bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Platonist Theory of Musical Works
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

The limitations of the analytic approach are further explored through a consideration of Jerrold Levinson's modified Platonist view of musical works and performances. Levinson's account of musical works as initiated types seems to be more sensitive to our pre‐ontological and aesthetic understanding of works. The debate between Goodman and Levinson largely turns on which pre‐ontological and/or aesthetic conditions they are willing either to accommodate or dispense with in their theories. Several disputes are considered: Do notationally identical pieces that are produced nonetheless by different composers count as ‘the same’ work? Are works created or discovered? Is the specification of instrumentation essential to the identity of a work? The cases are used to demonstrate that no satisfactory decision between pre‐ontological and ontological claims can be reached within the theoretical limits provided by current strategies of analysis.
The Limits of Analysis and the Need for History
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Presents an argument against the analytic approach. In each case, its inadequacies are argued to stem from either unsatisfactory or indecisive stands on the relation between the theory and the phenomena. In an attempt to be scientific or naturalistic, these theories seek ahistorical definitions of cultural concepts. Such definitions result in what Adorno calls a ‘false clarity’ and create an unbridgeable rift between theory and musical practice. The argument does not assume that harmony between theory and practice can be reached. It is an argument rather for the indispensability of history in the philosophical treatment of concepts.
The Central Claim
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Identifies the philosophical content of the claim that the work concept began to regulate musical practice at a particular point in history. The ontological picture presupposed by the historical investigation of the musical work is made explicit: rather than treating the work as an object, the investigation asks what sort of a concept the work concept is. Five claims are made about the concept of a musical work. (1) It is an open concept with original and derivative employment. (2) It is correlated to the ideals of a practice. (3) It is a regulative concept. (4) It is projective. (5) It is an emergent concept. It is argued that the work concept came to regulate musical practice around 1800, that music came at this time centrally or predominantly to be packaged in terms of works. The claim entails neither that the work concept is inappropriately applied to productions of music prior to 1800 nor that the concept has remained fixed since 1800.
Musical Meaning: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

The central claim is supported by tracing the concept of so‐called ‘serious’ music. Since 1800, so‐called serious or classical music has been packaged in terms of works. Several general transitions are described to demonstrate the emergence of an effectively imaginary museum of musical works: (1) The move from extra‐musical to purely musical criteria of value and classification; (2) The emancipation of the music language from its dependence on poetic and religious texts; (3) The rise of so‐called purely instrumental music or absolute music; (4) The articulation of the concepts of fine art and the autonomous work of art and the inclusion of music under these categories.
Musical Meaning: Romantic Transcendence and the Separability Principle
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Investigates how the emancipation of music from the extra‐musical involved first an inclusion of music under the recently emerged concept of ‘the fine arts’ (the Kristeller thesis). The emancipation of instrumental music and fine art both depended on the separability principle. The romanticization of fine art re‐evaluated the conditions previously associated with productive art, imbuing them with aesthetic value: creativity, product, artefactuality, and perseverance. As music began to be understood as one of the fine arts, it began to articulate its need for artefacts comparable to the other works of fine art. In music, the romantic aesthetic, broadly conceived, involved both a transcendent move and a formalist one. Both moves served more thoroughly to separate musical meaning from seemingly worldly affairs by merging form and content and eliminating mimesis as a goal of music.
Musical Production Without the Work‐Concept
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Demonstrates that most moments, aspects, or beliefs associated with the work concept was either absent or understood differently prior to the late eighteenth century. It argues that the moments of the work concept did not function together in such a way as to give the concept institutional centrality. It shows, further, how the extra‐musical and functional understanding of music pervaded every level of practice. Issues such as reception, occasional music, composers’ involvement in performances, ownership of musical material, musical publication, and notation are explored in their pre‐1800 settings.
After 1800: The Beethoven Paradigm
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Investigates the transition to a musical practice in which the focus was on the production of complete, discrete, original, and fixed products. It explores the development and consequences of the emerging Beethoven myth and with this the Beethoven paradigm, according to which Beethoven comes to be the standard for what it means to compose musical works. The paradigm is described according to several historical shifts in musical practice: the composers’ rising authority and social standing; the composer's increasing independence from worldly affairs; reconceived relations to publishers and performers as well as reconceived norms of ownership, copyright, and plagiarism; new discussions of fidelity, werktreue, and texttreue. The emerging cult of virtuosity and extemporization are also considered. The idea is simply to describe the work concept as thickly as possible, which means at every level of practice and theory.
Werktreue: Confirmation and Challenge in Contemporary Movements
Authors: Goehr Lydia
Published: October 2003

