In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Plot Taxonomies and IntentionalityJon AdamsEver popular among the various topics occupying non-academic conversations about literature—such as the identity of the real author of the plays attributed to "Shakespeare"—is the notion that there exists only a finite number of storylines, and that all the stories we know are only ever complications or rehearsals of these few, elementary plots. What is the status of that claim? The issue gains a renewed (...) relevance in light of literary criticism's recent interest in the possibilities of employing evolutionary psychology as a means of naturalising literary study, but interest in plot taxonomies stretches a long way back. Why might we seek to categorise plots into a finite taxonomy? And what are the implications of the claim if true?Organising literature into any classificatory scheme is an attempt to achieve something like the coherence that the natural sciences have achieved—in chemistry and physics with the composition of the periodic table, and in biology with Linnaean classification. Much of science's epistemic prestige is rooted in the enormous success with which they have organised and categorised their subject of study. In searching for mechanism and pattern, the natural sciences proceed confidently from the belief that those mechanisms and patterns exist to be discovered, and that (relatively) simple rules underlie the manifest complexity of natural phenomena.Unfortunately, the study of literary fiction has no such security. There are two senses here in which we can talk of literature being patterned. At the micro-level, we have the question of whether individual works can be thought of as internally patterned. Usually, this type of patterning is easy enough to establish and recognise, and something the author is (or ought to be) in a good position to control. But, of course, internal [End Page 102] structures are not always conspicuous, and readers faced with an overtly complex text, like Pound's Cantos, or Finnegans Wake, have no guarantee that there is sense to be made of it. Surface complexity may shield a profound and subtle architecture, or the work may be as unstructured, fragmentary, and chaotic as it initially appears. A frustrated Wayne C. Booth draws attention to the problem: "One can't be sure that Finnegans Wake is not a great novel; perhaps someday readers will discover that the complex structure they now dream of and quarrel about is a realizable structure, an experienced structure. I doubt it, but it may happen. Until then, each new intricacy discovered... reveals precisely nothing more than that: a new intricacy."1 What's missing is a conceptual centre around which overall coherence might be achieved from what had seemed to be unconnected parts. Even so, if this sort of centre cannot be found in the individual work, it may yet obtain between works. In other words, The Cantos or Finnegans Wake may yet occupy nodal roles in a larger system, within which they acquire a previously unrecognized unity and order. This type of organization is something the individual author is obviously in a much less suitable position to control. Nonetheless, mapping out this larger, macro-level order is a task that literary criticism might want to take on. There is the example Borges uses of how Kafka's work retrospectively confers a familial similarity upon previously unconnected works. The quality of being "Kafkaesque" is the only thing common to the pieces, but was not apparent (or rather—the paradox that excites Borges—did not exist) prior to Kafka's writing.2 This is the second sense in which literature might be thought of as patterned; that is, not within works, but across them. On the larger scale, is it possible that literature as a whole could be understood as patterned?The notion that literature can be understood "as a whole," and its corollary, that a literature so understood would submit to taxonomical classification, is an enduring one. Anthropologists and art historians have long acknowledged that there appear to be recurring themes, motifs, and commonalities across world cultures, and consequently, commonalities among the narratives those cultures construct and consume. Cataloguing these similarities has produced a variety of classificatory systems.In the mid-nineteenth century, German scholar Adolf... (shrink)

Zeno's paradoxes of motion are considered as challenges to the practice of describing motion in terms of continuous functions. A brief description of some work of adolf gruenbaum toward the resolution of these paradoxes is given. A new form of zeno's dichotomy paradox is described, And it is claimed that the paradox, In this form, Is not amenable to the explanations of gruenbaum. This is demonstrated by giving the new form of the paradox a second, More mathematical description. In (...) a short summary it is claimed that the challenges of zeno's paradoxes are still unanswered. (shrink)

According to some cosmologists, the big bang cosmogony and even the (now largely defunct) steady-state theory pose a scientifically insoluble problem of matter-energy creation. But I argue that the genuine problem of the origin of matter-energy or of the universe has been fallaciously transmuted into the pseudo-problem of creation by an external cause. A fortiori, it emerges that the initial "true" and "false" vacuum states of quantum cosmology do not vindicate biblical divine creation ex nihilo at all.

