The place and significance of religious community is a central concern in recent continental philosophy of religion. Although Kierkegaard is a significant influence for many recent continental philosophers of religion, recent work on his social thought is largely ignored. I begin the paper by describing how recent continental philosophers of religion, in particular John Caputo, John Milbank, and Jürgen Habermas, have used Kierkegaard in order to address social questions. Then I show how recent work on Kierkegaard’s social thought (...) – namely, his social ontology and his account of community – that can enrich discussion in recent continental philosophy of religion about the nature of religious community. (shrink)

Someone who has more sympathy with traditional empiricism than with much of present-day philosophy may ask himself: 'How do my experiences give rise to my beliefs about an external world, and to what extent do they justify them?' He wants to refer, among other things, to unremarkable experiences, of a sort which he cannot help believing to be so extremely common that it would be ridiculous to call them common experiences. He mainly has in mind sense-experiences, and he thinks of (...) them in a particular way. His way of thinking of them, roughly speaking as something 'inner', is one on which recent logico-linguistic philosophy has thrown a good deal of light. The relevant special notion of an experience contrasts, among other things, with a certain more general biographical notion of an experience, which some dictionaries indicate by the definition, 'an event of which one is the subject'. This book explores the concept of experiences, focusing on the disjunctions between perception and illusion. (shrink)

A mugging can overwhelm our ability to apply moral principles. When words fail, we still need advice that allows us to remain moral in the face of an attack. Self-defense offers just such advice and can be supported by utilitarian, deontological, and virtue approaches to ethics. Self-defense increases safety and security that enhance our freedom and well-being, which, in turn, allow us to survive and flourish as moral agents. Self-defense must, however, itself be qualified because its violent treatment of muggers (...) may produce human time bombs that reduce the safety and security of society.The martial art of Aikido trains our hand to act morally in the face of a physical attack when our mind is otherwise occupied. Aikido teaches self-defense, but it goes beyond self-centeredness to also protect the attacker. Such concern helps build community because it reduces vectors of resentment that spread when violence is perpetuated. The defense-only nature of Aikido teaches virtues in an embodied form on the mat. It offers philosophers an experiential and kinesthetic view of moral conduct that supplements and complements an exclusively intellectual approach. Moral philosophy cannot demand that we learn a martial art since it is only one of many possibilities to assist us in living a moral life; nevertheless, a reasonable attention to those conditions necessary for freedom and well-being entails an awareness of self-defense. (shrink)

"Jim would still be alive if he hadn't jumped" means that Jim's death was a consequence of his jumping. "x wouldn't be a triangle if it didn't have three sides" means that x's having a three sides is a consequence its being a triangle. Lewis takes the first sentence to mean that Jim is still alive in some alternative universe where he didn't jump, and he takes the second to mean that x is a non-triangle in every alternative universe where (...) it doesn't have three sides. Why did Lewis have such obviously wrong views? Because, like so many of his contemporaries, he failed to grasp the truth that it is the purpose of the present paper to demonstrate, to wit: No coherent doctrine assumes that statements about possible worlds are anything other than statements about the dependence-relations governing our world. The negation of this proposition has a number of obviously false consequences, for example: all true propositions are necessarily true (there is no modal difference between "2+2=4" and "Socrates was bald"); all modal terms (e.g. "possible," "necessary") are infinitely ambiguous; there is no difference between laws of nature (e.g. "metal expands when heated") and accidental generalizations (e.g. "all of the coins in my pocket are quarters"); and there is no difference between the belief that 1+1=2 and the belief that arithmetic is incomplete. Given that possible worlds are identical with mathematical models, it follows that the concept of model-theoretic entailment is useless in the way of understanding how inferences are drawn or how they should be drawn. Given that the concept of formal-entailment is equally useless in these respects, it follows that philosophers and mathematicians have simply failed to shed any light on the nature of the consequence-relation. Q's being either a formal or a model-theoretic consequence of P is parasitic on its bearing some third, still unidentified relation to P; and until this relation has been identified, the discipline of philosophical logic has yet to begin. (shrink)

