Philosophers after Leibniz used a technical idiom to classify and explain the nature of mental content. Substantive philosophical claims were formulated in terms of this vocabulary, including claims about the nature of mental representations, concepts, unconscious mental content, and consciousness. Despite its importance, the origin and development of this vocabulary is insufficiently well understood. More specifically, interpreters have failed to recognize the existence of two distinct and influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. These competing formulations used the same (...) technical terms and taxonomic relations but assigned different connotations to those terms and employed different criteria for their application. This paper explains the two most influential versions of the post-Leibnizian idiom. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and PhilosophyMartin WarnerPeter Ramus continues to muddy the waters where philosophers meet rhetoric. Aristotle defined rhetoric in terms of the modes of persuasion as an independent discipline, the counterpart of dialectic. Ramus’s sixteenth century revision of the intellectual map reclassified it as at best an adjunct of dialectic, to be conceived in terms of elocutio and pronunciatio, an approach that in the English-speaking world led to its reduction (...) to mere ornamentation—the application of figures and tropes—opening the way to Stoppard’s (anachronistic) debasement: 1Guildenstern: What in God’s name is going on?Rosencrantz: Foul! No rhetoric. Two-one.Both approaches are current, which makes for confusion. Two characteristic examples will suffice. The approach to rhetoric of Jeff Mason’s Philosophical Rhetoric is broadly Aristotelian but Roger Crisp’s review criticizes the book on the ground that “some philosophers just do not employ rhetorical techniques,” techniques which are broadly identified with the figures and tropes. Similarly, my own introduction to The Bible as Rhetoric opens by defining rhetoric in Aristotelian terms, but the Times Literary Supplement reviewer—evidently a closet Ramist—takes one of my contributors to task for using the word “rhetoric” in his title but providing “very little in the way of an examination of... linguistic features.” 2These examples illustrate the way two main conceptions of rhetoric appear to be at play when philosophers discuss the topic; one is concerned with the means of persuasion, the other with qualities of [End Page 106] style. Of course these cannot always easily be separated, for it may be that certain qualities of style figure prominently among the available means of persuasion, but a useful test of the conception an individual has of the topic may be judged by how he or she reacts to the (deliberately provocative) opening sentence of my introduction to The Bible as Rhetoric: “Rational argument is one of the most effective rhetorical modes we know.” Mason’s conception of the “plain style” of the philosophical logicians as rhetorical style fits this Aristotelian approach well, but for the more Ramist Crisp such examples are “unlikely candidates” for rhetorical status and Mason’s conception “forced.” So it may be as well to consider contemporary work on the philosophy/rhetoric borderline under two heads: the Ramist and the Aristotelian. But that borderline itself invites a further distinguo; philosophical analysis of rhetoric and rhetorical analysis of philosophy, though this distinction, too, is not absolute. This gives us a convenient set of quadrants, so for expository purposes I shall consider the contemporary relations between rhetoric and philosophy under four main heads.First, philosophical analysis of “rhetoric” understood in a stylistic or Ramist sense. Here the most significant work has been on metaphor, conceived as a “trope,” and related rhetorical devices. Whereas with “figures” the meaning of each individual word remains the same inside the figure as outside it, with the trope the matter is different. Quintilian defined a “trope” (or “turn”) as “the artistic alteration of a word or phrase from its proper meaning (significatione) to another,” 3 which suggests that use can determine meaning—and with this claim we are at the heart of a philosophical storm centre.It is conventional to distinguish between syntax (the study of formal relationships between expressions), semantics (in the narrower sense, as the study of the relations between linguistic items and the non-linguistic items to which they typically apply), and pragmatics (the study of the relations between linguistic expressions and the use or users of these expressions). One very powerful strand in contemporary philosophy of language sees matters concerning meaning and truth as analyzable in terms of the first two categories without any essential reference to linguistic use or users. Behind this lies a history going back at least to the Enlightenment project of a universal language or “character” in which each word would relate to a different idea and the syntax be transparent; Leibniz’s logical work was in part intended as a contribution to the syntax of the universal character, and although the semantics proved intractable, the logical positivist movement—with post-Leibnizian [End Page 107] logical syntax providing the framework within which... (shrink)

