Section 1 provides a brief summary of the pair-list literature singling out some points that are particularly relevant for the coming discussion. -/- Section 2 shows that the dilemma of quantifi cation versus domain restriction arises only in extensional complement interrogatives. In matrix questions and in intensional complements only universals support pairlist readings, whence the simplest domain restriction treatment suffices. Related data including conjunction, disjunction, and cumulative readings are discussed -/- Section 3 argues that in the case of extensional complements (...) the domain restriction treatment is inadequate for at least two independent reasons. One has to do with the fact that not only upward monotonic quantifi ers support pairlist readings, and the other with the derivation of apparent scope out readings. The reasoning is supplemented with some discussion of the semantic properties of layered quantifi ers.  The above will establish the need for quantifi cation, so the question arises how the objections explicitly enlisted in the literature against quantifi cation can be answered. Section 4 considers the de dicto reading of the quantifi er s restriction, quanti cational variability, and the absence of pairlist readings with whether questions, and argues that they need not militate against the quanti ficational analysis. -/- Section 5 summarizes the emergent proposal -/- Finally, section 6 discusses the signifi cance of the above findings for the behavior of weak islands. (shrink)

In this book, I defend the present-centered approach in historiography of science (i.e. study of the history of science), build an account for causal explanations in historiography of science, and show the fruitfulness of the approach and account in when we attempt to understand science. -/- The present-centered approach defines historiography of science as a field that studies the developments that led to the present science. I argue that the choice of the targets of studies in historiography of science should (...) be directly connected to our values and preferences in an intersubjective process. The main advantage of this approach is that it gives a clear motivation for historiography of science and avoids or solves stubborn conceptual and practical problems within the field. -/- The account of causal explanations is built on the notions of counterfactual scenarios and contrastive question-answer pairs. I argue that if and only if we track down patterns of counterfactual dependencies, can we understand history. Moreover, I define the notions of historical explanation, explanatory competition, explanatory depth, and explanatory resources. -/- Finally, I analyze the existing historiography of science with the framework built in the previous chapter, and I show that this framework clarifies many first-order (i.e. concerning the history of science) and meta-level issues (i.e. concerning the nature of science in general) that historians and philosophers tackle. As an illustration of the philosophical power of the framework, I explicate the notion of local explanation and analyze the question of whether the developments of science were necessary or contingent. (shrink)

Lying is standardly distinguished from misleading according to how a disbelieved proposition is conveyed. To lie, a speaker uses a sentence to say a proposition she does not believe. A speaker merely misleads by using a sentence to somehow convey but not say a disbelieved proposition. Front-and-center to the lying/misleading distinction is a conception of what-is-said by a sentence in a context. Stokke (2016, 2018) has recently argued that the standard account of lying/misleading is explanatorily inadequate unless paired with a (...) theory where what-is-said by a sentence is determined by the question under discussion or QUD. I present two objections to his theory, and conclude that no extant theory of what-is-said enables the standard account of the lying/misleading distinction to be explanatorily adequate. (shrink)

Frege famously held that numbers play the role of objects in our language and thought, and that this role is on display when we use sentences like "The number of Jupiter's moons is four". I argue that this role is an example of a general pattern that also encompasses persons, times, locations, reasons, causes, and ways of appearing or acting. These things are 'objects' simply in the sense that they are answers to questions: they are the sort of thing we (...) search for and specify during investigation or inquiry. I support this epistemological conception of objects by studying specificational sentences, a class of sentences which includes Frege's original example. I defend an analysis of such sentences as question-answer pairs, and show how to formally represent this analysis using game-theoretical semantics. (shrink)

In §57 of the Foundations of Arithmetic, Frege famously turns to natural language to support his claim that numbers are ‘self-subsistent objects’:I have already drawn attention above to the fact th...

The answer to some of the longstanding issues in the 20th century theoretical physics, such as those of the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics, the broken symmetries of the electroweak force acting at the subatomic scale and the missing mass of Higgs particle, and also those of the cosmic singularity and the black matter and energy, appear to be closely related to the problem of the quantum texture of space-time and the fluctuations of its underlying geometry. Each (...) region of space landscape seem to be filled with spacetime weaved and knotted networks, for example, spacetime has immaterial curvature and structures, such as topological singularities, and obeys the laws of quantum physics. Thus, it is filled with potentialparticles, pairs of virtual matter and anti-matter units, and potential properties at the quantum scale. For example, quantum entities (like fields and particles) have both wave (i.e., continuous) and particle (i.e., discrete) properties and behaviors. At the quantum level (precisely, the Planck scale) of space-time such properties and behaviors could emerge from some underlying (dynamic) phase space related to some field theory. Accordingly, these properties and behaviors leave their signature on objects and phenomena in the real Universe. In this paper we consider some conceptual issues of this question. (shrink)

Most believe that it is worse for a person to die than to continue to exist with a good life. At the same time, many believe that it is not worse for a merely possible person never to exist than to exist with a good life. I argue that if the underlying properties that make us the sort of thing we essentially are can come in small degrees, then to maintain this commonly-held pair of beliefs we will have to embrace (...) an implausible sort of evaluative hypersensitivity to slight nonevaluative differences. Avoidance of such hypersensitivity pressures us to accept that it can be worse for merely possible people never to exist. If this conclusion is correct, then the standard basis for giving no or less priority to merely possible persons would disappear (i.e., that things cannot be better or worse for them). Though defenders of Person-Affecting Views and their opponents may still disagree in theory, they could arrive at the same answers to many monumentally important practical questions. (shrink)

