The doctrine of idols is one of the most famous aspects of Bacon's thought. Yet his claim that the idols lead to madness has gone almost entirely unnoticed. This paper argues that Bacon's theory of idols underlies his diagnosis of the contemporary condition as one of ‘universal madness’. In contrast to interpretations that locate his doctrine of error and recovery within the biblical narrative of the Fall, the present analysis focuses on the material and (...) cultural sources of the mind's tendency towards error. It explains the idols in terms of Bacon's materialist psychology and his exposé of the debilitating effects of language and traditional learning. In so doing, it highlights the truly radical nature of the idols. For Bacon, the first step towards sanity was to alert people to the prevailing madness. The doctrine of idols was intended as a wake-up call, preparing the way for a remedy in the form of his new method of inquiry. The paper concludes by indicating how Bacon's method aimed to treat ‘universal madness’, and it suggests that his diagnosis influenced John Locke. (shrink)

This paper examines the concept of objectivity traceable in Francis Bacon's natural philosophy. After some historical background on this concept, it considers the question of whether it is not an anachronism to attribute such a concept to Bacon, since the word ‘objectivity’ is a later coinage and does not appear anywhere in his writings. The essay gives reasons for answering this question in the negative, and then criticizes the accounts given of Bacon's understanding of objectivity by Lorraine Daston (...) and Julie Robin Solomon. It argues that this understanding is most directly and fully expressed in his discussion of the idols of the mind. In this connection, the paper notes Bacon's critical attitude to sixteenth-century scepticism and its relevance to the idea of objectivity implicit in his comments on the idols. In conclusion, the paper argues that Bacon was not a pure empiricist and describes the place assigned to theories and hypotheses in his natural philosophy. (shrink)

This book shows readers how philosophy of education relates to and influences classroom practice.The book presents the authors' own philosophy of education and places it in the context of a broad range of other classic and contemporary perspectives. Within each chapter the theory is related to schools and classrooms as they really exist including issues and problems that teachers, parents, students, and administrators face daily. The book is easily accessible in approach, cutting-edge in its multicultural and feminist focus, and (...) rich in its development of philosophical issues. (shrink)

This is the first comprehensive textbook on higher order logic that is written specifically to introduce the subject matter to graduate students in philosophy. The book covers both the formal aspects of higher-order languages -- their model theory and proof theory, the theory of λ-abstraction and its generalizations -- and their philosophical applications, especially to the topics of modality and propositional granularity. The book has a strong focus on non-extensional higher-order logics, making it more appropriate for foundational (...) metaphysics than other introductions to the subject from computer science, mathematics, and linguistics. A Philosophical Introduction to Higher Order Logics assumes only that readers have a basic knowledge of first-order logic. With an emphasis on exercises, it can be used as a textbook though is also ideal for self-study. Author Andrew Bacon organizes the book's 18 chapters around four main parts: I. Typed Language II. Higher Order Languages III. General Higher-Order Languages IV. Higher-Order Model Theory In addition, two appendices cover the Curry-Howard isomorphism and its applications for modeling propositional structure. Each chapter includes exercises that move from easier to more difficult, strategically placed throughout the chapter, and concludes with an annotated suggested reading list providing graduate students with most valuable additional resources. Key Features Is the first comprehensive introduction to higher-order logic as a grounding for addressing problems in metaphysics Introduces the basic formal tools that are needed to theorize in, and model, higher order languages Offers an abundance of: - Simple exercises throughout the book, serving as comprehension checks on basic concepts and definitions - More difficult exercises designed to facilitate long-term learning Contains annotated sections on further reading, pointing the reader to related literature, learning resources, and historical context. (shrink)

