Works by Crawford Elder
59 found
Order:
1 filter applied
DisambiguationsDisambiguations:
| Crawford L. Elder [53] | Crawford Elder [7] | Crawford Latterner Elder [1] |
- Real Natures and Familiar Objects.Crawford Elder -2004 - Cambridge, Mass.: Bradford.In _Real Natures and Familiar Objects_ Crawford Elder defends, with qualifications, the ontology of common sense. He argues that we exist -- that no gloss is necessary for the statement "human beings exist" to show that it is true of the world as it really is -- and that we are surrounded by many of the medium-sized objects in which common sense believes. He argues further that these familiar medium-sized objects not only exist, but have essential properties, which we are (...) often able to determine by observation. The starting point of his argument is that ontology should operate under empirical load -- that is, it should give special weight to the objects and properties that we treat as real in our best predictions and explanations of what happens in the world. Elder calls this presumption "mildly controversial" because it entails that arguments are needed for certain widely assumed positions such as "mereological universalism". Elder begins by defending realism about essentialness. He then defends this view of familiar objects against causal exclusion arguments and worries about vagueness. Finally, he argues that many of the objects in which common sense believes really exist, including artifacts and biological devices shaped by natural selection, and that we too exist, as products of natural selection. (shrink)
- From an Ontological Point of View.Crawford L. Elder -2004 -Mind 113 (452):757-760.
- Familiar Objects and Their Shadows.Crawford L. Elder -2011 - Cambridge University Press.Most contemporary metaphysicians are sceptical about the reality of familiar objects such as dogs and trees, people and desks, cells and stars. They prefer an ontology of the spatially tiny or temporally tiny. Tiny microparticles 'dog-wise arranged' explain the appearance, they say, that there are dogs; microparticles obeying microphysics collectively cause anything that a baseball appears to cause; temporal stages collectively sustain the illusion of enduring objects that persist across changes. Crawford L. Elder argues that all such attempts to 'explain (...) away' familiar objects project downwards, onto the tiny entities, structures and features of familiar objects themselves. He contends that sceptical metaphysicians are thus employing shadows of familiar objects, while denying that the entities which cast those shadows really exist. He argues that the shadows are indeed really there, because their sources - familiar objects - are mind-independently real. (shrink)
- Real Natures and Familiar Objects.Crawford Elder -2005 -Philosophical Quarterly 55 (221):670-672.No categories
- Biological Species Are Natural Kinds.Crawford L. Elder -2008 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 46 (3):339-362.This paper argues that typical biological species are natural kinds, on a familiar realist understanding of natural kinds—classes of individuals across which certain properties cluster together, in virtue of the causal workings of the world. But the clustering is far from exceptionless. Virtually no properties, or property-combinations, characterize every last member of a typical species—unless they can also appear outside the species. This motivates some to hold that what ties together the members of a species is the ability to interbreed, (...) others that it is common descent. Yet others hold that species are scattered individuals,of which organisms are parts rather than members. But not one of these views absolves us of the need to posit a typical phenotypic profile. Vagueness is here to stay. Some seek to explain the vagueness by saying species are united by “homeostatic property clusters”; but this view collapses into the more familiar realist picture. (shrink)
- ‘On the Place of Artefacts in Ontology.Crawford Elder -2007 - In Eric Margolis & Stephen Laurence,Creations of the Mind: Theories of Artifacts and Their Representaion. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 33--51.
- Laws, natures, and contingent necessities.Crawford L. Elder -1994 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (3):649-667.
- Against universal mereological composition.Crawford Elder -2008 -Dialectica 62 (4):433-454.This paper opposes universal mereological composition (UMC). Sider defends it: unless UMC were true, he says, it could be indeterminate how many objects there are in the world. I argue that there is no general connection between how widely composition occurs and how many objects there are in the world. Sider fails to support UMC. I further argue that we should disbelieve in UMC objects. Existing objections against them say that they are radically unlike Aristotelian substances. True, but there is (...) a stronger objection. This is that they are characterized by no properties, and so fail to be like anything – even themselves. (shrink)
- An epistemological defence of realism about necessity.Crawford L. Elder -1992 -Philosophical Quarterly 42 (168):317-336.
