The self-limiting revolutions of 1989 in Central Europe offer an alternative paradigm of revolutionary change that is reminiscent more of the American struggle for independence in 1776 than the Jacobin tendencies that grew out of the French Revolution of 1789. In order to understand the contradictory impulses of the revolutions of 1989—the desire for a radical renewal and the concern for preservation—this article takes as its point of departure the political thought of Hannah Arendt and Edmund Burke.

The article employs music to describe the dynamics of Central European identity at the turn of the 20th century. Conceptually, the analysis is based on the notion of cultural resonance and the distinction between political territories, which isolate identity, and cultural landscapes which let it escape. This theoretical understanding is derived from the acoustic philosophy and musical practice of two Central European composers, Leoš Janáček and Béla Bartók. Exemplified here is artistic ‘extra-territorial’ identity, which is indeed how Theodor (...) Adorno at one point referred to the ‘peripheral’ sound coming from the region. This process of identity construction amplifies paradoxical middle spaces, which Jean Luc Nancy describes evocatively as a cultural mêlée. The vitality of cultural resonance is fuelled by this primary contact with mundane reality and the ‘navigational hesitation’ underpinning identity and its many trajectories. (shrink)

Paradoxes are arguments that lead from apparently true premises, via apparently uncontroversial reasoning, to a false or even contradictory conclusion. Paradoxes threaten our basic understanding of central concepts such as space, time, motion, infinity, truth, knowledge, and belief. In this volume Roy T Cook provides a sophisticated, yet accessible and entertaining, introduction to the study of paradoxes, one that includes a detailed examination of a wide variety of paradoxes. The book is organized around four important types of paradox: (...) the semantic paradoxes involving truth, the set-theoretic paradoxes involving arbitrary collections of objects, the Soritical paradoxes involving vague concepts, and the epistemic paradoxes involving knowledge and belief. In each of these cases, Cook frames the discussion in terms of four different approaches one might take towards solving such paradoxes. Each chapter concludes with a number of exercises that illustrate the philosophical arguments and logical concepts involved in the paradoxes. _Paradoxes_ is the ideal introduction to the topic and will be a valuable resource for scholars and students in a wide variety of disciplines who wish to understand the important role that paradoxes have played, and continue to play, in contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Paradoxes are more than just intellectual puzzles - they raise substantive philosophical issues and offer the promise of increased philosophical knowledge. In this introduction to paradox and paradoxes, Doris Olin shows how seductive paradoxes can be, why they confuse and confound, and why they continue to fascinate. Olin examines the nature of paradox, outlining a rigorous definition and providing a clear and incisive statement of what does and does not count as a resolution of a paradox. The (...) view that a statement can be both true and false, that contradictions can be true, is seen to provide a challenge to the account of paradox resolution, and is explored. With this framework in place, the book then turns to an in-depth treatment of the Prediction Paradox, versions of the Preface/Fallibility Paradox, the Lottery Paradox, Newcomb's Problem, the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Sorites Paradox. Each of these paradoxes is shown to have considerable philosophical punch. Olin unpacks the central arguments in a clear and systematic fashion, offers original analyses and solutions, and exposes further unsettling implications for some of our most deep-seated principles and convictions. (shrink)

Paradoxes are more than just intellectual puzzles - they raise substantive philosophical issues and offer the promise of increased philosophical knowledge. In this introduction to paradox and paradoxes, Doris Olin shows how seductive paradoxes can be, why they confuse and confound, and why they continue to fascinate. Olin examines the nature of paradox, outlining a rigorous definition and providing a clear and incisive statement of what does and does not count as a resolution of a paradox. The (...) view that a statement can be both true and false, that contradictions can be true, is seen to provide a challenge to the account of paradox resolution, and is explored. With this framework in place, the book then turns to an in-depth treatment of the Prediction Paradox, versions of the Preface/Fallibility Paradox, the Lottery Paradox, Newcomb's Problem, the Prisoner's Dilemma and the Sorites Paradox. Each of these paradoxes is shown to have considerable philosophical punch. Olin unpacks the central arguments in a clear and systematic fashion, offers original analyses and solutions, and exposes further unsettling implications for some of our most deep-seated principles and convictions. (shrink)

Paradox — the simultaneous existence of two inconsistent states — has become orthodox. The orthodox is now the paradox. The orthodox world of ordering, controlling and organizing is increasingly opposed to a normalizing world of disordering, disrupting and disorganizing. And organization studies cannot avoid changing its conceptions of reality as that reality changes. In the future, organization studies will be the study of paradox, how to understand it, how to use it. In this book of original contributions (...) addressed to management and organization paradoxes the authors address the new state of the field in terms of representations — representing paradoxes — and materialisations — materialising paradoxes. The themes — although varied, ranging from dialectics to internal tensions; from collaborations to ethics and value conflicts; from resistant labourers and wharfies to cartoon characters such as The Simpsons; from the irrationalities of finance to the psychoanalytic rationalities of auditing, and from issues of governance in Asian and international business to the composition of the new knowledge work force in the business professions — cohere around core aspects of paradoxicality. Overall, the contributions to Management and Organization Paradoxes are diverse and challenging. Each contribution takes a different angle on the central theme. All of the chapters illuminate diverse aspects of contemporary paradoxes in management and organization theory. The book provides, in each of its chapters, a challenge to the still overwhelmingly rationalist views of theory and practice that dominate the field and provides new directions for understanding organizations and management.The contributors are drawn from leading European, Australian and Latin American contributors. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence systems have been widely applied to various contexts, including high-stake decision processes in healthcare, banking, and judicial systems. Some developed AI models fail to offer a fair output for specific minority groups, sparking comprehensive discussions about AI fairness. We argue that the development of AI systems is marked by a central paradox: the less participation one stakeholder has within the AI system’s life cycle, the more influence they have over the way the system will function. This (...) means that the impact on the fairness of the system is in the hands of those who are less impacted by it. However, most of the existing works ignore how different aspects of AI fairness are dynamically and adaptively affected by different stages of AI system development. To this end, we present a use case to discuss fairness in the development of corporate wellness programs using smart wearables and AI algorithms to analyze data. The four key stakeholders throughout this type of AI system development process are presented. These stakeholders are called service designer, algorithm designer, system deployer, and end-user. We identify three core aspects of AI fairness, namely, contextual fairness, model fairness, and device fairness. We propose a relative contribution of the four stakeholders to the three aspects of fairness. Furthermore, we propose the boundaries and interactions between the four roles, from which we make our conclusion about the possible unfairness in such an AI developing process. (shrink)

