In [6] I tried to show how an objection to “the nominalist's” analysis of “This is red” and “That is red” on the basis of “the doctrine of common names” might be overcome. The objection is that “the nominalist,” attempting to analyze and by construing the pronouns in these sentences as two different proper names and “red” as a common name, is forced thereby to construe the copula in both sentences as the “is” of identity, and hence (...) this and that are identical, i.e., that there is only one red spot and not two. I attempted to show that by using Leśniewski's original axiom of ontology “the nominalist” could construe the pronouns in and as proper names, and “red” as a common name without taking the copula to express identity; he would not be forced to identify this with that. (shrink)

In [6] I tried to show how an objection to “the nominalist's” analysis of (a) “This is red” and (b) “That is red” on the basis of “the doctrine of common names” might be overcome. The objection is that “the nominalist,” attempting to analyze (a) and (b) by construing the pronouns in these sentences as two different proper names and “red” as a common name, is forced thereby to construe the copula in both sentences as the “is” (...) of identity, and hence (it is claimed)thisandthatare identical, i.e., that there is only one red spot and not two. I attempted to show that by using Leśniewski's original axiom ofontology“the nominalist” could construe the pronouns in (a) and (b) as proper names, and “red” as a common name without taking the copula to express identity; he would not be forced to identifythiswiththat. (shrink)

In [6] I tried to show how an objection to “the nominalist's” analysis of “This is red” and “That is red” on the basis of “the doctrine of common names” might be overcome. The objection is that “the nominalist,” attempting to analyze and by construing the pronouns in these sentences as two different proper names and “red” as a common name, is forced thereby to construe the copula in both sentences as the “is” of identity, and hence (...) this and that are identical, i.e., that there is only one red spot and not two. I attempted to show that by using Leśniewski's original axiom of ontology “the nominalist” could construe the pronouns in and as proper names, and “red” as a common name without taking the copula to express identity; he would not be forced to identify this with that. (shrink)

Common names, for Mill, have both connotation and denotation. Thus ‘horse’ connotes certain properties, and the name ‘horse’ denotes the things that have those properties. By contrast, proper names have no connotations; they do not denote in virtue of the possession of certain properties by their denotations, but so to speak, directly. Thus Socrates received his name by being dubbed ‘Socrates’; and he might just as well have been given any other name. This contrast is misleading. (...) After all, we might have named horses by another name, too; e.g., ‘cow’ or ‘Pferd’. However, once the convention by which they are called ‘horses’ is established, it is not correct to call them ‘cows’. A horse is not a cow. Just so Socrates could have been named ‘Plato’ or ‘Moses’, but once he has been named ‘Socrates’, it is just as wrong to call him ‘Plato’ as it is to call a horse a ‘cow’. What is correctly called a ‘horse’ is so called in virtue of its possession of certain properties, just as what is called ‘Socrates’ is so called in virtue of his possession of the requisite properties. From this point of view, proper names are words like any others. (Leonard Linsky, Oblique Contexts, University of Chicago Press 1983, pp. 16f.). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present a reconstruction of Olivi's account of signification of common names and to highlight certain intrusion of pragmatics into this account. The paper deals with the question of how certain facts, other than original imposition, may be relevant to determine the semantical content of an utterance, and not with the question of how we perform actions by means of utterances. The intrusion of pragmatics into Olivi's semantics we intend to point out may (...) seem minimal today, but was of a certain importance at his time. Even if the conventional codes still play a role in his explanation of how words acquire a semantical content, both the intention of the speaker and the communication context in which this intention is being effectuated are essential features of the actual signification of names. (shrink)

Common names, for Mill, have both connotation and denotation. Thus ‘horse’ connotes certain properties, and the name ‘horse’ denotes the things that have those properties. By contrast, proper names have no connotations; they do not denote in virtue of the possession of certain properties by their denotations, but so to speak, directly. Thus Socrates received his name by being dubbed ‘Socrates’; and he might just as well have been given any other name.This contrast is misleading. After (...) all, we might have named horses by another name, too; e.g., ‘cow’ or ‘Pferd’. However, once the convention by which they are called ‘horses’ is established, it is not correct to call them ‘cows’. A horse is not a cow. Just so Socrates could have been named ‘Plato’ or ‘Moses’, but once he has been named ‘Socrates’, it is just as wrong to call him ‘Plato’ as it is to call a horse a ‘cow’. What is correctly called a ‘horse’ is so called in virtue of its possession of certain properties, just as what is called ‘Socrates’ is so called in virtue of his possession of the requisite properties. From this point of view, proper names are words like any others. (shrink)

There are two undoubted instances of this use of Neaera in Prudentius which are cited by Mr. Ullman in support of his contention that in Horace another proper name may be similarly employed. I imagine however that to an unprejudiced sense of Latin usage these instances will themselves seem to be strange and in need of explanation.

