The tendency for consumers to over-indulge in purchase activities has been analyzed and discussed since the time of Plato, yet consumerism in today’s marketplace has become increasingly more prominent and pernicious. In this conceptual paper, we examine consumerism and discuss the four ways in which consumerism can undermine individuals and society. We then apply the four cardinal virtues - moderation, courage, justice and prudence - and describe how these virtues can be implemented by consumers and producers so as to result (...) in more effective achievement of the common good. As a result of this application, both consumer decision-making and producer marketing action should work to promote human flourishing. (shrink)

Ostension is bodily movement that manifests our engagement with things, whether we wish it to or not. Gestures, glances, facial expressions: all betray our interest in something. Ostension enables our first word learning, providing infants with a prelinguistic way to grasp the meaning of words. Ostension is philosophically puzzling; it cuts across domains seemingly unbridgeable -- public--private, inner--outer, mind--body. In this book, Chad Engelland offers a philosophical investigation of ostension and its role in word learning by infants. (...) class='Hi'>Engelland discusses ostension (distinguishing it from ostensive definition) in contemporary philosophy, examining accounts by Quine, Davidson, and Gadamer, and he explores relevant empirical findings in psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and neuroscience. He offers original studies of four representative historical thinkers whose work enriches the understanding of ostension: Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, Augustine, and Aristotle. And, building on these philosophical and empirical foundations, Engelland offers a meticulous analysis of the philosophical issues raised by ostension. He examines the phenomenological problem of whether embodied intentions are manifest or inferred; the problem of what concept of mind allows ostensive cues to be intersubjectively available; the epistemological problem of how ostensive cues, notoriously ambiguous, can be correctly understood; and the metaphysical problem of the ultimate status of the key terms in his argument: animate movement, language, and mind. Finally, he argues for the centrality of manifestation in philosophy. Taking ostension seriously, he proposes, has far-reaching implications for thinking about language and the practice of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper provides a qualified defense of Martin Heidegger’s controversial assertion that humans and animals differ in kind, not just degree. He has good reasons to defend the human difference, and his thesis is compatible with the evolution of humans from other animals. He argues that the human environment is the world of meaning and truth, an environment which peculiarly makes possible truthful activities such as biology. But the ability to be open to truth cannot be a feature of human (...) biology, without making such pursuits as biology, mathematics, and philosophy a biological function of a certain species, homo sapiens. To deny the human difference amounts to species relativism which leaves the normativity of truth unexplained. To reconcile the human evolutionary heritage and the uniquely human openness to meaning and truth, the paper amplifies a distinction occasionally made by Heidegger between condition and cause. (shrink)

_Heidegger’s Shadow_ is an important contribution to the understanding of Heidegger’s ambivalent relation to transcendental philosophy. Its contention is that Heidegger recognizes the importance of transcendental philosophy as the necessary point of entry to his thought, but he nonetheless comes to regard it as something that he must strive to overcome even though he knows such an attempt can never succeed. Engelland thoroughly engages with major texts such as _Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics_, _Being and Time_, and _Contributions (...) _and traces the progression of Heidegger’s readings of Kant and Husserl to show that Heidegger cannot abandon his own earlier breakthrough work in transcendental philosophy. This book will be of interest to those working on phenomenology, continental philosophy, and transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

Kripke raises the question concerning how the reference to God might be fixed, and Augustine makes it the leading question of the Confessions: How can I call upon God and not someone else instead? In this paper, I argue that this question is the central concern of Anselm’s Proslogion, which explicitly adopts the dialogical form of Augustine’s Confessions. Anselm does not define God but instead fixes the reference to God through an ostension or indexical description. The same linguistic formulation, “God (...) is that than which nothing greater can be thought,” has three functions: as an ostension, it points out God as that being and not another; as a criterion for selection, it ostensibly picks out a referent that exists rather than not; finally, as a rule for analysis, it provides a principle to clarify the necessary properties of the God that has been so ostended. (shrink)

