Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

The Bentham Project is delighted to announce a call for papers for “Bentham and Australia: Convicts, Utility, and Empire”, a conference to be held at University College London on 11-12 April 2019 to mark the forthcoming publication of Writings on Australia, a volume of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. The conference will explore themes such as the influence and impact of Bentham’s ideas on the theory and practice of punishment in convict Australia, on advocates and opponents of co...

Volume 8 of this landmark edition follows Peirce from May 1890 through July 1892—a period of turmoil as his career unraveled at the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The loss of his principal source of income meant the beginning of permanent penury and a lifelong struggle to find gainful employment. His key achievement during these years is his celebrated Monist metaphysical project, which consists of five classic articles on evolutionary cosmology. Also included are reviews and essays from The Nation in (...) which Peirce critiques Paul Carus, William James, Auguste Comte, Cesare Lombroso, and Karl Pearson, and takes part in a famous dispute between Francis E. Abbot and Josiah Royce. Peirce's short philosophical essays, studies in non-Euclidean geometry and number theory, and his only known experiment in prose fiction complete his production during these years. Peirce's 1883-1909 contributions to the Century Dictionary form the content of volume 7 which is forthcoming. (shrink)

Praise for Volume 1: "... a first-rate edition, which supersedes all other portable Peirces.... all the Peirce most people will ever need." —Louis Menand, The New York Review of Books Volume 2 of this convenient two-volume chronological reader’s edition provides the first comprehensive anthology of the brilliant American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce’s mature philosophy. A central focus of Volume 2 is Peirce’s evolving theory of signs and its appplication to his pragmatism.

This chapter contains sections titled: Hegel's Project of Phenomenology Kant and the Infinite Within‐and‐Without Experience The Phenomenology of Infinite Conflict Hegel and Witnessing to the Traces of Unacknowledged Absolutes Conclusion.

Formalised public participation in project approval procedures is rarely addressed in technology assessment. Empirical data about public participation processes are taken into account even more rarely. This article explores the practice of public participation in infrastructure projects in the Federal Republic of Germany on the basis of empirical data from the period of 1990 to 2010. The author compares the empirical data about participation processes with the targets of the public participation and asks for the reasons for the lack of (...) participation in formalised approval procedures. Furthermore, the author contrasts participation formats used in technology assessment with formalised public participation. In his conclusions, he advocates for a stronger combination of formalised and informal public participation in technology assessment. (shrink)

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his (...) search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, 'mind projection'. This fallacy occurs when we reason that the world has features that we (wrongly) project on to it or, using Gertrude Stein's whimsical language, when we do not carefully and humbly observe the world around us. Physicist E.T. Jaynes claimed to identify this fallacy as part of his critique of quantum theory of probability in his work “Clearing up Mysteries – The Original Goal”. He claimed that (...) probability theory led to fallacious thinking about the properties of nature. Probability is not an inherent characteristic of anything in nature, but it actually indicates a deficit of facts or knowledge. One promising way to avoid this fallacy is through what is frequently referred to today as epistemic humility. (shrink)

Moderate invariantism is the orthodox semantics for knowledge attributions. In recent years it has fallen out of favour, in large part because it fails to explain why ordinary speakers have the intuition that some utterances of knowledge attributions are felicitous and others infelicitous in several types of cases. To address this issue moderate invariantists have developed a variety of what I call non-semantic theories which they claim account for the relevant felicity intuitions independently of moderate invariantist semantics. Some critics have (...) responded by arguing that these non-semantic theories are implausible for one or more of the following reasons: they do not have a basis in empirical data or established theory; they do not account for all of the relevant felicity intuitions; they are ad hoc; or they in fact explain too many felicity intuitions and thus undermine the... (shrink)

