Showing and Self-Presentation of Experiences – Some Philosophical Cases
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Substance and the Concept of Personal Identity
AN OPEN ACCESS Ergo JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Substance and the Concept of Personal Identity JenS KIPPer University of Cologne In this paper, I identify and discuss the following feature of our judgments about hypothetical scenarios concerning the identity of persons: with respect to the vast majority of scenarios, both members of a pair of logically complementary proposi- tions about personal identity are conceivable. I consider a number of explanations of this feature that draw on the metaphysics and the epistemology of personal identity, none of which prove to be satisfactory. I then argue that in order to give an adequate explanation, one needs to recognize an important characteristic of our concept of personal identity: it is such that if there are mental substances (or the like), they constitute personal identity. At the same time, there can still be persons if there are no such substances. Since this finding casts doubts on the way that thought experi- ments about personal identity are usually set up, I end by outlining its potential consequences for the debate over the identity of persons. 1. Introduction The debate over the nature of personal identity is as replete with thought experi- ments as many other philosophical debates. But there is a nagging suspicion that thought experiments work differently when the identity of persons is concerned. For example, it is natural to think that our judgment that the person in Harry Frankfurt’s (1969) famous case is responsible for what he did is based on our conceptual competence. When John Locke argues, however, that the person in the body of a cobbler who has the memories of a prince is that prince (1694/1975: 340), he does not seem to be stating a conceptual truth. -
A Critique of Roderick Chisholm
DOI: https://doi.org/10.26512/rfmc.v8i2.35865 Intentionality and the Logico-Linguistic Commitment: A Critique of Roderick Chisholm [Intencionalidade e Compromisso Lógico-Linguístico: Uma crítica a Roderick Chisholm] Luis Niel* Abstract: The aim of this article is to analyze and criticize Roderick Chisholm’s con- ception of intentionality, which has, historically, served as the point of departure for most accounts of intentionality in analytic philosophy. My goal is to highlight the problematic ’logico-linguistic commitment’ presupposed by Chisholm, according to which mental concepts should be interpreted by means of semantic concepts. After addressing Chisholm’s differentiation between the ontological thesis (the idea that the intentional object might not exist) and the psychological thesis (the conception that only mental phenomena are intentional), as well as his defining criteria for intentionality (non-existential implication, independency of truth-value, and indirect reference), I fo- cus on the manifold problems presented by his theory. First, the two initial criteria entail a conceptual confusion between the semantic concept of ’intensionality’ and the mental concept of ’intentionality’. Second, according to these criteria-and against Chisholm’s explicit intention-perception and other cognitive activities should not be considered intentional. Third, there are no grounds for the artificial conflation of intentionality and the concept of ’propositional attitudes’-an equation which is an explicit tenet of the logico-linguistic commitment. In general, I argue that an interpretation of intentionality based on this commitment obscures the true meaning of the concept of intentionality, as it is presented, for instance, by phenomenology. Keywords: Chisholm. Intentionality. Intensionality. Propositional Attitudes. Logico- linguistic Commitment. -
PHIL. 555 – Fiction and Fictionalism Course Description: We Have No
PHIL. 555 – Fiction and Fictionalism Course Description: We have no trouble at all deploying our concept of fiction in everyday life. Yet, from a philosophical standpoint, few concepts are as problematic. Is what accounts for the difference between fictional and real representations something in the syntax (something manifest in the structure of the representation) or the semantics (the presence or absence of truth and reference), or is it a matter of pragmatics (the ways in which representations are used/intended to be used)? How should we analyze the truth- value of statements made in or about fictions? Can we learn anything from fictions, and can we make the case for literary cognitivism by drawing on the analogy between fictions and thought-experiments? What kinds of entities are fictional characters, and do they share anything in common with the entities postulated by mathematical and moral realism? This seminar will begin to address all of these questions, and touch upon the significance of the problems posed by fiction for aesthetics, metaphysics, metaethics, and the philosophy of mathematics. Schedule of Readings Week 1 Introductory Class Overview and organizational matters No readings Week 2 The Nature of Fiction I What is fiction, anyway? John Searle – The logical status of fictional discourse Gregory Currie – The Concept of Fiction David Davies – What is a literary work & The nature of fiction (Chs. 2 and 3 of Aesthetics and Literature) Week 3 The Nature of Fiction II What are fictions about? Harry Deutsch – Making Up Stories Stacy Friend – Real People in Unreal Contexts John Gibson – The Fictional and the Real Week 4 Truth in Fiction How to make it work; adding an intensional operator David K. -
Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real
Kairos. Journal of Philosophy & Science 17, 2016 Center for the Philosophy of Sciences of Lisbon University Centaurs, Pegasus, Sherlock Holmes: Against the Prejudice in Favour of the Real Cristina Travanini University of Rome Tor Vergata DAAD Fellow 2015/16 – FU Berlin [email protected] Abstract Meinong’s thought has been rediscovered in recent times by analytic phi- losophy: his object theory has significant consequences in formal ontology, and especially his account of impossible objects has proved itself to be decisive in a wide range of fields, from logic up to ontology of fiction. Rejecting the traditional ‘prejudice in favour of the real’, Meinong investigates what there is not: a peculiar non-existing object is precisely the fictional object, which exemplifies a number of properties (like Sherlock Holmes, who lives in Baker Street and is an outstanding de- tective) without existing in the same way as flesh-and-blood detectives do. Fictional objects are in some sense incomplete objects, whose core of constituent properties is not completely determined. Now, what does it imply to hold that a fictional object may also occur in true statements? We shall deal with the objections raised by Rus- sell and Quine against Meinong’s view, pointing out limits and advantages of both perspectives. Keywords Ontology of fiction, Meinong, classical quantification, Quine, meta-onto- logy. DOI 10.1515/kjps-2016-0017 1. Fictional Objects. Why Should We be Interested in Them? A fictional object is an object that occurs in fictional discourse, such as novels, scripts, short stories, created by the author’s imagination, so that we cannot find it in our actual world. -
Essence, Plenitude, and Paradox
PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES Philosophical Perspectives, 25, Metaphysics, 2011 ESSENCE, PLENITUDE, AND PARADOX Sarah-Jane Leslie Princeton University Essentialism in philosophy is the view that there are in principle two ways of having properties and including parts: the essential way and the accidental way (e.g, Fine, 1994, 1995; Johnston 1984, 2006; Kripke, 1980; Salmon 1986, 2005; Yablo 1987). As I understand the view, even an extreme essentialist — who takes every property and every part to be had essentially — should agree with the in-principle distinction while arguing that certain metaphysical considerations mean that the second way of having properties is not, and cannot be, exemplified. Such a view would contrast with the view of an anti-essentialist like Willard van Orman Quine who repudiates the very distinction between the two ways of having properties. Quine’s view is not that all properties are accidental, for that would be to use what he calls the “invidious distinction” (1953), rather than repudiate it. His view is that there is not even in principle these two ways of having properties (or satisfying predicates, as he would put it), about which we can ask “Which of these two ways do things have properties?” What then ostensibly distinguishes the essential way of having properties from the accidental way? An object’s essential properties are conditions on what it is to be that object, and this set of conditions fixes just which possibilities or possible worlds the object exists in, namely just those in which it satisfies those conditions. An object’s essential properties also fix how long it exists, namely only at those times at which it satisfies those conditions. -
INTENTIONALITY Past and Future VIBS
INTENTIONALITY Past and Future VIBS Volume 173 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Peter A. Redpath Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno Matti Häyry Mary-Rose Barral Steven V. Hicks Gerhold K. Becker Richard T. Hull Raymond Angelo Belliotti Mark Letteri Kenneth A. Bryson Vincent L. Luizzi C. Stephen Byrum Alan Milchman H. G. Callaway George David Miller Robert A. Delfino Alan Rosenberg Rem B. Edwards Arleen L. F. Salles Andrew Fitz-Gibbon John R. Shook Francesc Forn i Argimon Eddy Souffrant William Gay Tuija Takala Dane R. Gordon Anne Waters J. Everet Green John R. Welch Heta Aleksandra Gylling Thomas F. Woods a volume in Cognitive Science CS Francesc Forn i Argimon, Editor INTENTIONALITY Past and Future Edited by Gábor Forrai and George Kampis Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Cover Design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents - Requirements for permanence”. ISBN: 90-420-1817-8 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2005 Printed in the Netherlands CONTENTS Preface vii List of Abbreviations ix ONE The Necessity and Nature of Mental Content 1 LAIRD ADDIS TWO Reading Brentano on the Intentionality of the Mental 15 PHILIP J. BARTOK THREE Emotions, Moods, and Intentionality 25 WILLIAM FISH FOUR Lockean Ideas as Intentional Contents 37 GÁBOR FORRAI FIVE Normativity and Mental Content 51 JUSSI HAUKIOJA SIX The Ontological and Intentional Status of Fregean Senses: An Early Account of External Content 63 GREG JESSON -
