Category Archives: Meetings

SSHAP 2024 Conference Information and Program

The conference registration fee is $95 waged, $45 others for in-person participation; $45 waged, $20 others for online participation. The conference dinner is $65.

Here is the registration link: https://secure.touchnet.com/C21646_ustores/web/store_main.jsp?STOREID=296

If you would like to participate in the conference dinner on Friday, June 28, in Middletown, please register for the dinner (same link as above) by June 13.

The conference venue in Hartford is the Graduate Business Learning Center (UConn School of Business), 100 Constitution Plaza, corner of Market and Kinsley Streets, Hartford, CT 06103.  The venue in Middletown is at The Frank Center for Public Affairs of Wesleyan University 238 Church Street, Middletown, CT 06459.

Conference hotel rate is available at Candlewood Suites Downtown Hartford,370 Market Street, Hartford, CT  06120,+1 860-724-1074. This is a 10-minute walk to the Hartford conference venue, including a highway underpass. $179 per night plus tax. To book, call the hotel, tell them you’re going to the SSHAP conference organized by the University of Connecticut (be sure to ask them to look up both University of Connecticut *and* the SSHAP conference), and “rebook” the room in your name with a credit card.

There will be free bus transportation from Hartford to Wesleyan (a 20 minute drive) departing at 8 am on Friday, 28th June from Marriott Downtown, 200 Columbus Blvd, Hartford, CT 06103, and back to Hartford after the conference dinner, at 9pm.

The following conference program will be available in printed form at the conference. It contains the conference schedule, maps, and local/travel information.

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 Graduate Business Learning Center (Hartford) and the Public Affairs Center of Wesleyan (Middletown).

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 

SSHAP 2022 Abstracts of Talks

The abstracts are sorted by the Latin alphabet version of family name, and divided into five groups for ease of access by hyperlinks at the beginning of each group, see immediately below.



A-E, F-I, J-L, M-R, S-Z


Morgan Adou, Centre Gilles Gaston Granger Aix-Marseille

Title: The Influence of Wittgenstein on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

Abstract: The following paper aims at providing a comprehensive understanding of the influence of Wittgenstein on David Bloor’s famous “strong program” in sociology of scientific knowledge which he initiated in the seventies. This will allow us to understand: 1) the well-known four principles of this program (causality impartiality, symmetricity, reflexivity), 2) certain central aspects of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and 3) his influence on major thinkers of the twentieth century, which will enrich our representation of the history of analytic philosophy in this century.


Anton Alexandrov, University of Barcelona/LOGOS

Title: Frege’s Explication of Function and its Relevance for Logicism

Abstract: A number of philosophers have suggested that Frege’s logicism constitutes a Carnapian explication rather than an attempt of conceptual analysis. Curiously, none of the arguments given for the explication view elaborate upon FB. There, Frege explicitly mentions that, in the course of mathematical development, the initial notion of function was replaced by a more encompassing one and he goes on to introduce an even more general notion of function which he uses in Gg. In this talk, I reevaluate the explication view in light of this.


Aude Bandini, Université de Montréal

Title: Sellarsian Insights on the Scientific Status of Human and Social Sciences

Abstract: Sellars’ description of a so-called clash between the manifest and scientific images of man-in-the-world seems to be primarily concerned with the status of naturalized sciences like human biology and, most notably, psychology. However, he insists that there is a genuine form of scientific rationality involved in the manifest image itself. Accordingly, the manifest image cannot be reduced to some sort of pre-scientific image of the world that, as the inquiry progresses, should eventually be discarded as the outcome of mere unreflective opinions. In this presentation, I wish to address the extent to which, in a sellarsian framework, human and social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, but clinical medicine as well) can be genuinely considered sciences without any qualification, despite the persisting challenges the various attempts to naturalize them has faced in history. Since according to Sellars, human beings are persons rather than featherless bipeds, what kind of science—if any—would be appropriate in terms of description, explanation and understanding when it comes to human affairs.


Michael Beaney and LIANG Xiaolan 梁小岚

Title: Zhang Shizhao 章士釗 and the Translation of ‘logic’

Abstract: In this talk we will discuss Zhang Shizhao’s famous essay ‘On the Meanings of Names in Translation’ (Lùn fānyì míngyì 論翻譯名義)’, which played a key role in establishing what is now the standard translation of ‘logic’ into Chinese, sketching the historical context and analysing and evaluating the argument he gives for providing a phonemic rather than semantic translation.


Gabriela Besler, University of Silesia in Katowice

Title: Gottlob Frege’s Collaboration with two Italian Mathematicians: Giuseppe Peano and Giovanni Vailati

Abstract: Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) collaborated for around fifteen years with two Italian mathematicians interested in his scientific activity: Giuseppe Peano (1859–1932) and his student and later co-worker, Giovanni Vailati (1863–1909). Some of their letters have survived. Frege, Peano and Vailati studied mathematics, and they were not well educated in philosophy. The talk will be divided into three parts: Reconstruction of the timeline of Frege’s collaboration with Italian mathematicians. Contacts with Frege helped Peano publish the German translation of five of his articles in 1899. The topics of Frege – Vailati discussion in Jena in 1906.


Johannes L. Brandl, Universität Salzburg

Title: Brentano’s Concept of Intentionality: A Proposal for a New Beginning

Abstract: Within the analytic philosophy of mind, the study of Brentano’s concept of intentionality long followed the influential interpretation by Roderick Chisholm. According to this interpretation, Brentano understood the concept of intentionality both ontologically and psychologically, but later revised his ontological view considerably. In light of the criticisms that have been leveled at this view in recent years by Werner Sauer, Mauro Antonelli, and Carlo Ierna, I will argue in this talk for making a fresh start in dealing with Brentano’s concept of intentionality. The guiding idea will be that for Brentano intentionality in the case of sensory (receptive) phenomena is primarily an immanent consciousness, whereas in the case of cognitive (post-receptive) phenomena it is primarily a transcendent consciousness. Thus, Brentano’s notion of intentionality proves to be a precursor of a “two-factor analysis” of objective representations, as most recently proposed by Kenneth Taylor.


Christopher Campbell, York University Canada

Title: First Title: Wittgenstein’s Categorially Indeterminate Approach to Generality in the Tractatus Second Title: Wittgenstein’s letter to Russell and the significance of ‘N(ξ‾)’

Abstract: The Tractatus notion of an “object” is deliberately categorially indeterminate: Wittgenstein denies that it is the logician’s job to give a particular doctrine of categories. But how can the logician give an account of generality without distinguishing between name and predicate, or object and concept? This paper canvasses the resources the Tractatus is able to muster in the service of an account of generality while remaining categorially indeterminate. The result is not a full formal systematization of inference, a Begriffsschrift; but in Wittgenstein’s view it limns more faithfully the conceptual terrain, by respecting the distinction between logic and its application.


Siobhan Chapman, The University of Liverpool

Title: Susan Stebbing on Philosophical Analysis: Publication, Revision and Letters to G. E. Moore

Abstract: In this talk I will consider the development of Stebbing’s thought about philosophical analysis, concentrating on the period during which she was writing her seminal A Modern Introduction to Logic (1930), and then subsequently revising it for the second edition (1933). In doing so, I will draw on Stebbing’s published works, but also on her side of a long personal correspondence with G. E. Moore. These letters, held in the G. E. Moore papers at the University of Cambridge Library Archive, offer fascinating insights into Stebbing’s work and her relationship with Moore. In particular they provide evidence of the development of her response to Russell’s theory of descriptions and his account of incomplete symbols. Stebbing’s response to Russell contributed to the development of her ideas about ‘directional’, ‘new level’ or ‘metaphysical’ analysis, which was foundational to what became known as the Cambridge school of Analysis. It also enabled her to articulate what she saw as problematic in the ideas of logical positivism, which were being disseminated by members of the Vienna Circle. The reconsideration of some of Stebbing’s most influential published works in the light of her unpublished correspondence with Moore has both particular and more general significance. Firstly, while confirming the importance to Stebbing of her professional relationship with Moore, the letters serve to debunk any misconception that she was straightforwardly his ‘follower’ or merely his ‘disciple’. Secondly, recent scholarship has emphasised the importance both of the Cambridge school of analysis and of Stebbing’s response to logical positivism to the development of analytic philosophy in the early to mid twentieth century. An understanding of the genesis of this period in Stebbing’s work, informed by archival as well as by published sources, is therefore of importance to the wider history of analytic philosophy.


CHEN Bo 陈波, Wuhan University and HU Lanshuang 胡兰双, Nankai University

Title: Hintikka and Williamson on the KK Principle

Abstract: The controversy about the KK principle (Knowing implies knowing that one knows) has greatly revived in contemporary epistemology and epistemic logic. This paper carefully examines and critically reviews Hintikka’s and Williamson’s arguments about KK, and make three final conclusions: First, although Hintikka and Williamson have some similar viewpoints on KK, they essentially talk apart on KK: Hintikka advocates KK based on his strong concept of knowledge, i.e. ideal knowledge and ideal cognitive subjects, but Williamson rejects KK based on his talks of inexact knowledge and margin for error. Second, Williamson’s two arguments against KK don’t succeed, since the principle of knowledge reliability, the principle of humans’ cognitive limitation, and the margin for error principle used in them are all challengeable. Third, Hintikka has to face such troubles as that his strong conception of knowledge has nothing to do with our ordinary knowledge, that his epistemic logic is not applicable to the latter, and that it is very difficult for him to justify so strong conception of knowledge. Williamson has to face such troubles as that he holds double standards of knowledge: one is that knowledge implies truth, another is that knowledge is inexact and has its margin for error, and that it is very hard for him to justify his double standards of knowledge and make them coherent.


CHEN Bo 陈波, Wuhan University

Title: Quine’s Naturalism: Clarification and Vindication

Abstract: Naturalism is the dominant characteristic of Quine’s philosophy. This paper presents a more comprehensive and sympathetic clarification of Quine’s naturalized epistemology (NE for short), and vindicates its main positions by critically responding to the three objections to it: replacement (Quine’s NE is the replacement of traditional epistemology), circularity (Quine’s NE is viciously circular), and non-normativity (Quine’s NE is devoid of normative dimension), and to Williamson’s three charges to naturalism (mainly Quine’s brand), finally concludes that the three objections and Williamson’s three charges are mainly due to misreading or misinterpretation, so all of them failed, and that there are illuminating, reasonable, and valuable insights in Quine’s NE, which are worthy of further development.


Richard Creath, Arizona State University

Title: Whitehead’s Geometry as a Model for Quasi-Analysis

Abstract: As is well-known, Russell’s Our Knowledge of the External World (OKEW) was a significant inspiration for Carnap’s Aufbau. For many years it was thought that the chief point of the Aufbau was ontological reduction, and its chief inspiration was Russell’s program of reducing the external world to sensory phenomena. Now, this seems not to have been the case. Carnap was happy to use the word ‘reduction’, but I’m not sure that, especially in its present sense, that it is the best description of what Carnap was doing. Moreover, it seems that the closest model for the most significant accomplishment of the Aufbau, quasi-analysis, is not Russell’s external world program, but Whitehead’s geometry, which is also discussed briefly in OKEW.


Gary Ebbs, Indiana University

Title: Quine’s First Significant Step in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”

Abstract: Quine’s first significant step in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” is to criticize the initially tempting idea that we can clarify the vague term “analytic” by glossing it as “true by virtue of meanings and independently of facts.” His highly compressed criticism of this idea concludes with the sentence, “Once the theory of meaning is sharply separated from the theory of reference, it is a short step to recognizing as the primary business of the theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and the analyticity of statements; meanings as obscure intermediaries may well be abandoned” (FLPV, 21) I shall argue that this conclusion rests on Quine’s commitment to a methodological principle that is central both to Carnap’s strategies for explicating analyticity and to Quine’s criticisms of them in “Two Dogmas”: the principle that our practical ability to use our words in discourse is methodologically prior to and independent of our consideration of the question of whether or not there are meanings.


Joshua Eisenthal, California Institute of Technology

Title: An Essential Similarity: Hertz’s Method in Wittgenstein’sTractatus

Abstract: Although the importance of Hertz’s influence on Wittgenstein is widely accepted, the specific nature of this influence has not yet been fully understood. Honing in one aspect of this issue, I will argue that there are overarching methodological parallels between Hertz’s Principles of Mechanics and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. In particular, I will argue that both Hertz and Wittgenstein aim to capture an essential similarity in our ordinary forms of description, and both hope that the recognition of this similarity will help their readers to avoid fundamental confusions. I will also comment on the most important methodological divergence between the two texts.


Landon D. C. Elkind, Western Kentucky University

Title: Why didn’t Bertrand Russell cite the logical works of his PhD Advisee Dorothy Wrinch?

Abstract: In this paper I consider Bertrand Russell’s promotion of his other students like Ludwig Wittgenstein, especially citation and discussion of their work in print, and his decision not to similarly promote Dorothy Wrinch. At first blush it looks as though Russell cited his male students and not his female students without much intellectual cause. If this appearance is accurate, then it is tempting to infer that the explanation for this was simply blatant sexism. However, I argue that the appearance is inaccurate. Wrinch did share many of Russell’s 1911-1919 views about logic, science, and their relationship that are characteristic of logic-centric analytic philosophy. On the other hand, the chronology of Russell’s own philosophical interests and that of Wrinch’s intellectual activity do not match up. The story of influence and collaboration between them is in fact more complicated than the blatant sexism hypothesis would suggest. After unpacking these chronologies and showing how they weigh against the overly simple hypothesis of blatant sexism, I consider other explanations of why Russell cited the work of his male students and not Wrinch’s work.


Mauro Luiz Engelmann, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

Title: “What would it look like?”: Wittgenstein’s Radical Thought-Experiments in Philosophical Remarks

Abstract: My aim is to elucidate the role and consequences of the use of thought-experiments in manuscripts 105-108 and, thus, in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Remarks (1930). Roughly, they are of two kinds. The first kind grounds the creation of a phenomenological language (symbolism), and appears in MSS 105 and 106. The second kind connects the phenomenological language in MSS 105-7 with Wittgenstein’s phenomenology in grammar project in Philosophical Remarks (MSS 107-8). Both kinds of thought-experiments should reveal the implicit rules of syntax (or grammar) that determine what is possible


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K. T. Fann, Emeritus York University Canada

Title: Wittgenstein and Analytic Philosophy

Abstract: The mainstream of academic philosophy in English-speaking countries was “Analytic philosophy,” and it was divided into two currents: “Logical Analysis” and “Ordinary Language Analysis”. Both schools were inspired by Wittgenstein, the first by his early work: Tractatus Logico-philosophicus, and the second by his later thought and posthumous publication: Philosophical Investigations.

This widely considered the greatest philosopher of the 20th century was amazing not only in inspiring two diverse schools of thought but also in repudiating both in his lifetime. Today, I only have time to tell the story of how he formulated his early philosophy and how he later repudiated it. Analytic philosophy has its origin in England. I think this has something to do with the rise of modern science and industrialization in England. The industrial revolution depended on machines. If you want to understand how a machine works the best way is to take it apart and look at its constituent parts and see how they are related. This is also the method of science; if you want to understand how anything works, you take it apart, dissolve it, and analyze it until you reach the final stage where it can no longer be further analyzed, the atoms. Analytic philosophy adopted this successful scientific method to philosophy. Its clearest formulation is found in the Tractatus. The central theme of the Tractatus is to answer the question: How can language describe the world? Wittgenstein employed the a priori logical analysis method to arrive at his conclusion: the result of this analysis must finally come up with a set of “elementary propositions.” An elementary proposition consists of “names,” and names refer to “objects.” Objects related to each other in a certain way constitute a “fact,” and the totality of facts constitutes the world. Thus, by pure a priori logical analysis, Wittgenstein arrived at an ontology, which was appropriately called “Logical Atomism” by Russell. Language can describe the world because it is the picture of the world. Language consists of propositions. If a proposition matches with a fact then it is true; if not, it is false. Everything else is nonsense. Science-leaning philosophers really liked this part of Wittgenstein as it seemed to capture the scientific spirit. Scientific propositions are either true or false, everything else is nonsense, especially metaphysics and religion. The Vienna School of Logical Positivists regarded the Tractatus as their Bible. Their interpretation of the Tractatus spread to Russia and China. Much later they found out from their personal contact with Wittgenstein that they were deeply mistaken. Wittgenstein clearly stated in the Preface that he was trying to show “what cannot be said” through clearly presenting “what can be said”. “What can be said” (i.e. science) is not important to him; it is “what can not be said” that’s important to him. He was a mystic. But, that’s another story. In what follows I will merely discuss how he constructed his early analytical philosophy and later started to question and finally repudiated it.


Giulia Felappi, University of Southampton

Title: Langer on Saving Western logic from a Metaphysical Limbo

Abstract: In my paper, I will discuss Langer’s notion of logic. The purpose will be two-fold. I. I will show that Langer’s approach was to take logical languages, natural languages and other communicative media to create together an inextricable whole. Hence her approach was, as Gardener briefly noted, much more aligned with the Chinese tradition than with the Western Early Analytic tradition. II. Second, I will show how fruitful her approach to logic is, as compared to the more restricted approach of Russell and the first Wittgenstein.


Juliet Floyd, Boston University

Title: Reflections on Turing as a Philosopher

Abstract: In recent work I have argued for the sophistication of Turing’s work as a philosopher. By setting him into context against the backdrop of his Cambridge environment as a student, we see the work of Hobson and Wittgenstein as two elements to which he responded most creatively. My first purpose was to de-emphasize and re-construe the attention that has so far been paid to Turing’s philosophy of mind: philosophy of logic, I argue, was more central to his concerns. Next, following suggestions Zhao Fan, with whom I have been discussing Turing for several years, as well as the work of Jack Copeland, Diane Proudfoot and Oran Shagrir, I am turning to Turing’s wider thoughts about how computability as a notion should figure in AI and the foundations of mathematics. I will survey this growing literature and share some of my recent thoughts about Turing’s development in relation to Hilbert and his reactions to Wittgenstein’s 1939 Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics at Cambridge.


Carsten Fogh Nielsen, University of Southern Denmark

Title: Revising the Standard Story: How William Frankena invented Virtue Ethics

Abstract: The paper argues that the Standard Story of contemporary virtue ethics omits an important contributor to the development of virtue ethics as a distinct theoretical position within normative ethics, namely William Frankena. I provide evidence for this claim and argue that the Standard Story is flawed and should be revised.


Yael Gazit, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Title: McDowell, Sellars, and the History of Philosophy

Abstract: This paper examines and constructs John McDowell’s approach to the history of philosophy. While McDowell argues for his views with and by engaging the great philosophers of the past, he rarely reflects on it. His vigorous objection to the kind of reading-in that is practiced by his colleague and friend, Robert Brandom, suggests that he sees himself committed to a different approach. By closely looking into McDowell’s engagement with Sellars, and the interestingly similar accusations of reading-in that McDowell raises against Sellars’s reading of Kant, I account for McDowell’s approach and argue that it is closer to Brandom’s than it might seem, albeit substantial differences between the two.


