In the light of the principle of mediocrity, naturalism is in fact transcendent exceptionalism - as opposed to transcendent mediocrity. As such, it has the burden of proof - and the "inverse criterion" defeats many of such alleged proofs.

What can we know if we take sceptical worries such as the Münchhausen trilemma seriously? Quite a lot, actually - if the world is a certain way, namely if transcendent mediocrity is the case.

If the transcendence tree to which our world belongs has a root, and that root is a mind, then what can be known about that mind? It seems there are two sources of knowledge, theology (that mind may have revealed itself to us) and philosophy (we may be able to reason about it from first principles). Here we shall look into that latter aspect.

A broad pattern of correlations between mechanisms of brain function impairment and self-transcendence is shown. The pattern includes such mechanisms as cerebral hypoxia, physiological stress, transcranial magnetic stimulation, trance-induced physiological effects, the action of psychoactive substances and even physical trauma to the brain. In all these cases, subjects report self-transcending experiences o en described as ‘mystical’ and ‘awareness-expanding,’ as well as self-transcending skills o en described as ‘savant.’ The idea that these correlations could be rather trivially accounted for on the (...) basis of disruptions to inhibitory neural processes is reviewed and shown to be implausible. Instead, this paper suggests that an as-of-yet unrecognized causal principle underlying the entire pattern might be at work, whose further elucidation through systematic research could hold great promise. (shrink)

The terms immanence and transcendence have played a significant role in philosophical thought since its inception. Implicit in the notions of immanence and transcendence, as typified within the history of ideas, is often a separation and division between the human and the godly. This division has served to generate ontologies of isolation and set up epistemologies that can be both binary and divided. The terms immanence and transcendence thus sit at the heart of contemporary onto-epistemic accounts of the world. As (...) such, in seeking to examine the nature of what is, this paper traces a line through the history of ideas in an attempt to clarify the connections and dissonances in the notions of immanence and transcendence. This is done for the purpose of demonstrating what philosophical and religious accounts may offer in attempting to create a sound account of the godly and thus the world in a secular age. (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)

Current naturalistic accounts of value face the problem of explaining the normative constraints that value impose on agents. Attempts to solve this problem have progressively relaxed the strictness of naturalistic requirements, up to the point of seeking theistic solutions. However, appeals to God are also problematic, since it is questionable that a relevant notion of God is conceivable at all: if God is wholly other He cannot matter for our choices and if He is a being among natural beings He (...) cannot explain our normative constraints. Engaging a discussion with Fiona Ellis’ treatment of the problem, this essay sketches an account of transcendence, which vindicates the conceivability of a notion of God suitable for the explanation of value. The proposal rests on the possibility of transcendental arguments based on analogy. (shrink)

Habermas emphasizes the importance for critical thinking of ideas of truth and moral validity that are at once context-transcending and immanent to human practices. in a recent review, Peter Dews queries his distinction between metaphysically construed transcendence and transcendence from within, asking provocatively in what sense Habermas does not believe in God. I answer that his conception of “God” is resolutely postmetaphysical, a god that is constructed by way of human linguistic practices. I then give three reasons for why it (...) should not be embraced by contemporary critical social theory. First, in the domain of practical reason, this conception of transcendence excludes by fiat any “Other” to communicative reason, blocking possibilities for mutual learning. Second, due to the same exclusion, it risks reproducing an undesirable social order. Third, it is inadequate for the purposes of a critical theory of social institutions. (shrink)

How one transcends the self depends on the self that experiences it. Is it instigated or sought, does it happen by accident, or by an act of Grace? Is it common or rare? Is it brought on by the ingestion of psychedelic agents or by meditation or by being overcome by fear or merely by caring more about the welfare of others than oneself? Is it transcendence to experience a shift of perspective or dissolution of the self? In the pages (...) that follow, each of these paths is explored in nine ways, each unique unto itself. None of them deal with absolute self-transcendence, which should be no surprise, for, as I’ve indicated, there would no longer a self or person to record or communicate the event. Many of them deal the transcendence of self-consciousness, my own included, but only two describe the ingestion of mind-altering psychedelics to catalyze the event. One sees self-construction from the ground-up, as it were, as a form of transcending a previous self that has disintegrated. One looks to acts of kindness to sidestep the illusion of self-consciousness. Two, at least, look to creative experience in the arts as a way to connect with universal spontaneity, but in very different ways. The others refer to what might be called spiritual experiences that, though thirsted for or sought, arrive unexpectedly, almost like a gift. (shrink)

Introduction to vol 5, no. 2 This edition begins with a tribute to Brian Goodwin. Brian was not only an original member of the editorial board of Cosmos & History, but was the patron of the Joseph Needham Centre for Complex Processes Research from within which this journal was conceived. His work and life symbolizes all that the journal stands for. The central question that Brian was concerned with throughout his life was: What is life? It seems appropriate therefore to (...) retrospectively dedicate last year’s two volume special edition on this question to him. However, I believe that this edition of Cosmos & History would also meet with his approval. If there is a theme uniting the papers in this edition it is the problematic state of existing disciplines and the fruitfulness of transcending disciplinary boundaries, something that was of increasing concern to Brian. (shrink)

This essay shows the presence of transcendence in the on-going attempt to come up with a purely scientific account of the workings of the human mind. At the center of the developmental stages of this attempt is the computational theory of mind, which regards the human mind as some kind of computer. With Wittgenstein’s analysis of the limits of linguistic representation in the Tractatus as a framework, it is argued that the various difficulties encountered by this attempt are primarily due (...) to the transcendental nature of the human mind, which eludes scientific explanation. (shrink)

