This paper identifies several ways in which personality informs philosophical belief. In the present study, individuals holding doctorates in philosophy were given a personality inventory and asked to respond to nine philosophical questions, seven of which produced significant sample sizes. Personality predicted response to three of these seven questions, suggesting that philosophers' beliefs are determined in part by their personalities. This is taken as evidence that philosophy is intrinsically subjective, a claim which is herein developed more completely and (...) defended against several objections. (shrink)

Sometime, at your leisure—if you want to know what philosophy is—go into a large bookstore and browse. Check a variety of books in psychology, anthropology, physics, chemistry, archeology, astronomy, and other nonfiction fields. Look at the last chapter in each book. In a surprising number of cases, you will find that the author has chosen to round out his work with a final summation of what the book is all about. That is, having written a whole book on a (...) specialized subject in which he is probably an authority, he finds that he also has ideas about the larger meaning of the facts that he has written about. The final chapter may be called “Conclusions,” “Epilogue,” “Postscript,” “My Personal View,” “Implications,” “Comments," ,“ “Speculations,” or (as in one case) “So What?” But in every instance, the author is trying to elucidate the larger implications of his subject matter and to clarify how he thinks it relates to other fields or to life. He has an urge to tell us the meaning of all his facts taken together. He wants to share with us the philosophic implications of what he has written. When he does this, the author has moved beyond the role of a field specialist. He is a philosopher. (shrink)

Traditional views concerning musical meaning, in the field of philosophy, quite often oscillate around the discussion of whether music can transfer meaning (and if so if it happens by a means similar to language). Philosophers have provided a wide range of views – according to some, music has no meaning whatsoever, or if there is any meaning involved, it is only of a formal/structural significance. According to the opposing views, music can contain meaning similarly (...) to language and what is more, sometimes it can be even richer than language, as in music we are – arguably – able to encode “emotional meanings”. In recent years, several approaches – also speculative – to the old philosophical question have been proposed by evolutionary psychologists, one of the most controversial views being that of Stephen Pinker’s famous metaphor for music as “auditory cheesecake”. This anti-adaptationist view has been challenged f. ex. by Geoffrey Miller or Ian Cross. In this chapter, I enlist some main philosophical views on the titular problem and investigate some evolutionary-paradigm-based propositions for its solution, to examine whether – both from explanatory and methodological standpoints – the philosophy of music could gain something from recent developments in evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

What is it for marks or sounds to have meaning, and what is it for someone to mean something in producing them? Answering these and related questions, Schiffer explores communication, speech acts, convention, and the meaning of linguistic items in this reissue of a seminal work on the foundations of meaning. A new introduction takes account of recent developments and places his theory in a broader context.

This volume is a collective exploration of major themes in the work of Crispin Wright, one of today's leading philosophers. These newly commissioned papers are divided into four sections, preceded by a substantial Introduction, which places them in the context of the development of Wright's ideas. The distinguished contributors address issues such as the rule-following problem, knowledge of our meanings and minds, truth, realism, anti-realism and relativism, as well as the nature of perceptual justification, the cogency of arguments such as (...) G. E. Moore's celebrated proof of an external world, and skepticism about the material world. Some papers explore the relationship of Wright's ideas with those of Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose influence has always been a prominent aspect of Wright's philosophy. The essays collectively testify to the enormous interest and relevance of Wright's seminal contributions for present-day debates in areas as diverse as the philosophy of language and mind, metaphysics, and epistemology, and significantly advance research in these areas. The volume also contains Wright's substantial responses to his critics, which offer the most up-to-date versions of his ideas and a vigorous defense of his philosophy. (shrink)

