This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held that (...) true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

Fascinating illustrations contribute to this illuminating and award-winning account of how and why philosophy emerged and make it a must-read for any inquisitive thinker unsatisfied with prevailing assumptions on this timely and highly relevant subject._ By taking the reader back to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy more than 500 years B.C., the author, with unparalleled insight, tells the story of the Pythagorean quest for otherwordly konwledge -- a tale of cultism, political conspiracies, and bloody uprisings that eventually culminate in (...) tragic failure. The emerging hero is Parmenides, who introduces for the first time a technique for testing the truth of a statement that was not based on physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, but instead relied exclusively on the faculty we humans share with the gods: the ability to reason. "Figures from Anaximander to Zeno, the ruins where they lived and thought, and the paradoxes and thought-experiments they proposed are depicted among the [many] well-chosen color illustrations. The results read like an introductory textbook, but one that has been lovingly written, lavishly laid-out and crisply printed-- making it engaging enough to draw in readers to whom it has not been assigned." - _ Publishers Weekly___ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." - _ Richard D. McKirahan, Jr., Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College___ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." - _ Walter Burkert, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich___ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)

Plato’s "Parmenides" presents the modern reader with a puzzle. Noted for being the most difficult of Platonic dialogues, it is also one of the most influential. This new edition of the work includes the Greek text on facing pages, with an English translation by Arnold Hermann in collaboration with Sylvana Chrysakopoulou. Hermann's Introduction provides an overview and commentary aimed at scholars and first time readers alike.

This celebratory Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprises some 23 articles by friends, former students and colleagues, many of whom first presented their papers at the international "Presocratics and Plato" Symposium in his honor. The conference was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies, Parmenides Publishing, and Starcom AG, with endorsements from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. While Kahn's work reaches far beyond the Presocratics and (...) Plato, it is in these subject areas that the distinction of his scholarship has come to be regarded as virtually unrivaled. The articles contributed to this volume are by some of the most renowned scholars working on these topics today, their breadth and depth bearing witness to his profound impact and influence on the discipline of Ancient Greek Philosophy._ Charles Kahn taught Classics and Philosophy at Columbia University from 1957 to 1965, and has since been teaching in the Philosophy Department of the University of Pennsylvania. He spent a year as Visiting Professor at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens, and had additional Visiting Fellowships at Balliol College, Oxford and Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a term as Visiting Professor at Harvard. He is the recipient of several prestigious research grants, from the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2000 he was elected Fellow of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of _Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, The Verb “Be” in Ancient Greek, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, and Essays on Being_. His latest book,_Plato and the Post-Socratic Dialogue_, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. _ Contributors: Julia Annas Sarah Broadie Lesley Brown Tomás Calvo-Martínez Diskin Clay John M. Dillon Dorothea Frede Arnold Hermann Carl A. Huffman Enrique Hülsz Piccone D. M. Hutchinson Paul Kalligas Vassilis Karasmanis Aryeh Kosman Anthony A. Long Richard McKirahan Susan Sauvé Meyer Alexander P.D.Mourelatos Satoshi Ogihara Richard Patterson Christopher J. Rowe David Sedley Richard Sorabji. (shrink)

This volume is a Festschrift dedicated to Charles Kahn comprised of more than 20 papers presented at the conference "Presocratics and Plato: Festschrift Symposium in Honor of Charles Kahn", 3-7 June 2009. The conference was held at the European Cultural Center of Delphi, Greece, and was organized and sponsored by the HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies and Parmenides Publishing, with endorsement from the International Plato Society, and the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. Contributors: Julia (...) Annas - University of Arizona; Sarah Broadie - University of St. Andrews; Lesley Brown - University of Oxford; Tomás Calvo-Martínez - Universidad Complutense de Madrid; Diskin Clay - Duke University; John M. Dillon - Trinity College, Dublin; Dorothea Frede - Humbolt University, Berlin; Arnold Hermann - HYELE Institute for Comparative Studies; Carl A. Huffman - DePauw University; Enrique Hülsz Piccone - Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico; D.M. Hutchinson - St. Olaf College; Paul Kalligas - National and Kapodistrian University, Athens; Vassilis Karasmanis - National Technical University, Athens; Aryeh Kosman - Haverford College; Anthony A. Long - University of California, Berkeley; Richard McKirahan - Pomona College; Susan Sauvé Meyer - University of Pennsylvania; Alexander P.D. Mourelatos - University of Texas at Austin; Satoshi Ogihara - Tohoku University, Japan; Richard Patterson - Emory University; Christopher J. Rowe - Durham University; David Sedley - University of Cambridge; Richard Sorabji - University of Oxford. (shrink)

1. Die Hymnen des Rigveda, herausgegeben Oldenberg von Hermann. Band.I. Metrische und Textgeschichtliche Prolegomena. Berlin, 1888. 14 Mk.2. Vedische Studien, Pischel von Richard und Karl F. Geldner. Stuttgart, 1888–1889. 12 Mk.

