bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Connectionism Rules, OK?
Authors: Sterelny Kim
Published: April 2010

Those familiar with Paul Churchland's earlier work will expect A Neuro-computational Perspective to be lively, provocative and interesting. They will not be disappointed. Churchland is best known for his sceptical view of belief-desire psychology. He suspects this theory is hopelessly false. This welcome collection of his essays includes this work but also his papers on the subjective aspects of the mind and his more recent adventures in philosophy of science. Three themes unify the collection: an anti-sententialist view of cognition, an emphasis on the plasticity of the human mind and a strong endorsement of connectionist models of human cognitive processes.
How Does the Laboratory of the Mind Work?
Authors: Kujundzic Nebojsa
Published: April 2010

The Laboratory of the Mindwas written with two purposes in mind. The first was to contribute to the growing literature on thought experiments (TE) with a selection of the most interesting examples of the genre. The second and much more ambitious purpose was to serve as a “first attempt at a (modern) rationalist interpretation of science” (p. x).
Donald Peterson on Wittgenstein's Early Philosophy
Authors: Bradley Ray
Published: April 2010

This book on the Tractatus is lauded, on the dust jacket, as “the first to make sense of the work as a whole.” Both new and veteran readers of Wittgenstein, we are told, “will benefit from Donald Peterson's exceptionally clear explication and commentary on this crucial work of the twentieth century.” Grand claims, these; and both of them arguably false. To be sure, Peterson writes well; and there are parts of the book—especially those dealing with Wittgenstein's Grundgedanke (chap. 4) and Notation (chap. 7)—from which all will benefit. But the clarity of his writing can beguile neophyte and incautious veteran alike into supposing that the ideas he explicates are Wittgenstein's rather than the author's own.
Nicholas Griffin on Russell's Idealist Apprenticeship
Authors: Baldwin Thomas
Published: April 2010

In his Autobiography Russell describes how, in 1895, having recently completed his undergraduate studies in mathematics and philosophy at Cambridge, he formed the intellectual project that was to inform the rest of his life:

I remember a cold, bright day in early spring when I walked by myself in the Tiergarten, and made projects of future work. I thought I would write one series of books on the philosophy of the sciences from pure mathematics to physiology, and another series of books on social questions. I hoped that the two series might ultimately meet in a synthesis at once scientific and practical. My scheme was largely inspired by Hegelian ideas. Nevertheless I have to some extent followed it in later years, as much at any rate as could have been expected. (Autobiography 1.125)
Does Basing Rights on Autonomy Imply Obligations of Political Allegiance?
Authors: Nickel James W.
Published: April 2010

Charles Taylor's well-known essay, “Atomism”, criticizes libertarian theories of rights like Nozick's that make individual rights independent of any duties to belong to, support, or obey the law in the society in which those rights are to be enjoyed. Taylor argues that if one grounds rights to important liberties on the human capacity for autonomy, this commits one to the view that the development of autonomy in oneself and others is morally obligatory. Further, Taylor argues that most people cannot develop autonomy in the absence of a certain sort of social and political environment. Hence, if it is morally obligatory to try to develop autonomy in oneself and others, it is also obligatory to belong to, support, and give obedience to those institutions which create the environment in which autonomy can be developed.
The Inequality of Markets
Authors: Rogerson Kenneth F.
Published: April 2010

For some time there have been arguments in favour of the claim that “free markets” are necessary for a proper account of distributive justice. Traditionally the arguments have come from two quarters. On the one hand markets are recommended for reasons of efficiency. This fits into a utilitarian argument claiming that market economies best promote the greatest good when compared to the alternatives. On the other hand there is a libertarian argument claiming that only free markets are consistent with individual liberty. Neither of these arguments have been met with widespread support. However, Ronald Dworkin has offered an argument supporting markets that breaks new ground. He argues that market economies have the considerable virtue of treating people as “equals” with respect to their preferences for goods and careers. This fits well with his larger claim that social justice in economics and politics requires treating people as equals.
« … Quod circulum non commiserim … » — Quartae Responsiones
Authors: Moyal Georges J. D.
Published: April 2010

Si elles ne manquent pas de bienveillance, les Quatrièmes Objections formulées par Antoine Arnauld comptent parmi les plus rigoureuses et les plus pénétrantes qui aient été opposées aux Méditations de Descartes. On sait d'ailleurs en quelle haute et chaleureuse estime Descartes tint, dès lors, le jeune théologien.
Cinquante-six conceptions de l'androgynie
Authors: Bouchard Guy
Published: April 2010

C'est dans une fuite au-delà de la polarisation des sexes et de la prison de l'identité sexuale qui réside, selon Carolyn Heilbrun (1982, ix), notre salut; et la terre promise s'appelle: « androgynie ». De même, selon Bazin et Freeman (1974, 185), l'image de l'androgynie est essentielle pour nous guider dans un processus de changement radical de la société. Harris (1974), par contre, considère l'androgynie comme un mythe sexiste déguisé. Rhodes (1983, 109) l'assimile à un modèle utopique taré par des préjugés patriarcaux sexistes. Et Mary Daly, après une période d'engouement pour l'idéal androgyne, le décrit caricaturalement comme un être humain composé de deux moitiés déjetées: John Wayne et Brigitte Bardot fusionnés en frère et soeur siamois (1975, 30).
Le rôle de l'imagination dans le mouvement animal et l'action humaine chez Aristote
Authors: Dugré François
Published: April 2010

