On one standard view, paraphrasing Kierkegaard requires no special literary talent. It demands no particular flair for the poetic. However, Kierkegaard himself rejects this view. He says we cannot paraphrase in a straightforward fashion some of the ideas he expresses in a literary format. To use the words of Johannes Climacus, these ideas defy direct communication. In this paper, I piece together and defend the justification Kierkegaard offers for this position. I trace its origins to concerns raised by Lessing and (...) Mendelssohn about the relationship between form and content in works of art. I maintain that Kierkegaard follows early German Romantic thinkers in applying these aesthetic concerns to philosophical writing. By way of conclusion, I discuss the implications of Kierkegaard’s position for contemporary scholarship. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that for the purposes of ordinary reasoning, sentences about properties of concrete objects can be replaced with sentences concerning how things in our universe would be related to inscriptions were there a pluriverse. Speaking loosely, pluriverses are composites of universes that collectively realize every way a universe could possibly be. As such, pluriverses exhaust all possible meanings that inscriptions could take. Moreover, because universes necessarily do not influence one another, our universe would not be any (...) different intrinsically if there were a pluriverse. These two facts enable anti-realists about abstract objects to replace, e.g. talk of anatomical features with talk of the inscriptions concerning anatomical structure that would exist were there a pluriverse. The availability of such replacements enables anti-realists to carry out essential ordinary reasoning without referring to properties, thereby making room for a consistent anti-realist worldview. The inscriptions of the would-be pluriverse are so numerous and varied that sentences about them can play the roles in ordinary reasoning served by simple sentences about properties of concrete objects. (shrink)

This research aims at examining three important things, i.e. students’ technique in paraphrasing, paraphrasing acceptability and obstacles in paraphrasing. A qualitative approach was used to carry out this study by purposively selecting 26 Indonesian college students of English as respondents. The data were collected by giving a paraphrasing task (consisted of 5 paragraphs) to the students and interviewed them to find out in-depth information on paraphrasing acceptably and obstacles. The research revealed that synonym technique was the most frequent technique sued (...) by the respondents due to the easiness of using this technique. On the other hand, the technique of changing positive into negative (vice versa), changing structure of idea, combining two sentences, and changing clause into phrase (vice versa) were found to be the less frequent techniques used for paraphrasing. The research also found that all students are not able to produce good paraphrasing sentences due to their incompetence to satisfy the criteria of good paraphrasing such as not giving citation sources, the tendency for doing plagiarism (changing words with their synonyms and keep the sentence structures still the same as the original. Regarding the respondents’ obstacles in paraphrasing, this study found some obstacles: (1) difficult to find out the appropriate synonyms to change words on original text, (2) difficult to understand unfamiliar terms (3) unable to restructure sentences in new ones, and (4) no idea on how to paraphrase texts effectively. All the obstacles occur due to some causal factors, i.e. (1) lack of vocabulary, (2) lack of paraphrasing practice, (3) ineffective class when learning, (4) teaching technique of lecturers, and (5) limited knowledge of paraphrasing techniques. (shrink)

One important challenge for contingentists is that they seem to be unable to account for the meaning of some apparently meaningful modal discourse that is perfectly intelligible for necessitists. This worry is particularly pressing for higher-order contingentists, contingentists who hold that it is not only contingent which objects there are, but also contingent which semantic values there are for higher-order variables to quantify over. Objections against higher-order contingentism along these lines have been presented in Williamson (Mind 119(475):657–748, 2010; Modal logic (...) as metaphysics, Oxford University Press, 2013, ch. 7), and Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017). This paper presents a way for contingentists to respond to these challenges. The upshot is that the contingentist can account for the meaningfulness of the problematic modal claims by pretending necessitism to be true, but in some cases it turns out to be indeterminate whether they are true. I defend this strategy against the objections against pretence-strategies presented in Fritz and Goodman (Mind 126(504):1063–1108, 2017, §4). Furthermore, I defend the plausibility of the resulting indeterminacy from the contingentist’s perspective. (shrink)

A review of Graham Harman's book, Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy.

Why is there a long-standing debate about paraphrase in poetry? Everyone agrees that paraphrase can be useful; everyone agrees that paraphrase is no substitute for the poem itself. What is there to disagree about? Perhaps this: whether paraphrase can specify everything that counts as a contribution to the meaning of a poem. There are, we say, two ways to take the question; on one way of taking it, the answer is that paraphrase cannot. Does this entail that there is meaning (...) mysteriously locked in a poem, meaning that cannot be represented in any way other than via the poem itself? If that were so it would have profound implications for poetry’s capacity to convey insight. We suggest reasons for thinking that the entailment does not hold. Throughout, we connect the traditional debate over paraphrase, which has largely been conducted within the fields of philosophy and literary theory, with recent empirically oriented thinking about the communicability of meaning, represented by work in pragmatics. We end with a suggestion about what is to count as belonging to meaning, and what as merely among the things that determine meaning. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to paraphrase Theda Skocpol’s theory of social revolutions with the use of the conceptual apparatus of non-Marxian historical materialism. In the successive sections of this paper, the concepts of modernization, the nature of state power, an agrarian bureaucracy, and the mechanism of a victorious revolution are paraphrased. This paraphrase makes it possible to distinguish two kinds of agrarian bureaucracies, each resulting in social revolutions with different outcomes. A victorious revolution led to successful modernization in (...) the case of an economic agrarian bureaucracy, but not in the case of a political agrarian bureaucracy. (shrink)

The study of John Locke’s theological thought has yet to be combined with emerging historical research, pioneered by Jean-Louis Quantin, into the apologetic uses of Christian antiquity in the Restoration Church of England. This article will address this historiographical lacuna by making two related arguments. First, I will contend that Locke’s Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul (1705–1707) marked a definitive shift in his critique of the appeal to Christian antiquity. Prior to 1700, Locke had largely contested (...) these references to the precedent of the early Christian Church by making a narrowly philosophical case against arguments from authority in general. However, the controversial reception of Locke’s theological writings in the 1690s, compelled him to develop historical and methodological arguments in the Paraphrase against the witness of Christian antiquity. Secondly, I will argue that Locke’s repudiation of the witness of Christian antiquity was the primary motivation for the diverse responses to the Paraphrase by early eighteenth-century Anglican writers, such as Robert Jenkin, Daniel Whitby, William Whiston, Winch Holdsworth and Catharine Cockburn. (shrink)

I call anti-resemblism the thesis that independently of any contextual specification there is no determinate fact of the matter about the comparative overall similarity of things. Anti-resemblism plays crucial roles in the philosophy of David Lewis. For instance, Lewis has argued that his counterpart theory is anti-essentialist on the grounds that counterpart relations are relations of comparative overall similarity and that anti-resemblism is true. After Lewis committed himself to a form of realism about natural properties he maintained that anti-resemblism is (...) true about the relations of overall similarity that enter his counterpart theory and his analysis of counterfactuals. However, in this article I argue that Lewis’s account of degrees of naturalness for properties combined with his modal realism entails that anti-resemblism is false. The Lewisian must amend Lewis’s system if she aims to benefit from the alleged virtues of anti-resemblism. I consider two ways of amending it, neither of which is a free lunch. (shrink)

In this paper, I tested a KNN algorithm that could recognise a paraphrased version of a statement entered in the Essay Helper GitHub Repository, which recognises reused statements while questioning the user to write a humanities-style essay.

