This collection of essays by eminent philosopher Fred Dretske brings together work on the theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind spanning thirty years. The two areas combine to lay the groundwork for a naturalistic philosophy of mind. The fifteen essays focus on perception, knowledge, and consciousness. Together, they show the interconnectedness of Dretske's work in epistemology and his more contemporary ideas on philosophy of mind, shedding light on the links which can be made between the two. The first (...) section of the book argues the point that knowledge consists of beliefs with the right objective connection to facts; two essays discuss this conception of knowledge's implications for naturalism. The next section articulates a view of perception, attempting to distinguish conceptual states from phenomenal states. A naturalized philosophy of mind, and thus a naturalized epistemology, is articulated in the third section. This collection will be a valuable resource for a wide range of philosophers and their students, and will also be of interest to cognitive scientists, psychologists, and philosophers of biology. (shrink)

Fred Feldman is an important philosopher, who has made a substantial contribution to utilitarian moral philosophy. This collection of ten previously published essays plus a new introductory essay reveal the striking originality and unity of his views. Feldman's version of utilitarianism differs from traditional forms in that it evaluates behaviour by appeal to the values of accessible worlds. These worlds are in turn evaluated in terms of the amounts of pleasure they contain, but the conception of pleasure involved is (...) a novel one and the formulation of hedonism improved. In Feldman's view pleasure is not a feeling but a propositional attitude. He also deals with problems of justice that affect standard forms of utilitarianism. The collection is ideally suited for courses on contemporary utilitarian theory. (shrink)

For T any completion of Peano Arithmetic and for n any positive integer, there is a model of T of size $\beth_n$ with no (n + 1)-length sequence of indiscernibles. Hence the Hanf number for omitting types over T, H(T), is at least $\beth_\omega$ . (Now, using an upper bound previously obtained by Julia Knight H (true arithmetic) is exactly $\beth_\omega$ ). If T ≠ true arithmetic, then $H(T) = \beth_{\omega1}$ . If $\delta \not\rightarrow (\rho)^{ , then any completion of (...) Peano Arithmetic has a model of size δ with no set of indiscernibles of size ρ. There are similar results for theories strongly resembling Peano Arithmetic, e.g., ZF + V = L. (shrink)

Fred Dallmayr is Packey Dee Professor of Government at the University of Notre Dame.Contributors: Robert Alexy. Karl-Otto Apel. Seyla Benhabib. Dietrich Bohler. Jurgen Habermas. Otfried Hoffe. KarlHeinz Ilting. Hermann Lubbe.

While there has been a resurgence in Malebranche scholarship in the anglophone world over the last twenty years, most of it has focused on Malebranche’s theory of ideas, and little attention has been paid to his philosophy of mind. Schmaltz’s book thus comes as a welcome addition to the Malebranche literature; that he has given us such a well-researched and carefully argued study is even more welcome. The focus of this work is Malebranche’s split with Descartes on the question of (...) our knowledge of the nature of the mind; the book concentrates specifically on Malebranche’s rejection of the claim that we know the nature of the mind better than we know the nature of body. Schmaltz maintains that Malebranche’s arguments for his position are, for the most part, successful against the Cartesians who opposed him, though he claims—and this is perhaps the central claim of the book—that “Malebranche took his negative thesis concerning our knowledge of the soul to involve not so much a rejection of Cartesianism as an internal correction of it”. While acknowledging that Augustine was “the primary inspiration for [Malebranche’s] view of the ideas that are the objects of perception”, Schmaltz’s interpretation of Malebranche’s theory of the soul “presents it as fundamentally Cartesian”. According to Schmaltz, not only is Malebranche closer to Descartes in this regard than is generally thought, he is closer to him than are many other Cartesians. Part 1 of the book examines Malebranche’s position that while we have certain knowledge of the soul’s existence, we have only confused knowledge of its nature. Part 2 focuses on Arnauld’s objection that if in fact we had no clear idea of the soul, we could not, despite Malebranche’s claims to the contrary, know anything of its immortality, spirituality, or freedom. (shrink)

Demystifying Legal Reasoning defends the proposition that there are no special forms of reasoning peculiar to law. Legal decision makers engage in the same modes of reasoning that all actors use in deciding what to do: open-ended moral reasoning, empirical reasoning, and deduction from authoritative rules. This book addresses common law reasoning when prior judicial decisions determine the law, and interpretation of texts. In both areas, the popular view that legal decision makers practise special forms of reasoning is false.

