bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Relative Identity and Number
Authors: Perry John
Published: June 2016

Geach has claimed that Frege had an insight about number which should have led him to the doctrine of relative identity:

I maintain it makes no sense to judge whether x and y are “the same or whether x remains “the same” unless we add or understand some general term — the same F. That in accordance with which we thus judge as to the identity, I call a criterion of identity; … Frege sees clearly that “one” cannot significantly stand as a predicate of objects unless it is (at least understood as) attached to a general term; I am surprised he did not see that this holds for the closely allied expression, “the same”.

Frege has clearly explained that the predication of “one endowed with wisdom” … does not split up into predications of “one” and “endowed with wisdom” … It is surprising that Frege should on the contrary have constantly assumed that “x is the same A as Y” Does split up into “x is an A (and y is an A)” and “x is the same as … y.” We have already by implication rejected this analysis.
Castañeda on Phaedo 102b-d
Authors: Gallop David
Published: June 2016

In replying to my criticism of his interpretation of this passage, Professor H-N. Castañeda has disregarded much of my argument. In particular, he has ignored my contention that a contrast between 'essential’ and ‘accidental’ predication is integral to the wider argument for immortality in which Phaedo 102b-d is embedded. This would remain the case whatever the grammar of 102b-c, and whatever the exact force of πεφυxέναι and τυγχάνει at 102c1-2. Further, Castañeda pays no heed to the difficulty of interpreting Plato's other relational examples in his way, given that no analysis parallel to that of 102b-d is anywhere hinted at for them. Moreover, he disregards the difficulty that several other examples in the nearby context are analysed in terms of the Theory of Forms, and yet are not overtly ‘relational’ in the usual sense at all.

Castañeda says (note 12) that it is ‘clear’ from my own translation of several passages (72e6, 103e7, 109d4, 110b2, 111c2, etc.) that τυΥχάνει in the Phaedo ‘has nothing to do with accident.’
Circularity and Consistency in Descartes
Authors: Dreisbach Donald F.
Published: June 2016

The problem of the Cartesian Circle has been with us ever since the publication of the Meditations. This is quite remarkable, since the error of circularity which Descartes is accused of having committed is not a subtle one but is, if there is such an error, a gigantic blunder which is not difficult to discover, which was pointed out to Descartes shortly after the Meditations appeared, and which completely undermines Descartes’ primary project, the establishment of sure and certain knowledge. It is incredible that Descartes, a slow and careful thinker with considerable philosophical talent, could have made such an obvious and egregious error. It is much more plausible that there really is no circularity in Descartes’ argument, and that the charges of circularity grow out of a misunderstanding of Descartes’ intention or of the way in which his argument progresses.

The incredible, of course, is possible, and I am not proposing that the question of the circle be resolved merely by dismissing it, nor am I suggesting that the text be ignored in order to force consistency onto Descartes’ thought.
On ‘Moral Expertise’
Authors: Szabados Béla
Published: June 2016

Not so long ago it was fashionable to claim that it is not the moral philosopher's business to say what things are good or what actions we should perform. This view is succinctly stated by A. J. Ayer:

There is a distinction, which is not always sufficiently marked, between the activity of a moralist, who sets out to elaborate a moral code, or to encourage its observance, and that of a moral philosopher, whose concern is not primarily to make moral judgments but to analyse their nature.

On the other hand, in direct opposition to this, recently many philosophers actively moralize, in the sense that they argue for substantive normative ethical positions. In doing this they tend to assume but not to explore seriously two views: (1) that the notion of moral expertise is unproblematic, and (2) that moral philosophers in particular are moral experts. My aim in this paper is to promote the exploration of these questions. (1) is logically prior to (2). Nevertheless I begin with discussing (2); for puzzles about expertise in morals naturally emerge when one examines the credentials of candidates for the job.
Pearce on Behalf of the Materialist
Authors: Puccetti Roland
Published: June 2016

Glenn Pearce, labels the identification of the firing of one's pain centres in the brain with feeling pain ‘a naive view,’ the refutation of which cannot much threaten any serious version of materialism. But in fact at least a dozen proponents of contemporary materialism have already hypothesized the identification of feeling pain with activation of a specific neural mechanism, although they picked the wrong mechanism, namely C-fibres. Just to take a recent example, James Cornman and Keith Lehrer, trying to get around the objection to the identity theory that the language of neural processes and the language of feeling pains belong to different linguistic categories, suggest that the materialist could devise a new term to refer to the same entity across categories: ‘fibain.’