- Conventionalism and realism-imitating counterfactuals.Crawford L. Elder -2006 -Philosophical Quarterly 56 (222):1–15.Historically, opponents of realism have argued that the world’s objects are constructed by our cognitive activities—or, less colorfully, that they exist and are as they are only relative to our ways of thinking and speaking. To this realists have stoutly replied that even if we had thought or spoken in ways different from our actual ones, the world would still have been populated by the same objects as it actually is, or at least by most of them. (Our thinking differently (...) could cause some differences in which objects exist, or in what some existing objects are like, but that is another matter.) Yet this reply has repeatedly failed to amount to a decisive objection. For opponents of realism have repeatedly argued, in one way or another, that we construct the world’s objects in just such a way as to render such a counterfactual true. We construct them so as to appear not to be our constructs. Just such a debate is currently underway concerning the properties that are essential to the world’s objects. It is widely agreed, with varying caveats1, that there are such properties—that by virtue of belonging to one or another natural kind, the world’s objects possess certain properties essentially, and have individual careers that last exactly as long as those essential properties are jointly present. But what underlies the status as essential of the properties that are thus essential to objects in the world? The realist answer treats essential status as mind-independent, and assigns it to the way the world works (Elder.. (shrink)
- A different kind of natural kind.Crawford L. Elder -1995 -Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73 (4):516 – 531.
- Realism, naturalism, and culturally generated kinds.Crawford L. Elder -1989 -Philosophical Quarterly 39 (157):425-444.
- Realism and determinable properties.Crawford L. Elder -1996 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56 (1):149-159.The modern form of realism about properties has typically been far more austere than its Platonic ancestor. There is nothing especially austere about denying, as most modern property realists do, the reality of “disjunctive properties”—properties which would correspond, in the world, to disjunctive predicates such as “is an apple or an ocean,” “is observed by now and green or not observed by now and blue,” etc. But modern property realists typically deny far more. It has been argued, for example, that (...) the only real properties there are are properties flanked by contrary opposites—so that there is no real property corresponding, for example, to the predicate “is self-identical.” Perhaps the biggest step in the direction of austerity is the argument, offered by a number of modern property realists, that there can be in the world no “determinable properties” corresponding to such determinable predicates as “has mass,” “is colored,” or “has a valence.” For these arguments are said to establish that not even such familiar properties as redness or painfulness really exist; to predicates such as “is red” and “is painful,” no real property corresponds. The business of this paper is to examine the prevailing arguments against “determinable properties,” and to argue that the ontology which they entail is decidedly less austere than is commonly supposed. The motivation is mainly just to get a more accurate ontology of properties. But a side benefit, if my arguments are correct, will be an increased appreciation for the treatment of vague predicates that posits truth-value gaps—and with it, increased ease with the idea that corresponding to vague predicates there really are, in the world, vague properties. (shrink)
- Physicalism and the Fallacy of Composition.Crawford L. Elder -2000 -Philosophical Quarterly 50 (200):332-343.A mutation alters the hemoglobin in some members of a species of antelope, and as a result the members fare better at high altitudes than their conspecifics do; so high-altitude foraging areas become open to them that are closed to their conspecifics; they thrive, reproduce at a greater rate, and the gene for altered hemoglobin spreads further through the gene pool of the species. That sounds like a classic example (owed to Karen Neander, 1995) of a causal chain traced by (...) evolutionary biology. But a view now nearly universal among philosophers maintains that such biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on a different level.1 That the subgroup of antelopes forages in areas closed to the conspecifics is a state of affairs embodied or realized, notes this view, in certain movements and state changes done by certain physical microparticles—untold billions of microparticles and movements, but a finite and determinate (more on this below) collection nevertheless. That the subgroup reproduces at a greater rate is likewise realized by a huge collection of microparticle movements, a different collection. And the microparticle happenings comprised in the first collection are causally responsible, strictly in accordance with the laws of microphysics, for the microparticle happenings in the second. Biological causation is always shadowed, perhaps even rivaled, by causation on the level of microphysics. The view I mean is general: any case of causing uncovered by any of the special sciences can be recaptured at the level of microphysics. This view is I think what most philosophers mean by “physicalism”; in any case, “physicalism” is the label I shall use. Physicalism comes in two forms. Modest physicalism holds that any causal transaction reported by the special sciences can be retraced by microphysics.2 Hegemonic physicalism holds that retracing such a transaction at the level of.. (shrink)
- Essential properties and coinciding objects.Crawford L. Elder -1998 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58 (2):317-331.Common sense believes in objects which, if real, routinely lose component parts or particles. Statues get chipped, people undergo haircuts and amputations, and ships have planks replaced. Sometimes philosophers argue that in addition to these objects, there are others which could not possibly lose any of their parts or particles, nor have new ones added to them--objects which could not possibly have been bigger or smaller, at any time, than how they actually were.1 (Sometimes the restriction on size is argued (...) independently of the restriction on switches of parts.2) If these other objects are real at all, they are alarmingly abundant. Exactly where the statue sits, there sits a parcel or piece of clay which would cease to be itself, and hence cease to exist, were even so small a part as the statue's nose removed.3 In exactly the place where the recently reconditioned ship is found, there is a mass of wood which never contained, and never could contain, any particles of wood--or bits of wood-stuff--other than those it now has.4 Moreover, since masses of matter (or "aggregates") can continue to exist even if divided into separate parts, while parcels cannot, the abundance is two-fold: where every parcel is found, there is also a mass.5 But how can there be room for all these additional objects if, at any time, two different objects cannot occupy exactly the same place? Or, worse, if even some of these additional objects are real, how can room remain for familiar objects? Recent treatments of this ancient puzzle have urged that we retain both "the principle of one object to a place" and the other ontological assumptions which make that principle seem to force a choice between affirming the reality of familiar objects, and that of the strangely brittle intruders.6 But all the recent treatments have left standing the reality of at least some of these brittle objects.7 By doing so they have passed up what is, perhaps, the simplest and safest response to the ancient puzzle.. (shrink)
- Mental causation versus physical causation: No contest.Crawford L. Elder -2001 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 62 (1):110-127.James decides that the best price today on pork chops is at Supermarket S, then James makes driving motions for twenty minutes, then James’ car enters the parking lot at Supermarket S. Common sense supposes that the stages in this sequence may be causally connected, and that the pattern is commonplace: James’ belief (together with his desire for pork chops) causes bodily behavior, and the behavior causes a change in James’ whereabouts. Anyone committed to the idea that beliefs and desires (...) are states installed by evolution must, it seems, think something similar. For how can one see beliefs and desires as conferring selective advantage if not by supposing that, by causing bodily behavior in their subjects, they brought about changes in their subjects’ surroundings? Yet many, many philosophers currently think or worry that mental causation is illusory (see, e.g., Heil and Mele 1993, or Macdonald and Macdonald 1995). Any physical changes which a mental state appears to cause can be viewed as a complex event involving microparticles, and for any such complex event, many philosophers suppose, there will have been previous microphysical occurrences sufficient to cause it. Barring routine overdetermination of such complex events, the apparent causation of mental events seems to be excluded. Nor does it help to say that some salient segment of the previous microphysical event just is the mental event, differently described (Davidson 1970). For describing the previous events as microphysical seems to spotlight the very features in virtue of which they did their causal work; the mental features seem epiphenomenal (Yablo 1992b: pp. 425-36; Yablo 1992a). This paper argues that the complex physical events, which mental events seem excluded from causing, are not caused at all. For they are either accidents, in something like Aristotle’s sense (Sorabji 1980: pp. 3-25), or coincidences, in a sense which David Owens has recently sharpened (Owens 1992). (shrink)
- "Realism and the Problem of" Infimae Species".Crawford Elder -2007 -American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (2):111 - 127.Modal conventionalism is the view that two crucial forms of sameness are mind-dependent. There is no phenomenon of sameness in kind, on this view, except in virtue of our conventions for individuating nature’s kinds; there is no phenomenon of numerical sameness across time, for an individual member of some natural kind, except in virtue of our conventions for individuating such members.1 Modal conventionalism has its realist opponents. These opponents have argued, following Kripke’s lead more than thirty years ago (Kripke 1972), (...) that the boundaries of at least many of nature’s kinds are carved out by nature itself, and not by our classifi catory practices (e.g., Millikan 2000: passim, e.g., pp. 25 and 72). But they have not generally argued, with anything approaching the same vigor, that modal conventionalism is wrong in its other main claim. They have not in general argued that the world-given connections among properties, that make those properties mind-independently be membership conditions for some natural kind, at the same time make those properties mind-independently be persistence conditions for the members of the kind—properties the departure of which constitutes a ceasing-to-exist for the object that formerly had them. On the contrary, opponents of modal conventionalism have.. (shrink)
- Familiar Objects and the Sorites of Decomposition.Crawford L. Elder -2000 -American Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1):79 - 89.
