Philosophical Methods

The author addresses the literal in the room as necessarily unnecessary for sufficiency for soundness for any argument .

At the heart of Mizrahi’s project lies a sociological narrative concerning the recent history of philosophers’ negative attitudes towards scientism. Critics (e.g. de Ridder (2019), Wilson (2019) and Bryant (2020)), have detected various empirical inadequacies in Mizrahi’s methodology for discussing these attitudes. Bryant (2020) points out one of the main pertinent methodological deficiencies here, namely that the mere appearance of the word ‘scientism’ in a text does not suffice in determining whether the author feels threatened by it. Not all philosophers (...) use the term in ‘inherently negative’ (29) or pejorative ways. In this paper, I not only corroborate Bryant’s critical claim, but argue that Mizrahi’s response to this part of Bryant’s objection is inadequate. (shrink)

This paper concerns an important and exciting book by Marek Dobrzeniecki Ukrytość i Wcielenie. Teistyczna odpowiedź na argument Johna L. Schellenberga za nieistnieniem Boga [Hiddenness and the Incarnation: A Theistic Response to John L. Schellenberg’s Argument for Divine Nonexistence]. After a brief discussion of the content of the book’s chapters, critical remarks are presented. They concern the adopted method and approach to Schellenberg’s philosophy in general and the argument from hiddenness in particular. The conceptual framework serving as a typologization of (...) the propositional dimension of the phenomenon of theistic belief/faith is dubious and requires in-depth research. It is worth considering the possibility of asymmetry of the attitudes of belief/faith and unbelief, which requires consideration in the reasoning whose legitimacy would assume the transfer of features from one to the other and the negation functor. Regarding the voluntarism of belief in God, the paper suggests that extreme, purely intellectual, and purely volitional positions should be considered, as well as moderate and mixed ones. It is argued extensively that Dobrzeniecki’s criticism against the arguments of Rea and Mourad is not conclusive. Just the possibility of voluntariness of disbelief undermines the validity of Schellenberg’s argument and should therefore be ruled out as much as possible. The paper suggests supplementing Dobrzeniecki’s approach with a ‘trans-paradigmatic’ approach consisting of external criticism, which, in the light of Schellenberg’s arguments being probably incompatible with the described phenomenon of religious belief in God, leads to a modification of the theoretical apparatus of Schellenberg’s paradigm. Such a modification deprives the latter’s argument of justification. --- Niniejszy artykuł dotyczy ważnej i interesującej książki Marka Dobrzenieckiego Ukrytość i Wcielenie. Teistyczna odpowiedź na argument Johna L. Schellenberga za nieistnieniem Boga. Po krótkim omówieniu zawartości poszczególnych rozdziałów książki prezentuję swoje uwagi krytyczne. Dotyczą one przyjętej metody i podejścia do filozofii Schellenberga w ogólności, a argumentu z ukrytości w szczególności. Wątpliwa i wymagająca pogłębionego badania jest siatka pojęciowa pełniąca funkcję typologizacji propozycjonalnego wymiaru fenomenu wiary teistycznej. Warta rozważania jest możliwość niesymetryczności postaw wiary i niewiary, co wymaga uwzględnienia w rozumowaniach, których zasadność zakładałaby przenoszenie cech z jednej na drugą oraz funktora negacji. W sprawie woluntaryzmu wiary w Boga sugeruję, że należy rozpatrywać nie tylko stanowiska skrajne, czysto intelektualistyczne i czysto wolicjonalne, ale także u miarkowane i mieszane. Argumentuję szeroko, że krytyka Dobrzenieckiego skierowana przeciwko argumentom Rea i Mourada nie jest konkluzywna. Argumentuję, że samo możliwość woluntarności niewiary podważa zasadność argumentu Schellenberga i dlatego powinna ona być wykluczona w sposób maksymalnie możliwie uzasadniony. Sugeruję uzupełnienie podejścia Dobrzenieckiego o podejście ‘transparadygmatyczne’ polegające na rodzaju krytyki zewnętrznej, która w świetle nieprzystawania argumentacji Schellenberga do opisywanego fenomenu prowadzi do modyfikacji aparatu teoretycznego paradygmatu Schellenberga. Taka modyfikacja odbiera argumentowi tego ostatniego moc uzasadniającą. (shrink)

In Japan, from the pre-war to the post-war period, unique indigenous philosophizing cultures have been nurtured outside academism. The contemporary new philosophical practices which have been recently imported from Europe and North America are welcomed and widespread in Japan because of this indigenous traditional cultural soil cultivated by those local forerunners in the past. In this paper, the 'Life Experience Writing Movement', which was popular from the late Taisho era until the early Showa era, as well as the Science of (...) Thought journal, which was founded by Shunsuke Tsurumi and the other six coteries in 1945 and continued to be published for fifty years until 1996, are discussed. (shrink)

The methods of philosophical consultation vary enormously according to the practitioners who conceive and apply them. In this paper, we discuss the conceptions and methods we have been carrying out for several years in this field, such as philosophical naturalism, the dual requirement, first steps, anagogy and discrimination, thinking the unthinkable, switching to the "second floor", and being philosophical. Our methodology is mainly inspired by the Socratic maieutic, where the philosopher questions his interlocutor, invites him to identify the stakes of (...) his discourse, to conceptualize it by distinguishing key terms in order to implement them, to problematize it through a critical perspective, to universalize its implications. This practice has the specificity of inviting the subject to move away from a mere sensation to allow him a rational analysis of his speech and of himself, a sine qua non condition for deliberating on the cognitive and existential stakes which must be made explicit at first. The removal from oneself that this unnatural activity presupposes, for which it requires the assistance of a specialist, poses a certain number of difficulties, e.g., frustration, speech as a pretext, the issue of truth, pain and epidural. Finally, some additional exercises are very useful for the reflection process, such as establishing connections, real speech, order, universal and singular, and accepting the pathology. (shrink)