L’hypothèse qu’énonce Arnold Gehlen d’un retour possible de la religion dans la vie politique est le point de départ de cette étude, qui la soumet à un examen critique. On lui oppose que la dépolitisation de la religion en Europe – le grand acquis des Lumières – est une tendance lourde qui n’est pas prête de se renverser en son contraire. Il convient en réalité de distinguer trois choses : la religion politique, illustrée à partir de la révolution iranienne (...) de 1979, la théologie politique et la religion civile. En outre, la théologie politique est entendue en deux sens distincts : au sens de Carl Schmitt, qui fait de la théologie un programme de recherche académique et au sens de la théologie de la libération de Metz et de Moltmann, qui repose sur l’espoir de repolitiser la religion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of PhilosophyScott AustinArnold Hermann. To Think Like God: Pythagoras and Parmenides: The Origins of Philosophy. Las Vegas: Parmenides Publishing, 2004. Pp. xxx + 374. Cloth, $32.00.Mr. Arnold Hermann could presumably have used his connection with Parmenides Press to publish anything he wanted. Instead, he has put out a sober, bibliographically well aware, thesis about the origin, (...) nature, and motivations of Parmenides' thought, one evolved in dialogue with scholars such as Cordero, McKirahan, and Curd. The resulting monograph, to be the first of three on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's Parmenides, is a legitimate contribution to the field, to be taken very seriously as part of any scholarly bibliography. Best of all, in this reviewer's opinion, is the exploration of Parmenides' legal language and metaphors as they might affect the type of abstract object which can count as subject for the esti, the differences between or among routes and rules of inquiry, the necessity for a Doxa-section, the relationships with Xenophanes and Plato. Less successful, I think, is the attempt to put together a coherent picture out of the hazy evidence on Pythagoras and to distinguish levels of probability within that evidence. Nor, in spite of his praise for Mourelatos's book ("... truly one of the most indispensable works on the Eleatic," 214), does Hermann seem aware (see 189) that the possibility of a pluralistic Eleatic ontology was also present in that book, before it was followed by Curd's book.Hermann's thesis is that Parmenidean philosophy was an answer both to Xenophanes' challenge, to his indication of the limits of our human inquiry—our difference from the gods—and the problem of irrationals in Pythagoreanism. By setting out the rational limits which any purely theoretical inquiry must have, Parmenides intended to show that, in pursuing theory, we can, indeed, think like the gods. (Here excellent use is made of work by Mourelatos and Long.) But by distinguishing theoretical inquiry from empirical inquiry, Parmenides showed the limits of Pythagoreanism, which had been unable to make that distinction. (Units are theoretical entities, but points are empirical, so there are in reality no Pythagorean unit-points; rational numbers are theoretical while irrationals are empirical, and so on.) (Here there are affinities with the recent Popper book.) That is, the Doxa-section, according to Hermann, shows tragically that we do not always think like the gods, especially when we think empirically. Our contemporary science is continuing the inquiry that Parmenides began, but the original Parmenidean philosophy was a methodology about how to inquire into abstract objects, not necessarily a metaphysics, a theory about what those abstract objects are. Here Hermann differs from the standard portrait of Parmenides as theorist of an intelligible world; he thinks that it is Plato who is more responsible than Parmenides for theorizing about which objects correspond to the methodology. (Here he follows Mourelatos and Curd in viewing fragment 2 as setting up types of inquiry rather than types of entity.)One has no quarrel with the claim that Parmenides' originality is at least partly methodological. Yet a methodology whose strictures are this strong was thought, by Plato at least, to require absolute monism; is it an accident that I cannot have a pluralistic ontology without having non-identities between members of pairs of objects, non-identity being an example of saying what is not (fragment 8, lines 36–38)? Does not this particular methodology necessitate a very particular metaphysics? [End Page 481]And, if we do think like the gods, at least at times, are we not then thinking about what is ultimately real, i.e., about a certain type of object? If rules can be given which secure a kind of thought which is exempt from Xenophanean scepticism, do not these rules determine sorts of entities? And, if Pythagoreanism errs in confusing theoretical with empirical entities, must not we ourselves possess the perspective of a god or goddess in order to avoid the confusion?These are some of the questions provoked by this fresh book, which, untrammelled by much scholarly narrowness, is yet capable of contributing much to scholarly... (shrink)

