Philosophical analysis was the central preoccupation of 20th-century analytic philosophy. In the contemporary methodological debate, however, it faces a number of pressing external and internal challenges. While external challenges, like those from experimental philosophy or semantic externalism, have been extensively discussed, internal challenges to philosophical analysis have received much less attention. One especially vexing internal challenge is that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are deeply unclear. According to the standard textbook view, a philosophical analysis aims at a strict biconditional (...) that captures the necessary and sufficient conditions for membership in the relevant category. The textbook view arguably identifies a necessary condition on successful philosophical analyses, but understood as a sufficient condition it is untenable, as I will argue in this paper. To this end, I first uncover eight conditions of adequacy on successful philosophical analyses, some of which have rarely been spelled out in detail. As we shall see, even sophisticated alternatives to the textbook view fail to accommodate some of these conditions. I then propose the concept grounding view as a more promising account of philosophical analysis. According to this view, successful philosophical analyses require necessary biconditionals that are constrained by grounding relations among the concepts involved. Apart from providing a satisfactory account of philosophical analysis in its own right, the concept grounding view is also able to meet the challenge that the success conditions of philosophical analysis are problematically unclear. (shrink)

According to the so-called metaphysical conception of analyticity, analytic truths are true in virtue of meaning (or content) alone and independently of (extralinguistic) facts. Quine and Boghossian have tried to present a conclusive argument against the metaphysical conception of analyticity. In effect, they tried to show that the metaphysical conception inevitably leads into a highly implausible view about the truthmakers of analytic truths. We would like to show that their argument fails, since it relies on an ambiguity of the notion (...) of 'independence of (extralinguistic) facts'. If one distinguishes between variation independence and existence independence, the unwelcome view about the truthmakers of analytic truths no longer follows. Thus, there is at best a challenge, but no conclusive argument. The door to the metaphysical conception of analyticity is still open. (shrink)

Abstract.In this paper we show that the theory of fields together with an integrally closed subring, the theory of formally real fields with a real holomorphy ring and the theory of formally \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic fields with a \documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \usepackage{amsmath} \usepackage{wasysym} \usepackage{amsfonts} \usepackage{amssymb} \usepackage{amsbsy} \usepackage{mathrsfs} \usepackage{upgreek} \setlength{\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \begin{document} $p$\end{document}-adic holomorphy ring have no model companions in the language of fields augmented by a unary predicate for the corresponding ring.

This paper is an attempt at presenting a convincing reading of the first sentences of PI § 109, especially of its third sentence. There Wittgenstein mentions what he calls "the pneumatic conception of thought", which by Miss Anscombe is translated as "the conception of thought as a gaseous medium". By comparing the relevant sentences with their sources in Wittgenstein's manuscripts and additional parallels it is found that Anscombe's rendering is liable to be misleading. Wittgenstein's notion of "pneuma" is likely to (...) be inspired by a conception of the kind elucidated by Oswald Spengler, for instance, according to whose account pneuma is to be understood as a sort of body (Seelenkörper). If you take this as your central image, the pneumatic conception alluded to in PI § 109 is one which can be tracked down in Wittgenstein's early as well as in his middle-period work. In this remark (PI § 109), Wittgenstein tries to mention both helpful and misleading features of his earlier ways of thinking, and what he now calls the "pneumatic conception" can be seen to be the foil for both sorts of features. The central idea is that the core of language contains a scaffolding of rules whose ("pneumatic") substance is the same as that of our thought. In accordance with this view the logical structure of thought is held to be identical with that of language and reality—a notion which fits parts of the Tractatus as well as parts of the original "grammatical" conception developed in the early 1930ies. (shrink)

This book does not only attempt to clarify concepts used in the context of dialectical reasoning but also develops an epistemological theory by answering the question: What does it mean to possess a language? The epistemological theory then is used to ground the basis of social science in the logic of our common-sense language. This logic is viewed as more comprehensive than traditional formalized logic, which is viewed as only one though an important aspect of the more general and basic (...) logic of our common-sense language. (shrink)

In this brief introduction, we would first like to explain how these two special issues of Philosophical Psychology ( 23.3 and 23.4 ) actually came about. In addition, we will provide an outline of their overall structure and shortly summarize the featured papers.

Starting from a political controversy and a wide-ranging media-discussion, the article examines the evolution of German national holidays from the "Kaiserreich" to the reunited Federal Republic. The author lists the dates and attributes of the national festivities and asks to what extent national days can contribute to a collective identification with the given state and its political system. In the process of change one identifies a long run from emotional festivity towards a rather rational attitude in celebrating the National Day. (...) The future of the current German national holiday in the frame of a 'democratic culture' is far away from being settled. (shrink)

Grammar can be formulated as a kind of substructural propositional logic. In support of this claim, we survey bare Gentzen style deductive systems and two kinds of non-commutative linear logic: intuitionistic and compact bilinear logic. We also glance at their categorical refinements.

