Meinong’s object theory suggests the possibility of making progress in a third alternative with respect to the long-standing apparently intractable collision in the metaphysics of Platonic realism versus nominalism. Meinong’s own views on the existence of such abstract mathematical entities as numbers and geometrical figures are considered, and the possibility of treating relations in particular as nonexistent Meinongian intended objects is developed at length. Russell’s argument that relations must exist as universals, even if qualities at first are not assumed to (...) be existent, in order to do justice to the truth conditions of our predications of ordinarily properties to multiple ordinary objects, is also considered in this context as potentially undermining the Meinongian interpretation of relations as nonexistent. The effect of making relations nonexistent despite Russell’s argument is to achieve a considerable ontic reduction in a logic’s referential semantic domain, in accord with the methodological principle of Ockham’s razor not to multiply entities beyond explanatory necessity. (shrink)

Franz Brentano (1838-1917) led an intellectual revolution that sought to revitalize German-language philosophy and to reverse its post-Kantian direction. His philosophy laid the groundwork for philosophy of science as it came to fruition in the Vienna Circle, and for phenomenology in the work of such figures as his student Edmund Husserl. This volume brings together newly commissioned chapters on his important work in theory of judgement, the reform of syllogistic logic, theory of intentionality, empirical descriptive psychology and phenomenology, theory of (...) knowledge, metaphysics and ontology, value theory, and natural theology. It also offers a critical evaluation of Brentano's significance in his historical context, and of his impact on contemporary philosophy in both the analytic and the continental traditions. (shrink)

Introduction Alexius Meinong and his circle of students and collaborators at the Phi- losophisches Institut der Universitat Graz formulated the basic ...

This book presents an historical and conceptual reconstruction of the theories developed by Meinong and a group of philosophers and experimental psychologists in Graz at the turn of the 19th century. Adhering closely to original texts, the contributors explore Meinong's roots in the school of Brentano, complex theories such as the theory of intentional reference and direct reference, and ways of developing philosophy which are closely bound up with the sciences, particularly psychology. Providing a faithful reconstruction of both Meinong's contributions (...) to science and the school that arose from his thought, this book shows how the theories of the Graz school raise the possibility of engaging in the scientific metaphysics and ontology that for so long have been considered off limits. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege is one of the founding figures of analytic philosophy, whose contributions to logic, philosophical semantics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics set the agenda for future generations of theorists in these and related areas. Dale Jacquette's lively and incisive biography charts Frege's life from its beginnings in small-town north Germany, through his student days in Jena, to his development as an enduringly influential thinker. Along the way Jacquette considers Frege's ground-breaking Begriffschrift, in which he formulated his 'ideal (...) logical language', his magisterial Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, and his complex relation to thinkers including Husserl and especially Russell, whose Paradox had such drastic implications for Frege's logicism. Jacquette concludes with a thoughtful assessment of Frege's legacy. His rich and informative biography will appeal to all who are interested in Frege's philosophy. (shrink)

The papers presented in this volume examine topics of central interest in contemporary philosophy of logic. They include reflections on the nature of logic and its relevance for philosophy today, and explore in depth developments in informal logic and the relation of informal to symbolic logic, mathematical metatheory and the limiting metatheorems, modal logic, many-valued logic, relevance and paraconsistent logic, free logics, extensional v. intensional logics, the logic of fiction, epistemic logic, formal logical and semantic paradoxes, the concept of truth, (...) the formal theory of entailment, objectual and substitutional interpretation of the quantifiers, infinity and domain constraints, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem and Skolem paradox, vagueness, modal realism v. actualism, counterfactuals and the logic of causation, applications of logic and mathematics to the physical sciences, logically possible worlds and counterpart semantics, and the legacy of Hilbert’s program and logicism. The handbook is meant to be both a compendium of new work in symbolic logic and an authoritative resource for students and researchers, a book to be consulted for specific information about recent developments in logic and to be read with pleasure for its technical acumen and philosophical insights. Key Features - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic -Useful bibliographies in every chapter - Written by leading logicians and philosophers - Comprehensive authoritative coverage of all major areas of contemporary research in symbolic logic - Clear, in-depth expositions of technical detail - Progressive organization from general considerations to informal to symbolic logic to nonclassical logics - Presents current work in symbolic logic within a unified framework - Accessible to students, engaging for experts and professionals - Insightful philosophical discussions of all aspects of logic - Useful bibliographies in every chapter. (shrink)

