Aboutness has been studied from any number of angles. Brentano made it the defining feature of the mental. Phenomenologists try to pin down the aboutness-features of particular mental states. Materialists sometimes claim to have grounded aboutness in natural regularities. Attempts have even been made, in library science and information theory, to operationalize the notion. But it has played no real role in philosophical semantics. This is surprising; sentences have aboutness-properties if anything does. Aboutness is the first book to examine through (...) a philosophical lens the role of subject matter in meaning. A long-standing tradition sees meaning as truth-conditions, to be specified by listing the scenarios in which a sentence is true. Nothing is said about the principle of selection--about what in a scenario gets it onto the list. Subject matter is the missing link here. A sentence is true because of how matters stand where its subject matter is concerned. Stephen Yablo maintains that this is not just a feature of subject matter, but its essence. One indicates what a sentence is about by mapping out logical space according to its changing ways of being true or false. The notion of content that results--directed content--is brought to bear on a range of philosophical topics, including ontology, verisimilitude, knowledge, loose talk, assertive content, and philosophical methodology. Written by one of today's leading philosophers, Aboutness represents a major advance in semantics and the philosophy of language. (shrink)

This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry (...) it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences. (shrink)

_ Convention_ was immediately recognized as a major contribution to the subject and its significance has remained undiminished since its first publication in 1969. Lewis analyzes social conventions as regularities in the resolution of recurring coordination problems-situations characterized by interdependent decision processes in which common interests are at stake. Conventions are contrasted with other kinds of regularity, and conventions governing systems of communication are given special attention.

In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophical intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.

Many weaknesses of game theory are cured by new models that embody simple cognitive principles, while maintaining the formalism and generality that makes game theory useful. Social preference models can generate team reasoning by combining reciprocation and correlated equilibrium. Models of limited iterated thinking explain data better than equilibrium models do; and they self-repair problems of implausibility and multiplicity of equilibria.

Since the first chapter of this book presents an intro duction to the present state of game-theoretical semantics (GTS), there is no point in giving a briefer survey here. Instead, it may be helpful to indicate what this volume attempts to do. The first chapter gives a short intro duction to GTS and a survey of what is has accomplished. Chapter 2 puts the enterprise of GTS into new philo sophical perspective by relating its basic ideas to Kant's phi losophy (...) of mathematics, space, and time. Chapters 3-6 are samples of GTS's accomplishments in understanding different kinds of semantical phenomena, mostly in natural languages. Beyond presenting results, some of these chapters also have other aims. Chapter 3 relates GTS to an interesting line of logical and foundational studies - the so-called functional interpretations - while chapter 4 leads to certain important methodological theses. Chapter 7 marks an application of GTS in a more philo sophical direction by criticizing the Frege-Russell thesis that words like "is" are multiply ambiguous. This leads in turn to a criticism of recent logical languages (logical notation), which since Frege have been based on the ambi guity thesis, and also to certain methodological sug gestions. In chapter 8, GTS is shown to have important implications for our understanding of Aristotle's doctrine of categories, while chapter 9 continues my earlier criticism of Chomsky's generative approach to linguistic theorizing. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Phenomenology as transcendental phenomenology is centered in a description of meaning interpreted in relationship to acts of consciousness. ...

