Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 7, Page 1035-1053, September 2022. The article aspires to cast light on aspects of the radical character of Walter Benjamin’s work, that, sadly, have not, to date, provoked much discussion in the literature on him. The main issue it elaborates is his dialectic between fetishized, reified social form, and content-essence, which forms the core of the concept of critique in his philosophy. In Benjamin’s case, the concept of illusion, or, as the notion is (...) described in his texts, of phantasmagoria, or of the image, holds a special gravity that comes to the fore if it is connected not only to commodity fetishism but also to the fetishism of social forms as a process, and the concept of cracks in capitalism. (shrink)

The section dealing with the "phenomenology of consciousness" is finally dominated by the question, How does consciousness become self-consciousness, or how does consciousness become conscious that it is self-consciousness? This assertion, however, that consciousness is self-consciousness, is a central teaching of modern philosophy since Descartes. To this extent, Hegel’s idea of phenomenology lies in the Cartesian line. Contemporary parallels show how much this is the case, especially the quite unknown book of Sinclair, the friend of Hölderlin and Hegel, which deals (...) with the Sphragis in the Rhein hymn, and is entitled Truth and Certitude. The work attempts, beginning quite explicitly with the Cartesian concept cogito me cogitare, to lead one along the path from certitude to truth in two rather similar fashions, through Fichte, and, almost contemporaneously, in Hegel. (shrink)

I shall suggest in this paper that this "inverted world" is exactly that: an absurd position. This is not to say that it is to be ignored or condemned as "fantastic," but rather that its importance and intelligibility lay in its very absurdity, in its appearance as an unintelligible inversion of what previously was taken to constitute the intelligibility of the world of appearance. More precisely, I shall suggest that this inverted world is a misunderstanding (...) and perversion of the conclusion to which we should have been brought at this point in the Phenomenology. It is Hegel's intention, underscored by the conditional rather than indicative construction of this section, that we see this misunderstanding as a misunderstanding. When on the other hand the inversion is correctly understood, it brings to the phenomenological "we" undergoing the Bildungsprozess of the Phenomenology of Spirit the explicit realization that consciousness is not merely finite intentionality, but as such is infinite. Consciousness is self-consciousness, consciousness limited by nothing but itself. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss an interpretation of Hegel's concept of the “Inverted World”, which is present in the final part of the chapter on Force and Understanding in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Other than my own reading of the chapter, I also summarize the three most important interpretations of the verkehrte Welt from the last century: those of Jean Hyppolite, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Joseph Flay. I have chosen these three due to the typology of interpretation within them: (...) the first one adopts a Christian reading of Hegel, the second a Hellenistic phenomenological interpretation, and the last one, which is closest to the interpretation I also propose, a reading consistent with the thought of Immanuel Kant. The article ends with a possible interpretation of Hegel's verkehrte Welt through Kant's “Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding” from his Critique of Pure Reason, where I argue that Kant's fundamental faculty of imagination and its object, schemata, play the same role in Kant's system that Hegel's verkehrte Welt does in the development of natural consciousness. (shrink)

Proponents of the hard problem of consciousness argue that the zombie and inverted spectrum thought experiments demonstrate that consciousness cannot be physical. They present scenarios designed to demonstrate that it is conceivable that a physical replica of someone can have radically different or no conscious experiences, that such an experience-less replica is possible and therefore that materialism is false. I will argue that once one understands the limitations that the physics of this world puts on cognitive systems, zombies (...) and the inverted spectrum are not conceivable. (shrink)

Proponents of the hard problem of consciousness argue that the zombie and inverted spectrum thought experiments demonstrate that consciousness cannot be physical. They present scenarios designed to demonstrate that it is conceivable that a physical replica of someone can have radically different or no conscious experiences, that such an experience-less replica is possible and therefore that materialism is false. I will argue that once one understands the limitations that the physics of this world puts on cognitive systems, zombies (...) and the inverted spectrum are not conceivable. (shrink)

Palmer's attempt to dust off Locke's construct of “inverted spectrum” is discussed here to examine its plausibility. Perceptual inversion could be fulfilled by adopting the notion of “inverted trichromacy” rather than by the proposed existence of “red-green reversed trichromats.” Although the former alternative conforms to a hypothetical world of vampires, it fails to conform to the realities of genetics and neuroscience.

