In diesem Aufsatz erörtere ich Leibniz' Begriff des Blickpunktes von Monaden. Ich weise nach, daß die üblicherweise zur Verdeutlichung herangezogene Analogie, nämlich die der räumlichen Perspektive irreführend und ungenau ist. Ich stelle eine von C. D. Broad vorgeschlagene Verbesserung zur Diskussion und wandle Broads Analyse ihrerseits ab. Die Abwandlung vereinfacht Leibniz' Auffassung und zeigt gleichzeitig auf, was im Hinblick auf Monaden grundlegend falsch ist: die Unaussagbarkeit, die dem Sich-selbst-Repräsentieren der Monaden zukommt.

Limitations of space dictate that we confine ourselves to Miss Stern's most salient comments. First, a preliminary point. Miss Stern says “Levin offers no argument” for why “e happened because of c” implicitly contains an explanatory description, while “c caused e” does not. But surely the remark that we often know that c caused e without knowing why c caused e is just such an argument. Our linguistic intuition suggests that we use the first locution in this case; Miss Stern's (...) evidently does not. Cases of non-diagnostic causal ascriptions do exist, and even ordinary language must provide for them; how it does so is a verbal dispute about English. (shrink)

This thesis presents and criticizes Hilary Putnam's argument that mathematics is as empirical as science, in particular the argument that the switch from Euclidean geometry to Riemannian geometry as the approporiate geometry for physical space constituted an instance of revising mathematics as a result of observation. The thesis explains Putnam's views on mathematics as following from his theory of meaning and reference for natural kind terms. It is argued that Putnam's account of reference is unsuitable for mathematical terms and that (...) an "if-thenist" approach to mathematical knowledge is more fruitful. (shrink)