'The unconsidered life is not worth living' - Socrates. Thinking about life, what it means and what it holds in store does not have to be a despondent experience, but rather can be enlightening and uplifting. A life truly worth living is one that is informed and considered so a degree of philosophical insight into the inevitabilities of the human condition is inherently important and such an approach will help us to deal with real personal dilemmas. This book is an (...) accessible, lively and thought-provoking series of linked commentaries, based on A. C. Grayling's 'The Last Word' column in the Guardian. Its aim is not to persuade readers to accept one particular philosophical point of view or theory, but to help us consider the wonderful range of insights which can be drawn from an immeasurably rich history of philosophical thought. Concepts covered include courage, love, betrayal, ambition, cruelty, wisdom, passion, beauty and death. This will be a wonderfully stimulating read and act as an invaluable guide as to what is truly important in living life, whether facing success, failure, justice, wrong, love, loss or any of the other profound experience life throws out. (shrink)

Published very shortly before his death in February 1976, Meaning is the culmination of Michael Polanyi's philosophic endeavors.

Thomas Kuhn with his classic The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is one of the most influential and widely read philosophers of the 20th century. Kuhn's claim that the meanings of scientific terms change is often taken to be refuted by recent advances in the philosophy of language. Meaning Changes challenges this interpretation showing that meaning change in Kuhn has multiple aspects: Semantic, mental and historical. The author describes the traditional view with clarity, but demonstrates that Kuhn's idea (...) stems from his studies of history. The book explains how Kuhn's philosophy is supported by cognitive science and why meaning change is relevant to the history of ideas. It argues that Kuhn's case against Hilary Putnam's causal theory of reference constitutes serious criticism of the account. The book concludes by analysing Kuhn's 'historical perspective' in the coherentist epistemological framework, which regards the question of scientific progress ultimately as empirical. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science. It also is valuable reading to anybody interested in philosophy or scientific change. (shrink)

What is the meaning of life? It is a question that has intrigued the great philosophers--and has been hilariously lampooned by Monty Python. Indeed, the whole idea strikes many of us as vaguely pompous, a little absurd. Is there one profound and mysterious meaning to life, a single ultimate purpose behind human existence? In What's It All About?, Julian Baggini says no, there is no single meaning. Instead, Baggini argues meaning can be found in a variety (...) of ways, in this life. He succinctly breaks down six answers people commonly suggest when considering what life is all about--helping others, serving humanity, being happy, becoming successful, enjoying each day as if it were your last, and "freeing your mind." By reducing the vague, mysterious question of meaning to a series of more specific (if thoroughly unmysterious) questions about what gives life purpose and value, he shows that the quest for meaning can be personal, empowering, and uplifting. If the meaning of life is not a mystery, if leading meaningful lives is within the power of us all, then we can look around us and see the many ways in which life can have purpose. We can see the value of happiness while accepting it is not everything. We can see the value of success, without interpreting that too narrowly. We can see the value of seizing the day as well as helping others lead meaningful lives. We can recognize the value of love, as perhaps the most powerful motivator of all. Illustrating his argument with the thoughts of many of the great philosophers and examples drawn from everyday life, Baggini convincingly shows that the search for meaning is personal and within the power of each of us to find. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s first account of meaning was that sentences are pictures: the meaning of a sentence is a state of affairs it portrays. States of affairs are arrangements of some basic entities, the Objects. Sentences consist of names of Objects; an arrangement of such names, i.e., a sentence, shows how the named Objects are arranged. A sentence says that the state of affairs it thus pictures exists, hence it is true or false. That theory of meaning as picturing (...) is based on a primitive relation of naming, but what it is for an item to name another the Tractatus does not say. (shrink)

This article defends a conception of philosophy popular outside the discipline but unpopular within it: that philosophy is unified by a concern with the meaning of life. First, it argues against exceptionalist theses according to which philosophy is unique among academic disciplines in not being united by a distinctive subject matter. It then presents a positive account, showing that the issue of the meaning of life is uniquely able to reveal unity between the practical and (...) theoretical concerns of philosophy, while meeting a range of desiderata for a typical specification of subject matter. After showing how recent analytic work on “the meaning of life” has conflated the traditional question with issues of social meaningfulness, it offers an explanation of why the traditional question has become marginalised in philosophy. The reasons are not good, however, so it concludes that philosophy should embrace its popular image. (shrink)

Mind, Meaning, and Reality presents fifteen philosophical papers in which D. H. Mellor explores some of the most intriguing questions in philosophy. These include: what determines what we think, and what we use language to mean; how that depends on what there is in the world and why there is only one universe; and the nature of time.