This paper addresses two problems concerning the deferred ostension of extinct and fictive kinds. First, the sampled item, the fossil or the depiction, is not a sample of the referent. Nonetheless, the retained characteristic shape, understood via analogy with living creatures, enables the reference to be fixed. Second, though both extinct and fictive kinds are targets of deferred ostension, there is an important difference in the sample. Fossilization is a natural causal process that makes fossils to be reflections of their (...) originals. As reflections, fossils embed their referents in the primary existential world of perceived things. Images of artificial kinds, by contrast, leave their referents in the secondary existential world of mere appearance. In this way, the paper widens the scope of the Kripke-Putnam account of ostension for naming kinds by drawing on Quine’s concept of deferred ostension for absent referents. (shrink)

Recapitulating two recent trends in Heidegger-scholarship, this paper argues that the transcendental theme in Heidegger’s thought clarifies and relates the two basic questions of his philosophical itinerary. The preparatory question, which belongs to Being and Time , I.1–2, draws from the transcendental tradition to target the condition for the possibility of our openness to things: How must we be to access entities? The preliminary answer is that we are essentially opened up ecstatically and horizonally by timeliness. The fundamental question, which (...) belongs to the unpublished Being and Time , I.3, and the rest of Heidegger’s path of thinking, is accessed by means of the first. In a turn of perspective, it targets that in terms of which we relate to the givenness of being. Heidegger first attempts to handle this question using the transcendental language of temporal horizon before happening upon the terminologically more fitting “event of appropriation” and thereafter criticizing transcendental terms. By reconstructing the preparatory question and its reversal, we can see that Heidegger’s later criticism of transcendence in fact relies on its initial success. The turn from timeliness to appropriation (initially by means of transcendental temporality) happens within the domain initially disclosed by the preparatory question. (shrink)

By showing how the person appears, this paper calls into question the Cartesian prejudice that restricts appearance to objects. The paper recapitulates the origin of the term “person,” which originally designated the masks and characters donned by actors and only subsequently came to designate each particular human being. By concealing a face, the mask establishes a character who speaks with words of his own. The mask points to the face and to speech as ways the person appears. It belongs to (...) the very nature of the person not only to appear but also to be aware of how one appears, and to have the ability to modulate thatappearance as the situation requires. This ability means one thing in art and another in life, and the paper explores the significance of this contrast. (shrink)

Modernity is not only the culmination of the “oblivion of being,” for it also provides, in the form of transcendental thinking, a way to recover the original relation of thought to being. Heidegger develops this account through several lecture courses from 1935–1937, especially the 1935–1936 lecture course on Kant, and the account receives a kind of completion in the 1936–1938 manuscript, Contributions to Philosophy. Kant limits the dominance of rationalistic prejudices by reconnecting thought to the givenness of being. He thereby (...) shows the way to overcome the West’s rationalistic oblivion of being. By returning to Kant and repeating him more fundamentally we prepare ourselves for Heidegger’s non-rationalistic thinking of being. This paper, then, reconsiders Heidegger’s relation to modern philosophy, demonstrating on the basis of his own texts that he appropriates modern philosophy but in a non-rationalistic way. Transcendental philosophy plays an essential though ambiguous transitional role in his thinking. (shrink)

