Since Protagoras' classic “man is the measure of all things,” claims of relativism and counter-claims have been tendered. The nineteenth century saw Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Westermarck, Pareto, Marx, and others, suggesting that institutions, customs, moral codes, and the like, are “relative” both to the culture and to the time. At the crest of this wave of “relativism” surged a vicious claim: that truth and knowledge itself were merely functions of particular conditions. The “validity” of knowledge was said to be at the (...) whim of historic, social factors. Not only is no theory really true; no particular statement is ever so. Not only is no theory or statement really true; no theory of knowledge has thus far ever been free from the bias of its genesis. There have been no absolute insights for epistemology. Or so, at least, it was claimed. (shrink)

In a recent paper I criticized the pragmatist theory of truth from the frame of reference of modern logical positivism. By showing the similarity between Karl Mannheim's claims of epistemological relevance for sociology of knowledge and certain pragmatist notions concerning truth I made criticism of the latter with the former. The aim of this present paper is to extend and elaborate upon those critical remarks regarding pragmatism both in order to answer objections raised since and to clarify what was said (...) there. Moreover, the evaluation of the pragmatist theory of truth may have been surprising to some since so much lately has been made of the points of agreement between pragmatism and modern positivism. It is thus also my intent to delimit agreements and disagreements and compare the respective emphases in pragmatist and positivist thought concerning the nature of truth. (shrink)

Prompted by Alfred Landé's appraisal of individual indeterminacy in both ordinary and quantum games of chance, this paper suggests an alternative assessment in terms of the model-structure of physical theory. Whereas Landé explains such indeterminacy by appeal to "the Leibnitzian principle" of causal continuity, the author sees no need for such a special explanation. Instead, he indicates how the partial interpretation of the kinetic and quantum models limits us to statistical generalities--to limited "areas of relative chance." The alleged indeterminism of (...) physics thus resides in the model and its partial interpretation in the sense that the statistical nature of statements about "the next throw" or about individual particles is built into the model that enables the scientist to talk at all about such outcomes or entities. (shrink)

Can history be objective? Is history a science or humanistic discipline? What is its subject-matter? These three questions are variations on a single theme—the objectivity of history—which I want to explore. Faced with the welter of claims and counter-claims regarding objectivity in history, there is need to be explicit about one's approach to these claims. My prime endeavor in this paper is to reformulate these questions from my scheme of reference. I want to consider the objectivity of historical knowledge from (...) a framework that does justice both to philosophic and methological issues and to historical knowledge-claims themselves. How this philosophic framework be labeled is immaterial. What is alone important is that it does distinguish philosophy proper from both science and its methodological analysis. Confusion between the three, I believe, frequently generates problems out of whole cloth. The result is that obfuscation of issues present in much recent literature concerning history. (shrink)

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There are several attempts to build a theory of art starting from analytical philosophy, the best of which is probably the one provided by Nelson Goodman. Pavel's work is the first attempt to write a theory of literature from the premisses of analytical philosophy. Pavel, whose earlier work was influenced among others by Eco, Greimas, Hrushovsky and Brooke-Rose, begins with an analysis of recent philosophical positions regarding fiction and distinguishes on one side the hard-line "segregationist" position of Bertrand Russell which (...) denies "nonexistent individuals any ontological status" and maintains that any "statements on such individuals are false on logical grounds", a view more moderately followed by P. F. Strawson and G. Ryle. On the other side he finds the more tolerant and "integrationist" theories, derived from the views of Alexis von Meinong, according to which every kind of object is "equally endowed with being, although not necessarily with existence". Pavel clearly inclines towards broadly Meinongian theories but he would like to qualify them in a number of ways. First he finds it useful to speak, like premodern cosmologists, of "degrees of being". Furthermore he outlines a "speech-act theory of fiction" in which the measure of a genuine statement would be the epistemological adherence to the linguistic practice of a community or the correspondence to a "coordinate system" as Quine would say. (shrink)

At W.D. 202–12 Hesiod relates his ανος for the edification of the recalcitrant βασιλες, who must themselves admit the truth of the fable's moral . A hawk has seized a nightingale, and crushes her cries of misery by saying that she is in the claws of one who is πολλν ρείων and who is therefore at liberty to dispense with her as he pleases: anyone who tries to resist κρείσσονες is mad, for he has no chance of winning and merely (...) adds physical pain to the shame of defeat. Just what were the βασιλες to have made of this? Hesiod's most recent editor claims that ‘Hesiod does not manage to make it [the ανος] into a lesson for them [the kings]’, and ‘can only proceed by saying “Well, don't you behave like that” ’. (shrink)

At W.D. 202–12 Hesiod relates his ανος for the edification of the recalcitrant βασιλες, who must themselves admit the truth of the fable's moral. A hawk has seized a nightingale, and crushes her cries of misery by saying that she is in the claws of one who is πολλν ρείων and who is therefore at liberty to dispense with her as he pleases: anyone who tries to resist κρείσσονες is mad, for he has no chance of winning and merely adds (...) physical pain to the shame of defeat. Just what were the βασιλες to have made of this? Hesiod's most recent editor claims that ‘Hesiod does not manage to make it [the ανος] into a lesson for them [the kings]’, and ‘can only proceed by saying “Well, don't you behave like that” ’. (shrink)

IN a discussion of the reading in Lucan i. 231, Richard Bentley dismissed Grotius's suggestion Ariminon: ignes on the correct grounds that, like Virgil, Lucan avoids starting a new sentence or clause at the beginning of the sixth foot of the hexameter, except with a pair of monosyllables or with a word emphasized either by repetition or by a strong contrast.