Collected Papers on Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and History of Philosophy

1. The Problem of Universals Then and Now.- 1. The Problem.- 2. Platonism and Nominalism.- 3. Historical Background.- 4. Epistemological Discussion of Platonism and Nominalism.- 5. Constructive Conceptualism.- 6. The Three Ontological Positions.- 7. Summary.- 2. Towards a Rational Reconstruction of Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience.- I: Kant’s Riddle of Experience.- 1. On Rational Reconstructions of Philosophical Theories.- 2. The Place of Kant’s Theory of Experience within His Theoretical Philosophy.- 3. Synthetic a priori Propositions.- 4. The Existential Hypothesis in Kant’s Fundamental Question.- 5. The Influence of Isaac Newton, Chr. Wolff and D. Hume upon Kant’s Conception of Science.- 6. Kant’s Antinomy of Experience.- 7. Kant’s Project for a Solution: Synthetic a priori Statements as the Way out of the Dilemma.- 8. A Remark on the Relation between the ‘Regressive’ and the ‘Progressive’ Argument.- II: The Logical Structure of the Progressive Argument.- 1. The Aim of the Progressive Argument.- 2. Kant as a Rationalist Precursor of the Theory of Eliminative and Enumerative Induction.- 3. Kant’s Theory of Structural Reduction or a priori Elimination (The Modal Argument).- 4. Empirical Confirmation and Consolidation.- 5. The Gap in Kant’s Argument.- 6. Concluding Remarks.- 3. A Model Theoretic Explication of Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory.- 1. Introduction.- 2. Intensional Relational Systems, Model Worlds, Categorical Identity.- 3. Isomorphism, Homomorphism, Picture, Truth and Falsity.- 4. Logical Spaces, Isomorphism between Logical Spaces, Logically Adequate and Inadequate Pictures.- 5. Application of the Picture Theory to Language.- 4. Phenomenalism and Its Difficulties.- 1. Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics and Phenomenalism.- 2. ACharacterization of Phenomenalism.- 3. Motives for Phenomenalism.- 4. Difficulties in Carrying out the Phenomenalistic Programme.- 5. Conclusion.- 5. Ontology and Analyticity.- 1. The Ontological Problem.- 2. The Problem of Analytic Statements.- 3. Concluding Remarks.- Index of Names.