In the philosophy of mathematics, indispensability arguments aim to show that we are justified in believing that abstract mathematical objects exist. I wish to defend a particular objection to such arguments that has become increasingly popular recently. It is called instrumental nominalism. I consider the recent versions of this view and conclude that it has yet to be given an adequate formulation. I provide such a formulation and show that it can be used to answer the indispensability arguments. (...) -/- There are two main indispensability arguments in the literature, though one has received nearly all of the attention. They correspond to two ways in which we use mathematics in science and in everyday life. We use mathematical language to help us describe non-mathematical reality; and we use mathematical reasoning to help us perform inferences concerning non-mathematical reality using only a feasible amount of cognitive power. The former use is the starting point of the Quine-Putnam indispensability argument ([Quine, 1980a], [Quine, 1980b], [Quine, 1981a], [Quine, 1981b], [Putnam, 1979a], [Putnam, 1979b]); the latter provides the basis for Ketland’s more recent argument ([Ketland, 2005]). I begin by considering the Quine-Putnam argument and introduce instrumental nominalism to defuse it. Then I show that Ketland’s argument can be defused in a similar way. (shrink)

In this paper, I describe and motivate a new species of mathematical structuralism, which I call Instrumental Nominalism about Set-Theoretic Structuralism. As the name suggests, this approach takes standard Set-Theoretic Structuralism of the sort championed by Bourbaki and removes its ontological commitments by taking an instrumental nominalist approach to that ontology of the sort described by Joseph Melia and Gideon Rosen. I argue that this avoids all of the problems that plague other versions of structuralism.

Only concreta are causative, though other things can play a passive part in enabling them to do the causing that they do. Nonconcreta—platonic universals included—are just the instrumental and ethical values of concreta. There is no sense of the word in which both concreta and nonconcreta “exist”; but, coining one, we can say nothing “exists,” in that coined sense, over and above concreta, their vicissitudes and their values. That is nominalism.

If we must take mathematical statements to be true, must we also believe in the existence of abstract eternal invisible mathematical objects accessible only by the power of pure thought? Jody Azzouni says no, and he claims that the way to escape such commitments is to accept true statements which are about objects that don't exist in any sense at all. Azzouni illustrates what the metaphysical landscape looks like once we avoid a militant Realism which forces our commitment to anything (...) that our theories quantify. Escaping metaphysical straitjackets, while retaining the insight that some truths are about objects that do exist, Azzouni says that we can sort scientifically-given objects into two categories: ones which exist, and to which we forge instrumental access in order to learn their properties, and ones which do not, that is, which are made up in exactly the same sense that fictional objects are. He offers as a case study a small portion of Newtonian physics, and one result of his classification of its ontological commitments, is that it does not commit us to absolute space and time. (shrink)

Introduction -- The type/token theory introduced -- Motivating the type/token theory : repeatability -- Nominalist approaches to the ontology of music -- Musical anti-realism -- The type/token theory elaborated -- Types I : abstract, unstructured, unchanging -- Types introduced and nominalism repelled -- Types as abstracta -- Types as unstructured entities -- Types as fixed and unchanging -- Types II : platonism -- Introduction : eternal existence and timelessness -- Types and properties -- The eternal existence of properties reconsidered (...) -- Types and patterns -- Defending the type/token theory I -- Unstructuredness and analogical predication -- Musical works as fixed and unchanging -- Abstractness and audibility (again) -- Works and interpretations -- Conclusion and resumé -- Defending the type/token theory II : musical platonism -- Platonism it is : replies to Anderson and Levinson -- The existence conditions of works of music -- Composition as creative discovery -- The nature of the compositional process : replies to objections -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : a reply to Levinson -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : understanding, interpretation, and correctness -- Musical works as continuants : a theory rejected -- A theory introduced -- Explicating and motivating the continuant view -- The continuant view and repeatability -- Further objections to the continuant view -- Musical works as compositional actions : a critique -- Currie's action-type hypothesis -- Davies's performance theory -- Sonicism I : against instrumentalism -- Sonicism introduced -- Sonicism motivated : moderate empiricism -- Instrumentation : timbral sonicism introduced -- Scores -- Instrumentation, artistic properties, and aesthetic content -- Levinson's rejoinder -- Sonicism II : against contextualism -- Introduction : formulating contextualism -- Contextualist ontological proposals -- Levinson's doppelgänger thought-experiments -- Artistic, representational, and object-directed expressive properties -- Aesthetic and non-object-directed expressive properties -- Conclusion : the place of context. (shrink)