GU Chengcheng 谷城成, Shanxi University

Title: The Evaluation Criterion of Chinese Argumentation

Abstract: There are huge differences between Chinese expressions and Indo-European expressions. Chinese expressions format a language with a “topic-explanation” structure but not the “subject-predicate” structure. So, it is difficult to analyze Chinese expressions by logical analysis method. Based on Shen Youding’s discussion about language, thought and meaning, this paper further discusses the evaluation criteria of Chinese argumentation, is a further attempt to study and introduce Chinese philosophy by using analytical philosophy method.


Raimundo Henriques, University of Lisbon

Title: Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Architecture

Abstract: Among the remarks collected in Culture and Value, some concern architecture. In this talk, I will discuss those remarks, aiming at providing a systematic account of Wittgenstein’s conception of architecture. I will argue that Wittgenstein took ‘architecture’ to refer to two distinct activities, one which can be seen as a form of art and another which cannot. I will argue also that he took the latter to be the only form of architecture there could be in his time.


Michael R. Hicks, Miami University

Title: Sellars’s Logical Empiricism: Between Schlick and Neurath

Abstract: At a crucial point in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” Wilfrid Sellars discusses the protocol sentence debate and it can seem clear that his sympathies lie more with Neurath than Schlick. I complicate this story by observing that foundationalism is less central to Sellars’s concerns than this line of thought takes for granted. If we take seriously Sellars’s self-identification as a logical empiricist, methodologically he is closer to Schlick than to Neurath. This is my clue, then, to interpret the passage in question as attempting to highlight an epistemological constraint that the Neurathian coherentist cannot so much as recognize much less meet.


HUANG Min 黄敏, Sun Yat-Sen University

Title: The Tractarian Transcendental Idealism

Abstract: Whereas the solipsism in the Tractatus has been understood by many authors as a version of transcendental idealism, Peter Sullivan (1996) has derived from the visional field metaphor in 5.6331 a refutation of the solipsism. He then concludes that the transcendental idealism occurs in the Tractatus as an enemy, not an embraced position. For Adrian Moore, however, since the visional field metaphor is used by Wittgenstein to eliminate the occurrence of the eye from the field, it is a confirmation of the transcendental idealism. For both of them the defining feature of the transcendental idealism is just the absence of the limitations of representations within the representations, and in that metaphor, the eye, as a limitation, is absent in the visional field, or the representation. Sullivan agrees with Moore of the presence of a transcendental idealism in the Tractatus, while insists on that it was presented as a refuted target, rather than an embraced position. His reason is that, as Wittgenstein claims, there is no a priori order of things, and the limitations of the representations, if there were, would require such an order. In this talk, I will develop a different understanding of the nature of the Tractarian transcendental idealism, and steer a way out of the controversy. The idea is to explain the notion of limitations in a way different with one that Moore and Sullivan share. The explanation they share is made in terms of contrast, while the one I suggest in terms of autonomy. The latter effects without presupposition of a priori order of things. This changes the dialectic situation. Sullivan then could not reject the transcendental idealistic account of the Tractatus on the ground of its rejection of a priori order. The new notion of limitation also shapes our understanding of the transcendental idealism. It can be tracked back to two accounts of Kant’s transcendental idealism, one realistic and the other anti-realistic. According to the realistic account, the subject’s capacities are eventually facts about the subject and its interactions with objects in themselves. According to the latter, they are manifestation of the subject’s self-legislation, or a moment of its autonomy, which is intrinsically normative, rather than factual. In Moore’s understanding of the transcendental idealism, it is the realistic account that takes the advantage. In my explanation, however, it is the latter that works. So I call it the autonomy account of limitations. I argue that when Wittgenstein says in the Tractatus the subject “is the limit of the world”(5.632), that limit should be casted as a limitation of the autonomy account. This is nicely demonstrated by his well repeated remark, “logic must take care of itself”(5.473; NB, etc.). Such a limit has simply no outside. It is drawn from within, and it is not necessary to consider the outside in order to draw it. The autonomy account is connected with the say-show distinction, which is drawn in terms of language. Language constitutes a fulcrum so that logic can take care of itself. What are shown are the working of the language. They are manifested in forms of facts about the language itself, but do not figure in a representation as independent facts. Rather, they are internal to the representation, and can only be specified from the first-person perspective of the subject. On the other hand, what are said are independent of the representation (2.173). They are not sensitive to perspectives. Therefore, what can be shown cannot be said. To let what are shown be shown is to force us staying in the first-person perspective, and staying as a subject. This explains how a limit works. It works not by eliminating alternatives, but by defining the role of the subject, by showing what it is to be a subject. There is no a priori order of things presupposed, because nothing is eliminated before any representation is made. But it is not to say that there is no order of things before a representation among others is made. The subject is autonomous in the sense that it is governed by nothing but its self-consistency. Tautologies show how this consistency is to be achieved. Logic, as Wittgenstein understands it, offers no truth, but it governs inferences, namely derivation truth from truth. A subject, whose thinking is characterized with such a logic, would make representations possible. It plays a role as a transcendental idealist requires, but brings no contents into representations. We have a non-substantial transcendental idealism.


Robert Hudson, University of Saskatchewan,

Title: Rudner’s Second Argument (for the Value-ladenness of Science)

Abstract: In his 1953 paper, “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments”, Richard Rudner endorses Quine’s 1951 argument in “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology” that disputes the legitimacy of Carnap’s internal/external distinction, with the result that the influence of practical factors should “be conceded for every scientific hypothesis” (as Rudner quotes Quine). In this paper, I show that Carnap in his 1956 paper, “The Methodological Character of Theoretical Concepts”, has an effective response to Quine in defense of the external/internal distinction, a response that severely limits the relevance of practical considerations to the choice of theoretical frameworks.


David Hunter, Ryerson University

Title: Anscombe and an “Adequate Philosophy of Psychology”

Abstract: In “Modern Moral Philosophy,” Anscombe said that we cannot profitably do ethics until we have a more adequate philosophy of psychology, but her text leaves it unclear what such a philosophy might say. My paper is speculative. I suggest that her primary complaint concerns desire, its role in practical deliberation, and its connections to goodness. I start with the idea, implicit in “MMT” but explicit in Geach’s “Good and Evil,” that goodness is always relative to a sortal. Eschewing Moorean intrinsic goodness shifts our ethical focus onto what a thing needs to be a good thing of its kind. The idea of such a need applies to all living things and is not peculiarly human. When a thing knows it has an unmet need it can sometimes reason how best to fill it and then act on this knowledge. It is through known needs that (sortal) goodness enters practical reasoning and intentional action. This knowledge might be psychological, but the need itself is not. The idea of desire as a psychological state with its own representational content and its own motivational force plays no role in this story. It is replaced with the idea of knowing how to fill an unmet need. My speculation is that this is what Anscombe was urging on us.


Jim Hutchinson, Nazarbayev University

Title: Frege’s Metaphysical Separatism

Abstract: Commentators attribute to Frege realist, idealist and quietist views regarding the abstract objects he calls “thoughts”. I argue that these attributions are insufficiently motivated: it seems instead that Frege deliberately does not commit himself to any of these positions. I argue that this makes sense in the light of Frege’s separatist policy: a commitment not to answer metaphysical and psychological questions raised by his claims, in order to emphasize the epistemological autonomy of logic.


Peter Hylton, Boston University

Title: Naturalism and Tolerance

Abstract: Quine is a naturalist, by his own account and that of many commentators. In spite of similarities in the views of the two philosophers, Carnap is not a naturalist, at least not in anything like the same sense. I argue that this difference between the two arises from the fact that Carnap accepts the Principle of Tolerance, and Quine does not.


Ryo Ito 伊藤 遼, Waseda University

Title: An Interpretation of the Gray’s Elegy Argument

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that the Gray’s Elegy Argument—the notoriously 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 also attempt to show that before writing the paper, he effectively employed the notion of multifaceted object in order to philosophically motivate a certain solution to the set-theoretic paradox and to offer a general account of complex objects.​


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Henry Jackman, York University Canada

Title: William James on Truth and Assertion

Abstract: William James notoriously argued that “truth” had both an ‘absolute’ and a ‘temporary’ sense. However, it remains the case that almost everyone else (1) understood “truth” as having, at best, only the ‘absolute’ sense, and (2) considered “temporary truth” to be just a misleading way to talk about belief. However, while Peircian Pragmatists typically take it for granted the notion of absolute truth flows out of our practice of assertion, it will be argued here that James had reasons for thinking that the connection between truth and assertion (when combined with some of his other metaphysical views) gave one grounds for needing a notion of temporary truth as well.


JIANG Yi, Shanxi University

Title: On the Reverse Reading of the Tractatus and its Problems

Abstract: The order of the seven main propositions of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus have been read normally as the process from ontology through epistemology to the philosophy of language, which is seen as being along with the historical order of Western philosophy in the past. However, those readings could not interpret the significance of the seven main propositions and understand the intention Wittgenstein wants to express in the book. In this paper, I would like to interpret the logic relation of these propositions by a reverse reading in order to overcome the difficulties in the previous readings and to understand the true intention of the book in depth. The reverse reading explains Wittgenstein’s approach to thinking of the structure of the book rather than his approach to the writing of the book. This reading is appropriate closely to Wittgenstein’s way of thinking. But it also raises a key question to understanding Wittgenstein’s thoughts: in which way Wittgenstein presents his thoughts in the book, the logical or the ethical? In the end of this paper, I shall try to answer the question by analyzing the process of Wittgenstein’s thinking.


Alexander Johnstone, University of Pittsburgh

Title: Shieh on Frege: Judgement, Truth, and the Context Principle

Abstract: In the third chapter of his recent Necessity Lost: Modality and Logic in Early Analytic Philosophy, Sanford Shieh defends a deep and novel interpretation of Frege’s late conceptions of judgement, truth, and thought (2019). This paper raises two problems for Shieh. I first argue that a Fregean judgement à la Shieh must involve a multiplicity of judgements concerning the component senses of the thought judged. This is implausible. I then argue that this points towards a more general issue: Shieh’s line of interpretation sits uncomfortably with Frege’s Context Principle.


Junichi Kasuga カスガ ジュンイチ, LEC Graduate University Tokyo

Title: R. G. Collingwood as a Philosopher of Perception

Abstract: R. G. Collingwood occupies a curious place in the history of the earlier half of twentieth-century British philosophy. He has tended to be seen as an idealist and opponent of the analytic philosophy. On the other hand, he was reluctant to be seen as an idealist, albeit being critical of the emerging movement of analytic philosophy. By focusing on his philosophy of perception, this paper aims to consider the significance of Collingwood’s philosophy, contextualising it in its contemporary philosophy–the time of the drastic change of the philosophical agenda from the realism/idealism disputes to the emergence of analytic philosophy.


Juliette Kennedy, University of Helsinkis

Title: Gödel and the Entscheidungsproblem

Abstract: In “The Church-Turing ‘Thesis’ as a Special Corollary of Gödel’s Completeness Theorem,” Kripke has recently asked why Gödel didn’t solve the Entscheidungsproblem, given that it is, as Kripke claims, an immediate corollary of Gödel’s 1931 Incompleteness Theorem? In this talk we attempt a preliminary answer to Kripke’s question.


Alex Klein, McMaster University

Title: Introspection: From Jamesean to Russellian Monism

Abstract: Bertrand Russell was in Brixton Prison when he first set down on paper a newfound commitment to neutral monism—the view that mental and physical data are in some way built out of a more fundamental stuff that is itself “neutral” to being mental or physical. The Brixton papers constitute an initial sketch of themes he would develop more completely in “On Propositions” and, especially, in The Analysis of Mind. Two things are immediately evident in these notes. One is the centrality of considerations concerning introspection in Russell’s initial argument for neutral monism; and the other is the influence of William James. My question: are these themes related in Russell? James had developed a distinctive psychological conception of introspection that gave both metaphysical and epistemological shape to his own neutral monism (I will argue). So when Russell provisionally “adopt[s] William James’s view”—neutral monism—did Russell also adopt James’s account of introspection? I think the answer is a qualified “yes,” but we will find it (intriguingly) difficult to pin Russell down on this important issue. This interpretive difficulty raises deeper questions about some metaphysical and epistemological subtleties of the view Russell intended to adopt.


Teresa Kouri Kissel, Old Dominion University

Title: Stebbing: Translations and Verbal Disputes

Abstract: Merely verbal disputes can be problematJic. They have the potential to derail conversations and prevent progress. The purpose of this paper is two-fold. First, I will provide evidence that Susan Stebbing, in Ideals and Illusions, provided a test which foreshadowed some of the modern work on verbal disputes. This test has a potentially fatal flaw which can be fixed by making use of some of Stebbing’s previous work on directional analysis. Second, I will show how some problems with a similar, more modern test, provided by David Chalmers, could have been avoided if Stebbing’s work had been readily available.


Gregory Landini, University of Iowa

Title: Stipulations Missing Axioms in Frege’s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik

Abstract: This paper explores the implications of Frege’s never adding formal axioms for some of the stipulations of his Grundgesetze. It offers the explanation that Frege held that such axioms would over-determine what logical objects are. In particular, the True might well be a number, say 0, in accordance with the mathematical practice of forming characteristic functions. But 0 is the value-range of a concept. Frege allows this ontologically circularity. Since the functions that are concepts require the True (and the False) for their very existence, they would depend on the existence of value-ranges. At the same time, Frege explicitly says that he can achieve a theorem: ├┬ 2. It appears that he cannot. The paper adds a new axiom

(A)

in taking steps toward achieving this theorem and offers textual evidence that Frege held it and that it therefore it is not an overdetermination. But it is still not enough. It is argued that difficulties face any attempt to separate (without overdetermination) Frege’s logic of functions from his theory of value ranges, unless the existence of concepts is abandoned. The existence of concepts requires a consistent theory of value-ranges.


Jim Levine, Trinity College Dublin

Title: Pragmatism vs Naturalism in Quine’s Philosophical Development

Abstract: I argue (in accord with Sander Verhaegh’s 2018 book Working from Within) that Quine was not, by his later standards, a naturalist at the time of “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”. Further, I argue that at the time of “Two Dogmas”, Quine had a specific understanding of pragmatism (one that he finds in James but not Peirce) on which he regarded himself as a pragmatist and that, for Quine, becoming a naturalist required jettisoning central elements of the pragmatism he accepted in “Two Dogmas”. I conclude by suggesting that once it is recognized that Quine did not become, by his standards, a naturalist until the period between “Two Dogmas” and Word and Object, questions arise regarding elements of his view that he introduces in his pre-naturalist period—in particular, his commitment to “extensionality” and hence his scepticism regarding modality and the propositional attitudes—and his later naturalism.


LIANG Xiaolan, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,

Title: Seeing-as in Wittgenstein’s Middle Philosophy

Abstract: In this paper I demonstrate that a substantial part of seeing-as in Part II of the Brown Book indicates seeing-as contributes to developing Wittgenstein’s position on psychological concepts in his later work. It indicates seeing-as could shed light on Wittgenstein’s approach to dispelling philosophical bewilderment. It leads us to notice that seeing-as epitomizes a transition from a vertical conception that analyses the way down to the foundation of objects to a horizontal conception that sees relations and similarities among things.


Francis Y. Lin 林允清, Beijing International Studies University

Title: Wittgenstein on Criteria, Scientism and Skepticism about Other Minds

Abstract: “Criteria” (or “criterion”) is an important notion, and also a most difficult one, in the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy. Many commentators hold that the presence of the criteria for a mental state does not entail the presence of the mental state, because criteria are defeasible. They propose that criteria are typical manifestations, or the like, of mental states. But this non-entailment view suffers from a number of problems, one of which being that it lets in skepticism about other minds. In this paper I offer a solution to these problems and present a clear view of Wittgenstein’s notion of criteria.


Bernie Linsky, Emeritus University of Alberta

Title: On the Use of Dots in Principia Mathematica

Abstract: It might appear that there are two uses for dots in Principia Mathematica, one use replacing parentheses or brackets to indicate the scope of connectives and operators and the other to symbolize the sentential connective “and”. A careful examination of the paragraph “The use of dots” on pages 9 – 10 of the Introduction shows that the use of punctuation dots to “indicate” conjunction shows that in some sense, conjunction in PM is represented by the juxtaposition of formulas. How this all works was the subject of an exchange between Haskell Curry, writing in 1937, and Alan Turing in 1942.


LIU Jinfang 刘晋芳, Nankai University Tianjin

Title: Interaction between Wittgenstein and Ramsey

Abstract: 本文在遵从原文的基础上来探寻《逻辑哲学论》对拉姆塞的影响,以及拉姆塞对维特根斯坦的影响。这种探究进路为我们提供些许解读《逻辑哲学论》的线索,也使我们至少能够在一定程度上理解维特根斯坦如何看待语言与实在的关系,以及理想语言表达所需的逻辑标准。(only in Chinese)


Kirk Ludwig, Indiana University

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA


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Danielle Macbeth, Haverford College

Title: Under the Fregean Microscope: A Preliminary Analysis of Traditional Chinese Mathematical Practice

Abstract: Mathematics has always mattered to western philosophy, but philosophers (globally) have hitherto focused only on western mathematical practices in their thinking about the nature of cognition and knowledge, about truth and rationality. My aim is to bring the traditional Chinese mathematical practice of rod manipulation—which is in essence an algebraic practice, one that culminated in results not to be seen in Europe until centuries later—into the conversation. Applying conceptual tools provided by Frege’s work in logic, I aim, in particular, to clarify some essential features of this extraordinary, and extraordinarily fruitful, traditional Chinese practice.


Mathieu Marion, Université du Québec à Montréal

Title: Early Analytic Epistemology

Abstract: The usual account of early Analytic epistemology starts with the sense-data theories of Moore and Russell in opposition to the then prevalent idealism, in this paper I shall sketch an sketch an alternative account which makes room to another ‘realist’ reaction, in the work of John Cook Wilson and H. A. Prichard, which was also critical of sense-data theories and closer to a form of ‘direct realism’. I shall briefly trace its roots in changes in late nineteenth-century British philosophy and also explain its later impact on J. L. Austin. Involved in this school of realism is the idea that knowledge is a factive state of mind undefinable in terms of belief and some other properties – the view now known as ‘knowledge first’ – and I shall end with a discussion of its role in the subsequent history of Analytic philosophy.


Benjamin Marschall, Trinity College, Cambridge

Title: Carnap and Quine: The Best of Both Worlds?

Abstract: Carnap and Quine are well-known for their disagreements, for instance about the analytic/synthetic distinction. Their overall conceptions of philosophy are quite different as well. Carnap emphasises the normative task of improving language through explications, whereas Quine stresses the continuity of philosophy with descriptive natural science. Does one have to choose sides, or is it possible to combine their approaches in a fruitful way? Contrary to some views in the secondary literature I defend a conciliatory conclusion. A detailed analysis of two apparent disagreements will show them to be matters of emphasis and strategy rather than clashes about factual theses.


Robert May, Emeritus University of California, Davis and Sanford Shieh 谢舜虎, Wesleyan University

Title: Truth-Values as Value-Ranges: Grounds and Perplexities

Abstract: In this talk we discuss the metaphysical commitments of the Begriffschrift, the language of logic, in the Grundgesetze. We see Frege as taking logic to be committed to a hierarchy of concepts of finite levels. Concepts are functions whose values are the truth-values, the True and the False. Thus logic is committed to the arguments of such functions, and these arguments, along with the truth-values, are objects, entities of the 0th level. In order for the language of logic to express senses and denote referents, objects must include value-ranges as well as truth-values. In this context, Frege’s argument in Grundgesetze §10 is aimed at showing that logic can be as metaphysically lightweight as possible: the truth-values can be stipulated to be value-ranges satisfying certain criteria. However, these stipulations turn out to be creative: they endow the value-ranges in question which features they would not have without the stipulations. We conclude that, in the context of Frege’s aims for the Begriffschrift of Grundgesetze, commitment to truth-values as sui generis objects is best not avoided.


