In some previous work, I tried to give a concept-based account of the nature of our entitlement to certain very basic inferences (see the papers in Part III of Boghossian 2008b). In this previous work, I took it for granted, along with many other philosophers, that we understood well enough what it is for a person to infer. In this paper, I turn to thinking about the nature of inference itself. This topic is of great interest in its own right (...) and surprisingly understudied by philosophers. A correct understanding of inference promises to shed light on a number of important topics. In particular, it threatens to undermine the sort of concept-based story about entitlement to which I had previously been attracted. (shrink)

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)

"First published in this translation 1955; second edition (revised) 1974; reprinted with additional revisions 1987; reissued with new Further Reading 2003; reissued with new introduction 2007"--T.p. verso.

Proponents of public reason views hold that the exercise of political power ought to be acceptable to all reasonable citizens. This article elucidates the common structure shared by all public reason views, first by identifying a set of questions that all such views must answer and, second, by showing that the answers to these questions stand in a particular relationship to each other. In particular, we show that what we call the ‘rationale question’ is fundamental. This fact, and the common (...) structure more generally, are often overlooked or distorted within the literature. As a result, we argue, several prominent argumentative moves made by both critics and defenders of public reason are unsuccessful. Our overall conclusion is that discussions of public reason views would be more fruitful if they made consistent use of the common structure we identify. (shrink)

Dieses historische Buch kann zahlreiche Tippfehler und fehlende Textpassagen aufweisen. Kaufer konnen in der Regel eine kostenlose eingescannte Kopie des originalen Buches vom Verleger herunterladen (ohne Tippfehler). Ohne Indizes. Nicht dargestellt. 1910 edition. Auszug:...endliche als durch sie erzeugt; oder diese in jener involviert und aus ihr sich evolvierend. Der wahre Erzeuger der endlichen Grosse ist nicht die unendlichkleine" Grosse (das Unendlichkleine ware dem Grossenwert nach vielmehr Null), sondern es ist das Gesetz der Grosse (als Veranderlicher), das man sich nun wie (...) in einen Punkt zusammengezogen, d. h. fur den einzelnen Punkt ausgedruckt, oder an einer endlichen Erstreckung sich darstellend denken kann, das aber dem letzten Sachgehalt nach dasselbe ist fur den Punkt und die endliche Erstreckung, wenn es auch in Bezug auf beide verschiedene, im allgemeinen auseinander ableitbare Ausdrucke erhalten muss. Da aber die endliche Grosse uberhaupt von Punkt zu Punkt entstehend (d. h. veranderlich) gedacht wird, so ist insofern der punktuelle, d. h. infinitesimale Ausdruck der fundamentale, aus dem der extensionale gleichsam erst hervorwachst. Die Differenz entsteht eben von der Null an; nicht aus ihr; aus Null wird keine extensive Grosse; wohl aber von der Null, d. h. dem Nichtsein dessen, was werden soll, oder ganz schlicht1) vom Ausgangs wert an; woraus? Aus dem Gesetz; eine andere Antwort ist nicht zu geben und nicht zu verlangen. Durch dies Gesetz aber ist die Grosse als Eines, Identisches, im Unterschied von den sukzessiven Grossenwerten, also in ihrem Gattungsausdruck definiert. i) Vgl. oben S. 122. Fragt man also: wie soll aus der Null gewordenen, verschwundenen" Grosse die endliche Grosse wiederentstehen? so ist zu antworten: die Grosse zwar (yuantitas). (shrink)

A study of how syntax relates to meaning by a leader of the new generation of philosopher-linguists.

