Histories of philosophy frequently depict the later eleventh century as the scene of a series of bouts between dialecticians and anti-dialecticians — Berengar vs. Lanfranc, Roscelin vs. Anselm — preliminaries to the twelfth century welterweight contest between Abelard and St. Bernard and — dare one say? — the thirteenth century heavy-weight championship between St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.The bouts took place — no question about that — but whether the contestants can properly be characterized as dialecticians and anti-dialecticians is less (...) certain. Dialectics is logic, the third part of the trivium, and increasingly cultivated in the eleventh century; men like Berengar and Roscelin were plainly eager to apply the logical tools with which they had been equipped to the solution of intellectual problems. In particular they undertook the solution of certain central problems of theology — Berengar that of the Eucharist and Roscelin that of the Trinity — and it was this, we are told, that aroused the ire of the anti-dialecticians: if the aim of the dialecticians was to lay bare the mysteries of faith to the light of reason that of the anti-dialecticians was to protect those same mysteries from profanation. (shrink)

In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussions of the ideas and institutions of the age make this a fascinating (...) and valuable document in the history of ideas. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition, first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. It has been thoroughly revised for this series and provided with a new and longer introduction, a chronology on Leibniz's life and career and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

In the New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz argues chapter by chapter with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, challenging his views about knowledge, personal identity, God, morality, mind and matter, nature versus nurture, logic and language, and a host of other topics. The work is a series of sharp, deep discussions by one great philosopher of the work of another. Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussions of the ideas and institutions of the age make this a fascinating (...) and valuable document in the history of ideas. The work was originally written in French, and the version by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett, based on the only reliable French edition, first appeared in 1981 and has become the standard English translation. It has been thoroughly revised for this series and provided with a new and longer introduction, a chronology on Leibniz's life and career and a guide to further reading. (shrink)

Leibniz says that descartes maintains that a human soul brings about voluntary acts by changing the direction of motion of parts of its body without changing the total quantity of motion. Most subsequent commentators have endorsed this interpretation. But descartes does not say this anywhere, And says things inconsistent with this interpretation. The present paper attributes to descartes a complementarity doctrine, According to which the cartesian laws of motion do not apply to the behaviour of animated bodies, And argues that (...) this doctrine is a natural outcome of his methodological practice of constructing theoretical models for particular classes of phenomena. (shrink)

‘… the shortness that is in us declines ever to become or be tall; nor will any other quality, while still remaining what it was, at the same time become or be the opposite quality; in such a situation it either withdraws or ceases to exist.’ Plato: Phaedo.

The author states kant's cosmological argument and its connection to the ontological argument. He discusses different criticisms of kant's argument, None of which he finds convincing. (staff).

This is an abridgement of the complete translation of the New Essays, first published in 1981, designed for use as a study text. The material extraneous to philosophy - more than a third of the original - and the glossary of notes have been cut and a philosophical introduction and bibliography of work on Leibniz have been provided by the translators. The marginal pagination has been retained for ease of cross-reference to the full edition. The work itself is an acknowledged (...) philosophical classic, in which Leibniz argues point by point with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The result is the single most important confrontation between the philosophical traditions of rationalism and empiricism. It makes an extremely suitable focus for the study of Leibniz's thought and of those two traditions in relation to one another. (shrink)

An important part of ethics consists in the attempt to find a theoretical framework for the sincere moral discourse of ordinary people; to present, if possible, a consistent account of the ways in which such terms as “good,” “right,” “duty,” “obligation” are used in moral contexts. It is surprising that it should ever have been thought possible to account for such utterances as expressions of emotion. For the most part nothing could be less like the sighs, groans, shouts, and chuckles (...) with which we normally express emotion than are our assertions about right and wrong, good and bad; these are usually the outcome of careful consideration and they are almost invariably expressed in cognitive terms. That is, we describe ourselves as “thinking out what we ought to do,” “coming to a conclusion as to what is right,” “knowing the difference between right and wrong,” “recognizing our obligations,” “seeing our duty.” When we do employ “emotive” words in these contexts it is almost always for the purpose of expressing anger or remorse or disgust with regard to our own moral lapses or those of others. Moral utterances, in short, have all the appearance of being statements of fact, and statements, moreover, which cannot be made in other than moral terms. (shrink)