Abordaré la crítica de Axel Honneth a la primera Escuela de Frankfurt y su aparente omisión de Herbert Marcuse. Defenderé a Marcuse contra algunas de las críticas hechas por Honneth a la teoría crítica temprana de la Escuela de Frankfurt. Luego argumentaré que Marcuse siempre estuvo en busca de una subjetividad radical, incluso cuando advirtió contra los mecanismos unidimensionales en curso de producción de sujetos. Finalmente, mostraré que Honneth también construye su proyecto en torno a la búsqueda de una subjetividad (...) radical, pero aborda el problema a través de una teoría de la intersubjetividad que complementa el proyecto de Marcuse. (shrink)

Ausgehend von einer Gegenüberstellung der erkenntnistheoretischen Grundpositionen des Empirismus und der Transzendentalphilosophie (Apriorismus) will der Autor am Beispiel der Probleme «Begriffsbildung» und «Kausalität» zeigen, wie sich klassische philosophische Kontroversen (Hume-Kant) unter Zuhilfenahme erkenntnistheoretisch relevanter biologisch-psychologischer Forschungsergebnisse (J. Piaget, K. Lorenz) lösen lassen.

One way of increasing the supply of vital organs without violating the dead donor rule is to declare death on cardiopulmonary criteria after withdrawing life support. The question then is how quickly death may be declared.

Auf den Ersten Weltkrieg folgte in Mitteleuropa ein grundlegender politischer Umbruch. Albert Dikovich arbeitet die Folgen dieser demokratischen Zeitenwende für die deutschsprachige Philosophie umfassend auf. Dabei untersucht er zum einen, wie nach dem katastrophalen Gewaltereignis des Krieges und angesichts der akuten Eskalation im Inneren die Grenzen der moralisch legitimen Mittel politischer Konfliktaustragung neu gezogen wurden. Zum anderen beleuchtet er den Zusammenhang zwischen rechts- und erkenntnistheoretischen Annahmen und Positionierungen innerhalb eines Spannungsfeldes konkurrierender politischer Neuordnungsentwürfe. Dabei zeigt sich, dass die damals geführten (...) philosophischen Kämpfe um die Demokratie mit unserer Gegenwart mehr zu tun haben, als es der geschichtliche Abstand vermuten lässt. (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...) not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

Modern scientific knowledge is increasingly collaborative. Much analysis in social epistemology models scientists as self-interested agents motivated by external inducements and sanctions. However, less research exists on the epistemic import of scientists’ moral concern for their colleagues. I argue that scientists’ trust in their colleagues’ moral motivations is a key component of the rationality of collaboration. On the prevailing account, trust is a matter of mere reliance on the self-interest of one’s colleagues. That is, scientists merely rely on external compulsion (...) to motivate self-interested colleagues to be trustworthy collaborators. I show that this self-interest account has significant limitations. First, it cannot fully account for trust by relatively powerless scientists. Second, reliance on self-interest can be self-defeating. For each limitation, I show that moral trust can bridge the gap—when members of the scientific community cannot rely on the self-interest of their colleagues, they rationally place trust in the moral motivations of their colleagues. Case studies of mid-twentieth-century industrial laboratories and exploitation of junior scientists show that such moral trust justifies collaboration when mere reliance on the self-interest of colleagues would be irrational. Thus, this paper provides a more complete and realistic account of the rationality of scientific collaboration. (shrink)

Ignorance of one’s privileges and prejudices is an epistemic problem. While the sources of ignorance of privilege and prejudice are increasingly understood, less clarity exists about how to remedy ignorance. In fact, the various causes of ignorance can seem so powerful, various, and mutually reinforcing that studying the epistemology of ignorance can inspire pessimism about combatting socially constructed ignorance. I argue that this pessimism is unwarranted. The testimony of members of oppressed groups can often help members of privileged groups overcome (...) their ignorance. This paper argues that a particular type of speaker’s trust—hopeful trust—can motivate hearers to become cognizant of their privilege and prejudice. I argue that hopeful trust is a powerful way of eliciting trust-responsiveness that can be an effective mechanism for challenging privilege and prejudice. To make this case, I draw on case studies of online attempts to challenge ignorance. While the problems of testimonial injustice, defensi... (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories considered empirically successful in their time turn out to be not even approximately true, most present ones probably aren’t approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s ‘Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’ is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the evidence available to them. Here, I offer another answer, which I (...) call the ‘Problem of Misleading Evidence.’ I argue that this proposal is, in important respects, superior to Stanford’s. (shrink)

