The article addresses the question of how should scientific peers revise their beliefs (if at all) upon recognized disagreement. After presenting the basics of peer disagreement in sections 1 and 2, we focus, in section 3, on a concrete case of scientific disagreement, to wit, the dispute over the evidential status of randomized control trials in medical practice. The examination of this case motivates the idea that some scientific disagreements permit a steadfast reaction. In section 4, we support this conclusion (...) by providing a normative argument in the same direction; if we are correct, typical reasons for conciliation are absent in this kind of scientific disagreements. (shrink)

Because theories of visual perception have traditionally concentrated on form, artists have generally dealt with the problem of color through their own observation and intuition. In _Color Harmonies,_ Augusto Garau systematically investigates the role of both color and form in visual perception and presents an original theory of the aesthetic relations among colors. Garau, a painter who teaches the psychology of form, pays particular attention to the way colors behave when organized in patterns. His theory of color combination addresses two (...) principal compositional elements: the relations between figure and ground and the phenomenon of transparency. Garau meticulously analyzes the use of color in paintings by masters such as Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse to show how his theory applies to actual works of art. Containing many full-color examples, his introduction to the workings of color relations is of great practical use to art historians and critics, artists, interior decorators, fashion and set designers, and anyone who works with color to display information or convey emotions. "In an area of the psychology of art where reliable guidance is still so hard to come by, [Garau's] well-supported contributions to the theory of color composition ought to be welcomed by practitioners and scholars alike."—from the Foreword by Rudolf Arnheim. (shrink)

Trichromacy may result from an adaptation to the regularities in terrestrial illumination. However, we suggest that a complete characterization of the challenges faced by colour perception must include changes in surface surround and illuminant changes due to inter-reflections between surfaces in cluttered scenes. Furthermore, our trichromatic system may have evolved to allow the detection of brownish-reddish edibles against greenish backgrounds. [Shepard].

The metaverse is the extension of this virtual world in which our avatars and other holograms will socialize. Should we speak of incarnation when it is virtual beings that represent us rather than physical bodies?

Une classe capitaliste nationale peut-elle émerger dans les pays africains nouvellement indépendants? Débattue il y a quarante ans à propos du Kenya, la question se pose également pour l’Éthiopie des trois dernières décennies. Bien que ce pays n’ait jamais été colonisé, son passage il y a trente ans d’un régime militaire à un État démocratique et développeur a marqué un tournant comparable à celui des pays africains anciennement colonisés. Cette transition politique promettait d’accorder un rôle économique plus important au secteur (...) privé national, jusqu’alors très limité. Cette transition s’est toutefois accompagnée d’importantes contradictions en matière de propriété du capital, compte tenu de la centralisation de la politique industrielle par l’État éthiopien. Cet article analyse les tentatives de l’État éthiopien de stimuler la formation d’une classe capitaliste productive et autochtone, dans le secteur des métaux et de l’ingénierie, au cours de la dernière décennie. (shrink)

Après avoir identifié quelques-uns des multiples biais intellectuels qui obèrent trop souvent l’analyse de la réalité économique africaine, cette introduction précise la perspective de ce numéro. Il tente de définir l’esprit d’une économie politique lucide appliquée aux pays d’Afrique, avant de présenter brièvement les articles du dossier.

After more than three centuries, Molyneux's question continues to challenge our understanding of cognition and perceptual systems. Locke, the original recipient of the question, approached it as a theoretical exercise relevant to long-standing philosophical issues, such as nativism, the possibility of common sensibles, and the empiricism-rationalism debate. However, philosophers were quick to adopt the experimentalist's stance as soon as they became aware of recoveries from congenital blindness through ophtalmic surgery. Such recoveries were widely reported to support empiricist positions, suggesting that (...) the question had found its empirical answer. Contrary to this common view, we argue that studies of patients recovering from early blindness through surgery cannot provide an answer. In fact, because of the very nature of such ophtalmological interventions it is impossible to test the question in the empirical conditions outlined by Molyneux. Thus we propose that Molyneux's question be treated as an early thought experiment of a specific kind. Although thought experiments of this kind cannot be turned into actual experimental conditions, they provide a conceptual restructuring of theories. Such restructuring in turn leads to new predictions that can then be tested by normal experiments. In accord with this interpretation, we show that Molyneux's question can be analyzed into a hierarchy of specific questions about vision in its phenomenal and sensory-motor components. Some of these questions do lead to actual experimental conditions that could be studied empirically. (shrink)