In the 1930s, C. I. Lewis, who was responsible for the revival of modal logic in the era of modern symbolic logic, characterized ‘intensional’ approaches to logic as typical of post-Leibnizian ‘continental philosophy’, in contrast to the ‘extensionalist’ approaches dominant in the British tradition. Indeed Lewis’s own work in this area had been inspired by the logic of his teacher, the American ‘Absolute Idealist’, Josiah Royce. Hegel’s ‘Subjective Logic’ in Book III of hisScience of Logic, can, I (...) suggest, be considered as an intensional modal logic, and this paper explores parallels between it and a later variety of modal logic—tenselogic, as developed by Arthur Prior in the 1950s and 60s. Like Lewis, Prior too had been influenced in this area by a teacher with strong Hegelian leanings—John N. Findlay. Treated as anintensional(with an ‘s’) logic, Hegel’s subjective logic can be used as a framework for addressing issues ofintentionality(with a ‘t’)—the mind’s capacity to be intentionally directed to objects. In this way, I suggest that the structures of his subjective logic can clarify what is at issue in the ‘Psychology’ section of theEncyclopaediaPhilosophy of Subjective Spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany ed. by Corey W. DyckJulia BorcherdingCorey W. Dyck, editor. Women and Philosophy in Eighteenth-Century Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 272. Hardback, $85.00.In more ways than one, this volume constitutes an important contribution to ongoing efforts to reconfigure and enrich our existing philosophical canon and to question the narratives that have led to its current shape. To start, while (...) there is a growing amount of research dedicated to recovering the contributions of women to early modern philosophy, much of this work focuses on the seventeenth century, and geographically centers on England, France, and Italy. By turning the spotlight on eighteenth-century Germany, this volume broadens the scope of these efforts in an important way. Further, with the historiography of this period still shaped by a long-standing dismissive treatment of post-Leibnizian German philosophy and by the long shadow cast by the success of Kant's Critical philosophy, which eclipsed many of the thinkers opposed to it, challenges to its traditional narratives seem especially important. The editor's earlier collection (coedited with Falk Wunderlich) on Kant and his German contemporaries already succeeded in mounting such a challenge by showing that German philosophy throughout the eighteenth century in fact presents us with an extraordinarily rich tableau of intellectual life (Kant and His German Contemporaries. Vol. 1: Logic, Mind, Epistemology, Science and Ethics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018]).The present volume stands as a further valuable contribution to relativizing the still dominant narrative of German philosophy as the story of a select few brilliant minds. It successfully dispenses not only with the idea that those minds were few, but also with the equally persistent one that they were exclusively male. Already in the nineteenth century, we find historians such as Karl Joël explicitly casting the new age of German philosophy inaugurated by Kant as its "masculine epoch"—an image undoubtedly furthered by its main protagonist, who cast philosophical acumen in decidedly male terms when he observed that "[a] woman who has a head full of Greek, like Madame Dacier, or one who engages in debate about the intricacies of mechanics, like the Marquise du Châtelet, might just as well have a beard; for that expresses in a more recognizable form the profundity for which she strives" (Karl Joël, Die Frauen in der Philosophie [Hamburg, 1896], 48; Immanuel Kant, Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen [Königsberg, 1764], translation in Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989], 146; both cited in Eileen O'Neill, "Disappearing Ink: Early Modern Women Philosophers and Their Fate in History," in Philosophy in a Feminist [End Page 154] Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, ed. Janet A. Kourany [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997], 17–62). Yet as the contributions to this volume forcefully illustrate, women in the period did—in spite of the numerous severe social, religious, and political obstacles they faced—in fact manage to gain access to its intellectual sphere, and actively shaped its philosophical landscape.While the papers collected here are of high quality throughout, they do vary in their approach. Many chapters, especially in the earlier parts of the volume, investigate female figures as philosophers in their own right, and carve out their self-standing contributions to prominent philosophical movements and debates. Focusing on Sophie of Hanover's correspondence with Leibniz, Christian Leduc's chapter begins by examining her metaphysical views and argues, against standing interpretations, that her main aim is to defend a version of the doctrine of physical influence as an account of mind-body interaction while rejecting metaphysical commitments regarding the nature of the soul in favor of a more agnostic, Lockean empiricist approach. In chapter 3, Stefanie Buchenau shows how women engaging with Wolffian Schulphilosophie began to view themselves as more than teachers and translators and started to claim the title of philosophers. Using the example of Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Buchenau convincingly argues that despite the "feminine," aesthetic garb of her thought, Unzer in fact offers a serious critique and revision of the Wolffian model of... (shrink)