The last decade has witnessed the beginnings of a remarkable convergence of Husserlian phenonenology and analytic philosophy of language, and the present volumes provide original and important texts of the phenomenological philosophy of language. Powerfully influenced by the writings of the early Husserl, Reinach fashioned Husserl’s ideas into a rigorous analytical methodology of his own, which he applied in particular to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge, and to the philosophies of law and psychology. The central role of (...) the concept of state of affairs in Reinach’s philosophy will bring to mind immediately the formal ontology of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Reinach’s most significant contribution, however, is contained in his The a priori foundations of civil law (1913), above all in the detailed analysis of the a priori structure of the act of promising. This amounts to an elaborate phenomenological theory of speech acts which anticipates, and in some respects goes beyond, the later theories of Austin and Searle. The present edition is in two volumes. Volume 1, which includes a biographical and thematic introduction by the editors, contains critical editions of those pieces published by Reinach himself. Volume II is a collection of all those items in Reinach’s surviving Nachlass which are in publishable form, including a number of important pieces not hitherto obtainable on such themes as ethical predicates, speech acts (“soziale Akte”), perception and the theory of number, together with a comprehensive sketch of the problems in the theory of knowledge, logic and ethics. Appended to this is a text-critical apparatus which also contains extensive discussions of the origins and sources of the materials in question. (shrink)

It is a commonplace in the analytic geometry of physical space-time that an extended straight line segment, having positive length, is treated as “consisting of” unextended points, each of which has zero length. Analogously, time intervals of positive duration are resolved into instants, each of which has zero duration.

The foundation for a system of morals, this 1749 work is a landmark of moral and political thought. Its highly original theories of conscience, moral judgment, and virtue offer a reconstruction of the Enlightenment concept of social science, embracing both political economy and theories of law and government.

Cette traduction inedite de l'oeuvre principale d'Adolf Reinach (1883-1917) apporte des contributions fondamentales a divers champs de la connaissance. Disciple de Husserl, Reinach propose une interpretation du monde social qui engage la phenomenologie sur le terrain des actes sociaux et des experiences individuelles qui les accompagnent, afin d'isoler les structures a priori qui sont au principe meme du droit positif. Le travail de Reinach s'inscrit egalement dans un champ d'analyse philosophique et linguistique centre sur les enonces dits performatifs, baptises (...) tels par Austin quelques decennies plustard. (shrink)

This paper offers a refutation of P. Duhem's thesis that the falsifiability of an isolated empirical hypothesis H as an explanans is unavoidably inconclusive. Its central contentions are the following: 1. No general features of the logic of falsifiability can assure, for every isolated empirical hypothesis H and independently of the domain to which it pertains, that H can always be preserved as an explanans of any empirical findings O whatever by some modification of the auxiliary assumptions A in conjunction (...) with which H functions as an explanans. For Duhem cannot guarantee on any general logical grounds the deducibility of O from an explanans constituted by the conjunction of H and some revised non-trivial version R of A: the existence of the required set R of collateral assumptions must be demonstrated for each particular case. 2. The categorical form of the Duhemian thesis is not only a non-sequitur but actually false. This is shown by adducing the testing of physical geometry as a counterexample to Duhem in the form of a rebuttal to A. Einstein's geometrical articulation of Duhem's thesis. 3. The possibility of a quasi a priori choice of a physical geometry in the sense of Duhem must be clearly distinguished from the feasibility of a conventional adoption of such a geometry in the sense of H. Poincare. And the legitimacy of the latter cannot be invoked to save the Duhemian thesis from refutation by the foregoing considerations. (shrink)

