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(3) The London Philosophy Study Guide.

(4) Published by the Philosophy Panel of the University of London. Unless otherwise stated, the following guides are copyright of the Philosophy Panel of the University of London.. Designed and typeset by Basement Design.. Cover Design by Myriad Creative 289–293 High Holborn London WC1V 7HZ www.mycreative.net.

(5) Contents. 1 A Guide to Philosophy. 1. 2 Logic & Metaphysics. 12. 3 Epistemology & Methodology. 30. 4 Ethics. 45. 5 Political Philosophy. 59. 6 Greek Philosophy. 67. 7 Modern Philosophy. 73. 8 Philosophy of Mind. 89. 9 Philosophy of Religion. 102. 10 Philosophy of Language. 110. 11 Philosophy of Science. 120. 12 Aesthetics. 126. 13 Symbolic Logic. 134. 14 Post-Aristotelian Philosophy. 136. 15 Medieval Philosophy. 141. 16 Indian Philosophy. 148. 17 Kant. 158. 18 Nineteenth Century German Philosophy. 168. 19 Phenomenology. 171. 20 Frege, Russell & Wittgenstein. 175. 21 Marxism. 189. 22 Philosophy of Mathematics. 194. 23 Philosophy of Psychology. 204.

(6) Preface This guide is intended for use by all students of the London Philosophy degrees, BA, MA and its research degrees. It is based on The Philosophy Study Guide 19934 of UCL and The Philosophy Study Guide, 1994 and 1997 of the University of London. The initial project was conceived by Jonathan Wolff, and the document which resulted was produced by the UCL Philosophy Department in October 1993 for internal use, each member of staff, Malcolm Budd, Tim Crane, Marcus Giaquinto, Robert Heinaman, Mike Martin, Lucy O’Brien, Sarah Richmond, Jerry Valberg, Jonathan Wolff, Arnold Zuboff, contributing one or more sections. With the second edition, the guide was produced by and for the University of London as a whole; thanks are due to Sebastian Gardner, Paul Helm, Christopher Janaway, M.M. McCabe, David Papineau, Richard Sorabji, and John Worrall all of whom contributed one or more extensive revisions to the guide; and to Andrew Chitty, Dorothy Edgington, Anthony Grayling, Keith Hossack, Hugh Mellor, John Milton, Sarah Patterson, Anthony Savile, Barry Smith, all of whom gave extremely helpful criticisms and made useful suggestions. Substantial revisions were added in a third edition; in that case thanks are due to Helen Beebee, Tim Crane, Sebastian Gardner, Marcus Giaquinto, Jim Hopkins, Christopher Janaway, Fraser Macbride, Véronique Munoz-Dardé, Gerard O’Daly, David Papineau, Tom Pink, Sarah Richmond, David Hillel-Ruben, Mark Sainsbury, Michelle Salis, Robert Sharples, Martin Stone, Thomas Uebel, and Jonathan Wolff, all for advice and in most cases significant revisions of the guides; and to Tom Pink and Martin Stone in particular for the substantial revision of three of the guides. The fourth edition is a further revision and updating. In this case minimum additions and corrections have been made to the guides from the third edition by various of the above mentioned. In line with alterations to the undergraduate BA degree, the guide to Philosophy of Social Science has been removed; the guide to Continental Philosophy has been replaced with guides to Nineteenth Century German Philosophy and Phenomenology; a guide to Indian Philosophy, kindly provided by Jonardon Ganeri has been added. The most substantial revision has been the proper bibliographical annotation of the entries in the various guides. This was carried out through cross-referencing with The Philosophers’ Index. This gruelling and time consuming task was carried out by Matthew Nudds, to whom many thanks. Jayne Rowse and Ann Higginson provided invaluable secretarial help. The guide is a collective effort, it expresses the opinions of no one person—bibliographical errors are ultimately the responsibility of the editor. MGF Martin, December 2000.. iv.

(7) 1. A Guide to Studying Philosophy. This chapter of the guide contains some general information about studying Philosophy, while each chapter that follows contains an entry for one of the papers currently available within the B.A. degree. For each of these you will find a number of general hints about studying for that particular paper, together with a number of central readings. These reading lists vary greatly in length, but no inferences should be made on this basis about the comparative difficulty of the papers. In every case these reading lists will be supplemented by others you will receive in lectures or tutorials, and there is no attempt here at comprehensive coverage. At some London colleges, students on the B.A. degree do not begin to study for their finals papers until their second year. In that case, the main interest of this guide for first year students will be the contents of part one, together with the overview it gives of their second and third years. However it is hoped that students will use this guide throughout their whole course. The rest of this chapter offers guidance on reading philosophy; writing essays; constructing a bibliography; avoiding plagiarism; and how to get hold of books and articles.. 1 Reading Philosophy At no stage in one’s career is reading philosophy easy. Some people claim to read philosophy for pleasure. Wittgenstein is reported to have said that he found reading some philosophy ‘a kind of agony’. Many people are inclined to agree with this. Whatever good intentions philosophers have to make their works clear, accessible, and fun to read, the result is rarely any better than more dull and dense prose with a few corny jokes. Remember that you read philosophy not for the pleasure of the moment, but for what you can come away with. It is important, then, that you make your reading of philosophy as efficient and rewarding as possible. In order to do this you must maintain a sympathetic but critical attitude to the text. This can often be best achieved by approaching the text with a number of general questions in mind. Normally you will not have got everything you could have out of the text until you can answer the following questions.. A. WHAT CONCLUSION DOES THE AUTHOR WISH TO REACH? It is very rare that you will be asked to read a piece in which the author is not arguing for or against a certain thesis or conclusion. (The conclusion might even be ‘no conclusion can be reached on this topic’.) Understanding what that conclusion or thesis is will be the first and most important step in understanding the reading..

(8) 2 Study Guide. B. WHY IS THAT CONCLUSION INTERESTING? Of course, the conclusion may not seem very interesting to you, at least not at first. But, you hope, the conclusion should be interesting to its author. In what way? Does it contradict common sense? Or the view of some great philosopher of the past? Or some contemporary rival? Generally speaking, philosophers are writing to convince some people who hold a certain view. Who are those people and what is the view? Another way of thinking about this is to ask yourself why you think you have been set the reading, or why it appears on a reading list. What philosophical problem does it bear on, and how? What else that you know about does it connect with?. C. WHAT IS THE ARGUMENT? This is often the most difficult part. A thesis, generally, is not merely asserted, but argued for. To identify the argument is to determine what premisses or assumptions are being used, and to determine what logical inferences are being made. Philosophers are often very inexplicit about this. Certain premisses will be taken for granted and so not even mentioned. Many different arguments might be used, but not properly distinguished. Identifying the argument or arguments, then, often requires great imaginative and forensic skill, but is indispensable for a real understanding of the text.. D. IS THE ARGUMENT VALID IN ITS OWN TERMS? This question is really seamless with the last. If you think that you have identified the argument, but it is flagrantly invalid, then think again. Perhaps you have misunderstood something. Many readers apply a principle of hostility to philosophical texts, thinking that it is obvious that there must be a serious mistake somewhere, all one need do is identify it. A better tactic is to apply a principle of charity instead. If the argument seems flawed try to think of ways in which it can be repaired. The task here is not one of literal interpretation of the text, but of constructing the strongest line of thought available from the text. This is where some of the best, and most creative, philosophical work is to be done. Even with your best efforts, however, not all arguments can be rescued. The most common way of showing the invalidity of an argument is to find a counterexample. A counter-example to the argument is a case in which the premisses are true but the conclusion false. This shows that the argument is logically invalid, and the next task is to identify the particular logical mistake made. More often, counter-examples can be attempted to the main thesis, rather than the argument. If an author claims that all F’s are G, rack your brains to see if you can think of an F that is not a G. If you can, you have found a counterexample and (if it is genuine) you have refuted the thesis. Another common defect in philosophical arguments is equivocation, where an author uses a term in more than one sense, and the argument only goes through because this ambiguity is ignored. This can be very hard (so very rewarding) to detect. In all this, remember that the philosophically mature and responsible attitude is that understanding must precede criticism..

