In Part I of this series, we presented the microscopic approach to Souslin-tree constructions, and argued that all known ⋄-based constructions of Souslin trees with various additional properties may be rendered as applications of our approach. In this paper, we show that constructions following the same approach may be carried out even in the absence of ⋄. In particular, we obtain a new weak sufficient condition for the existence of Souslin trees at the level of a strongly inaccessible cardinal. We (...) also present a new construction of a Souslin tree with an ascent path, thereby increasing the consistency strength of such a tree's nonexistence from a Mahlo cardinal to a weakly compact cardinal. Section 2 of this paper is targeted at newcomers with minimal background. It offers a comprehensive exposition of the subject of constructing Souslin trees and the challenges involved. (shrink)

In two early and famous papers, “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make our Ideas Clear”, devoted to describing the “method of scientific investigation”, we are presented with some of the most basic and problematic features of Peirce’s thought. In the former paper Peirce surveys four ‘methods’ of arriving at beliefs and argues that the scientific method is superior to its alternatives because in it the concept of reality is operative. It alone contains as a “fundamental hypothesis” the belief (...) that there are real things and it alone has the prerogative of bringing about the coincidence of our beliefs and the facts. But curiously enough, the survey introducing these contentions is conducted from a rather different vantage point. For in it Peirce departs from the thesis that we human beings face the problem of replacing disturbing and irritating doubts with beliefs, and appears to argue that because we are social animals the only genuinely effective means of achieving this end is by employing the scientific method. In the latter paper Peirce formulates his maxim for clarifying ideas and proceeds to apply it to the ideas of truth and reality. As a result of this ‘clarification’, the meanings of these ideas are seen to be logically implicated with the methodology of scientific inquiry. In this paper I shall examine Peirce’s views on these obviously questionable points and I will try to show that when properly understood they are not vulnerable to some, at least, of the criticisms brought against them. While the matter cannot be argued here, it is my conviction that the positions we are dealing with are very basic both to Peirce’s philosophy and to any philosophical scheme warranting the label “pragmatism”. (shrink)

Providing a unique interpretation of Kant's theory of judgement as integral to his overall project, Claudia Brodsky explores his continued relevance to contemporary theoretical concerns. The Linguistic Condition traces how Kant combined sensus communis, or common sense with the communicative nature of judgement to reveal that, for him, acts of judgement are dependent on their linguistic articulation, so that in Kantian philosophy language and judgement are inextricably linked. In this first in-depth analysis of language in the Critique of Judgement, (...) Brodsky forms creative connections between literature and philosophy. (shrink)

An ℵ1-Souslin tree is a complicated combinatorial object whose existence cannot be decided on the grounds of ZFC alone. But fifteen years after Tennenbaum and Jech independently devised notions of forcing for introducing such a tree, Shelah proved that already the simplest forcing notion—Cohen forcing—adds an ℵ1-Souslin tree. In this article, we identify a rather large class of notions of forcing that, assuming a GCH-type hypothesis, add a λ+-Souslin tree. This class includes Prikry, Magidor, and Radin forcing.

The paper argues that the philosophy that was taught in Orthodox schools of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in late 16th – early 17th century and then became the ideological basis for the Moscow “Latinism” can be attributed to so-called Second scholasticism. The main features of Second scholasticism are the rejection of predestination in theology, usage of probabilistic approaches in logic and ethics and confrontation with absolutism in politics. These features made Second scholasticism unacceptable for absolute monarchies emerging in Europe (including the (...) Russian Empire) which utilized universal rationalism of the early Enlightenment as an ideological basis. Both in Western Europe and in Russia Second scholasticism became “a zone of cultural exclusion”. However prevalence of Second scholasticism in Orthodox schools of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth concurred with making up of the Ukrainian cultural originality and in many respects defined characteristic features of the Ukrainian mentality. (shrink)

by Charlee BrodskyStephanie Byram was my friend. She died of breast cancer at age thirty-eight on June 9, 2001. She lived eight years after the disease was discovered.With her cancer diagnosis at age thirty, Stephanie’s life changed. She became more known to others than she would have otherwise. She always had a close circle of friends who were drawn to her because of her candor, her intellect, her impish humor, her steadiness, her sensitivity. But after her diagnosis, many more people (...) knew of Stephanie Byram because of her willingness to share. Stephanie went public with breast cancer.Stephanie called the work that we produced our “art project.” The work consisted of my photographs and her words, and it took many forms. We exhibited in galleries; published pieces in newspapers, magazines, and journals; produced a thirty-minute video with filmmaker Mary Rawson; and the Univeristy of Pittsburgh published the work as a book. The project garnered recognition and many awards.Recently, I d .. (shrink)

This book examines the premises and principles of Kant's explicitly interdisciplinary philosophy in its specific relation to the defining features, means and aims of literature. It provides readers with analyses of Kant's relationship to literature along intersecting, internal and external lines.

