Although Whitehead’s particular style of philosophizing--looking at traditional philosophical problems in light of recent scientific advances--was part of a trend that began with the scientific revolutions in the early 20th century and continues today, he was marginalized in 20th century philosophy because of his outspoken defense of what he was doing as “metaphysics.” Metaphysics, for Whitehead, is a cross-disciplinary hermeneutic responsible for coherently integrating the perspectives of the special sciences with one another and with everyday (...) experience. The program of such a meta-discipline is challenging to philosophical orthodoxy because it enlarges, rather than narrows, the range of empirical evidence that philosophy must acknowledge. This places Whitehead’s philosophy in a perennial tradition that seeks to resolve fundamental antinomies through synthesis and reconciliation rather than reduction or elimination. (shrink)

My analysis here is an attempt to bring out the main through-line in the development of Bulgarian philosophy of law today. A proper account of Bulgarian philosophy of law in the 20th century requires an attempt to find, on the one hand, a solution to epistemological and methodological problems in law and, on the other, a clear-cut influence of the Kantian critical tradition. Bulgarian philosophy of law follows a complicated path, ranging from acceptance and revision (...) of Kantian philosophy to the development of interesting theories on the logic of legal reasoning. (shrink)

This chapter traces how theism was developed by leading 19th and 20th century figures (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Rahner, and Tillich) responding to Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy. Part one deals with the ontological nature of subjectivity itself and what it reveals about the conditions of the possibility of a subject’s relation to the Absolute. Part two explores the role of subjectivity and interiority in the individual’s relation to God, and part three takes a look at the (...) theme of the “unhappy consciousness,” how its development led to important attacks on theism, and the resources available to theology in countering these attacks. (shrink)

Please see the extended abstract in the attached file.

The first beginnings of modern logic in Croatia are recognizable as early as in the middle of the 19th century in Vatroslav Bertić. At the turn of the 20th century, Albin Nagy, who was teaching in Italy, made contributions to algebraic logic and to the philosophy of logic. At that time, a distinctive author Mate Meršić stood out, also working on algebraic logic. In the Croatian academic philosophy, until the publication of Gajo Petrović's textbook (1964) (...) and the contributions by Heda Festini, a critical or indifferent attitude toward modern logic prevailed. The first comprehensive modern logic textbook in Croatian was written by mathematician Vladimir Devidé (1964), known, for example, for his axiomatizations of natural numbers and classical propositional logic. In the Croatian philosophy of the 1980s and 1990s, influential logicians are Goran Švob and mathematician Zvonimir Šikić. At the turn of the 21st century, logical investigations are being intensified and extended to various branches of the contemporary logic. (shrink)

Philosophy in the 20th century began and ended with an obsession with the problems of consciousness. But the specific problems discussed at each end of the century were very different, and reflection on how these differences developed will illuminate not just our understanding of the history of philosophy of consciousness, but also our understanding of consciousness itself. An interest in the problems of consciousness can be found in at least three movements in early 20th (...) century philosophy: in the discussions of perception and realism by G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell; in the related discussions of realism and pragmatism in America, in the period between William James and C.I. Lewis; and in the phenomenological movement started by Edmund Husserl. Two common themes in all these movements are: (i) that consciousness is a central or defining feature of the mind, and (ii) consciousness and thought (or intentionality) are interrelated phenomena not to be discussed in isolation from one another. The problem of consciousness in those days was the problem of the nature of our access to the mind-independent world. (shrink)

In contemporary Western analytic philosophy, the classic analogical argument explaining our knowledge of other minds has been rejected. But at least three alternative positive theories of our knowledge of the second person have been formulated: the theory-theory, the simulation theory and the theory of direct empathy. After sketching out the problems faced by these accounts of the ego’s access to the contents of the mind of a “second ego”, this paper tries to recreate one argument given by Abhinavagupta (Shaiva (...) philosopher of recognition) to the effect that even in another’s body, one must feel and recognize one’s own self, if one is able to address that embodied person as a “you”. The otherness of You does not take away from its subjectivity. In that sense, just as every second person to whom one could speak is, first, a person, she is also a first person. Even as I regret that I do not know exactly how some other person is feeling right now, I must have some general access to the subjective experience of that other person, for otherwise what is it that I feel so painfully ignorant about? My subjective world is mine only to the extent that I recognize its continuity with a sharable subjective world where other I-s can make a You out of me. (shrink)

Christian moral philosophy is a distinctive kind of moral philosophy owing to the special role it assigns to God in Christ. Much contemporary 'Christian ethics' focuses on semantic, modal, conceptual and epistemological issues. This may be helpful but it omits the distinctive focus of Christian moral philosophy: the human condition in a morally ordered universe and the redemptive work of jesus Christ as a response to that predicament. Christian moral philosophers should seek to remedy that neglect.

Inquiries concerning the theory of imperatives and norms prosecuted in Poland in the 20th century covered practically the whole scope of this theory. In a uniform conceptual scheme, the paper shows main results of this research done mostly within the Lvov-Warsaw School tradition. It begins with presenting the Polish theoreticians’ approach to three correlated theoretical situations containing our preferences (opposed to impulses, decisions and tendencies), accepted values and imposed obligations. The second step is discussing their views on means (...) of verbalising these situations, i.e. by help of imperatives, evaluations and norms (opposed to consultatives, instructions and optatives) correspondingly. The paper is closed with examining the Polish logicians’ trials of reconstruction of imperative-normative argumentation. (shrink)

The article discusses the presence of Plato' philosophy in Poland including the presentation of the reception of Plato's texts and the knowledge of Plato's philosophy in Poland. It outlines the influence exerted by Plato's thought on various aspects of Polish culture and sets out the research on Plato in the XIX and XX centuries. The paper is supplemented with a selection of contributions concerning Plato (papers, monographs, translations) published in Poland after the year 1945.

This chapter describes the conceptual foundations of cognitive science during its establishment as a science in the 20th century. It is organized around the core ideas of individual agency as its basic explanans and information-processing as its basic explanandum. The latter consists of a package of ideas that provide a mathematico-engineering framework for the philosophical theory of materialism.

