It is generally thought that suspension of judgment about a proposition p is the doxastic attitude one is rationally compelled to adopt whenever the epistemic reasons for and against p are equipollent or equally credible, that is, whenever the total body of available evidence bearing on p epistemically justifies neither belief nor disbelief in p. However, in a recent contribution to this journal, Jan Wieland proposes “to broaden the conditions for suspension, and argue that it is rational to suspend belief (...) on a certain issue even if one’s current evidence is not neutral (or even close to neutral)”. My aim in this paper is to point to a number of problems in Wieland’s position, some of which in connection with the account of Pyrrhonian skepticism found in the extant works of Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

This paper engages with Svavar Svavarsson’s recent essay, “Sextus Empiricus on Persuasiveness and Equipollence,” arguing against both (i) his interpretation of whether two rival arguments appear equipollent to the Pyrrhonist because he himself is equally persuaded by both of them, and (ii) his interpretation of the way in which the argument from possible disagreement is supposed to induce suspension of judgment in the Pyrrhonist. In so doing, I aim to dispel some serious misunderstandings regarding key aspects of the Pyrrhonist’s (...) skeptical outlook and argumentative practice. (shrink)

Ian James has carved a rigorous analysis of four philosophers—Jean-Luc Nancy, François Laruelle, Catherine Malabou and Bernard Stiegler—who not only engage with the limits of thought through variegated, albeit embedded, disciplinary tendencies but have also, arguably, spearheaded a critical reorientation of continental philosophy, slowly opening the doors for transcending the traditional terms of the analytic-continental divide by engaging with a pluralized understanding of the sciences. A parallel plexus of American naturalist philosophy accompanies James’ analysis, as he stakes the claim that (...) these four thinkers engage with pluralist ontologies and the limit-conditions of the real to stoke a proximal entanglement between philosophy and science. However, The Technique of Thought is by no means a synoptic account of Nancy, Laruelle, Malabou and Stiegler, as James surveys discourses in philosophy of mind, quantum gravity, causality and biosemiology to index various recent horizons of thought and their developments. The rigor and deft with which James approaches scientific-realist perspectives produce a rich picture of post-metaphysical thinking. (shrink)

This is a defense of Pyrrhonian skepticism against the charge that the suspension of judgment based on equipollence is vitiated by the assent given to the equipollence in question. The apparent conflict has a conceptual side as well as a practical side, examined here as separate challenges with a section devoted to each. The conceptual challenge is that the skeptical transition from an equipollence of arguments to a suspension of judgment is undermined either by a logical contradiction (...) or by an epistemic inconsistency, perhaps by both, because the determination and affirmation of equipollence is itself a judgment of sorts, one that is not suspended. The practical challenge is that, independently of any conceptual confusion or contradiction, suspending judgment in reaction to equipollence evinces doxastic commitment to equipollence, if only because human beings are not capable of making assessments requiring rational determination without believing the corresponding premises and conclusions to be true. The two analytic sections addressing these challenges are preceded by two prefatory sections, one laying out the epistemic process, the other reviewing the evidentiary context. The response from the conceptual perspective is that the suspension of judgment based on equipollence is not a reasoned conclusion adopted as the truth of the matter but a natural reaction to an impression left by the apparently equal weight of opposing arguments. The response from the practical perspective is that the acknowledgment of equipollence is not just an affirmation of the equal weight of arguments but also an admission of inability to decide, suggesting that any assent, express or implied, is thrust upon the Pyrrhonist in a state of epistemic paralysis affecting the will and the intellect on the matter being investigated. This just leaves a deep disagreement, if any, regarding whether equipollence is an inference based on discursive activity or an impression coming from passive receptivity. But this, even if resolved in favor of the critic (which it need not and ought not be), is not the same as confusion or inconsistency on the part of the Pyrrhonist, the demonstration of which is the primary aim of this paper. (shrink)

Diverse interpretations of Maimonides’ Guide have abounded since it was first written. A recent school depicts Maimonides as a critical philosopher, in the Kantian mold, who was skeptical of claims to know certain metaphysical truths. Josef Stern’s new book is a landmark in this skeptical interpretation, which refines and extends the debate in various new directions. This chapter claims that focusing on skeptical motifs can bring Maimonides into line with recent developments in understanding the history of philosophy. Stern directs attention (...) to the role that questioning can play in religious faith, and contends that Maimonides’ arguments are a series of spiritual exercises leading to equipollence and, ultimately, to silence and incomplete knowledge of God and the intelligences. The second half of the chapter turns to arguments that oppose a straightforward reading. It contextualizes them in studies of recent decades and offers alternative explanations of key passages in order to preserve a traditional reading. (shrink)

In this paper, we present a new semantic framework designed to capture a distinctly cognitive or epistemic notion of meaning akin to Fregean senses. Traditional Carnapian intensions are too coarse-grained for this purpose: they fail to draw semantic distinctions between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, differ in meaning. This has led some philosophers to introduce more fine-grained hyperintensions that allow us to draw semantic distinctions among co-intensional sentences. But the hyperintensional strategy has a flip-side: it risks drawing semantic distinctions (...) between sentences that, from a Fregean perspective, do not differ in meaning. This is what we call the ‘new problem’ of hyperintensionality to distinguish it from the ‘old problem’ that faced the intensional theory. We show that our semantic framework offers a joint solution to both these problems by virtue of satisfying a version of Frege’s so-called ‘equipollence principle’ for sense individuation. Frege’s principle, we argue, not only captures the semantic intuitions that give rise to the old and the new problem of hyperintensionality, but also points the way to an independently motivated solution to both problems. (shrink)

This paper develops a criterion for sameness of Fregean senses. I consider three criteria: logical equivalence, intensional isomorphism, and epistemic equipollence. I reject the first two and argue for a version of the third.

