Dummy topic to circumvent bug in PublishContrib ShaughanLavine 28 Feb 2007

Empiricists Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Mill Empiricists believe that all knowledge comes from experience. They generally believe that science is just a particularly organized ...

A Brief and Eccentric History of Science This history focuses on what we would today think of as astronomy and physics since it was the Scientific Revolution in astronomy ...

Some Relations and Functions (Functionally) Representable in A {E} For weeks, we shall only be interested in representability in %$A {E}$%, and so, until further ...

Natural Numbers with 0 and Successor Consider the restriction %${\mathfrak N} {S}$% of %$\mathfrak N$% to the language that includes only 0 and %$S$%. We shall show ...

Our topic for today is, "Is every thisness a suchness?" The topic is the metaphysical counterpart of something we've been talking about for a while, namely, "Are there ...

ShaughanLavine 16 Jan 2009

All We Need Is Sense Data Last class, we discussed the traditional, Cartesian argument that we sometimes see sense data. Austin now turns to Ayer's discussion of the ...

Quine's Attack on the analytic synthetic distinction: Two Dogmas A truth is an analytic truth if it is true on the basis of what it says alone. Standard Examples ...

In his paper, “On Sense and Reference,” Frege argues that proper names have both sense and reference. The reference of any given proper name is the definite object ...

In “On Defining ‘Good’”, Moore says that good is a simple notion. By saying that good is a “simple notion” Moore means that good is not reducible to parts and properties ...

Cantor thought that new concepts in mathematics can be validly introduced only so long as they #8220;cohere #8221; with the existing conceptual framework. In other ...

Dedekind says that numbers, as “free creations of the human mind”, “serve as a means of apprehending more easily and more sharply the difference of things” (32). He ...

Discussion Questions: 1) In this paper Broad seems to rely on introspection (as the sole method of observing the mind) an awful lot. Is this problematic? Examples ...

Discussion Questions: (These are some of the issues that I spent the most time puzzling over. We can entertain other questions if others so desire.) Topic 1: In my ...

Discussion Questions: 1. Discuss the example of the possible fat man in the doorway (134). Why does Quine suggest that the concept of identity is not applicable ...

Dedekind wanted to use a kind of abstraction in order to introduce the natural numbers. He said that we could derive the natural numbers by abstracting on an arbitrary ...

The idea attributed to Hilbert is that once a mathematical theory has been proven finititically consistent, we can use it (we are justified in using it) regardless ...

In “The Naturalistic Fallacy” Frankena makes the claim that the real issue behind the so called naturalistic fallacy is not “a logical or quasi logical fallacy” (344 ...

#8220;Hume #8217;s principle #8221; (as quoted in Heck): #8220;The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs iff the Fs and Gs are equinumerous. #8221; Heck fleshes ...

One way that we might think that we can solve the Caesar problem is to say that any mixed identity statement that cannot be proven true on our account must be false ...

Hilbert says that we can introduce a new type of mathematical object when it is not only (a) consistent (meaning #8220;can be introduced without generating contradictions ...

Hume #8217;s principle: #8220;For any concepts F and G, the number of Fs is the number of Gs iff F and G can be put into one one correspondence. #8221; Wright says ...

In “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry” Frege explains that an indicative sentence contains both a thought and an assertion. Frege avoids defining the thought, saying ...

In this selection from his book, The Mind and Its Place in Nature, C.D. Broad discusses the question of interaction, “whether minds really do act on the organisms ...

In this selection from his book, Mind and the World Order, C.I. Lewis posits two components of experience. The first element consists of what Lewis calls “the immediate ...

In “The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language,” Carnap argues that the so called statements of metaphysics are meaningless. A sequence ...

In his very short and very influential paper, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” Edmund Gettier illustrates the doubt that justified true belief is sufficient for ...

Peano thought that these three notions are #8220;primitive #8221; (undefinable). He says that he defines all the signs that he uses except these three because these ...

Disclaimer: I apologize for the length of this shorty but I take no responsibility for it. I blame Shaughan for his lengthy questions. In “A Defense of Common Sense ...

In “Minds and Machines” Putnam says that “every philosophic argument that has ever been employed in connection with the mind body problem… has its exact counterpart ...

In “On What There Is” Quine begins with a problem. Suppose that he and another philosopher, whom he calls McX, disagree over ontology. McX holds that a certain thing ...

Short Answer: 1) a) Cognitive synonyms: According to Quine, to call two singular terms (x and y) cognitive synonyms is to say that the sentence “All and only xs are ...

In his essay “On Denoting” Bertrand Russell describes three puzzles that he feels a theory of denoting ought to be able to solve and, not surprisingly, he feels that ...

In #8216;On Denoting #8217; Russell says that denoting phrases #8220;never have any meaning in themselves #8221; but #8220;every proposition in whose verbal expression ...

In his paper, “On Referring,” Strawson asks how a sentence such as “The king of France is wise” can be significant even when there is nothing that exists to which ...

Benacerraf thinks that what we call numbers are nothing more than their role in a mathematical system. He says #8220;what is peculiar to 3 is that it defines a certain ...

In “On Defining ‘Good’”, Moore says that good is a simple notion. By saying that good is a “simple notion” Moore means that good is not reducible to parts and properties ...

Carnap says that we choose a certain #8220;framework #8221; or system, meaning a way of talking that is useful for our purposes. We say that things exist, which indicates ...

Appearance and Reality Last class, we talked about how material object language arises because of certain facts about how our sense data are structured. That was the ...

Is Pragmatic Realism a Form of Realism? It is natural to think, and most realists about most kinds of things have thought (though not so much any more, in part because ...

Argument from Illusion Descartes observed that not everything we sense is as it appears. He used many of the same examples that Ayer does. He noted, though not on ...

Arithmetic and Recursion Definition. An %$n$% ary relation %$R$% on the universe of a structure %$ \mathfrak{} \mathfrak{A} $% is definable in the structure if ...

Arithmetizing Formula, Sentence, Free Variable, Substitution, Axiom, Proof Our formulas are composed of certain symbols. Number them. (See p. 225.) Essentially all ...

1. What is Cantor's "coherence" criterion for the existence of mathematical objects? 1. Does his account of the real numbers accord with that principle? ShaughanLavine ...

Assigned Questions: Carnap and Quine How, according to Carnap or Quine, do we determine what actually exists? Is there, according to Carnap or Quine, any fact of the ...

Answer only one of the two questions. 1. Dedekind says that it is a defect of "even the most rigorous expositions of the calculus" that they "appeal to geometric ...

1. What is Dummett's criticism of Dedekind? 1. Why did numbers have to be objects? ShaughanLavine 30 Sep 2006

Assigned Questions on Field's Nominalism 1. Hilbert is sometimes said to have thought that once a mathematical theory had been finitistically proved consistent ...

1. What is Frege's argument that proper names have both sense and reference? 1. What is the difference between the sense of a linguistic unit and the idea associated ...

Assigned Questions Fregean Abstraction Explain the number #8211;qumber problem and the problem whether %$ \frac{1}{2}$% is %$\frac{ 1}{2}$%. What are they problems ...

1. State Hume's principle. 1. Why are equations (identities) important in Frege's theory? 1. What is the Julius Caesar problem? ShaughanLavine 23 Sep 2006 ...

When, according to Hilbert, can we introduce a new type of mathematical object? ShaughanLavine 22 Oct 2006

What was Peano's attitude toward the three notions of number, unity, and successor? How is that reflected in the "Explanations" that precede his "Axioms" in Peano89 ...

1. How does Wright attempt to square the claim that Hume's principle is analytic with the claim that the principle has existential consequences? 1. What is Heck ...

1. What are Russell's three puzzles? 1. Russell thinks that a non entity cannot be the subject of a proposition. But then how can 'the present King of France is ...

