Suppose you can save only one of two groups of people from harm, with one person in one group, and five persons in the other group. Are you obligated to save the greater number? While common sense seems to say ‘yes’, the numbers skeptic says ‘no’. Numbers Skepticism has been partly motivated by the anti-consequentialist thought that the goods, harms and well-being of individual people do not aggregate in any morally significant way. However, even many non-consequentialists think that Numbers Skepticism (...) goes too far in rejecting the claim that you ought to save the greater number. Besides the prima facie implausibility of Numbers Skepticism, Michael Otsuka has developed an intriguing argument against this position. Otsuka argues that Numbers Skepticism, in conjunction with an independently plausible moral principle, leads to inconsistent choices regarding what ought to be done in certain circumstances. This inconsistency in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Numbers Skepticism. Kirsten Meyer offers a notable challenge to Otsuka’s argument. I argue that Meyer’s challenge can be met, and then offer my own reasons for rejecting Otsuka’s argument. In light of these criticisms, I then develop an improved, yet structurally similar argument to Otsuka’s argument. I argue for the slightly different conclusion that the view proposed by John Taurek that ‘the numbers don’t count’ leads to inconsistent choices, which in turn provides us with a good reason to reject Taurek’s position. (shrink)

Traces the development of the idea of experience (Greek peira, empeiria) in Greek thought, from its origins in the Presocratics, through Aristotle and subsequent Peripatetics (Theophrastus, Alexander of Aphrodisias), to Galen. Particular emphasis is placed on the ideas of the medical school of the Empirics, who based their theory and practice on experience and memory. This experience-based epistemology can be traced back to the “epistemic modesty” characteristic of Archaic Greek thought. Some passages in Avicenna, redolent of Sufism, which react to (...) perceived shortcomings in the Aristotelian theory of cognition and demonstration (especially the ineffability of individuals) may have been influenced by the medical Empirist tradition. This emphasis on experience, shared by Archaic Greek thought, medical Empirism, and by certain aspects of Buddhism, may have influenced Islamic Sufism, and hence the thought of Avicenna and his successors. (shrink)

How can a persisting object change whilst remaining the same object? Lewis, who frames this as the problem of temporary intrinsics, presents us with the perdurance solution: objects persist by having temporal parts which may have differing properties. And in doing so he characterises the opposing view as persisting but not by having temporal parts – a view he calls endurance. But this dichotomous picture of Lewis, although now widely embraced, misses out the orthodox historic view – a view I (...) call temporal holism: objects persist by having temporal parts to which they are ontologically prior. (In the perduring solution, by contrast, the temporal parts are ontologically prior.) This paper sets out this temporal holist solution and makes clear its differences from perdurantist and endurantist solutions. Although temporal holism has a long and illustrious history, this history has not been explicitly recognised. I begin the task of recognising this history in this paper, in order to make clear the nature of temporal holism, and to show that it is a long-established, well supported and distinctive position. The paper sets out, too, how temporal holism solves other ontological problems so that, despite its current neglect, temporary holism has the potential to greatly enrich contemporary philosophical debates. (shrink)

The modern philosophical establishment is a bureaucracy, and all of the philosophy it produces is an attempt to give a sheen of legitimacy to that fact.

Nietzsche distinguishes between “slave morality” (the morality of the weak) and “master morality” (the morality of the strong), and he believes the structure of modern society to be rooted in slave morality. According to Nietzsche, slave morality is the morality of modern “bourgeois” (commerce-based) society, whereas “master morality” was the morality of ancient caste-based societies. In this paper, I argue for the legitimacy of the distinction between these two kinds of morality but argue against Nietzsche's contention that contemporary (capitalist or (...) semi-capitalist) society embodies slave morality. (shrink)

Sometimes, when a given person and/or his scholarly work are boring, it is intentional: that person is deliberately being boring so that nobody bothers to scrutinize, or therefore discover, the emptiness of either him or his work.

