There is a wide-spread belief amongst theorists of mind and language. This is that in order to understand the relation between language, thought, and reality we need a theory of meaning and content, that is, a normative, formal science of meaning, which is an extension and theoretical deepening of folk ideas about meaning. This book argues that this is false, offering an alternative idea: The form of a theory that illuminates the relation of language, thought, and reality is a theory (...) of language agency. In a nutshell, the theory of language agency is a theory of competence, without being a theory of understanding or grasping rules. It is a theory of cognitive structure and language production. This theory distils all there is to say about language, thought, and reality. It does not supplement a theory of truth-conditions or semantic norms. It is not the explanation of how a speaker, qua cognitive system causally embedded in a larger reality, is able to use a language with some pre-existing semantic characterization. There is no pre-existing semantic characterization. Nevertheless, there are facts of meaning, as good as any other facts. The dissolution of the theory of meaning is accompanied by another disappearance. That is the disappearance of metaphysical questions in a number of domains. Once we complete the theory of language agency, then just as theoretical questions about meaning disappear, certain theoretical questions about existence disappear. Having provided a theory of the language agency for talk of meaning, fact, property, relation, and proposition, there is no question left over about what meanings, facts, properties, relations, and propositions are. There is no theory to be given of their natures. This is not because they have primitive irreducible natures. Rather it is because, in a sense to be clarified in this work, they lack natures. I call this approach to language agency Global Expressivism. That is because it generalizes some of the insights brought to the study of value-language by expressivists. However, it removes these insights from the clouding affects of attempting to make expressivism a semantic theory. Expressivism about value fails as a semantic theory of value talk. However, global expressivism can succeed as a theory of all talk because it is not a semantic theory but a theory of language agency, wherein the theory of meaning is replaced by a theory of talk about meaning. (shrink)

In truth, however, value is here the active factor in a process, in which, while constantly assuming the form in turn of money and commodities, it at the same time changes in magnitude, differentiates itself by throwing off surplus-value from itself; the original value, in other words, expands spontaneously. For the movement... is its own movement... is automatic expansion... able to add value to itself... living off-springs...golden eggs...an independent substance....It differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus value; as (...) the father differentiates himself from himself qua the son, yet both are one and of one age: for only by the surplus value of £10 does the £100 originally advanced become capital, and so soon as this takes place, so soon as the son, and by the son, the father, is begotten, so soon does their difference vanish, and they again become one, £110.3. Marx (1967, 1:171-73)The future must no longer be determined by the past....Anticipation is imperative...in order to be more than herself...“impossible” subject, untenable in a real social framework....But secretly, silently, deep down inside, she grows and multiplies...she goes and passes into infinity....Heterogeneous, yes...she does not cling to herself; she is dispersible, prodigious, stunning, desirous and capable of others, of the other woman that she will be, of the other woman she isn't, of him, of you...she is everywhere, she exchanges...in the exchange that multiplies....She does not “know” what she's giving, she doesn't measure it...she finds not her sum but her differences....In one another we will never be lacking. Cixous (1986, 309-20)If God is dead, everything is permitted, then the conclusion imposing itself within the text of our experience is that the response to God is dead, is nothing is any longer permitted. Lacan (1991, 139)It is therefore absolutely impossible to control capitalism from the metalevel, because capitalism itself is deconstructive.Karatani (1995, 71). (shrink)

This essay provides a critical discussion of Philip Pettit’s book A Theory of Freedom: From the Psychology to the Politics of Agency (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). It evaluates the general prospeets of a ‘global theory of freedom’ of the kind advocated by Pettit, i.e. one that seeks explicitly to link a metaphysical theory of free agency to a distinct conception of political liberty. Pettit’s in many ways innovative views concerning ongoing debates in metaphysics and political theory (e.g. (...) compatibilism, republicanism, etc.) are also examined in detail. While recognising the legitimacy and originality of this intellectual endeavour, the paper concludes that, however full of important insights, Pettit’s account fails to realise the desired “reflective equilibrium” between a theory of free agency and that of political liberty. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the possibility of reading Immanuel Kant’s metaphysics of morals as a proposal of global ethics, that is, ethics of the globalizing world. We have a good reason to undertake this exploration because Kant suggests that the earth being a globe with a finite spherical surface is a fundamental condition ofrealization of the universal principle of right among the world citizens. Unfortunately, however, Kant did not develop a theory of cosmopolitan rights as far as he (...) could have. The reason is that he faced with a serious question which originated from his realistic judgment of his time, that it would be almost impossible to establish a cosmopolitan constitution without constraint of power. Today, however, we can hope to find an answer to this question in the development of global civil society and by virtue of this hope we can conceive global ethics which is further developed from Kant’s metaphysics of morals. (shrink)

In this essay, our goal is to discover science in Martin Heidegger's Introduction to Metaphysics, lecture notes for his 1935 summer semester course, because, after all, his subject is metaphysica generalis, or ontology, and this could be construed as a theory of the human brain. Here, by means of verbatim quotes from his text, we attempt to show that indeed these lectures can be viewed as suggestion for an objective scientific theory of human perception, the human capacity for deciphering phenomena, (...) ie. hermeneutics in its broadest sense. His added notes from the 1953 edition, all of which are comments, not corrections, imply that he never abandoned these thoughts on metaphysics, despite all of his utterances about a need to overcome it, and their popular interpretations to that effect. In his presentation, he further develops the colorful and intuitive style, an hermeneutic language, that he had created in his earlier work Being and Time. Of human existence he speaks in such expressions as being-there -- ``Dasein" -- and being-in-the-world, the latter term no longer explicit in the 1935 lectures. The lectures can be read as a pre-scientific analysis of how man, being-there, perceives his environment, artfully managing to deal with the manifold challenges posed by the phenomenal structures of the universe. Man attentively recognizes and deciphers their pre-linguistic contents and, while trying to make sense of it all, puts into words his awareness. There are numerous passages in Heidegger's work where he in fairly concrete terms provides us with hints for a perceptive science that, as it turns out and is demonstrated below in this essay, can be explained in terms of recent advances in neuroscience. It would be implausible, even unthinkable, unimaginable, for there not to be found essential agreement between on one hand his philosophical insights gained by hermeneutics of Dasein, into how our brain functions to let us know what's happening & on the other hand, scientific discoveries obtained through anatomy, EEG, fMRI, TMS, electrode implants, etc, of brain structures & functions employed in perception of the momentary scene. A nexus between science and philosophy is provided in Heidegger's definitive treatment of the Logos, here interpreted as a structural version of Platonic forms (Burchard, 2014). This allows for neurolinguistic brain functions to serve as meta-context for Heidegger's being-in-the-world. The logical functions of Dasein's anatomical brain are performed by the logos machine, formerly the human soul, using top-down processing based on a global context, the noumenal cosmos which humans maintain internally. Heidegger's 1942/43 winter semester lectures Parmenides extend in unbroken fashion his 1935 work, proving that he never abandoned, as is widely claimed, his metaphysical avenue of thought. (shrink)