Cassirer hat sich — wie der späte Cohen und der späte Natorp — von der Marburger Beschränkung auf Erkenntnistheorie entfernt. In bisher unpublizierten Texten aus der Emigrationszeit befaßte Cassirer sich mit dem Problem der Metaphysik. Goethes Lehre von den Urphänomenen und die Gestalttheorie Kurt Goldsteins beeinflußten Cassirers späte Theorie der « Basisphänomene ». Diese neue Denkrichtung knüpfte an die Symboltheorie Cassirers an und wies auf ihren Ausgang hin. Tout comme Cohen et Natorp dans leur œuvre tardive, Cassirer s'est situé au-delà (...) de la théorie de la connaissance à laquelle l'École de Marbourg entendait se limiter. Dans des textes écrits durant son exil et qui n'ont pas encore été publiés, Cassirer aborde la problématique de la métaphysique. La théorie gœthéenne des phénomènes originaires comme la théorie de la forme développée par Kurt Goldstein ont influencé la réflexion tardive de Cassirer sur les « phénomènes de base ». Cette nouvelle orientation de sa pensée s'articule sur la théorie du symbole, et indique comment la dépasser. (shrink)

The semantic rules governing natural language quantifiers (e.g. "all," "some," "most") neither coincide with nor resemble the semantic rules governing the analogues of those expressions that occur in the artificial languages used by semanticists. Some semanticists, e.g. Peter Strawson, have put forth data-consistent hypotheses as to the identities of the semantic rules governing some natural-language quantifiers. But, despite their obvious merits, those hypotheses have been universally rejected. In this paper, it is shown that those hypotheses are indeed correct. Moreover, data-consistent (...) hypotheses are put forth as to the identities of the semantic rules governing the words "most" and "many," the semantic rules governing which semanticists have thus far been unable to identify. The points made in this paper are anticipated in a paper, published in the same issue of the Journal of Pragmatics, by Andrzej Boguslawski. (shrink)

Sense-perceptions do not have to be deciphered if their contents are to be uploaded, the reason being that they are presentations, not representations. Linguistic expressions do have to be deciphered if their contents are to be uploaded, the reason being that they are representations, not presentations. It is viciously regressive to suppose that information-bearing mental entities are categorically in the nature of representations, as opposed to presentations, and it is therefore incoherent to suppose that thought is mediated by expressions or, (...) therefore, by linguistic entities. Attempts to neutralize this criticism inevitably overextend the concept of what it is to be a linguistic symbol, the result being that such attempts eviscerate the very position that it is their purpose to defend. Also, it is inherent in the nature of such attempts that they assume the truth of the view that for a given mental entity to bear this as opposed to that information is for that entity to have this as opposed to that causal role. This view is demonstrably false, dooming to failure the just-mentioned attempts to defend the contention that thought is in all cases mediated by linguistic symbols. (shrink)

Wittgenstein and Brandom both say that knowledge of a language constitutes one's ability to think. Further, they say that a language is an essentially public entity: so to know a language, and to be able to think, consist in one's being embedded in a public practice of some kind. Wittgenstein provides two famous arguments for this: his "private-language" and "rule-following" arguments. Brandom develops these arguments. In this paper, I argue that the Wittgenstein-Brandom view strips anyone of the ability to mean (...) anything by anything. Indeed, it strips anyone of the ability to think at all; the Wittgenstein-Brandom view is really just a version of Pavlov's stimulus-response psychology, and shares all its deficiencies. The rule-following argument is shown to be nothing more than a failure to register the fact that, in certain contexts, epistemic operators can be given either wide or narrow scope with respect to other operators. The private-language argument is shown to be based on a failure to distin-guish the conditions that are causally necessary for language from those that are constitutive of it. Brandom's argument involves a massive over-extension of the concept of a "linguistic community". The result is that his view becomes trivial: anything that can speak or think is by definition a member of a linguistic community; so Brandom's "demonstration" that only encultured beings can think turns out to be an artifact of his definitions. (shrink)

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.

Alan Turing advocated a kind of functionalism: A machine M is a thinker provided that it responds in certain ways to certain inputs. Davidson argues that Turing’s functionalism is inconsistent with a cer-tain kind of epistemic externalism, and is therefore false. In Davidson’s view, concepts consist of causal liasons of a certain kind between subject and object. Turing’s machine doesn’t have the right kinds of causal li-asons to its environment. Therefore it doesn’t have concepts. Therefore it doesn’t think. I argue (...) that this reasoning is entirely fallacious. It is true that, in some cases, a causal liason between subject and object is part of one’s concept of that object. Consequently, to grasp certain propositions, one must have certain kids of causal ties to one’s environment. But this means that we must rethink some old views on what rationality is. It does not mean, pace Davidson, that a precondition for being rational is being causally embedded in one’s environment in a certain way. If Tur-ing’s machine isn’t capable of thinking (I leave it open whether it is or is not), that has nothing to do with its lacking certain kinds of causal con-nections to the environment. The larger significance of our discussion is this: rationality consists either in one’s ability to see the bearing of purely existential propositions on one another or rationality is simply not to be understood as the ability see the bearing that propositions have on one another. (shrink)

Dishonesty with oneself makes one unable to act. Honesty with oneself makes one able to act.

