“Charles Kahn offers the following summary of how a new metaphysics takes shape in Islamic philosophy: 'My general view of the historical development is that existence in the modern sense becomes a central concept in philosophy only in the period when Greek ontology is radically revised in the light of a metaphysics of creation; that is to say, under the influence of biblical religion. As far as I can see, this development did not take place with Augustine or with the Greek Church Fathers, who remained under the sway of classical ontology. The new metaphysics seems to have taken shape in Islamic philosophy, in the form of a radical distinction between necessary and contingent existence: between the existence of God on the one hand, and that of the created world on the other.' The new metaphysics that takes shape in Islamic philosophy proves fateful for subsequent philosophy in various ways. What will interest us immediately below is how it plays a role in triggering a debate about how to conceive divine creation. What will be of implicit interest later in these replies is how a remarkably unvarnished version of this new metaphysics comes to be detached from its original theological context. The ensuing detheologized modal metaphysics remains in force in some quarters of analytic philosophy, even though it takes its point of departure from a topic (how to understand the act of divine creation) that is no longer of much interest to most analytic philosophers. For the new metaphysics introduces concepts and ways of thinking that, once divested of their theological garb, continually resurface in the history of philosophy up to the present day.” PhilosophyExistenceHistoryModernCreationLogicTheologyIslamicContingencyNecessary Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics Source: The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
“In Frege’s conception of logic, a logical law states an absolutely general truth—one whose truth every rational being must, on pain of contradiction, acknowledge. In later Wittgenstein’s practice, a grammatical remark inherits an aspect of Frege’s conception of the logical. On a proper understanding of a grammatical remark, it articulates a truism— something that admits of no contrary—hence something that every speaker of the language must acknowledge. Or conversely, if there is something in a given candidate grammatical remark that proves to admit of disagreement, then the remark in question cannot serve its methodological role. It fails to bring into view a point of (what later Wittgenstein calls) grammar. Grammatical remarks acquire their point—that is, our need for such reminders derives—from our attempting but failing to achieve a proper reflective understanding of our way around our own language. If the grammatical remark serves its purpose, what is thereby acknowledged is something that can come into view only against the background of a prior failed attempt to achieve a perspicuous overview of our own concepts. A Wittgensteinian grammatical remark comes to life as such only against the background of a philosophical confusion. Logic or grammar for later Wittgenstein, pace Frege, could qualify as a science only if philosophy is one. This also means that, for later Wittgenstein, unlike for Frege, there is no preexisting stock of propositions that constitutes all of the logico-grammatical truths there are. In potentiality there are perhaps indefinitely many, but in actuality the only remarks that actually exercise the power to disclose a philosophico-grammatical truth, for later Wittgenstein, are those that allow us to make progress with the problems that actually vex us in philosophy.” PhilosophyTruthScienceLanguageProgressGrammarFrege Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics Source: The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
“A conception of a cognitive capacity can qualify as unrestricted in aspiration and yet be insufficiently capacious in conception. A conception of a capacity, in aspiring not to go outside the order to which the capacity belongs so as to explain the capacity, may unwittingly frame its conception of the target capacity in terms that sever it from the conditions required for its genuine possession. This is a difficult balance to strike correctly in philosophy. Frege is concerned with not admitting anything psychological into his conception of the logical. This is the mark of the unrestrictedness of his aspiration - his refusal to admit anything external to the order of logic in his account of logic. But he builds his guardrail of protection against falling into the psychological sufficiently far in from the actual danger point that he severs the unity of our capacity for knowledge. Hence the need for a de-psychologizing of Frege's conception of the psychological.” PhilosophyCognitionFrameSeverCognitive Capacity Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics Source: The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics