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79The Purpose of the Essential IndexicalThe Commens Working Papers: Preprints, Research Reports and Scientific Communications. 2015.This paper takes indexicality as a case-study for critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics as currently conceived in mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre-indexical’ and ‘post-indexical’ analytic formal semantics are examined and found wanting, and instead an argument is mounted for a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’, according to which we do not work out what signs mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rath…Read more
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275J. Brunning and P. Forster (eds), "The Rule of Reason" (review)Metascience 8 (1): 170-174. 1999.
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878The hardness of the iconic must: can Peirce’s existential graphs assist modal epistemologyPhilosophia Mathematica 20 (1): 1-24. 2012.Charles Peirce's diagrammatic logic — the Existential Graphs — is presented as a tool for illuminating how we know necessity, in answer to Benacerraf's famous challenge that most ‘semantics for mathematics’ do not ‘fit an acceptable epistemology’. It is suggested that necessary reasoning is in essence a recognition that a certain structure has the particular structure that it has. This means that, contra Hume and his contemporary heirs, necessity is observable. One just needs to pay attention, n…Read more
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43Letting reality biteTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44 (2): 208-212. 2008.Describes an experiment in teaching undergraduate epistemology, guided by Peirce’s pragmatic maxim.
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104Engineering philosophyInternational Journal of Machine Consciousness 2 (1): 45-50. 2010.A commentary on a current paper by Aaron Sloman. Sloman argues that in order to make progress in AI, consciousness, "should be replaced by more precise and varied architecture-based concepts better suited to specify what needs to be explained by scientific theories". This original vision of philosophical inquiry as mapping out 'design-spaces' for a contested concept seeks to achieve a holistic, synthetic understanding of what possibilities such spaces embody. It therefore does not reduce to eith…Read more
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314J.J. Liszka, "An Introduction to the Semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce" (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76 (1): 122-124. 1998.
Deakin, Victoria, Australia
Areas of Interest
2 more
Metaphilosophy |
History of Western Philosophy |
Meaning |
Truth |
Philosophy of Cognitive Science |
Wilfrid Sellars |
Ludwig Wittgenstein |