I write this short essay in response to Peirce, as a feminist, pragmatist, and cultural studies scholar, in the hope that it will help to bring feminism and pragmatism together. I suggest that Peirce offers marginalized and colonized people a way to argue for the importance of their input, with his theory of fallibilism, even if he still claims a position of privilege. He also offers assistance through his concept of “a community of inquirers.” It is curious that Peirce’s (...) definition of a university argues for a split between theory and practice that his earlier work sought to heal. Peirce opened a door to help diverse scholars be able to enter the university, and find a way to address issues of power, with his youthful connecting of theory to practice, that his more senior position draws our attention away from and seeks to hold off. Fortunately, it is too late. Peirce’s youthful pragmatism has been developed in important ways by other scholars and now serves as an example of a way to do philosophy that does connect theory to practice and does seek to address real problems in diverse peoples lives, and help to find solutions that effect change. (shrink)

In assimilating the study of history to the study of natural science, Bacon emphasized the collection of historical facts and the need to induce general propositions from them. He indicated the psychological character of these propositions and claimed that historians were, and philosophers were not, competent to put moral and mental phenomena on a scientific basis. On the formal side, his theory of history was based on Aristotelian faculty psychology-history, the product of the mnemonic faculty, dealt with phenomena true (...) to life. In intent, his theory was designed to reorient the study of moral philosophy away from rationalism toward an empirical or historical foundation and to emphasize involuntary as well as voluntary aspects of behavior. (shrink)

Francis Bacon, lawyer, statesman, and philosopher, remains one of the most effectual thinkers in European intellectual history. We can trace his influence from Kant in the 1700s to Darwin a century later. The Advancement of Learning , first published in 1605, contains an unprecedented and thorough systematization of the whole range of human knowledge. Bacon’s argument that the sciences should move away from divine philosophy and embrace empirical observation would forever change the way philosophers and natural scientists interpret their world.

My task in Beyond Liberal Democracy in Schools was to develop a relational, pluralistic social political theory that moves beyond liberal democracy. I find Dewey is a key source to help us find our way out of liberal democracy’s assumptions and show us how to move on. He offers us the possibilities of moving beyond individualism, with his theory of social transaction and he shows us how to move beyond rationalism in his arguments for truths as warranted assertions. (...) A transactional description of selves-in-relation-with-others describes us as becoming individuals out of our social settings. At the same time that we are becoming individuals within a social setting, we are continually affecting that social setting. Individuals are not aggregates with separate boundaries that have no relation to one another. In fact, the ‘self’ is fictive, and contingent. Our ‘selves’ are multifarious and fractured, due to repressive forces imposed upon us by others as well as supportive forces offered to us by others. Others bind us and help us become free at the same time. The democratic theory I develop is a radical democratic theory that represents feminist and multicultural concerns. This theory is radical because of my efforts to present an anti-racist theory that critiques basic foundational-level assumptions embedded within both individualism and collectivism. The theory moves beyond modernism and critical theory as it seeks to address postmodern concerns of power and exclusionary practice without appealing to grand narratives such as Reason, the Scientific Method, or Dialogue. I follow Dewey’s social transactional lead and describe our world as one that is pluralistic, relational, and in process as we continually contribute to the on-going constructing of knowing. I argue, in agreement with Dewey , that a democracy is a mode of associated living, not just a view of political democracy, and that it needs to be struggled for on all fronts, with all our social institutions, including: political, economic, educational, scientific, artistic, religious, and familial. This comprehensive view of democracy is consistent with the transactional relational assumption I describe, for it recognizes that social institutions are no more autonomous and separate from each other than individuals are separate from each other. For this essay, I explore education’s role in helping us understand how connected we all are to each other, moving us closer to living in a world we may someday call a democracy. (shrink)

In A Pluralistic Universe, James argues that the world we experience is more than we can describe. Our theories are incomplete, open, and imperfect. Concepts function to try to shape, organize, and describe this open, flowing universe, while the universe continually escapes beyond our artificial boundaries. For James and myself, the universe is unfinished, a “primal stuff” or “pure experience.” However, James starts with parts and moves to wholes, and I want to start from wholes and move to parts and (...) back to wholes again. This is an issue between us I further consider, for while he describes himself as a radical empiricist, emphasizing the parts, my descriptions are in terms of w/holism. I use this opportunity to explore James’s contributions to my metaphor of “pure experience” as being like an infinite Ocean and the fishing nets we create represent our ontologies and epistemologies that help us catch up our experiences and give them meaning. I also make the case for why a better understanding of ontology matters for us as educators, using Maria Montessori’s curriculum and instruction design, Dinè Primary School, and Cajete’s theology of place and culturally based science as examples of relational fishing nets we could be using to teach our children. (shrink)

