Rationality of induction as entropic minimization: In favour of a fundamental aspect of the epistemology of Mariano Artigas –his commitment to the quest for truth on the part of the scientific theory– I argue about the rationality of the process of induction, both the induction of general laws from particular facts of experience and the inference of postulates from the experimental laws which form the empirical basis of the theory. This is argued by showing that we minimize the entropy of (...) the information when making an induction, so that we just do what usually the reason does. (shrink)

A key phrase in working with horses, “bringing up life” is taken in its literal sense of moving expressively and energetically in order to animate the movements of the horses. The phrase also points to both what the radical phenomenologist Michel Henry referred to as the auto-affectivity of life and the vital powers of an essential hetero-affectivity. “Bringing up life” is the kinetic, kinaesthetic, affective expression of this fundamental impression that life is shared with other animate beings and that it (...) is all the more powerfully felt for being so. Working with horses – in spite of all the human conceits that groundwork, liberty training, and the riding disciplines hold – can thus reveal what it means to “bring up life” as more than a topic of very practical interest and specific phenomenological description. Through the impressional investigation of this expression we may well begin to feel our way toward more life-affirming, life-enhancing interactions with others of our own and many other animal kinds. (shrink)

This paper deals with the highly personal way an individual makes sense of the world in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the so‐called private language. For Wittgenstein following a rule can never mean just following another rule, though we do follow rules blindly. His idea of the ‘form of life’ elicits that ‘what we do’ refers to what we have learnt, to the way in which we have learnt it and to how we have grown to find it (...) self‐evident. But the reference to the ‘bedrock’, to what was originally learnt, is the only kind of situation for which it makes sense to ask whether the meaning of a concept is correctly stated. Dialogue, conversation, and exchange of ideas are the right ways to characterize all the other situations. The challenge of Wittgensteinian philosophy is therefore that of a balance of the individual and the community, of language and the world. His insistence on the third person (or the intersubjective level) is countered by the importance he gives to each individual's personal stance: persons must speak for themselves and do what they can do. Given the growing interest for the kind of educational research where the ‘personal’ is focused on, I will try to take up the challenge to see how here as elsewhere ‘language’ works. By making clear what it does for us, it will gradually become clear how this kind of research may itself have to be reinterpreted. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Hybrid contingentism combines first-order contingentism, the view that it is contingent what individuals there are, with higher-order necessitism, the view that it is non-contingent what properties and propositions there are (where these are conceived as entities in the range of appropriate higher-order quantifiers). This combination of views avoids the most delicate problems afflicting alternative contingentist positions while preserving the central contingentist claim that ordinary, concrete entities exist contingently. Despite these attractive features, hybrid contingentism is usually faced with rejection. The main (...) reason for this is an objection that crucially involves haecceitistic properties, properties such as being identical to Plato or being identical to Aristotle. The objection alleges that by accepting the necessary existence of such haecceities, hybrid contingentists incur an explanatory commitment that they are unable to discharge, namely that of explaining how it is that certain haecceities ‘lock onto’ their target individuals even when those individuals are absent. To defend hybrid contingentism against this charge, I first clarify the haecceities objection in several respects and consider, in particular, what notion of explanation the objection is operating with. After arguing that it can be fruitfully understood as a challenge to provide metaphysical grounds for certain haecceity facts, I develop a contingentist response to the objection that draws on recent work on the connection between ground and essence. (shrink)

The core idea of David Armstrong’s combinatorial theory of possibility is attractive. Rearrangement is the key to modality; possible worlds result from scrambling bits and pieces of other possible worlds. Yet I encounter great difficulty when trying to formulate the theory rigorously, and my best attempts are vulnerable to counterexamples. The Leibnizian biconditionals relate possibility and necessity to possible world and true in.

