Metaphysik i 100 [reproduction of Norwegian symbol for paragraphs], av J. S. Welhaven.--Innholdsgjennomgåelse, av E. A. Wyller.--Welhaven og filosofien, av A. H. Winsnes.--Welhavens estetikk, av A. Aarnes.--Welhaven-litteratur (p. 175-[176]).

This text aims to offer a epistemic-normative reading of madness in Kant's work and its different developments throughout his work. This to maintain that madness arises from rationality itself when understood it as a force that exceeds the limits that reason imposes on itself. By outlining normality or mental sanity as the restriction of reason to sensibility, Kant intends -I maintain- to outline the minimum subjective and epistemic conditions for a republican political conformation, which is based on the agreement between (...) subjects about the rules that will regulate their actions and interactions. This reading will allow us to outline an understanding of the anti-vaccine protest that took place during the pandemic. Showing that those who promote and follow them break with this minimum agreement on the restrictions of reason, thus reaching selfish excesses that harm democratic dynamics. I concluded that these people can be understood as madness people who represent a danger to the republican and democratic political organization. (shrink)

Summary In the recent discussion, several authors have argued for the claim that propositional faith need not be doxastic, but also can be “non-doxastic”. Notable proponents of this view are William Alston, Robert Audi, Daniel Howard-Snyder, and J. L. Schellenberg. In this paper, I focus on Christian faith and consider whether its cognitive aspect can be understood solely in terms of Alston’s and others’ non-doxastic accounts. I argue for a negative answer. In my view, the cognitive aspect of Christian faith (...) calls for, as a minimum, “a sub-doxastic attitude”. As there is no shared terminology on this topic, a proportion of this paper deals with conceptual clarifications. (shrink)

We present a new notion of game equivalence that captures basic powers of interacting players. We provide a representation theorem, a complete logic, and a new game algebra for basic powers. In doing so, we establish connections with imperfect information games and epistemic logic. We also identify some new open problems concerning logic and games.

We propose a new perspective on logics of computation by combining instantial neighborhood logic INL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {INL}$$\end{document} with bisimulation safe operations adapted from PDL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {PDL}$$\end{document}. INL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {INL}$$\end{document} is a recent modal logic, based on an extended neighborhood semantics which permits quantification over individual neighborhoods plus their contents. This system has a natural interpretation as a (...) logic of computation in open systems. Motivated by this interpretation, we show that a number of familiar program constructors can be adapted to instantial neighborhood semantics to preserve invariance for instantial neighborhood bisimulations, the appropriate bisimulation concept for INL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {INL}$$\end{document}. We also prove that our extended logic IPDL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {IPDL}$$\end{document} is a conservative extension of dual-free game logic, and its semantics generalizes the monotone neighborhood semantics of game logic. Finally, we provide a sound and complete system of axioms for IPDL\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document}$$\mathsf {IPDL}$$\end{document}, and establish its finite model property and decidability. (shrink)

This paper explores a new language of neighbourhood structures where existential information can be given about what kind of worlds occur in a neighbourhood of a current world. The resulting system of ‘instantial neighbourhood logic’ INL has a nontrivial mix of features from relational semantics and from neighbourhood semantics. We explore some basic model-theoretic behavior, including a matching notion of bisimulation, and give a complete axiom system for which we prove completeness by a new normal form technique. In addition, we (...) relate INL to other modal logics by means of translations, and determine its precise SAT complexity. Finally, we discuss proof-theoretic fine-structure of INL in terms of semantic tableaux and some expressive fine-structure in terms of fragments, while discussing concrete illustrations of the instantial neighborhood language in topological spaces, in games with powers for players construed in a new way, as well as in dynamic logics of acquiring or deleting evidence. We conclude with some coalgebraic perspectives on what is achieved in this paper. Many of these final themes suggest follow-up work of independent interest. (shrink)

We present a new notion of game equivalence that captures basic powers of interacting players. We provide a representation theorem, a complete logic, and a new game algebra for basic powers. In doing so, we establish connections with imperfect information games and epistemic logic. We also identify some new open problems concerning logic and games.