In RussellPrinciplesofMathematics, especially pp. 56, 62, and 72, 'all men,' 'every man,' 'any man,' 'a man,' and 'some men' are all said to denote objects. In denoting ...

Benacerraf concludes his essay by saying that there are no such things as numbers, but that there are numbers. Explain. Remember to start early on the reading for ...

AssignedTopics is a poorly chosed WikiWord, because I shall want to have a page of AssignedTopics every class lecture, and I want them to be different pages for different ...

1. Define Broad's terms "animate" and "Two sided Interaction." 1. Why is it crucial to the mind body problem that "causation does not simply mean concomitant ...

Assigned Topics C. I. Lewis The Given Element in Experience 1. What is Lewis's argument that experience has two components, the given and interpretation or construction ...

1. At the top of p. 107, Carnap lists four questions that he takes to be mere variants of a single question. Are they? 1. Carnap's criterion for the meaningfulness ...

1. Frankena says (348 349) that "it is an error to construe a ... synthetic proposition as a definition," that is, as analytic. He goes on to say that to claim that ...

1. An indicative sentence contains not only a thought, but an assertion. Explain. 1. How are thoughts like ideas? Like things? 1. Having visual impressions is ...

Assigned Topics: Gettier, Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? 0.1 Give your own Gettier type example. 0.2 Is justified true belief either a necessary or a sufficient ...

1. Moore says, it seems to me quite clear that it might have been the case that Time was not real, material things not real, space not real, selves not real. And ...

1. If good is a "simple notion," so that it is a mistake to claim that "good is pleasure" (318), then how can it be that good is intrinsic value (323)? 1. What ...

NOTE: Putnam's discussion of Turing machines is completely irrelevant to the philosophical content of the article. At the time the article was published (1960), computers ...

1. Quine gives at least the following three reasons for preferring a desert landscape to Wyman's slum. Explain them. a. There is no such entity as Pegasus. ...

Short Answer The first three questions this week are short answer. No need to incorporate them in an essay. A singular term is a term that purports to denote a single ...

1. Frege would say that the sentence "The present King of France is bald" presupposes, but does not express, that there is a present King of France and that the sentence ...

John L. Austin (and Warnock) Sense and Sensibilia Ordinary Language Philosophy Since we use, in large part, ordinary language in discussing philosophy, it is worthwhile ...

Axiomatizable Theories For the last few lectures, we've been talking about using axioms to characterize mathematical systems, chiefly the natural numbers. However ...

Well ordering Principle Every set can be well ordered. Axiom of Choice There is a function on every set of nonempty sets that takes each set to one of its members ...

%$x$% is a maternal grandparent of %$y$% iff %$x$% is a parent of a mother of %$y$% iff there is a %$z$% such that %$x$% is a parent of %$z$% and %$z$% is a mother ...

Glanzberg Context and Quantification If there is no such thing as absolutely unrestricted quantification then our quantifiers don't always have the same domain. Glanzberg ...

Parsons Background The notation %$OxFx$% is, roughly, "the object that is '%$F$%'s semantic value. The relation %$\eta$% is the relation an object named '%$a$%' must ...

Benacerraf Mathematical Truth This article is as influential as the other Benacerraf article we read. Together, they set the agenda for contemporary philosophy of ...

ShaughanLavine 02 Oct 2008

Benacerraf What Numbers Could Not Be The present article is one of the most influential on contemporary philosophy of mathematics. The "traditional" philosophies of ...

Benacerraf WNCNB Today's article is the beginning of the contemporary philosophy of mathematics, at least along with Benacerraf's other article we'll read. It is referred ...

Dedekind considers numbers "as an immediate result from the laws of thought.", and we create this number domain in our minds as a framework from which we can learn ...

Cantor suggests that mathematical objects exist independently and are discovered by the mind through the creation of "a consistent coherent concept". There must be ...

On 53 there is a subtle criticism of Dedekind where Dummett mentions that Frege was right in making 'use of the Natural numbers as finite cardinals intrinsic to their ...

1. Hilbert's point is that a consistent axiomatic system is valid for use whether or not there actually are mathematical objects. From a consistent axiomatic system ...

The number qumber issue is that we get identical referents from the contextual definition. The number mod 2 of the number mod 2 of m (IFF n and m are both odd or ...

1 Hume?s Principle stated in Heck p.64 is ?The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs, if and only if, the Fs and the Gs are equinumerous?. 3 Frege rejects ...

New mathematical objects are introduced for practical considerations, primarily as a solution to existing difficulties in our given mathematical system. Hilbert explains ...

Wright says that ?If an abstraction is really to be merely a principle whereby a certain concept is determined, then..all it can legitimately do is to lay down truth ...

In the Explanations section, Peano gives us the signs: N, 1, a 1, and with the concepts they designate: number, unity, successor, and equality. His goal was to be ...

Benjamin Zamzow Response Paper Carnap and Quine 28 Aug 2006 Both Carnap and Quine suggest that careful use of language is important in discussing this matter. In ...

I believe that Russell's change of heart was due to his discovery of the work by Frege On denoting 483 . He looked at what had been done by Meinong and how his own ...

Benacerraf holds that there is no such thing as numbers. There are no objects (sets or otherwise) that can be identified as the numbers. Instead, when referring to ...

Pilate asked, "What is truth?" Colbert asked "What is truthiness?" A truth bearer is truthy if it has the ring of truth, sounds like it must be true, is widely and ...

Bernays Platonism This article appears to be the one in which the term "Platonism," as a name for a view about mathematics, was coined, in 1934. Plato advocated, not ...

Big Science Why did England join CERN? That is an interesting case because CERN was the beginning of big science outside the United States (and maybe everywhere). ...

Kuhn wrote Structure of Scientific Revolutions as an attack on the dominant logical positivist and post positivist philosophies of science of his day. He showed ...

Broad The Traditional Problem of Body and Mind AssignedTopicsBroadTraditionalProblemofBodyandMind ResponsePapersBroadTraditionalProblemofBodyandMind ShaughanLavine ...

C. I. Lewis The Given Element in Experience AssignedTopicsCILewisGivenElementinExperience ResponsePapersCILewisGivenElementinExperience ShaughanLavine 16 Oct ...

Cantor Real and Counting Numbers AssignedQuestionsCantorRealandCountingNumbers ResponsePapersCantorRealandCountingNumbers ShaughanLavine 16 Sep 2006

Cantor's Theory Was Never Intended to be a General Theory of Collections In particular, it was not the "naive set theory" that virtually everyone, following Russell ...

Carnap, The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language AssignedTopicsCarnapEliminationofMetaphysics ShaughanLavine 26 Sep 2005 ResponsePapersCarnapEliminationofMetaphysics ...

Carnap Frameworks The key distinction in the article is between "internal" and "external" questions. Internal and external to what? To "frameworks." " Which kind of ...

Carnap, Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology Empiricists are suspicious of abstract entities. They (we) shouldn't be: Carnap's project is to "overcome nominalistic ...

Predicativity Picking an object from several already existing objects is a very different process than building an object to specifications. The key point is this ...

Carnap and Quine AssignedQuestionsCarnapandQuine ResponsePapersCarnapandQuine ShaughanLavine 23 Aug 2006 Carnap For Carnap there are two kinds of questions ...

Carnap and Quine Compared Carnap Carnap thinks there is nothing more to making an ontological commitment than adopting a framework, which is a purely pragmatic matter ...

Carnap vs Quine Carnap Frameworks No metaphysics Use whatever framework you wish for free For every person %$p$% there is a number %$n$% that is the weight of that ...

Categoricity What we said last time about structures suggests that, whatever your attitude about whether mathematics cares about systems of objects only up to isomorphism ...

Causal Necessity The Principle of Determinism We are discussing the argument for a causal theory of perception. One premise of the argument is that every event has ...

The Causal Theory of Perception If all we ever see are sense data, then we never see material objects. How then can we know that they exist? If sense data are conceived ...

Causation of Sense Data The argument from causation was supposed to show that there must be something other than sense data, "behind them." The basic idea is that ...

I'm mostly interested in the first part of Chalmer's paper in which he attempts to lay out a framework that will be generally agreed upon in which to discuss ontology ...

Church's Thesis Church's thesis is that the recursive functions, recursively decidable, enumerable sets are the (intuitively) computable functions, decidable sets ...

Clouds and Cloud Chambers How can you make fog, a cloud? Hot air holds more moisture than cold air (that is part of why the humidity is so low in Arizona). So, you ...

Communicating about Sense Data Sense Data are Private My experiences, including my experiences of sense data, are my own, your experiences are your own, anre can ...

Computational Complexity For this topic, and this topic only, we consider questions of efficiency. A set that is decidable is decidable in polynomial time if there ...

Phenomenalism The "phenomena" in the philosophical term "phenomenalism" are the phenomena of consciousness, and specifically, sense data (or, perhaps, acts of awareness ...

Elementary Construction of the Material World This, finally, is Ayer's answer to the main question to which the whole book has been devoted: How do we come to use ...

Corcoran, "The Conceptual Structure of Classical Logic" Most everything we've read, and almost every philosopher, in discussing logic, in one way or another mixes ...

According to Corcoran, logic studies the correctness of arguments. We use the term "argument" in (at least) two ways, and there are two different, though related, ...

Science and Inquiry Traditions and Cultures 104 Fall 2007 Lectures: Monday and Wednesday ...

Curry's Philosophy: Formalism This article is out of sequence: he assumes you know what Hilbert's Program is and what (Brouwer's) intuitionism is. We'll read those ...

The problem As we have seen, mathematical theories don't determine their domain, and the logicist attempt to say what the objects of mathematics are seems to fail ...

Feyerabend #8220;A Dadaist is utterly unimpressed by any serious enterprise and he smells a rat whenever people stop smiling and assume that attitude and those facial ...

Discussion Section: 1. Open It Up: What Did Everyone Find Interesting About This Article? 2. What do you think of Putnam’s conclusion? Is it true ...

Introduction: In “The Naturalistic Fallacy,” W. K. Frankena sets out to clearly define the so called “naturalistic fallacy” which, at the time, framed much of the ...

Discussion Questions: 1. Open It Up for General Questions, Comments, and Discussion 2. Has Frankena accurately characterized Moore’s naturalistic fallacy? On ...

Introduction: In “On Defining ‘Good’,” Moore argues that the subject matter of Ethics is the question, “what is good?” Furthermore, he argues that the concept “good ...

Introduction: C.D. Broad, in his chapter “The Traditional Problem of Body and Mind,” tackles the “interaction” of the mind and body in certain complex organisms ...

Introduction In his article, "The Given Element in Experience," C.I. Lewis divides experience into two elements: the "Given," which is what is independent of the ...

Introduction: Carnap On Why We’ve All Been Wasting Our Time What is the fundamental nature of reality? What is being? What exists? As my freshman students will ...

Introduction: We think all the time. Right now, I’m thinking about ice cream—Rocky Road, in particular. A moment ago, I was thinking about the fact that my rent ...

(Note to Reader: I apologize, in advance, for the length of this paper. I found it incredibly difficult to give Frege's arguments justice inside the scope of one ...

Introduction: In a paper that I was able to read in the time it takes me to microwave a bowl of popcorn, Edmund Gettier challenges the idea that knowledge is justified ...

Introduction: In his famous article, "A Defence of Common Sense," G.E. Moore appeals to common sense in order to attack against various philosophical positions that ...

Hilary Putnam – “Minds and Machines” Introduction: In “Minds and Machines,” Hilary Putnam argues that all of the issues that arise for the mind body problem have ...

Introduction In “On What There Is,” Quine takes up the ontological problem and attacks those ontologies that seem “crowded” by allowing unactualized possibles into ...

In his famous paper “On Denoting,” Bertrand Russell argues that, just as experiments are used to test the merit of scientific theories, logical theories either sink ...

P.F. Strawson – “On Referring” Discussion Notes Gottlob Frege ...

Introduction In his paper, “On Referring,” P.F. Strawson argues against Bertrand Russell’s theory of descriptions, citing that Russell’s theory fails to make the ...

1. What is Cantor's "coherence" criterion for the existence of mathematical objects? Cantor thinks that mathematical objects can be created/discovered by developing ...

Dummett's criticism of Dedekind is that the final product of abstraction, namely a structurally specified progression isn't enough to indentify the natural numbers ...

1. On one influential interpretation, Hilbert is taken to have thought that any mathematical theory can be added to finitist mathematics so long as additions are consistent ...

One way to solve the Julius Caeser problem is simply to stipulate that purported mixed identities are false unless their truth follows from the contextual definition ...

Hume's Principle: The number of F's is equal to the number of G's if and only if the members of the set of all F's can be put in one to one correspondence with the ...

Hilbert claims that certain objects are required for logical operations (and hence mathematics). These concrete objects, whose properties and existence must be directly ...

1. Wright thinks, contra Boolos, that it is not essential to the concept of analiticity that everything it applies to is existentially neutral. Wright takes truths ...

The devlopment of predicate logic allowed Russell to do away with the "paradoxical" objects he took to be denoted by 'all men,' 'every man,' 'any man,' 'a man,' and ...

Benacerraf concludes "What numbers could not be" by claiming, "there are no such things as numbers; which is not to say that there is not at least least two prime ...

Dedekind Husserl AssignedQuestionsDedekindHusserl ResponsePapersDedekindHusserl In the era in which Dedekind and Husserl wrote, the live options were that mathematical ...

Deductive Nomological Explanation Today's topic is the logical positivist model of explanation, which these days always means Hempel and Oppenheim. No one thinks that ...

Defining Exponentiation from Plus and Times If we wanted to represent a sequence of numbers that are all less than 10 as a number using only and %$\times$%, we could ...

Definitional Extensions and Interpretations Definitional Extensions Let %$T$% be a theory in a in a language (set of constant, predicate, and function symbols) % ...

The sentence %$(\forall x {i}) (P(x {i})\Rightarrow(\forall x {j})\lnot P(x {i},x {j}))$% is true in the interpretation %$M$%, %\ M\models (\forall x {i}) (P(x {i ...

Contextual Definition Frege's context principle Sentences are the primary unit of meaning. To know the meaning of a word is just to know how it contributes to ...

Descriptivism, Essentialism, and All That Last time I presented the disagreement between Kripke and Quine. One important thing on which they agree is engaging in semantic ...

Discussion Board for Philosophy of Language (Phil. 463/563) Kripke points out that 'denotes' is a technical term that is to be used differently from 'refers ...

Pragmatics of Contextual Changes in Quantification How do we determine, in a context of use, what the restrictions on a quantifier are? 1. When available, we pick ...

Note: I may add another question or two before class. DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (1) The standard interpretation of Gettier cases is that Mr. Whoever lacks knowledge ...

For our discussion, I want to attempt to restrict the discussion to two specific yet fairly complicated questions. I won’t be lecturing; I just want to see what you ...

What is the problem we are discussing? We get into trouble right away, since there is no problem about whether there is such a thing as everything unless there is ...

Linnebo's Trick Last time, at the end, we talked about class models: A set model looks like this %\ \langle D,\{\langle P,\{x x\text{ is a person}\} \rangle ,\dotsc ...

What is metaphysical realism? (Putnam's term) A metaphysical realist is someone who thinks that there is a fact of the matter about what there is that is independent ...

