Sosa’s theory of knowledge

Synthese - This paper is a critical discussion of Ernest Sosa’s recent analysis of reflective knowledge.     

Note on Crozier’s Neural-Availability theory

Two implications of Crozier’s Availability theory are developed. First, the population of elements of neural effect is shown to have a minimum size. Second, intensity discrimination must be mediated by progressively smaller increments in neural effect as stimulus intensity is increased-an improbable state of affairs.     

An evolutionary perspective on Kohlberg’s theory of moral development

The purpose of this research was to test the proposition that moral development and social evolution have progressed together, each enabling the other. Stage 1 and Stage 2 reasons for behaving morally are to avoid punishment and achieve rewards. Since moral behavior at these stages is externally determined they do not form a basis for cooperative living. Stage 3 morality involves the reasoning that people are obligated to care for their family and friends; this would appear to be the morality of hunter and gatherer societies. Stage 4 morality involves the reasoning that people must obey authority in the form of traditional norms, written laws, and the legal system; this would appear to be the morality of nation states. Stage 5 morality involves the reasoning that people should obey democratically created rules which presumably create the greatest good for the greatest number and Stage 6 morality involves the reasoning that people should follow universal ethical principles like justice. These moralities would appear to be the morality of international social organizations. To test the hypothesis that moral development and social evolution progressed together, the Measures of Moral Reasoning Scale was created, consisting of six scales measuring Kohlberg’s stages of moral reasoning. As a measure of social evolution (i.e., inclusion), participants were asked how many of their resources they intended to invest in the following targets over their lifetimes: self, biological children, mate, biological parents, biological siblings, friends (but not relatives), American strangers, and non-American strangers. Supporting the hypothesis, Stage 1 and 2 measures correlated with the intent to invest in the self but not others; the Stage 3 measure correlated with the intent to invest in the participant’s children, mate, parents, siblings, and friends (a hunter-gatherer social organization); the Stage 4 measure correlated with investment in all of the above targets except self and non-American strangers (a nationalistic social organization); the Stage 5 measure correlated with investment in children, mate, parents, and American strangers (a nationalistic social organization), and the Stage 6 measure correlated with investment in all of the targets except self (a global social organization).

     

Hume’s naturalistic theory of representation

Hume is a naturalist in many different respects and about many different topics; this paper argues that he is also a naturalist about intentionality and representation. It does so in the course of answering four questions about his theory of mental representation: (1) Which perceptions represent? (2) What can perceptions represent? (3) Why do perceptions represent at all? (4) Howdo perceptions represent what they do? It appears that, for Hume, all perceptions except passions can represent; and they can represent bodies, minds, and persons, with their various qualities. In addition, ideas can represent impressions and other ideas. However, he explicitly rejects the view that ideas are inherently representational, and he implicitly adopts a view according to which things (whether mental or non-mental) represent in virtue of playing, through the production of mental effects and dispositions, a significant part of the causal and/or functional role of what they represent. It is in virtue of their particular functional roles that qualitatively identical ideas are capable of representing particulars or general kinds; substances or modes; relations; past, present, or future; and individuals or compounds.     

A repair of Frege’s theory of thoughts

Frege’s writings contain arguments for the thesis (i) that a thought expressed by a sentence S is a structured object whose composition pictures the composition of S, and for the thesis (ii) that a thought is an unstructured object. I will argue that Frege’s reasons for both (i) and (ii) are strong. Frege’s explanation of the difference in sense between logically equivalent sentences rests on assumption (i), while Frege’s claim that the same thought can be decomposed differently makes (ii) plausible. Thoughts are supposed to do work that requires that they be structured and work that requires that they be unstructured. But this cannot be! While the standard response to this problem is to reject either (i) or (ii), I propose a charitable repair in the spirit of Frege’s theory that accepts both. The key idea can be found in Frege’s Basic Laws of Arithmetic(BL, GGA). Frege argues that the thought expressed by a sentence is determined by the truth-conditions that can be derived from the semantic axioms for the sentence constituents. The fact that the same axiomatic truth-condition can be derived in different ways from different semantic axioms suggests a Fregean solution of the dilemma: A thought is a type that is instantiated by all sequences of senses (decomposed thoughts) that have the same axiomatic truth-conditions. This allows for multiple decomposability of the same thought (for different decomposed thoughts can have the same axiomatic truth-conditions) and for a notion of containment (the decomposed thought contains those senses whose semantic axioms are needed in the derivation of the truth-conditions). My proposal combines the virtues of (i) and (ii) without inheriting their vices.     