We propose a new perspective on logics of computation by combining instantial neighborhood logic \ with bisimulation safe operations adapted from \. \ is a recent modal logic, based on an extended neighborhood semantics which permits quantification over individual neighborhoods plus their contents. This system has a natural interpretation as a logic of computation in open systems. Motivated by this interpretation, we show that a number of familiar program constructors can be adapted to instantial neighborhood semantics to preserve invariance for (...) instantial neighborhood bisimulations, the appropriate bisimulation concept for \. We also prove that our extended logic \ is a conservative extension of dual-free game logic, and its semantics generalizes the monotone neighborhood semantics of game logic. Finally, we provide a sound and complete system of axioms for \, and establish its finite model property and decidability. (shrink)

In a recent article, Alexander Kurz and Yde Venema establish a Lindström theorem for coalgebraic modal logic that is shown to imply a modal Lindström theorem by Maarten de Rijke. A later modal Lindström theorem has been established by Johan van Benthem, and this result still lacks a coalgebraic formulation. The main obstacle has so far been the lack of a suitable notion of ‘submodels’ in coalgebraic semantics, and the problem is left open by Kurz and Venema. In this (...) article, we propose a solution to this problem and derive a general coalgebraic Lindström theorem along the lines of van Benthem's result. We provide several applications of the result. (shrink)

In “Risk Based Passenger Screening in Aviation Security: Implications and Variants of a New Paradigm”, Sebastian Weydner-Volkmann describes the current paradigm shift from ‘traditional’ forms of screening to ‘risk based passenger screening’ (RBS) in aviation security. This paradigm shift is put in the context of the wider historical development of risk management approaches. Through a discussion of Michel Foucault, Herfried Münkler and Ulrich Beck, Weydner-Volkmann analyses the shortcomings of such approaches in public security policies, which become especially evident in (...) the aviation security context. As he shows, the turn towards methods of RBS can be seen as an attempt to address a trade-off ‘trilemma’ between the effective provision of security, the implied costs for industry and passengers, and the ethical, legal and societal implications of the screening procedures. In order to analyse foreseeable outcomes of embracing RBS, he differentiates three prototypical variants of the new paradigm on the basis of their main referent and rationale. For each variant, he then subsequently assesses the implications for the ‘trilemma’, after having unveiled the criteria of analysis that will necessarily have to be followed within a serious appraisal of RBS methods. (shrink)

We argue that Wittgenstein’s philosophical perspective on Gödel’s most famous theorem is even more radical than has commonly been assumed. Wittgenstein shows in detail that there is no way that the Gödelian construct of a string of signs could be assigned a useful function within (ordinary) mathematics. — The focus is on Appendix III to Part I of Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. The present reading highlights the exceptional importance of this particular set of remarks and, more specifically, emphasises (...) its refined composition and rigorous internal structure. (shrink)

Meta-ethical expressivism was traditionally seen as the view that normative judgements are not beliefs. Recently, quasi-realists have argued, via a minimalist conception of “belief”, that expressivism is fully compatible with normative judgements being beliefs. This maneuver is successful, however, only if quasi-realists have really offered an expressivist-friendly account of belief that captures all platitudes characterizing belief. But, quasi-realists’ account has a crucial gap, namely how to account for the propositional contents of normative beliefs in an expressivist-friendly manner. In particular, quasi-realists (...) haven’t yet developed their preferred option, a “minimalist” or “deflationist” account of such contents. This paper aims to close that gap. I argue that expressivists who accepts conceptual role semantics and use an account of that-clauses in their use in belief-attributions based on Wilfrid Sellars’ work can give a deflationary account of the contents of beliefs that is compatible with normative judgements being beliefs, even if expressivism is true. (shrink)