The paper examines Gorgias' treatise "On non-being" in the paraphrasis of Sextus Empiricus (Adversus mathematicos, VII, 65-87).

The general topic of this paper is the ontological commitment to so-called "fictitious objects", that is, things and characters of fictional stories, like Sherlock Holmes and Pegasus. Discourse about fiction seems to entail an ontological commitment to fictitious entities, a commitment that is often deemed inconsistent with empirical facts. For instance, "Pegasus is a flying horse" seems to entail "There are flying horses" as well as "Pegasus exists" (according to some widely accepted logical principles). I discuss two solutions that have (...) been proposed in the literature. The first one amounts to rejecting sentences like "Pegasus is a flying horse" as false, at least if they are taken at face value. This solution is called the "story operator strategy". It consists in paraphrasing sentences like "Pegasus is a flying horse" by means of the expression "according to a story" such that they are interpreted as an elliptic formulation of, e.g., "According to a story, Pegasus is a flying horse". I spell out the difficulties of the story operator strategy and opt for a realist ontology of fiction. A novel interpretation of the story operator "according to a story" is given, which is not only consistent with but even sheds new light on such a realist ontology. In particular, it is shown how the story operator can be used as a tool to introduce the so-called "modes of predication distinction" (which is an essential ingredient of many realist ontologies of fiction) in a commonsensical way. (shrink)

Not every metaphor can be literally paraphrased by a corresponding simile – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is not the literal meaning of ‘Juliet is like the sun’. But every metaphor can be literally paraphrased, since if ‘metaphorically’ is prefixed to a metaphor, the result says literally what the metaphor says figuratively – the metaphorical meaning of ‘Juliet is the sun’, for example, is the literal meaning of ‘metaphorically, Juliet is the sun’.

This paper investigates whether 'even if A, B' is pragmatically polysemic, so that a nonconcessive conditional may have 'even if', and whether concessive conditionals, pragmatically defined, can fail to have 'even if' or a non-temporal 'still'. Different paraphrases are used to help elucidate pragmatic meanings. A theory of the pragmatic meanings of concessive and implicative conditionals is presented. The semantic meaning of 'even if' and the question of whether concessive conditionals imply the truth of their consequents are also discussed.

Poetry evokes mental imagery in its readers. But how is mental imagery precisely related to poetry? This article provides a systematic treatment. It clarifies two roles of mental imagery in relation to poetry—as an effect generated by poetry and as an efficient means for understanding and appreciating poetry. The article also relates mental imagery to the discussion on the ‘heresy of paraphrase’. It argues against the orthodox view that the imagistic effects of poetry cannot be captured by prosaic paraphrase, but (...) points to features of poetry that can shape aspects of mental imagery that are liable to be lost in paraphrase. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to work out Quine's account of explication. Quine does not provide a general account, but considers a paradigmatic example which does not fit other examples he claims to be explications. Besides working out Quine's account of explication and explaining this tension, I show how it connects to other notions such as paraphrase and ontological commitment. Furthermore, I relate Quinean explication to Carnap's conception and argue that Quinean explication is much narrower because its main (...) purpose is to be a criterion of theory choice. (shrink)

We paraphrase Descartes’ famous dictum in the area of AI ethics where the “I doubt and therefore I am” is suggested as a necessary aspect of morality. Therefore AI, which cannot doubt itself, cannot possess moral agency. Of course, this is not the end of the story. We explore various aspects of the human mind that substantially differ from AI, which includes the sensory grounding of our knowing, the act of understanding, and the significance of being able to doubt ourselves. (...) The foundation of our argument is the discipline of ethics, one of the oldest and largest knowledge projects of human history, yet, we seem only to be beginning to get a grasp of it. After a couple of thousand years of studying the ethics of humans, we (humans) arrived at a point where moral psychology suggests that our moral decisions are intuitive, and all the models from ethics become relevant only when we explain ourselves. This recognition has a major impact on what and how we can do regarding AI ethics. We do not offer a solution, we explore some ideas and leave the problem open, but we hope somewhat better understood than before our study. (shrink)

Excerpts and paraphrases of this memoir appeared in 2008 and 2009. I posted it in full here in happy memory of Peter Hare and my joyful years with him. -/- 2008. Remembering Peter Hare 1935–2008. Philosophy Now. Co-authors: T. Madigan and A. Razin. Issue 66 March/April 2008. Pages 50–2. PDF -/- 2009. Remembering My Life with Peter Hare. Remembering Peter Hare 1935–2008. Ed. J. Campbell. Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. pp. 9–16. http://american-philosophy.org/documents/RememberingPeterHare_final.pdf -/- Peter H. Hare, Distinguished (...) Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Buffalo (SUNY at Buffalo), died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday, January 3, 2008. I would like to share my memories of my life with him. Others have eulogized him, enumerated his virtues and accomplishments, and written his obituaries. I am revisiting my personal relationship with him. These memories are as much about me as about him. (shrink)

The concept of metaphor as primarily a vehicle for conveying ideas, even if unusual ones, seems to me as wrong as the parent idea that a metaphor has a special meaning. I agree with the view that metaphors cannot be paraphrased, but I think this is not because metaphors say something too novel for literal expression but because there is nothing there to paraphrase. Paraphrase, whether possible or not, inappropriate to what is said: we try, in paraphrase, to say it (...) another way. But if I am right, a metaphor doesn't say anything beyond its literal meaning. This is not, of course, to deny that a metaphor has a point, nor that that point can be brought out by using further words.... My disagreement is with the explanation of how metaphor works its wonders. To anticipate: I depend on the distinction between what words mean and what they are used to do. I think metaphor belongs exclusively to the domain of use. It is something brought off by the imaginative employment of words and sentences and depends entirely on the ordinary meanings of those words and hence on the ordinary meanings of the sentences they comprise. Donald Davidson is University Professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many important essays, including "Actions, Reasons and Causes," "Causal Relations," and "Truth and Meaning," coauthor of Decision-Making: An Experimental Approach, and coeditor of Words and Objections, Semantics of Natural Language, and The Logic of Grammar. (shrink)

