Showing papers in "Review of Metaphysics in 2014"

Strawson’s objectivity argument

Abstract: In his recent book on Kant, Strawson has offered a new and improved version of the central argument of the Transcendental Deduction – the argument that the possibility of experience somehow involves the possibility of experience of objects. This argument has a fair claim to be called the central argument of the Critique as a whole, since it is the argument which gives Kant’s justification for breaking with the traditional Cartesian notion of a veil of perceptions which separates the mind from the world, and insisting that the world is, in some sense, given whenever experience is given. Strawson’s account of this argument is an attempt to follow the lead Kant gives without getting involved in the “theory of synthesis” in terms of which Kant presents the Deduction . I think that this attempt is just what is needed in order to explicate Kant’s insight, but I think also that Strawson has not entirely succeeded in disentangling the underlying “analytic” argument from the misguided Kantian picture of intuitions and concepts as distinguishable sorts of representations. In this chapter, I offer an exegesis of this passage in Strawson, and I suggest revisions of, and additions to, his arguments. Early in The Bounds of Sense , Strawson gives us the plot of the Critique in the form of six theses which Kant wishes to expound. I quote from this passage the two theses which are most clearly relevant to the Transcendental Deduction : that there must be such unity among the members of some temporally extended series of experiences as is required for the possibility of self-consciousness, or self-ascription of experiences, on the part of a subject of such experiences (the thesis of the “necessary unity of consciousness”); that experience must include awareness of objects which are distinguishable from experiences of them in the sense that judgements about these objects are judgements about what is the case irrespective of the actual occurrence of particular subjective experiences of them (the objectivity thesis). (p. 24)

Nothingness and the Clearing: Heidegger, Daoism and the Quest for Primal Clarity

Abstract: When ONE SPEAKS OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER one seldom mentions East Asian philosophy in the same breath. Although the former's indebtedness to the latter might be historically well documented, (1) in terms of comparative philosophy there remains much to be said. One concept of particular note, and whose meaning evolved over the course of Heidegger's career, is Lichtung, "the clearing." As the site wherein the truth of being is revealed, Heidegger's theory that the clearing's own abyssal nature facilitates said revelation was without question influenced by Eastern philosophy, specifically that of Daoism. Drawing upon Laozi's (around sixth century B.C.E.) Daodejing and Zhuangzi's (375-300 B.C.E.) work of the same name, the argument will be made that Heidegger failed to fully grasp the cosmological significance of the nothingness of the clearing. By holding the former to the latter, their relationship is no longer one of mutual dependency but is subjugated to the existential truth of being. Had he taken the clearing as the self-embracement of nothingness, as Daoism does, Heidegger could have bridged the divide separating nothingness and being giving him the new beginning from which to approach the question of being he so much desired. Focusing on the recent translation of Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event) by Rojcewicz and Vallega-Neu, (2) this paper seeks to explicate Heidegger's version of the clearing and how it differs from the Daoist rendition, illuminate the relationship between nothingness and Being (hereafter beyng), and probe the significance of his call for a leap into the abyss of the clearing if we wish to learn the truth of beyng. This last point offers especially rich comparisons with Daoism, which holds that nothingness is the source of beyng while serving as the ground for its freedom. To begin, let us look at the German word for clearing. As a verb, lichten can be translated as the clearing of land; as a noun, Lichtung means lightness or unencumbered openness. Heidegger thus uses Lichtung in the sense of an opening in the forest that is free of obstructions allowing it to act as a space that exists independently of the interplay between its own hidden and manifest existence. (3) Although he associated beyng with light as early as Being and Time, (4) Heidegger would appear to reject this analogy in some of his postwar works such as the Heraclitus Seminar: Do clearing and light have anything at all to do with each other? Clearly not. "Clear" implies: to clear, to weigh anchor, to clear out. That does not mean that where the clearing clears, there is brightness. What is cleared is the free, the open. At the same time, what is cleared is what conceals itself. (5) According to Lin Ma, who examined Heidegger's connection with East Asian thought in great detail, five of the Daodejing's eighty-one chapters were utilized by Heidegger over the course of his career. (6) Of these five chapters, number fifteen is the most relevant to our discussion. Speaking of the sages of antiquity who were intimately acquainted with Dao, (7) Laozi asked: "Who can still the muddied, slowly rendering it clear; who can stir the calm, slowly bringing it to life?" (8) Heidegger subsequently revised this passage such that it became: "Clarifying finally brings something to light, and subtle motion in the tranquil and still can bring something into being." (9) Comparing the two passages, it would appear Heidegger deliberately deemphasized the cosmological qualities of nothingness, the dark and calm, so as to stress those of beyng, the clear and agitated. If the clearing brings to light the inner-concealedness of things, wherein does such hidden manifestness originate? The Zhuangzi, the second classic of Daoism after the Daodejing, provides a clue, saying: "Look into that closed room, the empty chamber where brightness is born; fortune and blessing gather where there is stillness. …

