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)

Degas, Manet, Picasso, Dali and Lipchitz produced works of art exemplifying a seeming impossibility: Not only combining incompatible attributes but doing so consistently with aesthetic strictures Horace formulated in Ars Poetica. The article explains how these artists were able to do this, achieving what some critics have called ‘a new art,’ ‘a miracle,’ and ‘a new metaphor.’ The article also argues that the author achieved the same result in sculpture by means of philosophical analysis – probably a first in the (...) history of art. (shrink)

Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. The one I propose (...) also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments. (shrink)

Brought about through philosophical analysis – a first in the history of art – paradigm shifts in the ontology and epistemology of sculpture are described, motivated, and exemplified with pieces they inspired. Navigating the new aesthetic environment requires an ‘escape from Plato's Cave’ by means of a kind of phenomenological reduction. The new conceptual foundation allows artists unprecedented levels of freedom to explore and innovate, connects sculpture to music, and has the potential to enhance significantly the appreciation of art and (...) its impact on contemporary culture. The algorithmic nature of my paradigms shows that art and science have more in common than previously thought. (shrink)

Arnold Cusmariu ABSTRACT: Degas, Manet, Picasso, Dali and Lipchitz produced works of art exemplifying a seeming impossibility: Not only combining incompatible attributes but doing so consistently with aesthetic strictures Horace formulated in Ars Poetica. The article explains how these artists were able to do this, achieving what some critics have called ‘a new art,’ ‘a...

Following up on its predecessor in this Journal, the article defends philosophy as a guide to making and analyzing art; identifies Cubist solutions to the Prometheus Challenge, including a novel analysis of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; defines a new concept of aesthetic attitude; proves the compatibility of Prometheus Challenge artworks with logic; and explains why Plato would have welcomed such artworks in his ideal state.

A theory purporting to solve the problem of universals must be able to explain predication, recurrence, and classification. How Platonism does this is well known. Here I take a hard look at an attempt by M.J. Cresswell to give an Aristotelian answer and show it to be a complete and utter failure. The answer does not eliminate commitment to universals and it is only half an answer anyway because it does not cover relational predicates, an omission that Russell noted dooms (...) answers by other philosophers as well. (shrink)

Philosophers have recognized for some time the usefulness of semantic conceptions of truth and belief. That the third member of the knowledge triad, evidence, might also have a useful semantic version seems to have been overlooked. This paper corrects that omission by defining a semantic conception of evidence for science and mathematics and then developing a semantic conception of knowledge for these fields, arguably mankind’s most important knowledge repository. The goal is to demonstrate the advantages of having an answer to (...) the more modest question “What is necessary and sufficient for introducing a knowledge predicate into scientific and mathematical languages?” – as contrasted with the ambitious Platonic question “What is knowledge?” After presenting the theory, the paper responds to a wide range of objections stemming from traditional philosophical concerns. (shrink)

I present a formally explicit statement of Church's celebrated argument against Carnap's analysis of belief and defend it against well-known objections by W.V.O. Quine, R.M. Martin, and Michael Dummett.

Cinema is an effective medium for communicating the Platonist attitude toward Beauty as an attribute worthy of moral respect, as case studies can illustrate. Mine focuses on the work of the French actress Carole Bouquet, who launched her career in Buñuel’s Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire). Part 1 shows sins against Beauty to be a unifying theme of Bouquet’s films, which leave no doubt as to the appropriate response. Part 2 combines Plato’s distinction in the (...) Phaedrus between erotic and aesthetic vision with insights from Kant and Baudelaire to sketch a course of action that addresses the critical “What is to be done?” question. (shrink)

An argument structure that covers both cases Gettier described in his 1963 paper reinforces the conclusion of my 2012 Logos & Episteme article that the justified true belief (JTB) conception of knowledge is inconsistent. The stronger argument makes possible identification of fundamental flaws in the standard approach of adding a fourth condition to JTB, so that a new kind of skepticism becomes inevitable unless conceptual change occurs.

Arnold Cusmariu ABSTRACT: The Cogito formulation in Discourse on Method attributes properties to one conceptual category that belong to another. Correcting the error ends up defeating Descartes’ response to skepticism. His own creation, the Evil Genius, is to blame. Download PDF.