This paper applies Karl Jaspers’ and Martin Heidegger’s accounts of transcendence to their descriptions of Van Gogh’s art. I will contrast Jaspers’ more vertical account of immanent transcendence to Heidegger’s horizontal one. This difference between their separate understandings of transcendence manifests itself in their estimations of the significance of Van Gogh’s art. Using phenomenology to understand Van Gogh’s art in light of immanent transcendence, moreover, illuminates a new understanding of transcendence as the ‘beyond’ that is always already here in the (...) immanent and reveals the ability of an object to point beyond itself. Both of these concepts are at work in Van Gogh’s art as well as modern art in general as the expansion of reality through new sight. Immanent transcendence and Van Gogh’s art are different but interconnected ways of rethinking experience beyond the limits of positivism and the myth of the given. Van Gogh’s art thus embodies a sensible world transformed. In particular, Van Gogh’s landscapes and still life series suggest the inexhaustibility of the things we so often overlook in our everyday experience. (shrink)

Nietzsche regarded nihilism as an outgrowth of the natural sciences which, he worried, were bringing about “an essentially mechanistic [and hence meaningless] world.” Nihilism in this sense refers to the doctrine that there are no values, or that everything we might value is worthless. In the last issue of Modern Horizons, I offered this conditional explanation of the relation of science and nihilism: that a scientific worldview is nihilistic insofar as it rules out the existence of anything that cannot in (...) principle be precisely picked out or identified.i What kinds of entities would a scientific worldview eliminate on the basis of such an assumption? The list is long and various, but it includes those intentional (mentalii) entities of our consciousness that underwrite the existence of persons, and more basically of thought itself – e.g., belief, value, agency, truth, and meaning. I argued in that previous paper that intentional concepts are ultimately inscrutable, and yet impossible coherently to deny. I claimed that we could no more doubt the existence of values than we could doubt reality itself – and when I spoke of values I had in mind the (suspicion-engendering) concept of the good, and was even toying with the related idea of the Logos (an even more suspect concept). There are a several attractive reasons why the idea of the good, or the Logos, might be regarded with suspicion, and why either might reasonably be discarded as a pseudo concept. Leaving the latter concern until later, we might worry that insisting on the possibility of an overarching good supports the idea of a total worldview, or that we are gradually progressing towards a single correct vision of things. A progressivist, totalising vision would seem to foreclose on outlooks, values, and persons that deviate from its most likely trajectory, and may stymie or interfere with incommensurate forms of otherness,iii awkward disturbances, and idiosyncrasies threatening its more well-established precincts – perhaps whatever stands out as strange, rare, and indissolubly individual. The idea of an emerging universal standard of values thus might amount to a source of oppression, e.g., if it provides a warrant to transform a currently limited universally prescriptive set of global practices and institutes into an ever more elaborate totalising hierarchy. In the discussion below, I will say why the good, conceived as the Logos, suggests a more salutary trajectory for individuals, and erodes support for either a totalitarian vision or a dissolving nihilistic outlook on the world. (shrink)

I consider an argument by Plotinus to show how the notion of transcendence is used in explaining the nature of knowledge. The argument is set forth in sections 4-6 of the treatise V.8 (31). In my opinion this argument provides a good example of the philosophical frame of Platonism. I sum up this frame in the following theses: a) for a thing being is to be real and true; so that for a thing being real and being true is equivalent; (...) but b) for a thing being real and true means being intelligible; that is to say: a thing could be understood because that thing is a being; thus, c) for a thing being is the identity of its ontological and epistemological nature. (shrink)

The article presents the key problems relevant to the issue of “transcendent Action,” as Peirce calls it. The author focuses on the relation between “belief” and the “transcendentals:” unity, truth, goodness, and beauty, in their peculiar Peirceian context. He considers firstly “belief” in the sense of “an original impulse to act consistently, to have a definite intention” and, secondly, “Normative Science, which investigates the universal and necessary laws of the relation of Phenomena to Ends, that is, perhaps, to Truth, (...) Right, and Beauty.” Finally, he considers Peirce's defense again two popular accusations: one on the part of the logicians which “confounds psychical truths with psychological truths,” and the second one regarding hedonism. (shrink)

This article is an inquiry into how the relationship between the principle of non-contradiction and the limits of thought has been understood by thinkers as diverse as Hegel, Heidegger, Levinas, and Graham Priest. While Heidegger and Levinas focus on the question of temporality and Priest takes a formal approach, all these philosophers effectively maintain that the principle of non-contradiction imposes a restriction on thought that disables it from adequately accounting for its own limits and thus what lies beyond those limits, (...) the implication being that the violation of the principle is necessary for such an accounting to take place. However, the ultimate argument here is that, contrary to Priest’s interpretation, Hegel’s philosophy can be convincingly read as supporting the idea that the mind’s ability to go beyond any particular limit of thought can actually be said to involve an adherence to a normative demand to locate and dispel the contradictions that emerge through the very setting of determinative limits. This is a non-formal consistency that evinces a “logic” that is unknowingly followed by the Heideggerian and Levinasian phenomenological philosophies of transcendence. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap's 1930s philosophy of logic, including his adherence to the principle of tolerance, is discussed. What theses did Carnap commit himself to, exactly? I argue that while Carnap did commit himself to a certain multitude thesis—there are different logics of different languages, and the choice between these languages is merely a matter of expediency—there is no evidence that he rejected a language-transcendent notion of fact, contrary to what Warren Goldfarb and Thomas Ricketts have prominently argued. (In fact, it (...) is obscure just what Goldfarb and Ricketts claim about Carnap). Toward the end I critically discuss Michael Friedman's suggestion that Carnap believed in a relative a priori. (shrink)

