This paper focuses on the Enkratic principle of rationality, according to which rationality requires that if an agent sincerely and with conviction believes she ought to X, then X-ing is a goal in her plan. We analyze the logical structure of Enkrasia and its implications for deontic logic. To do so, we elaborate on the distinction between basic and derived oughts, and provide a multi-modal neighborhood logic with three characteristic operators: a non-normal operator for basic oughts, a (...) non-normal operator for goals in plans, and a normal operator for derived oughts. We prove two completeness theorems for the resulting logic, and provide a dynamic extension of the logic by means of product updates. We illustrate how this setting informs deontic logic by considering issues related to the filtering of inconsistent oughts, the restricted validity of deontic closure, and the stability of oughts and goals under dynamics. (shrink)

I consider cases in which risk or ignorance create barriers to our discovery of what we ought to do. I argue that neither expected utility theory, nor the maximin principle, nor a timid gambling temperament, is relevant to discovering what we ought to do in one-off or infrequently recurring types of decisions involving risk, or to decisions involving ignorance. I argue, contra Kolodny and MacFarlane, that the miners case does not require us to give up any classical logical (...) principle in order to avoid contradiction. I reject Graham’s claim that the appearance of contradiction depends upon a confusion between acting rightly and not being blameworthy. In the cases of risk and ignorance discussed, we cannot know what we ought to do; and any way of deciding what we shall do is objectively arbitrary even if it reflects our gambling temperament. Subjective probability and the subjective ought should be repudiated. (shrink)

As George Boole saw it, the laws of logic are the laws of thought, and by this he meant, not that human thought is actually governed by the laws of logic, but, rather, that it should be. Boole’s view that the laws of logic have normative implications for how we ought to think is anything but an outlier. The idea that violating the laws of logic involves epistemic impropriety has seemed to many to be just (...) obvious. It has seemed especially obvious to those who see propositional justification as more fundamental than doxastic justification. Whatever other principles are required for defining propositional justification, the laws of logic seem indispensable. The idea that violation of the laws of logic involves some sort of epistemic impropriety—whatever the peculiarities of our psychology may be—has served as a fixed point around which defenders of the fundamentality of propositional justification are united, whatever their other differences. This paper challenges that common thread in defenses of the fundamentality of propositional justification. It is argued that the laws of logic have no bearing whatever on epistemic justification. Once we see why this should be so, the way is paved for seeing why it is that doxastic justification is more fundamental than propositional justification. (shrink)

‘Feminist logic’ may sound like an impossible, incoherent, or irrelevant project, but it is none of these. We begin by delineating three categories into which projects in feminist logic might fall: philosophical logic, philosophy of logic, and pedagogy. We then defuse two distinct objections to the very idea of feminist logic: the irrelevance argument and the independence argument. Having done so, we turn to a particular kind of project in feminist philosophy of logic: Valerie (...) Plumwood's feminist argument for a relevance logic. Plumwood's work serves as our primary case study as we turn to the project of considering three different ways we might understand her argument and revisionist arguments like it: as a priori theorizing, as ameliorative conceptual engineering, or as instances of anti-exceptionalist approaches to logic. After arguing that the anti-exceptionalist approach seems to provide the most promising means of understanding the kind of project undertaken in a feminist challenge to classical logic, we briefly address the consequences that this might have for logic instruction. Here, we argue for the perhaps unexpected conclusion that feminist programs ought to offer more, not less, instruction in logic for those who take interest. (shrink)

De início, apresentaremos a tese de Demócrito e Leucipo, segundo a qual o ser não é mais que o não-ser, tendo como contraponto o pensamento eleata acerca da inexistência necessária do não-ser. Esta discussão nos remete à oposição entre o pleno e o vazio que será posteriormente traduzida na oposição entre o ser e o nada. Desse modo, a oposição entre o pleno e o vazio é uma oposição que se desloca para o ser e o não-ser. Em seguida, faremos (...) a apreciação do escrito pré-crítico kantiano Ensaio para introduzir em filosofia o conceito de grandeza negativa, no qual distinguimos certo tipo de oposição tomada entre grandezas em geral que, acreditamos, poderia ser interpretado como estando de acordo com o posicionamento de Demócrito e Leucipo sobre o estatuto ontológico do não-ser como princípio equivalente ao ser, e não como sua contradição em sentido puramente lógico. Initially, we present the theory of Democritus and Leucippus whereby being is not more than the not-being, in contrast to Eleatic ideas about the necessary inexistence of the not-being. This discussion leads us to the opposition between the whole and the empty, which will then be transposed into the opposition between being and nothingness. Thus, the opposition between wholeand the empty is an opposition that moves to beingand not-being. Finally, we will make an assessment of the Kantian pre-critical essay Attempt to introduce the concept of negative magnitude into philosophy, in which we recognize a kind of opposition that, as we believe, would be interpreted as being in agreement with the position of Democritus and Leucippus regarding the ontological status of the not-being as an equivalent principle to the being, understood here not as a mutual contradiction in a purely logical sense. (shrink)

Anti-exceptionalists about logic claim that logical methodology is not different from scientific methodology when it comes to theory choice. Two anti-exceptionalist accounts of theory choice in logic are abductivism and predictivism. These accounts have in common reliance on pre-theoretical logical intuitions for the assessment of candidate logical theories. In this paper, I investigate whether intuitions can provide what abductivism and predictivism want from them and conclude that they do not. As an alternative to these approaches, I propose a (...) Carnapian view on logical theorizing according to which logical theories do not simply account for pre-theoretical intuitions, but rather improve on them. In this account, logical theories are ameliorative, rather than representational. (shrink)

A common reaction to Hegel’s suggestion that we collapse Kant’s distinction between form and content is that, since such a move would also deprive us of any way of distinguishing the merely logical from the real possibility of our concepts, it is incoherent and ought to be rejected. It is true that these two distinctions are intimately related in Kant, such that if one goes, the other does as well. But it is less obvious that giving them up as (...) Kant conceives them is as incoherent a proposal as many of Hegel’s critics think. It has been the point of a recent account of Hegel’s idealism to demonstrate that his critique of Kant’s dichotomy between form and content or concept and intuition does not commit him to the view that human cognition is materially creative of its content in the manner of a God-like or intuitive intellect—does not, in other words, signify a return to a pre-Critical metaphysics. This is the interpretative stance I adopt here as well, in hope of giving defenders of Kant reasons for taking Hegel more seriously. (shrink)

In the literature on enculturation—the thesis according to which higher cognitive capacities result from transformations in the brain driven by culture—numerical cognition is often cited as an example. A consequence of the enculturation account for numerical cognition is that individuals cannot acquire numerical competence if a symbolic system for numbers is not available in their cultural environment. This poses a problem for the explanation of the historical origins of numerical concepts and symbols. When a numeral system had not been created (...) yet, people did not have the opportunity to acquire number concepts. But, if people did not have number concepts, how could they ever create a symbolic system for numbers? Here I propose an account of the invention of symbolic systems for numbers by anumeric people in the remote past that is compatible with the enculturation thesis. I suggest that symbols for numbers and number concepts may have emerged at the same time through the re-semantification of words whose meanings were originally non-numerical. (shrink)

I argue that the Bayesian Way of reconstructing Duhem's problem fails to advance a solution to the problem of which of a group of hypotheses ought to be rejected or "blamed" when experiment disagrees with prediction. But scientists do regularly tackle and often enough solve Duhemian problems. When they do, they employ a logic and methodology which may be called error statistics. I discuss the key properties of this approach which enable it to split off the task of (...) testing auxiliary hypotheses from that of appraising a primary hypothesis. By discriminating patterns of error, this approach can at least block, if not also severely test, attempted explanations of an anomaly. I illustrate how this approach directs progress with Duhemian problems and explains how scientists actually grapple with them. (shrink)

This brief, elegantly written book puts forward a view of normative reasoning--a view White calls "corporatism"--based upon an analogy with certain views about reasoning in the empirical sciences. Duhem and Quine have argued that an empirical statement is not tested, accepted, or rejected in isolation from other beliefs. Rather, it is seen in the context of a web of related beliefs, assumptions, and sense experiences--even relevant laws of logic--and the testing process is essentially the process of deciding which, of (...) all those items, "must" or "ought to be" accepted or rejected. Moral reasoning, White thinks, is similar. Moral judgments are always assessed in a context which includes moral feelings of sentiments and empirical beliefs. Their assessment is essentially the process of deciding which, of all of those items, must be accepted, revised, or rejected. One of White's examples concerns abortion. The relevant normative judgments include the prohibition of homicides of certain sorts, the relevant empirical beliefs have to do with developmental biology, medicine, intention, and the like; the relevant moral feelings include a sense of obligation. Moral judgments drawn from the conjunction of such "premises" may set up conflicting feelings, or the premises themselves may be inconsistent. In such cases something must give: deciding just what must give is analogous to deciding what beliefs to give up when scientific experiments yield anomalous results. (shrink)

This brief, elegantly written book puts forward a view of normative reasoning--a view White calls "corporatism"--based upon an analogy with certain views about reasoning in the empirical sciences. Duhem and Quine have argued that an empirical statement is not tested, accepted, or rejected in isolation from other beliefs. Rather, it is seen in the context of a web of related beliefs, assumptions, and sense experiences--even relevant laws of logic--and the testing process is essentially the process of deciding which, of (...) all those items, "must" or "ought to be" accepted or rejected. Moral reasoning, White thinks, is similar. Moral judgments are always assessed in a context which includes moral feelings of sentiments and empirical beliefs. Their assessment is essentially the process of deciding which, of all of those items, must be accepted, revised, or rejected. One of White's examples concerns abortion. The relevant normative judgments include the prohibition of homicides of certain sorts, the relevant empirical beliefs have to do with developmental biology, medicine, intention, and the like; the relevant moral feelings include a sense of obligation. Moral judgments drawn from the conjunction of such "premises" may set up conflicting feelings, or the premises themselves may be inconsistent. In such cases something must give: deciding just what must give is analogous to deciding what beliefs to give up when scientific experiments yield anomalous results. (shrink)

