On the basis of careful textual exegesis and philosophical analysis, and contrary to the received view, Mark R. Wheeler demonstrates that Aristotle presents and systematically explicates his definition of the essence of the truth in the Metaphysics. Aristotle states the nominal definitions of the terms "truth" and "falsehood" as part of his arguments in defense of the logical axioms. These nominal definitions express conceptions of truth and falsehood his philosophical opponents would have recognized and accepted in the context (...) of dialectical argument. On the basis of these nominal definitions, Aristotle develops his definitions of the essences of truth and falsehood--his "real" definitions of truth and falsehood. Aristotle's methodical exposition of his essential definitions of truth and falsehood in the Metaphysics serves as a well-developed example of how his philosophical inquiry starts with nominal definitions and ends with real definitions. Wheeler also argues for the novel claim that Aristotle defines the most fundamental kind of truth in terms of accurate measurement. Aristotle's metrical conception of truth serves as the theoretical basis for specifying the truth conditions of various assertions, for identifying the sorts of beings implicated in these truth conditions, and for explaining the nature of approximate truth and falsehood. Far from offering us a minimal account of truth, Wheeler shows how Aristotle offers us a sophisticated and metrical theory of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Semantics in Aristotle’s OrganonMark WheelerVarious contemporary commentators have made conflicting claims about Aristotle’s theory of meaning. Some have claimed that he has a denotational theory of meaning, others that he has an ideational theory of meaning, and yet others that he has confused the denotational and ideational aspects of meaning.1 Recently, Kretzmann and Irwin have presented arguments which, taken together, imply that Aristotle has no theory of meaning.2I think (...) that all of these views are mistaken. Aristotle, I shall argue, is working with a rather sophisticated and coherent theory of meaning incorporating both denotational and ideational components. In section 1, I reconstruct the general theory of linguistic signification presented in De Interpretatione [End Page 191] 16a3–9, a passage which has been the cornerstone of both ancient and contemporary interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of meaning. I develop an interpretation different in important respects from both the standard view and recent alternatives. Aristotle’s general theory emerges as a remarkably flexible account of the relations among linguistic signs, mental images, and real things.3 In section 2, I recast Aristotle’s general theory in contemporary semantic terminology and respond to various arguments purporting to show that Aristotle hasn’t a theory of meaning as these are now understood.1. ARISTOTLE’S GENERAL THEORY OF LINGUISTIC SIGNIFICATIONIn the present section, I develop an interpretation of Aristotle’s explicit, albeit terse, sketch at De Interpretatione 16a3–9 of the fundamental semiotic relations among written marks, spoken sounds, affections of the soul, and things in the world. In so doing, I consider and reject an argument according to which the passage either doesn’t present a general theory of linguistic signification or, if it does, the theory presented is fatally flawed.4 The results of this section are very general but important enough to warrant isolated attention. I argue that, given Int. 16a3–9, Aristotle is committed to the following claims: (1) Written marks are signs of spoken sounds; (2) spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of mental images; (3) spoken sounds are, by convention, signs of mental images; (4) the mental images signified by spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of real perceptible or intelligible qualities; and (5) the mental images signified by spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of real things.5 [End Page 192]Our passage has been the subject of extensive study. Kretzmann has called it “the most influential text in the history of semantics” (3). It is worth quoting in full:Now spoken sounds [ϕωναί] are symbols [σύμβολα] of affections in the soul [ἐν τῇ Ψυχῇ παθημάτων], and written marks [γϱαϕὀμενα] symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks [γϱάμματα] are not the same [τά αὐτά] for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place [πϱώτων] signs [σημει̑α] of—affections of the soul [παθἡματα τῆς Ψυχῆς]—are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses [ὁμοιώματα] of—real things [πϱάγματα]—are also the same. These matters have been discussed in the work on the soul and do not belong to the present subject.6Traditionally, the passage is taken to present a sketch of Aristotle’s general theory of meaning.7 Standard interpretations run roughly as follows. First, Aristotle lays down three general semantic principles: Written marks signify spoken sounds; spoken sounds signify affections in the soul; and affections in the soul represent things in the world. These principles establish the basic semiotic relations among language, thought, and reality. Second, Aristotle implies (cf. Int. 16a6) that spoken sounds signify in the first place affections in the soul and that, by means of this primary significance, spoken sounds signify in the second place real things.8 I shall call this the ‘Semantic Primacy Thesis. ‘ Third, the affections in the soul with which Aristotle is concerned are thoughts [νοἠματα], and he refers us to book III, chapters 7–8 of the De Anima for further discussion of the nature of these. Lastly, Aristotle is developing a strictly conventionalist theory of linguistic meaning, according to which although all human beings have access to the same affections in the soul and the same real things, different written and spoken languages are used by different communities to signify... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Semantics in Aristotle’s OrganonMark WheelerVarious contemporary commentators have made conflicting claims about Aristotle’s theory of meaning. Some have claimed that he has a denotational theory of meaning, others that he has an ideational theory of meaning, and yet others that he has confused the denotational and ideational aspects of meaning.1 Recently, Kretzmann and Irwin have presented arguments which, taken together, imply that Aristotle has no theory of meaning.2I think (...) that all of these views are mistaken. Aristotle, I shall argue, is working with a rather sophisticated and coherent theory of meaning incorporating both denotational and ideational components. In section 1, I reconstruct the general theory of linguistic signification presented in De Interpretatione [End Page 191] 16a3–9, a passage which has been the cornerstone of both ancient and contemporary interpretations of Aristotle’s theory of meaning. I develop an interpretation different in important respects from both the standard view and recent alternatives. Aristotle’s general theory emerges as a remarkably flexible account of the relations among linguistic signs, mental images, and real things.3 In section 2, I recast Aristotle’s general theory in contemporary semantic terminology and respond to various arguments purporting to show that Aristotle hasn’t a theory of meaning as these are now understood.1. ARISTOTLE’S GENERAL THEORY OF LINGUISTIC SIGNIFICATIONIn the present section, I develop an interpretation of Aristotle’s explicit, albeit terse, sketch at De Interpretatione 16a3–9 of the fundamental semiotic relations among written marks, spoken sounds, affections of the soul, and things in the world. In so doing, I consider and reject an argument according to which the passage either doesn’t present a general theory of linguistic signification or, if it does, the theory presented is fatally flawed.4 The results of this section are very general but important enough to warrant isolated attention. I argue that, given Int. 16a3–9, Aristotle is committed to the following claims: (1) Written marks are signs of spoken sounds; (2) spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of mental images; (3) spoken sounds are, by convention, signs of mental images; (4) the mental images signified by spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of real perceptible or intelligible qualities; and (5) the mental images signified by spoken sounds are, by their very nature, signs of real things.5 [End Page 192]Our passage has been the subject of extensive study. Kretzmann has called it “the most influential text in the history of semantics” (3). It is worth quoting in full:Now spoken sounds [ϕωναί] are symbols [σύμβολα] of affections in the soul [ἐν τῇ Ψυχῇ παθημάτων], and written marks [γϱαϕὀμενα] symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks [γϱάμματα] are not the same [τά αὐτά] for all men, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place [πϱώτων] signs [σημει̑α] of—affections of the soul [παθἡματα τῆς Ψυχῆς]—are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses [ὁμοιώματα] of—real things [πϱάγματα]—are also the same. These matters have been discussed in the work on the soul and do not belong to the present subject.6Traditionally, the passage is taken to present a sketch of Aristotle’s general theory of meaning.7 Standard interpretations run roughly as follows. First, Aristotle lays down three general semantic principles: Written marks signify spoken sounds; spoken sounds signify affections in the soul; and affections in the soul represent things in the world. These principles establish the basic semiotic relations among language, thought, and reality. Second, Aristotle implies (cf. Int. 16a6) that spoken sounds signify in the first place affections in the soul and that, by means of this primary significance, spoken sounds signify in the second place real things.8 I shall call this the ‘Semantic Primacy Thesis. ‘ Third, the affections in the soul with which Aristotle is concerned are thoughts [νοἠματα], and he refers us to book III, chapters 7–8 of the De Anima for further discussion of the nature of these. Lastly, Aristotle is developing a strictly conventionalist theory of linguistic meaning, according to which although all human beings have access to the same affections in the soul and the same real things, different written and spoken languages are used by different communities to signify... (shrink)