They write,

He would then claim that there are fibains, that is, entities with those properties usually associated with pains, and also with the properties usually associated with firing C-fibers. He can, then, avoid category mistakes by saying that what are thought to be pains and what are thought to be firing C-fibers are really fibains.
Doing Without Events
Authors: Trenholme Russell
Published: June 2016

Events have played a central role in a number of recent philosophical analyses. In general, there are two different sorts of arguments that might be offered in favour of an event analysis: first, it might be held that the constructions being analyzed contain certain nominals (expressions like “the sinking of theLusitania,”or “Nixon's resignation“) which intuitively refer to events, and further that any satisfactory analysis must respect these intuitions; second, it might be argued that quite aside from our intuitions, the concept of an event — perhaps as a purely technical device — permits the solution of philosophical problems implicit in alternative non-event analyses (which typically take nominals as non-referring sentence transformations).

I wish to argue that both the above sorts of arguments fail. First, I argue that our intuitions about the reference on nominals are inconsistent, varying from context to context, so that the various sorts of event analyses cannot be talking about a single category of entities.
Volitions and Actions
Authors: Martin Michael
Published: June 2016

In a recent paper Lawrence Davis has argued that the difference between an arm raising and someone raising his arm is that in the latter case a volition causes the arm to rise. In this paper I will show that Davis's theory is faulty and that certain obvious ways of repairing his theory do not work.

Davis proposes the following as an account of Sam's raising his arm:

(E) Sam raises his arm if he willed to raise his arm and this caused his arm to rise.

According to Davis the volition — Sam's willing to raise his arm — need not be interpreted psychologically. Volitions could be ghostly mental events, but they might not be. He leaves this open. He also leaves open the question of whether volitions are introspectable events. Davis allows that in some cases Sam's arm rising can be caused by a volition different from the volition to raise his arm. For example, Sam might will to step on a pedal.
What Schooling in Capitalist America Teaches Us about Philosophy
Authors: Nicholson Linda J.
Published: June 2016

As a philosopher working in the area of education, I believe Samuel Bowles’ and Herbert Gintis’ recent book, Schooling in Capitalist America1 to be an important work. I believe it to be important first of all for the concrete ideas it raises about education in the history and present reality of American society. Secondly, it serves as an excellent example in a lesson in what philosophy, both philosophy of education, and philosophy generally, ought to become. In particular, by contrasting this work in its conclusions and methods with other works in mainstream contemporary philosophy of education, I believe we can see more clearly certain defects in contemporary philosophy of education, which apply also to other fields in philosophy. To accomplish this goal, I would like first of all to summarize the book itself.

The aim of Schooling in Capitalist America is to expose many of those self-deceptions which our society has about itself and its educational system.
Impartiality
Authors: Henberg M. C.
Published: June 2016

A great deal of philosophical consideration has been given in recent years to the issue of justice. In large measure this effort has focused upon justice in . relation to social institutions, to the distributive question of disbursing social benefits on the one hand or punishments and burdens on the other hand. Essentially we may view justice as having two basic requirements. In the first place we need conditions assuring impartial treatment of individuals and, in the second place, conditions for reasonable treatment of individuals — as injustice may arise either if relevantly similar persons are accorded dissimilar treatment or if they receive similar but unreasonable treatment.

In this article I shall examine a number of devices which have been proposed to meet the first requirement — that of impartiality. Social theorists have pursued impartiality with strategies ranging from the disinterested Ideal Observer of many utilitarians to the ‘veil of ignorance’ conditions in John Rawls's revitalized contract theory. I shall demonstrate that the preoccupation with impartiality in social institututions has had an unfortunate consequence. It has obscured the original motive for impartiality and led to a misunderstanding of the concept.
Opacity in the Attitudes
Authors: Fales Evan
Published: June 2016

Philosophical logic has its problem-children; and among these the Principle of Substitutivity of codesignating expressions — the linguistic spawn of Leibniz's law—has achieved a place of prominence. It has become increasingly apparent that a certain style of linguistic analysis, which seeks to impose formal regimentation ruled by the constraints of classical quantification theory, does not yield results with the kind of uniformity and elegance one should hope for from a satisfyi.ng theory. The root of the difficulty, I believe, bears upon the answers to fundamental questions concerning the nature of cognitive agents and the purposes which their use of language is designed to further. If this is the case, one might expect to find some of the trouble surfacing at precisely those points where the language is used to convey information about the cognitive activities associated with the use of language by such agents. So it is.

The central problem of this essay is the interpretation of referential expressions in statements involving propositional attitudes, with the focus on belief contexts. But I shall begin by placing the discussion within a broader theoretical framework.
Peter Damian: Could God Change the Past?
Authors: Remnant Peter
Published: June 2016

Histories of philosophy frequently depict the later eleventh century as the scene of a series of bouts between dialecticians and anti-dialecticians — Berengar vs. Lanfranc, Roscelin vs. Anselm — preliminaries to the twelfth century welterweight contest between Abelard and St. Bernard and — dare one say? — the thirteenth century heavy-weight championship between St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.