In §69.b of BT Heidegger attempts an existential genetic analysis of science, i.e. a phenomenology of the conceptual process of the constitution of the logical view of science (science seen as theory) starting from the Dasein. It attempts to do so by examining the special intentional-existential modification of (human) being-in-the-world, which is called the "mathematical projection of nature"; that is, by examining that special modification of our being, which places us in the state of experience that presents the world to (...) us as taught by, e.g., Galileo and Newton. The idea he puts forward is that modern mathematical physics and the corresponding experience of the real is the result of the mathematical projection of nature. Modern science, Heidegger says, stands out because it is mathematical. But we cannot get the answer to what this mathematicality consists in from mathematics, because mathematics is only a special manifestation of mathematicality. Here is what Heidegger means by "mathematicality" and, accordingly by "mathematical projection of nature." If one were to let two bodies of different weights fall simultaneously from the top of the tower of Pisa, Heidegger notes, both Galileo and an Aristotelian would see that the two bodies would reach the ground with as little time difference as possible, and not at exactly the same moment. Galileo, however, does something decisive: he claims that under conditions that would be impossible to ensure (if we removed absolutely all resistance to the motion of the bodies), the two bodies would reach the ground absolutely simultaneously. This is not something that he or the Aristotelian sees happening empirically. How, then, does Galileo insist so firmly on his position? How exactly does it happen that he has before him such a view of things? Heidegger's answer is that Galileo is mathematically projecting nature. In his Dialogues Galileo says "I conceive with my mind" (mente concipio) a body thrown to move on an infinitely extending horizontal plane, having eliminated from its path every possible obstacle. Finally, I argue that from the detailed interpretation of Heidegger's points of the mathematical and of the notion of mathematical projection of nature, we can arrive at the conclusions I had arrived at in my doctoral dissertation (2000) as regards the meaning and function of thought experiments in physics as seen from a Husserlian phenomenological point of view as intentional acts. In a nutshell, in thought experiments physics constitutes the special metaphysics (to use the Kantian term) of the primordial ontological region it investigates as well as attempts to make natural sense of the mathematical formalism in cases it proves necessary. (shrink)

Simulationists have recently started to employ the term "empathy" when characterizing our most basic understanding of other minds. I agree that empathy is crucial, but I think it is being misconstrued by the simulationists. Using some ideas to be found in Scheler's classical discussion of empathy, I will argue for a different understanding of the notion. More specifically, I will argue that there are basic levels of interpersonal understanding - in particular the understanding of emotional expressions - that are not (...) explicable in terms of simulation-plus-projection routines. (shrink)

The empirical phenomenon at the center of this paper is projection, which we define (uncontroversially) as follows: (1) Definition of projection An implication projects if and only if it survives as an utterance implication when the expression that triggers the implication occurs under the syntactic scope of an entailment-cancelling operator. Projection is observed, for example, with utterances containing aspectual verbs like stop, as shown in (2) and (3) with examples from English and Paraguayan Guaraní (Paraguay, Tupí-Guaraní).1 The Guaraní example in (...) (2) and its English translation have at least the following implications: (i) Carla has previously smoked, and (ii) Carla stopped smoking. The first but not the second of these implications is also conveyed by the question version of sentence (2), as in (3a), or when (2) is embedded under entailment-cancelling sentential operators, such as negation, as in (3b), the antecedent of a conditional, as in (3c), or an epistemic modal, as in (3d). Hence, by the definition in (14), the first but not the second implication of (2) projects. (shrink)

This book highlights the powerful impact of some important Spanish Jesuits on some relevant English thinkers such as Locke, Bacon, and others, regarding politics, law and natural rights, an influence sometimes hidden and always controversial.

Abstract Suppose one is persuaded of the merits of noncognitivism in ethics but not those of expressivism: in such a case, a form of moral fictionalism, combining a descriptivist account of moral sentences with a noncognitivist account of the attitudes involved in their acceptance or rejection, might seem an attractive alternative. This paper argues against the use of moral fictionalism as a strategy for defending noncognitivism in ethics. It argues, first, that the view is implausible as it stands and, second, (...) that it does not enjoy the benefits over standard?expressivist?noncognitivism both that it claims to enjoy and that make up the principal rationale for the view. The paper then turns to the grounds for noncognitivism itself before showing how far the criticisms developed extend to alternative forms of moral fictionalism and developing independent objections to each. (shrink)

The Projectability Challenge states that a metaethical view must explain how ordinary agents can, on the basis of moral experience and reflection, accurately and justifiably apply moral concepts to novel situations. In this paper, we argue for two primary claims. First, paradigm nonnaturalism can satisfactorily answer the projectability challenge. Second, it is unclear whether there is a version of moral naturalism that can satisfactorily answer the challenge. The conclusion we draw is that there is an important respect in (...) which nonnaturalism holds an advantage over its most prominent naturalist rivals. The conclusion is interesting if only because it is widely assumed that naturalism has an easier time handling thorny problems in moral epistemology. We argue that there is at least one such problem of which this assumption is not true. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1987, given by John McDowell, a South African philosopher.

