Pseudoproblems, pseudoquestions, pseudosentences (etc.) constitute an iridescent group of concepts which were prominently used by the Vienna Circle (including Wittgenstein). In the course of an explication this paper presents a compilation of the many different meanings that were given to these expressions. This includes the more prominent Viennese approaches as well as a more recent one by Roy Sorensen. A novel proposal concerning the use ofthe term is made, suggesting that nothing is just a pseudoproblem, but only relative to (...) a certain state of discourse. While the paper follows an explicative methodology, several uses of 'pseudoproblem', including the explicated one, relate pseudoproblemhood to other kinds of analysis. (shrink)

Available for the first time in 20 years, here are two important works from the 1920s by the best-known representative of the Vienna Circle.

The problem of the Rota Aristotelis deals with the unrolling of two tightly connected concentric circles with different radii. It is to be found in Chapter 24 of the text Mechanica of the Aristotelian corpus (today generally no longer attributed to Aristotle) and has bothered many authors until the modern age. All these scholars agree that the solution given there is not satisfactory. We conclude that Chapter 24 is close to Aristotle, at least, both from a philological and philosophical point (...) of view. The solution of the problem given in the ancient text can very well be transferred into a modern physical phenomenological explanation. (shrink)

This is a translation of Carnap's early classic, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt and his less technical but also important article from the same period, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. It is no secret that Carnap abandoned the phenomenalism of the Aufbau for the physicalism of Logische Syntax der Sprache, but there is no doubt that the real message of the Aufbau—which is punctuated with the Messianic spirit of early logical positivism—is the program of "rational reconstruction" which becomes, on an inverted (...) reading and with the addition of a bias in favor of the universal descriptive and explanatory power of scientific discourse, the program of scientific reductionism. In this light, the continuities between the Aufbau and Carnap's later work completely dwarf in importance the discrepancies between these two periods of his creative output. The Aufbau remains an important book in its own right, and is not simply a detailed manifesto of a now defunct program; it is a pleasure to have it in English.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a translation of Carnap's early classic, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt and his less technical but also important article from the same period, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. It is no secret that Carnap abandoned the phenomenalism of the Aufbau for the physicalism of Logische Syntax der Sprache, but there is no doubt that the real message of the Aufbau—which is punctuated with the Messianic spirit of early logical positivism—is the program of "rational reconstruction" which becomes, on an inverted (...) reading and with the addition of a bias in favor of the universal descriptive and explanatory power of scientific discourse, the program of scientific reductionism. In this light, the continuities between the Aufbau and Carnap's later work completely dwarf in importance the discrepancies between these two periods of his creative output. The Aufbau remains an important book in its own right, and is not simply a detailed manifesto of a now defunct program; it is a pleasure to have it in English.—E. A. R. (shrink)

It is convenient to review these two books together because of the obvious indebtedness of the latter to the former. The book by Carnap is the first English translation of his classic Der Logische Aufbau der Welt initially published in Berlin in 1928. It also includes his short Scheinprobleme in der Philosophic published first in the same year. The translator has produced a very readable text of two complex works and Carnap has added a new preface outlining his present attitude (...) to his work of over thirty years ago together with a short bibliography of recent publications relevant to the Aufbau. (shrink)

This paper is a review of Rudolf Carnap's changing attitudes towards the conceptualisation of pseudo-problems. For that purpose his early works are divided into four phases each of which display subtle dierences with respect to the role pseudo-problems play in Carnap's epistemology and philosophical methodology. Based on a number of short texts by Carnap, an attempt is made to give provisional denitions of 'pseudo-problem' and related expressions.

