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301. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 5
R. J. Connelly Creativity as Eternal Object in Whitehead
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This paper attempts to explore the position that A. N. Whitehead's ultimate principle of creativity may be identified explicitly as an eternal object. Such an interpretation seems to lend greater coherence to the categoreal scheme in Process and Reality and establish Whitehead's metaphysics as more of a rationalistic enterprise than most commentators are willing to admit. It would be rationalistic to the extent that its ultimate principle illustrates one of the categories of existence. That is, creativity may be viewed as an eternal object rather than a surd element which falls outside the categoreal scheme. As eternal object, creativity would serve as the very foundation of rationality in Whitehead's metaphysical system.
302. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 5
John M. Connolly Adam Smith on Wealth and Authority
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There is a question over whether or not Adam Smith, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), contended that the rich devise structures of authority (especially civil government) to protect their wealth. At issue is whether significant, private wealth can exist prior to forms of authority. Smith seems to me not to have thought so. It is true that he asserts that, "antecedent to any civil institutions", superiority of fortune can "give some men superiority over the greater part of their brethren" (p.670). However, I argue that there is strong reason not to take the word "antecedent" here in a temporal sense. In numerous and important examples Smith depicts the relationship between wealth and authority as non-empirical (or at least not simply empirical). This connection flows naturally from Smith's epoch-making redefinition of wealth as the productive capacity which a society can command within its given social and political framework. Appreciating this point leads one to see Smith as developing an early form of historical materialism.
303. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 5
Anthony C. Genova Selected Bibliography: Kant’s Critique of Judgment
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This is a selected bibliography of Kant's third Critique.
304. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 5
A. David Kline The Quinean ‘Pressing from Above’ Argument
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I show that what Quine calls 'pressing from above' is an argument for indeterminacy of translation that is generated by assuming the partial interpretation view of scientific theories. Furthermore, I argue that Quine's thesis should be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of partial interpretation and/or the view that the meaning of a term determines a unique extension for the term.
305. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Marcus G. Singer Rights, Duties, and Justice in Hobbes
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What is considered in this paper is the Hobbesian contention that there is no morality without government and consequently that there can be no moral criticism of government. It is argued that there are vital shifts in the way Hobbes thinks of rights, duties, and justice, without which outright contradictions result. Thus the Hobbesian claim that, in a state of nature, everyone has a right to everything, is equivalent to the claim that, in a state of nature, no one has a right to anything. But on Hobbes’ own account there must be rights as well as duties in a state of nature, hence also justice and injustice. It is argued that confusion about duties and justice as well as rights results from failing to distinguish rights from liberties and from power.
306. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Richard C. Onwuanibe The Human Person and Immortality in IBO (African) Metaphysics
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The theme of the human person and immortality has currently and forcefully become an issue in the face of modern materialism and dehumanization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate some philosophical issues involved in this theme with reference to Ibo (African) mataphysics as a contribution in this area. The approach is partly interpretive and partly analytical of some cultural ideas of the Ibos. The Ibos are not total materialists in their fundamental views of reality, especially with regard to the human person of which they have high regard. An analysis of some of their primitive notions and traditions shows the transcendental or metaphysical aspect of the human person. By analyzing human presence metaphysically, it is shown that personhood (Thou) is a manifestation through the body. The person or Thou survives the decay of the body. The Ibo notion of death as a "passage," the cult of ancestors, belief in reincarnation and an analysis of some dreams indicate the native sense of personal immortality. In conclusion, a warning is given against imported materialism which poses a threat to the Ibo holistic view of man since the problem today is how to integrate modern scientific and technological achievements with the traditional values without losing sight of the vital transcendence of the human person.
307. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Arthur E. Falk The State of the Questions About Fate
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A valid logical form is exhibited which underlies many arguments for logical, precognitive, and causal fatalism. The tools of modal and metrical tense logic (Prior's) are employed. And the logic of subjunctive conditionals is employed to display for the first time the valid variant of this form which underlies the most plausible causal fatalisms. Eleven arguments from ancient, medieval, and modern authors are shown to have variants of this valid form.The truth of the premises is examined, especially the premise that the past is necessary. This is made precise and defended as Ockham and Montague suggest, and this defence's implicit logic of the interrelations of time, modality, and counterfactual dependence is explored, A novel argument is given to refute the ancient view that unchangeable truth of a tensed sentence is proof of its necessity. Logical fatalism is shown to be not falsifiable independently of the falsity of causal fatalism.
308. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Michael Corrado, Bartolomeo Martello A Bibliography of Italian Logical Pragmatism: I. Giovanni Vailati
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The writings of the Italian philosophers Giovanni Vailati (1863-1909) and Mario Calderoni (1879-1914), sometimes called logical pragmatists, are not well-known in the English-speaking countries. A recent revival of interest is due in part to the reflection in the works of these men of later developments in analytic and pragmatic philosophy. This bibliography has three parts; In Part I are listed English and French translations of some of Vailati's writings, and commentaries in English and French on his work. Part II indicates the extent of Vailati's correspondence with scholars of his time, and lists reviews by Vailati of the works of his contemporaries. Part III is a list of his major writings in Italian, with English translations of the titles.
309. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Richard J. Arneson Marx's Comments on Women in the 1844 Manuscripts
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This paper contrasts the morally suspect elements in Marx's comments on relations between men and women in the 1844 Manuscripts with the more sensible and liberal tone of Marx's (and Engels') remarks on the same topic in post-1844 writings. The contrast is used to illustrate the claim that an important moral shift occurs in Marx's thought around 1844, a shift away from the early concern to overcome bourgeois egoism and with it the antagonism between state and civil society, and toward the mature concern to eliminate what are perceived to be unfair inequalities of power among economic agents in a capitalist economy.The concept of alienation articulated in the Manuscripts attempts to combine these disparate concerns, and in consequence Marx's discussion there founders interestingly.
310. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Kathy M. Squadrito Descartes, Locke and the Soul of Animals
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The view that animals are thoughtless brutes was the subject of considerable controversy during the seventeenth century. Locke clearly perceived his own position to differ substantially from that of Descartes. Historians usually credit Locke with an anti-Cartesian view of the nature of animals and with setting the vogue in France for a concept of soul that differentiated people and animals only in degree. According to Bayle, for example, "Locke has declared himself against those who will not attribute reason to beasts." In this paper I show that Locke does not attribute reason to beasts, that his ontological position does not differ in great detail from Descartes' and does not differ in its social consequences for animals. I argue that the major differences between Descartes and Locke on the question of animal consciousness are for the most part linguistic.
311. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Mary B. Mahowald Against Paternalism: A Developmental View
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Paternalism is generally construed to entail two claims about persons toward whom it is directed: (1) that their liberty is impeded, and (2) that their good or interests are promoted or intended. Two recent arguments on the subject are based on the writings of John Stuart Mill: one* by Gerald Dworkin, maintains that paternalism is sometimes justified; the other, by Tom Beauchamp, claims that paternalism is never justified. My critique of both positions is based on a concept of human life as developmental. In that context I argue that Mill's views themselves entail paternalism, Dworkin's position collapses into Beauchamp's, and Beauchamp neglects the crucial role of liberty in his critique of Mill. My conclusion suggests that a parental model be substituted for that of the pater, so that the individual's capacity for freedom be fully respected.
312. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Harry A. Nielsen A Categorial Difficulty in Berkeley
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In Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley speaks of the sensible qualities of an apple (its colour, taste, smell, etc.) as being its parts. The paper argues that our words for sense-qualities play a role so unlike that of part-words (stem, core, skin) that verbal atrocities would result from treating qualities as parts. Berkeley lends a surface plausibility to this move by focusing on a narrow selection of the normal linguistic accompaniment of the noun 'apple'. He puts out of mind the language of 'doing things with apples'— peeling, dicing, and so on— which when recalled shows how strikingly far apart are the two categories he tries to mingle.
313. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Mostafa Faghfoury Doctoral Dissertations on Ludwig Wittgenstein
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This bibliography of Ludwig Wittgenstein is limited to the doctoral dissertations submitted in North American Universities. It covers almost all aspects of Wittgenstein's thought. Compared with K.T. Fann's "Wittgenstein Bibliography", published in the International Philosophical Quarterly Vol. 7 1967 pp. 311-339, where there are only seventeen references to Ph.D. dissertations, this present list cites more than one hundred and twenty five. Further, the dissertations which have been published are indicated.
314. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
A. C. W. Bethel Wanting to Want
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Professor Harry Frankfurt has made a distinction between what he calls first-order desires, such as a desire for a Porsche, and second-order desires, such as a desire to desire (or a desire not to desire) a Porsche. He claims that this analysis of the structure of the will can provide an account of free human action. I argue against Frankfurt as follows: First, his account does not really free our wills, but only binds our wills at successively higher levels of desire; second, there is no good reason to think that desires of any level higher than second exist; and third, critical review of one's desires necessarily involves the idea of an ought, and is thus not really a second-order desire at all. Rightly understood, all "higher-order" critical review of one's desires occurs at a single "level" of review, contrary to what Frankfurt believes, and this fact makes room for the theory of agency.
315. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Roddy F. Gerraughty The Role of the Principle of Contradiction in Plato's Euthydemus
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Traditional interpretations of the Euthydemus find little of value in its sophistical sections. Where value is found at all it is in those aspects of the sophistic display which point to (but do not adequately analyze) serious issues in other dialogues. This paper argues that there is methodological value intrinsic to the sophistic sections, that taken together these displays make a coherent and valuable contribution to an understanding of sophistic argumentation, and of the foundations of correct reasoning. Each of the sections deals in some way with the principle of contradiction; it is the manipulation of this principle which produces the sophistic tricks, and the principle itself which reveals and organizes around itself the many sides of the sophistic display. The first display offers an apparent refutation of this principle, one based only on verbal ambiguity. In the second display the principle is denied from Parmenidean and Heraclitean perspectives, and the implications of such are analyzed. In the third display the brothers misapply this principle to relational predicates so as to work their tricks. Plato reveals here the necessity and limits of the principle of contradiction, and how its denial and misuse stand at the basis of various sophistical arguments.
316. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Anthony Murphy Popper's Defense of Tradition: World 3, Semantics, and the Concept of an Objective Norm
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Popper’s three world doctrine, it has been argued by Peyerahend and Krige, is a rejection of the type of critical dualism of facts and norms articulated in The Open Society. Peyerabend argues further that world 3 acts as a methodological prison designed to restrict the free decision of the individual theoretical scientist. It is my position that Popper's concept of world 3 is not a rejection of critical dualism but rather an attempt to allow for the existence of free normative decisions within the context of a binding tradition. The key to understanding this move is the notion of an objective norm. Specifically I argue that Popper's pluralistic epistemology is based on a traditional many-levelled semantics developed originally to combat psychologism and used now to place the issue of the choice of methodological norms within the framework of a theory of tradition.
317. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Thomas Wetzel Possible States of Affairs and Possible Objects
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"Possibilism" is the view that among the things that there are, or which have being»are included individual objects which do not exist, although they conceivably could have existed, and would have existed if certain possible-but-unrealized states of affairs had obtained. In this paper I try to develop a plausible ontological context from which the possibilist thesis could be deduced. Among the assumptions that are required for the argument is the idea that a state of affairs is a complex entity individuated by its constituents and their arrangement in that state of affairs. This is contrasted with Chisholm's strategy for individuating states of affairs. If one also assumes that possible states of affairs have their status as possibilities as a matter of logical necessity, then it is shown how a possibilist could argue that non-existent objects would have being as constituents of possible-but- non-obtaining states of affairs. In particular, possibilism could be seen as the view that the being of non-existent objects is required as an ontological ground of the possiblity of there having existed objects other than those things that do actually exist.
318. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
R. W. Ruegsegger The Propositional Attitude in Perception
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In Part I of this essay I distinguish perception from sensation and sensory processing, and I argue that propositional perceiving is an act, intentional, cognitive, and can go amiss. In Part II I show that perceiving must be committive to go amiss, and since a committive, cognitive, intentional act is assentive, I conclude that propositional perceiving is assentive. In Part III of the essay I argue that nonpropositional perceiving is an act, intentional, cognitive, and capable of going amiss, and hence committive. In the course of showing that nonpropositional perceiving is cognitive, I examine Bertrand Russell's views on knowledge by acquaintance and argue that such knowledge is logically propositional. Since nonpropositional perceiving is a committive, cognitive, intentional act, I conclude that it too is assentive. Thus, the conclusion I reach in this work is that the propositional attitude in perception, whether propositional or nonpropositional, is one of assent.
319. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Willis Doney Curley and Wilson on Descartes
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Comparing E.M. Curley's Descartes Against the Skeptics and Margaret Dauler Wilson's Descartes, I point out a seeming incompatibility between the central theses of the two books and an unclarity in the development of the central thesis in each book. More particularly, I examine and criticize two of Professor Curley's "reconstructions” of arguments in the Meditations : the argument from dreaming in Meditation I and the ontological proof in Meditation V. In Professor Wilson's book, I raise questions about her interpretation of the passages about the wax in Meditation II and the Attribution to Descartes of a "non-Platonic" theory of mathematics on the basis of passages in Meditations V and VI.
320. Philosophy Research Archives: Volume > 6
Dante A. Cosentino Self-Deception Without Paradox
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In this paper a view of self-deception is given which eliminates the paradox usually associated with self-deception (i.e., the self deceived believes both p and not-p at the same time).Self-deception is distinguished from ignorance, false belief, wishful thinking, and reluctance to believe. Through an analysis of ordinary language, the role of knowing and believing in self-deception is examined as well as the notion of the self-deceived person "persuading himself to believe." The role of intention and the function of "self" in "self-deception" is analyzed through a discussion of evidence and interpretation.It is shown that the self-deceived person does not know or even believe p, but is, nevertheless, properly characterized as "self-deceived." It is argued that the self-deceived person believes not-p and does not know, or even believe, p. The paradox turns out to be more apparent than real.