Advocates of conceptual engineering as a method of philosophy face a dilemma: either they are ignorant of how conceptual engineering can be implemented, or else it is trivial to implement but of very little value, representing no new or especially fruitful method of philosophizing. Two key distinctions frame this dilemma and explain its two horns. First, the distinction between speaker’s meaning and reference and semantic meaning and reference reveals a severe implementation problem for one construal of conceptual engineering. Second, the (...) distinction between stipulating meanings and conceptually analyzing allows us to see why, on another construal of what conceptual engineering involves, the practice is neither a new nor neglected philosophical methodology. The article also argues that semantic externalism is not the root of the implementation problem for conceptual engineering, and that the usual rationale for adopting the practice, one that ties its value to the amelioration of “conceptual defects”, is unsound. (shrink)

This book is a defense of the methods of analytic philosophy against a recent empirical challenge to the soundness of those methods. The challenge is raised by practitioners of “experimental philosophy” and concerns the extent to which analytic philosophy relies on intuition—in particular, the extent to which analytic philosophers treat intuitions as evidence in arguing for philosophical conclusions. Experimental philosophers say that analytic philosophers place a great deal of evidential weight on people’s intuitions about hypothetical cases and thought experiments. This (...) book argues that this view of traditional philosophical method is a myth, part of “metaphilosophical folklore.” Analytic philosophy makes regular use of hypothetical examples and thought experiments, but philosophers argue for their claims about what is true or not true in these examples and thought experiments. It is these arguments, not intuitions, that are treated as evidence for the claims. The book discusses xphi and some recent xphi studies; critiques a variety of other metaphilosophical claims; examines such famous arguments as Gettier’s refutation of the JTB theory and Kripke’s Gödel Case argument against descriptivism about proper names, and shows that they rely on reasoning rather than intuition; and finds existing critiques of xphi, the “Multiple Concepts” and “Expertise” replies, to be severely lacking. (shrink)

Von Theokrits Leben wissen wir wenig. Geboren wohl zu Beginn des 3. Jh.s. v. Chr. im sizilischen Syrakus, hat ihn das landliche Lebensumfeld gepragt. Eine Reise nach Alexandreia, der Metropole des Ptolemaerreiches, fuhrte ihn vermutlich mit Kallimachos und Apollonios Rhodios sowie dem Lehrdichter Arat zusammen; belegt ist das freundschaftliche Verhaltnis zu dem in Milet praktizierenden Arzt und Epigrammdichter Nikias. Als Todesdatum kommen die 60er Jahre in Frage, aber auch ein erheblich spaterer Zeitpunkt. Die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Veranderungen seit dem 4. (...) Jh. - die Herrschaft der Makedonenkonige bedeutete das Ende der Autonomie fur die demokratisch organisierten kleinen griechischen Stadtstaaten - blieben nicht ohne Einfluss auf die Dichtkunst: Die Abkehr vom Gesellschaftlich-Offentlichen und die Hinwendung zum Elitar-Privaten; der Verzicht auf die grosse Form des Epos und der Tragodie, statt dessen die Bevorzugung kleinerer Formen. Vorausgesetzt ist gleichzeitig ein verandertes Rezeptionsverhalten: Die Werke der alexandrinischen Dichter richten sich nicht an eine grosse Zuhorerschaft im Theater, sie wollen vielmehr den gebildeten einzelnen Leser, der all die literarischen und mythologischen Anspielungen und Variationen bis hin zur Parodie verstehen kann, erreichen und erfreuen. Ebenso unverkennbar ist der Innovationswille bei den Themen der eidyllia Theokrits: die Hirtenwelt mit einer besonderen Akzentuierung des Erotischen, das stadtische Leben, die landliche Arbeitswelt der Bauern und Fischer... Die realitatsgesattigte Darstellung des Alltags der kleinen Leute steht allem Pathos des Heroischen, das Archaik und Klassik pragte, vollig fern. Daruber hinaus stellt die distanzierende Ironie mit ihren Hinweisen auf die Schwachen und Defizite der Protagonisten nicht nur einen deutlichen Gegensatz zur literarischen Tradition dar, sondern auch zu jenen Nachfolgern, die sich oft auf ein idealisierend-verengendes Theokrit-Bild berufen haben: Vergil und andere Bukoliker sowie die Verfasser von Schaferdichtung spaterer Zeit. Deren heile Idyllenwelt entspringt haufig der kitschig-verklarenden Sehnsucht moderner Stadtmenschen nach dem vermeintlich einfachen und naturlichen Landleben. Allein am Wort selbst ist die Bedeutungsverschiebung unverkennbar: Das realitatsnahe "kleine Bildchen" des Theokrit mit seinen oft derb-obszonen Spassen hat wenig gemein mit der romantisierenden Idylle franzosischer Rokokodichtung.". (shrink)

