Professor [H.W.] Sheldon's critique of contemporary naturalism as professed in the volume Naturalism and the Human Spirit consists of one central "accusation": naturalism is materialism pure and simple. This charge is supported by his further claim that since the scientific method naturalists espouse for acquiring reliable knowledge of nature is incapable of yielding knowledge of the mental or spiritual "nature" for the naturalist is definitionally limited to "physical nature." He therefore concludes that instead of being a philosophy which can settle (...) age-old conflicts between materialism and idealism, naturalism is no more than a partisan standpoint, and contributes no new philosophical synthesis. ... (shrink)

Different inferences in probabilistic logics of conditionals 'preserve' the probabilities of their premisses to different degrees. Some preserve certainty, some high probability, some positive probability, and some minimum probability. In the first case conclusions must have probability I when premisses have probability 1, though they might have probability 0 when their premisses have any lower probability. In the second case, roughly speaking, if premisses are highly probable though not certain then conclusions must also be highly probable. In the third case (...) conclusions must have positive probability when premisses do, and in the last case conclusions must be at least as probable as their least probable premisses. Precise definitions and well known examples are given for each of these properties, characteristic principles are shown to be valid and complete for deriving conclusions of each of these kinds, and simple trivalent truthtable 'tests' are described for determining which properties are possessed by any given inference. Brief comments are made on the application of these results to certain modal inferences such as "Jones may own a car, and if he does he will have a driver's license. Therefore, he may have a driver's license.". (shrink)

My own serious study of Max Scheler began in 1958 when I pre sented a Master's thesis to St. Louis University under the direction of Professor Vernon]. Bourke on Scheler's value-theory. Three years later when I returned to complete my doctorate work at St. Louis University I returned also to the study of Max Scheler. In the meantime, several more volumes of the Gesammelte Werke had appeared, several new translations of Scheler were published and the whole area ofphenome nology began (...) to be more favorably accepted by the American intel lectual community. My doctoral dissertation was on Scheler's theory of community under the expert and careful direction of Professor James Collins. The bulk of the present work is a direct result of my work at St. Louis University. I have never regretted the time and effort spent on the study of Scheler. He can be classified as nothing short of a genius, not only in the breadth of his interests but also in the vitality, unity and depth of his thought. Most students of Scheler criticize his lack of unity; I claim to find strong lines of inner consistency throughout his writings. In the second place, my study of Scheler has put me into contact with many of the most dominant intellectual influences of the day. (shrink)

I suppose that 'ravens are black' is an inexact generalization having a degree of truth measured by the proportion of ravens that are black, and a probability measured by its expected degree of truth in different 'possible worlds.' Given this, 'ravens are black' differs in truth, probability, and confirmation from 'non-black things are not ravens', and this suggests a new approach to Hempel's Paradox as well as to other aspects of confirmation. Basic concepts of a formal theory developing this approach (...) are described, and some of its fundamental laws are given, together with sketches of applications. (shrink)

The purpose of this note is to dispute Michael Ayers' claim that "there is no special problem of subjunctive conditionals".

Grice's arguments that ordinary language indicative conditionals are logically equivalent to material conditionals are criticized. It is agreed that 'indirectness conditions' going beyond the material conditional can "sometimes" be detached' from ordinary language conditionals, but it is argued that this is not always possible. An example in which a speaker who knows that some mushrooms are non-poisonous tells a hearer "if you eat those mushrooms you will be poisoned", causing the hearer not to eat the mushrooms, is discussed, and it (...) is argued that this utterance should be regarded as factually unsatisfactory', and therefore, by Grice's own standards, false. (shrink)

In the December 2004 issue of Teaching Philosophy, readers were challenged to respond to Richard Schmitt’s essay, “Is the Unexamined Life Not Worth Living?” Here is one response.

The present survey was voluntarily and anonymously completed by 2,196 students enrolled in business courses at the University of Southern Mississippi. The intent of the survey was to determine whether or not age or gender played a role in a person''s perception of proper ethical conduct.The findings suggests that gender is a significant factor in the determination of ethical conduct and that females are more ethical than males in their perception of business ethical situations.

How do concepts of topology such as that of a boundary apply to the empirical world? Take the example of a chess board, represented here with black squares in black and red squares in white. We see by looking at the board that the squares of any one color have common boundaries only with squares of the opposite color, but each square has corners in common with other squares of the same color, which are points at which their common boundaries (...) intersect. For example, the white square labelled ‘A’ has common boundaries with the black squares that surround it, and common corners with the white squares like square B that are diagonally adjacent to it. (shrink)

This book is less about disjunction than about the English word ‘or’, and it is less for than against formal logicians—more exactly, against those who maintain that formal logic can be applied in certain ways to the evaluation of reasoning formulated in ordinary English. Nevertheless, there are many things to interest such of those persons who are willing to overlook the frequent animadversions directed against their kind in the book, and this review will concentrate on them.

Aspects of a formal theory of approximate generalizations, according to which they have degrees of truth measurable by the proportions of their instances for which they are true, are discussed. The idealizability of laws in theories of fundamental measurement is considered: given that the laws of these theories are only approximately true "in the real world", does it follow that slight changes in the extensions of their predicates would make them exactly true?

An informal theory is set forth of relations between abstract entities, includingcolors, physical quantities, times, andplaces in space, and the concrete things thathave them, or areat orin them, based on the assumption that there are close analogies between these relations and relations between abstractsets and the concrete things that aremembers of them. It is suggested that even standard scientific usage of these abstractions presupposes principles that are analogous to postulates of abstraction, identity, and other fundamental principles of set theory. Also (...) discussed is the significance of important disanalogies between sets and physical abstractions, including especiallymodal andtemporal aspects of physical abstractions, which is related to the problem of the characterizingconstancy, of colors, physical attributes, and locations in space. (shrink)

Applying first-order logic to derive the consequences of laws that are only approximately true of empirical phenomena involves idealization of a kind that is akin to applying arithmetic to calculate the area of a rectangular surface from approximate measures of the lengths of its sides. Errors in the data, in the exactness of the lengths in one case and in the exactness of the laws in the other, are in some measure transmitted to the consequences deduced from them, and the (...) aim of a theory of idealization is to describe this process. The present paper makes a start on this in the case of applied first-order logic, and relates it to Plato's picture of a world or model of 'appearances' in which laws are only approximately true, but which to some extent resembles an ideal world or model in which they are exactly true. (shrink)

That inferences of the form "If M then S and possibly M, therefore possibly S" are invalid in possible worlds modal logics can be viewed as another fallacy of material implication. However, this paper argues that properly analyzing this and related inferences requires treating the possibility involved as a practical modality. Specifically, ordinary language propositions of the form "It is possible that M" must be understood to mean that there is a non-negligible probability of M being the case. But this (...) entails reexamining the very idea of logical validity. (shrink)

Violence is not a free, self-creative activity but exactly the opposite; it is a passive, slavish response; it is falling victim to overpowering passions.

A kind of ‘isomorphism’ is commented on, between the relation of wants to indicative conditionals and the relation of wishes to counter‐factual conditionals. Among other things, it is suggested that Richard Jeffrey’s theory of decision applies equally to degrees of ‘wishedforness’.