In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke hints that he could explain how God may have created matter exnihilo, but refrains from doing so. Leibniz, when he came upon this passage, pricked up his ears. There ensued a sequence of personal events which are not without charm and piquancy, and a sequence of philosophical events which are of some interest. In this paper we tell the tale.Locke has been discussing the view that the creation of matter (...) out of nothing is so inconceivable — it is so utterly impossible to think of how it might be done — that not even omnipotence could bring off such a feat, and matter must therefore be co-eternal with God. (shrink)

In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke hints that he could explain how God may have created matter ex nihilo, but refrains from doing so. Leibniz, when he came upon this passage, pricked up his ears. There ensued a sequence of personal events which are not without charm and piquancy, and a sequence of philosophical events which are of some interest. In this paper we tell the tale.

Belot, Earman, and Ruetsche (1999) dismiss the black hole remnant proposal as an inadequate response to the Hawking information loss paradox. I argue that their criticisms are misplaced and that, properly understood, remnants do offer a substantial reply to the argument against the possibility of unitary evolution in spacetimes that contain evaporating black holes. The key to understanding these proposals lies in recognizing that the question of where and how our current theories break down is at the heart of (...) these debates in quantum gravity. I also argue that the controversial nature of assessing the limits of general relativity and quantum field theory illustrates the significance of attempts to establish the proper borders of our effective theories. (shrink)

Belot, Earman, and Ruetsche dismiss the black hole remnant proposal as an inadequate response to the Hawking information loss paradox. I argue that their criticisms are misplaced and that, properly understood, remnants do offer a substantial reply to the argument against the possibility of unitary evolution in spacetimes that contain evaporating black holes. The key to understanding these proposals lies in recognizing that the question of where and how our current theories break down is at the heart of these (...) debates in quantum gravity. I also argue that the controversial nature of assessing the limits of general relativity and quantum field theory illustrates the significance of attempts to establish the proper borders of our effective theories. (shrink)

In the Logical Investigations Husserl announced a critique of Lotze’s epistemology, but it was never included in the printed text. The aim of my paper is to investigate the remnant of Husserl’s planned text with special emphasis on the question of whether it goes beyond the obvious aspects of Husserl’s indebtedness to Lotze. Using Husserl’s student notes, excerpts, and book annotations, I refine the dating of Husserl’s encounter with Lotze and separate the various layers of influence. I argue that (...) Husserl’s acquaintance with Lotze’s epistemology forms a separate layer of influence, and that this layer cannot antedate the middle of the decade before the Logical Investigation. Husserl’s investigation of Lotze’s epistemology constitutes the most interesting aspect of the unpublished text that underlies the missing chapter from the Logical Investigations. I show that the most relevant influence of Lotze’s epistemology on Husserl lies in Lotze’s idea of the formal and real significance of logical laws. Although Husserl negatively evaluated Lotze’s epistemological problem both in the planned chapter and in other printed parts of the Logical Investigations, the problem repeatedly surfaced during Husserl’s Göttingen period. Finally, I use an unpublished student transcript to reconstruct Husserl’s SS 1912 seminar on Lotze’s epistemology. I argue that the deeper dimension of Lotze’s epistemological problem (and Husserl’s rejection of it) lies in the way that it highlights the epistemological function of phenomenology. (shrink)

In his book A Secular Age, Charles Taylor appeals to the metaphysical?normative distinction between ?immanence? and ?transcendence? as definitive for post-Axial religion. On Taylor's view, therefore, those of us who embrace a fully secular modernity can be described as having abandoned ?transcendence? to take up our lives wholly within the confines of the immanent frame, though he grants we may seek alternative satisfactions or ?substitutes? for eternity. But the notion that any metaphysical?normative model of sacred experience can serve as an (...) irresistible foundation is open to doubt if one recalls the Heideggerian insight that any metaphysical picture both reveals and conceals aspects of our experience. Taylor's own description of sacred and non-sacred experience within the immanent frame seems to rely upon this foundational distinction, without entertaining the possibility that the language itself may very well actually distort what our experience is like. This paper pursues the above objections to Taylor's argument, focusing special attention on the assumption that one can judge aesthetic experience (such as listening to a Beethoven string quartet) with the criteria we have inherited from post-Axial religion. The overwhelming authority of the Axial tradition might seem to validate questions such as, ?Is there an object?? or ?Is the experience purely immanent?? But to such questions we might respond that such language simply has no grip on the phenomena. Any such talk of ?substitution? might therefore be understood as an historical remnant in Taylor's book of the traditional monotheist's critique of idolatry. (shrink)

