I argue that mystical experience essentially involves two aspects: an element of direct encounter with God, and an element of union with God. The framework I use to make sense of is taken largely from William Alston’s magisterial book Perceiving God. While I believe Alston’s view is correct in many essentials, the main problem with the account is that it divorces the idea of encountering or perceiving God from the idea of being united with God. What I argue, on the (...) contrary, is that because our experience of God is an experience of a relationship-seeking, personal being, it brings with it an important element of union that Alston overlooks. (shrink)

Mysticism claims of its logical scheme that it is Euclidean, that from its first axiom or principle the remainder of its doctrine follows, but it makes this claim in so many languages and in such a variety of obscure and self-contradictory ways that it is difficult to discern how this could be possible, and it is rarely considered a plausible claim in metaphysics. I believe it is plausible, and in this essay I try to explain why. -/- .

Giving justice to Maximus any philosophy wich does not include mysticism will be false as philosophy. Our metaphysics must be mystical in order to be rational. In Maximus’ doctrine, then, Christ comes not to destroy but to fulfill the metaphysics of mystery elaborated by the philosophers. For him there can be no separation between philosophy and theology, or between natural and revealed theology. Thereby, Christology and liturgical mysticism are not additional to a neoplatonic, aristotelian, and other methaphysics. Maximus (...) concern was to continue, not the philosophical tradition of the Aristotelian commentators, but the theological one of the Fathers. He was not an Aristotelian commentator himself. The union and distinction are basic logical concepts in Maximus’ thinking, but the Chalcedonian logic is the application of these concepts. Only in this way one can talk about Christianization of aristotelian logic. St. Maximus the Confessor synthesized Aristotelianism influences with those of Platonism in order to exceed the daring speculations of cosmology origeniene. He had an extraordinary ability to combine metaphysical requirements with the effort of defining the faith dogma, and the monastic experiences with the depth thinking, succeeding to propose a new conception in which converge all cultural and religious influences. This study is analyzing the relationship between logoi and energeia (the intentional or “logical” energeia and the ontology of divine energy as ontological “logic”) within the maximian cosmology, by referring to the palamite theology. The concept of logoi for St. Maximus play a role similar in many respects to that of energy (energeiai) in Cappadocian Fathers, but the functional similarity it should not lead to the identification rationales with the energies. (shrink)

William James was one of the most controversial philosophers of the early part of the 20 century, and his apparent skepticism about logic and any robust conception of truth was often simply attributed to his endorsing mysticism and irrationality out of an overwhelming desire to make room for religion in his world-view. However, it will be argued here that James’s pessimism about logic and even truth (or at least ‘absolute’ truth), while most prominent in his later views, stem from (...) the naturalistic conception of concepts developed much earlier in The Principles of Psychology (1890), and it is his commitment to naturalism about our conceptual powers, rather than to any sort of mysticism or irrationalism, that motivates his skepticism about the scope and power of logic, and ultimately about the objectivity of truth itself. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how Bertrand Russell depicts the relation of mysticism to three other areas of human activity: philosophy, science, and religion, and thus: its special role. In his essay Mysticism and Logic (1914), Russell defines mystical thinking as beliefs in (1) the existence of special insight, (2) the unity of all things, (3) the unreality of time, and (4) the effacement of the boundaries between good and evil. Although he considers full (...) class='Hi'>mysticism – as a belief about the ontic structure of the world – to be erroneous – as a life attitude he attributes to it an element of wisdom that is lacking in other areas of human intellectual activity. Mysticism proves wrong also at the epistemological level, i.e. as a certain test of truth. But in its spirit of inquiry, it contains something that science also benefits from, and from which, therefore, scientific philosophy should take its cue. What additionally gives mysticism its value is the claim of impartial contemplation which gives rise to an attitude of love towards the whole world. Significantly, it was the combination of the best features of mystical thinking with scientific thinking and method which gave rise to Russell’s advocacy of scientific philosophy. In light of this, I argue that according to Russell mysticism is not an exclusively religious phenomenon, which is demonstrated, among other things, by the fact that he attributes two aspects of mysticism to the field of mathematics. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus and Edmund Husserl’s Experience and Judgement (Erfahrung und Urteil) are based on remarkably different conceptual frameworks and methodologies. After analyzing their respective accounts on the foundations of (formal) logic, I map out their common aims and different conclusions. I hold that Husserl and Wittgenstein both use the epistemic necessity of the existence of logical relations among things as an argument against philosophical scepticism, but their different epistemological convictions lead them to decisively diverging accounts of the (...) nature of those relations. Wittgenstein assumes a syntactic correspondence theory of truth, which identifies general logical form as a necessary condition for accurate representation, apparent in the existence of local truth-functions between propositions. As logical form is the (transcendental) necessary condition of every meaningful proposition, he infers that it is itself not representable and without ontological status. Husserl, by contrast, does not draw from a correspondence theory, but from a processual theory of certainty and truth, which offers genetic instead of categorical distinctions between perception and the logical relations apparent in conceptual knowledge. His theory of formal logic ultimately offers a coherent ontology for logical objects, which avoids logical mysticism. (shrink)