Les dynamiques de classe du changement agraire en Afrique ont fait l’objet de débats importants. Dans son ouvrage de référence, Femmes, greniers et capitaux, Meillassoux prédisait en 1975 la cannibalisation de la paysannerie, avec la domination croissante des relations capitalistes dans les campagnes. Pourtant, près d’un demi-siècle plus tard, la paysannerie reste une construction sociale, économique et politique pertinente. En s’appuyant sur le cas du Mozambique, cet article explore les significations contradictoires de la paysannerie dans le capitalisme contemporain. La première (...) section retrace la création du paysan-prolétaire en Afrique australe, en s’appuyant sur les travaux de Meillassoux sur la « communauté domestique ». La deuxième partie explore les différentes manières dont les camponeses improvisent leur subsistance à travers trois cas. L’article conclut que la paysannerie incarne un ensemble contradictoire de significations qui reflètent les processus de production de marchandises plutôt qu’un passé précapitaliste. (shrink)

The planning/control distinction is an important tool in the study of sensorimotor transformations. However, published data from our laboratories suggest that, contrary to what is predicted by the proposed model, (1) structures in the superior parietal lobe of both monkeys and humans can be involved in movement planning; and (2) fast pointing actions can be immune to visual illusions even if they are performed without visual feedback. The planning–control model as proposed by Glover is almost certainly too schematic.

Une envie de transmettre, d'expliquer. De s'expliquer aussi. Sur la cohérence d'une pensée que l'apparente dispersion et variété des sujets qu'il a abordés avait, en partie, masquée. Bruno Latour s'est livré à cette série d'entretiens avec une simplicité, une jubilation et une puissance qui n'adviennent que dans les moments où l'on sait que la vie, et notamment celle de l'esprit, se condense. Un apaisement lié au sentiment d'urgence, une immanence indissociable de l'imminence et de la nécessité à tout concentrer, (...) résumer, déployer. Un souci de clarté, un plaisir de la conversation, un art de la performance. Comme si tout s'éclaircissait alors que la fin approchait"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This article situates actor-network theory in the history of evolutionary anthropology. In the 1980s, this attempt at explaining the social through the mediation of nonhumans received important impulses from Bruno Latour’s conversations with primatologist Shirley Strum. In a re-articulation of social evolutionism, they proposed that the utilization of objects distinguished humans from baboons and that the use of a growing number of objects set industrialized human populations apart from hunter-gatherers, enabling the formation of larger collectives. While Strum’s and Latour’s (...) early work presented baboons as almost human and suggested that we moderns had never been modern, the Anthropocene has reawakened curiosity about the original question of anthropology: how do modern humans, including modern scientists, differ from premoderns and animals? This 18th-century question is gaining new significance and urgency as we recognize our transmutation into a super-dominant species. But the answer might not lie solely in the use of more objects. (shrink)

Las reflexiones que conforman el presente artículo intentan brindar un aporte a la cuestión de la naturaleza y de la problemática medioambiental desde el punto de vista de lo que denominaremos una filosofía del suelo. Se emprenderá dicha tarea a través de los planteos de una serie de autores y autoras pertenecientes a la contemporaneidad filosófica, que se han preocupado, en distinta medida y de modos muy diferentes, por la problemática de la tierra o el suelo: Donna Haraway, Tim Ingold (...) y Bruno Latour. Para esto, nos serviremos de una serie de elementos que extraeremos de la experiencia visual y táctil de las Líneas de Nazca, legado de nuestro pasado amerindio en el desierto peruano. El trabajo se dividirá en tres partes, dedicada cada una de ellas a explicitar ciertas reflexiones de los autores que puedan asociarse a una filosofía como la que pretendemos mentar. El enfoque priorizará los entrelazos entre los mismos y el desarrollo de elementos que nos permitan un entrecruzamiento de sus respectivas teorías. (shrink)

