The article considers possibility of applying the concept of descriptive metaphysics to the project of Kant's transcendental philosophy. According to analytical philosophy, descriptive metaphysics is the description of structures of thinking about the world. The basis for describing acts of thinking about the world from Kant's point of view is the description of forms of intuition. Transcendental (descriptive) analysis of understanding must be preceded by transcendental (descriptive) aesthetics as an investigation of pure intuitions of space and time. Phenomenon (...) of time is considered as a condition for determining the concepts "judgment", "category of understanding", "pure understanding" and "object of knowledge". (shrink)

The paper depicts the evolution of the conception of the method of analytical description of Czeżowski, one of the most important figures of the Lvov-Warsaw School of Philosophy. It portrays Czeżowski as an author, whose voice on relation between theory and experience, as well as language and empirical reality, can be still considered important and significant. Generally speaking, Czeżowski distinguishes between two kinds of methods: the inductive ones and the no inductive, i.e. the method of analytic description. (...) The results of the former are the base of every further scientific activity, from the empirical sciences to philosophy. The method serves, first of all, to define abstract concepts and to precise scientific terms, what allow next to set and to express relations between them. Its application is an indispensable and essential part of process of building every abstract scientific theory. Despite some similarities between Czeżowski’s method and other methods of conceptual analysis, the former is not subjected to the paradox of analysis, according to the author of the paper. (shrink)

Suppose you perceive a cup of wonderful Italian coffee on the table in front of you. Is your visual experience best described as a representation-of a cup of coffee or as a relation-to a cup of coffee? Representationalism and relationalism, I suggest, are two prominent options under discussion in the present-day philosophical investigations on perception. In this paper, I want to argue that both options are on the wrong track. The reason, basically, is that they are at odds with the (...) analytical description of our perceptual experience. (shrink)

The author enters an already old dispute, that is, whether a countеrpart of the notion of philosophy could be encountered in the traditional India, upholds the view that the term ānvīkṣikī (lit. “investigation”) was nearest to it and traces its meaning along the texts on dharma, politics, poetics and philosophy properly. Two main avenues to the understanding of philosophy’s vocations in India have been paved in the Mānavadharmaśāstra, along with the commentaries thereon and by Kamandaki, the author of the Nītisāra (...) (as the knowledge of Ātman) and in the Arthaśāstra and the Nyāya texts composed by Vātsyāyana and Uddyotakara (as a metascience helping the other branches of knowledge bear their fruits). Therefore philosophy in India as well was regarded as the duality of ideological and methodological constituents, while the emphasis on analytic practice in the definitions of ānvīkṣikī (Wittgenstein’s conception of philosophy as a practice is also referred to in this context) paves a good promise for comparative philosophy. (shrink)

In this article, I use Edmund Gettier’s Ten Coins hypothetical scenario to illustrate some reasoning errors in the use of definite descriptions. The Gettier problem, central as it is to modern epistemology, is first and foremost an argument, which Gettier (Analysis 23(6):121–123, 1963) constructs to prove a contrary conclusion to a widely held view in epistemology. Whereas the epistemological claims in the case have been extensively analysed conceptually, the strategies and tools from other philosophical disciplines such as analytic philosophy (...) of language, logic and argumentation that Gettier deploys in the case have scarcely received any attention. This work abstracts from the epistemological content and examines Gettier’s handling of the definite description involved, and how that affects the cogency of his argument. (shrink)

Perhaps no philosopher has so fully explored the nature and conditions of historical understanding as Wilhelm Dilthey. His work, conceived overall as a Critique of Historical Reason and developed through his well-known theory of the human studies, provides concepts and methods still fruitful for those concerned with analyzing the human condition. Despite the increasing recognition of Dilthey's contributions, relati vely few of his writings have as yet appeared in English translation. It is therefore both timely and useful to have available (...) here two works drawn from different phases in the development of his philosophy. The "Ideas Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology" (1894), now translated into English for the first time, sets forth Dilthey's programma tic and methodological viewpoints through a descriptive psychology, while "The Understanding of Other Persons and Their Expressions of Life" (ca. 1910) is representative of his later hermeneutic approach to historical understanding. DESCRIPTIVE PSYCHOLOGY AND THE HUMAN STUDIES Dilthey presented the first mature statement of his theory of the human studies in volume one of his Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften (Introduction to the Human Studies), published in 1883. He argued there that for the proper study of man and history we must eschew the metaphysical speculation of the absolute idealists while at the same time avoiding the scientistic reduction of positivism. (shrink)