O presente estudo constitui um ensaio crítico de reflexão sobre a questão dos limites da linguagem em Wittgenstein. A perspectiva deste estudo observa, numa primeira parte, o próprio procedimento do método wittgen-steiniano e segue um modelo de discurso plural, a partir de várias perspectivas que, não só permitem desconstruir a aparente unidade da razão, como indagar interiormente do próprio limite da análise wittgensteiniana. Retomando a caracterização da linguagem e do pensamento nos seus traços fundamentais, desde o "Tractatus" até às "Investigações (...) Filosóficas", chama-se a atenção para os pontos de dificuldade, da indefinição e da cons-trutividade do modelo de Wittgenstein. A plena lição do "autómaton" da linguagem face a uma possível diferenciação dos signos e aprofundamento lógico, constitui uma parte desta reflexão que se complementa pela referência aos horizontes de resíduo do não-linguístico, ou até do indizível, numa dupla maneira de estabelecer os limites da linguagem. Enfim, e a título conclusivo, apontam-se, não apenas os contornos do que se entende como uma moral retórica da linguagem em Wittgenstein, mas para perspectivas originais de um reaprofundamento em termos etioló-gicos de diferenciação de escala da lógica e da linguagem, e de recuperação de uma intencionalidade psico-lógico-linguística superando aquela indiferen-ciação do dizer no automático da fala estatuída na "ordinary language". /// La présente étude constitue un essai critique qui réfléchie sur la question des limites du langage dans la philosophie de Wittgenstein. Dans une première partie la perspective de cette réflexion analise les procédés que Wittgenstein lui-même utilise dans sa méthode, et pour cela se sert d'un modèle de discours pluriel, lequel permet non seulement la déconstruction de l'apparente unité de la raison, mais aussi faire une enquête au dedans des limites de l'analyse wittgensteinienne. Reprenant la caractérisation du langage et de la pensée dans ses traits principaux, dès le "Tractatus" jusqu'aux "Investigations Philosophiques", on remarque les points de difficulté, d'indéfînition et de constructivité du modèle de Wittgenstein. La leçon de l'"autômaton" du langage face à une possible diférenciation des signes et l'approfondissement logique, constitue une partie de cette réflexion, qui se complémente par la référence aux horizons résiduels du non-linguistique, ou de l'indicible même, dans une double manière d'établir les limites du langage. Finalement, et comme une conclusion, on remarque, non seulement les contours de ce qu'on considère une morale réthorique du langage chez Witt- genstein, mais aussi pour les perspectives originelles qui permettent reprendre profondément, en termes étiologiques les différences d'échelles logique et linguistique, et récuperer une intentionalité psycho-logico-linguistique. Ainsi on réussit à supérer cette indifférenciation du dire dans l'authomatique de la parole qui s'etablie dans l'"ordinary language". /// The present study is a critical essay on the question of language's limits in Wittgenstein's thought. First of all, the view of this study observes how Wittgensteinian method proceeds. This investigation adopts a pluralistic model of speach, from several points of view, which not only allow to desconstruct the pseudo-unity of reason, but also, make possible to investigate about the inner limits of Wittgenstein's analysis. The Author remarks the difficulties of the non-definition and the construed vity of the Wittgensteinian model of thought, remembering the characteristic relationship language and thought, from Tractatus, to Philosophical Investigations. In order to a possible differenciation of signs and deeper logical analysis, the "automaton" of languages gives us a lesson which is another important part of this reflexion. This point is completed by the reference on the residual boundaries of non-linguistic, or even, non sayable, in a double way of establishing the limits of language. At last, and as a conclusion, the author points out, not only the outlines of the so called "rethoric moral" of language in Wittgenstein philosophy, but also to original views. These views allow a new deeper understanding, in ethiological terms. Different logical and linguistical scales are pointed as a mean, to recover a psycho-logico-linguistic intentionality, overcoming the indifferenciation of authomatic speech as established in "ordinary language". (shrink)

The ambition of the paper is to provide a solution to the problem posed by Von Wright (1999): how is it possible that the two actions, one of producing P and the other of preventing P can have different deontic status, the former being obligatory and the latter being forbidden. The solution for the problem is sought for by an investigation into connections between imperative and deontic logic. First, it is asked whether a solution could be found in Lemmon's (...) (1965) system of "change logic", using his idea on connection between logic of orders being in force and deontic logic. The answer is the negative one. Next, the connection between Lemmon's imperative logic and deontic logic given in Aqvist's paper - "Next" and "Ought" (1965) - is analyzed. Than, the Lemmon's treatment of imperatives is restricted to the natural language imperatives and Aqvist's way of connecting imperative and deontic logic is modified accordingly. Some principles for the natural language imperatives are established (the negation rule ; the law of contraposition for imperative conditionals) and a simple "global" semantics is developed. The notion of "opposite action" is introduced and it is given an important role in semantics. Finally, a solution for von Wright's problem is given. In the closing sections some further topics for investigation are hinted: one of them being the connection between Aqvist's epistemic- imperative conception of interrogatives and "epistemic obligations", the other being formalization of the idea that imperatives create and re-create obligation patterns that can be described in deontic terms. (shrink)

I argue that we have not only individual reasons for action but also collective reasons for action: reasons which apply to us as a group. I next argue that if we together have a reason to act, then I may have a reason to do my part, but only when others will do theirs. Finally, I argue that collective reasons to do good can never make a difference to what individuals ought to do, but that other kinds of collective (...) reasons can. (shrink)

R. E. Jennings has recently provided us with two formal renderings of the motto of the view he calls ‘pseudo-subjectivism’, viz., ‘One ought to do what one thinks one ought to do’. These renderings are.

