New Essays on the Nature of Propositions

New Essays on the Nature of Propositions PDF Author: David Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317510275
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 499

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Book Description
These are exciting times for philosophical theorizing about propositions, with the last 15 years seeing the development of new approaches and the emergence of new theorists. Propositions have been invoked to explain thought and cognition, the nature and attribution of mental states, language and communication, and in philosophical treatments of truth, necessity and possibility. According to Frege and Russell, and their followers, propositions are structured mind- and language-independent abstract objects which have essential and intrinsic truth-conditions. Some recent theorizing doubts whether propositions really exist and, if they do, asks how we can grasp, entertain and know them? But most of the doubt concerns whether the abstract approach to propositions can really explain them. Are propositions really structured, and if so where does their structure come from? How does this structure form a unity, and does it need to? Are the representational and structural properties of propositions really independent of those of thinking and language? What does it mean to say that an object occurs in or is a constituent of a proposition? The volume takes up these and other questions, both as they apply to the abstract object approach and also to the more recently developed approaches. While the volume as a whole does not definitively and unequivocally reject the abstract objection approach, for the most part, the papers explore new critical and constructive directions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

New Essays on the Nature of Propositions

New Essays on the Nature of Propositions PDF Author: David Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317510275
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 499

Get Book Here

Book Description
These are exciting times for philosophical theorizing about propositions, with the last 15 years seeing the development of new approaches and the emergence of new theorists. Propositions have been invoked to explain thought and cognition, the nature and attribution of mental states, language and communication, and in philosophical treatments of truth, necessity and possibility. According to Frege and Russell, and their followers, propositions are structured mind- and language-independent abstract objects which have essential and intrinsic truth-conditions. Some recent theorizing doubts whether propositions really exist and, if they do, asks how we can grasp, entertain and know them? But most of the doubt concerns whether the abstract approach to propositions can really explain them. Are propositions really structured, and if so where does their structure come from? How does this structure form a unity, and does it need to? Are the representational and structural properties of propositions really independent of those of thinking and language? What does it mean to say that an object occurs in or is a constituent of a proposition? The volume takes up these and other questions, both as they apply to the abstract object approach and also to the more recently developed approaches. While the volume as a whole does not definitively and unequivocally reject the abstract objection approach, for the most part, the papers explore new critical and constructive directions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

New Essays on the Nature of Propositions

New Essays on the Nature of Propositions PDF Author: David Hunter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317510283
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
These are exciting times for philosophical theorizing about propositions, with the last 15 years seeing the development of new approaches and the emergence of new theorists. Propositions have been invoked to explain thought and cognition, the nature and attribution of mental states, language and communication, and in philosophical treatments of truth, necessity and possibility. According to Frege and Russell, and their followers, propositions are structured mind- and language-independent abstract objects which have essential and intrinsic truth-conditions. Some recent theorizing doubts whether propositions really exist and, if they do, asks how we can grasp, entertain and know them? But most of the doubt concerns whether the abstract approach to propositions can really explain them. Are propositions really structured, and if so where does their structure come from? How does this structure form a unity, and does it need to? Are the representational and structural properties of propositions really independent of those of thinking and language? What does it mean to say that an object occurs in or is a constituent of a proposition? The volume takes up these and other questions, both as they apply to the abstract object approach and also to the more recently developed approaches. While the volume as a whole does not definitively and unequivocally reject the abstract objection approach, for the most part, the papers explore new critical and constructive directions. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

Essays on the Nature of Propositions

Essays on the Nature of Propositions PDF Author: David Hunter
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description


What's in Your File Folder?

What's in Your File Folder? PDF Author: Roger Bissell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781689839167
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
This book takes a deep dive into Ayn Rand's theory of knowledge. It explains why her followers failed to develop a model of the proposition fulfilling the promise of her pioneering work on concepts--and it reveals the essence of propositions and the principles by which they operate in our gaining knowledge by identifying the facts of reality.These revelations are based on a fuller appreciation and application of some of Rand's most pregnant ideas: the metaphor of concepts as "mental file folders"--the unit-perspective as the key that unlocks the conceptual stage of awareness and welds together its three levels--form and content of cognitive awareness both being objective--and consciousness essentially consisting of differentiation and integration (functionally) and subject and object (structurally). On this basis, the author offers a significant revision to Rand's model of concepts and a new model of propositions, giving considerable attention to axioms and statements about nonexistent subjects and offering a fuller explanation of how syllogisms function in grasping truth.The author's main contention is that Objectivism's epistemology (and epistemology in general) lacks a viable model of propositional knowledge due to neglect of the "unit-perspective" view of concepts. This pioneering insight of Rand's, he says, not only is an essential building block of her concept theory, but also is the means for providing the clearest X-ray picture of our multilayered conceptual knowledge. Using the unit-perspective to expand Rand's theory of concepts, the author then introduces "duplex" and "triplex" units, which he shows are the components of propositions and syllogisms, which are composed of concepts that integrate single or "simplex" units, as he calls them.The author also argues that Rand's largely underdeveloped concept of the "dual-aspect objective" is vital for understanding how knowledge is grounded in reality. he explains how consciousness essentially involves an interaction between a conscious subject (i.e., organism) and some of aspect of the world which becomes the object of that subject's awareness, then applies this idea to perception, introspection, concepts, propositions, and syllogisms. The author also defines content of awareness carefully distinguishing it from both object and form of awareness, and applies those distinctions throughout.In addition, the author discusses how truth is both dual-aspect and contextual, and he shows how units, too, have a dual aspect, even on the level of syllogisms. He also shows how differentiation and integration are the conscious processes at work, for better or worse, in both logic and in logical errors, which include the fallacies of "Frozen Abstraction" and "False Alternative," as well as a long-standing Objectivist conflation of falsity and contradiction and a relatively more recent Objectivist error, the fallacy of "genuine awareness."

