DOCSLIB.ORG

Nicholas Rescher University Professor of Philosophy University Of

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Nicholas Rescher University Professor of Philosophy University Of LIST OF PUBLICATIONS Nicholas Rescher University Professor ofPhilosophy University ofPittsburgh CONTENTS I. BOOKS 209 II. ARTICLES 211 A. Theory of Knowledge 211 B. Metaphysics 212 c. Social Philosophy, Ethics, Value Theory, Deontic Logic 213 D. Philosophy of Science 214 E. Philosophical Logic and Philosophy of Logic 215 F. Symbolic Logic 216 G. History of Logic 217 H. History of Philosophy 218 III. REVIEWS 219 I. BOOKS Theory ofKnowledge Hypothetical Reasoning. Amsterdam (North-Holland Publishing Co.), 1964; 'Studies in Logic' series edited by L. E. J. Brouwer, A. Heyting, And D. W. Beth. The Coherence Theory of Truth. Oxford (The Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press), 1973. The Primacy of Practice. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. Tr. into Spanish as ... Madrid (Editorial Technos), 1978. Plausible Reasoning. Amsterdam, The Netherlands (Van Gorcum), 1976. Methodological Pragmatism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1977. Co-published in the USA by the New York University Press. Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Albany (State University of New York Press), 1977. Cognitive Systematization. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1978. Metaphysics The Philosophy of Leibniz. Englewood Oiffs (Prentice Hall), 1967. Essays in Philosophical Analysis: Historical and Systematic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1969. 209 E. Sosa (ed.), The Philosophy ofNicholas Rescher: Discussion and Replies, 209-220. All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Dordrecht, Holland. 210 R ESCHER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY Conceptual Idealism. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1973. A Theory ofPossibility. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1975. Co-published in the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Leibniz: An Introduction to His Philosophy. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1978; APQ Library of Philosophy. Co-published in the U.S.A. by Rowman-Littlefield. Social Philosophy, Ethics, and Value Theory Distributive Justice. New York (Bobbs Merrill Company), 1966. Introduction to Value Theory. Englewood Cliffs (Prentice Hall), 1969. Welfare: The Social Issues in Philosophical Perspective. Pittsburgh (University of Pitts­ burgh Press), 1972. Unselfishness: The Role of the Vicarious Affects in Moral Philosophy and Social Theory. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1975. Crochets and Comments: Essays on Technological Progress and the Condition of Man, Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1979. Philosophy of Science Scientific Explanation. New York (The Free Press), 1970. Scientific Progress: A Philosophical Essay on the Economics of Research in Natural Science. Oxford (Basil blackwell), 1978. Co-published the USA by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Peirce's Philosophy of Science. Notre Dame (University of Notre Dame Press), 1978. Philosophical Logic (and Philosophy of Logic) An Introduction to Logic. New York (St. Martin's Press), 1964. The Logic of Commands. London (Routledge & Kegan Paul), 1966. Topics in Philosophical Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1968; Synthese Library. Many- Valued Logic. New York (McGraw-Hill), 1969. Temporal Logic. New York and Vienna (Springer-Verlag), 1971. With Alastair Urquhart. Studies in Modality. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1974; American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph Series. The Logic of Inconsistency: A Study in Nonstandard Possible-World Semantics and Meinongian Ontology. Oxford (Basil Blackwell), 1979; APQ Library of Philosophy. (With Robert Brandom.) History of Philosophy (Arabic Philosophy and Greco/Arabie Philosophy) Al-Farabi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1962. AI·Farabi's Short Commentary on Aristotle's 'Prior Analytics.' Translated from the Arabic, with Introduction and Notes. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. RESCHER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 211 Studies in the History ofArabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1963. The Development ofArabic Logic. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964. AI-Kindi: An Annotated Bibliography. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1964. Galen and the Syllogism: An Examination of the Claim that Galen Originated the Fourth Figure of the Syllogism in the Light of New Data from Arabic Sources. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1966. Temporal Modalities in Arabic Logic. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1966; Supplementary Series of Foundations of Language. Studies in Arabic Philosophy. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1968. The Refutation by Alexander of Aphrodisias of Galen's Treatise on The First Mover. Karachi (Publications of the Central Institute of Islamic Research), 1970. With Michael E. Mannura. Books Edited 1. The Logic ofDecision and Action. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1967. [A volume of studies by several scholars edited by N. Rescher, and containing several contributions by him, including a monographic study of 'Semantic Founda­ tions for the Logic of Preference.') 2. Values and the Future: The Impact of Technological Change on American Values. New York (The Free Press), 1969. [A volume of studies by several scholars, edited by N. Rescher and Kurt Baier, and containing two contributions by N.R., including a monographic study of 'The Dynamics of Value Change.') 3. Essays in Honor of Carl G. Hempel. Dordrecht (Reidel), 1970; Synthese Library. [A Festschrift for this eminent philosopher of science, edited by N. Rescher and containing his essay 'Lawfulness as Mind-Dependent.') II. ARTICLES A. Theory of Knowledge 1. 'Problem No.7,' Analysis 16 (1955),4-5. 2. 'Translation as a Tool of Philosophical Analysis,' The Journal of Philosophy S3 (1955),219-224. 3. 'A Theory of Evidence,' Philosophy of Science 2S (1958), 83-94. 4. 'On Prediction and Explanation,' British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 8 (1958),281-290. 5. 'Evidence in History and in the Law,' The Journal ofPhilosophy S6 (1959), 561- 578. With Carey B. Joynt. 6. 'The Legitimacy of Doubt,' The Review ofMetaphysics 31 (1959),226-234. 7. 'Presuppositions of Knowledge,' Revue Internationale de Philosophie 13 (1959), 418-429. 8. 'Randomness as a Means to Fairness,' The Journal of Philosophy S6 (1959), 967- 968. 9. 'Discourse on a Method,' Methodos 11 (1959), 81-89. 212 RESCHER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 10. 'A Factual Analysis of Counterfactual Conditionals,' Philosophical Studies l1 (1960),49-54. 11. 'The Problem of a Logical Theory of Belief Statements,' Philosophy of Science 27 (1960),88-95. Spanish tr. as "El Problema de una Teoria Logica de los Enunciados de Creencia" in T. M. Simpson (ed.) , Semantica Filosofica: Problemas x Discussiones (Buenos Aires, 1973), pp. 401-416. 12. 'Belief-Contravening Suppositions,' The Philosophical Review 70 (1961),176-196. Reprinted in H. Feigl, W. Sellars, and K. Lehrer (eds.), New Readings in Philosoph­ ical Analysis (New York, 1972), pp. 530-545, and E. Sosa (ed.), Causation and Conditionals (Oxford, 1975), pp. 156-164. 13. 'On the Logic of Presupposition,' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 21 (1961),521-527. 14. 'Pragmatic Justification: A Cautionary Tale,' Philosophy 39 (1964), 346-348. 15. 'A New Look at the Problem of Innate Ideas,' British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 17 (1966), 205-218. 16. 'The Future as an Object of Research,' RAND Corporation Research Paper P-3593 (April, 1967). 17. 'A Methodological Problem in the EvaluatiOil of Explanations,' Nous 2 (1968), 121-129. With Brian Skyrms. 18. 'On Alternatives in Epistemic Logic,' Journal of Philosophical Logic 2 (1973), 119-135. With Arnold vander Nat. 19. 'Foundationalism, Coherentism, and the Idea of Cognitive Systematization,' The Journal ofPhil08ophy 71 (1974),695-708. 20. 'The Systematization of Knowledge,' Philosophy in Context 6 (1977), 20-24. 21. 'The Systematization of Knowledge,' International Classification 4 (1977), 73-75. [Note: This is a different paper from the preceding.] 22. 'Blanshard and the Coherence Theory of Truth' in The Philosophy of Brand Blanshard. (Forthcoming in the Library of Living Philosophers.) 23. 'Die Kriterien der Wahrheit' in G. Skirbekk (ed.), Wahrheitstheorien (Frankfurt, 1977). B. Metaphysics 1. 'The Identity of Indiscemibles: A Reinterpretation,' The Journal of Philosophy 52 (1955), 152-155. 2. 'A Reinterpretation of "Degrees of Truth",' Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 19 (1958), 241-245. 3. 'The Ontological Proof Revisited,' Australiasian Journal of Phil080phy 37 (1959), 138-148. 