Democracies Always in the Making develops Barbara Thayer-Bacon’s relational and pluralistic democratic theory, as well as translates that socio-political philosophical theory into educational theory and recommendations for school reform in American public schools. Democracy is a goal, an ideal which we must continually strive for that can guide us in our decision-making, as we continue to live in a world that is unpredictable, flawed, and limited in terms of its resources.

Decision theory is founded on the principle that we ought to take the action that has the maximum expected value from among actions we are in a position to take. But prior to the notion of expected value is the notion of the actual value of that action: roughly, a measure of the good outcomes you would in fact procure if you were to take it. Surprisingly many decision theories operate without an analysis of actual value. I offer a (...) definition of actual value, and show that a form of decision theory due to Stalnaker can be reformulated so as to be in line with the edict to maximize expected value. By contrast, I show that there is no quantity — given by my definition or otherwise — that plays the role of actual value in Jeffrey's decision theory. (shrink)

Relational Ontologies uses the metaphor of a fishing net to represent the epistemological and ontological beliefs that we weave together for our children, to give meaning to their experiences and to help sustain them in their lives. The book describes the epistemological threads we use to help determine what we catch up in our net as the warp threads, and our ontological threads as the weft threads. It asks: what kind of fishing nets are we weaving for our children to (...) help them make sense of their experiences? What weft threads are we including and working to strengthen, and what threads are we removing or leaving out? It is important to carefully re/examine these most basic ways of catching up what sustains us in our ocean of infinite experiences, as the threads we weave for our children will determine what they catch up in their nets, until they are old enough to re/weave their own. Relational Ontologies reweaves America's epistemological and ontological fishing net on a larger scale, turning to indigenous cultures and diverse spiritual beliefs for assistance in reforming American schools. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a revitalised interest in non-classical solutions to the semantic paradoxes. In this paper I show that a number of logics are susceptible to a strengthened version of Curry's paradox. This can be adapted to provide a proof theoretic analysis of the omega-inconsistency in Lukasiewicz's continuum valued logic, allowing us to better evaluate which logics are suitable for a naïve truth theory. On this basis I identify two natural subsystems of Lukasiewicz logic which individually, (...) but not jointly, lack the problematic feature. (shrink)

Collection of important essays by feminist scholars from cultural studies, philosophy of education, curriculum theory, and women’s studies. Education Feminism is a revised and updated version of Lynda Stone’s out-of-print anthology, The Education Feminism Reader. The text is intended as a course text and provides students a foundational base in feminist theories in education. The classics section is comprised of the readings that students have most responded to in classes. The contemporary readings section demonstrates how the third-wave feminist criticism (...) of the 1990s has an impact on today’s feminist work. Both of these sections address critical multicultural educational issues and have an inclusive, diverse selection of feminist scholars who bring race, class, sexual orientation, religious practices, and colonial/postcolonial perspectives to bear on their work. The individual essays are concise and well written and arranged in such a way that it is easy for instructors to assign them around themes of their own choosing. “The incredible value of this fine collection is that it demonstrates what it means to critically consider, interrogate, and challenge historic and contemporary ideas regarding educational equity while using these very ideas to imagine new possibilities. It will serve as an indispensable resource in graduate classrooms where students can use the text to ground and forward explorations of the necessarily complex considerations of equity in education today.” — Adela C. Licona, coeditor of Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward. (shrink)

