The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily amenable to (...) treatment by current scientific methods. -/- Klein argues that to fully appreciate the self, its two aspects must be acknowledged, since it is only in virtue of their interaction that the self of everyday experience becomes a phenomenological reality. However, given their different metaphysical commitments (i.e., material and immaterial aspects of reality), a number of issues must be addressed. These include, but are not limited to, the possibility of interaction between metaphysically distinct aspects of reality, questions of causal closure under the physical, the principle of energy conservation. -/- After addressing these concerns, Klein presents evidence based on self-reports from case studies of individuals who suffer from a chronic or temporary loss of their sense of personal ownership of their mental states. Drawing on this evidence, he argues that personal ownership may be the factor that closes the metaphysical gap between the material and immaterial selves, linking these two disparate aspects of reality, thereby enabling us to experience a unified sense of self despite its underlying multiplicity. -/- . (shrink)

This paper explores cosmopsychism’s explanatory aspirations from a programmatic perspective. The bulk of the text consists of an argument in favor of the conclusion that cosmopsychism suffers from no insurmountable individuation problem. I argue that the widespread tendency to view IND as a mirror-image of micropsychism’s combination problem is mistaken. In particular, what renders CP insolvable, namely, the commitment to the coupling of phenomenal constitution with phenomenal inclusion, is, from the standpoint of cosmopsychism, an entirely nonmandatory assumption. I proceed to (...) show that severing this unhappy coupling is the key for defending cosmopsychism against the charge of theoretical incoherence. Moreover, I argue that successful defense against such accusation could be mounted regardless of whether or not we assume cosmic consciousness to be perspectival in nature. In addition, the paper touches upon another foundational issue: cautioning against the popular tendency to identify cosmopsychism’s monism with a mereological unity-in-diversity, and motivating an alternative conception which I call generative monism. Finally, as befitting this volume, I pause to reflect upon the question of which schools of Hindu philosophy might tally best, and connect most fruitfully, with cosmopsychism as I understand it. (shrink)

Panpsychism is viewed by its advocates as resolving the main sticking points for materialism and dualism. While sympathetic to this approach, I locate two prevalent assumptions within modern panpsychism which I think are problematic: first, that fundamental consciousness belongs to a perspectival subject and second, that the physical world, despite being backed by conscious subject, is observer-independent. I re-introduce an argument I’d made elsewhere against the first assumption: that it lies behind the well-known combination and decombination problems. I then propose (...) a new argument against the second assumption: that it leads to an equally pernicious difficulty I call the “Inner-Outer Gap Problem.” The variant of panpsychism I continue to develop and defend, Perennial Idealism, avoids these assumptions and their problems, allowing real progress on the mind-body problem. Perennial Idealism is a type of panpsychist idealism rather than panpsychist materialism. (shrink)

Though one of anti-intellectualism’s key historical figures, Henri Bergson’s thought has not played a significant role in ongoing discussions of that topic. This paper attempts to help change this situation by discussing the notion at the centre of Bergson’s anti-intellectualism (namely, intuition) alongside the notion at the centre of a central form of contemporary anti-intellectualism (namely, know-how or skill). In doing so, it focuses on perhaps the most common objection to both Bergson and contemporary anti-intellectualists: that their anti-intellectualisms are rather (...) forms of irrationalism. It argues that in fact only a narrow charge of irrationalism applies to Bergsonian intuition and that a form of contemporary anti-intellectualism may offer help in responding to this remaining accusation. (shrink)

Although panpsychism has had a very long history, one that goes back to the very origin of western philosophy, its force has only recently been appreciated by analytic philosophers of mind. And even if many still reject the theory as utterly absurd, others have argued that it is the only genuine form of physicalism. This paper examines the case for panpsychism and argues that there are at least goodprima faciereasons for taking it seriously. In a second step, the paper discusses (...) the main difficulty the theory has to face, the ‘composition problem’. This is the problem of explaining how the primitive experiences that are supposed to exist at the ultimate level of reality could give rise to the unified experience of a human being. What assumptions as to the nature of experience generate the composition problem? Is mental composition impossible in principle or do we simply lack at present any understanding of phenomenal parts and wholes? (shrink)