Despite their success in describing and predicting cognitive behavior, the plausibility of so-called ‘rational explanations’ is often contested on the grounds of computational intractability. Several cognitive scientists have argued that such intractability is an orthogonal pseudoproblem, however, since rational explanations account for the ‘why’ of cognition but are agnostic about the ‘how’. Their central premise is that humans do not actually perform the rational calculations posited by their models, but only act as if they do. Whether or not the problem (...) of intractability is solved by recourse to ‘as if’ explanations critically depends, inter alia, on the semantics of the ‘as if’ connective. We examine the five most sensible explications in the literature, and conclude that none of them circumvents the problem. As a result, rational ‘as if’ explanations must obey the minimal computational constraint of tractability. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: 1 A Question about Composition 2 Some Answers 3 How Shall We Decide? 4 Common Sense and Unrestricted Composition 5 Common Sense and Compositional Nihilism 6 Compositional Nihilism and the Self 7 The Appeal to Science 8 Problem or Pseudoproblem? What To Do?

The traditional use of the expression 'pseudoproblem' is analysed in order to clarify the talk of pseudoproblems and related phenomena. The goal is to produce a philosophically serviceable terminology that stays true to its historical roots. This explicative study is inspired by and makes use of the method of logical reconstruction. Since pseudoproblems are usually expressed by pseudoquestions a formal language of questions is presented as a possible reconstruction language for alleged pseudoproblems. The study yields an informal (...) theory of pseudoproblems whose presuppositions are critically investigated right away. At least one result remains: Claims of pseudoproblemship and their refutations must not be voiced casually - they are to be relativized and need substantial interpretive effort. (shrink)

It is argued that Carnap was not a complete verificationist in the Aufbau despite the widespread view that he was. That doctrine would be intrinsic to constructionalism only if either of two additional assumptions are made, and there is no reason to believe that Carnap made these assumptions. Further, in the Aufbau Carnap did not demand verifiability independently of constructionalism, and his clear rejection of verifiability in Pseudoproblems counts heavily against his ever having accepted it in the Aufbau.

Any theory of practical irrationality necessarily imposes a division of labour between an account of the agent's intentional states and how these are formed, and an account of how these intentional states get applied in particular circumstances to choose a particular action. Nevertheless, questions that concern the content of the agent's beliefs and desires are still routinely lumped together with questions that deal with the way the agent chooses in the light of these beliefs and desires. This generates a number (...) of pseudoproblems. Seeks to clarify some of them, by considering the internal structure of decision theory. (shrink)

Conditional sentences with quantifying expressions are systematically ambigous. In one reading, the if -clause restricts the domain of the overt quantifier; in the other, the if -clause restricts the domain of a covert quantifier, which defaults to epistemic necessity. Although the ambiguity follows directly from the Lewis- Kratzer line on if, it is not generally acknowledged, which has led to pseudoproblems and spurious arguments.

The purpose of teaching logic in philosophy is to enable us to evaluate arguments with respect to (formal) validity. Standard logics refer to a concept of validity which allows for the relation of implication to hold between premises and conclusion even in cases where there is no “relevant” connection between the premises and the conclusion. A prominent example for this is the rule “Ex-Falso-Quodlibet” (EFQ), which allows us to infer an arbitrary proposition from a contradiction. The tolerance of irrelevance endorsed (...) by standard logics unfortunately engenders that they cannot adequately fulfill their intended task of analyzing and evaluating philosophical, scientific and everyday-life arguments – instead, their application even gives rise to a multitude of artificial philosophical pseudoproblems (like the problem of the disposition predicates or the problem of counterfactuals). As alternatives to standard logics, there exist non-standard systems called “relevance logics” or “relevant logics” meant to avoid irrelevance. The problem with these systems, however, is that the mainstream relational semantics (“worlds semantics”) available for them is to be considered unintuitive and complex to a degree which is apt to render relevant logics unattractive to the majority of philosophers who are on the lookout not only for adequate, but also simple and efficient technical means for evaluating arguments. Therefore, the main aim of this treatise is to provide an alternative semantics (“rules semantics”) which is comparatively easy to grasp and simple in application. A second aim of the book is to extend the semantics as least as far as it takes to cover more or less all the logical notions philosophers need in their “everyday analyzing”. This includes first order predicate logic, higher order logic (for analyzing talk about “properties” etc.), identity, definite descriptions, abstraction principles and modal logic. This book can be read without having any more background than a good introductory course in classical logic provides. (shrink)

