This essay takes issue with two possible stances in comparative and intercultural philosophy. First, there is the idea of ascertaining a method or conditions of possibility before engaging in intercultural comparison. This amounts to contemplating a form prior to any content. Second, there is the idea that a plurality of given philosophical traditions exist that do not have to be held together by a notion of what philosophy is. This is equivalent to asserting a diversity of content without giving it (...) a form. In both cases, the disunity of form and content subverts comprehension of universality. After problematizing both stances, I will seek to retrieve a notion of universality, drawing from Hegel’s insights into the peculiar character of philosophy. For Hegel, philosophy has the character of life, which does not allow for the isolation of form or content. Philosophy thus conceived does not apply any methods but is its own method. (shrink)

In this article, the author analyses the relationship between two prominent philosophers of the 20th century in Europe and Great Britain—Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell. According to a lot of correspondence available nowadays we can reconstruct not only the environment of thought in Cambridge in the beginning and the first half of the 20th century but to find out some very personal, subjective grounds for the changes of relationship between thinkers, misunderstandings between them. Such a kind of biographical-historical reconstruction does (...) not interfere but helps to understand better the origin, development, and criticism of philosophical ideas and theories. In this context, the personal relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein, their friendship for more than 30 years, and mutual assistance, both intellectual and business, played a big role in the development and formation of both philosophers as philosophers. Even mutual disagreements and criticism of ideas over time helped them to see the shortcomings and sometimes even complete failure of their theses and statements. First, the author describes in detail the role of Russell in Wittgenstein’s life: first meeting and inspiration to do philosophy, support in studies, assistance in the publication of Wittgenstein’s first book, support, and facilitation in returning to Cambridge in 1929, obtaining PhD degree and receiving Trinity College grant. Second, the author considers the fundamental points of philosophical disagreements between the two philosophers and Wittgenstein’s critique of Russell’s ideas. (shrink)

Two opposed movements of thought threaten philosophy as an autonomous practice from the inside: scientific naturalism and quietism. Naturalism (qua methodological thesis) threatens to turn philosophy into a mere ancilla of the sciences, quietism understood as the prescription to remain silent in philosophy would not countenance any more "positive" philosophy. This book reconstructs naturalism and quietism such that it becomes clear naturalism does have the potential to end philosophy as an autonomous practice and that quietism, correctly understood, does not. To (...) this end, this book provides arguments against the prevailing orthodox status of naturalism and a heterogenous reading of Wittgenstein's metaphilosophical quietism as the rejection of a certain kind of theories in philosophy, namely quasi-scientific theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the difficulty of distinguishing between science fiction and philosophy. The boundary between these genres is somewhat vague. There is a “neutral zone” separating the genres. But this neutral zone is often transgressed. One key distinction considered here is that between entertainment and edification. Another crucial element is found in the importance of the author’s apparent self-consciousness of these distinctions. Philosophy seeks to edify, and philosophers are often deliberately focused on thinking about the question of the (...) borders that distinguish genres. Science fiction is more interested in entertainment, and narrative authors tend to care less about policing the border. This distinction is a pragmatic one. And canonical authors often violate the boundary. I examine key authors to make this point, including Plato, Kant, and H.G. Wells. My discussion shows that these canonical authors wandered into the neutral zone in their own work, reminding us that the boundaries we draw around genres are arbitrary and subject to transgression. (shrink)

A theory of aesthetic value should explain what makes aesthetic value good. Current views about what makes aesthetic value good privilege the individual’s encounter with aesthetic value—listening to music, reading a novel, writing a poem, or viewing a painting. What makes aesthetic value good is its benefit to the individual appreciator. But engagement with aesthetic value is often a social, participatory matter: sharing and discussing aesthetic goods, imitating aesthetic agents, dancing, cooking, dining, or making music together. This article argues that (...) we should understand aesthetic value in a way that centers these social forms of aesthetic engagement. To this end, the article argues that there is a social practice of aesthetic valuing, characterized as a participatory practice governed by the value of aesthetic community, which engages us in the social development of our capacities for discretionary valuing and volitional openness. Current theories of aesthetic value have trouble capturing the character of the practice of aesthetic valuing, and this motivates a novel communitarian theory of aesthetic value: aesthetic value is what is worthy of engagement in the social practice of aesthetic valuing. (shrink)