Fictional names present unique challenges for semantic theories of proper names, challenges strong enough to warrant an account of names different from the standard treatment. The theory developed in this paper is motivated by a puzzle that depends on four assumptions: our intuitive assessment of the truth values of certain sentences, the most straightforward treatment of their syntactic structure, semantic compositionality, and metaphysical scruples strong enough to rule out fictional entities, at least. It is shown that these four assumptions, taken (...) together, are inconsistent with referentialism, the common view that names are uniformly associated with ordinary individuals as their semantic value. Instead, the view presented here interprets names as context-sensitive expressions, associated in a context of utterance with a particular act of introduction, or dubbing, which is then used to determine their semantic value. Some dubbings are referential, which associate names with ordinary individuals as their semantic values; others are fictional, which associate names, instead, with sets of properties. Since the semantic values of names can be of different sorts, the semantic rule interpreting predication must be complex as well. In the body of the paper, I show how this new treatment of names allows us to solve our original puzzle. I defend the complexity of the semantic predication rule, and address additional worries about ontological commitment. (shrink)

The notion of common ground is important for the production of referring expressions: In order for a referring expression to be felicitous, it has to be based on shared information. But determining what information is shared and what information is privileged may require gathering information from multiple sources, and constantly coordinating and updating them, which might be computationally too intensive to affect the earliest moments of production. Previous work has found that speakers produce overinformative referring expressions, which include privileged (...) names, violating Grice’s Maxims, and concluded that this is because they do not mark the distinction between shared and privileged information. We demonstrate that speakers are in fact quite effective in marking this distinction in the form of their utterances. Nonetheless, under certain circumstances, speakers choose to overspecify privileged names. (shrink)

In this article, I revisit Karl Marx’s claim in his Economic and Phil-osophic Manuscripts of 1844, that the subject in its “individual existence is at the same time a social being.” I redefine what has been translated as “social being” as “common being” in order to extrapolate an understanding of subjectivity that is a socio-ontological and collectively structured collectivity. In doing so, I demonstrate (1) that this common being is a collection of different socio-ontological traits; (2) that in (...) order for this common being to be approximated we must take into account all modes of subjectivity production that intersect in what will appear as the subject; and (3) that the Other is the constitutive parameter of the common being on which the subject depends. Finally, I revisit three exemplary modes of practice - namely critique, solidarity, and utopia - and show that conceiving of the subject as a common being renders critique constellational, solidarity overdetermined, and utopia a koinotopia. (shrink)

In the name of Husserl: nursing in pursuit of the things‐in‐themselves A perceived contradiction between the tenets of humanism and positivism secures phenomenology’s endorsement in nursing as an alternative methodology to the natural sciences. Nursing’s humanistic doctrine of valuing the individual is aligned with phenomenology in the belief that both projects investigate the subjective experiences of others. However, the belief that phenomenology opposes objectifying methods does not account for the different understandings of subjectivity that underpin various philosophic positions, such (...) as humanism, phenomenology, hermeneutics and positivism. What is not recognised in nursing inquiry is that the same characteristics which belong to humanism and are subsequently attributed as belonging to phenomenology are grounded, philosophically, in a view that separates the person from her world. But rather than examining the premises on which phenomenology and humanism are based, nurse‐phenomenologists have simply yoked them together in a mutual alliance against a common enemy — Cartesian dualism. This paper focuses on Husserl and argues that the conceptual link between nursing as a humanistic discipline and Husserlian phenomenology cannot be sustained on philosophic and methodologic grounds. Far from being mutual allies, the philosophic underpinnings of humanism and Husserlian phenomenology offer two incommensurable views on the nature of subjectivity. (shrink)

Stefano Predelli defends a semantics of proper names which has simplicity and common sense in its favour: proper names are non-indexical devices of rigid and direct reference. He grounds this view in accounts of the shape and form of names, and of their introduction within language use, and he responds to widespread misconceptions and objections.

The difference between common and proper names seems to derive from specific semantic characteristics of proper names. In particular, proper names refer to specific individual entities or events, and unlike common names, rarely map onto more general semantic characteristics (attributes, concepts, categories). This fact makes the link proper names have with their reference particularly fragile. Processing proper names seems, as a consequence, to require special cognitive and neural resources. Neuropsychological findings show that proper names and common names (...) follow functionally distinct processing pathways. These pathways are neurally distinct and differently sensitive to focal or generalized brain damage, cognitive changes with age or lack of organic resources. Their precise location, depending on specific tasks, is still partly unknown. (shrink)

This contribution to the volume explains predicativism, including reasons that favour it and different versions of it. What all predicativist theories have in common is the claim that a proper name is a general, predicative term, with a hidden determiner in its single use.

In an earlier paper I have attempted to show, among other things; that the names of human artifacts and man-devised activities and processes involve in their uses the notion of some end-in-view, function, or use , which partially regulates these uses. In this paper I shall limit myself to a somewhat detailed discussion of one very important class of such common names which requires a separate treatment. I mean art-names.

