Carnap on Analyticity and Existence
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Denying a Dualism: Goodman's Repudiation of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction
Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 28, 2004, 226-238. Denying a Dualism: Goodman’s Repudiation of the Analytic/Synthetic Distinction Catherine Z. Elgin The analytic synthetic/distinction forms the backbone of much modern Western philosophy. It underwrites a conception of the relation of representations to reality which affords an understanding of cognition. Its repudiation thus requires a fundamental reconception and perhaps a radical revision of philosophy. Many philosophers believe that the repudiation of the analytic/synthetic distinction and kindred dualisms constitutes a major loss, possibly even an irrecoverable loss, for philosophy. Nelson Goodman thinks otherwise. He believes that it liberates philosophy from unwarranted restrictions, creating opportunities for the development of powerful new approaches to and reconceptions of seemingly intractable problems. In this article I want to sketch some of the consequences of Goodman’s reconception. My focus is not on Goodman’s reasons for denying the dualism, but on some of the ways its absence affects his position. I do not contend that the Goodman obsessed over the issue. I have no reason to think that the repudiation of the distinction was a central factor in his intellectual life. But by considering the function that the analytic/synthetic distinction has performed in traditional philosophy, and appreciating what is lost and gained in repudiating it, we gain insight into Goodman’s contributions. I begin then by reviewing the distinction and the conception of philosophy it supports. The analytic/synthetic distinction is a distinction between truths that depend entirely on meaning and truths that depend on both meaning and fact. In the early modern period, it was cast as a distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact. -
Philosophical Logic 2018 Course Description (Tentative) January 15, 2018
Philosophical Logic 2018 Course description (tentative) January 15, 2018 Valentin Goranko Introduction This 7.5 hp course is mainly intended for students in philosophy and is generally accessible to a broad audience with basic background on formal classical logic and general appreciation of philosophical aspects of logic. Practical information The course will be given in English. It will comprise 18 two-hour long sessions combining lectures and exercises, grouped in 2 sessions per week over 9 teaching weeks. The weekly pairs of 2-hour time slots (incl. short breaks) allocated for these sessions, will be on Mondays during 10.00-12.00 and 13.00-15.00, except for the first lecture. The course will begin on Wednesday, April 4, 2018 (Week 14) at 10.00 am in D220, S¨odra huset, hus D. Lecturer's info: Name: Valentin Goranko Email: [email protected] Homepage: http://www2.philosophy.su.se/goranko Course webpage: http://www2.philosophy.su.se/goranko/Courses2018/PhilLogic-2018.html Prerequisites The course will be accessible to a broad audience with introductory background on classical formal logic. Some basic knowledge of modal logics would be an advantage but not a prerequisite. Brief description Philosophical logic studies a variety of non-classical logical systems intended to formalise and reason about various philosophical concepts and ideas. They include a broad family of modal logics, as well as many- valued, intuitionistic, relevant, conditional, non-monotonic, para-consistent, etc. logics. Modal logics extend classical logic with additional intensional logical operators, reflecting different modes of truth, including alethic, epistemic, doxastic, temporal, deontic, agentive, etc. -
Introduction to Philosophy. Social Studies--Language Arts: 6414.16. INSTITUTION Dade County Public Schools, Miami, Fla
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 086 604 SO 006 822 AUTHOR Norris, Jack A., Jr. TITLE Introduction to Philosophy. Social Studies--Language Arts: 6414.16. INSTITUTION Dade County Public Schools, Miami, Fla. PUB DATE 72 NOTE 20p.; Authorized Course of Instruction for the Quinmester Program EDRS PRICE MF-$0.65 HC-$3.29 DESCRIPTORS Course Objectives; Curriculum Guides; Grade 10; Grade 11; Grade 12; *Language Arts; Learnin4 Activities; *Logic; Non Western Civilization; *Philosophy; Resource Guides; Secondary Grades; *Social Studies; *Social Studies Units; Western Civilization IDENTIFIERS *Quinmester Program ABSTRACT Western and non - western philosophers and their ideas are introduced to 10th through 12th grade students in this general social studies Quinmester course designed to be used as a preparation for in-depth study of the various schools of philosophical thought. By acquainting students with the questions and categories of philosophy, a point of departure for further study is developed. Through suggested learning activities the meaning of philosopky is defined. The Socratic, deductive, inductive, intuitive and eclectic approaches to philosophical thought are examined, as are three general areas of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology,and axiology. Logical reasoning is applied to major philosophical questions. This course is arranged, as are other quinmester courses, with sections on broad goals, course content, activities, and materials. A related document is ED 071 937.(KSM) FILMED FROM BEST AVAILABLE COPY U S DEPARTMENT EDUCATION OF HEALTH. NAT10N41 -