Dispensing with Mathematics Balaguer discusses two options for an antiplatonist reply to the Quine Putnam indispensability argument. Quine and Putnam are taken to ...

Doing Things with Words Austin is the main guy. He distinguished locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary force. Locutionary Force The locutionary force of ...

Introduction For this week, we read Quine?s famous article ?Two Dogmas of Empiricism,? in which Quine attacks two foundational pillars of Logical Empiricism (in particular ...

there are no crucial experiments,no theory in isolation ever predicts an experimental outcome because you are relying on background thoeries RobertDionne 10 Dec ...

Dummett on Intuitionism The two most influential early proponents of intuitionism were Brouwer and his student Heyting. Brouwer's justification for the intuitionistic ...

Dummett on Frege What gives us reason to believe that a referring term refers? I'm commenting on Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Mathematics pages around 239 and the ...

Dummett on Frege's Contextual Definitions Frege rejects his own proposed theory of contextual definitions as inadequate because of the Julius Caesar problem, but the ...

Edible Knowledge The business about Shakespeare pills is bad science, bad sociology, bad history, though perhaps good journalism: it's a nice hook to get you interested ...

Maxwell "Theoretical entities" Maxwell's central thesis is that the theoretical entities of science are (insofar as the science is correct) just as real as all the ...

1. What is Dummett's criticism of Dedekind? 2. Why did numbers have to be objects? Suppose we want to account for an infinite system of numbers #8212;the natural numbers ...

1. What is Cantor's "coherence" criterion for the existence of mathematical objects? 2. Does his account of the real numbers accord with that principle? I think Ian ...

1. Dedekind says that it is a defect of "even the most rigorous expositions of the calculus" that they "appeal to geometric notions." He wants a "scientific basis ...

According to Quine, a thing can have ontological status if it is a value of a variable. This particular definition makes it somewhat unclear as to whether there is ...

1. State Hume's principle. The number of Fs are the same as the number of Gs if, and only if, the Fs are in one one correspondence with the Gs. 2. Why are equations ...

Entity Theories of Meaning Entity theories of meaning attempt to account for the data by positing that there are Meanings, particular entities associated with, in ...

Enumerability Last class, and occasionally throughout the semester we have discussed two closely related notions: Decidability Recursiveness The second, ...

From the Greeks at least until Newton, geometry held primacy over arithmetic, for the excellent reason that there didn't seem to be enough numbers to cover geometry ...

Four Possible Goals of Definition 1. attempt to assign a referent to a term deterministically 1. attempt to assign a referent to a term indeterministically ...

1. Belnap http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/stable/pdfplus/3326862.pdf discusses Prior's connective tonk, which obeys the following rules of inference ...

Experiments Don't Prove Anything Philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians carefully distinguish proving something from having good reason to think it true. Of ...

Explanation as Unification Standard attempts to repair the D N model of explanation had, at least, two parts: a theory of what constitutes a law and some condition ...

Expressibility within the Theory I could use this topic for most of the rest of the semester. We express facts, properties, and relations using formulas. Therefore ...

Euler could show, by the same method, that %\ \infty 1 2 3 \dotsm ,\ % %\ 1 1 2 4 \dotsm ,\ % and %\ \frac{1}{2} 1 1 1 1 \dotsm .\ % He used all of these in ...

Pinnick Problems with Feminist Epistemology Pinnick is criticizing a very specific theory of knowledge proposed by, along with others, Harding. I believe that Harding ...

Feminist politics is not the same the thing as feminist philosophy, only one part of which is looking at how sexism has influenced the intellectual history of philosophy ...

Feminist Epistemology of Science First, I want to distinguish feminism, and even feminism about the practice of science from the feminist philosophy of science. Feminists ...

Fictionalist Applicability without Dispensability If Balaguer's earlier arguments worked, all that would remain, in order for him to show that antiplatonism is tenable ...

Fictionalist Explanation of Applicability One standard platonist claim is that platonists can explain why mathematics is applicable in roughly these terms: mathematics ...

Liz would like to present on the article FieldFictionalismEpistemologyandModality Main.evp 14 Sep 2006

Field's Nominalism AssignedQuestionsFieldsNominalism ResponsePapersFieldsNominalism Abstractness Conservativeness? ShaughanLavine 18 Nov 2006

The final examination will be just like the midterm examination, only with twice as many questions. It will be comprehensive, and you will be required to answer some ...

Abstract Language Some morals. There is no clear generally accepted distinction between abstract and concrete objects. There are various relevant criteria, like ...

If one used a theory with infinitely many axioms, then it would be necessary to fully specify how to decide whether or not an expression is an axiom but decidability ...

All we did on the first day was discuss the SymbolicLogicBSyllabus2005. Some math: %$\alpha {\beta}^{\mathbold{A}}$% and so forth. If something is longer, it should ...

The course url is http://zillion.philosophy.arizona.edu/~ScienceandInquiryFall2005/ ShaughanLavine 22 Aug 2005

Axiomatic Method (Peano, Hilbert) You lay down a bunch of laws involving certain primitive terms, and the primitive terms are implicitly defined by the axioms. One ...

What is analytic philosophy? So far as I'm concerned, "analytic philosophy" is a family resemblance notion (and therefore not subject to the sort of analysis of which ...

http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~slavine/Courses/TwentiethCenturyPhilosophy.html ShaughanLavine 25 Aug 2009

Basically, all we did was to discuss the syllabus and course requirements. ProfessorShaughanLavine 12 Jan 2005

First order logic The main theorem of last semester was that the set of logical consequences of any r.e. set of axioms is r.e. Today we will prove that the set of ...

First vs. Second Order Logic There is a lot confusion, terminological and other, about the distinction between first and second order logic. Everyone agrees that ...

First Paper DUE 2 OCTOBER Requirements The paper must be 5 8 pages in length, typed and double spaced. (Five pages is approximately 1,250 2,000 words, or 6 ...

First vs. Second Order Logic There is a lot confusion, terminological and other, about the distinction between first and second order logic. Everyone agrees that ...

Foundationalism Has No Basis The pursuit of the incorrigible is one of the most venerable bugbears in the history of philosophy. 104 A bugbear is something of which ...

Frankena The Naturalistic Fallacy AssignedTopicsFrankenaNaturalisticFallacy ResponsePapersFrankenaNaturalisticFallacy ShaughanLavine 27 Nov 2005

Electricity and Life Electricity was new in the Victorian era and it had magical transformative powers. Electricity was also associated with life: Volta's batteries ...

Free Choice Sequences There are many constructivists of a variety of flavors, all of whom agree on using intuitionistic logic. The chief place at which they differ ...

"Frege's Argument" against Anti Platonism The Argument Balaguer 95: 1. The only way to account for the truth of our mathematical theories is to adopt platonism ...

Frege on the Concept of Number This has been a tremendously influential article, certainly in the philosophy of mathematics, but more importantly, and more surprisingly ...

Frege On Sense and Reference AssignedQuestionsFregeOnSenseandReference ShaughanLavine 22 Aug 2005 ResponsePapersFregeOnSenseandReference Frege distinguishes ...

One final remark on Russell's theory: He views it as a defect of his logical system that it comes out in that system to be a logical truth that something exists. He ...

Frege The Thought: A Logical Inquiry AssignedTopicsFregeTheThought ShaughanLavine 18 Sep 2005 ResponsePapersFregeTheThought True indicates the aim of logic ...

Fregean Abstraction AssignedQuestionsFregeanAbstraction ResponsePapersFregeanAbstraction EvansNotesFregeanAbstraction ShaughanLavine 18 Nov 2006

Frege on Arithmetic Frege is generally presented in philosophy of mathematics classes as the first logicist. He was. But the importance of his work in philosophy ...

