In a seminal paper of 1923 on vagueness, Bertrand Russell discussed some of the most important problems concerning the nature of vagueness, its extension within the language, and its relation to truth and logic. The present paper inquires into Russell's theory. The following topics will be analysed and discussed in turn in sections 1?5: Russell's definition of vagueness; his claim that all phrases are vague; his theory of the source of the vagueness in our language; his principles for the transmission (...) of vagueness; and his claim that logic is incompatible with vagueness. This paper is an attempt to give a rational reconstruction of Russell's position as expressed in his paper. Compatible passages in other of his works are also studied. (shrink)

Summary A. Vagueness is not definable in terms of behaviour (Section 4).

Körner's notion of vagueness, its relation to ostension and the alledged gulf between logic and experience are examined. Ostension is seen not to cause vagueness ~ there are precise concepts of mathematics which can be ostensively introduced. A distinction is drawn between classical logic not applying to the vague world and not applying to the vague language. The claims about logic and the vague world are unverifiable claims about existence. Körner's attempt to elimmate the seeming incompatibility between vague language and (...) logic leads to a Protagorean relativism which is rejected. It is denied that the incompatibility between vagueness and classical logic causes a gulf between two sublanguages; instead, ordinary language is held to contain both and so to be inconsistent. (shrink)

Körner's notion of vagueness, its relation to ostension and the alledged gulf between logic and experience are examined. Ostension is seen not to cause vagueness ~ there are precise concepts of mathematics which can be ostensively mtroduced. A distinction is drawn between classical logic not applymg to the vague world and not applymg to the vague language. The claims about logic and the vague world are unverifiable claims about existence. Körner's attempt to elimmate the seeming incompatibility between vague language and (...) logic leads to a Protagorean relativism which is rejected. It is denied that the incompatibility between vagueness and classical logic causes a gulf between two sublanguages; mstead, ordinary language is held to contam both and so to be inconsistent. (shrink)

A. Kenny, Frege, an introduction to the founder of modern analytic philosophy. London:Penguin, 1995. viii-h223pp. £7.99 T. Willamson, Vagueness. London:Routledge, 1994. xiii-f-325 pp. £35.00 TOM BU...

Over the years, egalitarian philosophers have made some challenging claims about the nature of egalitarianism. They have argued that egalitarian reasoning should make us reject the Pareto principle; that the Rawlsian leximin principle is not an egalitarian idea; that the Pigou–Dalton principle needs modification; that the intersection approach faces deep problems; that the numbers should not count within an egalitarian framework, and that egalitarianism should make us reject the property of transitivity in normative reasoning. In this paper, taking the recent (...) philosophical debate on equality versus priority as the starting point, I review these claims from the point of view of an economist. (shrink)

The paper tries to illustrate the influence of Aristotle's thought upon Brentano by arguing that the view that all psychological phenomena have objects was proably derived from the Aristotelian conception that the mind can know itself only en parergo, and that this knowledge presupposes that some other thing be in the mind "objectively". Brentano's contribution to Aristotle scholarship is illustrated by reviewing some of his arguments against Zeller's claim that Aristotle's God, contemplating only himself, is ignorant of the world. The (...) paper concludes with an attempt to explain the relative neglect into which Brentano's exegetical efforts have fallen. (shrink)

Abduction is considered the most powerful, but also the most controversially discussed type of inference. Based on an analysis of Peirce’s retroduction, Lipton’s Inference to the Best Explanation and other theories, a new theory of abduction is proposed. It considers abduction not as intrinsically explanatory but as intrinsically conditional: for a given fact, abduction allows one to infer a fact that implies it. There are three types of abduction: Selective abduction selects an already known conditional whose consequent is the given (...) fact and infers that its antecedent is true. Conditional-creative abduction creates a new conditional in which the given fact is the consequent and a defined fact is the antecedent that implies the given fact. Propositional-conditional-creative abduction assumes that the given fact is implied by a hitherto undefined fact and thus creates a new conditional with a new proposition as antecedent. The execution of abductive inferences is specified by theory-specific patterns. Each pattern consists of a set of rules for both generating and justifying abductive conclusions and covers the complete inference process. Consequently, abductive inferences can be formalised iff the whole pattern can be formalised. The empirical consistency of the proposed theory is demonstrated by a case study of Semmelweis' research on puerperal fever. (shrink)

Gegenstand der Nikomachischen Ethik (ca. 335-323 v. Chr.) ist das >tätige Leben.