The conditions of hunting and gathering through which one line of primates evolved into humans form the basis of what I term the wild self, a self marked by developmental needs of prolonged human neoteny and by deep attunement to the profusion of communicative signs of instinctive intelligence in which relatively “unmatured” hominids found themselves immersed. The passionate attunement to, and inquiry into, earth-drama, in tracking, hunting, foraging, rhythming, singing, and other arts/sciences, provided the trail to becoming human, and provide (...) external grammatical structures that became the basis of human language and animate mind. I outline my new philosophy of history as a progress in precision, counteracted by a regressive contraction of mind. The progress associated with history since the beginning of agriculturally-based civilizations can be considered as a regressive contraction from animate mind of our hunter-gatherer evolutionary past, to anthropocentric mind, and finally to the ghost in the machine world-view of mechanico-centric mind. Contemporary consumption culture represents an inversion of the original conditions of the human self, and indeed, targets aspects of developmental neoteny to condition conformity to its rational-mechanical system imperatives. (shrink)

Sociology originated in the mid-nineteenth century from a new confidence in the power of science to explain the world on a mathematical foundation. Both mathematics and sociology transformed over the ensuing century, inverting the hierarchical relationship from sociology as a mathematics-based science of complex human configurations to mathematics as a complex science based on social institutions. That is, where sociology began as the hard case for mathematics, it became possible to see mathematics as the hard case for sociology. In (...) this light, we examine a number of motivations and provocations for the sociology of mathematics, from language and social cognition to Marxist and materialist skepticism of ideology, and sample the evidence and arguments brought to bear on the sociology of mathematics at a range of scales. (shrink)

The world perceived by a person undergoing vision without inversion of the retinal image has traditionally been described as inverted. Drawing on the philosophical work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and the empirical research of Hubert Dolezal, I argue that this description is more reflective of a representationist conception of vision than of actual visual experience. The world initially perceived in vision without inversion of the retinal image is better described as lacking in lived significance rather than inverted; (...) vision without inversion of the retinal image affects the very content of the perceived world, including, importantly, its expressions and conducts, and not merely the orientation of this content. Moreover, I argue that the enactive approach, rather than a representationist approach, is best able to account for the perception of the world, after prolonged vision without inversion of the retinal image, as both normal and upright, yet still different from the world seen previously. Finally, in their attention to the perception of other people’s facial expressions, I argue that Merleau-Ponty and Dolezal draw out the existential significance of the enactive approach. In encountering another person, the most pressing task is generally not to observe this person’s features but, instead, to engage with this person’s expressions. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Relativistic Content The Argument from Primitive Colors The Argument from the Inverted Spectrum The Argument from Dual Looks The Argument from Duplication Conclusion References.

Scientific realists argue that a good track record of multi-agent, and multiple method, validation of empirical claims is itself evidence that those claims, at least partially and approximately, reflect ways nature actually is independent of the ways we conceptualize it. Constructivists contend that successes in validating empirical claims only suffice to establish that our ways of modelling the world, our “constructions,” are useful and adequate for beings like us. This essay presents a thought experiment in which beings like us (...) intersubjectively validate claims about properties of particular things in nature under conditions in which those beings have profoundly different personal phenomenological experiences of those properties. I submit that the thought experiment scenario parallels our actual situation, and argue that this shows that successes in intersubjectively validating empirical claims are indeed enough to claim victory for the realist. More specifically, I champion a variation of realism that marries Ronald Giere’s brand of ‘perspectival realism’ with Philip Kitcher’s ‘real realism,’ and posits that causal relations between ourselves and properties instantiated in nature ground our references to the relevant properties even though our conceptions of them are perspective relative. (shrink)

How "red", "green" were defined? Through analyzing how two children with congenitally inverted color sensations corresponding to red flags and green grass accept their grand mothers’ teaching about colors, the paper get opposite conclusions against logical empiricism. The “red” and “green” and other names of properties of objects were defined by objective physical properties (or together with behavior, such as in defining “beauty”), instead our sensations. So language directly points to things in themselves passing through sensations and presentative (...) class='Hi'>world. It is not that things in themselves are unknowable, but that sensations and presentative world cannot be exactly described by daily language. (shrink)

Everyone can agree that modern Westerners live in a secular age. That the process of "disenchantment" which led to this age constituted an epistemic loss, that it was not just a rejection of false beliefs but a real alteration in the way the world is experienced, has been shown by previous scholarship, notably that of Charles Taylor. This paper makes the case that this disenchantment was not only a latent possibility from the earliest interactions of Christianity with pre-Christian Roman (...) society, but developed from theological and political developments unique to Western Christendom. In so doing, it builds on the work of Taylor as well as that of Michael Allen Gillespie, who has written about the theological origins of modernity. It also provides a brief illustration of a recurrence, within the secular epistemic frame, of the same distinct features Christianity demonstrated in Rome which first made that frame possible. (shrink)

THERE are several answers in Aquinas to the question, what is the ground of the world's intelligibility. The fullest- answer is contained by the account of creation and expressed in the doctrine of divine Ideas. I would like to trace the lines of that doctrine in Aquinas's corpus as a means of showing how an account of creation at once clarifies and inverts the analysis of natural intelligibility.