Willie James Jennings contends that the goal of whiteness is the creation and preservation of segregated space. For Jennings, whiteness, as well as upholding perceived notions of white normativity, is a way of being in the world, an imagined reality made real by our movement in physical space which destroys the identity-forming connections between communities and land. In this article I bring together Pope Francis’s reflections on the globalised economy in Laudato Si’ with the critiques of James H. Cone and (...) Jennings to demonstrate the horrific harm of whiteness on marginalised people groups and the land itself. To resist the building project of whiteness, therefore, requires attention to our relationship with land. At this point I turn more readily to the land of England, offering the beginnings of a theology of place given the substantial land holdings of the Church of England. I close by asking whether the Church of England can be trusted to use its land to dismantle whiteness given its troubling colonial history in relation to land use. (shrink)

Subjects perceived touch sensations as arising from a table (or a rubber hand) when both the table (or the rubber hand) and their own real hand were repeatedly tapped and stroked in synchrony with the real hand hidden from view. If the table or rubber hand was then ‘injured’, subjects displayed a strong skin conductance response (SCR) even though nothing was done to the real hand. Sensations could even be projected to anatomically impossible locations. The illusion was much less vivid, (...) as indicated by subjective reports and SCR, if the real hand was simultaneously visible during stroking, or if the real hand was hidden but touched asynchronously. The fact that the illusion could be significantly diminished when the real hand was simultaneously visible suggests that the illusion and associated SCRs were due to perceptual assimilation of the table (or rubber hand) into one’s body image rather than associative conditioning. These experiments demonstrate the malleability of body image and the brain’s remarkable capacity for detecting statistical correlations in the sensory input. (shrink)

Religion and the external world -- Projection, religion, and the external world -- The senses, reason and the imagination -- Realism, meaning and justification : the external world and religious belief -- Modality, projection and realism -- 'Our profound ignorance' : causal realism, and the failure to detect necessity -- Spreading the mind : projection, necessity and realism -- Into the labyrinth : persons, modality, and Hume's undoing -- Value, projection, and realism -- Gilding : projection, value and secondary qualities (...) -- The gold : good, evil, belief and desire -- The golden : relational values, realism and a moral sense. (shrink)

Intersemiotic projection is one of the most common configurations in the knowledge construction process of academic comics. Although previous studies address some general features of intersemiotic projection, further research on interdependency relations of intersemiotic projection is needed in order to map out the whole system. This study, based on the social-semiotic approach to multimodal studies, proposes a systemic framework of image-text paratactic and hypotactic projection in academic comics. This framework identifies three sub-categories of paratactic projection and hypotactic projection, respectively: Emergent, (...) Adjoined, Sequential, Compound, Subsumed, and Fused. The use of these projection configurations contributes to the realization of the communicative purposes of academic comics to evidence, exemplify, emphasize, explain, elaborate, and visualize the discussed knowledge. This research attempts not only to contribute to the theoretical development of multimodality from the social-semiotic perspective by refining and enlarging the multimodal hypotactic projection framework but also to provide an effective and applicable tool for comics analysis. (shrink)

In this paper we advance a new solution to Quinn’s puzzle of the self-torturer. The solution falls directly out of an application of the principle of instrumental reasoning to what we call “vague projects”, i.e., projects whose completion does not occur at any particular or definite point or moment. The resulting treatment of the puzzle extends our understanding of instrumental rationality to projects and ends that cannot be accommodated by orthodox theories of rational choice.

Drawing on Stalnaker’s projection strategy, a revised version of the Ramsey test, and Dudman’s account of the evaluation of projective conditionals (e.g., “If Hitler invades England, Germany will win the war” and “If Hitler had invaded England, Germany would have won the war”), I offer a novel truth-conditional account of the semantics of a range of English conditionals. This account resolves some key puzzles in the philosophical literature about semantic differences between maximally similar conditionals of different types (including some parallel (...) indicative and subjunctive conditionals) without assuming that the word “if” is ambiguous. It does so by explaining these semantic differences on the basis of semantic properties of the clauses combined by “if” and temporal factors arising from these properties. (shrink)

Scientific practice involves two kinds of induction. In one, generalizations are drawn about the states of a particular system of variables. In the other, generalizations are drawn across systems in a class. We can discern two questions of correctness about both kinds of induction: what distinguishes those systems and classes of system that are ‘projectible’ in Goodman’s sense from those that are not, and what are the methods by which we are able to identify kinds that are likely to be (...) projectible? In answer to the first question, numerous theories of ‘natural kinds’ have been advanced, but none has satisfactorily addressed both questions simultaneously. I propose a shift in perspective. Both essentialist and cluster property theories have traditionally characterized kinds directly in terms of the causally salient properties their members possess. Instead, we should focus on ‘dynamical symmetries’, transformations of a system to which the causal structure of that system is indifferent. I suggest that to be a member of natural kind it is necessary and sufficient to possess a particular collection of dynamical symmetries. I show that membership in such a kind is in turn necessary and sufficient for the presence of the sort of causal structure that accounts for success in both kinds of induction, thus demonstrating that has been answered satisfactorily. More dramatically, I demonstrate that this new theory of ‘dynamical kinds’ provides an answer to with methodological implications concerning the discovery of projectible kinds. (shrink)

If there is no inner model with ω many strong cardinals, then there is a set forcing extension of the universe with a projective well-ordering of the reals.