: My project aims to develop a relational, pluralistic political theory that moves us beyond liberal democracy, and to consider how such a theory translates into our public school settings. In this essay I argue that Dewey offers us possibilities for moving beyond one key assumption of classical liberalism, individualism, with his theory of social transaction. I focus my discussion for this paper on Dewey's renascent liberal democracy. I move from a discussion of Dewey's liberal democratic (...) class='Hi'>theory to what a relational, pluralistic democratic theory might look like, with Dewey's help. (shrink)

In this paper a logic for reasoning disquotationally about truth is presented and shown to have a standard model. This work improves on Hartry Field's recent results establishing consistency and omega-consistency of truth-theories with strong conditional logics. A novel method utilising the Banach fixed point theorem for contracting functions on complete metric spaces is invoked, and the resulting logic is shown to validate a number of principles which existing revision theoretic methods have heretofore failed to provide.

Thayer-Bacon uses this opportunity to further explore Rancière's ideas concerning equality as described in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and their connection to democracy, as he explains in Hatred of Democracy. For Rancière, intelligence and equality are synonymous terms, just as reason and will are synonymous terms. Rancière recommends the only way to really teach a student is by viewing the student as an equal. Thayer-Bacon learned to view students as equals through her experience as a Montessori teacher, and so she brings (...) Montessori into conversation with Rancière to further explore the idea of equality between teachers and students, as well as between citizens in a democracy. There are problems with both Rancière's perspective and Montessori's that feminist theory, in the form of a relational ontology and epistemology, can help us solve by finding our way out of the paradoxes of democracy and on to trusting our students, our future democratic citizens. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical analysis of Locke's and Rousseau's basic assumptions upon which classical liberalism is built: rationalism, universalism, and individualism. I then describe an alternative starting place for democracy with a transactional view of individuals-in-relation-to-others. I then offer specific educational examples to help me sketch two themes that illustrate problems with classical liberalism and how a transactional democracy-always-in-the-making can help to solve these problems.

Amy Gutmann is a political philosopher who brings a critical, feminist, and multicultural read to John Dewey’s concept of democratic education. I begin by turning to Gutmann’s Democratic Education to see how she amends and extends Dewey’s concept of democracy in relation to education. I then explore her further development of deliberative democracy as a political theory in Democracy and Deliberation. We learn about her basic principles for democratic education, nonrepression and nondiscrimination, developed in her earlier work and the (...) addition of a third principle, deliberation, in Democracy and Disagreement, as she continues to aim to find ways for basic democratic values of liberty, opportunity, and mutual respect to thrive and for acceptable terms for social cooperation to further develop in a world where people disagree in significant ways. We find that Gutmann relies on a separation between moral ideals and political ideals to maintain the case for the value of deliberative democracy as a political ideal. There are problems such a separation creates from a transactional perspective of democracy-always-in-the-making. We consider if Gutmann’s theory will help us improve conditions for democracy someday, or not. (shrink)

In what follows, I focus on the partiality and fallibility of each of us as individuals, and explore what that means for us as epistemic agents. When we examine the tradition of Western European thought, we note that most epistemological theories assume individuals can know the answer, and are able to critique what is passed down to others as socially constructed knowledge. Many have made the argument that while humanity can be deceived, one individual can know, and therefore teach the (...) others about their deceptions and false beliefs. I argue that because we are embedded and embodied social beings who do not have transcendental, objective, "God's eye views" of the world in which we live, we need each other to help us be potential knowers able to make knowledge claims. Others help us become aware of our own situatedness and help us develop enlarged views. Rather than thinking that individual philosophers, credentialed experts in their field of study, know more and therefore have knowledge they can teach humanity, I argue that all of us, as members of humanity, have much that we can teach each other. My position is that it is only with the help of others that we are able to know anything. (shrink)

In this paper a principle of substitutivity of logical equivalents salve veritate and a version of Leibniz’s law are formulated and each is shown to cause problems when combined with naive truth theories.

