With this issue we initiate the policy of expanding the scope of Tulane Studies in Philosophy to include, in addition to the work of members of the department, contributions from philosophers who have earned advanced degrees from Tulane and who are now teaching in other colleges and universities. The Editor THE LOGIC OF OUR LANGUAGE ROBERT L. ARRINGTON Wittgenstein wrote in the Tractatus that "logic is not a body of doctrine, but a mirror-image of the world. " 1 In line (...) with his suggestion that a proposition is a 'picture', Wittgenstein argued that propositions 'show' the logical structure of the real. He was insistent, however, that "the apparent logical form of a proposition need not be its real one. " 2 As a result of this we can misunderstand the structure of fact. Philosophical problems arise just when "the logic of our language is mis understood. " 3 It is common knowledge that much of this view of logic was rejected by Wittgenstein himself in the Philosophical Investi gations. There we are told that language has no ideal or sublime 4 logic which mirrors the structure of the extra-linguistic world. Consequently, inferences from the structure of language to the structure of that extra-linguistic world are invalid. Reality can be 'cut up' in any of a number of ways by language. Wittgenstein adopted a view of philosophy which would render that discipline a non-explanatory, non-critical study of the multiple ways in which language can be used. (shrink)

RésuméPour les Grecs en général et pour Platon en particulier, il y avait trois sujets principaux d'intérět: la nature, Dieu et l'homme. Pour Platon, Dieu était l'intermédiaire entre le monde naturel des apparences et celui des ětres; et pour Aristote, Dieu se trouvait aux deux extrémités d'un monde naturel unique en devenir. Le Moyen Age s'est occupé uniquement de Dieu et de l'homme. Les œuvres scientifiques grecques émigrèrent vers l'est dans la période hellénistique où elles furent reprises par les Arabes (...) et elles ne retournèrent en Europe que pour rejoindre la joie de la nature qui se manifeste dans l'art grec et dans celui de la Renaissance. La Réformation ébranla la théologie si violemment que l'homme seul devint le sujet de l'étude philosophique. Les deux traditions empiristes étaient nées: l'empirisme scientifique qui s'occupe de la nature et l'empirisme philosophique qui s'occupe de l'homme. Le premier devint objectif dans ses intérěts, le second subjectif. Ils ne se rencontrèrent pas, et ainsi la philosophie ne représenta jamais correctement l'empirisme scientifique. Chacun des deux a sa propre place, mais leur confusion a retardé le développement des sciences sociales et a empěché la compréhension de ce qu'est la science en général. Pour rétablir l'importance des deux types d'empirisme dans l'opinion commune, il faudra les distinguer et développer chaque théorie sur des bases différentes. La philosophie des sciences comme branche spéciale de la philosophie devra apprendre à observer ce que les hommes de science font et non à écouter ce qu'ils pensent que signifie ce qu'ils font.For the Greeks generally and for Plato in particular there were three absorbing interests: nature, God and man. For Plato, God was the intermediary in a two‐storeyed natural world of being and appearance; and for Aristotle, God stood at both ends of a single natural world of becoming. The Middle Ages were concerned exclusively with God and man. Greek scientific works went east in the Hellenistic Age, where they were taken over by the Moslems; and only returned to Europe in time to join the rediscovery of the joy of nature as displayed in the Greek art of the Renaissance. The Reformation shook theology so badly that man alone became the object of philosophical study. Thus two traditions of empiricism were born: scientific empiricism, concerned with nature; and philosophical empiricism, concerned with man. The former became objective in its interests, and the latter subjective. They did not meet, and so philosophy has never correctly represented scientific empiricism. Each has its proper place, but the confusion has retarded the development of the social sciences and hampered the general understanding of what science is. In order to restore the importance of both types of empiricism in the common comprehension, they will have to be distinguished, and each theory developed on different grounds. The philosophy of science, as a special branch of philosophy, will have to learn how to watch what the scientists do and not listen to what they say what they are doing means. (shrink)

The religiously inclined have always rejected materialism. The thesis of this study is that there may have been good reasons for them to do so until comparatively recent times but that the same reasons no longer exist. Our knowledge of matter has not only increased, it has also been altered so completely that there is no more justification for disapproving of materialism on religious grounds.

The problem is that of how to relate reality to the categories of dyadic ontology. We shall understand by "reality" the immediate object of that which is true. We shall understand by "dyadic ontology" one which assumes a pair of ontological categories as the real. The categories chosen will be those of a class of constants characterized by persistence and a class of variables characterized by change. As one philosophical tradition succeeds another in history, the names will be altered. Again, (...) sometimes the class will be specified and sometimes its elements. The relation between reality and the categories can take any one of the following forms. Persistence is alone real, change is alone real, they are equally real, neither is real. The first will be called idealism, the second nominalism and the third realism. The fourth has no historic tradition in the West. (shrink)

SummaryThe working logician begins with whatever operations are necessary to make computation possible. He does not inquire into the foundations which the carrying out of his operations assumes; no axioms, no assumptions, just the computations themselves. Yet in logic of all places the starting‐point should be defensible. After examining the logical assumptions, the constructions of proofs, individuals and classes, and the metaphysical assumptions, the conclusion is reached that the net effect of operational logic is to assimilate logic to mathematics rather (...) than to consider mathematics an extension of logic. The price to be paid for this preference is to leave them both unexplained. It would mean that the metaphysics of mathematics would have to proceed without logic. (shrink)

Professor Quine in recent articles has raised an old question, an ontological one, concerning the status of universals. It is interesting to note that the same positions recur in symbolic logic that have appeared so often in the past in less exact language. There can be little doubt that the question he raises is crucial; and if the issue is not yet settled, there is at least some hope that it may be clarified. Propositions are required to make propositions clear.

If, then, we wish to reintroduce the category of substance into the set of those categories which can be justified in terms of modern knowledge, we shall have to treat it in connection with chance and irrationality, or accident. Real, objective chance means the fortuitous occurrence of just this predicate or property here and now rather than any other out of a whole host of possibles. This blue wall--why is it blue? And if we are told it had been painted (...) we could still ask why it had been painted blue. And driving back the series of causes conceals the fortuitous element, putting the selection on some antecedent cause which in turn has an antecedent chance element, and so on in an accidental series. (shrink)

In the introduction to his Human Knowledge, Bertrand Russell wrote: «If I believe that there is such a place as Semipalatinsk, I believe it because of things that have happened to me; and unless certain substantial principles of inference are accepted, I shall have to admit that all these things might have happened to me without there being any such place.» Beginning with an examination of belief, the argument turns on the nature of evidence, and it is shown that Russell (...) is in a contradictory position with respect to substance which he both rejects and assumes. A new definition of substance, one which will include a dynamic phase and also the objective existence of the irrational, is called for and offered. The new viewpoint involves us finally in the search for adequate descriptions, and here some notions of Wittgenstein and Russell seem to meet. (shrink)