This chapter contains sections titled: Overview A Medium for Thought Naturalization Mechanisms of Meaning Fodor's Meaning Mechanisms Dretske's Meaning Mechanisms Objections Conclusion.

As teorias epistemológicas do rastreamento sustentam que o conhecimento é uma relação real entre o agente cognitivo e seu ambiente. Os estados cognitivos de um agente epistêmico fazem o rastreamento da verdade das proposições que são objeto de conhecimento ao embasarem a crença em indicadores confiáveis da verdade (evidência, razões, ou métodos de formação de crença). A novidade nessa abordagem é que se dá pouca ênfase no tipo de justificação epistêmica voltada ao fornecimento de procedimentos de decisão doxástica ou regras (...) de responsabilidade epistêmica. Este artigo oferece um pouco da história das teorias de rastreamento e, então, defende-as contra muitas objeções que se pretendem (equivocadamente) refutadoras dessas teorias. PALAVRAS – CHAVE – Teorias de rastreamento. Nozick. Dretske. Conhecimento. ABSTRACT Tracking theories of knowledge maintain that knowledge is a real relation between cognitive agent and environment. Cognitive states of a knower track the truth of known propositions by basing belief on reliable indicators of truth (evidence, reasons, or belief forming methods). The novelty of this approach is that it places little emphasis on epistemic justification of a kind that aims at guiding epistemic agents by giving doxastic decision procedures or rules of epistemic responsibility. This paper gives some of the history of tracking theories, and then defends them against many of the objections most often judged (mistakenly) to refute tracking theories. KEY WORDS – Tracking theories. Nozick. Dretske. Knowledge. (shrink)

There is a long-standing view that Malebranche and his fellow occasionalists accepted occasionalism to solve the problem of interaction between immaterial souls and extended bodies. Recently, however, scholars have shown this story to be a myth. Malebranche, Geulincx, La Forge, and Cordemoy adopted occasionalism for a variety of reasons, but none did so because of a need to provide a solution to a perceived mind-body problem. Yet there is one Cartesian for whom the “traditional” reading is largely on the mark. (...) François Lamy argues in the second volume of his De la Connoissance de Soi-Meme much as the standard story has it. In this article I discuss and analyze Lamy’s argument, showing how he deals with some of the many concerns that made occasionalism attractive, and how he brings out some of the thorny questions that an occasionalist must face. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing inspiration from Fred Dretske, L. S. Carrier, John A. Barker, and Robert Nozick, we develop a tracking analysis of knowing according to which a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. We show that our sensitivity analysis handles numerous Gettier-type cases and lottery problems, blocks pathways leading to skepticism, and validates (...) the epistemic closure thesis that correct inferences from known premises yield knowledge of the conclusions. We discuss the plausible views of Ted Warfield and Branden Fitelson regarding cases of knowledge acquired via inference from false premises, and we show how our sensitivity analysis can account for such cases. We present arguments designed to discredit putative counterexamples to sensitivity analyses recently proffered by Tristan Haze, John Williams and Neil Sinhababu, which involve true statements made by untrustworthy informants and strange clocks that sometimes display the correct time while running backwards. Finally, we show that in virtue of employing the paradox-free subjunctive conditionals codified by Relevance Logic theorists instead of the paradox-laden subjunctive conditionals codified by Robert Stalnaker and David Lewis. (shrink)