Hume seems to contend that you can’t get an ought from an is. Searle professed to prove otherwise, deriving a conclusion about obligations from a premise about promises. Since (as Schurz and I have shown) you can’t derive a substantive ought from an is by logic alone, Searle is best construed as claiming that there are analytic bridge principles linking premises about promises to conclusions about obligations. But we can no more derive a moral obligation to pay (...) up from the fact that a promise has been made than we can derive a duty to fight a duel from the fact that a challenge has been issued – just conclusions about what we ought to do according to the rules of the relevant games. Hume suggests bridge principles that would take us from the rules of the games to conclusions about duties, but these principles are false. My argument features an obstreperous earl, an anarchist philosopher and a dueling Prime Minister. (shrink)

We tend to think every ought statement implies that an actual agent can comply. However, our uses of “ought” suggest that some ought statements fail to have this implication: it is possible that the actual agent ought to do something she has no chance of accomplishing even if she intends to do so. Rather they imply that if the agent and her circumstances were defect-free, she could and would perform the prescribed action. There are two types (...) of evaluation for ought statements. One type of evaluation addresses the question of what to do given the agent’s peculiar capacity and condition. The point of this evaluation is giving personalized action guidance, and so recommends only what the actual agent can do under the actual condition. Another type of evaluation addresses a different question, that of what to do as a type of agents. The point of this evaluation is the coordination of individuals by selecting a shared norm for them: the standard that prescribes all of them to perform the same action and classifies for all of them the same traits as defect. This is why it endorses the ought statements that some actual agents cannot comply with, but that a normal agent could and would do so under normal conditions. (shrink)

We tend to think every ought statement implies that an actual agent can comply. However, our uses of “ought” suggest that some ought statements fail to have this implication: it is possible that the actual agent ought to do something she has no chance of accomplishing even if she intends to do so. Rather they imply that if the agent and her circumstances were defect-free, she could and would perform the prescribed action. There are two types (...) of evaluation for ought statements. One type of evaluation addresses the question of what to do given the agent’s peculiar capacity and condition. The point of this evaluation is giving personalized action guidance, and so recommends only what the actual agent can do under the actual condition. Another type of evaluation addresses a different question, that of what to do as a type of agents. The point of this evaluation is the coordination of individuals by selecting a shared norm for them: the standard that prescribes all of them to perform the same action and classifies for all of them the same traits as defect. This is why it endorses the ought statements that some actual agents cannot comply with, but that a normal agent could and would do so under normal conditions. (shrink)

El artículo tiene por objeto analizar la construcción del conocimiento mapuche según el discurso de kimches. Sostenemos que en la educación familiar existe un proceso de construcción de conocimientos propios como un sistema de saberes y contenidos educativos para la formación de personas. La metodología empleada es la investigación educativa. Los resultados parciales muestran una descripción acerca de la lógica de los conocimientos educativos propios, para contextualizar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de las ciencias en el medio escolar, desde la (...) educación intercultural en contexto mapuche. The aim of this article is to analyze the construction of Mapuche knowledge based on the kimches speech. We argue that within family education, there exists a process of constructing their own knowledge, as a system of knowledge and educational contents for forming individuals. The research methodology applied corresponds to education research. Preliminary results describe the logic of individual educational knowledge from intercultural education in the Mapuche context, so as to contextualize the teaching and learning of Science in schools. (shrink)

A barrier to entailment exists if you can't get conclusions of a certain kind from premises of another. One of the most famous barriers in philosophy is Hume's Law, which says that you can't get normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or in slogan form: you can't get an ought from an is. This barrier is highly controversial, and many famous counterexamples were proposed in the last century. But there are other barriers which function almost as philosophical platitudes: no Universal (...) conclusions from Particular premises, no Future conclusions from premises about the Past, and no claims that attribute Necessity from premises that merely tell us how things happen to be in the Actual world. Barriers to Entailment proposes a unified logical account of five barriers that have played important roles in philosophy, in the process showing how to diagnose proposed counterexamples and arguing that the case for Hume's Law is as strong as that for the platitudinous barriers. -/- The first two parts of the book employ techniques from formal logic, but present them in an accessible way, suitable for any reader with some background in first-order model theory (of the kind that might be taught in a first class in logic). Gillian Russell introduces tense, modal, indexical, and deontic formal logics, but always avoids unneeded complexity. Each barrier is connected to broader philosophical topics: universality, time, necessity, context-sensitivity, and normativity. Russell brings out under-recognised connections between the domains and lays the groundwork for further work at the intersections. -/- The last part of the book transposes the formal work to informal barrier theses in the philosophy of language, in the process doing new work on the concept of logical consequence, and providing new responses to proposed informal counterexamples to Hume's Law which employ hard-to-formalise tools from natural language, such as speech acts and thick normative expressions. (shrink)

Appears to give the first model-theoretic account of both "must" and "ought" (without conflating them with one another). Some key pre-theoretic semantic and pragmatic phenomena that support a negative answer to the main title question are identified and a conclusion of some significance is drawn: a pervasive bipartisan presupposition of twentieth century ethical theory and deontic logic is false. Next, an intuitive model-theoretic framework for "must" and "ought" is hypothesized. It is then shown how this hypothesis helps (...) to explain and predict all the pre-theoretic phenomena previously observed. Next, I show that the framework hypothesized possesses additional expressive and explanatory power (e.g. derivatively predicting the existence of supererogatory and permissibly suboptimal alternatives), thus adding further confirmation that it is on the right track. (shrink)

In ordinary discourse, a single duty is often attributed to a plurality of agents. In "Group Duties: Their Existence and Their Implications for Individuals", Stephanie Collins claims that such attributions involve a “category error”. I critically discuss Collins’ argument for this claim and argue that there is a substantive sense in which non-agential groups can have moral duties. A plurality of agents can have a single duty to bring about an outcome by virtue of a capacity of each to practically (...) reason about what they ought to do together. I also argue that Collins’ attempt to give a reductive account of such “we-reasoning” fails. (shrink)

Tarski presented his definition of consequence operator to explain the most important notions which any logical consequence concept must contemplate. A Tarski space is a pair constituted by a nonempty set and a consequence operator. This structure characterizes an almost topological space. This paper presents an algebraic view of the Tarski spaces and introduces a modal propositional logic which has as a model exactly the closed sets of a Tarski space.