(9) A Guide to Study 3. E. SHOULD THE PREMISSES OF THE ARGUMENT BE ACCEPTED? Even if the argument is valid in its own terms, you might still want to reject the conclusion, perhaps because you have found a counter-example to it, or because it conflicts with something else you believe. It might even contradict something else the author has said elsewhere. At this point your strategy is to examine the premisses or assumptions of the argument. Are they true, or are there counterexamples to one or more of these? Or perhaps there are other reasons for rejecting them. If the argument relies on false premisses, then it doesn’t prove anything.. F. IF WE ACCEPT THE ARGUMENT AND CONCLUSION, WHAT ELSE FOLLOWS? Sometimes philosophers are explicit about the further implications of their view. Often they are not. If not, here is your own chance for real originality.. G. FINALLY: A CAUTION These notes are intended to help you read philosophy. But not all you read can be approached through these questions. Sometimes philosophers present views without argument. Sometimes they present arguments apparently without views. Some philosophers think that the governing assumption of these notes, that philosophy requires arguments for conclusions, is a vulgar mistake, and real philosophy requires something else. In all such cases, following this guide to the letter will lead only to frustration. But you can still apply the spirit: approach the text in a sympathetic but critical way; try to determine why the text is thought to be philosophically interesting; try to work out how it connects with other things you know about. Don’t just read: think.. 2 Writing Philosophy Peter Lipton ‘Style is the feather in the arrow, not the feather in the cap’. A. AWKWARDNESS Awkward writing makes the reader uncomfortable. It is ungrammatical, unclear, choppy, or just too difficult to follow. One cause of awkward writing is not using your own words. Instead, you rely on the phrases and constructions of the author you are discussing. The resulting mixture of your author’s style and your own is almost always awkward. Even if you are describing someone else’s views, use your own words. The most general and important cause of awkwardness, however, is simply the failure to revise. Most writers produce awkward sentences the first time around; good writers take the time to review their writing and know how to spot awkwardness and how to eliminate it. You should assume that the first draft of each sentence will have to be fixed up. Writing on a word processor may make this revision easier and less time-consuming. The best way to test for awkwardness is to read your draft out loud. Most people have a better ear than eye, and if it sounds good it will usually read well. If you do have any doubts about your ear, Strunk and White, Elements of Style is a good guide to awkwardness..

(10) 4 Study Guide. B. EMPATHY Once you understand something, it is difficult to remember what it was like not to understand it; but you have to do this to get your point across. To write effectively you must put yourself in the reader’s shoes. (Pretend that your reader is a friend not in the class rather than the teacher.) The reader cannot read your mind and she hasn’t just spent five hours thinking about your topic. So she needs plenty of help. Don’t just make your point, explain it. Give an example. Approach it from several angles. Above all, keep your writing concrete, even in as abstract a subject as philosophy because abstract writing loses the reader. In addition to keeping your reader on board, empathy helps you to figure out what it will take to convince her that what you write is true. You already believe yourself, but your reader needs an argument. Think of yourself as selling your point of view, or as defending yourself in front of a jury.. C. CHOREOGRAPHY An essay is not a list of sentences: it has structure. The structure should be obvious to the reader. Write informative introductions and conclusions. The introduction should not only introduce the topic, it should introduce your argument. That means that you should tell the reader what you are going to prove and how your are going to prove it. Unless the introduction gives the reader a clear map of the essay, she is likely to get lost. Be direct and specific. Replace sentences like ‘Throughout the centuries, the greatest minds have pondered the intractable problem of free will’ with ‘In this essay, I will show that free will is impossible’. The conclusion of the essay should tell the reader what has been accomplished and why the struggle was worthwhile. It should remind the reader how the different moves in the body of the essay fit together to form a coherent argument. Think of your essay as composed of a series of descriptive and argumentative moves. Each major move deserves a paragraph. Generally speaking, a paragraph should start with a transition sentence or a topic sentence. A transition sentence indicates how the paragraph follows from the previous one; a topic sentence says what the paragraph is about. Both types of sentences are really miniature maps. In the middle of a paragraph you may want to give another map, explaining how the move you are making here is connected to others you have made or will make. The order of your paragraphs is crucial. The reader should have a clear sense of development and progress as she reads. Later paragraphs should build on what has come before, and the reader should have a feeling of steady forward motion. To achieve this effect, you must make sure that your sentences hang together. Think about glue. You can get glue from maps, from transition sentences and words, and especially from the logic of your argument.. D. ORIGINALITY There is room for originality even when you are out to give an accurate description of someone else’s position. You can be original by using your own words, your own explanations, and your own examples. Of course in a critical essay there is much more scope for original work; most of the arguments should be your own. This worries some beginning philosophy students, who think they don’t know how to come up with their own arguments. Do not deceive yourself: Plato did not use up all the good and easy moves, nor do you have to be a Plato to.

(11) A Guide to Study 5. come up with original philosophy. It is difficult to teach creativity, but here are three techniques that may help. First, make distinctions. For example, instead of talking about knowledge in general, distinguish knowledge based on what others tell you from knowledge based on your own observation. Often, once you make a good distinction, you will see a fruitful and original line of argument. Second, consider comebacks. If you make an objection to one of Plato’s arguments, do not suppose that he would immediately admit defeat. Instead, make a reply on his behalf: the resulting ‘dialectic’ will help you with your own arguments. Lastly, play the why game. As you learned as a child, whatever someone says, you can always ask why. Play that game with your own claims. By forcing yourself to answer a few of those ‘whys’ you will push your own creativity. The technique of the why game suggest a more general point. Often the problem is not lack of originality; it is rather that the originality is not exploited. When you have a good point, don’t throw it away in one sentence. Make the most of it: explain it, extend it, give an example, and show connections. Push your own good ideas as deep as they will go. © Peter Lipton.. 3 Style Sheet for Bibliographical References There are several sets of conventions for referring to articles, journals, books, etc. The most commonly used method at the moment is the ‘Harvard method’. This section describes how to format a bibliography of works according to the Harvard method, and how to refer to those works from within one’s text.. A. THE FORMAT FOR A BIBLIOGRAPHY For a bibliography of works referred to, set them out in alphabetical order (by author’s surname) where more than one work by an author is listed, order them chronologically. The year of publication is cited immediately after the author’s name. If there is more than one work by the same author in the same year, use ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, etc. at the end of the year to differentiate them. Titles of books and journals should be in italics; titles of articles should be in single quotation marks. Place of publication and publisher should be included (for books) as should page numbers of articles in journals. Examples Dancy, J. (1985) Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Davidson, D. (1976) ‘Hume’s Cognitive Theory of Pride’, reprinted in Davidson 1980, pp. 277-290. Davidson, D. (1980) Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. James, W. (1897) The Will to Believe. New York: Dover Publications, 1956. Kitcher, P. (1984a) ‘A Priori Knowledge’, in The Philosophical Review 89, pp. 3-23. Kitcher, P. (1984b) ‘Species’, in Philosophy of Science 51, pp. 308-333. Oakley, J. (1992) Emotion. London: Routledge. Taylor, G. (1985) Pride, Shame and Guilt. Oxford: Clarendon Press.. B. HOW TO REFER TO WORKS WITHIN ONE’S TEXT References within the text to a work take the following form: (Kitcher 1984, p. 20). If it is clear from the context which author is being discussed, the reference can be abbreviated to (1984, p. 20); if it is also clear which work is discussed, all that is needed is the page reference (p. 20)..