Nikolay Milkov, University of Paderborn

Title: Susan Stebbing and Some Uncharted Sides of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract: Analytic philosophy started with the ambitious program for a revolution in philosophy. In fact, however, it was a complex project; its founding fathers, G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, were united in their fight against the British Idealism but at the same time followed different intuitions. Unfortunately, the philosophical movement they stirred up, analytic philosophy, developed only some of them, putting others in shadow. This paper claims that such interpretations deliver one-sided picture of analytic philosophy. In order to reveal a more complex view of this project in philosophy we call for help Susan Stebbing.


Tyke Nunez, University of South Carolina

Title: The Twilight of Intuition and Russell’s Early Hylomorphism: Space in Russell’s Foundations of Geometry

Abstract: In Bertrand Russell’s An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry he develops his account of space by responding to Kant and Carl Stumpf. Russell charges both with hypostatizing empty space and claims that, as a result, antinomies afflict their views. I argue that Russell’s hylomorphism about geometry is at the root of his own resolution to these antinomies. This is because the source of these antinomies is the confusion of unenformed geometrical matter with enformed geometrical matter, and unenmattered geometrical form with enmattered geometrical form. So long as these are kept distinct, however, Russell holds that the antinomies dissolve.


Luca Oliva, University of Houston

Title: Frege and Rickert on Mathematics

Abstract: This paper challenges the current picture of the relations between Frege and the neo-Kantians, at least those concerning mathematical issues. Contrary to common beliefs, Frege significantly influenced some neo-Kantian views of numbers, as the similarities between his Grundlagen (1884) and Rickert’s EEE (1924) show. Among them are a) the semantic analysis of the terms ‘one’ (das Eine), ‘singular’ (Einzahl), ‘unity’ (Einheit), and ‘number one’ (die Eins). (cf. Frege 1884: §§29-32; Rickert 1924: 1-6); b) the notion of “identity combined with distinguishability” (cf. Frege 1884: §40; Rickert 1924: 58); c) the rejection of naturalism and its naïve abstractionism (cf. Frege 1884: §§3, 7-8, 12 and 1894; Natorp 1910: 3; Rickert 1924: 7-8); and d) the semantic foundations of mind-independent numerical objects (cf. Frege 1884 §§58- 62; Rickert 1924: 7-8, 81-2). Although these similarities don’t overcome the significant differences between Frege’s logic developments and Rickert’s narrow subject-predicate relationship, they nevertheless prove an evident (although unexamined) influence of Frege’s logicism on the philosophy of mathematics of the neo-Kantian School of Baden.


Alessandro Palacio, Hamilton College

Title: The History of J. L. Austin’s Philosophy

Abstract: In this paper, I show that J.L. Austin’s philosophy is part of a revolutionary philosophical movement founded by John Cook Wilson, a now-forgotten late-19th-century Oxford don. This proposal challenges the established view, according to which Austin’s philosophy—as well as Oxford ordinary language philosophy more generally—is peculiar to the post-Second-World-War scene. It also challenges the widespread prejudice according to which Austin’s philosophy is an offshoot of the later Wittgenstein’s. This proposal can pave the way for fruitful future applications of Austin’s work to contemporary concerns.


Lydia Patton, Virginia Tech

Title: Mnemic Phenomena: History, Physiology, and Perception in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

Abstract: In Lecture IV of Analysis of Mind, Russell argues for a version of the Semon-Hering theory: that organisms inherit prior responses to stimuli. This theory was developed by Richard Semon and Ewald Hering to account for a range of psychological and physiological phenomena. The view was central to the dispute between Hering and Hermann von Helmholtz, in a debate usually conceived as between empiricism (Helmholtz) and nativism (Hering). The true stakes of the debate, though, was about the influence of an organism’s history on its present experience. Helmholtz argued that organisms must learn from their environment starting with a comparatively blank slate, while Semon and Hering argued for inherited instinctual responses coded in an organism’s ancestral history: in other words, for an early version of the law that ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. Russell’s account in Analysis of Mind is an interesting mixture of Helmholtzian empiricism and Semon-Hering nativism. This unlikely background informs several perplexing aspects of Russell’s account of perception in Lecture VII. The analysis of perception, imagination, sensation and the like in Lecture VII is clarified by understanding Russell’s position on how physics, physiology, and psychology – and the history of the perceiving subject – play a part in the analysis of perception.


Christopher Pincock, The Ohio University

Title: Propositional Attitudes in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

Abstract: In 1913 Russell famously abandoned his Theory of Knowledge manuscript due to Wittgenstein’s objections to Russell’s theory of judgment. In this paper I consider Russell’s account of belief in Analysis of Mind (1921) with these earlier objections in mind. I argue that the main features of Russell’s new account of belief can be motivated by tracing Russell’s reactions to Wittgenstein’s work from 1913 through 1921. In particular, Russell comes to endorse Wittgenstein’s claim that “ ‘A believes that p’ … [is] of the form ‘ “p” says p’: and this does not involve a correlation of a fact with an object, but rather the correlation of facts by means of the correlation of their objects” (Tractatus, 5.542). But, unlike Wittgenstein, Russell used empirical investigations to clarify how such correlations were achieved.


Fabian Pregel, University of Oxford

Title: Frege’s Concept of Completeness

Abstract: Existing literature suggests that Frege did not have the concept of completeness. Yet, Frege’s project is usually understood as finding a formal system from which all arithmetical truths could be proven. Furthermore, Frege is credited with devising the first calculus complete for first-order logic. How are we to reconcile these three claims? I argue that Frege did not just stumble across this complete calculus, but in fact had an early conception of theory- and calculus-completeness. Heck had briefly suggested this—I pick up on Heck’s work and substantially strengthen its case. The paper offers several text passages in support. Furthermore, I maintain that the reading to the contrary is based on an outdated overall reading of Frege (logocentricity). Finally, I use Blanchette’s account of Frege’s notion of logical consequence to illustrate what his notion of completeness looked like.


QIU Renzong 邱仁宗, ,Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Title: Ethics in China Needs Taking the Approach of Aristotle’s Practical Reasoning

Abstract: In my presentation I will first describe the main points made by Stephen Toulmin in his paper “How Medicine Saved the Life of Ethics” including the objectivity of interests, the importance of cases. my station and its duties, and equity and intimacy. Before ethicists in the West turn to practical ethical issues in medicine, they had been playing kite in the sky since Henry Sidgwick in mid-19th century only focusing on general theoretical inquires and later on metaethics, never willing to stand side on concrete, practical and substantial ethical issues in any of human activities. They never say which particular action is good or bad, right or wrong, they are only interested in what does it mean by the words “good”, “bad”, “right” or “wrong”. So ethics became a philosophical discipline without life. Toulmin argues that medicine saved the life of ethics. Ethics in China had been dead for a long time, it is only a discourse, and nothing to do with human action. An exception is the discipline bioethics always flourishing. It is a revelation that ethics must take the approach of Aristotle’s practical reasoning which focuses on concrete and particular as well as objective cases, human needs, interests, situations, circumstances, contexts and all other relevant elements when applying general ethical rules rather than linguistic dimension of these rules.


Erich Reck, University of California, Riverside

Title: Wittgenstein’s Reception of Frege

Abstract: While Wittgenstein was a fiercely independent philosopher, even he built on the contributions of earlier thinkers. In this talk, I will consider Wittgenstein’s reception of Frege as a case in point. I will start with a survey of the changing, often radically different views about their relationship that one can find in the secondary literature, arguing that these views, typically tied to external agendas, make it hard to understand Wittgenstein’s reception of Frege in a more objective and comprehensive way. Next, I will provide a summary of Wittgenstein’s contacts with Frege, in person and in terms of correspondence, together with some relevant and striking remarks by Wittgenstein even long after Frege’s death. In the third and main part of the talk, I will distinguish a variety of ways, each illustrated by examples, in which Frege was important for Wittgenstein: from introducing central themes for Wittgensteinian investigations; through providing targets for criticisms in terms of Fregean claims; all the way to sympathetic developments of shared ideas. Overall, both the shape and the depth of Frege’s influence on Wittgenstein, from early to late, should become clearer.


Marcus Rossberg, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Title: The Success of Logicism: Frege, Russell, Dedekind

Abstract: Logicism is the proposal that mathematics is just logic further developed. My investigation concerns three major and highly influential thinkers who carried out logicist programs (or attempted to do so): Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and Richard Dedekind. The failure of Frege’s program owing to the discovery of Russell’s paradox usually takes pride of place today and is presented as marking the failure of logicism of any form tout court. My main focus, however, will be the remarkable and under-appreciated successes of logicism. These include, inter alia, Frege’s creation of a logical language that is capable, for the first time in history, of formulating mathematical propositions; the partial success in reducing mathematical content to logic, starting with Frege’s definition of the ancestral; in general, providing a means to establish which parts of mathematics can be reduced to what other parts (many research programs in mathematical logic, and reverse mathematics in particular, are heirs of logicism in this respect); the rigorous delineation of the arguably extra-logical resources required to complete the reduction of mathematics: to wit, in addition to higher-order logic, we really only need an axiom of infinity (and beyond arithmetic an axiom of choice), as comes out in all three historical investigations, but particularly clearly in Russell and Dedekind. Understanding logicism thus properly, it is a resounding success: arithmetic really is the pure logic of (countably) infinite domains. Even the downfall of Frege’s project due to Russell’s Paradox can be seen in a positive light: without the painstaking detail and rigor of Frege’s development, the inconsistency couldn’t have been established with the same devastating force.


A-E, F-I, J-L, M-R, S-Z


Georg Schiemer, Universität Wien

Title: Carnap’s Formalist Thesis

Abstract: The aim of the talk is to retrace the development of Carnap’s views on the formality of logic and mathematics from the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, it will focus on a central shift in his understanding of these fields, namely from an object-theoretic approach to formality to a syntactic formalism presented in his Logical Syntax of Language (1934). I will offer a closer analysis of Carnap’s linguistic “formality thesis” from 1934 and discuss several connections to metamathematical work in logic and on the formalist foundations of mathematics from the period in question.


Stewart Shapiro, The Ohio State University

Title: TBA

Abstract: TBA


Robert Sinclair, Soka University

Title: Quine, Lewis, and Phenomenalism

Abstract: Recent work on the historical development of Quine’s naturalism has stressed his early engagement with phenomenalism, the view that truths about the physical world can be derived from truths of observation. In this paper I argue that C.I. Lewis’s position in Mind and the World Order offers an important source of Quine’s engagement with phenomenalism, especially with regard to assigning epistemic priority to phenomenal elements rather physical objects. This is seen by examining three stages of Quine’s philosophical development, culminating in his recognition that sense data are themselves scientific posits and therefore dependent on science.


David Stern, University of Iowa

Title: Tree structured readings of the Tractatus

Abstract: In an unpublished letter that G.E.M. Anscombe sent to G. H. von Wright in May 1948, Anscombe suggested a new way of reading the Tractatus: “By the way, it occurred to me to try a method of reading it which is pretty obvious but has not been tried by anyone I mentioned it to, and which I think helps: it is to read it in successive steps, first whole numbers, then these together with the first decimal point, then up to the second point, and so on.” Anscombe’s suggestion amounted to the first formulation, or perhaps anticipation, of what has since become known as a tree-structured reading. On this approach, the starting point consists of the seven whole-numbered remarks, which form the trunk of the tree; from there one turns to those with just one cardinal number after the decimal point, the main branches that are directly attached to the trunk; next come those with two cardinal numbers, the branches that are attached to the main branches, and so on. However, Anscombe never publicized this approach, and so it received almost no attention for over forty years, until work by Brian McGuinness, Verena Mayer and others made it clear that Wittgenstein had used that system to assemble and organize his work between 1915 and 1918.

Luciano Bazzocchi and Peter Hacker have recently argued that a tree-structured reading provides the key to understanding the structure of the Tractatus. In this paper, I draw on earlier discussions of tree-structured readings to argue that such readings can both help us see how Wittgenstein’s conception of the main themes of his book changed in the course of writing it and also provide us with a valuable alternative reading order. However, I also argue against Bazzocchi and Hacker that such readings cannot decisively settle much-debated questions about the book’s aims and methods.


Fredrik Stjernberg, Linkoping University Sweden

Title: The Essential Openness of Waismann’s Notion of Analyticity

Abstract: Waismann’s papers on analyticity (Waismann 1949, 1950, 1951a, 1951b, 1952, 1953) came just as Quine’s attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction (Quine 1951) was published. There are many similarities between their views, but also some important differences. Waismann shares some of Quine’s objections to analyticity, but he draws different conclusions from them. This paper examines Waismann’s notion of analyticity, and stresses how his views employ a conception of language and meaning as essentially open. There is no final determination of what analyticity amounts to, or of which truths that are analytic. Parallels with current theories are mentioned and discussed briefly.


Sebastian Sunday Grève 王小塞, Peking University

Title: Turing’s philosophy of AI

Abstract: The value of Turing’s work on artificial intelligence has traditionally been reduced to what is now known as the Turing Test, but it is more nuanced and compelling than previously assumed. This talk focuses on Turing’s writings and public speeches to provide a clear picture of what his primary goal was in formulating the imitation game in his famous essay. For instance, they show that, from 1947 onwards (and perhaps earlier), in pursuit of the same general goal he in fact proposed not one but many tests for comparing humans and machines. These tests concerned learning, thinking, and intelligence and could be applied to various smaller and bigger tasks, including simple problem-solving, games such as chess and go, as well as general conversation. But his primary goal was never merely to define or operationalise any of these things. Rather, it was always more fundamental and progressive in nature: namely, to prepare the conceptual ground, carefully and rigorously in the manner of the mathematical philosopher that he was, on which future computing technology could be successfully conceived, first by scientists and engineers and later by policymakers and society at large.


Timur Cengiz Uçan, Bordeaux Montaigne University

Title: The Phrase and the Word

Abstract: This paper is a comparative study of the criticisms of solipsism and methodological solipsism by Putnam and Descombes and an attempt to think of this debate in the actual circumstance of climate change.


Ragnar van der Merwe, University of Johannesburg

Title: Kant and Whewell’s Hylomorphism: Then and Now

Abstract: In this talk, I trace the genealogy of hylomorphism that originates with Aristotle and then influences Kant and Whewell. I argue that Whewell’s hylomorphism – his form/matter metaphor – offers us a cogent way to think about the subject/object or mind/world relationship. Whewell’s account presents a viable middle way between realism and anti-realism about the external world that is reminiscent of experience pragmatists’ notion that subject and object entwine in experience.


Simon Wimmer, Technical University Dortmund

Title: Cook Wilson’s Accretion

Abstract: John Cook Wilson is widely regarded as having accepted what Travis and Kalderon call the accretion: roughly, the claim that knowing entails knowing that one knows. Travis and Kalderon argue, however, that the accretion makes knowledge collapse, or at least contract beyond plausibility. I explore how Cook Wilson would have responded to this objection. My main aim is to leverage two distinctions that Cook Wilson makes amongst cases of knowledge in order to argue that the accretion, as Cook Wilson thought of it, in fact leaves our knowledge, as we typically think of it today, intact.


XU Ao 徐鏖, Southwest University of Politics and Law Chongqing

Title: Preliminary Discussion on Otto Weininger’s Influence on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract: 魏宁格对维特根斯坦的重大影响是为研究者们所承认,然而,魏宁格与《逻辑哲学论》的思想关联却为研究者所忽视。其原因在于冯特对维特根斯坦1931年名单的误读,使得研究者认为魏宁格对维特根斯坦前期没有影响。本文将对此进行反驳,并初步探究二者魏宁格与《逻辑哲学论》的思想关系,这些关联不仅对于理解《逻辑哲学论》显得十分重要,而且透过它们,还可以了解魏宁格被人淡忘的哲学思想,重拾魏宁格的思想价值。(Only in Chinese)


XU Qiang 徐强, Southwest Minzu University

Title: The Availability of Middle Wittgenstein’s Philosophy

Abstract: Did Wittgenstein experience an essential transformation of his philosophy in a certain period (roughly the early 1930s.)? It is a big question concerning the essence of “middle” Wittgenstein philosophy, and I argue that it is caused by the tensions lying behind different attempts to answer that question. In this paper I construct the Wittgenstein scholarship into a six-level hierarchy, and I put forward ten arguments concerning the hierarchy.


XU Yingjin 徐英瑾, ,Fudan University

Title: How Could Ōmori Shōzō Use Wittgenstein to Fight against Wittgenstein?

Abstract: Ōmori Shōzō’s philosophy can be generally described a hybrid system composed of both a Wittgensteinian skin and a Husserlian core, in the sense that he systematically uses a Wittgensteinian philosophical methodology to fight against Wittgenstein’s own publicity-oriented philosophical tendency. His first recipe for doing so, according to my reconstruction, is to appeal to the notion of tachiaraware (namely, “phenomena standing for themselves”), via which the gap between synthesizing activity and sense-data to be synthesized can be filled. Therefore, the first-personal character of tachiaraware could be easily transmitted to the formal features of “my language”, without which no public language can be formed. Ōmori’s second recipe for refuting Wittgenstein is to appeal to his Kasane-egaki (namely, “recoloring”)-narrative, according to which the ordinary language (L2) is nothing but the “recoloring” of the phenomenal language (L1), while the scientific language (L3) is nothing but the “recoloring” of the ordinary language. Given that the L1-L2-L3-hierarchy has to be elaborated without implementing double standards, a Wittgensteinian emphasis on the putative primacy of public languages cannot be recommended due to its patent violation of the so-called “Double-Standard-Abominating Principle” (DSAP). Hence, since both the respect of the “tachiaraware” and DASP are required by a thorough implementation of the phenomenological principle itself, Ōmori’s stance simply appears to be a natural result of radicalizing Wittgenstein’s stance alongside the phenomenological route.


ZHU Jing 朱菁, Xiamen University

Title: Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology: A Masterwork Ahead of Its Time with a Lamentable Fate

Abstract: Yuelin Jin (Yeuh Liu Chin, 1895-1984) was among the first generation of analytic philosophers in China, arguably the most influential one. Whereas he was a highly respected scholar who had introduced modern logic to China and a successful teacher who had trained a group of distinguished Chinese logicians and philosophers, his own original academic contributions to analytic philosophy have not been well recognized, assessed and appreciated, especially in light of the history of analytic philosophy worldwide.

Epistemology is the most important work of Yuelin Jin, a voluminous monograph written in the 1940s but not published until nearly 40 years later in 1983, one year before his death. Viewed in hindsight, this work may be ranked as one of the best in the time, when analytic epistemology was in its incubation stage before becoming one of the major branches in contemporary analytic philosophy since the 1960s. Jin’s Epistemology is extraordinarily rich in philosophical insights and novelties, many of them only proposed and discussed by contemporary epistemologists in recent years. As an instance, I shall show that Yuelin Jin has already developed a full-fledged disjunctive theory of perception, a hotly debated topic in past decades, twenty years earlier than the Oxford philosopher J. M. Hinton, who is regarded as the pioneer of disjunctivism (Hinton 1967).