Global capitalism is the politico-economic structure that subjects everything to its interests. It creates unimaginable poverty, ecological crisis, the ongoing pandemic, wars without end, and other horrors that humans can inflict against each other. Within this capitalist configuration, an idea and a political movement emerged that seeks to destroy the foundation of this system. Communism is this idea and political movement. The foundation of capitalism that they wanted to dismantle is private bourgeois property. In general, the Bolshevik revolution did destroy (...) that foundation, but this was not enough. It only resulted in the eventual transformation of the party as the collectivized bourgeoisie with its authoritarian state apparatus. It transformed this bourgeois-liberal capitalism into state-run capitalism. The revolutionary class that was supposed to be emancipated, remained as they were in capitalism, producer of the means of subsistence and surplus value. The eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union did not mean that the idea of communism is already dead. It should have been the perfect time to reassess the theoretical foundations of communism and test the ideas of Marx and others in their practical-idealistic form. The production and reproduction of capitalist social relations create everyday consciousness for all capitalist subjects, even to passionate communist revolutionaries. This is how ideology works. But the continuing havoc of global capitalism continues. The Left goes on with their same old traditions. They do not see that precisely ii their unceasing failure is one of the conditions for capitalism and its state apparatus to have the capacity to reinvent itself. In Pandemic 2: Chronicles of a Time Lost, Slovenian-born philosopher and global thinker Slavoj Zizek said that capitalism is incapable of solving the Covid-19 crisis. In his more than a thousand-page book paradoxically called Less Than Nothing, he said that ‘really existing’ socialism failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism. Can we utilize this Zizekian idea of communism, an idea that generates criticism both to capitalism and 20th-century communism to reinvent communism for it to revitalize its struggle against global capitalism? To answer this question, I employed Critical Theory through the ideas of communism of Zizek. I started with capitalism’s totality. It manifests itself in the world of commodities. Commodities are everywhere and almost in everything. Commodification not only involves things that man uses but humanity herself is commodified. Then I elaborated on the notion of the proletariat because she is the “commodified man” personified. The identification of the proletariat almost exclusively with factory workers is the prevailing idea in the Left movement. I tried to show that the proletariat is the overwhelming majority in every industry. Capitalism, I claim is both producing employment and unemployment. And the unemployed, not only are included as members of the proletarian class, but looking at it objectively, they may play a significant role in the political struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie. Therefore, as I tried to describe in quite a detailed fashion the various industries of capitalism and the sub-groups of the unemployed, it becomes evident that even without mentioning it, the proletariat is the class that almost everyone belongs to, except, as might be expected, the bourgeoisie. -/- Then I mustered the audacity to question Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. I also tried to imagine what will happen to the economic categories in Marx’s Capital in communism. My objective was to identify what is lacking in Marx that may explain the Left’s unending failure. I think I succeeded, although in a very superficial manner, in trying to locate what was missing in Marx’s theory. It was not enough to transform the bourgeois property into public property, but this transformation must stop commodity production itself. Commodity production is this self-perpetuating character of capitalist production. Then it led to further elucidation of the metamorphosis of commodity production to the production of human needs. Another idea is the double negation of the communist revolution. Communism must not only negate the bourgeois class but the proletariat herself. Marx only emphasized the dissolution of the bourgeoisie but failed to relate this dissolution to the proletariat’s self-negation. Absolutely, the significant reduction of working hours is fundamental for communism. This reduction must result from the conscious expansion of the workers' free time. Expanding free time is at the same time reducing time for production. Essentially, this is the process of the self-negation of the proletariat. I also tried to put forward an idea that directly links reform and revolution. They are directly linked with each other because both are communistic. A communist campaign for higher wages is directly involved with the communist expansion of political power. Communist reform becomes revolutionary. Concomitantly, the notion of revolution also changes. The communist revolution, instead of it being a sudden, external, and most often violent event, becomes an internal transformative process and possibly less violent. I concluded by transforming the concepts I think Marx missed into political possibilities. That is why I expounded on the immediate aims Marx and Engels enumerated in the Communist Manifesto and tried to claim the probability of the impossible in the communist struggle for political power and Man’s eventual freedom. -/- Marx's description of factory work creates no illusion about the status of freedom in capitalism. In Capital, he said that “factory work... confiscates every atom of freedom, both bodily and in intellectual activity.” And I think Marx made clear that the only way to freedom is ultimately to destroy capitalism. These words of his in Capital will cast no doubt, “the knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” And to signify who are those experiencing this unfreedom, Marx and Engels summon the subject of the revolution in their famous lines in the Communist Manifesto and urge them to fight, “the proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” Today is the time for philosophy because it is the age of declining freedom. But the prevailing capitalist structure is necessitating this unfreedom. And for philosophy to become what it is, communism should become philosophy. (shrink)

The vicissitudes of mathematical reason in the 20th century Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-6 DOI 10.1007/s11016-011-9556-y Authors Thomas Mormann, Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, University of the Basque Country UPV/EPU, Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain, Journal Metascience Online ISSN 1467-9981 Print ISSN 0815-0796.

