Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This paper is a philosophical reflection on how the development of science and technology can be studied better through the tradition of Islamic philosophy. This is attempted because the approach that has been used to study science and technology in the Islamic world is still centered on the process of assimilation or Islamization of Knowledge. In a critical reading of the two approaches, the problems that arise from the study of contemporary science and technology become something that is difficult to (...) anticipate. In fact, the development of science and technology is also moving very fast. This raises the question of the need for alternative approaches in the study of contemporary science and technology in the arena of Islamic Philosophy. To solve this problem, the author conducted an initial experiment that could elaborate Irfani's approach on the one hand with studies of contemporary science and technology on the other. This becomes possible with the reinterpretation of the concept of emanation that exists in the discourse of Yazdiyah's Hudhuri Science. Based on this interpretation as well as the perspective that Mishbah Yazdi has made about the help of Irfan in philosophy, the application of the Irfani approach in the study of science and technology becomes possible as part of the practice of Hudhuri Science. On a more practical level, the author also uses this Irfani approach in a scenario format to read the vision of contemporary science and technology in the NBIC discourse. (shrink)

The digital humanities have developed in concert with online systems that increase the accessibility and speed of learning. Whereas previously students were immersed in the fluidity of campus life, they have become suspended and drawn-into various streams and currents of digital pedagogy, which articulate new forms of epistemological movement, often operating at speeds outside the lived time and rhythm of human thought. When assessing learning technologies, we have to consider the degree to which they complement the rhythms immanent to human (...) thought, knowledge, investigation, and experimentation.In this paper, we examine learning from a humanities perspective, arguing that reading, writing, and thinking are ways of learning underscored by various genres of movement that segue with or diverge from the movements inherent to digital technologies, especially those deployed in learning systems. Using the work of thinkers such as John Dewey and Michel Serres, we examine the importance of movement in dialogue, where to truly learn involves embedding oneself in the flow of thought, accepting the flexibility of concepts, and aligning oneself with a community of thinkers. (shrink)

Of the many literary forms philosophy has taken, the survey is undoubtedly among the least likely to elicit excitement. Understood as the enumeration and summary of a series of positions, one could...

In the contemporary debate on free will, most philosophers assume that the defense of libertarianism implies the defense of the notion of alternative possibilities. This article discusses this presupposition by showing that it is possible to build a libertarianism without alternative possibilities, apparently more robust than libertarianism with alternative possibilities. Inspired by Bergson, this nonclassical libertarianism challenges the idea that all causation implies the actualization of a predetermined possibility (an idea shared by determinism and classical libertarianism). Moreover, it challenges the (...) idea that free will is a mere choice between prefixed possibilities: for this libertarianism, free will is the result of a creative process of the mind—an entirely causal process whose outcome is not, however, predetermined. This nonclassical libertarianism describes the process of forming a will in a more realistic way than classical libertarianism does. Furthermore, it is not threatened by the problem of chance. (shrink)

A crucial question for a process view of life is how to identify a process and how to follow it through time. The genidentity view can contribute decisively to this project. It says that the identity through time of an entity X is given by a well-identified series of continuous states of affairs. Genidentity helps address the problem of diachronic identity in the living world. This chapter describes the centrality of the concept of genidentity for David Hull and proposes an (...) extension of Hull’s view to the ubiquitous phenomenon of symbiosis. Finally, using immunology as a key example, it shows that the genidentity view suggests that the main interest of a process approach is epistemological rather than ontological and that its principal claim is one of priority, namely that processes precede and define things, and not vice versa. (shrink)

Using Buddhist thought, explores and challenges the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre.

