Showing papers in "European Journal of Philosophy in 2008"

Perceiving Temporal Properties

Abstract: Philosophers have long struggled to understand our perceptual experience of temporal properties such as succession, persistence and change. Indeed, strikingly, a number have felt compelled to deny that we enjoy such experience. Philosophical puzzlement arises as a consequence of assuming that, if one experiences succession or temporal structure at all, then one experiences it at a moment. The two leading types of theory of temporal awareness—specious present theories and memory theories—are best understood as attempts to explain how temporal awareness is possible within the constraints of this principle. I argue that the principle is false. Neither theory of temporal awareness can be made workable unless it is rejected. Our experience of temporal phenomena cannot be understood if we attempt to break experience down into instantaneous slices. In order to understand the perception of temporal properties we must look beyond the instant. 1. Puzzlement Nao ¨vely, we think that myriad different temporal properties and relations can be made manifest in perceptual awareness. Recall, for example, the celebrated opening bars of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue during which the first B-flat clarinet, starting from a long low trill, crescendos flamboyantly through a smooth two- and-a-half octave glissando to arrive on a sustained minim concert B-flat (see below).

The Myth of Practical Consistency

Abstract: It is often said that there is a special class of norms, ‘rational requirements’, that demand that our attitudes be related to one another in certain ways, whatever else may be the case. In recent work, a special class of these rational requirements has attracted particular attention: what I will call ‘requirements of formal coherence as such’, which require just that our attitudes be formally coherent. For example, we are rationally required, if we believe something, to believe what it entails. And we are rationally required, if we intend an end, to intend what we take to be necessary means to it. The intuitive idea is that formally incoherent attitudes give rise to a certain normative tension, or exert a kind of rational pressure on each another, and this tension, or pressure, is relieved just when one of the attitudes is revised. As John Broome observes, these requirements are, by their nature, ‘wide scope’, which is to say that there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to satisfy them. This is because they require just formal coherence, and there is no particular attitude that one must have or lack in order to be formally coherent. For many, these requirements of formal coherence are the only sure thing in the domain of normativity. Either, as Humeans say, there is nothing else. Or, as Kantians say, whatever else there is must be a construct, or relative, of requirements of formal coherence. Yet, in his much-discussed paper, ‘The Myth of Instrumental Rationality’, Joseph Raz puts this view on the defensive. He denies, in particular, that there is a rational requirement of formal coherence that governs means and ends, such as:

The Moral Development of First‐Person Authority

Abstract: For any detailed description of the complexity of human nature, of the insurgence of instinct in the garb of reason, of the multifarious play of the social environment in the individual ego, and of the individual ego on the social environment, I had to turn to the novelists and the poets. (Beatrice Webb, My Apprenticeship) It is a natural, commonsense assumption that human beings who are competent in their understanding and use of folk-psychological concepts (e.g. ‘belief’, ‘desire’, ‘intention’, ‘fear’, ‘hope’, ‘jealousy’ and the like) have a special kind of authority with respect to claims they make about their own minds, in particular about their own intentional attitudes. One way to capture this special sense of authority is to argue that such claims are subject to a ‘default hypothesis’ of correctness (e.g. Wright 1991: 143–4). If I claim to be upset or happy about something or to have a yearning for plum pudding, then, all things being equal (i.e. assuming I am sane, and sincere, and not deeply distracted), the appropriate default presumption is that such claims are true. This presumption must be carefully understood, of course. On the one hand, it does not amount to endorsing a person’s infallibility or even incorrigibility with respect to the claims they make about their own minds; others may successfully challenge them from the point of view of making sense of the overall pattern of that person’s behaviour. On the other hand, the evidence of someone’s ‘unextorted word’ about what they think, desire, or feel takes a lot to defeat (Dennett 1987: 20). For not only must the rest of the person’s behaviour speak strongly against taking them at their word; there must be some reasonable account of how they have failed to maintain first-person authority in the particular case. In other words, the idea of a special kind of authority attaching to first-person claims brings with it the demand for special explanations in the case of failure. There is a long tradition in philosophy of attempting to explain the special qualities of first-person authority in terms of a privileged epistemological relation a person bears to her own mind. Yet this purely epistemological approach not only encounters serious difficulties in its own terms; it fails to account for a critical feature of first-person authority even if these difficulties could be overcome. It fails to explain the close connection between acknowledging someone’s authority over her own psychological states and treating her as the sort of agent who can be held responsible for what she thinks and does. Such an