Doxastic involuntarists have paid insufficient attention to two debates in contemporary epistemology: the permissivism debate and the debate over norms of assertion and belief. In combination, these debates highlight a conception of belief on which, if you find yourself in what I will call an ‘equipollent case’ with respect to some proposition p, there will be no reason why you can’t believe p at will. While doxastic involuntarism is virtually epistemological orthodoxy, nothing in the entire stock of objections to belief (...) at will blocks this route to doxastic voluntarism. Against the backdrop of the permissivism debate and the literature on norms of belief and assertion, doxastic involuntarism emerges as an article of faith, not the obvious truth it’s usually purported to be. (shrink)

One main issue within environmental ethics is the so-called Demarcation Problem, i.e. the question of which entities are members of the moral community and hold intrinsic value. I argue that the demarcation problem relies mainly on Kantian moral philosophy. While the Kantian framework offers a strong and immediately deontological argument for moral agents holding inherent moral values, it presents problems when stretched beyond its original scope and lacks an adequate ground for addressing relational complexity and the moral significance of collectives. (...) In this paper I outline an alternative axiological framework ('map of moral significance') that relies on a relational ontology and encompasses intrinsic and relational values as the two equipollent axes of a matrix in which to embed the question posited by the Demarcation Problem. (shrink)

Epistemologists understand radical skepticism as arising from two principles: Closure and Underdetermination. Both possess intuitive prima facie support for their endorsement. Understanding how they engender skepticism is crucial for any reasonable anti-skeptical attempt. The contemporary discussion has focused on elucidating the relationship between them to ascertain whether they establish distinct skeptical questions and which of the two constitutes the ultimately fundamental threat. Major contributions to this debate are due to Brueckner, Cohen, and Pritchard. This contribution aims at defending Brueckner’s contention (...) that underdetermination expresses the fundamental skeptical threat and that the closure-based argument can ultimately be reduced to it, at least concerning skeptical contexts. This will be achieved by undermining Cohen’s objections to Brueckner on both counts. Cohen’s argument endorses a picture of evidential underdetermination, which, while apt for non-skeptical contexts, cannot be applied to radical skepticism. A comparison with a case of scientific underdetermination is developed to argue for this idea. Our argument is then applied to the principle equivalence issue and to objections against it. It is then shown how this analysis possesses a distinctive effect on our understanding of the skeptical threat and the assessment of successful anti-skeptical strategies. (shrink)

Sentences \(\varphi\) and \(\psi\) are _cognitive synonyms_ for one when they play the same role in one’s cognitive life. The notion is pervasive (Sect. 1 ), but elusive: it is bound to be hyperintensional (Sect. 2 ), but excessive fine-graining would trivialize it and there are reasons for some coarse-graining (Sect. 2.1 ). Conceptual limitations stand in the way of a natural algebra (Sect. 2.2 ), and it should be sensitive to subject matters (Sect. 2.3 ). A cognitively adequate individuation (...) of content may be intransitive (Sect. 3 ) due to ‘dead parrot’ series: sequences of sentences \(\varphi _1, \ldots, \varphi _n\) where adjacent \(\varphi _i\) and \(\varphi _{i+1}\) are cognitive synonyms while \(\varphi _1\) and \(\varphi _n\) are not (Sect. 3.1 ). Finding an intransitive account is hard: Fregean equipollence won’t do (Sect. 3.2 ) and a result by Leitgeb shows that it wouldn’t satisfy a minimal compositionality principle (Sect. 3.3 )._Sed contra_, there are reasons for transitivity, too (Sect. 3.4 ). In Sect. 4, we come up with a formal semantics capturing this jumble of desiderata, thereby showing that the notion is coherent. In Sect. 5, we re-assess the desiderata in its light. (shrink)

In this paper, I revisit Frege's theory of sense and reference in the constructive setting of the meaning explanations of type theory, extending and sharpening a program–value analysis of sense and reference proposed by Martin-Löf building on previous work of Dummett. I propose a computational identity criterion for senses and argue that it validates what I see as the most plausible interpretation of Frege's equipollence principle for both sentences and singular terms. Before doing so, I examine Frege's implementation of (...) his theory of sense and reference in the logical framework of Grundgesetze, his doctrine of truth values, and views on sameness of sense as equipollence of assertions. (shrink)

Cet article essaie de reconstruire les raisons complexes des changements successifs dans la relation entre le métaphysique de Leibniz dans ses écrits de jeunesse et son intérêt personnel dans l'apologétique et la réunion des Eglises. Je soutiens que, tandis que l'effort primitif de Leibniz pour lier l'intelligibilité de la Philosophie Mécanique au théisme le porta à mettre l'accent sur Dieu comme Moteur Premier, son désir croissant de défendre l'intelligibilité de la Transubstantiation inspira le développement d'analyses métaphysiques plus poussées sur les (...) sources de la substantiate et sur les modes de l'union divine avec le monde. Cependant, l'éveil de préoccupations mathématiques, physiques et théologiques plus amples lors du séjour de Leibniz à Paris crea une tension croissante entre la direaion prise par sa métaphysique et son désir de défendre la Transubstantiation. J'explore les raisons de cette tension et les relie au développement du principe d'équipollence et à la place de plus en plus centrale occupée dans la pensée leibnizienne par l'intelligibilité et l'autonomie de la nature. (shrink)