Recently, there has been growing interest in methodological issues of non-ideal theoretical philosophy. While some explicitly commit to non-ideal theorising, others doubt that there is anything useful about the ideal/non-ideal distinction in theoretical philosophy. The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, I propose a way of doing non-ideal theoretical philosophy, once we realise how limited certain idealised projects are. Since there is a big overlap between projects that are called non-ideal and applied, the second aim is (...) to distinguish between these categories in order to show that applied theoretical philosophy is only worth pursuing if it operates in a non-ideal framework. I argue that we should be pluralistic about possible non-ideal theories and view the ideal/non-ideal differences as a matter of degree, rather than kind. As an example, I show how my version of non-ideal theory is useful to a concrete debate in philosophy of language. My proposal allows us to identify already existing non-ideal approaches to linguistic meaning and encourages us to further engage in the debate on non-ideal theoretical philosophy. (shrink)

Nietzsche’s “drive theory”, as it is referred to in the secondary literature, is a rich, unique and fascinating articulation of the human condition. In broad brushstrokes, Nietzsche appears to contend that all human psychology is either directly reducible to animal drives (e.g. sex, aggression) or indirectly explicable to the historical transformations thereof (e.g. ressentiment). Moreover, Nietzsche’s initial elucidation of drive theory in On the Genealogy of Morals (and elsewhere) is well-complemented with a fecund, profound, and clear elucidation of the concept (...) in the secondary literature. -/- Yet, there remains a glaring lacuna for all the discussion of drive theory in the scholarship. The secondary literature is delinquent in explaining how animal drives became incorporated to form the human psyche. Nietzsche’s account to elucidate how drives became “digested” or in his words “inpsychated” is called the Internalization Hypothesis. However, as it appears in GM: II, 16, the hypothesis is grossly inchoate. The result of this undertheorization is manifold; its deleterious effects resonate along many axes of Nietzsche’s philosophy. -/- The present book, Internalized Valuation: A Genealogical Analysis of Nietzschean Drive Theory, offers an original and fruitful interpretation of Nietzsche’s philosophical psychology. First, it clarifies what drives are. Second, it provides a new way of thinking about Nietzsche’s genealogical methods and then applies these insights to The Genealogy itself. What follows is a work that not only sheds much-needed light on Nietzsche’s philosophy of mind in general and his theory of emotions in particular, but also informs and illuminates problematic passages of Nietzsche’s Genealogy. (shrink)

A central theme in the scholarly literature on Enlightenment Europe concerns the increased focus on the role of reason in the development of European thought, especially in the development of the new science by the natural philosophers. As a consequence, there is a tendency in both philosophical scholarship and teaching to bind philosophy and science tightly together. While there is certainly much that is correct in this approach, one motivation for pluralizing philosophy’s past is that this story leaves out a (...) great deal that is important in Enlightenment views of reason. We argue, using as an example the work of figures like Margaret Cavendish, that reason was significantly broader in scope—developments in science were paralleled by equally important advances in music, art, literature, medicine, philosophy, and so on. In recognizing the lack of a sharp boundary between these areas, an inclusive canon of Enlightenment philosophy gives us this richer notion of reason. Integrating figures such as Cavendish into the canon helps us to see that the narrow focus on the scientific version of reason within Enlightenment scholarship creates a false distinction between science and the humanities and misses out on the humanistic ends for which we engage in philosophy. (shrink)

We argue that Lewis would have rejected recent appeals to the notions of ‘metaphysical dependency’, ‘grounding’ and ‘ontological priority’, because he would have held that they’re not needed and they’re not intelligible. We argue our case by drawing upon Lewis’s views on supervenience, the metaphysics of singletons and the dubiousness of Kripke’s essentialism.

Playing in counterpoint with the general theoretical orientation of the book, this chapter does not focus its attention on the recording and archiving capabilities of the digital medium. Instead, it proposes an understanding of the digital medium that focuses on its disclosing various forms of “doing.” Gualeni’s chapter begins by offering an understanding of “doing in the digital” that methodologically separates “doing as acting” from “doing as making.” After setting its theoretical framework, the chapter discusses an “interactive thought experiment” designed (...) by the author that is analyzed as a digital artifact leveraging both dimensions of “doing in the digital” for philosophical purposes. In extreme synthesis, one could say that this chapter is about several kinds of soups. (shrink)

One of the most distinctive features of philosophy is self-reflection and by exploring novel philosophical methods, this book examines some of the most important metaphilosophical issues. Shows that philosophers are not only concerned with metaphysical, epistemological, conceptual, ethical, and aesthetic issues of things around us, but how they also pay serious attention to the nature, value, methods, and development of philosophy itself Explores some of the most important metaphilosophical issues: Is philosophy progressive? Are metaphysical claims meaningful? What is the aim (...) of philosophy? Should analytic metaphysics be replaced by naturalised metaphysics? What is the prospect of a digital approach to philosophy of science? Can poetry play a substantial role in philosophy? Revisits the value and significance of philosophy and examines new directions in metaphilosophy Features 12 essays with contributions by leading philosophers across the globe. (shrink)

