An excerpt of "The SignalGlyph Project and Prime Numbers" (a chapter of the book THE IMAGE OF LANGUAGE) that attempts to illustrate how dimensional limitations of mathematical language have obscured recognition of the system of patterning in the distribution of prime numbers.

This excerpted chapter of the book THE IMAGE OF LANGUAGE discusses the philosophical implications of geometric visualizations of the alphabetic patterning encoded in the orthography of words (a project showing examples of the visualizations is included). Reference pages are also included.

Some recent scientific discoveries regarding the signs of language, which impact my own ongoing project as a visual/conceptual artist, also dramatically impact the Saussurian foundation of the prevalent cultural theories which underlie the curatorial priorities of many major art institutions.

This article is basically an artist's statement published in connection with a major interdisciplinary art project currently in development (completion date estimated to be 2020).

A discussion of connections between modern language and the earliest artifacts of the emergence of the symbolic mind.

This essay places Paulo Freire in dialogue with a Black Radical Tradition (BRT) in three distinct yet interrelated ways. First, the paper situates the significance of Cedric’s Robinson’s articulation of a BRT while exploring how contemporary scholars are troubling his disputatious relationship with Marxist social thought. Second, the paper foregrounds Freire’s modest contributions to a BRT in his anticolonial literacy campaigns in Guinea Bissau, Africa. Extending the principles of ‘dialogical cultural action’ in the context of African struggle that Freire documented (...) in the letters compiled in Pedagogy in Process, a robust theorization of solidarity comes into sharper view. Third, the paper calls for further reinvention of Freire pointing to the ways his cogent analysis can be augmented by other racialized groups and radical traditions in solidarity with Black struggle to more explicitly confront the inherent racism and anti-Blackness fundamental to global capitalism. (shrink)

Thomas Ricketts has developed a powerful interpretation of Frege on judgment, truth and logic. Recently, Ricketts has modified his reading, holding that judgment is an act of knowledge-acquisition; this rules out incorrect judgment. I argue that Ricketts goes too far here. I criticize the textual basis for Ricketts's new view, and show that the interpretive problems which led him to this change can be met without such extreme measures. Thus, I defend Ricketts' earlier view against his own later modification. Along (...) the way I discuss Kant and Brentano on judgment, and I explore Fregean argument concerning the objectivity of truth. (shrink)

The first chapter explores the theory developed in Kripke's "Outline of a Theory of Truth." A tension in Kripke's account of the concept of truth is revealed--a conflict between two intuitions. The first intuition, called the "fixed point conception of truth," is that the whole meaning of the truth predicate is given by the formula "we may assert of a sentence that it is true iff we may assert that sentence." The second intuition, called the "thesis of the supervenience of (...) semantics," is that the interpretation of the truth predicate is determined by the interpretations of all the other non-logical constants of the language. I show that these two intuitions cannot be reconciled within the context of Kripke's theory, and I argue for the choice of the fixed point conception of truth over the principle of the supervenience of semantics. Chief among the considerations that I advance is the fact that the fixed point conception of truth yields a natural logic of truth. In the second chapter I present that logic of truth in the form of a cut-free sequent calculus. I then turn, in chapter three, to a discussion of the significance of such cut-free sequent calculi. I argue that we may view the sequent calculus introduction rules for a logical constant as giving the meaning of that constant, under certain conditions. In particular, we can see our logic of truth as providing an explication of our intuitive concept of truth which complements Kripke's original model-theoretic explication. The fourth chapter takes up some criticisms of Kripke's theory which center on the logic of truth. In addition, the general ideas developed in the first three chapters are applied in a discussion of the various schemes of three-valued logic which can be used in the development of Kripke's approach. Finally, in the last chapter, it is shown that Kripke's technical concepts, and the logical ideas developed in the second and third chapters, can be used to provide a unified account of many contexts in which paradox arises. (shrink)

The moral complexity surrounding intervention is influenced by a broad spectrum of both ethical and practical assumptions and considerations.

This book examines spectral haunting through the philosophies of Levinas and Derrida. Arguing that moral obligation can appear terrifying to the complacent self, the text interrogates ethical responsibility in contemporary horror genres.

In this paper, I argue that, on a reductionist reading of Buddhist no-self ontology, Buddhists could not have sincere ethical intentions toward persons. And if Buddhists cannot have sincere intentions toward persons, they cannot have second-personal moral reasons for acting. From this I conclude that Buddhists fail to qualify as genuine members of the moral community if, as some contemporary Anglo-American moral philosophers argue, such membership depends on an individual agent’s having the capacity to be motivated by second-personal moral reasons.

This little book which is a sequel to "Cartesianism" is not written for professional philosophers. Its less ambitious purpose is to initiate undergraduate students of Catholic Universities and Colleges, who are engaged in the study of scholastic philosophy, into a knowledge of the fundamental principles of those numerous systems that have contributed to the chaos of modern thought from the time of Descartes to the present day.

