CFA extended: SSHAP 2024 in Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut

The twelfth annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be held at the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University in, respectively, Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut from June 27–29, 2024. The annual meeting is locally organized by Marcus Rossberg (University of Connecticut) and Sanford Shieh (Wesleyan University). The main conference venue will be at the UConn Hartford campus and the Public Affairs Center of Wesleyan.

The meeting is to be held in-person; preference will be given to submitted talks that are able to be presented in-person. There will be a limited number of time slots available for those who need to present a paper remotely by video. Participants who wish to use this option should indicate this in their cover sheet.

Invited Speakers

  • Sandra Laugier, Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne
  • Ian Proops, University of Texas at Austin
  • Gregory Landini, University of Iowa

SSHAP – Call for Abstracts

SSHAP is an international organization aimed at promoting discussion in all areas of scholarship concerning the development of analytic philosophy. It welcomes scholars interested in the many ways in which this development was influenced by thinkers such as Bolzano, Brentano and his school, Husserl, Frege, Russell, the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Quine, and the Polish school, for instance, but also seeks to promote work engaging with lesser-known figures and trends, and its reception in countries right across the world. SSHAP invites submissions for its annual conference. Paper submissions in all areas of the history of analytic philosophy are welcome.

Submission Deadline

The extended submission deadline is March 15, 2024. In the past, some of the papers presented at the annual conference were published in the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy.

Submission Instructions

Authors are requested to submit their long abstract electronically according to the following guidelines.

Long abstracts (500-1000 words) should be prepared for anonymous refereeing, put into PDF file format, and sent as an email attachment to sshap2024 [at] gmail.com. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission”, and the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including:

  1. return email address
  2. author’s name
  3. affiliation
  4. paper title
  5. short abstract (50-100 words)
  6. whether you will need to present remotely if your paper is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

Panel submissions

Panel submissions involving multiple authors presenting on a theme(s), figure(s), text(s), trend(s), and/or traditions in in all areas of the history of analytical philosophy are welcome. A panel organizer or a corresponding panelist are requested to submit their long panel proposal electronically according to the following guidelines:

Long proposals (500-1000 words) describing the panel’s theme and its panelists and their respective papers should be prepared for blind refereeing, put into PDF file format, and sent as an email attachment to sshap2024 [at] gmail.com. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission (panel)”, and the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including:

  1. return email address
  2. organizer’s or corresponding author’s name
  3. affiliation
  4. panel title
  5. short abstract (50-100 words)
  6. the names and affiliations of all panelists
  7. whether any panelists will need to present remotely if your panel is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

CFA: SSHAP 2024 in Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut

The twelfth annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be held at the University of Connecticut and Wesleyan University in, respectively, Hartford and Middletown, Connecticut from June 27–29, 2024. The annual meeting is locally organized by Marcus Rossberg (University of Connecticut) and Sanford Shieh (Wesleyan University). The main conference venue will be at the UConn Hartford campus and the Public Affairs Center of Wesleyan.

The meeting is to be held in-person; preference will be given to submitted talks that are able to be presented in-person. There will be a limited number of time slots available for those who need to present a paper remotely by video. Participants who wish to use this option should indicate this in their cover sheet.

Invited Speakers

  • Sandra Laugier, Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne
  • Ian Proops, University of Texas at Austin
  • Gregory Landini, University of Iowa

SSHAP – Call for Abstracts

SSHAP is an international organization aimed at promoting discussion in all areas of scholarship concerning the development of analytic philosophy. It welcomes scholars interested in the many ways in which this development was influenced by thinkers such as Bolzano, Brentano and his school, Husserl, Frege, Russell, the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Quine, and the Polish school, for instance, but also seeks to promote work engaging with lesser-known figures and trends, and its reception in countries right across the world. SSHAP invites submissions for its annual conference. Paper submissions in all areas of the history of analytic philosophy are welcome.

Submission Deadline

The submission deadline is February 14, 2024. In the past, some of the papers presented at the annual conference were published in the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy.

Submission Instructions

Authors are requested to submit their long abstract electronically according to the following guidelines.