Book one consists of Bacon's scathing attack on current philosophy and on the scientific method. He attacks the syllogistic method, and the various idols that prevent men from investigating Nature in a reasonable way. The lack of attention paid to natural philosophy and the excessive reverence for ancient authors are key reasons why man's knowledge of nature has progressed so slowly. Book Two is a detailed explanation of Bacon's method, using various examples. It begins by creating tables (...) of the various instances that meet in the nature to be investigated. After the relevant instances have been presented to the intellect, the task of induction can be carried out. Induction acts by excluding various possibilities, until an affirmative has been achieved. The next stage is the consideration of privileged instances, which assist the process in terms of information or of practice. (shrink)

This paper presents and motivates a counterpart theoretic semantics for quantifi ed modal logic based on a fleshed out account of Lewis's notion of a `possibility.' According to the account a possibility consists of a world and some haecceitistic information about how each possible individual gets represented de re. A semantics for quanti ed modal logic based on evaluating formulae at possibilities is developed. It is shown that this framework naturally accommodates an actuality operator, addressing recent objections to counterpart (...) class='Hi'>theory, and is equivalent to the more familiar Kripke semantics for quanti fied modal logic with an actuality operator. (shrink)

Early in the 1240s the University of Paris hired a recent graduate from Oxford, Roger Bacon by name, to teach the arts and introduce Aristotle to its curriculum. Along with eight sets of questions on Aristotle's natural works and the Metaphysics he claims to have authored another eight books before he returned to Oxford around 1247. Within the prodigious output of this period we find a treatise on logic titled Summulae dialectices, and it is this that is here annotated and (...) presented in translation. The book is unique in several respects. First, there is the breadth of its sources. Not only do we find explicit reference to the usual authors such as Aristotle, Plato, Boethius, Porphyry, Cicero, and Priscian, we also find unexpected reference to Augustine, Bernardus Silvestris, Donatus, Terence, and Themistius, along with mention of the Muslim philosophers Algazel and Ibn Rushd. Second, it is clear that Bacon is drawing on or reacting to an extraordinarily wide variety of medieval sources: Garland the Computist, Hugh of St. Victor, Master Hugo, Hugutius of Pisa, Isidore of Seville, Nicholas of Damas, Nicholas of Paris, Richard of Cornwall, Robert Kilwardby, Robert of Lincoln, and Robert the Englishman. Third, it unexpectedly presents a full-blown treatment of Aristotle's theory of demonstration. And finally, Bacon reveals a highly unorthodox view of the signification of common terms. Bacon, here, takes his students and us deeper into medieval sources and controversy than any of his rivals do. (shrink)

Recent discussion in democratic theory has seen a revival of interest in pragmatism. Drawing on the work of C. S. Peirce, Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse have argued that a form of deliberative democracy is justified as the means for citizens to assure themselves of the truth of their beliefs. In this article, I suggest that the Peircean account of deliberative democracy is conceived too narrowly. It takes its force from seeing citizens as intellectual inquirers, something that I argue (...) is both problematic in itself and relies on a controversial understanding of truth and inquiry. The article goes on to propose reasons for favouring a Deweyan rather than a Peircean account of democracy, one in which deliberation is seen not simply as a matter of arriving at the truth, but as part of a broader view of human flourishing. (shrink)

ABSTRACTKevin Scharp’s ‘Replacing Truth’ is an ambitious and far reaching account of the semantic paradoxes. In this critical discussion we examine one the books central claims: to have provided a theory of truth that avoids the revenge paradoxes. In the first part we assess this claim, and in the second part we investigate some features of Scharp’s preferred theory of truth, ADT, and compare it with existing theories such as the Kripke–Feferman theory. In the appendix a simple (...) model of Scharp’s theory is presented, and some potential consistent ways to strengthen the theory are suggested. (shrink)

