In this paper, I pay tribute to Jonathan Webber, one of the most dependable interpreters among recent Sartre scholars. I do so by challenging both him and Sartre on an issue that has long frustrated my work on Sartre. In short, Sartre contends that the For-itself’s desire to be Being-in-itself-for-itself is in bad faith. This raises two issues: Is this desire to be ens causa sui part of the ontological structure of the For-itself? If so, is bad faith an essential (...) part of the human being? I contend that the desire to be the In-itself-for-itself is, on Sartre’s premises, part of the ontological structure of an existing human being. As our original flight from freedom and “fundamental project,” this constitutes bad faith’s “coming into the world,” and remains part of Being-for-itself’s “natural” disposition to bad faith. (shrink)

En la presente investigación se reflexionará sobre la guerra y su naturaleza en el contexto del sistema filosófico de Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, estableciendo como su fundamento ontológico la categoría del ser-para-sí o autoafirmación, aquella necesidad de toda autoconciencia que pretende ser libre, y que se alcanza a través del proceso dialéctico del reconocimiento. Se contrastará esta concepción con la clásica noción de guerra justa planteada por Tomás de Aquino, examinando el lugar que la negatividad del mal tiene en ambos (...) sistemas metafísicos, con el fin de determinar si es posible entender la eticidad de ambas guerras en un mismo sentido. (shrink)

It is argued that in beginning ``being and nothingness'' with the absolute ontological distinction between the for-itself (pure nothingness) and the in-itself (pure being), sartre makes it impossible to understand how the phenomenological account of experience which comes later in the work could be correct. attention is paid almost entirely to the critique of sartre implicit in the chapter of merleau-ponty's ``phenomenology of perception'' titled 'the cogito'. merleau-ponty's divergence from sartre is seen to center around his critique of sartre on (...) the nature of the in-itself, the world, and the pre-reflective 'cogito'. (shrink)

The argument against need[Need: the belonging of the essence of mortals to, a belonging which is appropriated in the event.]Metaphysically, and t...

This paper challenges the widely held view that ‘good for’, ‘well-being’, and related terms express a distinctive evaluative concept of central importance for ethics and separate from ‘simply good’ as used by G. E. Moore and others. More specifically, it argues that there's no philosophically useful good-for or well-being concept that's neither merely descriptive in the sense of naturalistic nor reducible to ‘simply good’. The paper distinguishes two interpretations of the common claim that the value ‘good for’ expresses is distinctively (...) ‘subject-relative’. One concerns the ground of this value, or the properties that make something good for you; it says these must involve some relation to you. The other concerns the resulting value itself, or what supervenes on this ground; it says that too involves a relation. Neither interpretation, the paper argues, yields a significantly distinct evaluative concept. The ethically fundamental evaluative concept is just ‘simply good’. (shrink)

Is the Bible the unembellished Word of God or the product of human agency? There are different answers to that question. And they lie at the heart of this book's powerful exploration of the fraught ways in which money, race and power shape the story of Christianity in American public life. The authors' subject is the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC: arguably the latest example of a long line of white evangelical institutions aiming to amplify and promote a (...) religious, political, and moral agenda of their own. In their careful and compelling investigation, Jill Hicks-Keeton and Cavan Concannon disclose the ways in which the Museum's exhibits reinforce a particularized and partial interpretation of the Bible's meaning. Bringing to light the Museum's implicit messaging about scriptural provenance and audience, the authors reveal how the MOTB produces a version of the Bible that in essence authorizes a certain sort of white evangelical privilege; promotes a view of history aligned with that same evangelical aspiration; and above all protects a cohort of white evangelicals from critique. They show too how the Museum collapses vital conceptual distinctions between its own conservative vision of the Bible and 'The Bible' as a cultural icon. This revelatory volume above all confirms that scripture – for all the claims made for it that it speaks only divine truth – can in the end never be separated from human politics. (shrink)

Theories about the dawn of "principality of existence" or "principality of quiddity" stand in the realm of "confusion of term and concept fallacy". It is true that asalat as a term appeared for the first time in Mirdamad's works such as Taqwim al-Iman to mention the problem of principality of existence, but we should notice that its meaning as a concept can be tracked in Suhrawadi's works. If by the term asalat we mean having real extension, as it is used (...) in Mulla Sadra's work, we can, without any doubt, claim that Suhrawardi is among the proponents of principality of quiddity. Proposing the distinction of existence and quiddity by al-Faraby and Avicenna, some philosophers regarded this distinction as a real one. But Suhrawardi, by presenting about nine arguments, claimed that existence remains as a mental predicate and does not have any real extension. He made use of his theory in the realm of the Necessary Being through Itself. Avicenna had claimed that the essence of God is His Existence but Suhrawardi denied this Avicennan Peripatetic principle. He said that existence has no real extension and so the essence of God cannot be existence. He claimed that here iniyyah means indivisible life. It seems that Mulla Sadra's arguments for demonstrating the principality of existence posed versus Suhrawardi's arguments for the mental nature of existence. (shrink)