A scholarly edition of a work by Adam Smith. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

Professor Buck has given an illuminating account of the logical status of reflexive predictions in the social sciences. He tells us that the classification of a prediction as reflexive is predicated on a tacit distinction between the “normal” and the “abnormal” or perturbed conditions under which it is made. This seems to me to be a perceptive and sound circumscription of the class of reflexive predictions as encountered in the social sciences. He goes on to show helpfully how the social (...) scientist can cope with the pitfalls of spurious disconfirmation and spurious confirmation which are created by “self-frustrating” and “self-fulfilling” predictions respectively. And Professor Buck then offers some searching doubts concerning the adequacy of regarding self-fulfilling predictions as the pattern of racial discrimination against minority groups. Finally, he presents objections to my critique of Robert Merton's claim that self-defeating and self-fulfilling predictions are endemic to the domain of human affairs and are “not found among predictions about the world of nature.”. (shrink)

Prompted by the "Panel Discussion of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Science" (Philosophy of Science 36, December, 1969) and other recent literature, this essay ranges over major issues in the philosophy of space, time and space-time as well as over problems in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. The author's philosophy of geometry has recently been challenged along three main distinct lines as follows: (i) The Panel article by G. J. Massey calls for a more precise and more (...) coherent account of the Riemannian conception of an intrinsic as opposed to an extrinsic metric, which the author has invoked as his basis for the distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden ascriptions of metrical equality and inequality; (ii) the latter distinction has been claimed to suffer from the liabilities of the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories [36]; and (iii) pursuant to H. Putnam's "An Examination of Grünbaum's Philosophy of Geometry" [56], J. Earman [16, 17] and R. Swinburne [65] have contended that the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is scientifically unilluminating, and that the associated distinction between non-conventional and convention-laden metrical comparisons does not have the kind of relevance to extant scientific theories that the author has claimed for it. The essay consists of two installments. The present installment, comprising the Introduction and Part A, is devoted to the clarification, correction and further development of the author's prior writings on the philosophy of geometry. Its main objective is constructive elaboration rather than offering polemics. But rebuttals to Earman, [16, 17], Swinburne [65] and Demopoulos [13] are included, because their inclusion conduced to clarity in giving the new exposition. Part B is to appear in a subsequent issue and will be devoted to replies to critiques contained in the Panel Discussion and in other recent literature. It will range over issues in the philosophy of geometry and in the logic of ascertaining the falsity of a scientific hypothesis. By way of merely elliptical anticipation of much more precise statements given in Part A, section 3(ii), the Introduction dissociates the notion of convention-ladenness developed in Part A from the quite different notion integral to the so-called "standard conception" of scientific theories. Thereby, the Introduction prepares the ground for seeing, as a corollary to Part A, section 3(ii), that the notion advocated in the present essay has nothing to fear from the following fact, noted by C. G. Hempel ([36]; cf. also his 1970 Carus Lectures): "even though a sentence may originally be introduced as true by stipulation, it soon joins the club of all other member-statements of the theory and becomes subject to revision in response to further empirical findings and theoretical developments." Part A, which begins with a fairly detailed table of contents, endeavors to meet the aforementioned three-fold challenge to the author's philosophy of geometry. Massey's call for the provision of clear and detailed characterizations of intrinsic and extrinsic metrics is answered with the invaluable aid rendered personally by Massey himself. These characterizations are shown to permit a precise explication of the portions of Riemann's Inaugural Dissertation relevant to (1) Riemann's brilliant anticipation of Einstein's dynamical conception of physical geometry, and (2) the author's philosophical characterization of the metrics and geometries of space, time, and space-time {section 2(c)}. A byproduct of the analysis is to raise two major philosophical doubts concerning Clifford's sketch of a so-called "space-theory of matter" as elaborated in J. A. Wheeler's relativistic geometrodynamics. That theory's vision of understanding matter as a manifestation of empty curved space is questioned in regard to (1) the existence of an intra-geometrodynamic basis for individuating the metrically homogeneous world points of its space-time manifold {section 1(a)}, and (2) the compatibility of the theory with the Riemannian metrical philosophy apparently espoused by its proponents {section 2(c)(i)}. (shrink)

