Problems and solutions for an act theoretic account of propositions. I discuss the relation between the primary source of intentionality, namely tokens of propositional acts or propositional acts simpliciter, and their representations, and I propose a measure-theoretic representation of propositional acts. On this basis, I argue for a Hanks-like conception of propositional acts as forceful acts. Propositional acts are forceful not only because they are truth-apt, but moreover because they are bearers of rational commitments and entitlements. I (...) will point out some undesirable consequences of adopting force cancellation or simulation contexts. These are that there seems to be an uncontrolled proliferation of force cancellation or simulation contexts, as suggested by the cases of probability judgments, comparative probability judgments, comparative preference directives, and the like. One might be dissatisfied with the lack of a unified account of what a cancellation context is supposed to be. I propose to liberate propositional acts so that they can be performed with a variety of forces, such as conditional assertion, disjunctive assertion, modified by degrees assertion etc. On the basis of a measurement theoretic representation of propositions, I propose the notion of act by surrogates to account for target-shifting in propositional acts. (shrink)

In the first section of this paper I review Measurement Theoretic Semantics – an approach to formal semantics modeled after the application of numbers in measurement, e.g., of length. In the second section it is argued that the measurement theoretic approach to semantics yields a novel, useful conception of propositions. In the third section the measurement theoretic view of propositions is compared with major other accounts of propositional content.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s a number of philosophers, notably Churchland, Field, Stalnaker, Dennett, and Davidson, began to argue that propositional attitude predicates (such as believes that it’s sunny outside) are a species of measure predicate, analogous in important ways to numerical predicates by which we attribute physical magnitudes (such as mass, length, and temperature). Other philosophers, including myself, have subsequently developed the idea in greater detail. In this paper I sketch the general outlines of measurement‐theoretic (...) accounts of propositional attitudes, explaining in the briefest terms the basic idea of such accounts, why some have thought such accounts plausible, how these accounts might go, what their implications might be both for our conception of propositional attitudes and for their role in cognitive scientific theorizing, and where the potential problems with such accounts might lie. (shrink)

In this paper I defend an account of the nature of propositional content according to which the proposition expressed by a declarative sentence is a certain type of action a speaker performs in uttering that sentence. On this view, the semantic contents of proper names turn out to be types of reference acts. By carefully individuating these types, it is possible to provide new solutions to Frege’s puzzles about names in identity- and belief-sentences.

In Hanks I defend a theory of propositions that locates the source of propositional unity in acts of predication that people perform in thought and speech. On my account, these acts of predication are judgmental or assertoric in character, and they commit the speaker to things being the way they are represented to be in the act of predication. This leads to a problem about negations, disjunctions, conditionals, and other kinds of embeddings. When you assert that a is F (...) or b is G you do not assert that a is F, nor do you commit yourself to a’s being F. According to my theory, however, in uttering the disjunction you predicate F of a. What is going on? I account for these cases using the concept of cancellation. In uttering the disjunction, the act of predicating F of a is cancelled, and when an act of predication is cancelled it does not count as an assertion and does not commit the speaker to anything. But what is it for an act of predication to be cancelled? One immediate concern is that cancelled predication won’t provide a unified proposition to be the input to disjunction. In this paper I answer this and related objections by explaining and defending my concept of cancellation. (shrink)

Peter Hanks and Scott Soames both defend pragmatic solutions to the problem of the unity of the proposition. According to them, what ties together Tim and baldness in the singular proposition expressed by ‘Tim is bald’ is an act of the speaker : the act of predicating baldness of Tim. But Soames construes that act as force neutral and noncommittal while, for Hanks, it is inherently assertive and committal. Hanks answers the Frege–Geach challenge by arguing that, in complex sentences, the (...) force inherent in the content of an embedded sentence is cancelled. Indrek Reiland has recently objected to Hanks’s proposal that it faces a dilemma: either force cancellation dissolves the unity of the proposition secured by the cancelled act of assertion, or Hanks’s proposal reduces to Soames’s. In this paper, I respond to Reiland by offering an analysis of force cancellation which gets rid of the alleged dilemma. The proposal is based on a set of distinctions from speech act theory : between two senses of ’force’, two types of act, and two types of context. The role of simulation in force cancellation is emphasized, and connections drawn to broader issues such as the evolution of complex language. (shrink)

In 1910 Bertrand Russell abandoned the theory of propositions that he advocated in 1903 in The Principles of Mathematics because of the problem of the unity of the proposition. This is the problem of explaining how the constituents of a proposition are bound together into a unified, representational whole. This problem has largely been ignored by contemporary advocates of Russellian propositions. I argue that this problem is the result of the Fregean distinction between content and force, the arguments for the (...) content-force distinction are inconclusive and there is independent linguistic evidence against the content-force distinction. For these reasons I think that Frege's distinction between content and force should be abandoned; this is the main negative conclusion of the dissertation. ;The main positive component of the dissertation is an account of structured propositions that individuates propositions in terms of force or mood. On the account I defend, propositions are types of representational actions or states. The proposition expressed by 'Jones loves Smith', for example, is a type of representational state, tokens of which are particular assertions that Jones loves Smith or belief-states that Jones loves Smith. The proposition expressed by 'Does Jones love Smith?', on the other hand, is a type of interrogative action or state, tokens of which are instances of asking whether Jones loves Smith or wondering whether Jones loves Smith. This account solves the problem of the unity of proposition by locating the unifying element in a proposition in an act of the subject. In addition, this account provides an empirical foundation for semantics. A semantic theory, on this view, is a theory of what speakers do with sentences in contexts. To say that a sentence S expresses a proposition p in context c is to record a fact about the literal and direct illocutionary act that could be performed using S in c. (shrink)