This book develops a framework for analysing strategic rationality, a notion central to contemporary game theory, which is the formal study of the interaction of rational agents and which has proved extremely fruitful in economics, political theory and business management. The author argues that a logical paradox lies at the root of a number of persistent puzzles in game theory, in particular those concerning rational agents who seek to establish some kind of reputation. Building on the work of (...) Parsons, Burge, Gaifman and Barwise and Etchemendy, Robert Koons constructs a context-sensitive solution to the whole family of liar-like paradoxes including, for the first time, a detailed account of how the interpretation of paradoxical statements is fixed by context. This analysis provides an understanding of how the rational agent model can account for the emergence of rules, practices and institutions. (shrink)

A sorites argument is a symptom of the vagueness of the predicate with which it is constructed. A vague predicate admits of at least one dimension of variation (and typically more than one) in its intended range along which we are at a loss when to say the predicate ceases to apply, though we start out confident that it does. It is this feature of them that the sorites arguments exploit. Exactly how is part of the subject of this paper. (...) The majority of philosophers writing on vagueness take it to be a kind of semantic phenomenon. If we are right, they are correct in this assumption, which is surely the default position, but they have not so far provided a satisfactory account of the implications of this or a satisfactory diagnosis of the sorites arguments. Other philosophers have urged more exotic responses, which range from the view that the fault lies not in our language, but in the world, which they propose to be populated with vague objects which our semantics precisely reflects, to the view that the world and language are both perfectly in order, but that the fault lies with our knowledge of the properties of the words we use (epistemicism). In contrast to the exotica to which some philosophers have found themselves driven in an attempt to respond to the sorites puzzles, we undertake a defense of the commonsense view that vague terms are semantically vague. Our strategy is to take fresh look at the phenomenon of vagueness. Rather than attempting to adjudicate between different extant theories, we begin with certain pre-theoretic intuitions about vague terms, and a default position on classical logic. The aim is to see whether (i) a natural story can be told which will explain the vagueness phenomenon and the puzzling nature of soritical arguments, and, in the course of this, to see whether (ii) there arises any compelling pressure to give up the natural stance. We conclude that there is a simple and natural story to be told, and we tell it, and that there is no good reason to abandon our intuitively compelling starting point. The importance of the strategy lies in its dialectical structure. Not all positions on vagueness are on a par. Some are so incredible that even their defenders think of them as positions of last resort, positions to which we must be driven by the power of philosophical argument. We aim to show that there is no pressure to adopt these incredible positions, obviating the need to respond to them directly. If we are right, semantic vagueness is neither surprising, nor threatening. It provides no reason to suppose that the logic of natural languages is not classical or to give up any independently plausible principle of bivalence. Properly understood, it provides us with a satisfying diagnosis of the sorites argumentation. It would be rash to claim to have any completely novel view about a topic so well worked as vagueness. But we believe that the subject, though ancient, still retains its power to inform and challenge us. In particular, we will argue that taking seriously the central phenomenon of predicate vagueness—the “boundarylessness” of vague predicates—on the commonsense assumption that vagueness is semantic, leads ineluctably to the view that no sentences containing vague expressions (henceforth ‘vague sentences’) are truth-evaluable. This runs counter to much of the literature on vagueness, which commonly assumes that, though some applications of vague predicates to objects fail to be truth-evaluable, in clear positive and negative cases vague sentences are unproblematically true or false. It is clarity on this, and related points, that removes the puzzles associated with vagueness, and helps us to a satisfying diagnosis of why the sorites arguments both seem compelling and yet so obviously a bit of trickery. We give a proof that semantically vague predicates neither apply nor fail-to-apply to anything, and that consequently it is a mistake to diagnose sorites arguments, as is commonly done, by attempting to locate in them a false premise. Sorites arguments are not sound, but not unsound either. We offer an explanation of their appeal, and defend our position against a variety of worries that might arise about it. The plan of the paper is as follows. We first introduce an important distinction in terms of which we characterize what has gone wrong with vague predicates. We characterize what we believe to be our natural starting point in thinking about the phenomenon of vagueness, from which only a powerful argument should move us, and then trace out the consequences of accepting this starting point. We consider the charge that among the consequences of semantic vagueness are that we must give up classical logic and the principle of bivalence, which has figured prominently in arguments for epistemicism. We argue there are no such consequences of our view: neither the view that the logic of natural languages is classical, nor any plausible principle of bivalence, need be given up. Next, we offer a diagnosis of what has gone wrong in sorites arguments on the basis of our account. We then present an argument to show that our account must be accepted on pain of embracing (in one way or another) the epistemic view of “vagueness”, i.e., of denying that there are any semantically vague terms at all. Next, we discuss some worries that may arise about the intelligibility of our linguistic practices if our account is correct. We argue none of these worries should force us from our intuitive starting point. Finally, we cast a quick glance at other forms of semantic incompleteness. (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in (...) which the paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in (...) which the paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

Presenting ten diverse and original moral paradoxes, this cutting edge work of philosophical ethics makes a focused, concrete case for the centrality of paradoxes within morality. Explores what these paradoxes can teach us about morality and the human condition Considers a broad range of subjects, from familiar topics to rarely posed questions Makes a concrete case for the centrality of paradox within morality Asks whether the existence of moral paradox is a good or a bad thing Presents analytic (...) moral philosophy in a provocative, engaging and entertaining way; posing new questions, proposing possible solutions, and challenging the reader to wrestle with the paradoxes themselves. (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in (...) which the paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