Some time ago, in an article for the Journal of Consciousness Studies, David Chalmers challenged his peers to identify the ingredient missing from our current theories of consciousness, the absence of which prevents us from solving the 'hard' problem and forces us to make do with nonreductive theories. Here I respond to this challenge. I suggest that consciousness is a metaphysical problem and as such can be solved only within a global metaphysical theory. Such a (...) theory would look very like the information theory proposed by Chalmers, but with the addition of an extra phenomenon that would allow it to become fundamental. (shrink)

In the recent years, attempts to relate metaphysics and sciences have taken various alternative forms such as metaphysics applied to science, metaphysics of science, and scientific metaphysics. In this article, I focus on scientific metaphysics and specifically explore the challenges with developing ontologies through four arguments. The Argument from Representational Indeterminacy highlights that global ontologies fail to clearly identify their target phenomenon. The Argument from Independent Inaccessibility explores the methodological difficulty of accessing a world that is independent of specific (...) sets of phenomena. The Argument from Conceptual Mismatch focuses on the tendency of local ontologies to pick out arbitrary scientific concepts, adapting them to study phenomena where they might not fit well. Finally, the Argument from Eliminative Prophecy details the possibility that local ontologies could eventually be rendered redundant by mature versions of scientific theories. In the end, given these challenges, I recommend an eliminativist stance toward ontology development. (shrink)

The objectives of this article are twofold. First, by denying the dualism inherent in attempts to load metaphysical significance on the inner/outer distinction, it defends the view that scientific investigation can approach consciousness in itself, and is not somehow restricted in scope to the outward manifestations of a private and hidden realm. Second, it provisionally endorses the central tenets of global workspace theory, and recommends them as a possible basis for the sort of scientific understanding of consciousness thus (...) legitimised. However, the article goes on to argue that global workspace theory alone does not constitute a fully worked-out objective account of the conscious subject. This requires additional attention to be paid to the issue of embodiment, and to the possibility of indexicality that arises when an instantiation of the global workspace architecture inhabits a spatially localised body. (shrink)

Introduction -- Metaphysics -- "Ostrich nominalism"' or "mirage realism"? -- Postscript to "Ostrich nominalism" or "mirage realism"? -- Aberrations of the realism debate -- Postscript to "aberrations of the realism debate" -- Underdetermination and commonsense realism -- Scientificrealism -- Postscript to "scientific realism" -- Incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics -- Postscript to "incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics" -- Global response dependency and worldmaking -- The metaphysics of nonfactualism -- The metaphysics of truth -- Moral realism : a (...) naturalistic perspective -- Natural kinds and biological realisms -- Resurrecting biological essentialism -- Epistemology -- Naturalism and the a priori -- No place for the a priori -- Intuitions -- On determining what there isn't. (shrink)

Metaphysics, as I understand it, is the attempt to construct theories which give correct accounts in general terms of pervasive structural features of reality. Though not precise and not intended as an explicit definition, this characterization is comprehensive enough to include both descriptive and revisionary varieties of metaphysical theory. The enterprise of descriptive metaphysics, Strawson tells us, consists in describing “the actual structure of our thought about the world.” Presumably a philosopher would favor this approach to metaphysics if (...) he or she believed either that the actual structure of our thought about the world provides, at least for the most part, an accurate portrait of the world’s structure or that the actual structure of our thought at any time provides privileged access, or perhaps our only access, at that time to the structure of the world. Revisionary metaphysics, by contrast, is concerned to produce a structure of thought about the world better than the one we actually have. Obviously a philosopher would adopt this approach if he or she believed that the actual structure of our thought about the world provides, in at least some important respects, an inaccurate portrait of the world’s structure and stands in need of revision in the interests of correctness. And clearly a philosopher might hold that the actual structure of our thought is quite accurate in some respects and need only be described to yield correct theory and yet is thoroughly inaccurate in others and requires substantial revision if correct theory is to be the outcome. Philosophers may, as I suppose most of them do, practice by turns descriptive and revisionary kinds of metaphysics. No global commitment to one approach or the other is required; the choice between approaches can be allowed to rest on the exigencies of local problems. (shrink)

This book gives an account of work that I have done over a period of decades that sets out to solve two fundamental problems of philosophy: the mind-body problem and the problem of induction. Remarkably, these revolutionary contributions to philosophy turn out to have dramatic implications for a wide range of issues outside philosophy itself, most notably for the capacity of humanity to resolve current grave global problems and make progress towards a better, wiser world. A key element of (...) the proposed solution to the first problem is that physics is about only a highly specialized aspect of all that there is – the causally efficacious aspect. Once this is understood, it ceases to be a mystery that natural science says nothing about the experiential aspect of reality, the colours we perceive, the inner experiences we are aware of. That natural science is silent about the experiential aspect of reality is no reason whatsoever to hold that the experiential does not objectively exist. A key element of the proposed solution to the second problem is that physics, in persistently accepting unified theories only, thereby makes a substantial metaphysical assumption about the universe: it is such that a unified pattern of physical law runs through all phenomena. We need a new conception, and kind, of physics that acknowledges, and actively seeks to improve, metaphysical presuppositions inherent in the methods of physics. The problematic aims and methods of physics need to be improved as physics proceeds. These are the ideas that have fruitful implications, I set out to show, for a wide range of issues: for philosophy itself, for physics, for natural science more generally, for the social sciences, for education, for the academic enterprise as a whole and, most important of all, for the capacity of humanity to learn how to solve the grave global problems that menace our future, and thus make progress to a better, wiser world. It is not just science that has problematic aims; in life too our aims, whether personal, social or institutional, are all too often profoundly problematic, and in urgent need of improvement. We need a new kind of academic enterprise which helps humanity put aims-and-methods improving meta-methods into practice in personal and social life, so that we may come to do better at achieving what is of value in life, and make progress towards a saner, wiser world. This body of work of mine has met with critical acclaim. Despite that, astonishingly, it has been ignored by mainstream philosophy. In the book I discuss the recent work of over 100 philosophers on the mind-body problem and the metaphysics of science, and show that my earlier, highly relevant work on these issues is universally ignored, the quality of subsequent work suffering as a result. My hope, in publishing this book, is that my fellow philosophers will come to appreciate the intellectual value of my proposed solutions to the mind-body problem and the problem of induction, and will, as a result, join with me in attempting to convince our fellow academics that we need to bring about an intellectual/institutional revolution in academic inquiry so that it takes up its proper task of helping humanity learn how to solve problems of living, including global problems, and make progress towards as good, as wise and enlightened a world as possible. (shrink)

