Barry Stroud

The Quest for Reality

Explores the metaphysical question of the relation between reality and human perceptions, thoughts and beliefs with reference to colours. Posits an absolute independent reality of which knowledge is sought through the testing of beliefs about it, and analyses physicalism and scientific explanation in an attempt to argue that, though colours reality may be rejected, colour cannot be properly referred to or explained through exclusive reference to scientific facts and physicalism or through the language of science since colour is understood as belonging to the realm of psychological facts. Utilises the concepts of perception, thoughts and beliefs in investigating psychological facts, and rejects the possibility of both a direct and an indirect connection between objects of perception and thoughts on the colour of these objects. Presents the argument that the metaphysical question cannot be fully answered in a subjectivist or objectivist manner or through metaphysical error theory, as abstraction from all beliefs about colour is neither possible nor desirable, and outlines the failure of the project of unmasking perceptions of colour. Concludes that disengagement from the world is needed for an answer to the metaphysical question of whether colours are objectively real, but the answer is unattainable.

Hume’s Scepticism: Natural Instincts and Philosophical Reflection

Philosophy for the Greeks was not confined to abstract theory but was also meant as a guide to the living of a good human life. Hume was steeped in the literature of antiquity. I think there is a close kinship between his conception of philosophy and that ancient conception. It is something we tend to miss when we look back at Hume for our own purposes from here and now. I want to try to bring out the connection by identifying what Hume thought philosophical reflection could reveal about human nature, and what he, therefore, thought the point, or the human good, of philosophical reflection can be. His own direction in philosophy took him closest to that way of life said to have been achieved by certain ancient sceptics.

Conventionalism and the indeterminacy of translation

In his early paper ‘Truth by Convention’ Quine asked what the thesis that the truths of logic and mathematics are true by convention comes to — what it means. His unsuccessful attempts to give it a plausible sense showed that the theory is deficient in crucial respects and that therefore the appeal to conventions cannot account for our knowledge in logic and mathematics. He concluded with the remark: We may wonder what one adds to the bare statement that the truths of logic and mathematics are a priori, or to the still barer behavioristic statement that they are firmly accepted, when he characterizes them as true by convention in such a sense. (W of P, p. 99)1 Much of Quine’s subsequent philosophical effort has been to show that conventionalism adds nothing whatever to that barer behavioristic statement.

G. E. Moore

Together with Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore was responsible for the rejection of the idealist philosophy of Bradley and for its replacement in the early years of this century by the distinctive style of analytic philosophy which has since predominated in the English-speaking world. In this work, Thomas Baldwin sets Moores philosophy in its intellectual and historical context, analyzing the works of Russell, Bradley and Wittgenstein. The book is a major critical study not only of Moores writings, but also of British philosophy from 1900 to the present day. Although not uncritical of Moore, Baldwin shows how some of Moores most famous arguments, such as the criticisms of ethical naturalism and the appeal to common sense, can be sustained. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and postgraduates of philosophy.

Kantian Argument, Conceptual Capacities, and Invulnerability

Kant’s transcendental philosophy was to be an exhaustive investigation of the necessary conditions of the possibility of thought and experience in general. And it was to proceed aprioricompletely independently of observation and empirical theory. Reason alone was to discover its own scope and limits; the conditions of its possible employment were to be “deduced” from thought and experience as they actually are. Any such enterprise could be expected to — and in that master’s hands obviously did — yield lasting illumination of the enormous richness of interconnections among our various ways of thinking of ourselves and the world. Kant showed how and why in order to think certain kinds of thoughts, or to possess a certain kind of mental capacity, we must possess and exercise certain others, and then still others in turn. Human thought was thereby revealed as incredibly more complicated and much more of a piece than any atomistic picture of discrete impressions and ideas coming and going in the mind could possibly convey.

Berkeley v. Locke on Primary Qualities

Locke was once supposed to have argued that since the colours, sounds, odours, and other ‘secondary’ qualities things appear to have can vary greatly according to the state and position of the observer, it follows that our ideas of the ‘secondary’ qualities of things do not ‘resemble’ anything existing in the objects themselves. And Berkeley has been credited with the obvious objection that similar facts about the ‘relativity’ of our perception of ‘primary’ qualities show that they do not ‘resemble’ anything existing in the objects either, so that both ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ qualities exist only ‘in the mind’. The falsity of this view of Locke has been amply demonstrated in recent years, but no corresponding revision has been made in what remains the standard interpretation of Berkeleys criticisms of Locke. His objections therefore appear to be based on misunderstanding and to be irrelevant to what is now seen to be Lockes actual view and his reasons for holding it. I think this account of Berkeley, like the old view of Locke, is a purely fictional chapter in the history of philosophy, and in this paper I try to show that Berkeleys criticisms involve no misunderstanding and amount to a direct denial of the view Locke actually held.

The Significance of Scepticism

One of the topics announced for this symposium is the contrast between two different approaches or tendencies in philosophical studies of the foundations of science. On the one hand there are those who would abandon the quest for a general justification of empirical knowledge in favour of a purely naturalistic study of the procedures actually employed by scientists and other knowing subjects. On the other hand there are those who take seriously the challenge of philosophical scepticism and, seeing that it cannot be met by a straightforward Cartesian or “foundationalist” theory of knowledge, resort to so-called “transcendental arguments” to show that certain concepts or principles enjoy a privileged status in our thought because without them no human knowledge or experience would be possible at all.

Explaining the Quest and Its Prospects: Reply to Boghossian and Byrne

A brief description of the goal and main lines of argument of The Quest for Reality, in reply to the responses of Paul Boghossian and Alex Byrne.

Dear Carnap, Dean Van: The Quine-Carnap Correspondence and Related Work.

Rudolf Carnap and W. V. Quine, two of the twentieth centurys most important philosophers, corresponded at length - and over a long period of time - on matters personal, professional, and philosophical. Their friendship encompassed issues and disagreements that go to the heart of contemporary philosophic discussions. Carnap (1891-1970) was a founder and leader of the logical positivist school. The younger Quine (1908) began as his staunch admirer but diverged from him increasingly over questions in the analysis of meaning and the justification of belief. That they remained close, relishing their differences through years of correspondence, shows their stature both as thinkers and as friends.The letters are presented here, in full, for the first time. The substantial introduction by Richard Creath offers a lively overview of Carnaps and Quines careers and backgrounds, allowing the nonspecialist to see their writings in historical and intellectual perspective. Creath also provides a judicious analysis of the philosophical divide between them, showing how deep the issues cut into the discipline, and how to a large extent they remain unresolved.

Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind

The teaching and writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein were largely responsible for bringing the philosophy of mind into its central position in philosophy in the English-speaking countries in the 1950s and 1960s. But other works which were thought to derive from his ideas often exerted a more immediate and a more specific influence on the topics discussed and on the way the subject was pursued. Gilbert Ryle’s The Concept of Mind [1] was perhaps predominant. It determined both the form and the content of most treatments of particular issues in the philosophy of mind in Oxford and therefore in Britain and in much of America for more than a decade after its appearance in 1949. What came to be called “Wittgensteinian” positions, like those of Norman Malcolm in his accounts of the problem of other minds [2] and of dreaming [3], were also widely discussed, if less widely believed. Chapter Three of P.F. Strawson’s Individuals: an Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics [4] was also extremely influential throughout the 1960s in its emphasis on the primacy of the person over the body or the mind and on the special character of psychological predicates.