Recent accounts of the role of diagrams in mathematical reasoning take a Platonic line, according to which the proof depends on the similarity between the perceived shape of the diagram and the shape of the abstract object. This approach is unable to explain proofs which share the same diagram in spite of drawing conclusions about different figures. Saccheri’s use of the bi-rectangular isosceles quadrilateral in Euclides Vindicatus provides three such proofs. By forsaking abstract objects it is possible to give a (...) natural explanation of Saccheri’s proofs as well as standard geometric proofs and even number-theoretic proofs. (shrink)

The paper seeks to answer two new questions about truth and scientific change: What lessons does the phenomenon of scientific change teach us about the nature of truth? What light do recent developments in the theory of truth, incorporating these lessons, throw on problems arising from the prevalence of scientific change, specifically, the problem of pessimistic meta-induction?

This paper contains an argument to the effect that possible worlds semantics renders semantic knowledge impossible, no matter what ontological interpretation is given to possible worlds. The essential contention made is that possible worlds semantic knowledge is unsafe and this is shown by a parallel with the preface paradox.

According to interpretationism, nothing can be intentionally meant, thought or performed independently of our interpretational practice. The presence of an interpretation (explicit or implicit) is a necessary condition on the existence of intentional contents expressed by verbal, mental or behavioral occurrences. In this paper, I criticize Donald Davidson’s interpretationism. I first characterize the view in its broad outlines. I then proceed to formulate some criticisms against it, and sketch an alternative approach : institutionalism. This approach suggests another way to conceive (...) of the relationship between meaning, understanding, intentional states and actions on the one hand, and ascriptive practices on the other hand. It is a relation between types and not between occurrences, and it is claimed that the types of states or acts that can express intentional contents do not exist independently of certain types of institutional facts. (shrink)

The idea to write this essay came after I studied, almost in the same period, the works of two major contemporary philosophers: the US-American Michael Heim, known as the best theorist of virtual reality, and the French Gilles Deleuze. At the beginning of the new millennium, I have noticed many challenging transformations in art and literature, influenced by the emerging of the new technologies and the self-transformation that it is currently undergoing. This was the major reason I tried to launch (...) a new concept, post-literarure, in order to describe the complex forms of art in the contemporary culture. The concept of post-literature defines metamorphoses and tensions in the world of contemporary creativity, the co-existence, even merging of fields with autonomous profiles in the past. In my opinion the changes are so radical and quick that we can already talk about a new cultural paradigm in this post-literary epoch, with so many amazing projects imagined by kinetic and temporary organizations, focused on interdisciplinary work and hybridization, on substitution of confrontation between interfering disciplines by dialogue and cohabitation among them, on interchangeability and virtual textualism. (shrink)

This article aims at contributing to the contemporary reception of Heidegger’s thought in eco-philosophical perspective. Its point of departure is Heidegger’s claim, in his Bremen lectures and The Question Concerning Technology, that today the earth is submitted to permanent requisition and planned ordering, and that, having thus lost sight of its auto-poiesis, we are no longer capable of listening, tuning in, and singing back to what he calls in his course on Heraclitus the “song of the earth.” Accordingly, first we (...) examine how the inherently reciprocal dynamics of “earth” and “world,” as thematised by Heidegger in The Origin of the Work of Art, have become opaque. Second, we analyse whether it is possible to find those same dynamics at play behind Heidegger’s “Fourfold,” which we propose to reread in binary key in dialogue with contemporary anthropology, from Bateson and Lévi-Strauss to Wagner and Viveiros de Castro, and in light of Guattari’s notion of “trans-entitarian generativity.” Third, we stress the need to reposition Heidegger’s thought alongside contemporary concerns on “worlding” and we explore its plausible intersections with today’s object-oriented ethnography. Lastly, we discuss the possibility of rereading Heidegger’s Fourfold afresh against the backdrop of Heidegger’s non-foundational thinking, as a conceptual metaphor for the joint dynamics of Abgrund and Grund. (shrink)