We outline a neo-Meinongian framework labeled as Modal Meinongian Metaphysics (MMM) to account for the ontology and semantics of fictional discourse. Several competing accounts of fictional objects are originated by the fact that our talking of them mirrors incoherent intuitions: mainstream theories of fiction privilege some such intuitions, but are forced to account for others via complicated paraphrases of the relevant sentences. An ideal theory should resort to as few paraphrases as possible. In Sect. 1, we make this (...) explicit via two methodological principles, called the Minimal Revision and the Acceptability Constraint. In Sect. 2, we introduce the standard distinction between internal and external fictional discourse. In Sects. 3–5, we discuss the approaches of (traditional) Meinongianism, Fictionalism, and Realism—and their main troubles. In Sect. 6 we propose our MMM approach. This is based upon (1) a modal semantics including impossible worlds (Subsect. 6.1); (2) a qualified Comprehension Principle for objects (Subsect. 6.2); (3) a notion of existence-entailment for properties (Subsect. 6.3). In Sect. 7 we present a formal semantics for MMM based upon a representation operator. And in Sect. 8 we have a look at how MMM solves the problems of the three aforementioned theories. (shrink)

'Ontology and Metaontology: A Contemporary Guide' is a clear and accessible survey of ontology, focussing on the most recent trends in the discipline. -/- Divided into parts, the first half characterizes metaontology: the discourse on the methodology of ontological inquiry, covering the main concepts, tools, and methods of the discipline, exploring the notions of being and existence, ontological commitment, paraphrase strategies, fictionalist strategies, and other metaontological questions. The second half considers a series of case studies, introducing and familiarizing the reader (...) with concrete examples of the latest research in the field. The basic sub-fields of ontology are covered here via an accessible and captivating exposition: events, properties, universals, abstract objects, possible worlds, material beings, mereology, fictional objects. -/- The guide's modular structure allows for a flexible approach to the subject, making it suitable for both undergraduates and postgraduates looking to better understand and apply the exciting developments and debates taking place in ontology today. (shrink)

We often speak as if there are merely possible people—for example, when we make such claims as that most possible people are never going to be born. Yet most metaphysicians deny that anything is both possibly a person and never born. Since our unreflective talk of merely possible people serves to draw non-trivial distinctions, these metaphysicians owe us some paraphrase by which we can draw those distinctions without committing ourselves to there being merely possible people. We show that such (...) class='Hi'>paraphrases are unavailable if we limit ourselves to the expressive resources of even highly infinitary first-order modal languages. We then argue that such paraphrases are available in higher-order modal languages only given certain strong assumptions concerning the metaphysics of properties. We then consider alternative paraphrase strategies, and argue that none of them are tenable. If talk of merely possible people cannot be paraphrased, then it must be taken at face value, in which case it is necessary what individuals there are. Therefore, if it is contingent what individuals there are, then the demands of paraphrase place tight constraints on the metaphysics of properties: either (i) it is necessary what properties there are, or (ii) necessarily equivalent properties are identical, and having properties does not entail even possibly being anything at all. (shrink)

Today, the Internet is a rich source of study materials, and Google Scholar offers free access to a large number of scientific articles. There are excellent research publications available in many more databases. Students have the option of easily copying the material. Reusing, paraphrasing, patchwriting, and ghostwriting without citing the original documents are plagiarism. Plagiarism is increasing in academics, particularly in research. This study aims to study the awareness of plagiarism and to analyze the reasons for plagiarism. The study samples (...) are the student teachers in India. For this study, we used a survey method, and the author prepared a questionnaire to collect data from the student teachers. Study respondents are the student teachers of the Regional Institute of Education Mysore; Purposive sampling was used to select samples. The total number of study respondents is 207. The findings of the study revealed that over 70 per cent of respondents mentioned reasons for plagiarism as lack of relevant literature studying, lack of preparation and time, difficulty checking every piece of work, do not know the manual citation style, lack of knowledge about bibliographic management software and also they stated that getting easily available materials on the internet is also a reason for plagiarism. The study recommends that teachers teach or conduct awareness programs on plagiarism, avoiding plagiarism, citation style, and software. (shrink)

What is money? Paraphrasing Goodman, I say that’s the wrong question to ask. The right question is, When is money? And to get the answer, Searle’s general formula for social objects (X couns as Y in context C) is fine, as long as you give it a different reading.

Abstract: An indirect report typically takes the form of a speaker using the locution “said that” to report an earlier utterance. In what follows, I introduce the principal philosophical and pragmatic points of interest in the study of indirect reports, including the extent to which context sensitivity affects the content of an indirect report, the constraints on the substitution of co-referential terms in reports, the extent of felicitous paraphrase and translation, the way in which indirect reports are opaque, and the (...) use of indirect reports as pragmatic vehicles for other speech acts such as humor, insult, or irony. Throughout I develop several positions: (i) that a semantic analysis of indirect reports is insufficient, (ii) that the distinction between direct and indirect reports is not clear and that indirect reports are the predominate way of reporting while direct reports may be a para-linguistic variation on them, (iii) that most questions about the semantics and pragmatics of indirect reports will rely on a full understanding of the nature of what is reported and how it gets reported, (iv) that an analysis of reporting requires the pragmatic tools of metarepresentation and a social, inter-personal understanding of relevance and shared knowledge. (shrink)

The paper argues that digital ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is digital, and the universe is a computational system equivalent to a Turing Machine) should be carefully distinguished from informational ontology (the ultimate nature of reality is structural), in order to abandon the former and retain only the latter as a promising line of research. Digital vs. analogue is a Boolean dichotomy typical of our computational paradigm, but digital and analogue are only “modes of presentation” of Being (to paraphrase (...) Kant), that is, ways in which reality is experienced or conceptualised by an epistemic agent at a given level of abstraction. A preferable alternative is provided by an informational approach to structural realism, according to which knowledge of the world is knowledge of its structures. The most reasonable ontological commitment turns out to be in favour of an interpretation of reality as the totality of structures dynamically interacting with each other. The paper is the first part (the pars destruens) of a two-part piece of research. The pars construens, entitled “A Defence of Informational Structural Realism”, is developed in a separate article, also published in this journal. (shrink)

