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1370Schelling and the Background of American Pragmatism: (review)Arisbe, Peirce-Related Papers 1 1-12. 1996.The short cover-description of the present book tells that "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was one of the formative philosophers of German idealism, whose great service was in the areas of the philosophy of nature, art, and religion." Those having some familiarity with Schelling, and his influence on American philosophy, indirectly via Coleridge and Carlyle and more directly via Emerson and C. S. Peirce, will perhaps not be surprised to learn that German idealism itself looks som…Read more
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747Liberalism and the Moral Significance of Individualism: A Deweyan ViewReason Papers 19 (Fall): 13-29. 1994.A liberalism which scorns all individualism is fundamentally misguided. This is the chief thesis of this paper. To argue for it, I look closely at some key concepts. The concepts of morislity and individualism are crucial. I emphasize Dewey on the "individuality of the mind" and a Deweyan discussion of language, communication, and community. The thesis links individualism and liberalism, and since appeals to liberalism have broader appeal in the present context of discussions, I start with consi…Read more
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705Review of Fodor, Psychosemantics (review)Erkenntnis 33 (2). 1990.This is my expository and critical review of Jerry Fodor's Psychosemantics. See also Callaway 1992, Meaning Holism and Semantic Realism.
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652Does Language Determine Our Scientific Ideas?Dialectica 46 (3-4): 225-242. 1992.SummaryThis paper argues that the influence of language on science, philosophy and other field is mediated by communicative practices. Where communications is more restrictive, established linguistic structures exercise a tighter control over innovations and scientifically motivated reforms of language. The viewpoint here centers on the thesis that argumentation is crucial in the understanding and evaluation of proposed reforms and that social practices which limit argumentation serve to erode s…Read more
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633Review of Schlesinger, War and the American Presidency (review)Reason Papers 2008 (No. 30): 121-128. 2008.This is a expository and critical review of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. 's last book, War and the American Presidency. The book collects and focuses recent writings of Arthur Schlesinger on the themes of its title. In its short Foreword and seven concise essays, the book aims to explore, in some contrast with the genre of “instant history,” the relationship between President George W. Bush’s Iraq adventure and the national past. This aim and the present work are deserving of wide attention, both bec…Read more
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609This book provides a concise overview, with excellent historical and systematic coverage, of the problems of the philosophy of language in the analytic tradition. Howard Callaway explains and explores the relation of language to the philosophy of mind and culture, to the theory of knowledge, and to ontology. He places the question of linguistic meaning at the center of his investigations. The teachings of authors who have become classics in the field, including Frege, Russell, Carnap, Quine, Dav…Read more
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571W.V. Quine, Immanuel Kant Lectures, translated and introduced by H.G. Callaway (edited book)Frommann-Holzboog. 2003.This book is a translation of W.V. Quine's Kant Lectures, given as a series at Stanford University in 1980. It provide a short and useful summary of Quine's philosophy. There are four lectures altogether: I. Prolegomena: Mind and its Place in Nature; II. Endolegomena: From Ostension to Quantification; III. Endolegomena loipa: The forked animal; and IV. Epilegomena: What's It all About? The Kant Lectures have been published to date only in Italian and German translation. The present book is fille…Read more
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562No Need to Speak the same Language? Review of Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of LanguageDialectica, Vol. 50, No.1, 1996, Pp. 63-71 50 (1): 63-72. 1996.The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation —a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The weaknes…Read more
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556Review of Gochet, Ascent to Truth: a Critical Examination of Quine's PhilosophyDialectica 42 (1): 45-58. 1988.This book focuses on issues in epistemology, semantics and logic with Quine’s views always setting the themes, even if Quine does not always remain quite at center stage. Gochet, Professor at Liège and Secretary to the Editorial Board of Logique et Analyse is a prominent of Quine’s views in Europe. The author does not aim to take up the whole of Quine’s philosophy here. Rather, the aim is to “focus on a few central themes...and to treat them thoroughly.” Continental Europe not only recognizes Qu…Read more
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493Emerson and Santayana on ImaginationIn Flamm And Skowronski (ed.), Under Any Sky, Contemporary Readings on George Santayana, . 2007.This paper examines Santayana on imagination, and related themes, chiefly as these are expressed in his early work, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900). My hypothesis is that Santayana under-estimates, in this book, the force and significance of the prevalent distinction between imagination and fancy, as this was originally put forward by Coleridge and later developed in Emerson’s late essays. I will focus on some of those aspects of Santayana’s book which appear to react to or to enga…Read more
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454This is the Introduction to my translation of Quine's Kant Lectures. Part of my interpretation is that an "esoteric doctrine" in involved in Quine's distinctive semantic claims: his skepticism of the credulity of non-expert evaluation of discourse and theory.