O objetivo deste artigo é apontar alguns problemas na relação entre esfera pública e emancipação na teoria do jovem Habermas. Para tanto, o recurso a dois textos habermasianos da década de 1960 é imprescindível: Mudança estrutural da esfera pública e Trabalho e Interação. No primeiro, Habermas fundamenta sua teoria pela perspectiva de uma esfera pública normativa, possibilitada pela configuração do período pós-guerra; no seguinte, além de utilizar outra categoria esfera pública, diferente daquela normativa, sua intenção é demonstrar como os indivíduos (...) se formam no âmbito privado de suas existências. Todavia, em ambos os textos há uma linearidade acerca da fundamentação teórica: o trabalho e a interação simbólica são separados no que tange aos desenvolvimentos da humanidade. A emancipação estaria a cargo da interação, enquanto o trabalho somente proviria a subsistência genérica. Isto é decorrente de uma reformulação problemática na teoria marxiana no que tange ao trabalho social e à perspectiva da totalidade. É nesse imbróglio que este artigo se situa: verificar até que ponto o que Habermas compreende por trabalho poderia desbancar, de fato, a teoria de Marx; e, por outro lado, demonstrar que a crítica dialética marxiana acerca do trabalho social, caso levada em consideração por Habermas, faria a teoria deste perder a lógica de seus fundamentos, deslocando sua ideia de emancipação para uma aceitação da realidade efetiva vigente.: The purpose of this paper is to point out some problems in the relation between public sphere and emancipation on the young Habermas’s theory. Therefore, it is going to be essential to rely on two habermasians works of the 1960s: The structural transformation of the public sphere and Work and Interaction. On the first one, the book The structural transformation of the public sphere, which was first published in 1962, Habermas founds his theory by the prospect of a normative public sphere, made possible by the configuration of the post-war period; whereas on the essay Work and Interaction, from 1967, besides using another public sphere category, different from that normative, his intention is to demonstrate how individuals are formed in the private sphere of their existence. However, both in the book from 1962 and in the text from 1967, there is linearity on the theoretical foundation: concerning humanity development, work and symbolic interaction are separated. Emancipation would be in charge of interaction, while work would simply provide for the generic livelihood. This is due to a problematic reformulation of marxian theory regarding social labor and the totality perspective. It is in this imbroglio that stands the point of this paper: to verify to what extent Habermas’s understanding of work could, in fact, debunk Marx's theory; and on the other hand, to show that the marxian dialectical critique about social labor, when taken into account by Habermas, loses the logic of its foundations, shifting his idea of emancipation to an acceptance of the present actual reality. Keywords: Habermas; Public Sphere; Private Sphere; Emancipation; Marx. (shrink)

According to a naïve view sometimes apparent in the writings of moral philosophers, ‘ought’ often expresses a relation between agents and actions – the relation that obtains between an agent and an action when that action is what that agent ought to do. It is not part of this naïve view that ‘ought’ always expresses this relation – on the contrary, adherents of the naïve view are happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an epistemic sense, (...) on which it means, roughly, that some proposition is likely to be the case, and adherents of the naïve view are also typically happy to allow that ‘ought’ also has an evaluative sense, on which it means, roughly, that were things ideal, some proposition would be the case.1 What is important to the naïve view is not that these other senses of ‘ought’ do not exist, but rather that they are not exhaustive – for what they leave out, is the important deliberative sense of ‘ought’, which is the central subject of moral inquiry about what we ought to do and why – and it is this deliberative sense of ‘ought’ which the naïve view understands to express a relation between agents and actions.2 In contrast, logically and linguistically sophisticated philosophers – with a few notable exceptions3 – have rejected this naïve view. According to a dominant perspective in the interpretation of deontic logic and in linguistic semantics, for example, articulated by Roderick Chisholm (1964) and Bernard Williams (1981) in philosophy and in the dominant paradigm in linguistic semantics as articulated in particular by.. (shrink)

Regarding the famous Sea Battle Argument, which Aristotle presents in De Interpretatione 9, there has never been a general agreement not only about its correctness but also, and mainly, about what the argument really is. According to the most natural reading of the chapter, the argument appeals to a temporal concept of truth and concludes that not every statement is always either true or false. However, many of Aristotle’s followers and commentators have not adopted this reading. I believe that it (...) has faced so much resistance for reasons of hermeneutic charity: denying the law of universal bivalence seems to be overly disruptive to logical orthodoxy – the kind of logical orthodoxy represented by what we now call classical propositional logic, much of which Aristotle clearly supports in many texts. I intend to show that the logical-semantic theses that the traditional reading finds in De Interpretatione 9 are much more conservative than they may seem to be at first glance. First, I will show that they complement, and do not contradict in any way, the orthodox definitions of the concepts of truth and statement that Aristotle advances in other texts. Second, by resorting in an anachronistic vein to concepts and methods peculiar to contemporary logic, I will show that a trivalent modal semantics conforming to those theses can be built for a standard formal language of the classical propositional calculus. It is remarkable that reasonable concepts of logical truth and logical consequence that may be defined on the basis of this trivalent modal semantics are coextensive with their orthodox counterparts, the concepts of tautology and tautological consequence of classical bivalent and extensional semantics. (shrink)

