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61. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 14
George Englebretsen A Journey to Eden: Geach on Aristotle
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Peter Geach has charged Aristotle with the sin of corrupting logic by initiating a process which led to the view that a sentence consists logically of just two names. This charge can only result from a clearly mistaken view of Aristotle's theory of logical syntax. Aristotle, unlike Geach, was careful to distinguish subjects from subject-terms and predicates from predicate-terms. He took both subjects and predicates as syntactical complexes. Geach, following Frege, holds a very different theory of logical syntax which takes predicates, but not subjects, as syntactically complex.
62. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 14
Wilhelm Vossenkuhl Free Agency: A Non-Reductionist Causal Account
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Free agency can be explained causally if the causal approach does not imply reductionism. A non-reductionist account of action is possible along the lines of Davidsonian 'anomalous monism'. Mental events, i.e. prepositional attitudes activated by indexical beliefs, are the causes of actions. Free agency presupposes a special type of causes to be analysed as rational causes allowing human agents to be self-determinant, autonomous agents in Kantian terms. An action is free if it has rational causes not to be ruled out by natural causes. With causes of actions being activated prepositional attitudes their rationality is analysed in terms of the coherence of prepositional attitudes. Principles of rational choice are not the basic ingredients of free i.e. rational action but have to conform to the prepositional attitudes of the human agent.
63. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 14
Barry Smith Outline of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions: An Essay in the Theory of Meaning and in the Philosophy of Logic
64. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 14
Peter M. Simons Unsaturatedness
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Frege's obscure key concept of the unsaturatedness of functions is clarified with the help of the concepts of dependent and independent parts and foundation relations used by Husserl in describing the ontology of complex wholes. Sentential unity in Frege, Husserl and Wittgenstein: all have a similar explanation. As applied to linguistic expressions, the terms 'unsaturated' and 'incomplete' are ambiguous: they may mean the ontological property of Unselbständigkeit, inability to exist alone, or the property of being what categorial grammar calls a functor. Separation of these two senses resolves a dispute between Dummett and Geach on the nature of predicates.
65. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Hide Ishiguro Logik und Semiotik in der Philosophie von Leibniz
66. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Bertil Rolf Körner on Vagueness and Applied Mathematics
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Körner's notion of vagueness, its relation to ostension and the alledged gulf between logic and experience are examined. Ostension is seen not to cause vagueness ~ there are precise concepts of mathematics which can be ostensively mtroduced. A distinction is drawn between classical logic not applymg to the vague world and not applymg to the vague language. The claims about logic and the vague world are unverifiable claims about existence. Körner's attempt to elimmate the seeming incompatibility between vague language and logic leads to a Protagorean relativism which is rejected. It is denied that the incompatibility between vagueness and classical logic causes a gulf between two sublanguages; mstead, ordinary language is held to contam both and so to be inconsistent.
67. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Stephan Körner Reply to Dr. Rolf
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The Reply to Dr. Rolfs essay makes the following main points: (1) The logic of inexactness has the same syntax as Kleene's three-valued logic. Its semantics is different in that the third truth-value can by choice be correctly turned into either truth or falsehood. (2) The definition of resemblance classes includes, but is not exhausted by, ostensive rules. (3) The application of classical mathematics to sense-experience consists in the limited identification of non-isomorphic structures. (4) There are exact perceptual and vague mathematical concepts. (5) The distinction between my categorial framework, a categorial framework and the true categorial framework, if any, is neither relativistic nor absolutistic.
68. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Joseph Tolliver Basing Beliefs on Reasons
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I propose to analyze the concept of basing beliefs on reasons. The concept is an important one in understanamg the so-called "inferential" or "indirect" knowledge. After briefly stating the causal analyses of this concept given by D.M. Armstrong and Marshall Swain I will present two cases which show these analyses to be too strong and too weak. Finally, I will propose an analysis which avoids these twin difficulties.
69. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Dale Jacquette Meinong's Theory of Defective Objects
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Meinong's theory of defective objects in On Emotional Presentation is ambiguous in ways which give rise to a dilemma. It is not clear whether or not defective objects are supposed to be a special kind of intentional object. If they are intentional objects, then a strengthened version of Mally's paradox about self-referential thought can be given which contradicts the intentionality thesis. But if they are not intentional objects, then thoughts with defective objects themselves constitute immediate counter-examples to the intentionality thesis. In either case, the theory of defective objects cannot be made logically consistent with both the possibility of self-referential thought and the intentionality thesis in its full generality.
70. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 15
Thomas Pogge The Interpretation of Rawl's First Principle of Justice
71. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Herman Tennessen Qualms About Otto Neurath's Cabby Language
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Otto Neurath's everyday "cabby"-language would only have preserved its appearance of a conceptual (etc.) system-neutrality to the extent at which it were to retain its semantic amorphousness as well as its user's shallow pragmatic mtentions. This (pseudo) neutrality would be irretrievably lost the moment the constituent parts of the everyday "cabby"-language were to be precised to a degree which transcended all conceivable pragmatic mtentions reasonably attributable to a cabman or to any other everyday speaker-. Dilemma: Either we settle for a semantically and pragmatically unambitious, superficial chatter, typical of a cabman, whereby we shall gam conceptual (philosophical, theoretical etc....) neutrality, or we relinquish all aspirations towards system neutrality in favor of a higher level of preciseness, which might in turn open the possibüities for some sort of meaningful, even philosophically relevant, discourse.
72. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Aldo Gargani Schlick and Wittgenstein: Language and Experience
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Schlick and Wittgenstein througli their criticism of the theory of synthetic a priori judgments assume language as a system of internal relations regulating the use of language in order to get an univocal description of states of affairs. This conception, in connection with Wittgenstein's doctrine of intentional acts, is at the basis of Schlick's intervention in the debate on protocol sentences through his notion of Konstatiemng or Beobachtungssatz. Therefore, the doctrine of internal relations, the notion of meaning as use and the principle of verification are closely related in Wittgenstein's and Schlick's works during the early Thirties.
73. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Keith Lehrer Schlick and Neurath: Meaning and Truth
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Schlick and Neurath shared a common assumption, what I call the verification theory of truth, as well as the verification of meaning. It is the claim that the truth of a sentence is the method of it's verification. For Neurath, the method of scientific verification must be interpersonal, and, therefore, private experience is precluded. This leads hmi to the doctrme that there is no truth beyond intersubjective agreement. Schlick, on the contrary, regarded it as obvious that certain sentences, even if they were not sentences in a conventional language, were confirmations or Konstatierungen verified by the private experiences they described. These sentences, which Schlick called basic contrasted with the protocol sentences of Neurath m that the truth of the former is determined by private experience and that of latter by interpersonal test. It is argued that once one distinguishes between the facts that make a sentence true and the meaning of a sentence one need not accept either the position of Schlick or that of Neurath. One may hold that the meaning of a sentence is interpersonal even if the fact described by a sentence is a personal experience. This theory yields a form of falliblism according to which the best method of verification of a sentence need not eliminate all possibüity of error.
74. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Roderick M. Chisholm Schlick on the Foundations of Knowing
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Schlick held that our knowledge is founded upon certain contingent apprehensions which he described as follows: "I grasp their meaning at the same time that I grasp their truth." He cites as an example the apprehension expressed by "Yellow here now." When such apprehensions are expressed in syntactically well-formed sentences, they can be seen to have certain psychological states as their objects - and therefore to be similar in all essential respects to what members of the Brentano school had called "inner perceptions."
75. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Francesco Barone Protocol Sentences and Scientific Anarchism
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Contrary to a common opinion, some theses of scientific anarchism are historically connected not only to Popper's and "second" Wittgenstein's thoughts, but also to some ideas affirmed by the advocates of "physicalism" (like Neurath) during the neopositivistie debate on protocol sentences. The common basis of "physicalism" and "anarchism" is a repulse of the "atomistic" theory of meaning. That is making more adequate the epistemological description of knowledge. But both Neurath and Feyerabend err in thinking that this repulse entails a conception of "truth" as "coherence" instead of "correspondence". Against such a conviction the "realistic" requirement expressed by SchHck through the concept of "Konstatiemng" is still very valid.
76. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Risto Hilpinen Schlick on the Foundations of Knowledge
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This paper outlines the main features of the conception of empirical knowledge presented by Moritz Schlick in his paper 'Über das Fundament der Erkenntnis', and contains a detaüed analysis of Schlick's concept of "Konstatierung". It is argued that in spite of its basically foundationalist appearance, Schlick's theory resembles in important respects contemporary coherence theories of knowledge.
77. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Henri Lauener Neurath's Protocol Sentences and Schlick's "Konstatierungen" versus Quine's Observation Sentences
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The relation between theory and reality is an important problem for phüosophy of science. Positivists or logical empkicists of the Vienna Circle have tried to solve it by postulating several types of so-called basic statements induced by immediate experience or observation. According to Neurath protocol sentences are distinguished from other synthetic sentences only m virtue of their syntactical form. Since consistency is a relation concerning sentences only, not a sentence and any immediate experience,he contends that there remains an unbridgeable gap between observationstatements and observation itself and consequently he adopts a coherentist strategy of corroboration, which Schlick, as a thorough empiricist, wants to avoid. For that purpose he introduces the notion of "Konstatierung". Such ascertainments play a decisive role as endpoints in the corroboration of theories insofar as they serve to verify predictions which express expected ascertainments. In spite of the fact that they are synthetic wc recognize their truth when grasping their meaning and, therefore, error is precluded in their case, while protocol sentences remain mere hypotheses. Quine attempts to overcome the weaknesses of all prior positions by proposing a purely behavioristic definition of 'observation sentence' which avoids the pitfalls of former sense-data theories as well as the ones of cultural relativism or irrationalism. Considering science to be a bridge linking together our sensory stimuli he comes to the view that empirical support of a theory is a consequence of the logical relation between the theory formulation and the observation categoricals derivable from it. He considers the ideological and epistemological neutrality of his conception as one of its main merits. Its feasibility depends, however, on the question whether, by his behavioristic method, he effectively can explain how linguistic expressions acquire their meanings.
78. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Marx W. Wartofsky Positivism and Politics: The Vienna Circle as a Social Movement
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What I want to focus on in this paper is the question of the connection between the positivism of the Vienna Circle — the "scientific conception of the world" — and politics. The Vienna Circle will be considered first ''als soziale Bewegung'' and second from the point of view of "Sozialforschung". The paper is a case study in the problem of the relation of a theory to practice, and more particularly, of the relation of a technical epistemological and methodological theory of science to social practice. The critical assessment of the nature of the Vienna Circle as a social movement starts from the consideration of the views of Otto Neurath; and concludes with some theses about the failure of this social movement precisely as it relates to the logical positivist and logical empiricist theory of science, and to its scientific conception of the world.
79. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Brian McGuinness Wittgenstein on Probability: A Contribution to Vienna Circle Discussions
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Wittgenstein was not only an inspirational figure for Schlick but also contributed to scientific philosophy as Neurath demanded. His verificationism is one instance of this, but it is also shown in his treatment of probability (where his ideas were developed further by Waismann). Wittgenstein revived Bolzano's logical interpretation of probability, anticipating Carnap and many moderns. He construed laws of nature as hypotheses that we had to assume. It is the general form of these hypotheses (what he later called a worldview) and not (pace von Wright) relative frequency that provides the basis for judgements of probability.
80. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 16/17
Lars Bergström Interpersonal Utility Comparisons
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Utilitarianism, as well as many other political and moral doctrines, presupposes that the problem of interpersonal utility comparisons can be solved. Otto Neurath gave a comparatively early (1912) and explicit statement of this problem, and he suggested that it cannot be solved. This may still be the dominant view. It is argued that recent attempts to solve the problem (by e.g. Schick, Rescher, Harsanyi, Brandt, Jeffrey, Arrow, and Hare) are unsatisfactory, but that the oldest suggestion - i.e. the method of minimal units or just-noticeable differences - is acceptable from the point of view of utilitarianism.