Online research in philosophy

This essay reconstructs the steps by which Cassirer moved from the philosophy of language in the early 1920s to his more general theory of symbolism. The linguistic turn in philosophy overcame idealism without falling into naturalism or psychologism, but according to Cassirer proclaiming the primacy of language was one-sided. He claimed that language is but one symbolic form among many and, what is more, it is not the most fundamental kind of symbolism. The basic function of symbolism is neither “reference” (...) nor “pure signification,” but the unification of sensory phenomena in perception, a function he termed symbolic “Prägnanz.” The essay explains how Cassirer argued for a continuity of symbolic processes linking expressive perceptual qualities with scientific theory. (shrink)

Cassirer hat sich — wie der späte Cohen und der späte Natorp — von der Marburger Beschränkung auf Erkenntnistheorie entfernt. In bisher unpublizierten Texten aus der Emigrationszeit befaßte Cassirer sich mit dem Problem der Metaphysik. Goethes Lehre von den Urphänomenen und die Gestalttheorie Kurt Goldsteins beeinflußten Cassirers späte Theorie der « Basisphänomene ». Diese neue Denkrichtung knüpfte an die Symboltheorie Cassirers an und wies auf ihren Ausgang hin. Tout comme Cohen et Natorp dans leur œuvre tardive, Cassirer s'est situé au-delà (...) de la théorie de la connaissance à laquelle l'École de Marbourg entendait se limiter. Dans des textes écrits durant son exil et qui n'ont pas encore été publiés, Cassirer aborde la problématique de la métaphysique. La théorie gœthéenne des phénomènes originaires comme la théorie de la forme développée par Kurt Goldstein ont influencé la réflexion tardive de Cassirer sur les « phénomènes de base ». Cette nouvelle orientation de sa pensée s'articule sur la théorie du symbole, et indique comment la dépasser. (shrink)

The first part of this essay outlines Cassirer’s philosophy of biology in the context of philosophy of science in the 20th century, giving an overview of Cassirer’s different writings on the philosophy of biology. The second part outlines his treatment of what he took to be the chief philosophical problem in the philosophy of biology: the conflict between mechanism and vitalism. Cassirer interpreted this conflict as a methodological debate, not a metaphysical problem. In Cassirer’s eyes, each point of view is (...) justified within specifics limits. The third part explicates Cassirer’s critique of Darwinism. Although Cassirer was critical of particular conceptions of Darwinian evolution, he did not reject evolution and, in fact, asserted that the concept of emergence was also of far-reaching importance in other fields besides biology. Part four offers concluding remarks about the importance of the philosophy of biology for Cassirer’s general philosophical orientation and for his conception of the tasks of philosophical theory. (shrink)

The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Vol. I, Theoretical Philosophy, 1755?1770. Ed. and tr. by D. Walford in collaboration with R. Meerbote, Cambridge University Press, 1992. lxxxi + 543 pp. £50.00 The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Vol. DC, Lectures on Logic. Ed. and tr. by J. Michael Young, Cambridge University Press, 1992. xxxii + 695 pp. £50.00 The Genesis of Kant's Critique of Judgment by John H. Zammito, University of Chicago Press, (...) 1992.490 pp. £51.95 hb; £15.25 pb. (shrink)

: Two major philosophers of the twentieth century, the German existential phenomenologist Martin Heidegger and the seminal Japanese Kyoto School philosopher Nishida Kitarō are examined here in an attempt to discern to what extent their ideas may converge. Both are viewed as expressing, each through the lens of his own tradition, a world in transition with the rise of modernity in the West and its subsequent globalization. The popularity of Heidegger's thought among Japanese philosophers, despite its own admitted limitation to (...) the Western "history of being," is connected to Nishida's opening of a uniquely Japanese path in its confrontation with Western philosophy. The focus is primarily on their later works (the post-Kehre Heidegger and the works of Nishida that have been designated "Nishida philosophy"), in which each in his own way attempts to overcome the subject-object dichotomy inherited from the tradition of Western metaphysics by looking to a deeper structure from out of which both subjectivity and objectivity are derived and which embraces both. For Heidegger, the answer lies in being as the opening of unconcealment, from out of which beings emerge, and for Nishida, it is the place of nothingness within which beings are co-determined in their oppositions and relations. Concepts such as Nishida's "discontinuous continuity," "absolutely self-contradictory identity" (between one and many, whole and part, world and things), the mutual interdependence of individuals, and the self-determination of the world through the co-relative self-determination of individuals, and Heidegger's "simultaneity" (zugleich) and "within one another" (ineinander) (of unconcealment and concealment, presencing and absencing), and their "between" (Zwischen) and "jointure" (Fuge) are examined. Through a discussion of these ideas, the suggestion is made of a possible "transition" (Übergang) of both Western and Eastern thinking, in their mutual encounter, both in relation to each other and each in relation to its own past history, leading to both a self-discovery in the other and to a simultaneous self-reconstitution. (shrink)

