Dans le dernier numéro de 2010 de l’ Interdisciplinary Science Reviews intitulé « Histoire et nature humaine », Brad Inwood et Willard McCarty, rédacteurs en chef, ont invité le professeur G.E.R Lloyd, à écrire un article sur le débat entre universalistes et relativistes, reprenant les thèses de son récent livre Cognitive Variations (Oxford University Press, 2007). À cet article répondent des spécialistes de diverses disciplines. Nous publions ici la réponse de deux anthropologues : Philippe Descola et Eduardo Viveiros (...) de Castro. (shrink)

An interview with Charles McCarty by Piotr Urbańczyk concerning mathematical explanation.

Willard Van Orman Quine begins this influential work by declaring, "Language is asocial art.

This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

La Logique elementaire est a la fois une introduction a la logique et une introduction a la pensee de Quine, son but ayant ete de condenser le sujet de la logique traditionnelle en le traitant par les moyens de la logique contemporaine, afin de rendre plus intelligibles les constructions logiques de base et les raisonnements impliques dans le langage usuel. Le lecteur trouvera ici tous les elements necessaires a la comprehension du symbolisme logique, mais aussi et surtout le role de (...) la logique formelle comme instrument d'analyse du langage usuel. (shrink)

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truth which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as (...) we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism. (shrink)

: A standard interpretation of Kantian "maxims" sees them as expressing reasons for action, implying that we cannot act without a maxim. But recent challenges to this interpretation claim that Kant viewed acting on maxims as optional. Kant's understanding of maxims derives from Christian Wolff, who regarded maxims as major premises of the practical syllogism. This supports the standard interpretation. Yet Kant also viewed commitments to maxims as essential for virtue and character development, which supports challenges to the standard interpretation, (...) and raises questions about the coherence of Kant's overall conception of the role of maxims in practical philosophy. (shrink)

Satisfiability or Sat\ is the metatheoretic statementEvery formally intuitionistically consistent set of first-order sentences has a model.The models in question are the Tarskian relational structures familiar from standard first-order model theory, but here treated within intuitionistic metamathematics. We prove that both IZF, intuitionistic Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, and HAS, second-order Heyting arithmetic, prove Sat\ to be false outright. Following the lead of Carter :75–95, 2008), we then generalize this result to some provably intermediate first-order logics, including the Rose logic. These metatheorems (...) distinguish the intuitionistic foundational significance of Sat\ sharply from that of Sat\, the satisfiability claim for intuitionistic propositional logic. At the same time, they establish intuitionistic connections with and between Test, COMP\, and \. Here, Test is the scheme of Testability, and COMP\ and \ are completeness for intuitionistic propositional logic and predicate logic, respectively. (shrink)

Several of these essays have been printed whole in journals; others are in varying degrees new. Two main themes run through them. One is the problem of meaning, particularly as involved in the notion of an analytic statement. The other is the notion of ontological, commitment, particularly as involved in the problem of universals.

The categorical imperative can be construed as a universalization test for moral permissibility. False negatives of the categorical imperative would be maxims failing this test, despite the permissibility of their actions; maxims like: ‘I’ll withdraw all my savings on April 15th’. Examples of purported false negatives familiar from the literature can be grouped into three general categories, and dispatched by applying category-specific methods for proper formulation of their maxims, or for proper testing. Methods for reformulating failing maxims, such as the (...) addition of appropriate conditional clauses, do not generate false-positive counterexamples in other instances. (shrink)

This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in the (...) best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth. (shrink)

The theory of action underlying Immanuel Kant's ethical theory is the subject of this book.

