What do Social Networking Sites (SNS) ‘do to us’: are they a damning threat or an emancipating force? Recent publications on the impact of “Web 2.0” proclaim very opposite evaluative positions. With the aim of finding a middle ground, this paper develops a pragmatist approach to SNS based on the work of Richard Rorty. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, we analyze SNS as conversational practices. Second, we outline, in the form of an imaginary conversation between Rorty and Heidegger, (...) a positive and negative ‘conversational’ view on SNS. Third, we deploy a reflection, again using Rortian notions, on that evaluation, starting from the concept of ‘self-reflectivity.’ Finally, the relations between these three steps are more detailedly investigated. By way of the sketched technique, we can interrelate the two opposing sides of the recent debates—hope and threat—and judge SNS in all their ambiguity. (shrink)

This essay begins with an outline of the early Heidegger's distinction between beings and the Being1 of those beings, followed by a discussion of Heideggerian teleology. It then turns to contemporary analytic metaphysics to suggest that analytic metaphysics concerns itself wholly with beings and does not recognize distinct forms of questioning concerning what Heidegger calls Being . This difference having been clarified, studies of identity and individuation in the analytic tradition are examined and it is demonstrated that such inquiries have (...) far more in common with Heidegger than one might initially suspect. Indeed, it turns out that much of what the early Heidegger says about Being is tacitly presupposed by the workings of certain being-centric metaphysical projects in the analytic tradition. The discussion concludes with the suggestion that the central difference between the two projects should be understood as one of emphasis and that Heidegger's discussion of Being and a realist metaphysics in the analytic tradition can complement each other as aspects of a broader, more unified philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

This essay reconsiders Wittgenstein’s relation to the pragmatist tradition. I first discuss, from a pragmatist perspective, three key issues of Wittgenstein studies: the distinction – invoked in recent discussions of On Certainty, in particular – between the propositional and the non-propositional (section 2); the tension between anti-Cartesian fallibilism and what has been called the ‘truth in skepticism’ in Wittgenstein (section 3); as well as the relation between metaphysics and the criticism of metaphysics in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and Wittgensteinian philosophy more generally (...) (section 4). I then proceed to a more metaphilosophical consideration of yet another problematic dichotomy, the one between deconstructive (therapeutic) and (re)constructive or systematic, argumentative philosophy – which, I argue, the pragmatist, together with Wittgenstein, ought to overcome rather than rely on (section 5). After having gone through these open issues in Wittgenstein scholarship at a general level, I briefly apply my considerations to the philosophy of religion, which is an important field of inquiry for both Wittgensteinian and pragmatist thinkers (section 6). (shrink)

This article offers a critical review of various ontological-relativist arguments, mostly deriving from the work of W. V. Quine and Thomas K hn. I maintain that these arguments are (1) internally contradictory, (2) incapable of accounting for our knowledge of the growth of scientific knowledge, and (3) shown up as fallacious from the standpoint of a causal-realist approach to issues of truth, meaning, and interpretation. Moreover, they have often been viewed as lending support to such programmes as the 'strong' sociology (...) of knowledge and the turn towards wholesale cultural-relativist doctrines, whether of the Wittgensteinian ('language-games') or Heideggerian (depth-hermeneutic) varieties. Thus Richard Rorty recommends that we should henceforth drop all that old-fashioned talk of 'truth', 'knowledge', or 'reality', since whatever warrants those descriptions from time to time is just the product of some currently favoured language-game or range of elective metaphors. Such ideas have little in common with Quine's general outlook of robust physicalism, nor again - though the case is less clear - with Kuhn's reconsidered approach to these issues as set forth in his 1969 Postscript to The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . However, both thinkers have left themselves open to misconstrual by adopting a sceptical-relativist fallback position in response to the well-known problems with logical empiricism. This essay therefore reviews those problems with reference to alternative, more adequate accounts of what is involved in the process of scientific discovery and theory-change. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to begin to try to understand the extent to which ethnomethodology (EM) might be informed by some concepts and ideas from the work of the philosopher Martin Heidegger. This is done in two parts. The first looks at Heidegger's later work and compares his conception of the ontological difference with Garfinkel's work on the difference between EM and formal sociological analysis (FA). The second part turns to Heidegger's earlier work (around Being and Time) and (...) works through a number of affinities between the analysis of Dasein and ethnomethodological versions of everydayness. (shrink)

