Neither the art historians Panofsky and Warburg nor the philosopher Cassirer had any interest with their cultural-historical research in fact-based, historical questions. An approach that had become common in the 19th century due to the loss of validity of the speculative aesthetics. On the contrary, instead of this substantial understanding as the documentary concept represents, these researchers focused on a functional understanding of art historical sources. Nevertheless, in contrast to this starting point, Panofsky invented a methodological procedure, the so-called (...) class='Hi'>iconological method, which in turn led back to a documentary-focused historical analysis of artistic artefacts that is still recognized today. The goal is to rediscover the original background of Panofsky´s method. This should make it clear that the original idea of the image concept pursued by Warburg and Cassirer, which had been lost or obscured by the aftermath of National Socialism in Germany, can be made fruitful in a new light today. This path may open up iconology to “image science”/Bildwissenschaft and thus transform the former from a purely historical approach to an understanding relevant to cultural processes and thus to human action. (shrink)

The Fifth Element (1997) is a French science-fiction film in English, directed and co-written by Luc Besson. The title and the plot of the film refer to a central notion of Greek philosophy, that is, pemptousia, or quintessence. Pre-Socratic philosophers such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes and others, were convinced that all natural beings – in fact, nature itself – consist in four primary imperishable elements or essences (ousiai), i.e., fire, earth, water, and air. To these four, Aristotle added aether, a (...) fifth essence (pemptousia). The introduction of aether gave birth to a great tradition in late Antique and Medieval philosophy, and eventually it came to signify not an additional primary element, but the core-essence of all beings, their fundamental ontological structure. Besson’s film draws its inspiration on this philosophical tradition but its cinematographic rendering of the concept of Quintessence is typical of the contemporaneous views on the core characteristics of matters. The modernity that stimulates the film is equally anti-transcendentalist and anti-essentialist. Thus, the fifth element of the film is existentially personified and genderized making the traditional philosophical significance of the term to be adjusted by modernity in an immanent and temporal context where in addition aesthetics plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Does a nihilist who kills himself betray his own beliefs? An unreflected answer would probably turn out positive, because a nihilist may be defined as a person who embraces all aspects of life and pain itself. But someone who escapes his sorrowful existence by committing suicide seems not to accept his own human condition and therefore cannot die as a nihilist. If this argumentation is right, human life would not be possible outside cultural contexts, for the particularity of nihilism (...) is its large distance to and independence of culture and collectivity. In his autobiographical work "Arbeit und Struktur" Wolfgang Herrndorf portrays his three and a half years of living with brain cancer. At the same time he shows us how his originally humanistic nihilism turns into a more pessimistic one while coping with his disease. Herrndorf, in a manner of speaking, writes his own "myth to live" without being able to rely on the shelter of culture, without a "myth of collectivity". In the face of this, we must assume Herrndorf's ideological transformation from a cooperative nihilism to a pessimistic nihilism, which justifies his own death, was his sole opportunity to mentally survive the three and a half years of pain and dissolution. From this perspective, the example of Wolfgang Herrndorf and his "Arbeit und Struktur" would reveal mankind's absolute dependency on metaphysical significance and its need for individual myths to live. Despite regarding himself as a modern, secular and rationalistic human being, Herrndorf cannot overcome the necessity of the iconological translation of "reality to world". Therefore, the intent of this master's thesis is to show that all living human beings are captives of icons and their metaphysical representation, and that the endless effort of translating whole reality into a single myth to live is part of our conditio humana. (shrink)

Since the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day, it has rarely been doubted that whenever formal aesthetic methods meet their iconological counterparts, the two approaches appear to be mutually exclusive. In reality, though, an ahistorical concept is challenging a historical analysis of art. It is especially Susanne K. Langer´s long-overlooked system of analogies between perceptions of the world and of artistic creations that are dependent on feelings which today allows a rapprochement of these positions. Krois’s insistence (...) on a similar point supports this analysis. - I - Unbestritten bis heute gilt, formwissenschaftliche und ikonologische Methoden scheinen sich grundsätzlich auszuschließen, da die ersteren auf ahistorischen und die letzteren auf historischen Grundlagen aufbauen. Dem entgegen soll mit diesem Beitrag gezeigt werden, wie insbesondere die Forschungen Susanne K. Langers und ergänzend diejenigen von John M. Krois eine Annäherung beider Positionen ermöglichen. (shrink)

In this paper, I draw the fundamental structures of the phenomenology of the person, on the basis of a precise theoretical assumption: to introduce to phenomenology of the person is to introduce to the eidetic phenomenology. So, my paper explores the fundamental questions of the Husserlian phenomenology, and traces a path towards the contemporary questions of the phenomenology of the person: what is a person in the era of social networks and liquid society?

