Conventionalism

Karl Popper’s conception of methodology and its relationship to epistemology is examined, and found wanting. Popper argues that positivist criteria of demarcation fail because they are attempts to discover a difference in the natures of empirical science and metaphysics. His alternative to naturalism is that a plausible criterion of demarcation is a proposal for an agreement, or convention. But this conventionalism about methodology is misplaced. Methodological rules are conventions, but which methodological rules are followed by scientists it is not itself a matter of convention. This casts doubt upon the status of Popper’s famous criterion of demarcation.

There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche’s view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche’s understanding of naturalism to support their interpretation. I argue that Nietzsche embraces a social constructivist conception of causality that renders his naturalism incompatible with the views of naturalism attributed to him by the two dominant readings

At the start of Plato's 'Minos' an anonymous comrade argues that the variability of law according to time and place undermines the claim that it conveys moral truth. But by the end he has accepted Minos as the greatest of lawgivers because of his education by Zeus. How does he manage to slide so quickly from the moral laxity of conventionalism to the moral absolutism of divine revelation? Guided by this question, the author considers how the two divergent parts of the 'Minos' form one whole, and so what Plato suggests is the common basis to conventionalism and piety. Plato's 'Minos' thus ends up having an unexpectedly close relationship to his 'Euthyphro'.

Conventionalism is a thesis according to which there is an empty space between the experience and theories which must be “conventionally filled”. Because of empirical equivalence, scientists have nothing but to choose a theory on “soft”, that is non-evidential grounds. As the experience does not “impose” any theory, scientists are free to choose one. Yet, the thing to remember is that conventionalism is not a “homogenous movement”. It is more convenient to speak about conventionalisms. Jindřich Černý’s task is to sketch a line between two basic ways – instrumentalism and constructivism – and to develop the idea of latter with reference to French conventionalism (Poincaré 1902, Le Roy 1901) and Lwow-Warsaw School (Ajdukiewicz 1934). Both instrumentalism and constructivism are, as Le Roy used to say, “philosophies of freedom”, yet respective consequences of freedom are quite different, for, in case of constructivism, the freedom pertains not only to form of knowledge but to its content too.
Constructivism” is an “anti-instrumentalism”, for it denies two emblematic consequences of instrumentalism. First, according to Constructivists, there is no essential difference between empirical and theoretical expressions; both kinds are meaningful. Second, not all statements formulated in vocabulary of empirical theories are “on a par”: epistemic status of some them is more “privileged” than others one. These statements could be termed “paradigmatic propositions”, or in Poincaréan fashion, “principles”. Paradigmatic propositions are constitutive of meanings and of object of cognition, so the theories which differ with respect to principle are not only untranslatable, yet quite literally incommensurable. There is no “invariant” factual or otherwise in virtue of which theories underlaid by different principles could be compared. 
The task amounts to find a new interpretation of relationships between spontaneity and receptivity. “A priori”, as already shown by Poincaré at the end of 19th century, cannot be taken as synonymous with “apodictic”. Yet it does not mean that Kantian spirit goes by the board. The emergence of non-Euclidean geometries calls for the substitution of relative linguistic concept of a priori for the absolute psychological one. The experience is still a result of mesh between receptivity and spontaneity, yet paradigmatic propositions (or principles) are not “innate”. What more, paradigmatic propositions do not “hang in the air”, for they have sensorial genealogy (Poincaré 1902). Even if principles cannot be empirically tested (for the experience depends on them), still they can be abandoned and substituted by different propositions, hence the facts – these primary targets the scientist aim at – are not made out of “nothing”. Freedom of choice is not whimsical. So to speak, constructivism, due to two-way relation between spontaneity and receptivity it postulates, overcomes traditional dichotomy between an “absolutistic” and a relativistic view on science.

In this essay I set out to critically analyse the foundations of contemporary analytic metaphysics and I investigate the feasibility of a realist, physicalist and pluralist project in particular. Having done that, I attempt to roughly outline a framework capable of supporting such a project.

