Five days before his twenty-first birthday, Guillaume Apollinaire set out on an automobile trip that would in large part determine his future. Together with the Viscountess Elinor de Milhau, who had hired him to tutor her daughter in French, he left for Germany on August 21, 1901. Since the car averaged thirty kilometers an hour, it took them nine days to reach her villa on the Rhine, near Honnef. For the next year, Apollinaire tutored the daughter in the morning and (...) explored the picturesque area in the afternoon. Inspired by his new surroundings, he read voraciously and began to write a new kind of verse influenced by French Symbolism and German Romanticism. Apollinaire managed to combine a realistic form of lyric.. (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 6, September 2019, Page 664-666.

In this paper I argue that composition as identity entails unrestricted composition. I also briefly consider a new take on the special composition question.

In this paper, I provide an argument for pannormism, the view according to which there are normative properties all the way down. In particular, I argue for what I call the trickling down principle, which says that if there is a metaphysically basic normative property, then, if whatever instantiates it has a ground, that ground instantiates it as well.

For the faithful there is much to ponder. In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically.

Knowledge is good, ignorance is bad. So it seems, anyway. But in this dissertation, I argue that some ignorance is epistemically valuable. Sometimes, we should suspend judgment even though by believing we would achieve knowledge. In this apology for ignorance (ignorance, that is, of a certain kind), I defend the following four theses: 1) Sometimes, we should continue inquiry in ignorance, even though we are in a position to know the answer, in order to achieve more than mere knowledge (e.g. (...) understanding) while minimizing the effects of confirmation bias. 2) It’s false that we should believe every proposition such that we are guaranteed to be right about it (and even such that we are guaranteed to know it) if we believe it. 3) Being in a position to know is the norm of assertion: importantly, this does not require belief or (thereby) knowledge, and so proper assertion can survive speaker-ignorance. 4) It can be permissible and conversationally useful to tell audiences things that it is logically impossible for them to come to know: Proper assertion can survive (necessary) audience-side ignorance. Cumulatively, this project suggests that, properly understood, ignorance has an important role to play in the good epistemic life. (shrink)

This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in the (...) best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth. (shrink)

Now much revised since its first appearance in 1941, this book, despite its brevity, is notable for its scope and rigor.

With his customary incisiveness, W. V. Quine presents logic as the product of two factors, truth and grammar-but argues against the doctrine that the logical truths are true because of grammar or language. Rather, in presenting a general theory of grammar and discussing the boundaries and possible extensions of logic, Quine argues that logic is not a mere matter of words.

Quine's areas of interest are panoramic, as this lively book amply demonstrates.

These essays, along with several manuscripts published here for the first time, offer a more complete and highly defined picture than ever before of one of the ...

The qualities that distinguished him in any discussion are on clear display in this volume, which features him in dialogue with his predecessors and peers, his ...

I first explore the notion of the world's being such that everything in it is a proper part. I then explore the notion of the world's being such that everything in it both is and has a proper part. Given two well recognized assumptions, I argue that both notions represent genuine metaphysical possibilities. Finally I consider, but dismiss, some possible objections.

It is gratifying to see that philosophers' continued interest in Words and Objections has been so strong as to motivate a paperback edition. This is gratifying because it vindicates the editors' belief in the permanent im portance of Quine's philosophy and in the value of the papers com menting on it which were collected in our volume. Apart from a couple of small corrections, only one change has been made. The list of Professor Quine's writings has been brought up to (...) date. The editors cannot claim any credit for this improvement, however. We have not tried to imitate the Library of Living Philosophers volumes and to include Professor Quine's autobiography in this volume, but we are fortunate to publish here his brand-new auto bibliography. 1975 THE EDITORS TABLE OF CONTENTS V PREFACE 1 EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION 1. 1. C. SMAR T / Quine's Philosophy of Science 3 GILBERT HARMAN / An Introduction to 'Translation and Meaning', Chapter Two of Word and Object 14 ERIK STENIUS / Beginning with Ordinary Things 27 NOAM CHOMSKY / Quine's Empirical Assumptions 53 1AAKKO HINTIKKA / Behavioral Criteria of Radical Translation 69 BARRY STROUD / Conventionalism and the Indeterminacy of Translation 82 P. F. STRA WSON / Singular Terms and Predication 97 118 H. P. GRICE / Vacuous Names P. T. (shrink)

