SS RAMA RAO PAPPU PROFESSOR PT RAJU: EVOLUTION OF HIS PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT "In India (PT Raju) represents and is really the original initiator of, ...
This thesis explores, thematically and chronologically, the substantial concordance between the work of Martin Heidegger and T.S. Eliot. The introduction traces Eliot's ideas of the 'objective (...) class='Hi'> correlative' and 'situatedness' to a familiarity with German Idealism. Heidegger shared this familiarity, suggesting a reason for the similarity of their thought. Chapter one explores the 'authenticity' developed in Being and Time, as well as associated themes like temporality, the 'they' (Das Man), inauthenticity, idle talk and angst, and applies them to interpreting Eliot's poem, 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock'. Both texts depict a bleak Modernist view of the early twentieth-century Western human condition, characterized as a dispiriting nihilism and homelessness. Chapter two traces the chronological development of Ereignis in Heidegger's thinking, showing the term's two discernible but related meanings: first our nature as the 'site of the open' where Being can manifest, and second individual 'Events' of 'appropriation and revelation'. The world is always happening as 'event', but only through our appropriation by the Ereignis event can we become aware of this. Heidegger finds poetry, the essential example of language as the 'house of Being', to be the purest manifestation of Ereignis, taking as his examples Hölderlin and Rilke. A detailed analysis of Eliot's late work Four Quartets reveals how Ereignis, both as an ineluctable and an epiphanic condition of human existence, is central to his poetry, confirming, in Heidegger's words, 'what poets are for in a destitute time', namely to re-found and restore the wonder of the world and existence itself. This restoration results from what Eliot calls 'raid[s] on the inarticulate', the poet's continual striving to enact that openness to Being through which human language and the human world continually come to be. The final chapter shows how both Eliot and Heidegger value a genuine relationship with place as enabling human flourishing. Both distrust technological materialism, which destroys our sense of the world as dwelling place, and both are essentially committed to a genuinely authentic life, not the angstful authenticity of Being and Time, but a richer belonging which affirms our relationship with the earth, each other and our gods. (shrink)
The article is devoted to the four principle realization in the creative work of two poets, namely the English literature classic T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) and a (...) class='Hi'> representative of the Russian poetry Elena Swarz (1948-2010). Number four is a structural principle in their works composition and crucifix of Christ. On the example of the two poets the author shows that on the one hand, the symbol of four is a cosmic transversalism of being and the cross image, on the other. Thus, two contradictory meanings are combined here: harmony and drama as truly Christian forms of dialectics. (shrink)
No one is quite sure what happened to T.S. Eliot in that rose-garden. What we do know is that it formed the basis for Four Quartets (...) class='Hi'>, arguably the greatest English poem written in the twentieth century. Luckily it turns out that Martin Heidegger, when not pondering the meaning of being, spent a great deal of time thinking and writing about the kind of event that Eliot experienced. This essay explores how Heidegger developed the concept of Ereignis, “event” which, in the context of Eliot’s poetry, helps us understand an encounter with the “heart of light” a little better. (shrink)
Inspired by Pohlers' local predicativity approach to Pure Proof Theory and Howard's ordinal analysis of bar recursion of type zero we present a short, technically smooth (...) class='Hi'>and constructive strong normalization proof for Gödel's system T of primitive recursive functionals of finite types by constructing an ε 0 -recursive function [] 0 : T → ω so that a reduces to b implies [a] $_0 > [b]_0$ . The construction of [] 0 is based on a careful analysis of the Howard-Schütte treatment of Gödel's T and utilizes the collapsing function ψ: ε 0 → ω which has been developed by the author for a local predicativity style proof-theoretic analysis of PA. The construction of [] 0 is also crucially based on ideas developed in the 1995 paper "A proof of strongly uniform termination for Gödel's T by the method of local predicativity" by the author. The results on complexity bounds for the fragments of T which are obtained in this paper strengthen considerably the results of the 1995 paper. Indeed, for given n let T n be the subsystem of T in which the recursors have type level less than or equal to n+2. (By definition, case distinction functionals for every type are also contained in T n .) As a corollary of the main theorem of this paper we obtain (reobtain?) optimal bounds for the T n -derivation lengths in terms of ω n+2 -descent recursive functions. The derivation lengths of type one functionals from T n (hence also their computational complexities) are classified optimally in terms of $ -descent recursive functions. In particular we obtain (reobtain?) that the derivation lengths function of a type one functional a ∈ T 0 is primitive recursive, thus any type one functional a in T 0 defines a primitive recursive function. Similarly we also obtain (reobtain?) a full classification of T 1 in terms of multiple recursion. As proof-theoretic corollaries we reobtain the classification of the IΣ n+1 -provably recursive functions. Taking advantage from our finitistic and constructive treatment of the terms of Gödel's T we reobtain additionally (without employing continuous cut elimination techniques) that PRA + PRWO ( $\varepsilon_0) \vdash \Pi^0_2$ - Refl(PA) and PRA + PRWO ( $\omega_{n+2}) \vdash \Pi^0_2$ - Refl(I Σ n+1 ), hence PRA + PRWO( $\epsilon_0) \vdash$ Con(PA) and PRA + PRWO( $\omega_{n+2}) \vdash$ Con(IΣ n+1 ). For programmatic reasons we outline in the introduction a vision of how to apply a certain type of infinitary methods to questions of finitary mathematics and recursion theory. We also indicate some connections between ordinals, term rewriting, recursion theory and computational complexity. (shrink)