Though commentators have paid little thematic attention to Heidegger’s 1928 treatise “On the Essence of Ground” (OEG), recently available subsequent writings suggest that Heidegger himself saw OEG as a pivotal step on the way to “overcoming” his analysis of fundamental ontological transcendence. Among these writings is a set of rarely discussed lettered notes originally scribbled into his personal copy of OEG in which Heidegger offers a point-for-point deconstruction of the treatise’s fundamental ontological interpretation of transcendence. I argue that examining the (...) interplay between these two tiers of analysis may illuminate the murky trail that cuts between the beaten track of Being and Time and the increasingly well-trodden paths of Contributions to Philosophy and other later writings. Part one motivates the reading I propose by situating OEG in the broader contexts of its reception in the secondary literature, its engagement by Heidegger himself in subsequent writings, and my own interpretation—in view of Heidegger’s remarks—of its utility for illuminating the catalyst’s role played by the transcendence problem in the development of his overall project. Against this backdrop, part two advances a selective reading of the most important developments in OEG’s main text and lettered notes, elucidating in the process their hermeneutic significance for returning to and “turning” from the progressive elaboration of transcendence that both initiates and eventually exhausts Heidegger’s fundamental ontological inquiries. The picture that emerges, I conclude, is that OEG is hermeneutically a significantly more important work (for Heidegger certainly, but potentially also for his interpreters) than its marginal status in the secondary literature might lead one to believe. (shrink)

This paper investigates the meaning of the neo-Confucian concept of 'li'. From early on, it has the sense of a pattern designating how things are and ought to be. But it takes on the appearance of something transcendent to the world only at a certain point in history, when it becomes juxtaposed to 'qi'. Zhu Xi has been criticized for this 'li-qi' dichotomization and the transcendentalization of 'li'. The paper re-examines this putative dualism and transcendentalism, looking into both Zhu's (...) discussions and pre- and post-Zhu discussions of 'li', and concludes it to be an inter-connective threading immanent to the world. (shrink)

In the famous Appendix to paragraphs 11 and 20 of his 5th Logical Investigation, Husserl criticizes the concept of ‘immanent object’ defended by Brentano and his pupils. Husserl holds that intentional objects, even non-existent ones, are ‘transcendent’. Yet long before Husserl’s criticism, Brentano and his pupils, in their theories of intentionality, besides immanent objects also took into account transcendent ones, in a similar way to Husserl, since such transcendent objects were not necessarily objects that exist. The ‘immanent (...) object’ (immanenter Gegenstand) was also called ‘presented-thing as presented’ (Vorgestelltes als Vorgestelltes), whereas the ‘transcendent object’ was called ‘object tout court’ (Gegenstand schlechtweg) or ‘presented-thing tout court’ (Vorgestelltes schlechtweg). Even if it is in Marty that one finds the clearest distinction between these two kinds of objects, other pupils of Brentano, and Brentano himself, made similar distinctions. Despite its importance, this point has been neglected in the Brentanian literature. In the first part of this article, I present the way in which immanent and transcendent objects have been distinguished in the School of Brentano. In the second part of the article, I present some problems linked to the distinction of two objects for every mental act, an immanent and a transcendent one; these problems could explain the abandonment of the notion of ‘immanent object’ by many philosophers of the Brentanian tradition. I conclude with some remarks on the distinction between content and object in the School of Brentano. (shrink)

‘Transcendence’ has been a key subject of Western philosophy of religion and history of ideas. The meaning of transcendence, however, has changed over time. The article looks at some perspectives o ered by the nineteenth and the twentieth century Anglo‐American and con‐ tinental European philosophers of religion and presents their views in relation to the concept of transcendence formulated by the Bengali Hindu traditionalist Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati (1874–1937). The questions raised are what transcendence in the philosophy of religion is, how one (...) can speak of it, and what its goal is. The paper points to parallels and di erences in epistemology, ontology and practice. One di erence is that the nineteenth and the twentieth century Western philosophy of religion tended to assume an ontological di erence between self and transcendence inherited om personalities such as Søren Kierkegaard, but also to explore the concept of transcendence beyond the idea of a metaphysical God. Bhaktisiddhanta, whose foundational thought mirrors medieval Hindu philosophy of religion and the theistic schools of Vedānta, suggests that transcendence has a metaphysical and personal dimension that is to some degree ontologically similar to and directly knowable by the self. Bhaktisid‐ dhanta’s approach to transcendence di ers om Kierkegaard’s and other Western philosophers’ and revolves around the idea of God as a transcendent person that can be directly known mor‐ phologically and ontologically through devotion. The article is a contribution to the history of ideas and the philosophy of religion in Eurasia and beyond. (shrink)