This collection of articles was written over the last 10 years and edited to bring them up to date (2019). All the articles are about human behavior (as are all articles by anyone about anything), and so about the limitations of having a recent monkey ancestry (8 million years or much less depending on viewpoint) and manifest words and deeds within the framework of our innate psychology as presented in the table of intentionality. As famous evolutionist Richard Leakey says, it (...) is critical to keep in mind not that we evolved from apes, but that in every important way, we are apes. If everyone was given a real understanding of this (i.e., of human ecology and psychology to actually give them some control over themselves), maybe civilization would have a chance. As things are however the leaders of society have no more grasp of things than their constituents and so collapse into anarchy is inevitable. -/- The first group of articles attempt to give some insight into how we behave that is reasonably free of theoretical delusions. In the next three groups, I comment on three of the principal delusions preventing a sustainable world— technology, religion and politics (cooperative groups). People believe that society can be saved by them, so I provide some suggestions in the rest of the book as to why this is unlikely via short articles and reviews of recent books by well-known writers. -/- It is critical to understand why we behave as we do and so the first section presents articles that try to describe (not explain as Wittgenstein insisted) behavior. I start with a brief review of the logical structure of rationality, which provides some heuristics for the description of language (mind, rationality, personality) and gives some suggestions as to how this relates to the evolution of social behavior. This centers around the two writers I have found the most important in this regard, Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle, whose ideas I combine and extend within the dual system (two systems of thought) framework that has proven so useful in recent thinking and reasoning research. As I note, there is in my view essentially complete overlap between philosophy, in the strict sense of the enduring questions that concern the academic discipline, and the descriptive psychology of higher order thought (behavior). Once one has grasped Wittgenstein’s insight that there is only the issue of how the language game is to be played, one determines the Conditions of Satisfaction (what makes a statement true or satisfied etc.) and that is the end of the discussion. No neurophysiology, no metaphysics, no postmodernism, no theology. -/- It is my contention that the table of intentionality (rationality, mind, thought, language, personality etc.) that features prominently here describes more or less accurately, or at least serves as an heuristic for, how we think and behave, and so it encompasses not merely philosophy and psychology, but everything else (history, literature, mathematics, politics etc.). Note especially that intentionality and rationality as I (along with Searle, Wittgenstein and others) view it, includes both conscious deliberative System 2 and unconscious automated System 1 actions or reflexes. -/- The next section describes the digital delusions, which confuse the language games of System 2 with the automatisms of System one, and so cannot distinguish biological machines (i.e., people) from other kinds of machines (i.e., computers). The ‘reductionist’ claim is that one can ‘explain’ behavior at a ‘lower’ level, but what actually happens is that one does not explain human behavior but a ‘stand in’ for it. Hence the title of Searle’s classic review of Dennett’s book (“Consciousness Explained”)— “Consciousness Explained Away”. In most contexts ‘reduction’ of higher level emergent behavior to brain functions, biochemistry, or physics is incoherent. Even for ‘reduction’ of chemistry or physics, the path is blocked by chaos and uncertainty. Anything can be ‘represented’ by equations, but when they ‘represent’ higher order behavior, it is not clear (and cannot be made clear) what the ‘results’ mean. Reductionist metaphysics is a joke, but most scientists and philosophers lack the appropriate sense of humor. -/- The last section describes The One Big Happy Family Delusion, i.e., that we are selected for cooperation with everyone, and that the euphonious ideals of Democracy, Diversity and Equality will lead us into utopia, if we just manage things correctly (the possibility of politics). Again, the No Free Lunch Principle ought to warn us it cannot be true, and we see throughout history and all over the contemporary world, that without strict controls, selfishness and stupidity gain the upper hand and soon destroy any nation that embraces these delusions. In addition, the monkey mind steeply discounts the future, and so we cooperate in selling our descendant’s heritage for temporary comforts, greatly exacerbating the problems. The only major change in this edition is the addition in the last article of a short discussion of China, a threat to peace and freedom as great as overpopulation and climate change and one to which even most professional scholars and politicians are oblivious so I regarded it as sufficiently important to warrant a new edition. -/- I describe versions of this delusion (i.e., that we are basically ‘friendly’ if just given a chance) as it appears in some recent books on sociology/biology/economics. Even Sapolsky’s otherwise excellent “Behave”(2017) embraces leftist politics and group selection and gives space to a discussion of whether humans are innately violent. I end with an essay on the great tragedy playing out in America and the world, which can be seen as a direct result of our evolved psychology manifested as the inexorable machinations of System 1. Our psychology, eminently adaptive and eugenic on the plains of Africa from ca. 6 million years ago, when we split from chimpanzees, to ca. 50,000 years ago, when many of our ancestors left Africa (i.e., in the EEA or Environment of Evolutionary Adaptation), is now maladaptive and dysgenic and the source of our Suicidal Utopian Delusions. So, like all discussions of behavior (philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, anthropology, politics, law, literature, history, economics, soccer strategies, business meetings, etc.), this book is about evolutionary strategies, selfish genes and inclusive fitness (kin selection, natural selection). -/- The great mystic Osho said that the separation of God and Heaven from Earth and Humankind was the most evil idea that ever entered the Human mind. In the 20th century an even more evil notion arose, or at least became popular with leftists—that humans are born with rights, rather than having to earn privileges. The idea of human rights is an evil fantasy created by leftists to draw attention away from the merciless destruction of the earth by unrestrained 3rd world motherhood. Thus, every day the population increases by 200,000, who must be provided with resources to grow and space to live, and who soon produce another 200,000 etc. And one almost never hears it noted that what they receive must be taken from those already alive, and their descendants. Their lives diminish those already here in both major obvious and countless subtle ways. Every new baby destroys the earth from the moment of conception. In a horrifically overcrowded world with vanishing resources, there cannot be human rights without destroying the earth and our descendant’s futures. It could not be more obvious, but it is rarely mentioned in a clear and direct way, and one will never see the streets full of protesters against motherhood. -/- The most basic facts, almost never mentioned, are that there are not enough resources in America or the world to lift a significant percentage of the poor out of poverty and keep them there. Even the attempt to do this is already bankrupting America and destroying the world. The earth’s capacity to produce food decreases daily, as does our genetic quality. And now, as always, by far the greatest enemy of the poor is other poor and not the rich. -/- America and the world are in the process of collapse from excessive population growth, most of it for the last century, and now all of it, due to 3rd world people. Consumption of resources and the addition of 4 billion more ca. 2100 will collapse industrial civilization and bring about starvation, disease, violence and war on a staggering scale. The earth loses about 2% of its topsoil every year, so as it nears 2100, most of its food growing capacity will be gone. Billions will die and nuclear war is all but certain. In America, this is being hugely accelerated by massive immigration and immigrant reproduction, combined with abuses made possible by democracy. Depraved human nature inexorably turns the dream of democracy and diversity into a nightmare of crime and poverty. China will continue to overwhelm America and the world, as long as it maintains the dictatorship which limits selfishness. The root cause of collapse is the inability of our innate psychology to adapt to the modern world, which leads people to treat unrelated persons as though they had common interests (which I suggest may be regarded as an unrecognized -- but the commonest and most serious-- psychological problem -- Inclusive Fitness Disorder). This, plus ignorance of basic biology and psychology, leads to the social engineering delusions of the partially educated who control democratic societies. Few understand that if you help one person you harm someone else—there is no free lunch and every single item anyone consumes destroys the earth beyond repair. Consequently, social policies everywhere are unsustainable and one by one all societies without stringent controls on selfishness will collapse into anarchy or dictatorship. Without dramatic and immediate changes, there is no hope for preventing the collapse of America, or any country that follows a democratic system. Hence my concluding essay “Suicide by Democracy”. -/- Those wishing to read my other writings may see Talking Monkeys 2nd ed (2019), The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle 2nd ed (2019), Suicide by Democracy 3rd ed (2019), The Logical Stucture of Human Behavior (2019) and Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st Century 4th ed (2019) . (shrink)

This chapter examines the legacy of Kuhn’s Structure for normative philosophy of science. As an argument regarding the history of 20th century philosophy of science, I contend that the main legacy of Structure was destructive: Structure shifted philosophy of science away from addressing general normative philosophical issues (e.g., the demarcation problem, empirical testability) towards more deflationary and local approaches to normative issues. This is evident in the first generation of post-Structure philosophers of science in the (...) 1980s and 1990s, who adopted a pluralist approach to HPS. As a metaphilosophical argument regarding the methods adopted in HPS, I argue that there are a plurality of legitimate philosophical methodologies for inferring normative claims from historical cases. I frame this argument as a response to Pitt’s dilemma of case studies. I reject Pitt’s dilemma for its presupposition of an unrealistic and unfruitful standard (viz., epistemic certainty) for assessing HPS arguments and its analysis of philosophical methodology at the level of individual arguments. Pitt’s dilemma is most usefully understood as identifying potential points of criticism for HPS arguments. -/- The chapter begins with an examination of Kuhn’s normative philosophy of science in Structure and his position that historical cases provide evidence for philosophical claims. Kuhn’s philosophical methodology is insufficiently articulated, and his utilization of case studies is subject to objections (viz., interpretative bias, hasty generalization) implied by Pitt’s dilemma. I subsequently examine four post-Kuhnian methodological perspectives: (1) Ian Hacking’s particularism, (2) Helen Longino’s practice-based approach, (3) Michael Friedman’s neo-Kantianism, and (4) Hasok Chang’s complementary science. These views suggest alternative methodological strategies in HPS for addressing normative issues. I conclude by articulating some outstanding methodological challenges for the pluralist tradition of HPS—associated with the Stanford and Minnesota schools of philosophy of science—that emerged in the 1980s and remains influential. (shrink)

Russell’s second philosophy of time (1899–1913), which will be the subject of this paper, is of special interest for two reasons. (1) It was basic to his New Philosophy, later called the “philosophy of logical atomism”. In fact, this philosophy didn’t initially emerge in the period of 1914– 1919, as many interpreters (e.g. A. J. Ayer) suggest, but with the introduction of Russell’s second philosophy of time (and space). The importance of Russell’s second philosophy (...) of time for his early and middle philosophy can be seen from the fact that it survived the dramatic changes in his philosophy of August–December 1900, and of July 1905. There is of course no surprise about this point: it served as their fundament. (2) Russell’s second philosophy of time is a locus classicus of all so called B-theories of time which define it in terms of the relations of before, after and simultaneous between events or moments. 20th century philosophy; absolute theory of time; theory of time; order; relation; relationist theory of time; B-series. (shrink)