Erwin Panofsky’s essay “Perspective as Symbolic Form” from 1924 is among the most widely commented essays in twentieth-century aesthetics and was discussed with regard to art theory, Renaissance painting, Western codes of
depiction, history of optical devices, psychology of perception, or even ophthalmology. Strangely enough, however, almost nothing has been written about the philosophical claim implicit in the title, i.e. that perspective is a symbolic form among others. The article situates the essay within the intellectual constellation at Aby Warburg’s Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek in Hamburg, and analyzes the role of Ernst Cassirer’s philosophy of symbolic forms for the members of the Warburg circle. Does perspective meet the requirements for becoming a further “symbolic form,” beyond those outlined by Cassirer? The article argues that, ultimately, perspective cannot possibly be a symbolic form; not because it does not meet Cassirer’s philosophical requirements, but rather, because that would uproot Cassirer’s overall project. While revisiting Panofsky with Cassirer unearths the wide-raging philosophical implication of the essay, revisiting Cassirer with Panofsky means to highlight the fundamentally perspectival nature of all symbolic forms.

O objetivo deste artigo é definir o contexto filosófico em que surge o convencionalismo de Poincaré, distinguir as suas teses de outras posições filosóficas que, sendo também convencionalistas, se afastam da perspectiva deste autor. Pretende-se assim clarificar o pensamento filosófico do génio francês no que diz respeito à ciência, ainda hoje origem de grande controvérsia. Além disso, procura-se também apresentar, em traços gerais, os problemas científicos que levaram Poincaré a desenvolver as suas posições filosóficas. Procura-se ainda proporcionar uma interpretação sobre o estatuto que o conhecimento científico tem para Poincaré. Para esclarecer em que consiste o convencionalismo, seja o de Poincaré, seja o de qualquer outro, é preciso enunciar várias questões. Nomeadamente: (1) como é que surgem as convenções, isto é, qual é a sua origem? (2) Como é que se sustentam estas convenções, ou seja, que é que faz que estas convenções possam ser parte integrante das teorias? (3) Como se escolhe entre convenções alternativas, isto é, que critérios se usam para selecionar determinadas convenções? (4) Porque é que se deve adequar as teorias a estas convenções; ou, dito de outro modo, porque é que as convenções servem de guia no proceder científico? 1 Para dar resposta a todas estas questões, seria preciso expor a filosofia de Poincaré no seu conjunto, o que não é objetivo deste artigo. Tentar-se-á definir o marco filosófico que assinala a presença do convencionalismo no seu pensamento, para o distinguir de outras posições também 1 Estas perguntas são expostas com algumas variantes em Rescorla, 2011.

Resumen: Se analizan las causas, dentro de la cultura eclesiástica de postrimerías de la Edad Media, de la escisión de poderes: celestial y terrenal, que hasta entonces existían unificados y bajo autoridad de la Iglesia. Hasta comienzos del S. XIV, la Iglesia tenía potestad en ambas esferas de la vida de los fieles, dominaba tanto en el ámbito espiritual como en el civil. Pero los creyentes, además de tener vida espiritual, también están dotados de vida social, civil y política. Esta noción dicotómica del poder eclesiástico y civil tiene su desenlace manifiesto, ya en pleno siglo XIV, en la separación entre las esferas diferenciadas de la Iglesia y el Estado, movimiento que fuera iniciado mayormente a través de los escritos sistemáticos del teólogo y filósofo franciscano inglés William of Ockham. Su pensamiento revolucionó diversos ámbitos del conocimiento, como así también de las prácticas que contrajo implicadas, incidiendo marcadamente en la Modernidad.
Palabras clave: Iglesia y Estado, autoridad, poder político, poder religioso, Ockham

Zora Neale Hurston was the most prominent woman in the Harlem Renaissance. “As an ethnographer and writer, she … is now considered one of the defining authors of the African American literary tradition” (Robinson, 2005:272). Following the suggestion of Hill (1996) and of Plant (1995), this essay links Hurston's ethnography and fiction with a discussion of performative speech acts. In particular, Hurston's work is linked to a conventionalist/intentionalist debate about how illocutionary speech acts should be interpreted.

Poincaré is well known for his conventionalism and structuralism. However, the relationship between these two theses and their place in Poincaré’s epistemology of science remain puzzling. In this paper I show the scope of Poincaré’s conventionalism and its position in Poincaré’s hierarchical approach to scientific theories. I argue that for Poincaré scientific knowledge is relational and made possible by synthetic a priori, empirical and conventional elements, which, however, are not chosen arbitrarily. By examining his geometric conventionalism, his hierarchical account of science and defence of continuity in theory change, I argue that Poincaré defends a complex structuralist position based on synthetic a priori and conventional elements, the mind-dependence of which departs him from metaphysical realism.