The fate of Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology is a story with lamentable twists. Jin wrote and almost completed the draft during the hard times of the nationwide Anti-Japanese War (1937-1945, a part of the World War II), while trekked from Beijing to southwest China and eventually settled in Kunming. Unfortunately, the draft was lost in a turmoil of air raid by accident. So Jin had to rewrite the whole book, and finally handed the draft to a publishing house at the end of 1948, when the regime change from the Nationalist Party to the Communist Party happened, resulting in the halt of this book’s publication. In the 1950s, Jin embraced Marxism wholeheartedly, and began to abandon and criticize the brand of philosophy that he had studied in the first half of his life as part of western and bourgeois ideologies. The Reform and Open-up movement starting from the late 1970s eventually revived the life of Yuelin Jin’s Epistemology, and he was fortunate enough to see its publication before he passed away. The intricate and lamentable fate of Jin’s Epistemology tangibly reflects the bumpy journey of analytic philosophy in China in the 20th century, and respectful and thoughtful studies of this masterwork may provide inspirations and lessons to better develop analytic philosophy in China in the 21st century.

A-E, F-I, J-L, M-R, S-Z

SSHAP 2022 (Shanxi): Call for Abstracts/Papers

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.  The format will be a hybrid of online and in-person participation. In-person sessions will be held at the Academic Hall of School of Philosophy, Shanxi University; the online sessions will be on zoom.

It is locally organized by Professor Jiang Yi 江怡教授, with the assistance of Professor Chen Changshen 陈敬坤, Professor Chen Jingkun 陈常燊, Dr. Gu Chengcheng 谷城成, and Dr. Fu Xingyuan 傅星源. The main local sponsors and supporters are the School of Philosophy and Sociology of Shanxi University 山西大学哲学社会学学院, and the Chinese Society for Analytic Philosophy 中国分析哲学专业委员会.

The conference website will be online in early 2022.

Invited Speakers:

SSHAP – Call for Papers/Abstracts

SSHAP is an international organization aimed at promoting discussion in all areas of scholarship concerning the development of philosophical logic, philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ethics and metaethics, the philosophy of science, and epistemology. We welcome scholars interested in the many ways in which the disciplines were 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 seek to promote work engaging with lesser known figures and trends, as well as connections of analytic philosophy with other traditions and practices in philosophy all over the world.  We would like to invite submissions for our 2022 annual conference. Papers on all aspect of the analytic historical tradition of philosophy are welcome.

Given the development of analytic philosophy in China and Asia, more generally, we are especially interested in papers exploring this development as well as the use of analytic methods and ideas in understanding Asian philosophies, and comparative investigations of Asian and analytic philosophy.

The principal conference language is English. Presentations in other languages are welcome. In particular, we welcome presentations in Chinese, the language of the local organizing institution.  Please note, however, that, given the present nature of international scholarly exchange, one might limit the accessibility of one’s research by not presenting in English or Chinese.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: February 1, 2022.

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 a long abstract, whether or not they submit a paper as well. The abstract will be the main basis for our decisions. Please submit 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 sshap2022@163.com.
  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, and e) short abstract (50-100 words) and f) academic rank.

Authors will be informed of decisions on their submissions by 1 April, 2022.

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

SSHAP 2021 Abstracts of Talks

Anton Alexandrov (University of Barcelona)

Is Frege’s Logical Analysis of Arithmetical Notions an Instance of Carnapian Explication?

Abstract:

In Carnap 1950, Frege’s logicism is presented as an example of explication. Lavers 2013, 2016 and Weiner 2020 argue that, already in the Gl, Frege engages in explication rather than conceptual analysis. In this talk, I evaluate their arguments and find them wanting. Taking Frege’s rationalist epistemology in light of which he executed his foundationalist work seriously, I argue that Frege wanted to rationally ground our practice of arithmetic by providing a full understanding of ordinary arithmetical concepts instead of proposing replacements of these. After a brief clarification of explication and logicism, I look at the textual evidence Lavers and Weiner use for their explication view and show that most passages they cite do not support their interpretation. Especially, their chief witness, §69, straightforwardly supports the analysis view rather than the explication view. However, Weiner invokes other passages (§§63, 100, and 107) which appear indeed problematic for the analysis view. I argue that if one pays close attention to the dialectical functions of §§63 and 100, even these passages do not support the explication view. I close with some considerations about the notorious ending of §107.


Sophia Arbeiter (University of Pittsburgh)

Representation and Truth in the Tractatus

Abstract:

In this talk I will focus on two verbs that Wittgenstein uses to capture representation, namely “darstellen” and “vorstellen” (as in 2.15). Firstly I argue that the difference between the two verbs has been overlooked, and that closer attention to “vorstellen”—which I will show should neither be understood just as “representation” nor as “presentation”-will shed light on representation more broadly. Secondly I will link these claims to theories of truth, and argue that they support a certain understanding of the Identity Theory of Truth.


Roberta Ballarin (University of British Columbia)

Carnap and Quine on Ontology and Categories

Abstract:

This paper joins the recent scholarly debate around Quine’s reading of Carnap’s “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology” (ESQ) in “On Carnap’s Views on Ontology” (CVO). The paper strongly supports Quine’s claim that ESO is principally concerned with category questions pertaining to the distinction between ontologically separate kinds of entities. Quite controversially, Quine also claims (i) that Carnap’s external questions of existence are all category questions; and (ii) that answers to internal category questions of existence are always trivial and analytic. Recently, Ebbs (2017; 2019) has defended Quine on both points. This paper supports Ebbs’ conclusion on the first point. But the epistemic considerations I employ in support of Quine’s first point undermine Quine’s second proposal. I argue that the answer to internal category questions of existence can never be trivial.


Flavio Baracco (University of Milano)

Carnap’s Intellectual Development in the Early 1920s: Encounters with Husserl’s Circle

Abstract:

In this talk I will explore to what extent Husserl’s circle, broadly conceived, might have influenced the young Carnap in the early 1920s, especially those kind of studies pursued by phenomenologically-oriented mathematicians, such as Hermann Weyl and Oskar Becker. I am going to support my claim enriching it with historical records, collected from his diaries, correspondences, and other archival resources. I will then attempt to clarify why Carnap seemed to be interested in this kind of studies. To this aim, a comparison between Carnap’s and Weyl’s mathematical studies on the nature of space in the early 1920s, especially in their mathematical analysis of intuitive space, seems to be a good starting point to better understanding the development of Carnap’s thought in his early ages.


Philipp Leon Bauer (University of Vienna)

Waismann’s Time in Vienna

Abstract:

The mathematician and philosopher Friedrich Waismann (1896-1959) was a significant member of the Vienna Circle, a group whose members advocated Logical Empirism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Waismann made important contributions during his lifetime to analytic philosophy and to philosophy of science as well. The Focus on my research is Waismann’s Time in Vienna, before his emigration from National-Socialism to his death in exile in England.


Francesca Biagioli (University of Turin) and Michael Stoeltzner (University of South Carolina)

How Far Should Concepts Grow? Federigo Enriques on Mathematics, its Justification and its Application

Abstract:

As one of the leading figures of the Italian school of algebraic geometry and a historical epistemologist, Federigo Enriques occupies an original position in the early 20th century debates about the nature and foundations of mathematics, debates shaped by Klein’s Erlangen Program and Hilbert’s Paris address. In his 1906 Problems of Science, Enriques sought to reconcile the philosophical implications of the logical techniques developed by the Peano School with the geometrical approaches of mathematicians such as Veronese, Pasch, and Klein. But he also discussed the transition between geometrical and mechanical concepts, largely informed by Vailati’s and Mach’s historical analyses. While he strongly emphasized the role if invariance, his attitude towards the axiomatic method was mixed. How could well-thought-out concepts ever require a consistency proof and was there any semantic test for them other than to let them play out over time in theorems and applications? Discussing concept formation in geometry and mechanics we intend to show that Enriques’ position escapes easy dichotomies and can, in turn, help to understand the complexity of the programs of Klein and Hilbert.


Chen Bo (Peking University)

Russell and Jin Yuelin on Truth: A Comparative Study

Abstract: Jin Yuelin’s logical and philosophical thought was deeply influenced by the philosophy of Bertrand Russell. The same influence existed also in the case of his view on truth, which was considerably close to the views maintained by Russell in his phase of logical atomism. In their investigations, Russell and Jin did not only focus on similar topics, but also occupied similar philosophical positions, such as realism in the domain of ontology, empiricism in epistemology, and the correspondence theory in the study of truth. Nevertheless, Jin Yuelin’s view on truth was not only a mere imitation, recapitulation or even plagiarised copy of Russell’s, but also contained innovations and characteristics of its own. Jin, for example, emphasized certain general characteristics of truth, including the notion of truth as a relational quality, that truth is not a matter of degree, and that it is relative neither to time and space nor to the different types of knowledge. By so doing, Jin underlined the objectiveness, reliability and transcendence of true propositions. By arguing that the correspondence theory of truth possessed strong foundations in common sense, Jin set out to defend the role of common sense in philosophy and science, maintaining that common sense cannot be completely overthrown, and that any modification of common sense must ultimately depend on yet another segment of common sense. Moreover, Jin delivered his own response against the gap between “the subjective and objective/the internal and the external” which had been used to question the correspondence theory of truth, and proposed a variety of cognitivist conception of facts, which defined facts as “the given” (datum) that has been received and arranged by cognitive agents. Most importantly, facts are cognitive constructions established on the basis of “the given” (datum) and encapsulate both subjectiveness and objectiveness. Jin Yuelin was a modern Chinese philosopher, who had achieved profound erudition in both Chinese and Western thoughts, and, above all, an independent and sort of original thinker.


Rachel Boddy (Utrecht University)

Definition and the Proof of Referentiality (Rachel Boddy and Robert May)

Abstract:

In Grundgesetze, Frege attempted to demonstrate that his logical language, the Begriffsschrift, is a fully referential language. Although Frege’s proof of referentiality fails (Russell’s Paradox), Frege’s reasons for requiring referentiality remain of interest, and these reasons are our topic. We argue that Frege’s core purpose was to legitimize the use of definitions, and accordingly the proof must be considered in the context of Frege’s broader concern with canons of proper definition, that is, definitions that are scientifically useful. We start from the observation that the sections of Grundgesetze where the proof of referentiality is located are placed by Frege in the Table of Contents under the heading “Definitions”. This encompasses §§26 -33, labelled “General remarks” on definitions, which are placed just before the sections containing the definitions of arithmetical notions. Building on this, we explore how and why Frege saw the proof of referentiality as essential to the justification of definitions.


Kenneth Boyd (University of Southern Denmark)

I’m Not Actually Perfectly Delighted To See You: Peirce On Shared Responsibility For Assertion

Abstract:

According to C.S. Peirce’s theory of assertion, by asserting a proposition one takes responsibility for it. The onus of responsibility for an assertion does not, however, fall solely on the shoulders of the speaker, as listeners also bear responsibility in a given act of assertion. Little has been said about what the responsibilities of the listener are. My goals in this paper, then, are twofold: first, to develop a more fully-fledged conception of listener responsibility in a Peircean theory of assertion, and second, to trace some consequences of this view for Peirce’s theory and commitment views of assertion generally.


Silver Bronzo (HSE University, Moscow)

Language, Thought, and Expression in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract:

The Tractatus holds that language expresses thought (TLP 3.1) and that language disguises thought (TLP 4.002), but also that language is thought (TLP 4). How can we make sense of this triad? I offer an interpretation of the Tractarian conception of the relation between thought and language that is at the same time anti-Lockean and anti-Fregean: a thought is neither a separate mental item standing behind a perceptible sentence, nor a separate abstract item standing above a perceptible sentence. Rather, the thought is immanent in the sentence that expresses it. For language to express thought is for language to be the perceptible embodiment of thought; and for language to disguise thought is—in a sense to be clarified—for thought to disguise itself.


Anna Brożek (University of Warsaw)

Social Justice from the Point of View of the Lvov-Warsaw School

Abstract:

The Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS) is considered as a Polish branch of the twentieth-century analytic movement. It was initiated in Lvov at the turn of the 19th century by Kazimierz Twardowski and was formed of Twardowski’s students and students of his students. From the second decade of the 20th century the second “branch” of the school became Warsaw.

The LWS was joined mostly by methodological postulates: the focus on conceptual precision and reliable justification of accepted theses. Members of the LWS found the tools of realization of these postulates in broadly understood logic.

In the paper, the problem of social justice in the Lvov-Warsaw School will be presented from two perspectives: theoretical and historical. Within theoretical perspective, some analyses of the concept of justice as well as some derivative and related concepts will be reconstructed (Ajdukiewicz, Kotarbihski, Czezowski, Ossowski). Within the historical perspective, it will be showed that members of the school contributed to the realization of the idea of social justice on many fields, including the fight against the discrimination based on class and national provenance, as well as gender differences. Members of the LWS came from various social strata, had various worldviews, there were relatively many female members of the School (Ossowska, Hosiasson, Kotarbihska, Dqmbska Kokoszyhska among others). The position of the LWS representatives on social matters was subjected to a special test during World War II (occupation of Poland) and immediately after it (communist regime).


Julie Brumberg-Chaumont (Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Paris)

A Social History of Logic: Problems and Methods

Abstract:

tba


Christopher Alan Campbell (Glendon College, York University)

Generality and the Enumerability of Instances in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Beyond

Abstract:

The method by which Wittgenstein treats generality in the Tractatus has the surprising corollary that generality is never essential to the sense of a proposition. This represents a deliberate divergence from Frege’s and Russell’s approaches to generality, the inadequacy of which in part motivated the Tractatus. When Wittgenstein returns to philosophy about a decade later, he recognizes the inadequacy in turn of his earlier treatment of generality–but far from reverting to a Fregean or Russellian approach, this impels him to develop a new conception of propositional sense, one already bearing distinctive marks of his later philosophy.


Paola Cantù (Aix-Marseille Université and CNRS)

Definitions in the Peano School

Abstract:

The interest of the members of the Peano school in definitions is attested by a series of conferences given by Peano, Padoa, Pieri, Vailati and Burali-Forti at the 1900 Paris Conferences in Mathematics, Philosophy and Psychology. Well known in the literature are Padoa’s criterion of indefinability, and Russell’s praise for the rigor and clarity of reasoning of the group, but scarce attention has been given in the literature to a thorough reconstruction of definitions in the Peano School. The present talk will analyze different types and uses of definitions (by axioms, by abstraction, by operators, conditional…), investigate which criteria characterize good definitions and examine the relation between the theory of definitions and metatheoretical results on independence. The comparison between the theoretical remarks on definitions and their actual uses in mathematical practice will offer some insights not only on the logical understanding of definitions, but also on their actual role in mathematical axiomatizations. Two distinct meaning of Implicit definition will be distinguished, and different constraints guiding the determination of definitions, axioms and rules of inferences will be compared.


Matt Carlson (Wabash College)

Traditional Epistemology and Epistemology Naturalized

Abstract:

I In this paper, I develop a new interpretation of Quine’s epistemology in the hopes of clarifying the relationship between naturalized epistemology and traditional epistemology. While Quine argues that traditional “doctrinal” projects in epistemology are hopeless and should be abandoned, he approves of projects in the “conceptual” side of epistemology. By interpreting Quine’s “web of belief” metaphor, I argue that the conceptual side of epistemology is actually concerned with the articulation and development of understanding, which is also a central project of traditional epistemology. Thus, naturalized epistemology does not amount to a wholescale rejection of traditional epistemological projects.


Giorgio Castiglione (Università degli Studi di Torino)

A ‘Third Man’ in the Debate? Arthur Pap’s Conception of the A Priori between Carnap and Quine

Abstract:

Pap is usually mentioned for his contribution to the diffusion of the denomination «analytic philosophy». Apart from his functional theory of the a priori, Pap’s work is interesting also for the early and pervasive critique of the analytic/synthetic dichotomy he kept on addressing to the members of logical empiricism, in a way that deserves attention as much as the Quinean. I will focus on the three main objections of which it consist, showing how the positive epistemological proposal he put forward, whatever incomplete and aporetic, sets his theory of knowledge in the middle between Carnap’s conventionalism and Quine’s naturalism.


Annalisa Coliva (University of California, Irvine)

Family Resemblances and “Metaphilosophy”: Waismann, Wittgenstein and Goethe

Abstract:

It is seldom noticed that the idea of family resemblance which plays a key role in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations – with respect to meaning, concepts and the very aim of philosophy – is crucially indebted to Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants. This is no doubt partly due to the fact that Wittgenstein does not mention Goethe in that connection. By contrast, in his The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy, Waismann acutely points out the relevance of Goethe’s ideas. In this talk, I trace some of the connections between these three thinkers and draw out their “metaphilosophical” implications regarding the aim and methods of philosophy.


Michael Oliva Cordoba (University of Hamburg)

A “want of clearness’’ in §13 of Moore’s Principia Ethica

Abstract:

§13 of Moore’s Principia Ethica contains the much lauded open question argument, the classic statement of which reads: “Whatever definition be offered, it may be always asked, with significance, of the complex so defined, whether it is itself good.”1 The notion of (moral) goodness, Moore thinks, withstands conceptual analysis. The argument became his chief illustration of the naturalistic fallacy.2 In my talk, I shall argue that Moore’s excessively liberal talk of “sense” and “meaning” lumped together what is categorically distinct. As a consequence, both his theory of the good and his views on conceptual analysis are beset with the self-inflicted error of conflating the semantics of an expression with the pragmatics of its use.31 shall illustrate this with statements like

(1) Kindness is good

(2) The good is good

Whoever uses (1) will most likely praise kindness. Whoever uses (2) will most likely not praise anything at all. It is the pragmatics of (1) rather than the semantics of “good” that explains moral valuation. Also, with regard to Moore’s views on conceptual analysis a similar verdict is in order. In sum, had Moore only observed the semantics-pragmatics divide he could have killed two birds with one stone.

  • 1 Moore 1903, 67. Cf. Feldman 2005, 23f.

  • 2 Cf. Preti 2019, 54ff.; Rosati 2019, 177ff.; Frankena 1939, 30f.

  • 3 Cf. Austin 1962 & Grice 1989.


Sorin Costreie (University of Bucharest)

Fregean Acquaintance

Abstract:

My talk brings into discussion Frege’s notion of acquaintance, and is also a reaction to two recent papers of Saul Kripke and Palle Yourgrau. Both endorse a very Russellian interpretation of Frege’s theory of sense, based on the fact that somehow Frege needs to make room in his system to a kind of sense-acquaintance notion. I argue against this interpretation, showing that Fregean acquaintance is very different from the Russellian one.


Richard Creath (Arizona State University)

Reciprocal Containment and the Aufbau

Abstract:

As is well known, from 1969 onward Quine claimed that epistemology (empiricism) was “reciprocally contained” in ontology (natural science). What is less well known is that Carnap also has a reciprocal containment thesis – in the Aufbau. Here, however, the thesis is that the mental and the physical domains are mutually contained in each other. More precisely, this thesis follows logically, not from Carnap’s actual Aufbau constructions, but from the assumed to-be-completed constructions he outlines there and to which he commits himself. That Carnap is advancing a reciprocal containment thesis has consequences both for the understanding of that book and for understanding his work thereafter: (1) It gives substance to his claim that different constructions of the world are possible, including constructions on a physical basis. (2) The thesis directly implies the main thesis of Carnap’s physicalism papers of the early 1930s, so that transition is not as abrupt as might otherwise be assumed. (3) The thesis provides an embryonic model for Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance. (4) And finally, it gives some clue as to why, throughout his work, Carnap was so resistant to drawing substantive ontological conclusions from his constructions and explications.


