Die Entwicklung eines philosophischen Systems ist für den Autor Folge der persönlichen Auseinandersetzung mit der Frage nach dem Lebenssinn und der Stellung des Menschen in der Welt. Die Frage nach dem Sinn des menschlichen Lebens ist die zentrale Frage des Menschen. Die zentrale Stellung bekommt diese Frage dadurch, dass der Mensch selbst - mehr unbewusst als bewusst - sie in seinem Verhalten, seinen Absichten und in seiner Lebensweise, in dem, was er vom Leben im Allgemeinen und von seinem persönlichen Leben (...) im Besonderen fordert und in ihm erreichen will, beantwortet. Diese Frage wird durch die Möglichkeit eines konkret bestimmten individuellen Lebensvollzugs gestellt und durch den Vollzug dieses individuellen, persönlichen Lebens beantwortet. Das eigentliche Problem eines jeden einzelnen Menschen ist seine Orientierung in der Welt. Den «Kompass» für die Orientierung in der Welt kann er nur in der Erkenntnis der Wirklichkeit finden. (shrink)

The paper attempts to do two things: (1) to give a detailed account of what conditions must be satisfied by theories that hold some knowledge to be more fundamental than the rest, And (2) it asks, And answers affirmatively, Whether there is such a foundationalist account in wittgenstein's "on certainty".

SummaryThis paper contains a detailed investigation of the way ordinary persons talk about surfaces. Among the results achieved are: 1) No theory of perception can be correct which holds that it is a necessary condition for seeing an object that we must also see its surface; 2) Not all cases of visual perception can be analyzed in terms of seeing part of some surface as a necessary condition for seeing the object which has that surface; 3) Not every physical object (...) has a surface, and 4) surfaces are sometimes identified with a particular medium, such as macadam, and sometimes are considered as a kind of logical entity — not visible, without depth, having no mass, a “mere outer aspect.”. (shrink)

On this fascinating journey, navigating the borders where science and philosophy meet, Avrum Stroll addresses the major dilemmas that have perplexed humanity since the dawn of reason.

In reply to Jeremy Garrett's criticism of my paper in the July 2009 issue of Public Affairs Quarterly, I, first, clarify my view of the proper status of same-sex marriage in a liberal society. I, second, defend my claim that moral disapprobation of homosexuality may be a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for denying same-sex couples the benefits and protections of the marriage license. Finally, I criticize the view that, as long as marriage is viewed as a contract to be entered into (...) by competent parties, it is not legitimate for the state to provide material and legal support only to contracts in which the parties are opposite-sex couples. (shrink)

Professor sard states that russell's response to ronald searle rests on a fallacy. Russell states that he dreamt of one thing not in heaven or earth, While searle says that there are more things in heaven than russell dreamt of. Stroll argues that sard's interpretation of the phrase "there are more things in heaven than are dreamed of" is mistaken. Russell interprets this to mean that taking a to be the set of all things capable of being dreamed of in (...) heaven or earth, It is possible to dream of another thing--The class of all those classes that are not members of themselves--Which does not exist in a. (shrink)

The early formal logicians (Frege, Russell, Peano et al.) were worried about differentiating logic from psychology. As a result, they interpreted logic in the most abstract way possible: as a theory about inference patterns whose terms lacked descriptive content. Such a theory was also acontextual. What they did not realize was that psychological concepts like expecting someone, doubting, pain etc. each had their own logic, a logic that had two features: it was contextually oriented and its concepts had a restricted (...) sensible application. This is still a recognizable sense of logic but broader in scope than the conceptions that Frege and Russell had in mind. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy is difficult to define since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems. As well as having strong ties to scientism -the notion that only the methods of the natural sciences give rise to knowledge -it also has humanistic ties to the great thinkers and philosophical problems of the past. Moreover, no single feature characterizes the activities of analytic philosophers. Undaunted by these difficulties, Avrum Stroll investigates the "family resemblances" (...) between that impressive breed of thinkers known as analytic philosophers. In so doing, he grapples with the point and purpose of doing philosophy: What is philosophy? What are its tasks? What kind of information, illumination, and understanding is it supposed to provide if it is not one of the natural sciences? Imbued with clarity, liveliness, and philosophical sophistication, Stroll´s book presents a synoptic picture of the main developments in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics in the past century. It does this by concentrating on the individual thinkers whose ideas have been most influential. Major themes in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy include: · the innovation of mathematical logic by Gottlob Frege at the close of the nineteenth century and its independent development by Bertrand Russell; · the impact of advancements in science on the world of philosophy and its importance for understanding such doctrines as logical positivism, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and eliminative materialism; · the refusal by such thinkers as Wittgenstein, Moore, and Austin to treat logic as an ideal language superior to natural languages; and · a conjecture about which, if any, of the philosophers discussed in the book will enter the pantheon of philosophical gods. Along the way, Stroll also covers the theories of Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, John Searle, Ruth Marcus, and Patricia and Paul Churchland. Stroll´s approach to his subject treats the critical movements in analytic philosophy in terms of the philosophers who defined them. The notoriously complex realm of analytic philosophy emerges less as an abstract enterprise than as a domain of personalities and their competing methods and arguments. The book´s inventive presentations of complex logical doctrines relate them to the traditional problems of philosophy, seeking the continuity between them rather than polemical distinctions so as to bring the true differences of their respective achievements into sharper focus. (shrink)