Knowledge of the subject only ever speaks to the subject himself and of nothing more than the subject himself. And yet, when due to their mode of emergence, objects of this knowledge seem to occupy part of a space (whatever it may be) which would contain them, it is tempting for the subject to give this space the name of Reality. The conventional western philosophies (and science) gave in to this temptation. They came to distinguish the Subject {place-of-the-mind} from the (...) Reality {place-of-the-objects} whereas Reality is only the "objectified" or rather "objectivized" aspect of knowledge of the subject. From this artificial distinction followed a great confusion, a dispute that lasted for centuries, and still does, between different -isms with infinitesimal differences, from which the most influential parties emerge victorious each at his turn. In reaction to this confusion a "pivotal" re-orientation is suggested, considering the way objects of knowledge emerge and are organized, not in correlation with objects of Reality but with the subject for himself and knowledge for itself. For this re-orientation the OK proposes to transcend the subject's mind to reveal its logical principles. That's the specific subject I would like to delve into here : the transcendence of meaning. This is necessary for understanding the OK and could be beneficial to “mental health counseling”. (shrink)

Psychedelic experiences have been shown to both facilitate (re)connection to one’s values and change values, including enhancing aesthetic appreciation, promoting pro-environmental attitudes, and encouraging prosocial behavior. This article presents an empirically informed framework of philosophical psychology to understand how self-transcendence relates to psychedelic value changes. Most of the observed psychedelic value changes are toward the self-transcendent values of Schwartz’s value theory. As psychedelics also reliably cause various self-transcendent experiences (STEs), a parsimonious hypothesis is that STEs change values toward (...) self-transcendent values. I argue that STEs indeed can lead to value changes, and discuss the morally relevant process of self-transcendence through Iris Murdoch’s concept of “unselfing”. I argue that overt egocentric concerns easily bias one’s valuations. Unselfing reduces egocentric attributions of salience and enhances non-egocentric attention to the world, widening one’s perspective and shifting evaluation toward self-transcendent modes. Values are inherently tied to various evaluative contexts, and unselfing can attune the individual to evaluative contexts and accompanying values beyond the self. Understood this way, psychedelics can provide temporarily enhanced access to self-transcendent values and function as sources of aspiration and value change. However, contextual factors can complicate whether STEs lead to long-term changes in values. The framework is supported by various research strands establishing empirical and conceptual connections between long-term differences in egocentricity, STEs, and self-transcendent values. Furthermore, the link between unselfing and value changes is supported by phenomenological and theoretical analysis of psychedelic experiences, as well as empirical findings on their long-term effects. This article furthers understanding of psychedelic value changes and contributes to discussions on whether value changes are justified, whether they result from cultural context, and whether psychedelics could function as tools of moral neuroenhancement. (shrink)

Recent political theory has attempted to unbundle demos and ethnos, and thus citizenship from national identity. There are two possible ways to meet this challenge: by taming the relationship between citizenship and the nation, for example, by defending a form of liberal multicultural nationalism, or by transcending it with a postnational, cosmopolitan conception of citizenship. Both strategies run up against the boundedness of democratic authority. In this paper, I argue that Shachar adresses this issue in an innovative way, but remains (...) ultimately trapped by it. My argument has two parts. In the first one, I look at the analogy between property and citizenship on which Shachar rely to justify the obligations of wealthy states towards the global poor. I suggest that it does not work well to explain the rarity of citizenship and that the idea of taxing its value at the global level, however intuitive in liberal theory on property, could yield unexpected and non-liberal consequences. Nevertheless I also assess its merits. In the second part, I suggest that Shachar’s claim that her argument generates a legal obligation toward the global poor is not binding. It could only be so with the kind of cosmopolitan political institutions that she eschews. Thus we return where we begin. (shrink)

Poetry is sometimes used in a logical argument sense of the five major arguments, and the meaning behind it is the argument and expression that its common element is imagination. In fact, the distinguishing feature of poetry from other arguments is the poetic nature of the language. Poetry is sometimes used in an artistic sense and can be considered one of the seven arts. The definition of artistic poetry can be understood as a speech that is firstly rhythmic, secondly rhyming, (...) and thirdly imaginative. In this article, poetry is used in the second sense, as poetry in the artistic sense can have a sublime aspect. In fact, poetry in the first sense has an industrial and organic aspect, while poetry in the second sense has an authentic aspect. Mulla Sadra, in addition to writing in prose in rational knowledge, has also expressed many of his sublime philosophical ideas in poetic language. What Sadr al-Muta'allihin has written in poetic form is poetry in the second sense because it has both the three conditions of being rhythmic, rhyming, and imaginative, as well as expressing sublime wisdom in poetic and sublime art language. (shrink)

In the essay "Philosophy and the Meaning of Life," found within the book "Philosophical Explanations," Robert Nozick proposes that the key to comprehending how theistic religions can impart meaning to human existence lies in the concept of God's boundless nature. This unlimited quality is an expansive backdrop, capable of imbuing the comparatively finite lives of theists with profound meaning. Furthermore, Nozick argues that meaningful lives are not restricted solely to the theistic realm defined by God's boundlessness because, paradoxically, God's boundlessness (...) imposes a limitation upon itself. This perspective emerges from Nozick's theory of "limited transcendence," which involves transcending our inherent limitations to connect with a broader context that possesses limitations but imparts meaning to our lives—albeit within defined boundaries (Nozick, 25). In essence, Nozick's theory suggests that meaning can be found in life beyond the confines of theistic religion. (shrink)

Aesthetic transfiguration, as described by Nietzsche, is the capacity of art to alchemize the meaningless sufferings of natural existence into the aesthetically magnificent struggle that is human ‘life’. Like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer assessed ‘art from the perspective of life’. As Schopenhauer is standardly read, however, his conception of aesthetic experience has little in common with that offered by Nietzsche. Against the standard reading, this chapter argues that Nietzsche’s psychology of aesthetic experience—and in particular his idea that aesthetic transfiguration invests human experience (...) with positive value—is essentially an elaboration of insights owed to Schopenhauer. (shrink)

