“Here is the first Kant-biography in English since Paulsen’s and Cassirer’s only full-scale study of Kant’s philosophy. On a very deep level, all of Cassirer’s philosophy was based on Kant’s, and accordingly this book is Cassirer’s explicit coming to terms with his own historical origins. It sensitively integrates interesting facts about Kant’s life with an appreciation and critique of his works. Its value is enhanced by Stephen Körner’s Introduction, which places Cassirer’s Kant-interpretation in its historical and contemporary context.”—Lewis White Beck (...) “The first English translation (well done by James Haden) of a 60-year-old classic intellectual biography. Those readers who know Kant only through the first _Critique_ will find their understanding of that work deepened and illuminated by a long explication of the pre-critical writings, but perhaps the most distinctive contribution is Cassirer’s argument that the later _Critiques_, and especially the _Critique of Judgment_, must be understood not as merely applying the principles of the first to other areas but as subsuming the latter into a larger and more comprehensive framework.”—Frederick J. Crown, _The Key Reporter_ “_Kant’s Life and Thought_ is that rare achievement: a lucid and highly readable account of the life and work of one of the world’s profoundest thinkers. Now for the first time available in an admirable English translation, the book introduces the reader to two of the finest minds in the history of philosophy.”—Ashley Montagu. (shrink)

Common knowledge is usually defined as a state in which everyone knows that p, everyone knows that everyone knows that p, and so on, ad infinitum. This definition is usually attributed to David Lewis, despite the fact that his own formulation bears no resemblance to common knowledge as it is usually understood. In this paper, I argue that this concept of common knowledge requires revision. Contrary to usual practice, it turns out to be difficult to model formally because existing models (...) fail to distinguish between full-blown common knowledge and merely finite levels of interactive knowledge. Conceptually, the concept is incompatible with Lewis's intended purpose and obscures the explanatory role played by rational choice models. I propose that the concept of common knowledge be brought better into alignment with Lewis's actual formulation. This reconceptualization of common knowledge suggests a greater focus on explanations that make recourse to the cognitive constraints of real-world agents. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Controversy Between Schelling and Jacobi LEWIS S. FORD SCHELLING, ALONGWITH FICHTE, has suffered the fate of being labelled one of tIegel's predecessors. Richard Kroner provides the classic expression of this viewpoint in his monumental study, Von Kant bis Hegel, which examines Schelling's thought primarily for its contribution to Hegel's final synthesis.I In English we have Josiah Royce's sympathetic and lively account of Schelling's early romantic exuberance, regarded as (...) a transitional stage in the development of German idealism. 2 But this emphasis on the early ScheUing has led to an unfortunate neglect of his work subsequent to the break with Hegel in 1807. Schelling's romanticism, so ably documented by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., 3 can only be regarded as one phase in the total sweep of his thought, for, after the break with Hegel, Schelling produced at least three major works: the essay •ber das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit,4 wrestling with the problem of evil and human freedom, the fragmentary Weltalter, 5 which in scope and dialectical intricacy should be compared with Hegel's Logic, and the Philosophie der Mythologie und Offenbarung, 6 furnishing a fundamental critique of the whole dialectical enterprise. Save for the essay on human freedom, however, none of these works were published during his lifetinm, as Schelling withdrew from the public eye after his controversies with Hegel and Jacobi. Thus the publishing histories of Schelling and Hegel are exactly reverse. Schelling rushed into print his early speculative gropings, while Hegel suppressed his/making the Ph~nomenologic des Geistes his first major publication. Then while Hegel's Logic and Encyclopedia were being publicly acclaimed, Schelling remained silent. This accident of history is largely responsible for the illusion that Schelling is the older of the two x (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1921-24),2 vols. 2The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892), Lecture VI, 164-189. Wordsworth and ScheUing, A Typological Study of Romanticism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960),Yale Studies in English, Vol. CXLV. 4Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph yon Sehelling, Philosophische Untersuchungen i~berdas Wesen der menschlichen Freyheit und die damit zusaramenhdngenden Gegenstdnde, 1809. Reprinted in the Sdmmtliche Werke, Erste Abtheilung, VII. Band (Stuttgart und Augsburg: J. G. Cotta, 1856), 331-416. English translation by James Gutmann: Of Human Freedom (Chicago: Open Court, 1936). 5Three fragmentary versions of the Weltalter have been published. The Urfassungen of 1811 and 1813were edited by Manfrcd SehrSter and published as a separate Naehlassband to the M~nchener Jubildumsausgabe of the collected works: Die Weltalter, Fragmente (Munich: Biederstein, Leibniz, 1946). A later version is published in S.W. I: 8, pp. 195-344,which has been translated by Frederick de Wolfe Bolman, Jr. : The Ages of the World (NewYork: Columbia University Press, 1942). 6Philosophie der Mythologie is published in S.W. II: 1-2; Philosophie der Offenbarung in S.W. II: 3-4. These essays were first collected and published by Herman Nohl in Hegels theologische Jugendschriften (Tiibingen: 1907).T. M. Knox translated them into English, with an introduction by Richard Kroner: GeorgWilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Early Theological Writings (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948). [75] 76 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY thinkers (actually he was five years Hegel's junior), who retired from the philosophical scene after making his contribution to the Hegelian synthesis. Paul Tillich's doctoral dissertations s and Ernst Cassirer's studies in post-Kantian thought 9 made serious inroads on this conception, yet the iIInsion persisted. Their insistence on the importance of the later Schelling has been brilliantly sustained by two recent studies: Horst Fuhrmans's Schellings Philosophie der Weltalter1~and Walter Schulz's Die Vollendung des deutschen Idealismus in der Spdtphilosophie Schellings, ~ and we may hope that the conventional estimate of Schelling will be drastically revised. Fuhrmans has demonstrated that the split between the early and the later Schelling must be placed in the year 1806 when he came in contact with Franz yon Bander in Munich, who encouraged him to delve deeper into the theological and cosmological ramifications of Jacob Boehme's thought. TM The reorientation this caused is apparent in the essay on human freedom, published in 1809, but it was not fully exploited until the... (shrink)