In this chapter I consider the prospects of globalizing expressivism. Expressivism is a position in the philosophy of language that questions the central role of representation in a theory of meaning or linguistic function. An expressivist about a domain D of discourse proposes that utterances of sentences in D should not be seen, at the level of analysis as representing how things are, but as expression of non-representational states. So, in the domain of value-utterances, the standard idea is that speakers (...) are expressing affective-states, such as approval or disapproval focused on objects or conditions. Global expressivism is the thesis that for all domains of discourse, we treat utterances, at the level of analysis, as expressing non-representational states. I set out several conceptions of how one might formulate this programme. The first involves minimalism about truth and semantic content – and only partially gives up representationalism (viz., the thesis that some utterances express representational states). The second is Price’s conception, which incorporates minimalism, Brandomian inferentalism, and concepts from Carnap, but still clings to representationalism. I then arrive at my favoured third conception, which does not employ minimalism or inferentialism, and eliminates vestiges of representationalism. It does the latter by embracing expressivism about meaning-attribution. Having set out key aspects of the approach I then address the question of metaphysics. What metaphysical conception of reality goes with global expressivism so understood? I argue it implies a form of metametaphysical nihilism. This is that idea that reality lacks any ultimate nature. (shrink)

Shanahan’s eloquently argued version of the global workspace theory fits well into the emerging understanding of consciousness as a computational phenomenon. His disinclination toward metaphysics notwithstanding, Shanahan’s book can also be seen as supportive of a particular metaphysical stance on consciousness — the computational identity theory.

This paper argues that some defenses of global antirealism that critique both epistemic foundationalism and ontological priority foundationalism (e.g., Westerhoff 2020) turn on a false dilemma that ignores non-representational approaches to consciousness and cognition. Arguments against the existence of an external world and against introspective certainty, typically draw on a range of empirical findings (mainly about the brain-based mechanisms that realize cognition) and that are said to lend support to irrealism. Theories that incorporate these findings, such as the (...) interface theory of perception and predictive processing, not only retain the notion of the veil of perception, but have continued to assign to it an important theoretical role. While the mathematical frameworks these theories employ do make them viable candidates, neither theory is moving in a direction that would suggest global anti-realism is the more plausible attitude. Rather, I argue that the new paradigm of 4E cognitive science (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended) bolsters epistemological and metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Why is there so much attention on Kant's global politics in present day law and philosophy? This book argues that to understand the complexities of our current legal-institutional arrangements, we first need an insight into Kant's global politics, and highlights the potential fruitfulness of Kant's cosmopolitan thought for contemporary political thinking. It adopts a double methodological strategy by reconstructing a genealogical conceptual journey showing the development of international law, as well as introducing an interpretation of cosmopolitanism centered on (...) Kant's theory of a metaphysics of freedom. The result is a novel focus on Kant's notion of the world republic. Rather than considering such political entity as something empirically realizable, this book argues that the world republic stands as a way of thinking about international politics and that the possibility of progression towards peace would result from a regulative use of the idea of a world republic. (shrink)

Global metaphysical skepticism is the view that we have no knowledge of any substantive metaphysical thesis. Various reasons have been provided in support of global metaphysical skepticism. I provide a new one. The reason, very roughly, is this. Metaphysical theses come together as packages. Such packages are very different from each other. Because the packages are so different, we cannot know of any one of the packages that it isn't true. And because we cannot (...) know of any one of them that it isn't true, we cannot know any substantive metaphysical thesis at all. My paper makes this argument much more precise and defends each of the premises in detail. (shrink)

The paper argues that metaphysics depends upon science when it comes to claims about the constitution of the real world. That thesis is illustrated by considering the examples of global supervenience, the tenseless vs. the tensed theory of time and existence, events vs. substances, and relations vs. intrinsic properties. An argument is sketched out for a metaphysics of a four-dimensional block universe whose content are events and their sequences, events consisting in physical properties instantiated at space-time points, these properties (...) being relations rather than intrinsic properties. (shrink)

The debates over global and historical justice much preoccupy contemporary political theory. Yet they have not been analyzed in tandem. And this, despite the fact that a number of theoretical frameworks, principal among them contractarianism and utilitarianism, configure arguments in both debates. In this essay, I show that such arguments, as advanced by either side in each of the two debates, all rest on a set of patterned assumptions about the nature of the self. Specifically, I argue, the debates (...) over historical and global justice resemble each other as parallel contests over the physical, metasocial, metaphysical and social natures of the self. At their cores, the debates over historical and global justice thus display a common and symmetrical structure. I will also show that certain conceptions of the self underlying both the anti-historical justice and the anti-global justice positions are mutually inconsistent. Similar contradictions do not beset the pro-historical and pro-global justice positions. (shrink)

“Scientific theories are maps of the natural world.” This metaphor is often used as part of a deflationary argument for a weak but relatively global version of scientific realism, a version that recognizes the place of conventions, goals, and contingencies in scientific representations, while maintaining that they are typically true in a clear and literal sense. By examining, in a naturalistic way, some relationships between maps and what they map, we question the scope and value of realist construals (...) of maps—and by extension of scientific representations. Deflationary philosophy of science requires more variegated stances. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay performs an anticolonial and poetic methodology of combining Black and Native feminists' deconstruction of metaphor and metaphysics in order to argue for the centrality of colonial metaphor to colonial metaphysics. I combine their analyses of the separate gendered metaphors of Blackness and Indianness and the centrality of these metaphors to the development of a global metaphysics as well as the transference of the terms of metaphysics to whiteness. I then apply this method of combined terms and readings (...) to white colonial writing that compares Black and Native America, which transforms both communities not only into individually potent, gendered metaphors but into an essential poetic pairing, a poetic couplet. Drawing on the work of Black and Native feminists, I further argue that when we take this paired model to evaluate the political concerns of Black and Native America, we come to a more complete and global understanding and refutation of whiteness. The creation, connection, and comparison of the gendered metaphors and archetypical figures of the "African Slave" and "Indian Savage" are important to each other and to the creation of a Western conception of the globe. Colonialism uses gender to compound metaphor's ability to create, by combining metaphors of gender with metaphors of race and colonialism to develop new symbolic amalgamations. This gestalt of metaphors comes together in order to create a fictive European metaphysics used to ameliorate white fears of the diversity of life on planet Earth and to satisfy white desires to control it. In this coupled metaphoric form, Blackness and Indianness are not connected by analogy but by the open-ended cut, the caesura, of poetry and the violence of slavery and conquest. I offer this anticolonial and poetic pairing as a model for political imagining between Black and Native theory. (shrink)