w a y s h a v e b e e n . W e a l l r e m e m b e r M a (...) class='Hi'> r x ' s p o l e m i c a g a i n s t P r o u d h o n , t h e Manifesto's critique of "historical action [yielding] to personal inventive action, historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones, and the gradual spontaneous class organizations of the proletariat to an organization of society specially contrived by these inventors" (Marx and Engels, 1986, 64), and the numerous other occasions when the fathers of "scientific socialism" went a f t e r t h e " u t o p i a n s . " I n general this Marxian aversion to drawing up blueprints has been healthy, fueled at least in part by a respect for the concrete specificity of the revolutionary situation and for the agents engaged in revolutionary activity: it is not the business of Marxist intellectuals to tell the agents of revolution how they are to construct their postrevolutionary economy. (shrink)
: T. L. Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs offers a strong interpretation of semeiotic, advocating a developmental and naturalistic position. This commentary examines some of the (...) class='Hi'>main features of Short's approach, raising a number of critical questions concerning the growth of Peirce's thought and the problem of anthropomorphism. First, two possible weaknesses in Short's account of the development of semeiotic, connected to the treatment of the "New List of Categories" and the role of the index, are noted. Next, the menace of anthropomorphism is placed in the context of Peirce's startling affirmation of this point of view. Finally, the article draws attention to Short's bold claim that Peirce's theory of signs needs to be modified in order to accommodate a plurality of final interpretants in view of varying purposes. (shrink)
We consider the implications of trends in the number of U.S. farmers and food imports on the question of what role U.S. farmers have in an (...) class='Hi'> increasingly global agrifood system. Our discussion stems from the argument some scholars have made that American consumers can import their food more cheaply from other countries than it can produce it. We consider the distinction between U.S. farmers and agriculture and the effect of the U.S. food footprint on developing nations to argue there might be an important role for U.S. farmers, even if it appears Americans don’t need them. For instance, we may need to protect U.S. farmland and, by implication, U.S. farmers, for future food security needs both domestic and international. We also explore the role of U.S. farmers by considering the question of whether food is a privilege or a right. Although Americans seem to accept that food is a privilege, many scholars and commentators argue that, at least on a global scale, food is a right, particularly for the world’s poor and hungry. If this is the case, then U.S. farmers might have a role in meeting the associated obligation to ensure that the poor of the world have enough food to eat. We look at the consequences of determining that food is a right versus a privilege and the implications of that decision for agricultural subsidies as well as U.S. agriculture and nutrition policies. (shrink)
: According to T.L. Short, Peirce's early thought-sign account of semeiotic engenders fatal flaws. On the one hand, it entails an infinite regressus of representation that (...) class='Hi'> cannot feasibly explain the connection between signs and objects and, on the other, an infinite progressus, leaving Peirce's theory without the wherewithal to account for the sign's meaning and significance. According to Short, Peirce overcomes the first flaw through the robust development of the notion of the index and the concept of collateral experience. The second flaw is overcome through the pragmatic theory of meaning, connected as it is to the notion of purpose and, ultimately, a complex theory of teleology. My commentary focuses primarily on Short's important analysis of Peirce's teleology. I argue that he is successful in giving a plausible, naturalistic account of Peirce's theory without straying from the spirit of Peirce's systematic thought. Although, in my view, the book is the best account of Peirce's semiotic grammar in print, it fails to give a sufficient systematic analysis of the other two branches of Peirce's semeiotic—critical logic and formal rhetoric. (shrink)
A relativized version of Tarski’s T-scheme is introduced as a new principle of the truth predicate. Under the relativized T-scheme, the paradoxical objects, such as (...) the Liar sentence and Jourdain’s card sequence, are found to have certain relative contradictoriness. That is, they are contradictory only in some frames in the sense that any valuation admissible for them in these frames will lead to a contradiction. It is proved that for any positive integer n , the n -jump liar sentence is contradictory in and only in those frames containing at least an n -jump odd cycle. In particular, the Liar sentence is contradictory in and only in those frames containing at least an odd cycle. The Liar sentence is also proved to be less contradictory than Jourdain’s card sequence: the latter must be contradictory in those frames where the former is so, but not vice versa . Generally, the relative contradictoriness is the common characteristic of the paradoxical objects, but different paradoxical objects may have different relative contradictoriness. (shrink)
T. L. Short's Peirce's Theory of Signs offers a strong interpretation of semeiotic, advocating a developmental and naturalistic position. This commentary examines some of the main (...) class='Hi'> features of Short's approach, raising a number of critical questions concerning the growth of Peirce's thought and the problem of anthropomorphism. First, two possible weaknesses in Short's account of the development of semeiotic, connected to the treatment of the "New List of Categories" and the role of the index, are noted. Next, the menace of anthropomorphism is placed in the context of Peirce's startling affirmation of this point of view. Finally, the article draws attention to Short's bold claim that Peirce's theory of signs needs to be modified in order to accommodate a plurality of final interpretants in view of varying purposes. (shrink)
