19th Century British Philosophy

John Cook Wilson is increasingly recognised as an important predecessor of ordinary language philosophy. He emphasizes the authority of ordinary language in philosophical theorizing. At the same time, however, he circumscribes the limits of that authority and identifies cases in which it threatens to mislead us. My aim is to consider in detail one case where, according to Cook Wilson, ordinary language has misled philosophical theorizing. Judgement was one of the core notions of the logic, epistemology, and philosophy of mind (...) of Cook Wilson’s time. Cook Wilson rejects this notion, in the form developed by his contemporaries, in part because it is based on a problematic analogy between ordinary language and the thoughts expressed in that language. Cook Wilson’s discussion of judgement also highlights the extent to which Cook Wilson was critical of, but also responsive to, his contemporaries. In addition, variants of the language-thought analogy Cook Wilson opposes continue to feature in 21st century epistemology and philosophy of mind. Cook Wilson’s criticism of the analogy thus raises questions about recent work as well as the theories of his contemporaries. (shrink)

Can knowledge be defined? We expound an argument of John Cook Wilson's that it cannot. Cook Wilson's argument connects knowing with having the power to inquire. We suggest that if he is right about that connection, then knowledge is, indeed, indefinable.

La crisis financiera, que ha llevado a la recesión económica con sus secuelas sociales, no es más que un aspecto de la problemática a la que hoy nos enfrentamos. Se nos presenta además una crisis de la hegemonía del centro del sistema capitalista a favor de países periféricos, especialmente la República Popular China. Una tercera crisis se hará visible a más largo plazo como la destrucción de la biosfera terrestre. Esos fenómenos hunden sus raíces en el actual modo de producción (...) económica, el cual se funda en el mercado y la propiedad privada, como instituciones reguladoras de las relaciones de los individuos entre sí y con la naturaleza. (shrink)

Chengbing WangShanxi University, Taiyuan, ChinaMichael A. PetersBeijing Normal University, Beijing, ChinaContemporary Chinese Marxism is not only an important theory in the humanities and social sc...

This paper seeks to reconstruct philosopher Aleksandr Bogdanov’s approach to the philosophy of Spinoza in the context of the debate against Plekhanov. I demonstrate that the Soviet interest in Spinoza’s theory has never been purely historical, but rather, it served an important function in developing the theoretical foundations for Marxist philosophy. However, Bogdanov was one of only a very few who objected strongly to Plekhanov’s attempt to relate Spinoza’s philosophy to Marxism in a direct way. Two principles underlie Bogdanov’s critique: (...) one being methodological, the other—systematic. The methodological principle has a hermeneutical character, since it demands that we treat historical concepts by taking into account their context and their changes during the time. According to Bogdanov, failing to fulfil this principle results in the dogmatization and instrumentalization of philosophy, and transforms it into political doctrine. The systematic principle concerns Bogdanov’s radical rethinking of the relationship between extension and thought. I argue that by rethinking Spinoza’s concepts in the framework of “ideo-empirical parallelism”, Bogdanov develops his own theory of cognition, which he called “empiriomonism”. When considered in historical context, I argue that these debates can serve as a window into the foundational role the Spinoza’s philosophy has played in the formation of different versions of Russian Marxism, as well as in the development of Russian Marxism in general. (shrink)

In the Laws of Thought, Boole establishes a theory of secondary propositions based upon the notion of time. This temporal interpretation of secondary propositions has historically been met with wide disapproval and is usually dismissed in the modern literature as a philosophical non-starter. What was Boole thinking? This paper attempts to give an answer to this question. Specifically, it provides an account according to which Boole’s temporal interpretation follows from his psychologistic conception of logic, in addition to certain background assumptions (...) regarding the psychological necessity of the concept of time. Once Boole’s psychological premises are laid bare, it becomes clearer how he might have viewed the temporal interpretation to be an essential feature of his theory of secondary propositions. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson is an important predecessor of contemporary knowledge first epistemologists: among other parallels, he claimed that knowledge is indefinable. We reconstruct four arguments for this claim discernible in his work, three of which find no clear analogues in contemporary discussions of knowledge first epistemology. We pay special attention to Cook Wilson’s view of the relation between knowledge and forms of thinking (like belief). Claims of Cook Wilson’s that support the indefinability of knowledge include: that knowledge, unlike belief, straddles (...) an active/passive divide; that, rather than entailing belief, knowledge excludes belief; and that understanding forms of thinking other than knowledge (such as belief) depends on understanding knowledge. Reflecting on Cook Wilson’s framework highlights underappreciated concerns relevant to any attempt to define knowledge. (shrink)