The institution of the family and its importance have recently received considerable attention from political theorists. Leading views maintain that the institution’s justification is grounded, at least in part, in the non-instrumental value of the parent-child relationship itself. Such views face the challenge of identifying a specific good in the parent-child relationship that can account for how adults acquire parental rights over a particular child—as opposed to general parental rights, which need not warrant a claim to parent one’s biological progeny. (...) I develop a view that meets this challenge. This Project View identifies the pursuit of a parental project as a distinctive non-instrumentally valuable good that provides a justification for the family and whose pursuit is necessary and sufficient for the acquisition of parental rights. This view grounds moral parenthood in a normative relation as opposed to a biological one, supports polyadic forms of parenting, and provides plausible guidance in cases of assisted reproduction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, I provide a cluster of theories of truth in classical logic that is (internally) consistent with global reflection principles: the theories of positive truth (and falsity). After that, I analyse the _epistemic value_ of such theories. I do so employing the framework of cognitive projects introduced by Wright (Proc Aristot Soc 78:167–245, 2004), and employed—in the context of theories of truth—by Fischer et al. (Noûs 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/nous.12292 ). In particular, I will argue (...) that theories of positive truth are _trustworthy_, analogously to the theories of full disquotational truth. Moreover, I argue that, for a given cognitive project, _if_ the acceptance of trustworthy theories is taken to be an _epistemic norm_ of cognitive project, then one has good reasons to accept theories of positive truth over other rival theories of truth in classical logic. On the other hand, the latter theories are deemed epistemically unacceptable. (shrink)

The world around 1900 -- The unity of diversity : Wilhelm Ostwald's world formations -- World history of technology : Dr. Franz Maria Feldhaus -- Systems economy : Walther Rathenau, man of the world -- As for the rest : in search of the world's remains.

Projecting Illusion offers a systematic analysis of the impression of reality in the cinema and the pleasure it gives to the film spectator. Film provides a compelling experience that can be considered as a form of illusion akin to the experience of day-dream and dream. Examining the concept of illusion and its relationship to fantasy in the experience of visual representation, Richard Allen situates his explanation within the context of an analytical criticism of contemporary film and critical theory. He argues (...) that many contemporary film theorists correctly identify the significance of the impression of reality, although their explanation of it is incorrect because of an invalid philosophical understanding of the relationship between the mind, representation and reality. Offering a clear presentation and critique of the central arguments of contemporary film and critical theory, Allen also touches on fundamental issues in current discourses of philosophy, art history and feminist theory. (shrink)

In dynamic theories of presupposition, a trigger pp′ with presupposition p and at-issue component p′ comes with a requirement that p should be entailed by the local context of pp′. We argue that some co-speech gestures should be analyzed within a presuppositional framework, but with a twist: an expression p co-occurring with a co-speech gesture G with content g comes with the requirement that the local context of p should guarantee that p entails g; we call such assertion-dependent presuppositions ‘cosuppositions’. (...) We show that this analysis can be combined with earlier theories of local contexts to account for complex patterns of gesture projection in quantified and in attitudinal contexts, and we compare our account to two potential alternatives: one based on supervaluations, and one, due to Cornelia Ebert, that treats co-speech gestures as supplements. We argue that the latter is correct, but for ‘post-speech’ gestures, rather than for co-speech gestures. (shrink)

This article provides a semantic analysis of Protagonist Projection, the phenomenon by which things are described from a point of view different from that of the speaker. Against what has been argued by some, the account vindicates the intuitive idea that Protagonist Projection does not give rise to counterexamples to factivity, and similar plausible principles. A pragmatics is sketched that explains the attitude attributions generated by Protagonist Projection. Further, the phenomenon is compared to Free Indirect Discourse, and the proposed account (...) is seen to preserve the relation between them. (shrink)