Investigates the force of the Werktreue ideal in various parts of musical practice––in the practices of jazz and the avant‐garde, and in early performance practice; it offers a reading specifically of John Cage's 4’ 33’. It looks too at the use of the Werktreue ideal as shown in the rise of the conductor. If further investigates the ideal of Werktreue in relation now to the historical or authentic performance movement. It returns critically to the analysts’ use of the counter example method. It looks at the possibility of distinguishing original from derivative uses of the work concept as a development of the idea of the open concept. It looks at what it means to speak of conceptual challenge, conceptual change, neutralization, and the generic use of concepts; it looks also at the idea of conceptual imperialism. Though the argument of the book as a whole follows a strong conceptual argument all the way through, it is dependent also on the so‐called 1800 thesis, namely that this was the time of the emergence or culmination of the concept of a musical work as a regulative concept of musical practice.
Testimony
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

This book is about a topic in epistemology that had been much neglected until its publication, but has subsequently become much more discussed. That topic is testimony, or, less technically, the conveying of information by telling. Coady argues that reliance upon the word of others plays a crucial role in the economy of knowledge, though the extent and depth of this reliance have gone largely unrecognized in the philosophical tradition. He discusses those efforts that have been made to explain and justify the role of testimony in the getting and sustaining of knowledge or reliable belief, and concludes that, with the partial exception of Thomas Reid's discussion in the eighteenth century, they have been unsuccessful. This widespread failure, he argues, stems from a reductive approach with an individualist bias that fails to appreciate just how fundamental are our cognitive debts to one another. Indeed, he argues, the very possibility of linguistic communication rests upon some basic reliability of testimony. He spells out an alternative to the reductive way of understanding the links between testimony, perception, memory, and inference. In the latter part of the book, Coady explores several puzzles generated by our reliance on testimony, including those created by the tension between prior probabilities and testimony to astonishing events, the supposed increase in unreliability of testimonial chains of transmission as they expand, and a puzzle about competence and transmission of knowledge. He also discusses certain implications of his view of testimony for important issues in history, psychology, mathematics, and the law.
The Domain of Testimony
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

Sets the stage by exhibiting the extent and depth of our normal dependence upon the word of others. It explores the often‐unnoticed ways that this reliance is present in both everyday knowledge and rigorous scientific thought. It then examines the history of philosophical belittling of testimony and relates this to social and intellectual movements such as the dominance of an ideal of knowledge inherited from Platonic sources, the rise of individualism, the increased post‐Renaissance hostility to authority, and the development of probability theory.
Deciding for Testimony
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

Continues the critique of important discussions of testimony in the philosophical tradition by discussing H. H. Price's complex defence of our reliance upon the word of others. Price rejects the attempt at an inductive justification for the reliance, since he thinks that this treats the reliability of testimony as a factual claim, and, moreover, one that is impossible to establish. He thinks that it is really a policy justification that is required, but Coady argues that the reasons Price provides, and some others that could be developed from his comments, fail to vindicate the reliability of testimony in the way required.
The Status of Testimony
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

Begins with an investigation of certain central cognitive verbs to do with perceiving and remembering in order to compare the status of perception and memory with that of testimony. The verb learn is contrived to allow comparison of receiving testimony with other sources of knowledge, and objections to the idea that testimonial knowledge can be direct are considered and rejected. It then argues that, even allowing a certain centrality to perception, testimony should be treated non‐reductively as on the same epistemic level as perception, memory, and inference.
Astonishing Reports
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

Deals with puzzles raised by reports of deeply surprising events. There is a tendency to judge testimony harshly when it fails strikingly to conform to past experience (especially one's own), but this dismissive tendency is argued to be problematic. Discussions by Locke, Hume, Paley, Laplace, Mill, Bradley, and Peirce, amongst others, are examined and the relevance of Bayesian considerations is explored.
The Disappearance of History
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

The puzzle addressed in this chapter is most explicitly raised by Laplace, though foreshadowed by Locke, and is concerned with the supposed diminution in probative force of testimony that has passed through too many hands (or tongues). Laplace suggests that lengthy transmission chains must ‘enfeeble’ the probability of historical facts, but this disappearance of history thesis (DOHT) has some very counter‐intuitive consequences. It argues against various forms of the DOHT by exploring the diverse types of testimony chains available in written and oral traditions.
Experts and the Law
Authors: Coady C. A. J.
Published: October 2003

