SummaryThis paper contains a detailed investigation of the way ordinary persons talk about surfaces. Among the results achieved are: 1) No theory of perception can be correct which holds that it is a necessary condition for seeing an object that we must also see its surface; 2) Not all cases of visual perception can be analyzed in terms of seeing part of some surface as a necessary condition for seeing the object which has that surface; 3) Not every physical object (...) has a surface, and 4) surfaces are sometimes identified with a particular medium, such as macadam, and sometimes are considered as a kind of logical entity — not visible, without depth, having no mass, a “mere outer aspect.”. (shrink)

The human mind remains a mystery despite the best efforts of philosophers to understand it. Each person knows that he/she has a mind, regards it as something internal, and is aware of its operations. Yet nobody knows what it is. The reason why the mind is so puzzling turns on three of its features: its invisibility while operating, the unique access which its proprietor has to it, and the inability to give a clear meaning to the polar notions of 'internal-external' (...) when applied to it. This last feature makes it obvious that no computer or A.I. based analogies, or any forms of functionahsm, provide adequate models for understanding its nature. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy is difficult to define since it is not so much a specific doctrine as a loose concatenation of approaches to problems. As well as having strong ties to scientism -the notion that only the methods of the natural sciences give rise to knowledge -it also has humanistic ties to the great thinkers and philosophical problems of the past. Moreover, no single feature characterizes the activities of analytic philosophers. Undaunted by these difficulties, Avrum Stroll investigates the "family (...) resemblances" between that impressive breed of thinkers known as analytic philosophers. In so doing, he grapples with the point and purpose of doing philosophy: What is philosophy? What are its tasks? What kind of information, illumination, and understanding is it supposed to provide if it is not one of the natural sciences? Imbued with clarity, liveliness, and philosophical sophistication, Stroll´s book presents a synoptic picture of the main developments in logic, philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics in the past century. It does this by concentrating on the individual thinkers whose ideas have been most influential. Major themes in Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy include: · the innovation of mathematical logic by Gottlob Frege at the close of the nineteenth century and its independent development by Bertrand Russell; · the impact of advancements in science on the world of philosophy and its importance for understanding such doctrines as logical positivism, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and eliminative materialism; · the refusal by such thinkers as Wittgenstein, Moore, and Austin to treat logic as an ideal language superior to natural languages; and · a conjecture about which, if any, of the philosophers discussed in the book will enter the pantheon of philosophical gods. Along the way, Stroll also covers the theories of Rudolf Carnap, W. V. O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, J. L. Austin, Hilary Putnam, Saul Kripke, John Searle, Ruth Marcus, and Patricia and Paul Churchland. Stroll´s approach to his subject treats the critical movements in analytic philosophy in terms of the philosophers who defined them. The notoriously complex realm of analytic philosophy emerges less as an abstract enterprise than as a domain of personalities and their competing methods and arguments. The book´s inventive presentations of complex logical doctrines relate them to the traditional problems of philosophy, seeking the continuity between them rather than polemical distinctions so as to bring the true differences of their respective achievements into sharper focus. (shrink)

Fiction, Reference, and Nonexistence contains a new, contemporary theory of fiction and discusses the connection between language and reality. Martinich and Stroll, two of America's leading philosophers, explore fiction and undertake an analytic philosophical study of fiction and its reference, and its relation to truth.

The paper attempts to do two things: (1) to give a detailed account of what conditions must be satisfied by theories that hold some knowledge to be more fundamental than the rest, And (2) it asks, And answers affirmatively, Whether there is such a foundationalist account in wittgenstein's "on certainty".