In 1955, Goodman set out to 'dissolve' the problem of induction, that is, to argue that the old problem of induction is a mere pseudoproblem not worthy of serious philosophical attention. I will argue that, under naturalistic views of the reflective equilibrium method, it cannot provide a basis for a dissolution of the problem of induction. This is because naturalized reflective equilibrium is -- in a way to be explained -- itself an inductive method, and thus renders Goodman's dissolution viciously (...) circular. This paper, then, examines how the old problem of induction crept back in while nobody was looking. (shrink)

A fundamental problem in Christian theology has been that of determining whether God can be an object of experience and how we should account for God's empirical availability to us. Can experiences of God serve to inform and justify our theological beliefs and practices? The central claim in this work is that there is a radical mistake in many contemporary accounts that require grounding a theological story of Gods availability to us in experience in a prior general philosophical theory of (...) perception. Instead, it is argued that the philosophical problem of perception is a pseudoproblem and that in virtue of their entanglement with that pseudoproblem, the influential accounts of Christian religious experience, such as in Jean-Luc Marion, Kevin Hector, or William P. Alston, are at bottom incoherent. The study concludes with a new reading of Gregory of Nyssa and his theology of the spiritual senses, which is free from the bewitchment of the problem of perception. This critical retrieval of Nyssen opens the path toward a viable contemporary theological empiricism, one that characterizes both tasks of theological contemplation and spiritual formation in terms of a receptivity and responsiveness to the perceptible presence and agency of God in the world. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Adolf Grünbaum’s charge that the cosmological problem to which the theological doctrine of divine creation would, if true, be a solution is really only a pseudoproblem. My discussion focuses on three questions: Why does the possible world that is in fact actual obtain, rather than any of the other possible worlds? Why does a possible world with the natural laws of the actual world obtain, rather than some possible world with a different nomological structure? (...) And why does a possible world in which some contingent things exist obtain, rather than the possible world in which nothing contingent exists? I argue that each of these questions can be understood in such a way that it avoids Grünbaum’s pseudoproblem charge. I also argue that the second and third questions give rise, if pressed, to problems that science cannot solve. Their ultimate answers are either appeals to inexplicable brute facts, which are not explanatory, or appeals to extrascientific explanations, which could be theological. (shrink)