This book offers a unique analysis of the tension between the individual and society in educational contexts, and the role that citizenship and democratic education can play. It approaches the question from two different perspectives – the institutional and the interactional – and argues that any solution must answer the tension from both or it will necessarily fail. The answer is found through a political methodology that places education at the centre and concludes that a balance can be found if (...) we embrace the federated disestablishment of education and state and internally democratic schooling that aims to realise the emancipation of the political child. -/- The book situates itself in the tradition of political philosophy that is education focused, identifying an unresolved tension between the individual and society in the works of Rousseau, Dewey, and Freire. It discusses the concept of authority as a primary issue persisting in this tension. It does so by exploring both interactional and institutional responses based on the idea of the free individual and cooperative associations. The author advocates an education system that creates the necessary space for the cultivation of the free individual and is run by the principles of internally democratic schooling. -/- With a strong focus on citizenship and the role of education in the development of social-justice oriented citizens, this book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, political philosophy, educational theory, and citizenship education. (shrink)

In this chapter, we focus on animism and how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines. Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of philosophy of (...) religion to discuss and accommodate different perspectives means a large part of human religious beliefs, practices, and experiences remains outside its purview. As a point of focus, we examine animism in two cultures as a way to think about what sorts of questions and ideas an expansion of philosophy of religion into lesser-explored traditions could offer. (shrink)

How should we conceive of policymakers for the purposes of political analysis? In particular, if we wish to explain and predict political decisions and their consequences, if we wish to ensure that political action is as effective as it can be, how should we think of policymakers? Should we think of them as they are commonly conceived in traditional political analysis, i.e., as uniquely knowledgeable and as either altruistic (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their constituents’ interests) or (...) knavish (i.e., as motivated to realize goals associated with their own personal interests), or should we treat them as possibly ignorant with respect to their political tasks? -/- It is always an open question whether policymakers possess the knowledge required to realize some policy objective. It should never be assumed a priori that policymaker knowledge is adequate to the policy tasks with which policymakers are charged. Politicians need knowledge concerning the causes of social phenomena adequate to control events sufficiently well to ensure the success of their policies. No argument has ever been offered for the standard, if only implicit, assumption that policymakers, somehow automatically, possess this knowledge. In many contexts, there is no reason to believe that policymakers possess or can acquire this knowledge. Indeed, a bit of reflection reveals how unlikely it is that and how rare the circumstances must be in which policymakers meet this condition, which political philosophers, theorists, economists, and other political thinkers have traditionally assumed as a matter of course. -/- The main purpose of the book is to encourage a conversation among scholars and students of political inquiry (in philosophy and political theory, political science, economics and political economy) concerning the best way to conceive of policymakers for the purposes of such inquiry. -/- The book defends an alternative, more realistic, method of political analysis. The book argues against the false assumption that policymakers are epistemically privileged. The book presents and defends the alternative assumption that, with respect to the knowledge required to discharge their political tasks effectively, policymakers are at least as ignorant as constituents. -/- The book further argues that whether policymakers are altruistic or knavish is, in the first instance, a function of the nature and extent of their ignorance with regard to constituent-minded policy goals. Policymakers who possess the knowledge required to be effectively altruistic are more likely to be altruistic, other things the same, than policymakers who are ignorant of the knowledge that successful altruism requires. -/- This being said, my goal is more to leave readers thinking about and inclined to debate these profound issues than to prescribe a particular methodological conclusion (even less to advocate a particular political conclusion). The book is a heuristic for spurring further conversation. It makes of readers fellow interlocutors partnered with the characters (and the author!) of the dialogue. -/- The vehicle for this analysis is a conversation between four friends, philosophy graduate students, with different interests, different levels and kinds of experience, and different political preferences. The four friends consider how politicians should be conceived for the purposes of analyzing political decision-making and its consequences. -/- In his famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume concluded that the assumption of an all-knowing and all-powerful God was neither necessary nor sufficient to explain natural phenomena. Dialogues concerning Natural Politics does for social science what Hume did for natural science. Both books undermine the assumption that some epistemically privileged being – God in the case of natural phenomena and God-like politicians in the case of social phenomena – must be invoked to explain relevant phenomena. (shrink)

Social ontology focuses on questions about the reality of human categories. The typical examples are gender and race. Common questions about them are: Do they exist? What is their nature? Do they exist in the best possible way? Meanwhile, the philosophy of psychiatry has been discussing the reality of psychopathology, what is the best way to classify mental disorders, and whether it is possible to define them without normative vocabulary. I think there is something not only strange but inadequate about (...) these discussions being held apart. Particularly, I hold that by being held separately these discussions are philosophically incomplete. In this paper, I argue that these debates are parallel in crucial aspects, but more importantly that they can benefit from each other if they start a dialogue. I suggest some paths we can take to start fruitful discussions and offer examples of the kind of outcomes we can expect. However, my main contribution is to sketch a common framework to map current discussions, make comparisons between them, and, more importantly, guide new research. (shrink)