In this work, I consider Aristotle's theory of universals in the Organon. I argue that, according to Aristotle, demonstrative knowledge presupposes the existence of real universals, and I defend a mereological interpretation of Aristotelian real universals. ;The work is divided into three parts. First, I demonstrate that Aristotle's theory of demonstrative knowledge presupposes the existence of universals and argue that the ontological status of universals cannot be determined from Aristotle's explications of his concept of a universal. Second, I reconstruct Aristotle's (...) semantics for universal affirmative premises and demonstrate that, according to Aristotle, every true universal affirmative premise involves a universal term that primarily signifies a universal concept and secondarily signifies either a real essence or a real genus. Third, I argue that real essences and genera are real universals and that real universals are wholes, each of the parts of which is a real particular. ;In chapter 1, I reconstruct two arguments from the Posterior Analytics that reveal important connections between Aristotle's theory of demonstrative knowledge, his philosophy of language, and his ontology in the Organon. In chapter 2, I argue that the ontological status of universals is underdetermined by the various explications of the concept of a universal $\lbrack\tau\`o\ \kappa\alpha\theta\'o\lambda o\upsilon\rbrack$ presented by Aristotle in the Organon. In chapter 3, the syntax of simple statements as presented in De Interpretatione is investigated. In chapter 4, I argue the semantic scheme for simple statements presented by Aristotle in De Interpretatione in conjunction with his excursus on concept acquisition in APst. B 19 provide the semantic grounds for the syntactic distinctions among simple statements. I establish the extensional features of Aristotle's semantics in chapter 5. In chapter 6, I present my interpretation of Aristotelian real universals, focusing solely on primary and secondary substances. I argue that, according to Aristotle, there are real universals that are wholes having for parts the essences or the parts of the essences of primary substances. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Aristotle on TruthMark Richard WheelerPaolo Crivelli. Aristotle on Truth. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 340. Cloth, $85.00.A thorough contemporary study of Aristotle's theory of truth is welcome. Adopting a frankly analytic approach, Professor Crivelli addresses all of the most important Aristotelian texts on truth. He provides close and careful exegesis, attending to philological and interpretive difficulties related to the manuscripts and alternative translations. (...) In the spirit of Hintikka, Łukasiewicz, and Mignucci, the tools of contemporary logical analysis are applied effectively and yield rigorous restatements of Aristotle's concepts and arguments. The most pressing questions about truth are posed. Crivelli scrutinizes prevailing interpretations, both traditional and contemporary, contrasts them with his own, and always maintains a fair and balanced dialectical stance. Where pertinent, he compares Aristotle's approach with contemporary alternatives. Anyone interested in Aristotle's theory of truth must read this book.Crivelli divides the book into four parts. He provides an excellent detailed summary of his interpretation in the Introduction. In Part I, he presents the core of his interpretation of Aristotle's theory of truth. In Part II, he argues that Aristotle's account is a kind of "correspondence-as-isomorphism" theory, and he responds to the Liar paradox and to the problem of "empty" terms. In Part III, he considers two diachronic aspects of Aristotle's theory—change in truth value and the truth value of future tense assertions.The book is rich in interpretation and argument. I shall limit myself here to a few salient points.In Chapter 1, Crivelli argues that Aristotle posits three kinds of truth-bearers: linguistic expressions, beliefs, and objects. His discussion of linguistic expressions in terms of utterance tokens is sharp, though it is silent about written expression tokens. Although he does not dismiss the psychological dimension of Aristotle's semantic theory, Crivelli assumes that Aristotelian beliefs and thoughts are well enough understood as analogous to linguistic truth bearers, ignoring altogether the role of phantasia in Aristotle's semantic theory. Given the importance of representational thought in Aristotle's semantic theory and the wealth of relevant texts, this is disappointing.The chief problem in Chapter 1, however, is Crivelli's proposed ontological scheme. Among objects, in addition to simple immaterial and composite material substances, Crivelli argues that Aristotle posits composite "states-of-affairs" that bear truth and falsehood, exhibit modal properties, and serve as objects of propositional attitudes. He relies on Metaphysics 10.29, 1024b17–21 and 10.10, 1051a34–1051b17 for this claim, and it is the weakest point in the book. Crivelli's abstract, propositionally-structured states-of-affairs do not resemble any of the familiar denizens of Aristotle's ontology, and the textual evidence he offers is insufficient, leaving it unclear how they would fit into Aristotle's general semantic theory. Clearly, they generate difficulties for an Aristotelian account of propositional attitudes.In Chapters 2 and 3, Crivelli presents the core of his interpretation of Aristotle's theory of truth—the truth conditions for assertions and beliefs. Crivelli's proposed analyses are dense but carefully wrought. The related Appendices 3–5 are very helpful, especially Appendix 5 which provides a formal presentation of a principle part of the theory.In Chapter 4, Crivelli argues that Aristotle's account is a correspondence-as-isomorphism theory of truth for assertions and beliefs. The resulting interpretation establishes a clear sense in which assertions and beliefs "correspond" to reality. Crivelli then proposes a solution to the Liar paradox based on a shrewd reading of Sophistici Elenchi 25, 180a34–180b7 that turns on a principled rejection of the Principle of Bivalence. While leaving Aristotle vulnerable to the Strengthened Liar, it is clear that Aristotle has resources from which to draw in responding to alethic paradox.In Chapter 5, Crivelli confronts the notorious problem of "vacuous" and "empty" terms. Such terms signify nothing, on Crivelli's interpretation, and simple assertions involving vacuous and empty terms turn out to be disguised composite assertions. [End Page 469]According to Aristotle, utterances can be true at one time and false at another, a jarring claim for... (shrink)