This paper presents a deductive proof for the necessary existence of objective truth and reality, addressing core philosophical challenges across multiple frameworks, including modernism, postmodernism, relativism, and radical skepticism. By starting with the undeniable fact of subjective experience, the argument demonstrates that rationality presupposes subjectivity, which in turn relies on the classical laws of logic. These laws cannot be grounded within subjectivity or rationality without falling into circular reasoning. Therefore, the proof establishes that objective reality must serve as the ground (...) for these logical laws, while objective truth provides their validation. This foundational framework resolves key philosophical problems, including infinite regress and self-justification, allowing for coherent philosophical thought. Furthermore, the paper explores conceptual parallels between this proof and elements of mysticism, pragmatism, and religious notions of divinity, suggesting a unified foundation that can empower individual contributions to the collective pursuit of truth. (shrink)

There are two fundamental questions that this paper tries to answer: how Zubiri knows God, and whether we can consider his philosophy to be mysticism. The greatest part of the analysis considers the last ten years of his philosophical activity. The first part of the paper analyzes the mature form of his method, which Zubiri revealed in his Trilogy. A brief presentation is made of primordial apprehension, logos and reason. Zubiri’s method goes beyond orthodox phenomenology, because he finds a (...) need also to include metaphysics. The second part of the article applies this method in order to know God. It begins with an analysis of the person in the process of construction of its I. Zubiri analyzes this mostly in Man and God. We can access God only on the metaphysical level of knowledge. On this path he rejects logic and speculation. On our way to know God we must confront the presumed sketch of God with human personal life. We can discover human life only by following strictly the sui generis phenomenological method. The conclusion that Zubiri reaches is that there is a personal absolute God, who influences humans in the construction of the I through the reality of things. On certain conditions, we can call Zubiri’s approach to philosophy a mystical one. This is due to the constant action of God creating a certain tension between the person and reality and a need for a personal answer to the divine action. (shrink)

This essay proposes to rethink the conceptual associations that bind immanence to the secular and oppose it to (divine) transcendence. It asks: What if immanence is divorced from the conceptual opposition between the world and its openings to (divine) other(s), between enclosure and the trace of a transcendent outside? What might arise if immanence is severed from its link with secularity, if it ceases to be merely another conceptual support in secularism’s metaphysical armature? To pursue these questions, the essay engages (...) a variety of materials, including medieval mysticism, anthropological critiques of the secular, work in Black studies, critiques of the subject, and François Laruelle’s non-philosophical thought. The result links immanence more intimately with dispossession than with the subject’s self-possession—and entwines it with the undercommons, as the atopic lowest place, rather than with the nomos and topos imposed by the (modern) world and its regime of the proper. Immanence is thought of as anti- and antenomian force, a groundless ground coming underneath the conceptual logics of the world, its normative order of things, and life lived according to its distributions. As a result, rather than a weapon in modernity’s endless self-justifying polemics with religion, immanence opens forth trajectories for its destitution and delegitimation. (shrink)

In his Tractatus and Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein develops some themes concerning the nature of the subject, transcendentalism, solipsism and mysticism. Though Wittgenstein rejects a naive, psychological understanding of the subject, he preserves the idea of the metaphysical subject, so-called “philosophical I”. The present investigations exhibit two ways of grasping the subject: (1) subject as a boundary (of the world); (2) subject (I) as the world. The author of the paper aims to analyze different methods of conceiving the subject, both (...) logical and transcendental. Then he discusses the naturalistic or reductionist consequences of solipsism which were derived by Wittgenstein. Moreover, he refers to the concept of ‘subject of will’ introduced in the Tractatus. Finally, the author puts a question whether the metaphysical subject is a boundary of the world identified with the subject of will. While trying to answer this question one can point to the essential difficulties of Wittgenstein’s standpoint. These difficulties become especially evident if we examine Wittgenstein’s statements concerning mysticism. The category of subject seems to gain a new dimension when reconsidered in this context. In the conclusion, the author offers an interpretation inspired by Schopenhauer’s conception of the double aspect of the subject that is to overstep these difficulties. (shrink)

The central teaching of mysticism is that Everything is One, whereas from the side of rationalism the universe is Multiple. The essence of the mystical tradition is not a particular philosophical system, but the simple realization that the soul of any individual/existence is identified with the Absolute. A special feature of the mysticism is the elimination of discriminations, i.e. the One and the Multiple are identical.On the other hand, in rationalism the One and the Multiple differ substantially. (...) class='Hi'>Mysticism aims at the Emptiness of Zero, whereas rationalism aims at the identification with the Infinite of Everything. Based on the ontology resulting from modern physics the One is also the Multiple and the Multiplicity is also a Module, also the Void and the Everything are complementary aspects of a single and indivisible reality. This means that mysticism and rationalism are the two sides of a Cosmic Thought, which isexpressed through consciousness. We could say that this consciousness is the rhythm that coordinates any opposite. (shrink)

