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Some Strands of Wittgenstein's Normative Pragmatism
Some Strands of Wittgenstein’s Normative Pragmatism, and Some Strains of his Semantic Nihilism ROBERT B. BRANDOM ABSTRACT WORK TYPE In this reflection I address one of the critical questions this monograph is Article about: How to justify proposing yet another semantic theory in the light of Wittgenstein’s strong warnings against it. I see two clear motives for ARTICLE HISTORY Wittgenstein’s semantic nihilism. The first one is the view that philosophical Received: problems arise from postulating hypothetical entities such as ‘meanings’. To 27–January–2018 dissolve the philosophical problems rather than create new ones, Wittgenstein Accepted: suggests substituting ‘meaning’ with ‘use’ and avoiding scientism in philosophy 3–March–2018 together with the urge to penetrate in one's investigation to unobservable depths. I believe this first motive constitutes only a weak motive for ARTICLE LANGUAGE Wittgenstein’s quietism, because there are substantial differences between English empirical theories in natural sciences and semantic theories in philosophy that KEYWORDS leave Wittgenstein’s assimilation of both open to criticism. But Wittgenstein is Meaning and Use right, on the second motive, that given the dynamic character of linguistic Hypothetical Entities practice, the classical project of semantic theory is a disease that can be Antiscientism removed or ameliorated only by heeding the advice to replace concern with Semantic Nihilism meaning by concern with use. On my view, this does not preclude, however, a Linguistic Dynamism different kind of theoretical approach to meaning that avoids the pitfalls of the Procrustean enterprise Wittgenstein complained about. © Studia Humanitatis – Universidad de Salamanca 2019 R. Brandom (✉) Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin University of Pittsburgh, USA Vol. -
A Priori Rules: Wittgenstein on the Normativity of Logic
A Priori Rules: Wittgenstein on the Normativity of Logic Peter Railton The University of Michigan Introduction Like many, I have long been uneasy with the category of the a priori. Perhaps I have simply misunderstood it. It has seemed to me, at any rate, that asserting a claim or principle as a priori is tantamount to claiming that we would be justified in ruling out alternatives in advance, no matter what the future course of experience might hold. Yet in my own case, I have felt it would be mere bluffing were I to lodge such a claim. I certainly could not discover in myself any sense of the requisite authority, nor even any clear idea of where to look for guidance in forming it. Contemplating widely-used examples of "propositions true a priori" did not remove my worry. For a start, there was the shadow of history. A claim like "logical truth is a priori" or "the attribution of rationality is a priori in intentional explanation" kept sounding, to my ears, as if they echoed "the Euclidean geometry of space is a priori" or "the principle of sufficient reason is a priori in physical explanation". And these echoes awakened just sort of the worry that had initially unsettled me: I would pronouce myself satisfied that certain claims, at least, were safe from the threat of contrary experience, just on the eve of developments in our on-going view of the world that would lead a sensible person to want to reopen the question. So I would emerge looking like the (perhaps apocryphal) fellow who claimed, in the wake of the great inventions of the nineteenth century, that the US Patent Office could now be closed, since all the really new ideas had been used up. -
A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J
Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal Issue 27 Article 14 Winter 1-1-2004 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis Brown University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj Part of the Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons, Mathematics Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Philip J. (2004) "A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology," Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal: Iss. 27, Article 14. Available at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj/vol1/iss27/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Claremont at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis "Such a really remarkable discovery. I wanted your opinion on it. You know the formula m over naught equals infinity, m being any positive number? [m/0 = ]. Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by naught? In which case you have m equals infinity times naught [m = x 0]. That is to say, a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the Universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?" Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point, (1928), Chapter XI. I Introduction We are living in a mathematical age. Our lives, from the personal to the communal, from the communal to the international, from the biological and physical to the economic and even to the ethical, are increasingly mathematicized. -
As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain
Department of History and Civilization As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain Ana Avalos Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Florence, February 2007 EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE Department of History and Civilization As Above, So Below. Astrology and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century New Spain Ana Avalos Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of History and Civilization of the European University Institute Examining Board: Prof. Peter Becker, Johannes-Kepler-Universität Linz Institut für Neuere Geschichte und Zeitgeschichte (Supervisor) Prof. Víctor Navarro Brotons, Istituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación “López Piñero” (External Supervisor) Prof. Antonella Romano, European University Institute Prof. Perla Chinchilla Pawling, Universidad Iberoamericana © 2007, Ana Avalos No part of this thesis may be copied, reproduced or transmitted without prior permission of the author A Bernardo y Lupita. ‘That which is above is like that which is below and that which is below is like that which is above, to achieve the wonders of the one thing…’ Hermes Trismegistus Contents Acknowledgements 4 Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 1. The place of astrology in the history of the Scientific Revolution 7 2. The place of astrology in the history of the Inquisition 13 3. Astrology and the Inquisition in seventeenth-century New Spain 17 Chapter 1. Early Modern Astrology: a Question of Discipline? 24 1.1. The astrological tradition 27 1.2. Astrological practice 32 1.3. Astrology and medicine in the New World 41 1.4. -
Some Strands of Wittgenstein's Normative Pragmatism, and Some
Some Strands of Wittgenstein’s Normative Pragmatism, and Some Strains of his Semantic Nihilism ROBERT B. BRANDOM §1. Strands of Normative Pragmatism FIRST READ THE TRIUMVIRATE of classical American pragmatists as an I undergraduate, under the tutelage of Bruce Kuklick. He saw them as instituting a vibrant philosophical tradition that was visibly continued not only by C. I. Lewis, but by his students Goodman and Quine. (More controversially, but I believe, also correctly, he further saw the semantic holism Quine shared with Sellars as picking up a central strand of the idealist tradition —represented in the Golden Age by Lewis’s teacher Josiah Royce— with which pragmatism had always been in conversation.) My Doktorvater Richard Rorty then made familiar to me an understanding of pragmatism sufficiently capacious to include such disparate and reciprocally unsympathetic philosophers as the early Heidegger and the later Wittgenstein, as well as Sellars, and Quine’s student Davidson. I came to think of pragmatism as a house with many mansions, comprising a number of more or less closely related but distinct and separable commitments, relating various thinkers in the way Wittgenstein made famous under the rubric of “family resemblances.” Excavating the conceptual antecedents of those various pragmatist views led me to see some of the most central among them as rooted firmly in the thought of the German Idealists, Kant and Hegel —as Peirce and Dewey had explicitly avowed1. Among the most important of these antecedents is a thought that I take it serves as a fundamental orienting insight for the later Wittgenstein. This is the idea that intentionality is through and through a normative phenomenon. -
"The Philosophy of Humanism"
THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM Books by Corliss Lamont The Philosophy of Humanism, Eighth Edition, 1997 (posthumous) Lover’s Credo: Poems of Love, 1994 The Illusion of Immortality, Fifth Edition, 1990 Freedom of Choice Affirmed, Third Edition, 1990 Freedom Is as Freedom Does: Civil Liberties in America, Fourth Edition, 1990 Yes To Life: Memoirs of Corliss Lamont, 1990 Remembering John Masefield, 1990 A Lifetime of Dissent, 1988 A Humanist Funeral Service, 1977 Voice in the Wilderness: Collected Essays of Fifty Years, 1974 A Humanist Wedding Service, 1970 Soviet Civilization, Second Edition, 1955 The Independent Mind, 1951 The Peoples of the Soviet Union, 1946 You Might Like Socialism, 1939 Russia Day by Day Co-author (with Margaret I. Lamont), 1933 (Continued on last page of book) THE PHILOSOPHY OF HUMANISM CORLISS LAMONT EIGHTH EDITION, REVISED HALF-MOON FOUNDATION, INC. The Half-Moon Foundation was formed to promote enduring inter- national peace, support for the United Nations, the conservation of our country’s natural environment, and to safeguard and extend civil liberties as guaranteed under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. AMHERST, NEW YORK 14226 To My Mother FLORENCE CORLISS LAMONT discerning companion in philosophy Published 1997 by Humanist Press A division of the American Humanist Association 7 Harwood Drive, P.O. Box 1188 Amherst, NY 14226-7188 Eighth Edition Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-77244 ISBN 0-931779-07-3 Copyright © 1949, 1957, 1965, 1982, 1990, 1992 by Corliss Lamont. Copyright © 1997 by Half-Moon Foundation, Inc. Copy Editor, Rick Szykowny ~ Page Layout, F. J. O’Neill The following special copyright information applies to this electronic text version of The Philosophy of Humanism, Eighth Edition: THIS DOCUMENT IS COPYRIGHT © 1997 BY HALF-MOON FOUNDATION, INC. -
Our Health After Hiroshima?