Did the pragmatic turn encompass the linguistic turn in the history of philosophy? Or was the linguistic turn a turn away from pragmatism? Some commentators identify the so-called “eclipse” of pragmatism by analytic philosophy, especially during the Cold War era, as a turn away from pragmatist thinking. However, the historical evidence suggests that this narrative is little more than a myth. Pragmatism persisted, transforming into a more analytic variety under the influence of Quine and Putnam (...) and, more recently, a continental version in the hands of Richard Rorty and Cornel West. In this paper, I argue that proof of the linguistic turn’s presence as a moment in a broader pragmatic turn in philosophy can be garnered from close examination of a single article, W. V. O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” and a single issue: whether the analytic-synthetic distinction is philosophically defensible. (shrink)

Richard Bernstein’s recent book The Pragmatic Turn is a first-rate scholarly work, an enduring contribution to the literature on the history of Pragmatism, and one that is very difficult to find fault with. Since I am a Dewey scholar and a democratic theorist, I will focus mainly on the book’s third chapter (“John Dewey’s Vision of Radical Democracy”) and its relation to Bernstein’s overall thesis: namely, that “during the past 150 years, philosophers working in different traditions have explored and (...) refined themes that were prominent in the pragmatic movement.” While Bernstein criticizes several of Dewey’s intellectual opponents (e.g., Maine, Trotsky and Lippmann), he does not excuse Dewey and his democratic theory from similarly exacting scrutiny—as some Dewey scholars are guilty of. Indeed, a recurring critique in the third chapter is that Dewey’s democratic theory is too light on particulars, saying very little about how to institutionalize the ideal he sets forth. I think that there is a good reason for Dewey’s vagueness, and that reason comes forth when we appreciate the turn within the pragmatic turn. Some philosophical historians draw attention to philosophy’s large-scale or macro-level turns, such as the so-called “pragmatic” and “linguistic” turns, but tend to ignore the small-scale or micro-level turns within those broader turns. Bernstein is not one of them. Democratic theory experienced a deliberative turn in the late twentieth-century, followed by a turn toward more practical issues, such as testing, applying and institutionalizing the deliberative democratic ideal. Likewise, we encounter a more recent turn within pragmatist studies, which manifests in the secondary literature on John Dewey’s pragmatism. Download PDF . (shrink)

Epistemology has taken a zetetic turn from the study of belief towards the study of inquiry. Several decades ago, theories of bounded rationality took a procedural turn from attitudes towards the processes of inquiry that produce them. What is the relationship between the zetetic and procedural turns? In this paper, I argue that we should treat the zetetic turn in epistemology as part of a broader procedural turn in the study of bounded rationality. I use this (...) claim to motivate and clarify the zetetic turn in epistemology, as well as to reveal the need for a second zetetic turn within practical philosophy. (shrink)

The ontological turn (OT) is a loose cluster of theoretical approaches within cultural anthropology that advocates a synthetic, overarching way forward for ethnographically oriented cultural anthropology. We argue that in order to contribute substantively to ethnobiology the OT needs to distance itself from a long-standing tradition of thinking within ethnography that assumes some kind of fundamental divide between the natural and the social sciences. This distancing seems especially unlikely in light of the meta-anthropological nature of the OT as primarily (...) a perspective on ethnographic methodology. Instead, we advocate for naturalistic theoretical alternatives for thinking about human sociality, where philosophical innovation develops in concert with ongoing empirical work across the biological, cognitive, and social sciences. We illustrate this perspective by drawing on two naturalistic accounts likely to prove more fruitful for ethnobiological practice, namely, trans-genera models of sociality and progenerative views of kinship. (shrink)

This paper argues that the recent metaethical turn to reasons as the fundamental units of normativity offers no special advantage in explaining a variety of other normative and evaluative phenomena, unless perhaps a form of reductionism about reasons is adopted which is rejected by many of those who advocate turning to reasons.

The recent discussion of fictional models has focused on imagination, implicitly considering fictions as something nonconcrete. We present two cases from synthetic biology that can be viewed as concrete fictions. Both minimal cells and alternative genetic systems are modal in nature: they, as well as their abstract cousins, can be used to study unactualized possibilia. We approach these synthetic constructs through Vaihinger’s notion of a semi-fiction and Goodman’s notion of semifactuality. Our study highlights the relative existence of such concrete fictions. (...) Before their realizations neither minimal cells nor alternative genetic systems were any well-defined objects, and the subsequent experimental work has given more content to these originally schematic imaginings. But it is as yet unclear whether individual members of these heterogeneous groups of somewhat functional synthetic constructs will eventually turn out to be fully realizable, remain only partially realizable, or prove outright impossible. (shrink)

