In this article, I respond to some criticisms raised in Evan Fales’ review of my book The Epistemology of Spirit Beliefs that was published in this journal. The points I will address are the following: (i) Fales’ complaint about unclarity in my epistemological position, (ii) his complaint about my insufficient presentation of alternative explanations, and (iii) his complaint about my use of the terms ‘naturalism’ and ‘naturalistic explanation’.

In this major work, Blumenberg takes issue with Karl Lowith's well-known thesis that the idea of progress is a secularized version of Christian eschatology, which promises a dramatic intervention that will consummate the history of the ...

The essay recapitulates the decisive steps in Heidegger’s development of the problem of human freedom. The interpretation is set in the context of a general matrix for how freedom is treated in the tradition, as both a theoretical ontological problem, and as practical appeal. According to some readers, Heidegger’s thinking is a philosophy of freedom throughout; according to others his “turning” implies abandoning the idea of human freedom as a metaphysical remnant. The essay seeks an intermediate path, by following his (...) explicit attempts to develop an ontology based on the concept of freedom in the earlier writings, showing how this is the central theme in his confrontation and also his final break with German idealism, with Kant and with Schelling in particular, and with the prospects for a system of freedom. However, this break does not terminate his preoccupation with the problem of freedom, which is then transformed into the idea of thinking as a practice of freedom, as a way of reaching into “the free”. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's remarks about family resemblance in the Philosophical Investigations should not be construed as implying a comprehensive theory of universals. They possess, rather, a defensive function in his exposition. The remarks allow one, nevertheless, to draw certain general conclusions about how Wittgenstein thought about concepts. Reflection on the notion of family resemblance reveals that kinship and similarity considerations intersect in it in a problematic fashion.

This paper examines and compares the ways in which intentions of the singular kind and the plural kind are subjective. Are intentions of the plural kind ours in the same way intentions of the singular kind are mine? Starting with the singular case, it is argued that “I intend” is subjective in virtue of self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is special in that it is self-identifying, self-validating, self-committing, and self-authorizing. Moving to the plural form, it is argued that in spite of apparent differences, (...) attitudes of the form “we intend” are subjective in the same way. The self-knowledge at work here is plural rather than singular. This supports a plural subject account of collective intentionality. It is argued that the worries sometimes raised in the literature against the metaphysical “spookiness” of plural subjects are due to a fundamental misconception of the way in which attitudes of either kind –singular and plural – are subjective. (shrink)

What role do metaphors play in philosophical language? Are they impediments to clear thinking that should be eradicated in the interests of terminological exactness? Or can they be used by philosophers to indicate the attitudes that regulate an epoch?

Hans Kelsen is considered by many to be the foremost legal thinker of the twentieth century. During the last decade of his life he was working on what he called a general theory of norms. Published posthumously in 1979 as Allgemeine Theorie der Normen, the book is here translated for the first time into English. Kelsen develops his "pure theory of law" into a "general theory of norms", and analyzes the applicability of logic to norms to offer an original (...) and extreme position which some have called "normative irrationalism". Examining the views of over 200 philosophers and legal theorists on law, morality, and logic, and revising several of his own earlier positions, Kelsen's final work is a mandatory resource for legal and moral philosophers. (shrink)

Quine and Davidson are among the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. Their influence on contemporary philosophy is second to none, and their impact is also strongly felt in disciplines such as linguistics and psychology. This book is devoted to both of them, but also questions some of their basic assumptions. Hans-Johann Glock critically scrutinizes their ideas on ontology, truth, necessity, meaning and interpretation, thought and language, and shows that their attempts to accommodate meaning and thought within a naturalistic (...) framework, either by impugning them as unclear or by extracting them from physical facts, are ultimately unsuccessful. His discussion includes interesting comparisons of Quine and Davidson with other philosophers, particularly Wittgenstein, and also offers detailed accounts of central issues in contemporary analytic philosophy, such as the nature of truth and of meaning and interpretation, and the relation between thought and language. (shrink)