This paper attempts to do the following things. First, it reinterprets the notion of «mind engineering» from a more neutral standpoint and offers a totally new approach to the phenomenon. Thus, instead of looking at the phenomenon from a wholly negative perspective (such as identification of mind engineering with «brainwashing», «mind control» and other coercive and manipulatory techniques), it defines mind engineering as the process of «design/redesign, implementation/reimplementation, evaluation/reevaluation of minds». In itself, this process can be deliberate or forceful. Here, (...) the author looks at deliberate mind engineering primarily. Secondly, the «mind» is defined as a set of beliefs, and the latter, following Charles Peirce, is interpreted as the set of habits. The phenomenon of habit is interpreted pragmatically-hermeneutically and is defined as a «‘fixed’ functional interpretation of the world and one’s place in it that either works or does not work». If a specific interpretation constantly works, it constitutes a «good» habit. If it does not work, it means a «bad» habit. Unlike the current social-psychological approaches to habit as goal-independent and automatic, and therefore «mindless»/non-cognitive, the author claims that habits are essentially goal-dependent, and cognitive. The habit’s main goal is to resolve the problematic situation that the organism is in. Habit’s cognitive element is grounded in the organism’s interpretive effort that allows it to specify a problematic situation as problematic. Therefore, the connection between the organism and a situation is not direct/immediate but rather is mediated via functional interpretive meaning. In the end, mind engineering must be taken as «habit engineering», and, thus understood, the phenomenon in question can be seen as one of the key phenomena to clarify human nature. (shrink)

Jim Slagle claims that eliminative materialism (EM) denies some of the mind’s self-evident properties, such as intentionality, qualia and the view that beliefs are real or veridical. I, herein, will argue that what EM denies is actually the folk psychological notion of belief, not belief as such. The Churchlands construe propositional belief as merely one kind of representation in the larger representational scheme. The point here is not to deny belief, but to construe it as one of the, and possibly (...) a very recent, sorts of representations that the brain uses, not the general or fundamental form thereof. (shrink)

In this paper, we focus on one controversial element of the method of reflective equilibrium, namely Rawls’s idea that the commitments that enter the justificatory procedure should be pre-selected or filtered: According to him, only considered judgements should be taken into account in moral philosophy. There are two camps of critics of this filtering process: 1) Critics of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too weak and seek a more reliable one, which would actually constitute a distinct (...) epistemic method. 2) Proponents of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too exclusionary. We defend RE against its critics, arguing that the method can secure reasonable commitments without depending on a strong external filtering process. However, we side with the critical proponents of reflective equilibrium and argue that without the Rawlsian weak filtering process, RE is more plausible both as a general method as well as in the context of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolution, distinguishes between two types of sciences-one, normal; the other, revolutionary. However, the transition from normal to revolutionary science (what he calls paradigm-shift) is initiated by anomaly. This anomaly arises when the paradigm guiding a particular community of scientists malfunctions, thus resisting all efforts to reposition it. Hence, science for Kuhn, grows through the paradigm-shift initiated by tension. However, Kuhn argues that the process of choosing another paradigm that will guild scientific practices requires (...) a thorough debate among a community of scientists. In this debate, a new paradigm is selected out of numerous competing others by the method of elimination. This selection is based on their ability to solve problems and to guide research work without developing further faults. Nevertheless, in this understanding of scientific growth, in our view, inheres some contradictions. In the first places, Kuhn attributes growth to paradigm-shift through tension and anomaly but argues that a new paradigm must be selected based on its ability not to develop fault. It is not, however clear how paradigm-shift can occur if there is no fault, tension or anomaly in research. Secondly, he bases the selection of a new paradigm on the inarticulate aesthetic sentiments, faith and destiny, which contradicts the initial argument that it must be selected based on its observed inherent problem-solving ability out of the numerous others. We shall discuss these notable flaws in Kuhn's view of scientific growth, using the method of critical argumentation and conceptual clarification. (shrink)

I consider an epistemological, methodological dispute between Nietzsche and Kant about the possibility of rational self-critique: an activity where the intellect reflects on its cognitive powers, demarcates the proper use and limitations of these powers, and thereby achieves a systematically complete insight into what we can and cannot know. Kant affirms whereas Nietzsche denies that we can successfully conduct such a self-directed rational enquiry. By reconstructing the central argumentative moves that Nietzsche and Kant do or could make to defend their (...) respective position, I trace their disagreement to starkly diverging models of philosophical enquiry, of what philosophy is and ought to be all about. (shrink)

This paper investigates a particular philosophical puzzle via an examination of its status in the writings of Wittgenstein. The puzzle concerns negation and can take on three interrelated guises. The first puzzle is how not-p can so much as negate p at all – for if p is not the case, then nothing corresponds to p. The second puzzle is how not-p can so much as negate p at all when not-p rejects p not as false but as unintelligible – (...) for if p is unintelligible, then p is nothing but scratches and sounds and does not seem apt for negation. And the third puzzle is how “not” could be anything but hopelessly equivocal if it sometimes (per the first puzzle) requires, and sometimes (per the second puzzle) precludes the intelligibility of p. The paper investigates these three puzzles, their respective structures, and their relations to each other. The second puzzle is expounded as the centre of gravity, and in countering two objections to the threefold puzzle, a special predicament is expounded with regard to the second puzzle’s concern with unipolar propositions – propositions that do not admit of an intelligible negation. The text concludes by indicating the first steps that could potentially lead us out of the threefold puzzle. (shrink)

The paper interprets Wittgenstein’s famous call to silence at the end of his Tractatus – that “whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” – as a critique of philosophy itself. Wittgenstein was concerned throughout his philosophical life with finding a way to delineate the limits of language. These limits, once we have them clearly in view, rob our attempts to put forth philosophical theories of their legitimacy. In order to give a critical assessment of this Wittgensteinian critique of (...) philosophy, the paper primarily focuses on the roots of that critique in Wittgenstein’s earliest writings – his notebooks, his 1913 “Notes on Logic,” the 1914 set of notes dictated to G. E. Moore, and the Tractatus itself. Wittgenstein’s influence by Fritz Mauthner and, mediated through Mauthner, by Kant receive special attention. The conclusion is that, far from Mauthner’s radical anti-philosophical bias, we can come to see a deep appreciation of the power, the draw, and the significance of philosophical problems in Wittgenstein’s writings. The text closes with a short look at how Wittgenstein’s thinking about the limits of language evolved later in his life. (shrink)

This is the Portuguese translation of "What the Sokal Hoax Ought to Teach Us". -/- .

