Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

This paper reevaluates Kaplan’s (Themes from Kaplan, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 481–563, 1989b) infamous ‘compulsive talker’ objection to Reichenbach’s (Elements of symbolic logic, AQ1 Macmillan, New York, 1947 ) token-reflexive theory of indexicals. It argues that Kaplan’s objection depends on the modal status of Reichenbachian tokens. On one interpretation, Kaplan’s objection stands. But on another, equally plausible interpretation, the following points hold: (i) Reichenbach’s theory effectively preempts contemporary discussion of rigid definite descriptions, (ii) Kaplan’s own analysis of indexicals in (...) terms of _dthat_-terms comes extremely close to Reichenbach’s own analysis, and (iii) Kaplan’s ‘compulsive talker’ objection should be rejected. (shrink)

The interaction between intuitions about inference, and the normative constraints that logical principles applied to mechanically-recognizable derivations impose on (informal) inference, is explored. These intuitions are evaluated in a clear testcase: informal mathe­matical proof. It is argued that formal derivations are not the source of our intuitions of validity, and indeed, neither is the semantic recognition of validity, either as construed model-theoretically, or as driven by the subject-matter such inferences are directed towards. Rather, psychologically-engrained inference-packages (often opportunistically used by (...) mathematicians) are the source of our sense of validity. Formal derivations, or the semantic construal of such, are after-the-fact norms imposed on our inference practices. (shrink)

The history of mental illnesses is as old as human history. Mental disorders are affected by changing social and cultural factors during the historical process, and have been conceptually restructured and their definitions and classifications have been changed. The evolution of obssessive-compulsive disorders with roots as old as human history into modern concepts took place in the 19th century. The first scientific views on the spiritual origin of OCD belong to S. Freud. Freud observed that mental causes in OCD are (...) different from other mental disorders, and he examined obsession as a separate and specific disorder. Over time, it has been understood that OCD is a very common disorder. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has classified OCD under an independent title in the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) by removing it from the category of anxiety disorders. OCD is a mental disorder caused by mental actions such as obsessive thoughts (obsessions) and / or repetitive and compulsive behaviors (compulsion). The patient is often aware that such thoughts and behaviors are irrational and absurd. For this reason, he tries to get away obsessive thoughts that he finds contrary to his beliefs, opinions, moral values and logic from his mind. However, as he tries, obsessive thoughts become more and more frequent and create a great anxiety in the person. This time, the patient resorts to compulsions to alleviate the anxiety he feels or to get rid of it completely. As his compulsions repeat, his anxiety increases and he goes into a vicious circle. There are many symptom subgroups of OCD that seriously worsen the quality of life of the individual. One of these, and even the most overwhelming, is religious obsessions. It has been thought that there has been a relationship between religion and OCD for a long time in the psychology literature, and some remarkable studies have been conducted to clarify this relationship. Although there are many research findings showing that religion is an indispensable element in the protection of the mental health integrity of the individual, some forms of religious understanding and some experiences gained as a result of religious experiences may affect the concerns about OCD. This stage of religiosity is closely related to some sub-symptom groups of OCD. The explanations of the founder of the psychoanalytic method, Freud psychoanalytic method, and his followers made a great contribution to the understanding of OCD. However, since the psychoanalytic method exhibits a theoretically reductionist approach to religion, it is possible that the individual's devotion to religion is initially evaluated as a pathology or at least an important obstacle to insight. Today, cognitive behavioral psychotherapies are considered the most effective psychological treatment method for OCD, but their success rates in the treatment of religious OCD are low. Since religious OCD concerns often involve spiritual issues rather than concrete repeatable situations, behavioral methods can be quite difficult to apply in the treatment of religious OCD. Therefore, traditional psychotherapy approaches, even if they are not openly against religions, are insufficient to relieve the suffering in the lives of individuals with religious obsessions, as they generally neglect the religious dimension. Due to the vacuum that arises from restricting spiritual treatments to secular approaches, religious patients are threatened by the illegal practices of people who abuse religious feelings. Clinically, religious obsessions are more worrying and overwhelming. Therefore, their treatment is more difficult than others. Selective approaches that use different scientific disciplines together in the treatment of OCD and can stretch around religious beliefs and values can create more effective treatment models. Thus, the success rate in the treatment of religious OCD can be carried to higher levels thanks to the appropriate cooperation of the disciplines of medicine, psychology and theology. There is a rich religious cultural heritage that can support this collaboration in terms of theological disciplines. As an example, Abū Zayd al-Balkhī (d. 322/934), in his Maṣāliḥ al-abdān wa-l-anfus, probably made a clear distinction between neuroses and psychosis and classified neurotic disorders for the first time about ten centuries before Freud. In this study, the importance of approaching to religious obsessions as both a psychological disorder and a theological problem is emphasized. For this reason, cooperation of psychiatric and psychological approaches with spiritual counseling and guidance is recommended in the treatment of religious OCD. The difficulty in distinguishing whether the symptoms seen in a religious person are normal, natural religious thoughts and behaviors of religious life or abnormal appearances in the religious guise necessitates this interdisciplinary cooperation. (shrink)