Curriculum Vitae
BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN Curriculum Vitae Last updated 3/6/2019 I. Personal and Academic History .................................................................................................................... 1 List of Degrees Earned ........................................................................................................................................................ 1 Title of Ph.D. Thesis ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 Positions held ..................................................................................................................................................................... 1 Invited lectures and lecture series ........................................................................................................................................ 1 List of Honors, Prizes ......................................................................................................................................................... 4 Research Grants .................................................................................................................................................................. 4 Non-Academic Publications ................................................................................................................................................ 5 II. Professional Activities ................................................................................................................................. -
Philosophical Analysis on the Nature and Forms of Information—From the Perspective of Marxist Philosophy †
Proceedings Philosophical Analysis on the Nature and Forms of Information—From the Perspective of Marxist Philosophy † Mingfang Feng 1 and Liang Feng 2,* 1 School of Economics & Law, Shaanxi University of Technology, No.1, First Eastern Ring Road, Hanzhong 723001, China; [email protected] 2 School of Marxism Studies, Xi’an Jiaotong University, No.28 Xianning West Road, Xi’an 710049, China * Correspondence: [email protected] † Presented at the IS4SI 2017 Summit DIGITALISATION FOR A SUSTAINABLE SOCIETY, Gothenburg, Sweden, 12–16 June 2017. Published: 8 June 2017 Abstract: The aim of this research essay attempt to reveal the nature of information form the perspective of Marxist Philosophy. The nature of Information is the first question that philosophy of information science and technology research must be answered, thus the problem is still debated. According to Marxist dialectical materialism method to the essence of information has made the analysis and argumentation, points out the essence of information between what is and its internal contact things, and this contact information is presented. Due to the connection between the protean and endless things, thus produce the endless, full of beautiful things in eyes, each are not identical information. To grasp the nature of information, must pay attention to and the specific form of information and information processing, the reorganization, transmission, storage, use and so on. Keywords: information; nature; connection; philosophy of information 1. Introduction The development of information science and technology has spar ked the nature of information exploration after World War II. The question that ‘What is the nature of information?’ is always unable to avoid in information science and philosophical technology research. -
The Tyranny of Method: a Pragmatic Defense of Philosophical Pluralism
THE TYRANNY OF METHOD: A PRAGMATIC DEFENSE OF PHILOSOPHICAL PLURALISM Vincent M. Colapietro Abstract: The history of philosophy is in no small measure a series of attempts to institute a fail-safe method. In response to what they take to be the scandal of disagreement (disagreement itself being judged as scandalous), a number of historically influential philosophers (e.g., Descartes, Peirce, Husserl, and Carnap) have time and again tried to craft a method for guaranteeing agreement. In light of the failure of these attempts, this tendency might be seen as remotely analogous to what is called in psychoanalytic parlance a “repetition compulsion.” In any event, historical reflections on this repeated tendency promise to be illuminating. But there is a polemical purpose animating these historical reflections. The author tries, in light of these reflections, to render plausible the suggestion that this tendency amounts to a tyranny of method and, in turn, such tyranny results in an inevitable impoverishment of philosophical thought. THE TOPIC of my essay is best brought into focus by recalling a central figure in the history of Western philosophy. 1 This recollection is, however, far from methodologically innocent. My deliberate turn toward a pivotal moment in our intellectual history – in brief, my turn toward history – will provide the basis for my critique of what I am disposed to identify as the tyranny of method. This tyranny is not so much exercised by any particular method as by the repeated impulse to institute a philosophical method of allegedly revolutionary significance. Most often, this impulse is bound up with the hope that philosophy can transform itself into a science (an unquestionable form of certain knowledge) either by adopting the method of science itself (e.g., the efforts of C. -