This chapter highlights the common practice of appealing to lay intuitions as evidence for philosophical theories of free will. These arguments often seem to assume that the purported intuitions in question are not results of error, and the purported intuitions are generalizable to some interesting extent. Some empirical investigations of these two assumptions, including some studies that revealed intra‐personal variation in compatibilist intuitions are reviewed. The chapter examines two popular error theories, the affect Hypothesis and the Bypassing Hypothesis, which take (...) these findings to challenges. With new empirical results, it argues instead that both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions genuinely reflect how people think about free will and moral responsibility. A pluralistic approach of theorizing about free will that allows one to embrace either compatibilism or incompatibilism in different contexts is proposed. (shrink)

Art is always political! Only dance is not!Dance has been somewhat ignored in utopian studies as a potential transformatory and political artistic expression, though performance and drama have attracted critical attention. The exhibition Das Echo der Utopien at the Dance Archive in Cologne uses its own archival materials to prove that dance can be political by looking at archival visual material from the sixteenth century to the German dance theater of the 1990s. The underlying assumption of the exhibition is (...) that dance as a physical, bodily form of individual and social expression has been and will be monitored and censored. “Social choreography,” in the words of Hewitt, highlights the interconnection between... (shrink)

An extraordinary and challenging synthesis of ideas uniting Quantum Theory, and the theories of Computation, Knowledge and Evolution, Deutsch's extraordinary book explores the deep connections between these strands which reveal the fabric ...

It is argued on a variety of grounds that recent results in 'experimental philosophy of language', which appear to show that there are significant cross-cultural differences in intuitions about the reference of proper names, do not pose a threat to a more traditional mode of philosophizing about reference. Some of these same grounds justify a complaint about experimental philosophy as a whole.

Practitioners of the new ‘experimental philosophy’ have collected data that appear to show that some philosophical intuitions are culturally variable. Many experimental philosophers take this to pose a problem for a more traditional, ‘armchair’ style of philosophizing. It is argued that this is a mistake that derives from a false assumption about the character of philosophical methods; neither philosophy nor its methods have anything to fear from cultural variability in philosophical intuitions.

The selection of wanted from unwanted messages requires discriminatory mechanisms of as great a complexity as those in normal perception, as is indicated by behavioral evidence. The results of neurophysiology experiments on selective attention are compatible with this supposition. This presents a difficulty for Filter theory. Another mechanism is proposed, which assumes the existence of a shifting reference standard, which takes up the level of the most important arriving signal. The way such importance is determined in the system is further (...) described. Neurophysiological evidence relative to this postulation is discussed. (shrink)

A bold and all-embracing exploration of the nature and progress of knowledge from one of today's great thinkers. Throughout history, mankind has struggled to understand life's mysteries, from the mundane to the seemingly miraculous. In this important new book, David Deutsch, an award-winning pioneer in the field of quantum computation, argues that explanations have a fundamental place in the universe. They have unlimited scope and power to cause change, and the quest to improve them is the basic regulating principle not (...) only of science but of all successful human endeavor. This stream of ever improving explanations has infinite reach, according to Deutsch: we are subject only to the laws of physics, and they impose no upper boundary to what we can eventually understand, control, and achieve. In his previous book, The Fabric of Reality, Deutsch describe the four deepest strands of existing knowledge-the theories of evolution, quantum physics, knowledge, and computation-arguing jointly they reveal a unified fabric of reality. In this new book, he applies that worldview to a wide range of issues and unsolved problems, from creativity and free will to the origin and future of the human species. Filled with startling new conclusions about human choice, optimism, scientific explanation, and the evolution of culture, The Beginning of Infinity is a groundbreaking book that will become a classic of its kind. (shrink)

