This paper looks at what David Kaplan's work on indexicals can teach us about logic and the philosophy of logic, and also what Kaplan's logic (i.e. the Logic of Demonstratives) can teach us about indexicals. The lessons are i) that logical consequence is not necessary truth-preservation, ii) that that the linguistic doctrine of necessary truth (also called conventionalism about modality) fails, and iii) that there is a kind of barrier to entailment between non-context-sensitive and context-sensitive claims.

G. E. Moore was a central figure in twentieth-century philosophy. Along with Russell and Wittgenstein, he pioneered analytic philosophy, and his Principia Ethica shaped the contours of twentieth-century ethics. Indeed, until the publication of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, no single book in moral philosophy was to equal Principia's influence. Unfortunately, however, Principia Ethica has so dominated critical discussions of Moore's work that even experts on his moral philosophy have tended to ignore his Ethics, which he published eight years (...) later. But Ethics is Moore's only other book on moral philosophy, and one of only a handful of post-Principia publications dealing with ethics. Its detailed discussions of utilitarianism, free will, and the objectivity of moral judgements find no real counterpart in Principia while its account of right and wrong and of the nature of intrinsic value deepen our understanding of his moral philosophy. The republication of Ethics thus rounds out our understanding of Moore's ethical thought. But the book's value goes beyond its historical or scholarly interest. A short but philosophically rich text, Ethics stands independent of Principia and repays careful study in its own right. By raising a number of fundamental questions in ethics, questions that remain live today, by proffering clear, credible, and often innovative answers to them, and by doing so with a philosophical skill that is still impressive, Moore's short book is a minor classic. Almost a century after its original publication, it still amply rewards those who read it.This new edition of Moore's Ethics includes his essay 'The Nature of Moral Philosophy' as well as editorial notes, an introduction, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

G.E. Moore, more than either Bertrand Russell or Ludwig Wittgenstein, was chiefly responsible for the rise of the analytic method in twentieth-century philosophy. This selection of his writings shows Moore at his very best. The classic essays are crucial to major philosophical debates that still resonate today. Amongst those included are: * A Defense of Common Sense * Certainty * Sense-Data * External and Internal Relations * Hume's Theory Explained * Is Existence a Predicate? * Proof of an External (...) World In addition, this collection also contains the key early papers in which Moore signals his break with idealism, and three important previously unpublished papers from his later work which illustrate his relationship with Wittgenstein. (shrink)

G. E. Moore was a central figure in twentieth-century philosophy. Along with Russell and Wittgenstein, he pioneered analytic philosophy, and his Principia Ethica shaped the contours of twentieth-century ethics. Indeed, until the publication of Rawls's A Theory of Justice, no single book in moral philosophy was to equal Principia's influence. Unfortunately, however, Principia Ethica has so dominated critical discussions of Moore's work that even experts on his moral philosophy have tended to ignore his Ethics, which he published eight years (...) later. But Ethics is Moore's only other book on moral philosophy, and one of only a handful of post-Principia publications dealing with ethics. Its detailed discussions of utilitarianism, free will, and the objectivity of moral judgements find no real counterpart in Principia while its account of right and wrong and of the nature of intrinsic value deepen our understanding of his moral philosophy. The republication of Ethics thus rounds out our understanding of Moore's ethical thought. But the book's value goes beyond its historical or scholarly interest. A short but philosophically rich text, Ethics stands independent of Principia and repays careful study in its own right. By raising a number of fundamental questions in ethics, questions that remain live today, by proffering clear, credible, and often innovative answers to them, and by doing so with a philosophical skill that is still impressive, Moore's short book is a minor classic. Almost a century after its original publication, it still amply rewards those who read it.This new edition of Moore's Ethics includes his essay 'The Nature of Moral Philosophy' as well as editorial notes, an introduction, and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Introductory paragraph from unpublished review.

