Philosophy

In Logical Syntax of Language, Carnap offers a translation of several key parts of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus into the so-called formal mode of speech. This paper expands on this translation in order to draw conclusions about some key points of Carnap's philosophy in Logical Syntax of Language. In particular, the key differences between the views in Logical Syntax of Language and the Tractatus are made clear.

Drawing deeply from Wittgenstein's later works, Thomas Morawetz has articulated a vision of legal decision making according to which it is not a defect, but inherent in the very nature of law, for there to be disagreement among judges regarding their legal decision-making strategies. Central to Morawetz's account is the notion of a legal grammatical proposition. This essay argues that because legal grammatical remarks lack any truth-value, they cannot play a justificatory role. This would imply that the rule of law is no more justifiable than the violent alternatives used by anarchists and religious fanatics.

This is a negative appraisal of Raymond Bechard\u27s The Berlin Turnpike on the basis of its unbalanced treatment of the the phenomenon of trafficking within Connecticut and the United States. The book omits any consideration of victim service providers and fails in its goal to let victims speak for themselves. The organization, scholarship and even the methods by which the book has been marketed are called into question

The bounds of agency-of our capacities to act in the world-are revealed in our commitments. We tend to think that our moral commitments, for example, emerge from our moral agency. They mark out how we are willing to act, morally speaking. And likewise, we might say that our epistemic commitments reveal our epistemic agency. They illustrate the kind of inquirers we happen to be. In this paper, I want to raise two questions about epistemic commitments, and thus, indirectly, about our epistemic agency. Can we rationally defend such commitments when challenged to do so? And if so, how?

A prevailing view in contemporary philosophy of mind is that zombies are logically possible. I argue, via a thought experiment, that if this prevailing view is correct, then I could be transformed into a zombie. If I could be transformed into a zombie, then surprisingly, I am not certain that I am conscious. Regrettably, this is not just an idiosyncratic fact about my psychology; I think you are in the same position. This means that we must revise or replace some important positions in the philosophy of mind. We could embrace radical skepticism about our own consciousness, or maintain the complete and total infallibility of our beliefs about our own phenomenal experiences. I argue that we should actually reject the logical possibility of zombies.

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