This paper offers the first philosophical analysis of a form of artificial intelligence (AI) which the author calls facial profiling technology (FPT). FPT is a type of facial analysis technology designed to predict criminal behavior based solely on facial structure. Marketed for use by law enforcement, face classifiers generated by the program can supposedly identify murderers, thieves, pedophiles, and terrorists prior to the commission of crimes. At the time of this writing, an FPT company has a contract with the United (...) States federal government. After recounting how FPT resurrects the same moral problems associated with the pseudoscience of physiognomy, the author of this manuscript develops and defends the ‘Liberal Argument Against Facial Discrimination’ (LAAFD), which concludes that government use of FPT poses a significant risk of violating the classical liberal value of equality before the law by committing unjust discrimination against groups of people whose faces happen to match FPT classifiers. A key move in the argument suggests how a future scenario that results in widespread discrimination based solely on facial structure could be as unjustified and harmful, mutatis mutandis, as similar discrimination based solely on racial background. In the final section, the author of this paper develops prima facie policy proposals designed to protect classical liberal values if FPT is to be utilized by governments in liberal democratic societies. (shrink)

A number of thinkers in recent decades have argued that, in light of the Trinity, we can see that God's being is communion. Particularly effective was John D. Zizioulas, whose Trinitarian ontology centered on communion. Some skeptical of this claim have invoked Aquinas as a source for countering an ontology of communion. I argue that, while Thomas never explicitly affirms that the divine being is communion, he can give us deep resources for reaching this conclusion. Indeed, he can ultimately lead (...) us towards a divine being which is more thoroughly a matter of communion—and towards an ontology which is more radically Trinitarian—than anything we find in Zizioulas. (shrink)

The three books reviewed in this essay, Morality Among Nations: An Evolutionary View , Righteous Realists: Political Realism, Responsible Power, and American Culture in the Nuclear Age , and Securing Europe , in some sense represent a reaction to Reagan's ideological policies.

Smith provides a summary of Walzer's work, with particular emphasis on his method of moral argument. Walzer's argument emphasizes the importance of moral judgment based on the principle of human rights rather than on utilitarian calculation.

The essay first makes some observations on the general interrelationship between the logical writings of Albert and Buridan. Second, it gives an account of a ‘semantic logical model’ for analyzing complex subject terms in some basic categorical propositions which is defended by Albert of Saxony, and briefly recounts Buridan's criticisms of that model. Finally, the essay maintains that the Albertian model is typically compatible with, and a further development of, what is called by a late-fourteenth century anonymous scholar ‘the English-Rule’ (...) but the ‘determinable/determinate’ grammatical model defended by Buridan is not. (shrink)

Post-millennial scholarship in Buddhist studies reflects increasing interest from Anglophone philosophers working within the analytic tradition.1 Within this emerging body of work the aim has been not merely to bring the conceptual toolkit of analytic philosophers to bear on topics traditionally of interest to Buddhist philosophers but also to enlist the theories that analytic philosophers have developed on core topics within epistemology and metaphysics as frameworks within which to interpret the work of major Buddhist philosophers. Two recent notable examples of (...) this interpretative enterprise are seen in the work of Siderits and Hayashi. These Anglophone commentators utilize theories... (shrink)

This dissertation aims at forging an archetectonic link between Kant's first and third Critiques within a cognitive-semantic framework. My aim is to show how the major conceptual innovations of Kant’s third Critique can be plausibly understood in terms of the theoretical aims of the first, (Critique of Pure Reason). However, unlike other cognition-oriented approaches to Kant's third Critique, which take the point of contact between the first and third Critique's to be the first Critique's Transcendental Analytic, I link these two (...) works via the first Critique's Transcendental Dialectic, specifically its discussions of the "ideas of pure reason." -/- According to Kant, the “ideas of pure reason” (IPRs) — viz., the notions of self, world-whole, and God — are innate content-bearing entities representing three types of transempirical object, none of which are possible objects of cognition. However, although Kant denies that these rather unique content-bearers can be used for purposes of “speculative cognition,” he does think that they have an internal functional value for human cognitive systems. Although under my analysis of their functional value the IPRs subserve a highest-order aim which derives from theoretical reason — namely, to ground and optimize cognitive systematicity — their directive content in fact renders their implementation(thus their form of intentionality) more characteristic of practical reason. Kant’s positive account of reason’s “interest” in and use of the IPRs exhibits a kind of cognitive pragmatism. -/- Of utmost concern to the cognitive-semantic enterprise, as I conceive it, is the development of (what might be called) a metaphysics of intentionality. A `metaphysics of intentionality', as I use the term, refers to a coherent set of postulative propositional cognitions (or, at any rate, content-bearing entities) implemented, first, for the sake of rationally explaining the phenomenological unity and object-directed character of our perceptual states and, second, to explain why the objects represented in such states are, or must be, law-governed and thus necessarily amenable to scientific investigation. On my view, the discussions in Kant’s third Critique nontrivially contribute to the development of a metaphysics of intentionality and thus to the larger cognitive-semantic enterprise of Kant's first Critique, and it is this link that lends Kant's third Critique a cognitive significance. -/- . (shrink)