Bruno Latour reconnaît l’influence de Gilbert Simondon sur son oeuvre, en particulier quant à sa compréhension de la technique. Latour semble ainsi réaliser en grande partie le programme de « non-anthropologie » de Simondon. Mais une apparente contradiction existe dans le traitement de l’énonciation par Latour : sa compréhension de la matérialité et des modes d’existence semble prendre le détour de la sémiotique. Cela a mené certains critiques à mettre en doute son approche de la matérialité. Toutefois, vue à (...) travers la lentille de l’influence que Simondon a eue sur Latour, il est possible de relire la théorie latourienne de l’énonciation en comprenant la communication comme passage de l’action d’un être à l’autre, et la signification de cette action comme résultat de sa participation à un processus de constitution des êtres. Latour est donc résolument un penseur du décentrement de l’humain.Bruno Latour recognizes the influence of Gilbert Simondon on his work, especially with respect to his understanding of technique. Latour appears, in that sense, to actualize a large proportion of Simondon’s “non-anthropology”. Yet, what appears to be a contradiction remains in his treatment of enunciation: indeed, his understanding of materiality seems to take the detour of semiotics. This has led some critics to question his approach to materiality. However, seen through the lens of Simondon’s influence on him, it is possible to revisit Latour’s theory of enunciation and to understand communication as the passage of action from one being to the next, and signification as the outcome of action’s participation to the constitution process of a being. This way, Latour is a thinker resolutely committed to de-centering the focus of research away from human beings. (shrink)

Translator's introduction : At the end of July 2014 there was a week-long workshop held at the Ecole des Mines in Paris, Bruno Latour's former work-place. This was a final workshop, convened by Latour's project, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence, which was not only a book, but a website that was an experiment in interactive metaphysics that had been going on for four years. About 30 participants gathered to workshop and rewrite some key contested areas that had been (...) challenged on the site with discussions and counter-examples. One of the round tables working away during the week, occasionally with changes in personnel, was on Nature. Their job (like the other round tables on Politics, Diplomacy, Religion and Economics) was to ‘reboot’ or reinstitute a concept close to the heart of the Moderns. The assumption was that the traditional concept of nature, as developed through modern European history, would no longer be adequate to a future beset by environmental crises. The main people working on a draft were Didier Debaise, Pablo Jensen, Pierre Montebello, Nicolas Prignot, Isabelle Stengers and Aline Wiame. When they finished the draft, I translated it and it was presented, in French and English, in a final two-day public session at Science Po, to a group of seven international scholars designated as “chargés d'affaires,” or “diplomats from the future” whose job was to assess the results of our labours in terms of how they might be met by Gaia, the ur-representative of future planetary crises. The text, originally under the title of Our “Nature,” was as follows. [Stephen Muecke]. (shrink)

“Medico, filosofo e matematico di gran dottrina et inventione, raro nel’architettura, erudito di lettere greche, che ha già composto molti libri di proprio e non alieno intelletto”, così Federico Cesi, il princeps dell’Accademia dei Lincei, presentò nel 1612 a Galileo il nuovo adepto Nicola Antonio Stigliola, conterraneo e compagno di gioventù Giordano Bruno.