The article seeks to challenge the standard accounts of how to view the difference between Husserl and Frege on the nature of ideal objects and meanings. It does so partly by using Derrida’s deconstructive reading of Husserl to open up a critical space where the two approaches can be confronted in a new way. Frege’s criticism of Husserl’s philosophy of mathematics (that it was essentially psychologistic) was partly overcome by the program of transcendental phenomenology. But the original challenge to the (...) prospect of a fulfilled intuition of idealities remained and was in fact encountered again from within the transcendental analysis by Husserl himself in his last writings on geometry and language. According to the two standard and conflicting accounts, Husserl either changed his earlier psychologistic program as a result of Frege’s criticism, or he was in fact never challenged by it in the first place. The article shows instead how Husserl continued to struggle with the problem of the constitution of ideal objects, and how his quest led him to a point where his analyses anticipate a more dialectical and deconstructive conclusion, eventually made explicit by Derrida. It also shows not only how this development constitutes a philosophical continuity from the original dispute with Frege, but also how Frege’s critique in a certain respect could be read as an anticipation of Derrida’s deconstructive elaboration of Husserl’s phenomenology. (shrink)

This volume makes available for the first time in English the most important of Hans-Georg Gadamer's extensive writings on art and literature. The principal text included is 'The Relevance of the Beautiful', Gadamer's most sustained treatment of philosophical aesthetics. The eleven other essays focus particularly on the challenge issued by modern painting and literature to our customary ideas of art, and use that challenge to revitalize our understanding of it. Gadamer demonstrates the continuing importance of such concepts as imitation, (...) truth, symbol, and play for our appreciation of contemporary art, and thereby establishes its continuity with the Western tradition. The essays here are not technical and are readily accessible to the beginning student and the general reader. The collection as a whole serves to illustrate the practice of hermeneutics and to introduce Gadamer's thought. Robert Bernasconi provides an introduction clarifying the central aims of the essays and their relations to Gadamer's major work, Truth and Method, and to the philosophy of art since Kant. A bibliography of Gadamer's writings available in English is also included. (shrink)

In this paper we provide an analysis of the logical relations within the conceptual or lexical field of angles in 2D geometry. The basic tripartition into acute/right/obtuse angles is extended in two steps: first zero and straight angles are added, and secondly reflex and full angles are added, in both cases extending the logical space of angles. Within the framework of logical geometry, the resulting partitions of these logical spaces yield bitstring semantics of increasing complexity. These bitstring analyses allow a (...) straightforward account of the Aristotelian relations between angular concepts. In addition, also relational concepts such as complementary and supplementary angles receive a natural bitstring analysis. (shrink)

This collection of original essays by preeminent interpreters of continental philosophy explores the question of whether Western thought and culture have been dominated by a vision-centered paradigm of knowledge, ethics, and power. It focuses on the character of vision in modern philosophy and on arguments for and against the view that contemporary life and thought are distinctively "ocularcentric." The authors examine these ideas in the context of the history of philosophy and consider the character of visual discourse in the writings (...) of Plato, Descartes, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Benjamin, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas, Derrida, Foucault, Gadamer, Wittgenstein, and Habermas. With essays on television, the visual arts, and feminism, the book will interest readers in cultural studies, gender studies, and art history as well as philosophers. (shrink)