Gabriella Crocco (Aix-Marseille University)

Emile Boutroux and “Scientific” Philosophy

Abstract:

In his inaugural address to the First International Congress of Philosophy which took place in Paris in 1900, Emile Boutroux, brother-in-law of Henri Poincare and one of the French prominent philosophers of the time, presented a diagnosis of the relationship between science and philosophy. In the contest of the European debate on the matter, we analyze the specificity of his conception of the role and task of philosophy which had a great influence in the birth of the French structuralist tradition in history of philosophy and in twentiethcentury French epistemology.


Joäo Esteves da Silva (University of Lisbon)

Reading Wittgenstein with Ryle: Reconsidering the Roots of Non-Metaphysical Readings of the Tractatus

Abstract:

This talk aims at a reconsideration of Gilbert Ryle’s understanding of Wittgenstein’s philosophy, especially of the Tractatus. I argue that Ryle, rarely mentioned among scholarly debates, can be seen as an important ancestor of the “New Wittgenstein” stream of interpretation. In particular, I emphasise his view of the Tractatus as a book primarily concerned with metalogical and metaphilosophical issues, his understanding of saying and showing in light of his own knowing-that and knowing-how distinction, his dissatisfaction with metaphysical (or ontologically oriented) readings, or his acknowledgement of often neglected continuities between Wittgenstein’s early and later writings.


Felix Danowski (University of Vienna)

How Ayer could be right about Moral Arguments

Abstract:

In my talk, I will reconstruct how Ayer explains away moral argumentation, and I will argue that straightforward counterexamples to his Moral-Epistemic Reductionism are not available. I take that to be a deeply puzzling result, esspecially given that Ayer’s own metaethical explanation of this fact did not stand the test of time.


John David Lohner (University of Cambridge)

Canonizing Wittgenstein. A Social Historian’s Assessment.

Abstract:

tba


Samuel Descarreaux (University of Ottawa, Université de Lorraine, Trier Universität)

Can 19th Century Early Neo-Kantian Naturalism be relevant for Contemporary Debates on Naturalistic Epistemology?

Abstract:

This presentation seeks to assess the relevance of 19th century early Neo-Kantian naturalism — from Hermann von Helmholtz and Friedrich-Albert Lange — in the contemporary debates on naturalistic epistemology as instantiated by Penelope Maddy. If the old and contemporary naturalist both settle on a realist ontology regarding the logical structure of the world, rectifying epistemology along psychophysical discoveries should not justify the elimination of a transcendental method. Thus, Maddy’s approach to epistemology presents for us some loopholes.


Michal Dobrzanski (University of Warsaw)

Arthur Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Language: from German Idealism towards Analytical Philosophy

Abstract:

Arthur Schopenhauer is usually not viewed as a contributor to the development of analytical philosophy. In my presentation I argue that his impact on it should be reconsidered. His writings contain broad reflections on philosophy of language, including such topics as the relation of signs of language and thoughts, privacy of language, translation, extension and intension and even conceptions of both the representational and use theories of language. I demonstrate how Schopenhauer’s philosophy of language led him to a decisive breach with the German idealist tradition and point out his documented impact on Wittgenstein. I also draw to attention further similarities of his philosophy with analytical thought.


Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Carnap meets Foucault: Explication and Genealogy

Abstract:

Carnap’s notion of explication has attracted much attention over the last years. As presented by Carnap himself, however, it contains a significant lacuna: insufficient attention is paid to the preliminary stage of clarifying the explicandum. In this talk, I argue that Foucaultian genealogy is a suitable approach to address this lacuna. Moreover, the focus on practices in Foucaultian genealogies facilitates a reflection on the functions of the concept to be explicated, which is crucial for the fruitfulness of the explication as a whole. I start by canvassing a number of commonalities between Carnap and Foucault, as they were both influenced by Kant and Nietzsche; they shared a number of philosophical commitments such as a rejection of metaphysics and a tolerant meta-normative stance. I then discuss the lacuna in Carnapian explication, and argue that Foucaultian genealogy provides the right level of detail to remedy this lacuna. I close with a discussion of a concrete example, the concept of marriage, and conclude that this combination of Carnapian explication with Foucaultian genealogy is an illustration of the relevance of historical analysis for conceptual engineering.


Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

The Roots of Deduction. A Conceptual Genealogy.

Abstract:

tba


Gary Ebbs (Indiana University)

Do Carnap and Quine Disagree about Explication?

Abstract:

Carnap’s formulations of the method of explication imply that only an inexact term can be a candidate for explication. Quine’s paradigm of explication is that of the notion of ordered pair, as expressed by the notation <x, y> and subject to the postulate:
(*) If <x, y> = <z, w> then x = z and y = w.
As several writers have recently pointed out, the notation <x, y> and its postulate (*) are clear, unproblematic parts of established mathematical practice. Some of these writers (e.g. Martin Gustafsson) infer that
(a) the notion of ordered pair, as expressed by the notation <x, y> and subject to postulate (*), is exact by Carnap’s standards,
and conclude that
(b) what Quine treats as a paradigm of explication—namely, the replacement of <x, y> by one of the standard set-theoretical versions of order pairs, such as {{x}, {x, y}}—is not a case of explication according to Carnap.
I shall argue, on the contrary, that for Carnap the appraisal-words “inexact” and “exact,” as applied to notions already in use or to proposed explications of them, must always be understood relative to one’s purposes: a term is “exact” in a given context of inquiry to the extent that its formulation makes clear its role in a well-connected system of scientific concepts that one takes as basic in that context. If one takes set theory as basic for the purposes of an explication of the notion of ordered pair, for instance, then, contrary to (a), treating the notion of order pair as primitive, subject only to (*), is (relative to one’s purposes in the context) inexact, since it does not make clear the role of <x, y> in set-theoretical terms, and replacing <x, y> by {{x}, {x, y}} is (relative to one’s purposes in the context) exact. Thus understood, contrary to (b), a decision to replace <x, y> by {{x}, {x, y}} is a paradigm of explication for both Carnap and Quine.


Josh Eisenthal (California Institute of Technology)

Propositions as Pictures

Abstract:

Although there is much that is controversial in Tractatus scholarship, the following interpretive claim is surprisingly uncontroversial: the Tractarian picture-theory of representation applies primarily to elementary propositions. On this view, non-elementary propositions inherit their pictorial nature by dint of the fact that they are truth-functions of the elementary propositions. However, despite the broad agreement in the literature, this interpretation faces several immediate difficulties. In many of the places where Wittgenstein describes propositions as pictures, he does not indicate that this should be understood as applying primarily to elementary propositions. Rather, he talks about propositions in general (see 2.1, 4.01 and 4.011). Worse, if the picture-theory is understood as applying primarily to elementary propositions, it is difficult to see how truth-functionally complex propositions could function as pictures in anything like the same sense.

In this talk, I will sketch an alternative interpretation according to which the paradigm example of the picture-theory was not an elementary proposition but rather an ordinary (colloquial) proposition. I will outline the advantages of this approach and indicate the further work that would need to be done in order to make it fully convincing.


Landon Elkind (University of Iowa)

Computer Verification for Historians of Philosophy?

Abstract:

Interactive theorem provers might seem particularly impractical in the history of philosophy. Journal articles in this discipline are generally not formalized. Interactive theorem provers involve a learning curve for which the payo s might seem minimal. In this article I argue that interactive theorem provers have already demonstrated their potential as a useful tool for historians of philosophy; I do this by highlighting examples of work where this has already been done. Further, I argue that interactive theorem provers can continue to be useful tools for historians of philosophy in the future; this claim is defended through a more conceptual analysis of what historians of philosophy do that identifies argument reconstruction as a core activity of such practitioners. It is then shown that interactive theorem provers can assist in this core practice by a description of what interactive theorem provers are and can do. If this is right, then computer verification for historians of philosophy is in the offing.


Jamie Elliott (Central European University and University of Leipzig)

Anscombe and ‘I’.

Abstract:

Directly after the conclusion that ‘“I” is neither a name nor another kind of expression whose logical role is to make a reference, at all.’ (Anscombe, 1975: 32) the text of Anscombe’s ‘The First Person’ (1975) states ‘Of course, we must accept the rule “If X asserts something withT as subject, his assertion will be true if and only if what he asserts is true of X’ (1975, 32). This subsequent rule claim suggests an alternative interpretation of Anscombe’s text as forwarding a pure indexical or purely semantic account of T. In this talk, I will use work on the nature of rules found in Anscombe’s texts on ethics to illuminate the claim that ‘Of course, we must accept the rule “If X asserts something with T as subject, his assertion will be true if and only if what he asserts is true of X’ (1975, 32). In addition to illuminating the rule claim, I will argue that the purely semantic account of T which Anscombe’s texts suggest is implausible. In order to argue this, I will call upon the early work of both P.F. Strawson and Gareth Evans and upon the example of the first-person pronoun in sign language.


Jordi Fairhurst (Universität de les Illes Balears)

Ethics is Transcendental (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.421)

Abstract:

In this paper I set out to study Wittgenstein’s claim that “Ethics is Transcendental” (TLP 6.421). First, I analyze a series of existing interpretations that have been advance in order to account for this proposition and single out their inadequacies. Second I aim to offer a coherent interpretation of Wittgenstein’s claim in 6.421. Resorting to Wittgenstein’s understanding of the transcendental character of logic and some parallelisms with Kant, I argue that for Wittgenstein ethics is transcendental insofar as it is internal to or constitutive of a certain mystical view: valuing the world in an absolute sense sub specie aeterni.


Florian Franken Figueiredo (FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

Wittgenstein and the Conception of Hypotheses

turning point in Wittgenstein’s thought. To that end I focus on a longer passage in Ms-107, 247-250 in which Wittgenstein relates his new conception of hypotheses to pragmatism. The evidence that I present speaks against a direct influence from Ramsey on this specific issue. As I understand Wittgenstein, he intends to demonstrate the similarities and differences between his new conception of hypotheses and the pragmatist view of a hypothesis arguing that the pragmatist conception is misguided as it wrongly equates the usefulness of a hypothesis with the truth of a proposition. From my discussion I draw the conclusion that Wittgenstein’s new conception of what it is to be a hypothesis is neither part of any putative pragmatist turning point nor is it directly influenced by Ramsey.


Juliet Floyd (Boston University)

Susanne K. Langer

Abstract:

A survey of some of the different areas of research being stimulated today by Susanne K. Langer’s work, alongside a brief synopsis of her career.


Francesco A. Genco and Francesca Poggiolesi (IHPST, CNRS and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)

A Solution to the Paradoxes of Grounding Inspired by Bolzano

Abstract:

Grounding is receiving increasing attention in philosophy. It is usually introduced as an objective and explanatory relation that is non-causal in nature, and much effort has been spent to logically characterise it and to provide formal systems that capture the relation between a formula and its logical grounds, namely the formulae in virtue of which it holds. Nevertheless, the existing grounding rules for universal and existential quantifiers have been shown to lead to paradoxes. By exploiting Bolzano’s theory of Abfolge, we define a first-order formal system that captures the notion of grounding and avoids these paradoxes.


Eduardo N. Giovannini (University of Vienna and CONICET)

Hilbert’s Early Views on Completeness and Categoricity

Abstract:

The aim of this talk is to present a historical analysis and a systematic assessment of Hilbert’s famous “axiom of completeness” for Euclidean geometry and analysis. This task will be undertaken on the basis of a series of unpublished notes for lecture courses, corresponding to the period 1894-1905. I will argue that this historical and conceptual analysis not only sheds new light on how Hilbert originally conceived the nature of his axiom of completeness, but also it proves relevant for a better understanding of the relation between the axiom and several notions of ‘completeness’ of an axiomatic system.


Warren Goldfarb (Harvard University)

Conjuring with the Beetle

Abstract:

A close examination of §§293-309 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, informed by attention to his “Notes for a Philosophical Lecture” and the recently published Wittgenstein-Skinner manuscripts, can illuminate what Wittgenstein is denying when he urges us not “to construe the the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of ‘object and names’”.


Jonathan Gombin (Université Bordeaux Montaigne)

Simplex Sigillum Veri: the Tractatus on the Simplicity of Logic. A close reading of TLP 5.4541

Abstract:

Asserting that “[t]he solutions of the problems of logic must be simple, since they set the standard of simplicity”, TLP 5.4541 is bewildering both in its picture of logic as “a realm in which the answers to questions are symmetrically combined” (in apparent contradiction to 5.454) and in its claim that “[m]en have always had a presentiment that there must be [such] a realm”. By offering a close reading of this passage, I hope to show that it puts forth a specific concept of simplicity that is central for understanding Wittgenstein’s project.


Aleksandra Gomulczak (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan)

An Attempt to recognize the Relationship between Analytic and Continental Philosophy”

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is (1) to briefly describe the possible ways of conceptualization of the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy, and problems that concern them. Do these traditions stay in opposition? Do they overlap in certain respects? Or maybe, the distinction is invaluable?; (2) to examine the interesting case of the occurrence of the gap in the philosophy of the Lviv-Warsaw School; (3) to examine whether the conception of philosophy proposed in Twardowski’s School can be of any use to grasp the relationship between analytic and continental philosophy.


Ewelina Gradzka (Pontifical University of John Paul II, Cracow)

Kazimierz Twardowski’s View on Teaching Philosophy at School in the Context of Analytical Philosophy

Abstract:

This paper aims to consider Twardowski’s ideas about teaching philosophy at school. Majority of articles focus on his research whereas his educational engagement is underestimated. It is to learn about cultural and historical context of his work in this area and what motivated him. It is to acknowledge his accomplishments and analyze failures as part of little known heritage of Polish philosophy, particularly analytical school, and its engagement in educational system. The final goal is to analyze actuality of Twardowski’s ideas for modern school system and teaching philosophy in schools.

Academic rank: student/ philosophy for children facilitator and Head of Assiocation „Under the common sky”


Sebastian Sunday Grève (Peking University Department of Philosophy; Berggruen Research Center; 北京大学外国哲学研究所 Institute of Foreign Philosophy)

Turing’s Philosophy of Intelligence

Abstract:

What are the possible forms of human and non-human intelligence? And what normative consequences might follow for our life with machines from a comparison of these possible forms? This research is partly situated within the history of ideas, for it is not sufficiently appreciated that these two questions also figured at the forefront of Alan Turing’s visionary post-war thinking about machines. An adequate understanding of the philosophical work by this pioneer of computer science promises an impactful injection of new ideas into debates on the foundations of intelligence research as well as the ethics and politics of computing technology.


Chengcheng Gu (Shanxi University)

A Comparative Study of Shen Yu-ting and Husserl’s Theory of Meaning

Abstract:

Shen Yu-ting (1908-1989) , a famous Chinese contemporary logician and analytic philosopher, is the earliest Chinese scholar who chose the theory of meaning as the breakthrough to fuse analytic philosophy and phenomenology in 1930s.Comparing Shen Yu-ting and Hussel’s study in theory of meaning can find out their similarities and differences,and also reassess Shen Yu-ting’s theory of meaning,which proves Shen Yu-ting’s efforts on fusing analytic philosophy and phenomenology had grasped the trend of philosophy’s development in advance.


Edward Guetti (Hunter College, CUNY)

No Surprises: Insight and Limit-Concepts in the Tractatus

Abstract:

In this paper I appeal to odd comparisons Wittgenstein uses in the Tractatus to clarify a sense of limit concepts. The sense of limit concepts supports an understanding of both the limitations of formal analysis (in the paper I focus on the idea of the General Propositional Form and the General Form of Operations for formal series) and of our capacity to engage in logical clarification as thoroughly dependent upon a sense of insight. I find that this route through the Tractatus is not entirely appreciated for its worth, and seek to vindicate this claim in relation to the ‘fundamental thought’ of the Tractatus (4.0312).


Michael Robert Hicks (Miami University, Ohio)

Sellars on Carnap and Conceptual Voluntarism

Abstract:

Sellars’s epistemology of science derives from his sustained engagement with a doctrine I’ll call Carnap’s conceptual voluntarism. As Sellars understands it, Carnap’s view makes it impossible to understand why language as we use it concerns the world in which we use it. In his early work, Sellars thought that this could be addressed by affixing a theory of “pure pragmatics” to Carnap’s syntactic theory, but his critique became more radical in time. Ultimately any “epistemological” account of the capacity of scientists to generate new theories of our world must abandon Carnap’s voluntarism to recognize the sense in which, in Sellars’s colorful phrase, rules are generalizations “written in flesh and blood, or nerve and sinew, rather than pen and ink.”


Jim Hutchinson (Simon Fraser University)

Frege’s Radical Anti-Psychologism

Abstract:

Frege’s anti-psychologistic argument is radical, implying that everything from nineteenthcentury empirical research to a priori conceptual analyses of thinking is irrelevant to logic. In particular, this conclusion is more radical than Husserl’s anti-psychologism, and Husserl, in fact, objects to Frege’s argument.

Husserl’s objection is influential and illuminating, but ultimately mistaken. Thinking through what Frege would think is wrong with it helps us recognize something important about the way Frege sees the way that laws prescribe for our thinking.


David Hyder (University of Ottawa)

Locality in the Tractatus

Abstract:

In this talk, I will present arguments for the claim that Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is a “local theory”. By a “local theory,” I mean one in which the following holds:

For two events, e and f, e can be the cause of f iff f is temporally later than e.

From this it follows that,

For two events, e and f, occurring at the same time, neither e causes f nor f causes e.

Now, if we employ a modern definition of causality, for instance that of David Lewis, the proposition that, of two events e and f, neither is the cause of the other, implies that there is no similarity-relation between worlds that supports counterfactual inferences of the form, if e/f hadn’t happened, then f/e wouldn’t have happened either. But that is to say, in turn, that there is no ranking of these worlds—from the fact that either e or f occurs, nothing can be inferred about f or e. And the latter is simply the doctrine of the independence of elementary propositions. The independence of elementary propositions thereby reflects logically what 19th c. thinkers called the principle of local action: the principle that no present state of affairs depends causally on a simultaneous one.


Ryo Ito (Waseda University)

Two Epistemological Problems in the early Russell’s Ontology

Abstract:

In The Principles of Mathematics, Russell defines a term to be, in effect, whatever we can think of. Simple as the definition is, it remains unclear what terms are, because there is an apparent conflict among Russell’s remarks concerning them. On the one hand, the ontology he puts forward is in a sense quite generous as it includes among terms ‘A man, a moment, a number, a class, a relation, a chimaera, or anything else that can be mentioned’ (p.43). On the other hand, there cannot seem to be so many terms because he considers them to be ‘immutable and indestructible’ (p.44). This conflict has been noted by some authors including Gideon Makin (2000, p.181) and Stewart Candlish (2007, p.109), though they do not offer an account as to how one can espouse those two seemingly incompatible claims in a consistent manner.
It is not impossible to resolve the conflict, however. In my view, we can interpret those claims in such a way that they do not directly contradict each other, if we understand terms merely as abstract bearers of properties. To be precise, since Russell classifies terms into things and concepts, he seems to think that the former are bearers of properties while the latter are properties that can also be bearers of properties. On this view, Socrates may be viewed as a term, but the name ‘Socrates’ does not refer to a man with flesh and blood but an abstract bearer of properties. Socrates thus understood is indeed indestructible because he is (or it is) a mere abstract bearer of properties, not a concrete entity.