We consider the implications of trends in the number of U.S. farmers and food imports on the question of what role U.S. farmers have in an (...) class='Hi'> increasingly global agrifood system. Our discussion stems from the argument some scholars have made that American consumers can import their food more cheaply from other countries than it can produce it. We consider the distinction between U.S. farmers and agriculture and the effect of the U.S. food footprint on developing nations to argue there might be an important role for U.S. farmers, even if it appears Americans don’t need them. For instance, we may need to protect U.S. farmland and, by implication, U.S. farmers, for future food security needs both domestic and international. We also explore the role of U.S. farmers by considering the question of whether food is a privilege or a right. Although Americans seem to accept that food is a privilege, many scholars and commentators argue that, at least on a global scale, food is a right, particularly for the world’s poor and hungry. If this is the case, then U.S. farmers might have a role in meeting the associated obligation to ensure that the poor of the world have enough food to eat. We look at the consequences of determining that food is a right versus a privilege and the implications of that decision for agricultural subsidies as well as U.S. agriculture and nutrition policies. (shrink)
Internalism about a person's good is roughly the view that in order for something to intrinsically enhance a person's well-being, that person must be capable (...) of caring about that thing. I argue in this paper that internalism about a person's good should not be believed. Though many philosophers accept the view, Connie Rosati provides the most comprehensive case in favor of it. Her defense of the view consists mainly in offering five independent arguments to think that at least some form of internalism about one's good is true. But I argue that, on closer inspection, not one of these arguments succeeds. The problems don't end there, however. While Rosati offers good reasons to think that what she calls 'two-tier internalism' would be the best way to formulate the intuition behind internalism about one's good, I argue that two-tier internalism is actually false. In particular, the problem is that no substantive theory of well-being is consistent with two-tier internalism. Accordingly, there is reason to think that even the best version of internalism about one's good is in fact false. Thus, I conclude, the prospects for internalism about a person's good do not look promising. (shrink)
I defend Pascal's Wager from a particular way of evading it, the mixed strategy approach. The mixed strategies approach suggests that Pascal's Wager does not obligate (...) class='Hi'> one to believe in God, because one can get the same infinite expected utility from other strategies besides the strategy of believing in God. I will show that while there's nothing technically wrong with the mixed strategy approach, rationality requires it to be applied in such a way that Pascal's Wager doesn't lose any force. (shrink)
T'ang Chün-i's early work Ai-ching chih fu-yin (Gospel of love) has been much neglected by T'ang scholars. This essay argues that this text (...) is not a caprice, and that it marks an important stage in T'ang's life and studies. Furthermore, in the history of Chinese philosophy, it is probably the first book ever written on the philosophy of love. (shrink)
The "New Synthesis" in cognitive science is committed to the computational theory of mind (CTM), massive modularity, nativism, and adaptationism. In The mind doesn't work (...) that way , Jerry Fodor argues that CTM has problems explaining abductive or global inference, but that the New Synthesis offers no solution, since massive modularity is in fact incompatible with global cognitive processes. I argue that it is not clear how global human mentation is, so whether CTM is imperiled is an open question. Massive modularity also lacks some of the invidious commitments Fodor ascribes to it. Furthermore, Fodor's anti-adaptationist arguments are in tension with his nativism about the contents of modular systems. The New Synthesis thus has points worth preserving. (shrink)
The "New Synthesis" in cognitive science is committed to the computational theory of mind (CTM), massive modularity, nativism, and adaptationism. In The mind doesn't work that (...) class='Hi'>way , Jerry Fodor argues that CTM has problems explaining abductive or global inference, but that the New Synthesis offers no solution, since massive modularity is in fact incompatible with global cognitive processes. I argue that it is not clear how global human mentation is, so whether CTM is imperiled is an open question. Massive modularity also lacks some of the invidious commitments Fodor ascribes to it. Furthermore, Fodor's anti-adaptationist arguments are in tension with his nativism about the contents of modular systems. The New Synthesis thus has points worth preserving. (shrink)
I define T-schema deflationism as the thesis that a theory of truth for our language can simply take the form of certain instances of Tarski's schema (...) class='Hi'> (T). I show that any effective enumeration of these instances will yield as a dividend an effective enumeration of all truths of our language. But that contradicts Gödel's First Incompleteness Theorem. So the instances of (T) constituting the T-Schema deflationist's theory of truth are not effectively enumerable, which casts doubt on the idea that the T-schema deflationist in any sense has a theory of truth. (The argument in section 2 of "Semantics for Deflationists" supercedes this paper.). (shrink)
Discussion of J. Kevin O’Regan’s “Why Red Doesn’t Sound Like a Bell: Understanding the Feel of Consciousness” Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-20 DOI (...) class='Hi'>10.1007/s13164-012-0090-7 Authors J. Kevin O’Regan, Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception, CNRS - Université Paris Descartes, Centre Biomédical des Saints Pères, 45 rue des Sts Pères, 75270 Paris cedex 06, France Ned Block, Departments of Philosophy, Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, 5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003, USA Journal Review of Philosophy and Psychology Online ISSN 1878-5166 Print ISSN 1878-5158. (shrink)
By way of an example, Lewis imagines your being invited to join Schrödinger’s cat in its box for an hour. This box will either fill up (...) class='Hi'>with deadly poison fumes or not, depending on whether or not some radioactive atom decays, the probability of decay within an hour being 50%. The invitation is accompanied with some further incentive to comply (Lewis sets it up so there is a significant chance of some pretty bad but not life-threatening punishment if you don’t get in the box). Lewis argues that the many minds theory implies that you should get in the box with the cat, despite this making it 50% likely you will die. (shrink)