This dissertation examines the doctrine of the formal distinction as it was developed in the writings of Duns Scotus. After an initial examination of some influential predecessors of Scotus, a study is made of the formal distinction in Scotus' works. Through a careful study of Scotus' language, and the examples he uses to illustrate the formal distinction, the conclusion is reached that Scotus' work on the formal distinction constitutes a continual process of linguistic revision and refinement which leaves him with (...) an increasingly more technical and precise vocabulary with which to express the doctrine. It is denied that these revisions constitute different doctrines in Scotus. ;A philosophical application of the doctrine is then examined. Here it is shown that the formal distinction allowed Scotus to make novel and significant contributions to the solution of the problems of the natures of, and relationships between, universals and particulars. ;Reactions to the formal distinction on the part of Ockham and selected twentieth-century commentators are then presented. An analysis of Ockham's objections shows that they are not germane. A study of the twentieth-century commentators reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of their interpretations. ;Finally, the dissertation ends with a brief note on certain applications of the formal distinction in contemporary philosophy. This serves to demonstrate not only a link to the past, but also the continuing importance of the formal distinction in our times. (shrink)

This dissertation is a comparison and contrast of the educational theories of John Henry Newman and John Lancaster Spalding. Newman is known for his great book, The Idea Of A University, whereas Spalding is known for his university, The Catholic University of America. ;Running through Newman's work is a preoccupation with the practice of one's religion vs. the theological root of that same religion, whereas Spalding stresses the need for an intellectual environment in which to train the clergy. ;Newman tried (...) to set down specific, logical reasons for the foundation of a catholic university whereas Spalding was trying to create a national school of catholic education. Newman was interested in the "why" of catholic education, and Spalding was interested in the "how" of catholic education. For Newman, a university was a place of teaching universal knowledge, whereas for Spalding, a university will teach only the best student and encourage him to do research. ;Both Newman and Spalding encouraged a cultivated intellect, but Newman saw this cultivated intellect as one which is the result of a liberal education, as opposed to Spalding's "directed" education. ;Newman desired to create an atmosphere of thought which is conducive to forming the philosophical habit of mind. And Spalding sought to create the tools whereby the mind may gather and disseminate the philosophy of religion. ;Oddly enough, both were into experiencial education of nature thereby giving the student a means to self-education, Spalding sought the young man to educate himself through observation, reading, writing, and reflection. Newman agreed with these points, but took the student beyond his own reflections, and asked him to read books, intercourse with people and study life to further the liberal philosophy of one's own mind. (shrink)

The American Postulate Theorists were a group of influential American mathematicians at the beginning of the twentieth century who presented axiomatized mathematical theories. This group includes, among others, E. V. Huntington, O. Veblen, E. H. Moore, H. M. Sheffer, and C. H. Langford. Views of these men concerning the nature of mathematical theories are explained and criticized. As background, traditional notions of an axiomatic science are analyzed, especially as described by Aristotle, Pascal, and Frege; also discussed are aspects of nineteenth (...) century mathematics considered significant for axiomatic method . Postulate Theorists' own views on the nature of mathematical theories, the relation of a theory to its interpretations, implication, completeness , and definitions are then discussed in detail. ;Some specific results of this examination follow. There is no single conception of "Axiomatic Method," but at last three different conceptions. Some axiom sets are considered foundational for knowledge, some provide simply a clerical codification of knowledge, and some are meant to characterize either one or a set of mathematical objects. The use of models in geometry before 1890 reveals that authors had no clear idea of how to use interpretations to prove independence of the parallel postulate. The conflict between substitutional accounts of variables, which consider them place-holders for constants of the language, and objectual accounts, in which each variable ranges over a class, exists already at the beginning of the twentieth century. Huntington discovered the concept of categoricity to provide an adequacy test for characterizing axiom sets. By Veblen's Thesis, i.e., that any sentence has the same truth value in all models of a categorical axiom set, categoricity also provided a test for completeness. It is a mistake to attribute to Gergonne the notion of "implicit definition" of undefined constants by their appearance in an axiom set. Finally, authors at the beginning of the twentieth century confuse definability of a constant in a theory with interpretability of one theory in another through addition of definitions. In works of Veblen, Russell, Lewis, and Langford this confusion is compounded by use of "parametric definitions" incorporating arbitrary names. (shrink)

