The thirteenth-century logician Lambert of Auxerre was well known for his Summa Lamberti, or simply Logica, written in the mid-1250s, which became an authoritative textbook on logic in the Western tradition. Our knowledge of medieval logic comes in great part from Lambert's Logica and three other texts: William of Sherwood's Introductiones in logicam, Peter of Spain's Tractatus, and Roger Bacon's Summulae dialectics. Of the four, Lambert's work is the best example of question-summas that proceed principally by asking and answering (...) questions on the subject matter. Thomas S. Maloney's translation of Logica, the only complete translation of this work in any language, is a milestone in the study of medieval logic. More than simply a translation, Maloney's project is a critical, comprehensive study of Lambert's logic situated in the context of his contemporaries and predecessors. As such, it offers a wealth of annotation and commentary. The lengthy introduction and extensive notes to the text explain the origin, theoretical context, and intricacies of the text and its doctrines. Maloney also addresses the disputed issues of authorship, date, and place of publication of the Summa Lamberti and makes available to the English-only audience the French, German, and Italian secondary sources--all translated--that are needed to enter the discussion. "Thomas S. Maloney fully commands the primary and secondary sources necessary to elucidate Lambert's Logica. An expert on Roger Bacon's philosophy, he demonstrates a rare proficiency in medieval Latin and scholastic logic. His references to sources from the ancient (Aristotle and Boethius) and medieval worlds are apposite, perspicuous, and useful. The volume's presentation with an appropriate introduction and commentary in the endnotes will no doubt establish it as an indispensable resource for scholars in the twenty-first century." --Alan Perreiah, University of Kentucky. (shrink)

This paper addresses two issues: (a) Does linguistic competence with respect to a given sentence S (or an utterance of S) whose meaning is that p strictly require knowledge that S means that p? (b) Of what kind is the entity which is the subject matter of the propositions embedded in the knowledge-that attributions constituting attributions of linguistic competence? These two issues are addressed in connection to some classical problems raised by names and direct reference theory. It (...) will be argued that in order to be linguistically competent with respect to a given name it is sufficient that a speaker internalize some appropriate description of the name itself. (shrink)

Eleonora Orlando argues that one must understand some descriptivist theories of names that I criticize in my book Roads to Reference as ceteris paribus generalizations, and that on this understanding they survive my criticisms; she also introduces some doubts about my views on the knowledge speakers have of the reference-fixing conventions I postulate for proper names. In this note I argue against Orlando’s suggestion about ceteris paribus provisos and explain my view of the epistemology of reference-fixing (...) conventions. (shrink)

In ‘The Semantics of Singular Terms’ (1976) Brian Loar proposed a famous case where a hearer seems to misunderstand an utterance even though he has correctly identified its referent. Loar’s case has been used to defend a model of communication where speaker and hearer must think of the referent in similar ways in order for communication to succeed. This ‘Similar Ways of Thinking’ (SW) theory is extremely popular, both in the literature on Loar cases and in other philosophical discussions. My (...) goal is to offer a novel argument against this influential model of communication and propose an alternative picture. First, I show how a certain version of SW fails to solve Loar’s puzzle. Then I point at a more general problem with SW, arguing that no version of this model can account for Loar-style cases without making the conditions for communication too strict. I then propose an alternative account of Loar cases, analyzing them as cases of luck where the hearer does not know that she has identified the referent correctly. I conclude by contrasting my view with other existing accounts of Loar cases. (shrink)

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: In what sense does science provide knowledge? Is it to be taken literally? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Does the language of science adequately describe the truth? Jody Azzouni approaches these questions through an analysis of the "reference" of kind terms. He investigates the technology of science--the actual forging and exploiting of causal links--and shows (...) how this technology allows for knowledge-gathering, why scientific lore must be regarded as true, and in what ways our access to the universe is anchored in observation. The book then explores the language of science and shows how this flexible tool enables us to transform our fragmented investigations of the world into a unitary and seamless discourse. (shrink)

_Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science_ is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jodi Azziouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand.