Respecting privacy and patients’ satisfaction are amongst the main indicators of quality of care and one of the basic goals of health services. This study, carried out in 2007, aimed to investigate the extent to which patient privacy is observed and its correlation with patient satisfaction in three emergency departments of Tehran University of Medical Science, Iran. Questionnaire data were collected from a convenience sample of 360 patients admitted to emergency departments and analysed using SPSS software. The results indicated that, (...) according to 50.6% of the patients, the extent to which their privacy was respected was described as either ‘weak’ or ‘average’. Spearman’s coefficient indicated a significant correlation between respecting privacy and the patients’ satisfaction about the various aspects of privacy studied. Considering the levels of privacy observed together with the patients’ degree of satisfaction, it is imperative that clinical professionals address both aspects from conceptual and practical viewpoints. (shrink)

An increasingly common complaint about philosophy of religion—especially, though not exclusively, as it is pursued in the “analytic tradition”—is that its preoccupation with questions of rationality and justification in relation to “theism” has deflected attention from the diversity of forms that religious life takes. Among measures proposed for ameliorating this condition has been the deployment of “thick description” that facilitates more richly contextualized understandings of religious phenomena. Endorsing and elaborating this proposal, I provide an overview of different but (...) related notions of thick description before turning to two specific examples, which illustrate the potential for engagement with ethnography to contribute to an expanded conception of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In this paper, I have tried to present, by a descriptive – analytic method, an analytical description of, the eighteenth century Scottish philosopher, Thomas Reid's ethical theory - which is known as "Common-Sense Intuitionism" – on the way of perceiving and acknowledging the moral values and norms, and through this analytical description, answering these two questions: "How far does the scope of Reid's ethical intuitionism contain?" and "What is Reid's explanation of the origin of moral error?" With (...) reference to the above-mentioned analytical description, and by clarifying some of the pros and cons of Reid's ethical theory, I have tried to show, first, "Whether Reid's ethical theory is a justified, defensible and acceptable theory in justifying the validity of ethical knowledge?" And then, “Whether Reid's explanation of the origin of men's moral error is a sufficient explanation?". (shrink)

In this paper I offer a defence of a Russellian analysis of the referential uses of incomplete (mis)descriptions, in a contextual setting. With regard to the debate between a unificationist and an ambiguity approach to the formal treatment of definite descriptions (introduction), I will support the former against the latter. In 1. I explain what I mean by "essentially" incomplete descriptions: incomplete descriptions are context dependent descriptions. In 2. I examine one of the best versions of the unificationist “explicit” approach (...) given by Buchanan and Ostertag. I then show that this proposal seems unable to treat the normal uses of misdescriptions. I then accept the challenge of treating misdescriptions as a key to solving the problem of context dependent descriptions. In 3. I briefly discuss Michael Devitt’s and Joseph Almog’s treatments of referential descriptions, showing that they find it difficult to explain misdescriptions. In 4. I suggest an alternative approach to DD as contextuals, under a normative epistemic stance. Definite descriptions express (i) what a speaker should have in mind in using certain words in a certain context and (ii) what a normal speaker is justified in saying in a context, given a common basic knowledge of the lexicon. In 5. I define a procedure running on contextual parameters (partiality, perspective and approximation) as a means of representing the role of pragmatics as a filter for semantic interpretation. In 6. I defend my procedural approach against possible objections concerning the problem of the boundaries between semantics and pragmatics, relying on the distinction between semantics and theory of meaning. (shrink)

