LOGICAL FOUNDATIONS Also by Indira Mahalingam ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHY (editor with Brian Carr) Also by Brian Carr BERTRAND RUSSELL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ASIAN PHILOSOPHY (editor with Indira M ahalingam) INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE (with D . .1. O'Connor) METAPHYSICS: An Introduction D. J. O'Connor (photograph taken by Lotte Meitner-Graf, London, 1979) Logical Foundations Essays in Honor of D. J. O'Connor Edited by Indira Mahalingam Lecturer in Law University College of Wales, Aberystwyth and Brian Carr Senior Lecturer in Philosophy University of Nottingham Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-21234-7 ISBN 978-1-349-21232-3 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-21232-3 Editorial matter and selection © Indira Mahalingam and Brian Carr, 1991 Chapters 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,20,21 © Macmillan, 1991 Chapter 5 © Karl R. Popper, 1985 Chapter 13 © the estate of A. J. Ayer, 1991 Frontispiece photograph © Kathleen O'Connor, 1991 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1991 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 First published in the United States of America 1991 ISBN 978-0-312-04737-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Logical foundations: essays in honor of D. J. O'Connor/edited by Indira Mahalingam and Brian Carr. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-312-04737-5 1. Philosophy. 2. Logical positivism. 3. O'Connor, D. J. (Daniel John), 1914- . I. O'Connor, D. J. (Daniel John), 1914- . II. Mahalingam, Indira, 1952- III. Carr, Brian, 1946-- . B29.L56232 1991 146'. 42--dc20 90--31926 CIP Contents D.J. O'Connor frontispiece Preface vii Notes on the Contributors viii PART I PARADOX AND INFERENCE Super Pragmatic Paradoxes 3 Robert Ackermann 2 Fences and Ceilings: Schrodinger's Cat and Other Animals 11 Heinz Post 3 The Paradoxes of Indicative Conditionals 15 Brian Carr 4 Pretending to Infer 20 G.B. Keene 5 The Non-Existence of Probabilistic Inductive Support 31 Karl R. Popper PART II KNOWLEDGE AND LANGUAGE 6 On Certainty 45 Alice Ambrose 7 Truth and Status Rerum 56 David E. Cooper 8 Knowledge and Rationality 68 D. W. Hamlyn 9 Language and Philosophy: Some Suggestions for Further Reflection 76 John Burbidge 10 Languageless Creatures and Communication 86 Indira M ahalingam v VI Contents PART III THOUGHT AND ACTION 11 Locke's Idea of an Idea 97 Glenn Langford 12 The Chinese Room Argument: An Exercise in Computational Philosophy of Mind 106 Ajit Narayanan 13 Free-Will and Determinism 119 A.J. Ayer 14 Two All-or-Nothing Theories of Freedom 131 John Watkins 15 Contra Hume: On Making Things Happen 137 Colin B. Wright PART IV PEOPLE AND THINGS 16 Locke on Solidity and Incompressibility 149 Peter Alexander 17 What did Aristotle Mean by 'Nature does Nothing in Vain'? 158 Pamela M. Huby 18 Could the World Embody God? 167 W.D. Hudson 19 Locke on Government 175 R. F. Atkinson 20 The Philosophy of Education? 185 Alan M ontefiore 21 Education: Anti-racist, Multi-ethnic and Multi-cultural 194 Antony Flew Bibliography of Works by D. J. O'Connor 206 Index of Names 208 Index of Subjects 210 Preface This collection of essays marks the occasion of Dan O'Connor's 75th birthday, and provides the opportunity for the contributors to show their appreciation of his work in philosophy. The essays each discuss a topic which has commanded his attention, in print or in personal discussion, though not every essay takes issue with him directly. The range of these topics, from philosophical logic to the philosophy of education, reflects his commitment to following through the consequences of the fundamental principles of 'logical empiricism' for the major questions of philosophy. Inheriting these principles from Russell and Carnap - and more distantly from Locke and Hume - Dan O'Connor's major service to his subject has been in their unwavering defence. But this primary task has been supplemented by a strong interest in the history of philosophy, and we can count among his most important work such books as John Locke (1952), Aquinas and Natural Law (1968), and of course the Critical History of Western Philosophy (1964) to which very many students are greatly indebted. We personally owe him a particular debt for his generous encouragement of our developing interest in the philosophical traditions of Asia. A logical empiricist by deep commitment, Dan O'Connor has nevertheless always been ready to acknowledge the contributions of other ages and other cultures. We have included a full bibliography of his published material at the end of the collection. There is every reason to expect this corpus to grow even further, for Dan's enthusiasm for philosophy is undiminished. Among the present contributors there are many of his old colleagues in the Philosophy Departments of the University College of North Staffordshire (now the University of Keele), the University of Liverpool and (since 1957) the University of Exeter. They all owe much to that very enthusiasm. INDIRA MAHALINGAM BRIAN CARR vii Notes on the Contributors Robert Ackermann is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of Data, Instruments and Theory (1985), Wittgenstein's City (1988) and numerous other books, articles, and reviews. He was a colleague of D. J. O'Connor's at the University of Exeter twice, once under a Fulbright and once under a Guggenheim. Peter Alexander is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University of Bristol. He previously taught at Leeds University. He is the author of Sensationalism and Scientific Explanation (1963), A Preface to the Logic of Science (1963), An Introduction to Logic (1969) and Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles (1985). He edited, with Roger Gill, Utopias (1984). Alice Ambrose is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Smith College, Massachusetts. She is author of Essays in Analysis (1966) and co-author, with Morris Lazerowitz, of a number of books, including Fundamentals of Symbolic Logic (rev. edn, 1962), Essays in the Unknown Wittgenstein (1984) and Necessity and Language (1985). She has edited a number of works, including Wittgenstein's Lectures, Cambridge 1932-35 from the notes of A. Ambrose and Margaret Macdonald (1979). She was President of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, 1975. R. F. Atkinson teaches philosophy at the University of Exeter, having previously taught at York and Keele. He is author of Sexual Morality (1965), Conduct (1969) and Knowledge and Explanation in History (1978). A.J. Ayer, who died in 1989, was Wykeham Professor of Logic in the University of Oxford until his retirement in 1978 having previously been Grote Professor of the Philosophy of the Mind and Logic in the University of London. Among his many publications were Language, Truth and Logic (1936), The Problem of Knowledge (1956) and The Central Questions of Philosophy (1974). He was knighted in 1970. There is a volume of the Library of Living Philosophers series, edited by P. A. Schilpp, in preparation containing numerous articles on aspects of his philosophy. viii