If recent exploratory traditions tap into evolved psychological dispositions to explore, wouldn't humans be expected to have drawn on such dispositions long before the written word? Trickster oral traditions fill this role in all levels of society, affluence, and on all continents, inverting the boundaries of social worlds and those between humans and animals, fostering cultural innovation.

Sylvia Wynter discusses Eurocentric thought as a closed cognitive order. In this article, Mijke van der Drift interrogates this cognitive closure as a style of thought that is intertwined with institutions. By inverting the attention Foucault gives to the subjects under scrutiny, van der Drift shows that the focus on those that maintain the institution, the managerial class, reveals how power and knowledge configure this contraction of perception. Van der Drift argues that institutions are central to this process because it (...) offers alignment of purpose and understanding by means of rights and discipline. Consequently, this alignment leads to an indifference to other ways of worlding that Philomena Essed and Isabel Hoving describe as “smug ignorance.” Van der Drift argues that this finds root in the institution, rather than being a harmful side effect that needs to be addressed. To contrast institutional alignment, the author sketches a pluralist ethics that offers an alternative mode of relationality and collective organization. (shrink)

The Health Impact Fund (HIF) is a project aimed at expanding access to life-saving drugs worldwide and incentivizing pharmaceutical companies to invest in research and development for neglected diseases. The HIF would invert the existing patent framework by rewarding ideas through their diffusion rather than protecting against this diffusion, by encouraging a collective rather than privatized wealth scheme. The basic idea behind the HIF is the creation of a new competitive market that centers on individuals who, under normal circumstances, exert (...) very little force on the tide of market demand. The HIF does not operate on standard market measures of demand, but instead measures demand as a product of needs, while in conventional market scenarios, private citizens and national welfare states pay for needs. The idea is that the HIF would create a functional, competitive market in which pharmaceutical profit is determined by the actual health impact of each new drug, a measure born from pharmacological and distributive efficacy. In this article, the basic features of and main challenges to the HIF are addressed. (shrink)

This article devoted to ‘speech eversions‘ that are viewed as speech evidences of children’s perception of the world. The cases of perceiving the world from a point of view that is not corresponding to the norm are considered, including those that are caused by child’s egocentrism, by incorrect ’partitioning’ of objects in reality, by properties of input. Children’s verbal causative oppositions are also analyzed in connection with the ‘inverted‘ worldview. The conclusion is made that ‘speech eversions‘ are (...) most often somehow connected with the stage of child’s egocentric perception of the world. (shrink)

Ibn Gabirol apresenta, em sua obra Fons Vitae, um modelo metafísico baseado no hilemorfismo universal, ou seja, na presença de matéria e de forma em todos os seres, tanto corpóreos quanto espirituais. Embora considerado um autor neoplatônico, Ibn Gabirol não explicita propriamente uma henologia, mas parte das realidades sensíveis e corpóreas em direção às mais sutis. Este artigo pretende inverter essa apresentação do autor, buscando redesenhar sua metafísica a partir da Essência Primeira até o fim da criação. Para tanto, o (...) ponto específico analisado, ainda que de modo incipiente, é a questão da unidade e seu qualificativo uno/una, tanto na atribuição que ele faz em seu modelo ontológico, quanto nos seus aspectos lógicos. In his work Fons Vitae, Ibn Gabirol presents a metaphysical model based on universal hylomorphism, i.e., on the presence of matter and form in all beings both corporeal and spiritual. Although considered a neoplatonic author, Ibn Gabirol does not properly present a henology, but starts from sensible and corporeal realities and then treats the more subtle ones. This article intends to invert the author's presentation, seeking to redesign his metaphysics from the first essence to the end of creation. To this end, the specific point that is analyzed (although in an incipient way) is the question of unity and its qualifier 'one', both in the attribution Ibn Gabirol makes in his ontological model and in the model's logical aspects. (shrink)

