Margaret MacDonald (1907–56) was a central figure in the history of early analytic philosophy in Britain due to both her editorial work as well as her own writings. While her later work on aesthetics and political philosophy has recently received attention, her early writings in the 1930s present a coherent and, for its time, strikingly original blend of common-sense and scientific philosophy. In these papers, MacDonald tackles the central problems of philosophy of her day: verification, the problem of induction, and (...) the relationship between philosophical and scientific method. MacDonald’s philosophy of science starts from the principle that we should carefully analyse the elements of scientific practice (particularly its temporal features) and the ways that scientists describe that practice. That is, she applies the techniques of ordinary language philosophy to actual scientific language. MacDonald shows how ‘scientific common-sense’ is inconsistent with both of the dominant schools of philosophy of her day. Bringing MacDonald back into the story of analytic philosophy corrects the impression that in early analytic philosophy, there are fundamental dichotomies between the style of Moore and Wittgenstein, on the one hand, and the Vienna Circle on the other. (shrink)

Nous publions sous ce titre la traduction française de l'essai philosophique de Kurt Gödel intitulé: «Is Mathematics Syntax of Language?» Inédit jusqu'à présent, l'original paraîtra dans le 3e volume des Collected Works de Gödel, dont la publication est imminente. Nous savons par Hao Wang que, le 15 mai 1953, Paul Arthur Schilpp avait invité Gödel à apporter sa contribution au volume consacré à Carnap dans The Library of Living Philosophers. Le manuscrit de Gödel «Carnap and the Ontology of Mathematics», devait (...) être remis au plus tard le 2 avril 1954. Dés le 2 juillet 1953, Gödel donnait son accord à Schilpp pour la rédaction d'un article intitulé «Some Observations on the Nominalistic View of the Nature of Mathematics.» Cependant, le volume consacré à Carnap paraîtra en 1963 sans qu'y figure la contribution de Gödel. En effet — toujours selon Wang — Gödel avait informé Schilpp, le 2 février 1959, qu'il renonçait à l'envoi de l'article, dont il avait composé, surtout en 1954–1955, plusieur s versions sous le titre «Is Mathematics Syntax of Language?» Pour expliquer cet abandon, Wang avance les raisons suivantes: En premier lieu, Gödel était bien convaincu d'avoir réfuté la thése syntaxique, mais il n'était pas satisfait de son argumentation en faveur du platonisme. Deuxiémement, les critiques de Gödel s'adressent aux théses soutenues par Carnap en 1934 plutôt qu'à celles que ce dernier défendra vingt ans aprés, et qui paraissent moins hostiles au platonisme de son interlocuteur. II pouvait paraître douteux, en troisieme lieu, que Carnap ait eu le temps de rédiger, en 1959, la réponse qu'il aurait du faire, conformément aux régies de la collection, à Gödel. Or, en 1943 déjà, Gödel avait voulu retirer sa contribution au volume consacré à Russell dans la même serie, parce que ce dernier n'avait pu répondre à l'article de Gödel dont la rédaction lui avait été communiquée trop tardivement. (shrink)

The paper addresses the question of the nature and limits of philosophical thought experiments. On the one hand, experimental philosophers are right to claim that we need much more laboratory work in order to have more reliable thought experiments, but on the other hand a naturalism that is too radical is incapable of clarifying the peculiarity of thought experiments in philosophy. Starting from a historico-critical reconstruction of Kant’s concept of the “experiments of pure reason”, this paper outlines an account of (...) thought experiments in philosophy that tries to reconcile the thesis of a principled difference between scientific and philosophical TEs with the position of a methodological naturalism that does not admit any difference in kind between the methods of science and of philosophy. (shrink)

Philosophy and science have always striven to make sense of the world, continuously influencing each other in the process. Their interplay paved the way for neurophilosophy, which harnesses neuroscientific insights to address traditionally philosophical questions. Given the rapid neuroscientific and technological advances in recent years, this paper argues that philosophers who wish to tackle intractable philosophical problems and influence public discourse and policies should engage in neuro-techno-philosophy. This novel type of inquiry describes the transdisciplinary endeavor of philosophers, (neuro)scientists, and others (...) to anticipate the societal implications of the impending transformations of subjects and theorizers. While human enhancement is likely to irreversibly change what it means to be human, disruptive technologies might lead to the emergence of artificial intelligent agents and human-machine hybrids. The paper predicts that neuro-techno-philosophy will be indispensable to understanding and engaging with these game-changing innovations and thus play a pivotal role in the future of philosophy. (shrink)

Arthur Pap’s work played an important role in the development of the analytic tradition. This role goes beyond the merely historical fact that Pap’s views of dispositional and modal concepts were influential. As a sympathetic critic of logical empiricism, Pap, like Quine, saw a deep tension in logical empiricism at its very best in the work of Carnap. But Pap’s critique of Carnap is quite different from Quine’s, and represents the discovery of limits beyond which empiricism cannot go, where there (...) lies nothing other than intuitive knowledge of logic itself. Pap’s arguments for this intuitive knowledge anticipate Etchemendy’s recent critique of the model-theoretic account of logical consequence. Pap’s work also anticipates prominent developments in the contemporary neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics championed by Wright and Hale. Finally, Pap’s major philosophical preoccupation, the concepts of necessity and possibility, provides distinctive solutions and perspectives on issues of contemporary concern in the metaphysics of modality. In particular, Pap’s account of modality allows us to see the significance of Kripke’s well-known arguments on necessity and apriority in a new light. (shrink)