J. L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason claims that the existence of reflective persons who long to solve the problem of God’s existencebut cannot do so constitutes an evil rendering God’s existence improbable. In this essay, I present Schellenberg’s argument and argue that the kind of reasonable nonbelief Schellenberg needs for his argument to succeed is unlikely to exist. Since Schellenberg’s argument is an inductive-style version of the problem of evil, the empirical improbability of the premise I challenge renders (...) the conclusions derived from it empirically improbable as well. (shrink)

In Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason, J. L. Schellenberg argues that the phenomenon of “reasonable nonbelief” constitutes sufficient reason to doubtthe existence of God. In this essay I assert the reasonableness of entertaining doubts about the kind of reasonable nonbelief that Schellenberg needs for a cogent argument. Treating his latest set of arguments in this journal, I dispute his claims about the scope and status of “unreflective nonbelief,” his assertion that God would prevent reasonable nonbelief “of any kind and duration,” (...) and his confidence that we can know that some doubters are not self-deceived. (shrink)

Plato provocatively characterizes truth $$ in terms of harmony $$ at various points throughout his dialogues. While limited attention has been directed toward the role of musical concepts in Plato's general cosmology, not any attention has been directed toward how musical concepts function in relation to Plato's characterization of truth. In fact, this issue has had little occasion for consideration. Almost every contemporary translator empties terms such as $\grave\alpha\rho\mu o\nu\acute\iota\alpha,$ when co-incidental with $\acute\alpha\lambda\acute\eta\theta\varepsilon\iota\alpha,$ of their musical content. As a consequence, (...) I argue, Plato's characterization of truth is made readily amenable to contemporary conceptions of truth-not necessarily a good thing since it robs us of the original richness of Plato's thought. The dissertation explores how retaining the aural meaning latent within $\grave\alpha\rho\mu o\nu\acute\iota\alpha$ and other terms of musical import serves to elucidate the rich complexion of Plato's notion of $\acute\alpha\lambda\acute\eta\theta\varepsilon\iota\alpha.$ Ultimately, I show how Plato's use of musical terminology to characterize truth informs other features of his philosophical outlook, illustrate the cohesiveness and consistency of key texts believed problematic by other commentators, and underscore significant differences between Plato's $\acute\alpha\lambda\acute\eta\theta\varepsilon\iota\alpha$ and ideas of truth prevalent today. ;For Plato, I argue $\acute\alpha\lambda\acute\eta\theta\varepsilon\iota\alpha$ bears a meaning different from its primitive sense of oracular unconcealment and its later sense of correctness $,$ and a meaning also different from other terminological alternatives $.$ Truth, accordingly, turns out for Plato to be neither mysterious and groundless nor a matter of simple correspondence to an objective reality. The value of Plato's conception of truth as harmony consists in its ability to avoid the polarity of contemporary conceptions of truth as either objectively determinate or subjectively determinate . Truth is neither arbitrarily imposed upon the world by us, nor artificially imposed upon us by an antecedently structured and independent reality. The dissertation concludes by articulating reasons for favoring Plato's theory of truth, while noting a few underlying assumptions likely problematic for some contemporary philosophers. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to restore the radicality of W. V. O. Quine's argument against deviant logics, as found in Philosophy of Logic. The objective of this argument is to expose the emptiness of the concept of deviant logic, i.e., its nonsense. To give an account of this requires taking the full measure of the anti-psychological dimension of Quine's argument. Thus, I try to show that Quine's most radical challenge does not consist in pointing out to the deviant (...) logician that changing logical laws means changing the meaning of logical constant terms. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: I II III IV V.

The distinction has occasioned a long controversy between Carnap and W.V. Quine. The latter distinguishes two sorts of analytic statements: the logical truths, characterized by their remaining true under all reinterpretations of the descriptive terms; and the statements, which reduce to logical truths with the help of definitions or by substitution of synonyms for synonyms. In “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, he directs his criticism mainly against the latter arguing that the explications so far provided move in a circle, since, in (...) the end, the concept of synonymy is explained in terms of analyticity. He reaches the conclusion that the only form of synonymy not exhibiting this deficiency is that introduced by explicit conventions. But according to him, this procedure is of no avail, because the philosophically interesting content of the general term “analytic in L” cannot be grasped with its help. Carnap’s suggestion of defining a new basic concept “analytic in L0” does not solve the problem since we could just as well designate this with a neutral word, say “K”, thus avoiding the illusion of an explanation. The attempt to define synonymy with the help of semantic rules fails in a similar way: it accomplishes nothing more than to place certain statements under the rubric “Semantic rules” — a notion which is no clearer than the explicandum. Carnap replies that his definition of “analytically true” is given with regard to artificial or formalized languages for which we can determine syntactic and semantic rules in such a way that the concept of truth, in Tarski’s sense, can be applied to them. Analytic statements other than logical truths will thus be distinguished by means of so-called meaning postulates which serve to make the truth-value of such statements independent of empirical matters. I share Carnap’s astonishment that Quine finds the term “semantic rule” unintelligible while formulating no complaint against similar notions such as that of a syntactically well-formed formula, or that of an axiom etc. It appears that he cannot be satisfied with rules, because he expects a theory which would give us an empirical, i.e., a behavioristic, criterion of analyticity for natural languages. His chief dissatisfaction seems to come from the fact that no clear explicandum has been put forward — in contrast, e.g., with the notion of truth, where we have a sufficiently clear pre-theoretical concept. Thus, according to him, there is nothing that could be clarified by an explication. (shrink)

H. G. Liddell & R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. and aug. by Sir H. S. Jones. with the ass. of R. McKenzie, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1940. ῥυθμός , Ion. ῥυσμός (v. infr. 111, IV), ὁ : (ῥέω) :— A. any regular recurring motion (“πᾶς ῥ. ὡρισμένῃ μετρεῖται κινήσει” Arist.Pr.882b2) : I. measured motion, time, whether in sound or motion, Democr.15c ; = ἡ τῆς κινήσεως τάξις, Pl.Lg.665a, cf. 672e ; “ὁ ῥ. ἐκ τοῦ ταχέος (...) - Études grecques et (...) latines. (shrink)

I Begin with quotations from two authoritative works, both of which require modification in the light of the evidence which I have assembled concerning the language of the inscriptions of Attica of the period 323–146 B.C. These quotations are: LSJ s.v. B: ‘in early Attic inscriptions only is used …; without only once in cent, iv B.C., IG 22. 226. 42 , after which it becomes gradually prevalent.’ This is very near the truth. Goodwin, Moods and Tenses, § 328: ‘ (...) final with the subjunctive appears first in Aeschylus, and remains in good use in Attic poetry and prose, being almost the only final expression found in the formal language of the Attic inscriptions.’ This, although absolutely correct in relation to the fifth and fourth centuries, is too sweeping for the period 299–146 B.C., and definitely misleading for the period after 146 B.C. (shrink)

This essay fills in some historical, conceptual, and pedagogical gaps that appear in the most visible and recent professional efforts to “revive” Philosophy as a Way of Life (PWOL). I present “American Philosophy and Self-Culture” as an advanced undergraduate seminar that broadens who counts in and what counts as philosophy by immersing us in the lives, writings, and practices of seven representative U.S.-American philosophers of self-culture, community-building, and world-changing: Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Frederick Douglass (1818–1895), William Ellery Channing (1780–1842), Henry (...) David Thoreau (1817–1862), Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), Henry Bugbee (1915–1999), and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004). Students enter the class with preconceptions about who philosophers are, what they do, how they write, and the languages in which they write. Students walk out with new senses of self, place, and language that emerge through new ways of seeing, doing, and writing philosophy. (shrink)

Between 1940 and 1945, while still a student of theoretical physics and without any contact with the history of science, Thomas S. Kuhn developed a general outline of a theory of the role of belief in science. This theory was well rooted in the philosophical tradition of Emerson Hall, Harvard, and particularly in H. M. Sheffer’s and C. I. Lewis’s logico-philosophical works—Kuhn was, actually, a graduate student of the former in 1945. In this paper I reconstruct the development of that (...) general outline after Kuhn’s first years at Harvard. I examine his works on moral and aesthetic issues—where he displayed an already ‘anti-Whig’ stance concerning historiography—as well as his first ‘Humean’ approach to science and realism, where his earliest concern with belief is evident. Then I scrutinise his graduate work to show how his first account of the role of belief was developed. The main aim of this paper is to show that the history of science illustrated for Kuhn the epistemic role and effects of belief he had already been theorising about since around 1941.Keywords: Intension; Belief; Causality; Thomas Kuhn; Clarence Irving Lewis; Henry Sheffer. (shrink)