For the most part, the papers collected in this volume stern from presentations given at a conference held in Tucson over the weekend of May 31 through June 2, 1985. We wish to record our gratitude to the participants in that conference, as well as to the National Science Foundation and the University of Arizona SBS Research Institute for their financial support. The advice we received from Susan Steele on organizational matters proved invaluable and had many felicitous consequences for the (...) success of the con­ ference. We also would like to thank the staff of the Departments of Linguistics of the University of Arizona and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst for their help, as weIl as a number of individuals, including Lin Hall, Kathy Todd, and Jiazhen Hu, Sandra Fulmer, Maria Sandoval, Natsuko Tsujimura, Stuart Davis, Mark Lewis, Robin Schafer, Shi Zhang, Olivia Oehrle-Steele, and Paul Saka. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Martin Scrivener, our editor, for his patience and his encouragement. Vll INTRODUCTION The term 'categorial grammar' was introduced by Bar-Rillel as a handy way of grouping together some of his own earlier work and the work of the Polish logicians and philosophers Lesniewski and Ajdukiewicz, in contrast to approaches to linguistic analysis based on phrase structure grammars. (shrink)

Mark Richard Wheeler - Aristotle on Truth - Journal of the History of Philosophy 44:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 44.3 469-470 Paolo Crivelli. Aristotle on Truth. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 340. Cloth, $85.00. A thorough contemporary study of Aristotle's theory of truth is welcome. Adopting a frankly analytic approach, Professor Crivelli addresses all of the most important Aristotelian texts on truth. He provides close and careful exegesis, attending to philological and (...) interpretive difficulties related to the manuscripts and alternative translations. In the spirit of Hintikka, Łukasiewicz, and Mignucci, the tools of contemporary logical analysis are applied effectively and yield rigorous restatements of Aristotle's.. (shrink)