In this new book, acclaimed scholar Avrum Stroll introduces the legendary philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, first through his unconventional lifestyle, and secondly through Wittgenstein's own greatest works.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Phenomenalistic Interpretation of Kant's Theory of Knowledge PAUL MARHENKEt Introduction THw FOLLOWINGARTXCLEwas one of two previously unpublished papers found in the effects of the late Paul Marhenke (1899-1952), who was a professor at the University of California from 1927 until his death. Because of the intrinsic interest of the paper, the editors of the Journal o/the History of Philosophy have kindly consented to publish it. I have made (...) a few revisions in the manuscript in order to prepare it for publication. These revisions do not affect the sense of the argument in any way, being confined mainly to the expansion of abbreviations, the correction of typographical mistakes, and so on. It is not known when this paper was written, or for what occasion. Professor W. R. Dennes, who wrote the biographical sketch of Paul Marhenke which is included in the In Memoriam volume published by the University of California, informs me that he was unaware of the existence of this paper. Professor Dennes writes in this connection: I can only say that ever since our year of graduate study together (1919-19207) Paul and I often discussed the question how far Kant's apparatus of Categories and so on merely expressed a strong confidence in various sorts of regularities in phenomena; and if the apparatus really grounded the confidence, did it do so by a question-begging procedure of, for example, assuming causal regularity, and then grounding and guaranteeing such regularity by a "deduction" of the category of causation. In our discussions that went on, off and on, for thirty years, Paul at various times took various positions--all interesting-and I often urged him to write out his views on the matter. I wish I knew at which stage he did write them out, but I do not. This was one subject upon which I think Paul changed his mind a good deal in the course of his years of study and teaching. Paul Marhenke's main interests in philosophy lay in epistemology and particularly in the realist-phenomenalist issue which he here discusses in the context of Kant's philosophy. For those readers who will be making their [47] 48 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY first acquaintance with his work, this paper will provide an impressive illustration of the subtlety of his mind and of the care with which he drew distinctions. For those of us who were familiar with the cast of his mind, former students and colleagues alike, it will evoke the man himself, with his insistence upon rigor and precision as viae mediae toward an understanding of philosophical issues--AvRuM STROLL Two CURRENTSRUN through the Kantian theory of knowledge, one subjective, the other objective. These two currents follow very often in extreme proximity, so that we find Kant speaking in the same paragraph or even in successive sentences of the object of knowledge as being nothing but a synthesis of representations, i.e., sensations, and as being distinct from those sensations and merely represented by them in the individual mind of the perceiver. The former position is indistinguishable from Berkeleyan subjectivism as far as the existential status of the objects of immediate awareness is concerned; the world perceived is merely a subjective representation of the real world of things in themselves. The argument by which this position is reached presupposes, however, the truth of the realistic assumption which is denied in the conclusion based on the argument. For the argument presupposes the causal theory of perception with its realistic presupposition of real objects, sense-organs, nerves, a brain, etc. According to Kant sensations arise in the mind due to the impinging of physical stimuli on our senseorgans. Henceforth, however, it is denied that we perceive anything but these sensations and the truth of the realistic premises on which the conclusion is based must therefore be denied. The manifold of sensations constitutes the originally given material of the mind. The question to which Kant now attempts to give an answer is how this manifold becomes organized into a world of objects. This answer is given in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. The Kantian solution of the problem is a failure if for no... (shrink)

In this third edition, the chapter on ethics has been expanded and updated to include material on euthanasia, abortion and censorship. The impact of the break-up of the former communist countries is discussed in the chapter on political philosophy. The book contains new material on artificial intelligence, logic and contemporary philosophy.

Avrum Stroll accepts the ancient tradition that one of the tasks of philosophy is to give an accurate account of the world's features, both animate and inanimate. But, he contends, because these features are inexhaustibly complex, no single theory or conceptual model can provide a complete account. Stroll's approach is piecemeal and example-oriented. In stressing the importance of examples, his work runs counter to one of the most powerful and seductive ways of thinking about the world--the Platonic (...) tradition, which denigrates examples in the search for qualities or essences. Stroll favors pluralism, on the ground that this is how the world is.The "landscapes" of the title refers to various conceptual landscapes. Using the methodological approach he calls philosophy by example, the author discusses seven major problems of epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of language: skepticism, direct reference theories and natural kinds, the relationship between the microscopic and macroscopic, the logic of examples, direct reference and fiction, holistic theories of meaning, and direct versus indirect realism in perception. It is the author's method that binds together the different topics, but the method is not the message. What matters are the substantive results. His unique analyses reveal new understandings of some difficult problems. (shrink)

The paper deals with Wittgenstein’s treatment of radical skepticism. He holds from his earliest work to his last that skepticism is senseless and therefore no rebuttal, such as G.E. Moore offered, is necessary.

SummaryA new form of expiricism has developed recently which drives a wedge between the principles that science alone will provide a true account of reality and that any such account must be grounded in observation. These empiricists hold firm to the first principle, but have qualified adherence to the second. Using arguments like Putnam's Twin Earth scenario, they contend that a search for reality must go beneath the observable to find the microstructure of substances . Their arguments are fallacious and (...) are susceptible to definite counter‐examples, as the author shows. (shrink)

Professor sard states that russell's response to ronald searle rests on a fallacy. Russell states that he dreamt of one thing not in heaven or earth, While searle says that there are more things in heaven than russell dreamt of. Stroll argues that sard's interpretation of the phrase "there are more things in heaven than are dreamed of" is mistaken. Russell interprets this to mean that taking a to be the set of all things capable of being dreamed of (...) in heaven or earth, It is possible to dream of another thing--The class of all those classes that are not members of themselves--Which does not exist in a. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to revisit some familiar terrain, namely an argument that occurs in many of Russell's writings on the theory of descriptions and which he repeatedly describes as a “proof.” For the past two decades this argument has been the subject of considerable philosophical controversy. The prevailing view has been that it is invalid. Leonard Linsky, for instance, maintains that it is circular, while Peter Geach, W.V.O. Quine, and Alan White have argued that it equivocates on two (...) different senses of the word “means” and is therefore fallacious. Yet the argument has also had its defenders. In an acute and persuasive paper, R.K. Perkins has recently contended that some of these critics fail to understand that Russell is employing the term “means” in a special and technical sense, where it is equivalent to “naming”, and that when so understood, the argument does in fact go through. (shrink)

