The subject of this symposium is sometimes introduced by asking whether machines could think. This way of introducing it may be misleading, for it may seem as if it were merely about a particular activity, called ‘thinking’. The question would then seem to have the same character as ‘Can machines make a noise?’. But thinking is not something that can be treated in isolation from other personal qualities. What we need to consider is whether, or to what extent, a machine (...) could participate in the whole complex of qualities, activities, attitudes, thoughts, feelings and moral relationships that we regard as essential to being a person—whether, in this sense, machines could be persons. (shrink)

This book is a compact, accessible treatment of the main ideas advanced by the positivists, including Schlick, Carnap, Ayer, and the early Wittgenstein. Oswald Hanfling discusses such ideas as the 'verification principle' ('the meaning of this statement is the method of its verification') and the 'elimination of metaphysics, ' an attempt to show that metaphysical statements, for example about God, are unverifiable and therefore meaningless.

In modern representative democracies, much healthcare is publicly funded or provided and so the question of what healthcare systems should do is a matter of public policy. Given that public resources are inevitably limited, what should be done and who should benefit from healthcare? It is a dilemma for policymakers and a subject of debate within several disciplines, but rarely across disciplines. In this paper, I draw on thinking from several disciplines and especially philosophy, economics, and systems theory. I conclude (...) that economist and philosopher John Broome’s writing provides the framework for an answer: a healthcare system in a democracy should do as much good as possible, although sometimes we should sacrifice some overall good for the sake of fairness. This leaves open some detailed questions about what in practice we consider to be good and fair, and about when some good should be traded off in order to be fair. The answers to these questions depend on our values, or as explained by systems theory, our weltanschauung. How policy decisions should be made when citizens’ values differ is a subject of extensive academic debate. However, it is a separate question. Representative democracies have mechanisms for resolving such debates. (shrink)

The Anglican Tradition of Moral Theology Alan M. Suggate Hooker and the via media For the English who experienced the impact of the Reformation on the ...

This article addresses the relationship between understanding and believing from the cognitive perspective of information-processing. I promote, within the scope of the Critical Discourse Analysis agenda, the relevance of an account of belief-fixation sustained by a combination of argumentative and cognitive insights. To this end, I first argue that discursive strategies fulfilling legitimization purposes, such as evidentials, tap into the same cognitive mechanisms as arguments. I then proceed to examine the idea that the most effective arguments are the ones that (...) manage to obscure or make irrelevant counter-evidence and propose, from a cognitive pragmatic perspective, a formulation of rhetorical effectiveness as a constraint on information-selection taking place at the interpretation stage and decisively influencing the evaluation stage responsible for belief-fixation. (shrink)

What is philosophy about and what are its methods? _Philosophy and Ordinary Language_ is a defence of the view that philosophy is largely about questions of language, which to a large extent means _ordinary_ language. Some people argue that if philosophy is about ordinary language, then it is necessarily less deep and difficult than it is usually taken to be but Oswald Hanfling shows us that this isn't true. Hanfling, a leading expert in the development of analytic philosophy, covers (...) a wide range of topics, including scepticism and the definition of knowledge, free will, empiricism, folk psychology, ordinary versus artificial logic, and philosophy versus science. Drawing on philosophers such as Austin, Wittgenstein, and Quine, this book explores the nature of ordinary language in philosophy. (shrink)

Asked about Wittgenstein's contribution to aesthetics, one might think first of all of his discussion of ‘family resemblance’ concepts, in which he argued that the various instances of games, for example, need not have any feature or set of features in common, in virtue of which they are all called games; the concept of a game can function perfectly well without any such set of conditions. This insight was soon applied to the much debated quest for a definition of the (...) word ‘art’, and it was claimed that here too the various instances of art were related by way of family resemblance, so that it was futile to look for a condition or set of conditions, which works of art, and only works of art, had in common. Wittgenstein himself did not extend his argument to the concept of art. Although he was deeply interested in the arts, especially music, he wrote very little on aesthetics, his most sustained treatment of the topic being available for us only in the form of notes taken of a set of his lectures on aesthetics. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists largely agree that fake news is not just necessarily untruthful, but necessarily insincere: it’s produced either with the intention to deceive or an indifference toward its truth. Against this, I argue insincerity is neither a necessary nor obviously typical feature of fake news. The main argument proceeds in two stages. The first, methodological step develops classification criteria for identifying instances of fake news. By attending to expressed theoretical and practical interests, I observe how our classification practices (...) turn on worries about fake news’s unique political-epistemic risks. From this, I argue (i) theories of fake news should capture independent mechanisms that realise these risks and (ii) the manifestation of them suffices for classifying a news story as fake news. The second step applies the classification criteria to bad science journalism. I argue the systematic epistemic faults in bad science journalism manifest the same political-epistemic risks we see in fake news, which suffices to justify classifying it as fake news. But since such faults aren’t plausibly attributed to its propagators being insincere, insincerity doesn’t function independently as a mechanism for realising fake news’s political-epistemic risks. Thus, I conclude, we should exclude insincerity from our accounts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

