Category: Aporetics
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The Aporetics of Singular Sentences
I should issue a partial retraction. I wrote earlier,"The TFL representation of singular sentences as quantified sentences does not capture their logical form, and this is an inadequacy of TFL, and a point in favor of MPL." ('TFL' is short for 'traditional formal logic'; 'MPL' for 'modern predicate logic with identity.' ) The animadversions of Edward the…
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Bad to Die Young but Not Bad to Die? An Aporetic Dyad
Herewith, a rumination on death with Epicurus as presiding shade. The following two propositions are both logically inconsistent and yet very plausible: 1. Being dead is not an evil for anyone at any time. 2. Being dead at a young age is an evil for some. Obviously, the limbs of the dyad cannot both be…
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The Ought-to-Be and the Ought-to-Do and the Aporetics of “Be Ye Perfect”
Is there any justification for talk of the ought-to-be in cases where they are not cases of the ought-to-do? Let's begin by noting that if I ought to do X (pay my debts, feed my kids, keep my hands off my neighbor's wife, etc.) then my doing X ought to be. For example, given that…
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Self-Reference and Individual Concepts
The following can happen. You see yourself but without self-recognition. You see yourself, but not as yourself. Suppose you walk into a room which unbeknownst to you has a mirror covering the far wall. You are slightly alarmed to see a wild-haired man with his fly open approaching you. You are looking at yourself but you don't…
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Mental Acts Versus Mental Actions: Sellars and Bergmann
I have been assuming that there are mental acts and that there are mental actions and that they must not be confused. It's high time for a bit of exfoliation. Suppose I note that the front door of an elderly neighbor's house has been left ajar. That noting is a mental act, but it is…
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The Aporetics of the Intentional Object, Part I
Here is a puzzle that may be thought to motivate a distinction between intentional and real objects, a distinction that turns out to be problematic indeed. Puzzle. One cannot think without thinking of something, but if one is thinking of something, it does not follow that something is such that one is thinking of it.…
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My Intentionality Aporia ‘Ockhamized’
Edward of London proposes the following triad O1. The proposition ‘Bill is looking for a nonexistent thing’ can be true even when there are no nonexistent things.O2. The proposition ‘Bill is looking for a nonexistent thing’ expresses a relation between two things.O3. Every relation is such that if it obtains, all of its relata exist.…
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The Twardowski-Meinong-Grossmann Solution to the Problem of Intentionality
Perhaps the central problem to which the phenomenon of intentionality gives rise can be set forth in terms of an aporetic triad: 1. We sometimes think about the nonexistent.2. Intentionality is a relation between thinker and object of thought.3. Every relation R is such that, if R obtains,then all its relata exist. The datanic first limb is…
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On Reference: An Aporetic Septad
We can divide the following seven propositions into two groups, a datanic triad and a theoretical tetrad. The members of the datanic triad are just given — hence 'datanic' — and so are not up for grabs, whence it follows that to relieve ourselves of the ensuing contradiction we must reject one of the members…
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The Dead and the Nonexistent: Meinong Contra Epicurus
Are there nonexistent objects in the sense in which Meinong thought there are? One reason to think so derives from the problem of reference to the dead. The problem can be displayed as an aporetic tetrad: 1. A dead person no longer exists.2. What no longer exists does not exist at all. 3. What does not…
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Life-Death Asymmetry: An Aporetic Triad
Let us consider a person whose life is going well, and who has a reasonable expectation that it will continue to go well in the near term at least. For such a person 1. A longer being-alive is better than a shorter being-alive. 2. A longer being-dead is not worse than a shorter being-dead. (Equivalently:…
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A Modal Ontological Argument and an Argument from Evil Compared
After leaving the polling place this morning, I headed out on a sunrise hike over the local hills whereupon the muse of philosophy bestowed upon me some good thoughts. Suppose we compare a modal ontological argument with an argument from evil in respect of the question of evidential support for the key premise in each. This post…