Frege's Theory of Numbers AssignedQuestionsFregesTheoryofNumbers ResponsePapersFregesTheoryofNumbers ShaughanLavine 23 Sep 2006

From Private Sense Data to a Public Material World How can we get from private sense data to a public material world? My experiences of sense data don’t overlap ...

Galileo Galileo wrote beautifully, and he devoted a lot of energy to making fun of his predecessors for ignoring experience (or experimentation and careful observation ...

Geach's Relative Identity Theory We read Perry's paper instead of anything by Geach because Geach is quite hard to understand, and Perry provides a fairly clear account ...

The usual heroic story is of Pasteur vs. Pouchet. It is a story in which Pasteur proves that there is no such thing as spontaneous generation of life, an old superstitious ...

Gettier Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? AssignedTopicsGettierIsJustifiedTrueBeliefKnowledge ResponsePapersGettierIsJustifiedTrueBeliefKnowledge ShaughanLavine ...

Gibbard gives examples of what he takes to be contingent identity statements that he takes to survive Kripke's attack on the idea. Kripke, recall, argues that 'Hesperus ...

Everything Quine says that the topic of ontology is "What is there?" and that the answer, everyone will agree, is "Everything." Glanzberg (and I and Kit Fine) disagree ...

How is the replacement of geometric intuition by human creations supposed to be an improvement? Is it coherent to take an object to be "completely determined by all ...

For Canap and Quine what exists is a question about the commitments of our thoeries or linguistic framework. Moreover, it's not a particularly interesting or "deep ...

Peano's project was to disambiguate and clarify the language used to in the foundations of mathematics. Consequently, he requires that his notions of "0," "number ...

Glory Hole spillway on Lake Berryessa, California ShaughanLavine 31 Jan 2006 Glory Hole dry: Glory Hole in use:

G #246;del Numbering Our main goal in this course is to show that some problems are hard, for example, not recursively decidable. To do that, we'll find one hard problem ...

G del: What Is Cantor's Continuum Hypothesis? Cantor's Definition of Cardinality %$\S$%1 The concept of cardinal number (470). G del argues that Cantor's definition ...

Suppose we want to code a sequence of numbers that are all less than 1000. One easy way to do it, is to write numbers in base 1000 notation, and just use the sequence ...

Cantor's notion of cardinality is the notion of cardinality The argument is that if we can take one set and morph it into another, they have the same size, and if ...

G del's Incompleteness Theorems Intuitive account Theorems and philosophical consequences G del didn't just prove a theorem or two, he invented a whole new branch ...

G del's Methods Definition. Given a set of formulas %$\Phi$% that includes %$S$% and %$ 0 $% in its language, an %$n$% ary relation on numbers %$R$% is said to be ...

Grading Curves PhiL463GradingCurves06 PhiL563GradingCurves06 ShaughanLavine 22 Feb 2006 Midterm 34 35 A 33 A 32 ...

PhiL420GradingCurves06 PhiL520GradingCurves06 ShaughanLavine 28 Feb 2006

Student name: Grade0 5 5 3 1 Argument Clear thesis statementWell developed arguments in support of the thesisAddresses relevant ...

Gravitational Radiation According to electromagnetic theory, there should be electromagnetic radiation, and there is: examples include light, radio waves, microwaves ...

Grice Speaker Meaning is Primary Grice takes seriously the idea that language is a human artifact and so the way in which humans use language must be constitutive ...

A PHIL 416 Class Study Session will be held on February 22, 2005 from 530pm to 830pm at the Intregrated Learning Center (ILC) Computer Study Lounge. We will cover ...

Professor Lavine agreed to accept final versions of the fist paper assignment for the course on February 28, 2005 (Monday); however he warned that he will not be able ...

EdwardHopkins 23 Feb 2005

Is Science Rational? I agree with Hacking that the appropriate answer to that question is, who cares? A lot of people took Kuhn to be saying that science isn't rational ...

Suppose there is a predicate halts? such that (halts p a) returns #t if program p halts on input a and returns #f if it does not halt. Then we could make the following ...

1. Hilbert is sometimes said to have thought that once a mathematical theory had been finitistically proved consistent, that would justify its use independently of ...

Benacerraf concludes his essay by saying that there are no such things as numbers, but that there are numbers. Explain. It's easy to explain this part of Benacerraf ...

1. What is Cantor's "coherence" criterion for the existence of mathematical objects? 2. Does his account of the real numbers accord with that principle? I really liked ...

How is the replacement of geometric intuition by human creations supposed to be an improvement? Is it coherent to take an object to be "completely determined by all ...

1. What is Dummett's criticism of Dedekind? Dummett criticizes Dedekind for trying to define the numbers without reference to the relations they bear to things outside ...

Hilbert is sometimes said to have thought that once a mathematical theory had been finitistically proved consistent, that would justify its use independently of whether ...

Explain the number qumber problem and the problem whether (1/2) is ( 1)/2. What are they problems for? The number qumber problem illustrates why a particular solution ...

1. State Hume's principle. 2. Why are equations (identities) important in Frege's theory? 3. What is the Julius Caesar problem? Hume's principle is that two ...

When, according to Hilbert, can we introduce a new type of mathematical object? I think Hilbert answers this early on in his essay (unless there's something later ...

1. How does Wright attempt to square the claim that Hume's principle is analytic with the claim that the principle has existential consequences? Typically, if a claim ...

How, according to Carnap or Quine, do we determine what actually exists? Is there, according to Carnap or Quine, any fact of the matter? Quine's position in "On What ...

In RussellPrinciplesofMathematics, especially pp. 56, 62, and 72, 'all men,' 'every man,' 'any man,' 'a man,' and 'some men' are all said to denote objects. In On ...

Helen Habermann 9/5/06 Peano and Russell I have two main concerns about the readings for today. First, Kennedy's explanation of whether Peano intended his five postulates ...

Ok, I can't sleep. I need help. Here's my trouble: From the excerpt we have of Science Without Numbers , I don't see why mathematics has to be conservative. On page ...

Hellman Nominalism Hellman uses the standard Russellian argument against absolutely everything as an argument for nominalism. He considers whether the "Carnapian" ...

Damn my not having a key to the philosophy department office! Damn it forever! I haven't made a copy of pp 5 25 of Russell's book, and the office is closed (or will ...

Hilbert's On the Infinite He starts with some motivation: A. 1. Because of Quantum Mechanics, there is no reason to believe that there is anything physical ...

When Hilbert devised his philosophy, it looked like there was a serious possibility that Brouwer's intuitionism might win. Hilbert's philosophy can be read as an attempt ...

Hilbert's Ideal Elements AssignedQuestionsHilbertsIdealElements ResponsePapersHilbertsIdealElements Hilbert's philosophy of mathematics arose in part out of his ...

Putnam has adopted many different but related forms of pragmatic realism: There are facts of the matter about what is real, but they may be different for different ...

Homework First of all, a set of strings is decidable if you can tell whether or not a string is in the set. The way we implemented that is by having a machine that ...

Horgan and Timmons take Putnam's many forms of pragmatic realism to exhibit "conceptual relativism," and they view such conceptual relativism as an important argument ...

Hormones as Social Constructs What are the sociological markers by which you can tell that scientists have concluded that some proposition is not just a neat idea ...

Prerequisites for Thought I saw a TV interviewer ask Jackie Joyner Kersey, immediately after setting a record for the hurdles, still out of breath, "What do you think ...

How to Create a Topic Any WikiWord (roughly, a "word" with a capital letter at the beginning and at least one other capital letter) is automatically a link to a new ...

"I'm My Own Grandpa" by Lonzo and Oscar I have taken the lyrics from http://www.geocities.com/bjaes.geo/lyrics/grandpa.htm . Please link to that page, not this ...