The polarities of democracy framework is used to achieve human emancipation by simultaneously managing multiple paradoxes by employing Johnson’s polarity management as the conceptual framework. Although Johnson’s framework may be appropriate for managing other tension-dependent pairs, it is less suitable for managing multiple democratic values when the goal is human emancipation and sustainable democratic social change. Managing multiple polarities is exacerbated by the problem-shifting and problem-creation effect inherent in a tension-driven framework. The aim was to develop a constructivist grounded (...) theory to answer the research question: How can the first principles of democracy be used to reduce dynamic tension and achieve human emancipation? This gap has been filled by a parsimonious conceptual framework based on three democratic principles: human dignity, fairness, and knowledge. The principles of democracy conceptual framework can synthesize the tension between democratic values in order to manage, plan, and evaluate democratic social change initiatives. (shrink)

What sort of doxastic response is rational to learning that one disagrees with an epistemic peer who has evaluated the same evidence? I argue that even weak general recommendations run the risk of being incompatible with a pair of real epistemic phenomena, what I call evidential attenuation and evidential amplification. I focus on a popular and intuitive view of disagreement, the equal weight view. I take it to state that in cases of peer disagreement, a subject ought to end up (...) equally confident that her own opinion is correct as that the opinion of her peer is. I say why we should regard the equal weight view as a synchronic constraint on (prior) credence functions. I then spell out a trilemma for the view: it violates what are intuitively correct updates (also leading to violations of conditionalisation), it poses implausible restrictions on prior credence functions, or it is non-substantive. The sorts of reasons why the equal weight view fails apply to other views as well: there is no blanket answer to the question of how a subject should adjust her opinions in cases of peer disagreement. (shrink)

Leibniz’s views on modality are among the most discussed by his interpreters. Although most of the discussion has focused on Leibniz’s analyses of modality, this essay explores Leibniz’s grounding of modality. Leibniz holds that possibilities and possibilia are grounded in the intellect of God. Although other early moderns agreed that modal truths are in some way dependent on God, there were sharp disagreements surrounding two distinct questions: (1) On what in God do modal truths and modal truth-makers depend? (2) What (...) is the manner(s) of dependence by which modal truths and modal truth-makers depend on God? Very roughly, Leibniz’s own answers are: (1) God’s intellect and (2) a form of ontological dependence. The essay first distinguishes Leibniz’s account from two nearby (and often misunderstood) alternatives found in Descartes and Spinoza. It then examines Leibniz’s theory in detail, showing how, on his account, God’s ideas provide both truth-makers for possibilities and necessities and an ontological foothold for those truth-makers, thereby explaining modal truths. Along the way, it suggests several refinements and possible amendments to Leibniz’s grounding thesis. It then defends Leibniz against a pair of recent objections by Robert Merrihew Adams and Andrew Chignell that invoke the early work of Kant. I conclude that whereas Leibniz’s alternative avoids collapsing into yet another form of Spinozism, the alternatives proposed by Adams, Chignell, and the early Kant do not. (shrink)

What constitutes a “good” life—not necessarily a morally good life, but a life that is good for the person who lived it? In response to this question of “well-being," philosophers have offered three significant answers: A good life is one in which a person can satisfy their desires (“Desire-Satisfaction” or “Preferentism”), one that includes certain good features (“Objectivism”), or one in which pleasurable states dominate or outweigh painful ones (“Hedonism”). To adjudicate among these competing theories, moral philosophers traditionally gather (...) data from thought experiments and intuition. In this chapter, we supplement that traditional approach with a pair of experimental studies that examine whether the three theories reflect laypeople’s intuitions about well-being. The empirical studies yield two primary findings. First, they provide evidence for lay "well-being pluralism": laypeople treat desire satisfaction, positive objective conditions, and happiness as all constitutive of well-being. Second, the studies provide evidence of "hedonic dominance": laypeople evaluate an individual’s happiness as more important to an individual’s overall well-being than desire satisfaction or objective conditions. (shrink)

A general characterization of logical opposition is given in the present paper, where oppositions are defined by specific answers in an algebraic question-answer game. It is shown that opposition is essentially a semantic relation of truth values between syntactic opposites, before generalizing the theory of opposition from the initial Apuleian square to a variety of alter- native geometrical representations. In the light of this generalization, the famous problem of existential import is traced back to an ambiguous interpretation of (...) assertoric sentences in Aristotle's traditional logic. Following Abelard’s distinction between two alternative readings of the O-vertex: Non omnis and Quidam non, a logical difference is made between negation and denial by means of a more fine- grained modal analysis. A consistent treatment of assertoric oppositions is thus made possible by an underlying abstract theory of logical opposition, where the central concept is negation. A parallel is finally drawn between opposition and consequence, laying the ground for future works on an abstract operator of opposition that would characterize logical negation just as does Tarski’s operator of consequence for logical truth. (shrink)

The thesis of Weak Unrestricted Composition says that every pair of objects has a fusion. This thesis has been argued by Contessa and Smith to be compatible with the world being junky and hence to evade an argument against the necessity of Strong Unrestricted Composition proposed by Bohn. However, neither Weak Unrestricted Composition alone nor the different variants of it that have been proposed in the literature can provide us with a satisfying answer to the special composition question, (...) or so we will argue. We will then go on to explore an alternative family of purely mereological rules in the vicinity of Weak Unrestricted Composition, Cardinal Composition: A plurality of pairwise non-overlapping objects composes an object iff the objects in the plurality are of cardinality smaller than $$\kappa $$ κ. As we will show, all the instances for infinite $$\kappa $$ κ s determine fusion and are compatible with junk, and every instance for a $$\kappa > \aleph _0$$ κ > ℵ 0 is furthermore compatible with gunk and dense chains of parthood. (shrink)

Because you know you exist with the cogito (I think therefore I am), you possess the fundamental capability to prove your own existence (science) and how you emerged (metaphysics). The act of 'metatheos' then, a metaphysical activity, serves to help you understand your own consciousness and its limitation, while simultaneously understanding God, what it is, and its limitlessness. God hereby, should begin to be conceivably understood as something well beyond our abilities to perceive, while also proving the definition that it (...) is everything, including nothingness. This eliminates the anthropomorphism of fundamentalist religions and the infinite regress of the material reductionists, as it makes them both valid and compatible. (shrink)