HOW DO WE KNOW (Y)OUR HEALTH AFTER HIROSHIMA? ETHICS IN WRITING (Y)OUR HEALTH AS A CASE by KEN SCHRAMM A.B. (philosophy), Dartmouth College, 1954 M.D., University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, 1958 F.R.C.P. (Canada) Psychiatry, 1975 Diploma^ Applied Creative Nonfiction, University of British Columbia, 1992 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES Centre for the Study of Curriculum & Instruction Faculty of Education We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA April 1998 © Ken Schramm, 1998 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) 11 Abstract You do not yet know you are looking at my face, making a case of me. You are reading "How do we know (y)our health after Hiroshima? Ethics in writing (y)our health as a case," in a familied body, supplementing student and case-based curricula, written by U.B.C. faculty who teach basic and clinical health sciences with attention to ethical, aboriginal, alternative, and complementary medicines. -
Psychologism: a Case Study in the Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge/Martin Kusch
PSYCHOLOGISM For most of this century, Western philosophy has been resolutely antinaturalist, and until recently the sharp distinction between the empirical sciences and philosophy seemed almost self-evident: the questions of why they should be separate, and of how they came to be separate, were never asked. These questions are at the heart of Martin Kusch’s groundbreaking study. Antinaturalism rose to dominance in the debate on psychologism among German academic philosophers at the turn of the century. Psychologism, according to received opinion, was decisively refuted by Frege and Husserl. Kusch therefore examines their arguments and, crucially, relates them to the context that shaped that debate and gave those arguments their persuasive force. Drawing on perspectives pioneered by the sociology of scientific knowledge, he reconstructs the dynamics of the psychologism debate; he uncovers its causes and weighs the factors that determined its outcome. What emerges is the fascinating picture of a struggle, between ‘pure’ philosophy and the newly emerging experimental psychology, for academic status, social influence and institutional power. The triumph of antinaturalism, far from being the only logical conclusion, was dependent on historical contingency. Introducing forms of analysis new to the history of philosophy, Psychologism will make fascinating reading for lecturers and students of philosophy, psychology, sociology and cognitive science; it will also stimulate renewed debate on the prospects of antinaturalism at the close of this century. Martin Kusch is Lecturer at the Science Studies Unit of the University of Edinburgh. He is the author of Language as Calculus vs. Language as Universal Medium (1989), and Foucault’s Strata and Fields (1991). -
The Debate on Epistemic and Ethical Normativity
Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen THE DEBATE ON EPISTEMIC AND ETHICAL NORMATIVITY Dalibor Reni} 165.15 17.023 Epistemology uses some concepts which are usually understood as normative and evaluative. We talk about what a person should or should not believe or judge in certain epistemic circumstances. We evaluate beliefs or judgments with respect not only to whether they are true, but also to whether they are justified. We evaluate the person’s intellectual qualities and motivations with respect to whether she is reasonable, rational, wise, impartial, and epistemically responsible in general. In certain ways this is comparable to the way we evaluate persons and their actions in ethics. It is true that we cannot simply take it for granted that the epistemic evaluation of beliefs and subjects is one case of ethical evaluation, but they seem to be, at least, analogous. Whether or not epistemic normativity is a case of ethical normativity, there are good reasons to assume that notions like ethics of belief, ethics of inquiry or truth–ethos, which we often come across in epistemology, are relevant for understanding epistemic normativity. The question of ethical factors in epistemology has historically underlain Western epistemology, even if it was not always the main focus of attention. The interest for that topic has been revived in recent years in an unexpected settingthat of analytic epistemology. The debate has reached such a degree of liveliness that some commentators speak of a “value turn” in epistemology.1 The issues discussed are mainly the question of the validity of the traditional deontological concept of epistemic normativity, either in itself or in contrast to its consequentialist alternative, and the question of the relevance of virtue ethics in epistemology (virtue epistemology). -
Normative Science