First published in 1987. This study is concerned with the problem of political obligation, the normative question of why one should obey the law, and with social contract thought as an answer to this question. It is entitled a critique, but the critique is not of social contract theory as such, but rather of the "orthodox" treatment of contract that yields so readily to the rough handling and easy rejection that is the normal lot of contractarianism in contemporary treatments. In (...) its place will be suggested a reinterpretation of contract that sees it as making different assumptions and requiring different premises, and that is proof against many of the orthodox refutations of social contract theory; the reinterpretation is thus in the nature of a vindication. First, from an examination of the most commonly cited champions of contractarianism will be derive a reinterpretation of contract in the form of a new model or syllogism, the features of which will be brought out by contrasting it first with the contemporary ideas of John Rawls and then with the orthodox model itself. Democratic consent theory, as the heir to the remnants of the orthodox model, will be examined, and the ideas of T. H. Green will be considered as embodying an important feature of contractarianism omitted or ignored by the orthodox model Finally, the new model of contract will be suggested as a potentially useful approach to the problem of political obligation in the modern context. This title will be of interest to student of politics and philosophy. (shrink)

For over two centuries, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has been constructed and categorized in multiple ways. An unprecedented mélange of anatomical features and physiological functions, it long remained a systematic quandary. Nevertheless, since 1797, naturalists and biologists have pursued two recurring obsessions. Investigations into platypus reproduction and lactation have focused attention largely upon females of the species. Despite its apparent admixture of avian, reptilian and mammalian characters, the platypus was soon placed as a rudimentary mammal – primitive, naïve and harmless. (...) This article pursues a different taxonomic trajectory, concentrating on a specifically male anatomical development: the crural spur and venom gland on the hind legs. Once the defining characteristic of both the platypus and echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus), by 1830 this sexed spur had been largely dismissed as inactive and irrelevant. For a creature regularly depicted as a biological outlier, the systematic and evolutionary implications of platypus poison have remained largely overlooked. In Australia, however, sporadic cases of ‘spiking’ led to consistent homologies being remarked between the platypus crural system and the venom glands of snakes. As with its reproductive reliance upon eggs, possession of an endogenous poison suggested significant reptilian affinities, yet the platypus has rarely been classed as an advanced reptile. Indeed, ongoing uncertainty regarding the biological purpose of the male’s spur has ostensibly posed a directional puzzle. As with so many of its traits, however, platypus poison has been consistently described as a redundant remnant, rather than an emergent feature indicating evolutionary advance. (shrink)

Hegel’s treatment of Judaism in his early theological writings and his lectures on the philosophy of world history is relatively well-known. One of the best and most recent discussions of it is found in Shlomo Avineri’s paper, “The Fossil and the Phoenix: Hegel and Krochmal on the Jewish Volksgeist,” presented at the 1982 biennial meeting of the Hegel Society of America. Avineri points out that Hegel’s portrayal of Judaism in the early writings mainly followed the conventional image found in traditional (...) Christian theology. He depicted Judaism as a religion of “slavish obedience to laws” laid down not by the people themselves but by a “supreme wisdom on high,” as well as a religion of deceit, cowardice, alienation, and stubborn particularism. In one significant instance, however, Hegel deviated from these traditional stereotypes, namely, in his understanding of and sympathy for the political, national feelings of the Jews during the period of Roman subjugation prior to the destruction of the second temple. They “discarded their ineffective messianic hopes and took up arms,” resisting courageously but suffering “the most appalling of human calamities,” the loss of city and nation. “The scattered remnant of the Jews have not abandoned the idea of the Jewish state, but they have reverted not to the banners of their own courage, but only to the standards of an ineffective messianic hope.”. (shrink)

After Meaning, 1972, and The Remnants of Meaning , 1987, The Things We Mean is Stephen Schiffer's third major work on the foundations of the theory of linguistic meaning. In simplest possible outline, the development started with a positive attempt to base a meaning theory on a modified Gricean account of utterance meaning, but took a negative turn, with the problems of belief sentences as a major reason for thinking that a systematic (compositional) semantic theory for natural language was not (...) possible at all. In the recent book, things have again taken a more positive turn, but now constructive and destructive elements are mixed in complex ways in a complex account, rich in ideas and in detail, and a great challenge to the reader. It is not always obviously free of inner conflict. Nor can one always easily see how things hang together. I shall here try to accurately present the main ideas. Where my comments are not relegated to separate paragraphs, I mark the transition with a dash ( -). (shrink)