This article demonstrates how Iranian classical music and Persian medieval poetry, taken as separate semiotic systems, form together, in certain contexts, a single hybrid semiotic system with overlapping structural features and shared aesthetic principles. Hjelmslev’s description of connotative semiotic systems serves as a theoretical framework to show the modalities of this hybridization. This phenomenon can be observed through comparative analysis of the interdependence of poetry and music in the Persianate World from a semiotic point of view. On the one hand, (...) the quantitative (chronemic) meter of the Persian classical versification, called ‘aruz, as well as its extraordinarily heavy use of rhyme display a formal structure that evokes that of a musical phrase. On the other hand, the dependence of the structure of the Iranian musical system upon the rhythmic structure of classical poetry suggests a unique character of which few examples exist. This interdependence manifests itself particularly in the mystic (Sufi) poetry of the medieval period, specifically in the work of such renowned poets as Rumi, Sa’di Shirāzi, and Hāfez, who are among the best-known in the West. Examples of their lyric works are examined here to demonstrate occurrences of the collusion between the two semiotic systems. (shrink)

For me, personally, Wittgenstein’s philosophy poses the greatest challenge: if he is right, the sort of philosophy I am attempting to do is impossible. Wittgenstein argued powerfully that there can be no such thing as a general philosophical theory of language, mind, consciousness, society, and so on. I wanted and still do want to do precisely that: to present a general philosophical theory of language, mind, consciousness, society, and so on.

In Sect. 1 it is argued that systems of logic are exceptional, but not a priori necessary. Logics are exceptional because they can neither be demonstrated as valid nor be confirmed by observation without entering a circle, and their motivation based on intuition is unreliable. On the other hand, logics do not express a priori necessities of thinking because alternative non-classical logics have been developed. Section 2 reflects the controversies about four major kinds of non-classical logics—multi-valued, intuitionistic, paraconsistent and quantum (...) logics. Its purpose is to show that there is no particular domain or reason that demands the use of a non-classical logic; the particular reasons given for the non-classical logic can also be handled within classical logic. The result of Sect. 2 is substantiated in Sect. 3, where it is shown (referring to other work) that all four kinds of non-classical logics can be translated into classical logic in a meaning-preserving way. Based on this fact a justification of classical logic is developed in Sect. 4 that is based on its representational optimality. It is pointed out that not many but a few non-classical logics can be likewise representationally optimal. However, the situation is not symmetric: classical logic has ceteris paribus advantages as a unifying metalogic, while non-classical logics can have local simplicity advantages. (shrink)

Ludwig Boltzmann’s work in theoretical physics exhibits an approach to the construction of theory that he transmitted to the succeeding generation by example. It involved the construction of clear models, allowed more than one, and was not based solely on the existing facts, with the intent of examining and criticizing the assumptions that made each model work. This tacit program influenced physicists like Ehrenfest and Einstein and the philosopher Wittgenstein, suggesting ways that they used to make further advances.

According to Wittgenstein, mathematics is embedded in, and partly constituting, a form of life. Hence, to imagine different, alternative forms of elementary mathematics, we should have to imagine different practices, different forms of life in which they could play a role. If we tried to imagine a radically different arithmetic we should think either of a strange world or of people acting and responding in very peculiar ways. If such was their practice, a calculus expressing the norms of representation they (...) applied could not be called false. Rather, our criticism could only be to dismiss such a practice as foolish and to dismiss their norms as too different from ours to be called ‘mathematics’. (shrink)

Images from the nanoworld are not at all disorienting or bewildering, as one might expect from contemplating the strange and surprising features that arise where classical physics comes to an end and quantum effects begin to appear. Instead, we see the traces of explorers in a world that appears to be infinitely malleable. The paper shows that the capability to visualize processes and phenomena at the nanoscale is a matter not only of research technologies and the advancement of observational techniques, (...) but also a matter of developing a visual setting that exhibits knowledge and practice, surprise and control. The surface is such a stage and so is the landscape: they invite us to become immersed and move around like someone who goes for a walk. In order to appreciate this pictorial, as well as discursive, setting we turn to “strollology” as a method of reconstructing the world that is experienced in the manner of walking. With the notion of imagescape this method is applied to the modes of partaking in the nanoworld and its specific features. Rather than articulate theoretical or metaphysical presuppositions these nanoscapes serve to validate the very idea of nanotechnology. (shrink)

Should weak forms of the axiom of choice really be accepted within constructive mathematics? A critical view of the Brouwer-Heyting-Kolmogorov interpretation, accompanied by the intention to include nondeterministic algorithms, leads us to subscribe to Richman's appeal for dropping countable choice. As an alternative interpretation of intuitionistic logic, we propose to renew dialogue semantics.