The evidence is overwhelming that members of particularly wealthy and industry-owning segments of Western societies have much larger carbon footprints than most other humans, and thereby contribute far more than their “fair share” to the enormous problem of climate change. Nonetheless, in this paper we shall counsel against a strategy focused primarily on blaming and shaming and propose, instead, a change in the ethical conversation about climate change. We recommend a shift in the ethical framework from a focus on the (...) role of individual agents and a conversation about guilt; in its place, we propose a relational approach to public health ethics that is centered around the idea of relational solidarity. We begin by briefly reviewing the most common—and woefully inadequate—approach in the West to reducing emissions and responding to the health-related impacts of climate change. We then go on to propose a relational approach to public health ethics as an alternative ethical framework that better fits the moral problems associated with climate change and holds promise for a more meaningful response. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

It is far from obvious that outside of highly specialized domains such as commercial agriculture, the methodology of biometrics—quantitative comparisons over groups of organisms—should be of any use in today’s bioinformatically informed biological sciences. The methods in our biometric textbooks, such as regressions and principal components analysis, make assumptions of homogeneity that are incompatible with current understandings of the origins of developmental or evolutionary data in historically contingent processes, processes that might have come out otherwise; the appropriate statistical methods are (...) those suited to random walks, not normal distributions. A valid methodology would further require that especially close attention be paid to the difference between aspects of processes that are plastic, those that encode their own histories or biographies, and the very small fraction of quantifications that can usefully and realistically be modeled as varying by colored noise around a central tendency that itself has some quantitative meaning. This point of view—that only a vanishingly small fraction of the quantitative information borne by any living organism is worth quantifying—is illustrated by some data on a human birth defect, namely, fetal alcohol syndrome. In a suggestive metaphor, the biometrician is like the pilgrim in Friedrich’s painting Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, uncertain as to whether to measure the mountains or the clouds. The mountains stand for contingent history, the clouds for the subset of the data most closely matching controlled experiments suitable for quantitative biometric summary. Biometrics applies to the clouds, not the mountains. The success of statistical methods comes at the expense of all the theories that we simultaneously hold to be true about the biological materials to which they both pertain. Biometrics is thus complementary to all of the emerging reductionist sciences of biological structure. (shrink)

The barn/barn façade thought experiment is familiar to most epistemologists. It is intended to present a counterexample to certain causal theories of knowledge; in it, a father driving through the countryside with his son says, ‘That's a barn’ while pointing to a barn. Unbeknownst to the father, however, a film crew is working in the area, and it has constructed several barn façades. While the father did correctly point to a barn when he made his assertion, he could have just (...) as easily pointed to a barn façade, and so, many hold, he does not know that the structure at which he is pointing is in fact a barn. If this is so, then it follows that true beliefs formed from reliable causal processes may still not qualify as knowledge. (shrink)

ABSTRACTBernard Lamy is frequently included among the Cartesian Empiricists of the second half of the seventeenth century. He has also been described as an Augustinian who dabbled in Cartesianism. While acknowledging that there are both empiricist and Augustinian elements in his thought, I argue that it ought not be forgotten that there are central components of his philosophy that are both anti-empiricist and in opposition to Augustine. My aim in this paper, though, is not critical; I hope to show that (...) Lamy provides us with one more example of the diversity present among the various thinkers labelled as ‘Cartesian’. (shrink)

In that it holds God to be the only true efficient cause, Malebranche’s occasionalism would seem to deny human freedom and to make God responsible for our sins. I argue that Malebranche’s occasionalism must be considered within its Cartesian framework; once one understands what it is to be an occasional cause in this context, Malebranche can be seen as saving a place for human freedom, and he can consistently hold that we are morally responsible for our actions.