My Ph.D. dissertation written under the supervision of Prof. Tomasz Placek at the Institute of Philosophy of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. In one of its most basic and informal shapes, the principle of the common cause states that any surprising correlation between two factors which are believed not to directly influence one another is due to their common cause. Here we will be concerned with a version od this idea which possesses a purely probabilistic formulation. It was (...) introduced, in the form of a general principle, by Hans Reichenbach in his posthumously published book "The Direction of Time". The central notion of the principle in Reichenbach's formulation, and of the current essay, is that of screening off: two correlated events are screened off by a third event if conditioning on the third event makes them probabilistically independent. Reichenbach's principle marks also the beginning of a new field of philosophy: namely, that of ``probabilistic causality''. For the most part, the current essay can be seen as an effort at checking how far one can go with the purely statistical notions revolving around Reichenbach's idea of common cause. In short, the answer is ``surprisingly far''; in some classes of probability spaces all correlations between ``interesting'' events possess explanations of such sort. However, this fact lends itself to opposing interpretations; more on that in the conclusion. Chapters 6 and 7 contain mathematical results concerning these issues. The screening-off condition requires an equality of a probabilistic nature to hold; chapter 8 is a short discussion of slightly weakened versions of the condition, which hold if the sides of the above mentioned equality differ to a small degree. In chapter 2, after some mathematical preliminaries, we study the various formulations of the principle which might be said to stem from the original idea of Reichenbach. We also examine a few of the most salient counterarguments, which undermine at least some of the formulations. Chapter 3 is of a formal nature, dealing with various probabilistic notions which can be thought of as generalizations of Reichenbach's concept of common cause. The next chapter concerns the relationship between the idea of common causal explanation and the Bell inequalities. In chapter 5 we briefly present the form of Reichenbach's principle which can be found in the field of representing causal structures by means of directed acyclic graphs. (shrink)

This essay studies the semantic properties of what I call Russell-names. Russell-names bear intimate semantic relations with descriptive conditions, in consonance with the main tenets of descriptivism. Yet, they are endowed with the semantic properties attributed to ordinary proper names by Millianism: they are rigid and non-indexical devices of direct reference. This is not an essay in natural language semantics, and remains deliberately neutral with respect to the question whether any among the expressions we ordinarily classify as proper names behave (...) as Russell-names. Its aim is rather that of casting a new light on the traditional debate about descriptivism on the one hand, and, on the other, what is commonly understood as a radically anti-descriptivist approach. From the viewpoint of descriptivism, the conceivability of Russell-names provides welcome relief from the pressure exerted by considerations at odds with a flaccid and/or indexical treatment of proper names. Conversely, from a Millian standpoint, the conceivability of Russell-names indicates that the Millian stance, far from providing a meagre picture of names as ‘mere tags’, is at least in principle consistent with the recognition of their semantic bonds with richer descriptive material. The Appendix provides a formal treatment of Russell-names within a model theoretic semantics for indexical intensional languages, developed within an original ‘double-context’ framework. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:POETRY AS THE NAMING OF THE GODS by Phyllis Zagano There have been many attempts to define poetry, and there is copious advice to would-be poets. Horace writes somewhere "Sit quod vis, simplex dumtaxat et unum" which can be comfortably rendered as "make anything at all, so long as it hangs together." The hanging together is the quality most writers point to as evidence of success: simply, it works. (...) What poetry does is the more complex question, since it is the understanding of its internal kinesis which allows for its definition. Essentially, it takes an object from objective reality (insofar as we can agree such exists) and creates an oxymoronic entity: a static consciousness. This is always seen in phenomenological terms, that is, it must be consciousness of something. The poet recognizes this in deference to the common consciousness and the common understanding of the everyday, by the use of metaphor, simile, and the other accouterments of the trade. Things must be as they appear, and they must be as they appear to some majority of the people, in order for the poet to argue his private vision with clarity. The analogy must have some common ground before it has meaning, before the "naming" takes place. For Martin Heidegger the activity of creating poetry, dichten, is not only an indispensable part of human life, it signals the humanness of the person. He has two principal essays on poetry which show how this activity ofdichten combines his concepts Dasein and Vorhandenheit (despite his later abandonment of Dasein for Lichtung). Heidegger's essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," seeks to determine what is common to poetry, that is, what constitutes its essence. 