Download or read book The Unity of the Proposition written by Richard Gaskin and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-10-30 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Gaskin presents a work in the philosophy of language. He analyses what is distinctive about sentences and the propositions they express—what marks them off from mere lists of words and mere aggregates of word-meanings respectively. Since he identifies the world with all the true and false propositions, his account of the unity of the proposition has significant implications for our understanding of the nature of reality. He argues that the unity of the proposition is constituted by a certain infinitistic structure known in the tradition as 'Bradley's regress'. Usually, Bradley's regress has been regarded as vicious, but Gaskin argues that it is the metaphysical ground of the propositional unity, and gives us an important insight into the fundamental make-up of the world.
Download or read book Force Content and the Unity of the Proposition written by Gabriele M. Mras and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume advances discussion between critics and defenders of the force-content distinction and opens up new ways of thinking about force and speech acts in relation to the unity problem. The force-content dichotomy has shaped the philosophy of language and mind since the time of Frege and Russell. Isn’t it obvious that, for example, the clauses of a conditional are not asserted and must therefore be propositions and propositions the forceless contents of forceful acts? But, others have recently asked in response, how can a proposition be a truth value bearer if it is not unified through the forceful act of a subject that takes a position regarding how things are? Can we not instead think of propositions as being inherently forceful, but of force as being cancelled in certain contexts? And what do assertoric, but also directive and interrogative force indicators mean? Force, Content and the Unity of the Proposition will be of interest to researchers working in philosophy of language, philosophical logic, philosophy of mind and linguistics.
Download or read book The Unity of Linguistic Meaning written by John Collins and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015-05-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Collins presents an analysis of the problem of the unity of the proposition - how propositions can be both single things and complexes at the same time. He surveys previous investigations of the problem and offers his own solution, which is defended from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives.
Download or read book One written by Graham Priest and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014-02 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores philosophical questions concerning the one and the many, covering a wide range of issues in metaphysics and deploying techniques of paraconsistent logic while bringing together traditions of Western and Asian thought.
Download or read book Propositional Content written by Peter Hanks and published by Context & Content. This book was released on 2015 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Hanks defends a new theory about the nature of propositional content. According to this theory, the basic bearers of representational properties are particular mental or spoken actions. Propositions are types of these actions, which we use to classify and individuate our attitudes and speech acts. Hanks abandons several key features of the traditional Fregean conception of propositional content, including the idea that propositions are the primary bearers of truth-conditions, the distinction between content and force, and the concept of entertainment. The main difficulty for this traditional conception is the problem of the unity of the proposition, the problem of explaining how propositions have truth conditions and other representational properties. The new theory developed here, in its place, explains the unity of propositions and provides new solutions to a long list of puzzles and problems in philosophy of language.
Download or read book What Is Meaning written by Scott Soames and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-28 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tradition descending from Frege and Russell has typically treated theories of meaning either as theories of meanings (propositions expressed), or as theories of truth conditions. However, propositions of the classical sort don't exist, and truth conditions can't provide all the information required by a theory of meaning. In this book, one of the world's leading philosophers of language offers a way out of this dilemma. Traditionally conceived, propositions are denizens of a "third realm" beyond mind and matter, "grasped" by mysterious Platonic intuition. As conceived here, they are cognitive-event types in which agents predicate properties and relations of things--in using language, in perception, and in nonlinguistic thought. Because of this, one's acquaintance with, and knowledge of, propositions is acquaintance with, and knowledge of, events of one's cognitive life. This view also solves the problem of "the unity of the proposition" by explaining how propositions can be genuinely representational, and therefore bearers of truth. The problem, in the traditional conception, is that sentences, utterances, and mental states are representational because of the relations they bear to inherently representational Platonic complexes of universals and particulars. Since we have no way of understanding how such structures can be representational, independent of interpretations placed on them by agents, the problem is unsolvable when so conceived. However, when propositions are taken to be cognitive-event types, the order of explanation is reversed and a natural solution emerges. Propositions are representational because they are constitutively related to inherently representational cognitive acts. Strikingly original, What Is Meaning? is a major advance.
Download or read book The Unity of Consciousness written by Tim Bayne and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-04 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Unity of Consciousness Tim Bayne draws on philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience in defence of the claim that consciousness is unified. In the first part of the book Bayne develops an account of what it means to say that consciousness is unified. Part II applies this account to a variety of cases - drawn from both normal and pathological forms of experience - in which the unity of consciousness is said to break down. Bayne argues that the unity of consciousness remains intact in each of these cases. Part III explores the implications of the unity of consciousness for theories of consciousness, for the sense of embodiment, and for accounts of the self. In one of the most comprehensive examinations of the topic available, The Unity of Consciousness draws on a wide range of findings within philosophy and the sciences of the mind to construct an account of the unity of consciousness that is both conceptually sophisticated and scientifically informed.
