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After Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein realized that elementary propositions may logically conflict with each other, due to the fact that the most elementary measurements may contradict each other. This led to the view that logic consists of various calculi. A calculus consists of measurement scales, each scale being a rule for the application of numbers. These scales determine logical relationships between elementary propositions by reason of arithmetical relations. Attempts to reject Wittgenstein's change in viewpoint, which ignore the relevance of measurement and arithmetic, are remiss. In this light, I discuss Sarah Moss’s criticism of intermediate Wittgenstein., Depois do Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein percebeu que proposições elementares podem entrar em conflito logicamente umas com as outras, devido ao fato de que as medições mais elementares podem se contradizer. Isso levou à visão de que a lógica consiste em vários cálculos. Um cálculo consiste em escalas de medida, cada escala sendo uma regra para a aplicação de números. Essas escalas determinam relações lógicas entre proposições elementares em razão de relações aritméticas. Tentativas de rejeitar a mudança de ponto de vista dele, que ignoram a relevância da medição e da aritmética, são negligentes. Sob essa luz, discuto as críticas de Sarah Moss ao intermediário Wittgenstein.

Resumo: Ludwig Wittgenstein tentou desenvolver, desde 1929, uma abordagem à filosofia da lógica em termos de escalas de medição. Embora mostrasse grande sensibilidade a diversos tipos de escalas, Wittgenstein não estava bem posicionado para fazer seu projeto render frutos, porque a teoria das medidas não começou a fazer avanços significativos antes do final da década de 1940, e continuou desfrutando de um progresso relevante, até os anos 80. Não obstante, nas suas obras e palestras dos anos 30, Wittgenstein fez diversas tentativas de entender a lógica, ou a “gramática” da linguagem religiosa e ética relativa à medição. Este artigo é uma tentativa de desenvolver algumas dessas ideias que ocorreram a Wittgenstein, na sua fase intermediária, dentro do contexto da evolução posterior da teoria da medição. Especificamente, defende-se que as linguagens religiosa e ética são formas extremas de medição, não empíricas nem fatuais. Elas representam o caso-limite da medição. Abstract: Ludwig Wittgenstein attempted to develop an approach to the philosophy of logic in terms of measurement scales. While he showed great sensitivity to different kinds of scaling, Wittgenstein was not in a good position to bring this project to fruition; measurement theory did not begin to develop significantly until the late 1940s, and only made pertinent advances as late as the 1980s. However, in writings and lectures from the 1930s, Wittgenstein made a number of attempts to understand the logic, or “grammar”, of religious and ethical language in relation to measurement. This article is an attempt to develop some of these nascent ideas in intermediate Wittgenstein in terms of later developments in measurement theory. Specifically, it is argued that religious and ethical language are extreme forms of non-empirical and non-factual forms of measurement; they represent the limit-case of measurement.

For Ludwig Wittgenstein, the label “language” lumps together activities by reason of their overlapping similarities, their family resemblances. He saw no need to suppose any prevailing hidden unity.

Due to persecution, Sabean Mandaeans have fled Iraq in large numbers. Although there is widespread suffering and vulnerability in Iraq, the Mandaeans are a special case, since they have no safe enclave within Iraq to which they can return and their pacifism makes them especially vulnerable to violence. Ted Honderich's Principle of Humanity is used to argue that countries able to do so, meaning wealthy Western nations in particular, should take steps to guarantee the Mandaeans a safe homeland where they can not only live but also maintain their cultural identity.

It is a widely held assumption that social cognition is wholly the result of natural selection and learning, debates arising over how much was naturally selected versus how much is learned. I argue here, however, for there being a third factor, namely physics, specifically symmetries and symmetry breakings in neural dynamics. These symmetries manifest themselves in social judgments in a fairly direct way as descending chains of subgroup types in mental social schemata. These schemata are the four models of Alan Page Fiske's relational-models typology. Descending chains of subgroup types are a phenomenon widely observed in nature; their presence in social cognition is consistent with there being a relevant neural network, the activity of which can undergo symmetry breakings. This would be analogous to the neural activity that has been computer modeled in an attempt to explain animal locomotion. This should encourage work towards specifying the particular symmetry groups in social cognition as a step towards devising computer models of the relevant neural mechanism. Approaches to animal locomotion suggest at least the broad outlines of how to proceed. Evidence of symmetry groups in social schemata also supports the view that the innate aspects of social cognition are at least partly structured by dynamics without being encoded in genes, just as the shape of the protective shell of some viruses results from dynamics without being genetically encoded.

A cultural change occurred roughly 40,000 years ago. For the first time, there was evidence of belief in unseen agents and an afterlife. Before this time, humans did not show widespread evidence of being able to think about objects, persons, and other agents that they had not been in close contact with. I argue that one can explain this transition by appealing to a population increase resulting in greater exoteric (inter-group) communication. The increase in exoteric communication triggered the actualization of a dormant potential for greater syntactic computational power; specifically it triggered syntactic movement. Syntactic movement, in turn, made possible variable binding, which crucially figures into cognition by description, a naturalistic analogue of Russell’s knowledge by description. Cognition by description made possible the ability to conceive of things one had never experienced, such as mythological beings, places only visited by the dead, and so forth. The Amazonian Piraha provide some corroboration for this hypothesis, since they exhibit the combination of traits here attributed to Middle Paleolithic individuals, namely exclusively esoteric (intra-group) communication, evident lack of syntactic movement, and a limitation to knowledge (cognition) by acquaintance.

