Early Analytic Philosophy

A comparison is made between Russell's multiple-relation theory of judgments and Wittgenstein's conception of propositions in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is maintained that the correct parallel in Wittgenstein's philosophy for Russell's theory of judgment is the whole picture theory and the conception of propositions that goes with it, not the few remarks on belief we can find in the Tractatus (5.541-5.5422). The shift from judgments to propositions has some far-reaching consequences, which have to do - among other things - with the so-called Òlinguistic turnÓ. An examination is also conducted of some of the reasons underlying Russell's and Wittgenstein's different choices.

By 1931 Carnap had an integrated perspective consisting of a method, a view, an attitude, and a well-developed sense of ÒusÓ versus ÒthemÓ. This perspective is still the popular conception of logical positivism. But it is not Carnap's mature view. This paper attempts to illuminate that mature view by focusing on the character of the importantly different perspective that preceded it. This focus not only highlights aspects of the later view but also reveals features of the earlier situation that helped to provoke the changes in Carnap's philosophy and to provoke as well Quine's challenges to that philosophy.

According to the standard story, Quine discredited Carnap's account of analyticity by discrediting the idea that logic and mathematics are true by convention. This story is superficially plausible, but completely wrong. Quine knew all along that to make sense of his own scientific naturalism he needed to acknowledge that some sentences are true by convention in a thin explanatory sense. Drawing mainly on the account of truth by convention in ÒCarnap and Logical Truth,Ó I sketch an account of how and why Quine holds that some parts of mathematics are true by convention. For Quine, I argue, the goal of every part of science, including those parts of science, such as logic and mathematics, that are far removed from sensory experience, is explanation. When a reasonable scientist's acceptance of a sentence s is part of her best current scientific theory, her acceptance of s counts as explanatory for Quine even if, as in the case of certain axioms of set theory, her acceptance of s is both underdetermined by all her evidence and theoretically optional for her. In such cases, according to Quine, a reasonable scientist's acceptance of s constitutes an explanatory sort of truth by convention-a sort of truth by convention that leaves open the possibility that s is not true and hence that one may later reject s without changing the topic.

Russell's view about the nature of relations, like many of his views, went through a number of changes before it reached maturity. This paper will focus on an expression of one of his earlier views, held about the turn of the century, found in a short, unpublished manuscript entitled "Do Differences Differ?" (hereafter, DDD). DDD was one of Russell's early attempts to focus solely on the issue of specific (or, as he sometimes calls them, ÒparticularizedÓ) relations. There will be references to one of Russell's yet earlier positions to provide us with context for the DDD argument, and references to his later positions, to provide us with contrast for the DDD position, the arguments employed, and the entities recognized therein.

Brentano heralded "reference to a content" as the distinctive mark of the mental. Can Frege's On Sense and Reference illuminate how thoughts have the capacity to refer? This paper argues that Frege faces a dilemma. Fregean senses are objective and bear a logical relation to their referents. They are grasped by intermediary ideas. If ideas are subjective, reference is marooned in the psychological for we are without an explanation of how senses are grasped. If ideas are objective, like senses, then we cannot explain how we grasp ideas. Either way, reference to objects outside of the mind is impossible.

In this paper I advance a syntactical interpretation of Frege's theory of assertion which derives from the views of Kwasi Wiredu (1975) and W. E. Johnson (1921). On this interpretation, it is argued that the expressions
   1) 'The circumstance that unlike poles attract'
   2) 'Unlike poles attract'
are to be taken as the grammatical forms of the symbolic expressions,
   1a) —A
   2a) |—A
It is then argued that Frege (of Begriffsschrift) accomplished what he intended to do, namely, to show that (1) is the conceptual content of (2) and that (2) shows (1) as having been asserted. The semantic role of expressions may be said to be altered by the addition of the (vertical) judgment-stroke in (2a) in such a way that requires us to either (i) convert the sentence to a complex noun phrase, or (ii) represent the alteration by converting the principal verb from its finite to its infinitive form. I argue that on this interpretation, we may find a solution to the problem with which Russell struggled (in Principles of Mathematics) in finding an account of the difference between the finite and infinitive forms of verbs that will accord with an "ultimate notion of assertion." The second half of the discussion examines in more detail Russell's problem in light of the suggested view of assertion. A general consequence of accepting this view is the prescription that we conceive of assertion as primarily a logical, rather than psychological, notion.

Two fundamental assumptions permeate the interpretation of Russell's philosophy. The first is that Principia Mathematica espoused a ramified type-theory of attributes in intension. The second is that Russell espoused a form methodologically solipsistic reductive empiricism. Both assumptions are false. Both are dogmas of Russellian interpretation which undermine his philosophy.

A close and critical examination of the very idea of pure syntax and some of the false suppositions associated with it by philosophers.

Heckling by BB.  Dear DCM: Did I mention that the referee recommended you should *not* join us for the Philharmonic/Conference Dinner unless you publicly revoke and abandon your heretic ideas?