The Pyrrhonist’s argumentative practice is characterized by at least four features. First, he makes a therapeutic use of arguments: he employs arguments that differ in their persuasiveness in order to cure his dogmatic patients of the distinct degrees of conceit and rashness that afflict them. Secondly, his arguments are for the most part dialectical: when offering an argument to oppose it to another argument advanced by a given dogmatist, he accepts in propria persona neither the truth of its premises and (...) conclusion nor the validity of its logical form. Thirdly, he avails himself of arguments in his own open-minded inquiry into the truth about a wide range of topics. Fourthly, Pyrrhonian argumentation is oppositional inasmuch as it typically works by producing oppositions among arguments that appear to the Pyrrhonist to be equipollent. In this article, I focus on the first three features with the aim of both shedding some light on them and determining whether they are in tension or coherently relate to each other. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel and the Problem of Beginning: Scepticism and Presuppositionlessness by Robb DUNPHYJ. M. FritzmanDUNPHY, Robb. Hegel and the Problem of Beginning: Scepticism and Presuppositionlessness. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2023. x + 213 pp. Cloth, $105.00This rich, learned, and important book investigates and critically evaluates how, according to Hegel, philosophy should begin. Briefly stated, the problem of beginning philosophy is that any beginning seems susceptible to a skeptical (...) challenge that takes the form of a dilemma. On the one side, if philosophy begins immediately with a presuppositionless assertion, skeptics will contend that it is dogmatic. On the other side, if philosophy begins mediately with a claim that presupposes an argument, skeptics will confront each premise of that argument with a trilemma: The premise is either only a dogmatic assertion; it is the conclusion of an argument whose premises must in turn be justified (which threatens an infinite regress); or it depends on an argument that is viciously circular. Hegel solves this problem with a beginning that is simultaneously immediate and mediate.The introduction explains that this book has three goals. First, it critically analyzes the problem of beginning, showing how Hegel responds to the skeptical challenge. Second, it explains how Hegel’s approach to the problem and his solution are informed by his deep engagement with the tradition of Pyrrhonian skepticism. Finally, it provides a guide to reading Hegel’s essay “With What Must the Beginning of the Science be Made?” in the Science of Logic.Chapter 1, “Hegel and Pyrrhonian Scepticism,” presents the essentials of Pyrrhonism and Hegel’s interpretation of it. Pyrrhonism is a way of life. It aims to find an equally good counterargument for every argument it encounters, thus leading to a suspension of judgment that allows the skeptic to live in a state of undisturbedness. Pyrrhonism presents encountered arguments with a trilemma: Either they depend on dogmatic assertions; they generate an infinite regress of arguments; or they are viciously circular. Hegel’s interpretation emphasizes skepticism’s equipollence, whereby it opposes every argument with a counterargument that is equally persuasive. Viewed historically, Pyrrhonism seems to have confronted arguments only as it happened to encounter them and to have restricted itself to epistemology. However, Hegel is open to the interpretation that skepticism’s inquiry could be completed. This would allow it to demonstrate that for every argument there will always be an [End Page 143] equally persuasive counterargument. He also interprets skepticism as accepting a metaphysical principle regarding the inherent instability of objects.“A Short History of the Problem of Beginning,” chapter 2, provides a detailed précis of Hegel’s essay. It also gives the brief history of the problem of beginning, discussing Descartes, Kant, Reinhold, Fichte, and Schelling. It notes that some philosophers posit an objective beginning, others a subjective beginning. It explains why Hegel regards previous attempts to solve the problem of beginning as inadequate. It recognizes that Fichte’s solution can be interpreted as much closer to that of Hegel than Hegel acknowledges.Chapter 3, “The Problem of Beginning,” supplies Hegel’s own account of the problem. His solution has two versions, one in the Science of Logic and the other in the Encyclopedia Logic. Each version posits a beginning without determinate content. In the Science of Logic, Hegel states that absolute knowing, the culminating shape of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit, corresponds to the empty thinking with which philosophy begins. Philosophy’s beginning in the Science of Logic is mediate as it emerges from the progression of shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit and immediate as it does not have an object of thought. In the Encyclopedia Logic, Hegel proposes that a completed skepticism corresponds to the abstract concept of being with which philosophy begins. Philosophy’s beginning in the Encyclopedia Logic is mediate as it emerges from the skepticism’s equipollence and immediate as being without content. Hegel ultimately denies that a completed skepticism could play this role, however, which suggests that he believes that philosophy can begin immediately.“Meditation I—Phenomenology,” chapter 4, argues that Hegel’s first version is unsuccessful. To succeed, William Maker’s interpretation would have to be accepted, which... (shrink)

