Narrow search


By category:

By publication type:

By language:

By journals:

By document type:


Displaying: 81-100 of 481 documents

0.21 sec

81. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 19
Roger Scruton Fantasy, Imagination and the Screen
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
There is a real distinction between fantasy and imagination, which corresponds in part to Coleridge's distinction between fancy and imagination. Fantasy seeks substitute objects for a real emotion: it therefore involves the 'realization' of its object in a perfect simulacrum. Imagination seeks unreal objects for unreal emotions, and therefore is thwarted by the presentation of a simulacrum. At the same time, the motive of imagination is to understand what is real, and to respond with emotional alertness to it. The cinema awakens and satisfies fantasy. But it has difficulty in giving full elaboration to an imaginative thought. Its principle is not reality but realization.
82. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 19
David Novitz Fiction and the Growth of Knowledge
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Philosophers currently speak of the growth of knowledge only in the context of scientific enquiry, and concentrate exclusively on the growth of prepositional knowledge. That this is mistaken can be seen from a consideration of the knowledge acquired from fictional literature. There are many different things that are learned from fiction. Certainly people acquire prepositional beliefs and knowledge about the actual world from fiction, but they also acquire strategic and cognitive skills, emphatic beliefs and knowledge, and values of one sort or another. These are all acquired in interestingly different ways which are detailed in the body of the paper.
83. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 2
John Woods Ad Baculum
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In an attempt to overcome the traditional casual neglect of the study of the informal fallacies, we here treat one fallacy, the ad baculum, at an adequate theoretical level in order to determine how it may best be understood as a fallacy. We conclude, after following through a number of plausible routes of tracking down the essential fallaciousness of the ad baculum, that the type of phenomenon apparently so typically thought to constitute ad baculum by the texts is not, so far as we can tell, an instance of a logical fallacy.
84. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 2
Wolfgang Lenzen Knowledge, Belief, Existence, and Quantifiers: A Note on Hintikka
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Die Diskussion des in Hintikkas Knowledge and Belief entwickelten Systems epistemischer Logik hat gezeigt, daß einige fundamentale, intuitiv außer Frage stehende Prinzipien zu unerwarteten Schwierigkeiten führen. Hier wird nun nachzuweisen versucht, daß diese Schwierigkeiten nicht den informellen Prinzipien anzulasten sind, sondern Hintikkas Behandlung der Existenz. Speziell wird gezeigt, daß die fraglichen Probleme sich dadurch lösen lassen, daß man allgemein über "mögliche Objekte", und nicht nur über tatsächlich existierende Gegenstände quantifiziert.
85. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 2
Joseph Margolis Knowledge and Belief; Facts and Propositions
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The principal claims supported include: (i) that 'believe' and 'know' take the same grammatical object 'that p'; (ii) that each may take grammatical objects that the other cannot take; (iii) that merely grammatical considerations cannot determine whether 'that p' designates a proposition or a fact; (iv) that, on an epistemically relevant interpretation, 'that p' may be construed either as designating a proposition or a fact or both; (v) that propositions and facts are correlative and heuristic entities. The issues are developed in the context of exploring chiefly the views of Zeno Vendler, Alan White, and Peter Geach. Complications bearing on the distinction between thought and speech are considered.
86. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 2
Reinhardt Grossmann The Factuality of Facts
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
It is argued that, while there is no such property as truth, there is a feature of factuality which certain states of affairs have and others lack. Since states of affairs can appear before the mind as having this feature when, in reality, they do not have it, a most difficult epistemological problem arises, namely, how to distinguish between a state of affairs which merely appears to have factuality and a state of affairs which really is factual. The test for factuality, it is maintained, is twofold. It consists, on the one hand, of perception and introspection, and on the other, of coherence. What we perceive and introspect is not only presented to us as factual, but justifiedly taken to be factual. In case of doubt, though, we cannot but fall back on coherence, comparing some of our beliefs, perceptions, assumptions etc. with others.
87. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 2
John M. Vickers On the Phenomenology of Partial Judgment
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The main sources here are Hume, Husserl, and De Finetti. The problem is how phenomenological investigation has to do with partial or probabilistic judgment. Behavioristic, frequentist and subjectivistic views are briefly surveyed. A variant of Hume's account of the probability of chances is developed with the help of De Finetti's concept of exchangeability. The question of transcendental elements in or behind partial judgment is considered in the light of understanding disagreement and error in partial judgment.
88. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 20
Myles Brand The Human Output System
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
This paper recommends a framework for explaining largescale, complex actions. Philosophers have concentrated on simple actions — on hand raisings — far too long. Large-scale actions are the normal objects of legal and moral responsibility, as well as the kmd of activity for which the question of freedom is most pertinent. I focus on that part of the causal sequence constituting an action that begins after the decision and continues through the bodily movements: I call this part of the sequence 'the output system'. In particular, I am concerned to explain the cognitive attitude associated with planned, intentional action.I contend that the human output system is best explained through the judicious combination of folk psychology (commonsense psychology) and scientific psychology, broadly understood. Folk psychology sets the agenda, as it were. But it has its limitations; the key one being that its conceptual foundations are insufficiently rich or precise. Scientific psychology serves, in part, to articulate these conceptual foundations. This conception of the philosophical task — to adjudicate between folk and scientific psychology — contrasts with that of some philosophers. Stephan Körner, for one, has argued that the primary function of philosophy is to exhibit the structure and form of commonsense.
89. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 20
Roderick M. Chisholm Boundaries as Dependent Particulars
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Körner has made an important distinction between dependent and independent particulars, noting that any adequate theory of categories will divide particulars into those that are independent and those that are not. In the present paper, the concept of a spatial boundary is used to illustrate the concept of a dependent particular. It is suggested that, if we follow Brentano and think of such boundaries as ontologically dependent upon the things of which they may be said to be boundaries, then we will be able to throw light upon a number of philosophical questions about the spatial continuum. These questions pertain to such topics as: the distinction between parts and boundaries; the definition of dimensionality; and the nature of contact and physical continuity.
90. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 20
Martin Hollis Categorial Imprisonment
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Stephan Körner is a noble guardian of the grand tradition in philosophy and has given us many reasons to wish him well. But here I take him admiringly to task for doubting that there are eternal verities. The conceptual puzzles of anthropology yield a case for the epistemological unity of mankind. In understanding the thought of other cultures, we cannot fail to find in it some of our own categories, constitutive principles and maximal kinds. Their logic must be, at heart, ours. In upshot, since the bars of our conceptual prison can be seen neither from within nor from without, I conclude that they are not there at all. Yet none of this denies the inspiring quality of his work — the grand tradition is safe with him.
91. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 21
Barry Miller De Essentia Individua: In Defence of Possible Worlds Existentialism
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The actualist position rests on the mistaken assumption that individuals can be referred to before they exist; the existentialist makes no such assumption. Plantinga's criticisms of existentialism founder on his claim that for a proposition the only possibility is possible truth. In fact, there is another kind of possibility, viz. possible predication. Hence, 'Socrates does not exist' is a possible predication, even though not possibly true. Plantinga's other putative counter examples are flawed in the same way.
92. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 21
Ermanno Bencivenga Supervaluations and Theories
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
When applying supervaluations to the analysis of a theory, one may encounter the following problem: in supervaluational semantics, contingent statements often have existential presuppositions, and these presuppositions may either contradict the theory or make the application of supervaluations pointless. The most natural way of handling this problem consists in revising the semantics each time a specific theory is considered, and in making the status of the axioms of the theory technically indistinguishable from that of logical truths. Philosophically, this position has important implications: one must either give up any absolute distinction between logical and non-logical truths or allow for a third class of truths besides analytic and factual ones.
93. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 21
David Welker Logical Problems for Lockean Persons
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
A defense of the neo-Lockean theory of personal identity. Wiggins' objection to relative identity is met by a person-stage interpretation of the neo-Lockean theory. This interpretation is subject to the objections that person-stages are not logically independent of persons and that person-stages cannot have the properties of persons. These objections are met in large part by regarding person-stages as somewhat arbitrary divisions of persons whose postulation is justified by the requirements set by Leibniz's Law and our reflective intuitions.
94. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 22
George Englebretsen Notes on Quine's Syntactical Insights
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
W.V. Quine has led many logicians in thinking that mathematical logic can offer insights into the syntax of natural language. One example of such an insight is the use of quantifier scope difference to resolve the ambiguity of sentences like ' I don't know every poem'. Such differences also are claimed to be useful in analyzing phrases such as 'the lady I saw you with'. But an older, Aristotelian theory of logical syntax can equally well resolve the ambiguity problem in terms of term distribution. And it provides a better analysis of 'the lady' phrase by treating quantifiers as subject formatives rather than pronoun binders.
95. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 22
Rudolf Haller Self-Presentation and the Psychological
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
The Brentano-Meinong concept of self-presentation is discussed and defined. A property P is said to be self-presenting, i f and only if, P is necessarily such that, for every x, i f x has P and considers the question whether he has P, then it is evident to x that he has P. A definition of the purely psychological is propojsed. Then the following material epistemic principle is discussed and defended: A property P is self-presenting to a person x, i f and only if, P is entailed by a purely psychological property of x.
96. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 22
Avrum Stroll Some Different Ways that Things Stand Fast for Us
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Foundationalism, the idea that there is a basic kind of knowledge which is ground-level and hence beyond proof or justification, is one of the oldest themes in philosophy. It has been held by such great philosophers as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Locke, Wittgenstein and Moore inter alia\ but exactly what they mean by "foundationalism" is seldom carefully or fully articulated. This paper attempts to give such an explication. It holds that a foundationalist theory must satisfy at least nine conditions, vagueness, stratification, nondependence, particularism or methodism, publicity, negational absurdity, absorption, certitude, and the concept of 'standing fast', the last idea deriving from Wittgenstein's On Certainty.
97. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 22
Garry Rosenkrantz Nonexistent Possibles and Their Individuation
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
A nonexistent possible is a particular concrete object which exists in some possible world but doesn't exist in the actual world. A definite description may be said to individuate a nonexistent possible if just one possible object satisfies the condition specified by that description, and this possible object doesn't exist in the actual world. Given a plausible form of mereological essentialism, certain mereological and causal descriptions which determine a thing's composition individuate nonexistent possible hunks of matter which are mereological or causal products of actual objects. Other sorts of descriptions such as 'the possible fat man in that doorway' and ones associated with typical fictional, imaginary, and mythical things do not individuate a nonexistent possible, and it is problematical whether we can individuate a nonexistent possible which is disjoint, viz., one which is not a mereological or causal product of actual objects.
98. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 23
Arnold Cusmariu Self-Predication and the " Third Man"
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Considerable effort has gone into clarifying the structure and the content of the Third Man Argument. Nevertheless, the argument is still an enthymeme. A premise crucial to it has yet to be stated openly. This premise holds the way out of the predicament which, happily, enables Plato to retain intact the foundations of the Theory of Forms. The solution proposed allows us in addition to look beyond the TMA and place this ancient argument in the context of an important modern insight.
99. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 23
Joseph Wayne Smith Meiland and the Self-Refutation of Protagorean Relativism
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
In this paper I shall attempt to perform two tasks; first, to defend James Jordan's recent self-referential arguments for the inconsistency of Protagorean relativism from the criticisms of Jack Meiland, and second, to contribute towards the cause of undermining Protagorean and conceptual relativism by criticizing Meiland's own explication of the notion of relative truth.
100. Grazer Philosophische Studien: Volume > 23
Rodney J. Douglas, Bernard P. Keaney Popper and Eccles' Psychophysical Interaction Theses Examined
abstract | view |  rights & permissions
Popper and Eccles present two different notions of Interactionism. Popper's arguments arise out of the traditional philosophical debate, whereas Eccles' arguments arise out of a mixture of neurophysiology and personal belief. Popper's three-world ontology is the philosophical foundation of both their positions. However, it is precisely against the background of the three Worlds that the considerable differences between their positions are apparent. Despite these defects, Interactionism is a productive notion since it does not place the Self beyond experimental investigation. Indeed, both Popper and Eccles have made implicit suggestions as to experimental procedure which might contribute to the investigation of the Self.