This richly annotated second edition of the now-classic pairing of Bacon’s masterpieces, New Atlantis and The Great Instauration features the addition of other works by Bacon, including “The Idols of the Mind,” Of Unity in Religion” and “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates,” as well a Summary of the each work and Questions for the reader. S Includes works new to the second edition, including “The Idols of the Mind,” “Of Unity in Religion,” and “Of the (...) True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates” Updates the layout of the previous edition with a more generous interior design, making this work more student-friendly and easier to navigate in the classroom Each work is introduced and subsequently discussed, revealing the importance of Bacon’s work to his contemporaries as well as to modern readers Includes a comprehensive introduction and annotations throughout the text; as well as an appendix of Principal Dates in the Life of Sir Francis Bacon; a selected bibliography; and synopses and questions to accompany each work. (shrink)

An increasing amount of contemporary philosophy of mathematics posits, and theorizes in terms of special kinds of mathematical modality. The goal of this paper is to bring recent work on higher-order metaphysics to bear on the investigation of these modalities. The main focus of the paper will be views that posit mathematical contingency or indeterminacy about statements that concern the `width' of the set theoretic universe, such as Cantor's continuum hypothesis. Within a higher-order framework I show that contingency about the (...) width of the set-theoretic universe refutes two orthodoxies concerning the structure of modal reality: the view that the broadest necessity has a logic of S5, and the "Leibniz biconditionals" stating that what is possible, in the broadest sense of possible, is what is true in some possible world. Nonetheless, I suggest that the underlying picture of modal set-theory is coherent and has attractions. (shrink)

A number of arguments purport to show that vague properties determine sharp boundaries at higher orders. That is, although we may countenance vagueness concerning the location of boundaries for vague predicates, every predicate can instead be associated with precise knowable cut-off points deriving from precision in their higher order boundaries. I argue that this conclusion is indeed paradoxical, and identify the assumption responsible for the paradox as the Brouwerian principle B for vagueness: that if p then it's determinate that it's (...) not determinate that not p. Other paradoxes which do not appear to turn on B turn instead on some subtle issues concerning the relation between assertion, belief and higher order vagueness. In this paper a theory of assertion, knowledge and logic is outlined which allows one to avoid any kind of higher order precision. A class of realistic models containing counterexamples to B and a number of weakenings of B are introduced and its logic is shown to support vagueness at every order. (shrink)

Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers.

An increasing amount of contemporary philosophy of mathematics posits, and theorizes in terms of special kinds of mathematical modality. The goal of this paper is to bring recent work on higher-order metaphysics to bear on the investigation of these modalities. The main focus of the paper will be views that posit mathematical contingency or indeterminacy about statements that concern the ‘width’ of the set theoretic universe, such as Cantor’s continuum hypothesis. Within a higher-order framework I show that contingency about the (...) width of the set-theoretic universe refutes two orthodoxies concerning the structure of modal reality: the view that the broadest necessity has a logic of S5, and the ‘Leibniz biconditionals’ stating that what is possible, in the broadest sense of _possible_, is what is true in some possible world. Nonetheless, I suggest that the underlying picture of modal set-theory is coherent and has attractions. (shrink)

This article examines Gianni Vattimo’s contribution to the recent ontological turn in political theory. Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo offers a ‘philosophy of history’ in which strong metaphysical claims are presented as gradually being weakened, but in which the irrationalism he thinks characteristic of many anti-foundationalist theorists is also avoided. This philosophy is said to provide for new understandings of ethical and political life which have the acceptance of pluralism as their aim. The article argues that Vattimo’s attempt (...) to identify a position beyond metaphysics on the one hand and relativism on the other is unsuccessful, and that he ought to join in with the thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism that marks the work of writers such as Rorty and Derrida. It suggests further that awareness of our historical situation need not weaken the confidence with which our beliefs are held, and does not support any particular political programme. (shrink)

Michael Bacon gives a critical presentation of Rorty's writings on pragmatism and political theory, comparing and contrasting him with pragmatists such as Hilary Putnam and Susan Haack and liberals such as John Rawls and Brian Barry. The result is an imaginative presentation of one of contemporary philosophy's most innovative and important thinkers.