This thesis explores the possibility of composite consciousness: phenomenally conscious states belonging to a composite being in virtue of the consciousness of, and relations among, its parts. We have no trouble accepting that a composite being has physical properties entirely in virtue of the physical properties of, and relations among, its parts. But a long­standing intuition holds that consciousness is different: my consciousness cannot be understood as a complex of interacting component consciousnesses belonging to parts of me. I ask why: (...) what is it about consciousness that makes us think it so different from matter? And should we accept this apparent difference? (shrink)

Human consciousness usually displays a striking unity. When one experiences a noise and, say, a pain, one is not conscious of the noise and then, separately, of the pain. One is conscious of the noise and pain together, as aspects of a single conscious experience. Since at least the time of Immanuel Kant (1781/7), this phenomenon has been called the unity of consciousness . More generally, it is consciousness not of A and, separately, of B and, separately, of C, but (...) of A-and-B- and-C together, as the contents of a single conscious state. (shrink)

A popular trend in the sciences of the mind is to understand cognition as embodied, embedded, enactive, ecological, and so on. While some of the work under the label of “embodied cognition” takes for granted key commitments of traditional cognitive science, other projects coincide in treating embodiment as the starting point for an entirely different way of investigating all of cognition. Focusing on the latter, this paper discusses how embodied cognitive science can be made more reflexive and more sensitive to (...) the implications that our views of cognition have for how we understand scientific practice, including our own theorizing about cognition. Inspired by the “strong programme” in the sociology of scientific knowledge, I explore the prospect of an analogously “strong” program in embodied cognitive science. I first draw from Dewey’s transactional notion of “situation” to identify a broad sense in which embodied cognitive science takes cognition, as an embodied phenomenon, to be _situated_. I then sketch a perspective I call _situated reflexivity_, which extends the Deweyan analysis to understand scientific practice in the same terms, and thereby illustrates what research in line with a strong program in embodied cognitive science can look like. This move, I propose, has the potential of setting up a new inquiry situation that makes more salient the embodiment of scientific practice and that, through this, can help organize our own embodied cognitive activities as we try to make sense of scientific work, including our own. (shrink)

Both through his own work and that of his students, Franz Clemens Brentano had an often underappreciated influence on the course of 20 th - and 21 st -century philosophy. _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ offers full coverage of Brentano’s philosophy and his influence. It contains 38 brand-new essays from an international team of experts that offer a comprehensive view of Brentano’s central research areas—philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and value theory—as well as of the principal (...) figures shaped by Brentano’s school of thought. A General Introduction serves as an overview of Brentano and the contents of the volume and three separate bibliographies point students and researchers on to further avenues of inquiry. Systematic and detailed, _The Routledge Handbook of Franz Brentano and the Brentano School_ provides readers with a valuable reference to Brentano’s work, and to his lasting importance in the history of philosophy and in contemporary debates. (shrink)

This paper aims to shed light on an underexplored aspect of Gilbert Ryle’s interest in the notion of “knowing-how”. It is argued that in addition to his motive of discounting a certain theory of mind, his interest in the notion also stemmed (and perhaps stemmed more deeply) from two ethical interests: one concerning his own life as a philosopher and whether the philosopher has any meaningful task, and one concerning the ancient issue of whether virtue is a kind of knowledge. (...) It is argued that Ryle saw know-how as crucial in both respects and that he continued to be interested in these ethical issues throughout his career. (shrink)