Long abstracts (500-1000 words) should be prepared for anonymous refereeing, put into PDF file format, and sent as an email attachment to sshap2024 [at] gmail.com. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission”, and the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including:

  1. return email address
  2. author’s name
  3. affiliation
  4. paper title
  5. short abstract (50-100 words)
  6. whether you will need to present remotely if your paper is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

Panel submissions

Panel submissions involving multiple authors presenting on a theme(s), figure(s), text(s), trend(s), and/or traditions in in all areas of the history of analytical philosophy are welcome. A panel organizer or a corresponding panelist are requested to submit their long panel proposal electronically according to the following guidelines:

Long proposals (500-1000 words) describing the panel’s theme and its panelists and their respective papers should be prepared for blind refereeing, put into PDF file format, and sent as an email attachment to sshap2024 [at] gmail.com. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission (panel)”, and the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including:

  1. return email address
  2. organizer’s or corresponding author’s name
  3. affiliation
  4. panel title
  5. short abstract (50-100 words)
  6. the names and affiliations of all panelists
  7. whether any panelists will need to present remotely if your panel is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

SSHAP 2023 in Berlin

Registration

Presenters and participants should register here for the SSHAP annual meeting (the downloadable program is below): https://www.store.abdn.ac.uk/product-catalogue/events/college-of-arts-and-social-sciences/school-of-divinity-history-and-philosophy/sshap-conference.

11th Annual Conference of SSHAP

The eleventh annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be held at Humboldt University in Berlin from July 13 – 15, 2023. The annual meeting is locally organized by Michael Beaney (University of Aberdeen / Humboldt University) and is sponsored by the the Institute of Philosophy at Humboldt University and the British Society for the History of Philosophy. The main conference venue will be in the Festsaal at Luisenstraße 56, 10115 Berlin, Germany.

The meeting is to be held in-person; preference will be given to submitted talks that are able to be presented in-person. There will be some time slots available for persons who need to present a paper remotely by video; persons who wish to use this option should indicate this in their cover sheet (no rationale is required to be given to the conference organizers).

Invited Speakers

  • Alex Klein (McMaster University)
  • Rachael Wiseman (University of Liverpool)
  • Jiang Yi (Shanxi University)

Program

Abstracts

CFA: SSHAP 2023 in Berlin

The eleventh annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be held at Humboldt University in Berlin from July 13 – 15, 2023. The annual meeting is locally organized by Michael Beaney (University of Aberdeen / Humboldt University) and is sponsored by the the Institute of Philosophy at Humboldt University and the British Society for the History of Philosophy. The main conference venue will be in the Festsaal at Luisenstraße 56, 10115 Berlin, Germany.

The meeting is to be held in-person; preference will be given to submitted talks that are able to be presented in-person. There will be some time slots available for persons who need to present a paper remotely by video; persons who wish to use this option should indicate this in their cover sheet (no rationale is required to be given to the conference organizers).

Invited Speakers

  • Alex Klein (McMaster University)
  • Rachael Wiseman (University of Liverpool)
  • Jiang Yi (Shanxi University)

SSHAP – Call for Abstracts

SSHAP is an international organization aimed at promoting discussion in all areas of scholarship concerning the development of analytic philosophy. It welcomes scholars interested in the many ways in which this development was influenced by thinkers such as Bolzano, Brentano and his school, Husserl, Frege, Russell, the Vienna Circle, Wittgenstein, Tarski, Quine, and the Polish school, for instance, but also seeks to promote work engaging with lesser known figures and trends, and its reception in countries right across the world. SSHAP invites submissions for its annual conference. Paper submissions in all areas of the history of analytic philosophy are welcome.

Submission Deadline

The submission deadline is February 10, 2023. In the past, some of the papers presented at the annual conference were published in the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy.