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY PRIZE for the best published book in the history of philosophy [Awarded in 2010] _______________ -/- Although it is widely recognized that David Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) belongs among the greatest works of philosophy, there is little agreement about the correct way to interpret his fundamental intentions. It is an established orthodoxy among almost all commentators that skepticism and naturalism are the two dominant themes in this work. The difficulty has been, (...) however, that Hume's skeptical arguments and commitments appear to undermine and discredit his naturalistic ambition to contribute to "the science of man". This schism appears to leave his entire project broken-backed. The solution to this riddle depends on challenging another, closely related, point of orthodoxy: namely, that before Hume published the Treatise he removed almost all material concerned with problems of religion. Russell argues, contrary to this view, that irreligious aims and objectives are fundamental to the Treatise and account for its underlying unity and coherence. It is Hume's basic anti-Christian aims and objectives that serve to shape and direct both his skeptical and naturalistic commitments. When Hume's arguments are viewed from this perspective we can solve, not only puzzles arising from his discussion of various specific issues, we can also explain the intimate and intricate connections that hold his entire project together. This "irreligious" interpretation provides a comprehensive fresh account of the nature of Hume's fundamental aims and ambitions in the Treatise. It also presents a radically different picture of the way in which Hume's project was rooted in the debates and controversies of his own time, placing the Treatise in an irreligious or anti-Chrisitan philosophical tradition that includes Hobbes, Spinoza and freethinking followers. Considered in these terms, Hume's Treatise constitutes the crowning achievement of the Radical Enlightenment. (shrink)

Many of our most important goals require months or even years of effort to achieve, and some never get achieved at all. As social psychologists have lately emphasized, success in pursuing such goals requires the capacity for perseverance, or "grit." Philosophers have had little to say about grit, however, insofar as it differs from more familiar notions of willpower or continence. This leaves us ill-equipped to assess the social and moral implications of promoting grit. We propose that grit has an (...) important epistemic component, in that failures of perseverance are often caused by a significant loss of confidence that one will succeed if one continues to try. Correspondingly, successful exercises of grit often involve a kind of epistemic resilience in the face of failure, injury, rejection, and other setbacks that constitute genuine evidence that success is not forthcoming. Given this, we discuss whether and to what extent displays of grit can be epistemically as well as practically rational. We conclude that they can be (although many are not), and that the rationality of grit will depend partly on features of the context the agent normally finds herself in. In particular, grit-friendly norms of deliberation might be irrational to use in contexts of severe material scarcity or oppression. (shrink)

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox, a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician, a new foundational school, and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection (...) brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. (shrink)

Bowers et al. rightly emphasise that deep learning models often fail to capture constraints on visual perception that have been discovered by previous research. However, the solution is not to discard deep learning altogether, but to design stimuli and tasks that more closely reflect the problems that biological vision evolved to solve, such as understanding scenes and preparing skilled action.

In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

This is the account of an ongoing appeal initiated in 2009 by 725 doctors from 43 countries concerning medical complicity with torture in Israel. It has been underpinned by a voluminous and still accumulating evidence base from reputable international and regional human rights organisations, quoted below, and has spanned the terms of office of four World Medical Association presidencies and two UN special rapporteurs on torture. This campaign has been a litmus test of whether international medical codes regarding doctors and (...) torture actually matter, and are applied rigorously and even-handededly, particularly when compelling evidence incriminates a WMA member association. Our findings in the case of Israel suggest that this is not true, and that impunity largely operates. The WMA seems in partisan violation of its mandate to be the official international watchdog on the ethical behaviour of doctors. And as the IMA case demonstrates, by their inaction national medical associations or other regulatory bodies appear to function at base as buttresses and shields of the state. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

Jerry Fodor has charged that Fred Dretske's account of content suffers from indeterminacy to the extent that we should reject it in favor of Fodor‘s own account. In this paper, we ask what the problem of indeterminacy really is; we distinguish a relatively minor problem we call ‘looseness of fit’ from a major problem of failing to show how to point to what is not there. We sketch Dretske's account of content and how it is supposed to solve the major (...) problem. After presenting Fodor's challenge as the claim that Dretske has failed to solve the major problem, we articulate a response available to Dretske. Although we do not think the response is ultimately successful, we argue that it is every bit as good as the response Fodor has offered to a similar challenge, in his so-called ‘mixed theory.’ The upshot is this: despite advertisements to the contrary, Fodor's theory, in its mixed version, offers no real advantages over Dretske's regarding the serious problem of indeterminacy. (shrink)