A putative problem for the moral particularist is that he or she fails to capture the normative relevance of certain considerations that they carry on their face, or the intuitive irrelevance of other considerations. It is argued in response that mastery of certain topic-specific truisms about a subject matter is what it is for a reasonable interlocutor to be engaged in a moral discussion, but the relevance of these truisms has nothing to do with the particularist/generalist dispute. Given that practical (...) reasoning is plausibly a form of abductive reasoning, and is therefore non-monotonic, any arbitrary addition of information can change the degree of support evidence offers for a conclusion. Given this arbitrariness, it is no objection to the particularist if he or she represents the ‘normative landscape as flat’ in a way that does not display the ‘obvious’ relevance of certain considerations. The normative landscape is flat and our best account of practical reasoning represents it precisely as such. Appealing to a distinction between practical reasoning and moral reasoning does not help to resurrect this pseudoproblem for particularism. Key Words: abductive inference • default reasons • moral particularism • practical reasoning. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 81-96 [Access article in PDF] Pragmatism:The Unformulated Method of Bishop Berkeley Lesley Friedman 1. Introduction THOUGH WELL KNOWN AS A SCIENTIST, logician, and metaphysician, Charles Sanders Peirce is perhaps best remembered as the founder of Pragmatism. Surprisingly, Peirce attributes this way of thinking—often taken as a uniquely American contribution—to Bishop George Berkeley. According to Pierce, Berkeley should be regarded as the (...) author of that method of modern pragmatism (RFB, 96): 1 Pragmaticism is... a method of thinking.... Of those who have used this way of thinking Berkeley is the clearest example.... (CP, 8.206, c.1905) Berkeley on the whole has more right to be considered the introducer of pragmatism into philosophy than any other one man.... (1903 letter to William James)In a metaphysical Club, I used to preach this principle as a sort of logical gospel, representing the unformulated method followed by Berkeley, and in conversation about it I called it 'Pragmatism.' (CP, 6.482, 1908) [End Page 81]While it is acknowledged that Peirce believed Berkeley to be "a very distinguished master of the pragmatist mode of thinking," just why Peirce makes this claim is not altogether clear. In significant ways Berkeley blundered metaphysically, according to Peirce (MS, 322, c.1907). 2 He overlooked the reality of possibility (and thus realism about generals), misunderstood the nature of existence and the ordinary notion of matter, and had an inadequate view of perception. 3 In his early work, Peirce goes so far as to criticize what looks to be Berkeley's attempt at the pragmatic method: "A better rule [than Berkeley's] for avoiding the deceits of language is this: Do things fulfil the same function practically? Then let them be signified by the same word. Do they not? Then let them be distinguished" (CP, 8.33, 1871). Moreover, while Peirce cites the Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision as using the "medium of pragmatism," others have criticized Berkeley in this very work for drawing conclusions without any experimentation. 4 Since it is precisely the pivotal role of experience and experiment that distinguish the method of pragmatism, it is puzzling that Berkeley is chosen as worthy of the title that Peirce bestows on him. My hope in this paper is to shed some light on this question. I beginwith an explication of Peirce's pragmatism and then move on to offer an account ofhow Berkeley uses this method, though never formulates it. Next, I discuss the positions Peirce understood to be consequences of the view, including critical common-sensism, fallibilism, and scholastic realism. I suggest that, although he erred on several corollary positions, Berkeley foresaw the aims, purpose, and essential points of the methodological, though not the "metaphysical side" of pragmatism. 5 2. Peircean Pragmatism Pragmatism 6 is not a metaphysical doctrine: it does not aim to ascertain the truth of things; it does not attempt to throw any "positive light on any problem" (CP, 5.464, 1907). Rather, it offers a means of distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate [End Page 82] hypotheses, so that verbal disputes—those that so often arise simply because the disputants do not understand meanings in the same way—can be resolved. It is thus "only a method of thinking"(CP, 8.206, c.1905, emphasis added).... pragmatism proposes a certain maxim which, if sound, must render needless any further rule as to the admissibility of hypotheses to rank as hypotheses, that is to say, as explanations of phenomena held as hopeful suggestions; and furthermore, this is all that the [logical] maxim of pragmatism really pretends to do.... (CP, 5.195, 1903) Seeking to lay "the dust of pseudoproblems," pragmatism allows "us to discern what pertinent facts the phenomena may present. But this is a good half of the task of philosophy" (CP, 8.186, 1903). It is worth pausing to mention that philosophy, as Peirce understands it, does not stand apart from science in the way it does today, but rather is the second of the three sciences of discovery, all of which... (shrink)

Recent scholarship (by mainly Michael Friedman, but also by Thomas Uebel) on the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap covering the period from the publication of Carnap’s’ 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau der Welt through to the mid to late 1930’s has tended to view Carnap as espousing a form of conventionalism (epitomized by his adoption of the principle of tolerance) and not a form of empirical foundationalism. On this view, it follows that Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language is the (...) pinnacle of his work during this era, this book having developed in its most complete form the conventionalist approach to dissolving the pseudoproblems that often attend philosophical investigation. My task in this paper, in opposition to this trend, is to resuscitate the empiricist interpretation of Carnap’s work during this time period. The crux of my argument is that Carnap’s 1934 book, by eschewing for the most part the empiricism he espouses in the Aufbau and in his 1932 The Unity of Science, is led to a form of conventionalism that faces the serious hazard of collapsing into epistemological relativism. My speculation is that Carnap came to recognize this deficiency in his 1934 book, and in subsequent work (“Testability and Meaning”, published in 1936/37) felt the need to re-instate his empiricist agenda. This subsequent work provides a much improved empiricist epistemology from Carnap’s previous efforts and, ashistory informs us, sets the standard for future research in the theory of confirmation. (shrink)