Normative Science Henrik Rydenfelt University of Helsinki Margolis on normativity “[N]ormativity is thoroughly sittlich; it cannot convincingly provide any privileged sources by which to validate our claims or legitimate our validative practices. Something of the sort holds true as well of truth and knowledge in general— though I remind you that that need not spell disaster. It does, however, confirm that the analysis of science and normativity is systematically intertwined. (I find a distinct argumentative advantage there.)” Problem of normativity Contemporary philosophers: ● A denial of “first philosophy” as circular, regressive or dogmatic ● A view of normative questions as not scientifically scrutable (or science as limited to the “descriptive”, not “prescriptive”) The project (1) Normativity received (as a capacity) ● Intention/purpose as a part of human nature as developed ● Irreducible, reductive attempts misguided ● Compare: Margolis’s sittlich and “Darwinian effect” (2) Normative views can be revised critically ● Analogy to any (other) science ● Fallibilism instead of circularity or regress ● The notion of reality can be invoked her (Peirce’s Darwinian lesson) Four challenges (1) Philosophical naturalism - Unless reduced to something non-normative, normative “facts” would be non-natural, hence not scientifically scrutable (2) Moral semantics - Or normative claims cannot be true in the “descriptive” sense (3) Practical vs. theoretical reasoning - Theoretical reasoning (or scientific inquiry) differs in kind from practical reasoning -
![On Facts and Values: Critique of the Fact-Value Dichotomy in Economics Joseph Noko [Zimbabwe]](https://docslib.b-cdn.net/cover/2694/on-facts-and-values-critique-of-the-fact-value-dichotomy-in-economics-joseph-noko-zimbabwe-3392694.webp)
On Facts and Values: Critique of the Fact-Value Dichotomy in Economics Joseph Noko [Zimbabwe]
real-world economics review, issue no. 66 subscribe for free On facts and values: critique of the fact-value dichotomy in economics Joseph Noko [Zimbabwe] Copyright: Joseph Noko, 2014 You may post comments on this paper at http://rwer.wordpress.com/comments-on-rwer-issue-no-66 Abstract The fact-value dichotomy has been with us for centuries, since David Hume gave birth to the idea and in its most modern form was championed by the logical positivists. Two thought-experiments throw open the nature of the relationship between facts and values and later, Socrates is invoked to demonstrate the objective dimension of values and the difference between a value that is held as true and one that is true. This leads, at the end, to the following theorem: When we speak of the division between facts and values in conceptual space, we must admit that the truth and idea of facts is not definable using the expressive means facts afford, rather, the truth and idea of facts can only be defined with values, and these values have an objective dimension. Keywords fact-value dichotomy, Hume’s guillotine, positive-normative distinction, Socrates, fact-value entanglement, factual commitments, significance testing JEL codes A13, B41, D03 Introduction There is a certain tendency in economics, whose genealogy may be traced back to the time of the hardening and ossification of Scepticism and which has the smell of the Dogmatism of Clitomachus and Carneades and other Academicians of classical Greece1. It is to David Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature, that we formally owe this tendency: that of the segregation of facts from values. -
Crisis Theory: the Challenge to Peace Research
CHAPTER ONE Crisis Theory: The Challenge to Peace Research BOULDING’S SCIENTISM In framing a question concerning the meaning of the twentieth century, one must inevitably acknowledge a hermeneutic prejudice with respect to both content and boundary, declaring “our time” to be a time possessed of its own most proper significance. Thus, in the domain of sociopolitical inquiry as it bears upon the study of peace, we have a representative work in Kenneth Boulding’s widely read The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (1964). In this work Boulding discloses, as the meaning of the century, the fact of “a great transition” from civilization to “postcivilization.” Today, this distinction may well be termed the modern-postmodern transition as we re-examine the structural possibilities of civil society. Boulding recommends, as the appro- priate comportment and strategy, “critical acceptance”; and, rather than understanding the transition as itself an ideological position, he sees the great transition from the perspective of one having “no desire to plant a standard other than truth itself.” Thus, given the evident relationship in our time between the assertion of ideology and conflict, and, thus, the possible degeneration of ideological conflict into war, Boulding (in a spirit of fidelity 17 18 Theoretical Critique to truth) concludes: “Therefore, an understanding of ideologies, of man’s need for them, and of the circumstances under which they can be modified, is a crucial component in the achievement of the great transition.”1 The practical issue