Armstrong holds that a law of nature is a certain sort of structural universal which, in turn, fixes causal relations between particular states of affairs. His claim that these nomic structural universals explain causal relations commits him to saying that such universals are irreducible, not supervenient upon the particular causal relations they fix. However, Armstrong also wants to avoid Plato’s view that a universal can exist without being instantiated, a view which he regards as incompatible with naturalism. This construal of naturalism forces Armstrong to say that universals are abstractions from a certain class of particulars; they are abstractions from first-order states of affairs, to be more precise. It is here argued that these two tendencies in Armstrong cannot be reconciled: To say that universals are abstractions from first-order states of affairs is not compatible with saying that universals fix causal relations between particulars. Causal relations are themselves states of affairs of a sort, and Armstrong’s claim that a law is a kind of structural universal is best understood as the view that any given law logically supervenes on its corresponding causal relations. The result is an inconsistency, Armstrong having to say that laws do not supervene on particular causal relations while also being committed to the view that they do so supervene. The inconsistency is perhaps best resolved by denying that universals are abstractions from states of affairs.

Alan Page Fiske has made a strong empirical case that social cognition is structured by four elementary mental schemata, the “relational models”. Fiske argues that the four models are innate, and he thus concludes that they are encoded in the genome. But work on self-organization suggests that biological structures can be innate without being genetically encoded. Plausibly, the four models result from principles of self-organization, specifically a sequence of symmetry-breaking bifurcations. The evidence for this lies in the fact that the four models can be arranged in a sequence from more-to-less symmetrical, exemplifying a chain of descending subgroups. This formal property is commonly observed in self-organizing systems. Furthermore, the less symmetrical the model, the later it first appears in childhood. This is analogous to embryonic development in which the organism begins in a highly symmetrical state and develops into a less symmetrical one, plausibly due to a sequence of symmetry breakings. It is also analogous to the acquisition of syntax, in which it has been argued that the initial state of the language faculty is highly symmetrical and hence relatively simple, with syntactic complexity partly deriving from a sequence of symmetry breakings plus interactions with other mental faculties. Explaining complexity in terms of symmetry breaking and interaction with other mental faculties can also plausibly be applied to social cognition, suggesting a parallel with minimalism in syntactic theory.

The view that moral cognition is subserved by a two-tieredarchitecture is defended: Moral reasoning is the result both ofspecialized, informationally encapsulated modules which automaticallyand effortlessly generate intuitions; and of general-purpose,cognitively penetrable mechanisms which enable moral judgment in thelight of the agent's general fund of knowledge. This view is contrastedwith rival architectures of social/moral cognition, such as Cosmidesand Tooby's view that the mind is wholly modular, and it is argued thata two-tiered architecture is more plausible.

John Searle dismisses the attempt to understand thought as a form of computation, on the grounds that it is not scientific. Science is concerned with intrinsic properties, i.e. those features which are not observer relative, e.g. science is concerned with mass but not with beauty. Computation, according to Searle, presupposes the property of following an algorithm, but algorithmicity is normative, by reason of appealing to function, and hence not intrinsic. I argue that Searle's critique presupposes the folk notion of function, which is indeed normative. But this folk notion can be replaced by a purely descriptive analogue, thereby showing that algorithmicity can be construed as intrinsic after all.

Jaegwon Kim attempts to pose a dilemma for anyone who would deny mind/body reductionism, namely that one must either advocate the wholesale reduction of psychology to physical science or the sundering of psychology into distinct fields each one of which is reducible to physical science. Supposedly, the denial of mind/body reduction is not an option. My aim is to show that this is not a genuine dilemma, and that antireductionism is an option, if one recognizes that natural-kind individuation is not wholly a matter of metaphysics but is, at least to some degree, a matter of convention as well. The central point is that physical sciences and mental sciences have somewhat different criteria for individuating kinds.

É surpreendente que o ser humano possa formar representações mentais de objetos e propriedades que os seus órgãos dos sentidos não foram projetados pela seleção natural para registrar. Isto não é apenas referência deslocada, uma capacidade partilhada com algumas outras espécies. Afinal, referência deslocada pode ser referência para observáveis. Defendo a plausibilidade de desenvolver um programa de pesquisa para explorar como essa capacidade se refere o conhecimento por descrição em um sentido mais ou menos russelliano. Como tal, é um desdobramento acidental da faculdade de linguagem, especificamente a capacidade de construir descrições. Ainda mais especificamente, ele requer a capacidade para formar frases quantificadas, como por variantes da teoria das descrições. Os linguistas têm apresentado evidências de uma operação computacional própria para a faculdade de linguagem, Confluir Interno, que liga variáveis. Defendo a razoabilidade de um programa para explorar a forma como a singularidade humana de Confluir Interno contribui para a nossa capacidade de conhecimento por descrição.