The main goal of the article is to offer a description of cryptotexts of theatre staging handbooks and dramatic works created in Poland during the socialist realism period. A cryptotext is a secret text which is the result of a purposeful act of subterfuge. In the article, I present selected cryptotexts – reviews produced in the Ministry of Culture and Art and censorship reviews of the dramatic works submitted for evaluation to the Voivodship Control Bureau for Press, Main Office of (...) Control of Press, Publications and Shows. The archives contain evaluation of works which have been published in subsequent years as well as those which remained only in their draft form. Analysis of the evaluations of ministry officials reveal the mechanisms for allowing and withholding submitted dramatic works and a theatre staging handbook which shows the practices of publishing theatrical works. An analysis of different evaluations of the same text allows for a hypothesis that the main aim of cryptotexts was the evaluation of ideological correctness of submitted works. Despite this main function it is possible to point out specific passages in the statements by the WUKPPiW officials which are similar to statements of Ministry officials. In both cases the evaluation pertains to the content and the planned fulfilment of the work and plays mainly a didactic function. (shrink)

"David Ricardo has been acclaimed - or vilified - for merits he would never have dreamt of, or sins for which he was entirely innocent. Entrenched mythology labels him as a utilitarian economist, an enemy of the working class, an impractical theorist, a scientist with 'no philosophy at all' and the author of a formalist methodological revolution. Exploring a middle ground between theory and biography, this book explores the formative intellectual encounters of a man who came to economic studies via (...) other experiences, thus bridging the gap between the historical Ricardo and the economist's Ricardo. The chapters undertake a thorough analysis of Ricardo's writings in their context, asking who was speaking, what audience was being addressed, with what communicative intentions, using what kind of lexicon and communicative conventions, and starting with what shared knowledge. The work opens in presenting the different religious communities with which Ricardo was in touch. It goes on to describe his education in the leading science of the time - geology - before he turned to the study of political economy. Another chapter discusses five 'philosophers' - students of logic, ethics and politics - with whom he was in touch. From correspondence, manuscripts and publications, the closing chapters reconstruct, firstly, Ricardo's ideas on scientific method, the limits of the 'abstract science' and its application, secondly, his ideas on ethics and politics and their impact on strategies for improving the condition of the working class. This book sheds new light on Ricardian economics, providing an invaluable service to readers of economic methodology, philosophy of economics, the history of economic thought, political thought and philosophy. Sergio Cremaschi is a former Reader of Moral Philosophy at the 'Amedeo Avogadro' University at Vercelli"--. (shrink)

The Heythrop Journal, Volume 63, Issue 3, Page 349-366, May 2022.

Association dominated theorizing about the mind in the English-speaking world from the early eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth and remained an important concept into the twenty-first. This endurance across centuries and intellectual traditions means that it has manifested in many different ways in different views of mind. This article traces associationist themes as they developed over the years by presenting the views of central historical figures in each era, focusing specifically on their conception of the associative relation and how it (...) operates in the mind. (shrink)

I discuss Malthus, Thomas Robert "The unpublished papers in the collection of Kanto Gakuen University", Pullen, John; Parry, Trevor Hughes (eds). I argue that the theological dimension in Malthus’s overall project may be stressed in the light of some of the original materials published here for the first time. -/- .

This is an introduction to the thematic section on “The Historiography of Science and Religion in Europe,” which resulted from a symposium held at the eighth Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, University College London, UK, from September 14–17, 2018. The introduction provides a brief argument for the decentering of science and religion from the Anglo‐American discourse. It concludes by previewing the contributions of the section's essays.