§ 1. “To the mind of the philosopher”, according to Plato,1 “there belongs a vision of all time and all being"; and certainly many of the great thinkers have made it their business to speculate about the omnitudo realitatis or the ens realissimum—about the universe as a whole and in its wholeness, or about that which is supremely real—in short about ‘ the Absolute ‘. It may be that this interest in the Whole lies at the heart of all genuine (...) philosophy, giving to it its distinctive inspiration and character. It may be, on the other hand, that it is a misdirected solicitude—an anxiety to solve the inherently insoluble. The Absolute, we shall perhaps be told, is a vox nihili—a name for that which, being nothing, has no attributes ; or we, at least, can never hope to characterize it. All our available predicates, being drawn of necessity from a limited field, must ‘ come short‘must prove inadequate for so immense and so august a subject. (shrink)

Robert Burch describes Peircean Algebraic Logic as a language to express Peirce's “unitary logical vision” , which Peirce tried to formulate using different logical systems. A “correct” formulation of Peirce's vision then should allow a mathematical proof of Peirce's Reduction Thesis, that all relations can be generated from the ensemble of unary, binary, and ternary relations, but that at least some ternary relations cannot be reduced to relations of lower arity.Based on Burch's algebraization, the authors further simplify the mathematical structure (...) of PAL and remove a restriction imposed by Burch, making the resulting system in its expressiveness more similar to Peirce's system of existential graphs. The drawback, however, is that the proof of the Reduction Thesis from Burch no longer holds. A new proof was introduced in Hereth Correia, and Pöschel and was published in full detail in Hereth .In this paper, we provide proof of Peirce's Reduction Thesis using a graph notation similar to Peirce's existential graphs. (shrink)

Was ist der Mensch? Das ist die Kernfrage dieses Buches, die aus philosophischer Sicht bearbeitet wird. Es wird dafür argumentiert, dass der Mensch mehr ist als eine sehr komplexe Ansammlung materieller Elementarteilchen, die einfach nach den normalen Gesetzen der Physik miteinander zusammenwirken. Stattdessen muss man Menschen zusätzlich spezifisch menschliche Eigenschaften zuschreiben, die nicht vollständig aus den körperlichen Eigenschaften heraus erklärbar sind. Sie verfügen über Bewusstsein und können in einem gewissen Umfang frei handeln. Das sind psycho-physische Phänomene, die mit den Gesetzen (...) der Physik nicht vollständig erfasst werden können. Deswegen ist der Materialismus wahrscheinlich falsch, wenngleich er nicht definitiv widerlegbar ist. Die beste Antwort auf das uralte Leib-Seele-Problem ist der Polare Dualismus, ein Eigenschaftsdualismus, der die Welt als grundsätzlich psycho-physisch auffasst. Psycho-physische Zusammenhänge sind keine nachträgliche Verbindung zweier eigenständiger Seinsbereiche, sondern stehen in einem polaren Verhältnis zueinander. Keiner der Bereiche ist ohne den anderen denkbar, aber es kann auch keiner auf den jeweils anderen zurückgeführt werden. (shrink)

Um Erfahrungen machen zu können, gilt es nach Kant, «Erscheinungen zu buchstabieren, um sie als Erfahrungen lesen zu können». Dabei droht eine doppelte Erfahrungsunfähigkeit. Einerseits werden Erscheinungen mit Erfahrungen verwechselt, wie in der Legasthenie Buchstaben mit dem Wortsinn. Andererseits glaubt man, Erfahrungen machen und dabei die Erscheinungen übergehen zu können, wie beim Lesen, das nicht mehr auf die Buchstaben achtet. Die Erfahrung ist immer dann bedroht, wenn die Wechselbeziehung zwischen Sinn und Sinnlichkeit aus dem Gleichgewicht gerät, wenn die Sinnlichkeit des (...) Subjektes oder die Verstandestätigkeit des Subjektes überbetont wird. Wie Kant und die Marburger Neukantianer mit der Problematik umgehen, ist Gegenstand der vorliegenden Untersuchung. (shrink)

Die psychoanalytische Debatte um unrepräsentierte psychische Zustände und die Grenzen der Behandelbarkeit schwerer seelischer Leiden ist theoretisch ebenso wie klinisch für die Psychoanalyse der Gegenwart zentral. Theoretisch gehaltvoll ist sie, weil das Verhältnis von verbalsprachlichen und infralinguistischen »Einschreibungen« sowie zwischen intrapsychischer und interpersonaler Erfahrung neu zu klären ist und einige enorm heterogen verwendete psychoanalytische Kernbegriffe zur Repräsentation neu zu sichten und voneinander abzugrenzen sind. Klinisch entscheidet sich an diesen Fragen, welche Leiden der psychoanalytischen Therapie zugänglich sind. Die vorliegende Arbeit will (...) einen sowohl theoretisch wie klinisch relevanten Beitrag zur Diskussion leisten. Sie geht aus von Sigmund Freuds Konzepten zu den unbewussten Vorstellungen, aus deren Perspektive die weiterführenden Gedanken neu gelesen und überprüft werden. Dabei stehen die Modelle von Green, Levine, Botella & Botella und Kristeva im Mittelpunkt. Sie kommt zu dem Ergebnis, dass es vorschnell ist, infralinguistische oder semiotische Erfahrungsschichten als »nicht repräsentiert« einzustufen. Vielmehr sollen die verschiedenen Darstellungsformen seelischer Zustände gewürdigt und aufeinander bezogen werden, die schließlich sprachlicher Repräsentation und so der Behandlung geöffnet werden. Ein ausführlicher Fallbericht und Hinweise auf die Behandlungsdynamik der Anorexia nervosa erläutern beispielhaft, wie das in der Kur gelingen kann. (shrink)