Depuis maintenant plus d'un siècle, soit depuis la parution en 1863 de la monographie de J. Freudenthal (Über den Begriff des Wortes øαντασια bei Aristoteles, Göttingen), la tendance générale des interprèetes qui se sont intéressés à l'imagination chez Aristote aura été, sans conteste, de privilégier l'examen du De anima III 3 et de certains textes des Parva naturalia afin de rendre compte de son rôle à l'intérieur de la psychologie aristotélicienne. Ce faisant, on a laissé quelque peu dans l'ombre, consciemment ou non, peu importe, la fonction de l'imagination dans l'explication du mouvement animal et de l'action humaine qu'Aristote nous a léguée essentiellement dans le De motu animalium et le De anima III 7, 9–11. Certes, étant donné l'importance de l'imagination en ces questions, certains exégètes n'ont pas manqué de s'y arrêter, mais la rareté des commentaires sur ces sujets, tout spéecialement le premier, et la possibilité d'apporter de nouveaux éclaircissements nous incitent àen reprendre l'examen. Nous traiterons d'abord du rôle de l'imagination dans l'explication du mouvement animal, puis dans celle, plus complexe, de l'action proprement humaine où l'imagination, de prime abord, pourrait sembler avoir une fonction préjudiciable à l'action réfléchie. Pour effacer ce soupçon à l'égard de la pensée du Stagirite, que bien des philosophes auront manifesté dans l'histoire, il nous faudra, notamment, discuter la question du bien apparent et du bien comme tel en regard de l'imagination délibérative.
Locke on Personal Identity and the Trinity Controversy of the 1690s
Authors: Wedeking Gary
Published: April 2010

No aspect of Locke's Essay has received more attention than his theory of personal identity. Yet surprisingly little attention has been given to the intellectual context in which it was written. This is particularly noteworthy in that the chapter in which the theory is developed, “Of Identity and Diversity” (II,xxvii), has a history quite independent of the bulk of the Essay. Added only in the second edition (1694), the theory constitutes a rather late chapter in Locke's intellectual biography. In contrast to other major themes of the Essay, such as the origin of our ideas, substance, power, essence, etc., which received their early development in the various drafts of the Essay (the first being dated 1670), Locke's views on personal identity were apparently first formulated in a note in his 1683 journal.
Apriorisme et théorie du choix rationnel: arguments pour la défense de la position de l'École autrichienne
Authors: Kaufmann J. Nicolas
Published: April 2010

Les représentants de l'École autrichienne sont ici mis sous la même bannière pour autant seulement qu'ils ont été unanimes à revendiquer pour les postulats de l'économie pure, les «lois exactes» (Menger) de la théorie économique, c'est-à-dire de la théorie marginale de l'utilité, un statut particulier en ce sens qu'ils tenaient pour impossible, voire absurde ou simplement inutile de soumettre les postulats en cause à des tests empiriques. L'apriorisme dont ils se réclament, fait à juste titre la marque de commerce de l'École marginaliste autrichienne; Menger en a fourni les principes, von Mises la justification, et Rothbard s'est occupé de propager la doctrine de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique.
Freud devait-il choisir entre les deux conceptions du symbole que lui attribue Lévi-Strauss?
Authors: Charron Ghyslain
Published: April 2010

Si un auditeur saisit la lettre d'un récit et s'il se trouve devant une énigme ou une absurdité, il peut persister à attribuer du sens à ce discours et supposer que pour appréhender ce sens il lui faut recourir à un code autre que celui apparemment employé. Ainsi un rêve dont le contenu manifeste paraît insensé pourra prendre un sens si celui qui l'entend prête une valeur symbolique déterminée à tel ou tel élément de ce contenu et traduit ce symbolisé dans le discours ordinaire. Toute la question est de savoir comment l'interprète va s'y prendre pour déchiffrer correctement le texte énigmatique. Qui pratique l'interprétation devra pour justifier son travail développer une théorie du symbole et de la symbolisation. Lévi-Strauss reproche précisément à Freud d'avoir oscillé entre une conception réaliste et une conception relativiste du symbole et de n'avoir pas su choisir entre les deux.
A Synthetic Formulation of Nietzsche's Aesthetic Model
Authors: Jovanovski Thomas
Published: April 2010

Nietzsche's philosophy in extenso may properly be appraised as a sustained endeavour to effect a creative sublation of Western ontology—and thus to nullify the latter's aesthetic Socratic basis—as a prerequisite toward the re-establishment of the instinct-affirming property of the post-Homeric/pre-Socratic Attic tragic paideia. Hence Nietzsche is compelled to investigate art's intrinsically twofold and ostensibly self-contradictory nature; namely, (i) its proclivity to metaphysically abstract Being and (ii) its capability to bring forth a context of ontological absence. Accordingly, paramount to his interest and analysis is his conception that art (in all its manifestations) is entirely and necessarily grounded in the dynamic interplay between the two primary, antithetical but not irreconcilable artistic impulses—(i) the Apollinian and (ii) the Dionysian. As he argues in the opening lines of The Birth of Tragedy (with the apparent conviction of a missionary for the “science of aesthetics”): “The continuous development of art is bound up with the Apollinian and the Dionysian duality—just as procreation depends on the duality of the sexes, involving perpetual strife with only periodically intervening reconciliations.”
Peut-on parler de connaissance philosophique?
Authors: Lagueux Maurice
Published: April 2010

