Alexandre Koyre was one of the most prominent historians of science of the twentieth century. The standard interpretation of Koyre is that he falls squarely within the internalist camp of historians of science-that he focuses on the history of the ideas themselves, eschewing cultural and sociological interpretations regarding the influence of ideologies and institutions on the development of science. When we read what Koyre has to say about his historical studies (and most of what others have said about them), we (...) find him embracing and championing this Platonic view of his work. Ultimately I think this interpretation of Koyre's history of science is lopsided and in need of correction. I claim, rather, that a careful reading of Koyre's work suggests that a tension exists between internal and external methodological considerations. The external considerations stem from Koyre's commitment to the unity of human thought and the influence he admits that the 'transscientifiques' (philosophy, metaphysics, religion) have on the development of science. I suggest in conclusion then, that if we are to put a philosophical label on his work, rather than 'Platonist', as has been the custom, 'Hegelian' makes a better fit. (shrink)

Are the truths of arithmetic analytic, as Frege insisted in opposition to Kant? Although bits and pieces of an adequate answer to the question are doubtless to be found scattered throughout the literature, one continues to be disappointed by the absence of any extended treatment of the issue that would undertake to digest the rich body of diverse material that has accumulated since the publication of Frege's Begriffsschrift in 1879.

Levin follows the development of Freud's ideas up to Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, claiming that "his writings through 1905 can easily be recognized as containing virtually all the fundamental elements of his system." The interpretation has two complementary emphases: "that his early theoretical models were much more closely tied to current medical and psychological literature than has previously been acknowledged, and that, contrary to presently accepted views, Freud, from his first studies of the neuroses, consistently eschewed speculations (...) concerning possible organic explanations for these diseases". (shrink)

It is largely through a return to the old-fashioned topic of judgment that the new "revisionist" history is seen to be taking shape according to which the "apostolic succession" proceeds from Kant not to Hegel but to Frege, though the Begriff is by no means ignored. A pivotal work, David Bell’s elegant monograph is at once useful and challenging. In the forefront lies the purely exegetical question, "What does Frege mean when he says that concepts are unsaturated?" In the background: (...) a fight over Frege’s soul, Kant vs. Plato, where Bell discreetly advances the cause of the new anti-realism of which Michael Dummett is the éminence grise. (shrink)

Although Ordinary Language Philosophy is widely believed to have disappeared leaving scarcely a trace in this era of formal semantics, it is very much the formal semantics of ordinary language that dominates the scene. More common ground than one might have supposed proves thus to be available for the unreconstructed ordinary language philosopher, in the present volume, to enter into the thick of current discussion. The prevailing tone of the work is certainly much more formal than anything one recalls from (...) the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, and in its episodic fashion the central topics—e.g., reference, opacity, identity, propositions—are standard enough, though by the end an effort has been made to reinstate synonymy, analyticity, and even verificationism. On the specific side of grammar the nominalization of sentences receives extended attention, and it is in that connection that Bede Rundle queries the postulation of propositions as metaphysical objects for the so-called propositional attitudes. The deepest, most pervasive theme of the book turns out to be that of ontological commitment. In an uncharacteristic, refreshing moment of testiness Rundle confides that serious controversy as to whether there are or are not events "just cannot get going unless our ordinary language is supplanted... by the grandiose but ill-defined jargon of ‘ontology'." The focus of the work tends to be blurred owing to a tacit assimilation of Quine to the formal semanticists of ordinary language. If the Quinean framework of ontological commitment would seem to be almost ubiquitous today, the semantic emphasis on the ontological commitments of ordinary language renders the current fashion almost as alien to Quine as to the later Wittgenstein. Rundle is thus faced with a shifting target. His excellent anti-Fregean, quasi-nominalistic discussion of number brings out some of the difficulty. Sensitive to the difference between the nonreferential and referential uses of number words in ordinary language, Rundle argues that one can only go so far with the former. Accordingly, he will allow that "by ordinary standards there quite clearly are numbers", a thesis that neither Wittgenstein nor Quine—for very different reasons—would accept. At the outset of his book Rundle writes as follows, "We could look more favorably upon the pragmatic approach if there were room for a choice, if the analysis of the meaning of, say, sentences seemingly alluding to certain abstractions, left the question of existence undecided. There are reasons for thinking that this cannot be so, and the arguments to come will, I hope, bear out the general objection in particular cases." The discussion of number fails to connect with Quine who readily concedes ordinary language to the nominalist. It is only when one consults such items as sets, which Quine takes to have scarcely any footing in ordinary language, that his pragmatism comes properly into its own. Are the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory analytic or synthetic? Are they perhaps synthetic a priori? Shall we indeed accept them as true? It can hardly be supposed that pre-Quinean approaches, whether empiricist or rationalist, have proved very fruitful here. And what guidance can linguistic analysis provide? (shrink)