Submission Instructions

Authors are requested to submit their long abstract electronically according to the following guidelines:

  1. Long abstracts (500-1000 words) should be prepared for blind refereeing,
  2. put into PDF file format, and
  3. sent as an email attachment to Michael Beaney (michael.beaney[at]abdn.ac.uk).
  4. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission”, and
  5. the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including
    • a) return email address
    • b) author’s name
    • c) affiliation
    • d) paper title
    • e) short abstract (50-100 words)
    • f) academic rank
    • g) whether you will need to present remotely if your paper is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

Panel submissions

Panel submissions involving multiple authors presenting on a theme(s), figure(s), text(s), trend(s), and/or traditions in in all areas of the history of analytical philosophy are welcome. A panel organizer or a corresponding panelist are requested to submit their long panel proposal electronically according to the following guidelines:

  1. Long proposals (500-1000 words) describing the panel’s theme and its panelists and their respective papers should be prepared for blind refereeing,
  2. put into PDF file format, and
  3. sent as an email attachment to Michael Beaney (michael.beaney[at]abdn.ac.uk).
  4. The subject line of the submission email should include the key-phrase “SSHAP submission (panel)”, and
  5. the body text of the email message should constitute a cover page for the submission by including
    • a) return email address
    • b) organizer’s or corresponding author’s name
    • c) affiliation
    • d) panel title
    • e) short abstract (50-100 words)
    • f) academic rank
    • g) the names and academic ranks of all panelists
    • h) whether any panelists will need to present remotely if your panel is accepted.

Time allowed for presentation is 45 minutes (including discussion).

SSHAP 2022 Program

The tenth annual conference of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytical Philosophy (SSHAP) will be held at School of Philosophy, Shanxi University 山西大学, 6-8 July, 2022. 

All talks will be online, on Zoom. All are welcome to attend the talks, but please register by sending an email to sshap2022@163.com with the subject line: “Register for SSHAP 2022” to receive passcode access. Zoom meeting links are hyperlinked to “Zoom n” along the Morning and Afternoon Session rows, and to “ Plenary Lecture. ”

  • Talks are 45 minutes including Q&A.
  • There will be 5-10 minutes between talks for rest and to switch to another Zoom session.
  • Some symposia have a slightly different time structure from the standard times of the left-most column below, and in these cases times are given for each participant or event of the symposium.
  • All times are China Standard Time (CST), UTC+8. Thus, for participants in time zones of the Americas, the Morning Sessions are in the evenings of 5-7 July, and for participants in time zones of Europe, the Afternoon Sessions are in the mornings of 6-8 July.

A preliminary program follows below. Titles of talks are links to abstracts.

Changes will be posted here as they occur, so please check back here, and at the local conference website: http://zxxy.sxu.edu.cn/zlxz/index.htm

Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Morning SessionsZoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
 Chair: Josh EisenthalChair: Gary EbbsChair: JIANG Yi 江怡
09:00-09:45Tyke Nunez,
The Twilight of Intuition and Russell’s Early Hylomorphism: Space in
Russell’s Foundations of Geometry
Bernard Linsky,
On the Use of Dots in Principia Mathematica
Stewart Shapiro, Øystein Linnebo, and Samuel Levey,
Theology, Potential Infinity, and Cantor
09:55-10:40Marcus Rossberg,
The Success of Logicism: Frege, Russell, Dedekind
Mauro Luiz Engelmann,
“What would it look like?”: Wittgenstein’s Radical Thought-Experiments in Philosophical Remarks
10:50-11:35Teresa Kouri Kissel,
Stebbing: Translations and Verbal Disputes
Christopher Pincock,
Propositional Attitudes in Russell’s Analysis of Mind
Yael Gazit,
McDowell, Sellars, and the History of Philosophy
11:45-13:15 Plenary Lecture
Erich Reck,
Wittgenstein’s Reception of Frege
Chair: Sanford Shieh
13:15-14:30Lunch Break
Afternoon SessionsZoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
Chair: Francis Y. Lin 林允清 Chair: CHEN Changshen 陈常燊Chair: Michael Beaney
14:30-15:15CHEN Bo 陈波 and HU Lanshuang 胡兰双,
Hintikka and Williamson on the KK Principle
XU Ao 徐鏖,
Preliminary Discussion on Otto Weininger’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
GU Chengcheng 谷城成
The Evaluation Criterion of Chinese Argumentation
15:25-16:10HUANG Min 黄敏,
The Tractarian Transcendental Idealism
XU Yingjin 徐英瑾,
How Could Ōmori Shōzō Use Wittgenstein to Fight against Wittgenstein?
ZHU Jing 朱菁,
Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology: A Masterwork Ahead of Its Time with a Lamentable Fate
16:20-17:05Carsten Fogh Nielsen,
Revising the Standard Story: How William Frankena invented Virtue Ethics
Fabian Pregel,
Frege’s Concept of Completeness
Fredrik Stjernberg,
The Essential Openness of Waismann’s Notion of Analyticity
17:15-18:00Anton Alexandrov,
Frege’s Explication of Function and its Relevance for Logicism
Benjamin Marschall,
Carnap and Quine: The Best of Both Worlds?