Mereological nihilism is the thesis that composite objects—objects with proper parts—do not exist. Nihilists generally paraphrase talk of composite objects F into talk of there being “xs arranged F-wise” . Recently several philosophers have argued that nihilism is defective insofar as nihilists are either unable to say what they mean by such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” or that nihilists are unable to employ such phrases without incurring significant costs, perhaps even undermining one of the chief motivations for (...) nihilism. In this paper I defend nihilism against these objections. A key theme of the paper is this: if nihilists need to employ such phrases as “there are xs arranged F-wise,” non-nihilists will need to do so as well. Accordingly, any costs incurred by the nihilist when she employs such phrases will be shared by everyone else. What’s more, such phrases are intelligible when employed by the nihilist, as well as when they are employed by the non-nihilist, insofar as analyses of such phrases will not essentially involve mereological concepts incompatible with nihilism. (shrink)

Since Benacerraf’s ‘What Numbers Could Not Be, ’ there has been a growing interest in mathematical structuralism. An influential form of mathematical structuralism, modal structuralism, uses logical possibility and second order logic to provide paraphrases of mathematical statements which don’t quantify over mathematical objects. These modal structuralist paraphrases are a useful tool for nominalists and realists alike. But their use of second order logic and quantification into the logical possibility operator raises concerns. In this paper, I show that (...) the work of both these elements can be done by a single natural generalization of the logical possibility operator. (shrink)

Virtually everyone agrees that, even after having presented the arguments for their positions, proponents of revisionary philosophical theories are required to provide some sort of account of the conflict between their theories and what the folk believe. I examine various strategies for answering the challenge from folk belief. The examination proceeds as a case study, whose focus is eliminativism about ordinary material objects. I critically assess eliminativist attempts to explain folk belief by appeal to paraphrase, experience, and intuition.

According to the so-called strong variant of Composition as Identity (CAI), the Principle of Indiscernibility of Identicals can be extended to composition, by resorting to broadly Fregean relativizations of cardinality ascriptions. In this paper we analyze various ways in which this relativization could be achieved. According to one broad variety of relativization, cardinality ascriptions are about objects, while concepts occupy an additional argument place. It should be possible to paraphrase the cardinality ascriptions in plural logic and, as a consequence, relative (...) counting requires the relativization either of quantifiers, or of identity, or of the is one of relation. However, some of these relativizations do not deliver the expected results, and others rely on problematic assumptions. In another broad variety of relativization, cardinality ascriptions are about concepts or sets. The most promising development of this approach is prima facie connected with a violation of the so-called Coreferentiality Constraint, according to which an identity statement is true only if its terms have the same referent. Moreover - even provided that the problem with coreferentiality can be fixed - the resulting analysis of cardinality ascriptions meets several difficulties. (shrink)

Nominalists need some account of correctness for sentences committed to the existence of abstract objects. This paper proposes a new statement of such conditions specifically for properties. The account builds on an earlier proposal of mine, but avoids the counter-examples against the latter pointed out by Thomas Schindler, particularly, the sentence ‘There are inexpressible properties’. I argue that the new proposal is independently motivated and more faithful to the spirit of the kind of error-theoretic nominalism that the original proposal was (...) part of. Along the way, I also propose novel treatments of Arthur Pap’s and W.V.O. Quine’s notoriously hard-to-paraphrase sentences about abstracta. (shrink)

In diesem Eintrag werden zwei miteinander zusammenhängende Aspekte betrachtet. Nun betreffen diese zwei Aspekte aber nicht ontologische Fragen erster Ordnung, d. h. Fragen, was es gibt. Vielmehr sind es Fragen zweiter Ordnung, ›metaontologische‹ Fragen dazu, wie philosophisch untersucht werden sollte, was es gibt. Der Fokus dieses Eintrags liegt dabei auf der Standardauffassung ontologischer Untersuchung, die die philosophische Literatur der letzten Jahre dominiert hat. Diese Auffassung haben wir zum größten Teil dem Einfluss von Willard Van Orman Quine zu verdanken.

German Lutheran scholar Johann Friedrich Weitenkampf (d.1758) sets out to explain and refute the Turkish concept of fate, dividing his dissertation into two sections: the first outlining the Turkish-Muslim view of fate; and the second seeking to prove the invalidity of the Muslim concept of fate with philosophical argumentation. He begins with some brief notes on the historical origin of the Turks, turning then to the backstory of the Qur’an, which he claims can be divided into six sections or topics, (...) the last of which concerns its teachings on fate. According to Weitenkampf, in mainstream Islamic thought, fate is predetermined and immutable. Weitenkampf categorizes most Turks as Jabrites who believe that God is the source of all evil and that men do not have free will. Therefore, men are compelled to do evil or good through God’s omnipotence. He offers examples of how this belief is manifested in the actions and values of the Turks. According to Weitenkampf, since Turks believe in predestination, they do not flee plague-ridden cities or shun contact with those infected. They do not fear death. If they suffer, they believe fate decreed it. In battle, this makes them brave to the point of foolhardy. Weitenkampf also paraphrases an exhortation from the Qur’an in which Muslims are told not to avoid danger, as God has already determined their fate. . . . Weitenkampf’s dissertatio is a symptom of the struggle between the weakened Lutheran orthodoxy and the rise of Pietism and rationalism in the wake of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. Unlike other Lutheran authors, he analyzes Islamic thought through systematic philosophical argumentation, deeply influenced by his logic and metaphysics teacher Knutzen, who tried to combine Wolffan Enlightenment rationalism with pietistic spirituality. (shrink)

The thesis aims at a methodological reflection of logical reconstruction and tries to develop this method in detail, especially with regard to the reconstruction of natural language arguments. First, the groundwork for the thesis is laid by presenting and, where necessary, adapting its foundations with regard to the philosophy of language and the theory of argument. Subsequently, logical reconstruction, especially the logical reconstruction of arguments, is presented as a hermeneutic method and as a tool for the application of (formal) logic (...) and argumentation theory to natural language arguments. Logical reconstruction is presented as a special type of exegetical interpretation by paraphrase that is subject to (adapted) hermeneutic maxims and presumption rules that govern exegetical interpretation in general. However, in contrast to the interpretation of texts by natural language paraphrases, logical reconstruction leads to interpretantia that are logically explicit formal language texts and can be analyzed using formal methods and meta-theoretical concepts that are not directly applicable to natural language texts. By providing explicit and precise records of different readings, logical reconstruction can thus help to clarify (and maybe even solve) persistent interpretation controversies. Through an adaptation and specification of hermeneutic maxims and presumption rules, the thesis aims at providing suitable means for the systematic guidance and evaluation of logical reconstructions of argumentative texts. As a genuinely interpretative undertaking, logical reconstruction will be distinguished from the non-interpretative enterprise of formalization and from the development of theories of logical form, which provide a framework in which formalization and reconstruction take place. As exegetical interpretations, logical reconstructions of texts that are not readily formalizable can still be assessed with respect to their hermeneutic quality. The hermeneutic method of logical reconstruction can thus widen the scope for the application of logic and argumentation theory, because it allows us to use formal methods for the analysis and assessment of "difficult" natural language texts in a non-arbitrary, albeit indirect way. The last part of the thesis presents a manual for the logical reconstruction of natural language arguments, whose application is illustrated step by step. (shrink)

