Erfahrung und Analyse Experience and Analysis - Austrian Ludwig ...

HORWICH AND THE
GENERALIZATION PROBLEM
Klaus Ladstätter, Albany, New York
In order to be complete, Horwich’s minimalist theory must
be able to deal with generalizations about truth. A logical
and an epistemic-explanatory level of the generalization
problem are distinguished, and Horwich’s responses to
both sides of the problem are examined. Finally some
persistent problems for minimalism are pointed out.
UNDERSTANDING LINGUISTIC SIGNS.
A NOTE ON HUSSERL AND FREGE
Sandra Lapointe, Montréal, Canada
Analogies between Frege’s and Husserl’s respective
theories of meanings are well known, but comparisons are
often unfair to Husserl’s philosophy of language. I am here
interested not in what these two philosophers have to say
about meaning per se, but about what they say about
signs, the way in which they can be said to signify, as well
as in their conceptions of the conditions under which
linguistic signs can be identified and understood. In
particular, I show how Husserl’s theory may help us
understand a set of idiosyncratic remarks Frege makes in
the Grundgesetze which vouches for an interpretation of
his philosophy of language which is both more plausible
and epistemologically more acceptable than the standard
interpretation will allow.
DETERMINISM, RANDOMNESS
AND DESERT-VALUE
Noa Latham, Calgary, Canada
This paper offers a thought experiment to show that values
embodied in what I call desert principles should be
abandoned if one believes either in determinism or in
probabilistic indeterminism. Desert principles are those
entailing that the intrinsic goodness of a person’s receiving
pleasure or pain depends on the virtue or vice of the
person. I also offer two reasons for preferring to examine
the relation between values and determinism directly
rather that doing so in terms of free will or moral
responsibility.
INSTINCTS AND CONSCIOUSNESS IN REID
Marion Ledwig, Santa Cruz, California
I relate Reid to Tinbergen’s The Study of Instinct. Taking
Freud as a starting point, I consider the question whether
instincts are conscious in Reid.
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Abstracts
EXPERIENCE AND ANALYSIS
OF A WORK OF ART
Keith Lehrer, Tucson, Arizona
Arnold Isenberg, in an article of remarkable longevity,
“Critical Communication”, claimed that the discursive
analysis of a work of art required the experience of the
work of art to fill in the meaning of the critical description.
Other aestheticians have proposed that there is something
ineffable about the content of a work of art which one can
only understand in the particular experience of the work of
art. These reflections, if they contain an insight, leave us
with something of a paradox. How can the content of the
work, or even what the work of art is like, be both particular
to experience, in some way ineffable, and the subject of
critical discourse? How can the content, or what the work
of art is like, be at the same time general enough to be part
of the meaning of critical discourse and at the same time
be particular and unique to the experience of the work?
The problem intensifies when one attempts to understand
the relationship between the experience of art and the
theory of art. I argue that the solution to the problem is
contained in an understanding of how the particular
exemplar becomes representational in a process I have
called “exemplarization” which makes the particular part
and parcel of the content of the work or what it is like.
SCIENCE AND VALUE-JUDGEMENTS
Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, Lublin, Poland
The paper defends the claim that value-judgements are
essential for science. They cannot be restricted to purely
epistemic ones, if we take seriously both everyday
scientific practice and the nature of our language. For
moral and methodological values are entangled, as much
as are facts and values. I attempt to demonstrate this by
considering cases of scientific practice where moral
considerations are necessary for (a) formulating a scientific
problem and evaluating a solution; (b) choosing a research
method; (c) accepting a hypothesis; (d) evaluating the
correctness of fact description and explanation; (e)
justifying a hypothesis. Admitting the presence of moral
values in science does not threaten the objectivity of
science but forces us to rethink our post-Humean understanding
of values and value-judgements.