Shipwreck with Spectator traces the evolution of the complex of metaphors related to the sea, to shipwreck, and to the role of the spectator in human culture from ancient Greece to modern times. This elegant essay exemplifies Blumenberg's ideas about the ability of the historical study of metaphor to illuminate essential aspects of being human. Originally published in the same year as his monumental Work on Myth, Shipwreck with Spectator traces the evolution of the complex of metaphors related to the (...) sea, to shipwreck, and to the role of the spectator in human culture from ancient Greece to modern times. The sea is one of humanity's oldest metaphors for life, and a sea journey, Blumenberg observes, has often stood for our journey through life. We all know the role that shipwrecks can play in this journey, and at some level we have all played witness to others' wrecks, standing in safety and knowing that there is nothing we can do to help, yet fixed comfortably or uncomfortably in our ambiguous role as spectator. Through Blumenberg's seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of letters, from ancient texts through nineteenth-century reminiscences and modern speeches, we see layer upon layer revealed in the meaning humans have given to these metaphors; and in this way we begin to understand what metaphors can do that more straightforward modes of expression cannot. This edition of Shipwreck with Spectator also includes "Prospect for a Theory of Nonconceptuality," an essay that recounts the evolution of Blumenberg's ideas about metaphorology in the years following his early manifesto "Paradigms for a Metaphorology.". (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis - Einleitung; Lebenswelt und Technisierung unter Aspekten der Phänomenologie; 'Nachahmung der Natur'. Zur Vorgeschichte der Idee des schöpferischen Menschen; Anthropologische Annäherung an die Aktualität der Rhetorik; Sprachsituation und immanente Poetik; Paradigma, grammatisch; Ernst Cassirers gedenkend bei Entgegennahme des Kuno-Fischer-Preises der Universität Heidelberg.

Observation and conceptual interpretation constitute the two major ways through which human beings engage the world. _The World Observed/The World Conceived _presents an innovative analysis of the nature and role of observation and conceptualization. While these two actions are often treated as separate, Hans Radder shows that they are inherently interconnected-that materially realized observational processes are always conceptually interpreted and that the meaning of concepts depends on the way they structure observational processes and abstract from them. He examines the (...) role of human action and conceptualization in realizing observational processes and develops a detailed theory of the relationship between observation, abstraction, and the meaning of concepts. This book provides a critical analysis of the work of various other philosophers and their accounts of scientific and ordinary-life observation and conceptualization. Radder discusses the formation and nature of concepts and demonstrates how concepts structure the phenomenal world. He then introduces and defines the notions of extensible concepts, abstraction and nonlocal meanings and explores the philosophical implications of his theory. _The World Observed/The World Conceived_ offers fresh insights in practices of observation and conceptualization, that will prove useful to many areas of scholarly study including ontology, epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, science studies, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Computers have far to go to match human strengths, and our estimates will depend on analogy and extrapolation. Fortunately, these are grounded in the first bit of the journey, now behind us. Thirty years of computer vision reveals that 1 MIPS can extract simple features from real-time imagery--tracking a white line or a white spot on a mottled background. 10 MIPS can follow complex gray-scale patches--as smart bombs, cruise missiles and early self-driving vans attest. 100 MIPS can follow moderately unpredictable (...) features like roads--as recent long NAVLAB trips demonstrate. 1,000 MIPS will be adequate for coarse-grained three-dimensional spatial awareness--illustrated by several mid-resolution stereoscopic vision programs, including my own. 10,000 MIPS can find three-dimensional objects in clutter--suggested by several "bin-picking" and high-resolution stereo-vision demonstrations, which accomplish the task in an hour or so at 10 MIPS. The data fades there--research careers are too short, and computer memories too small, for significantly more elaborate experiments. (shrink)

This article discusses the problems which concepts pose for the attribution of thoughts to animals. It locates these problems within a range of other issues concerning animal minds (section 1), and presents a ‘lingualist master argument’ according to which one cannot entertain a thought without possessing its constituent concepts and cannot possess concepts without possessing language (section 2). The first premise is compelling if one accepts the building-block model of concepts as parts of wholes – propositions – and the idea (...) that intentional verbs signify relations between subjects and such propositions. But I shall find fault with both (section 3). This opens the way for recognizing a form of ‘holodoxastic’ thought-ascription which does not presuppose concept-possession on the part of the subject (section 4). Section 5 defends this idea against objections. Section 6 turns to the second premise of the lingualist master argument. I press the idea of judgement into service as a label for conceptual thought that need not be linguistic and argue that the possession of concepts is an ability. Section 7 accepts that concept-possession requires the ability to classify rather than merely to discriminate, but suggests that this need not disqualify animals. In the final section I confirm this verdict by returning to the notion of judgement: classification is the deliberate and considered response to a range of options in a sorting or discrimination task. Notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, the capacity for such a response does not presuppose the linguistic ability to answer questions. Judgement is a feature of a type of problem-solving that we share with some non-linguistic creatures. (shrink)