Claudia Brodsky skillfully combines close readings of narrative works by Goethe, Austen, Balzac, Stendhal, Melville, and Proust with a detailed analysis of the relation between Kant's critical epistemology and narrative theory. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal (...) of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

There are many loose ends in this study and I shall make no effort to tie them together in some neat summary. I trust that my basic sympathies with Dewey have been clear throughout. What I have discovered in the course of writing this is that reflecting upon Dewey's work in the light of contemporary problems and schools of philosophy not only casts light on these problems and schools but enhances one's appreciation for the distinctiveness, coherence and value of his (...) work. (shrink)

It is considerably easier to say that modern philosophy began with Descartes than it is to define the modernity and philosophy to which Descartes gave rise. In _Lines of Thought_, Claudia Brodsky Lacour describes the double origin of modern philosophy in Descartes’s _Discours de la méthode_ and _Géométrie_, works whose interrelation, she argues, reveals the specific nature of the modern in his thought. Her study examines the roles of discourse and writing in Cartesian method and intuition, and the significance (...) of graphic architectonic form in the genealogy of modern philosophy. While Cartesianism has long served as a synonym for rationalism, the contents of Descartes’s method and _cogito_ have remained infamously resistant to rational analysis. Similarly, although modern phenomenological analyses descend from Descartes’s notion of intuition, the “things” Cartesian intuitions represent bear no resemblance to phenomena. By returning to what Descartes calls the construction of his “foundation” in the _Discours_, Brodsky Lacour identifies the conceptual problems at the root of Descartes’s literary and aesthetic theory as well as epistemology. If, for Descartes, linear extension and “I” are the only “things” we can know exist, the Cartesian subject of thought, she shows, derives first from the intersection of discourse and drawing, representation and matter. The crux of that intersection, Brodsky Lacour concludes, is and must be the _cogito_, Descartes’s theoretical extension of thinking into material being. Describable in accordance with the _Géométrie_ as a freely constructed line of thought, the _cogito_, she argues, extends historically to link philosophy with theories of discursive representation and graphic delineation after Descartes. In conclusion, Brodsky Lacour analyzes such a link in the writings of Claude Perrault, the architectural theorist whose reflections on beauty helped shape the seventeenth-century dispute between “the ancients and the moderns.” Part of a growing body of literary and interdisciplinary considerations of philosophical texts, _Lines of Thought_ will appeal to theorists and historians of literature, architecture, art, and philosophy, and those concerned with the origin and identity of the modern. (shrink)

(2003). Ethical and Professional Demands for Forensic Mental Health Professionals in the Post-Atkins Era. Ethics & Behavior: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 3-9.

A memoir of one womanÆs struggle against breast cancer reveals how she channeled her energy to transform her life, even as she was dying.

Dewey’s formulation of a naturalistic account of experience has been criticized from time to time on the grounds that it is anthropomorphic, subjectivistic and idealistic. In this paper I wish to examine some of the issues associated with these charges in the light of two recent discussions of Dewey’s thought.

In this paper I advance an interpretation of Nietzsche's notions of amor fati and eternal recurrence in which they are taken to delimit the project of becoming well-disposed to life and oneself. I argue that interpreted in this way these notions do not have the problematic implications which stand in the way of our adopting them and, in fact, cast light on how we may theoretically understand and practically live our lives.

The latter point is clearly illustrated by Ayer's study which is composed of two long essays, one devoted to Peirce and the other to James. Ayer says much that is stimulating and enlightening about Peirce's theory of science, signs and categories and about James' radical empiricism. But he makes virtually no effort to relate these topics to one another or to integrate them in some over-view of pragmatism. He does point out.

Since virtually all aspects of Marx's thought have been competently scrutinized during the past decade or so, it is not surprising that most of what Love says about it is familiar and uncontroversial. The one obvious exception is Love's view that Marx does not explain history teleologically. Only those who construe teleological explanations in a naive, quasi-positivistic manner will find this unexceptionable. Fortunately, neither this point nor the familiarity of Love's views of Marx obscures what is worthwhile in this seriously (...) flawed work, its treatment of the political content and ramifications of Nietzsche's philosophy. (shrink)