Since antiquity well into the beginnings of the 20th century geometry was a central topic for philosophy. Since then, however, most philosophers of science, if they took notice of topology at all, considered it as an abstruse subdiscipline of mathematics lacking philosophical interest. Here it is argued that this neglect of topology by philosophy may be conceived of as the sign of a conceptual sea-change in philosophy of science that expelled geometry, and, more generally, mathematics, (...) from the central position it used to have in philosophy of science and placed logic at center stage in the 20th century philosophy of science. Only in recent decades logic has begun to loose its monopoly and geometry and topology received a new chance to find a place in philosophy of science. (shrink)

I propose to reconsider Gilbert Ryle’s thesis in 1956 in his introduction to The Revolution of Philosophy that “the story of twentieth-century philosophy is very largely the story of this notion of sense or meaning” and, as he writes elsewhere, the “preoccupation with the theory of meaning is the occupational disease of twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon and Austrian philoso- phy.” Ryle maintains that this preoccupation demar- cates analytic philosophy from its predecessors and that it gave philosophy (...) a set of academic credentials as a rigorous discipline with its own domain and method. I will maintain that Ryle, with some minor qualifica- tions, was correct in his assessment of the nature of analytic philosophy at that time, and I will argue that the next 50 years continued to be, very largely, the story of meaning, exemplified by the groundbreaking work of Rawls and Kripke. However, I argue that this work also contains the seeds that contributed to the emergence of philosophies that represent a significant departure from analytic philosophy. (shrink)

There are a number of questions, the answers to which define specific theoretical approaches to Hegel’s philosophy of action. To begin with, does Hegel attempt to give a theory of free will that responds to the naturalistic skepticism so prevalent in the history of modern philosophy? Though some scholars hold that he is interested in providing such a theory, perhaps the majority view is that Hegel instead socializes his conception of the will such that the traditional naturalistic worries (...) are no longer germane.1 A second question is: does Hegel have a theory of action as such that competes with those found in the history of modern philosophy and more particularly in the Anglophone literature from the mid-20th century onwards? Though perhaps the majority view is that Hegel does have such a theory of action, it is commonly held to be independent of any commitments to a conception of free will, and to take a form radically different from the other offerings in the literature in virtue of introducing and essentially retrospective rather than prospective relation between the agent and her action. (shrink)

Course Description: Science appears to be extraordinarily successful is two crucial respects. First, science apparently serves as an extremely reliable vehicle for arriving at the truth (as contrasted with astrology or palm reading). Second, the methodology of science seems eminently rational (again as opposed to the methodologies of astrology or palm reading). Philosophers have been quite interested in these two apparent virtues of science. Some philosophers think that the two virtues are illusory and that, upon reflection, science is not significantly (...) superior to astrology or palm reading. Some philosophers even reject concepts like truth and rationality as somehow bogus or illegitimate. Our basic goal in this course is to survey 20th century philosophy of science as centered upon such disputes. To this end, our focus will be upon the following question: are truth and rationality genuine features of scientific inquiry, or are they mere illusions? (shrink)

During the second decade of the 20th century Hans Kleinpeter, an Austrian scholar devoted to the development of the modern science, published some brief papers on Nietzsche’s thought. Kleinpeter has been one of the main upholders of Mach’s epistemology and probably the first who connected his ideas with the philosophy of Nietzsche. In his book on Der Phänomenalismus (1913) he described a new world view that arose in the 19th century, a perspective that ‒ according to (...) him ‒ completely contrasted the mechanistic and metaphysical world view of the old school of scientific inquiry. The main outcome of the scientists whose name was related with this perspective (e.g. Clifford, Maxwell, Kirchoff and, obviously, Mach himself) has been the refusal of the absolute value of any “truth”. Kleinpeter’s statements on this topic are a good example of the rising of a Scientific Philosophy, whose development involved many scientists and thinkers that later set up the Verein Ernst Mach and the Wiener Kreis. On the other hand, his interest on Nietzsche is a relevant case of reception of the latter’s thought, that Kleinpeter puts into the context of the contemporary epistemology. In fact, he considers Nietzsche as one of the main upholders of the phenomenalistic world view, and states that he «took part at the same renewal of philosophical investigation that arose from the latest results of scientific inquiry» during the 19th century. A renewal whose main outcomes has been presented by John Stallo in his book on The Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics (1881), which Kleinpeter translated in German and published in 1901. According to Kleinpeter, in Nietzsche’s writings (mostly unpublished) one can find a theory of knowledge quite close to the one presented by both Mach and the new born Pragmatism, i.e. the complete refusal of an absolute truth and, therefore, the development of an antimetaphysical world view. In my paper I’ll discuss the main statements presented by Kleinpeter on this topic and show which of Nietzsche’s ideas has actually been in compliance with the main outcomes of late 19th century science. Thus, I’ll carry out a reconstruction of an unfamiliar side of the first period of reception of the philosophy of Nietzsche and its relevance to the development of a new (scientific) world view. (shrink)

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

Throughout its history, analytic philosophy has established a decidedly anti-rhetoric self-understanding. Yet the historical development of analytic philosophy, leading from Russell to Quine and Davidson, successively puts this anti-rhetorical ideals in question. Even though the rhetorics of clarity and objectivity remain, the discussions of post-analytic philosophy focus more and more an an understanding of language which is forced to acknowledge its irreducible practical and situational aspects. Analytical philosophy, then, should be seen as a decidedly anti-rhetoric tradition (...) which tries to keep up the spirit of scientific enlightenment in times of growing skepticism -- and which is driven, by the very force of clarity and a better understanding, to develop a picture of language which undermines this ideal at least in some aspects. (shrink)