Steffen Koch raises several objections to my critique of conceptual engineering. Here, I reply to these objections, arguing that Koch fails to adequately defend the “standard rationale” for conceptual engineering, and that the dilemma I have posed for “conceptual re-engineering”, a dilemma that presents this practice as either infeasible or else trivial, survives Koch’s objections unscathed. I conclude that conceptual engineering, both in terms of its conception and rationale, remains problematic.

"A leading scientist interweaves evolution, theoretical physics, and computer science to offer a new understanding of reality"--Cover.

Annotation. "This trim publication satisfies a much-felt need among teachers of Indian philosophy, who badly want introductions to the several systems of classical Indian thought such as Professor Deutsch provides."--Journal of Asian Studies.

Name der Zeitschrift: Jahrbuch für Wissenschaft und Ethik Jahrgang: 20 Heft: 1 Seiten: 225-236.

“Doing Gender,” West and Zimmerman's landmark article, highlighted the importance of social interaction, thus revealing the weaknesses of socialization and structural approaches. However, despite its revolutionary potential for illuminating how to dismantle the gender system, doing gender has become a theory of gender persistence and the inevitability of inequality. In this article, the author argues that we need to reframe the questions to ask how we can undo gender. Research should focus on when and how social interactions become less gendered, (...) whether gender can be irrelevant in interaction, whether gendered interactions always underwrite inequality, how the institutional and interactional levels work together to produce change, and interaction as the site of change. (shrink)

“Conceptual analysis” is a misnomer—it refers, but it does not refer to a method or practice that involves the analysis of concepts. Once this is recognized, many of the main arguments for skepticism about conceptual analysis can be answered, since many of these arguments falsely assume that conceptual analyses target concepts. The present paper defends conceptual analysis from skepticism about its viability and, positively, presents an argument for viewing conceptual analyses as targeting philosophical phenomena, not our concepts of these phenomena.

Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations–those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot. This is a departure from the prevailing conception of fundamental physics which is to predict what will happen from initial conditions and laws of motion. Several converging motivations for expecting constructor theory to be a fundamental branch of physics are discussed. Some principles of the theory are suggested and its potential (...) for solving various problems and achieving various unifications is explored. These include providing a theory of information underlying classical and quantum information; generalising the theory of computation to include all physical transformations; unifying formal statements of conservation laws with the stronger operational ones (such as the ruling-out of perpetual motion machines); expressing the principles of testability and of the computability of nature (currently deemed methodological and metaphysical respectively) as laws of physics; allowing exact statements of emergent laws (such as the second law of thermodynamics); and expressing certain apparently anthropocentric attributes such as knowledge in physical terms. (shrink)

Solutions to Russell’s paradox of propositions and to Kaplan’s paradox are proposed based on an extension of von Neumann’s method of avoiding paradox. It is shown that Russell’s ‘anti-Cantorian’ mappings can be preserved using this method, but Kaplan’s mapping cannot. In addition, several versions of the Epimenides paradox are discussed in light of von Neumann’s method.

This article argues that the “_qua_ problem” for purely causal theories of reference grounding is an illusion. Reference _can_ be grounded via description and fit, but purely causal reference grounding is possible too. In fact, “arguments from ignorance and error” suggest that many of our terms have had their reference grounded purely causally. If the _qua_ problem is illusory, then there is no need to adopt a “hybrid” theory of reference grounding of the kind recently recommended by Amie Thomasson (Ontology (...) made easy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2015) and Ron Mallon (The construction of human kinds, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2016). This opens the door to a “discovery model” of philosophical knowledge, a model we could then choose to accept. (shrink)