Meinongian Merits and Maladies
Sam Hoadley-Brill | PHIL 197B | Spring 2019 1 Meinongian Merits and Maladies Willard V. Quine begins perhaps the most celebrated article on ontology of the 20th century: A curious thing about the ontological problem is its simplicity. It can be put in three Anglo-Saxon monosyllables: “What is there?” It can be answered, moreover, in a word –– “Everything” –– and everyone will accept this answer as true. However, this is merely to say that there is what there is. (1948, p. 21) Has Quine made a methodological mistake in these first few sentences? I do not wish to suggest that, because there are some theorists who deny that “Everything” is the correct answer to the ontological problem, Quine is being irresponsible in saying this answer is universally appealing; it is certainly an answer with which the vast majority of analytic philosophers would agree, in spite of their thinking it utterly uninformative and unsatisfying. But it is far from obvious that this licenses Quine’s inference that the sentences ‘Everything is’ and ‘There is whatever there is’ are semantically equivalent. Mightn’t it be true that, for something x, it is not true that there is an x? To find an answer, we must determine the semantic content of ‘something’ and ‘there is.’ According to what has long been the dominant school of thought in analytic meta-ontology–– defended not only by Quine, but also by Bertrand Russell, Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and many others––the meaning of ‘there is’ is identical to the meaning of ‘there exists.’ The most (in)famous aberration from this view is advanced by Alexius Meinong, whose ontological picture has endured extensive criticism (and borderline abuse) from several subscribers to the majority view. -
Monism P16ff
1 Intentionality in Mullā Ṣadrā Submitted by Sümeyye Parıldar to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arab and Islamic Studies In June 2014 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: ………………………………………………………….. 2 ABSTRACT The present study reconstructs psychological, linguistic and ontological aspects of Mullā Ṣadrā’s philosophy in the light of Brentano’s theory of intentionality. Brentano used intentionality as a psychological term to denote the ‘mental’ as opposed to the ‘natural’. Later, with Meinong, intentionality took an ontological commitment to assenting that ‘there are things that do not exist’. The chapters that discuss Ṣadrā’s philosophy reflect the two aspects with an investigation for the production process of intentional objects and an investigation of the status of these objects in ontology. The main aim of the research is to give an internalist and monist account for the nature of intentionality demonstrating an alternative approach to the concepts of existence and the soul. Ontologically, there is only one reality (existence) and nothing is left outside it. Accordingly, intentional objects are mental beings that are at a lower level of existence (wujūd ẓillī). The principles behind the monist ontology are: first, the gradational ontology (tashkīk) that all things are determined beings (mutamayyiz) and they are manifestations of a single reality at different levels of intensity (mutashakkik), and, second, the simplicity principle (basīṭ al-ḥaqīqa) in which existence is a simple reality that comprehends all beings whilst being the principle of multiplicity at the same time. -
Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence
Meinongian Semantics and Artificial Intelligence William J. Rapaport Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Department of Philosophy, and Center for Cognitive Science State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260-2000 [email protected] http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/ rapaport/ originally written in 1985; updated 3 February 1995; updated again, 28 June 2005 Abstract This paper introduces semantic networks to a philosophical audience and surveys several approaches to semantic-network semantics that, at the original time of writing (1985) had not previously been treated in the AI or computational- linguistics literature (but see ¡ 12), though there is a large philosophical literature investigating them in some detail. In particular, propositional semantic networks (exemplified by SNePS) are discussed, it is argued that only a fully intensional, Meinongian semantics is appropriate for them, and several Meinongian systems are presented. This paper was once allegedly forthcoming in: Simons, Peter (ed.), Essays on Meinong (Dettelbach: Roell Verlag) (or possibly Amsterdam: Rodopi Editions). A shorter version appeared as: Rapaport, William J. (1985), “Meinongian Semantics for Propositional Semantic Networks”, Proceedings of the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (University of Chicago) (Morristown, NJ: Association for Computational Linguistics): 43–48, [http://acl.ldc.upenn.edu/P/P85/P85-1006.pdf]. 1 1 Meinong, Philosophy, and Artificial Intelligence Philosophy has not been kind to Alexius Meinong, a late-19th/early-20th-century cognitive scientist (see Findlay 1963; Grossmann 1974; Rapaport 1978, 1991b; Routley 1979; Lambert 1983; Schubert-Kalsi 1987). Only recently (ca. 1970s) has there been a renaissance in Meinong studies. Even so, his writings are often treated as curiosities (or worse) by mainstream philosophers. -