Some of the most interesting recent work in philosophy of language and metaphysics is focused on questions about propositions, the abstract, truth-bearing contents of sentences and beliefs. The aim of this guide is to give instructors and students a road map for some significant work on propositions since the mid-1990s. This work falls roughly into two areas: challenges to the existence of propositions and theories about the nature and structure of propositions. The former includes both a widely discussed puzzle about (...) propositional designators as well as direct and indirect arguments against the existence of propositions. The latter is dominated by what is currently the central debate about the metaphysics of propositions, i.e. whether they are structured, composite entities or unstructured ontological simples. This issue has eclipsed older debates about whether propositions can be identified with sets of possible worlds or other kinds of sentence intensions. Author Recommends 1. Soames, Scott. 'Direct Reference, Propositional Attitudes, and Semantic Content.' Philosophical Topics 15 (1987): 47–87. Reprinted in Propositions and Attitudes . Eds. N. Salmon and S. Soames. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. 197–239. Essential groundwork for more recent work on propositions. Soames gives a careful and exacting presentation of the case against identifying propositions with sets of possible worlds or other truth-supporting circumstances. Also contains a detailed statement of the Russellian conception of propositions on which propositions are ordered sets of objects, properties and relations. 2. King, Jeffrey. 'Designating Propositions.' The Philosophical Review 111 (2002): 341–71. Sometimes substituting a definite description for a corresponding 'that'-clause can lead to bizarre changes in truth-conditions: compare 'Bill fears that Hillary will be president' with 'Bill fears the proposition that Hillary will be president'. This puzzle about propositional designators threatens the relational analysis of propositional attitude reports, the view that 'believes' expresses a relation to the proposition designated by its 'that'-clause, and thereby poses an indirect threat to the existence of propositions. King's solution posits an ambiguity in verbs like 'fear' that embed both 'that'-clauses and definite descriptions. 3. Jubien, Michael. 'Propositions and the Objects of Thought.' Philosophical Studies 104 (2001): 47–62. A direct attack on the existence of propositions. Jubien deploys an analogue of the problem that Paul Benacerraf raised for set-theoretical reductions of numbers against metaphysical reductions of propositions. Just as numbers can be reduced to sets in many different ways, any reduction of propositions brings with it equally good variants, thus making any such reduction arbitrary and unmotivated. The only alternative is to treat propositions as abstract metaphysical primitives. As Jubien argues, however, abstract primitive entities are incapable of doing what propositions must do, i.e. represent objects and states of affairs on their own, without the input of thinking subjects. The upshot is the propositions cannot be reduced and they cannot be primitive, and so they must not exist. 4. Hanks, Peter. 'How Wittgenstein Defeated Russell's Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment.' Synthese 154 (2007): 121–46. Scepticism about propositions has recently led some philosophers, Jubien included, to resuscitate Russell's multiple relation theory of judgment, the idea that judgment is a many-place relation to objects, properties and relations. This paper explains why Russell himself abandoned that theory, and why the theory is still refuted by an objection due to Wittgenstein. 5. Hofweber, Thomas. 'Inexpressible Properties and Propositions.' Oxford Studies in Metaphysics . 2 vols. Ed. D. Zimmerman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 155–206. An indirect attack on the existence of propositions. Hofweber argues that sentences like 'Bill believes something that Hillary asserted' do not commit us to the existence of propositions. His view is that propositional quantification is an instance of what he calls 'internal' or 'inferential role' quantification, a kind of quantification that carries no ontological implications. 6. Schiffer, Stephen. The Things We Mean . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. esp. chs 1–2. Schiffer defends his theory of pleonastic propositions, on which propositions are unstructured, have no parts, and are very finely grained. 7. Bealer, George. 'Propositions.' Mind 107 (1998): 1–32. Bealer defends his algebraic theory of propositions, which, like Schiffer's pleonastic account, treats propositions as unstructured metaphysical simples. 8. King, Jeffrey. The Nature of and Structure of Content . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. The best developed current theory of the structure in structured propositions. King identifies propositions with certain kinds of facts in which objects, properties and relations are bound together by amalgams of syntactic and semantic relations. 9. Hanks, Peter. 'Recent Work on Propositions.' Philosophy Compass 4 (2009): 1–18. A survey of work on propositions since the mid-1990s that complements this teaching and learning guide. Contains responses to Jubien's and Hofweber's arguments against propositions and critical discussions of Schiffer's pleonastic propositions and King's theory of propositional structure. Online Resources 1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions/ Propositions (Matthew McGrath) 2. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions-structured/ Structured Propositions (Jeffrey King) 3. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/propositions-singular/ Singular Propositions (Greg Fitch) Sample Partial Syllabus The following partial syllabus can be used as a unit on recent work on propositions in graduate level courses in philosophy of language or metaphysics. Week 1: A Substitution Puzzle About Propositional Designators King, Jeffrey. 'Designating Propositions'. Moltmann, Friederike. 'Propositional Attitudes Without Propositions.' Synthese 135 (2003): 77–118. Week 2: The Benacerraf Problem and Propositional Representation Benacerraf, Paul. 'What Numbers Could Not Be.' Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 47–73. Jubien, Michael. 'Propositions and the Objects of Thought.' Week 3: Propositional Quantification Hofweber, Thomas. 'Inexpressible Properties and Propositions'. Hofweber, Thomas. 'A Puzzle about Ontology.' Noûs 39 (2005): 256–83. Week 4: Schiffer on Pleonastic Propositions Schiffer, Stephen. 'Language-Created Language-Independent Entities.' Philosophical Topics 24 (1996): 149–67. Schiffer, Stephen. The Things We Mean , chs 1–2. Week 5: King on Structured Propositions King, Jeffrey. 'Structured Propositions and Complex Predicates.' Noûs , 29 (1995): 516–35. King, Jeffrey. The Nature and Structure of Content , chs 1–3. Focus Questions 1. Why does identifying propositions with sentence intensions, e.g. sets of possible worlds, 'require the attitudes to have a particular sort of closure under logical consequence, which they clearly don't have' (Mark Richard)? 2. How does the difference between (a) and (b) pose a threat to the existence of propositions? (a) Bill fears that Hillary will be president. (b) Bill fears the proposition that Hillary will be president. 3. What is the Benacerraf problem for metaphysical reductions of propositions? 4. Why must a proposition represent 'on its own cuff' (Michael Jubien)? Why is this a problem for the view that propositions are primitive abstract entities? 5. What does it mean to say that propositions are structured ? Give two different accounts of what propositional structure might be. (shrink)

Several philosophers advance substantive theories of propositions, to deal with several issues they raise in connection with a concern with a long pedigree in philosophy, the problem of the unity of propositions. The qualification ‘substantive’ is meant to contrast with ‘minimal’ or ‘deflationary’ – roughly, views that reject that propositions have a hidden nature, worth investigating. Substantive views appear to create spurious problems by characterizing propositions in ways that make them unfit to perform their theoretical jobs. I will present in (...) this light some critical points against Hanks’ (2015, 2019) act-theoretic view, and Recanati’s (2019) recent elaboration of Hanks’ notion of cancellation. Both Hanks and Recanati, I’ll argue, rely on problematic conceptions of fiction and pretense. (shrink)

The Frege point to the effect that e.g. the clauses of conditionals are not asserted and therefore cannot be assertions is often taken to establish a dichotomy between the content of a speech act, which is propositional and belongs to logic and semantics, and its force, which belongs to pragmatics. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks and Francois Recanati, who propose act-theoretic accounts of propositions, argue that we can’t account for propositional (...) unity independently of the forceful acts of speakers, and respond to the Frege point by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. I argue that the notion of force cancellation is faced with a dilemma and offer an alternative response to the Frege point, which extends the act-theoretic account to logical acts such as conditionalizing or disjoining. Such higher-level acts allow us to present forceful acts while suspending commitment to them. In connecting them, a subject rather commits to an affirmation function of such acts. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to what is put forward with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

Standardly, mental properties like beliefs, desires, fears, etc. are analysed as relations between the agent, to whom the predicate is ascribed, and a proposition, which is the intentional content of this property. According to this relational analysis, having a thought implies having its content present to the mind. This has wide-ranging philosophical implications, e.g. for the possibility of children and animals having intentional mental properties, or for the problem of knowing one’s own thoughts. Further, according to the relational analysis, the (...) causal efficacy of mental properties must be in virtue of their content. This implies that folk-psychological explanations acquire a special status, for they employ mental properties as the explanans of behaviour. Mental properties can be conceived of as causally efficacious, and hence like standard scientific explanans, only if a satisfactory account is provided how they are causally efficacious in virtue of their semantic content. A successful account of this sort, I submit, does not exist as of yet; hence it seems, on the relational account, that folk psychological explanations are non-scientific, if they are explanations at all. (shrink)

Can we solve the problem of the essential indexical, and account for de se belief, by appealing to 'relativized propositions' (functions from rich indices to truth-values)? According to John Perry, we cannot. This paper offers a detailed examination and a critique of Perry's argument.

