This paper examines how Descartes’ philosophy was presented and discussed in articles and reviews published in Mind from 1900 to 1947, a period in which this most prestigious British philosophical journal was edited by George F. Stout (until 1920) and then by George E. Moore (from 1921 to 1947). The survey deals with various aspects of the reception of Cartesian philosophy in the journal: articles devoted to several topics of Cartesian thought, critical notices and reviews of the secondary literature, discussions (...) of twentieth-century English translations of Cartesian works. In line with the theoretical character of Mind, most of the interpreters discussed Cartesian philosophy with the aim either of checking its internal consistency or of proving how the Cartesian system might be rendered consistent with its own premises. In this respect, all the themes revolving around the problem of the Cartesian circle attracted the attention of commentators, and the intuitionist foundation of Cartesian theory was analyzed. Descartes’ metaphysics and natural philosophy were often evaluated from the perspective of contemporary philosophical debates, while their original historical context was neglected. Of particular relevance were issues like the mind-body problem, discussed at the beginning of the century in relation to developments in psychology, and the question of the existence of the external world, which was examined from various standpoints, metaphysically, epistemologically and from the point of view of linguistic analysis. Interest in Descartes was shown by many authors from major philosophers (such as Ward, Schiller, Taylor, Broad, Ryle) to lesser known scholars whose profiles and contributions are outlined. Through the angle of the Cartesian presence a sketch emerges of the rich and variegated philosophical scene of British culture in the first half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

From time to time philosophers and scientists have made sensational, provocative claims that certain things do not exist or never happen that, in everyday life, we unquestioningly take for granted as existing or happening. These claims have included denying the existence of matter, space, time, the self, free will, and other sturdy and basic elements of our common-sense or naïve world-view. Around the middle of the twentieth century an argument was developed that can be used to challenge many such skeptical (...) claims based on linguistic considerations, which came to be known as the Paradigm Case Argument ... (shrink)

In this paper, it is argued that the late twentieth century conception of consciousness in analytic philosophy emerged from the idea of consciousness as givenness, via the behaviourist idea of “raw feels”. In the post-behaviourist period in philosophy, this resulted in the division of states of mind into essentially unconscious propositional attitudes plus the phenomenal residue of qualia: intrinsic, ineffable and inefficacious sensory states. It is striking how little in the important questions about consciousness depends on this conception, or on (...) this particular division of mental states. So accepting this division and its associated conceptions of intentionality and consciousness is not an obligatory starting point for the philosophy of mind. A historical investigation of how these ideas came to be seen as inevitable can also help us see how we might reasonably reject them. (shrink)

Disjunctivism is the view that perceptual experience is either constituted by fact in the world or mere appearance. This view is said to be able to guarantee our cognitive contact with the world, and thus remove a crucial “prop” upon which skepticism depends. This paper has two aims. First, it aims to show that disjunctivism is a solution to Cartesian skepticism. Cartesian skepticism is an epistemological thesis, not an ontological one. Therefore, if there is an external world, we may well (...) undergo a veridical experience, and thus we can take advantage of disjunctivism to adopt an anti-evidential-skepticism strategy to counter Cartesian skepticism. Second, this paper argues that disjunctivism fails to solve Pyrrhonian skepticism. To counter Pyrrhonian skepticism, one has to give reasons both for his belief and for his believing. But disjunctivism can only account the former, that is, the reason for the content of perceptual belief. Given that one’s experience in good case and bad case is subjectively indistinguishable, one cannot just use his experience to justify his believing. This shows that disjunctivism cannot meet the requirement to provide an adequate account for reflective knowledge. (shrink)

I interpret the anti-idealist manoeuverings of the second half of Moore's 'The refutation of idealism', material as widely cited for its discussion of 'transparency' and 'diaphanousness' as it is deeply obscure. The centerpiece of these manoeuverings is a phenomenological argument for a relational view of perceptual phenomenal character, on which, roughly, 'that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact' is a non-intentional relation of conscious awareness, a view close to the opposite of the most characteristic contemporary view going (...) under the transparency rubric. The discussion of transparency and diaphanousness is a sidelight, its principal purpose to shore up the main line of argumentation against criticism; in those passages all Moore argues is that the relation of conscious awareness is not transparent, while acknowledging that it can seem to be. (shrink)

جعل و کشف معنا دو دیدگاه بنیادین در معنای زندگی هستند که هر کدام موافقان و مخالفانی را به خود اختصاص داده‌اند. سارتر با تبیین وجودِ فی‌نفسه و وجودِ‌ لنفسه، و همچنین مفاهیمی همچون امکان ناضرور، آزادی و فردیت، ابتدا جهان را از هر معنایی تهی می‌کند و سپس برای استعلای خویش و همچنین عدم انفعال، در پی جعل معناست. بنابراین، در این حوزه، سارتر را می‌توان یک ناشناخت‌گرا و سوبژکتیویست خواند و از این رو انتقادات مربوط به این دو (...) نحله به سارتر نیز تعلق می‌گیرد. برای نمونه، سارتر با سوبژکتیو دانستن معنا امکان هر گونه داوری معرفتی را دربارۀ صدق و کذب دیدگاه اخذشده از بین می‌برد. در عین حال، به نظر می‌رسد، با توجه به مبانی معرفتی ناشناخت‌گرایان و سوبژکتیویست‌ها، می‌توان از قوت این نقد کاست. همان طور که می‌دانیم، تأکیدِ سارتر و سایر اگزیستانسیالیست‌ها بر جعل و یا کشف معنا شدیداً وابسته به فرد و ساختار سوبژکتیو اوست. بنابراین به نظر می‌آید با توجه به بنیان‌های فلسفی سارتر، نقدهای مبتنی بر شناخت‌گرایی بر سارتر وارد نباشد. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren entstand ein neues Cicerobild, das Cicero als akademischen Philosophen wieder ernst nimmt. Davon ausgehend wird in Studien zu seinem Werk und seiner Wirkung gezeigt, wie der römische Philosoph in seinen Dialogen eine innovative Art skeptischen Philosophierens entwickelt. Cicero transferiert die griechische Philosophie nicht nur in die römische Lebenswelt, sondern transformiert sie durch die probabilistische Methode seines Philosophierens auch in philosophisch relevanter Weise. Mit dieser Transformation versetzt Cicero seine Leser in die Lage, eigenständig nach Lösungen der in (...) Rede stehenden philosophischen Probleme zu suchen. Cicero leistet so einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Veränderung von Philosophie und Wissenschaft. Denn seine Erneuerung des philosophischen Diskurses verliert im Laufe der Zeit nicht an Bedeutung. Mit ihrem Potenzial zur Entwicklung eigenständigen Denkens und von Selbstkritik scheinen Ciceros Denkanstöße in einer von mangelnder Reflexion und Hassrede geprägten Gegenwart vielmehr aktueller denn je zu sein. (shrink)