VOLUME 7 • 2008
ADVANCED MATHEMATICAL THINKING AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT
ABSTRACT. Bergeson et al. claim that place value is extremely significant in mathematical learning. Tall focuses attention on psychological evidence of relevance to advanced mathematical thinking. English contends that complexity is the study of systems of interconnected components whose behavior ca..
EXISTA INCA UN SENS IN CARE MATEMATICA POATE AVEA FUNDAMENTE? (IV)
ABSTRACT. An analysis of traditional mathematical proof is undertaken, with an implicit contrast to formal derivations. The semantic interpretation of mathematical terms plays a role in the former that doesn’t appear in the latter. This semantic interpretation, with an accompanying role for intuitio..
CONTEXTUALISM, ANTICONTEXTUALISM, SI ARGUMENTELE FIECAREI POZITII
ABSTRACT. The aim of this paper is to develop a critique of the contemporary debate between "contextualists" and "anti-contextualists" with respect to the concept of propositional knowledge ("knowing that such and such"). Very roughly, I shall argue that both parties have failed to properly apprecia..
DUMNEZEU SI MORALITATE
ABSTRACT. My topic is - what follows from the nature and will of God for the moral goodness or badness of different human actions? I assume a standard Western account of the nature of God as omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, creator and sustainer (from moment to moment) of the Universe and all..
THE FUNDAMENTAL VIEW OF IDEALISM
ABSTRACT. Philosophies that are labelled as ’idealist’ are disparate, often conflicting with each other, even on what constitutes the nature of idealism. We can find, however, a common idea that finds expression in all of them: that what is possible is in some sense limited to what is conceivable. T..
RATIONALITY AND PRAGMATICS
ABSTRACT. Speech acts are intentional acts and as such lend themselves to philosophical analysis in terms of ends, means and the rules that govern them. Rationality involves norms of appropriateness of means for ends. Rationality considerations are, therefore, applicable to acts of language use. Som..
LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS MADE SIMPLE
ABSTRACT. This paper tries to capture the conventionality of natural language in much simpler terms than David Lewis’s, displaying continuity with more rudimentary non-coordinating conventions. Like these simpler natural conventions, natural language conventions do not involve regularities, either d..
TRUTH, METAPHOR, AND INDETERMINABILITY
ABSTRACT. This essay is an exposition, defense, supplementation, and elaboration of Donald Davidson’s account of metaphor. The first section outlines some features of Davidson’s account of language. The second section shows how Davidson’s account of metaphor as rhetorical fits with his general conce..
BARELY TRUE SUBJUNCTIVE CONDITIONALS AND ANTI-REALISM
ABSTRACT. Phenomenalism, as has often been observed, is an untenable position because it is committed to there being barely true subjunctive conditionals. In this paper I argue that all anti-realists are committed to there being such conditionals, and so if phenomenalism is untenable because of this..
DUMMETT AND THE PROBLEM OF THE VANISHING PAST
ABSTRACT. Dummett has recently presented his most mature and sophisticated version of justificationism, i.e. the view that meaning and truth are to be analysed in terms of justifiability. In this paper, I argue that this conception does not resolve a difficulty that also affected Dummett’s earlier v..
THE IDENTITY OF INDISCERNIBLES AND THE ARTICULABILITY OF CONCEPTS
ABSTRACT. This paper is a response to Robin Jeshion’s criticisms of my recent defense of the Identity of Indiscernibles. Jeshion’s criticisms are shown to fail to do justice to some very natural and compelling demands for an explanation of certain features of our concepts, in particular the concept ..
DENNETT’S REDUCTION OF BRENTANO’S INTENTIONALITY
ABSTRACT. Since as far back as the middle ages, philosophers have been concerned with the inner representations of the mind. St Thomas Aquinas suggested that when he thinks of an object, the object of his thought has a different sort of existence in his mind. Indeed, there certainly seems to be a di..