Dans un contexte de compréhension de l’être humain en tant que créé à l’image et à la ressemblance divine, Nicolas de Cues a considéré que la vision et l’union avec l’Absolu conduit, d’une part, au bonheur, et implique aussi, d’autre part, l’expression de la plus grande liberté que puisse atteindre l’humain, c’est-à-dire la pleine possession de soi. Cette conviction se présente dans son œuvre, le De visione Dei, dans une ambiance mesurée par l’attitude de la personne en prière, qui s’adresse (...) à Dieu dans la recherche de soi-même, et dans l’aspiration à accéder à ce qui est sciemment inaccessible. À la fin de la Renaissance, Giordano Bruno est l’auteur qui marquera indiscutablement le tournant anthropologique dans le sens d’une subjectivité ne prétendant plus à une union avec l’Absolu, mais qui se retourne vers elle-même. Cela se produit dans un système dans lequel l’être humain et le monde s’auto-impliquent dans une totalité dynamique qui ne laisse pas de place à un Absolu transcendant. (shrink)

À l’origine de cet ouvrage, il y a le postulat que la conception historique de la laïcité « à la française » est un héritage problématique plus que dogmatique. C’est-à-dire un héritage, comme l’évoque la conclusion, « qui ne saurait être envisagé comme une question à clore, mais bien plutôt comme un champ susceptible de reconfiguration perpétuelle ». La spécificité de cet ouvrage dans ce champ repose alors quant à elle sur deux points. Il s’agit d’abord de prendre le temps (...) du recul, du suspen.. (shrink)

The Mongols’ Middle East: Continuity and Transformation in Ilkhanid Iran. Edited by Bruno De Nicola and Charles Melville. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 127. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xiii + 346. $149, €115.

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of Nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of Nature have been continuously developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world. The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, (...) since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the natural world oblige every one of us to reopen the earlier notions of Nature and redistribute what had been packed inside. So the question now arises: what will replace the old ways of looking at Nature? This book explores a potential candidate proposed by James Lovelock when he chose the name "Gaia" for the fragile, complex system through which living phenomena modify the Earth. The fact that he was immediately misunderstood proves simply that his readers have tried to fit this new notion into an older frame, transforming Gaia into a single organism, a kind of giant thermostat, some sort of New Age goddess, or even divine Providence. In this series of lectures on "natural religion", Bruno Latour argues that the complex and ambiguous figure of Gaia offers, on the contrary, an ideal way to disentangle the ethical, political, theological, and scientific aspects of the now obsolete notion of Nature. He lays the groundwork for a future collaboration among scientists, theologians, activists, and artists as they, and we, begin to adjust to the new climatic regime. (shrink)

Taste as Experience puts the pleasure of food at the center of human experience. It shows how the sense of taste informs our preferences for and relationship to nature, pushes us toward ethical practices of consumption, and impresses upon us the importance of aesthetics. Eating is often dismissed as a necessary aspect of survival, and our personal enjoyment of food is considered a quirk. Nicola Perullo sees food as the only portion of the world we take in on a (...) daily basis, constituting our first and most significant encounter with the earth. Perullo has long observed people's food practices and has listened to their food experiences. He draws on years of research to explain the complex meanings behind our food choices and the thinking that accompanies our gustatory actions. He also considers our indifference toward food as a force influencing us as much as engagement. For Perullo, taste is value and wisdom. It cannot be reduced to mere chemical or cultural factors but embodies the quality and quantity of our earthly experience. (shrink)

Quantum physics, which offers an explanation of the world on the smallest scale, has fundamental implications that pose a serious challenge to ordinary logic. Particularly counterintuitive is the notion of entanglement, which has been explored for the past 30 years and posits an ubiquitous randomness capable of manifesting itself simultaneously in more than one place. This amazing 'non-locality' is more than just an abstract curiosity or paradox: it has entirely down-to-earth applications in cryptography, serving for example to protect financial information; (...) it also has enabled the demonstration of 'quantum teleportation', whose infinite possibilities even science-fiction writers can scarcely imagine. This delightful and concise exposition does not avoid the deep logical difficulties of quantum physics, but gives the reader the insights needed to appreciate them. From 'Bell's Theorem' to experiments in quantum entanglement, the reader will gain a solid understanding of one of the most fascinating areas of contemporary physics. (shrink)

Giordano Bruno.--La cena de le ceneri.--De la causa, principio e uno.--De l'infinito, universi e mondi.--Spaccio de la bestia trionfante.--De gli eroici furori.--Accusa e condanna di Bruno.--Nota bibliografica (p. 313-315).