Philosophers have studied geometry since ancient times. Geometrical knowledge has often played the role of a laboratory for the philosopher's conceptual experiments dedicated to the ideation of powerful theories of knowledge. Lorenzo Magnani's new book Philosophy and Geometry illustrates the rich intrigue of this fascinating story of human knowledge, providing a new analysis of the ideas of many scholars (including Plato, Proclus, Kant, and Poincaré), and discussing conventionalist and neopositivist perspectives and the problem of the origins of geometry. The book also ties together the concerns of philosophers of science and cognitive scientists, showing, for example, the connections between geometrical reasoning and cognition as well as the results of recent logical and computational models of geometrical reasoning. All the topics are dealt with using a novel combination of both historical and contemporary perspectives. Philosophy and Geometry is a valuable contribution to the renaissance of research in the field.

Can a set of musical metaphors in a treatise on ethics reveal something about the nature and source of moral autonomy? This article argues that it can. It shows how metaphorical usage of words like tone, pitch, and concord in Adam Smiths Theory of Moral Sentiments can be understood as elements of an analogical model for morality. What this model tells us about morality depends on how we conceptualise music. In contrast to earlier interpretations of Smiths metaphors that have seen music as an aesthetic object, this article sees music as a practice. Understood in this way, the analogy allows us to see morality too as a practice-as moral tuning. This in turn reveals a novel answer to the intractable problem of conventionalism: moral autonomy consists in the freedom inherent in the constant need to interpret and reinterpret the strictly formal ideal of perfect propriety.

https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12319

Just ask me for a copy!

In his Romanes Lecture of 1907, Lord Curzon emphasized the overwhelming influence of “natural” and “artificial” frontiers in the political history of the modern world. As Barry Smith has shown, the same could be said, more generally, of the natural and artificial boundaries that are at work in articulating every aspect of the reality with which we have to deal, not only in the world of geography, but the world of human experience at large. Moreover, once the natural/artificial distinction has been recognized, it can be drawn across the board: not merely in relation to boundaries but also in relation to those entities that may be said to have boundaries. If something enjoys a natural boundary, its identity and survival conditions do not depend on us; it is a bona fide, mind-independent entity of its own. By contrast, if its boundary is artificial, then the entity itself is to some degree a fiat entity, a product of our worldmaking. Here I am interested in limit case: what if, pace Curzon and pace Smith, all entities turned out to be of the latter sort?

This paper examines whether, and in what contexts, Duhem’s and Poincaré’s views can be regarded as conventionalist or structural realist. After analysing the three different contexts in which conventionalism is attributed to them – in the context of the aim of science, the underdetermination problem and the epistemological status of certain principles – I show that neither Duhem’s nor Poincaré’s arguments can be regarded as conventionalist. I argue that Duhem and Poincaré offer different solutions to the problem of theory choice, differ in their stances towards scientific knowledge and the status of scientific principles, making their epistemological claims substantially different.

En el presente trabajo me propongo defender la hipótesis según la cual la tesis davidsoniana del lenguaje, que presupone un conjunto de creencias y deseos compartidos, es un fenómeno cuasi-racional que proporciona las verdades y, a partir de ellas, poder deducir otros pensamientos objetivos en el dominio de los valores. Desde ya adelanto que esta tesis se explica al entender que Davidson concibe que el pensamiento y el lenguaje son previos a la convención, por lo que, necesariamente, implica afirmar que comprende intrínsecamente al ser humano como un ser pensante, esto es, que goza de la inteligencia, de la capacidad de entender y comprender, aunque se encuentre desprovisto de contenido, es decir, negando un naturalismo o contenidos de creencias y deseos innatos.