This essay argues that the overuse of the idiom of forgiveness has distorted our understanding of the nature and requirements of political reconciliation, and proposes its supplementation by a notion of grace. This is a mode of response to wrongs that is less hedged around by conventions and conditions, and grace complements forgiveness in contexts in which the latter is inappropriate; it is also more serviceable for maintaining inter-community harmony in the long term. Following a detailed analysis of grace in (...) the political environment, the paper concludes by tracing a concept of grace in the Sermon on the Mount. (shrink)

Negation is a fundamental component of communication (no-answers), cognition (logical negation), perception (different color), attitude (dislike), emotion (hatred), and volition (disagreement). Its many uses make it difficult to provide an integrated definition of the concept. The aim of this paper is to show that an integrated definition of the concept can be arrived at by means of a phenomenological method structuring it into three general essences labelled lack, otherness and obstruction.

The publication of the revised edition of Place and Experience provides the occasion to discuss Malpas’ original account of place, and its role in a proper account of the central features of human...

This paper offers a critique of a central psychopathological concept, the notion of "poor reality-testing. "Using ideas from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, I consider the nature of delusions in schizophrenia, largely through examining Daniel Paul Schreber's famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. Many schizophrenic individuals do not in fact mistake their fantasies for reality, as is traditionally assumed. Rather, I argue, they engage in a solipsistic mode of experience, a felt subjectivization of the lived world that is associated with a (...) stance of passivity and hyperconsciousness. I discuss the existential conditions and consequences of this stance and show that certain anomalous or paradoxical features of schizophrenic delusion are explicable on this phenomenological account. (shrink)

In this paper, we use a phenomenological approach to compare the unusual ways in which language can be experienced by individuals with schizophrenia or severe mood disorders, specifically mania and melancholia. Our discussion follows a tripartite/dialectical format: first we describe traditionally observed distinctions ; then we consider some apparent similarities in the experience of language in these conditions. Finally, we explore more subtle, qualitative differences. These involve: 1, interpersonal orientation, 2, forms of attention and context-relevance, 3, underlying mutations of experience, (...) and 4, meta-attitudes toward language. Such distinctions appear to reflect significant differences in underlying forms of subjectivity; they are broadly consistent with work in phenomenological psychopathology on other aspects of experience, including body, self, and social world. An understanding of such distinctions may assist with difficult cases of differential diagnosis, while also contributing to a better understanding of suffering persons and of psychological factors underlying their disorders. (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)

ABSTRACT The contemporary philosophical debate about "gift" brought into light above all by French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, brought about new and live discussions regarding what gift is and what is its nature. The present article analyses whether or not love can be regarded as a gift or, rather, follow the same problem showed by Derrida. According to him, every gift carries an internal contradiction and can never be and, therefore, will never be gift. A gift is impossible. (...) What is as gift to people, is, actually a commodity, an economical circle for Derrida. This article seeks to inquire whether can or cannot love follow the same gift pattern or if it, rather, builds his own path and follows its own internal logic. Is it possible to analyze love following on the footsteps of phenomenology? If love can be analyzed in a phenomenological fashion - reduction of love - then a new horizon will be opened. RESUMO O problema do debate filosófico contemporâneo acerca do dom, trazido à tona sobretudo pelos filósofos franceses Jacques Derrida e Jean-Luc Marion, trouxe novas e vivas discussõets sobre o que é e qual a sua natureza. O presente artigo analisa se o amor pode ser considerado como um dom ou se segue o mesmo problema sublinhado por Derrida. Segundo o autor, todo dom tem uma contradição interna e não pode ser considerado como tal. O que é dom para as pessoas, para Derrida é uma commodities, um círculo econômico. Em outras palavras, o dom é impossível. A análise que se faz neste artigo é se o amor segue este paradigma, portanto é impossível, ou se ele constrói um caminho próprio e segue sua própria lógica. É possível analisar o amor seguindo os passos da fenomenologia? Reduzindo o amor a fenômeno, então a análise se abre a novos horizontes. (shrink)