- What versus how in naturally selected representations.Crawford L. Elder -1998 -Mind 107 (426):349-363.Empty judgements appear to be about something, and inaccurate judgements to report something. Naturalism tries to explain these appearances without positing non-real objects or states of affairs. Biological naturalism explains that the false and the empty are tokens which fail to perform the function proper to their biological type. But if truth is a biological 'supposed to', we should expect designs that achieve it only often enough. The sensory stimuli which trigger the frog's gulp-launching signal may be a poor guide (...) to the signal's content. Teleosemantics should be anti-verificationist. (shrink)
- Higher and Lower Essential Natures.Crawford L. Elder -1994 -American Philosophical Quarterly 31 (3):255 - 265.No categories
- On the Phenomenon of “Dog- Wise Arrangement”.Crawford L. Elder -2007 -Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74 (1):132–155.An influential line of thought in metaphysics holds that where common sense discerns a tree or a dog or a baseball there may be just many microparticles. Provided the microparticles are arranged in the right way -- are “treewise” or “dogwise” or “baseballwise” arranged -- our sensory experiences will be just the same as if a tree or dog or baseball were really there. Therefore whether there really are suchfamiliar objects in the world can be decided only by determining what (...) more is needed for microparticles dogwise arranged actually to compose a dog. This paper argues that this line of thought sets up the wrong agenda. Composition is trivial; dogwise (etc.) arrangement is tricky. Dogwise arrangement will obtain in the wrong regions unless we stipulate that there are dogs, and that dogwise arrangementobtains only within their borders. The bearers of dogwise arrangement, moreover, will have to be dogs themselves, not their microparticles. Thus allowing that dogwise arrangement obtains at all is allowing that there are dogs. (shrink)
- Conventionalism and the world as bare sense-data.Crawford L. Elder -2007 -Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85 (2):261 – 275.We are confident of many of the judgements we make as to what sorts of alterations the members of nature's kinds can survive, and what sorts of events mark the ends of their existences. But is our confidence based on empirical observation of nature's kinds and their members? Conventionalists deny that we can learn empirically which properties are essential to the members of nature's kinds. Judgements of sameness in kind between members, and of numerical sameness of a member across time, (...) merely project our conventions of individuation. Our confidence is warranted because apart from those conventions there are no phenomena of kind-sameness or of numerical sameness across time. There is just 'stuff' displaying properties. This paper argues that conventionalists can assign no properties to the 'stuff' beyond immediate phenomenal properties. Consequently they cannot explain how each of us comes to be able to wield 'our conventions'. (shrink)
- Ontology and realism about modality.Crawford L. Elder -1999 -Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77 (3):292 – 302.To be a realist about modality, need one claim that more exists than just the various objects and properties that populate the world—e.g. worlds other than the actual one, or maximal consistent sets of propositions? Or does the existence of objects and properties by itself involve the obtaining of necessities (and possibilities) in re? The latter position is now unpopular but not unfamiliar. Aristotle held that objects have essences, and hence necessarily have certain properties. Recently it has been argued that (...) the identity of any property is tied to the natural laws in which it figures, which entails that the occurrence of properties involves the obtaining of nomological necessities ([24], pp. 206-33 and 234-60; [23]; cf. [25] and [6]). Somewhat less recently, Wittgenstein ([28], p. 168) worried that the reality of at least some properties—precise shades of colors being a prime example—involved the obtaining in re of certain impossibilities. This paper argues that Wittgenstein’s worries were right, and not just concerning some properties, but all properties whatever. That there are objects and properties in the world at all, then, amounts to there obtaining modal states of affairs. This argument supplements, rather than replaces, the others. The position on property incompatibility advanced here actually helps defend Aristotelian essentialism against epistemological objections, or so I have argued ([15]). And while this paper’s position on property incompatibility diverges from the idea that a property’s nomic profile is essential to it—more on this in the next section—it is at least compatible with the thought that the necessity involved in the laws of nature enters into ontology at the ground level. (shrink)
- Destruction, alteration, simples and world stuff.Crawford L. Elder -2003 -Philosophical Quarterly 53 (210):24–38.When a tree is chopped to bits, or a sweater unravelled, its matter still exists. Since antiquity, it has sometimes been inferred that nothing really has been destroyed: what has happened is just that this matter has assumed new form. Contemporary versions hold that apparent destruction of a familiar object is just rearrangement of microparticles or of 'physical simples' or 'world stuff'. But if destruction of a familiar object is genuinely to be reduced to mere alteration of something else, we (...) must identify an alteration proper to the career, the course of existence, of this something else; relatedly, the alteration must be characterizable without asserting the existence of the familiar object. All contemporary views fail one of these requirements. (shrink)
- On the reality of medium-sized objects.Crawford L. Elder -1996 -Philosophical Studies 83 (2):191 - 211.