Hermann Cohen's Religion of Reason, Out of the Sources of Judaism is widely taken to be the greatest work in Jewish philosophy and religious thought since Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed. It is at once a Jewish book and a philosophical one: Jewish because it takes its material from the literary tradition that extends from the bible to the rabbis to the great medieval philosophers; philosophical because it studies that material in order to construct a worldview that is rational (...) in the broadest sense of the term. This edition reprints a 1972 introduction by Leo Strauss and includes an essay on the work by Steven Schwarzchild. A new introduction by Kenneth R. Seeskin situates Cohen's masterwork in the history of modern philosophical and religious thought. (shrink)

Evidence shows that during birth women frequently experience unconsented care, coercion, and a loss of autonomy. For many countries, this contradicts both the law and medical ethics guidelines, which emphasize that competent and fully informed women’s autonomy must always be respected. To better understand this discordance, we empirically describe perinatal maternity care providers’ and women’s moral deliberation surrounding coercive measures during birth. Data were obtained from 1-on-1 interviews with providers (N = 15) and women (N = 14), and a survey (...) of women (N = 118). Analyses focused on an in-depth exploration of responses to a question on the permissibility of coercion in birth whose wording was borrowed from a Swiss medical-ethical guideline. Reasons for and against a principle permissibility of coercive measures in birth were grouped into clusters of reasons to build a coherent explanatory framework. Factors considered morally relevant when deliberating on coercion included women’s decisional capacity, beneficence/non-maleficence, authority through knowledge on the part of providers, flaws of the medical system, or the imperative to protect the most vulnerable. Also, we identified various misconceptions, such as the conviction that a pathological birth can justify coercion or that fetal rights can justifiably infringe on women’s autonomy. Information and education on the issue of coercion in birth are urgently needed to enable women to fully exercise their reproductive autonomy, to prevent long-term adverse health outcomes of women and children, and to reconcile the medical vigilance which has lead to a reduction of perinatal morbidity and mortality with women’s enfranchisement in their own care. (shrink)

On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice presents a view of morality that is inspired by the later Wittgenstein. Hermann explores the ethical implications of Wittgenstein's remarks on doubt, justification, rule-following, certainty and training, offering an alternative to interpretations of Wittgenstein's work that view it as being intrinsically ethical. The book scrutinises cases in which doubt and justification do not make sense, and contrasts certain justificatory demands made by philosophers with the role of moral justification in concrete situations. It offers (...) an account of moral certainty, which is linked to a view of moral competence. Contrary to the views propounded by philosophers who emphasise the importance of moral principles, it is argued that moral agency is first and foremost a matter of having certain capacities. The book takes an anti-intellectualist stance and remains close to concrete practices. The practice-based view of morality it endorses has implications for moral education, intercultural moral dialogue and the prospects for moral agreement, change and progress. (shrink)

This paper argues that trustworthiness is an epistemic virtue that promotes objectivity. I show that untrustworthy imposture can be an arrogant act of privilege that silences marginalized voices. But, as epistemologists of ignorance have shown, sometimes trickery and the betrayal of epistemic norms are important resistance strategies. This raises the question: when is betrayal of trust epistemically virtuous? After establishing that trust is central to objectivity, I argue for the following answer: a betrayal is epistemically vicious when it strengthens or (...) promotes oppressive, exclusive networks of trust, and a betrayal is epistemically virtuous when it expands trust networks to involve the oppressed. These criteria correctly account for both the epistemic vice of a recent case of Internet imposture and the epistemic virtue of resistant tricksters. (shrink)

Suppose one believes that the historical record of discarded scientific theories provides good evidence against scientific realism. Should one adopt Kyle Stanford’s specific version of this view, based on the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives? I present reasons for answering this question in the negative. In particular, Stanford’s challenge cannot use many of the prima facie strongest pieces of historical evidence against realism, namely: superseded theories whose successors were explicitly conceived, and superseded theories that were not the result of elimination-of-alternatives inferences. (...) Attempts to accommodate and within Stanford’s framework are incompatible with other commitments Stanford holds, such as anti-realism being piecemeal instead of global. As separate lines of criticism, I argue that there are problems with Stanford’s claim that the PUA is the most important challenge to realism, and with his view of instrumentalist theory endorsement. (shrink)