The relationship between philosophy and aesthetic criticism has occupied Robert Pippin throughout his illustrious career. Whether discussing film, literature, or modern and contemporary art, Pippin's claim is that we cannot understand aesthetic objects unless we reckon with the fact that some distinct philosophical issue is integral to their meaning. In his latest offering, Philosophy by Other Means, we are treated to a collection of essays that builds on this larger project, offering profound ruminations on philosophical issues in (...) aesthetics along with revelatory readings of Henry James, Marcel Proust, and J. M. Coetzee. (shrink)

The Book Focuses On Meaning And Linguistic Representations , And Links Them To Propose A Representational Theory Of Meaning. It Shows That Meaning As Truth-Conditions And As Justification-Conditions Are Equally Rooted In The Semantic Space Of Language-Use.

To develop this theory, Karl Löwith—beginning with the more accessible philosophies of history in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries and working back to the Bible—analyzes the writings of outstanding historians both in antiquity ...

This book offers a new way of doing African philosophy by building on an analysis of the way people talk. The author bases his investigation on the belief that traditional African philosophy is hidden in expressions used in ordinary language. As a result, he argues that people are engaging in a philosophical activity when they use expressions such as taboos, proverbs, idioms, riddles, and metaphors. The analysis investigates proverbs using the ordinary language approach and Speech Act theory. Next, (...) the author looks at taboos using counterfactual logic, which studies the meaning of taboo expressions by departing from a consideration of their structure and use. He argues that the study of these figurative expressions using the counterfactual framework offers a particular understanding of African philosophy and belief systems. The study also investigates issues of meaning and rationality departing from a study on riddles, explores conceptual metaphors used in conceptualizing the notion of politics in modern African political thought, and examines language and marginalization of women and people with disabilities. The book differs from other works in African philosophy in the sense that it does not claim that Africans have a philosophy as is commonly done in most studies. Rather, it reflects and unfolds philosophical elements in ordinary language use. The book also builds African Conception of beauty and truth through the study of language. (shrink)

Tsenay Serequeberhan’s hermeneutics has been crucial to the development of African philosophy. Initially employed as a pathway through the ethno- and professional philosophical debates, scholars have engaged how Serequeberhan’s hermeneutics grapples with one’s own place within a socio-historical world in service of liberation/self-determination. However, this scholarship mainly has focused on his adaptation of Gadamer’s ‘effective-historical consciousness’ for his own concept of heritage. This consequently leaves his concept of a ‘lived existence’ – which is equally crucial – under-examined. This paper (...) probes what a ‘lived existence’ entails and its essentiality when explicating how one even begins to authentically think, which is the groundwork to Serequeberhan’s hermeneutics. This deepens why his concept of heritage matters as a starting point for self-determination. Addressing this lacuna, this article asks, where does philosophy begin and where should it go, particularly when rationality has been historically denied? Serequeberhan’s point of departure to answer this question proposes Heidegger’s concept of thinking itself to arrive at a notion of existence; contrariwise to most African scholars who employ a Sartrean existentialism via Frantz Fanon. As such, this paper gives an in-depth exploration of Serequeberhan’s initial reading of Heidegger, and then unfolds how he appropriates Heidegger to craft his notion of ‘lived existence’. The upshot this is twofold: First, a broader understanding of Serequeberhan’s project, its non-existentialist view of existence; Second, it describes how he specifically tailors his ‘lived existence’ to undergird his hermeneutical approach to heritage as a prescriptive, activist project which dynamically addresses the postcolonial situation. (shrink)