When one thinks of Hegel in relation to the theme of education, the first book that comes to mind is his Phenomenology of Spirit, which he characterizes as the education of ordinary consciousness to the standpoint of science. This book is a selfcompleting skepticism that, considered from the standpoint of immediate, natural consciousness is a highway of despair, but, considered from the standpoint of the phenomenological observers, is the education of ordinary consciousness to the standpoint of absolute knowing and system. (...) Hegel's concept of experience is a process whereby every shape of consciousness goes through the stages of immediate certainty, the collapse of that immediate certainty, and the correction of that initial certainty where its truth is revealed to be the opposite of what it was originally taken to be. Education is a process of dialectical reversals that does not end in skeptical equipollence and suspension, but rather culminates in a vision of truth as the whole. Truth emerges as a whole or totality because, in Hegel's view, each position is not a simple error that must be totally negated, but rather a partial grasp of truth. Central to Hegel's vision of education is the idea of truth as a result of overcoming conflict, and of error as an essential, but subordinate and correctable, aspect of truth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Idea of a “Phenomenology of Spirit” by Michael N. ForsterGünter ZöllerMichael N. Forster. Hegel’s Idea of a “Phenomenology of Spirit.” Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xi + 661. Paper, $30.00.Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) has remained an enigmatic and controversial work. Typically it has been studied and appropriated selectively, by focusing on a few topics or sections of this immense opus. There are also several (...) commentaries on all or part of the work that immerse the reader in plenty of detail, but often with insufficient attention paid to the work’s overall design. Forster’s book is thematically focused but has sufficient scope to provide the reader with an overall orientation about the Phenomenology. Moreover, it is written in a clear, accessible language, with plenty of genuinely philosophical material to balance the more narrowly exegetical aspects of the study. Forster’s work stands in the tradition of a number of German and French studies that seek to unravel the “genesis and structure” (Hyppolite) of the Phenomenology as a key to understanding and assessing the import of Hegel’s singular work. Forster discusses those earlier readings, subjects them to a thorough critique, and develops original positions on a number of key issues in scholarship on the Phenomenology.The entire first half of the book (Parts One and Two) is concerned with the “official project of the Phenomenology,” which Forster reconstructs as three sets of philosophical tasks. First are the pedagogical tasks designed to introduce the reader to the superior viewpoint of Hegel’s system and its ability to overcome the ills specific to modern culture. In particular, Hegel is shown to further advance Herder’s and Schiller’s philosophical project of replacing the multiple, unreconciled dualisms of the modern intellectual and moral outlook with a unified, monistic account of natural and social reality. In a strong interpretive move, Forster attributes a naturalism of sorts to Hegel’s integrationist account of mind and body or self and world.Second are the epistemological tasks designed to justify the cognitive claims of Hegel’s [End Page 541] system (“science”) against those of all other philosophical and popular viewpoints. In particular, Forster shows Hegel’s indebtedness to the ancient (Pyrronic) skeptical strategy of equipollence, i.e., the method of setting into opposition equally strong arguments on both sides of any issue and thereby producing an equal balance of justification on all sides of the issue. Of all possible viewpoints only Hegel’s own, which is not subject to any external opposition, eludes the scope of the method of equipollence.The third, specifically metaphysical set of tasks of the Phenomenology centers around the work’s social and (on Forster’s reading) naturalist conceptions of God, meaning and truth, in which transcendent warrants are replaced by communal consensus. Forster concludes the first half of his study with a detailed consideration of the relation between the Phenomenology and Hegel’s system proper. He stresses that the work is only the “appearance” (Erscheinung) of the philosophical science itself and that it remains systematically independent of the latter.Part Three examines the role of history and historicism in the Phenomenology. Forster distinguishes between teleological or normative historicism and intellectual or descriptive historicism, and limits his investigation to the latter as the philosophically defensible of the two enterprises. He argues extensively for a one-to-one correlation between the various “shapes of consciousness” to be found in the core of the Phenomenology (from the chapter on Consciousness through the chapter on Reason) and specific periods in human history. This chronological history of consciousness is shown to be supplemented by two further accounts of the history of consciousness (in the chapter on Spirit and in the chapters on Religion and Absolute Knowledge, respectively), in which the first history’s focus on individual consciousness is enlarged to include supra-individual mind (“spirit”).In Part Four Forster explains the tripling of the history of consciousness with a shift in the plan of the Phenomenology, away from the more limited project of the original or “Ur-Phenomenology”—to lead individual consciousness to the viewpoint of (Hegelian) science—to the more ambitious goal... (shrink)

According to Frege, we need a criterion for recognising when different sentences express the same thought to make progress in logic. He himself hedged his own equipollence criterion with a number of provisos. In the literature on Frege, little attention has been paid to the problems these provisos raise. In this paper, I will argue that Fregeans have ignored these provisos at their peril. For without these provisos, Frege’s criterion yields wrong results; but with the provisos in place, it (...) is of no use for Frege’s purposes. This is connected to what Frege took to be the ‘greatest difficulty for philosophy’: natural language sentences don’t just express thoughts; they convey evaluations and communicative hints. Because of this, Frege’s recognition criterion for thoughts cannot be applied to them and we cannot make logical progress by ‘recognising a thought in different linguistic guises’. (shrink)

This article draws out the political implications of some of the avatars of ancient skepticism in modern fiction. It relies on Martha Nussbaum’s claim that fiction can provide some of the best lessons in moral philosophy to refute her claim that ancient skepticism was a bad influence on morals. It surveys references to skepticism from Shakespeare through such diverse writers as Isabel de Charrière, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Anatole France, and Albert Camus down to recent writers such as Orhan Pamuk (...) and Michel Houellebecq. The most substantial treatment is of Naguib Mahfouz’sCairo Trilogy, which is interpreted in two ways: one, as an example ofisostheniaor equipollence in arguments on both sides of questions about gender in the Islamic world, and two, as the biography of a person who claims to be a self-conscious skeptic. Skepticism emerges as a multi-faceted concept in modern literature, but there are definite references back to the ancient skeptics, including mention of the name Pyrrhonism and knowledge of the writings of Sextus Empiricus. The political implications militate against dogmatic claims to truth and knowledge of a one-dimensional justice. (shrink)

This chapter shows that in certain circumstances desires are a guide to possibility, and that, in these circumstances, human beings desire at least one state of affairs for which the existence of God is a necessary condition. It follows that God’s existence is possible; or, more modestly, anyone with the relevant desires has a reason to believe God’s existence is possible. Thus, a new argument in the tradition of C.S. Lewis’s argument from nostalgia is offered, an argument from certain desires (...) to the possibility premise of the modal ontological argument. It is argued, further, that support for the possibility premise does not succumb to the problem of equipollence, a problem that undermines many attempts to support the possibility premise. (shrink)

This paper aims to explain the distinction between syllogisms and subsyllogisms in Stoic logic. Subsyllogisms replace at least one premise in a syllogism with a premise that is, according to Galen and Alexander, equipollent to the respective syllogistic premise. This equipollence is not synonymy of meaning between two linguistic expressions, but obtains between two propositions when they are true or false by the same standard. Subsyllogistic premises are simple propositions that are equipollent to the non-simple premises of the respective (...) syllogisms. For subsyllogistic premises that replace syllogistic premises consist of predicates combining with cases rather than of connectives or negations governing propositions. Because of this difference in their premises, subsyllogisms have a different logical form than syllogisms and are not formally valid. (shrink)