Flanagan (1991) was the first contemporary philosopher to suggest that a modularity of morals hypothesis (MMH) was worth consideration by cognitive science. There is now a serious empirically informed proposal that moral competence is best explained in terms of moral modules-evolutionarily ancient, fast-acting, automatic reactions to particular sociomoral experiences (Haidt & Joseph, 2007). MMH fleshes out an idea nascent in Aristotle, Mencius, and Darwin. We discuss the evidence for MMH, specifically an ancient version, “Mencian Moral Modularity,” which claims four innate (...) modules, and “Social Intuitionist Modularity,” which claims five innate modules. We compare these two moral modularity models, discuss whether the postulated modules are best conceived as perceptual/Fodorian or emotional/Darwinian, and consider whether assuming MMH true has any normative ethical consequences whatsoever. The discussion of MMH reconnects cognitive science with normative ethics in a way that involves the reassertion of the “is-ought” problem. We explain in a new way what this problem is and why it would not yield. The reason does not involve the logic of “ought,” but rather the plasticity of human nature and the realistic options to “grow” and “do” human nature in multifarious legitimate ways. (shrink)

Liberalism, as currently manifest in the permissive, consumer society powerfully invokes the principle that, questions of harm aside, human beings ought to be able to do what they want to do; and, by implication, not be coerced into doing what they do not want to do. Liberty, defined in terms of want satisfaction, all wants being taken at par, and used by the more extreme adherents of liberalism as a necessary and even sufficient condition for the good life, is (...) said to be increased or diminished with greater or decreasing opportunities for the satisfaction of wants: every want, given its rightful due, a success story.As an adjunct to this first principle comes another, also of great political importance; namely, that it is for the subject of the want to say what his wants are, he being, logically speaking, in an impregnable position to identify these shy denizens of his mental world. (shrink)

This essay is part of a larger project aimed at making sense of rational thought and agency as part of the natural world. It provides a semantic framework for thinking about the contents of: 1) descriptive thoughts and sentences having a representational or mind-to-world direction of fit, and which manifest our capacity for theoretical rationality; and 2) prescriptive and intentional sentences having an expressive or world-to-mind direction of fit, and which manifest our capacity for practical rationality. I use a modified (...) version of Allan Gibbard’s hyperstate semantics, employing both maximally determinate possible worlds and maximally determinate plans of action, as a basis for providing a unified understanding of moral judgments and expressions of individual and collective intentionality – they one and all give voice to our ability as rational agents to adopt the perspectives of various individuals within a community and consider how we would behave were we in their positions. In the course of spelling out the view I draw on and criticize ideas that Wilfrid Sellars advanced in the middle of the 20th century, while employing the tools of contemporary modal logic and model-theoretic semantics to give perspicuous formulation to his thought that the moral judgment ‘one ought to do A’ should be understood in terms of the collective intention ‘we shall do A’, where the pronoun denotes the unrestricted class of rational agents and the ‘ought’ is in some sense unconditionally binding. (shrink)

This paper considers two competing pictures of knowledge of what one ought to do—one which assimilates this to other propositional knowledge conceived as partial ‘locational’ knowledge of where one is in a space of possibilities, the other which distinguishes this from other propositional knowledge by construing it as partial ‘directional’ knowledge of what to do in particular circumstances. I argue that the apparent tension can be lessened by better understanding the contextualized modal-cum-prescriptive nature of ‘ought’ and enriching our (...) conception of the kinds of possibilities within which we can locate ourselves. (shrink)

Should philosophers of science offer methodological prescriptions about how science ought to be practiced, or should they rest content with describing ways it has actually been practiced over time? Do the standards by which good science is assessed remain stable over time? How should rival philosophies of science be evaluated, and what role ought history of science play in such assessments? This book engages such questions while introducing a range of key ideas and debates by examining the four (...) positions named in its subtitle: Logical Reconstructionism, Descriptivism, Normative Naturalism, and Foundationalism. Why 1945 to 2000? After World War II, as graduate programs and journals were established, philosophy of... (shrink)

The objective of this work is to investigate Karol Wojtyła’s meta-ethics. Following the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition, he maintains that ethics is a science. Contrary to the Aristotelian tradition, which conceives ethics as a practical science, Wojtyła sustains that ethics is also a science with theoretical objectivity. He posits the human “experience of morality,” in a specific sense, the moral experience of “I ought to do x”, as the ground for the objectivity of ethics as science. He also critiques (...) the understanding of experience as merely a sense-perception and appearance/phenomenon in empiricism and phenomenalism. However, it maintains the phenomenological understanding of experience as “lived-experience.” Thus, this work is an attempt to flesh out Karol Wojtyla's meta-ethics by investigating the following: 1. Karol Wojtyła’s Philosophy of Person as an Efficacious Moral Person. 2. Wojtyła’s Objectivity of Experience as Subjective Fact. 3. Exposition of his Understanding of Ethics. 4. Discussion of the experience of “I ought to do x”: As the Moral Ground in Karol Wojtyła’s Meta-Ethics. 5. A critical Evaluation and Conclusion. (shrink)

ResumoAinda que Schopenhauer não seja nominalmente referido no Tractatus, não há dúvida razoável de que ele esteja ali presente, particularmente nos aforismos sobre o solipsismo e a ética. Nesses aforismos, Wittgenstein apropria-se de várias teses e movimentos argumentativos que encontra em O Mundo como Vontade e Representação, mas faz uso deles para seus próprios fins filosóficos. Ao serem deslocados de seucontexto original ao contexto do Tractatus, eles mudam radicalmente de sentido e são incorporados a um percurso crítico lógico que resulta (...) em uma visão dos temas tradicionais da metafísica e da ética muito diferente daquela que resulta do percurso epistemológico de Schopenhauer em O Mundo como Vontade e Representação. A análise minuciosa desse deslocamento distorcivo pode, por contraste, ensinar algo importante a respeito da singularidade de cada um desses percursos críticos.AbstractAlthough Schopenhauer is not mentioned by name in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, there is no reasonable doubt that he is there, particularly in the aphorisms about solipsism and ethics. In these aphorisms, Wittgenstein appropriates several theses and argumentative movements that he finds in The World as Will and Representation, but uses them for his own philosophical purposes. When displaced from their original context to the context of the Tractatus, their meaning changes radically and they are incorporated into a logical critical path that results in a vision of the traditional themes of metaphysics and ethics very different from the one that results from Schopenhauer’s epistemological path in The World as Will and Representation. The detailed analysis of this kind of distorting displacement can, by means of contrast, teach us something important about the uniqueness of each of these critical paths. (shrink)