The bouts took place — no question about that — but whether the contestants can properly be characterized as dialecticians and anti-dialecticians is less certain. Dialectics is logic, the third part of the trivium, and increasingly cultivated in the eleventh century; men like Berengar and Roscelin were plainly eager to apply the logical tools with which they had been equipped to the solution of intellectual problems. In particular they undertook the solution of certain central problems of theology — Berengar that of the Eucharist and Roscelin that of the Trinity — and it was this, we are told, that aroused the ire of the anti-dialecticians: if the aim of the dialecticians was to lay bare the mysteries of faith to the light of reason that of the anti-dialecticians was to protect those same mysteries from profanation.
A Few Words About Knowledge, Scepticism, and Entailment
Authors: Daniels Charles B.
Published: June 2016

In a recent article entitled “Scepticism and Knowing That One Knows” (Canadian Journal of Philosophy 6, pp. 655–63), Michael Hall poses a sceptical argument based upon two rules of inference:

where ‘Kp’ stands for ‘it is known that p'. The argument goes:

Hall (rightly, in my opinion) attacks R2, but he says little about R1. I wish to add a few words of warning about R1 as well.
Prospects for a Causal Theory of Knowledge
Authors: Hanson Philip P.
Published: June 2016

Knowing is something that we do not have much of a theory about. (H. Putman, “The Analytic and the Synthetic,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 3 (1962), p. 365.)

Interest has recently been shown in causal theories of perception, memory, inference, reference, truth, justification and belief, as well as in a more general “causal theory of knowledge” which would embrace and connect all of these concepts within a broad epistemological framework. The burden of this paper is that prospects are poor for an interesting and general enough causal theory of knowledge. A threat to generality arises from the causal theory's difficulties with knowledge of general truths. A threat to interest arises when attempts to accommodate general truths lead to a weakening of the notion of “causal connection” appealed to, making dubious the explanatory force of such an appeal.
Do Proper Names Always Rigidly Designate?
Authors: Nute Donald
Published: June 2016

Many philosophers have claimed possible worlds semantics is incoherent because of insoluble problems involved in the notion of identifying a single individual in different worlds. One frequent approach to trans-world identification has been to assume that all the possible worlds, complete with their populations, are described by means of qualities alone prior to our considering the question of identification of the same individual in each world in which it exists. If we interpret possible worlds semantics in this way, trans-world identification could only be accomplished on the basis of some properties the individual has uniquely in every world in which it exists. This becomes problematic since the individual doesn't have the same properties in every world. In ‘Naming and Necessity’ and ‘Identity and Necessity’ Saul Kripke rejects such an account of both possible worlds and trans-world identification, developing an alternative interpretation of the new semantics. His approach involves a distinction between referring expressions which designate different individuals in different worlds according to the distribution of properties within each world and referring expressions which designate the same individual in every world.
Fictionalism and Realism
Authors: Neumann Michael
Published: June 2016

Suppose that a scientific theory X is well confirmed, and either states or (in conjunction with certain specified systems of logic, mathematics, and semantics) implies a statement like “classes exist”. Suppose, if the statement is not explicit but implied, that the specified systems are ‘accepted’ by two individuals, R and F, as the ‘best available'. Suppose, finally, that both R and F, in some yet to be explained sense of the word, ‘accept’ and use theory X to regulate their experience. Then we have something very like the situation discussed by Putnam and van Fraassen in their debate over ‘fictionalism'. I will argue that, in this situation, there is a great mystery over what would separate a fictionalist F from a realist R. Neither Putnam nor van Fraassen seems to be conscious of the problems involved.

Fictionalism, according to its opponent, Putnam, states

various entities presupposed by scientific and common sense discourse [are] merely “useful fictions”, or that we cannot, at any rate, possibly know that they are more than “useful fictions” (and so we may as well say that that is what they are) (PL 63).
Reid on Primary and Secondary Qualities
Authors: Greenberg Arthur R.
Published: June 2016

In recent years renewed interest in Thomas Reid's philosophy has led to fruitful discussion of Reid's theories of sensation and perception. Although certain aspects of these topics can be discussed without setting out Reid's version of the primary-secondary quality distinction, the ultimate evaluation of Reid's work on both sensation and perception requires discussion of his views on primary and secondary qualities. Current Reid literature virtually ignores this important topic. This paper is an attempt to remedy this situation. In addition to setting out Reid's position on primary and secondary qualities I will discuss Reid's curious relation to the New Science of his day and will explain how Reid thought he could reintroduce the primary-secondary quality distinction despite Berkeley's attacks on the doctrine.