C'est bien à la question de savoir s'il est légitime de parler d'une connaissance philosophique, que Gilles-Gaston Granger a voulu répondre, et répondre par l'affirmative, en publiant son dernier livre intitulé Pour la connaissance philosophique. À en juger pourtant par les réactions agaçées que provoque souvent cette enquête constamment réouverte sur la nature de la philosophie, il se pourrait bien que nombre de philosophes trouvent un peu excessif de consacrer encore un ouvrage de près de trois cents pages à justifier la portée cognitive d'une discipline qui, au cours de sa longue histoire, a produit autant d'œuvres dont le moins qu'on puisse dire est qu'elles ont hautement contribué à enrichir le bagage culturel de l'humanité. Qui, parmi ceux qui vouent l'essentiel de leur vie à l'enseignement de la philosophie, accepterait de se voir refuser le droit de prétendre transmettre une connaissance authentique? Pourtant, je voudrais soutenir ici que, compte tenu de son contexte, non seulement l'intervention de Granger n'était pas superflue mais qu'elle n'aura pas été suffisante pour établir de façon convaincante qu'il existe telle chose qu'une connaissance proprement philosophique.
The Reality of the Future
Authors: Leslie John
Published: April 2010

This book would better have been called Backward Causation. For its central purposes, the reason for wanting the future to be real is that it must be real if it is to affect the present (see p. 12). Backward causation might be essential to the precognitions reported by paranormal psychologists (p. 20). Philosophers, too, might want it for giving power to Newcomb's Paradox (p. 42–45) in which the presence of a superbly efficient Predictor could discourage what would otherwise be evidently rational behaviour. Again, Time Machines (p. 226–237) and Ray Guns fired into the Past (p. 30f.) have attracted philosophical attention. Finally, and of more interest to Faye, physicists have published hundreds of papers speculating about advanced particles and tachyons. Advanced particles (Chapter 7) are conceived as moving backwards in time. Tachyons (Chapter 8) travel faster than light, which means that at least some observers will be inclined to view their temporal progress as backwards.
Prado's The Limits of Pragmatism
Authors: Gerwin Martin
Published: April 2010

Carlos Prado has been much influenced by the thought of Richard Rorty, whose ideas have found application in Prado's earlier philosophical writings on the nature of fiction and on aging. In this book, Rorty's ideas are themselves the object of study. Prado is not attempting a complete examination of Rorty's work, and as a result, Rorty's relations to certain other philosophers he admires—earlier American pragmatists and contemporary uropean thinkers—are not explored to any great extent. The focus, instead, is on the theory of truth, on the issue of objectivity in science, and on Rorty's relation to Donald Davidson and other philosophers of the analytic tradition.
Preference's Progress: Rational Self-Alteration and the Rationality of Morality
Authors: Macintosh Duncan
Published: April 2010

On the received theory of rational choice,(a) a choice is rational if it maximizes one's individual expected utility. However in the Prisoner's Dilemma (PD), by this standard, each agent should Defect, since each maximizes no matter what the other does if he Defects. But then both will Defect, doing poorly; better for each if both had Co-operated.
Signification et essence. Les Leçons de 1908 de Husserl sur sa doctrine de la signification
Authors: Fisette Denis
Published: April 2010

Je prends ici comme prétexte la parution aux éditions Nijhoff des Leçons professées par E. Husserl durant le semestre d'été 1908 à Göttingen sur sa doctrine de la signification, Vorlesungen ueber Bedeutungslehre Sommersemester 1908 (1987), afin de faire le point sur les changements qui interviennent durant cette période concernant sa conception de la signification. L'importance du contenu de ces Leçons a déjà été signalée par quelques phénoménologues dont G. Küng (1973), R. Bernet (1979). D. W. Smith et R. McIntyre (1982) et par Husserl (1968) lui-même dans une lettre à R. Ingarden. Il semble que ces Leçons marquent ce qu'on pourrait appeler un «tournant frégéen» dans la conception husserlienne de la signification et qu'elles préparent le sol sur lequel s'édifie la théorie de l'intentionalité des Idées directrices.
Justification, Deductive Closure and Reasons to Believe
Authors: Audi Robert
Published: April 2010

By deduction, we often extend both our knowledge and our justified belief. Moreover, in achieving knowledge or justified belief of some proposition, we commonly acquire justification for believing many of its entailed consequences, such as at least some of those that self-evidently follow from it. These and related facts have led some philosophers to endorse strong closure principles, for instance: If a person, S, is justified in believing a proposition, p, and p entails q, then S is justified in believing q. Others have denied such principles, whether for justification or, with the appropriate additions, for knowledge. The debate continues. There is, however, this much consensus: there are difficult problems about the scope of closure, and epistemology should develop theories that can resolve them.
Intelligence et intentionalité. Critique de l'argument de Searle contre l'intelligence artificielle
Authors: Longeart Maryvonne
Published: April 2010