Advances in artificial intelligence research allow us to build fairly sophisticated agents: robots and computer programs capable of acting and deciding on their own. These systems raise questions about who is responsible when something goes wrong—when such systems harm or kill humans. In a recent paper, Sven Nyholm has suggested that, because current AI will likely possess what we might call “supervised agency”, the theory of responsibility for individual agency is the wrong place to look for an answer to the (...) question of responsibility. Instead, or so argues Nyholm, because supervised agency is a form of collaborative agency—of acting together—the right place to look is the theory of collaborative responsibility—responsibility in cases of acting together. This paper concedes that current AI will possess supervised agency, but argues that it is nevertheless wrong to think of the relevant human-AI interactions as a form of collaborative agency and, hence, that responsibility in cases of collaborative agency is not the right place to look for the responsibility-grounding relation in human-AI interactions. It also suggests that the right place to look for this responsibility-grounding relation in human-AI interactions is the use of certain sorts of agents as instruments. (shrink)

It has recently been suggested that meta-normative expressivism is best seen as a meta-semantic, rather than a semantic view. One strong motivation for this is that expressivism becomes, thereby, compatible with truth-conditional semantics. While this approach is promising, however, many of its details are still unexplored. One issue that still needs to be explored in particular, is what accounts of propositional contents are open to meta-semantic expressivists. This paper makes progress on this issue by developing an expressivist-friendly deflationary account of (...) such contents. (shrink)

This comprehensive treatment of Neo-Kantianism discusses the main topics and key figures of the movement and their intersection with other 20th-century philosophers. With the advent of phenomenology, existentialism, and the Frankfurt School, Neo-Kantianism was deemed too narrowly academic and science-oriented to compete with new directions in philosophy. These essays bring Neo-Kantianism back into contemporary philosophical discourse. They expand current views of the Neo-Kantians and reassess the movement and the philosophical traditions emerging from it. This groundbreaking volume provides new and important (...) insights into the history of philosophy, the scope of transcendental thought, and Neo-Kantian influence on the sciences and intellectual culture. (shrink)

Quasi-realism prominently figures in the expressivist research program. However, many complain that it has become increasingly unclear what exactly quasi-realism involves. This paper offers clarification. It argues that we need to distinguish two distinctive views that might be and have been pursued under the label “quasi-realism”: conciliatory expressivism and quasi-realism properly so-called. Of these, only conciliatory expressivism is a genuinely meta-ethical project, while quasi-realism is a first-order normative view. This paper demonstrates the fruitfulness of these clarifications by using them to (...) address Terence Cuneo’s recent challenge that quasi-realist expressivists lack the resources to plausibly accommodate certain sorts of data points. (shrink)

How do we inferentially unify separately acquired empirical information into a single comprehensive picture of the lives of persistent particulars? This paper argues that hidden in such inferences is a Fregean puzzle that can only be solved by individuating our demonstratives thoughts in terms of object-dependent Fregean Senses. I begin by characterizing some constraints on a non-skeptical account of our inferential unification of empirical information. I then go on to show that traditional Fregean views of Sense cannot explain the rationality (...) of such inferences; the consequence of which would be widespread skepticism concerning fundamental aspects of our empirical worldview. I show how the theory of object-dependent Senses can account for the rationality of the puzzling inferences. Lastly, I consider the alternative that we abandon a Fregean explanation of the rationality of inferences. While not fully dismissing that option, I briefly raise, what I take to be, a daunting challenge that uniquely faces non-Fregean views of rational inference. (shrink)