340 Phyllis Zagano341 Another ofhis essays, "What are Poets For?" begins where the first ends (with considerations of Friedrich Hölderlin's "Bread and Wine"). Each essay comments on specific poems and somewhat imperfectly attempts a poetic theory in consonance with the rest of Heidegger's work. Since "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry" concentrates more on poetic theory than "What are Poets For?," investigation of it will prove more helpful in understanding and appropriating Heidegger's contention that "The writing of poetry is the fundamental naming of the Gods____"· In his "Letter on Humanism," Heidegger calls language the "House of Being," while man is the "Shepherd of Being." This understanding ofthe function oflanguage and the methodweuse tocreateand recreate ourselves and our world recurs often in Heidegger's work. The essay, "Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry," stands as a seeking after what is common to poetry and, while Heidegger recognizes that Hölderlin's work is "only one among many others" (p. 294) and therefore cannot be used as the sole criterion to determine what constitutes poetry, he says that if what we recognize as the "essence of poetry" is present in a universal concept, then it ought to be able to be extrapolated from Hölderlin's poetry as well as from that of any other poet. What constitutes the "essence" of poetry, Heidegger argues, ought to be equally valid in every poem, but it is perhaps well to remind him that what ought to be equally valid in every poem is only equally valid in every poem which "hangs together," that is, every poem which performs its function as poem. Such insistence is ofcourse mere definition of terms, but in this case, without prior argument on the metaphysics of art, it is necessary. In any event, Heidegger concludes that the essence of Hölderlin's poetry is the "essence ofpoetry" itself (p. 294), and that what is common to poetry is found in it. While some critics might argue that Heidegger makes too much of Hölderlin here, the more dangerous weakness in this method of argumentation is the possibility that an idiosyncrasy might be mistaken for an essential element or, more probably, that too much will be generalized from this particular example or set of examples. The trained literary critic can cast a cold eye on such magnification of a single poet as the presenter of both form and content for the meaning of the "essence of poetry." In fact, it... (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the predicativist’s identification of proper names and common count nouns. Although Predicativism emerges precisely to account for certain syntactic facts about proper names, namely, that they behave like common count nouns on occasions, it seems clear that proper names and common count nouns have different properties, and this undermines the thesis that proper names are in fact just common count nouns. The predicativist’s strategy to bridge these differences is to postulate an (...) unpronounced determiner to go with names when they appear to function as singular terms, making them effectively a concealed determiner phrase. In this paper I revisit these differences and argue that the predicativist’s strategy is not well justified and worse, it does not help make proper names and common count nouns unified; rather, it makes proper names exceptional as count nouns. I also discuss the referentialist’s take on names qua predicates and make some suggestions about how the syntactic difference between proper names and count nouns should be understood. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and explore what I shall call the Common Subject Problem for ethics. The problem is that there seems to be no good answer to what property everyone who makes moral claims could be talking and thinking about. The Common Subject Problem is not a new problem; on the contrary, I will argue that it is one of the central animating concerns in the history of both metaethics and normative theory. But (...) despite its importance, the Common Subject Problem is essentially invisible on many contemporary ways of carving up the problems of metaethics and normative ethical theory. My aim, therefore, is to make progress – in part by naming the problem, but also by beginning to sketch out the contours of what gives the problem its force, by distinguishing between different paths of response to the problem and assessing some of their chief merits, and finally, by distinguishing the Common Subject Problem from another problem with which it has come to be conflated. This nearby problem is the Moral Twin Earth Problem. Whereas the Common Subject Problem is a problem about what property ‘wrong’ could refer to, the Moral Twin Earth Problem is a problem about how ‘wrong’ could refer to it. The upshot of the paper, therefore, is to rescue one of the historically significant problems in normative ethics and metaethics – a problem that is essentially about normative semantics – from the illusion that has persisted over the last twenty years that it is really, somehow, a problem about metasemantics. Once we have reclaimed this problem, we can see that it could still be a problem even if there are no distinctively metasemantic problems in metaethics at all, that it is a problem faced by a wider variety of views, and that the space of possible solutions is much wider and more interesting for normative theory, moral psychology, and moral epistemology. (shrink)