Knowledge and Reference in Empirical Science is a fascinating study of the bounds between science and language: in what sense, and of what, does science provide knowledge? Is science an instrument only distantly related to what's real? Can the language of science be used to adequately describe the truth? In this book, Jody Azzouni investigates the technology of science - the actual forging and exploiting of causal links, between ourselves and what we endeavor to know and understand. (...) Here can be found one of the earliest severely careful analyses of Putnam's notorious permutation argument, as well as the responses to it by David Lewis and Michael Devitt, among others. The ways in which the references of noun phrases transcend our capacities to fix reference by human means (e.g. causation) are shown and the consequences of this are drawn clearly. (shrink)

The entry is intended as an advanced introduction to the topic of knowledge-how. It starts with a list of overviews, monographs and collections, followed by selected 20th century discussions. The last two sections contain sources pertaining to Ryle's own work on the topic as well as work by other influential thinkers, and themes that are sometimes associated with knowledge-how. The remaining seven sections survey the contemporary literature on knowledge-how from three perspectives: (i) generic desiderata for accounts of (...) knowledge-how, (ii) specific topics that are already well-entrenched in the tradition of particular subdisciplines and (iii) second-order controversy regarding distinct assumptions and tools employed by the debaters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Locke on the Knowledge of Material Things ROBERT FENDEL ANDERSON IT IS nOT John Locke's intention, in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, to deal with matter and material substance nor with how these are able to affect the mind. These are considerations for natural philosophy; Locke counts himself rather among the moral philosophers. He does not propose, therefore, to meddle with the physical aspects of the mind, nor (...) with the physical production of sensations through the organs, nor with the production of ideas in the understanding, nor even with whether ideas depend upon matter for their source. He defers to the wisdom of such men as Boyle, Sydenham, Huygens and Newton in these considerations, and finds it "... ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge....,, 1 It is true that Locke's Essay is characterized chiefly not by an interest in matter and the mechanics of perception but rather by an interest in epistemology and in the ordering and assessment of our knowledge. Because of the very nature and emphasis of this epistemology, however, Locke finds that he must, from time to time, at least mention the nature of matter and how it affects us. Finally, it becomes apparent, certain changes or ambiguities in his point of view regarding the mode of our knowledge and its certainty are consequences of his understanding of matter. It is a demonstration of these elements of his doctrine, which seem not to have obtained the full attention of such scholars as Aaron, Fraser, and Gibson, that I shall attempt in this paper. Fundamentally, Locke's theory of matter appears to be that of Democritus and Epicurus. Like the Greek atomists, he conceives of matter as consisting of particles or corpuscles infinite in number. At least some of these are so minute as to be individually insensible, and probably he intends that all are, although, to my knowledge, he never states that this is so. In the aggregate, in any case, particles do constitute perceptible bodies. As for the Greeks, so also for Locke, the particles arc all extended, having size and shape. They are said also to possess motion or rest, although he takes care to say that matter cannot produce motion in itself,e Locke frequently mentions other properties as being "primary" or "really in" material things. Some of these are solidity, texture, cohesion of parts, situation, and number. Apparently some of these may be ranked under others since, as he 1"Epistle to the Reader," Vol. I, p. 14. All footnotes refer to passages in John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, collated and annotated, with prolegomena, biographical, critical, and historical by Alexander Campbell Fraser, in two volumes (New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1959). Large Roman numerals refer to books of the Essay; small Roman numerals refer to chapters of the books; Arabic numerals refer to sections of the chapters. 2 IV, x, 10. [205] 206 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY remarks, figure presupposes extension, and receiving or communicating motion through impact presupposes solidity. The influences of these particles upon one another are treated by Locke under the topic of "powers," a notion which includes in it some kind of "secret relation of parts." 3 The capacities in any substance to give alterations of primary qualities are active powers; the capacities to receive such alterations are passive powers. This alteration must be accomplished by impact or impulse since this, Locke says, is the only way in which bodies can be conceived to operate. Sensation in the percipient being then is to be understood as a special case of this impact of particles upon others. It is evident to Locke that from external obiects some motion must be conveyed by some parts of our bodies to the brain or seat of sensation to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of these external objects. We are able by sight to perceive at a distance the primary qualities of bodies of observable size. Locke reasons that therefore "... some singly imperceptible bodies must come from them to the eyes, and thereby convey to... (shrink)