This paper reconnects the personal and the biological by extending the reach of parental causality. First, it argues that the reproductive act is profitably understood in personal terms as an “invitation” to new life and that the egg and sperm are “ambassadors” or “delegates,” because they represent the potential mother and father and are naturally endowed with causal powers to bring about motherhood and fatherhood, two of the most significant roles a person may have. Second, it argues that even though (...) God alone can create a spiritual soul, the human parents are not just the causes of their child’s body; they are the secondary causes of the whole child. In this way, God acts as a kind of “sponsor” who enables the acceptance of the invitation issued by the parents, and he accepts it on behalf of the new human person that comes to be thanks to their invitation. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger rejects the traditional definition of the human being as the “rational animal” in part because he thinks it fits us into a genus that obscures our difference in kind. Thomas Aquinas shares with Heidegger the concern about the human difference, and yet he appropriates the definition, “rational animal” by conceiving animality in terms of the specifically human power of understanding being. Humans are not just distinct in their openness to being, but, thanks to that openness, they are distinct (...) in their animality, a distinction that changes the very significance of animality itself. Heidegger also thinks the traditional definition closes us to the experience of our essence, but again Aquinas has resources for bringing out the experiential character of rational animality. Aquinas’ inclusion of animation has significance for what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology; by virtue of the human animate body, particular beings can be pointed out and designated as such. (shrink)

Phenomenologists turn to Augustine to remedy the neglect of life, love, and language in the Cartesian cogito: (1) concerning life, Edmund Husserl appropriates Augustine’s analysis of distentio animi, Edith Stein of vivo, and Hannah Arendt of initium; (2) concerning love, Max Scheler appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ordo amoris, Martin Heidegger of curare, and Dietrich von Hildebrand of affectiones; (3) concerning language, Ludwig Wittgenstein appropriates Augustine’s analysis of ostendere, Hans-Georg Gadamer of verbum cordis, and Jean-Luc Marion of confessio. Phenomenology’s non-Cartesian Augustinianism (...) can tell us something about phenomenology, namely that it is engaged in the project of recontextualizing the cogito, and something about Augustine, namely how radically different his project is than Descartes’s. Phenomenology presents an Augustine that is well positioned for the debates of our times concerning mind and world, desire and the human person, and language and embodiment. (shrink)

What justifies one interlocutor to challenge the conversational expectations of the other? Paul Grice approaches conversation as one instance of joint action that, like all such action, is governed by the Cooperative Principle. He thinks the expectations of the interlocutors must align, although he acknowledges that expectations can and do shift in the course of a conversation through a process he finds strange. Martin Heidegger analyzes discourse as governed by the normativity of care for self and for another. It is (...) the structure of care that warrants disrupting the presumed cooperative horizon of a conversation in order to occasion some new insight. The chapter expands Heidegger’s ontological conception of care to make sense of the exigencies of conversation. Conversation requires taking cognizance of (1) the human good, (2) the specifics of the conversational context, and (3) one’s responsibilities for the other. This threefold understanding can provide directives for subverting the interlocutor’s expectation for the purposes of a given conversation. (shrink)

Heidegger thinks that humans enjoy openness to being, an openness that distinguishes them from all other entities, animals included. To safeguard openness to being, Heidegger denies that humans are animals. This position attracts the criticism of Derrida, who denies the difference between humans and animals and with it the human openness to being. In this paper, I argue that human difference and human animality are not mutually exclusive. Heidegger has the conceptual resources in his thought and in the history of (...) philosophy to affirm human animality while safeguarding the human difference. A cause transforms the meaning of a condition. The case of the human hand, an animal appendage that serves our openness to being, illustrates splendidly this transformation. The human hand not only grasps things in its environment but also points things out, makes things, acts, and welcomes others in the world. Humans are animals transformed by openness to being. (shrink)

The introduction argues that nothing could be more natural than the phenomenological treatment of language; after all, its breakthrough in method consists in a renewed appreciation for the power of speech to unlock the truth of things. Interest in the phenomenology of language has increased in the last two decades due to the publication of new phenomenological texts and due to dialogue with other disciplines and approaches. At the same time, the phenomenological contribution cannot be fully appreciated apart from its (...) transcendental method. Only in light of its unique approach do the properly phenomenological themes come to the fore; among these are presence and absence, the pre-predicative, and embodied intersubjectivity. Phenomenology’s analysis of language is a vital one within the philosophy of language; it shows that language belongs to experience, and it shows how language arises from and gives voice to joint experience. (shrink)