In both of his major works, An Inquiry Into The Human Mind (1764), and Essays On The Intellectual Powers Of Man (1785), Thomas Reid was intent upon examining the philosophical problems of human knowledge. In the Inquiry perception received his exclusive attention. In the Essays other cognitive operations were examined as well. The impetus for these investigations was provided by Reid's negative assessment of the achievements of his philosophical predecessors.
Can Serious Rights Be Taken Seriously?
Authors: McDonald Michael
Published: June 2016

In his book, Taking Rights Seriously Prof. Dworkin argues that all elements of society — citizens, legislature, and courts — ought to be ‘taking rights seriously’ in reaching decisions both about the actions and design of public institutions. This has two aspects. First in accord with traditional rights-centred views, there are certain ways of treating individuals that rights rule out. Formally, rights are ‘political trumps held by individuals’; they deny society certain kinds of access to collective goals (xi). Materially, rights can be seen as an expression of equal concern for each citizen as a human being; to deny a right is to ‘insult’ a person by failing to treat him as an equal of other persons, that is, as deserving the same basic respect as others. Secondly, and in contrast to the traditional natural rights view, Dworkin presents a particular way of reasoning about rights that does not presuppose their existence as Platonic entities; instead, rights are discovered in the process of constructing a theory which plausibly accounts for both the letter and the spirit of our society's institutional actions.
Aristotle'sMetaphysicsZ 13
Authors: Teloh Henry
Published: June 2016

Aristotle states inMetaphysicsZ13 (1038b9-11) that nothing said universally τῶν ϰαϑόλου λεγομένων is substance (οὐαία), rather the substance of each thing is particular to it (οὐαία ἐϰάστου ὴ ίδιος ἐϰάστῳ). The natural interpretation of this statement is that being said universally is a sufficient condition for not being substance. But this claim is very perplexing since it is the key premiss in the following apparently inconsistent set:

(1)

Form is substance.

(2)

Form is universal.

(3)

Nothing universal or said universally is substance, rather the substance of something is particular ἴδιος to it.
Hypocrisy
Authors: Szabados Béla
Published: June 2016

What is it to be a hypocrite? Gilbert Ryle's answer is the by now commonly held one: to be hypocritical is to “try to appear activated by a motive other than one's real motive”; again, it is “deliberately to refrain from saying what comes to one's lips, while pretending to say frankly things one does not mean.” Can this be the right answer? My aim is to show that it cannot. In doing this I hope to gesture towards a richer understanding of our notion of hypocrisy.
Threats and Coercion
Authors: Gunderson Martin
Published: June 2016

There is nearly universal agreement that coercion is an evil. Even when it is necessary to avoid a greater evil or to attain some good, it is still a necessary evil. There is also nearly universal agreement that, other things being equal, one ought not to exercise coercion. Here the agreement ends. There is little agreement about just when coercion is justified. More surprisingly, there is little agreement about what coercion is. This latter controversy is more fundamental, and this paper is an attempt to shed some light on it.
On the Relationship between A Priori and Necessary Statements
Authors: Casullo Albert
Published: June 2016

Edward Erwin has recently argued against the thesis that the concepts a priori truth’ and ‘necessary truth’ are extensionally equivalent. (Following Erwin, I shall refer to this thesis as the ‘Extensional Equivalence Hypothesis’ or, for short, E. E. H.) This thesis consists of two logically independent claims: (1) all a priori truths are necessary; and (2) all necessary truths are a priori. Erwin leaves the first claim unchallenged and elects to devote his efforts exclusively to undermining the second. The brunt of his attack on the second claim rests on alleged unclarities in the concept of an a priori truth. He attempts to show that the E.E.H. cannot be defended upon any plausible interpretation of this concept. Although I agree that the E.E.H., as stated above, is open to Erwin's objections, I shall argue that a slightly revised version of it can be defended against these objections.
Locations
Authors: Edgar William J.
Published: June 2016

Zeno's challenge to the usual mathematical characterization of extension is still with us. Butchvarov, considering the limits of ontological analysis, writes, “I shall not explore [the decision to accept the infinite regress in which the pursuit of the analytical ideal is involved], beyond noting that the infinite divisibility of space is the reductio ad absurdum of any attempt to understand space in terms of its ultimate, simple parts.” Grünbaum states this problem, commonly known as the Measure Paradox, concisely, “[How can one conceive] of an extended continuum as an aggregate of unextended elements ?”
Descartes: Body and Soul
Authors: Remnant Peter
Published: June 2016

There is an account of the soul's capacity to activate its body which is frequently attributed to Descartes and, so far as I know, has only once been said not to represent his opinion on this topic. I shall refer to it with, I hope, pardonable exaggeration as the standard account. The earliest attributions to Descartes of the standard account, which I have been able to discover, are in various writings by Leibniz; there is a rather full version in his “Explanation of the New System of the Communication of Substances” (1696):

You know that M. Descartes believed that the same quantity of motion is conserved in bodies …. Even so, the changes which take place in the body as a consequence of the modifications of the soul caused him embarrassment, because they seemed to violate this law. He thought therefore that he had found a way out of the difficulty, which is certainly ingenious, by saying that we must distinguish between motion and direction of motion; and that the soul cannot increase or diminish the motive force, but that it changes the direction or determination of the course of the animal spirits, and it is in this way that voluntary motions take place.
Utilitarianism, Supererogation and Future Generations
Authors: Sikora R. I.
Published: June 2016