Au détour de l'ordre géométrique, dans un scolie de la Quatrième partie de l'Éthique faisant suite à l'énoncé de la règle fondamentale qui associe l'utilité du corps humain, et par conséquent le bien de l'individu, à la recherche d'une constance fondamentale dans le rapport de ses parties, surgit un scolie baroque, où passe l'ombre de la mort et qui débouche sur d'inquiétantes possibilités de mutation, voire de transmutation de l'identité : « Il arrive qu'un homme subit de tels changements, que (...) je ne dirai pas aisément qu'il est le même. C'est ce que j'ai entendu raconter de certain poète espagnol qui avait été atteint de maladie et qui, bien qu'il en fût guéri, demeura cependant dans un tel oubli de sa vie passée, qu'il ne croyait pas que les nouvelles et les tragédies qu'il avait faites fussent de lui ; et certes on eût pu le tenir pour un nourrisson adulte, s'il eût oublié aussi sa langue maternelle... » De ce texte perturbateur et de sa « contradiction » centrale, qui ont semé le trouble chez les commentateurs, François Zourabichvili qui en propose une explication systématique fait le fil conducteur d'une relecture complète des relations qui associent la métaphysique spinozienne à son anthropologie et à sa politique, centrée sur la question de la transformation comme « oubli », voire amnésie d'une forme antérieure, et « imagination », chimérique ou non, d'une nouvelle aptitude du corps. Il démontre ainsi la rigoureuse correspondance qui, d'un bout à l'autre de l'œuvre, associe la question d'une sortie de l'enfance à celle d'une émancipation de l'imaginaire monarchique. A l'encontre d'une lecture naïvement « révolutionnaire » du spinozisme, surgit alors ce qu'on peut appeler un conservatisme : mais dont le paradoxe est éclatant, car il tend moins à préserver l'état de choses existant qu'à inventer les conditions d'une vraie conservation de soi (neutralisation de la mort et de la servitude). Pages de début Avertissement Introduction Première étude. Envelopper une autre nature / envelopper la nature Introduction 1. La transition éthique dans le Court traité 2. La transition éthique dans le Traité de la réforme de l'entendement Deuxième étude. L'image rectifiée de l'enfance Introduction 3. La figure de l'infans adultus 4. Enfance et philosophie 5. Enfance et mémoire Conclusion sur le rapport à l'enfance Troisième étude. Puissance de Dieu et puissance des rois Introduction 6. La confusion des deux puissances et la dérive baroque du cartésianisme 7. Le rêve transformiste de la monarchie absolue 8. Qu'est-cequ'une multitude libre? Guerre et civilisation Bibliographie Index. (shrink)

The Knowability Paradox purports to show that the controversial but not patently absurd hypothesis that all truths are knowable entails the implausible conclusion that all truths are known. The notoriety of this argument owes to the negative light it appears to cast on the view that there can be no verification-transcendent truths. We argue that it is overly simplistic to formalize the views of contemporary verificationists like Dummett, Prawitz or Martin-Löf using the sort of propositional modal operators which are (...) employed in the original derivation of the Paradox. Instead we propose that the central tenet of verificationism is most accurately formulated as follows: if φ is true, then there exists a proof of φ Building on the work of Artemov (Bull Symb Log 7(1): 1-36, 2001), a system of explicit modal logic with proof quantifiers is introduced to reason about such statements. When the original reasoning of the Paradox is developed in this setting, we reach not a contradiction, but rather the conclusion that there must exist non-constructed proofs. This outcome is evaluated relative to the controversy between Dummett and Prawitz about proof existence and bivalence. (shrink)

RESUMO:O presente artigo pretende abordar a forma original com a qual Rousseau focaliza a questão da origem do poder político, tema que é central na teoria política moderna. Em sua obra Do Contrato Social, o autor examina as razões, aparentemente paradoxais, pelas quais alguém, nascido livre, se escravizaria voluntariamente, obedecendo a outro e não a si próprio. Distanciando-se da influência de Hobbes e Locke, o autor apresenta a tese do contrato social, fundado no conceito de vontade geral, como o (...) único meio pelo qual o indivíduo se realizaria enquanto ser humano. Ao assumir sua condição de cidadão, unindo-se a todos em vista do bem comum e não obedecendo a ninguém a não ser a si próprio, o mesmo adquire tanto a igualdade quanto a liberdade civil, condições sem as quais deixaria de existir. Somente dessa forma, cada cidadão, exercendo seus direitos e deveres, seria detentor de parcela da soberania, enquanto membro da vontade geral, no direito de legislar. ABSTRACTThe article aims at discussing the new approach proposed by Rousseau regarding the question of the origin of political power, which is a central aspect of modern political theory. In his masterpiece The Social Contract, the author analyzes the apparently paradoxical reasons why someone born free could become a slave by his own free will, and, as such, subject to the authority of one other than himself. Going beyond the influence of Hobbes and Locke, the author presents the thesis of the social contract, based on the concept of the general will and considered the only way through which man can realize the human condition. By achieving the condition of citizen, each one as his own master and uniting with all others and looking toward the common good, man can reach the necessary conditions for his own existence: the conditions of equality and liberty. (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in (...) which the paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction (e.g., one person giving a present to another requires that both parties appreciate that a voluntary transfer of ownership is intended). Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may (...) depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent (the “we”) arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions. (shrink)

Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction. Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of (...) A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions. (shrink)

The paper presents the logical milieu of the Paradox of ravens, identified by Hempel in his Studies in the Logic of Confirmation. It deals with Hempel’s interpretations of Nicod’s criterion of confirmation as well as with its inadmissible consequences. I, subsequently, suggest an epistemological and semantic specification of empirical properties, i.e., of their identity; then I formulate a criterion of the test of properties expressed by empirical hypothesis. Finally, I propose a procedural conception of confirmation by means of the (...) testing procedure schema. The confirmation is, therefore, conceived as an attribute which can be ascribed to a hypothesis through the process of its testing. The methods of testing are central to the hypothesis’s qualifica-tion as confirmed. (shrink)

This paper reconsiders certain of Kierkegaard's criticisms of Hegel's theoretical philosophy in the light of recent interpretations of the latter. The paper seeks to show how these criticisms, far from being merely parochial or rhetorical, turn on central issues concerning the nature of thought and what it is to think. I begin by introducing Hegel's conception of "pure thought" as this is distinguished by his commitment to certain general requirements on a properly philosophical form of inquiry. I then outline (...) Hegel's strategy for resolving a crucial problem he takes himself to face. For his account of the nature of thought depends upon the idea of a form of inquiry in which nothing whatsoever is presupposed; but this idea appears basically paradoxical inasmuch as the mere act of beginning to inquire in a certain way embodies an assumption about how it is appropriate to begin. Turning to Kierkegaard, I consider a key objection to the effect that Hegel's strategy for resolving this paradox depends on the incoherent idea of a purely reflexive act of thinking. Finally, I draw out some central features of the alternative account of "situated" thought and inquiry which Kierkegaard presents as distinctively Socratic. (shrink)