The cosmology of Charles Peirce is amongst the least celebrated aspects of his thought.It is typically considered far too anthropomorphic to be a serious contribution to our understanding of the evolution of reality. While this anthropomorphism may or may not disqualify the cosmology from serious scientific consideration, it is quite possible that the cosmology does offer philosophical insights about the very human experience that inspired it. In this dissertation I offer a "reclaiming" of the Peircean cosmology. My intent is to (...) look to the Peircean cosmology not for insights about the growth of the cosmos as such, but for insights about the growing self. ;Specifically, the dissertation takes cue from Peirce's 1893 essay "Evolutionary Love" which claims that "growth comes only from love" or agape. The majority of the dissertation is dedicated to a historically and biologically informed examination of the relation between agape and growth in Peirce's philosophy. My hope, however, is to not only to clarify the specifics of this relationship in theory, but to apply Peirce's account of agapastic growth to an experientially persuasive account of the evolution of the self. (shrink)

This dissertation is an attempt to provide a philosophical basis upon which the descriptions of human sexuality, as revealed by the natural and social sciences, may be coordinated, synthesized, and fully understood. Our primary purpose is to reassess the way in which human sexuality is conceived, studied, experienced, and expressed. This involves viewing sexuality as an essential function of personhood, incorporating it within the whole of human existence , and ultimately re-evaluating what it means to speak of persons as sexual (...) beings. ;The meaning we assign to "human sexuality" is broader than the ordinary one. We use this term "sexuality" to indicate a form of human behavior whereby an embodied consciousness expresses itself and finds expression in its relations with others and with the world. It is characterized by the fact that, while arising out of the bio-physical conditions of physical--i.e., reproductive--sex, it is not restricted to these conditions for its full meaningfulness. Instead, human sexuality is conceptualized as a form of behavior through which we may manifest our unique ability to orient ourselves to the world, subjectively and creatively, as persons. ;Using Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of Behavior as a running thread, this phenomenological inquiry proceeds from a bio-physical description of human sexuality through a psycho-social one, and brings us to a point where it becomes possible to distinguish the fact of human sexuality, human sexual behavior, the consciousness of sex differences, and the consequences of the consciousness of sex differences. Our phenomenology of human sexuality thus enables us to recognize the true interdependence of all the factors that go into an individual's sexual make-up. Along with this, it provides a trans-disciplinary basis upon which we can create a synthesis and a unity of the various perspectival approaches to the subject. Further our investigation serves to point out the need for us to consider more carefully the value of sexuality in human life, and to re-evaluate seriously the framework from within which it is currently conceptualized. (shrink)

Plato both delineated the separate disciplines of poetry and philosophy and used poetry to enhance philosophic content conveyed in the dialogues. Although Plato is often critical of poetry's imitative function , he does not desert the use of poetic images to convey experiential knowledge, and thus to reinforce the philosophical content conveyed in the dialogues. ;Much recent scholarship has focused on interpretation based primarily on the dramatic elements of the dialogues. This trend leads in the work of many scholars to (...) a de-emphasis of specifically stated philosophic content, or Platonic doctrine. The current study is an attempt to balance doctrinal and dramatic approaches to the interpretation of the Meno and Phaedrus. Dramatic elements and philosophic content in the Meno and Phaedrus work hand in hand to educate the reader. The fullest understanding of these and other Platonic dialogues requires an appreciation of both philosophic and dramatic elements. (shrink)

Max Scheler was a thinker recognized as having the talent of discovering the essence of something happening in the present and projecting onto the future; a man ahead of his time. It is with this in mind that the present dissertation explores, explains, and evaluates Scheler's philosophy of religion as contained in his early philosophy, and principally as stated in his essay, "Problems of Religion." These early writings of Scheler have value and form a consistent "philosophy" by themselves without going (...) into later things . However, the purpose here ultimately is to articulate the relevancy of Scheler's views on religion in relation to the contemporary human condition. ;The expository approach of this study has been to present Scheler's religious problematic, or problem of religion, both as an open issue to contemporary man who faces an age of nihilism, and as a concentric set of concerns which also involves and focuses all of Scheler's early philosophy. The nucleus of this "concentric" edifice is Scheler's formulation of his phenomenological grounds for natural religious experience as man's direct universal access to and involvement with God, salvation, and personal transcendence. ;Chapter 1 proceeds by introducing the reader to some background about Scheler's life and phenomenological orientation of philosophy, especially insofar as this type of information serves to better understand his philosophy of religion. ;Chapter 2 locates Scheler's concerns over the religious as an overriding focus for his early philosophy. ;Chapter 3 outlines, in an interpretative manner, the basic concepts of a Schelerian philosophy of religion, especially as such a philosophy attempts to unite man's propensity for such a thing as natural religious experience with positive religion proper . ;Insofar as the goal of this study entails a comprehension of Scheler's phenomenological grounds of religious experience as the focus of his philosophy of religion and early philosophy in general, Chapter 4 establishes some standards by which to do so through explaining Scheler's notion of phenomenological experience. ;Chapter 5 is an account of Scheler's essay, "Problems of Religion" wherein his views on religion, natural theology, philosophy of religion, religious experience; and the like are stated explicitly. This chapter is comprised of two parts, in which is first presented Scheler's assessment of traditional theological and philosophical ways of understanding the religious, and secondly, Scheler's own understanding of the religious in the form of his essential phenomenology of religion. ;Chapter 6 is a critical assessment of Scheler's phenomenological grounds for religious experience in that these grounds are examined in light of Scheler's standards regarding the nature of phenomenological experience. In so doing, the question arises as to why contemporary consciousness seems closed of, or insensitive, to religious experience, and what can be done, given the content of Scheler's phenomenological formulations, about this situation. ;Finally, Chapter 7 concludes on a positive note through clarifying and explaining some Schelerian insights which speak to the original task set for this work: that is, the relevance of Scheler's religious problematic to the contemporary human condition and the re-establsihment of a connection between man's natural religious proclivities and the overriding spiritual, historical, and cultural context of positive religion. (shrink)