The first of two volumes to be added to Dilthey’s Collected Works, making available unpublished manuscripts connected with his Introduction to the Human Sciences. The present volume includes plans and outlines from Dilthey’s philosophical beginnings, ca. 1865, with an appendix of aphorisms from his student years, probably pre-1860, preliminary writings for what was to become the "Treatise of 1875," i.e., "On the Study of the History of the Sciences of Man, Society, and the State," with the related project of a (...) methodological introduction to a study of the natural law of the Sophists and its reemergence in the 16th- and 17th-century egoistic theories of man, which was to provide an example of "historical research of philosophical intent," continuations of the "Treatise of 1875," elaborations of Dilthey’s descriptive psychology from around 1880, and two epistemological manuscripts: "On the possibility of a consistent shaping [Gestaltung] of empiricism, through which the insight into the objectivity of appearances would be given a foundation," 1874, and "Essay on the Philosophy of Experience and Reality in opposition to Empiricism and Speculation," 1879. The following volume will be comprised essentially of the extensive drafts for a continuation of the Introduction to the Human Sciences, one of which was already close to completion in 1882/83 when the first volume was sent to press and Dilthey was given Lotze’s chair in philosophy at Berlin. The present volume thus is devoted mainly to writings from Dilthey’s Breslau period 1871-82; its successor will be evenly divided between the so-called "Breslauer Ausarbeitung" and the "Berliner Entwurf." It should be a great benefit to Dilthey studies that these manuscripts are finally being published, and it is to be hoped that they will also excite further interest in the surprisingly neglected Introduction to the Human Sciences itself. (shrink)

Sokolowski’s book is a refreshing departure from the norm of much Husserlian literature in English. Neither paraphrase nor summary, it explores and illumines the central and thorniest issues in Husserl’s thought, doing so in lively and graceful language unencumbered by transcendental jargon. The author insightfully draws parallels between Husserl and philosophers in the linguistic tradition such as Austin and Strawson. The binding thread throughout the work is the theme of "being truthful." Through the exploration of Husserl’s texts, Sokolowski aims at (...) describing "what it is to be truthful and to be human, and to show what philosophy is." Husserlian phenomenology may be understood as the systematic and clear reflection on being truthful as it is realized in the natural attitude, but also as it is achieved in philosophy itself, which seeks truth in the unique mode of reflecting upon being truthful. (shrink)

Since 1968 there has been a renewal of interest in Dilthey which has revealed new facets of his work and shown the need for a fundamental revision of the prevailing general conception of Dilthey. In 1968 Peter Krausser, in Kritik der endlichen Vernunft. Diltheys Revolution der allgemeinen Wissenschafts- und Handlungstheorie, brought out the connection between his epistemological and social-hermeneutic concerns by isolating a theory of functional structure running through his work which was seen as an anticipation of a cybernetic approach. (...) Krausser concluded by contrasting this "structure-theory" favorably with contending positions in current debate, Adorno and Habermas, Gadamer, and Popper. In the same year Habermas devoted two chapters of Erkenntnis und Interesse to Dilthey. Although he related him rather exclusively to a theoretical grounding of "the Geisteswissenschaften", the effect of Habermas’ parallel treatment of Dilthey, Peirce, and Freud was to free Dilthey from the confines of his received image. This worked to undermine the tripartite division of natural, humanistic, and social science which Habermas adapted from Scheler. Just as Peirce’s ideas on the fixation of belief concern not only experimental method but the psychology of experience, so Dilthey’s grasp of the relation of lived experience, objectivation, and understanding bears directly on experience in the full practical sense. In 1969 Frithjof Rodi, in Morphologie und Hermeneutik. Dilthey’s Ästhetik, connected his more "humanistic" work with his interests in biology and physiology, complementing the formal continuity of "structure-theory" established by Krausser and reintegrating this with a more familiar Dilthey. More recently others, above all Manfred Riedel and Ulrich Herrmann, have made important critical and editorial contributions, relying like Krausser on their familiarity with unpublished manuscripts, including that of the second volume of the Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften, which Rodi is currently editing, in collaboration with Johach, for publication as volumes 18 and 19 of the Gesammelte Schriften. The availability of these texts should consolidate the revolution of the conventional image of Dilthey, under way since 1968, and Johach’s book must be welcomed as an anticipation of that edition. (shrink)

If the slogan "No entity without identity" might be said to encapsulate the new essentialism, it has in any case been felt to serve the working ontologist as a powerful tool for ruling out certain dubious entities. The first half of Baruch Brody’s book consists in a radical "critique of this whole philosophical tradition," as it is seen to be "based upon a fundamental erroneous assumption," namely that "the truth-conditions of claims concerning identity vary as the type of entity in (...) question varies." In fact no such parochial identity conditions need be invoked according to Brody, seeing that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles will suffice to define identity in omnibus fashion across the board, even to the extent of being "understood by those who want to learn the meaning of ‘identity'.". (shrink)

In a strictly deterministic universe a Laplacian superman undertakes to predict if a certain ongoing Turing machine will ever halt. Well, he may predict that the machine will be struck by lightning tomorrow but Judson Webb invites us to "idealize" the case sufficiently so that it is not any lack of physical knowledge that stymies the Laplacian superman but rather the negative result of Turing's metamathematical or formal "indeterminacy" that suggests to Webb a the-Turing machines are thus seen to enjoy (...) a certain sort of "indeterminacy" or "unpredictability" which, while not physical in character, might readily be styled metamathematical. It is precisely that metamathematical or formal "indeterminacy" that suggests to Webb a theoretical basis for overcoming the traditional dichotomy of mind and mechanism. The ostensibly negative results of Turing, Gödel, and Church, far from showing that minds cannot possibly be machines, Webb interprets positively as supplying us with rich instructions as to what sort of unpredictable machines we have right to expect them to be. (shrink)