It is and has been widely assumed, e.g., in Hintikka and Hintikka, that the logical theory available from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus affords a foundation for the conventional logic represented in standard formulations of classical propositional, first-order predicate, and perhaps higher-order formal systems. The present article is a detailed attempt at a mathematical demonstration, or as much demonstration as the sources will allow, that this assumption is false by contemporary lights and according to a preferred account of argument validity. When Wittgenstein’s (...) description of the forms of propositions or Sätze in the 5-numbered remarks and Remark 6 is given a close reconstruction, one sees that no Tractarian proposition is logically equivalent to a simple universally or existentially quantified formula of first-order predicate logic. Therefore, although Wittgenstein employs the sign ∀—or, in his notation—occasionally in explanations and illustrations, e.g., 4.0411 and 5.1311, when it comes to logic, the sign ∀ should receive in Tractatus a semantical treatment that is nonstandard. En route to that result, we show that the hierarchy of variables–and, hence, of propositions–defined at 5.501 incorporates the expressive power of finitary classical propositional logic. Also, when constructed over a first-order language for arithmetic, formulae corresponding to the specification of 5.501 pick out all and only arithmetic sets of numbers. Consequently, Wittgenstein’s hierarchy of iterated N-propositions–as described in vide Remark 6–does not collapse: at any level k, one finds propositions at k + 1 or above that are not logically equivalent to any proposition formed at k or below. (shrink)

In The Anticipatory Corpse, Jeffrey Bishop claims that modern medicine has lost formal and final causality as the dead body has become epistemologically normative, and that a singular focus on efficient and material causality has thoroughly distorted modern medical practice. Bishop implies that the renewal of medicine will require its housing in alternate social spaces. This essay critiques both Bishop’s diagnosis and therapy by arguing, first, that alternate social imaginaries, though perhaps marginalized, are already present within the practice of medicine. (...) And second, the essay argues that alternate social imaginaries in medicine can be reclaimed not through separatist communities but in the re-narration of conceptually underdetermined practices. Given Bishop’s invitation for theology to engage medicine, this essay then draws from theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the kind of diagnosis and therapy currently needed, concluding with a contemporary example of how an alternate social imaginary is being instantiated in modern medicine. (shrink)

Recently, a number of epistemologists (notably Feldman [2007], [2009] and White [2005], [2013]) have argued for the rational uniqueness thesis, the principle that any set of evidence permits only one rationally acceptable attitude toward a given proposition. In contrast, this paper argues for extreme rational permissivism, the view that two agents with the same evidence may sometimes arrive at contradictory beliefs rationally. This paper identifies different versions of uniqueness and permissivism that vary in strength and range, argues that evidential peers (...) with different interests need not rationally endorse all the same hypotheses, argues that evidential peers who weigh the theoretic virtues differently can sometimes rationally endorse contradictory conclusions, and finally defends the permissivist appeal to standards against objections in the works of Feldman and White. (shrink)

A compact, coherent introduction to the study of rational belief, this text provides points of entry to such areas of philosophy as theory of knowledge, methodology of science, and philosophy of language. The book is accessible to all undergraduates and presupposes no philosophical training.

A respected Harvard logician and philosopher gathers together twenty-nine writings dealing with the foundations of mathematics, Rudolf Carnap, lin-guistics, ...

" This is a key book for understanding the effort that a major philosopher has made a large part of his life's work: to naturalize epistemology in the twentieth ...

Few challenges facing Kantian ethics are more famous and formidable than the so-called "case of the inquiring murderer." It appears in some form today in most introductory ethics texts, but it is not a new objection. Even Kant himself was compelled to respond to it, though by most accounts his response was embarrassingly unpersuasive. A more satisfactory reply can be offered to this old objection, however. It will be shown here that Kantian ethics permits lying to inquirers asking wrong questions, (...) and that, therefore, it can be right to lie to a murderer inquiring whether his intended victim is hiding in your house. We begin by reviewing a now popular and plausible-sounding defense of the right to lie. Finding it unsuccessful, we turn next to scrutinize the type of question asked. The case of the inquiring murderer cannot be presented without supposing that the murderer's inquiry is unevadable. As we shall then see, in Kantian ethics it is usually wrong to ask such questions. (shrink)

