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)

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.

This paper shows that Russell’s theory of descriptions gives the wrong semantics for definite descriptions occurring in questions and imperatives. Depending on how that theory is applied, it either assigns nonsense to perfectly meaningful questions and assertions or it assigns meanings that diverge from the actual semantics of such sentences, even after all pragmatic and contextual variables are allowed for. Given that Russell’s theory is wrong for questions and assertions, it must be wrong for assertoric statements; for the semantics of (...) ‘the phi’ obviously doesn’t vary depending on whether it occurs in a question or an assertion or a command. (shrink)

The most basic laws and principles of the Predicate Calculus, also known as Quantification Theory, are stated, as clearly and concisely as possible.

Les sciences empiriques font des suppositions qu'elles ne sont pas elles-mêmes capables de justifier. La philosophie justifie ces hypothèses; C'est son travail.

The significance of the concept of a mathematical transformation is explained. In particular, it is explained how to construct true statements concerning n-dimensional spaces, for arbitrary n, on the basis of true statements concerning two-dimensional spaces.

This book concisely states the main laws and precepts of formal logic along with their immediate corollaries. Commentary is kept to a minimum.

The bureaucrat's intellectual configuration is identical with the psychopath's.

Does the conceit in question expand awareness or narrow it? If it narrows it, then it is pathological. It if expands it, it is non-pathological.

The theorems of the propositional calculus and the predicate calculus are stated, and the analogous principles of Boolean Algebra are identified. Also, the primary principles of modal logic are stated, and a procedure is described for identifying their Boolean analogues.

It is made clear what discursive knowledge is and how we acquire it, and some age-old skeptical views are shown to be incoherent. It is shown that all knowledge is to some degree inferential. At the same time, it is shown that there are three quite distinct senses in which empirical knowledge can be inferential. It is proved that we have a priori knowledge, and also that knowledge of non-empirical truths is needed to acquire empirical knowledge. Finally, it is clearly (...) explained what prediction is, what explanation is, how the two differ, and how they are similar. (shrink)

Une introduction rapide aux problèmes fondamentaux de l'éthique, ce travail consiste en des réponses pointues et profondes aux questions fondamentales: * les obligations légales ont-elles un poids moral? * peut-on agir immoralement envers soi-même? * Quelle est la base objective des revendications morales légitimes? * Comment savons-nous le bien du mal? * Comment peut-il y avoir une responsabilité morale dans un monde déterministe? -/- Rigoureux mais accessible, ce travail est une introduction idéale à l'éthique analytique et à la théorie de (...) la valeur. (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)

This book concisely explicates and evaluates four doctrines concerning the nature of moral obligation: hedonism (one's sole moral obligation is to enjoy oneself); egoism (one's sole moral obligation is to serve one's own interests); consequentialism (the ends justify the means), and deontology (the ends do not justify the means).

It is concisely explained how to conquer OCD.

In this book, Kant's ethical system is clearly stated and carefully critiqued. In the process, cogent answers are given to the following questions: -/- *What is the relationship between self-interest and morality? *What is the relationship between morality and rationality? *What is the nature of rationality? *What is the difference between rationality and intelligence? *What is the relationship between awareness of moral norms and awareness of logical norms? -/- A must-read for anyone interested in philosophical psychology, moral epistemology, or Kant-interpretation, (...) this brisk monograph provides a long-overdue alternative to the dreary and opaque tomes on which Kant-aficionados have thus far had to rely. (shrink)

Neuroses are secondary mental illnesses, it being their purpose to contain psychoses.

Obsessions are internalized compulsions, and compulsions are externalized obsessions.

Obsessive fears are unconscious desires. The woman who is obsessively afraid that her phone is tapped actually wants her phone to be tapped; that is, she wants someone to pay attention to her. A neurotic fear of such and such is actually an unconscious desire for such and such, this being the topic of this brutally honest exchange.

Some psychoanalytic truths are identified and some of their practical corollaries are identified.

Some illnesses, e.g. OCD and schizophrenia, corrupt the activity mediated by one's basic psychological framework but do not corrupt that framework itself. But some illnesses, e.g. psychopathy, corrupt that framework itself. Thus, whereas OCD and schizophrenia are structure-internal mental illnesses, psychopathy is a structural mental illness. Structure-internal mental illnesses can be alleviated, but structural mental illnesses cannot.

In this paper, it is shown that an event E can be the cause of an event E* even if there is a less than 100% likelihood that, given an arbitrary E-similar event, an E*-similar event will ensue.

A context that is not expanded by the intelligence within it---that is only internally articulated by that intelligence---is a zero-sum context and is therefore not worth being in.

It is proved that time travel is impossible.

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.

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)

It is shown (i) that causation exists, since we couldn't even ask whether causation existed unless it did; (ii) that any given case of causation is a case of persistence; and (iii) that spatiotemporal relations supervene on causal relations. (ii) is subject to the qualification that we tend not to become aware of instances of causation as such except when two different causal lines---i.e. two different cases of persistence---intersect, resulting in a breakdown of some other case of persistence, this being (...) why we tend to regard instances of causation as fundamentally disruptive, as opposed to preservative in nature. The meaning of (iii) is that spatiotemporal relations are causal relations considered in abstraction of the various specific differences holding between different kinds of causation. (shrink)

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)

How a person is on the inside replicates how he is on the outside—so he is a fractal in that sense. And how he is in little matters replicates how he is in big ones—so he is a fractal in that sense as well. And so it is that a person’s identity has a doubly fractal structure.

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.

It is established that bullshit is institutional truth that is not actual truth.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This volume brings together some of Dr. Kuczynski's most important work on mathematical logic. The crushing power of Kuczynski's intellect is on full display in these paper, in which he introduces the neophyte to the basic principles of set theory and logic while at the very same time articulating new and important theorems of his own.