Show more ▾ There are various dichotomies in Kant’s philosophy: sensibility vs. rationality, nature vs. freedom, cognition vs. morality, noumenon vs. phenomenon, among others. There are also different ways of mediating these dichotomies, which is the systematic undertaking of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. One of the most important concepts in this work is the sublime, which exemplifies the connections between the different dichotomies; this fact means the concept’s construction is full of tension. On the one hand, as (...) a pure reflection of aesthetic judgment the sublime must be without interest or purpose, but on the other hand it is “based on the concept of reason” (KU AA:292). On the one hand, the sublime “represents merely the subjective play of the powers of the mind (imagination and reason) as harmonious” (KU AA5:258), but on the other hand, reason “exercises dominion over sensibility” and the imagination is “purposively determined in accordance with a law” of reason (KU AA5:268f). Taking into account these problems concerning the essential definition the sublime, this paper will first illustrate how the sublime embodies the a priori principle of aesthetic judgment through contrasting the judgment of the sublime with the judgment of taste in order to establish a basic logical frame for the judgment of the sublime. Second, this paper redefines the boundary between the mathematically and dynamically sublime in order to reveal both the coexistence of contemplation and movement within the sublime and the unrevealed function of reason and imagination. Finally, contrasting the sublime with moral feeling, this paper elaborates the turning-structure (from sensibility to rationality and from object-intuition to idea-exhibition) of the sublime. (shrink)

The linguistic turn is a central aspect of Richard Rorty’s philosophy, informing his early critiques of foundationalism in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and subsequent critiques of authoritarianism in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. It is argued that we should interpret the linguistic turn as a methodological suggestion for how philosophy can take a non-foundational perspective on normativity. It is then argued that although Rorty did not succeed in explicating normativity without foundations (or authority without authoritarianism), we should (...) take seriously the ambition motivating his project. But taking that ambition seriously may require reconsidering the linguistic turn. (shrink)

The editorial introduces issue 21.1 of Technoetic Arts via a critical reflection on the artificial intelligence hype (AI hype) that emerged in 2022. Tracing the history of the critique of Large Language Models, the editorial underscores that there are substantial ethical challenges related to bias in the training data, copyright issues, as well as ecological challenges which the technology industry has consistently downplayed over the years. -/- The editorial highlights the distinction between the current AI technology’s reliance on extensive pre-existing (...) human-generated data for pattern recognition and the performative process inherent in art practice. Patterns of creative output can be replicated without a thorough understanding of underlying concepts. In contrast, the performative process of art practice, as explored through the conceptual frameworks of creativity by Noam Chomsky, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roger T. Ames and with reference to an earlier publication of the editorial’s author, creates concepts and continually ‘strives to extend itself towards the unknown.’ -/- Following this introductory section, the editorial provides an overview of the ten articles featured in this issue of Technoetic Arts. The first four texts engage with emerging technologies from various perspectives in art and design. The subsequent six articles, part of a special section titled 'Perspectives from Chandigarh,' reflect a quest for meaningful existence within colonial, patriarchal, and biopolitical structures that frame everyday practices of exclusion and oppression. (shrink)

Alexander Bird indicates that the significance of Thomas Kuhn in the history of philosophy of science is somehow paradoxical. On the one hand, Kuhn was one of the most influential and important philosophers of science in the second half of the twentieth century. On the other hand, nowadays there is little distinctively Kuhn’s legacy in the sense that most of Kuhn’s work has no longer any philosophical significance. Bird argues that the explanation of the paradox of Kuhn’s legacy is that (...) Kuhn took a direction opposite to that of the mainstream of the philosophy of science in his later academic career. This paper aims to provide a new way to understand and develop Kuhn’s legacy by revisiting the development of Kuhn’s philosophy of science in 1970s and proposing a new account of exemplar. Firstly, I propose my diagnosis of Kuhn’s “wrong turning” by identifying Kuhn’s two novel contributions: the introduction of paradigm and the proposal of the incommensurability thesis. Secondly, I argue that Kuhn made a conceptual/terminological turn from paradigm to theory, which undermined Kuhn’s novel contributions. Thirdly, I propose a new articulation of exemplar and propose an exemplar-based approach to analysing the history of science. Finally, I show how the exemplar-based approach can be applied to analyse the history of science by my case study of the early development of genetics. (shrink)