This paper dispels the Cartesian reading of Augustine’s treatment of mind and other minds by examining key passages from De Trinitate and De Civitate Dei. While Augustine does vigorously argue that mind is indubitable and immaterial, he disavows the fundamental thesis of the dualistic tradition: the separation of invisible spirit and visible body. The immediate self-awareness of mind includes awareness of life, that is, of animating a body. Each of us animates our own body; seeing other animated bodies enables us (...) to see other animating souls or minds. Augustine’s affirmation of animation lets us perceive that other minds are present, but Descartes’ denial of animation renders others ineluctably absent. Augustine’s soul is no ghost, because his body is no machine. (shrink)

In dialogue with Stephen Hawking, Martin Heidegger, and Thomas Aquinas, I argue that there are three different and compatible ways to understand the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (1) The scientific way asks about the origin of the cosmos. (2) The transcendental way asks about the origin of experience. (3) The metaphysical way asks about the origin of existence. The questions work independent of each other, so that answering one version of the question does not affect the (...) other two versions. Hawking and Heidegger are therefore mistaken to think that the scientific and transcendental questions render otiose the metaphysical question concerning the origin of existence. (shrink)

The Presocratic philosopher Heraclitus quoted an ancient Greek proverb, “Absent while present.” This paper argues that social technology, which makes us present to those absent, also makes us absent to those present. That is, technology connects our attentions to our virtual community of friends but in doing so it disconnects our attentions from those about us. Because we are finite beings, who dwell wherever our attentions reside, there is a real conflict between the connectivity of social technology and bodily communion (...) with those about us. The interpersonal presence afforded by social technology is a presence purchased at a price: the absence of the body. What social technology is incapable of achieving is bodily presence, and bodily presence is needed for intimacy and friendship. (shrink)

While the promise of the resurrection appears wonderful, it is also perplexing: How can the person raised be one and the same person as the one that dies? And if the raised person is not the same, why should any of us mortals regard the promise of the resurrection as good news? In this paper, I articulate the part-whole structure of human nature that supports belief in the sameness of the resurrected person’s identity and the desirability of the resurrection: the (...) immaterial core of the person must survive the destruction of the body; the person must nonetheless be incomplete apart from the body; and the personal core must be the source for the personal identity of the resurrected body. In light of these criteria, I conclude by arguing that survivalism rather than corruptionism is the more compelling account of death and resurrection present in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the difficulty of acquiring phenomenological terms by examining Carnap’s and Derrida’s criticisms of phenomenological speech; their criticisms show that any account of how phenomenological speech is acquired must clarify its distinction from ordinary speech about things while not falling prey to an esoteric separation. The chapter then reviews the way Husserl, Scheler, and Heidegger offer “indication” as the way to distinguish but not separate the one and the other, and it argues that indication, even with the support (...) of analogy, metaphor, and metonym, suffers from Quinean indeterminacy and therefore requires some other resources for its successful enactment. Finally, the chapter outlines a novel solution to the problem of phenomenological speech by approaching the question as one of genesis and acquisition: ordinary language embeds certain experiential terms, such as “presence” and “absence,” that, when inflected, introduce the learner into the transcendental dimension of experience. The chapter demonstrates that the question of language learning or acquisition is necessary for unraveling the nature of phenomenological language and clarifying its relation to ordinary speech. (shrink)

Some commentators, such as Jürgen Habermas, think Martin Heidegger is guilty of a performative contradiction, because he uses judgments to situate judgments in a non-judicative context. This paper defends Heidegger by distinguishing two senses of judgment in his thought. Temporality enables two different directions of inquiry and hence two kinds of judgment. Scientific judgments arise when we turn from the temporal horizon toward entities alone; phenomenological judgments arise when we return to the temporal horizon in which such entities are accessible. (...) Consequently, using phenomenological judgments to show the condition for the possibility of scientific judgments is not contradictory. (shrink)