Download or read book Representation and Reality in Wittgenstein s Tractatus written by José L. Zalabardo and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jos L. Zalabardo puts forward a new interpretation of central ideas in Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus concerning the structure of reality and our representations of it in thought and language. He shows the origins of Wittgenstein's picture theory of propositional representation in Russell's theories of judgment, arguing that the picture theory is Wittgenstein's solution to some of the problems that he found in Russell's position. Zalabardo defends the view that, for Wittgenstein, facts in general, and the facts that play the role of propositions in particular, are not composite items, arising from the combination of their constituents. They are ultimate, irreducible units, and what we think of as their constituents are features that facts have in common with one another. These common features have built into them their possibilities of combination with other features into possible situations. This is the source of the Tractarian account of non-actual possibilities. It is also the source of the idea that it is not possible to produce propositions answering to certain descriptions, including those that would give rise to Russell's paradox. Zalabardo then considers Wittgenstein's view that every proposition is a truth function of elementary propositions. He argues that this view is motivated by Wittgenstein's epistemology of logic, according to which we should be able to see logical relations by inspecting the structures of propositions. Finally, Zalabardo considers the problems that we face if we try to extend the application of the picture theory from elementary propositions to truth functions of these.
Download or read book Thinking and Being written by Irad Kimhi and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opposing a long-standing orthodoxy of the Western philosophical tradition running from ancient Greek thought until the late nineteenth century, Frege argued that psychological laws of thought—those that explicate how we in fact think—must be distinguished from logical laws of thought—those that formulate and impose rational requirements on thinking. Logic does not describe how we actually think, but only how we should. Yet by thus sundering the logical from the psychological, Frege was unable to explain certain fundamental logical truths, most notably the psychological version of the law of non-contradiction—that one cannot think a thought and its negation simultaneously. Irad Kimhi’s Thinking and Being marks a radical break with Frege’s legacy in analytic philosophy, exposing the flaws of his approach and outlining a novel conception of judgment as a two-way capacity. In closing the gap that Frege opened, Kimhi shows that the two principles of non-contradiction—the ontological principle and the psychological principle—are in fact aspects of the very same capacity, differently manifested in thinking and being. As his argument progresses, Kimhi draws on the insights of historical figures such as Aristotle, Kant, and Wittgenstein to develop highly original accounts of topics that are of central importance to logic and philosophy more generally. Self-consciousness, language, and logic are revealed to be but different sides of the same reality. Ultimately, Kimhi’s work elucidates the essential sameness of thinking and being that has exercised Western philosophy since its inception.
Download or read book Truth and Predication written by Donald Davidson and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brief book takes readers to the very heart of what it is that philosophy can do well. Completed shortly before Donald Davidson's death at 85, Truth and Predication brings full circle a journey moving from the insights of Plato and Aristotle to the problems of contemporary philosophy. In particular, Davidson, countering many of his contemporaries, argues that the concept of truth is not ambiguous, and that we need an effective theory of truth in order to live well. Davidson begins by harking back to an early interest in the classics, and an even earlier engagement with the workings of grammar; in the pleasures of diagramming sentences in grade school, he locates his first glimpse into the mechanics of how we conduct the most important activities in our life--such as declaring love, asking directions, issuing orders, and telling stories. Davidson connects these essential questions with the most basic and yet hard to understand mysteries of language use--how we connect noun to verb. This is a problem that Plato and Aristotle wrestled with, and Davidson draws on their thinking to show how an understanding of linguistic behavior is critical to the formulating of a workable concept of truth. Anchored in classical philosophy, Truth and Predication nonetheless makes telling use of the work of a great number of modern philosophers from Tarski and Dewey to Quine and Rorty. Representing the very best of Western thought, it reopens the most difficult and pressing of ancient philosophical problems, and reveals them to be very much of our day.
Download or read book Aquinas on One and Many written by David Svoboda and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-04-26 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The quest for unity and multiplicity is one of the most important concerns in the history of human thought. Since the origins of the history of philosophy up to the present, we can observe more or less unceasing interest in the issue. The same holds of the writings of Thomas Aquinas, to whose conception this work is devoted. Since the problem of unity and multitude is closely linked to many other key metaphysical issues, such as the doctrine of transcendental concepts, the mode of composition of being qua being, as well as substantial and accidental being, or the doctrine of whole and part, we believe that its proper interpretation not only can clarify some partial metaphysical problem, but will also contribute to understanding the metaphysical thought of the Angelic Doctor as a whole.