[W]e might despair of despair itself, rather than of life, and cast that off, and begin, and so reverse our direction.This is a finely conceived, elegantly written, and exquisitely executed work. At its center, there is Naoko Saito ’s creative appropriation of one of Cavell’s most fecund suggestions—philosophy is first and foremost an activity and, as such, it is either akin to or, more strongly, identifiable with practices of translation.1 Everything I have to say concerns translation, if only implicitly. Moreover, (...) I offer everything as a friendly amendment. That is, I take my reflections on her book to be in accord with both the spirit and, in most instances, even the letter of her texts. Whether or not she... (shrink)

I analyse the meaning of a popular idiom among consciousness researchers, in which an individual's consciousness is described as a 'field'. I consider some of the contexts where this idea appears, in particular discussions of attention and the unity of consciousness. In neither case, I argue, do authors provide the resources to cash out all the implications of field-talk: in particular, they do not give sense to the idea of conscious elements being arrayed along multiple dimensions. I suggest ways to (...) extend and generalize the attentional construal of 'field-talk' to provide a genuine multiplicity of dimensions, through the notions of attentional proximity and causal proximity: the degree to which two experiential elements are disposed to bring one another into attention when attended, or to interact in other distinctively mental ways. I conclude that if consciousness is a field, it is one organized by attentional and/or causal proximity. (shrink)

Despite Donald Davidson's influential criticism of the very notion of conceptual schemes, the notion continues enjoying its popularity in contemporary philosophy and, accordingly, conceptual relativism is still very much alive. There is one major reason responsible for Davidson's failure which has not been widely recognized: What Davidson attacks fiercely is not the very notion, but a notion of conceptual schemes, namely, the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and its underlying Kantian scheme-content dualism. However, such a notion simply cannot carry the (...) weight of conceptual relativism for it does not catch the essences of conceptual relativism. Consequently, I argue that the very notion of conceptual schemes and conceptual relativism have survived Davidson's attack. Therefore, the failure of the Quinean notion of conceptual schemes and Kantian scheme-content dualism, even if Davidson can claim victory, does not mark the end of the very notion of conceptual schemes.[ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]. (shrink)

This comment explains why the claims of Callicott et al. in their paper 'Was Aldo Leopold a Pragmatist?' (Environmental Values 18 (2009): 453—486) are incorrect. The arguments they make are shown to be based upon several misunderstandings. In addition, important contributions by Aldo Leopold to the philosophy of conservation are missed.

Henri Bergson and William James were great admirers of each other, and James seemed to think he got valuable ideas from Bergson. But early critics were right to see in Bergson the antithesis of pragmatism. Unfolding this antithesis is a convenient way to study important concepts and innovations in Bergson's philosophy. I concentrate on his ideas of duration and intuition, and show how they prove the necessity of going beyond pragmatism. The reason is because knowledge itself goes beyond the utilitarian (...) limitations in which pragmatism confines it. Knowledge is more than utility, more than adaptation, more than pragmatism, because our cognitive powers prove capable of more than any naturally selected service to survival. (shrink)

If there is one question that has perplexed the best minds in every society, it is how to raise the individuals from their present state to a higher state of existence and perfection? The answers have been tried using different formulations in history: religious, scientific and political. The common factor in all these historical formulations was that they were designed in opposition to each other and therefore left many things unaccounted. The aim of this paper is to explore the idea (...) of self-perfection as a continuous streak of infinite vertical ascension. The paper has elaborated the idea of ‘Verticality’, propounded by Peter Sloterdijk for looking in to the domains of self-perfection and the stages of vertical ascension. For our purpose, we have relied on the example of discipline of Management that has progressively theorized about different aspects and stages of existence. (shrink)

Evolutionary biologists, evolutionary epistemologists, and biosemioticians have demonstrated that organisms not merely adapt to an external world, but that they actively construct their environmental, sociocultural, and cognitive niches. Denis Noble demonstrates that such is no different for those organisms that engage in science, and he lays bare several crucial assumptions that define the scientific dogmas and practices of evolutionary biology.