One of the main issues concerning different versions of content externalism is whether or not they are compatible with the privileged access thesis. According to the so-called ‘illusion version’ of externalism, in reference failure cases (such as cases in which an empty proper name is involved) the subject suffers an illusion of entertaining a thought. In this paper, I shall concentrate on a recent argument offered by Jessica Brown, which she calls the “illusion argument”, to the effect that the (...) illusion version of externalism undermines the privileged access thesis (Brown, 2004). After criticizing Brown's argument, I shall try to reconstruct the illusion argument in a more defensible and straightforward way. I will exploit, in my argument, solutions proposed by Goldman and Alston for the so-called ‘generality problem’ (Goldman, 1986; Alston, 1995). Moreover, I shall offer a stronger formulation of the global reliability condition for knowledge, upon which my reconstruction of the illusion argument is based. (shrink)

To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also includes an array of excellent (...) exercises and a good list of references. (shrink)

The paper is sympathetic to the idea that speakers have implicit knowledge of the semantics of sub-sentential elements of language, loosely, of words. Implicit knowledge is knowledge which the subject need not be capable of articulating yet which is a genuine propositional attitude and it is to be contrasted with tacit knowledge which refers to an information-bearing state which, however, is not a genuine propositional attitude. I begin by defending the implicit knowledge conception of speakers' (...) knowledge of the meanings of words from a challenge articulated by Evans and then go on the offensive against positions which attempt to replace the notion of implicit knowledge in semantic theory by that of tacit knowledge. (shrink)

In his interesting discussion of Mr. C. B. Martin's Mind article “A Religious Way of Knowing,” Mr. W. D. Glasgow ;“Knowledge of God”), agrees with Martin that emotions and feelings are part of what we call an aesthetic experience, and also that emotions and feelings are part of what we call a religious experience. “In this sense, at any rate,” Glasgow writes, “there is an analogy between aesthetic experience and religious experience. But...” he goes on, “are aesthetic statements more (...) than statements about emotions and feelings? Are statements about religious experience anything more than statements about emotions and feelings? A person could accept the analogy and yet maintain that for him aesthetic judgments have an objective reference. In this case the analogy confirms rather than destroys the existential claim of the theologian.”. (shrink)

This round table discussion takes the diversity of discourse and practice shaping modern knowledge about childhood as an opportunity to engage with recent historiographical approaches in the history of science. It draws attention to symmetries and references among scientific, material, literary and artistic cultures and their respective forms of knowledge. The five participating scholars come from various fields in the humanities and social sciences and allude to historiographical and methodological questions through a range of examples. Topics include the (...) emergence of children's rooms in US consumer magazines, research on the unborn in nineteenth-century sciences of development, the framing of autism in nascent child psychiatry, German literary discourses about the child's initiation into writing, and the sociopolitics of racial identity in the photographic depiction of African American infant corpses in the early twentieth century. Throughout the course of the paper, childhood emerges as a topic particularly amenable to interdisciplinary perspectives that take the history of science as part of a broader history of knowledge. (shrink)

This thesis provides an account of acquaintance with abstract objects. The notion of acquaintance is integral to theorising on reference and singular thought, since it is generally taken to be the relation that must exist between a subject and an object, in order for the subject to refer to, and entertain singular thoughts about the object. The most common way of understanding acquaintance is as a form of causal connection. However, this implies a problem. We seem to be able (...) to refer and have singular thoughts about abstract objects. But given that abstract objects are causally inert, this would mean that we are unable to become acquainted with them. This problem shall be the focus of this thesis. I first argue that these traditional causal interpretations of acquaintance are lacking. Instead, I show that acquaintance is dependent to some degree on factors internal to the subject, namely the skills that they possess. From doctors to sommeliers to mathematicians (and possibly even philosophers!) – these subjects seem to succeed in becoming acquainted with certain objects precisely in virtue of their respective skills. Thus, building off from Evans’ The Varieties of Reference, I present a novel account of acquaintance, which I term as Skill-based Acquaintance (SBA). On SBA, a subject is said to be acquainted with an object when they possess discriminating knowledge of that object, gained through the use of their capacities and skills. The SBA account is applied to virtual (Ch.3), fictional (Ch.4), and mathematical objects (Ch.5), as well as God (Ch.6). SBA is successful in explaining how subjects can indeed become acquainted with these problematic categories of objects - some of which are abstract – thus being able to refer and entertain singular thoughts about them. Overall, then, SBA is shown to have greater explanatory power than competing accounts and should thus be preferred. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to present a Kripkean (Causal) picture of Reference where the cognitive content in fixing reference plays a vital role. It also points out that Kripke is not a pure causal theorist. By introducing Thomas Kuhn and his theory on vulnerability of the rigid designation, I have shown that there is a danger for causal theory of reference. However Kuhn’s argument fails to have an impact if a Knowledge aspect is augmented to (...) Kripkean theory of reference. This new causal theory of reference preserves the truth of the referential term in spite of the vulnerability of the rigid designation and problem of reference change. It can also adequately answer the question of theoretical terms reference failure. (shrink)

Chapter: Sense and Intentionality A: Reference and Sense — Preliminary Remarks Few people during Frege's lifetime paid due attention to his work and its ...