This dissertation examines the general problem of how to give a philosophical account of the nature of representation by looking at three specific philosophies of language and the philosophic treatment of fictional discourse. I argue that Edmund Husserl, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin all try to give accounts of meaning by arguing for what I call a "closure of meaning" in language. The closure thesis is the claim that some set of criteria can exhaustively determine the ways in which (...) language can be meaningful. This thesis is implicit in Husserl's theory of expressive meaning in the Logical Investigations, in Wittgenstein's picture theory, and in J. L. Austin's pragmatic account of meaning in speech act theory. My general thesis is that the three philosophers in question do not successfully defend the closure thesis for linguistic representation. Since fictional discourse is a source of counterexamples to the closure thesis, I look specifically at two recent philosophical accounts of fiction by David Lewis and John Searle. I criticize these attempts to account for fictional discourse within referential and pragmatic theories of language. Since such attempts are usually part of a closure thesis, my discussion of fiction provides further reasons for doubting the general possibility of accounting for a closure of meaning in language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Destruction and Transcendence in W. G. SebaldMark R. McCullohIFor all the Saturnine pessimism of W. G. Sebald's application of Walter Benjamin's view of historical process (an attitude toward history expounded upon at length in an influential work by Susan Sontag), the author's sense of irony about the human predicament is irrepressible. 1 Human beings seem destined to remain prisoners of various paradoxes—they both create and destroy, they are capable (...) of acts of love as well as bitterness and hate, they make efforts to document and communicate, but at the same time they tend to forget and are given to suppressing the truth, they are driven by ideals, yet remain hobbled by imperfection. Art and music, passed on from generation to generation, seem to be the most common way that human beings transcend the strictures of their imperfections, inadequacies, and their finitude. And to the extent that art indeed survives over time, and continues to be perceived and appreciated by beholders, the aesthetic enterprise succeeds. However, ultimately, as the Book of Ecclesiastes and Shelley's "Ozymandias" remind us, all human endeavor is in vain, and, to assume the perspective of physical cosmology for a moment—and in this regard Benjamin's cosmic vision appears painfully accurate—our speck of earth, dwarfed by a vast universe the true immensity of which has been revealed by the Hubble Telescope, will one day be ground to dust and debris like the rings of Saturn, and our sun will exist only as a burned-out hulk. But such a future world, devoid of beholders, and devoid of creators and their artifacts, is not Sebald's primary subject, even though it clearly forms the teleological backdrop for his third novel, The Rings of Saturn (1995, English version 1998). Rather, Sebald pursues his art in spite of a terminal prospect that will ultimately confront our [End Page 395] planet and solar system. His primary subject, the effect of trauma on individual and collective experience, is instead closely linked with the passing of Europe as a tradition, as an idea—as an idiosyncratic and innovative, but inherently corrupt contributor to cultural history. In the course of his narratives he also addresses the redemptive role of art in memorializing the past and attempting to capture the passing present. In both respects he attends to the humane and the sublime as well as the tragic and the grotesque.Paraphrasing the art historian Svetlana Alpers, one early reviewer of Sebald's novel Austerlitz (2001) points out the self-contradictory nature of preserving the transient moment in art:Why create visual art at all when everything on earth must be represented in its inexorable transitoriness; why paint earthly scenes with such incredible care and precision as if they were permanent? 2The care and precision of the painter's craft (in this case, the Dutch still-life painter David Bailly) are devoted to the representation of a scene that is by its very nature transient and even tenuous—like the scenes of sublime beauty in Sebald's fiction, the artist's depiction "courts and admits" its own fragility. What Bailly does visually, Sebald attempts in words. Take, for instance, the following passage from Vertigo, Sebald's first novel, which was titled in German (with considerably more irony) Schwindel. Gefühle 3 :At a hairpin bend I looked out of the turning bus down into the depths below and could see the turquoise surfaces of the Ferstein and Smaranger lakes, which, even when I was a child, on our first excursions into the Tyrol, had seemed to me the essence of all conceivable beauty.(p. 176)The author has already prepared the reader for this moment of awe by remarking on the otherworldly "slow-motion quality" of the waterfalls descending from the mountain cliffs and on the boulders in their screes spreading downwards into the wooded hillsides, "screes which reached from the mountains down into the forests like pale fingers into dark hair..." (p. 176). Examined closely, the passage in question suggests both the enduring power of natural beauty and, especially with its precise reference to an automobile long since out of production and unfamiliar to... (shrink)