_This essay is a brief story of one comparative philosopher’s journey that led to an understanding of Daoism and how it can serve the world and not simply an indigenous Chinese minority community. __In Daoist contemplative experience, the practitioner does not gain some suprarational knowledge, but he/she is changed by the practices in which he/she engages. The person is remade, becoming like an infant or a newborn (_Daodejing 10, Zhuangzi 22_). The point is not that the experience leads to some (...) new cognitive truth about the world but rather what the experience itself consists of; that is, transformation. The Daoist practitioner acts/moves in a certain sort of way (i.e., as _wu-wei_), not according to something he/she knows, but by means of something he/she has become. Only a transformation of being can overcome the nature of humans to problematize life and tie themselves into knots. Daoism is designed to heal the central challenge of the will, and that is the ultimate remedy Daoist practice offers to global humanity. The way of Daoism does not rely on transcendent power or sources but on a person’s own ability to transform himself/herself by following its practices._. (shrink)

Shelly Kagan notices in a recent, influential paper how philosophers of well-being tend to neglect ill-being—the part of the theory of well-being that tells us what is bad in itself for subjects—and explains why we need to give it more attention. This paper does its part by addressing the question, If desire satisfaction is good, what is the corresponding bad? The two most discussed ill-being options for theories on which desire satisfaction is a basic good are the Frustration View and (...) the Aversion View. I aim to show that the Frustration View is more plausible than Kagan and others think; to introduce and evaluate two additional desire-oriented theories of ill-being worth considering, the Pluralist View and the Deflationary View; and to present a new line of argument for the Aversion View. (shrink)

In De trinitate X Augustine seeks to discover the nature of mind. As if recalling Plato’s Paradox of Inquiry, he wonders how such a search can be coherently understood. Rejecting the idea that the mind knows itself only indirectly, or partially, or by description, he insists that nothing is so present to the mind as itself. Yet it is open to the mind to perfect its knowledge of itself by coming to realize that its nature is to be only what (...) it is certain that it is. (shrink)

This essay compares the cultural context for The Courage to Be with the present American context and then assesses the extent to which Tillich’s analysis is helpful in understanding and/or addressing current challenges to faith and life. Two aspects of culture that need to be addressed today are 1) the importance of our human bodies in how we live and in how we relate to others and 2) issues of justice and power. People still experience the anxieties of fate and (...) death, doubt and meaninglessness, and guilt and condemnation, but today there is less emphasis on guilt. For some groups, a fourth anxiety of injustice and oppression dominates. American culture today is polarized politically and religiously over basic values, with people gaining courage through belonging to particular groups much more than through the courage to be as oneself. Transcendent courage participates in the power of being-itself and grounds all forms of courage, providing a religious meaning to courage and to life. (shrink)

This article aims to contextualize and problematize Alexandre Kojève’s Note on Hegel and Heidegger, written in 1936 and unpublished during his lifetime, which is being introduced into Russian-language scholarship. A translation of the Note is published in the same issue with the permission of the copyright holders. This paper provides a general introduction to Kojève’s philosophy, illustrates possible reading strategies for Kojève and the place of the translated Note in his corpus of the philosopher’s texts, and describes the philosophical and (...) historical circumstances of the text, namely that it was composed as an extension of a review on Tragische Existenz. Zur Philosophie Martin Heidegger by Alfred Delp written and published by Kojève that same year in Recherches philosophique. The article reconstructs the lines of reference that are essential to understanding Alexandre Kojève and provides a critique of certain statements. Finally, on the basis of an analysis of Kojève’s language, it offers a broader thesis on the epistemological problems of Kojève’s philosophy, the discovery of which led him to make a series of debatable statements in the philosophy of history (on the necessity for the philosopher to participate in the realization of the end of history), in anthropology (on the difference between people in their capacity to be philosophers or sages depending on a philosophical and religious attitude that is not entirely dependent on them), and in his decision to leave academia and turn to the ideological and diplomatic provision of economic integration of European states during the Cold War. (shrink)

The essay studies Aristotle’s critique of Parmenides in the light of the Heideggerian account of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics as an approach to being in terms of beings. Aristotle’s critique focuses on the presuppositions of the Parmenidean thesis of the unity of being. It is argued that a close study of the presuppositions of Aristotle’s own critique reveals an important difference between the Aristotelian metaphysical framework and the Parmenidean “protometaphysical” approach. The Parmenides fragments indicate being as such in the sense of the (...) pure, undifferentiated “is there” —as the intelligible accessibility of meaningful reality to thinking, prior to its articulation into determinate beings. For Aristotle, by contrast, “being itself” has no other plausible meaning than “being-something-determinate as such”, which itself remains equivocal. In this sense, Aristotle can indeed be said to conceive being in terms of beings, as the being-ness of determinate beings. (shrink)

The article provides an introduction to Heidegger's manuscript “The Argument against Need”. It comments on the nature of the manuscript, the circumstances of its composition, and its major philosop...