The role of expert evidence in the law has been much debated in the legal literature though less so in philosophy. This chapter attempts to bring the insights of the earlier chapters of this book to bear on the problem of the admissibility and value of expert evidence, especially in criminal trials. It examines various proposals for restricting or enlarging the role of experts, and the implications of these proposals are discussed.
Hylomorphism and Functionalism
Authors: Cohen S. Marc
Published: October 2003

Myles Burnyeat, Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University, disputes functionalist interpretations of Aristotle. Moreover, he contends that a correct understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy of mind leads to the realization that the only thing to do with it is to reject it. This essay argues that Burnyeat has failed to refute either Aristotle or his functionalist interpreters.
On Aristotle's Conception of the Soul
Authors: Frede Michael
Published: October 2003

This essay explores Aristotle’s conception of the soul. Aristotle believes that natural objects and their behaviour cannot be fully understood in terms of their material constituents and their properties, but have to be explained in terms of their essence or nature. Souls are simply a particular kind of essence or nature, namely the essence or nature of animal bodies. Doing justice to physical or natural phenomena requires the notion of a form or nature. Once this notion is allowed, it is strong enough to account for all that one would want a soul to account for – life, the things living objects do, and even the so-called affections of the soul.
Explaining Various Forms of Living
Authors: Code Alan , Moravcsik Julius
Published: October 2003

Aristotle did not see a sharp contrast between the psychological and the physical. He viewed the physical as just the natural, and treats the psychological as part of the physical. This essay attempts to explain why this is so, and presents observations about Aristotle’s framework. It explores the relation of hylomorphism to functionalism, and argues against funtionalist interpretations of Aristotle due to the belief that Aristotle was confronting a different set of concerns and issues.
De Anima 2. 2–4 and the Meaning of Life
Authors: Matthews Gareth B.
Published: October 2003

This essay constructs a picture of the meaning of life based on De Anima 2. 2-4. It shows that there are organisms that preserve their form through the exercise of identifiable functions. For an individual to be a short, living thing is for it to be one of these naturally species-preserving organisms. For an individual living thing to be actually living is for it to be able to perform one of the psychic or living functions appropriate to its species.
Intentionality and Physiological Processes: Aristotle's Theory of Sense‐Perception
Authors: Sorabji Richard
Published: October 2003

Aristotle did not view perception as a rudimentary reaction with little content as suggested by Plato, nor as the work of reason and thought as claimed by Strato. Perception is a half-way house between the two. This essay explores Aristotle’s redrawing of the map in which perception is located, and the formal and material causes of perception.
What Does the Maker Mind Make?
Authors: Kosman L. A.
Published: October 2003

This essay examines the question: what does the maker mind make, and what is it anyway? It argues that active thinking, thinking as theoria, which the maker mind makes, is a thinking most fully exemplified in the unremittingly active thinking of the divine mind. Thus, the maker mind is not simply an element in Aristotle’s psychological theory, but also an element in this theology.
Aristotle on Thinking
Authors: Ahn Charles H.
Published: October 2003

This essay discusses Aristotle’s theory of the intellect (nous), which is often neglected or misunderstood. It focuses on two doctrines in the theory of intellect: Doctrine One (D1) claims that nous is essentially incorporeal and has no bodily organ; and Doctrine Two (D2) is the thesis that the intellect in act is identical with its intelligible object. It is argued that D1 is incompatible with the general definition of psuchē, and that the appearance of conflict between D1 and the need for phantasms can be removed by distinguishing between noetic faculty and concrete acts of human thinking. D2 can shed light on the relationship of the nous and empirical consciousness in ordinary thinking, to sharpen the contrast between Aristotle’s view and post-Cartesian philosophy of mind.
What Is a Theory of Meaning? (I)
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

The theory of meaning may either attempt to explain what it is to have the concepts expressible in a particular language (full‐blooded theory), or merely to associate concepts with words in that particular language (modest theory). A theory of meaning suggested by Davidson, according to which knowing the meaning of a sentence consists in the ability to produce a T‐schema for that sentence, is a modest theory. But such a theory will be either a translation manual (in which case it does not explain the knowledge of language), or will have to be construed holistically (in which case a systematic account of the mastery of language is impossible).
What Is a Theory of Meaning? (II)
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

