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  1. The extended mind.Andy Clark & David J. Chalmers - 1998 - Analysis 58 (1):7-19.
    Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin? The question invites two standard replies. Some accept the demarcations of skin and skull, and say that what is outside the body is outside the mind. Others are impressed by arguments suggesting that the meaning of our words "just ain't in the head", and hold that this externalism about meaning carries over into an externalism about mind. We propose to pursue a third position. We advocate a very different (...)
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  • The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience.Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson & Eleanor Rosch - 1991 - MIT Press.
    The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience.
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  • The Predictive Mind.Jakob Hohwy - 2013 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
    A new theory is taking hold in neuroscience. It is the theory that the brain is essentially a hypothesis-testing mechanism, one that attempts to minimise the error of its predictions about the sensory input it receives from the world. It is an attractive theory because powerful theoretical arguments support it, and yet it is at heart stunningly simple. Jakob Hohwy explains and explores this theory from the perspective of cognitive science and philosophy. The key argument throughout The Predictive Mind is (...)
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  • Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind.Andy Clark - 2015 - New York: Oxford University Press USA.
    How is it that thoroughly physical material beings such as ourselves can think, dream, feel, create and understand ideas, theories and concepts? How does mere matter give rise to all these non-material mental states, including consciousness itself? An answer to this central question of our existence is emerging at the busy intersection of neuroscience, psychology, artificial intelligence, and robotics.In this groundbreaking work, philosopher and cognitive scientist Andy Clark explores exciting new theories from these fields that reveal minds like ours to (...)
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  • Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science.Andy Clark - 2013 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 36 (3):181-204.
    Brains, it has recently been argued, are essentially prediction machines. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly attempting to match incoming sensory inputs with top-down expectations or predictions. This is achieved using a hierarchical generative model that aims to minimize prediction error within a bidirectional cascade of cortical processing. Such accounts offer a unifying model of perception and action, illuminate the functional role of attention, and may neatly capture the special contribution of cortical processing to (...)
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  • The Scientific Image.William Demopoulos & Bas C. van Fraassen - 1982 - Philosophical Review 91 (4):603.
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  • The Self‐Evidencing Brain.Jakob Hohwy - 2014 - Noûs 50 (2):259-285.
    An exciting theory in neuroscience is that the brain is an organ for prediction error minimization. This theory is rapidly gaining influence and is set to dominate the science of mind and brain in the years to come. PEM has extreme explanatory ambition, and profound philosophical implications. Here, I assume the theory, briefly explain it, and then I argue that PEM implies that the brain is essentially self-evidencing. This means it is imperative to identify an evidentiary boundary between the brain (...)
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  • The Structure of the World: Metaphysics and Representation.Steven French - 2014 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Steven French articulates and defends the bold claim that there are no objects in the world. He draws on metaphysics and philosophy of science to argue for structural realism--the position that we live in a world of structures--and defends a form of eliminativism about objects that sets laws and symmetry principles at the heart of ontology.
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  • Structural realism: The best of both worlds?John Worrall - 1989 - Dialectica 43 (1-2):99-124.
    The no-miracles argument for realism and the pessimistic meta-induction for anti-realism pull in opposite directions. Structural Realism---the position that the mathematical structure of mature science reflects reality---relieves this tension.
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  • (2 other versions)The semantic conception of truth and the foundations of semantics.Alfred Tarski - 1943 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 4 (3):341-376.
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  • Foundation of the Unity of Science: Toward an International Encyclopedia of Unified Science.C. H. Langford - 1970 - University of Chicago Press Cambridge University Press.
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  • (1 other version)The symbol grounding problem.Stevan Harnad - 1990 - Physica D 42:335-346.
    There has been much discussion recently about the scope and limits of purely symbolic models of the mind and about the proper role of connectionism in cognitive modeling. This paper describes the symbol grounding problem : How can the semantic interpretation of a formal symbol system be made intrinsic to the system, rather than just parasitic on the meanings in our heads? How can the meanings of the meaningless symbol tokens, manipulated solely on the basis of their shapes, be grounded (...)