This paper examines Alain Badiou’s critical engagement with religion. It is argued that there are two central points at which religion enters the scene of Badiou’s philosophy. First, in his critique, the ‘motif of finitude’ Badiou repeatedly refers to religion, claiming that ‘the obsession with finitude is a remnant of the tyranny of the sacred’. Second, Badiou stages his attempt to regenerate philosophy against the proclamation of its end as a confrontation with the religion, through philosophy’s detachment from the (...) poetization of philosophy and its reattachment to mathematics. By examining these two points, the paper aims to encircle Badiou’s notion of religion and thus clarify the role it plays in his philosophical system. This paper suggests that his notion of religion is a by-product of his polemics and therefore needs to be ‘extracted’ from his writings. Hence, the ‘critique of religion’ present in Badiou’s work is not straightforward and explicit critique. Another central aspect of Badiou’s critique of religion is related to his effort to separate the concept of truth from the category of meaning, which he understands as the emblem of religion. The paper sheds light on this matter and its setting in Jacques Lacan’s considerations on religion. (shrink)

This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor ...

In his New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz presents an extended critical commentary on Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Leibniz read some of Locke’s work in English and then, a few years later, the whole of it in French, a language in which he was more comfortable. Over a period of about two further years, on and off, he wrote his New Essays, which he finished at about the time Locke died and which was not published until about half a (...) century after Leibniz’s death. (He left them unpublished partly because they had been motivated by a hope of getting Locke to reply, and Locke’s death put an end to that; though his character made it a forlorn hope in any case.) The New Essays has been an important work: for one thing, Kant read it on its first appearance, and scholars say that this was a decisive event in his philosophical development. Anyway, given that this is one of Leibniz’s only two philosophical works of substantial book length, in all the torrent that poured from his pen, and given also that it is focused - critically but with respect and careful attentiveness - on the greatest classic of English philosophy, it is surprising that the New Essays had to wait until 1981 for a usable English translation.1 In 1896 there was published a sort of translation by A. G. Langley;2 but it is inaccurate far beyond the bounds of normal incompetence, as well as being grimly unreadable for stylistic reasons. As Chesterton once said about The Origin of Species, it is surprising how many people think they have read it, but I'll bet that nobody alive has slogged through the Langley version from cover to cover. It is a pity that the work was not decently available in English for nearly three centuries, because even for those who can read the French of, say, Descartes, Leibniz’s French is difficult. He reserved his native German for writings on history and politics, using French and Latin for philosophy and mathematics; presumably French was chosen for the New Essays because Leibniz wanted to respond to a popular work by a popular work.. (shrink)

A historical investigation of the exclusion of Africa and Asia from modern histories of philosophy.

A complete system of classical Aristotelian logic intended for honors high school and college.

Ohne Rücksicht auf disziplinäre Schranken bringt dieses Buch verschiedene nicht-reduktionistische Lerntheorien miteinander ins Gespräch. In einem offenen Diskurs, der die Konzepte zueinander in Beziehung setzt, werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven kritisch abgewogen und hinsichtlich ihrer Stärken und Schwächen diskutiert.

Delo se loteva vprašanja aktualnosti pojma subjekta v filozofiji in politiki skozi analizo tistih avtorjev, ki so ga domnevno najbolj radikalno pokopali: pokaže, da vznik radikalno novega in problematika subjekta zavzema osrednje mesto v Deleuzovi filozofiji, kakor tudi v Lyotardovi pozni misli posvečeni praznini, v Foucaultovi obravnavi biopolitike in biooblasti, v delu Negrija in Hardta o Imperiju, ter nazadnje v Badioujevi predelavi temeljnih filozofskih kategorij biti, resnice in subjekta, na osnovi katerih je dandanes znova možna renesansa filozofije. Ta ima po (...) Badiouju štiri razsežnosti, ki se v delu Vznik subjekta nenehno prepletajo: »V osnovi želja filozofije implicira razsežnost upora: ni filozofije brez nezadovoljstva mišljenja v njegovem soočenju s svetom, kakršen je. Pa vendar želja filozofije vključuje tudi logiko: to je, prepričanje v moč argumenta in uma.«. (shrink)