This paper argues that the Islamic metaphysical vision finds its Western philosophical counterpart in Anna-Teresa Tymienecka's Phenomenology of Life. Comparative analysis of the main categories and strategies of knowledge in Islamic metaphysics and the Phenomenology of Life demonstrates obvious similarities, but also significant distinctions whereby the systems can be viewed as complementary. Tymieniecka’s philosophy begins with epoché on preceding philosophical knowledge, while Islamic philosophy begins with revelation. Tymieniecka uses presuppositionless phenomenological direct intuition combined with reflective analysis, while Sufi metaphysics combines (...) logic, intuitio,n and reliance on the experience attained in states of mystical perception. Unification of Reality and realization of truth in the Phenomenology of Life is attained via phenomenological intuition of life in all forms of experience, and in Islam, via certainty attained in religious experiences of unveiling. Due to its refocusing on the dynamic moments of the ontopoiesis of life, Tymieniecka’s ontology serves as a possible solution to the problems incurred by the more static metaphysical vision of Reality in Sufism. (shrink)

If this can be seen as a long way from the beginning of the ancient history, where humans have envisioned different new things and then invented them to make their life’s working smoother and easier, then it can be found that they have attributed their discoveries to various aspects and names of Gods and tried to signify their belief in the form of portraying the God’s powers through the nature of their discovery. Rather, in much modern times, when humans have (...) developed the natural insights and prorated those in the form of a much more logically biased discovery, then, the atheists have started to dominate the scientific arena for their foreplay in the work of their discoveries. However, as time passes by, five special types of research communities have gathered to allocate their discovered data’s in the respective norms as such, i) Atheists to whom, there is in essence no God and nothing in this universe can be attributed to them. ii) Believer of only one God as a whole, where the principle of religious biasing is effluent and supreme in their regards of the physical laws associated with the life and stimuli, iii) Believer of multiple God’s as a whole which poses no such scientific evaluation but can be thought of as a conjugate mechanism for the creator of the universe, iv) A divine supreme, where there is exactly no God, but the whole universe is a manifestation of the nature, where nature indirectly focuses the presence of God’s or the supreme creator that maintains symmetry and working of the universe, v) The not-so-sure about mechanism of the God’s presence, where the researcher sometimes tends to belief in God when something magical happens and attribute all to their divine grace, or in times of failures where they accused them for not being philosophically intrinsic as to their own needs, and in times with the believe that, ‘we won’t believe what we can’t see!’, either in the middle of the good or bad moments or in general in a casual and carefree mode. But, this should be kept in mind, that, the Eastern mysticism has always signifies God’s action in terms of every scientific actions with a proper mythological essence which when accompanied by knowledge produces something so scientific in the ancient of the days, that modern day researchers also have had no options left than to attribute affirmation to the fantastic achievements in the ‘so’ ancient times discovery with a strict modern effluence. Therefore, to model this paper, I have gathered data’s and ideas from researchers of various fields mostly (PhDs) in their respective discipline, so as to emulate their minds in the norms of God and its associated beliefs. (shrink)