(12) 6 Study Guide. Examples There has been much recent philosophical discussion of the emotions (Oakley 1992; Taylor 1985). Philosophers have attempted to provide characterisations of the type of mental entity that emotions are; in addition, they have offered analyses of particular emotions, such as love, jealousy, pride and fear. Gabriele Taylor has made a study of the ‘emotions of self assessment’, which include pride, shame and guilt (1985). In her study she takes issue with Davidson’s (1976) well-known cognitive theory of pride. She rejects Davidson’s account for its insistence on ‘a form of rationality... which is not necessary for an understanding... of the emotional experience in question’ (Taylor 1985, p. 5).. 4 Plagiarism Any work guilty of plagiarism will lead to a failing grade on that paper, and likely disqualification by the University. To avoid this possibility please bear in mind when presubmitting work: 1. Direct quotations should be in quotation marks, with reference to the source, including page numbers. 2. Indirect/paraphrased quotations and borrowed ideas should be acknowledged by means of a reference. 3. A full bibliography of work consulted and used should be appended to the essay. Below is attached an example of what is, and what is not, plagiarism, prepared by Richard Dennis of the Geography Department at UCL. If you are concerned about this in your own work, please discuss the matter with your tutor or Departmental Tutor.. AN EXAMPLE: OBSERVATIONS ON CLASS STRUGGLE Richard Dennis 1. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.. THIS IS PLAGIARISM. THERE IS NO ATTEMPT TO INDICATE THAT THESE ARE NOT RICHARD DENNIS’S OWN THOUGHTS BUT ARE WORDS TAKEN DIRECT FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO. 2.. Marx and Engels noted that the history of all hitherto existing society had been the history of class struggles. Society as a whole was more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. They observed that proletarians had nothing to lose but their chains. They had a world to win.. THIS IS STILL PLAGIARISM. ALTHOUGH THE IDEAS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO MARX AND ENGELS, THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT THE FORM OF WORDS IS NOT RICHARD DENNIS’S. JUST CHANGING IT INTO THE PAST TENSE DOESN’T MAKE IT ORIGINAL..

(13) A Guide to Study 7 3.. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (1973 edn., p. 40) noted that ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles’. They argued that society was ‘more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat’ (p. 41). ‘Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory’ were ‘organised like soldiers ... slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State’ (p. 52). They concluded that ‘The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win’ (p. 96).. THIS IS NOT PLAGIARISM, BUT IF ALL YOUR ESSAY CONSISTS OF IS A SET OF QUOTATIONS STITCHED TOGETHER, IT DOESN’T SUGGEST THAT YOU HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT OR UNDERSTOOD THE CONTENTS OF THE QUOTATIONS. SO RICHARD DENNIS WOULDN’T EARN VERY MANY MARKS FROM ME FOR THIS EFFORT! 4.. In one of the most famous first sentences ever written, Marx and Engels (1973 edn., p 40) began The Communist Manifesto thus: ‘The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.’ They went on to exemplify this claim by showing how the structure of society had, in their view, developed into two interdependent but antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. The latter comprised factory operatives, who had been reduced to no more than slave labour; but as they became concentrated geographically, in the great factory towns of the industrial revolution, so they had the opportunity to organise themselves politically. Hence, the authors’ conclusion that a communist revolution was not only desirable, but possible, leading them to issue their equally famous final exhortation (p. 96): ‘WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!’. THIS MAY NOT BE A VERY PROFOUND COMMENTARY, BUT AT LEAST I’VE TRIED! © Richard Dennis 1989. 5 General Works and Series in Philosophy One of the most noticeable trends in Philosophy publishing in recent years is the proliferation of books aimed directly at students. This is, of course, driven by thought that if a book gets on an ‘essential purchase’ list then it will make quite a lot of money for the publisher, but it does mean that publishers have started to do more to produce philosophy books that are both readable and useful, which once looked like an endangered species. For the most part these books have been produced in series, with the idea that books in the same series should have been written at the same level and in the same style, so one always knows what one is getting. Inevitably, though, there will be variations in quality. Many of these books are recommended at various places in this Study Guide. Look out for: Routledge Arguments of The Philosophers. This is a series of monographs on individual philosophers (or close-linked schools) in most cases trying to cover the entire range of the philosopher’s work. The series is almost complete, and most of the major figures in the canon are covered. The books are generally of a very high standard. Oxford Readings in Philosophy. Another older series, in which a dozen or so major papers in an area are reprinted, with an Introduction by the editor. The series began in the 1960’s, and many but not all of the earliest volumes are now out of print. In general the more recent volumes are narrower in focus than the earlier ones, and as a whole the series is very highly recommended as a guide to some of the most influential papers in analytic philosophy. The Blackwell Philosopher Dictionaries. These books take key terms from a particular thinker and explain them. So if you want to know what Hobbes meant by ‘covenant’ or Descartes.

(14) 8 Study Guide by ‘substance’ look at the Hobbes Dictionary or the Descartes Dictionary respectively. They are not meant to be read as continuous works, but can provide excellent background material. Cambridge Companions. These are multi-authored collections, with about 15 essays on different aspects of a particular philosophers work, together with biographical and bibliographical information. Coverage is very wide and the series will probably be complete soon. Generally they are edited to a very high standard, and are reliable and informative. Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. These take a particular subject area (Ethics, Philosophy of Mind, etc.) and provide a large number of articles on varying areas and sub-areas within the field. These vary substantially in format, and in some cases in the quality of the entry within a volume. However they can be a great deal of help. The volume entitled The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy, edd. Nicholas Bunnin and E.P. Tsui-James, contains entries both on areas of philosophy which broadly coincide with finals papers, and on particular Philosophers. If you still have to rely on this when you get to finals then you are in trouble, but it provides excellent introductions to areas and thinkers, and should help guide choice of finals options. Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks. A fairly new series aimed at providing clear and reliable commentaries on the major works in the western tradition. Philosophy: A Guide Through The Subject ed A. Grayling. Not really a series, although a second volume is in production. Sometimes called ‘The Yellow Pages’ although at the time of writing it is not known what the colour of the cover of the second volume will be. The book was written expressly as a multi-authored textbook for people studying for the London External BA, which bears a striking resemblance to the Internal BA, so the book will be particularly useful to students of Philosophy in London. Volume 1 covers the compulsory papers and some options, and Volume 2 most of the remaining options. It aims to be introductory, but not all contributions have achieved this: some will not be easily understood by first and second year students. However all the articles are extremely valuable and close study will be rewarded. Those particularly recommended are mentioned throughout this Study Guide. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards. Eight Volumes. This was for a long time the standard Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and should be in all major libraries. The great majority of individuals who own it took it as their introductory offer to an American book club. It is fine piece of work, although as it is now 30 years old it records the subject as it was, rather than as it is. Nevertheless many of the entries are still very much worth reading. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Craig. This is ten volumes long and is intended to replace Edwards as the standard work. The work is also available on CDROM, so some universities may have it networked, and there is now a web-based editions. Routledge have recently published a concise edition, though this will be a lot less useful.. 6 All the Books in the World Looking for books can be time-consuming and frustrating. All the philosophy journals you will need are stocked in College libraries and in Senate House; copies of the major journals are also available from departmental libraries. Many of the books you will need will be in heavy demand so it is important that you are able to explore several possibilities in trying to find a book. Sometimes you may need or wish to buy a book rather than borrow it from the library. The list of shops below includes those which deal in second-hand copies. The manner in which one can gain access to reading material has altered radically over the period since this guide was first produced, and may well change beyond recognition before the next edition. It still remains the case that first port.