Heidegger’s 1921 lecture course, “Augustine and Neo-Platonism,” shows the emergence of certain Augustinian elements in Heidegger’s account of the human being. In Book X of Augustine’s Confessions, Heidegger finds a rich account of the historicity and facticity of human existence. He interprets Augustinian molestia (facticity) by exhibiting the complex relation of curare (the fundamental character of factical life) and the three forms of tentatio (possibilities of falling). In this analysis, molestia appears as the how of the being of life. Heidegger (...) also makes an important critique of what is Platonic in Augustine. Specifically, he rejects what he calls Augustine’s axiological interpretation of tentatio for a more existential one. Heidegger understands axiology to be a calculative preferring of one good over another in reference to a theoretical hierarchy of goods. We offer a defense of Augustine which focuses on the historical manner in which goods are disclosed in desire. (shrink)

The traditional problem of other minds is epistemological. What justification can be given for thinking that the world is populated with other minds? More recently, some philosophers have argued for a second problem of other minds that is conceptual. How can we conceive of the point of view of another mind in relation to our own? This article retraces the logic of the epistemological and conceptual problems, and it argues for a third problem of other minds. This is the phenomenological (...) problem which concerns the philosophical question of experience. How is another mind experienced as another mind? The article offers dialectical and motivational justification for regarding these as three distinct problems. First, it argues that while the phenomenological problem cannot be reduced to the other problems, it is logically presupposed by them. Second, the article examines how the three problems are motivated by everyday experiences in three distinct ways. (shrink)

This paper provides a new, comprehensive overview of Martin Heidegger’s interpretations of Immanuel Kant. Its aim is to identify Heidegger’s motive in interpreting Kant and to distinguish, for the first time, the four phases of Heidegger’s reading of Kant. The promise of the “phenomenological Kant” gave Heidegger entrance to a rich domain of investigation. In four phases and with reference to Husserl, Heidegger interpreted Kant as first falling short of phenomenology (1919-1925), then approaching phenomenology (1925-1927), then advancing phenomenology (1927-1929), and (...) finally recovering phenomenology (1930 and after). By identifying this motive and these four phases, the paper sets aside a number of common misinterpretations concerning the significance of the 1925 turn to Kant, the relation of the Kant-interpretation to Husserl, the relation of the 1929 'Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics' to 'Being and Time,' and Heidegger’s regard for Kant in his later writings. The paper thereby clarifies Heidegger’s path of thinking and its indebtedness to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

For many philosophers, the relation of medicine to health is exemplary for understanding the relation of human power to nature in general. Drawing on Heidegger and Aquinas, this paper examines the relation of art to nature as it emerges in the second book of Aristotle’s Physics, and it does so by articulating the duality of efficient causality. The art of medicine operates as a dispositive cause rather than as a perfective cause; it removes obstacles to the achievement of health, but (...) it does not impose health. Medicine, on this conception, aids the efficient causality of the natural body rather than substituting for it. The loss of dispositive causality makes efficient causality an imposition of force that bypasses the natural power to achieve natural goods. The paper concludes, with Plato, by arguing that dispositive causality offers a way to understand not only medicine but also governing, teaching, and parenting. (shrink)

Both Gabriel Marcel and Martin Heidegger hold that the proper task of philosophy is to think mystery. This is not the unknown as such; rather it is what ever again gives rise to thought. For both philosophers, representational thinking is inadequate to this subject matter. The present study explicates their attempts to approach mystery and identifies their final difference. For Marcel, the domain of mystery is opened in interpersonal presence; for Heidegger, mystery is opened in the appropriation of being. Marcel’s (...) mystery gives rise to thinking because of its fullness; Heidegger’s mystery gives rise to thinking because it withdraws. (shrink)

