I argue that the typical Wittgensteinian method of philosophical investigation cannot help elucidate the grammar of aspect-seeing. In the typical Wittgensteinian method, we examine meaning in use: We practice language, and note the logical ramifications. I argue that the effectiveness of this method is hindered in the case of aspect-seeing by the fact that aspect-seeing involves an aberrant activity of seeing: Whereas it is normally nonsense to say that we choose what to see (decide to see the White House red, (...) for instance), it is possible to see aspects at will—e.g. to decide to see Jastrow’s duck-rabbit as a duck. I suggest an alternative method of investigation, one that reflects on language from a disengaged standpoint: a method that allows us to entertain a form of conceptualization of an object but does not commit us to adopting that way—namely, that does not involve us in a use of the object according to the norms that govern that conceptualization. This method, I argue, fits the s ubject matter of aspect-perception, since aspect-perception itself involves such a disengaged form of reflection. (shrink)

I argue that at least one of the reasons that philosophy is difficult is because it requires students to master “relational categories”, which contrast with “object” or “entity” categories. An object category is one whose members are united on the basis of perceptual and/ or salient properties, and a relational category is one whose members are united on the basis of a relational property. Empirical evidence shows that relational categories are more difficult to grasp than object categories. If learning philosophy (...) consists in mastering relational categories and relational schemas, then philosophical discourse ought to be similarly difficult. Empirical evidence also shows that the activity of comparison is central to learning relational categories. This suggests that comparison ought to play a central role in the instruction of philosophy. I explore this implication and develop some examples of how comparison can be implemented in the classroom in order to promote philosophical discovery. (shrink)

The application of digital humanities techniques to philosophy is changing the way scholars approach the discipline. This paper seeks to open a discussion about the difficulties, methods, opportunities, and dangers of creating and utilizing a formal representation of the discipline of philosophy. We review our current project, the Indiana Philosophy Ontology (InPhO) project, which uses a combination of automated methods and expert feedback to create a dynamic computational ontology for the discipline of philosophy. We argue that our distributed, expert-based approach (...) to modeling the discipline carries substantial practical and philosophical benefits over alternatives. We also discuss challenges facing our project (and any other similar project) as well as the future directions for digital philosophy afforded by formal modeling. (shrink)

"In this densely imbricated volume Derrida pursues his devoted, relentless dismantling of the philosophical tradition, the tradition of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger--each dealt with in one or more of the essays. There are essays too on linguistics (Saussure, Benveniste, Austin) and on the nature of metaphor ("White Mythology"), the latter with important implications for literary theory. Derrida is fully in control of a dazzling stylistic register in this book--a source of true illumination for those prepared to follow his (...) arduous path. Bass is a superb translator and annotator. His notes on the multilingual allusions and puns are a great service."--Alexander Gelley, Library Journal. (shrink)

Except for a patina of twenty-first century modernity, in the form of logic and language, philosophy is exactly the same now as it ever was; it has made no progress whatsoever. We philosophers wrestle with the exact same problems the Pre-Socratics wrestled with. Even more outrageous than this claim, though, is the blatant denial of its obvious truth by many practicing philosophers. The No-Progress view is explored and argued for here. Its denial is diagnosed as a form of anosognosia, a (...) mental condition where the affected person denies there is any problem. The theories of two eminent philosophers supporting the No-Progress view are also examined. The final section offers an explanation for philosophy's inability to solve any philosophical problem, ever. The paper closes with some reflections on philosophy's future. (shrink)

Why is debate over the free will problem so intractable? In this broad and stimulating look at the philosophical enterprise, Richard Double uses the free will controversy to build on the subjectivist conclusion he developed in The Non-Reality of Free Will (OUP 1991). Double argues that various views about free will--e.g., compatibilism, incompatibilism, and even subjectivism--are compelling if, and only if, we adopt supporting metaphilosophical views. Because metaphilosophical considerations are not provable, we cannot show any free will theory to be (...) most reasonable. Metaphilosophy and Free Will deconstructs the free will problem and, by example, challenges philosophers in other areas to show how their philosophical argumentation can succeed. (shrink)

This essay uses citational analyses to argue that most of the philosophers considered "postanalytic" - Wittgenstein, McDowell, Davidson, and Rorty - are not, in fact, genuine figures of rapprochement, since the particular essays cited, and/or the background literature that is cited, are not shared in common between the standard-bearing analytic and continental journals.

By focusing on the different ways in which this methodological norm was enacted in the lives and work of Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx, the author puts the ...

The thirteen specially-commissioned essays in this volume are designed to provide an accessible and stimulating guide through an area of philosophical thought ...

