Books by Danielle Macbeth
_Realizing Reason_ pursues three interrelated themes. First, it traces the essential moments in t... more _Realizing Reason_ pursues three interrelated themes. First, it traces the essential moments in the historical unfolding—from the ancient Greeks, through Descartes, Kant, and developments in the nineteenth century, to the present—that culminates in the realization of pure reason as a power of knowing. Second, it provides a cogent account of mathematical practice as a mode of inquiry into objective truth. And finally, it develops and defends a new conception of our being in the world, one that builds on and transforms the now standard conception according to which our experience of reality arises out of brain activity due, in part, to merely causal impacts on our sense organs. Macbeth shows that to achieve an adequate understanding of the striving for truth in the exact sciences we must overcome this standard conception and that the way to do that is through a more adequate understanding of the nature of mathematical practice and the profound transformations it has undergone over the course of its history, the history through which reason is first realized as a power of knowing. Because we can understand mathematical practice only if we attend to the systems of written signs within which to do mathematics, Macbeth also provides an account of the nature and role of written notations, specifically of the principal systems that have been developed within which to reason in mathematics: Euclidean diagrams, the symbolic language of arithmetic and algebra, and Frege's concept-script _Begriffsschrift_.
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Papers by Danielle Macbeth
Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin, 2022
Note: This (uploaded April 9, 2023) is the correct, published version. The previously uploaded fi... more Note: This (uploaded April 9, 2023) is the correct, published version. The previously uploaded file was a penultimate draft and should not be cited.
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Sellars and the History of Modern Philosophy, 2018
Although Sellars often had occasion to refer to Frege and Fregean themes in his writings, only in... more Although Sellars often had occasion to refer to Frege and Fregean themes in his writings, only in 'Grammar and Existence' (1960) does Sellars engage at any length with a Fregean thesis. The thesis is that a (Fregean) concept is, though not an object, nevertheless an objective entity, the Bedeutung of a concept word. This thesis, Sellars aims to show, is quite wrong. What matters for meaning in the case of a concept word is not reference, Bedeutung , but instead the functional role of the word. There is, according to Sellars, no such thing as a concept as conceived by Frege. Interestingly, this divergence in the views of Sellars and Frege is coupled with what I will argue is a deep convergence on the nature and role of inference in cognition. Both Sellars and Frege hold that, as Sellars puts it in a famous title of one of his early essays (CIL), concepts involve laws and are inconceivable without them. And such laws are, for both, fully objective, discovered in the course of scientifi c inquiry. Why, then, do Sellars and Frege diverge on the question of the Bedeutung , the reference or signifi cation, of concept words?
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Disputatio vol. 8 (9), 2019
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Philosophy East and West, 2017
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University Microfilms order no. 8911282. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1988. Include... more University Microfilms order no. 8911282. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pittsburgh, 1988. Includes bibliographical references.
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Philosophia Scientiae, 2012
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http://www.bahps.org/acta-baltica/abhps-5-1
Descartes’ creation doctrine, his claim that God fre... more http://www.bahps.org/acta-baltica/abhps-5-1
Descartes’ creation doctrine, his claim that God freely creates the eternal truths of mathematics and metaphysics, is almost universally regarded as an extremely bizarre and unfortunate idea. This appearance, I suggest, is due largely to the fact that no one has looked closely enough at fundamental changes, right around the time Descartes first espouses the doctrine, in Descartes’ view of how inquiry in mathematics and metaphysics actually works. By 1630 the God-created truths come to play the role in inquiry that was at first, in the Rules, played by images. It follows that the truths of logic are not among the God-created truths.
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Philosophy East and West, 2017
What should be the place of philosophy in today’s intellectual culture? My exploration begins wit... more What should be the place of philosophy in today’s intellectual culture? My exploration begins with Western philosophy, especially analytic philosophy, and aims to show that we are at a singular historical moment: it is now clear, as it could not have been hitherto, that the conversation of philosophy is inherently global.