A number of general points behind the story of this paper may be worth setting out separately, now that we have come to the end.There is perhaps one obvious omission to be addressed right away. Although the word “information” has occurred throughout this paper, it must have struck the reader that we have had nothing to say on what information is. In this respect, our theories may be like those in physics: which do not explain what “energy” is (a notion (...) which seems quite similar to “information” in several ways), but only give some basic laws about its behaviour and transmission.The eventual recommendation made here has been to use a broad type-theoretic framework for studying various more classical and more dynamic notions of proposition in their interaction. This is not quite the viewpoint advocated by many current authors in the area, who argue for a whole-sale switch from a ‘static’ to a ‘dynamic’ perspective on propositions. This is not the place, however, to survey the conceptual arguments for and against such a more radical move.This still leaves many questions about possible reductions from one perspective to another. For instance, it would seem that classical systems ought to serve as a ‘limiting case’, which should still be valid after procedural details of some cognitive process have been forgotten. There are various ways of implementing the desired correspondence: e.g. by considering extreme cases with ⫅ equal to identity, or, in the pure relational algebra framework by considering only pairs (x, x). What we shall want then are reductions of dynamic logics, in those special cases, to classical logic. But perhaps also, more sophisticated views are possible. How do we take a piece of ‘dynamic’ prose, remove control instructions and the like, and obtain a piece of ‘classical’ text, suitable for inference ‘in the light of eternity’?There is also a more technical side to the matter of ‘reduction’. By now, Logic has reached such a state of ‘inter-translatability’ that almost all known variant logics can be embedded into each other, via suitable translations. In particular, once an adequate semantic has been given for a new system, this usually induces an embedding into standard logic: as we know, e.g., for the case of Modal Logic. Like-wise, all systems of dynamic interpretation or inference proposed so far admit of direct embedding into an ordinary ‘static’ predicate logic having explicit transition predicates (cf. van Benthem 1988b). Thus, our moral is this. The issue is not whether the new systems of information structure or processing are essentially beyond the expressive resources of traditional logical systems: for, they are not. The issue is rather which interesting phenomena and questions will be put into the right focus by them.The next broad issue concerns the specific use of the perspective proposed here, vis-à-vis concrete proposals for information-oriented or dynamic semantics. The general strategy advocated here is to locate some suitable base calculus and then consider which ‘extras’ are peculiar to the proposal. For instance, this is the spirit in which modal S4 would be a base logic of information models, and intuitionistic logicthe special theory devoting itself to upward persistent propositions. Or, with the examples in Section 4.1, the underlying base logic is our relational algebra, whereas, say, ordinary updates then impose special properties, such as ‘idempotence’: $$xRy \Rightarrow yRy$$ Does this kind of application presuppose the existence of one distinguished base logic, of which all others are extensions? This would be attractive-and some form of relational algebra or linear logic might be a reasonable candidate. Nevertheless, the enterprise does not rest on this outcome. What matters is an increased sensitivity to the ‘landscape’ of dynamic logics, just as with the ‘Categorial Hierarchy’ in Categorial Grammar (cf. van Benthem 1989a, 1991) where the family of logics with their interconnections seems more important than any specific patriarch.Finally, perhaps the most important issue in the new framework is the possibility of new kinds of questions arising precisely because of its differences from standard logic. Notably, given the option of regarding propositions as programs, it will be of interest to consider systematically which major questions about programming languages now make sense inside logic too.EXAMPLE. Correctness. When do we have $$\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ \pi \right]\kern-0.15em\right](\left[\kern-0.15em\left[ A \right]\kern-0.15em\right]) \subseteq \left[\kern-0.15em\left[ B \right]\kern-0.15em\right]$$ for (s, t) propositions A, B and a dynamic (s, (s, t)) proposition π?Program Synthesis. Which dynamic proposition will take us from an information state satisfying A to one satisfying B? (This question needs refinement, lest there be trivial answers.)Determinism. Which propositions as programs are deterministic, in the sense of defining single-valued functions from states to states?Querying. What does it mean to ask for information in the present setting? (Again, individual types referring to e will be crucial here.)This is not merely an agenda for wishful thinking. Within Logic, there are various ways of introducing such concerns into semantics, especially, using tools from Automata Theory. (See van Benthem 1989c for further discussion of such computational perspectives in ‘cognitive programming’.)At least if one believes that ‘dynamics’ is of the essence in cognition (rather than a mere interfacing problem between the halls of eternal truth and the noisy streets of reality), the true test for the present enterprise is the development of a significant new research program not merely copying the questions of old. (shrink)

This study focuses on the ancient commentaries on Plato’s Phaedo by Olympiodorus and Damascius and aims to present the relevance of their challenging and valuable readings of the dialogue to Neoplatonic ethics.