Plato's Symposium: the Ethics of Desire
Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire FRISBEE C. C. SHEFFIELD 1 Contents Introduction 1 1. Ero¯s and the Good Life 8 2. Socrates’ Speech: The Nature of Ero¯s 40 3. Socrates’ Speech: The Aim of Ero¯s 75 4. Socrates’ Speech: The Activity of Ero¯s 112 5. Socrates’ Speech: Concern for Others? 154 6. ‘Nothing to do with Human AVairs?’: Alcibiades’ Response to Socrates 183 7. Shadow Lovers: The Symposiasts and Socrates 207 Conclusion 225 Appendix : Socratic Psychology or Tripartition in the Symposium? 227 References 240 Index 249 Introduction In the Symposium Plato invites us to imagine the following scene: A pair of lovers are locked in an embrace and Hephaestus stands over them with his mending tools asking: ‘What is it that you human beings really want from each other?’ The lovers are puzzled, and he asks them again: ‘Is this your heart’s desire, for the two of you to become parts of the same whole, and never to separate, day or night? If that is your desire, I’d like to weld you together and join you into something whole, so that the two of you are made into one. Look at your love and see if this is what you desire: wouldn’t this be all that you want?’ No one, apparently, would think that mere sex is the reason each lover takes such deep joy in being with the other. The soul of each lover apparently longs for something else, but cannot say what it is. The beloved holds out the promise of something beyond itself, but that something lovers are unable to name.1 Hephaestus’ question is a pressing one. -
The Analytic-Synthetic Distinction and the Classical Model of Science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege
Synthese (2010) 174:237–261 DOI 10.1007/s11229-008-9420-9 The analytic-synthetic distinction and the classical model of science: Kant, Bolzano and Frege Willem R. de Jong Received: 10 April 2007 / Revised: 24 July 2007 / Accepted: 1 April 2008 / Published online: 8 November 2008 © The Author(s) 2008. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract This paper concentrates on some aspects of the history of the analytic- synthetic distinction from Kant to Bolzano and Frege. This history evinces con- siderable continuity but also some important discontinuities. The analytic-synthetic distinction has to be seen in the first place in relation to a science, i.e. an ordered system of cognition. Looking especially to the place and role of logic it will be argued that Kant, Bolzano and Frege each developed the analytic-synthetic distinction within the same conception of scientific rationality, that is, within the Classical Model of Science: scientific knowledge as cognitio ex principiis. But as we will see, the way the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or propositions functions within this model turns out to differ considerably between them. Keywords Analytic-synthetic · Science · Logic · Kant · Bolzano · Frege 1 Introduction As is well known, the critical Kant is the first to apply the analytic-synthetic distinction to such things as judgments, sentences or propositions. For Kant this distinction is not only important in his repudiation of traditional, so-called dogmatic, metaphysics, but it is also crucial in his inquiry into (the possibility of) metaphysics as a rational science. Namely, this distinction should be “indispensable with regard to the critique of human understanding, and therefore deserves to be classical in it” (Kant 1783, p. -
What Is a Philosophical Analysis?
JEFFREY C. KING WHAT IS A PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSIS? (Received 24 January 1996) It is common for philosophers to offer philosophical accounts or analyses, as they are sometimes called, of knowledge, autonomy, representation, (moral) goodness, reference, and even modesty.1 These philosophical analyses raise deep questions. What is it that is being analyzed (i.e. what sorts of things are the objects of analysis)? What sort of thing is the analysis itself (a proposition? sentence?)? Under what conditions is an analysis correct? How can a correct analysis be informative? How, if at all, does the production of philo- sophical analyses differ from what scientists do? The purpose of the present paper is to provide answers to these questions. The traditional answers to the ®rst and last of these questions are that concepts are the objects of philosophical analysis and that philo- sophical analyses differ from the results of scienti®c investigation in being conceptual analyses. Like many philosophers I am suspicious of the notions of concept and conceptual analysis as traditionally understood. Though the critique of these notions is beyond the scope of the present work, the answers I shall give to the questions raised above shall not invoke concepts (understood as things distinct from properties).2 I count it as a virtue of my account that it is able to provide answers to the questions raised above without an appeal to concepts. And to the extent that it has been felt that concepts are needed to answer these questions, the present account weakens the case for positing concepts. Before addressing these questions, however, we shall make the simplifying assumption that analyses are given in a ªcanonical formº. -
