Over the last three decades, non-adaptationism has developed as an alternative model to more traditional, adaptationist approaches within Evolutionary Epistemology. Despite its great explanatory strength, non-adaptationist EE finds a potential Achilles heel in its adherence to conceptual relativism, namely the idea that empirical content can be relative to many different and radically incommensurable conceptual schemes. In his seminal essay “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme”, Donald Davidson did in fact prove the unintelligibility of an analogous form of conceptual (...) relativism. Although Davidson’s original intent was to debunk a conceptual relativist position which he discerned in the works of authors such as Kuhn, Quine, and Whorf, given the apparent similarity between the conceptual relativism supported by non-adaptationist EE and the one criticised by Davidson, one might well wonder if Davidson’s objections would have the same debunking effect if applied to non-adaptationist EE. In this paper I propose to answer this question by directing Davidson’s critiques of conceptual relativism to non-adaptationist EE and by testing to what extent the latter is de facto undermined by Davidson’s attacks. I demonstrate that Davidson’s arguments do not detract from the reliability of non-adaptationist perspectives and, to some extent, they appear to substantiate the non-adaptationist evolutionary epistemological cause anew. (shrink)

(First paragraph.) Different views on the relation between phenomenal reality, the world as we consciously experience it, and noumenal reality, the world as it is independent from an experiencing subject, have different implications for a collection of interrelated issues of meaning and reality including aspects of metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology. Exploring some of these implications, this paper compares and brings together analytic, continental, and Buddhist approaches, focusing on relevant aspects of the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Jacques (...) Derrida, Dharmakīrti, and Dōgen. Prima facie, these philosophers have little in common, and indeed the differences are vast. Even in case of the two Western thinkers there is a fundamental difference between Davidson’s anti-dualist identification of phenomenal, experienced reality with the noumenal, real, external world on the one hand, and the bracketing or elimination of noumenal reality at the base of Derrida’s thought on the other, which lead to radically different ideas with regards to (the possibility and nature of) objectivity and our linguistic access to the real/external/noumenal world. Nevertheless, there are important similarities between Dharmakīrti’s theory of apoha and Davidson’s and Derrida’s theories of triangulation and différance respectively, and these similarities can be exploited to bridge some of the differences and attempt a constructive engagement. (shrink)

Reason, objectivity, and human nature are now suspect ideas. Among postmodern thinkers, Richard Rorty has advanced an especially forceful critique of these notions. Drawing partly on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Rorty contends that objectivity is no more than a metaphysical name for intersubjective agreement, and that “human nature” is an empty category, there being nothing beneath history and culture. Wittgenstein himself, however, recognized within the world's many civilizations “the common behavior of mankind,” without which Rorty's ethnocentric “solidarity” would be inconceivable. (...) This common form of life—the life of those who speak—encompasses countless human activities that presuppose and are interwoven with the concepts of reason and objectivity. (shrink)

John Searle’s theory of social ontology posits that there are indispensable normative components in the linguistic apparatuses termed status functions, collective intentionality, and collective recognition, all of which, he argues, make the social world. In this paper, I argue that these building blocks of Searle’s theory are caught in a petitio of constitutive circularity. Moreover, I note how Searle fails to observe language in reciprocal relation to the institutions which not only are shaped by it but also shape language’s practical (...) applications. According to Searle, social theorists that tried to show a connection between society, culture, and language all failed to see the constitutive role of language in the making of social reality. Consequently, I believe that Searle is himself guilty of a certain kind of blind presumption, and argue that Hegel’s philosophy of culture, which Searle dismisses as implausible, offers a more cohesive account of the normative transactions between human beings and their social world. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to give arguments for bringing aesthetics back into praxis. Often aesthetics is understood as something coming out of individual designers' or architects' creative talents. We challenge such a view by introducing an understanding of aesthetics as an aspect of praxis. The article builds on observations of a design project for a community centre in a Danish village. We argue that aesthetics is a result of struggles by participants in praxis, where aesthetic, material, functional, ethical, political, (...) and economic aspects are formed by each other in a dialectic process. The struggles are found in the client's reasons for starting the process, in the design and construction process and the use of the results. This means that descriptions of the aesthetics of buildings should incorporate relevant discussions and struggles of the design, construction and use of the building. It also means that the key to a fruitful ongoing collaborative process producing good aesthetic comes from managing together the many aspects of praxis in an open way. (shrink)

This paper is discusses some central points in a dissertation for the degree of dr. phil., "Regulation as Productive Tool Use - a Participatory Observation in the Control Room of a District Heating System." An earlier version of the paper was presented by the author as part of the defense of the dissertation at Roskilde University Center June 14 2002. As suggested by the title, the dissertation was an empirical study of regulation in a control room. The object of the (...) authors participatory observation was how the operators in the control room followed rules when they regulated a highly automated plant. When I was shown the plant I was told that the technology ran smoothly and without error. Its control structures are based on formal logic and mechanical principles, all the same human beings are required in the control room to take care of anomalies. Among other things, the observations provide an opportunity to discuss the limitations of psychologies that study human beings on the basis of formal principles. The present paper focuses on two characteristic aspects of this discussion in the dissertation. First, it takes its point of departure in some practical problems of the control structures of the control room. It will demonstrate that the practical problems are problems of principle, and that formal principles are not adequate to study the object of human sciences, namely, human beings. Second, it sketches out what is required of a conception of human beings. As human beings are trusted to handle anomalies, we must explain how they are able to act on an incomplete understanding of the situation. And since they are able to identify what is wrong, we must explain how they develop new knowledge. The paper presented at the defense summarized the main arguments of the dissertation and alluded to an expansion of the main point using a particular instance. Here the weight is shifted to the latter expansion. (shrink)

This paper responds to the violence inherent in modern ‘formal’ conceptions of justice which sever the ‘cultural’ from the ‘political’. As a counterpoint to this dominant rendering of justice the paper explores an alternate justice whose character is typified by the disposition and exigencies of the viscera.

The central aim of this article is to explore the power politics of perception between English and Irish representations within selected canonised Irish texts. The focal point of this article orbits around the relationship between the observer and the observed with an essential emphasis on the roles of defining and defined subjects. Focusing on the metaphorical framework of Father England as the authority of gaze and Mother Ireland as the object of gaze, this article introduces Ireland’s post-independence era as the (...) inception of a transformative journey that is characterised by a promise of self-definition after liberation from English dominion. In navigating the power dynamics of perception between Father England and Mother Ireland, this article takes a focused approach by analysing key literary works. Specifically, James Joyce’s “The Dead” (1914), Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s The Key (1949), and John Banville’s The Book of Evidence (1989) serve as illustrative examples. With these texts, this article aims to depict the trajectory of Ireland’s evolution from a position of being defined to a self-defining position. (shrink)