Supervisory Committee Dr. Warren Magnusson, Department of Political Science (CSPT) Supervisor Dr. Rob Walker, Department of Political Science (CSPT) Departmental Member Dr. Michael Asch, Departments of Anthropology and Political Science (CSPT) Departmental Member Dr. Alan Drengson, School of Environmental Studies Outside Member Several scholars are now examining the emergence of ecology as a means for achieving tighter governmental regulations under the label of what they call green or ecogovernmentality. Adopting Michel Foucault‘s historical ontology, one of their critiques consists in problematizing the notion of Nature at the core of environmental debates as a political construct modulated by the historical conditions in which it finds itself. One implication of this is that ―Nature‖ has no normative implications except the ones we collectively fantasize about. Such a critique is often perceived as a threat by many environmentalists who are struggling to develop a global and intercultural perspective on environmental destruction. This dissertation suggests that Foucault‘s critical project should be examined from a more thoroughly ecological standpoint, leading toward the adoption of a broader, less ethnocentric and anthropocentric ontology. It explores the possibility of rethinking the concept of Nature at the core of political ecology from the standpoint of a relational ontology rather than an historical ontology. It argues that a relational ontology offers a possible alternative to historical ontology by posing our relations to ―Nature‖ not through the metaphysic of will and temporality assumed by Foucault (by which he asserts a universal state of contingency and finitude to deploy his critical project), but through a holistic understanding of Nature in terms of inter-constitutive relations. By being relational instead of historical, a relational ontology contributes to the formulation of open-ended and dynamic worldviews that do not operate against the backdrop of a homogenizing form of temporal universalism or constructivism, but rather poses the immanent differences and processes of diversification we are experiencing as the unifying and harmonizing principle by which we can rethink a more thorough egalitarian and non-anthropocentric standpoint for ecological thinking. Such a differential—yet shared—understanding of Nature could facilitate the development of an intercultural and non anthropocentric perspective on environmental destruction.

Green governmentality and its closeted metaphysics: toward an ontological relationality

Neuroscience is commonly thought to challenge the basic way we think of ourselves in ordinary thought, morality, and the law This paper: (1) describes the legal institutions challenged in this way by neuroscience, including in that description both the political philosophy such institutions enshrine and the common sense psychology they presuppose; (2) describes the three kinds of data produced by contemporary neuroscience that is thought to challenge these commonsense views of ourselves in morals and law; and (3) distinguishes four major and several minor kinds of challenges that that data can reasonably be interpreted to present The major challenges are: first, the challenge of reductionism, that we are merely machines; second, the challenge of determinism, that we are caused to choose and act as we do by brain states that we do not control; third, the challenge of epiphenomenalism, that our choices do not cause our actions because our brains are the real cause of those actions; and fourth, the challenge of fallibilism, that we do not have direct access to those of our mental states that do cause our actions, nor are we infallible in such knowledge as we do have of them

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0265052511000082

Responsible choices, desert-based legal institutions, and the challenges of contemporary neuroscience*

The aim of The Poetics of Being is to inquire into how the apperception of the Being of beings is produced. We will recognize this production not primarily in philosophy, but in a medium accessible to us all, theatre. Although the Romantic tradition of literary criticism from Herder to Bloom has noted that Shakespeare produces an exceptional sense of what is [true], so much so that he is said to create the impression of nature or life, no one has so far attempted to show how precisely Shakespeare affects this experience. Contrary to T. S. Eliot, who is unable to discern any kind of poetics in Shakespeare's plays, we have discovered an insistent and consistent pattern of inadequation, a kind of mismatch. The thesis argues, that the predominant tropes of inadequation are falsity, dissimilarity, nothing, indefinition, elision and substitution. We shall show that these figures of inadequation are the universal means by which Shakespeare, almost imperceptibly, compels the spectator to infer the apperception of what is [true].

On the basis of these tropes of inadequation the thesis makes the fundamental philosophical claim that the cognition of Being through non-Being is a negative form of what Heidegger calls the ontological difference. We call this the negative ontological difference. The thesis demonstrates that with the exception of some Pre-Socratic thinkers, Plato in the Sophist, the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, and the writings of Derrida, the bulk of the tradition of Western philosophy has argued Being in terms of positivities. While the thesis does not question the possibility of realizing the ontological difference in a positive fashion, as does Heidegger's philosophy of unconcealment, the thesis claims that the negative ontological difference, or ontological contradiction, is the more forceful process by which we become aware of what is [true].

The Poetics of Being

In this paper I offer a novel analysis of Quine's indeterminacy puzzle and an unorthodox approach to its resolution. It is argued that the ultimate roots of indeterminacy lie not in behaviorism per se, but rather in Quine's commitment to a fundamental assumption about the nature of perceptual input, namely, the assumption that sensory information is strictly extensional. Calling this assumption the ‘principle of input extensionalism’ (PIE) I first demonstrate the fundamental role that it plays in generating Quine's argument for the indeterminacy of translation. It is then argued that a tacit acceptance of PIE is prevalent among contemporary theories of cognition and representation, making Quine's puzzle a living challenge for cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. A standard way of responding to the challenge consists of the idea that the indeterminacy generated at the perceptual level is canceled out courtesy of the contribution of higher cognitive processes. However, I argue that such a top-down ...

The whole rabbit: On the perceptual roots of Quine's indeterminacy puzzle

Extensionalism, as I understand it here, is the view that physical reality consists exclusively of extensional entities. On this view, intensional entitities must either be eliminated in favor of an ontology of extensional entities, or be reduced to such an ontology, or otherwise be admitted as non-physical. In this paper I argue that extensionalism is a misguided philosophical doctrine. First, I argue that intensional phenomena are not confined to the realm of language and thought. Rather, the ontology of such phenomena is intimately entwined with the ontology of properties. After providing some evidence to the popularity of extensionalism in contemporary analytic philosophy, I investigate the motivating reasons behind it. Considering several explanations, I argue that the main motivating reason is rooted in the identification of matter with extension, an identification which is one of the hallmarks of the mechanistic conception of nature inherited from the founding fathers of our modern scientific outlook. I then argue that such a conception is not only at odds with a robust ontology of properties but is also at odds with our best contemporary physics. Rather than vindicating extensionalism contemporary science undermines the position, and the lesson to be drawn from this surprising fact is that extensionalism needs no longer be espoused as a regulative ideal of naturalistic philosophy. I conclude by showing that the ontological approach to intensional phenomena advocated throughout the paper also gains support from an examination of the historical context within which ‘intension’ was first introduced as a semantic notion.

James W. Cornman

Papers

Intentionality and Intensionality

Language and ontology