In everyday life, we constantly encounter and deal with useful things without pausing to inquire about the sources of their intelligibility. In Div. I of Being and Time, Heidegger undertakes just such an inquiry. According to a common reading of Heidegger's analysis, the intelligibility of our everyday encounters and dealings with useful things is ultimately constituted by practical self-understandings. In this paper, I argue that while such practical self-understandings may be sufficient to constitute the intelligibility of the tools and equipment (...) specific to many practices, these “tools of the trade” are only a small portion of the things we encounter, use, and deal with on a daily basis. Practical self-understandings cannot similarly account for the intelligibility of the more mundane things—like toothbrushes and sidewalks—used in everyday life. I consider whether an anonymous self-understanding as “one,” “anyone,” or “no one in particular” —das Man—might play this intelligibility-constituting role. In examining this possibility, another type of self-understanding comes to light: cultural identities. I show that the cultural identities into which we are “thrown,” rather than practical identities or das Man, constitute the intelligibility of the abundance of mundane things that fill our everyday lives. Finally, I spell out how this finding bears on our understanding of Heidegger's notion of authenticity. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that J. Patočka’s conception of three movements of human existence can be considered a contribution to the “pragmatic turn” in phenomenology. In order to demonstrate this contribution, I will first recapitulate the context of pragmatic turn, outlining both Heidegger’s original position and its consequent pragmatic interpretation offered by H. Dreyfus and other scholars. The core of the pragmatic interpretation is based on a modification of the Primacy of Praxis thesis that can be described as (...) the Primacy of Practic_es_ thesis, according to which our background practices, i.e., the ‘contingent ways of acting and judging,’ operate as a “source” of intelligibility. Based on Patočka’s criticisms, I will further argue that Heidegger-inspired pragmatism is hampered by the opposition between authentic and inauthentic disclosure, leading to both the rigidification of everyday practices and rendering authentic disclosure formal and empty. In the final section, I will demonstrate that Patočka’s own conception of the three movements of existence can be seen as committed to the Primacy of Practices thesis and that this version of the Primacy of Practice thesis is more acceptable because it does not share the disdainful attitude in regards of the public world. (shrink)

In this article, I examine various aspects of the application of Heidegger's motif of interpretative articulation (the core phenomenological motif of existential analytic) to the constitutional analysis of meaningful objects in scientific research that are contextually ready-to-hand. It is my contention that not only the concepts of the ‘fore-structure of understanding’ and the ‘as-structure of interpretation’, but also the extended concepts of the ‘hermeneutic fore-structure of meaning constitution’ and ‘characteristic hermeneutic situation’ are the keys to understanding the interpretative nature of (...) scientific research. The paper applies the constitutional analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology to several phenomena of scientific research—constitution of meaningful objects, situational fulfilment of a domain's general project, production of a domain's thematically given objects, implementation of readable technologies to what is contextually ready-to-hand, reading hypothetical theoretical objects, and exegetical textualizing within interrelated practices. The study is supplied with exemplary illustrations from enzymology and biochemistry. The correlation between a domain's interpretative articulation and the appropriation of research possibilities within the research everydayness is addressed. Special attention is paid to the belief in and reading of intracellular enzymes as hypothetical theoretical objects. (shrink)

Heidegger's Being and Time sets out a view of ourselves that shows in positive terms how a reification of ourselves as minded beings can be avoided. Heidegger thereby provides a view of ourselves that fits into one of the main strands of today's philosophy of mind: the intentional vocabulary in which we describe ourselves is indispensable and in principle irreducible to a naturalistic vocabulary. However, as far as ontology is concerned, there is no commitment to the position that being minded (...) is something beyond the physical. In particular, this paper shows how Heidegger's claim that being minded is tied to being-in-the-world links up with (a) externalism and (b) a social theory of intentionality. (shrink)