To know the meaning of a sentence is to know its truth‐conditions. Yet, in what does the knowledge of truth‐conditions consist? In many cases, it consists in knowing the way in which the truth of the sentence is dependent upon the truth of some other sentences in the language; in some cases, paradigmatically those of the statements of observation. This knowledge consists in the ability to give a report of observation. Then one must know a way. Hence, the notion of truth‐conditions no longer occupies the central place, being replaced by verification and falsification.
What Do I Know When I Know a Language?
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Is the knowledge of language exhausted by a practical ability to employ the language on a certain occasion, or rather it should explain that practical ability? The knowledge of language is distinguished from other typical practical abilities by being a conscious process. It is, however, not a code concealing thoughts at some deeper level. The study of thoughts is conducted via the study of language. Any implicit knowledge of meaning is to be manifested in the actual use of the language.
The Source of the Concept of Truth
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

We should address not the issue of the nature of truth, but rather that of the way we come by the very concept of truth. As Hilbert's discussion of quantifiers shows, the concept of truth is borne out of a more basic concept of justifiability. Our mastery of the most primitive aspects of the use of language to transmit information does not require even an implicit grasp of the concept of truth, but can be fully described in terms of the antecedent notion of justifiability.
Existence
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Frege saw existence as a second‐level concept and ascribed it to first‐level concepts, rather than to individual objects. Frege's solution encounters difficulties with the statements involving either empty proper names or modal locutions. A modification of Frege's account is possible if Quine's proposal for transforming statements containing proper names into statements with quantifiers and predicates. It is further argued that Kripke's account of negative existentials is untenable, whilst Evans's insistence that all information‐linked terms can be understood just in case they have reference is misguided.
Does Quantification Involve Identity?
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Geach defended the thesis of relative identity according to which, for any theory there is an extension, in whose language the meaning of the identity sign does not coincide with the meaning of the identity sign in the original language. The argument fails for formalized languages, since the interpretation of a first‐order language demands that a domain be specified for the variables, and in doing this we specify the finest possible interpretation of the identity sign. Yet an analogous question for natural languages is whether for any expression of restricted generality (such as `every A’ or `some A’) there is a definite identity‐relation associated with the range of generality. Geach's thesis fails for natural languages, too, and furthermore, it is dependent upon the failure of the thesis for formalized languages.
Causal Loops
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

What is our conception of the temporal priority of cause over effect? It is that a causal chain runs always in the earlier‐to‐later direction. Each link in the chain is a process, whose initiation is the immediate, and thus simultaneous, effect of the arrival at a particular stage of the process that constitutes the preceding link. It is the fact that it is the subsequent continuation of the process, once initiated, that calls for no explanation, which gives a temporal direction to the causal chain. If there are causal chains running in the reverse as well as in the usual direction, there is a possibility of causal loops.
Common Sense and Physics
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

The distinction between `how things are in themselves’ and `how they appear to us’ bifurcates into two different distinctions: that between what is true of the world and what only appears to be, but is not in fact true of it; and that between what may be called an absolute and what may be called a relative form of description. An absolute description characterizes things independently of the situation of human beings, located on the surface of a certain planet at a particular stage in its history, and having a particular range of sensory faculties. One of the things that a scientific theory aims to do is to attain an accurate absolute description. However, such a description need not invalidate the form of description in relative terms that we employ in everyday life. Thus, there is no ground for an instrumentalist view of science, according to which science is useful as a means of encapsulating patterns and regularities detectable among the genuine facts supplied by common sense.
Wittgenstein on Necessity: Some Reflections
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Radical conventionalism treats every necessary truth as a linguistic convention, akin to the statement ’There are seven days in a week’. Wittgenstein's endorsement of this view was a result of his belief that nothing can explain the fact of the acceptance of necessary truths. There could not be necessary truths being a consequence of human nature, which have not yet been recognized, or those which would never be recognized as such. This view stands in contrast to moderate conventionalism, which is powerless to explain the necessity of logical consequence.
The Kantian Sublime, the Postmodern, and the Avant‐Garde
Authors: Crowther Paul
Published: October 2003

Considers Lyotard's influential theory of the sublime. Explores the important links that he makes between the Kantian sublime, modernism, the postmodern, and the avant‐garde. Highlights problems in relation to these connections.
Postmodernism in the Visual Arts
Authors: Crowther Paul
Published: October 2003

Commences with Arthur Danto's claim that art has exhausted its creative possibilities, and that we have, in effect, witnessed the end of art. On the basis of a comparison between modernism and postmodernism in the visual arts, it is argued that Danto is wrong. The argument is then contextualized in relation to the theory of art and the aesthetic broached earlier in this book.
Causality, Interpretation, and the Mind
Authors: Child William
Published: October 2003