Heidegger’s 1921 lecture course, “Augustine and Neo-Platonism,” shows the emergence of certain Augustinian elements in Heidegger’s account of the humanbeing. In Book X of Augustine’s Confessions, Heidegger finds a rich account of the historicity and facticity of human existence. He interprets Augustinianmolestia (facticity) by exhibiting the complex relation of curare (the fundamental character of factical life) and the three forms of tentatio (possibilities of falling).In this analysis, molestia appears as the how of the being of life. Heidegger also makes an (...) important critique of what is Platonic in Augustine. Specifically, herejects what he calls Augustine’s axiological interpretation of tentatio for a more existential one. Heidegger understands axiology to be a calculative preferring ofone good over another in reference to a theoretical hierarchy of goods. We offer a defense of Augustine which focuses on the historical manner in which goods are disclosed in desire. (shrink)

For many philosophers, the relation of medicine to health is exemplary for understanding the relation of human power to nature in general. Drawing on Heidegger and Aquinas, this paper examines the relation of art to nature as it emerges in the second book of Aristotle’s Physics, and it does so by articulating the duality of efficient causality. The art of medicine operates as a dispositive cause rather than as a perfective cause; it removes obstacles to the achievement of health, but (...) it does not impose health. Medicine, on this conception, aids the efficient causality of the natural body rather than substituting for it. The loss of dispositive causality makes efficient causality an imposition of force that bypasses the natural power to achieve natural goods. The paper concludes, with Plato, by arguing that dispositive causality offers a way to understand not only medicine but also governing, teaching, and parenting. (shrink)

At first blush, phenomenology seems to be concerned preeminently with questions of knowledge, truth, and perception, and yet closer inspection reveals that the analyses of these phenomena remain bound up with language and that consequently phenomenology is, inextricably, a philosophy of language. Drawing on the insights of a variety of phenomenological authors, including Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Gadamer, and Ricoeur, this collection of essays by leading scholars articulates the distinctively phenomenological contribution to language by examining two sets of questions. The first (...) set of questions concerns the relatedness of language to experience. Studies exhibit the first-person character of the philosophy of language by focusing on lived experience, the issue of reference, and disclosive speech. The second set of questions concerns the relatedness of language to intersubjective experience. Studies exhibit the second-person character of the philosophy of language by focusing on language acquisition, culture, and conversation. This book will be of interest to scholars of phenomenology and philosophy of language. (shrink)

-/- A concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, which investigates the experience of experience. -/- This volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series offers a concise and accessible introduction to phenomenology, a philosophical movement that investigates the experience of experience. Founded by Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and expounded by Max Scheler, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and others, phenomenology ventures forth into the field of experience so that truth might be met in the flesh. It investigates everything as experienced. It does (...) not study mere appearance but the true appearances of things, holding that the unfolding of experience allows us to sort true appearances from mere appearance. -/- The book unpacks a series of terms—world, flesh, speech, life, truth, love, and wonder—all of which are bound up with each other in experience. For example, world is where experience takes place; flesh names the way our experiential exploration is inscribed into the bearings of our bodily being; speech is instituted in bodily presence; truth concerns the way our claims about things are confirmed by our experience. A chapter on the phenomenological method describes it as a means of clarifying the modality of experience that is written into its very fabric; and a chapter on the phenomenological movement bridges its divisions while responding to criticisms from analytic philosophy and postmodernism. (shrink)

At the beach, we soak up some sun, frolic in the surf, and swim with the waves – to name just a few of the activities possible. Apart from doing anything, though, it is exhilarating just to be at the beach. Why? What is the contemplative appeal of that place where the ocean meets the land?

