Indeterminiertheit,Iterabilität und Intentionalität

In his recent paper Indeterminacy, empiricism, and the first person John R. Searle tries to refute Willard V. O. Quine's famous indeterminacy of translation thesis by arguing that this thesis is in fact areductio ad absurdum of Quine's own linguistic behaviorism. Searle accuses Quine of being (irrationally) antimentalistic and suggests that the absurdity of Quine's thesis might be avoided if a full-fledged intentionality were tolerated in the debate on meaning. — This anti-Quinean approach in some respects reminds of the improbable debate between Searle and Jacques Derrida ten years ago, when Derrida had split and deferred intentionality by showing that the essential iterability of signs inevitably infects every intentional act with an unremovable non-presence.In this paper it is argued that Searle's attacks on Quine and Derrida have both failed — and that there are structural similarities between these two failures which reveal some interesting parallels between Quine's and Derrida's philosophy.     

Metaphors for God: Why and How Do Our Choices Matter for Humans? The Application of Contemporary Cognitive Linguistics Research to the Debate on God and Metaphor

This article explores and critiques conservative and liberal theological understandings of metaphor in light of the contemporary research in cognitive linguistics. This assessment is followed by a cognitive examination of the biblical metaphors for God, their unconscious entailments, an assessment of why certain metaphors are more effective than others, and a short discussion of the implications of this effectiveness.     

Actual truth,possible knowledge

The well-known argument of Frederick Fitch, purporting to show that verificationism (= Truth implies knowability) entails the absurd conclusion that all the truths are known, has been disarmed by Dorothy Edgington's suggestion that the proper formulation of verificationism presupposes that we make use of anactuality operator along with the standardly invoked epistemic and modal operators. According to her interpretation of verificationism, the actual truth of a proposition implies that it could be known in some possible situation that the proposition holds in theactual situation. Thus, suppose that our object language contains the operatorA — it is actually the case that ... — with the following truth condition: _vA iff _w0, wherew ₀ stands for the designated world of the model — the actual world. Then we can formalize the verificationist claim as follows:

The Web and the Quilt: Alternatives to the Heroic Journey Toward Spiritual Development

This paper poses a feminist challenge to stage models of spiritual development and suggests alternative metaphors to the common image of a heroic journey. Women's spirituality is typically more intuitive and relational than rational and individualistic and to express this, we employ metaphors of the web and the quilt. Support for the relevance of these metaphors comes from the spiritual autobiography of Jane Goodall, an anthology of African American women's writings about spirituality, and two qualitative research investigations of older women's spirituality. We conclude with an autobiographical account of our own spiritual development and engage in a dialogue-on-the-page in which we respond to each other's narratives.     

What is non-fregean in the semantics of Wittgenstein'sTractatus and why?

From J.M. Bocheski's Rady starego filozofa [Advice of the old philosopher]: 6. Pytaj sie Zawsze (i) co to znaczy? i (ii) dlaczego? [Ask always (i) what does it mean? and (ii) why?]     

The two cultures

Anhand von zwei Unterbereichen der künstlichen Intelligenz — den Expertensystemen und der wissenschaftlichen Entdeckung — wird aufzuzeigen versucht, daß die Beziehung zwischen der formalen und der intuitiven Kultur aus dem Gleichgewicht geraten ist. Dem Bereich der Intuition sollte größere Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet werden.

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This article is based on a presentation given on a symposium The Art of Science, in Amsterdam, Amolf, 27 May 1987. It was organized to celebrate the 65th birthday of Prof. J. o.     

Emeralds are no chameleons — Why “Grue” is not projectible for induction

The model function for induction of Goodmans's composite predicate Grue was examined by analysis. Two subpredicates were found, each containing two further predicates which are mutually exclusive (green and blue, observed before and after t). The rules for the inductive processing of composite predicates were studied with the more familiar predicate blellow (blue and yellow) for violets and primroses. The following rules for induction were violated by processing grue: From two subpredicates only one (blue after t) appears in the conclusion. As a statement about a future and unobserved condition this subpredicate, however, is not projectible for induction whereas the only suitable predicate (green before t) does not show up in the conclusion. In a disjunction a v b where a is true and b false the disjunction is true. When, however, the only true component is dropped, what remains is necessarily false. An analogous mistake may be observed in the processing of grue, where the only true component (green) was dropped in the conclusion. — As a potent criterion for correct inductions a check of the necessity of the conclusions is recommended.The author is indebted to Prof. Curt Christian for valuable suggestions.     

On fideism and Alvin Plantinga

The first version of this paper was presented at a summer workshop on Skepticism and Fideism in 1986 at the University of Notre Dame, sponsored by The Society of Christian Philosophers. Subsequent versions have been read at the Mississippi Philosophical Association and the American Academy of Religion. I would like to thank the director of the workshop, Phil L. Quinn, and the participants for providing an intellectual springboard for developing my ideas on the topic of fideism and the proper basicality of theistic belief.     