From the theory of ‘deliberative democracy’ to the politics of the ‘third way’, the present Zeitgeist is characterized by attempts to deny what Chantal Mouffe contends is the inherently conflictual nature of democratic politics. Far from being signs of progress, such ideas constitute a serious threat to democratic institutions. Taking issue with John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas on one side, and the political tenets of Blair, Clinton and Schröder on the other, Mouffe brings to the fore the paradoxical nature of (...) modern liberal democracy in which the category of the ‘adversary’ plays a central role. She draws on the work of Wittgenstein, Derrida, and the provocative theses of Carl Schmitt, to propose a new understanding of democracy which acknowledges the ineradicability of antagonism in its workings. (shrink)

The paradox of hedonism is the idea that making pleasure the only thing that we desire for its own sake can be self-defeating. Why would this be true? In this paper, I survey two prominent explanations, then develop a third possible explanation, inspired by Joseph Butler's classic discussion of the paradox. The existing accounts claim that the paradox arises because we are systematically incompetent at predicting what will make us happy, or because the greatest pleasures for human (...) beings are found in certain special goods which hedonists cannot enjoy. On the account that I develop, the paradox is a consequence of a theory about the nature of pleasure, together with a view about the requirements of rational belief. Which of these explanations is correct, I argue, bears on central questions about how to understand the nature and extent of the paradox. (shrink)

Modern epistemology has run into several paradoxes in its efforts to explain how knowledge acquisition can be both socially based and still able to determine objective facts about the world. In this important book, Richmond Campbell attempts to dispel some of these paradoxes, to show how they are ultimately just "illusions of paradox," by developing ideas central to two of the most promising currents in epistemology: feminist epistemology and naturalized epistemology. Campbell's aim is to construct a coherent theory (...) of knowing that is feminist and "naturalized." Illusions of Paradox will be valuable for students and scholars of epistemology and women's studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: Reviews PASSION AND PARADOX L G Religious Studies / McMaster U. Hamilton, , Canada   @. Joan Cocks. Passion and Paradox: Intellectuals Confront the National Question. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton U. P., . Pp. . .; pb .. ccording to an ancient legend, four Rabbis ventured into the garden of Aphilosophy. One, it is said, went insane, another became a heretic, a third died and (...) only the fourth emerged unscathed. A modern variation of this story might go like this. Four or perhaps  philosophers entered the jungle of nationalism and for the most part went insane. There were those who embraced nationalism and consequently abandoned the universality of philosophy for the promotion of xenophobia, racism and even Nazism. Others remained internationalist and hence became futile—philosophical Canutes—commanding the raging beasts of nationality to be still. No one struggled harder with nationalism than Bertrand Russell. In , writing as an internationalist, he announced the demise of the principle of nationality only to see nationalisms explode in every region of the world (see his “National Independence and Internationalism”, Papers ). He opposed it relentlessly and without compromise until near the end of his life when he found himself endorsing wars of national liberation. Nationalism is often depicted as a howling beast. It would be better to think of it as an anaconda that wraps itself around everyone who ventures into its domain. Joan Cocks’ Passion and Paradox is an important book on nationalism and the intelligentsia. She traces the intellectual encounter with nationalism of a number of figures—Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Isaiah Berlin and the Scottish nationalist Tom Nairn, among others. All are exiles, most are Jews, and all try to hack their way through a jungle of conundrums of nationalist thought. Her accounts of these thinkers sometimes read like complex legal briefs, but are always illuminating. Though an internationalist, she sees the power of nationalist imperatives. Her approach to the contradictory strains of nationalism and hostility to nationalism echoes that of Hegel. She presents critical but sympathetic accounts of each side of the nationalist problematic and shows how their difficulties might be resolved in a higher synthesis. Alas! her resolution suffers from the unworldliness that she finds in other versions of internationalism. Her argument begins with a personal experience. In the early ’s she joined a group of Arabs and Jews against the Gulf War. In the course of their associ- Reviews  ation she learned that the Jews were all internationalists, while the Arabs were outspoken nationalists. This experience presumably demonstrated that a happy collusion of nationalism and internationalism was possible. But, of course, there was another side: those prosecuting the war she opposed were also nationalists. Her central thesis addresses the tragedy of opposition. It states that nationalism is “dilemmatic”, that is, that “all paths of thought obscured equally telling contrary thoughts; all courses of action were strewn with causes for regret and remorse” (p. ). The horns of the dilemma are the valid claims of the internationalist who sees the underlying self-destructive deep structures of nationalism on one side, and the claims of the national particularistic who is engaged in the compelling theatre of national liberation and the protection of local customs and roots on the other. Her book is an account of how her thinkers are framed by this dilemma, locked in by the imperatives of either side. In the period between the Gulf War and the composition of this book in  Cocks was able to observe what she identifies as the destructive logic of nationalism. The ’s were a period of postmodernist celebration of the local, a sensibility that helped to legitimate nationalism. The explosion of nationalism that followed the breakup of the Communist imperium was a time of liberation of the imprisoned nations—a springtime when it was good to be alive. But as the decade wore on the concealed pit bulls came out—in Yugoslavia, in Rwanda and elsewhere. In Cocks’ view nationalism showed an inner logic, of a sort that Russell called attention to in the early ’s—a logic that led from euphoria to self-destruction (see his Prospects). Her aim is to revive the half-remembered internationalist tradition as formulated by Marx and Luxemburg—but also to show... (shrink)