Many metaphysicians accept the view that, necessarily, any collection of things composes some further thing. Necessarily, my arms, legs, head, and torso compose my body; necessarily, my arms, my heart, and the table compose something y; necessarily, my heart and the sun compose something z; and so on. 1 Though there have been a few recent attempts to argue against the necessity of this principle of unrestricted composition the consensus is that if it is true, it is necessarily true. 2In (...) what follows I will join the few dissenters and argue that this principle of unrestricted composition is not necessarily true. If I am right, it follows that either some principle of restricted composition is necessarily true or the existence of composite objects is a contingent matter. I will end by indicating why the latter option seems the most plausible. 3I proceed by reductio. Assume the following: Unrestricted composition is necessarily true.That is, assume that necessarily, any collection of things composes something. Then, necessarily, the collection of everything composes something. That is, necessarily, there exists a universal object U having all things as parts, not itself being a proper part of anything. Hence, by our assumption, we get: There must be a universal object U.It is important to note that this is so whether the world is finite or infinite. Holding that in worlds of finite cardinality there is a universal object U while in worlds of infinite cardinality there is no universal object U amounts to accepting a restricted form of composition. 4Now consider the following scenario. Everything in this world is spatially extended and just one half of something else that is also spatially extended. That is, for any thing in this world, there is something else of which …. (shrink)

In the course of the discussion, Professor Quine pinpoints the difficulties involved in translation, brings to light the anomalies and conflicts implicit in our ...

In this paper I argue that we need to take irreducibly plural logic more seriously in metaphysical debates due to the fact that the verdict of many metaphysical debates hangs on it. I give two examples. The main example I focus on is the debate recently revived by Jonathan Schaffer over the fundamental cardinality of the world. I show how the three main arguments provided by Schaffer are unsound in virtue of an employment of plural logic. The second example I (...) give is a more general issue about the possibility of emergent properties of mereological wholes. Employing plural logic there is a new way to understand such cases. The upshot is that plural logic greatly matters to metaphysics and hence can no longer be ignored the way it has in this area. (shrink)

I develop and defend a version of panpsychism that avoids the combination problem by appealing to plural collective properties.

This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

In this paper, I present the thesis of Composition as Identity as I think it should be understood, and reply to some objections to it. My aim is not to argue that CAI is true, but to show how CAI can be true, and push the debate forward in the direction I think it must and should go in light of some new objections.

W. V. Quine was one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century American analytic philosophy. Although he wrote predominantly in English, in Brazil in 1942 he gave a series of lectures on logic and its philosophy in Portuguese, subsequently published as the book O Sentido da Nova Lógica. The book has never before been fully translated into English, and this volume is the first to make its content accessible to Anglophone philosophers. Quine would go on to develop revolutionary ideas about (...) semantic holism and ontology, and this book provides a snapshot of his views on logic and language at a pivotal stage of his intellectual development. The volume also includes an essay on logic which Quine also published in Portuguese, together with an extensive historical-philosophical essay by Frederique Janssen-Lauret. The valuable and previously neglected works first translated in this volume will be essential for scholars of twentieth-century philosophy. (shrink)

Divine Foundationalism is the thesis that God is the source of all things (apart from God hirself). I clarify and defend the thesis, before I consider the main arguments for and against it.

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

I show that a particular version of Hume's Dictum together with the falsity of Composition as Identity entails an incoherency, so either that version of Hume's Dictum is false or Composition as Identity is true. I conditionally defend the particular version of Hume's Dictum in play, and hence conditionally conclude that Composition as Identity is true. I end by suggesting an alternative way out for a persistent foe of Composition as Identity, namely mereological nihilism.