Coherentism maintains that coherent beliefs are more likely to be true than incoherent beliefs, and that coherent evidence provides more confirmation of a hypothesis when the evidence is made coherent by the explanation provided by that hypothesis. Although probabilistic models of credence ought to be well-suited to justifying such claims, negative results from Bayesian epistemology have suggested otherwise. In this essay we argue that the connection between coherence and confirmation should be understood as a relation mediated by the causal relationships (...) among the evidence and a hypothesis, and we offer a framework for doing so by fitting together probabilistic models of coherence, confirmation, and causation. We show that the causal structure among the evidence and hypothesis is sometimes enough to determine whether the coherence of the evidence boosts confirmation of the hypothesis, makes no difference to it, or even reduces it. We also show that, ceteris paribus, it is not the coherence of the evidence that boosts confirmation, but rather the ratio of the coherence of the evidence to the coherence of the evidence conditional on a hypothesis. (shrink)

Sainsbury and Tye present a new theory, 'originalism', which provides natural, simple solutions to puzzles about thought that have troubled philosophers for centuries. They argue that concepts are to be individuated by their origin, rather than epistemically or semantically. Although thought is special, no special mystery attaches to its nature.

A paradox can be defined as an unacceptable conclusion derived by apparently acceptable reasoning from apparently acceptable premises. Many paradoxes raise serious philosophical problems, and they are associated with crises of thought and revolutionary advances. The expanded and revised third edition of this intriguing book considers a range of knotty paradoxes including Zeno's paradoxical claim that the runner can never overtake the tortoise, a new chapter on paradoxes about morals, paradoxes about belief, and hardest of all, paradoxes about truth. The (...) discussion uses a minimum of technicality but also grapples with complicated and difficult considerations, and is accompanied by helpful questions designed to engage the reader with the arguments. The result is not only an explanation of paradoxes but also an excellent introduction to philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Is the point of belief and assertion invariably to think or say something true? Is the truth of a belief or assertion absolute, or is it only relative to human interests? Most philosophers think it incoherent to profess to believe something but not think it true, or to say that some of the things we believe are only relatively true. Common sense disagrees. It sees many opinions, such as those about matters of taste, as neither true nor false; it takes (...) it as obvious that some of the truth is relative. Mark Richard's accessible book argues that when it comes to truth, common sense is right, philosophical orthodoxy wrong. The first half of the book examines connections between the performative aspects of talk, our emotions and evaluations, and the conditions under which talk and thought qualifies as true or false. It argues that the performative and expressive sometimes trump the semantic, making truth and falsity the wrong dimension of evaluation for belief or assertion. Among the topics taken up are: racial slurs and other epithets; relations between logic and truth; the status of moral and ethical talk; vagueness and the liar paradox. The book's second half defends the idea that much of everyday thought and talk is only relatively true or false. Truth is inevitably relative, given that we cannot work out in advance how our concepts will apply to the world. Richard explains what it is for truth to be relative, rebuts standard objections to relativism, and argues that relativism is consistent with the idea that one view can be objectively better than another. The book concludes with an account of matters of taste and of how it is possible for divergent views of such matters to be equally valid, even if not true or false. When Truth Gives Out will be of interest not only to philosophers who work on language, ethics, knowledge, or logic, but to any thoughtful person who has wondered what it is, or isn't, for something to be true. (shrink)

This book makes a stimulating contribution to the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. It begins with a spirited defence of the view that propositions are structured and that propositional structure is 'psychologically real'. The author then develops a subtle view of propositions and attitude ascription. The view is worked out in detail with attention to such topics as the semantics of conversations, iterated attitude ascriptions, and the role of propositions as bearers of truth. Along the way important issues (...) in the philosophy of mind are addressed. Though intended primarily for professional philosophers and graduate students the book will also interest cognitive scientists and linguists. (shrink)

The development of a defensible and fecund notion of emergence has been dogged by a number of threshold issues neatly highlighted in a recent paper by Jaegwon Kim. We argue that physicalist assumptions confuse and vitiate the whole project. In particular, his contention that emergence entails supervenience is contradicted by his own argument that the ‘microstructure’ of an object belongs to the whole object, not to its constituents. And his argument against the possibility of downward causation is question-begging and makes (...) false assumptions about causal sufficiency. We argue, on the contrary, for a rejection of the deeply entrenched assumption, shared by physicalists and Cartesians alike, that what basically exists are things (entities, substances). Our best physics tells us that there are no basic particulars, only fields in process. We need an ontology which gives priority to organization, which is inherently relational. Reflection upon the fact that all biological creatures are far-from-equilibrium systems, whose very persistence depend upon their interactions with their environment, reveals incoherence in the notion of an ‘emergence base’. (shrink)

Logical Forms explains both the detailed problems involved in finding logical forms and also the theoretical underpinnings of philosophical logic. In this revised edition, exercises are integrated throughout the book. The result is a genuinely interactive introduction which engages the reader in developing the argument. Each chapter concludes with updated notes to guide further reading.