This volume celebrates the work of Hans-Johann Glock, a philosopher renowned for both his exegesis of Wittgenstein and his many contributions to debates in contemporary philosophy. It brings together 16 new essays by up-and-coming and distinguished philosophers engaging with Glock’s work, and it concludes with a "Reflections and Replies" chapter in which Glock responds to his interlocutors. -/- Glock’s distinctive philosophical voice features a rare combination of a Wittgenstein-inspired approach with a willingness to break away from Wittgenstein to tackle problems (...) in an open-minded way. The broad selection of essays included in this volume reflects Glock’s wide-ranging philosophical interests and demonstrates the potential of applying Wittgensteinian insights to advance current systematic debates in philosophy. The chapters discuss Wittgenstein’s philosophy, metaphilosophy, truth and language, animal minds and agency, and reasons and normativity. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of the problem of Augustine’s rationalism, by paying particular attention to his Dialogi, in which the Ciceronian and Christian ideal of the search for truth (quaerere veritatem) emerges as a life-long project. It shows how in Augustine’s thought the overcoming of Manichaeism has to be understood as a liberation from an ‘experience of madness’, or ‘perverse logic’, produced by an imagination unable to rise to pure rationality, in contrast with the ideal of order typical of (...) classical education, and in particular of the rhetorics, based on Cicero, which Augustine had learned in African schools. (shrink)

In Philosophical Investigations §§185–201, Wittgenstein addresses an oscillation in our thinking about the nature of rules. He seems to introduce a problem—how do we follow rules?—, and a “paradox” in which it is rooted, in order to find a solution to them; only to then call the whole puzzle a “misunderstanding” after all. My contention is that this apparent friction can best be understood and resolved when we view it in light of Wittgenstein’s engagement with limits and limitations, and how (...) easy it is to confuse one with the other when thinking about human thought and language. This central bit of the frequently discussed “rule-following considerations,” then, is concerned not simply with matters of semantics, convention, or community, but rather with the question of a proper philosophical method for thinking about our life with language in general. When traced out, these few remarks elucidate a bifurcation in interpreting one of the central methodological themes in Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Nowadays, there is an image that the philosopher is a figure who sits in an armchair thinking about his questions and reaching his conclusions. This image is not completely wrong. In philosophy, there really are “armchair” methods. Several philosophers try to do philosophy with little appeal to experimental evidence and a significant part of philosophers do not even try to do controlled experiments to verify their hypotheses. In this sense, a closer image of armchair philosophy is one in which philosophers (...) work with intuitions and concepts. (shrink)

Kant's Reason develops a novel interpretation of Kant’s conception of reason and its philosophical significance, focusing on two claims. First, it argues that Kant presents a powerful model for understanding the unity of theoretical and practical reason as two manifestations of a unified capacity for theoretical and practical understanding (or “comprehension”). This model allows us to do justice to the deep commonalities between theoretical and practical rationality, without reducing either to the other. In particular, through it, we see why the (...) activities of both theoretical and practical reason are governed by a version of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, while also seeing why reason is essentially autonomous. At the same time, Kant's Reason also reads Kant as presenting us with a compelling picture of the role that reason (as a capacity or power) should play in a systematic approach to foundational philosophical questions. In doing so, it argues for an account of the fundamental norms that apply to rational beings that treats as fundamental neither substantive reasons or values nor merely structural rationality, but instead a robust conception of reason as a power or capacity — namely, the capacity for theoretical and practical understanding. The result is a form of “rational constitutivism” – one which contrasts both with the forms of “reasons fundamentalism” that are currently fashionable and the forms of “agency-first constitutivism” that have dominated much of Kantian metaethics. In this sense, the aim of the book is to vindicate Kant’s insistence that his philosophy represents nothing more or less than reason’s implicit self-understanding coming to explicit and systematic self-consciousness. (shrink)