There are advantages to thrift over honest toil. If we can make do without numbers we avoid challenging questions over the metaphysics and epistemology of such entities; and we have a good idea, I think, of what a nominalistic metaphysics should look like. But minimizing ontology brings its own problems; for it seems to lead to error theory— saying that large swathes of common-sense and best science are false. Should recherche philosophical arguments really convince us to give all this up? (...) Such Moorean considerations are explicitly part of the motivation for the recent resurgence of structured metaphysics, which allow a minimal (perhaps nominalistic) fundamental ontology, while avoiding error-theory by adopting a permissive stance towards ontology that can be argued to be grounded in the fundamental. This paper evaluates the Moorean arguments, identifying key epistemological assumptions. On the assumption that Moorean arguments can be used to rule out error-theory, I examine deflationary ‘representationalist’ rivals to the structured metaphysics reaction. Quinean paraphrase, fictionalist claims about syntax and semantics are considered and criticized. In the final section, a ‘direct’ deflationary strategy is outlined and the theoretical obligations that it faces are articulated. The position advocated may have us talking a lot like a friend of structured metaphysics—but with a very different conception of what we’re up to. (shrink)

One of the primary burdens of the mereological nihilist is accounting for our ordinary intuitions about material objects. It certainly *seems* as if I am typing on a keyboard, which has particular keys and buttons as parts. But such intuitions are mistaken if mereological nihilism is right, leading to widespread error. So nihilists often propose paraphrases of our everyday utterances as compensation. Cotnoir aims to deliver a new paraphrase strategy on behalf of the nihilist: one that interprets parthood and (...) composition modally, and interprets (spatial) parts as (modal) counterparts. He advertises this view as the spatial analog of Sider’s stage-theoretic view. Unfortunately, I argue, it isn't. The spatial analog to the above views would be something like the following: individuals are region-bound spatial bits. Certain spatial claims about these objects may be true if the relevant spatial bits have the appropriate spatial counterparts. The table is flat iff the table (a spatial bit) has a spatial counterpart that is flat. That is, spatial *counterparts* make certain spatial claims true. Call this the *bit-theoretic* view. In this paper, I use the bit-theoretic view as a foil for highlighting certain aspects of Cotnoir’s proposal, as well as to show that the very ways in which Cotnoir’s view differs from the bit-theoretic view are ways in which it undermines advantages of nihilism. (shrink)

Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...) shows how to reconcile the view that they function like quantified noun phrases with the view that simple demonstratives function as context sensitive referring terms wherever they occur. If we are right, previous accounts of complex demonstratives have misconceived their semantic role; and philosophers relying on the majority view in employing complex demonstratives in analysis have proceeded on a false assumption. (shrink)

Die „Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre“ bleibt für den, der Fichte im philosophiegeschichtlichen Zusammenhang sehen will, der wichtigste Text; dies gilt auch dann noch, wenn die Akademie-Ausgabe abgeschlossen sein wird. Der Jenaer Fichte hat nicht nur auf seine Zeitgenossen am stärksten gewirkt, er war auch seinerseits damals noch am offensten für Einflüsse. Der vorliegende Kommentar – der erste, der den gesamten deutschen Text behandelt – bietet keine Paraphrase, keine Übersetzung in eine zeitgemäßere Sprache, keine „Darstellung“, die Fichtes Disposition durch eine eigene (...) ersetzt und damit – gewollt oder ungewollt – in Konkurrenz zum Original tritt. Er will vielmehr den Leser auf seinem dornigen Pfad Satz für Satz begleiten und bei keiner Schwierigkeit im Stich lassen. Die konkrete Erforschung literarischer Bezüge und Abhängigkeiten zeigt, wie sehr der „Selbstdenker“ Fichte – unbeschadet seiner Eigenständigkeit – nicht nur in der Philosophie, sondern im ganzen Geistesleben der Epoche verwurzelt ist. Durch die ausgiebigen, mit sprachlichen Erläuterungen versehenen Zitate entlegener Quellen ist der Kommentar zugleich eine Art Lesebuch. (shrink)

EAP course teaches how the program concerns and provides us with a valuable way of organizing our thinking about conceptual disciplinary within the particular community. The area of EAP is referred with genres. The process of writing academically requires creating a text where the writer takes it for granted the reader is about to recognize. To group texts together, writers utilize language in order to respond to recurring situations and this case is +represented with the term genre.

The point of departure for Perceiving Reality is the idea that per- ception is an embodied structural feature of consciousness whose function is determined by phenomenal experiences in a corresponding domain (of visible, tangibles, etc.). In Perceiving Reality, I try to develop a way of conceiving of our most basic mode of being in the world that resists attempts to cleave reality into an inner and outer, a mental and a physical domain. The central argument of the book is that (...) what we apprehend in perception are not, to paraphrase J.L. Austin, the external, mind-independent, medium-sized dry goods that populate the realist’s ontology. Rather, to paraphrase Husserl and a group of Buddhist philosophers in league with Dignāga and Dharmakīrti, the objects apprehended in perception are the intentional or aspectual object. (shrink)

Some natural languages do not lexically distinguish between modals of possibility and modals of necessity. From the perspective of languages like English, modals in such languages appear to do double duty: they are used both where possibility modals are expected and where necessity modals are expected. The Nez Perce modal suffix o’qa offers an example of this behavior. I offer a simple account of the flexibility of the o’qa modal centered on the absence of scalar implicatures. O’qa is a possibility (...) modal that does not belong to a Horn scale; its use is never associated with a scalar implicature. Accordingly, in an upward entailing environment, φ-o’qa is appropriate whenever there are accessible φ-worlds, even if indeed all accessible worlds are φ-worlds. In a downward entailing environment, the flexibility of the o’qa modal is seen no more. Here, neither o’qa nor English possibility modals are associated with scalar implicatures, and the use of o’qa exactly parallels the use of English modals of possibility. -/- Given that o’qa is a possibility modal that does not contrast with a modal of necessity, just how do you talk about necessities in Nez Perce? Speakers translating into Nez Perce rely on a variety of techniques to paraphrase expressions of simple necessity away. Their strategies highlight an area where Nez Perce and English plausibly differ in the range of propositions they convey. The data cast doubt on any strong form of effability as a language universal. (shrink)