Arnold Cusmariu ABSTRACT: Following up on its predecessor in this Journal, the article defends philosophy as a guide to making and analyzing art; identifies Cubist solutions to the Prometheus Challenge, including a novel analysis of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; defines a new concept of aesthetic attitude; proves the compatibility of Prometheus Challenge artworks with logic;...

In "Translation and Belief" I presented a two-stage version of Church's translation argument against Carnap's analysis of belief. Here I show that the first stage is sufficient to establish a weaker, though no less significant conclusion, if supplemented with the principle that the same thought or idea can be expressed in different languages.

A valid and arguably sound private language argument is built using premises based on Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations augmented by familiar analytic distinctions and concepts of logic. The private language problem and the solution presented here can be plausibly traced to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. Both literatures missed the connection.

I give the following analysis of de re belief: S believes with respect to X that it has the property F =df S believes a proposition which is for S extensionally to the effect that it has the property F. I spell this definition out and defend it against objections by M. Pastin, commenting also on his account of de re belief.

Logical reasoning is explained in ways young children can understand and apply. Concepts of a difficult and complex subject are made interesting, fun and easy to grasp thanks to a playful and friendly approach free of jargon. -/- .

Tackling the question whether beauty is a property as if the problem of universals could safely be ignored leads to confusions exemplified in Scruton 2009, McMahon 2007, Zangwill 2001 and Scarry 1999, among recent writers. I frame the question in the proper context with a measure of precision, clear away misunderstandings, present a logically valid argument for an affirmative answer, list three relevant and four irrelevant ways of countering the argument, and show that well-known views of Hume and Kant yield (...) relevant objections only if construed in Russellian terms, but still fail. Finally, I sketch a realization account of beauty along Platonist lines, similar to Hogarth’s. (shrink)

Norman Malcolm has maintained that impure memory is a de dicto mixture of factual memory and later knowledge or inference. E. Stiffler objects that impure memory must be given a de re analysis because later knowledge must be applied to earlier memory to yield impure memory. I show that the conditions of Stiffler's de re analysis are neither necessary nor sufficient and that Malcolm can easily give a de dicto solution to the application problem.

Platonism considers existence as well as nonexistence as genuine properties. Kant and others have denied the former and the latter seems absurd. I reply that critics have forgotten that Platonism means accepting properties that are neither exemplified (like being a unicorn) nor exemplifiable (like nonexistence). I also present a Platonist analysis of negative existentials without appealing to nonexistence.

According to Platonism, "Socrates is wise" expresses the exemplification by Socrates of the property of being wise; while "Simmias is taller than Socrates" expresses the exemplification by <Simmias, Socrates> of the relation of being taller than. What about "Socrates is as tall as Socrates"? Is this property or relation exemplification? I show there is an answer that solves Russell's Paradox, Plato's "Third Man" argument, and the Greeling-Nelson paradox of non-self-applying terms.

Generations of scholars have worked to clarify the structure and content of the TMA, one of the most famous arguments in the history of philosophy. Though progress has been made, I show that a premise crucial to the argument has yet to be stated openly. This premise holds the way out of the predicament that enables Plato to retain intact the foundations of the Theory of Forms.

W.V.O. Quine has famously objected that (1) properties are philosophically suspect because (2) there is no entity without identity and (3) the synonymy criterion for property identity won't do because there's no such concept as synonymy. (2) and (3) may or may not be right but do not prove (1). I reply that Leiniz's Law handles property identity, as it does for everything else, then respond to a variety of objections and confusions.

Am şlefuit materia pentru a afla linia continuă.Und das Problem ensteht: was is das, was übrigbleibt, wenn ich von der Tatsache, daß ich meinen Arm hebe, die abziehe, daß mein Arm sich hebt?Acknowledged to have launched modern poetry with Les Fleurs du mal, Charles Baudelaire was also a prolific and influential art critic, a close friend of Edouard Manet, and an early champion of Eugène Delacroix. At one time decidedly not a friend of sculpture, Baudelaire published a critique of this (...) art form in a section of his Salon de 1846 titled “Pourquoi la sculpture est ennuyeuse” :3Sculpture has several disadvantages inherent in the medium itself. Crude and direct like nature, sculpture is.. (shrink)