Outline of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions

Outline of a Nominalist Theory of Propositions PDF Author: Paul Gochet
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400989490
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
1. IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT In 1900, in A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of Leihniz, Russell made the following assertion: "That all sound philosophy should begin with an analysis of propositions is a truth too evident, perhaps, to demand a proof". 1 Forty years later, the interest aroused by this notion had not decreased. C. J. Ducasse wrote in the Journal of Philosophy: "There is perhaps no question more basic for the theory of knowledge than that of the nature of 2 propositions and their relations to judgments, sentences, facts and inferences". Today, the great number of publications on the subject is proof that it is still of interest. One of the problems raised by propositions, the problem of deter mining whether propositions, statements or sentences are the primary bearers of truth and falsity, is even in the eyes of Bar-Hillel, "one of the major items that the future philosophy oflanguage will have to discuss". 3 gave a correct summary of the situation when he wrote in his Ph. Devaux Russell (1967): Since Peano and Schroder who, in fact, adhered more faithfully to Boole's logic of classes, the logical and epistemological status of the proposition together with its analysis have not ceased to be the object of productive philosophical controversies. And especially so since the establishment of contemporary symbolic logic, the foundations 4 of which have been laid out by Russell and Whitehead. * 2.

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality PDF Author: Alvin Plantinga
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190282932
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Perhaps no one has done more in the last 30 years to advance thinking in the metaphysics of modality than has Alvin Plantinga. Collected here are some of his most important essays on this influential subject. Dating back from the late 1960's to the present, they chronicle the development of Plantinga's thoughts about some of the most fundamental issues in metaphysics: what is the nature of abstract objects like possible worlds, properties, propositions, and such phenomena? Are there possible but non-actual objects? Can objects that do not exist exemplify properties? Plantinga gives thorough and penetrating answers to all of these questions and many others. This volume contains some of the best work in metaphysics from the past 30 years, and will remain a source of critical contention and keen interest among philosophers of metaphysics and philosophical logic for years to come.

Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions

Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions PDF Author: Samuel Lebens
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351733893
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
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.

Propositions, Functions, and Analysis

Propositions, Functions, and Analysis PDF Author: Peter Hylton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199286353
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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Book Description
The work of Bertrand Russell has a decisive influence on the emergence of analytic philosophy, and on its subsequent development. The essays in this text recapture aspects of Russell's philosophical vision during his most influential period, the two decades following his break with Idealism in 1899.

Reason and Nature

Reason and Nature PDF Author: José Luis Bermúdez
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199256839
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
In a series of essays nine philosophers and two psychologists address three main themes: the status of norms of rationality; the precise form taken by them; and the role of norms in belief and actions.

Knowing How

Knowing How PDF Author: John Bengson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190452838
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Knowledge how to do things is a pervasive and central element of everyday life. Yet it raises many difficult questions that must be answered by philosophers and cognitive scientists aspiring to understand human cognition and agency. What is the connection between knowing how and knowing that? Is knowledge how simply a type of ability or disposition to act? Is there an irreducibly practical form of knowledge? What is the role of the intellect in intelligent action? This volume contains fifteen state of the art essays by leading figures in philosophy and linguistics that amplify and sharpen the debate between "intellectualists" and "anti-intellectualists" about mind and action, highlighting the conceptual, empirical, and linguistic issues that motivate and sustain the conflict. The essays also explore various ways in which this debate informs central areas of ethics, philosophy of action, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Knowing How covers a broad range of topics dealing with tacit and procedural knowledge, the psychology of skill, expertise, intelligence and intelligent action, the nature of ability, the syntax and semantics of embedded questions, the mind-body problem, phenomenal character, epistemic injustice, moral knowledge, the epistemology of logic, linguistic competence, the connection between knowledge and understanding, and the relation between theory and practice. This is the book on knowing how--an invaluable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, and others concerned with knowledge, mind, and action.