This is a translation of Carnap's early classic, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt and his less technical but also important article from the same period, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. It is no secret that Carnap abandoned the phenomenalism of the Aufbau for the physicalism of Logische Syntax der Sprache, but there is no doubt that the real message of the Aufbau—which is punctuated with the Messianic spirit of early logical positivism—is the program of "rational reconstruction" which becomes, on an (...) class='Hi'>inverted reading and with the addition of a bias in favor of the universal descriptive and explanatory power of scientific discourse, the program of scientific reductionism. In this light, the continuities between the Aufbau and Carnap's later work completely dwarf in importance the discrepancies between these two periods of his creative output. The Aufbau remains an important book in its own right, and is not simply a detailed manifesto of a now defunct program; it is a pleasure to have it in English.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This is a translation of Carnap's early classic, Der Logische Aufbau der Welt and his less technical but also important article from the same period, Scheinprobleme in der Philosophie. It is no secret that Carnap abandoned the phenomenalism of the Aufbau for the physicalism of Logische Syntax der Sprache, but there is no doubt that the real message of the Aufbau—which is punctuated with the Messianic spirit of early logical positivism—is the program of "rational reconstruction" which becomes, on an (...) class='Hi'>inverted reading and with the addition of a bias in favor of the universal descriptive and explanatory power of scientific discourse, the program of scientific reductionism. In this light, the continuities between the Aufbau and Carnap's later work completely dwarf in importance the discrepancies between these two periods of his creative output. The Aufbau remains an important book in its own right, and is not simply a detailed manifesto of a now defunct program; it is a pleasure to have it in English.—E. A. R. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Hegel is a major (albeit unrecognized) epistemologist: Hegel’s Introduction provides the key to his phenomenological method by showing that the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion refutes traditional coherentist and foundationalist theories of justification. Hegel then solves this Dilemma by analyzing the possibility of constructive self- and mutual criticism. ‘Sense Certainty’ provides a sound internal critique of ‘knowledge by acquaintance’, thus undermining a key tenet of Concept Empiricism, a view Hegel further undermines by showing that a series (...) of non-logical a priori concepts must be used to identify any particular object of experience. Most importantly, Hegel justifies a semantics of singular cognitive reference with important anti-skeptical implications. ‘Perception’ extends Hegel’s criticism Concept Empiricism by exposing the inadequacy of Modern theories of perception (and also sense data theories) which lack a tenable concept of the identity of perceptible things. Hegel demonstrates that this concept is a priori and integrates two counterposed sub-concepts, ‘unity’ and ‘plurality’. Hegel’s examination of this concept reveals his clear awareness of what is now called the ‘binding problem’ in neurophysiology of perception, a problem only very recently noticed by epistemologists. ‘Force and Understanding’ exposes a fatal equivocation in the traditional concept of substance which thwarts our understanding of force and causal interaction. Hegel’s disambiguation of that concept enables us to comprehend how relations can be essential to physical particulars. Hegel contends that Newtonian universal gravitation shows that gravitational relations are essential to physical particulars, and he criticizes a series of attempts—including the infamous ‘inverted world’—to avoid this conclusion. Hegel’s cognitive semantics supports Newton’s Fourth Rule of philosophizing, which rejects mere logical possibilities as counter-examples to empirical hypotheses. This is an important anti-Cartesian, also anti-empiricist, insight. Finally, Hegel’s cognitive semantics reveals a previously unnoticed link between Pyrrhonian and Cartesian skepticism and empiricist anti-realism about causality within philosophy of science: all three appeal to premises, hypotheses, or counter-examples which, as mere logical possibilities, lack in principle fully determinate, cognitively legitimate meaning. ‘Consciousness’ thus establishes basic principles and features of human cognition to which Hegel returns throughout the Phenomenology. The chapter concludes by summarizing Hegel’s over-arching epistemological analysis in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

I will begin this comparative analysis with Quine, focusing on the front matter and first chapter of Word and Object (alongside From a Logical Point of View and two other short pieces), attempting to illuminate there a (1) basis of excessive, yet familiar, chaos, (2) method of improvised, dramatic distortion, and (3) consequent neo-Pragmatist metaphysics. Having elaborated this Quinian basis, method and metaphysics, I will then show that they can be productively translated into James Mercer’s poetic lyrics for The Shins, (...) with an emphasis on the first song, entitled “Caring is Creepy,” from their debut studio album, Oh, Inverted World! Finally, I will explain why Quine and Mercer are particularly suited to this translation (in contrast to other philosophically-rich pop lyricists such as Bob Dylan, and other pragmatist philosophers like Robert Brandom), in the course of which important implications will emerge for our globalized world today. (shrink)