Definite descriptions, I shall argue, have two possible functions. 1] They are used to refer to what a speaker wishes to talk about, but they are also used quite differently. Moreover, a definite description occurring in one and the same sentence may, on different occasions of its use, function in either way. The failure to deal with this duality of function obscures the genuine referring use of definite descriptions. The best known theories of definite descriptions, those of Russell and (...) Strawson, I shall suggest, are both guilty of this. Before discussing this distinction in use, I will mention some features of these theories to which it is especially relevant. (shrink)

Hart said that analytical jurisprudence is descriptive and general but did not draw an explicit distinction between conceptual questions that are in the main theoretical and others that are in the main practical. In Hart’s account, analytical jurisprudence searches for some kind of clarity about the idea of law and the other basic legal ideas as they occur in our ordinary experience. In the Postscript he explains that jurisprudence is the ‘theoretical or scientific study of law as a social phenomenon’, (...) which may, on occasion, but typically does not, rely on moral deliberation. It is to be contrasted to ‘practical’ questions as to how to live one’s life. I shall call this view ‘descriptivism’. It has been a very influential position in analytical jurisprudence and it is being defended by Hart’s followers even today. In this essay I raise some doubts about its coherence. First, I do not think Hart defended this view consistently —even though he did so in the Postscript. Second, I do not think that the position has been adequately defended, either by Hart or by his followers. There is still a great deal of ambiguity as to the precise position of jurisprudence between theoretical and practical reason.Resumen:Hart sostuvo que la jurisprudencia analítica es descriptiva y general pero no elaboró una distinción explícita entre las preguntas conceptuales que son principalmente teóricas y otras que son principalmente prácticas. En la explicación de Hart, la jurisprudencia analítica busca cierto tipo de claridad acerca de la noción de derecho y las demás ideas básicas tal cual ellas ocurren en nuestra experiencia ordinaria. En el Post Scriptum, él explica que la jurisprudencia es el ‘estudio teórico o científico del derecho como un fenómeno social’, el cual puede, en ocasiones, basarse en la deliberación moral, pero típicamente no lo hace. Esto puede contrastarse con las preguntas “prácticas” acerca de como las personas dirigen su propia vida. Llamo esta tesis “descriptivismo”. Esta ha sido una posición muy influyente en la jurisprudencia analítica y ha sido defendida por los seguidores de Hart hasta hoy. En este ensayo despierto dudas sobre su coherencia. Primero, no creo que Hart defendiera esta tesis de forma consistente. Segundo, no creo que la posición haya sido defendida de forma adecuada, ni por Hart ni por sus seguidores. Aún existe una gran ambigüedad acerca de la posición exacta de la jurisprudencia entre la razón teórica y la razón práctica. (shrink)

Three views on definite descriptions are summarized and discussed, including that of P. F. Strawson in which reference failure results in lack of truth value. When reference failure is allowed, a problem arises concerning Universal Instantiation. Van Fraassen solves the problem by the use of supervaluations, preserving as well such theorems as a=a, and Fa or ~Fa, even when the term a fails to refer. In the present paper a form of relevant, quasi-analytic implication is set out which allows (...) reference failure to infect even a=a and Fa or ~Fa with lack of truth-value. Reference failure causes lack of truth-value in a subwff to spread throughout any wff built up by the classical connectives. As a result none of the classical first-order axiom schemes remain as axiom schemes in the system presented. (shrink)

