The Chrysippus intuition and contextual theories of truth

Contextual theories of truth are motivated primarily by the resolution they provide to paradoxical reasoning about truth. The principal argument for contextual theories of truth relies on a key intuition about the truth value of the proposition expressed by a particular utterance made during paradoxical reasoning, which Anil Gupta calls “the Chrysippus intuition.” In this paper, I argue that the principal argument for contextual theories of truth is circular, and that the Chrysippus intuition is false. I conclude that the philosophical motivation for contextual theories of truth fails.

Intuition as a Basic Source of Moral Knowledge

The idea that intuition plays a basic role in moral knowledge and moral philosophy probably began in the eighteenth century. British philosophers such as Anthony Shaftsbury, Francis Hutcheson, Thomas Reid, and later David Hume talk about a “moral sense” that they place in John Locke’s theory of knowledge in terms of Lockean reflexive perceptions, while Richard Price seeks a faculty by which we obtain our ideas of right and wrong. In the twentieth century intuitionism in moral philosophy was revived by the works of G. E. Moore, H. A. Prichard, and W. D. Ross. These philosophers reject Kantian deontological ethics and utilitarianism insisting that intuition is the only source of moral knowledge. Recently, there is a renewed interest in intuition by philosophers doing meta-philosophy by reflecting on what philosophers do, and why they disagree. In this essay we plan to take some of this recent literature on intuition and apply it to moral philosophy. We will proceed by (1) defining a conception of intuition, (2) answering some skeptical challenges, (3) delimiting its target, and (4) arguing that intuition is often a source of moral knowledge.

A critique of causality in Islamic philosophy

After the problems of epistemology, the most fundamental problem of Islamic philosophy is that of causality. Causality has been studied from various perspectives. This paper endeavors first to analyze the issues of causality in Islamic philosophy and then to critique them. A sketch is provided of the history of the development of theories of causality in Islamic philosophy, with particular attention to how religious considerations came to determine the shape of the philosophical theories that were accepted. It is suggested that outstanding philosophical and theological problems that have plagued the tradition of Islamic philosophy require a new approach to the issue of causality.

Our Relations with the Past

The approach that philosophers have taken to history has too often been one-dimensional. It is my aim in this paper to map out a future multi-dimensional philosophy of history, by invoking the notion of a relation with the past, and by arguing for the philosophical relevance of multiple such relations.

Experimental philosophy and philosophical intuition

The topic is experimental philosophy as a naturalistic movement, and its bearing on the value of intuitions in philosophy. This paper explores first how the movement might bear on philosophy more generally, and how it might amount to something novel and promising. Then it turns to one accomplishment repeatedly claimed for it already: namely, the discrediting of armchair intuitions as used in philosophy.

Introduction

The place of philosophy in Iranian society is prominent. Philosophy is discussed in popular media as well as specialized journals, and in seminaries, research centers, and universities. Philosophy in Iran is often divided into Western and Islamic. Sometimes these are taken to be rivals. The methods of instruction differ to some extent, as well as the languages needed for advanced study. The question of the nature of Islamic philosophy is itself a controversial topic in Iran, and positions on this issue are often driven by ideological trends. The study of philosophy in the Islamic seminaries has its own history. Today Islamic philosophy may be considered a philosophical tradition that is being carried on with increasing interaction with the study of Western philosophy in Iran.

Sophistry In and As Its Course

Although sophistry has been characterized as separable from real philosophy, formal analysis does not work without it and one cannot always identify just where philosophy leaves off and sophistry begins. Whether sophistry offers anything to thinking reason has to do with what parties in dialogue do with sophistries. Sophistries can close down or open up philosophical perspectives, depending on the local work that sophistic strategies accomplish. Such local work of philosophers is rarely available to analyses of docile texts, but they can be furthered by ethnomethodological studies of illustrative philosophical argumentation presented and analyzed in videotaped format.

The Psychology of Dilemmas and the Philosophy of Morality

We review several instances where cognitive research has identified distinct psychological mechanisms for moral judgment that yield conflicting answers to moral dilemmas. In each of these cases, the conflict between psychological mechanisms is paralleled by prominent philosophical debates between different moral theories. A parsimonious account of this data is that key claims supporting different moral theories ultimately derive from the psychological mechanisms that give rise to moral judgments. If this view is correct, it has some important implications for the practice of philosophy. We suggest several ways that moral philosophy and practical reasoning can proceed in the face of discordant theories grounded in diverse psychological mechanisms.

Experimental Mathematics

The rise of the field of “experimental mathematics” poses an apparent challenge to traditional philosophical accounts of mathematics as an a priori, non-empirical endeavor. This paper surveys different attempts to characterize experimental mathematics. One suggestion is that experimental mathematics makes essential use of electronic computers. A second suggestion is that experimental mathematics involves support being gathered for an hypothesis which is inductive rather than deductive. Each of these options turns out to be inadequate, and instead a third suggestion is considered according to which experimental mathematics involves calculating instances of some general hypothesis. The paper concludes with the examination of some philosophical implications of this characterization.

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Phenomenology in Lithuania

The article deals with phenomenology in Lithuania. The main thesis of the article is this: phenomenology is a living tradition in need of both development and interpretation. The minor thesis follows from the main one: the Western phenomenological tradition and Lithuanian philosophy interact and develop in tandem with one another. According to the authors, the contact between poetics and philosophy is the dominant form of phenomenology in Lithuania. The phenomenological tradition is treated as creative and living philosophical thought.