Abstrakt/Abstract What is conventionalism in philosophy of science? Basically, it is a thesis about empirical underdetermination. According to Conventionalists, there is " a slack " between our theories and experience that is to be " lined " with conventions. As the experience does not " impose " any theory, scientists are always free to choose a theory on " softer " non-evidential grounds when facing empirical underdetermination. " Conventionalism is a philosophy of freedom, " as Édouard Le Roy put it. Yet the thing to remember is that there is no such a thing as the conventionalism. Reasons for empirical underdetermination that Conventionalists state are not always the same, hence it is more convenient to talk about varieties of conventionalism. The present paper is an attempt to sketch a line between two basic variants of conventionalism which are instrumentalism and constructivism. Co je konvencionalismus? V nejobecnější rovině se jedná o tvrzení o empirické poddeterminovanosti. Podle konvencionalistů existuje "mezera" mezi zkušeností a teoriemi, která může být překonána pouze pomocí konvencí. Vědci si podle konvencionalistů mohou vybrat teorie na základě měkkých kritérií, protože teorie nikdy nejsou předepisovány zkušeností. Konvencionalimus je, jak jednou poznamenal stoupenec jeho radikální varianty, Édouard Le Roy, "filozofii svobody." Konvencionalismus by však neměl být považován za homogenní proud. Konvencionalisté se v podstatných ohledech různí v názorech na příčiny empirické poddeterminovanosti, což je i důvodem, proč je příhodnější hovořit o variantách konvencionalismu. Předložený článek je pokusem vymezit dvě základní varianty konvencionalismu: instrumentalismus a konstruktivismus. 1 Práce na studii byla podpořena z IP projektu "Otázka relativismu ve filosofii a společenských vědách " řešeného na Katedře filozofie a společenských věd Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Hradec Králové.

Following Hume and Hayek, a variety of contemporary theorists have used evolutionary models of social interaction to assert the idea of an inevitable trade off between State and Society. On my interpretation this amounts to the definition of an ideal-type model of constitutional order that I label the Humean project. The objective of this work is to evaluate whether the conventional theory of justice supplied by the Humean project can explain the emergence of norms and moral sentiments that compose the ‘Constitutional Order’ of a a well-ordered society. The initial questions that I shall address belong, therefore, to the epistemology of social action: has the tradition of spontaneous order been able to work out an answer to collective action problems? Can a social contract be signed by an invisible hand? The answer to those questions would take us up to the first step in assessing the soundness of the Humean project as an analytical theory of ‘Constitutional Order’. Since this epistemology supports a deterministic link between descriptive and normative domains, I shall endeavour to verify whether the theory of spontaneous order proposed by Humeans has indeed the normative implications that its supporters affirm it has. Is the Humean genealogy of morals useful for the justification of principles, values and institutions? Assuming that it is so, does this justification coincide with the defence of Liberal order? In other words, I shall make clear whether the contribution brought about by the Humean project does indeed represent a convincing evolutionary social philosophy that can supply a normative analysis of the state which fits the liberal outlook

Are there any bona fide boundaries, i.e., boundaries that carve at the joints? Or is any boundary—hence any object—the result of a fiat articulation reflecting our cognitive biases and our social practices and conventions? Does the choice between these two options amount to a choice between metaphysical realism and anti-realism? How does the latter option compare to (a) Berkeleyan idealism, (b) Goodmanian irrealism, (c) Putnamian relativism, and (d) Postmodern anything-goes-ism?

According to Wittgenstein, mathematical propositions are rules of grammar, that is, conventions, or implications of conventions. So his position can be regarded as a form of conventionalism. However, mathematical conventionalism is widely thought to be untenable due to objections presented by Quine, Dummett and Crispin Wright. It has also been argued that only an implausibly radical form of conventionalism could withstand the critical implications of Wittgenstein's rule-following considerations. In this article I discuss those objections to conventionalism and argue that none of them is convincing.