This paper provides a phenomenological analysis of postphenomenological philosophy of technology. While acknowledging that the results of its analyses are to be recognized as original, insightful, and valuable, we will argue that in its execution of the empirical turn, postphenomenology forfeits a phenomenological dimension of questioning. By contrasting the postphenomenological method with Heidegger’s understanding of phenomenology as developed in his early Freiburg lectures and in Being and Time, we will show how the postphenomenological method must be understood as mediation (...) theory, which adheres to what Heidegger calls the theoretical attitude. This leaves undiscussed how mediation theory about ontic beings involves a specific ontological mode of relating to beings, whereas consideration of this mode is precisely the concern of phenomenology. This ontological dimension is important to consider, since we will argue that postphenomenology is unwittingly technically mediated in an ontological way. The upshot of this is that in its dismissal of Heidegger’s questioning of technology as belonging to “classical philosophy of technology,” postphenomenology implicitly adheres to what Heidegger calls technology as Enframing. We argue that postphenomenology overlooks its own adherence to the theoretical attitude and ultimately to Enframing, and we will conclude with calling for a phenomenological questioning of the dimension that postphenomenology presently leaves unthought, meaning that we will develop a plea for a rehabilitation of the ontological dimension in the philosophy of technology. (shrink)

Alberto Coffa used the phrase "the Copernican turn in semantics" to denote a revolutionary transformation of philosophical views about the connection between the meanings of words and the acceptability of sentences and arguments containing those words. According to the new conception resulting from the Copernican turn, here called "the Copernican view", rules of use are constitutive of the meanings of words. This view has been linked with two doctrines: (A) the instances of meaning-constitutive rules are analytically and a (...) priori true or valid; (B) to grasp a meaning is to accept its rules. The pros and cons of different versions of the Copernican view, ascribable to Wittgenstein, Carnap, Gentzen, Dummett, Prawitz, Boghossian and other authors, will be weighed. A new version will be proposed, which implies neither (A) nor (B). (shrink)

There are two families of influential and stubborn puzzles that many theories of aboutness (intentionality) face: underdetermination puzzles and puzzles concerning representations that appear to be about things that do not exist. I propose an approach that elegantly avoids both kinds of puzzle. The central idea is to explain aboutness (the relation supposed to stand between thoughts and terms and their objects) in terms of relations of co-aboutness (the relation of being about the same thing that stands between the thoughts (...) and terms themselves). (shrink)

According to A-theories of time, the metaphysical ground of change and dynamicity is provided by a continuous shifting in which events are past, present and future (A-determinations). It is often claimed that these theories make better sense of our experience of dynamicity than their rival, the B-theories; according to the latter, dynamicity is grounded solely in the irreducible earlier-than relations (B-relations) which obtain between events or states of affairs. In this paper, I argue that the experience of time's dynamicity, on (...) the contrary, cannot be accounted for solely in terms of representations of irreducible A-determinations, because any representation which is adequate to ground these experiences must itself involve representation of irreducible B-relations, while it needs not involve representation of A-determinations. Even if, as a matter of contingent fact, our experiences of dynamicity consisted of representations of successions of A-determinations, what would account for them being experiences of dynamicity would be solely the B-theoretic relations of succession, rather than the irrelevant A-theoretic nature of the relata. (shrink)

This is a report of the international workshop «Transcendental Turn in Contemporary Philosophy 2: Kant’s Appearance, Its Ontological and Epistemic Status» (April 27—29, 2017, Moscow), the tasks of which was (1) to discuss the specificity of transcendental idealism, (2) to study the nature of one of Kant’s important concepts — that of appearance — within the framework of the essential conceptual triad of transcendentalism: thing in itself (Ding an sich) — appearance (Erscheinung) — representation (Vorstellung), (3) to analyse the (...) distinction between Kant’s concepts of appearance and phenomenon, and (4) to examine the concepts of appearance and phenomenon in relation to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. (shrink)

In the present article, I show that sounds are properties that are not physical in a narrow sense. First, I argue that sounds are properties using Moorean style arguments and defend this property view from various arguments against it that make use of salient disanalogies between sounds and colors. The first disanalogy is that we talk of objects making sounds but not of objects making colors. The second is that we count and quantify over sounds but not colors. The third (...) is that sounds can survive qualitative change in their auditory properties, but colors cannot survive change in their chromatic properties. Next, I provide a taxonomy of property views of sound. As the property view of sound has been so rarely discussed, many of the views available have never been articulated. My taxonomy will articulate these views and how they are related to one another. I taxonomize sounds according to three characteristics: dispositional/non-dispositional, relational/non-relational, and reductive/non-reductive. Finally, mirroring a popular argument in the color literature, I argue that physical views in the narrow sense are unable to accommodate the similarity and difference relations in which sounds essentially stand. I end replying to three objections. (shrink)