This article examines the relationship between the conspicuous and complicated terms of transcendence and immanence, which may equally be defined as essentially connected, or diametrically opposed. Recent developments in two largely unrelated sets of scholarship— the re-evaluation of secularisation, and the relationship between medieval and modern philosophy—provide a helpful means to arrive at a clearer understanding of this challenging problem. Charles Taylor and Jan Aertesn act as foci for these developments, particularly through their respective concerns with epistemic framing in relation (...) to transcendence and immanence, and the role of transcendentals in medieval philosophy. This examination brings these two concepts together, examining the idea of transcendentals offered by both Aquinas, a thinker of the transcendent frame, and Kant, a thinker of the immanent frame. From this juxtaposition we can offer two contrasting understandings of the relationship between transcendence and immanence from within both the transcendent and immanent frames. Finally, two brief literary examples demonstrate how these two ways of reading transcendence and immanence may be employed in the contextual understanding of religious writing. To understand the unity and division between transcendence and immanence is to better comprehend two primary terms in the study of religion, and to appreciate a fundamental development in the history of religion in the West. (shrink)

I offer a close reading of the first part of Sartre's The Transcendence of the Ego, arguing that contrary to widely held interpretation, one of Sartre's main goals in that text is to defend the view that consciousness does not necessitate self-awareness, that not all conscious states need be, ipso facto, states of self-awareness. In addition, I explain that this view about the conceptual relationship between consciousness and self-awareness has important methodological implications. One of the standard strategies for accounting for (...) the possibility of the type of capacity to have I* thoughts and attitudes is based on the assumption that being conscious necessarily entails being self-aware in at least a minimal sense, and then proceeds to explain how it I*-thoughts and attitudes are possible on the basis of those minimal states of self-awareness. Yet if Sartre's account of self-awareness is so much as plausible, this kind of strategy is bound to be incomplete. By helping itself to a notion of minimal self-awareness that is purportedly constitutive of consciousness, it fails to account for what is, by its own lights, the most fundamental form of self-awareness. (shrink)

Among the many common criticisms of the Turing test, a valid criticism concerns its scope. Intelligence is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon that will require testing using as many different formats as possible. The Turing test continues to be valuable as a source of evidence to support the inductive inference that a machine possesses a certain kind of intelligence and when interpreted as providing a behavioural test for a certain kind of intelligence. This paper raises the novel criticism that the (...) Turing test represents an example of Goodhart’s Law operating in the field of artificial intelligence. As one measure towards the goal of creating genuinely intelligent machines, the Turing test must not be confused with the goal itself. Moreover, the Turing test ought to be augmented such that through its use additional evidence could be secured to support the strong inference that a machine, were it to pass the Turing Test, could think like a human. (shrink)

Merold Westphal's book is a wonderful introduction to the history of philosophy.

It is generally recognized that Adorno and Levinas should both be read as urging a rethinking of ethics in light of Auschwitz. This demand should be understood in terms of the acknowledgement of transcendence. A phenomenological account of the event of Auschwitz developed by Todes motivates my use of Cavell’s distinction between acknowledgement and knowledge. Both Levinas and Adorno argue that an ethically adequate acknowledgement of transcendence requires that the traditional concept of transcendence as represented in theodicy must be rejected. (...) This rejection takes the form of a rejection of theodicy (Levinas) and a negative theodicy (Adorno). I argue that Adorno’s response is superior because it is a response to the specificity and particularity of the event of Auschwitz as the destruction of, rather than merely the denial of, the humanity of both perpetrators and victims. (shrink)

A debate about whether all children are entitled to an “equal” or an “adequate” education has been waged at the forefront of school finance policy for decades. In an era of budget deficits and harsh cuts in public education, I submit that it is time to move on. Equality of educational opportunity has been thought to require equal spending per pupil or spending adjusted to the needs of differently situated children. Adequacy has been understood as a level of spending sufficient (...) to satisfy some absolute, rather than relative, educational threshold. In practice, however, many courts interpreting their state’s constitutional obligations have fused the equality and adequacy theories. Certain federal laws express principles of both doctrines. And gradually, more advocates and scholars have come to endorse hybrid equality-adequacy approaches. Still, the debate persists over seemingly intractable conceptual precepts and their political and legal ramifications. Tracking the philosophical origins and evolution of equality and adequacy as legal doctrines, I explain the significance of their points of convergence and argue that the few points of divergence are untenable in practice. Equality of educational opportunity should not be interpret-ed as pursuing equal chances for educational achievement for all children, because that ideal is infeasible. Nor should educational adequacy be interpreted as completely indifferent to objectionable inequalities that can be feasibly curtailed. Properly conceived, equality and adequacy are not merely congruent but reciprocal. That is, children are owed an education that is adequately equal and equally adequate. (shrink)