Comparing Buddhist and contemporary analytic views about mereological composition reveals significant dissimilarities about the purposes that constrain successful answers to mereological questions, the kinds of considerations taken to be probative in justifying those answers, and the value of mereological inquiry. I develop these dissimilarities by examining three questions relevant to those who deny the existence of composite wholes. The first is a question of justification: What justifies denying the existence of composite wholes as more reasonable than affirming their existence? The (...) second is a question of ontology: Under what conditions are many partless individuals arranged composite-wise? The third is a question of reasonableness: Why, if there are no composites available to experience, do “the folk” find it reasonable to believe there are? I motivate each question, sketch some analytic answers for each, develop in more detail answers from the Theravādin Buddhist scholar Buddhaghosa, and extract comparative lessons. (shrink)

Several authors claim that, according to Wittgenstein, ethics has no particular subject matter and that, consequently, there is and can be no such thing as meta-ethics. These authors argue that, for Wittgenstein, a sentence’s belonging to ethics is a classification by use rather than by subject matter and that ethics is a pervasive dimension of life rather than a distinguishable region or strand of it. In this article, I will critically examine the reasons and arguments given for these claims. In (...) my view, a Wittgensteinian perspective does not exclude the possibilities of doing meta-ethics and of there being a particular subject matter of moral philosophy. These alleged impossibilities are not the distinguishing marks of Wittgensteinian moral philosophy. What distinguishes Wittgensteinian moral philosophy from traditional moral philosophy is, rather, its emphasis on alternative ways of thinking about the subject matter of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Cognitivists and non-cognitivists in contemporary meta-ethics tend to assume that moral judgments are semantically uniform. That is, they share the assumption that either all moral judgments express beliefs, or they all express non-beliefs. But what if some moral judgments express beliefs and others do not? Then moral judgments are not semantically uniform and the question “Cognitivist or non-cognitivist?” poses a false dilemma. I will question the assumption that moral judgments are semantically uniform. First, I will explain what I mean by (...) the assumption (section 2). I will call this assumption SUM, the semantic uniformity of moral judgments. Second, I will provide some examples in order to illustrate that SUM cannot be taken for granted (section 3). Third, I will try to understand, using ideas from Wittgenstein, why SUM has nevertheless so often been taken for granted (section 4). Fourth, I will discuss some authors in contemporary meta-ethics who have noted the false dilemma between cognitivism and non-cognitivism and evaluate the solutions they propose for overcoming it (section 5). Fifth, I will indicate, again with some help from Wittgenstein, how meta-ethical research about moral judgments is possible without the assumption that morality is semantically uniform (section 6). (shrink)

The current debate concerning musical profundity was instigated, and set up by Peter Kivy in his book Music Alone (1990) as part of his comprehensive defense of enhanced formalism, a position he championed vigorously throughout his entire career. Kivy’s view of music led him to maintain utter skepticism regarding musical profundity. The scholarly debate that ensued centers on the question whether or not (at least some) music can be profound. In this study I would like to take the opportunity to (...) relate Wittgenstein’s ideas on music to this current debate, thereby achieving a twofold goal: not only to reintroduce Wittgenstein’s ideas into the current debate, but also to use the current debate as a foil to better appreciating Wittgenstein’s otherness as a philosopher of music. I argue that Wittgenstein’s unique philosophical response to the Romantic framing of the discourse concerning musical profundity —specifically, its threefold emphasis on the specificity, aboutness, and artistically exalted status of music— occasioned a view, which was bound to be glossed over by a philosophical tradition, whose origins had made it inimical to Wittgenstein’s original philosophical insights. I conclude that, in a sense, Wittgenstein occasions a paradigm shift by his philosophical thrust to undo the gravitational forces which form the current debate: the very idea of aboutness pertaining to music, and the very idea that a clear line could ever be drawn between music and language. (shrink)

Reification, a central theme in radical social/political theory from the 1920s onward, has started falling out of fashion since the 1970s, a period when a number of crucial alterations in the compo...