Several metaphysical debates have typically been modeled as oppositions between a relationist approach and a substantivalist approach. Such debates include the Bundle Theory and the Substratum Theory about ordinary material objects, the Bundle (Humean) Theory and the Substance (Cartesian) Theory of the Self, and Relationism and Substantivalism about time. In all three debates, the substantivalist side typically insists that in order to provide a good treatment of the subject-matter of the theory (time, Self, material objects), it is necessary to postulate (...) the existence of a certain kind of substance, while the other side, the relationist one, characteristically feels that this is an unnecessary expense and that one can get the job done in an ontologically cheaper way just with inter-related properties or events. In this paper I shall defend the view that there is much less of a disagreement between relational ontologies and substantival ontologies than it is usually thought. I believe that, when carefully examined, the two sides of the debate are not that different from each other, in all three cases of pairs of views mentioned above. As we will see, both the relational side and the substantival side work in the same way, suffer from and answer the same objections, and are structurally extremely similar. It will be an important question – one that I shall discuss in detail, and that is indeed the main point of interest for me in this paper – whether this means that the two sides of the debate are somehow 'equivalent' or not, and what 'equivalent' could mean. (shrink)

This paper discusses the following question: why was the term “dunatos” (“possible”) employed by Aristotle as an alternative label for imperfect syllogisms in his discussion of assertoric syllogistic? My answer ascribes to Aristotle a bottom up perspective, in which he stresses what is necessary in the premise-pairs to attain target conclusions of a given form within a given figure. I argue that “dunatos” is employed by Aristotle to stress that an imperfect syllogism is always one of the (...) possible options to attain a conclusion of a given form within a given figure. I also argue that this picture sheds some light on Aristotle’s clarifications of the final clause in his definition of syllogism. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding (...) and topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

Who is Pulcinella? What does his laughter have to say about the "end of time" and the end of life of Giandomenico Tiepolo? How can the end of a life make anyone laugh like Carnival’s popular mask does? This article tries to answer such questions. By unfolding the tools that come from the realm of Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy – notably the notion of "recapitulation of time" in its relation to comedy – we will trace a path which links Michail (...) Bachtin’s theories on the carnivalesque culture together with a recognition in the aesthetics of "character". In this encounter, the consistency of Pulcinella-King Carnival’s form of life will appear in the light of an “escape route”: it winks at a kind of general and anonymous beatitude, which pairs with the experience of the destitution of time. (shrink)

Contextuality and entanglement are valuable resources for quantum computing and quantum information. Bell inequalities are used to certify entanglement; thus, it is important to understand why and how they are violated. Quantum mechanics and behavioural sciences teach us that random variables ‘measuring’ the same content (the answer to the same Yes or No question) may vary, if ‘measured’ jointly with other random variables. Alice’s and Bob’s raw data confirm Einsteinian non-signaling, but setting dependent experimental protocols are used to (...) create samples of coupled pairs of distant ±1 outcomes and to estimate correlations.Marginal expectations, estimated using these final samples, depend on distant settings. Therefore,a system of random variables ‘measured’ in Bell tests is inconsistently connected and it should be analyzed using a Contextuality- by-Default approach, what is done for the first time in this paper.The violation of Bell inequalities and inconsistent connectedness may be explained using a contextual locally causal probabilistic model in which setting dependent variables describing measuring instruments are correctly incorporated. We prove that this model does not restrict experimenters` freedom of choice which is a prerequisite of science. Contextuality seems to be the rule and not an exception; thus, it should be carefully tested. (shrink)

Let I be a countable jump ideal in $\mathscr{D} = \langle \text{The Turing degrees}, \leq\rangle$ . The central theorem of this paper is: a is a uniform upper bound on I iff a computes the join of an I-exact pair whose double jump a (1) computes. We may replace "the join of an I-exact pair" in the above theorem by "a weak uniform upper bound on I". We also answer two minimality questions: the class of uniform upper bounds on (...) I never has a minimal member; if ∪ I = L α [ A] ∩ ω ω for α admissible or a limit of admissibles, the same holds for nice uniform upper bounds. The central technique used in proving these theorems consists in this: by trial and error construct a generic sequence approximating the desired object; simultaneously settle definitely on finite pieces of that object; make sure that the guessing settles down to the object determined by the limit of these finite pieces. (shrink)

