Arthur Pap’s work played an important role in the development of the analytic tradition. This role goes beyond the merely historical fact that Pap’s views of dispositional and modal concepts were influential. As a sympathetic critic of logical empiricism, Pap, like Quine, saw a deep tension in logical empiricism at its very best in the work of Carnap. But Pap’s critique of Carnap is quite different from Quine’s, and represents the discovery of limits beyond which empiricism cannot go, where there (...) lies nothing other than intuitive knowledge of logic itself. Pap’s arguments for this intuitive knowledge anticipate Etchemendy’s recent critique of the model-theoretic account of logical consequence. Pap’s work also anticipates prominent developments in the contemporary neo-Fregean philosophy of mathematics championed by Wright and Hale. Finally, Pap’s major philosophical preoccupation, the concepts of necessity and possibility, provides distinctive solutions and perspectives on issues of contemporary concern in the metaphysics of modality. In particular, Pap’s account of modality allows us to see the significance of Kripke’s well-known arguments on necessity and apriority in a new light. (shrink)

Definitions can be classified from two different points of view. We can ask what sort of statements definitions are, how they are to be justified, and what purpose they serve in the process of acquiring scientific knowledge. For lack of a simpler word, let us call a classification of definitions from this point of view epistemological. We can also distinguish different forms of definition; and a classification from this point of view is naturally called formal.

The repudiation of propositions as “obscure entities” which is prevalent among logicians and philosophers of “nominalistic” persuasion, is frequently justified by pointing out that no agreement seems ever to have been reached about the identity-condition of propositions. And if we cannot specify, so they argue, under what conditions two sentences express the same proposition, then we use the word “proposition” without any clear meaning. Quine, for example, feels far less uneasy about quantification over class-variables than about quantification over attribute-variables and (...) propositional variables, because there is a clear criterion for deciding whether we are dealing with two classes or with only one class referred to by different predicates: two classes are identical if they have the same membership. And such a criterion of identity is alleged to be lacking for intensions. (shrink)

1m Studienjahr 1953/54 hielt ich an der Universitat Wien als Gast­ professor Vorlesungen und Seminare uber die gegenwartige analytische Philosophie in USA und England. Auf Grund einer Einladung durch die philosophische Fakultat, die hauptsachlich der Initiative von em. o. o. Professor Dr. VICTOR KRAFT zu verdanken war, wurde mir zu diesem Zweck yom amerikanischen State Department ein "Fulbright"­ Stipendium gewahrt. Das vorliegende Buch entsprang dieser Tatigkeit. Es ware jedoch ohne die sachverstandige und enthusiastische Mitarbeit von Dr. PAUL FEYERABEND, dem ich (...) hiermit meinen herzlichen Dank aussprechen will, kaum in so kurzer Zeit zustandegekommen. Fragmente eines Vorlesungsmanuskriptes lagen nur fUr die ersten drei Kapitel vor. Dr. FEYERABEND verfertigte die fehlenden Partien ex post facto auf Grund der N otizen, die er sich, als auBergewohnlich aktiver "Horer", bei den Vorlesungen und Seminaren machte. Ich unterzog sein Manuskript einer grundlichen Revision, hier und dort auch Erweiterungen anbringend; der groBte Teil des Buches entstand auf diese Weise. Auch die anregenden Diskussionen mit Dr. FEYERABEND, innerhalb und auBerhalb der Vor­ lesungen und Seminare, waren ein betrachtlicher Ansporn zum Schreiben dieses Buches. (shrink)