Sortal concepts are at the center of certain logical discussions and have played a significant role in solutions to particular problems in philosophy. Apart from logic and philosophy, the study of sortal concepts has found its place in specific fields of psychology, such as the theory of infant cognitive development and the theory of human perception. In this monograph, different formal logics for sortal concepts and sortal-related logical notions are characterized. Most of these logics are intensional in nature and possess, (...) in addition, a bidimensional character. That is, they simultaneously represent two different logical dimensions. In most cases, the dimensions are those of time and natural necessity, and, in other cases, those of time and epistemic necessity. Another feature of the logics in question concerns second-order quantification over sortal concepts, a logical notion that is also represented in the logics. Some of the logics adopt a constant domain interpretation, others a varying domain interpretation of such quantification. Two of the above bidimensional logics are philosophically grounded on predication sortalism, that is, on the philosophical view that predication necessarily requires sortal concepts. Another bidimensional logic constitutes a logic for complex sortal predicates. These three sorts of logics are among the important novelties of this work since logics with similar features have not been developed up to now, and they might be instrumental for the solution of philosophically significant problems regarding sortal predicates. The book assumes a modern variant of conceptualism as a philosophical background. For this reason, the approach to sortal predicates is in terms of sortal concepts. Concepts, in general, are here understood as intersubjective realizable cognitive capacities. The proper features of sortal concepts are determined by an analysis of the main features of sortal predicates. Posterior to this analysis, the sortal-related logical notions represented in the above logics are discussed. There is also a discussion on the extent to which the set-theoretic formal semantic systems of the book capture different aspects of the conceptualist approach to sortals. These different semantic frameworks are also related to realist and nominalist approaches to sortal predicates, and possible modifications to them are considered that might represent those alternative approaches. (shrink)

[Supposition of Mental Term according to William of Ockham :] This paper investigates Ockham ’s claim that there is a diversity of suppositions of a mental term. First, it summarizes the hitherto research in Ockham ’s theory of concepts and the theory of mental language ascribed to him. Secondly, it describes his theory of supposition, focusing on the interpretation of this theory which describes it as a device for interpretation of propositions. Thirdly, the paper examines the problems which arise from (...) combining Ockham ’s theory concepts and his theory of supposition – namely, the problems concerning the nature of mental proposition, the question of mental syncategoremata, and of equivocation in mental language. Part 8 then reveals the absurdity of understanding the supposition of a mental term as an instrument for interpretation of mental propositions. Finally, I propose a new interpretation of the whole issue, based on Ockham ’s early commentary on the Sentences. According to this interpretation, the diversity of supposition of a mental term is not triggered by the need of distinguishing various meanings of a mental propositions, but by Ockham ’s nominalistic theory of science. (shrink)

Le livre III de l’Essai de Locke passe pour un des textes importants que la fin du XVIIe siècle consacre exclusivement au langage. Mais il ne faut pas s’attendre à y trouver un traité de linguistique innovant dans un champ vierge; même si Locke découvre tardivement l’importance du nom dans le savoir, il lui est facile de trouver autour de lui suffisamment de travaux pour prendre position, critiquer, simplifier, réorienter. Réorienter car son étude du nom ne vise qu’à préparer un (...) traité de la connaissance, non à faire de la linguistique pour elle-même. Il simplifie de ce fait les travaux que le Scolastique nominaliste notamment avait multipliés. Il critique tous ceux qui dissocient le mot de la double “référence” qui lui est “naturelle” : l’idée et la chose; contre Hobbes mais aussi contre les théoriciens des langues universelles, il ancre les langues dans l’usage commun d’une part, dans le rapport incertain aux choses d’autre part, toujours par la médiation de la pensée individuelle. Il prend enfin position : le nom est l’instrument privilégié de l’abstraction et de la généralisation : indispensable pour la communication et l’accumulation du savoir, il est aussi le lieu de toutes les illusions. Par son approche des espèces naturelles, par sa critique de l’essentialisme qui restaure paradoxalement l’abstrait et l’universel, par sa réduction du langage à la communication d’informations, plus que par sa théorie linguistique, ce texte nous donne encore à penser. (shrink)