(15) A Guide to Study 9. of call for both journals and books will be the college or University library, and as ever getting hold of the book or journal issue desired can be a time-consuming and frustrating business. However, access to journals and means of purchasing new and second hand books has been changed entirely by the continuing expansion of the World Wide Web. First, most of you will have access to online library catalogues throughout the world—these offer a way of determining the complete publishing details of hard to find volumes or journals. Second, many of you will have access on line to the Philosophers’ Index or other such bibliographical aids which enable you to search for relevant material on any subject. Third, and perhaps most useful, there are various online stores of humanities journals which are accessible if one’s college or university pays the appropriate subscription. For anything published in a journal at least seven years ago, by the far quickest way to track down the original journal version and to have a copy of it is to use an online store such as JSTOR (for more details see below). As physical bookstores decline and for the chains become extended coffee shops and for the specialist and second-hand dealer simply become non-existent, the web becomes yet more essential for tracking down your own copy of something. Various web sites enable you to compare prices for new books—in the UK no VAT is levied on books, so you can import from other countries without fear of surcharge. This web has taken serendipity out of hunting for rare second hand editions, but in its place you now can survey the globe to find long out of print items.. A. LIBRARIES There is a College Library with a Philosophy collection at each of the colleges. In addition, Senate House lodges the University of London Library which has a fairly comprehensive collection of philosophy books and periodicals. Some of the departments also possess a departmental library but this is normally of very limited stock. In general, undergraduates will only have limited access to libraries at other colleges, with the possibility of using them for reference but not for borrowing. Post-graduate students are often able to join a library at another college with a letter from their supervisor. All departmental libraries are restricted to the members of the respective colleges. Each department is anxious to make library provision as effective as possible. To do this, we need to know of any difficulties. In particular, it is important to find out if there are books regularly assigned by tutors not available in any of the University of London libraries. Students are encouraged to let their department know of any deficiency in their College or Departmental Library or in Senate House. Note that Inter-Library loans are possible. If a student cannot otherwise obtain a book, the book can be borrowed from another library in the British Isles Library System, by filling in a form at the Main Issue Desk. (This does, of course, take rather a long time.. B. VIRTUAL LIBRARIES In addition to library online catalogues, and the British Library, www.bl.uk, also look out for:.

(16) 10 Study Guide. Philosophers’ Index. This is published every quarter with listings of all English language philosophy publications including bibliographical details and an abstract. Colleges and universities often provide electronic access to this. JSTOR This is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and includes a complete store of many humanities journals from their inception. Currently it provides access to the following philosophy journals: Ethics; Journal of Philosophy; Journal of Symbolic Logic; Mind; Nous and Philosophical Perspectives; Philosophical Quarterly; Philosophical Review; Philosophy and Phenomenological Research; Philosophy and Public Affairs. At present it does not provide access to current issues but only up until 1992 in one case and 1994 for most of these journals. However mode of access is currently under re-negotiation. JSTOR contains compressed images of each page of these journals, together with a searchable electronic index of all contained material (both bibliographical and full text). Any article can be downloaded (with permission only once) for printing. INGENTA This is a commercial store of various humanities and science journals which provides access to current issues of journals which your university subscribes to. Articles are made available through Adobe Acrobat pdf format; and the bibliographical information is fully searchable. Currently this does not provide access to various of the independent American journals such as Ethics, Philosophical Review, and Philosophy and Public Affairs. At UK universities access to Ingenta is normally provided through the Bath Information and Data Services web site www.bids.ac.uk. Access is normally provided both from college-based networked computers and from personal systems via the use of password control using ATHENS. POESIS This is a similar resource to Ingenta, but provided through a joint venture of a commercial company Intelex Corp. and the Philosophy Documentation Center (who produce Philosophers’ Index). You can find out which services are available to you and how you gain access from your college or university library.. C. BOOKSHOPS i. Second-hand ULU run regular book fairs which are well-advertised, and are a good source for textbooks. Skoob Books Ltd, 15 Sicilian Avenue (between Southampton Row & Bloomsbury Square) has an extensive selection of second-hand philosophy books, from review copies of recent volumes to the truly bizarre. 10% discount for all students with a student card. Unsworth, Rice & Coe, 12 Bloomsbury St. (also Turl Street, Oxford) offer an interesting and varied selection of philosophy books. Waterstone’s, 82 Gower St. has a large philosophy section in its second-hand department on the first floor. Judd St. Books. Marchmont Street, Another useful selection of second-hand and remaindered books. Bloomsbury Books, Bury Place. This has quite a large selection of philosophy, but it is also somewhat more expensive than some of the alternatives..

(17) A Guide to Study 11. If you feel you have a lot of time to waste, the various second-hand bookshops on Charing Cross Rd. stock the odd philosophy book, almost by accident.. ii. New Books For when a book is too new, too popular or too obscure to turn up in the secondhand bookshops, or for when you are feeling particularly flush: Waterstone’s, 82 Gower St, 3rd floor, still the main academic bookshop in London. Also look at their branch in Charing Cross Rd., first floor, a reasonable selection, particularly for continental philosophy, & some interesting oddities. Blackwell’s Book Shop, 100 Charing Cross Road Nowhere near as large or comprehensive as the original Oxford store, but still has a reasonable selection. Borders, 203-207 Oxford Street, 1st floor, has a more than reasonable, if slightly cramped, selection of philosophy books. W. & G. Foyle, 119 Charing Cross Rd. 3rd floor, a similar selection of philosophy books to Waterstone’s, although notably fewer, organised by author.. iii. Out of Town If you wish to travel in search of books (dedication indeed), the best selection of philosophy books for sale can be found at: B.H. Blackwell’s, 50 Broad St. Oxford, basement, this has a comprehensive selection of philosophy books in print, and a substantial, but expensive selection of second-hand books. Heffer’s, Cambridge, basement, less comprehensive than Blackwell’s in Oxford (and now owned by them) but still useful. Galloway & Porter, Cambridge, first floor, a good selection of second-hand & remaindered philosophy books. Great Expectations, 2071 Foster St, Evanston, Illinois, USA; tel: (708) 864 3881, possibly the largest selection of new philosophy books, in and out of print. If you cannot manage to hop a ride on the El. you can write to or phone them and place an order, packaging and airmail are only a slight addition to the American price of books which is still marginally lower than the UK price.. iv. The Virtual Bookstore Currently (December 2000) the most obvious stopping off points on the web are: Amazon: www.amazon.com and www.amazon.co.uk. Comprehensive provision of books in print, but rarely the cheapest. Blackwell’s: www.blackwells.co.uk for general web site, bookshop.blackwell.co.uk takes one directly into the bookshop at the moment. Currently do not charge postage within the UK. Waterstone’s: www.waterstones.co.uk. Online version of the store. Bertelsman: www.bol.com One of the largest (German based) publishing conglomerates. May provide discounts on books that others don’t, but do charge postage. Barnes & Noble: Big American bookstore similar in scope and charging to Amazon, www.bn.com.. For second hand books look at: Alibris: www.alibris.com Bibliofind: www.bibliofind.com. Both of these are large conglomerates of second-hand bookstores across the world from which you can search for books. Both Amazon and Barnes and Noble also offer booksearch facilities..