Given berkeley's view of ideas and spirits and his reference to notions of spirits, Actions, Relations, And ideas, I argue that (a) the doctrine of the notion is his account of knowledge of the self, (b) to have a notion of something is to comprehend it non-Perceptually and actively, And (c) berkeley ultimately holds the self is substantial and knowable. By intuition and principled knowledge we know the self "exists". Notional knowledge is not intuition. The former (...) and principled knowledge presuppose intuition. Notions are conceptual or epistemological "acts". Hence they serve to comprehend and present the self as "active, Non-Sensible, Independently existing subject and spiritual substance". They are "active, Thinking images." finally, I discuss the problems of the nature of the self, Its identity and activity in relation to God and in view of recent commentaries. (shrink)

This paper discusses the reproductive health knowledge of Nigerian in-school adolescents, with special reference to pregnancy occurrence at first coitus. The data were derived from an Association for Reproductive and Family Health (ARFH) survey carried out in four secondary schools in Ibadan, Nigeria, between August and October 1995. A total of 828 students were interviewed. The results revealed that the majority of sexually active adolescents were not aware of the consequences of their actions. Religious affiliation and number of (...) wives in a male adolescents parents, were found to influence adolescents’ knowledge of pregnancy probability at first coitus. This paper confirms earlier findings that the majority of Nigerian adolescents do not know the consequences of sex. Therefore, a clear-cut plan of action is needed to inform sexually active adolescents through an effective sex education programme. (shrink)

Suppose your conscious life were surgically excised, but everything else left intact, what would you miss? In this situation you would not have the slightest idea what was going on. You would have no idea what there is in the world around you; what the grounds are of the potentialities and threats are that you are negotiating. Experience of your surroundings provides you with knowledge of what is there: with your initial base of knowledge of what the things (...) are that you are thinking and talking about. But this connection between consciousness of the objects and properties around you, and knowledge of the references of the basic terms you use, has proven difficult to articulate. The connection cannot be recognized so long as you think of consciousness as a kind of glow with which representations are accompanied or enlivened. It is, though, also possible to think of perceptual experience as fundamentally a relation between the subject and the things experienced; and given such a conception, we can make visible the link between consciousness and reference. (shrink)

Affirming that divine knowledge of occurrent changes among particulars is incompatible with the doctrine of divine immutability, this article seeks to resolve this tension by denying the latter. Reviewing this long-running debate, I first formalize the exchange between al-Ghazālı̄and Avicenna on this topic, and then set out the ways in which contemporary Sadrāean philosophers have tried to resolve the incompatibility. I argue that none of the cited Sadrāean attempts to resolve the incompatibility between divine omniscience and immutability is successful. (...) Then, by reference to certain principles drawn from Shia theology, I indicate how one might seek to reject the dogma of divine immutability. I conclude that by emancipating ourselves from that dogma, new horizons could be opened for Islamic philosophy, free from traditional Hellenistic constraints. (shrink)

Nietzsche read far more widely, and more actively, than he led us to believe. Reading was his most important intellectual stimulus: he lived a very isolated life for most of his career, and particularly in the 1880s. Much of what Nietzche thought and wrote therefore came in response to his reading. This book is an in-depth study of Nietzsche's reading, and his knowledge of philosophy and philosophers. It examines his relation to the major European thinkers and Eastern traditions, as (...) well as his knowledge and reading of intellectual women and journals of philosophy. Author Thomas Brobjer has gathered much previously unpublished information about Nietzsche's reading and library, including a great deal about the annotations he made in his books. Nietzsche's Knowledge and Reading and Philosophy will be useful as a handbook for anyone interested in the philosophical context of Nietzsche's thought. It will become an important reference work for all those interested in Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)

The paper is sympathetic to the idea that speakers have implicit knowledge of the semantics of sub-sentential elements of language, loosely, of words. Implicit knowledge is knowledge which the subject need not be capable of articulating yet which is a genuine propositional attitude and it is to be contrasted with tacit knowledge which refers to an information-bearing state which, however, is not a genuine propositional attitude. I begin by defending the implicit knowledge conception of speakers' (...) knowledge of the meanings of words from a challenge articulated by Evans and then go on the offensive against positions which attempt to replace the notion of implicit knowledge in semantic theory by that of tacit knowledge. (shrink)

On the philosophy of action, with reference to Advaita, Nyāya, and Mīmāṃsā systems in Hindu philosophy.