The article deals with the structure and function of perceptual judgment in the perception theories of the Buddhist Diṅṅāga and the Vaiśeṣika Praśastapāda. I show their indebtedness to the Vyākaraṇa tradition and particularly to Patañjali. Following Shōryū Katsura’s idea that the status of perceptual judgment with regard to the Buddhist system of instruments of valid cognition was first established by Dharmakīrti, I argue that Diṅṅāga’s examples in his definition of perception in Pramāṇasamuccaya-vṛtti I,3d could be considered as perceptual judgments in (...) the sense of Charles Peirce. After the examination of Diṅṅāga’s and Praśastapāda’s examples of perceptual judgments, I come to the conclusion that Diṅṅāga, as a nominalist, sees in them an expression of ordinary linguistic behaviour shaped by convention and grammatical tradition, while Praśastapāda, as a realist, seeks to show that perceptual judgments follow the Vaiśeṣika ontological categories. If in Diṅṅāga’s epistemology perceptual judgement remains outside the pramāṇa system, in Praśastapāda’s Vaiśeṣika it pertains to the pramāṇa of perception. (shrink)

The article presents a review of the role of language in Hobbes’ s philosophy and its relantionship with the nominalism of Occam. The article examines the relation of words with objects and finishes with a criticism of nominalism for its instrumental use of language and its confusion of logic with truth.El artículo presenta una revisión del rol del lenguaje en la filosofía de Hobbes y su relación con el nominalismo de Occam. El artículo examina la relación de (...) las palabras con los objetos y finaliza con una crítica al nominalismo por su uso instrumental del lenguaje y su confusión de la lógica con la verdad. (shrink)

This paper looks into the contents of the Tractatus suppositionum terminorum by Master Franquera, in the context of the teaching of logic in Salamanca in the fifteenth century. Franquera’s work is characterised by its explicit realist bias and its rejection of Ockhamist theses, i.e., by its recognition of the existence of a natura communis or a universale in re, which is evident in all discussions related to suppositio simplex and the theory of significatio. But, apart from this, Franquera’s discussion of (...) the theory of suppositio stands out as a strange mixture of different doctrines: some of them are derived from thirteenth-century analyses, others from fourteenth-century developments; realist goals are reached by means of instruments that, while not being nominalist, are definitely inspired by terminism. While upholding the theses of realist schools, Franquera adopts the definitions and rules of nominalist authors. (shrink)

Pupils—the learners of both educational thought and of educational practice—exist ever more as data, as do the strictures and goals through which these pupils are pedagogically managed. I elaborate this thought by way of a single example: a particular kind of pupils whose number is reportedly on the increase, namely pupils diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. In my analysis I combine Hacking’s nominalist conception of human kinds and Weber’s instrumental rationalism with recent thinking about the effects of digital (...) technologies on social organising. Discussed in more detail is a key consequence from data playing a primary role in bringing together ADHD as coherent idea and practice: if ADHD is primarily the digital and instrumental product of psychiatry and education, so that ADHD is only secondarily a reliable description of behaviour, then what is to count as valid description of ADHD as behaviour will depend firstly upon the character and application of the existing database and not on actual behaviours among pupils. The article concludes with the observation that such technological products as ADHD seem notably at odds with traditional values in education. Traditional notions of education as a form of personable nurture for example seem to contrast with the instrumental disinterestedness of managing pupils as data flows. Given the latter, there seems rising need to theorise social reproduction by data and of data in contemporary education. (shrink)

Drawing on struggles within academe between faculty that promote critical education and advocates of New Public Management (NPM) who endorse instrumental learning, I reimagine the university as a counter-space that positions it as a counter-power to informational capitalism. Initially, I outline its twin threats: ethical, as self-entrepreneurial academics are valorised by NPM; and political, with informationalisation conflating spaces of thinking. I then detail Scott Lash’s specific account of how the info-comm society negates critique. However, his monistic understanding of informationalisation (...) means Lash’s alternative of Informationskritik risks subsumption by it. I therefore defer to Jacques Derrida’s idea of the university. To ensure the autonomy of the principle of reason in a world of info-comm flows, the university is a supplementary body to society, yet intimately linked to it by its critical reflexivity, which is on behalf of society. Because Derrida does not elaborate the requisite institutional architecture, I conclude with Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia as a quasi-illicit site that is different and other. Such an institutional design enables the university as a counter-space that is a bank of reason and an archive of its manifestation in social practices. It also upholds a space for thinking, which in the form of nominalist critical history proffers a counter-power to society as an informational homotopia. (shrink)

Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à la façon particulière dont Diderot envisage le caractère productif de l'esprit en mettant en rapport certains aspects de son épistémologie et de son esthétique avec trois lieux théoriques hérités de ses prédécesseurs. D'abord, ce problème touche la question de l'invention en tant que méthode de construction du discours peu à peu assimilée à une méthode de découverte par Bacon et Descartes. Dans un second temps, il semble que Diderot, qui fait grand cas de (...) la conjecture, définisse avant tout la connaissance comme une anticipation, prolongeant ainsi ce retour de l'épicurisme dans la pensée moderne. Enfin, du point de vue esthétique, Diderot développe une conception du modèle idéal qui s'accorde avec une théorie nominaliste de l'abstraction comme production d'un instrument conceptuel. Ces trois facettes de la pensée de Diderot contribuent, à notre sens, à la formation d'une véritable théorie matérialiste de la connaissance.In this article, we try to give an account of the way Diderot treats the productive character of the mind, relating aspects of his epistemology and his aesthetics with three theoretical instances. Firstly, this question touches the problem of invention as a rhetorical method which becomes assimilated by Bacon and Descartes to a method leading to discovery. Secondly, Diderot, who emphasizes the use of hypothesis, defines knowledge as a kind of anticipation, as it is defined in the modern epicureanism. Finally, regarding aesthetics, Diderot puts forth a theory of the « modèle idéal » which is tied to a nominalist conception of the abstraction. These three aspects of Diderot's thought are important, in our opinion, for the formation of a materialist theory of knowledge. (shrink)

The construction of mediaeval semantic theories is based on defining semantic concepts introduced by means of paradigmatic examples. One of the commonly discussed expressions is the promise “Debeo tibi equum”. This study deals with analyses of this proposition in fourteenth century logic done by means of instruments of terminist semantics. We may distinguish between realist and nominalist analyses, the nominalist may further be classified according to how the propositional context is interpreted – whether as extensional, intensional or hyperintensional. If we (...) take the function terminist logic has with respect to grounded elimination of false inferences as the criterion of its effectivity, all solutions must be considered comparably effective, and therefore acceptable.Medio aevo doctrinae semanticae super notionum semanticarum definitiones, quae exem plorum allatorum auxilio communiter introducebantur, construi solebant. Inter exempla saepius pertractata est etiam hoc promissum “Debeo tibi equum”. In dissertatione nostra explicationes, quae instrumentis semantices terministicae 14. saeculo in logica propositae sunt, investigamus, quorum aliae sunt realisticae, aliae nominalisticae. Inter hasce aliud porro discrimen notaripotest, scilicet quod aliae contextum dicti “extensionalem”, aliae “intensionalem”, aliae “hyperintensionalem” interpretantur. Quae omnes explicationes fere aeque efficaces esse inveniuntur, inquantum scilicet sufficientia praebent fundamenta ad argumenta fallacia eliminanda, quod et aeque acceptabiles. (shrink)