Explores the relation between interpretationism and causal theories in the philosophy of mind. Interpretationism is the view that we can understand the nature of the propositional attitudes by reflecting on the process of interpretation—the process of ascribing attitudes to a subject on the basis of what she says and does. Causal theories say that the concepts of common‐sense psychology—concepts such as action, perception, and memory—are essentially causal. Interpretationism and causal theories are sometimes combined, notably in the work of Donald Davidson. But it is often thought that they are incompatible—that interpretationism makes it impossible for mental phenomena to play genuinely causal roles. The book defends interpretationism as an approach to the propositional attitudes; it defends causal theories of action‐explanation and vision; and it explains how these two approaches are compatible. Different versions of interpretationism are distinguished and assessed. The relations between the mental and the physical are discussed; the anomalism of the mental is traced to the uncodifiability of rationality and its implications are explored. A disjunctive conception of visual experience is supported and combined with a causal theory of vision. And the explanatory relevance of mental properties is defended against those who hold that non‐reductive monism in general, and anomalous monism in particular, cannot satisfactorily accommodate the causal role of the mental.
Anomalism, Rationality, and Psychophysical Relations
Authors: Child William
Published: October 2003

Examines the arguments for the anomalism of the mental (the Davidsonian view, central to anomalous monism, that there are no laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained). It is argued that the basis for the anomalism of the mental is the principle that rationality is uncodifiable, and that principle is defended. It is shown that the anomalism of the mental, and the uncodifiability of rationality that underlies it, is compatible with the supervenience of the mental on the physical, but that it rules out most varieties of functionalism. It is argued that the uncodifiability of rationality rules out token identity or token correlation between particular mental states or events and particular physical states or events.
Causalism and Interpretationism: The Problem of Compatibility
Authors: Child William
Published: October 2003

Interpretationism in the philosophy of mind is often thought to conflict with the idea that beliefs and desires play a genuinely causal role. It is argued that there is in fact no such conflict and that a causal understanding of the mental is essential for realism about mental phenomena and about the relations between thought and reality. First, the chapter considers and responds to various reasons for thinking that the metaphysics of interpretationism is incompatible with a causal view of the mental. Then it examines the view of philosophers (like Richard Rorty) who accept that rationalizing, interpretative stories and causal stories are both legitimate, but argue that no single account of anything can be simultaneously rationalizing and causal. Against that view, it is argued that, unless we see interpretative, psychological stories as themselves being causal stories, we cannot understand psychological explanation and we cannot understand how thought and experience can have the objective content they do.
Action: Causal Theories and Explanatory Relevance
Authors: Child William
Published: October 2003

If mental causal explanations are grounded in facts about physical causes and effects, and if there are no psychophysical laws, how can we avoid the conclusion that the mental is causally, and causally explanatorily, irrelevant? The chapter analyses the ways in which this objection has been raised against non‐reductive monism in general, and Davidson's anomalous monism in particular. Then a conception of explanatory relevance for non‐basic physical properties is set out: properties are candidates for explanatory relevance if they play a role in a simple model of causal action; it is intelligible how a property can be causally explanatorily relevant only if it supervenes on low‐level physical properties; but such supervenience does not provide a self‐standing condition of explanatory relevance. A parallel model is developed for the mental case, exploiting the intuitive model of rational action and appealing to supervenience. Anomalous monism is thereby defended against one objection; but, it is argued, this defence challenges the original motivation for thinking that mental events must be physical events.
Frege and the Paradox of Analysis
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

This chapter is about Frege's understanding of the aim of philosophical analyses of familiar concepts, illustrated by his procedure in his Grunndlagen der Arithmetik and by Edmund Husserl's criticism of that book.
Objectivity and Reality in Lotze and Frege
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

In this chapter, the ideas of Lotze and of Frege on objectivity and Wirklichkeit (actuality) are compared and contrasted.
Frege and Kant on Geometry
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Frege's philosophical ideas about geometry, which have, for the most part, to be extracted from the contrasts he makes between it and arithmetic, are here contrasted with those of Immanuel Kant.
Second Thoughts
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

This chapter replies to a rejoinder by Baker and Hacker to the forgoing review.
Thought and Perception: The Views of Two Philosophical Innovators
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Abstracts and keywords to be supplied.
The Relative Priority of Thought and Language
Authors: Dummett Michael
Published: October 2003

Abstracts and keywords to be supplied.
Composition as Identity in the Parmenides and Sophist
Authors: Harte Verity
Published: October 2003

