Dale Jacquette

Around and beyond the square of opposition

1 Historical and Critical Aspects of the Square.- 2 Philosophical Discussions around the Square of Opposition.- 3 The Square of Opposition and Non-Classical Logics.- 4 Constructions Generalizing the Square of Opposition.- 5 Applications of the Square of Opposition.

The Cambridge companion to Brentano

Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Chronology 1. Introduction: Brentanos philosophy Dale Jacquette 2. Brentanos relation to Aristotle Rolf George and Glen Koehn 3. Judging correctly: Brentano and the reform of syllogistic Peter Simons 4. Brentano on the mind Kevin Mulligan 5. Brentanos concept of intentionality Dale Jacquette 6. Reflections on intentionality Joseph Margolis 7. Brentanos epistemology Linda L. McAlister 8. Brentano on judgment and truth Charles Parsons 9. Brentanos ontology: from conceptualism to reism Arkadiusz Chrudzimski and Barry Smith 10. Brentanos value theory: beauty, goodness, and the concept of correct emotion Wilhelm Baumgartner and Lynn Pasquerella 11. Brentano on religion and natural theology Susan F. Krantz 12. Brentano and Husserl Robin D. Rollinger 13. Brentanos impact on twentieth-century philosophy Karl Schuhmann Bibliography Index.

Thinking Outside the Square of Opposition Box

The graphic meaning and formal implications of the canonical Aristotelian square of opposition are favorably compared with alternative ways of representing subsyllogistic logical relations among the four categorical AEIO propositions of syllogistic logic. The canonical arrangement of AEIO propositions in the square is justified by an exhaustive survey of graphically nonequivalent alternatives. The conspicuous omission in a modified expanded Aristotelian square of inversions involving complements of subject terms is critically considered. Two of the four inversions are shown to be logically equivalent to two of the AEIO propositions, and are consequently discounted as offering no potential significant revision of the canonical square. The remaining two inversions are logically distinct from any of the AEIO propositions, and the advantages of adding them to an expanded square are explored. It is shown that the two AEIO-distinct inversions are inferentially, and as contraries, subcontraries, subalterns or contradictories, logically isolated from the AEIO propositions. From this it seems reasonable to conclude that no inversion makes a contribution to the subsyllogistic logical relations represented in an expanded version of the square. The investigation leaves the traditional Aristotelian square unchanged, but affords a deeper appreciation of the canonical square’s optimal two-dimensional diagramming of subsyllogistic logical relations among the four fixed AEIO propositions, and of why inversions of the AEIO propositions are appropriately excluded from the square. The limits and disadvantages of subsyllogistic logic are made conspicuous in the use of contemporary classical logic to translate and verify in algebraic terms all potential square of opposition relations, as a formal basis for excluding inversions, where they are otherwise manifestly excluded without explanation from the canonical square.

Moral dilemmas, disjunctive obligations, and Kant's principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’

In moral dilemmas, where circumstances prevent two or more equally justified prima facie ethical requirements from being fulfilled, it is often maintained that, since the agent cannot do both, conjoint obligation is overridden by Kants principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, but that the agent nevertheless has a disjunctive obligation to perform one of the otherwise obligatory actions or the other. Against this commonly received view, it is demonstrated that although Kants ought-can principle may avoid logical inconsistency, the principle is incompatible with disjunctive obligation in standard deontic logic, and that it entails paradoxically that none of the conflicting dilemma actions will in fact occur. The principle appears to provide the only plausible safeguard against deontic antinomy, but cannot be admitted because of its collision with considered moral judgments.

Mally's heresy and the logic of meinong's object theory

The consistent formalization of Meinongs object theory in recent mathematical logic requires either plural modes of predication, or distinct categories of nuclear or constitutive and extranuclear or nonconstitutive properties. The plural modes of predication approach is rejected because it is reducible to the nuclear extranuclear property distinction, but not conversely, and because the nuclear extranuclear property distinction offers a more satisfactory solution to object theory paradoxes.

Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing

Meinong introduces the concept of implexive being and non-being to explain the metaphysics of universals, and as a contribution to the theory of reference and perception. Meinong accounts for Aristotle’s doctrine of the inherence of secondary substances in primary substances in object theory terms as the implection of incomplete universals in complete existent or subsistent entities. The derivative notion of implexive so-being is developed by Meinong to advance an intuitive modal semantics that admits degrees of possibility. A set theoretical interpretation of Meinong’s mereological concept of the implection of incomplete beingless objects in existent or subsistent complete objects is proposed. The implications of Meinong’s concept of implection are then exploited to answer extensionalist objections about ‘Meinong’s jungle’, defending the ontic economy of an extraontological neo-Meinongian semantic domain that supports individual reference and true predication of constitutive properties to beingless objects. Meinong’s distinction between implexive being and non-being makes it possible to refute the popular but mistaken criticism that Meinongian semantics is ontically inflationary by showing that a revisionary object theory in addition to an ontology of actually existent particulars need at most posit in its extraontology a single maximally impossible object in which all other beingless objects are properly implected.

