Philosophy publications (MU)
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Items in this collection are the scholarly output of the Department of Philosophy faculty, staff, and students, either alone or as co-authors, and which may or may not have been published in an alternate format. Items may contain more than one file type.
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Item Are all names of the Absolute synonymous?(University of Hawaii Press, 1983) Gupta, Bina, 1947-; Wilcox, William C.In one way different names of the Absolute may be synonymous,and in another way not synonymous. Using Frege's terminology, words may have the same reference but different "senses." Just as "Morning Star" and "Evening Star" are names of the same object, and in that mode have the same meaning, they have different "senses"(intensions, connotations, and so forth) and in that mode have differing meanings. Assuming that one can adequately understand the notion of synonymity in the extensional mode, to begin with, one might argue that all such names of the Absolute are synonymous, that is to say, all such names are intersubstitutable, salva veritate. In the intensional mode, the names might very well not be intersubstitutable, and hence not synonymous; in this intensional mode, however, it is doubtful whether one could come up with any acceptable criterion of synonymity that is, no two words would, or could, be synonymous. Whether, in fact, all names of the Absolute are names of some one thing is, of course, a factual question, just as the identity of the Evening Star and the Morning Star is an empirical fact.Item "Tat tvam asi": An Important Identity Statement or a Mere Tautology(University of Hawaii Press, 1984) Gupta, Bina, 1947-; Wilcox, William C.Before one can reasonably investigate the question of whether two things are identical, it stands to reason that one must have a clear understanding not only of what counts as a thing but, even more importantly, of what it means for two things to be identical. The question of the nature of identity is indeed a perplexing one, and has served as a starting point for much recent philosophical investigations. It drove Frege to make the distinction between sense and reference,1 has been a central factor in much of Quine's ontological analysis, and recently has played a central role in Butchvarov's protometaphysical Being Qua Being.Item Robustness and Conceptual Analysis in Evolutionary Game Theory(University of Chicago Press, 2005) Ernst, ZacharyA variety of robustness objections have been made against evolutionary game theory. One of these objections alleges that the games used in the underlying model are too arbitrary and oversimplified to generate a robust model of interesting prosocial behaviors. In this paper, I argue that the robustness objection can be met. However, in order to do so, we must attend to important conceptual issues regarding the nature of fairness, justice, and other moral concepts. Specifically, we must better understand the relationship between moral concepts and formal characterizations of games.Item Epistemic Conditions for Collective Action(Oxford University Press, 2008) Chant, Sara Rachel; Ernst, ZacharyWriters on collective action are in broad agreement that in order for a group of agents to form a collective intention, the members of that group must have beliefs about the beliefs of the other members. But in spite of the fact that this so-called 'interactive knowledge' is central to virtually every account of collective intention, writers on this subject have not offered a detailed account of the nature of interactive knowledge. In this paper, we argue that such an account is necessary for any adequate analysis of collective intention. Furthermore, we argue that an application of Robert Aumann's theory of interactive knowledge may be used to address several puzzling features of collective intention.Item Perception, True Opinion and Knowledge in Plato's Theaetetus(Brill, 1969) Bondeson, William B., 1938-Several years ago Mr. J. Xenakis proposed an interpretation of some aspects of the passage in the Theaetetus in which the thesis that is oc'LaO-?aLq receives its final refutation (184B4- 186El2). Although I agree in the main with his interpretation, I believe that it can be supported more strongly. Thus an analysis of this passage is the first task of this paper. But on the basis of that analysis, I want to show also how this passage is related to what follows - in the dialogue, the long discussion beginning with the thesis that knowledge is true opinion but turning almost immediately to a discussion of the nature and possibility of false opinion and ending with the wax block and aviary models (187AI-20OD4). The criticism of the thesis that is cx.(cr8.fJcr?ç begins with the distinction between what the soul apprehends through the sense organs and what it apprehends "by itself". Whatever Plato's views about the soul might be at his writing of the Theaetetus, he wants to distinguish between those characteristics which the soul apprehends through the sense organs and those characteristics which are called "common to everything" 7tOCO'L xow6v -184C4-5). In spite of his expressed desire to be precise (184 C 1-7), Plato has some difficulties and ambiguities in his terminology. His general point is to show that knowledge cannot be equated with but he does speak, on the one hand, of what the soul "perceives" when he talks about the particular objects of the various senses, e.g. colors, tastes, sounds, etc. On the other hand he also speaks of what the soul "perceives" (again cx.?cr8&voflcx.? - 185 C8) when he talks about the xocva, characteristics which are somehow different from those apprehended via the individual sense-organs. The ambiguity in vottocl leaves two questions to be answered.