Paul Rusnock

Theory of science

VOLUME I: THEORY OF FUNDAMENTALS AND THEORY OF ELEMENTS (PART I) VOLUME TWO: THEORY OF ELEMENTS (PART II) VOLUME THREE: THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND THE ART OF DISCOVERY VOLUME FOUR: THEORY OF SCIENCE PROPER

A Last Shot at Kant and Incongruent Counterparts

LA. etudie le probleme de lincongruite des contreparties dans les «Premiers principes de la distinction des regions dans lespace» de Kant. LA. montre que la theorie de lespace de Kant sinscrit dans le cadre de lespace euclidien defini par sa nature tri-dimensionnelle, infinie, orientable et homogene

Kant and Bolzano on logical form

Abstract In the works of Kant and his followers, the notion of form plays an important role in explaining the apriority, necessity and certainty of logic. Bernard Bolzano (1781–1848), an important early critic of Kant, found the Kantians definitions of form imprecise and their explanations of the special status of logic deeply unsatisfying. Proposing his own conception of form, Bolzano developed radically different views on logic, truth in virtue of form, and other matters. This essay presents Bolzanos views in the light of his criticisms of the Kantian logicians.

Bolzano as Logician

Bernard Bolzano stands out with Frege as one of the great logicians of the nineteenth century. His approach to logic, set out in the Theory of Science of 1837, marks a fundamental reorientation of the subject on many fronts, one that is as radical as any in the history of the field. In sharp contrast to many of his contemporaries, Bolzano insisted upon a rigorous separation of logic from psychology. It should be possible, he thought, to characterize propositions, ideas, inferences, and the axiomatic organization of sciences without reference to a thinking subject. Consistently pursuing this approach to logic and methodology, Bolzano developed important accounts of formal semantics and formal axiomatics. A talented mathematician, Bolzano developed his logic in conjunction with his mathematical research. Among the first to work on the foundations of mathematics in the modern sense of the term, he made a number of key discoveries in analysis, topology, and set theory and had a significant influence on the development of mathematics in the nineteenth century. This chapter discusses Bolzanos logic along with some of his work in the foundations of mathematics that has some bearing on logic.

Review Essays: Snails Rolled Up Contrary to All Sense@@@The Philosophy of Right and Left: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space.

To The Argument Of 1768.- To The Arguments Of 1770 And 1783.- On The First Ground Of The Distinction Of Regions In Space (1768).- Selection From Section 15 Of Dissertation On The Form And Principles Of The Sensible And Intelligible World (1770).- Selection From The Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics (1783).- On Higher Space.- The Paradox Of Incongruous Counterparts.- Tractatus 6.36111.- Incongruent Counterparts And Absolute Space.- The Fourth Dimension.- The Ozma Problem And The Fall Of Parity.- The Difference Between Right And Left.- Kant Incongruous Counterparts, And The Nature Of Space And Space-Time.- Hands, Knees, And Absolute Space.- Incongruous Counterparts, Intrinsic Features, And The Substantiviality Of Space.- Incongruent Counterparts.- Showing And Telling: Can The Difference Between Right And Left Be Explained In Words?.- Right, Left, And The Fourth Dimension.- On the Other Hand...: A Reconsideration of Kant, Incongruent Counterparts, and Absolute Space.- Replies To Sklar And Earman.- Kant On Incongruent Counterparts.- The Role of Incongruent Counterparts in Kants Transcendental Idealism.- Incongruent Counterparts And Things In Themselves.- Contemporary Contributors.

Review Essays: The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station@@@The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap: To the Vienna Station.

The impressive volume before us started out as an attempt to write the history of epistemology since Kant, the way Carnap would have written it had he been Hegel.(1)1 Coffa began his project in 1981 while a fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science in Pittsburgh and had finished a good penultimate draft when he suddenly died, after a brief illness, on 30 Dec., 1984. The title alludes to Edmund Wilsons classic study of revolutionary ideology, To the Finland Station. This is no accident and would be presumptuous in a lesser work. The two studies cover roughly the same period, from the late eighteenth century to the first part of the present one, and they are both sparkling narratives that boldly project a large picture and then fill it in with canny detail. Coffa begins with Kant, the villain of the piece, and ends with a group of thinkers in the neighborhood of Vienna (generously construed to include Berlin, Prague, Warsaw) who came to terms with the restrictive framework they had inherited from Kant, finally overcoming it in favor of a new philosophy in which meaning, rather than mind, played the central role. The main subject is the elusive a priori, the competitors for explaining it (or explaining it away) Kantianism, positivism, and what Coffa calls the semantic tradition. Kant is given credit for pointing to something of worth in his remarks on the constitutive functions of mind, but his sins are many, prominent among them a variety of semantic confusions: of the contents of representations with their objects, of knowledge obtained by (narrowly Kantian) analysis of concepts and purely conceptual knowledge, of purely conceptual knowledge with knowledge which tells us nothing new, and so on. These errors had large and lasting consequences: Only through a complex and labo-