Alexius Meinong, the shepherd of non-being

Preface (with Acknowledgments).- Introduction: Meinong and Philosophical Analysis.- Chapter 1. Meinongs Life and Philosophy.- Chapter 2. Origins of Gegenstandstheorie: Immanent and Transcendent Intended Objects in Brentano, Twardowski, and Meinong.- Chapter 3. Meinong on the Phenomenology of Assumption.- Chapter 4. Aussersein of the Pure Object.- Chapter 5. Constitutive (Nuclear) and Extraconstitutive (Extranuclear) Properties.- Chapter 6. Meditations on Meinongs Golden Mountain.- Chapter 7. Domain Comprehension in Meinongian Object Theory.- Chapter 8. Meinongs Concept of Implexive Being and Non-Being.- Chapter 9. About Nothing.- Chapter 10. Tarskis Quantificational Semantics and Meinongian Object Theory Domains.- Chapter 11. Reflections on Mallys Heresy.- Chapter 12. Virtual Relations and Meinongian Abstractions.- Chapter 13. Truth and Fiction in Lewiss Critique of Meinongian Semantics.- Chapter 14. Anti-Meinongian Actualist Meaning of Fiction in Kripkes 1973 John Locke Lectures.- Chapter 15. Metaphysics of Meinongian Aesthetic Value.- Chapter 16. Quantum Indeterminacy and Physical Reality as a Relevantly Predicationally Incomplete Existent Entity.-Chapter 17. Confessions of a Meinongian Logician.- Chapter 18. Meinongian Dark Ages and Renaissance.- Appendix: Object Theory Logic and Mathematics - Two Essays by Ernst Mally (Translation and Critical Commentary).- Notes.- References.- Index.

Fin de siècle Austrian thought and the rise of scientific philosophy

I consider three conditions to explain the emergence of scientific philosophy in Austrian thought at the turn of the century, concentrating on Vienna and Graz as distinct centers of philosophical development: (1) An outlook that seeks philosophical truth in sound reasoning, combined with a commitment to developing and practicing a methodology that is not essentially dependent on any particular cultures literary–philosophical traditions; (2) The desire to transcend national boundaries in the pursuit of philosophical understanding, as manifested in international professional conferences, publications, and training of international students; and (3) Cultural infrastructure that sustains ambitious philosophical projects, including tangible assets like financial resources, established educational institutions and communication networks, but also less conspicuous elements, such as, among others, a political environment of open inquiry, a relatively free press, community support for the enhancement of learning, and participation in an international language of science.

Later Wittgenstein's anti-philosophical therapy

The object of this essay is to discuss Ludwig Wittgensteins remarks in Philosophical Investigations and elsewhere in the posthumously published writings concerning the role of therapy in relation to philosophy. Wittgensteins reflections seem to suggest that there is a kind of philosophy or mode of investigation targeting the philosophical grammar of language uses that gratuitously give rise to philosophical problems, and produce in many thinkers philosophical anxieties for which the proper therapy is intended to offer relief. Two possible objectives of later Wittgensteinian therapy are proposed, for subjective psychological versus objective semantic symptoms of ailments that a therapy might address for the sake of relieving philosophical anxieties. The psychological in its most plausible form is rejected, leaving only the semantic. Semantic therapy in the sense defined and developed is more general and long-lasting, and more in the spirit of Wittgensteins project on a variety of levels. A semantic approach treats language rather than the thinking, language-using subject as the patient needing therapy, and directs its attention to the treatment of problems in language and the conceptual framework a language game use expresses in its philosophical grammar, rather than to soothing unhappy or socially ill-adjusted individual psychologies.

Diagonalization in Logic and Mathematics

The family of diagonalization techniques in logic and mathematics supports important mathematical theorems and rigorously demonstrates philosophically interesting formal and metatheoretical results. Diagonalization methods underwrite Cantor’s proof of transfinite mathematics, the generalizability of the power set theorem to the infinite and transfinite case, and give rise at the same time to unsolved and in some instances unsolvable problems of transfinite set theory. Diagonalization is also frequently construed as the logical basis of the liar, Richard’s, Grelling’s, the Russell and Curry paradoxes, Godel’s theorems, Church’s and Rosser’s incompleteness results, and every logically or semantically self-limiting metatheorem and self-referential logical puzzle and formal semantic paradox.