- Contrariety and "Carving up Reality".Crawford L. Elder -1996 -American Philosophical Quarterly 33 (3):277 - 289.No categories
- The Case against Irrealism.Crawford L. Elder -1983 -American Philosophical Quarterly 20 (3):239 - 253.
- Alexander's dictum and the reality of familiar objects.Crawford L. Elder -2003 -Topoi 22 (2):163-171.
- Content and the subtle extensionality of " -explains...".Crawford L. Elder -1996 -Philosophical Quarterly 46 (184):320-32.
- Materialism and the Mediated Causation of Behavior.Crawford L. Elder -2001 -Philosophical Studies 103 (2):165-175.Are judgements and wishes reallybrain events (or brain states) which will be affirmedby a completed scientific account of how humanbehavior is caused? Materialists, other thaneliminativists, say Yes. But brain events do notcause muscle contractions, hence bodily movements,directly. They do so, if at all, by triggeringintermediate causes, viz. firings in motor nerves. Soit is crucial, this paper argues, whether they arecharacterized as biological events –performances of naturally-selected-for operations – orinstead as complex microphysical events. ``Acauses B, B causes C, so A causes (...) C'' is defensible forbiological brain events, but fails for microphysical ones. (shrink)
- Proper Functions Defended.Crawford L. Elder -1994 -Analysis 54 (3):167 - 171.
- Persistence, Stage Theory And Speaking Loosely.Crawford Elder -2010 -Annales Philosophici 1:18-29..What are the truth-makers for the claims we make about the ways familiar objects persist across change?“Stage theory” has come to be recognized as an alternative to endurantism and perdurantism. It locates the truth-makers in properties possessed by momentary object-stages and in relations between suitably propertied objectstages. This paper argues that stage theory needs tightening up: momentary stages are too short to possess by themselves the requisite properties, and relations to other stages cannot remedy the defect. Fixing this problem requires (...) reconstruing stage theory. It then is the position that all claims of persistence are true only when we are speaking loosely; in philosophical strictness, nothing persists. What stage theory then endangers is neither endurantism nor perdurantism—these now have no subject-matter—but recent efforts to argue that the essence/accident distinction is as objective as persistence itself. But even reconstrued stage theory fails. (shrink)Export citation
Bookmark - Real essentialism • by David S. Oderberg.Crawford L. Elder -2009 -Analysis 69 (2):376-378.This book presents vigorous and wide-ranging arguments in defense of an Aristotelian metaphysical scheme along fairly orthodox Thomistic lines. The central claim is that the items that populate the world have real essences – natures that mind-independently define what each such item is. This Aristotelian essentialism, Oderberg begins by telling us, is a different doctrine from what has recently been called ‘essentialism’, and a more powerful one . For recent essentialism has treated a thing's essence as merely all those properties (...) that the thing takes with it across all possible worlds – and here modality gets presupposed in order to explain essentialness, when the order should be reversed.We can observe essences, Oderberg holds, even though the observation is indirect, and even though knowing what to make of our observations requires applying