In this article, it tries to interpret the modern society under the the logic of the market, in which the human being is removed of the historical center and substituted by the consumption object, that stars to assume preponderant factor of control and social alienation in actual historial stage. The purpose of this article is to deonstrate that the contemporary society didn't renounce the rite neither the mythm as construction instruments and psychological and sociological elabration, To approriate or to (...) link with the being or object of the desire it requests a logical asbolutely formal, contractual and self-denial. (shrink)

The central hypothesis of the collaboration between Language and Computing (L&C) and the Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Science (IFOMIS) is that the methodology and conceptual rigor of a philosophically inspired formal ontology greatly benefits application ontologies.[1] To this end LinKBase®, L&C’s ontology, which is designed to integrate and reason across various external databases simultaneously, has been submitted to the conceptual demands of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology (BFO).[2] With this project we aim to move beyond the level of (...) controlled vocabularies to yield an ontology with the ability to support reasoning applications. Our general procedure has been the implementation of a meta-ontological definition space in which the definitions of all the concepts and relations in LinKBase® are standardized in a framework of first-order logic. In this paper we describe how this standardization has already led to an improvement in the LinKBase® structure that allows for a greater degree of internal coherence than ever before possible. We then show the use of this philosophical standardization for the purpose of mapping external databases to one another, using LinKBase® as translation hub, with a greater degree of success than possible hitherto. We demonstrate how this offers a genuine advance over other application ontologies that have not submitted themselves to the demands of philosophical scrutiny. (shrink)

The idea that the Leviathan frontispiece offers a visual summary of the contents of the work is widespread. However, the analysis of the frontispiece often under-explores Leviathan's text or leaves certain iconographic elements aside. In discussions of the Scholastics ‘Dilemma’ emblem, for instance, the image is commonly reduced to a representation of ‘logic’ or ‘scholasticism’, leaving aside the intricate interrelationship between the objects present in the image and their connection with the content of the book. This paper argues that (...) this image helps understanding Hobbes’ critique of Scholastic doctrines and their political effects in Leviathan. For Hobbes, these supposedly pure philosophical concepts either in logic (trident of the ‘Syllogism’) or metaphysics (‘Real/Intentional’ bident) hide a central part of Scholastic thought: a ‘seditious’ political conception claiming that the Pope has an indirect right to temporal power in affairs concerning spiritual matters theory (‘Spiritual/Temporal’ and ‘Direct/Indirect’ bidents). The Scholastic model made the common people believe that the Pope would have at least as much authority as the Sovereign. When faced with the choice between obeying either the Pope or their Civil Sovereign the subjects would find themselves in a dangerous ‘Dilemma’. (shrink)

According to a naive view sometimes apparent in the writings of moral philosophers, 'ought' often expresses a relation between agents and actions—the relation that obtains between an agent and an action when that action is what that agent ought to do. It is not part of this naive view that 'ought' always expresses this relation—adherents of the naive view are happy to allow that 'ought' also has an evaluative sense, on which it means, roughly, that were (...) things ideal, some proposition would be the case. What is important to the naive view is that there is also a deliberative sense of 'ought', on which it relates agents to actions. In contrast, logically and linguistically sophisticated philosophers have typically rejected this naive view. According to them, there is no argument-place for an agent in any relation expressed by 'ought', nor is there any argument-place for an action. According to this view, if Jim ought to jam, that is not because there is a special distinctive deliberative ought relation between Jim and jamming; rather, it is because a certain proposition ought to be the case: namely, that Jim jams. This essay defends the naive view, by first arguing that there are two distinct normative senses of 'ought', which actually exhibit different syntactic behavior, and then going on to argue that the deliberative sense of 'ought' relates agents to actions, rather than to propositions. It closes by drawing lessons for a range of issues in moral theory. (shrink)

Resumo: Tomás de Aquino, ao falar de ciência mostra-se influenciado pelo Segundos analíticos. Entende ciência quer como uma disposição mental, quer como um conjunto de proposições de acordo com as propriedades e relações lógicas e epistêmicas das proposições que dele fazem parte.: When dealing with science, Thomas Aquinas proves to have been influenced by the Posterior Analytics. He understands science either as a mental disposition or as a set of propositions organized according to their properties and their logical and epistemic (...) relations. (shrink)

