Ernst Mach and B. F. Skinner: Their similarities with two traditions for verbal behavior

Ernst Mach is most closely associated with a positivism that demanded a language of close contact with reality. Mach linked this view with the tradition of the quest for an ideal language in which meaning is a property of a word. Logical positivism and the S-R psychology of the early B. F. Skinner also participated in this ideal-language positivism. In addition, Mach showed an affinity with another tradition-a pragmatic-selectionist tradition-although that tradition and Mach's similarities with it were not as well developed. Mach showed no difficulty in jointly maintaining both of these traditions although they have been regarded as deeply incompatible. When the later Skinner adopted a pragmatic selectionism for his later views on verbal behavior, he rejected his earlier views that were aligned with S-R psychology as well as with logical positivism and its sympathizers. Nevertheless, some statements consistent with "meaning is a property of a word" remained for some time in Skinner's writing.     

Laws,the Inference Problem,and Uninstantiated Universals

The difficulties facing Humean regularity accounts of laws have led some philosophers to a theory that takes laws to be necessitation relations between universals. In this paper I evaluate David Armstrong's version of this theory by considering two of its key elements: its solution to the so‐called “Inference Problem” and its denial of uninstantiated universals. After considering some potential problems with each of these elements on their own, I argue that Armstrong's solution to the Inference Problem and his denial of uninstantiated universals are not two independent aspects of his view. His solution to the Inference Problem depends upon his denial of uninstantiated universals.     

Storming Heaven with Karl Barth? Barth's Unwitting Appropriation of the Genus Maiestaticum and what Lutherans Can Learn from It

Abstract:  This article seeks to demonstrate that Barth radically misunderstands the Lutheran doctrine of the communication of attributes, with its centerpiece the genus maiestaticum . However, misdirected as Barth's criticism is, the doctrine is not without its own problems and, instead of giving expression to the integrity of Christ's person and the co-presence of his natures, is in danger of subverting itself. After showing that Barth's Christology actually employs what for all practical purposes is the majestic genus of the Lutherans, I propose that the Swiss theologian's thought may offer ways of resolving the tensions inherent in the Lutheran tenet, and that by means of resources that the Lutherans already possess.     

管仲的王霸学思想及其精神源流

管仲是中国先秦哲学思想史上第一位思想家,他的王霸学思想既是对前先秦文化思想精神的时代性因革,又是对后来哲学思想的开启。管仲的政治思想是以民为本的刑赏主义法治思想和功利主义治政思想,其赖以支撑的伦理精神是自然主义人性论,思想基础是水本原论哲学。从历史源流看,管仲开辟了中国哲学思想“因人事而自然”的思维道路,是自然人性论功利主义伦理学和政治学的始祖,并以此开辟了“以刑入礼”的刑赏主义实践道路。管仲的思想之源,是夏商周三代所形成的以王道为目标、以天道为根据、以人道为途径的“王官之学”;管仲的思想之流,不仅涌动出法家思潮,而且激励并贯穿了先秦诸子各家学说。     

Spinoza on the Limits of Explanation

Commentators standardly ascribe to Spinoza a belief in an exceptionless conceptual closure of mental and physical realms: no intention can allow us to understand a bodily movement, no bodily injury can make intelligible a sensation of pain. This counterintuitive doctrine, most often now referred to as Spinoza's 'attribute barrier', has weighty repercussions for his views on intelligibility, nature of the mind, identity, and causality. I argue against the standard reading of the doctrine, by showing that it produces an inconsistent epistemological picture, contradicting Spinoza's theory of mind and his commitment to universal intelligibility. The alternative account I propose is also philosophically more compelling and plausible as an account of thought in its essential intentionality.     

