This essay attempts to distinguish and discuss the importance and limitations of different ways of being wrong. At first it is argued that strictly falsifiable knowledge is concerned with simple (instrumental) mistakes only, and thus is incapable of understanding more complex errors (and truths). In order to gain a deeper understanding of mistakes (and to understand a deeper kind of mistake), it is argued that communicative aspects have to be taken into account. This is done in the theory of communicative (...) action, which adds to our knowledge of errors the notion of communicative mistakes: mistakes as obstacles for sincere communication. However, to overcome this still purely negative judgement of errors, two processes are examined in which mistakes are best regarded as developmental steps, that is, steps not only meaningful in their own right (as containing some truth), but also as necessary preconditions for further progress. This would suggest that truth is born out of errors. But if so, one has to understand the wrongness of such errors; how is it that they are erroneous if they (somehow) contain the truth? At the end of this essay, a tentative answer to this question is given. (shrink)

This paper defends an idealist form of non-reductivism in the philosophy of mind. I refer to it as a kind of conceptual dualism without substance dualism. I contrast this idealist alternative with the two most widespread forms of non-reductivism: multiple realisability functionalism and anomalous monism. I argue first, that functionalism fails to challenge seriously the claim for methodological unity since it is quite comfortable with the idea that it is possible to articulate a descriptive theory of the mind. Second, that (...) as an attempt to graft conceptual mind-body dualism onto a monistic metaphysics, the idealist alternative bears some similarities to anomalous monism, but that it is superior to it because it is not vulnerable to the charge of epiphenomenalism. I conclude that this idealist alternative should be given serious consideration by those who remain unconvinced that a successful defence of the non-reducibility of the mental is compatible with the pursuit of a naturalistic agenda. (shrink)

In his review of Charles Spearman’s The Nature of ‘Intelligence’, R. G. Collingwood launched an attack upon psychometrics that was expanded in his Essay on Metaphysics. Although underrated by friend and foe alike, Collingwood’s critique identified a number of defects in the thinking of psychometricians that subsequently became entrenched. However, his main complaint was that psychology generally was a ‘fashionable scientific fraud’. This charge was inspired by his more general views on logic and metaphysics, which, however, as I argue, are (...) logically unsustainable. Ironically, other elements of his philosophy – his ‘fallacy of calculation’ and concept of ‘scale of forms’ – are relevant to psychometrics and tip the scales in favour of his otherwise unwarranted charge. (shrink)

In this article I suggest a way of overcoming the traditional dichotomy between analytic and continental philosophy by pointing at some similarities between apparently disparate philosophical approaches, viz. those of Michael Dummett and Jürgen Habermas. The comparison revolves around the so-called 'paradox of analysis', which poses a dilemma concerning philosophical propositions: these are allegedly shown to be either trivial or unsecured. Both Dummett and Habermas offer ways out of the dilemma, through recognition of the intersection of analysis with life. A (...) transcendentally characterized conception of language is conceived by both as the only way to overcome the haunting objective -subjective distinction. Thus they offer fresh insights into the nature of meaning and truth, and the place these occupy within philosophical systems. Both philosophers take the notions of justification and procedural rationality to be primary in the order of philosophical explanation. Meaning is not conceived in terms of representation and truth conditions, but in terms of validity claims. Truth is not viewed as independent and static, but as historically conditioned and constantly unfolding. As a result, even the statements of logic, and certainly those of philosophy, find a place between the alleged emptiness of analyticity and the robust empirical character of science. This common ground represents, I believe, one of the new faces of post-analytic -and hence also post-continental -philosophy. Parts of it are shared by other contemporary philosophers, such as Derrida and Brandom. What marks this new Weltanschauung is the way it surpasses the current eliminativist trends in philosophy. (shrink)

The ontological proof became something of a signature argument for the British Idealist movement and this paper examines how and why that was so. Beginning with an account of Hegel's understanding of the argument, it looks at how the thesis was picked up, developed and criticized by the Cairds, Bradley, Pringle-Pattison and others. The importance of Bradley's reading in particular is stressed. Lastly, consideration is given to Collingwood's lifelong interest in the proof and it is argued that his attention is (...) best understood as a direct continuation of theirs. In view of the fact that recent commentators have tried to draw a sharp line between Collingwood's approach to metaphysics and ontology and that of his predecessors, the establishment of this connection calls for a measure of reassessment on both sides. (shrink)

What do we mean when we refer to world? How does the world relate to the human person? Are the two interdependent and, if so, in what way? What does world mean for an ethnographer or an anthropologist? Much has been said of worlds and worldviews, but do we really know what we mean by these words? Asking these questions and many more, this book explores the conditions of possibility of the ethnographic gesture, and how these shed light on the (...) relationship between humans and the world in the midst of which they find themselves. As Pina-Cabral shows, recent decades have seen important shifts in the way we relate human thought to human embodiment—the relation between how we think and what we are. The book proposes a novel approach to the human condition: an anthropological outlook that is centered around the notions of personhood and sociality. Through a rich confrontation with ethnographic and historical material, this work contributes to the ongoing task of overcoming the theoretical constraints that have hindered anthropological thinking over the past century. (shrink)