It is explained what it is for a statement to be logically true and it is thereby explained what it is for a statement to be formally true. It is also explained how logical truth differs from formal truth. Further, it is explained what a system of logic is. Finally, the nature of entailment is explained and, in particular, it is explained how formal entailment differs from analytic entailment.

Granting that there is more substance to the idea that we lack freedom than there is to the idea we know nothing about the external world, neither idea has much substance; and the appeal of both ideas, especially of the latter—and doubly especially of the two taken in conjunction---is that they give bureaucrats an excuse to be bureaucrats—to be people who do not know anything and are therefore under no obligation to do anything.

Nach David Hume ist das Konzept der Kausalität und Wahrscheinlichkeit in Begriffen von Ähnlichkeit und Wiederholung zu verstehen. In diesem Buch wird gezeigt, dass Sie in Bezug auf das Konzept der Kontinuität zu verstehen sind. Eine logische Folge ist, dass es keine legitime Grundlage für Skepsis hinsichtlich der Legitimität der induktiven Folgerung gibt. Ein weiterer ist, dass Anti-Realismus über theoretische Entitäten ist undenkbar.

Lack of coordination is an expression of internal conflict.

In being paranoid, one is consciously afraid of something that one unconsciously desires; and in many cases, what is unconsciously desired is to remain within the safe confines of an autistic bubble.

Doing is about having ideals. Merely reacting isn't. Therefore people who lack integrity can react but cannot act.

This book states, illustrates, and evaluates the main points of Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. This book also contains a thorough exposition of the fundamentals of set theory, including Cantor's groundbreaking investigations into the theory of transfinite numbers. Topics covered include: *Cardinal number (Frege's analysis) *Cardinal number (von Neumann's analysis) *Ordinal number *Isomorphism *Mathematical induction *Limits and continuity *The arithmetic of transfinites *Set-theoretic definitions of "point" and "instant" *An analysis of cardinal n, for arbitrary n, that, unlike the analyses put (...) forth by Russell and von *Neumann, is not merely adequate but de rigueur. *Cogent analyses of hitherto unsolved paradoxes of set-theory and logic, e.g. the Liar Paradox and Russell's Paradox. (shrink)

It is made clear what knowledge is and how we acquire it. It is also explained how we can have knowledge of the future, the past, the possible, the imperceptible, and the non-existent. The Gettier problem is solved, and it is proved that we have a priori knowledge, as well as knowledge of non-trivial but purely analytic truths.

Wittgenstein believed linguistic competence to be the very essence of cognitive competence. This is shown to be false and the main fallacy in Wittgenstein's argument is identified.

If more than a tiny minority of people were non-bureaucrats, civilization would not be possible.

The greater the extent to which a given system rewards the absence of merit, the greater the incentive that people within that system have to perpetuate that system. People who are falsely rewarded have a double stake in the perpetuation of whatever it is that falsely rewarded them. First, without that system and all of the lies surrounding it, such people lose their wealth and their social status. Second, without that system, such people lose their self-respect. The more a given (...) person is overvalued, the more likely it is that his social status and self-image depend on specific institutions and, therefore, the more likely it is that he does not those institutions to be replaced or even improved. (shrink)

We may dislike or disapprove of criminals who are genuine doers, as opposed to drifters; but we do not hold them in contempt. We hold them in contempt when, and only when, they are drifters. And in almost cases, that is precisely what they are.

At his death in 1945, the influential German philosopher Ernst Cassirer left manuscripts for the fourth and final volume of his magnum opus, _The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms_. John Michael Krois and Donald Phillip Verene have edited these writings and translated them into English for the first time, bringing to completion Cassirer's major treatment of the concept of symbolic form. Ernst Cassirer believed that all the forms of representation that human beings use—language, myth, art, religion, history, science—are symbolic, (...) and the concept of symbolic forms was the basis of his thinking on these subjects. In this volume, which contains one text written in 1928 and another in about 1940, Cassirer presents the metaphysics that is implicit in his epistemology and phenomenology of culture. The earlier text grounds the philosopher's conception of symbolic forms on a notion of human nature that makes a general distinction between Geist and life. In the later text, he discusses Basis Phenomena, an original concept not mentioned in any of his previous works, and he compares his own viewpoint with those of other modern philosophers, notably Bergson and Heidegger. (shrink)

The behavior of individuals who compose an institution tends to mirror the behavior of that institution as a whole. This short work illustrates this principle.