My aim has been to adapt Quine's criterion of the ontological commitment of theories couched in standard quantificational idiom to a much broader class of theories by focusing on the set-theoretic structure of the models of those theories. For standard first-order theories, the two criteria coincide on simple entities. Divergences appear as they are applied to higher-order theories and as composite entities are taken into account. In support of the extended criterion, I appeal to its fruits in treating the various (...) examples considered above and to the healthy intuitions of the non-noneists among us. Don't O(m) and E(m) comprise just the things we should have though existed according to a particular interpretation m of a language or a theory? Whatever the answer (and it will hardly be unanimous), I hope to have pointed the way towards a recognition of ontology as a worthwhile branch of modern theory. (shrink)

This paper examines the issue that has taken center stage in the writings of John Gray, the bankruptcy of the Enlightenment project and its implications for liberal political theory. The paper outlines Gray’s critique, showing that elements of his argument against what he calls “the liberal project” apply equally to his own value-pluralist position. It suggests that Gray equivocates between rejecting the Enlightenment liberal project and offering a value-pluralist version of that project because of a fear of moral relativism, (...) a fear that, it is argued, is misplaced. (shrink)

In "Supervenience, Necessary Coextension, and Reducibility" (Philosophical Studies 49, 1986, 163-176), among other results, I showed that weak or ordinary supervenience is equivalent to Jaegwon Kim's strong supervenience, given certain assumptions: S4 modality, the usual modal conception of properties as class-concepts, and diagonal closure or resplicing of the set of base properties. This last means that any mapping of possible worlds into extensions of base properties counts itself as a base property. James Van Cleve attacks the modal conception of property (...) and diagonal closure. To me it seems desperate to reject diagonal closure merely in order to save supervenience-materialism. But I concede that it may be unacceptable in the context of a sparser theory of properties. (shrink)

From Parmenides to the present, philosophers have been attracted by characterizations of being as being uttered or utterable, formulated or formulable. But what for Parmenides was presumably a valid co-entailment between antecedently understood concepts reappears in contemporary thought as a proffered explication of what it is to be. Without presuming to discredit Parmenidean views in general, my purpose here is to examine certain members of a modern family of theories of existence that fall into place around Quine’s. Depending on the (...) methodology of explication espoused, the theories in this family are either semantic commentaries on ideal languages, or they are themselves interpreted formalized languages. The former may be called, after Quine, theories of ontological commitment. The theories of the latter sort I wish to consider are called, after Karel Lambert, free logics, i.e., logic systems the singular terms of which are free of existential import. My conclusion about theories of both kinds is that, while unexceptionable on their own terms, from a broader point of view they beg the question of what it is to be. In arguing that these theories thus fail to clarify the concept of existence, I believe I am not so much propounding a new insight as articulating an objection many thinkers have felt in the face of views akin to Quine’s. (shrink)

Spousal correlation in risk attitude is estimated using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel over the period 2004–2009. We apply the bivariate panel ordered probit model to the analysis of the simultaneous determination of the male’s and the female’s risk attitude, using the survey question about general willingness to take risk, provided on a 0–10 Likert-scale. The correlations between both the individual-specific effects of the two partners and the two within-individual errors are separately estimated, and found to be +0.285 and (...) +0.310, respectively. We consider the former to be a key parameter, since its positive sign may be interpreted in terms of positive assortative mating on risk attitude: individuals tend to form partnerships with others having a similar risk attitude. We also find evidence that this correlation increases with years of marriage, suggesting either a form of spousal socialization or a selection process in which marriage breakdown is more likely in poorly matched couples. (shrink)