Hegel once wrote that Truth could not be expressed within a single sentence. His statement could surely be taken as justification for the length of his ...

Research into the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) aims to identify not just those brain areas that are NCC, but also those that are not. In the received method for ruling out a brain area from being an NCC, this is accomplished by showing a brain area’s content to be consistently absent from subjects’ reports about what they are experiencing. This paper points out how this same absence can be used to infer that the brain area’s content is cognitively inaccessible, (...) in which case we would expect its content to be absent from subjects’ reports whether its content is (phenomenally) conscious or not. If so, such reports cannot count as evidence against that brain area being an NCC, and the received method fails. An alternative method (one suggested in Block, 2007) is considered. (shrink)

Famously, in his seminal After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux charges Heidegger with what he classifies as strong correlationism. In general,...

In the topological semantics for modal logic, S4 is well-known to be complete for the rational line, for the real line, and for Cantor space: these are special cases of S4’s completeness for any dense-in-itself metric space. The construction used to prove completeness can be slightly amended to show that S4 is not only complete, but also strongly complete, for the rational line. But no similarly easy amendment is available for the real line or for Cantor space and the question (...) of strong completeness for these spaces has remained open, together with the more general question of strong completeness for any dense-in-itself metric space. In this paper, we prove that S4 is strongly complete for any dense-in-itself metric space. (shrink)

The principle of informed consent obligates physicians to explain possible side effects when prescribing medications. This disclosure may itself induce adverse effects through expectancy mechanisms known as nocebo effects, contradicting the principle of nonmaleficence. Rigorous research suggests that providing patients with a detailed enumeration of every possible adverse event—especially subjective self-appraised symptoms—can actually increase side effects. Describing one version of what might happen (clinical “facts”) may actually create outcomes that are different from what would have happened without this information (another (...) version of “facts”). This essay argues that the perceived tension between balancing informed consent with nonmaleficence might be resolved by recognizing that adverse effects have no clear black or white “truth.” This essay suggests a pragmatic approach for providers to minimize nocebo responses while still maintaining patient autonomy through “contextualized informed consent,” which takes into account possible side effects, the patient being treated, and the particular diagnosis involved. (shrink)

This article explores the defense Indian Buddhist texts make in support of their conceptions of lives that are good for an individual. This defense occurs, largely, through their analysis of ordinary experience as being saturated by subtle forms of suffering . I begin by explicating the most influential of the Buddhist taxonomies of suffering: the threefold division into explicit suffering , the suffering of change , and conditioned suffering . Next, I sketch the three theories of welfare that have been (...) most influential in contemporary ethical theory. I then argue that Buddhist texts underdetermine which of these theories would have been accepted by ancient Indian Buddhists. Nevertheless, Buddhist ideas about suffering narrow the shape any acceptable theory of welfare may take. In my conclusion, I argue that this narrowing process itself is enough to reconstruct a philosophical defense of the forms of life endorsed in Buddhist texts. (shrink)

From its Presocratic beginnings, Western philosophy concerned itself with a quest for unity both in terms of the systematization of knowledge and as a metaphysical search for a unity of being—two trends that can be regarded as converging and culminating in Hegel’s system of absolute idealism. Since Hegel, however, the philosophical quest for unity has become increasingly problematic. Jussi Backman returns to that question in this book, examining the place of the unity of being in the work of Heidegger. Backman (...) sketches a consistent picture of Heidegger as a thinker of unity who throughout his career in different ways attempted to come to terms with both Parmenides’s and Aristotle’s fundamental questions concerning the singularity or multiplicity of being—attempting to do so, however, in a “postmetaphysical” manner rooted in rather than above and beyond particular, situated beings. Through his analysis, Backman offers a new way of understanding the basic continuity of Heidegger’s philosophical project and the interconnectedness of such key Heideggerian concepts as ecstatic temporality, the ontological difference, the turn (Kehre), the event (Ereignis), the fourfold (Geviert), and the analysis of modern technology. (shrink)

SmartData is a research program to develop web-based intelligent agents that will perform two tasks: securely store an individual’s personal and/or proprietary data, and protect the privacy and security of the data by only disclosing it in accordance with instructions authorized by the data subject. The vision consists of a web-based SmartData agent that would serve as an individual’s proxy in cyberspace to protect their personal or proprietary data. The SmartData agent (which ‘houses’ the data and its permitted uses) would (...) be transmitted to, or stored in a database, not the personal data itself. In effect, there would be no personal or proprietary raw data out in the open—it would instead be housed within a SmartData agent, much like we humans carry information in our heads; extending the analogy, it would be the human-like clone that would be transmitted or stored, not the raw data. The binary string representative of a SmartData agent would be located in local or central databases. Organizations requiring access to any of the data resident within the agent would query it once it had been activated. In this paper, we provide a preliminary overview of the SmartData concept, and describe the associated research and development that must be conducted in order to actualize this vision. (shrink)