The early formal logicians (Frege, Russell, Peano et al.) were worried about differentiating logic from psychology. As a result, they interpreted logic in the most abstract way possible: as a theory about inference patterns whose terms lacked descriptive content. Such a theory was also acontextual. What they did not realize was that psychological concepts like expecting someone, doubting, pain etc. each had their own logic, a logic that had two features: it was contextually oriented and its concepts had a restricted (...) sensible application. This is still a recognizable sense of logic but broader in scope than the conceptions that Frege and Russell had in mind. (shrink)

The article describes and attempts to resolve a problem that arises for interpreters, translators, teachers, linguists, literary critics, and lawyers. Professional interpreters, for example, see themselves as the impartial transmitters of messages. Their dilemma notably arises in legal contexts when judges and prosecutors use language that is technical and belongs to a political system whose traditions are unfamiliar to defendants. In an effort to explain what such concepts as 'habeas corpus' and 'taking the fifth amendment' mean to Spanish-speaking monoglots, for (...) example, interpreters may become independent voices sending a nuanced version of the original message to its recipients. In such cases, and for other reasons, they may breach the principle of impartiality. The dilemma arises through a seeming incompatibility between two principles essential to impartial interpretation: the need neutrally to transmit a message and the need to communicate the content of a message in such a way as to make it comprehensible to an alien auditor. The author argues that these principles are not necessarily inconsistent. Thus whether an interpreter has deviated from the ideal of impartiality can only be decided on a case-by-case basis. (shrink)

SummaryThere is an enormous literature on Moore's so‐called “proof”per se, but practically nothing has been written on the distinctions upon which the proof is bases, such as “being presented in space” and “being met with in space”. These are crucial to the argument, since Moore wishes to draw the line between the external and internal world via such distinctions. The author argues that these distinctions themselves crucially depend on a point that Moore does not argue for, but assumes, namely that (...) afterimages, negative after‐images, some sense‐data and pains are private to those that have them, and that two different people cannot sense numerically the same after‐images, pains etc. The author shows that this assumption is nonsense and that the entire proof, based upon it, therefore fails. (shrink)

The problem of universals, at least in its modern form, often begins from questions which seem, in principle, decidable by the sorts of experimental procedures carried on in descriptive semantics, or in applied linguistics. These are questions about the role which pronouns, common nouns, adjectives etc. play in natural languages. But these apparently scientific questions are interpreted by philosophers in ways which give rise to metaphysical conundrums ? to problems which arc not in principle decidable. The paper traces some of (...) the factors which impel philosophers to interpret these questions in the way they do. The author's thesis is that questions about the roles which linguistic expressions play are often interpreted as questions about the meaning of these words, and these, in turn, are thought to be questions asking for the identification of differing sorts of objects in the universe (e. g., particulars, universals). The author attempts to show in detail why such interpretations of ordinary questions are improper. (shrink)

In Parts I, II, and III of the paper, the authors show that an argument essential to Alan White's defense of the Correspondence Theory of truth is unsuccessful. They argue that some of the premises of White's argument are false, and others incoherent. They show, further, that certain widely accepted assumptions in the philosophy of language, which underlie White's argument, must also be abandoned. In Part IV, they attempt to say something new about 'true', 'false', truth and falsity, and related (...) notions. They do not offer a competing theory to White's, but instead stress features of the use of these words and concepts which philosophers have either ignored or insufficiently emphasized. (shrink)

According to a widely accepted conceptual model, principles play essential roles in moral reasoning: it is asserted that they hold universally and cannot be avoided in the justification of human action and belief. This paper challenges that view. It argues that, though some principles play such substantive roles, most do not. They can be characterized instead as being fragile or defeasible, i.e., they are capable of being weakened, voided or undone. The claim is made that it is the pressures exerted (...) by particular cases of moral dilemmas that are the sources of such fragility. The paper contains detailed examples illustrating how the process of defeasibility, including a retreat into moral vacuity, arises from such pressures. (shrink)

The human mind remains a mystery despite the best efforts of philosophers to understand it. Each person knows that he/she has a mind, regards it as something internal, and is aware of its operations. Yet nobody knows what it is. The reason why the mind is so puzzling turns on three of its features: its invisibility while operating, the unique access which its proprietor has to it, and the inability to give a clear meaning to the polar notions of 'internal-external' (...) when applied to it. This last feature makes it obvious that no computer or A.I. based analogies, or any forms of functionahsm, provide adequate models for understanding its nature. (shrink)