The pair democreteanism-Platonism (nothing/something is outside space-Time) differs from the pair nominalism-Realism (universals are/are not nameable entities). Nominalism need not be democretean, And democreateanism is nominalist only if conceptualism is rejected. Putnam's critique of nominalism is thus invalid. Quine's theory is democretean-When-Possible: quine is also a minimalist platonist. Conceptualists and realists agree that universals exist but not as physical objects. Nominalists accept universals only as "facons de parler".

In philosophy, old theories never die, they just hibernate. For many years, no philosophical approach could have been more out of date than that of the British Hegelians: Green, Bradley, and Bosanquet. No theory has been “refuted” more often than their coherence account of truth, both as a definition of truth and as a criterion of truth. Coherence did enjoy a brief renaissance during the early days of logical positivism. Neurath put forth such an account. Carnap, during one of his (...) many periods, came under the influence of Neurath’s brand of physicalism and Carl Hempel defended the coherence view against the criticisms of Schlick, among others. (shrink)

Methodological disputes in economics have been with us since Mill and Senior fought over the nature of economic science in the first half of the 19th Century. Progress has been extremely slow, and there is good reason for this as the present essay hopes to show. Three important methodological positions are examined critically: the “ultra-empiricism” of T.W. Hutchison, the “moderate empiricism” of Milton Friedman, and the “extreme a priorism” of Lionel Robbins and Ludwig Von Mises. The argument between Guttierrez and (...) Block inTheory and Decision over praxiology is discussed in connection with the last mentioned position. The paper concludes that “extreme a priorism,” though very much out of fashion is not without its resources. The work of the contemporary German philosopher, Paul Lorenzen, is enlisted to bolster this position. (shrink)

Philosophers probably ask more What is questions than anyone else. From the Socratic-Platonic What is Justice, Love, Virtue, etc., through the Aristotelian quest for essences and the contemporary concern with various modes of meaning, philosophers have kept raising What is questions. Now some say that this penchant for What is represents the worst in philosophy. Such questions inevitably lead to confusing verbal or definitional matters, with substantive or factual matters. Lexicography is not an important part of either science or philosophy. (...) It is truth and not meaning that matters. If philosophers are to continue with their What is brand of questioning, they would do well to interpret What is x as a request for a true theoretical account of x. It is true theories we are after—a not very surprising conclusion. When a philosopher asks What is life? he is asking for the best theoretical account available of the phenomenon of life. Of course, we cannot always be sure that this is the question he is asking. He might be asking about the importance of life in some evaluative sense. Is life better than death? What is life, anyway? Is life worth living? And perhaps these are the truly philosophical questions about life. They are certainly elusive enough to deserve the appellation philosophical. When the scientist asks what is life, he asks for a biological theory. But when a philosopher asks this question, he is after something deeper. There are philosophers and philosophers. In what follows, philosophers are what used to be termed natural philosophers. In this usage, Newton was a great philosopher. And who would not be happy to have Newton as one of us. (shrink)

Summary The incommensurability of scientific theories is not the only famous incommensurability issue in the history of western philosophy. The commensurability of all magnitudes (things) by means of ratios of integers (arithmetical ratios) wasthe thesis of Pythagoreanism. The diagonal and side of a square, however, are not commensurable, thus the Pythagorean thesis is refuted. Most philosophers ancient and contemporary would agree that Pythagoreanism was refuted by the counter-example and the concommitant argument or proof. The incommensurabilists were victorious. The present paper (...) examines the prospects of the contemporary thesis of the incommensurability of scientific theories in the light of the history of the Pythagorean thesis. What factors were responsible for the rather clear-cut victory of theincommensurability side? How were they able to carry through a refutation? How likely is it that the contemporary dispute over the commensurability of scientific theories will be resolved in such a sharp manner? The paper concludes that it is not at all likely. (shrink)

Explores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and renders the Gödel-Church-Lucas argument in terms intelligible to beginning students. Updated and expanded to take into account important arguments and developments in the ten years since its original publication, this provocative dialogue explores the ideas of Turing, Lucas, Scriven, Putnam, and Searle, and renders the complex Gödel-Church-Lucas argument in transparent terms. It includes a new argument, based loosely on Tarski's work on truth and the liar paradox, and a new (...) section dealing with the problem of qualitative features of experience, such as color properties. (shrink)