When a debate seems intractable, with little agreement as to how one might proceed towards a resolution, it is understandable that philosophers should consider whether something might be amiss with the debate itself. Famously in the last century, philosophers of various stripes explored in various ways the possibility that at least certain philosophical debates are in some manner deficient in sense. Such moves are no longer so much in vogue. For one thing, the particular ways they have been made have (...) themselves undergone much critical scrutiny, so that many philosophers now feel that there is, for example, a Quinean response to Carnap, a Gricean reply to Austin, and a diluting proliferation of Wittgenstein interpretations.2 Be that as it may,3 there do of.. (shrink)

P. M. S. Hacker 1. The poverty of philosophy as a science Throughout its history philosophy has been thought to be a member of a community of intellectual disciplines united by their common pursuit of knowledge. It has sometimes been thought to be the queen of the sciences, at other times merely their under-labourer. But irrespective of its social status, it was held to be a participant in the quest for knowledge – a cognitive discipline. Cognitive disciplines may be a (...) priori or empirical. The distinction between what is a priori and what is empirical is epistemological. It turns, as Frege noted, on the ultimate justification for holding something to be true.1 If the truths which a cognitive discipline attains are warranted neither by observation nor by experiment (nor by inference therefrom), then they are a priori. Otherwise they are empirical. The natural and moral sciences (the Geisteswissenschaften) strive for and attain empirical knowledge.2 The mathematical sciences are a priori. Cognitive disciplines have a distinctive subject matter, concerning which they aim to add to human knowledge. Physics deals with matter, motion, and energy, chemistry with the constitution of stuffs out of elements, biology with the nature of living beings, history with ‘the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind’ (Gibbon), and so forth. The empirical sciences aim not only to discover truths but also to explain the phenomena they study. The natural sciences produce theories (typically with predictive powers) to explain the facts and laws they discover. The moral sciences too aim to explain the phenomena they study – although not to the same extent by way of theory and general laws; and their predictive powers, if any, are more limited. Mathematics and logic strive to produce theorems by means of proofs, and are.. (shrink)

The focus of this volume, which collects both recent and now-classic essays, is the historical emergence of concepts and objects, through new uses of words and ...

In this book, a Grice/Strawson account of analyticity is explained and formalized, and a corresponding account of logic is offered. The implications of these views for science/substantive inquiry are explored and a neo-Carnapian/verificationist meta-theory is presented.

Conceptual analyses can be subdivided into two classes, good and evil. Em- pirical analysis is the good kind, routinely practiced in the sciences. Orthodox analysis is the malevolent version that plagues philosophical discourse. In this paper, I will clarify the difference between them, provide some reasons to prefer good over evil, and illustrate their consequences for the metaphysics of causation. By conducting an empirical analysis of causation rather than an orthodox analysis, one can segregate the genuine metaphysical problems that need (...) to be addressed from the many pseudo-problems that have long dogged traditional accounts of causation. (shrink)

The most exciting and important new philosophical idea of the past decade, in my view, is the discovery that we urgently need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academic inquiry more generally, so that the basic intellectual aim becomes to seek and promote wisdom. We urgently need to transform our schools and universities so that they become rationally devoted to helping humanity learn how to tackle our grave global problems, and thus make progress towards as good a (...) world as possible. (shrink)

The concern of this paper is not with the truth of any particular realist or anti-realist view, but rather with determining what it is to be a realist or anti-realist in the first place. While much skepticism has been voiced in recent years about the viability of such a project, my goal is to articulate interesting and informative conditions whereby any view in any domain of experience can count as either a realist or an anti-realist position.

What do Ross’s The Right and the Good; Chisholm’s Theory of Knowledge; Kripke’s Naming and Necessity; and Audi’s The Architecture of Reason have in common? They all advance important philosophical positions, but not so much via analytic arguments as via formal schemas, distinctions, examples, and analogies. They use such formal schemas, etc, to describe the world so as to make some aspect of it manifest. That is, they simply try to ‘tell it like it is’. This ‘method of descriptive manifestation’ (...) is less commonly recognized than it should be given its divergence from the self-image of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

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

Experimental philosophers have gathered impressive evidence for the surprising conclusion that philosophers' intuitions are out of step with those of the folk. As a result, many argue that philosophers' intuitions are unreliable. Focusing on the Knobe Effect, a leading finding of experimental philosophy, we defend traditional philosophy against this conclusion. Our key premise relies on experiments we conducted which indicate that judgments of the folk elicited under higher quality cognitive or epistemic conditions are more likely to resemble those of the (...) philosopher. We end by showing how our experimental findings can help us better understand the Knobe Effect. (shrink)

This "reply" continues the debate with Simon Glendinning regarding his book The Idea of Continental Philosophy, and pursues my claim that there is a distinctive 'temporal turn' associated with twentieth century continental philosophy. I also offer some family resemblance criteria for continental philosophy.

Questioning the premise that philosophy can only be conceived as a rational discourse, Sellars presents it instead as an art (techne) that combines both 'logos' ...