An influential interpretation of phenomenology construes Husserl's project as an attempt to generalize the Fregean notion of sense- an attempt to extend Frege's analysis of the structure of meaningful expressions to a more general account of the structure of meaning in experience . Michael Dummett has articulated a broadly Fregean critique of this Husserlian program, arguing that the project is misguided and retrograde-a relapse into the psychologism and idealism that Frege sought to avoid. A defense of Husserl is offered, based (...) in part on key elements of the theory of meaning articulated in his Logical Investigations . But the main aim is neither to acquit nor to convict Husserl of Dummett's charges; rather it is to use the exchange to investigate some of the philosophical commitments of a broadly Husserlian phenomenology. If we are to understand how Husserl avoids psychologism then we must come to terms with the paradoxical idea of an anti-psychologistic investigation of consciousness (an anti-psychologistic psychology). If we are to understand his complex stance toward idealism then we must not only understand the grounds for his rejection of subjective idealism but also be attuned to the other forms of idealism to which his project is committed. In the course of investigating these matters the author considers how Husserl can reply to the charge of explanatory vacuity, and shows that Frege himself recognizes the legitimacy of something like the Husserlian project. (shrink)

: This paper investigates the way in which Rudolf Carnap drew on Gestalt psychological notions when defining the basic elements of his constitutional system. I argue that while Carnap's conceptualization of basic experience was compatible with ideas articulated by members of the Berlin/Frankfurt school of Gestalt psychology, his formal analysis of the relationship between two basic experiences ("recollection of similarity") was not. This is consistent, given that Carnap's aim was to provide a unified reconstruction of scientific knowledge, as opposed to (...) the mental processes by which we gain knowledge about the world. It is this last point that put him in marked contrast to some of the older epistemological literature, which he cited when pointing to the complex character of basic experience. While this literature had the explicit goal of overcoming metaphysical presuppositions by means of an analysis of consciousness, Carnap viewed these attempts as still carrying metaphysical baggage. By choosing the autopsychological basis, he expressed his intellectual depth to their antimetaphysical impetus. By insisting on the metaphysical neutrality of his system, he emphasized that he was carrying out a project in which they had not succeeded. (shrink)

After the attempt at collaboration between the Frankfurt School and the Vienna Circle failed in the late 1930s, Adorno stood at the forefront of critical theory’s polemics against ‘positivism’. Given these later polemical exchanges, some of the tendencies common to both movements have remained overlooked. Among these is their opposition to the phenomenological tradition. This paper focusses on certain features common to Schlick’s and Adorno’s critical responses to Husserl. The Machians, including Adorno’s supervisor Hans Cornelius, were targeted by Husserl’s onslaught (...) against psychologism in 1900. The young Schlick’s Machian background had motivated his contribution to the Psychologismusstreit, in the context of which he launched a series of objections against Husserl’s ‘independence theory of truth’. Adorno’s later doctoral dissertation under Cornelius was also motivated by the effort to defend his master against Husserl’s objections. Schlick’s criticisms intensified in later works, where Husserl’s epistemology of intuition is seen as yet another instance of the widespread confusion between knowledge and acquaintance. Schlick’s warnings against Husserl’s turn towards the irrationalist fashions of his day find their echo in Adorno’s ‘Metakritik’. Apart from their broad agreement in how they understand Husserl’s positioning within his context, Schlick and Adorno also develop a similar criticism of Husserl’s account of intuition as failing in its aspiration to discover unmediated givenness, which it confuses with mediated conceptual knowledge. Unfortunately, while Adorno explicitly acknowledges Schlick’s critique of Husserl, he also misconstrues it as a scientistic rejection of metaphysical nonsense, thus failing to acknowledge the proximity to his approach. (shrink)

I argue that Sellars’s naturalization of Kant should be understood in terms of how he used behavioristic psychology and cybernetics. I first explore how Sellars used Edward Tolman’s cognitive-behavioristic psychology to naturalize Kant in the early essay “Language, Rules, and Behavior”. I then turn to Norbert Wiener’s understanding of feedback loops and circular causality. On this basis I argue that Sellars’s distinction between signifying and picturing, which he introduces in “Being and Being Known,” can be understood in terms of what (...) I call cybernetic behaviorism. I interpret picturing in terms of cycles of cybernetic behavior and signifying in terms of coordination between cybernetic behavior systems, or what I call triangulated cybernetic behavior. This leads to a formal, naturalistic understanding of personhood as the capacity to engage in triangulated cybernetic behavior. I conclude by showing that Sellars’s thought has the resources, which he did not exploit, for introducing the concept of second-order cybernetics. This suggests that Sellars’s philosophy of mind could be developed in the direction of autopoiesis and enactivism. (shrink)

