Conventionalism and the Impoverishment of the Space of Reasons: Carnap, Quine and Sellars

Westphal, Kenneth R.

doi:10.15173/jhap.v3i8.42

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…The history of the development of this idea during the middle of the last century is not well understood, but Sellars' reading of Carnap, and more generally the readings of the American philosophers at Iowa in the 1940's, look problematic when considered alongside certain plausible reconstructions of Carnap's project (cf. Carus, 2003 andOlen, 2017;Westphal, 2015 offers a contrastive reading of the Carnapian strands in Quine and Sellars, and a criticism of Quine's extensionalist ambitions). At the same time it is clear that the definitive statement of this period of 20th century philosophy has yet to be written.…”

Section: Some Remarks On Logic and The History Of Philosophymentioning

confidence: 99%

Syllogistic reasoning as a ground for the content of judgment: A line of thought from Kant through Hegel to Peirce

Stovall

2020

European J of Philosophy

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In this paper I develop Paul Redding's suggestion that Peircean abduction and Hegel's discussion of the syllogism can be seen as a working out of Kant's treatment of the reflecting power of judgment, particularly concerning its role in conceptual change. After some historical background I regiment a use of singular terms, kind terms, and predicates across Hegel's three syllogistic figures and reconstruct an account of comprehension and extension for this system suggested by Peirce. In doing so I show that reasoning according to the ampliative syllogistic figures affects the content of these three classes of terms in precise ways. I close with a treatment of inference by analogy (associated by Hegel with the third syllogistic figure) as an exercise of reflection, and I discuss two cases in the history of science, one in astronomy and the other in biology, where a reflective exercise associated with analogical inference revised our understanding of the domain in question. | INTRODUCTIONIn a paper published in this journal, Paul Redding (2003) suggests that Kant's notion of the reflecting power of judgment, as a capacity for concept formation, lies at the back of Hegel's third figure syllogism, corresponding to hypothetical inference in Peirce's exposition of the syllogistic figures and later traded by Peirce for talk of abduction. 1 In this paper I develop the thought that Peircean abduction and Hegel's discussion of the third syllogistic figure can be seen as a working out of Kant's treatment of the reflecting power of judgment, and in particular a working out of Kant's view that reflection, as an exercise of our rational capacities in operation during inquiry, affects the contents of our concepts. In doing so I lay some groundwork for considering contemporary work in semantics and philosophical logic alongside a tradition that is not well-represented in current debates.

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Section: Some Remarks On Logic and The History Of Philosophymentioning

confidence: 99%

Syllogistic reasoning as a ground for the content of judgment: A line of thought from Kant through Hegel to Peirce

Stovall

2020

European J of Philosophy

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“…topics that are somehow related to them but are irrelevant for our purposes, such as those of the synthetic a priori, the ontology of abstract entities and our talk about them, and the myth of the given. The connection between Sellars's view of analyticity and his views on these topics has already been explored in Brandt (2017), Rosenberg (2007, ch. 2), and Westphal (2015). These studies make clear the broader implications Sellars's account of analyticity and his response to Quine might have, but they do not examine them in detail on their own nor his dynamic picture of language behind them.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sellars, Analyticity, and a Dynamic Picture of Language

Matsui

2024

HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History

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Even after Quine's critique of the analytic-synthetic distinction in "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," Wilfrid Sellars maintained some forms of analyticity or truth in virtue of meaning. This paper aims to reconstruct his neglected account of the analytic-synthetic distinction and the revisability of analytic sentences, its connection to his inferentialist account of meaning, and his response to Quine. While Sellars's account of how analytic sentences can be revised bears certain similarities with Carnap's and Grice and Strawson's accounts, it is still striking in that it is part of his broader picture of how our language develops dynamically in our ongoing inquiry. I aim to show how it relates within his broader picture to his account of how the diachronic continuity in meaning, language, or conceptual framework can be preserved through a revision of analytic sentences, and to his evolutionary account of the development of our language or conceptual framework.

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“…Although the present analysis contradicts several centuries of empiricism, I respectfully submit that Kant understood the implications of Hume's Treatise better than Hume's empiricist successors. For example, at its core, Quine's semantics is incoherent, for reasons revealed by his superficial mis‐reading of Hume, ‘Of Scepticism with regard to the senses’ ( Treatise 1.4.2); see Westphal (, ). Kant's epistemology itself, of course, is not an object of empirical knowledge.…”

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confidence: 99%

How Kant Justifies Freedom of Agency (without Transcendental Idealism)

Westphal

2017

European J of Philosophy

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This paper argues that the problem of the apparent conflict between freedom of action and natural causal determinism has not been properly framed, because the key premiss—the thesis of universal causal determinism—is, in the domain of human behaviour, an unjustified conjecture based on over‐simplified, under‐informed explanatory models. Kant's semantics of singular cognitive reference (explained herein), which stands independently of his Transcendental Idealism, justifies and emphasises a quadruple distinction between causal description, causal ascription (predication), (approximately) true causal ascription (accurate predication) and cognitively justified causal ascription. Contemporary causal theories of mind, of action or of meaning do not suffice for causal ascription, and so cannot suffice for causal predication, and hence cannot justify causal determinism about human behaviour. More generally, the principle of universal causal determinism is a regulative principle governing causal inquiry and was so formulated by LaPlace. Only successful, sufficient causal explanation of particular events provides for causal knowledge of those events. Such knowledge we lack in the domain of human behaviour. Rational belief, including scientific belief, requires apportioning belief to justifying evidence; all else is conjecture or speculation, which do not justify premises of sound proofs. Causal determinism about human behaviour remains unjustified speculation, for sound Critical reasons Kant provided us in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft. In these regards, contemporary debates about these issues remain decidedly pre‐Critical.

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Conventionalism and the Impoverishment of the Space of Reasons: Carnap, Quine and Sellars

Cited by 6 publications

References 79 publications

Syllogistic reasoning as a ground for the content of judgment: A line of thought from Kant through Hegel to Peirce

Syllogistic reasoning as a ground for the content of judgment: A line of thought from Kant through Hegel to Peirce

Sellars, Analyticity, and a Dynamic Picture of Language

How Kant Justifies Freedom of Agency (without Transcendental Idealism)

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