Online research in philosophy

Thomas Reid introduced the notion of social operation of mind in the theory of mind and language. Hhis friend James Gregory developed this notion and gave it a meaningful role in classical Uuniversal Grammar, especially in the General Theory of the Mmoods of Vverbs. Bbefore Reid and Gregory, the classical Philosophical Grammar presupposes, inter alia, that the mind is self-contained; in other words, that mental contents and operations are all independent from the natural and social environment. Ssome of these operations (...) have a modus/dictum structure corresponding, grosso modo, to the actual distinction between psychological mode and conceptual mental content, also analogous to the distinction between illocutionary force and propositional content, which is partially reflected in the system of verbal moods of natural languages. The famous Grammaire de Port-Royal already pointed to a serious limitation of this model. Arnauld & Lancelot wrote: “Oon ne se commande pas proprement à soi-même” (“Oone does not command properly to oneself”). I will try to show that Reid realized clearly that what we call today “individualism” does not allow us to characterize adequately the social aspects of language, and consequently headed for a different conception of the mind, an anti-individualist one. The notion of social operation of the mind is the cornerstone of that reform undertaken by Reid in the philosophy of mind. Furthermore, he and Gregory defended that natural languages were created especially to expresses those social aspects of language and mind. (shrink)

Russeilian or singular propositions are very useful in sernantics to specify "what has been said" by a literal and serious utterance of a sentence containing a proper name, an indexical or a dernonstrative, or for modeling demonstrative thoughts. Based on an example given by S. Guttenplan, I construct a case showing that if our only option for modeling dernonstrative thoughts is a singular proposition à la Russell, we run the risk of admitting infallible empirical (existential) beliefs. I defend the principle (...) of the fallibility of our (first order) representations by appealing to Perry's notionof a relational mode of presentation that allows us to generalize the proposition which is the content of the perceptual belief in cases of hallucination or misidentification, so that there is no "immunity to error through misidentification" in the province of demonstrative thought. (shrink)

Nosso objetivo é identificar; na filosofia de nosso seculo, 0 que ha de tipicamente platonista. Para tanto, eu dou uma definiciio do platonismo como uma tese ontologica e gnoseologica, que reconhece a existencia de entidades niio sensiveis, que niio podem ser tocadas, nem vistas, nem ouvidas, etc, mas que so podem ser conhecidas gracas a uma intuiciio de um tipo um pouco especial, que certos filosofos de nosso seculo, como Husserl, chama ram de "intuiciio categorial", ou "intuiciio das essencias". Depois, (...) eu faco um sobrevoo, comecando pela filosofia da matemdtica, principalmente a de Frege, em seguida, examino afilosofia da linguagem e da logica, a ontologia (principalmente a "teoria dos objetos" de Meinong) e a epistemologia (sobretudo, 0 "objetivismo" de Popper). Por fim, eu examino 0 programa naturalista e sua significaciio para a etica, mostrando que nada impede, ainda hoje, de sustentar as ideias de Platiio em diversos campos da Filosofia. (shrink)

La pensée fondamentale de Wittgenstein affirme que les constantes logiques ne représentent pas, ne fonctionnent pas sémantiquement comme des noms. En apparence truiviale, cette pensée, nous le montrerons, à des ramifications étonnantes dans la philosophie du premier wittgenstein, en ce qui concerne partmulzer sa conception de la logique. Notre but est d'interpréter l'aphorisme en question (T 4.0312) en montrant comment il se rapporte aux thèses et théories les plus importantes du Tractatus, et comment il permet de les faire tenir ensemble (...) d'une façon cohérente, justifiant par là son caractère "fondamental". Nous tentons également d'apporter une réponse aux questions suivantes: les propositions complexes sont-elles encore — comme les propositions atomiques — des "images" de la réalité? et quelle est cette "logique des faits" dont parle Wittgenstein dans l'aphorisme sous examen? (shrink)

I shall examine Quine’s conception of logic, of propositional attitudes, and of the unity of knowledge in order to show that there are some tensions in Quine’s system. I first propose a conception of the use or application of logic, stating that logic strictly speaking applies to intentional phenomena or to things that presuppose the existence of intentional phenomena. Then, I con-sider briefly Quine’s philosophy of logic and discuss some issues. In Quine’s philosophy, logic stays at the very center of (...) the web of our beliefs; it is cen-tral in science and ordinary knowledge as well. Then I examine Quine’s tendency to “quine” the mental, given his own maxim of minimum mutila-tion. Finally, I consider Quine’s thesis of the unity of knowledge, the thesis that there is continuity from ordinary to scientific knowledge. If I am right about the use of logic and the presence of the propositional attitude idiom in ordinary knowledge and social sciences and humanities, I think there is a problem of consistency in Quine’s system, and that Quine himself pointed to a part of the solution. (shrink)

After the seminal works of Putnam (1975), Burge (1979), and Kripke (1982), the next important contribution to externalism is certainly Davidson’s (mainly 1987, 1988, 1989, 2001). By criticizing the positions of these philosophers, Davidson elaborated his own brand of externalism. We shall first present some features of Davidson’s externalism (the importance of historical-causal connections for the foundation of language and thought, for the explanation of how language can be learned, and how attitudes can be identified by the interpreter, and finally (...) how mental content is determined by appealing to the idea of triangulation), to prepare the discussion of a few problems. We then discuss two questions in Davidson’s externalism. First, how to reconcile the fact that external factors determine mental content, as Putnam, Burge and Davidson himself argued convincingly, with token-physicalism, the thesis that mental events are identical with physical events occurring “in the head” (or the thesis that mental events supervenes locally on brain activities)? The second main problem is how to reconcile the first person authority with some prima facie consequences of externalism, mainly that we should know the relevant parts of our (natural and social) environment in order to know the content of our own thoughts? We argue that Davidson’s answer to the first question is not successful, while his answer to the second was a breakthrough. (shrink)