Notes and news

Recently, proponents of Humean Supervenience have challenged the plausibility of the intuition that the laws of nature ‘govern’, or guide, the evolution of events in the universe. Certain influential thought experiments authored by John Carroll, Michael Tooley, and others, rely strongly on such intuitions. These thought experiments are generally regarded as playing a central role in the lawhood debate, suggesting that the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view of the laws of nature, and the related doctrine of the Humean Supervenience of laws, are false. In this paper, I take on these recent challenges, arguing that the intuition that the laws govern should be taken seriously. Still, I find the recent discussions insightful, in certain ways. Employing some ideas from one of the critics (Barry Loewer), I draw some non-standard conclusions about the significance of the thought experiments to the lawhood debate.     

Sensualistischer Phänomenalismus und Denkökonomie. Zur Wissenschaftskonzeption Ernst Machs

Sensationalistic Phenomenalism and Economy of Thought. On Ernst Mach's Concept of Science. Ernst Mach, natural scientist and major precursor of the Vienna Circle, never wants to be a philosopher. Nevertheless his writings are full of valuable hints for a modern theory of human knowledge – with respect to economical, historical and evolutionary aspects. His kind of phenomenalism is sensationalistic, monistic and instrumentalistic. This article deals with some contributions of his approach to actual debates in the general philosophy of science. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Laws of Nature Don't Have Ceteris Paribus Clauses,They Are Ceteris Paribus Clauses

Laws of nature are properly (if controversially) conceived as abstract entities playing a governing role in the physical universe. Dispositionalists typically hold that laws of nature are not real, or at least are not fundamental, and that regularities in the physical universe are grounded in the causal powers of objects. By contrast, I argue that dispositionalism implies nomic realism: since at least some dispositions have ceteris paribus clauses incorporating uninstantiated universals, and these ceteris paribus clauses help to determine their dispositions' ranges of manifestation, there are indeed abstracta which play a governing role in the physical universe. After addressing several objections (including the objection that such ‘laws’ lack sufficient independence/externality from the dispositions to count as genuinely governing), I go on to consider some broader implications of this conclusion for other debates in metaphysics and the philosophy of science. ¹      

Leibniz on the Metaphysics of Color

Drawing on remarks scattered through his writings, I argue that Leibniz has a highly distinctive and interesting theory of color. The central feature of the theory is the way in which it combines a nuanced subjectivism about color with a reductive approach of a sort usually associated with objectivist theories of color. After reconstructing Leibniz's theory and calling attention to some of its most notable attractions, I turn to the apparent incompatibility of its subjective and reductive components. I argue that this apparent tension vanishes in light of his rejection of a widely accepted doctrine concerning the nature of bodies and their geometrical qualities.     

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVOCITY IS TRUE AND SALUTARY

After clearing up some misunderstandings of Scotus's doctrine of univocity, I argue that the doctrine of univocity is true. All predications about God must be reducible to univocity if they are to be intelligible at all. So even if the doctrine has unwelcome consequences, we ought to affirm it anyway; it is not the job of the theologian or philosopher to shrink from uncomfortable truths. I then argue that the doctrine of univocity in fact has no unwelcome consequences. Moreover, it has at least two salutary logical consequences of the highest importance. I conclude that the polemic against univocity, and against Scotus as its defender, is misplaced.     

Ronald Thiemann, Thomas Torrance and Epistemological Doctrines of Revelation

Abstract: Ronald Thiemann goes against the grain of much recent theology in arguing that the Christian doctrine of revelation is worth believing and defending, but he finds most modern expressions and defences of it to be fatally infected with epistemological foundationalism. He criticizes the foundationalism of Thomas F. Torrance; in its place he offers a coherentist account and defence of the doctrine of revelation. In this article I look closely at some of the distinctly theological strengths and weaknesses of Thiemann's coherentism and Torrance's foundationalism. I argue that Thiemann's understanding of foundationalism is fraught with ambiguity and his dismissal of it somewhat premature. I argue further that his coherentism produces problems that make it less than ideally suited for a doctrine of revelation, and I suggest that the modest foundationalism of Torrance is a much stronger position.     

Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective

David Lewis is a natural target for those who believe that findings in quantum physics threaten the tenability of traditional metaphysical reductionism. Such philosophers point to allegedly holistic entities they take both to be the subjects of some claims of quantum mechanics and to be incompatible with Lewisian metaphysics. According to one popular argument, the non-separability argument from quantum entanglement, any realist interpretation of quantum theory is straightforwardly inconsistent with the reductive conviction that the complete physical state of the world supervenes on the intrinsic properties of and spatio-temporal relations between its point-sized constituents. Here I defend Lewis's metaphysical doctrine, and traditional reductionism more generally, against this alleged threat from quantum holism. After presenting the non-separability argument from entanglement, I show that Bohmian mechanics, an interpretation of quantum mechanics explicitly recognized as a realist one by proponents of the non-separability argument, plausibly rejects a key premise of that argument. Another holistic worry for Humeanism persists, however, the trouble being the apparently holistic character of the Bohmian pilot wave. I present a Humean strategy for addressing the holistic threat from the pilot wave by drawing on resources from the Humean best system account of laws.     

Peter Martyr Vermigli on grace and free choice

Abstract

Within contemporary scholarship there has been considerable debate over the character and scope of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s scholasticism, which has sought to locate his thought between the two poles of the ‘via Thomae’ and the ‘via Gregorii.’ This paper traces the Augustinian-Thomist polarity throughout Vermigli’s doctrine of grace and free choice. In particular it seeks to discover Gregorian distinctives in his thought, namely, doctrinal points shared by Vermigli and Rimini, representing a development of Augustine and a departure from Aquinas. Without denying the important Thomist and Aristotelian elements of his thought, this paper concludes that renewed attention now needs to be paid to his profound debt to late-medieval Augustinian scholasticism and its global impact on his theology.     

Duhem and the origins of statics: Ramifications of the crisis of 1903–04

Much speculation on the sources of Duhem's historical interests fails to account for the major shifts in these interests: neither his belief in the continuous development of physics nor his Catholicism, when his Church was encouraging the study of generally Aristotelian scholastic thought, led to any interest in mediaeval science before 1904. Equally, his own claim that he was merely testing his views on the nature of physical theory is easily squared only with earlier work with no trace of mediaeval science. Behind this discontinuity lies a major crisis. Though not a positivist, Duhem had based all his work on assumptions acceptable to positivists. One of these, the sterility of the Middle Ages, was refuted by his chance discovery of evidence of genuine mediaeval science in the autumn of 1903, but that left the doctrine of scholastic sterility intact.Drafted for the Blacksburg conference, versions of this paper were also presented at colloquia at the University of Harvard Department of the History of Science and the University of Toronto Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. I am grateful to all those who responded to earlier versions, but particularly to Phillip Quinn, the commentator on my paper at Blacksburg, and Jamil Ragep.     

Against alief

A physicalist holds, in part, that what properties are instantiated depends on what physical properties are instantiated; a physicalist thinks that mental properties, for example, are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical “realizer” properties. One issue that arises in this context concerns the relationship between the “causal powers” of instances of physical properties and instances of dependent properties, properties that are instantiated in virtue of the instantiation of physical properties. After explaining the significance of this issue, I evaluate two core lines of thought that have been advanced in favor of Subset Inheritance, the view that instances of dependent properties typically have some, but not all, of the powers of physical realizers, and do not have any powers that are not also powers of physical realizers. The first argument that I address turns on our intuitive reactions to certain cases; the second appeals to the phenomenon of multiple realization. I argue that neither line of thought succeeds, and thus that insofar as we grant that an instance of a dependent property inherits some of the powers of its physical realizer, defenders of subset inheritance have not provided a compelling reason to think that it will not inherit all of the powers of its physical realizer.     

