72 research outputs found
Fiction and Thought Experiment - A Case Study
Many philosophers are very sanguine about the cognitive contributions of fiction to science and philosophy. I focus on a case study: Ichikawa and Jarvis’s account of thought experiments in terms of everyday fictional stories. As far as the contribution of fiction is not sui generis, processing fiction often will be parasitic on cognitive capacities which may replace it; as far as it is sui generis, nothing guarantees that fiction is sufficiently well-behaved to abide by the constraints of scientific and philosophical discourse, not even by the minimum requirements of conceptual and logical coherence
Das cartesische Begründungsideal und seine kritische Rezeption durch Sosa und Wittgenstein
Descartes nennt als Ziel seiner Bemühungen, mit
gesicherter Zuversicht durchs Leben zu schreiten (AT VI,
10). Dieses Ziel hängt von der möglichst großen Gewißheit
des Denkers ab, daß die Überzeugungen, gemäß denen
er lebt, wahr sind. Daran richtet Descartes die Aufgabe der
Philosophie aus, die daher durch zwei Aspekte gekennzeichnet
ist:
1. Gewißheitsstreben: In einer programmatischen
Äußerung avisiert Descartes vier "Stufen der Weisheit"
und stellt ihnen eine "[..]fünfte unvergleichlich erhabenere
und sicherere Stufe der Weisheit[..]" (AT IX / 2, 5)1
gegenüber. Überzeugungen, die ihr zugehören, erfüllen
einen höheren Maßstab der Gewißheit als andere.
Descartes sieht die traditionelle Aufgabe der Philosophie
darin, diese Stufe zu erreichen (AT IX / 2, 5).
2. Fundierungsideal: Descartes umreißt den Bereich
dieses Wissens, wenn er erklärt, daß die Philosophen
"die wahren Prinzipien suchten, woraus man die Gründe
alles Wißbaren ableiten könnte"( AT IX / 2, 5)2 Die
Philosophie soll das gesamte Wissen auf eine neue
Grundlage stellen und unseren Überzeugungen unvergleichlich
größere Gewißheit geben
Should Special Science Laws Be Written into the Semantics of Counterfactuals?
Abstract
Adam Elga has presented an anti-thermodynamic process as a counterexample to Lewis's default semantics for counterfactuals. The outstanding reaction of Jonathan Schaffer and Boris Kment is revisionary. It sacrifices Lewis's aim of defining causation in terms of counterfactual dependence. Lewis himself suggested an alternative: «counter-entropic funnybusiness» should make for dissimilarity. But how is this alternative to be spelled out? I discuss a recent proposal: include special science laws, among them the laws of thermodynamics. Although the proposal fails, it serves to uncover the limits of Elga's example
McDowell und das Regelfolgenproblem
John McDowell hat eine einflussreiche Interpretation von Wittgensteins Überlegungen zum Regelfolgen vorgelegt. Wenn Regeln einer Interpretation bedürfen, bricht die Unterscheidung von richtigen und falschen Anwendungen zusammen, denn jede Anwendung lässt sich durch eine geeignete Interpretation mit der Regel in Einklang bringen, es sei denn, man akzeptiert einen metaphysisch unattraktiven Platonismus. Wenn Regeln naturalistisch durch bloße Verhaltensregularitäten rekonstruiert werden, geht der normative Begriff der Richtigkeit verloren. Nach McDowells Überzeugung kann nur die Auffassung, Regeln würden von einer Praxis getragen, die einem direkten Zugang zu ihnen ermöglicht, dieses Problem lösen. Es soll untersucht werden, ob er damit Wittgenstein gerecht wird, und inwieweit er eine haltbare Position bietet
‘Mais la fantaisie est-elle un privilège des seuls poètes?’ Schlick on a ‘Sinnkriterium’ for Thought Experiments
Ever since the term ‘thought experiment’ was coined by Ørsted, philosophers
have struggled with the question of how thought experiments
manage to provide knowledge. Ernst Mach’s seminal contribution has
eclipsed other approaches in the Austrian tradition. I discuss one of
these neglected approaches. Faced with the challenge of how to reconcile
his empiricist position with his use of thought experiments, Moritz
Schlick proposed the following ‘Sinnkriterium’: a thought experiment is
meaningful if it allows to answer a question under discussion by imagining
the experiences that would confi rm that the thought experimental
scenario is actual. I trace this view throughout three exemplary thought
experiments of Schlick’s
Interpretive Charity and Content Externalism
Interpretive charity is an important principle in devising the content of propositional attitudes and their expression. I want to argue that it does not square well with externalism about content. Although my argument clearly also applies to a principle of maximizing truth (as it requires only the true belief - component of knowledge), I will focus my attention to Timothy Williamson’s more intriguing recent proposal of maximizing knowledge
Counterfactuals, Accessibility, and Comparative Similarity
Berit Brogaard and Joe Salerno (2008) have defended the validity of counterfactual hypothetical syllogism (CHS) within the Stalnaker-Lewis account. Whenever the premisses of an instance of CHS are non-vacuosly true, a shift in context has occurred. Hence the standard counterexamples to CHS suffer from context failure. Charles Cross (2011) rejects this argument as irreconcilable with the Stalnaker-Lewis account. I argue against Cross that the basic Stalnaker-Lewis truth condition may be supplemented in a way that makes (CHS) valid. Yet pace Brogaard and Salerno, there are alternative ways of spelling out the basic truth condition which are standard in most debates; and given these ways, the counterexamples to CHS are successful
What Zif
In a series of articles, David Barnett (2006, 2009, 2010) has developed a general theory of conditionals. The grand aim is to reconcile the two main rivals: a suppositional and a truth-conditional view (Barnett 2006, 521). While I confine my critical discussion to counterfactuals, I will give some hints how they might spell trouble for his suppositional view in general
The Unthinkable, Might It Be?
A basic intuition about epistemic possibility is the following: It might be that p iff it is open whether p. The standard way of cashing out this intuition is: It might be that p iff it is reconcilable with one’s informational state that p. However, there are certain examples which point to a lacuna in this conception. They indicate that epistemic possibility is restricted to what one can conceive as an alternative, what one can have a cognitive attitude to
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