Semantics and metaphysics are different. However, many philosophers maintain that the two are very closely related. Semantics is usually considered as a linguistic subject that deals with the meanings of linguistic expressions. Metaphysics, on the other hand, is a philosophical enterprise that purports to explore the nature of the world and to describe the structures and constituents of it. It is not difficult to see why the two distinct areas can merge so intimately together. After all, we all agree that human languages and the world we know are closely connected. Because of this, some philosophers approach linguistic issues from the metaphysical perspectives and construct their theses of philosophical semantics based on their metaphysical positions. It naturally results in various confusions of the semantic debates and projects with the metaphysical ones. This paper aims to explore the confusions that lie between semantics and metaphysics and to suggest that we can execute the semantic project successfully without taking up any metaphysical dispute.
Truth is a semantic concept. Semantics is a linguistic discipline which, characterized broadly, deals with certain relations between expressions of a language and the objects or states of affairs represented by those expressions. According to this characterization, it is natural to think that truth is a main focal point where our language and the world meet. By acquiring true expressions in our language, we seem to gain access to the world, or more specifically, to have access to the objects or states of affairs in the world. In virtues of true expressions, the world seems to find its way to be mirrored or to be represented by our language. So, if one is attempting to construct a semantic theory for the concept of truth, one would feel obligated to provide some metaphysical perspective with respect to what the world is like. When one introduces entities such as objects, facts or states of affairs to define the concept of truth or to explain why expressions of a language are true, the debate between realism and antirealism can easily arise and the battles can be moved onto the stage of semantics. In fact, one of the hottest issues in recent philosophical studies of semantics is the realism-antirealism dispute with respect to the concept of truth, or the so-called "alethic" realism-antirealism debate. I propose that most contemporary discussions regarding the concept of truth have been loaded with traditional metaphysical burdens, and that many varieties of theories of truth are metaphysical in nature. Most contemporary theories of truth are concerned with the nature of truth, and hope to find the definition and philosophical significances of the concept. As Michael Lynch, in his "Introduction" to the book The Nature of Truth, has pointed out, when we distinguish all kinds of "Robust theories of truth" from the "Deflationary theories of truth", we are actually classifying these theories based on the starting point (or question): "Does truth have a nature?" So, it is natural for us to sort out various theories of truth just depending on whether the attitudes toward the starting question are positive or negative. However, Lynch also notices that "there is a growing consensus among some philosophers that neither traditional robust theories nor deflationary theories are right." If it is so, then he claims that "we must find new ways to think about this old concept." (Lynch, 2001: 5) It is my hope that we could find a new way to think about the old concept of truth in this article-that is, viewing the concept from a theory of truth based on a purely semantic project or a linguistic perspective.

In Autumn 1898, G.E. Moore delivered a set of lectures on ethics, titled "The Elements of Ethics," at the newly formed and short-lived London School of Ethics. These lectures became the basis for his 1903 Principia Ethica, and also bear a strong and direct connection to the 1898 version of his Prize Fellowship dissertation, titled The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics. There survive two typescripts of these lectures, one containing nearly 70 handwritten marginal notations, in what seem to be three hands. One hand is Moore's, one appears to be Russell's, and I will argue that archival evidence supports the view that one is William Sorley's (1855-1935), a philosopher and colleague of Moore's at Cambridge, who played an important role in the decision by Cambridge University Press in 1902 to accept the lectures-upon revision- for publication. There are, in addition, some intriguing questions that arise concerning Russell's notations on the typescript, which I will discuss and aim to resolve.

I explore two similarities between the Tractatus and the late notes comprising On Certainty. One is the claim, made in both works, that the self-evidence of propositions that are certain is not what justifies our belief in their truth. The second, striking similarity concerns the special logical role of the tautologies in the Tractatus and the contingent certainties in On Certainty (e.g. "This is a hand"). In the Tractatus, the structural properties of propositions entering into tautologies preclude any 'illogical thought' by showing what can, and what cannot, be said/thought about the world. We cannot think a sense for senseless propositions. In On Certainty, the certain propositions derive from our acts of recognizing objects with certainty, whereby those propositions enter into the foundation of all thought/language. So, about them, there can be no 'mistakes'. In both works, we cannot say/think what cannot be said/thought

Remark TLP 4.466 presents a problem for the usual sort of interpretation of the Tractatus on senselessness. According to that interpretation, tautology and contradiction are results of logical operations applied ultimately to elementary propositions. At 4.466, however, Wittgenstein wrote that tautology is no logical combination of signs-because there is no corresponding combination of meanings. That seems incompatible with the usual interpretation, as some Tractatus scholars have pointed out. This paper offers a reading of 4.466 that shows how Wittgenstein may have thought that tautologies and contradictions are the dissolution of logical signs-combinations without rejecting that they are truth-functions of elementary propositions. And that reading trades in part on the important observation that truth-functions may have nonessential, or trivial, bases.

By comparing W. V. Quine with P. Feyerabend, this paper intends to justify that empirical stimulus plays a role of indispensable negativity in theory change. It will proceed from historical as well as methodological viewpoints. Historically, both Quine and Feyerabend developed their ideas from questions (notably that concerned protocol sentences) discussed by the Vienna Circle. And methodologically, both attempted to illustrate the nature of science by taking empirical stimulus into account. Though they shared mach, Feyerabend remained different from Quine. While Quine has sought to avoid positivism and relativism by his physicalistic claim, the proper role of empirical stimulus is considered a basis for warranted belief. Feyerabend, however, though being materialistic regarding the basis of science, rejected that observation sentences can be meaningful independent of being incorporated into the accepted body of theory. Without such incorporation, there is no interpretation of observation sentences available. Hence, the idea that observation sentences are by their nature theoretical prevails all its way through Feyerabend's philosophy. However, this does not therefore imply a relativistic stance. What Feyerabend actually did when proposing his outrageous ideas such as Òepistemological anarchismÓ or Òanything goesÓ was rather an expedient means than a mere provocation. The insistence of the proliferation of theories is intended to safeguard the chance of a new theory from being promptly eliminated by the accepted theory. In other words, the pluralistic methodology of Feyerabend is set to play the role of indispensable negativity which triggers the first signal in theory change