In this survey paper, I start from two classical theses of speech act theory: that speech act content is uniformly propositional and that sentence mood encodes illocutionary force. These theses have been questioned in recent work, both in philosophy and linguistics. The force/content distinction itself – a cornerstone of 20‐century philosophy of language – has come to be rejected by some theorists, unmoved by the famous ‘Frege–Geach’ argument. The paper reviews some of these debates.

Although the terms ‘poles’, ‘bipolar’, and ‘bipolarity’ do not appear in the Tractatus, it is widely held that Wittgenstein maintained his commitment to bipolarity in the Tractatus. As it is usually understood, the principle of bipolarity is that every proposition must be capable of being true and capable of being false, which rules out propositions that are necessarily true or necessarily false. Here I argue that Wittgenstein was committed to bipolarity in the Tractatus, but getting a clear view of this (...) commitment requires a different understanding of bipolarity. Properly understood, bipolarity is the view that every proposition represents two possible states of affairs, one positive and the other negative. Of course, in the case of elementary propositions, the sense of a proposition is only the positive state of affairs. There is thus an asymmetry between what a proposition represents, its true-false poles, and what it says, its sense. In this paper I show how Wittgenstein accounted for this asymmetry in Notes on Logic and I consider two ways he might have accounted for it in the Tractatus. (shrink)

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its action-oriented offspring Corporate Citizenship (CC) currently trigger an intensifying debate on ethics, role and behavior of companies within civil society. For companies, CSR raises the question of what may be the "good reason(s)" for acting responsible towards its members, customers or society. In order to answer this question, we face the debate on CSR and its strategic engagement drivers on the levels of corporate culture, social innovation, and civil society. In this article, we provide (...) a conceptual framework based on the analytic distinction of legitimation and sensemaking. The conceptual framework developed in this article can serve as a basis to develop a company's CSR strategy. It provides measures and instruments to make complex CSR processes more visible and manageable. (shrink)

In response to Mandy Simons’ defence of a classical Gricean approach to pragmatic enrichment in terms of conversational implicature, I emphasize the following contrast. Conversational implicatures are generated by a global inference which uses as a premise the fact that the speaker has said that p, but only the triggering inference is global in cases of pragmatic enrichment. What generates the correct interpretation is a process of reconstrual, which locally maps the literal meaning of a constituent to a modulated meaning (...) and composes that meaning with that of the other constituents. That process is constrained by Gricean considerations but that is true of all pragmatic aspects of interpretation, whether pre-propositional or post-propositional. Just as indexical resolution, though pragmatic and constrained by Gricean considerations, does not fit the two-stage model through which Grice accounts for conversational implicatures, so pragmatic modulation can’t be accounted for in terms of that model despite the fact that, like conversational implicatures and unlike indexical resolution, modulation is pragmatically rather than semantically triggered. (shrink)

The article deals with the analysis of one medieval solution of semantic paradoxes, namely with the position of the so-called “cassantes” (i.e. “those who nullify”). The solution is based upon designating problematical sentences to be agrammatical and thus “saying nothing”: paradoxes are solved by means of deyning apparent truth-apts. Theoretically fundamental supposition of this step is drawing the distinction between grammatical and logical structure of a sentence, or (from a speech-act theoretical point of view) the distinction between a sentence and (...) a statement. Remarkable analogies can also be shown between this distinction and the distinction between two conceptions of congruence in the twelfth-century grammar. Nowadays the cassationist approach is the solution of paradoxes proposed in the theoretical framework of the illocutionary logic. (shrink)

In their chapter, Bourmayan and Recanati discuss the intransitive use of 'eat' and cognate verbs which take (on such uses) an indefinite implicit argument. Sometimes, Recanati pointed out in early work, the implicit argument of intransitive 'eat' seems definite ; there are also seemingly anaphoric and bound uses. How to account for them ? Recanati's early account invoked free enrichment, but Marti's negation test provides counter-examples to that account. Bourmayan and Recanati offer a (...) new, situation-theoretic account, show that it can handle the negation data, and discuss the implications of the account for the Recanati-Stanley debate over for the semantics/pragmatics interface. (shrink)

The deflationary aim of this book, which occupies Part I, is to show that a widely held view has little to be said for it. The constructive aim, pursued in Part II, is to make plausible a measure-theoretic account of propositional attitudes. The discussion is throughout instructive, illuminating and sensitive to the many intricacies surrounding attitude ascriptions and how they can carry information about a subject's psychology. There is close engagement with cognitive science. The book should be read (...) by anyone seriously engaged with issues about propositional attitudes.According to the widely held view, which Matthews calls the Received View, the attitude of Φing that p is a matter of standing in a computational/functional relation to an explicit Representation that expresses the proposition that p, and thinking is ‘an inferential computational process defined over one or more of these Representations that eventuates in the production of either another Representation or a behavior’. The representations are understood to be sentences in a language of thought and thus to have a compositional syntax and semantics. The theory that Matthews aims to make plausible has it that ascriptions of propositional attitudes in the form ‘X Φs that p’, ascribe a state to a person by relating that person to an abstract object that is the representative of the state in roughly the way that numbers on a scale are the measure-theoretic representations of certain physical magnitudes. We are to think of the role of ‘Jones believes that interest rates will fall’ by analogy with that of ‘Jones weighs 150lbs’. The latter depends on there being arithmetical relations defined over numbers that enable its particular assignment of a number to Jones's weight to represent physical properties that Jones has in virtue …. (shrink)

In this paper I present an overview of my research in the philosophy of language in mind over more than thirty years, from my early work on speech act theory to my current work on mental files. The unifying theme is context-dependence,both in language and thought. I distinguish several varieties of context-dependence and, along the way, provide tentative accounts of various phenomena: performative utterances, indexicals, modulation (metonymy and loose talk, free enrichment), de se thought, the content of experiential states, and (...) immunity to error through misidentification. (shrink)

Donald Davidson is famous for, among other things, his theory of radical interpretation – an account of how it is that we can attribute meanings to people's words, and contents to their mental states, based on an apparent paucity of evidence. This account is infused with ideas from, and applications of, the general theory of measurement, as well as one specific instance of that theory – decision theory. In addition, however, Davidson also applies measurement theory – (...) in the form of his “measurement theoretic analogy” – from outside the theory of radical interpretation, to yield a novel account of one of its notable features: the indeterminacy of interpretation. I argue that the success of this application is limited, however, in dispelling a worry to which indeterminacy gives rise – namely that if Davidson's account of indeterminacy is correct, we have no mental states. (shrink)

A prospective introduction -- The received view -- Troubles with the received view -- Are propositional attitudes relations? -- Foundations of a measurement-theoretic account of the attitudes -- The basic measurement-theoretic account -- Elaboration and explication of the proposed measurement-theoretic account.