Roughly, the problem of the Trinity is the problem of how God can be one and yet be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which are three, not one. That one thing is identical with three distinct things seems to violate traditional laws of identity. I propose a solution to this problem according to which it is just an ordinary claim of one-many identity. For example, one pair of shoes is identical with two shoes; and my one body (...) is identical with its six limbs of arms, legs, head, and torso. The pair of shoes is not identical with each one of the two shoes, nor is my body identical with each one of its six limbs, but rather identical with all of them taken together, or collectively. I argue that the problem of the Trinity should be understood accordingly: God is identical with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit collectively, but not with each one of them distributively. According to the way I develop this proposal, no traditional laws of identity are violated, but merely generalized in an intuitive way. I argue that this is compatible with Christian Orthodoxy as given by the Athanasian Creed. I end by responding to some anticipated objections. (shrink)

Recent publications debate the value of inconsistency arguments. Here, I argue that 'Cause of Death Arguments' - inconsistency arguments that claim miscarriage causes death far more often than induced abortion - are unsound or invalid. 'Miscarriage' ambiguously refers both to intrauterine death, an outcome that does not itself cause death, and preterm delivery, which only sometimes causes death. The referential ambiguity also obscures actions people do take to prevent 'miscarriage.' When using the most plausible versions of each premise, these arguments (...) equivocate. Thus, they cannot prove anything. However, missing the equivocation also causes those responding to Cause of Death Arguments to make unconvincing arguments; they inadvertently make or grant false claims themselves. To avoid such mistakes and expose the merely rhetorical power of Cause of Death Arguments, philosophers should replace 'miscarriage' with disambiguated terms. Doing so should lead people across the abortion debate to finally abandon the Cause of Death Argument. (shrink)

This article will study a class of deduction systems that allow for a limited use of the modus ponens method of deduction. We will show that it is possible to devise axiom systems α that can recognize their consistency under a deduction system D provided that: (1) α treats multiplication as a 3-way relation (rather than as a total function), and that (2) D does not allow for the use of a modus ponens methodology above essentially the levels of Π1 (...) and Σ1 formulae. Part of what will make this boundary-case exception to the Second Incompleteness Theorem interesting is that we will also characterize generalizations of the Second Incompleteness Theorem that take force when we only slightly weaken the assumptions of our boundary-case exceptions in any of several further directions. (shrink)

Despite significant efforts to support those bereaved by intrauterine death, they remain susceptible to avoidable psychological harm such as disenfranchised grief, misplaced guilt, and emotional shock. This is in part because the words available to describe intrauterine death—“miscarriage,” “spontaneous abortion,” and “pregnancy loss”—are referentially ambiguous. Despite appearing to refer to one event, they can refer to two distinct events: the baby’s death and his preterm delivery. Disenfranchised grief increases when people understand “miscarriage” as the physical process of preterm delivery alone, (...) for this obscures the baby’s death and excludes non-gestational parents, such as the father. Additionally, focusing on the delivery reinforces the mistaken idea that a gestational mother bears responsibility for her baby’s death, increasing misplaced guilt. When these terms instead shift the focus to the baby’s intrauterine death rather than the preterm delivery, they can obscure the physically difficult and often traumatic experience women have when they deliver their dead children, leaving women shocked by preterm delivery’s physical reality. Given their outsized role in framing the bereaved’s experiences, and their duty to avoid harming their patients, healthcare practitioners in particular should take special care to discuss intrauterine death and preterm delivery appropriately with patients and their families. Changing language to describe intrauterine death and preterm delivery clearly and precisely helps mitigate disenfranchised grief, misplaced guilt, and shock, while also helping to reframe the social response to intrauterine death, making it more obvious why certain steps, such as allowing bereavement leave following an intrauterine death, promote healing. (shrink)