Festschrift honoring P.F. Strawson; includes contributed articles on his contributions in logic and on logic.

This is a transcript of a conversation between P F Strawson and Gareth Evans in 1973, filmed for The Open University. Under the title 'Truth', Strawson and Evans discuss the question as to whether the distinction between genuinely fact-stating uses of language and other uses can be grounded on a theory of truth, especially a 'thin' notion of truth in the tradition of F P Ramsey.

Since its publication in 1959, Individuals has become a modern philosophical classic. Bold in scope and ambition, it continues to influence debates in metaphysics, philosophy of logic and language, and epistemology. Peter Strawson's most famous work, it sets out to describe nothing less than the basic subject matter of our thought. It contains Strawson's now famous argument for descriptive metaphysics and his repudiation of revisionary metaphysics, in which reality is something beyond the world of appearances. Throughout, Individuals advances some highly (...) influential and controversial ideas, such as 'non-solipsistic consciousness' and the concept of a person a 'primitive concept'. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Life Themes Definite descriptions and reference Truth Logical theory Meaning and related notions Individuals Persons and states of mind Subjects and predicates The bounds of sense Responses to skepticism Freedom and resentment Conclusion.

P.F. Strawson has been a major and influential spokesman for ordinary language philosophy throughout the late twentieth century, studying the relationship between common language and the language of formal logic. This reissue of his collection of early essays, Logico-Linguistic Papers, is published with a brand new introduction by Professor Strawson but, apart from minor corrections to the text, these classic essays remain original and intact. Logico-Linguistic Papers contains Strawson's major essay, 'On Referring', in which he disputed Bertrand Russell's theory of (...) definite descriptions, distinguishing between referring to an entity and asserting its existence. The book contains twelve essays in all, grouped by subject matter. The first five are concerned with the topic of singular reference and predication and the last three are all responses to J.L. Austin's treatment of the topic of truth. Strawson disputes the correspondence theory of truth, maintaining that facts are what statements state. The remaining papers deal with meaning, speech acts, logical truth and Chomsky's views on syntax. (shrink)

North .—What is the trouble about moral facts? When someone denies that there is an objective moral order, or asserts that ethical propositions are pseudo-propositions, cannot I refute him by saying: “You know very well that Brown did wrong in beating his wife. You know very well that you ought to keep promises. You know very well that human affection is good and cruelty bad, that many actions are wrong and some are right”? West .—Isn't the trouble about moral facts (...) another case of trouble about knowing, about learning? We find out facts about the external world by looking and listening; about ourselves, by feeling; about other people, by looking and listening and feeling. When this is noticed, there arises a wish to say that the facts are what is seen, what is heard, what is felt; and, consequently, that moral facts fall into one of these classes. So those who have denied that there are “objective moral characteristics” have not wanted to deny that Brown's action was wrong or that keeping promises is right. (shrink)

The aim is to uncover the foundations of quine's distinction between definite singular terms and general terms in predicative position, And hence of the general schema of predication, 'fx'. While each term in such a predication specifies its own item, The items so specified exhibit a typical difference exemplified in the basic case by the difference between spatio-Temporal particulars and properties of such particulars. A generally consequential difference of role is that while both terms are applied to the item of (...) lower type, Only the definite singular term has the function of identifying it. (shrink)

The book pays close attention to Wittgenstein's own remarks on religious belief, arranging them against the background of his broader philosophical methodology, ...

Philosophy differs from most other disciplines in that one of the questions with which its practitioners are professionally concerned is its own nature. There is nothing surprising about this since, having no special subject-matter of its own, it is free—and perhaps obliged—to enquire into the special nature of every discipline. But, such an obligation presumes that we know what in general we are—or should be—up to in philosophy. What is, in fact, our objective? To establish how we should live, the (...) nature of the good life? To determine the scope and limits of human knowledge? To achieve self-understanding? If properly understood, I think the last suggestion is correct. I do not mean that we should turn into psychologists or social scientists. Rather, I mean that our essential, if not our only, business is to get a clear view of our most general working concepts or types of concept and of their place in our lives. We should aim at general human conceptual self-understanding. (shrink)

Traduçáo. texto Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabela normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} retirado de Carlos E. Caorsi (Ed.). Ensayos sobre Strawson . Universidad de la República/Faculdad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Montevidéo,1992, p. 55-71.

My topic is personal identity, or rather,ouridentity. There is general, but not, of course, unanimous, agreement that it is wrong to give an account of what is involved in, and essential to, our persistence over time which requires the existence of immaterial entities, but, it seems to me, there is no consensus about how, within, what might be called this naturalistic framework, we should best procede. This lack of consensus, no doubt, reflects the difficulty, which must strike anyone who has (...) considered the issue, of achieving, just in one's own thinking, a reflective equilibrium. The theory of personal identity, I feel, provides a curious contrast. On the one side, it seems highly important to know what sort of thing we are, but, on the other, it is hard to find any answer which has a ‘solid’ feel. (shrink)

Wiggins recently proposed construing frege's 'unsaturated expressions' as containing two elements, Viz., (1) a copula and (2) a general term standing for a concept; but he argued that concepts, So understood, Were not to be identified with properties. While accepting the above division of 'unsaturated expressions', I argue, Contra wiggins, That concepts, So understood, Were precisely to be identified with properties.

P. F. Strawson; II*—Scruton and Wright on Anti-Realism Etc., Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 77, Issue 1, 1 June 1977, Pages 15–22, https://doi.