M.A. Philosophy Programme Is a Two Year Course Divided Into Four-Semester
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Kripke's Theory of Truth
Kripke’s Theory of Truth (for the strong Kleene scheme) Presented by Christopher Gauker Version: July 26, 2006 Contemporary discussions of truth often make reference to Kripke’s theory of truth (presented by Kripke only his 1975 Journal of Philosophy paper). What Kripke did was show how to interpret a language in such a way that it contains its own truth predicate. The fact that the language he describes contains its own truth predicate is proved by means of something called a fixed-point theorem. I have written this document and posted it on the web because it is hard to find a presentation of Kripke’s theory that will be understandable even to readers who have had only a first course in logic. It is my intention that this presentation will be understandable to all readers who have been exposed to at least the following: The languages of ordinary predicate logic. Recursive definitions of truth in a structure for such languages. (Structures are also called models or interpretations.) The basic concepts and notation of set theory, such as curly brackets, membership (“∈”), inclusion (“⊆”), ordered n-tuples, relations and functions. Kripke’s theory of truth builds on a three-valued interpretation of a language. (So sentences may be neither true nor false (N) as well as (T) or false (F).) Various three- valued valuation schemes may be used. Here we will consider only the strong Kleene scheme, which is the only one most people care about. I can take no credit for this presentation. It is nothing more than a distillation from the more general presentation in Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap’s book, The Revision Theory of Truth (MIT Press, 1993) (who in turn acknowledge debts to Fitting and Visser). -
A Note on Extension, Intension, and Truth Author(S): Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap Source: the Journal of Philosophy, Vol
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. A Note on Extension, Intension, and Truth Author(s): Anil Gupta and Nuel Belnap Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Mar., 1987), pp. 168-174 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026597 Accessed: 28/05/2009 11:06 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=jphil. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org 168 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY A NOTE ON EXTENSION, INTENSION, AND TRUTH* I T is common knowledge that two predicates may coincide in extension but differ in intension and that, for any predicate, one can construct an infinity of coextensional predicates that differ in intension. -
Richard Dawkins
RICHARD DAWKINS HOW A SCIENTIST CHANGED THE WAY WE THINK Reflections by scientists, writers, and philosophers Edited by ALAN GRAFEN AND MARK RIDLEY 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 2006 with the exception of To Rise Above © Marek Kohn 2006 and Every Indication of Inadvertent Solicitude © Philip Pullman 2006 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should -
Critical Approach to Evolutionary Perspective of Richard Dawkins
World Journal of Environmental Biosciences All Rights Reserved WJES © 2014 Available Online at: www.environmentaljournals.org Volume 6, Supplementary : 78-82 ISSN 2277- 8047 Critical Approach to Evolutionary Perspective of Richard Dawkins Ghodratollah Shirzadi , Dr.Mahdi Dehbashi Department of Islamic philosophy and kalam, Khorasgan (Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Iran ABSTRACT This paper presents an analytical descriptive study to review and criticize the evolutionary perspective of Richard Dawkins. Using his own interpretation of the theory of Darwinian evolution he denies religion, God and other metaphysical beliefs. Dawkins criticism is based on rational approach and it is believed that Dawkins theory suffers from rational methodological weaknesses and lacks adequate explanation needed to prove his claim. He also deals with major proof that acts as a basis for his theory and leads to a vicious circle to prove his theory. Dawkins theory lacks internal consistency because he presents many of its claims including complexity of God's existence without providing any logical proof and merely by considering it as incontrovertible which presents his system’s weakness more than before. Keywords: Dawkins, evolution, denial of God, natural selection, cumulative selection Corresponding author: Alireza Sargolzaei existence, he has rejected them all. The important point in criticism of Dawkins thoughts is that although it is possible to explain the complexities of the universe from the perspective of INTRODUCTION biology, this cannot lead to the denial of the designer and order in the universe. After presenting the evolutionary theory of Charles Darwin in History 1859 and its completion by the evolutionary biologists as his It may be thought that Darwin's theory is the first theory that followers, some scholars like Richard Dawkins decided to believes in the evolution of species but this is contrary to fact rejects theism by providing naturalistic and atheistic because this view of the different species existed before Darwin. -