What's so funny about that?: The domains-interaction approach as a model of incongruity and resolution in humor

The domains-interaction approach, originally developed in metaphor research, was used to model humor processing. Using jokes of the structure A is the B of A's domain (e.g., John Candy is the hamburger of actors), this approach allows for precise operationalizations of incongruity and resolution in terms of between-domain and within-domain semantic distance, respectively. Distances between 26 terms used in 250 of these simple jokes were derived from semantic differential ratings. As predicted, humor ratings of the jokes were positively correlated with incongruity (between-domain distance) but not with resolution (within-domain distance). Also as predicted, a significant interaction revealed that jokes with both incongruity and resolution were rated as most humorous. These findings were replicated in a second study. A third study indicated that humor perception differs from metaphor appreciation, showing main effects for both types of semantic distance, but no interaction, when the sentences were presented as metaphors instead of jokes and rated for aptness.The authors wish to thank Richard Harshman and Albert Katz for their helpful suggestions in conducting this research.     

Twardowski's theory of modification againts the background of traditional logic

Paper presented at the conference The Social and Philosophical Thought in Galicia and Its Austro-Hungarian Context, Lvov, December 5–7, 1991.     

Between Science and Nature: Interpreting Lactation Failure in Elizabeth von Arnim's The Pastor's Wife

Interpreting a scene of lactation failure allows us to represent breast-feeding as a contested social practice. This essay reads a novelistic scene of lactation failure in the context of the decline of breast-feeding in the twentieth century. The protagonist's ignorance of the female experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, and lactation is an effect of her objectification within the opposition between science and nature. Unnatural as a woman because she is a natural individual, the pastor's wife exemplifies the dilemmas of breast-feeding as a biosocial practice of maternity in a technological society which features the breakdown of traditional female networks in which knowledge about maternity and breast-feeding are circulated.     

Ein Argumentationsspiel um das Münchhausen-Trilemma

By means of a strategic game the present paper tries to answer the question of whether the so-called trilemma of Münchhausen (H. Albert)as it stands is able to perform the twofold task of both refuting the methodology of foundationalismand of getting us thereby nearer to the methodology of critical rationalism.The formal reconstruction of the argument provides us with four possible versions which however can only be called trilemmas in a wider sense of this term. Moreover, a test shows three of them to be invalid. The subsequent discussion of the only valid one makes clear that in order to save the truth of its premisses as far as possible the latter have to be modified in a way that brings us still farther away from the original trilemma of Münchhausen. But even then it may be doubted whether the remains of the argument can fulfil the above-mentioned twofold task.     

Clocks,Creation and Clarity: Insights on Ethics and Economics from a Feminist Perspective

This essay discusses the origins, biases, and effects on contemporary discussions of economics and ethics of the unexamined use of the metaphor an economy is a machine. Both neoliberal economics and many critiques of capitalist systems take this metaphor as their starting point. The belief that economies run according to universal laws of motion, however, is shown to be based on a variety of rationalist thinking that – while widely held – is inadequate for explaining lived human experience. Feminist scholarship in the philosophy of science and economics has brought to light some of the biases that have supported the mechanistic worldview. Possible alternatives to the an economy is a machine include an economy is a creative process and an economy is an organism. Such metaphors are intellectually defensible as guides to scientific inquiry and provide a richer ground for moral imagination.     

General education,cultural diversity,and identity

The issue of this paper is cultural plurality as a problem for public, general education and for (personal) identity. In order to examine this question, one needs to be clear about the meaning of the concepts of general education, on the one hand, and cultural diversity on the other. In the first section, we will fix the meaning of these concepts. A conceptual distinction between cultural diversity and cultural pluralism will be introduced. In the second section, it will be argued that open pluralism can only be maintained if there is a basic common culture apart from the cultural diversity that pluralism affirms. Therefore, there is yet an indispensable role for general education in an open, pluralistic society. In the third section we will look at two metaphors that give an opposite significance to the relation between identity and diversity: the conversational metaphor and the food metaphor mishmash. The final section expands on the conversational metaphor by way of an exposition of Ricoeur's hermeneutics of the self. It supplies us with a promising concept of identity that is not in complete opposition to diversity.     

Analityczne komponenty definicji arbitralnych

Tre: Wstp. I. Definicje arbitralne. II. Syntetyczne konsekwencje definicji arbitralnych III. Analityczne i rzeczowe komponenty definicji arbitralnych. IV. Zdania analityczne.Artyku ten w nieznacznym tylko stopniu róni si od pracy doktorskiej, któr przedstawiem w 1962 r. Jak najuprzejmiej dzikuj Prof. Dr M. Kokoszyskiej-Lutman, Prof. Dr J. Supeckiemu oraz Doc. Dr M. Przeckiemu za szereg uwag i wskazówek, z których tak wiele skorzystaem przygotowujc ostateczn redakcj pracy.     

Where “Sex” Is Born(e): Intersexed Births and the Social Urgency of Heterosexuality

Our beloved genders of the present moment are neither universal nor trans-historical presences in the world. The specific gender order which we employ today is the legacy of a particular cultural and political history, and there is still a great deal at stake in preserving it. As a graduate student I stumbled upon the topic of intersexuality a few years ago and found myself enthralled with its implications. Continuing to present itself inspite of all our scientific knowledge about the supposed immutability of female and male, intersexuality disrupts the gender order. The response to this disruption has been swift and terrible: from the intersexed infants who enter our world everyday are carved (literally and figuratively) supposedly normal boys and girls (mostly girls). The following exposition represents a pre-fieldwork (theoretical) stage in my current research and attempts to demonstrate that medical authorities manage intersex cases as they do in order to stabilize the always precarious institution of heterosexuality.