Carnap’s 1931 attack against metaphysics notoriously utilises Heidegger’s work to exemplify the meaninglessness of metaphysical pseudo‐statements. This paper interprets Carnap’s metametaphysics as concerned with delimiting theoretical dialogue in such a manner as to exclude unresolvable disagreements. It puts forth a revised version of Carnap’s argument against the viability of metaphysics, by setting aside his stronger claims that rely on verificationism and focusing instead on his account of metaphysical claims as mere expressions of what he calls “Lebensgefühl,” or a general attitude (...) towards life. Such attitudes, Carnap argues, are unsuitable objects of theoretical dialogue, insofar as disagreements that concern them are unresolvable. Carnap thus recommends abandoning the attempt to resolve metaphysical disagreements as if they were theoretical. As long as it does not enter into unresolvable disagreements, art, rather than theory, is the appropriate medium for expressing Lebensgefühl. (shrink)

In a move characteristic of appropriationist approaches to the history of philosophy, Katzav (Asian Journal of Philosophy 2(47):1–26, Katzav, 2023a) argues that Grace Andrus de Laguna had, already in 1909, developed what is effectively a critique of analytic philosophy (as a form of epistemically conservative philosophy). In response to Katzav’s claim, this symposium paper attempts to pay closer attention to the context of de Laguna’s paper. As Katzav also acknowledges, de Laguna was dialogically engaged with two non-analytic tendencies in her (...) contemporary philosophy, namely pragmatism and absolute idealism. More specifically, her target is Dewey’s, 1905 defence of ‘immediatism’ (and, by extension, James’ ‘radical empiricism’), which was put forward in opposition to absolute idealism. In 1909, de Laguna separates ‘immediatism’ from ‘instrumentalism’ as two distinct tendencies within pragmatism, rejecting the former and embracing the latter. By thus situating her critique, I argue that, while successful against Deweyan non-analytic ‘immediatism’ (and possibly also James’s Bergsonist variant of this view), it cannot, without further ado, be charitably interpreted as applicable against Russell’s analytic theory of sense-data. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo plantea la tesis de que la filosofía fenomenológica de la percepción de Merleau-Ponty, en la medida en que es crítica tanto del empirismo como del idealismo, apunta hacia una forma de realismo. Para argumentar en favor de esta idea y mostrar la vigencia del pensador francés, se contrastan los planteamientos de éste con posturas del “realismo especulativo” de Meillassoux, del “nuevo realismo” de Gabriel y del “realismo plural” de Taylor y Dreyfus. Se propone el concepto de “realismo (...) ontológico” para apuntalar la postura de Merleau-Ponty y a los planteamientos de este ensayo.This essay claims that the thesis of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, insofar that it criticizes both empirism and idealism, points towards a form of realism. To argue this, and to show the validity of the work of the French thinker, I contrast his thoughts with the approaches of “speculative realism” of Meillassoux, of the “new realism” of Gabriel and of “plural realism” of Taylor and Dreyfus. I propose the concept of “ontological realism” in order to support the posture of Merleau-Ponty and the arguments of this essay. (shrink)

This article compares two attempts to return to realism after Kant’s ‘Copernican Revolution’. Quentin Meillassoux, representing the ‘speculative realism’ school, rejects both Kantian and post-Kantian idealism in favour of a materialism based on the epistemology of the modern sciences. But Meillassoux is unaware of the element of choice in his philosophical position, and he does not solve the essential problem posed by idealism which concerns the place of the subject in being. Ricœur, on the other hand, sublates Kant by a (...) deeper embrace of finitude that leads to the self-displacement of the subject, and a ‘Second Copernican Revolution’, one that he freely admits can only be arrived at by Jaspersian ‘Philosophical Faith’. The article concludes by showing how crossing the border into theological faith offers a virtue-ethical perspective on the question of realism and idealism: it is in fact the choice between a childlike humility that receives reality as it is, and an arrogant self-positing that puts the subject in the position of God. (shrink)

As noted by philosopher Robert Pasnau, “Our standard view of sound is incoherent” at best (Pasnau, 1999, p 309). A quick perusal of how we discuss and represent sound in our day-to-day language readily highlights several inconsistencies. Sound might be described roughly as emanating from the location of its material source (the ‘crack of the snare drum over there’ distal theory), as a disruption somewhere in the space in-between the sounding object and the listener (the ‘longitudinal compression waves in the (...) air’ medial theory), located with the hearer (the ‘inner sensations’ proximal theory), or perhaps entirely devoid of spatial characteristics (aspatial theory). Beyond these topographic ruminations on the location of sounds, more profound disagreements arise around what sorts of things sounds are. A broad array of theories treat sounds as events, as object-like particulars that travel through space, as properties of their sounding objects, etc., with many subtle ontological variations springing up along the way. -/- The philosophical plot further thickens as we expand from defining the ontology and spatial position of simple primary sounds to the phenomenon of echoes, with some theories arguably faring better than others. The focus here will be on Casey O’Callaghan’s formulation of sounds as disturbance events that bind primary sounds and their echoes together as one (O’Callaghan, 2007a, pp 126-127). In short, the claim is that echoes are identical to their associated primary sound and are not distinct sounds in their own right. Described as the ‘Primary Sound Account of Echoes’ (‘PSAE’) in Gregory Fowler’s ‘Against the Primary Sound Account of Echoes,’ the intricacies of this particular aspect of O’Callaghan’s theory of a primary sound’s connection to its echo bears considerably upon the workability of distal theories of sound in general (Fowler, 2013, p 466). -/- In this paper, I expand upon Fowler’s work by demonstrating additional instances where the PSAE fails to hold when subjected to increased scrutiny across a broader range of echo scenarios, presenting a significant issue for proponents of distal theories of sound. (shrink)

It will be argued that the “problem of demarcation” and the defining of “expertise” share common structural features that can lead to either a type of strong relativism or ultra-scepticism. Appropriating notions from Thomas Kuhn’s. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions it will be argued that an “expert” in a field that has a dominant paradigm is different to an “expert” in a field that has multiple competing paradigms. To illustrate my argument I will look at the field of economics and (...) the competing claims of experts over the likelihood of a global recession circa 2005. To this I will apply Goldman’s criteria for expertise assessment and by-way of a hypothetical non-expert show that this criteria becomes deficient in expertise assessment if we only hold to what I have called a “methodological” definition of expertise. I will also introduce the notion of the “anti-expert” who is an equivalent expert, but their whole field is dependent upon the dominant paradigm for its meaning. That is, its existence is parasitic upon the success of the paradigm, rather than as a “revolutionary science” which looks to overthrown or change the paradigm. (shrink)