By 1910 the Cambridge University physiology department had become the kernel of British physiology. Between 1909 and 1914 an astonishing number of young and talented scientists passed through the laboratory. The University College department was also a stimulating place of study under the dynamic leadership of Ernest Starling.I have argued that the reasons for this metropolitan axis within British physiology lie with the social structure of late-Victorian and Edwardian higher education. Cambridge, Oxford, and University College London were national institutions attracting (...) students from all over England and Wales. In contrast, the provincial colleges drew their clientele from relatively narrow geographic radii. Generally, also, these institutions were regarded as socially inferior to the longer-established universities.A brief survey of the biographies of some British physiologists demonstrates how physiology, as an occupation, became, over the later decades of the century, socially elite. The scientists who achieved full-time posts in the 1870s generally came from somewhat marginal backgrounds. Foster, like his mentors T. H. Huxley and William Sharpey, came from a non-conformist family. Edward Schäfer was also a dissenter and, like Foster, began his professional career as a general practitioner.Physiologists of the succeeding generation, however, came from wealthy families with established intellectual traditions. John Scott Haldane, nephew of John Burdon Sanderson, was the brother of the politician R. B. Haldane and uncle of the historian A. R. B. Haldane.71 Joseph Barcroft was one of the most affluent of all physiologists.72 His family's wealth derived from linen manufacturing. He attended the Ley's School Cambridge, where his schoolmates included Henry Dale, later Director of the National Institute for Medical Research; F. A. Bainbridge, who eventually became Professor of Physiology at St. Bartholomew's Hospital; and the Cambridge historian J. H. Clapham. A. V. Hill, Professor of Physiology at Manchester and, subsequently, London, married Margaret Keynes, sister of John Maynard Keynes and niece of Sir Walter Langdon Brown, Professor of Physic at Cambridge. Margaret Keynes's younger brother, the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, married a granddaughter of Charles Darwin; their son Richard Keynes also became a physiologist at Cambridge.These families were part of a new class emerging during the late Victorian period, descendants of the great reforming radicals of the 1830s, who had begun to achieve power through positions in the universities, the professions, and the civil service. Their social prestige rested upon their intellectual expertise. Physiology was an appealing research discipline to these groups because of its clear dissociation from industry and commerce. And because physiology's “practical” face was medicine, its acceptability was reinforced by professional ties.The nature of the Physiological Society confirms this image of physiology as an elite science. By the turn of the century the Society had taken on some of the characteristics of a dining club. The scientific meetings were generally followed by dinner: if the Society met at Oxford, they were entertained at Burdon Sanderson's college, Magdalen.73 Through a “black ball” system, unwanted candidates could be excluded. In 1912, when the question of admitting foreigners was discussed, E. H. Starling wrote to Edward Schäfer: “the Society has very much in it the nature of a club, and a certain amount of personal knowledge of the candidate is always desirable.”74.The developing institutional structure of physiology in late Victorian Britain indicates, therefore, that we must look beyond the achievements of individuals and departments to understand why physiology flourished. The discipline became part of a new social order in which the professional middle classes assumed increasing power. These groups valued intellectual skill, especially in the pure scienes, as forces both for self-advancement and for progress within society. (shrink)

Studies in philosophy: I. Tufts, J.H. On moral evolution. II. Willcos, W.F. The expansion of Europe in its influence upon population. III. Woods, R.A. Democracy a new unfolding of human power. IV. Sharp, F.C. An analysis of the moral judgment. V. Woodbridge, F.J.E. The problem of consciousness. VI. Norton, E.L. The intellectual element in music. VII. Raub, W.L. Pragmatism and Kantianism. VIII. Lyman, E.W. The influence of pragmatism upon the status of theology.--Studies in psychology: IX. Delabarre, E.B. Influence of surrounding (...) objects on the apparent direction of a line. X. Swift, E.J. Beginning a language; a contribution to the psychology of learning. XI. Pierce, A.H. An appeal from the prevailing doctrine of a detached subconsciousness. XII. Woodworth, R.S. The cause of a voluntary movement. XIII. Burnett, C.T. An experimental test of the classical theory of volition. (shrink)

Question: What is a (or the) scientific theory V based on a set B of syntactical L-formulas, interpreted according to the intended interpretations of the language L? What probably corresponds to the traditional candidate for V is found to be inadequate for use in deductively explaining experimental facts of a certain form. A second candidate for V, called a strong scientific theory (SST), does not suffer such an inadequacy because it is existentially strong, i.e., it has considerable existential import. It (...) even satisfies the particle physicist's dictum: WHAT IS NOT FORBIDDEN WILL HAPPEN. (shrink)

This past summer, I was having lunch in Toronto with Dr. Raymond Macken, general editor of the critical edition of the Opera Omnia of Henry of Ghent, and author of the Preface to this excellent translation of several important quodlibetal questions of Henry on a topic that has long proved itself fraught with difficulties for scholars of Henry's thought. Macken held this very work in his hand and said, "English is the new Latin. We must provide more (...) and more translations of Henry's work for students of his ideas." In spite of a veritable renaissance in Latin studies, in the United States in particular, the remark seems as justified as it is melancholic. (shrink)