This volume consists of papers originally presented at the international conference "Occasionalism: History and Problems," held in Venice in 2015; it contains twelve chapters, nine of which are in English, three in French. In their introduction, the editors describe occasionalism as a theory that was viewed by Medieval Christian philosophers as a "dangerous and treacherous" threat, only later to be "proudly asserted" in the post-Descartes era. This raises the question of to what degree this transition should be seen as a (...) result of interpretations of the commitments of Cartesian metaphysics, particularly with regard to questions concerning mind-body interaction. Many scholars have pointed out that to view... (shrink)

If a statue and lump of clay have the same life-histories, are they numerically identical?

Erratum to: Topoi DOI 10.1007/s11245-014-9252-9The affiliation of the second author was incorrectly published in the original article. The author’s correct affiliation appears in this erratum.

I challenge Jackendoff's claim that semantics should not be paralyzed by a failure to solve Brentano's problem of intentionality. I argue that his account of semantics is in fact paralyzed because it fails to live up to his own standards of naturalization, has no account of falsity, and gives the wrong semantic objects for words and thoughts.

This article treats the conflict between historicism and neo-Kantianism in the late nineteenth century by a careful examination of the writings of Wilhelm Windelband, the leader of the Southwestern neo-Kantians. Historicism was a profound challenge to the fundamental principles of Kant’s philosophy because it seemed to imply that there are no universal and necessary principles of science, ethics or aesthetics. Since all such principles are determined by their social and historical context, they differ with each culture and epoch. Windelband attempted (...) to respond to the challenge of this relativism by either broadening Kantian principles, so that they could accommodate the results of historicism, or by reformulating Kantian principles, so that they were impregnable to historical change. The article examines both aspects of Windelband’s strategy in some detail, noting the many changes and different formulations in his views. A final section considers some of the difficulties of Windelband’s strategy and concludes that, despite its heroic efforts, it was a failure.Keywords: Historicism; Normativity; Weltanschauung; Hegelianism; Relativism; Wilhelm Windelband; Immanuel Kant. (shrink)

These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the 'myth of the given', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticize non-Humean notions of cause; they criticize the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against (...) nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance. (shrink)

“We have to be willing to consider stimulants as an option because we are not correcting students' disadvantages in other, more traditional ways,” writes Ray (2016), pointing out how limited and in...

Journalists are guided by ethical principles derived from history, philosophy, and the findings of the 1947 Commission on Freedom of the Press. Newspaper owners, however, often are motivated primarily by profits. This study uses the rubric of the Hutchins Commission to propose a new ethical approach to the trend toward monopoly buyouts in urban markets. The author asserts that the closing of one newspaper violated the spirit, if not the intent, of Hutchins as applied through a corporate ethics formula, then (...) concludes that the foundation of ethics should move from newsrooms to boardrooms. (shrink)

Tristan Haze claims we have made two mistakes in replying to his two attempted counter-examples to Tracking Theories of Knowledge. Here we respond to his two recent claims that we have made mistakes in our reply. We deny both of his claims.

Fred Greenstein, an acknowledged authority in this field, lays out conceptual and methodological standards for carrying out personality-and politics inquiries, ranging from psychological case studies of single actors, through multi-case analyses of types of political actors, to aggregative analyses of the impact of individuals and types of individuals on political systems and processes. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University (...) Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the memory of the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick, who died in 2002. The publication of Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia in 1974 revived serious interest in natural rights liberalism, which, beginning in the latter half of the eighteenth century, had been eclipsed by a succession of antithetical political theories including utilitarianism, progressivism, and various egalitarian and collectivist ideologies. Some of our contributors critique Nozick's political philosophy. Other contributors examine earlier figures in the (...) liberal tradition, most notably John Locke, whose Second Treatise of Government, published in the late seventeenth century, profoundly influenced the American founders. The remaining authors analyze natural rights liberalism's central doctrines. (shrink)