This paper argues for a ‘contextualist’ approach to teaching antisemitism in philosophy class. The traditional ‘systematic’ approach emphasizes recognizing and dismantling antisemitic aspects in canonical philosophical texts. The introduced contextualist approach broadens the perspective, treating philosophy as a continuous debate embedded in cultural realities. It focuses on historical controversies rather than isolated arguments, includes the voice and the perspectives of the oppressed, and so has the potential to broaden traditional philosophical canons. In the second half of the paper, we provide (...) a case study of the contextualist approach, applying it to the ‘Berlin antisemitism controversy’ of 1879/80. We argue that the contextualist approach is particularly valuable when dealing with antisemitism as it teaches students to analyze arguments within the socio-political landscape and to identify antisemitic elements. The students thereby acquire the skills to discern antisemitic argumentation in other contexts as well. We suggest that this approach could be used to teach other debates in the history of philosophy, especially those tackling race, sex, and gender issues. (shrink)

Against those who identify genealogy with reductive genealogical debunking or deny it any evaluative and action-guiding significance, I argue for the following three claims: that although genealogies, true to their Enlightenment origins, tend to trace the higher to the lower, they need not reduce the higher to the lower, but can elucidate the relation between them and put us in a position to think more realistically about both relata; that if we think of genealogy’s normative significance in terms of a (...) triadic model that includes the genealogy’s addressee, we can see that in tracing the higher to the lower, a genealogy can facilitate an evaluation of the higher element, and where the lower element is some important practical need rather than some sinister motive, the genealogy can even be vindicatory; and finally, that vindicatory genealogies can offer positive guidance on how to engineer better concepts. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates that two signature methodological concepts in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, the epoché and the phenomenological reduction, derive from his reflections on the history and significance of epistemological skepticism in the Western tradition. Drawing on his Lectures on Logic and Epistemology (Hua XXIV) from the Winter semester of 1906–07, it is argued that Husserl derives his conception of the fundamental task of transcendental philosophy from his reading of a novel skeptical challenge posed by David Hume’s philosophy—a kind of skeptical (...) challenge that Husserl did not recognize in his earlier treatments of Hume. On Husserl’s revised reading, Hume promotes a certain kind of philosophical “despair” (Verzweiflung) or, as it may be called today, “quietism” as the only possible response to the traditional problems of epistemology stemming back to the ancient skeptics. Husserl’s criticism of Hume’s quietism is presented. And Husserl’s reading of Descartes’s cogito as the first decisive uncovering of the limits of epistemological skepticism in the Western tradition is shown to be the source of two key elements of Husserl’s positive alternative to Humean epistemological quietism, which ultimately become the heart of a novel conception of critical transcendental philosophy. These two key elements are the phenomenological epoché and phenomenological reduction. Husserl’s arguments are presented for the claim that these are essential parts of any epistemological program that can answer traditional skeptical challenges. (shrink)

In 1911, Bergson visited Britain for a number of lectures which led to his increasing popularity. Russell personally encountered Bergson during his lecture at University College London on the 28th of October, and on the 30th of October Bergson attended one of Russell’s lectures. Russell went on to write a number of critical articles on Bergson, contributing to the hundreds of publications on Bergson which ensued following these lectures. Russell’s critical writings have been seen as part of a history of (...) controversies between so-called ‘Continental’ and ‘Analytic’ philosophers in the twentieth century. Yet Russell’s engagement with Bergson’s thought comes as a response to a particular British form of Bergsonism and is involved with the wider phenomenon of the British import of Bergsonism (by figures connected in different ways to Russell, such as Hulme, Wildon Carr or Eliot). Though this may challenge the view of Russell and Bergson as enacting an early version of the ‘Analytic’-‘Continental’ divide, there are however some particular characterisations of Bergson by Russell which contribute to the subsequent formation of the ‘rotten scene’ (Glendinning 2006: 69) of the divide in the second half of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

As Thomas Uebel has recently argued, some early logical positivists saw American pragmatism as a kindred form of scientific philosophy. They associated pragmatism with William James, whom they rightly saw as allied with Ernst Mach. But what apparently blocked sympathetic positivists from pursuing commonalities with American pragmatism was the concern that James advocated some form of psychologism, a view they thought could not do justice to the a priori. This paper argues that positivists were wrong to read James as offering (...) a psychologistic account of the a priori. They had encountered James by reading Pragmatism as translated by the unabashedly psychologistic Wilhelm Jerusalem. But in more technical works, James had actually developed a form of conventionalism that anticipated the so-called “relativized” a priori positivists themselves would independently develop. While positivists arrived at conventionalism largely through reflection on the exact sciences, though, James’s account of the a priori grew from his reflections on the biological evolution of cognition, particularly in the context of his Darwin-inspired critique of Herbert Spencer. (shrink)