Consider the most recent Yale-Harvard football game, an event which occurred on 11/20/21 in New Haven, lasting about three hours. This event, like many college football games before, was composed of four quarters, each of which was composed of possessions, each of which was composed of downs, each of which was composed of particular movements, tackles and decisions of the individual players. Each of these parts of the game was itself an event, occurring in a smaller region of space and (...) time than the game itself. Each of these events involved material objects like players, helmets, jerseys, etc. Each had causes and effects, and each instantiated qualitative properties, such as being a kickoff or being a tackle. These are paradigmatic examples of events. Events are many and varied; some other examples include the melting of an ice cube, the birth of a horse, the supernova of a star, the presidential election campaign and a winter snowstorm. Each of these took place in a certain region of spacetime, had other events as parts, involved certain objects, had causes and effects, and instantiated properties. Objects and their properties are not the only furniture in the world. Events are a crucial part of our manifest and scientific pictures of the world. We go to football games, think about and participate in elections, eagerly anticipate the birth of a child, and quantify over and explain such things in our scientific theories. Yet, events have received insufficient attention from metaphysicians. Some philosophers have been skeptical of events, holding that talk of events can be paraphrased away, or that events can be reduced to objects and properties.1 When philosophers have accepted events, their motivations have usually been extrinsic—events are introduced in order to play a role in a larger philosophical system. This tendency has led philosophers to miss a number of interesting features of events. In this paper, I wish to reverse that trend by developing an ontology of events which is not an afterthought with respect to another philosophical project. In so doing, I will provide answers to substantive metaphysical questions about the relations in which events stand and their identity conditions. In the next section, I identify four basic relations in which events stand: parthood, involvement, causation and instantiation, focusing in particular on involvement. Then, I argue that events are individuated by their involvements, and criticize the identity conditions which have been offered by other philosophers, notably Quine, Davidson and Kim. I then conclude. (shrink)

Plausibly, mathematical claims are true, but the fundamental furniture of the world does not include mathematical objects. This can be made sense of by providing mathematical claims with paraphrases, which make clear how the truth of such claims does not require the fundamental existence of mathematical objects. This paper explores the consequences of this type of position for explanatory structure. There is an apparently straightforward relationship between this sort of structure, and the logical sort: i.e. logically complex claims are (...) explained by logically simpler ones. For example, disjunctions are explained by their (true) disjuncts, while generalizations are explained by their (true) instances. This would seem as plausible in the case of mathematics as elsewhere. Also, it would seem to be something that the anti-realist approaches at issue would want to preserve. It will be argued, however, that these approaches cannot do this: they lead not merely to violations of the familiar principles relating logical and explanatory structure, but even to reversals of these. That is, there are cases where generalizations explain their instances, or disjunctions their disjuncts. (shrink)

The truth table method, natural deduction, and the truth tree method, the three validity proving methods standardly taught in an introductory logic course, are too clumsy for the battlefield of real-life. The “short truth table” test is handy at times, but it stumbles at many other times. In this paper, we set up a general method that can beat all the methods mentioned above in a contest of speed. Furthermore, the procedure can be step-by-step paraphrased in a natural language, so (...) that, unlike the other methods, a real-life logical problem can be analyzed and explained in a real-life language too. (shrink)

Commonsense ontology often conflicts with the ontology of our best scientific and philosophical theories. However, commonsense ontology, and commonsense belief systems in general, seems to be remarkably efficient and cognitively fundamental. In cases of contrast, it is better to find a way to reconcile commonsense and ”theoretical” ontologies. Given that commonsense ontologies are typically expressed within natural language, a classical procedure of reconciliation is semantical. The strategy is that of individuating the ”ontologically problematic” expressions of natural language and paraphrasing the (...) sentences in which they appear in a (formal) language whose commitments are compatible with those of our best theories. We believe that this strategy of reconciliation, though quite standard, especially in the philosophical literature, is problematic: for a start, it forces us to conclude that the ”real content” of our commonsense expressions and beliefs is different from what it appears. Commonsense ontology becomes just an illusion. We will thus propose an alternative approach: according to our view, a commonsense ontology is reconciled with a theoretical ontology in case it is shown that the explanation of why we believe in the existence of a problematic entity is compatible with our best theories. We will call this kind of reconciliation ”epistemic”. The advantage of an epistemic reconciliation is that commonsense ontology is treated in its own right and could be taken prima facie. Another advantage of the view is that epistemic reconciliation can be analysed through the notion of explaining away: a commonsense ontology is epistemically reconciled with a theoretical ontology if and only if the problematic entities of the commonsense ontology are explained away by ”respectable” entities of the theoretical ontology. In the final part of the paper, we sketch a formal analysis of explaining away. (shrink)

The Neoplatonic commentaries on Aristotle’s works have always been considered somehow suspicious. That is partly related to the doctrinal commitments of the commentators, partly with the hermeneutical strategies to which they seem to recur. Both of these reasons have also give place to the accusation of distortion and misunderstanding of Aristotle’s philosophy. In the following paper I want to perform an exercise of disclosing the hermeneutical procedure that one of this commentators applies to one of the passages of the first (...) book of the De Anima. The commentator is Philoponus, the passage is the refutation of the soul-harmony theory. My aim is to show that, despite the doctrinal commitments that the commentator may have, his methodology follows Aristotelian guidelines. I hope that this could open perspectives on the value that the commentators must have as philosophers, rather than merely interpreters or paraphrasers. (shrink)

Mereological Nihilism is the thesis that no material object has proper parts; every material object is a simple. Recent developments in plural semantics have made it possible to develop and motivate this position. In particular, some have argued that the tools of plural reference and quantification enable us to systematically paraphrase true statements apparently about composites into statements that only concern simples. Are composites really surplus to philosophical requirements? Given the resources of plural semantics, what must the world be like (...) if composites are to be theoretically indispensable? I will describe and defend the possibility of scenario in which mention of composites cannot be paraphrased. We will therefore come to appreciate one way in which the world would have to be in order for composites to be required and for Nihilism to fail. (shrink)