"Recent years have seen a growing interest among scholars of 18th-century German philosophy in the period between Wolff and Kant. This book challenges traditional interpretations of this period that focus largely on post-Leibnizian rationalism and, accordingly, on a depreciation of the contribution of the senses to knowledge about the world and the self. It addresses the divergent ways in which eighteenth-century German philosophers reconceived the notion and role of experience in their efforts to identify, defend, and contest (...) the contribution of foundational a priori principles and empirical data to the various branches of metaphysics, the natural sciences, and emerging disciplines such as psychology and aesthetics. The chapters are organized according to the four major schools that defined the various phases of German Enlightenment philosophy: Wolff and Wolffianism, Eclecticism and Populärphilosophie, the Berlin Academy, and Kant. Each chapter is devoted to one or more philosophers, several of whom are seriously under investigated or even unknown outside small circles of specialists. By framing the period in terms of the notion of experience, this book presents a more nuanced understanding of the German reception of British and French ideas and theories, dismisses the prevailing view that German philosophy was largely isolated from European debates, introduces a number of relatively unknown, but highly relevant philosophers and developments to non-specialized scholars, and contributes to a better understanding of the richness and complexity of the German Enlightenment"--. (shrink)

This paper employs the revised conception of Leibniz emerging from recent research to reassess critically the ‘radical spiritual revolution’ which, according to Alexandre Koyré’s landmark book, From the closed world to the infinite universe was precipitated in the seventeenth century by the revolutions in physics, astronomy, and cosmology. While conceding that the cosmological revolution necessitated a reassessment of the place of value-concepts within cosmology, it argues that this reassessment did not entail a spiritual revolution of the kind assumed by Koyré, (...) in which ‘value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim’ were shed from the conception of the structure of the universe altogether. On the contrary, thanks to his pioneering intuition of the distinction between physical and metaphysical levels of explanation, Leibniz saw with great clarity that a scientific explanation of the universe which rejected the ‘closed world’ typical of Aristotelian cosmology did not necessarily require the abandonment of key metaphysical doctrines underlying the Aristotelian conception of the universe. Indeed the canon of value-concepts mentioned by Koyré—meaning, aim, perfection and harmony—reads like a list of the most important concepts underlying the Leibnizian conception of the metaphysical structure of the universe. Moreover, Leibniz’s universe, far from being a universe without God—because, as Clarke insinuated, it does not need intervention from God—is a universe which in its deepest ontological fabric is interwoven with the presence of God.Author Keywords: Leibniz; Koyré; Clarke; Universe; Cosmology; Harmony. (shrink)

