Peter McLaughlin

On Having a Function and Having a Good

Abstract One result of recent discussions on the notion of function is that the appeal to the function of something in order to explain why it is there and what it is, presupposes (willingly or not) that some system particularly relevant to the function bearer has a good. Some recent analyses of what it means to have a good trace having a good back to having a function. Two such attempts are examined and compared to a more traditional analysis. An anachronistic version of Aristotle, involving the self-production of the beneficiary, is recommended as a better starting point for a naturalistic reconstruction of the subject of benefit.

Die Welt als Maschine Zur Genese des neuzeitlichen Naturbegriffs

Zunachst zu meinem Titel, „Die Welt als Maschine: Zur Genese des neuzeitlichen Naturbegriffs“: vielleicht sollte man besser sagen, „zur Genese eines neuzeitlichen Naturbegriffs” oder eines bestimmten Aspekts dieses Naturbegriffs. Der Begriff der Natur, von dem ich sprechen werde, ist nicht nur nicht der einzige der Neuzeit, sondern er lauft sogar etwas quer zu dem Naturbegriff des Sammlers, der vielfach bei dieser Tagung thematisiert wird. Ferner handelt es sich um einen Begriff, der sich nicht nur auf die Natur bezieht. Diejenigen, die im 17. Jh. die Natur als Maschine betrachteten, haben grosteils auch die Gesellschaft, das Gemeinwesen, als Maschine betrachtet.1 Und insofern sie — wie etwa Hobbes, Clarke oder Leibniz — systematische Philosophie betrieben, vertraten sie auch eine mechanistische Metaphysik, indem sie in ihrer philosophia prima die Gemeinsamkeiten der Maschinenbegriffe der philosophia naturalis und civilis reflektierten.

Transcendental Presuppositions and Ideas of Reason

Abstract: In the Introduction to the Critique of Judgment Kant seems to present the “transcendental deduction” of the (subjective) purposiveness of nature whose necessity he had denied in the Appendix to the Critique of Pure Reason. The so-called First Introduction to the CJ promised two transcendental deductions of the (objective) purposiveness of nature, which the published text did not deliver. This paper analyzes the arguments of the CPR-Appendix showing that each of its two parts discusses a different sort of deduction. The fact that Kant at various times envisioned at least five very different deductions in the same context is taken as an occasion to rethink the project that Kant sketches in the Appendix to the CPR.

The arrival of the fittest

In one of his early sketches from the Russian Revolution Jaroslav Hasek tells the story of a more zealous than competent Red Army commander who sought to foster literacy among the peasants in the area where he was stationed by posting a written notice ordering them to learn how to read within three days. Those inhabitants of the county still illiterate after this period were to be shot. Had the local Bolshevik commissar (Hasek) not crossed the commander’s plans, the proposition, “All adult inhabitants of the county are literate,” might have become true, and its truth would have been explainable by appeal to a sort of selection. Some people believe that adaptation by means of natural selection proceeds more or less along the lines of Colonel Jerochymov’s program of literacy by firing squad. Selection, they believe, explains only the survival but not the arrival of the fittest.

The Balance, the Lever and the Aristotelian Origins of Mechanics

The Mechanical Problems traditionally attributed to Aristotle is a short problem collection that also contains an ambitious project of reduction, which traces various mechanical devices back to the lever, the balance and the radii of a circle. This work is thus not just a collection of problems, but also the first theoretical mechanical treatise that has come down to us: Basic concepts of technical mechanics such as force, load, fulcrum are abstracted from an analysis of simple technology, and the workings of this technology are explained by arguments cast in syllogistic form. This chapter traces the origins of mechanical theory in this work and analyzes the form and structure of its argument. The key steps in the concept formation of basic mechanics carried out in this treatise are analyzed in detail. We focus on the special role of the balance with unequal arms in the early development of mechanics, on the interaction of various forms of explanatory practice and on their integration into systems of knowledge in the Peripatetic school.

Concept and Inference: Descartes and Beeckman on the Fall of Bodies

The discovery of the law of free fall is usually considered to be a milestone in the development of modern physics and a major step in superseding medieval ways of thought. The subject of the law is the relation between the space traversed by a falling body and the time elapsed. The law states that under certain conditions the spaces traversed measured from rest are proportional to the squares of the times elapsed.

Conservation and Contrariety: The Logical Foundations of Cartesian Physics

The general theory of matter presented by Descartes in the second book of the Principia Philosophiae is the first well founded systematic physical theory of modern science; for it explicitly introduces the logical presuppositions necessary for a system of causal explanations of physical phenomena using equations. While it is true that Descartes himself takes very little advantage of the possibilities created by the introduction of these prerequisites (there is, for instance, very little mathematics, no formal equations, and few proportions in the Principia itself), he nonetheless determines basic requirements of such a system of explanations and provides conceptual instruments adequate for the formation of such a physical theory.

Proofs and Paradoxes: Free Fall and Projectile Motion in Galileo’s Physics

According to a well established view the work of Galileo marks the beginning of classical mechanics.1 His work does not yet represent the full fledged classical theory as it emerged in the contributions of Newton and others, but, following this widespread interpretation, Galileo did take the first decisive steps: he criticized and overcame the traditional Aristotelian world picture, he introduced the experimental method, he concentrated on a systematic and concise description of single phenomena rather than searching for their causes and elaborating an overarching philosophy of nature, and he succeeded in the mathematical analysis of some of the key problems of classical mechanics.2