This thoughtful new abridgment is enriched by the brilliant commentary which accompanies it. In it, Laurence Dickey argues that the _Wealth of Nations_ contains--and conceals--a great deal of how Smith actually thought a commercial society works. Guided by his conviction that the so-called Adam Smith Problem--the relationship between ethics and economics in Smith's thinking--is a core element in the argument of the work itself, Dickey's commentary focuses on the devices Smith uses to ground his economics in broadly ethical and (...) social categories. An unparalleled guide to an often difficult and perplexing work. (shrink)

Recent progress in artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn attention to the technology’s transformative potential, including what some see as its prospects for causing large-scale harm. We review two influential arguments purporting to show how AI could pose catastrophic risks. The first argument — the Problem of Power-Seeking — claims that, under certain assumptions, advanced AI systems are likely to engage in dangerous power-seeking behavior in pursuit of their goals. We review reasons for thinking that AI systems might seek power, that (...) they might obtain it, that this could lead to catastrophe, and that we might build and deploy such systems anyway. The second argument claims that the development of human-level AI will unlock rapid further progress, culminating in AI systems far more capable than any human — this is the Singularity Hypothesis. Power-seeking behavior on the part of such systems might be particularly dangerous. We discuss a variety of objections to both arguments and conclude by assessing the state of the debate. (shrink)

Ellis and Bowman's account of nonstandard signal synchronizations is examined as a prolegomenon to this paper. Attention is called to some consequences of an important ambiguity in their account of the transitivity of nonstandard synchrony. Then an analysis is given of the principle of relativity to assess E & B's claim that this principle either restricts nonstandard signal synchronisms or rules them out altogether. It is argued that the latitude for choices of nonstandard synchronisms is not circumscribed by the factual (...) content of the principle of relativity; instead, the exclusion of such synchronisms by this principle depends on a tacit appeal to the particular conventions implicit in certain formulations of the principle. Hence E & B's claim is rejected as an argument against the factual tenability of nonstandard synchronisms. (shrink)

Distinguishes two senses of 'judgment' on the one hand as meaning a state of 'conviction' or 'belief', and on the other hand as meaning an act of 'affirmation' or 'assertion'. Certainly conviction and assertion stand in close relation to each other, but they delineate two heterogeneous logical spheres, and thereby divide the total field of the theory of judgment into two neighbouring but separate sub-fields. Once this is done it is shown to have implications for our understanding especially of the (...) phenomenon of negation, and of the distinction between negation as affirmation of a negative state of affairs, and negation as act of contradicting the judgment someone else has made. (shrink)

Three major ways in which temporal asymmetries enter into scientific induction are discussed as follows: 1. An account is given of the physical basis for the temporal asymmetry of recordability, which obtains in the following sense: except for humanly recorded predictions and one other class of advance indicators to be discussed, interacting systems can contain reliable indicators of only their past and not of their future interactions. To deal with the exceptional cases of non-spontaneous "pre-records," a clarification is offered of (...) the essential differences in the conditions requisite to the production of an indicator having retrodictive significance ("post-record"), on the one hand, and of one having predictive significance ("prerecord" or recorded prediction), on the other. Purported counter-examples to the asymmetry of spontaneous recordability are refuted. 2. It is shown how in cases of asymmetric recordability, the associated retrodiction-prediction asymmetry makes for an asymmetry of assertibility as between an explanandum (or an explanans) referring to a future event and one referring to a past one. But it is argued that this epistemological asymmetry in the assertibility per se must be clearly distinguished from a logical asymmetry between the past and the future in regard to the inferability (deductive or inductive) of the explanandum from the explanans. And it is then contended that the failure to distinguish between an epistemological and a logical asymmetry vitiates the critiques that recent writers have offered of the Popper-Hempel thesis, which affirms symmetry of inferability as between predictive and post-explanatory arguments. In reply to Scriven, it is maintained that predictions based on mere indicators (rather than causes) do not establish an asymmetry in scientific understanding as between predictive arguments and post-explanatory ones. 3. As a further philosophical ramification of the retrodiction-prediction asymmetry, a set of sufficient conditions are stated for the correctness of philosophical mechanism as opposed to teleology. (shrink)