All human activity including motion is construed mentally with reference to different objects and spatial relations that are relevant (Waliński 2014). Following the work of Talmy (1985, 2000) on categorization of languages on the basis of motion events into verb framed languages and satellite framed languages, this paper addresses the typology of the Tugen language regarding motion events. It takes into consideration the reclassification of the V-languages into equipollent frame and the doubling frame, (Slobin 2003; Croft et al. 2010). Further (...) it explores the hybrid system as expounded by Schröder (2016) on the categorization of V-languages so as to cater for languages that do not fit into the equipollent and the doubling frame. This paper analyses motion events in Tugen, a Kalenjin language belonging to the southern Nilotic cluster. In this analysis, Tugen is seen as both verb framed language and satellite framed as a result of prevalence of deictic directionals and the applicative. The language also bears an associated motion affix which relates simultaneous motion to non-motion events. The associated motion affix renders the motion events to be satellite framed. The occurrence of deictic directionals on motion events that are verb framed can also be taken to be instances of doubling frame. (shrink)

Bolzano holds that every sentence can be paraphrased into a sentence of the form "A has b". Bolzano's arguments for this claim are reconstructed and discussed. Since they crucially rely on Bolzano's notion of paraphrase, this notion is investigated in detail. Bolzano has usually been taken to require that in a correct paraphrase the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence express the same proposition. In view of Bolzano's texts and systematical considerations this interpretation is rejected: Bolzano only holds (...) that the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence must be equipollent ("gleichgeltend"). It is shown that even this modest view of paraphrase does not help Bolzano in sustaining his claim that all sentences have the form "A has b". (shrink)

Bolzano holds that every sentence can be paraphrased into a sentence of the form "A has b". Bolzano's arguments for this claim are reconstructed and discussed. Since they crucially rely on Bolzano's notion of paraphrase, this notion is investigated in detail. Bolzano has usually been taken to require that in a correct paraphrase the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence express the same proposition. In view of Bolzano's texts and systematical considerations this interpretation is rejected: Bolzano only holds (...) that the sentence to be paraphrased and the paraphrasing sentence must be equipollent ("gleichgeltend"). It is shown that even this modest view of paraphrase does not help Bolzano in sustaining his claim that all sentences have the form "A has b". (shrink)

In terms of psychotransgressionism, personality is a network of five equipollent psychons, the content of which determines the personality’s functioning. The strength and power of the individual psychons underlies the tendency to undertake transgressive actions. In this study, we hypothesized that transgressive spouses are characterized by greater potential strength, greater power of cognitive, instrumental, motivational, emotional, and personal psychons than protective spouses. We operationalized all psychons, created the appropriate research tools, and then studied married couples. Using the Transgression Scale developed (...) by Studenski, we found a group of spouses with higher levels of transgression, and a group of spouses with lower levels of transgression. Transgressive wives are characterized by better knowledge about their husbands’ operational sphere, and are more aware of personal beliefs than protective wives. Similarly, transgressive husbands have greater knowledge of their wives’ operational sphere, stronger cognitive needs, and weaker personal needs than protective husbands. Transgressive husbands are characterized by a positive affective shift and have a greater awareness of personal beliefs than protective husbands. The potential brought into interpersonal relationships by transgressive spouses may create a climate conducive to building a satisfying marital relationship. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.1 (2003) 125-126 [Access article in PDF] Sextus Empiricus. Against the Grammarians (Adversos Mathematicos I). Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by D. L. Blank. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp. lvi + 436. Cloth, $105.00. Sesto Empirico. Contro gli astrologi. Introduction, Commentary, and Translation by Emidio Spinelli. Naples: Bibliopolis, 2000. Pp. 230. Paper, L. 70.000. No historian of philosophy should be retailing the old canards (...) that the Hellenistic philosopher Sextus Empiricus was silly, wholly confused, or merely a compiler and not a philosopher in his own right. These translations and commentaries, along with the recent work of Richard Bett, James Hankinson, and others, should bury those notions forever.Against the Grammarians is the first and Against the Astrologers is the fifth volume of Sextus's six-volume Against the Teachers of the technai or professional arts and sciences (grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology, and music). Sextus is not against all forms of the study of these matters; in fact, one of the skeptic's "rules for living" is that he will engage in an art (techne) to make a living (Outlines of Pyrrhonism, I.24). But he is against the claims of each of them to special technical expertise. He prefers the unpretentious experience of everyday life—living by the phenomena; non-expert, practical forms of grammar, astronomy, music—to fancy theories about the nature of things.Against the Grammarians is Sextus's critique of the interpreters of poetry and prose—today's English professors and historians. Philosophers will be amused by his deconstruction of various sorts of lit crit arrogance and rashness that are still with us. Regrettably, some of us are not immune from the same critiques.Against the Astrologers is Sextus's critique of the Chaldean soothsayers. He is not against the observation of celestial phenomena for agricultural or navigational purposes. His critiques of the astrologers for lack of empirical evidence and promotion of superstition make him sound like a proto-scientist.One originality of Sextus's work was his combination of a dogmatic Epicurean critique of the grammatologists and astrologers with a skeptical aporetic critique. Precisely because he does not hesitate to make use of the arguments of others, some interpreters have decided that Sextus was unoriginal and derivative. But Blank and Spinelli both show that he recombines these arguments in ways that no one else had done. That is one of the ways of being original in philosophy. The upshot is that he is our earliest source of quite a number of critiques of grammarians and astrologers.The use of dogmatic arguments raises the problem of whether Sextus engages in so-called "negative dogmatism" in these volumes. Right at the beginning of Against the Astrologers, Sextus accuses them of violating "right reason." What right does a skeptic have to invoke such a standard? Some have felt that at this stage Sextus was a dogmatic skeptic, invoking one set of truths to tear down another. But that is not necessary. Blank and Spinelli explain this well with a combination of points. One, we can see the dogmatic and Epicurean attacks as clearing the ground for the following skeptical equipollence of arguments. Two, we can follow Jonathan Barnes in assuming that each claim that something has been demolished assumes the counterargument that it has been proven, so that the implied upshot is equipollence. Three, "right reason" can be the sort of unpretentious practical reasoning and living in accord with the appearances that the skeptics often claimed to live by.Spinelli and Blank provide many useful improvements over the previous English translations of these texts by Bury and the Italian translations by Russo. Blank rightly relies on Spinelli's 1995 translation and commentary on Sextus's Against the Ethicists and Spinelli rightly relies on Blank for a number of points. Spinelli supplies the Greek on facing pages of the translation; Blank does not. Spinelli also supplies five Greek zodiac charts and a beautiful print of a fifteenth-century zodiac.Neither Blank nor Spinelli unduly lionizes Sextus. They admit that... (shrink)