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  • The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory?Karl Friston - 2010 - Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11 (2):127–18.
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  • The anticipating brain is not a scientist: the free-energy principle from an ecological-enactive perspective.Jelle Bruineberg, Julian Kiverstein & Erik Rietveld - 2018 - Synthese 195 (6).
    In this paper, we argue for a theoretical separation of the free-energy principle from Helmholtzian accounts of the predictive brain. The free-energy principle is a theoretical framework capturing the imperative for biological self-organization in information-theoretic terms. The free-energy principle has typically been connected with a Bayesian theory of predictive coding, and the latter is often taken to support a Helmholtzian theory of perception as unconscious inference. If our interpretation is right, however, a Helmholtzian view of perception is incompatible with Bayesian (...)
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  • The Mathematical Theory of Communication.Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver - 1949 - University of Illinois Press.
    Scientific knowledge grows at a phenomenal pace--but few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a role in our modern world as The Mathematical Theory of Communication, published originally as a paper on communication theory more than fifty years ago. Republished in book form shortly thereafter, it has since gone through four hardcover and sixteen paperback printings. It is a revolutionary work, astounding in its foresight and contemporaneity. The University of Illinois Press is pleased and honored (...)
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  • (2 other versions)The Semantic Conception of Truth and the Foundations of Semantics.Alfred Tarski - 1944 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 9 (3):68-68.
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  • How to entrain your evil demon.Jakob Hohwy - 2017 - Philosophy and Predictive Processing.
    The notion that the brain is a prediction error minimizer entails, via the notion of Markov blankets and self-evidencing, a form of global scepticism — an inability to rule out evil demon scenarios. This type of scepticism is viewed by some as a sign of a fatally flawed conception of mind and cognition. Here I discuss whether this scepticism is ameliorated by acknowledging the role of action in the most ambitious approach to prediction error minimization, namely under the free energy (...)
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  • Models of data.Patrick Suppes - 2009 - In Ernest Nagel, Patrick Suppes & Alfred Tarski (eds.), Provability, Computability and Reflection. Stanford, CA, USA: Elsevier.
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  • The Logical Syntax of Language.Rudolph Carnap - 1936 - Philosophical Review 46 (5):549-553.
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  • A defence of informational structural realism.Luciano Floridi - 2008 - Synthese 161 (2):219-253.
    This is the revised version of an invited keynote lecture delivered at the "1st Australian Computing and Philosophy Conference". The paper is divided into two parts. The first part defends an informational approach to structural realism. It does so in three steps. First, it is shown that, within the debate about structural realism, epistemic and ontic structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position. Second, it is argued that a version of (...)
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  • Is semantic information meaningful data?Luciano Floridi - 2005 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):351-370.
    There is no consensus yet on the definition of semantic information. This paper contributes to the current debate by criticising and revising the Standard Definition of semantic Information (SDI) as meaningful data, in favour of the Dretske-Grice approach: meaningful and well-formed data constitute semantic information only if they also qualify as contingently truthful. After a brief introduction, SDI is criticised for providing necessary but insufficient conditions for the definition of semantic information. SDI is incorrect because truth-values do not supervene on (...)
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  • Radical Predictive Processing.Andy Clark - 2015 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (S1):3-27.
    Recent work in computational and cognitive neuroscience depicts the brain as an ever‐active prediction machine: an inner engine continuously striving to anticipate the incoming sensory barrage. I briefly introduce this class of models before contrasting two ways of understanding the implied vision of mind. One way (Conservative Predictive Processing) depicts the predictive mind as an insulated inner arena populated by representations so rich and reconstructive as to enable the organism to ‘throw away the world’. The other (Radical Predictive Processing) stresses (...)