Fichte assigns ‘intellectual intuition’ a new meaning after Kant. But in 1799, his doctrine of intellectual intuition is publicly deemed indefensible by Kant and nihilistic by Jacobi. I propose to defend Fichte’s doctrine against these charges, leaving aside whether it captures what he calls the ‘spirit’ of transcendental idealism. I do so by articulating three problems that motivate Fichte’s redirection of intellectual intuition from being to acting: (1) the regress problem, which states that reflecting on empirical facts of consciousness leads (...) only to further facts and so cannot yield a first principle; (2) the rhapsody problem, which states that the categories form a haphazard set and so lack necessity unless they derive from a first principle; and (3) the nihilism problem, which states that a first principle cannot lie outside our cognition of it, lest it be the cause of our cognition and, being first, the cause of all our actions, reducing us to machines. Crucially, Fichte’s three motivating problems are in fact aspects of a single problem. Leaving any aspect unsolved spoils putative solutions to the other two. Consequently, Fichte requires a single unified solution to all three, which his doctrine of intellectual intuition provides. (shrink)

A precursor to the hard problem of consciousness confronts nihilism. Like physicalism, nihilism collides with the first-personal fact of what perception and action are like. Unless this problem is solved, nature’s inclusion of conscious experience will remain, as Chalmers warns the physicalist, an “unanswered question” and, as Jacobi chides the nihilist, “completely inexplicable". One advantage of Kant’s Copernican turn is to dismiss the question that imposes this hard problem. We need not ask how nature is accompanied by the first-person standpoint (...) because “I think” is an apperceptive form of thinking that must be able to accompany any cognition of nature. Kant’s formal conception of apperception worries Fichte in his Nova Methodo lectures. This conception arguably cannot exhaust the ground of experience, for it does not show why we posit objects “at all". For Fichte, it is our agency that first opens a world of objects, viz., as subjects, means, ends, and obstacles. In what follows, I argue that, for Fichte, the I poses no hard problem because it collides exclusively with nihilistic views like Spinozism, which are refuted by a properly transcendental idealist conception of apperception, according to which the first-person standpoint is the absolute ground of our experience of nature. If transcendental idealism refutes nihilism, nature is no more explicable than that there is something it is like for me to perceive and act. In Section 1, I show why Kantian apperception is necessary for possible experience. In Section 2, I reconstruct Fichte’s argument that a modified conception of apperception refutes guises of nihilism, thereby solving the hard problem of consciousness. In Section 3, I suggest that transcendental idealism undermines Chalmers’ proposed solution to and Dennett’s dismissal of this problem. (shrink)

Ontological pluralism is the view that there are different ways to exist. It is a position with deep roots in the history of philosophy, and in which there has been a recent resurgence of interest. In contemporary presentations, it is stated in terms of fundamental languages: as the view that such languages contain more than one quantifier. For example, one ranging over abstract objects, and another over concrete ones. A natural worry, however, is that the languages proposed by the pluralist (...) are mere notational variants of those proposed by the monist, in which case the debate between the two positions would not seem to be substantive. Jason Turner has given an ingenious response to this worry, in terms of a principle that he calls ‘logical realism’. This paper offers a counter-response on behalf of the ‘notationalist’. I argue that, properly applied, the principle of logical realism is no threat to the claim that the languages in question are notational variants. Indeed, there seems to be every reason to think that they are. (shrink)

In the historical context of a crisis in biological psychiatry, psychedelic drugs paired with psychotherapy are globally re-emerging in research clinics as a potential transdiagnostic therapy for treating mood disorders, addictions, and other forms of psychological distress. The treatments are poised to soon shift from clinical trials to widespread service delivery in places like Australia, North America, and Europe, which has prompted ethical questions by social scientists and bioethicists. Taking a broader view, we argue that the ethics of psychedelic therapy (...) concerns not simply how psychotherapies are different when paired with psychedelic drugs, but how psychedelic therapies shape and are shaped by different values, norms, and metaphysical commitments. Drawing from the published literature and interviews with seven psychedelic therapists working in clinical trials in the United States, Germany, Switzerland, and Australia, this article opens the black box of the treatments to consider the values and informal debates currently animating the therapies. Considering questions of patient autonomy, mechanisms of therapeutic action, and which therapies are best suited to pair with psychedelic substances, we examine the ethics of psychedelic therapy as an emergent form of life. To bring this form of life out in fuller relief, we conclude by comparing and contrasting it with ayahuasca use in Amazonian shamanism. (shrink)