4. 'Logical Analysis in Historical Application,' Methodos 11 (1959), 178-194. 5. 'The Paradox of Buridan's Ass: A Fundamental Problem in the Theory of Reasoned Choice,' Bucknell Review 9 (1960), 106-122. 6. 'The Revolt Against Process,' The Journal ofPhilosophy 59 (1962), 410-417. 7. 'Evaluative Metaphysics' in Metaphysics and Explanation, ed. by W. H. Capitan and D. D. Merrill. Pittsburgh (University of Pittsburgh Press), 1966. 8. 'Aspect of Action' in Myles Brand (ed.), Reprinted in German in G. Meggle (ed.), RESCHER'S BIBLIOGRAPHY 213 Analytische Handlungstheorie, Vol. I (Frankfurt, 1977), pp. 1-7. 9. 'Conceptual Idealism,' Idealistic Studies 2 (1972), 191-207. 10. 'The Ontology of the Possible,' in M. Munitz (ed.), Essays in Ontology (New York, 1973). 11. 'McTaggart's Logical Determinism,' forthcoming in a volume of essays devoted to McTaggart's philosophy. 12. 'On First Principles and Their Legitimation,' Allgemeine Zeitschrift fur Philosophie 2 (1976), 1-16. 13. 'The Equivocality of Existence,' in N. Rescher (ed.), Existence and Ontology (Oxford, 1978;American Philosophical Quarterly Monograph No. 12). 14. 'Philosophical Disagreement,'
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Haecceitism, Chance
    HAECCEITISM, CHANCE, AND COUNTERFACTUALS Boris Kment Abstract. Anti-haecceitists believe that all facts about specific individuals—such as the fact that Fred exists, or that Katie is tall—globally supervene on purely qualitative facts. Haecceitists deny that. The issue is not only of interest in itself, but receives additional importance from its intimate connection to the question of whether all fundamental facts are qualitative or whether they include facts about which specific individuals there are and how qualitative properties and relations are distributed over them. Those who think that all fundamental facts are qualitative are arguably committed to anti-haecceitism. The goal of this paper is to point out some problems for anti-haecceitism (and therefore for the thesis that all fundamental facts are qualitative). The article focuses on two common assumptions about possible worlds: (i) Sets of possible worlds are the bearers of objective physical chance. (ii) Counterfactual conditionals can be defined by appeal to a relation of closeness between possible worlds. The essay tries to show that absurd consequences ensue if either of these assumptions is combined with anti-haecceitism. Then it considers a natural response by the anti-haecceitist, which is to deny that worlds play the role described in (i) and (ii). Instead, the reply continues, we can introduce a new set of entities that are defined in terms of worlds and that behave the way worlds do on the haecceitist position. That allows the anti-haecceitist to formulate anti-haecceitist friendly versions of (i) and (ii) by replacing the appeal to possible worlds with reference to the newly introduced entities.
    [Show full text]
  • Stalnaker on Sleeping Beauty Brian Weatherson
    Stalnaker on Sleeping Beauty Brian Weatherson The Sleeping Beauty puzzle provides a nice illustration of the approach to self-lo- cating belief defended by Robert Stalnaker in Our Knowledge of the Internal World (Stalnaker, 2008), as well as a test of the utility of that method. The setup of the Sleeping Beauty puzzle is by now fairly familiar. On Sunday Sleeping Beauty is told the rules of the game, and a (known to be) fair coin is flipped. On Monday, Sleeping Beauty is woken, and then put back to sleep. If, and only if, the coin landed tails, she is woken again on Tuesday after having her memory of the Monday awakening erased.1 On Wednesday she is woken again and the game ends. There are a few ques- tions we can ask about Beauty’s attitudes as the game progresses. We’d like to know what her credence that the coin landed heads should be (a) Before she goes to sleep Sunday; (b) When she wakes on Monday; (c) When she wakes on Tuesday; and (d) When she wakes on Wednesday? Standard treatments of the Sleeping Beauty puzzle ignore (d), run together (b) and (c) into one (somewhat ill-formed) question, and then divide theorists into ‘halfers’ or ‘thirders’ depending on how they answer it. Following Stalnaker, I’m going to focus on (b) here, though I’ll have a little to say about (c) and (d) as well. I’ll be following 1 orthodoxy in taking 2 to be the clear answer to (a), and in taking the correct answers to (b) and (c) to be independent of how the coin lands, though I’ll briefly question that assumption at the end.