While some of our deepest moral intuitions are consequentialist in nature, others are decidedly not. This difference at the intuitive level is reflected at the theoretical level by two equally venerable traditions of moral philosophy, consequentialism and deontology. One of the main problems of theory selection in ethics is that neither tradition appears fully able to account for both kinds of intuitions. ;To solve this problem, the thesis posits an epistemological connection between moral intuition and moral theory. The general human (...) capacity for making impartial judgements is characterized as a moral competence, of which the general rules of the two competing kinds of theories are considered alternative representations. To show that it is such a competence which leads us to have the intuitions that we do, two tests of this hypothesis are developed. ;The first test has two stages: do our intuitions best achieve the aim our competence would give us, if it were correctly represented by the rules of one of the two kinds of theories; given this competence, together with other relevant epistemological factors, could we have arrived at the intuitions which we in fact have? The second test presupposes a negative response to , and asks whether we might not have arrived at intuitions which fail to best achieve our competence-based aim because of some fault in the combination of our competence with the other relevant epistemological factors. ;The thesis argues that while one kind of theory promises to pass the first test, the other promises to fail both. Given the equally fundamental nature of the two kinds of intuitions and the differential results of the two tests, the thesis concludes that it is reasonable to suppose that our moral intuitions are informed by a rule-governed moral competence. (shrink)

This dissertation introduces the Virtues Scale, a 140-item self-report measure of virtues. A total of 714 subjects participated in the study. The four virtue factors identified through factor analysis are: Factor I Empathy, Factor II Order, Factor III Resourcefulness, and Factor IV Serenity. Factor I Empathy describes the virtue involved with empathetically caring for others. Factor II Order describes the virtue involved with conscientiously maintaining order and discipline over one's behavior. Factor III Resourcefulness describes the virtue involved with successfully developing (...) and utilizing one's resources and talents with confidence. Factor IV Serenity describes the virtue involved with maintaining an attitude of serenity, meekness, and peace in the face of interactions with others. Four virtue factor scales are derived from the factor analysis data. These scales show excellent reliabilities. ;The four virtue factor scales demonstrate construct validity through Pearson product-moment correlations with measures of personality, moral development, and epistemological style: the Revised NEO Personality Inventory , the Defining Issues Test , the Scale of Adult Intellectual Development , the Organicism-Mechanism Paradigm Inventory , the California Psychological Inventory , the Hogan Personality Inventory , the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale , and the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale . ;Meaningful and significant relationships were found between the four virtues scales and factors of each of the personality and epistemological style measures. Factor I Empathy correlates most highly with HPI Likeability, NEO PI-R Agreeableness, and HPI Validity. Factor II Order correlates most highly with NEO PI-R Conscientiousness, and HPI Prudence. Factor III Resourcefulness correlates most highly with RSES, HPI Ambition, and negatively with NEO PI-R Neuroticism. Factor IV Serenity correlates most highly with HPI Service Orientation. No meaningful and significant relationships were found between the virtues scales and the DIT measure of moral development. ;The results are discussed in light of issues concerning personality, moral development, and epistemology. The data suggest a model of psychological virtue which is closer to personality than to moral development or epistemological style. This dissertation concludes that the virtues approach to moral psychology appears fruitful and that the Virtues Scale is a reliable and valid measure of one virtues perspective. (shrink)