A series of sharp, deep answers to hard-hitting questions about psychopathy, with embedded link to the author real-timing it.

Key terms of analytic philosophy defined.

It is shown that moral values are constitutive of the scientific process and therefore, contrary to the traditional view, not incidental to it.

The same person who claims to be a relativist about musical beauty—who claims that all musical works are equally ‘valid’ and beautiful---adores certain musical works while detesting others. And the same person who claims to be a relativist about personal beauty—who claims that all people are beautiful, if only ‘on the inside’---finds certain people intensely attractive and finds others equally intensely repellent. And the same person who is guilty of the one hypocrisy is almost always guilty of the other. So (...) we are dealing with two hypocrisies---two ‘open secrets’, each of which has a social justification while lacking an alethic or logical justification---that parallel each other. And that is because the one hypocrisy is really just a proxy for the other: relativism about musical beauty—which is just an absurd purely philosophical position---is really just a proxy for relativism about female beauty—which is not an absurd philosophical position, but a deeply important social protocol that is rooted in the depths of female psychology. (shrink)

Paranoias are unconscious desires that are represented in consciousness as fears. In being paranoid, one unconsciously desires what one consciously fears.

Freud divided people in three libidinal types: narcissist (doer), obsessional (thinker), and libidinal (lover). Kirk (narcissist), Spock (obsessional) and McCoy (libidinal) complemented each other, giving the show depth and balance.

This briskly written little book rigorously establishes that in order to be able to use language, it is necessary to be able to think and, consequently, that linguistic ability is not constitutive of cognitive ability. But it is also explained why it is that linguistic ability so greatly enhanced cognitive ability. Wittgenstein's famous Private Language and Rule Following Arguments are assiduously analyzed and decisively refuted. At the same time, so Kuczynski demonstrates, a viable analysis of the relationship between language and (...) thought can be understood in terms of the shortcomings of these two arguments. (shrink)

The United States is not communist: We have a market-economy. But that economy is embedded in a larger culture whose outlook is largely Marxist in nature, and this constricts and also sterilizes commercial activity in the United States.

According to David Hume, there is nothing to the mind other than the various fleeting events that it hosts. According to commonsense, this is false. But the commonsense view has never been meaningfully elaborated. This short work states an analysis of personal identity that combines Hume's position with the position, so far as there is one, of commonsense, thereby giving much needed substance to the latter.

If S is any well-formed and significant question or command having the form "...the phi...", Russell's Theory of Descriptions entails (i) that S is syntactically ambiguous, and (ii) that there is at least one disambiguation of S that is syntactically ill-formed. Given that each of (i) and (ii) is false, so is the Theory of Descriptions.

The ArgumentErnst Cassirer's fundamental conception of symbolism (symbolic pregnance) derives from what may be called a bio-medical model of semiotics, not a linguistic one. He employs both models in his philosophy of symbolic forms, but his notion of the “prototype and model of symbolism” was not derived from linguistics. The sources for his conception of symbolism include the ethnographic and anthropological literature he discovered in Aby Warburg's (1866–1929) Hamburg research library, findings of medical research on aphasia and related conditions, particularly (...) the work of Kurt Goldstein (1878–1965) and the theoretical biology of Jacob von Uexküll (1864–1944). The linguistic model of semiotics regards the bond between the signifier and the signified as purely arbitrary and conventional, but Cassirer traced meaning back to a “natural symbolism” of image-like configurations in bodily feeling and perception. In this way, his doctrine of symbolism assumed a form that undercut the distinction between philosophical Naturalism and Idealism. This helps to explain why in later years Cassirer developed his theory of Basic Phenomena. Cassirer's notion of the “prototype and model of symbolism” illustrates his method of thought, which eschews pure argument in favor of interaction with empirical research. (shrink)

For intellectuals, and probably others, one form of escapism is a kind of constricted and shallow hyper-realism—the hyper-realism of having a dead-end job, even though one has a PhD or an IQ of 170. And that sort of hyper-realism is pseudo-realism, because realism is not about having a bad life; it is having the courage to have a good life, which the intellectual with the dead end job does not have.