Dawkins's Gambit, Hume's Aroma, and God's Simplicity
PHILOSOPHIA CHRISTI VOL. 11, NO. 1 © 2009 Dawkins’s Gambit, Hume’s Aroma, and God’s Simplicity ERIK WIELENBERG The editors of a recent anthology on natural theology observe that since the time of David Hume, “the vast majority of philosophical attacks against the rationality of theism have borne an unmistakable Humean aroma.” Hume’s aroma became particularly pungent with the publication of Rich- ard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion in 2006. One of Dawkins’s more well-known remarks is that “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”2 In the same paragraph in which he makes that remark, Dawkins credits Hume with effectively criticizing the logic of the design argument, but suggests that Hume’s writings nevertheless would likely leave the atheist feeling “unsatisfied” and that it was only the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species some eighty-three years after Hume’s death that put the atheist at ease. It is somewhat ironic, therefore, that the central atheistic argument of The God Delusion is remarkably similar to an argument advanced by the character Philo in Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. In this paper I analyze the central atheistic argument of The God Delu- sion and expose its Humean roots. It turns out that Dawkins’s argument is a fragment of a more comprehensive critique of the rationality of theism that is ABSTRACT: I examine the central atheistic argument of Richard Dawkins’s book The God De- lusion (“Dawkins’s Gambit”) and illustrate its failure. I further show that Dawkins’s Gambit is a fragment of a more comprehensive critique of theism found in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. -
Gupta Comment
Discussion of Anil Gupta's “Outline of an Account of Experience” The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. Citation Byrne, Alex et al. "Discussion of Anil Gupta's “Outline of an Account of Experience”." Analytic Philosophy 59, 1 (March 2018): 75-88 © 1999-2020 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. As Published http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/phib.12121 Publisher Wiley Version Author's final manuscript Citable link https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123434 Terms of Use Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike Detailed Terms http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ Comments on Gupta Alex Byrne 1. Transitions Fundamental to Gupta’s picture is the idea of a “rational transition”. The role of experience, he thinks, “is not to provide the subject knowledge of anything or to bestow a rational or justificatory status on…beliefs or judgments”, but to “render rational certain transitions, including transitions from views to judgments”. His central non-perceptual example of a rational transition involves modus-ponens reasoning from the two premises, B and if B then C, to the conclusion C. And that does indeed seem to be rational or reasonable, in some sense of these elastic terms. Something is going right if someone reasons in this way—at least it’s better than affirming the consequent. Since valid reasoning, as Gupta emphasizes, implies nothing about whether the premises are true, or justifiably believed, or known, this example might seem to suggest that the rationality of transitions and the rationality of beliefs are quite different matters. -
Read Book the Extended Phenotype: the Long Reach of the Gene Kindle
THE EXTENDED PHENOTYPE: THE LONG REACH OF THE GENE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Richard Dawkins | 496 pages | 01 Oct 2016 | Oxford University Press | 9780198788911 | English | Oxford, United Kingdom The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene PDF Book Genetic Determinism and Gene Selectionism; 3. It would be improved if Dawkins were less preoccupied with defending himself against his detractors, if he better separated his broad points from his technical detail, and if he made clearer distinctions between his criticisms of others and his own positions. Of course, this new approach revolves around the ide In The Extended Phenotype , Richard Dawkins proposes that the expression of a gene is not limited simply to the organism's physical appearance or phenotype, that is the direct synthesis of proteins, or to the organism's behaviour, but also includes the impact of the phenotype and the behaviour on the organism's environment. The book has been awarded with , and many others. It's an expansion of topics covered in The Selfish Gene, which I'd previously enjoyed, but there was too much detail for me to take in. Oct 16, Pink rated it it was ok. So well drilled that we consider something for which that question has no answer to be suspicious if not insidious. He writes, "Organisms process matter and energy as well as information; each represents a dynamic node in a whirlpool of several currents, and self-reproduction is a property of the collective, not of genes With a multitude of examples Dawkins demonstrates that there is no real reason to believe in "gene A of X accounts for X's skin color" and at the same time deny anything like "gene A of X account's for change in Y's behavior". -
Curriculum Vitae 2015 JAMES THOMAS CARGILE Place and Date
Curriculum Vitae 2015 JAMES THOMAS CARGILE Place and Date of Birth Ponca City, Oklahoma - 13 April 1938 Education University of Utah, B.A. 1957 University of Virginia, M.A. 1962 University of Cambridge, Ph.D. 1965 Teaching Experience T.A., University of Virginia, 1960-62 Tutor, University of Cambridge, 1962-65 Assistant Professor, University of Virginia, 1965-69 Visiting Asst. Professor, University of Michigan, Fall 1968 Associate Professor, University of Virginia, 1969-80 Visiting Assoc. Professor, University of Illinois, Fall 1970 Professor, University of Virginia, 1981-present FBI Academy (taught logic and ethics) Areas of Specialization Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Logic, Philosophy of Language Honors and Awards All-University Outstanding Teaching Award, 1997 Publications Books Paradoxes: A Study in Form and Predication, Cambridge University Press, 1979. (This book was re-issued in paperback, 2009). Articles “Logical Form” in The Force of Argument, ed. By Jonathan Lear and Alex Oliver, Routledge, 2010, pp.48-67. Critical Notice of The Language of Thought Revisited by Jerry Fodor (Oxford 2008) in Analysis, February, 2010, pp.1-10. “The Fallacy of Epistemicism” Oxford Studies in Epistemology. 2006. pp. 33-67. “On ‘Alexander’s Dictum’” Topoi vol. 22 (2003). “On Russell’s Argument Against Resemblance Nominalism” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2003. “Panteismo” in Arete vol XIII no. 2, 2001. Comments on Christopher Peacocke’s Being Known for the Book Symposium Philosophical Books 2001. “Skepticism and Possibilities” Philosophical and Phenomenological Research 2000. “Proposition and Tense” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 1999. “On an Argument Against Closure” Nous, June 1999. “The Problem of Induction”, Philosophy 73, 1998. -
Anil Gupta, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Biographical Bibliometric Fact Sheets
Anil Gupta, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: Biographical Bibliometric Fact Sheets E. R. Prakasan and V. L. Kalyane Scientific Information Resource Division, Knowledge Management Group, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai, India – 400 085 *e-mail: [email protected] Anil Gupta, Distinguished Professor Logic, Philosophy of Language, Metaphysics, Epistemology PhD, Pittsburgh, 1977 [email protected] Anil Gupta is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, professor of History and Philosophy of Science, and a fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining the department in 2001, he taught at Indiana, Illinois at Chicago, and McGill [1]. Materials and Methods Standard bibliometric methods were used [2-70] for the analysis of the Bibliography (see Appendix) of Anil Gupta [71-117]. Results He is the author of The Logic of Common Nouns (Yale, 1980) and Empiricism and Experience (Oxford, 2006), and a co-author (with Nuel Belnap) of The Revision Theory of Truth (MIT, 1993). Gupta has received fellowships from the NEH and the ACLS, and he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, in 1998-99. Gupta’s main research interests lie in logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. Topics that are of special interest to him include definitions, truth, meaning, and perception. 50 7 Number of publications 45 Cumulative Number of Publications 6 40 ations c i 35 ons ubl 5 P cati 30 of 4 25 publi -
Conditionals in Theories of Truth⋆
Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Conditionals in Theories of Truth? Anil Gupta · Shawn Standefer Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract We argue that distinct conditionals|conditionals that are gov- erned by different logics|are needed to formalize the rules of Truth Intro- duction and Truth Elimination. We show that revision theory, when enriched with the new conditionals, yields an attractive theory of truth. We go on to compare this theory with one recently proposed by Hartry Field. Keywords Truth, paradox, revision theory, conditionals, circular definitions ? This is a near-final version of our paper published in the Journal of Philosophical Logic. Small differences may exist, so please cite the published version, available at http: //dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10992-015-9393-3. Anil Gupta University of Pittsburgh E-mail: [email protected] Shawn Standefer University of Melbourne E-mail: [email protected] 2 Anil Gupta, Shawn Standefer 1 Introduction The conditionals we will be concerned with are those used in stating the rules for truth, Truth Introduction (TI) and Truth Elimination (TE): (TI) If A, then `A' is true; and (TE) If `A' is true, then A. We will argue that the two conditionals here are different: they do not mean the same; they are not governed by the same logic. In outline, our argument will be as follows. We will take it that (TI) and (TE) are the best formulations we have of the principal rules governing truth. Aristotle suggested these rules in the Categories; the medievals called them `Aristotle's Rules'; and at least on this bit of logic no one has improved on Aristotle. -
RICHARD DAWKINS "A Su....,I11al Machine"
BOOKS BY JOHN BROCKMAN THIRD AS AUTHOR: By the Late John Brockman CULTURE 37 4fterwords AS EDITOR: - About Bateson Speculations Doi~ Science by John Brockman Ways of Knowi~ Creati'Vity How Thin~s Are A TOUCHSTONE BOOK Published by Simon & Schuster RICHARD DAWKINS "A su....,i11al Machine" w.DANIEL HILLIS: Notions like se(fish genes, memes, and RICHARD DAWKINS: Some time ago, I had a strangely moving experi- extended phenotypes are powerful and excitif111.They make ence. I was being interviewed by a Japanese television company, me think differently. Unfortunately, I~ a lot of time which had hired an English actor and dressed him up as Darwin. argui7111a-gainst people who ha-oe O'OeTinterpretedthese ideas. During the filming, I opened a door and greeted "Darwin." He and I They're too easily misunderstood as explainif111nwre than they then entered into a discussion out of time. I presented modem neo- do. So you see, this Dawkins is a da7111erousguy. Like Marx. Darwinist ideas and "Darwin" acted astounded, delighted, and sur- OrDanDin. prised. There are indeed indications that Darwin would have been • • • pleased about this modem way of looking at his ideas, because we know he was very troubled by genetics all his life. In Darwin's time, RICHARD DAWKINS is an evolutionary biologist; reader nobody understood genetics, except Mendel, but Darwin never read in the Department of Zoology at O~ord Uni'Vef'sity;Fel- Mendel; practically nobody read Mendel. low ofNew College; autlwr of The Selfish Gene (1976, 2d If only Darwin had read Mendel! A gigantic piece of the jigsaw ed. -
On Learning from Experience
ON LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE by Ori Beck B.A. in Philosophy and Criminology, Bar-Ilan University, 2005 M.A. in Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University, 2008 M.A. in Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2015 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Ori Beck It was defended on September 9, 2015 and approved by Anil Gupta, Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Edouard Machery, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science John McDowell, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy Mark Wilson, Professor of Philosophy Dissertation Director: Anil Gupta, Alan Ross Anderson Distinguished Professor of Philosophy ii Copyright c by Ori Beck 2015 iii ON LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCE Ori Beck, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 How can I come to justifiably (or knowledgeably) believe that there is an owl over there on the basis of my seeing its being there? More generally: How can we come to justifiably (or knowledgeably) believe things on the basis of our experiences? I argue that we can make do with a simple and intuitive answer: Experiences present us with objects, properties, relations and states of affairs (or, events). If we have the capacities to tell what these presented entities are, we can justifiably (or knowledgeably) form appropriate beliefs on the basis of the experiences. I call this position the “Simple Picture” (or, “SP”). SP stands in contrast to the Representationalist epistemology, according to which expe- riences do not quite present us with entities, as represent how the world is.