This paper employs the revised conception of Leibniz emerging from recent research to reassess critically the 'radical spiritual revolution' which, according to Alexandre Koyre's landmark book, From the closed world to the infinite universe (1957) was precipitated in the seventeenth century by the revolutions in physics, astronomy, and cosmology. While conceding that the cosmological revolution necessitated a reassessment of the place of value-concepts within cosmology, it argues that this reassessment did not entail a spiritual revolution of the kind assumed by (...) Koyre, in which 'value-concepts, such as perfection, harmony, meaning and aim' were shed from the conception of the structure of the universe altogether. On the contrary, thanks to his pioneering intuition of the distinction between physical and metaphysical levels of explanation, Leibniz saw with great clarity that a scientific explanation of the universe which rejected the 'closed world' typical of Aristotelian cosmology did not necessarily require the abandonment of key metaphysical doctrines underlying the Aristotelian conception of the universe. Indeed the canon of value-concepts mentioned by Koyre-meaning, aim, perfection and harmony-reads like a list of the most important concepts underlying the Leibnizian conception of the metaphysical structure of the universe. Moreover, Leibniz's universe, far from being a universe without God-because, as Clarke insinuated, it does not need intervention from God-is a universe which in its deepest ontological fabric is interwoven with the presence of God. (shrink)

In this contribution, we first discuss the aspects of the analytic method conceived by Kant in the Deutlichkeit that differentiate it from the Wolffian method and relate it to the Newtonian method. Compared to the philosophical tradition, the task of analysing concepts appears profoundly changed. Since Kant aims philosophy towards the world, he considers concepts as something given and intends to discern their characteristic marks by observing their usual applications. Although Kant abandons any attempt to define concepts nominally, he (...) still gives great relevance to words to the extent that concepts, according to him, acquire their meaning in the linguistic usage. We will also point out how for Kant the linguistic usage makes the analysis of concepts anything but easy and how a hermeneutic process is necessary for its completion. In distinguishing philosophical signs from mathematical signs, Kant provides the semiotic reasons that underlie his recourse to hermeneutics. (shrink)

Aquinas’s Five Ways are often presented as standard cosmological arguments for God’s existence. They tend to be anthologized and presented independently of the metaphysical thought that informs them. Thus, when Aquinas deploys technical metaphysical issues in his articulation of the ways, the contemporary reader may have trouble interpreting them correctly. This is particularly the case when Aquinas uses terminology familiar to a contemporary reader that nevertheless should be understood within the context of Aquinas’s own metaphysical thought. The Third Way is (...) particularly challenging in this respect since it trades on modal notions that are familiar within a post-Leibnizian philosophical context but do not carry the same philosophical connotations. With that in mind, I propose to present a reading of the Third Way that is rooted within Aquinas’s own metaphysical thought and is defensible as an argument for God’s existence. (shrink)

The spiritual torsion and material complexity so characteristic of Baroque aesthetics is something that extends to (or perhaps, better, issues from) the intension of the term itself. This much is evident in the sense that, since the twentieth century, various projects have proposed such notions as a medical-baroque, a postcolonial-baroque, and a digital-baroque. Beyond any given object of analysis, then, in this way the Baroque adduces the concepts by which any inquiry into objects might take place. As such, the Baroque (...) can be said to be that which signals the ongoing relation of thought to the world, of ‘the inside’ to ‘the outside’ (while at the same time problematising the priority of either side over the other). Indeed, following certain post-Kantian readings of Leibnizian philosophy, the Baroque is to be regarded not so much as something to be understood but rather as a frenzied development of the understanding itself. (shrink)

Reproduction of the original: Post-Prandial Philosophy by Grant Allen.

This paper examines the origin, range and meaning of the Principle of Action and Reaction in Kant’s mechanics. On the received view, it is a version of Newton’s Third Law. I argue that Kant meant his principle as foundation for a Leibnizian mechanics. To find a ‘Newtonian’ law of action and reaction, we must look to Kant’s ‘dynamics,’ or theory of matter. I begin, in part I, by noting marked differences between Newton’s and Kant’s laws of action and reaction. (...) I argue that these are explainable by Kant’s allegiance to a Leibnizian mechanics. I show (in part II) that Leibniz too had a model of action and reaction, at odds with Newton’s. Then I reconstruct how Jakob Hermann and Christian Wolff received Leibniz’s model. I present (in Part III) Kant’s early law of action and reaction for mechanics. I show that he devised it so as to solve extant problems in the Hermann-Wolff account. I reconstruct Kant’s views on ‘mechanical’ action and reaction in the 1780s, and highlight strong continuities with his earlier, pre-Critical stance. I use these continuities, and Kant’s earlier engagement with post-Leibnizians, to explain the un-Newtonian features of his law of action and reaction. (shrink)