One approach to understanding how the human cognitive system stores and operates with quantifiers such as “some,” “many,” and “all” is to investigate their interaction with the cognitive mechanisms for estimating and comparing quantities from perceptual input (i.e., nonsymbolic quantities). While a potential link between quantifier processing and nonsymbolic quantity processing has been considered in the past, it has never been discussed extensively. Simultaneously, there is a long line of research within the field of numerical cognition on the relationship between (...) processing exact number symbols (such as “3” or “three”) and nonsymbolic quantity. This accumulated knowledge can potentially be harvested for research on quantifiers since quantifiers and number symbols are two different ways of referring to quantity information symbolically. The goal of the present review is to survey the research on the relationship between quantifiers and nonsymbolic quantity processing mechanisms and provide a set of research directions and specific questions for the investigation of quantifier processing. (shrink)

An epistemology of art has seemed problematic mainly because of arguments claiming that an essential element of a theory of knowledge, truth, has no place in aesthetic contexts. For, if it is objectively true that something is beautiful, it seems to follow that the predicate “is beautiful” expresses a property – a view asserted by Plato but denied by Hume and Kant. But then, if the belief that something is beautiful is not objectively true, we cannot be said to know (...) that something is beautiful and the path to an epistemology of art is effectively blocked. The article places the existence aesthetic properties in the proper context; presents a logically correct argument for the existence of such properties; identifies strategies for responding to this argument; explains why objections by Hume, Kant, and several other philosophers fail; and sketches a realization account of beauty influenced by Hogarth. (shrink)

While popular cultural representations portray the “new father” of the past two decades as more involved, more nurturing, and capable of coparenting, many argue that actual fathering conduct has not kept pace. Others, however, question the extent to which the culture of fatherhood does indeed support involved fathering and, if so, what this involvement entails. This study aims to contribute to the exploration of the culture of fatherhood through an analysis of a yearlong Canadian newspaper series dedicated to family issues. (...) Findings suggest that through representations of parental guilt, parental responsibility, work—family balance issues, and hegemonic masculinity, mothers continue to be positioned as primary parents. Support for father involvement, to the extent that it exists, occurs within the framework of fathers as part-time, secondary parents whose relationship with children remains less important than mothers'. (shrink)

Many have tackled the question ‘What (if anything) is analytic philosophy?’ I will not attempt to answer this vexed question. Rather, I address a smaller, more manageable set of interrelated questions: first, when and how did people begin using the label ‘analytic philosophy’? Second, how did those who used this label understand it? Third, why did many philosophers we today classify as analytic initially resist being grouped together under the single category of ‘analytic philosophy’? Finally, for the first generation who (...) described themselves as analytic philosophers, what was their intended contrast class? Relatedly, when did ‘continental philosophy’ become the standard opposition? Some evidence I present justifies received answers to these questions; other evidence supports surprising and unorthodox answers to these questions. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss Babylonian observations of a “massing of the planets” reported in two Astronomical Diaries, BM 32562 and BM 46051. This extremely rare astronomical phenomenon was observed in Babylon between 20 and 30 March 185 BC shortly before sunrise when all five planets were simultaneously visible for about 10 to 15 min close to the horizon in the eastern morning sky. These two observational texts are not only interesting as records of an extremely rare planetary configuration, but (...) also because the observers appear to be confused by the presence of all planets simultaneously and mix them up in their reports, and the two reports of the same observations are so different that we are forced to conclude that they were carried out by two different observers. There is an additional astronomical event which makes this planetary configuration even more unique: the exact conjunction of the planets Mars and Jupiter in the afternoon of 25 March 185 BC. An exact conjunction, where two planets are so close together that they appear as one object in the sky, is also extremely rare. Although this exact conjunction between Mars and Jupiter occurred during the day so that it was not observable, it was correctly predicted by the Babylonian scholars: a remarkable achievement and a nice illustration of their astronomical craftsmanship. Finally, our study clearly exposes one of the limitations of Babylonian naked-eye astronomy. When first appearances of the planets Mercury, Mars and Saturn are expected around the same date, it is nearly impossible to correctly identify them because their expected positions are only approximately known while they have about the same visual magnitude so that they become visible at about the same altitude above the horizon. (shrink)

Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field maintained that confused terms can still (...) refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage. (shrink)