Eine kurze Zusammenfassung dieses Buches finden Sie auf S. 135 oder 326. Wenn Sie in der Evolutionspsychologie nicht auf dem neuesten Standsind, sollten Sie zunächst einen der zahlreichen aktuellen Texte mit diesem Begriff im Titel lesen. Eines der besten ist "The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology" 2nd ed by Buss. Bis vor etwa 15 Jahren waren "Erklärungen" des Verhaltens überhaupt keine Erklärungen für mentale Prozesse, sondern eher vage und weitgehend nutzlose Beschreibungen dessen, was Menschen taten und was sie sagten, ohne ein (...) Einsicht in das Warum. Man könnte sagen, dass sich die Menschen versammeln, um an ein Ereignis zu erinnern, Gott zu preisen, seine (oder ihre) Segnungen zu empfangen usw.. , aber nichts davon beschreibt die relevanten mentalen Prozesse, so könnten wir sagen, dass es Erklärungen in der gleichen Weise, dass es erklärt, warum ein Apfel fällt auf den Boden, wenn wir sagen, es, weil wir es freigegeben, und es ist schwer-es gibt keinen Mechanismus und keine erklärende oder prädiktive Kraft. Dieses Buch setzt die Aufklärung der genetischen Grundlagen menschlichen Verhaltens fort, die von Wissenschaft, Religion, Politik und Öffentlichkeit fast überall ignoriert und geleugnet wurde (siehe Pinkers ausgezeichnetes Buch ''The Blank Slat''). Seine Aussage (p3), dass es bedeutungslos ist zu fragen, ob Religion genetisch ist, ist falsch, da der Prozentsatz der Variation eines Verhaltens aufgrund von Genen und Umwelt untersucht werden kann, genau wie sie für alle anderen Verhaltensweisen sind (siehe z.B. Pinker). Der Titel sollte "Preliminary Attempts to Explain Some Aspects of Primitive Religion"lauten, da er überhaupt kein höheres Bewusstsein behandelt (z.B. Satori, Erleuchtung usw.), die bei weitem die interessantesten Phänomene und der einzige Teil der Religion von persönlichem Interesse für intelligente, gebildete Menschen im 21. Jahrhundert sind. Wenn man dieses ganze Buch liest, würde man nie ahnen, dass es solche Dinge gibt. Ebenso, für das immense Feld der Drogen und Religion. Es fehlt ein Rahmen für Rationalität und erwähnt nicht die dualen Denksysteme, die jetzt so produktiv sind. Für diemeine eigenen jüngsten Papiere schlage ich vor. Dennoch hat das Buch großesInteresse, und trotz der Verabginkung ist immer noch lesenswert. Wer aus der modernen zweisystems-Sichteinen umfassenden, aktuellen Rahmen für menschliches Verhalten wünscht, kann mein Buch "The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mindand Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019) konsultieren. Diejenigen,die sich für mehr meiner Schriften interessieren, können 'Talking Monkeys--Philosophie, Psychologie, Wissenschaft, Religion und Politik auf einem verdammten Planeten --Artikel und Rezensionen 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) und Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) und andere sehen. (shrink)

Ein kurzer Überblick über das Leben und die spirituelle Autobiographie des einzigartigen amerikanischen Mystikers Adi Da (Franklin Jones). Auf dem Aufkleber auf dem Cover einiger Ausgaben steht "Die tiefste spirituelle Autobiographie aller Zeiten" und das könnte wahr sein. Ich bin in meinen 70ern und habe viele Bücher von spirituellen Lehrern und über Spiritualität gelesen, und das ist eines der größten. Gewiss,, es ist beiweitemder umfassendste und klarste Bericht über den Prozess der Erleuchtung, den ich je gesehen habe. Auch wenn Sie (...) überhaupt kein Interesse an den faszinierendsten menschlichen psychologischen Prozessen haben, ist es ein erstaunliches Dokument, das viel über Religion, Yoga und menschliche Psychologie verrät und die Tiefen und Grenzen menschlicher Möglichkeiten untersucht. Ich beschreibe es ausführlich und vergleiche seine Lehre mit der des zeitgenössischen indischen Mystikers Osho. Wer aus der modernen zweisystems-Sichteinen umfassenden, aktuellen Rahmen für menschliches Verhalten wünscht, kann mein Buch "The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mindand Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle' 2nd ed (2019) konsultieren. Diejenigen,die sich für mehr meiner Schriften interessieren, können 'Talking Monkeys--Philosophie, Psychologie, Wissenschaft, Religion und Politik auf einem verdammten Planeten --Artikel und Rezensionen 2006-2019 3rd ed (2019) und Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) und andere sehen. (shrink)

Another spiritual adventure from a modern master. Adi Da is certainly one of the most powerful enlightened beings of modern times and his spritual autobiography ``The Knee of Listening`` (1978 originally, but revised and enlarged continually-see my review) is probably the most detailed and fascinating personal account there is of the process of enlightenment. He is a very smart and a good writer with a substantial output. However when speaking he is far less interesting as can be seen here or (...) in any of the videotapes available from the Adi da web page. This book is mostly transcribed from his talks to the small group of devotees with whom he lives on a small island in Fiji. It will mostly be valuable only to those who have followed him for many years and know his jargon and style and who practice his meditation or sit in his presence. Others will find it very tough going if not downright boring as he tries to convey the ineffable state of enlightenment). -/- Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ 662p (2016). (shrink)

Today, philosophers interested in self-knowledge usually look to the scholastic tradition, where the topic is addressed in a systematic and familiar way. Contemporary conceptions of what medieval figures thought about self-knowledge thus skew toward the epistemological. In so doing, however, they often fail to capture the crucial ethical and theological importance that self-knowledge possesses throughout the Middle Ages. -/- Human beings are not transparent to themselves: in particular, knowing oneself in the way needed for moral progress requires hard and rigorous (...) work. Yet, medieval contemplatives insist, without this work we will never attain our final end. In this paper, I trace the connection drawn in this tradition between self-knowledge, humility, and self-fulfillment, arguing in section 1 that the humility that results from introspection needs to be understood in the context of contemplative expectations for eventual perfection. Self-knowledge is key for developing the relationship with God that leads to mystical union, but (as I show in section 2) in the affective tradition of the 13th-14th centuries, which emphasizes the role of emotion and the body, such union with God tends to restore rather than annihilate us. In fact, I argue in section 3, the outcome of such union even in this life is often knowledge that benefits not only the individual who experiences it but also their broader community. (shrink)