Thursday, July 7, 2022

Morning Sessions Zoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
 Chair: Mauro Luiz EngelmannChair: Landon ElkindChair: ZHU Jing 朱菁
09:00-09:45JIANG Yi 江怡 ,
The Reverse Reading of the Tractatus and its Problems
Peter Hylton,
Naturalism and Tolerance
Jim Hutchinson,
Frege’s Metaphysical Separatism
09:55-10:40Lydia Patton,
Mnemic Phenomena: History, Physiology, and Perception in Russell’s Analysis of Mind
Gary Ebbs,
Quine’s First Significant Step in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”
Robert Sinclair,
Quine, Lewis, and Phenomenalism
10:50-11:35Josh Eisenthal,
An Essential Similarity: Hertz’s Method in Wittgenstein’s
Tractatus
Robert May and Sanford Shieh 谢舜虎,
Truth-Values as Value-Ranges: Grounds and Perplexities
Richard Creath,
Whitehead’s Geometry as a Model for Quasi-Analysis
11:45-12:30Michael R. Hicks,
Sellars’s Logical Empiricism: Between Schlick and Neurath
Georg Schiemer,
Carnap’s Formalist Thesis
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break 
Afternoon Sessions  Zoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
Chair: CHEN Bo 陈波Chair: CHEN Jingkun 陈敬坤Chair: CHEN Changshen 陈常燊
14:00-14:45Francis Y. Lin 林允清,
Wittgenstein on Criteria, Scientism and Skepticism about Other Minds
XU Qiang 徐强,
The Availability of Middle Wittgenstein’s Philosophy
Sebastian Sunday Grève 王小塞,
Turing’s philosophy of AI
14:55-15:40K. T. Fann 范光棣,
Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy
Ragnar van der Merwe,
Kant and Whewell’s Hylomorphism: Then and Now
Giulia Felappi,
Langer on Saving Western logic from a Metaphysical Limbo
15:50-16:35Gabriela Besler,
Gottlob Frege’s Collaboration with two Italian Mathematicians: Giuseppe Peano and Giovanni Vailati
Nikolay Milkov,
Susan Stebbing and Some Uncharted Sides of Analytic Philosophy
16:45-17:30Timur Cengiz Uçan,
The Phrase and the Word
17:45-19:15 Plenary Lecture
Siobhan Chapman
Susan Stebbing on Philosophical Analysis: Publication, Revision and Letters to G. E. Moore
Chair: Michael Beaney
 

