Is linguistic meaning to be accounted for independently of the states of mind of language users, or can it only be explained in terms of them? If the latter, what account of the mental states in question avoids circularity? In this book Brian Loar offers a subtle and comprehensive theory that both preserves the natural priority of the mind in explanations of meaning, and gives an independent characterisation of its features. the nature of meaning and its relation to the mind (...) is probably the area of paramount concern among philosophers. The theory presented here, by its reach and substance and the thoroughness and sophistication of its development, makes a major contribution to the debate. (shrink)

Pragmatism's ambiguous legacy -- Can democracy be a way of life? -- Peirce, inquiry, and politics -- Pluralism and the Peircean view -- Posner's pragmatic realism -- The case of Sidney Hook -- Epilogue : the eclipse narrative revisited.

The secondary literature on Rawls is vast, but little of it is historical. Relying on the archival materials he left to Harvard after his death, we look at the historical contexts that informed Rawls's understanding of political philosophy and the changes in his thinking up to A Theory of Justice. We argue that Rawls's classic work reveals positivist aspirations that were altered and frayed by various encounters with postanalytic naturalism. So, we begin in the 1940s, showing the influence of other (...) positivist projects, such as those of Popper and Ducasse. Thereafter, we explore how Rawls's encounter with Wittgenstein and Quine in the 1950s and 1960s led him to introduce the post-analytic features evident in A Theory of Justice. Our historical narrative challenges commonplace folk-understandings that portray Rawls as either wholly committed to positivism or as its principal slayer. (shrink)

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

This is a short, accessible introduction to John Rawls' thought and gives a thorough and concise presentation of the main outlines of Rawls' theory as well as drawing links between Rawls' enterprise and other important positions in moral and political philosophy.

matter of knowing that -- that injustice is wrong, courage is valuable, and care is As a result, what I'll be doing is primarily defending in general -- and due. Such knowledge is embodied in a range of capacities, abilities, and skills..

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The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy.This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, students, and (...) generalists with an authoritative analysis of Quine's lasting contributions to philosophy. The major themes covered include the adaptation of the language of modern logic to formulate a criterion of ontological commitment; Quine's own ontological commitments; Duhemian-Holistic empiricism and the attendant rejection of a priori knowledge; the nature and grounds of logical truth; Quine's criticisms of such notions as meaning, synonymy, analyticity, and necessity; the conjecture of the indeterminacy of translation; modal logic; propositional attitudes; and Quine's work on naturalized epistemology.Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke, and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them. (shrink)

explores the interaction between psychology and epistemology and addresses empirical questions about how we should arrive at our beliefs, and whether the processes by which we arrive at our beliefs are the ones by which we ought to arrive at our beliefs.

Robert Brandom's latest book, the product of his John Locke lectures in Oxford in 2006, is a return to the philosophy of language and is easily read as a continuation and development of the views defended in Making it Explicit. The text of the lectures is presented much as they were delivered, but it contains an ‘Afterword’ of more than 30 pages which responds to questions raised when he gave the lectures, and also when they were subsequently delivered in Prague (...) the following year. The published text also contains relatively technical appendices to two of the lectures.The individual lectures engage with some important and difficult issues, often ones that were explored in detail in the earlier book. However, these discussions are located within a broader meta-philosophical context, and it says something about the abstract and difficult character of these views that they provide the main subject matter of the Afterword. This framework affects how we should understand the relations between this book and Making It Explicit too. Although most of the detailed discussions happily belong within the general project of the earlier book, they are offered as illustrations of a framework that is independent of this project. Indeed, Brandom suggests that defenders of the semantic views of David Lewis, for example, could embrace his main message as well as those who favour Brandom's own form of pragmatism.Neo-pragmatist philosophers such as Brandom's teacher, Richard Rorty, often present themselves as rejecting the analytic tradition in philosophy. When Brandom describes the ‘pragmatist challenge’ to the ‘classical project of analysis’, he appeals to the criticisms found in the work of Wittgenstein and Sellars that are often appealed to by the critics of the analytic tradition. The message of the new book is that the views he has built on this …. (shrink)

The most influential philosopher in the analytic tradition of his time, Willard Van Orman Quine changed the way we think about language and its relation to the world. His rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his scepticism about modal logic and essentialism, his celebrated theme of the indeterminacy of translation, and his advocacy of naturalism have challenged key assumptions of the prevailing orthodoxy and helped shape the development of much of recent philosophy. This introduction to Quine's philosophical ideas provides philosophers, students (...) and generalists with an authoritative analysis of his lasting contributions to philosophy. Quine's ideas throughout are contrasted with more traditional views, as well as with contemporaries such as Frege, Russell, Carnap, Davidson, Field, Kripke and Chomsky, enabling the reader to grasp a clear sense of the place of Quine's views in twentieth-century philosophy and the important criticisms of them. (shrink)

For the first time in print, this article reports passages from John Rawls’s graduate papers and annotations on books and manuscripts from his personal library. The analysis of this material shows the historical inaccuracy of the widespread assumption that Rawls’s philosophy owes very little to American pragmatism. Peirce’s notion of truth, as well as the holistic critique of pragmatism thatMortonWhite began in the late 1940s, prove significant at the very beginning of Rawls’s philosophical enterprise. In the light of this material, (...) it might be argued that Rawls’s elaboration of ‘reflective equilibrium’ started at least in part as an attempt to overcome the pending problems of pragmatism. (shrink)

Quine was one of the foremost philosophers of the Twentieth century. In this outstanding overview of Quine's philosophy, Peter Hylton shows why Quine is so important and how his philosophical naturalism has been so influential within analytic philosophy. Beginning with an overview of Quine's philosophical background in logic and mathematics and the role of Rudolf Carnap's influence on Quine's thought, he goes on to discuss Quine's famous analytic-synthetic distinction and his arguments concerning the nature of the a priori. He also (...) discusses Quine's philosophy of language and epistemology, his celebrated theory of the indeterminacy of translation and his broader views of ontology and modality. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in Quine, twentieth century philosophy and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

The paper introduces ten open problems in belief revision theory, related to the representation of the belief state, to different notions of degrees of belief, and to the nature of change operations. It is argued that these problems are all issues in philosopical logic, in the strong sense of requiring inputs from both logic and philosophy for their solution.