Dale Jacquette charts the development of Schopenhauer's ideas from the time of his early dissertation on The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason through the two editions of his magnum opus The World as Will and Representation to his later collections of philosophical aphorisms and competition essays. Jacquette explores the central topics in Schopenhauer's philosophy including his metaphysics of the world as representation and Will, his so-called pessimistic philosophical appraisal of the human condition, his examination of the concept (...) of death, his dualistic analysis of free will, and his simplified non-Kantian theory of morality. Jacquette shows how these many complex themes fit together in a unified portrait of Schopenhauer's philosophy. The synthesis of Plato, Kant and Buddhist and Hindu ideas is given particular attention as is his influence on Nietzsche, first a follower and then arch opponent of Schopenhauer's thought, and the early Wittgenstein. The book provides a comprehensive and in-depth historical and philosophical introduction to Schopenhauer's distinctive contribution to philosophy. (shrink)

The object of this essay is to discuss Ludwig Wittgenstein's remarks inPhilosophical Investigationsand elsewhere in the posthumously published writings concerning the role of therapy in relation to philosophy. Wittgenstein's reflections seem to suggest that there is a kind of philosophy or mode of investigation targeting the philosophical grammar of language uses that gratuitously give rise to philosophical problems, and produce in many thinkers philosophical anxieties for which the proper therapy is intended to offer relief. Two possible objectives of later Wittgensteinian (...) therapy are proposed, for subjectivepsychologicalversus objectivesemanticsymptoms of ailments that a therapy might address for the sake of relieving philosophical anxieties. The psychological in its most plausible form is rejected, leaving only the semantic. Semantic therapy in the sense defined and developed is more general and long-lasting, and more in the spirit of Wittgenstein's project on a variety of levels. A semantic approach treats language rather than the thinking, language-using subject as the patient needing therapy, and directs its attention to the treatment of problems in language and the conceptual framework a language game use expresses in its philosophical grammar, rather than to soothing unhappy or socially ill-adjusted individual psychologies. (shrink)

This essay proposes and defends a general thesis concerning the nature of fallacies of reasoning. These in distinctive ways are all said to be deductively invalid. More importantly, the most accurate, complete and charitable reconstructions of these species and specimens of the informal fallacies are instructive with respect to the individual character of each distinct informal fallacy. Reconstructions of the fallacies as deductive invalidities are possible in every case, if deductivism is true, which means that in every case they should (...) be formalizable in an expressively comprehensive formal symbolic deductive logic. The general thesis is illustrated by a detailed examination of Walter Burleigh's paradox in his c. 1323 work, De Puritate Artis Logicae Tractatus Longior (Longer Treatise on the Purity of Logic), as a challenge to the deductive validity of hypothetical syllogism. The paradox has the form, ‹If I call you a swine, then I call you an animal; if I call you an animal, then I speak truly; therefore, if I call you a swine, then I speak truly'. Several solutions to the problem are considered, and the inference is exposed as an instance of the common deductive fallacy of equivocation. (shrink)

Seneca in his Moral Epistles to Lucilium ridicules Protagoras’ claim that both sides of any position can be equally well argued. Cicero, on the contrary, in the surviving fragments of his dialogue, the Republic, maintains in the person of Laelius that the thorough exploration of the strengths and weaknesses of any position pro and con is the best and often the only dialectical avenue to the discovery of difficult truths. There are therefore at least two sides to the issue of (...) whether philosophers ought to address their arguments to the two sides of any issue. This paper examines the epistemic advantages and disadvantages of the same reasoning agent playing both roles of advocate and critic, as opposed to encouraging only distinct independently minded reasoning agents each to consider any of the opposing sides of an issue in dispute. The question in argumentation theory posed by this inquiry in simplest terms is whether a single thinker considering both sides of an issue is more able to arrive at truth, or whether, as the popular adage has it, two minds are inherently dialectically better than one. The answer proposed here is that it does not matter provided that the conflict of opposing views are in some manner resolved with the sincere intention of arriving at the truth. (shrink)

This collection of newly comissioned essays by international contributors offers a representative overview of the most important developments in contemporary philosophical logic. Presents controversies in philosophical implications and applications of formal symbolic logic. Surveys major trends and offers original insights.