Nicholas Rescher’s way of understanding process philosophy reflects the ambitions of his own philosophical project and commits him to a conceptually ideal interpretation of process. Process becomes a transcendental idea of reflection that can always be predicated of our knowledge of the world and of the world qua known, but not necessarily of reality an sich. Rescher’s own taxonomy of process thinking implies that it has other variants. While Rescher’s approach to process philosophy makes it intelligible and appealing to mainstream (...) analytic philosophy, it leaves behind the more daring ideas of Bergson, James, and Whitehead, all of whom envisioned the primordial reality of process in a radical ontology of becoming. This variant of process thought can be construed as coherent and self-consistent, but not without relinquishing the correspondence theory of truth and embracing challenging ideas that bring us in close proximity to existentialism, apophatic theology, and Buddhism. (shrink)

This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L'Aquila, 4–6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time. For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time (...) is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time? The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that Bergson and James defend a form of panpsychism, and that on this point, Bergson probably had an influence on James. For Bergson, matter has psychic characters, in particular a memory of the immediate past and a motor memory. These characters are necessary to explain causation within the physical world, understood then as analogous to automatic activity in living beings. However, according to Bergson, there is a radical distinction between the inert and (...) the living: only the living is capable of creation. Probably inspired by Bergson, James develops a similar idea: causation in the physical world is understandable only by admitting that matter has psychic characters. Nevertheless, unlike Bergson, James does not make a radical distinction between the inert and the living. This leads him to make a link between matter and consciousness. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the French philosopher Henri Bergson was a hidden interlocutor in Susan Stebbing’s critique of Arthur Eddington in her Philosophy and the Physicists. First, we outline Stebbing’s critique of Eddington’s philosophical- physical writings with a particular emphasis on her case against Eddington’s account of the passage of time. Second, we provide evidence that Eddington’s philosophy is, at its core, Bergsonian and make the case that Eddington was directly influenced by Bergson’s philosophy of la durée. Third, (...) we lay out Stebbing’s critique of Bergsonism in her Pragmatism and French Voluntarism and identify important similarities with her critique of Eddington over twenty years later. In doing so, we show that it is Eddington’s Bergsonism that she is attacking. Finally, we situate Stebbing’s criticisms of both Eddington and Bergson within two wider conflicts that emerged in early twentieth century British philosophy: one between an objectively describable time of physics and subjective temporal experience, and the other between science and intuition. (shrink)

This article approaches Gilles Deleuze's notion of problems through a series of thinkers Deleuze draws on in developing this notion: Heidegger, Plato, Kant, Bergson and Nietzsche. Taking these thinkers as its guide, it sketches six broad characteristics that accompany an investment in problems, ultimately arguing that problems are attained through the activity of critique. It echoes Deleuze's essay ‘How Do We Recognise Structuralism?’ by asking: for whom do problems exist? What does Deleuze recognise in those who recognise problems? And what (...) do those who recognise problems make visible for us? (shrink)

Drawing on the 1870s-1880s work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, William James famously characterised the specious present as ‘the short duration of which we are immediately and incessantly sensible’. Literature on the pre-history of late nineteenth century specious present theories clusters around the work of John Locke and Thomas Reid, and I argue it is incomplete. The pre-history is missing an inter-connected group of English philosophers writing on the present between 1749 and 1785: David Hartley, Joseph Priestley, Abraham Tucker, (...) and William Watson. With William Herschel, Watson even conducted experiments to determine the limits of human temporal perception. These thinkers do not appear in the specious present literature, or broader historical surveys of temporal consciousness. Yet this paper shows that they all produced important work on our experience of the present, variously defending theses that can be found in subsequent specious present theories. It argues their texts reward study, and may have influenced later theorists; contextualises the nineteenth century theories of James and others; and pushes back the start date of the 'standard history' of micro time by over half a century. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to provide an interpretation for Sartre’s account of the unity of consciousness in The Transcendence of the Ego. I will argue that it is only once The Transcendence of the Ego is read alongside other texts written around the same time, such as The Imaginary, that we can understand how Sartre believes it is possible for consciousness to be unified without an I. I begin by setting out the Kantian context that Sartre develops for (...) his views, before looking at Sartre’s arguments themselves. I then turn to some of the difficulties other readers have encountered with making sense of the arguments of the Transcendence of the Ego. I argue that it is only in relation to Sartre’s account of what he calls the illusion of immanence in The Imaginary, that we can make sense of Sartre’s account of consciousness, before reconstructing what I take to be Sartre’s position drawing on Sartre’s references to Bergson and Spinoza. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explore Deleuze's use of Kant's argument from incongruent counterparts, which Kant uses to show the existence of what he calls an “internal difference” within things. I want to explore how Deleuze draws out an important distinction between the concept and the Idea, and provides an incisive account of his relationship to both the Kantian and Leibnizian projects. First, I look at Kant's use of the argument to provide a refutation of the Leibnizian account (...) of space, before showing how this criticism in fact rests on the question of the conceptual determination of object. Second, I show how Deleuze develops a taxonomy of difference on the basis of his reading of Kant's argument. Finally, I look at what Deleuze sees as the limitations in Kant's understanding of this concept and Deleuze's attempt to overcome these limitations through the introduction of the notion of the Idea, which will provide a genetic and nonconceptual account of the object. In doing so, I show why Deleuze takes the formulation of an adequate account of difference to be one of the central aims of his own metaphysics. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to develop a consistent reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of capitalism by taking seriously their use of Kant’s philosophy in formulating it. In Sect. 1, I will set out the two different roots of the term axiomatic in Deleuze and Guattari’s thought. The first of these is the axiomatic approach to formalising fields of mathematics, and the second the Kantian account of the indeterminate relationship between the transcendental unity of apperception and the transcendental (...) object. In Sect. 2, we will see how this transcendental aspect of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of axiomatics is expressed in the notion of binding, which Deleuze and Guattari take to be a process that forces us to understand a field of entities in a certain manner, namely as clearly delimited and deployed in a homogeneous space. I will argue that this process of binding operates as a transcendental condition for capitalism for Deleuze and Guattari. Section 3 addresses some of the details of the capitalist axiomatic itself, drawing out why a Kantian reading of Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the axiomatic provides a response to some of the criticisms of it. Section 4 then analyses Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the outside of capitalism, using the double signification of the noumenal to understand the complex relationship between what they call the war machine and its representation within the axiomatic. (shrink)

