scholarly journals TRUTH, REALISM, RELATIVISM: INTERCONNECTION AND RECIPROCAL DEFINABILITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
Anna Laktionova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Formal Modeling ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Paul Boghossian

In the contemporary English-language philosophy the problems of truth, realism, and relativism appear actual and interconnected; this evidences reciprocal complementarity and definability between metaphysics, epistemology and methodologies of philosophical investigations. In the article relevant views of prominent today philosophers – Paul Boghossian, Crispin Wright, JC Beall – are comparatively analyzed. In the considered articles the ordinary view on dispute of inclinations is analyzed in competition with other possible interpretations. For example, one person likes stewed rhubarb, another – doesn’t. This is a case of true disagreement: each person maintains the position that another denies. Such disagreement Wright calls the dispute of inclinations; ordinary view on dispute of inclinations involves: really incompatible attitudes (contradiction), the faultlessness of each side, rational maintaining of the view in spite of obvious unresolved disagreement (sustainability). According to Boghossian the attitude of relativism involves tree components: metaphysical – denying of “absolute” facts of a certain type (from some specific investigative domain) in favor of relative; recommendational – permission to accept only appropriate relative propositions; limiting – about meanings which allow unexpected parameters that relativize. Beall advocates “Polarity View” and fruitfully applies it to analyze the ordinary view. Modeling of the former involves: concepts of truthmakers, positive and negative polarity, atomic facts, situational semantics. The formal modeling and philosophical explanation coincide. Each of the authors defends realism and correspondence understanding of truth (in particular truth as relation of proposition’s correspondence to a fact); and also opposes relativism. At the same time, relativism turns out to be an inevitable (at least implicitly inherent to all three authors) tendency, which testifies to at least the contextual (Boghossian) relativity of non-cognitive concepts or competencies (Wright); functional fixation of facts in their application (Beall).

English-Language Philosophy 1750-1945.

1995 ◽  
Vol 45 (181) ◽  
pp. 540
Author(s):  
Stuart Brown ◽  
John Skorupski
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Language Philosophy

Poincaré, Jules Henri (1854–1912)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Stump
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
English Language ◽  
Philosophy Of Mathematics ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
Theory Of Relativity ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Non Euclidean Geometry

Although primarily a mathematician, Henri Poincaré wrote and lectured extensively on astronomy, theoretical physics, philosophy of science and philosophy of mathematics at the turn of the century. In philosophy, Poincaré is famous for the conventionalist thesis that we may choose either Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry in physics, claiming that space is neither Euclidean nor non-Euclidean and that geometry is neither true nor false. However, Poincaré’s conventionalism was not global, as some have claimed. Poincaré held that only geometry and perhaps a few principles of mechanics are conventional, and argued that science does discover truth, despite a conventional element. Poincaré followed new developments in mathematics and physics closely and was involved in discussion of the foundations of mathematics and in the development of the theory of relativity. He was an important transitional figure in both of these areas, sometimes seeming ahead of his time and sometimes seeming very traditional. Perhaps because of the breadth of his views or because of the way in which philosophers focused on issues or small pieces of his work rather than on accurate history, interpretations of Poincaré vary greatly. Frequently cited by the logical positivists as a precursor, and widely discussed in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of mathematics, Poincaré’s writings have had a strong impact on English-language philosophy.

scholarly journals Analytical Anthropology of Peter Hacker

2021 ◽  
pp. 142-149
Author(s):  
V. Y Popov ◽  
Е. V Popova
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Intellectual Ability ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Foundations ◽  
European Philosophy

Purpose. The article is an explication of the features of the anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the context of analytical philosophy with consideration to the context of European philosophy within the framework of the Oxford School of ordinary language philosophy. The theoretical basis of the research is determined by the latest research in the English-language analytical philosophical tradition, rethinking the place of anthropological problems in the system of philosophical knowledge. Originality. Referring to primary sources, we reconstructed the philosophical and anthropological teaching of Peter Hacker in the unity of its basic principles and theoretical and practical results. We determined philosophical origins of the key ideas of his philosophical anthropology and substantiated their originality, systematicity and logical argumentation. His philosophical position is defined as anthropological holism, synthesizing the reinterpreted ideas of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. Conclusions. Peter Hacker is the creator of the original version of Analytic Philosophical Anthropology. His anthropology is based on criticism of Cartesian dualism and physicalism, which underlie modern neurosciences and which he tries to overcome on the basis of Wittgenstein’s philosophical "logotherapy". The conceptual framework of his holistic anthropology is a rethought conceptual scheme of the Ordinary language philosophy. Hacker considers consciousness not as a separate mental reality, but one of the powers of human nature – an intellectual ability, which, along with emotional (passionate) and moral, belongs to a person as an integral socio-biological being. Asserting the free will of man, the Oxford thinker criticizes various forms of determinism, especially its most common form in modern science – neurobiological determinism, which is built on false philosophical foundations. This criticism allows the modern British philosopher to build an original, systematic and logically consistent anthropological concept that asserts the immutability of the highest human values – goodness, love and happiness.