The present work considers Hume's critique of infinity in historical context as a product of Enlightenment theory of knowledge, and assesses the prospects of ...

The philosophical study of what exists and what it means for something to exist is one of the core concerns of metaphysics. This introduction to ontology provides readers with a comprehensive account of the central ideas of the subject of being. This book is divided into two parts. The first part explores questions of pure philosophical ontology: what is meant by the concept of being, why there exists something rather than nothing, and why there is only one logically contingent actual (...) world. Dale Jacquette shows how logic provides the only possible answers to these fundamental problems. The second part of the book examines issues of applied scientific ontology. Jacquette offers a critical survey of some of the most influential traditional ontologies, such as the distinction between appearance and reality, and the categories of substance and transcendence. The ontology of physical entities - space, time, matter and causation - is examined as well as the ontology of abstract entities such as sets, numbers, properties, relations and propositions. The special problems posed by the subjectivity of mind and of postulating a god are also explored in detail. The final chapter examines the ontology of culture, language and art. (shrink)

The liar paradox is standardly supposed to arise from three conditions: classical bivalent truth value semantics, the Tarskian truth schema, and the formal constructability of a sentence that says of itself that it is not true. Standard solutions to the paradox, beginning most notably with Tarski, try to forestall the paradox by rejecting or weakening one or more of these three conditions. It is argued that all efforts to avoid the liar paradox by watering down any of the three assumptions (...) suffers serious disadvantages that are at least as undesirable as the liar paradox itself. Instead, a new solution is proposed that admits that if the liar sentence is true then it is false, in the first paradox dilemma horn, but denies that the liar sentence is true, but asserting instead that it is false, and refuting the second paradox dilemma horn according to which it is supposed to follow that if the liar sentence is false then it is true. The reasoning for the second paradox dilemma horn is flawed, in that is not only not supported by but actually contradicted by the Tarskian truth schema. We could only infer the second dilemma horn if it were to clasically follow from the assumption that the liar sentence is false, and from the three liar paradox conditions, that therefore it is false that the liar sentence is false. This entire sentence can be shown to be false on the basis of the standard truth schema, thus blocking the paradox. Alternative formulations of the liar sentence are discussed, and the formal proofs and counterproofs for the two paradox dilemma horns, are considered along with the further philosophical implications of maintaining a resolute stance that the liar sentence is simply false. (shrink)

A clear and accessible introduction to the philosophy of mind, ideal for use on undergraduate courses.

In Plato’s dialogues, the Phaedo, Laches, and Republic, Socrates warns his interlocutors about the dangers of misology. Misology is explained by analogy with misanthropy, not as the hatred of other human beings, but as the hatred of the logos or reasonable discourse. According to Socrates, misology arises when a person alternates between believing an argument to be correct, and then refuting it as false. If Socrates is right, then misanthropy is sometimes instilled when a person goes from trusting people to (...) learning that others sometimes betray our reliance and expectations, and finally not to placing any confidence whatsoever in other people, or, in the case of misology, in the correctness or trustworthiness of arguments. A cynical indifference to the soundness of arguments generally is sometimes associated with Socrates’ polemical targets, the Sophists, at least as Plato represents Socrates’ reaction to these itinerant teachers of rhetoric, public speaking and the fashioning of arguments suitable to any occasion. Socrates’ injunctions against misology are largely moral, pronouncing it ‘shameful’ and ‘very wicked’, and something that without further justification we must ‘guard against’, maintaining that we will be less excellent persons if we come to despise argument as lacking the potential of leading to the truth. I examine Socrates’ moral objections to misology which I show to be inconclusive. I consider instead the problem of logical coherence in the motivations supposedly underlying misology, and conclude that misology as Socrates intends the concept is an emotional reaction to argumentation on the part of persons who have not acquired the logical dialectical skills or will to sort out good from bad arguments. We cannot dismiss argument as directed toward the truth unless we have a strong reason for doing so, and any such argument must itself presuppose that at least some reasoning can be justified in discovering and justifying belief in interesting truths. The relevant passages from Socrates’ discussion of the soul’s immortality in the Phaedo are discussed in detail, and set in scholarly background against Socrates’ philosophy more generally, as represented by Plato’s dialogues. I conclude by offering a suggestive list of practical remedies to avoid the alienation from argument in dialectic with which Socrates is concerned. (shrink)

