John-Michael Kuczynski

Climbing the ranks in academia is about forfeiting integrity. But if integrity is forfeited too soon, the person in question won't have the moral fiber needed to write a dissertation. And when this happens, the result is a perpetual dissertator. The phenomenon of being a perpetual dissertator has nothing to do with the difficulties supposedly inherent in writing a philosophy or economics dissertation. There are no such difficulties. The perpetual dissertator simply forfeited his moral fiber too soon.

Este trabajo da claras respuestas rigurosas a las cuestiones fundamentales de la epistemología, siendo estas: * ¿Qué es el conocimiento? * ¿Cómo difiere el conocimiento declarativo del conocimiento procedimental? * ¿Cómo se diferencia el conocimiento intuitivo forma ¿conocimiento discursivo? * ¿Cómo difiere el conocimiento científico de los conocimientos no científicos? * ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre el descubrimiento y la justificación? * ¿Cuál es la naturaleza de nuestro conocimiento del pasado, del futuro, de lo meramente posible, y del presente pero no perceptible? * ¿Cómo es el conocimiento conceptual diferente del conocimiento empírico? * ¿todo el conocimiento es inferencial? * ¿todo el conocimiento es teórico? * ¿todo el conocimiento inferencial es teórico? * ¿es la mente transparente para sí misma? * ¿es coherente el concepto de ideación inconsciente? * ¿Cuál es el problema de Gettier y cuál es la solución al problema de Gettier? Este libro es apropiado para principiantes y también para los investigadores.

W.V.O. tried to prove that no statement is necessarily true. In this work, Quine's argument is stated, analyzed, and shown to be a broken argument for a false conclusion. It is shown that necessary truths are as important as empirical truths to the empirical sciences, the reason being that, without necessary truths, there is no way to organize or interpret data. It comes to light that, in addition to being false, every form of extreme empiricism (e.g. Dewey's pragmatism, Wittgenstein's verificationism, Comte's positivism) is so incoherent that it cannot be clearly stated without thereby being refuted.

In this work, Descartes' metaphysics and epistemology are clearly stated and assiduously analyzed. It is shown that Descartes' epistemic foundationalism is tenable, and that his mind-body dualism is correct if taken to concern the relationship of mentalistic (mind-related) data to physicalistic data, even though it is incorrect if taken to concern the relationship of mind per se to body per se. Descartes' analysis of causation is shown to be correct, notwithstanding the copious criticism to which centuries have subjected it. Descartes arguments for God's existence are clearly stated and, thereby, shown to be masterpieces of dialectical ingenuity.

According to Frege, n=Kn, where n is any cardinal number and Kn is the class of all n-tuples. According to Von Neumann, n=Kpn, where Kpn is the class of all of n's predecessors. These analyses are prima facie incompatible with each other, given that Kn≠Kpn, for n>0. In the present paper it is shown that these analyses are in fact compatible with each other, for the reason that each analysis can and ultimately must be interpreted as being to the effect that n=Cn, where Cn is the class of all ordered pairs <Kn#,Rn#>, where Kn# is an arbitrary class and Rn# is an arbitrary relation such that a class k has n-many members exactly if k bears Rn# to Kn#.

Beobachtung informiert uns, was ist, aber nicht was sein muss. Sie weist uns daher nicht auf logische Normen oder auf Beziehungen logischer Abhängigkeit hin. Darüber hinaus setzt die Umwandlung von sensorischer Information (Bildinformation) in propositionale (konzeptuelle, nicht-bildliche) Information das Wissen voraus, wie man Informationen einer Art in Informationen anderer Art umwandeln kann, und setzt daher die Kenntnis logischer Äquivalenzen voraus. So ist nicht jedes Wissen aus der Sinneswahrnehmung abgeleitet, auch wenn man sich auf die Unterscheidung zwischen wissensartigen, aber nicht wirklich wissensvermittelnden, kognitiven Strukturen einerseits und echtem Wissen andererseits beruft. Eine philosophische Rechtfertigung wird für Freuds tiefgründige Einsichten in Kapitel VII der Traumdeutung über die Grenzen der ikonischen Ideation gegeben. Wittgensteins so genannte "Bildtheorie" der Sprache wird untersucht.

The greater the extent to which a given system rewards the absence of merit, the greater the incentive that people within that system have to perpetuate that system. People who are falsely rewarded have a double stake in the perpetuation of whatever it is that falsely rewarded them. First, without that system and all of the lies surrounding it, such people lose their wealth and their social status. Second, without that system, such people lose their self-respect. The more a given person is overvalued, the more likely it is that his social status and self-image depend on specific institutions and, therefore, the more likely it is that he does not those institutions to be replaced or even improved.

The essence of psychosis is alienatedness from the truth, and the essence of psychopathy is alienatedness from moral truth. According to Marx, truth and morality from culture to culture and from epoch to epoch, the only epoch- and culture-invariant thing about them being, in Marx's view, that they are always so much self-serving propaganda. Thus, Marxism, in its insistence on the non-existence (or, what is the same, the relativity) of truth and morality, is nothing more than an exhortation to be psyochotic and psychopathic; and the supposedly unsuccessful Marxist reovlutions in Russian, China, and Cambodia were, in fact, successful--that is to say, they successfully implemented the psychotic psychopathy that is the very heart of Marxism.

This book states, illustrates, and evaluates the main points of Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. This book also contains a thorough exposition of the fundamentals of set theory, including Cantor's groundbreaking investigations into the theory of transfinite numbers. Topics covered include: *Cardinal number (Frege's analysis) *Cardinal number (von Neumann's analysis) *Ordinal number *Isomorphism *Mathematical induction *Limits and continuity *The arithmetic of transfinites *Set-theoretic definitions of "point" and "instant" *An analysis of cardinal n, for arbitrary n, that, unlike the analyses put forth by Russell and von *Neumann, is not merely adequate but de rigueur. *Cogent analyses of hitherto unsolved paradoxes of set-theory and logic, e.g. the Liar Paradox and Russell's Paradox.

In this book, Kant's ethical system is clearly stated and carefully critiqued. In the process, cogent answers are given to the following questions: *What is the relationship between self-interest and morality? *What is the relationship between morality and rationality? *What is the nature of rationality? *What is the difference between rationality and intelligence? *What is the relationship between awareness of moral norms and awareness of logical norms? A must-read for anyone interested in philosophical psychology, moral epistemology, or Kant-interpretation, this brisk monograph provides a long-overdue alternative to the dreary and opaque tomes on which Kant-aficionados have thus far had to rely.