Public health interventions, particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries (LMICs), are implemented with the never‐ending challenge of limited resources and the ever‐present challenge of choosing between interventions. While necessary, the application of ethical analysis is absent in most of such decision‐making, resulting in fewer favourable consequences. In applying ethical principles to the saving of women from the burden of cervical cancer, I argue in favour of saving statistical lives (investing in prevention) in LMICs, by mapping the principles of justice in (...) resource allocation to the prevailing circumstance. The key facts in this circumstance are that providing treatment (which is saving identified lives), involves mostly providing palliative treatment, which is associated with a high likelihood of death among the identified lives while undergoing treatment or shortly thereafter. I focus on the dilemma of having a national cancer prevention program versus the expansion of cancer treatment facilities. (shrink)

Womit beschäftigt sich die medizinische Wissenschaft? Ich verstehe ja natürlich nichts davon, aber sie beschäftigt sich doch mit dem Menschen. Und die Juristerei, die Gesetzgebung und Rechtsprechung? Auch mit dem Menschen.

With respect to the reproach by habermas and ricoeur that freud will fall prey to a "scientistic self-misunderstanding" i submit that it was not freud, but these hermeneuticians themselves, who forced the clinical theory of psychoanalysis onto the procrustean bed of a philosophical ideology demonstrably alien to it. as against the generic "disavowal" of causal attributions advocated by some hermeneuticians, i maintain that it is a nihilistic, if not frivolous, trivialization of freud's entire clinical theory. far from serving as a (...) new citadel for psychoanalytic apologetics, the embrace of such hermeneuticians is, i submit, the kiss of death for the legacy that was to be saved. (edited). (shrink)

1. Introduction. The germ of the clock paradox was contained in Einstein's fundamental paper on the special theory of relativity, where he declares that the retardation of a moving clock “still holds good if the clock moves from A to B in any polygonal line, and also when the points A and B coincide.” This remark soon gave rise to a criticism which was to play a prominent role in the discussions of the consistency of the theory of relativity. It (...) was charged that this theory allows the paradoxical conclusion that at the instant of the return of a moving clock U1 to its point of departure A, the time shown by Ul is both earlier and later than the corresponding reading of a clock U2 which has remained stationary at A during U1's journey. Critics based this contention on the following assumptions, for which they claimed the sanction of relativity: The relative motion of U1 and U2 is such that the kinematic process seen by an observer on one of these clocks is of the same character as that seen by an observer on the other, and this symmetry allows each of these two clocks to be used as a reference frame from which to describe the motion of the other, and there is reciprocity between these two reference frames such that in each of them, the moving clock must be slow upon returning to the stationary one. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is by no means clear whether the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative can be justifi ed. Therefore, we should not regard the explanation or the grasp of the normativity of meaning as an adequacy condition of a theory of meaning — as some philosophers do. In the first part of the paper, I distinguish four intuitive kinds of normativity of meaning. After that, I focus on the question what sorts of normativity can (...) be distinguished in general. I discuss the advantages and problems of a common characterization of normativity, adopted by Schnädelbach and von Wright, and I defend a certain modifi ed version of this characterization. In the third part of the paper, I apply this modifi ed characterization to the four kinds of normativity of meaning distinguished earlier, and I show that only one of the four is compatible with the thesis that meaning is an intrinsically normative concept. In the last part of the paper, I focus on the semantic relations between meaning and use, and I reject some common forms of reducing facts about meaning to facts about use. (shrink)