Die philosophische Begegnung zwischen Leibniz und Martin Heidegger - von Heidegger wahrend seines Denkwegs in verschiedenen Formen inszeniert - hat für die Definition der Philosophie und des philosophischen Denkens eine ausgezeichnete Bedeutung. Der bekannte Vorwurf Heideggers an Leibniz, Begründer einer kalkulierenden Vernunft zu sein, die die Moderne eingefangen hat, steht gegen den nicht weniger verbreiteten Verdacht, Heidegger selbst sei wiederum doch des Verrats am Ethos philosophischer Vernunft zu tadeln. Die Auseinandersetzung zwischen beiden Denkern zwingt dazu, hinsichtlich einiger Probleme von philosophisch (...) außerordentlicher Relevanz nun Positionen zu beziehen - im Zentrum jener Kontroverse steht zweifellos der Satz vom Grund, der Heidegger in unterschiedlichen Zusammenhangen noch stets als Schlussel fur das Denken Leibniz' gait: Der Beitrag eruiert Heideggers Interpretation des Themas mit der Kritik an Leibniz und kommt somit zu der Frage, welche philosophische Schlußfolgerung am Ende dann zu ziehen bleibt. Ich untersuche hier zunächst die Rolle und Bedeutung des Sujets in Leibniz' Schriften, im Anschluß wird Heidegger behandelt. (shrink)

In seinem 1960 erschienenen Hauptwerk "Wahrheit und Methode" nimmt Gadamer die bis in die Antike zuruckreichende hermeneutische Tradition auf, um vor allem im Anschluss an Hegel und Heidegger eine philosophische Hermeneutik zu begrunden. Das Buch brachte seinem Autor internationalen Ruhm, und die philosophische Hermeneutik ist eine der massgeblichen Konzeptionen der neueren Philosophie geworden. Nach wie vor bildet "Wahrheit und Methode" den Ausgangspunkt fur eine philosophische Klarung des Verstehens und seiner von Gadamer behandelten Auspragungen in Kunst, Geschichte und Sprache. Der vorliegende (...) Band rekonstruiert und diskutiert in Form eines kooperativen Kommentars, der Gliederung des Werkes folgend, Gadamers Gedankengang, zeigt aber auch die Perspektiven einer Philosophie auf, die sich gegenuber ihrem eigenen hermeneutischen Charakter nicht verschliesst.". (shrink)

The Handbook of Metaphysics and Ontology reflects the conviction that the history of metaphysics and current work in metaphysics and ontology can each throw valuable light on the other. Thus it is designed to serve both äs a means of making more widely accessible the results of recent scholarship in the history of philosophy, and also äs a unique work of reference in reladon to the metaphysical themes at the centre of much current debate in analyüc philosophy. The work contains (...) more man 450 shorter articies on specific themes and methods in metaphysics and ontology, together with biographical essays summarizing the thinking of the most important philosophers within the traditions dealt with. In addition, it contains about 20 longer survey arücles mapping out both historically and systemadcally the main areas of metaphysics and ontology. AU contributions have been speciaüy commissioned for this project from leading authorities in their respective fields. A special feature of the work is the pardcular attention that is paid to topics and issues of relevance to contemporary philosophical debates. The work includes also a series of arücles on the logical and mathematical tools of metaphysics and on the applications of metaphysical ideas within linguisdcs, psychology, cognitive science, and mathemadcs. (shrink)

Hans Kamp; XIII*—Context, Thought and Communication, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 85, Issue 1, 1 June 1985, Pages 239–262, https://doi.org/10.

These five essays on Hegel give the English-speaking reader a long-awaited opportunity to read the work of one of Germany's most distinguished philosophers, Hans-Georg Gadamer.