La posición filosófica de Poincaré, conocida como " convencionalismo " se ha si-tuado siempre en conexión con problemas acerca del estatuto epistémico de cier-tos principios, siendo estos problemas causados por el desarrollo de nuevas teorías científicas. En este sentido, es una filosofía situada típicamente en estrecha cone-xión con la práctica y el desarrollo de la ciencia. Teniendo en cuenta esta perspec-tiva, el objetivo de este artículo es mostrar un posible camino que conecte la filo-sofía de la geometría de Poincaré con su filosofía de la física y la mecánica por medio de la noción de estructura, entendida en el sentido del pensamiento estruc-turalista en matemáticas. Y la idea es hacerlo pensando la filosofía de Poincaré como surgida de su práctica científica y no como una reflexión de segundo orden sobre la ciencia. Al utilizar la noción de estructura y el pensamiento estructuralista en matemáti-cas no se trata necesariamente de una idea o concepto tomada estrictamente de Poincaré, sino de algo que nos pueda servir para interpretar o entender su pensa-miento, pese a que en algunos aspectos pueda suponer " traer algo de fuera ". El artículo se divide en tres partes. En la primera, nos centraremos en propor-cionar una descripción básica de lo que entendemos por estructuralismo matemáti-co con el objetivo de que quede claramente caracterizado aquello a lo que nos re-ferimos al hablar de estructuralismo en la obra de Poincaré. Por tanto, no pretendemos en esta parte realizar una discusión filosófica profunda sobre las im-plicaciones de esta posición dentro de las matemáticas, sino utilizar esta concep-ción para repensar algunas ideas del sabio francés. Igualmente, no procuramos presentarlo como un estructuralista, en la medida en que este no es el objetivo central , ni como un proto-estructuralista, sino simplemente mostrar que hay algunos rasgos estructuralistas identificables en su pensamiento que pueden llevar a pensar filosóficamente algunas cuestiones de la manera que él lo hizo. La segunda parte mostrará cómo algunos rasgos de estructuralismo matemático en su manera de abordar la geometría se encuentran conectados con su posición filosófica acerca de esta disciplina. La tercera parte plantea si estas ideas que emergieron a partir de

European Journal of Philosophy

Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche’s argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche.

The centrality of religion and the religious orientations have been studied in its relations to authoritarianism because such expressions of religiosity offer a stable conventional social framework. Such framework includes a set of guidelines that govern the behavior of authoritarian subjects. However, previous studies examining these relationships did not take into account the specific contribution of each of the dimensions of authoritarianism. The main objective of the study was to analyze the relationship between the dimensions of authoritarianism, the centrality of religion and religious orientations. 431 college students participated, aged between 20 and 35 years, 72.38% of them were women. It was observed that the two dimensions of authoritarianism are related to centrality of religion, intrinsic and extrinsic religious orientation. Relationships between dimensions are discussed as well as their linear and nonlinear analysis.

Abstract: I aim to show that in the Cratylus Plato carries out a model for names and meaning by which he offers an alternative for solving some problems arrising from some naturalist as well as conventionalist theses about language. I will focus chiefly on the reconstruction of the argument at 384a8-391a4 and on the later refutation of the rough naturalism at 428d ss. So, I will try to explain Plato’s main theses on names according to which (a) they are instruments made by convention in order to perform some specific action, and (b) they have a semantic-normative external source lying in the natural essences of things. Besides them, I aim at showing that Plato’s Cratylus makes a start with the descriptive theory of meaning which Aristotle continues in De Interpretatione.
Keywords: Name; meaning; essence; naturalism; conventionalism.

Publikacja jest pierwszym przeglądowym i krytycznym opracowaniem dotyczącym współczesnego pozytywizmu prawniczego. W książce przedstawione są różne odmiany pozytywizmu przez pryzmat sposobu, w jaki rozwijają one tezę o konwencjonalnych źródłach normatywności prawa.  Autor w swojej pracy stara się udzielić odpowiedzi na pytania postawione przez R. Dworkina w ramach debaty z H.L.A. Hartem - czy istnieje możliwość wiarygodnego przedstawienia takiej reguły społecznej, która posiadałaby moc normatywną? Czy u podstaw prawa stoi konwencja dostarczająca szczególnych powodów do działania?  W książce zaprezentowano m.in.:  przegląd teorii pozytywistycznych, analizę filozofi czną pojęcia konwencji oraz konkurencyjnych ujęć tezy o konwencjonalnych podstawach prawa, polemikę z Dworkinowską krytyką pozytywistycznej koncepcji prawa, szerokie omówienie literatury przedmiotu ostatnich lat. Adresaci: Monografia przeznaczona jest przede wszystkim dla teoretyków i filozofów prawa, prawników, socjologów oraz innych humanistów zainteresowanych omawianym tematem.

In this paper I argue that the positivist-conventionalist interpretation of the Restricted Principle of Relativity is flawed, due to the positivists' own understanding of conventions and their origins. I claim in the paper that, to understand the conventionalist thesis, one has to diambiguate between three types of convention; the linguistic conventions stemming from the fundamental role of mathematical axioms (conceptual conventions), the conventions stemming from the coordination betweeh theoretical statements and physical, observable facts or entities (coordinative definitions), and conventions that are made possible by possible revisions to theory (the thesis of empirical underdetermination). I claim that it is not possible to interpret the Principle of Relativity as based on one of these three types of convention. This renders the conventionalist interpretation of the Principle of Relativity untenable. The paper is part of a larger project that aims to understand the philosophical significance of the Principle of Relativity.

