Philosophical and Conceptual Analysis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Physical State ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Paradox Of Analysis ◽  
Relevant Notion

This article examines the main lines of contemporary thinking about analysis in philosophy. It first considers G. E. Moore’s statement of the paradox of analysis. It then reviews a number of accounts of analysis that address the paradox of analysis, including the account offered by Ernest Sosa 1983 and others by Felicia Ackerman (1981, 1986, 1991); the latter gives an account of analysis on which properties are the objects of analysis. It also discusses Jeffrey C. King’s (1998, 2007) accounts of philosophical analysis, before turning to views of analysis that are not aimed at addressing the paradox of analysis, including those associated with David Lewis, Frank Jackson, and David Chalmers. In particular, it comments on Lewis’s argument that conceptual analysis is simply a means for picking out the physical state that occupies a certain role, where formulating what that role is constitutes a conceptual analysis of the relevant notion.

A POSITIVIST ROUTE FOR EXPLAINING HOW FACTS MAKE LAW

Legal Theory ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Rational Relation ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Two Stages

In “How Facts Make Law” and other recent work, Mark Greenberg argues that legal positivists cannot develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets what he calls the “the rational-relation requirement.” He argues that this gives us reason to reject positivism in favor of antipositivism. In this paper, I argue that Greenberg is wrong: positivists can in fact develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets the rational-relation requirement. I make this argument in two stages. First, I offer an account of the rational-relation requirement. Second, I put forward a viable positivist account of law that I argue meets this requirement. The account that I propose is a version of Scott Shapiro's Planning Theory of Law. The version of Shapiro's account that I propose combines (1) the account of concepts and conceptual analysis put forward by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson with (2) the account of the conceptlegal institution(and its conceptual connections to the conceptlegal norm) that we get from a certain reading of Shapiro's Planning Theory. In addition to providing a compelling response to Greenberg's argument in “How Facts Make Law,” I argue that the explanation for why my response to Greenberg works underscores one of the central problems facing legal antipositivism: namely, its lack of a convincing account of the nature of legal institutions.

Dreams of a Final Theory T

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-157
Author(s):  
Mark Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
Final Theory ◽  
Conceptual Innovation ◽  
Axiomatizable Theory ◽  
Analytic Metaphysics

The grander metaphysical schemes popular in Hertz’s era often suppressed conceptual innovation in manifestly unhelpful ways. In counterreaction, Hertz and his colleagues stressed the raw pragmatic advantages of “good theory” considered as a functional whole and rejected the armchair meditations upon individual words characteristic of the metaphysical imperatives they spurned. Rudolf Carnap’s later rejection of all forms of “metaphysics” attempts to broaden these methodological tenets to a wider canvas. In doing so, the notion of an integrated, axiomatizable “theory” became the shaping tenet within our most conception of how the enterprise of “rigorous conceptual analysis” should be prosecuted. Although Carnap hoped to suppress all forms of metaphysics, large and small, through these means, in more recent times, closely allied veins of “theory T thinking” have instead encouraged a revival of grand metaphysical speculation that embodies many of the suppressive doctrines that Hertz’s generation rightly resisted (I have in mind the school of “analytic metaphysics” founded by David Lewis). The proper corrective to these inflated ambitions lies in directly examining the proper sources of descriptive effectiveness in the liberal manner of a multiscalar architecture.

Does Anything Break Because it is Fragile?

1998 ◽  
pp. 95-99
Author(s):  
Paul Raymont
Keyword(s):  
David Lewis ◽  
Alternative Conception ◽  
Causal Role ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Causal Relevance ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
Negative Argument

I maintain that dispositions are not causally relevant to their manifestations. The paper begins with a negative argument, which is intended to undermine David Lewis’ recent attempt to restore causal potency to dispositions by identifying their instantiations with the instantiations of their causal bases. I conclude that Lewis’ attempt to vindicate the causal credentials of dispositions meets obstacles that are analogous to (though importantly different from) those that beset Donald Davidson’s attempt to accord a causal role to the mental. I then consider an argument recently given by Frank Jackson against the causal relevance of dispositions (to their manifestations). Jackson’s argument relies on a conception of dispositions that is not likely to be shared by those who defend their causal relevance. I sketch an alternative conception of dispositions that links them more closely to their causal bases, but argue that even on this model dispositions are causally impotent. The paper closes with a defense of the claim that dispositions, in spite of their causal irrelevance to their manifestations, are nevertheless causal-explanatorily relevant to them.

scholarly journals Cultural Ideas of Ivan Ogienko (Metropolitan Ilarion)

2000 ◽  
pp. 67-76
Author(s):  
K. Nedzelsky
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
World Culture ◽  
Theoretical Developments

It is known that Ivan Ogienko in his numerous scientific and theological works paid much attention to the problems of cultural development, to clarify its significance in the life of society. However, he did not leave the deep theoretical developments devoted to culturological issues. This does not mean at all that he was not interested in the theory of culture as a branch of knowledge, engaged in the scientific and philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of culture. However, there is no reason to say that he tried to reach the level of comprehension of universal laws of development of world culture, as was done by his contemporaries and predecessors - M. Ya. Danilevsky, K. Leontiev, M. Berdyayev, A. Spengler, A. Toynbee and others. There is also no reason to prove that I.Ogienko directly addressed the works of these and other prominent philosophers, historians and sociologists of culture, although it is likely that his acquaintance with their ideas is indirect. But despite this, it seems advisable to translate I. Ogienko's argument about culture into a cultural-conceptual analysis plane