Bypassing Lewis’ Triviality Results. A Kripke-Style Partial Semantics for Compounds of Adams’ Conditionals Alberto Mura University of Sassari Abstract According to Lewis’ Triviality Results (LTR), conditionals cannot satisfy the equa­tion (E) P(C if A) = P(C | A), except in trivial cases. Ernst Adams (1975), however, provided a probabilistic semantics for the so-called simple conditionals that also sat­isfies equation (E) and provides a probabilistic counterpart of logical consequence (called p-entailment). Adams’ probabilistic semantics is coextensive to Stalnaker­Thomason’s (1970) and Lewis’ (...) (1973) semantics as far as simple conditionals are concerned. A theorem, proved in McGee 1981, shows that no truth-functional many-valued logic allows a relation of logical consequence coextensive with Adams’ p-entailment. This paper presents a modified modal (Kripke-style) version of de Finetti’s se­mantics that escapes McGee’s result and provides a general truth-conditional se­mantics for indicative conditionals. It agrees with Adams’ logic and is not affected by LTR. The new framework encompasses and extends Adams’ probabilistic se­mantics (APS) to compounds of conditionals. A generalised set of axioms for prob­ability over the set of tri-events is provided, which coincide with the standard axioms over the set of the two-valued ordinary sentences. -/- Keywords: Conditionals, Probability logic, de Finetti, Tri-events, Adams’ logic, Stal­naker’s thesis, Partial logic, Lewis’ triviality results, Ramsey test. (shrink)

A critical and detailed introduction to Kant's philosophy, with particular reference to the Critique of Pure Reason. Since Broad's death there have been many publications on Kant but Broad's 1978 book still finds a definite place between the very general surveys and the more specialised commentaries. He offers a characteristically clear, judicious and direct account of Kant's work; his criticisms are acute and sympathetic, reminding us forcefully that 'Kant's mistakes are usually more important than other people's correctitudes'. C.D. Broad was (...) Knightsbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy at Cambridge from 1933 to 1953, and this book is based on his undergraduate lectures on Kant. Broad died in 1971 and Dr Lewy has since edited the book for publication. (shrink)

A study of various central and connected topics in philosophical logic and the theory of meaning. There are important sections on the relation between linguistic and abstract entities, on necessity and convention, on meaning, sense and reference, and on entailment. Dr Lewy proposes a number of original solutions to problems which have been widely discussed in literature, and there is in particular a sharp and sustained criticism of conventionalism and reductionism. These are among the most difficult and intricate issues (...) in contemporary philosophy, but Dr Lewy writes with great clarity and a minimum of technicality. Where his views are controversial they are explained and supported in a detail which makes it both possible and necessary for potential critics to state their disagreement precisely. The book should therefore be of value as an advanced textbook as well as an original contribution to philosophical logic. (shrink)

Casimir Lewy; On the “Justification” of Induction1, Analysis, Volume 6, Issue 5-6, 1 September 1939, Pages 87–90, https://doi.org/10.1093/analys/6.5-6.87.

C. Lewy; VI—Entailment and Propositional Identity, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 64, Issue 1, 1 June 1964, Pages 107–122, https://doi.org/10.1.