What is an inference? Logicians and philosophers have proposed various conceptions of inference. I shall first highlight seven features that contribute to distinguish these conceptions. I shall then compare three conceptions to see which of them best explains the special force that compels us to accept the conclusion of an inference, if we accept its premises.

Prawitz has recently developed a theory of epistemic grounding that differs in many respects from his earlier semantics of arguments and proofs. An innovative approach to inferences yields a new conception of the intertwinement of the notions of valid inference and proof. We aim at singling out three reasons that may have led Prawitz to the ground-theoretic turn, i.e.: a better order in the explanation of the relation between valid inferences and proofs; a notion of valid inference based on which (...) valid inferences and proofs are recognisable as such; a reconstruction of the deductive activity that makes inferences capable of yielding justification per se. These topics are discussed by Prawitz with reference to a very general and ancient question: why and how correct deduction has the epistemic power to compel us to accept its conclusions, provided its premises are justified? We conclude by remarking that, in spite of some improvements, the ground-theoretic approach shares with the previous one a problem of vacuous validity which, as Prawitz himself points out, blocks in both cases a satisfactory explanation of epistemic compulsion. (shrink)

Carnap’s work was instrumental to the liberalization of empiricism in the 1930s that transformed the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle to what came to be known as logical empiricism. A central feature of this liberalization was the deployment of the Principle of Tolerance, originally introduced in logic, but now invoked in an epistemological context in “Testability and Meaning”. Immediately afterwards, starting with Foundations of Logic and Mathematics, Carnap embraced semantics and turned to interpretation to guide the choice (...) of a theoretical language for science. The first thesis of this paper is that recourse to an intended interpretation led to a partial retrenchment of the conventionalism implied by the Principle of Tolerance. It required that the choice of a language be based on abstraction from a context; this procedure later became a component of the process of explication that was distinctive to Carnap’s mature views. The interpretive origin of formal systems also ensured their likely syntactic consistency, an issue on which Carnap was strongly criticized by figures such as Beth and Gödel. The second thesis of this paper is that this reliance on an intended interpretation enabled constructed formal systems to be relevant to the development of empirical science. (shrink)

The standard philosophical view is that compulsive behaviors are caused by “irresistible” desires. Gary Watson famously argued that this view conflates compulsion with weakness of the will, and proposed differentiating weakness and compulsion by appealing to the normal strength-of-will of members of the community. This extrinsic distinction leaves no room for phenomenological differences between weakness and compulsion. Evidence from clinical psychology shows, however, that compulsion is associated with certain phenomenological features that are absent in cases of (...) weakness. I therefore reject the irresistible desire account. Instead, I propose that psychological compulsions “wear down” an individual’s normal faculty of self-control, i.e., the will. The recurrent inhibition of the behavior by the will overexerts this faculty, causing the psychological stress noted by psychologists. This stress raises the cost of resistance until it is unbearable. The subject abandons resistance and therefore performs the behavior. (shrink)