The present essay contends that progressive readings of Smith ignore the influence of theological concepts and religious ideas on his work, notably three distinct strands: first, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural theology; second, Jansenist Augustinianism; third, Stoic arguments of theodicy. Taken together, these theological elements help explain why Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy intensifies the secular early modern and Enlightenment idea that the Fall brought about ‘radical evil’ and a ‘fatherless world’ in need of permanent divine intervention. As such, Smith (...) views the market as divine regulation of human sinfulness and an instrument to serve God’s providential plan. Indeed, the ‘invisible hand of the market’ represents a nominalist realm where human cooperation intersects with divine providence, blending private self-interest with the public commonweal. I will also argue that Smith’s conception of a morally neutral market is ultimately incompatible with creedal Christianity, in particular orthodox catholic Christian ideas of the common good in which all can share and the practice of charity for those most in need who have been abandoned by state bureaucracy and the marketplace. The main reason is that Smith, not unlike Calvin, tends to divorce human contract from divine gift by dividing the theo-logic of gratuitous reciprocal giving from the economic logic of contract – a dualism that bears an uncanny resemblance with Suárez’s Baroque scholasticism of which Smith’s friend David Hume was rightly critical. In particular, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology of Calvin, Luther and Suárez sunders ‘pure nature’ from the supernatural and develops a ‘two ends’ account of human nature, according to which human beings have a natural end separate from their supernatural finality. So instead of participating in the divine oikonomia of asymmetrical gift-exchange, human society and the economy operate autonomously and are ordered towards a purely natural end. Smith conceptualises the market mechanism as both a fundamental precondition for interpersonal relationality and at the same time separate from the sociality it engenders. Smith’s anthropology hovers half-way between Machiavelli and Mandeville’s homo œconomicus in search for maximal profit, on the one hand, and the diametrically opposed conception of man as a gift-exchanging animal striving for mutual social recognition, on the other hand. By viewing market exchange as separate from the private virtues of benevolence, justice and prudence, he introduces a split between the exercise of moral virtues and the operation of commercial society. Such a divide is wholly foreign to the project of an overarching civil compact in the writings of Smith’s contemporary Antonio Genovesi and other members of the Italian schools of civic humanism and civil economy. In consequence, Smith’s œuvre marks a decisive shift from civil to political economy. (shrink)

The word "metacritique," as present in the title, strikes the American reader as strange. Perhaps the closest English translation of the title would be "Philosophy of Formal Logic." For what is in question is not the formal structure of logic; instead, the question is: What is the relation between formal logic and the world? The thesis that Eley seeks to dislodge is that of nominalism. His interest is not in formal logic as such, but in the philosophical thesis purported (...) by logicians that formal logic has no intrinsic relation to the world but is, at best, an instrument for our scientific understanding of the world. This postfoundational, instrumental theory is for him nominalistic dogmatism. Correlative to this dogmatism is the transformation of the world into a "technical world of things" or, as he also contends, "the medium of an industrial society." Opposed to nominalism and such a technical world, Eley proposes a transcendental-phenomenological critique of formal logic by means of which the origin of formal logic in life-world structures is to be uncovered. Through such a return to the life-world, he believes he is able to reintegrate formal logic and the world. Insofar as those schematic operations essential to a logic of statements and an elementary predicate logic are to be traced to their origin in the life-world, the method employed is a genetic one. (shrink)

This monumental work by a perceptive medieval scholar is undoubtedly the most comprehensive work in any modern language of the overall system of Ockham. Its three parts deal respectively with the cognitive order, the theological order, and the created order. Leff credits the more than 30 years of research by such Ockham scholars as Hochstetter, Vignaux, Moody, Baudry, Boehner, etc., with correcting his own earlier misconception—shared by so many historians of philosophy and theology—of Ockham as the one who destroyed scholasticism (...) and upset the fine balance of faith and reason by his ruthless logic, religious insensitivity, and skepticism. Such misconceptions stem from viewing Ockham either through the eyes of his predecessors, such as Aquinas or Scotus, or in the light of "the Ockhamism" of those who claimed to be his followers. In the present book, the author eschews this type of "historical approach." As he puts it, "I have sought to see his thought as a whole, in its own terms, not in pedigrees or... subsequent effects." Although much of Ockham’s writing still await critical editing, Leff sees a remarkable unity in all his works. "They are shaped by the same principles which recur throughout Ockham’s writings.... Whatever the modifications still to come as his works are properly edited, it is inconceivable that they will alter the configuration of Ockham’s thought. It is founded upon the discrepancy between the conceptual and the ontological expressed in the contrast between the individual nature of all being and the universal nature of our concepts. Instead of assuming or attempting to establish a direct rapport between them, Ockham was the first thinker systematically to explore their difference whilst accepting their interdependence." It is precisely because of this interdependence that Ockham was a "conceptualistic realist," to use Boehner’s description. Ockham was "safeguarding concepts from the status of merely mental constructs." He did not deny them epistemological validity as the nominalists did. On the other hand the varying degrees of "realism"—other than conceptualistic—"allowed no means of distinguishing logically between the mental and the real.... The distinction between concepts and what they represented then vanishes, and with it the power of differentiating true from false propositions." Ockham was genuinely concerned with meaning and evidence, the two key words that Leff believes best characterize his outlook. Leff’s professed aim is to show that "Ockham was not a logician devaluing theology or metaphysics; he was no less a philosopher and theologian than his predecessors. He accepted the same framework of knowledge and belief. The difference was that he was concerned with their meaning and evidence to the exclusion of treating their concepts as metaphysical bricks from which to build systems." Howsoever much Leff may have succeeded in achieving this goal or how many of his interpretations of specific topics may need some modification, the fact that he has followed Ockham’s thinking and argument step by step—often in what seems to be little more than an English paraphrase of the Latin text—makes his own detailed analysis a useful instrument for anyone seriously interested in Ockham’s thought.—A.B.W. (shrink)

