Descartes'
cogito
argument is perhaps the most well‐known philosophical argument, the conclusion of which is supposed to be a form of rationalism that allows for contingent
a priori
knowledge of the world. In this short note, I argue that, in fact, the all important statement, ‘I am, I exist’, should be analysed through the lens of (classical) two‐dimensional semantics (a la Kaplan and Evans). Once we do this, I argue, we find that even though the thought is always true when thought, it does not express a deep contingency (as per Evans). That is, it does not result in substantive knowledge of the world. I note that it might also not be superficially contingent, but something more nuanced in between due to the performative nature of the thought.
In 2020, Daniele Molinini published a paper outlining two types of mathematical objectivity. One could say that with this paper Molinini not only separated two mathematical concepts in terms of terminology and content, but also contrasted two mathematical-philosophical contexts, the traditional-idealistic and the modern-practical. Since the first context was the theoretical basis for a large number of analyses that we find in the framework of the philosophy of mathematics, the space was now offered to re-examine such analyses in the second context. More specifically, with respect to the second context, we will analyse the strength of one of the few explicit Platonic arguments (the “Enhanced Indispensability Argument”) that seeks to justify the ontological status of mathematical objects and the central claim of mathematical Platonism about the existence of mathematical objects.
Thomas Aquinas regularly claims that metaphysics is not merely scientific, but the highest and most certain of all the sciences, and his conception of metaphysics is one of the boldest and most epistemically ambitious in the history of philosophy. This book presents a new account of Aquinas's metaphysics, approached from the perspective of his theory of science and knowledge. It offers a novel interpretation of his understanding of the properties of being, the principles of being, the requirements for demonstrative knowledge, and shows how Aquinas's account of metaphysics was able to meet those requirements in a more coherent and compelling way than any thinker who had come before him. It will be of interest to scholars of medieval philosophy, the Aristotelian tradition, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical methodology.
Contemporary analytic philosophy abounds with invocations of something called ‘the world’ (or ‘reality’); but it is none too clear what is meant by ‘the world’ in those invocations. This book shows that in case after case—ranging from the metaphysics of magnitudes, through cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, all the way to metaethics—those making invocations of ‘the world’ take themselves to be talking about the world as captured or reflected in our objective representations, when those representations are true. At the same time, however, they take that world—as thus captured or reflected—to be altogether independent of our representations of it, and hence independent as well of the conditions under which those representations have whatever sense they have for us. These philosophers thus reveal themselves as transcendental realists, in Kant’s sense. Drawing on Kant, but revising and expanding his ideas under the inspiration of (the Later) Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell, this book argues that transcendental realism ultimately amounts to no more than an empty gesture; and it argues for a form of transcendental idealism, which, in a way, is just the recognition and acknowledgement of transcendental realism’s emptiness, but also has a positive upshot: in bringing out the emptiness of transcendental realism, it reveals our sense-making as conditioned, and shows that, and how, philosophers get themselves in philosophical trouble when they try to hold on to sense apart from its (worldly-historical) conditions.