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In " Mind Embodied and Embedded " Haugeland develops and defends a conception of our mindedness t... more In " Mind Embodied and Embedded " Haugeland develops and defends a conception of our mindedness that, in its explicit opposition to the Cartesian divide of mind and body (or matter or world), is very reminiscent of the ancient Aristotelian conception. He holds, in particular, that the meaningful is not in our mind or brain, but is essentially worldly. The meaningful is not a model—that is, it's not representational—but is instead objects embedded in their context of references. And we do not store the meaningful inside of ourselves, but rather live and are at home in it. (1998, 231) Such a view is defended also by, for instance, McDowell (1994) and Thompson (2008); and both emphasize the Aristotelian resonances of the conception. It appears, then, that we are faced with a choice between the ancient Aristotelian conception of our mindedness and the modern Cartesian conception (or more usual today, some suitably naturalized version of that latter conception). And as critics are happy to point out, if we are faced with such a choice then it must be the modern conception that we choose. My aim is to show that this inference rests on a mistake: the conception of our mindedness that Haugeland defends is not the pre-modern conception but instead one that is essentially and recognizably " post-modern " in incorporating insights of both the premodern, Aristotelian conception and that of early modernity.
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Although profoundly influential for essentially the whole of philosophy's twenty-five hundred yea... more Although profoundly influential for essentially the whole of philosophy's twenty-five hundred year history, the model of a science that is outlined in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics has recently been abandoned on grounds that developments in mathematics and logic over the last century or so have rendered it obsolete. Nor has anything emerged to take its place. As things stand we have not even the outlines of an adequate understanding of the rationality of mathematics as a scientific practice. It seems reasonable, in light of this lacuna, to return again to Frege—who was at once one of the last great defenders of the model and a key figure in the very developments that have been taken to spell its demise—in hopes of finding a way forward. What we find when we do is that although Frege remains true to the spirit of the model, he also modifies it in very fundamental ways. So modified, I will suggest, the model continues to provide a viable and compelling image of scientific rationality by showing, in broad outline, how we achieve, and maintain, cognitive control in our mathematical investigations.
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The idea of natural truth— modeled on the idea of natural goodness in ethics—is the idea that som... more The idea of natural truth— modeled on the idea of natural goodness in ethics—is the idea that some truths, although not the same for, or available to be grasped by, all rational beings, are nonetheless valid for, available to be grasped by, all human beings, that is, all rational beings with our sort of body and form of sensibility. My aim is to show that despite Sellars’s own conception of science as the measure of all thing, of what is that it is and what is not that it is not, and consequent (if only implicit) rejection of any such thing as natural truth, Sellars provides us with all the tools we need in order to show that there are natural truths. It follows directly that our powers of perception are powers of knowing.
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Invited as a contribution to a forum on analytic philosophy.
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Books by Danielle Macbeth
Papers by Danielle Macbeth
Descartes’ creation doctrine, his claim that God freely creates the eternal truths of mathematics and metaphysics, is almost universally regarded as an extremely bizarre and unfortunate idea. This appearance, I suggest, is due largely to the fact that no one has looked closely enough at fundamental changes, right around the time Descartes first espouses the doctrine, in Descartes’ view of how inquiry in mathematics and metaphysics actually works. By 1630 the God-created truths come to play the role in inquiry that was at first, in the Rules, played by images. It follows that the truths of logic are not among the God-created truths.
Descartes’ creation doctrine, his claim that God freely creates the eternal truths of mathematics and metaphysics, is almost universally regarded as an extremely bizarre and unfortunate idea. This appearance, I suggest, is due largely to the fact that no one has looked closely enough at fundamental changes, right around the time Descartes first espouses the doctrine, in Descartes’ view of how inquiry in mathematics and metaphysics actually works. By 1630 the God-created truths come to play the role in inquiry that was at first, in the Rules, played by images. It follows that the truths of logic are not among the God-created truths.
A principal aim of Chateaubriand's Logical Forms II: Logic, Language, and Knowledge is to clarify and defend what Chateaubriand describes as the ontological conception of logic against the standard model-theoretic or "linguistic" view. Both sides to the debate accept that if logic is a science then there must be logically necessary facts that this science discovers, Chateaubriand arguing that because logic is a science, there must be logically necessary facts, and his opponent that because there are no logically necessary facts, logic cannot be a science. I argue that we can go between the horns of this dilemma by showing that, although logic is a science, it does not follow, as Chateaubriand assumes, that there are logically necessary facts. There are truths of (the science of) logic; there are no "logical truths".
Abstract response:
Danielle Macbeth disagrees with the view that there are logical truths in an ontological sense, and argues that we have no adequate epistemological account of our access to such features of reality. In my response I recall some main aspects of my ontological and epistemological formulation of logic as a science, and argue that neither Quine’s considerations against meaning, nor Benacerraf’s considerations against Gödel’s realism, show the untenability of an approach to logical truth in terms of logical propositions that denote logical states of affairs.