Mathematics textbooks teach logical reasoning by example, a practice started by Euclid; while logic textbooks treat logic as a subject in its own right without practical application to mathematics. Stuck in the middle are students seeking mathematical proficiency and educators seeking to provide it. To assist them, the article explains in practical detail how to teach logic-based skills such as: making mathematical reasoning fully explicit; moving from step to step in a mathematical proof in logically correct ways; and checking to (...) make sure inferences are logically correct. The methodology can easily be extended beyond the four examples analyzed. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle has argued that Plato's Theory of Forms is a "logically vicious" doctrine because it's fundamental concept of exemplification leads to a vicious infinite regress. David Armstrong and Alan Donagan have agreed with Ryle. After making Ryle's argument logically explicit, I show the exemplification regress is illusory. Exemplification is a genuine universal alongside other relations; there is nothing paradoxical in its being exemplified over and over and over ... Platonism can define logical properties of this relation but not the (...) relation itself, however. (shrink)

I attempt to rescue Frege's naive conception of a set according to which there is a set for every property by redefining the technical concept of degree of an open sentence. Instead of making degree a function of the number of free variables, I make it a function of free variable occurrences. What Russell proved, then, is that there is not a relation-in-extension for every relation-in-intension. In a brief paper it is not possible to discuss how redefining the function-argument correlation (...) affects Frege's system. (shrink)

The article demonstrates unity in Plato’s thought to a degree not heretofore realized and suggests analytical links to developments in logic, metaphysics and epistemology millennia later, substantiating Whitehead's famous comment that ‘the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.’.

Considerable effort has gone into clarifying the structure and the content of the Third Man Argument. Nevertheless, the argument is still an enthymeme. A premise crucial to it has yet to be stated openly. This premise holds the way out of the predicament which, happily, enables Plato to retain intact the foundations of the Theory of Forms. The solution proposed allows us in addition to look beyond the TMA and place this ancient argument in the context of an important modern (...) insight. (shrink)

In "The Problems of Philosophy," Russell held that universals not exist, rather, they subsist. In the same work, he stated that universals are nevertheless "something," without intending to suggest that quantification over universals would require a special quantifier. I show these apparently conflicting statements can be reconciled with a simple definition of "subsists.".

Exemplifying with sculptures the author created, the article shows that ontological algorithms can yield aesthetic content, while epistemological algorithms can capture it. Bridging the gap between art and logic creates new and exciting aesthetic opportunities, allaying Henry Moore’s fears of ‘paralysis by analysis.’ On the flip side, appreciating all that algorithmic art has to offer poses intellectual challenges that run counter to subjectivist approaches to art and its education.

The Cogito formulation in Discourse on Method attributes properties to one conceptual category that belong to another. Correcting the error ends up defeating Descartes’ response to skepticism. His own creation, the Evil Genius, is to blame.

I: Environmental aesthetics -- A phenomenological aesthetics of environment -- Aesthetic dimensions of environmental design -- Down the garden path -- The wilderness city : a study of metaphorical experience -- Aesthetics of the coastal environment -- The world from the water -- Is there life in virtual space? -- Is greasy lake a place? -- Embodied music -- II: Social aesthetics -- The idea of a cultural aesthetic -- The social evaluation of art -- Subsidization of art as social (...) policy -- Morality and the artist : toward an ethics of art -- Getting along beautifully : ideas for a social aesthetics. (shrink)

In this book, Arnold Davidson elaborates a method for considering the history of concepts and the nature of scientific knowledge, a method he calls "historical epistemology." He applies this to the history of sexuality, with consequences for our understanding of desire, abnormality, and sexuality.