El objeto principal de este trabajo consiste en discutir una propuesta de C. Alchourrón y A. Martino para hacer frente al problema de la fundamentación de la lógica deóntica, planteado por el dilema de Jørgensen. La propuesta criticada se basa en la idea de que no existe obstáculo alguno en compatibilizar la idea de que las normas carecen de valor de verdad con la idea de que poseen una lógica, una vez que se renuncia al "prejuicio filosófico" de que es (...) indispensable caracterizar semánticamente las relaciones y propiedades lógicas y se explica la lógica a partir de la noción abstracta de consecuencia, desligándola de las nociones de verdad y falsedad. Sostienen que el significado de los operadores deónticos, al igual que el de los términos lógicos en la deducción natural, puede quedar totalmente expresado una vez que se explicita su uso mediante reglas de introducción y eliminación. Para ilustrar su propuesta, pretenden ofrecer una fundamentación puramente sintáctica de la lógica deóntica standard. Mis críticas se centran en tres puntos: a) no utilizan auténticas reglas de introducción para los operadores deónticos; b) no derivan la lógica deóntica standard como pretenden haber hecho, y c) no se establecen criterios para relacionar las fórmulas del cálculo con el lenguaje normativo ordinario, con lo que no existen razones para considerar que se trata de una lógica deóntica. Defiendo la idea de que, a los fines de fundamentar semánticamente la lógica deóntica, sólo es necesario que existan interpretaciones admisibles que atribuyan valores de verdad a las normas, y que este requisito es cumplido por la semántica usual de la lógica deóntica standard, con lo que el dilema de Jørgensen resulta ser un seudoproblema. In this paper I discuss a proposal from C. Alchourrón and A. Martino with which they try to face the problem posed to the foundation of deontic logic by Jørgensen' s dilemma. Their proposal is based on the idea that there is no problem at all in compatibilizing the fact that norms lack truth values with their possession of a logic, once it is denied that it is absolutely necessary to offer a semantic characterization of logical properties and relations, and the abstract notion of consequence is taken as primitive. They claim that the meaning of deontic operators, like that of logical terms in natural deduction, is completely expressed through their use, which is explained by means of rules of introduction and elimination. As an illustration, they present a calculus with which they intend to offer a foundation for standard deontic logic. I make three objections: a) They don' t use real rules of introduction for deontic operators; b) They don' t have derived standard deontic logic as they claim; c) There are no criteria for relating the formulas with ordinary normative discourse; so there are no reasons for considering their calculus as a deontic logic. I claim that, in order to give a semantical foundation to deontic logic it is only necessary that there are admissible interpretations that assign truth values to norms, and that this requisite is satisfied by the usual semantic of standard deontic logic. I conclude that Jørgensen' s dilemma is a pseudoproblem. (shrink)

Feigl approaches philosophy of mind in the monist perspective of Logical Empiricism but he does not treat the mind-body problem in an eliminative manner. Although he modified his positions and wavered between strict reductionism and explicit non-reductionism, he never abandoned his conviction that the mind-body problem is not a pseudoproblem. Especially in his 'double-knowledge-view' he concedes private mental states that physical theory cannot account for and develops an identity theory that integrates two epistemic features - the way of immediate experience (...) and the indirect way of knowledge-by-description. Feigl's complex treatment of the mind-body problem retains its systematical importance even in the light of later developments in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Feigl approaches philosophy of mind in the monist perspective of Logical Empiricism but he does not treat the mind-body problem in an eliminative manner. Although he modified his positions and wavered between strict reductionism and explicit non-reductionism, he never abandoned his conviction that the mind-body problem is not a pseudoproblem. Especially in his 'double-knowledge-view' he concedes private mental states that physical theory cannot account for and develops an identity theory that integrates two epistemic features - the way of immediate experience (...) and the indirect way of knowledge-by-description. Feigl's complex treatment of the mind-body problem retains its systematical importance even in the light of later developments in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