As Kant claimed in the Groundwork, and as the idea has been developed by Korsgaard 1997, Bratman 1987, and Broome 2002. This formulation is agnostic on whether reasons for ends derive from our desiring those ends, or from the relation of those ends to things of independent value. However, desire-based theorists may deny, against Hubin 1999, that their theory is a combination of a principle of instrumental transmission and the principle that reasons for ends are provided by desires. Instead, (...) they may say, there is just one principle, a principle of, if you will, instrumental transmutation: if one desires the end, then one has reason to take the means. See the discussion of General Production, in section 8, for a doubt about this. (shrink)

You should be specific, but also explain the context and relevance of the term. (Each ID is worth 5 points).

This paper criticizes two accounts of the normativity of practical principles: the empiricist account and the rationalist or realist account. It argues against the empiricist view, focusing on the Humean texts that are usually taken to be its locus classicus. It then argues both against the dogmatic rationalist view, and for the Kantian view, through a discussion of Kant's own remarks about instrumental rationality in the second section of the Groundwork. It further argues that the instrumental principle cannot (...) stand alone. Unless there are normative principles directing us to the adoption of certain ends, there can be no requirement to take the means to our ends. The familiar view that the instrumental principle is the only requirement of practical reason is incoherent. (shrink)

Two approaches to instrumental rationality Suppose I intend end E, believe that a necessary means to E is M, and believe that M requires that I intend M. My attitudes concerning E and M engage a basic requirement of practical rationality, a requirement that, barring a change in my cited beliefs, I either intend M or give up intending E.2 Call this the Instrumental Rationality requirement – for short, the IR requirement.

The Wide-Scope approach to instrumental reason holds that the requirement to intend the necessary means to your ends should be understood as a requirement to either intend the means, or else not intend the end. In this paper I explain and defend a neglected version of this approach. I argue that three serious objections to Wide-Scope accounts turn on a certain assumption about the nature of the reasons that ground the Wide-Scope requirement. The version of the Wide-Scope approach defended (...) here allows us to reject this assumption, and so defuse the objections. (shrink)

In this paper we suggest an interpretation of the concept of 'relational value' that could be useful in both environmental ethics and empirical analyses. We argue that relational valuing includes aspects of intrinsic and instrumental valuing. If relational values are attributed, objects are appreciated because the relationship with them contributes to the human flourishing component of well-being (instrumental aspect). At the same time, attributing relational value involves genuine esteem for the valued item (intrinsic aspect). We also introduce the (...) notions of mediating and indirect relational environmental values, attributed in relationships involving people as well as environmental objects. We close by proposing how our analysis can be used in empirical research. (shrink)

There are, broadly speaking, two ways to think about rationality, as defined in the following passage: ‘Reason’ for a long time meant the activity of understanding and assimilating the eternal ideas which were to function as goals for men. Today, on the contrary, it is not only the business but the essential work of reason to find means for the goals one adopts at any given time. To use what Horkheimer called objective reason, and what others have called expressive or (...) non–instrumental reason, is to reflect on one's goals, to attempt to determine what preferences one ought to hold. On the other hand, to use what Horkheimer called subjective reason is to ‘be concerned with means and ends, with the adequacy of procedures for purposes more or less taken for granted’, that is, to be instrumentally rational. This contrast between non-instrumental and instrumental reason is at the heart of many contemporary social and philosophical disputes. 1. (shrink)

These essays, written between 1949 and 1967, focus on a single theme: the triumph in the twentieth century of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and ‘instrumental reason’ and the concomitant liquidation of the individual and the basic social institutions and relationships associated with the individual.