ABSTRACT:In a series of reports the United Nations Special Representative on the issue of Human Rights and Transnational Corporations has emphasized a tripartite framework regarding business and human rights that includes the state “duty to protect,” the TNC “responsibility to respect,” and “appropriate remedies” for human rights violations. This article examines the recent history of UN initiatives regarding business and human rights and places the tripartite framework in historical context. Three approaches to human rights are distinguished: moral, political, and legal. (...) It is argued that the tripartite framework’s grounding of the responsibility of TNCs to respect human rights is properly understood as moral and not merely as a political or legal duty. A moral account of the duty of TNCs to respect basic human rights is defended and contrasted with a merely strategic approach. The main conclusion of the article is that only a moral account of the basic human rights duties of TNCs provides a sufficiently deep justification of “the corporate responsibility to respect human rights” feature of the tripartite framework. (shrink)

Aesthetic sensibility rests on perceptual experience and characterizes not only our experience of the arts but our experience of the world. _Sensibility and Sense_ offers a philosophically comprehensive account of humans' social and cultural embeddedness encountered, recognized, and fulfilled as an aesthetic mode of experience. Extending the range of aesthetic experience from the stone of the earth's surface to the celestial sphere, the book focuses on the aesthetic as a dimension of social experience. The guiding idea of pervasive interconnectedness, both (...) social and environmental, leads to an aesthetic critique of the urban environment, the environment of daily life, and of terrorism, and has profound implications for grounding social and political values. The aesthetic emerges as a powerful critical tool for appraising urban culture and political practice. (shrink)

This article applies the Kantian doctrine of respect for persons to the problem of sweatshops. We argue that multinational enterprises are properly regarded as responsible for the practices of their subcontractors and suppliers. We then argue that multinationalenterprises have the following duties in their off-shore manufacturing facilities: to ensure that local labor laws are followed; to refrain from coercion; to meet minimum safety standards; and to provide a living wage for employees. Finally, we consider and reply to the objection that (...) improving health and safety conditions and providing a living wage will cause greater harm than good. (shrink)

Environmental aesthetics is an emerging discipline that explores the meaning and influence of environmental perception and experience on human life. Arguing for the idea that environment is not merely a setting for people but is fully integrated and continuous with us, The Aesthetics of Environment explores the aesthetic dimensions of the human-environmental continuum in both theoretical terms and concrete situations. From outer space to the museum, from architecture to landscape, from city to countryside to wilderness, this book discovers in the (...) aesthetic perception of environment the reciprocity that constitutes both person and place. (shrink)

Auch seine letzte Monographie Moral und Hypermoral sah Gehlen in der direkten Nachfolge seines anthropologischen Hauptwerkes Der Mensch. Insofern verstand er seinen Entwurf einer pluralistischen Ethik als Konkretisierung seiner Lehre vom Menschen. In diesem Buch, das eine Genealogie der Moralen entwickeln will, stellte sich Gehlen die Aufgabe, Anthropologie, Verhaltensforschung und Soziologie so zu verbinden, dass vier voneinander nicht ableitbare Ethosformen empirisch freigelegt werden konnten: von einem aus der aGegenseitigkeit entwickelten Ethos uber Eudaimonismus und Humanitarismus bis hin zu einem Ethos der (...) Institutionen einschliesslich des Staates. Gehlen wollte der abstrakten Ethik der Aufklarung widersprechen, wie sie beispielsweise in Voltaires Diktum zum Ausdruck kam, nach welchem es nur eine Moral gebe, so wie es nur eine Geometrie gibt. Systematisch geht es in erster Linie um eine anthropologische Begrundung der Ethik, d.h. um eine Mehrheit moralischer Instanzen und Sozial-Regulationen. Diese werden nicht evolutionar interpretiert, d.h. als Fortschritt von der Nahethik zu einer schliesslich weltumspannenden Moralitat. Manche Moralen konnen als instinktnah angenommen werden, andere ergeben sich aus den Notwendigkeiten bestimmter Institutionen. Immer jedoch sind sie kulturell geformt und zugleich auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Abstraktion angesiedelt. Es bleibt im Zuge einer neuerlichen Rezeption von Moral und Hypermoral die These zu prufen, ob die Modellvorstellung eines unversohnlichen Pluralismus moralischer Normen eine Dimension des Ethischen zum Ausdruck bringt, die in den evolutiven Konzepten der ethischen Anpassung an je hohere gesellschaftliche Synthesen unterschatzt wird. Insofern gehort dieses Buch in den Zusammenhang einer philosophisch-soziologischen Grundlagenforschung, wie sie seit Max Scheler und Helmuth Plessner als Philosophische Anthropologie durchgefuhrt wurde und welche Arnold Gehlen - von den Elementarbestanden der menschlichen Existenz bis zur Analyse der modernen Malerei - mit so viel Sachhaltigkeit weiterverfolgt hat. (shrink)