In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kant's principle that ought implies can, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kant's ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the principle is incompatible (...) with disjunctive obligation in standard deontic logic, and that it entails paradoxically that none of the conflicting dilemma actions will in fact occur. The principle appears to provide the only plausible safeguard against deontic antinomy, but cannot be admitted because of its collision with considered moral judgments. (shrink)

If conceptual analysis is possible for finite thinkers, then there must ultimately be a distinction between complex and primitive or irreducible and unanalyzable concepts, by which complex concepts are analyzed as relations among primitive concepts. This investigation considers the advantages of categorizing intentionality as a primitive rather than analyzable concept, in both a historical Brentanian context and in terms of contemporary philosophy of mind. Arguments in support of intentionality as a primitive relation are evaluated relative to objections, especially a recent (...) criticism by Jerry A. Fodor. Against this background, the relation between qualia and intentionality in the understanding of consciousness is explored. (shrink)

The concept of death is of special importance in Schopenhauer''s metaphysics of appearance and Will. Death for Schopenhauer is the aim and purpose of life, that toward which life is directed, and the denial of the individual will to life. Despite his profound pessimism, Schopenhauer vehemently rejects suicide as an unworthy affirmation of the will to life by those who seek to escape rather than seek nondiscursive knowledge of Will in suffering. The only manner of self-destruction Schopenhauer finds philosophically acceptable (...) is the ascetic saint''s death by starvation. Here the individual will to life is so completely mastered as to refuse even the most basic desire for nourishment, and thereby passes into nonexistence in complete renunciation of the individual will. Schopenhauer''s attitude toward suicide nevertheless embodies an inconsistency. If, as Schopenhauer believes, the aim of life is death, and death is an unreal aspect of the world as appearance, then there appears to be no justification why the philosopher should not rush headlong into it - not to affirm the will to life in an abject effort to avoid suffering, but in order to fulfill life''s purpose by ending it for distinctly philosophical reasons immediately upon arriving at an understanding of the appearance-reality distinction. (shrink)

Any enthymeme can be made logically valid by adding as a suppressed premise a conditional that reiterates the argument's stated content and inferential structure in if-then form, We cannot blanketly prohibit reiteration to avoid this sort of trivialization, because some enthymemes legitimately require completion by reiterative conditionals, The solution proposed here is to allow reiterative expansions, but to rank them, other things being equal, as less charitable than nonreiterative expansions. Reiterative expansions can then be chosen as the most charitable only (...) when all nonreiterative expansions have been eliminated for independent reasons. This pluralistic model encourages experimentation with a number of different permissible expansions in evaluating enthymemes, from the least controversial or problematic to the most trivializing and the least charitable. (shrink)

The fundamental idea of a Neoaristotelian inherence ontology of mathematical entities parallels that of an Aristotelian approach to the ontology of universals. It is proposed that mathematical objects are nominalizations especially of dimensional and related structural properties that inhere as formal species and hence as secondary substances of Aristotelian primary substances in the actual world of existent physical spatiotemporal entities. The approach makes it straightforward to understand the distinction between pure and applied mathematics, and the otherwise enigmatic success of applied (...) mathematics in the natural sciences. It also raises an interesting set of challenges for conventional mathematics, and in particular for the ontic status of infinity, infinite sets and series, infinitesimals, and transfinite cardinalities. The final arbiter of all such questions on an Aristotelian inherentist account of the nature of mathematical entities are the requirements of practicing scientists for infinitary versus strictly finite mathematics in describing, explaining, predicting and retrodicting physical spatiotemporal phenomena. Following Quine, we classify all mathematics that falls outside of this sphere of applied scientific need as belonging to pure, and, with no prejudice or downplaying of its importance, ‘recreational’, mathematics. We consider a number of important problems in the philosophy of mathematics, and indicate how a Neoaristotelian inherence metaphysics of mathematical entities provides a plausible answer to Benacerraf’s metaphilosophical dilemma, pitting the semantics of mathematical truth conditions against the epistemic possibilities for justifying an abstract realist ontology of mathematical entities and truth conditions. (shrink)

This volume explores the central problems and exposes intriguing new directions in the philosophy of mathematics, making it an essential teaching resource, ...