Each one of T.H. Marshall's trinity of human rights rested on the state as, simultaneously, its birth place, executive manager and guardian. And no wonder. At (...) class='Hi'> the time Marshall tied personal, political and social freedoms into a historically determined succession of won/bestowed rights, the boundaries of the sovereign state marked the limits of what humans could contemplate, and what they thought they should jointly do, in order to make their world more user-friendly. The state enclosed territory was the site of private initiatives and public actions, as well as the arena on which private interests and public issues met, clashed and sought reconciliation. In all those respects, the realm of state sovereignty was presumed to be self-contained, selfassertive and self-sufficient. (shrink)
Although T. H. Green is primarily remembered today as a moral and political philosopher, many of his philosophical concerns owe their origins to the Victorian crisis of (...) faith in which a widespread belief in the literal truth of Scripture confronted seemingly incompatible scientific theories. Green attributed this crisis to the inability of science and religion to find accommodation in the popular version of empiricism widely accepted by educated men and women of his day. In his 371-page introduction to Hume’s Treatise, Green argued that this philosophy was unacceptable, even on its own terms, and that it needed to be replaced with a new philosophy of life, one recognizing that both knowledge and human action are .. (shrink)
My aim in this study is not to praise Fischer's fine theory of moral responsibility, but to (try to) bury the "semi" in "semicompatibilism". I think (...) class='Hi'>Fischer gives the Consequence Argument (CA) too much credit, and gives himself too little credit. In his book, The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer gave the CA as good a statement as it will ever get, and put his finger on what is wrong with it. Then he declared stalemate rather than victory. In my view, Fischer's view amounts to sophisticated compatibilism. It would be nice to be able to call it by its right name. In The Metaphysics of Free Will, Fischer develops his own version of Consequence Argument, which turns on two principles, one of which is the fixity of the past. FP: For any action K, agent S and time i, if it is true that is S were to do Y at t, some fact about that past relative to t would not have been a fact, then S cannot at t do Fat 1. 1 argue that the equipment needed to reject FP (and thereby defend the most plausible version of compatibilism) is needed to deal with the problem of fatalism. In addition, I argue that the rejection of FP is compatible with Fischer's approach to Frankfurt cases and with his account of transfer principles. (shrink)
Burgess and Rosen argue that Yablo’s figuralist account of mathematics fails because it says mathematical claims are really only metaphorical. They suggest Yablo’s view is implausible (...) class='Hi'> as an account of what mathematicians say and confused about literal language. I show their argument isn’t decisive, briefly exploring some questions in the philosophy of language it raises, and argue Yablo’s view may be amended to a kind of revolutionary fictionalism not refuted by Burgess and Rosen. (shrink)
Rafey Habib's book offers a comprehensive study of Eliot's philosophical writings and attempts to assess their impact on both his early poetry through 'The Waste Land (...) class='Hi'>' and the central concepts of his literary criticsm. Habib presents the first scholalrly analysis of Eliot's difficult unpublished papers on Kant and Bergson and establishes the nature of Eliot's connections with major figures in the Western philosophical tradition, including Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Hume, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bradley and Russell. The Early T. S. Eliot and Western Philosophy attempts to unravel the complex notions of irony underlying Eliot's poetry, arguing that these originate in his philosophical thinking and achieve persistent expression in his early aesthetics. This book offers close readings of Eliot's major poems and critical essays, shedding valuable light on his views on language, tradition, impersonality and emotion, and situating these in a broad aesthetic and philosophical context. (shrink)
O presente artigo tem como objectivo fundamental propor uma interpretação do poema de T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1922), no qual a experiência do mal constitui (...) class='Hi'>ponto de referência central. Esta experiência, traduzida metaforicamente por "terra desolada", pode ser perspectivada tanto em termos pessoais como civilizacionais. O poema, depois de realizar o diagnóstico de uma situação de crise profunda, realiza o que poderíamos designar como um ritual catártico que permite a purificação das dimensões negativas, sedimentadas em nós, constrangedoras da nossa liberdade. /// This paper proposes an interpretation of T. S. <span class='Hi'>Elliotspan>'s poem The Waste Land (1922) whose core is the experience of evil. Such experience, expressed by the metaphor of the "waste land", can be viewed either in personal or in civilizational terms. After diagnosing a profound crisis, the poem goes on to what could be called a cathartic ritual, which enables the purification of negative elements of life that constrain our freedom. (shrink)
T. L. S. Sprigge produced an eclectic yet highly original system of metaphysics and ethics, a synthesis of panpsychism, absolute idealism, and utilitarianism, at a time in (...) which orthodox analytical philosophy could only view this system as an anachronism of the nineteenth century. His critics claim that his philosophy has only historical interest to a small group of specialists in the relatively dormant tradition of British Idealism, that an attempt to defend his view of consciousness is a hopeless nonstarter, and that his Spinozistic monism can have no relevance in our intellectual culture.1 Yet others have defended Sprigge as the "most independent of thinkers within the field of metaphysics" and salute him as "a .. (shrink)