Abstract: It deals with the question of what a moral judgment is. On the one hand, a satisfactory theory of moral judgments must take into account the descriptive character of moral judgments and the realistic language of morals. On the other hand, it must also meet the non-descriptive character of moral judgments that consists in the recommending or condemning element and in the fact that normative statements are derived from moral judgments. However, cognitivism and emotivism or “normativism” are contradictory theories: (...) If moral judgments are descriptive, it is not possible to deduce norms from them. But if one can deduce norms from moral judgments, they are not descriptive. As a solution to this problem, the paper suggests that moral judgments represent institutional facts; the corresponding theory is moral institutionalism. A moral institutional fact – “an act X is Y”, Y” means “morally right” or “morally false” – is a hybrid of descriptive and prescriptive elements: It is stating a fact in descriptive language (“is”) and at the same time, it is short for the prescriptive constitutive rule “X is Y according to the moral rules of the language community C”. Institutional facts contain normative presuppositions without letting them appear in their grammatical form. Institutional facts are now (in relation to the language community C) objective and intersubjective and they can be generalized (cognitive aspect), although they cannot be reduced to brute physical or psychological facts, and it is also possible to deduce norms from them because they are built into them. The meta-ethical concept of moral institutionalism, which is evolved further in the paper, preserves the best intentions of emotivism and cognitivism without leading to contradiction. As a by-product, the article shows exactly the error in J. R. Searle’s alleged counterexample against the so-called naturalistic fallacy from “is” to “ought”. This lies in the normative “are” of the analytic premise or definition in “2a. All promises are [that is ought to be] acts of placing oneself under (undertaking) an obligation to do the thing promised”. In “Key concepts in philosophy”, Sankt Augustin 2015, institutionalism is explained further (p.184-191) and confined to what Hegel has called “Sittlichkeit” that is customary morality in in distinction to the “morality” of my personal consciousness (p.212-213):. (shrink)

It deals with the question of what a moral judgment is. On the one hand, a satisfactory theory of moral judgments must take into account the descriptive character of moral judgments and the realistic language of morals. On the other hand, it must also meet the non-descriptive character of moral judgments that consists in the recommending or condemning element and in the fact that normative statements are derived from moral judgments. However, cognitivism and emotivism or “normativism” are contradictory theories: If (...) moral judgments are descriptive, it is not possible to deduce norms from them. But if one can deduce norms from moral judgments, they are not descriptive. As a solution to this problem, the paper suggests that moral judgments represent institutional facts; the corresponding theory is moral institutionalism. A moral institutional fact – “an act X is Y”, Y means “morally right” or “morally false” – is a hybrid of descriptive and prescriptive elements: It is stating a fact in descriptive language (“is”) and at the same time, it is short for the prescriptive constitutive rule “X is Y according to the moral rules of the language community C”. Institutional facts contain normative presuppositions without letting them appear in their grammatical form. Institutional facts are now (in relation to the language community C) objective and intersubjective and they can be generalized (cognitive aspect), although they cannot be reduced to brute physical or psychological facts, and it is also possible to deduce norms from them because they are built into them. The meta-ethical concept of moral institutionalism, which is evolved further in the paper, preserves the best intentions of emotivism and cognitivism without leading to contradiction. As a by-product, the article shows exactly the still undetected error in J. R. Searle’s alleged counterexample against the so-called naturalistic fallacy from “is” to “ought”. This lies in the normative “are” of the analytic premise or definition in “2a. All promises are [that is ought to be] acts of placing oneself under (undertaking) an obligation to do the thing promised”. (shrink)

Introducing analytic philosophy -- F.H. Bradley and monistic idealism -- G.E. Moore on idealism, the good, and common sense -- Gottlob Frege : logic and the philosophy of language -- Bertrand Russell on relations, descriptions, and knowledge -- E.E. Constance Jones on language and logic -- Ludwig Wittgenstein on language and philosophy -- Logical empiricism : meaning, metaphysics, and mathematics -- Susan Stebbing on logic, language, and analysis -- W.V.O Quine on analyticity and ontology -- Analytic philosophy since (...) 1950. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell's theory of definite descriptions sparked an ongoing debate concerning the proper logical and linguistic analysis of definite descriptions. While it is now widely acknowledged that, like the indexical expressions 'I', 'here', and 'now', definite descriptions in natural language are context-sensitive, there is significant disagreement as to the ultimate challenge this context-sensitivity poses to Russell's theory.This reader is intended both to introduce students to the philosophy of language via the theory of descriptions, and to provide scholars in analytic (...) philosophy with ready access to some of the central contributions in this area. It includes classic works by Russell, Carnap, Strawson, Lambert, Donnellan, Grice, Peacocke, Kripke, Wettstein, Soames, Neale, and Schiffer. (shrink)

Volume 1, The Development of the Personality, investigates the extent to which analytical psychology draws on concepts found in German classical aesthetics. It aims to place analytical psychology in the German-speaking tradition of Goethe and Schiller, with which Jung was well acquainted. The second volume builds on the previous one to show how German classicism, specifically the classical aesthetics associated with Goethe and Schiller known as Weimar classicism, was a major influence on psychoanalysis and analytical psychology alike. --From publisher's (...) class='Hi'>description. (shrink)

Bach fails to give a satisfactory pragmatic account of referential uses of definite descriptions because he does not explain how a description’s quantificational meaning plays a “key role” in those uses. Bach’s criticism that my semantic account does not explain how the hearer understands a description is misguided. Bach’s denial that a pragmatic account is committed to the attributive use being more fundamental detaches meaning from use in an unacceptable way.

