Volume 106, Issue 1

While the argument of Plato’s Cratylus supports both the claim that there is a natural correctness of names and the claim that correct names need not be descriptions or imitations of their referents, the protagonists of the Cratylus find it infeasible to reconcile these two claims. In my paper, I account for this puzzling observation by elaborating a novel interpretation of the Cratylus . I show that the protagonists of the Cratylus are unable to make sense of the results of their joined investigation because they rely on a mistaken preconception of what a correct name is. Based on this diagnosis, I contend that Plato wants his readers to comprehend and overcome the dialectical predicament of his protagonists. I thus illuminate both the internal logic of the Cratylus and the philosophical agenda Plato pursues in staging a dialogue with this particular internal logic.

This paper is devoted to a fascinating passage in Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 1210), in which he argues that non-human animals have rational souls. It is found in his Mulaḫḫaṣ fī l-manṭiq wa-l-ḥikma ( Epitome on Philosophy and Logic ). Following a discussion of the afterlife, Faḫr al-Dīn suggests that animals should, like humans, be capable of grasping universals, and that they are aware of their own identity over time. Furthermore, animal behavior shows that they are capable of rational planning and problem-solving. We contextualize these arguments with reference to Faḫr al-Dīn’s other philosophical works, and also compare the considerations he raises to ideas found in modern-day animal ethics, drawing here especially on the work of Mark Rowlands. The paper concludes with a translation of the passage.

In this paper I argue that the English freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729) is making use of ‘conglobation’ to develop an argument across the Vindication of the Divine Attributes (1710) and the Discourse on Free-Thinking (1713), which aims to challenge the religious authority of orthodox representatives of the Anglican church. That is, Colins makes use of a rhetorical (piecemeal) strategy that serves to insinuate one’s proper position to create, what I will call, the ‘authority-challenge’. I reconstruct this challenge in three steps. First, I analyse Collins’ criticism of William King (1650–1729), the Archbishop of Dublin, who according to Collins’ Vindication advances a conception of the divine attributes and of the nature of God that is compatible with atheism. Second, I introduce Collins’ argument from disagreement, which he develops in his Discourse . This argument aims to establish that whenever there is meaningful disagreement, e. g., about the (philosophical) content and not merely about the best terminology, between the supposed experts, we have the right to think on our own about the issue at hand. In the third step, I present the ‘authority-challenge’. In a nutshell, this challenge requires orthodox representatives of the Anglican church either (i) to open the door to atheism by not substantively disagreeing with William King (thereby undermining everything they stand for and presenting themselves as hypocrites) or (ii) to substantively disagree with King to contain atheism (thereby undermining their status as experts for religious issues). Since (i) cannot be an option, they have no choice but to undermine their own authority by impairing their expert status, which, in turn, has ramifications for their political power as well. In the second part of my paper, I argue that §§ 16–22 of the fourth dialogue of George Berkeley’s Alciphron (1732/52) are designed to meet Collins’ ‘authority-challenge’. This will allow me to resolve the puzzle that these sections so far have posed for commentators. In particular, many have been puzzled by Berkeley’s argumentative strategy and in particular his references to the Scholastics. As I argue, however, if §§ 16–22 are read in the light of Collins’ authority challenge, it becomes evident that Berkeley uses these references in his attempt to refute King without failing to meet Collins’ challenge.

Counteracting a widespread interpretation of Schelling’s project of a philosophy of nature as anti-Kantian, this paper claims that Kant’s doctrine of the schematism plays a central role in the emergence and development of Schelling’s project. My argument will be structured in the following way. First, I will discuss Schelling’s reception of the schematism in his Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature of 1797, especially as regards his association of it with Kant’s dynamical conception of matter in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science . Relying on this reconstruction, I will argue, secondly, that Schelling brings together a central issue of the Critique of Pure Reason (the objectivity of pure concepts) and the overall problem of the Metaphysical Foundations (the transition from pure philosophy to empirical sciences) by addressing the issue of a schematism specifically related to outer sense. Thirdly, I maintain that this issue is at the core of the overall argument developed in the Ideas , where it appears in the form of a schematism of “materiality as such”. Finally, I suggest that the notion of a schematism of materiality as such offers a useful key to understanding the unfolding of Schelling’s project between 1797 and 1800.

Many have taken Sellars’s critique of empiricism in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” ( EPM ) to be aimed at his teacher C. I. Lewis. But if so, why do the famous arguments of its opening sections carry so little force against Lewis’s views? Understandably, some respond by denying that Lewis’s epistemology is among the positions targeted by Sellars. But this is incorrect. Indeed, Sellars had earlier offered more trenchant (if already familiar) critiques of Lewis’s epistemology. What is original about EPM is that it criticizes empiricist positions like Lewis’s not because of their foundationalism, but because of their psychologism about meaning. Since psychologism turns out to be unacceptable by Lewis’s own lights, EPM has a compelling (if implicit) critique of Lewis to offer after all, one that strikes at the heart of his philosophical system.