In honour of the birthdays of Rudolf Carnap and Bertrand Russell, check out these articles in JHAP:
Volume 5.5 of the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) is now online. This is a special issue entitled Gilbert Ryle, Intelligence, Practice, Skill, edited by Juliet Floyd and Lydia Patton.
It contains the following four articles:
1) “Volume Introduction: Gilbert Ryle on Propositions, Propositional Attitudes, and Theoretical Knowledge” by Julia Tanney
Abstract: In the introduction to the special volume, Gilbert Ryle: Intelligence, Practice and Skill, Julia Tanney introduces the contributions of Michael Kremer, Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson, and Will Small, each of which indicates concern about the appropriation of Ryle’s distinction between knowing-how and knowing-that in seminal work in contemporary epistemology. Expressing agreement with the authors that something has gone awry in these borrowings from Ryle, Tanney takes this criticism to a deeper level. She argues that the very notion of content-bearing, causally-efficacious mental states, let alone representational states of knowledge-that or knowledge-how, embodies the very presuppositions that Ryle calls into question in his rejection of classical theories of meaning and his related warning of the type-errors involved in conflating rational and mechanistic explanation. That these mental posits are presupposed, unchallenged, in today’s debates make his arguments against intellectualism particularly difficult to discern.
2) “Ryle’s ‘Intellectualist Legend’ in Historical Context” by Michael Kremer
Abstract: Gilbert Ryle’s distinction between knowledge-how and knowledge-that emerged from his criticism of the “intellectualist legend” that to do something intelligently is “to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit of practice,” and became a philosophical commonplace in the second half of the last century. In this century Jason Stanley (initially with Timothy Williamson) has attacked Ryle’s distinction, arguing that “knowing-how is a species of knowing-that,” and accusing Ryle of setting up a straw man in his critique of “intellectualism.” Examining the use of the terms “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism” in the first half of the 20th century, in a wide-ranging debate in the social sciences as well as in philosophy, I show that Ryle was not criticizing a straw man, but a live historical position. In the context of this controversy, Ryle’s position represents a third way between “intellectualism” and “anti-intellectualism,” an option that has largely gone missing in the 21st century discussion. This argument illustrates how history can inform the history of philosophy, and how the history of philosophy can inform contemporary philosophical inquiry.
3) “Skill, Drill, and Intelligent Performance: Ryle and Intellectualism” by Stina Bäckström and Martin Gustafsson
Abstract: In this paper, we aim to show that a study of Gilbert Ryle’s work has much to contribute to the current debate between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism with respect to skill and know-how. According to Ryle, knowing how and skill are distinctive from and do not reduce to knowing that. What is often overlooked is that for Ryle this point is connected to the idea that the distinction between skill and mere habit is a category distinction, or a distinction in form. Criticizing the reading of Ryle presented by Jason Stanley, we argue that once the formal nature of Ryle’s investigation is recognized it becomes clear that his dispositional account is not an instance of reductionist behaviorism, and that his regress argument has a broader target than Stanley appears to recognize.
4) “Ryle on the Explanatory Role of Knowledge How” by Will Small
Abstract: Contemporary discussions of knowledge how typically focus on the question whether or not knowing how to do ϕ consists in propositional knowledge, and divide the field between intellectualists (who think that it does) and anti-intellectualists (who think that it does not, and that it consists instead in the possession of the ability to ϕ). This way of framing the issue is said to derive from Gilbert Ryle. I argue that this is a misreading of Ryle, whose primary interest in discussing knowledge how was not epistemological but rather action-theoretical, whose argument against intellectualism has for this reason been misunderstood and underestimated (by Jason Stanley, among others), and whose positive view aims to chart a middle course between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism.
JHAP is a free, open access journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org. Submissions welcome.
Annual General Meeting of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy
University of Calgary, May 9th 2017-05-07
Chairing: Sandra Lapointe, President
Attending: all those present at the conference (see programme attached)
13:00 Call to order
13:00 Approval of the agenda
Motion to approve the agenda: Sean Morris, seconded Gary Ebbs.
PASSES unanimously
13:01 President’s report
13:02 Adoption of the Constitution
The proposed Constitution of the SSHAP has been circulated and posted on sshap.org.
Motion that the Constitution be approved: Richard Creath, seconded: William Tashek
PASSES with one abstention
13:03 Presentation of Officers and Steering Committee of the SSHAP
Motion: That the following members of the SSHAP be confirmed in the following positions, for the terms indicated: Warren Goldfarb, seconded: Joshua Eisenthal
Steering Committee:
PASSES unanimously
13:04 Other Business: None
13:04 Adjournment. Richard Zach proposes the meeting be adjourned. No objections.
Richard Zach
Secretary
Recommendations:
Good Practice Guidelines
To ensure representation of women on the executive committee, it is recommended that,
Conference Speakers
To ensure representation of women in conferences, it is recommended that,
Eva Picardi, Professor Emerita at the University of Bologna, has died on April 23, 2017. She was a central member of the community of historians of analytic philosophers, and has served on the Advisory Board of the Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy since its inception.