An extract from Williams' The Ground of Induction (1947): "The sober amateur who takes the time to follow recent philosophical discussion will hardly resist the impression that much of it, in its dread of superstition and dogmatic reaction, has been oriented purposely toward skepticism: that a conclusion is admired in proportion as it is skeptical; that a jejune argument for skepticism will be admitted where a scrupulous defense of knowledge is derided or ignored; that an affirmative theory is a mere (...) annoyance to be stamped down as quickly as possible to a normal level of denial and defeat. It is an age which most admires the man who, as somebody has said, 'has a difficulty for every solution'. Whether or not this judgment is fair, however, it is safe to say, with Whitehead, that 'the theory of induction is the despair of philosophy - and yet all our activities are based upon it'. [A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York, 1925, p. 35] So prodigious a theoretical contretemps cannot remain a tempest in the professors' teapot. The news that no foundation is discoverable for the procedures of empirical intelligence, and still more the proclaimed discovery that there is no foundation, and still more the complacency which recommends that we reconcile ourselves to the lack, condemn the problem as a 'pseudoproblem', and proceed by irrational faith or pragmatic postulate, will slowly shatter civilized life and thought, to a degree which will make the modernist's loss of confidence in Christian supernaturalism, so often cited as the ultimate in spiritual cataclysms, seem a minor vicissitude. The demand that rational man adjust himself to a somewhat bleaker universe than he once hoped for is only one large and picturesque instance of the sort of re-orientation which inductive intelligence, in its very nature,continually imposes, and well within the proved capacities of human reason and good-will.. (shrink)