These notes of G. E. Moore's lectures for the three terms of 1934-1935 were compiled by Alice Ambrose, then Student of Newnham College, and Margaret Macdonald, then Fellow of Girton College. The lectures cover a wealth of interrelated topics, and provide instances of the analyses which made Moore «the father of the analytic school.» Since his analyses of such concepts as material objects, sense data, and truth rest on the ordinary use of expressions for these concepts, «ordinary language» philosophers found (...) in him their champion. Moore examines the views of Broad, Russell, F. P. Ramsey, W. E. Johnson, and John Wisdom. (shrink)

By a `denoting phrase' I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. We may distinguish (...) three cases: (1) A phrase may be denoting, and yet not denote anything; e.g., `the present King of France'. (2) A phrase may denote one definite object; e.g., `the present King of England' denotes a certain man. (3) A phrase may denote ambiguously; e.g. `a man' denotes not many men, but an ambiguous man. The interpretation of such phrases is a matter of considerably difficulty; indeed, it is very hard to frame any theory not susceptible of formal refutation. All the difficulties with which I am acquainted are met, so far as I can discover, by the theory which I am about to explain. (shrink)

By a `denoting phrase' I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the center of mass of the solar system at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. Thus a phrase is denoting solely in virtue of its form. We may distinguish (...) three cases: (1) A phrase may be denoting, and yet not denote anything; e.g., `the present King of France'. (2) A phrase may denote one definite object; e.g., `the present King of England' denotes a certain man. (3) A phrase may denote ambiguously; e.g. `a man' denotes not many men, but an ambiguous man. The interpretation of such phrases is a matter of considerably difficulty; indeed, it is very hard to frame any theory not susceptible of formal refutation. All the difficulties with which I am acquainted are met, so far as I can discover, by the theory which I am about to explain. (shrink)

The debate surrounding eliminative materialism, and the role of empiricism more broadly, has been one of the more prominent philosophical debates of the last half-century. But too often what is at stake in this debate has been left implicit. This essay surveys the rhetoric of two participants in this debate, Paul Churchland and Thomas Nagel, on the question of whether or not scientific explanations will do away with the need for nonscientific descriptions. Both philosophers talk about this possibility in language (...) reminiscent of revolutionary politics. These authors do not see eliminative materialism merely as an idea to be evaluated, but a revolution to be welcomed or quashed. After surveying their rhetoric, the paper turns to the work of four philosophers—G.E.M. Anscombe, Peter Winch, Paul Holmer, and G.H. von Wright—to suggest that there is within Wittgensteinian tradition a ‘nonrevolutionary’ approach to the question of eliminative materialism. (shrink)

.... The strategy I have defended involves drawing a distinction between those who can and cannot legitimately hold an agent responsible in circumstances when the agent is being covertly controlled (e.g. through implantation processes). What is intuitively unacceptable, I maintain, is that an agent should be held responsible or subject to reactive attitudes that come from another agent who is covertly controlling or manipulating him. This places some limits on who is entitled to take up the participant stance in relation (...) to agents who are rational self-controllers but nevertheless subject to covert control.26 In this way, what is compromised by conditions of covert control is not the responsibility of the agent as such. It is, rather, the participant stance of those other agents who covertly control him. Clearly it is possible to establish these specific limits on who can hold these agents responsible without denying that the agents themselves remain free and responsible. When we take this approach we will find that we are no longer faced with an unattractive choice between simply “biting the bullet” or having to “spit it out”. All we need to do is chew carefully, until there is nothing left that we find too hard to swallow. (shrink)

