Bradley, F. H.. Appearance and Reality
1893, Oxford University Press.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Peter Jones
Publisher's Note: Appearance and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics addresses quantum mechanics and relativity and their philosophical implications, focusing on whether these theories of modern physics can help us know nature as it really is, or only as it appears to us. The author clearly explains the foundational concepts and principles of both quantum mechanics and relativity and then uses them to argue that we can know more than mere appearances, and that we can know to some extent the way things really are. He argues that modern physics gives us reason to believe that we can know some things about the objective, real world, but he also acknowledges that we cannot know everything, which results in a position he calls "realistic realism." This book is not a survey of possible philosophical interpretations of modern physics, nor does it leap from a caricature of the physics to some wildly alarming metaphysics. Instead, it is careful with the physics and true to the evidence in arriving at its own realistic conclusions. It presents the physics without mathematics, and makes extensive use of diagrams and analogies to explain important ideas. Engaging and accessible, Appearance and Reality serves as an ideal introduction for anyone interested in the intersection of philosophy and physics, including students in philosophy of physics and philosophy of science courses.Comment : This is a stub entry. Please add your comments to help us expand itBrown, Jessica. Contextualism and warranted assertibility manoeuvres2006, Philosophical Studies 130 (3): 407-435.-
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Added by: Jie Gao
Abstract: Contextualists such as Cohen and DeRose claim that the truth conditions of knowledge attributions vary contextually, in particular that the strength of epistemic position required for one to be truly ascribed knowledge depends on features of the attributor's context. Contextualists support their view by appeal to our intuitions about when it's correct (or incorrect) to ascribe knowledge. Someone might argue that some of these intuitions merely reflect when it is conversationally appropriate to ascribe knowledge, not when knowledge is truly ascribed, and so try to accommodate these intuitions even on an invariantist view. DeRose (Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, 1998; Philosophical Review, 2002) argues that any such 'warranted assertibility manoeuvre', or 'WAM', against contextualism is unlikely to succeed. Here, I argue that his objections to a WAM against contextualism are not persuasive and offer a pragmatic account of the data about ascriptions of knowledge.Comment : This paper defends the warranted assertibility manoeuvres, a prominent pragmatic criticism to epistemic contextualism. It is useful as a central or a further reading material for teachings on contextualism in an upper-level undergraduate course on epistemology.Camp, Elisabeth. Two Varieties of Literary Imagination: Metaphor, Fiction, and Thought Experiments2009, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 33 (1):107-130.-
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Christy Mag Uidhir
Abstract: Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don't believe that Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no 'morality fiction,' analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one's imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the 'offline' simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue..Carston, Robyn. Linguistic communication and the semantics/pragmatics distinction2008, Synthese 165 (3):321-345.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Thomas Hodgson
Abstract: Most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. The position defended in this paper is that the semantics/pragmatics distinction holds between encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Two other 'minimalist' positions on semantics are explored and found wanting: Kent Bach's view that there is a narrow semantic notion of context which is responsible for providing semantic values for a small number of indexicals, and Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore's view that semantics includes the provision of values for all indexicals, even though these depend on the speaker's communicative intentions. Finally, some implications are considered for the favoured semantics/pragmatics distinction of the fact that there are linguistic elements which do not contribute to truth-conditional content but rather provide guidance on pragmatic inferenceChari, V.K.. Validity in Interpretation: Some Indian Views1978, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 36(3): 329-340.-
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Added by: Meilin Chinn
Summary: An outline of the theory of interpretation within the language philosophies of ancient India. Chari organizes this extensive history according to topics such as verbal autonomy, intention, unity of meaning, polysemy, contextualism, and interpretation.Comment : This text is appropriate for discussions of language and meaning in aesthetics, as well as philosophy of language.Cuffari, Elena Clare, Ezequiel Di Paolo, Hanne De Jaegher. From participatory sense-making to language: there and back again2015, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 14(4), pp. 1089-1125-
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Added by: Maria Jimena Clavel VazquezAbstract:
The enactive approach to cognition distinctively emphasizes autonomy, adaptivity, agency, meaning, experience, and interaction. Taken together, these principles can provide the new sciences of language with a comprehensive philosophical framework: languaging as adaptive social sense-making. This is a refinement and advancement on Maturana's idea of languaging as a manner of living. Overcoming limitations in Maturana's initial formulation of languaging is one of three motivations for this paper. Another is to give a response to skeptics who challenge enactivism to connect "lower-level" sense-making with "higher-order" sophisticated moves like those commonly ascribed to language. Our primary goal is to contribute a positive story developed from the enactive account of social cognition, participatory sense-making. This concept is put into play in two different philosophical models, which respectively chronicle the logical and ontogenetic development of languaging as a particular form of social agency. Languaging emerges from the interplay of coordination and exploration inherent in the primordial tensions of participatory sense-making between individual and interactive norms; it is a practice that transcends the self-other boundary and enables agents to regulate self and other as well as interaction couplings. Linguistic sense-makers are those who negotiate interactive and internalized ways of meta-regulating the moment-to-moment activities of living and cognizing. Sense-makers in enlanguaged environments incorporate sensitivities, roles, and powers into their unique yet intelligible linguistic bodies. We dissolve the problematic dichotomies of high/low, online/offline, and linguistic/nonlinguistic cognition, and we provide new boundary criteria for specifying languaging as a prevalent kind of human social sense-makingComment : available in this BlueprintDembroff, Robin, Wodak, Daniel. He/She/They/Ze2018, Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy, 5(14): 371 - 406.-
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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Rory Wilson
Abstract: In this paper, we defend two main claims. The first is a moderate claim: we have a negative duty to not use binary gender-specific pronouns he or she to refer to genderqueer individuals. We defend this with an argument by analogy. It was gravely wrong for Mark Latham to refer to Catherine McGregor, a transgender woman, using the pronoun he; we argue that such cases of misgendering are morally analogous to referring to Angel Haze, who identifies as genderqueer, as he or she. The second is a radical claim: we have a negative duty to not use any gender-specific pronouns to refer to anyone, regardless of their gender identity. We offer three arguments in favor of this claim (which appeal to concerns about inegalitarianism and risk, invasions of privacy, and reinforcing essentialist ideologies). We also show why the radical claim is compatible with the moderate claim. Before concluding, we examine common concerns about incorporating either they or a neologism such as ze as a third-person singular gender-neutral pronoun. These concerns, we argue, do not provide sufficient reason to reject either the moderate or radical claim.Comment : This text can be used as a companion piece to other texts on the metaphysics of gender or to introduce students to transgender / nonbinary identities. Dembroff and Wodak give a good overview of the importance of pronouns as well as the contemporary pronoun debate between they and ze for those with little to no prior background. This paper is good for debate over its radical claim.Diaz-Leon, Esa. We Are Living in a Material World (And I am a Material Girl)2008, Teorema: International Journal of Philosophy 27 (3):85-101 (2008)-
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Added by: Nick Novelli
Abstract: In this paper I examine the question of whether the characterization of physicalism that is presupposed by some influential anti-physicalist arguments, namely, the so-called conceivability arguments, is a good characterization of physicalism or not. I compare this characterization with some alternative ones, showing how it can overcome some problems, and I defend it from several objections. I conclude that any arguments against physicalism characterised in that way are genuine arguments against physicalism, as intuitively conceived.Comment : Provides a good, clear, explanation of supervenience, and methodically goes through various formulations of physicalism and objections to them. Would be a very good introduction to these issues to set up for an examination of arguments for and against physicalism.Edgington, Dorothy. On Conditionals1995, Mind 104(414): 235-329.-
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Added by: Emily Paul, Contributed by: Helen De Cruz
Summary: Examines the theory of conditionals and whether it's possible to have a unified theory of them.Comment : Great core text as there are many important discussion points here, and Edginton uses lots of helpful examples. Could set students the task of coming up with their own conditionals, and analysing these in the would/will sense. This definitely requires a background in beginner's logic.Edgington, Dorothy. Indicative Conditionals2001, In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.)-
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Added by: Franci MangravitiAbstract:
The chapter is an introduction to logical treatments of indicative conditionals, comparing truth-functional, non-truth-functional, and suppositional approaches. Some of the topics discussed are truth conditions, conditional belief, assertability, and issues with compounds of conditionals.
Comment : This page can be used in a course focused on the philosophy of conditionals, as an introduction/overview of the basic logical issues; or in any logic course wishing to spend more time on this particular notion.Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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