The pessimistic origin of Nietzsche’s thought of eternal recurrence

ABSTRACT

In this article I argue that we should understand Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal recurrence as the ideal of life affirmation opposed to philosophical pessimism, the view that life is not worth living. I first articulate Nietzsche’s psychological account of pessimism as a vengeful focus on the past and an aversion to time understood as transience. I then consider the question of why a person with the opposite psychological orientation – a creative relation to the future and an endorsement of time – would will the eternal recurrence of all things. My answer appeals to Nietzsche’s notions of will to power and the redemption of the past from its senselessness. The interpretation of eternal recurrence that emerges from this approach takes Nietzsche’s vision of a great, world-redeeming individual to be integral to his doctrine of eternal recurrence. This is just one way in which it differs from common interpretations of eternal recurrence as a cosmological theory or thought experiment.     

The Twofold Life of the Word: Karl Barth's Critical Reception of the Extra Calvinisticum

Though the extra Calvinisticum has played an historically important role for Christology, the doctrine has been criticized not only by Lutherans and modern Christologies ‘from below’ but by some Reformed thinkers as well. This article examines the place of the extra in dogmatic thinking about the incarnation: specifically, Karl Barth's critical response to his own tradition. After examining the differences between Lutheran and Reformed construals of the relationship of the Logos asarkos to the Logos ensarkos I take up Barth's views on the extra, which over the course of his career moved from enthusiastic affirmation to a sharp critique. Finally, I suggest that Barth's mature Christology retains the best of both Protestant positions by correcting a critical inconsistency in Reformed thought. He does not reject the doctrine of the Logos asarkos, but he does suggest a way in which this is related to the life of the Logos ensarkos that marginalizes the former. Barth is right not to discard the extra, but also that it has been misused in how it is deployed in dogmatic theology.     

Divine Infinity in Thomas Aquinas: I. Philosophico-Theological Background

A reassessment of Aquinas's doctrine of divine infinity, particularly in the light of the previous history of the concept within Western philosophy and theology. From the critical perspective provided by this history the central place which has been claimed for it in Aquinas's thinking is questioned, as are also its originality and coherence. The notion that the doctrine of divine infinity was introduced to Western thought by Judaeo-Christianity is rejected; from Anaximander onwards it had been a central concept in Greek philosophy. Aristotle however had rejected it so effectively that, for several centuries afterwards, it seems to have led an 'underground' existence until it finally surfaces again in 'Gnostic' and related currents of thought. It is from these circles that it finally, and after some resistance, patchily entered orthodox Christian thinking. Likewise Plotinus was not the source of the doctrine, as some have claimed; historical precedence must be given to the Gnostics. Neoplatonism never, despite the prestige of Plotinus, fully accepted the doctrine; in Proclus it is a subordinate emanation from the One, which is beyond Infinity and Infinitude. Nor, because of the influence of Aristotle, does Islamic Neoplatonized Aristotelianism endorse the doctrine. Aquinas's commitment to it seems to stem from the impact of John of Damascus's stress upon the doctrine, the translation of whose work greatly influenced Western theology from the late twelfth century onward, together with his need to distance himself from the restrictions of the divine power and freedom found in the Arabic Aristotelian philosophers, whom, in general, he regarded as philosophical authorities. But his position on the doctrine is flawed by equivocation and self-contradiction, flowing from his attempt to reconcile Christian personalist theism with Neoplatonized Aristotleain necessitarian monism.     

Formal systems as physical objects: A physicalist account of mathematical truth

This article is a brief formulation of a radical thesis. We start with the formalist doctrine that mathematical objects have no meanings; we have marks and rules governing how these marks can be combined. That's all. Then I go further by arguing that the signs of a formal system of mathematics should be considered as physical objects, and the formal operations as physical processes. The rules of the formal operations are or can be expressed in terms of the laws of physics governing these processes. In accordance with the physicalist understanding of mind, this is true even if the operations in question are executed in the head. A truth obtained through (mathematical) reasoning is, therefore, an observed outcome of a neuro-physiological (or other physical) experiment. Consequently, deduction is nothing but a particular case of induction.