I shall argue here that the reason supererogatory acts are not obligatory is that they require too much personal sacrifice, and that in order for an act to be supererogatory, it must have a kind of result that you would have an obligation to bring about if you could do so with no personal sacrifice. I further argue that traditional utilitarianism should be modified so as not to treat supererogatory acts as obligatory.
The Peculiar Function of Human Beings
Authors: Kraut Richard
Published: June 2016

The passage I will discuss in this paper, one of the best known in the Aristotelian corpus, occurs in Book I chapter 7 of the Nicomachean Ethics, and concerns the ergon, i.e. the function, of human beings. Aristotle argues that we have a function, that our happiness consists in fulfilling it, and that this function must be idion, i.e. it must be peculiar to us. On this basis, he asserts that our function cannot consist in being alive, nourishment, growth, or perception, for these activities are common to other species. Aristotle then arrives at his familiar conclusion that our function consists in the excellent use of reason.
A Goal-State Theory of Function Attributions
Authors: Adams Frederick R.
Published: June 2016

The analysis of function-ascribing statements, such as “the function of x is y”, is proving to be a difficult matter. It is difficult because we are only beginning to see the complexity which is involved in ascribing functions. The process of discovery has been slow and tedious, with each newly constructed analysis of the meaning of functional ascriptions yielding insights into the structure of functional analysis and functional explanation. However, as each analysis is, in turn, dismantled, we seem to see our insights slip away. In the wake of each exchange, a new member is added to the list of desiderata for an analysis of function-ascribing statements. Thus, the matter of finding a proper analysis of function attributions becomes more and more complex.
How Beliefs Find Their Objects
Authors: Beebe Michael
Published: June 2016

A theory is developed explaining how beliefs, and derivatively intentions and perhaps the other propositional attitudes, find their objects. Beliefs about particular objects are divided into two kinds. Attributive beliefs find their objects purely through the mediation of contained descriptive content, while referential beliefs connect directly with their objects via a causal connection. This distinction is explicated in terms of complementing semantic and epistemic differences, and details of the causal connection are explored.
Paternalism and Subsequent Consent
Authors: Van De Veer Donald
Published: June 2016

Some philosophers believe that appeals to promoting or maximizing good consequences are a suspect way of attempting to justify coercive interference with another person's actions. Suppose that is true. If there is a presumption that individuals have a right not to be coercively interfered with, then, foregoing utilitarian type appeals, it would seem that the only way to justify coercive interference of a paternalistic sort would be to show that under certain conditions the presumption fails.
Russell on the Notion of Cause
Authors: Lipkind Donald
Published: June 2016

Writing in 1912, Bertrand Russell declared talk of causes and of causality to be obsolete, noting its elimination from scientific theory as he saw it: “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word 'cause' never occurs .... The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.” Causal laws, he claimed, “tend to be replaced by quite different laws as soon as a science is successful.”
Rule Utilitarianism and Cumulative-Effect Utilitarianism
Authors: Harrison Jonathan
Published: June 2016

‘It is to be observed, in the second place, that the obligation, as a general rule, to respect possession and promises, admits of being clearly shewn by reference to the consequences of actions taken as species and classes.’ Alexander Smith: The Philosophy of Morals.

Once upon a time I wrote a paper in which I defended a version of utilitarianism. This paper has received a certain amount of attention, but, I think, not as much individual attention as it might have done, had it not been confused with another version of utilitarianism, which became prevalent at about that time. This second version of utilitarianism came quite quickly to be known as rule utilitarianism. It has engendered a considerable amount of interest, so much so that it seems to me to be very likely that philosophers, who are utilitarians at all, are nowadays more likely to be rule utilitarians than they are to be ordinary act utilitarians.
Culpability and Mental Disorder
Authors: Cummins R.
Published: June 2016

It is widely held that the insane are not culpable for their offenses, or at least that they are not culpable for those offenses which are specific manifestations of mental disorder. Indeed, this is generally regarded by philosophers as a platitude. Yet it seems to me that what we have here is not a platitude, or even a truth, but an overly broad swipe with a dull blade. When we have brought the issues into sharper focus I think we will see that the mere fact that an offense was a manifestation of mental disorder never in itself exculpates, though it is sometimes relevant to determining whether the action was excusable in one of several standard ways. Moreover, I think it emerges that the issue is not nearly as significant as one might initially suppose it to be.
Incomplete Symbols and Russell's Proof
Authors: Wilson W. Kent
Published: June 2016

The primary purpose of this paper is to explain Russell's notion of ‘incomplete symbol’. The paper was provoked by some discussions of a controversial argument, advanced by Russell in several places - as early as Principia Mathematica (1910) and as late as My Philosophical Development (1959) - whose conclusion is that definite descriptive phrases have no meaning. It will be shown how the doctrine of incomplete symbols helps to resolve some of the questions raised about this argument.