. In whatever form, terminal philosophy holds that some matters are so fundamental that they are presupposed in any practice of reason-giving; accordingly, if reason-giving were applied to such matters in order to justify them, or even to criticize, then the very attempt to do so would necessarily assume what is at issue, a fatal circularity . No further argumentative recourse is possible at this level of fundamentality ; rational reason-giving must terminate.

Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing is a poetic, insightful, and ultimately moving exploration of 'the strange science of writing.

From Nietzsche to the present, the Western philosophical tradition has been dominated by a secular thinking that has dismissed discussion of God as largely irrelevant. In recent years however, the issue of theology has returned to spark some of the most controversial debates within contemporary philosophy. Discussions of theology by key contemporary philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas have placed religion at centre stage. _Post-Secular Philosophy_ is one of the first volumes to consider how God has been approached by (...) modern philosophers and consider the links between theology and postmodern thought. Fifteen accessible essays present a clear and compelling picture of how key thinkers including Descartes, Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Derrida have made God a central part of their thinking. Each philosopher and how they have approached and criticised theology is placed in a clear historical context. Placing the collection in context with Phillip Blond's outstanding introduction, _Post-Secular Philosophy_ presents a fascinating discussion of the alternatives to the relativism and nihilism that dominate Western thinking. (shrink)

The concept of altruism, or disinterested concern for another's welfare, has been discussed by everyone from theologians to psychologists to biologists. In this book, evolutionary, neurological, developmental, psychological, social, cultural, and religious aspects of altruistic behavior are examined. It is a collaborative examination of one of humanity's essential and defining characteristics by renowned researchers from various disciplines. Their integrative dialogue illustrates that altruistic behavior is a significant mode of expression that can be studied by various scholarly methods and understood from (...) a variety of perspectives in both the humanities and the sciences. Altruism and Altruistic Love establishes a framework for scholarship on altruism by presenting definitions, a historical overview, a review of contemporary research, and debates in various disciplines, as well as a discussion of directions for future work. (shrink)

ExcerptIn 1985, a collection titled Post-Analytic Philosophy appeared (Columbia University Press). Advertised with overly optimistic blurbs from Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard, and featuring work by famous, pragmatically inclining, analytically trained philosophers such as Donald Davidson, Cornel West, Stanley Cavell, Arthur Danto, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, Thomas Kuhn, Thomas Nagel, and John Rawls, the text announced the death of analytic philosophy at least thirty or forty years after the fact. But if Wittgenstein, Quine, and others had long (...) ago convincingly refuted many of the core doctrines of “analytic philosophy,” British empiricism, logical positivism, and logical empiricism, many American philosophers continued…. (shrink)

