hermeschris

“To allow the market mechanism to be sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment…would result in the demolition of society”

I just updated the webpages with the newest material and short protocols for the sessions of 11. and 12. January. Find them at:

• Sprache und Welt(en)
  
• Analytische Philosophie

In the following lines (pdf-version) I will show that Quines critique on de re modality offered in §41 of his “Word and Object” is not substantial. He gives the following scenario:

[(i)] Mathematicians may conceivably be said to be necessarily rational and not necessarily two-legged; and cyclists necessarily two-legged and not necessarily rational.

[(ii)] But what of an individual who counts among his eccentricities both mathematics and cycling? In this concrete individual necessarily rational and contingently two-legged or vice versa? Just insofar as we are talking referentially of the object, with no special bias toward a background grouping of mathematicians as against cyclists or vice versa, there is no semblance of sense in rating some of his attributes as necessary and others as contingent. Some of his attributes count as important and others as unimportant, yes; some as enduring and others as fleeting; but none as necessary or contingent.

First I will formalize (i) in different ways:

For any c for which we know Mathematician(c) ∧ Cyclist(x) we have as a consequence from (1), (3), (4) and (2) the following

This is contradictory. Maybe there is a way out with formalizing (i) in a different way:

This way we are safe from contradictions as we deduce now for our c:

But can (6) and (7) still be interpreted de re? If we speak about de re modality we do not want the concept of being e.g. mathematician be responsible for the necessity of being rational, but the reason should lay in each particular individual in the extension of the predicate “…is a mathematician.” Formally expressed, what we need is in our case: □rational(c). (6) and (7) could be still interpreted as providing de re modality for the implication, but this is not the way we conceptualize usually de re modality, t.i. as necessity or possibility of single properties of individuals. So if we want to take Quine’s critique serious, we are not allowed to change the formalization offered in (1) to (4).

The only way to debunk Quine’s argument as not substantial is to take his presumptions (1) to (4) under critical examination. Let me first illustrate the extensions of our predicates “…is mathematician” and “…is cyclist” like follows:

Let’s concede (1) and think about (2). If we take an arbitrary member m of the extensions of “…is mathematician”, we cannot say with certainty if m will have two legs or not, or if she is cyclist or not. This Quine takes as a reason to say, that it is contingent for m to have two legs. That is where he is mistaken!

Quine takes the heteronomy of the extension of “…is mathematician” according to the property of being two-legged as a reason to apply de re contingency to each individual in the extension. That is counter-intuitive: everything we can say in this case is, that from being a mathematician follows nothing according to the property of being two-legged. Although we cannot say that mathematician have in general the property of being two-legged we have to look at each single individual m being mathematician separately to be able to see if for m it is contingent or necessary to be two-legged.

Thus we have to conclude that Quine did not succeed with his reductio ad absurdum of de re modality.

Today the godfather of funk died. He is for me one of the most inspiring and vigorous artists. Thank you for every single muscle your music ever shaked in my body and for teaching me, how liberating and kick-in-the-ass music can be.

Das Haus der Wissenschaften hat ausgerufen zu einem Ideenwettbewerb “Geist begeistert” zum Jahr der Geisteswissenschaften 2007. Es geht darum, der Frage nachzugehen

Wie können die Bedeutung und die Leistungen der Geisteswissenschaften am Besten in das Licht der Öffentlichkeit gerückt werden?

Das beste ist jedoch

Ausgezeichnet werden die 15 kreativsten und originellsten Projekte. Die Sieger erhalten jeweils 15.000 Euro zur Umsetzung ihrer Ideen.

Chrissy Veltan hat uns Passauer Philosophiestudenten/innen auf der Weihnachtsfeier zu einem Brainstorming ermuntert, das sie hier als Google-Spreadsheat zur semi-öffentlichen Bearbeitung bereitgestellt hat. Na, dann lasst euch mal was einfallen!

Monday and Tuesday I did my two days long lasting “task” in adaptive logics for my pre-doctoral application at University of Ghent. I was handed out four different papers at Monday 10am and a question on which I was supposed to work, so that I present my results Tuesday 4pm.

So I worked busily, so that in the end I had 6 pages written in Latex in my hands when entering the interview room. Here we sat the next about 3 hours - ok, I was standing quite often at the blackboard. The result was that they already now told me, that I am accepted for the project (instead of friday).

8) This Dunja and I had to celebrate: I invited her to Chinese restaurant and she me to the cinema (The Parfume - was great 8))

After working the whole weekend on preperation, Monday and Tuesday on the task, I still had to prepare my two courses for Thursday and Friday. That’s what I began while travelling home. After two really busy days at University Passau finally the weekend was waiting for me: and on Saturday I really did nothing else than listening to music. I was so crazy exhausted that I couldn’t even look at a book. Today I still feel not that good, like getting ill.

I’m looking forward to x-mas, to hide in the kitchen of my heart, eating cookies with the most precious beings in my little world and forgetting about everything, letting loose, open the sails with the wind blowing a warm breeze, no coursebook, no navigation, just a sweet trust in the silence of the ocean…

For all who experienced the compiler complaint about the

\newcommand{\checkmark}{\dingbat@sym{’104}}

Solution is to simply change the line in dingbat.sty into

 \renewcommand{\checkmark}{\dingbat@sym{’104}}

The Inn has her magic moments. Completely took my breath away this lunch break.

Have a look at more pictures at:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/hermeschris/tags/passau/

I just posted the 5th session reports for my courses:

• Einführung in die analytische Philosophie
• Sprache und Welt(en)