A. Accident 1. We call an accident (συμβεβηκὸς) that which attaches to something and can be truly asserted, but neither of necessity nor usually.’ (Met. , Δ, 1025a14-16) 2. Whenever an accident attaches to a subject, it attaches to it not because it is that subject (μὴ διότι τοδὶ ἧν). (Met., Δ, 1025a21-24) 3. ‘There is no definite cause for an accident, but a chance cause, i.e. an indefinite one.’ (Met., Δ, 1025a24-25) 4. ‘The accident has happened or exists, -not (...) in virtue of itself, however, but of something else. (Met., Δ, 1025a28-29) 5. ‘What attaches to each thing in virtue of itself but is not in its substance is an accident.’ (Met., Δ, 1025a30-32) 6. ‘An accident is something which, though it is … neither a definition nor a property nor a genus, yet belongs to the thing.’ (To., I, 5, 102b4-) 7. An accident is ‘something which may either belong or not belong to any one and the self-same thing, as (e.g.) being seated may belong or not belong to some self-same thing.’ (To., I, 5, 102b4-) 8. ‘There is nothing to prevent an accident from becoming a temporary or relative property … [and] there is nothing to prevent an accident from becoming both a relative and a temporary property; but a property absolutely it will never be.’ Aristotle’s example is ‘being seated.’ That it is a temporary property is evident. It is also a relative property to those who are not seating when he is the only person sitting. Therefore, it is a temporary and also a relative property. 9. ‘In the case of accidents and in no other it is possible for something to be true in a certain respect and not universally’ and ‘there is nothing to prevent an attribute belonging in part’ so that it is open to dispute accidents e.g. being white or just about a man because he might be white or just in part only. Thus, ‘conversion is not a necessary process in the case of accidents.’ (To., B, 1, 109a9-) B. Essential versus accidental Aristotle distinguishes between two senses of being (τὸ ὄν): accidental sense (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) and essential sense (καθ᾿ αὑτό). The accidental sense happens when something is said to be another thing while there is in fact a third thing which is both of them. Thus, being the first thing is not by itself the second thing. a) Aristotle speaks of three ways in which one thing is said in an accidental sense to be another. (Met., Δ, 1017a8-22) i) When both the subject and the predicate are accidents of a third thing and it is in fact the third thing which ‘is’ by its own. Thus, when it is said e.g. that ‘The just is musical’ it is said accidentally because it is in fact a third thing, Socrates for example, which is just and musical. (Met., Δ, 1017a13-19) ii) When that to which the attribute belongs is. The example of this must be ‘the man is musical’ because it is in fact the man which is. iii) When the subject which has as an attribute that of which it is itself predicated, itself is. The example of this must be Aristotle’s third example: ‘The musical is man.’ b) Aristotle rejects the essential sense to categories: ‘Those things are said in their own right to be that are indicated by the figures of predication; for the senses of ‘being’ are just as many as these figures.’ (Met., Δ, 1017a22-24) Aristotle does not give us any example of the essential sense. Daniel W. Graham suggests that while essential predication is of the logical form of ‘S is P,’ the logical form of the accidental predication is ‘S has P.’ Although he concedes that the is/has contrast is not Aristotle’s, for which he thinks Aristotle prefers ‘said of’/’in’ terminology, he points to the discussion of ‘have’ in Cat. 15 as an evidence of its potential value for an analysis of predication. Kirwan analyses the distinction of essential and accidental predicate as such: while essential predicates ‘are identical with the subjects of which they are predicated; other predications are true in virtue of the fact that two distinct items, e.g. a substance and a quality, ‘coincide.’ Herman Weidemann believes ‘what divides a predicative statement which predicates essentially from a predicative statement which predicates accidentally is the fact that the former does- whereas the latter does not- answer the question what its subject cannot fail to be without ceasing to exist, as the somewhat its subject goes on existing, no matter what happens to be true of it during its existence, or, what kind of things its subject must be in order to be identifiable as one and the same object as long as it exists.’ C. Essential 1. Either the formula or the name of the subject of an essential attribute is involved in it. For example, animal is involved in female but not in white. (Met., Z, 1030b23-26) 2. Essential attributes, combined together, form a unity. Thus, e.g. animal and biped form a unity because they are both essential of man. (OI., II, 11, 21a14-16) 3. Aristotle distinguishes between two kinds of essential attributes (PsA., A, 4, 73a34-b3; 22, 84a12-17): a) Those attributes that belong to their subject as elements in its essential nature as e.g. line belongs to triangle or point to line. Here the very being of triangle is composed of line or that of line is composed of points: line is contained in the formula of triangle and point in that of line. b) Those attributes whose subjects are contained in their own defining formula as e.g. straight is an essential attribute of line because line is part of the defining formula of straight or odd belongs to number because number is part of the defining formula of odd. Every attribute that is related in neither of these two ways to its subject, it is not an essential but an accidental attribute. (PsA., A, 4, 73b3-5) 4. That attribute which is not predicated of a subject other than itself is an essential attribute. A substance cannot be predicated of anything but itself and is, thus, essential. (PsA., A, 4, 73b5-10) 5. A thing consequently co-stated with anything is essential. For example, if a beast dies when its throat is being cut, its death is also essentially connected with the cutting because the cutting was the cause of death, not death a coincidence of cutting. (PsA., A, 4, 73b10-15) 6. Essential attributes in both of this sense, either in the sense that their subjects are contained in them or in the sense that they are contained in their subjects, are necessary as well as consequently co-stated with their subjects. The reason is that it is impossible for them to inhere in their subjects either simply or in the qualified sense (that one or other of a pair of opposites must inhere in the subject as e.g. one of straight or curve must be necessarily predicable of a line or one of odd or even of number). (PsA., A, 4, 73b16-21; 6, 74b5-12; B, 96b1-5) 7. Only those attributes that are within a genus are essential and possessed by their respective subjects as such and, thus, are necessary. Thereupon, both the conclusion and the premises of demonstrations which produce scientific knowledge are essential. (PsA., A, 6, 75a28-31) Therefore, ‘the extreme and the middle terms must be drawn from the same genus; otherwise, as predicated, they will not be essential and will thus be accidents.’ (PsA., A, 6, 75b10-12) Also, the theorems of a science can be demonstrated by means of another science only when they are related as subordinate to superior. (PsA., A, 6, 75b13-) 8. Our knowledge of the connexion of an attribute with a subject is essential only when ‘we know that connexion through the middle term in virtue of which it inheres (καθ᾿ὃ ὑπἀρχει), and as an inference from basic premises essential and ‘appropriate’ to the subject.’ The essential belonging of the middle to the minor has a necessary connexion with its belonging to the same genus of the major and minor: ‘If that middle term also belongs essentially to the minor, the middle must belong to the same genus as the major and minor terms (ἀνάγκη τὸ μέσον ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ συγγενείᾳ εἶναι). (PsA., A, 9, 76a4-9) 9. In an essential predication, the predicate is signified of a subject identical with itself or with a species of itself. Since only predicates which signify substance signify that the subject is identical with the predicate or with a species of the predicate, predicates signifying substance are essentially predicated and any other predicate is accidental or coincidental. Thus, while animal is essentially predicated of man because man is identical with a species of animal, white is accidentally predicated of man because man is neither identical with white nor a species of it. (PsA., A, 22, 83a24-32) Weidemann discusses the confusion between essential predications and statements of identity. He warns that the expression ‘(to be) just what a man is’ (analogous to the Greek phrase ‘(εἶναι) ὃπερ ἀνθρώπον) ought not to be confused with the expression ‘just what it is for a man to be,’ which renders the phrase τὸ ὃπερ ἀνθρώπῳ εἶναι’ (1007a22, 23, 27-28); a confusion Kirwan discusses. 10. ‘Demonstration proves the inherence of essential attributes in things.’ (PsA., A, 22, 84a11-12) 11. ‘Nothing which does not happen to belong to the genus is essentially the genus; e.g. a white man is not essentially a color.’ Thus, while justice falls within the genus, a just man does not. (To., Γ, 1, ^116a24-) 12. There is no syllogism of essence (ti esti). Nevertheless, we come to know ti esti through a demonstration. (93b15-20; cf. 93b25-28) D. Accidental 1. An accidental attribute cannot be predicated of a subject universally. Thus, we cannot say ‘Every man is musical.’ The reason is that ‘universal attributes belong to things in virtue of their nature.’ Therefore, accidental predicates are predicated only of the individuals. (Met., Δ, 1017b33-1018a2) 2. An accidental is a mere name. (Met., E, 1026b13-) 3. An accidental is obviously akin to non-being. (Met., E, 1026b21) 4. ‘That which is neither always nor for the most part we call accidental.’ (Met., E, 1026b27-33) 5. The matter (ὕλη) is the cause of the accidental because it is matter which is capable of being otherwise than as it for the most part is. (Met., E, 1027a13-16) In fact, there is cause or principle of the incidental of the same kind as there are of the essential because if there were, everything would be of necessity. (Met., K, 1065a6-8) The causes of accidental are unordered and indefinite. (Met., K, 1065a25-26) 6. Since all science is either of that which is always or of that which is for the most part, there is no science of the accidental. (Met., E, 1027a19-24; K, 1064b30-1065a6) Therefore, since an accident may also not inhere and, thus, it is impossible to prove its inherence as a necessary conclusion, there is no demonstrative knowledge of accidents. (PsA., A, 6, 75a18-23) 7. The accidental is not necessary but indeterminate. (Met., K, 1065a24-26) 8. The co-positing of a subject and a predicate which are accidental either to the same subject or to one another, whiteness and being musical for instance, does not form a unity. (OI, II, 11, 21a7-14) 9. Negative predicates, i.e. predicates including a ‘not,’ are accidental predicates. Thus, if good be an essential predicate of a subject, ‘not bad’ cannot be essential but is accidental. (OI., II, 14, 23b15-20) 10. Every attribute which does not belong to its subject in either of two senses of essential attribute (cf. PsA., A, 4, 73a34-b3), namely, belonging to their subjects as an element of its formula or their subjects belonging to them as an element of them, is an accidental attribute. (PsA., A, 4, 73b3-5) 11. Those attributes that are predicated of a subject other than themselves are accidental attributes. Thus, everything except substance is an accidental in this sense. (PsA., A, 4, 73b5-10) 12. A thing not consequentially connected with anything is accidental. For example, in ‘while he was walking it lightened,’ the lightening was not due to his walking but was a coincidence. (PsA., A, 4, 73b10-15) 13. Those attributes that are not within a genus are accidental attributes. (PsA., A, 6, 75a28-31) Therefore, the extreme and middle terms that are not drawn from the same genus are accidents. (PsA., A, 6, 75b10-12) Moreover, to apply an attribute to subjects in different genera afford knowledge of the attribute, only as inhering accidentally, not as belonging to its subject as such.’ (PsA., A, 9, 75b38-76a3) . (shrink)