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  • A Mathematical Theory of Communication.Claude Elwood Shannon - 1948 - Bell System Technical Journal 27 (April 1924):379–423.
    The mathematical theory of communication.
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  • Free-Energy and the Brain.Karl J. Friston & Klaas E. Stephan - 2007 - Synthese 159 (3):417 - 458.
    If one formulates Helmholtz's ideas about perception in terms of modern-day theories one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. Using constructs from statistical physics it can be shown that the problems of inferring what cause our sensory inputs and learning causal regularities in the sensorium can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests on (...)
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  • Reinflating the semantic approach.Steven French & James Ladyman - 1999 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 13 (2):103 – 121.
    The semantic, or model-theoretic, approach to theories has recently come under criticism on two fronts: (i) it is claimed that it cannot account for the wide diversity of models employed in scientific practice—a claim which has led some to propose a “deflationary” account of models; (ii) it is further contended that the sense of “model” used by the approach differs from that given in model theory. Our aim in the present work is to articulate a possible response to these claims, (...)
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  • Free-energy and the brain.Karl Friston & Klaas Stephan - 2007 - Synthese 159 (3):417-458.
    If one formulates Helmholtz’s ideas about perception in terms of modern-day theories one arrives at a model of perceptual inference and learning that can explain a remarkable range of neurobiological facts. Using constructs from statistical physics it can be shown that the problems of inferring what cause our sensory inputs and learning causal regularities in the sensorium can be resolved using exactly the same principles. Furthermore, inference and learning can proceed in a biologically plausible fashion. The ensuing scheme rests on (...)
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  • (1 other version)Meaning and synonymy in natural languages.Rudolf Carnap - 1955 - Philosophical Studies 6 (3):33 - 47.
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  • Outline of a theory of strongly semantic information.Luciano Floridi - 2004 - Minds and Machines 14 (2):197-221.
    This paper outlines a quantitative theory of strongly semantic information (TSSI) based on truth-values rather than probability distributions. The main hypothesis supported in the paper is that the classic quantitative theory of weakly semantic information (TWSI), based on probability distributions, assumes that truth-values supervene on factual semantic information, yet this principle is too weak and generates a well-known semantic paradox, whereas TSSI, according to which factual semantic information encapsulates truth, can avoid the paradox and is more in line with the (...)
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  • Busting Out: Predictive Brains, Embodied Minds, and the Puzzle of the Evidentiary Veil.Andy Clark - 2017 - Noûs 51 (4):727-753.
    Biological brains are increasingly cast as ‘prediction machines’: evolved organs whose core operating principle is to learn about the world by trying to predict their own patterns of sensory stimulation. This, some argue, should lead us to embrace a brain-bound ‘neurocentric’ vision of the mind. The mind, such views suggest, consists entirely in the skull-bound activity of the predictive brain. In this paper I reject the inference from predictive brains to skull-bound minds. Predictive brains, I hope to show, can be (...)
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  • Where’s the action? The pragmatic turn in cognitive science.Andreas K. Engel, Alexander Maye, Martin Kurthen & Peter König - 2013 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 17 (5):202-209.
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  • A defence of constructionism: philosophy as conceptual engineering.Luciano Floridi - 2011 - Metaphilosophy 42 (3):282-304.
    This article offers an account and defence of constructionism, both as a metaphilosophical approach and as a philosophical methodology, with references to the so-called maker's knowledge tradition. Its main thesis is that Plato's “user's knowledge” tradition should be complemented, if not replaced, by a constructionist approach to philosophical problems in general and to knowledge in particular. Epistemic agents know something when they are able to build (reproduce, simulate, model, construct, etc.) that something and plug the obtained information into the correct (...)
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  • An Outline of a Theory of Semantic Information.Rudolf Carnap & Yehoshua Bar-Hillel - 1952 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 19 (3):230-232.