Saul Kripke recently has published an interpretation of the later Wittgenstein's rule-following problem as a "sceptical paradox," the conclusion of which is that language is impossible. In this dissertation, I document the history of the rule-following problem in Wittgenstein's writings, thereby providing a historical perspective not provided by Kripke. In chapters I and II, I develop a broadly Kantian interpretation of the epistemology of the Tractatus. My interpretation conflicts both with interpretations according to which the Tractatus implicitly embodies an empiricist (...) epistemology or no epistemology at all and with idealist readings. In chapter III, I extend the comparison between Wittgenstein and Kant, arguing that there is an important sense in which the notion of thought is fundamental in the Tractatus. My interpretation conflicts with interpretations according to which the Tractarian theory of meaning requires a mental act of "dubbing" which correlates signs and objects as well as with interpretations according to which nothing mental is presupposed. On one hand, chapters I-III can be read independently of chapters IV and V as an interpretation of some aspects of the Tractatus. On the other hand, these chapters lay the groundwork for my argument in chapter IV that the rule-following problem in the Philosophical Investigations is a general and forceful restatement of the problem of an infinite regress of interpretations to which the Tractarian theory of meaning was supposed to provide a solution. For various reasons, which I recount, Wittgenstein became dissatisfied with his early answer, and the problem reappears in his later work. Finally, in chapter V, I present and evaluate Kripke's interpretation of the rule-following problem from the historical perspective developed in the preceding chapters. I suggest that Kripke fails to see that it is a carry-over of a problem with which Wittgenstein wrestled in the Tractatus. In addition, although he recognizes that the later Wittgenstein believes that no fact or process could account for our ability to represent the world, he does not show clearly why Wittgenstein believes that this is so. (shrink)

When talking about music, particularly classical music, we frequently describe musical events in terms of expectation and fulfilment. I begin by exploring how this expectation is described and located in music theory. To do this I look at twentieth century writers such as Eugene Narmour and Leonard Meyer before moving onto David Huron’s monograph Sweet Anticipation. I then look at the relationship between expectation, detective narratives and music theory using Edward Cone’s detailed attempt to relate the experience of listening to (...) music to detective fiction. Taking Cone’s ideas, I use that to demonstrate the existence of a particular variant of Slavoj Žižek’s “subject supposed to believe”, an absent subject who enables belief to operate. In this case, it is a “subject supposed to expect” who allows us to structure and mediate our enjoyment of music. I identify three specific instances of this figure: in the historical enjoyment of music, in the enjoyment of the composer, and in the enjoyment of the idea that musical structure enacts an abstraction of desire. In each case I show how these function in ways that intersect with further concepts of Lacanian theory as explicated by Žižek, such as the Ego-Ideal and the master signifier. (shrink)

That Wittgenstein in the Tractatus likens logic to geometry has been noticed; however, the extent and force of the analogy he develops between logical form and a broadly Kantian account of geometry has not been sufficiently appreciated. In this paper, I trace Wittgenstein's analogy in detail by looking closely at the relevant texts. I then suggest that we regard the fact that Wittgenstein develops his account of logical form by analogy with a Kantian account of geometry as evidence for the (...) bold thesis that Wittgenstein belongs within a Kantian epistemological tradition. Finally, I supply two small pieces of the interpretive puzzle needed to support the larger thesis: first, evidence that Wittgenstein's concern with logical form involves a crucial epistemological component; second, a sketch of how Wittgenstein's account of logical and mathematical knowledge can be viewed as continuing a Kantian tradition. (shrink)

For over twenty years, Paul Weithman has explored the thought of John Rawls to ask how liberalism can secure the principled allegiance of those people whom Rawls called 'citizens of faith'. This volume brings together ten of his major essays, which reflect on the task and political character of political philosophy, the ways in which liberalism does and does not privatize religion, the role of liberal legitimacy in Rawls's theory, and the requirements of public reason. The essays reveal Rawls (...) as a thinker deeply engaged with political and existential questions that trouble citizens of faith, and explore how - in firm opposition to political realism - he tries to show that the possibility of liberal democracy and the natural goodness of humanity are objects of reasonable faith. The volume will be of interest to political philosophers, political theorists, moral theologians, and religious ethicists. (shrink)

The first study of this ancient text in over 70 years, Rituals of the Way explores how the Xunzi influenced Confucianism and other Chinese philosophies through its emphasis on "the Way.".