What do the psychoanalyst and the historian have in common? This important question has stimulated a lively debate within the psychoanalytic profession in recent years, bearing as it does on the very nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise. Edwin Wallace, a clinician with training in the history and philosophy of science, brings a ranging scholarly perspective to the debate, mediating between rival perspectives and clarifying the issues at stake in the process of offering his own thoughtful conception of the historical nature (...) of psychoanalysis. For Wallace, the procedures, problems, and interpretive possibilities of psychoanalysis and history are strikingly constant and mutually illuminating. He insists, further, that the fundamentally historical nature of psychoanalysis poses no threat to its scientific dignity. In arriving at this verdict, Wallace pushes beyond his expansive treatment of the many parallels between history and psychoanalysis to a systematic consideration of the problem of causation in both disciplines. Tracing the historical background of causation in science, philosophy, history, and analysis, he offers a logical analysis of determinism and a critique of causal language in psychoanalysis while adumbrating the historical character of psychoanalytic explanation. _Historiography and Causation in Psychoanalysis_ is a thought-provoking work that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. It will cultivate the historical sensibilities of all its clinical readers, broadening and deepening the intellectual perspective they bring to the dialogue about the nature of psychoanalytic work. Timely and rewarding reading for analysts, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists, it will be welcomed by historians and philosophers as well. (shrink)

What do the psychoanalyst and the historian have in common? This important question has stimulated a lively debate within the psychoanalytic profession in recent years, bearing as it does on the very nature of the psychoanalytic enterprise. Edwin Wallace, a clinician with training in the history and philosophy of science, brings a ranging scholarly perspective to the debate, mediating between rival perspectives and clarifying the issues at stake in the process of offering his own thoughtful conception of the historical nature (...) of psychoanalysis. For Wallace, the procedures, problems, and interpretive possibilities of psychoanalysis and history are strikingly constant and mutually illuminating. He insists, further, that the fundamentally historical nature of psychoanalysis poses no threat to its scientific dignity. In arriving at this verdict, Wallace pushes beyond his expansive treatment of the many parallels between history and psychoanalysis to a systematic consideration of the problem of causation in both disciplines. Tracing the historical background of causation in science, philosophy, history, and analysis, he offers a logical analysis of determinism and a critique of causal language in psychoanalysis while adumbrating the historical character of psychoanalytic explanation. _Historiography and Causation in Psychoanalysis_ is a thought-provoking work that cuts across disciplinary boundaries. It will cultivate the historical sensibilities of all its clinical readers, broadening and deepening the intellectual perspective they bring to the dialogue about the nature of psychoanalytic work. Timely and rewarding reading for analysts, psychiatrists, and clinical psychologists, it will be welcomed by historians and philosophers as well. (shrink)

Ch. 1. Ėtnologii͡a puteshestviĭ -- ch. 2. Mifologii͡a puteshestviĭ -- ch. 3. Filosofii͡a puteshestviĭ -- ch. 4 Apostolʹstvo puteshestviĭ -- ch. 5. Velike geograficheskie otkrytii͡a -- ch. 6 Uslugi dli͡a puteshestvennikov -- ch. 7 Industrii͡a turizma -- ch. 8 Rekreat͡sii͡a.

Abstract.In recent issues of Zygon, numerous reflections have been published commenting on where the field of science‐and‐religion has been, where it presently stands, and where it should move in the future. These reflections touch on the importance of the dialogue and raise questions as to what audience the dialogue addresses and whom it should address. Some scholars see the dialogue as prospering, while others point out that much work needs to be done to make the dialogue more accessible to a (...) larger audience and more successful at tackling the provocative questions before us. Other academics view the questions themselves as needing further consideration and focus before answers to them can even be explored. In this article I provide a general overview of these essays by outlining some general categories of thought that seem to emerge from the contributors. I then present some of my own opinions concerning the future of the science‐religion field and emphasize that the dialogue, in addition to its traditional roles, must further the philosophical framework that can aid humanity in resolving the most pressing global concerns of our time. (shrink)

Henri Bergson se za svého života těšil velké popularitě. Přes jistý ústup ze slávy jeho filosofie i v druhé polovině dvacátého století inspirovala např. Gillese Deleuze. Nicméně analytická filosofie Bergsonovi dosud mnoho pozornosti nevěnovala. Ačkoli na první pohled skutečně s analytickou filosofií nemá mnoho společného, najdeme v jeho díle některé myšlenky, které by si zasloužily, aby je analytická filosofie zhodnotila. Zaměříme se na Bergsonovo pojetí špatně položených otázek, které je v mnohém podobné pojetí logických pozitivistů. Dále navrhneme, v čem může (...) spočívat jeho přínos pro teorii pravidel a normativistickou teorii významu. Obě témata jsou zde především programaticky nastíněna, jejich hlubší rozpracování je úkol pro další práci. (shrink)