The aim of this paper is to show that a comprehensive account of the role of representations in science should reconsider some neglected theses of the classical philosophy of science proposed in the first decades of the 20th century. More precisely, it is argued that the accounts of Helmholtz and Hertz may be taken as prototypes of representational accounts in which structure preservation plays an essential role. Following Reichenbach, structure-preserving representations provide a useful device for formulating an up-to-date version of (...) a (relativized) Kantian a priori. An essential feature of modern scientific representations is their mathematical character. That is, representations can be conceived as (partially) structure-preserving maps or functions. This observation suggests an interesting but neglected perspective on the history and philosophy of this concept, namely, that structure-preserving representations are closely related to a priori elements of scientific knowledge. Reichenbach’s early theory of a relativized constitutive but non-apodictic a priori component of scientific knowledge provides a further elaboration of Kantian aspects of scientific representation. To cope with the dynamic aspects of the evolution of scientific knowledge, Cassirer proposed a re-interpretation of the concept of representation that conceived of a particular representation as only one phase in a continuous process determined by pragmatic considerations. Pragmatic aspects of representations are further elaborated in the classical account of C.I. Lewis and the more modern of Hasok Chang. (shrink)

A contemporary of Jesus Christ, Philo of Alexandria ranks among the greatest of Jewish and Greek thinkers.

Band 2 der ECN macht erstmals die 1936-1937 geschriebene, fast fertiggestellte Monographie »Ziele und Wege der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis« zugänglich. Cassirer stellt sich darin die Aufgabe, die verschiedenen Richtungen, in denen der Prozeß der Objektivierung von Erkenntnis fortschreiten kann, gesondert zu verfolgen, um damit das Phänomen des Erscheinens selbst in seiner ganzen Fülle und in seiner ganzen Tiefe zu erfassen. Diese Schrift gibt einen allgemeinen systematischen Überblick über die verschiedenen Methoden, die in den Einzelwissenschaften (Mathematik, Physik, Biologie, Geschichte) verwandt werden und die (...) deren Wirklichkeitsbegriff bestimmen. Cassirers »Ziele und Wege der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis« bilden das systematische Pendant zu seiner historischen Bearbeitung des Verhältnisses von Philosophie und Wissenschaften im vierten Band seines 'Erkenntnisproblems' und wenden die in der Philosophie der symbolischen Formen gewonnene Konzeption verschiedener gleichberechtigter Zugangsweisen zu »Wirklichkeit« auf die verschiedenen Methoden wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis an. Inhalt: Kapitel 1: Die drei Grundrichtungen der Wirklichkeitserkenntnis; Kapitel 2: Die mathematische Synthesis; Kapitel 3: Die Invarianten der Wahrnehmung und des Begriffs; Kapitel 4: Kulturwissenschaft und Geschichtswissenschaft (1936/37). (shrink)

Excerpt from Substanzbegriff und Funktionsbegriff: Untersuchungen Uber die Grundfragen der Erkenntniskritik Die erste Anregung zu den Untersuchungen, die dieser Band enthalt, ist mir aus Studien zur Philosophie der Mathe matik erwachsen. Indem ich versuchte, von Seiten der Logik aus einen Zugang zu den Grundbegriffen der Mathematik zu gewinnen, erwies es sich vor allem als notwendig, die B e g r i f f s f u n k t i 0 n e'lhsimaher zu zergliedern und auf ihre Voraussetzungen zuruckzufuhren. Hier (...) aber machte sich alsbald eine eigentumliche Schwierigkeit geltend: die her kommliche logische Lehre vom Begriff zeigte sich in ihren bekannten Hauptzugen als unzureichend, die Probleme, zu denen die Prinzipienlehre der Mathematik hinfuhrt, auch nur vollstandig z u b e z e i c h n e n. Die exakte Wissenschaft war hier, wie sich mir immer deutlicher zu ergeben schien, zu Fragen gelangt, fur welche die Formensprache der tradi tionellen Logik kein genaues Correlat besitzt. Der sachliche Gehalt der mathematischen Erkenntnisse wies auf eine Grund form des Begriffs zuruck, die in der Logik selbst nicht zu klarer Bezeichnung und Anerkennung gekommen war. Ins besondere waren es Untersuchungen jiber den Reihenbegriff und den Grenzbegriff (deren spezielles Ergebnis in die allgemeineren Erorterungen dieses Buches nich? 3iffge nommen werden konnte), die diese Uberzeugung in mir be festigten und damit zu einer erneuten Analyse der Prinzipien der Begriffsbildung selbsfhindrangten. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

While robotics has benefited from inspiration gained from biology, the opposite is not the case: there are few if any cases in which robotic models have lead to genuine insight into biology. We analyze the reasons why biorobotics has been essentially a one-way street. We argue that the development of better tools is essential for progress in this field.