metaphysical knowledge. Positivism-inspired worries that there is something unfactual about modal claims, and hence about essences, are unfounded . Claims about essences do have factual content, but not because they merely express our concepts or our grammar, and not because they simply report empirical findings . True reports of the essences of objects articulate a metaphysical insight from Aristotle: an object's essence is a compound of its substantial form and its prime matter . Its form actuates potentialities of its matter . The laws of nature derive from essences, and hence are necessary rather than contingent . Artifacts are ‘accidental unities’ of individual substances and …. (shrink)
- The problem of harmonizing laws.Crawford L. Elder -2001 -Philosophical Studies 105 (1):25 - 41.More laws obtain in the world,it appears, than just those of microphysics –e.g. laws of genetics, perceptual psychology,economics. This paper assumes there indeedare laws in the special sciences, and notjust scrambled versions of microphysical laws. Yet the objects which obey them are composedwholly of microparticles. How can themicroparticles in such an object lawfully domore than what is required of them by the lawsof microphysics? Are there additional laws formicroparticles – which seems to violate closureof microphysics – or is the ``more'' (...) acoincidental outcome of microphysics itself? This paper argues that the appearance ofviolation is illusory, and the worry aboutcoincidence misleading. We cannot expect tounderstand the special sciences at the level ofthe microparticles. (shrink)
- Carving Up a Reality in Which There are no Joints.Crawford L. Elder -2010 - In Steven D. Hales,A Companion to Relativism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 604–620.This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction Sameness and Objects The “Softness” of Sameness in Kind and Numerical Sameness Carving out Strange Kinds Carving Out Strange Individuals The World Onto Which We Project Kind ‐ Sameness and Persistence We Who Project Kind ‐ Sameness and Persistence References.No categories
- Antirealism and realist claims of invariance.Crawford L. Elder -1991 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 29 (1):1-19.
- Anthropology and the interpretation of moral beliefs.Crawford L. Elder -1986 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 24 (3):287-306.
- Appropriating Hegel.Crawford Elder -1980 - [Aberdeen]: Aberdeen University Press.
- Contrariety and the Individuation of Properties.Crawford L. Elder -2001 -American Philosophical Quarterly 38 (3):249 - 260.No categories
- Can Contrariety be Reduced to Contradiction?Crawford L. Elder -2001 -Croatian Journal of Philosophy 1 (1):1-4.Can an ontology which treats properties as really out there in the world be combined vvith the view that necessity is not out there? What about the necessity by which redness excludes greenness, or weighing 8 kg excludes weighing 6 kg? Armstrong, who combines property realism with logical atomism, argues that such exclusions reflect just the trivial necessity that a whole cannot be any of its proper parts. Buthis argument fails for colors themselves and for other cases of contrary properties. (...) Property realism must be necessity realism. (shrink)
- Goodman's “new riddle” — a realist's reprise.Crawford L. Elder -1990 -Philosophical Studies 59 (2):115 - 135.