In 1989, the age of power political realism ended. The conditions were set to replace the prevailing Hobbesian model of peace by deterrence with the considerably more challenging Kantian model of peace by right. If, however, Huntington's paradigm of fighting civilizations were right, we would have to forget Kant and remember Hobbes. Sober rationality, healthy distrust, striving for power accumulation and all the other instruments from the realist's toolbox of political prudence are very well suited to facilitate political self-assertion in (...) an age of violently clashing cultures. However, this helplessness is not well grounded. Considering that from the very beginning liberalism is a theory of religious and ethical pluralism and well-experienced in dealing with problems of multiculturalism, it is at least possible to argue for a weak liberal universalism which provides normative foundations for a global order of peacefully living together. Of course, conceptual and moral modesty is crucial. If the human rights doctrine wants to defend its universal claim in the face of cultural diversity , it has to restrict itself to the conditions of esse: the pre-cultural and sheer natural conditions of human being and human coexistence. However, the formulation of the conditions of bene esse has to be left to culture and its authorities and belief systems which buttress a cultural constitution of meaning, both theologically and metaphysically. Traditional natural rights theory knew that both have to go together, and that the esse-enabling duties necessarily enjoy priority. No cultural conception of thriving life and existential significance can be accepted which contradicts the fundamental imperatives and conditions of pure human existence and coexistence. (shrink)

Floridi’s ontocentric ethics is compared with Spinoza’s ethical and metaphysical system as found in the Ethics. Floridi’s is a naturalistic ethics where he argues that an action is right or wrong primarily because the action does decrease the ‹entropy’ of the infosphere or not. An action that decreases the amount entropy of the infosphere is a good one, and one that increases it is a bad one. For Floridi, ‹entropy’ refers to destruction or loss of diversity of the infosphere, (...) or the total reality consisting of informational objects. The similarity with Spinoza is that both philosophers refer to basic reality as a foundation for normative judgments. Hence they are both ethical naturalists. An interpretation of both Floridi and Spinoza is offered that might begin to solve the basic problems for any naturalistic ethics. The problems are how a value theory that is based on metaphysics could maintain normative force and how normative force could be justified when there appear to be widely differing metaphysical systems according to the many cultural traditions. I argue that in Spinoza’s and presumably in Floridi’s system, there is no separation between the normative and the natural from the beginning. Normative terms derive their validity from their role in referring to action that leads to a richer and fuller reality. As for the second problem, Spinoza’s God is such that He cannot be fully described by mere finite intellect. What this translates to the contemporary situation of information ethics is that there are always bound to be many different ways of conceptualizing one and the same reality, and it is the people’s needs, goals and desires that often dictate how the conceptualizing is done. However, when different groups of people interact, these systems become calibrated with one another. This is possible because they already belong to the same reality. (shrink)

This paper aims to discuss two realist conceptions about causation in the light of the general theory of relativity. I first consider the conserved quantity of causation, which explicitly relies on the energy conservation principle. Such principle is however problematic within GTR, mainly because of the dynamical nature of the spacetime structure itself. I then turn to the causal theory of properties, according to which properties are such that insofar as they are certain qualities, they are powers to produce certain (...) effects. In order to be compatible with GTR, such theory has to assume non-trivial global conditions on the spacetime structure; such assumptions seem to deprive the „singularist‟ non-Humean feature of this theory of causation. The question of the possible causal nature of spacetime properties is addressed in the conclusion. (shrink)

About 60 years ago, Tang Junyi 唐君毅, Mou Zongsan 牟宗三, Xu Fuguan 徐復觀, and Zhang Junmai 張君勱 published “A Manifesto for a Reappraisal of Sinology and Reconstruction of Chinese Culture.” In the Manifesto, these major representatives of contemporary New Confucianism tried to rectify Westerners’ biases and reestablish Chinese people’s cultural confidence by upholding the Confucian learning of the heart-mind as the core of Chinese culture. Following the same approach, some prominent scholars today continue the effort of bringing Confucianism to a (...) new epoch through reappropriating metaphysical theories of the heart-mind and human nature of the Zisi 子思–Mencius lineage, which flourished in the Song-Ming 宋明 period. This article critically reflects on this approach and argues that the Confucian learning of the heart-mind and human nature should not be taken so much as a mirror that reflects metaphysical reality than as a lever that directs and uplifts human vision and gongfu 功夫/工夫. In the cultural context today, revealing the gongfu nature of Confucianism can help us appreciate the real value of Confucianism as a constructive resource for global culture. (shrink)

Global directional eliminativists deny that there is any global direction to time. This paper provides a way to understand everyday temporal assertions—assertions made outside the physics or metaphysics rooms, the truth of which appears to require that time has a global direction—on the assumption that global directional eliminativism is true.

Over the past decade, in contrast to the traditional analytic version of metaphysics, a brand of metaphysics that prioritizes collaboration and corroboration with sciences has emerged in the form of scientific metaphysics. While there has been a shift from the methodological dependence of analytic metaphysis on intuition, and conceptual analysis to the methodological preference for empirically-motivated metaphysical insights in scientific metaphysics, such a shift has not penetrated the foundational aims. Scientific metaphysics continues to probe the nature and structure of (...) reality, much like its analytic counterpart and in this process, develops ontologies. Broadly two kinds of ontologies are furnished - global metaphysical ontologies and local scientific ontologies. In this paper, I highlight the challenges with developing such ontologies in scientific metaphysics. With Ladyman-Ross’ Information Theoretic Structural Realism as a case in point, I contest that the former suffers from representational indeterminacy and redundancy. Further, I note the possibility that eventually, local scientific ontologies might be replaced by scientific theories and in such a scenario, the former are best conceived as interim metaphysical supports for the latter. (shrink)

Moral expressivists think that moral thoughts and sentences don’t represent or describe the world, at least not in any interesting sense. Global expressivists think that _no_ thoughts or sentences represent the world; local expressivists think that some do and others don’t. Huw Price has influentially argued that local expressivism collapses into global expressivism, due both to the effects of minimalist theories of representation and similar concepts, and to an unappreciated consequence of the success of specific expressivist (...) class='Hi'>theories like moral expressivism. In this paper I argue that Price’s arguments don’t succeed. While they can be fixed, doing so makes them miss their intended target. Local expressivists should therefore not be worried by Price’s arguments. (shrink)