(For the English version, see below) Dieser Band schließt an die "Prozessontologie" von Wolfgang Sohst an. In vorliegenden Buch entwickelt er den Begriff der Emergenz auf der Grundlage einer Schichtenontologie. Kern dieser Theorie ist der Nachweis, dass die Struktur alles Gegebenen (also nicht nur des physischen Universums, sondern auch der irdischen Biosphäre und der aus ihr hervorgegangenen psychischen, sozialen und abstrakten Existenzformen) offen ist; es gibt keine absolute Entwicklungsgrenze der Weltstruktur. Alles Gegebene ist allerdings in Schichten gegliedert, beginnend mit den (...) protophysikalischen Weltzuständen über die quantenmechanische, die makrophysikalische und biologische Ebene bis hin zu den sozialen Strukturen menschlicher Wirklichkeit und den noch über sie hinausgehenden abstrakten Strukturen der reinen Symbolsysteme. -/- Der Begriff der Emergenz spielt hierin eine wichtige Rolle. Seine ideengeschichtliche Entwicklung seit den 1920er Jahren verlief allerdings unglücklich, weil von vornherein auf neue Einzelgegenstände und ihre Eigenschaften fixiert. Dabei ging sowohl die Prozesshaftigkeit der Welt verloren als auch die Einsicht, dass neue Strukturschichten der Welt nicht durch einzelne Gegenstände oder ihre Eigenschaften repräsentiert werden, sondern durch neue Gegenstands-, Zustands- und Prozesstypen. Dieser zunächst unauffällig erscheinende Unterschied zur traditionellen Emergenztheorie eröffnet vollkommen neue Zugänge und Verständnismöglichkeiten zur strukturellen Entwicklung des Weltganzen. (560 Seiten, Hardcover) -/- English version: This volume follows on from Wolfgang Sohst's "Process Ontology". In this book, he develops the concept of emergence on the basis of a layered ontology. The core of this theory is the proof that the structure of everything given (i.e. not only of the physical universe but also of the earthly biosphere and the mental, social and abstract forms of existence that emerged from it) is open; there is no absolute developmental limit of the world structure. However, everything given is divided into layers or strata, beginning with the proto-physical world states over the quantum-mechanical, the macrophysical, and biological level up to the social structures of human reality and the abstract structures of the pure symbol systems still going beyond them. -/- The concept of emergence plays an important role in this. However, its development in the history of ideas since the 1920s was unfortunate, because from the outset it was fixed on new individual objects and their properties. In the process, both the processuality of the world and the insight that new structural layers or strata of the world are not represented by individual objects or their properties, but by new types of objects, states, and processes, were lost. This differs from traditional emergence theory, which at first seems inconspicuous, and opens up entirely new approaches and ways of understanding the structural development of the world as a whole. (560 pages, hardcover). (shrink)

Drawing on Laurie A. Paul’s notion of “transformative experience”, this paper explores transformative philosophical experiences and analyses the structure of the attitude underlying them. It is argued that these experiences have to be explained not in cognitive terms but as a change in our affective attitude. More precisely, these experiences lead us to feel values in a novel manner. However, in order to make the philosophical experience epistemically transformative and provide a new perspective from which we can acquire new philosophical (...) insights, this feeling of value must meet certain moral conditions such as being open, humble and aware of possible self-deceptive tendencies. Since affectivity is central to the person we are, epistemically transformative experiences in philosophy go hand in hand with personal transformation. (shrink)

An important strand in the debate on abortion focuses on the moral status of fetuses. Knowledge of the moral value of fetuses is needed to assess fetuses’ moral status. As Errol Lord argues, acquaintance plays a key role in moral and aesthetic knowledge. Many pregnant persons have acquaintance with their fetus that provides privileged access to knowledge about that fetus’ moral value. This knowledge is (a) very difficult to acquire without being pregnant and (b) relevant for assessing the moral status (...) of fetuses. This has implications for public debate on abortion and the research methods of philosophers working on abortion. (shrink)

In this paper, I criticize the most prevalent positive argument for ethical nonnaturalism, the argument from ethical phenomenology. According to it, nonnatural entities are part of the best explanation of the phenomenology of ethical deliberation; therefore, nonnaturalism is true. -/- The argument from ethical phenomenology blinds out the external, empirically informed perspective on ethical deliberation. I argue that this is unwarranted for general methodological reasons: When starting to investigate any mental process — such as ethical deliberation — it is reasonable (...) to take into account, and try to reconcile, both the internal and the external perspective on the process. This renders the argument from ethical phenomenology methodologically flawed. The problem could be avoided if we already knew, somehow, that external evidence is irrelevant for the nature of ethical entities. Many nonnaturalists believe in this irrelevance because they take ethics to be "autonomous", "just too different", or the like. But the autonomy of ethics must itself be justified in a way that does not solely rely on internal insights — or else we are going in circles. I conclude that solely phenomenology-based arguments for nonnaturalism fail for methodological reasons. Consequently, nonnaturalists need to change their strategies and actively embrace the external perspective. (shrink)

In this paper, we consider two different attempts to make an end run around the experimentalist challenge to the armchair use of intuitions: one due to Max Deutsch and Herman Cappelen, contending that philosophers do not appeal to intuitions, but rather to arguments, in canonical philosophical texts; the other due to Joshua Knobe, arguing that intuitions are so stable that there is in fact no empirical basis for the experimentalist challenge in the first place. We show that a closer attention (...) to philosophical practices reveal, in turn, that we cannot make sense of these philosophical texts as arguments all the way down; and that our methods are so sensitive to error that even a modest amount of instability is enough to raise deep methodological concerns. (shrink)

My thesis is that the say-show distinction is the basis of Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy in both the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953). -/- Wittgenstein said that the Investigations should be read in conjunction with the Tractatus. To understand the Tractatus we must understand the say-show distinction: the principle that "what can be shown, cannot be said". A correct interpretation of Wittgenstein's philosophy will explain the significance of the say-show distinction for the Investigations. I evaluate three (...) available readings of the say-show distinction which fail to meet this challenge. I argue that Wittgenstein's main purpose throughout his career was to replace traditional philosophy with an alternative conception of philosophy, which can only be understood through the say-show distinction. The Tractatus and the Investigations are different attempts to present the same conception of philosophy. I describe how, in both cases, they present a distinctive account of the nature of philosophical problems, the appropriate methods of philosophy, the end result of a philosophical task and the overall aim of philosophy. -/- I argue that my interpretation provides a correct view of the significant continuities and discontinuities between the Tractatus and the Investigations. The failure of the Tractatus was not a flaw in the conception of philosophy presented in it, nor a flaw in the say-show distinction. In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein failed properly to implement his proposed conception of philosophy, as he remained in the grip of traditional philosophical presuppositions. The Investigations presents the same conception of philosophy, but freed from the presuppositions of the Tractatus. The say-show distinction remains the basis of Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy in the Investigations. (shrink)