Last spring, as I was beginning a graduate seminar on Frege, I received a complimentary copy of this new translation of his masterwork, The Foundations of Arithmetic . I had ordered Austin's famous translation, well-loved for the beauty of its English and the clarity with which it presents Frege's overall argument, but known to be less than literal, and to sometimes supplement translation with interpretation. I was intrigued by Dale Jacquette's promise "to combine literal accuracy and readability for beginning students (...) and professional scholars alike," and to improve on Austin where the latter "does not always faithfully represent or seem to perfectly understand certain of Frege's German idioms." (v) Such a translation, complete with index, critical introduction, and commentary, and at a bargain price, seemed worthy of my students' attention. So, I mentioned to the class that this book might be worth looking into. (shrink)

In this paper we consider the implications for belief revision of weakening the logic under which belief sets are taken to be closed. A widely held view is that the usual belief revision functions are highly classical, especially in being driven by consistency. We show that, on the contrary, the standard representation theorems still hold for paraconsistent belief revision. Then we give conditions under which consistency is preserved by revisions, and we show that this modelling allows for the gradual revision (...) of inconsistency. (shrink)

In classical and intuitionistic arithmetics, any formula implies a true equation, and a false equation implies anything. In weaker logics fewer implications hold. In this paper we rehearse known results about the relevant arithmetic R, and we show that in linear arithmetic LL by contrast false equations never imply true ones. As a result, linear arithmetic is desecsed. A formula A which entails 0 = 0 is a secondary equation; one entailed by 0 6= 0 is a secondary unequation. A (...) system of formal arithmetic is secsed if every extensional formula is either a secondary equation or a secondary unequation. We are indebted to the program MaGIC for the simple countermodel SZ7, on which 0 = 1 is not a secondary formula. This is a small but signi cant success for automated reasoning. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida, Aporias, tr. Thomas Dutoit (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1993) 0-8047-2252-8. Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, trs. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992) 0-253-31693-6. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, tr. Peggy Kamuf (New York and London: Routledge, 1994) 0-415-91045-5.

Coffee is an important commodity and an important comestible, one that is momentous not only for nations’ economies but also, at the micro-social level, as a resource for interpersonal sociability. Among a subculture of certain coffee connoisseurs, the coffee itself is a topic that is an organizing focus of, and for, that sociability. This paper is an empirical investigation of online narratives produced by hobbyist participants in what coffee aficionados refer to as the third wave coffee phenomenon and engages and (...) challenges extant perspectives social aspects of taste by inspecting members’ insights concerning their conceptions of taste and their participation in a subculture that comprises taste as an important, central defining aspect. The analytic point of view deployed in this paper is ethnomethodological, one that, instead of emphasizing a priori the social structural characteristics of these connoisseurs as do Bourdieu (In: Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, tr. Richard Nice, Routledge, New York 1984) and those who work in his tradition, emphasizes discovery of members’ own displayed understandings of the topic at hand. As such, this paper is more than an investigation of the coffee geek subculture but is also an invitation to an ethnomethodologically-informed sociology of taste. (shrink)

Can one extend crisp Peano arithmetic PA by a possibly many-valued predicate Tr(x) saying "x is true" and satisfying the "dequotation schema" $\varphi \equiv \text{Tr}(\bar{\varphi})$ for all sentences φ? This problem is investigated in the frame of Lukasiewicz infinitely valued logic.

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