This is a relatively short but important book. Boys-Stones argues for the following : Both Platonists and Christians from the end of the first century A.D. onwards grounded the authority of a doctrine in its antiquity. Christian writers claimed that Christianity is the expression of an ancient wisdom from which both Judaism and pagan philosophy are deviations. Platonists claimed that Plato gave the fullest expression to an ancient wisdom also preserved, though less perfectly, in the supposed writings of Orpheus (...) and Pythagoras. This approach is itself a development from the attempts of Platonists to resist skeptical arguments from the disagreements between different schools by claiming that the philosophical schools that developed after Plato changed his doctrines for the worse, this explaining their disagreements, combined with the appeal, developed by the Stoics and more widely influential in the early Imperial period, to a supposed wisdom of earlier mankind preserved in imperfect form in mythological doctrines. Boys-Stones draws careful distinctions: while the early Stoics distinguished between the pre-philosophical, natural understanding of the earliest humans, and the subsequent development of a conscious inquiry into nature, Posidonius argued for the presence of philosophers even in the Golden Age, resisting an innate human tendency towards evil. Boys-Stones describes how the first-century A.D. Stoic Cornutus took the further step of arguing that the early philosophers themselves expressed their doctrines in allegorical form, whereas for the early Stoics the contributions of poets had obscured the truth rather than expressing it. A new emphasis on antiquity is also apparent, Boys-Stones argues, in Josephus’s responses to Hellenistic anti-Semitic arguments, and in Philo of Alexandria’s readiness to interpret Greek myths as allegorical expressions of the truth. Thus, for Boys-Stones, and together gave rise to the view that Plato gave the fullest expression to truths which derived their authority from their antiquity. (shrink)

In the wake of Brexit and Trump, the debate surrounding post-truth fills the newspapers and is at the center of the public debate. Democratic institutions and the rule of law have always been constructed and legitimized by discourses of truth. And so the issue of "post-truth" or "fake truth" can be regarded as a contemporary degeneration of that legitimacy. But what, precisely, is post-truth from a theoretical point of view? Can it actually change perceptions of law, of (...) institutions and political power? And can it affect our understanding of society and social relations? What are its ideological premises? What are the technical conditions that foster it? And most importantly, does it have anything to teach lovers of the truth? Pursuing an interdisciplinary perspective, this book gathers both well-known and newer scholars from a range of subject areas, to engage in a philosophical interrogation of the relationship between truth and law. (shrink)

Ecologists traditionally regard time as part of the background against which ecological interactions play out. In this book, Eric Post argues that time should be treated as a resource used by organisms for growth, maintenance, and offspring production. Post uses insights from phenology -- the study of the timing of life-cycle events -- to present a theoretical framework of time in ecology that casts long-standing observations in the field in an entirely new light. Combining conceptual models with field (...) data, he demonstrates how phenological advances, delays, and stasis, documented in an array of taxa, can all be viewed as adaptive components of an organism's strategic use of time. Post shows how the allocation of time by individual organisms to critical life history stages is not only a response to environmental cues but also an important driver of interactions at the population, species, and community levels. To demonstrate the applications of this exciting new conceptual framework, Time in Ecology uses meta-analyses of previous studies as well as Post's original data on the phenological dynamics of plants, caribou, and muskoxen in Greenland.--Back cover. (shrink)

