ADVERTISEMENT FOR THE BOOK 'LINES OF
THOUGHT: RETHINKING PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS'
(CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS
PUBLISHING, 2014).
Lines of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions is a highly innovative and powerfully
argued book. According to the author, noted Brazilian philosopher Claudio
Costa, many philosophical ideas that today are widely seen as old-fashioned
suggests replacing the causal-historical view of proper names with a much more
sophisticated form of descriptive-internalist theory able to meet Kripke’s
challenges. In epistemology, he argues convincingly that we should return to
the old traditional tripartite definition of knowledge, reformulated in a much
more complex form in which Gettier’s problem disappear. The correct response to
skepticism about the external world should not be to adopt new and more
fanciful views, but rather to carefully analyze the different kinds of reality
attributions implied by the argument and responsible for its equivocal
character. In metaphysics, he argues for a more complex reformulation of the
traditional compatibilist approach of free will, relating it intrinsically with
the causal theory of action and making it powerful enough to assimilate the
best elements of hierarchical views. Finally, according to the author,
contemporary analytic philosophy suffers from a lack of comprehensiveness. In
response to this, the papers in this collection aim to restore something of the
broader perspective, salvaging isolated insights by integrating them into more
comprehensive views. The text is written in a clear and accessible style that
meets the needs of not only professional philosophers, but also of contemporary
students and laypersons.
This is an impressive contribution to
answering several important questions of analytic philosophy. Few philosophers
have written on such difficult questions with comparable lucidity and
originality.
Guido Antônio de
Almeida - Emeritus professor of philosophy - Federal University of Rio de
Janeiro
Claudio Costa's collection of
philosophical essays covers many of the central problems of philosophy - the
nature of philosophy and of knowledge, how names refers to individuals, frewill
and consciousness. He reminds us of some of the major insights on these issues
from the early years of 'linguistic philosophy' and develops important
objections to some more recent views about them".
Richard Swinburne - Emeritus Noloth professor of philosophy -
Oxford University
(from the back-cover)
--------------------------
BLURB
SINCE I AM A COMPLETE OUTSIDER, AN
"ASPIE" LIVING ALONE IN A GREAT ISLAND IN THE ATLANTIC SOUTH, IT IS
BETTER TO BE INCISIVE.
I’M
ADVERTISING HERE FOR MY GROUNDBREAKING WORK “LINES OF THOUGHT: RETHINKING
PHILOSOPHICAL ASSUMPTIONS”.
THE BOOK IS A TOTALLY INDEPENDENT AND
SERIOUS ARTISAN WORK, AND THIS IS THE SECRET OF ITS INSIGHTFULNESS.
THIS BOOK PUTS THE DISCOVERY OF KRIPKE IN
ITS RIGHT INTERNALIST SHUES. THIS BOOK PUTS PUTNAM’S BRILLIANT THEORY OF
MEANING UNDER THE SHADOW.
IT TELLS YOU FINALLY WHAT KNOWLEDGE REALLY
IS, EXORCIZING GETTIERS PROBLEM FOR EVER AND EVER.
IT NOT ONLY GIVES THE ULTIMATE PROOF THAT
THE EXTERNAL WORLD REALLY EXISTS, BUT SOLVES ONCE AND FOR ALL THE DIFFICULT
PROBLEM POSED BY THE MODUS TOLLENS SCEPTICAL ARGUEMENT.
IT OFFERS THE MOST COMPLETE AND PLAUSIBLE
COMPATIBILIST THEORY OF FREE WILL, THE EXPLANATION TO OUR FREEDOM TO DO
OTHERWISE AND A BETTER HINT TO THE SOLUTION OF THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM.
IF YOU ARE NOT YET TAMED BY THE LATEST
WAVE OF PHILOSOPHICAL SELF-DECEPTION, YOU WILL BE UNAVOIDABLE COMPELLED TO BUY
MY BOOK.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
SUMMARY OF THE MAIN IDEAS
"For me, contemporary analytic
philosophy suffers from a lack of comprehensiveness due to the growing
influence of related particular sciences, and this ‘scientism’ tends to
transform philosophy into a handmaiden of science. Partially because of this, I
defend the view that many philosophical ideas that today are widely considered
old-fashioned and outdated should not be abandoned, but instead should be
extensively reworked and reformulated.
An example is my sketch of a totally
general correspondence theory of truth (published as the first chapter of the
book Paisagens Conceituais). In my view the process by which
we find correspondence usually incorporates coherence as an important element.
Usually we have a hypothesis p and a
reverse chain of reasons that begins in criterial evidences and ends in q, and
if q equals p, we have correspondence, otherwise not.
Even if the chain of reasons gains its
ultimate certainty from observations, it is the element of coherence that
sustains this certainty through the whole chain of reasoning.
So understood, the view applies also
to the formal sciences. For example: I have the hypothesis that the sum of the
angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, this is p. And I make a reasoning that
begins with evidential axioms and brings me to the same result, this is q.
Since p equals q correspondence is warranted. The certainty of q is
conventionally accepted as an evidence impossible to be false in the context of
the particular linguistic praxis, the language-game, in which the truth-value
is asked.
The upshot is a totally general
correspondence theory of truth that incorporates in it the coherence view.