With respect to the several giants of post-Kantian German philosophy – Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche – developments elsewhere in Europe have often seemed to pale into insignific...

This paper shows how reflection on habit leads in nineteenth-century French philosophy to Henri Bergson’s idea of duration in 1888 as a non-quantifiable dimension irreducible to time as measured by clocks. Historically, I show how Albert Lemoine’s 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct was crucial, since he holds – in a way that is both Ravaissonian and Bergsonian avant la lettre – that for the being capable of habit, the three elements of time are fused together. For that habituated being, Lemoine claims, (...) it is not true to say that the past is no longer, nor even that the future is not yet. This historical link between Ravaisson and Bergson, however, only sharpens the philosophical question of how a dynamic conception of habit involves and requires a conception of real duration, of a temporality more original than clock-time, and, conversely, of how reflection on duration prior to clock-time involves a notion of habit. With reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper concludes by showing that there is an internal connection between these two grand philosophical themes of nineteenth- and then twentieth-century French thought: habit and time. (shrink)

Transcendental idealism has been conceived of in philosophy as a position that aims to secure objectivity without traditional metaphysical underpinnings. This article contrasts two forms of transcendental idealism that have been identified: one in the work of Kant, the other in the later Wittgenstein. The distinction between these two positions is clarified by means of a distinction between transcendental constraints and transcendental features. It is argued that these conceptions provide the - fundamentally different - bases of the two positions under (...) discussion. With the core of the positions identified, it is then suggested that neither form of transcendental idealism - the Kantian or the Wittgensteinian - manages to combine the twin aims of safeguarding objectivity and maintaining metaphysical parsimony. The Kantian form appears to succeed on the first score at the cost of failing on the second, while the Wittgensteinian form succeeds on the second and fails on the first. (shrink)

Deleuze’s philosophy is permeated with the problem of the continuum. The idea that the coexistence of durations is implied in the concept of duration itself allows Deleuze to offer a fresh perspective on multiplicity, which is distinct from Bergson’s approach, and which proposes new perspectives on the continuum. While Deleuze critiques Leibniz’s view on this concept by highlighting the non-uniform nature of the continuum, the infinitesimal still plays a significant role in his analysis. However, in his late reading of Leibniz, (...) Deleuze emphasises that folds, rather than infinitesimals, should be considered as the smallest components of the continuum’s labyrinth. This implies that there is a union of indiscernible cuts in the continuity, cuts that do not create gaps or breaks in the overall coherence, but rather a labyrinth. I will show how, in exploring this problem, Deleuze and Guattari draw inspiration from Kafka, in order to relate continuity to contiguity. This relation reveals an internal difference that defines the distinction between what is continuous and what is contiguous. This, in our view, marks a considerable shift between Deleuze’s early reading of Bergson and his late reading of Leibniz, and it allows Deleuze to further develop his idea of the continuum. (shrink)