Thomas Aquinas wrote a text later known as Quaestio de attributis and ordered it inserted in a precise location of his Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard more than a decade after composing this work. Aquinas assigned exceptional importance to this text, in which he confronts the debate on the issue of the divine attributes that swept the most important centres of learning in 13th Century Europe and examines the answers given to the problem by the representatives of the (...) four mainstream schools of his time: the Greek mystic Dionysius Areopagita, the Latin Saint Anselm of Canterbury, the Jewish rabbi Moses Maimonides and the Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina. This in-depth study of Thomas Aquinas’ Quaestio de attributis (In I Sent., d. 2, q. 1, a. 3) binds together the findings of previous research on the unique history of this text by reconstructing the historical circumstances surrounding its composition, shows that the Quaestio contains Aquinas’ final answer to the dispute on the divine attributes, and thoroughly examines his interpretation of Maimonides’ position on the issue of the knowledge of God by analysing this and other texts related to it chronologically and doctrinally. The examination of the Quaestio reveals the background of Thomas Aquinas’ renewed interest in Maimonides’ position on the issue and brings to light elements of Aquinas’ interpretation that are absent from his earlier references to Maimonides. Moreover, the chronological and doctrinal connection of the Quaestio de attributis to other Thomistic works with explicit references to Maimonides enables a reconstruction of his comprehensive approach to Maimonides’ teaching on the possibility and extent of the knowledge of God in the Guide of the Perplexed and highlights the place of Maimonides’ philosophical teachings in Thomas’ own thought in issues like "Being" as the proper name of God, the multiplicity of the divine names, the beatific vision in the afterlife, the causes that prevent the instruction of the multitude in divine matters and the role of faith and prophecy in the acquisition of the true knowledge of God in this life. The last chapter examines the reasons behind Aquinas’ silencing of Maimonides’ name when introducing his Five Ways for the knowledge of the existence of God, in spite of the evident relation between these and Maimonides’ Four Speculations. The study is completed with an extensive appendix that includes the text of the Quaestio de attributis with an English translation and the critical edition of several chapters of the 13th Century Latin translation of the Guide of the Perplexed known as Dux neutrorum. (shrink)

Willard Van Orman Quine's work revolutionized the fields of epistemology, semantics and ontology. At the heart of his philosophy are several interconnected doctrines: his rejection of conventionalism and of the linguistic doctrine of logical and mathematical truth, his rejection of the analytic/synthetic distinction, his thesis of the indeterminacy of translation and his thesis of the inscrutability of reference. In this book Edward Becker sets out to interpret and explain these doctrines. He offers detailed analyses of the relevant texts, discusses (...) Quine's views on meaning, reference and knowledge, and shows how Quine's views developed over the years. He also proposes a new version of the linguistic doctrine of logical truth, and a new way of rehabilitating analyticity. His rich exploration of Quine's thought will interest all those seeking to understand and evaluate the work of one of the most important philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

It is sometimes argued that if PDP networks can be trained to make correct judgements of grammaticality we have an existence proof that there is enough information in the stimulus to permit learning grammar by inductive means alone. This seems inconsistent superficially with Gold's theorem and at a deeper level with the fact that networks are designed on the basis of assumptions about the domain of the function to be learned. To clarify the issue I consider what we should learn (...) from Gold's theorem, then go on to inquire into what it means to say that knowledge is domain specific. I first try sharpening the intuitive notion of domain specific knowledge by reviewing the alleged difference between processing limitations due to shortage of resources vs shortages of knowledge. After rejecting different formulations of this idea, I suggest that a model is language specific if it transparently refer to entities and facts about language as opposed to entities and facts of more general mathematical domains. This is a useful but not necessary condition. I then suggest that a theory is domain specific if it belongs to a model family which is attuned in a law-like way to domain regularities. This leads to a comparison of PDP and parameter setting models of language learning. I conclude with a novel version of the poverty of stimulus argument. (shrink)