Die minimalistische Konzeption der Wahrheit wurde von Paul Horwich als eine Variante des Wahrheitsdeflationismus in die Diskussion eingeführt. Diese Konzeption gilt gegenwärtig als eine, wenn nicht die plausibelste Darlegung des deflationistischen Standpunkts. Dennoch wurde diese Konzeption in den letzten Jahren mit einer ganzen Reihe von Einwänden konfrontiert, um deren Ausräumung sich Paul Horwich ausführlich bemüht hat. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit werde ich Horwichs minimalistische Konzeption der Wahrheit im Vergleich zu Alstons minimalistischer Konzeption der Wahrheit darlegen und ihre Vorzüge gegenüber (...) Alstons Konzeption herausarbeiten. Im zweiten Teil werde ich sechs unterschiedliche Probleme von Horwichs minimalistischer Konzeption der Wahrheit anführen und diskutieren. Auf dieser Grundlage wird sich zeigen, inwiefern sich der minimalistische Standpunkt verteidigen oder modifizieren läßt und wo die zentralen Schwächen dieses Standpunkts liegen. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is by no means clear whether the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative can be justifi ed. Therefore, we should not regard the explanation or the grasp of the normativity of meaning as an adequacy condition of a theory of meaning — as some philosophers do. In the first part of the paper, I distinguish four intuitive kinds of normativity of meaning. After that, I focus on the question what sorts of normativity can (...) be distinguished in general. I discuss the advantages and problems of a common characterization of normativity, adopted by Schnädelbach and von Wright, and I defend a certain modifi ed version of this characterization. In the third part of the paper, I apply this modifi ed characterization to the four kinds of normativity of meaning distinguished earlier, and I show that only one of the four is compatible with the thesis that meaning is an intrinsically normative concept. In the last part of the paper, I focus on the semantic relations between meaning and use, and I reject some common forms of reducing facts about meaning to facts about use. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate that it is by no means clear whether the thesis that meaning is intrinsically normative can be justifi ed. Therefore, we should not regard the explanation or the grasp of the normativity of meaning as an adequacy condition of a theory of meaning — as some philosophers do. In the first part of the paper, I distinguish four intuitive kinds of normativity of meaning. After that, I focus on the question what sorts of normativity can (...) be distinguished in general. I discuss the advantages and problems of a common characterization of normativity, adopted by Schnädelbach and von Wright, and I defend a certain modifi ed version of this characterization. In the third part of the paper, I apply this modifi ed characterization to the four kinds of normativity of meaning distinguished earlier, and I show that only one of the four is compatible with the thesis that meaning is an intrinsically normative concept. In the last part of the paper, I focus on the semantic relations between meaning and use, and I reject some common forms of reducing facts about meaning to facts about use. (shrink)

Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, eine neue Lesart jenes Paradoxons zu skizzieren und vorzustellen, das in den Paragraphen §§138 – 242 der Philosophischen Untersuchungen von Ludwig Wittgenstein anzufinden ist. Diese neue Lesart soll eine Alternative zu jener Lesart dieses Paradoxon darstellen, die von Saul Aaron Kripke gegeben und populär gemacht wurde. Die Darlegung einer solchen alternativen Lesart scheint mir deshalb notwendig zu sein, da Kripkes Interpretation zwar berechtigterweise ausführlicher partieller Kritik unterzogen wurde, jedoch haben die Kritiker es dabei verabsäumt, insofern (...) sie die Existenz eines wie auch immer gearteten Paradoxons in den Philosophischen Untersuchungen nicht grundsätzlich in Zweifel gezogen haben, der Lesart Kripkes eine alternative Lesart von "Wittgensteins Paradoxon" gegenüberzustellen. (shrink)