This article was inspired by participant observation of a contemporary collaboration between empirically oriented philosophers of mind and neuroscientists. An encounter between this anthropologist of science and neurophilosophers in a Finnish sleep laboratory led to the following philosophical exploration of the intellectual space shared by neurophilosophy and science studies. Since these fields emerged in the 1970s, scholars from both sides have been visiting brain research facilities, but engaged with neuroscientists very differently and passionately fought with each other over the reduction (...) of mind to brain. As a case in point, this article looks at the philosophical controversy over the dreaming brain. It serves as a window on the problem space opened up by the demise of positivist conceptions of science, now inhabited by both neurophilosophy and science studies. Both fields face the problem of how to bridge the gap between empirical research and conceptual work. At a time when ontological speculation has made a comeback in these areas of research, studies on how epistemic objects manifest themselves in the material culture of neuroscience could help neurophilosophers to become better materialists. In the sleep laboratory, however, the materiality of dreams continues to be elusive. In dreaming science studies and neurophilosophy encounter a phenomenon that – at least in 2015 – still invites a positivist rather than a materialist attitude. (shrink)

Maria Rosa Antognazza's work has issued a historical challenge to the thesis that the analysis of knowledge (as justified true belief) attacked by epistemologists from Gettier onwards was indeed the standard view traditionally upheld from Plato onwards. This challenge led to an ongoing reappraisal of the historical significance of intuitive knowledge, in which the knower is intimately connected to what is known. Such traditional accounts of intuition, and their accompanying claims to epistemological primacy, constituted the precise target of Moritz Schlick's (...) critique. Schlick engages with this topic throughout his oeuvre, from some of his early epistemological writings, to his anti-metaphysical stance as a leading Logical Empiricist. Schlick crucially distinguishes knowledge from mere acquaintance, denying that the latter has epistemic status. He therefore argues that the very notion of ‘intuitive knowledge’ is a contradictio in adjecto. (shrink)

In conversations with Schlick and Waismann from June and December 1930, Wittgenstein began to turn his attention to the topic of games. This topic also centrally concerned Schlick. In his earliest philosophical output, Schlick had relied on the results of evolutionary biology in setting out an account of the emergence of the human species’ ability to play [Spiel] as a prerequisite for the genesis of scientific knowledge. Throughout his subsequent works one finds fragmentary appeals to this early view, e.g. in (...) his oft misunderstood claim that play constitutes the meaning of life. Wittgenstein’s turn to the topic of games in 1930 not only happened while Professor Schlick was in the room, but was also coupled with an explicit response to Schlick’s 1930 book Fragen der Ethik. Schlick here employs the example of chess to distinguish between rules and their application – a distinction which underlies his whole attempt to naturalise ethics as a descriptive psycho-sociological discipline. This paper investigates the relation between Wittgenstein’s and Schlick’s accounts of games in light of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of Schlick’s ethics. Wittgenstein’s objections can be answered by taking Schlick’s theory of play into consideration. (shrink)

Eudaimonia, that is, the experience of flourishing and welfare at the center of Greek philosophical investigations, describes the qualitative experience of being able to feel well in our bodies. Reductionism in medicine as well as in philosophy would instead reduce well-being to a set of standards that the human body or its mind must meet in order to be recognized as functioning. This journal issue, dedicated to a phenomenological approach in bioethics, represents a way to overcome this dangerous constraint thanks (...) to the methodological support of the phenomenological investigations. The authors invited to write in this journal issue will tackle the problem of reductionism in bioethics through a phenomenological approach. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

In the article “A Tension in the Strong Program: The Relation between the Rational and the Social,” I stated that David Bloor, citing the principle of symmetry, expresses that rational and irrational beliefs must be explained in the same way, that is, by causes of the same kind. On this wise, he rejects the methodology of traditional philosophers and historians of science as asymmetrical; since they explain evidence-based beliefs with epistemic reasons and unreasonable beliefs—e.g. beliefs based on indoctrination, propaganda, ideology, (...) and superstition—citing social factors. On the other hand, Bloor argues that the rational is made entirely of the social and, therefore, is itself a kind of social factor. But by admitting this maximum conception of social constructivism, Bloor can no longer consider the rational and the social as two separate identities and accuse the traditional view of asymmetry. However, Professor Finn Collin says that Bloor’s critique of the traditional model never commits him to the duality of the rational and the social. (shrink)