John Locke’s account of personal identity is usually thought to have been proved false by Thomas Reid’s simple ‘Gallant Officer’ argument. Locke is traditionally interpreted as holding that your having memories of a past person’s thoughts or actions is necessary and sufficient for your being identical to that person. This paper argues that the traditional memory interpretation of Locke’s account is mistaken and defends a memory continuity view according to which a sequence of overlapping memories is necessary and sufficient for (...) personal identity. On this view Locke is not vulnerable to the Gallant Officer argument. (shrink)

Sicherheitsfragen spielen für die Gestaltung technischer Innovation und Entwicklung sowie für deren gesellschaftliche Implementierung eine zentrale Rolle. Wonach hierbei im Einzelfall konkret gefragt wird, ist aber keinesfalls eindeutig. Vielmehr verweist der Sicherheitsbegriff immer auf ein komplexes Gefüge von Urteils- und Wertungszusammenhängen, die es im situativen Kontext von Mensch-Maschine-Interaktionen zu explizieren gilt.

Functions play an important role in neo-pragmatism. This paper advances neo-pragmatism’s prospects by investigating how functions are to be understood on this account. It argues that prominent ways of understanding functions do not suit neo-pragmatists’ meta-semantic commitments or their preferred methodology. It then presents an account that fits both, based on Laura and François Schroeter’s theory of rationalizing self-interpretation. On this account, a term’s function is what it allows us to do that makes our tradition with the term rational.

Moral responsibility seems to presuppose personal identity. However, there are problems with this view, raised by Derek Parfit’s arguments for the view that personal identity isn’t what matters for our practical concerns. While Parfit discusses moral responsibility only in passing, the problems that arise for the connection between moral responsibility and personal identity have recently been sharpened by David Shoemaker. This paper defends the claim that moral responsibility presupposes personal identity against these problems. It argues, first, that only reductionist views (...) about personal identity have problems with the connection between responsibility and identity, which suggests that personal identity is a non-reductionist concept. Second, it argues that while non-reductionism is problematic, there is a novel view—non-representationalism about personal identity, according to which we account for personal identity in terms of a distinctive non-representational function—that is equally well-positioned to rescue the connection as non-reductionism, without suffering from non-reductionism’s problems. (shrink)

McDowell recently renounced the assumption that the content of any knowledgeable, perceptual judgement must be included in the content of the knowledge grounding experience. We argue that McDowell’s introduction of a new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge is incompatible with the main line of argument in favour of conceptualism as presented in Mind and World [McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press]. We reconstruct the original line of argument and show that it rests on (...) the assumption that a specific model of justification, the Comparison Model, must apply to all cases of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. We then show that the Comparison Model cannot be applied to McDowell’s new category of non-inferential, perceptual knowledge. As a consequence, McDowell is in need of an alternative model of justification and an alternative argument for conceptualism. We propose such an alternative model of justification based on McDowell’s reading of Sellars, but argue that the model only serves to make the need for an alternative motivation for conceptualism more urgent. (shrink)

This paper argues that the main global critiques of scientism lose their punch because they rely on an uncharitable definition of their target. It focuses on epistemological scientism and divides it into four categories in terms of how strong (science is the only source of knowledge) or weak (science is the best source of knowledge) and how narrow (only natural sciences) or broad (all sciences or at least not only the natural sciences) they are. Two central arguments against scientism, the (...) (false) dilemma and self‐referential incoherence, are analysed. Of the four types of epistemological scientism, three can deal with these counterarguments by utilizing two methodological principles: epistemic evaluability of reliability and epistemic opportunism. One hopes that these considerations will steer the discussion on scientism to more fruitful pastures in the future. For example, there are interesting methodological considerations concerning what evaluability or reliability and epistemic opportunism entail. (shrink)

This book argues that we can only develop a proper grasp of Kant s practical philosophy if we appreciate the central role played in it by the notion of the interests of reason. While it is generally acknowledged that Kant does not regard reason as a purely instrumental faculty, this book is the first to show how his notion of reason as guided by its own interests offers the key to some of the most puzzling aspects of his practical philosophy.".

Despite the efforts of meta-ethical expressivists to rebut such worries, one objection raised over and over again against expressivism is that, if the theory is true, matters of morality must be mind-dependent in some objectionable way. This paper develops an argument which not only shows that this is and cannot be the case, but also – and perhaps more importantly – offers a diagnosis why philosophers are nevertheless so often led to think otherwise.

_Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy _offers an engaging and in-depth introduction to the philosophical questions raised by this rich and far reaching period in the history of philosophy. Throughout thirty chapters, the volume surveys the intellectual contributions of European philosophy in the nineteenth century, but it also engages the on-going debates about how these contributions can and should be understood. As such, the volume provides both an overview of nineteenth-century European philosophy and an introduction to contemporary scholarship in this field. (...) __KEY DEBATES IN EUROPEAN NINETEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY__ Kristin Gjesdal Contributors Editor's Introduction I. Kantian Presuppositions 1. The Reception of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ in German Idealism by Rolf-Peter Horstmann 2. The Reception of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ in German Idealism: A Response to Rolf-Peter Horstmann by Paul Guyer II. Fichte 3. Fichte's Original Insight by Dieter Henrich 4. Fichte's Original Insight: Dieter Henrich's Pioneering Piece Half A Century Later by Günter Zöller III. Romanticism 5. Philosophical Foundations of Early Romanticism by Manfred Frank 6. Response to Manfred Frank, "Philosophical Foundations of Early Romanticism" by Michael N. Forster IV. Hegel 7. From Desire to Recognition: Hegel's Account of Human Sociality by Axel Honneth 8. On Honneth's Interpretation of Hegel's "Phenomenology of Self-Consciousness" by Robert B. Pippin V. Schelling 9. The Nature of Subjectivity: The Critical and Systematic Function of Schelling's Philosophy of Nature by Dieter Sturma 10. Nature as Unconditioned? The Critical and Systematic Function of Schelling's Early Works by Dalia Nassar VI. Schopenhauer 11. The Real Essence of Human Beings: Schopenhauer and the Unconscious Will by Christopher Janaway 12. Emancipation from the Will by David E. Wellbery VII. Comte 13. Auguste Comte and Modern Epistemology by Johan Heilbron 14. Why Was Comte an Epistemologist? by Robert C. Scharff VIII. Mill 15. Mill: The Principle of Liberty by John Rawls 16. John Rawls on Mill's Principle of Liberty by John Skorupski IX. Darwin 17. Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and its Moral Purpose by Robert J. Richards 18. Response to Richards by Gabriel Finkelstein X. Kierkegaard 19. Kierkegaard's _On Authority and Revelation _ by Stanley Cavell 20. A Nice Arrangement of Epigrams: Stanley Cavell on Søren Kierkegaard by Stephen Mulhall XI. Marx 21. Marx's Metacritique of Hegel: Synthesis Through Social Labor by Jürgen Habermas 22. Epistemology and Self-Reflection in the Young Marx by Espen Hammer XII. Dilthey 23. Wilhelm Dilthey after 150 Years by Hans-Georg Gadamer 24. Gadamer on Dilthey by Frederick C. Beiser XIII. Nietzsche 25. Nietzsche's Minimalist Moral Psychology by Bernard Williams 26. Naturalism, Minimalism, and the Scope of Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology by Paul Katsafanas XIV. Freud 27. Bad Faith and Falsehood by Jean-Paul Sartre 28. Freud by Sebastian Gardner XV. Twentieth-Century Developments 29. Analytic and Conversational Philosophy by Richard Rorty 30. Not Knowing What the Right Hand is Doing: Rorty's "Ambidextrous" Analytic Redescription of Nineteenth-Century Hegelian Philosophy by Paul Redding References for Republished Texts Accompanying Original Works. (shrink)

Contemporary historians of logic tend to credit Bernard Bolzano with the invention of the semantic notion, of consequence, a full century before Tarski. Nevertheless, Bolzano's work played no significant rôle in the genesis of modern logical semantics. The purpose of this paper is to point out three highly original, and still quite relevant themes in Bolzano's work, being a systematic study of possible types of inference, of consistency, as well as their meta-theory. There are certain analogies with Tarski's concerns here, (...) although the main thrust seems to be different, both philosophically and technically. Thus, if only obliquely, we also provide some additional historical perspective on Tarski's achievement. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against defining either of ‘good’ and ‘better’ in terms of the other. According to definitions of ‘good’ in terms of ‘better’, something is good if and only if it is better than some indifference point. Against this approach, I argue that the indifference point cannot be defined in terms of ‘better’ without ruling out some reasonable axiologies. Against defining ‘better’ in terms of ‘good’, I argue that this approach either cannot allow for the incorruptibility of (...) intrinsic goodness or it breaks down in cases where both of the relata of ‘better’ are bad. (shrink)

Any theory that analyses personal identity in terms of phenomenal continuity needs to deal with the ordinary interruptions of our consciousness that it is commonly thought that a person can survive. This is the bridge problem. The present paper offers a novel solution to the bridge problem based on the proposal that dreamless sleep need not interrupt phenomenal continuity. On this solution one can both hold that phenomenal continuity is necessary for personal identity and that persons can survive dreamless sleep.