(18) 2. Logic & Metaphysics. 1 The Paper The Logic and Metaphysics paper covers many of the central problems of philosophy. Do not be misled by the occurrence of the word ‘logic’ in the title of the paper: it is not primarily about formal logic (the sort of thing you will have learned in your first year) but about what is sometimes called ‘Philosophical Logic’. Philosophical Logic is about philosophical problems that arise in reflecting on logic, and in applying logic to the following areas: the analysis of reasoning (e.g. validity, conditionals); the study of aspects of natural language (e.g. names, descriptions); the treatment of certain traditional metaphysical problems (e.g. truth, existence, necessity). You are expected, of course, to know the basics of elementary logic: the propositional calculus and predicate calculus. You should understand the truthfunctional account of the sentential connectives (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘if...then...’ and ‘if and only if ’) and how to use truth-tables to test for validity. You should have an understanding of the existential and universal quantifiers, and the notion of a variable, and you should also know how the propositional and predicate calculi can be supplemented by the modal operators ‘necessarily’ and ‘possibly’. In short, the course assumes as much logic as is contained in an elementary logic textbook such as Hodges’s Logic, (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977), or Guttenplan’s Languages of Logic, (2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997). (A useful handbook that summarises the main elements of predicate logic and set theory is John Pollock, Technical Methods in Philosophy, (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990).) What about metaphysics? Like many terms in philosophy, the term ‘metaphysics’ does not have one clear and uncontroversial definition. The term originally derives from the name of Aristotle’s Metaphysics which was so-called because it came straight after his Physics in the ordering of his works. These days, metaphysics is normally taken to cover very general questions about what there is and how the world works: questions about substance, identity, universals, time and causation, for instance. Many of the problems addressed will be familiar from the study of the history of philosophy, particularly from those philosophers found in the Modern Philosophy paper. The way in which many of these subjects are treated in contemporary philosophy means that there is considerable overlap of issues in the philosophy of logic and metaphysics as conceived by the philosophers of the Modern period. (This is particularly obvious in the issues concerning necessity, truth, realism, essence, identity and existence.) Given this, it is not really possible to draw a sharp line between what is ‘logic’ and what is ‘metaphysics’, and the paper is not divided into sections..

(19) LOGIC & METAPHYSICS 13. 2 General Reading Anthologies Martinich, A. P. ed. 1990. The Philosophy of Language, 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. All the essays in §3 and §4 are central to the philosophy of language aspects of the course. Moore, A. W. ed. 1993. Meaning and Reference. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Useful collection of classic papers and more up-to-date works on the philosophy of language. Hughes, R. I. G. ed. 1993. A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic. Indianapolis: Hackett. Contains many important papers on the philosophy of logic. Strawson, P. F. ed. 1967. Philosophical Logic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Contains many classic papers on the philosophy of logic and language. Frege, G. 1997. The Frege Reader. Trans., and ed., M. Beaney. Oxford: Blackwell. Quine, W.V. 1953. From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. A very useful collection of papers by one of the most influential philosophers and logicians of the twentieth century. LePoidevin, R., and M. MacBeath. eds. 1993. The Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Very useful collection of papers on the philosophy of time. Sosa, E., and M. Tooley. eds. 1993. Causation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Contains many of the classic papers on causation, some of which are also relevant to the Epistemology and Methodology paper. Mellor, D. H., and Alex Oliver. eds. 1997. Properties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. A collection of many essential papers on universals and properties. Grayling, A. C. ed. 1995. Philosophy: a Guide Through the Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press. The chapter on Metaphysics gives introductions to the problems of causation, time, universals and substance; the chapter on Philosophical Logic introduces many of the issues mentioned under ‘Language and Logic’ below. van Inwagen P., and D. W. Zimmerman, eds. 1998 . Metaphysics: the Big Questions. Oxford: Blackwell.. Books Sainsbury, Mark. 1991. Logical Forms: an Introduction to Philosophical Logic. Oxford: Blackwell. Good introduction to the main areas of the philosophy of logic, with useful exercises. Kripke, Saul. 1980. Naming & Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell. Essential reading. McCulloch, G. 1989. The Game of the Name: Introducing Logic, Language and Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chapters 1-4. Good introduction to the ideas of Frege and Russell. Haack, Susan. 1978. Philosophy of Logics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Some good surveys; worth looking at. Blackburn, S. 1984. Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quite advanced introduction to the philosophy of language, containing many of the author’s own views. van Inwagen, P. 1993. Metaphysics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. An excellent introduction to metaphysics.. 3 Topics A. LANGUAGE & LOGIC i. Sense and reference How does language relate to reality? How is it that words can be about things or refer to things? Referring expressions or singular terms, expressions which pick out a particular object, are normally divided into three categories: proper names (‘Julius Caesar’, ‘Rome’), descriptions (‘the conqueror of Gaul’) and demonstratives (‘this’, ‘that’, ‘that fish’, ‘this emperor’). Names and descriptions need to be treated.