British idealism is usually regarded as having been, in the main, indifferent to the problems of the philosophy of history. The interest in the philosophy of history found in German, and later in Italian, idealism was allegedly not shared by the early generations of the British idealists. At best they are regarded as unwitting precursors of things to come, some of their reflections paving the way for subsequent advances in historical thinking. The British idealists, however, were not as economical with (...) their historical pronouncements as commonly believed. A more careful examination of their general writings and lesser known contributions reveals a more complex picture. One of stronger historical consciousness, knowledge of the philosophical developments in history, interest in its problems, and active involvement with historical scholarship. Further study will certainly illuminate the details of the entire character of British idealism with regard to its historical concerns. (shrink)

The present dissertation presents an examination of the Carrollian logic through the reconstruction of its syllogistic theory. Lewis Carroll was one of the main responsible for the dissemination of logic during the nineteenth century, but most of his logical writings remained unknown until a posthumous publication of 1977. The reconstruction of the Carrollian syllogistic theory was based on the comparison of the two books on author's logic, "The Game of Logic" and "Symbolic Logic". The analysis of the Carrollian syllogistics starts (...) from a study of the historical context of development of the logic and the developments of syllogistics previous to the contribution of the author. Situated in the historical period of algebraical logic, Carrollian syllogistics is characterized as a conservative extension of the Aristotelian syllogistics, the main innovation is the use of negative terms and the introduction of a diagrammatic method suitable for the representation of negative terms. The diagrammatic method of the Carrollian syllogistics presents advances in relation to the methods of Euler and Venn. The use of negative terms also requires a redefinition of the notion of syllogism, simplifying and expanding the amount of arguments amenable to logical treatment. Carroll does not use four, but only three categorical propositions in his syllogistic, with interpretation of existential presuppositions congruent with a syntactic-existential reading. Carrollian syllogistics uses some techniques found in the work of algebraists of logic and also made the same confusions between notions of "class" and "member" that were common in the period. Convinced of the social utility of logic and dedicated to popularize it, Carroll priorized a creation of new didactics for the teaching of logic in his works, where he can include his diagrammatic method of solving syllogisms. Carroll made only scant considerations of his conception of logic. Based on the small considerations found throughout the study and on the constant claim of the social utility of logic, it is suggested that Carroll is close to the so-called pragmatic position, which considers a logic as an instrument of regulation of discourse. (shrink)

William Whewell’s work on historical science has received some attention from historians and philosophers of science. Whewell’s own work on the history of German Gothic church architecture has been touched on within the context of the history of architecture. To a large extent these discussions have been conducted separately. I argue that Whewell intended his work on Gothic architecture as an attempt to (help) found a science of historical architecture, as an exemplar of historical science. I proceed by analyzing the (...) key features of Whewell’s philosophy of historical science. I then show how his architectural history exemplifies this philosophy. Finally, I show how Whewell’s philosophy of historical science matches some developments in a science (biological systematics) that, in the mid-to latenineteenth century, came to be reinterpreted as a historical science. I comment briefly on Whewell as a potential influence on nineteenth century biology and in particular on Darwin. (shrink)

