Das Ziel: Konstitutionssystem der Begriffe Das Ziel der vorliegenden Untersuchungen ist die Aufstellung eines erkenntnismäßig-logischen Systems der ...

With this third edition of Nelson Goodman's The Structure of Appear ance, we are pleased to make available once more one of the most in fluential and important works in the philosophy of our times. Professor Geoffrey Hellman's introduction gives a sustained analysis and appreciation of the major themes and the thrust of the book, as well as an account of the ways in which many of Goodman's problems and projects have been picked up and developed by others. Hellman also (...) suggests how The Structure of Appearance introduces issues which Goodman later continues in his essays and in the Languages of Art. There remains the task of understanding Good man's project as a whole; to see the deep continuities of his thought, as it ranges from logic to epistemology, to science and art; to see it therefore as a complex yet coherent theory of human cognition and practice. What we can only hope to suggest, in this note, is the b. road Significance of Goodman's apparently technical work for philosophers, scientists and humanists. One may say of Nelson Goodman that his bite is worse than his bark. Behind what appears as a cool and methodical analysis of the conditions of the construction of systems, there lurks a radical and disturbing thesis: that the world is, in itself, no more one way than another, nor are we. It depends on the ways in which we take it, and on what we do. (shrink)

This book argues against the view that mathematical knowledge is a priori,contending that mathematics is an empirical science and develops historically,just as ...

An Essay on Mathematical Instrumentalism M. Detlefsen. THE PHILOSOPHICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF HILBERT'S PROGRAM 1. INTRODUCTION In this chapter I shall attempt to set out Hilbert's Program in a way that is more revealing than ...

A respected Harvard logician and philosopher gathers together twenty-nine writings dealing with the foundations of mathematics, Rudolf Carnap, lin-guistics, ...

Challenging the myth that mathematical objects can be defined into existence, Bigelow here employs Armstrong's metaphysical materialism to cast new light on mathematics. He identifies natural, real, and imaginary numbers and sets with specified physical properties and relations and, by so doing, draws mathematics back from its sterile, abstract exile into the midst of the physical world.

In this foundational work on the theory of linguistic and mental representation, Stephen Schiffer surveys all the leading theories of meaning and content in the philosophy of language and finds them lacking. He concludes that there can be no correct, positive philosophical theory or linguistic or mental representation and, accordingly advocates the deflationary "no-theory theory of meaning and content." Along the way he takes up functionalism, the nature of propositions and their suitability as contents, the language of thought and other (...) sententialist theories of belief, intention based semantics, and related issues in ontology. Stephen Schiffer is Professor of Philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Quine claims to be "working from within" our conceptual scheme and proceeding scientifically. This description makes his views of interest to those who are skeptical of traditional metaphysical projects and to those with confidence in science. This study examines whether Quine is in fact starting within ordinary language and proceeding scientifically and, if not, how his views are to be best understood. I proceed by exploring some central doctrines in Quine's writing, most notably indeterminacy of translation, but also his views (...) on underdetermination of scientific theory, truth, reality and the dispensability of theory, and the nature of scientific method. In examining Quine's arguments for these doctrines, I find that they do not all issue from what we would ordinarily or scientifically say on the topics concerned. Instead, I find that most arise from an underlying view of the nature of language and knowledge, which I call natural empiricism. I argue that natural empiricism involves assumptions and dynamics of reasoning characteristic of metaphysical points of view, rather than of an ordinary or scientific stance. This is a result with consequences for a critical evaluation of Quine's views. ;I show that natural empiricism leads not only to the central doctrines in Quine's writing that I examine, but also to his general claim to be "working from within" our conceptual scheme and proceeding scientifically. I argue that there is a tension between natural empiricism and "working from within" that is the major tension in Quine's views, leading him to reach different conclusions on the same topic. Quine's views are unusual in that this tension is internal to natural empiricism; most metaphysical views, while they may conflict with the ordinary, do not also endorse it. Natural empiricism is also an unusual point of view in its thoroughgoing empiricism: I claim that it is an empiricist overreaction to the vestiges of rationalism in twentieth century logical empiricism. It shares with the views to which it reacts the need to ground language and knowledge, in a metaphysical sense. Thus Quine's position is particularly valuable for showing up the differences and common motivations in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

A correspondence theory of truth explains truth in terms of various correspondence relations (e.G., Reference) between words and the extralinguistic world. What are the consequences of quine's doctrine of indeterminacy for correspondence theories? in "ontological relativity" quine implicitly claims that correspondence theories are impossible; that is what the doctrine of 'relative reference' amounts to. But quine's doctrine of relative reference is incoherent. Those who think the indeterminacy thesis valid should not try to relativize reference, They should abandon the relation and (...) replace it by certain more general correspondence relations between words and extralinguistic objects. Doing so will not interfere with the task of defining truth in terms of correspondence relations. (shrink)