Chomsky's arguments for the existence of pre-experiential knowledge, and for the existence of sub-personal cognition, are clearly stated and shown to be cogent.

Double-think is more of a threat to psychical integrity than repression.

This article argues that Ralph Waldo Emerson employs metempsychosis (reincarnation or the transmigration of the soul into successive bodies) as a figurative template for human consciousness. Mapping various traditions from Hinduism, Pythagoreanism, Platonism, and Neoplatonism onto the vastness of the geological and biological records, Emerson translates metaphysics for modernity: he depicts the soul's journey through the chronological sequence of history as a poetic process that culminates in a tenuous form of self-knowledge.

Este trabajo da claras respuestas rigurosas a las cuestiones fundamentales de la epistemología, siendo estas: -/- * ¿Qué es el conocimiento? * ¿Cómo difiere el conocimiento declarativo del conocimiento procedimental? * ¿Cómo se diferencia el conocimiento intuitivo forma ¿conocimiento discursivo? * ¿Cómo difiere el conocimiento científico de los conocimientos no científicos? * ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre el descubrimiento y la justificación? * ¿Cuál es la naturaleza de nuestro conocimiento del pasado, del futuro, de lo meramente posible, y del presente (...) pero no perceptible? * ¿Cómo es el conocimiento conceptual diferente del conocimiento empírico? * ¿todo el conocimiento es inferencial? * ¿todo el conocimiento es teórico? * ¿todo el conocimiento inferencial es teórico? * ¿es la mente transparente para sí misma? * ¿es coherente el concepto de ideación inconsciente? * ¿Cuál es el problema de Gettier y cuál es la solución al problema de Gettier? -/- Este libro es apropiado para principiantes y también para los investigadores. (shrink)

According to David Hume, the concept of causation and probability are to be understood in terms of the concepts of similarity and repetition. In this book, it is shown that they are to be understood in terms of the concept of continuity. One corollary is that there is no legitimate basis for skepticism concerning the legitimacy of inductive inference. Another is that anti-realism about theoretical entities is misconceived.

This volume contains monologues and dialogues in which the most basic questions of psychoanalysis, philosophy, and logic are given clear and cogent answers. Table of Contents: 30 Laws of Logic Different Kinds of Mathematical Functions: A Dialogue Functions, Bijections, and Mapping-relations What is Logic? Outline of a Theory of Knowledge Determinism, Indeterminism, and Personal Freedom A Dialogue Neurosis vs. Psychosis What determines whether one is happy? Compulsive Work Stuttering How men and women are different One learns from adversity, not from (...) failure Does everybody want money? The #1 Rule of Writing Lack of Coordination Mental Illness: The Ultimate Litmus Test The #1 Rule of Business Honesty and Integrity A Dialogue Anger A Dialogue What is Bullshit? A Short Treatise on Causality Part 1: Causality and Continuity Part 2 : Causation and Explanation Part 3: Causation and Counterfactual Truth Part 4: Program-causation Part 5: The four different kinds of causes involved in the development of mental illness Part 6: Singular Causation Obsessions and Compulsions A Dialogue concerning OCD Writing Animated Dialogues as Self-Analysis: A Dialogue Neurotic Anxiety as Rational Fear: A Dialogue Agency Analyticity Anomalous Monism Bullshit Two Kinds of Insanity Ignorance of the Future Justice Proof that Time-Travel is Impossible Rationality vs. Intelligence: A Dialogue. (shrink)

Este libro establece y analiza la Teoría de las descripciones de Russell.