The works of Michel Foucault and Theodor W. Adorno are notable for their forceful critiques of modern culture, as well as for their profound reinterpretations of Western literature. Indeed, these two thinkers share a great deal in terms of the methods and goals of their analyses. These affinities exist in spite of the fact that Foucault and Adorno come from different philosophical, literary and interpretive traditions. In short, a comparison of Foucault and Adorno puts in stark relief a comparison of (...) the dynamics of post-structuralism and Frankfurt School Marxism. Further, such a comparison reveals the affinities as well as differences inherent in these modes of critique. ;I have attempted to outline the consequences for cultural and literary studies of each thinker's approach to the act of criticism. More specifically, I have emphasized the different notions of nature and history inherent in each thinker's oeuvre. In essence, Adorno adheres to a conception of nature which is fundamentally the consequence of an instrumental understanding, while Foucault emphasizes a much more haphazard, and far less Hegelian, understanding of nature as a product of non-intentional discursive and non-discursive practices. This fundamental difference in their otherwise strikingly similar work results in two conceptions of history that are, finally, at odds with one another. It is in their different conceptions of these two concepts--history and nature--that a tremendously fruitful area of cultural critique unfolds. It is such an arena that this dissertation attempts to characterize, and which culminates in a reinterpretation of Homer's Odyssey. (shrink)

It is impossible to discuss the phenomena of violence apart from their mimetic representations: awareness of violence is premised on retroactive reference to an unviolated state prior to violation. Violence is structured as an aporia between two irreducible absences: "what-is" being defined in terms of "what-is-no-longer." The imperative of violent representation simultaneously structures and subverts the three main referential registers of language: deixis, mimesis, diegesis. Because of the systematic failure of these three registers to stabilize violence's representation, we resort to (...) rhetoric, the twisting and troping of semantic meaning, not so much to heal the representational rupture as to thematize it in terms of analogous gaps within language itself. Our fundamental experience of language is traumatic: the primal experience of violence is the shock of signifier at once being associated with and insuperably separated from signified. All subsequent language takes place within the irreducible gap between signifier and signified, as we attempt to "suture" the two together, but, in the words of Antonio Negri, "Every suture opens new wounds." Chapter 1 presents Plato's exploration of the traumatic foundation of language and its role in the constitution of the classical fractionalized subject. Chapter 2 studies Elizabethan Revenge Tragedies as exhibiting how the Renaissance turned Plato's classical subjectivity "inside out" to produce an incessantly self-surpassing subjectivity amenable to the demands of nascent capitalism. Chapter 3 discusses how the subjectivity incarnated on the Elizabethan stage would be, by the eighteenth century, disseminated throughout English society at large by two institutions, the novel and the police, which, surprisingly, may share a common point of origin. Chapter 4 explores modernism's traumatic fixation on points of asymbolic blockage, which I have termed "entropes," by offering a symptomatic "traumatic reading" of Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent. (shrink)

Kant makes frequent direct references to the Stoics in his ethical writings, both published and unpublished. There are also close similarities between the two philosophies that suggest other unacknowledged links. Furthermore, even where such ties are not likely, we find numerous parallels betw.

This thesis calls into question a currently orthodox view of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractarian philosophy. This view is that the social and political implications of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations are conservative and relativist. That is, Wittgenstein's concepts such as 'forms of life', 'language-games' and 'rule-following' defend and promote: a rule-determined and context-determined rationality; or an incomparable community-determined human understanding; or a neutralist, nonrevisionary, private or uncritical social and political philosophy. ;In order to challenge and correct this conventional understanding the thesis sets up (...) as 'objects of comparison' a variety of very different examples of the use of Wittgenstein in social and political philosophy. These uses are neither relativist nor conservative and they situate understanding and critical reflection in the practices of comparison and dialogue. The examples of this 'comparative-dialogical' Wittgensteinian approach are found in the works of three contemporary philosophers: Thomas L. Kuhn, Quentin Skinner and Charles Taylor. ;This study employs the technique of a survey rather than undertaking a uniquely textual analysis because it is less convincing to suggest that Wittgenstein's concepts might be used in these unfamiliar ways than to show that they have been put to these unfamiliar uses. Therefore I turn not to a Wittgensteinian ideal but to examples of the 'comparative-dialogical' uses of Wittgenstein. In so doing I am following Wittgenstein's insight in section 208 of the Philosophical Investigations: "I shall teach him to use the words by means of examples and by practice. And when I do this, I do not communicate less to him than I know myself." Thus it will be in a survey of various uses and applications of Wittgenstein's concepts and techniques that I will show that I and others understand them. (shrink)