In his undertaking to articulate the manifold of Leibnizian thought in view of a unified focal point, Kaehler concentrates on the relation between logic and metaphysics, which was inaugurated in the beginning of metaphysical thinking and which at the same time takes on special relevance in modern metaphysics. In light of the tendency, evident in post-Leibnizian metaphysics, to deprive logic of the status of a mere organon, of an ars, and to grant it a closer relation to (...) metaphysics, this viewpoint can lay claim to eminent interest. Kaehler’s main thesis is that Leibnizian logic as the science of the formal structures of truth points beyond itself to material presuppositions that can be realized only in a theology of reason. The simple and extremely composite concepts, which are inaccessible to the finite mens, demand as their correlate the establishment of the concept of a perfect reason. The ground of the investigation is laid by situating Leibniz’s logic within the framework of his metaphysics and by working out the ambivalence of the independence, “autonomy”, and reliance of natural reason on an infinite reason: “for natural reason, which metaphysically represents it, the ultima ratio has to be not only the cause of its being, but in the end also the ground of its knowledge”. A comprehensive and detailed reconstruction of Leibniz’s logic constitutes the main part of this work, a reconstruction which is centered on the aforementioned transition from the scientia generalis to metaphysics. The reconstruction of the systematic context of the logical forms, in that it articulates the genesis of these from one another out of their mere juxtaposition, goes beyond, on the one hand, what Leibniz himself achieved, but remains, on the other hand, within the bounds of the Leibnizian position insofar as the claim to a unified organization of the totality of natural reason’s knowledge of the forms of truth lies in the validity of the principium rationis itself—the fundamental presupposition of his logic. Kaehler surveys the region of Leibniz’s logic as a singular exposition of the natura veritatis; it must in the end always be possible to trace the forms of truth back to the relation of the containedness : “The predicate or the consequent is always in the subject or the antecedent. And the natura veritatis in general, or the connection between the terms of the statement, consists therein.” The procedure of the reconstruction is revealed in nucleo already in the presentation of the principal fundament of logic. It is easy to follow Kaehler’s reading of the principle of reason as the unfolding of the nature of truth. Yet the reconstructive intention first becomes manifest in the presentation of the principle of non-contradiction. Although Leibniz does not extensively discuss the interconnection of these principles, Kaehler takes the principle of non-contradiction to be a further determination of the principle of reason insofar as identity can be thought as identity only via its relation to contradiction: “The negation of the negation of truth, as the latter’s contradiction, first achieves the principal affirmation of reason as identity”. Kaehler’s systematization of Leibniz’s logic thus seems to pursue two objectives. First, it aims at the reduction of the entirety of logical knowledge to the natura veritatis—first of all at the reduction of the “two great principles” to the latter, then at the reduction of the inferences to statements and of statements to concepts. But second, the manifold of logical forms is not merely reduced to its principle; rather, their interrelation is posited as one of reflection, and here reflection means: the more developed and differentiated forms make explicit that which the simple forms contain. In order to indicate how these two objectives of the reconstruction intersect, we shall take up the elementary transition from categorical to hypothetical statements. (shrink)

Born 80 years ago, Continental Philosophy is on its last legs. Its extraordinary career has been helped along by an almost total absence of interest on the part of analytic or other exact philosophers in what the Australian philosopher David Stove calls "the nosology of philosophy" 1, the exploration of the manifold forms taken by bad philosophy. Stove points out that such an enterprise involves doing history. A nosology of Continental Philosophy is, at least in the (...) first instance, inseparable from the history of this strand in twentieth century philosophy, a history which would make clear the relations, philosophical and historical, between it and exact philosophy. Rorty is quite right to point to the absence of such a historical perspective. (shrink)

In order to defend the regress argument for foundationalism against Post’s objection that relevant forms of inferential justification are not transitive, Lydia McGrew and Timothy McGrew define a relation E of positive evidence, which, they contend, has the following features: It is a necessary condition for any inferential justification; it is transitive and irreflexive; and it enables both a strengthened regress argument proof against Post’s objection and an argument that nothing can ever appear in its own justificational ancestry. (...) In reply, we construct in their own terms both a counterexample to the would-be transitivity of E, and a related objection to their never-in-its-own-ancestry argument. We also rebut their rejection of certain counterexamples to the would-be transitivity of some forms of inferential justification. By doing so, and by questioning their transitivity claim for E, we aim to further the project of undermining the circularity arguments advanced by a zoo of skeptics, relativists, antirealists and internalists against realism and externalism. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The foundationalism in irrealism is structural foundationalism, according to which reason giving must terminate with some affair beyond the reach of noncircular inferential justification or critique. Even relativist irrealists are structural foundationalists. But structural foundationalism is only as good as the regress argument for it, which presupposes that the relevant forms of inferential justification are all transitive. Since they are not, structural foundationalism fails. So too does the “God’s-eye-view” or look-see argument against realism, to the effect that when it comes (...) to correspondence and universals or samenesses found not made, realists have no noncircular argumentative recourse, hence must gaze on reality bare, looking to see that the categories of our language or thought conform to something in reality. Furthermore, realists can justify their view via nontransitive forms of inferential justífication, without recourse either to look-see or to morally problematic notions of sameness and difference made rather than lovingly found. (shrink)

