Philosophy Commons^™

Demos Agonistes Redux: Reflections On The Streit Of Political Agonism, Christa Davis Acampora

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Nature And Nurture In Cognition, Muhammad Ali Khalidi

Publications and Research

This paper advocates a dispositional account of innate cognitive capacities, which has an illustrious history from Plato to Chomsky. The ‘triggering model’ of innateness, first made explicit by Stich ([1975]), explicates the notion in terms of the relative informational content of the stimulus (input) and the competence (output). The advantage of this model of innateness is that it does not make a problematic reference to normal conditions and avoids relativizing innate traits to specific populations, as biological models of innateness are forced to do. Relativization can be avoided in the case of cognitive capacities precisely because informational content is involved. …

Violence, Mourning, Politics, Judith Butler

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I’d like to speak to you this evening on the matter of politics and, specifically, how the struggles of gender and sexual minorities might offer a perspective on current issues that are before us, questions of mourning and violence, which we have to deal with as part of an international community. I'd like to start, and to end, with the question of the human, of who counts as the human, and the related question of whose lives count as lives, and with a question that has preoccupied many of us for years: what makes for a grievable life. I believe …

On The Grounds Of Globalization: A Topography For Feminist Political Engagement, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

Globalization is nothing new. Global trade has been going on for millennia—though what constitutes the "globe" has expanded dramatically in that time. And trade is nothing if not cultural exchange, the narrow distinctions between the economic and the cultural having long been rendered obsolete. Moreover, our forbears, like us, were great "miscegenators." If here I gloss the racialized and gendered violence often associated with miscegenation, I do so strategically to note that all recourse to purity, indigeneity, or aboriginality—however useful strategically—should be subject to at least as much scrutiny as the easy romance with hybridity (see Mitchell 1997). Globalization has …

Wittgenstein And The Grammar Of Physics: A Study Of Ludwig Wittgenstein's 1929-1930 Manuscripts And The Roots Of His Later Philosophy, Anton Alterman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1929 Wittgenstein began to work on the first philosophical manuscripts he had kept since completing the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (TLP) in 1918. The impetus for this was his conviction that the logic of the TLP was flawed: it was unable to account for the fact that a proposition that assigns a single value on a continuum to a simple object thereby excludes all assignments of different values to the object (the "color exclusion" problem). Consequently Wittgenstein's "atomic propositions" could not be logically independent of one another.

Initially he thought he could replace the "logically perfect language" of the TLP with …

Deflating Deflationism, Bradley Philip Armour-Garb

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I take a close look at the deflationary theory of truth, and deflationary semantics, generally. My thesis is that, as a theory about the nature and function of the property of truth, deflationism is well supported. However, deflationary semantics, which combines deflationism about truth with deflationism about meaning cannot be argued for by pointing to the expressive function of the truth predicate.

Having shown that deflationism about meaning cannot be argued for in this way, I develop a challenge to deflationary semantics, the challenge of the contingency of sentential truth conditions. The challenge for the deflationist …

Rationalism In Normative Budget Theory, Dan Williams

Publications and Research

This paper concerns epistemological rationalism and the norms used by governments to instruct their officers to perform their duties. The particular duty I discuss here is preparation of and action on the budget. In this paper I use "rationalism" as the opposite of "empiricism." This rationalism does not refer to "'economic rationality," it refers to the method of attaining knowledge associated with introspection, logic, and a priori knowledge. It is opposed to the method of attaining knowledge associated with observation, experiment, and evidence. By "norms, “normative," and other related terms, I mean action guiding language. Four senses of normative are …

Some Consequences Of Semantic Externalism, Consuelo Preti

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Semantic externalism is the view that meaning and mental content are determined by relations to the world of objects and properties outside the physical boundaries of the subject of mental states. What you mean by your words–what you're thinking when you're thinking about something–is essentially constituted by the world at large. It has become customary to formulate externalism in terms of so-called twin earth cases–cases where (some kinds of) content do not supervene on inner states, but this formulation can be shown to be too limited to be of any great use in characterizing a theory of mind. A more …

Le Contrat Social, Une Œuvre Genevoise? L’École Du Droit Naturel Et Le Débat Politique À Genève. La Réponse De Rousseau, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

La question de l'influence de Genève sur les idées politiques et religieuses de Jean-Jacques Rousseau est discutée depuis plus de deux cents ans. Cependant, au cours des années, les suppositions méthodologiques sous-jacentes au débat sont restées fondamentalement les mêmes, et elles ont besoin d'être modifiées. C'est pourquoi il est encore nécéssaire de réexaminer un vieux sujet selon une nouvelle approche. Au lieu de voir Genève simplement en tant que source d'idées que Rousseau a pu adopter, il faudrait voir Genève comme fournissant des problèmes concrets et intellectuels que Rousseau a tâché de résoudre.

On Public Language And Private Language, Rohit J. Parikh

Publications and Research

It is discussed how a discussion of private experiences and qualia can arise in personal life. The examples used are an accident with a truck and a possible operation by researchers at CUNY.

Christopher Caudwell And His Critics: A Study Of Caudwell's Philosophy Of Art And The Critical Response, Thomas Riggins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis deals with the philosophy of art of the British Marxist, Christopher Caudwell. It begins with a general discussion of the intellectual environment of Caudwell's day–i.e., the 1920s and 30s in Europe and especially in England. It then procedes to a presentation of Caudwell's basic philosophical position with major emphasis on his work Illusion and Reality. This is followed by a review of the critical assessment Caudwell's ideas evoked and a number of detractors and supporters are discussed. Special attention is then placed on a review of the aesthetic theory of Socialist Realism and Caudwell's relation to it. …

Foundationalism And The Proper Stopping Place For Socratic Questioning, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Conclusion. Bibliography., Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Probability, Terminating Judgments, Memory, And Justified Belief, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Chisholm's Rules Of Evidence, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Directly Evident, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Given, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Foundationalism, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Probability And Foundationalism, Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

[Foundationalism And Perceptual Knowledge], Richard Legum

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Aristotle's Conception Of Megalopsychia, Kevin Patrick Osborne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

An Alternative Policy For Obtaining Cadaver Organs For Transplantation, James L. Muyskens

Publications and Research

Two moral principles have been basic to the legal decisions concerning the rights and duties toward the newly dead. They are the duty to give decent burial and the denial to anyone of a right to ownership of the dead body for commercial profit. The next-of-kin-rather than the church or the state­ have come to bear the primary responsibility for providing decent burial.

The familial duty to give decent burial has come to be understood as a legal right to determine what is to be done to the body in the interval between death and burial.

Armed with this right, …

D-Structures And Their Semantics, Rohit J. Parikh

Publications and Research

"Many logicians are familiar with the game theoretic approach to semantics, due to Jaakko Hintikka. This paper by me contains class notes of a logic course at Boston University in fall 1972. It has similar game theoretic ideas, developed quite independently, but influenced by the work of A. Ehrenfeucht. It applies to a larger class of logics, including classical logic, intuitionistic logic and the *-semantics of Ehrenfeucht. The treatment is via D-structures which are finite approximations of infinite structures. For various reasons I did not publish this paper then, but some abstracts, both by myself as well as joint abstracts …