How does experimental philosophy address philosophical questions and problems? That is: What projects does experimental philosophy pursue? What is their philosophical relevance? And what empirical methods do they employ? Answers to these questions will reveal how experimental philosophy can contribute to the longstanding ambition of placing philosophy on the ‘secure path of a science’, as Kant put it. We argue that experimental philosophy has introduced a new methodological perspective – a ‘meta-philosophical naturalism’ that addresses philosophical questions about a phenomenon by (...) empirically investigating how people think about this phenomenon. This chapter asks how this novel perspective can be successfully implemented: How can the empirical investigation of how people think about something address genuinely philosophical problems? And what methods – and, specifically, what methods beyond the questionnaire – can this investigation employ? We first review core projects of experimental philosophy and raise the question of their philosophical relevance. For ambitious answers, we turn to experimental philosophy’s most direct historical precursor, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and discuss empirical implementations of two of its research programmes that use experimental methods from psycholinguistics and corpus methods from the digital humanities. (shrink)

This article discusses Hans Jonas’ argument for teleology in living organisms, in light of recently raised concerns over enactivism’s “Jonasian turn.” Drawing on textual resources rarely discussed in contemporary enactivist literature on Jonas’ philosophy, we reconstruct five core ideas of his thinking: 1) That natural science’s rejection of teleology is methodological rather than ontological, and thus not a proof of its non-existence; 2) that denial of the reality of teleology amounts to a performative self-contradiction; 3) that the fact of evolution (...) makes it implausible that only humans actualize purpose; 4) that the concept of metabolism delimits and gestures towards beings performing purposive activity; and 5) that concrete encounters with living organisms are indispensable for the judgment that they are purposive. Lastly, we draw attention to how Jonas’ understanding of teleology and inwardness in nonhuman life in terms of degrees of identity with human life poses a problem for his view. In this way, we hope to clarify what Jonas, as an important source of inspiration for the enactivist project, is proposing. (shrink)

We argue that definite noun phrases give rise to uniqueness inferences characterized by a pattern we call definiteness projection. Definiteness projection says that the uniqueness inference of a definite projects out unless there is an indefinite antecedent in a position that filters presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection poses a serious puzzle for e-type theories of (in)definites; on such theories, indefinites should filter existence presuppositions but not uniqueness presuppositions. We argue that definiteness projection also poses challenges for dynamic approaches, which (...) have trouble generating uniqueness inferences and predicting some filtering behavior, though unlike the challenge for e-type theories, these challenges have mostly been noted in the literature, albeit in a piecemeal way. Our central aim, however, is not to argue for or against a particular view, but rather to formulate and motivate a generalization about definiteness which any adequate theory must account for. (shrink)

This article focuses on the difficulty for a general theory of depiction of providing a notion of pictorial content that accommodates the full diversity of picture types. The article begins by introducing two basic models of pictorial content using paradigmatic positions that maximize the ability of the respective models to deal with pictorial diversity. Kulvicki's On Images is interpreted as a generalized projection-based model which proposes a scene-centred notion of pictorial content. By contrast, Lopes's aspect-recognition theory, in Understanding Pictures, is (...) taken to exemplify a recognition-based model of pictorial content. It is then considered how applicable these two notions of pictorial content are to a spectrum of different picture types, highlighting differences between mechanically produced and “freehand” pictures. It is shown that while the projection-based and recognition-based models are each required for some picture types, neither model can be applied over the whole spectrum of diverse picture types. This, it is argued, has the far-reaching consequence that neither the projection model nor the recognition model, nor any unitary combination of the two, can provide the basis for a theory of depiction applying to all pictures. (shrink)

Kant's Transition Project and Late Philosophy is the first study to provide a close reading of the connection between texts written by Kant during 1796 and 1798. Connecting Kant's unfinished book project, the Opus postumum, with the Metaphysics of Morals, it identifies and clarifies issues at the forefront of Kant's focus towards the end of his life. Labelled by Kant as the “Transition Project”, the Opus postumum generates debate among commentators as to why Kant describes the project as filling a (...) “gap” within his system of critical philosophy. This study argues for a pervasive transition project that can be traced through Kant's entire critical philosophy and is the key to addressing current debates in the scholarship. By showing that there is not only a Transition Project in Kant's theoretical philosophy but also a Transition Project in his practical philosophy, it reveals why an accurate assessment of Kant's critical philosophy requires a new understanding of the Opus postumum and Kant's parallel late writings on practical philosophy. Rather than seeing Kant's late thoughts on a Transition as afterthoughts, they must be seen at the centre of his critical philosophy. (shrink)