Bad philosophy is responsible for the climate and nature crises, and other global problems too that threaten our future. That sounds mad, but it is true. A philosophy of science, or of theatre or life is a view about what are, or ought to be, the aims and methods of science, theatre or life. It is in this entirely legitimate sense of “philosophy” that bad philosophy is responsible for the crises we face. First, and in a (...) blatantly obvious way, those institutions, organizations, corporations, businesses, endeavours, and activities of humanity that cause the crises and global problems we face, do so because of the aims they pursue (profit perhaps, or power, or heat and light for homes), and the methods adopted in pursuit of those aims – the philosophy in other words, built into the institution, organization, business, human activities, or whatever it may be. It is the philosophy of these institutions, organizations and activities that we need to change to put a stop to, or at least lessen the severity of, the crises we face, the global problems that confront us, above all the climate and nature crises. One institution has an especially crucial role in this respect: our universities. They are dominated in a multitude of ways by a particularly disastrous philosophy, a philosophy of inquiry which may be called knowledge-inquiry. This holds that the basic aim of the university is to acquire and apply knowledge. First, knowledge is to be acquired; once acquired, it can be applied to help solve social problems. But this philosophy of knowledge-inquiry is an intellectual disaster. As a result, universities are, in devastating and almost entirely unrecognized ways, humanitarian disasters too. Judged from the standpoint of helping to promote human welfare, the university shaped by the philosophy of knowledge-inquiry violates THREE of the four most elementary rules of rational problem solving conceivable in a wholesale, structural fashion, and it is this gross, wholesale, structural irrationality of the university, unnoticed by all but a few scientists and scholars, that is in part responsible for the creation of our grave global problems, and our current incapacity to learn how to solve them. The pursuit of knowledge, conducted in universities, within the framework of knowledge-inquiry over the decades and centuries, has produced much of great benefit to humanity. It has made the modern world possible. It has led to modern power production, modern industry and armaments, modern agriculture, modern hygiene and medicine, modern travel and communications, and the internet. But these very successes have also created many of our most serious current global problems: the climate crisis; the destruction of natural habitats, the catastrophic loss of wild life, and impending mass extinction of species (the nature crisis); the lethal character of modern war; the impact on the natural world of the rapid growth of the human population; the menace posed by nuclear weapons; pollution of earth, sea and air; threats to democracy caused in part by the internet and social media. All these grave global problems have been made possible by modern science and technology, pursued largely in universities within the framework of knowledge-inquiry. Nevertheless, it is not science and technology as such that are the problem, but science pursued in a way that is dissociated from a more fundamental task of the university to help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways, so that progress may be made to a better world. Science and technology, pursued within the framework of knowledge-inquiry, create for some of us the power to act, but not the power to act wisely – not the power to learn how to resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational ways. For that, we need our institutions of learning, above all our universities, to take as their primary task to help humanity learn how to do it. In order to do that, the philosophy of inquiry put into practice by universities needs to be dramatically transformed. We urgently need to bring about a revolution in the overall aims and methods of academic inquiry – a revolution in the philosophy of the university, all around the world, wherever possible, so that the basic aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom, construed to be the capacity, active endeavour, and perhaps desire, to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others, wisdom in this sense including knowledge, understanding and technological know-how, but much else besides, methods being dramatically modified too so as to help achieve the new academic aim. The basic task of the university would be, not to solve problems of knowledge, but rather to help people in the social world beyond the university to resolve conflicts and problems of living so that what is of value in life may be realized by everyone, insofar as that is possible. The pursuit of knowledge would be vital, but not intellectually fundamental. The intellectual and institutional revolution we so urgently need in our universities would affect every discipline and aspect of the university; it would dramatically affect both research and education, and the whole way the university is related to the rest of the social world. The revolution, from knowledge-inquiry to wisdom-inquiry would dramatically enhance the intellectual integrity and rationality of natural science, social inquiry, the humanities and technology, the character of these disciplines and the relationships they have with one another. University education throughout the university would be dramatically improved. And academic inquiry as a whole would do what, on the whole, it fails to do at present: it would help humanity resolve conflicts and problems of living in increasingly cooperatively rational and, as a result, increasingly successful ways, progress at last being made to a genuinely good, civilized world – a world in which there is peace, justice, liberal democracy, individual freedom, education, reasonable equality, sustainable prosperity and worthwhile opportunities in life, all of these for everyone, insofar as this is possible. Why, it may be asked, has academic philosophy not noticed that we urgently need to transform the current bad philosophy of inquiry of knowledge-inquiry into the far more intellectually rigorous and humanly valuable philosophy of wisdom-inquiry, so that we can begin to do what so far we have failed to do so lamentably: learn how to avoid impending disasters, and even make progress to a better world, something that seems at present almost unthinkable given the horrors of war, poverty, political enslavement of the 20th century, and the horrors of this century so far too? The answer is that academic philosophy is in a particularly pitiful state, as philosophers themselves, are just beginning to realize and lament. That is why academic philosophers are blind to the intellectual and humanitarian disaster of the bad philosophy that dominates universities today, and inconceivable to them to them that they might have, as a disciplinary task, to ensure academic inquiry implements a good philosophy of inquiry, and advocate and argue for change if it does not. Once upon a time, in Europe at least, philosophy was an intellectual power in the world. In the 17th century it created modern science which massively increased and improved our knowledge and understanding of the world, which in turn led to the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution, and the modern world. Philosophy was once so intellectually powerful and influential that it changed the course of history. But philosophy also made in the past three disastrous intellectual blunders: the post-Cartesian blunder, the post-Newtonian blunder, and the Enlightenment blunder. Never acknowledged and corrected by subsequent philosophy right down to the present, these unrecognized intellectual blunders rendered academic philosophy the esoteric, pathetic, and powerless discipline it is today, so that throughout the last century and, so far, throughout this one, academic philosophy has remained blind to the intellectual disaster of knowledge-inquiry, and thus failed entirely to take up its proper disciplinary task of warning fellow academics of the structural irrationality of the philosophy that prevails in the university, and of proposing what steps need to be taken to put things right. Instead of performing such an urgently needed philosophical task, so-called analytic philosophy was reduced to analysing the meaning of words. Since then, there has been hardly any discernible improvement, even if analysis of concepts no longer dominates the scene. Bad academic philosophy is indeed responsible for intellectual and humanitarian failures of the university. What the three past intellectual blunders of philosophy are, why their persistence so dramatically reduces academic philosophy to a triviality, and why, furthermore, this results in the failure of scientists and scholars to see what is so blatantly bad about the philosophy prevailing in universities around the world – the failure to see what so urgently needs to be done to put right what has been wrong for so long: all this is made clear in this book. A new kind of philosophy emerges during the course of the argument, critical fundamentalism, which has as its task to keep alive imaginative and critical – that is rational – thinking about our fundamental problem: How can our human world, the world we experience and live in – the world of living things, people, consciousness, free will, meaning and value – how can all of this exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? That problem encompasses all others of life, science and thought. Critical fundamentalism tries to improve answers to aspects of this problem; but it also seeks to encourage everyone to think about the problem, from time to time, and think about how it interacts, in both directions, with more urgent particular and specialized problems of life and thought. Critical fundamentalism sets out to help improve bad philosophy wherever it is to be found: in social, political, commercial, legal, financial, and international life; and especially in academia, in institutions of learning, so that they become devoted to enhancing the capacity of people to learn how to achieve what is of genuine value in this brief life of a few decades if we are fortunate. Critical fundamentalism does everything it can to bring about the revolution in our universities we so urgently need. If taken up by mainstream philosophy, it might really have an impact, and begin to transform universities for the better, in both intellectual and humanitarian terms, and thus, enable humanity to learn how, after the grim failures and horrors of the last century and this one, to make progress to a better world. -/- . (shrink)

Many women wrote philosophy in nineteenth-century Britain, and they wrote across the full range of philosophical topics. Yet these important women thinkers have been left out of the philosophical canon and many of them are barely known today. The aim of this book is to put them back on the map. It introduces twelve women philosophers - Mary Shepherd, Harriet Martineau, Ada Lovelace, George Eliot, Frances Power Cobbe, Helena Blavatsky, Julia Wedgwood, Victoria Welby, Arabella Buckley, Annie Besant, Vernon (...) Lee, and Constance Naden. Alison Stone looks at their views on naturalism, philosophy of mind, evolution, morality and religion, and progress in history. She shows how these women interacted and developed their philosophical views in conversation with one another, not only with their male contemporaries. The rich print and periodical culture of the period enabled these women to publish philosophy in forms accessible to a general readership, despite the restrictions women faced, such as having limited or no access to university education. Stone explains how these women became excluded from the history of philosophy because there was a cultural shift at the end of the nineteenth century towards specialised forms of philosophical writing, which depended on academic credentials that were still largely unavailable to women. (shrink)

many things were back to front in 20th century analytic philosophy.