Arguably, a theory of assertion should be able to provide (i) a definition of assertion, and (ii) a set of conditions for an assertion to be appropriate. This paper reviews two strands of theories that have attempted to meet this challenge. Commitment-based accounts à la Peirce define assertion in terms of commitment to the truth of the proposition. Restriction-based accounts à la Williamson define assertion in terms of the conditions for its appropriate performance. After assessing the suitability of these projects (...) to meet the desiderata of a theory of assertion, I argue that a speech act theoretic account à la Searle is more suitable for this purpose: it integrates the core intuitions of both restriction-based and commitment-based accounts while avoiding their respective problems, and has the further advantage of determining how assertion fits into a more general theory of illocutionary acts. (shrink)

The deflationary aim of this book, which occupies Part I, is to show that a widely held view has little to be said for it. The constructive aim, pursued in Part II, is to make plausible a measure-theoretic account of propositional attitudes. The discussion is throughout instructive, illuminating and sensitive to the many intricacies surrounding attitude ascriptions and how they can carry information about a subject's psychology. There is close engagement with cognitive science. The book should be read (...) by anyone seriously engaged with issues about propositional attitudes.According to the widely held view, which Matthews calls the Received View, the attitude of Φing that p is a matter of standing in a computational/functional relation to an explicit Representation that expresses the proposition that p, and thinking is ‘an inferential computational process defined over one or more of these Representations that eventuates in the production of either another Representation or a behavior’ . The representations are understood to be sentences in a language of thought and thus to have a compositional syntax and semantics . The theory that Matthews aims to make plausible has it that ascriptions of propositional attitudes in the form ‘X Φs that p’, ascribe a state to a person by relating that person to an abstract object that is the representative of the state in roughly the way that numbers on a scale are the measure-theoretic representations of certain physical magnitudes . We are to think of the role of ‘Jones believes that interest rates will fall’ by analogy with that of ‘Jones weighs 150lbs’. The latter depends on there being arithmetical relations defined over numbers that enable its particular assignment of a number to Jones's weight to represent physical properties that Jones has in virtue …. (shrink)

[This is an old version which is superseded by the published version. I keep it here for the record, as it has been cited.] A strict dichotomy between the force / mode of speech acts and intentional states and their propositional content has been a central feature of analytical philosophy of language and mind since the time of Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell. Recently this dichotomy has been questioned by philosophers such as Peter Hanks (2015, 2016) and Francois Recanati (...) (2016), who argue that we can't account for propositional unity independently of the forceful acts of speakers and propose new ways of responding to the notorious 'Frege point' by appealing to a notion of force cancellation. In my paper I will offer some supplementary criticisms of the traditional view, but also a way of reconceptualizing the force-content distinction which allows us to preserve certain of its features, and an alternative response to the Frege point that rejects the notion of force cancellation in favor of an appeal to intentional acts that create additional forms of unity at higher levels of intentional organization: acts such as questioning a statement or order, or merely putting it forward or entertaining it; pretending to state or order; or conjoining or disjoining statements or orders. This allows us to understand how we can present a forceful act without being committed to it. In contrast, the Frege point confuses a lack of commitment to with a lack of commitment or force in what is put forward. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 361-367 [Access article in PDF] Psychopathology and Two Kinds of Narrative Account of the Self Tim Thornton Keywords self, narrative, reductionism, embodiment, Dennett, Strawson, McDowell The self plays an important role in psycho pathology. Conditions such as dementia raise the question of how much loss of memory and awareness there can be before there is, if ever, also a loss of the (...) self. Syndromes such as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) raise the possibility of a fragmentation of one self into a number of selves. Depersonalization disorder suggests a kind of diminution both of the sense of self and the reality of the world. Symptoms such as thought insertion suggest a different kind of fragmentation of the coherence of thought within a self.At the same time there is something prima facie paradoxical about the very idea of the fragmentation or loss of self. It seems to be one thing for a self to suffer loss, quite another to think of the self as being lost. Although the experiences or beliefs had or entertained by a self might be disordered or chaotic, how can a self be anything other than whole and seem real and whole to itself?The narrative approach to the self looks like a tool purpose built to shed light on some aspects of psychopathology. The papers in this issue have examined its application to four revealing case histories and questioned its effectiveness in accounting for features of psychopathology. But in this short note I wish to stand back from the particular cases discussed in previous papers and to shed light on the general approach by setting out two contrasting versions of it. Crudely put, the first forges a connection between the concepts of self and personality; the second between the concepts of self and person. I will use the contrast between these two to draw some general lessons for the philosophy of psychopathology. Dennett's Austere Narrative Account I will start with Dennett's influential version of a narrative account of the self. His central idea is that the very idea of a self should be understood as dependent on a particular kind of interpretative strategy. Roughly, this contrasts with the idea that it is a more basic datum calling out for notice prior to adopting a specific theoretical perspective.Dennett suggests an analogy with centers of gravity both to outline the consequences of this view for the reality of selves, and the connection between the self and the interpretative strategy involved. [End Page 361] A center of gravity is just an abstractum. It's just a fictional object. But when I say it's a fictional object, I do not mean to disparage it; it's a wonderful fictional object, and it has a perfectly legitimate place within serious, sober, echt physical science. (Dennett 1992) The concept of a center of gravity is deployed within a branch of physics to describe and predict the behavior of physical systems acting under physical forces. It is the theoretical context that determines the nature of centers of gravity; at the same time, they contribute to that broader context. Dennett stresses that they are abstract or calculation-bound theoretical objects to contrast with objects that are also theoretically posited but causally interactive, such as microphysical particles (Dennett 1987, 53).Dennett has also used the analogy with abstracta to account for mental states such as beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes, which he suggests are ascribed using a particular interpretative strategy: the "Intentional Stance" (Dennett 1987, 13-42). The suggestion is that by showing the necessity of adopting that stance to make sense of human behavior he can defend a form of objectivity about mental states even while rejecting the industrial-strength realism that requires identifying mental states with physical, and thus causally interactive, internal states.Selves are given similar treatment. Like centers of gravity or mental states, they are theoretical, even fictional, entities articulated within an interpretative theoretical stance: A self is also an abstract object, a theorist's fiction... (shrink)

