Relational, operator, and predicate systems are distinguished on the basis that they correspond to the three possible pair-wise bracketings into two constituents of the three parts of a proposition: relation, subject, and object. It is asserted that the verbal propositional modality (left hemisphere) uses a predicate grammar, while the spatial-image operational modality (right hemisphere) uses an operator grammar. Verbal propositional memory has the capacity for extensive propositional embedding while spatial operational memory does not.

Written not by a journalist or politician but rather by a theology professor with a Ph.D. in New Testament studies, Voting by the Bible: The Economic and Foreign Policy Issues begins with the assumption that God intended the Bible to give guidance to every area of life£including how governments should function. Derived from author Wayne Grudemþs magisterial Politics£According to the Bible, this book highlights those economic and foreign-policy issues that have dominated political debate recently. Throughout, author Wayne Grudem (...) supports political positions that would be called more 'conservative' than 'liberal.' However, 'it is important to understand that I see these positions as flowing out of the Bible's teachings rather than positions I hold prior to, or independently of, those biblical teachings,' he writes. 'My primary purpose in the book is not to be liberally or conservative, or Democrat or Republican, but to explain a biblical worldview and a biblical perspective on issues of politics, law, and government.' Concise yet carefully argued, this book is a must-read for any Christian concerned about current debates over the economy, the size and role of government, and the best way forward out of the current recession. Not every reader will agree with the book's conclusions. But by grounding his analysis deeply on Scripture, Grudem has equipped Christians to better understand and respond to some of today's key political debates wisely and in a manner consistent with their primary citizenship as members and ambassadors of the kingdom of God" -- Publisher description. (shrink)

Abortion and euthanasia are among the most controversial topics in society today. Abortion is simply any action that intentionally causes the death and removal from the womb of an unborn child. Likewise, Euthanasia is the act of intentionally ending the life of a person who is elderly, terminally ill, or suffering from some incurable injury or disease. In this book, Dr. Wayne Grudem attempts to give an accurate summary of biblical teachings related to abortion and euthanasia, and also to (...) represent fairly the arguments of people who disagree with his positions. (shrink)

A comprehensive political philosophy, arguing for Christian involvement based on biblical teachings and a Christian worldview. --from publisher description.

To avoid problems with classical theories that take our mental states to represent in virtue of what propositions they represent, and more recent theories that reverse the representational priority, Grzankowski and Buchanan (Philos Stud 176:3159–3178, 2019) propose a “cheap” theory of propositions that does not assume that they are representational entities. They believe that everything there is to know about propositions is provided by the principle that token mental states have the same propositional content if they represent the same things (...) in the same way. I show that the postulated correlation of propositions with mental states does not suffice for propositions to have standard properties like truth values or constituent structures, or to secure the truth of their other basic principle “essentiality of content.” Their theory tells us so little about what propositions are that there is no reason to believe that propositions are object of mental states, or that they exist at all. (shrink)

This philosophical treatise on the foundations of semantics is a systematic effort to clarify, deepen, and defend the classical doctrine that words are conventional signs of mental states, principally thoughts and ideas, and that meaning consists in their expression. This expression theory of meaning is developed by carrying out the Gricean program, explaining what it is for words to have meaning in terms of speaker meaning, and what it is for a speaker to mean something in terms of intention. But (...) Grice's own formulations are rejected and alternatives developed. The foundations of the expression theory are explored at length, and the author develops the theory of thought as a fundamental cognitive phenomenon distinct from belief and desire, argues for the thesis that thoughts have parts, and identifies ideas or concepts with parts of thoughts. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

There is abundant evidence of contextual variation in the use of “S knows p.” Contextualist theories explain this variation in terms of semantic hypotheses that refer to standards of justification determined by “practical” features of either the subject’s context (Hawthorne & Stanley) or the ascriber’s context (Lewis, Cohen, & DeRose). There is extensive linguistic counterevidence to both forms. I maintain that the contextual variation of knowledge claims is better explained by common pragmatic factors. I show here that one is variable (...) strictness. “S knows p” is commonly used loosely to implicate “S is close enough to knowing p for contextually indicated purposes.” A pragmatic account may use a range of semantics, even contextualist. I use an invariant semantics on which knowledge requires complete justification. This combination meets the Moorean constraint as well as any linguistic theory should, and meets the intuition constraint much better than contextualism. There is no need for ad hoc error theories. The variation in conditions of assertability and practical rationality is better explained by variably strict constraints. It will follow that “S knows p” is used loosely to implicate that the condition for asserting “p” and using it in practical reasoning are satisfied. (shrink)

This philosophical treatise on the foundations of semantics is a systematic effort to clarify, deepen and defend the classical doctrine that words are conventional signs of mental states, principally thoughts and ideas, and that meaning consists in their expression. This expression theory of meaning is developed by carrying out the Gricean programme, explaining what it is for words to have meaning in terms of speaker meaning, and what it is for a speaker to mean something in terms of intention. But (...) Grice's own formulations are rejected and alternatives developed. The foundations of the expression theory are explored at length, and the author develops the theory of thought as a fundamental cognitive phenomenon distinct from belief and desire, argues for the thesis that thoughts have parts, and identifies ideas or concepts with parts of thoughts. This book will appeal to students and professionals interested in the philosophy of language. (shrink)