Choreography and Ceremony: The Artful Side of Action "Actions" are normally thought of as taken by individuals. But to understand their quality, it is not enough to classify them from the perspective of individual psychology (rational vs. emotional, technical vs. artistic, etc.). We need to grasp their relation to those forms of collective life which have a historical existence independent of specific individual action (institutions, the conventions of social gathering, the organizing principles of games, architecture, music, ritual, etc.). This paper (...) focuses on what characteristics such forms of collective life share, not what seems to separate them (eg. into sacred vs secular, technology vs creative art). The main features emphasized are their choreography, that is their enactment within commonly understood patterns of a spatial and temporal kind, as well as rules of interactive movement; and their ceremonial character, something which can be found in simple situations such as a conversation or a meal, though much more intensely in major religious ritual. A particularly resonant image for these enactments of social life is the dance. Because there is a ceremonial aspect to all social interaction, the paper argues that individual action, necessarily oriented to the social context, always has an "artful" side (however habitual or technical). The paper draws on the writings of Wittgenstein on action, and those of Collingwood on language and art, to shape the argument. Illustrations are provided of the "artful" employment of language (especially by actors on the stage), the "artful" side of material culture, and from the author's own ethnographic studies, the significance of dance among Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia. (shrink)

The author argues that Kant was working out a theory of society in his postcritical work, and that he intentionally, and studiously, kept the 1st Critique sociology-free.

Quentin Skinner has enduringly insisted that a past text cannot be ‘understood’ without the reader knowing something about its historical and linguistic context. But since the 1970s he has been attacked on this central point of all his work by authors maintaining that the text itself is the fundamental guide to the author’s intention, and that a separate study of the context cannot tell the historian anything that the text itself could not. Mark Bevir has spent much of the last (...) 20 years repeating a similar counter-argument. Although ‘study the linguistic context’ might be a useful heuristic maxim, Bevir says, it does not express a necessary or sufficient condition for understanding. But Skinner is right, and one of the figures he has consistently identified as a formative inspiration, R. G. Collingwood, has already (in his work of the 1930s) shown why. What Collingwood calls his ‘logic of question and answer’ explains why the historian cannot answer his characteristic ‘intention’ question about past texts without knowing the context of problems to which authors think they are offering solutions. The study of context is neither ‘prior’ (as Bevir incorrectly supposes) nor ‘separate’ (as Skinner inaccurately says), but it is, as Skinner maintains, nevertheless impossible to grasp an author’s intention without it. This ‘logic of question and answer’ also explains why, in history, dismissing the study of context is in fact a pre-judgement of evidence yet unseen. (shrink)

In mainstream Anglo-American philosophy, the relation between cognition and community has been defined primarily in terms of the generalization of the mathematical function, especially as a model for the nature of rules, which thus come to be under-stood as algorithms. This leads to the elimination of both the reflexive, synthesizing subject, and the intrinsic communal-historical nature of argumentation and belief-formation. Against this approach, I follow R.G. Collingwood’s hitherto unrecognized strategy in his Essay on Metaphysics and argue that the relation of (...) cognition and community is better understood by way of the ancient and forgotten model of creedal rules of faith or trust. These will be shown to have the logical form of first person performative rules of faith or trust that generate third person declaratives or proposi-tions, and so constitute the possibility conditions for an argumentational logic of question and answer. They restore the synthetic subject, for they are not algorithms but reflexive and interpretive formulae; they are communally constituted and so historically saturated; and they reinstate an ontological theory of truth as disclosure, with coherence and comprehensiveness as its criteria. In these respects, as Collingwood saw, the creedal model provides a fresh interpretation of the historicality of argumentation and redefines the relation of cognition and community in terms of the interdependence of faith and reason. (shrink)

The careful historical and metaphilosophical attention recently bestowed upon analytic philosophy has revealed that traditional ways of defining it are inadequate. In the face of this inadequacy, contemporary authors have proposed new definitions that detach analytic philosophy from its turn of the twentieth century origins. I argue that this contemporary trend in defining analytic philosophy is misguided, and that it diminishes the likelihood of our coming to an accurate historical and metaphilosophical understanding of it. This is especially unsatisfactory since such (...) understanding is essential to finding an adequate remedy for the widely perceived ills of contemporary analytic philosophy. I suggest that a more fruitful approach to developing such understanding might begin with treating the unity of analytic philosophy as illusory. (shrink)

*I would like to thank Michel ter Hark, Lodi Nauta and James Connelly, for their critical reading of earlier versions of this paper and for their comments. Gilbert Ryle and R. G. Collingwood are no...