In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Kant wrote that ‘freedom of the power of choice has the characteristic, entirely peculiar to it, that it cannot be determined to action through any incentive except insofar as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim.’ This is an obscure statement, in both meaning and provenance. Yet almost all recent interpreters of Kant's practical philosophy find it crucial for understanding his theories of freedom and motivation, since it seems to indicate (...) what we are required to do in order to act by our own free choice. Here I refer to Kant's statement expressing the requirement that incentives be incorporated into maxims as his ‘incorporation requirement.’ How that requirement is best understood will be the leading question in what follows: a question I shall answer by showing why the incorporation requirement, and Kant's theories of freedom and motivation, should be understood differently from the way they are now usually understood. (shrink)

Provides comprehensive coverage of logical structure as well as the techniques of formal reasoning.

In retrospecting "Two Dogmas" I find myself overshooting by twenty years. I think back to college days, 61 years agao. I majored in mathematics and was doing my honors reading in mathematical logic, a subject that had not yet penetrated the Oberlin curriculum. My new love, in the platonic sense, was Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica.

What do medicine and war have to do with each other? This question is explored through the writings of James Childress, whose early contributions to just war theory illuminate his work in bioethics. By considering the conceptual influences of just war theory on Childress’s bioethics, the contributions and limits of his approach can be set in relief through normative engagement with certain areas of medicine. In particular, Childress’s just-war-inspired bioethics befits the practice of surgery; but oncology, as a medical analogue (...) to total warfare, requires significant transformation in order to be disciplined by Childress’s approach. Childress offers a coherent schema for navigating moral conflict in a fallen world, but he does not provide a substantive account of the peaceable end toward which medicine as just war aims. (shrink)

This chapter presents and illustrates fundamental principles of the intuitionistic mathematics devised by L.E.J. Brouwer and then describes in largely nontechnical terms metamathematical results that shed light on the logical character of that mathematics. The fundamental principles, such as Uniformity and Brouwer’s Theorem, are drawn from the intuitionistic studies of logic and topology. The metamathematical results include Gödel’s negative and modal translations and Kleene’s realizability interpretation. The chapter closes with an assessment of anti-realism as a philosophy of intuitionism.

Knowledge is good, ignorance is bad. So it seems, anyway. But in this dissertation, I argue that some ignorance is epistemically valuable. Sometimes, we should suspend judgment even though by believing we would achieve knowledge. In this apology for ignorance (ignorance, that is, of a certain kind), I defend the following four theses: 1) Sometimes, we should continue inquiry in ignorance, even though we are in a position to know the answer, in order to achieve more than mere knowledge (e.g. (...) understanding) while minimizing the effects of confirmation bias. 2) It’s false that we should believe every proposition such that we are guaranteed to be right about it (and even such that we are guaranteed to know it) if we believe it. 3) Being in a position to know is the norm of assertion: importantly, this does not require belief or (thereby) knowledge, and so proper assertion can survive speaker-ignorance. 4) It can be permissible and conversationally useful to tell audiences things that it is logically impossible for them to come to know: Proper assertion can survive (necessary) audience-side ignorance. Cumulatively, this project suggests that, properly understood, ignorance has an important role to play in the good epistemic life. (shrink)

Kant's question 'How are synthetic judgments a priori possible?' pre- cipitated the Critique of Pure Reason. Question and answer notwith- standing, Mill and others persisted in doubting that such judgments were possible at all. At length some of Kant's own clearest purported.

Quine's areas of interest are panoramic, as this lively book amply demonstrates.