Naming, according to Sebeok, constihttes the first stage of zoosemiotics. This special but common use of language acrually inaugurates more complicated procedures of human discourse on non-human kingdom, including classification of its members. Because of language's double articulation in sound and sense, as well as the grapheme's pleremic (meaning-full) rather than cenemic (meaning-empty) characteristic (according to Hjelmslev). Chinese script is capable of naming and grouping animals randomly but effectively. This paper attempts to describe the said scriptorial "necessity of naming" (...) (Kripke) in classical Chinese by citing all the creatures, real or fabulous, with a /ma/ (horse) radical. (shrink)

It is commonly accepted, after Frege, that identity statements like “Tully is Cicero” differ from statements like “Tully is Tully”. For the former, unlike the latter, are informative. One way to deal with the information problem is to postulate that the terms ‘Tully’ and ‘Cicero’ come equipped with different informative values. Another approach is to claim that statements like these are of the subject/predicate form. As such, they should be analyzed along the way we treat “Tully walks”. Since proper names (...) can appear in predicative position we could go as far as to dismiss the sign of identity altogether, some told us. I will try to discuss the advantages and/or disadvantages of this approach and investigate whether Frege’s view that the ‘is’ of identity must be distinguished from the ‘is’ of predication can be reconciled with the fact that names can appear in predicative position. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NAMING GOD: MOSES MAIMONIDES AND THOMAS AQUINAS NEIL A. 8TUBBENS The Methodist Ohurch Barnsley Oircuit, South Yorkshire MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135-U04) and Thomas Aquinas (c. U~5-1274), two of the greatest theologians of the Jewish and Christian faiths, had much in oommon.1 Like other Ohristian.writers, Aquinas made several criticisms of Maimonides' views on divine predication. In this article l will discuss these criticisms and evaluate them by means of a detailed (...) e:iq>0sition of Maimonides' position. I will ithen offer an account of Aquinas's justification of analogical predication and make some suggestions ais to the :role of causality in naming God. 1. Introduetion Moses Maimonides was the middle-man in the interaction of the three monotheistic faiths with Aristotelian philosophy. He was a great admirer of the ancient philosopher, claiming that Aristotle':s intellect reached the highest perfection attainable hy humanity-e:reept by the prophets and they WeTe divinely inspired. Maimonides :firrst work, the short Treatise on Logic, clewly reflects ihis own interest in logic and language and shows the influence of Afistotle mediated through the Ambs.2 It was The Guide or the Perplexed, his last major work, that introduced the mostly Christian West to the thought of the Islamic philosophers Alf.arabi, Avicenna, and 1 On some matters Aquinas refers to Maimonides as a:ii. authority, e.g., De potentia, q.7, a.4, c; Summa theologiae (ST), I, q.68, a.2 ad 1. 2 Treatise on Logic, translated by I. Efros, Proceedmgs of the American Academy for Jewish Research 8 (1938): 1-65. 230 NEIL A. STUBBENS Avermes.3 The Guide, however, is not so much a philosophical work as a iphilosoprucal interpretation of the Bible. Like the thinkers of the Christian monastic anrd later cathedral schools of the eleventh and rbwelfth centuries, Maimonides began his reflections with the wo;vds of Scripture. Soon after its publication in 1190, two Hebrew triansla:tions of the Guide were produced from,the original Arabic by Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Jehudah al-Harizi; Aquinas wo:rked with_ a Latin translation of the Harizi version.4 Feldman has complained that some of the scholastics misinterpreted Maimonides, foisting upon him views which were clearly not his own. According :to Feldman, Giles of Rome.(c. 1247-1316), in his ErrofJ'es Philosophorum, misformulates Maimonides' theory of negative ·attributes and suggests that he employs attributes ".by wa.y of causality." 5 Duns Scotus (c. 1264-1308) cites Maimonides and Avicenna ws ·advocating attributes of efficient causality. Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), in his Summa theologiae, moorrrectly construes actions as relations : "Indeed", writes Feldman, "he characterises them as ruttributes 'hy way of causality.'" Aquinas's translators and interp:veters come in d)or as much criticism from Feldman as :Aquinas himself, e.g., R. Garrigou-Lagrange,6 M. Penido,7 and R. Mulligan:8 all mistakenly say that a.ooording to Maimonides "God is good" means "God is the ca;use of good things.'' a See S. Pines, "Translator's Introduction: the Philosophic Sources of The Guide of the Perplwed," in The Guide of the Perplewed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, 1963). 4 The chapters of the Harizi and Latin versions are enumerated one less than those of the Ibn Tibbon version. I shall use the latter scheme as is common practice. 5.S. Feldman, " A Scholastic Misinterpretation of Maimonides' Doctrine of Divine Attributes," in Studies in, Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Dienstag (New York, 1975), pp. 58-59. 6 See The One God, (St. Louis, 1944), p. 404. 1 See "Le role d'analogie en theologie dogmatique," Bibliotheque Thomiste 15 (1931) : 149 and 169. s See his translation of De veritate, q.2, a.I, in The Disputed Question on Truth (Chicago, 1952). MAIMONIDES AND AQUINAS 2. Aquinas's Criticism of Maimonides There are five points of disagreement between Aquinas and Maimonides. First, Aquinas argues that if expressions such as " God is wise " and " God is angry " are used to indicate only a likeness of effect, i.e., we say " God is wise" or " God is angry " because in his effoots he acts lilre a wise or angry person, there would he no difference in the... (shrink)

In her recent defense of predicativism for proper names, Delia Graff Fara proposes the following non-metalinguistic being-called condition for the applicability of names as predicates: A name ‘N’ is true of a thing if and only if it is called N. The BCC is supposed to hold for names only. In this essay I criticize Fara’s BCC by arguing that the word ‘called’ is ambiguous, and that the BCC holds only for the particular sense of ‘calling’ as naming. I (...) revise accordingly Fara’s BCC and propose in its place a non-metalinguistic being-named condition. I also argue, against Fara, that being-named conditions are not unique to proper names: they hold for mass nouns, common count nouns, as well as for family names, which I distinguish from surnames. Finally, I discuss honorific titles and propose a being-entitled condition according to which a title ‘T’ is true of a thing just in case it is dubbed T. I conclude the paper with pragmatic, syntactic, as well as semantic considerations in favor of the thesis that names are a subspecies of non-hereditary, honorific titles. (shrink)

Bioethics Common Market is an international bulletin board to post notices regarding such things as networking contacts among people interested in a specific area of concern, hospitality, research underway for which collaboration is desired or possible, sources of scarce or hard-to-find materials, reports or papers available in sufficient numbers to share, textbooks or study materials desired, and, for travelers to any state or country, names of local people with possible common interests.