The question of the psychologism of the theory of number developed by Husserl in his Philosophy of Arithmetic has long been debated, but it cannot be considered fully resolved. In this paper, I address the issue from a new point of view. My claim is that in the Philosophy of Arithmetic, Husserl made, albeit indirectly, a series of arguments that are worth reconstructing and clarifying since they are useful in shedding some light on the psychologism issue. More specifically, I maintain (...) that the clarification of these arguments, along with other arguments that Husserl presented against alternative theories of number as well as with some contemporary distinctions concerning the notion of ontological dependence, allows us to determine that Husserl’s theory of number is psychologistic in a minimal and precise sense: it entails a generic ontological dependence of numbers upon the mind. (shrink)

With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, there emerged two controversies related to the responsibility of philosophical ideas for the rise of German militarism. The first, mainly journalistic, controversy concerned the influence that Nietzsche’s ideas may have had on what British propagandists portrayed as the ruthlessly amoral German foreign policy. This soon gave way to a second controversy, waged primarily among academics, concerning the purportedly vicious political outcomes of German Idealism, from Kant through to Fichte, Schelling, and (...) Hegel. During the autumn of 1914, and at the cusp between the two controversies, Moritz Schlick was to deliver a lecture series on Nietzsche’s life and work at the University of Rostock. Responding to both debates, Schlick penned an introduction in which he sought to defend philosophy against all those who would embroil it in warfare. Schlick offers a series of arguments defending Nietzsche against his accusers. He also argues that, though their contributions to the History of Philosophy often amounted to no more than ‘beautiful nonsense’, the German Idealists’ philosophical views cannot be held responsible for the rise of German nationalism. Finally, Schlick mounts a general defense of the search for truth, both in philosophy and in Wissenschaft, as a type of activity which presupposes peace. Though Schlick’s metaphilosophical views change, as this paper shows, he remains constant both in his favourable appraisal of Nietzsche, as well as his separation between politics on the one hand, and both philosophy and Wissenschaft on the other hand. (shrink)

Erich Rothacker (1888–1965) was a key figure in early-twentieth-century philosophy in Germany. In this paper, I examine the development of Rothacker’s philosophy of culture from 1907 to 1945. Rothacker began his philosophical career with a völkerpsychological dissertation on history, outlining his early biologistic conception of culture (1907–1913). In his mid-career work, he then turned to Wilhelm Dilthey’s (1833–1911) Lebensphilosophie (philosophy of life), advancing a hermeneutic approach to culture (1919–1928). In his later work (1929–1945), Rothacker developed a cultural anthropology. I shall (...) argue that Rothacker’s later theory of culture retained key motifs of his earlier works. In this way, I trace central aspects of Rothacker’s reception of both Völkerpsychologie and Lebensphilosophie. The paper focuses on two aspects of Rothacker’s philosophical development that deserve more attention than they have received to date: his reception of Völkerpsychologie and the political character of his theories of culture. Rothacker’s theoretical work was closely connected to his political conservatism, which culminated in his engagement with National Socialism. The paper unearths problematic aspects of the legacy of Völkerpsychologie and Lebensphilosophie in early twentieth-century German thought. (shrink)

This paper seeks to re-assess Dilthey’s descriptive psychology in light of the charge of “psychologism”. The paper has two goals. First, I seek to give a fine-grained reconstruction of Dilthey’s foundational project. I provide a systematic account of how Dilthey sought to ground the knowledge claims of the human sciences in inner experience. I place special emphasis on Dilthey’s concept of “articulation” which mediates between inner experience and psychological knowledge, as well as between individual psychology and knowledge about the socio-historical (...) world. Second, I re-assess the allegedly “psychologistic” aspects of Dilthey’s philosophy. I reconstruct how Dilthey’s critics Husserl, Windelband and Rickert understood psychologism, highlight commonalities between them and explain why Dilthey’s approach seemed “psychologistic” from their perspective. At the same time, I show that Dilthey’s philosophical thinking goes against the very presuppositions that the “psychologism”-charges are usually based upon. The paper concludes with some reflections on the transition from Dilthey's descriptive psychology to his mature hermeneutics. (shrink)

