W. V. Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", first published in 1951, is one of the most influential articles in the history of analytic philosophy. It does not just question central semantic and epistemological views of logical positivism and early analytic philosophy, it also marks a momentous challenge to the ideas that conceptual analysis is a main task of philosophy and that philosophy is an a priori discipline which differs in principle from the empirical sciences. These ideas dominated early analytic philosophy, but similar views are to be found in the Kantian tradition, in phenomenology and in philosophical hermeneutics. In questioning this consensus from the perspective of a radical empiricism, Quine's article has had a sustained and lasting impact across all these philosophical divisions. Quine himself moved from the abandonment of the analytic/synthetic distinction to a thoroughgoing naturalism, and many analytic philosophers have followed his lead. The current collection differs from other anthologies devoted to Quine in two respects. On the one hand, it focuses on his attack on analyticity, apriority and necessity; on the other, it considers implications of that attack that far transcend the limits of Quine scholarship, and lie at the heart of the current self-understanding of philosophy. The contributors include both opponents and proponents of the dichotomies attacked by Quine. Furthermore, they include both eminent figures such as Boghossian, Burge, and Davidson, and up and coming younger philosophers.

Is it possible to apply a theoretical approach to ethics? The French philosopher Catherine Chalier addresses this question with an unusual combination of traditional ethics and continental philosophy. In a powerful argument for the necessity of moral reflection, Chalier counters the notion that morality can be derived from theoretical knowledge.

Chalier analyzes the positions of two great moral philosophers, Kant and Levinas. While both are critical of an ethics founded on knowledge, their criticisms spring from distinctly different points of view. Chalier reexamines their conclusions, pitting Levinas against (and with) Kant, to interrogate the very foundations of moral philosophy and moral imperatives. She provides a clear, systematic comparison of their positions on essential ideas such as free will, happiness, freedom, and evil. Although based on a close and elegant presentation of Kant and Levinas, Chalier's book serves as a context for the development of the author's own reflections on the question "What am I supposed to do?" and its continued importance for contemporary philosophy.

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects.

"Minds, Causes, and Mechanisms" questions the internal consistency of causal physicalism, and vindicates a novel approach to mental causation. Through a series of original and detailed arguments, it is made clear that many difficulties in the physicalist picture derive from an implausible view about causality. An alternative approach is defended which shows how mental contents, as opposed to functional properties, may be causally efficacious without having an implementing mechanism.

This volume includes a lucid discussion of recent developments by philosophers such as Block, Davidson, Fodor, Kim, Lewis, Mellor, Putnam, Schiffer, Shoemaker, and Yablo.

No one who wants to deal with the issue of mental causation, or causation in general, will be able to ignore the strong case against physicalism that this book makes.

This text provides a unique and compelling account of Wittgenstein's impact upon twentieth-century analytic philosophy, from its inception at the turn of the century to its subsequent decline.

Psychosemantics explores the relation between commonsense psychological theories and problems that are central to semantics and the philosophy of language. Building on and extending Fodor's earlier work it puts folk psychology on firm theoretical ground and rebuts externalist, holist, and naturalist threats to its position.

"This book is included in the series Explorations in Cognitive Science, edited by Margaret A. Boden.

A Bradford Book."

Ludwig Wittgenstein destroyed a large number of his notebooks, but by accident three of them remain. They serve to show what problems were occupying him in connection with many of the paragraphs of the Tractatus which are found in the notebooks as a first draft. They serve as a testimony to the thought processes of the Austrian philosopher.

In diesem Buch diskutiert Oliver Schott verschiedene metaethische Ansatze ausgehend von der Kontroverse zwischen Internalismus und Externalismus bezuglich praktischer Grunde. Er entwickelt eine nichtkantianische Variante des Konstruktivismus, der sich sowohl phanomenologisch als auch hinsichtlich einer Grundlegung der Moralphilosophie als uberzeugendste Alternative erweist.

Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece, "Naming and Necessity," reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection "Philosophical Troubles."In this book Kripke's long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to all of Kripke's published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke's influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke's work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher's major publications. "Kripke" will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy's greatest living thinkers.

Dieses Buch zeigt die ideen- und wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Entwicklung des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs vom Mittelalter bis zum 20. Jhd. auf. Dabei geht Sebastian Simmert vertieft auf die epistemische Bedeutung der Wahrscheinlichkeit als qualitative Bestimmung von Wissen ein. Hierbei untersucht er die Bedingungen der Moeglichkeit quantitativer Wahrscheinlichkeit. Im Zentrum steht die UEberlegung, dass die elementare Ebene qualitativer Wahrscheinlichkeiten keine Gleichwahrscheinlichkeiten zulasst. Denn sie baut auf einer zweiwertigen Logik auf. Mit dieser Pramisse werden die Grenzen des durch Wahrscheinlichkeiten Aussagbaren aufgezeigt; unter anderem, dass die Anwendung des Gesetzes der grossen Zahl keine empirischen Aussagen rechtfertigt.