The neuroscience revolution has revived interpretations of religious experiences as wholly dependent on biological conditions. William James cautioned against allowing such neurological reductionism to overwhelm other useful perspectives. Contemporary psychologists of religion have raised similar cautions, but have failed to engage James as a full conversation partner. In this article, we present a contemporary, applied version of James's perspective. We clarify the problem by reviewing specific James-like contemporary concerns about reductionism in the neuropsychological study of religion. Then, most centrally, we (...) employ three of James's conceptual tools—pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism—to moderate contemporary reductionism. Finally, we point to a constructive approach through which neuroscientists might collaborate with scholars in the humanities and psychosocial sciences, which is consistent with our conclusion that it is often no longer fruitful to separate neurobiological studies from studies that are psychosocial or sociocultural. (shrink)

Humean Supervenience is the view that (a) there are a plurality of fundamental beings, (b) there are no inexplicable constraints on modal space, and hence the fundamental nature of each such being is independent of those of all the rest and of the fundamental relations in which it stands to the rest, (c) the fundamental beings stand in no fundamental causal or nomic relations, and hence (d) the distribution of any causal or nomic relations in which they do stand globally (...) supervenes on their fundamental natures and the non‐nomic, non‐causal fundamental relations in which they stand. If Humean Supervenience is true, then as A.J. Ayer put it, it's just one damn thing after another. Radical Pluralism is the view that Humean Supervenience is true, and, moreover, that none of the fundamental beings stands in any fundamental relations at all. If Radical Pluralism is true, then, as William James puts it, the world's pieces are held together by nothing more than conjunction: it's just one damn thing and another. I argue that Radical Pluralism is very likely true, conditional upon Humean Supervenience. Any philosopher pluralist enough to be Humean ought to be radically pluralistic. (shrink)

The argument of this article is that, philosophically, there are but three broad conceptual models that Western thought employs in thinking about the meaning of God. At the level of greatest generality, these are the models known as classical theism, pantheism, and panentheism. The essay surveys and updates these three conceptual models in light of recent writings, finds more flaws in classical theism and panentheism than in pantheism, and suggests a feminist response to each.

The self is a common yet unclear theme in addiction studies. William James's model of self provides a framework to explore the experience of self. His model details the subjective and objective constituents, the sense of self‐continuity through time, and the ephemeral and plural nature of the changing self. This exploration yields insights into the self that can be usefully applied to subjective experiences with psychoactive drugs of addiction. Results of this application add depth to the common understanding of self (...) in addiction, acknowledge the importance of feelings and choice in the sense of self created in addiction experiences, and affirm the values salient to these interior experiences in addiction. These results suggest meaning derived from those values, and provide important background knowledge for the nurse interacting with these clients. (shrink)

This paper argues for a rearticulation of the theory of truthmaking within pragmatism. The concept of truthmaking has usually been employed by metaphysical realists, but it can be reinterpreted in a pragmatist manner, following both classical and more recent pragmatists’ ideas on the “making of truth” as a process within human experience and world-categorization. Thus, a pragmatist criticism of metaphysical realism can be extended to the core areas of realist metaphysics, including the truthmaking theory.

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)

(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)

Recent developments in contemporary pragmatist thought have the potential to help reshape our understandings of pragmatism in philosophy of education. We first survey the development of pragmatism as founded in experience, moving through linguistic pragmatism, to a newer actionistic approach in conduct pragmatism. Conduct pragmatism prioritises action over both experience and discursive thought in ways that can be central to educational activity and projects. Conduct pragmatism so conceived has the potential to alter and shift how philosophers of education relate to (...) pragmatist thought and in the second part of the paper we outline some of these potentials. We indicate the possibilities for pragmatist philosophy of education to engage with diverse bodies of thought, moving away from an insular focus on one or two philosophers, and a diversity of locations where philosophy is active and conducted. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 4, Page 431-445, July 2022.

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria (...) for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate. (shrink)

. From the bankruptcy of relations to the reality of connections: language and semantics in Bradley and Bosanquet. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 26, Special Issue: British Idealism: Language, Aesthetics and Emotions. Guest Editors: Colin Tyler and James Connelly, pp. 700-718.