Abstract - This paper primarily harps on the issue whether the admission of universals (Especially as discussed in this paper resemblance and supervenience) would impose any extra burden on the ontology. In this connection I would like to make a special mention of the fact that metaphysical issues dealt in Philosophy are quite relevant in medical ethics and management speculations or even in marketing. In this paper both the relation of Supervenience and that of Resemblance is dealt which undoubtedly helps (...) in the understanding of properties, the structure or orientation of any programming or theory. So the present paper may be a sure help in prioritization of issues in case of management study or in the removal of any disharmony generated in patients after treatment of an ailment. Keeping this in mind I have tried to analyze the almost known fact that providing an account of sameness of type is the compulsory task for any theory of Universals since unless the question of sameness of type is answered and a philosophical superstructure is unfolded the question of making or arriving at an ontology which is not unduly burdened can at all be addressed. I started with the Realist and the Nominalist. In order to arrive at this position I had first discussed about the positions of the different types of Nominalism. I have also tried to show how realism and the different forms of nominalism have made an attempt to explain the compulsory task of giving an account of sameness of type. I have seriously dealt with a very crucial point of considering resemblance as a relation and supervenience as a relation. Here one thing is stressed on namely that both supervenience and resemblance if and when considered as a dyadic universal which binds two relatas, it works as a property of a pair ( relatas). So it can very well be thought of as gaining a separate status over and above the pair that it unites. The whole discussion on a non-cumbersome ontology thus gains its strength at this point when such extra burden is ruled out by both supervenience and resemblance nominalism theory. I have made an attempt also to show that a burden less ontology can also be achieved if further questions on the issue of similarity being subjective or objective or simply as innate be addressed. (shrink)