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426Review of W. V. Quine, Pursuit of Truth (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning without Analyticity) (review)Dialectica, Vol. 45, No. 4, 1991, Pp. 317-22 45 (No. 4): 317-322. 1991.Quine's aim in this slim book is to "update, sum up and clarify variously intersecting views on cognitive meaning, objective referencce, and the grounds of knowledge." Only nine pages had previously appeared as the book came to print. It is based largely on unpublished lectures and informal discussions of the past ten years back to the Immanuel Kant Lectures given at Stanford in 1980. It does not, then duplicate Leonelli's Italian translation of the Kant lectures, La Scienza E I Datti di Senso, …Read more
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377Review of Alison L. LaCroix Ideological Origins of American Federalism (review)Law and Politics Book Review 21 (10): 619-627. 2011.Alison L. LaCroix is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she specializes in legal history, federalism, constitutional law and questions of jurisdiction. She has written a fine, scholarly volume on the intellectual origins of American federalism. LaCroix holds the JD degree (Yale, 1999) and a Ph.D. in history (Harvard, 2007). According to the author, to fully understand the origins of American federalism, we must look beyond the Constitutional Convention of 1…Read more
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346Meaning without analyticity: essays on logic, language and meaning (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Press. 2008.Meaning without Analyticity draws upon the author’s essays and articles, over a period of 20 years, focused on language, logic and meaning. The book explores the prospect of a non-behavioristic theory of cognitive meaning which rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction, Quinean behaviorism, and the logical and social-intellectual excesses of extreme holism. Cast in clear, perspicuous language and oriented to scientific discussions, this book takes up the challenges of philosophical communicatio…Read more
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343Pluralism, Pragmatism and American Democracy: A Minority ReportCambridge Scholars Publishing. 2017.This book presents the author’s many and varied contributions to the revival and re-evaluation of American pragmatism. The assembled critical perspective on contemporary pragmatism in philosophy emphasizes the American tradition of cultural pluralism and the requirements of American democracy. Based partly on a survey of the literature on interest-group pluralism and critical perspectives on the politics of globalization, the monograph argues for reasoned caution concerning the practical effects…Read more
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313Meaning without Analyticity (Reprinted in Callaway, 2008 Meaning without Analyticity)Logique Et Analyse 109 (March): 41-60. 1985.In a series of interesting and influential papers on semantics, Hilary Putnam has developed what he calls a “post-verificationist” theory of meaning. As part of this work, and not I think the most important part, Putnam defends a limited version of the analytic-synthetic distinction. In this paper I will survey and evaluate Putnam’s defense of analyticity and explore its relationship to broader concerns in semantics. Putnam’s defense of analyticity ultimately fails, and I want to show here exact…Read more
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302There are many advantages and disadvantages to central locations. These have shown themselves in the long course of European history. In times of peace, there are important economic and cultural advantages (to illustrate: the present area of the Czech Republic was the richest country in Europe between the two World Wars). There are cross-currents of trade and culture in central Europe of great advantage. For, cultural cross-currents represent a potential benefit in comprehension and cultural gro…Read more
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259Review of Gochet, Ascent to Truth (review)Dialectica, Vol. 42, No. 1, 1988, Pp. 45-58 42 (No. 1): 45-58. 1988.This book focuses on issues in epistemology, semantics and logic with Quine’s views always setting the themes, even if Quine does not always remain quite at center stage. Gochet, Professor at Liège and Secretary to the Editorial Board of Logique et Analyse is a prominent of Quine’s views in Europe. The author does not aim to take up the whole of Quine’s philosophy here. Rather, the aim is to “focus on a few central themes...and to treat them thoroughly.” Continental Europe not only recognizes Qu…Read more
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246Emerson and the Law of FreedomIn R.W. Emerson, Society and Solitude: Twelve Chapters, Mellon Press. 2008.This paper is the expository and evaluative introduction to my new edition of Emerson's Society and Solitude, Twelve Chapters.
