I reject both (a) inevitabilism about the historical development of the sciences and (b) what Ian Hacking calls the "put up or shut up" argument against those who make contingentist claims. Each position is guilty of a lack of humility about our epistemic capacities.

Though largely neglected by philosophers, the concept of ineffability is integral to the Christian mystical tradition, and has been part of almost every philosophical discussion of religious experience since the early twentieth century. After a brief introduction, this article surveys the most important discussions of divine ineffability, observing that the literature presents two mutually reinforcing obstacles to a coherent account of the concept, creating the impression that philosophical reflection on the subject had reached an impasse. The article goes on to (...) survey some more recent work, which draws on the conceptual resources of existential phenomenology, pragmatism, and the later Wittgenstein. It shows that this work has made possible a new philosophical account of divine ineffability that surmounts the obstacles, overcomes the impasse and makes divine ineffability, once again, a live option in philosophy of religion. The article concludes with some brief remarks on how this alternative approach reflects recent trends in the discipline as a whole and has the potential to make a valuable contribution to live research questions in epistemology of religion. (shrink)

I argue that philosophical studies of the virtues of creativity should attend to the ways that our conceptions of human creativity may be grounded in conceptions of human nature or the nature of reality. I consider and reject claims in this direction made by David Bohm and Paul Feyerabend. The more compelling candidate is the account of science, creativity, and human nature developed by the early Marx. Its guiding claim is that the forms of creativity enabled by the sciences are (...) ultimately valuable insofar as they advance our emancipation from a state of existential alienation. I end by encouraging future investigations of such vertical explanations of the significance of certain virtues in the context of scientific enquiry. (shrink)

This paper explains the nature and origin of what I am calling Transgressive Realism, a middle path between realism and anti-realism which tries to combine their strengths while avoiding their weaknesses. Kierkegaard created the position by merging Hegel’s insistence that we must have some kind of contact with anything we can call real (thus rejecting noumena), with Kant’s belief that reality fundamentally exceeds our understanding; human reason should not be the criterion of the real. The result is the idea that (...) our most vivid encounters with reality come in experiences that shatter our categories, the way God’s commandment to kill Isaac irreconcilably clashes with the best understanding of ethics we are capable of. I explain the genesis of this idea, and then show it at work in Heidegger and Levinas’ thought. Understanding this position illuminates important aspects of the history of continental philosophy and offers a new perspective on realism. (shrink)

This paper addresses an apparent tension between a familiar claim about meaning in general, to the effect that the meaning of anything owes to its place, ultimately, within a ‘form of life’, and a claim, also familiar, about the meaning of human life itself, to the effect that this must be something ‘beyond the human’. How can life itself be meaningful if meaning is a matter of a relationship to life? After elaborating and briefly defending these two claims, two ways (...) of amending and thereby reconciling them are considered and rejected. These ways involve either spiriting away the issue of life's meaning or encouraging unwelcome metaphysical views. The author then argues that, rather than remove the tension between the two claims, each should be viewed as expressing an aspect of a delicate metaphysical position. This position is distinguished from ones, like transcendental idealism and constructivism, with which it might be confused, and is then related to Daoist and Zen thought and to the later philosophy of Heidegger. Crucial to the position is the proposal that the ‘beyond the human’ which enables life to be meaningful is both ineffable and ‘intimate’ with life itself. (shrink)

In the first two sections of this reply article, I provide a brief introduction to the topic of ineffability and a summary of Ineffability and Religious Experience. This is followed, in section 3, by some reflections in reply to the response articles by Professors Metz and Cooper. Section 4 presents some concluding remarks on the future of philosophy of religion in the light of the most recent philosophical work on ineffability.

This paper addresses Bas van Fraassen’s claim that empiricism is a ‘stance’. I begin by distinguishing two different kinds of stance: an explicit epistemic policy and an implicit way of ‘finding oneself in a world’. At least some of van Fraassen’s claims, I suggest, refer to the latter. In explicating his ordinarily implicit ‘empirical stance’, he assumes the stance of the phenomenologist, describing the structure of his commitment to empiricism without committing to it in the process. This latter stance does (...) not incorporate the attitude that van Fraassen takes to be characteristic of empiricism. Thus its possibility serves to illustrate that empiricism as an all-encompassing philosophical orientation is untenable. I conclude by discussing the part played by feelings in philosophical stances and propose that they contribute to philosophical conviction, commitment and critique. (shrink)

While all of the great philosophers are difficult to read, Heidegger and Wittgenstein seem to be so in striking ways. Their writings are oddly reluctant to yield up to us what we might think of as ‘their philosophical claims’; and both seem to manifest an attitude towards argument unlike that of most contemporary philosophers. This paper will re-consider these features of Heidegger’s and Wittgenstein’s work in the light of some common themes in their understanding of philosophical confusion. Given that understanding, (...) writings that would combat such confusion must meet rather distinctive objectives and, as a result, may be required to take on rather distinctive forms. The paper will explore these possibilities, drawing, in particular, on the motif of ‘recollection’ upon which both Heidegger and Wittgenstein draw, Heidegger's scattered remarks on 'formal indication', and The Sophist lectures’ discussion of Platonic dialectic. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, Steve Clarke and Adrian Walsh propose a normative basis for John Dupré’s criticisms of scientific imperialism, namely, that scientific imperialism can cause a discipline to fail to progress in ways that it otherwise would have. This proposal is based on two presuppositions: one, that scientific disciplines have developmental teleologies, and two, that these teleologies are optimal. I argue that we should reject both of these presuppositions and so conclude that Clarke and Walsh’s proposal (...) is insufficiently warranted for it to provide a normative basis for criticisms of scientific imperialism. (shrink)