Sir Roger Penrose and prof. Stuart Hameroff had substantiated a theory that a human brain performs quantum computations. Logically, a question comes what information does then the brain compute and what is the result of such a quantum computing? To answer this, it is tempting to exploit isomorphism between complex hermitian 2 × 2 matrices and R4, more specifically a real vector representation of qubit states. P Arrighi proposed that "qubit states may be viewed as spatio-temporal objects, or (...) indeed as four-vectors of a Minkowski space-time." Under Orch OR theory assumptions, a very large number of entangled qubits is involved in a massive and highly complex computing task. What does this gigantic quantum computing machinery produce as the final outcome of its coordinated computations? The answer is obvious - it is the physical world as we see it, or the so called an external, to the human brain, reality (Minkowski space). Accordingly, underlying Orch OR brain computing concept is a mathematical connection between a qubit (qm) and relativity (Minkowski space). It is a connection between our mind, or the consciousness, and a physical reality the way we see it as the result of quantum computations of our brain. Does this mean that a physical reality as we see it, is being internally quantum computed and represented to us as a Minkowski space? That is, can a physical classical world be viewed as the result of our internal measurement leading to collapse of the quantum computed wave function? This abstract omits this question as irrelevant to the subject matter of a paper. The most important question is the aforementioned mathematical connection between quantum mechanics and relativity, it is a foundation which proves that Orch OR theory is correct. I propose that enormous quantum computing power in human brain does produce the Minkowski space, a representation of the physical reality. Mathematically, it is done by integrating, or encoding, the information about external physical world, into a qubit wave function vectors. I believe that probability distribution functions of pairs of fermions and bosons serve as the hidden variables encoding information about external world, into a qubit wave function vectors. They are hidden for two reasons. First is that these variables are not obvious as an intrinsic part of a qubit equation defining human brain quantum computing. Traditional way of thinking does not easily accommodate these variables into a qubit equation. The second reason they are hidden is because Einstein was desperately looking for them to make quantum mechanics complete. Simply, Sir Roger Penrose and prof. Stuart Hameroff had made a breakthrough that will have a very far reaching implications, including but not limited to Einstein hidden variables discovery. Quantum mechanics and relativity can be easily unified should indeed these variables be encoded into qubit as the carriers of information of the classical physical world. (shrink)

The special composition question is the question, ‘When do some things compose something?’ The answers to this question in the literature have largely been at odds with common sense, either by allowing that any two things compose something, or by denying the existence of most ordinary composite objects. I propose a new ‘series-style’ answer to the special composition question that accords much more closely with common sense, and I defend this answer from van Inwagen's (...) objections. Specifically, I will argue that the proposed answer entails the transitivity of parthood, that it is non-circular, and that it casts some light on the ancient puzzle about the Ship of Theseus. (shrink)

Many epistemologists have been attracted to the view that knowledge-wh can be reduced to knowledge-that. An important challenge to this, presented by Jonathan Schaffer, is the problem of “convergent knowledge”: reductive accounts imply that any two knowledge-wh ascriptions with identical true answers to the questions embedded in their wh-clauses are materially equivalent, but according to Schaffer, there are counterexamples to this equivalence. Parallel to this, Schaffer has presented a very similar argument against binary accounts of knowledge, and thereby in favour (...) of his alternative contrastive account, relying on similar examples of apparently inequivalent knowledge ascriptions, which binary accounts treat as equivalent. In this article, I develop a unified diagnosis and solution to these problems for the reductive and binary accounts, based on a general theory of knowledge ascriptions that embed presuppositional expressions. All of Schaffer's apparent counterexamples embed presuppositional expressions, and once the effect of these is taken into account, it becomes apparent that the counterexamples depend on an illicit equivocation of contexts. Since epistemologists often rely on knowledge ascriptions that embed presuppositional expressions, the general theory of them presented here will have ramifications beyond defusing Schaffer's argument. (shrink)

This article critically examines the positions taken by Stephen E. Toulmin, Robert C. Coburn, and and Gordon D. Kaufman on existential experience and limiting questions and answers.

It is often assumed that moral questions ask for answers in the way other questions do. In this article, moral and non-moral versions of the question ‘Should I do x or y?’ are compared. While non-moral questions of that form typically ask for answers of the form ‘You should do x/y’, so-called ‘narrow answers’, moral questions often do not ask for such narrow answers. Rather, they ask for answers recognizing their delicacy, the need for a deeper understanding of the (...) meaning of the alternatives and the fact that moral decisions are, as Gaita formulates it, ‘non-accidentally and inescapably’ the agent’s to make. In short, moral questions often ask for a kind of answer that is highly different from the kind of answer non-moral questions ask for. In presupposing the ideal answer to a moral question to be a narrow answer, moral philosophers have tended to overlook this. (shrink)

I came late to philosophy and even later to normative ethics. When I started my undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto in 1970, I was interested in mathematics and languages. I soon discovered, however, that my mathematical talents were rather meager compared to the truly talented. I therefore decided to study actuarial science (the applied mathematics of risk assessment for insurance and pension plans) rather than abstract math. After two years, however, I dropped out of university, went to work (...) for a life insurance company, and started studying on my own for the ten professional actuarial exams. When not studying, I would often go to the public library and I was drawn to the philosophy section—although I had no idea of what philosophy was about. I there saw Logical Positivism, edited by A.J. Ayer. I was interested in logical thinking and I also favored an optimistic attitude towards life (!) and so I thought that the book might be interesting. I checked it out and was absolutely enthralled with the writings of Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel and others (if I’m remembering correctly). Of course, I didn’t really understand much of what they were doing, but I did see that they were addressing important problems in a systematic and rigorous manner. I liked it! (shrink)

The following article will attempt to highlight four questions which, in my opinion, are left unanswered (or overlooked) by QBism and to show the answers that the Ontology of Knowledge (OK) can provide. ● How does the subject come to exist for itself, individuated and persistent? ● From what common reality do world, mind, and meaning emerge? ● How does meaning emerge from the mathematical fact of probabilistic expectation? ● Is meaning animated by its own nature?