Description Logics—Basics, Applications, and More
Description Logics|Basics, Applications, and More Ian Horrocks Information Management Group University of Manchester, UK Ulrike Sattler Teaching and Research Area for Theoretical Computer Science RWTH Aachen, Germany RWTH Aachen 1 Germany Overview of the Tutorial • History and Basics: Syntax, Semantics, ABoxes, Tboxes, Inference Problems and their interrelationship, and Relationship with other (logical) formalisms • Applications of DLs: ER-diagrams with i.com demo, ontologies, etc. including system demonstration • Reasoning Procedures: simple tableaux and why they work • Reasoning Procedures II: more complex tableaux, non-standard inference prob- lems • Complexity issues • Implementing/Optimising DL systems RWTH Aachen 2 Germany Description Logics • family of logic-based knowledge representation formalisms well-suited for the representation of and reasoning about ➠ terminological knowledge ➠ configurations ➠ ontologies ➠ database schemata { schema design, evolution, and query optimisation { source integration in heterogeneous databases/data warehouses { conceptual modelling of multidimensional aggregation ➠ : : : • descendents of semantics networks, frame-based systems, and KL-ONE • aka terminological KR systems, concept languages, etc. RWTH Aachen 3 Germany Architecture of a Standard DL System Knowledge Base I N Terminology F E I R Father = Man u 9 has child.>... N E T Human = Mammal. u Biped . N E Description C R E F Logic A Concrete Situation S C Y E John:Human u Father S John has child Bill . T . E M RWTH Aachen 4 Germany Introduction -
The Theory of Descriptions 1. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970): Mathematician, Logician, and Philosopher
Louis deRosset { Spring 2019 Russell: The Theory of Descriptions 1. Bertrand Russell (1872-1970): mathematician, logician, and philosopher. He's one of the founders of analytic philosophy. \On Denoting" is a founding document of analytic philosophy. It is a paradigm of philosophical analysis. An analysis of a concept/phenomenon c: a recipe for eliminating c-vocabulary from our theories which still captures all of the facts the c-vocabulary targets. FOR EXAMPLE: \The Name View Analysis of Identity." 2. Russell's target: Denoting Phrases By a \denoting phrase" I mean a phrase such as any one of the following: a man, some man, any man, every man, all men, the present King of England, the present King of France, the centre of mass of the Solar System at the first instant of the twentieth century, the revolution of the earth round the sun, the revolution of the sun round the earth. (479) Includes: • universals: \all F 's" (\each"/\every") • existentials: \some F " (\at least one") • indefinite descriptions: \an F " • definite descriptions: \the F " Later additions: • negative existentials: \no F 's" (480) • Genitives: \my F " (\your"/\their"/\Joe's"/etc.) (484) • Empty Proper Names: \Apollo", \Hamlet", etc. (491) Russell proposes to analyze denoting phrases. 3. Why Analyze Denoting Phrases? Russell's Project: The distinction between acquaintance and knowledge about is the distinction between the things we have presentation of, and the things we only reach by means of denoting phrases. [. ] In perception we have acquaintance with the objects of perception, and in thought we have acquaintance with objects of a more abstract logical character; but we do not necessarily have acquaintance with the objects denoted by phrases composed of words with whose meanings we are ac- quainted. -
Meaning and Necessity Author(S): Gilbert Ryle Reviewed Work(S): Source: Philosophy, Vol
Royal Institute of Philosophy Meaning and Necessity Author(s): Gilbert Ryle Reviewed work(s): Source: Philosophy, Vol. 24, No. 88 (Jan., 1949), pp. 69-76 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of Royal Institute of Philosophy Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3747236 . Accessed: 18/10/2012 00:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Cambridge University Press and Royal Institute of Philosophy are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org DISCUSSION MEANING AND NECESSITY' PROFESSORCARNAP in his new book proffersa method for analysing and describingthe meaningsof expressionsand, more briefly,discusses the theory of logical modalities,the concepts,that is, of logical necessityand possibility. His meaning-analysisis in the main intendedas an improvementupon certain doctrinesand practices of Frege. His account of the modal concepts of logic is in the main intended as an improvementupon certain doctrinesof C. I. Lewis. Views of Quine, Russell, Tarski, Churchand othersare also discussed. Students of Carap's other writingswill notice with interestthat he has now swung still furtherfrom the extreme nominalismof his earlier years. Inverted commas are no longer his panacea, and he now makes alarming requisitionsupon philosophy'sstock of extra-linguisticentities.