This paper examines the possibility of setting a boundary between religion and “pseudo-religion” (or superstition). Philosophers of religion inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas, in particular, insist that religious language-use can be neither legitimated nor criticized from the perspective of non-religious language-games. Thus, for example, the “theodicist” requirement that the existence of evil should be theoretically reconciled with theism can be argued to be pseudo-religious (superstitious). Another example discussed in the paper is the relation between religion and morality. The paper concludes (...) by reflecting on the issue of relativism arising from the Wittgensteinian contention that the religion vs. pseudo-religion division can only be drawn within a religious framework, and on Wittgenstein’s own suggestion that the religious person “uses a picture”. (shrink)

Although Cottingham and Holland make a persuasive case for the claim that it is difficult to situate a meaningful life within a Darwinian naturalistic cosmology, this paper argues that their case should be modified in response to the apparent fact that certain persons seem genuinely not to experience the ‘bleakness’ that they describe. Although certain of these cases will reflect an incomplete appreciation of the existential implications of Darwinian naturalism, at least some of those cases may be genuine. The resulting (...) possibility that certain persons can embrace Darwinian naturalism and live meaningful lives in apparent immunity to the ‘bleakness charge’ therefore poses new puzzles for Cottingham and Holland, and for wider questions about the meaningfulness of human life. I consider that possibility in light of the work of David E. Cooper and Paul Feyerabend and offer a set of three suggestions for further developing these debates. (shrink)

Global metaphysical antirealism (or “antirealism”) is often thought to entail that the identity of each and every concrete entity in our world ultimately depends on us—on our adoption of certain social and linguistic conventions, for instance, or on our use of certain conceptual schemes. Drawing on the middle‐period works of Maurice Merleau‐Ponty, I contend that metaphysical antirealism entails nothing of the sort. For Merleau‐Ponty, I argue, entities do not ultimately owe their identities to us, even though—as he puts it—their “articulations (...) are the very ones of our existence.” Once this is recognised, I maintain, certain interpretations of phenomenology are revealed to be caricatures and certain general objections to antirealism lose their force. (shrink)

In the final chapter of his Ineffability and Religious Experience, Guy Bennett-Hunter proposes that the ineffable may be ‘bodied forth’ through works of art and ritual, and hence engage with our lives. By way of supporting this proposal, this paper discusses some relationships between experiences of music and of natural environments. It is argued that several aspects of musical experience encourage a sense of convergence or intimacy between human practice and nature. Indeed, these aspects suggest a codependence between culture and (...) nature. The paper continues by proposing that a sense of this co-dependence fosters the further sense of cultural and environmental experience as an integrated whole whose ‘ground’ must be entirely mysterious and ineffable. It is concluded that, if this is right, then music and other cultural practices indeed bring the ineffable into engagement with human life. (shrink)

This paper develops the idea, articulated by Martin Buber among others, that a religious sense cannot be identified independently of sensory and practical engagement with the world of ordinary experience. It begins by rejecting the ‘doxastic’ model’ on which religiousness is equated with propositional belief. Criticisms, however, are made of some attempts to soften the contrast between belief and practice. The religious sense, which need not be a theistic one, is understood in terms of a sense of the mystery or (...) ineffability of things – one that has become occluded in modernity. This sense, in turn, is understood in terms of how it may be cultivated and exemplified in and through practices. This claim is elaborated by considering the East Asian notion of ‘Ways’ – practices, like ‘The Way of Tea’, that aim at self-cultivation and spiritual enlightenment. Gardening, in particular, has been regarded as an exemplary Way through which a sense of mystery is cultivated and shaped. The paper concludes by proposing that, when engaged in appropriately and mindfully, almost any ordinary practice may both reflect and confirm an attunement to a mystery that is diffused over the world at large. (shrink)

Absurdist accounts of life’s meaning posit that life is absurd because our pretensions regarding its meaning conflict with the actual or perceived reality of the situation. Relationary accounts posit that contingent things gain their meaning only from their relationship to other meaningful things. I take a detailed look at the two types of account, and, proceeding under the assumption that they are correct, combine them to see what the implications of such a combination might be. I conclude that another way (...) of looking at the absurdity of life is to see it as a conflict between our dual beliefs that there exist intrinsically meaningful contingent things, and that contingent things may only gain their meaning extrinsically through their relationships to other meaningful things. In this way, I provide another lens through which feelings of life’s absurdity may be interpreted and analysed: as the conflict between the simultaneous beliefs in both intrinsically and relationally meaningful contingent things. Looking through this lens gives us an entirely different framework for analysing life’s absurdity than that which Nagel described in 1971, providing opportunity for more potential avenues of analysis and discussion. (shrink)