While there is good reason to think that Mendelssohn's Morgenstunden targets some of the key claims of Kant’s first Critique, this criticism has yet to be considered in the appropriate context or presented in all of its systematic detail. I show that far from being an isolated assault, Mendelssohn’s attack in the Morgenstunden is a continuation and development of his earlier criticism of Kant’s idealism as presented in the Inaugural Dissertation. I also show that Mendelssohn’s objection was more influential on (...) Kant than has previously been suspected; not only did Kant respond to it in a brief review and a set of remarks published along with a disciple’s examination of Mendelssohn’s text but, as I will suggest, Kant’s Refutation of Idealism is intended (at least in part) to undermine the Cartesian starting-point Mendelssohn had presumed throughout his campaign against Kantian idealism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the search for explainable models and interpretable decisions in AI must be reformulated in terms of the broader project of offering a pragmatic and naturalistic account of understanding in AI. Intuitively, the purpose of providing an explanation of a model or a decision is to make it understandable to its stakeholders. But without a previous grasp of what it means to say that an agent understands a model or a decision, the explanatory strategies will (...) lack a well-defined goal. Aside from providing a clearer objective for XAI, focusing on understanding also allows us to relax the factivity condition on explanation, which is impossible to fulfill in many machine learning models, and to focus instead on the pragmatic conditions that determine the best fit between a model and the methods and devices deployed to understand it. After an examination of the different types of understanding discussed in the philosophical and psychological literature, I conclude that interpretative or approximation models not only provide the best way to achieve the objectual understanding of a machine learning model, but are also a necessary condition to achieve post hoc interpretability. This conclusion is partly based on the shortcomings of the purely functionalist approach to post hoc interpretability that seems to be predominant in most recent literature. (shrink)

This chapter examines the pragmatist approach to cognition and experience and provides some of the conceptual background to the “pragmatic turn” currently underway in cognitive science. Classical pragmatists wrote extensively on cognition from a naturalistic perspective, and many of their views are compatible with contemporary pragmatist approaches such as enactivist, extended, and embodied-Bayesian approaches to cognition. Three principles of a pragmatic approach to cognition frame the discussion: First, thinking is structured by the interaction of an organism with its environment. (...) Second, cognition develops via exploratory inference, which remains a core cognitive ability throughout the life cycle. Finally, inquiry/problem solving begins with genuinely irritating doubts that arise in a situation and is carried out by exploratory inference. (shrink)

Heidegger’s “Evening Conversation: In a Prisoner of War Camp in Russia, between a Younger and an Older Man”, one of three dialogues composed by Heidegger after the defeat of National Socialist Germany published in Country Path Conversations explores the being-historical situation and fate of the German people by turning to the early Daoist text of the Zhuangzi. My article traces how Heidegger interprets fundamental concepts from the Zhuangzi, mediated by way of Richard Wilhelm’s translation Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, (...) such as naturalness, letting/releasement, the unnecessary and the useless in the context of his hermeneutical and political situation. I consider to what extent this dialogue, along with his other discussions of the Zhuangzi and intensive engagement with the Daodejing from 1943 to 1950, constitute a “Daoist turn” in Heidegger’s thinking that helped shape his Postwar thought. (shrink)

This poem metaphorically depicts how a person overcomes his fear and anxiety by inwardly and faithfully relating oneself to the One. The person was seriously scared of water, which is symbolic of his fear of the storm such as failure, death, or perhaps COVID-19.

Aristotle’s political theory is often dismissed as undemocratic due to his treatment of natural slavery and women and to his conception of political rule as rule by turns. The second reason presents no less serious challenges than the first for finding democracy in Aristotle’s political theory. This article argues that Aristotle’s account of ruling in turns hinges on a critique of master rule and an affirmation of political rule, which involves both the rulers and the ruled in the project of (...) ruling. Ruling in turns makes the rule shared, not merely an exchange of opportunities to rule as a despot. (shrink)

Neuroscientists have in recent years turned to building models that aim to generate predictions rather than explanations. This “predictive turn” has swept across domains including law, marketing, and neuropsychiatry. Yet the norms of prediction remain undertheorized relative to those of explanation. I examine two styles of predictive modeling and show how they exemplify the normative dynamics at work in prediction. I propose an account of how predictive models, conceived of as technological devices for aiding decision-making, can come to be (...) adequate for purposes that are defined by both their guiding research questions and their larger social context of application. (shrink)

Images, or icons, have been made the subject of a ‘turn’. But no new epoch under its sign is looming. The image is just one medium among others. The best we can do is to face what it may and what it may not achieve. Its main competitor is the word – though there is a field of transition between both. Words and numbers surpass the image when one needs to refer to something that cannot be seen – this (...) holds for ‘radioactivity’ just as much as for ‘responsibility’. To unambiguously show a categorial relation like causality or a logical feature like negation in an image borders on the impossible. (The aspiration to symbolize or manifest the invisible, though, has long inspired artistic images.) Pictures are accessible to the illiterate; while a language must be learned, an image seems to admit everyone. Yet that is in part an illusion. Obviously, it is not enough to see an image. To understand it, however, often a number of things must have been learnt in the first place, too. (shrink)