Manju Jain's innovative study of T. S. <span class='Hi'>Eliotspan>'s Harvard years traces the genesis of his major literary, religious and intellectual preoccupations in his (...) class='Hi'> early work as a student of philosophy, and explores its influence on his poetic and critical practice. His concerns were located within the mainstream of Harvard philosophical debates, especially in relation to the controversy of science versus religion. These questions (and <span class='Hi'>Eliotspan>'s work as he grappled with them) point forward to important debates in contemporary philosophy and hermeneutics. Drawing extensively on unpublished sources, Manju Jain offers answers to the questions of why <span class='Hi'>Eliotspan> failed to find satisfaction in an academic career devoted to philosophy, and why he abandoned the speculations of metaphysics for the dogmas of theology. (shrink)
The paper considers T.S. Eliot's 'dissociation of sensibility' thesis, considering its philosophical value and attempting to defend it against published objections. While accepting some of the (...) class='Hi'> criticisms, it is argued that Eliot's argument is sound to a significant extent. Eliot's account retains explanatory power with regard to an enduring arts-science divide in schooling and, more broadly, in environmental ethics. In both these areas, educators can, and should, find greater synergies between arts and science, and theoria and praxis , despite continuing pressures on the school curriculum to move in the opposite direction. It is suggested that an acknowledgement of living as semiosis can be helpful in this respect. (shrink)
The paper questions Weintraub's thesis that ?Methodology doesn't matter?. It is argued that the thesis is unclear, and when clarified on the basis of textual evidence (...) class='Hi'> from Weintraub himself, it is false (or else trivially true). It is also pointed out that Weintraub's argument for the thesis is based on what he denounces, namely ?Methodology? (of a second degree); it turns out to be a ?Methodological? argument against ?Methodology?. The thesis also gives a distorted picture of what many methodologists of economics actually are doing. On the other hand, Weintraub's arguments for why the history of economic thought might matter also apply to much of economic methodology. It is concluded that methodology might matter. (shrink)
The October 1987 issue of CONVIVIUM (No. 25, pp. 48 54) contains an article by R.T. Allen entitled "Polanyi and Truth" (hereafter "PT"), in which the (...) class='Hi'>author claims to "take up the challenge posed by Mr. S. Palmquist's 'A Kantian Critique of Polanyi's "Post Critical Philosophy"' (CONVIVIUM No. 24, March 1987 [pp. 1 11])." In that article (hereafter "KCP") I intended to "use Kant's philosophy as a sounding board to help pinpoint some unfortunate misunderstandings contained in PK" ("KCP" 2). I presupposed, for the purpose of that rather modest task, an interpretation of Kant's philosophy which I had developed in full elsewhere. In deference to any readers who questioned or failed to understand this interpretation as summarized in "KCP", I referred in the footnotes to seven of the articles I have written in its defense (see "KCP" 10 11). (shrink)
This book offers a new phenomenological interpretation of T.H. Green's (1836-1882) philosophy and political theory. By analyzing his theory of human practice, the moral idea, (...) the common good, freedom and human rights, the book demonstrates that Green joins the same tradition as Kantian and Husserlian transcendentalism. The book offers a reconstruction of Green's idealism and demonstrates its potential to address contemporary debates on the nature of moral agency, positive and negative freedom and on justifying human rights. (shrink)
The German facts are consistent with the hypothesis that the default is the most frequent allomorph. Plural -s is the least frequent allomorph and does not act (...) as a default. There is another way to measure the frequency of perfects in which no single -n allomorph is as frequent as -t. Lexical versus computational components do not correlate with regularity. (shrink)
Robert Corrington's ever-emerging theory of ecstatic naturalism is dense with possibilities for secondary studies. The task of attending to the rich theoretical territory of Corrington's (...) philosophical world is in itself deserving of many monograph-length treatments. Nam T. Nguyen's Natures Primal Self not only takes on this task but also triples the workload by attempting to compare and contrast Corrington's ideas with the philosophies of Charles Peirce and Karl Jaspers, who are notably difficult to penetrate in their own right and conspicuously disparate from one another. As would be expected, Nguyen's study brings a plethora of interesting philosophical questions to the foreground with respect to these three .. (shrink)
In Heidegger’s Being and Time certain concepts are discussed which are central to the ontological constitution of Dasein. This paper demonstrates the interesting manner in which (...) class='Hi'>some of these concepts can be used in a reading of T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. A comparative analysis is performed, explicating the relevant Heideggerian terms and then relating them to Eliot’s poem. In this way strong parallels are revealed between the two men’s respective thoughts and distinct modernist sensibilities. Prufrock, the protagonist of the poem, and the world he inhabits illustrate poetically concepts such as authenticity, inauthenticity, the ‘they’, idle talk and angst, which Heidegger develops in Being and Time. (shrink)
The contemporary popularity of the prefix post has found its expression also in the realm of analytic philosophy - there arises something which has come to be called (...) class='Hi'> postanalytic philosophy. We put forward that this branch of the analytic movement, germinating in the writings of the late Ludwig Wittgenstein, of Willard Van Orman Quine and Willfrid Sellars, and coming to full blossom with Nelson Goodman, Donald Davidson, Hilary Putnam and Richard Rorty, springs first and foremost from the repudiation of the doctrine of logical atomism as entertained by Bertrand Russell and the early Wittgenstein. The dismantling of this doctrine means especially the denial of the following four points: (1) the atomistic character of language; (2) the sharp boundary between analytic and contingent statements; (3) the sharp boundary between 'given' and 'inferred' knowledge; and also (4) the essential cummulativity of knowledge. Postanalytic philosophy is thus essentially holistic; and we put forward that in fact postanalytic philosophy equals analytic philosophy minus logical atomism. (shrink)