I argue that the act-based accounts of propositions, like the one defended by Soames, cannot be used to address Frege’s Puzzle without also giving up the Millian view of names. I begin by identifying two puzzles—both of which have been called Frege’s puzzle—and discuss the act-based theorist’s solution to the first puzzle. I then raise an objection against the solution and argue that it cannot be overcome unless a concession is made. Making the concession, however, would make it impossible for (...) the act-based theorist to solve the second puzzle. I further argue that any attempt to solve the puzzle while also maintaining a commitment to the Millian view will force such theoretical commitments on the act-based theorist which seriously undermine the scope and motivation of the act-based approaches. Thus, any solution to Frege’s puzzle on the act-based account is bound to conflict with the Millian view of names. (shrink)

Propositional attitude sentences, such as "John believes that snow is white," are traditionally taken to express the holding of a relation between a subject and what ‘that’-clauses like ‘that snow is white’ denote, i.e. propositions. On the traditional account, propositions are abstract, mind- and language-independent entities. Recently, some have raised some serious worries for the traditional account and thought that we were mistaken about the kind of entities propositions are. Over the last ten years there has then been (...) a boom of accounts of propositions in terms of mental acts. But Friederike Moltmann has recently suggested that in accounting for attitudes we should forget about mindand language-independent entities and acts and follow Twardowski in focusing instead on attitudinal objects, which are the products of our mental life. In this paper, I will focus on some semantic problems that any product-based account seems to face. Moreover, I will show that product-based accounts may be also criticised on ontological grounds. My conclusion will be that we lack a reason to think that in accounting for propositional attitudes we should focus on the alleged products of our mental lives. (shrink)

Moore’s paradox, the infamous felt bizarreness of sincerely uttering something of the form “I believe grass is green, but it ain’t”—has attracted a lot of attention since its original discovery (Moore 1942). It is often taken to be a paradox of belief—in the sense that the locus of the inconsistency is the beliefs of someone who so sincerely utters. This claim has been labeled as the priority thesis: If you have an explanation of why a putative content could not be (...) coherently believed, you thereby have an explanation of why it cannot be coherently asserted. (Shoemaker 1995). The priority thesis, however, is insufficient to give a general explanation of Moore-paradoxical phenomena and, moreover, it’s false. I demonstrate this, then show how to give a commitment-theoretic account of Moore Paradoxicality, drawing on work by Bach and Harnish. The resulting account has the virtue of explaining not only cases of pragmatic incoherence involving assertions, but also cases of cognate incoherence arising for other speech acts, such as promising, guaranteeing, ordering, and the like. (shrink)

Hanks develops a theory of propositions as speech-act types. Because speech acts play a role in the contents themselves, the view overturns Frege’s force/content distinction, and as such, faces the challenge of explaining how propositions embed under logical operators like negation. The attempt to solve this problem has lead Hanks and his recent commentators to adopt theoretically exotic resources, none of which, we argue, is ultimately successful. The problem is that although there are three different ways of negating the sentence (...) “Mary’s card is an ace”, current speech-act theories of propositions can only accommodate two of them. We distinguish between “It is false that Mary’s card is an ace”, “Mary’s card is a non-ace”, and “Mary’s card is not an ace” and show that Hanks and his commentators cannot explain content negation. We call this Hanks’ Negation Problem. The problem is significant because content negation is the negation required for logic. Fortunately, we think there is a natural way for Hanks to accommodate content negation as successive acts of predication. The view solves Hanks’ Negation Problem with only resources internal to Hanks’ own view. (shrink)

What makes it the case that an utterance constitutes an illocutionary act of a given kind? This is the central question of speech-act theory. Answers to it—i.e., theories of speech acts—have proliferated. Our main goal in this chapter is to clarify the logical space into which these different theories fit. -/- We begin, in Section 1, by dividing theories of speech acts into five families, each distinguished from the others by its account of the key ingredients in illocutionary acts. (...) Are speech acts fundamentally a matter of convention or intention? Or should we instead think of them in terms of the psychological states they express, in terms of the effects that it is their function to produce, or in terms of the norms that govern them? In Section 2, we take up the highly influential idea that speech acts can be understood in terms of their effects on a conversation’s context or “score”. Part of why this idea has been so useful is that it allows speech-act theorists from the five families to engage at a level of abstraction that elides their foundational disagreements. In Section 3, we investigate some of the motivations for the traditional distinction between propositional content and illocutionary force, and some of the ways in which this distinction has been undermined by recent work. In Section 4, we survey some of the ways in which speech-act theory has been applied to issues outside semantics and pragmatics, narrowly construed. (shrink)

Ever since Frege, propositions have played a central role in philosophy of language. Propositions are generally conceived as abstract objects that have truth conditions essentially and fulfill both the role of the meaning of sentences and of the objects or content of propositional attitudes. More recently, the abstract conception of propositions has given rise to serious dissatisfaction among a number of philosophers, who have instead proposed a conception of propositional content based on cognitive acts (Hanks, Moltmann, Soames). This approach is (...) not entirely new, though, but has important precedents in early analytic philosophy and phenomenology. The aim of this volume is bring together some of the most important texts from the relevant historical literature and new contributions from contemporary proponents of act-based conceptions of propositional content. (shrink)

The content of our propositional attitudes is often characterized by assigning them abstract entities, namely propositions. In decision theory the attitudes are also assigned numerical measures. It may thus be asked how assignments of these two types are related to each other — both metaphysically and structurally. In the first section of this paper I argue for the importance of this question and I review Davidson’s unified account of decision theory and radical interpretation as a failed attempt to answer (...) it. Then, in the main part of the paper, I present a unified measurement-theoretic account of linguistic meaning, propositional mental content, and action, an account that avoids the difficulties of Davidson’s picture. Thus in the second section I outline two theoretical preliminaries (the representational theory of measurement and Savage’s decision theory), in the third section I present the proposed novel account, and in the fourth section I defend it against various objections. (shrink)

Much problem solving and learning research in math and science has focused on formal representations. Recently researchers have documented the use of unschooled strategies for solving daily problems -- informal strategies which can be as effective, and sometimes as sophisticated, as school-taught formalisms. Our research focuses on how formal and informal strategies interact in the process of doing and learning mathematics. We found that combining informal and formal strategies is more effective than single strategies. We provide a theoretical account (...) of this multiple strategy effect and have begun to formulate this theory in an ACT-R computer model. We show why students may reach common impasses in the use of written algebra, and how subsequent or concurrent use of informal strategies leads to better problem-solving performance. Formal strategies facilitate computation because of their abstract and syntactic nature; however, abstraction can lead to nonsensical interpretations and conceptual errors. Reapplying the formal strategy will not repair such errors; switching to an informal one may. We explain the multiple strategy effect as a complementary relationship between the computational efficiency of formal strategies and the sense-making function of informal strategies. (shrink)