Psichologizmas yra loginių ir psichologinių terminų reikšmių tapatinimas. Husserlio Prolegomenai yra žymiausias psichologizmą kritikuojantis tekstas. Iki šiol buvo atviras klausimas, kas būtent juose įrodyta. Šio straipsnio tikslas yra į jį atsakyti. Pagrindinis straipsnyje ginamas teiginys yra toks: Prolegomenuose Husserlis įrodė, kad jei reliatyvizmas klaidingas, tai psichologizmas klaidingas, bet neįrodė reliatyvizmo ar psichologizmo klaidingumo, nes jis neįrodė, kad reliatyvizmas save paneigia. Pirmiausia nagrinėjami du kartais Husserliui priskiriami įrodymai: paremtasis prielaida, kad logika yra normatyvi, ir paremtasis prielaida, kad psichologija remiasi logika. Tvirtinama, (...) kad jie nesuderinami su logikos samprata Prolegomenuose. Tuomet nagrinėjami likę įrodymai ir parodoma, kaip iš jų plaukia, kad jei reliatyvizmas klaidingas, tai psichologizmas klaidingas. Galiausiai nagrinėjamas įrodymas, kad reliatyvizmas save paneigia vienu ar kitu būdu: ar savaime, ar tuomet, kai yra išreiškiamas, ar tada, kai įrodinėjamas kitam. Teigiama, kad reliatyvizmo klaidingumas juo neįrodytas. Straipsnio išvados reikšmingos bet kokiam logiką reliatyvizuojančiam požiūriui. (shrink)

My dissertation explores the ways in which Rudolf Carnap sought to make philosophy scientific by further developing recent interpretive efforts to explain Carnap’s mature philosophical work as a form of engineering. It does this by looking in detail at his philosophical practice in his most sustained mature project, his work on pure and applied inductive logic. I, first, specify the sort of engineering Carnap is engaged in as involving an engineering design problem and then draw out the complications of design (...) problems from current work in history of engineering and technology studies. I then model Carnap’s practice based on those lessons and uncover ways in which Carnap’s technical work in inductive logic takes some of these lessons on board. This shows ways in which Carnap’s philosophical project subtly changes right through his late work on induction, providing an important corrective to interpretations that ignore the work on inductive logic. Specifically, I show that paying attention to the historical details of Carnap’s attempt to apply his work in inductive logic to decision theory and theoretical statistics in the 1950s and 1960s helps us understand how Carnap develops and rearticulates the philosophical point of the practical/theoretical distinction in his late work, offering thus a new interpretation of Carnap’s technical work within the broader context of philosophy of science and analytical philosophy in general. (shrink)

This two-part paper reviews a scholarly debate on an alleged tension in Frege ’s philosophy of logic. In Section 1 of Part I, I discuss Frege ’s view that logic is concerned with establishing norms for correct thinking and is therefore a normative science. In Section 2, I explore a different understanding of the role of logic that Frege seems to advance: logic is constitutive of the very possibility of thought, because it sets forth necessary conditions for thought. Hence, the (...) tension the view according to which logic is normative for thought seems to be incompatible with the idea that abiding by the laws of logic forms a precondition for thought. In Section 1 of Part II, I survey a number of interpretations of Frege ’s conception of logic that deal with this question. I show that they are for the most part either normative readings or constitutive readings. Finally, in Section 2, I adjudicate the debate and aim at reconciling the normative and the constitutive strands in Frege ’s conception of logic. (shrink)

This two-part paper reviews a scholarly debate on an alleged tension in Frege's philosophy of logic. In Section 1 of Part I, I discuss Frege's view that logic is concerned with establishing norms for correct thinking and is therefore a normative science. In Section 2, I explore a different understanding of the role of logic that Frege seems to advance: logic is constitutive of the very possibility of thought, because it sets forth necessary conditions for thought. Hence, the tension the (...) view according to which logic is normative for thought seems to be incompatible with the idea that abiding by the laws of logic forms a precondition for thought. In Section 1 of Part II, I survey a number of interpretations of Frege's conception of logic that deal with this question. I show that they are for the most part either normative readings (emphasising the former understanding of the nature of logic) or constitutive readings (emphasising the latter). Finally, in Section 2, I adjudicate the debate and aim at reconciling the normative and the constitutive strands in Frege's conception of logic. (shrink)

Cognitive neuroscience constitutes the third phase of development of the field of cognitive psychophysiology since it was established about half a century ago. A critical historical overview is given of this development, focusing on recurring problems that keep frustrating great expectations. It is argued that psychology has to regain its independent status with respect to cognitive neuroscience and should take psychophysical dualism seriously. A constructive quantum physical model for psychophysical interaction is presented, based on a new stochastic interpretation of the (...) quantum potential in the de Broglie–Bohm theory. This model can be applied to analyze cognitive information processing in psychological experiments. It is shown that the quantum potential shares several features with Duns Scotus’ notion of contingent causality. (shrink)