Nietzsche subjects traditional philosophical causality to a skeptical critique. With the moderns, he rejects form as superficial. Against the moderns, he findsphysical laws and their ground in a free consciousness equally superficial, and he thinks that the principle of utility is ultimately life denying. However, Nietzscheis not a skeptic, and he has his own doctrine of causality centered on the noble power of the philosopher. The philosopher has the ability to impose new purposes, and this power is the culmination of (...) nature and history. The philosopher believes himself to be a kind of exemplar cause, the consummation of the whole. His is not an instrumental good but one sought for its own sake. (shrink)

Recent scholars have followed Martin Heidegger in distinguishing his change in approach from the "Turn," which properly belongs to the matter itself. While the distinction significantly clarifies Heidegger’s one topic, it still leaves open Heidegger’s motive for changing his approach to that topic. This paper argues that the motivation is fundamentally phenomenological in character and responds to the peculiar nature of the matter. Heidegger’s change is the immanent development of phenomenology from a program of research about the concealed into a (...) phenomenology of the self-concealing. The former roots concealment in Dasein’s falling; the latter in the historical unfolding of disclosure. (shrink)

Bodily expression of affection through movement is both simple and complex: simple insofar as it puts us into immediate communion with the affective lives of others; complex insofar as it relies on rapid and subtle movements that generally escape explicit notice. The difficulty in understanding the bodily basis of intersubjectivity comes in understanding how in and through complex movement the simplicity of expression is possible. It is here that reflection on the arts proves valuable. Hans-Georg Gadamer points to the role (...) of art in contemplating the truth of appearance, and he observes that nature appears as self-renewing play. Drawing on these insights, this paper considers the treatment of bodily expression in the work of three artists: the portraiture of El Greco, a novel by Charlotte Brontë, and several poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins. All three artists employ the imagery of fire to represent bodily expression. Fire recommends itself because of its subtle movement and its radiance. In light of these artists’ approach to the phenomenon, the paper argues that “radiant interplay” characterizes the how of bodily expressiveness. Our bodies radiate our felt affectivity through the play of our features, and this play is always reciprocally related to the play of others radiating their felt affectivity. Reflection on art enriches the phenomenology of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

In dialogue with Stephen Hawking, Martin Heidegger, and Thomas Aquinas, I argue that there are three different and compatible ways to understand the question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” (1) The scientific way asks about the origin of the cosmos. (2) The transcendental way asks about the origin of experience. (3) The metaphysical way asks about the origin of existence. The questions work independent of each other, so that answering one version of the question does not affect the (...) other two versions. Hawking and Heidegger are therefore mistaken to think that the scientific and transcendental questions render otiose the metaphysical question concerning the origin of existence. (shrink)

Philosophy is the quest for a life that is fully alive. Drawing on the insights of philosophers through the ages, The Way of Philosophy clarifies what it means to live life intensely.

In this chapter, I make the case for platonic realism, the thesis that there are properties that lack spatial locations. After criticizing the one-over-many argument for realism and Lewis's argument for realism, I endorse a modal argument that derives the existence of platonic properties from considerations involving necessary truth. I then defend this argument from various objections. Finally, I argue that epistemic considerations and considerations of parsimony favor a weak form of platonic realism on which there are platonic properties, but (...) each property could have had an instance, and would have been located in its instances if it had any. (shrink)

It is widely held that for a life to be conferred meaning it requires the appropriate type of agency. Call this the agency requirement. The agency requirement is primarily motivated in the philosophical literature by the assumption that there is a widespread pre-theoretical intuition that humans have the capacity for meaning whereas animals do not; and that difference must come down to their agency or lack thereof. This paper aims to undercut the motivation for the agency requirement by arguing our (...) pre-theoretical intuitions actually run opposite; that animals, and even objects, can have meaningful lives/existences. The argument is twofold. First, I extend an existing argument for animals as having a capacity for meaning to objects. Second, I argue maintaining that only humans have the capacity for meaning results in the more counterintuitive upshot that all animals and objects have, by definition, meaningless existences. Since we pre-theoretically believe that anything can be meaningful—even things which by definition lack agency—then we have strong reason for being sceptical about an agency requirement for meaning in life. (shrink)