Straightening the current ‘value-laden turn’ (VLT) in the philosophical literature on values in science, and reviving the legacy of the value-free ideal of science (VFI), this paper argues that the influence of extra-scientific values should be minimised—not excluded—in the core phase of scientific inquiry where claims are accepted or rejected. Noting that the original arguments for the VFI (ensuring the truth of scientific knowledge, respecting the autonomy of science results users, preserving public trust in science) have not been satisfactorily (...) addressed by proponents of the VLT, it proposes four prerequisites which any model for values in the acceptance/rejection phase of scientific inquiry should respect, coming from the fundamental requirement to distinguish between facts and values: (1) the truth of scientific knowledge must be ensured; (2) the uncertainties associated with scientific claims must be stated clearly; (3) claims accepted into the scientific corpus must be distinguished from claims taken as a basis for action. An additional prerequisite of (4) simplicity and systematicity is desirable, if the model is to be applicable. Methodological documents from international institutions and regulation agencies are used to illustrate the prerequisites. A model combining Betz’s conception (stating uncertainties associated with scientific claims) and Hansson’s corpus model (ensuring the truth of the scientific corpus and distinguishing it from other claims taken as a basis for action) is proposed. Additional prerequisites are finally suggested for future research, stemming from the requirement for philosophy of science to self-reflect on its own values: (5) any model for values in science must be descriptively and normatively relevant; and (6) its consequences must be thoroughly assessed. (shrink)

This paper examines the soul-turning metaphor in Book 7 of Plato’s Republic. It argues that the failure to find a consistent reading of how the metaphor is used has contributed to a number of long-standing disagreements, especially concerning the more famous metaphor with which it is intertwined, the Cave allegory. A full reading of the metaphor, as it occurs throughout Book 7, is offered, with particularly close attention to what is one of the most difficult and stubbornly divisive passages in (...) Book 7, 532b6–d1. (shrink)

Abstract:This article raises a series of doubts about Chris Voparil’s reading of Rorty, particularly the claim that what he calls “Rorty’s Pragmatic Maxim” represents what is at the heart of his philosophical vision. Those doubts are tied together with some scattered thoughts about how Voparil describes the affinities between Rorty and William James in chapter 2 of Reconstructing Pragmatism. Voparil is correct to claim that it is James, more than any other figure in the pragmatist tradition, who shares the most (...) with Rorty in “basic philosophical orientation”. Yet I also argue that Voparil fails to correctly puts his finger on what that “basic philosophical orientation” really comes to, due in large part to an excessively political reading of James and Rorty that he relies on. (shrink)

Zetetic norms govern our acts of inquiry. Epistemic norms govern our beliefs and acts of belief formation. Recently, Jane Friedman (2020) has defended that we should think of these norms as conforming a single normative domain: epistemology should take a zetetic turn. Though this unification project implies a substantive re-elaboration of our traditional epistemic norms, Friedman argues that the reasons supporting the turn are robust enough to warrant its revisionary implications. In this paper, I suggest we should read (...) Friedman’s proposal as a dilemma. Either we believe the zetetic turn is well-motivated and undertake the task of looking for the proper revision of our traditional epistemic norms, or we take the revisionary implications of the turn to be unacceptable, in which case our challenge is to show why a zetetic epistemology is not a well-motivated project after all. After presenting this dilemma, I make a case for endorsing its second horn by presenting a two-pronged argument against Friedman’s project. First, I show that the revisionary implications of the zetetic turn are more far-reaching than expected. Second, I defend that the most persuasive reasons for endorsing the turn are not strong enough to support it. Taken together, these considerations speak against accepting the zetetic turn and the revisionary implications that come with it. (shrink)

A central question in the philosophy of science is: What is a law of nature? Different answers to this question define an important schism: Humeans, in the wake of David Hume, hold that the laws of nature are nothing over and above what actually happens and reject irreducible facts about natural modality (Lewis, 1983, 1994; cf. Miller, 2015). According to Non-Humeans, by contrast, the laws are metaphysically fundamental (Maudlin, 2007) or grounded in primitive modal structures, such as dispositional essences of (...) powerful properties (Bird, 2007), necessitation relations (Armstrong, 1983), or primitive subjunctive facts (Lange, 2009). This volume focuses on recent developments in the discussion of Humeanism, specifically on pragmatic versions of the view that put the needs of limited agents like us front and center. (shrink)

semiology of social and global transformations on public relations and, by consequence, of human intimacy.