Conceptual analysis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Other ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Paradox Of Analysis ◽  
The One ◽  
Definition Of

A distinction must be made between the philosophical theory of conceptual analysis and the historical philosophical movement of Conceptual Analysis. The theory of conceptual analysis holds that concepts – general meanings of linguistic predicates – are the fundamental objects of philosophical inquiry, and that insights into conceptual contents are expressed in necessary ’conceptual truths’ (analytic propositions). There are two methods for obtaining these truths: - direct a priori definition of concepts; - indirect ’transcendental’ argumentation. The movement of Conceptual Analysis arose at Cambridge during the first half of the twentieth century, and flourished at Oxford and many American departments of philosophy in the 1950s and early 1960s. In the USA its doctrines came under heavy criticism, and its proponents were not able to respond effectively; by the end of the 1970s the movement was widely regarded as defunct. This reversal of fortunes can be traced primarily to the conjunction of several powerful objections: the attack on intensions and on the analytic/synthetic distinction; the paradox of analysis; the ‘scientific essentialist’ theory of propositions; and the critique of transcendental arguments. Nevertheless a closer examination indicates that each of these objections presupposes a covert appeal to concepts and conceptual truths. In the light of this dissonance between the conventional wisdom of the critics on the one hand, and the implicit commitments of their arguments on the other, there is a manifest need for a careful re-examination of conceptual analysis.

A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON GENERIC אלהים IN THE HEBREW BIBLE IN RELATION TO THE CLASSICAL THEORY OF CONCEPTS

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaco Gericke
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Classical Theory ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Generic Concept ◽  
Psychological Theories ◽  
Pros And Cons ◽  
Conceptual Overview

Contemporary analyses of אלהים as generic concept tend to be based on psychological theories of concepts. This article, by contrast, attempts to show what a philosophical analysis of the concept of generic אלהים in the Hebrew Bible is concerned with when approached from the perspective of the classical or definitionist view of conceptual structure. However, rather than offering a conceptual analysis of generic אלהים in any given context, the discussion features a general meta-conceptual overview of the classical theory and the pros and cons of applying it to the concept in question.

Conceivability Arguments or the Revenge of the Zombies

1998 ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Katalin Balog
Keyword(s):  
Phenomenal Experience ◽  
Metaphysical Possibility ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Conceivability Arguments ◽  
The One ◽  
Physical Fact

There is a tradition, going back at least to Descartes, of arguing against physicalism on the basis of claims about conceivability. Philosophers in this tradition claim that we can conceive of any physical facts obtaining without there being any phenomenal experience. From this conceptual claim it is further argued that it is metaphysically possible for any physical fact to obtain without the occurrence of any phenomenal experience. If this is correct, then physicalism as it is usually construed is false. In this paper I examine and refute the new conceivability arguments due to Frank Jackson and David Chalmers. I will argue, namely, that the crucial premiss of the arguments, the one that links conceivability with metaphysical possibility, is self-undermining. I proceed in two steps. First, I lay out the two arguments, and show that the crucial premiss in Jackson's argument, and so Chalmers' corresponding premiss as well, is self-undermining, and so that the alleged link between conceivability and metaphysical possibility does not exist. This does not amount to an argument for physicalism, except indirectly; what I show is that the argument on which non-physicalists most rely is ineffective.

Causal Essentialism versus the Zombie Worlds

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Jonathan Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Actual World ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Logical Possibility ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Causal Essentialism

David Chalmers claims that the logical possibility of ‘zombie worlds’ — worlds physically indiscernible from the actual world, but that lack consciousness — reveal that consciousness is a distinct fact, or property, in addition to the physical facts or properties.The ‘existence’ or possibility of Zombie worlds violates the physicalist demand that consciousness logically supervene upon the physical. On the assumption that the logical supervenience of consciousness upon the physical is, indeed, a necessary entailment of physicalism, the existence of zombie worlds implies the falsity of physicalism. How do we determine the logical possibility of zombie worlds? By conceptual analysis of the concepts involved, keeping empirical facts in mind.

scholarly journals Philosophy as Total Axiomatics: Serious Metaphysics, Scrutability Bases, and Aesthetic Evaluation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
URIAH KRIEGEL
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Total Theory

ABSTRACT:What is the aim of philosophy? There may be too many philosophical branches, traditions, practices, and programs to admit of a single overarching aim. Here, I focus on a fairly traditional philosophical project that has recently received increasingly sophisticated articulation, especially by Frank Jackson (1998) and David Chalmers (2012). In Section 1, I present the project and suggest that it is usefully thought of as ‘total axiomatics’: the project of attempting to axiomatize the total theory of the world. In Section 2, I raise a problem for the project that I call the ‘problem of multiple axiomatizations’. I consider some initially alluring but ultimately unpromising approaches to this problem in Section 3. In Section 4, I defend a surprising approach to the problem, according to which competing axiomatizations of the total theory of the world are effectively evaluated for their aesthetic virtues.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document