    [Show full text]
  • 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 .................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge
    4 Semantical Paradox* Tyler Burge Frege remarked that the goal of all sciences is truth, but that it falls to logic to discern the laws of truth. Perceiving that the task of determining these laws went beyond Frege’s conception of it, Tarski enlarged the jurisdiction of logic, establishing semantics as truth’s lawyer.1 At the core of Tarski’s theory of truth and validity was a diagnosis of the Liar paradox according to which natural language was hopelessly infected with contradiction. Tarski construed himself as treating the disease by replacing ordinary discourse with a sanitized, artificial construction. But those interested in natural language have been dissatisfied with this medication. The best ground for dis­ satisfaction is that the notion of a natural language’s harboring contradictions is based on an illegitimate assimilation of natural language to a semantical system. According to that assimilation, part of the nature of a “language” is a set of postulates that purport to be true by virtue of their meaning or are at least partially constitutive of that “language”. Tarski thought that he had identified just such postulates in natural language as spawning inconsistency. But postulates are contained in theories that are promoted by people. Natural languages per se do not postulate or Tyler Burge, “Semantical Paradox", reprinted from The Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979), 169-98. Copyright © 1979 The Journal of Philosophy. Reprinted by permission of the Editor of The Journal of Philosophy and the author. * I am grateful to Robert L. Martin for several helpful discussions; to Herbert Enderton for proving the consistency (relative to that of arithmetic) of an extension of Construction C3; to Charles Parsons for stimulating exchanges back in 1973 and 1974; and to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for its support.
    [Show full text]
  • Two Views of the De Re E) Scope Paradoxes: (5) John Thinks at Least Two Men in the Room Are Spies
    two views of the de re e) scope paradoxes: (5) John thinks at least two men in the room are spies. (John is not thinking of them as the men in the room) PLUK, Leeds, 2014 Daniel Rothschild ([email protected]) 2 neo-Fregean orthodoxy 1 de re in attitudes Kaplan [1986], building on Quine [1956] sets the standard for accounts of the de re. Basic assumption: semantic values in attitude reports present certain problems not present for other intensional contexts (such as metaphysi- cal modals). (6) (x believes α is a drunk and α denotes y) iff (9 guise g (satisfying some conditions that could make reference to x), the g = y and x A reasonable subset of the data to be captured, for the use of a term α in believes the g is drunk.) an attitude context. Covers a), b) be modified to handle c), d) and e) a) attitude about α does not require the attitude holder to think of α under the predicative content expressed by α. So substitution of co- a) we do not require that x think about y as α. extensive terms: b) we can make the with two different guises x can think y is drunk and is not drunk. (1) John thinks the mayor/the man in the corner is tall. Kaplan puts no contextual restrictions on what guises (his `names') can be, he just quantifies over them and requires them to be vivid, be an b) double vision. at least across different conversation contexts, but per- acquaintance relation for the attitude holder of the referent.
    [Show full text]
  • Mind and Language Seminar: Theories of Content
    Mind and Language Seminar: Theories of Content Ned Block and David Chalmers Meetings • Main meeting: Tuesdays 4-7pm over Zoom [4-6pm in weeks without a visitor] • Student meeting: Mondays 5-6pm hybrid • Starting Feb 22 [only weeks with a visitor] • Enrolled students and NYU philosophy graduate students only. • Feb 2: Background: Theories of Content • Feb 9: Background: Causal/Teleological Theories • Feb 16: Background: Interpretivism • Feb 23: Nick Shea • March 2: Robbie Williams • March 9: Frances Egan • March 16: Adam Pautz • March 23: Veronica Gómez Sánchez • March 30: Background: Phenomenal Intentionality • April 6: Imogen Dickie • April 13: Angela Mendelovici • April 20: Background: Conceptual-Role Semantics • April 27: Christopher Peacocke • May 4: David Chalmers Assessment • Draft paper due April 19 • Term paper due May 17 Attendance Policy • Monday meetings: Enrolled students and NYU philosophy graduate students only. • Tuesday meetings: NYU and NYC Consortium students and faculty only • Very limited exceptions • Email us to sign up on email list if you haven’t already. Introductions Short History of the 20th Century • 1900-1970: Reduce philosophical questions to issues about language and meaning. • 1970s: Theories of meaning (philosophy of language as first philosophy) • 1980s: Theories of mental content (philosophy of mind as first philosophy). • 1990s: Brick wall. Theories of Content • What is content? • What is a theory of content? Content • Content (in the broadest sense?) is intentionality or aboutness • Something has content when it is about something. Contents • Content = truth-conditions • Content = satisfaction-conditions • Content = propositions • Content = objects of intentional states • Content = … What Has Content? • What sort of thing has content? What Has Content? • What sort of thing has content? • language (esp.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaphysical Perspectives by Nicholas Rescher (Review) J
