Logical Foundations: Essays in Honor of D. J. O’Connor

218 Pages·1991·17.872 MB·English

by  Indira Mahalingam, Brian Carr (eds.)

LOGICAL FOUNDATIONS
Also by Indira Mahalingam
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHY (editor with Brian Carr)
Also by Brian Carr
BERTRAND RUSSELL
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHY (editor with Indira
M ahalingam)
INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE (with D . .1.
O'Connor)
METAPHYSICS: An Introduction
D. J. O'Connor
(photograph taken by Lotte Meitner-Graf, London, 1979)
Logical Foundations
Essays in Honor of D. J. O'Connor
Edited by
Indira Mahalingam
Lecturer in Law
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
and
Brian Carr
Senior Lecturer in Philosophy
University of Nottingham
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-21234-7 ISBN 978-1-349-21232-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21232-3
Editorial matter and selection © Indira Mahalingam and Brian Carr, 1991
Chapters 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,20,21
© Macmillan, 1991
Chapter 5 © Karl R. Popper, 1985
Chapter 13 © the estate of A. J. Ayer, 1991
Frontispiece photograph © Kathleen O'Connor, 1991
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991
All rights reserved. For information, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America 1991
ISBN 978-0-312-04737-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Logical foundations: essays in honor of D. J. O'Connor/edited by
Indira Mahalingam and Brian Carr.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-312-04737-5
1. Philosophy. 2. Logical positivism. 3. O'Connor, D. J. (Daniel
John), 1914- . I. O'Connor, D. J. (Daniel John), 1914- .
II. Mahalingam, Indira, 1952- III. Carr, Brian, 1946-- .
B29.L56232 1991
146'. 42--dc20 90--31926
CIP
Contents
D.J. O'Connor frontispiece
Preface vii
Notes on the Contributors viii
PART I PARADOX AND INFERENCE
Super Pragmatic Paradoxes 3
Robert Ackermann
2 Fences and Ceilings: Schrodinger's Cat and Other
Animals 11
Heinz Post
3 The Paradoxes of Indicative Conditionals 15
Brian Carr
4 Pretending to Infer 20
G.B. Keene
5 The Non-Existence of Probabilistic Inductive Support 31
Karl R. Popper
PART II KNOWLEDGE AND LANGUAGE
6 On Certainty 45
Alice Ambrose
7 Truth and Status Rerum 56
David E. Cooper
8 Knowledge and Rationality 68
D. W. Hamlyn
9 Language and Philosophy: Some Suggestions for Further
Reflection 76
John Burbidge
10 Languageless Creatures and Communication 86
Indira M ahalingam
v
VI Contents
PART III THOUGHT AND ACTION
11 Locke's Idea of an Idea 97
Glenn Langford
12 The Chinese Room Argument: An Exercise in
Computational Philosophy of Mind 106
Ajit Narayanan
13 Free-Will and Determinism 119
A.J. Ayer
14 Two All-or-Nothing Theories of Freedom 131
John Watkins
15 Contra Hume: On Making Things Happen 137
Colin B. Wright
PART IV PEOPLE AND THINGS
16 Locke on Solidity and Incompressibility 149
Peter Alexander
17 What did Aristotle Mean by 'Nature does Nothing in
Vain'? 158
Pamela M. Huby
18 Could the World Embody God? 167
W.D. Hudson
19 Locke on Government 175
R. F. Atkinson
20 The Philosophy of Education? 185
Alan M ontefiore
21 Education: Anti-racist, Multi-ethnic and Multi-cultural 194
Antony Flew
Bibliography of Works by D. J. O'Connor 206
Index of Names 208
Index of Subjects 210
Preface
This collection of essays marks the occasion of Dan O'Connor's 75th
birthday, and provides the opportunity for the contributors to show
their appreciation of his work in philosophy. The essays each discuss a
topic which has commanded his attention, in print or in personal
discussion, though not every essay takes issue with him directly. The
range of these topics, from philosophical logic to the philosophy of
education, reflects his commitment to following through the
consequences of the fundamental principles of 'logical empiricism'
for the major questions of philosophy.
Inheriting these principles from Russell and Carnap - and more
distantly from Locke and Hume - Dan O'Connor's major service to his
subject has been in their unwavering defence. But this primary task has
been supplemented by a strong interest in the history of philosophy,
and we can count among his most important work such books as John
Locke (1952), Aquinas and Natural Law (1968), and of course the
Critical History of Western Philosophy (1964) to which very many
students are greatly indebted. We personally owe him a particular debt
for his generous encouragement of our developing interest in the
philosophical traditions of Asia. A logical empiricist by deep
commitment, Dan O'Connor has nevertheless always been ready to
acknowledge the contributions of other ages and other cultures.
We have included a full bibliography of his published material at the
end of the collection. There is every reason to expect this corpus to
grow even further, for Dan's enthusiasm for philosophy is
undiminished. Among the present contributors there are many of his
old colleagues in the Philosophy Departments of the University College
of North Staffordshire (now the University of Keele), the University of
Liverpool and (since 1957) the University of Exeter. They all owe much
to that very enthusiasm.
INDIRA MAHALINGAM
BRIAN CARR
vii
Notes on the Contributors
Robert Ackermann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Massachusetts. He is the author of Data, Instruments and Theory
(1985), Wittgenstein's City (1988) and numerous other books, articles,
and reviews. He was a colleague of D. J. O'Connor's at the University
of Exeter twice, once under a Fulbright and once under a Guggenheim.
Peter Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University
of Bristol. He previously taught at Leeds University. He is the author
of Sensationalism and Scientific Explanation (1963), A Preface to the
Logic of Science (1963), An Introduction to Logic (1969) and Ideas,
Qualities and Corpuscles (1985). He edited, with Roger Gill, Utopias
(1984).
Alice Ambrose is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Smith College,
Massachusetts. She is author of Essays in Analysis (1966) and
co-author, with Morris Lazerowitz, of a number of books, including
Fundamentals of Symbolic Logic (rev. edn, 1962), Essays in the
Unknown Wittgenstein (1984) and Necessity and Language (1985).
She has edited a number of works, including Wittgenstein's Lectures,
Cambridge 1932-35 from the notes of A. Ambrose and Margaret
Macdonald (1979). She was President of the American Philosophical
Association, Eastern Division, 1975.
R. F. Atkinson teaches philosophy at the University of Exeter, having
previously taught at York and Keele. He is author of Sexual Morality
(1965), Conduct (1969) and Knowledge and Explanation in History
(1978).
A.J. Ayer, who died in 1989, was Wykeham Professor of Logic in the
University of Oxford until his retirement in 1978 having previously
been Grote Professor of the Philosophy of the Mind and Logic in the
University of London. Among his many publications were Language,
Truth and Logic (1936), The Problem of Knowledge (1956) and The
Central Questions of Philosophy (1974). He was knighted in 1970. There
is a volume of the Library of Living Philosophers series, edited by
P. A. Schilpp, in preparation containing numerous articles on aspects
of his philosophy.
viii