Since antiquity, opposed concepts such as the One and the Many, the Finite and the Infinite, and the Absolute and the Relative, have been a driving force in philosophical, scientific, and mathematical thought. Yet they have also given rise to perplexing problems and conceptual paradoxes which continue to haunt scientists and philosophers. In _Oppositions and Paradoxes_, John L. Bell explains and investigates the paradoxes and puzzles that arise out of conceptual oppositions in physics and mathematics. In the process, Bell not (...) only motivates abstract conceptual thinking about the paradoxes at issue, but he also offers a compelling introduction to central ideas in such otherwise-difficult topics as non-Euclidean geometry, relativity, and quantum physics. These paradoxes are often as fun as they are flabbergasting. Consider, for example, the famous Tristram Shandy paradox: an immortal man composing an autobiography so slowly as to require a year of writing to describe each day of his life — he would, if he had infinite time, presumably never complete the work, although no individual part of it would remain unwritten. Or think of an office mailbox labelled “mail for those with no mailbox”—if this is a person’s mailbox, how can they possibly have “no mailbox”? These and many other paradoxes straddle the boundary between physics and metaphysics, and demonstrate the hidden difficulty in many of our most basic concepts. (shrink)

Present discussions in philosophy of mind focuson ontological and epistemic characteristics ofmind and on mind-brain relations. In contrast,ontological and epistemic characteristics ofthe brain have rarely been thematized. Rather,philosophy seems to rely upon an implicitdefinition of the brain as "neuronal object''and "object of recognition'': henceontologically and epistemically distinct fromthe mind, characterized as "mental subject'' and"subject of recognition''. This leads to the"brain-paradox''. This ontological and epistemicdissociation between brain and mind can beconsidered central for the problems of mind andmind-brain relations that (...) have yet to beresolved in philosophy. The brain itself hasnot been thematized epistemically andontologically, leading to a "brain problem''.The epistemic and ontological dissociationbetween brain and mind presupposes an"isolated'' picture of the brain, characterizedby context-independence (i.e. "isolation'' frombody and environment). We can describe thisview as an extrinsic relationship betweenbrain, body and environment. However, based onrecent empirical findings about body image andphantom sensations, we can no longer considerthe brain as context-independent or "isolated''from its bodily and environmental context.Instead, the brain must be considered"embedded''. Within the context of 'embeddment',brain and bodily/environmental context seemmutually to determine each other, and hence bereciprocally dependent on each other. We candescribe this as an intrinsic relationshipbetween brain, body and environment.Defining the brain as "embedded'' undermines theepistemic and ontological dissociation betweenbrain and mind and consequently resolves the"brain-paradox''. This resolution sheds novellight on problems of mind and mind-brainrelations by relativizing both. It is thereforeconcluded that philosophy should thematizeontological and epistemic characteristics ofthe brain, thereby taking into account the"brain problem'' and developing a "philosophy ofthe brain''. This approach not only opens a newfield in philosophy but also extends the focusof empirical investigation in the neurosciencesto take into account the intrinsic relationshipbetween brain, body and environment. (shrink)

For the Critical Theory tradition of the Frankfurt School, rationalisation is a central concept that refers to the socio-cultural closure of capitalist modernity due to the proliferation of technical, ‘instrumental’ rationality at the expense of some form of political reason. This picture of rationalisation, however, hinges on a separation of technology and politics that is both empirically and philosophically problematic. This article aims to re-conceptualise the rationalisation thesis through a survey of research from science and technology studies and the (...) conceptual framework of Niklas Luhmann's systems theory. It argues that rationalisation indeed exhibits a logic of closure, namely the ‘operational closure’ of sociotechnical systems of measurement, but that this closure in fact produces the historical logics of technical reason and, paradoxically, also generates spaces of critical-political openness. This opens up the theoretical and practical opportunity of connecting the politically just to the technically efficient. (shrink)

When may someone complain, morally? And what, if any, is the relationship between legitimate moral complaint and one's own behaviour? I point out a perplexity about a certain class of moral complaints. Two very different conceptions of moral complaint seem to be operating, and they often have contrary implications. Moreover, both seem intuitively compelling. This is theoretically and practically troubling, but has not been sufficiently noticed. The Paradox of Moral Complaint seems to point to an inherent difficulty in our (...) reflective moral intuitions. Given the legislative nature of moral agency, the plausible limitations upon reasonable moral complaint seem to contradict the inviolability of central moral constraints and the complaints they allow. In the sort of cases under discussion, morality seems at once both to insist upon the possibility of moral complaint, and to deny it. (Published Online August 21 2006). (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship borne by the traditional paradoxes of set theory and semantics to formal incompleteness phenomena. A central tool is the application of the Arithmetized Completeness Theorem to systems of second-order arithmetic and set theory in which various “paradoxical notions” for first-order languages can be formalized. I will first discuss the setting in which this result was originally presented by Hilbert & Bernays (1939) and also how it was later adapted by Kreisel (1950) and Wang (1955) (...) in order to obtain formal undecidability results. A generalization of this method will then be presented whereby Russell’s paradox, a variant of Mirimanoff’s paradox, the Liar, and the Grelling–Nelson paradox may be uniformly transformed into incompleteness theorems. Some additional observations are then framed relating these results to the unification of the set theoretic and semantic paradoxes, the intensionality of arithmetization (in the sense of Feferman, 1960), and axiomatic theories of truth. (shrink)

Social interaction is both ubiquitous and central to understanding human behavior. Such interactions depend, we argue, on shared intentionality: the parties must form a common understanding of an ambiguous interaction (e.g., one person giving a present to another requires that both parties appreciate that a voluntary transfer of ownership is intended). Yet how can shared intentionality arise? Many well-known accounts of social cognition, including those involving “mind-reading,” typically fall into circularity and/or regress. For example, A’s beliefs and behavior may (...) depend on her prediction of B’s beliefs and behavior, but B’s beliefs and behavior depend in turn on her prediction of A’s beliefs and behavior. One possibility is to embrace circularity and take shared intentionality as imposing consistency conditions on beliefs and behavior, but typically there are many possible solutions and no clear criteria for choosing between them. We argue that addressing these challenges requires some form of we-reasoning, but that this raises the puzzle of how the collective agent (the “we”) arises from the individual agents. This puzzle can be solved by proposing that the will of the collective agent arises from a simulated process of bargaining: agents must infer what they would agree, were they able to communicate. This model explains how, and which, shared intentions are formed. We also propose that such “virtual bargaining” may be fundamental to understanding social interactions. (shrink)

