Online research in philosophy

ABSTRACT: Consensus has it that Putnam-Burge style arguments for content-externalism do not strengthen the case for vehicle-externalism, i.e., the thesis that some mental states include as their parts notebooks, iPhones, and other extra-bodily phenomena. Rowlands and Sprevak, among others, argue that vehicle-externalism gets stronger support from Clark and Chalmers’s parity principle and functionalism, generally. I contest this assessment and thereby give reason to reconsider the support that content-externalism provides the extended mind thesis: although content-externalism does not entail vehicle-externalism, as Rowlands (...) argues, neither does functionalism. The functionalist cannot reject the content-externalist argument for vehicle-externalism on these grounds without undercutting her own. (shrink)

Through a close reading of Derrida’s recently published Adieu à EmmanueI Lévinas, the author undertakes to reflect on the significance of the expression “subject of the welcome,“ which Derrida retrieves from Levinas’s work. The author singles out four essential propositions which could define this hospitable subjcet: 1. The welcome of the other is a welcome of an infinite; 2. the welcome of the other is a genitive subjeetive; 3. the welcome is not a gathering; 4. the host is a guest. (...) Those four characteristics manifest a peculiar ex-propriation of the subject in Levinas’s work, on whieh the author reflects in two ways: first, by underlying Levinas’s reversal of the tradition of autonomous subjectivity; second, by attempting to think together the position and deposition of the subject through recourse to what Derrida calls the “ex-appropriation” of the subject.À partir d’une lecture de Adieu à Emmanuel Lévinas de Jaeques Derrida, l’auteur s’interroge sur la signification de l’expression “sujet de I’accueil”, une expression que Jaeques Derrida commente dans ce livre. L’auteur déploie quatre propositions qui pourraient cerner le sens de ce sujet hospitalier. 1. I’accueil de l’autre est l’accueil d’un infini; 2. l’accueil de l’autre est un subjectif génitif; 3. l’accueil n’est pas un recueil; 4. I’hôte (hast) est un invité (guest). Ces quatre caractéristiques manifestent une singulière ex-propriation du sujet dans I’oeuvre d’Emanuel Lévinas, une ex-propriation sur laquelle l’auteur réfléchit de deux façons: premiérement, en relevant un renversement de la tradition de la subjcetivité autonome chez Lévinas; deuxièmement, en s’efforçant de penser enselnble la position et déposition du sujet à partir de ce que Jacques Derrida appelle “I”ex-appropriation” du sujet. (shrink)