It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community in (...) which the fiction originated. (shrink)

In his preface to the English edition, Apel (identified with critical theory) explains that the title of his two-volume German collection connotes both a reconstruction of the process of hermeneutic transformation in recent philosophy and the author's semiotical transformation of transcendental logic. The emphasis here is on the latter with discussions of the a priori nature of language per Wittgenstein, Peirce, and Chomsky, and its implications for a rational foundation for ethics in modern science. Includes a new foreword. Name index (...) only. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR. (shrink)

This article provides an account of an attempt to use games in teaching the political philosophies of Hobbes (and Locke). The idea of using games as an educational tool seems appropriate for philosophy since philosophers so often discuss games and draw examples from them. Political philosophy is especially suited for this approach since games involve human interactions similar to those discussed by political philosophers.

The Prisoner's Dilemma (PD) exhibits a tragedy in this sense: if the players are fully informed and rational, they are condemned to a jointly dispreferred outcome. In this essay I address the following question: What feature of the PD's payoff structure is necessary and sufficient to produce the tragedy? In answering it I use the notion of a trembling-hand equilibrium. In the final section I discuss an implication of my argument, an implication which bears on the persistence of the problem (...) posed by the PD. (shrink)

In 1976, John Immerwahr published a classroom simulation designed to illustrate Hobbes’ model of the mutual transfer of rights in the formation of the social contract. The game is fruitfully seized upon in classrooms from a broad range of disciplines because the lesson of Hobbes’ state of nature and Immerwahr’s game can both be represented and elucidated by principles of game theory. This paper reintroduces a new generation of teachers to what the author calls “one of the finest philosophy simulations (...) ever designed”, offers suggestions on conducting the game and on how Immerwahr’s implementation of it can be improved, and discusses its game-theoretic implications. Whereas Immerwahr’s version of the game approximates the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the version presented in this paper more closely resembles the “Assurance Game”. Accordingly, the results of the author’s game indicate that, if given the chance to cooperate, students do so, and the average student finishes the game better off than in the Prisoner’s Dilemma. The author relates the results of his game to the theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, and concludes by underscoring the richness of the game for philosophical analysis. (shrink)

Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of (...) contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. "Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology." This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book. This new translation, based on the text in the complete edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory. (shrink)

In part through correcting mistranslations of key passages in the "de logica" part of his "de corpore," hobbes is shown to have held a theory in which the intention to communicate enters into the definition of signification; and in which speech requires, In addition, (1) socially agreed-Upon correlations between kinds of utterances and kinds of things, And (2) an interrelationship of such utterances (or 'words') in what hobbes calls 'contexture'. It is shown that hobbes did not hold that for a (...) linguistic expression to have meaning is for it to stand for something, Or that what an expression means is what it stands for--Positions commonly, And mistakenly, Attributed to him. (shrink)

Thomas hobbes's papers at chatsworth prove that he had considerable knowledge of legal concepts. apparently he used the chatsworth copy of christopher saint german's "doctor" and "student" in developing his concept of contractual obligation. realizing this is useful for a careful analysis of hobbes's theory of why contracts oblige. the crucial problem is hobbes attempt to explain why we should perform a disadvantageous contract. he suggests different motives in all three of his major political works. in "leviathan" he finally settles (...) on the argument that it is always to our long-term advantage to fail to keep contracts. this argument is not very satisfactory, but it is the best that he can come up with given his account of human nature. (shrink)