Karl Marx's voluminous writings contain an implicit concept of social and historical progress based on the principles of contradiction, paradox and practice. This concept was an integral part of Marx's intellectual and political development and reflected the contradictory-paradoxical-activist bent of his personal life. Marx never wrote explicitly about progress, but the genesis of an implicit concept of progress appears in his adolescent activities and poetry of the mid-1830s and develops through the formative years of his theoretical development in the 1840s. (...) His conversion to Hegelian philosophy at the University of Berlin established the basis for a concept of progress based on Hegel's dialectical worldview and the role of conflict in history. Marx's doctoral dissertation in Greek philosophy located the practical materialism of Epicurean philosophy as the basis for human freedom and progress. As a journalist in 1842--3, Marx developed his views on progress in the context of political, economic and social conditions in Germany. He criticized government censorship and defended the "free press" as a vehicle for social progress. Marx's critique of Hegel's philosophy of law in 1843, his initial studies in political economy and contacts with workers in Paris in 1844, and his polemical attacks on German idealism in 1845, strengthened the contradictory practical aspects of his concept of progress. Simultaneously, Marx's increasing knowledge of history led him to view all progress in history as paradoxical. From 1846 to 1848, his efforts to organize European workers as a leader in various political organizations strengthened the role of practice in his conception of progress. Marx's complete yet implicit concept of progress appeared in The Poverty of Philosophy . His work as a journalist and political revolutionary in the Revolutions of 1848--9 reflected this concept of progress. The defeat that followed changed Marx's life politically and personally but not his concept of progress. After 1850, he applied his concept of progress to his journalism, his work in political economy, and to the formation of working class organizations and political parties. From the early 1850s to his death in 1883, Marx rejected all abstract, evolutionary and teleological views of progress. (shrink)

This dissertation is an examination of Leibniz's philosophy of time and causation as expressed in his late metaphysics. The central thesis of the dissertation is that Leibniz propounds a causal theory of time, one in which a world's temporal facts are ontologically dependent on its causal facts. I begin with a comprehensive exploration of Leibniz's writings on causation. I argue that Leibniz assimilates causal relations to logical and explanatory relations, and that a cause is what, in conjunction with other conditions, (...) constitutes a sufficient condition for the effect. I further examine the counterfactual character of causal relations, and how Leibniz explains the nature of causal asymmetry without invoking temporal concepts. With this background in hand, I turn to Leibniz's many analyses of qualitative temporal relations. Specifically, I provide an interpretation of Leibniz's causal theory of time according to which temporal facts are constructed from and defined in terms of metaphysically more basic causal and spatial relations. In this respect, Leibniz's philosophy of time is a precursor to more recent spatio-causal theories of time. Against the view that Leibniz limits the dependence of temporal on causal and spatial facts to one a form of supervenience, I argue that he opts he for an identificatory reductive strategy. The final two chapters examine Leibniz's views on the topological features of time, and the relation between tensed and non-tensed time. Though the dissertation focuses on Leibniz's metaphysics, it gives extensive consideration both to the historical antecedents that inform Leibniz's theories as well as to the relevance of Leibniz's philosophy of time and causation for contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Existential phenomenology is an effective method for explicating man's transcendence and makes a significant contribution to traditional philosophy inasmuch as it points up the belonging together of man and Being. ;Phenomenology accounts for the priority, originality, and initiative of Being which demands a response, not just an intellectual affirmation. The movement of transcendence is a total involvement of man toward Being. ;It is openness to Being that defines man and reflects his capacity for transcendence. According to Heidegger, in this technological (...) age, Dasein founders with the distancing of the god or prepares for the nearing of the god by sharing in the thinking and poetizing. ;Freedom is an essential element for each of the three philosophers. It is the groundless ground of transcendence. The self comes to be through its choice to be or not to be itself. In order to preserve personal freedom, Jaspers claims that religion must necessarily be reduced to myth whereas, for Marcel, there can be no freedom without god. Heidegger, however, takes a position between myth and religion insofar as Dasein, in freely surrendering himself to others, simultaneously gains his authentic self and transcends to Being. ;The intention of Heidegger, Jaspers, and Marcel is to existentially ground the notion of transcendence. Marcel, however, with his notion of participation, remains within the parameters of traditional philosophy and onto-theology. Jaspers, by his emphasis upon the ontic rather than the ontological, fails to sufficiently ground transcendence. Although positing philosophic faith, Jaspers fails to bring his notion to fulfillment since man, though experiencing intermittent peace, ultimately founders. It is only Heidegger who, by stepping completely outside of traditional philosophy, is able to develop the movement from existence to transcendence without relying on faith. There is a constant interplay between Dasein and Being, between world and the farther side of the horizon. Rather than creating a hiatus between finite and infinite Being as in a purely intellectual approach to God, that-which-regions appropriates Dasein in the intimacy of nearness. Although Heidegger does not posit a personal God, he allows for Being as presence and, consequently, opens onto rather than excludes religion. (shrink)

Some material object ontologists advance the thesis that given a material object, two entities are present: the object and an entity which is the object's matter. The motivation for entifying the matter of material objects is to counter a current materialistic, reductionist ontology. According to the reductionist, the divisions in the material world are due not to the existence of medium-sized entities such as material objects, but are due to the microscopic components of a substratum which is formed out of (...) the matter of objects. By positing the thesis that the matter of a given material object occurs in entity form, the material object ontologist pluralizes the substratum, and thereby counters the reductionist view: since each material object contains its matter in entity form , material objects do, in effect, segment material reality. ;I outline the views of two material object ontologists, Helen Cartwright and V. C. Chappell, who hold that the matter of a material object is itself an entity. It is my contention that a key term, i.e., "thing", used in a formula employed by Cartwright and Chappell to derive the matter of an object in entity form, has a stipulative or non-ordinary meaning. I maintain that "thing" is stipulative because it designates items of two different kinds simultaneously. Granted that "thing" has a broad range of meanings, it is, like any other term in the language, not normally used to denote phenomena of two different classes at the same time. If my thesis is correct, the derivation by Cartwright and Chappell of the matter of an object in entity form becomes true merely by way of a stipulative definition of one of its terms. To establish that the formula used by Cartwright and Chappell employs a dual use of "thing", I offer syntactical evidence concerning the use of the pronoun "one". (shrink)