R. Jay Wallace argues that the normativity of instrumental rationality can be traced to the independent rational requirement to hold consistent beliefs. I present three objections to this view. John Broome argues that there is a structural similarity between the rational requirements of instrumental rationality and belief consistency. Since he does not reduce the former to the latter, his view can avoid the objections to Wallace’s view. However, we should not think Broome’s account explains the whole of (...) class='Hi'>instrumental rationality since agents with consistent intentions can still fail in their instrumental reasoning. This consideration makes Broome’s approach vulnerable to a line of criticism that both he and Wallace present against Christine Korsgaard’s conception of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

It is natural to think that law ought not to be vague. After all, law is supposed to guide conduct, and vague law seems poorly suited to do that. Contrary to this common impression, however, a number of authors have argued that vagueness in the law is sometimes a good thing, because it is a means to achieving certain valuable legislative ends. In this article, I argue that many authors—including Timothy Endicott and Jeremy Waldron—wrongly associate vagueness with instrumental roles (...) that are really played by a closely related semantic phenomenon. (shrink)

Stakeholder theory is one of the most influential theories in business ethics. It is perhaps not surprising that a theory as popular as stakeholder theory should be used in different ways, but when the disparity between different uses becomes too great, it is questionable whether all the ‘stakeholder research’ refers to the same underlying theory. This paper starts to clarify this definitional confusion by distinguishing between three different ways in which different lines of stakeholder research are connected with descriptive and (...) instrumental stakeholder theory. First, a distinction is made between research connected with descriptive and with instrumental stakeholder theory as defined by Donaldson & Preston in the narrow or broad sense. Second, a distinction is made between research that interprets descriptive and instrumental stakeholder theories as either hypotheses or research areas. Third, a distinction is made between research that interprets Donaldson & Preston’s central concept of ‘stakeholder management’ as either behaviour or rationale. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of these differences for empirical research into stakeholder theory. (shrink)

Reported is a study of French & Eng prosody. A list of items was developed which allowed the closest possible transposition between langs (eg, a photograph/une photographie). The items were placed in carrier phrase of the type It's a .../C'est une ... Ss were asked to read each sentence with neutral, emphatic, & surprised intonation. Ss were French & US students (N = 1 each). In a second phase, French-speaking students were asked to repeat the Eng sentences from a written (...) text &, later, from the model of the recording obtained in the first phase. Based on the analysis of these productions, suggestions are made concerning teaching of pronunciation. It was found that many of the French speakers tended to hypercorrect when speaking Eng. Students did not sufficiently lower the accent on unaccented syllables, perhaps as an effect of intonation patterns carried over from French. 13 References. B. Annesser Murray. (shrink)

In my reply to michael devitt, It is argued, First, That quine fails to appreciate the force of plato's "one over many" argument for universals. It is argued, Second, That quine's failure springs in part at least from his doctrine of ontological commitment: from the view that predicates need not be treated with ontological seriousness. Finally, An attempt is made to blunt the force of devitt's contention that realists cannot give a coherent explanation of the way that universals stand to (...) particulars. (shrink)

