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Displaying: 1-20 of 216 documents


1. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Valeria Bizzari Aristotle, Phenomenology, and the Mind/Body Problem
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The mind-body relationship is a fundamental issue that has interested philosophers from very different schools of thought. Nowadays we can observe several positions being taken on this topic — my aim is to emphasize the phenomenological perspective on the mind-body relationship and, in particular, the role of Aristotelian thought in the contributions of philosophers such as Husserl and Merleau-Ponty. This paper consists of three different parts: in the first part, I will briefly sketch out a phenomenological account of the living body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty; in the second part, I will try to find parallels between phenomenology and Aristotle’s philosophy. Finally, I will argue for an Aristotelian reading of schizophrenia, a pathology that seems to be caused by a disruption of the corporeal Self.
2. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Douglas Ian Campbell Against Lewis on ‘Desire as Belief’
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David Lewis describes, then attempts to refute, a simple anti-Humean theory of desire he calls ‘Desire as Belief’. Lewis’ critics generally accept that his argument is sound and focus instead on trying to show that its implications are less severe than appearances suggest. In this paper I argue that Lewis’ argument is unsound. I show that it rests on an essential assumption that can be straightforwardly proven false using ideas and principles to which Lewis is himself committed.
3. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Bogna Choińska Following Desire as the Ethical Postulate of Psychoanalysis
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One of the most controversial theses of Jacques Lacan is his conviction that a very specific relationship links ethics and desire. The aim of the article is to present what this new relationship consists in, and, further on, to outline the weaknesses of this concept, which does not take into account the existence of the sovereign good as a category available to cognition. According to my thesis, Lacan believes that the ethics of Supreme Good, or simply traditional ethics of goods, leads the human subject to remain, voluntarily (and perhaps thoughtlessly), within the Imaginary dimension. The idea of the ethical postulate will be treated here not so much as something applied during psychoanalysis, but as a general clue as to how people should behave.
4. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Michael J. Shaffer Grounding Reichenbach’s Pragmatic Vindication of Induction
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This paper has three interdependent aims. The first is to make Reichenbach’s views on induction and probabilities clearer, especially as they pertain to his pragmatic justification of induction. The second aim is to show how his view of pragmatic justification arises out of his commitment to extensional empiricism and moots the possibility of a non-pragmatic justification of induction. Finally, and most importantly, a formal decision-theoretic account of Reichenbach’s pragmatic justification is offered in terms both of the minimax principle and of the dominance principle.
5. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 11 > Issue: 1
Adam Tamas Tuboly From ‘Syntax’ to ‘Semantik’ — Carnap’s Inferentialism and Its Prospects
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The aim of this paper is to provide context for and historical exegesis of Carnap’s alleged move from syntax to semantics. The Orthodox Received View states that there was a radical break, while the Unorthodox Received View holds that Carnap’s syntactical period already had many significant semantical elements. I will argue that both of them are partly right, both of them contain a kernel of truth: it is true that Carnap’s semantical period started after his Logical Syntax of Language — in one sense of semantics. But it is also true that Carnap had already included semantical ideas in LSL: though not (just) in the sense that URV maintains. This latter sense of semantics is related to what is usually called inferentialism, and by getting a clearer picture of Carnap’s original aims, context, and concept-usage, we might be in a better position to approach his alleged inferentialism.
6. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Wolfgang Barz A Note on a Remark of Evans
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In his seminal paper, ‘Can There Be Vague Objects?’ (1978), Gareth Evans advanced an argument purporting to prove that the idea of indeterminate identity is incoherent. Aware that his argument was incomplete as it stands, Evans added a remark at the end of his paper, in which he explained how the original argument needed to be modified to arrive at an explicit contradiction. This paper aims to develop a modified version of Evans’ original argument, which I argue is more promising than the modification that Evans proposed in his remark. Last, a structurally similar argument against the idea of indeterminate existence is presented.
7. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Anna Cremaldi Is Aristotelian Generosity a Unified Virtue?
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Commentators worry that Aristotelian generosity is a conglomeration of distinct virtues, rather than a single, unified virtue. This paper argues that the virtue of generosity is unified if we recognize that the generous person’s goal lies in promoting friendship — in particular, in ensuring that there is sufficient wealth to support a community of friends. One of the important consequences of this reading is that it reverses the standard interpretation according to which Aristotelian generosity resembles our modern conception of generosity as an impartial virtue. On the proposed view, Aristotelian generosity is undergirded by reciprocity, rather than impartiality.
8. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Diego Fusaro The Role of Aesthetics in Fichte’s Science of Knowledge
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This paper aims to address the problem of aesthetics in relation to Fichte’s Science of Knowledge Wissenschaftslehre as System der Freiheit. We will focus more specifically on the role that aesthetics plays in connection with the supporting structures of the science of knowledge and on what has been happily referred to as Fichte’s praxologische Dialektik.
9. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Ryan J. Johnson Homesickness and Nomadism: Traveling with Kant and Maimon
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Solomon Maimon argues that while Kantianism does venture quite a way toward the establishment of an immanent critical project that more satisfyingly addresses real experience, it does not fulfill the aims of its own project. In order to negotiate Maimon’s claim, I utilize the primary metaphorics of the First Critique: homesickness. The Kantian longing for home is an insatiable yearning, a striving for the end of something that cannot end, namely, the end of the search for home (Zuhause). According to Maimon, although home is unattainable, there is a different sense of home: home is the path itself, a sort of nomadism, a roving life of the path that never leads home. The Kant of the first Critique did not fully realize that the project could not reach an actual final resting place; in fact, this realization, that home is a transcendental ideal, might be the very motivation for the third Critique. Thus, in order not merely to justify the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge, but also to allow the application of such knowledge to reach the facts themselves, actuality as such, the “well-groundedness” of the critical project requires some re-direction from Maimon. To do this, Maimon renders Kantian transcendental conditions truly genetic.
10. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 2
Piotr K. Szałek Thomas Reid, Sensations, and Intentionality
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The paper attempts to examine whether Reid adopts, but does not articulate explicitly, a philosophical theory regarding intentionality, or rather if intentionality remains an unexamined assumption within Reid’s philosophy. In the recent interpretations, Reid is perceived both as the proponent of the notion of intentionality and at the same time as a forerunner of the anti-intentional view. I will argue that the crucial element to solving this puzzling opposition in the interpretations is an analysis of the relation between sensations and perceptions. Perceptions are intentional in Reid’s view, while sensations are not intentional. However, what seems to be missing in this dichotomy is Reid’s firm assumption about the role of ‘common sense’ in sensations. Both sensations and perceptions as two separate operations of the mind contain an immediate conviction on the part of the observer about the existence of some item that is apprehended. In that sense, sensations exhibit themselves intentionally, as do perceptions. Moreover, this view of sensations argues for Reid’s position as proto-Brentanian as regards the notion of intentionality, because Brentano also assumed an essential role of an assistant judgment in the formation of sensations of items that are apprehended.
book symposium
11. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Varieties of Linguistic Conventions: A book symposium on Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone's Imagination and Convention. Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language
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12. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Manuel García-Carpintero Indirect Assertions
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Imagination and Convention by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone is a sustained attack on a standard piece of contemporary philosophical lore, Grice’s (1975) theory of conversational implicatures, and on indirect meanings in general. Although I agree with quite a lot of what they say, and with some important aspects of their theoretical stance, here I will respond to some of their criticism. I’ll assume a characterization of implicatures as theory-neutral as possible, on which implicatures are a sort of indirectly conveyed meanings, illustrated by some traditional examples. Then I will discuss the claim that one can make an assertion indirectly, through a mechanism essentially like the one envisaged by Grice in his account of implicatures. This is something that not just L&S have argued against, but other writers as well, for more or less related reasons. Since it will be clear that assertions, the way I will characterize them, “convey information inthe usual sense” and provide “information in the semantic sense of publicly accessible content that supports inquiry”, I will be thereby arguing for a claim clearly at odds with some of those made by L&S.
13. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska Conventions of Usage vs. Meaning Conventions
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In this paper I criticise some aspects of the view that Ernie Lepore and Mathew Stone propose in their book Imagination and Convention. I concentrate on their analysis of indirect speech acts and contrast it with the view held by Searle. I point out some problems that arise for Lepore and Stone’s ambiguity view and argue that admitting conventions of usage that are not meaning conventions allows one to avoid postulating global ambiguity, which in my opinion threatens the view proposed in Imagination and Convention. In addition, if one admits that there might be such conventions of usage, one is in a position to provide an adequate analysis of sub-sentential speech acts and semantic underdetermination as well as indirect speech acts.
14. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Marcin Matczak Does Legal Interpretation Need Paul Grice?: Reflections on Lepore and Stone’s Imagination and Convention
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By significantly diminishing the role intentions play in communication, in Imagination and Convention (2015) Lepore and Stone attempt to overthrow the Gricean paradigm which prevails in the philosophy of language. The approach they propose is attractive to theorists of legal interpretations for many reasons. Primary among these is that the more general dispute in the philosophy of language between Griceans and non-Griceans mirrors the dispute between intentionalists and non-intentionalists in legal interpretation. The ideas proposed in Imagination and Convention naturally support the non-intentionalist camp, which makes them unique in the contemporary philosophy of language.In this paper I argue that despite an almost universal acceptance for the Gricean paradigm in legal interpretation, a strong, externalist approach to language, one in which interpretation is based on conventions, not intentions, better reflects the nature of legal language. The latter functions in societies as a written, public discourse to which many individuals contribute; the number of contributions renders the identification of individual intentions impossible, making it badly suited to a Gricean, intention-based analysis. Lepore and Stone’s discourse-based, non-Gricean alternative provides a better tool for the theorist of legal interpretation to analyse legal language. In what follows, I first present an overview of the disputes in legal interpretation that may be affected by Imagination and Convention. In the second section, I analyze several of Lepore and Stone’s theses and apply them to issues in legal interpretation, paying particular attention to their concept of “direct intentionalism.” In the last section, I outline some proposals for finishing the anti-Gricean revolution, which involves Ruth Millikan’s idea of conventions as lineages.
15. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
K. M. Jaszczolt On Unimaginative Imagination and Conventional Conventions: Response to Lepore and Stone
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The article is a response to Lepore and Stone 2015 and offers a critical discussion of their claims that various aspects of discourse meaning can be ascribed togrammar and that the concept of semantic ambiguity can be defended in the light of the current debates on the semantics/pragmatics interface. It also addresses the question of the understanding of conventions and inferences and their place in the above interface. It ends with the claim that the role Lepore and Stone ascribe to grammar cannot be defended.
16. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Maciej Witek Accommodation and Convention
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The paper develops a non-Gricean account of accommodation: a contextadjusting process guided by the assumption that the speaker’s utterance constitutes an appropriate conversational move. The paper is organized into three parts. The first one reconstructs the basic tenets of Lepore and Stone's non-Gricean model of meaningmaking, which results from integrating direct intentionalism and extended semantics. The second part discusses the phenomenon of accommodation as it occurs in conversational practice. The third part uses the tenets of the non-Gricean model of meaning-making to account for the discursive mechanisms underlying accommodation; the proposed account relies on a distinction between the rules of appropriateness, which form part of extendedgrammar, and the Maxim of Appropriateness, which functions as a discursive norm guiding our conversational practice.
17. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 10 > Issue: 1
Ernie Lepore, Matthew Stone Problems and Perspectives on the Limits of Pragmatics: Reply to Critics
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articles
18. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Jiri Benovsky ‘Nothing over and above’ or ‘nothing’?: On Eliminativism, Reductionism, and Composition
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In this article, I am interested in an issue concerning eliminativism about ordinary objects that can be put as the claim that the eliminativist is guilty of postulating the existence of something (atoms arranged tablewise), but not of something that is identical to it (the table). But, as we will see, this turns out to be a problem for everybody except the eliminativist. Indeed, this issue highlights a more general problem about the relationship between an entity and the parts the compose it. Furthermore, I am not interested in this issue only for its own sake and for the sake of understanding and defending eliminativism, but also for the way it allows me to discuss the differences and relations between eliminativism and reductionism. What difference is there between eliminating an entity and reducing it to something else?
19. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Yves Bouchard KK-Thesis and Contextualism
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In this paper, I defend a contextualist reading of the KK-thesis. In the first part, I present the general problem and I contrast three concepts of knowledge with respect to the KK-thesis, (Hintikka, Lemmon, and Williamson) that all rely on a univocal interpretation of the K-predicate. In the second part, I provide a contextualist framework based upon an indexical interpretation of the K-predicate and the notion of epistemic context. I show how this framework can integrate different concepts of knowledge, and how it highlights the crucial significance of the KK-thesis for epistemology.
20. Polish Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 9 > Issue: 2
Kai Michael Büttner Truth Conditions and Behaviourism
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Quine tries to combine truth conditional semantics with linguistic behaviourism. To this end, he identifies the truth conditions of a sentence with the conditions that prompt speakers to assign truth or falsity to the sentence. The first problem with this conception is that truth conditions determine not when truth-value assignments are made, but when they are correct. This fact vitiates Quine’s account of observation sentences (section 2). A second difficulty pertains only to theoretical sentences. The correctness of truth-value assignments to such sentences depends not on current experiences, but on what can be experienced on other occasions. This observation militates against Quine’s general verification holism and against his account of predications (section 3 and 4). Combining truth conditional semantics and linguistic behaviourism is possible, though, if both these lessons are taken into account (section 5).