Ritual (li) is central to Confucian ethics and political philosophy. Robert Neville believes that Chinese Philosophy has an important role to play in our times by bringing ritual theory to the analysis of global moral and political issues. In a recent work, Neville maintains that ritual ‘needs a contemporary metaphysical expression if its importance is to be seen.’ This paper examines Neville's claim through a detailed study of the ‘ethics of ritual’ in one of the early Confucian texts, (...) the Xunzi. This text has sometimes been read as offering a form of naturalism in its discussions of ‘heaven (tian)’ as analogous to Western, even modern, concept of ‘nature,’ while other interpreters insist that tian is a normative notion. Does this concept of tian offer a metaphysical ground for ethics of ritual advocated in the text? If so, what kind of metaphysics is it? Does Confucian ritual ethics need any metaphysical grounding? There is no specific metaphysical theory in the Xunzi and passages which could be referring to or implying metaphysical assumptions are open to hermeneutical debates. Even if metaphysical assumptions are necessary or beneficial to an ethics of ritual, the paper argues that the ‘metaphysical flexibility’ of the text could work to its advantage in remaining relevant in contemporary context. The conclusion explores some possible directions for further exploring the metaphysics of ritual in a modern understanding of Xunzi. (shrink)

The spectre of global environmental destruction is before us, the legacy of the expansion and domination of the world by European civilization. Not even the threat to the continued existence of humanity is enough to move the members of this civilization to alter its trajectory. And Marxism, which had held out the possibility of creating a new social order, has been swept from the historical stage by the failure of Eastern European communism. Nihilism Inc. is an attempt to overcome (...) this crisis. Examining the relationship between metaphysical assumptions, ideas, social practices, institutions and economic processes in the formation and evolution of European civilization, it offers a genealogy of its current nihilism. The theory and practice of Marxism are analysed to show why the Soviet Union proved even more environmentally destructive and even less responsive to the environmental crisis than the West. These analyses reveal the need for a radical cultural transformation, a transformation which can only be effected on the foundation of a new metaphysics. The final part of this work offers the required metaphysics, clearing the way for the creation of an environmentally sustainable civilization. (shrink)

We are living in a time of meta-organics and post-biology, where we perceive everything in our world as customizable and changeable. Modelling biology within a technological context allows us to investigate GEO-volutionary alternatives/alterations to our original natural systems, where augmentation and transmutation become standards in search of overall betterment (Genetically Engineered Organics). Our expectations for technology exceeds ubiquitous access and functional perfection and enters the world of technoetics, where our present hyper-functional, immersively multi-apped, borderline-prosthetic, global village devices fail to (...) satiate our desires to be synaptically surpassed. Most real-time interactive behavioural systems in art utilize two and three dimensions. Artificial neural networks and prediction (Latin: from pr- before plus dicere to say) systems give rise to experimentation within the third-plus-one (3+1) dimension of the spacetime continuum. Spacetime in accordance with string theory requires the where and when to describe something in existence, rather than mere points in space. It explains the workings of the universe from both super-galactic and subatomic levels. Physical cosmology studies the motions of the celestial bodies in relation to the first cause (ie. primum movens) or the source of all-being. In book 12 of Metaphysics, Aristotle spoke of something which moves without (itself) being moved (by anything), and referred to being as motion. In quantum mechanics, a particle is described by a wave. Physiognomy is an evolving area of psychological research that describes a direct correlation between human gesture (or movement) and thought. Early twentieth-century Persian philosopher Abdul-Baha mentioned that the reality of man is his thought, not his material body. Prediction systems apply models of the mind, or artificial neural networks and machine learning strategies, to use the recorded past with the present to anticipate the future. This article investigates existing human and artificial psychic systems in hopes of identifying tools necessary in building a gesture prediction system. The relationship of intent to gesture and whether intent can be perceived without the evidence of gesture are two factors that must be tested. (shrink)

The monograph is an English, expanded and revised version of the book Cheshko, V. T., Ivanitskaya, L.V., & Glazko, V.I. (2018). Anthropocene. Philosophy of Biotechnology. Moscow, Course. The manuscript was completed by me on November 15, 2019. It is a study devoted to the development of the concept of a stable evolutionary human strategy as a unique phenomenon of global evolution. The name “An Evolutionary Metaphysics (Cheshko, 2012; Glazko et al., 2016). With equal rights, this study could be entitled (...) “Biotechnology as a result and factor of the evolutionary processˮ. The choice in favor of used “The Evolutionary Metaphysics of Human Enhancement Technologiesˮ was made in accordance with the basic principle of modern post-academician and human-sized science, a classic example of which is biotechnology. The “Metaphysics of Evolution” and “Evolutionary Metaphysics” concepts are used in several ways in modern philosophical discourse. In any case, the values contain a logical or associative reference to the teleological nature of the evolutionary process (Hull, 1967, 1989; Apel, 1995; Faye, 2016; Dupre, 2017; Rose, 2018, etc). In our study, the “evolutionary metaphysics” serves to denote the thesis of the rationalization and technologization of global evolution and anthropogenesis, in particular. At the same time, the postulate of an open future remains relevant in relation to the results of the evolutionary process. The theory of evolution of complex, including the humans system and algorithm for its constructing are а synthesis of evolutionary epistemology, philosophical anthropology and concrete scientific empirical basis in modern science. ln other words, natural philosophy is regaining the status bar element theoretical science in the era of technology-driven evolution. The co-evolutionary concept of 3-modal stable evolutionary strategy of Homo sapiens is developed. The concept based оn the principle of evolutionary complementarity of anthropogenesis: value of evolutionary risk and evolutionary path of human evolution are defined bу descriptive (evolutionary efficiency) and creative-teleological (evolutionary correctness) parameters simultaneously, that cannot bе instrumental reduced to others ones. Resulting volume of both parameters define the vectors of blological, social, cultural and techno-rationalistic human evolution Ьу two gear mechanism genetic and cultural co-evolution and techno-humanitarian balance. The resultant each of them сап estimated Ьу the ratio of socio-psychological predispositions of humanization / dehumanization in mentality. Explanatory model and methodology of evaluation of creatively teleological evolutionary risk component of NBIC technological complex is proposed. Integral part of the model is evolutionary semantics (time-varying semantic code, the compliance of the blological, socio-cultural and techno-rationalist adaptive modules of human stable evolutionary strategy). It is seem necessary to make three clarifications. First, logical construct, “evolutionary metaphysics” contains an internal contradiction, because it unites two alternative explanatory models. “Metaphysics”, as a subject, implies deducibility of the process from the initial general abstract principle, and, consequently, the outcome of the development of the object is uniquely determined by the initial conditions. Predicate, “evolutionary”, means stochastic mechanism of realizing the same principle by memorizing and replicating random choices in all variants of the post-Darwin paradigm. In philosophy, random choice corresponds to the category of “free will” of a reasonable agent. In evolutionary theory, the same phenomenon is reflected in the concept of “covariant replication”. Authors will attempt to synthesize both of these models in a single transdisciplinary theoretical framework. Secondly, the interpretation of the term “evolutionary (adaptive) strategyˮ is different from the classical definition. The difference is that the adaptive strategy in this context is equivalent to the survival, i.e. it includes the adaptation to the environment and the transformation (construction) of the medium in accordance with the objectives of survival. To emphasize this difference authors used verbal construction “adaptiveˮ (rather than “evolutionaryˮ) strategy as more adequate. In all other cases, the two terms may be regarded as synonymous. Thirdly, the initial two essays of this series were published in one book in 2012. Their main goal was the development of the logically consistent methodological concept of stable adaptive (evolutionary) strategy of hominines and the argumentation of its heuristic possibilities as a transdisciplinary scientific paradigm of modern anthropology. The task was to demonstrate the possibilities of the SESH concept in describing and explaining the evolutionary prospects for the interaction of social organization and technology (techno-humanitarian balance) and the associated biological and cultural mechanisms of the genesis of religion (gene-cultural co-evolution). In other words, it was related to the sphere of cultural and philosophical anthropology, i.e. to the axiological component of any theoretical constructions describing the behavior of self-organizing systems with human participation. In contrast, the present work is an attempt to introduce this concept into the sphere of biological anthropology and, consequently, its main goal is to demonstrate the possibility of verification of its main provisions by means of procedures developed by natural science, i.e. refers to the descriptive component of the same theoretical constructions. The result of this in the future should be methods for assessing, calculating and predicting the risk of loss of biological and cultural identity of a person, associated with a permanent and continuously deepening process of development of science and technology. (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be interpreted (...) as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

