From Empiricism to Expressivism 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

From Empiricism to Expressivism 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 1 2 From Empiricism to Expressivism 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd i 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:14:10:14 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd iiii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 From Empiricism 4 5 6 to Expressivism 7 8 9 brandom reads sellars 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Robert B. Brandom 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England • 2014 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd iiiiii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 Copyright © 2014 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College 28 All rights reserved 29 Printed in the United States of America 30 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 31 Brandom, Robert. 32 From empiricism to expressivism : Brandom reads Sellars / Robert B. Brandom. pages cm 33 Includes bibliographical references and index. 34 ISBN 978-0-674-18728-3 (alk. paper) 35 1. Sellars, Wilfrid. 2. Empiricism. 3. Pragmatism. 4. Expressivism (Ethics) I. Title. 36 B945.S444B73 2014 170'.42—dc23 2014008332 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd iivv 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 Even without this explicit dedication, 4 it would be clear that this one is for Wilfi d. 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd v 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd vvii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 Contents 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Title Abbreviations ix 12 13 Introduction 1 14 15 1 Categories and Noumena: Two Kantian Axes of Sellars’s Th ought 30 16 2 Th e Centrality of Sellars’s Two-Ply Account of Observation 17 to the Arguments of “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” 99 18 3 Pragmatism, Inferentialism, and Modality 19 in Sellars’s Arguments against Empiricism 120 20 4 Modality and Normativity: 21 From Hume and Quine to Kant and Sellars 145 22 23 5 Modal Expressivism and Modal Realism: Together Again 174 24 6 Sortals, Identity, and Modality: Th e Metaphysical 25 Signifi cance of the Modal Kant-Sellars Th esis 216 26 7 Sellars’s Metalinguistic Expressivist Nominalism 236 27 28 Credits 273 29 30 Index 275 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd vviiii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd vviiiiii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 Title Abbreviations 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 EPM Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind 12 PPPW Pure Pragmatics and Possible Worlds: Th e Early Essays of Wilfrid 13 Sellars 14 15 CDCM “Counterfactuals, Dispositions, and the Causal Modalities” 16 TTC “Toward a Th eory of the Categories” 17 RNWW “Realism and the New Way of Words” 18 GE “Grammar and Existence: A Preface to Ontology” 19 NS “Naming and Saying” 20 21 AE “Abstract Entities” 22 BSD Between Saying and Doing 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd iixx 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd x 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 From Empiricism to Expressivism 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd xxii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd xxiiii 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 1 Introduction 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1. Kant, Pragmatism, and the “New Way of Words” 10 11 Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (1912–1989) was the greatest American philosopher of 12 the middle years of the twentieth century. Th e depth, originality, and range 13 of his philosophical thought earn him a place alongside Charles Sanders 14 Peirce, the greatest American philosopher of an earlier generation. From the 15 point of view of contemporary conventional opinion among Anglophone 16 philosophers, this assessment is somewhat eccentric—though not quite idio- 17 syncratic. Th ere is no question that other American philosophers of the time 18 were more infl uential than Sellars—of those with a large overlap of interests, 19 W. V. O. Quine (1908–2000) being preeminent among them. But one can 20 also gauge the importance of a philosopher by the wealth of ideas, connec- 21 tions, and projects he bequeaths, by their power and fecundity, their capac- 22 ity for further development, their potential for further illumination. Peirce’s 23 scattered, fi tful, frustrating writings remain a trove of mostly still-buried 24 treasures. I fi nd in Sellars’s