The traditional hermeneutic ruling not to use reports and legends for questioning edicts and rules signifies the tacit recognition, contrary to explicit statement, of the part of (...) the Rabbinical leadership, of the inevitability of change in diverse aspects if Jewish life. This may invite criticism of the conduct of the ancient leadership, which, as always, is questionable and useless. Rather, an open discussion should be instituted on the proposal to make future changes openly, not surreptitiously; particularly the change from surreptitious changes to open changes is better done openly. (shrink)
Jesus Christ may be regarded as the chief spirit of agitation and innovation. He himself declared, “I come not to bring peace, but a sword.” One cannot (...) delve seriously into the centuries of activism and scholarship against racism, Jim Crowism, and the terrorism of lynching without encountering the legacies of Timothy Thomas Fortune and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Black scholars from the 19th century to the present have been inspired by the sociological and economic works of Fortune and Wells. Scholars of American philosophy, however, continue to ignore their writings, their theoretical contributions and their ethical aspirations, preferring instead the insipid declarations of white turn of the century .. (shrink)
T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets is foremost a meditation on the significance of place. Each quartet is named for a place which holds importance for Eliot, either (...) class='Hi'> because of historical or personal memory. I argue that this importance is grounded in an ontological topology, by which I mean that the poem explores the fate of the individual and his/her heritage as inextricably bound up with the notion of place. This sense of place extends beyond the borders of a single life to encompass the remembered past and the unknown future. How this broader narrative of the passing and enduring of human existence can be better understood is a primary concern of the work of Martin Heidegger, in whose Being and Time the historical, situated context of an individual within a community is an important theme. Even more important is his later work in which this theme is extended to include place and dwelling. Dwelling is a particularly rich and poetic idea, weaving the narratological, topological and temporal aspects of human existence together, offering a challenge to modern technology thinking. This paper explores Heidegger’s thoughts on the topology of Being within the context of a poem which, I contend, is also telling the story of human situatedness, and attempting to understand what it means to truly dwell. (shrink)
: This paper is a commentary on some topics discussed by Thomas Short in his recent book Peirce's Theory of Signs: Peirce's distinction between iconic and (...) class='Hi'>indexical signs, the objects of propositions, and different ways of interpreting the distinction between the immediate and dynamic objects of signs. Peirce's distinction between immediate and dynamic objects is in certain respects analogous to Alexius Meinong's distinction between the "auxiliary objects" and the "ultimate objects" ("target objects") of mental representations. It is suggested that the models of a theory can be regarded as its immediate objects, and the real systems represented by the models are the dynamic objects of the theory. (shrink)
This paper is a commentary on some topics discussed by Thomas Short in his recent book Peirce's Theory of Signs: Peirce's distinction between iconic and indexical (...) class='Hi'> signs, the objects of propositions, and different ways of interpreting the distinction between the immediate and dynamic objects of signs. Peirce's distinction between immediate and dynamic objects is in certain respects analogous to Alexius Meinong's distinction between the "auxiliary objects" and the "ultimate objects" ("target objects") of mental representations. It is suggested that the models of a theory can be regarded as its immediate objects, and the real systems represented by the models are the dynamic objects of the theory. (shrink)
: My contribution to the present symposium on Short's book is an assessment of it as an attempt to provide a reliable starting understanding of Peirce's (...) class='Hi'>semeiotic for anyone interested in its relevance to contemporary philosophy of mind and philosophy of science, which is the special (but somewhat limited) perspective from which Short himself views Peirce's work. I suggest that although the central core of the book—meaning those chapters (3 through 9) which present the basic conceptions of Peirce's theory of thought as representation—is successful in providing an unusually lucid account of its basic process conceptions (subject to important qualification), and is clearly of special interest in that part of it in which Short applies Peirce's conceptions in the context of current problematics in analytic philosophy (Chs. 10–12), it is seriously flawed as a book by the gratuitous inclusion (in Ch. 2) of a methodologically unsound and implausibly argued thesis about the development of Peirce's thought which serves no useful purpose relative to the rest of the book. As regards the qualification referred to above the one provided here concerns his account of Peirce's conception of symbolism in particular, which is based on a misunderstanding of its proper interpretant. (shrink)
The question of whether chimpanzees, like humans, reason about unobservable mental states remains highly controversial. On one account, chimpanzees are seen as possessing a psychological system for (...) social cognition that represents and reasons about behaviors alone. A competing account allows that the chimpanzee's social cognition system additionally construes the behaviors it represents in terms of mental states. Because the range of behaviors that each of the two systems can generate is not currently known, and because the latter system depends upon the former, determining the presence of this latter system in chimpanzees is a far more difficult task than has been assumed. We call for recognition of this problem, and a shift from experimental paradigms that cannot resolve this question, to ones that might allow researchers to intelligently determine when it is necessary to postulate the presence of a system which reasons about both behavior and mental states. (shrink)