This chapter aims to examine parallels between two ancient Indian philosophical schools, Jaina (Jainism) of Mahāvīra and Ajñāna (Unending Agnosticism) of Sañjaya Belaṭṭhiputta. Jaina and Ajñāna traditions were a part of the Non-Vedic larger Śramaṇa movement of seventh to sixth-century BCE India, where Śramaṇa were monastics, who dwelled in forests and lived a retired life, focussing themselves in the search of discovering the knowledge of truth, reality and existence. Sañjaya and Mahāvīra were contemporaries and were a prominent and well-known Śramaṇa (...) of their time. The chapter is broadly divided into two parts, with two sections each. The first part aims to discuss Sañjaya’s ajñānavāda (epistemological method) and Mahāvīra’s doctrine of anekāntavāda (metaphysical pluralism) and saptabhanginaya (sevenfold predication). The second part aims to explore the logical relationship and similarities between ajñānavāda and anekāntavāda and its metaphysical consequences, and conclusively the major part of the paper will discuss the claim first made by the German Jaina scholar Hermann Jacobi, about the possible influence that Sañjaya’s ajñānavāda had on the establishment of Mahāvīra’s anekāntavāda. In brief, the chapter intends to present and discuss the contemporary scholarship claims on Sañjaya and his possible influence it had on the development of the Jaina thought. (shrink)

The issue of the article is whether the experience of Beauty or love in Plato can be considered as some kind of religious experience. First, the article describes different views on the religious experience. Then it deals with Plato's view on beauty and love and their relationship. finally, demonstrating the divinity of Beauty in Plato, the article shows that if religious experience is an encounter of the experiencer with the divine being, or in religious term God, that manifests itself in (...) various forms, and that encounter is accompanied by a direct conscious of the divine being, then the experience of Beauty or love in Plato can be considered as a kind of religious experience. The article merely claims that the experience of Beauty or love is an instance of religious experience, and it does not have any epistemological view on religious experience, however, any epistemological view on religious experience logically includes the experience of Beauty or love. -/- Key words: religious experience, beauty, love, divinity, Plato . (shrink)

The article is centered on the question of how best to understand the logical pluralism/logical monism debate. A number of suggestions are brought up and rejected on the ground that they re...

The traditional possible-worlds model of belief describes agents as ‘logically omniscient’ in the sense that they believe all logical consequences of what they believe, including all logical truths. This is widely considered a problem if we want to reason about the epistemic lives of non-ideal agents who—much like ordinary human beings—are logically competent, but not logically omniscient. A popular strategy for avoiding logical omniscience centers around the use of impossible worlds: worlds that, in one way or another, (...) violate the laws of logic. In this paper, we argue that existing impossible-worlds models of belief fail to describe agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. To model such agents, we argue, we need to ‘dynamize’ the impossible-worlds framework in a way that allows us to capture not only what agents believe, but also what they are able to infer from what they believe. In light of this diagnosis, we go on to develop the formal details of a dynamic impossible-worlds framework, and show that it successfully models agents who are both logically non-omniscient and logically competent. (shrink)

In the literature on supervaluationism, a central source of concern has been the acceptability, or otherwise, of its alleged logical revisionism. I attack the presupposition of this debate: arguing that when properly construed, there is no sense in which supervaluational consequence is revisionary. I provide new considerations supporting the claim that the supervaluational consequence should be characterized in a ‘global’ way. But pace Williamson (1994) and Keefe (2000), I argue that supervaluationism does not give rise to counterexamples to familiar (...) inference-patterns such as reductio and conditional proof. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the thesis that logic is not special. In this paper, I consider, and reject, a challenge to this thesis. According to this challenge, there are basic logical principles, and part of what makes such principles basic is that they are epistemically exceptional. Thus, according to this challenge, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to reject anti-exceptionalism about logic. I argue that this challenge fails, and that the exceptionalist positions motivated by it are (...) thus unfounded. I make this case by disambiguating two senses of ‘basic’ and showing that, once this disambiguation is taken into account, the best reason we have for thinking that there are basic principles actually implies that those principles do not require a special epistemology. Consequently, the existence of basic logical principles provides reason to accept, rather than reject, anti-exceptionalism concerning the epistemology of logic. I conclude by explaining how an abductivist, anti-exceptionalist approach to the epistemology of logic can accommodate the notion of basic logical principles. (shrink)