The current research tested the idea that it is the cultural fit of emotions, rather than certain emotions per se, that predicts psychological well-being. We reasoned that emotional fit in the domains of life that afford the realization of central cultural mandates would be particularly important to psychological well-being. We tested this hypothesis with samples from three cultural contexts that are known to differ with respect to their main cultural mandates: a European American ( N = 30), a Korean ( (...) N = 80), and a Belgian sample ( N = 266). Cultural fit was measured by comparing an individual’s patterns of emotions to the average cultural pattern for the same type of situation on the Emotional Patterns Questionnaire ( De Leersnyder et al., 2011 ). Consistent with our hypothesis, we found evidence for “universality without uniformity”: in each sample, psychological well-being was associated with emotional fit in the domain that was key to the cultural mandate. However, cultures varied with regard to the particular domain involved. Psychological well-being was predicted by emotional fit (a) in autonomy-promoting situations at work in the U.S., (b) in relatedness-promoting situations at home in Korea, and (c) in both autonomy-promoting and relatedness-promoting situations in Belgium. These findings show that the experience of culturally appropriate patterns of emotions contributes to psychological well-being. One interpretation is that experiencing appropriate emotions is itself a realization of the cultural mandates. (shrink)

The present article aims to utilize some insights from behavioral and happiness economics to discuss the consequences that the introduction of an unconditional basic income to cope with technological unemployment may hold for well-being. The impact of 21st-century technological progress on employment has only just begun to make itself felt and it will take time to realize its full extent. However, the main innovation is already common knowledge: robots are finding their way into the production process. According to several recent (...) contributions, the phenomenon is radically different from past technological revolutions and could generate high levels of unemployment, calling for innovative redistributive public policies. The present article, building on Keynes’ short essay and referring to some of the principles and models of behavioral and happiness economics, focuses on the best-known of these policies, namely provision of an unconditional basic income. A series of factors – loss aversion and hedonic adaptation, the impossibility of escalating to higher-grade consumption behaviors, social interaction in the form of active and passive envy, loss of self-esteem and social stigma – are all likely to have a negative impact on well-being if an unconditional basic income that remains unchanging over time is implemented. A policy mix combining a rising basic income with other measures is therefore proposed. (shrink)

In this article, I explore the mythic narratives of the Yoruba-derived tradition of Candomblé Nagô to discern the attributes of its Supreme Being. I introduce Candomblé, offering an overview of its central beliefs and practices, and then present theological perspectives on the Supreme Being in African Traditional Religion as a basis for comparison with the myths I will examine. I consider the primary creation myths of Candomblé, emphasizing references to the tradition's Supreme Being and, analysing these myths, I argue that (...) Candomblé's Supreme Being, as depicted in these narratives, amounts to a limited god. This portrayal accounts for the absence of a problem of evil within the tradition. It suggests the moral ambivalence of Candomblé's Supreme Being and other high deities, as well as the world itself. This exploration sheds light on a lesser-explored tradition and its unique approach to philosophical dilemmas, distinct from the predominantly theistic framework of most philosophy of religion, and evinces that philosophizing through immersion in myths should involve appreciating the complexities and richness inherent in these forms of life, free from the imposition of external assumptions or biases. (shrink)

How can we make businesspeople more concerned about the truth of the information they spread or allow to circulate? In this age of ‘fake news’, ‘business bullshit’ and ‘post-truth,’ the issue is of the utmost importance, especially for business trustworthiness in the internet economy. The issue is related to a kind of epistemic responsibility, that consists in accounting for one’s own epistemic wrongdoings, such as making a third party believe something false. Despite growing interest in epistemic misbehavior in the literature (...) of business ethics, the question of epistemic responsibility has been neglected. The aim of this paper is therefore to address this gap, by proposing a notion of epistemic responsibility for business, that may help regulate undesirable epistemic behavior, such as the spreading of false information. To define this notion of epistemic responsibility, I have introduced the concept of epistemic fault. Being epistemically responsible consists in being disposed to account for alleged epistemic faults. This notion of epistemic fault relies on a theoretical framework which combines a typology of eight ‘epistemic values’, a normative stance regarding these values, and a dispositional approach to epistemic virtues and vices. I use this theoretical framework to integrate the various accounts of epistemic virtues and vices found in the literature into a single explanatory scheme. Combined with the notion of epistemic responsibility itself, such an integrative framework should facilitate the practical application of an operational epistemic ethics in business, i.e., the development of virtuous epistemic practices. (shrink)

