A recent paper, ‘Hume's Immanent God’, )* by George Nathan, contains an insightful interpretation of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion . Insight is no guarantee against error. I shall argue that Nathan's interpretation is mistaken, and then offer my own. Nathan observes that the general tendency in scholarship on D has been to focus on its sceptical side. He proposes to ‘bring out Hume's positive contribution’. Nathan's thesis, briefly, is that D best supports a modestly theistic interpretation according to which (...) God is the ultimate cause of order in the universe. (shrink)

In this paper, the author discusses the feasibility of constructing a Humean model of the psychological realities of categorical propositions and syllogistic deduction by employing only Hume’s kinds of “ideas” and kinds of mental operations on ideas which Hume explicitly or implicitly postulated in his theory of discursive thinking.

In this paper, the author discusses the feasibility of constructing a Humean model of the psychological realities of categorical propositions and syllogistic deduction by employing only Hume’s kinds of “ideas” and kinds of mental operations on ideas which Hume explicitly or implicitly postulated in his theory of discursive thinking.

In this essay, I argue that Hume’s theory of Quantitative and Numerical Philosophical Relations can be interpreted in a way which allows mathematical knowledge to be about a body of objective and necessary truths, while preserving Hume’s nominalism and the basic principles of his theory of ideas. Attempts are made to clear up a number of obscure points about Hume’s claims concerning the abstract sciences of Arithmetic and Algebra by means of re-examining what he says and what he could comfortably (...) have said about relations of qualitative resemblance. (shrink)

The author examines Scheffler’s extensional alternative to the usual notion of belief and shows that it is necessarily inadequate to serve the purpose for which it was designed. This point is established by showing that Scheffler’s proposed substitute for psychologically intensional verbs like ‘believes’ can not deliver philosophers from the classical puzzles over propositional attitudes and can not be used in all cases even to provide materially equivalent extensional substitutes for ordinary belief-statements.

The author examines Scheffler’s extensional alternative to the usual notion of belief and shows that it is necessarily inadequate to serve the purpose for which it was designed. This point is established by showing that Scheffler’s proposed substitute for psychologically intensional verbs like ‘believes’ can not deliver philosophers from the classical puzzles over propositional attitudes and can not be used in all cases even to provide materially equivalent extensional substitutes for ordinary belief-statements.

The casual browser of books might at first take this selection from Dewey’s and Russell’s works to be a collection of letters exchanged between the two men. In fact, it consists of short pieces of writing by each philosopher. The principle of selection used by Mr. Meyer is to find parts of their works in which each philosopher criticized the other’s ideas on such topics as logic, democracy, and religion. The sources from which these selections are made are quite well (...) known. Those readers already familiar with their general works will find nothing new here. Those who are not familiar with these works will find these selections very difficult to follow. (shrink)

The casual browser of books might at first take this selection from Dewey’s and Russell’s works to be a collection of letters exchanged between the two men. In fact, it consists of short pieces of writing by each philosopher. The principle of selection used by Mr. Meyer is to find parts of their works in which each philosopher criticized the other’s ideas on such topics as logic, democracy, and religion. The sources from which these selections are made are quite well (...) known. Those readers already familiar with their general works will find nothing new here. Those who are not familiar with these works will find these selections very difficult to follow. (shrink)

There is a traditional dispute over the question of the difference between having reasons for a belief or knowledge claim and being caused to believe something. Some recent work has attempted to bridge the gap between the two by arguing that there may be cases of having reasons for a belief where the reasons both justify and cause the belief. Marshall Swain’s Reasons and Knowledge is an example of the latter sort of work. Swain presents what he calls a “causal (...) version of a defeasibility analysis” of knowledge. He acknowledges that the book grew out of what originally were, for him, issues raised by the Gettier-type counterexamples to the traditional “justified true belief” analysis of knowledge. According to Swain, “the character of the causal process by which one comes to have beliefs is vital to the question whether those beliefs are instances of knowledge”. Swain also defends what he calls a “reliability theory” of justified belief. Crucial to Swain’s analysis is the notion of a “reason-based belief.” In Chapter Three, Swain presents and defends a definition of what it is for a belief to be based on a definite set of reasons at some time. The definition’s key component is that there be an “appropriate causal connection” between each of the reasons one has and one’s believing what one believes. Swain distinguishes between what he calls “causal reasons” and “evidential reasons.” The former enter into the causal explanation of the having of the belief in question. Evidential reasons may be propositions believed and may enter into the justification of belief. Swain defends the possibility that some reason-states may be both causal and evidential. Evidential reasons are belief-states, but reason-states may be reasons on which a belief is based without themselves being belief-states. Examples are perceptual-states and sensation-states. These can be links in causal chains leading to beliefs. (shrink)

The author of this book describes it as a “revised version of my thesis submitted … for the award of the PhD degree”. He says that its object is to “present a concise exposition of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind” as opposed to an “exhaustive account” of same. The book has a good index but no general bibliography. Owing to the difficulty of understanding Wittgenstein’s books, it is a good thing to have available short, clear expositions of his thought. (...) So, Vohra’s book will be helpful to nonphilosophers as well as to students. The four chapters are on The Concept of Sensation, Privacy and Private Language, Self-Knowledge and Personal Identity, and Knowledge of Other Persons. The book is not a mere paraphrase of Wittgenstein’s words. It relates his ideas to those of other, both contemporary and classical, philosophers. It provides clear explanations of some key points and the topics are selected and arranged logically. The author very properly does not intend the book as competition for well-known critical studies such as those by Hacker or Kenny. (shrink)