One of the most characteristic claims of the dominant movement in contemporary British philosophy, to which we shall refer as the philosophy of ordinary language, is that traditional philosophical discourse has usually been logically improper because it has depended upon systematic misuses of certain expressions in ordinary language and that philosophy is a legitimate cognitive discipline only if it is concerned with the description of the actual use of language. To substantiate this claim, the philosopher of ordinary language has had (...) to establish at least the following two general philosophical theses, which together seem to constitute the hard core of original doctrine in the philosophy of ordinary language. First, that the meaning of an expression is its use and not its referent or what it corresponds to. Second, that the description of the uses of certain expressions in language is not merely a study of words but genuinely solves the same problems which traditional philosophy had tried to solve through other methods. (shrink)

This article offers a survey of computational research on referring expressions generation (REG). It introduces the REG problem and describes early work in this area, discussing what basic assumptions lie behind it, and showing how its remit has widened in recent years. We discuss computational frameworks underlying REG, and demonstrate a recent trend that seeks to link up REG algorithms with well-established Knowledge Representation traditions. Considerable attention is given to recent efforts at evaluating REG algorithms and the lessons that (...) they allow us to learn. The article concludes with a discussion of the way forward in REG, focussing on references in larger and more realistic settings. (shrink)

Peter Fitzpatrick’s writings prove once and for all that it is possible for a law professor to write in beautiful English. His work also proves once and for all that the dominating tradition of Anglo-American legal philosophy and of law teaching has been barking up the wrong tree: namely, that the philosopher and professional law teachers can understand justice as nested in empty forms, better known as rules, doctrines, principles, policies, and other standards. The more rigorous our analysis or decomposition (...) of the forms, we have believed, the more closely do we access the identity of laws. Justice has been assumed to be a matter of intellectually accessing such analysed forms. Fitzpatrick’s articles and books embody an implicit critique of the analytic view of law and of justice. My entry point into this critique is his preoccupation with Jacques Derrida’s theory of laws as universals and with Derrida’s theory of justice as an inaccessible immediacy or presence in context-specific or concrete experienced events. Each event is experienced in an official’s decision. Such a decision represents what Derrida, Fitzpatrick, and Hegel call ‘individuality’. -/- Derrida’s theory of law presents a conundrum. Derrida misses the possibility that law may exist by virtue of its content rather than its form. Derrida misses this possibility because, heavily influenced by Kant (in Derrida’s theory of law), Derrida associates law with universals. This is so because Kant (and Derrida) are preoccupied with the identity of what counts as a law (lois) rather than with a law’s legitimacy. A universal cannot exist unless it is legitimate, and it is legitimate, I claim, by virtue of its content. In his association of law with universals, Derrida presupposes that legal knowledge exists with reference to a territorial-like boundary. The forms are represented or signified by signs (signifiers) within a boundary of the ultimate form (the state, the nation, or humanity). This ultimate form as a universal, like the discrete rules or forms, lacks socially contingent content. A boundary separates knowable universals from the unknowable world on the exteriority of the boundary. The unknowable world is constituted by concrete events experienced in context-specific circumstances. In his legal theory Derrida hones in upon the decision as the experienced event. In a decision, one is present or immediate with the event. Derrida considers such immediacy as justice. The immediacy, however, can only be represented as a sign (sometimes called a signifier). The sign, in turn, represents an empty signified or form, according to Derrida. Because the immediacy remains a representation rather than a presentation of the experienced event, laws as universals cannot be just. The rupture between the inaccessible immediacy of a decision on the one hand and the represented empty forms on the other is critical to Derrida’s theory of law. -/- I claim that this rupture permeates Derrida’s writings about law because Derrida possesses a territorial-like sense of legal knowledge. I shall argue to this effect as follows. In the first section I shall explain the importance of Fitzpatrick’s exposure of the vacuity of the foundation of the system or structure of universals. In the second section I shall flesh out two elements of Derrida’s legal theory: law as form and the ipseity or concrete event that the form excludes from law. This takes me to the third section, where I shall elaborate how Derrida’s legal theory presupposes knowledge as territorial. I shall argue in the final section that this very sense of territorial knowledge prevents justice from accessing law and law from accessing justice. I conclude with the hint of a very different sense of law, one that draws from experiential knowledge in contradistinction to territorial knowledge. (shrink)