All too often, we think of our minds and bodies separately. The reality couldn’t be more different: the fundamental fact about our mind is that it is embodied. We have a deep visceral, emotional, and qualitative relationship to the world—and any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of the mind must take into account the ways that cognition, meaning, language, action, and values are grounded in and shaped by that embodiment. This book gathers the best of philosopher Mark Johnson’s essays (...) addressing questions of our embodiment as they deal with aesthetics—which, he argues, we need to rethink so that it takes into account the central role of body-based meaning. Viewed that way, the arts can give us profound insights into the processes of meaning making that underlie our conceptual systems and cultural practices. Johnson shows how our embodiment shapes our philosophy, science, morality, and art; what emerges is a view of humans as aesthetic, meaning-making creatures who draw on their deepest physical processes to make sense of the world around them. (shrink)

The theory of essential definitions is a fundamental anti‐sceptic element of the Aristotelian‐Avicennian epistemology. In this theory, when we distinguish the genus and the specific differentia of a given essence we thereby acquire a scientific understanding of it. The aim of this article is to analyse systematically the sceptical reasons, arguments and conclusions against real definitions of three major authorities of twelfth‐century Arabic philosophy: Faḫr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī, Šihāb al‐Dīn al‐Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt al‐Baġdādī. I focus on showing how their (...) refutation of our capacity to provide essential definitions of things is rooted in their semantic theory: we only know things under certain descriptions which are identical to the meanings of the words that we use to refer to them, yet these descriptions do not capture the essences of things in themselves. The best result one can achieve with Aristotelian‐Avicennian scientific definitions is a “nominal definition”. With this, Rāzī, Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt will put some serious epistemic limitations on our capacity to attain scientific knowledge of things, at least as Aristotle and Avicenna would have it. (shrink)

Among the main concerns of 20th century philosophy was that of the foundations of mathematics. But usually not recognized is the relevance of the choice of a foundational approach to the other main problems of 20th century philosophy, i.e., the logical structure of language, the nature of scientific theories, and the architecture of the mind. The tools used to deal with the difficulties inherent in such problems have largely relied on set theory and its “received view”. There are (...) specific issues, in philosophy of language, epistemology and philosophy of mind, where this dependence turns out to be misleading. The same issues suggest the gain in understanding coming from category theory, which is, therefore, more than just the source of a “non-standard” approach to the foundations of mathematics. But, even so conceived, it is the very notion of what a foundation has to be that is called into question. The philosophical meaning of mathematics is no longer confined to which first principles are assumed and which “ontological” interpretation is given to them in terms of some possibly updated version of logicism, formalism or intuitionism. What is central to any foundational project proper is the role of universal constructions that serve to unify the different branches of mathematics, as already made clear in 1969 by Lawvere. Such universal constructions are best expressed by means of adjoint functors and representability up to isomorphism. In this lies the relevance of a category-theoretic perspective, which leads to wide-ranging consequences. One such is the presence of functorial constraints on the syntax–semantics relationships; another is an intrinsic view of (constructive) logic, as arises in topoi and, subsequently, in more general fibrations. But as soon as theories and their models are described accordingly, a new look at the main problems of 20th century’s philosophy becomes possible. The lack of any satisfactory solution to these problems in a purely logical and set-theoretic setting is the result of too circumscribed an approach, such as a static and punctiform view of objects and their elements, and a misconception of geometry and its historical changes before, during, and after the foundational “crisis”, as if algebraic geometry and synthetic differential geometry – not to mention algebraic topology – were secondary sources for what concerns foundational issues. The objectivity of basic geometrical intuitions also acts against the recent version of structuralism proposed as ‘the’ philosophy of category theory. On the other hand, the need for a consistent and adequate conceptual framework in facing the difficulties met by pre-categorical theories of language and scientific knowledge not only provides the basic concepts of category theory with specific applications but also suggests further directions for their development (e.g., in approaching the foundations of physics or the mathematical models in the cognitive sciences). This ‘virtuous’ circle is by now largely admitted in theoretical computer science; the time is ripe to realise that the same holds for classical topics of philosophy. (shrink)