This dissertation was submitted and accepted in 1979 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Philosophy) at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The Doctoral Committee included Professor Jaegwon Kim (Co-Chairman), Assistant Professor Timothy G. McCarthy (Co-Chairman), and Assistant Professor Louis E. Loeb. -/- This dissertation undertakes a metaphysical examination of our concept of a physical object’s persistence through time. Certainly, the concept of a persisting physical object is at the core of our ordinary ways of thinking about the (...) world. The philosopher’s challenge is to see if anything broad and systematic can be said about such a concept. -/- When inquiring into an object’s persistence through time, we are asking for a characterization of the unity of a physical object’s history. The object’s history stretches over temporal intervals, and objects can be viewed as being temporally elongated entities. As such, a way of talking about objects persisting at different times must be developed. A central feature in this enterprise will be the notion of an object-stage which can be defined as follows: Object-stage =df. The material content of the space-time region occupied at a time. An object’s history, comprised out of a succession of object-stages, must fit together in some fashion or other. However, it is obvious that not just any succession of object-stages constitutes the history of a single persisting object. -/- Since not just any succession of stages will suffice, the task becomes one of trying to determine what the special relationship is between successive stages which do correspond to the history of a single object. Hence, the central problems of this dissertation can be delineated accordingly: (a) when is a succession of object-stages, object-stages in the history of a single physical object?; and, (b) under what conditions is a physical object which exists at one time the same object as (or, identical with) a physical object which exists at another time? -/- My analysis of the persistence of physical objects is presented in Chapter IV. It turns out that the analysis is complex, a necessity when the broad range of results to be accounted for is recognized. This task is undertaken in Chapters II and III. In the former Chapter, I argue that prior to the construction of an analysis of persistence, we must recognize certain pre-theoretic “data” concerning objects and their persistence. Chapter II ponders a variety of cases, employing arguments to draw out consequences which our analysis must account for. After Chapter II has delineated those results which must be incorporated in the analysis, Chapter III reviews various attempts to provide an account of persistence. However, it is argued that all such attempts fail to adequately account for the results set out in Chapter II. -/- Chapters V through VIII investigate a wide spectrum of issues in contemporary metaphysics checking to see how my analysis illuminates these problems. Chapters V and VI study the necessity of origins thesis. As a result of that study, a certain range of properties are specified as being original essential properties of an object. Chapter VII takes up the troublesome topic of transworld identity, closely associated with the problem of essentialism. A solution to this issue is suggested which utilizes my analysis of persistence and the views of many other philosophers. The final Chapter considers the debate over relative and absolute identity. It is demonstrated that my analysis of persistence is neutral with respect to this controversy, and in that Chapter my analysis is accommodated to either theory of identity. (shrink)

This is a study of the concepts and normative implications of forgery and authenticity. ;Chapter one concentrates on conceptual analysis. A definition of forgery is proffered and then clarified, sharpened, and defended. That having been accomplished, a large number of conceptual issues are addressed. They include the conceptual relations between forged artworks and forged artifacts of other sorts, the possibility that all artworks are forgeries, the complex logic of the attributive adjective "forged," the conceptual relations between forgeries and fakes, and (...) the conceptual relations between forgery and piracy and between forgery and plagiarism. ;Chapter two is an intermediary sort of chapter, one concerned both with the conceptual issues directly addressed in chapter one and with the normative issues directly addressed in chapter three. But it is also, and more importantly, an extensive and intensive study of Nelson Goodman's "Art and Authenticity." Goodman's unique and highly original arguments are explored in detail, but all are found to be seriously flawed. ;The focal question of chapter three is, What, if anything, is wrong with a forgery? To clarify this question, three different points of view and two sorts of criteria are distinguished, and the original question thus becomes six different ones. All six questions are then methodically answered, though the bulk of the chapter is devoted to only one of them, What, if anything, is intrinsically wrong with a forgery from the aesthetic point of view? ;Authenticity and the restoration and reproduction of works of art is discussed in chapter four, and here certain extreme positions--notably, that of Mark Sagoff--are exposed and criticized, and the aesthetic value of good reproductions and restorations properly vindicated. Forgery and authenticity are thus seen to be, in sum, interesting concepts but not ones which have, in themselves, any purely aesthetic import. (shrink)