In this paper I discuss a prevailing view by which logical terms determine forms of sentences and arguments and therefore the logical validity of arguments. This view is common to those who hold that there is a principled distinction between logical and nonlogical terms and those holding relativistic accounts. I adopt the Tarskian tradition by which logical validity is determined by form, but reject the centrality of logical terms. I propose an alternative framework for logic (...) where logical terms no longer play a distinctive role. This account employs a new notion of semantic. (shrink)

This paper examines the evolution of Husserl’s philosophy of nonintuitive intentions. The analysis has two stages. First, I expose a mistake in Husserl’s account of non-intuitive acts from his 1901 Logical Investigations. I demonstrate that Husserl employs the term “signitive” too broadly, as he concludes that all non-intuitive acts are signitive. He states that not only meaning acts, but also the contiguity intentions of perception are signitive acts. Second, I show how Husserl, in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth (...) Logical Investigation, amends his 1901 theory of non-intuitive acts, which he now calls “empty” intentions. He there accurately distinguishes empty meaning acts from the empty intentions of perception. In the conclusion, I reveal how Husserl’s alterations to his theory of non-intuitive intentions can inform our understanding of a larger shift in his philosophy. (shrink)

This interesting and imaginative monograph is based on the author’s PhD dissertation supervised by Saul Kripke. It is dedicated to Timothy Smiley, whose interpretation of PRIOR ANALYTICS informs its approach. As suggested by its title, this short work demonstrates conclusively that Aristotle’s syllogistic is a suitable vehicle for fruitful discussion of contemporary issues in logical theory. Aristotle’s syllogistic is represented by Corcoran’s 1972 reconstruction. The review studies Lear’s treatment of Aristotle’s logic, his appreciation of the Corcoran-Smiley paradigm, and his (...) understanding of modern logical theory. In the process Corcoran and Scanlan present new, previously unpublished results. Corcoran regards this review as an important contribution to contemporary study of PRIOR ANALYTICS: both the book and the review deserve to be better known. (shrink)

Bas van Fraassen’s Constructive Empiricism (CE) has been much discussed. There is, however, a curious feature of van Fraassen’s writings that has been overlooked up until now. This is that he sometimes capitalises certain key terms, notably “Induction”. This is done to differentiate a pragmatic small ‘i’ induction (which has epistemic import) from a rule-bound capital ‘I’ induction (which does not). In this paper, I argue that van Fraassen’s small letter/capital letter distinction reveals an underlying dualism, one that is reminiscent (...) of the notoriously problematic semantic dualism in Logical Positivism (between a theoretical language and an observation language). Despite partly developing CE to overcome Logical Positivism’s kind of dualism, van Fraassen seems to have tacitly endorsed it anyway. If so, then CE requires revision. It is, however, not clear how to conduct such a revision. It is not clear what the way forward should be once CE is understood as innately dualistic. (shrink)

A good metaphysical account of logical form, must make clear why logical form is logical. However, this task has proved to be very elusive. Here, I analyze different attempts to meet this challenge and defend an inferential externalism where logical form is grounded on external logical relations as our most promising option.

Judgment aggregation theory, or rather, as we conceive of it here, logical aggregation theory generalizes social choice theory by having the aggregation rule bear on judgments of all kinds instead of merely preference judgments. It derives from Kornhauser and Sager’s doctrinal paradox and List and Pettit’s discursive dilemma, two problems that we distinguish emphatically here. The current theory has developed from the discursive dilemma, rather than the doctrinal paradox, and the final objective of the paper is to give the (...) latter its own theoretical development along the line of recent work by Dietrich and Mongin. However, the paper also aims at reviewing logical aggregation theory as such, and it covers impossibility theorems by Dietrich, Dietrich and List, Dokow and Holzman, List and Pettit, Mongin, Nehring and Puppe, Pauly and van Hees, providing a uniform logical framework in which they can be compared with each other. The review goes through three historical stages: the initial paradox and dilemma, the scattered early results on the independence axiom, and the so-called canonical theorem, a collective achievement that provided the theory with its specific method of analysis. The paper goes some way towards philosophical logic, first by briefly connecting the aggregative framework of judgment with the modern philosophy of judgment, and second by thoroughly discussing and axiomatizing the ‘general logic’ built in this framework. (shrink)

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, the essay demonstrates that Edmund Husserl’s theory of meaning consciousness from his 1901 Logical Investigations is internally inconsistent and falls apart upon closer inspection. I show that Husserl, in 1901, describes non-intuitive meaning consciousness as a direct parallel or as a ‘mirror’ of intuitive consciousness. He claims that non-intuitive meaning acts, like intuitions, have substance and represent their objects. I reveal that, by defining meaning acts in this way, Husserl cannot account for our (...) experiences of countersensical, absurd, or impossible meanings. Second, I examine how Husserl came to recognize this 1901 mistake in his 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. I discuss how he accordingly reformulates his understanding of non-intuitive meaning acts from the ground up in those Revisions, where this also allows for him to properly account for the experience of impossible meanings. Instead of describing them as mirrors of intuitions, Husserl takes non-intuitive meaning acts to be modifications of intuitions, where they have no substance and do not represent their objects. Finally, in the conclusion to this essay, I demonstrate how this fundamental change to his understanding of meaning consciousness forced Husserl to revise other central tenets of his philosophy, such that the trajectory of his thought can only be properly understood in light of these revisions to his theory of non-intuitive meaning consciousness. (shrink)

