【Philosophy】African philosophy cannot be a thing
This essay unpacks several arguments about the metaphilosophic nature of African philosophy and charts a way through the problems these arguments enco... [more]
【Philosophy】Fusion Philosophy and Epistemic Injustice
I use the concept of epistemic injustice to think through the practice and methodology of comparative, or fusion, philosophy. I make two related claim... [more]
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Axiomatic quantum theory
The basis of a rigorous formal axiomatization of quantum mechanics is constructed, built upon Dirac's bra-ket notation. The system is three-sorted, with separate variables for scalars, vectors and operators. First-order quantification over all three type
Do regulators of animal welfare need to develop a theory of psychological well-being?
The quest for a theory of nonhuman minds'' to assess claims about the moral status of animals is misguided. Misframed questions about animal minds facilitate the appropriation of animal welfare by the animal user industry. When misframed, these question
On cloning: Advocating history of biology in the public interest
Cloning - the process of creating a cell, tissue line or even a complete organism from a single cell - or the strands that led to the cloning of a mammal, Dolly, are not new. Yet the media coverage of Dolly's inception raised a range of reactions from fe
Comments on some completeness theorems of Urquhart and Mendez and Salto
Urquhart and Mendez and Salto claim to establish completeness theorems for the system C and two of its negation extensions. In this note, we do that following three things: (1) provide a counterexample to all of these alleged completeness theorems, (2) at
What's wrong with infinite regresses?
It is almost universally believed that some infinite regresses are vicious, and also almost universally believed that some are benign. In this paper I argue that regresses can be vicious for several different sorts of reasons. Furthermore, I claim that so
The logical structure of linguistic commitment, part 3, Brandomian scorekeeping and incompatibility
Curiously, though he provides in Making It Explicit (MIE) elaborate accounts of various representational idioms, of anaphora and deixis, and of quantification, Robert Brandom nowhere attempts to lay out how his understanding of content and his view of the
On the nature of continuous physical quantities in classical and quantum mechanics
Within the traditional Hilbert space formalism of quantum mechanics, it is not possible to describe a particle as possessing, simultaneously, a sharp position value and a sharp momentum value. Is it possible, thought, to describe a particle as possessing
On discourse markers: Evidence from modern Greek
The aim of this paper is to describe and account for the function of four Modem creek expressions, namely delta ila deltai ('that is to say'), m ala loja ('in other words'), theta elo na po ('I wish to say'), i malon ('or rather'). After a brief t
Proclus and the Neoplatonic syllogistic
AN investigation of Proclus' logic of the syllogistic and of negations in the Elements of Theology, On the Parmenides, and Platonic Theology. It is shown that Proclus employs interpretations over a linear semantic structure with operators for scalar nega
Truth as translation, part A (Convention T, Liar paradox)
According to Tarski's Convention T, the adequacy of a truth definition is (implicitly) defined relatively to a translation mapping from the object language to the metalanguage; the translation mapping itself is left unspecified. This paper restates Conve
First-order Frege theory is undecidable
The system whose only predicate is identity, whose only nonlogical vocabulary is the abstraction operator, and whose axioms are all first-order instances of Frege's Axiom V is shown to be undecidable.
Intersubjectivity and naturalism - Husserl's 'Fifth Cartesian Meditation' revisited
As Husserl argues in the fifth Cartesian Meditation, the similarity of my Body (Leib) with the body (Korper) of another person is the founding moment of th experience of the other. This similarity is based on the previous objectivation of my Body. Husserl
Prediction and the periodic table
The debate about the relative epistemic weights carried in favour of a theory by predictions of new phenomena as opposed to accommodations of already known phenomena has a long history. We readdress the issue through a detailed re-examination of a particu
Joseph Dalton Hooker's ideals for a professional man of science
During the 1840s and the 1850s botanist Joseph Hooker developed distinct notions about the proper characteristics of a professional man of science. While he never articulated these ideas publicly as a coherent agenda, he did share his opinions openly in l
Gentlemanly men of science: Sir Francis Galton and the professionalization of the British life-scien
Because Francis Galton (1822-1911) was a well-connected gentleman scientist with substantial private means, the importance of the role he played in the professionalization of the Victorian life-sciences has been considered anomalous. In contrast to the X-