    Metaphysical Perspectives by Nicholas Rescher (review) J. P. Moreland The Review of Metaphysics, Volume 72, Number 1 (Issue No. 285), September 2018, pp. 151-153 (Review) Published by The Philosophy Education Society, Inc. For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/736129 [ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ] SUMMARIES AND COMMENTS 151 easy to spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Rescher cites as examples the cases involving Alger Hiss, Claus Fuchs, and Anthony Blunt. Rescher concludes with the acknowledgment that evaluating reports prepared for state purposes is a complex business. There is an inevitable gap between the supporting evidence provided and the objective factual claims often based upon it. The information actually at our disposal in many matters confirms our claims but does not always demonstrate them. One is reminded of Plato’s discussion in the Meno where, in introducing the notion of “true opinion,” Plato has Socrates speak of the value of such knowledge. True opinion, although supported by fact, falls short of demonstrative knowledge but is nevertheless required by those who would govern. “Men,” says Socrates, “become good and useful to states not only because they have knowledge, but because they have right opinion.” Given the practical wisdom offered in this volume, it could well be required reading for any high school or college journalism class, and promoted for principled guidance to others, especially those who report on matters of state.—Jude P. Dougherty, The Catholic University of America RESCHER, Nicholas. Metaphysical Perspectives. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2017.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Problem of Intentionality: a Cardinal Difficulty for Physicalism Or What Happens to the World When a Mind Shows Up? Joel S
    The Problem of Intentionality: A Cardinal Difficulty for Physicalism Or What Happens to the World When a Mind Shows Up? Joel Steinmetz I. What is the Socratic Club? • Content: Issues related to the truth or falsity of the Christian faith • Method: In the Socratic spirit to follow the argument wherever it leads • Motivation: “In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into coteries where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say. In the Socratic all this was changed. Here a man could get the case for Christianity without all the paraphernalia of pietism and the case against it without the irrelevant sansculottisme of our common anti-God weeklies. At the very least we helped civilize one another…. Everyone found how little he had known about everyone else.”1 II. What is the problem of intentionality (a brief historical intro)? • The way in which intentionality is understood, or the aspect of intentionality that is emphasized, focuses the way in which intentionality is problematic. Analytic vs. Continental divide: • Phenomenology: explain the essential structures of intentionality; how does objectivity arise from subjectivity? • Analytic: intentionality is mark of mental; how can we explain, or incorporate, intentional mental states into a physicalist account of the world? • Why a physicalist account of the world? “These days we’re all materialists for much the reason that Churchill gave for being a democrat: the alternatives seem even worse.
    [Show full text]
  • Concrete Possible Worlds (Final)
    CONCRETE POSSIBLE WORLDS Phillip Bricker 1. INTRODUCTION. Open a book or article of contemporary analytic philosophy, and you are likely to find talk of possible worlds therein. This applies not only to analytic metaphysics, but to areas as diverse as philosophy of language, philosophy of science, epistemology, and ethics. Philosophers agree, for the most part, that possible worlds talk is extremely useful for explicating concepts and formulating theories. They disagree, however, over its proper interpretation. In this chapter, I discuss the view, championed by David Lewis, that philosophers’ talk of possible worlds is the literal truth.1 There exists a plurality of worlds. One of these is our world, the actual world, the physical universe that contains us and all our surroundings. The others are merely possible worlds containing merely possible beings, such as flying pigs and talking donkeys. But the other worlds are no less real or concrete for being merely possible. Fantastic? Yes! What could motivate a philosopher to believe such a tale? I start, as is customary, with modality.2 Truths about the world divide into two sorts: categorical and modal. Categorical truths describe how things are, what is actually the case. Modal truths describe how things could or must be, what is possibly or 1 The fullest statement of Lewis’s theory of possible worlds is contained in his magnum opus, Lewis (1986), On the Plurality of Worlds. Lewis’s view is sometimes called “modal realism.” 2 Historically, it was the attempt to provide semantics for modal logic that catapulted possible worlds to the forefront of analytic philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Qt11c0x4n5.Pdf
    UC Berkeley Working Papers Title Figure and Ground in Logical Space Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/11c0x4n5 Author Yalcin, Seth Publication Date 2015-12-02 eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Figure and Ground in Logical Space⇤ Seth Yalcin [email protected] April 22, 2011 1Introduction The idea that states of belief are, in a certain sense, sensitive to questions, or to subject matters, or more generally to ways of resolving logical space,helpsin some simple ways with aspects of the classical problem of logical omniscience. So I argue here. Focusing on belief, I begin by reviewing a version of a familiar story about belief and belief content, what I will call the map picture of belief. I will suggest that the picture is incomplete in ways that lead to the problems of logical omniscience, and that the addition of the aforementioned kind of sensitivity helps to fill in the picture in ways that start to address the problems. My larger aim is to explore the extent to which the idea of belief as question- sensitive state can be motivated by considerations in the philosophy of content, considered largely in abstraction from issues in descriptive semantics per se (e.g., in abstraction from the detailed compositional semantics of belief ascription). By the end, we will not have fully resolved the problems of logical omniscience, but we will have made some headway. 2Themappicture The motto of the map picture is: belief is the map by which we steer.1 You will have heard some version this story before, but we need a single version of it for operating on.