A. KRATYLOS DİYALOGU Platon'un geçiş dönemi 1 diyalogları arasında yer alan Kratylos, Platonik diyaloglar içinde dil konusunu doğrudan doğruya ele alan tek diyalogdur. Aysever, Kratylos'un kimi araştırmacılar tarafından "Platon'un düşüncesinin gelişimi açısından çok önemli olmayan" bir diyalog olarak görüldüğünü ve sadece dilin doğuşu gibi hususi ve detay kabilinden sayılabilecek bir konuyu ele aldığının düşünüldüğünü belirtmektedir. 2 Dil felsefesiyle ilgilenenler dışında Platon araştırmacılarının pek üzerinde durmadıkları bir diyalog olduğu belirtilen Kratylos hakkındaki bu değerlendirmeler 3 onun gerçek değerine yapılmış bir haksızlık olarak kabul edilmelidir. Aslında diyalog hem çok ilginç bir meseleyi ele almakta, hem de okudukça ve üzerinde düşündükçe, adeta ovuldukça daha çok parlayan bir kristal gibi, çok zengin, çok derin ve çok değişik uçlara uzanan fikirlere ilham kaynağı olabilmektedir. Sözcük-Nesne İlişkisi ve Adların Doğruluğu Diyalog, alt başlığında da belirtildiği gibi, adların doğruluğu konusunu ele almaktadır 4. İlk başta "adların doğruluğu" deyimi garip bulunabilir. Zira doğruluk ad gibi kendi başına bir sözcük için değil de, yargılar için kullanılan bir nitelemedir. Ancak yargıların, doğru veya yanlış olabileceği bilinen bir mantık kuralıdır. "Doğru"nun yargılar dışında kalan kullanımlarını mecazi olarak anlamak gerekir. Dolayısıyla varlıklar, nesneler yada sözcükler kedi başlarına doğru veya yanlış olmazlar. Sözcüklerin uygun ve yerinde olup olmadıklarından yani doğru kullanılıp kullanılmadıklarından bahsedilebilir. Burada doğruluk,

This article examines how Quine and Sellars develop informatively contrasting responses to a fundamental tension in Carnap’s semantics ca. 1950. Quine’s philosophy could well be styled ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; his assay of radical empiricism is invaluable for what it reveals about the inherent limits of empiricism. Careful examination shows that Quine’s criticism of Carnap’s semantics in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ fails, that at its core Quine’s semantics is for two key reasons incoherent and that his hallmark Thesis of Extensionalism is untenable. The tension in Carnap’s semantics together with Quine’s exposure of the severe limits of radical empiricism illuminate central features of Sellars’s philosophy: the fully general form of the myth of givenness, together with Sellars’s alternative Kantian characterisation of understanding; the full significance of Carnap’s distinction between conceptual analysis and conceptual explication, and its important methodological implications; the specifically pragmatic character of Sellars’s realism; and Sellars’s methodological reasons for holding that philosophy must be systematic and that systematic philosophy must be deeply historically and textually informed. This paper thus re-examines this recent episode of philosophical history for its philosophical benefits and systematic insights.
Journal for the History of Analytic Philosophy 3.8 (2015):1-66; doi: 10.15173/jhap.v3i8.42.  http://jhaponline.org

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.

"Die Dynamik von Authentifizierung und Fälschung". Uncertainty often
arises around objects concerning the relevant qualities that determine their value in different markets. The existence of conventions of quality allows to reduce this uncertainty but these conventions can be used strategically. So, other resources must be mobilized to authenticate objects relying on sensed experience. In this contribution, we present first our model of expertise and we then adopt a historical perspective questioning the plurality of regimes of authenticity.
This plurality depends on the conception of copying and on the different
ways of attributing authorship between law and social norms. These
sources of variation have changed the resources mobilized in authentication and thus its mode of organization and legitimation. The growing importance of scientific and legal guarantees in the current exchanges of high-value goods reflects the creation of a market for authentication and raises the question of its regulation.