A longstanding debate in the philosophy of action opposes causalists to anti-causalists. Causalists claim the authority of Davidson, who offered powerful arguments to the effect that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. Anti-causalists claim the authority of Wittgenstein, who offered equally powerful arguments to the effect that reasons cannot be causes. My aim in this paper is to achieve a rapprochement between Davidsonian causalists and Wittgensteinian anti-causalists by showing how both sides can agree that reasons are not causes, but that (...) intentional explanations are causal explanations. To this end, I first defuse Davidson’s Challenge, an argument purporting to show that intentional explanations are best made sense of as being explanatory because reasons are causes. I argue that Wittgenstein furnishes anti-causalists with the means to resist this conclusion. I then argue that this leaves the Master Argument for the claim that intentional explanations are causal explanations, but that by distinguishing between a narrow and a wide conception of causal explanation, we can resolve the stalemate between Wittgensteinian anti-causalists impressed by the thought that reasons cannot be causes and Davidsonian causalists impressed by the thought that intentional explanations must be causal explanations. (shrink)

What does it mean to know how to do something? This book develops a comprehensive account of know-how, a crucial epistemic goal for all who care about getting things right, not only with respect to the facts, but also with respect to practice. It proposes a novel interpretation of the seminal work of Gilbert Ryle, according to which know-how is a competence, a complex ability to do well in an activity in virtue of guidance by an understanding of what it (...) takes to do so. This idea is developed into a full-fledged account, Rylean responsibilism, which understands know-how in terms of the normative guidance and responsible control of one's acts. Within the complex current debate about know-how, this view occupies a middle ground position between the intellectualist claim that know-how just is propositional or objectual knowledge and the anti-intellectualist claim that know-how just is ability. In genuine know-how, practical ability and guiding intellect are both necessary, but essentially intertwined. (shrink)

This paper examines the almost ineradicable misconception of Wittgenstein's alleged antagonism to science as evidenced through some characteristic disparaging comments by world-renowned scientists, notably by Anton Zeilinger. Above all, he criticizes Wittgenstein on the basis of the opening sentence of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, "The world is all that is the case", which he regards as expressing *"the naive world-view"*1 of a *"typical philosopher of classical physics"*. He proposes an extension in agreement with the findings of quantum theory, namely by the (...) clause *"… and all that can be the case"* (Zeilinger 2003, 231). -/- It will become apparent, however, that this amplification is redundant, that Wittgenstein was in tune with modern physics, that a surprising number of his philosophical concepts are in agreement with it, and that various quantum pundits consider them to be relevant. (shrink)

This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that Wittgenstein's distinction (...) between bad and vacuous modern music is analogous to Schenker's distinction between the compositional fallacies of the progressive and the reactionary composers of his time. Concomitantly, Wittgenstein's philosophically problematic notion of good modern music transcended the conceptual framework of both Schenker and Spengler. In this context, I examine Wittgenstein's remarks on Gustav Mahler as well as his remark on the music of the future as monophony, which, I conclude, should be understood ultimately as an ellipsis of his much later view of musical meaning and intelligibility. (shrink)

I argue for the Wittgensteinian thesis that mathematical statements are expressions of norms, rather than descriptions of the world. An expression of a norm is a statement like a promise or a New Year's resolution, which says that someone is committed or entitled to a certain line of action. A expression of a norm is not a mere description of a regularity of human behavior, nor is it merely a descriptive statement which happens to entail a norms. The view can (...) be thought of as a sort of logicism for the logical expressivist---a person who believes that the purpose of logical language is to make explicit commitments and entitlements that are implicit in ordinary practice. The thesis that mathematical statements are expression of norms is a kind of logicism, not because it says that mathematics can be reduced to logic, but because it says that mathematical statements play the same role as logical statements. ;I contrast my position with two sets of views, an empiricist view, which says that mathematical knowledge is acquired and justified through experience, and a cluster of nativist and apriorist views, which say that mathematical knowledge is either hardwired into the human brain, or justified a priori, or both. To develop the empiricist view, I look at the work of Kitcher and Mill, arguing that although their ideas can withstand the criticisms brought against empiricism by Frege and others, they cannot reply to a version of the critique brought by Wittgenstein in the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. To develop the nativist and apriorist views, I look at the work of contemporary developmental psychologists, like Gelman and Gallistel and Karen Wynn, as well as the work of philosophers who advocate the existence of a mathematical intuition, such as Kant, Husserl, and Parsons. After clarifying the definitions of "innate" and "a priori," I argue that the mechanisms proposed by the nativists cannot bring knowledge, and the existence of the mechanisms proposed by the apriorists is not supported by the arguments they give. (shrink)

