Fred Wilson – författare

The essays in this volume are connected with the main areas of Thomas A. Goudge''s research: Peirce studies and the philosophy of science, especially the philosophy of biology. There are two sections, each opened with an essay on Goudge''s contribution to the field.

The first section deals with C.S. Peirce. Essays examine major features of his thought: his proof of pragmatism, his logic of relations, his semiotics, his theory of truth, his philosophy of induction, and his Scotist metaphysics of individuals. Other essays in this group relate pragmatism and pragmaticism to the work of others, in particular Collingwood, Descartes, and James and Santayana. Each involves substantial dialogue with Peirce, and a philosophical evaluation of his work and the work of others.

The second is concerned with the philosophy of science. Some of the essays study the nature of scientific explanation: whether there is a logic of discovery, and whether life and teleology could be fitted into the mechanistic view of the universe that arose in the early modern period of philosophy. Various problems specifically concerning the synthetic theory of evolution are also discussed: for example, is it a theory somehow intrinsically different in kind from theories in physics? Does it yield special forms of explanation? How is it related to modern genetic theory? Other essays deal with problems arising out of an evolutionary view of life and man: for example, emergence, the place of consciousness in nature, man''s knowledge of necessary truths.

This is an important collection for those working in Peirce studies or the philosophy of biology, and a substantial contribution to the history of Canadian philosophy.

These essays bring together forty years of work in ontology. Intentionality, negation, universals, bare particulars, tropes, general facts, relations, the myth of the ''myth of the given'', are among the topics covered. Bergmann, Quine, Sellars, Russell, Wittgenstein, Hume, Bradley, Hochberg, Dummett, Frege, Plato, are among the philosophers discussed. The essays criticize non-Humean notions of cause; they criticize the notion that besides simple atomic facts there are also negative facts and general facts. They defend a realism of properties as universals, against nominalism; bare particulars; a (qualified) realism with regard to logical form; a Russellian account of relations; and an account of minds and intentionality, which is opposed to materialism, but is also a form of (methodological) behaviourism. In general, the ontology is one of logical atomism and empiricist throughout, rooted in a Principle of Acquaintance.

This essay proposes that Hume’s non-substantialist bundle account of minds is basically correct. The concept of a person is not a metaphysical notion but a forensic one, that of a being who enters into the moral and normative relations of civil society. A person is a bundle but it is also a structured bundle. Hume’s metaphysics of relations is argued must be replaced by a more adequate one such as that of Russell, but beyond that Hume’s account is essentially correct. In particular it is argued that it is one’s character that constitutes one’s identity; and that sympathy and the passions of pride and humility are central in forming and maintaining one’s character and one’s identity as a person. But also central is one’s body: a person is an embodied consciousness: the notion that one’s body is essential to one’s identity is defended at length. Various concepts of mind and consciousness are examined - for example, neutral monism and intentionality - and also the concept of privacy and our inferences to other minds.