ArgumentThis paper builds on a neglected philosophical idea,Evidenz. Max Weber used it in his discussion ofVerstehen, as the goal of understanding either action or such things as logic. It was formulated differently by Franz Brentano, but with a novel twist: thatanyonewho understood something would see the thing to be understood as self-evident, not something dependent on inference, argument, or reasoning. The only way one could take something as evident in this sense is by being able to treat other people as (...) having the same responses – by empathy with them, in the weak sense of following their thought. Brentano's philosophical claim is that without some stopping point at what is self-evident, justifications fall into infinite regress. This is radically opposed to much of conventional philosophy. The usual solutions to the regress problem rely on problematic claims about the supposed hidden transcendental structure behind reasoning. In contrast, empathy is a genuine natural phenomenon and a better explanation for the actual phenomenon of making sense of the reasoning of others. What is evident to all who are capable of understanding is an empirically-defined subset of this class. (shrink)

One of the important challenges in the philosophy of mathematics is to account for the semantics of sentences that express mathematical propositions while simultaneously explaining our access to their contents. This is Benacerraf’s Dilemma. In this dissertation, I argue that cognitive science furnishes new tools by means of which we can make progress on this problem. The foundation of the solution, I argue, must be an ontologically realist, albeit non-platonist, conception of mathematical reality. The semantic portion of the problem can (...) be addressed by accepting a Chomskyan conception of natural languages and a matching internalist, mentalist and nativist view of semantics. A helpful perspective on the epistemic aspect of the puzzle can be gained by translating Kurt G ̈odel’s neo-Kantian conception of the nature of mathematics and its objects into modern, cognitive terms. (shrink)

This article has three main aims. First, it argues that the question of the inclusion of “non‐Western” thought in philosophy cannot be resolved by appealing to definitions of philosophy, as such definitions are an integral part of the epistemically hegemonic practices responsible for the exclusion of non‐Western thought in the first place. Second, it argues that philosophy is structurally Eurocentric. It makes this argument first by looking at metaphilosophy. It argues that metaphilosophy is primarily performative and that its performativity is (...) a form of boundary work that is engaged in hegemonic practices of the epistemic type. It then argues that philosophy as a whole is inescapably engaged in boundary work and hegemonic practices, some of which partake in structural Eurocentrism. Finally, it promotes sociometaphilosophy, an approach that draws from the new sociology of knowledge to identify illegitimate mechanisms of exclusion inscribed in the rules that codify philosophical practice. (shrink)

Political epistemology has become a popular field of research in recent years. It sets itself the ambitious task to intertwine epistemology with social and political theory in order to do justice to the relationships between truth and politics, or reason and power. Yet many contributions either expand arguments and concepts from traditional epistemology to political phenomena or use existing theories and frameworks from social and political theory to address the politics of epistemological questions. The former approach (prominent, e.g., in the (...) epistemic injustice debate) leads to an epistemisation of political phenomena and concepts coupled with their de-politicization, the latter approach (prominent, e.g., in Frankfurt School critical theory) leads to a politicization of epistemic phenomena and concepts coupled with their de-epistemisation. Instead, it is argued that political epistemology requires reworking even basic concepts, due to its three foundational commitments: It is committed to the claim that socio-material conditions of existence matter epistemically (minimal materialism), to the self-reflection of the socio-material conditions of political epistemology's own arguments and theories (radical self-reflexivity), and to a specific form of epistemic humility (epistemic non-sovereignty). Using the notion of normativity as an exemplary problem, the article closes by highlighting the difficulty of maintaining these three commitments. (shrink)

In 1940, Wolfgang Metzger began a profound reflection on the meaning of the phenomenological approach to Gestalt psychology, which had its starting point in the rejection of what he called the “Eleatic” or “Eleatic–Rationalistic Postulate,” that is, the notion that, in his opinion, had dominated Western scientific and philosophical thought of the past centuries, according to which any assertion about the state of things that could lead to self-contradictory conclusions had to be considered unfounded. On the basis of this rejection (...) and with exclusive reference to access to experiential data, Metzger proposed to distinguish five meanings of reality: (1) the physical or experiential world; (2) the intuitive or experienced world; (3) the experienced world (met, Angetroffen) in contrast to the represented world; (4) the something or fullness in contrast to emptiness or nothingness; (5) the real in contrast to the apparent. For Metzger (1950), this concept, although primarily related to perception, has far-reaching implications for our conception of others and of society. We question here the validity of Metzger’s concept, its explanatory significance, and its relation to other phenomenological concepts, such as that of Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