more systematic, sustained, if sometimes equally 25 frustrating, writings correspondingly rich veins of philosophical ore. 26 It was obvious to his contemporaries that Sellars was not only an immensely 27 talented philosopher, but one distinguished from his fellow analysts of the 28 time both by his overtly systematic ambitions and by the self-consciously 29 historical roots of his thought. Although his range of historical reference was 30 very wide, the most important fi gure for Sellars always was Kant. Th e subtitle 31 of his most systematic work, his 1966 John Locke lectures, is “Variations on 32 Kantian Th emes.” Being avowedly interested in and infl uenced by Kant was 33 unusual among analytic philosophers during the period of Sellars’s fl oruit in 34 the late fi ft ies and early sixties. Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore had forged 35 the fi ghting faith of analytic philosophy in opposition to the then-dominant 36 37 BBrandomrandom 11stst ppages.inddages.indd 1 66/5/2014/5/2014 33:10:26:10:26 PPMM 2 FROM EMPIRICISM TO EXPRESSIVISM 1 British Idealism inspired by Hegel (the passion of their youth), which they 2 properly saw as developing themes already implicit in Kant’s transcendental 3 idealism. Th e recoil from Kant in Sellars’s philosophical culture circle was 4 not universal. Of those with most infl uence on Sellars, C. I. Lewis was a self- 5 professed neo-Kantian, who did more than anyone else to keep the teaching 6 of the fi rst Critique alive in American graduate schools of philosophy. And 7 Sellars was in an ideal position to see how deeply infl uenced by his neo-Kan- 8 tian background Rudolf Carnap was—perhaps better situated in this regard 9 than Carnap himself. 10 Th e eff orts in the late sixties of John Rawls in America and Peter Strawson 11 in Britain ensured that Kant would be recovered for later generations not 12 only for the Anglophone canon but as a party to contemporary philosophi- 13 cal conversation. Sellars’s development of Kantian ideas in application to 14 issues of current philosophical interest has yet to have its hearing, how- 15 ever. In Chapter 1 of this work, I talk about two major Kantian axes of 16 Sellars’s thought: his metalinguistic version of the Kantian idea of catego- 17 ries (“pure concepts of the Understanding”) and his scientifi c naturalism 18 as a version of Kant’s distinction between phenomena and noumena. On 19 the fi rst topic, following out clues he fi nds in Carnap, he gives a metalin- 20 guistic reading of Kant’s thought that, besides concepts used in empiri- 21 cal description and explanation, there are also concepts whose expressive 22 role it is to make explicit necessary features of the framework that makes 23 empirical description and explanation possible.
Recommended publications
  • Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Chemistry
    Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Chemistry Jaap van Brakel Abstract: In this paper I assess the relation between philosophy of chemistry and (general) philosophy of science, focusing on those themes in the philoso- phy of chemistry that may bring about major revisions or extensions of cur- rent philosophy of science. Three themes can claim to make a unique contri- bution to philosophy of science: first, the variety of materials in the (natural and artificial) world; second, extending the world by making new stuff; and, third, specific features of the relations between chemistry and physics. Keywords : philosophy of science, philosophy of chemistry, interdiscourse relations, making stuff, variety of substances . 1. Introduction Chemistry is unique and distinguishes itself from all other sciences, with respect to three broad issues: • A (variety of) stuff perspective, requiring conceptual analysis of the notion of stuff or material (Sections 4 and 5). • A making stuff perspective: the transformation of stuff by chemical reaction or phase transition (Section 6). • The pivotal role of the relations between chemistry and physics in connection with the question how everything fits together (Section 7). All themes in the philosophy of chemistry can be classified in one of these three clusters or make contributions to general philosophy of science that, as yet , are not particularly different from similar contributions from other sci- ences (Section 3). I do not exclude the possibility of there being more than three clusters of philosophical issues unique to philosophy of chemistry, but I am not aware of any as yet. Moreover, highlighting the issues discussed in Sections 5-7 does not mean that issues reviewed in Section 3 are less im- portant in revising the philosophy of science.