The aim of Pyrrhonism is deceptively simple: to achieve a state of ataraxia, of tranquility and relief from perturbation. But what is the extent of the ataraxia envisioned? Must the Skeptic admit a hard distinction between disturbances apparently related to belief and there­fore subject to suspension of judgement, and extra-doxastic disturbanc­es that are beyond the scope of the Skeptical method? In this paper I examine passages from Sextus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism that indicate that such a distinction may not stand up (...) to Skeptical scrutiny and that the Skepti­cal method does not only apply to “philosophical” speculative dogma or to “intellectual” perturbation, contra Barnes’s claim that the person who perceives the fewest anomalies may make “the perfect Pyrrhonist”. But I also, following Massie’s critique of unwarranted causal inferences regarding the relation between equipollence and ataraxia, distinguish cases where tarache presents itself as anomalous and thus lends itself to inquiry from cases where it presents itself with an appar­ent cause and does not provoke inquiry. Thus, though an apparently extra-doxastic disturbance may actually be rooted in unconsciously-held dogma, the Skeptic cannot demarcate a special class of potentially doxastic disturbances without employing a dogmatic psychology of her own. She must instead suspend judgment regarding the entire scope of her method, entertaining the possibility that any disturbance could be relieved through the Skeptical method. In the process, ataraxia is divested of definite parameters and the Skeptical method becomes effectively endless. (shrink)

In “Psychopower and Ordinary Madness” my ambition, as it relates to Bernard Stiegler’s recent literature, was twofold: 1) critiquing Stiegler’s work on exosomatization and artefactual posthumanism—or, more specifically, nonhumanism—to problematize approaches to media archaeology that rely upon technical exteriorization; 2) challenging how Stiegler engages with Giuseppe Longo and Francis Bailly’s conception of negative entropy. These efforts were directed by a prevalent techno-cultural qualifier: the rise of Synthetic Intelligence (including neural nets, deep learning, predictive processing and Bayesian models of cognition). This (...) paper continues this project but first directs a critical analytic lens at the Derridean practice of the ontologization of grammatization from which Stiegler emerges while also distinguishing how metalanguages operate in relation to object-oriented environmental interaction by way of inferentialism. Stalking continental (Kapp, Simondon, Leroi-Gourhan, etc.) and analytic traditions (e.g., Carnap, Chalmers, Clark, Sutton, Novaes, etc.), we move from artefacts to AI and Predictive Processing so as to link theories related to technicity with philosophy of mind. Simultaneously drawing forth Robert Brandom’s conceptualization of the roles that commitments play in retrospectively reconstructing the social experiences that lead to our endorsement(s) of norms, we compliment this account with Reza Negarestani’s deprivatized account of intelligence while analyzing the equipollent role between language and media (both digital and analog). (shrink)

Pyrrhonism, named after the scepticism of Pyrrho of Elis, as one of the significant philosophical doctrines in the history of philosophy, was revived by Aenesidemus and Agrippa, and defended by Sextus Empiricus, its last follower, against criticisms in the theoretical and practical contexts. Pyrrhonian scepticism, based on three tenets as the state of equipollence, suspension of judgment and ataraxia, accepts adherence to appearances as a practical guide for life. The aim of this study is to discuss Sextus’ objections regarding (...) two main problems, the nature of good and evil and the art of living, elaborated in Outlines of Pyrrhonism and Against the Ethicists and contemporary remarks on the subject. Thus, it will be addressed whether the sceptic way of life prescribed by Sextus is compatible with his theoretical framework and therefore, whether it can be applied in practice. (shrink)

Languages differ systematically in how to encode a motion event. English characteristically expresses manner in verb root and path in verb particle; in Chinese, varied aspects of motion, such as manner, path and cause, can be simultaneously encoded in a verb compound. This study investigates whether typological differences, as such, influence how first and second language learners conceptualise motion events, as suggested by behavioural evidences. Specifically, the performance of Chinese learners of English, at three proficiencies, was compared to that of (...) two groups of monolingual speakers in a triads matching task. The first set of analyses regarding categorisation preferences indicates that participants across groups preferred the path-matched (rather than manner-matched) screens. However, the second set of analyses regarding reaction time suggests, firstly, that English monolingual speakers reacted significantly more quickly in selecting the manner-matched scenes compared with monolingual speakers of Chinese, who tended to use an approximately equal amount of time in making manner- and path-matched decisions, a finding that can arguably be mapped onto the typological difference between the two languages. Secondly, the pattern of response latency in low-level L2 learners looked more like that of monolingual speakers of Chinese. Only at intermediate and advanced levels of acquisition did the behavioural pattern of L2 learners become target-like, thus suggesting language-specific constraints from the L1 at an early stage of acquisition. Overall, our results suggest that motion event cognition may be linked to, among other things, the linguistic structure of motion description in particular languages. (shrink)

