The Hungarian émigré Imre Lakatos earned a worldwide reputation through the influential philosophy of science debates involving Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Sir Karl Popper. In _Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason_ John Kadvany shows that embedded in Lakatos’s English-language work is a remarkable historical philosophy rooted in his Hungarian past. Below the surface of his life as an Anglo-American philosopher of science and mathematics, Lakatos covertly introduced novel transformations of Hegelian and Marxist ideas about historiography, skepticism, (...) criticism, and rationality. Lakatos escaped Hungary following the failed 1956 Revolution. Before then, he had been an influential Communist intellectual and was imprisoned for years by the Stalinist regime. He also wrote a lost doctoral thesis in the philosophy of science and participated in what was criminal behavior in all but a legal sense. Kadvany argues that this intellectual and political past animates Lakatos’s English-language philosophy, and that, whether intended or not, Lakatos integrated a penetrating vision of Hegelian ideas with rigorous analysis of mathematical proofs and controversial histories of science. Including new applications of Lakatos’s ideas to the histories of mathematical logic and economics and providing lucid exegesis of many of Hegel’s basic ideas, _Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason_ is an exciting reconstruction of ideas and episodes from the history of philosophy, science, mathematics, and modern political history. (shrink)

An approach to describing risk analysis, risk perception and risk interpretation under a single umbrella starting with a general definition of risk as "adverse consequences under uncertainty." The idea of risk representation is introduced as an omnibus term for many different ways of conceptualizing risk and deploying risk messages in science, government or society.

In his philosophical history of nineteenth-century mathematics, Proofs and Persuasions: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery, Imre Lakatos asserts that mathematical criticism was the driving force in the growth of mathematical knowledge during the nineteenth century, and provided the impetus for some of the deepest conceptual reformulations of the century. The philosophy of mathematics represented by Proofs and Refutations also presents a rich analysis of how mathematics can be thought of as an essentially historical discipline. Despite protestations by Lakatos that he (...) completely discarded Hegel when he discovered the work of Karl Popper, his philosophy of error closely resembles Hegel's in the Phenomenology of Spirit. According to Lakatos, the impact of proofs and refutations on naive concepts is to erase them completely and replace them by proof-generated concepts. His historical point about proofs and refutations is that this pattern in the growth of mathematical knowledge is a relatively recent innovation. Hegel's and Lakatos' shared vision of theoretical knowledge is that rather than being the inspired work of timeless, totally subjective, intellectual intuition , it is, more often than not, mediated by a lengthy history of speculation and failure. (shrink)

This essay is about mathematics as a written or literate language. Through historical and anthropological observations drawn from the history of Greek mathematics and the oral tradition preceding the rise of literacy in Greece, as well as considerations on the nature of alphabetic writing, it is argued that three essential linguistic features of mathematical discourse are jointly possible only through written, alphabetic language. The essay concludes with a discussion of how both alphabetic principles and issues related to literacy faced by (...) the Greeks in the axiomatization of geometry play a central role in some specific metamathematical theories. Drawing extensively on the work of ArpSd Szatx5, Eric Havelock, and Albert Lord, the implications developed between Szab6's history of Greek mathematics and Havelock and Lord's theories of writing and oral traditions (Homer's in particular) are the author's own, as are the applications to modern logic. (shrink)

This review was prompted by the publication of Paul Feyerabend's autobiography Killing Time, just following his sudden death in 1994.

A brief correction to a review of my book Imre Lakatos and the Guises of Reason published in Philosophia Mathematica, regarding the role of George Polya's notion of heuristic in Lakatos' Proofs and Refutations.

Pāṇini's fourth century BC Sanskrit grammar uses rewrite rules utilizing an explicit formal language defined through a semi-formal metalanguage. The grammar is generative, meaning that it is capable of expressing a potential infinity of well-formed Sanskrit sentences starting from a finite symbolic inventory. The grammar's operational rules involve extensive use of auxiliary markers, in the form of Sanskrit phonemes, to control grammatical derivations. Pāṇini's rules often utilize a generic context-sensitive format to identify terms used in replacement, modification or deletion operations. (...) The context-sensitive rule format is itself defined using Pāṇini's more general method of auxiliary markers, the latter used to define many dozens of linguistic categories and rules controlling derivations of Sanskrit sentences through the manipulation of ‘non-terminal’ and ‘terminal’ symbols. This technique for controlling formal derivations was rediscovered by Emil Post in the 1920s and later shown by him to be ca... (shrink)