In contemporary literature, the fact that there is negative causation is the primary motivation for rejecting the physical connection view, and arguing for alternative accounts of causation. In this paper we insist that such a conclusion is too fast. We present two frameworks, which help the proponent of the physical connection view to resist the anti-connectionist conclusion. According to the first framework, there are positive causal claims, which co-refer with at least some negative causal claims. According to the second framework, (...) negative causal claims are generated from mapping and comparing different scenarios, which can fully be accounted for in purely positive terms. Since the positive causal claims evoked by both frameworks pose no obvious difficulties for the physical connection view, these frameworks make it possible for the connectionists to accommodate negative causal claims into their theory. Once these strategies are available, the connectionists become able to render all the arguments starting from the observation that there are negative causal claims in our causal discourse inconclusive with regard to the viability of the physical connection view. (shrink)

Markosian presents an argument against certain theories of time based on the aesthetic value of music. He argues that turning a piece of music sideways in time destroys its intrinsic value, which would not be possible if the Spacetime Thesis were true. In this paper I show that sideways music poses no problems for any theory of time by demonstrating that turning a piece of music sideways does not affect its intrinsic value. I do this by appealing to spatial analogies (...) that highlight the similarities between spatial and temporal rotations. (shrink)

Our technological lifeworld has become an info-computational media populated by data and algorithms, an artificial environment for life and shared experiences. In this chapter, I tried to sketch three new assumptions for bioethics – it is hardly possible to substantiate ethical guidelines or an idea of normativity in an aprioristic manner; moral status is a function of data entities, not something solely human; agency is plural and thus is shared or sometimes delegated – in order to chart a proposal for (...) a posthuman bioethics. Posthuman is perhaps not the best expression available, but it covers the idea of a shift from a world centered on self-contained and exclusively human agency to a more comprehensive and relational way of thinking. The “posthuman” label should be understood as a rebuttal of biocentrism and anthropocentrism by moving closer to conceptions we encounter in population ethics or in discourse about biosocial and technical systems. Posthuman bioethics is “environmentalist” without losing the humanistic stance. The question regarding how suitable an infocentric bioethics is in practice remains to be settled. The moral principles in bioethics could be reconceived as relying on these new assumptions, in a postindividualistic manner that accepts formal primacy of causal digital artifacts in affording actions in a world of ambient algorithmic intelligence. (shrink)

Focusing principally on the once-feted philosophical movement of object-oriented ontology (OOO), this article examines the ways in which this movement fits into a broader “speculative turn,” which seeks to reverse the purportedly wrongheaded emphasis of post-Kantian critical philosophy upon the finitude of the subject and to once again unleash the fecund potentialities of speculative thought. Identifying several incongruities and tensions that traverse this project, it is argued that OOO exemplifies the difficulties faced when attempting to articulate a decidedly pre-critical (...) metaphysics. (shrink)

Russell’s initial project in philosophy (1898) was to make mathematics rigorous reducing it to logic. Before August 1900, however, Russell’s logic was nothing but mereology. First, his acquaintance with Peano’s ideas in August 1900 led him to discard the part-whole logic and accept a kind of intensional predicate logic instead. Among other things, the predicate logic helped Russell embrace a technique of treating the paradox of infinite numbers with the help of a singular concept, which he called ‘denoting phrase’. Unfortunately, (...) a new paradox emerged soon: that of classes. The main contention of this paper is that Russell’s new conception only transferred the paradox of infinity from the realm of infinite numbers to that of class-inclusion. Russell’s long-elaborated solution to his paradox developed between 1905 and 1908 was nothing but to set aside of some of the ideas he adopted with his turn of August 1900: (i) With the Theory of Descriptions, he reintroduced the complexes we are acquainted with in logic. In this way, he partly restored the pre-August 1900 mereology of complexes and simples. (ii) The elimination of classes, with the help of the ‘substitutional theory’, and of propositions, by means of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment, completed this process. (shrink)

Future-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for negatively valenced events be located in the past rather than the future, and positively valenced ones to be located in the future rather than the past. Strong risk aversion is the preference to pay some cost to mitigate the badness of the worst outcome. People who are both strongly risk averse and future-biased can face a series of choices that will guarantee them more pain, for no compensating benefit: they will be (...) pain pumped. Thus, combining these preferences is rationally impermissible. Dougherty (2011) argues that this gives us reason to think that future-bias is rationally impermissible. This argument, and a similar one presented by Greene and Sullivan (2015), relies on the idea that if several preferences are not rationally combinable, then in the absence of some explanation of why they are not combinable, we should conclude that (at least) one of them is rationally impermissible. We take up this question by, inter alia, reflecting on the empirical results of a study we ran that probes people’s risk averse and future-biased preferences. We argue that the data, in conjunction with other considerations, suggests that we should not infer from the irrationality of the combination of these preferences to the irrationality of one of the preferences singly. We also argue that given the descriptive data about these preferences, there is no reason to think that, if one of them is rationally impermissible, then it is future-bias. (shrink)