Dans son célèbre article de 1950 «Computing Machinery and Intelligence», Alan Turing suggère qu'un critère d'intelligence pour une machine serait qu'elle puisse se faire passer pour un interlocuteur humain. Ce test, appelé «Test de Turing», a été critiqué par John Searle, qui a remis en cause sa pertinence en s'appuyant sur une expérience mentale connue sous le nom de l'argument de la chambre chinoise (Chinese Room Argument). L'expérience tend à montrer que l'intelligence artificielle au sens propre du terme est impossible, parce que les symboles manipulés par les programmes de prétendue «intelligence artificielle» (IA) sont dépourvus de signification. L'intentionalité propre à certains êtres vivants peut seule faire naître le sens. L'imitation d'un comportement intentionnel ne le peut pas. Le test de Turing serait done insatisfaisant, parce qu'il ne permettrait pas de distinguer les systèmes intentionnels de systèmes qui ne le sont pas, et que par conséquent il ne permettrait pas de distinguer l'intelligence authentique (intentionnelle) de la simulation de l'intelligence (non intentionnelle).
Lehrer Reading Reid
Authors: Todd D. D.
Published: April 2010

Lehrer's “reason for writing this book is that the philosophy of Thomas Reid is widely unread, while the combination of soundness and creativity of his work is unexcelled.” The book contributes to the ongoing Reid revival. Chapter 1 presents an overview of Reid's life and works and the last, Chapter 15, gives Lehrer's appraisal of Reid's philosophy. Chapter 2, “Beyond Impressions and Ideas,” outlines Reid's “refutation of what he called the Ideal System” of impressions and ideas that dominated philosophy from Descartes through Hume, and summarizes Reid's theory of the mind. The remaining chapters conduct the reader through the three books Reid published during his lifetime. There are three chapters covering the Inquiry of the Human Mind (1764), five on the Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), a chapter comparing Reid on conception and evidence in the Inquiry and the Essays, and three chapters on Essays on the Active Powers of Man (1788). The index is helpful despite occasional references to a page number larger than the number of pages. The bibliography is generally good, although, oddly, Lehrer lists the inaccessible 1937 Latin edition of Reid's important Philosophical Orations and not the English translation published by the Philosophy Research Archives in 1977 and republished by the Journal of the History of Philosophy Monograph Series early in 1989. The text is remarkably free of typographical errors, but on p. 130 Putnam's 1973 article, “Meaning and Reference,” is said to have been published in 1983.
Intention et faiblesse de la volonté
Authors: Bilodeau Renée
Published: April 2010

Akrasia is both an intentional and an irrational phenomenon. These two characteristics can be reconciled by a careful reconstruction of practical reasoning. I undertake this task along Davidsonian lines, arguing against his critics that the notion of unconditional judgement is the key to an adequate account of akrasia. Unless akrasia is conceived as a failure of the agent to form an unconditional judgement that conforms to her best judgement “all things considered,” the intentionality of akrasia is lost. Likewise, I show how practical and theoretical reasonings concur in the production of action, and why akrasia is a problem for the philosophy of action before being a problem for moral philosophy.
The Inverted Nature of Plato's Euthyphro
Authors: Brouwer James
Published: April 2010

L'article montre qu'une interversion structurelle caractéristique se retrouve tout au long de l'Euthyphron de Platon. Il est assez facile de voir qu'Euthyphron confond un aspect dérivé de la piété avec l'essence même de la piété, mais ma thèse est que cette confusion entre positions primaires et secondaires est présente à plusieurs niveaux dans le dialogue. Il y a relation d'interversion non seulement entre l'essentiel et le dérivé, mais aussi parmi les personnages mêmes, comme dans d'autres éléments du dialogue. C'est la répétition de ce schéma de base qui confère à l'Euthyphron une certaine immobilité et qui fait obstacle à tout développement organique dans le texte.
Geach on Generalization
Authors: Sayward Charles
Published: April 2010

Il y a des objections plausibles contre une approche substitutionnelle de la généralisation, dont certaines peuvent être contrées par un appel à une version de l'approche substitutionnelle qui a été proposée par Peter Geach il y a presque quarante ans. Il n'est pas clair que la conception substitutionnelle de Geach vaille pour tous les phénomènes de généralisation, mais on s'emploie ici à montrer que c'est une conception qui est tout à fait digne de considération et qu'elle donne bel et bien lieu à une compréhension correcte de la généralisation pour un éventail important de cas.
Generosity and Representation: Making Sense of a Non-Representational Model of the Passions
Authors: Mayeda Graham
Published: April 2010

Pour plusieurs, la troisième notion primitive, celle de l'union de l'esprit et du corps, est un ajout obscur et inexplicable dans la philosophie de Descartes, et qui est venu après coup. Je soutiens, pour ma part, que nous pouvons réconcilier la conception que se fait Descartes de cette troisième notion primitive avec l'approche dualiste des Méditations par le biais d'un modèle non représentationnaliste des passions. Je montre, pour y parvenir, que les passions, qui sont des manifestations de la troisième notion primitive, sont autoréflexives et présentent ainsi la même structure que la conscience du cogito.
On What Does the Issue of Supervenience and Psychophysical Dependence Depend?
Authors: Hendel Giovanna
Published: April 2010

