The mainstream view in the philosophy of language holds that every meaningful sentence has a truth-condition. This view, however, runs into difficulties with non-objective sentences such as sentences on matters of taste or value: these do not appear to be either true or false, but are generally taken to be meaningful. How can this conflict be resolved? -/- Truth Without Objectivity examines various ways of resolving this fundamental problem, before developing and defending its own original solution, a relativist theory of (...) truth. Standard solutions maintain either that in uttering non-objective sentences speakers make implicit reference to their own preferences and thus have unproblematic truth conditions, or that they have no truth conditions at all. Max Kölbel argues that both of these proposed solutions are inadequate, and that a third well-known position, minimalism, can only solve the problem if it is developed in the direction of relativism about truth. -/- Kölbel defends the idea that truth (as invoked in semantics) is a neutral notion: a sentence’s possessing a truth condition does not yet entail that it concerns an objective subject matter, because truth and objectivity are independent of one another. He argues that this notion of ‘truth without objectivity’ leads directly to relativism about truth, and goes on to defend one form of relativism against well-known objections. (shrink)

These essays reveal another side of Horkheimer, focusing on his remarkable contributions to critical theory in the 1930s. Max Horkheimer is well known as the director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research and as a sometime collaborator with Theodor Adorno, especially on their classic Dialectic of Enlightenment. These essays reveal another side of Horkheimer, focusing on his remarkable contributions to critical theory in the 1930s. Included are Horkheimer's inaugural address as director of the Institute, in which he outlines the (...) interdisciplinary research program that would dominate the initial phase of the Frankfurt School, his first full monograph, and a number of other pieces published in the 1930s. The essays, most of which have not appeared in English before, are surprisingly relevant to current post-philosophy debates, notably "On the Problem of Truth," with its focus on pragmatism, and "The Rationalism Debate in Current Philosophy," a sustained critique of the post-Cartesian philosophy of consciousness. Horkheimer's 1933 critique of Kantian ethics, "Materialism and Morality," is of particular interest given the current reaction to the neo-Kantian aspect of Habermas's work. There are also essays relevant to the current foundations debate within Continental philosophy, and the rationality/relativism question is sustained throughout the volume. (shrink)

Philosophical critics standardly read behaviorism as a program for defining the concepts of folk psychology in equivalent behavioral terms. This is a misreading. Behaviorism is a program for getting rid of ill-defined mentalistic terms in favor of better defined behavioral idiom. In short, it is a program not for conceptual analysis but for verbal reform. Therefore, criticizing behaviorists for failing to define mentalistic concepts is like criticizing opponents of the Spanish Inquisition for failing to define witchcraft.

An in-depth look at the theory of solidarity of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, serving also as a comprehensive introduction to his work.

These critical remarks attempt to point out the role which modern philosophical anthropology can play in historical theories of the present day. In order to grasp correctly the historical tendencies of the present period, it is necessary to take into account the special characteristics of modern man. Modern philosophical anthropology is criticized by H. because it attempts to picture man in his fundamental essence as a permanent and unchangeable entity, instead of studying him from the viewpoint of a theory of (...) historical change. Today it is necessary to emphasize the difference in human qualities between different social groups and to understand the interconnection between the changes of human types and the whole social development. But philosophical anthropology attempts to consider the essence of man as permanent and independent of historical change, and thus to impart meaning to individual and social life. In this way it proves its relationship to metaphysics and religion. In contradiction to this, H. indicates the results that might be achieved on the basis of an historical approach. He shows how the attitude of modern man towards contracts has changed in the last decades ; how the principle of equality has taken on an entirely different meaning ; how the human qualities of sympathy and understanding change their essence and their functions and are being transferred from one social group to another.Pour saisir exactement les tendances historiques de l'époque actuelle, il est nécessaire de tenir compte aussi du caractère propre et des transformations des hommes d'aujourd'hui. L'anthropologie philosophique moderne est critiquée par H. parce qu'elle cherche à dessiner une image éternelle de l'homme, alors que les études anthropologiques devraient être pénétrées d'esprit historique. Alors qu’il importe aujourd’hui de dégager les différences des qualités humaines dans les divers groupes sociaux, de comprendre le lien des transformations des types humains et de l’évolution de la société dans son ensemble, l’anthropologie philosophique veut fixer une fois pour toutes l'essence de l’homme et donner par là un sens à l’existence individuelle et sociale. Elle montre ainsi qu’elle est solidaire de la métaphysique et de la religion. H. oppose à cette méthode une recherche anthropologique qui serait orientée aux problèmes historiques, et il donne quelques indications sur cette anthropologie. J1 montre comment l’attitude de l’homme actuel à l’égard des engagements et des traités s’est transformée dans les dernières dizaines d’années, comment la categorie d'égalité comme détermination des hommes prend des significations toutes différentes, comment les qualités humaines de compréhension et de sympathie changent de nature et de fonction, passent d’un groupe social à un autre. (shrink)