How can we figure out what’s right or wrong, if moral truths are neither self-evident nor something we can perceive? Very roughly, the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) says that we should begin moral inquiry from what we already confidently think, seeking to find a a match between our initial convictions and general principles that are well-supported by background theories, mutually adjusting both until we reach a coherent outlook in which our beliefs are in harmony (the equilibrium part) and we (...) know why and how they support each other (the reflective part). It has been central to the self-understanding of normative ethics and other branches of philosophy in the last half a century. In this chapter, we examine the history of the idea of RE and introduce a schema for generating 256 variants. We explain why RE is subject to serious objections insofar as it purports to yield epistemic justification in virtue of achieving coherence. However, we also develop a new argument to the effect that RE is the best feasible method for us to achieve moral understanding and the ability to justify our judgments to others. It may thus be crucial for responsible moral inquiry, even if coherence among considered judgments and principles is neither sufficient nor necessary for justified moral belief. (shrink)

A leitmotif of the interviews Werner Herzog gave throughout several decades is his portrayal of himself as an anti-intellectualist, an anti-theorist, and an anti-philosopher. The text resorts to an established philosopher, who may have actually welcomed Herzog’s anti-intellectualist and anti-theoretical posture: Ludwig Wittgenstein. They both attempt to do justice – the former cinematically, the latter philosophically – to what is sometimes called the “human condition,” its quirks and fancies included. And they are both concerned with the trouble we experience in (...) putting up with what there is, with what there may be at hand or before our eyes. Thus, the obstinacy of Herzog’s protagonists to achieve something come what may, and the dogmatism of Wittgenstein’s interlocutors to conceive of something in just one way, are two sides of the same coin. This coin is the unbounded attachment to a theory: one’s exclusive manner of acting upon, or looking at, the world around oneself. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s mention of the term “phenomenology” in his writings from the middle period has long been regarded as puzzling by interpreters. It is striking to see him concerned with that philosophical approach, generally regarded as foreign to the tradition of Russell and Frege, in which Wittgenstein’s thought is commonly taken to have primarily developed. On the basis of partially unpublished material from Wittgenstein’s Nachlass, the thesis provides a reconstruction of the rationale and fate of his conception of phenomenology, which he (...) advances after his return to Cambridge in 1929. On the one hand, that conception is tributary to his longstanding task to philosophically clarify the workings of language. On the other hand, Wittgenstein’s concern with phenomenology develops against the background of his reconsideration of the resources for clarification provided by his early philosophy. His 1929 paper “Some Remarks on Logical Form” is elucidatory in this respect. The paper expresses a dissatisfaction with the Tractarian account of logical grammar and pleas for a “logical investigation of the phenomena themselves”. That plea echoes Wittgenstein’s notion of a “phenomenological language” in the manuscripts from the same period. The thesis addresses the intricacies of that notion and the reasons for Wittgenstein’s coming to criticize it. By contrast to the prevalent view in the literature, it turns out that he did not fully endorse for a definite period, and then suddenly abandoned, the idea of phenomenological language. Wittgenstein rather attempts to develop a viable means of clarification and of philosophical expression through phenomenological language, while critically exploring the assumptions and implications of that attempt at the very same time. (shrink)

Strevens’s Thinking Off Your Feet promises to vindicate philosophical analysis. My comments take a narrow, critical focus. I argue that Strevens doesn’t deliver on this promise. Given my understanding of (i) what is required from a vindication of philosophical analysis and (ii) Strevens’s grounds for ‘optimism’ about philosophical analysis, Strevens hasn’t done enough to vindicate philosophical analysis. Indeed, Strevens’s supposed grounds for optimism about armchair philosophy in fact provide motivation for philosophical analysis to give up some ground to experimental philosophy. (...) Although my comments are critical, my overall view of the book is not. Strevens does important and interesting work presenting and analysing various models of how armchair philosophy might work and what it might achieve. The book deserves a central place in future discussions about these issues. (shrink)

This open access book provides the first explicit case study for an application of the method of reflective equilibrium (RE), using it to develop and defend a precautionary principle. It thereby makes an important and original contribution to questions of philosophical method and methodology. The book shows step-by-step how RE is applied, and develops a methodological framework which will be useful for everyone who wishes to use reflective equilibrium. With respect to precautionary principles, the book demonstrates how a rights-based precautionary (...) principle can be constructed and defended. The case study succeeds in demonstrating that RE can be successfully applied and puts real constraints on the justification process. This is all the more remarkable as the case study was designed as an open-ended process, without presupposing any specific results. This book will be highly relevant both to people interested in philosophical methodology and epistemology, as well as to researchers who are interested in using philosophical methods and tools and applying them to practical problems. (shrink)