Marx criticized political economy for propounding an inverted, mystical view of economic reality. But he went beyond asserting the falsity and apologetic character of the doctrine to characterize it as reflecting a social practice of inversion or mystification — an inverted social world — in which individuals incorporate their own actions into a process whose dynamic lies beyond their control. Caught up in this process, individuals confront aspects of their own agency in the alien or reified form (...) of a given, determining reality. Marx leaves unclear exactly how the process exerts and maintains its hold on agents, the nature of the reasons they might have for wanting to free themselves of it, and under what conditions they could do so. However, it is possible to abstract somewhat from Marx's specific concerns and to model a self-reproducing practice of reification that works through the informational environment of decision. Though of wider interest, this more general conception can shed light on the nature and critique of Marx's inverted world. It draws on conceptual resources from decision theory, game theory and general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs the “speculative exposition” of the correlative distinction between being and cognition called for by Fink in Husserl’s intentional analytics on the basis of his discussion of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. In this context, for Fink the chapter “Force and the Understanding, Appearance and the Supersensible World” is key in the Phenomenology asa whole. There, not only the transition fromobject-consciousness to self-consciousness is accomplished but also the question of the basic structure of thinghood in general is raised: (...) From where does being as such and as a whole make itself appear? The paper traces Fink’s reading step by step, which is guided by a radicalisation of “ontological experience” – ontology as an “Er-fahrung (ex-perience)”, which sounds out itself in view of its presuppositions. “Radicalisation”, according to Fink, is the “transition from operative use to the subject”: the living, performative reference itself moves to the abysmal centre of an “inverted world”, which at the same time can be read as an introduction to Fink’s own thinking of a “cosmological difference”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.3 (2002) 287-288 [Access article in PDF] Investigating Depersonalization Filip Radovic and Susanna Radovic The comments offered by Morris and Modigh in this issue give us an opportunity to clarify some of the views and topics discussed in our paper.One of Morris' objections is that we on some occasions characterize depersonalization complaints in a way that indicate delusion. Although one of the criteria of depersonalization (...) syndrome is intact reality testing (APA 2000), it is nevertheless the case that patients with depersonalization complaints may at the same time be delusional, a fact that Modigh also points out: "The border between unreality feelings with largely intact reality-testing ability and psychotic disorders with grossly disturbed reality-testing is, however, not absolute and patients with psychotic disorders may of course experience feelings of unreality or depersonalization."Morris is also critical of the idea that feelings of unreality in the quasi-sensory sense (or in sense [a3]) may tempt patients to doubt the reality of the items experienced as unreal. We suggest that the experience of the self or the world as unreal may actually give rise to an impulse to believe that the self or the world does not exist. This, however, need not imply that a person who has such a belief is delusional. For example, consider the following cases, which include patients with intense unreality feelings but who exhibit largely intact reality testing. One of Sierra and Berrios' (2000) patients says: "I have to touch myself to make sure that I have a body and a real existence." Lindqvist (1966, p. 171) describes two cases of the "mirror syndrome," which he recognizes as a typical behavior seen in cases of severe depersonalization. The patients want to confirm that they are real by looking in a mirror. Such cases strongly indicate that a person with otherwise intact reality testing can be so overwhelmed by feelings of unreality that he or she can come to doubt his or her own existence. The reason we do not want to call this state delusional is that the patient constantly tries to compare the experience of reality with some other mark of reality (e.g., by using a mirror), thus indicating that, on a higher cognitive level, he or she still understands that his or her belief may be incorrect. The image in the mirror works as an assurance that the fear of not existing is, after all, just a fear.Merleau-Ponty's (1962) description of Stratton's inverting spectacles experiment is indeed relevant to our analysis. The experiment seems to indicate that the feeling of unreality corresponds to the degree of unfamiliarity with seeing the world upside down. Stratton's subjects report that after a couple of days objects still appear inverted but less unreal than they did before. This seems to suggest that unreal in this circumstance approximates not normal. An inverted world is after some time accepted as normal. (See also note 3 in our paper.)Let us conclude with a few comments on an important methodological issue. Our methodological [End Page 287] approach is not equivalent with a classical ordinary language approach because our main concern is language use in psychiatric contexts. A classical ordinary language analysis aims to explicate how terms actually are used in everyday language; our primary concern is to try to understand the phenomenology underlying descriptions of felt unreality given by patients suffering from depersonalization. However, we do start by looking at the terms from an everyday angle, but this only gives us a coarse approximation of what the depersonalization patient may mean by such expressions. The strange and unpleasant phenomenology of the condition in combination with the variety of characteristic expressions make it likely that the role of unreal in connection with depersonalization complaints is quite different from its use in everyday language. When a person undergoes a depersonalization episode for the first time, he or she encounters a quite new and perhaps unexpected phenomenological reality. When the person attempts to describe these perplexing feelings he or she, naturally, uses terms found in everyday language, but the changed... (shrink)

The discourse on escaping is primarily directed towards the who of escape. The question of what and how of escaping in its cultural-anthropological significance is usually neglected. The present paper claims to overcome this inadequacy by exploring escape eo ipso and as a spatial-theoretical phenomenon. For this purpose, it is necessary to rethink escape as a triple articulated phenomenological topology based on three vectors: escape as a start, escape as a transition and escape as a destination/refuge. The escape-vectors play the (...) role of symbolic and basic structures which are connected with linguistic and cognitive paradigms. Among the basic figures of escaping, this paper examines escape as a separation, as a non-place and as a fugue; these correspond in turn to the environmental metaphors, first, of the earth as exile, secondly, of the sea and the desert, and finally of the earth as asylum. The multilayered topology of escaping is reconstructed in the interdisciplinary field of spatial theory, of etymology, literature and political philosophy. By examining its spatial-philosophical characteristics, escape emerges as a dynamic phenomenon that can reshape essential concepts and inverse traditional categories of politics. For that reason, escaping determines a philosophically “inverted world” and consequently constitutes an essential source for the future development of cultural-political systems. (shrink)