Prenant comme point de départ un article récent de Neil Campbell, j'examine la question de savoir si la survenance psychophysique peut assurer la dépendance psychophysique. Mes thèses principales sont que (1) contrairement à ce que croit Campbell, il n'est pas clair que Kim ait montré de manière convaincante que les formulations de la survenance psychophysique en termes de propriétés soient inadéquates pour expliquer la dépendance psychophysique; (2) la pertinence des difficultés soulevées par Kim tient surtout à la conception que l'on se fait, d'abord de la notion de dépendance qui est en jeu, puis d'autres notions également, comme celle d'explication; (3) pour quelqu'un qui est convaincu par les problèmes de Kim, il n'est pas clair—contrairement à ce que suggère Campbell — que le passage d'une survenance au niveau des propriétés à une survenance au niveau des prédicats, comme celle de Davidson, puisse être d'une quelconque utilité; done (4) ce qui importe à notre problème n'est pas de savoir si nous avons affaire à une survenance au niveau des propriétés ou à une survenance au niveau des prédicats, mais c'est plutôt la façon dont on conçoit la notion de dépendance dans ce contexte, et d'autres notions telles que celle d'explication.
L'herméneutique philosophique: entre réflexion et vigilance
Authors: Langlois Luc
Published: April 2010

On n'a pas toujours assez insisté sur cet aspect, mais la préoccupation de l'herméneutique de Gadamer d'affranchir l'expérience humaine de la vérité de sa dépendance unilatérale envers la méthode et ses promesses de contrôle, plonge ses racines, bien avant la rédaction deVérité et méthode, dans les premières années d'apprentissage du philosophe. C'est la puissance de révélation et d'évocation non maîtrisable de la poésie qui aura d'abord éveillé le jeune Gadamer à un univers deconnaissancequi ne se résume ni à un savoir d'objet ni aux prétentions modernes d'une pensée qui veut s'assurer de ses precédés et de ses propres pensées, mais qui n'en recèle pas moins un authentique pouvoir véritatif.
John Stuart Mill as Philosopher
Authors: Narveson Jan
Published: April 2010

This substantial study appears in a series called The Arguments of the Philosophers. If Professor Skorupski's admirable work on Mill is typical, it will be a remarkable series. Both as a work of scholarship and as a contribution to philosophy in its own right, this is an outstanding work, well worth reading by the general philosopher and not just by Mill devotees.
Esthétique et moralité selon Kant. Le cas du sublime
Authors: Dumouchel Daniel
Published: April 2010

La parution d'un ouvrage entièrement consacré à la théorie kantienne du sublime mérite d'être saluée avec un certain enthousiasme, a fortiori lorsqu'il provient de la tradition anglo-saxonne, où la question du sublime est généralement considérée comme une «erreur» dont la théorie esthétique de Kant gagnerait à être expurgée. Paul Crowther remarque d'entrée de jeu que le regain d'intérêt pour l'esthétique de Kant qui s'est fait sentir dans le monde anglo-saxon depuis les années soixante-dix s'est concentré presque exclusivement sur les questions de la beauté et de l'art, au détriment du sublime. Paul Guyer avait prétendu fixer les raisons de cet ostracisme: d'abord, le sentiment du sublime est selon lui inconciliable avec l'explication fondamentale que donne Kant de la «réponse esthétique» en général en termes d'harmonie de l'imagination et de l'entendement; ensuite, la discussion du sublime minimiserait l'importance de 1'intersubjectivité esthétique, qui constitue selon lui l'essentiel de la théorie esthétique kantienne comprise comme une théorie du «goût»; et finalement, la discussion kantienne du sublime ne posséderait plus qu'un intérêt historique, qui ne saurait rencontrer nos sensibilités esthétiques modernes, tandis que nous aurions au contraire beaucoup à apprendre de la discussion des jugements sur la beauté (1979, p. 399 sq.). Or, c'est précisément d'une nouvelle sensibilité à l'endroit du sublime, qui se ferait sentir depuis les années quatre-vingt, que se réclame Crowther pour justifier son entreprise théorique (p. 2).
Making Believe
Authors: Levinson Jerrold
Published: April 2010

Kendall Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe is the most significant event in Anglo-American aesthetics in many a year, and joins a small pantheon of landmark books such as Nelson Goodman's Languages of Art, Richard Wollheim's Art and Its Objects and Arthur Danto's Transfiguration of the Commonplace. Walton's aim is to provide a comprehensive account of the representational arts—literature, drama, cinema, painting, drawing, sculpture—from both the generative and the receptive points of view. That is to say, he attempts to explain how representations are fashioned, what their representational status consists in, how representations are apprehended and what the experience of them characteristically involves. Inthese aims he is to my mind enormously, if not completely, successful.
Faut-il enterrer le principe de compositionnalitè?
Authors: Rivenc François
Published: April 2010