Not Always Enslaved,Yet Not Quite Free: Philosophical Challenges from the Underside of the New World

This article is the keynote address of the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill, Barbados, philosophy symposium in celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the British outlawing the Atlantic Slave Trade. The paper explores questions of enslavement and freedom through challenges of philosophical anthropology, philosophy of social change, and metacritical reflections posed by African Diasporic or Africana philosophy. Such challenges include the relevance and legitimacy of philosophical reflection to the lives of racialized slaves and concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis for an understanding of the “face” of political life and the importance of the concept of “home” for a cogent theory of freedom.

Visualizations in Mathematics

In this paper we discuss visualizations in mathematics from a historical and didactical perspective. We consider historical debates from the 17th and 19th centuries regarding the role of intuition and visualizations in mathematics. We also consider the problem of what a visualization in mathematical learning can achieve. In an empirical study we investigate what mathematical conclusions university students made on the basis of a visualization. We emphasize that a visualization in mathematics should always be considered in its proper context.

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Existentialism in Lithuania

Philosophical trends such as the philosophy of religion, especially Thomism, existentialism, and phenomenology emerged in Lithuanian philosophy during the 20th century. The article discusses the chief preconditions of the spread of existentialism, in particular the dominant Christian existentialism, in Lithuania and its influence on Lithuanian culture. The best known representatives of this philosophical trend were J. Girnius and A. Maceina. There are two periods of existentialism and its development in Lithuania: the first one includes the independence years and the second covers the time of the Soviet occupation. The author discusses its influence on Lithuanian literature and introduces the main problems of existential philosophy.

A defense of intuitions

Radical experimentalists argue that we should give up using intuitions as evidence in philosophy. In this paper, I first argue that the studies presented by the radical experimentalists in fact suggest that some intuitions are reliable. I next consider and reject a different way of handling the radical experimentalists’ challenge, what I call the Argument from Robust Intuitions. I then propose a way of understanding why some intuitions can be unreliable and how intuitions can conflict, and I argue that on this understanding, both moderate experimentalism and the standard philosophical practice of using intuitions as evidence can help resolve these conflicts.

Kant and Wittgenstein: Common Sense,Therapy, and the Critical Philosophy

Kant’s reputation for making absolutist claims about universal and necessary conditions for the possibility of experience are put here in the broader context of his goals for the Critical philosophy. It is shown that within that context, Kant’s claims can be seen as considerably more innocuous than they are traditionally regarded, underscoring his deep respect for “common sense” and sharing surprisingly similar goals with Wittgenstein in terms of what philosophy can, and at least as importantly cannot, provide.

Who is the Addressee of Philosophical Argumentation?

Chaim Perelman invokes the idea of “universal audience” for explaining the nature of philosophical argumentation as rational rhetoric. As opposed to this view, centuries before Perelman, Socrates argues that philosophy should be conducted as a dialogue between concrete individuals with very specific qualities. The paper presents these different views in order to claim that the philosopher addresses neither a universal audience nor a particular other, but mainly and essentially the philosopher herself/himself. This brings to light the problem of self-deception as a central problem of philosophical thinking. In posing this view the paper uses Nietzsche’s definition of “the will to truth” as the will not to deceive, not even myself.

Finding common ground between evolutionary biology and continental philosophy

This article identifies already existing theoretical and methodological commonalities between evolutionary biology and phenomenology, concentrating specifically on their common pursuit of origins. It identifies in passing theoretical support from evolutionary biology for present-day concerns in philosophy, singling out Sartre’s conception of fraternity as an example. It anchors its analysis of the common pursuit of origins in Husserl’s consistent recognition of the grounding significance of Nature and in his consistent recognition of animate forms of life other than human. It enumerates and exemplifies five basic errors of continental philosophers with respect to Nature, errors testifying to a philosophical fundamentalism that distorts the intricate interconnections and relationships of Nature in favor of a preferred knowledge rooted in ontological reductionism. It shows that to discover and appreciate the common ground, one must indeed study “the things themselves.”

The Role of Axioms in Mathematics

To answer the question of whether mathematics needs new axioms, it seems necessary to say what role axioms actually play in mathematics. A first guess is that they are inherently obvious statements that are used to guarantee the truth of theorems proved from them. However, this may neither be possible nor necessary, and it doesn’t seem to fit the historical facts. Instead, I argue that the role of axioms is to systematize uncontroversial facts that mathematicians can accept from a wide variety of philosophical positions. Once the axioms are generally accepted, mathematicians can expend their energies on proving theorems instead of arguing philosophy. Given this account of the role of axioms, I give four criteria that axioms must meet in order to be accepted. Penelope Maddy has proposed a similar view in Naturalism in Mathematics, but she suggests that the philosophical questions bracketed by adopting the axioms can in fact be ignored forever. I contend that these philosophical arguments are in fact important, and should ideally be resolved at some point, but I concede that their resolution is unlikely to affect the ordinary practice of mathematics. However, they may have effects in the margins of mathematics, including with regards to the controversial “large cardinal axioms” Maddy would like to support.

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Collins’s incorrect depiction of Dreyfus’s critique of artificial intelligence

Harry Collins interprets Hubert Dreyfus’s philosophy of embodiment as a criticism of all possible forms of artificial intelligence. I argue that this characterization is inaccurate and predicated upon a misunderstanding of the relevance of phenomenology for empirical scientific research.