There is a topic that no one has addressed in their responses, so it must be either so obvious as not to need address, or it must seem so obvious as not to need address ...

1. What is Dummett's criticism of Dedekind? Dummett criticizes Dedekind for missing the most fundamental relation numbers bear to objects outside the structure of ...

1. State Hume's principle. The number of Fs is the same as the number of Gs if, and only if, the Fs and the Gs are equinumerous 2. Why are equations (identities) important ...

The only mathematical objects that are legitimate for Hilbert are those presented directly to us via our "faculty of representation;" only in working with these can ...

How is the replacement of geometric intuition by human creations supposed to be an improvement? Is it coherent to take an object to be "completely determined by all ...

Of course, I can't quite remember what the question was. I propose to answer this question: what, according to Carnap, is the ontological status of the abstract objects ...

As far as I can tell, Peano cannot be interested in reducing mathematics to logic because his primitive terms (N, 1, a 1) are not primitive terms in any standard ...

In his Principles of Mathematics , Russell had an ontology that included objects (existents) and concepts (subsistents). Phrases such as 'a man', `some man', `every ...

Benacerraf concludes his essay by saying: "there are no such things as numbers; which is not to say that there are not at least two prime numbers between 15 and 20 ...

1. Hilbert is sometimes said to have thought that once a mathematical theory had been finitistically proved consistent, that would justify its use independently of ...

Inline: occurring in the middle of a line of text, as opposed to Displayed: centered on a line by itself. ShaughanLavine 19 Nov 2004

Indeterminacy of Meaning and Reference Let me start by admitting that the distinction in meaning, use, reference, and intent of 'indeterminacy of translation' and ...

Infinite Numbers We use numbers for two purposes: ordering things (first, second, third, ...) and determining quantity (half a dozen). The first kind of number is ...

Introducing Sense Data Ways of using "sees" Straight stick in water Veridical Delusive Object does exist I see a straight stick ...

Introduction Our text is an historically structured introduction, not to science, but to our theories about what science is, what distinguishes good from bad science ...

Introduction and Peano AssignedQuestionsIntroductionandPeano ResponsePapersIntroductionandPeano ShaughanLavine 01 Sep 2006 False or misleading claims in what ...

Introduction Balaguer's argument has three parts. 1. Platonism is tenable. 1. Anti Platonism is tenable. 1. There is no fact of the matter. When he argues ...

Introduction Sense and Sensibilia, John L. Austin ("Sensibilia" was the term Russell used for his version of sense data, and Jane Austen wrote Sense and Sensibilities ...

Introduction to the Philosophy of Science %STOPPUBLISH% Due Dates %STARTPUBLISH% Final examination: Thursday ...

Introduction to the Philosophy of Science Shaughan Lavine Fall 2007 Philosophy 305415 ...

Intuitionistic Logic Last time, we discussed Dummett's motivation for insisting that each logical operator must be independently defined (molecularism required for ...

Intuitive Computability We have an intuitive, preformal notion of a definite procedure. A definite procedure is supposed to be a specification of a process such that ...

Thisnesses and Suchnesses A thisness is what the medievals called a hacceity, which is Latin for thisness. Objects may or may not have thisnesses, but if an objects ...

Structures Today, we're taking an approach opposite to that of Corcoran's. I'll be introducing various formal mathematical notions. I'll give them suggestive names ...

Issues and Methods Study session Monday May 7th, 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m. Room 138 Sciences. Due Dates The final exam will be ...

Issues and Methods in Analytic Philosophy Shaughan Lavine Tuesday and Thursday 2 ...

Derivations LostmyZ 05 Dec 2004 Here is an attempt at proving some rules on page 64 3.3 (c) %$\Gamma,\neg\phi,\neg\psi$% %$\Gamma,\psi,\phi$% Solution 1. ...

Kant on Objectively Universal Validity vs Subjectively Universal Validity page 100 5:215 Now an objectively universally valid judgment is also always subjectively ...

Frege, in his “On Sense and Reference” is intent on drawing several important distinctions within the philosophy of language. What follows is an attempt to summarize ...

Moore, Wittgenstein, and the Nexus of Common Sense: First, we’ll cover whatever issues that are raised by the discussion questions. But, as is my wont, I have my ...

In this essay, I will address a variety of assertions that Carnap makes in his article on the elimination of metaphysics. Many of Carnap’s views appear to have been ...

• Frankena says (348–349) that "it is an error to construe a ... synthetic proposition as a definition," that is, as analytic. He goes on to say that to claim that ...

Defining Broadly ‘To animate’ just means that ‘a certain mind is connected in some peculiarly intimate way with a certain body, and, under normal conditions with no ...

C. I. Lewis argues for the existence of a brute part of experience, called ‘the given’. In this shortie, I will outline the argument, discuss the role of the a priori ...

In this paper, I will attempt to outline some of the general metaphysical and philosophy of language questions that Frege raises in his article ‘The Thought’. I will ...

1. Give your own Gettier type example. Imagine a woman who sees a man steal her pocketbook on the side of the street. The man was wearing red pants, which made him ...

In this paper, I’m going to attempt to explain G.E. Moore’s views in ‘Defence of Common Sense’. However, there is some difficulty knowing just what Moore is arguing ...

Question 1 : There are a few ways one might think of the Putnam’s reformulation problem as relating to Broad’s problem of interaction. So first, remember that the ...

I will attempt in this paper to cover some of the motivations Quine gives for his pragmatic conception of ontological commitments in “On What There Is”. First, Quine ...

Necessity, Contingency, and Revisability Does Quine think that the term ‘necessary’ is meaningless (beyond just the sense in which everything is meaningless)? If so ...

Shaughan , A few things before I begin. First, I've chosen to cut and past your questions and then put the answers right after the question. Second, I have to say ...

Russell on Denoting Kevin Vallier Russell, in #8220;On Denoting #8221; develops three puzzles that he believes his theory of denotation can solve. I #8217;ll list ...

Strawson’s “On Referring” is an intended response to Russell’s “On Denoting.” In the article, Strawson attempts to explain Russell’s paradoxes by introducing an emphasis ...

Today, we're switching from metametaphysics to "straight" metaphysics, or at least so it should seem. Instead of talking about how to tell what exists, we are talking ...

Kripke Identity and Necessity One of Kripke's main questions is "Can there be contingent identity statements? (Contingent just means, not necessary, and so the question ...

Kuhn, Normal Science PAPERS ARE DUE FRIDAY Don't plagiarize. Kuhn's method is historical and, to some extent, sociological It was a big shock to a lot of people ...

Kuhn, Revolutionary Science Crisis Accumulation of anomalies Loss of faith in the paradigm Rival Theories Other Factors ...

Kuhn's Cyclical Theory Papers are due Tuesday. First, Kuhn's criticism of logical positivism and its heirs: Scientists never reject a theory because its predictions ...

\Large\LaTeX \LaTeX is a complete typesetting language developed by Leslie Lamport on top of Donald Knuth's \TeX. Most of it is implemented using LatexModePlugin, ...

Lakatos "Methodology of scientific research programmes" He thought Kuhn was a disaster, because he took Kuhn to say that there is no general methodology of science ...

Laudan Critique of Underdetermination Laudan uses "underdetermination" as short for the thesis that a theoretical explanation is undeterdetermined by its data (as ...

What does McGee's learnability show? Of course, we assume absolutely unrestricted quantification in the metalinguistic background. I shall say that an object %$a$ ...

The thesis of the article is that "the facts of nature are decided within the field of human argument" (119). If that means that scientists decide what they think ...

Lewis distinguishes between what he calls 'properties' and 'relations' and 'natural' properties and relations. Aside: A property is a property of a single object ...

Logical Positivism Logical positivism in its purest, simplest, most extreme form didn't last very long. In this course. we shall call the fallback positions logical ...

Quine and Davidson, Background Logical Positivism Quine became famous and influential largely as a critic of logical positivism. To see what Quine's concerns are ...

Logicism, Intuitionism, Hilbertian Formalism Logicism To make logicism at all plausible, it was initially thought one needed self evident logical axioms on the basis ...

In addition to the devastating criticisms of Quine, logical positivism faced internal difficulties: The main internal project was to give a detailed, formal account ...

Multiple Realizability Natural Kinds When doing a physics experiment, one tries very hard to control all the variables: you make sure that there are no stray electric ...

Gibbard on Contingent Identity Our question is, "Are Lumpl and Goliath identical, or distinct indiscernibles?" Gibbard distinguishes between portions of clay, pieces ...

Nada. NathanB 24 Oct 2005

Magnetic Curves Before 1820 1850. Static electricity. Electric current can be produced by chemical processes. Magnets attract and repel, point North, the exact direction ...

As many of you will know, John McClane is the name of Bruce Willis's character in the Die Hard series. DanielS 21 Nov 2005

Logical consequence and Tarski's notion of logical consequence Koslow defines a consequence relation on a set to be a relation between subsets of that set and members ...

Messy Science According to Kuhn, long periods of normal science are punctuated by occasional episodes of "revolutionary science." There are obvious reasons for using ...

Metaphysics Due Dates MetaphysicsSyllabus TopicsfortheFirstPaper TopicsfortheSecondPaper Lecture Notes QuineWhatThereIs ...

Metaphysics Due Dates MetaphysicsSyllabusSpring2008 SuggestedTopicsandAdvicefortheFirstPaper SuggestedTopicsandAdvicefortheSecondPaper ...

Possible topics moral explanation (Harman, Sturgeon, etc.) non Humean motivation (Nagel, McDowell, etc.) Australian rules metaethics (Smith, Jackson ...

The chapter in Lycan is about metaphor, but there is really a more general phenomenon that is of interest: We have an amazing capacity to make sense of language that ...

Metaphysics Phil4/540 Fall 2008 Tuesday and Thursday9:30 A.M. 10:45 A.M.Room 304 Languages Shaughan Lavine Syllabus Overview A syllabus may be viewed by the University ...

Metaphysics Phil4/540 Spring 2008 Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 2:00 P.M. 2:50 P.M.Room 311 Sciences Shaughan Lavine Syllabus Overview A syllabus may be viewed ...

Drop date is this Friday. Midterm Curve A 83 100 A 78 82 B 73 77 B 67 72 B 62 66 C 57 61 ...

Midterm 28 September Bring blue books. Closed book, open notes. "Notes" includes print outs from the wiki. Questions may be detailed, so take good notes. There will ...

Putnam, Models and Reality What was Skolem's problem for axiomatic mathematics? There are two parts: 1. First order axioms for any mathematical system that has ...

A Defence of Common Sense The article was published in 1925, well before Ayer or Austin. Both Ayer and Austin, I think, would take themselves to have absorbed Moore ...

Moore A Defence of Common Sense AssignedTopicsMooreDefenceofCommonSense ResponsePapersMooreDefenceofCommonSense ShaughanLavine 10 Oct 2005 Two versions of Moore ...

Moore On Defining 'Good' AssignedTopicsMooreOnDefining'Good' ResponsePapersMooreOnDefining'Good' ShaughanLavine 20 Nov 2005

Laudan on Underdetermination Laudan's classification of kinds of underdetermination is worthwhile, and provides a useful framework in which to think about such claims ...

• If good is a "simple notion," so that it is a mistake to claim that "good is pleasure" (318), then how can it be that good is intrinsic value (323)? The worry, ...

• If good is a "simple notion," so that it is a mistake to claim that "good is pleasure" (318), then how can it be that good is intrinsic value (323)? The worry, ...

Muddy Paste Next Monday is Veteran's Day. There are no classes. Next class, we start on a new text: Collins and Pinch Godfrey Smith proposes a frappe of empiricism ...

Multiple Realizability and the Disunity of Science Preliminaries: 1. Type token distinction. There can be many tokens of the same type. For example, the word aardvark ...

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS : (1) According to Lewis, is it impossible to describe the given? Yea : “ W e cannot describe any particular given as such , because in describing ...

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS (1) The standard interpretation of Gettier cases is that Mr. Whoever lacks knowledge. What should Gettier (or you, if you accept the standard ...

Discussion Questions: Moore’s ON DEFINING ‘GOOD’ Preliminary question : According to Nathan, what is good? (1) According to Moore, what is good? (2) Is Moore ...

Frankena’s “The Naturalistic Fallacy” Frankena’s paper examines a particular style of criticism leveled against traditional ethical theories by Moore and his intuitionist ...

A bad attempt to say something about Moore’s “On Defining ‘Good’” In Moore’s “On Defining ‘Good’,” he attempts to determine what’s involved in that . In what follows ...

What Gives? C.I. Lewis' "The Given Element in Experience" (or Givin' me a headache: Lewis on the given) NathanB 24 Oct 2005

(More or less) on Moore’s “A Defense of Common Sense” In his “A Defense of Common Sense,” Moore develops a position to counter those who would deny the reality of ...

In philosophy, it’s bad to be too narrow; but that doesn’t mean it’s good to be Broad. Daniel: "Ouch! Score one for Nathan!" Nathan Broad 1 0 In ...

What Gives? C.I. Lewis’ “The Given Element in Experience” C.I. Lewis once wrote a book called Mind and the World Order . That’s an intimidating title. And let me ...

In what follows, I will briefly consider some issues raised by Carnap’s article, “The Elimination of Metaphysics through the Logical Analysis of Language.” FOUR QUESTIONS ...

In “The Thought”, Frege is concerned with whatever entity it is for which the question of truth arises (in discourses like mathematics and science). A thought, he ...

In “On Sense and Reference” ( The $60 Book , 21 32), Frege draws a distinction between the sense and the reference of proper names. In this short paper, I’ll briefly ...

WHO GOT TENURE ON ONE PUBLICATION? In what follows, my goal is type more words than are contained in Gettier’s 1963 paper. I’ll answer the assigned questions and ...

ON PUTNAM’S “MINDS AND MACHINES”: COMING SOON TO A COMPUTER NEAR YOU! Putnam’s suggestion is that “every philosophic argument that has even been employed in connect ...

What is there in “On What There Is”? In “On What There Is,” Quine assays reasons for and against accepting an ontology that admits of possibles and universals. He ...

Oh, Discussion Question In Section 5 of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” Quine turns to the verification theory of meaning and asks whether it can solve the problem ...

Russell’s Three Puzzles Russell considers three puzzles (see p. 36) whose solution he takes as a constraint on any good theory of denoting. The first puzzle concerns ...

Frege and Strawson on “the present King of France is bald” Frege would say that “the present King of France is bald” has a sense but no reference. On Frege’s view ...

Natural Kinds and Predicates A "natural kind" is a group of things or substances that are genuinely similar in some natural way. Examples: gold (or any element), granite ...

A Logician's View of the Natural Numbers We are going to study the theory of the natural numbers to death this semester. First, though, we need to know what the ...

The Nature of Reality Last time we saw that Ayer #8217;s argument for the empirical adequacy of a sense datum language is question begging, since it only requires ...

Nature of Sense Data We Could Be Wrong about Sense Data I said that Ayer said that Moore (and others) were wrong to take it to be possible that one might be mistaken ...

The Nature of the “Given” Carnap claims that the “problems of the so called given or primitive data” are purely verbal: one answers it by specifying what kinds of ...

NeoFregeanism AssignedQuestionsNeoFregeanism ResponsePapersNeoFregeanism ShaughanLavine 12 Nov 2006

Science is not a house built on a firm concrete slab, it is a ship at sea that we must repair while we keep it afloat. (Otto Neurath) I can extend the metaphor: ...