Commençons par saluer la parution de cet ouvrage, qui propose au lecteur francophone les traductions de quatorze articles de Hintikka (dont deux écrits en collaboration avec G. Sandu), couvrant la période 1976-1990, qu'on peut pour l'essentiel répartir en deux rubriques; les six premiers articles constituent à des titres divers un plaidoyer pour l'introduction d'un nouveau cadre conceptuel, ou «paradigme», en linguistique, destiné à rem-placer le programme de la grammaire générative, et capable (selon l'auteur) d'expliquer et de prédire un grand nombre de phénomènes linguistiques plus ou moins négligés par l'approche traditionnelle, liée au pré-jugé selon lequel la créativité du langage est essentiellement d'ordre récursif. La seconde partie du recueil a pour thème central les limites de la logique du premier ordre (théorie de la quantification), et esquisse ce que devrait être une logique du premier ordre plus générate, en ce qu'elle accueille dans ses notations des phénoménes d'independance relative des quantificateurs et des connecteurs (Independence-friendly Logic, en abrégé IF). Á travers les deux révolutions dans la pensée qui sont ainsi proposées, Hintikka développe (et c'est ce qui fait l'unité profonde de l'ouvrage) les conséquences proches et lointaines de la sémantique qu'il a introduite dans les années 1970 (Hintikka, 1973), et initialement appliquée á la logique du premier ordre, sémantique fondée sur l'utilisation de concepts de la théorie des jeux (Game-theoretical Semantics, en abrégé GTS). Quels que soient par ailleurs ses grands mérites, la traduction française ici utilisée par N. Lavand, «sémantique des jeux», voile plus qu'elle ne révèle les rapports exacts entre la théorie mathématique desjeux, les langages, naturels ou formalisés, pour lesquels on construit une sémantique dite «formelle», et les concepts de stratégic et d'information, en particulier, tirés précisément de l a théorie des jeux et appliqués á l'interprétation du vocabulaire logique de ces langages. II est vrai qu'il y a lá une difficulté de traduction.
Should Kantians Care about Moral Worth?
Authors: Schaller Walter E.
Published: April 2010

One of the central features of Kant's moral theory is the sharp distinction he draws between the moral Tightness (legality) of actions and their moral worth or goodness (morality). As we know from the first pages of the Groundwork, the rightness of an action is determined by the conformity of the agent's maxim to the categorical imperative; the moral goodness or worth of an action is determined by the agent's motives, by whether the agent acted from the motive of duty or from some other (non-moral) empirical motive. Morally good actions must be morally right, according to Kant, whereas morally right actions are not necessarily morally good.
Heidegger on Realism and the Correspondence Theory of Truth
Authors: Tietz John
Published: April 2010

In An Introduction to Metaphysics Heidegger asserted that “it wasnot German idealism that collapsed; rather, the age was no longer strong enough to sustain the greatness, breadth, and originality of that spiritual world, i.e., truly to realize it” (1961, p. 37). He was at this point launchinginto one of the major themes of his later work: the “darkening of the world” in the form of the materialism and “demonism” typified by the antitheses of the USSR and the USA, a polarity of seeming opposites obscuring an underlying fundamental similarity. This was the modernist faith of both cultures in the power of science to solve all of the problems that have plagued humanity for untold centuries, a faith in the power of science to tell us the absolute truth about the nature of reality. In 1955 Heidegger also characterized science and technology in “The Question Concerning Technology” as an “enframing” (Gestell), a particular dominant interpretation of reality dependent on the interest of control and which conceals far more than it reveals. For one thing, “the essence of technology isin a lofty sense ambiguous. Such ambiguity points to the mystery of all revealing, i.e., of truth” (1977a, p. 33). Although enframing “lets man endure,” only art (poiesis) as the successor of philosophy transcends techne by allowing us to see that “the essence of technologyis nothing technological” (1977a, p. 35). Much earlier, in Being and Time, he gave his first sustained account of science as the interpretationof reality driven by technological interests, and spoke of Being as the “transcendens” lying beyond “every possible character which an entity can possess” [p. 38]. It remains debatable whether this characterization of Being survived into Heidegger's later period, but despite his nostalgia for the spirituality of the early nineteenth century, the role of Beingin these earlier works might best be explained as some kind of realism.
La Grammaire générale classique en tant que programme de recherche scientifique
Authors: Leclerc André
Published: April 2010

La Grammaire (1660) et la Logique (1662) de Port-Royal ouvrirent une ère nouvelle dans l'histoire des sciences du langage. On a beau insister sur la dette des Messieurs de Port-Royal (Arnauld, Nicole, Lancelot) envers Descartes, Augustin, Sanctius, ou meme Aristote, l'originalité de leur œuvre logico-grammaticale ne fait malgré tout aucun doute. Quant à l'influence de cette oeuvre sur les grammairiens philosophes des générations suivantes, elle est d'une remarquable persistance et demeure sensible pendant un bon siecle et demi, en dépit des critiques, corrections et innovations qu'elle a pu inspirer, et de la diversité des orientations philosophiques ou gnoséologiques des plus illustres grammairiens des Lumières. L'œuvre des Messieurs propose une vision unifiée des phénomènes langagiers et «l'appareil mis en place à Port-Royal continue à fonctionner pour l'essentiel» (cf. Dominicy, La naissance. …, p. 14), aussi bien chez les grammairiens philosophes de l'Encyclop'dic (Du Marsais, Beauzée), que chez Condillac et ses successeurs idéologues (en particulier Destutt de Tracy).
Empire-Building
Authors: Baker Brenda M.
Published: April 2010

Law's Empire is a bold and ambitious attempt to provide a philosophical framework which will serve to install the judicial perspective as the preferred perspective from which to think about theories of law. The heart of its argument is that judicial determination of what constitutes law is an exercise in constructive interpretation. Judges have the responsibility to seek that story of the law that both fits reasonably with its past political history and constitutes the best justification that can be given of the legal practices of the society as a whole. They are engaged in finding an account consistent with the history of the practice that displays the point, purpose(s) and values that the law serves to express and uphold, and so brings out most fully the law's claim to authority as a legitimate expression of governmental power in that society. Dworkin believes that the interpretation of law that best satisfies these conditions is law as integrity, which conceives of law as expressing a coherent set of principles embodying those substantive ideas of justice, fairness and procedural fairness that are respected in the community. Integrity tells judges to identify legal rights and duties as though they were all created by a single author, the community personified, as an embodiment of a coherent conception of justice and fairness to which the community subscribes. In this way, integrity requires judges to interpret the rules of law as having a principled justification in a network of values and moral principles that the society adopts.
Matter and Objecthood Disentangled
Authors: Laycock Henry
Published: April 2010