While numerous studies have examined the relationships between facial actions and emotions, they have yet to account for the ways that specific spontaneous facial expressions map onto emotional experiences induced without expressive intent. Moreover, previous studies emphasized that a fine-grained investigation of facial components could establish the coherence of facial actions with actual internal states. Therefore, this study aimed to accumulate evidence for the correspondence between spontaneous facial components and emotional experiences. We reinvestigated data from previous research which secretly recorded (...) spontaneous facial expressions of Japanese participants as they watched film clips designed to evoke four different target emotions: surprise, amusement, disgust, and sadness. The participants rated their emotional experiences via a self-reported questionnaire of sixteen emotions. These spontaneous facial expressions were coded using the Facial Action Coding System, the gold standard for classifying visible facial movements. We corroborated each facial action that was present in the emotional experiences by applying stepwise regression models. The results found that spontaneous facial components occurred in ways that cohere to the their evolutionary functions based on the rating values of emotional experiences (e.g., the inner brow raiser might be involved in the evaluation of novelty). This study provided new empirical evidence for the correspondence between each spontaneous facial component and first-person internal states of emotion as reported by the expresser. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 171 c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM REFLECTIONS FROM PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA Russell Wahl English and Philosophy / Idaho State U. Pocatello, id 83209 usa [email protected] Alexandre Guay, ed. Autour des Principia Mathematica de Russell et Whitehead. (Collection Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences.) Dijon: Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2012. Pp. 168. isbn 978-2-36441-001-4. €20.00 (pb). his collection, by several distinguished French philosophers, is intended to be (...) a work on problems which are suggested by or perhaps stem from Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica. It turns out to be a somewhat eclectic collection. Some of the papers explicate points in Principia, some delve into issues from Principia or perhaps suggested by something in it, and q= 172 Reviews c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM some into issues suggested by later works of Russell’s. The collection was put together for the centenary of Principia, with the idea of focusing on “its posterity, the doors it has opened, the questions it has brought up, and the techniques it has initiated” (p. 5). The essays are all interesting, but in some of them the main focuses are only introduced and are not developed very much, appearing to explicate points already made in detail elsewhere and not adding a great deal that is new. The first essay, for example, gives an overview of the development of Russell’s logic, the theory of classes and the account of relations, the antinomies, the theory of descriptions and even the ramified theory of types. While the review is useful, there doesn’t seem to be here anything more than what would be found in the previous works of Denis Vernant, Jules Vuillemin, or Philippe de Rouilhan, on which the author draws. Hints of further issues are to be found in the discussion, but they are not developed because of the sheer number of points being reviewed. Denis Vernant, in the fifth essay, gives a thorough review of Russell’s account of similarity of relations and his use of this in relation-arithmetic, mostly from Chapter 6 of Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. Vernant points out that Russell uses the terms “analogy” and “exactly analogous” in several places and thinks of these in terms of his definition of structure. At the end of the essay Vernant begins with Russell’s formal account of structure and seeks to give an account of analogy, and specifically metaphor, using the tools of similarity of structure. Again, the discussion of similarity relations is good, but does not really go beyond previous work, and the application to metaphor, while interesting, is very brief. The sixth essay, by Nadine Gessler and Denis Miéville, discusses Lesniewski ”s criticisms of Principia and gives some hint of Lesniewski’s own positions. Lesniewski’s work is very interesting and has probably not been given its due. These authors briefly mention Lesniewski’s concerns about classes, the assertion sign and definitions, and then give a short presentation of Lesniewski’s own views. This last part is again just sketched out. The authors do point out difficulties Lesniewski had with parts of Principia, including the sloppiness about use and mention, the requirement that definitions be non-creative and the theory of types. They also point out that Lesniewski had a view of logic (reminiscent of Arnauld and Nicod) as “the art of thinking”, and they discuss his suspicion of sets as abstract entities rather than mereological wholes of the kind which can be grounded in experience. Lesniewski apparently thought of mathematical logic as limiting and not encompassing the whole of thinking. This is curious, because often Russell and Whitehead are accused of expanding logic in order to capture all mathematics as part of logic. Gessler and Miéville accent the differences between Lesniewski ’s position and Principia, but in many ways Lesniewski’s views are actually Reviews 173 c:\users\ken\documents\type3402\rj 3402 050 red.docx 2015-02-04 9:19 PM closer to those of Whitehead and Russell than to, e.g., the views... (shrink)