Contemporary capitalism is becoming increasingly metaphysical. The article contrasts a ‘physical’ capitalism – of the national and manufacturing age – with a ‘metaphysical capitalism’ of the global information society. It describes physical capitalism in terms of extensity, equivalence, equilibrium and the phenomenal, which stands in contrast to metaphysical capitalism’s intensity, inequivalence, disequilibrium and the noumenal. Most centrally: if use-value or the gift in pre-capitalist society is grounded in concrete inequivalence, and exchange-value in physical capitalism presumes abstract (...) equivalence, then value in contemporary society presumes abstract inequivalence. The article argues that the predominantly physical causation of the earlier epoch is being superseded by a more metaphysical causation. This is discussed in terms of the four Aristotelian causes. Thus there is a shift in efficient cause from abstract homogenous labour to abstract heterogeneous life. Material cause changes from the commodity’s units of equivalence to consist of informational units of inequivalence. Formal cause takes place through the preservation of form as a disequilibriate system through operations of closure. These operations are at the same time information interchanges with a form’s environment. Final cause becomes the deep-structural generation of information from a compressed virtual substrate. This may have implications for method in the social and human sciences. The article illustrates this shift with a brief discussion of global finance. (shrink)

his article develops a framework for addressing racial ontologies in transnational perspective. In contrast to simple contextualist accounts, it is argued that a globally engaged metaphysics of race needs to address transnational continuities of racial ontologies. In contrast to unificationist accounts that aim for one globally unified ontology, it is argued that questions about the nature and reality of race do not always have the same answers across national contexts. In order address racial ontologies in global perspective, the article (...) develops a framework that accounts for both continuities and discontinuities by looking beyond the referents of narrowly defined core concepts. By shifting the focus from narrow concepts to richer conceptions of race, racial ontologies become comparable through globally related but nonetheless distinct mappings between conceptions and property relations. The article concludes by showing how this framework can generate novel insights in case studies from Asia, Europe, and Latin America. (shrink)

In this book, Ellis argues that moral and political objectives are not independent of one other, and so must be pursued in tandem. _Social humanism_ is a moral and political philosophy that does just this. As a political philosophy, it justifies the implementation and maintenance of many of the characteristic social policies of welfare states. As a moral philosophy, it provides the foundation required for most human rights legislation. To this end, Ellis elaborates on the theory of social humanism and (...) the need to reconsider the metaphysical foundations of morals. He develops the theory of social idealism as a meta-theory for both morals and social policy, exploring the global consequences of this new approach. (shrink)

In this book, Ellis argues that moral and political objectives are not independent of one other, and so must be pursued in tandem. _Social humanism_ is a moral and political philosophy that does just this. As a political philosophy, it justifies the implementation and maintenance of many of the characteristic social policies of welfare states. As a moral philosophy, it provides the foundation required for most human rights legislation. To this end, Ellis elaborates on the theory of social humanism and (...) the need to reconsider the metaphysical foundations of morals. He develops the theory of social idealism as a meta-theory for both morals and social policy, exploring the global consequences of this new approach. (shrink)

Moods have global and profound effects on our thoughts, motivations and behavior. To understand human behavior and cognition fully, we must understand moods. In this paper I critically examine and reject the methodology of conventional ?cognitive theories? of affect. I lay the foundations of a new theory of moods that identifies them with processes of our cognitive functional architecture. Moods differ fundamentally from some of our other affective states and hence require distinct explanatory tools. The computational theory of (...) mood I propose places them within the context of other mental phenomena and is consistent with the empirical data on moods. (shrink)

Dynamical systems theory (DST) is gaining popularity in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Recently several authors (e.g. J.A.S. Kelso, 1995; A. Juarrero, 1999; F. Varela and E. Thompson, 2001) offered a DST approach to mental causation as an alternative for models of mental causation in the line of Jaegwon Kim (e.g. 1998). They claim that some dynamical systems exhibit a form of global to local determination or downward causation in that the large-scale, global activity of the system (...) governs or constrains local interactions. This form of downward causation is the key to the DST model of mental causation. In this paper I evaluate the DST approach to mental causation. I will argue that the main problem for current DST approaches to mental causation is that they lack a clear metaphysics. I propose one metaphysical framework (Gillett, 2002a/b/c) that might deal with this deficiency. (shrink)

Taking the Heideggerian critical ontology of technology as its base, this volume looks at postcolonial modernization and development in the global south as the worldwide expansion of the western metaphysical understanding of reality. We live today in an increasingly globalizing technological society that Martin Heidegger described in the middle of the last century as 'the planetary imperialism of technologically organized man.' Consequent upon this cultural-intellectual globalization, the ahistorical, violent, individualistic, calculative and capitalistic logic of the metaphysics of technology (...) is permeating the life-world, even of the world's poorest peoples, in ways they could neither choose nor control. This volume questions the political ethics and justice of post-war development discourse in the light of the egalitarian aims of modern societies, cultural freedom of communities and nations, and the ecological limits of the planet. The final chapters discuss the alternative proposal of development as various conceptions of good life and equitable human flourishing amidst equally flourishing non-human life and non-living beings. This unique volume is the first book-length treatment of the ontology of modernization and development in the global south from a Heideggerian stance. (shrink)