Let propositionalism be the thesis that all mental attitudes are propositional. Anti-propositionalists typically point at apparently non-propositional attitudes, such as fearing a dog and loving a spouse, and play defense against attempts at propositional analysis of such attitudes. Here I explore the anti-propositionalist’s prospects for going on the offensive, trying to show that some apparently propositional attitudes, notably belief and judgment, can be given non-propositional analysis. Although the notion that belief is a non-propositional attitude may seem ludicrous at first, it (...) is admirably defended by Franz Brentano, whose analysis I propose to expound, update, and deepen here. The basic strategy can be thought of as follows. First, although the grammar of belief-that reports clearly suggests a propositional attitude, the grammar of belief-in reports suggests instead an ‘objectual’ attitude. Second, with some ingenuity all belief-that reports can be paraphrased into belief-in reports. Third, given certain general considerations, this paraphraseability recommends the view that the psychological reality of belief states is objectual rather than propositional. Nonetheless, I will argue, there are two very real costs associated with this non-propositional analysis of belie. (shrink)

The concept of universal in Aristotle’s philosophy has several aspects. 1) Universal and plurality Aristotle posits universal (καθόλου) versus particular (καθ᾿ ἕκαστον) each covering a range of elements: some elements are universal while others are particulars. Aristotle defines universal as ‘that which by nature is predicated (κατηγορεῖσθαι) of many subjects’ and particular as ‘that which is not’ so. (OI ., I, 7, 17a38-b1) The plurality of possible subjects of universal is what Aristotle insists on. The inclusion of the notion of (...) ‘plurality’ in the definition of universal might make us expect to have ‘singularity’ in the definition of particular. So, when Aristotle says that universal is that which is naturally predicable of many subjects, we expect him to define the particular as ‘that which is predicable of one subject only.’ Nonetheless, Aristotle does not and indeed cannot define it this way. We cannot find a text in which he defines particular as such simply because particulars are not predicable of any subject unless we regard their predication of themselves a predication, which Aristotle does not, at least in a genuine sense. Thus, he defines a particular only negatively. Hence, the capability of predication of a plurality is indeed the capability of predication itself because the particular cannot be predicated of anything. A particular is that which cannot be predicated of anything (or: of anything else, if saying of a thing of itself is to be considered as predication). It is ‘numerically one’ and what of which the universal is predicated (Met., B, 999b34-1000a1). Those that cannot be predicated of anything, or particulars, are of two kinds: primary substances and individual accidents. Besides Categories we can hardly find a text where Aristotle discusses individual accidents maybe because they are of much less importance for him compared with substances. However, substances are what he mentions repeatedly so that we can confine particulars to substances. In fact, it is substance that Aristotle considers so repeatedly as what cannot be predicated. As the main particulars and individuals, substances are posited as the main things that are not universal. The closeness of the two concepts of ‘substance’ and ‘unpredicability’ is to the extent that he ignores individual accidents and makes these concepts equal and as the opposite of universal: ‘what is not predicated of a subject is said a substance (οὐσία λέγετα τὸ μὴ καθ᾿ ὑποκειμένου) but what is always said of some subject is called a universal.’ (Met., Z, 1038b15-16. cf. Met., B, 1003a7-9) Therefore, since particulars cannot be predicated of any subject and, thus, every predication is necessarily a predication of a plurality of subjects, the inclusion of ‘plurality’ in the definition of universal is either i) in the sense of ‘representation’ or it must be regarded as ii) an unnecessary addition mentioned just for clarification or iii) only for avoiding cases where something is predicated of itself. By the first we mean this: though a substance is not said of anything, it represents some one thing and there is some one thing that is that substance. A universal, on the other hand, can represent a plurality of things. There is, however, a third possibility that has no essential difference with the sense of representation. Aristotle might have ‘arbitrary predication’ in mind when he suses ‘plurality’ in the definition of universal: while a particular can be the arbitrary predicate of just one thing, a universal can be predicated, both really and arbitrarily, of many things. Whatever Aristotle’s intention was, what is important for our investigation is this: Aristotle uses the notion of plurality in the definition of universal in spite of the fact that it is not necessary. What this implies is that this notion is so important for Aristotle that albeit every predictability is a predictability of a possible plurality, he adds the notion of plurality. What makes this notion important, I believe, is that he has something like a class in mind when he defines a universal because the notion of plurality is indistinguishable from a class. 2) Universal and whole; particular and part In Aristotle, the concepts of universal and whole are so close: ‘That which is true of a whole class and is said to hold good as a whole (which implies that it is a kind of whole) is true of a whole in the sense that it contains many things by being predicated of each, and that each and all of them, e.g. man, horse, god, are one because all are living things (τὸ μὲν γὰρ καθόλου καὶ τὸ ὃλως λεγόμενον ὡς πολλὰ περιέχον τῷ κατηγορεῖσθαι καθ’ ἑκάστου καὶ ἓν ἃπαντα εἶναι ὡς ἑκαστον, ...). Phil Corkum points to Aristotle’s distinction between quantitative and integral wholes in Met., 5, 26, 1023b26-33 where a quantitative whole is called homoiomerous, as the sum of animal while an integral whole, e.g. a house, is called heteromerous. He links the notion of homoiomerous to the notion of indivisibility of individuals (in 1b6-9 and 3b10-18) and indivisibility of universals. He believes that in PrA., I, 4, 25b32-26a2 it is the transitivity of mereological containment that is discussed. 3) Universal is common between instances Universal is common (κοινόν) between all the plurality of subjects it can be predicated of because what belongs to more than one thing must be common between them. (Met., Z, 1038b10-12) In the Same way, what is common cannot be a particular and, thus, a substance. (Met., Z, 1040b23-24) An individual or substance is a ‘this’ and a ‘this’ cannot be what common indicates simply because it is here in ‘this’ and can be nowhere else while common must be common between several things. In fact, what can be indicated by a common is indeed a ‘such.’ (Met., B, 1003a7-9) 4) Universal is the same in its instances We have a universal i) in all of its instances and ii) in the same way (ταὐτὸ ἐπὶ πὰντων). (Met, Γ, 1005a9-10) While the first point is evident (otherwise how could it be their universal?), the second point might seem not only ambiguous but the cause of many problems. For Aristotle, therefore, a universal must be ‘one’ in number and not many. This numerically one universal is the very universal for all its instances. It is the same universal that is predicated on each of its instances. This sameness is not, however, a mere homonymous sameness or the sameness of a homonymous word. All these three points, namely oneness, sameness and rejection of mere homonymous sameness are asserted in Aristotle’s own words τι ἕν καὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ἐπὶ πλειόνων μη ὁμώνυμον. (PsA., A, 11, 77a8-9) This non-homonymous unity is asserted also in PsA., A, 24, 85b15-16. 