The authors sum up the central issue of ethics in the conduct of controlled clinical trials in these two paradoxes: 'first, it is unethical to use treatment the efficacy of which has not been examined scientifically; second, it is also unethical to examine the efficacy of treatment scientifically.' In this paper they set out to demonstrate how these antithetical statements apply in controlled trials conducted in psychiatric patients. In such trials the problem of obtaining informed consent may be acute, (...) but in these patients giving 'informed' consent might contribute to a further exacerbation of the illness. Nevertheless the problem cannot be evaded, and scientific judgments must be applied to treatment for it to be sound and improved for the further benefit of patients. These problems in the case of psychiatric controlled trials are a part of the methodology, and in Germany a new drug law has been drafted to attempt to clarify the issue. The authors briefly discuss its application, and its consequences if such a law were enacted. British psychiatrists have exactly the same problems to face but so far no attempts have been made to establish a legal framework. (shrink)

How do the hard facts of political responsibility shape and constrain the demands of ethical life? That question lies at the heart of the problem of 'dirty hands' in public life. Those who exercise political power often feel they must act in ways that would otherwise be considered immoral: indeed, paradoxically, they sometimes feel that it would be immoral of them not to perform or condone such acts as killing or lying. John Parrish offers a wide-ranging account of how this (...) important philosophical problem emerged and developed, tracing it - and its proposed solutions - from ancient Greece through the Enlightenment. His central argument is that many of our most familiar concepts and institutions - from Augustine's interiorised ethics, to Hobbes's sovereign state, to Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', understanding of the modern commercial economy - were designed partly as responses to the ethical problem of dirty hands in public life. (shrink)

The epistemic paradox of 'belief instability' has recently received notable attention from many philosophers. Understanding this paradox is very important because belief is a central notion of psychologically motivated semantic theories in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, and this paradox poses serious problems for these theories. In this dissertation I criticize previous proposals and offer a new proposal, which I call a 'revision theory of belief'. ;My revision theory of belief is in many respects an application (...) of Gupta's and Belnap's revision theory of truth, which is proposed to deal with the Liar paradox. They argue that truth is a circular notion because Tarski biconditionals provide circular, partial definitions of truth. And this circularity of truth is the source of the Liar paradox. I offer a similar proposal for handling the paradox of belief instability. In particular, I argue that our notion of belief involved in the paradox of belief instability is circular, and that is why this paradox arises. ;If the notion of belief involved in the paradox is circular, we have to employ a hypothetical evaluation of the belief predicate, and if we do so through a revision process, we can avoid the contradiction which seems to be generated by some paradoxical belief sentences. But it is not easy to show that our notion of belief is circular. Especially, there is nothing like Tarski biconditionals in the case of belief. Nonetheless, I show in this dissertation that there is a certain schema, which I call the B-schema, whose instances can be taken as circular, partial definitions of a notion of belief, and it is that notion of belief which is involved in the paradox of belief instability. In this dissertation I also show that the revision approach can be extended for handling the Knower paradox. I argue that the Knower paradox arises because our notion of knowledge involved in the paradox is circular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Paradox of Kandinsky's Abstract RepresentationKenneth BerryThere is a paradox in the relationship between Kandinsky's use of the terms, "abstract" and "concrete," which is presented in the expression, "Kandinsky's abstract representation." Thisexpression, while being apparently contradictory, may point to a feature underpinning Kandinsky's art, which is pivotal to a proper experience of his work, just as, in Christopher Middleton's view, a poetic language may be pivotal to (...) the formation of cultures.1 Art and cultural artifacts are vital to aesthetic experience and aesthetic education, and both the language of art and other languages are instrumental to this end. However, how may Kandinsky's mature abstraction, being in essence objectless, have any claim to representation, and consequently the higher cultural goals of aesthetic expression and the aesthetic enrichment of society?According to Thomas M. Messer, the position of centrality that Kandinsky has assumed in our understanding of modern art is largely due to his having brought to bear on his art, an instinctive awareness of what constituted the central aesthetic issues of his era.2 Kandinsky's writings in Concerning the Spiritual in Art elaborate on his aesthetic theories, and, in particular, [End Page 99] present the view that paintings should be looked at as a graphic representation of a mood rather than as a representation of objects. Messer observes that, for Kandinsky, abstraction, defined as a mode of painting extending beyond the depiction of recognizable objects, having gradually stripped itself of mimetic vestiges, thus becomes paramount. Michael Carter has similarly pointed out that with the pure forms of absolute abstraction, the non-objective colors and shapes of Kandinsky's paintings were regarded as distillations of the aesthetic properties of the artistic sign3 — separable from any referential aspect of art.4 This aesthetic aspect of Kandinsky's work, which became known as nonfigurative, nonobjective, or nonrepresentational,goes along with the cultural — and, as sculptor Anish Kapoor has remarked, "in the deepest, deepest depths of human history the cultural has always been a motivator of people," and has the power to transform society through finding visual equivalents for an emotional language.5Much has been written about Kandinsky's use of color, but perhaps the primary innovation that he made, as in the case of Barnett Newman, was in the field of drawing. Kandinsky was influenced by Gauguin's idea that drawing was an abstraction from memory after nature, just as Gauguin had been affected by the simplified contours and flattened forms of Puvis de Chavannes. Drawing did not come so easily to Kandinsky as color — he had to work harder at drawing, but in his early improvisations, forms and their outlines as graphic symbols came welling up from the unconscious, and eidetic motifs only had to be copied — almost as the art of calligraphy. Kandinsky's "organic" drawing developed as an urge to nonnaturalistic impulses, and during the period of Point and Line to Plane became almost a grammar of form, saved from mere pedantry by the living forces or visual tensions that made various kinds of line operate not just as contours but as dynamic or restful elements within themselves. In 1913, Kandinsky wrote in his "Reminiscences" that, "painting is a thundering collision of different worlds, intended to create a new world in, and from, their struggles with one another, a new world which is the work of art."6 It is clear from this that the Modernist work of art was intended to be a "new world" operating according to its own universal aesthetic laws.Kandinsky is not just a painter; he is also a visual poet. Poetry, according to Tony Curtis, involves the expression of the intensification of experience — the elevation of banal facts of life into something beyond the merely prosaic — something unique and perceptively heightened.7 It involves both imagination and poetic license to explore both ambiguity and paradox. As Scottish poet Norman MacCaig observed, poetry renders the ordinary extraordinary, seeing the unfamiliar in the familiar.8 Creative analogical thinking such as evinced in Kandinsky's art, often involves breaking free of a clichéd representation.Malcolm Budd has remarked that, in its most exclusive sense, a work... (shrink)