The concept of empiricism evokes both a historical tradition and a set of philosophical theses. The theses are usually understood to have been developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But these figures did not use the term “empiricism,” and they did not see themselves as united by a shared epistemology into one school of thought. My dissertation analyzes the debate that elevated the concept of empiricism (and of an empiricist tradition) to prominence in English-language philosophy. -/- In the 1870s and (...) ’80s a lively debate about psychology emerged. Neo-Kantian idealists criticized the very idea that the mind can be studied scientifically. A group of philosopher-psychologists responded, often in Mind. They were among the first to call themselves “empiricists,” arguing that psychology could provide a scientific basis for philosophical progress. Idealists held that empirical psychology depended on premises developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. These premises were allegedly absurd because they rendered ideas of extension, as well as other ideas crucial to natural science, unreal. Those who wanted to advance psychology towards becoming a legitimate science were forced to engage these philosophical attacks, while at the same time to develop empirical theories that could successfully explain some characteristics of experience. I show how James’s theory of space perception accomplished both tasks. -/- In developing this theory, James found he had to reject the Lockean notion that reality is associated with passively-registered sensations. James also abandoned Berkeley and Hume’s claim that ideas are ultimately derived from atomic sensations. Instead, James presented experimental evidence that sensation is a continuous stream. The mind must actively parse this stream if it is to gain a coherent representation of its environment. I argue that James’s stream-of-thought thesis served as a presupposition of his entire psychology. The thesis showed how the labor of investigating the mind could be divided between philosophers and scientists, and in a manner sensitive to the concerns of both. The stream thesis also provided a scientific basis for a new philosophical empiricism that, I argue, has a hidden legacy in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Critically engages the work of American philosopher Richard J. Bernstein.

Hager and Beckett assert that a ‘characteristic feature of … assorted co-present groups is that their processes and outputs are marked by the full gamut of human experiences involved in their functioning’. My paper endorses and further develops this claim. I begin by expanding on their emphasis upon the priority of relations in terms of Dewey and Bentley’s transactionalism and Buddhist dependent co-origination and emptiness. Next, I emphasize the importance of embodied perspectives in acquiring meaning and transforming the world. Here, (...) too, we will find surprising Buddhist connections. Finally, I examine the primacy of practice: how we acquire our minds and selves by participating in shared social practices. This stance is shared by philosophers as diverse as Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dewey. (shrink)

This paper explores the scientific viability of the concept of causality—by questioning a central element of the distinction between “fundamental” and non-fundamental physics. It will be argued that the prevalent emphasis on fundamental physics involves formalistic and idealized partial models of physical regularities abstracting from and idealizing the causal evolution of physical systems. The accepted roles of partial models and of the special sciences in the growth of knowledge help demonstrate proper limitations of the concept of fundamental physics. We expect (...) that a cause precedes its effect. But in some tension with this point, fundamental physical law is often held to be symmetrical and all-encompassing. Physical time, however, has not only measurable extension, as with spatial dimensions, it also has a direction—from the past through the present into the future. This preferred direction is time’s arrow. In spite of this standard contrast of time with space, if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetrical, they are indifferent to time’s arrow. In consequence, excessive emphasis on the ideal of symmetrical, fundamental laws of physics generates skepticism regarding the common-sense and scientific uses of the concept of causality. The expectation has been that all physical phenomena are capable of explanation and prediction by reference to fundamental physicals laws—so that the laws and phenomena of statistical thermodynam- ics —and of the special sciences—must be derivative and/or secondary. The most important and oft repeated explanation of time’s arrow, however, is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper explores the prospects for time’s arrow based on the second law. The concept of causality employed here is empirically based, though acknowledging practical scientific interests, and is linked to time’s arrow and to the thesis that there can be no causal change, in any domain of inquiry, without physical interaction. (shrink)