In his recent John Locke Lectures – published as Between Saying and Doing – Brandom extends and refines his views on the nature of language and philosophy by developing a position that he calls Analytic Pragmatism. Although Brandom’s project bears on an extraordinarily rich array of different philosophical issues, we focus here on the contention that certain vocabularies have a privileged status within our linguistic practices, and that when adequately understood, the practices in which these vocabularies figure can help furnish (...) us with an account of semantic intentionality. Brandom’s claim is that such vocabularies are privileged because they are a species of what he calls universal LX vocabulary –roughly, vocabulary whose mastery is implicit in any linguistic practice whatsoever. We show that, contrary to Brandom’s claim, logical vocabulary per se fails to satisfy the conditions that must be met for something to count as universal LX vocabulary. Further, we show that exactly analogous considerations undermine his claim that modal vocabulary is universal LX. If our arguments are sound, then, contrary to what Brandom maintains, intentionality cannot be explicated as a “pragmatically mediated semantic phenomenon”, at any rate not of the sort that he proposes. (shrink)

‘Spirituality’ is an old word which throughout history has been given different meanings. Over the last two decades, it has successively become an increasingly frequent concept in scientific studies, none the least in psychosocial oncology. Advocates of ‘spirituality’ regard it as a human dimension and state that since all humans have ‘spiritual needs’ it is urgent to develop ‘spiritual care’. With the focus on recent publications, this article critically scrutinizes aspects of scientific soundness in this growing research tradition, foremost problems (...) of the lack of conceptual clarity and reliance on interconnected instruments that imply circular findings. It is concluded that the concept adds more confusion than clarity if it is not put into a meaningful theoretical and cultural context, and subsequently it is important to guard against preconceptions and vague meanings in this research field. (shrink)

The paper exemplifies how we as teachers see children, and indicates ways of understanding the existential educational meanings of what we see. The authors suggest that the phenomenon of seeing is a personal and relational intentional act that opens up, as well as delimits educational practice. A hermeneutic phenomenological approach to education is suggested and the thought of seeing and telling as interwoven representations is put forth. However, despite a phenomenological inquiry’s immense qualities as a pre-reflective experiential source to understanding, (...) the authors believe that phenomenology cannot overcome or erase the aporetic unavailability of a pedagogical practice and a pedagogical-ethical language. The paper intends to show that seeing pedagogically always will be more complex, paradoxical and unsettled than what can be shown and told phenomenologically. (shrink)

Ziel des vorliegenden Aufsatzes ist es, die Existenz von eventuellen Berührungspunkten zwischen Wittgenstein und Ingarden nachzuweisen. Nach einer kurzen Einführung wird anfangs der Hintergrund der Analyse des Problems formuliert. Darauf hin werden die Positionen Wittgensteins Ontologie mit wenigen Begriffen und Ingardens dreistufige Ontologie jeweils skizzenhaft dargestellt und kritisch auf das Vorhandensein von gemeinsamen Grundlinien geprüft. Als Gesichtspunkte gelten dabei folgende Begriffe: Ontologie, Welt und Mensch, Sprache und Ästhetik. Abschließend werden die charakteristischen Merkmale von Berührungspunkten genannt.