It is said what it is to persist in time, and on that basis it is shown that time-travel, teleportation, and other mainstays of science fiction are impossible.

Non-biological systems are entropic systems. Biological systems are counter-entropic systems.

An analysis of the concepts in terms of which we understand the internal (psychological) and external (physical) realms, with special emphasis being placed on the concepts of causality, interdisciplinary reduction, and the nature of the self. Special attention is given to the nature of psychological explanation, and substantive contentions about the nature of psychopathology are defended, especially in relation to OCD and psychopathy.

What we call "neurosis" is psychosis about specific facts, but not about the logical instruments used to judge relations between facts. What we call "psychosis" is psychosis about both facts and the aforementioned logical instruments.

This short work proves the incompleteness of deductive logic. In other words, it proves that there is no recursive definition of K, where K is the class of all systems of logic.

Instead of writing a book or article, which contains at most one paragraph’s worth of actual content, why not just write that one paragraph?

This article discusses ethical implications for the academy in the use of cyberspace and virtual reality in conducting its teaching and research responsibilities. It identifies important cyberspace ethics concerns as they intersect with the academy and provides an ethical framework for coming to grips with them. Topics discussed here include the sine qua non of academic collegiality and civility, concerns about digital alteration of images and sounds, and issues pertaining to academic administration and infrastructure.

It is discussed why it is beneficial to let go of anger. To this end, the teachings of the Buddha are discussed.

In this fictitious dialogue, it is shown that there are three kinds of freedom, each of which, though non-trivially different from the other two, is identical with the subject's being appropriately constitutive of a causally cohesive structure of some kind or other. Analogues of this point are proven to hold not just of personal freedom, but also of personal identity, and not just of personal identity, but also of objectual identity.

It is clearly explained: -/- *What it is for a statement to be necessarily true, *Why necessity, possibility, existence, and non-existence are properties of propositions (truths and falsehoods), not of objects or states of affairs, *What conditions a class of expressions must meet if the expressions belonging to it jointly constitute a single language, *The significance for meta-linguistic research of the concepts of systematicity and productivity, as Chomsky defines these terms, and the relevance of these concepts to researches into the (...) nature of necessity, *Why Quine's attempt to prove the non-existence of analytic truth is not only false but self-defeating, and, finally, *Why empirical science relies on truths of purely conceptual, non-observational kind to organize the data at its disposal. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) invented the discipline of mathematical logic. In this short work, it is clearly stated what Frege did and did not accomplish.

It is shown that institutions are fractals, meaning that are structurally the same as their parts, and that for this reason liberal institutions are quicker than conservative institutions to decay into a condition of abject psychopathy.

If It isn’t necessary, its non-existence is.

When bad people try to be good, their supposed goodness turns out to be a mere extension of their badness and in fact compounds their badness by giving it a sheen of legitimacy.

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

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

There are two kinds of bureaucracies: those that serve some non-bureaucratic purpose, albeit in a bureaucratic way, and those whose only purpose is to create more bureaucracy.

A brief statement of the most basic principles of the discipline of Knowledge Management (KM).

The nature of of Infinite Number is discussed in a rigorous but easy-to-follow manner. Special attention is paid to Cantor's proof that any given set has more subsets than members, and it is discussed how this fact bears on the question: How many infinite numbers are there? This work is ideal for people with little or no background in set theory who would like an introduction to the mathematics of the infinite.

The shred of truth in Kuhn's erroneous theory of scientific theories is identified.

Philosophy is the analysis of the categories in terms of which we understand the world. Analytic philosophy is simply philosophy that is pursued with a high degree of awareness of what philosophy is. Contrary to what Wittgenstein alleges, analytic philosophy is not linguistic philosophy; for it is only to the quite limited extent that meaning-analysis takes the form of sentential analysis that the latter falls within the bailiwick of analytic philosophy.

A therapist turns very damaged people into moderately damaged people. I turn moderately strong people into very strong people. I am an analyst, not a therapist.

A case is made that justice is a kind of social proxy for the cause-effect relation. When in a state of nature, man has no one but himself to rely on in his dealings with nature, which, though cruel, is consistent, driven as she is by inviolable physical laws and which, consequently, always rewards an action with an equal and opposite reaction.