    [Show full text]
  • Mind Body Problem and Brandom's Analytic Pragmatism
    The Mind-Body Problem and Brandom’s Analytic Pragmatism François-Igor Pris [email protected] Erfurt University (Nordhäuserstraße 63, 99089 Erfurt, Germany) Abstract. I propose to solve the hard problem in the philosophy of mind by means of Brandom‟s notion of the pragmatically mediated semantic relation. The explanatory gap between a phenomenal concept and the corresponding theoretical concept is a gap in the pragmatically mediated semantic relation between them. It is closed if we do not neglect the pragmatics. 1 Introduction In the second section, I will formulate the hard problem. In the third section, I will describe a pragmatic approach to the problem and propose to replace the classical non-normative physicalism/naturalism with a normative physicalism/naturalism of Wittgensteinian language games. In subsection 3.1, I will give a definition of a normative naturalism. In subsection 3.2, I will make some suggestions concerning an analytic interpretation of the second philosophy of Wittgenstein. In the fourth section, I will propose a solution to the hard problem within Brandom‟s analytic pragmatism by using the notion of the pragmatically mediated semantic relation. In the fifth section, I will make some suggestions about possible combinatorics related to pragmatically mediated semantic relations. In the sixth section, I will consider pragmatic and discursive versions of the mind-body identity M=B. In the last section, I will conclude that the explanatory gap is a gap in a pragmatically mediated semantic relation between B and M. It is closed if we do not neglect pragmatics. 2 The Hard Problem The hard problem in the philosophy of mind can be formulated as follows.
    [Show full text]
  • Towards a Methodology for Ontology Based Model Engineering
    Towards a methodology for ontology based model engineering Nicola Guarino and Christopher Welty† LADSEB/CNR Padova, Italy {guarino,welty}@ladseb.pd.cnr.it http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html Phone: +39 049 829 57 51 Fax: +39 049 829 57 63 † on sabbatical from Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY Abstract The Formal Tools of Ontological Analysis The philosophical discipline of Ontology is evolving towards an engineering discipline, and in this evolution the Our methodology is based on four fundamental ontologi- need for a principled methodology has clearly arisen. In cal notions, which will be discussed in this section: identity, this paper, we briefly discuss our recent work towards devel- unity, rigidity, and dependence. We shall represent the oping a methodology for ontology-based model engineering. behavior of a property with respect to these notions by This methodology builds on previous methodology efforts, means of a set of meta-properties. Our goal is to show how and is founded on important analytic notions that have been these meta-properties impose some constraints on the way drawn from Philosophy and adapted to Engineering: identity, subsumption is used to model a domain. unity, rigidity, and dependence. We demonstrate how these techniques can be used to analyze properties, which clarifies many misconceptions about taxonomies and helps bring substantial order to ontologies. Preliminaries Let’s assume we have a first-order language L0 (the model- Introduction ing language) whose intended domain is the world to be modeled, and another first order language (the meta-lan- Ontologies are becoming increasingly popular in prac- L1 tice, and the number of poor quality ontologies have made guage) whose constant symbols are the predicates of L0.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphysics Today and Tomorrow*
    1 Metaphysics Today and Tomorrow* Raphaël Millière École normale supérieure, Paris – October 2011 Translated by Mark Ohm with the assistance of Leah Orth, Jon Cogburn, and Emily Beck Cogburn “By metaphysics, I do not mean those abstract considerations of certain imaginary properties, the principal use of which is to furnish the wherewithal for endless dispute to those who want to dispute. By this science I mean the general truths which can serve as principles for the particular sciences.” Malebranche Dialogues on Metaphysics and Religion 1. The interminable agony of metaphysics Throughout the twentieth century, numerous philosophers sounded the death knell of metaphysics. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rudolf Carnap, Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, and, henceforth, Hilary Putnam: a great many tutelary figures have extolled the rejection, the exceeding, the elimination, or the deconstruction of first philosophy. All these necrological chronicles do not have the same radiance, the same seriousness, nor the same motivations, but they all agree to dismiss the discipline, which in the past was considered “the queen of the sciences”, with a violence at times comparable to the prestige it commanded at the time of its impunity. Even today, certain philosophers hastily spread the tragic news with contempt for philosophical inquiry, as if its grave solemnity bestowed upon it some obviousness. Thus, Franco Volpi writes: ‘Grand metaphysics is dead!’ is the slogan which applies to the majority of contemporary philosophers, whether continentals or of analytic profession. They all treat metaphysics as a dead dog.1 In this way, the “path of modern thought” would declare itself vociferously “anti- metaphysical and finally post-metaphysical”.