Simon Blackburn has shown that there is an analogy between the problem of moral motivation in ethics (how can moral reasons move us?) and the problem of what we might call the power of logical reasons (how can logical reasons move us, what is the force of the 'logical must?'). In this paper, I explore further the parallel between the internalism problem in ethics and the problem of the power of logical reasons, and defend a version (...) of psychologism about reasons, although not one of the Humean form. I discuss two forms of cognitivism: (i) a pure cognitivism and 'hard' realism modelled after Dancy's parallel conception in ethics: when we grasp logical reasons we grasp facts, which are directly known to us; (ii) a Kantian form of cognitivism, based on the idea that compulsion by reason goes with the capacity of reflection. I argue that (i) is implausible, and that (ii) fails to meet the internalist requirement. One would then seem to be left with what Dancy calls, about practical reasoning, psychologism about reasons. I sketch what might be such a psychologism. But it fails to account for the objectivity of logical reasons. I argue that the relevant state here is a form of dispositional knowledge of logical reasons. (shrink)

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from adversity, not from (...) failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue. (shrink)

If reason is a real causal force,operative in some, but not all ofour cognition and conation, then itought to be possible to tell anaturalistic story that distinguishes themind which is moved byreason from the mind which is movedby forces other than reason.This essay proposes some steps towardthat end. I proceed by showingthat it is possible to reconcile certainemerging psychological ideasabout the causal powers of themind/brain with a venerablephilosophical vision of reason as the facultyof norms. My accountof reason is psychologistic, social, (...) and consistent with anevolutionary approach to mind. The account preserves thenormativity by deflating it. But I argue that onlysuch deflated normativity has any chance of beingmade naturalistically respectable. (shrink)

Maurice Blondel devised a logic of the moral life on the grounds that action itself respects its own law of contradiction. Thwarted by compulsions and often by habits, the actions we choose often do not reflect the principles we endorse and so we sometimes find our actions operating against what we actually want to achieve. To describe this possible imbalance Blondel outlines five rules which describe the vulnerability of human action until the individual actor must finally confront her own destiny.

Mr. A. F. Bentley in his Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics has attacked the problem of the “embedding language” of mathematics; “This essay” we read in the Foreword, “deals with the language of mathematics, including not only the mathematical symbols, but also those immediately surrounding forms of expressions and assertions through which the symbols are developed, communicated and interpreted. The writer seeks to establish a firm construction for this embedding language.” Inevitably, in the first instance this embedding language must be, as (...) he puts it, “every-day language”; but this is sadly inadequate: “The every-day language reeks with philosophies—the absolutisms of pointing. It shatters at every touch of advancing knowledge. At its heart is paradox… Mathematicians know this. Yet they feel ever the compulsion to interpret their mathematics in terms of every-day language. So proceeding, their harvest is super-paradox.” Yet the writer recognizes after all that “every-day language is the basal medium of communication between men,” even when we seek to “extend standards of symbolic consistency into the regions of the embedding language.”. (shrink)

Popper's three?world doctrine differs significantly from an earlier position which insisted on a dualism of facts and norms. This dualism, combined with a hostility to that version of psychologism which holds that logical principles are descriptive psychological laws, initially led him to espouse the view that we are free to reject rules of inference as norms shaping our reasoning. However, in some formulations of his recently developed pluralistic epistemology, Popper appears to deny this freedom to the individual. Feyerabend has (...) condemned him for this. My critique conflicts with Feyerabend's, in that I develop an alternative view of the relationship between logic and psychology which retains the compulsive aspect of the third realm, but rejects that version of anti?psychologism which holds that truths of logic do not have normative implications for people's psychological states. More specifically, it is argued that it is logically possible, though logically impermissible, for people to be irrational: the categories of logic are inescapably evaluative and critical. (shrink)