A wide variety of ontologies relevant to the biological and medical domains are available through the OBO Foundry portal, and their number is growing rapidly. Integration of these ontologies, while requiring considerable effort, is extremely desirable. However, heterogeneities in format and style pose serious obstacles to such integration. In particular, inconsistencies in naming conventions can impair the readability and navigability of ontology class hierarchies, and hinder their alignment and integration. While other sources of diversity are tremendously complex and challenging, agreeing (...) a set of common naming conventions is an achievable goal, particularly if those conventions are based on lessons drawn from pooled practical experience and surveys of community opinion. We summarize a review of existing naming conventions and highlight certain disadvantages with respect to general applicability in the biological domain. We also present the results of a survey carried out to establish which naming conventions are currently employed by OBO Foundry ontologies and to determine what their special requirements regarding the naming of entities might be. Lastly, we propose an initial set of typographic, syntactic and semantic conventions for labelling classes in OBO Foundry ontologies. Adherence to common naming conventions is more than just a matter of aesthetics. Such conventions provide guidance to ontology creators, help developers avoid flaws and inaccuracies when editing, and especially when interlinking, ontologies. Common naming conventions will also assist consumers of ontologies to more readily understand what meanings were intended by the authors of ontologies used in annotating bodies of data. (shrink)

Though the notion of common-sense plays an important role in Kant’s aesthetic theory, it is not immediately clear what Kant means by this term. This essay works to clarify the role that common-sense plays in the logic of Kant’s argument. My interpretive hypothesis is that a careful examination of the way common-sense functions in Kant’s account of judgments of taste can help explain what this notion means. I argue that common-sense names the capacity to discern the (...) relation between the cognitive faculties by means of a feeling, and I conclude that this understanding of common-sense lays the groundwork for an account of the unity of judgments of taste. I conclude that attending to Kant’s notion of common-sense is especially important because it highlights the anthropological significance of Kant’s account of beauty. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:NAMING GOD: MOSES MAIMONIDES AND THOMAS AQUINAS NEIL A. 8TUBBENS The Methodist Ohurch Barnsley Oircuit, South Yorkshire MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135-U04) and Thomas Aquinas (c. U~5-1274), two of the greatest theologians of the Jewish and Christian faiths, had much in oommon.1 Like other Ohristian.writers, Aquinas made several criticisms of Maimonides' views on divine predication. In this article l will discuss these criticisms and evaluate them by means of a detailed (...) e:iq>0sition of Maimonides' position. I will ithen offer an account of Aquinas's justification of analogical predication and make some suggestions ais to the :role of causality in naming God. 1. Introduetion Moses Maimonides was the middle-man in the interaction of the three monotheistic faiths with Aristotelian philosophy. He was a great admirer of the ancient philosopher, claiming that Aristotle':s intellect reached the highest perfection attainable hy humanity-e:reept by the prophets and they WeTe divinely inspired. Maimonides :firrst work, the short Treatise on Logic, clewly reflects ihis own interest in logic and language and shows the influence of Afistotle mediated through the Ambs.2 It was The Guide or the Perplexed, his last major work, that introduced the mostly Christian West to the thought of the Islamic philosophers Alf.arabi, Avicenna, and 1 On some matters Aquinas refers to Maimonides as a:ii. authority, e.g., De potentia, q.7, a.4, c; Summa theologiae (ST), I, q.68, a.2 ad 1. 2 Treatise on Logic, translated by I. Efros, Proceedmgs of the American Academy for Jewish Research 8 (1938): 1-65. 230 NEIL A. STUBBENS Avermes.3 The Guide, however, is not so much a philosophical work as a iphilosoprucal interpretation of the Bible. Like the thinkers of the Christian monastic anrd later cathedral schools of the eleventh and rbwelfth centuries, Maimonides began his reflections with the wo;vds of Scripture. Soon after its publication in 1190, two Hebrew triansla:tions of the Guide were produced from,the original Arabic by Samuel Ibn Tibbon and Jehudah al-Harizi; Aquinas wo:rked with_ a Latin translation of the Harizi version.4 Feldman has complained that some of the scholastics misinterpreted Maimonides, foisting upon him views which were clearly not his own. According :to Feldman, Giles of Rome.(c. 1247-1316), in his ErrofJ'es Philosophorum, misformulates Maimonides' theory of negative ·attributes and suggests that he employs attributes ".by wa.y of causality." 5 Duns Scotus (c. 1264-1308) cites Maimonides and Avicenna ws ·advocating attributes of efficient causality. Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), in his Summa theologiae, moorrrectly construes actions as relations : "Indeed", writes Feldman, "he characterises them as ruttributes 'hy way of causality.'" Aquinas's translators and interp:veters come in d)or as much criticism from Feldman as :Aquinas himself, e.g., R. Garrigou-Lagrange,6 M. Penido,7 and R. Mulligan:8 all mistakenly say that a.ooording to Maimonides "God is good" means "God is the ca;use of good things.'' a See S. Pines, "Translator's Introduction: the Philosophic Sources of The Guide of the Perplwed," in The Guide of the Perplewed, trans. S. Pines (Chicago, 1963). 4 The chapters of the Harizi and Latin versions are enumerated one less than those of the Ibn Tibbon version. I shall use the latter scheme as is common practice. 5.S. Feldman, " A Scholastic Misinterpretation of Maimonides' Doctrine of Divine Attributes," in Studies in, Maimonides and St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. J. Dienstag (New York, 1975), pp. 58-59. 6 See The One God, (St. Louis, 1944), p. 404. 1 See "Le role d'analogie en theologie dogmatique," Bibliotheque Thomiste 15 (1931) : 149 and 169. s See his translation of De veritate, q.2, a.I, in The Disputed Question on Truth (Chicago, 1952). MAIMONIDES AND AQUINAS 2. Aquinas's Criticism of Maimonides There are five points of disagreement between Aquinas and Maimonides. First, Aquinas argues that if expressions such as " God is wise " and " God is angry " are used to indicate only a likeness of effect, i.e., we say " God is wise" or " God is angry " because in his effoots he acts lilre a wise or angry person, there would he no difference in the... (shrink)