Containing the debate between Michel Foucault and Noam Chomsky on epistemology and politics, this book also features the most significant essays by the most important French thinkers who influenced and were influenced by Foucault. Foucault's teachers, colleagues, and collaborators take up his major claims, from his first to final works, and provide us with the authoritative context in which to understand Foucault's writings. This volume also includes several important works by Foucault previously unpublished in English. The other contributors are Georges (...) Canguilhem, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Pierre Hadot, Michel Serres, and Paul Veyne. Here for the first time is the French Foucault. This volume offers lucid and important texts that will appeal to students and professors at every level of study. It is essential reading for all scholars of twentieth-century philosophy and critical theory. (shrink)

The essays, collected by Berleant in this volume all express the impulse to reject the received wisdom of modern aesthetics: that art demands a mode of experience sharply different from others and unique to the aesthetic situation, and that the identity of the aesthetic lies in keeping it distinct from other kinds of human experience, such as the moral, the practical, and the social. Berleant shows, on the contrary, that the value, the insight, the force of art and the aesthetic (...) are all enhanced. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:We review recent developments in ethical pluralism, ethical particularism, Kantian intuitionism, rights theory, and climate change ethics, and show the relevance of these developments in ethical theory to contemporary business ethics. This paper explains why pluralists think that ethical decisions should be guided by multiple standards and why particularists emphasize the crucial role of context in determining sound moral judgments. We explain why Kantian intuitionism emphasizes the discerning power of intuitive reason and seek to integrate that with the comprehensiveness of (...) Kant’s moral framework. And we show how human rights can be grounded in human agency, and explain the connections between human rights and climate change. (shrink)

Imagine that you and a duplicate of yourself are lying unconscious, next to each other, about to undergo a complete step-by-step exchange of bits of your bodies. It certainly seems that at no stage in this exchange of bits will you have thereby switched places with your duplicate. Yet it also seems that the end-result, with all the bits exchanged, will be essentially that of the two of you having switched places. Where will you awaken? I claim that one and (...) the same person possesses both bodies, occupies both places and will experience both awakenings, just as a person whose brain has been bisected must at once experience both of the unconnected fields of awareness, even though each of these will falsely appear to him as the entirety of his experience. I also claim that the more usual apparent boundaries of persons are as illusory as those in brain bisection; personal identity remains unchanged through any variation or multiplication of body or mind. In all conscious life there is only one person - I - whose existence depends merely on the presence of a quality that is inherent in all experience - its quality of being mine, the simple immediacy of it for whatever is having experience. One powerful argument for this is statistical: on the ordinary view of personhood it is an incredible coincidence for you (though not for others) that out of 200,000,000 sperm cells the very one required on each occasion for your future existence was first to the egg in each of the begettings of yourself and all your ancestors. The only view that does not make your existence incredible, and that is not therefore (from your perspective) an incredible view, is that any conscious being would necessarily have been you anyway. It is a consequence that self-interest should extend to all conscious organisms. (shrink)

Without access to Michel Foucault’s courses, it was extremely difficult to understand his reorientation from an analysis of the strategies and tactics of power immanent in the modern discourse on sexuality (1976) to an analysis of the ancient forms and modalities of relation to oneself by which one constituted oneself as a moral subject of sexual conduct (1984). In short, Foucault’s passage from the political to the ethical dimension of sexuality seemed sudden and inexplicable. Moreover, it was clear from his (...) published essays and interviews that this displacement of focus had consequences far beyond the specific domain of the history of sexuality. Security, Territory, Population (Foucault, 2007) contains a conceptual hinge, a key concept, that allows us to link together the political and ethical axes of Foucault’s thought. Indeed, it is Foucault’s analysis of the notions of conduct and counter-conduct in his lecture of 1 March 1978 that seems to me to constitute one of the richest and most brilliant moments in the entire course. It is astonishing, and of profound significance, that the autonomous sphere of conduct has been more or less invisible in the history of modern (as opposed to ancient) moral and political philosophy. This article argues that a new attention should be given to this notion, both in Foucault’s work and more generally. (shrink)