Central to Kierkegaard’s account of religious existence is his critique of speculative reason. This critique begins with the distinction between subjective and objective reflection. Its most radical aspects appear in Kierkegaard’s discussions of the paradox. In spite of Kierkegaard’s frequent comments on this notion, it is not readily understood. I want to argue against a common reading of this notion and propose an alternative reading. This alternative reading allows for a conceptually quite plausible account of the manner in (...) which the paradox presents reason with a boundary, in virtue of its relation to objective reflection and to subjective reflection as well. Because of this boundary, reason points beyond its own achievements to a domain of contemplation and appropriation. This is a domain that reason itself identifies in connection with the paradox. It both surpasses rational achievements and integrates them into itself. (shrink)

I express my dissatisfaction with the common ways to treat the semantic paradoxes. Not only do they give rise to revenge paradoxes, they ignore the wisdom contained in the ordinary reaction to paradoxes. I instead propose an account that vindicates the ordinary reaction to paradox by putting the blame on us philosophers. It is the wrong conception of what a valid inference is, one that is central to “the ideal of deductive logic” that gives rise to the problem. (...) The solution outlined gives us a new way to accept defeat in light of the paradoxes: the arguments that lead to them are based on valid forms of reasoning, but their conclusions are nonetheless rationally rejected. (shrink)

Present discussions in philosophy of mind focuson ontological and epistemic characteristics ofmind and on mind-brain relations. In contrast,ontological and epistemic characteristics ofthe brain have rarely been thematized. Rather,philosophy seems to rely upon an implicitdefinition of the brain as "neuronal object''and "object of recognition'': henceontologically and epistemically distinct fromthe mind, characterized as "mental subject'' and"subject of recognition''. This leads to the"brain-paradox''. This ontological and epistemicdissociation between brain and mind can beconsidered central for the problems of mind andmind-brain relations that (...) have yet to beresolved in philosophy. The brain itself hasnot been thematized epistemically andontologically, leading to a "brain problem''.The epistemic and ontological dissociationbetween brain and mind presupposes an"isolated'' picture of the brain, characterizedby context-independence (i.e. "isolation'' frombody and environment). We can describe thisview as an extrinsic relationship betweenbrain, body and environment. However, based onrecent empirical findings about body image andphantom sensations, we can no longer considerthe brain as context-independent or "isolated''from its bodily and environmental context.Instead, the brain must be considered"embedded''. Within the context of 'embeddment',brain and bodily/environmental context seemmutually to determine each other, and hence bereciprocally dependent on each other. We candescribe this as an intrinsic relationshipbetween brain, body and environment.Defining the brain as "embedded'' undermines theepistemic and ontological dissociation betweenbrain and mind and consequently resolves the"brain-paradox''. This resolution sheds novellight on problems of mind and mind-brainrelations by relativizing both. It is thereforeconcluded that philosophy should thematizeontological and epistemic characteristics ofthe brain, thereby taking into account the"brain problem'' and developing a "philosophy ofthe brain''. This approach not only opens a newfield in philosophy but also extends the focusof empirical investigation in the neurosciencesto take into account the intrinsic relationshipbetween brain, body and environment. (shrink)

Consider the following argument written on the board in room 227: 1 = 1. So, the argument on the board in room 227 is not valid. This argument generates a paradox. The aim of this paper is to present a resolution of this paradox and related paradoxes of validity, including a version of the Curry paradox. The proposal stresses the close connections between these validity paradoxes and paradoxes of truth and paradoxes of denotation. So a more general (...) aim is to provide a unified response to semantic paradox. The positive proposal is in part inspired by a brief, tantalizing suggestion of Gödel’s, that the paradoxes might appear “as something analogous to dividing by zero”—so that the concept of validity, for example, is everywhere applicable except for certain singular points or singularities. A second central claim is that ‘valid’ is a context-sensitive predicate. The key notions of this contextual-singularity theory are presented and applied to a variety of cases. Any purported solution to paradox must deal with the phenomenon of revenge, and a response to revenge is outlined. The paper closes with remarks about the accommodation of Tarski’s claim that natural languages are universal. (shrink)

Our ability to understand others is one of the most central parts of human life, but explaining how this ability develops remains a controversial issue, exercising psychologists and philosophers alike. Within this literature the Paradox of False Belief Understanding remains one of the main open challenges. Based on an up to date overview of the empirical and theoretical literature, this book highlights the significance of this paradox for our understanding of the development of social cognition and provides (...) a new explanation of it in the form of the Situational Mental File Account. Central features of the account are, firstly, identitfying three distinct stages in the development of belief understanding and, secondly, elaborating the role of both cognitive and situational factors as well as their interaction in the development of belief understanding. This account is also applied to the related phenomenon of pretend play, demonstrating the potential for a wider application of the account. This account generates both new empirical predications and a framework for further theoretical work, thereby providing a fruitful ground for further interdisciplinary research in this area. (shrink)

Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant (...) and animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. -/- Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro’s integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers. (shrink)

The book is a contribution on the early Stoics’ views of action, responsibility and freedom. The central claim, which sets the framework of its three chapters, is that an influential interpretation according to which the Stoics’ concept of responsibility is entirely separate from their concept of freedom (S. Bobzien) is mistaken. The present interpretation does conserve a compatibilist reading but the claim is made that if a person is responsible for an action it is so on the basis of (...) features which make his or her action also (potentially) virtuous and free. Moreover, if responsibility is thought and presented as a kind of paradox, it is the same paradox which is recognizable as a foundaon of virtue and freedom. It is important for this interpretation to see responsibility as based on assent (and not merely on one’s – determined – nature/character) and to see the corresponding compatibilism as a result of a two-sided mental act which is then also to be found in the exercise of virtue. By defending these views, the book offers a unified Stoic theory of action in which psychology (assent) and ethics (virtue and freedom) presuppose similar reflective turns in the soul though on different levels of the soul’s activity. (shrink)