In this investigation of the contemporary notion of evil, C. Fred Alford asks what we can learn about this concept, and about ourselves, by examining a society where it is unknown--where language contains no word that equates to the English term "evil." Does such a society look upon human nature more benignly? Do its members view the world through rose-colored glasses? Korea offers a fascinating starting point, and Alford begins his search for answers there.In conversations with hundreds of Koreans (...) from diverse religions and walks of life--students, politicians, teachers, Buddhist monks, Confucian scholars, Catholic priests, housewives, psychiatrists, and farmers--Alford found remarkable agreement about the nonexistence of evil. Koreans regard evil not as a moral category but as an intellectual one, the result of erroneous Western thinking. For them, evil results from the creation of dualisms, oppositions between people and ideas.Alford's interviews often led to discussions about imported ways of thinking and the impact of globalization upon society at large. In particular, he was struck by how Koreans' responses to globalization matched Westerners' views about evil. In much of the world, he argues, globalization is the ultimate dualism--attractive for the enlightenment and freedom it brings, terrifying for the great social and personal upheaval it can cause. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Comparative Religious Ethics: Everyday Decisions for Our Everyday Lives by Christine GudorfFred GlennonReview of Comparative Religious Ethics: Everyday Decisions for Our Everyday Lives CHRISTINE GUDORF Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. 256 pp. $49.00In Comparative Religious Ethics, Christine Gudorf identifies her primary audience as those “seeker-skeptical students” who see value in the study of religion but who eschew organized religion. She contends that a comparative study of religious ethics—in which (...) students explore the ethical decisions they face every day within the context of a range of religious traditions—will draw them into exploring not only their own moral sensibilities but also those religious traditions. I submit that her textbook accomplishes exactly that.No stranger to textbooks in religious ethics, Christine Gudorf has presented us with a well-organized book. The initial chapter is fairly traditional in its approach to the question of ethical method. She rehearses the same threefold pattern found in most textbooks centering on rules, ends, and virtues. Gudorf does much more with rule-based ethics than with teleological ethics, giving the impression that religious ethics is fundamentally rule-based. While this may be true to some degree, there has been far more attention given to teleology in religious ethics than she acknowledges. Her emphasis on connecting theological and religious frameworks to social analysis is helpful and reflects the orientation of many who teach undergraduates in this area. A weakness of the book is that some chapters connect the religious traditions with ethical issues more directly than others. While I tend to be in agreement with much of Gudorf’s own perspective, I sensed at times that she could have made more direct connections between ethical issues and particular religious tradition’s ethical teachings. I might also note that at points the social analysis was a bit long—especially in discussing the history of certain ideas—which might be boring for some undergraduates.Gudorf covers topics that have more experiential relevance for undergraduates than is usually found in social ethics textbooks. This is a good thing because it enables her to cover issues that have the most interest for undergraduates. By drawing on what they are interested in, this textbook is able to lead them into an analysis of the structural components of these issues (rather than zoning out, as undergraduates are prone to do). For the most part, the chapters treat each issue evenly, although the chapter on clothing is a bit short. While there [End Page 236] might be some topics I would like to see added, no text can adequately address everything.The author has a great deal of expertise with case studies, and for the most part the case studies she includes are helpful primarily because their narrative structure and length lend themselves to more sustained and nuanced discussion. The discussion questions, film suggestions, and web resources at the end of each chapter are helpful pedagogical aids. The addition of a glossary is important, but I am glad that she explains most of the terms in the chapters (most students do not take the time to review the glossary).Undergraduates will be able to understand the material Gudorf covers in this book because it connects well with the issues they face on a daily basis. In bringing in her own perspective and experiences as she deliberates about ethical issues—I especially like the discussion of what to do with the homeless on street corners—Gudorf makes this book a bit more distinctive and personal than some other textbooks that attempt to be more “objective.” In all likelihood, I will use this book in my comparative religious ethics class. There is a wealth of material and insight in it that my students and I would find engaging. [End Page 237]Fred GlennonLe Moyne CollegeCopyright © 2015 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)