5) Universal as predicate Contrary to substance that cannot be a predicate, universal is what cannot be prevented from being in the place of predicate. Therefore, Aristotle distinguishes universal from subject because while the latter must necessarily be capable of being a predicate, though it might take the position of subject as well, the latter does not necessarily have such a capability especially when it is a this because it cannot be a predicate in such a case: ‘For the subject and universal differ in being or not being a ‘this’; like man and body and soul are the subject of accidents while the accident is something like musical or white.’ (Met., Θ, 1049a27-30) This indicates that a universal is basically different from subject and although it can be posited in the place of subject, it is the position of predicate that is its position as a universal. In Metaphysics, Z, 13, Aristotle asserts that ‘no universal can be substance.’ The same is asserted in Met., I, 1053b16-17 cf. 1060b21. As James H. Lesher points out, Aristotle’s position is that ‘nothing predicated universally is a substance.’ 6) Universal in substance In Met., 10388b8-9 Aristotle says that no universal is a substance. While a universal cannot be a substance in the way essence (to ti en einai) is, it is, Aristotle asserts, ‘in’ it (ἐν τούτῳ δὲ ἐνυπάρχειν) (Met., Ζ, 1038b16-18). Aristotle’s examples are: animal in man and horse. A universal is ‘in’ the thing it is its universal. But in what sense a universal can be in a thing? It cannot be in it as ‘in a subject’, which is denied in Categories for secondary substances. If we check the senses of being in, we can find some other senses of ‘being in’ some of which are compatible with this sense of ‘being in.’ Michael J. Loux believes that contrary to his earlier works like Peri Ideaon and Organon in which the immanence of universals signals a reproduction of the platonic two worlds picture, in his later works like Physics and Metaphysics, when Aristotle tells us that universals are in particulars he means that they are ‘components of or ingredients in sensible particulars.’ In Metaphysics (Δ, 1014b3-9) Aristotle compares elements with universals and call them ‘the most universal things because elements are present either in all or in many things. 7) Logos is of universal Not only universals have logos (Met., Z, 1038b18-19) but ‘Every logos and every science is of universals and not of particulars.’ (Met., K, 1059b25-26) The reason is that they are the same: the logos of the unjiversal ‘circle’ is nothing but ‘being circle’ and the logos of the universal ‘soul’ is ‘being soul.’ (Met., Z, 1035b33-1036a2) The same is said about definition. (Met, Z, 1036a27-29) 8) Universal: in the soul Contrasting individuals, universals are in the soul (So., 3, 5, 417b22-23; cf. PsA., B, 19, 100a6-7). Aristotle also says that the form, i.e. the essence, of the artwork is in the soul. (met., Z, 1032a32-b2) Moreover, as Michael J. Loux points out, ‘the Peri Ideon tells us that we need universals to serve as the objects of noetic acts.’ 9) Universal: not beside individual In spite of the fact that demonstration creates the opinion that demonstrating is based on the existence of universals as existing among the existing things, they do not have existence besides individuals (PsA., A, 24, 85a31-35; Met, Λ, 1071a19-23). Aristotle believes that universals of a P-series (B203, 71) are not παρὰ τὰ εἴδη: 999a6ff. Also check De Anima, II, 3, 414b20-25 10) Primary or commensurate universal Aristotle distinguishes ‘πρῶτον καθόλού’ (PsA., B, 17, 99a33-35) literally meaning ‘primary universal’ but mostly, and truly, translated as commensurate universal. While a universal merely ‘μὴ ἀντιςτρέφει,’ a primary universal ‘ᾧ ἓκαςτον μὲν μὴ ἀντιςτρέφει’ (PsA., B, 17, 99a33-35). Aristotle mentions three conditions for a commensurate universal. It is an attribute that i) belongs to every instance of its subject (without exception!!!), and this belonging is ii) essentially and iii) qua that subject itself (ᾗ αύτό). (PsA., A, 4, 73b26-28) However, he insists that the second and the third conditions are indeed the same. (PsA., A, 4, 73b28-30) The first condition he paraphrases as ‘to belong to any random instance of that subject’ and the second and the third as ‘when the subject is the first thing to which it can be shown to belong.’ (PsA., A, 4, 73b32-74a3) Aristotle’s example is ‘the equality of its angles to two right angles’. This attribute is not a commensurate universal of figure due to the first condition: it cannot be demonstrated of any figure. Nonetheless, though it can be demonstrated of every isosceles because every isosceles has angles equal to two right angles, it is not a commensurate universal of isosceles due to the other conditions: it is not predicated of isosceles qua isosceles but qua triangle. These conditions seem to be like regulators: they organize everything to match to the right group. The method of finding commensurate universal is like test and error method based on elimination: you must eliminate each of the higher or lower universals and check if the attribute remains or not. The commensurate universal is that which remains in between eliminated universals. (cf. PsA., A, 5, 74a37-b4) Brad Inwoodpresents an understanding of commensurate universal that is different from what I have understood and, thus, must be checked: ‘These universals are propositions in which, for example, ‘all A are B’ is true and which are still true universal statements if converted: ‘all B are A’ is also true.’ -/- . (shrink)

Darwinian ideas were developed and radically transformed when they were transmitted to the alien intellectual background of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. The earliest references to Darwin in China appeared in the 1870s through the writings of Western missionaries who provided the Chinese with the earliest information on evolutionary doctrines. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassadors, literati and overseas students contributed to the dissemination of evolutionary ideas, with modest effect. The ‘evolutionary sensation’ in China was generated by the Chinese Spencerian Yan Fu’s (...) paraphrased translation and reformulation of Thomas Huxley’s 1893 Romanes Lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’ and his ‘Prolegomena’. It was from this source that ‘Darwin’ became well known in China – although it was Darwin’s name, rather than his theories, that reached Chinese literati’s households. The Origin of Species itself began to receive attention only at the turn of the twentieth century. The translator, Ma Junwu (1881–1940), incorporated non-Darwinian doctrines, particularly Lamarckian and Spencerian principles, into his edition of the Chinese Origin. This partially reflected the importance of the pre-existing Chinese intellectual background as well as Yan Fu’s progressive ‘evolutionary paradigm’. In this paper, I will elucidate Ma Junwu’s culturally conditioned reinterpretation of the Origin before 1906 by investigating his transformation of Darwin’s principal concepts. (shrink)