My goal is to define intending. I defend the view that believing and desiring something are necessary for intending it. They are not sufficient, however, for some things we both expect and want (e.g., the sun to rise tomorrow) are unintendable. Restricting the objects of intention to our own future actions is unwarranted and unhelpful. Rather, the belief involved in intending must be based on the desire in a certain way. En route, I argue that expected but unwanted consequences are (...) not intended, examine the two senses of "desire," distinguish intending from being willing, and relate intending to a variety of other propositional at? titudes. (shrink)

Wayne Davis presents a highly original approach to the foundations of semantics, showing how the so-called "expression" theory of meaning can handle names and other problematic cases of nondescriptive meaning. The fact that thoughts have parts ("ideas" or "concepts") is fundamental: Davis argues that like other unstructured words, names mean what they do because they are conventionally used to express atomic or basic ideas. In the process he shows that many pillars of contemporary philosophical semantics, from twin earth arguments (...) to the necessity of identity, are unfounded. (shrink)

In part 4 of Meaning, Expression, and Thought, Davis rejects what he calls Fregean ideational theories, according to which the meaning of an expression is an idea; and then presents his own account, which states that, e.g., the meaning of 'Primzahl' in German is the property of meaning prime number. Before casting doubt on the latter ontology of meanings, I come to Frege's defence by pointing out that he was not an advocate of the position Davis named after him because (...) Fregean senses are not lexical meanings and Fregean thoughts are not types of mental events. (shrink)

Biblical theology ought to find relevant to its task the whole story, if it can be learned, of the formation and reformation of the people for whom and by whom the biblical writings were made.

Extensive research has documented the harmful effects associated with working for a narcissistic supervisor. However, little effort has been made to investigate ways for victims to alleviate the burdens associated with exposure to such aversive persons. Building on the tenets of conservation of resources theory and the documented efficacy of functional assets to combat job-related stress, we hypothesized that subordinates’ resource management ability would buffer the detrimental impact of narcissistic supervisors on affective, cognitive, and behavioral work outcomes for subordinates. We (...) found support for our hypotheses across three independent samples of US workers (N = 187; 199; 136). Specifically, higher levels of subordinate resource management ability attenuated the harmful effects of supervisor narcissism on employee-reported emotional exhaustion, job tension, depressed mood, task performance, and citizenship behavior. Conversely, these relationships further deteriorated for subordinates with lower levels of resource management ability. Overall, our research contributes to the literature that, although extensively documenting the harmful ramifications of narcissism in organizations, has neglected to investigate potentially mitigating factors. (shrink)

A project of the Gandhi Centennial Committee of Southern Illinois University, the book outlines the basic tenets of Gandhian philosophy as interpreted by Western thinkers, deals with problems of American education, and offers some reflec­tions on what kinds of solutions may be posed by educators, primarily at the university level. The Foreword and Epilogue are by two distinguished Indian educators, _K. L. Shrimali_, Vice-chancellor, and _N. A. Nikam_, former Vice-chancellor, University of Mysore.

According to act theories, propositions are structured cognitive act‐types. Act theories appear to make propositions inherently representational and truth‐evaluable, and to provide solutions to familiar problems with alternative theories, including Frege’s and Russell’s problems, and the third‐realm and unity problems. Act theories have critical problems of their own, though: acts as opposed to their objects are not truth evaluable, not structured in the right way, not expressed by sentences, and not the objects of propositional attitudes. I show how identifying propositions (...) with other cognitive event‐types, namely thoughts, has the perceived virtues of act theories without the defects. (shrink)

It has often been said that 'desire' is ambiguous. I do not believe the case for this has been made thoroughly enough, however. The claim typically occurs in the course of defending controversial philosophical theses, such as that intention entails desire, where it tends to look ad hoc. There is need, therefore, for a thorough and single-minded exploration of the ambiguity. I believe the results will be more profound than might be suspected.

This article uncovers the logical structure of Russell’s negative facts, which he postulated in his 1919 lectures on logical atomism as a way of accounting for the truth of negative propositions. It is argued that he subsequently abandoned his belief in the existence of negative facts because the latter could not be reconciled with his Principle of Acquaintance, a fundamental corner stone of his logical atomism. A proposed fine tuning of this Principle shows that the postulation of negative facts represents (...) the best solution to the problem of negation which his logical atomism must face. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In recent work, Scott Soames has declared that we need a new conception of propositions to overcome critical objections to traditional theories of semantics and propositional attitudes. Propositions must be cognitive to account for their inherent intentionality, structure, and epistemic accessibility, and to overcome Frege’s and Russell’s problems. I have previously worked out a foundational semantics in which cognitive propositions are what sentences express. My objective in this paper is to identify some of the limitations of Soames’s theory, and (...) show how they can be overcome within the cognitive framework. Soames’s conception of propositions is needlessly encumbered by identifying them with acts rather than objects. Soames has not fully exploited the possibilities opened up by embracing cognitive propositions, and is still too attached to Russellian propositions and Millian semantics. As a result, his conception of the constituents of propositions is untenable, and his semantics still faces Frege’s and Russell’s problem, which are easily avoidable with the resources of cognitive propositions. Soames was led astray by a mistaken assumption about transparent attitude reports. (shrink)

We wish to examine Hartshorne's ontological argument, as formulated in his discussion entitled “The Irreducibly Modal Structure of the Argument.“ The argument is as follows.We wish to show that, if the above argument is to work, “q” must be analytic. If it is analytic, Hartshorne is saddled with a contradiction. Furthermore, if “q” is analytic, the argument is irrelevant.