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cites the Gestalt psychologist Wolfgang Koehler almost as often as he cites William James in his posthumously published writings on the philosophy of psychology. Yet, few treatments of the Wittgenstein–Koehler relation in the philosophical literature could be called sustained discussions. Moreover, most of them treat Koehler as a mere whipping boy for Wittgenstein, one more opportunity to criticize the practice of psychologists. This article emphasizes how much the two thinkers agreed, and the extent to which some (...) of Wittgenstein’s work not only agreed with but also has a logical structure parallel to some of Koehler’s text. Both thinkers hold that the theoretician should strive to recognize and resist the impulse to step in and purify, distill, streamline, or exclude phenomena: common, everyday experience for Koehler and common, everyday uses of words for Wittgenstein. They both aim to counteract the tendency to discount and disparage what is ordinary and common. (shrink)

Reason, objectivity, and human nature are now suspect ideas. Among postmodern thinkers, Richard Rorty has advanced an especially forceful critique of these notions. Drawing partly on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Rorty contends that objectivity is no more than a metaphysical name for intersubjective agreement, and that “human nature” is an empty category, there being nothing beneath history and culture. Wittgenstein himself, however, recognized within the world's many civilizations “the common behavior of mankind,” without which Rorty's ethnocentric “solidarity” would be inconceivable. (...) This common form of life—the life of those who speak—encompasses countless human activities that presuppose and are interwoven with the concepts of reason and objectivity. (shrink)

This article assembles reasons for holding that the propaedeutic rationale for much of the discourse produced by ‘ethogenic science’ is inadequate. One reason is that the interactional principles that are the pretext for assembling the situational vignettes, which are the staple of ethogenics, are truisms and do not require documentation. Our familiarity with the risks and rewards of social life is already considerable and it is not clear how, or to what end, ethogenic science can augment them. Moreover ethogenic theorists (...) do not explain how a discipline that eschews experiment and causal inquiry can transcend the understanding of the subject and how, if it does not, it can do more than provide perspicuous views of the social facts and practices already known, or at least within reach of unspecialized observation. The programme of uncovering the mechanisms by which we register and evince our social standing is not one of which we are given a coherent account and is, in any case, not to be served by multiplying examples of how respect and contempt are merited or meted out. It is suggested that the need such discourse surreptiously meets is that of an autonomous craving for Wittgensteinian Übersichten - overviews - of the vicissitudes of social existence. (shrink)

Many contributors of the debate about knowledge by testimony concentrate on the problem of justification. In my paper I will stress a different point – the concept of testimony itself. As a starting point I will use the definitional proposal of Jennifer Lackey. She holds that the concept of testimony should be regarded as entailing two aspects – one corresponding to the speaker, the other one to the hearer. I will adopt the assumption that we need to deal with both (...) aspects. Nevertheless, I will show that her concept – which suggests regarding testimony as an act of communication conveying information – is too broad and, therefore, I will end up with a different twofold definition. (shrink)

O presente manual tem como intenção constituir um guia para uma disciplina introdutória de filosofia da linguagem. Foi elaborado a partir da leccionação da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I na Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto desde 2001. A disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I ocupa um semestre lectivo e proporciona aos estudantes o primeiro contacto sistemático com a área da filosofia da linguagem. Pretende-se que este manual ofereça aos estudantes os instrumentos necessários não apenas para acompanhar uma (...) iniciação ao campo da filosofia da linguagem mas também para o estudo e a investigação autónomos posteriores. Para isso é percorrido um trajecto que conduz das intuições pré-teóricas acerca de linguagem, de que todos dispomos, até um conhecimento disciplinar específico, histórico e temático, da filosofia da linguagem. Em termos práticos, são considerados como precedentes da disciplina de Filosofia da Linguagem I – mesmo se, pelo existem actualmente precedências em sentido estrito – as disciplinas de Lógica I e II e de Filosofia do Conhecimento I e II. Os programas dessas disciplinas nos últimos anos estiveram presentes por trás da elaboração do manual. (shrink)

The Greeks had a ready answer for what happens when the mind suddenly finds the answer to a question for which it had been searching: insight was regarded as a gift of the Muses, its origins were divine. It served to highlight the Greeks'' belief that there are some things which are not meant to be scientifically explained. The essence of insight is that it comes from some supernatural source: unpredicted and unfettered. In other words, the origins of insight are (...) unconscious, and hence, unexplainable. Wittgenstein felt that, as long as there continues to be a noun expression like to have a moment of insight which functions in the same way as the expression to have a hunger pang, thereby inducing us to treat moment of insight as the name of an experience, then people will keep stumbling over the same puzzling difficulties and find themselves staring at something which no explanation seems capable of clearing up. To the founders of AI, this argument reeked of obscurantism. The moment of insight, they felt, is indeed a mystery, but it is one that begs to be explained in causal terms. Indeed, the problem of insight served as one of the leading problems in the evolution of AI. Hence anyone interested in the foundations of AI is compelled to examine the manner in which the early pioneers of the field sought to explain the eureka experience. In this paper I will look at some of the key conceptual developments which paved the way for Newell and Simon''s theory of GPS: the fundamental changes in the notion of the unconscious — the emergence of the cognitive unconscious — which took place in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. In so doing, I hope to clarify what Wittgenstein may have had in mind in his strictures against mechanist attempts to analyse the nature of insight. (shrink)