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  • In defence of ontic structural realism.Steven French & James Ladyman - 2011 - In Alisa Bokulich & Peter Bokulich (eds.), Scientific Structuralism. Springer Science+Business Media. pp. 25-42.
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  • Existential hypotheses. Realistic versus phenomenalistic interpretations.Herbert Feigl - 1950 - Philosophy of Science 17 (1):35-62.
    The intention of the present essay is to urge a reconsideration of the Realism-Phenomenalism-Issue, mainly and primarily in regard to the interpretation of scientific hypotheses; secondarily also relating to the basic problems of epistemology.
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  • Dreaming the Whole Cat: Generative Models, Predictive Processing, and the Enactivist Conception of Perceptual Experience.Andy Clark - 2012 - Mind 121 (483):753-771.
    Does the material basis of conscious experience extend beyond the boundaries of the brain and central nervous system? In Clark 2009 I reviewed a number of ‘enactivist’ arguments for such a view and found none of them compelling. Ward (2012) rejects my analysis on the grounds that the enactivist deploys an essentially world-involving concept of experience that transforms the argumentative landscape in a way that makes the enactivist conclusion inescapable. I present an alternative (prediction-and-generative-model-based) account that neatly accommodates all the (...)
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  • Against digital ontology.Luciano Floridi - 2009 - Synthese 168 (1):151 - 178.
    The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research. Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” of Being (to paraphrase (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Structuralist View of Theories. A Posible Analogue of the Bourbaki Programme in Physical Science.W. Stegmüller - 1982 - Erkenntnis 17 (3):377-397.
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  • Understanding Scientific Theories: An Assessment of Developments, 1969–1998.Frederick Suppe - 2000 - Philosophy of Science 67 (3):115.
    The positivistic Received View construed scientific theories syntactically as axiomatic calculi where theoretical terms were given a partial semantic interpretation via correspondence rules connecting them to observation statements. This paper assesses what, with hindsight, seem the most important defects in the Received View; surveys the main proposed successor analyses to the Received View--various Semantic Conception versions and the Structuralist Analysis; evaluates how well they avoid those defects; examines what new problems they face and where the most promising require further development (...)
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  • Solving the symbol grounding problem: a critical review of fifteen years of research.Mariarosaria Taddeo & Luciano Floridi - unknown
    This article reviews eight proposed strategies for solving the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP), which was given its classic formulation in Harnad (1990). After a concise introduction, we provide an analysis of the requirement that must be satisfied by any hypothesis seeking to solve the SGP, the zero semantical commitment condition. We then use it to assess the eight strategies, which are organised into three main approaches: representationalism, semi-representationalism and non-representationalism. The conclusion is that all the strategies are semantically committed and (...)
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  • (1 other version)The Structuralist View of Theories. A Possible Analogue of the Bourbaki Programme in Physical Science.W. Stegmüller - 1980 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 170 (1):85-86.
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  • What a maker’s knowledge could be.Luciano Floridi - 2018 - Synthese 195 (1):465-481.
    Three classic distinctions specify that truths can be necessary versus contingent,analytic versus synthetic, and a priori versus a posteriori. The philosopher reading this article knows very well both how useful and ordinary such distinctions are in our conceptual work and that they have been subject to many and detailed debates, especially the last two. In the following pages, I do not wish to discuss how far they may be tenable. I shall assume that, if they are reasonable and non problematic (...)
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  • Semantic information and the correctness theory of truth.Luciano Floridi - 2011 - Erkenntnis 74 (2):147–175.
    Semantic information is usually supposed to satisfy the veridicality thesis: p qualifies as semantic information only if p is true. However, what it means for semantic information to be true is often left implicit, with correspondentist interpretations representing the most popular, default option. The article develops an alternative approach, namely a correctness theory of truth (CTT) for semantic information. This is meant as a contribution not only to the philosophy of information but also to the philosophical debate on the nature (...)