Mark Richard presents an original theory of meaning, as the collection of assumptions speakers make in using it and expect their hearers to recognize as being made. Meaning is spread across a population, inherited by each new generation of speakers from the last, and evolving through the interactions of speakers with their environment.

Brouwer and Weyl recognized that the intuitive continuum requires a mathematical analysis of a kind that set theory is not able to provide. As an alternative, Brouwer introduced choice sequences. We first describe the features of the intuitive continuum that prompted this development, focusing in particular on the flow of internal time as described in Husserl's phenomenology. Then we look at choice sequences and their logic. Finally, we investigate the differences between Brouwer and Weyl, and argue that Weyl's conception of (...) choice sequences is defective on several counts. (shrink)

The editors of the JRE collected short essays from scholars of religion in response to a recent incident at Hamline University that made national headlines. Last fall, Hamline University administrators refused to extend a contract to an adjunct professor of art history after a Muslim student accused her of Islamophobia for showing a 14th‐century image of Mohammad in an online class. The event provoked intense conversations about issues of academic freedom, religious diversity, the status of contingent faculty, and race. These (...) essays bring together scholarly and personal reflections about the incident at Hamline and what it means for the pedagogy of religious studies. (shrink)

This chapter argues that some have wanted to reserve the term 'propositional attitude' for states which are 'in principle accessible' to consciousness, or that are 'inferentially integrated' with other propositional attitudes. Some of the contention and research surrounding propositional attitudes and sentences ascribing them results from their importance to epistemology, philosophy of mind, and action theory. Perhaps the primary reason is the view that propositional attitudes are relations to propositions. On many views, propositions both are closely related to meanings and (...) are what is in the first instance true or false. The chapter talks about two most significant alternatives to relational accounts of attitude ascription: Relationism and Descriptivism. It concludes by reviews of Lewis's example and topic of belief de se, which involves a distinctive way of ascribing a property. All believers can self‐ascribe properties, and all properties are open to self‐ascription. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the paradoxes and dilemmas facing firms in the extractive sector when they attempt to take on a more stakeholder-responsive orientation towards issues of environmental and social responsibility. We describe the case of Shell and the Ogoni and attempt to draw out some of the lessons of that case for more sustainable operations in the developing world. We argue that firms such as Shell, Rio Tinto and others may well exhibit increasingly stakeholder-responsive behaviours at the corporate, (...) strategic level. However for reasons of strategy, lack of competency or institutional will this increasing level of corporate responsiveness may not be mirrored effectively in dealings between subsidiary business units and their most important direct stakeholders: for example local communities and in the developing world. We contrast the struggles of Shell to replicate its corporate stakeholder-responsiveness at the local level in Nigeria with the experiences of other firms that seem to have developed managerial capabilities at a somewhat deeper level throughout the firm with consequent benefits both for stakeholders and the business. (shrink)

The general introduction, which is replicated across all four volumes, aims to orientate readers unfamiliar with this area of research. It provides an overview of the different approaches within distributed cognition and discussion of the value of a distributed cognitive approach to the humanities.

Thirteen seminal essays by Mark Richard develop a nuanced account of semantics and propositional attitudes. The collection addresses a range of topics in philosophical semantics and philosophy of mind, and is accompanied by a new Introduction which discusses attitudes realized by dispositions and other non-linguistic cognitive structures.