The focus of this chapter is Plato's examination of the rejected model of composition, particularly in the Parmenides, in which the same pattern of puzzle recurs four times in an escalating series, ending in the first and second deductions, to further develop the model's paradoxical implications. The unity of the whole is shown to be problematic in all those puzzles that depend on the rejected model of composition as the identity and share the central premise that parts pluralize, i.e. that a whole is many rather than (or, as well as) one. This same premise and model of composition is then to be found in the Sophist (244b6–245e2) in the dilemma presented to the monists by the Eleatic Stranger. Here, Plato once again associates the rejected model with his Eleatic predecessors, who are lead to it by their desire for ontological innocence.
One Way to Read Ourselves
Authors: Craig Edward
Published: October 2003

This chapter examines central philosophical themes and doctrines of twentieth century philosophy in the light of the Agency Theory. Craig argues that despite the unpopularity of philosophical visions of high generality in contemporary philosophy, the Agency Theory is the one vision, or Weltbild, on which much twentieth century philosophy explicitly or implicitly relies. It is evident in the philosophical doctrines of the Vienna Circle, with its radically emotivist accounts of value and radically conventionalist accounts of the a priori. It is evident in the numerous attacks on moral realism, which invite us, instead of thinking about morality not in terms of an independent realm of moral facts that obtain independently of our thinking about them, to see ourselves as the creators of ethical value. It is evident in existentialism, with its belief in absolute human freedom and its demand for absolute moral independence, manifested in the existentialist ethics of authenticity. It is evident in the prevalence of ‘opacity’, our willing acceptance of brute facts without further explanation as long as our beliefs about those facts are reliable. Finally, the dominance of the Agency Theory is evident in epistemology, where the community has taken over many responsibilities that the individual used to have, as well as in the theory of meaning, where accounts of meaning are given in terms of the use of words in a linguistic community, as by Wittgenstein and Austin, or in terms of the speaker’s environment, as in the externalist account of meaning advocated by Putnam. But, as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four illustrate, too much enthusiasm for human activity has its dangers.
Introduction
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Technical terms to be used in this book are introduced – substance, property, event, material object, mental property, physical property. Three views on the mind/body problem are distinguished – hard materialism, soft materialism (or property dualism), and substance dualism. Inductive principles to be used in the book are introduced – the principles of credulity, of testimony, and of simplicity (entailing the principle of charity).
Sensations
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Mental events consist in the instantiation of mental properties. Part 1 of this book (Chs. 2–7) analyses the different kinds of mental event that occur in humans and animals. This chapter analyses sensations, to which we have privileged, but not infallible, access and which are, together with beliefs, components of perceptions.
Body and Soul
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Personal identity cannot be analysed either in terms of a continuity of mental life, or in terms of continuity of bodily matter. Continuing personal identity in the short term is a datum of experience, not merely known by inference from other experiences. To express this fact within an integrated system of thought, we must think of human persons as substances that consist of two parts – soul (the essential part) and body (non‐essential). Part 2 of this book (Chs. 8–10) develops this view more fully. The argument of this chapter is put in precise logical form in New Appendix C. New Appendix D claims that souls have thisness; that is, the indiscernibility of identicals does not apply to souls.
The Origin and Life of the Soul
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

We have no grounds for supposing that a foetus has a soul until it is conscious, and no grounds for supposing that it is conscious until there occur in it brain processes similar to those that accompany consciousness in more developed human brains. The higher animals have souls. While scientists may discover vast numbers of correlations between mental events and brain events, it is most improbable that they will be able to explain why there are the correlations that they are, or any correlations at all – that is, why neural systems of a certain complexity give rise to souls. The very success of science in achieving vast integrations of theories in physics and chemistry was achieved by separating off from the physical world colours, tastes etc; but this cannot be done when we are looking for a theory with psychophysical laws.
Moral Awareness
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Human souls unlike animal ones have moral beliefs, universalizable beliefs of a certain kind about what is best to do Hence, they have a conscience that urges them to do some actions and not others. Moral beliefs are a natural acquisition for thinking humans, though not one that conveys any evolutionary advantage on the possessor.
The Freedom of the Will
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

A substantial balance of evidence favours the view that human souls have (limited) libertarian free will, that is the freedom to choose between alternative actions, despite all causal influences acting on them. Free will thus entails soul indeterminism, which entails brain indeterminism. There is no reason to suppose that the same laws govern the behaviour of the brain as govern any other physical system, since the brain is different from any other physical system in being in causal interaction with a soul. In any case, its indeterminism may be ensured by Quantum indeterminism. The main evidence for soul indeterminism is, however, the fact that human counter‐suggestibility would be compatible with determinism only on the assumption of an a priori very unlikely mechanism for the production of beliefs. New Appendices E, F, and G discuss the relevance to this topic of different interpretations of Quantum Theory, of Gödel's Theorem and of Libet's experiments.
The Structure of the Soul
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