The concept of care has occupied a central place in nursing philosophy and scholarship since the modern formation of the profession. Perhaps the defining character of the scholarship has been the recognition not only of the complexity of the concept of care, its elusiveness and ambiguity, but also the lack of consensus or agreement regarding its meaning and value. I will make two interconnected arguments: first, I will argue that disputes around care are not an accidental feature or an unfortunate (...) condition of its applicability. Rather, care is an example of what I will call, following W.B. Gallie (1956), an “essentially contested” concept. Secondly, I will employ insights from the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859‐1941) to explore the concept of care and argue that the essentially contested processual nature of care is the source of its meaning and value. (shrink)

According to the B-theory, the passage of time is an illusion. The B-theory therefore requires an explanation of this illusion before it can be regarded as fullysatisfactory; yet very few B-theorists have taken up the challenge of trying to provide one. In this paper I take some first steps toward such an explanation by first making a methodological proposal, then a hypothesis about a key element in the phenomenology of temporal passage. The methodological proposal focuses onthe representational content of the (...) element of experience by virtue of which time seems to pass. The hypothesis involves the claim that the experience of changeinvolves the representation of something enduring, rather than perduring, through any change. (shrink)

This essay defines ethical resonance through an ethnographic interlude that paves the way for a broader theorization of the concept. It begins by contextually recounting the story of an individual who had stayed at Sevagram, Mahatma Gandhi’s last ashram in 1944, shadowing Gandhi for some 20 days. The young man’s brief meeting with Gandhi in which Gandhi uttered only one sentence transformed him for his lifetime. I reflect on the experience and its narrative qualities to explore the broader question of (...) why one is moved, and moved enough to be altered. I propose that the theorization of resonance in modern physics, in phenomenology, and in 11th‐century Sanskrit poetics is productive for understanding the subjective and the trans‐subjective elements that underlie ethical persuasion. I argue that the idea of resonance helps bridge the affective and the aesthetic in moral self‐formation that occurs in everyday life. (shrink)

The concept of shame is important for Deleuze's ethics and politics. In this essay, shame is positioned within a nexus of concepts: the intolerable, seeing, resistance, powerlessness, and belief in this world. If one has fallen short, it is not because of who one is, how one is seen, or how one has been judged, but it is, in part, because of one's failure to see what is intolerable. In this respect, shame, in particular ‘the shame of the world’, has (...) the potential to be a proto-political and proto-ethical affect because it suspends and precludes the ready invocation of clichés and explanations that buttress us against reality. This disruption in turn opens a space for creativity and resistance. (shrink)

Value is increasingly found in human subjects and in particular within their minds. This places the individual at the centre of economic life and therefore the inner life of individual merits more attention. A key element of humanity is memory and it drives such phenomena as trust and goodwill, essential in modern business. Bergson’s philosophy examines the interaction of mind and matter and in this reflects the dualism of the knowledge economy. His work on memory offers important insights for those (...) seeking to account for and manage intangible assets. Our paper examines, through the prism of Bergsonian philosophy, the implications for accounting practice of the increased importance of intangible assets in modern corporations. (shrink)

This paper explores the influence of Henri Bergson’s (1859–1941) philosophy of time on three early twentieth-century British philosophers: Karin Costelloe-Stephen (1889–1953), Hilda Oakeley (1867–1950), and May Sinclair (1863–1946). I demonstrate that three central claims of Bergson’s account of temporal experience (novelty, memory, and indivisibility) were creatively incorporated into their accounts of time. All these philosophers place time at the centre of their philosophical systems, so this study of their views on time and temporality can deepen our understanding of their systems (...) more broadly. Further, this study helps us appreciate the reception of Bergson’s thought in British philosophy after it was ferociously attacked by Bertrand Russell in 1912, and can provide more detailed contours on the joint fortunes of temporal experience and Bergson's thought in the history of twentieth-century philosophy. I conclude by emphasizing reasons why contemporary philosophers should pay particular attention to the three figures’ treatment of Bergson. (shrink)