Based on a discussion of the theoretical contributions of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Pierre Clastres, this article explores social relationships as more than a human dimension. Though strongly analysed by both anthropologists, these relationships appear to involve indigenous societies’ whole ecological and cosmological system. In this sense, reciprocity, social cohesion, and exchange can be understood as material and immaterial interrelationships between entities of a more than a corporeal world. I argue, then, that to go beyond the mere anthropocentric conceptualisation of sociality (...) in a nature good to think, we need to holistically conceive the interconnected levels of trophic, socio-structural and socio-cosmic relationships and exchanges between human and non-human beings in the ecosystem. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the relationship between phenomenology and metaphysics by reassessing the relationship between phenomenological and metaphysical transcendence. More specifically, I examine the notion of phenomenological transcendence in Husserl and the early Heidegger: Husserl defines transcendence primarily as the mode of givenness of phenomena that do not appear all at once, but must be given in partial profiles; Heidegger defines transcendence primarily as Dasein’s capacity to go beyond entities toward being. I argue that these divergent understandings of phenomenological (...) transcendence have resulted in a significant difference in reception among French phenomenologists of religion. These thinkers assert that phenomenology, when properly conceived and utilized, can make room for the divine and its revelation, i.e., for a metaphysical transcendence. I further argue that these thinkers prefer Heidegger’s phenomenology to Husserl’s because they understand Heidegger’s transcendence as the subject’s openness to being, while they understand Husserl’s transcendence as a limit, as the inability to capture worldly objects. I take up Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of givenness as a “case study” to illustrate this point. Finally, I argue that this preference for Heidegger over Husserl is misplaced and should be reversed. A close reading of Heidegger’s Phenomenology of Religious Life shows that Dasein is confined to its own possibilities and cannot be open to a relationship with the divine. By contrast, Husserl’s phenomenology provides the radical openness necessary to welcome revelation. While Husserl cannot envision a “worldly God,” the structures of horizonality and temporality characterize a subject capable of an authentic openness to revelation. (shrink)

What is the persuasive basis for the doctrine of universal human rights - rights that pertain to all human beings, regardless of national, racial, or religious affiliation? This essay offers some reflections on the subject by considering the contrasting approaches of two thinkers: Vaclav Havel, the playwright, essayist, human rights advocate, and onetime President of Czechoslovakia; and Henri Bergson, the once influential French philosopher and apostle of creative evolution, unfortunately now often forgotten.

In psycho-clinical research the notion of spirituality acquires a semantic plurality. This equivocal and ambiguous connotation that characterizes this term represents an obstacle to the epistemic and methodological validity of research designs, recognized as the threat to construct validity. In order to overcome this difficulty, we introduce, from Dietrich von Hildebrand's phenomenology, the notions of intentionality and transcendence insofar as these are capable of accounting for the specific element of the spiritual-religious phenomenon and discriminating it from the other phenomena or (...) variables that may be included under the notion of spirituality. This conceptual elucidation task allows evaluating the legitimacy of the variable selection process and establishing why they are or are not representatives of the phenomenon of spiritual-religious experience. (shrink)

What is this thing we each call “I” and consider the eye of consciousness, that which beholds objects in the world and objects in our minds? This inner perceiver seems to be the same I who calls forth memories or images at will, the I who feels and determines whether to act on those feelings or suppress them, as well as the I who worries and makes plans and attempts to avoid those worries and act on those plans. Am I (...) the subject, thus the source, of my awareness, just as you are the subject and source of your awareness? If this is the case, it is likely impossible to be conscious without the self (yours or mine), the eye of consciousness, and it must certainly not be desirable, for such a consciousness would have no focal point, no self-that-is-conscious to guide it, so it would be cast adrift on a wide and wild sea like a boat that has broken from its anchor. Without self-enclosure, “We shall go mad no doubt and die that way,” as Robert Graves (1927/1966) expressed it in "The Cool Web". (shrink)

One of the most frequently asked question is whether Hegel’s idea of God is immanent or transcendent. In Transcending Subjects: Augustine, Hegel, and Theology, Geoffrey Holsclaw attempts to solve this puzzle by contrasting the political theologies of Hegel and Augustine. He argues that Hegel produces a political theology of ‘self-transcending immanence’ while Augustine produces a political theology of ‘self-immanentizing transcendence’. The primary problem with Holsclaw’s dialectical procedure results from its uncritical appeal to a transcendent source for the supersession (...) of opposites. Rather than critically annulling each opposed position, he often resorts to simply describing the inadequacy of positions in light of the privileged ideal of Augustinian transcendence. Holsclaw’s dialectic has not been directly derived from Augustine but from the more recent writings of William Desmond. He translates Desmond’s opposition between the second and third types of transcendence into his own opposition between Hegelian self-transcending immanence and Augustinian self-immanentizing transcendence. Hegel’s apparent ambiguity on transcendence seems to expose him to Holsclaw’s critique. Yet Hegel may, arguably, have never needed to answer this objection because the opposition between immanence and transcendence has already been resolved by Hegel’s dialectic of infinity: for if the opposition between the categories of immanence and transcendence that appears at the level of Spirit merely replicates the vanishing opposition between the finite and the infinite at the level of Logic, then the supersession of this negative opposition between the infinite and the finite into the true and speculative infinity can be virtually replicated for religious consciousness in the supersession of transcendence and immanence into an equally speculative transcendence. Where Holsclaw seeks to supersede immanence into transcendence, Hegel seeks to preserve both transcendence and immanence in the true ‘speculative transcendence’ that corresponds to the true ‘speculative infinity’. The decisive disagreement between Hegel and Holsclaw thus concerns, not merely any relation between transcendence and immanence, but – more fundamentally – the very possibility of superseding the spurious transcendence into a genuinely speculative notion of infinity and transcendence. (shrink)

