Volume I, Issue 1, 2010

Nicholas RESCHER ABSTRACT: BIn general, scholars have viewed the mathematical detail of Plato’s Divided Line discussion in Republic VI-VII as irrelevant to the substance of his epistemology. Against this stance this essay argues that this detail serves a serious and instructive purpose and makes manifest some central features of Plato’s account of human knowledge. Download PDF

Shahid RAHMAN ABSTRACT: Between 1906 and 1911, as a response to Betrand’s Russell’s review of La Science et l’Hypothèse, Henri Poincaré launched an attack on the movement to formalise the foundations of mathematics reducing it to logic. The main point is the following: the universality of logic is based on the idea that their truth is independent of any context including …

Christian MÖCKEL ABSTRACT: The decisive occasion for the following paper was the discovery, during the editorial work, of the expression “symbolische Ideation” (symbolic ideation) in the posthumous manuscript of Ernst Cassirer, “Prägnanz, symbolische Ideation”. The occurrence of this expression raises one more time the question of the relation between Cassirer and the system of concepts of Husserl’s phenomenology. The present research …

Stephen HETHERINGTON ABSTRACT: This paper highlights an aspect of Gettier situations, one standardly not accorded interpretive significance. A remark of Gettier’s suggests its potential importance. And once that aspect’s contribution is made explicit, an argument unfolds for the conclusion that it is fairly simple to have knowledge within Gettier situations. Indeed, that argument dissolves the traditional Gettier problem. Download PDF

Daniel ŞANDRU ABSTRACT: Assigning a positive signification to the concept of ‘ideology,’ the basic hypothesis of this paper is that both what we call social reality and what we understand by the expression social knowledge are the result of an ideological projection. In other words, it is my opinion that ideology accomplishes a double purpose: on the one hand, it actively …

Sanford GOLDBERG ABSTRACT: Whether or not all assertion counts as testimony (a matter not addressed here), it is argued that not all testimony involves assertion. Since many views in the epistemology of testimony assume that testimony requires assertion, such views are (at best) insufficiently general. This result also points to what we might call the epistemic significance of assertion as such. …

Catherine Z. ELGIN ABSTRACT: In “Hume and Julius Caesar,” G.E.M. Anscombe argues that some historical claims, such as “Julius Caesar was assassinated,” serve as touchstones for historical knowledge. Only Cartesian doubt can call them into question. I examine her reasons for thinking that the discipline of history must be grounded in claims that it is powerless to discredit. I argue that …

Susan HAACK ABSTRACT: The present study reiterates one of the main ideas that we exposed in 1983, in the paper “Din fals rezultă orice” (“From False Follows Anything”), published in the volume Întemeieri raţionale în filosofia ştiinţei (Rational Foundations in the Philosophy of Science) when we referred to the notion of semi-truth, as a third alethic value, placed between „truth” and …

Teodor DIMA ABSTRACT: The present study reiterates one of the main ideas that we exposed in 1983, in the paper “Din fals rezultă orice” (“From False Follows Anything”), published in the volume Întemeieri raţionale în filosofia ştiinţei (Rational Foundations in the Philosophy of Science) when we referred to the notion of semi-truth, as a third alethic value, placed between „truth” and …

Panayot BUTCHVAROV ABSTRACT: The standard arguments for antirealism are densely abstract, often enigmatic, and thus unpersuasive. The ubiquity and irreducibility of what linguists call generic statements provides a clear argument from a specific and readily understandable case. We think and talk about the world as necessarily subject to generalization. But the chief vehicles of generalization are generic statements, typically of the …