How to think a unique and determinative turn in analytic philosophy of mind? To answer this question this article first presents an attempt to render clear that analytic phenomenology, by contrast with conceptions of phenomenology of the XXth century, beneficially dispenses with several methodological and conceptual assumptions that were assumed to be compulsory, as phenomenological reduction, a notion of synthesis, and a philosophical notion of the a priori. It then presents some eventual difficulties to the achievement of a (...) phenomenological turn within analytic philosophy, which are, the neglect of historicity, abstractionism, the acknowledgement of the place of language in our lives, and solipsism. It finally presents several demands that concern the felicity of contemporary analytic phenomenologies, namely, anti-abstractionism, fallibilism, attention to polyadic relations, and the integration of ecological and decolonial concerns of our cultures. (shrink)

Bach fails to give a satisfactory pragmatic account of referential uses of definite descriptions because he does not explain how a description’s quantificational meaning plays a “key role” in those uses. Bach’s criticism that my semantic account does not explain how the hearer understands a description is misguided. Bach’s denial that a pragmatic account is committed to the attributive use being more fundamental detaches meaning from use in an unacceptable way.

Illustrations: Numerous B/w Figures Description: Key questions in the history of Navya-nyaya (New Nyaya) remain unresolved: when did this school of logic begin, who was its founder, what distinguishes Navya-nyaya from Pracina-nyaya (Old Nyaya), and so on. This book attempts to answer these key questions in Part I. Part II provides a translation, analysis, and critical edition of the Lion and Tiger Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Simha-vyaghra-laksana: LT Chapter) of the Tattva-cintamani-rahasya (TCR) of Mathuranatha (16th-17th c.). The hypothesis (...) adopted by the author with regard to the first question is that Udayana, who lived in the 11th century, is the founder of Navya-nyaya. This hypothesis is closely linked to the hypothesis offered regarding the second question, which is that the feature that distinguishes Navya-nyaya from the earlier school is its description of concepts and the structure of the world in terms of relation. Early Navya-nyaya authors, who flourished between Udayana and Gangesa (14th c.), devised specific terminology, of which delimitor (avacchedaka) and describer (niËpaka) are the most important, in order to identify or specify relation. This book attempts to illustrate the function of these and other Navya-nyaya terms from the viewpoint of relation. The main sources upon which the author has based his conclusions are Udayana s Laksanavali and the chapters on invariable concomitance or pervasion (vyapti) of the Nyaya-siddhanta-dipa (NSD) of Sasadhara (13rd-14th c.), the Tattva-cintamaÆi (TC) of Gangesa, and the TCR. Of these Sanskrit texts no scholar has worked on the Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-vada) of the NSD in detail or the LT Chapter of the TCR. The latter chapter follows in the TCR the Five Definitions of Invariable Concomitance Chapter (Vyapti-pancaka), which Ingalls edited, translated, and analyzed in his epoch-making book Materials for the Study of Navya-Nyaya Logic (1951). One major innovation of this book made in Part II is to explain the structure of Navya-nyaya analysis by employing 86 diagrams based on the dharma-dharmin (property and property-possessor) relation, which serve as a visual aid and help readers to more easily understand the complicated structure of its analysis. The diagrams are also helpful in ascertaining how the definitions of invariable concomitance apply to individual cases and how the entities are connected in the application of the definitions. Another major innovation is: almost every sub-section of the LT Chapter of the TCR contains Mathuranatha s clarification of part of the two definitions; but this clarification does not give the definition incorporating prior clarifications and insertions; this book provides such a definition accompanied by a diagram. In other words, Part II illustrates the structure of the whole definition at every process of the clarification, which (definition) is never presented as such in Mathuranatha s text. (shrink)