According to a theorem recently proved in the theory of logical aggregation, any nonconstant social judgment function that satisfies independence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA) is dictatorial. We show that the strong and not very plausible IIA condition can be replaced with a minimal independence assumption plus a Pareto-like condition. This new version of the impossibility theorem likens it to Arrow’s and arguably enhances its paradoxical value.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the “Austro-American” logical empiricism proposed by physicist and philosopher Philipp Frank, particularly his interpretation of Carnap’s Aufbau, which he considered the charter of logical empiricism as a scientific world conception. According to Frank, the Aufbau was to be read as an integration of the ideas of Mach and Poincaré, leading eventually to a pragmatism quite similar to that of the American pragmatist William James. Relying on this peculiar interpretation, Frank intended (...) to bring about a rapprochement between the logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle in exile and American pragmatism. In the course of this project, in the last years of his career, Frank outlined a comprehensive, socially engaged philosophy of science that could serve as a “link between science and philosophy”. (shrink)

Recent work on Austrian philosophy has revealed, hitherto, unsuspected links between Vienna circle positivism on the one hand, and the thought of Franz Brentano and his circle on the other. the paper explores these links, casting light also on the Polish analytic movement, on the development of gestalt psychology, and on the work of Schlick and Neurath.

This essay critically assesses Roman Ingarden’s 1915 review of the second edition of Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations. I elucidate and critique Ingarden’s analysis of the differences between the 1901 first edition and the 1913 second edition. I specifically examine three tenets of Ingarden’s interpretation. First, I demonstrate that Ingarden correctly denounces Husserl’s claim that he only engages in an eidetic study of consciousness in 1913, as Husserl was already performing eidetic analyses in 1901. Second, I show that Ingarden is (...) misguided, when he asserts that Husserl had fully transformed his philosophy into a transcendental idealism in the second edition. While Husserl does appear to adopt a transcendental phenomenology by asserting–in his programmatic claims–that the intentional content and object are now included in his domain of research, he does not alter his actual descriptions of the intentional relationship in any pertinent manner. Third, I show Ingarden correctly predicts many of the insights Husserl would arrive at about logic in his late philosophy. This analysis augments current readings of the evolution of Ingarden’s philosophy, by more closely examining the development of his largely neglected early thought. I execute this critical assessment by drawing both from Husserl’s later writings and from recent literature on the Investigations. By doing so, I hope to additionally demonstrate how research on the Investigations has matured in the one hundred years since the release of that text, while also presenting my own views concerning these difficult interpretative issues. (shrink)

In the last decade Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has started to focus attention on forms of persuasive interaction where computer technologies have the goal of changing users behavior and attitudes according to a predefined direction. In this work, we hypothesize a strong connection between logical fallacies (forms of reasoning which are logically invalid but cognitively effective) and some common persuasion strategies adopted within web technologies. With the aim of empirically evaluating our hypothesis, we carried out a pilot study on a (...) sample of 150 e-commerce websites. (shrink)

This paper responds to the generous comments by Alexander Klein and Cheryl Misak on my “American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle: The Early Years”. First, besides offering some clarification of my original thesis, I argue that Jerusalem was not liable to the anti-Spencerian criticisms by James that Klein adduces in the course of defending James against the charge of psychologism. Then I investigate the impact of Wittgenstein’s Ramsey-derived pragmatism, importantly foregrounded by Misak, on the Vienna Circle and argue that it (...) was mainly limited to Schlick but not recognized as pragmatist, also leaving unaffected the impact of James’s pragmatism on Frank, Hahn and Neurath specified in my original paper. That said, Klein’s and Misak’s comments add significantly to our understanding of long-neglected transatlantic philosophical connections in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

According to a prevalent view among philosophers formal logic is the philosopher’s main tool to assess the validity of arguments, i.e. the philosopher’s ars iudicandi. By drawing on a famous dispute between Russell and Strawson over the validity of a certain kind of argument – of arguments whose premises feature definite descriptions – this paper casts doubt on the accuracy of the ars iudicandi conception. Rather than settling the question whether the contentious arguments are valid or not, Russell and Strawson, (...) upon discussing the proper logical analysis of definite descriptions, merely contrast converse informal validity assessments rendered explicit by nonequivalent logical for-malizations. (shrink)