Starting with a few simple questions about living well and where movement originates from this essay turns into a vast map of intricate relations revolving around the notion of grace. By developing the argument from a historical perspective it quickly becomes clear that grace relies on the specific qualities of figuration and how the figure appears in what is termed “the gap between habit and inhabitation.” This article is a shorter version of the introductory chapter to my “Grace and Gravity: (...) Architectures of the Figure” (Bloomsbury, 2020). (shrink)

This essay argues that there are concrete emotion regulation practices described, but not developed, in Kierkegaard’s Christian Discourses. These practices—such as attentiveness to emotion, attentional deployment, and cognitive reappraisal—help the reader to regulate her emotions, to get rid of negative, unwanted emotions such as worry, and to cultivate and nourish positive emotions such as faith, gratitude, and trust. An examination of the Discourses also expose Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions; his view is akin to a perceptual theory of the emotions (...) that closely connects emotions and concerns. In particular, this analysis unearths two main regulatory strategies located in the Discourses, strategies that closely resemble present-day psychological accounts of emotion regulation. I conclude that contemporary research reinforces Kierkegaard’s philosophical analysis of emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Drawing on this research provides the most persuasive interpretation of Kierkegaard’s understanding of the emotions and emotion-regulation strategies. Additionally, present-day research clarifies the otherwise elusive, opaque strategies he describes. Finally, my analysis demonstrates that Kierkegaard’s work can uniquely contribute to the present-day psychological research by emphasizing the need for diachronic regulation strategies, while the contemporary literature overwhelmingly focuses on synchronic strategies. (shrink)

What is the relationship between inquiry and epistemology? Are epistemic norms the norms that guide us as inquirers—as agents in the pursuit of knowledge and understanding? Recently, there has been growing support for what I, following Friedman (Philosophical Review 129(4):501–536, 2020), will call the zetetic turn in epistemology, the view that all epistemic norms are norms of inquiry. This paper investigates the prospects of an inquiry-centered approach to epistemology and develops several motivations for resisting it. First, I argue that (...) the norms of inquiry are most plausibly seen as practical, not as distinctively epistemic. Second, I argue that a zetetically-grounded epistemology is unable to properly account for the rationality of belief. It fails to account for cases where intuitively irrational beliefs promote inquiry, or where intuitively rational beliefs are zetetically useless or counterproductive to inquiry. The main upshot is this: there must be a source of epistemic normativity that isn’t ultimately zetetic. (shrink)

Confronting the Liar Paradox is commonly viewed as a prerequisite for developing a theory of truth. In this paper I turn the tables on this traditional conception of the relation between the two. The theorist of truth need not constrain his search for a “material” theory of truth, i.e., a theory of the philosophical nature of truth, by committing himself to one solution or another to the Liar Paradox. If he focuses on the nature of truth (leaving issues of (...) formal consistency for a later stage), he can arrive at material principles that prevent the Liar Paradox from arising in the first place. I argue for this point both on general methodological grounds and by example. The example is based on a substantivist theory of truth that emphasizes the role of truth in human cognition. The key point is that truth requires a certain complementarity of “immanence” and “transcendence”, and this means that some hierarchical structure is inherent in truth. Approaching the Liar Paradox from this perspective throws new light on its existent solutions: their differences and commonalities, their purported ad-hocness, and the relevance of natural language and bivalence to truth and the Liar. (shrink)

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and (...) progress, the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers. (shrink)

The contemporary debate between scientific realism and anti-realism is conditioned by a polarity between two opposing arguments: the realist’s success argument and the anti-realist’s pessimistic induction. This polarity has skewed the debate away from the problem that lies at the source of the debate. From a realist point of view, the historical approach to the philosophy of science which came to the fore in the 1960s gave rise to an unsatisfactory conception of scientific progress. One of the main motivations for (...) the scientific realist appeal to the success of science was the need to provide a substantive account of the progress of science as an increase of knowledge about the same entities as those referred to by earlier theories in the history of science. But the idea that a substantive conception of progress requires continuity of reference has faded from the contemporary debate. In this paper, I revisit the historical movement in the philosophy of science in an attempt to resuscitate the original agenda of the debate about scientific realism. I also briefly outline the way in which the realist should employ the theory of reference as the basis for a robust account of scientific progress which will satisfy realist requirements. (shrink)