Data on farming systems in Petén, Guatemala, were used to develop an agricultural intensity index. The index can be used to assign an intensity “score” to a given farming system based on the array of practices used by the farmer, each practice’s contribution to production intensity, and the scale at which these practices are used. The scores assigned to 118 farmers in three study areas in Petén were analyzed through analysis of variance (ANOVA) to identify the factors that account for (...) the variation in intensity levels, as measured through the index. The analyses reveal that the factors influencing agricultural intensity in Petén vary greatly from one study area to the next. This is due to differences in livelihood opportunities and strategies that, in turn, affect how agriculture fits into the local economy and how and why intensification is pursued. Variation in intensity levels can best be understood by considering the factors at the household and sub-regional scales that influence (a) whether farmers feel a need to intensify, (b) whether they see some benefit in doing so, and (c) whether they have the resources required to intensify production through particular strategies. Close attention must be paid to these factors by conservation and development organizations seeking to influence land use patterns and conserve forest in Petén. (shrink)

Fiction, Reference, and Nonexistence contains a new, contemporary theory of fiction and discusses the connection between language and reality. Martinich and Stroll, two of America's leading philosophers, explore fiction and undertake an analytic philosophical study of fiction and its reference, and its relation to truth.

Older adults in the United States have been the age group hardest hit by the Covid pandemic. They have suffered a disproportionate number of deaths; Covid patients eighty years or older on ventilators had fatality rates higher than 90 percent. How could we have better protected older adults? Both the popular press and government entities blamed nursing homes, labeling them “snake pits” and imposing harsh fines and arduous new regulations. We argue that this approach is unlikely to improve protections for (...) older adults. Rather than focusing exclusively on acute and critical resources, including ventilators, a plan that respected the best interests of older adults would have also supported nursing homes, a critical part of the health care system. Better access to protective equipment for staff members, early testing of staff members and patients, and enhanced means of communication with families were what was needed. These preventive measures would have offered greater benefit to the oldest members of our population than the exclusive focus on acute care. (shrink)

Using a multidisciplinary framework, this article examines the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) policy decision to prohibit teens in federal immigration custody from obtaining abortions. As we argue, this appropriation of decisional authority over their reproductive bodies discursively cast them as doubly subversive for first breaching the southern border of the United States and then insisting upon the right to ‘abortion on demand’. Mapping these twinned agendas onto their bodies, these teens were configured as a threat to the racialised national (...) order during the Trump era. Centring our analysis on the much publicised constitutional challenge to ORR’s abortion ban in Garza v. Hargan, we interrogate this policy as a powerful expression of legal duplicity, the spatial and bodily containment of those deemed other, and the privileging of the citizen-foetus over their undocumented mothers. (shrink)

In this new book, acclaimed scholar Avrum Stroll introduces the legendary philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, first through his unconventional lifestyle, and secondly through Wittgenstein's own greatest works.

In this third edition, the chapter on ethics has been expanded and updated to include material on euthanasia, abortion and censorship. The impact of the break-up of the former communist countries is discussed in the chapter on political philosophy. The book contains new material on artificial intelligence, logic and contemporary philosophy.

In his monograph On Numbers and Games, J. H. Conway introduced a real-closed field containing the reals and the ordinals as well as a great many less familiar numbers including $-\omega, \,\omega/2, \,1/\omega, \sqrt{\omega}$ and $\omega-\pi$ to name only a few. Indeed, this particular real-closed field, which Conway calls No, is so remarkably inclusive that, subject to the proviso that numbers—construed here as members of ordered fields—be individually definable in terms of sets of NBG, it may be said to contain (...) “All Numbers Great and Small.” In this respect, No bears much the same relation to ordered fields that the system ℝ of real numbers bears to Archimedean ordered fields. In Part I of the present paper, we suggest that whereas $\mathbb{R}$should merely be regarded as constituting an arithmetic continuum, No may be regarded as a sort of absolute arithmetic continuum, and in Part II we draw attention to the unifying framework No provides not only for the reals and the ordinals but also for an array of non-Archimedean ordered number systems that have arisen in connection with the theories of non-Archimedean ordered algebraic and geometric systems, the theory of the rate of growth of real functions and nonstandard analysis. In addition to its inclusive structure as an ordered field, the system No of surreal numbers has a rich algebraico-tree-theoretic structure—a simplicity hierarchical structure—that emerges from the recursive clauses in terms of which it is defined. In the development of No outlined in the present paper, in which the surreals emerge vis-à-vis a generalization of the von Neumann ordinal construction, the simplicity hierarchical features of No are brought to the fore and play central roles in the aforementioned unification of systems of numbers great and small and in some of the more revealing characterizations of No as an absolute continuum. (shrink)

We examine the notions of negative, infinite and hotter than infinite temperatures and show how these unusual concepts gain legitimacy in quantum statistical mechanics. We ask if the existence of an infinite temperature implies the existence of an actual infinity and argue that it does not. Since one can sensibly talk about hotter than infinite temperatures, we ask if one could legitimately speak of other physical quantities, such as length and duration, in analogous terms. That is, could there be longer (...) than infinite lengths or temporal durations? We argue that the answer is surprisingly yes, and we outline the properties of a number system that could be employed to characterize such magnitudes. (shrink)

The excellent quality and depth of the various essays make [the book] an invaluable resource....It is likely to become essential reading in its field.—CHOICE.

The innovative and revolutionary scholarship of the eminent Austrian legal theorist and professor of Roman law, Eugen Ehrlich, is of a very high..