Social phenomena—quite like mental states in the philosophy of mind—are often regarded as potential troublemakers from the start, particularly if they are approached with certain explanatory commitments, such as naturalism or social individualism, already in place. In this paper, we argue that such explanatory constraints should be at least initially bracketed if we are to arrive at an adequate non-biased description of social phenomena. Legitimate explanatory projects, or so we maintain, such as those of making the social world fit (...) within the natural world with the help of, e.g., collective intentionality, social individualism, and the like, should neither exclude nor influence the prior description of social phenomena. Just as we need a description of the mental that is not biased, for example, by (anti)physicalist constraints, we need a description of the social that is not biased, for example, by (anti)individualist or (anti)naturalist commitments. Descriptive social ontology, as we shall conceive of it, is not incompatible with the adoption of explanatory frameworks in social ontology; rather, the descriptive task, according to our conception, ought to be recognized as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. If social phenomena are, for example, to be reduced to nonsocial (e.g., psychological or physical) phenomena, we need first to understand clearly what the social candidates for the reduction in question are. While such descriptive or naive approaches have been influential in general metaphysics (see Fine 2017), they have so far not been prominent in analytic social ontology (though things are different outside of analytic philosophy, see esp. Reinach (1913). In what follows, we shall outline the contours of a descriptive approach by arguing, first, that description and explanation need to be distinguished as two distinct ways of engaging with social phenomena. Secondly, we defend the claim that the descriptive project ought to be regarded as prior to the explanatory project in the order of inquiry. We begin, in Section 2, by considering two different ways of engaging with mental phenomena: a descriptive approach taken by descriptive psychology and an explanatory approach utilized in analytic philosophy of mind. We take these two ways of approaching the study of the mind to be analogous to the distinction we want to draw in social ontology between a descriptive and an explanatory approach to the study of social phenomena. We consider next, in Section 3, how our approach compares to neighboring perspectives that are familiar to us from general metaphysics and philosophy more broadly, such as Aristotle’s emphasis on “saving the appearances”, Strawson’s distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics, as well as Fine’s contrast between na¨ive and foundational metaphysics. In Section 4, we apply the proposed descriptive/explanatory distinction to the domain of social ontology and argue that descriptive social ontology ought to take precedence in the order of inquiry over explanatory social ontology. Finally, in Section 5, we consider and respond to several objections to which our account might seem to be susceptible. (shrink)

A central theme of this book is that the main problems of philosophy and certainly the main traditional problems in the theory of knowledge, concern the space between language and the world. Professor Danto distinguishes between descriptive concepts, concerned with saying how the world is and semantic concepts, which have to do with the application of descriptions of the world. Failure to make these distinctions is responsible for a class of seemingly irresolvable disputes over the foundations of knowledge; but when (...) the distinction is appreciated, a plausible philosophical theory of what it is to know the world can be framed which is free from the standard scepticisms. (shrink)

“Thin description and thick description of a work of art” is at the crossroads of analytical philosophy and iconology. The author Johann Michel questions the demarcation between the description and the interpretation of a work of art. Rather than opposing them, the article seeks to put them in dialectic, starting from the distinction proposed by Ryle between “thin description” and “thick description”. Refusing the principle of a pure and neutral description of a work of (...) art, the contribution pleads in favor of the “integral relativism” defended by J. Margolis which is based on the principle of tolerance of incompatible interpretations, as long as they remain plausible. (shrink)

This article discusses the issue of the conceptual accuracy of descriptions of social life, which, although fundamental for the social sciences, has in fact been neglected. I approach this task via an examination of Paul Roth’s recent work, which recapitulates reflection in analytic philosophy of history and sets out a view of the past as indeterminate until retrospectively constructed in historical narratives. I argue that Roth’s position embraces an overly restricted notion of historical significance and underestimates how anachronistic descriptions (...) vitiate central historiographical tasks. I contend that the importance of conceptually accurate descriptions for history and the social sciences cannot be overstated. (shrink)