This article examines Gianni Vattimo’s contribution to the recent ontological turn in political theory. Drawing on Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimo offers a ‘philosophy of history’ in which strong metaphysical claims are presented as gradually being weakened, but in which the irrationalism he thinks characteristic of many anti-foundationalist theorists is also avoided. This philosophy is said to provide for new understandings of ethical and political life which have the acceptance of pluralism as their aim. The article argues that Vattimo’s attempt (...) to identify a position beyond metaphysics on the one hand and relativism on the other is unsuccessful, and that he ought to join in with the thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism that marks the work of writers such as Rorty and Derrida. It suggests further that awareness of our historical situation need not weaken the confidence with which our beliefs are held, and does not support any particular political programme. (shrink)

The article is the study of some aspects of the methodology of scientific knowledge that F. Bacon addressed in his treatise “New Organon” (1620) and in other works in one way or another related to his work on the project of the Instauratio Magna Scientiarum. The article focuses on the following three questions: Bacon’s attitude to Aristotle’s legacy, the context of Bacon’s doctrine of idols and the reasons for the English philosopher to choose a fragmented (aphoristic) form of presentation (...) of his ideas in the “New Organon” and in some other works. Based on an analysis of Bacon’s works related to the above project, it was shown that his statements about Aristotle and his philosophy were differentiated depending on whether the corresponding text was intended for printing or served as a working draft. In the latter case, the estimates of Aristotle by Bacon were more stringent. Baconian criticism of Aristotelianism was formed in the context of the development by the English philosopher of the doctrine of the idols of knowledge. The article shows that developing this doctrine, Bacon proceeded from the idea of mass insanity of the human race (insania publica), which has ancient roots and was shared by a number of contemporaries of F. Bacon. At the same time, the latter considered Aristotle as the creator of “a kind of art of insanity (artemque quondam insaniae componere)”. As a cure for “insania universalis”, Bacon proposed a new method (the “new organon”) of cognition, and the presentation of his ideas in the form of separate, but conceptually related aphorisms, as a way of activating the reader’s thought process. (shrink)

Francis Bacon (15611626) wrote that good scientists are not like ants (mindlessly gathering data) or spiders (spinning empty theories). Instead, they are like bees, transforming nature into a nourishing product. This essay examines Bacon's "middle way" by elucidating the means he proposes to turn experience and insight into understanding. The human intellect relies on "machines" to extend perceptual limits, check impulsive imaginations, and reveal nature's latent causal structure, or "forms." This constructivist interpretation is not intended to supplant inductivist or (...) experimentalist interpretations, but is designed to explicate Bacon's account of science as a collaborative project with several interdependent methodological goals. (shrink)

Is vision merely a state of the beholder’s sensory organ which can be explained as an immediate effect caused by external sensible objects? Or is it rather a successive process in which the observer actively scanning the surrounding environment plays a major part? These two general attitudes towards visual perception were both developed already by ancient thinkers. The former is embraced by natural philosophers (e.g., atomists and Aristotelians) and is often labelled “intromissionist”, based on their assumption that vision is an (...) outcome of the causal influence exerted by an external object upon a sensory organ receiving an entity from the object. The latter attitude to vision as a successive process is rather linked to the “extramissionist” theories of the proponents of geometrical optics (such as Euclid or Ptolemy) who suggest that an entity – a visual ray – is sent forth from the eyes to the object. The present paper focuses on the contributions to this ancient controversy proposed by some 13th-century Latin thinkers. [...]. (shrink)

The essay offers a philosophical reconstruction of Nietzsche’s theory of the will, focusing on (1) Nietzsche’s account of the phenomenology of “willing” an action, the experience we have which leads us (causally) to conceive of ourselves as exercising our will; (2) Nietzsche’s arguments that the experiences picked out by the phenomenology are not causally connected to the resulting action (at least not in a way sufficient to underwrite ascriptions of moral responsibility); and (3) Nietzsche’s account of the actual causal (...) genesis of action. Particular attention is given to passages from Daybreak, Beyond Good and Evil and Twilight of the Idols and a revised version of my earlier account of Nietzsche’s epiphenomenalism is defended. Finally, recent work in empirical psychology (Libet, Wegner) is shown to support Nietzsche’s skepticism that our “feeling” of will is a reliable guide to the causation of action. (shrink)