In 1925-26, the late Max Born gave two sets of lectures at M.I.T., one on the structure of the atom, the other on the lattice theory of rigid bodies. Problems of Atomic Dynamics contains the text of both sets.What gives this volume its remarkable interest is just those dates: 1925-26. This must have been, by all accounts, the headiest period in twentieth-century physics, and Max Born was one of the leaders of the ferment. As Norbert Wiener remembers, "When Professor Born (...) came to the United States [for these lectures in 1925] he was enormously excited about the new basis Heisenberg had just given for the quantum theory of the atom."These lectures represent perhaps the most vivid written record of the transition between the "old" quantum theory of Bohr, and the "new" theory. "At the time I began this course of lectures," Born writes, "Heisenberg's first paper on the new quantum theory had just appeared. Here his masterly treatment gave the quantum theory an entirely new turn. The paper of Jordan and myself, in which we recognized the matrix calculus as the proper formulation of Heisenberg's ideas, was in press, and the manuscript of a third paper by the three of us was almost completed."Even as the lecture series progressed, Born became familiar with new results, which he introduced into his presentation: Pauli's fourth quantum number, Dirac's formalism, his own work on a general operational calculus. And yet, in spite of the conditions of revolutionary changes in physics that year -- in which established ancien regime principles were collapsing almost monthly -- the theory is developed with a cool elegance and with a formal completeness which may be regarded as a "limiting case" of its current state. These lectures represent the foundations of quantum theory, and they have withstood the tests of time -- the tests of more than forty years of experimental evidence. (shrink)

Weber’s improvised reply to Werner Sombart’s lecture on ‘Technology and Culture’, presented at the first meeting of the German Sociological Society in 1910, opens and closes with an appeal to uphold the principle of ‘value-freedom’ in academic discussions. Referring to the capitalist development of antiquity as an illustration, Weber argues for a factually precise conception of technology and against a Marxist definition in terms of economic causality or property relations. Turning to the influence of technology in the development of formal (...) aesthetic values, his primary emphasis is on how the modern metropolis gives rise to new forms of literature, painting, architecture and especially orchestral music. The editorial notes to this translation place Weber’s remarks in the context of his critical relationship to predecessors and contemporaries (including many of those present at the conference) and within the thematic development of his career-long studies on the rise of occidental rationalism. (shrink)

There are many reasons to assume that the contents expressible by declarative sentences are generally truth-evaluable. This assumption of global truth-evaluability, however, appears to conflict with the view that the contents of some sentences do not admit of truth or falsehood for lack of objectivity of their subject matter. Could there be a notion of truth on which the truth-evaluability of a content does not rule out the non-objectivity of its subject matter?In this paper, I discuss Crispin Wright's criterion of (...) Cognitive Command as a criterion for objectivity. This criterion faces the Problem of A Priori Error. I reject Wright's response to that problem and propose to solve the problem by relativising truth. This move allows for the possibility of contents that are truth-evaluable yet non-objective. (shrink)

It is controversial whether a property can both be dispositional and causally efficacious. Mackie and Armstrong hold that dispositions can be causes, Prior, Pargetter and Jackson argue that they cannot. However, all parties of the debate agree on two ideas: 1) The dispositional properties at issue are macroscopic, and in principle reducible to a microscopic reduction base. 2) Only the microphysical base properties are causally efficacious. The disagreement is about whether the macroscopic disposition inherits this efficacy by being identical to (...) its reduction base (Armstrong) or is epiphenomenal because not identical to its reduction base (Prior, Pargetter and Jackson). I challenge thesis 2, which seems plausible only if one conflates two senses of the word “basis” that can be clearly distinguished thanks to the predicate/property distinction. I show that the categorical basis of a disposition need not be its microscopic reduction basis. This allows me to defend the idea that macroscopic dispositional properties can be distinct from their microscopic base properties and nevertheless efficacious. Part of the importance of this topic lies in its bearing on the nature of mental properties: If I am correct about macroscopic dispositions in general, it becomes plausible to argue that mental properties of a subject are dispositional properties which are nevertheless causally efficacious for the subject's actions. (shrink)