In this paper I sketch William Whewell’s attempts to impose order on classificatory mineralogy, which was in Whewell’s day (1794e1866) a confused science of uncertain prospects. Whewell argued that progress was impeded by the crude reductionist assumption that all macroproperties of crystals could be straightforwardly explained by reference to the crystals’ chemical constituents. By comparison with biological classification, Whewell proposed methodological reforms that he claimed would lead to a natural classification of minerals, which in turn would support advances in causal (...) understanding of the properties of minerals. Whewell’s comparison to successful biological classification is particularly striking given that classificatory biologists did not share an understanding of the causal structure underlying the natural classification of life (the common descent with modification of all organisms). Whewell’s key proposed methodological reform is consideration of multiple, distinct principles of classification. The most powerful evidence in support of a natural classificatory claim is the consilience of claims arrived at through distinct lines of reasoning, rooted in distinct conceptual approaches to the target objects. Mineralogists must consider not only elemental composition and chemical affinities, but also symmetry and polarity. Geometrical properties are central to what makes an individual mineral the type of mineral that it is. In Whewell’s view, function and organization jointly define life, and so are the keys to understanding what makes an organism the type of organism that it is. I explain the relationship between Whewell’s teleological account of life and his natural theology. I conclude with brief comments about the importance of Whewell’s classificatory theory for the further development of his philosophy of science and in particular his account of consilience. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to make contributions to normative ethics and to the history of philosophy. First, it contributes to the defense of consequentialist ethics against objections grounded upon the value of loving relationships. Secondly, it provides the first systematic account of John M. E. McTaggart’s ethical theory and its relation to his philosophy of love. According to consequentialist ethics, it is always morally wrong to knowingly do what will make the world worse-off than it could have been. Many consequentialists also (...) recognize that love is one of the most important goods worth pursing for its own sake and so this implies a strong duty to promote love. Recently, however, philosophers have outlined what I call the “love-based objection.” It argues that consequentialism ought to be rejected on its own terms because a commitment to maximizing aggregate overall goodness precludes forming the kinds of commitments necessary for highly valuable loving relationships. Other philosophers, however, have argued that a particular kind of consequentialist theory that recognizes the intrinsic value of love and that restricts evaluations based on maximizing goodness to only the most fundamental realms of moral evaluation and guidance overcomes the love-based objection. While philosophers have indicated how to overcome the objection through sophisticated consequentialism, the task of constructing a plausible version of such a system is currently ongoing. This dissertation argues that, more than fifty years before this contemporary debate started, McTaggart outlined a version of consequentialism called “Ideal Utilitarianism” that can overcome recent love-based objections in the way suggested by Railton and Mason. McTaggart’s work in moral philosophy, therefore, has a previously unrecognized relevance to contemporary issues in normative ethics and so his contributions ought to be considered alongside other, currently more prominent, ethicists of his day such as Hastings Rashdall and G. E. Moore. (shrink)

The article presents Lord Acton’s notion of liberalism and citizenship. Liberalism, as ordinarily understood, treats the individual as the founding stone of civil society and the measure of political order – man and woman and their rights are supreme. In the past, this allowed liberalism to delegitimize society of estates and absolutism, yet it raised the insoluble dilemma of how to reconnect the self‑sufficient individual with the society and the state. Furthermore, social engineering employed in service of equality and individual (...) rights, made liberalism an abstract doctrine, hostile to any tradition and illiberal in its nature. Unlike this doctrinaire liberalism, Actonian liberalism is organic, thriving on national tradition and having only one arbitrary element – higher law that is the yardstick of good and evil. Organic liberalism knows not the contradiction between the individual and the polity. It balances the rights of the individual with the respect for the national tradition, and stresses individual and communal liberty as the ultimate aim of politics. Further, man and woman participate in a multitude of intermediate organizations in which they can truly exercise their citizenship. Organic liberalism, as Acton claims, is a constant element of Western Civilization, even if it achieves its maturity sometime in the seventeenth‑eighteenth century. It then become a characteristic feature of Anglo‑American liberalism. (shrink)

The turn of the last century saw an explosion of philosophical realisms, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. Gary Hatfield helpfully asks whether we can impose order on this chaotic scene by portraying these diverse actors as responding to a common philosophical problem—the so-called problem of the external world, as articulated by William Hamilton. I argue that we should not place the American realism that grows out of James’s neutral monism in this problem space. James first (...) articulated his position in response to critical attacks on the methodology he had employed in his psychological research. The direct topic of these criticisms was James’s earlier claim that a scientific psychology must treat knowledge as an inexplicable theoretical primitive. If I am right, then we ought to hesitate about Hatfield’s suggestion that American realism operated inside the same problem space as the early realism of British figures like Russell and Moore. James’s neutral monism first emerged as a conception of knowledge by a psychologist, and it was designed to meet concerns about his scientific research that had been raised by other psychologists. (shrink)