This paper offers a more comprehensive and accurate picture of Edmund Husserl’s semiotics. I not only clarify, as many have already done, Husserl’s theory of signs from the 1901 Logical Investigations, but also examine how he transforms that element of his philosophy in the 1913/14 Revisions to the Sixth Logical Investigation. Specifically, the paper examines the evolution of two central tenets of Husserl’s semiotics. I first look at how he modifies his classification of signs. I disclose why he (...) revised his 1901 distinction between indicators and expressions, instead claiming in 1913/14 that the divisions should be drawn between indicators, signals, and categorial signs. Second, I elucidate why Husserl overturned his conclusion from the Investigations, that signs execute their signitive operations in three steps, because he recognizes that categorial signs and their meant object are experienced all at once. By exploring the transformation of these two tenets of Husserl’s semiotics, we will see that he conceived of the First Investigation only as a starting or jumping off point for future analyses of signitive experience, rather than as his final account. This analysis will further reveal novel insights about Husserl’s understanding of intersubjectivity, passivity, and temporality. (shrink)

There are two ways of thinking about instants of time: "spatial" accounts emphasize the similarities between instants and places; "modal" accounts focus on the parallels between times and possible worlds. My aim in this paper is to draw attention to one respect in which times are more similar to possible worlds than they are to places.

This paper is partly inspired by a well-known debate between Ruth Barcan Marcus, Terence Parsons and W. V. 0. Quine in the sixties> concerning the extent to which Quantified Modal Logic is committed to Essentialism; the issue nevertheless goes back to the origins of "analytic philosophy'', to the reflections of Frege, Russell, and the earlier Wittgenstein on the nature of logic. By elaborating on a suggestion by Quine, we purport to show that there is a relevant and interesting way to (...) look at the ontological commitments of logical systems such that they are stronger than they are usually taken to be. (shrink)

How "red", "green" were defined? Through analyzing how two children with congenitally inverted color sensations corresponding to red flags and green grass accept their grand mothers’ teaching about colors, the paper get opposite conclusions against logical empiricism. The “red” and “green” and other names of properties of objects were defined by objective physical properties (or together with behavior, such as in defining “beauty”), instead our sensations. So language directly points to things in themselves passing through sensations and presentative world. (...) It is not that things in themselves are unknowable, but that sensations and presentative world cannot be exactly described by daily language. (shrink)

What are people who disagree about logic disagreeing about? The paper argues that (in a wide range of cases) they are primarily disagreeing about how to regulate their degrees of belief. An analogy is drawn between beliefs about validity and beliefs about chance: both sorts of belief serve primarily to regulate degrees of belief about other matters, but in both cases the concepts have a kind of objectivity nonetheless.

It has been argued recently that classical theism and Lewisian modal realism are incompatible theses. The most substantial argument to this effect takes the form of a trilemma. It argues that no sense can be made of God’s being a necessary being in the modal realistic picture, on pain of, among other things, modal collapse. The question of this essay is: Is that so? My goal here is to detail the reasons that have been offered in support of this contention (...) and then defend the coherence of theistic modal realism from the trilemma. I call my reply to the argument an “Anselmian-Thomistic” defense, since it appeals to resources from classical medieval philosophy, especially from Anselm and Aquinas. (shrink)

I argue for a kind of logical pluralism on the basis of a difficulty with defining the meaning of negation in the framework of Dummett's and Prawitz' proof-theoretic semantics.

In this paper, I provide a new reading of Wittgenstein’s N operator, and of its significance within his early logical philosophy. I thereby aim to resolve a longstanding scholarly controversy concerning the expressive completeness of N. Within the debate between Fogelin and Geach in particular, an apparent dilemma emerged to the effect that we must either concede Fogelin’s claim that N is expressively incomplete, or reject certain fundamental tenets within Wittgenstein’s logical philosophy. Despite their various points of disagreement, (...) however, Fogelin and Geach nevertheless share several common and problematic assumptions regarding Wittgenstein’s logical philosophy, and it is these mistaken assumptions which are the source of the dilemma. Once we recognize and correct these, and other, associated expository errors, it will become clear how to reconcile the expressive completeness of Wittgenstein’s N operator, with several commonly recognized features of, and fundamental theses within, the Tractarian logical system. (shrink)

In a recent paper, “The Concept of Logical Consequence,” W. H. Hanson criticizes a formal-structural characterization of logical consequence in Tarski and Sher. Hanson accepts many principles of the formal-structural view. Relating to Sher 1991 and 1996a, he says.

In To be is to be the object of a possible act of choice the authors defended Boolos’ thesis that plural quantification is part of logic. To this purpose, plural quantification was explained in terms of plural reference, and a semantics of plural acts of choice, performed by an ideal team of agents, was introduced. In this paper, following that approach, we develop a theory of concepts that—in a sense to be explained—can be labeled as a theory of logical (...) concepts. Within this theory, we propose a new logicist approach to natural numbers. Then, we compare our logicism with Frege’s traditional logicism. (shrink)