The book Lines of Thought is
a collection of published and unpublished papers, presented in a revised and
expanded form:
The most important paper in the
collection is a long essay called ‘Outline of a Theory of Proper Names’, which
is an expanded and corrected version of an earlier paper published under the
titel ‘A Meta-Descriptivist Theory of Proper Names’ in the journal Ratio.
In this essay, a new and much more
sophisticated version of the cluster theory of proper names emerges. Thus,
calling localizing description a description that expresses a rule for the
spatio-temporal location of the reference, and calling a characterizing
description a description that expresses the rule that is the proper reason for
our choice of the name, we can state the following form of the identification
rule for any proper name:
A proper name N refers to an object of a
certain class C iff in a sufficient manner and more than in any other case, its
localizing description applies and/or its characterizing description applies.
Normal speakers do not need to know
the identifying rule, but must know enough from it to be able to insert adequately
the name in the discourse.
The identifying rule, turned into a
description, is a rigid designator, applicable in all possible worlds where the
object to be referred can be found. This explains the rigidity of proper names.
Since usual definite descriptions
are loosely associated with the identifying rule of proper names of the objects
they are usually designating, they are accidental designators.
To show that this view is
right we need only consider cases of definite descriptions that do not belong
to the cluster of descriptions of any proper name, for example, ‘the third
cavalry regiment of Cintra’. This description is rigid, since it will be
applied in any possible world where there is a third cavalry regiment of Cintra.
This theory not only gives
descriptive paraphrases of actual discoveries of Kripke, but allows us to
explain the most relevant classical counterexamples to descriptivism more
precisely than Searle’s memorable attempt to do it in the chapter 9 of his
book Intentionality.
Since proper names is a
touching stone to the theories of reference, a radical change of perspective in
the direction of descriptivism should bring with it also a radical change in
the way we understand the reference of others terms and expressions.
Another relevant paper in the
collection is the previously unpublished ‘On the Concept of Water’, proposing a
neo-descriptivist analysis of this concept.
For me the word ‘water’ has
two nuclei of meaning: an old popular nucleus, and a new scientific nucleus. A
complete descriptivist view must extend itself to the scientific meaning too,
since ‘Water is made of H2O’ is a descriptive sentence that is found in the
definition of water given by modern dictionaries.
When sufficiently developed,
this analysis allows us to give an internalist answer to Putnam’s twin earth
experiment, as resulting from our projection of one of these senses in Oscar’s
indexical use of the word. For according with the context of interests involved
we can emphasize the popular meaning of the world ‘water’ or the scientific
meaning of this world.
Moreover, distinguishing
several senses in which we can say that ‘Water is H2O’, our analysis shows more
clearly than two-dimensinalist views why it is misleading to see this statement
as being necessary a posteriori. To make it clear: for me in the
statement ‘Water is H2O’ the word ‘water’ can be understood as ‘watery liquid’
or as ‘dihydrogen monoxide’, according to the context. In the first case the
statement will be read as contingent a posteriori. In the second it will be
read as necessary a priori. Kripke simply mixed the contingence of the first
statement with the necessity of the second, arriving in this way to the
necessary a posteriori.
As Wittgenstein would say, Kripke’s
conclusion results from a metaphysical confusion caused by lack of attention to
the ways in which language really works.
Another relevant paper is called
‘Free Will and the Soft Constraints of Reason’ is a modern defense of
compatibilism in which the causal theory of action is used to explain different
levels of free will.
According to that theory, reasoning
causes volitions that cause actions. Freedom can be constrained, externally or
internally, by pressure or limitation, under a reasonable range of alternatives,
in these three levels: physical, motivational and rational, in the last case
possibly without awareness of the agent, what makes it important and
contestable and demands a detailed explanation.
The upshot is a view potentially
able to incorporate the results of modern hierarchical views.
This paper is followed by a
compatibilist analysis of our feeling that we can do otherwise, with
consequences for the arguments of Van Inwagen and Harry Frankfurt.
‘A Perspectival Definition of
Knowledge’ is a paper revising the old tripartite definition of knowledge in a
way in which Gettiers problem disappears without creating new difficulties,
since the internal link between the conditions of justification and truth is
made fully explicit in a formal way. The basic intuition is that the adequate
justification must be able to satisfy the condition of truth to the
knowledge-evaluator in the moment of his evaluation. However, the details of
the definition are partially formal and too complex to be explained in few words.
The most difficult paper is, I believe,
‘The Sceptical Deal With our Concept of External Reality’. This paper offers
shows that both, the modus tollens skeptical argument about the reality of the
external world, as much as the modus ponens anti-skeptical argument about the
external world, are both equivocal and consequently falacious. The way to get
this result is through an analysis of the concept of reality. I show that this
concept is ambiguous; it has a sense in the usual contexts and another sense in
the context of skeptical hypothesis. Since there is an implicit attribution or
disattribution of reality in the different sentences of the skeptical and
anti-skeptical arguments, the passages from the premises to the conclusion are
implicitly equivocal and consequently fallacious.
This paper contains an
passant a developed proof of the external world. It is in my view in
the whole philosophical literature the only proof that really works. It is able
to explain why we are so sure that the external world is real.
What these papers have in
common is that they belong to the same program of restoring something from the
traditional comprehensiveness of philosophy, often by reviving views that by
many are, I believe, wrongly considered outdated."