Chocolate and Chess (Unlocking Lakatos) tells the fascinating story of Imre Lakatos’ life in Hungary before his flight to England following the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The book focuses on Lakatos’ role as a political functionary under Hungarian Stalinism, and compiles what is known of Lakatos’ role in the induced suicide of a young woman, Éva Iszák, at the end of World War II. This historical and biographical study provides essential background for appreciating Lakatos’ cross-cultural role as a philosopher in (...) England and Hungary, through the Anglo-American philosophy and the Hegelian-Marxist traditions in which he was trained and did not leave behind. (shrink)

Chocolate and Chess tells the fascinating story of Imre Lakatos’ life in Hungary before his flight to England following the failed 1956 Hungarian Revolution. The book focuses on Lakatos’ role as a political functionary under Hungarian Stalinism, and compiles what is known of Lakatos’ role in the induced suicide of a young woman, Éva Iszák, at the end of World War II. This historical and biographical study provides essential background for appreciating Lakatos’ cross-cultural role as a philosopher in England and (...) Hungary, through the Anglo-American philosophy and the Hegelian-Marxist traditions in which he was trained and did not leave behind. (shrink)

This paper explains how mathematical computation can be constructed from weaker recursive patterns typical of natural languages. A thought experiment is used to describe the formalization of computational rules, or arithmetical axioms, using only orally-based natural language capabilities, and motivated by two accomplishments of ancient Indian mathematics and linguistics. One accomplishment is the expression of positional value using versified Sanskrit number words in addition to orthodox inscribed numerals. The second is Pāṇini’s invention, around the fifth century BCE, of a formal (...) grammar for spoken Sanskrit, expressed in oral verse extending ordinary Sanskrit, and using recursive methods rediscovered in the twentieth century. The Sanskrit positional number compounds and Pāṇini’s formal system are construed as linguistic grammaticalizations relying on tacit cognitive models of symbolic form. The thought experiment shows that universal computation can be constructed from natural language structure and skills, and shows why intentional capabilities needed for language use play a role in computation across all media. The evolution of writing and positional number systems in Mesopotamia is used to transfer the thought experiment of “oral arithmetic” to inscribed computation. The thought experiment and historical evidence combine to show how and why mathematical computation is a cognitive technology extending generic symbolic skills associated with language structure, usage, and change. (shrink)

This review takes seriously Badiou's use of set theory and mathematics, explaining the book's subtle technical content while maintaining a critical distance on Badiou's interpretative views.

Bernard Lavor and John Kadvany argue that Lakatos’s Hegelian approach to the philosophy of mathematics and science enabled him to overcome all competing philosophies. His use of the approach Hegel developed in his Phenomenology enabled him to show how mathematics and science develop, how they are open-ended, and that they are not subject to rules, even though their rationality may be understood after the fact. Hegel showed Lakatos how to falsify the past to make progress in the present. (...) A critique based on normal standards of fairness and honesty finds this argument an attack on rationality. The similarity of the methods Lakatos used as a Stalinist politician and those he used as a philosopher are pointed out. The Hegelian interpretation of his philosophy is an excuse for his misdeeds. Key Words: Lakatos • Popper • Agassi • research program • historiography. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

In his preface Mr Wilson writes 'I feel that a great many adults … would do better to spend less time in simply accepting the concepts of others uncritically, and more time in learning how to analyse concepts in general'. Mr Wilson starts by describing the techniques of conceptual analysis. He then gives examples of them in action by composing answers to specific questions and by criticism of quoted passages of argument. Chapter 3 sums up the importance of this kind (...) of mental activity. Chapter 4 presents selections for the reader to analyse, followed by questions of university entrance/scholarship type. This is a book to be worked through, in a sense a text-book. (shrink)

Foreword I. Critical rationalism is a genuinely new philosophical perspective. It is not, however, one systematic view. The development of it by Popper and ...