- Hegel and the Explanation of Behavior.Crawford L. Elder -1980 -Idealistic Studies 10 (2):157-172.A certain analogy can be drawn between Hegel’s central views on material objects and Hegel’s views on persons. To an extent, Hegel himself indicates this analogy. Yet to date, surprisingly, no one has commented upon it. Various interpreters have suggested that Hegel is an opponent of Cartesian dualism, and, in this connection, that Hegel’s philosophy might offer useful commentary on problems about mind and body currently under discussion. A study of the analogy mentioned would make it possible to state just (...) how Hegel is an opponent of Cartesian dualism, and to show just what contribution Hegel has to make toward contemporary discussion. Such a study is the topic of the present paper. (shrink)
- Hegel’s Reasons For Using the Concept of an Absolute.Crawford L. Elder -1983 -Idealistic Studies 13 (1):50-60.“Spirit,” Hegel writes in par. 389 of the Encyclopaedia, “is the existent truth of matter—the truth that matter itself has no truth.” The same claim is made in more understandable form in the Zusatz which follows: “the material, which lacks independence in the face of spirit, is freely pervaded by the latter which overarches this its Other,” reducing this Other “to an ideal moment and to something mediated.” Philosophers who have written on Hegel will recognize these passages as ones which (...) call for a fair amount of exegesis. The issue I want to raise in this paper is rather different: just what argument does Hegel supply to establish that Spirit indeed is, as claimed, “the truth of,” or central to, the material world? What reason is given to show that we readers should agree that “the material has absolutely no meaning beyond that of being a negative over against spirit and over against itself?” I shall begin by considering one of the clearer answers to this question offered in recent literature on Hegel. I then shall discuss at much greater length how this answer requires to be supplemented. (shrink)
- Hegel’s Teleology and the Relation Between Mind and Brain.Crawford L. Elder -1979 -Southern Journal of Philosophy 17 (1):27-45.This paper argues that there can be, For each individual mental state, Some identifiable neural "embodiment" only if the brain operates in accord with a hegelian teleological model. "embodiments" are neural configurations which do, Or would, Produce all the behaviors connected with the mental state. The argument hinges on how these behaviors are described: if under predicates of neurophysics only, Then only under wildly disjunctive predicates, Which cannot be projected for any candidate configuration; if under "teleological" predicates, Then under predicates (...) projectible for teleological hardware. Hegel's logic provides for a teleology consistent with modern science. (shrink)
- (1 other version)Kant and the Unity of Experience.Crawford L. Elder -1980 -Kant Studien 71 (1-4):299-307.
- Kripkean externalism versus conceptual analysis.Crawford L. Elder -2003 -Facta Philosophica 5 (1):75-86.
- Millikan, Realism, and Sameness.Crawford L. Elder -2012 - In Dan Ryder, Justine Kingsbury & Kenneth Williford,Millikan and her critics. Malden, MA: Wiley. pp. 155–175.This chapter contains section titles: I II III IV.
- Moral Realism: Its Aetiology and a Consequent Dilemma.Crawford L. Elder -1987 -American Philosophical Quarterly 24 (1):33 - 45.
- Millikan, Realismus und Selbigkeit.Crawford L. Elder -2010 -Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58 (6):955-973.Millikan seeks to provide new foundations for realism, and I argue that she gets half-way to this goal. For she provides a robustly realist account of nature′s kinds: what holds the members or samples of a kind together are properties that recur together for a common causal reason. But full-strength realism requires realism not just about kind-membership, but about persistence across time. I argue that Millikan does not, but could and should, embrace the traditional idea that the conditions on kind-membership (...) double as persistence conditions for members of the kind. Thus could she generate realism about persistence from realism about kinds. (shrink)
- Notes and news.Crawford L. Elder -1987 -Philosophia 17 (3):391-391.
| 1 — 50 / 59 |
Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Create an account to enable off-campus access through your institution's proxy server or OpenAthens.
Monitor this page
Be alerted of all new items appearing on this page. Choose how you want to monitor it:
 Email |  RSS feed |
Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
Other editors
Contact us
Learn more about PhilPapers
David Bourget (Western Ontario)
David Chalmers (ANU, NYU)
Area Editors:
David Bourget
Gwen Bradford
Berit Brogaard
Margaret Cameron
David Chalmers
James Chase
Rafael De Clercq
Ezio Di Nucci
Esa Diaz-Leon
Barry Hallen
Hans Halvorson
Jonathan Ichikawa
Monte Johnson
Michelle Kosch
Øystein Linnebo
Paul Livingston
Brandon Look
Manolo Martínez
Matthew McGrath
Michiru Nagatsu
Susana Nuccetelli
Giuseppe Primiero
Jack Alan Reynolds
Darrell P. Rowbottom
Aleksandra Samonek
Constantine Sandis
Howard Sankey
Jonathan Schaffer
Thomas Senor
Daniel Star
Jussi Suikkanen
Aness Kim Webster
Other editors
Contact us
Learn more about PhilPapers
Home |New books and articles |Bibliographies |Philosophy journals |About PhilPapers |API |Contact us |Code of conduct
PhilPapers logo byAndrea Andrews andMeghan Driscoll.
This site uses cookies and Google Analytics (see ourterms & conditions for details regarding the privacy implications).Use of this site is subject toterms & conditions.
All rights reserved byThe PhilPapers Foundation
Server: philpapers-web-54b44b69b7-cj6sj uwo