The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle
THE PHILOSOPHICAL DEVELOPMENT OF GILBERT RYLE A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings © Charlotte Vrijen 2007 Illustrations front cover: 1) Ryle’s annotations to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus 2) Notes (miscellaneous) from ‘the red box’, Linacre College Library Illustration back cover: Rodin’s Le Penseur RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN The Philosophical Development of Gilbert Ryle A Study of His Published and Unpublished Writings Proefschrift ter verkrijging van het doctoraat in de Wijsbegeerte aan de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen op gezag van de Rector Magnificus, dr. F. Zwarts, in het openbaar te verdedigen op donderdag 14 juni 2007 om 16.15 uur door Charlotte Vrijen geboren op 11 maart 1978 te Rolde Promotor: Prof. Dr. L.W. Nauta Copromotor: Prof. Dr. M.R.M. ter Hark Beoordelingscommissie: Prof. Dr. D.H.K. Pätzold Prof. Dr. B.F. McGuinness Prof. Dr. J.M. Connelly ISBN: 978-90-367-3049-5 Preface I am indebted to many people for being able to finish this dissertation. First of all I would like to thank my supervisor and promotor Lodi Nauta for his comments on an enormous variety of drafts and for the many stimulating discussions we had throughout the project. He did not limit himself to deeply theoretical discussions but also saved me from grammatical and stylish sloppiness. (He would, for example, have suggested to leave out the ‘enormous’ and ‘many’ above, as well as by far most of the ‘very’’s and ‘greatly’’s in the sentences to come.) After I had already started my new job outside the academic world, Lodi regularly – but always in a pleasant way – reminded me of this other job that still had to be finished. -
Jeff Buechner.POMSIGMAA 2017 Invited Address
Computers, mathematical proof, and the nature of the human mind POMSIGMAA Keynote Address Philosophy of Mathematics American Mathematical Society and Mathematical Association of America Joint Meetings Jeff Buechner Rutgers University-Newark and The Saul Kripke Center, CUNY, The Graduate Center January 6th, 2017 1 1976 Appel and Haken prove the four- color theorem • June 21, 1976 Wolfgang Haken and Kenneth Appel, with the aid of John Koch, completed their proof of the Four-Color Theorem (4CT). (Haken turned 48 years old on that day.) • Their proof was published in 1977: “Every planar map is four colorable,” Parts 1 and II, and Supplements I and II, Illinois Journal of Mathematics, XXI, 84, September 1977 2 1976 Appel and Haken prove the four- color theorem • At one place in the proof of the 4CT, Appel and Haken need to find a finite list of reducible configurations with the property that every graph contains at least one configuration in the list. To do this, a lemma must be proved: that every configuration in an unavoidable set is reducible. A computer is needed to prove that all of the configurations are reducible. For instance, to show that one kind of configuration in the set is reducible requires 1,000,000 steps. 3 1976 Appel and Haken prove the four- color theorem • Although computers had already been used to prove theorems in mathematics before the Appel-Haken proof, the importance of the 4CT brought the use of a computer in proving it to the forefront of attention of mathematicians, as well as a lay public. -
Neurath's Boat, Theseus' Ship and Chisholm's Nonintactly Persisting Universe ABSTRACT
1 Neurath’s Boat, Theseus’ Ship and Chisholm’s Nonintactly Persisting Universe ABSTRACT: Neurath’s famous boat metaphor paints a picture of a coherentist system of knowledge where every statement (protocol or otherwise) is always open to revision. However, his total rejection of correspondence theory, I argue, raises questions about what “statements” actually are, since they can no longer be defined with reference to an external world. I believe that, if Neurath’s coherentism is taken seriously, statements must be ontological entities that make up a universe that is a nonintactly persisting object, in Roderick Chisolm’s sense. I explain this concept with recourse to the classic metaphysical riddle of the ship of Theseus. Otto Neurath famously compared our experience of the world to our being on a ship at sea that never reaches land. Instead, we have to constantly make repairs on the open water. His point was that we don’t have the benefit of being able to stop and check our theories of the world from a detached perspective. There are no absolute, indubitable certainties to which our theories must conform. We must be prepared to revise anything and everything as necessary, in order to maintain the coherence of our world system—to stay afloat: “We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials” (Neurath 1932/33, 201). Neurath’s metaphor is reminiscent of the ancient metaphysical riddle of Theseus’ ship: if the parts of a ship are slowly replaced over time, until the ship has none of its original parts, would it still be the same ship? In what follows, I use Roderick Chisholm’s language to suggest that, if Neurath’s metaphor is accurate, our world is a nonintactly persisting object, dropping and gaining parts over time according to the pragmatic needs of coherence.