Si le concept husserlien de passivité a fasciné toute une génération de philosophes (Merleau-Ponty, Landgrebe, Levinas, Henry), il a rarement fait l'objet d'une étude qui adopte la perspective du fondateur de la phénoménologie. Sa célébrité a comme masqué sa spécificité, créant une sorte de doctrine officielle de la passivité qui a, en fin de compte, peu de choses à voir avec la pensée et les intentions de Husserl. En effet, là où les phénoménologues contemporains voient dans la passivité la zone (...) d'ombre où le programme d'une phénoménologie transcendantale et subjective s'effondrerait, Husserl considère, de son côté, qu'elle appartient sans reste à la sphère de la constitution et qu'elle consolide par conséquent son transcendantalisme. Loin d'être un domaine de sens irréductible à la rationalité, elle représente même le fondement des opérations de la pensée catégoriale. C'est en son sein que doivent être cherchées les « sources » des formes supérieures de la logique. Toute passive et préconsciente qu'elle soit, l'expérience antéprédicative appartient sans reste pour Husserl au sujet transcendantal et ne le destitue donc pas de sa position centrale et primordiale. Ce travail s'attache ainsi à suivre cette genèse du catégorial à partir de l'expérience passive et à montrer qu'elle entre dans le projet général, qui a été toujours celui de Husserl, d'asseoir la phénoménologie transcendantale sur le socle originaire de l'expérience du monde. Remerciements Avant-propos Remarques Chapitre premier. Le sens phénoménologique de la passivité Chapitre II. La refondation méthodologique de la phénoménologie Chapitre premier. La formation du concept husserlien de « synthèse passive » Chapitre II. La constitution passive de l'expérience dans les Analysen zur passiven Synthesis Chapitre III. Le rôle de l'affection dans la formation de l'unité sensible Chapitre IV. La phénoménologie de l'inconscient Chapitre premier. Les présupposés fondamentaux de la généalogie de la logique Chapitre II. L'analyse généalogique du jugement prédicatif Chapitre III. L'origine de l'erreur dans la passivité Conclusion.Le conflit des fondements Bibliographie Index nominum. (shrink)

Ce livre mène un examen critique de la notion d’intentionnalité, tant dans son versant phénoménologique qu’analytique. Partant d’une réflexion sur les actes de langage, il en transpose en partie le modèle aux actes mentaux, en les réinscrivant dans le tissu de contextualité réelle qui est le leur. L’idée majeure du livre est qu’on ne peut séparer la pensée du monde, et placer celle-ci sous le régime exclusif de la visée, libre d’effectivité. Ainsi l’auteur recherche les voies d’une nouvelle théorie de (...) l’esprit, placée sous le signe d’une espèce de réalisme d’inspiration phénoménologique. cette enquête sur les fondations d’un possible réalisme, à la fois linguistique, perceptuel et structural, prend la forme d’une interrogation sur les limites du sens, entre philosophie du langage et philosophie de l’esprit. (shrink)

A concise and accessible dictionary of the key terms and concepts in Husserl's philosophy, his major works and philosophical influences.

Games are played everywhere: from economics and online auctions to social interactions, and game theory is about how to play such games in a rational way, and how to maximize their outcomes. This VSI reveals, without mathematical equations, the insights the theory can bring to everything from how to play poker optimally to the sex ratio among bees.

the Logische Untersuchungen,l phenomenology has been conceived as a substratum of empirical psychology, as a sphere comprising "imma nental" descriptions of psychical mental processes, a sphere compris ing descriptions that - so the immanence in question is understood - are strictly confined within the bounds of internal experience. It 2 would seem that my protest against this conception has been oflittle avail; and the added explanations, which sharply pinpointed at least some chief points of difference, either have not been understood (...) or have been heedlessly pushed aside. Thus the replies directed against my criticism of psychological method are also quite negative because they miss the straightforward sense of my presentation. My criticism of psychological method did not at all deny the value of modern psychology, did not at all disparage the experimental work done by eminent men. Rather it laid bare certain, in the literal sense, radical defects of method upon the removal of which, in my opinion, must depend an elevation of psychology to a higher scientific level and an extraordinary amplification ofits field of work. Later an occasion will be found to say a few words about the unnecessary defences of psychology against my supposed "attacks. (shrink)

Husserl’s philosophy, by the usual account, evolved through three stages: 1. development of an anti-psychologistic, objective foundation of logic and mathematics, rooted in Brentanian descriptive psychology; 2. development of a new discipline of "phenomenology" founded on a metaphysical position dubbed "transcendental idealism"; transformation of phenomenology from a form of methodological solipsism into a phenomenology of intersubjectivity and ultimately (in his Crisis of 1936) into an ontology of the life-world, embracing the social worlds of culture and history. We show that this (...) story of three revolutions can provide at best a preliminary orientation, and that Husserl was constantly expanding and revising his philosophical system, integrating views in phenomenology, ontology, epistemology and logic with views on the nature and tasks of philosophy and science as well as on the nature of culture and the world in ways that reveal more common elements than violent shifts of direction. We argue further that Husserl is a seminal figure in the evolution from traditional philosophy to the characteristic philosophical concerns of the late twentieth century: concerns with representation and intentionality and with problems at the borderlines of the philosophy of mind, ontology, and cognitive science. (shrink)