    [Show full text]
  • Out of Sorts? Remedies for Theories of Object
    Out of Sorts? Some Remedies for Theories of Object Concepts: A Reply to Rhemtulla and Xu Sergey V. Blok University of Texas at Austin George E. Newman Yale University Lance J. Rips Northwestern University Psychological Review, in press. Out of Sorts? / 2 Abstract Concepts of individual objects (e.g., a favorite chair or pet) include knowledge that allows people to identify these objects, sometimes after long stretches of time. In an earlier article, we set out experimental findings and mathematical modeling to support the view that judgments of identity depend on people’s beliefs about the causal connections that unite an object’s earlier and later stages. In this article, we examine Rhemtulla and Xu’s (in press) critique of the causal theory. We argue that Rhemtulla and Xu’s alternative sortal proposal is not a necessary part of identity judgments, is internally inconsistent, leads to conflicts with current theories of categories, and encounters problems explaining empirical dissociations. Previous evidence also suggests that causal factors dominate spatiotemporal continuity and perceptual similarity in direct tests. We conclude that the causal theory provides the only existing account consistent with current evidence. Keywords: Concepts Causation Sortals Object concepts Out of Sorts? / 3 Out of Sorts? Some Remedies for Theories of Object Concepts: A Reply to Rhemtulla and Xu Many objects persist over stretches of time too long for us to track perceptually. If you attend your thirtieth high school reunion, you’re bound to run into classmates like Fred Lugbagg whom you haven’t encountered since graduation and whose perceptual appearance is no more similar to the 18-year- old Lugbagg than is the appearance of most of the other males at the reunion.
    [Show full text]
  • Durham E-Theses
    Durham E-Theses Understanding, normativity, and scientic practice LEWENDON-EVANS, HARRY,EDWARD How to cite: LEWENDON-EVANS, HARRY,EDWARD (2018) Understanding, normativity, and scientic practice, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/12780/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk Understanding, Normativity, and Scientific Practice Harry Lewendon-Evans PhD Thesis Department of Philosophy Durham University 2018 Abstract Understanding, Normativity, and Scientific Practice Harry Lewendon-Evans Recent work in epistemology and philosophy of science has argued that understanding is an important cognitive achievement that philosophers should seek to address for its own sake. This thesis outlines and defends a new account of scientific understanding that analyses the concept of understanding in terms of the concept of normativity. The central claim is that to understand means to grasp something in the light of norms.
    [Show full text]
  • The Gnosiology As Experience of the Resurrected Christ in the Liturgical Texts of the Pentecostarion
    The Gnosiology as experience of the Resurrected Christ in the liturgical texts of the Pentecostarion CONTENT INTRODUCTION 4 The motif for choosing the theme 4 The stage of the theme`s research 5 The used method 5 The purpose of the research 5 Terminological clarifications 6 CHAPTER I. THE PENTECOSTARION – THE HYMNOGRAPHICAL IMAGE OF 11 THE STATE OF RESURRECTION IN JESUS CHRIST 1.1. The Pentecostarion – the Church`s Book of Cult 11 1.2. The Pentecostarion – the Relation Dogma – Cult – Knowledge 24 1.2.1. The Cult, Favorable Environment for Spreading the Faith and for Knowing the Dogma 27 1.2.2. The Church`s Cult, Guardian of the Dogma Against Heresy 30 1.2.3. The Dogma, the Cult and the Spiritual Knowledge 33 1.3. The Pentecostarion – the Doxological Dimension of the Knowledge 36 CHAPTER II. THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ORTHODOX 51 GNOSIOLOGY MIRRORED IN PENTECOSTARION 2.1. Revelation and Knowledge 51 2.2. Image and Likeness of the Power of the Man of Knowing God 63 2.2.1. The Falling into Sin and the Image Corrupted through Passions 67 2.2.2. The Renewal of the Engulfed by Passion Image 68 2.3. Person - Communion - Knowledge 75 CHAPTER III THE CHRISTOLOGICAL FUNDAMENTALS OF THE ORTHODOX 84 GNOSIOLOGY MIRRORED IN PENTECOSTARION 1 3.1. The Man`s Healing into Christ – Premise of the Knowledge 84 3.1.1. The Embodiment of the Son of God 84 3.1.1.1. Jesus Christ True God and True Man 90 3.1.1.2. The Deification of the Human Nature into Christ 91 3.1.1.3.