This chapter challenges Cantor’s notion of the ‘power’, or ‘cardinality’, of an infinite set. According to Cantor, two infinite sets have the same cardinality if and only if there is a one-to-one correspondence between them. Cantor showed that there are infinite sets that do not have the same cardinality in this sense. Further, he took this result to show that there are infinite sets of different sizes. This has become the standard understanding of the result. The chapter challenges this, arguing (...) that we have no reason to think there are infinite sets of different sizes. It begins with an initial argument against Cantor’s claim that there are infinite sets of different sizes and then proceeds, by way of an analogy between Cantor’s mathematical result and Russell’s paradox, to a more direct argument. (shrink)

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely self-active or living (...) power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

In 1957, Francis Crick outlined a startling vision of life in which the great diversity of forms and shapes of macromolecules was encoded in the one-dimensional sequence of nucleic acids. This paper situates Crick's new vision in the debates of the 1950s about protein synthesis and gene action. After exploring the reception of Crick's ideas, it shows how they differed radically from a different model of protein synthesis which enjoyed wide currency in that decade. In this alternative model, advocated by (...) Linus Pauling and other luminaries, three-dimensional templates directed the folding of proteins. Even though it was always considered somewhat speculative, this theory was supported by a number of empirical results originating in different experimental systems. It was eventually replaced by a model in which the forms and shapes of macromolecules resulted solely from their amino acid sequence, dramatically simplifying the problem of protein synthesis which Crick was attempting to solve in 1957. (shrink)

In Intuition et idéalités: Phénoménologie des objets mathématiques (2020), Dominique Pradelle questioned the nature of mathematical knowledge–the status of math.

Kant’s critique/doctrine distinction tracks the difference between a canon for the understanding’s proper use and an organon for its dialectical misuse. The latter reflects the dogmatic use of reason to attain a doctrine of knowledge with no antecedent critique. In the 1790s, Fichte collapses Kant’s distinction and redefines dogmatism. He argues that deriving a canon is essentially dialectical and thus yields an organon: critical idealism is properly a doctrine of science or Wissenschaftslehre. Criticism is furthermore said to refute dogmatism, by (...) which Fichte means Spinozism. Schelling repudiates Fichte’s position in his Philosophical Letters by reviving Kant’s distinction. First, ‘critique’ for Schelling names a canon that is valid for all systems—including Spinozism—and thus favours none—not even the Wissenschaftslehre. Second, Schelling coins ‘dogmaticism’ to refer to what Kant calls ‘dogmatism’: reason’s uncritical claim to doctrine. Hence, he says all systems—even Fichte’s—are susceptible to the ‘enthusiasm’ of mistaking themselves for doctrines or ‘objects of knowledge’, instead of subjectively valid ‘objects of freedom’. I reconstruct Schelling’s argument for reviving Kant’s distinction, while noting two consequences for German idealism. First, if criticism favours no system, a system’s origin cannot be an act of knowledge, e.g., intellectual intuition, but only an act of endorsement. Second, if dogmaticism entails enthusiasm, a system’s goal cannot be absolute knowledge, but only infinite striving. Hence, by retrieving Schelling’s notion of dogmaticism, we can both gain a better understanding of the Letters and register the impact of a core Kantian distinction on the German idealist project. (shrink)

Which entities should be accepted as part of the furniture of the world, and which not? What are pseudo-objects, if they are not properly objects? This collection explores the answers given to these questions by some key philosophers throughout the 20th century. It brings together essays by leading scholars on a subject of central importance to both metaphysics and the history of philosophy.".