Attitudes and illusions: Herbert Leyendecker’s phenomenology of perception

In this paper, I discuss aspects of Herbert Leyendecker’s 1913 doctoral dissertation, Towards the Phenomenology of Deceptions (Zur Phänomenologie der Täuschungen), which he defended in 1913 at the University of Munich. Leyendecker was a member of the Munich and Göttingen Phenomenological Circles. In my discussion of his largely neglected views, I explore the connection between his ideas concerning “attitudes” (Einstellungen), e.g., of searching for, observing, counting, or working with objects, and the central topic of his text, perceptual illusions, thematized by Leyendecker as a kind of perceptual “deception” (Täuschung). Indeed, Leyendecker argues that a change of attitude is a necessary aspect of an illusion. I argue that Leyendecker’s use of the notion of attitude in accounting for illusions is problematic; yet I also suggest that his ideas are not devoid of philosophical interest, in relation to current debates.

     

Hume’s theory of justice and Vanderschraaf’s vulnerablity objection

Philosophical Studies -     

Mary Astell’s theory of spiritual friendship

Mary Astell’s theory of friendship has been interpreted either as a version of Aristotelian virtue friendship, or as aligned with a Christian and Platonist tradition. In this paper, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship is determinedly anti-Aristotelian; it is a theory of spiritual friendship offered as an alternative to Aristotelian virtue friendship. By grounding her conception of friendship in a Christian–Platonist metaphysics, I show that Astell rejects the Aristotelian criteria of reciprocity and partiality as essential features of the friendship bond and that she develops a theory of friendship that is neither reciprocal nor partial. Further, I argue that Astell’s theory of friendship advances her feminist aims by providing a justification for female–female spiritual bonds in contradistinction to female–male marriage bonds. Astell argues that the female–female bond of spiritual friendship is sanctioned by God, and is, therefore, a divinely authorized alternative to the male–female bond of marriage. Through her theory of spiritual friendship, Astell marks out a central place for female–female bonds and provides women with a justification for resisting marriage.     

Soames’s new conception of propositions

In this paper, I argue that, when it comes to explaining what can be described as “representational” properties of propositions, Soames’s new conception of propositions—on which the proposition that Seattle is sunny is the act of predicating the property being sunny of Seattle and to entertain that proposition is to perform that act—does not have an advantage over traditional ones.     

Counting distinctions: on the conceptual foundations of Shannon’s information theory

Categorical logic has shown that modern logic is essentially the logic of subsets (or “subobjects”). In “subset logic,” predicates are modeled as subsets of a universe and a predicate applies to an individual if the individual is in the subset. Partitions are dual to subsets so there is a dual logic of partitions where a “distinction” [an ordered pair of distinct elements (u, u′) from the universe U] is dual to an “element”. A predicate modeled by a partition π on U would apply to a distinction if the pair of elements was distinguished by the partition π, i.e., if u and u′ were in different blocks of π. Subset logic leads to finite probability theory by taking the (Laplacian) probability as the normalized size of each subset-event of a finite universe. The analogous step in the logic of partitions is to assign to a partition the number of distinctions made by a partition normalized by the total number of ordered |U|² pairs from the finite universe. That yields a notion of “logical entropy” for partitions and a “logical information theory.” The logical theory directly counts the (normalized) number of distinctions in a partition while Shannon’s theory gives the average number of binary partitions needed to make those same distinctions. Thus the logical theory is seen as providing a conceptual underpinning for Shannon’s theory based on the logical notion of “distinctions.” This paper is dedicated to the memory of Gian-Carlo Rota—mathematician, philosopher, mentor, and friend.     