Hegel's dialectic "Consciousness," Part A from the Phenomenology of Spirit, is interpreted in light of the concept of "reading." The logic of reading is especially helpful for interpreting the often misunderstood dialectic of understanding, as that is described in chapter 3 of the Phenomenology, "Force and Understanding: Appearance and the Supersensible World." Hegel's concept of "the Inverted World" in particular is clarified, and from it Hegel's notion of originary difference is developed. Derrida's notion of "differance" is used (...) to illuminate Hegel's use of difference and to interpret the Hegelian metaphysics that is developed in "Force and Understanding" and in the opening moves of Hegel's Science of Logic. It is argued that the philosophical projects of Hegel and Derrida are ultimately indistinguishable. (shrink)

The early Hegel and late Wittgenstein alike suggest that the idealism-realism contrast is better understood as a contrast between normative and naturalistic accounts of actions. Building upon parallels between Hegel’s account of the “inverted world” and what Kripke called Wittgenstein’s “skeptical solution to the skeptical paradox,” I suggest that Wittgensteinian rule following may involve not only first personal commitments, as Lear argues, but also something like the specifically historical agency Hegel called Geist, and that, in turn, Hegel’s “Absolute” (...) may be seen to represent not this agency itself but the normative “rule” governing our accounts of what it is to be a rule-following agent. This construal suggests that Brandom’s pragmatic reading of Hegel, claiming that practical adjudication of norms may be pursued independently of historical self-accounting, artificially delimits the practical sphere of such adjudication, and thus undermines rather than promotes the pragmatism he pursues. (shrink)

The world today is divided not only by conflicting interests and ambitions, but also by rival conceptions of freedom. It is often pointed out that whereas the Anglo-American liberty, won chiefly through victories of dissenting religious sects, was mainly attentive to the rights of minorities, the French conception, owing much to Rousseau's theory of the General Will, and to the drastic course of revolution, put the emphasis on the sovereignty of the people and majority rights. In England the battles (...) for freedom were won, not on the barricades, but in Parliament, and not wholesale but bit by bit. However much the West may have ironed out in practice the discordance between these rival conceptions, the impact on the twentieth century has been momentous; for Hegel took over Rousseau's General Will. Marx and Engels adopted Hegel, somewhat inverted, and the Soviets built on Marx and Engels. This lineage of theory, as Edward Hallett Carr has pointed out, provides a background and a rationale for the Soviet emphasis on political solidarity and unanimity, and the corresponding neglect of individual and minority rights. For the backward and colonial nations today the Soviets, therefore, represent the ideal of popular unity to carry out large-scale economic plans, which usually require a drastic break with the past and new leaders; whereas the United States symbolizes economic aid with competition and opposition rights upheld. (shrink)

The reader of Joseph Navickas’s recent book will be disappointed if he expects the author to keep the promise made in the note on the back cover: “The book combines a textual analysis with a new constructive interpretation of the Phenomenology.” And the note goes on to say, “The complete working out of the notion of subjectivity requires a re-examination of the phenomenological transitions and a re-investigation of some allegedly insignificant achievements of the subject.” In point of fact there is (...) nothing particularly new in Navickas’s interpretation. His book actually repeats certain misunderstandings which one would think were the stock of older text-books. And as for the promised “textual analysis”, it consists mostly in a textual exposition of uneven quality. Some sections of Parts IV and V are lucid and accurate. Others, notably the sections of Part II, are woefully cursory, and often misleading. For instance, the theme of the “inverted world” is treated in these words. (shrink)

Inverted sensation arguments such as the inverted spectrum thought experiment are often criticized for relying on an unconstrained notion of 'qualia'. In reply to this criticism, 'qualia-free' arguments for inversion have been proposed, in which only physical changes happen: inversions in the world, such as the replacement of surface colors by their complements, and a rewiring of peripheral input cables to more central areas in the nervous system. I show why such constrained inversion arguments won't work. The (...) first problem is that the world lacks the symmetry required to invert physical properties in the way required. The second problem concerns 'rewiring'. Empirical evidence indicates that the rewirings are either impossible, or would not result in an inversion of sensation. I propose the deeper reason for the failure of constrained inversion arguments lies in the fact that sensations are not properties of brain states, but spread into the world and the body. (shrink)

