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498This paper explores the relationships between perception, representation and appetition in Leibniz's later metaphysics, and defends four theses. First, for Leibniz perceptions are not the carriers of content, but they are identical to representational content. Second, Leibniz's appetitions are the carriers of content and he should be taken at his word when he declares, "Thought consists in conatus". Third, while it is true that for Leibniz representational content is determined by a species o…Read more
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5Modern Philosophy of LanguageIn Gillian Russell & Delia Graff Fara (eds.), Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language, Routledge. pp. 841-851. 2014.A survey of the emergence of the philosophy of language in 17th- and 18th-century European philosophy as an independent subdiscipline of philosophy.
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The Concept of Linguistic Reference Before FregeIn Stephen Biggs and Heimir Geirsson (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Reference, Routledge. pp. 17-29. 2021.This essay traces the concept of linguistic reference and its role in the determination of linguistic meaning in the history of philosophy before Frege.
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The History of the Philosophy of Language before FregeIn Piotr Stalmaszczyk (ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Philosoph of Language, Cambridge University Press. pp. 51-70. 2021.
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104Leibniz and the rational order of nature (review)Philosophical Review 109 (1): 94-98. 2000.In this comprehensive study of Leibniz’s mature metaphysics, Donald Rutherford attempts to recover Leibniz’s theodicy as an essential part of his philosophy. Although Rutherford does not succeed in showing that the theodicy is essential to Leibniz’s metaphysics, he effectively uses the theodicy as an entry into Leibniz’s metaphysics and he highlights the many links between them. Of course, there are other significant ways of entering Leibniz’s philosophy—he wanted to “do justice to theology as t…Read more
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359Plantinga and the Problem of EvilThe Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy 8 109-113. 2006.The logical problem of evil centers on the apparent inconsistency of the following two propositions: God is omnipotent, omniscient, and wholly good, and There is evil in the world. This is the problem that Alvin Plantinga takes to task in his celebrated response to the problem of evil. Plantinga denies that and are inconsistent, arguing that J.L. Mackie's principle - that there are no limits to what an omnipotent thing can do - is false. We challenge Plantinga, and defend Mackie's view
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33Review of Brook (2007): The Prehistory of Cognitive Science (review)Pragmatics and Cognition 16 (1): 185-189. 2008.
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31Hume's Skepticism and the Whimsical ConditionHume Studies 43 (1): 29-59. 2017.At a crucial point in the final section 12 of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding he refers to "the whimsical condition of mankind".1 This occurs in his concluding remarks about the untenability of what he calls "Pyrrhonism, or excessive scepticism" that set the stage for "mitigated scepticism, or ACADEMICAL philosophy", which then culminates in the famous agitated final paragraph of the first Enquiry that advocates "havoc" and committing certain kinds of books "to the flames".I wish t…Read more
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1Logic and Language in Early Modern PhilosophyIn Donald Rutherford (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy. pp. 170-197. 2006.
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111Lenz on Locke on Language (review)Historiographia Linguistica 40 477-487. 2013.Review article of Martin Lenz, Locke's Sprachkonzeption, Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.
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62Enlightenment and Action From Descartes to Kant: Passionate ThoughtCambridge University Press. 2001.Kant believed that true enlightenment is the use of reason freely in public. This book systematicaaly traces the philosophical origins and development of the idea that the improvement of human understanding requires public activity. Michael Losonsky focuses on seventeenth-century discussions of the problem of irresolution and the closely connected theme of the role of volition in human belief formation. This involves a discussion of the work of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza and Leibniz. Chal…Read more
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1The cognitive unity of external and internal statesIn Roberto Casati & Graham White (eds.), Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, Ludwig Wittgenstein Society. pp. 313--318. 1993.
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216What God Could Have MadeSouthern Journal of Philosophy 43 (3): 355-376. 2005.Plantinga grants that there are possible worlds with freedom and no moral evil, but he argues that it is possible that although God is omnipotent, it is not within God’s power to actualize a world containing freedom and no moral evil. Plantinga believes that the atheologian assumes that it is necessary that it is within an omnipotent God’s power to actualize these better worlds, but in fact, Plantinga argues, this is demonstrably not the case. Since so many philosophers have regarded Plantinga’s…Read more
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12Philosophy and the Ecological Problem, a Special Issue of Filozoficky CasopisEnvironmental Ethics 13 (1): 87-93. 1991.
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Language, meaning, and mind in Locke's EssayIn Lex Newman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke's Essay, Cambridge University Press. pp. 286-312. 2007.This paper reconsiders and defends the view that Locke's theory of signification is a theory of meaning.