Contemporary philosophy and theoretical psychology are dominated by an acceptance of content-externalism: the view that the contents of one's mental states are constitutively, as opposed to causally, dependent on facts about the external world. In the present work, it is shown that content-externalism involves a failure to distinguish between semantics and pre-semantics---between, on the one hand, the literal meanings of expressions and, on the other hand, the information that one must exploit in order to ascertain their literal meanings. It is (...) further shown that, given the falsity of content-externalism, the falsity of the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) follows. It is also shown that CTM involves a misunderstanding of terms such as "computation," "syntax," "algorithm," and "formal truth." Novel analyses of the concepts expressed by these terms are put forth. These analyses yield clear, intuition-friendly, and extensionally correct answers to the questions "what are propositions?, "what is it for a proposition to be true?", and "what are the logical and psychological differences between conceptual (propositional) and non-conceptual (non-propositional) content?" Naively taking literal meaning to be in lockstep with cognitive content, Burge, Salmon, Falvey, and other semantic externalists have wrongly taken Kripke's correct semantic views to justify drastic and otherwise contraindicated revisions of commonsense. (Salmon: What is non-existent exists; at a given time, one can rationally accept a proposition and its negation. Burge: Somebody who is having a thought may be psychologically indistinguishable from somebody who is thinking nothing. Falvey: somebody who rightly believes himself to be thinking about water is psychologically indistinguishable from somebody who wrongly thinks himself to be doing so and who, indeed, isn't thinking about anything.) Given a few truisms concerning the differences between thought-borne and sentence-borne information, the data is easily modeled without conceding any legitimacy to any one of these rationality-dismantling atrocities. (It thus turns out, ironically, that no one has done more to undermine Kripke's correct semantic points than Kripke's own followers!). (shrink)

It is argued (a) that laws are assurances of protections of rights and (b) that governments are protectors of rights. Lest those assurances be empty and thus not really be assurances at all, laws must be enforced and governments must therefore have the power to coerce. For this reason, the government of a given region tends to have, as Max Weber put it, a "monopoly on power" in that region. And because governments are power-monopolizers, it is tempting to think that (...) the concepts of government and law are to be understood in terms of the concept of power. In actuality, the first two concepts are to be understood primarily in terms of the concept of morality--of rights-protection, to be specific--and only secondarily in terms of the concept of power. Contentions (a) and (b) appear to be inconsistent with obvious facts (e.g. the fact that Pol Pot's regime violated the rights of those over whom it had power). But (a) and (b) are compatible with those facts. This is a consequence of two principles. First, moral requirements have a "dimension of weight," as Dworkin put it, meaning that one moral imperative can be outweighed, without being obliterated, by another moral imperative. Second, sentential operators can have different degrees of scope. "It is hereby assured that" is such an operator. Linguistic surface structure may obfuscate the degree of scope that it has in a given sentence. That fact compatibilizes our analysis with the fact that there are evil laws and evil governments. (shrink)

What is the relation between acting intentionally and acting for a reason? While this question has generated a considerable amount of debate in the philosophy of action, on one point there has been a virtual consensus: actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional. Recently, this consensus has been challenged by Joshua Knobe and Sean Kelly, who argue against it on the basis of empirical evidence concerning the ways in which ordinary speakers of the English language describe and explain certain (...) side-effect actions. Knobe and Kelly's argument is of interest not only because it challenges a widely accepted philosophical thesis on the basis of experimental evidence, but also because it indirectly raises an important and largely neglected question, the question of whether or in what sense an agent can perform a side-effect action for a reason. In this article, I address this question and provide a positive answer to it. Specifically, I argue that agents act for a reason whenever they perform side-effect actions as trade-offs. Thus, I claim that there are three distinct types of rational action: actions performed as ends in themselves, actions performed as means to further ends, and side-effect actions performed as trade-offs. Given this multiplicity of types of rational action, the question of whether or not actions performed for a reason are necessarily intentional is in need of refinement. The more specific question that lies at the heart of this article is whether or not side-effect actions performed as trade-offs are necessarily intentional. I conclude that, contrary to what Knobe and Kelly suggest, the question remains open. (shrink)

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)

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.

It is said what aggregative properties are and also what emergent properties are, and examples are given each of kind of property. It is also explained why, even though all emergent properties are aggregative properties, not all aggregative properties are emergent properties. It is further made clear that, strictly speaking, emergence is a property of one's knowledge of a given kind of aggregate, and not of such aggregates themselves, this being why a property that is emergent at one time will, (...) when additional information becomes available, cease to be emergent. And it is explained why, for this very reason, the right answer to the question 'why does X exist?' is never 'because X is an emergent property.'. (shrink)

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

Lack of coordination is an expression of internal conflict.