Arthur Prior was one of the logicians who participated in the invention of the possible worlds’ semantics. The ontology, which is connected with his systems of modal logic, is unique. Prior tried to reduce the number of abstract entities as much as possible. Hence he did not elect to introduce possible worlds and possibilia into his ontology. In addition, he held a reductionist view, which is called modal actualism by Fine or modalism by Melia. Prior was inspired by various authors (...) but this paper mainly discusses the influence of two prominent sources, Wittgenstein and logicians from Warsaw School. Prior acknowledged Wittgenstein’s influence, when he discuss the view that possible worlds consist of propositions. The second important feature of Prior’s concept is the denial of the real existence of possible worlds and the denial of the existence of entities which are in them. It was probably enabled by Prior’s adoption of some systems of logic invented by logicians from the Warsaw school, especially Lesniewski’s and Łukasiewicz’s systems. (shrink)

Francis Collins, the director of the NEH and well-known Christian, has said that agnosticism is a bit of a cop-out. Either be a Christian or be an atheism, but have the guts to make up your mind. I shall argue in a positive way for agnosticism, showing that it can be as vibrant a position as belief or non-belief. It gives you a renewed appreciation of life and the world in which we live.

We offer a novel picture of mathematical language from the perspective of speech act theory. There are distinct speech acts within mathematics, and, as we intend to show, distinct illocutionary force indicators as well. Even mathematics in its most formalized version cannot do without some such indicators. This goes against a certain orthodoxy both in contemporary philosophy of mathematics and in speech act theory. As we will comment, the recognition of distinct illocutionary acts within logic and mathematics and the incorporation (...) of illocutionary force indicators in the formal language for both goes back to Frege’s conception of these topics. We are, therefore, going back to a Fregean perspective. This paper is part of a larger project of applying contemporary speech act theory to the scientific language of mathematics in order to uncover the varieties and regular combinations of illocutionary acts present in it. For reasons of space, we here concentrate only on assertive and declarative acts within mathematics, leaving the investigation of other kinds of acts for a future occasion. (shrink)

Why does Walter Benjamin claim “indirection” to be the proper method for philosophical contemplation and writing? Why is this method—embodied, according to Benjamin, in the convoluted form of scholastic treatises and in their use of citations—fundamental for understanding his Origin of German Trauerspiel as suggesting an alternative to most strands of modern philosophy? The explicit and well-studied function of this method is for the presentation of what cannot be represented in language, of what cannot be intended or approached in thinking. (...) Namely, of what Benjamin understands as “truth.” Indeed, as Adorno implied, providing a method for presenting an intentionless reality, rather than for re-presenting the world as corresponding to the mind, is revolutionary. However, I claim that beyond its presentational function, the method of indirection has a further, pedagogical function. Benjamin’s concept of truth requires thinking in a manner that does not impose any exterior form, any conceptual or intuitive intention on truth and the materials in which it might be exhibited. The methodological adoption of digressive and intermittent writing is supposed to transform the way we think, or more accurately, the position from which thinking occurs. By examining Benjamin’s use of pedagogical terms against the backdrop of scholastic history and the Urfigure of modern method, that of Descartes, I show that writing and reading in the form of the tractatus serves as exercise in receding from the subject-position—a position of a subject intending an object—and thus conditions the presentation of intentionless truth. (shrink)

This article is intended as a contribution to the current debates about the relationship between politics and the philosophy of science in the Vienna Circle. I reconsider this issue by shifting the focus from philosophy of science as theory to philosophy of science as practice. From this perspective I take as a starting point the Vienna Circle’s scientific world-conception and emphasize its practical nature: I reinterpret its tenets as a set of recommendations that express the particular epistemological attitude in which (...) both the Vienna Circle’s (doing) philosophy of science and its political engagement were rooted. -/- Regarding politics, and referring to new primary sources, I reconstruct how the scientific world-conception placed the Vienna Circle within a neoliberal-socialist political network that pursued concrete political aims. In light of my reconstruction I shall argue that neither the Vienna Circle’s alleged ethical noncognitivism nor its alleged adhesion to the Weberian ideal of a value-free science rules out the possibility of ascribing to the Vienna Circle a politically engaged philosophy of science: the case of the Vienna Circle shows how philosophy of science, as a public activity, can itself become a form of political engagement, even without necessarily entailing a theory of objective values. (shrink)