    [Show full text]
  • Trends in Philosophy of Mind and in Philosophy of Neuroscience
    Trends in Philosophy of Mind and in Philosophy of Neuroscience Juan José Sanguineti School of Philosophy, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, Italy Published with permission of Springer Science + Business Media, 2015 In P. A. Gargiulo, H. L. Mesones-Arroyo (eds.), Psychiatry and Neuroscience Update. Bridging the Divide, Springer, Heidelberg 2015, pp. 23-37. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-17103-6 Abstract. This paper presents current trends in philosophy of mind and philosophy of neuroscience, with a special focus on neuroscientists dealing with some topics usually discussed by philosophers of mind. The aim is to detect the philosophical views of those scientists, such as Eccles, Gazzaniga, Damasio, Changeux, and others, which are not easy to classify according to the standard divisions of dualism, functionalism, emergentism, and others. As the variety of opinions in these fields is sometimes a source of confusion, it is worth the effort to obtain an overall panorama of the topic. A general conclusion on epistemological and ontological issues, concerning the relationship between neurobiology and philosophy and the multi-level account of the embodied mind, is proposed. Key words: Dualism, monism, behaviorism, functionalism, reductionism, emergentism, enactivism, mind, mental acts, self, body, soul, person. 1. Introduction Philosophical questions concerning the nature of the mind and its relationship with the body are usually addressed by philosophy of mind. This area of philosophy inherits the traditional issue of the relationship between the soul and the body, interpreted in modern terms as the mind and the brain. Whereas the classical view of the problem was thoroughly ontological, going back to ancient philosophers as Plato and Aristotle, philosophy of mind, born in the twentieth century, is generally more epistemological, posing its object of inquiry within a scientific framework.
    [Show full text]
  • Sellars in Context: an Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works Peter Jackson Olen University of South Florida, [email protected]
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School January 2012 Sellars in Context: An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works Peter Jackson Olen University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the American Studies Commons, and the Philosophy of Science Commons Scholar Commons Citation Olen, Peter Jackson, "Sellars in Context: An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars's Early Works" (2012). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4191 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Sellars in Context: An Analysis of Wilfrid Sellars’s Early Works by Peter Olen A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Co-Major Professor: Stephen Turner, Ph.D. Co-Major Professor: Richard Manning, Ph.D. Rebecca Kukla, Ph.D. Alexander Levine, Ph.D. Willem deVries, Ph.D. Date of Approval: March 20th, 2012 Keywords: Logical Positivism, History of Analytic Philosophy Copyright © 2012, Peter Olen DEDICATION I dedicate this dissertation to the faculty members and fellow graduate students who helped me along the way. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I want to thank Rebecca Kukla, Richard Manning, Stephen Turner, Willem deVries, Alex Levine, Roger Ariew, Eric Winsberg, Charles Guigon, Nancy Stanlick, Michael Strawser, and the myriad of faculty members who were instrumental in getting me to this point.
