The religiously inclined have always rejected materialism. The thesis of this study is that there may have been good reasons for them to do so until comparatively recent times but that the same reasons no longer exist. Our knowledge of matter has not only increased, it has also been altered so completely that there is no more justification for disapproving of materialism on religious grounds.

With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In line (...) with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used. (shrink)

The problem is that of how to relate reality to the categories of dyadic ontology. We shall understand by "reality" the immediate object of that which is true. We shall understand by "dyadic ontology" one which assumes a pair of ontological categories as the real. The categories chosen will be those of a class of constants characterized by persistence and a class of variables characterized by change. As one philosophical tradition succeeds another in history, the names will be altered. Again, (...) sometimes the class will be specified and sometimes its elements. The relation between reality and the categories can take any one of the following forms. Persistence is alone real, change is alone real, they are equally real, neither is real. The first will be called idealism, the second nominalism and the third realism. The fourth has no historic tradition in the West. (shrink)

If, then, we wish to reintroduce the category of substance into the set of those categories which can be justified in terms of modern knowledge, we shall have to treat it in connection with chance and irrationality, or accident. Real, objective chance means the fortuitous occurrence of just this predicate or property here and now rather than any other out of a whole host of possibles. This blue wall--why is it blue? And if we are told it had been painted (...) we could still ask why it had been painted blue. And driving back the series of causes conceals the fortuitous element, putting the selection on some antecedent cause which in turn has an antecedent chance element, and so on in an accidental series. (shrink)

Professor Quine in recent articles has raised an old question, an ontological one, concerning the status of universals. It is interesting to note that the same positions recur in symbolic logic that have appeared so often in the past in less exact language. There can be little doubt that the question he raises is crucial; and if the issue is not yet settled, there is at least some hope that it may be clarified. Propositions are required to make propositions clear.

In the introduction to his Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell wrote: «If I believe that there is such a place as Semipalatinsk, I believe it because of things that have happened to me; and unless certain substantial principles of inference are accepted, I shall have to admit that all these things might have happened to me without there being any such place.» Beginning with an examination of belief, the argument turns on the nature of evidence, and it is shown that Russell (...) is in a contradictory position with respect to substance which he both rejects and assumes. A new definition of substance, one which will include a dynamic phase and also the objective existence of the irrational, is called for and offered. The new viewpoint involves us finally in the search for adequate descriptions, and here some notions of Wittgenstein and Russell seem to meet. (shrink)