This article argues that time‐asymmetric processes in spacetime are enantiomorphs. Subsequently, the Kantian puzzle concerning enantiomorphs in space is reviewed to introduce a number of positions concerning enantiomorphy, and to arrive at a dilemma: one must either reject that orientations of enantiomorphs are determinate, or furnish space or objects with orientation. The discussion on space is then used to derive two problems in the debate on the direction of time. First, it is shown that certain kinds of reductionism about the (...) direction of time are at variance with the claim that orientation of enantiomorphic objects is intrinsic. Second, it is argued that reductive explanations of time‐asymmetric processes presuppose that enantiomorphic processes do not have determinate orientation. (shrink)

The article examines some well-known attempts to consider Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in the context of transcendental idealism. The main purpose of these attempts is to protect Wittgenstein’s later philosophy from the relativistic interpretation of such concepts a “language games” and “forms of life.” Thus, Bernard Williams, noting the ambiguity of the pronoun “we” in Philosophical Investigations, believes that such a “we” has a transcendental rather than empirical character. This approach allows Williams to argue that there is no meaningful alternative (...) to the general perspective on the world that is embodied in this “we.” However, the main disadvantage of this approach is that Williams views such a “we” in much the same way as a conceptual schema. However, as many authors point out, this idea does not find its confirmation in the later works of Wittgenstein. Jonathan Lear, in turn, suggests that we should consider such a non-empirical “we” as a special kind of “mindedness.” Such a mindedness could be considered as analogous to a Kant’s analytical principle of apperception. Lear believes that it is this principle that gives meaningful unity to human behaviour and makes possible any communication with other people. Following Williams and trying to correct the shortcomings of his position, Lear proposes to consider the ambiguous status of “we” in Philosophical Investigations as an argument in favour of the “disappearance” of the transcendental “we,” and with it the disappearance of the threat of relativism. John McDowell, however, agreeing with the need to get rid Wittgenstein's philosophy of relativistic interpretations, critically assesses the idea of using transcendental idealism for this purpose. Instead, McDowell proposes to return to Hegel’s thesis about the unboundedness of the conceptual, which makes it unnecessary to appeal to the transcendental justification of harmony between reason and the world. The article, therefore, also examines McDowell’s arguments against attributing to Wittgenstein any versions of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

Debates concerning causal explanations of the universe tend to be based on a priori propositions . The present paper, however, addresses the metaphysical question, “Why does the universe exist?” from the perspective of a school of Hindu philosophy referred to as advaita vedanta and two of its a posteriori derived creation theories: the theory of simultaneous creation and the theory of non-causality . Objections to advaita vedanta are also discussed. It is concluded that advaita vedanta has the potential to make (...) a significant contribution to contemporary metaphysical debate in general and our understanding of the question, “Why does the universe exist?” in particular. (shrink)

Mi proposición central es sencilla. El silencio es un fenómeno mucho más presente en el mundo jurídico que lo que apreciamos usualmente. Sin embargo, tanto la teoría del derecho como la doctrina han guardado un relativo silencio sobre el silencio en el derecho. Salvo notables excepciones, generalmente dirigidas al examen de aspectos puntuales, se ha procurado muy poco sistematizar la reflexión en torno a lo que el silencio entraña tanto para el carácter mismo del derecho como para la práctica jurídica. (...) Este trabajo, todavía en progreso, pretende contribuir en alguna medida a atender esa situación. Sé que me estoy tomando un riesgo, pues quizás el silencio sea uno de esos fenómenos inefables, inaprehensibles, sobre los que Wittgenstein advertía... (shrink)

This essay examines the perspective from which Bas van Fraassen, in his book, The Empirical Stance, explains the project of empiricism. I argue that this perspective is a robustly transcendental perspective, which suggests that the tradition of empiricism lacks the resources to explain itself. I offer an alternative history of epistemic voluntarism in twentieth-century philosophy to the history van Fraassen himself provides, one that finds the novelty in van Fraassen's own views to be precisely his reintroduction of the knowing mind (...) into the tradition of analytic philosophy of science. (shrink)