We must admire the ambition of Prinz’s title question. But does he provide a convincing answer to it? Prinz’s own view of morality as “a byproduct (...) class='Hi'> – accidental or invented – of faculties that evolved for different purposes (1),” which appears to express a negative reply, does not receive much direct argument here. Rather, Prinz’s main aim is to try to show that the considerations he believes are typically presented by moral nativists are insufficient or inadequate to establish that morality is innate. He discusses, individually, how much evidential weight the (alleged) existence of (1) universal moral norms, (2) universal moral domains, (3) fixed stages in moral development, and (4) precursors to morality among non-human animals lend to nativist claims, and, in addition, he argues that poverty-of-the-moral-stimulus arguments are as yet unconvincing. “[C]urrent evidence,” Prinz claims, “is consistent with the conclusion that children acquire moral competence through experience (22).” It is not my intention here to follow Prinz’s piecemeal criticisms of moral nativism. In their attacks on linguistic nativism (see, e.g., Cowie 1999) and now on moral nativism, empiricists typically deploy the.. (shrink)
The Mind Doesn’t Work That Way is an expose of certain theoretical problems in cognitive science, and in particular, problems that concern the Classical Computational Theory (...) class='Hi'>of Mind (CTM). The problems that Fodor worries plague CTM divide into two kinds, and both purport to show that the success of cognitive science will likely be limited to the modules. The first sort of problem concerns what Fodor has called “global properties”; features that a mental sentence has which depend on how the sentence interacts with a larger plan (i.e., set of sentences), rather than the type identity of the sentence alone. The second problem concerns what many have called, “The Relevance Problem”: the problem of whether and how humans determine what is relevant in a computational manner. However, I argue that the problem that Fodor believes global properties pose for CTM is a non-problem, and that further, while the relevance problem is a serious research issue, it does not justify the grim view that cognitive science, and CTM in particular, will likely fail to explain cognition. (shrink)
In this article, I explore the relationship between the philosophy of Theodor Adorno and the Bilderverbot , or biblical Second Commandment against images. My starting point is J (...) class='Hi'>. F. Lyotard's construction of the melancholic sublime in his essay `What is the Postmodern?', which I argue he uses to critique Adorno's aesthetics, and, more generally, his position as a `modern' thinker. To prove that Lyotard had Adorno in mind when he constructed the category of the melancholic sublime, I return to an earlier piece by Lyotard — `Adorno as the Devil' — which is a reading of Thomas Mann's Dr Faustus , in which Adorno is said to be one of the faces of the Devil. My argument is that Lyotard's understanding of Adorno is flawed because he does not recognize the distinctly Jewish, albeit secularized, character of his thought. I set out to challenge Lyotard by demonstrating the central importance that the Bilderverbot plays in Adorno's work, which should not be understood as melancholic because the Jewish Messianism associated with the Bilderverbot is profoundly future-oriented. In short, I argue that Lyotard's depiction of Adorno is flawed because he reads him as a Christian, while he should be approaching him as a secularized Jew. Key Words: Theodor Adorno • aesthetic theory • Dr Faustus • the image prohibition • Jewish thought • Jean-François Lyotard • Thomas Mann • Messianism • representation • the sublime. (shrink)
Weiming) has assisted in defining the New Confucian movement, a philosophical discourse that depends on axiological themes and traits based on an exegesis and defense of the (...) revival and reform of traditional Confucian discourse inherited from the Classical and Neo-Confucian waves in East Asia. Thomas A. Metzgerâs discussion of the profound difference between modern Western post-Enlightenment discourse and New Confucian discourse challenges many of Duâs primary assumptions. My conclusion is that Du is both a citizen of the modern Western academy and a Confucian public intellectual dedicated to mediating the great debate that now spans the Pacific ocean between the West and a revived East Asian cultural complex, including New Confucianism as a major dialogue partner at the beginning of the new millennium by continuing the historic Confucian commitment to a theory of values. (shrink)
John R. Searle has recently observed that something might instantiate a Chinese??understanding? computer program without having any understanding of Chinese. He thinks that this implies that (...) class='Hi'>instantiating such a program is ?never by itself a sufficient condition of intentionality?. I show that this phrase is incoherent, and that all that follows is that instantiating such a program is not in every case a sufficient condition for the given intentionality. But the conclusion to Searle's argument, thus revised, is neither new nor significant; Searle's arguments merely raise old issues in new clothing. (shrink)
In this paper we argue for the robustness of Leibniz's commitment to the reality (but not substantiality) of body. We claim that a number of his (...) class='Hi'>most important metaphysical doctrines — among them, psychophysical parallelism, the harmony between efficient and final causes, the connection of all things, and the argument for the plurality of substances stemming from his solution to the continuum problem— make no sense if he is interpreted as giving an eliminative reduction of bodies to perceptions. (shrink)
David Bloor has claimed that Wittgenstein is best read as offering the beginnings of a sociological theory of knowledge, despite Wittgenstein's reluctance to view his work (...) class='Hi'>this way. This leads him to dismiss Wittgenstein's many self?characterizations as mere ?prejudice?. In doing so, however, Bloor misses the import of Wittgenstein's work as a ?grammatical investigation?. The problems inherent in Bloor's interpretative approach can be discerned in his attitude toward Wittgenstein's use of imaginary scenarios: he demands that they be replaced by real natural history and real ethnography. This demand is misplaced. The very self?characterizations Bloor dismisses show how imaginary scenarios have a place in his philosophical project simply by being imagined. Three examples are examined and presented in such a way as to make Bloor's demand for replacement increasingly more difficult to comprehend: while in the first case, the demand seems simply beside the point, in the second and third cases, it becomes difficult to say just what would count as replacements. Wittgenstein's imaginary scenarios are thus best read not as suggestions for further empirical research, but as devices to aid in recovering the naturalness and familiarity of our concepts, which is precisely what one would expect from them as part of a grammatical investigation. (shrink)