ExcerptIntroduction Much of nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophy proclaimed the end the metaphysics and the death of God. The German, French, and English strands of the Enlightenment were united in their suspicion of metaphysical theism. Figures as diverse as Comte, Marx, Spencer, Nietzsche, and Russell defended the absolute autonomy of atheist reason against religious faith. Following the rise of partisan ideologies that terrorized the West from 1789 to 1989, the downfall of the Soviet empire appeared to herald the “end of (...) history” and a global convergence toward liberal market democracy. Ideas of freedom and justice would henceforth…. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to show that the philosophy of Mihai Şora can both be seen as a phenomenological treatment of being and as a general theory of being in its most rigorous sense. At least, this philosophy could be designated as a phenomenological ontology which opens up itself towards an originally metaphysical perspective based on a specific type of knowledge of the sort of “global disclosure”. I will argue too that within Şora's philosophy one can have (...) a twofold approach: one starts from what we could call the phenomenology of the “common givenness” (“ordinary/ quotidian givenness”) and then proceeds (in a phenomenological manner) to a general theory of being, which is represented in Şora's philosophy by the constitution of the model of the “sphere with the null ray”; the second commences with the treatment of the ontological model as such (the model, which is already formed, represents in the end the symbolic structure of reality), that is, from this “general theory of being” (or of the constitution of being) and then advances step by step towards various (phenomenological) applications of this ontological model to the multifaceted spheres of the domain of being (the sphere of language, of temporality, of ethics, of the social, of politics, etc.). (shrink)

Peter Carruthers has recently argued for a surprising conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is both correct and fully reductive, then there are no substantive facts to discover about phenomenal consciousness in nonhuman animals. I present two problems for this conditional. First, it rests on an odd double-standard about the ordinary concept of phenomenal consciousness: its intuitive non-gradability is taken to be unchallengeable by future scientific developments, whereas its intuitive determinacy is predicted to fall by the (...) wayside. Second, it relies on dismissing, prematurely, the live empirical possibility that phenomenal consciousness may be linked to a core global broadcast mechanism that is shared by a wide range of animals. Future developments in the science of consciousness may lead us to reconsider the non-gradability of phenomenal consciousness, but they are unlikely to lead us to accept that there are no facts to discover outside the paradigm case of a healthy adult human. (shrink)

The post-Kantians were inspired by Kant’s Critique of Judgment to forge a new synthesis of natural philosophy, art and history that would overcome the dualisms and gulfs within Kant’s philosophy. Focusing on biology and showing how Schelling reworked and transformed Kant’s insights, it is argued that Schelling was largely successful in laying the foundations for this synthesis, although he was not always consistent in building on these foundations. To appreciate this achievement, it is argued that Schelling should not be interpreted (...) as an idealist but as a process metaphysician; as he claimed, overcoming the oppositions between idealism and realism, spiritualism and materialism. It is also argued that as a process metaphysician, Schelling not merely defended an organic view of nature but developed a theory of emergence and a new conception of life relevant to current theoretical and philosophical biology. This interpretation provides a defense of process metaphysics as the logical successor to Kant’s critical philosophy and thereby as the most defensible tradition of philosophy up to the present. It provides the foundations for post-reductionist science, reconciling the sciences, the arts and the humanities, and provides the basis for a more satisfactory ethics and political philosophy. Most importantly, it overcomes the nihilism of European civilization, providing the foundations for a global ecological civilization. (shrink)

I articulate a Global Best-System Account (GBSA) of laws of nature along broadly Mill–Ramsey–Lewis lines. The guiding idea is that the job of laws is to capture real patterns across time—where a pattern is real if it allows to compress information about matters of particular fact. The GBSA’s key ingredient is a definition of ‘best system’ in terms of a ranking method that meets a number of desiderata: it is rigorously defined; it outputs the ranking based on the candidate (...) systems’ epistemic virtues; it is objective, in that the output does not depend on one’s choice of basic concepts; it avoids two trivialization results (by Lewis, and Arrow-Okasha); and it does not appeal to naturalness, or other metaphysical notions in that vicinity. Although the GBSA is independent of the controversial thesis of Humean Supervenience, it satisfies the weaker thesis that laws of nature supervene on the total physical state of the world. Moreover, the resulting notion of lawhood is hyperintensional, unlike the neighboring notion of nomological necessity. Finally, GBSA-laws do not track naturalness, contra the Lewisian orthodoxy. (shrink)

Pogge’s writings on international distributive justice, some of them now collected in ‘World Poverty and Human Rights’ (2002),1 exhibit a masterly interplay of moral argumentation and empirical data. In this contribution, I cannot do justice to both and will therefore focus on Pogge’s moral arguments, the origins of which are to be found in the legal philosophies of Kant and Rawls. Contrary to these philosophers, however, Pogge does argue in favor of an institutionalized global order. That is, he argues, (...) what justice demands. On this point, he sharply differs from his predecessors. Although Rawls criticizes Kant because of his adherence to a ‘comprehensive’, metaphysical viewpoint, he follows Kant in distinguishing between several layers of justice, especially between justice on the domestic, national level and justice on the international, global scale (adding local justice as a third layer). In comparison with both Kant’s and Rawls’s views, Pogge pleads for a revolutionary transformation of the ‘law of peoples’, in which the ‘statist’ approach is rejected altogether and a much more utopian stance is adopted. Here, I intend to bring the main arguments together: Kant’s and Rawls’s pleas for international justice on the one hand and Pogge’s arguments for global justice on the other. By doing so, I hope to contribute to answering the question whether Pogge’s views represent an unjustifiable ‘moral doctrine’, unfit for the highly complex international society of societies or an utopian view in need of being endorsed by many. This then sets my agenda: I will first briefly summarize Kant’s and Rawls’s arguments in favor of a layered structure of ‘international’ justice. Second, I will briefly summarize Pogge’s arguments in favor of ‘global’ justice. The contrast between those views will then enable me to raise the most difficult question: if the requirement of global justice is true in theory, why is it so difficult to apply it in practice? Do these difficulties point at the nature of morality itself.. (shrink)