Everyone loves something or somebody, and most people are concerned with loving another person like themselves, all equal. This book is based on the belief that getting clear about the concept and meaning of love between equals is essential for success in our practical lives. For how can we love properly unless we have a fairly clear idea of what love is? The book is written in ordinary language and for the ordinary person, without jargon or philosophical technicalities. It aims (...) to show that love between equals involves a single basic disposition, though that disposition expresses itself in various ways. Thus, after an introduction explaining the need for analysis and clarification, the author then deals in order with love as desire or need; with intrinsic friendship and sharing the self; with basic difficulties concerning power, dependence, altruism and paranoia; with sex and erotic love; and finally with the value in human life of love between equals. The work as a whole gives clear, coherent and practical guidance for all who wish to grasp what such love is really like. (shrink)

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

Ed. Daniel Greenberger, 750pp May 1995 164.95.

John Webster provides a major scholarly analysis, the first in any language, of the final sections of the Church Dogmatics. He focuses on the theme of human agency in Barth's late ethics and doctrine of baptism, placing the discussion in the context of an interpretation of the Dogmatics as an intrinsically ethical dogmatics. The first two chapters survey the themes of agency, covenant and human reality in the Dogmatics as a whole; later chapters give a thorough analysis of Church (...) Dogmatics IV/4 and the posthumously published text The Christian Life. A final chapter examines the significance of Barth's work for contemporary accounts of moral selfhood. The book is important not only for a detailed analysis of a neglected part of Barth's oeuvre, but also because it casts into question much of what has hitherto been written about Barth's ethical dogmatics. (shrink)

I argue that incomprehensibility (what the ancient skeptics called acatalepsia) plays a central role in the skepticism of both Bayle and Hume. I challenge a commonly held view (recently argued by Todd Ryan) that Hume, unlike Bayle, does not present oppositions of reason--what Kant called antimonies.

Reissued here in its corrected second edition of 1864, this essay by John Stuart Mill argues for a utilitarian theory of morality. Originally printed as a series of three articles in Fraser's Magazine in 1861, the work sought to refine the 'greatest happiness' principle that had been championed by Jeremy Bentham, defending it from common criticisms, and offering a justification of its validity. Following Bentham, Mill holds that actions can be judged as right or wrong depending on whether they (...) promote happiness or 'the reverse of happiness'. Although attracted by Bentham's consequentialist framework based on empirical evidence rather than intuition, Mill separates happiness into 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, arguing for a weighted system of measurement when making and judging decisions. Dissected and debated since its first appearance, the essay is Mill's key discussion on the topic and remains a fundamental text in the study of ethics. (shrink)

This book investigates the central role of reason in Islamic intellectual life. Despite widespread characterization of Islam as a system of belief based only on revelation, John Walbridge argues that rational methods, not fundamentalism, have characterized Islamic law, philosophy and education since the medieval period. His research demonstrates that this medieval Islamic rational tradition was opposed by both modernists and fundamentalists, resulting in a general collapse of traditional Islamic intellectual life and its replacement by more modern but far shallower (...) forms of thought. However, the resources of this Islamic scholarly tradition remain an integral part of the Islamic intellectual tradition and will prove vital to its revival. The future of Islam, Walbridge argues, will be marked by a return to rationalism"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

We present several new studies focusing on “salience effects”—the decreased tendency to attribute knowledge to someone when an unrealized possibility of error has been made salient in a given conversational context. These studies suggest a complicated picture of epistemic universalism: there may be structural universals, universal epistemic parameters that influence epistemic intuitions, but that these parameters vary in such a way that epistemic intuitions, in either their strength or propositional content, can display patterns of genuine cross-cultural diversity.

1. 1735-1738 -- 2. 1738-1743 -- 3. 1743-1754 -- 4. 1755-1765 -- 5. 1765-1775 -- 6. 1776-1786 -- 7. 1787-91.

Whiskey Lao -- Fair warning -- Randomness at large -- We the addicted -- The best possible world -- The importance of being doomed -- Moral responsibility -- The upper limit to the value of possible worlds.