In this paper I do four things. (1) I explain one clear thing that ‘the problem of the unity of the proposition’ might mean. (2) I lay out a few different versions of the theory of propositions as cognitive acts, and explain why this problem arises for the version of that theory which has been defended in different forms by Peter Hanks and Scott Soames. (3) I argue that the natural ways in which the act theorist might try to solve (...) the problem fail to solve it; (4) I propose a way to fix the problem, and then I explain how the problem re-emerges in the act theorist’s treatment of propositional attitude relations. (shrink)

This paper raises a principled objection against the idea that Bayesian confirmation theory can be used to explain the conjunction fallacy. The paper demonstrates that confirmation-based explanations are limited in scope and can only be applied to cases of the fallacy of a certain restricted kind. In particular; confirmation-based explanations cannot account for the inverse conjunction fallacy, a more recently discovered form of the conjunction fallacy. Once the problem has been set out, the paper explores four different ways for (...) the confirmation theorist to come to terms with the problem, and argues that none of them are successful. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Convention for Protection of Human Rights and Dignity of the Human Being with Regard to the Application of Biology and Biomedicine: Convention on Human Rights and BiomedicineCouncil of EuropePreambleThe Member States of the Council of Europe, the other States and the European Community signatories hereto,Bearing in mind the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 December 1948;Bearing in mind the (...) Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of 4 November 1950;Bearing in mind the European Social Charter of 18 October 1961;Bearing in mind the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 16 December 1966;Bearing in mind the Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data of 28 January 1981;Bearing also in mind the Convention on the Rights of the Child of 20 November 1989;Considering that the aim of the Council of Europe is the achievement of a greater unity between its members and that one of the methods by which that aim is to be pursued is the maintenance and further realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms;Conscious of the accelerating developments in biology and medicine;Convinced of the need to respect the human being both as an individual and as a member of the human species and recognising the importance of ensuring the dignity of the human being; [End Page 277]Conscious that the misuse of biology and medicine may lead to acts endangering human dignity;Affirming that progress in biology and medicine should be used for the benefit of present and future generations;Stressing the need for international co-operation so that all humanity may enjoy the benefits of biology and medicine;Recognising the importance of promoting a public debate on the questions posed by the application of biology and medicine and the responses to be given thereto;Wishing to remind all members of society of their rights and responsibilities;Taking account of the work of the Parliamentary Assembly in this field, including Recommendation 1160 (1991) on the preparation of a Convention on bioethics;Resolving to take such measures as are necessary to safeguard human dignity and the fundamental rights and freedoms of the individual with regard to the application of biology and medicine;Have agreed as follows:Chapter IGeneral provisionsArticle 1. (Purpose and object)Parties to this Convention shall protect the dignity and identity of all human beings and guarantee everyone, without discrimination, respect for their integrity and other rights and fundamental freedoms with regard to the application of biology and medicine.Each Party shall take in its internal law the necessary measures to give effect to the provisions of this Convention.Article 2. (Primacy of the human being)The interests and welfare of the human being shall prevail over the sole interest of society or science.Article 3. (Equitable access to health care)Parties, taking into account health needs and available resources, shall take appropriate measures with a view to providing, within their jurisdiction, equitable access to health care of appropriate quality. [End Page 278]Article 4. (Professional standards)Any intervention in the health field, including research, must be carried out in accordance with relevant professional obligations and standards.Chapter IIConsentArticle 5. (General rule)An intervention in the health field may only be carried out after the person concerned has given free and informed consent to it.This person shall beforehand be given appropriate information as to the purpose and nature of the intervention as well as on its consequences and risks.The person concerned may freely withdraw consent at any time.Article 6. (Protection of persons not able to consent)1. Subject to Articles 17 and 20 below, an intervention may only be carried out on a person who does not have the capacity to consent, for his or her direct benefit.2. Where, according to law, a minor does not have the capacity to consent to an intervention, the intervention may only be carried out with the authorisation of his or her representative or an authority or a person or... (shrink)

We present an account of processing capacity in the ACT-R theory. At the symbolic level, the number of chunks in the current goal provides a measure of relational complexity. At the subsymbolic level, limits on spreading activation, measured by the attentional parameter W, provide a theory of processing capacity, which has been applied to performance, learning, and individual differences data.

I propose a version of the act‐type theory of propositions, following Hanks and Soames. According to the theory, propositions are types of act of predication. The content of a sentence is the type of such act performed when that sentence is uttered. A consequence of this theory is that the structure of the content of a sentence will mirror the structure of that sentence. I defend this consequence of the theory from two important objections. I then argue that this theory (...) is well motivated because it can be part of a theory of what is said. (shrink)

The theory that structured propositions are complex act-types has been independently articulated by Peter Hanks and Scott Soames. The present paper argues that the role of the act in such theories is supererogatory, for the individuation conditions of the act-based propositions remain wholly at the level of concepts and their formal combination, features which the traditional structured proposition theorist endorses. Thus, it is shown that the traditional problems for structured propositions are only ameliorable on the act conception by appeal to (...) the very resources of the traditional conception. It is also shown that the act theories have no act-based account of quantification and other operator-involving relations. An elementary account of propositions is sketched, after Fodor, which retains the virtues of the traditional structural conception without falling into ’Platonism’. (shrink)

PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS IN LIGHT OF THEIR INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION Summary The book consists of two main parts: in the first, on the basis of an analysis of international law, elements of the contemporary conception of human rights and its positive legal protection are identified; in the second - in light of the first part -a philosophical theory of law based on the tradition leading from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas is constructed. The conclusion contains an application (...) of the results of the analysis conducted in the second part. The first part comprises four chapters. The first aims at revealing characteristics of human rights on the basis of an analysis of historical conditioning of the inter-national law of human rights and its development. The historical context displays the practical, vindicative, and critical character of the positive legal protection of human rights. Moreover, the process of change of positive human rights law is distinguished from the process of change of human rights as such. In the second chapter the content of human rights - a topic which is only auxiliary to the conducted analysis - is discussed. Basic typology and catalogues of rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and protected in the International Covenants of Human Rights are presented. The review of the content of rights aims at a more precise limitation of the field of research. The examination shows a diversity of rights which poses a serious challenge to the coherence of every philosophical theory of human rights. In the third chapter, central in the first part, international law is analyzed with regard to the characteristics of rights and the foundations of them. The analysis of documents shows a number of solutions referring to the anthropological foundations of rights. The inherent dignity of the human person is the source of all human rights. Each human being is recognized as free, and endowed with both reason and conscience. In the propounded conception of man individuals are not rivals but create a community which is a condition for their development. International law characterizes the rights as universal, inherent, inalienable and inviolable. The reconstructed conception also comprises the following basic elements: on the level of the structure of rights, a recognition of their equality, interdependence, and comprehensiveness; in the grounding of these rights, a recognition of the anthropological foundations of law; in the conception of positive law, a recognition of the secondariness of the positive law of human rights to human rights themselves, and a recognition of human rights and justice as the basis for legal order; in the conception of state, a recognition of the well-being of the individual as the fundamental aim of actions undertaken by political institutions, and recogni¬tion of rights which form an impassable boundary to the power of the state, includ¬ing its legislative actions. The characterization of the international legal paradigm serving for the under¬standing of human rights is supplemented by analyses of the structure of their posi¬tive legal protection. Various meanings of the terms "right" and "freedom" are distinguished. Subjective right, as basic structure of the positive legal protection of human rights, is understood as a complex relation formed by various legal situations of the subject of a right which create a functional whole in respect of the subordi-nation of human person to its good. Subordinating person to a good proper for it, expressed usually in a proclamatory norm, is the central element of particular rights around which further elements aiming at the realization of this good are built. In the second part of the book a philosophical theory is developed which allows for the location of a coherent foundation for the presented characterization of human rights and their positive legal protection. This part consists of two chapters. The first includes a review of some - not entirely satisfactory - means of founding of human rights; the second presents philosophical conceptions of law and man which may form a basis for the constructed theory. The review of arguments contained in the first chapter does not aim at a detailed analysis of various specific ways of argumentation encountered in works on this subject but rather at a concise presentation of the main possible lines of argumentation. These analyses also serve to emphasize the positive solutions which are pro¬posed later and to underscore the explanatory power of the elaborated theory. This theory, retaining accurate intuitions contained in the presented types of argumenta¬tion, helps in avoiding their consequences which are difficult to reconcile with the reconstructed paradigm of human rights. Efforts to base human rights on the norms of international law rightly take into account the necessity of determining the content of the rights and their positive legal protection as a means for the realization of man's good. These attempts, how¬ever, do not properly take into account the inherent character of human rights, which are independent of positive law and provide grounds for applying specific legislative measures and not others. Founding human rights on freedom accurately points at the freedom of an indi¬vidual as a constitutive element of some rights; however, absolutization of freedom leads, to a loss of an important element of the contemporary paradigm of under¬standing human rights. This foundation undermines recognition of the fact that human rights may set limits to both the freedom of others and the freedom of the subject of rights itself. Additionally, attempts at the so-called axiological justification of human rights are discussed. This type of justification has a few variants depending on the as¬sumed conception of value. Subjectivistic conceptions have similar advantages and disadvantages to the conceptions basing human rights on freedom; objectivistic conceptions while providing for the universality of human rights place, the fundamental aim of human rights protection beyond the individual human being - in the idealistically existing world of values; finally, conceptions rooting values and human rights in culture, while accurately noting that human rights are learned through the medium of culture, place the source of human rights beyond a concrete individual - in culture and processes which take place in it - which leads to difficulties in finding a basis for the universality of rights. Furthermore, attempts to ground human rights in specific characteristics of the human being are presented. This type of approach points to an important problem of dependence of the content of rights on what man is. However, recognition of specific characteristics of a human being as an ontic foundation of the existence of rights poses a danger to their universality since one has to accept that it is not enough to be a man to be a subject of rights, but a man possessing specific charac¬teristics. The second chapter aims at outlining solutions worked out by Saint Thomas Aquinas. For a fuller understanding of his propositions selected elements of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophy are presented. It was them who formulated the founda¬tions for reflection on law and justice in the ontological context. A qualification is made that Stoicism is not be analysed in depth. Although Thomas' concept of law was undoubtedly developed under the influence of the Stoic doctrine as well, it is not in this that one should look for the tools to understand the ontic foundations of human rights and law in general since the Stoic moral philosophy and philosophy of law were developed in the context of a theory of being which assumed monistic and pantheistic premises as foundations, leading to the recognition of a total subor¬dination of the human individual to a larger unity of which man is only a part. The analysis of Plato's and Aristotle's texts concentrates on problems of justice. Plato seems to be the first philosopher who reflected on the formula basic in the history of European thought: to render to each his due. It appears that justice as both a characteristic of man and his acts is understood in the perspective of that which is just, that which is a good for another man - the recipient of the act. The basis for determining what is just is the relation of correspondence between some¬one and something. While in the case of Plato this relation is based on something beyond its terms, namely on ideas, in the case of Aristotle the relation occurs on account of the elements of the relation itself. Something is just when it contributes to the develop¬ment of the recipient of an act realizing that which is just. At the same time, the realization of that which is just is a good for the agent. In the analysis of the just two types of relation are revealed: the relation of due-to-recipient occurring on account of the compatibility of that which is due, with the recipient of the act; and - a "superstructure" - a relation of obligation-of-subject occurring on account of the compatibility of the acting subject with the thing which should be done. The basis for being that which is due is formed by various potentialities of development of man - the recipient of agency; the basis of being that which is an obligation is the possibility of development of the subject of action. Aristotle distinguishes various types of freedom and points to the necessity of taking them into account in the discussion of justice. Among other things, as the core of man's freedom, he considers life for its own sake, which can be seen as his expression of the basic indices of the autotelic character of man - which is funda¬mental for later conceptions of dignity. The freedom which is described by him is not, however, inherent and inalienable; being free is conditioned by a factual possi¬bility of undertaking actions, which are not solely means to the realization of aims set by others. Thomas Aquinas takes over the Aristotelian research perspective both in his conception of man and of law. At the same time, however, he significantly enriches it. In anthropology he develops a conception of personal being. Drawing upon his distinction between existence ("that something is") and essence ("what something is"), he sees the basis for being a person in the dignity of personal being which is a certain way of existence of a rational being more perfect than that of non-personal beings. The person is a being which, by virtue of its act of existence, is individual¬ized in a specific way. It is an aim in itself. Expressing it in a negative way, one may say that it does not exist as a means for the realization of the aims of others and, in this sense, that it is free. As distinct from Aristotelian conclusions, being a person is not conditioned by the specific actions of a being. Dignity is inherent, based on that which is the foundation of the factual existence of every rational being. Although freedom requires that a being is rational, dignity still encompasses all being, all its properties and potentialities. Thus an act conforming with dignity has to take into account a whole human being. Among different types of that which is just, ius, the first place, from the point of view of understanding law, falls to "the just thing itself ("ipsa res justa"), which is right in the full meaning of the word. On the one hand, it is that which is due; on the other hand, it determines the way of acting in the utmost degree, since the course of every act is determined in the fullest extent by its aim. The content of ius may be determined both by elements independent of free decisions - ius naturale - and by free decisions taking into account the state of things - ius positivum. Recognition of the objective structure of being as the basis of law does not entail that it is possible or desirable to determine unequivocally "the only right" patterns of conduct. This concept is very well justified within the system proposed by Saint Thomas. Individualization of being is a significant element of the develop¬ment of a person as a person. It is attained by the realization of individual aims which are not unequivocally determined by circumstances and the nature common to all people. By virtue of free choices made in the sphere of that which is not by its nature unjust, the object of action becomes ius. Since in the realization of the person the individualization of human being is central, Aquinas clearly sees the need for the protection of the sphere of "dominion of will". This sphere itself constitutes ius naturale, something which is due to man independently of the acts of will. Therefore "law should forbid nothing which is not unjust" ("nihil debet lege prohiberi quod licite fieri potest", In 3 Sent., dist. 40, q. I, a. 1, 3). Besides the relation of due-to-recipient, ius also includes the relation of obligation-of-subject which is superimposed on the relation of due-to-recipient. As far as the ontic foundations of obligation are concerned, in explaining why man is subordinated to realization of the good of others, Aquinas generally follows Aristotle in accepting that this basis is the subordination to moral good - to actions conforming with the learned truth about reality. Aquinas' systemic solutions allow, however, to reach deeper and understand why moral development is also a development of the whole human being. This was difficult within Aristotle's system, since he was reluc¬tant to decide whether precedence should be given to intellectual or moral develop¬ment. The inclination to realise good of another appears to be a transcendental characteristic of being, based on its very existence. Morality understood as rational and free subordination to realize the good of another is a specifically personal way of the realization of this inclination. Thus just actions contribute to the actualization of being in the aspect of its existence and therefore to the actualization of being as a whole. Thomas' conception of natural law (lex naturalis) as participation in eternal law (lex aeterna), offers possibilities for grasping that which is just as something which is basically accessible cognition, independently of Revelation and independently of faith in God, and at the same time as something based in eternal law, understood as a design of God's wisdom. Eternal law, embracing all particular actions, is not, from the human perspective, accessible cognition directly. It is enacted in the struc-ture of the created being and - in case of human beings - in free choices taking this structure into account. In the concluding remarks, the results obtained earlier are applied directly to the contemporary conception of human rights. Human rights are understood in the first place as "just things" - concrete goods of man; as that which is due because of subordination, based on dignity, to the personal development of man. That which is just is understood as a relational - actual or potential - state of things, which exists by virtue of existing relations. Evaluations referring to that which is right are true when respective relations of due-to-recipient take place; norms of conduct are true when respective relations of obligation-of-subject take place. Examples of the application of the sketched theory outside the field of human rights are also presented. Procedural consequences of the developed theory are shown, such as the discrimination of two types of legislative procedures which differ significantly in the structure of argumentation: the first aims at recognition of that which is just independently of the will of the legislator, and the second, at making individual or collective "projects" of development compatible. Finally the possibilities of applying the theory to the increasingly important problems of the protection of the environment and the "rights" of animals are mentioned. The central issue is a philosophical conception of man and his freedom and a conception of law. It is also indispensable to turn to a general theory of being. The search for a comprehensive theory of human rights requires attention to the Abso¬lute Being - God - as well. This is important for at least two reasons. First, a conception of the Absolute Being is integral to philosophy of the systemic type -of which the present book is a piece. A conception of the Absolute Being is signifi¬cant for understanding all being, including, first of all, man as a personal being. Second, every theory of human rights which does not comprise the problem of the Absolute may be questioned as to whether solutions adopted in it do not lead, in consequence, to eliminating God from the perspective of the understanding of law. It is desirable that a philosophical theory should deal with this problem directly. A theory which eliminates God from the perspective of the understanding of rights will be unacceptable for all those who, for philosophical reasons or relying on faith, consider God as the author of inherent rights. Nevertheless, a theoretical approach to rights from the perspective of the Absolute Being should only be a possible extension of a philosophical approach which bases rights on something which is cognizable independently of the acceptance of the existence of God so that the theory is also acceptable for those who reject the existence of God or suspend their judgment on this subject. The pursued theory should therefore contain, on the one hand, reference to natural, faith-independent foundations of human rights, but on the other hand, point to a possible extension accounting for the Absolute Being. The analyses contained in this chapter have undoubtedly some historical value since they are based on source texts. Nevertheless, the use of these texts and not critical works was dictated, first of all, by a conviction that analyses embrace a given theory in the aspect selected by the interests of the researcher. Therefore to find out what past thinkers say on the subject characterized in the first part it is simpler to reach to the sources than to adopt the existing critical works. The pre¬sented reconstruction of Aquinas' views on philosophy of law incorporates proposi¬tions of supplementing and developing some of the ideas undertaken by him. Obligation to act in this and not an other way arises because human actions are subordinated to the conformity, on the one hand, of aims realized by these actions and, on the one hand, the order of being determining that which is favourable to man or destroys him. The content of the order of being is, on the one hand, determined by the structure of being independent from man's will and, on the other, by free decisions of man. (shrink)