Near the beginning of Charles Baudelaire’s Salon of 1846—one of the most brilliant and intellectually ambitious essays in art criticism ever written—the twenty-five-year-old author states that “the critic should arm himself from the start with a sure criterion, a criterion drawn from nature, and should then carry out his duty with a passion; for a critic does not cease to be a man, and passion draws similar temperaments together and exalts the reason to fresh heights.”1 It may be the emphasis (...) on passion, indeed on strong personal feeling of every kind, not only here but everywhere in the Salon, that has prevented commentators from taking wholly seriously the possibility that a single criterion is in fact at work throughout it. But what if that criterion operates in the realm of feeling, if it is itself a feeling or complex of feelings, and if, moreover, as Baudelaire as much as says, no conflict between the claims of reason and of passion exists within his conception of the critical enterprise? Not that scholars have failed to recognize either the brilliance or the ambitiousness of the Salon of 1846; on the contrary, it is widely regarded as the major extrapoetic text of Baudelaire’s early career and especially in recent years has received extensive commentary. But by and large, those who have written about it have focused primarily on topics, such as Baudelaire’s conception of nature, his vision of the creative process, and the relation of his ideas to those of other critics, that seem to me, if not quite pseudoproblems, at any rate concerns that lead us to ignore what the text may be saying about its own manner of proceeding.2 I acknowledge, too, that certain features of that manner—the mixture of irony and seriousness in the opening dedication to the bourgeois, the many abrupt fluctuations of tone in the body of the essay, the seeming breaks in the argument from section to section, the texture and movement of the prose—could hardly be less systematic in effect. And yet it would not be hard to show that the Salon as a whole is the product of a remarkable effort, not merely to ground the judgment of individual works of art in a single experiential principle but also to bind together a number of diverse concerns—pictorial, literary, political, philosophical—in an intellectually coherent structure every part of which is meant to be consonant with every other. No wonder the last sentence of the Salon apostrophizes Balzac: the sheer inclusiveness of Baudelaire’s undertaking recalls nothing so much as the scope of the Comédie humaine. 1. Charles Baudelaire, Salon of 1846, Art in Paris 1845-1862: Salons and Other Exhibitions, ed. and trans. Jonathan Mayne , pp. 101-2. All further references to the Salon of 1846 will be included parenthetically in the text . I have also consulted the recent edition, Baudelaire: “Salon de 1846,” ed. David Kelley , which includes a useful introduction and bibliography.2. See, for example, Margaret Gilman, Baudelaire, the Critic , pp. 12-53 and 77-111; F. W. Leakey, “Les Esthétiques de Baudelaire: Le ‘Système’ des annés 1844-1847,” Revue des sciences humaines, n.s., fasc. 127 : 481-96, and Baudelaire and Nature , pp. 73-88; and Kelley, “Deux Aspects du Salon de 1846 de Baudelaire : La Dédicace aux bourgeois et la couleur,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 5 : 331-46, and introduction to Baudelaire: “Salon de 1846,” pp. 1-114. Michael Fried, professor of humanities and the history of art and director of the Humanities Center at the Johns Hopkins University, is the author of Morris Louis and Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. He is currently at work on a book on Gustave Courbet. His most recent contribution to Critical Inquiry, “The Structure of Beholding in Courbet’s Burial at Ornans,” appeared in the June 1983 issue. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that the general problem of indication, increasingly discussed in the field of psychotherapy in recent years, actually is a pseudoproblem with no solution to be expected. In its objectives and premises it is trongly suggestive of conceptions and ideas of early logical empiricism, to be considered as out-of-date today. The concept of indication is identified as ambiguous, and preliminary remarks aiming at an explication of the concept are made. Finally, the consequences of our arguments (...) for the immediate problem of integration of the different therapeutic approaches are pointed out. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Philosophy of PhysicsMartin CurdRoberto Torretti. The Philosophy of Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xvi + 512. Cloth, $64.95. Paper, $23.95.This is the first volume in a new Cambridge series, "The Evolution of Modern Philosophy." It is a historical work, tracing the interaction between physics and philosophy from the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century through general relativity and quantum mechanics in the twentieth century. The (...) emphasis is on the philosophy in physics (rather than philosophizing about physics) and, with the exceptions noted below, the focus is on scientists (scientist-philosophers in many cases) rather than philosophers outside of science. Most of the book is about the conceptual and mathematical development of the core branches of physics (mainly mechanics, but also geometry, thermodynamics, and field theory). There are seven chapters plus three supplements giving the mathematical essentials of vector analysis, lattice theory, and topology.The hero of chapter one is Galileo who, more than anyone else prior to Newton, set physics on its modern path towards mathematization and away from Aristotle. Also discussed in chapter one are Descartes, Huyghens, and Leibniz. Chapter two is devoted to Newton (both the foundations of Newtonian mechanics and the derivation of the law of universal gravitation) and follows the development of analytical mechanics up to Lagrange and Hamilton. Chapter three, appropriately entitled "Kant," is the only chapter devoted to a philosopher. After a brief discussion of Leibniz, Berkeley, and Kant's pre-critical writings, it covers the important scientific topics in the Critique of Pure Reason (space, time, the three Analogies) but avoids the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (referring the reader to Michael Friedman's Kant and the Exact Sciences). Chapter four looks at scientific developments in three areas that proved to be important for twentieth-century physics: non-Euclidean geometry from Lobachevsky to Riemann, electromagnetic field theory (Maxwell), and thermal physics (classical thermodynamics, the kinetic theory, and statistical mechanics) from Carnot to Boltzmann. The chapter concludes, somewhat untidily, with a section on four philosophers of science (Whewell, Peirce, Mach, and Duhem), selected, we are