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By North-American standards, philosophy is not new in Quebec: the first men tion of philosophy lectures given by a Jesuit in the College de Quebec (founded 1635) dates from 1665, and the oldest logic manuscript dates from 1679. In English-speaking universities such as McGill (founded 1829), philosophy began to be taught later, during the second half of the 19th century. The major influence on English-speaking philosophers was, at least initially, that of Scottish Empiricism. On the other hand, the strong influence of the Catholic Church on French-Canadian society meant that the staff of the facultes of the French-speaking universities consisted, until recently, almost entirely of Thomist philosophers. There was accordingly little or no work in modern Formal Logic and Philosophy of Science and precious few contacts between the philosophical communities. In the late forties, Hugues Leblanc was a young student wanting to learn Formal Logic. He could not find anyone in Quebec to teach him and he went to study at Harvard University under the supervision of W. V. Quine. His best friend Maurice L' Abbe had left, a year earlier, for Princeton to study with Alonzo Church. After receiving his Ph. D from Harvard in 1948, Leblanc started his profes sional career at Bryn Mawr College, where he stayed until 1967. He then went to Temple University, where he taught until his retirement in 1992, serving as Chair of the Department of Philosophy from 1973 until 1979.
List of contents
Philosophy of Biology.- Teleological Arguments from a Methodological Viewpoint.- Natural Selection and Selection Type Theories.- Function, Normality and Temporality.- Natural Selection and Indexical Representation.- Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science.- Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, and the Symbol-Matter Problem.- Making Colored Objects.- Why Marr's Theory of Vision Is Not Anti-Individualist.- "Three Thought Experiments Revisited".- Davidson on Norms and the Explanation of Behavior.- Decision Theory and Philosophy of Economics.- Economics and Intentionality.- How Could Anyone Be Irrational?.- "If Cows Had Wings, We'd Carry Big Umbrellas." An Almost Number-Free Note on Newcomb's Problem.- The Belief-Desire Model of Decision Theory Needs a Third Component: Prospective Intentions.- Decision Theory, Individualistic Explanations and Social Darwinism.- Epistemological Studies.- Dispositions to Explain.- Belief-Sentences: Outline of a Nominalistic Approach.- Verifieationism and the Molecular View of Language.- Notes on the Authors.- Name Index.
About the author
PhD Mathieu Marion, Oxford, 1991. Publications in Philosophiques, Synthese, Philosophia Scientiae.