In the first two sections I present and motivate a formal semantics program that is modeled after the application of numbers in measurement (e.g., of length). Then, in the main part of the paper, I use the suggested framework to give an account of the semantics of necessity and possibility: (i) I show thatthe measurement theoretic framework is consistent with a robust (non-Quinean) view of modal logic, (ii) I give an account of the semantics of (...) the modal notions within this framework, and (iii) I defend the suggested account against various objections. (shrink)

In this article, I argue against a widely accepted model of utterance interpretation, namely the LS model (literality‐based serial model), according to which the literal interpretation of an utterance (the proposition literally expressed by that utterance) must be computed before nonliteral interpretations can be entertained. Alleged arguments in favor of this model are shown to be fallacious, counter‐examples are provided, and alternative models are sketched.

In the first two sections I present and motivate a formal semantics program that is modeled after the application of numbers in measurement (e.g., of length). Then, in the main part of the paper, I use the suggested framework to give an account of the semantics of necessity and possibility: (i) I show thatthe measurement theoretic framework is consistent with a robust (non-Quinean) view of modal logic, (ii) I give an account of the semantics of (...) the modal notions within this framework, and (iii) I defend the suggested account against various objections. (shrink)

Peter Hanks defends a new theory about the nature of propositional content, according to which the basic bearers of representational properties are particular mental or spoken actions. He explains the unity of propositions and provides new solutions to a long list of puzzles and problems in philosophy of language.

Plant morphogenesis exhibits numerous bifurcations with particular angle values such as 41°, 53°, which, in lower plants, can be measured in the thallus, and, in higher plants, in the ribs of the leaves. An interpretation of these angles is attempted. Since they characterize the functioning of a morphogenetic field, a formalism was constructed suitable for the study of living systems. The mathematical tool devised here, named the Arithmetical Relator, combines Geometry and Arithmetic, and assumes that a general system results from (...) the interaction between an internal cyclic structure and an environment to which this structure is adapted. The formalism described therefore takes into account partial self-reference and changes in the level of organization. Within this framework, the particular values of the ramification angles are extreme for slight shifts in the internal structure. A pattern of the relations between the genome, the cell and the organ is suggested. (shrink)