[A. W. Moore] There are criteria of ineffability whereby, even if the concept of ineffability can never serve to modify truth, it can sometimes serve to modify other things, specifically understanding. This allows for a reappraisal of the dispute between those who adopt a traditional reading of Wittgenstein's Tractatus and those who adopt the new reading recently championed by Diamond, Conant, and others. By maintaining that what the nonsense in the Tractatus is supposed to convey is ineffable understanding, rather than (...) ineffable truth, we can do considerable justice to each of these readings. We can also do considerable justice to the Tractatus. /// [Peter Sullivan] Moore proposes to cut between 'traditional' and 'new' approaches to the Tractatus, suggesting that Wittgenstein's intention is to convey, through the knowing use of nonsense, ineffable understanding. I argue, first, that there is indeed room for a proposal of Moore's general kind. Secondly, though, I question whether Moore's actual proposal is not more in tune with Wittgenstein's later thought than with the attitude of the Tractatus. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

In the opening paragraph of “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” Alan Turing famously notes that “if the meaning of the words ‘machine’ and ‘think’ are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, ‘Can machines think?’ is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll.” He then immediately responds, “But this is absurd.” But why is this absurd, if indeed (...) it is? We think that the suggested method is absurd because the answer to the question might not follow from the meaning of the words alone—it might critically depend on what machines can be built to do. Further, the ordinary use of the terms might display shallow biases or superstitions that we want to set aside, or overcome, in pursuing a science or philosophy of mind. However, we do not think that the method is absurd insofar as we are interested in getting clear on “the normal use of the words,” as Turing puts it. And we believe that getting clear on the normal use of words like “machine” and “think” is relevant even if we then want to move beyond the ordinary usage in our theorizing. But the best way to figure out how ordinary people use language is via empirical investigation. (shrink)

Responding to Michael Luntley's article, ‘Learning, Empowerment and Judgement’, the author shows he cannot successfully make the following three moves: (1) dissolve the analytic distinction between learning by training and learning by reasoning, while advocating the latter; (2) diminish the role of training in Wittgenstein's philosophy, nor attribute to him a rationalist model of learning; and (3) turn to empirical research as a way of solving the philosophical problems he addresses through Wittgenstein. Drawing on José Medina's analysis of the fundamental (...) role of training in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the paper offers a tour of key passages in the Investigations and other works to develop an understanding of what Wittgenstein meant by ‘mastery of techniques’. In opposition to Luntley's liberal‐individual, or his subject as rational agent, the author explores Wittgenstein's non‐foundationalist, forms of life approach to how we act with agreement. More effort must be given to differentiating Wittgenstein's view from that of the analytic school, which Luntley appears to echo despite his criticism of the analytic divide. (shrink)

This collection maintains a dialogue between the analytic and continental traditions, while aspiring to situate itself beyond the analytic-continental divide. It divides into four parts, Methodologies, Truth and Meaning, Metaphysics and Ontology, and Values, Personhood and Agency, though there is considerable overlap among the categories. History and temporality are recurrent themes, but there is a lot of metaphysics generally, with some philosophy of language, philosophy of social science, ethics, political philosophy and epistemology. Less prominent is a pragmatic, deflationary attitude, and (...) at a number of points I argue for the virtues of such an approach. (shrink)

This paper aims to distinguish Wittgenstein’s concept of ‘form of life’ from other concepts or expressions that have been confused or conflated with it, such as ‘language-game’, ‘certainty’, ‘patterns of life’, ‘ways of living’ and ‘facts of living’. Competing interpretations of Wittgenstein’s ‘form of life’ are reviewed, and it is concluded that Wittgenstein intended both a singular and a plural use of the concept; with, where the human is concerned, a single human form of life characterized by innumerable forms of (...) human life. (shrink)

In this paper, I lend credence to the move toward non-reductive religious epistemology by highlighting the systematic failings of Alvin Plantinga’s seminal, religious epistemology when it comes to surmounting the Gettier Problem. Taking Plantinga’s account as archetypal, I argue that we have systematic reasons to believe that no reductive theory of knowledge can viably surmount the Gettier Problem, that the future of religious epistemology lies in non-reductive models of knowledge.

