Causality, Method, and Modality: Essays in Honor of Jules Vuillemin

244 Pages·1991·6.851 MB·English

by  Jules Vuillemin (auth.), Gordon G. Brittan Jr. (eds.)

CAUSALITY, METHOD, AND MODALITY
THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTA RlO
SERIES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
A SERIES OF BOOKS
IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, METHODOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOG
LOGIC, HISTORY OF SCIENCE, AND RELATED FIELDS
Managing Editor
ROBERT E. BUTTS
Dept. ofP hilosophy, University of Western Ontario, Canal
Editorial Board
JEFFREY BUB, University of Western Ontario
L. JONATHAN COHEN, Queen's College, Oxford
WILLIAM DEMOPOULOS, University of Western Ontario
WILLIAM HARPER, University ofW estern Ontario
JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Florida State University, Tallahassee
CLIFFORD A. HOOKER, University ofN ewcastle
HENRY E. KYBURG, JR., University ofR ochester
AUSONIO MARRAS, University ofW estern Ontario
.rORGEN MITTELS1RASS, Universitiit Konstanz
JOHN M. NICHOLAS, University of Western Ontario
BAS C. VAN FRAASSEN, Princeton University
VOLUME 48
CAUSALITY, METHOD,
AND MODALITY
Essays in Honor ofJ ules Vuillemin
With a Complete Bibliography
of Jules Vuillemin
Editedby
Gordon G. Brittan, Jr.
Regents Professor ofP hilosophy,
Montana State University
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Causality. method. and madality : essays in hanar of Jules Vuillemin /
edited by Gardan G. Brittan. Jr.
p. cm. -- <The University of Western Ontaria series in
philasaphy of science ; v. 48)
Essays in English ar French.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-94-010-5479-9 ISBN 978-94-011-3348-7 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-011-3348-7
1. Philosaphy. 2. Vuillemin. Jules. r. Vuillemin. Jules.
II. Brittan. Gardan G. III. Series.
B29.C336 1990
110--dc20 90-19840
ISBN 978-94-010-5479-9
Printed on acid-free paper
AII Rights Reserved
@ 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1991
Softcover rePrint of the hardcover Ist edition 1991
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
Table of Contents
PREFACE vii
Jules Vuillemin / "Ma vie en bref' 1
Patrick Suppes / "Indeterminism or Instability, Does It Matter ?" 5
Erhard Scheibe / "Covariance and the Non-Preference of Coordinate Systems" 23
Pierre Laberge / "Kant's 'Platonic' Argument in Behalf of the A Priori
Character of the Representation of Space" 41
Fran~ois Duchesneau / "The Sense of the A Priori Method in Leibniz' s
Dynamics" 53
Gilles Gaston Granger / "Methode axiomatique et idee de systeme dans
l'oeuvre de Jules Vuillemin" 83
Gordon G. Brittan, Jr. / "Algebra, Constructibility, and the Indeterminate" 99
Karel Lambert / "On Whether an Answer to a Why-Question Is an Explana-
tion If and Only If It Yields Scientific Understanding" 125
Ruth Barcan Marcus / "Some Revisionary Proposals About Belief and
Believing" 143
Brian Skyrms / "Quantification, Modality, and Semantic Ascent" 175
David Wiggins / "Temporal Necessity, Time and Ability: a philosophical
commentary on Diodorus Cronus' Master Argument as given in the
interpretation of Jules Vuillemin" 185
Jules Vuillemin / "Replies" 207
List of the Publications of Jules Vuillemin, 1947-1989 225