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108Individuation and the bundle theoryPhilosophical Studies 52 (2). 1987.It has been suggested that distinct individuals can have exactly the same properties; thus individuals cannot be individuated by their properties, And so the bundle theory appears to be false. One way to shore up the bundle theory is to introduce impure properties, And I defend this move against some objections by d m armstrong, M loux, And j van cleve
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76The Nature of ArtifactsPhilosophy 65 (251). 1990.In Book II, Chapter 1 of the Physics Aristotle attempts to distinguish natural objects from artifacts. He begins by stating that a natural object ‘has in itself a source of change and staying unchanged, whether in respect of place, or growth and decay, or alteration’. But this is not sufficient to distinguish natural objects from artifacts. As he points out later, a wooden bed, for example, can rot or burn, and this is surely a change whose source is, in part, internal to the bed. To make his di…Read more
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50An Ontological Argument for Modal RealismGrazer Philosophische Studien 31 (1): 165-177. 1988.I argue for modal realism from the following principles:(R1) p just in case there are truth-makers for the proposition that p.(R2) If there are truth-makers for the proposition that p and the proposition that p relevantly entails the proposition that q, then there are truthrmakers for the proposition that q.(M) The proposition that p relevantly entails the proposition that possibly p.(R3) I f there are truth-makers for the proposition that q, then necessarily, if q, there are truth-makers for th…Read more
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Alvin I. Goldman, Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences (review)Minds and Machines 7 306-312. 1997.
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91Linguistic Turns in Modern PhilosophyCambridge University Press. 2006.This book traces the linguistic turns in the history of modern philosophy and the development of the philosophy of language from Locke to Wittgenstein. It examines the contributions of canonical figures such as Leibniz, Mill, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Austin, Quine, and Davidson, as well as those of Condillac, Humboldt, Chomsky, and Derrida. Michael Losonsky argues that the philosophy of language begins with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. He shows how the history of the philos…Read more
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48Roger Woolhouse, Locke: A Biography (review)Journal of the History of Philosophy 46 (1): 175-176. 2008."A man of versatile mind"—a remark from a letter to Locke by a life-long friend—is the subtitle of the first chapter of this biography. It could also be the book's subtitle. Relying on Locke's correspondence, manuscripts, and mostly unpublished journals, Woolhouse pieces together a detailed quilt that exhibits the tremendous variety of Locke's interests and activities. Locke, who admitted to wandering interests , wrote about medicine, horticulture, religion, education, economics, government, and…Read more
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111Emdedded systems vs. individualismMinds and Machines 5 (3): 357-71. 1995.The dispute between individualism and anti-individualism is about the individuation of psychological states, and individualism, on some accounts, is committed to the claim that psychological subjects together with their environments do not constitute integrated computational systems. Hence on this view the computational states that explain psychological states in computational accounts of mind will not involve the subject''s natural and social environment. Moreover, the explanation of a system''…Read more
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341The Preoccupation and Crisis of Analytic PhilosophyEuropean Journal of Analytic Philosophy 10 (1): 5-20. 2014.I propose to reconsider Gilbert Ryle’s thesis in 1956 in his introduction to The Revolution of Philosophy that “the story of twentieth-century philosophy is very largely the story of this notion of sense or meaning” and, as he writes elsewhere, the “preoccupation with the theory of meaning is the occupational disease of twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon and Austrian philoso- phy.” Ryle maintains that this preoccupation demar- cates analytic philosophy from its predecessors and that it gave philosoph…Read more
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37Abstraction, covariance, and representationPhilosophical Studies 70 (2). 1993.According to a simple similarity theory of representation, x represents y because x and y share some properties. In Meaning and Mental Representation, Robert Cummins rejects this account for representations that play a role in cognition because, among other things, a similarity theory of representation precludes a satisfactory account of an essential cognitive task, namely abstraction. Intelligent beings have representations of classes and properties, and we need an account for such representati…Read more
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2Patricia S. Churchland and Terrence J. Sejnowski, The Computational Brain Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 13 (4): 142-144. 1993.
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Locke on meaning and significationIn Graham Alan John Rogers (ed.), Locke's Philosophy: Content and Context, Oxford University Press. 1994.
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25Idealism, cataclysms, and the facts of referenceAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 61 (1). 1983.A theory of reference for proper names according to which reference is fixed solely in terms of the contents of language users' minds is an idealist theory. A theory of reference for proper names in which reference is fixed not in terms of the contents of language users' minds, but in terms of causal chains connecting users to referents is a materialist theory. A dualist theory is one in which reference is fixed both by the contents of minds and causal chains. The main reason materialists…Read more
Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics |
Philosophy of Language |
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
Areas of Interest
The Argument from Evil |
The Nature of Analytic Philosophy |