This text seeks to situate Being and Time in the line of the ancient philosophical tradition of care for self (epiméleia heautou). After a brief description of the main features of this tradition as portrayed by Michel Foucault and Pierre Hadot, the author presents the elements of Being in Time in favour and those against such a link. Her hypothesis appears to encounter a major objection in the explicit refusal of Heidegger to speak of Selbstsorge. But an attentive examination of (...) the meaning of this reserve (the rejection of selfhood as a transparent and introspective relationship of the soul to itself) makes it in reality possible to show Heidegger to be one of the most consequent philosophers in the tradition of care for the soul. Indeed, by highlighting the constitutive link between selfhood and care, Heidegger shows the very condition of possibility of the tradition of care for the soul: that the self is not given as a thing, but may contribute to its own transformation through a specific form of care. (shrink)

The presence of a human being/organism—a living human ‘whole’, with the defining tendency to promote its own welfare—has value in itself, as do the functions which compose it. Life is inseparable from health, since without some degree of healthy functionality the living whole would not exist. The value of life differs both within a single life and between lives. As with any other form of human flourishing, the value of life-and-health must be distinguished from the moral importance of human beings: (...) less fulfilled means not less important morally, but more in need of being fulfilled. That said, to say that life and health has value is not to say exactly what—if anything—that value requires by way of active promotion at a given time. Many factors must be taken into account in making health care decisions, even if the worth of all lives, and the dignity of all human beings, must in every case be acknowledged. (shrink)

James T. Hong’s experimental documentary, The Denazification of MH is neither anapology for Heidegger’s involvement with National Socialism nor a condemnation of thatinvolvement. Rather, the film is a critical philosophical confrontation with Heidegger’s thought and the issue of his involvement withNational Socialism. The film addresses the perennial concern as old as philosophy itself: therelationship between the philosopher’s life and his philosophy. While the film does notadopt a definitive position regarding Heidegger, Nazism, and the issue of personalresponsibility, it does suggest an (...) affirmative response to the question posed by bothLevinas and Blanchot regarding the possibility of philosophizing after Auschwitz.Considering Heidegger’s influence on contemporary philosophy and literary studies,inspiring such films as The Denazification of MH and The Ister , it appears as though it is not only possible, but necessary, to carefully andcritically approach Heidegger in the effort to continue to philosophize in the wake of themost catastrophic event of the 20thcentury, the Holocaust. In his thoroughly researched biography of Martin Heidegger, Rudiger Strafaski states the following regarding thepotential of Heidegger himself to do philosophy in the wake of the German death camps, amatter about which Heidegger remained conspicuously silent. (shrink)

Uriah Kriegel presents a rich exploration of the philosophy of the great nineteenth-century thinker Franz Brentano. He locates Brentano at the crossroads where the Anglo-American and continental European philosophical traditions diverged. At the centre of this account of Brentano's philosophy is the connection between mind and reality. Kriegel aims to develop Brentano's central ideas where they are overly programmatic or do not take into account philosophical developments that have taken place since Brentano's death a century ago; and to offer a (...) partial defense of Brentano's system as quite plausible and in any case extraordinarily creative and thought-provoking. Brentano's system grounds a complete metaphysics and value theory in a well-developed philosophy of mind, and accordingly the book is divided into three parts, devoted to Brentano's philosophy of mind, his metaphysics, and his moral philosophy. The book's fundamental ambition is to show how Brentano combines the clarity and precision of the analytic philosopher with the sweeping vision of the continental philosopher. Brentano pays careful attention to important distinctions, conscientiously defines key notions, presents precise arguments for his claims, judiciously considers potential objections, and in general proceeds very methodically - yet he does so not as an end in itself, but as a means only. His end is the crafting of a grand philosophical system in the classical sense, attempting to produce nothing less than a unified theory of the true, the good, and the beautiful. (shrink)

People often think there are moral duties that hold irrespective of the consequences, until those consequences exceed some threshold level – that we shouldn’t kill innocent people in order to produce the best consequences, for example, except when those consequences involve saving millions of lives. This view is known as “threshold deontology.” While clearly controversial, threshold deontology has significant appeal. But it has proven quite difficult to provide a non-ad hoc justification for it. This chapter develops a new justification, showing (...) that acting like a threshold deontologist is a good strategy for being moral, given our uncertainty and imperfect moral knowledge. And failing to use good strategies for being moral is, itself, morally bad. (shrink)