We may regard this notion of entity as an internally consistent picture of the universe in the sense that it does not involve any pair of mutually contradictory sentences, as long as we put aside any epistemological concerns. But once we do, it leads to at least two epistemological problems.

First, how can we distinguish between two things if they are mere abstract bearers of properties? To put it otherwise, if things are just bearers of properties and the bearers themselves are only numerically different from one another, how can we distinguish one thing from another? The other problem is concerned with our perception of an ordinary object. If Socrates is an abstract bearer of properties, how can we perceive him? Can we perceive an abstract bearers of properties with our senses?

My aim in this essay is to offer an account as to how these problems contributed to the well-known shrinking of the early Russell’s generous ontology from 1905 onwards.

As for the first problem, I argue that Russell’s theory of terms allows us to identify a thing, though it leaves unclear how we can recognise the thing. If someone is thinking about just one thing, the very fact that she is thinking about the thing and nothing else implies the numerical difference of the thing from all the other terms. For she has the relation of thinking about only to that thing. She can thus identify a thing in the sense she can numerically differentiate it from the other entities. To be sure, this does not mean that she can thereby recognise the thing in the sense she can tell if a given thing is identical to it. She may well wonder if the former is identical to the latter. When she thus wonders, she has the relation of thinking about to just one thing if these things are indeed one and the same or to two things if they are different. But she may not be able to tell which is the case. Thus, the relation of thinking about can be seen as an external epistemic relation in the sense that it helps one identify a thing but not necessarily recognise it.

As for the second problem, I argue that Russell could not solve it and that was at least partially why he replaced the notion of thinking about with that of being acquainted with. It has been customary to think that though these relations play the same role in the early Russell’s epistemology, both holding between the judging mind and a mind-independent entity, even though they are supposed to have different kinds of entities as their objects,. But in my view there is a further point of difference between these relations. I think he introduced the latter at least partially because he wanted to resolve the problem with the former. We can think about an abstract bearer of properties, but we cannot perceive any. On the other hand, when we are acquainted with sense data, we do perceive them. Thus, by replacing the relation of thinking about with that of being acquainted with, Russell resolved one of the two epistemological problems he had confronted when advocating the notion of term.


Mahmoud Jalloh (University of Southern California)

Structuralism in the Tractatus

Abstract:

This paper has two aims. One is to suggest that developing a “Tractarian” structuralism allows the structuralist to be free from one of the major problems of their view: wellfoundedness without fundamental objects. Another is to argue that such a Tractarian structuralism is to be found in the Tractatus. This all relies heavily on an interpretation of the discussion of structural properties, formal concepts, and types in the 4s. Both the dissolution of the wellfoundedness problem and the structuralist interpretation of the Tractatusdepend on making sense of “object” as merely denoting a logical role, with no metaphysical significance. Of dialectical necessity, my approach to the Tractatus is largely in line with a “logically oriented” reading (but stopping short of a “resolute” reading). Particularly of importance is the context principle which sets up a “top-down” semantic chain of dependency (3.3). This discussion aims to shed new light on the general structuralist project and perhaps on Tractatus interpretation as well. Any contribution of the latter kind found herein is towards an understanding of the climbing of the ladder.


Frederique Janssen-Lauret (University of Manchester)

Early Analytic Female Logicians: Combating the Great Men Narrative of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract:

Historical narratives tell us that analytic philosophy issued from the logical minds of the great men, Frege, Russell, Moore, and Wittgenstein, women played little role until, in the mid-analytic period, Anscombe, Foot, Murdoch and Midgley broadened the movement to include normativity. My research on women’s writings in the early analytic period, 1880s-1940s, reveals that this narrative is a myth. Most research-active female philosophers of this period published primarily on logic broadly conceived. Women like Constance Jones, Christine Ladd-Franklin, Dorothy Wrinch, Susan Stebbing, Alice Ambrose, Margaret MacDonald, Janina Hosiasson, Maria Kokoszynska and Ruth Barcan made important contributions to early analytic logic. They moved the field forward by publishing pioneering results about the sense-reference distinction, logical form, judgement and mathematical logic, analysis, probability, truth, and modality. I argue that we must broaden our narratives of early analytic philosophy to make space for these remarkable women and their contributions to logic.


Frederique Janssen-Lauret (University of Manchester)

Victoria Welby as a Grandmother of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract:

I argue that Victoria Welby (1837-1912), a self-taught philosopher of language, made crucial contributions to early analytic philosophy which moved the subject forward significantly. Welby, a self-identified ‘naturalist’ advocated a philosophy of language informed by the new psychology and evolutionary biology. She rebutted the ‘myth of the museum’ 50 years before Quine, and viewed facts as theory-laden. Russell later admitted that Welby had helped dissuade him from seeing language as ‘transparent’, a medium we need not pay attention to, which refers unproblematically to constituents of reality. So I conclude Welby deserves a place in the canon of early analytic philosophy.


Dominik Jarczewski (Kolegium Filozoficzno-Teologiczne Dominikanôw, Cracow)

Towards an Activist Epistemology. The Neglected Project of C. I. Lewis

Abstract:

In my paper, I argue that the epistemology of Clarence I. Lewis should better be understood if read within the framework of his pragmatism. As opposed to traditional, so called “copyist” epistemologies, Lewis proposed an activist shift. The study of his published and unpublished works serves to read correctly his often misunderstood notions of the given and a priori. I explain his normative point of view and draw some parallels with other contemporary projects, like Code’s virtue epistemology and others.


Yi Jiang (Shanxi University)

On Reverse Reading of the Tractatus, for Celebration of the Centennial of Publication of the Tractatus

Abstract:

The order of the seven main propositions of the Tractatus have been read normally as the process from ontology through epistemology to the philosophy of language, which is seen as following the historical order of Western philosophy in the past. However, two difficulties appeared in this reading. First, it is hard to explain, according to this reading, the crucial role of these propositions among all the propositions in the book. Second, it is hard to understand the intention Wittgenstein wants to express in the book, the intention of demarcation of language and thought. In this talk, I would like to interpret the logic of these propositions by a reverse reading in order to overcome the two difficulties in the previous reading and to understand the real intention of the book in depth. The reverse reading explains Wittgenstein’s approach to thinking of the structure of the book rather than his approach to the writing of the book. This reading is appropriate closely to Wittgenstein’s way of thinking. But it also arises a key question to understand Wittgenstein’s thoughts: in which way Wittgenstein presents his thoughts in the book, the logical or the ethical? In this talk, I shall try to answer the question by analyzing the process of Wittgenstein’s thinking. My answer will be that, for Wittgenstein, the logical is the formation, the ethical is the attitude, and the essential is his thoughts.


David Kashtan (Edelstein Center for the History and Philosophy of Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Tarskian Stratification of Language, Regardless of Paradox

Abstract:

On the received view, Tarski “sanitized” and “stratified” natural language into a hierarchy of formalized metalanguages as a response to the liar paradox. Through scrutiny of the history, text and logic of Tarski’s (1933) The Concept of Truth in Formalized Languages (CTFL), I argue that the liar paradox is at best a secondary motivation for language stratification.

The only place in CTFL in which the liar paradox is mentioned as such is §1, the content of which is attributed by Tarski to other writers, and which doesn’t suggest language stratification. The only other occurrence is in §5, in which Godel’s syntactic diagonalization technique is adapted in order to formulate a liar sentence in a reductio of the possibility of semantic closure. This argument can plausibly be interpreted as stratification in response to the paradox. However, historically, the argument was added to CTFL only after the latter had been sent to press, and doesn’t form an organic part of it. Moreover, language stratification is present already in §4, which probably predates the diagonal argument, and there it is motivated on grounds other than the liar paradox.

By studying Tarski’s motivation and procedure, I believe contemporary philosophy of truth has a lot to gain.


Gary Kemp (University of Glasgow)

A Conflict in Quine? Ontological Relativity vs Naturalism

Abstract:

I make a Quinean case that Quine’s ontological relativity marked a wrong turn in his philosophy. I think indeed that his fundamental commitments — especially his commitments to immanentism and naturalism — point towards the classical view of ontology that was worked out in the most detail in Word and Object.


Dongwoo Kim (The Graduate Center, City University of New York)

Reference and Analysis in Frege

Abstract:

It has been a subject of controversy what conditions (Frege thinks) the logical definitions of various arithmetical notions should satisfy for it to be considered adequate for the epistemic goal. Some commentators have argued that the definitions ought to preserve the senses of ordinary arithmetical expressions, while others thought that Frege was indifferent even to reference-preservation. In this paper, I argue that sense preservation is not necessary for his project as long as there is a connection between the senses of Frege’s newly defined terms and of the corresponding ordinary terms, from which we can recognize that they are coreferential solely by means of logic. I shall present what I take to be Frege’s argument to that effect.


Alexander Klein (McMaster University)

From Willing to Meaning: William James on Mental Content

Abstract:

William James’s account of meaning is familiar from popular works like Pragmatism and his more academic follow-up, The Meaning of Truth. According to this account, my thought is about Memorial Hall in virtue of aiding me in finding the building. We can fruitfully think of this as a forward-facing causal account of mental content. For James the question is not what objects caused the mental state, as on more recent causal accounts. The question is what actions the mental state would cause—and in particular, what objects my actions would put me in contact with. One problem causal theories have traditionally faced is what Fodor called the “disjunction problem”—roughly, how to explain the possibility of misrepresentation. I try to solve the problem on James’s behalf by appealing to a theoretical resource that is not often connected with his work on intentionality. The resource is his psychological theory of will, two aspects of which are particularly relevant to the disjunction problem. First, genuine action (for James) begins with an agent hatching a goal for herself. In the paradigmatic sort of case, hatching a goal means framing an idea of what it will have felt like to perform an action. For example, an archer might hatch the goal of shooting an arrow at a target by thinking of what it will have felt like to have performed the relevant motions. Second, there is a chain of muscular innervation that naturally (as an evolutionary-physiological matter) tends to be caused by the conscious awareness of the goal representation, for James. Thus not just any old interaction with an object will establish reference, for James—my interaction must be in accord with my initial goal representation. The solution is noteworthy in that the goal representation and the intended action may both be continually updated in the context of a dynamic, sensory feedback loop, for James, as the intended action unfolds in real time. In my talk I will unpack this solution and assess its strengths and weaknesses.


Artur Kosecki (University of Szczecin)

On Ajdukiewicz’s and Quine’s Views on Ontology

Abstract:

The aim of the paper is to analyze the views of Willard van Orman Quine and compare them with the views of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz, an eminent philosopher from the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will argue that Ajdukiewicz’s approach to ontology is deflationary and, in that respect, similar to Quine’s. In my analysis of these two ontological stances, I would like to refer to Price’s deflationist interpretation of Quine’s views in order to highlight the similarity between Ajdukiewicz’s views and Quine’s stance on ontology. Additionally, as both Ajdukiewicz and Quine used a method of paraphrase, my paper also discusses similarities and differences in the methods used by these central representatives of two philosophical environments – Polish and Anglosphere.


Allison Koslow (University of California, Irvine)

TBA

Abstract:

TBA


Teresa Kouri Kissel (Old Dominion University)

Susan Stebbing on Logical Atomism

Abstract:

In her A Modern Introduction to Logic and “Relation and Coherence”, Susan Stebbing considers an objection to Russell’s logical atomism. She claims that atomism makes use of an illegitimate pluralism: the atomist treats relations as external to the terms they relate, thus cleaving relations and terms. This, claims Stebbing, is problematic, since we only have “terms in their relations”, and not “terms and their relations” (“Relation and Coherence”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1917, p 463). In this paper, I will explain what this criticism amounts to, and how it fits with the notion of directional analysis Stebbing would develop later in life.


Martin Kusch (University of Vienna)

Is Georg Simmel Part of the History of Analytic Philosophy?

Abstract:

This paper seeks to defend a positive answer to the title question in two steps. First, I discuss different ways of understanding analytic philosophy and its history. I defend an understanding of analytic philosophy as an evolving and diversifying tradition not held together by a permanent collective commitment to a small set of theses or tools. Second, I reconstruct Simmel’s relativist epistemology and show how it relates to current debates in epistemology and the philosophy of science.


Gregory Landini (University of Iowa)

Gödel’s Diagonal Function Doesn’t Exist without Numbers

Abstract:

Taking seriously the revolution within mathematics against abstract particulars that Whitehead and Russell embraced in their Principia Mathematica, this paper shows that Gödel fails to make good on his promise to obtain an important incompleteness result concerning the axiomatic conception of the arithmetic of natural numbers espoused in Principia.

Of course, one may feel justified in interpreting Godel’s promise as having been made in the context, not of Principia, but in the modified version of the work that Gödel himself imagined. Gödel alters Principia and identifies natural numbers as abstract particulars that are classes regimented by simple type theory. This omits the very heart of the revolutionary agenda against abstract particulars in the branches of mathematics that Whitehead and Russell were embracing. It remains, therefore, to evaluate Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem as applied to the revolutionary mathematics Principia represents, adding only its wff Infin ax to its formal axioms. Though the revolutionaries accept Cantor’s diagonal functions, we shall find that without numbers as abstract particulars, there is no good reason for revolutionary mathematicians to believe that Gödel’s diagonal function exists.


Sandra Lapointe (McMaster University)

What is a Disciplinary History of Logic?

Abstract:

tba


Matt LaVine (SUNY Potsdam)

An Introduction to Social Justice and the History of Analytic Philosophy

Abstract:

The relationship between analytic philosophy and social justice activism is difficult to discern. Hans-Johann Glock, for instance, published a chapter which investigates such wildly conflicting hypotheses as (i) that analytic philosophy is characterized by excluding all moral and political philosophy, (ii) that analytic philosophy is apolitical and conservative, and (iii) that analytic philosophy is liberal and progressive. Furthermore, as Meena Krishnamurthy has pointed out, this state of affairs isn’t helped by the existence of a Rawlsian Myth amongst the analytic mainstream that there was no important political philosophy of note between Mill’s death and Rawls’ A Theory of Justice. Such an exclusionary picture ignores such important figures as Cooper, King, de Beauvoir, Gandhi, Nehru, and Malcolm X, as well as acknowledged analytic figures like MacDonald, Neurath, Russell, and Stebbing. The primary aim of this panel is to investigate issues like what potential there may or may not be for analytic work to contribute to social justice activism, why so little such work has happened, why the work that has happened on this front has often been forgotten or ignored, and what barriers there are to such work.


Richard Lawrence (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)

Frege and Formalism: an Apology for Thomae

Abstract:

Johannes Thomae was Frege’s colleague in Jena, and worked closely with him for decades. His research was mostly in the Thomae advocated a formalist view in the foundations of mathematics. He is the source of the chess analogy that Frege attacks in the second volume of *Grundgesetze der Arithmetik*: the idea that the numerals acquire their meaning in arithmetic via our rules for calculating with them, much like wooden pieces acquire a meaning in chess via the rules of the game.

This talk will briefly present Thomae’s formalism in order to examine Frege’s criticisms in *Grundgesetze* more closely. What was Thomae’s view, and why did Frege feel the need to criticize it at such length? What exactly is the problem that Frege sees with the chess analogy? A central part of Frege’s criticism is the claim that rules cannot determine the content of signs if those signs are to express thoughts and have applications. The talk will focus on understanding the implications of this claim for Frege’s theory of content.


Anton Leodolter (University of East Anglia / Universität Leipzig)

An Arduous Journey – The Concept ‘Illusion’ in Wittgenstein Scholarship and Cavell’s Solution

Abstract:

In the history of Wittgenstein scholarship and thus in the history of analytic philosophy the idea that philosophical problems are akin to pathological illusions is a controversial topic as it pertains to the problem of philosophical methodology in Wittgenstein more generally. One of my central points will be that most interpreters agree in that illusions in Wittgenstein are ontologically subjective, with the exception of Stanley Cavell who construes illusions structurally. As I intend to show, this structuralist account of illusions has serious implications for how to construe philosophical methodology after Wittgenstein.


Dwight Lewis (University of Central Florida)

Cultural Epistemology: A Query of Physicalism and an Investigation into Patricia Hill Collins’ ‘outsider within’

Abstract:

When one engages the history of analytic philosophy, Frank Jackson’s article Epiphenomenal Qualia and its aftermath cannot be avoided, which examines the possibility of nonphysical mental states. I want to do something a bit different with Jackson’s article. I employ Jackson’s Mary Argument to interrogate cultural epistemology and query into the possible of its nonphysical nature. John Smith can read and learn everything about Blackness and being Black in the world, but can John know what it is like to be Black if he has never been Black? Or if he has never experienced the world from within Blackness? If not, then physicalism is placed in question; and furthermore, there may be mental states that are caused by physical states or experiences, which cannot be known in the physical world. If this is the case, then what can this tell us about the outsider and insider perspective? And how can this enrich and probe our understanding of Patricia Hill Collins’ “outsider within”?


Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau (University of Vienna)

Waismann on Rules and Hypotheses

Abstract:

Waismann’s early philosophy, at the time he began to work on his book on the philosophy of Wittgenstein, is often overlooked because it is thought to be a faithful exegesis of the Tractatus. Based on Waismann’s “Theses” (1931) and a series of talks he gave in the Vienna Circle (1930), I want to show that he developed a view of syntactic rules, which not only strongly deviates from the Tractarian view, but also shaped the discussions on grammar and logical syntax in the Vienna Circle. I will emphasize how this new view of rules is connected to his conception of general propositions and hypotheses. The talk will also analyze how this development blurs the common distinction between a (Wittgensteinian) right wing and a left wing of the Vienna Circle.


Indrek Lobus (University of Stirling/University of St Andrews)

Frege Against Textbook Logical Atoms

Abstract:

According to standard textbook semantics, an atomic proposition is true iff the value of its predicate yields truth for a sequence of values of its terms. Contrary to entrenched view, this account does not gain support from Frege’s doctrine of saturation. It is in conflict with it. Such values as are currently assigned to prefnoidicates cannot contribute to the determination of truth-values or-conditions of atoms because they depend on atoms already having truth-values. We avoid this problem by replacing the standard account with a Tractarian account—that an atom is true iff certain objects are combined in the right way.


Stephen Mackereth (University of Pittsburgh)

Heck’s Two-Sorted Frege Arithmetic and the Neo-Fregean Program

Abstract:

Neo-Fregean logicists claim that Hume’s Principle (HP) may be taken as an implicit definition of cardinal number, true simply by fiat. A longstanding problem for neo-Fregean logicism is that HP is not deductively conservative over pure axiomatic second-order logic. This seems to preclude HP from being true by fiat.