A notable feature of classical American pragmatism is its close association with the birth of experimental psychology. In particular, William James’ work as a psychologist influenced, and was influenced by, his pragmatism. This paper seeks to support this reading of the relation between Jamesian psychology and pragmatism, particularly through his “Sentiment of Rationality” and the later contention that the true is the satisfactory. In addition, James’ insights are tested and expanded through reference to contemporary research on processing fluency, as well (...) as concepts of ecological rationality. (shrink)

Current views of consciousness can be divided by whether the theorist accepts or rejects cognitivism about consciousness. Cognitivism as we understand it is the view that consciousness is just a form of representation or an information-processing property of a system that has representations or perhaps both.<b> </b>Anti-cognitivists deny this, appealing to thought experiments about inverted spectra, zombies and the like to argue that consciousness could change while nothing cognitive or representational changes. Nearly everyone agrees, however, that consciousness has a _representational (...) base._ Whether consciousness _simply is_ representational or cognitive, it at least _requires _representation (and cognition). In an ecumenical spirit, we will focus on this point of agreement and sketch a theory of what this representational base might be. We hope that the result will be a framework useful for investigating consciousness empirically. (shrink)

The American philosophy and the problem of time –[article]– attempts to briefly outline the concepts of understanding of the problem of time, temporality and continuity in American philosophy which is represented by Ch. Peirce, W. James, and A. N. Whitehead. The article also tries to point out the importance of the enquiry on the field of time. Further, it gives abbreviated outline of the historic conditions of emergence of the American philosophy.

This chapter explores some features of pragmatic pluralism as an ethical perspective on climate change. It is inspired in part by Andrew Light’s work on climate diplomacy as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy for International Affairs, and by Bryan Norton’s environmental pragmatism, while drawing more explicitly than Light or Norton from classical pragmatist sources such as John Dewey. The primary aim of the chapter is to characterize, differentiate, and advance a general pragmatist approach to climate ethics. The main line of (...) argument is that we are suffering culturally from a sort of “moral jetlag” due in part to “moral fundamentalist” habits, and that a critical focus on pragmatic pluralism—in moral theory generally and climate ethics particularly—would be salutary for our recovery if philosophers are to speak more effectively to “wicked problems” in a way that aids public deliberation and social learning. Moral fundamentalist habits, and the monistic one-way assumption that unintentionally—but not blamelessly—exercises and unduly reinforces them, are obstacles to fostering habits of moral and political inquiry better suited to dealing with predicaments rapidly transforming our warming planet. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Crisis of Meaning in Sartor Resartus—Thomas Carlyle's Pioneering Work in Articulating and Addressing the Existential ConfrontationFrank Martelawhat i call an "existential confrontation" is the encounter with the possibility that human life is absurd: created for no purpose and devoid of any lasting value or meaning. It is "the hour of terror at the world's vast meaningless grinding" that William James (Will to Believe 173) examines, described by Todd May (...) (xi) as "the confrontation of our need for meaning with the unwillingness of the Universe to yield it to us." This confrontation with the existential void and the potential absurdity of human existence is often not just an intellectual dilemma, but felt as a deep personal crisis accompanied by melancholia, angst, nausea, or even suicidal thoughts. Young William James confessed in a letter to a friend that "all last winter" he "was on the continual verge of suicide" (quoted in Gunnarsson), writing later that "too much questioning" leads "to the edge of the slope" wherein lies "nightmare or suicidal view of life" (James, "Is Life Worth Living?" 6). Similarly, Leo Tolstoy (54) reports how his inability to identify a lasting meaning of life drove him to a "state of lunacy" where "the best I could do was to hang myself."Despite a few earlier allusions—most famously the Book of Ecclesiastes proclaiming that "all is vanity and a striving after wind," and Shakespeare's Macbeth lamenting that life is "a tale told by an idiot … signifying nothing"—the existential confrontation is predominantly a modern phenomenon (Martela, A Wonderful Life). The modern history of descriptions of existential confrontations start at the turn of the nineteenth century, and includes Søren Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death, Leo Tolstoy's A Confession, Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, Camus's Outsider, Sartre's Nausea, and T. S.Eliot's The Waste Land.There are many responses that the confrontation with the existential void has generated. Sartre embraced the lack of values imposed from outside and [End Page 80] emphasized human freedom. Human beings are "cast into this world … condemned to be free" without any "luminous realm of values" providing "justification or excuse," as Sartre famously summarized in "Existentialism Is a Humanism" (29). Other responses range from Søren Kierkegaard's leap of faith and William James's will to believe to Albert Camus's happiness from absurdity.While some of the responses end up finding a new way of connecting with God and faith, and others are explicitly atheistic, embracing the "death of God," a common thread in most responses is an acknowledgment of the situatedness of human experience and an emphasis placed on human subjectivity and the opportunity to live one's life more authentically. While existentialism, broadly conceived, is often seen as the central philosophical tradition dealing with the existential void, the confrontation was very much alive in the United States as well, visible in both literature and philosophy. As already alluded, William James had an existential confrontation in his youth, writing about the topic in "Is Life Worth Living" and other essays in Will to Believe. There has also been much back-and-forth between Europe and the United States around these themes, with the influences crossing the Atlantic on many occasions. For example, William James cites Thomas Carlyle in Will to Believe, while Sartre cites William James in Nausea, when discussing themes related to the existential confrontation. Similarly, Emerson inspired Nietzsche who inspired Josiah Royce. Typically, the histories tracing the early encounters with the existential confrontation acknowledge Friedrich Nietzsche, Søren Kierkegaard, and Fyodor Dostoevsky as key nineteenth-century predecessors to Existentialism, as all faced directly the question of the meaning of life and the dreadful possibility that life might not have any meaning or value to it.However, there is a key author usually not mentioned in these histories, despite the fact that he played a pivotal role in introducing existentialist themes to the English-speaking audience, coining the phrase "meaning of life" in the English language. Thus, in writing the prehistory of Existentialism, we need to examine Thomas Carlyle and his Sartor Resartus, which has been described by literary historians as "one of... (shrink)