Notebook

Philosophy ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-471
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representation ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Royal Institute ◽  
Annual Lecture ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Christopher Peacocke ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Paul Boghossian

NotebookRoyal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture Series, 2000–2001Logic, Thought and Language200013 October Mark Sainsbury What Logic Should We Think With?20 October Gregory McCulloch Mental Representation27 October Julia Tanney Self-Knowledge, Normativity, and Construction3 November Barry Smith Thought and Language10 November Alan Millar The Normativity of Intention and Meaning17 November Gabriel Segal tba24 November David Wiggins tba1 December Crispin Wright Relativism and Classical Logic8 December Jennifer Hornsby Communication200119 January Christopher Peacocke tba26 January M. G. F. Martin Language2 February A. W. Moore What Are These familiar Words Doing Here?9 February Scott Surgeon The Conditionality of Thought16 February Timothy Williamson Possible Beings23 February S. G. Williams Ambiguity2 March Bob Hale Logical Knowledge9 March Charles Travis Rethinking Psychologism16 March Paul Boghossian Rational BeliefAll Lectures to be given at 14 Gordon Square, London WC1 on Fridays at 5.45 pm. Admission is free.

scholarly journals Realist and antirealist interpretations of Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations

2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
Andrej Jandric
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Semantic Realism ◽  
Conceptual Distinction ◽  
Sceptical Paradox

The sceptical paradox which Kripke found in Wittgenstein?s rule-following considerations threatens the very notion of meaning. However, Kripke also offered a sceptical solution to it, according to which semantic sentences have no truth conditions, but their meaning is determined by assertability conditions instead. He presented Wittgenstein?s development as the abandoning of semantic realism of the Tractatus in favour of semantic antirealism, characteristic of Philosophical Investigations. Crispin Wright, although at points critical of Kripke?s interpretation, also understood the rule-following considerations as containing a crucial argument for antirealism. Contrary to Wright, John McDowell maintained that they offer a transcendental argument for realism. In this paper, I will argue that neither the realist nor the antirealist reading is faithfull to Wittgenstein, as his important conceptual distinction between criteria and symptoms is not adequately recoverable in any of them. Hence the upshot of rulefollowing considerations is that the distinction between realism and antirealism should not be articulated in terms of truth/assertability conditions.

How Austin does things with words

Dialogue ◽  
1963 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 337-345
Author(s):  
Jon Wheatley
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Life Time ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
What Is Said ◽  
To Come ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Simple Sentences ◽  
The Way

Professor J. L. Austin published only reluctantly during his life time so that we are getting much of his major work after his death. I think this an enormous pity as there would be much to be learned from his answers to the criticisms which have already been given to his books by critical reviewers. I differ from many of the reviewers in that I think How To Do Things With Words is one of the most important books, if not the most important, to come out since Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Like the Investigations, to a superficial glance it exists in isolation. That is, in it there is little discussion of current or traditional philosophical problems and the application of what is said to these problems is a matter, in large part, for the reader. The book itself consists in a set of relatively simple sentences, almost all of them about some aspect of the English language; it therefore represents not so much a problem of interpretation as the problem of which way up we shall look at it. The obvious way to look at it, the way Austin explicitly offers us, is as the Pursuit of the Performative. For reasons I shall give later, I do not think this is the best way to look at it but it is the way with which I shall start.

scholarly journals The meaning of negation in the second language classroom: Evidence from ‘any’

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kook-Hee Gil ◽  
Heather Marsden ◽  
Melinda Whong
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Textbook Analysis ◽  
Polarity Item ◽  
Negative Polarity Item ◽  
Lexical Semantic ◽  
Lower Accuracy ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
Arabic Speaking

This article brings together an experimental study involving L2 knowledge of negation in English and an analysis of how English language textbooks treat negation, in order to consider whether textbook explanations of negation could better exploit linguistic insights into negation. We focus on the English negative polarity item any, whose distribution is contingent on negation, whether through the explicit negator not or through lexical semantic negators (e.g. hardly). Our experiment compares Chinese-speaking learners with existing data from Arabic-speaking learners, finding lower accuracy on any with lexical semantic negators in both groups. Our textbook analysis reveals an approach to negation that is limited to form, focusing on the explicit negator not without explicit treatment of other types of negation. We propose that emphasizing the meaning of negation, with explicit treatment of the full range of negative forms could facilitate more complete acquisition across a range of grammatical properties where negation plays a role.

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