One virtue of the account given here is that the theory of definite descriptions may be seen to continue the departure from the earlier Principles of Mathematics approach, where it is allowed that “grammar, though not our master, will yet be taken as our guide” (p. 42), to the quite different outlook of “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” where logical grammar and a logically perfect language are distinguished from natural languages and their (apparent) grammars. It marks a departure from “surface” grammar even more radical than that marked by the Frege-Russell treatment of quantification, but yet is a continuation of that same approach to language.
Whither States?
Authors: Montmaruet J.
Published: June 2016

In a number of influential papers, Donald Davidson has argued the desirability of admitting events into our ontology. In this paper I will try to show that all of Davidson's arguments for events serve equally well to provide proper ontological credentials for states. As conceived here, states are like Davidsonian events in being unrepealable particulars; they differ only in not being changes. A state will always consist in an object's (or set of objects’) remaining the same in respect of some one or more properties during a time interval. Thus, a leaf's turning red would be an event; its remaining so, a state. In a brief final section, I will suggest some of the implications of my argument for semantics and general ontology.
lfs as Labels on Cans
Authors: Rankin W. K.
Published: June 2016

Austin argued that ‘if’ has sometimes a non-conditional function, his reason being that some types of if-statement are deviant by two criteria which establish a norm. Following Pears more or less closely, I shall refer to applications of these criteria as the contrapositive and nondetachment tests, and to any if-statement which fails at least one test as a pseudoconditional, or more briefly as a pseudo. Thus, to turn directly to the narrower subject of this paper- the singularity Austin exposed in a thesis of Moore's - ‘He can, if he chooses’ fails either test. It does not entail ‘lf he cannot, he does not choose to’. Nor does it entail ‘He can’. Hence, it is doubly pseudo - and the same applies after systematic variation in grammatical person, tense and mood.
Note on Defining 'Punishment'
Authors: Scheid Don E.
Published: June 2016

Dictionaries distinguish the following senses of ‘punishment’:

(1a)

the act of punishing, or the fact of being punished - where ‘punish’ is defined as: an act of public authority causing an offender to suffer for an offense. As In: ‘the respectable not only obey the law, but punish those who refuse to do so’.

(1b)

that which is inflicted as a penalty for an offense. As in: ‘all punishments are to be carried out in the Barrack Yard’, ‘fit the punishment to the crime’.

(2)

severe handling or treatment causing heavy damage, injury or loss. As in: ‘the fighter had been subjected to heavy punishment in his losing bout’, ‘the ships received considerable punishment from the batteries’.
On the Right not to be Made to Suffer Gratuitously
Authors: Regan Tom
Published: June 2016

Donald VanDeVeer has again forwarded the debate over the morality of our treatment of animals, this time by focusing attention on certain arguments used in defense of vegetarianism. Since I am identified as the principal, though not alway the sole perpetrator of these arguments (see my “The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, October 1975) I would like to respond to VanDeVeer's most important remarks. For while I readily concede that there is at least much that is incomplete in my arguments for vegetarianism and for the more humane treatment of animals generally, it is not clear to me that VanDeVeer quite puts his finger on where my arguments are open to this objection or, if and when he does, that he draws the correct conclusion from this.
Locke on Qualities
Authors: Campbell John
Published: June 2016

Locke's division between primary and secondary qualities in chapter viii of Book II of the Essay is a hardy philosophical perennial which has weathered centuries of misrepresentation. Gradually, however, a new dawn in Locke scholarship is breaking, in the light of which it transpires that the importance and interest of the dichotomy belongs not to classical philosophy of perception but to philosophy of science. The excellence of current Locke exegesis, however, should not blind us to the fact that recent readings are in urgent need of supplementation: and one aim of this paper is to show how this might be achieved.
On the Rights of Non-Persons
Authors: Husak Douglas N.
Published: June 2016

Do non-persons have moral rights? I will suppose this question can best be answered by inquiring whether some animals and/or environmental objects have moral rights, for if any non-persons are possessors of rights, animals and/or environmental objects are the most plausible candidates. As so interpreted, this question has received an extraordinary amount of recent attention from philosophers. Arguments have been offered and defended; rebuttals have appeared in print. Yet, so far as I am aware, no one has presented a clear and accurate statement of what turns on the issue of whether non-persons have moral rights. In the absence of such a statement, philosophers are likely to be at sea in determining on which side of the controversy their initial sympathies lie. In this paper it is my central concern to help clarify what turns on the issue of whether non-persons are possessors of moral rights, rather than to argue decisively for one position or the other.
Meta-Ethics Naturalized
Authors: Zimmerman David
Published: June 2016