Rules, Regression and the ‘Background’: Dreyfus, Heidegger and McDowell

Abstract: The work of Hubert Dreyfus interweaves productively ideas from, among others, Heidegger and Wittgenstein. A central element in Dreyfus' hugely influential interpretation of the former is the proposal that, if we are to—in some sense—'make sense' of intentionality, then we must recognize what Dreyfus calls the 'background'. Though Dreyfus has, over the years, put the notion of the 'background' to a variety of philosophical uses,1 considerations familiar from the literature inspired by Wittgenstein's reflections on rule-following have played an important role in motivating the case for believing that we need to recognize the 'background' and thus also in identifying precisely what it is about the intentional that supposedly needs to be 'made sense of'. Dreyfus argues that what he calls 'representationalism' will land us with an unstoppable 'regress of rules'. In this paper, I first argue that there are actually two different arguments that Dreyfus invokes; I then go on to evaluate quite how, in the light of the problems that those arguments reveal, our position might be thought to be improved by our recognizing the 'background'. Given that various philosophical positions designed to deal with these problems have emerged within the Wittgensteinian literature, an obvious question to ask is whether the position that Dreyfus would have us adopt is essentially one of those positions. If it isn't, then how does it differ? There is surely a variety of ways in which such a comparison might be carried out and what I offer is only one. I argue that if, through a recognition of the 'background', we are thought to have acquired solutions to those problems, then it's not at all clear that the supposed solutions that emerge work. So I explore instead the possibility that that recognition forms part of an attempt to 'dissolve' those problems. In order to bring some clarity to that possibility I consider a number of different ways in which Dreyfus' proposals might be interpreted by drawing on ideas set out by John McDowell (and I suggest that his view of one of the 'regress' arguments is anticipated by Heidegger himself). I then identify and assess some of the consequences of adopting such McDowellian readings. My sense is that Dreyfus is on the side of the angels, so to speak. But if what is right in his proposals is to become clear, and if he is to be spared some obvious objections that those proposals may elicit, we need to be clear about just what kind of contribution those proposals are meant to make. In pursuing that clarity, I am attempting to follow through on the comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian ideas that Dreyfus and his supporters have initiated: what has yet to be clarified is how and why recognizing the 'background' will allow us to 'cope better' with the puzzles in the rule-following literature that they have cited in making a case for the need to recognize the 'background'. Ultimately, I will argue that assessing this matter may require a yet broader comparison of Wittgensteinian and Heideggerian themes, one which raises questions about what we take 'doing ontology' and 'doing phenomenology' to be.

Rationalism about Obligation

Abstract: This paper considers whether having an obligation to do something involves having a special kind of reason to do it. I focus on those obligations which arise from the exercise of normative powers e.g. commands and promises. Various theories of obligation are examined, particularly that of Joseph Raz. I conclude that rationalism fails, at least with respect to promissory obligation.

Transcendental philosophy and atheism

Abstract: Engineers test materials by subjecting them to stress: once a beam has been broken one can specify exactly how strong it was. The same method can be used in philosophy. In the Autumn of 1798 and the Winter of 1799, Fichte’s philosophical position was submitted to extraordinary stress in the extended episode known as the Atheism Controversy, culminating in his forced dismissal from his university post at Jena. The disputed issues explicitly concerned matters of religious faith and philosophical theology, but the stress of the controversy exposed fundamental tensions in Fichte’s broader philosophical position and provoked him to formulate a novel, proto-phenomenological account of the scope and structure of transcendental investigation. Recent years have seen an explosion of new interest in the writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte.1 This recent spate of scholarship has focused attention on Fichte’s distinctive contributions in an array of interrelated areas: the theory of self-consciousness, the theory of subjectivity, idealism, intersubjectivity, private property and political right, freedom, etc.2 In all these areas a common pattern has emerged: Fichte appropriates and radicalizes – sometimes beyond recognition – themes he found in Kant, often mediated by figures such as Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Friedrich Jacobi, or Salomon Maimon. What has been less systematically interrogated is Fichte’s contribution to the very idea of transcendental philosophy, transcendental inquiry or transcendental proof. There are a few notable exceptions, the most important of which is Gunter Zoller’s study, Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy. But this is one of those cases where the exception proves the rule. For while Zoller emphasizes Fichte’s departures from Kant on many key points, when it comes to the theme of his title he generally emphasizes continuity. Zoller: ‘Historically speaking, Fichte’s project of a Wissenschaftslehre continues Kant’s development of a transcendental philosophy; it aims at a comprehensive account of the principles governing human knowledge and its world of objects.’3 And elsewhere: ‘Fichte retains the Kantian understanding of transcendental philosophy as a theory of experience.’4 One might accordingly conclude that Fichte simply did not have much to contribute on this score. Although he was a radical innovator in many areas, he essentially took over an unmodified Kantian construal of the parameters of transcendental investigation: transcendental philosophy is opposed on the one hand to 1 In referring to Fichte’s writings I have made use of the two standard editions. Where possible, I refer to the volume and page of I.H. Fichte, (ed.) Johann Gottlieb Fichtes sammtliche Werke (Berlin: Veit & Comp, 1845-6; reprint: Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), using the abbreviation SW. The pagination of SW is provided in most modern editions of Fichte’s works. For works not included in SW, I refer to R. Lauth et al. (eds.) J.G. Fichte: Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Stuttgart: Friedrich Frommann Verlag, 1964 ); page references to this edition are given with the abbreviation GA. English translations of many of the works cited here can be found in Breazeale 1988 and 1994. Citations to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason make use of the usual A and B numbering. 2 On Fichte’s contributions in these areas see inter alia: Henrich 1966 (on self-consciousness); Neuhouser 1990 (on subjectivity); Pippin 1989 (on idealism); Wood 2006 (on intersubjectivity); Merle, et al. 2001 (on political right). 3 Zoller 1998: 2. 4 Zoller 1998: 74.