A brief account of educational aims, focussing on preparation for a life of autonomous well-being.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment by Frederick C. BeiserJohn W. YoltonFrederick C. Beiser. The Sovereignty of Reason: The Defense of Rationality in the Early English Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996. Pp. xi + 332. Cloth, $39.50.Beiser characterizes the methodology of his study as historical and philosophical: historical in placing texts in their own context and in uncovering the intentions (...) of their authors; philosophical in reconstructing and appraising arguments (ix). Both methods are necessary for good historical work. The second is often practiced without the first, to the detriment of philosophy and its history. “A philosopher who reconstructs arguments without the aid of history indulges in mere guesswork and anachronism, measuring the standards of philosophical relevance and importance by the concerns of his own age” (x). Equally, understanding the arguments and ideas of, e.g., seventeenth-century writers, “also involves testing their truth: seeing how they cohere with one another, what their consequences are, whether they follow from the evidence adduced for them, and if they reply to the objections made against them” (x). This splendid study of the role of reason in seventeenth-century religion, science, and philosophy is a fine example of careful textual-historical scholarship with rigorous philosophical analysis.The goal of his study is to tell “the story of how rationalism, in the very specific sense of the sovereignty of reason, arose in seventeenth-century England” (5). Starting with an introduction which discusses such topics as “The Paradox of the English Enlightenment,” “Rationalism in the English Church,” “The Enlightenment and the New Sciences,” Beiser proceeds to detailed presentations and discussions of “The Protestant Challenge” (Chap. 1); Richard Hookers’s defense of reason (Chap. 2); the views of the Great Tew Circle, e.g., Falkland, Chillingworth, Hammond, Hales (Chap. 3); the Cambridge Platonists (Chap. 4); the nature of Enthusiasm (Chap. 5); John Toland and Deism (Chap. 6); and ethical rationalism (Chap. 7).Many of the topics covered have been the subjects of other books and articles. What marks Beiser’s account is the freshness of his approach, the many new insights and suggestions about the tensions between the holders of traditional doctrines and newer challenges. Beiser’s writing is clear, and the issues are carefully presented and analyzed. One of the central themes is the mistake of equating “rationalism with the critique or rejection of religion” (15), of identifying enlightenment with secularization (14). The appeals to reason often emerge from within orthodox religion, whose defenders were trying to cope with their own internal tensions. “Once we consider the Cambridge Platonists’ early reaction to predestination, it becomes clear that it was not Hobbes but Calvin who first posed the danger of atheism for them. For it was Calvin’s theology, and not Hobbes’s materialism, that inspired the fear of God that [End Page 138] they regarded as the source of atheism. In the eyes of the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes’s materialism was only a false remedy for that fear...” (147). A similar point is made later: “the foundations of a rational theology” in Whichcote “did not arise from any need to combat a creeping Hobbesianism. Rather, it grew up from the inner struggles and torments of the Protestant soul” (165).Equally significant is Beiser’s analysis of enthusiasm, the appeals to divine inspiration rather than to reason or evidence: “We should be aware of accepting the contemporary caricature of the enthusiasts, which portrayed them as zealous and ignorant anti–intellectuals with no cogent or coherent philosophical position of their own” (187). His analysis of the enthusiasts stresses the epistemological nature of their position, rather than the usual theological, ethical, or political dimensions (193). He insists that “enthusiasm is essentially a philosophical concept. Historically, it arose as a response to the problem of the sources and criteria of religious knowledge” (187). The search for criteria is a pervasive feature of Beiser’s study: Luther’s and Calvin’s efforts to draw the boundary between faith and reason (24); Richard Hooker’s failure to “provide an epistemological foundation for his theory of natural law” (67); the need for a criterion to distinguish genuine from false revelation... (shrink)

Could one give expression to a doctrine of essentialism without running afoul of semantical problems that are alleged to beggar systems of quantified modal logic? An affirmative answer is, I believe, called for at least in the case of individual essentialism. Individual essentialism is an ontological thesis concerning a kind of necessary connection between objects and their (essential) properties. It is not or anyhow not primarily a semantic thesis, a thesis about meanings, for example. And thus we are implicitly counselled (...) not to seek for the logical reconstruction of such necessities in theories in which necessity is a de ditto matter. A more natural-seeming target is an understanding of the structure of idioms of de re necessity. Of course, de re necessities may turn out to be special cases of necessities de ditto, with what consequences it is interesting to speculate upon, but it would be preferable if the theory of individual essences were to be prosecuted initially at least without prejudice to this other matter. A theory of individual essences therefore may find it a convenience to recognize a special category of open sentence by means of which to represent de re attributions of necessity. (shrink)