Friday, July 8, 2022

Morning Sessions Zoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
 Chair: Marcus RossbergChair: Michael R. HicksChair: Tyke Nunez
09:00-09:45Alexander Johnstone,
Shieh on Frege: Judgement, Truth, and the Context Principle
Danielle Macbeth,
Under the Fregean Microscope: A Preliminary Analysis of Traditional Chinese Mathematical Practice
Gregory Landini,
Stipulations Missing Axioms in Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik
09:55-10:40Sanford Shieh 谢舜虎,
Discussion of Johnstone
Christopher Campbell,
Wittgenstein’s Categorially Indeterminate Approach to Generality in the Tractatus
Alexander Klein,
Introspection: From Jamesean to Russellian Monism
10:50-11:35Luca Oliva,
Frege and Rickert on Mathematics
Aude Bandini,
Sellarsian Insights on the Scientific Status of Human and Social Sciences
Alessandro R. Moscarítolo Palacio,
The History of J. L. Austin’s Philosophy
11:45-12:30Robert Hudson,
Rudner’s Second Argument (for the Value-ladenness of Science)
Landon Elkind,
Why didn’t Bertrand Russell cite the logical works of his PhD Advisee Dorothy Wrinch?
12:30-14:00 Lunch Break 
Afternoon SessionsZoom 1Zoom 2Zoom 3
Chair: GU Chengcheng 谷城成 Chair: HUANG Min 黄敏 Chair: JIANG Yi  江怡
14:00-14:45LIU Jinfang 刘晋芳,
Interaction between Wittgenstein and Ramsey
Junichi Kasuga カスガ ジュンイチ,
R. G. Collingwood as a Philosopher of Perception
Ryo Ito 伊藤 遼,
An Interpretation of the Gray’s Elegy Argument
14:55-15:40 Johannes Brandl,
Brentano’s Concept of Intentionality: A Proposal for a New Beginning
Morgan Adou,
The Influence of Wittgenstein on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge
Raimundo Henriques,
Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Architecture
15:50-16:35Juliette Kennedy,
Gödel and the Entscheidungsproblem
Simon Wimmer,
Cook Wilson’s Accretion
LIANG Xiaolan 梁小岚,
Seeing-as in Wittgenstein’s Middle Philosophy
16:45-17:30James Levine,
Pragmatism vs Naturalism in Quine’s Philosophical Development
Michael Beaney and LIANG Xiaolan 梁小岚,
Zhang Shizhao 章士釗 and the Translation of ‘logic’
17:45-19:15 Plenary Lecture
CHEN Bo 陈波
Quine’s Naturalism: Clarification and Vindication
Chair: JIANG Yi 江怡
 
21:00-22:30 SSHAP Annual General Meeting 

Frank Ramsey’s Anti-Intellectualism

Volume 12.2 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/511

It features an article by Soroush Marouzi, entitled “Frank Ramsey’s Anti-Intellectualism”. Here is the abstract:

Frank Ramsey’s philosophy, developed in the 1920s in Cambridge, was in conversation with the debates surrounding intellectualism in the early twentieth century. Ramsey made his mark on the anti-intellectualist tradition via his notion of habit. He posited that human judgments take shape through habitual processes, and he rejected the separation between the domain of reason, on one hand, and the domain of habit, on the other. Ramsey also provided the ground to explore the nature of knowledge employed in acting from habit. That ground was passed onto Margaret MacDonald who came up with the distinction between knowing that something is the case and knowing how to apply a rule (or habit), the distinction that set the stage for Gilbert Ryle’s philosophical project against intellectualism from the 1940s onward. Ramsey thus influenced Ryle’s account of knowledge through the channel of MacDonald.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

On “Ontology”

Volume 12.1 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/510

It features an article by Sam Whitman McGrath, entitled “On ‘Ontology’: Analyzing the Carnap-Quine Debate as a Case of Metalinguistic Negotiation”. Here is the abstract:

This paper uses the concept of metalinguistic negotiation, drawn from contemporary philosophy of language, to develop a novel interpretation of Carnap and Quine’s debate about ontology. Like recent revisionary accounts of the debate, it argues that the widespread perception of first-order disagreement between the two is misleading, ascribing this misperception to Carnap and Quine’s divergent usage of “ontology” and its cognates. Once this difference is accounted for, their seemingly contradictory claims about the subject can be reconciled, as the two “talk past” each other on the semantic level. Crucially, however, this does not render their dispute merely verbal. Rather, it emerges as a remarkably consequential metalinguistic negotiation over whether the term “ontology” ought to be reinterpreted or replaced for the purposes of positive philosophical theorizing. This reading provides an account of the genuine disagreement that drove Carnap and Quine to engage in their debate and illuminates the broader metaphilosophical convictions that support each of their positions. As such, it addresses an important explanatory challenge facing members of the revisionary camp.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

An Interpretation of the Gray’s Elegy Argument

Volume 11.6 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/503

It features an article by Ryo Ito, entitled “An Interpretation of the Gray’s Elegy Argument“. Here is the abstract:

In this essay, I first argue that the Gray’s Elegy Argument—the dense passage in Bertrand Russell’s ‘On Denoting’—can be interpreted as a single, coherent argument against the notion that a definite description corresponds to what I call a multifaceted object—an object having multiple facets or sides. I then look into some manuscripts Russell wrote in 1904 and in 1905. I show that he had envisaged the notion of a multifaceted object and used it for two different purposes before he discovered various objections to it, which he turned into the Gray’s Elegy Argument.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

Indeterminate Analyticity

Volume 11.5 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/501

It features an article by Martin Montminy, entitled “Indeterminate Analyticity“. Here is the abstract:

W. V. Quine is commonly read as holding that there are no analytic truths and no a priori truths. I argue that this is a misreading. Quine’s view is that no sentence is determinately analytic or determinately a priori. I show that my reading is better supported by Quine’s arguments and general remarks about meaning and analyticity. I then briefly reexamine the debate between Quine and Carnap about analyticity, and show that the nature of their disagreement is different than what it is usually thought to be.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

Carnap’s Geometrical Methodology / Review of work on Venn

Volume 11.4 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/499

It features an article by Matteo De Benedetto, entitled “Carnap’s Geometrical Methodology: Explication as a transfer principle“. Here is the abstract:

In this paper, I will offer a novel perspective on Carnapian explication, understanding it as a philosophical analogue of the transfer principle methodology that originated in nineteenth-century projective geometry. Building upon the historical influence that projective geometry exerted on Carnap’s philosophy, I will show how explication can be modeled as a kind of transfer principle that connects, relative to a given task and normatively constrained by the desiderata chosen by the explicators, the functional properties of concepts belonging to different conceptual frameworks. Moreover, I will demonstrate how, in light of this characterization, we can better appreciate the evolution of Carnap’s metaphilosophy.

The volume also contains a review of John Venn: A Life in Logic, by Lukas M. Verburgt (University of Chicago Press, 2022), written by David E. Dunning.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

Rules and Self-Citation / Review of work on Quine

Volume 11.3 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/497

It features an article by Ori Simchen, entitled “Rules and Self-Citation“. Here is the abstract:

I discuss a neglected solution to the skeptical problem introduced by Lewis Carroll’s “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles” (1895) in terms of a self-citational inferential license. I then consider some responses to this solution. The most significant response on behalf of the skeptic utilizes the familiar distinction between two ways of accepting a rule: as action-guiding and as a mere truth. I argue that this is ultimately unsatisfactory and conclude by opting for an alternative conception of rules as representations of behavior deployed for various purposes, some theoretical and others practical. This alternative conception does not allow the skeptical problem to get off the ground.

The volume also contains a review of Quine’s Science and Sensibilia, edited by Robert Sinclair (Palgrave Macmillan 2019), written by Tyke Nunez.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!

Frege, Thomae, and Formalism / Review of work on Wittgenstein and Russell

Volume 11.2 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online, with full open-access:

https://jhaponline.org/jhap/issue/view/494

It features an article by Richard Lawrence, entitled “Frege, Thomae, and Formalism: Shifting Perspectives” Here is the abstract:

Mathematical formalism is the the view that numbers are “signs” and that arithmetic is like a game played with such signs. Frege’s colleague Thomae defended formalism using an analogy with chess, and Frege’s critique of this analogy has had a major influence on discussions in analytic philosophy about signs, rules, meaning, and mathematics. Here I offer a new interpretation of formalism as defended by Thomae and his predecessors, paying close attention to the mathematical details and historical context. I argue that for Thomae, the formal standpoint is an algebraic perspective on a domain of objects, and a “sign” is not a linguistic expression or mark, but a representation of an object within that perspective. Thomae exploits a shift into this perspective to give a purely algebraic construction of the real numbers from the rational numbers. I suggest that Thomae’s chess analogy is intended to provide a model for such shifts in perspective.

The volume also contains a review of Wittgenstein’s Critique of Russell’s Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement, by James Connelly (Anthem Press 2021), written by Samuel Lebens.

JHAP is a free, open-access, peer-reviewed journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org/. Submissions welcome!