In a recent conference volume, American philosopher Michael Sandel engages the Confucian tradition in the search for alternatives to what Sandel calls the “unencumbered self,” the unattached liberal subject as detailed in the philosophy of John Rawls. Responding to Sandel, American Confucianist Roger Ames draws on a lifetime of comparative thought to advance the Pragmatism of John Dewey as a way to interrogate Western philosophy in general, arguing that “humane becomings,” a view of the human person facilitated, Ames writes, by (...) Deweyan Pragmatism, are the Confucian ideal and the key to recovering a holistic anthropology within the Western tradition. In this essay, I intervene in the Ames-Sandel debate to argue that Charles Peirce, and not John Dewey, is the best American Pragmatist for bridging the divide between the Confucian and Rawlsian views of the human person. Peirce’s emphasis on love as true intersubjectivity and on communication as the exchange of real meaning is, I argue, the key to unlocking the Confucian ideal to the West. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty’s explication of concrete or practical movement by way of the Schneider case could be read as ending up close to automatism, neglecting its flexibility and plasticity in the face of obstacles. It can be contended that he already goes off course in his explication of Schneider’s condition. Rasmus Jensen has argued that he assimilates a normal person’s motor intentionality to the patient’s, thereby generating a vacuity problem. I argue that Schneider’s difficulties with certain movements point to a means of (...) broadening Merleau-Ponty’s account of concrete movement, one that he broaches without exploiting. What could do more work is his recognition of a transposition capacity - and hence of a plasticity - in the healthy body’s skill schema. As well as avoiding vacuity, he could forestall the appearance of a dichotomy between practical coping and creativity. (shrink)

This paper represents such an amateur approach; hence any comments backed up by professional erudition will be highly appreciated. Let me start from an attempt to sketch a relationship between professionals’ and amateurs’ contributions. The latter may be compared with the letters to the Editor of a journal, written by perceptive readers, while professionals contribute to the very content of the journal in question. Owing to such letters, the Editor and his professional staff can become more aware of the responses (...) of educated public to the journal’s output. (shrink)

Clarice Lispector puts forth nothing less than a complete philosophy of time in her writings, that is, a cohesive philosophical examination of what time is, of its physics and metaphysics, of how humans and animals perceive time, and even an innovative aesthetic theory in which time is the inspiring force giving rise to literary and artistic creation. Her view of time is unique in the Western philosophical canon, offering original solutions to many of time’s classic difficulties. For Lispector, time is (...) pure actuality. Reality is an unwavering present that never stops being, is fully material, and is ceaselessly attentive to itself. The present, matter, and attention form the unquestionable unit of the real and the core of Lispector’s philosophy of time. Supporting this structure is her inventive metaphysics of time, anchored in her notion of the “fourth dimension of the instant-now,” which is given close attention. (shrink)

This essay interrogates recent materialist monisms, be they based on contingency, eliminativism, or objective phenomenology, on account of their metaphilosophical ramifications. It is argued that certain dualities must be retained, at least nominally, in order to have any explanatory purchase and escape velocity from philosophical circularity. Dyads such as “spirit” and “matter,” “manifest” and “scientific,” “living” and “dead,” or even “illusion” and “reality” are given an immanentist reading that treats them as equal parts of the Real. Following this revisionary metaphysics (...) that reviews the meaning of such terms as optical realities, the matter–spirit couple is specifically used to explain why reality cannot appear as just one thing, even if only in virtue of the illusion of at least two things. The consequences for philosophical monisms of all types, and for anthropocentric thought in general, are then examined in the light of the ethical effects of recent attempts to explain every thing through one medium alone. (shrink)

This article examines Henri Bergson’s conception of human rights in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. I claim that he provides an original view of human rights. Rather than understand human rights primarily as an institution to protect all human beings from serious social, legal, and political abuse, Bergson conceives of them as a medium of personal transformation. In particular, I argue that for him the true potential of human rights is to initiate all human beings into a way (...) of life open to love and joy. (shrink)