The most influential egalitarian perspective is undoubtedly Rawls's (1971, 1993), which assigns absolute priority to the least advantaged in society (the difference principle). However, many have claimed that even though an egalitarian perspective should imply some priority to the worst off, the Rawlsian perspective is too demanding. One response to this criticism is to argue in favour of an egalitarian perspective that never assigns absolute priority to the worse off, but which still includes limited priority to those members of society (...) in distributive conflicts. A different response to the demandingness criticism is to agree that the worse off should not always be given absolute priority, but to argue that there are some cases where they should be. In this paper, we elaborate on this view, and look at the possibility of deviating from the leximin approach within this category of egalitarian principles. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that knowledge of emotions essentially depends on introspecting the phenomenology of emotional experiences, and that introspection of emotional experiences is a process by stages, where the most fundamental stage is a non-classificatory introspective state, i.e., one that does not depend on the subject’s classifying the introspected emotion as an instance of any experience type. We call such a non-classificatory kind of introspection primitive introspection. Our main goal is to show that, although not sufficient, primitive introspection (...) is a necessary ground to acquire knowledge of emotions. Our main argument is phenomenological: by examining a variety of examples, we suggest that an accurate analysis of the introspective process through which one comes to know, or refines one’s knowledge of, one’s current emotion requires that one primitively introspects it. (shrink)

Hegel argues that Kant's critical project is analogous to the attempt to learn to swim before getting in the water. Some have taken this to indicate the broadly anti-epistemological nature of Hegel's philosophical system. In this paper, I offer a novel interpretation of the swimming argument which is both (i) compatible with a broadly epistemological conception of his Logic and (ii) more obviously efficacious against its intended target (viz. Kant). Briefly stated, the swimming argument is intended to reveal the reflexive (...) or self-implicating nature of any critical-reflection. (shrink)

We provide first-order axioms for the theories of finite trees with bounded branching and finite trees with arbitrary (finite) branching. The signature is chosen to express, in a natural way, those properties of trees most relevant to linguistic theories. These axioms provide a foundation for results in linguistics that are based on reasoning formally about such properties. We include some observations on the expressive power of these theories relative to traditional language complexity classes.

P3 is the most prominent of the electrical potentials of the human electroencephalogram that are sensitive to psychological variables. According to the most influential current hypothesis about its psychological significance [E. Donchin's], the “context updating” hypothesis, P3 reflects the updating of working memory. This hypothesis cannot account for relevant portions of the available evidence and it entails some basic contradictions. A more general formulation of this hypothesis is that P3 reflects the updating of expectancies. This version implies that P3-evoking stimuli (...) are initially unexpected but later become expected. This contradiction cannot be resolved within this formulation. The alternative “context closure” hypothesis retains the concept of “strategic information processing” emphasized by the context updating hypothesis. P3s are evoked by events that are awaited when subjects deal with repetitive, highly structured tasks; P3s arise from subjects' combining successive stimuli into larger units. The tasks in which P3s are elicited can accordingly be classified in terms of their respective formal sequences of stimuli. P3 may be a physiological indicator of excess activation being released from perceptual control areas. (shrink)

This paper discusses the argument for preference utilitarianism proposed by Richard Hare in Moral Thinking(Hare, 1981). G. F. Schueler (1984) and Ingmar Persson (1989) identified a serious gap in Hare’s reasoning, which might be called the No-Conflict Problem. The paper first tries to fill the gap. Then, however, starting with an idea of Zeno Vendler, the question is raised whether the gap is there to begin with. Unfortunately, this Vendlerian move does not save Hare from criticism. Paradoxically, it instead endangers (...) the whole argumentative enterprise. (shrink)

We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., wellbeing) of individuals and explore the possibility of such theories ascribing some priority to benefits to those who are worse off—without this priority being absolute. Utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives on the basis of total or average benefits) ascribes no priority to the worse off, and leximin (which evaluates alternatives by giving lexical priority to the worst off, and then the second worst off, and so on) (...) ascribes absolute priority to the worse off (i.e., favors even a very small benefit to a worse off person over very large benefits to large numbers of better off people). Neither extreme view, we assume, is plausible. (shrink)

Statements of the form ''Osorno is in Chile'' were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.

The book is based on documentary and biographical materials that have only recently become available.

This experimental study examines individuals’ legitimacy judgments. We develop a model that demonstrates the role of attributed motives and corporate credibility for the evaluation of organizational legitimacy and test this model with an experimental vignette study. Our results show that when a corporate activity creates benefits for the firm—in addition to social benefits—individuals attribute more extrinsic motives. Extrinsic motives are ascribed when a corporation is perceived as being driven by external rewards as opposed to an altruistic commitment to a social (...) cause. Extrinsic motives negatively affect corporate credibility and organizational legitimacy judgments. This article contributes to a better understanding of the complex process of organizational legitimacy judgment by shedding light on the individual’s perspective and expounding the relationship between attributed motives, corporate credibility, and organizational legitimacy. (shrink)

The book series Linguistische Arbeiten (LA) publishes high-quality work in linguistics that addresses current issues in synchrony and diachrony, theoretically or empirically oriented.