This paper seeks to explore the processes involved in becoming a teacher in this particular historical moment of global pandemic in Brazil. What are the challenges, limitations, possibilities and opportunities that the pandemic presents to the process of teaching work and teacher formation? A review of the literature that included contributions from Caponi, Kohan, Larrosa, Neuscharank, Vaz, Arroyo and Abramowicz suggests a dialogue between pedagogic theory, philosophy of education and the contemporary experience of political and social events in the pandemic (...) period The discussions reviewed explore the profound extent to which Covid-19 has affected our way of living, working and relating to others, and the psychological effects of social isolation. The situation demands from the Brazilian teacher an attitude of openness to change, specifically in the use of new technologies, and the extent to which they are or are not able to replace face-to-face interactions. The situation also challenges us to reconstruct, beyond the logic of neoliberalism, our notions of the type of school we have and type of school we want, the type of teachers we are and the type of teacher we want to be. We conclude that this process of thinking school again depends, if it is to escape neoliberal logic, on the capacity of understanding the vocation of the teacher to be one of “becoming-child” in the sense of experiencing an openness to and a desire for the new. As such, the “becoming-teacher” is one who allows herself to be addressed by another logic, another more sensitive and more aesthetic temporality, and who finds, in encounter with others, with art, with childhood, with becoming itself, the capacity to think, to resist, to fight for the realization of that logic. (shrink)

How many logics do logical pluralists adopt, or are allowed to adopt, or ought to adopt, in arguing for their view? These metatheoretical questions lurk behind much of the discussion on logical pluralism, and have a direct bearing on normative issues concerning the choice of a correct logic and the characterization of valid reasoning. Still, they commonly receive just swift answers – if any. Our aim is to tackle these questions head on, by clarifying the range of possibilities (...) that logical pluralists have at their disposal when it comes to the metatheory of their position, and by spelling out which routes are advisable. We explore ramifications of all relevant responses to our question: no logic, a single logic, more than one logic. In the end, we express skepticism that any proposed answer is viable. This threatens the coherence of current and future versions of logical pluralism. (shrink)

It is a truism that we ought to be rational. Despite this, it has become popular to think that it is not the case that we ought to be rational. In this paper I argue for a view about rationality—the view that what one is rationally required to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses—by showing that it can vindicate that one ought to be rational. I do this by showing that it is independently very (...) plausible that what one ought to do is determined by the normative reasons one possesses. Thus, the paper also makes a contribution tos the debate about the nature of our obligations. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy called the 'is/ought fallacy (IOF)'. Some philosophers conclude that the IOF is not a logical problem but an epistemological one, meaning that even if inferences like this one are logically valid, they cannot be used epistemologically to warrant anyone's real‐life moral beliefs. Arguments do not warrant their conclusions unless the premises of those arguments are themselves warranted, and in the real world, they say, no one would ever (...) be warranted in believing premise. Charles Pigden argues for the illegitimacy of the move from is to ought, saying that we should understand David Hume as pointing to the conservativeness of logic. According to Pigden, logic is conservative in that “the conclusions of a valid inference are contained within the premises. You do not get out what you have not put in”. (shrink)

The subtitle of this text intended for philosophy students’ 2nd course in logic is in no way misleading. It is a lucid introduction to the philosophic activities of uncovering metaphysical presuppositions of logical techniques and altering logical techniques, and hence assessments of deductive validity, to conform to metaphysical presuppositions. They do not, though, assume that techniques for assessing deductive validity are or should be wholly dependent upon metaphysical presuppositions. They write on p. 213 in their section on intensional discourse: (...) "And logic wherever possible ought not to wait upon philosophy, for logic wherever possible ought to be neutral between different philosophical analyses." In their investigations of metaphysical presuppositions and logical techniques, they consider primarily the consequences of existential presuppositions about the use of singular terms, viz., individual variables, individual names, and definite descriptions. They favor freeing use of singular terms from existential presuppositions. The consideration of allowing non-referring names and definite descriptions makes their text one of the first, if not the first, for teaching Free Logic. The gist of Free Logic is not to allow existential generalization of Fb to unless there is an auxiliary premise asserting the existence of b, because use of the name b has been freed from the presupposition that it names something. It is suitable that these authors have a text on Free Logic since Lambert is the major figure in its origin while van Fraassen has established some of the most significant results about Free Logic systems. They go on to consider alternative logical rules to those of Russell for dealing with nonreferring definite descriptions. These alternatives to standard logic are philosophically motivated. They are not simply dumped upon students as rules for symbol manipulation. For instance, on pp. 152-157 they give a succinct analysis of the Russell-Meinong debate when they agree with Meinong that one can talk of the thing that is such and such without accepting that there is such a thing. The treatment of singular terms leads them to discussions of topics such as: What is it for a logic to be extensional and is Free Logic extensional?, the substitution interpretation of quantifiers, and the notion of presupposition. (shrink)

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting (...) role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay. (shrink)

Tarski presented his definition of consequence operator to explain the most important notions which any logical consequence concept must contemplate. A Tarski space is a pair constituted by a nonempty set and a consequence operator. This structure characterizes an almost topological space. This paper presents an algebraic view of the Tarski spaces and introduces a modal propositional logic which has as a model exactly the closed sets of a Tarski space. • DOI:10.5007/1808-1711.2010v14n1p47.

It is clear that in the eyes of a growing number of humanitarian fieldworkers and decision-makers, palliative care is something humanitarian organizations should strive to provide as they address the needs of populations affected by crises. What remains less clear are the moral justifications underlying the push to do so. This chapter dives beneath surface prescriptions of what “ought to be” the place of palliative care within humanitarian response. It presents and analyses a series of evocative statements made by (...) 24 humanitarian healthcare actors about why, on what bases, and with what caveats, care for the dying deserves more attention within humanitarian healthcare response. Embedded in these statements are sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit ideas about what it means be a human and a humanitarian, and what humans need and deserve. Clarifying the experiences, practical considerations, understandings of care and responsibility, and norms and values underlying these feelings renders these available for more thorough reflection, discussion, and debate. (shrink)