How does experimental philosophy address philosophical questions and problems? That is: What projects does experimental philosophy pursue? What is their philosophical relevance? And what empirical methods do they employ? Answers to these questions will reveal how experimental philosophy can contribute to the longstanding ambition of placing philosophy on the ‘secure path of a science’, as Kant put it. We argue that experimental philosophy has introduced a new methodological perspective – a ‘meta-philosophical naturalism’ that addresses philosophical (...) questions about a phenomenon by empirically investigating how people think about this phenomenon. This chapter asks how this novel perspective can be successfully implemented: How can the empirical investigation of how people think about something address genuinely philosophical problems? And what methods – and, specifically, what methods beyond the questionnaire – can this investigation employ? We first review core projects of experimental philosophy and raise the question of their philosophical relevance. For ambitious answers, we turn to experimental philosophy’s most direct historical precursor, mid-20th century ordinary language philosophy, and discuss empirical implementations of two of its research programmes that use experimental methods from psycholinguistics and corpus methods from the digital humanities. (shrink)

Karl Popper (1902-1994) was one of the most influential philosophers of science of the 20th century. He made significant contributions to debates concerning general scientific methodology and theory choice, the demarcation of science from non-science, the nature of probability and quantum mechanics, and the methodology of the social sciences. His work is notable for its wide influence both within the philosophy of science, within science itself, and within a broader social context. Popper’s early work attempts to solve (...) the problem of demarcation and offer a clear criterion that distinguishes scientific theories from metaphysical or mythological claims. Popper’s falsificationist methodology holds that scientific theories are characterized by entailing predictions that future observations might reveal to be false. When theories are falsified by such observations, scientists can respond by revising the theory, or by rejecting the theory in favor of a rival or by maintaining the theory as is and changing an auxiliary hypothesis. In either case, however, this process must aim at the production of new, falsifiable predictions. While Popper recognizes that scientists can and do hold onto theories in the face of failed predictions when there are no predictively superior rivals to turn to. He holds that scientific practice is characterized by its continual effort to test theories against experience and make revisions based on the outcomes of these tests. By contrast, theories that are permanently immunized from falsification by the introduction of untestable ad hoc hypotheses can no longer be classified as scientific. Among other things, Popper argues that his falsificationist proposal allows for a solution of the problem of induction, since inductive reasoning plays no role in his account of theory choice. Along with his general proposals regarding falsification and scientific methodology, Popper is notable for his work on probability and quantum mechanics and on the methodology of the social sciences. Popper defends a propensity theory of probability, according to which probabilities are interpreted as objective, mind-independent properties of experimental setups. Popper then uses this theory to provide a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics, though its applicability goes beyond this specific case. With respect to the social sciences, Popper argued against the historicist attempt to formulate universal laws covering the whole of human history and instead argued in favor of methodological individualism and situational logic. Table of Contents 1. Background 2. Falsification and the Criterion of Demarcation a. Popper on Physics and Psychoanalysis b. Auxiliary and Ad Hoc Hypotheses c. Basic Sentences and the Role of Convention d. Induction, Corroboration, and Verisimilitude 3. Criticisms of Falsificationism 4. Realism, Quantum Mechanics, and Probability 5. Methodology in the Social Sciences 6. Popper’s Legacy 7. References and Further Reading a. Primary Sources b. Secondary Sources -/- . (shrink)

A general insight of 20th-century philosophy of science is that the acceptance of a scientific theory is grounded, not merely on a theory's relation to data, but on its status as having no, or being superior to its, competitors. I explore the ways in which scientific realists might be thought to utilise this insight, have in fact utilised it, and can legitimately utilise it. In more detail, I point out that, barring a natural but mistaken characterisation of (...) scientific realism, traditional realism has not utilised that insight regarding scientific theories, i.e., has not explicitly factored that insight into, and invoked it as justification for, what realists believe. Nonetheless, a new form of realism has. In response to a key historical threat, two of the most thoroughly developed contemporary versions of realism—one put forward by Jarrett Leplin, another by Stathis Psillos—are anchored on the sensible tactic of requiring that the theories to which realists commit themselves have no competitors. I argue, however, that the particular kind of non-competitor condition they invoke is illegitimate in the context of the realism debate. I contend further that invoking a non-competitor condition that is legitimate, sensible, and even, as it turns out, required in the context of the debate threatens to eliminate the possibility of scientific realism altogether. (shrink)

The main thesis of this paper is that Pap’s The Functional A Priori of Physical Theory (Pap 1946, henceforth FAP) and Cassirer’s Determinism and Indeterminism in Modern Physics (Cassirer 1937, henceforth DI) may be conceived as two kindred accounts of a late Neo-Kantian philosophy of science. They elucidate and clarify each other mutually by elaborating conceptual possibilities and pointing out affinities of neo-Kantian ideas with other currents of 20th century’s philosophy of science, namely, pragmatism, conventionalism, and (...) logical empiricism. Taking into account these facts, it seems not too far fetched to conjecture that under more favorable circumstances Pap could have served as a mediator between the “analytic” and “continental” tradition thereby overcoming the dogmatic dualism of these two philosophical currents that has characterized philosophy in the second half the 20th century. (shrink)

In the recent past, especially in the last quarter of 20th century, there have been drastic changes which have taken place. People all over the world, started feeling the pinch of “rate of change” in emerging contemporary society. It has influenced all the aspects of human life. It also influenced the ancient conception of philosophy that it seeks to understand the mysteries of existence and reality. It was also influenced by present scientific development which raised philosophical speculations (...) towards linguistic analysis, mental content and later on cognitive science studies. It is true that philosophy tries to discover the nature of truth and knowledge and to find what is of basic value and importance in life. It also examines the relationships between humanity and nature and between the individual and society. Philosophy arises out of wonder, curiosity, and the desire to know and understand. Philosophy is thus a form of inquiry--a process of analysis, criticism, interpretation, and speculation. It is contributing in the process of human development since ancient times. The process of human development begins with the conceptions and continues throughout life. It takes as many different courses as every human being develops in a unique way, embedded in the context of his or her environment. In the light of above assumptions, we are going to study the role of philosophy and values in public affairs and how philosophy shaping the human life with its continuous progress. (shrink)

Plato’s partition argument infers that the soul has parts from the fact that the soul experiences mental conflict. We consider an ambiguity in the concept of mental conflict. According to the first sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires whose satisfaction is logically incompatible. According to the second sense of conflict, a soul is in conflict when it has desires which are logically incompatible even when they are unsatisfied. This raises a dilemma: if the mental (...) conflict is supposed to be the latter kind of conflict, then the partition argument is valid but is likely unsound; if it’s supposed to be the former kind, then the partition argument has true premises but is invalid. We explain this dilemma in detail and defend a dispositionalist solution to it. (shrink)

The expression “linguistic Kantianism” is widely used to refer to ideas about thought and cognition being determined by language — a conception characteristic of 20th century analytic philosophy. In this article, I conduct a comparative analysis of Kant’s philosophy and views falling under the umbrella expression “linguistic Kantianism.” First, I show that “linguistic Kantianism” usually presupposes a relativistic conception that is alien to Kant’s philosophy. Second, I analyse Kant’s treatment of linguistic determinism and the place (...) of his ideas in the 18th century intellectual milieu and provide an overview of relevant contemporary literature. Third, I show that authentic Kantianism and “linguistic Kantianism” belong to two different types of transcendentalism, to which I respectively refer as the “transcendentalism of the subject” and the “transcendentalism of the medium.” The transcendentalism of the subject assigns a central role to the faculties of the cognising subject. The transcendentalism of the medium assigns the role of an “active” element neither to the external world nor to the faculties of the cognising subject, but to something in between — language, in the case of “linguistic Kantianism.” I conclude that the expression “linguistic Kantianism” can be misleading when it comes to the origins of this theory. It would be more appropriate to refer to this theory by the expression “linguistic transcendentalism,” thus avoiding an incorrect reference to Kant. (shrink)