The integrated information theory is an ambitious theory of consciousness that aims to provide both a neuroscientific and a metaphysical account of consciousness by identifying consciousness with integrated information. In the philosophical literature, IIT is often associated with a panpsychist worldview. In this paper, I show that IIT can be considered, instead, as a form of emergentism that is incompatible with panpsychism. First, I show that the panpsychist interpretation of IIT is based on two properties of integrated information: intrinsicality (...) and fundamentality. I show that the way IIT deals with these two properties, however, aligns better with emergentism than panpsychism. Then, after plugging some anti-panpsychist assumptions into IIT’s structure, I analyse different philosophical options for interpreting the formal result of causal emergence of integrated information in terms of dependence on and autonomy from its physical substrate. The upshot is that integrated information can be seen as dependent upon the fusion of the cause-effect powers of a physical substrate, and as autonomous in virtue of global-to-local determination. According to this interpretation, consciousness is the constraining power of the system as a whole upon itself, when this power emerges from the fusion on the cause-effect powers of the system’s components. (shrink)

Traditional Chinese philosophy, if engaged at all, is often regarded as an object of antiquated curiosity and dismissed as unimportant in the current age of globalization. Written by a team of internationally renowned scholars, this book, however, challenges this judgement and offers an in-depth study of pre-modern Chinese philosophy from an interdisciplinary perspective. Exploring the relevance of traditional Chinese philosophy for the global age, it takes a comparative approach, analysing ancient Chinese philosophy in its relation to Western ideas and (...) contemporary postmodernist theories. The conversation extends over a broad spectrum of philosophical areas and themes, ranging from metaphysics, hermeneutics, political theory, religion and aesthetics to specific philosophical schools including Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. By engaging many time-honoured philosophical issues from a comparative perspective, this book bridges the gap between Eastern and Western thought and emphasises the need for a newly fortified global humanism and a deeper appreciation of different philosophical and religious values in an age gripped by large-scale crises. Arguing that traditional Chinese philosophy has immediate relevance to the many challenges of modern life, this book will be useful to students and scholars of Asian Philosophy and Asian Studies in general. (shrink)

This paper develops an adverbial theory of consciousness. Adverbialism is described and endorsed and defended from its near rival, an identity thesis in which conscious mental states are those that the mental subject self-knows immediately that he or she is "in". The paper develops an account of globally supported self-ascription to embed this neo-Brentanian view of experiencing consciously within a more general account of the relation between consciousness and self-knowledge. Following O'Shaughnessy, person level consciousness is explained as a feature of (...) the bundle of mental capacities characteristic of persons: person level consciousness involves a capacity holism. Drawing on Kant, it is argued that if a person is in a mental state intentionally directed to an object then such a subject can "self token" such knowledge. The content of that self-knoweldge supervenes on the possession of a global set of capacities, and this capacity for self-ascription depends on the fact that our experience has a perspectival character with, as it were, nothing at the vanishing point of this perspective. The fact that one can attach the cogito to any one of one's representation shows a truth about the unity of the conscious life of a person that cannot be stated and this capacity is distinguished from self-conscious thinking about oneself. This approach is contrasted to Shoemaker's functionalist treatment of the self-tokening of conscious states and of "self-blindness". It is argued that to be fully consistent, Shoemaker has to abandon the claim that introspectionism is guilty of a self-scanning model or rational control as he seems committed to that model too. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics by Mark SideritsRick Repetti (bio)How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics. By Mark Siderits. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022. Pp. vi + 204. Paperback $29.95, ISBN 978-0-19-760691-9.How Things Are: An Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics, by Mark Siderits, presents ten chapters on Buddhist metaphysics that will appeal to readers from any number of backgrounds, e.g. Western philosophers concerned with (...) analytic metaphysics, but also philosophers of mind, epistemologists, phenomenologists, philosophers of meditation, comparative philosophers, non-Buddhist Indian philosophers, and Buddhist philosophers. The book includes an introductory chapter and chapters on the self, the person, fundamental ontology, causation, Buddhist nominalism, time, the external world, the internal world, and anti-realism. This book is a must-read for anyone who wishes to have a robust understanding of Buddhist metaphysics. If nothing else, the reader will appreciate the richness, complexity, and analytic rigor of Buddhist metaphysics that parallels its Western counterparts.This book is an "introduction" to "Buddhist" metaphysics, but much more, as each chapter comprehensively assesses the dialectical progression of arguments, theories, objections, rebuttals, and refinements throughout the history within and between the various schools and traditions of Buddhist metaphysics and their non-Buddhist interlocutors in Indian philosophy, and their analogues in Western philosophy. That comprehensiveness is an obvious feature, but possibly also a bug, as "Introduction to Buddhist Metaphysics" is an understatement. For readers to fully follow any "introduction," they must be able to do so on the basis of the information provided. This is largely but not entirely the case here, for, as someone fairly well-versed in Western and Indian philosophy, I think readers of How Things Are would only be able to fully follow its many abstract, complex, eloquent arguments and assertions if they were already quite well-versed in the history of both. I found it occasionally difficult to follow Siderits' reasoning, despite knowing what he means by certain unexplained terms he relies on, such as "qualia-philes," "cognitively impenetrable," and "the refrigerator illusion."The introductory chapter begins by noting that, contextually, older philosophical systems, e.g. Sāṃkhya and Nyāya, were extant when Buddhism [End Page 1] arose in India, systems which agree that liberation is about disidentifying consciousness with matter, while Buddhism is about disidentifying with anything. Siderits here sketches the eightfold path and its meditative core, noting that "the careful observation of mental states cultivated in some types of meditational practice is said to provide empirical evidence in support of key philosophical theses" (p. 11). As keen as Siderits is elsewhere to uncover problems, however, this description glosses over the fact that Buddhist meditative instructions are formulated precisely to "confirm" the "key philosophical theses" of momentariness, impersonality, and causal interdependence, in which case practitioners are looking for these things in ways that generate their perception; thus the claim that meditative experiences count as "empirical evidence of key Buddhist ideological theses" is circular (Struhl 2022).Siderits then sketches the three main stages in Buddhist development, namely, the early sūtras (the Indian Nikāyas and the Chinese Āgamas), the subsequent philosophical analyses of these (the Abhidharma), and the later developments (the Mahāyāna: both Yogācāra and Mādhyamaka), and what they all agree on: the unreality of the self, momentariness, mereological nihilism, and non-substantialism. Siderits brilliantly explains arguments for and against each, and maps out four general stances: two dualist realisms (Vaibhāṣika and Sautrāntika), one external world anti-realism (Yogācāra), and one global anti-realism (Mādhyamaka). He then explains Vaibhāṣika's direct realism (we perceive external, mind-independent objects directly, akin to naïve realism) and eternalism (each moment exists in all three times: past, present, future). He goes on to explain Sautrāntika's representationalism (we are aware only of mental representations of perceptual objects, akin to sense data) and presentism (only the present moment exists). Siderits here notes that representationalism leads to idealism (as it did in the modern West), and that Yogācāra espouses non-duality between representation and reality--a non-duality that entails local anti-realism about the physical... (shrink)