In this talk, we will consider Richard Kimberly Heck’s theory of Two-sorted Frege Arithmetic (2FA). In order to avoid the Julius Caesar problem, Heck reimagines HP as introducing a new logical sort of objects into the language, namely, the cardinal-number sort. The operator “#” introduced by HP may combine with concept variables of either sort, yielding terms of the cardinal-number sort. The proof of Frege’s Theorem goes through in the new, cardinalnumber sort, but there is no longer any obvious witness to non-conservativeness. Indeed, Burgess has conjectured that 2FA is conservative over pure second-order logic.

Alas, it is not so. Surprisingly, even a weak fragment of 2FA is not conservative over pure second-order logic. We will explain this and some related results, which suggest that it will be very difficult for neo-Fregeans to meet the conservativeness objection. (Moral: you can’t get infinity for free in second-order logic.)


Rory Madden (University College London)

Self-Awareness in G.E. Moore’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’

Abstract:

The closing pages of G.E. Moore’s otherwise famous 1903 ‘Refutation of Idealism’ contain an interesting but neglected argument against the idealist view that objects of awareness are ‘contents’ of awareness. It takes the form of a transcendental argument from the possibility of self-awareness. The argument anticipates a remarkably similar anti-psychologistic argument in Frege’s late essay ‘Thought’. It also bears upon the question of the extent to which Moore’s early philosophy of mind is similar to Brentano’s descriptive psychology. I will argue that, while Moore’s act-object analysis of sensation may be vaguely Brentanian, his remarks on the self express a very un-Brentanian vision of the mind, committed to a ‘higher order’ theory of introspection, and to the existence of a subject of awareness over and above acts of awareness.


Dejan Makovec (University of Pittsburgh)

Panelists: Annalisa Coliva, Greg Lavers, Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau, Gillian Russell, Bastian Stoppelkamp

Abstract:

This panel will open the discussion about Friedrich Waismann’s position in the history of analytic philosophy in relation to Carnap, Quine and Wittgenstein as well as positivism, pragmatism and pluralism. With a look at the ongoing and still very much incipient rediscovery of Waismann’s own philosophy, the panelists will exchange experiences made along the way and share ideas for further research to come.


Benjamin Marschall (University of Cambridge)

Quine’s Empiricist Platonism

Abstract:

What is Quine’s philosophy of mathematics, and how does it differ from Carnap’s? The historical development is often described as follows: for a brief period Quine shared Carnap’s linguistic conventionalism, but quickly came to reject the notion of truth by convention. Together with Nelson Goodman he then explored the prospects of nominalism but came to see that it is not viable either. In the end Quine thus settled for mathematical Platonism, even though somewhat grudgingly.

The aim of this talk is to investigate the nature of Quine’s Platonism, and to assess whether it is an attractive position. In the first half I will argue that Quine’s position turns out to be surprisingly similar to that of Carnap after all. In the second half I will focus on the systematic merits of Quine’s empiricist variety of Platonism by investigating whether and how he could respond to the Benacerraf Problem.


Robert May (University of California, Davis)

The Role of Truth

Abstract:

In this talk I That truth-values are objects is one of Frege’s most distinctive theses. Frege’s reason for taking this view resides with the role truth-values are called on to play in logic and language in founding the logical concepts as truth-functions; Frege’s view of truth is functional rather than metaphysical. In Grundgesetze, Frege identifies truth-values as logical objects, as certain value-ranges, and this characterization sets the basis for the so-called “proof of referentiality”, intended to show that the logical language is a referential language, and so properly suited for the development of scientific applications. However, Frege’s stipulative identification of truth-values with value-ranges is problematic as it is creative, leading to what is dubbed the “quasi-paradox of truth”.


Sam Whitman McGrath (Brown University)

On ‘Ontology’: Analyzing the Carnap-Quine Debate as a Case of Metalinguistic Negotiation.

Abstract:

This paper develops an original interpretation of the Carnap-Quine debate, arguing that the appearance of strong disagreement between the two concerning the status of ontological questions stems from their divergent use of terminology, rather than first-order disagreements on the status of metaphysical inquiry. However, this does not dissolve the disagreement between them and render the debate merely verbal. Rather, it locates the source of their disagreement in their conflicting views on the proper use of metaphysical terminology itself. This interpretation both provides historical illumination and carries specific import for contemporary disputes about the nature of ontology, which are often framed as the continuation of Carnap and Quine’s original debate.


José Mestre (University of St Andrews, University of Stirling, LanCog (University of Lisbon)

Are Thoughts Propositions?

Abstract:

Revised abstract (187 words): In The Metaphysicians of Meaning, Gideon Makin argues that ‘Frege moved into, and Russell out of, sensism, while their commitment to propositionalism remained constant’ (2000: 142). Propositionalism is the view that propositions, a certain kind of abstract and mind-independent complex entities, serve simultaneously as the meanings of sentences, the bearers of truth, and the objects of propositional attitudes. Sensism, a species of propositionalism, is the view that at least some of their constituents are ‘aboutness-shifters’. An aboutness-shifter is such that, whenever it occurs in a proposition, the proposition is not about it, but about what it denotes (cf. Russell 1903 §56). Since Frege’s senses and Russell’s denoting concepts alike are aboutness-shifters, Fregean thoughts and Russellian propositions differ only with respect to their quantity.

While Makin’s interpretation may sound plausible at a certain level of generality, here I want to resist his reading of Frege. Against the claim that Frege moved into sensism, I argue that, appearances notwithstanding, Russell’s denoting concepts resemble, not Frege’s senses, but Frege’s referents. Against the claim that Frege was a propositionalist, I argue that the view is at odds with the context principle.

References

Makin, G. 2000. The Metaphysicians of Meaning. Russell and Frege on sense and denotation. London and New York: Routledge.

Russell, B. 1903. Principles of Mathematics. London and New York: Routledge, 2010.


Robert Michels (Eidos, The Centre for Metaphysics & Università della Svizzera Italiana & Université de Neuchâtel)

Lewis’s Counterpart Theory and the Aufbau

Abstract:

In his ‘Counterpart Theory and Quantified Modal Logic’, David Lewis states that his counterpart relation ‘is very like’ the relation of intersubjective correspondence in Carnap’s ‘Aufbau’. This reference must appear surprising to anyone familiar with the history of analytic philosophy, since it likens a central building stone of Lewis’s metaphysical system to a relation introduced in an early manifesto of the most prominent critic of metaphysics of the 20th century. This talk aims to answer two questions: Was Lewis right to make this similarity claim? Does the fact that he makes it hint at a particular way in which Carnap’s Aufbau influenced Lewis?


Nikolay Milkov (University of Paderborn)

Bertrand Russell’s Philosophical Logic and Its Logical Forms

Abstract:

From 1903 till 1919, Russell persistently maintained that there are two kinds of logic that he carefully distinguished: (i) symbolic logic; (ii) philosophical logic that alone belongs to philosophy. The task of the philosophical logic is in no way identical with that of the symbolic logic. Unfortunately, the exploration of Russell’s philosophical logic was neglected in Russell studies for decades. In this paper we shall discriminate three levels of Russell’s philosophical logic: (i) describing logical forms of propositions; (ii) describing logical forms of phenomena and facts; (¡ii) exploring the philosophical fundament of mathematical logic.


Giovanni Mion (Istanbul Technical University)

Did Wittgenstein read Cassirer?

Abstract:

The talk explores the striking similarities between some of Wittgenstein’s core claims in On Certainty (1969), including the famous hinge metaphor, and Cassirer’s Einstein’s Theory of Relativity (1921). Moreover, it suggests that Wittgenstein’s remark on relativity in On Certainty might have been triggered by Wittgenstein’s reading of Cassirer’s book.


Sean Morris (Metropolitan State University of Denver)

Russell on Philosophical and Mathematical Definitions in Principles of Mathematics

Abstract:

In his 1903 Principles of Mathematics, Bertrand Russell draws a distinction between philosophical and mathematical definitions. Russell closely ties the former to his method of analysis, intended to yield the indefinables of mathematics. In contrast, Russell gives a more philosophically modest role to mathematical definitions, stating that they must only satisfy necessary and sufficient conditions for the mathematical object being defined. No further condition of uniqueness is required. At various places in Principles the two types of definitions appear to be in tension with each other, and in the years following this work, Russell increasingly appeals to mathematical definitions to carry out his philosophical aims. This paper attempts to assess how much of a tension there really is between philosophical and mathematical definitions in Principles of Mathematics as well as to determine whether Russell’s turn toward mathematical definitions in the years following represents a significant shift away from his earlier notion of analysis.


Matthias Neuber (University of Tübingen)

Perry on the Ego-Centric Predicament

Abstract:

The present paper examines Ralph Barton Perry’s analysis of the “ego-centric predicament.” It will be shown that Perry convincingly argued against prevailing contemporary versions of ontological idealism and that it makes perfectly good sense to consider him a precursor of subsequent trends of American analytical philosophy. In point of fact, Perry sought for a realistic outlook but, in the last analysis, failed in dealing with the problem of perceptual error.


Maximilian Noichl (University of Vienna)

Quantifying the Analytic/Continental Divide

Abstract:

One of the most salient structures of contemporary philosophy is the divide between Continental and analytical philosophy. That its stabilization fell into a period of massive increase in scholarly output since the 1950s poses unique challenges to its historiography, which has to deal not with hundreds, but, in principle, with hundreds of thousands of sources, if it wants to answer questions of disciplinary structure.

In our present investigation, we propose one possible scheme for the modeling of oppositions in corpora. We first train a word-embedding network on a corpus of more than 250000 philosophy texts sampled from the JSTOR-archive. Then we derive representations for each text by averaging the TF-IDF-weighted vectors of the words in each text.

To achieve a focused representation of the analytic/Continental divide, we identify clear cases of analytic/Continental papers as seed points in the vector space and calculate the average difference vector between these samples. We then search for pairs of articles whose difference is most similar to this vector. By calculating the relative similarity to the Continental and analytical samples in the resulting set, we can derive one single “analyticity/Continentality”-score for each article along the Continental/analytical axis.

To measure how the Continental/analytic divide has widened/contracted over time, a bimodal Gaussian model is fit to the distributions of scores over time, with the difference between the central tendencies of the distributions reflecting the width of the divide at specific points in time. This single value is further related to several descriptive variables of interest. We report initial results for the respective differences between analytical and Continental philosophy regarding source-publication, citation counts, and gender of authors.


Luca Oliva (University of Houston)

Analyticity in Wittgenstein

Abstract:

This paper addresses the question of analyticity in the later Wittgenstein, including its related issues of apriority and necessity. First, I will describe the historical background of the question from Kant to the early analytic philosophers and their successors (Frege, Moore, Russell, Ayer, Quine, Putnam). Second, I will account for the view of Wittgenstein on this matter (Kripke, Kalhat, Glock). Third, I will extend my analysis to mathematical propositions (Baker-Hacker, Putnam, Floyd, Dummett, Marion). Fourth, I will finally consider a few complications concerning this view (Horwich, Putnam, Boghossian). The bibliographic references appear at the end of this abstract.


Naomi Osorio-Kupferblum (University of Vienna)

Ryle’s and Carnap’s Impact on Goodman’s Notions of Linguistic Aboutness

Abstract:

In Goodman’s seminal ’About’ (Mind 1961), the first footnote points the reader to what must have been the main inspiration for his disquisition on what it is for a statement to be about something: Ryle’s 1933 ‘About’ (Analysis) and ‘Imaginary Objects’ (Proceedings of the AS, Supp.) and Carnap’s discussion of subject matter in his The Logical Syntax of Language (1934/1937). This talk will outline their views and discuss their merits and drawbacks. It will explain that Ryle’s was quite informal, but showed that the occurrence of a designating word is neither necessary nor sufficient for a text to be about the designatum. Carnap overlooked this, but stressed that a text must reflect or add to our knowledge of the designatum. Goodman took both these aspects on board and developed an account with three different “degrees” of aboutness in two ontologically different versions. The aim of this talk is to allow for a better appraisal of Goodman’s proposals which are particularly enlightening at a time when aboutness has once again become a hot topic.


Gary Ostertag (Graduate Center, CUNY and Nassau Community College)

E. E. Constance Jones on Predication

Abstract:

E. E. Constance Jones’s distinction between attribution and denomination in her Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions (1890) is often cited as anticipating Frege’s distinction between sense and reference. But the significance of Jones’s contribution is slighted if we merely right the historical wrong and move on. Fully appreciating Jones’s innovation requires understanding its role in her theory of predication. Jones inherited from Lotze the idea that predications take the form of identity statements. To say that lions are carnivores is to say that the set of lions is identical to (a subset of) the carnivores. But as even Lotze seems to have realized, this reduces predications to triviality. Jones’s law of significant assertion -“Any subject of predication is an identity of denotation in diversity of intension” – resolves the problem of triviality, grounding the truth of the assertion but also accounting for its informativeness. My discussion will provide the background to Jones’s distinction as well as a brief survey of its reception among her contemporaries.


Julien Ouellette-Michaud (McGill University)

Notational Bearings on Conceptions of Assumptions

Abstract:

Gentzen introduced systems of natural deduction and sequent calculi to overcome defects of axiomatic systems. But how can systems of natural deduction and sequent calculi, which are in a sense equivalent to axiomatic systems—they prove the same theorems— nevertheless depart from them in non trivial ways? In this paper, I argue that despite their shared equivalence with axiomatic systems which discard assumptions, the systems introduced by Gentzen give us two different conceptions of assumptions in formal systems. These two conceptions, I argue, correspond with specific features of the notations, which can be traced back directly to Gentzen’s writings.


Flavia Padovani (Drexel University)

Scientific Philosophy in Exile: Reichenbach and Rougier.

Abstract:

In this paper, I will use material from the correspondence between Reichenbach and the only French logical empiricist, Louis Rougier, to describe their struggles to promote scientific philosophy in the period between the two wars. Both Rougier and Reichenbach experienced the painful condition of living in countries they did not consider ready for that new philosophy, and each would often confide his frustration to the other. In the case of Reichenbach, however, this correspondence also reveals a number of interesting elements especially related to the impact that a situation of enforced exile had on his philosophical work, and thus on his shift from (Germany and) foundationalism, to (the US and) pragmatism, via Istanbul.


Gareth Pearce (University of Vienna)

Why Formalism died too early and why Lewis should have brought it back

Abstract:

An orthodox narrative of the history of Philosophy of Mathematics tells us that for a brief window between the discovery of Russell’s Paradox, that put Classical Logicism out of favour, and widespread understanding of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems (IC), Mathematical Formalism was a dominant position amongst both Mathematicians and Philosophers of Mathematics. Yet following IC and some philosophical work by Godel, this view fell out of fashion. But this is both a historically and rationally problematic narrative. Godel’s IC was discovered in 1931, but formalism was still popular even through the 40s. Moreover, IC only creates a problem for Hilbert’s program, not formalism in general. Nevertheless, there were good alternative reasons relating to the modal nature of consequence for the early formalists, especially the Vienna Circle, to abandon formalism. David Lewis, on the other hand, could have been a formalist. In this talk I also argue that he should have been. Thus this talk defends two claims: that formalism died too early and that Lewis should have brought it back.


James Pearson (Bridgewater State University)

Writing Conversationalists into Philosophical History: The Case of Burton Dreben

Abstract:

Some philosophers granted tenured at major departments in the twentieth century published very little. Their influence will be lost if our histones rely solely upon publication records, yet how can we access and engage their ideas? In this paper, I focus upon Burton Dreben, who taught a generation of scholars in the Boston area the value of closely attending to the recent philosophical past. But the few papers he authored fail to capture his philosophical voice. Instead of looking to these, I discuss an unpublished transcript of Dreben in conversation.

In 1986, Dagfinn F0llesdal, W.V. Quine, Donald Davidson and Dreben held a closed conference at Stanford. Quine added marginal comments and line-edits to a hard copy of a transcription of the conference that F0llesdal sent him, part of which survives in the Quine Archive. In addition to yielding insights into a transitional period in Quine’s and Davidson’s thought, this document reveals Dreben peppering all three of his interlocutors with sharp and thoughtful critiques.

The ultimate aim of my presentation will be to showcase Dreben in his element. More broadly, I argue that attending to conversationalists is a way for historians to capture the collaborative nature of philosophy.


Inger Bakken Pedersen (University of Vienna)

Coherentist Structuralism: A Metaontological Inquiry

Abstract:

In this paper I argue that there are two kinds of answers to the access problem, which correspond to two approaches. Depending on the kind of answer one favours, the two approaches deal with the access problem in a very different manner. This methodological difference leads to certain constraints for what counts as an acceptable epistemological story of mathematical knowledge. My aim is twofold: 1) to argue that there are two distinct approaches in dealing with the access problem, and 2) to show that one of them is superior to the other and therefore should be pursued.


Eugenio Petrovich (University of Siena)

Uncovering the Social Network of Recent Analytic Philosophy by the Analysis of Acknowledgments in Academic Publications

Abstract:

It has become a common practice among analytic philosophers to write extended acknowledgments in their academic publications. These texts are a rich source of information about the social context of analytic philosophy since they mention seminars, institutions, funders, and, most interestingly, the persons who contributed to the publications. I will present a large-scale analysis of the acknowledgments contained in 2073 articles published between 2005 and 2019 in five prestigious analytic philosophy journals. The main results consist of a ranking of the most mentioned persons and a map of the social network of contemporary analytic philosophy based on the mentioned persons.


Pawel Polak (Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow)

The Specificity of the Lvov-Warsaw School Philosophy of Science: A Case of Reception of Special and General Relativity

Abstract:

The Lvov-Warsaw school (LWS) of philosophy founded by Kazimierz Twardowski was active before the Second World War. Lesser known its aspect is philosophy of science created within the paradigm of analytic philosophy. The presentation focuses on accounts by Zawirski, Ajdukiewicz, Manthey and few other researchers in the context of Einstein’s theory of Special Relativity (1905), and General Relativity (1915) reception. The study shows the convergence of the style of Lviv’s philosophy of science with the style of philosophy practiced in Krakow. This inspires questions about the relatively low interest in philosophical reflection on groundbreaking scientific theories in Twardowski’s school.


John Preston (The University of Reading)

Paul Feyerabend’s Ernst Mach

Abstract:

Of all the influences on the work of Paul Feyerabend, Ernst Mach’s was probably the most long-standing, and undoubtedly among the most important. In his autobiography, Killing Time, Feyerabend recounted something of his acquaintance with Mach’s works. I begin by showing that that account is only part of the story, and by no means the whole. I do so by tracing certain ways in which Mach is discussed in Feyerabend’s works, from the mid-1950s right up until the mid-1990s. I first show that Feyerabend’s earliest mentions of Mach (in the 1950s and early 1960s) are heavily under the influence of Karl Popper, especially his then very recently-published ‘Note on Berkeley as a Precursor of Mach and Einstein’ (1953). Early Feyerabend characterises Mach in traditional terms as a positivist whose philosophy is flawed in comparison with critical rationalism. Next, in the papers Feyerabend published during the early and mid-1960’s, Mach appears in two main guises: not only as an antirealist, but also as an anti-pluralist. This new accusation corresponds to a new focus in Feyerabend’s philosophy. Mach appears in Feyerabend’s best-known long papers from the early to mid-1960s as a prime example of those who accept what Feyerabend identifies as the perniciously conservative (anti-pluralistic) assumptions of contemporary empiricism. I show that while there are some flashes of insight (about Mach) in some of these papers, by and large Feyerabend sticks to the traditional way of reading Mach as a positivist, more specifically as an anti-pluralist villain, aligned with the logical empiricists.