Kai Nielsen and Felicity McCutcheon have each in their own way taken issue with the received view that Wittgenstein’s remarks on religious language are to be construed as a form of “fideism”. They each provide sharply divergent views on Wittgenstein’s remarks on the meaning of religious language and, indeed, the importance of religion itself. These differences, however, serve to bring into relief both Wittgenstein’s recognition of the genuinely descriptive nature of ordinary religious discourse and his underlying political sensitivity. The paper (...) reflects on these differences in the the recent works of Nielsen and McCutcheon on Wittgenstein’s alleged fedeism.“…speak the old language… but speak it in a way that is appropriate to the modern world, without on that account necessarily being in accordance with its taste.” (Wittgenstein, 1980, 60e). (shrink)

Drawing heavily on Wittgenstein, Winch’s The Idea of a Social Science advanced a forceful and still valuable critique of positivist/empiricist conceptions of social science. In its more self-confident assertions concerning the nature of philosophy and society, however, Winch failed to recognize Wittgenstein’s acknowledgement of and appreciation for the indeterminacy and unsettled character of social and moral life.

In the aftermath of a normalized Foucaultian world with an all encompassing web of biopower, one remaining hope is to cultivate nimbleness. Nimbleness is an embodied aesthetic sensitivity to the material presence. Cultivating nimbleness is a particular style of cultivation; it is to willfully gather together one’s self in the wake of a formative force far richer than the derivative web of living power relationships of human embeddness within a horizon of social, economical, political and historical subjectivating power relations; which (...) are chronicled and labeled by Michel Foucault as the normalizing practices of biopower. In other words to have freedom, one must start by rejecting the categories and labels normally internalized in order to relearn to learn from the material presence. Such a style of cultivation is a means of resisting normalizing power relations which co-opt cultivating practices to engross their own dominance which has had the by-product of an impotence to negate the gross material injustices present. This normalizing style of cultivation is a prevalent, corrupted, semblance which denies the importance of beauty for that of efficiency, rejects non-human purposiveness, and limits its measure of ethics to short term economical pragmatism. The thesis acknowledges that something is awry with the world and that giving care to beauty might help. The aim is to examine the event of Beauty as depicted by the philosopher Immanuel Kant and to apply this characterization to elective architectural spaces such that it may motivate individuals to cultivate their own nimbleness in relation to a formative force of nature. However given the revealed need for sensitivity to the particular material presence, the thesis can not be a rule book or catalog for beautiful design. Rather it is a rehabilitation for architects who are already heterospatially curious, with the desired outcome of architects cultivating their own nimbleness to reflectively judge as a ground up, multi-node, rhizomatic means of resistance to normalizing power practices as manifest in bad architecture. (shrink)

I propose to sketch my views on several aspects of the philosophy of mathematics that I take to be especially relevant to philosophy as a whole. The relevance of my discussion would, I think, become more evident, if the reader keeps in mind the function of (the philosophy of) mathematics in philosophy in providing us with more transparent aspects of general issues. I shall consider: (1) three familiar examples; (2) logic and our conceptual frame; (3) communal agreement and objective certainty; (...) (4) the transcommunal universality of mathematics; (5) the big jump to the potential infinite; (6) the reconciliation of local creation with the hypothesis of discovery; (7) Platonism as realism plus conceptualism; (8) foundational studies and mathematical practice; and (9) the decomposition of philosophical disagreements. The views of Gödel and Wittgenstein are emphasized in order to add specificity to the discussions. (shrink)

Our task will be to demonstrate that there are instructive parallels between Hebrew and Buddhist concepts of self. There are at least five main constituents (skandhas in Sanskrit) of the Hebrew self: (1) nepe as living being; (2) rah as indwelling spirit; (3) lb as heart-mind; (4) bāār as flesh; and (5) dām as blood. We will compare these with the five Buddhist skandhas: disposition (samskāra), consciousness (vijñāna), feeling (vedanā), perception (samjñā), and body (rpa). Generally, what we will discover is (...) that both Buddhists and Hebrews have a 'bundle' theory of the self; both see the body as an essential part of personal identity; both overcome the modernist distinction of the inner and the outer; and both avoid language about the will as a distinct faculty. In sum, both present us with a fully somatic and nondualistic view of being human. (shrink)