The ‘Introduction’ to Naturrecht Feyerabend is the transcript of a lecture Kant held at the very time he began writing the Groundwork. It contains the first securely dated occurrence of the term ‘autonomy’ (and its first occurrence in the context of moral philosophy) in Kant’s work. It argues that moral imperatives are categorical and asks how they are possible. Kant’s attempts to answer this question circle around the idea that freedom must be ‘a law to itself’ and lead him to (...) the claim that the form of universal lawfulness, independently of any inclination, can determine the will. Thus various central elements of the Groundwork conception of autonomy are already present in this text. Other elements, most notably the universal law formulation of the categorical imperative and the emphasis on reason as both source and addressee of moral commands, are conspicuously absent. Following a reconstruction of Kant’s overall argument for autonomy of the will in the notes, the paper offers a detailed interpretation of central passages concerning autonomy in order to identify both similarities and differences between the conceptions of autonomy in the ‘Introduction’ and in the Groundwork. (shrink)

Figuratively speaking, rising to its feet and becoming more aware of itself, one way or another tried to find the answer to the question: "What is this world around?", on this Earth, what is its mission and vocation? " Over the centuries, it became more and more obvious: the first of these questions should be answered by science, the second by religion.

Digitalization reveals the world in new varieties and forms. This power to unveil not only transforms human outreach and actions, but also changes our conceptions; about whom we are, about our uses and about human horizons for sense-making. In this paper, I explore experience design and the aesthetic turn in contemporary research in human–computer interaction and interaction design. This rather recent interest in aesthetic experience is in my view a move away from a view of digitalization as instances of objects (...) aligned in networks, with certain features, qualities and properties, towards an understanding of digitalization as a relation to the world, to itself, and to what it means to be human (e.g. Technology and the character of contemporary life. A philosophical inquiry. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1984, Holding on to reality. The nature of information at the turn of the millennium. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999; Questioning technology. Routledge, New York, 1999; The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper and Row, New York, 1977; Technology and the lifeworld, from garden to earth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1990). As such my attempt in this text is to outline a conceptual account concerning what it might mean to designate digitalization as experienced rather than as what we traditionally think of it—as a cause of what we perceive. The paper is based on some previous work suggesting that a focus on the beauty of digitalization (i.e. the beast) entails the possibility to investigate ambiguous meanings of digitalization, meanings that are intrinsic to digitalization but have so far received little or no attention. My suggestion is that there are aesthetic and/or sublime dimensions inherent in digitalization that involves the realization of meaning that are becoming increasingly important in both use and design of digital materials. Hence, the particular focus on aesthetics as implied by the title of this text refers to a pervasive quality harbouring meaning that through a phenomenological lens could be regarded as the material basis of digitalization. The paper concludes that it is crucial to conduct more thorough studies of the relationship between aesthetics and digitalization if we are truly interested in exploring the potential of digitalization in our lives. (shrink)

According to the author, psychoanalytic theory and practice – which discloses ‘the interminable falsity of the human subject’s belief in the mastery of its own mental life’ – is in part responsible for the coming of the postmodern era. In this title, originally published in 1993, Barratt examines the role of psychoanalysis in what he sees as the crisis of modernism, shows why the modernist position – what he calls the ‘modern episteme’ – is failing, and proposes that psychoanalysis should (...) redefine itself as a postmodern method. In Barratt’s innovative account of psychoanalysis, which focuses on the significance of the free-associative process, Freud’s discovery of the repressed unconscious leads to a claim that is basic to postmodern ideas: ‘that all thinking and speaking, the production and reproduction of psychic reality, is inherently dynamic, polysemous, and contradictorious.’ He argues that subsequent attempts to ‘normalize and systematize’ psychoanalysis are reactionary and antipsychoanalytic efforts to salvage the modern episteme that psychoanalysis itself calls into question. (shrink)

In section 1, I develop epistemic communism, my view of the function of epistemically evaluative terms such as ‘rational’. The function is to support the coordination of our belief-forming rules, which in turn supports the reliable acquisition of beliefs through testimony. This view is motivated by the existence of valid inferences that we hesitate to call rational. I defend the view against the worry that it fails to account for a function of evaluations within first-personal deliberation. In the rest of (...) the paper, I then argue, on the basis of epistemic communism, for a view about rationality itself. I set up the argument in section 2 by saying what a theory of rational deduction is supposed to do. I claim that such a theory would provide a necessary, sufficient, and explanatorily unifying condition for being a rational rule for inferring deductive consequences. I argue in section 3 that, given epistemic communism and the conventionality that it entails, there is no such theory. Nothing explains why certain rules for deductive reasoning are rational. (shrink)