This article explores the claim that law is characteristically in search of the past. We argue that the structure of memory defines our relationship with the past and this relationship, in turn, has important implications for the nature of law. The article begins by examining the structure of memory, drawing particularly on the work of Henri Bergson. It then draws out the implications of Bergson’s theory for the interplay of past and present, highlighting the challenges this poses for law’s project (...) of retrieval. Law, as an artifact, seeks its origins in human action, but this often yields a static view of legal discourse as the retrieval of pivotal moments. Bergson, by contrast, shows us that past and present influence each other dynamically, giving rise to an integrated whole. The article concludes by exploring the potential for law to transcend the structure of memory. We argue that even beyond the limits of memory legal reasoning encounters a kind of residue left by the ethical foundations of law. Law searches vainly for the past, but what it finds is itself. (shrink)

The publication of Cora Diamond's important 2002 “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” (in Philosophy and Animal Life) stimulated the writing of this essay. “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” attempted to show that there are experiences of reality (recounted especially in literature like John Coetzee's novels and Ted Hughes' poetry) in relation to which philosophical concepts and words encounter difficulty. The experiences resist conceptualization. By examining several of Diamond's earlier writings, I try to (...) show that the difficulty of philosophical conceptualization of reality is due to the fact that reality does not exist external to experience. Reality being internal to experience means that reality contains an unfixed set of possibilities. Being experiential, reality is historical. The historical dimension of reality – such as the reality of animal life suffering – makes the words through we describe this reality too weak, i.e. they are not powerful enough to capture reality, hence the difficulty. Consequently, as I argue, for Diamond, the weakness of words means that words are never complete concepts. The meaning of them seems always still to come since reality seems always to have a surplus of possibilities. I suggest that because of this always still “to come” aspect of the meaning of words, we might characterise Diamond's thought as a messianism. (shrink)

Phenomenology presents itself not as an explanation or interpretation of phenomena but as a description of them. Describing experience means making its internal structure explicit, which, in phenomenology, is an eidetic structure. The method of phenomenological explication or clarification is, however, by no means univocal. This paper aims to isolate the two fundamental ways in which phenomenological description is achieved. The first refers to a phenomenology of manifestation, based on the concept of determination or datum, which is realized in the (...) phenomenological-static approach and, in particular, on the concept of extensive quality. The second refers to a phenomenology of disposition, based on the concept of tension or force – which is realized in the genetic approach as well as in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception – and, in particular on the concept of intensive or forceful quality. The analysis of the difference between the two approaches allows us to introduce the crucial distinction between digital and analogue dimensions within phenomenology. (shrink)

The debate between Einstein and Bergson is a salient episode in the history of modern physics and a telling example of the interaction between science and philosophy. This paper initially discusses five reasons why Bergson criticised Einstein for giving up absolute time. The most important one was Bergson’s commitment to an intuitionist, anti-Kantian metaphysics informed by common sense. Apart from that, he knew that the theory of special relativity permits “duration” in the form of the passage of proper time, to (...) which Bergson referred as “real time”. Neither static eternalism nor dynamic eternalism are acceptable from Bergson’s philosophical perspective, which acknowledges the role of temporal experience and everyday thinking in addition to science and metaphysics. He understood temporal passage as creation of new existence, anticipating what later became known as the growing block theory of time. The pointy relativistic variant of this theory, which divides the universe into blocks of growing past light cones, does justice to large parts of his philosophy, including the distinction between the actual and the virtual. Supporters of Bergson’s account of duration should adopt this theory of time. (shrink)

In cinematic experience, a view from nowhere appears in an instituting moment – neither in time nor out of time, but part of time itself – when a camera reflex lifts the viewer’s perception out of somewhere and into the infinite time of the film. We argue that the view from nowhere found in Birt Acres’s film Rough Sea at Dover – a fifteen-second shot of waves breaking against a sea wall in Dover, England in 1895 – transcends all attempts (...) to turn it into a view from somewhere, as an empty space that carries the auratic trace of the past into the present through phase shifts of technical mediation. In Simondon’s terms, the view from nowhere opens up possibilities of becoming all ways at once in the reflexive capacity of the human organon. Following Stiegler’s organological technics, we identify the capture of perception by the apparatus of recording and playback in the digitally automated algorithm as a threat to the reflexive capability of the organon to see otherwise in the creative individuation opened up in the phase-shifting process. Our analysis triggers a switch from an anthropocentric to a neganthropic-ecological mode of seeing in which the auratic trace of the event of waves crashing against the pier is seen in an inhuman view from nowhere that carries the threat of automatized systems in which human noesis – self-reflexive capacity – is eclipsed by machines. By seeing otherwise, the eclipse by machines is reversed to reveal the complex becoming of the film in its materiality as a work of creative individuation. (shrink)

In this article I aim to bring to the fore a problematic trait of Polish philosopher Stanisław Brzozowski’s thinking, which is his insistence on the metaphysical importance of human domination of nature through work, technology, and maximization of production. The focal point of the article is Brzozowski’s interpretation of Georg Sorel, with an emphasis on Reflections on Violence and the concept of the social myth. I argue that Brzozowski considers the primary strength of the social myth to lie in its (...) contribution to such domination, because its principal trait is to provide man with a sublime feeling of elevation above nature. Furthermore, this feeling becomes a motive force for struggle against nature. In conclusion, I suggest that the perspective of the sublime is a fruitful path for future critical encounters with Brzozowski’s work. The first part of the article stresses the importance of the sublime in Reflections on Violence. Sorel uses this concept throughout his main work to describe the affective nature of the violence of the social myth, which coordinates the inclinations of the masses towards emancipation. The second part discusses how Brzozowski understands the social myth, law, and nationhood from the perspective of human domination of elemental nature. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of labour through a diremptive reading of Polish philosopher Stanisław Brzozowski’s essay “Prolegomena filozofii ‘pracy’” written in 1909. This essay appears as a chapter in his main work Idee: wstęp do filozofii dojrzałości dziejowej, first published in 1910. In “Prolegomena,” Brzozowski defines labour as an inner gesture that delineates the duration of life. In the interpretation of this definition the influence of Henri Bergson on Brzozowski’s thought is stressed. Inspired by Bergson, Brzozowski understands labour as (...) the only ground-creating—and therefore metaphysical—activity of humanity, when faced with the absence of transcendent grounds for existence in modernity. Emphasis is placed on Brzozowski’s insistence in “Prolegomena” that labour is irrational in its delineation of the absolutely new. He describes it as the α of the inner gesture of labour that cannot be known until it is performed. This unknown α is interpreted as his way of describing the groundlessness of the ground-creating activity of labour, and that this groundlessness means that labour eludes the control of the subject. (shrink)

Here, we defend the thesis whereby the event plays a main role of sense in the meaning of certain sentences. This thesis is based on the one hand on recent work in the metaphysics of so-called “happening” entities, which has led to a distinction between concrete physical processes and abstract events, the latter being conceived as psychological constructs accounting for stabilities or changes in the world. Furthermore, we look back at the work on intentionality carried out in the Brentanian school (...) at the turn of the 20th century and we relate abstract events to the mental states of affairs studied by Twardowski but which were then neglected by contemporary philosophers of language. Abstract events, thus characterized, have the contingent property of occurring, when facts obtain and realize them. We suggest that the facts in question correspond to Wittgensteinian states of affairs. (shrink)

This introduction presents a state of the art of philosophical research on cognitive phenomenology and its relation to the nature of conscious thinking more generally. We firstly introduce the question of cognitive phenomenology, the motivation for the debate, and situate the discussion within the fields of philosophy, cognitive psychology and consciousness studies. Secondly, we review the main research on the question, which we argue has so far situated the cognitive phenomenology debate around the following topics and arguments: phenomenal contrast, epistemic (...) arguments and challenges, introspection, ontology and temporal character, intentionality, inner speech, agency, holistic perspective, categorical perception, value, and phenomenological description. Thirdly, we suggest future developments by pointing to four questions that can be explored in relation to the cognitive phenomenology discussion: the self and self-awareness, attention, emotions and general the... (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The aim of this paper is to explain how the Heraclitean doctrine of universal flux must be rejected, while the notion of flux should and can be preserved. Against the reductionist account of subjectless change, a modern version of the Heraclitean doctrine advocated by revisionist metaphysics, I argue that (1) the idea of subjectless change is one that can and should be formulated in the established conceptual framework, and (2) subjectlessness is a feature that most aptly characterizes material changes. In (...) essence, I seek to provide a proper accommodation for the notion of flux in a conceptual framework that is traditionally understood (or rather misunderstood) as decidedly excluding it. (shrink)