Meta-ethics without normative ethics is empty. In the current climate this hardly needs emphasis: since 1960 or so philosophers in the English-speaking world have put away their earlier reluctance to think about substantive moral issues. For a while, in fact, it seemed that normative ethics would completely dominate the scene in the way metaethics once did, but, happily, this situation has begun to change with the appearance of a stimulating and illuminating body of work on the rational basis of morality. Even those philosophers most intent on solving first-order moral problems have begun to realize that, in the last analysis, normative ethics without meta-ethics is blind.
Leibniz and Russell on Existence and Quantification Theory
Authors: Skosnik Jeffrey
Published: June 2016

Never shall this be proved, that things that are not are. Parmenides

To say that something does not exist, or that there is something which is not, is clearly a contradiction in terms; hence “(∀x) (x exists)” must be true. Moreover, we should certainly expect leave to put any primitive name of our language for the “x” of any matrix “ … x … ”, and to infer the resulting singular statement from “(∀x) ( … x … )”; it is difficult to contemplate any alternative logical rule for reasoning with names.
True, False, Etc.
Authors: Herzberger Hans G.
Published: June 2016

How many truth-values are there? Although this appears to be a very simple question, in my opinion it defies any very simple answer. Some of us have trouble making up our minds. Frege, who invented the term “truth-value”, declared that apart from Truth and Falsity “there are no further truth-values”; and yet Frege, who introduced many of us to semantic presuppositions, acknowledged truth-value gaps. Now how many values would that be? On one way of counting, True, False and Gap make three. To be sure it's not Frege's way of counting; but it's defensible. And we are left with the historical puzzle that Frege, who founded his semantics on the insistence that functions be everywhere defined—without any gaps—has come to be known as the author of the doctrine of semantic presuppositions and truth-value gaps.
Supervaluations without Truth-Value Gaps
Authors: Herzberger Hans G.
Published: June 2016

For a very long time truth-value gaps were under a cloud of suspicion because they were considered logically unmanageable. So Frege declared that:

“as regards concepts we have a requirement of sharp delimitation; if this were not satisfied it would be impossible to set forth logical laws about them”.

Three-valued logic promised to dispel the cloud but in the eyes of many it had promised more than it could deliver. So in response to Reichenbach's plea for a three-valued quantum logic Russell replied:

“This is one of a number of questions as to which I am prevented from accepting a certain view by difficulties in carrying it out, but am prepared to alter my opinion if technical skill supplies an answer to my difficulties”.

‘By now technical skill has supplied many alternative systems of three-valued logic, but few answers and numerous additional difficulties.’
Modifiers and Quantifiers in Natural Language
Authors: Parsons Terence
Published: June 2016

This paper has two parts. In part I, I review two older accounts of the logical forms of modifiers (adjectives, adverbs and prepositional phrases), and suggest that they may be combined with each other so as to yield a theory that is better than either of its parts taken singly. Part of this theory involves the idea that certain sentences refer to events, states, or processes; Part II of this paper shows how to use this idea to account for tenses and temporal adverbials, and offers a new account of ordinary language quantification.
Kleist
Authors: Mondadori Fabrizio
Published: June 2016

“Chaque homme est divisé entre les hommes qu'il peut être”, P. Nizan (for Sylvie)

As if we had in mind something like a scale of might-have-beens, erratically decreasing in specificity, in which each point provides some or all of the grounds for a transition to the next one, but not conversely, we could claim that Kleist might not have met Henriette Vogel; that he might not have committed suicide at all; that he might have had different properties than the properties he in fact had; even, in a somewhat figurative vein, that he might have been a different person than the person he was; and so on; and so forth, either adding new marks to the scale, or with a different scale in mind, along similar lines. Scales of this sort not only qualify as a kind of string of causally and temporally related might-have-beens; they also qualify, at the same time, as partial lists of true de re modal predications about Kleist.
Secular Faith
Authors: Baier Annette
Published: June 2016

Both in ethics and in epistemology one source of scepticism in its contemporary version is the realization, often belated, of the full consequences of atheism. Modern non-moral philosophy looks back to Descartes as its father figure, but disowns the Third Meditation. But if God does not underwrite one's cognitive powers, what does? The largely unknown evolution of them, which is just a version of Descartes’ unreliable demon? “Let us … grant that all that is here said of God is a fable, nevertheless in whatever way they suppose that I have arived at the state of being that I have reached, whether they attribute it to fate or to accident, or make out that it is by a continual succession of antecedents, or by some other method — since to err and deceive oneself is a defect, it is clear that the greater will be the probability of my being so imperfect as to deceive myself ever, as is the Author to whom they assign my being the less powerful” (Meditation I, Haldane and Ross, tr.).
Morality and the Marxist Concept of Ideology
Authors: Peffer R.G.
Published: June 2016

A paradox in Marx's thought (and for Marxism in general) is that while Marx's writings abound in moral Judgments (i.e., in commendations, condemnations, prescriptions, etc., made on the basis of a concern for human ill and well-being), they contain, at the same time, explicit repudiations of morality. A major charge leveled against morality in the writings of Marx and other Marxists, a charge to which, perhaps, all of the other charges against morality can be reduced, is that morality is ideology or, to say the same thing slightly differently, that morality is ideological.
Marxism, Morality, and Ideology
Authors: Kellner Douglas
Published: June 2016