1. Meaning and use in Wittgenstein's Blue and Brown books.

How can we rethink anthropology beyond itself? In this book, twenty-one artists, anthropologists, and curators grapple with how anthropology has been formulated, thought, and practised 'elsewhere' and 'otherwise'. They do so by unfolding ethnographic case studies from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland - and through conversations that expand these geographies and genealogies of contemporary exhibition making. This collection considers where and how anthropology is troubled, mobilised, and rendered meaningful. 'Across Anthropology' charts new ground by analysing the convergences (...) of museums, curatorial practice, and Europe's reckoning with its colonial legacies. Situated amid resurgent debates on nationalism and identity politics, this book addresses scholars and practitioners in fields spanning the arts, social sciences, humanities, and curatorial studies."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's later writings generate a great deal of controversy and debate, as do the implications of his ideas for such topics as consciousness, knowledge, language and the arts. Oswald Hanfling addresses a widespeard tendency to ascribe to Wittgenstein views that go beyond those he actually held. Separate chapters deal with important topics such as the private language argument, rule-following, the problem of other minds, and the ascription of scepticism to Wittgenstein. Describing Wittgenstein as a 'humanist' thinker, he contrasts his (...) views on language, art humanity and philosophy itself with those of scientifically minded philosophers. He argues that 'the human form of life' calls for a kind of understanding that cfannot be achieved by the methods of emirical science; that consiousness, for example, cannot properly be regarded as a property of the bran; and that the resulting 'problem of consoiusness is an illusion. Wittgenstein and the Human Form of Life is essential reading for anyone interested in Wittgenstein's approach to what it means to be human. It will be invaluable to all Wittgenstein scholars, and all who are interested in the philosophy of mind, language and aesthetics. (shrink)

Die mit dem Buch von Oswald Schwemmer vorgestellte Grundlegung etabliert Kulturphilosophie als eine systematisch organisierte Disziplin, und zwar als Ansatz für Forschungen, die auch über die geistigen Verhältnisse der Menschen ein empirisches Wissen bilden können. Angesichts der historischen Kontingenz und Vielfalt der verschiedenen Kulturen konzentriert sich die vorliegende Darstellung auf die - z. B. bildlichen und begriffli-chen - Medien, die als kollektiver Grundbestand die Formen der menschlichen Artikulation und Sinnbildung in einer Kultur prägen. Das Buch bietet eine Grundlegung auch (...) für Leser, die sich in den oft verwirrenden Disputen der Philosophie noch nicht verfangen haben. Eine Orientierung auf dem gedanklichen Weg dieser Grundlegung soll die Begriffskette Artikulation und Medium - Medium und Symbol - Symbol und Form - Form und Sinn - Sinn und Bild - Bild und Begriff - Begriff und Kultur geben, mit der die einzelnen Kapitel über ihre Titel zusammengehalten werden. Die Titelbegriffe stehen dabei für die Themenfelder, mit denen sich die Überlegungen in den jeweiligen Kapiteln auseinandersetzen. Diese Fokussierung auf ganze Themenfelder erlaubt es, in einigen Exkur-sen auch Um- oder Seitenwege in diesen Gebieten zu gehen. Dass die gedanklichen Wege dieser Grundlegung am Ende wieder zu ihrem Ausgangsbegriff Kultur zurückführen, zeigt, dass das Ende auch als ein neuer Anfang, nämlich zur Fortsetzung des Projektes einer medientheoretisch orientierten Kulturphilosophie gelesen werden kann. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer wird in diesem Buch als ein Denker vorgestellt, der geistig in der philosophischen Tradition wurzelt und sich gleichzeitig den Herausforderungen duch die europäische Moderne stellt: dem Festschreiben eines vor allem durch die Wissenschaften beglaubigten universalen Vernunftanspruchs auf der einen und der Anerkennung einer Vielfalt kultureller Welten auf der anderen Seite. Über die Analyse einiger Grundbegriffe des Cassirerschen Entwurfs einer "Philosophie der symbolischen Formen" - in die auch die Werke aus dem Nachlass Cassirers miteinbezogen werden - versucht der Autor, (...) die Spannungen sichtbar zu machen, die diesem Entwurf die Modernität geben und ihn offen machen für eine Weiterentwicklung. "Die Vielfalt der symbolischen Welten und die Einheit des Geistes", "der Werkbegriff im Denken Cassirers", "Ausdruck und symbolische Prägnanz", "die ethische Dimension des symbolischen Handelns", "das Denken der Renaissance und die Wurzeln der Moderne", sind die Titel, unter denen - von einer bestimmten Seite aus - jeweils ein Blick auf das Ganze des Cassirerschen Denksn gewonnen werden soll. Dass dieses Ganze kein geschlossenes "System" sein, sondern Wege zum Verstehen unserer geistigen und kulturellen SDituation freilegen will, zeigt der Autor in einer abschließenden Analyse, die auch die Bedeutung des Cassirerschen Entwurfs für die philosophische Diskussion der Gegenwart darzulegen versucht. (shrink)