The first volume of the Library of Living Philosophers (LLP) appeared in 1939, the brainchild of the late Professor Paul A. Schilpp. Schilpp saw that it would help to eliminate confusion and endless sterile disputes over interpretation if great philosophers could be confronted by their capable philosophical peers and asked to reply. As well as a number of critical essays with the chosen philosopher's replies to each essay, each volume would include an intellectual autobiography and an up-to-date bibliography The LLP (...) series has exceeded even Schilpp's expectations, enabling great philosophers to do more than clarify by extending and elaborating their thoughts. A volume in the Library of Living Philosophers is not merely a commentary on a philosopher's work; it is a critical part of that work. (shrink)

Kant's question 'How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?' pre- cipitated the Critique of Pure Reason. Question and answer notwith- standing, Mill and others persisted in doubting that such judgments were possible at all. At length some of Kant's own clearest purported.

The student of philosophy usually is not irritated by obscure formulations. On the contrary, reading the quoted passage he would presumably be convinced ...

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper offers a refutation of P. Duhem's thesis that the falsifiability of an isolated empirical hypothesis H as an explanans is unavoidably inconclusive. Its central contentions are the following: 1. No general features of the logic of falsifiability can assure, for every isolated empirical hypothesis H and independently of the domain to which it pertains, that H can always be preserved as an explanans of any empirical findings O whatever by some modification of the auxiliary assumptions A in conjunction (...) with which H functions as an explanans. For Duhem cannot guarantee on any general logical grounds the deducibility of O from an explanans constituted by the conjunction of H and some revised non-trivial version R of A: the existence of the required set R of collateral assumptions must be demonstrated for each particular case. 2. The categorical form of the Duhemian thesis is not only a non-sequitur but actually false. This is shown by adducing the testing of physical geometry as a counterexample to Duhem in the form of a rebuttal to A. Einstein's geometrical articulation of Duhem's thesis. 3. The possibility of a quasi a priori choice of a physical geometry in the sense of Duhem must be clearly distinguished from the feasibility of a conventional adoption of such a geometry in the sense of H. Poincare. And the legitimacy of the latter cannot be invoked to save the Duhemian thesis from refutation by the foregoing considerations. (shrink)