Turnbull offers a close and detailed reading of the Parmenides, using his interpretation to illuminate Plato's major late dialogues. The picture presented of Plato's later philosophy is plausible, highly interesting, and original.

It is claimed that 'Do x!' means 'Then you will do x'. Answering a "Why?" question concerning the former may take either of two forms, viz., 'Because --' or 'If you wish to --'. The second answer completes the truncated hypothetical. "Ought" sentences are treated as a species of imperatives involving universality in the "if" clause ('If anyone wished to --'). Moral "ought" sentences involve a double universality, viz., the one mentioned above and universality connecting the action with social harmony (...) (e.g., "If everyone were to do x, then there would be social harmony'). (shrink)

Wahrnehmung / Philosophie / Wissenschaft / Geschichte.

Richard Rorty’s assessment of the American philosophical scene is unduly cynical. Part of the reason for this seems to lie in his recognition (in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature) of the incoherence of “grounding” a linguistic or conceptual scheme on a “given”, but proceeding, nevertheless, to think of representation and truth as requiring conformity to a “given”. He, therefore, fails to appreciate the unity and seriousness of American philosophers who, abandoning the “given”, are working with some success·on plausible accounts (...) of representation and truth. Surprisingly, neither in his article nor his book does he attend to the remarkable increase in sophistication and serious research on the part of historians of philosophy and historians of science. Both in serious work on representation and truth and in historical research there is more rapprochement between American and Continental philosophers than Rorty seems prepared to credit. (shrink)

It is a commonplace that philosophical doctrines, like old soldiers, are not vanquished, but merely fade away. It might have been added that, like old soldiers, they occasionally return. What is sound in the commonplace, aside from whatever merit it may have as sociological comment, is found in its underscoring the peculiarities of philosophical refutation. Did Aristotle refute Plato? Did Ockham refute Scotus? Did Reid refute Locke? Did Moore refute Bradley? Did Strawson refute Russell? Part of what I wish to (...) show in this paper is that there are ways of posing questions like these so that they are at least answerable; it is not, however, so to pose them, much less to answer them. My chief concern is with the fact that one of the peculiarities of philosophical refutation is that it commonly contains a metaphilosophical component. Indeed, after considerable stage-setting, I shall argue that some important doctrines of Linguistic Analysts and Phenomenologists rest upon metaphilosophical mistakes and that, even where some of their doctrines are sound, the intellectual ambiance in which they are placed invites confusion. It is visionary to expect the ending of the intellectual embarrassment constituted by the coming and going of philosophical styles and fads; the attempt to expose metaphilosophical mistakes and confusions may, nevertheless, help to wither the exuberant cynicism of the commonplace. (shrink)

Premise: our representational system has had a relatively invariant core throughout human history (cf. Sellars's manifest image). Major theses: (i) When philosophical argument establishes the existence of an entity, that entity is a representing, not a represented. (ii) Most of the documents in the history of philosophy are on a par (as dialogical resources) with current philosophical literature for establishing or controverting such existence claims. (iii) The use of mathematics (initially the mathematized neo-Platonism of classical mechanics) allowed modern physical science (...) to break with the perennial system of representation; in consequence, a portion of the representings of modern physical scientists do not belong to the historically invariant core. This limits the dialogical resources of physical science and the applicability of arguments from perennial philosophy to science. It also explains the relative irrelevance of pre-17th century science to contemporary physical scientists in contrast to the relevance of pre-17th century philosophy to contemporary philosophers. It also supports thesis (iv), that logic (broadly conceived) in central to all serious philosophical enterprises, since logic is the central tool for exhibiting and criticizing the rationale(s) of our representational system(s). Support for these theses will be found in the paper. (shrink)

To Americans accustomed to thinking of Greece as the cradle of Western Civilization, the realization that modern Greece is a young nation with serious cultural, political, and economic identity problems comes only with difficulty. This little book is a celebration of the life and work of Evangelos P. Papanoutsos, a very productive and influential philosopher and educational reformer. Although, like every Greek intellectual, Papanoutsos is steeped in ancient culture, he is also emphatically a twentieth-century philosopher caught up in the Enlightenment (...) tradition of Hume and Kant and occupied with moral philosophical critique of contemporary culture. (shrink)

To Americans accustomed to thinking of Greece as the cradle of Western Civilization, the realization that modern Greece is a young nation with serious cultural, political, and economic identity problems comes only with difficulty. This little book is a celebration of the life and work of Evangelos P. Papanoutsos, a very productive and influential philosopher and educational reformer. Although, like every Greek intellectual, Papanoutsos is steeped in ancient culture, he is also emphatically a twentieth-century philosopher caught up in the Enlightenment (...) tradition of Hume and Kant and occupied with moral philosophical critique of contemporary culture. (shrink)