When our smartphones distract us, much more is at stake than a momentary lapse of attention. Our use of smartphones can interfere with the building-blocks of meaningfulness and the actions that shape our self-identity. -/- By analyzing social interactions and evolving experiences, Roholt reveals the mechanisms of smartphone-distraction that impact our meaningful projects and activities. Roholt’s conception of meaning in life draws from a disparate group of philosophers—Susan Wolf, John Dewey, Hubert Dreyfus, Martin Heidegger, and Albert Borgmann. Central to (...) Roholt’s argument are what Borgmann calls focal practices: dinners with friends, running, a college seminar, attending sporting events. As a recurring example, Roholt develops the classification of musical instruments as focal things, contending that musical performance can be fruitfully understood as a focal practice. -/- Through this exploration of what generates meaning in life, Roholt makes us rethink the place we allow smartphones to occupy in the everyday. But he remains cautiously optimistic. This thoughtful, needed interrogation of smartphones shows how we can establish a positive role for technologies within our lives. (shrink)

This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.3,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.11, No.1, 2021, pp.1-154. We held the Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, on July 21–23, 2020. This conference was co-hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion, and the Waseda Institute of Life and (...) Death Studies. We accepted about 50 presentations from around the world. Professor Lisa Bortolotti and I gave keynote lectures. After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted seven papers and an essay for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the subjective/objective debate, narrative meaning, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alain Badiou, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of meaning in life. (shrink)

This introduction brings to life the main themes in Indian philosophy of language by using an accessible translation of an Indian classical text to provide an entry into the world of Indian linguistic theories. -/- Malcolm Keating draws on Mukula's Fundamentals of the Communicative Function to show the ability of language to convey a wide range of meanings and introduce ideas about testimony, pragmatics, and religious implications. Along with a complete translation of this foundational text, Keating also provides: - (...) Clear explanations of themes such as reference, figuration and sentence meaning - Commentary illuminating connections between Mukula and contemporary philosophy - Romanized text of the Sanskrit - A glossary of terms and annotated bibliography - A chronology of important figures and dates -/- By complementing a historically-informed introduction with a focused study of an influential primary text, Keating responds to the need for a reliable guide to better understand theories of language and related issues in Indian philosophy. (shrink)

Preface 1 Introduction: The Persistence of the Attitudes 2 Individualism and Supervenience 3 Meaning Holism 4 Meaning and the World Order Epilogue Creation Myth Appendix Why There Still Has to be a Language of Thought Notes References Author Index.

Trans Philosophy: Meaning and Mattering will be the first authoritative collection to establish trans philosophy as a unique field of inquiry. It defines trans philosophy as philosophical work that is accountable to and illuminative of transgender experiences, histories, cultural production, and politics. The book will showcase work from a range of fresh and established voices in this nascent field. It will address a variety of topics (e.g. embodiment, identity, language, law, politics, transphobia), utilize diverse philosophical methods (...) (e.g. analytic, continental, and pluralist; theoretical, experimental, and applied), and attend to significant intersections between trans identity and class, disability, race, and sexuality. Across language and politics, feminism and phenomenology, decolonial theory and disability studies, trans philosophy concerns itself with trans worldmaking in all its excruciating beauty and mundanity. (shrink)

This book offers a semantic and metasemantic inquiry into the representation of meaning in linguistic interaction. Kasia Jaszczolt offers a new contextualist take on the semantics/pragmatics boundary, and argues that this is the only promising stance on meaning. This approach allows the selection of the cognitively plausible object of enquiry - namely the intended, primary meaning - and its adoption as a unit of semantic analysis despite the varying provenance of the contributing information. The analysis transcends the (...) said/implicated distinction and heavily relies on the dynamic construction of meaning in discourse, using truth conditions as a tool and at the same time conforming to pragmatic compositionality. Meaning in Linguistic Interaction builds on the author's earlier work on Default Semantics, and adds new arguments in favour of radical contextualism, particularly with regard to the role of salience, the dynamic nature of the unit that forms a basis of the interpretation process, and the flexibility of word meaning. It is illustrated with examples from a variety of languages and offers formal representations of meaning in the metalanguage of Default Semantics. (shrink)