The relationship of part to whole is one of the most fundamental there is; this is the first and only full-length study of this concept. This book shows that mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, is essential to ontology. Peter Simons surveys and criticizes previous theories, especially the standard extensional view, and proposes a more adequate account which encompasses both temporal and modal considerations in detail. 'Parts could easily be the standard book on mereology for the next (...) twenty or thirty years.' Timothy Williamson, Grazer Philosophische Studien. (shrink)

This chapter provides an introduction to higher-order metaphysics as well as to the contributions to this volume. We discuss five topics, corresponding to the five parts of this volume, and summarize the contributions to each part. First, we motivate the usefulness of higher-order quantification in metaphysics using a number of examples, and discuss the question of how such quantifiers should be interpreted. We provide a brief introduction to the most common forms of higher-order logics used in metaphysics, and indicate a (...) number of questions which can be raised in such systems using logical vocabulary alone. Using a further example, we return to applications of higher-order logics in metaphysics. We also mention key developments in the history of higher-order logic as it pertains to metaphysics. Finally, we mention certain arguments which have been raised against the use of higher-order logic, and some ways of responding to them. (shrink)

Confirmation bias is one of the most widely discussed epistemically problematic cognitions, challenging reliable belief formation and the correction of inaccurate views. Given its problematic nature, it remains unclear why the bias evolved and is still with us today. To offer an explanation, several philosophers and scientists have argued that the bias is in fact adaptive. I critically discuss three recent proposals of this kind before developing a novel alternative, what I call the ‘reality-matching account’. According to the account, confirmation (...) bias evolved because it helps us influence people and social structures so that they come to match our beliefs about them. This can result in significant developmental and epistemic benefits for us and other people, ensuring that over time we don’t become epistemically disconnected from social reality but can navigate it more easily. While that might not be the only evolved function of confirmation bias, it is an important one that has so far been neglected in the theorizing on the bias. (shrink)

In this short but meaty book, Peter Unger questions the objective answers that have been given to central problems in philosophy. As Unger hypothesizes, many of these problems are unanswerable, including the problems of knowledge and scepticism, the problems of free will, and problems of causation and explanation. In each case, he argues, we arrive at one answer only relative to an assumption about the meaning of key terms, terms like "know" and like "cause," even while we arrive at (...) an opposite answer relative to quite different assumptions, but equally arbitrary assumptions, about what the key terms mean. (shrink)

Members of the field of philosophy have, just as other people, political convictions or, as psychologists call them, ideologies. How are different ideologies distributed and perceived in the field? Using the familiar distinction between the political left and right, we surveyed an international sample of 794 subjects in philosophy. We found that survey participants clearly leaned left (75%), while right-leaning individuals (14%) and moderates (11%) were underrepresented. Moreover, and strikingly, across the political spectrum, from very left-leaning individuals and moderates to (...) very right-leaning individuals, participants reported experiencing ideological hostility in the field, occasionally even from those from their own side of the political spectrum. Finally, while about half of the subjects believed that discrimination against left- or right-leaning individuals in the field is not justified, a significant minority displayed an explicit willingness to discriminate against colleagues with the opposite ideology. Our findings are both surprising and important, because a commitment to tolerance and equality is widespread in philosophy, and there is reason to think that ideological similarity, hostility, and discrimination undermine reliable belief formation in many areas of the discipline. (shrink)

Narrative thinking -- Narrative thinking about one's past -- Grief : a case study -- Narrative thinking about one's future -- Self-forgiveness : a case study -- The narrative sense of self -- Narrative, truth, life, and fiction.

While Hermann Levin Goldschmidt didn’t read Yiddish anarchists, there seems to have been a convergent evolution in their thinking. Goldschmidt’s looking up to Jewish lore as a source of liberating creativity is commonly encountered in Yiddish anarchist texts. His view of action as a constant response to internal and external challenges in the struggle for an open future is developed by Isaac Nachman Steinberg on the basis of nineteenth-century vitalism. Goldschmidt’s theory of anarchist individualism as willed self-limiting solidarity has a (...) compelling parallel in Hillel Solotaroff’s view of history. His use of impressionism and photography to eternalize the immediacy of human actuality is akin to Rudolf Rocker’s championing of decadent literature. In both cases, the goal of anarchism is not a dictatorship of the former downtrodden, but a continuous and contradictory evolution of freedom in ever-changing contexts. (shrink)