Abstract:There is evidence that children learn both proper names and count nouns from the outset of lexical development. Furthermore, children's first proper names are typically words for people, whereas their first count nouns are commonly terms for other objects, including artifacts. I argue that these facts represent a challenge for two well‐known theoretical accounts of object word learning. I defend an alternative account, which credits young children with conceptual resources to acquire words for both individual objects and object categories, and (...) conceptual biases to construe some objects (notably people) as individuals in their own right and most other objects as instances of their category. (shrink)

This article is the first in a series of four articles that engage critically with the arguments of two recent and significant additions to the literature on critical realism, namely Bhaskar’s ‘Enlightened Common Sense: The Philosophy of Critical Realism’, and Bhaskar et al.’s ‘Interdisciplinarity and Wellbeing: A Critical Realist General Theory of Interdisciplinarity’. Using the method of immanent critique and focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on the arguments of Enlightened Common Sense, I identify, and propose solutions to, a (...) range of problems pertaining to the concepts of depth, emergence and transfactuality. In identifying and resolving these problems, my aim is to clarify and develop the categories of original critical realism and thereby ensure that critical realism as a whole is as effective an underlabourer for science as it can be. (shrink)

In a recent discussion of the notion of substance Miss Anscombe points out that the following three doctrines are very closely associated: the doctrine that proper names lack all connotation, are mere labels, the view that there is nothing essential to the individual, and the doctrine that individuals are bare particulars with no properties in and of themselves. In this article as well as in other writings she rejects all three of these doctrines. And, along with P. T. Geach, whose (...) position on this matter I take to be identical to hers, she defends a doctrine of proper names that is based upon this rejection. She is quite right in supposing that the notion of individuality embodied in these three doctrines is not a straw man. E. B. Allaire has recently defended the doctrine that there are bare particulars along with its corollaries about names and the nominal essence of individuals. He even thinks the doctrine can be defended on “common sense” grounds, independently of dialectical considerations. In this paper I wish to examine one of his arguments in defence of bare particulars. (shrink)

In this article, I compare WANG Bi’s 王弼 rendition of Dao 道 as the nameless, unfathomable root of language and the totality of beings, with Derrida’s analysis of the term khōra. Both cases include a text that presents itself as a commentary on another text, namely the Laozi 老子 for Wang Bi and Plato’s Timaeus for Derrida, whose matter is declared as elusive and ungraspable. I analyze the analogies between these two attempts to convey the unsayable, as well as the (...) philosophical differences in highlighting the “ipseity,” or the “otherness,” of what resides beyond the edge of discourse. On the basis of my analysis, I claim that decisive parallelisms can be found in the homology between text and theme, in the linguistic strategies and common metaphors, whereas the main difference lies in the metaphysical background. Whereas the Dao presumes a harmonious ability for self-ordering, khōra is centered on the concept of absolute otherness, whose unsayability is that of an entity that is constantly removing itself from any determination and which properly consists in dispossessing itself. (shrink)

Saul Kripke, in a series of classic writings of the 1960s and 1970s, changed the face of metaphysics and philosophy of language. Christopher Hughes offers a careful exposition and critical analysis of Kripke's central ideas about names, necessity, and identity. He clears up some common misunderstandings of Kripke's views on rigid designation, causality and reference, and the necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori. Through his engagement with Kripke's ideas Hughes makes a significant contribution to ongoing debates on, inter (...) alia, the semantics of natural kind terms, the nature of natural kinds, the essentiality of origin and constitution, the relative merits of 'identitarian' and counterpart-theoretic accounts of modality, and the identity or otherwise of mental types and tokens with physical types and tokens. No specialist knowledge in either the philosophy of language or metaphysics is presupposed; Hughes's book will be valuable for anyone working on the ideas which Kripke made famous in the philosophy world. (shrink)