Many philosophers of science have argued that a set of evidence that is "coherent" confirms a hypothesis which explains such coherence. In this paper, we examine the relationships between probabilistic models of all three of these concepts: coherence, confirmation, and explanation. For coherence, we consider Shogenji's measure of association (deviation from independence). For confirmation, we consider several measures in the literature, and for explanation, we turn to Causal Bayes Nets and resort to causal structure and its constraint on probability. All (...) else equal, we show that focused correlation, which is the ratio of the coherence of evidence and the coherence of the evidence conditional on a hypothesis, tracks confirmation. We then show that the causal structure of the evidence and hypothesis can put strong constraints on how coherence in the evidence does or does not translate into confirmation of the hypothesis. (shrink)

Questioning Ethics is a major discussion by some of world's leading thinkers of some of the most important ethical issues confronting us today. New essays including Habermas, MacIntyre, Ricoeur and Kristeva discuss issues such as the nature of politics, women's rights, lying, repressed memory, historical debt and forgiveness, the self and responsibility, revisionism, bioethics and multiculturalism. The contributors organize their discussions along the topics of hermeneutics, deconstruction, critical theory, psychoanalysi and the applications of ethics. Also included in this collection is (...) an interview with Jacques Derrida which provides the most accessible insight into his thinking. Contributors: Karl-Otto Apel, Geoffrey Barash, John Caputo, Maeve Cooke, Simon Critchley, Jacques Derrida, Simon Glendinning, Jean Greish, Jurgen Habermas, Richard Kearney, Peter Kemp, Julia Kristeva, Alasdair MacIntyre, Thomas McCarthy, David Rasmussen, William J. Richardson, Paul Ricoeur, David Wood. (shrink)

This text argues that we must depart considerably from Frege's own views if we are to work towards an adequate conception of natural language.

Economics has developed into one of the most specialised social sciences. Yet at the same time, it shares its subject matter with other social sciences and humanities and its method of analysis has developed in close correspondence with the natural and life sciences. This book offers an up to date assessment of economics in relation to other disciplines. -/- This edited collection explores fields as diverse as mathematics, physics, biology, medicine, sociology, architecture, and literature, drawing from selected contributions to the (...) 2005 Annual Conference of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET). There is currently much discussion at the leading edges of modern economics about openness to other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology. But what we see here is that economics has drawn on (as well as contributed to) other disciplines throughout its history. In this sense, in spite of the increasing specialisation within all disciplines, economics has always been an open discipline and the chapters in this volume provide a vivid illustration for this. -/- Open Economics is a testament to the intellectual vibrancy of historical research in economics. It presents the reader with a historical introduction to the disciplinary context of economics that is the first of its kind, and will appeal to practising economists and students of the discipline alike, as well as to anybody interested in economics and its position in the scientific and social scientific landscape. -/- Table of Contents -/- Introduction: Economics in relation to other disciplines Richard Arena, Sheila Dow and Matthias Klaes Part I. Economics in relation to the humanities and social sciences 1. The social science of economics Brian J. Loasby 2. Economics and literature Bruna Ingrao 3. Happiness: what Kahneman could have learnt from Pietro Verri Pier Luigi Porta Part II. Economics in relation to the life and natural sciences 4. Newtonian physics, experimental moral philosophy and the shaping of political economy Sergio Cremaschi 5. Evolutionary biology and economic behaviour: re-visiting Veblen's instinct of workmanship Mark Harrison 6. Medicine and economics in pre-classical economics Alain Clément and Ludovic Desmedt Part III. Economics and mathematics 7. Mathematics as the role model for neoclassical economics Nicola Giocoli 8. The role of econometric method in economic analysis: A reassessment of the Keynes-Tinbergen debate, 1938-43 Giovanna Garrone and Roberto Marchionatti IV. Economics and architecture 9. Economics and architecture Maurice Lagueux 10. Economic policies and urban development in Latin America Michele Alacevich and Andrea Costa V. Economics and geography 11. ‘Space’ in economic thought Giovanna Vertova 12. Economics, geography and colonialism in the writings of William Petty Hugh Goodacre Part VI. Economics and sociology 13. Economics and sociology: Gustav Schmoller and Werner Sombart on social differentiation Joachim Zweynert 14. Is Homo Oeconomicus a 'bad guy'? Isabelle This Saint-Jean -/- . (shrink)