John Barker, in two recent essays, raises a variety of intriguing criticisms to challenge my interpretation of the liar paradox and the type of solution I proposein ‘Denying the Liar’ and ‘Denying the Liar Reaffirmed.’ Barker continues to believe that I have misunderstood the logical structure of the liar sentence and itsexpression, and that as a result my solution misfires. I shall try to show that on the contrary my analysis is correct, and that Barker does not properly grasp what (...) mysolution to the liar paradox involves. Additionally, I argue that Barker makes fundamental errors in the explanation of liar sentence formulations in intensional contexts and in the classical metatheory he invokes to support his criticisms. (shrink)

An unconventional formalization of the canonical square of opposition in the notation of classical symbolic logic secures all but one of the canonical square’s grid of logical interrelations between four A-E-I-O categorical sentence types. The canonical square is first formalized in the functional calculus in Frege’s Begriffsschrift, from which it can be directly transcribed into the syntax of contemporary symbolic logic. Difficulties in received formalizations of the canonical square motivate translating I categoricals, ‘Some S is P’, into symbolic logical notation, (...) not conjunctively as \, but unconventionally instead in an ontically neutral conditional logical symbolization, as \. The virtues and drawbacks of the proposal are compared at length on twelve grounds with the explicit existence expansion of A and E categoricals as the default strategy for symbolizing the canonical square preserving all original logical interrelations. (shrink)

The argument diagramming method developed by Monroe C. Beardsley in his (1950) book Practical Logic, which has since become the gold standard for diagramming arguments in informal logic, makes it possible to map the relation between premises and conclusions of a chain of reasoning in relatively complex ways. The method has since been adapted and developed in a number of directions by many contemporary informal logicians and argumentation theorists. It has proved useful in practical applications and especially pedagogically in teaching (...) basic logic and critical reasoning skills at all levels of scientific education. I propose in this essay to build on Beardsley diagramming techniques to refine and supplement their structural tools for visualizing logical relationships in a number of categories not originally accommodated by Beardsley diagramming, including circular reasoning, reductio ad absurdum arguments, and efforts to dispute and contradict arguments, with applications and analysis. (shrink)

Psychologism is the target of vehement disapproval in much of mainstream philosophy from Kant to the present day. Yet although antipsychologistic rhetoric is adamant, there is little substantive argument against psychologism to be discovered in contemporary discussions of the problem. Many recent influential philosophical projects, moreover, including intuitionistic logic, conceptualism in the ontology of mathematics and the program to naturalize epistemology, are in different ways efforts to apply modern psychology in the service of philosophical theory. In this essay, I critically (...) survey the history of attacks on psychologism and conclude with a refutation of eight of the most important objections of the theory. My purpose is both to try to clarify the concept of psychologism and to encourage a renewed dialectical interaction between proponents and opponents of the philosophical merits of psychologism. (shrink)

Among theorists of all kinds, those generally engaged at some level of their work in a dialectical enterprise, and certainly in argumentation theory, much argument concerns, is about or directed toward, other arguments. Arguments about arguments, meta-arguments, including all of the rational inferential underpinnings of argumentation theory, are in several ways and for several reasons worth distinguishing from arguments about things other than arguments, such as the causes of WWI or the periodicity of the tides.Maurice A. Finocchiaro in this new (...) book offers an interesting contribution to argumentation theory, and in particular to the study of meta-arguments about the logic and critical evaluation of arguments, in both a general sense as argumentation theory, and in specific applications. One of Finocchiaro’s preferred subjects of specific application of his approach to meta-argumentation theory is in understanding the fine details of Galileo’s arguments and meta-arguments, especially i. (shrink)