In this paper we shall open a perspective from which the relatedness between the early analytic philosophy and Husserl’s phenomenology is so close that we can call the two programs with one name: “rigorous philosophy”, or “theory of forms”. Moreover, we shall show that the close relatedness between the two most influential philosophical movements of the 20th century has its roots in their common history. At the end of the paper we shall try to answer the (...) question why being rather related at the beginning, their ways parted in the subsequent years. (shrink)

When humanism is thought, especially within the borders of 20th century philosophy, one of the things that first comes to mind is the statements which have occurred in 1950s between Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre, can be named as Heidegger-Sartre Controversy on Humanism and mainly based on two texts. Sartre, in one of his speeches, builds an essential connection between humanism and existentialism and in here he defines Heidegger as an existentialist like himself. In return, Heidegger, probably (...) as a criticism to Sartre's attribution to him, told about his thoughts on humanism within the expanded version of one of his earlier letters. By this controversy the context and content humanism had been expanded, the understanding of humanism is deepened. The aim of this article is to manifest if there are some things that the controversy between Heidegger and Sartre could contribute to the terms -as a problematic humanism has nowadays- like post-humanism, trans-humanism, meta-humanism, super-humanism, alter-humanism whose terminological meanings aren't quite well-defined. It is to investigate if there are any solutions that humanism -which is being shaped again and obtaining new contexts through these terms- could gain by this controversy against this current terminology problem. (shrink)

Over the last two decades there has been a growing interest in the transcendental dialectic of Critique of Pure Reason in Germany. Authors, however, often do not pay enough attention to the fact that Kant’s theory of reason (in the narrow sense) and the concept of ideas derived from it is not limited to this text. The purpose of this article is to compare and analyze the functionality of mind as a subjective ability developed by Kant and Fichte with the (...) Hegelian expansion of the mind to the idea of universal rationality. The relevance of such a comparison is connected with the need to demonstrate how the Hegelian paradigm of absolute rationality causes either the subsequent rejection of reason as a philosophical principle in the 19th and´20th centuries counter-discourse, or reduction of reason to the concept of pragmatic rationality. In the first part of this paper, the author intends to differentiate between at least 7 different types of ideas and their functions in Kant’s works. In the second part, he demonstrates how Fichte tries to systematize them beginning with reason, which at first creates an idea of itself. Special attention is paid to the way that Fichte categorizes them with the help of 5 spheres of action or 5 worldviews. The third and final part of the article discusses how Hegel goes beyond the frame of the transcendental philosophy of consciousness using different demands linked to the concepts of “reason” and “ideas”. Although these requirements are not found in Kant and Fichte, they entail a set of difficulties, which the author considers in conclusion. The author’s interpretation of the theory of ideas and their functions in Kant, Fichte and Hegel demonstrates the dynamic character of the theories of reason in classical German philosophy, as well as the relevance of the 7 types of ideas that retain their significance for philosophy of the 21st century. Keywords: Kant and German idealism, types of ideas, functions of reason, worldviews, the problem of different demands. В Германии на протяжении последних двух десятилетий возрос интерес к трансцендентальной диалектике «Критики чистого разума». Однако авторы часто не обращают внимания на то, что кантовская теория разума (в узком смысле), в которой разворачивается работа с идеями, не ограничивается этим текстом. Целью данной статьи является сравнительный анализ разработанной Кантом и Фихте функциональности разума как субъективной способности с гегелевским расширением разума до идеи всеобщей разумности. Актуальность такого сравнения связана с необходимостью продемонстрировать то, каким образом гегелевская парадигма абсолютной разумности вызывает либо последующий отказ от разума как философского принципа в контрдискурсе XIX–XX вв., либо редукцию разума к понятию прагматической рациональности. В первой части данной статьи вводится различение по меньшей мере семи различных видов идей и связанных с ними функций в философии Канта. Во второй части демонстрируется попытка Фихте их систематизировать исходя из утверждения том, что разум должен сначала создать идею о самом себе. Проанализировано также предложенное Фихте распределение идей на пять сфер действенности или типов мировоззрения. В третьей, итоговой части статьи рассмотрен выход гегелевской мысли за рамки трансцендентальной философии сознания. Автор статьи связывает этот процесс с выдвижением не осуществимых в контексте философии Канта и Фихте требований к понятиям «разум» и «идея» и анализирует ряд сложностей, вызванных этими требованиями. Таким образом, интерпретация учения об идеях и их функциях у Канта, Фихте и Гегеля демонстрирует динамический характер теорий разума в классической немецкой философии и актуальность семи видов идей, которые сохраняют свое значение для философии XXI в. Ключевые слова: Кант и немецкий идеализм, виды идей, функции разума, мировоззрение, проблема различных требований. (shrink)

The second half of the 20th century may fairly be considered a golden age for the study of ancient philosophy. This period witnessed the creation of four English-language journals for specialists and two professional societies. Throughout this period there were numerous regional and national conferences, reading groups, NEH-sponsored summer seminars and institutes on various aspects of ancient thought, successful graduate programs in ancient philosophy at a sizable number of American universities, and a steady supply of jobs (...) for specialists in the field. Seminal studies by Gregory Vlastos and G.E.L. Owen stimulated broad interest in ancient Greek philosophy by showing how the methods and issues explored by ancient thinkers were relevant to contemporary philosophical debates. On a less happy note, in recent years some influential analytic philosophers have discounted the value of work in the history of philosophy, and public funding for philosophy, along with other humanities fields, has declined sharply. -/- . (shrink)

The expression experimental philosophy has taken on a lively interest in recent research on Nietzsche, as the growing shows number of interpreters. This reflection occupied a small place in the discussions at the end of the 20th century; a situation that changed dramatically at the beginning of our century. To understanding the questions that revolve around this philosophy, it is necessary to consider its limits and scope and, above all, the space it occupies in the (...) work of the German thinker. Through a philological approach, the development of the latest works and different uses of the concept, we will be able to highlight the of this project promising. This work aims to bring the reader closer, due to the novelty in the Spanish language, to this discussion that is attracting the gaze of those interested in philosopher of Röcken. (shrink)

The Warsaw School of Logic (WSL) was the famous branch of the Lviv-Warsaw School (LWS) – the most important movement in the history of Polish philosophy. Logic made the most important field in the activities of the WSL. The aim of this work is to highlight the role and significance of the WSL in the history of logic in the 20th century.