The relationship between Marxism, morality, and ideology has been fraught with controversy and heated debates throughout the century. Advocates of ‘scientific socialism’ tend to dismiss morality as mere ideology, which serves as a camouflage for class interests. In this view, Marxism is a science, separate from and opposed to morality; morality is conceived of as part of the ideological superstructure: false consciousness, containing lies and illusions, which seduces the bourgeoisie into self-satisfaction and complacency, while blinding the working class to their own class-interests and exploitation by the ruling class and the capitalist mode of production. Since, however, there are powerful moral impulses in Marx's own critique of capitalism and call to socialist revolution, and since those engaged in political struggle invariably make use of moral terms and exhortations, the self-reflexive ‘scientific socialist’ comes to devise some sort of moral doctrine: Engels, Kautsky, Trotsky and others talked of a higher socialist morality which would govern the future socialist society and, in some versions, which is to become already the guiding morality for a socialist revolutionary.
Workers' Interests and the Proletarian Ethic; Conflicting Strains in Marxian Anti-moralism
Authors: Skillen Anthony
Published: June 2016

Marx wrote in The German Ideology that the communist movement ‘shatters the basis of all morality’ and that ‘the communists preach no morality at all’; in The Communist Manifesto that morality and religion are correctly seen by the class-conscious proletarian as ‘so many bourgeois prejudices behind which there lurk in ambush Just as many bourgeois interests.’ In an article ‘Marxism and Morality’ and in a book Ruling Illusions; Philosophy and the Social Order, I urged that Marx's well advertised but untheorised scorn for ‘morality’ not be interpreted in terms of rejection of the prevailing (bourgeois) content of moral norms, which would be consistent with espousing an alternative set of ‘precepts’ or ‘principles.’ Rather, Marx's position should be seen as a theoretical and practical opposition to the very form of ‘morality’ as he understood it: the form of universal, absolute laws binding on individuals as beings with a capacity to rise above and conquer their selfish, capricious ‘inclinations.’
Is There a Marxist Personal Morality?
Authors: McMurtry John
Published: June 2016

Man must prove the truth i.e., the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice.

As individuals express their life, so they are.

Karl Marx.

The idea of a Marxian personal morality is in some ways irresistible. It strikes a personal chord in us, as most Marxian ideas may not, and it brings us close to the heart of the Marxian vision, its concern for the welfare of oppressed others.

Yet Marxist theory, with its emphasis on classes, social laws, and historical determinism, seems to rule out the domains of the personal and the moral in principle. And this standard theoretical preemption is reflected in practice. Marxists rarely examine, or seek to revolutionize, their individual lives as they do societies. Indeed they may be inclined to be disdainful of any such venture as a sort of ‘bourgeois individualism.’
Marx's Critique of Utilitarianism1
Authors: Brenkert G.G.
Published: June 2016

The nature of Marx's ethics has been a matter of considerable dispute since the latter part of the nineteenth century. Some have maintained that Marx had no ethics; others have claimed that his ethics is Kantian; and yet others have maintained that his ethics is utilitarian. The first two views were prominent at the turn of the century. It is the utilitarian view that seems to hold favor among a great many today. Thus Adam Schaff has claimed that ‘Marxist theory … leads to the general position that may be called “social hedonism” —the view that the aim of human life is to secure the maximum happiness for the broadest masses of the people … ’ Similarly, Derek Allen has claimed that ‘it is possible … to show that the arguments which support [Marx's and Engels’] moral judgments are utilitarian in all but name.’
Spinoza's Theory of the Eternity of the Mind
Authors: Steinberg Diane
Published: June 2016

In part I of this paper I argue that on his theory of the mind as the idea of an actually existing body Spinoza is unable to account for the ability of the mind to have adequate knowledge, and I suggest that his theory of the eternity of the mind can be viewed as his solution to this problem. In part II I deal with the question of the meaning of ‘eternity’ in Spinoza (i.e., whether eternity involves timelessness or not, and why), in regard both to God and the human mind, and I sketch a line of thought which I believe may have provided him with further motivation for his theory that a part of the mind is eternal.
Virtue and Happiness: Kant and Three Critics
Authors: Friedman R.Z.
Published: June 2016

'Contentment with our existence, ‘Kant observes, ‘is not, as it were, an inborn possession or a bliss, … it is rather a problem imposed upon us by our finite nature as a being of needs.’ Happiness is an inescapable problem for man; is it, however, the central problem of morality? Kant thinks not. The central problem of morality is the tension between two sets of demands, between two goods- virtue and happiness.

Happiness, according to Kant, is the fulfillment of all of one's wants. It is ‘a rational being's consciousness of the agreeableness of life which without interruption accompanies his whole existence.'