피론주의를 부활시켰던 아이네시데모스는 고대 회의주의 역사에서 독특한 위치를 차지하고 있다. 처음에는 아카데미 학파의 일원이었으나, 독단주의로 경도된 아카데미학파를 떠나 회의주의자인 피론에게서 새로운 철학의 가능성을 찾았기 때문이다. 그가 부활시킨 피론주의는 크게 다음 3가지 특징을 가진다.BR 첫째, 아이네시데모스의 주저는 『피론의 담화』이나 현존하지는 않는다. 그 대신, 디오게네스 라에르티오스의 『철학자 열전』, 섹스투스의 『피론주의 개요』, 에우세비오스의 『복음의 준비』에 등장하는 아리스토클레스의 언급 그리고 포티우스의 『도서관』등에 이 책의 단편적인 내용들이 존재한다. 섹스투스와 라에르티오스의 보고는 정당하나, 아리스토클레스와 포티우스의 보고는 많은 문제점을 안고 있다. 특히, 후자들은 그의 회의주의를 소개하면서 그의 철학적 (...) 목적을 인식론적 토대의 부재성에 찾고 있으나, 그의 철학을 인식론적인 것으로 한정하고, 그의 회의주의적 태도를 자기모순적인 것으로 이해하는 오류를 범하였다. 그러기에, 아이네시데모스의 회의주의에 대한 논의는 라에르티오스와 섹스투스의 기록에 힘입어 재구성되어야 한다.BR 둘째, 아이네시데모스의 회의주의에는 “이소스테네이아(isostheneia)”에 근거한 양립화의 기술이 있다. 이 기술을 통하여, 그는 모든 문제에 있어서 긍정적인 논증과 부정적인 논증이 동시적으로 성립될 수 있는 가능성을 보여준다. 하나의 이슈에 동일한 힘을 가지고 있는 대립항을 성립시키고 인식론적 판단유보를 이끌어냄으로써, 그는 사물의 한쪽 면만을 절대시하는 인식론적 독단주의로부터 자유로워지고, 마음의 평안(ataraxia)을 획득할 것을 강조하였다.BR 셋째, 아이네시데모스 회의주의의 중심에는 10개의 논증방식들(tropen)이 있다. 10개의 논증방식들은 ‘주체에 기인한 논증방식’, ‘판단되는 대상에 기인한 논증방식’ 그리고 ‘주체와 객체 양자에 기인한 논증방식’이 있으며, 3개의 상위 논증방식들은 다시 1개의 최상위 논증방식인 ‘상대성에 기인한 논증방식’으로 수렴된다. 그의 논증방식들은 딜레마적인 형태를 갖춘 10가지 파괴적인 논증방식으로, 판단의 가능성에 대한 그의 논증의 형태이자 체계적인 이해의 산물이다. 아이네시데모스는 이 파괴적인 논증방식들을 사용함으로써, 그는 인식론적 독단주의를 제거하고, 마음의 혼란을 잠재우고자 하였다.BR 결론적으로, 아이네시데모스는 새롭게 부활한 피론주의에 최고의 논증방식을 제공한 최초의 피론주의자였다. 물론, 그의 철학에 대한 많은 오해가 있음에도 불구하고, 그는 초기 피론주의를 확립하는데 부족함이 없었다. 이후, 섹스투스는 이러한 아이네시데모스의 성과에 힙 입어 성숙한 피론주의를 완성한다. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.3 (2003) 416-417 [Access article in PDF] Jean-Baptiste Rauzy. La Doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité. Aspects logiques et ontologiques. Paris: Vrin, 2001. Pp. vii + 353. Paper, FF 170,55.This important book provides a reappraisal of Leibniz's philosophy of logic and epistemology based on a close scrutiny of the recently edited manuscripts in the Akademie-Ausgabe, and a reconstitution of Leibniz's sequential investigations. The author (...) displays an exceptional knowledge of the Leibnizian corpus, the ancient and medieval sources for the various doctrines he analyzes, and the contemporary issues underpinning Leibniz's investigations. He aims at rectifying misconceptions that stemmed originally in Couturat's La Logique de Leibniz (1901) and have since affected several studies. Three methodological statements set the ground for Rauzy's analysis: (1) Leibniz's notion of truth concerns in unified fashion all the elements of discourse: terms, concepts, and propositions. (2) Leibniz did not restrict his doctrine of truth to consistency relations, but yielded a complex, well-articulated conception of truth as correspondence, as evidenced in New Essays on Human Understanding, IV, v, sect. 11; yet, at the same time, his doctrine focused on conceptual relations which specify an order of reasons deserving to be analyzed for their own sake: "Dans la doctrine leibnizienne de la vérité, l'adaequatio rei constitue encore le cadre général en dehors duquel le prédicat de vérité n'a pas de sens. Mais les concepts et les liaisons conceptuelles donnent désormais la raison pour laquelle telle phrase particulière est vraie..." (47). And (3) one should resist attributing to Leibniz a purely syntactic conception of truth since the semantic dimension of his logical analyses deserves to be reconstituted and due consideration should be given to the evolution of his thoughts on central philosophical issues, which occasioned significant variations in the elements and formulas of his calculus rationis.It is merely possible to render the rich contents of the book by mentioning some of its more striking features. In Chapter 1, the inesse principle (Praedicatum inestsubjecto) is shown to serve grammatical, logical, and conceptual functions. The doctrine of expression is finely analyzed: expression is shown to provide the major translation tool between characters and thoughts and to condition the combinatorial treatment of rational discourse. In Chapter 2, the distinction between concept and object is shown to involve some relativity, even if the understanding of complete notions is supposed to entail real knowledge of the corresponding realities. Leibniz is thus justified to represent the manifold of ontological relations, including the requisites of actual existence, in a tentatively unified logical way: "Que [End Page 416] l'existence soit une propriété relationnelle complexe, conçue tantôt par la relation de compatibilité, tantôt par une relation à l'esprit en général—et éventuellement [...] par un mixte des deux—n'interdit nullement de maintenir que la vérité de toutes les propositions dépend de relations conceptuelles" (124-5). In Chapter 3, the project of a calculus based on concepts is shown to entail a special relation, hardly dealt with in the literature, between intension and extension (cf. for instance New Essays, IV, xvii, sect. 8). Rauzy reassesses in particular Leibniz's critical revision of nominalism and of inductive procedures as these require universal propositions to ground rational presumptions. The extensional notion of class is considered an abstraction: a class presupposes therefore the extension of a concept in order to become an object of thought. The principle of conceptual inherence requires to be interpreted as stating the equipollence between the requisites of subject and predicate; if such an equipollence may be reached a priori in exceptional cases, most of the time it will require various kinds of additions and derivations to yield sufficient congruence between the related terms. Chapter 4 is devoted to substitutions, more precisely to the theory of definition and the context, at once logical and discursive, from which a potential Leibnizian theory of communication might be derived. Rauzy notes that substitutive equivalences... (shrink)