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  • A plea for non-naturalism as constructionism.Luciano Floridi - 2017 - Minds and Machines 27 (2):269-285.
    Contemporary science seems to be caught in a strange predicament. On the one hand, it holds a firm and reasonable commitment to a healthy naturalistic methodology, according to which explanations of natural phenomena should never overstep the limits of the natural itself. On the other hand, contemporary science is also inextricably and now inevitably dependent on ever more complex technologies, especially Information and Communication Technologies, which it exploits as well as fosters. Yet such technologies are increasingly “artificialising” or “denaturalising” the (...)
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  • Introduction to Semantics and Formalization of Logic.Rudolf Carnap - 1959 - Harvard University Press.
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  • The Logic of Pragmatic Truth.Newton C. A. Da Costa, Otávio Bueno & Steven French - 1998 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 27 (6):603-620.
    The mathematical concept of pragmatic truth, first introduced in Mikenberg, da Costa and Chuaqui (1986), has received in the last few years several applications in logic and the philosophy of science. In this paper, we study the logic of pragmatic truth, and show that there are important connections between this logic, modal logic and, in particular, Jaskowski's discussive logic. In order to do so, two systems are put forward so that the notions of pragmatic validity and pragmatic truth can be (...)
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  • A praxical solution of the symbol grounding problem.Mariarosaria Taddeo & Luciano Floridi - 2007 - Minds and Machines 17 (4):369-389.
    This article is the second step in our research into the Symbol Grounding Problem (SGP). In a previous work, we defined the main condition that must be satisfied by any strategy in order to provide a valid solution to the SGP, namely the zero semantic commitment condition (Z condition). We then showed that all the main strategies proposed so far fail to satisfy the Z condition, although they provide several important lessons to be followed by any new proposal. Here, we (...)
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  • (1 other version)Perception and testimony as data providers.Luciano Floridi - 2014 - Logique Et Analyse 57 (226):71–95.
    This chapter addresses two questions. First, if knowledge is accounted information, how are we supposed (to apply this analysis in order) to understand perceptual knowledge and knowledge by testimony? In the first part of the chapter, I articulate an answer in terms of a re-interpretation of perception and testimony as data providers rather than full-blown cases of knowledge. Second, if perception and testimony are correctly understood as data providers, how are we supposed (to apply this analysis in order) to understand (...)
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  • A Critical Analysis of Floridi’s Theory of Semantic Information.Pieter Adriaans - 2010 - Knowledge, Technology & Policy 23 (1):41-56.
    In various publications over the past years, Floridi has developed a theory of semantic information as well-formed, meaningful, and truthful data. This theory is more or less orthogonal to the standard entropy-based notions of information known from physics, information theory, and computer science that all define the amount of information in a certain system as a scalar value without any direct semantic implication. In this context the question rises what the exact relation between these various conceptions of information is and (...)
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  • Realism and its representational vehicles.Steven French - 2017 - Synthese 194 (9):3311-3326.
    In this essay I shall focus on the adoption of the Semantic Approach by structural realists, including myself, who have done so on the grounds that it wears its structuralist sympathies on its sleeve. Despite this, the SA has been identified as standing in tension with the ontological commitments of the so-called ’ontic’ form of this view and so I shall explore that tension before discussing the usefulness of the SA in framing scientific representation and concluding with a discussion of (...)
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  • Pragmatics in Carnap and Morris and the Bipartite Metatheory Conception.Thomas Uebel - 2013 - Erkenntnis 78 (3):523-546.
    This paper concerns the issue of whether the so-called left wing of the Vienna Circle (Carnap, Neurath, Frank) can be understood as having provided the blueprint for a bipartite metatheory with a formal-logical part (the “logic of science”) supporting and being supported by a naturalistic-empirical part (the “behavioristics of science”). A claim to this effect was recently met by a counterclaim that there was indeed an attempt made to broaden Carnap’s formalist conception of philosophy by the pragmatist Morris, but that (...)
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