Arnold Gehlen's attempt to give anthropological grounds for morality stems from Kant's idea that being freed from the compulsion of instinct left human beings in need of compensation for the loss of the practical guidance which instinct had hitherto provided. Whereas Kant thought this compensation was to found only in reasoned morality, Gehlen would argue that morality provides recompense by becoming a quasi-instinct that functions without reflection and that needs to be bred into human beings. The author maintains that (...) in comparing animals and human beings. Gehlen posits will as a deficient instinct as deficient will; because each side is characterized as the negative of the other, Gehlen's starting point fails to meet the conditions for a valid comparison. (shrink)

In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language , Saul Kripke presents his influential reading of Wittgenstein’s later writings on language. One of the largely unexplored features of that reading is that Kripke makes a small number of suggestive remarks concerning the possible threat that Wittgenstein’s arguments pose for Chomsky’s linguistic project. In this paper, we attempt to characterise the relevance of Wittgenstein’s later work on meaning and rule-following for transformational linguistics, and in particular to identify the potentially negative impact (...) it has on that project. Although we use Kripke’s remarks to articulate some of the pertinent issues, we return to Wittgenstein’s later writings to address them. We argue that Wittgenstein’s main target in the relevant sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the notion of ‘logical compulsion’, which involves assuming that there is more to applying a word or rule than how we are naturally or “psychologically” compelled to apply. We characterise two of the main lines of argument in the Investigations in terms of the rejection of logical compulsion. We thus propose to address the relevance of Wittgenstein’s writings for Chomsky by considering whether Chomsky’s linguistics presupposes the targeted notion of logical compulsion. We argue that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic competence in terms of successive states of the “language faculty” (containing the principles of universal grammar) does presuppose this problematic notion. Chomsky responded to Kripke by devoting a chapter of his Knowledge of Language to defending this conception of linguistic competence against the Wittgensteinian arguments. We evaluate his response and argue that he has misidentified the threat to his linguistic project as consisting in the attack on its ‘individual psychology’ standpoint, rather than its commitment to logical compulsion. We conclude by arguing that Chomsky’s attempts at defending his individualist or non-communitarian standpoint are undermined by his inability to give a decisive response to Wittgenstein’s attack on logical compulsion. (shrink)

I read Stefan Collini’s What are Universities For? last week with very mixed feelings. In the past, I’ve much admired his polemical essays on the REF, “impact”, the Browne Report, etc. in the London Review of Books and elsewhere: they speak to my heart. If you don’t know those essays, you can get some of their flavour from his latest article in the Guardian yesterday. But I found the book a disappointment. Perhaps the trouble is that Collini is too decent, (...) too high-minded, has too unrealistically exalted a view about what actually happens in universities which is too coloured by attitudes appropriate to the traditional humanities. And he is optimistic to the point of fantasy if he thinks that people are so susceptible to “the romance of ideas and the power of beauty” that they will want, or can be brought to want, lots and lots of universities in order to promote the ideas (as if they would suppose that the task of “conserving, understanding, extending and handing on to subsequent generations the intellectual, scientific, and artistic heritage of mankind” was clearly ill-served when there were only forty universities in England, as opposed to a hundred and whatever). (shrink)

A common reaction to Hegel’s suggestion that we collapse Kant’s distinction between form and content is that, since such a move would also deprive us of any way of distinguishing the merely logical from the real possibility of our concepts, it is incoherent and ought to be rejected. It is true that these two distinctions are intimately related in Kant, such that if one goes, the other does as well. But it is less obvious that giving them up as (...) Kant conceives them is as incoherent a proposal as many of Hegel’s critics think. It has been the point of a recent account of Hegel’s idealism to demonstrate that his critique of Kant’s dichotomy between form and content or concept and intuition does not commit him to the view that human cognition is materially creative of its content in the manner of a God-like or intuitive intellect—does not, in other words, signify a return to a pre-Critical metaphysics. This is the interpretative stance I adopt here as well, in hope of giving defenders of Kant reasons for taking Hegel more seriously. (shrink)