A distinction is drawn in “Matter and Objecthood” (henceforth MO) between two analyses of the status of matter vis-à-vis structured objects—between what is presented as a straightforward “two-level” analysis, and a putatively “deeper”, more dubious “three-level” analysis which the author believes to be posited by “Some Questions of Ontology” (henceforth SQO). It is at this “third level” (whatever it might be) that the dubious category of the “concrete non-particular” is said to be located.
Modernité, droits de l'homme et éthique du discours
Authors: Leydet Dominique
Published: April 2010

Le ressurgissement de la notion de droits de l'homme, à la faveur notamment du printemps polonais de 1980, restera sans doute l'un des traits les plus marquants de la décennie qui s'achève. L'on pourrait trouver son équivalent proprement philosophique dans l'audience croissante qu'ont su trouver des penseurs tels que Jürgen Habermas et K. O. Apel pour leur projet d'élaboration d'une nouvelle morale universaliste, à partir des principes de l'éthique kantienne. En effet, tant les droits de l'homme que ces théories morales inspirées de Kant ont en commun une même exigence d'universalité qui les voue à un niveau élevé d'abstraction, obtenu en libérant les principes invoqués de la réalité substantielle dont ils sont issus et sur laquelle ils ont, en définitive, à s'exercer. C'est ce qui fait de ces droits une politique de la déclaration et de ces théories morales une éthique du discours.
True to the Facts: A Sartrean Version
Authors: McLure Roger
Published: April 2010

In constructing the concept of truth I believe to be implicit in Sartre's philosophy, I shall inevitably make glancing contact with differences between his and Descartes' understanding of the cogito—their common foundational truth. This family quarrel will, however, remain peripheral to my discussion of what I take to be the core claim of any cogito-argument: that my existence is certain insofar as it results from my thinking. Beyond that, nothing is certain about what Descartes meant by the certainty of the cogito, or about what could reasonably be meant by it. His express inconsistencies in characterizing the (now inferential, now intuitive, even performative) force of his cogito-argument are well known, as are the various incompatible, textually more or less defensible, construals of generations of his interpreters. Unsurprisingly, then, the problem of truth for those of his followers, including Sartre, who have not been content to accept cogito, ergo sum as an unanalyzable datum, has tended to centre on proposing more intellectually transparent readings of their ancestor's seemingly inscrutable ergo.
Deductive Justification
Authors: Canary Catherine M. , Odegard Douglas
Published: April 2010

The principle that epistemic justification is necessarily transmitted to all the known logical consequences of a justified belief continues to attract critical attention. That attention is not misplaced. If the Transmission Principle is valid, anyone who thinks that a given belief is justified must defend the view that every known consequence of the belief is also justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection principle is modified, the possibility of deductive justification is threatened. If some known consequence fails to be justified, the failure may extend to every known consequence. To reject Transmission is to insert a logical gap between the justification of a premise and the justification of the conclusion in an obviously valid argument. Once created, the gap is hard to fill, whatever the circumstances. Reflection on the Transmission Principle therefore usefully brings us face to face with the following dilemma: accept the principle and hand Cartesian scepticism a powerful weapon, or modify the principle and risk undermining deductive justification.
Bernard Williams and the Nature of Moral Reflection
Authors: Cragg A. W.
Published: April 2010

In Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams offers an unsettling critique of modern moral philosophy, a critique that calls for a radical reorientation that would have us start again leaving behind much or most or what has been done from the time of the flowering of classical philosophy. However, like moral philosophy itself, Williams' critique reaches beyond the theoretical to matters of practical concern. Moral philosophy since the time of Socrates has endeavoured to answer the question, “How should one live?” (1). Williams' critique is unsettling not simply or primarily because it implies that philosophy has much less to contribute to answering this question than Socrates and most philosophers since his time have thought. Rather, it is unsettling because it implies that Socrates' view that an unexamined life is not worth living, together with his assumption, shared by most moral philosophers since his time, that determining how one should live requires that one step back and reflect on the values governing one's life (19ff.), is either seriously misleading (110 and 116) or mistaken (168).
Modality, Mechanism and Translational Indeterminacy
Authors: MacIntosh Duncan
Published: April 2010

How does Quine argue to the indeterminacy of translation? It has always been hard to tell, but one construction goes like this: A fact is determinate only if it is empirically determinable, for empirical evidence under-determines truth about the trans-empirical; theory is underdetermined by data. Therefore, facts about the unobservable, facts of theory, are indeterminate. A fact about the meaning of a person's sentence is only determinate if it is empirically determinable. The meaning of a person's sentence is empirically determinable only if it is empirically determinable under what conditions he assents to it. The meaning of a person's sentence about something unobservable is determinable only if it is determinable what unobservable events are occurring whenever he assents to a sentence supposedly about the unobservable. It is not empirically determinable what is going on in the unobservable realm whenever someone assents to a sentence supposedly about the unobservable. Therefore it is undeterminable what a person's theory sentence means. Therefore what it means is indeterminate.
Bonjour's Objection to Traditional Foundationalism
Authors: Rappaport Steven
Published: April 2010