told, because of their influence on philosophy of science in the second half of the twentieth century. (For the "two great philosopher-scientists" Helmholtz and Poincaré, the reader is referred to Torretti's earlier books, Philosophy of Geometry from Riemann to Poincaré, and Relativity and Geometry.) Chapter five covers both the special and general theory of relativity. After a masterful exposition of the special theory and its Minkowski spacetime representation, the usual topics of philosophical interest are discussed; these include the conventionality of simultaneity thesis, the twin paradox, the relativistic concept of mass, and determinism. The rather brief treatment of the general theory is, unavoidably, mathematically demanding and carries the subject through to recent inflationary cosmological models. Chapter six (also mathematically demanding at times) examines the development and structure of quantum mechanics, aptly praised as "one of the most elegant creations of the human spirit" (340). Torretti wisely ignores the complexities of quantum field theory since the philosophical problems discussed—measurement, the EPR paradox, the interpretation of the y-function—remain when quantum mechanics is made Lorentz invariant; but he urges philosophers of science to follow the lead of Michael Redhead and [End Page 602] Paul Teller in exploring its metaphysical ramifications. Of special note are the author's trenchant criticisms of attempts to solve the quantum mysteries by Bohr (complementarity), Bohm (hidden variables), Putnam (quantum logic), and Everett (the many worlds interpretation). The book concludes with the author's reflections on issues in the philosophy of science. Torretti defends the structuralist explication of physical theories (more familiarly known as the semantic conception or the model-theoretic view) that informs much of his book, arguing that it succeeds where the "received view" of logical empiricism failed while avoiding Kuhnian incommensurability—"a pseudoproblem that made philosophy of science the laughing stock of practicing physicists" (404). The chapter ends with an attack on inductive logic: "one of the blindest alleys in twentieth-century philosophy" (437).The writing is admirably clear and the author has done a commendable job of explaining the arguments of historical scientists while presenting their theories in a clear... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Language, Thought, and LogicGabriele PooleLanguage, Thought, and Logic, by John M. Ellis; x & 163 pp. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993, $29.95.It is John Ellis’s contention that notwithstanding the enormous amount of energy that has gone into language studies not very much progress has been achieved and our theory of language remains vastly fragmented and contradictory. Language, Thought, and Logic is presented as an effort to overcome this (...) impasse. Many ideas are discussed, but the fundamental themes are the following four: the priority of categorization over communication, the functional nature of most categories, the attack on the severance of grammar from meaning which characterizes generative grammarians, and the dismissal of the debate on the relationship between language and thought as a meaningless issue.In chapters two and three, Ellis—after having convincingly argued for the logical priority of (language induced) categorization over communication—proceeds to illustrate the difference between “real” and “functional” categories. He states that a few categories, such as chemical classes, have their base in “reality.” Most categories, however, (Ellis uses the example of poison) are not based on intrinsic characteristics of its members (poisons differ widely in chemical structure) but on the collective purposes of the speakers (identifying dangerous substances). The former are “real” categories, the latter functional ones, and on the basis of this opposition Ellis attacks “naive realists” who claim that most linguistic categories are grounded in the extra-linguistic world. Ellis’s dichotomy however is not fully convincing: reality, of course, includes human beings and their interactions with the world. Once we concede that the chemical structure of a given substance is a real fact, then we have to admit that the interaction of a given substance with the human body is equally “real,” and [End Page 142] that a category based on a given type of interaction is grounded in “reality” just as one based on a given type of chemical structure.Chapter five instead is devoted to the traditional question of the relationship between thought and language. Ellis’s contention is that this discussion is in itself logically absurd, since language is an essential part of thought. This “initial logical misstep” inevitably leads thinkers such as John Lyons, Max Black, Eric Lenneberg, and no doubt countless others, to “astonishing” and “bewildering” statements, pseudoproblems,” and “comic” errors (pp. 56–58). In this case, too, Ellis’s position is not particularly convincing, and one wishes that he had devoted some of his unforgiving examination of the logical integrity of other people’s positions to his own arguments. For readers are bound to ask themselves why on earth does the fact that language is part of thought make it “not possible” to speak of the relationship between the two. Is it logically “not possible” to speak of the relationship of the part to the whole? Is it “not possible,” for example, to speak of the relationship of the heart to the rest of the human body?In general, by denying the possibility of discussing the relationship of thought and language, Ellis ends up completely ignoring the tension between the more standardized and collective aspects of language (grammar, and denotation, in particular) and the various ways it becomes articulated within individuals, through its inevitable enmeshment in their different experiences. This is a pity, because in many ways Ellis is trying to carve a commendable path between the Scylla of “deep structures” and the Charybdis of “linguistic determinism,” between the severance of language from meaning, and their absolute identification. It is perhaps inevitable that in shying away from the latter peril he ends up contradicting himself. After having declared the logical impossibility of speaking of the influence of the structure of language on thought, he subsequently states that it is certainly not true that everything in our mental life is completely determined by the structure of our language” (p. 61).Ultimately one is left with the impression that what would have best been offered as a refinement and integration of other positions has been polemically presented as a radical alternative, with the risk of helping to perpetuate the fragmentation of linguistic studies it was meant to overcome. Thus, as far as... (shrink)