“Metaphysical questions relating to what ex­ists do not seem to fade away” notes Jack Kaminsky in this book, which takes as its starting point the Quinian view that we de­termine what exists by means of the formal systems we construct to explain the world. This starting point, Kaminsky points out, is not novel; philosophers have often tried to construct formal systems, and from these systems they have been able to deduce what can be said to exist. Contemporary (...) formal systems are different from earlier ones, how­ever, because they make more extensive use of the results of linguistics, logic, and mathe­matics studies. But these contemporary formal systems also must state eventually what their commitments to existence are, and they must be able to show their commit­ments to be free of paradox, ambiguity, and contradiction. Given these conditions, Kaminsky exam­ines the difficulties inherent in the existence claims of contemporary formal language systems. To do this he uses only a minimum of the technical elements of propositional and first-order quantificational logic. He concludes: many existential commitments are relative to the formal systems of time; some commitments seem to be absolute; and some problems—those relating to vacuous terms—arise only because no distinction is made between humanly constructed objects and naturally constructed objects. (shrink)

The acceptance of the concept of necessary linguistic cate­gories has given renewed prominence to the subject of ontology in contemporary discussions of language and logic. Jack Kaminsky, Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Binghamton, here contributes an important expo­sition of this school of thought. He examines the views of many philosophers who either admit or deny that ontological com­mitments are necessary, and he raises broad questions and shows why there is a compelling interest (...) in the relation of a formal language to the issue of ontological inquiry. (shrink)

In a recent paper Copi has argued for the admission of the term “essence” into scientific terminology. His primary reason is that the increasing adequacy of scientific theories is evidence of a gradual approximation to the real essences of things. Copi is aware that the laws of modern science are not to be taken as formulations of essences. But, he claims, “that is an ideal towards which science strives… Centuries hence wiser men will have radically different and more adequate theories, (...) and their notions will be closer approximations than ours to the real essences of things.”. (shrink)

Professor Kaminsky’s lucid exposition is, surprisingly, the first attempt in English to deal extensively and critically with Hegel’s views on art, as outlined in his difficult volumes on that subject. Hegel on Art thus performs a needed service for those interested in either the philosophy or the history of the fine arts. Hegel’s idealistic metaphysics was the last European endeavor to construct a universal philosophical system on the traditional pattern, and to modern readers it can easily appear more imposing (...) than useful. But in his examination of art, according to Professor Kaminsky, the German philosopher became “the most empirical of the empiricists,” and his observations can be valuable to us quite independent of our commitment to his metaphysics. Moreover, as Professor Kaminsky shows, Hegel’s metaphysical framework does give him an advantage not available under the rigorous skepticism of today’s positivist or symbolist: he can recognize that art mirrors the world of action, and so can provide it with objective validity. As the author concludes in Hegel’s defense: “It may well be that only art can be used to communicate the important episodes that happen to us or others....Without art, we lose one of our great sources of information as to who we are and what we ought to do.”. (shrink)

Corrigibility has generally been designated as the major qualification of a scientific law. Although various other characteristics of a scientific law have been questioned, corrigibility has usually been accepted as one of its essential features. On this basis scientists, positivists, and pragmatists have frequently distinguished between genuine empirical laws and all other assertions that only seem to be laws. The mark of a genuine law in the scientific sense is its corrigibility; the mark of a pseudo law is its non-corrigibility. (...) In this paper I should like to reopen philosophic inquiry into the nature of corrigibility as it is supposedly exemplified in law and to call attention to some of the peculiar difficulties and conclusions attendant on any such inquiry. (shrink)