(20) 14 STUDY GUIDE. separately. (Demonstratives are treated in the philosophy of language section of this Guide.) The main reading for this topic is contained in the anthologies edited by Martinich and Moore mentioned above; there is an excellent introductory essay in sections 1 & 2 of Mark Sainsbury, ‘Philosophical Logic’, in A. C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy. An essential theme is Frege’s classic theory of sense and reference. Frege thought that there are two aspects to the meaning of any term: its reference (what it applies to in the world) and its sense (the way in which the term presents its reference). So the two terms ‘Julius Caesar’ and ‘the Roman conqueror of Gaul’ have the same reference but different senses. See Frege, ‘On Sense and Reference’, in the Frege Reader, reprinted in Moore and in Martinich. See also Michael Dummett, ‘Frege’s Distinction Between Sense and Reference’, in Moore and in Dummett’s Truth and Other Enigmas, (London: Duckworth, 1978). For discussion, see Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), chapter 1; Greg McCulloch, The Game of the Name, chapters 1&5; David Bell, ‘Reference and Sense: an Epitome’, in C. Wright, ed., Frege: Tradition and Influence, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984) and ‘How “Russellian” was Frege?’, Mind 99 (1990): 267-277; and Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, (London: Duckworth, 1981) chapters 1, 5 & 6. For more on Frege see the section Philosophies of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein in this guide.. ii. Descriptions Descriptions can be divided into two kinds: definite (‘the emperor’) and indefinite (‘an emperor’). Most philosophical debate has centred upon definite descriptions. Russell argued that the logical form of sentences containing definite descriptions is that of existentially quantified sentences. The logical form of ‘The F is G’ is: there is exactly one F which is G. See the essays by Russell in Martinich and Moore, and L. Linsky, Referring, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967) for an exposition. Section 2 of Mark Sainsbury, ‘Philosophical Logic’ in A. C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy, is an excellent introduction. Russell’s theory has been influentially criticised by P. F. Strawson, ‘On Referring’, (in Martinich and in Moore) and Keith Donnellan, ‘Reference and Definite Descriptions’, (in Martinich). Kripke attacks Donnellan’s criticism of Russell in ‘Speaker’s Reference and Semantic Reference’, (in Martinich). In a more advanced but readable study, Stephen Neale, Descriptions, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990) has defended Russell (see especially chapters 1-2). McCulloch (chapters 2-3) gives a good introduction. See also Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982) chs. 2 and 9.3. For a discussion of what Russell’s original paper was attempting to do, see Peter Hylton, ‘The Significance of “On Denoting”’, in Hughes, ed., A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic.. iii. Names Both Frege and Russell are often attributed the view that names have, in some sense, descriptive meaning: e.g. the meaning of the name ‘Julius Caesar’ may be given by the description, ‘the Roman conqueror of Gaul’. This thesis was brilliantly criticised by Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980). Despite the apparently narrow range of the topic, Kripke’s work has had a deep effect on many areas of philosophy. The whole book is essential reading. (Bear in mind that one could consistently hold Kripke’s views on names together with Russell’s view on descriptions.) For an introduction to this issue, see section 1 of.

(21) LOGIC & METAPHYSICS 15. Mark Sainsbury, ‘Philosophical Logic’, in A. C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy. For discussion of Kripke, see McCulloch, chapter 4; and Evans, ‘The Causal Theory of Names’, in Moore and in Martinich. More advanced discussion can be found in Evans’s, The Varieties of Reference, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch. 11; and in M. Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language, (London: Duckworth, 1981), appendix to Ch.5.. iv. Conditionals Conditional statements, those involving ‘if...then...’ constructions, are central to logic and to reasoning in general. But there are many kinds of conditional statement, and there is no clear consensus about how to understand, or even to classify, these different kinds. In propositional logic we learn to translate ‘if...then...’ as the material conditional (symbolised as ‘→’). But this does not seem to capture the meaning of ‘if...then...’ in natural language. For one thing, there are the so-called ‘paradoxes of material implication’: according to the truth-tables for ‘→’, any conditional with a false antecedent is true; and any conditional with a true consequent is true. (The antecedent is the statement before the ‘then’; the consequent is the statement after the ‘then’.) So ‘If the Pope is not Catholic, then Paris is in Italy’ and ‘If Paris is in Italy, then the Pope is Catholic’ both come out true on this interpretation. See Sainsbury, Logical Forms, chapter 3, for a useful introduction. The essays by Grice, Jackson, Stalnaker (essay VII) and Edgington, in F. Jackson, ed., Conditionals, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) are essential further reading. Commonly philosophers draw a distinction between two types of conditionals. Compare ‘If Booth didn’t kill Lincoln, someone else did’ with ‘If Booth hadn’t killed Lincoln, someone else would have’. The former is assertible on the basis simply of knowing that Lincoln was indeed assassinated, while one will assert the latter if one believes in conspiracy theories. The distinction is often marked by talk of ‘indicative’ versus ‘subjunctive’ conditionals or between ‘indicative’ and ‘counterfactual’ conditionals, but these labels are controversial as is the criterion and place to make the division. Modern discussion of ‘counterfactual/subjunctive’ conditionals Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast, (4th ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). Lewis (Counterfactuals, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1973)) and Stalnaker (Essay II in Jackson) give an account of counterfactuals in terms of possible worlds: ‘if it were the case that A, then it would be the case that B’ is analysed as, ‘in the closest possible worlds in which A is true, B is true.’ This analysis has been very influential in other areas (for instance in Nozick’s theory of knowledge: see Epistemology & Methodology). A long and difficult but comprehensive discussion of conditionals, which will also give you an introduction to the controversy about the differences between types of conditional, can be found in Dorothy Edgington, ‘On Conditionals’, Mind 104 (1995): 235-329.. v. Existence What is the logical form of sentences like ‘God exists’? Debate on this question has often focused on the question whether ‘exists’ functions as a logical predicate, like ‘walks’, true of individuals, or should be interpreted as the existential quantifier; the denial that ‘exists’ is a predicate is associated with Kant’s critique of the ontological argument for the existence of God (see his Critique of Pure Reason,.

(22) 16 STUDY GUIDE. translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) A592/B620-A603/B631), and with Frege (see The Foundations of Arithmetic: a Logico-mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number, translated by J. L. Austin (2nd ed. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), p.65); it has recently become popular to question this interpretation. One of the background issues here is the need to make sense of singular negative existential statements, such as ‘Lao Tzu does not exist’. For introduction to these issues see section 3 of Mark Sainsbury, ‘Philosophical Logic’, in A. C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy, and Stephen Williams’s essay ‘Existence’, in J. Kim and E. Sosa, eds., A Companion to Metaphysics, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). On the idea that there is simply a univocal notion of existence associated with the existential quantifier, see Quine, ‘On What There Is’, in From a Logical Point of View; for a contrasting view see Nathan Salmon, ‘Existence’, in James E. Tomberlin, ed., Metaphysics, Philosophical Perspectives 1, (Atascadero, Cal.: Ridgeview, 1987). Gareth Evans, The Varieties of Reference, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), ch.10, contains an invaluable survey of earlier discussions and an important proposal about how to interpret negative singular existential statements (a brief gloss of this is provided in Sainsbury’s essay)—for a contrasting view of empty names see Keith Donnellan, ‘Speaking of Nothing’, Philosophical Review 83 (1974): 3-31. Michael Dummett, ‘Existence’, in his The Seas of Language, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), criticises Evans’s account and defends a Fregean approach to empty names; David Wiggins, in a subtle and difficult paper, ‘The Kant-Frege-Russell View of Existence’, in W SinnotArmstrong, ed., Modality, Morality, and Belief: Essays in Honor of Ruth Barcan Marcus, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), defends the Kant-Frege account of ‘exists’ and combines this with a modification of Evans’s account (an excellent primer for this is Mark Sainsbury’s ‘Names, Fictional Names, And “Really”’: Supplement to the Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society 73, (1999): 243269.) For a survey of the various forms of ontological argument see Graham Oppy, Ontological Arguments & Belief in God, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).. vi. Validity and Entailment The central concept of logic is the concept of a valid argument: an argument in which the truth of the premises in some way guarantees the truth of the conclusion. An argument can be valid without its premises being true; validity demands only that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be. (A sound argument is a valid argument with true premises.) How should we understand validity? For one traditional account see Quine, Philosophy of Logic, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970), chapters 1, 2, and 4. A good general introduction to the issue is Sainsbury, Logical Forms, chapter 1. Also central is Alfred Tarski’s ‘Truth & Proof ’, in Hughes, ed., A Companion to First-Order Logic. for a yet more advanced and partly historical (but nonetheless very clear) treatment, see John Etchemendy, The Concept of Logical Consequence, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990) which challenges Tarski’s account; for one response (of many) see William Hanson, ‘The Concept of Logical Consequence’, Philosophical Review, 106, (1997): 365-409. A related question is the question of what it is for something to entail something else. On the standard interpretations of entailment, anything follows from a.

