Self Defense:a Philosophy of Violence

This book celebrates and explores some philosophical issues raised by the work of Alan Weir, who is Professor Emeritus at the University of Glasgow, having previously held positions at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and Queen’s, Belfast. In a number of areas, Weir has elaborated strikingly original views which involve a radical departure from the mainstream. These include formalism in the philosophy of mathematics, and as well as naïve set theory, with a universal set, and a naïve theory of truth. In contrast to other contemporary defenders of the latter two theories, Weir rejects dialetheism and accepts classical rules for the logical connectives. He avoids contradictions by restricting certain structural inference rules, specifically some generalized versions of transitivity. In addition, Weir has developed radical versions of naturalism and physicalism (partly informed by his work on Quine) and perceptual realism. This collection includes contributions by a distinguished group of philosophers on Weir’s philosophy, as well as a memoir and a new essay on the philosophy of mathematics by Weir himself.

Essays on Husserl’s Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics sets out to fill up a lacuna in the present research on Husserl by presenting a precise account of Husserl’s work in the field of logic, of the philosophy of logic and of the philosophy of mathematics. The aim is to provide an in-depth reconstruction and analysis of the discussion between Husserl and his most important interlocutors, and to clarify pivotal ideas of Husserl’s by considering their reception and elaboration by some of his disciples and followers, such as Oskar Becker and Jacob Klein, as well as their influence on some of the most significant logicians and mathematicians of the past century, such as Luitzen E. J. Brouwer, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel and Hermann Weyl. Most of the papers consider Husserl and another scholar – e.g. Leibniz, Kant, Bolzano, Brentano, Cantor, Frege – and trace out and contextualize lines of influence, points of contact, and points of disagreement. Each essay is written by an expert of the field, and the volume includes contributions both from the analytical tradition and from the phenomenological one.

This book offers the first sustained investigation of the phenomenon of retraction - the “taking back” of the conventional or deontic effects of a previous speech act - bringing together issues and solutions from the semantics of perspectival expressions and from the framework of Speech Act theory. It addresses questions that have been at the center of lively debates in philosophy of language and linguistics, but also draws out some of the ramifications these questions have for certain debates in the logic of discourse, philosophy of mind or experimental philosophy.

Essays on Husserl’s Logic and Philosophy of Mathematics sets out to fill up a lacuna in the present research on Husserl by presenting a precise account of Husserl’s work in the field of logic, of the philosophy of logic and of the philosophy of mathematics. The aim is to provide an in-depth reconstruction and analysis of the discussion between Husserl and his most important interlocutors, and to clarify pivotal ideas of Husserl’s by considering their reception and elaboration by some of his disciples and followers, such as Oskar Becker and Jacob Klein, as well as their influence on some of the most significant logicians and mathematicians of the past century, such as Luitzen E. J. Brouwer, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel and Hermann Weyl. Most of the papers consider Husserl and another scholar – e.g. Leibniz, Kant, Bolzano, Brentano, Cantor, Frege – and trace out and contextualize lines of influence, points of contact, and points of disagreement. Each essay is written by an expert of the field, and the volume includes contributions both from the analytical tradition and from the phenomenological one.