The paper starts with reflections on Plato’s critique of the poets and the preference many express for Aristotle’s view of poetry. The second part of the paper takes a case study of analytic treatments of ancient philosophy, including the ancient philosopher poets, to examine the poetics of analytic philosophy, diagnosing a preference in Analytic philosophy for a clean non-poetic style of presentation, and then develops this in considering how well historians of philosophy in the Analytic tradition (...) can accommodate the contributions of philosophers who wrote in verse. The final part of the paper reviews the current enthusiasm for decoding Empedocles’ vague and poetic descriptions of the cosmic cycle into a precise scientific periodicity on the basis of the recently discovered Byzantine scholia on Aristotle. I argue that this enthusiasm speaks to a desire for definite and clear numerical values in place of poetic motifs of give and take, and that this mathematical and scientific poetic is comparable to the preferred poetic of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Analytic philosophers have traditionally held the proper sense of language to be determined in large part by precise descriptions substituted for the vague words and phrases of ordinary usage. These descriptions are usually conceived as lists of abstract attributes. These attributes, it is often assumed, are synthesized by the mind on the occasion of its contact with particular objects. And, once synthesized, they are held to function as the criteria by which the facts of our ordinary experience are recognized (...) and classified in language. Aspects of this attributive theory go back to Locke, if not to Aristotle, but its classic expression is probably Russell’s theory of definite descriptions. Since the tendency of this theory is to substitute everywhere complex expressions for simpler ones, the simplest parts of speech, i.e., names, are driven to the vanishing point. It is well known, for example, that Russell considered ordinary names such as ’socrates’ to be abbreviations for descriptions and not really names at all; the only terms of ordinary language he considered to be true names are terms such as ‘this’ and ‘that'. (shrink)

This paper reexamines some examples, discussed by Mates and others, of sentences containing both definite descriptions and quantifiers. It has frequently been claimed that these sentences provide evidence for the view that definite descriptions themselves are quantifiers. The main goal of this paper is to argue this is not so. Though the examples are compatible with quantificational approaches to definite descriptions, they are also compatible with views that treat definite descriptions as basically scopeless. They thus provide no reason to see (...) definite descriptions as quantifiers. Even so, this paper shows that the examples do raise a surprising range of complex issues about how quantifier scope works, and where it occurs. Thus, a clear picture of how these examples work will help us to understand better where definite descriptions fit into the larger picture of quantifiers and related phenomena. (shrink)

Professor Von Wright is a prominent analytical philosopher who has written about the very notion of analytical philosophy. Other analytical philosophers are present here and they have their ideas on this notion. As for me, I believe that it is not at all an obvious notion. Sometimes it seemed to me that analytical philosophy does not exist, or at least that there is no single common feature shared by all so-called analytical philosophers and only by them, though there are many (...) family resemblances. Therefore I thought I might take the opportunity of this meeting in honour of Professor Von Wright and propose as one of our themes for discussion, precisely the question: “what is analytical philosophy?”. The natural start is Professor Von Wright’s description of analytical philosophy. (shrink)

IN this note I propose to make some general remarks concerning the analytical forays carried out into moral discourse by some leading figures in the modern ‘linguistic’ tradition. The philosophers I am going to speak of, may all be said to be attempting some sort of ‘descriptive’ analysis, but my thesis is that philosophers such as Toulmin and Baier are attempting something that is significantly different from what a philosopher such as Nowell-Smith is attempting. I will suggest, in the following (...) section, that the expression—‘the logic of moral discourse’—seems to be understood by these two groups of linguistic philosophers in two different ways and that one of these ways involves a more ambitious claim, than does the other, on behalf of the philosopher embarking upon a conceptual analysis of moral discourse. The manner in which, it seems to me, Toulmin and Baier understand this expression is the one that involves the more ambitious claim. In the final section of this paper I suggest that the more ambitious claim involves overloading the so-called Linguistic method to force it do a job that it seems at least not suited to perform. (shrink)