In this article I will discuss the dancer’s physical potential and the sensitive knowledge (‘la connaissance sensible’) that emerges from dance practice. For this, I take Lévi-Strauss’ (2010) theory of the ‘savage mind’ as a reference. This theory is important to understand how the discipline of dance does not need to be justified through modern science (Lévi-Strauss 2010). It is understood that dance operates from sensitive knowledge, while modern science is expressed through the intelligible. I will point (...) out how the dancer operates the sensitive, or dancing, thought, stressing that this type of knowledge is created through interest in how to use it and not through interest in how it serves, or what it means. I will then explain how, through sensitive knowledge, dancers propose new challenges during their aesthetic training in order to develop new body technologies, thereby increasing their expressive potential. For this, dancers need to develop body acuity. In other words, I will discuss the processes that dancers use to transform the perception of the self and of the world through danced gestures. In this process, the dancer is always looking for new challenges; he/she constantly deals with new risks in order to discover new knowledge. I will also discuss the problem that dance faces in traditional academia, which disregards sensitive knowledge and values scientific knowledge. (shrink)

El presente trabajo constituye un homenaje al filósofo mendocino Arturo Andrés Roig. En el mismo se recuperan algunas de las observaciones de Roig respecto del humanismo utópico y mesiánico con sus numerosas variantes y matices, mediante la utilización del recurso al "discurso referido". Se atiende especialmente al caso del jesuita chileno Manuel Lacunza (1731-1801). This work is a tribute to the philosopher, Arturo Andrés Roig, born in Mendoza, Argentina. In that one there are recovered some of Roig's observations regarding messianic (...) and utopian humanism with their numerous variants and nuances, by means of the use of the resource to the "referred speech". Special attention is paid to the case of the Chilean Jesuit Manuel Lacunza (1731-1801). (shrink)

The paper attempts to give an account of the introspective self-knowledge of our own experiences which is in line with representationalism about phenomenal consciousness and the transparency of experience. A two-step model is presented. First, a demonstrative thought of the form ‚I am experiencing this’ is formed which refers to what one experiences, by means of attention. Plausibly, this thought is knowledge, since safe. Second, a non-demonstrative thought of the form ‚I am experiencing a pain’ occurs. This second (...) self-ascription is justified inferentially, on the basis of the first, demonstrative thought. Thus, an account of introspective experiential self-knowledge can be developed which is richer and more adequate to the phenomena than pure reliabilism and Dretske’s displaced perception model. There is really such a thing as introspection, but no inner sense. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Where we will make our start The supervenience of reference on nature The availability issue What is required of a user of a name? The issue about personal level knowledge The demand for precise and explicit specifications What is a theory of reference a theory of? In the mouths of the very young The description theory and interchangeability What is to come and a final objection noted.

To the best of my knowledge, no one in recent decades has written a book of this magnitude about the semantics of natural language. Certainly, nothing available today matches this volume in depth, precision, and coherence. The authors present classical and recent results of linguistic semantics within the framework of interpretative T-theories and defend the philosophical foundations of their approach by showing how it fits into the larger enterprise of cognitive linguistics. The book also includes an array of excellent (...) exercises and a good list of references. (shrink)

This article argues that the “_qua_ problem” for purely causal theories of reference grounding is an illusion. Reference _can_ be grounded via description and fit, but purely causal reference grounding is possible too. In fact, “arguments from ignorance and error” suggest that many of our terms have had their reference grounded purely causally. If the _qua_ problem is illusory, then there is no need to adopt a “hybrid” theory of reference grounding of the kind recently (...) recommended by Amie Thomasson (Ontology made easy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015) and Ron Mallon (The construction of human kinds, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). This opens the door to a “discovery model” of philosophical knowledge, a model we could then choose to accept. (shrink)

This paper evaluates Putnam’s argument in the first chapter of Reason, Truth and History, for the claim that we can know that we are not brains in a vat (of a certain sort). A widespread response to Putnam’s argument has been that if it were successful not only the world but the meanings of our words (and consequently our thoughts) would be beyond the pale of knowledge, because a causal theory of reference is not compatible with our having (...) knowledge of the meanings of our words. I argue that this is not so. I argue also, however, that given how Putnam argues (here) for the causal theory of reference, he cannot after all escape this consequence. (shrink)