Prof. Picardi received her DPhil under Michael Dummett at Oxford in 1984, and worked with Georg Henrik van Wright in 1986 and with Christian Thiel as a Humboldt Fellow in 1988/89. She is the author of Assertibility and Truth. A Study of Fregean Themes (1981), Linguaggio e analisi filosofica (1992), La chimica dei concetti (1994), Le teorie del significato (1999) and numerous articles on Frege, Peano, Russell and the philosophy of language more broadly. She has also edited and translated into Italian Frege’s Nachlaß (1981) as well as his papers from 1890-1897 (2001, with Carlo Penco).
Prof. Picardi was a founding member and past president of the Italian Society for Analytic Philosophy. Her work contributed significantly to establishing the history of analytic philosophy as a field, and to establishing analytic philosophy in Italy and on the European continent.
SSHAP and the JHAP editorial board send their condolences to Prof. Picardi’s family, friends, and colleagues.
The Society for the Study of the History of Philosophy 2017 Annual Meeting will be held May 8-10, 2017 at the University of Calgary, Canada. The program follows below.
Online registration is now closed, but you can register on site.
Abstracts of papers Continue reading SSHAP 2017 Abstracts
Volume 5.4 of The Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy is now online.
It features an article by James R. Connelly entitled, “On Operator N and Wittgenstein’s Logical Philosophy”. Here is an abstract.
In this paper, I provide a new reading of Wittgenstein’s N operator, and of its significance within his early logical philosophy. I thereby aim to resolve a longstanding scholarly controversy concerning the expressive completeness of N. Within the debate between Fogelin and Geach in particular, an apparent dilemma emerged to the effect that we must either concede Fogelin’s claim that N is expressively incomplete, or reject certain fundamental tenets within Wittgenstein’s logical philosophy. Despite their various points of disagreement, however, Fogelin and Geach nevertheless share several common and problematic assumptions regarding Wittgenstein’s logical philosophy, and it is these mistaken assumptions which are the source of the dilemma. Once we recognize and correct these, and other, associated expository errors, it will become clear how to reconcile the expressive completeness of Wittgenstein’s N operator, with several commonly recognized features of, and fundamental theses within, the Tractarian logical system.
The issue also contains a review of Sebastian Sunday Grève and Jakub Mácha, eds. Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language, written by Craig Fox.
JHAP is a free, open access journal. It is available at https://jhaponline.org. Submissions welcome.
Volume 5.3 of the Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy (JHAP) has now been published online.
It features an article by Victor Moberger entitled, “Not Just Errors: A New Interpretation of Mackie’s Error Theory”.
Here is an abstract:
J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection.
The volume also contains a review of Cheryl Misak’s book, Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein, written by John Capps.
JHAP is a free and open-access journal. Submissions welcome at https://jhaponline.org.
The Department of Philosophy at McMaster University invites applications for a Visiting Professorship in Russell and the History of Early Analytic Philosophy for 2017-2018. McMaster University, which houses the Bertrand Russell Archives and the Bertrand Russell Research Centre, is one of the leading centres for research on Russell’s philosophy.
The Visiting Professorships, one of which will be available each year, are intended for established scholars whose research would be benefited by access to the Bertrand Russell Archives for an extended period. They are tenable for either one or two semesters, and involve the obligation to present at least one paper in the Philosophy Department’s Speakers Series and teach one fourth year undergraduate course also open to graduates, preferably on the history of analytic philosophy (although a different topic may be agreed upon with the Chair of the Department of Philosophy), while undertaking research in the Russell Archives. The stipend for teaching the course is up to $16,627.00, depending on rank, in accordance with the standard schedule for overload teaching.
It is expected that successful applicants will be on research leave from their home university during the term of their Visiting Professorship and thus can rely on their regular leave salary for their main financial support.
Review of applications will commence on April 15, 2017.
How to Apply:
Applicants must submit their application through the University’s electronic portal at www.workingatmcmaster.ca/careers/. Please include a CV together with a description of the research you propose to conduct at the Russell Archives.
Queries should be addressed to Dr. Stefan Sciaraffa, Chair, Department of Philosophy at chphilo@mcmaster.ca
To comply with the Government of Canada’s reporting requirements, the University is obliged to gather information about applicants’ status as either Permanent Residents of Canada or Canadian citizens. Applicants need not identify their country of origin or current citizenship, however, all applications must include one of the following statements:
Yes, I am a citizen or permanent resident of Canada
No, I am not a citizen or permanent resident of Canada
All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply. However, Canadian citizens and permanent residents will be given priority for these positions. McMaster University is strongly committed to employment equity within its community and to recruiting a diverse faculty and staff. The University encourages applications from all qualified candidates including women, persons with disabilities, First Nations, Métis and Inuit persons, members of racialized communities and LGBTQ-identified persons. If you require any form of accommodation throughout the recruitment and selection procedure, please contact the Human Resources Service Centre at 905-525-9140 ext. 222-HR (22247).