In my 1993 IJPS paper it was suggested that postmodernist verdicts on ‘the death of philosophy’ relied on a rejection of any ‘substantive’ or ‘metaphysical’ notion of truth. The present paper relates these verdicts to Wittgenstein’s alleged ‘philosophical quietism’. In both cases, for example, there is a rejection of ‘depth’. Various characterisations of Wittgenstein’s position are questioned, including the idea that his quietism consists in showing the impossibility of sceptical challenges to our ‘hinge’ propositions and beliefs. It is then argued, (...) however, that recognition of the groundlessness of beliefs (and practices), far from curing ‘vertigo’ or ‘Angst’, is apt to inspire it. In a final section, I propose that the ‘metaphysical horror’ at the impossibility of articulating grounds for our beliefs can be allayed only by the thought that these answer to a reality that cannot be articulated and must therefore remain a mystery. One role for philosophy might be to cultivate a sense of this mystery and trace its implications for how we should live. (shrink)

Is Present Time a Precondition for the Existence of the Material and Public World?. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2013.782591.

Environmental thinkers often suppose that the natural world (or some parts of it, at least) exists in its own right, independent of human concerns. The arguments developed in this paper suggest that it is possible to do justice to this thought without endorsing some form of metaphysical realism. Thus the early sections look to Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception to develop an anti-realist account of the independent reality of the natural world, one, it is argued, that has certain advantages over the (...) accounts proffered by 'environmental realists'. The concluding sections draw upon certain of Merleau-Ponty's later works to defend a rather bolder claim: that the conceptions of realism endorsed by environmental thinkers are not just ill equipped but, in fact, unable to acknowledge what may be provisionally referred to as the more-than-human dimension of reality. (shrink)

Heidegger, Education and Modernity Michael Peters (ed.). New York and Oxford, Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. Pp. viii + 257.Hbk £56.00/$73.00. Pbk £20.95/$27.95.

There can be no such thing as the meaningful life, but only a meaningful life for a particular life as it is lived. Thus, there are meaningful lives, which are lives that make sense and are sufficiently aligned, these two characteristics being honed successively by the limits of a particular contingent form of life, a particular individual of that form of life, and a particular time in the life of that individual. Only the form of a meaningful life may be (...) given, which is sense and alignment, whereas its content may only be determined by the individual whose life it is. (shrink)

My interests lie in consideration of conceptions of authenticity and inauthenticity from the perspective of ethical theories which conceive of the good for man with reference to human nature and concomitant beliefs regarding the most appropriate realisation of human capacities. Here, I find particular interest in the philosophical styles embodied by the existentialist and Lebensphilosophie movements. Such approaches sit outside the traditional frames of reference provided by deontological and utilitarian approaches to ethical reasoning and yet do I shall argue, share (...) significant similarities with ancient aretaic styles of ethics. Here, I take Aristotle to represent those aspects of ethical thought which are quintessentially of this period of intellectual history. I find not merely points of comparison but a fruitful way in which to re-examine the thought of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Scheler, Heidegger and Sartre with reference to styles of ethical enquiry which place primacy upon an objective conception of happiness which centres upon the appropriate realisation of human capacity understood with reference to Aristotle's Function Argument. I argue that phenomenological analysis shares a conception of self-perspicuity in which the agent reflects upon the full contents of their conscious experience. By this means, certain self-delusions which impede entry into the ethical life, may be removed. Additionally, whilst Aristotle's 'non-law' conception of ethics shares with existentialist thought an understanding of the human situation and its normative concerns in isolation from dualistic and theistic metaphysical speculation, such philosophy is still able to provide clear and objective ethical standards - standards often lacking within existentialism. For instance, whilst Nietzsche's pronouncement of the 'death of God' signals the death also of Christian morality, we find that such philosophy is not without normative implications and in fact can be derived to a large degree from assent towards a radical and more severe ethical self-discipline. Indeed, central certainly to the thought of Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre is an understanding of the role of self-deception in the human condition. Here a useful distinction may be made between those types of self-deception which may be understood as structural that is to say which are representative of an essential characteristic of human being at the abstract level - and those types of self-deception which may be described as 'motivated' or 'psychological' which relate to more specific types of self-deceptive engagement. I believe it is useful to examine both Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre through the lens of such interpretation, I find for instance that it is of use to examine the early Sartre as having a purely structural interpretation of bad faith (described by Jeanson as 'natural' bad-faith) whilst moving towards a psychological account in his later work, an account which has more specific moral implications with the possibility of 'willed conversion' to authenticity (Santoni). Additionally with Nietzsche, we also find a similar distinction between a self-deception which is in some sense preconditional and a motivational account of self-deception in which the agent infused with ressentiment falsifies reality in favour of subjective needs which are ultimately destructive of life-enhancement. In this sense the vicious individual can be said to have achieved merely a false optimum, and moreover, false from an objective standpoint. (shrink)