Meaning and Purpose of Life are perhaps the most thought about, if not talked about, issues on the planet since human beings have walked on earth. This book is another attempt to understand the Meaning and Purpose of Life using ideas of Vedanta in Indian philosophy, and of mainstream economics. Starting from first principles, Dr Agarwal explores the core concept of Brahman in Vedanta, and builds an axiomatic foundation for understanding the meaning and purpose of life (...) using the fundamental ideas of the Prasthana Traya, and in particular of The Bhagavad Gita and The Principal Upanishads. Dr Agarwal adheres to the philosophy of Karma Yoga as his chosen area of interest for the exploration of meaning and purpose, which allows him to seek linkages between the concepts of social welfare in Vedanta and economics. Ideas of lokasamgraha in Indian Philosophy and of externalities in economics provide a clear common ground between the two apparently disparate disciplines. Throughout the book, he emphasizes simple practical approaches for making life more meaningful and happier, while relying fundamentally on the basic ideas of Vedanta. (shrink)

A peculiarity of early medieval geometrical texts was that alongside Euclid's Elements they transmitted remnants of the corpus of Roman land surveyors and metaphysical digressions extraneous to geometry proper. Rather than dismissing these additions as irrelevant, this essay attempts to elucidate the cultural grounds for the indiscriminate mixture of the three disciplines -- geometry, surveying, and metaphysics. Inquiry into the broader context of early medieval culture suggests that neither geometry nor surveying was treated as an independent discipline. Texts on geometry (...) and surveying were studied mainly because they were thought to provide good opportunities for enlarging the scope of meditation on spiritual subjects. Accordingly, the main concern of this essay is to show how Christian symbolism influenced both the composition and the study of geometrical texts. The essay is based on a wide range of sources: treatises on geometry and surveying, pictorial representations of Creation, and philosophical literature in which geometry was used in arguments about ontological doctrines. (shrink)

Recent discussions, principally among analytic philosophers, concerning the meaning and the validity of the ‘question of life's meaning’ are significant in several ways. They indicate how analytic philosophy, long charged with sterility, can clarify deeply human questions. They suggest useful avenues of discussion between the analysts and the existentialists, phenomenologists and process philosophers. And they offer some illuminating discriminations between theism and naturalism, and between religious and non-religious understandings of life. But an additional consequence of these discussions (...) is the emergence of a series of challenges to most forms of theism, especially Christianity. In this paper we will be concerned with the latter. (shrink)

"This book is valuable as expounding in full a theory of meaning that has its roots in the work of Frege and has been of the widest influence.

Phenomenology was in large part the discovery of Edmund Husserl, whose Logical Investigations of 1900/01 are normally regarded as the work that launched the phenomenological movement. Yet Husserl's phenomenology, in particular in the form in which it is set out in this his most important contribution to philosophy, is itself part of an Austrian philosophical tradi tion inspired by Brentano and continued, in very different ways, by Meinong, Stumpf, Twardowski, Ehrenfels, Husserl - and Marty. Like Brentano and all his (...) heirs Marty's philosophical interests were in the philosophy of mind, where this is taken to include or at least ground the philosophy of language, and analytic metaphysics. It is Marty's discussions of topics in these two areas that provide the contributions to this volume with their subject-matter. The papers by Roderick Chisholm, S. -Y. Kuroda, Barry Smith, Peter Simons, Rosaria Egidi, Karl Schuhmann, Elmar Holenstein, Edgar Morscher, Wolf gang Wenning and myself were presented at the 1984 conference on Anton Marty in Fribourg, Switzerland. Our host in Fribourg was Guido Kung, the conference was made possible by the Fritz Thyssen Stiftung. I should like to thank both for their help. Geneva, April 1988 KEVIN MULLIGAN Xl Abbreviations Employed in the Text Anton Marty's two major works, the Untersuchungen and the posthumously published Raum und Zeit are referred to in what follows in the following style. U Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Grammatik und Sprachphilosophie, Vol. I (only volume published). Halle a. S. (shrink)