Beyond sympathy: Smith’s rejection of Hume’s moral theory

Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) has long been recognized as importantly influenced by, and in part responding to, David Hume’s earlier ethical theory. With regard to Smith’s account of the foundations of morals in particular, recent scholarly attention has focused on Smith’s differences with Hume over the question of sympathy. Whilst this is certainly important, disagreement over sympathy in fact represents only the starting point of Smith’s engagement with – and eventual attempted rejection of – Hume’s core moral theory. We can see this by recognizing the TMS’s account of moral foundations as predicated upon a rejection of Hume’s distinction between the natural and artificial virtues. Smith is in turn revealed as generating a major break with Hume – a break which, if based on a superior theory of moral foundations (as Smith thought it to be) has important consequences for how we treat Smith and Hume in both the history of philosophy and contemporary moral theory.     

Kant’s virtue theory

By focusing on human virtues rather than the general morality of rational beings, Kant’s virtue theory presents systematic arguments from the perspectives of reason and experiential emotion, norms and disposition, spirituality and humanity, etc., which is of great significance to an overall understanding of Kantian ethics, thus clarifying misunderstandings from the past decades.     

Jameson and Hurvich’s theory of brightness contrast

Jameson and Hurvich’s theoretical model, formulated to account for perceived brightness under conditions of simultaneous brightness contrast, was shown to predict linear brightness functions with (I) slopes of.33, ?.33, or 0 on a log-log plot, where apparent brightness is plotted against illuminance, contrast ratio is the parameter, and spatial arrangements are constant; and (2) y-intercepts that shift monotonically as contrast ratio is increased. Predicting the value of a y-intercept and which of the three possible slopes of a function would occur was shown to depend on empirically evaluating a constant k. Because k was found unsolvable, the model as presently defined was rejected. The evidence for a general class of similar models was found to be fragmentary.     

Lifshits’ ontognoseology as a version of Lenin’s theory of reflection

In Soviet philosophy, two versions of Lenin’s theory of reflection are represented respectively by Mikhail Lifshits and Todor Pavlov. They both isolate and juxtapose two dialectical elements: reflection and creativity. Within this methodological dilemma, Lifshits’s ontognoseology is an original doctrine of our “mirror” attitude to the world whereby material being is the true subject, while man is a tool of its self-reflection.     

Kant’s coherent theory of the highest good

International Journal for Philosophy of Religion - In the second Critique, Kant argues that for the highest good to be possible we need to postulate the existence of God and the...     

A further analysis of Zhu Xi’s theory of mind

Mind was the oneness of form and function. The change from an old theory to a new one about zhong 中 (the mean) and he 和 (harmony) was a shift from the idea of the separate form of nature and function of mind to one about both form and function of mind. Form was both the form of the spirit of the mind and of the substantiality of nature (not the same as substantial realities in substantialism); it was the integration of vacancy and substantiality, the integration of mind and nature. In contrast, function meant both feelings and perceiving action. It was infeasible to interpret function without reference to form; likewise, it was impractical to talk about perception without mentioning nature. On the other hand, a knower represented nature through concrete things and his actions, and a perceiver enlightened himself, realizing the self-consciousness of nature as a whole. Mind, nature, and perception could be interpreted as a whole, and these three could be separated too. Viewed in general, mind, nature, and principles were oneness; observed separately, nature differed with principles: nature meant principles, but perception was the quintessence of qi. The unfolding of perception, however, had its independence, and could be easily influenced by qi; thus, it was necessary to transform and cultivate qi-related temperament. Realistically, a man needs to face up to himself and to transform himself, and this sentiment is inspiring for today.     

Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language

Many philosophers have assumed, without argument, that Wittgenstein influenced Austin. More often, however, this is vehemently denied, especially by those who knew Austin personally. We compile and assess the currently available evidence for Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language. Surprisingly, this has not been done before in any detail. On the basis of both textual and circumstantial evidence we show that Austin’s work demonstrates substantial engagement with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In particular, Austin’s 1940 paper, ‘The Meaning of a Word’, should be construed as a direct response to and development of ideas he encountered in Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. Moreover, we argue that Austin’s mature speech-act theory in How to Do Things with Words was also significantly influenced by Wittgenstein.