Can we sensibly attribute some of the happenings in our world to the agency of some of the things around us? We do this all the time, but there are conceptual challenges purporting to show that attributable agency, and specifically one of its most important subspecies, human free agency, is incoherent. We address these challenges in a novel way: rather than merely rebutting specific arguments, we discuss a concrete model that we claim positively illustrates attributable agency in an indeterministic setting. (...) The model, recently introduced by one of the authors in the context of artificial intelligence, shows that an agent with a sufficiently complex memory organization can employ indeterministic happenings in a meaningful way. We claim that these considerations successfully counter arguments against the coherence of libertarian free will. (shrink)

This paper presents a generalization of the standard notions of left monotonicity (on the nominal argument of a determiner) and right monotonicity (on the VP argument of a determiner). Determiners such as “more than/at least as many as” or “fewer than/at most as many as”, which occur in so-called propositional comparison, are shown to be monotone with respect to two nominal arguments and two VP-arguments. In addition, it is argued that the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis of numerical determiners such as (...) “more than three/at least three” is a simplification which ignores the fundamental parallellism with the propositional comparatives. Furthermore, the symmetric monotonicity configurations of the existential “some” and “no” are shown to be straightforwardly related to those of numerical comparatives with the limit numeral zero, whereas the asymmetric configurations of universal “all” and “not all” involve the extra complicating mechanism of polarity reversal, which is related to Keenan's notion of co-intersectivity (as opposed to intersectivity). A second aim of the paper is to investigate some of the factors reducing the inferential potential of determiners. Different types of comparative determiners and their modification will be considered in detail. In addition, a systematic interaction will be revealed between the monotonicity properties of the determiners in propositional comparatives and the differ ent types of ellipsis in the “than”-complement. Different degrees of ellipsis are defined in terms of informational dependencies between the “than”-complement and the main clause. A general balancing mechanism is observed by virtue of which an increase in informational dependency is compensated by a reduction of the inferential potential of the comparative determiner. The structure of the paper is as follows. Part two deals with propositional comparison and introduces the two basic monotonicity configurations. Part three distinguishes three types of informational dependencies or ellipsis between the “than”-complement and the main clause. In Section 3.1 the “than”-complement only contains a VP constituent, whereas in Section 3.2. it only consists of a nominal constituent. Section 3.3 considers more complex instances of multiple dependencies. Section 3.4 then looks at the interaction of these three types with the modifier “proportionally”. Part four presents the two basic monotonicity configurations for numerical comparison, whereas part five deals with more complex numerical determiners. Bounding determiners, such as “between five and ten”, and other boolean combinations are discussed in Section 5.1, whereas Section 5.2 goes into approximative determiners involving modifiers such as “only” or “almost”. Section 5.3. is devoted to proportional determiners such as “more than two out of three”. Part six then considers the standard existential and universal quantifiers. Section 6.1 reformulates the standard Generalized Quantifier analysis in comparative terms, whereas Section 6.2 deals with exception determiners of the form “all but five”. (shrink)

The paper interprets Wittgenstein’s famous call to silence at the end of his Tractatus – that “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” – as a critique of philosophy itself. Wittgenstein was concerned throughout his philosophical life with finding a way to delineate the limits of language. These limits, once we have them clearly in view, rob our attempts to put forth philosophical theories of their legitimacy. In order to give a critical assessment of this Wittgensteinian critique of (...) philosophy, the paper primarily focuses on the roots of that critique in Wittgenstein’s earliest writings – his notebooks, his 1913 “Notes on Logic,” the 1914 set of notes dictated to G. E. Moore, and the Tractatus itself. Wittgenstein’s influence by Fritz Mauthner and, mediated through Mauthner, by Kant receive special attention. The conclusion is that, far from Mauthner’s radical anti-philosophical bias, we can come to see a deep appreciation of the power, the draw, and the significance of philosophical problems in Wittgenstein’s writings. The text closes with a short look at how Wittgenstein’s thinking about the limits of language evolved later in his life. (shrink)

The first English translation of Hans Reichenbach's lucid doctoral thesis sheds new light on how Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was understood in some quarters at the time. The source of several themes in his still influential The Direction of Time, the thesis shows Reichenbach's early focus on the interdependence of physics, probability, and epistemology.