Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Butchvarov

  • Butchvarov on Semi-Realism about Facts

    This post takes up where Butchvarov Against Facts left off.  See the latter post for bibliographical data concerning the essay "Facts" which I presently have under my logical microscope.  And if you are a fan of Butch's work, all of my Butchvarov posts are collected in the aptly entitled Butchvarov category. (The following is also…

  • Are Facts Perceivable? An Aporetic Pentad

    'The table is against the wall.'  This is a true contingent sentence.  How do I know that it is true except by seeing (or otherwise sense perceiving) that the table is against the wall?  And what is this seeing if not the seeing of a fact, where a fact is not a true proposition but…

  • Butchvarov Against Facts

    In his essay, "Facts," (Studies in the Ontology of Reinhardt Grossmann, Javier Cumpa, ed., Ontos Verlag, 2010, p. 83) Panayot Butchvarov generously cites me as a defender of realism and a proponent of facts.  He credits me with doing something William P. Alston does not do in his theory of facts, namely, specifying their mode…

  • Indeterminate Yet Existent? The Aporetics of Prime Matter and Pure Consciousness

    Scott Roberts e-mails in reference to my post Hylomorphic Ontological Analysis and the Puzzle of Prime Matter:  I have also been perplexed at hylomorphism's dependence on something called [prime]  'matter', for the same reason as you give. But I think there is a way out, though perhaps not one a hylomorphist will like. You say…

  • Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Transcendental Idealism

    This entry extends and clarifies my post, Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence.  Preliminaries For Butchvarov, all consciousness is intentional. (There are no non-intentional consciousnesses.)  And all intentionality is conscious intentionality. (There is no "physical intentionality" to use George Molnar's term.)  So, for Butchvarov, 'consciousness' and 'intentionality' are equivalent terms.  Consciousness, by…

  • Realism and Idealism

    An excerpt from an e-mail by Chris C., with responses in blue. . . . I read your post on Butchvarov's latest paper, and you made clear your argument about the problem with the crucial step in the "idealist" position; then you closed with the assertion that realism has its own set of problems.  Granted that…

  • Butchvarov on Metaphysical Realism and Logical Nonrealism

    This post is a  stab at a summary and evaluation of Panayot Butchvarov's "Metaphysical Realism and Logical Nonrealism" which is available both online and in R. M. Gale, ed., The Blackwell Guide to Metaphysics (Oxford: Blackwell 2002), pp. 282-302.  Page references are to the Blackwell source. The ComBox stands open if readers have some informed commentary…

  • Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence

    (UPDATE: 23 March.  Butchvarov sent me some comments via e-mail the main ones of  which I insert in the text in red.) This post assumes familiarity with Panayot Butchvarov's "protometaphysics," as he calls it.  But I will begin by sketching the distinction between objects and entities.  Then I will present an objection that occurred to…

  • Knowledge as Absolute Impossibility of Mistake

    I incline towards Panayot Butchvarov's notion of knowledge as involving the absolute impossibility of mistake. In The Concept of Knowledge (Northwestern  UP, 1970), Butchvarov writes that "an epistemic judgment of the form 'I know that p' can be regarded as having the same content as one of the form 'It is absolutely impossible that I…

  • Posits or Inventions? Geach and Butchvarov on Intentionality

    One philosopher's necessary explanatory posit is another's mere invention. In his rich and fascinating article "Direct Realism Without Materialism" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1994), Panayot Butchvarov rejects  epistemic intermediaries as "philosophical inventions." Thus he rejects  sense data, sensations, ways of being appeared to, sense experiences, mental representations, ideas, images, looks, seemings, appearances, and the like.…

  • Message From Butchvarov

     Bill, great web site! The address of mine should be corrected. It's http://myweb.uiowa.edu/butchvar/No "www" in it. Best,Butch

  • Knowledge, Certainty, and Exaggeration

    As I explained the other day, I am inclined to accept Butchvarov's view of knowledge as the impossibility of error. If I know that p, then it is not enough that I have a justified true belief that p; I must have a true belief whose justification rules out the possibility of error. Anything short…

  • Butchvarov: Knowledge as Requiring Certainty

    We begin with an example from Panayot Butchvarov's The Concept of Knowledge, Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 47. [CK is the red volume on the topmost visible shelf.  Immediately to its right is Butch's Being Qua Being.  Is Butch showing without saying that epistemology is prior to metaphysics?] There is a bag containing 99 white marbles and one black…