Abstract In contemporary moral philosophy, the standard way of understanding the constituents of the human good is in terms of a fairly limited number of features that contribute to our happiness independently of how they are situated in our lives. Even when this approach is supplemented by Moorean ideas about organic wholes, it still cannot do justice to the deep importance of how things are situated and even when meaning is seen as an important factor, it still tends to be (...) treated as simply another item on the list of constituents. It is argued here that we should abandon this approach in favor of one that recognizes that our lives are best understood in terms of their narrative structure and that treats narrative meaning as a pervasive phenomenon that strongly influences the importance that different features have in making our lives go more or less well. (shrink)

I conceptualise the role of dualities in quantum gravity, in terms of their functions for theory construction. I distinguish between two functions of duality in physical practice: namely, discovering and describing ‘equivalent physics’, versus suggesting ‘new physics’. I dub these the ‘theoretical’ versus the ‘heuristic’ functions of dualities. The distinction seems to have gone largely unnoticed in the philosophical literature: and it exists both for dualities, and for the more general relation of theoretical equivalence. The paper develops the heuristic function (...) of dualities: illustrating how they can be used, if one has any luck, to find and formulate new theories. I also point to the different physical commitments about the theories in question that underlie these two functions. I show how a recently developed schema for dualities articulates the differences between the two functions. (shrink)

One worry about metaethical expressivism is that it reduces to some form of subjectivism. This worry is enforced by subjectivists who argue that subjectivism can explain certain phenomena thought to support expressivism equally well. Recently, authors have started to suggest that subjectivism can take away what has often been seen as expressivism's biggest explanatory advantage, namely expressivism's ability to explain the possibility of moral disagreement. In this paper, I will give a response to an argument recently given by Frank Jackson (...) to this conclusion that will show that it is false that subjectivism could explain disagreement as well as expressivism. (shrink)

The Introduction to this volume identifies and briefly summarizes certain issues which have been of central concern to philosophers in the transcendental tradition, including: the question of its relation to metaphysics; the relation of transcendentalism to transcendental idealism; the Kantian concept of a condition of possibility; the concepts of transcendental logic and of transcendental proof or argumentation; the concept of the transcendental turn and the issue of its justification; and the standpoint of transcendental reflection.

There was a time when meta-ethical expressivism seemed to be the only game in town for meta-ethical non-representationalists. In recent years, though, meta-ethical inferentialism has emerged as a promising non-representationalist alternative. So far, however, inferentialists lack something that would really allow them to draw level with expressivists. This is an explanation for the distinctive difference between normative and descriptive vocabulary when it comes to disagreement—something expressivists can explain in terms of the difference between representational and desire-like states and which constitutes (...) one of the primary motivations for expressivism. This paper develops a novel and distinctive account for this difference on behalf of inferentialists, based on the different functions of these two vocabularies. Not only does this account help inferentialists, it also shows how non-representionalist accounts can capture the relevant disagreement phenomena without appealing to the sorts of desire-like states expressivists tend to appeal to. (shrink)

We are all familiar with judgements about the persistence of people. Furthermore, we tend to structure certain attitudes and practices around such judgements because we think that personal identity matters for the relevant practical concerns. Response‐dependence views try to accommodate that personal identity matters by letting relevant attitudes and practices determine the personal identity relation for a particular person. This paper argues that genuine response‐dependence views are not well positioned to accommodate the connection between personal identity and what matters. Rather, (...) if we accept such a connection, this supports normative‐facts‐first views, according to which relevant normative facts determine personal identity. (shrink)