Allow me to rehearse a familiar scenario. We all know that which ends you have has something to do with what you ought to do. If Ronnie is keen on dancing but Bradley can’t stand it, then the fact that there will be dancing at the party tonight affects what Ronnie and Bradley ought to do in different ways. In short, (HI) you ought, if you have the end, to take the means. But now trouble looms: what if you have (...) dreadful, murderous ends? Ought you to take the means to them? Seemingly not. But fortunately, an assumption made by deontic logics1 comes to the rescue. Since ‘‘ought’’, according to this assumption, is a sentential operator, HI must really be ambiguous. It could be read either as (Narrow) You have the end ! O(you take the means) or as (Wide) O(you have the end ! you take the means). Now if Narrow is true, then you really ought to take the means to your murderous ends. But this doesn’t follow from Wide. All that follows from Wide is that you ought to either take the means to these ends or else give them up. Conclusions: (1) Since HI is on some reading true, but Narrow isn’t, Wide is true. (2) Wide accounts for the relationship between your ends and what you ought to do. This elegant scenario repeats itself in many other domains in which it seems like something can have a bearing on what some particular agent ought to do. Does what you know affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs about what you ought to do affect what you ought to do? Do your promises affect what you ought to do? Do your beliefs affect what you ought to believe? On each of these counts, the intuitive answer is ‘‘yes’’. And so each of these questions leaves something for the moral philosopher or the epistemologist to investigate. On each count, it seems that what we all know, is that (Account) you ought, if p, to do A. But on each count, the Narrow-scope reading of the ‘‘ought’’ in this claim yields unintuitive consequences. So since Account is true, it must be true on the Wide-scope reading.. (shrink)

What in our theoretical pronouncements commits us to objects? The Quinean standard for ontological commitment involves (nearly enough) commitments when we utter “there is” or “there are” statements without hope of eliminating these by paraphrase. Coupled with the indispensability of the truth of applied mathematical doctrine, the result is that the ontologically hard-nosed scientist is a Platonist—haplessly commited to abstracta. In this book Azzouni offers a way around the Quinean straitjacket: ontological commitment turns on how theories are (nearly enough) nailed (...) to the world. The specifics of how theories are applied indicates which among the posits of a theory are mere mathematical garb and which are genuine connections to items out there. In the first part of the book Azzouni undercuts the arguments, both actual and possible, in support of Quine’s criterion. An alternative criterion for what exists—ontological independence—is offered, one in sturdy accord with ordinary folk views on the matter. In the second part of the book, a beginning is made of bringing this alternative to bear upon scientific theories with a rich mathematical component. Along the way, old philosophical issues about absolute space and time versus relative space and time, the status of mathematical posits, such as spatial and temporal points, and so on, are illuminated. (shrink)

Basic rights are often of great instrumental value in securing protection for important human needs and interests. The first two sections of this paper defend the thesis that basic rights are also valuable independently of their instrumental role. Taking my cue from Frances Kamm's suggestion that basic rights reflect or express human worth, in the third, fourth and fifth sections I develop the proposal that the non-instrumental value of basic rights derives from their constitutive role in a (...) universal form of community or fellowship. The importance of basic rights' instrumental role is reaffi rmed in the final section of the paper, which builds on the earlier sections to offer a 'mixed' theory according to which basic rights have both instrumental and non-instrumental value. (shrink)

The puzzle of the self-torturer raises intriguing questions concerning rationality, cyclic preferences, and resoluteness. Interestingly, what makes the case puzzling has not been clearly pinpointed. The puzzle, it seems, is that a series of rational choices foreseeably leads the self-torturer to an option that serves his preferences worse than the one with which he started. But this is a very misleading way of casting the puzzle. I pinpoint the real puzzle of the self-torturer and, in the process, reveal a neglected (...) but crucial dimension of instrumental rationality. (shrink)

Peter Winch and Ludwig Wittgenstein have opposed the idea that traditional religion and magic are practiced in order to gain practical, instrumental ends. Their argument rests on interpretive charity: other cultures would have to be unbelievably irrational to believe in magic's practical effectiveness. In this paper, I show that Winch's own philosopical doctrine makes room for the possibility of instrumental pluralism, the notion that different societies may possess different criteria of instrumental rationality. Judged in terms of a (...) native criterion, the instrumental use of magic and religion may be rationaL. (shrink)

In his two recent books on ontology, Universals: an Opinionated Introduction, and A World of States of Affairs, David Armstrong gives a new argument against nominalism. That argument seems, on the face of it, to be similar to another argument that he used much earlier against Rylean behaviourism: the Truthmaker Argument, stemming from a certain plausible premise, the Truthmaker Principle. Other authors have traced the history of the truthmaker principle, its appearance in the work of Aristotle [10], Bradley [16], (...) and even Husserl [15]. But that is not my task — in this paper I argue that Armstrong’s new argument is not logically analogous to the old, and, in particular, that it is quite possible to be a thoroughgoing nominalist, and hold a truthmaker principle. (shrink)