No Answer Distinguish The question is unanswerable To say that a question is unanswerable is to say that there is no means by which we can ever come to know ...

Against the Proliferation of Senses The official topic of Chapter 9 of Sense and Sensibilia is Ayer's discussion of the question: "Are we to say that the objects ...

ShaughanLavine 26 Mar 2009

Nonuniqueness A Benacerrafian Argument Against Platonism Benacerraf presented the argument using Peano arithmetic (PA), and so does Balaguer. 1. If any mathematical ...

Observation Is Theory Laden Today's topic is that observation is theory laden. That is a point that should have been made much earlier, around the time that we discussed ...

The Observational Theoretical Distinction There are a number of important distinctions that, for the most part, people run roughshod over in discussing the observational ...

One Reality? First of all, we need to distinguish realism from what I've been calling realism : Essentially no Anglo American philosopher today engages in traditional ...

There's an old saying from biology: Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Quine said, Ontology recapitulates philology. Armstrong provides a wonderful example ...

Darwin's Theory of Evolution Notation: This is something predicted or explained by the theory This is an assumption, presupposition, hypothesis, component, law ...

Darwin, The Prequel Charles Darwin's family was a well to do family of doctors his mother was a Wedgewood (daughter of the Wedgewood); his father and grandfather ...

Paradoxes, Completeness, and Skolem I'm going to present technical results, and mention their impact in the philosophy of mathematics, but, in fact, the picture presented ...

Parsons on Structuralism Charles Parsons, "The Structuralist View of Mathematical Objects," Synth se 84: 303 346, 1990. Parsons takes structuralism to be the view ...

Guiseppe Peano's "The principles of arithmetic, presented by a new method" (1889) The material below is excerpted from the translation of and the translator's preface ...

Papers 1 and 2 A 20 19 A 18 17 B 16 B 15 B 14 12 C 11 10 C 9 7 C 6 2 ShaughanLavine ...

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Paper 1 A 20 A 19 17 B 16 14 ShaughanLavine 28 Feb 2006 Paper 2 A 20 A 19 18 B 17 14 ShaughanLavine ...

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Philosophy of Language PhilosophyofLanguageSyllabus SomeConventionsandDefinitions AustinNatureofReality ShaughanLavine 18 Jan 2010

Graded papers may be picked up in the Philosophy Department office (Social Sciences Building). Finals may be reviewed at, but not removed from, the same location. ...

Philosophy of Language Professor Shaughan Lavine Philosophy 596L Spring 2010 Tuesday ...

Philosophy of Language Professor Shaughan Lavine Philosophy 463 and 563 Spring ...

Philosophy of Language Professor Shaughan Lavine Philosophy 463 and 563 Spring ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Due Dates PhilosophyofMathematicsSyllabus FirstPaperTopics SecondPaperTopics ...

Philosophy of Mathematics You can view this site just like any web site. If you want to be able to edit it, you must register. Once you have a WikiName and password ...

Philosophy of Mathematics You can view this site just like any web site. If you want to be able to edit it, you must register. Once you have a WikiName and password ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Due Dates The final exam will be of the same basic format as the midterm. It will be cumulative ...

http://zillion.philosophy.arizona.edu/twiki/bin/view/Courses/PhilosophyofMathematics2007 zillion.philosophy.arizona.edu/twiki/bin/view/ Courses/PhilosophyofMathematics ...

Presentation Sign up Sheet You must give a presentation on one of the articles or book excerpts to be discussed on a given day. There may be exceptions: if a reading ...

If your paper showed some effort, but showed that you misunderstood the nature of the assignment, I shall permit you to submit a replacement paper. ShaughanLavine ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Shaughan Lavine Fall 2007 Philosophy 4/516316 Building ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Philosophy 416/516 Spring 2005 Professor Shaughan Lavine Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 10:00 A.M. 10:50 A.M. 314 Modern Languages ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Professor Shaughan Lavine Philosophy 596S Fall 2006 ...

Philosophy of Mathematics Shaughan Lavine Spring 2007 Philosophy 4/516311 Sciences ...

Graded papers may be picked up in the Philosophy Department office (Social Sciences Building). Finals may be reviewed at, but not removed from, the same location. ...

Philosophy of Science Professor Shaughan Lavine Philosophy 420 and 520 Spring ...

What Is Physicalism? Crudely, physicalism is the view that there isn't anything other than physical objects in the physical world. The standard contrast is with Cartesian ...

The bulk of the Plantinga article discusses basic characterizations of modalities, possible worlds, and the like that I mostly discussed when we talked about Kripke ...

Knowledge of Mathematical Objects without Contact Wright and Hale and Frege $ D: The direction of line a is identical to the direction of line b. $ L: Line ...

Plenitudinous Platonism Plenitudinous platonism, which Balaguer takes to be the most defensible form of platonism, is the view that all logically possible mathematical ...

Poincar On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning 1894 Poincar did not know about what we now think of as logic. When he is referring to logic as syllogisms, this is ...

Popper Demarcation Demarcation criterion that enables us to tell what is science and what is not. He started with the opinion that physics is science, but Freudian ...

Popper's Falsificationism what makes a theory suitable for science is not being able to be verifiable but that it is falsifiable. The more falsifiable a theory is ...

Logicism Logicism is "the" view that mathematics is reducible to logic. Logicism foundered on the paradoxes. In order to avoid the paradoxes, Russell introduced the ...

Preview of Incompleteness Loose discussion of pp. 184 185. Theorem 30A No set of true sentences about arithmetic definable in arithmetic includes all the true sentences ...

Ontological Hedonism Remember Carnap's motivation in the article we read? His motivation is to show that empiricists can make use of whatever frameworks they want ...

Price on Quine again This time around, Price splits the claims attributed to Quine into two: 1. Realism 1. Naturalism, that is, the claim that what is real is ...

Why Price thinks Carnap and Ontological Antirealism Survived Quine Terminology: An ontological realist about Xs is, roughly, someone who thinks there is a legitimate ...

Classes Essentially the following definitions of how symbols for classes are used occur on pages 76 and 78 of I have used a system of notation that is common now ...

Principle of Determinism The principle is that every event has a cause. In the end, Ayer rejects the principle, but he also thinks that most of the standard arguments ...

Prisms, Mirrors, Mathematical Instruments Mathematical Instruments, Optical Instruments, Philosophical Instruments In the last class, we divided intruments up into ...

ProSeminar You can view this site just like any web site. If you want to be able to edit it, you must register. Once you have a WikiName and password, all you have ...

Induction and Confirmation What is it? All good (but not guaranteed) nondeductive arguments. Induction: Reasoning from lots of cases to a generalization: This raven ...

Logical empiricism seemed to be a viable form of empiricism in general and to provide a fruitful philosophy of science. A couple of generations of English speaking ...

1. You can't get correspondence rules. Examples $ solubility (dispositional terms Carnap): What observation is connected with the solubility of salt ...

Let's read as a Science of Patterns: Ontology and Reference, Michael D. Resnik Noûs, Vol. 15, No. 4, Special Issue on Philosophy of Mathematics. (Nov., 1981), pp. ...

The alphabet of the propositional calculus consists of capital italic letters, capital italic letters with numerical subscripts, and the following list of symbols ...

;; ;;; File: "mendelsonpropositionaleasy.scm" ;;; Copyright (c) 2009 by Shaughan Lavine. All Rights Reserved. ;;; Called "easy" because this is just a naive implementation ...

Last Published Publisher ShaughanLavine Date 07 May 2007 17:13 {PublishContrib}{Dir} c:/home/philosophy/faculty/slavine/public html/ {PublishContrib}{URL} http ...