Preface
Deservedly so, Jules Vuillemin is widely respected and greatly
admired. It is not simply that he has produced a large body of
outstanding work, in many different areas of philosophy. Or that he
combines to an unusual degree rigorous standards with a very wide
perspective. Or even that in his path-breaking accounts of algebra, of
!)escartes, of Kant and of Russell, he showed in new and profound
ways how the histories of science and philosophy could be used to
illuminate each other. It is also that he has pursued the application of
formal techniques and the defense of liberal institutions with a rare
singlemindedness and courage. In a time and place where the
former were generally ignored and the latter often attacked, he
carried on, at some personal cost, embodying a traditional and ideal
conception of the philosophical life, bridging national differences.
Those who know him also treasure his friendship. Always
curious, he delights in new facts and new experiences, and continually
heightens the perception of those around him. Almost yearly, at the
College de France he introduced brand new courses always with fresh
and fruitful inSights. Exceptionally solicitous, he follows the lives of
the families around him in great detail. The devotion of his students is
legend. His personal energy is also legend. Many of us have followed
him bounding up the stairs two at a time or through the gardens of
the Luxembourg, his wit and irony apace. Some of us have been
fortunate enough to ski with him along the ridges of the Jura dividing
France and Switzerland, arriving back at his mountain home
exhausted and famished, to enjoy the unending hospitality that he and
his wife Gudrun, herself an established scholar, provide.
The participation in this volume d'hommages of well-know
philosophers from widely diverse areas of interest and a number of
different countries testifies to the importance and influence of Jules
Vuillemin's work. We hope that this volume, presented to him in his
vii
viii PREFACE
seventieth year and upon retirement from a distinguished career at
the College de France, will underline the importance and extend the
influence.
In the Vie de Rance, Chateaubriand wrote: "Tout est fragile;
apres avoir vecu quelque temps, on ne sa it plus si on a bien ou si on a
mal vecu." Tout est fragile. But from a provisional point of view, who
would not agree that Jules Vuillemin has tees bien vecu.
MA VIE EN BREF
I was born the 15th of February, 1920, at Pierrefontaine-Ies
Varans, a village in the Doubs. My father had entered the civil service,
in the reconquered province of Lorraine, first at the prefecture of
Metz, then at the sous-prefecture of Chateau-Salins, a small country
town at that time both comfortable and prosperous, where I passed
my childhood.
Of my secondary and preparatory studies at the College de
jesuites in Metz, then at the Lycee Louis-Ie-Grand in Paris, I have
retained the memory of a liberal, but diSciplined instruction, isolated
from the quarrels and noises of the outside world, solid in ancient
languages, in French, in history, in mathematics - the ax had not yet
been applied to separate letters and sciences - behind the times in
physics: I heard the special theory of relativity mentioned as a
curiosity in 1936.
My baccalaureat in hand, I made a trip to Berlin in August, 1936.
It opened my eyes to the imminence of hostilities. France, caught up
in class struggles, strikes, local disorders, in the conflict in Spain,
engaged in speeches instead of acting.
A few weeks before the AnglO-French declaration of war, I
entered the Ecole Norrnale Superieure for a period of four years. The
circumstances seemed hardly favorable for philosophical studies.
Nonetheless, I remember how it felt: the "dr6le de guerre," the
mobilization of my class in May, 1940, the overwhelming defeat,
several months in the "Camps de jeunesse" of Marshall Petain, the
return to an occupied Paris, a failed attempt to get to England, far
from undermining the scholastic background necessary for
philosophical reflection, gave to it a kind of seriousness and urgency
2 JULES VUILLEMIN
which are ordinarily missing in peace time. At the Ecole Normale,
Cuzin served as my mentor and introduced me to Kant. At the
Sorbonne, I took the courses of Bachelard, Brehier, Gouhier, and
Cavailles.
Cuzin and Cavailles were shot for the part they played in the
resistance.
Having received the agregation in philosophy in 1943, I was
named a teacher at the Lycee de Besan~on, not far from the village
where my family had located. Teaching is the best way of learning,
for the student stops at the point where the master has not
understood. I did a survey, during my Besan~onian year, of the
shadowy zones heretofore covered over by scholarly rhetoric. The
war, however, pressed on both town and school. Four of my students
were arrested. One of my friends was deported to Buchenwald. He
was declared "disappeared" the day the camp was liberated by the
American army. Guerillas organized. I rejoined my village group.
The ebb-tide, with its dramas, began.
Happily, the army, disembarked at Toulon, hurried on its way. It
happened in a night. In the morning we were liberated. When
armored cars and trucks left for the East, I thought the war was over.
I was mistaken by more than six months.
I re-entered Paris in a holiday mood and obtained, for five years,
a position at half-salary at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique. I set myself the task of making clear what remained of
rationalism when the Absolute was removed from its foundation.
The history of Kantian interpretation showed the interpreters coming
to grips with this question. The French philosophical world split at
the time principally between the dogmas of Existentialism and
Marxism: there an ontology of anguish and nausea, here an
unscrupulous activism which, in Paris, continues to pervert thought
even to the present day. In my doctoral thesis, I sought to examine