This book is about Gottlob Frege. The guiding thought is that Frege left philosophy a legacy which has been largely ignored, not least of all by his admirers. In order of logical priority, Frege's first concern was to locate the law-like behaviour of truths and falsehoods merely by virtue of their being such. The just-mentioned legacy lies in his first step towards that goal. It consists in winnowing the 'logical' from the 'psychological', the business of being true as such from (...) that of holding, or holding forth as true-and to keep these separate. A first lesson: what belongs to what is thus abstracted cannot be read directly back into what it was abstracted from. This is what is most widely ignored. The book is divided in three parts. The first presents Frege's general picture of the business of being true-of what belongs to the abstraction. The second is primarily concerned with steps Frege takes between 1891 and 1895, to pave the way for what became, after logic itself, his central project, that whose attempted carrying out is contained in Grundgesetze I. The third part concerns views of logic, truth, the inexorableness of logic, which Frege eventually came to hold, and what it might be to study 'The Mind' as opposed to minds. (shrink)

Today, the earth is an interconnected globe humming with electronic transmissions-a chattering planet nestled in the provident silence of space. The ethical question is whether this is contributing to authentic human development and helping individuals and peoples to be true to their transcendent destiny. The new media are powerful tools for education, cultural enrichment, commercial activity, political participation, intercultural dialogue and understanding. They also can serve the cause of religion. Yet the new information technology needs to be informed and guided (...) by solidarity in the service of the common good bridging the digital divide within and among nations. The value-laden message of Western secular culture to people and traditional societies in many cases ill-prepared to evaluate it leads to widespread crisis, for example, in regard to marriage and family life. This technology can be a means for solving human problems, promoting the integral development of persons, creating a world governed by justice, peace, and love. It also can help men and women in their age-old search for self-understanding. Like today's world itself, the world of media, including the Internet, has been brought by Christ, inchoately yet truly, within the boundaries of the kingdom of God and placed in service to the word of salvation. (shrink)

Both Millikan’s brand of naturalistic analytic philosophy and Husserlian phenomenology have held on to teleological notions, despite their being out of favor in mainstream Western philosophy for most of the twentieth century. Both traditions have recognized the need for teleology in order to adequately account for intentionality, the need to adequately account for intentionality in order to adequately account for meaning, and the need for an adequate theory of meaning in order to precisely and consistently describe the world and life. (...) The stark differences between their accounts of these fundamental concepts stem from radically different conceptions of the world, the natural and life. I argue that Millikan’s teleosemantic approach relies on a teleology of determination by means of the lawfulness of nature that leaves no room for the freedom of self-determination, for reason, or for experience—for the reality of lived human life. In contrast to Millikan’s account, Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology situates teleology as a function of reason and first-personal experience, part of an extended account of intentionality and meaning according to which the full range of our making sense of the world is conceived as a rational activity that is itself a part of that world, and not an unnatural activity to be separated from it. While Husserl’s account of these issues is indeed symptomatic of what Millikan calls “meaning rationalism,” I argue that it is immune to the sorts of problems she claims will plague any such account, since these problems arise only against the background of a set of presuppositions about intentionality that Husserl does not share. Husserl’s position can itself be understood to be within the bounds of a suitably liberal conception of naturalism, and interpreting him in this way it has the added benefit—contra Millikan—of not divorcing teleology from reason, the latter construed as our first-personal striving to make sense of the world as we experience it—of life. (shrink)

The chapter on temporality in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception , is situated in a section titled, “Being-for-Itself and Being-in-the-World.” As such, Merleau-Ponty’s task in the chapter on temporality is to bring these two positions together, in other words, to articulate the manner in which time links the cogito (Being-for-Itself) with freedom (Being-in-the-World). To accomplish this, Merleau-Ponty proposes a subject located at the junction of the for-itself and the in-itself, a subject which has an exterior that makes it possible for others (...) to have an interior. This analysis will take Merleau-Ponty to an impasse where, on the one hand, there appears to be an objective world and the time of objects in that world, and on the other, there is the subject’s notion of events and the passing of time. Referring to Bergson’s notion of time, this essay proposes that there must be a temporal interval between perception, feeling and action in order for the subject to be “temporal by means of an inner necessity,” as Merleau-Ponty prescribes. (shrink)

This paper addresses the question of whether there is a proper analogy of being according to both meaning and being. I disagree with Ralph McInerny’s understanding of how things are named through concepts and argue that McInerny’s account does not allow for the thing represented by the name to be known in itself. In his understanding of analogy, only ideas of things may be known. This results in a wholesale inability to name things at all and thereby forces McInerny to (...) relegate naming to a purely logical concern. As a consequence, for McInerny, since naming becomes only a logical concern, being itself cannot be known as analogous according to being and meaning since naming only involves the naming of ideas, not of things. (shrink)