We show that if κ is a weakly compact cardinal then the embeddability relation on trees of size κ is invariantly universal. This means that for every analytic quasi-order R on the generalized Cantor space View the MathML source there is an Lκ+κ-sentence φ such that the embeddability relation on its models of size κ, which are all trees, is Borel bi-reducible to R. In particular, this implies that the relation of embeddability on trees of size κ is complete (...) for analytic quasi-orders on View the MathML source. These facts generalize analogous results for κ=ω obtained in Louveau and Rosendal [17] and Friedman and Motto Ros [6], and it also partially extends a result from Baumgartner [3] concerning the structure of the embeddability relation on linear orders of size κ. (shrink)

This article reevaluates Hermann Ebbinghaus’s famous criticisms of Wilhelm Dilthey’s 1894 essay “Ideas for a Descriptive and Analytic Psychology,” to determine how Dilthey’s diverse approaches toward philosophy and the human sciences are related to experimental psychology and to hypothetico-deductive science. It turns out that Ebbinghaus falsely accuses Dilthey of rejecting experimental psychology overall, while, in fact, Dilthey rejects only a specific misuse of experimental psychology: as a way to provide a foundation for the humanities. At the same time, Dilthey (...) recognizes several ways in which philosophy and the human sciences might benefit from experimental psychology. Although it clearly rules out experimental psychology, Dilthey’s descriptive psychology involves a hypothetico-deductive standpoint that intermediates, with some success, between modern social science and nineteenth-century hermeneutics. (shrink)

When Peter Strawson subtitled the most celebrated book in ordinary language philosophy, Individuals, ‘An essay in descriptive metaphysics’, he shocked mainly for having reintroduced ‘metaphysics’ into intellectually respectable English a quarter-century after A.J. Ayer had consigned it to the logical positivists' index of forbidden philosophical words . Few at the time appreciated the import of the modifiers ‘descriptive’ and its opposite, ‘revisionary’. Now, another half century on, philosophers have come around to Bertrand Russell's original view that both the ordinary language (...) philosophy Strawson championed and the ideal scientific language philosophy Ayer championed offer alternative metaphysical visions. The remaining question of philosophical interest is what hangs in the balance between a descriptive and revisionary approach to metaphysics – or, for that matter, any branch of philosophy. This paper critically examines the currently dominant descriptive approach from a revisionary standpoint, initially relying on the terms Strawson uses to frame the distinction, and then moving outward to consider its implications for our understanding of the history of modern philosophy, especially the ‘naturalist’ sensibility that has been especially influential in analytic social epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper we motivate and develop the analytic theory of measurement, in which autonomously specified algebras of quantities (together with the resources of mathematical analysis) are used as a unified mathematical framework for modeling (a) the time-dependent behavior of natural systems, (b) interactions between natural systems and measuring instruments, (c) error and uncertainty in measurement, and (d) the formal propositional language for describing and reasoning about measurement results. We also discuss how a celebrated theorem in analysis, known as (...) Gelfand representation, guarantees that autonomously specified algebras of quantities can be interpreted as algebras of observables on a suitable state space. Such an interpretation is then used to support (i) a realist conception of quantities as objective characteristics of natural systems, and (ii) a realist conception of measurement results (evaluations of quantities) as determined by and descriptive of the states of a target natural system. As a way of motivating the analytic approach to measurement, we begin with a discussion of some serious philosophical and theoretical problems facing the well-known representational theory of measurement. We then explain why we consider the analytic approach, which avoids all these problems, to be far more attractive on both philosophical and theoretical grounds. (shrink)

Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology for about the past half-century. The major contemporary theories of SAE include versions of foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and contextualism. While proponents of SAE don’t agree about how to define naturalized epistemology, most agree that a thoroughgoing naturalism in epistemology can’t work. For the purposes of this paper, we will suppose that a naturalistic theory of epistemology takes as its core, as its (...) starting-point, an empirical theory. The standard argument against naturalistic approaches to epistemology is that empirical theories are essentially descriptive, while epistemology is essentially prescriptive, and a descriptive theory cannot yield normative, evaluative prescriptions. In short, naturalistic theories cannot overcome the is-ought divide. Our main goal in this paper is to show that the standard argument against naturalized epistemology has it almost exactly backwards. (shrink)