Feyerabend did, however, come to change his mind about Mach (to a perspective that corresponds with the account in his autobiography, mentioned above). In fact he eventually came to be at the forefront of those who initiated a re-evaluation of Mach in the late 20thcentury, thereby beginning to move opinion away from the ‘received view’ of Mach as a relatively simple pre-logical positivist. In this he did us a significant service.

Feyerabend’s published struggle on Mach’s behalf began in earnest with his 1970 paper ‘Philosophy of Science: A Subject with a Great Past’. From this point onwards, I suggest, Feyerabend’s attitude to Mach was relatively constant. In this presentation, I look mainly at his important 1984 paper ‘Mach’s Theory of Research and its Relation to Einstein’, as well as certain remarks from his later papers. While endorsing several of the ways in which Feyerabend came to characterise Mach’s thought, I take issue with some other central themes emerging from these publications. I suggest that we should not follow Feyerabend’s mature reading of Mach in its entirety, since he really had turned away from certain sensible aspects of Mach’s ideas. Finally (if I have time), I reveal why Feyerabend changed his mind about Mach, that is, as a result of an encounter with a physicist and philosopher who seems to have initiated a ‘turn’ in Feyerabend’s whole philosophy.


Consuelo Preti (The College of New Jersey)

The Extrusion of Thought from the Mind: Brentano and Moore on the Nature of Judgment

Abstract:

Dummett (1993) argued that the attribution of the origins of analytic philosophy was wrongly attributed to the work of Moore and Russell at Cambridge at the turn of the 20th century. On his view, their ‘milieu’ at Cambridge did not include familiarity with the work of the Austrian and German philosophers, psychologists, and logicians who were the true originators of key defining conception of analytic philosophy—in particular, what Dummett called “the extrusion of thought from the mind.” In this paper I will make two main objections to Dummett’s account. The first is that the ‘milieu’ at Cambridge was deeply familiar with the work of Austrian and German philosophers: in particular, with the work of Brentano. The second is that it is not clear that Brentano’s conception of “intentional inexistence” extruded thought from the mind with sufficient force to have been the direct source of the key move in Moore’s revolutionary theory of judgment (1898/1899), as Bell (1999) and Milkov (2001/2008), along with Dummett, have also claimed. Russell himself gave all the credit to Moore’s new view for helping to re-orient his own thoughts on the foundations of mathematics and for changing the practice of philosophy henceforth, so it is of some importance to the history of early analytic philosophy to fully explore the influences on Moore’s groundbreaking formulation of the nature of judgment.


Jonas Raab (University of Manchester)

Quine on Explication

Abstract:

In this paper, I consider Quine’s account of explication. Quine does not provide a general account, but considers an example he claims to be paradigmatic. However, Quine also lists examples which do not fit his paradigmatic account. Besides working out Quine’s particular account and showing how it is intertwined with his notions of ontological commitment and paraphrase, I want to consider how his conception of explication relates to Carnap’s. I argue that Quinean explication is much narrower than Carnap’s conception in his ‘Meaning and Necessity’. Moreover, I argue that Quinean explication serves a different purpose than Carnapian explication, viz., it is a tool for theory choice.


Erich Reck (University of California, Riverside)

On Frege’s and Dedekind’s Definitions of Number

Abstract:

A core part of Frege’s logicism is his definition of the natural numbers. But what kind of definition is it supposed to be? In “Logic in Mathematics” (1913), Frege himself distinguishes generally between “stipulative” and “analytic” definitions; one can also ask whether it is meant as an “explication” in Carnap’s sense. In the secondary literature, this issue is sometimes discussed in terms of whether Frege’s approach is meant to preserve either the “sense” or the “reference” of relevant terms; but the textual evidence in that connection is inconclusive. Instead, one can ask what other kinds of considerations, if any, constrain his definition. With the latter question in mind, I will put Frege in the context of 19th- and early 20th-century mathematics, and in particular, compare his approach to several related ones. This will range from the traditional conception of natural numbers as “multitudes of units”, still prominent in Mill’s and Cantor’s works in the 19th century, to their set-theoretic reconstruction as finite von Neumann ordinals in the 20th century. But Dedekind’s structuralist conception of number, arguably the most important alternative at the time, will serve as my main contrast.


Tabea Rohr (IHPST Paris)

Frege on Geometry

Abstract:

Frege’s Philosophy of Mathematics is set into the context of 19th century geometry. The relationship between and particularly the difference between Geometry and Arithmetic was a hot topic during this time.

Paragraph 13 of the Foundations of Arithmetic is set interpreted in this backound: New ways of coordinizations shet light on the fact that point can only be disitinguished from other points when they are set in spatial relation to other points. Freges argues that Arithmetic differs from Geometry because the same does not hold for numbers. Thus arithmetic must rest on a different source of knowledge then geometery.


Joan Bertran-San Millán (Centre for Philosophy of Science of the University of Lisbon)

Russell and Peano on the Independence of the Axioms of Arithmetic

Abstract:

It is often claimed that the Frege-Russell conception of logic rejects metatheoretical investigations. Although Peano is linked to this conception of logic, he considered on several occasions the independence of the axioms of geometry and arithmetic. I shall argue that the general claim that Russell rejected tout court independence proofs should be revised. First, I shall explain Russell’s interpretation in The Principles of Mathematics of Peano’s axiomatisation of arithmetic and conclude that the Russell’s structuralist understanding failed to completely grasp Peano’s view on the construction of arithmetic. Then, I shall argue that Russell’s opposition to independence arguments should not be understood in general, but in the context of the axioms which express principles of deduction.


Michael Schmitz (University of Vienna)

Wittgenstein contra Frege on Force

Abstract:

I argue that both in the Tractatus and in the Investigations Wittgenstein makes several compelling criticisms of Frege’s use of an assertion sign and of the force-content distinction that support more recent criticisms such as those made by Peter Hanks: Frege’s assertion sign is meant to mark the complex proposition as a whole, but this is redundant, because it is already represented by a full-stop (Investigations, §22) or a truth-table (Tractatus 4.442). We have to be careful what contrast the assertion sign is supposed to indicate, and a that-clause is essentially incomplete and cannot be a truth-value bearer (§23).


Sanford Shieh (Wesleyan University)

Notes on Logical Alien Science or Deolaus ab paene omni naevo vindicatus

Abstract:

In this talk I discuss early Wittgenstein’s opposition to Frege. First, I examine an argument published by Jim Conant (now in part disavowed by Jim) that Frege’s treatment of what Tom Ricketts calls “logical aliens” reveals a tension in Frege’s conception of logic that leads to a strain of “resolutely” reading the Tractatus. I show that a key inference in the argument is fallacious, and so it fails to reveal any tension in Frege. Second, I contextualize Robert May’s view of the logical role of truth for Frege as the third in three grades of referential involvement. I suggest that Frege has the option of stopping at the second grade and avoiding the quasi-paradox of truth Robert discusses. Finally, I suggest a tension in Frege that does point in the direction of the Tractatus: between Frege’s conception of the “opposite” thought to a given thought and his doctrine of negation signs as names of functions.


Sanford Shieh (Wesleyan University)

Possibility and the Undepictability of Form in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

Abstract:

Perhaps the first version of the notorious contrast between showing and saying in the Tractatus is 2.172: “A picture cannot depict its form of depiction, however; it shows it forth [es weist sie auf].” In this talk I indicate a difficulty with an explanation of the undepictability of form, part of an illuminating interpretation of Tractarian picturing by Peter Sullivan. I propose a more satisfying explanation, based on taking as fundamental Wittgenstein’s characterization of form as possibility of structure (2.033, 2.15).


Andrew Smith (Indiana University, Bloomington)

Quine’s Unpublished 1985 Typescript “Convention and Its Place in Truth’’

Abstract:

The topic of my paper is an unpublished typescript in the Quine Archive at Harvard called “Convention and Its Place in Truth,” dated 1985. In it, Quine generalizes from David Lewis’ explication of convention, arguing that some option (action, acceptance of a theory, etc.) is conventional when it is equally good as some other options that are all better than all other options. Since Quine argues that some theories are equally good to accept as our true ones, he infers some of our theories are conventional. The result, I argue, is a Quinean conception of conventional truth worth investigating.


Marta Sznajder (University of Groningen)

Janina Hosiasson: between subjective and objective Probability.

Abstract:

Janina Hosiasson was a Polish philosopher in early 20th century. Most of her philosophical work concerned the logical aspects of inductive reasoning. In this paper, based on Hosiasson’s full surviving body of work, I reconstruct her own position on the nature of probability. Hosiasson’s approach turns out to be a very rich one: she focuses on the logic of inductive reasoning, while at the same time paying tribute to the more subjectivist interpretations and even keeping an eye on purely psychological aspects of inductive reasoning. She appears to cut across the traditional objective-subjective-frequentist divide in the philosophy of probability.


Shunichi Takagi (University College London)

The Genealogy of the Tractarian ‘Ontology’

Abstract:

Based on the recent developments of the philological studies of the pre-Tractatus manuscripts, I shall demonstrate the ‘ontology’ of the Tractatus was born during the period between the end of June 1915 and mid-March 1916, and that it emerged through Wittgenstein’s critical examination of Russell’s scientific method and simultaneous appropriation of Frege’s logical doctrines (the context principle and the principles of definition) as well as the transcendental standpoint of Hertz and Kant.


Claudio Ternullo (University of Barcelona) and Luca Zanetti (IUSS Pavia)

Cantor’s Abstractionism and Hume’s Principle

Abstract:

Richard Kimberly Heck and Paolo Mancosu have claimed that the possibility of non-Cantorian assignments of cardinalities to infinite concepts implies that Hume’s Principle (HP) is not implicit in the concept of cardinal number. Neologicism — the project of providing a foundation for arithmetic on the basis of HP conceived as an implicit definition — would therefore be threatened by the ‘good company’ HP is kept by such alternative assignments. In his review of Mancosu’s book, Bob Hale argues however that ‘getting different numerosities for different countable infinite collections depends on taking the groups in a certain order — but it is of the essence of cardinal numbers that the cardinal size of a collection does not depend upon how its members are ordered’. Our goal is to implement Hale’s response to the Good Company problem by producing a Cantorian argument for HP. In particular, after discussing Cantor’s abstractionist definitions of number, we argue that good abstraction must comply with what we call Gödel’s Minimal Account of Abstraction (GMAA), and show that non-Cantorian theories of cardinality fail to satisfy GMAA.


Mark Textor (King’s College London)

Stout’s take on the Tripartite Distinction

Abstract:

The terms “Akt”, “Inhalt”, and “Gegenstand” are the keywords of a certain theory of knowledge which constitutes, in my opinion, the most important recent development of philosophical thought in Germany. (Stout: Some Fundamental Points in the Theory of Knowledge)

Austro-German Philosophers use the distinction between act, content and object to systematize mental phenomena. Moore and Russell argued that content is superfluous and act and object suffice to say everything about mental phenomena one wants to say. In contrast Stout defended the full tripartite distinction. He brought something new to the table: the distinctions under consideration are not, as most Austrians and Moore argued, manifest in consciousness, but need to be worked out by arguments. After some scene-setting I will present Stout’s arguments for the tripartite distinction and consider Russell’s response.


Adam Tamas Tuboly (Institute of Philosophy, Hungarian Academy of Sciences / Institute for Transdisciplinary Discoveries, Medical School, University of Pecs)

Otto Neurath on Plato-Hitler and the British Scene of Irritation

Abstract:

This talk presents Otto Neurath’s crusade, or campaign about the relation between Plato, the general Platonic attitude and Fascism/Nazism. I will reconstruct his papers on German (re)education and Plato with the replies that were published in The Journal of Education. Some lessons and main points will be presented that could be abstracted from the debate. As I will demonstrate, all the replies to Neurath exemplified the very same Platonic attitude they criticized and thus it made the whole debate (and the call for a more reflexive critical and rational discourse on the topic) impossible.”


Aviezer Tucker (Harvard University)

The Pre-history of Analytical Philosophy of History

Abstract:

The presentation attempts to understand the classical philosophies of history of Popper and Hempel as reaction to Neo-Kantianism and the Austrian School of Mises and Hayek. The Neo-Kantian and the Austrians reacted against Psychologism.


Sara L. Uckelmann (Durham University)

Building a History of Women in Logic.

Abstract:

Before one can write (or rewrite) the history of a subfield of philosophy, one must first identify what the bounds of that subfield are. When that subfield is logic, there is another question beyond “what is logic?” and that is “who counts as/is a logician?” Traditional histones of logic have tended to adopt narrow answers for both of these questions, focusing on the developments of formal/symbolic logic, and looking primarily at the people who drove those developments through the writing of theoretical textbooks and research papers. Such a history of logic entirely omits two very significant parts: All of the non-formal/non-formalizable aspects of logic, and those who learned or were taught logic, and may have applied what they learned in other contexts, but were not necessarily teaching logic themselves, or doing theoretical research.

In this talk, we discuss the methodological consequences of adopting wider answers to both of these questions — how if we treat logic not as what modern-day logicians would recognize as logic, but instead as anything that would have been identified as logic by historic contemporaries, and if we look beyond those who taught/did research in logic to those who may have merely learned it or applied it, we are forced to rewrite our understanding of the history of logic, through the participation of and contributions by women. We will look at different historical eras to illustrate this, but would like to here highlight one in particular: When one reaches the late 19th/early 20th century, it is clear that these women were not excluded from the “canon” of (what was then) contemporary logic: There is ample evidence that these women were read and responded to and that their work was integrated into the wider field. It is only _afterwards_ that their names dropped out of history.

By (re)writing the history of women in logic, not only can we bring to light the forgotten women and their contributions, we can also start to understand how their exclusion from the canon came about.


Sander Verhaegh (Tilburg University)

Carnap and Quine: First Encounters

Abstract:

Carnap and Quine first met in the 1932-33 academic year, when the latter, fresh out of graduate school, visited the key centers of mathematical logic in Central Europe. The philosophical friendship that emerged during these meetings had an impact on the course of analytic philosophy that can hardly be overestimated. Still, little is known about Carnap’s and Quine’s first encounters, except for the fact that they discussed the former’s Logische Syntax der Sprache.

In this paper, I shed new light on Carnap’s and Quine’s first encounters by examining a set of previously unexplored material from their personal and academic archives. Why did Quine decide to visit Carnap? What did they discuss? And in what ways did the meetings affect their philosophical development? In this paper, I address these questions by examining a range letters and notes, arguing that (1) the meetings convinced Quine to fully accept the metaphilosophical implications of Carnap’s syntax program, (2) that Quine’s interpretation of Carnap’s project was significantly influenced by his philosophical background, and (3) that the encounters played an important role in Carnap’s decision to emigrate to the United States.


Andreas Vrahimis (University of Cyprus)

Stebbing’s critique of Bergson

Abstract:

During the 1910s and 1920s, Henri Bergson was a kind of international celebrity. Prominent analytic philosophers, including Russell and the Vienna Circle, reacted critically to the Bergsonist fad. This presentation will examine L. Susan Stebbing’s overlooked early response to Bergson’s work. Stebbing’s critique of Bergson predates both Russell’s and Schlick’s well-known polemics. It was first undertaken in her M.A. thesis written in 1911-1912. When it was later published as a book in 1914, Stebbing stated that her intention was to correct the excesses of previous criticisms, highlighting instead those aspects of Bergson’s work whose importance survives such objections.1 Stebbing’s is perhaps the most extended treatment of Bergson’s thought produced by any philosopher associated with the analytic tradition (though, notably, according to Stebbing’s account she only converted to analytic philosophy after she met Moore in 1917).2 Having overcome various common misconceptions of Bergson, Stebbing proceeds to develop some potent objections to his views.

In criticising Bergson, Stebbing clarifies that she stands in defence of what Bergsonians would call ‘intellectualism’. Her approach to Bergson’s thought involves an elaborate argument against its confused identification with currents within pragmatism. Instead, Stebbing situates Bergson within what she understands to be the French Voluntarist tradition. Stebbing diagnoses a divergence between Bergson’s and the Pragmatists’ accounts of truth. Her subsequent criticisms rely on her understanding of Bergson as offering an account of the nature of truth, but no criterion for truth. Without a criterion for truth, Bergson’s methodological reliance on intuition as an immediate source of knowledge inevitably leads to radical scepticism. Stebbing further argues against the possibility of immediate knowledge (on which Bergson’s method of intuition appeals) by appealing to Lotze’s view that knowledge necessarily involves two-term relations. Stebbing’s argument for this predates those first directed by Schlick against Bergson in 1913. In answering potential defences of Bergson, Stebbing adds a second type of objection to the Lotzean claim: if, as Bergson proposes, language is a practical tool, it is incapable of communicating intuition. Intuition therefore cannot result in knowledge, but at best gives us a fleeting ‘vision’ whereof we cannot speak.

1

Susan L. Stebbing (1914), Pragmatism and French Voluntarism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. v.

2

See Siobhan Chapman (2013), Susan Stebbing and the Language of Common Sense, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 33-34; Michael Beaney (2016), Susan Stebbing and the Early Reception of Logical Positivism in Britain, in C. Dambdck (ed.), Influences on the Aufbau, Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 238-239.


Henri Wagner (Université Bordeaux Montaigne – SPH)

An Externalist Strand in C. I. Lewis’s Mind and the World Order

Abstract:

Clarence Irving Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, as exposed and defended in Mind and the World-Order (1929), has often been interpreted as a pragmatic version of the traditional internalist theory of meaning and hence as an outdated philosophical framework. Relying both on a Putnamian understanding of semantic externalism and on a close reading of neglected passages from Lewis’s masterpiece, I would like to show that Lewis adumbrates what I takes to be the basic tenet of semantic externalism : that worldly thought is “worldinvolving”.


Russell Wahl (Idaho State University)

Russell and Kant: the Question of Intuition, revisited, or Did Russell misunderstand Kant?

Abstract:

Russell has often been criticized for his writings on Kant. Jaako Hintikka criticized Russell as misunderstanding Kant on the role of intuition in Kant’s geometry. Michael Friedman has defended Russell’s conclusion concerning Kant’s view of geometrical reasoning, but did not discuss Russell’s own arguments. In this paper I examine Russell’s early work on geometry and specifically his remarks on Kant. I also look at Rusell’s arguments in the Principles of Mathematics. I argue that while Russell did not have Friedman’s understanding of Kant, he did not rely on the view of intuition attributed to him by Hintikka. Russell displayed a greater understanding of Kant than is often realized.


Martijn Wallage (Leipzig University)

Is a Person an Object of Reference?

Abstract:

In both early and contemporary analytic philosophy, it is generally accepted that although a person is not an object in a narrow sense, a person is nevertheless an object of reference. I argue that persons are not objects even in the maximally general, logical sense; instead, I identify a distinctly human form of the third person of which human names are the paradigm. Whereas the relation between a referring term and a thing can be traced back to pointing at the thing, the relation between a name and a person is founded in the moment of introduction and address, and thereby in the face-to-face relation of conversation. This line of thought develops in a new direction the arguments of Wittgenstein and Anscombe that the first person does not refer, while avoiding a solipsism that places the subject outside of the world. On my interpretation, their insight applies equally to the second person and reveals a fundamental distinction between two forms of the third person: a form for speaking of something and a form for speaking of someone.