Easy Ontologists, most notably Thomasson (2015), argue that ontological questions are shallow. They think that these questions can either be answered by using our ordinary conceptual competence—of course tables exist!—or are meaningless, or else should be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Ontology thus is “easy”, requiring no distinctively metaphysical investigation. This paper raises a two-stage objection to Easy Ontology. We first argue that questions concerning which entities exist are inextricably bound up with “ontological category questions”, which are questions concerning the identity (...) of and differences between kinds of entities. We then argue that ontological category questions do not have trivial answers, are meaningful, and cannot be answered through conceptual re-engineering. Easy Ontology hence does not constitute a comprehensive ontological methodology. While some of ontology might be easy, category questions form a central part of ontology and are not answered easily. (shrink)

The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is asking. (...) I go on to articulate a theory of what I call existential grounding, a notion which explains the role that prospective children play in the lives of many would-be parents. Procreative ethicists who want their work to have real practical relevance must, I claim, start to engage with this markedly first-personal kind of practical consideration. (shrink)

English translation of Kant's Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? (Königsberg in Prussia, 30 September 1784).

Back when I was a college freshman, I started working as a research assistant to a young graduate student named Bertram Malle. I hadn’t actually known very much about Malle’s work when I first signed up for the position, but as luck would have it, he was a brilliant researcher with an innovative new approach. Malle was interested in understanding people’s ordinary intuitions about intentional action – the way in which people’s ascriptions of belief, desire, awareness and so forth ultimately (...) feed into the process by which people determine whether or not a behavior was performed intentionally. Of course, this sort of question had already been pursued in countless philosophy papers, but Malle wanted to use a different approach. He wanted to study the problem experimentally. We ran a number of experiments together and then co-authored a paper, which was published in a social psychology journal. Yet although I found this type of research interesting and engaging, my real passion lay elsewhere. I was obsessively reading Nietzsche, along with some heavy doses of Kierkegaard, Hume, Marx, Wittgenstein and Aristotle. What I really wanted to do was to continue working on the very same sorts of questions I saw addressed in these thinkers. (shrink)

The special composition question asks, roughly, under what conditions composition occurs. The common sense view is that composition only occurs among some things and that all and only ‘ordinary objects’ exist. Peter van Inwagen has marshaled a devastating argument against this view. The common sense view appears to commit one to giving what van Inwagen calls a ‘series-style answer’ to the special composition question, but van Inwagen argues that series-style answers are impossible because they are inconsistent with (...) the transitivity of parthood. In what follows I answer this objection in addition to other, less troubling objections raised by van Inwagen. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to diagnose the sources of our dissatisfaction with answers to the question of the meaning of life. I contend that some of these have to do with the question (its polyvalence and persistent vagueness) and some have to do with life and meaningfulness themselves. By showing how dissatisfaction arises and the extent to which it is in-eliminable even by God, I hope to show that we should be satisfied with our dissatisfaction.

Leibniz is often cited as an authority when it comes to the formulation and answer strategy of the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Yet much current research assumes that Leibniz advocates an unambiguous question and strategy for the answer. In this respect, one repeatedly finds the argument in the literature that alternative explanatory approaches to this question violate Leibniz’s intention, since he derives the question from the principle of sufficient reason and (...) also demands a causal explanation to the question. In particular, the new research on non-causal explanatory strategies to the Leibniz question seems to concern this counter-argument. In this paper, however, I will argue that while Leibniz raises the question by means of the principle of sufficient reason, he even favours a non-causal explanatory strategy to the question. Thus, a more accurate Leibniz interpretation seems not only to legitimise but also to support non-causal explanations to the Leibniz question. (shrink)

Plato articulates a deep perplexity about inquiry in ?Meno's Paradox??the claim that one can inquire neither into what one knows, nor into what one does not know. Although some commentators have wrestled with the paradox itself, many suppose that the paradox of inquiry is special to Plato, arising from peculiarities of the Socratic elenchus or of Platonic epistemology. But there is nothing peculiarly Platonic in this puzzle. For it arises, too, in classical Indian philosophical discussions, where it is formulated with (...) great clarity, and analysed in a way that casts it in a new light. We present three treatments of the puzzle in Indian philosophy, as a way of refining and sharpening our understanding of the paradox, before turning to the most radical of the Indian philosophers to tackle it. The Indian philosophers who are optimistic that the paradox can be resolved appeal to the existence of prior beliefs, and to the resources embedded in language to explain how we can investigate, and so move from ignorance to knowledge. Highlighting this structural feature of inquiry, however, allows the pessimist philosopher to demonstrate that the paradox stands. The incoherence of inquiry is rooted in the very idea of aiming our desires at the unknown. Asking questions and giving answers rests on referential intentions targeting objects in a region of epistemic darkness, and so our ?inquiry sceptic? also finds structurally similar forms of incoherence in the pragmatics of interrogative discourse. (shrink)

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...) that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. -/- Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. -/- Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

Cajetan’s analogy theory is usually evaluated in terms of its fidelity to the teachings of Aquinas. But what if Cajetan was trying to answer questions Aquinas himself did not raise, and so could not help to answer? Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia can be interpreted as intending to solve a particular semantic problem: to characterize the unity of the analogical concept, so as to defend the possibility of a non-univocal term’s mediating syllogistic reasoning. Aquinas offers various semantic characterizations of (...) analogy, saying it involves, for instance: signification per prius et posterius; or a ratio propria which is only found in one analogate; or diverse modi significandi with a common res significata. Examined in turn, it is clear that none of Aquinas’s rules for analogy solve the semantic problem described. Cajetan thus cannot be reasonably expected to have intended his analogy treatise primarily as an interpretation or systematization of Aquinas’s teaching on analogy. (shrink)

Amongst those who answered Molyneux’s question in the negative or at least not in the positive, George Berkeley is of particular interest because he argued for a very radical position. Most of his contribution to the discussion can be found in his Essay towards a New Theory of Vision. I will give an exposition of his view (2) and then move on to a critical discussion of this kind of view, - what one could call the “Berkeleian view” (3). (...) I think that the problems of what has become a standard negative answer to the question (mainly brought forward by empiricists) become very clear in Berkeley’s case and one can also learn a lot from this. (shrink)

