... LIMITS OF MEANING Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, The Johns Hopkins University Nearly thirty years ago Professor Singer ...

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Examines the problem of correlating the “question” and the “answer” in modern science.

And yet when after the lapse of four maturing decades we recall certain passages of this Essay, how can we exonerate Clifford from backsliding Can we even urge ...

Giordano Bruno, 1548-1600.- Benedict de Spinoza, 1632-1677.- A disciple of Spinoza (an illustration) - David Hume, 1711-1776.- Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804.- Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860.- Friederich [!] Nietzsche, 1844-1900.- Pragmatism.- Progress.- Royce on love and loyalty.- Retrospect and prospect.

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I outline the theoretical framework of, and three research programs within American speculative philosophy of science during the period 1900-1931. One program applies verificationism to research in psychology, one investigates the methodology of research programs, and one analyses scientific explanation and other scientific concepts. The primary sources for my outline are works by Morris Raphael Cohen, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Theodore de Laguna, Edgar Arthur Singer Jr., Harold Robert Smart, and Marie Collins Swabey. I also use my (...) outline to provide a partial comparison of American speculative philosophy of science and 1930s logical positivism. My comparison suggests that logical positivism was a proposal for substantially narrowing down and winding back American philosophy of science and was based on positions that were already problematized in the American context. -/- . (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger claims that (1) das Man is an 'existential' i.e. a necessary feature of Dasein's Being; and (2) Dasein need not always exist in the mode of the Man-self, but can also be eigentlich, which I translate as 'self-owningly'. These apparently contradictory statements have prompted a debate between Hubert Dreyfus, who recommends abandoning (2), and Frederick Olafson, who favors jettisoning (1). I offer an interpretation of the structure of Dasein's Being compatible with both (1) and (2), (...) thus resolving the Dreyfus-Olafson debate. Central to this resolution is the distinction between das Man and the Man-self. Das Man is one of three existential 'horizons', or fields of possibilities; the other two horizons are the world and death. At any time, Dasein encounters entities in one of two basic modes: either by 'expressly seizing' possibilities of the horizon, or by occluding these possibilities. These modes are 'existentiell', i.e. features of Dasein's Being that are possible, but not essential. Self-ownership and the Man-self are the two basic existentiell modes of being oneself, i.e. projecting everyday possibilities of oneself appropriated from the horizon of das Man. What differentiates these two modes is the stance one takes to the possibility of death, the existential horizon of being oneself. (shrink)

The literature of our day shows experimental scientists to be divided between two schools of thought, now generally called Mechanist and Vitalist. The literature of any day these last 2000 years would tell the same tale, but for occasional changes of name. Where an issue dividing scientists is seen to be an experimental issue, it presents no challenge to the philosopher. His interest is limited to the question, How shall we find out? and where all are agreed as to the (...) way of settling a difference of opinion, he can wait with patience to learn the result. But the very history of this world-old and world-wide conflict between schools of experimental science shows that it never has been, is not now, could never become one whose issue turned on the outcome of this or that experiment; nor in all the 2000 years the conflict has lasted, has science been able to come upon any other type of evidence by which the issue might be settled. As one of a class of similar issues, ancient, pervasive, persistent, the manner of whose decision lies still beyond the grasp of experimental science, this Mechanist-Vitalist controversy gives the philosopher much to think about. (shrink)

This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.