Download or read book We Hold These Truths written by John Courtney Murray and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2005 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1960 publication of We Hold These Truths marked a significant event in the history of modern American thought. Since that time, Sheed & Ward has kept the book in print and has published several studies of John Courtney Murray's life and work. We are proud to present a new edition of this classic text, which features a comprehensive introduction by Peter Lawler that places Murray in the context of Catholic and American history and thought while revealing his relevance today. From the new Introduction by Peter Lawler: The Jesuit John Courtney Murray (1904-67) was, in his time, probably the best known and most widely respected American Catholic writer on the relationship between Catholic philosophy and theology and his country's political life. The highpoint of his influence was the publication of We Hold These Truths in the same year as an election of our country's first Catholic president. Those two events were celebrated by a Time cover story (December 12, 1960) on Murray's work and influence. The story's author, Protestant Douglas Auchincloss, reported that it was "The most relentlessly intellectual cover story I've done." His amazingly wide ranging and dense-if not altogether accurate-account of Murray's thought was crowned with a smart and pointed conclusion: "If anyone can help U.S. Catholics and their non-Catholic countrymen toward the disagreement that precedes understanding-John Courtney Murray can." . . . Murray's work, of course, is treated with great respect and has had considerable influence, but now it's time to begin to think of him as one of America's very few genuine political philosophers. His disarmingly lucid and accessible prose has caused his book to be widely cited and celebrated, but it still is not well understood. It is both praised and blamed for reconciling Catholic faith with the fundamental premises of American political life. It is praised by liberals for paving the way for Vatican II's embrace of the American idea of religious liberty, and it is
Download or read book Affects Actions and Passions in Spinoza written by Chantal Jaquet and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-23 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revisiting the generally accepted notion of psycho-physical parallelism in Spinoza, Chantal Jaquet offers a new analysis of the relation between body and mind. Looking at a range of Spinoza's texts, and using an original methodology, she analyses their unity in action through affects, actions and passions.
Download or read book The Russellian Origins of Analytical Philosophy written by Graham Stevens and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book explores in detail the repercussions for his philosophical logic of Russell's discovery of the contradiction in 1901. From close study of Russell's development of the theory of types, including the recently rediscovered work on his substitutional theory in unpublished manuscripts, an interpretation of Russell's philosophical logic emerges which provides new and important insights into his philosophy as a whole, and places the problem of the unity of the proposition at its heart from start to finish."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book New Thinking about Propositions written by Jeffrey C. King and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy, science, and common sense all refer to propositions—things we believe and say, and things which are true or false. But there is no consensus on what sorts of things these entities are. Jeffrey C. King, Scott Soames, and Jeff Speaks argue that commitment to propositions is indispensable, and each defend their own views on the debate.
Download or read book Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions written by Samuel Lebens and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-25 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions offers the first book-length defence of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement (MRTJ). Although the theory was much maligned by Wittgenstein and ultimately rejected by Russell himself, Lebens shows that it provides a rich and insightful way to understand the nature of propositional content. In Part I, Lebens charts the trajectory of Russell’s thought before he adopted the MRTJ. Part II reviews the historical story of the theory: What led Russell to deny the existence of propositions altogether? Why did the theory keep evolving throughout its short life? What role did G. F. Stout play in the evolution of the theory? What was Wittgenstein’s concern with the theory, and, if we can’t know what his concern was exactly, then what are the best contending hypotheses? And why did Russell give the theory up? In Part III, Lebens makes the case that Russell’s concerns with the theory weren’t worth its rejection. Moreover, he argues that the MRTJ does most of what we could want from an account of propositions at little philosophical cost. This book bridges the history of early analytic philosophy with work in contemporary philosophy of language. It advances a bold reading of the theory of descriptions and offers a new understanding of the role of Stout and the representation concern in the evolution of the MRTJ. It also makes a decisive contribution to philosophy of language by demonstrating the viability of a no-proposition theory of propositions.
Download or read book Predicative Minds written by Radu J. Bogdan and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-01-09 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of why and how the human competence for predication came to be. The predicative mind singles out and represents an item in order to attribute to it a property, a relation, an action, an evaluation; it thinks, and says, of a house that it is big, of a car that it is to the left of the house, of a cat that it is about to jump, of a hypothesis that it is plausible. The capacity to predicate appears to be neither innate nor learned, yet it is universal among humans. Puzzling in evolutionary, developmental, and philosophical terms, the mental competence for predication still awaits a coherent and plausible explanation. In this exploration of the predicative roots of human thinking, Radu Bogdan takes up the challenge. Bogdan argues that predication is not only an outcome of development but also a by-product of uniquely human features of development, many of them social in nature and unrelated to representation, cognition, and thinking. Humans develop predicative minds for disparate reasons, which bear initially on physiological coregulation, affective and manipulative communication, and the socially shared acquisition of words. Once developed, the competence for predication in turn redesigns human thinking and communication. Predication is at the heart of conscious, deliberate, explicit, and language-based human thinking, and it is the fuel of higher mental activities. Understanding the uniqueness and representational power of the human mind, Bogdan contends, requires an explanation of why and how predication came to be.