This paper will attempt to assess the primary differences between what I take to be the two primary philosophical "traditions" in contemporary French philosophy, using Derrida (transcendence) and Deleuze (immanence) as exemplary representatives. The body of the paper will examine the use of these terms in three different areas of philosophy on which Derrida and Deleuze have both written: subjectivity, ontology, and epistemology. (1) In the field of subjectivity, the notion of the subject has been critiqued in two manners, either (...) by appealing either to the transcendence of the other (Levinas, Derrida) or to the immanent jlux of experience itself, in relation to which the Ego itself is trancendent (Deleuze, Foucault, Sartre, James). (2) In the field of ontology, a purely "immanent" ontology would be an ontology in which there is neither a "beyond" or an "otherwise" Being, nor "interruptions" in Being, both of which would require an appeal to a formal element of transcendence (Deleuze). Such a "transcendent" and aporetic structure, which can never appear or be present as such within Being, is what lies at the basis of the project of deconstruction, with its attendant aporias (Derrida). (3) This distinction, finally, finds parallels in Kant's epistemology, for whom the possible experience is conditioned by purely immanent criteria (Deleuze), whereas what goes beyond the limits of possible experience is transcendent (Derrida). Drawing on these three thread of analysis, the paper concludes with an assessment of what is at stake in the ethical differences between the two traditions. The question of "transcendence" is "What mast I do?", which is the question of morality (a duty or obligation that is beyond being, an "ought" beyond the "is"). The question of "immanence" is "What can I do?" (my power or capacity as an existing individual within being). For Levinas and Derrida, ethics precedes ontology because it is derived from an element of transcendence (the Other); for Deleuze, ethics is ontology because it is derived from the immanent relation of beings to Being at the level of their existence (Spinoza). (shrink)

This paper seeks to defuse two claims. On the one hand, I confront the Hildebrandian claim that Thomism, by placing the principium of love in the needs and desires of the lover rather than in the beloved, denies the possibility of transcendent love; on the other, I seek to refute the Thomistic objection that Hildebrand lacks a sufficient understanding of nature and its inherent teleology. In order to accomplish this, a distinction must be made between different kinds of principium (...) or “for-its-own-sakeness.” Using St. Thomas’ theory of friendship-love, I show how every affective movement in fact has two fundamentally different principia: an “end-desired,” and an “end-for-whom” the former is desired. I next note that “value” and “bonum honestum” each encompass both of these types of “worthiness,” and that the failure to distinguish between these two has led to much of the misunderstanding between Thomists and Hildebrandians: for while the latter sometimes seem to include inanimate objects like sunsets under the higher “worthiness” (as “ends-for-whom”), the former often tend to classify even the beloved under the lower “worthiness” (as a mere “end-desired”), which are both untenable positions. It is shown, however, that for St. Thomas it is the higher, more ultimate sense of “worthiness” that is the foundation of friendship-love, and that thus love remains a truly “transcendent” or “ecstatic” phenomenon. Two objections are then addressed: 1) St. Thomas’ claim that substantial unity is the greatest cause of love, and 2) his claim that man’s primary end is Vision. In both these respects I argue that Aquinas’ position needs correction; still I maintain that neither claim should be taken to imply that, for Aquinas, man is his own center, his own chief “end-for-whom.” Finally, while Hildebrand emphatically denies that natural teleology can explain man’s transcendence (a Thomistic position), this denial seems to flow simply from confusing two ways in which “nature” can be invoked as an explanation: where he sees it invoked as the final cause, Thomists actually invoke it as simply the formal cause of our love for our true Final Cause. (shrink)

This paper, written from the perspective of a liberal Protestant, addresses Karl Barth’s famous dispute with his predecessor Friedrich Schleiermacher. It claims that despite the vehemence he often employs against Schleiermacher, a careful assessment of Barth reveals an ever-shifting ambivalence. Barth’s dismissal was very much a heated reaction amidst post-war circumstances, and Schleiermacher served as a symbol for aspects of pre-war culture and theology that are not necessarily reflective of Schleiermacher’s original project. Later in his career, Barth seems to have (...) yearned to rehabilitate aspects of that very project. (shrink)

The article seeks to elucidate the status of transcendence in the historiography of secularization through the perspective of collective memory. It discusses two typological models dealing with the basic metaphysical problem concerned with the presence and meaning of transcendence in real human existence. According to the first, the historical reality of secularization causes a break from the collective memory whose roots are in religion. In contrast, the second model considers that despite the deep transformations in the status of religion in (...) a reality of secularization, an experience of historical continuity may also occur there. These models denote the two poles in the argument about the meaning and value of history for modern people. The article suggests a phenomenological analysis of the two models and criticizes their deficiencies. Finally, the “tension model” is outlined as a third alternative that aims at overcoming the binary situation created by the first two in favor of a perspective that necessitates and contains both immanence and transcendence. (shrink)

“It’s so hard to be a saint in the city,” sings Bruce Springsteen in a ballad released 35 years ago. Judging from the national popular sentiment about the matter, he could have been talking about the complexity of being a philosopher in Turkey.