This paper aims to clarify Merleau-Ponty’s contribution to an embodied-enactive account of mathematical cognition. I first identify the main points of interest in the current discussions of embodied higher cognition and explain how they relate to Merleau-Ponty and his sources, in particular Husserl’s late works. Subsequently, I explain these convergences in greater detail by more specifically discussing the domains of geometry and algebra and by clarifying the role of gestalt psychology in Merleau-Ponty’s account. Beyond that, I explain how, for Merleau-Ponty, (...) mathematical cognition requires not only the presence and actual manipulation of some concrete perceptible symbols but, more strongly, how it is fundamentally linked to the structural transformation of the concrete configurations of symbolic systems to which these symbols appertain. Furthemore, I fill a gap in the literature by explaining Merleau-Ponty’s claim that these structural transformations are operated through motor intentionality. This makes it possible, in turn, to contrast Merleau-Ponty’s approach to ontologically idealistic and realistic views on mathematical objects. On Merleau-Ponty’s account, mathematical objects are relational entities, that is, gestalts that necessarily imply situated cognizers to whom they afford a specific type of engagement in the world and on whom they depend in their eventual structural transformations. I argue that, by attributing a strongly constitutive role to phenomenal configurations and their motor transformation in mathematical thinking, Merleau-Ponty contributes to clarifying the worldly, historical, and socio-cultural aspects of mathematical truths without compromising what we perceive as their universality, certainty, and necessity. (shrink)

Though the claims they make about temporality are markedly different, Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger agree that time is a philosophically foundational phenomenon; indeed, they agree that time is, in certain respects, the basis for all discursively representable beings. This paper focuses not so much on their theories of temporality (i.e., their respective answers to the question what is time? and their justifications for these answers) but rather on the challenges involved in talking about this phenomenon at all. Both thinkers (...) are highly sensitive to these challenges and to the problems involved in any attempt to represent time in a discursively straightforward manner. I will show that: (1) Bergson’s and Heidegger’s respective claims about time can be fully understood only if we keep this sensitivity in view and carefully note what they are—and aren’t—doing in talking about time ; and (2) what is ultimately at stake in their analyses is not just the phenomenon of time but what it means to engage in rigorous philosophical praxis. (shrink)

Jean Nicod (1893–1924) is a French philosopher and logician who worked with Russell during the First World War. His PhD, with a preface from Russell, was published under the titleLa géométrie dans le monde sensiblein 1924, the year of his untimely death. The book did not have the impact he deserved. In this paper, I discuss the methodological aspect of Nicod’s approach. My aim is twofold. I would first like to show that Nicod’s definition of various notions of equivalence between (...) theories anticipates, in many respects, the (syntactic and semantic) model-theoretic notion of interpretation of a theory into another. I would secondly like to present the philosophical agenda that led Nicod to elaborate his logical framework: the defense of rationalism against Bergson’s attacks. (shrink)

Jean Nicod (1893–1924) is a French philosopher and logician who worked with Russell during the First World War. His PhD, with a preface from Russell, was published under the title La géométrie dans le monde sensible in 1924, the year of his untimely death. The book did not have the impact he deserved. In this paper, I discuss the methodological aspect of Nicod’s approach. My aim is twofold. I would first like to show that Nicod’s definition of various notions of (...) equivalence between theories anticipates, in many respects, the (syntactic and semantic) model-theoretic notion of interpretation of a theory into another. I would secondly like to present the philosophical agenda that led Nicod to elaborate his logical framework: the defense of rationalism against Bergson’s attacks. (shrink)