Logical Atomism is a philosophy that sought to account for the world in all its various aspects by relating it to the structure of the language in which we articulate information. In The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Bertrand Russell, with input from his young student Ludwig Wittgenstein, developed the concept and argues for a reformed language based on pure logic. Despite Russell’s own future doubts surrounding the concept, this founding and definitive work in analytical philosophy by one of the world’s most significant philosophers is a remarkable attempt to establish a novel way of thinking.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918) 1. Facts and Propositions 2. Particulars, Predicates, and Relations 3. Atomic and Molecular Propositions 4. Propositions and Facts with More than One Verb: Beliefs, Etc 5. General Propositions and Existence 6. Descriptions and Incomplete Symbols 7. The Theory of Types and Symbolism: Classes 123 8. Excursions into Metaphysics: What There Is Logical Atomism (1924) Bibliography Chronological Tables Index

Paul Ricoeur is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time. In "The Rule of Metaphor" he seeks "to show how language can extend itself to its very limits, forever discovering new resonances within itself". Recognizing the fundamental power of language in constructing the world we perceive, Ricoeur reveals the processes by which linguistic imagination creates and recreates meaning through metaphor. Taking further his acclaimed analysis of the power of myth and symbol, Ricoeur invites us to explore the many layers of language in order to rediscover what that meaning might be.

Das biomedizinische Verstandnis der modernen (Schul-)Medizin darf als Resultat einer seit uber 160 Jahren andauernden Ver-Naturwissenschaftlichung der Medizin verstanden werden. Infolgedessen resumiert Petra Lenz eine "Krise der Medizin", die sich im Vertrauensverlust der Menschen in das Medizinsystem zeigt. Es wird gezeigt, dass der theoretische Krankheitsbegriff als sinnspezifischer Faktenbegriff der Naturwissenschaften nicht als Hoffnungstrager fur Medizin und Gesundheitspolitik infrage kommt, sondern erst durch ihn medizinethische und gesundheitspolitische Herausforderungen entstehen.

In this illuminating guide to the criteria of rational theorizing, Michael Shepanski identifies, defends and applies W. V. Quine's epistemic norms - the norms that best explain Quine's decisions to accept some theories and not others. Parts I and II set out the doctrines of this epistemology, demonstrating their potential for philosophical application. The third part is a case study in which Shepanski develops a theory of the propositional attitudes by the method of formulating inferences to behaviour. Finally, he presents critiques of popular alternative views, including foundationalism, the centrality of knowledge and Quine's own epistemological naturalism. By reassessing Quine's normative epistemology, Shepanski advances our understanding of Quine's philosophy whilst providing a guide for our own theorizing.

This volume is the first English resource to shed light on the philosophy of Joseph Petzoldt (1862-1929), the main pupil of Ernst Mach and founder of the Gesellschaft fur wissenschaftliche Philosophie, later the association of Berlin logical positivists. A central figure in the early debate on the theory of relativity, his work was praised by Einstein himself. Tracing the development of Petzoldt's ideas, starting from his early acceptance of materialism and Kantian agnosticism, Chiara Russo Krauss presents a comprehensive reconstruction of his philosophy in the context of the German milieu. She examines his attempt to develop a new philosophy following Gustav Fechner and the empiriocriticism of Richard Avenarius and Ernst Mach. In the final chapter, she sets out how Petzoldt proposed relativistic positivism as the official interpretation of Einstein's relativity. By illuminating key elements of Petzoldt's work, this is a valuable case study for students and scholars of philosophy of science and late 19th-century and early 20th-century philosophy. It reveals the complex interplay of two different tendencies of the time: neo-Kantianism and its struggle to overcome the notion of thing-in-itself, as well as the need for an epistemological foundation for the new advances of science.

Spanning the period between Wittgenstein's return to Cambridge in 1929 and the first version of Philosophical Investigations in 1936, Piotr Dehnel explores the middle stage in Ludwig Wittgenstein's philosophical development and identifies the major issues which engrossed him, including phenomenology, philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of language. Contrary to the dominant perspective, Dehnel argues that this period was intrinsically different from the early and late stages and should not be viewed as a mere transitional phase. The distinctiveness of Wittgenstein's middle work can be seen in his philosophical thinking as it unfolds in a non-linear trajectory: thoughts do not follow upon each other, ideas do not appear sequentially one by one, and insights do not form a straight chain. Dehnel portrays the diffused and multifarious quality of Wittgenstein's middle thinking, enabling readers to form a more comprehensive view of his entire philosophy and acquire a better grasp of his conceptual trajectory, complete with the intricacies and challenges that it poses.

Over the past one and a half decades, the scope of experimental philosophy (x-phi) has expanded significantly. Experimental research programmes now cover almost all areas of philosophy, including epistemology, the philosophy of language, action theory, and the free will debate, to name just a few. This volume introduces the reader to these new developments in an accessible and systematic way. It explains how x-phi differs from traditional views of philosophy, investigates in depth how it uses empirical evidence to support philosophical conclusions of various kinds, and introduces the reader to both the most widely discussed experimental studies and the latest advancements in the field. As a critical study, it also examines the various criticisms that x-phi has received over the years and seeks, tentatively, to adjudicate them.

This book explores Hegel's theory of modality (actuality, possibility, necessity, contingency) through extremely close textual analysis of the "Actuality" chapter of Hegel's Science of Logic. The "Actuality" chapter is the equivalence of Aristotle's momentous Metaphysics book 9. Because of this, Hegel's chapter deserves the same thorough investigation into its complex insights and argumentation. This book situates Hegel's insights about possibility and necessity within historical and contemporary debates about metaphysics, while analyzing some of the most controversial themes of Hegel's theory, such as the question of the ontological status of unactualized possibilities, the relationship between contradiction and possibility, and the claim that necessity leads to freedom. This book also contributes to an ongoing philosophical inquiry into the nature of dialectics by articulating Hegel's "Actuality" chapter as a coherent argument divided into twenty-seven premises.