The belief‐desire set of every soul is necessarily an integrated one in the sense that each belief and desire requires many other beliefs and desires to give it meaning and justification. Some beliefs and desires are much more central than others, and these include those that form a person's character. There are normal rational processes of change of belief and desire, often ones caused by other beliefs and desires; and abnormal irrational processes of change by means of brainwashing, brain disease, and surgery. The continuing existence of beliefs and desires when the subject is unaware of them consists in a continuing state of the soul, not merely in a continuing state of the brain linked to the soul. Some beliefs and desires belong to the Unconscious.
The Future of the Soul
Authors: Swinburne Richard
Published: October 2003

Evidence of ‘near‐death’ experiences, parapsychology, and claims of reincarnation do not constitute very good evidence that human souls survive the death of their bodies. Nor are there good philosophical arguments for the natural immortality of souls. Yet there are no natural laws connecting the existence or functioning of a soul with the existence or functioning of a body. Only an argument via some very general metaphysical theory could show what happens to a soul after death – e.g. an argument to a God who has revealed what happens.
Context and Content
Authors: Stalnaker Robert C.
Published: October 2003

A collection about the intentionality of speech acts and propositional attitudes. The chapters in the first section develop a framework for pragmatics—the study of the interaction of speech acts and the contexts in which they are performed. The framework is used to defend and apply a pragmatic conception of presupposition, to account for the role of indicative conditional statements in reasoning, and to solve some puzzles about statements of identity and existence. The chapters in the second section concern the semantics of the attribution of belief and other propositional attitudes. They attempt to reconcile the possible‐worlds analysis of propositional content with the phenomena, including de re belief attribution and the attribution of indexical or self‐locating belief. The chapters in the third section defend an externalist account of the contents of thought. It is argued that there is no reason to think a viable account of narrow content can be developed, and that none is needed to provide an adequate account of the role of intentional content in the explanation of behaviour and experience. The chapters in the fourth section discuss the relation between the content of thoughts and the forms in which content is represented and expressed. It is argued that the temptation to build linguistic structure into the content of thought should be resisted since it does not provide the material for an adequate solution to the problems that plague the possible‐worlds conception of proposition, such as the problem of logical omniscience.
The Philosophy of Schopenhauer
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

There are unusual reasons why Schopenhauer's philosophy is important. Retaining from Kant the distinction between the noumenal and the phenomenal, he embraces the relevance of Eastern philosophy to the former and that of empiricism to the latter. His ethics—unlike Kant's, which are based on reason—are based on compassion. So he alone among major Western philosophers takes genuine account of Buddhism, yet at the same time gives full weight to science. Areas outside philosophy in which his thought has been important include psychology and the arts. As well as being the first and greatest philosophical influence on both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, he had comparable influence on Freud and Jung and affected the work of creative artists from Wagner to Tolstoy. The intellectual fashions of the twentieth century underestimated his work, and neglected his influence, but a reappraisal of both is now due. This book takes a fresh look at his work, and contains especially long discussions of his influence on Wittgenstein and Wagner.
Schopenhauer's Life as Background to His Work
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

This chapter is a brief biography of Schopenhauer that provides the background for the presentation of his work that is to follow. Schopenhauer grew up knowing many eminent people, including Goethe, and wrote his masterpiece, The World as Will and Representation, while still in his twenties, yet his work was neglected until he reached his mid‐sixties. He sank into pessimism, isolation, and misanthropy for most of his adult life. But in his last six years he became internationally famous.
The Ends of Explanation
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Investigates the contents of Schopenhauer's first book On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This is devoted to the nature of explanation. It concludes that all events in the empirical world fall under one or more of four forms of explanation: scientific, mathematical, logical, and motivational. Since all meaningful empirical concepts are derived from experience, and no valid deductive argument can add to the content of its own premises, the only fully satisfactory empirical knowledge is provided by direct perception.
The Great Tradition
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Shows what Schopenhauer's view was of his own place in the history of philosophy, as revealed by an unusually long synopsis he wrote for such a history. He counted two philosophers, Plato and Kant, as supreme and regarded himself as correcting and completing the work of Kant. The foundations of Kant's critical philosophy had been laid, he believed, by Locke, and then strengthened by Hume. So he saw Locke, Hume, Kant, and himself as having developed a single line of thought over nearly 200 years. However, this was because they all stood baffled before the same fundamental problems: he disparaged any approach to philosophy that was primarily concerned with the writings of other philosophers and not directly with the problems presented to us by the world.
More Arguments for Transcendental Idealism
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