In the Laws of Thought, Boole establishes a theory of secondary propositions based upon the notion of time. This temporal interpretation of secondary propositions has historically been met with wide disapproval and is usually dismissed in the modern literature as a philosophical non-starter. What was Boole thinking? This paper attempts to give an answer to this question. Specifically, it provides an account according to which Boole’s temporal interpretation follows from his psychologistic conception of logic, in addition to certain background assumptions (...) regarding the psychological necessity of the concept of time. Once Boole’s psychological premises are laid bare, it becomes clearer how he might have viewed the temporal interpretation to be an essential feature of his theory of secondary propositions. (shrink)

We offer an analysis of the disciplinary transformations underwent by mathematical or symbolic logic since its emergence in the late 19 th century. Examined are its origins as a hybrid of philosophy and mathematics, the maturity and institutionalisation attained under the label “logic and foundations,” a second wave of institutionalisation in the Postwar period, and the institutional developments since 1975 in connection with computer science and with the study of language and informatics. Although some “internal history” is discussed, the main (...) focus is on the emergence, consolidation and convolutions of logic as a discipline, through various professional associations and journals, in centers such as Torino, Göttingen, Warsaw, Berkeley, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, and Amsterdam. (shrink)

There is a gap between the first-person and third-person perspectives resulting in a tension experienced between psychological science, ‘experimental psychology’, and applied consulting psychological practice, ‘clinical psychology’. This is an exploration of that ‘gap’ and its resulting tension. First-person perspective is proposed as an important aspect of psychological reality in conjunction with the related perspectival aspects of second- and third-person perspectives. These three aspects taken ‘wholistically’ constitute a perspectival diffusion grate through which psychological reality is discerned. The reductionistic naturalism of (...) scientifically apprehended reality is examined for the powerful resistances that impedite utilizing perspective in psychological investigations with consequences for our understanding of psychological reality. The impediments constructed by Quine, Sellars, Dennett, Metzinger, and cognitive psychology are all examined for their robust intractability to first-person perspective or anything that might seem similar. The conclusion suggested is that they all result from a ‘scientific near-sightedness’ of a strict naturalism. The result is that any intentionally dependent objects that are real in the lives of persons are eliminated as not real with no ontological significance. The assertion is that ordinary things such as car keys and employment are real and are ontologically significant. (shrink)

This paper explores a pair of puzzling and controversial topics in the history of late nineteenth-century philosophy: the psychologism debates, and the nature of neo-Kantianism. Each is sufficientl...

In this paper, I defend a tripartite metaphysics of intentional mental states, according to which mental states are divided into subject, content, and attitude, against recent attempts at eliminating the attitude component (e.g., Montague, Oxford studies in philosophy of mind, 2022, 2, Oxford University Press). I suggest that a metaphysics composed of only subject and content cannot account for (a) multisensory perceptual experiences and (b) phenomenological differences between episodes of perception and imagination. Finally, I suggest that some of the motivations (...) behind the rejection of the attitude component can be accommodated within the tripartite framework. (shrink)

In the nineteenth century, philosophy was at a crossroads. While the natural and technical sciences were developing in an unprecedented fashion, philosophy seemed to be stalled. Inspired by the progress of the natural sciences, many philosophers attempted to make such progress in philosophy and make philosophy a truly scientific discipline. This effort was also reflected in the philosophy of the Lvov-Warsaw school. While its founder, Kazimierz Twardowski, following his teacher Franz Brentano, promoted psychology as a method of scientific philosophy, one (...) of his first students, Jan Łukasiewicz, was convinced that mathematical logic was such a method. To use mathematical logic as a tool, Łukasiewicz had to, however, argue convincingly that logic is an independent science and hence is not a part of psychology, i.e., arguing for anti-psychologism in logic. He initially adopted the arguments provided by Husserl, then celebrated as a proponent of anti-psychologism, and Frege’s views. When Łukasiewicz developed, however, his systems of many-valued logic, he denied almost all the principles that characterise Husserl and Frege’s anti-psychologism, i.e., the objectivity of the laws of logic, the existence of apodictic propositions, and the distinction between a priori and empirical sciences. He was, however, a proponent of anti-psychologism up to the end of his life. The aim of my paper is to introduce Łukasiewicz’s unique concept of anti-psychologism that significantly affected the views of mathematical logic in the Lvov-Warsaw School, and the views of his colleagues which helped him develop the concept. (shrink)