Speech act theorists tend to hold that the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by one interlocutor alone: either the speaker or the hearer. Yet experience tells us that the force of our utterances is not determined unilaterally. Rather, communication often feels collaborative. In this paper, I develop and defend a collaborative theory of illocutionary force, according to which the illocutionary force of an utterance is determined by an agreement reached by the speaker and the hearer. This theory, which builds upon linguistic and sociological work on adjacency pairs and conversational interaction, can accommodate the complexity of speaker intentions (which may be disjunctive, indeterminate, and/or inconsistent over time), and renders speech act theory more compatible with theories of common ground.

This paper aims at understanding the concept of convention in mechanics as a notion transferred from the field of jurisprudence.This enables us to clarify it as a new epistemic category having a pertinent role in the transformation of mechanics in the nineteenth century. Such understanding permits a separation from linguistic and arbitrary conventions, thus highlighting its epistemic features and not transforming fundamental principles into mere arbitrary agreements. After addressing the main references in the literature discussing the role of convention in mechanics, we analyze its classical use as a concept originating from law. Then we explain its use by Carl G. Jacobi,  Ferdinand F.Reech, and J.Henri Poincaré. Here we also show how their uses conform to the features analyzed regarding conventions in jurisprudence. Finally, we try to explain how the use of this concept, among other factors, contributed to the transformation of mechanics.

Adam Smith argued that the ideal moral judge is both well-informed and impartial. As non-ideal moral agents, we tend only to be truly well-informed about those with whom we frequently interact. These are also those with whom we tend to have the closest affective bonds. Hence, those who are well-informed, like our friends, tend to make for partial judges, while those who are impartial, like strangers, tend to make for ill-informed ones. Combining these two traits in one person seems far from straightforward. Still, if becoming well-informed is, as Smith also claims, a matter of imaginative perspective-taking with the "person principally concerned" (TMS, I.i.1.4, 13), it might be possible to become well-informed without the emotional entanglement that comes from any actual proximity to those we judge. Against this intuition, I use Construal Level Theory to show that the tension between being well-informed and impartial is likely to persist even if we take any actual proximity out of the equation. I end by discussing some implications of this, and suggest that we should consider revising the ideal to accommodate them.

In the introduction to his famous book, La Science et l’hypothèse, Poincaré remarks on the necessary role and legitimacy of hypotheses. He establishes a triple classification of hypotheses, dividing them into verifiable, useful, and apparent. However, in chapter 9, entitled ‘Les hypothèses en physique’, he gives a slightly different triadic classification: natural hypotheses, indifferent hypotheses, and real generalizations. The origin of this second classification is a lecture given at the International Congress of Physics, Paris, 1900. What are the similarities and differences between these two classifications? My main purpose is to provide a possible equivalence between the two classifications in order to clarify the role of hypotheses in Poincaré’s epistemology of natural science. The discussion will be based on the two fundamental texts mentioned above and on the contrast between Poincaré’s use of the notion of hypothesis and that of some of his contemporaries.

Este trabajo plantea una reflexión sobre un tema central en el deporte, el enjuiciamiento de aquellas jugadas en las que un jugador o equipo, amparándose en las normas del sistema normativo deportivo, obtiene ventaja de la buena fe del rival. Un ejemplo de este tipo de jugadas tuvo lugar recientemente en un partido entre el FC Shakhtar Donetz de Ukrania y el FC Nordsjaelland de Dinamarca, en el cual el jugador del equipo ucraniano Luiz Adriano se aprovechó de un saque neutral para marcar un gol. Curiosamente, el árbitro no anuló el gol, pero el órgano disciplinario de la UEFA impuso una sanción al jugador. En este trabajo proponemos caracterizar este tipo de jugadas que “ensucian el juego” a partir de una institución característica del derecho como es el abuso de derecho, para posteriormente analizar estos supuestos desde las diferentes teorías del deporte (formalismo, convencionalismo, interpretativismo) y concluir que la última es la concepción que permite una más completa explica...

European Journal of Philosophy Nietzsche appears to adopt a radical Kantian view of objects called constructivism, which holds that the existence of all objects depends essentially on our practices. This essay provides a new reconstruction of Nietzsche’s argument for constructivism and responds to five pressing objections to reading Nietzsche as a constructivist that have not been addressed by commentators defending constructivist interpretations of Nietzsche.