(23) LOGIC & METAPHYSICS 17. contradiction. Some philosophers have taken this as reason to revise our notion of entailment. For a classic statement of these issues see Peter Geach, ‘Entailment’, in his Logic Matters, (Oxford: Blackwell , 1972) and D. H. Rice, ‘Entailment’, Mind 95 (1986): 345-360. On relevance logic see Stephen Read, Thinking about Logic: an Introduction to the Philosophy of Logic, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994) ch. 6; and of some relevance to this Frank Jackson’s ‘On a Puzzle about Ontological Commitment’, in J. Heil, ed., Cause, Mind, & Reality: Essays Honoring C. B. Martin, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1989).. vii. Alternative Logics For various reasons, philosophers have proposed alternative logics to the standard or ‘classical’ logic that one is taught in elementary logic classes. For an introduction to these difficult issues start with Susan Haack, Philosophy of Logics, chs. 9-11, and her Deviant Logic, Fuzzy Logic: Beyond the Formalism, (Rev. ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). See also M. Sainsbury, Paradoxes, (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Alternative logics may add elements to classical logic or they may subtract them. Three notable ways in which logic may be supplemented include modal logic, which is used to formalise talk of possibility—see further the entry below on modal logic, and the Symbolic Logic section of this Guide; tense logic, to handle means we have in natural language of talking of the past or present—see the entry below on time and tense for more on the philosophical significance of this; and second-order logic which includes quantification over predicate position as well as subject position in sentences—for more on this see the Symbolic Logic section of this Guide, and the entry on Set Theory in the Philosophy of Mathematics section of this Guide. One way in which classical logic may be thinned out is by removing some of its assumptions about what can exist: ‘free’ logics allow for the occurrence of empty terms within well-formed formulae, requiring consequent modifications of the rules for the existential and universal quantifiers. For outlines of various forms of free logic, and their philosophical significance (i.e. to issues of reference, descriptions and existence) see Karel Lambert, ed., Philosophical Applications of Free Logic, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)—in particular, the editor’s introduction and the papers by van Fraasen and Burge. Among other modifications to classical logic: intuitionists refuse to endorse the law of bivalence, that every sentence is determinately true or false—for an introduction to these issues see Michael Dummett, ‘The Philosophical Basis of Intuitionistic Logic’, in his Truth & Other Enigmas, (London: Duckworth, 1978) and also the reading later in this section under Realism, Idealism, and Anti-Realism; quantum logicians deny the distributive law for disjunction, for an introduction to this see Hilary Putnam’s ‘Is Logic Empirical?’, in his Mathematics, Matter & Method, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); and paraconsistent logics even allow for the truth of contradictions: for this see T. Smiley and G. Priest, ‘Can contradictions be true?’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 67 (1993): 17-33, 35-54. For scepticism about alternative logics, see Quine, Philosophy of Logic, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970) chapter 6. One of the main motivations philosophers have found for endorsing nonclassical logic has been the problems posed by vagueness in natural language; for.

(24) 18 STUDY GUIDE. reading on these matters see the section immediately below.. viii. Vagueness Many people think that logic should be able to accommodate vague predicates (like ‘bald’ and ‘heap’) and that this gives us a reason for departing from classical logic. See Sainsbury, Paradoxes, (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) chapter 2, for an introduction to supervaluationist and degree-theoretic approaches to the problem of vagueness, and T. Williamson, ‘Vagueness and Ignorance’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 66 (1992): 145-162, for the view that vagueness need not require giving up classical logic. See also Williamson’s book Vagueness, (London: Routledge, 1994) for an exhaustive survey of approaches to the problem since ancient times and Williamson’s own solution to it. A good critique of Williamson is Mark Sainsbury’s ‘Vagueness, Ignorance, and Margin for Error’, British Journal of Philosophy of Science 46 (1995): 589-601. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Supp. Vol. 33 (1995), contains a number of important essays on vagueness including essays by Sainsbury, Tye, Wright, and Williamson. One important sub-debate in this area is whether there can be vague objects: for an argument that there cannot be see Gareth Evans’s short (one page) paper in Analysis 38 (1978): 208, reprinted in his Collected Papers, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); this issue is discussed by Williamson in his book, and by Sainsbury in the above mentioned article; see also Terence Parsons and Peter Woodruff, ‘Wordly Indeterminacy of Identity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 95 (1995): 171-191. An indispensible collection is R. Keefe and P. Smith, eds., Vagueness: a Reader, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1997).. B. TRUTH & OBJECTIVITY i. Theories of truth What is truth? That is, what is it for something to be true (or false)? A preliminary question is: what sorts of things are true or false? What, for instance, should we understand the ps and qs in our truth-tables to be standing in for? Some candidates for ‘truth-bearers’ are sentences, statements, propositions, assertions, beliefs or judgements. A useful discussion is E. J. Lemmon, ‘Sentences, Statements and Propositions’, in B. Williams, ed., British Analytic Philosophy, (Routledge & K. Paul, 1966). See also Strawson, ‘On Referring’, in Moore, ed., Meaning and Reference, and Richard Cartwright, ‘Propositions’, in his Philosophical Essays, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). For the bearing of these questions on logic, Richard E. Grandy, ‘What do “Q” and “R” stand for Anyway?’, in Hughes, ed., A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic, is a very useful introduction. The next question is: what is it about a true statement, proposition (or whatever) that makes it true? There are various traditional answers: truth consists in a relation between the proposition and a fact (the correspondence theory); the truth of a proposition consists in its membership of some specified coherent set of propositions or beliefs (the coherence theory); truth just is the property of propositions or beliefs which enables us to succeed in our endeavours (the pragmatic theory); the whole nature of truth can be explained in terms of the principle ‘“P” is true if and only if P’ (the redundancy or ‘minimalist’ theory). For these issues see Blackburn, Spreading the Word, chapters 7-8; Haack, Philosophy of Logics, chap-.