Social grooming is an important element of social life in terrestrial primates, inducing the putative benefits of β-endorphin stimulation and group harmony and cohesion. Implicit in many analyses of grooming (e.g. biological markets) are the assumptions of costs and benefits to grooming behaviour. Here, in a review of literature, we investigate the proximate costs and benefits of grooming, as a potentially useful explanatory substrate to the well-documented ultimate (functional) explanations. We find that the hedonic benefits of grooming are well documented. (...) However, we did not find convincing evidence for costs. If proximate costs do exist, they might consist of energetic, cognitive, opportunity costs, or some combination of all of these. Nonetheless, there remains the possibility that grooming costs are negligible, or even that the provision of allogrooming is rewarding in itself. We suggest empirical research to resolve this issue. (shrink)

1. The philosophical version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a) the 'real' properties of matter, (b) the epistemology of sensation, and (c) a contrast challenged by Berkely as illusory. The scientific version of the primary-secondary distinction concerns (a') the physical properties of matter, (b') a contrast essential within the history of atomism, and (c') a contrast challenged by 20th century microphysics as de facto untenable. 2. The primary-secondary distinction within physics can be interpreted in two ways: a. it can refer (...) to content; e.g. 'Matter has the properties of mass, shape, density... etc. -- it only appears to have the properties of warmth, fragrance, etc.' Or, b. it can refer to form; e.g. 'Whatever properties our best theories accord to primary matter, e.g., electrons, these are by definition primary. All other properties of, e.g., macromatter, are derivative.' Concerning 2.a., this interpretation is simply false when 17th, 18th, or 19th century values for the property-variables are introduced. Concerning 2.b., this either uninformative or misleading. It is uninformative when it constitutes no more than a decision to use the word 'primary' as an umbrella-word for all the properties contemporary micro-physics accords to fundamental material particles, whatever these may be. It is misleading when it turns on an implicit contrast between certain properties particles may be said to have when 'harnessed' to a detector, and certain other properties these particles have when free and unharnessed to any detector. This contrast does not exist. Quantum-theoretic information is always about particles-and-their-detectors-in-combination. Dissolve this combination and you destroy any possible knowledge of the particle. Hence the notion of 'completely objectifiable properties of particles' is in principle unsound. (shrink)

