Those who wish to defend the role of aesthetic values in science face a dilemma: Either aesthetic language is used metaphorically for what are ultimately epistemic features, or aesthetic language is used literally but it is difficult to see the importance of such values in science. I introduce a new account that gets around this problem by looking to an overlooked source of aesthetic value in science: the relation between form and content. I argue that a fit between (...) the content of a thought experiment, and the way in which that content is formulated, can have important epistemic pay offs through contributing to scientific understanding. (shrink)

An excessive preoccupation with formalism is impeding the development of computer science. Form- content confusion is discussed relative to three areas: theory of computation, programming languages, and education.

Philosophers investigating the nature of knowledge from Bacon and Descartes to logical empiricism, have sought to understand its character by means of the distinction between the content of knowledge, and the abstract logical and mathematical principles which regulate its structure or form. The nature of the distinction, the relative roles of content and form, and the relationships between the two, however, have been given widely divergent interpretations.

Even the best of artists are human, and therefore capable of turning out bad work. The father of poets has set his children the example of nodding, and small blame to his children if in this, as in other matters, they have followed where Homer led. Critics, that hardy and self-sacrificing race of beings who voluntarily incur the enmity of artists for the sake of the common welfare, have to classify the various manners and causes of nodding in poets. I (...) do not claim to be a critic, but I want to call your attention to a particular kind of nodding which presents a curious problem in the theory of art. I will call it the nod of the uncongenial subject. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1967, given by Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989), an American philosopher.

Derek Turner, Professor of Philosophy, has written an introductory logic textbook that students at Connecticut College, or anywhere, can access for free. The book differs from other standard logic textbooks in its reliance on fun, low-stakes examples involving dinosaurs, a dog and his friends, etc. This work is published in 2020 under a Creative Commons AttributionNonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may share this text in any format or medium. You may not use it for commercial purposes. If you share it, (...) you must give appropriate credit. If you remix, transform, add to, or modify the text in any way, you may not then redistribute the modified text. (shrink)

Abstract Few theoretical insights have emerged from the extensive literature discussions of petitio principii argument. In particular, the pattern of petitio analysis has largely been one of movement between the two sides of a dichotomy, that of form and content. In this paper, I trace the basis of this dichotomy to a dualist conception of mind and world. I argue for the rejection of the form/content dichotomy on the ground that its dualist presuppositions generate a reductionist (...) analysis of certain concepts which are central to the analysis of petitio argument. I contend, for example, that no syntactic relation can assimilate within its analysis the essentially holistic nature of a notion like justification. In this regard, I expound a form of dialectical criticism which has been frequently employed in the philosophical arguments of Hilary Putnam. Here the focus of analysis is upon the way in which the proponent of a position proceeds to explain or argue for his/her own particular theses. My conclusion points to the use of such dialectic within future analyses of petitio principii. (shrink)

Even the best of artists are human, and therefore capable of turning out bad work. The father of poets has set his children the example of nodding, and small blame to his children if in this, as in other matters, they have followed where Homer led. Critics, that hardy and self-sacrificing race of beings who voluntarily incur the enmity of artists for the sake of the common welfare, have to classify the various manners and causes of nodding in poets. I (...) do not claim to be a critic, but I want to call your attention to a particular kind of nodding which presents a curious problem in the theory of art. I will call it the nod of the uncongenial subject. (shrink)

This paper continues a strain of intellectual complaint against the presumptions of certain kinds of formal semantics (the qualification is important) and their bad effects on those areas of artificial intelligence concerned with machine understanding of human language. After some discussion of the use of the term epistemology in artificial intelligence, the paper takes as a case study the various positions held by McDermott on these issues and concludes, reluctantly, that, although he has reversed himself on the issue, there was (...) no time at which he was right. (shrink)

The question of form and content is one of the fundamental questions of esthetics and the theory of art. However, it remains unresolved in many respects. Certain of its aspects still have not been investigated, and others have been treated only very sketchily.

A critique of Habermas is theory of the three worlds as a foundation for criticism and social philosophy.

In this essay I evaluate Larry Alan Busk’s critique of contemporary democratic theorists and contemporary “democratic” politics in Democracy in Spite of the Demos in the context of Carl Schmitt’s critique of modern democracy. I argue that Busk shares Schmitt’s general conception of democracy and of the dangers attending any appeal to it. Though Busk presents Herbert Marcuse and Theodor Adorno as alternatives to the current crop of democratic theorists, I demonstrate that Marcuse fell prey to the most significant of (...) the paradoxes and ambivalences that Schmitt prognosticated. Adorno, I argue, is less unsteady an ally, but one that stays further back from politics than Busk evidently wishes. In the end, Busk’s Schmittian critique of democracy and democratic theory extends further than he himself suggests and reveals, not to a solution to our problems, but a new way of understanding them and their severity. (shrink)

Flaminia Pischedda Cet article s’intéresse à l’un des textes fondamentaux de la tradition du Classique des changements (Yijing 易經) : le Xici (Commentaire sur les sentences attachées), également connu sous le titre Grand commentaire (Dazhuan 大傳) au Classique des changements. Nous procédons à une analyse formelle du texte, afin d’explorer ses motifs argumentatifs et philosophiques. Sans ignorer la nature composite de ce texte, qui est faite de plusieurs couches superposées, notre analyse sera conduite autant dans le détail du texte que (...) dans ses articulations globales. Nous entendons éclairer la manière dont la structure du texte reflète son contenu. Ainsi, nous montrerons comment un ensemble d’éléments structurels et lexicaux font du Xici un texte élaborant et défendant ses propres arguments, sans qu'il lui soit besoin de recourir à des ressources extra-textuelles. (shrink)

The paper offers a qualified endorsement of Terry Eagleton’s striking claim that “a work’s moral outlook … may be secreted as much in its form as its content”. A number of points are raised in defence of the claim: an argument for the inseparability, under certain conditions, of form and content in a literary work; an idea of moral content, not as derived moral principle, but as inward-facing interpretation grounded in an ethical vocabulary; the possibility (...) of internal and external perspectives on fictional characters; and an emphasis on emotions expressed in, rather than caused by, narrative. Three literary examples are explored, to show how vocabulary, syntax, implicature, and tone, contribute to the emergence of moral salience. A consequence drawn is that the ethical stance readers take to a scene or incident is partially shaped by the narrative modes of its presentation. The overall perspective of the paper is that of aesthetic autonomism: the view that the aesthetic value of a work of literature is distinct from, and not reducible to, any instrumental moral values (positive or negative) attributed to the work. (shrink)