The paper aims to prove the hypothesis that Sextus Empiricus’ Neo-Pyrrhonism is significantly influenced by the Cartesian meditation as a genre of philosophizing. It refutes theses about (1) the non-predicativity of Sextus’ language and about (2) Sextus’ epochê as an automatic result of the action of opposite things or statements, and it argues that both Sextus and Descartes distinguish between (a) internal (forced) agreement with clarity and (b) the personal acceptance of this agreement which depends on a volitional decision. Sextus’ (...) recognition of the clarity of appearance as appearance gives Descartes the only chance to refute the skepticism of Sextus, which is invulnerable to external criticism. Therefore, Descartes developed meditation as a special model of purely immanent criticism (the very word “skepticism” is never mentioned in the Meditations), focused on dealing with states of clarity and evidence. The author’s hypothesis is that the key elements to which this model appeals are the “history of a skeptic” set out in Outlines of Pyrrhonism and the conception of skeptical expressions. This hypothesis can be tested further by proving or disproving the thesis that the discourse of I, II, and at least partially of III Meditations is based on the pattern of skeptical expressions, focused on the internal states of the speaker, and not on clarifying the “objective” state of affairs (i.e. not on dogmatic inferences). (shrink)

This chapter presents Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy as modern fictions with ancient-skeptical ambitions. Whether in the affective domain (Flaubert) or in the cognitive (Beckett), the aim is to help the reader achieve a position of studied neutrality—ataraxia, époché—thanks not to an a priori decision but to the mutual cancellation of opposing tendencies. Understanding Flaubert and Beckett in this way allows us, first, to enrich our sense of what “catharsis” may involve; second, to see why the apparently (...) odious Charles, in Madame Bovary, suddenly becomes a deeply touching figure; and third, to recognize the severe limitations of empathy-based moralist theories of fiction. (shrink)

The author is interested in discussing various aspects of the propositional calculus; in particular, the relationships among the various propositional connectives in various systems of logic such as Intuitionistic and modal are scrutinized. The first three chapters survey the notation to be used and describe the general notion of logistic system; the author then describes the concept of a deductive system in exceptional generality, then treats the connexions of equivalence and independence among such deductive systems in what are essentially algebraic (...) terms. Building on the latter work, he then treats the idea of one system's being an extension of the other, going into the details concerning the fine structure of exactly what sort of extension it is—conservative, consistent, and thus arrives at Lindenbaum's lemma. The equivalence relations of congruence and equipollence among propositional systems form the central core around which Porte's discussion of axiomatizability of systems of connectives constituting various propositional calculi is based. Porte is one of the best of the several young logicians now working in France and this book is useful both as a technical treatise containing a sophisticated treatment of sentential logic, and as a guide to at least one direction and trend of contemporary French logical thought.—P. J. M. (shrink)

This is a text for a one or two semester course on axiomatic set theory; the goal is to introduce and develop one system of set theory in a complete and thorough way, presupposing only the elusive "mathematical maturity" of the reader. There are nine chapters which begin with a development of propositional and predicate logic oriented toward set theory and develop the Zermelo-Fraenkel system in exceptional detail. The book starts slowly, the first 120 pages being devoted to logical preliminaries (...) and the introduction of axioms; it gathers speed, however, and the remaining chapters include treatment of the algebra of classes, relations and functions, order of various sorts and Zorn's lemma, real numbers and equivalence classes, the equipollence of sets, similarity as a relation of sets, the ordinal numbers and their arithmetic, the cardinal numbers and their arithmetic. These later chapters are extremely detailed and comprehensive, presenting a wealth of material. There are numerous exercises, many quite difficult, at the end of each chapter, along with a summary of that chapter's content. Because of the single-mindedness of the book, there is little reference to other systems of set theory, but this is not a drawback at all. The presentation is orthodox, but not dull; careful, but not generally pedantic or repetitive. This makes it a good text for self-study.—P. J. M. (shrink)

Jessica Berry provides the first detailed analysis of whether, and in what sense, Nietzsche was a skeptic (5). Exploring the affinity between Nietzsche’s work and Pyrrhonism in six main chapters, Berry differentiates between modern skepticism, understood as epistemological pessimism or nihilism (33), and Pyrrhonian skepticism as a commitment to continuing inquiry, based on the equipollence of arguments, “roughly equal persuasive weight for and against just about any claim,” and epochē, suspension of judgment (36–37). Berry shows that Nietzsche appreciated this (...) distinction (29–32) and proceeds to read Nietzsche’s remarks on truth skeptically. She argues that—like the ancient Skeptic’s response to the .. (shrink)