Mental states that are inherently conscious are said to be “phenomenally conscious” by philosophers. If phenomenal consciousness is a natural phenomenon, a part of the physical world, we can reasonably suppose that there should be a mechanism which provides an explanatory link between the subjective and the objective. Philosophical zombies pose a serious threat to any sort of physicalist view of phenomenal consciousness. They are microphysical duplicates that lack phenomenal consciousness. The problem of the inverted spectrum is sometimes (...) presented with respect to a single individual who adapts to an operation through time and eventually forgets that things ever looked any different to him. Not all philosophers accept that experiences are transparent. There is no one problem of unity for experiences, and there is no one kind of unity either. Split‐brain subjects, divided consciousness, and the problem of animal consciousness are also discussed. (shrink)

In this essay, I set out my responses to the following five questions that had been posed: -/- 1. Why were you initially drawn to metaphysics (and what keeps you interested)? 2. What do you consider to be your most important contributions to metaphysics? 3. What do you consider to be the proper method for metaphysics? 4. What do you think is the proper role of metaphysics in relation to other areas of philosophy and other academic disciplines, including the natural (...) sciences? 5. What do you consider to be the most neglected topics in contemporary metaphysics, and what direction would you like metaphysics to take in the future? (shrink)

Inverted sensation arguments such as the inverted spectrum thought experiment are often criticized for relying on an unconstrained notion of 'qualia'. In reply to this criticism, 'qualia-free' arguments for inversion have been proposed, in which only physical changes happen: inversions in the world, such as the replacement of surface colors by their complements, and a rewiring of peripheral input cables to more central areas in the nervous system. I show why such constrained inversion arguments won't work. The (...) first problem is that the world lacks the symmetry required to invert physical properties in the way required. The second problem concerns 'rewiring'. Empirical evidence indicates that the rewirings are either impossible, or would not result in an inversion of sensation. I propose the deeper reason for the failure of constrained inversion arguments lies in the fact that sensations are not properties of brain states, but spread into the world and the body. (shrink)

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I am persuaded that (...) I have done enough fieldwork to write a book that combines philosophical and theological reflection with autobiographical narrative. Writing is not only possible but actually seems necessary." _Field Notes from Elsewhere_ is Taylor's unforgettable, inverted journey from death to life. Each of his memoir's fifty-two chapters and accompanying photographs recounts a morning-to-evening experience with sickness and convalescence, mingling humor and hope with a deep exploration of human frailty and, conversely, resilience. When we confront the end of life, Taylor explains, the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything must be reevaluated. As Taylor sorts through his remembrances, much that once seemed familiar becomes strange, paradoxical, and contradictory. He reads his experience with and against ghosts from his past, recasting the meaning of mortality, sacrifice, solitude, and abandonment, along with a host of other issues, in light of modern ways of dying. "You never come back from elsewhere," Taylor concludes, "because elsewhere always comes back with you.". (shrink)