An examination of the genre of philosophical autobiography sheds light on the role of personal judgment alongside objective rationality in philosophy. Building on Monk's conception of philosophical biography, philosophical autobiography can be seen as any autobiography that reveals some interplay between life and thought. It is argued that almost all autobiographies by philosophers are philosophical because the recounting of one's own life is almost invariably a form of extended speech act of self-revelation. When a philosopher is the autobiographer, this self-revelation (...) illuminates the interplay between thought, life, and personality. Understanding how this works allows us to address three problems of biography raised by Honderich: how to give an account of something as large and complex as a human life; how a life-story is also a judgment; and how we can justify identifying one part of a causal circumstance as 'the cause'. There is also a new ethical problem raised about the autobiographer's right to make public details of a shared private life. (shrink)

This work tries to show that the metapoetic meditation developed by Ramos Rosa throughout his very extensive poetic work not only did not condemn his poetry to a cold cloister in the textual plane, but also contributed decisively to the opening to the real, to the effect of evidence and to the sense of communion that would become increasingly sensitive in his writing. To this end, we propose to clarify the thread that, under the aegis of the poetic lucidity consecrated (...) by the author, leads us from his metapoetic meditation to a poetic meditation of an ontophenomenological and sapiential nature, that is, from his metapoetry to a poetry whose wisdom provides a set of intuitions with a sapiential and philosophical accent. It is our intention to contribute, in this way, to the understanding of the (cognitive and ontological) demand and scope of Rosa’s poetic path, as well as, collaterally, to the debate around topics such as poetic (self-)reference, the ontological status of the poetic text or the philosophy-literature relationship. (shrink)

In this paper, we deal with the issue of contradictory beliefs, particularly with regard to Philosophical Counseling: both voices from the philosophical tradition (with no claim of being exhaustive!) and concepts developed by philosophical practitioners will be considered, in order to make clear what a wide range of resources for dealing with contradictions is available to the philosopher who may wish to engage in Philosophical Counseling. Among the philosophical practitioners, we devote special consideration to Ben Mijuskovic and Gerd Achenbach, and (...) this for two main reasons: first, because the issue of contradiction plays a central role in their concept of Philosophical Counseling and, accordingly, it is given special consideration in their writings; second, because their approaches to Philosophical Counseling are so different that by looking at them one can get an impression of the variety of the positions one can adopt in Philosophical Counseling with respect to the issue of contradiction. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to develop further a quasi-fideistic Wittgensteinian view on the nature of religious beliefs proposed by Duncan Pritchard (Pritchard, 2000; Pritchard, 2012a; Pritchard, 2012b; Pritchard, 2015; Pritchard forthcoming). According to Pritchard, Wittgenstein's thoughts on religion may be connected with the epistemological perspective developed in his final notebooks On Certainty (Wittgenstein, 1969), where Wittgenstein argues that our empirical beliefs rest upon grounds (i.e., hinge commitments) that cannot be rationally defended, but that we nonetheless find certain. (...) Pritchard proposes that the idea of hinge commitments may be extended to religious beliefs as well, and argues that if this is done, religious beliefs may turn out to be no less defensible than our nonreligious, empirical beliefs. Pritchard provides a preliminary analysis of the kinds of hinge commitments as well as of their characteristics. In this paper our main concern is to engage in further analysis of these commitments. Such analysis seems to be necessary if we are to grasp the way faith relates to the rest of human knowledge. Moreover, we suggest that the best way to approach this task is by asking how we acquire basic hinge commitments. In order to answer this question we need to consult not only philosophers but also developmental and social psychologists, and see how children acquire knowledge of religious as well as nonreligious beliefs. (shrink)

The paper argues that Plato’s dialogue form creates a Quinean “opaque context” that segregates the assertions by Plato’s characters in the dialogues from both Plato and the real world with the result that the dialogues require a hermeneutical interpretation. Sec. I argues that since the assertions in the dialogues are located inside an opaque context, the forms of life of the characters in the dialogues acquires primary philosophical importance for Plato. The second section argues that the thesis of Sec. I (...) coheres with the claim in Plato’s Seventh Letter that since philosophical truth is incommunicable by means of language it is of primary importance for philosophers to develop proper “schemes of living”. Sec. III argues since the forms of life of the characters portrayed in the dialogues is of primary philosophical importance for Plato, and since hermeneutical methods are required to interpret emerging forms of life, Plato’s dialogues are positively crafted to be read hermeneutically. Sec IV argues that Heidegger, who is famous for seeing Plato’s views as antithetical to his own hermeneutical approach, is mistaken, and that Plato’s real views are, in principle, more akin to Heidegger’s views than he thinks. (shrink)