Suppose now that two philosophers, McX and I, differ over ontology. Suppose McX maintains there is something which I maintain there is not. McX can, quite consistently with his own point of view, describe our difference of opinion by saying that I refuse to recognize certain entities. I should protest of course that he is wrong in his formulation of our disagreement, for I maintain that there are no entities, of the kind which he alleges, for me to recognize; but (...) my finding him wrong in his formulation of our disagreement is unimportant, for I am committed to considering him wrong in his ontology anyway. When I try to formulate our difference of opinion, on the other hand, I seem to be in a predicament. I cannot admit that there are some things which McX countenances and I do not, for in admitting that there are such things I should be contradicting my own rejection of them. (shrink)

"Some Pow'r did us the giftie grant/ To see oursels as others can't." With that play on Burns' famous line as a preface, Willard Van Orman Quine sets out to spin the yarn of his life so far. And it is a gift indeed to see one of the world's most famous philosophers as no one else has seen him before. To catch an intimate glimpse of his seminal and controversial theories of philosophy, logic, and language as they evolved, (...) and to hear his warm and often amusing comments on famous contemporary philosophers.From his beginnings in Akron, Ohio in the early 1900s, Quine takes us on a tour of over 100 countries over three-quarters of a century, including close observations of the Depression and two world wars. Far from a philosophical tract, it is an ebullient, folksy account of a richly varied and rounded life. When he does dip into philosophy, it is generally of the armchair sort, and laced with a gentle good humor: "There is that which one wants to do for the glory of having done it, and there is that which one wants to do for the joy of doing it. One can want to be a scientist because he wants to see himself as a Darwin or an Einstein, and one can want to be a scientist because he is curious about what makes things tick.... In normal cases the two kinds of motivation are in time brought to terms.... In me the glory motive lingered......In this book, Quine approaches the details of his life the way he has always approached them with a sharp sense of interest, adventure and fun. And he has a skill for picking a word that is just off-center enough to pull an ordinary event out of the humdrum of daily life and evoke its personal meaning. The result is a book of memories that is utterly mesmerizing.Willard Van Orman Quine is the author of numerous books, including Word and Object, published by The MIT Press in 1960.A Bradford Book. (shrink)

We call a logic regular for a semantics when the satisfaction predicate for at least one of its nontheorems is closed under double negation. Such intuitionistic theories as second-order Heyting arithmetic HAS and the intuitionistic set theory IZF prove completeness for no regular logics, no matter how simple or complicated. Any extensions of those theories proving completeness for regular logics are classical, i.e., they derive the tertium non datur. When an intuitionistic metatheory features anticlassical principles or recognizes that a logic (...) regular for a semantics is nonclassical, it proves explicitly that the logic is incomplete with respect to that semantics. Logics regular relative to Tarski. Beth and Kripke semantics form a large collection that includes propositional and predicate intuitionistic, intermediate and classical logics. These results are corollaries of a single theorem. A variant of its proof yields a generalization of the Gödel-Kreisel Theorem linking weak completeness for intuitionistic predicate logic to Markov's Principle. (shrink)

"As a distinctive philosophy, religious humanism emphasizes man's place in an unfathomed universe, reason as an instrument for discovering the truth, free inquiry as a condition for discerning meaning and purpose, and happiness as a fundamental value. "Man's uniqueness emerges partly from homo sapiens' capacity to employ symbols effectively. For this reason, Willard's provocative book is not a celebration of controversy but a sophisticated study exploring the grounds of man's knowledge. Drawing upon phenomenologists such as Alfred Schultz, psychologists such (...) as George Kelley, and argumentation philosophers such as Stephen Toulmin, Willard makes a genuine contribution to intellectual inquiry by extending essential consideration about human knowledge. The [author] demonstrates how 'secular sources' provide a fundamental resource in developing religious understanding from argumentative interactions. "Highly insightful and intellectually refreshing... _Argumentation and the Social Grounds of Knowledge_ provides thought-provoking reading for humanists concerned with rational inquiry, communication theory, religious philosophy, and liberal education." _--Religious Humanism_. (shrink)

For the faithful there is much to ponder. In this short book, based on lectures delivered in Spain in 1990, Quine begins by locating his work historically.