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox (Russell's Paradox), a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the 'mathematical intuitionism' of Brouwer), a new foundational school (Hilbert's Formalism), and the profound incompleteness results of Kurt Gödel. In the same period, the cross-fertilization of mathematics and philosophy resulted in a new sort of 'mathematical philosophy', associated most notably (but in different ways) with Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and Gödel himself, (...) and which remains at the focus of Anglo-Saxon philosophical discussion. The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers. It is a substantially revised version of the edition first published in 1964 and includes a revised bibliography. The volume will be welcomed as a major work of reference at this level in the field. (shrink)

According to the subset account of realization, a property, F, is realized by another property, G, whenever F is individuated by a non-empty proper subset of the causal powers by which G is individuated (and F is not a conjunctive property of which G is a conjunct). This account is especially attractive because it seems both to explain the way in which realized properties are nothing over and above their realizers, and to provide for the causal efficacy of realized properties. (...) It therefore seems to provide a way around the causal exclusion problem. There is reason to doubt, however, that the subset account can achieve both tasks. The problem arises when we look closely at the relation between properties and causal powers, specifically, at the idea that properties confer powers on the things that have them. If realizers are to be ontically prior to what they realize, then we must regard the conferral of powers by properties as a substantive relation of determination. This relation of conferral is at the heart of a kind of exclusion problem, analogous to the familiar causal exclusion problem. I argue that the subset account cannot adequately answer this new exclusion problem, and is for that reason ill-suited to be the backbone of a non-reductive physicalism. (shrink)

Although thinkers of the past might have started from presumptions of fundamental difference and inequality between (say) the genders, or people of different races, this is no longer the case. At least in mainstream political philosophy, we are all now presumed to be, in some fundamental sense, basic equals. Of course, what follows from this putative fact of basic equality remains enormously controversial: liberals, libertarians, conservatives, Marxists, republicans, and so on, continue to disagree vigorously with each other, despite all presupposing (...) some kind of basic equality. They may argue about who gets what, how much, and why, but the starting point - that all people are in some sense deserving of prima facie equal consideration - has become an axiom of our moral and political thinking. But why? Why are we basic equals? The trouble is that as soon as one asks for an explanation of this foundational premise, it begins to look shaky. After all, on any conceivable metric human beings are notably unequal, and often to striking degrees. Philosophers in this area tend to talk of equal worth, but often without trying to specify what exactly that means. Philosophically, basic equality is neither acceptable nor rejectable. It is not rejectable because we appear to be, as a matter of fact, profoundly committed to the truth of the claim that we are all one another's basic equals. But to the extent that there appear to be no philosophical arguments for believing in the truth of basic equality, it is not acceptable either. The aim of this book is to try and show why basic equality is acceptable. To do so, however, it will also contend that we need to approach the question rather differently to how it has mostly been handled so far. What's required is an exercise in what Bernard Williams called 'impure philosophy': it must include insights from other areas of human intellectual endeavour, whether psychology and history or even what we learn from how we go about practicing basic equality in our collective lives. (shrink)

In this book, Livingston develops the political implications of formal results obtained over the course of the twentieth century in set theory, metalogic, and computational theory. He argues that the results achieved by thinkers such as Cantor, Russell, Godel, Turing, and Cohen, even when they suggest inherent paradoxes and limitations to the structuring capacities of language or symbolic thought, have far-reaching implications for understanding the nature of political communities and their development and transformation. Alain Badiou's analysis of logical-mathematical structures forms (...) the backbone of his comprehensive and provocative theory of ontology, politics, and the possibilities of radical change. Through interpretive readings of Badiou's work as well as the texts of Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Livingston develops a formally based taxonomy of critical positions on the nature and structure of political communities. These readings, along with readings of Parmenides and Plato, show how the formal results can transfigure two interrelated and ancient problems of the One and the Many: the problem of the relationship of a Form or Idea to the many of its participants, and the problem of the relationship of a social whole to its many constituents. (shrink)