This article explores the philosophies of Heidegger and Wittgenstein to illustrate the thesis that philosophy is a human activity exhibiting a unity of investigative and therapeutic aims. For both philosophers, the purpose of philosophical concepts is to point toward a path of transformation rather than to explain. For both, a first step on this path is the recognition of constraining illusions, whether conventional or metaphysical. For both, such illusions are sedimented in linguistic practices, and for both, philosophical investigation is a (...) way of emancipating thought and life from illusion by bringing what is already prereflectively understood into the light of thematic explicitness. And what both philosophers bring into thematic explicitness are aspects of the context-embeddedness and finitude of human existence. It is hoped that comparing the works of these two philosophers will unveil features of each that are more difficult to discern in the works of either considered in isolation. (shrink)

I observe Iris Murdoch's distinctive use of the word ‘flux’ in discussion of Sartre's Nausea and show that her usage is persuasive and revolutionary, first as Sartre exegesis, second as Heraclitus exegesis, and throughout as a contribution to the philosophy of language. Murdoch's usage of ‘flux’ frames a comparison of Sartre's Roquentin with other figures who have had similarly flowing experience but without nausea. Roquentin's plight is shown to be ‘a philosopher's plight’ precipitated by a defective theory of descriptive success. (...) I then show how the Heraclitean fragments would support Murdoch's treatment of flux and on close analysis contradict the established view exemplified in the work of Wittgenstein and Jonathan Barnes. Flux is not a variety of change, and the river image ‘cannot be analysed into non-metaphorical components without a loss of substance’. (shrink)

Enactivists seek to revolutionize the new sciences of the mind. In doing so, they promote adopting a thoroughly anti-intellectualist starting point, one that sees mentality as rooted in engaged, embodied activity as opposed to detached forms of thought. In advocating the so-called embodied turn, enactivists touch on recurrent themes of central importance in Wittgenstein's later philosophy. More than this, today's enactivists characterize the nature of minds and how they fundamentally relate to the world in ways that not only echo but (...) fully agree with many of the later Wittgenstein's trademark philosophical remarks on the same topics. (shrink)

I've been teaching Wittgenstein's On Certainty lately, and coming again to the question of Wittgenstein's relation to pragmatism.1 This is of course a question Wittgenstein raises himself when he writes in the middle of that work: 'So I am trying to say something that sounds like pragmatism'.2 He adds to this sentence the claim that 'Here I am being thwarted by a kind of Weltanschauung', but in the remarks to follow I want to focus not on Wittgenstein's differences from or (...) antipathy to pragmatism, nor on the world view that he felt thwarted him, but on those elements of his philosophy that sound like pragmatism-as he says. I will work primarily from On Certainty but also from the Philosophical Investigations, which intersects with that late, unfinished work at various places, and which also, at times, sounds like pragmatism. (shrink)

Given the coterie of philosophers focused on everyday aesthetics, it's fascinating that gift reception has heretofore managed to escape their scrutiny. To enact a gift, recipients begin by imagining its use. On this level, gifts serve as a litmus test. In luring us, we're taken out of our normal ways of being to experience a different side of ourselves. Enacting a gift is thus a kind of performance, whose value depends on the donee’s interpretation, just as exhibitions, concerts, staged plays (...) or books are performances of visual art, scores, scripts or texts, whose interpretations demonstrate their aesthetic value. To develop the relationship between enacting gifts and performing artworks, I begin by surveying junctures along the gift-event’s arc: reply, imagination, trust, recognition, transformation and memory. Transformations arising from agonistic gifts strike me as significant because they characterise the way gifts challenge our beliefs, eventually altering our values. That we grow to love gifts, which we originally rejected out of hand, casts doubt on self-knowledge. Enacted gifts handily challenge self-knowledge’s twin features: authority and transparency. As this paper indicates, gift reception helps both to understand ourselves better and to remove the obstacles to what Quassim Cassim calls Substantive Self-Knowledge. (shrink)