In a recent number of the CLASSICAL QUARTERLY , under the title ‘Neaera as a Common Name,’ Mr. Postgate writes: ‘There are two undoubted instances of this use of Neaera in Prudentius which are cited by Mr. Ullman.’ This is indeed a very welcome admission, for, unless I am greatly mistaken, Mr. Postgate was formerly of the opinion that such a usage or anything approaching it was unthinkable in Latin.1 But Mr. Postgate still feels uneasy about it, for (...) he says: ‘I imagine however that to an unprejudiced sense of Latin usage these instances will themselves seem to be strange and in need of explanation…. Now is there anything in Neaera or its history which will account for this ? Let us examine the possibilities. And first those offered by etymology…. But it may be thought that it acquired its objectionable colour through the reputed conduct of some particular Neaera of legend or history.’ We are now on common ground, for of course there can be no type-names or common names without some reason. (shrink)

Land is becoming increasingly scarce relative to the demands of the global economy; a problem significantly exacerbated by climate change. In response, some have suggested that land should be conceptualised as a global commons. This framing might seem like an appealing way to promote sustainable and equitable land use. However, it is a poor fit for the worldʼs land because global commons are generally understood as resources located beyond state borders. I argue that land can be seen to fit the (...) definition of a global commons, if viewed in a particular way; namely, as a biogeochemical resource system that sequesters carbon emissions. The question then arises whether land should be conceptualised as a global commons. I consider this question by reference to three contemporary problems of land justice (land grabbing, forced displacement, and unfairness in land-based climate mitigation); arguing that the global-commons framing will not be conducive to understanding or responding to these problems. I leave the question of how the global community should conceptualise land in the context of climate change open, claiming that any answer must include the voices and perspectives of those whose livelihoods and identities are closely connected to the land. (shrink)

Throughout his career Aquinas held to the Avicennian doctrine that the nature or essence of sensible substances is somehow indifferent. According to Aquinas's version of this well-known doctrine an essence as such posssesses only those characteristics which are specified in its definition. The essence of a human being, for instance, possesses as such animality and rationality and nothing else. On this view, all the other characteristics and in particular general properties like being one or many, universal or particular, do not (...) belong to essence as such, but are attributed to it only in so far as it enjoys a particular mode of existence. Essence, for instance, is in itself neither universal nor particular, but is universal in so far as it exists in the intellect and particular in its extra-mental existence in different individuals. Although Aquinas is entirely consistent all through his career in maintaining that essence as such is neither universal nor particular, there is a point of viw from which the essence of a sensible substance can be regarded as universal or common, namely the point of view of inviduation. (shrink)

Concepts are highly theoretical entities. One cannot study them empirically without committing oneself to substantial preliminary assumptions. Among the competing theories of concepts and categorization developed by psychologists in the last thirty years, the implicit theoretical assumption that what falls under a concept is determined by description () has never been seriously challenged. I present a nondescriptionist theory of our most basic concepts, which include (1) stuffs (gold, milk), (2) real kinds (cat, chair), and (3) individuals (Mama, Bill Clinton, the (...) Empire State Building). On the basis of something important that all three have in common, our earliest and most basic concepts of substances are identical in structure. The membership of the category like that of is a natural unit in nature, to which the concept does something like pointing, and continues to point despite large changes in the properties the thinker represents the unit as having. For example, large changes can occur in the way a child identifies cats and the things it is willing to call without affecting the extension of its word The difficulty is to cash in the metaphor of in this context. Having substance concepts need not depend on knowing words, but language interacts with substance concepts, completely transforming the conceptual repertoire. I will discuss how public language plays a crucial role in both the acquisition of substance concepts and their completed structure. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Kant-Studien Jahrgang: 107 Heft: 1 Seiten: 160-178.

Arendt's concept of common sense has generally been misunderstood. It is almost exclusively interpreted in light of Kant's common sense, either as an espousal of the latter or as a distortion of it. This narrow reading of Arendtian common sense has led to a problem, as her uses of the concept do not always fit its Kantian understanding. This has led to accusing her of being inconsistent, or as holding on to several, incompatible concepts of common (...) sense.This article argues that Arendt has one complex concept of common sense, used more or less consistently throughout her writings. Rather than understanding Arendt's common sense in light of Kant's, as most readers do, I demonstrate its links to Aristotle and to the eighteenth‐century Scottish school of common sense. By doing so I turn attention to a difficulty that has thus far not been adequately treated, namely the fact that Arendt presents two, allegedly contradictory pictures of the relation between common sense on the one hand and science and philosophy on the other: a picture in which science and philosophy depend upon common sense, versus one in which they find themselves in a conflict that eventually leads to the loss or demise of common sense. The last part of the article suggests a way to settle the tension between these two pictures, by understanding the political significance Arendt ascribes to them as two distinct yet complementary ways of approaching the modern phenomenon of totalitarianism. (shrink)

In the paper it will be shown that Reichenbach’s Weak Common Cause Principle is not valid in algebraic quantum field theory with locally finite degrees of freedom in general. Namely, for any pair of projections A, B supported in spacelike separated double cones ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ , respectively, a correlating state can be given for which there is no nontrivial common cause (system) located in the union of the backward light cones of ${\mathcal{O}}_{a}$ and ${\mathcal{O}}_{b}$ and commuting with (...) the both A and B. Since noncommuting common cause solutions are presented in these states the abandonment of commutativity can modulate this result: noncommutative Common Cause Principles might survive in these models. (shrink)