This volume of Ned Block's writings collects his papers on consciousness, functionalism, and representationism. A number of these papers treat the significance of the multiple realizability of mental states for the mind-body problem -- a theme that has concerned Block since the 1960s. One paper on this topic considers the upshot for the mind-body problem of the possibility of a robot that is functionally like us but physically different -- as is Commander Data of _Star Trek's_ second generation. The papers (...) on consciousness treat such conceptual issues as phenomenal versus access consciousness, Dennett's theory of consciousness, and the function of consciousness, as well as such empirical matters as "How Not to Find the Neural Correlate of Consciousness," and an argument that there are distinct neural correlates for access consciousness and phenomenal consciousness. Turning to the mind-body problem, Block defends physicalism against Max Black's argument concerning phenomenal modes of presentation. The papers on representationism consider "mental paint" as well as the "Inverted Earth" thought experiment -- a world in which colors are reversed but there is a compensating reversal in the words that are used to describe them. _Consciousness, Function, and Representation_, bringing together papers that have appeared primarily in journals and conference proceedings, can be regarded as Block's most complete statement of his positions on consciousness. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RUSSELLS ARGUMENT AGAINST FREGE'S SENSE-REFERENCE DISTINCTION PAWEL TURNAu Philosophy I Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland I n "On Denoting"l Russell argued that Frege's theory of sense and reference was an "inextricable tangle", but, ironically, many readers found the argument even more knotry. In an effort to make sense of it, commentators were often driven to attribute to Russell quite obvious and simple fallacies. A different approach was taken by Peter (...) Geach, who suggested that Russell's argument could be given a consistent reading if it were construed as arguing, not against Frege's theory, but against Russell's own earlier theory, which he put forward in The Principles of Mathematics. It is not an implausible hypothesis, considering how prone Russell was to misrepresent' other philosophers' views and read his own powerful ideas into their writings. In order to justifY Geach's hypothesis properly, one would have to show the crucial difference between Russell's and Frege's theories that made only one of them susceptible to the attack in "On Denoting ". Russell explicitly considered the two theories to be "very nearly the same"; this self-interpretation would have to be questioned. Geach's hypothesis would be further strengthened by providing an actual exegesis of the "On Denoting" argument as directed against The Principles ofMathematics theory. In this paper 1 will try to accomplish both of these tasks. Russell is often accused of confusing use and mention. The accusation is not fair, however. It is true that he does not insist on this distinction; he does not employ it extensively. But he is certainly Russell's Argument against Frege's Distinction 53 aware of it; he simply does not think that it is an important logical distinction. Today this view may seem almost incomprehensible, but that only shows the strength of Frege's influence on our ideas. There are two striking symptoms of Russell's lack of concern for the use-mention distinction: firstly, he does not observe the convention which says that putting an expression in quotation marks produces a name of that expression; secondly, he does not feel any need to employ the pair of terms "sentence" and "proposition", but contents himself with the latter only. The claim about Russell's use of inverted commas needs to be proved; I will come to that later. Russell's assertions are often ambiguous between use and mention of expressions. For example, he asserts that "propositions do not contain words" (PaM, p. 47). However, a few pages later, he speaks of propositions that contain the phrase "any number" (p. 53). If this is not to be self-contradictory, then either the term "proposition" must sometimes signifY a linguistic expression, or the term "phrase" must sometimes be understood without implying that a phrase consists of words. This ambiguity is openly admitted in a later article, where he writes: [we shall be concerned with] the distinction between verbs and substantives, or, more correctly, between the objects denoted by verbs and the objects denoted by substantives. Since this more correct expression is long and cumbrous, I shall generally use the shorter expression to mean the same thing. Thus, when I speak of verbs, I mean the object denoted by verbs, and similarly for substantives.2. Russell's attitude towards the distinction between use and mention is not unjustified. It has its reason in his view oflanguage and the subject -matter of logic. In Russell's view, the subject-matter of logic has nothing to do with language. Words, both spoken and written, are entirely outside its realm. Logic, just as other sciences (except linguistics ), is concerned with the entities indicated by words, and not with words themselves. Even the relation of indicating, which holds between words and things in the world, is of no interest to it: "mean1 In Lf(, pp. 39-56. russ.lI: the Journal of the Bertrand Russell Archives McMaster Univecsity Library Press n.s. 11 (summer 1991): 51- 66 ISSN 0036-o16~ 2 B. Russell, "On the Relations of Universals and Particulars", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 12 (r9II-12): 1-24; in Lf(, pp. 103-24 (at 107-8). 54 PAWEL TURNAU Russell's Argument... (shrink)

Strange inversions occur when things work in ways that turn received wisdom upside down. Hume offered a strangely inverted story about causation, and Darwin, about apparent design. Dennett suggests that a strange inversion also occurs when we project our own reactive complexes outward, painting our world with elusive properties like cuteness, sweetness, blueness, sexiness, funniness, and more. Such properties strike us as experiential causes, but they are really effects—a kind of shorthand for whole sets of reactive dispositions rooted (...) in the nuts and bolts of human information processing. Understanding the nature and origins of that strange inversion, Dennett believes, is thus key to understanding the nature and origins of human experience itself. This paper examines this claim, paying special attention to recent formulations that link that strange inversion to the emerging vision of the brain as a Bayesian estimator, constantly seeking to predict the unfolding sensory barrage. (shrink)

A zombie world is a possible world in which all the microphysical truths are identical to the truths in our world, but no one is phenomenally conscious. A zombie is an individual in a possible world whose microphysical truths are identical to the microphysical truths of an individual in our world, but who has none of the phenomenal conscious experiences of the individual in our world. An inverted is an individual in a possible (...) world whose microphysical truths are not only identical to the microphysical truths of an individual in our world, but who also has phenomenal conscious experiences. These experiences, however, are qualitatively different from the ones of the individual in our world. The first premise of Chalmers’ conceivability argument against materialism is that a zombie world, a zombie and an inverted are ideally conceivable. This paper rejects this premise in claiming that: given that current physics does not allow philosophers to establish a clear concept of the physical that could be opposed to something else non-physical, a zombie world, a zombie and an inverted are merely prima facie, but not ideally conceivable. This objection is called the Obscurity of the Physical Objection.Key-words: Zombies, qualia, conceivability, possibility, physics. (shrink)

Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked papers, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically unproblematic and epistemologically impenetrable. He also investigates the basis of our knowledge that there is a mind-body problem, and the bearing of this on attempted solutions. McGinn goes on to discuss the status of first-person authority, the possibility of atomism with respect to consciousness, extreme (...) dualism, and the role of non-existent objects in constituting intentionality. He argues that traditional claims about our knowledge of our own mind and of the external world can be inverted; that atomism about the conscious mind might turn out to be true; that dualism is more credible the more extreme it is; and that all intentionality involves non-existent objects. These are all surprising positions, but he contends that what the philosophy of mind needs now is 'methodological radicalism' - a willingness to consider new and seemingly extravagant ideas. (shrink)