    [Show full text]
  • What Are Centered Worlds?*
    What Are Centered Worlds?* Shen-yi Liao e Philosophical Quarterly (2012)† Abstract David Lewis argues that centered worlds give us a way to capture de se, or self- locating, contents in philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. In recent years, centered worlds have also gained other uses in areas ranging widely from metaphysics to ethics. In this paper, I raise a problem for centered worlds and discuss the costs and benets of different solutions. My investigation into the nature of centered worlds brings out potentially problematic implicit commit- ments of the theories that employ them. In addition, my investigation shows that the conception of centered worlds widely attributed to David Lewis is not only problematic, but in fact not his. is paper raises a problem for centered worlds and discusses the costs and benets of different solutions. In recent years, centered worlds have gained uses in a variety of philosophical sub-disciplines, from metaphysics to ethics. Given the diverse applica- tions and theoretical usefulness of centered worlds, the problem and solutions raised in this paper have wide ramications. Examining the nature of centered worlds brings out implicit commitments of the theories that employ them. §1 motivates the present investigation into what centered worlds are by reviewing their applications. e original motivation for positing centered worlds is to have a way of adequately capturing the self-locating contents of attitudes such as belief. Since then, philosophers have given centered worlds new uses in the metaphysics of prop- erties, foundations of two-dimensional semantics, and relativist theories in aesthetics, epistemology, metaethics, and philosophy of language.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Radical About Radical Constructivism?
    What is Radical about Radical Constructivism? Karl H. Müller This article will become an exercise in cognitive mapping of constructivist territories or landscapes. In this sense, the proposed map on different domains of constructivism is, by necessity, the territory. The subsequent explorations will start with Ernst von Glasersfeld’s account of what constitutes Radical Constructivism (RC). The aim is to assemble a set of building blocks and fields of discourse which, in conjunction, form the core of RC Glasersfeld-style. Subsequently, a quick overview will be given on the structure and organization of Second-Order Cybernetics (SOC) as developed and proposed in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s by Heinz von Foerster, who, together with Humberto R. Maturana, Francisco L. Varela and Ernst von Glasersfeld, formed the core-group of RC.1 Mapping RC and SOC across different arenas, an interesting trade-off can be constructed between the radical building blocks of RC or SOC and their degree of diffusion. Towards the end, a few strategies will be outlined how RC and SOC, in conjunction, could be utilized as a radically new framework which so far has only been occasionally utilized or explored. 1 Radical Constructivism à la Glasersfeld Ernst von Glasersfeld, in combination with Siegfried J. Schmidt (1987, 1987a), was largely responsible for the label of Radical Constructivism (RC). In 1974 von Glasersfeld wrote an article about Jean Piaget and the radical constructivist epistemology (Glasersfeld 1974). In 1981 Ernst von Glasersfeld produced the most influential article for the promotion and the diffusion of RC, namely his “Introduction to Radical Constructivism” in Paul Watzlawick’s widely distributed reader “Die erfundene Wirklichkeit” or, in English, “The Invented Reality” (1984).
    [Show full text]