The theory of essential definitions is a fundamental anti‐sceptic element of the Aristotelian‐Avicennian epistemology. In this theory, when we distinguish the genus and the specific differentia of a given essence we thereby acquire a scientific understanding of it. The aim of this article is to analyse systematically the sceptical reasons, arguments and conclusions against real definitions of three major authorities of twelfth‐century Arabic philosophy: Faḫr al‐Dīn al‐Rāzī, Šihāb al‐Dīn al‐Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt al‐Baġdādī. I focus on showing how their (...) refutation of our capacity to provide essential definitions of things is rooted in their semantic theory: we only know things under certain descriptions which are identical to the meanings of the words that we use to refer to them, yet these descriptions do not capture the essences of things in themselves. The best result one can achieve with Aristotelian‐Avicennian scientific definitions is a “nominal definition”. With this, Rāzī, Suhrawardī and Abū l‐Barakāt will put some serious epistemic limitations on our capacity to attain scientific knowledge of things, at least as Aristotle and Avicenna would have it. (shrink)

At the turn of the century, Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl both participated in the discussion concerning the foundations of logic and mathematics. Since the 1960s, comparisons have been made between Frege's semantic views and Husserl's theory of intentional acts. In quite recent years, new approaches to the two philosophers' views have appeared. This collection of articles opens with the first English translation of Dagfinn Føllesdal's early classic on Husserl and Frege of 1958. The book brings together a number of (...) new contributions by well-known authors and gives a survey of recent developments in the field. It shows that Husserl's thought is coming to occupy a central role in the philosophy of logic and mathematics, as well as in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The work is primarily meant for philosophers, especially for those working on the problems of language, logic, mathematics, and mind. It can also be used as a textbook in advanced courses in philosophy. (shrink)

In his Notes on Philosophy , which he began writing in 1796, Friedrich Schlegel asserts that ‘The fact that one person understands the other is philosophically incomprehensible, but it is certainly magical.’ In the interim a large amount of philosophical effort has been expended on trying to refute Schlegel's first claim. The fact is, though, that what Michael Dummett calls a ‘fullblooded theory of meaning’ is now looking less and less like a really feasible philosophical enterprise, so Schlegel (...) may have actually been right. Dummett maintains that a ‘full-blooded theory of meaning’ ‘must give an explicit account, not only of what anyone must know in order to know the meaning of any given expression, but of what constitutes having such knowledge’. However, as I shall try to show via aspects of the hermeneutic tradition, it is precisely this way of talking about meaning and understanding that renders them incomprehensible. The differences between approaching the issue of understanding from the hermeneutic tradition and approaching it from the analytical tradition can, I want to suggest, tell us something important about the state of philosophy today. My aim is eventually to suggest that we need to understand the analytical version of the ‘linguistic turn’ in modern philosophy as a perhaps rather questionable aspect of a much more important ‘hermeneutic turn’, whose implications are now becoming apparent in more and more diverse areas of contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The paper presetns a criticism on Donald Davidson's philosophy of language that tries to dispence with theory of meaning.

Drawing on recent work in the philosophy of psychoanalysis, and on considerations of the nature of psychoanalytic theory itself, this book reveals new possibilities which psychoanalysis offers for an understanding of the mind - more broadly, the subject of mental states - and its relation to the world. Entailing a re-examination of an approach embedded in the work of certain Continental thinkers, notably Heidegger and Hegel, the connections between philosophy and psychoanalysis presented in this book represent a fresh (...) departure. Linking Kleinian notions of an "inner world" of unconscious phantasy, to philosophical conceptions of non-linguistic meaning whose significance for the psychoanalytic understanding of subjectivity has been hitherto overlooked, Snelling argues that psychoanalysis demands a significant place in our philosophical understanding of ourselves. (shrink)