Opera is a paradoxical genre. For it seems self-defeating to create an illusion of reality by means of the theatrical apparatus if the art form’s central mode of expression, lavish singing in all kinds of circumstances, defies realism anyway. A solution to the paradox is implied by the 18th century turn of European philosophy of art from mimēsis to aisthēsis. In terms of aesthetics, reality is no longer an object of imitation but rather the impact upon and presence (...) for a consciousness – that are actually heightened by singing. Of course we remain aware that to deal with everything in the mode of singing is in a way surreal. But then the simultaneous production and suspension of illusion turns out to be not a fault of art; rather it features as one of its peculiar achievements. (shrink)

I argue that intentionalism in aesthetics and in legal interpretation is vulnerable to a different sort of criticism than is found in the voluminous literature on the topic. Specifically, a kind of paradox arises for the intentionalist out of recognition of a second-order intention embedded in the social practices that characterize both art and law. The paper shows how this second-order intention manifests itself in each of the two enterprises, and argues that its presence entails the overriding centrality of (...) the public text, and hence a rejection of the interpretive stance distinctive of intentionalism itself. (shrink)

Starting with a discussion of what I call Koyré’s paradox of conceptual novelty, I introduce the ideas of Damerow et al. on the establishment of classical mechanics in Galileo’s work. I then argue that although the view of Damerow et al. on the nature of Galileo’s conceptual innovation is convincing, it misses an essential element: Galileo’s use of the experiments described in the first day of the Two New Sciences. I describe these experiments and analyze their function. Central (...) to my analysis is the idea that Galileo’s pendulum experiments serve to secure the reference of his theoretical models in actually occurring cases of free fall. In this way Galileo’s experiments constitute an essential part of the meaning of the new concepts of classical mechanics. (shrink)

[[[ (Here only the chapters 3 – 8, see *** ) First I argue that the prohibition of linguistic self-reference as a solution to the antinomy problem contains a pragmatic contradiction and is thus not only too restrictive, but just inconsistent (chap.1). Furthermore, the possibilities of non-restrictive strategies for antinomy avoidance are discussed, whereby the explicit inclusion of the – pragmatically presuposed – consistency requirement proves to be the optimal strategy (chap.2). ]]] The central question here is that about (...) the actual reason for antinomic structures. It turns out to be a form of negative self-conditioning (chap.3). This makes it necessary to clarify the status of negative concepts (chap.4). The generalization of these considerations (chap.5) leads to the actual analysis of the antinomic basic structure (chap.6): Decisively for the pragmatics of the concept is that it positively owns a meaning, so that positivity is always constituted by the concept qua concept. Thus a negative concept is characterized by a fundamental ambivalence: From a semantic point of view it has negative character, in its pragmatic status as a concept, however, it has positive character. If the meaning is especially that of a negative self-reference, the ambivalence leads to the antinomic constellation of a negative self-condition – that is the crux of the matter here! The concept thus possesses the property defined by it exactly when it does not possess it and vice versa. A closer analysis shows that the function of reflective structures for the occurrence of antinomies has to be judged much more differentiated than previous opinions suggest. Not only are four forms of reflectivity to be distinguished in this context – ontic, semantic, pragmatic reflectivity, and especially the form of negative self-condition; but it is also apparent that these are intertwined with each other in a way that is difficult to be understood. The astonishing variety of relationships associated with this makes the irritation that has always emanated from the antinomy problem appear more comprehensible. In the developed pragmatic perspective furtheron parallels to the structure of self-consciousness become visible (chap.7). I conclude with considerations about the significance of the antinomic structure for the problem of dialectics, especially for the synthesis formation of mutually exclusive terms (chap.8). (shrink)

Propositions are central to at least most theorizing about the connection between our mental lives and the world: we use them in our theories of an array of attitudes including belief, desire, hope, fear, knowledge, and understanding. Unfortunately, when we press on these theories, we encounter a relatively neglected family of paradoxes first studied by Arthur Prior. I argue that these paradoxes present a fatal problem for most familiar resolutions of paradoxes. In particular, I argue that truth-value gap, contextualist, (...) situation theoretic, revision theoretic, ramified, and dialetheist approaches to the paradoxes must deny us the conceptual resources that they themselves make use of, on pain of contradiction. I then detail the costs of the extant strategies that avoid this issue: Hartry Field’s paracomplete approach; Andrew Bacon’s classical treatment of indeterminacy; a generalization of ideas from Prior, Nicholas J.J. Smith, and Hartley Slater; and free logics as recently explored by Bacon, John Hawthorne, and Gabriel Uzquiano. I argue that none of these is perfect, and that each restricts the theories we can endorse in a variety of areas of philosophy. I spell these restrictions out, showing, I hope, that the further investigation of these paradoxes must be a part of future research on propositional attitudes. (shrink)

The epistemic paradox of 'belief instability' has recently received notable attention from many philosophers. Understanding this paradox is very important because belief is a central notion of psychologically motivated semantic theories in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science, and this paradox poses serious problems for these theories. In this dissertation I criticize previous proposals and offer a new proposal, which I call a 'revision theory of belief'. -/- My revision theory of belief is in many respects an (...) application of Gupta's and Belnap's revision theory of truth, which is proposed to deal with the Liar paradox. They argue that truth is a circular notion because Tarski biconditionals provide circular, partial definitions of truth. And this circularity of truth is the source of the Liar paradox. I offer a similar proposal for handling the paradox of belief instability. In particular, I argue that our notion of belief involved in the paradox of belief instability is circular, and that is why this paradox arises. -/- If the notion of belief involved in the paradox is circular, we have to employ a hypothetical evaluation of the belief predicate, and if we do so through a revision process, we can avoid the contradiction which seems to be generated by some paradoxical belief sentences. But it is not easy to show that our notion of belief is circular. Especially, there is nothing like Tarski biconditionals in the case of belief. Nonetheless, I show in this dissertation that there is a certain schema, which I call the B-schema, whose instances can be taken as circular, partial definitions of a notion of belief, and it is that notion of belief which is involved in the paradox of belief instability. In this dissertation I also show that the revision approach can be extended for handling the Knower paradox. I argue that the Knower paradox arises because our notion of knowledge involved in the paradox is circular. (shrink)