Empirical foundationalism affirms that some empirical beliefs a person holds (at a time) have a degree of justification or warrant that does not derive from their being inferable from other empirical beliefs the person holds. Such beliefs are basic for the person (at the time). In his recent book Laurence Bonjour claims that foundationalism faces the following problem:

The basic problem confronting empirical foundationalism … is how the basic or foundational empirical beliefs to which it appeals are themselves justified or warranted or in some way given positive epistemic standing, while still preserving their status as basic. This problem amounts to a dilemma: if there is no justification, basic beliefs are rendered epistemically arbitrary, thereby fatally impugning the very claim of foundationalism to constitute a theory of epistemic justification; while a justification which appeals to further premises of some sort threatens to begin anew the regress of justification which it is the whole point of foundationalism to avoid.
Desire's Desire for Moral Realism: A Phenomenological Objection to Non-Cognitivism
Authors: Nelson James Lindemann
Published: April 2010

Roughly thirty years ago, R. M. Hare told an Anglo-French philosophy conference about a young Swiss student who came to stay with his family in Oxford. It seems that the student was doing very nicely, until, in a burst of misguided hospitality, the Hares provided him with one of their few French books, Camus's L'Etranger. Reading Camus had the effect of changing the student from an affable, altogether attractive young man into a chain-smoking recluse for whom “rien, rien n'avait d'importance”.
Autonomy, Liberty, and Utility
Authors: Kapur Neera Badhwar
Published: April 2010

Lawrence Haworth's book, Autonomy, discusses “Autonomy as a Psychological Idea”, and “Autonomy as a Normative Idea”. Part 1 discusses autonomy in relation to rationality, agency, and responsibility, defends it against Skinnerian sceptics, and outlines a theory of autonomous decision-making and the autonomous task environment. Haworth's conception of autonomy integrates and builds on the concepts of S. I. Benn, G. Dworkin, H. Frankfurt, and R. W. White. Part 2 centres on social/political theory, and not, despite the book's subtitle, on ethics as such. Haworth argues that only autonomy, and not liberty or happiness, is an intrinsic (non-moral) value, and fundamental right. His “autonomist” theory of liberty rights, a form of revisionary liberalism derived from the later idealists, is opposed to the classical liberal/libertarian theory. The arguments prompt a re-examination of the role of autonomy in the arguments for liberty (and happiness), but do not, in my view, make a persuasive case for “autonomism” against classical liberalism (hereafter liberalism). The book is chiefly noteworthy for its success in covering many important topics connected with autonomy, in an impressively short space, and in an always clear and often very insightful way.
Ontological Arguments for Satan and Other Sorts of Evil Beings
Authors: Power William L.
Published: April 2010

Over the years it has been suggested that it is possible to construct deductive arguments for the existence of Satan and other sorts of evil beings, modelled on Anselm's argument in the Proslogium. From time to time such suggestions and similar proposals have also appeared in print. In my judgment, such suggestions and proposals are ill-conceived, misguided and foolish. My reasons for this judgment are all implicitly contained in Anselm's Proslogium or in his reply to Gaunilon. When examined in light of Anselm's insights, arguments for the existence of Satan and other sorts of evil beings turn out to be unsound.
The Logical Form of Descriptions
Authors: Linsky Bernard
Published: April 2010

Stephen Neale defends Russell's famous theory of definite descriptions against more than 40 years' worth of criticisms beginning long before Strawson's “On Referring.” Ever since Strawson's parting shot in that paper (“… ordinary language has no exact logic”), the theory of descriptions has been a battleground for the larger issue of whether a systematic theory of the semantics of natural language is really possible. Neale provides us with a sketch of part of that project as it currently stands. All of the complexities and irregularities of the use of definite descriptions in natural language can be combined, after all, in a single theory based on an “exact logic.” Neale argues that one can give a Russellian account of “incomplete descriptions” (as in ‘The table is covered with books’), generic uses of ‘the’ (‘The whale is a mammal’), plural descriptions (‘The men carried the piano’) and, of central interest, the purportedly referential uses identified by Donnellan (as in ‘The murderer of Smith is insane’ when it is Jones the accused we have in mind). Neale follows familiar answers to these objections; incorporate demonstratives into the account (to get ‘The table over there …’), distinguish the proposition expressed from the one meant (the “referential” use is what was meant not said), and point out that the problem is not unique to definite descriptions and so cannot be a fault of any particular theory of them (many expressions have generic, plural and “referential” uses).
Necessitate Without Inclining
Authors: Gombay André
Published: April 2010

Imagine this sequence of events. I am at the wheel of my car at an intersection, waiting for the lights to change. Suddenly, a stranger runs out of the bank building at the corner, makes his way into the car, puts a gun to my head and orders me to drive off, on the double. Eventually there's a chase and we are caught.
Incline Without Necessitating
Authors: McCall Storrs
Published: April 2010

A stranger runs out of a bank while I am sitting at the wheel of my car waiting for the lights to change; he jumps in beside me, points a gun at me, and says, “Drive me to St. Bruno.” This is Andre Gombay's example, from his excellent paper on duress. The question that interests Gombay and me is: Could I refrain from doing what the gunman asks?