This study explores the distinguished Persian Sufi mystic Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabestarī’s Golshan-e Rāz, or The Rose Garden of Mystery. Adopting a hermeneutic approach, it scrutinizes the intricate spiritual journey towards divine realization delineated in Shabestarī’s poetry, utilizing qualitative content analysis of original texts and interpretations by scholars such as Lāhījī and Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī. The main question the paper addresses is this: “How can the spiritual journeyer overcome obstacles—particularly ‘otherness’—and achieve unity with the divine Essence within the framework of Islamic (...) mysticism, as interpreted through Shabestarī’s teachings in Golshan-e Rāz?” To answer this inquiry, the paper addresses pivotal questions concerning Shabestarī’s depiction of the spiritual journeyer’s path, its stages and challenges, and the critical role of the human form in divine manifestation. The study underscores the necessity of overcoming duality and distinction, alluding to the transformative nature of the journey that necessitates self-purification and the cessation of otherness. Findings from this study provide an enriched understanding of Shabestarī’s thought, contributing to the discourse on Islamic metaphysics. It presents valuable insights into the spiritual journeyer’s path, offering a comprehensive interpretation of the challenges, practices, and transformative experiences leading to divine realization and unity. (shrink)

The article treats again the question of whether «the Idea of the Good is a Reality in the Universe, or beyond it. Is it immanent or transcendent ?» (Rufus Jones, 1863 1948). Plato scholars such as Matthias Baltes (1940 2003) and Luc Brisson have defended the thesis that Plato’s Idea of the Good is, on the one hand, beyond being (epekeina tês ousias) in dignity and power, but on the other, is nevertheless not transcendent over being. The article (...) delivers first (I.) the most important arguments for the thesis of Baltes and Brisson. Then (II.), it gives two counterarguments against the thesis. Third (III.), it concludes with some general questions concerning the deflationist interpretation of Plato’s Republic 509b9 10 and defends again the transcendence of the Idea of the Good. (shrink)

The 1929 confrontation between Heidegger and Cassirer in Davos (Switzerland) is pivotal for the history of the twentieth-century philosophy. The stake of that encounter was the appropriation of Kant’s legacy during the first half of the last century and the fate of Neo-Kantianism between the two World Wars. Since then, the “Davos disputation” has become controversial among researchers of the development of philosophical orientations in the twentieth century. Moreover, not only these researchers, but also the attendants of that dispute, express (...) opposite views on its outcome. Central at Davos was the issue of human finitude and transcendence within a Kantian framework. Although Kant addresses this issue most explicitly in his moral philosophy, the research of the Davos disputation tends to focus primarily on theoretical matters. The thesis revaluates Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s debate on human finitude and transcendence against the background of their written interpretations of Kant’s critical ethics. Heidegger’s reading of Kant’s conception of human finitude turns out to underestimate Kant’s views on the human potential for transcending, while Cassirer turns out to overestimate that potential by downplaying Kant’s arguments for ineluctable finitude. According to a moderate interpretative position, halfway between Heidegger’s and Cassirer’s, a finite being has, for Kant, a potential to transcend “within” – not “beyond” – finitude. (shrink)

This dissertation seeks to clarify the import of the transcendence problem in Heidegger and Derrida. The guiding suggestion of my interpretations of both thinkers is that following the development of this problem through their respective projects can help to demonstrate in each an underlying continuity in light of which their seemingly discrepant shifts in emphasis from early to late can be understood as moments of an ongoing hermeneutic task. ;My argument unfolds in four chapters and a brief conclusion. Chapter one (...) motivates the project in view of the contentious standing of the problem in continental philosophy as it is characterized in the competing narratives advanced by Richard Rorty, John Caputo, and Rodolphe Gasche. ;Chapters two and three trace the problem through Heidegger's Denkweg. While Being and Time might seem to be the obvious place to start, I argue that the character of the problem is difficult to see without recourse to both the context in which the problem first arises, and the future interpretations of the problem toward which Being and Time proceeds. Accordingly, I attend to the emergence of the problem in Heidegger's dissertation and early lectures, and then leap ahead to its more explicit appropriations in the writings of 1928 where the provisional standing of fundamental ontology becomes increasingly apparent. In view of its past and future trajectories, then, I return to Being and Time to exhibit therein what I take to be latent indications of Heidegger's later disposition toward transcendence. ;Chapter four situates Derrida in terms of his debts to and departures from Heidegger. I argue that Derrida's debts in fact compel his departures; since he concurs that the transcendence of predecessor discourses necessitates their destruction in the name of advancing their undeveloped possibilities, he must dismantle Heidegger to do justice to him. In applying this insight to Derrida's project, I maintain, the careful reader can find traces of his later injunctions to "absolute responsibility" in his early affirmations of "infinite play". ;I conclude with a few brief remarks as to how this investigation might contribute to a richer understanding of contemporary continental philosophy. (shrink)

Most students of Tocqueville know of his remark, “There are three men with whom I live a little every day; they are Pascal, Montesquieu, and Rousseau.” In this paper I trace out the contours of Pascal’s influence upon Tocqueville’s understanding of the human condition and our appropriate response to it. Similar temperaments lead both Tocqueville and Pascal to emphasize human limitations and contingency, as Peter Lawler rightly emphasizes. Tocqueville and Pascal both emphasize mortality, ignorance of the most important subjects, the (...) effects of historical contingency on what we take to be human nature, and both represent the complex internal dynamic of human nature in terms of the interplay of “angel” and “brute.” The most important difference between them concerns their relative estimates of human power and the significance of human action. Whereas the motif of human weakness is fundamental for Pascal, Tocqueville repeatedly affirms that, under the right conditions, human beings are “powerful and free.” Beginning from Pascalian premises, and endeavoring to be more faithful to some of those premises than Pascal himself was, Tocqueville aims to illuminate the possibility of an amelioration of the human condition through a “new political science” that redeems the political realm without divinizing it. -/- . (shrink)