    [Show full text]
  • Theoretical Analysis of Depreciation in Municipalities (Gnosiology, Ontology and Epistemology)
    Trakia Journal of Sciences, Vol. 17, Suppl. 1, pp 524-529, 2019 Copyright © 2019 Trakia University Available online at: http://www.uni-sz.bg ISSN 1313-7069 (print) ISSN 1313-3551 (online) doi:10.15547/tjs.2019.s.01.083 THEORETICAL ANALYSIS OF DEPRECIATION IN MUNICIPALITIES (GNOSIOLOGY, ONTOLOGY AND EPISTEMOLOGY) D. Velikov* Department of Finance and Management, Plovdiv University "Paisii Hilendarski", Plovdiv, Bulgaria ABSTRACT The amortization charge leads to an improvement in the quality of accountability and public finance statistics. Accounting analysis is part of the information function of accounting. The aim of the publication is to analyze depreciation in municipalities and to propose a synthesis of properties and a summary of common features, trends and laws. The ontological nature of depreciation in accounting science presents the main problems solved by accounting for depreciation. Epistemological coverage of depreciation covers its origin, scope and peculiarities. The research methods are analysis and synthesis, comparison, analogy, modeling, systematization and summary, comparative and group accounting analysis. The results obtained are presented in tabular form. The conclusion is that by switching from a smaller range of the signage coverage of the unit to the depreciation in municipalities, we are targeting a wider range of sign coverage, pointing out the qualities of the different categories of depreciation in the municipalities as an internal definition and an external manifestation. Key words: depreciation, theoretical analysis, accounting, public sector, category, quality. INTRODUCTION expression of the systematic distribution of the The accrual of depreciation in the public sector depreciable value of the asset over its last life. leads to an improvement in the quality of The subject of the survey is the normative accountability and public finance statistics.
    [Show full text]
  • An Introduction to Late British Associationism and Its Context This Is a Story About Philosophy. Or About Science
    Chapter 1: An Introduction to Late British Associationism and Its Context This is a story about philosophy. Or about science. Or about philosophy transforming into science. Or about science and philosophy, and how they are related. Or were, in a particular time and place. At least, that is the general area that the following narrative will explore, I hope with sufficient subtlety. The matter is rendered non-transparent by the fact that that the conclusions one draws with regard to such questions are, in part, matters of discretionary perspective – as I will try to demonstrate. My specific historical focus will be on the propagation of a complex intellectual tradition concerned with human sensation, perception, and mental function in early nineteenth century Britain. Not only philosophical opinion, but all aspects of British intellectual – and practical – life, were in the process of significant transformation during this time. This cultural flux further confuses recovery of the situated significance of the intellectual tradition I am investigating. The study of the mind not only was influenced by a set of broad social shifts, but it also participated in them fully as both stimulus to and recipient of changing conditions. One indication of this is simply the variety of terms used to identify the ‘philosophy of mind’ as an intellectual enterprise in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 But the issue goes far deeper into the fluid constitutive features of the enterprise - including associated conceptual systems, methods, intentions of practitioners, and institutional affiliations. In order to understand philosophy of mind in its time, we must put all these factors into play.
    [Show full text]
  • Islamic Philosophy (PHIL 10197) Course Organiser: Fedor Benevich
    Islamic Philosophy (PHIL 10197) Course Organiser: Fedor Benevich Email: [email protected] Office Hours: Thursday 10-12am, signup via doodle at least 8hrs in advance. Course Secretary: Ann-Marie Cowe Email: [email protected] Course Description: This course will provide a systematic introduction to key issues and debates in Islamic philosophy by focusing on the medieval period and showing its relevance for contemporary philosophical discussions. It will explore the mechanisms of the critical appropriation of the Western (Greek) philosophical heritage in the Islamic intellectual tradition and the relationship between philosophy and religion in Islam. Islamic philosophy is the missing link between ancient Greek thought and the European (medieval and early modern) philosophical tradition. It offers independent solutions to many philosophical problems which remain crucial for contemporary readers. Starting with a historical overview of the most important figures and schools, this course covers central topics of Islamic philosophy, such as (the selection of topics may vary from year to year): - faith and reason - philosophy and political authority - free will and determinism (incl. the problem of evil) - scientific knowledge and empiricism - materialism (atomism) and sortal essentialism - self-awareness, personal identity, and the immateriality of soul - proofs for God's existence Primary sources will be read in English translation. Learning Outcomes: On completion of this course, the student will be able to: 1. Demonstrate knowledge of the central issues of Islamic philosophy 2. Analyse materials independently and critically engage with other interpretations 3. Provide systematic exposition and argumentation for their views 4. Demonstrate understanding of a non-Western intellectual tradition Topics and Readings: Week 1.
    [Show full text]