This book is about the idea that some true statements would have been true no matter how the world had turned out, while others could have been false. It develops and defends a version of the idea that we tell the difference between these two types of truths in part by reflecting on the meanings of words. It has often been thought that modal issues—issues about possibility and necessity—are related to issues about meaning. In this book, the author defends the (...) view that the analysis of meaning is not just a preliminary to answering modal questions in philosophy; it is not merely that before we can find out whether something is possible, we need to get clear on what we are talking about. Rather, clarity about meaning often brings with it answers to modal questions. In service of this view, the author analyzes the notion of necessity and develops ideas about linguistic meaning, applying them to several puzzles and problems in philosophy of language. Meaning and Metaphysical Necessity will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophical logic. [See my homepage for a sample chapter.]. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate about whether poetry can make a substantive contribution to philosophy with compelling arguments to show that poetry and philosophy involve distinct modes of thought and aims, albeit with similar concerns. This paper argues that reading lyric poetry can play a substantive role in philosophy by helping the philosopher understand how to forge connections with the perspectives of others. The paper takes the view that poetry is not directly philosophical but can play an important role in (...) developing the philosopher's awareness of how perspective shapes beliefs and thought processes. Following Robert Nozick, David Lewis, and Helen Beebee, it argues for the need to broaden our conception of the aims of philosophy beyond aiming for conclusive proof, at the least where philosophical inquiry is focused on questions of value. It then shows how poetry cultivates an intellectual virtue essential to philosophy aimed at uncovering equilibria and collective understanding. (shrink)

This paper provides an exposition of the structuralist approach to underdetermination, which aims to resolve the underdetermination of theories by identifying their common theoretical structure. Applications of the structuralist approach can be found in many areas of philosophy. I present a schema of the structuralist approach, which conceptually unifies such applications in different subject matters. It is argued that two classic arguments in the literature, Paul Benacerraf’s argument on natural numbers and W. V. O. Quine’s argument for the indeterminacy of (...) translation, can be analyzed as instances of the structuralist schema. These two applications illustrate different kinds of conclusions that can be drawn through the structuralist approach; Benacerraf’s argument shows that we can derive an ontological conclusion about the given subject matter, while Quine’s structuralist approach leads to a semantic conclusion about how to determine linguistic meanings given radical translation. Then, as a case study, I review a recent debate in metaphysics between Shamik Dasgupta, Jason Turner, and Catharine Diehl to consider the extent to which different instances of the structuralist schema are conceptually unified. Both sides of the debate can be interpreted as utilizing the structuralist approach; one side uses the structuralist approach for an ontological conclusion, while the other side relies on a semantic conclusion. I argue that this has a strong dialectical consequence, which sheds light on the conceptual unity of the structuralist approach. (shrink)

When studying historical thinkers, it helps enormously to know on which issues they had philosophically systematic views. For example, if attributing to Mencius the view that all existence is process-like rather than substance-like, it is very useful to know whether Mencius had philosophically systematic views about the (process-like or substance-like) nature of existence in the first place, or whether speculation about this particular issue is more constructive on the part of interpreters. In this paper, I offer a rough-and-ready account of (...) philosophical systematicity, talk about what would count as evidence of this sort of systematicity, and what implications it should have for one's interpretation if one can or cannot provide such evidence. The historical tradition that I am most concerned with is the pre-modern Chinese one, but my conclusions should hold for philosophical interpretations of thinkers of most times and traditions. (shrink)

Even prior to its publication, John Norton’s book has stimulated debates about induction. Its publication will galvanize these discussions. Does it merit all this attention? Yes, and not just from philosophers of science. Practically all philosophers will find novel and thought-provoking ideas, with implications for their research.

What can we know? How should we live? What is there? Philosophers famously diverge in the answers they give to these and other philosophical questions. It is widely presumed that a lack of convergence on these questions suggests that philosophy is not progressing at all, is not progressing fast enough, or is not progressing as fast as other disciplines, such as the natural sciences. Call the view that ideal philosophical progress is marked by at least some degree of convergence on (...) the core philosophical questions the pro-convergence thesis. I will argue that there is reason to reject the pro-convergence thesis in favor of the anti-convergence thesis, the view that significant viewpoint convergence is at odds with the aims of a philosophically ideal community. The argument centers on a thought experiment about two different philosophical communities. (shrink)

As neither a classical naturalist nor a non-naturalist, Merleau-Ponty appears to be a moderate or liberal naturalist. But can a phenomenologist really be a naturalist, even a liberal one? A lot hinges on how we tease this out, both as to whether it is plausible to claim Merleau-Ponty as a liberal naturalist (I argue it is), and as to whether it is an attractive and coherent position. Indeed, despite its important challenges to orthodox naturalism, there are arguably two traps to (...) avoid. If it becomes too liberal, we get: dualism or an ontological pluralism that is difficult to distinguish from a constructivism; or, in seeking to sidestep that metaphysical dilemma, there is sometimes an insistence on an overly neat methodological separation between description/understanding and explanation that is belied in practice (both scientific and philosophical). It is doubtful that such positions can legitimately claim to be naturalist in orientation, liberal or not. Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy avoids these traps, however, and it is thus a useful resource for contemporary work trying to navigate between scientific naturalism and non-naturalism. (shrink)

A *qualation* does not contain merely references to qualia, but contains actual qualia. There are many differences to equations. Qualations are irreducibly 1st-person and are required for the statement of a hard problem.

In the course of this article we discussed the method of applying philosophy to adolescents, we count on the added experience during the year we worked in a technical college. We have chosen to apply a method that goes beyond the traditional, in order to make the philosophical act more natural and close to the students. We discuss the effectiveness of the traditional while showing the results achieved in this period. We worked with young people from fifteen to nineteen years, (...) these had their focus to learn the agricultural technical part, our challenge was to take philosophy to a group of students who had no real interest in the material, even thought it was useless. Thinking about the difficulties that it was to bring philosophical thought to these young people, together with the problems that are already part of the school, the different social contexts of the students, we developed classes and contents in order to work all these factors. We want to make these young people not simply knowledgeable of the concepts, but rather to broaden their worldview and logical thinking. (shrink)