(25) LOGIC & METAPHYSICS 19. ter 7; Paul Horwich, ‘Theories of Truth’, in Hughes, ed., A Philosophical Companion to First-Order Logic; and his book Truth, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990); M. Dummett, ‘Truth’, in Strawson, ed., Philosophical Logic, also reprinted in Dummett’s Truth & Other Enigmas, (London: Duckworth, 1978); and D. Grover, J. Camp, and N. Belnap, ‘A Prosentential Theory of Truth’, Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 73-125, reprinted in Grover’s The Prosentential Theory of Truth, (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992). The anthology, edited by Simon Blackburn and Keith Simmons, Truth, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), contains much useful material, especially on minimalism. In addition to these issues there is the ancient puzzle of the liar sentence, ‘This sentence is false’. For an introduction to the paradox, see Sainsbury, Paradoxes, (2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) chapter 5; for more advanced discussion see the introduction to R. Martin, ed., Recent Essays on Truth & the Liar, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)) and among the difficult but excellent papers collected there, look in particular at those by Kripke, Burge and Parsons. One impact of the liar puzzle was the problem of providing a definition of truth for formal languages. See Tarski, ‘The Semantic Conception of Truth’, in Feigl and Sellars, eds., Readings in Philosophical Analysis, (New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts Inc.,1949)). For an elementary introduction, see section 6 of Mark Sainsbury, ‘Philosophical Logic’, in A. C. Grayling, ed., Philosophy. See also Quine, Philosophy of Logic, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970). Tarski’s theory of truth has inspired a number of different accounts of truth in general, and there is a lively debate over the status and significance of Tarski’s theory of truth for formal languages for an account of the nature of truth in general. For contrasting (rather difficult, but rewarding) treatments see Hartry Field’s ‘Tarski’s Theory Of Truth’, Journal of Philosophy, 69, (1972): 347-375 and Richard Heck, ‘Tarski, Truth, and Semantics’, Philosophical Review 106 (1997): 533-554. Other essential reading on truth includes: F. P. Ramsey, ‘Facts and Propositions,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 27 (1927); reprinted in his collected papers, D. H. Mellor, ed., Philosophical Papers, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Donald Davidson, ‘True to the Facts,’ Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 748-764, reprinted in Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984); Donald Davidson, ‘The Structure and Content of Truth,’ Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 279-328, esp. sections II-III; Crispin Wright, Truth & Objectivity, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992) chapters 1-2; (these last two are quite difficult).. ii. Realism, idealism and anti-realism Is the world independent of our experience of it? Realists hold that it is; idealists and phenomenalists deny that this is so. What arguments can one give against them? Are there other forms of attack on realism? Can we really make sense of a world independent of how we conceive it to be? See A. J. Ayer, ‘Phenomenalism’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 47 (1947): 163-196, reprinted in his Philosophical Essays, (London: Macmillan, 1954), W. V. Quine, ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, in his From a Logical Point of View, (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press,1953), and J. Foster, ‘Berkeley on the Physical World’, in J. Foster, and H. Robinson, eds., Essays on Berkeley: a Ter-.

(26) 20 STUDY GUIDE. centennial Celebration, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), for three rather different discussions all somewhat favourably inclined towards phenomenalism, and I. Berlin, ‘Empirical Propositions and Hypothetical Statements’, in his Concepts & Categories: Philosophical Essays, (London: Hogarth, 1978) for a robust attack on it. Michael Dummett has been influential in framing the questions about realism in a new way: see The Interpretation of Frege’s Philosophy, (London: Duckworth, 1981) ch.20, and ‘Realism & Anti-Realism’, in his The Seas of Language, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); John McDowell, ‘Anti-Realism and the Epistemology of Understanding’, in H. Parret, and J. Bouveresse, eds., Meaning and Understanding, (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981); and Crispin Wright, Truth & Objectivity, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992) esp. chs.1-3. Another influential critic of realism is Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth & History, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981) chs. 1 & 2. Realism is defended by T. Nagel, The View from Nowhere, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) ch. 6. (Beginners will find Nagel and Putnam more accessible than Dummett and McDowell.). iii. Subjective & objective Related to the issue of realism is the question of subjective and objective conceptions of reality. What do the terms ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ really mean? An objective conception of the world is sometimes described as one from a ‘God’s eye point of view’, or from no point of view at all. But is it possible to get a purely objective conception of the world? Are the only real things those which are purely objective? Or does it make sense to suppose that there are subjective ‘facts’? A good introduction is T. Nagel, ‘Subjective & Objective’, in his Mortal Questions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); see also his The View from Nowhere, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) ch. 4; B. Williams, Descartes: the Project of Pure Enquiry (London: Penguin, 1978), ch. 8, pp.236-52, and ch. 10; and A. W. Moore, Points of View, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) especially chs. 1-4. Look at Colin McGinn, The Subjective View: Secondary Qualities and Indexical Thoughts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983) chs. 1-3, 6, and F. Jackson, Perception: a Representative Theory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977) ch. 5 on the subjectivity of so-called secondary qualities (colours, tastes and so on). John McDowell discusses the analogy between secondary qualities and values in ‘Values & Secondary Qualities’, in T. Honderich, ed., Morality & Objectivity: a Tribute to J. L. Mackie, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985). For more on the specific case of colour, see Alex Byrne and David R. Hilbert, eds., Readings on Color, Vol. 1, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997) in particular the papers by Johnston, Broackes, Boghossian & Velleman, and Campbell.. C. MIND & NATURE (For further details on these topics, see the Philosophy of Mind). i. The place of the mind in nature What are we? Are human beings and other creatures with minds simply part of the natural order? Dualists claim that our existence as conscious and rational creatures proves the existence of immaterial substances. Naturalists claim that our lives are as governed by the laws of nature, as are the physical objects with which we interact. Some naturalists are dualists, but chiefly naturalism has come.

(27) LOGIC & METAPHYSICS 21. to be associated with materialism or physicalism, and the rejection of dualism. Influential arguments for dualism are offered by S. Kripke, Naming & Necessity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980) lecture 3, and F. Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’, Philosophical Quarterly 32 (1982): 127-136, reprinted in William G. Lycan, ed., Mind & Cognition: a Reader, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990). Arguments for materialism/physicalism are given by D. Lewis, ‘An Argument for the Identity Theory’, in Journal of Philosophy 63 (1966): 17-25, reprinted in his Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983); and D. Davidson, ‘Mental Events’ & postscript, in his Essays on Actions & Events, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). Strawson argues against the coherence of dualism, ‘Self, Mind & Body’, in his Freedom & Resentment: and Other Essays, (London: Methuen, 1974), but dualism is defended by W. D. Hart, The Engines of the Soul, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) chs. 1-3, and John Foster, The Immaterial Self: a Defence of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind, (London: Routledge, 1996). See also S. Shoemaker, ‘On an Argument for Dualism’, in his Identity, Cause & Mind: Philosophical Essays, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Some physicalists have argued that we will never be able fully to explain consciousness, even though we have good reason to believe that physicalism is true. See Nagel, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, in his Mortal Questions, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) and The View from Nowhere, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986) chs. 2 & 3; and Colin McGinn, ‘Can we Solve the Mind-Body Problem?’ Mind 98 (1989): 349-366, reprinted in his The Problem of Consciousness: Essays Towards a Resolution, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,1991).. ii. Reduction and supervenience There are many different kinds of phenomena, biological, chemical, physical, social and psychological, recognised by the various sciences and by common sense. How are all these phenomena, and the different theories of these phenomena, related? A popular theory earlier in this century was Reductionism, the theory that all sciences reduce to physics (see Nagel, and for recent discussion, Smith). These days the weaker thesis is preferred, that all the non-physical supervenes upon the physical—where X supervenes upon Y if there can be no difference in X without a difference in Y (see Kim and Horgan for discussion). Kim’s Mind in a Physical World: an Essay on the Mind-body Problem and Mental Causation, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998) is a recent defence of reductionism. Nagel, E. 1961. The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Smith, Peter. 1992. ‘Modest Reductions and the Unity of Science’. In D. Charles, and K. Lennon, eds., Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kim, J. 1984. ‘Concepts of Supervenience’. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 45:153-176. Reprinted in Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. ——. 1985. ‘Psychophysical Laws’. In E. Lepore, and B. McLaughlin, eds., Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Reprinted in Supervenience and Mind. ——. 1998. Mind in a Physical World: an Essay on the Mind-body Problem and Mental Causation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Charles, David. 1992. ‘Supervenience, Composition and Physicalism’. In D. Charles, and K. Lennon, eds., Reduction, Explanation and Realism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Papineau, D. 1993. Philosophical Naturalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Ch.1..

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