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Displaying: 1-20 of 31 documents


1. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Robert A. Monk

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I examine Hanson's idea of a logic of discovery and conclude that there is no such thing. Nevertheless, the idea is based on a correct insight—that scientists often arrive at hypotheses through a process of reasoning. I offer an alternative account of the nature of this process. It consists of the development of a precise hypothesis out of a vague idea, under controls imposed by facts or data and by the nature of the problem to which a solution is sought. I describe the process abstractly and use Kepler's work on the orbit of Mars as an example.

2. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Verner Smitheram

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The paper studies the divergent theories of choice spawned within the larger question of freedom in J.P. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness as well as the Critique de la raison dialectique and P. Ricoeur's Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary.All the key features of Sartre’s and Ricoeur’s theories of choice are reviewed while accounting for their similarities and differences. It is argued that Sartre’s theory is best understood if distinctions are made between ontological freedom, freedom of choice, and freedom of execution. In the light of Ricoeur's position, Sartre's description of choice is shown to be phenomenologically inaccurate while his theory of motivation emerges as onesided in that it submerges all the receptive or involuntary aspects of choice in the act of resolution. The sources of Sartre's voluntaristic one-sidedness are traced to his premature leap into ontology, to his existential naivete in seeking direct description of man’s prereflexive experience, and to his rejection of the results of empirical investigations of man.The conclusion argues for the superiority of Ricoeur’s position over both the determinists' interpretations of choice and Sartre's voluntaristic existential interpretation.

3. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Michael W. Martin

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In "Nature and Conscience in Butler's Ethics," Nicholas Sturgeon argues that Butler's account of the role of conscience in morality is fundamentally Incoherent. Butler's emphasis upon conscience as the most superior principle rendering acts natural or unnatural is inconsistent with his tacit commitment to the "Naturalistic Thesis" that conscience always uses naturalness and unnaturalness as grounds upon which it bases its approvals and disapprovals. I argue that Butler is not committed to the Naturalistic Thesis, and hence his views are saved from incoherence. This Thesis is not entailed, as Sturgeon claims, by two of Butler's central doctrines, and there are reasonable interpretations of the passages Sturgeon cites that do not conurlt Butler to the Thesis. Butler's view is that the logically primary perception-approvals of acts as virtuous and perception-disapprovals of acts as vicious by themselves can render acts natural and unnatural, respectively, without the need for conscience to rely upon some other superior principle to first determine the naturalness or unnaturalness of acts.

4. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Caroline Dudeck

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In this article I try to offer a new reading of "Sense Certainty" in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. Especially, I try to show that the primary thrust of Hegel's analysis is directed against a view which takes language to be private and private experience to be incorrigible or certain. Hegel plays a number of games with the sense-certain consciousness in order to reveal the social character of language, as well as the role of concepts in experience.I also attempt to show, against Ivan Soil's reading, that Hegel's apparent claims concerning language must be carefully interpreted and that Hegel is not saying that it is impossible to refer in language, to particulars, but, rather, that such reference requires universal conceptual frameworks.Finally, I briefly examine Hegel's position toward ordinary language as well as some further implications of the notion of private language which Hegel suggests in the Science of Logic

5. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Jane Lipsky McIntyre

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In this paper I offer an analysis, reconstruction and defense of Locke's account of personal identity. I begin with a detailed analysis of Locke's use of the term 'conscious' in its historical context. This term, which plays a central role in Locke's theory, had senses in the seventeenth century which it does not have today. In the light of this analysis, an interpretation of continuity of consciousness as the ancestral of memory is given. It is argued that this interpretation of Locke's theory of personal identity does not involve an ontological commitment to immaterial substances, and Locke is defended against the historically important criticisms of Butler and Reid. In the conclusion I suggest that the account of the individuation of persons implicit in Locke's discussion of personal identity is similar to the account of contextual individuation given by Hintikka.

6. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Richard Leonard

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Cet article cherche à travers une étude des textes, et en suivant l'évolution de la pensée de Frege, à dégager le rôle prédominant - à la fois positif et regrettable - qu'a joué la philosophie dans la construction du système fondationnel des Grundgesetze. En premier lieu, sa conception exhaltante de la logique, qui fonde son logicisme est exposée; ensuite, il apparaît que le concept "autonome” d'ensemble n'entrant pas, selon Frege, dans ce domaine pur, ne peut pas fonder l'arithmétique; ensuite, on voit que les types violent à la fois la simplicité privilégiée de la logique et la nature métaphysique des fonctions et en dernier lieu, les raisons philosophiques de la théorie des entités incomplètes sont développées. Il apparaît qu'une vision philosophique empêche de sauver le système des Grundgesetze à moins de le détruire.

7. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
T. R. Girill

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Although context and comparison are widely regarded as vital to explanatory pragmatics, no systematic treatment of them is available which is free from unnecessary vagueness. The goal of this paper, therefore, is to develop a network of clear, explicit principles describing the conditions under which an audience finds a sentential explanation pragmatically adequate. Previous suggestions are spelled out overtly, and revised or rejected when they cannot overcome counter-examples. The roles and interrelationships of type appropriateness, explanatory power and explanatory appeal as pragmatic concepts are examined and clarified. In the process of formulating improved pragmatic principles, misleading assumptions by earlier writers are disclosed, and the logical consequences of each proposal are compared.

8. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Ken Siegel

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It has often been thought that the existence of an infinite amount of time implies the realization of all possibilities. However, it can be proved that it is not true that for any T, if T is an infinite period of time, then every possibility is actualized in T. The proof works for any sense of 'possibility' in which there are possibilities that cannot be actualized simultaneously.It still might be argued that if there is an infinite amount of time, then each possibility is actualized sometime (during some infinite period of time, though not all). In particular it might be claimed that if there is an infinite amount of time, then there is an uninterrupted infinite period of time; and (P*) for any T, if T is an uninterrupted infinite period of time, then every possibility is actualized in T. However, it can also be shown that (P*) is not necessarily true.For it to be actually true, some very strong Principle of Universal Random Change must be true.

9. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Martha Brandt Bolton

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Leibniz repeatedly daims to refute "Hobbes' doctrine of arbitrary truth". I argue against several recent expositors of Hobbes that Hobbes' view comes to nothing more scandalous than "nominalism" about kind terms. Although some have recognized that it is this thesis which Leibniz claims to refute, his argument has not been correctly understood. I maintain that the argument rests upon Leibniz' theory of signs and his account of concepts. In brief, Leibniz argues that concepts have structures which correspond to structures of (possible) things; thus, kinds are independent of language and truth is independent of arbitrary convention.

10. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Robert F. Litke

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It is ccranonly supposed that what we know and believe influences what we do, that knowledge and beliefs provide us with considerations (rules, reasons, action-plans, etc.) which guide our action. Sane recent discussions of human behavior makes this appear dubious. In particular, by holding that influential considerations must be conscious occurrent events they make it appear that there is substantially less influence than we usually take for granted. In turn, this suggests that in large measure human action is unknowing, that agents often do not know what they are doing. In my view accounts leading to such conclusions are themselves dubious. I show that these accounts give rise to puzzles and paradoxes if they are taken as applying to routine sorts of everyday behavior (as their authors intend). I hope, in this way, to raise substantial doubt about the viability of these counter-intuitive accounts of human action.

11. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
William Todd

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In this paper it is claimed that beliefs, feelings, and actions are typically complex phenomena which have simpler components. In particular, beliefs often involve feelings and actions, while actions involve feelings and beliefs, and feelings involve beliefs and actions. It is then suggested that unconscious beliefs and commitments, both ontological and otherwise, may be discovered by the examination of actions and feelings. While these will vary from one individual to another, it is suggested that it may be possible to form certain generalizations which are of philosophical interest.

12. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Philip Ostien

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Quine has moved toward "naturalism" in philosophy, which I applaud; at the same time his work has touched off a new round of pseudo-problems in philosophy, which I lament. I read the pseudo-problems as evidence that the shift toward naturalism has not been thorough-going enough. In this paper I undertake an extended discussion of sane of the problems and prospects of a thorough-going shift to a naturalistic viewpoint in philosophy, making frequent reference to Quine’s work. I suggest, in particular, that the notions of truth and reference, so central to Quine’s views, are not likely to survive as theoretically central notions within the kind of theory of language and thought which a more perfect naturalism (vaguely) foresees and works toward.

13. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Ralph L. Slaght

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This monograph is a critical survey and conceptual classification of recent work in the analysis of non- basic knowledge. The survey extends from the 1950's to Harman's Thought and Lehrer's Knowledge. Although the survey is not all-inclusive, I have examined at least twelve of what I believe to be important and interesting analyses. These analyses fall into three groups: Type I analyses, where the authors have concentrated their attention on the relation between the justifying evidence and false statements; Defeasibility-type analyses; and amalgamations of these two types. It is my conclusion that Type I analyses are wrong-headed, and that, while there are no clearly adequate analyses of the other varieties, they represent attempts in the right direction. An extensive bibliography is included.

14. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Gerald Doppelt

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This paper constitutes a thoroughgoing critique of Rorty's interesting attempt to characterize the mental and its elimination within materialism in terms of the incorrigibility of mental reports. I elucidate, criticize, and improve the concept of incorrigibility his position requires. Then I argue: (1) that although mental-state reports are as corrigible as physical reports, this reflects contingent matters which do not affect the boundary of the mental and the physical; (2) that even if the familiar paradigm mental-event reports ("I am in pain") are incorrigible, there are mental events for which our language does not provide descriptions plausibly considered as incorrigible; (3) even the familiar mental-event reports are not incorrigible which I show through examples that explain how and why persons maintain false beliefs about their most simple sensations, thoughts, indeed anything, I then suggest that Rorty’s conception of the triumph of materialism is simplistic and inadequate in a number of respects. Finally, I attempt to show how difficult if not impossible it is to define or eliminate the mental without presupposing it; in trying to get the barest sense of Rorty's materialist world, the mental forces itself into our mind at every turn.

15. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Mark Sagoff

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This paper interprets Kant's theory of right on analogy with his theory of truth. The familiar distinction is presented between the mental act and its object: e.g. between the act of believing and the belief; the perceiving and the thing perceived; the act of willing and the action willed. The act of mind is always private; different people, however, can perceive and believe the same or contradictory things. The notion of truth depends (for Kant) on the intersubjectivity or universalizability of the mental object. It might seem that the act intended as well as the act of intending must be private, however, because I can will only my own actions; but Kant suggests that I may will not as myself but as one of a community: the logical subject of the intending may not be I but We. Kant had in mind the community of rational beings; Bradley and Green relativize the community to national groups.

16. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Baruch de Spinoza, Paul D. Eisenberg

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The following pages offer, for the first time in English, a translation of Spinoza's Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione which aims to render Spinoza's views as literally as possible; the aim is accuracy rather than elegance. In addition to this new translation itself, I have prepared an extensive commentary on textual problems posed, e.g., by discrepancies (all of which have been indicated) between the original Latin and the original Dutch editions of the treatise, or by the difficulties of rendering certain of Spinoza's phrases into English. There is also a relatively brief introduction, and a detailed index (which no previous English translation of this treatise has included).

17. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Guy Lafrance

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The first intention of this article is to show, with some essays of Marcel Mauss, how his way of studying cultural facts anticipates the structural analysis method in anthropology.The concept of "fait social total" is confronted with the concept of structure as developed by Claude Lévi-Strauss, so that we could see the similarities and the distinctions.As well as reconstructing a decisive period of the history of structuralism within the French philosophical and sociological tradition, this article seeks to show the elements of Mauss1s contribution to structuralist anthropology and in a more general why his contribution to the epistemology of the social sciences.

18. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
James L. Hudson

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The central part of any cosmological argument for the existence of God is the inference of a conclusion of the form 1(ᴲx)-Fx from a premiss of the form 1 (ᴲx)Fx'. Since the premiss here is known only a posteriori, such an argument would ordinarily be classified as itself a posteriori. But I point out that any argument of this form may by a trivial modifi- cation be turned into an argument which requires no a posteriori premisses, and that the modified version is in fact a less misleading presentation of the reasoning involved. I conclude that cosmological arguments are best viewed as a priori arguments.

19. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Richard A. Hogan

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This paper discusses the interpretation of Charmides 164Dff. given by John Gould in The Development of Plato's Ethics. Gould claims that in this passage Plato wishes to indicate that he wants to delimit or qualify Socrates' analogy between morality or virtue on the one hand and art or craft (technē) on the other. Plato does this, supposedly, by showing us the unacceptable consequences which follow from assuming a complete analogy between morality and technē. I argue that this interpretation conflicts with the text, which seems to indicate that the root of whatever problems occur in the dialectic is not the technē analogy, but rather that the analogy is not being applied strictly enough. In particular, I try to show that the failure of Critias' definition of temperance is due, in large measure, to his failure to specify an object for the knowledge which he asserts is equivalent to temperance.

20. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 3
Bruce Nissen

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This article analyzes John Dewey’s critique of the traditional distinction between means and ends in terms of "instrumental" and "intrinsic" value. Dewey's own counter doctrine of the "continuum of ends and means" with only a temporal distinction between the two is also analyzed. It is argued that both Dewey's critique and his own position fail; Dewey fails to invalidate the instrumental value/intrinsic value distinction, fails to show that the relation between means and ends is symmetrical, fails to show that we always prize the means equally with the end, fails to account for "external" means which are not incorporated into their end, confuses an end or goal with the plan to achieve that goal, and ultimately borders on a utopian position that means necessarily resemble their ends.