Philosophical semantics requires an ontology that includes negative as well as positive states of affairs as truth-makers and truth-breakers. Theories that try to do without negative states of affairs while interpreting propositional truth as positive correspondence with existent states of affairs are inherently inadequate and incomplete. A semantics and ontology of negative states of affairs can also do justice to positive states of affairs, since the iterated negative state of affairs that a negative state of affairs exists describes a positive (...) state of affairs, but the iterated positive state of affairs that a positive state of affairs exists never describes a negative state of affairs. Negative states of affairs are not only essential to semantics, but to a complete description of the world; they include phenomena of presence in absence and the metaphysics of gaps, lacks, holes and interstitia. The conceivability of an empty or null universe as consisting of nothing but negative states of affairs recalls a famous problem of Parmenides. (shrink)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle offers a solution to the problem of motivating morality based on his distinction between three types of friendship. I consider Aristotle's argument in detail, placing it in a context of similar concerns about the question of why we ought to be moral that ranges from Socrates' discussion of the ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic to Wittgenstein's distinction between internal and external rewards and punishments for action in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Contrary to J.O. Urmson's conclusion that Aristotle's (...) discussion of the highest form of friendship is an editorial insertion in Book VIII of the Ethics, I attempt to show, by filling in the necessary steps in Aristotle's inference, that the treatment of friendship is an integral part of what Aristotle considers a complete moral philosophy. According to the interpretation that I propose, Aristotle's account of being worthy of the highest form of friendship is indispensable to his explanation of an internally rewarding reason for being moral. (shrink)

The consistent formalization of Meinong's object theory in recent mathematical logic requires either plural modes of predication, or distinct categories of nuclear or constitutive and extranuclear or nonconstitutive properties. The plural modes of predication approach is rejected because it is reducible to the nuclear extranuclear property distinction, but not conversely, and because the nuclear extranuclear property distinction offers a more satisfactory solution to object theory paradoxes.

This essay offers a detailed philosophical criticism of Frege’s popular thesis that identity is a relation of names. I consider Frege’s position as articulated both in ‘On Sense and Reference’, and in the Grundgesetze, where he appears to take an objectual view of identity, arguing that in both cases Frege is clearly committed to the proposition that identity is a relation holding between names, on the grounds that two different things can never be identical. A counterexample to Frege’s thesis is (...) considered, and a positive thesis is developed according to which, in contradistinction to the Fregean position, identity is a reflexive, symmetric, and transitive relation holding only between a thing and itself which can be expressed as a relation between names. (shrink)

In a bold series of pronouncements, Arthur Schopenhauer maintains that the Kantian thing-in-itself is Will. The division between the world as Will and representation, with its impressive array of implications, is Schopenhauer's most important and distinctive contribution to metaphysics. To understand what Schopenhauer means by ‘Will’ as opposed to the empirical ‘will’, and his reasons for identifying thing-in-itself with Will, we must look in detail at two related arguments by which Schopenhauer proposes to link these concepts. The arguments appear in (...) the first and second editions of Schopenhauer's masterwork, The World as Will and Representation. The differences between the two versions appear to represent a change in his thinking about the most persuasive way to demonstrate the nature of thing-in-itself. The arguments are reconstructed for the sake of comparison, and critically evaluated in light of a variety of objections. While Schopenhauer's first, analogical, argument is inconclusive, his second argument offers a highly defensible inference identifying thing-in-itself as Will. (shrink)

Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and nonbeing to explain the metaphysics of universals, and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle's doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent objects. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation (...) of Meinong's mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong's concept of implection are exploited to answer extensionalist objections about "Meinong's jungle", defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects. (shrink)

The author argues that Descartes is not trapped inside the Cartesian circle. The essay rehearses Descartes’ argument against the “evil demon” hypothesis. The so-called Cartesian circle is described and some of the most prominent discussions of the problem are evaluated. Such arguments tend either to leave Descartes in the circle, or themselves depend upon distinctions that in the end lead to Descartes claiming something less than metaphysical certainty for his system. The author argues that Descartes’ real Archimedian point is the (...) light of nature, and that his project is to extend the certainty of the light of nature to those ideas which are clear and distinct. Using this interpretation of Descartes, the author returns to the accounts of the critics to account for their mischaracterization of Descartes’ reasoning as circular. (shrink)