At the core of what Schopenhauer took from Kant is transcendental idealism. An understanding of this calls not only for intelligence but for what might be called ‘intellectual imagination’. The nature of whatever faculties we have must limit what they can do, and therefore, unless reality is itself a product of our minds, it is almost certain that there are aspects of an independent reality that we cannot apprehend. Schopenhauer follows Kant in using the word ‘noumenal’ for these and the word ‘phenomenal’ for those aspects of reality that are accessible to experience.
Objects and Subjects
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Empirical reality presents itself to us as experience, and this can take only such forms as can be mediated by whatever equipment we possess, including our own bodies. Thus there has to be a detailed correlation between our powers of apprehension and reality as we perceive it. So subject and object are interdependent: neither could exist as we apprehend them if the other did not also exist. Pure subject without an object and pure object without a subject are both metaphysical concepts, to which nothing could correspond in the empirical world.
Bodies and Wills
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

To the proposition that I can know objects only from outside, and through the forms of sense and intellect that my personal equipment makes available, there is a single exception and that is my own body. Each of us is a physical object that knows one physical object from inside, namely itself. But I experience the movements of this body primarily as an agent rather than through organs of sense or intellect. My willed movements are perceived by others as matter in motion, but by me they are apprehended first and foremost as acts of will: the two are the same phenomenon experienced in different ways.
The Flower of Existence
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

The general forms through which the always‐hidden noumenal manifests itself in detailed phenomena were accurately identified by Plato, and we can retain the name ‘Platonic Forms of Platonic Ideas’. Cognition of these is made possible by works of art, which reveal to us the universal in the particular. Thus, the primary function of art is the expression not of emotion but of cognitive insight into the inner nature of things, expressible in art but unstatable in language. Music alone among the arts does not represent phenomena, and therefore does not unveil Platonic Forms, but is a direct experience of the noumenon. This makes it a super‐art, radically different in kind from the rest, and superior.
Metaphysics of the Person
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Schopenhauer believes that differentiation is possible only where there is time or space, and therefore only in the phenomenal world: the noumenon must be one and undifferentiable. This inner one‐less of all being explains our feeling for others, the compassion on which morality is based. Thus, Schopenhauer's ethics are a practical inference from his metaphysics. At our death in the empirical world, we cease to exist as individuals, but our noumenal nature remains unaltered. Being noumenal, it is outside time, and indestructible.
Schopenhauer and the Idealists
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

The neglect of Schopenhauer's philosophy in the twentieth century led to his becoming associated in people's minds with his neat‐contemporaries, the Idealist philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, when in fact he was a radically different sort of philosopher from them. Unlike them, he absorbed the empiricist tradition into his work and saw the enterprise on which he was engaged as having been launched by Locke. He hated the Idealists and their writings, regarding them as a poisonous influence. In this he went too far, for their work had merits that he failed to appreciate and more in common with his own than he realized.
Schopenhauer's Influence on Wittgenstein
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Schopenhauer was the first and greatest philosophical influence on Wittgenstein, a fact attested to by those closest to him. He began by accepting Schopenhauer's division of total reality into phenomenal and noumenal, and offered a new analysis of the phenomenal in his first book, the Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus. The Logical Positivists, who believed that only the phenomenal existed, took this as the paradigm for their philosophy. Wittgenstein, however, moved away from it and proposed a new and different analysis in his book Philosophical Investigations, and this became the most influential text in linguistic philosophy. Thus, Wittgenstein produced two different philosophies, each of which influenced a whole generation that remained largely oblivious of its Schopenhauerian origins.
Schopenhauer's Influence on Creative Writers
Authors: Magee Bryan
Published: October 2003

Schopenhauer has influenced the work of more, and more distinguished, creative writers than any philosopher since his day, more even than Marx. This is especially true among novelists: Tolstoy, Turgenev, Zola, Maupassant, Proust, Hardy, Conrad, and Thomas Mann must be included. He also influenced short‐story writers such as Maugham and Borges, poets such as Rilke and Eliot, and dramatists such as Pirandello and Beckett. They were attracted, variously, by his psychological insight, his understanding of unconscious motivation, his disenchanted view of human beings, and his non‐religious view of the cosmos, as well as by his teachings about the arts and the fact that he was himself a great prose writer.