This article examines the role of time as a methodological tool and pathological focus of clinical psychiatry and psychology in the first half of the 20th century. Contextualizing ‘psychopathologies of time’ developed by practitioners in Europe and North America with reference to the temporal theories implicit in Freudian psychoanalysis and Henri Bergson’s philosophy of durée, it illuminates how depression, schizophrenia, and other mental disorders such as obsessive-compulsive behaviours and aphasia were understood to be symptomatic of an altered or disturbed ‘time-sense’. (...) Drawing upon a model of temporal synthesis whereby in healthy individuals, a subjective temporal sense ( Ichzeit, durée, or personal lifetime) was perceived and understood in relation to objective time frameworks ( Weltzeit, clock-time, or quantitative time models like historical chronology), clinicians argued that mentally ill patients were unable to synthesize Ichzeit and Weltzeit, using variations in this disturbance to define specific pathological conditions. (shrink)

Roholt’s discussion of the methodological divide between analytic and continental philosophy of music is undertaken with the hope of bringing about the divide’s dissolution. Roholt limits the scope of the discussion to methodological debates in the philosophy of music, without referring to the ongoing debate about the divide at large. This begs the question of how methodological differences in the philosophy of music correlate with differences between analytic and continental philosophy. Upon closer inspection, there is nothing that is essentially analytic (...) or continental about the opposed methodological preferences discussed by Roholt. This acknowledgement is in part what Roholt aimed at: it erects no strict communicative barrier between two methodologically opposed sides. There is however, as I point out, a further unresolved problem with Roholt’s talk of ‘tendencies’ (or the parallel metaphilosophical employment of family resemblances to understand the divide), which if unresolved may allow for a regression to stereotypical conceptions of the divide. (shrink)

It is argued that Russell before 1905 saw no value in Frege's sense/reference distinction. This is clearest in the Mont Blanc correspondence. It is argued that Russell and Frege failed to engage because Frege lacked a grasp on the internal/external relations distinction. For Russell sense is either an external relation, objectionably separating out thought and reference, or an internal relation, so what is thought is altered such that we do not know what we are talking about. The novelty of the (...) present paper lies in the arrangement of the parts and the claim that Russellian propositions are not made up of the things themselves but of transparent representatives thereof. (shrink)

This paper presents a version of neurophenomenology based on generative modelling techniques developed in computational neuroscience and biology. Our approach can be described as _computational phenomenology_ because it applies methods originally developed in computational modelling to provide a formal model of the descriptions of lived experience in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy (e.g., the work of Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, etc.). The first section presents a brief review of the overall project to naturalize phenomenology. The second section presents and evaluates (...) philosophical objections to that project and situates our version of computational phenomenology with respect to these projects. The third section reviews the generative modelling framework. The final section presents our approach in detail. We conclude by discussing how our approach differs from previous attempts to use generative modelling to help understand consciousness. In summary, we describe a version of computational phenomenology which uses generative modelling to construct a computational model of the inferential or interpretive processes that best explain this or that kind of lived experience. (shrink)

Neo-positivism is dead. Let that imperfect designation stand for the project that dominated and defined the philosophy of science, especially in its Anglophone form, during the fifty or so years following the end of the Second World War. While its critics were many,1 its death was slow, and some think still to find a pulse.2 But die it did in the cul-de-sac into which it was led by its own faulty compass.

I begin with a diagnosis. Present-day scholarly work on the Scottish Enlightenment is bifurcated: it is either focused on the areas of moral philosophy or of natural philosophy, broadly construed in both cases. The aspiration to combine these inquiries is rare and unsystematic. This paper makes a case for the need and possibility of a perspective that conceives moral and natural inquiry as integrated enterprises in the period. It also suggests that potentially useful interpretive devices can be adopted from the (...) historiography of science and philosophy, as well as science studies. (shrink)

ValsinerJaan, A Guided Science: History of Psychology in the Middle of its Making. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Transaction, 2012, 20 + 332 pp., 15 figures, $49.95, ISBN 978-1-4128-4290-7.

: The distinction between science and philosophy plays a central role in methodological, programmatic and institutional debates. Discussions of disciplinary identities typically focus on boundaries or else on genealogies, yielding models of demarcation and models of dynamics. Considerations of a discipline's self-image, often based on history, often plays an important role in the values, projects and practices of its members. Recent focus on the dynamics of scientific change supplements Kuhnian neat model with a role for philosophy and yields a model (...) of the evolution of philosophy of science. This view illuminates important aspects of science and itself contributes to philosophy of science. This interactive model is general yet based on exclusive attention to physics. In this paper and two sequels, I focus on the human sciences and argue that their role in the history of philosophy of science is just as important and it also involves a close involvement of the history of philosophy. The focus is on Gestalt psychology and it points to some lessons for philosophy of science. But, unlike the discussion of natural sciences, the discussion here brings out more complication than explication, and skews certain kinds of generalizations. (shrink)