This book draws from previously unpublished letters and interviews with physicists, theologians, and Sir John’s close associates and family to present Sir John’s ideas on pure unlimited love. Post, who was in dialogue with Sir John for fifteen years on this topic and who had founded the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love, addresses how John Templeton arrived at his philosophy as a youth growing up in Tennessee. Post also shares how classical Presbyterian ideas came to synergize (...) in his mind with the more eastern influences of American transcendentalism and the Unity School of Christianity and ponders if Sir John truly believed that science and spiritualty might fully converge on the same view of Ultimate Reality with their very different ways of knowing. _Is Ultimate Reality Unlimited Love?_ presents Sir John’s hope for spiritual progress with the eventual convergence of ultimate reality and unlimited love at its very center. (shrink)

This is a comprehensive study of the far-reaching changes that led to a re-shaping of the philosophical discourse in Islam during the sixth/twelfth century. Whereas earlier Western scholars thought that Islam's engagement with the tradition of Greek philosophy ended during that century, more recent analyses suggest its integration into the genre of rationalist Muslim theology (kalam). This book proposes a third view about the fate of philosophy in Islam. It argues that in addition to this integration, Muslim theologians (...) picked up the discourse of philosophy in Islam (falsafa) and began to produce books on philosophy. Written by the same authors, books in these two genres, kalām and philosophy, argue for opposing teachings on the nature of God, the world's creation, and on the afterlife. This study explains the emergence of a new genre of philosophical books called "hikma" that stand opposed to Islamic theology and at the same wishes to complement it. Offering a detailed history of philosophy in Iraq, Iran, and Central Asia during the sixth/twelfth century together with an analysis of the circumstances of practicing philosophy during this time, this study can show how reports of falsafa, written by major Muslim theologians such as al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), developed step-by-step into critical assessments of philosophy that try to improve philosophical teachings, and eventually become fully fledged philosophical summas in the work of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (d. 606/1210). The book ends in a discussion of the different methods of kalam and hikma and the coherence and ambiguity of a Muslim post-classical philosopher's œuvre. (shrink)

With the destruction of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Communist Party, Russia in the past few years has experienced a philosophical revolution unparalleled in suddenness and scope. Among the salient features of this revolution are the displacement of Marxism from its former, virtually monopolistic status to a distinctly subordinate and widely scorned position; the rediscovery of Russia’s pre-Marxist and anti-Marxist philosophers, in particular the religious thinkers of the past two centuries; increasing interest in Western philosophical traditions that (...) were neglected or condemned during the Soviet period; and special attention to the philosophy of culture, with particular reference to the role of philosophy in the national culture of Russia. In all of these new directions, a recurring and controversial theme is the widely perceived need for a new “Russian idea,” or something to “fill the ideological vacuum” left by the demise of Russian Marxism. (shrink)

In this essay, the philosophies of John Dewey and Martin Heidegger are compared specifically on the topic of the productionist metaphysics. In this comparison, the readings of Larry Hickman and Michael E. Zimmerman are utilized to highlight the noted philosophers’ views. In Hickman’s reading of Dewey, production is the key virtue of the entire pragmatic theory and the evolution of humanity through the improvement of technique and productivity the focus of human life.Hickman’s reading of Dewey, deemed the “technological” reading of (...) Dewey, provides proof of support of the productionist metaphysics view of the West that Heidegger deemed as the root of the “darkening” of the world. To illustrate the historical calamity that Heidegger deemed directly connected to this brand of metaphysics, which he believed began with the ancient Greeks and since has expanded to all areas of human life, the reading of Zimmerman is applied. (shrink)

(1997). Wittgenstein and post‐analytic philosophy of education: Rorty or Lyotard? Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 1-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00018.x.

Richard Gale and Alexander Pruss raise a number of excellent questions in their separate responses to my comments on Gale’s book, On the Nature and Existence of God. They focus on aspects of my discussion that need at least to be clarified, if not retracted, in ways I explain in this reply.