It is undeniable Poincaré was a very famous and influential scientist. So, possibly because of it, it was relatively easy for him to participate in the heated discussions of the foundations of mathematics in the early 20th century. We can say it was “easy” because he didn't get involved in this subject by writing great treatises, or entire books about his own philosophy of mathematics (as other authors from the same period did). Poincaré contributed to the (...) class='Hi'>philosophy of mathematics by writing short essays and letters. (shrink)

The three young philosophers Kevin Mulligan, Peter Simons and Barry Smith have become well-known in the last few years especially in German-speaking analytical philosophy and phenomenology circles. This is on the one hand as a result of their historical and systematic philosophical work; but it is also because of the provocative way in which they represent their philosophy. Because they often appear in threes, they have become known as the "gang of three" or "three musketeers" or even – (...) and this in an admiring sense – "mafiosi" (Rescher). They are known primarily for the small workshops they have been organizing in uncomplicated Anglo-Saxon manner all over Europe. Their goal has been to show that analytic philosophy as it has been pursued up to now is in need of reform and also that the history of scientific philosophizing is not identical to the history of Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophy. Above all, they have tried to make more well known the Austrian tradition of scientific philosophy, and they can be given credit for having done much to promote the current interest in this tradition, which means: the history of Austrian philosophy of the 19th and early 20th centuries and its historical context in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. (shrink)

The Polish philosophy of mathematics in the 19th century is not a well-researched topic. For this period, only five philosophers are usually mentioned, namely Jan Śniadecki, Józef Maria Hoene-Wroński, Henryk Struve, Samuel Dickstein, and Edward Stamm. This limited and incomplete perspective does not allow us to develop a well-balanced picture of the Polish philosophy of mathematics and gauge its influence on 19th- and 20th-century Polish philosophy in general. To somewhat complete our picture of the (...) history of the Polish philosophy of mathematics in those times, we here present the profiles of some lesser-known Polish Romantic philosophers of the 19th century, namely Karol Libelt, Bronisław Trentowski, and Józef Kremer. We discuss their contributions to the philosophy of mathematics and their metaphysical perspectives, and we also show how their metaphysical ideas have found some continuity in the studies of some Catholic philosophers. (shrink)

This dissertation aims to show the philosophical content of the ‘society of spectacle’ concept, which was elaborated by a French thinker from the second part of the 20th century, Guy Debord. The study achieves this aim by means of the history of philosophy, analyzing this concept in the context of previous and contemporary philosophical ideas. Analysis, the structural method, the hermeneutic method of interpretation, and the comparative method are prime research methods. The philosophical part of Guy Debord’s (...) legacy is underexplored, so the dissertation helps to make significant progress in its exploration, because it sheds light on the key concepts of this theoretician. -/- The topic is divided into three themes discussed in the corresponding chapters. In the first chapter the research discusses the literature on the ‘society of spectacle’ and the proper methodology for exploring the philosophical content of this concept. In the next chapter the research covers the ontological basis of this concept in the framework of the history of philosophy, and in the third chapter the study focuses on the historical and philosophical research of the portion of the content of the concept which expresses Debord’s social and political philosophy. -/- The dissertation argues that the ‘society of spectacle’ concept is rooted in Guy Debord’s ideas about discrete space and the specific ontological status of ‘image’ as a substitute for reality. Thoughts in the area of ontology distinguish Guy Debord’s concept from similar ideas of other authors; for instance, from Roland Barthes’ theories. On the contrary, the ontological basis of the ‘society of spectacle’ places this concept in close quarters with Jean Baudrillard and Jacques Derrida’s ideas about space and reality. The dissertation particularly argues for the conceptual proximity of G. Debord’s notion of ‘image’ with Jean Baudrillard’s notion of ‘simulacrum’, and also of G. Debord’s notion of ‘creating of images’ with Jacques Derrida’s notion of ‘deconstruction.’ The study then argues that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a more radical interpretation of the irrationality of social behavior than similar concepts of thinkers such as Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, and Paul-Michel Foucault. Moreover, the analysis shows that G. Debord’s ‘society of spectacle’ concept is a result of a long development of philosophical ideas which compare world, society or cognitive processes with spectacle throughout all main periods of the history of Western philosophy, primarily its modern period. -/- In contemporary research literature on G. Debord’s theoretical legacy, the dissertation primarily contributes the new idea that Debord’s thoughts have an ontological basis that opens new vistas for further researching their content and explaining their influence on contemporary culture. (shrink)

The ‘Ordinary Language’ philosophy of the early 20th century is widely thought to have failed. It is identified with the broader so-called ‘linguistic turn’, a common criticism of which is captured by Devitt and Sterelny (1999), who quip: “When the naturalistic philosopher points his finger at reality, the linguistic philosopher discusses the finger.” (p 280) The implication is that according to ‘linguistic’ philosophy, we are not to study reality or truth or morality etc, but the meaning (...) of the words ‘reality’, ‘truth’, ‘morality’ etc. Ordinary Language philosophy has fallen so thoroughly into disrepute because it is supposed to advocate that not only are we to study words and meanings rather than the phenomena themselves (which is apparently bad enough), but we must restrict that study to words and meanings as they occur in the language used by the ordinary speaker. A number of preposterous corollaries have been taken to follow from this view. Most seriously, perhaps, and irritatingly, is that any theory which contains ‘non-ordinary’ uses of expressions is thereby ‘meaningless’ or simply false – which is clearly absurd. In this paper I show that this is a completely inaccurate picture of Ordinary Language philosophy. My aim is to correct these persistent misinterpretations, and make possible a more sensible reassessment of the philosophy. (shrink)

This paper examines the fortunes of non-European philosophies in histories of philosophy written by European and American philosophers from the 17th century to the present day. It charts the shift from inclusive histories of philosophy, which included non-European philosophies, to exclusive histories of philosophy, which excluded and/or marginalized non-European philosophies, at the end of the 18th century. This shift was motivated by racial Eurocentrism, which cast a long shadow over histories of philosophy written during (...) the 19th and 20th centuries. The paper also considers recent attempts to produce a more inclusive history of philosophy. By examining the history of the inclusion and exclusion of non-European philosophies in histories of philosophy, this paper seeks to challenge the assumption that philosophy began and has been practised exclusively by European or western thinkers. (shrink)

Xiaoman Yang and Jean Langlois-Berthelot explore the analysis by Chinese philosophers of Emmanuel Levinas, a 20th century French philosopher whose thinking had close links with the cultural philosophical principles of Confucius and Chan Buddhism. Their article is entitled "Language, Culture and Philosophy-Comparing France and China".

This second volume is a continuation of the first volume’s 20th century conceptual foundations of quantum physics extending its view to the principles and research fields of the 21st century. A summary of the standard concepts, from modern advanced experimental tests of 'quantum ontology’ to the interpretations of quantum mechanics, the standard model of particle physics, and the mainstream quantum gravity theories. A state-of-the-art treatise that reports on the recent developments in quantum computing, classical and quantum information (...) theory, the black holes information paradox and the holographic principle to quantum cosmology, with some attention on contemporary themes such as the Bose-Einstein condensates as also to the more speculative areas of quantum biology and quantum consciousness. A final chapter on the connections between the quantum realm and philosophical idealism concludes this volume. Considering how the media (sometimes also physicists) present quantum theory, which focuses only on highly dubious ideas and speculations backed by no evidence or, worse, promote pseudo-scientific hypes that fall regularly in and out of fashion, this is a ‘vademecum’ for those who look for a serious introduction and deeper understanding of the 21st century quantum theory. All topics are explained with a concise but rigorous intermediate level style which may, at times, require some effort. However, you will finally acquire an unparalleled background in the conceptual foundations of quantum physics, enabling you to distinguish between the real science backed by experimental facts and mere speculative interpretations. (shrink)