Melatonin, the chief hormone of the pineal gland, is produced and secreted into the blood in a circadian manner with maximal production always occurring during the dark phase of the light dark cycle. Whereas the 24h rhythm of melatonin production is very robust in young animals including humans, the cycle deteriorates during ageing. The rhythm of melatonin can be substantially preserved during ageing by restricting the food intake of experimental animals; this same treatment increases the life span of the animals. (...) The exogenous administration of melatonin to non‐food restricted animals also reportedly increases their survival. Moreover, melatonin has been shown to have immunoenhancing effects and oncostatic properties. The implication of these studies is that melatonin may have both direct and indirect beneficial effects in delaying ageing processes or it may retard the development of processes (e.g., immunodeficiency and tumor growth) which contribute to a reduced life span. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Causes of WarBertrand RussellRussell’s authorship of this anonymously published entry in An Encylopaedia of Pacifism (London: Chatto & Windus, 1937), pp. 12–13, has only just come to light, thanks to the recent sale at auction of a letter to him from Aldous Huxley. If this determination had been made earlier, the text would have featured in Papers 21. In acknowledging receipt of “Causes of War” on 14 December 1936, (...) Huxley, the volume’s editor, also wondered whether Russell would like to examine his subject “at greater length—say in 1,000 words” (internet print, ra3 1,850). The original editorial plan, to which Russell must have adhered, allocated a single page to each topic, which ranged alphabetically from “Armaments, Private Manufacture of”, to “Women in Modern War, Position of”. But as Huxley explained, such compression was “impossible” for some subjects. Russell evidently declined the offer (no reply is extant), for his published contribution amounted to 300 words only. It nevertheless lucidly distils a complex and contested issue. In the spirit of the publishing enterprise Russell had joined, “Causes of War” is also somewhat didactic. Yet there is little hint of either the psychological predispositions towards war he also regarded as crucial, or the absolute pacifist doctrines he had recently embraced and elaborated in Which Way to Peace? (1936). The latter ground, however, was well covered elsewhere, in entries on “Force” and “Non-Violence”, most explicitly, but also in those disparaging armed revolution, for example, or the use of sanctions to enforce international law.The two cross references at the end of Russell’s entry are probably not authorial. The text presented below is the only known version, from the cheap softcover edition of the Encyclopaedia (priced 6d ) published by Chatto & Windus under the auspices of the Peace Pledge Union—the British pacifist group of which both Huxley and Russell were sponsors, along with, in all likelihood, other of the work’s anonymous contributors. [End Page 83]CAUSES OF WARThe main causes of war are of three kinds (1) the pursuit of wealth, (2) the pursuit of glory, (3) the advocacy of a creed. Usually all three are combined in varying proportions, as, for example in the Book of Joshua. The economic motive has various forms:a. Occupation of fruitful territory—e.g. Whites and Indians in United States.b. Plunder—e.g. Romans in Asia Minor; Cortez and Pisarro.c. Trade—e.g. English and Dutch in seventeenth century.d. Markets and fields for investment—most modern imperialist wars.e. Raw materials—e.g. Japan in China, France and Germany as regards Lorraine.The notion of glory is usually dynastic or governmental—for example, the ancient Assyrians and Persians, and eighteenth-century wars so far as the Continent of Europe is concerned. But it can be made popular by propaganda, and always has been made so since the French Revolution.Creed wars may be religious or political; usually they are both. They almost always also have economic motives. The early Mohammedans, for example, had economic motives (a) and (b); the Protestants wished to secure church lands and revenues; and so on. The English Civil War combined religious and political motives in equal measure. The Albigensian crusade was, on the part of the instigators, more economic than political. The French revolutionary wars, the American Civil War, and the various civil wars since 1815, involved important politico-economic issues, and were all, in a greater or less degree, creed wars.The main causes predisposing to modern war are: first, the competition between States for markets and raw materials; secondly, the competition between classes as regards the distribution of the national wealth. These two causes are intertwined, because different governments stand for different economic systems. (See Economic Reform and Pacifism; Education and Peace.) [End Page 84]Bertrand RussellIntroduced by andrew g. bone Russell Research Centre / McMaster U. [email protected] © 2023 Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster University... (shrink)

Direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and reputation are important interrelated topics in the evolution of sociality. This non-mathematical review is a summary of each. Direct reciprocity (the positive kind) has a straightforward structure (e.g., "A rewards B, then rewards A") but the allocation might differ from the process that enabled it (e.g., whether it is true reciprocity or some form of mutualism). Indirect reciprocity (the positive kind) occurs when person (B) is rewarded by a third party (A) after doing a good (...) deed towards somebody else (C) — with the structure "A observes B help C, therefore A helps B." Here too, the allocation differs from the process: if there is underlying cognition, then indirect reciprocity is based on some ability to keep track of the reputations of others (to remember that "B helped C"). Reputation is a kind of social impression based on typicality, derived from three channels of experience (direct encounters, bystander observation, and gossip). Although non-human animals cannot gossip verbally, they can eavesdrop on third parties and learn vicariously. This paper ends with a proposal to investigate the topic of social expertise as a model for understanding how animals understand and utilise observed information within their social groups. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Being the Right Kind of Parent:Conceiving PeopleCamisha Russell (bio)Daniel Groll's Conceiving People makes one central claim regarding the ethics of using egg or sperm donations to create a child (that one intends to parent): "[P]arents should use an open donor because doing so puts their resulting child in a good position to satisfy the child's likely future interest in having genetic knowledge" (Groll 2021, 12, original italics).Amid myriad (...) thorny ethical questions surrounding assisted reproduction, Groll's decision to focus on a choice that intended parents in need of donor gametes must make before their future child is even conceived—a choice that is typically taken very seriously—makes a lot of sense. The question is live, rarely completely determined as a matter of policy or law, and, as Groll demonstrates, important to most donor-conceived people (and therefore to the families of which they are a part). For this increasing number of individuals and families, a cultural shift in how we think about open versus anonymous donors would have a significant (and as Groll argues, positive) impact.Groll's carefully built argument is important not only for the paths of ethical reasoning that it highlights, but for those common rationales it gently but firmly sets aside (e.g., the donor-conceived person's medical need to know their genetic history or the idea that knowledge of one's genetic origins is the best or only way to truly know oneself). Groll's work is attentive to the types of relationships that foster the emotional health of families, and it's grounded in the experiences and desires articulated by donor-conceived people themselves. For this reader, these are the book's greatest strengths, along with the fact that Groll is often quite funny in his examples, which makes the examples highly relatable.Of course, the challenge for philosophers in writing books of ethical importance for "laypeople" is to offer something an average educated adult can understand while addressing the more technical theoretical issues that matter to ethicists. I would expect Groll's text to satisfy ethicists because his definitions and distinctions are scrupulously clear, and he engages the existing philosophical literature well. As for laypeople, there are surely a few moments in which they will find themselves in the theoretical weeds, so to speak, but Groll has [End Page 193] successfully made the book largely modular, such that they should get a lot from just reading the chapters of direct interest (Groll 2021, 29).Chapter 2, "Keeping Secrets," is essential for intended parents seeking ethical guidance. Groll notes that professional opinion on donor conception has shifted from seeing nondisclosure of a child's donor-conceived status as a moral requirement (to protect privacy and avoid family stigma) to recommending disclosure. He then reviews standard arguments for disclosure: (1) the "profound importance" of known genetic origins to health identity formation, (2) the medical importance of knowing to whom you are (and are not) genetically related, and (3) the harm that keeping secrets can do to family members and family functioning. While Groll agrees with the latter two arguments, he introduces and emphasizes a new argument: the Intimacy argument, in which he convincingly argues that keeping a child's genetic origins secret "violates norms of intimacy by creating distance between parents and children that is at odds with the demands of intimacy in the parent-child relationship" (Groll 2021, 44, original italics). Though, in many ways, this chapter's argument is separate from the central argument for the use of open donors constructed in the rest of the book, I find it compelling and wonder whether it could hold up more of the open donor argument, placing less weight on the Significant Interest view that Groll introduces in the next chapter (and the concerns regarding bionormativity that emerge from that view).In the third chapter, Groll moves from disclosure to the information that's available to be disclosed. That is, it is one thing to commit to telling a child they were donor-conceived after conception. It is another to commit before conception to choosing a donor willing to be known to the future child when... (shrink)

In his recent Philosophers’ Imprint paper “The (mostly harmless) inconsistency of knowledge attributions” [Weiner, 2009], Matt Weiner argues that the semantics of the expression “knows that”, as it is used in attributions of knowledge like “Hannah knows that the bank will be open,” are inconsistent, but that this inconsistency is “mostly harmless.” He presents his view as an alternative to the invariantist, contextualist and relativist approaches currently prevalent in the literature, (e.g. [Stanley, 2005], [DeRose, 1995], [Hawthorne, 2006], [MacFarlane, 2005]) and (...) argues that it avoids important disadvantages of each. Yet in calling the supposed inconsistency of knowledge attributions “mostly harmless”, Weiner implies that his view does not have new disadvantages of its own. My purpose in the present paper is to argue that the inconsistency and harmlessness theses cannot be jointly maintained: if we accept that the semantics of ‘know’—or indeed any word—are inconsistent, then we face a dilemma: one horn is dialetheism, the view that there there are true contradictions, the other is the view that that semantic competence in English requires belief in, or similar commitment to, falsehoods. I will argue that neither of these options is well described as “mostly harmless.” The paper is structured as follows: in the first part I present Weiner’s view and his arguments for it. Then in section 2 I compare the question of whether the semantics of ‘knows that’ are inconsistent to the much older controversy over whether the semantics of the expression ‘is true’ are inconsistent. In section 3 I will present Hans Herzberger’s arguments from the 1960s for thinking that no expression in a natural language can have inconsistent semantics. Finally, in section 4 I argue that although Herzberger’s argument seems anachronistic today, both contemporary ways of avoiding his conclusion have significant disadvantages. (shrink)