In this position paper, we argue that careless reliance on AI to answer our questions and to judge our output is a violation of Grice’s Maxim of Quality as well as a violation of Lemoine’s legal Maxim of Innocence, performing an (unwarranted) authority fallacy, and while lacking assessment signals, committing Type II errors that result from fallacies of the inverse. What is missing in the focus on output and results of AI-generated and AI-evaluated content is, apart from paying proper (...) tribute, the demand to follow a person’s thought process (or a machine’s decision processes). In deliberately avoiding Neural Networks that cannot explain how they come to their conclusions, we introduce logic-symbolic inference to handle any possible epistemics any human or artificial information processor may have. Our system can deal with various belief systems and shows how decisions may differ for what is true, false, realistic, unrealistic, literal, or anomalous. As is, stota AI such as ChatGPT is a sorcerer’s apprentice. (shrink)

A significant argument for the claim that knowing-wh is knowing-that, implicit in much of the literature, including Stanley and Williamson (2001), is spelt out and challenged. The argument includes the assumption that a subject's state of knowing-wh is constituted by their involvement in a relation with an answer to a question. And it involves the assumption that answers to questions are propositions or facts. One of Lawrence Powers' counterexamples to the conjunction of these two assumptions is developed, responses (...) to it are rebutted, and the possibility of rejecting the second rather than the first of these assumptions is explored briefly. (shrink)

Why is there something rather than nothing? This paper explores one particular argument in favor of the answer that 'the existence of nothing' would amount to a logical contradiction. This argument consists of positing the existence of a novel entity, called a bion, of which all contingent things can be composed yet itself is non-contingent. First an overview of historical attempts to compile a systematic and exhaustive list of answers to the question is presented as context. Then follows (...) an analysis of how the antropic principle would manifest itself in a world that consists of information and at the same time conforms to modal realism. Next, a thought experiment introduces bions as the foundation of such a world, showing how under these circumstances the ultimate origin of all existing things would be explained. The non-contingent nature of bions themselves is subsequently argued via a discussion of the principle of non-contradiction. Finally, this theory centered on the existence of bions is integrated into the worldview of Popperian metaphysics. According to the latter's criteria, I conclude that bion theory provides an integral answer to why there is something rather than nothing. (shrink)

What can be more fascinating than experimental metaphysics, to quote one of Abner Shimony’s enlightening expressions? Bell inequalities are at the heart of the study of nonlocality. I present a list of open questions, organised in three categories: fundamental; linked to experiments; and exploring nonlocality as a resource. New families of inequalities for binary outcomes are presented.

Amidst the lively and often highly positive reception of this best-selling collection of six essays in feminist philosophy, some critics have complained that it does not seem to argue for very much...

Choices confront us with questions. How we act depends on our answers to those questions. So the way our beliefs guide our choices is not just a function of their informational content, but also depends systematically on the questions those beliefs address. This paper gives a precise account of the interplay between choices, questions and beliefs, and harnesses this account to obtain a principled approach to the problem of deduction. The result is a novel theory of belief-guided action that explains (...) and predicts the decisions of agents who, like ourselves, fail to be logically omniscient: that is, of agents whose beliefs may not be deductively closed, or even consistent. (Winner of the 2021 Isaac Levi Prize.). (shrink)

The Question of Iterated Grounding (QIG) asks what grounds the grounding facts. Although the question received a lot of attention in the past few years, it is usually discussed independently of another important issue: the connection between metaphysical explanation and the relation or relations that supposedly “back” it. I will show that once we get clear on the distinction between metaphysical explanation and the relation(s) backing it, we can distinguish no fewer than four questions lumped under QIG. I (...) will also argue that given some plausible assumptions about what it would take for a relation to back metaphysical explanation, many salient views about grounding allow us to give “easy” answers to these questions—easy in the sense that we can straightforwardly derive them from the respective conception of grounding without getting into the sorts of complexities that typically inform answers to QIG. The paper's main upshot is that we cannot expect to make much progress on QIG without first addressing the difficult issue of how exactly grounding is related to metaphysical explanation. (shrink)

Molyneux addressed his question to Locke in two forms. The question that is most often discussed in the literature is the 1693 version–about whether a newly sighted man could distinguish a globe and a cube when they are presented to his sight alone. But in 1688, he asked whether this man could know which was the globe. While Locke and Molyneux probably thought this an unnecessary add-on, we argue that it changes the question. Locke had no account (...) of how one could know a contingent singular fact by sight or by vision. We argue that we know in these ways by using a process of active sensory exploration that employs the modality in question. A new form of Molyneux’s question emerges from this understanding of perceptual knowledge. While the variety of sensory exploration methods within and across modalities raises considerable difficulties for a positive answer, the original question, like the later version, can ultimately be answered only by empirical investigation. (shrink)

One of the singularities of Latin exegesis of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi, is that it arbitrarily brought together two families of fallacies, the «figure of speech» and the «accident», despite the fact that they are on either side of the divide between sophisms related to expression and sophisms independent of expression, a divide that lays at the heart of Aristotle’s taxonomy of sophistic arguments. What is behind this surprising identification? The talk is meant to show that it actually originates from a (...) curious mistake in Boethius’ translation of Aristotle’s Sophistici elenchi, 22, 178b 36-37 which radically transformed the nature of the argument at stake. While it was originally an example of the fallacies related to the «figure of speech», Boethius’ translation wrongly brings about two arguments instead of one, both related to the «accident». This explains why authors from the Latin tradition came to think that fallacies of «figure of speech» were linked to fallacies of «accident» closely enough to ask whether they actually fell outside expression, even though it does not at first glance appear that such a possibility was allowed or even suggested by Aristotle’s text. This odd question illustrates some of the remarkable features of the medieval archive and how some of its most peculiar problems came to be. It specifically allows us to reconstruct the mechanisms through which a minor disturbance in the letter of the text leads to a whole new way of organising its exegetical material. (shrink)