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166Review of Ulrich Baltzer, "Erkenntnis als Relationengeflecht: Kategorien bei Charles S. Peirce" (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 31 (2): 445. 1995.This book arose from the author’s recent dissertation written under the Gerhard Schonrich at Munich. It focuses on Peirce’s theory of categories and his epistemology. According to Baltzer, what is distinctive in Peirce’s theory of knowledge is that he reconstrues objects as “knots in networks of relations.” The phrase may ring a bell. It suggests a structuralist interpretation of Peirce, influenced by the Munich environs. The study aims to shows how Peirce’s theory of categories …Read more
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162Semantic Theory and Language: A Perspective (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning without Analyticity)Proceedings of the Southwestern Philosophical Association; Philosophical Topics 1981 (summer): 93-103. 1981.Chomsky’s conception of semantics must contend with both philosophical skepticism and contrary traditions in linguistics. In “Two Dogmas” Quine argued that “...it is non-sense, and the root of much non-sense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement.” If so, it follows that language as the object of semantic investigation cannot be separated from collateral information. F. R. Palmer pursues a similar contention in his recent survey of is…Read more
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161Semantic competence and truth-conditional semanticsErkenntnis 28 (1). 1988.Davidson approaches the notions of meaning and interpretation with the aim of characterizing semantic competence in the syntactically characterized natural language. The objective is to provide a truth-theory for a language, generating T-sentences expressed in the semantic metalanguage, so that each sentence of the object language receives an appropriate interpretation. Proceeding within the constraints of referential semantics, I will argue for the viability of reconstructing the notion of ling…Read more
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151William James, A Pluralistic Universe: A New Philosophical Reading (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Press. 2008.This new edition of William James’s 1909 classic, A Pluralistic Universe reproduces the original text, only modernizing the spelling. The books has been annotated throughout to clarify James’s points of reference and discussion. There is a new, fuller index, a brief chronology of James’s life, and a new bibliography—chiefly based on James’s own references. The editor, H.G. Callaway, has included a new Introduction which elucidates the legacy of Jamesian pluralism to survey some related questions…Read more
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142Sense and Mode of PresentationIn Meaning without Analyticity, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 49-72. 2008.Theories of linguistic meaning have been a major influence in twentieth century philosophy. This is due, in part, to the assumption that meaning is the crucial and interesting thing about language. To know the meaning of an expression is to understand it, and since understanding is central to philosophy in many different ways, it should be no surprise that the notion of meaning has often taken center stage. The aim of this paper is to briefly explore some influential views concerning linguistic …Read more
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140Schlesinger, Jr., Arthur M. War and the American Presidency. New York: W. W. Norton Co., 2004 (review)Reason Papers 30 121-128. 2008.This book collects and focuses recent writings of Arthur Schlesinger on the themes of its title. In its short Foreword and seven concise essays, the book aims to explore, in some contrast with the genre of “instant history,” the relationship between President George W. Bush’s Iraq adventure and the national past. This aim and the present work are deserving of wide attention, both because of the contemporary need to deal with the extended war in Iraq and because Americans, in particular, need to …Read more
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137Meaning holism and semantic realism (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning without Analyticity)Dialectica 46 (1): 41-59. 1992.Reconciliation of semantic holism with interpretation of individual expressions is advanced here by means of a relativization of sentence meaning to object language theories viewed as idealizations of belief-systems. Fodor's view of the autonomy of the special sciences is emphasized and this is combined with detailed replies to his recent criticisms of meaning holism. The argument is that the need for empirical evidence requires a holistic approach to meaning. Thus, semantic realism requires sem…Read more
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133Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, An Annotated EditionCambridge Scholars Press. 2014.Arthur S. Eddington, FRS, (1882–1944) was one of the most prominent British scientists of his time. He made major contributions to astrophysics and to the broader understanding of the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is famed for his astronomical observations of 1919, confirming Einstein’s prediction of the curving of the paths of starlight, and he was the first major interpreter of Einstein’s physics to the English-speaking world. His 1928 book, The Nature of the P…Read more
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132A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy, by William James; A New Philosophical Reading (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Press. 2008.This new edition of William James’s 1909 classic, A Pluralistic Universe reproduces the original text, only modernizing the spelling. The books has been annotated throughout to clarify James’s points of reference and discussion. There is a new, fuller index, a brief chronology of James’s life, and a new bibliography—chiefly based on James’s own references. The editor, H.G. Callaway, has included a new Introduction which elucidates the legacy of Jamesian pluralism to survey some related questions…Read more
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131R.W. Emerson, Society and Solitude, Twelve ChaptersEdwin Mellen Press. 2008.This new edition of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Society and Solitude reproduces the original 1870 edition—only updating nineteenth-century prose spellings. Emerson’s text is fully annotated to identify the authors and issues of concern in the twelve essays, and definitions are provided for selected words in Emerson’s impressive vocabulary. The work aims to facilitate a better understanding of Emerson’s late philosophy in relation to his sources, his development and his subsequent influence.
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129Abduction, Competing Models and the Virtues of HypothesesIn Lorenzo Magnani (ed.), (2014) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, Springer. pp. 263-280. 2014.This paper focuses on abduction as explicit or readily formulatable inference to possible explanatory hypotheses--as contrasted with inference to conceptual innovations or abductive logic as a cycle of hypotheses, deduction of consequences and inductive testing. Inference to an explanation is often a matter of projection or extrapolation of elements of accepted theory for the solution of outstanding problems in particular domains of inquiry. I say "projections or extrapolation" of accepted theor…Read more
Areas of Specialization
Philosophy of Language |
Philosophy of the Americas |
PhilPapers Editorships
William James |
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
Donald Davidson |
W. V. O. Quine |