Arthur Danto’s analytic theory of art relies on a form of artistic interpretation that requires access to the art theoretical concepts of the artworld, ‘an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an artworld’. Art, in what Danto refers to as post-history, has become theoretical, yet it is here contended that his explanation of the artist’s creative style lacks a theoretical dimension. This article examines Danto’s account of style in light of the role the artistic metaphor (...) plays in the interpretation of the artwork, arguing that it is unable to account for the metaphorical power he claims is embedded within the work of art. An artist’s style issues from a unique perspective, the way an artist inhabits a specific spot in history. Though each person has such a perspective, when applied aesthetically, it is the key to the articulation of a unique historical meaning in the work of art. At the same time, artists’ knowledge of their contribution remains cut off from this perspective, for they are unaware of their self-manifestation of the historical concept of style. This article makes the case that Danto’s notion of style, based on Sartre’s notion of being-for-itself, cannot fulfil the role he allots it in his theory because, at some level, artists must apprehend their style to create a work of art capable of functioning critically as a countertext. It is only through the apprehension of their style, and dialogical activity that takes place between the artist and the beholders, that the unseen body of artworld theory is formed. Without this, when oriented to the aesthetic, style provides no concept or theory for the mind to behold. This article presents an alternative approach to style that recognizes the role of theory in the creation of metaphor, which would circumvent this problem. (shrink)

Drawing on Sartre's account of violence, I argue that not only is bad faith inevitable in practice, but a limited bad faith is necessary for authenticity. Although violating the freedom of others is bad faith, it is impossible to never violate anyone's freedom. Moreover, and more fundamentally, the ontological structure of the foritself entails that the for-itself can only be authentic in the mode of not being authentic. Seeking to altogether avoid bad faith is bad faith, for it is an (...) attempt to constitute oneself as essentially authentic, yet the for-itself has no preexisting essence. By recognizing one's complete responsibility for choosing bad faith, however, one limits one's bad faith. This limited bad faith is in fact necessary to authenticity, which is a project lived out in concrete situations and not a categorical moral law that forbids bad faith. (shrink)

Management of meaning inside organizations has been an enduring issue in organization studies. Issues relating to commitment and control through the meaning-making mechanisms have been studied by organization culture theorists for sometime now. However, rapidly changing dynamics of the business environment lend these issues a critical salience today. Two factors of this dynamic context are particularly noteworthy. Firstly, a redefinition of the long-standing employment relationship—loyalty no longer being traded for lifelong employment—has led management to look for alternative sources of gaining (...) commitment from their employees. Second, several factors—socio-cultural, organizational and individual—have led the employees today to explore issues relating to meaning and purpose in their workplaces. Labelled variously by different scholars, the most widely accepted term for this growing movement is ‘Spirituality at Work’. In this article we link the two factors to present a framework wherein the emergence of an issue from the private individual domain to the organizational is seen as having the potential of answering concerns of eliciting commitment from employees in a turbulent environment. However, the SAW movement is accompanied by vigorous debates about the concept itself and on how it is to be studied. In the course of this article we present the central conceptual debates that have characterized the SAW discourse to emerge with three definitional themes to understand and study SAW, and then argue for utilizing the person–organization fit lens to study SAW. We end with a conceptual framework that would enable researchers to make a comprehensive study of the elusive phenomenon of SAW. (shrink)

The paper presents a truth-maker semantics for Strict/Tolerant Logic (ST), which is the currently most popular logic among advocates of the non-transitive approach to paradoxes. Besides being interesting in itself, the truth-maker presentation of ST offers a new perspective on the recently discovered hierarchy of meta-inferences that, according to some, generalizes the idea behind ST. While fascinating from a mathematical perspective, there is no agreement on the philosophical significance of this hierarchy. I aim to show that there is no clear (...) philosophical significance of meta-inferences above the first level. (shrink)

One of the outstanding achievements of recent cosmology has been to offer some prospect of a unified explanation of temporal asymmetry. The explanation is in two main parts, and runs something like this. First, the various asymmetries we observe are all thermodynamic in origin – all products of the fact that we live in an epoch in which the universe is far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Second, this thermodynamic disequilibrium is associated with the condition of the universe very soon after the (...) Big Bang – the essential point being that in the rapidly expanding universe of the time, gravity is able to create organisation much faster than other processes can destroy it. The stars, galaxies and other forms of organisation we find in the present universe are all products of this early period. Such concentrated energy sources themselves make possible the kinds of asymmetric phenomena with which we are most familiar, such as life itself. If this explanation proves to be right it will surely rank as one of the most impressive achievements in the whole of natural philosophy. Where else do we find this breathtaking scale, this extraordinary conjunction of fundamental physics, the first moments of Creation, the possibility of life and the basic character of human experience? And it is very much a contemporary achievement: even if its roots go back on one side to the investigation of time asymmetry in nineteenth century statistical mechanics, and on the other to Hubble's discovery in the 1920's of the expansion of the universe, the body of the picture has only begun to be filled in in the last twenty or thirty years. This fascinating story has recently been given some well-deserved publicity in Stephen Hawking's bestseller, A Brief History of Time – well-deserved, not least, because Hawking himself is responsible for a considerable part of the story as it presently stands. (shrink)