Free Will & The Tragic Predicament : Making Sense of Williams -/- The discussion in this paper aims to make better sense of free will and moral responsibility by way of making sense of Bernard Williams’ significant and substantial contribution to this subject. Williams’ fundamental objective is to vindicate moral responsibility by way of freeing it from the distortions and misrepresentations imposed on it by “the morality system”. What Williams rejects, in particular, are the efforts of “morality” to further “deepen” (...) or “refine” the notion of the voluntary, with a view to securing “ultimate justice”. It is these aims and aspirations, he argues, that take us to the precipice of scepticism. In Shame and Necessity (1993) Williams advances a vindicatory genealogy that unmasks the “illusions” and “fantasies” of our current ethical ideas as they relate to agency and responsibility. What we are then left with is the task of “recasting our ethical conceptions” . It is here that Williams is especially insistent on the importance and value of historical consciousness and reflection. The role of our reflections about the Greeks and tragedy is precisely to show that in order to move forward, into the future, we need to first look back at where we have come from. The value of these “untimely” observations is that they provide us with alternatives and options that we might otherwise lack. What we discover, when we consider the Greeks, is their commitment to a “pessimism of strength” that rests on rejecting scepticism. It is this two-sided perspective on our ethical predicament that delivers a more truthful account of our human situation, one that will help us discard those illusions and fantasies of "morality" that we are “better off” without. An account of this kind refuses to accept an optimism that insists that any form of responsible ethical life must be one that is immune to the influence of luck and fate. This is the fundamental lesson that we can learn from the ancient Greeks and that Williams seeks to “recover” for us. (shrink)

This is done by exploring some of his other ideas concerning how critical comparisons inform our cultivation of taste, and art's relation to genius.

This Special Issue addresses a range of educational issues linked to main themes from our 2019 book The Emergence of Complexity: Rethinking Education as a Social Science. This book elaborated two major theses that raise fundamental questions for philosophy of education. First, that learning by groups is typically a distinctive kind of learning that is not reducible to learning by individuals. Second, that a degree of holism, as against a focus on individuals, is essential for achieving a convincing understanding of (...) this distinctive type of group learning. These two theses are of direct interest to philosophy of education since they challenges the resources of received theories of learning. Yet this kind of group learning characterises the vast bulk of human learning situations that occur outside of formal education systems. In this Special Issue introductory article we, firstly, introduce some basic principles of complexity theory, and demonstrate that, together with the concept of a ‘co-present group’ (between 2 and about 12 individuals), these ideas offer develop novel understandings of the distinctive learning that occurs within such groups. Secondly, we outline and illustrate with further examples the main features of co-present groups. Thirdly, we consolidate our conceptual work by showing five ways in which our account of group learning serves to refurbish the concept of ‘learning’. (shrink)

Ricoeur’s theory of productive imagination in previously unpublished lectures. The eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur was devoted to the imagination. These previously unpublished lectures offer Ricoeur’s most significant and sustained reflections on creativity as he builds a new theory of imagination through close examination, moving from Aristotle, Pascal, Spinoza, Hume, and Kant to Ryle, Price, Wittgenstein, Husserl, and Sartre. These thinkers, he contends, underestimate humanity’s creative capacity. While the Western tradition generally views imagination as derived from the reproductive example of (...) the image, Ricoeur develops a theory about the mind’s power to produce new realities. Modeled most clearly in fiction, this productive imagination, Ricoeur argues, is available across conceptual domains. His theory provocatively suggests that we are not constrained by existing political, social, and scientific structures. Rather, our imaginations have the power to break through our conceptual horizons and remake the world. (shrink)