Consent's capacity to legitimise actions and claims is limited by conditions such as coercion, which render consent ineffective. A better understanding of the limits to consent's (...) class='Hi'> capacity to legitimise can shed light on a variety of applied debates, in political philosophy, bioethics, economics and law. I show that traditional paternalist explanations for limits to consent's capacity to legitimise cannot explain the central intuition that consent is often rendered ineffective when brought about by a rights violation or threatened rights violation. I argue that this intuition is an expression of the same principles of corrective justice that underlie norms of compensation and rectification. I show how these principles can explain and clarify core intuitions about conditions which render consent ineffective, including those concerned with the consenting agent's option set, his mental competence, and available information. (shrink)
Arthur Falk has proposed a new construal of faith according to which it is not a mere species of belief, but has essential components in action. This (...) twist on faith promises to resurrect Pascal’s Wager, making faith compatible with reason by believing as the scientist but acting as the theist. I argue that Falk’s proposal leaves religious faith in no better shape; in particular, it merely reframes the question in terms of rational desires rather than rational beliefs. (shrink)
This paper offers an alternative to deontological and utilitarian approaches to making ethical decisions and taking good actions by organisational leaders. It argues that the relational and (...) context-dependent nature of leadership necessitates reference to an ethical approach which explicitly takes these aspects into account. Such an approach is offered in the re-conceptualisation of ethical action on the part of leaders as a process of “coming into right relation” vis-à-vis those affected by their decisions and actions. Heidegger’s notion of “dwelling” is explored as a means of “coming into right relation”. Three aspects of dwelling: “staying with”, “comportment” and “active engagement” are described and ways in which they might be practically enacted by leaders are suggested. The paper concludes by reflecting on the ways adopting a “dwelling” approach to resolving ethical issues implies a re-conceptualisation of leadership itself. (shrink)
Tomasello et al.'s two prerequisites, we argue, are not sufficient to explain the emergence of Joint Collaboration. An adequate account must include the human-specific capacity to (...) class='Hi'> communicate relevant information (that may have initially evolved to ensure efficient cultural learning). This, together with understanding intentional actions, does provide sufficient preconditions for Joint Collaboration without the need to postulate a primary human motive to share others' psychological states. (shrink)
"Fame," observes Elias Canetti, "wants to hang from the stars because they are so far removed . . ."1 What the seeker after fame finds attractive in the (...) class='Hi'>prospect of hanging from the stars are the conditions of distance and elevation, which promise security in the form of detachment and abstraction from the world below. We find in Canetti's image of the fame-seeking sensibility not two conflicting desires (for the renown conferred upon successful risk-takers and the safety secured through abstention from risk) co-existing within the confines of an outsized temperament, but a single-minded need for safety from the threats of dissolution and oblivion. So imperative is this need that the fame seeker does not .. (shrink)
<span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span><span class='Hi'>span> readers of Greek ethics tend to (...) class='Hi'> favour those accounts of the virtuous ideal according to which virtue involves the development of our non-rational—appetitive and emotional—<span class='Hi'>span> motivations as well as of our rational motivations.<span class='Hi'>span> So our contemporaries find much of interest and sympathy in Aristotle’s conception of virtue as a condition in which reason does not simply override our appetites and emotions,<span class='Hi'>span> but these non-rational motivations themselves <span class='Hi'>span>‘speak with the same voice as reason’<span class='Hi'>span>.2 By contrast,<span class='Hi'>span> the Stoic.<span class='Hi'>span>. (shrink)
6. Seeing With the Mind’s Eye 1: The Puzzle of Mental Imagery .................................................6-1 6.1 What is the puzzle about mental imagery?..............................................................................6-1 6.2 Content, (...) form and substance of representations ......................................................................6-6 6.3 What is responsible for the pattern of results obtained in imagery studies?.................................6-8.. (shrink)
Hume’s view of reason is notoriously hard to pin down, not least because of the apparently contradictory positions which he appears to adopt in different places. (...) class='Hi'>The problem is perhaps most clear in his writings concerning induction - in his famous argument of Treatise I iii 6 and Enquiry IV, on the one hand, he seems to conclude that “probable inference” has no rational basis, while elsewhere, for example in much of his writing on natural theology, he seems happy to acknowledge that such inference is not only reasonable, but is even a paradigm of reasoning against which the theistic arguments must be judged. In the face of this apparent contradiction, many recent commentators have proferred “non-sceptical” interpretations of Hume’s argument concerning induction, but in this paper I sketch an alternative and perhaps less radical method of resolving the problem, by identifying a major threefold ambiguity in Hume’s use of the word “reason”. On this interpretation, Hume indeed sees induction as a paradigm of reasonableness in what is arguably the most important sense, but he nevertheless believes induction to be entirely non-reasonable in another sense, which though less important in common life is nevertheless very significant philosophically. A comparison with Locke can help to illuminate Hume’s position, which though indeed not entirely sceptical about induction, is by no means entirely non-sceptical either. (shrink)