The culture-economy dialectic (CED) – the opposition of the concepts and phenomena of culture and economy – is one of the most important ideas in the modern history of ideas. Both disciplinary boundaries and much theoretical thought in social science are strongly influenced or even determined by the CED. For that reason, a thorough analysis and evaluation of the CED is needed to improve understanding of the history of ideas in social science and the currently fashionable research on the cultural (...) influences on economic differences between countries and regions. This thesis is an attempt to do just that. The concepts of “culture” and “economy” (and related concepts) and the (assumed) relations therebetween are compared and analyzed. Empirical results from earlier studies are summarized and some new test are presented. These new tests are partly based on a measurement of Dutch regional culture. However, most theories of the CED are (nearly) impossible to verify (empirically). There appears to be some influence of wealth on specific cultural phenomena (such as individualism and post-materialism), but the often assumed influence of culture on entrepreneurship and economic growth remains unconfirmed. Moreover, from an analysis of the theories themselves, it appears that most of these cannot be falsified and are, therefore, hardly 'scientific'. Many of the theories of the CED and, in fact, many theories of social science in general are of a conceptual rather than a causal nature. These theories cannot be falsified (or verified) by empirical means alone, but must be studied by means of conceptual analysis. In the final conclusions, this thesis, therefore, argues for conceptual analysis in – and a more anarchist approach to – social science. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this essay I agree with Nicholas Burbules that ‘Phronesis’ is an ethical and political category that grounds the possibility of intercultural communication in translation from one particular context to another rather than in the presumption of one or another account of universalism. After a brief review of the development of this idea in key milestones of Western philosophy, I argue that it requires an education in dialogue across difference that can foster hope for peaceful coexistence among diverse traditions and (...) perspectives in diverse democratic societies. (shrink)