The Third Antinomy Resolved

This chapter examines the resolution of the third antinomy. Kant argues that the thesis and antithesis are (roughly speaking) sub-contraries rather than contradictories. However, the sense in which he maintains that the thesis and antithesis ‘can both be true’ is delicate. He holds that the truth of neither claim excludes the truth of the other; but this is compatible with necessary falsehood of the thesis, which affirms the existence of human freedom. Importantly, Kant does not take himself to show on theoretical grounds that freedom is even logically possible. The chapter also discusses: Kant’s conceptions of intelligible causality and of empirical and intelligible character; moral responsibility; moral growth; the rationality of blame; Kant’s criticisms of Leibniz’s compatibilism; the third antinomy as an indirect argument for Transcendental Idealism; and the first-Critique’s version of a moral argument for freedom. Kant emerges as a ‘soft determinist’ of a highly unusual stripe.

The Mathematical Antinomies Resolved

This chapter identifies two lines of resolution in the mathematical antinomies, which lines, it argues, correspond to two traditional ways of attempting to generate counter-examples to the law of excluded middle. One line involves positing an instance of category clash, the other the suggestion that ‘the world’ is a non-referring singular term. The upshot, in either case, is that the thesis and antithesis are not contradictories but merely contraries (and both are false). The chapter criticizes, and then charitably reformulates, Kant’s indirect argument for Transcendental Idealism. It considers why Kant did not seek to resolve the antinomies by arguing that thesis or antithesis are nonsense. Also discussed are: reductio proofs in philosophy (and Kant’s attitude toward them, which is argued to be more sympathetic than is often supposed), regresses ad infinitum and ad indefinitum; the cosmological syllogism; the sceptical representation; the Lambert analogy, the indifferentists; and the comparison with Zeno.

SAMUEL DUCLOS’ CRITIQUE OF ROBERT BOYLE’S CORPUSCULAR PHILOSOPHY: A CONTROVERSY ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF ‘CHEMISTRY‘

The seventeenth century witnessed the transition from qualitative to quantitative physics. The very process was not easy and obvious and it consisted of discussions in many fields. One of them was the question about the nature of chemistry which was at the time undergoing some changes towards the form we know now. The main argument concerned the explanatory principles one should invoke to understand properly certain outcomes of chemical experiments. The present paper is a presentation of such an (indirect) argument between R. Boyle, a prominent proponent of corpuscular, quantitative principles and S. Duclos, an al-chymist and a proponent of paracelsian, qualitative ones. What is interesting, Duclos knew The Sceptical Chymist, Boyle’s main work which contained a severe critique of paracelsian chemistry, and a%empted to point out some weaknesses of Boyle’s own position. Duclos scrutinized Boyle’s experiments described in his Certain Physiological Essays and other works and argued for certain shortcomings of Boyle’s laboratory skills, his failure to indicate some literature sources and, first of all, insufficiency of Boyle’s arguments for the corpuscular thesis. According to Duclos, Boyle did not follow in laboratory certain procedures recommended by himself, using unclear notions and applying the corpuscular principles without proper justification. What is more, Duclos argued also in favour of paracelsian chymistry presenting some qualitative explanations in experiments in which Boyle failed to give quantitative ones. Knowing the further development of natural philosophy, it seems interesting to realize how complex it was. The present paper shows also how much irremovable from scientific research is the theoretical component.

Zum Zusammenspiel von Erzähler- und Protagonistenperspektive in den Brenner-Romanen von Wolf Haas

In this paper I show that a close look at the use of demonstrative pronouns (DPros) of the der/die/das paradigm in the crime novel Auferstehung der Toten (‘Resurrection of the dead’) by Wolf Haas allows us to gain a deeper understanding of the interplay of the narrator’s and the main protagonist’s perspective in narrative texts. At the same time, it provides an indirect argument against the assumption that the distribution of DPros can be fully derived from anti-logophoricity (Hinterwimmer and Bosch 2017) and in favor of an analysis sketched as an alternative in that paper: DPros avoid maximally prominent discourse referents as antecedents, where not only protagonists, but also narrators can be discourse referents. In text segments where the narrator’s perspective becomes prominent in virtue of evaluations, comments etc., the narrator is the maximally prominent discourse referent, while in text segments involving Free Indirect Discourse or other forms of protagonist’s perspective-taking such as Protagonist Projection (Holton 1997, Stokke 2013) or Viewpoint Shifting (Hinterwimmer 2017), the respective protagonist is the maximally prominent discourse referent. Finally, in text segments involving neutral narration where neither the narrator’s nor a protagonist’s perspective is salient, the respective discourse topic is the maximally prominent discourse referent.

The Annual Glasses for All Who Seek Knowledge and its Place in the Modern Malay Book Culture

The development of printing in the region of insular Southeast Asia dates back to the 17th century and is connected, first of all, with the activities of European missionaries, for whom preaching Christianity was inseparable from the struggle for the literacy of the population. This prompted the need not only for spiritual literature, but also for the books of a broader educational profile. One of such editions was the annual Glasses for All who Seek Knowledge, published in Singapore in 1858–1859. Its content testified to the successes of European science and technology, and various stories about Muslims who saw the world and became convinced of the merits of European civilization served as an indirect argument in favor of Christianity. The content of the annual reveals a certain parallel with the genre of framed story, familiar to Malay people. The main feature of this genre, traditional for the East, is its cyclical structure where a single plot frames a sequence of instructive stories, historical examples, and sayings of worldly wisdom. Apparently, this similarity led to the success of the annual and its reprints in subsequent years.

Selecting roots: the view from compounding

We investigate how saturation of different theta-roles by the non-head constituent correlates with derivational suffixes and, in turn, with the event structures compatible with those suffixes. We also investigate XP realisations of themes, causers and instruments in deverbal nominal and participial constructions and which ±agentive and/or ±process/episodic sub-readings allow which type of argument. It turns out that for each theta-role, the contexts that allow an XP realisation are exactly the complement of the contexts that would allow compounding of that same theta-role. We take this complementarity to be an indirect argument in favour of (i) divorcing argument licensing from argument selection and (ii) dissociating argument introduction from event-structure-related heads, which then potentially reaffirms the role of roots in (first phase) syntax.

Normative Theory

The ultimate ground of Bentham’s normative philosophy was the principle of utility. It functioned for Bentham as the fundamental evaluative and decision principle and principle of institutional design. The principle combines universal consequentialism (the ultimate aim of morality is to promote the overall good of the community) with impartial hedonism (that the good of the community must be understood in terms of the subjective well-being or happiness of each considered impartially). Bentham maintained that at bottom moral judgments are expressions of approval or disapproval that appeal beyond themselves to some public matters of fact and that appeal to pleasures and pains can only serve this purpose. This essential meta-ethical requirement of publicity of moral judgment supplied the basic elements for an indirect argument for the principle of utility and the foundation of his critique of natural rights. Justice, he argued, is not opposed to utility so understood, but rather is a species of utility.

Thomas More as author of Margaret Roper's letter to Alice Alington

Why would Sir Thomas More write a letter to Alice Alington under the name of Margaret More Roper? To answer that question, this essay examines the political and familial circumstances of the letter's composition, its artfully concealed design of forensic oratory, and use of indirect argument. A careful analysis of the letter's rhetorical strategy will reveal further that More crafted his defense of conscience with allusion to the question of counsel from Utopia, whether or not a philosopher should enter into a king's service. In the Alington letter, from More's position as an imprisoned, former Chancellor of England, he revised civic humanism's call for political engagement into a powerful statement of defiance against King Henry VIII.