Act and Fact: On a Disputed Question in Recent Thomistic Metaphysics

Abstract: Thomism seems to be different in every one of its proponents who is thinking authentically on the philosophical level--Joseph Owens (1) I WOULD LIKE TO DRAW ATTENTION to a question that has arisen in Thomistic metaphysics in recent decades, in a thread of discussion winding through remarks in three articles published in The Review of Metaphysics The discussion began in 1974, when Cornelio Fabro said, not for the first time, that there is, according to Aquinas, a difference between "esse as act" and "existence which is the fact of being" (2) In 1976, Joseph Owens said, in response to Fabro's distinction, that, for Aquinas, it is the same existence (esse) that is conceptualized both as an "actuality" and as a fact (3) In 1989, John F Wippel, differing from Owens, said that there is a distinction in Aquinas's writings between "esse as facticity" and "esse as intrinsic actus essendi" (4) As may be seen, there are variations in the way in which these authors describe the distinction, whether to affirm or deny it But Owens and Wippel evidently consider themselves to be concerned with the same question, the question raised by Fabro's claim It is a question that would seem to be of no small importance for understanding what Aquinas means by esse, or to be Perhaps, then, it will be useful to bring the differences between these interpreters on the question into sharper focus I Fabro's La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo s Tommaso d'Aquino (1939) includes a section, recently singled out for discussion by Wippel, on the participation of beings in the act of being (5) Early in the section, Fabro introduces the notion of esse as actus essendi, calling it a simpler but more mysterious notion than that of essence Our intellect, he says, directly comprehends only essence; it does not reach the existence that enters into an essence Existence cannot be defined by us, not only because of its maximum generality or logical transcendence, but also because, of its nature, it has no distinctive way (modo proprio) of presenting itself to our intellect outside of the essence of which it is act Aquinas "contents himself," Fabro says, with presenting descriptions of existence or esse, descriptions that give notably greater importance to the act of esse than to essence (6) We might wonder about the sense in which esse "enters into" (entro') and cannot present itself "outside of" (all'infuori dell') essence The metaphorical "interiority and exteriority" evidently involves a likewise metaphorical "invisibility and visibility" to our intellect: the suggestion is that our intellect can "see" an essence, which is, as it were, "on the surface," "out in the open," in intelligible "space," but that it cannot "see" an esse hidden "deeply within" an essence, although it can try to describe it Fabro begins his discussion of Aquinas's descriptions of esse by making the distinction in which we are interested He says that esse as act of being (atto di essere, "act of to be"), is not just the fact of existing, or "that by which something is constituted outside its causes"' This fact is rather the external effect of the act of being, which is of a deeper nature (e di natura piu prof onda)" The act of being is "that by which" (quo) every formality can be indicated as real, that is, as distinct from every other formality, and not just as notionally distinct, but as really separate in the nature of things The act of being (atto di essere) is the act of the essence (l'atto dell'essenza) (9) "Act of being" here seems to be an appositional genitive, meaning the act that is being "Act of the essence," on the other hand, is clearly a genitive of possession, meaning the act belonging to the essence, by which the essence is actual Again, an "interiority and exteriority" is spoken of: the fact of existing is an "external" (and therefore evident) effect of the "deeper" (and therefore hidden) act of being …

Experiencing Tradition versus Belonging to It: Gadamer’s Dilemma

Abstract: We "BELONG" TO TRADITION, Gadamer says, (1) and he insists, "The conceptual world in which philosophizing develops has already captivated us in the same way that the language in which we live conditions us." (2) The historical and cultural traditions in which we participate orient us toward our world and form the bases for our assumptions and expectations about how that world works. Understanding is always preoriented; we anticipate the meanings things have for us and we already possess a language for what we understand before we consider it more explicitly. At the same time, Gadamer emphasizes the importance of experiences that thwart our expectations and undermine our assumptions. In this negative sense of experiences, one "has" them; something surprises us in our normal routines and leads us to reconsider the possibilities of the situation in which we find ourselves. Likewise, experiences of historical tradition provoke us to rethink our views and allow us to go beyond the limits of our previous understanding. These two elements of Gadamer's hermeneutics seem to move in opposite directions. On the one hand, our socialization into historical traditions means that we are part of them and that they set the terms for our orientation toward our world. On the other hand, we can have experiences of our historical traditions in which they surprise and challenge us. Yet if we are part of historical traditions, how can we experience them in this way? If they already orient us how can they also surprise us? Conversely, if they do surprise us, does this surprise not reflect some difference from them, some way in which we are not or are no longer part of them? If Gadamer is to stress the way we always belong to historical traditions, must he not give up on the possibility of experiencing them? In this case, will he not have to question whether we can learn from them to go beyond the previous limits of our understanding? Alternatively, if he is to stress the way historical traditions can surprise us, must he not concede that we possess some independence from them and thus moderate his claims about the extent to which we belong to them? Gadamer's dilemma here is significant. In the introduction to Truth and Method he claims that his aim is to show "how little the traditions in which we stand are weakened by modern historical consciousness," (3) by which he means methodologically oriented social and historical sciences. Nevertheless, if we can have experiences of our traditions, will these experiences not affect the way we stand or participate in them? How can Gadamer value experience but deny that it has any effect? In his original response to Truth and Method Jurgen Habermas questions whether Gadamer sufficiently appreciates the power of reflection to alter the way we stand or participate in traditions. The question here, however, is whether, in this regard, Gadamer sufficiently appreciates the implications of his own account of experience. (4) He models his account of our relation to tradition on our relations to the Thou or what he also calls the Other. I therefore want to explore the question by examining this relation. I begin, however, with a more extensive account of Gadamer's view of experience. I In the empirical sciences experiences are methodically set up as experiments that are designed to test well-formulated hypotheses. Confirming the results of these tests depends upon the capacity of others to repeat the experience or experiment and to achieve similar results. The significance of any experience thus depends, first, on the strength of the experimental design and, second, on the ability of others to replicate the scientific results. Gadamer does not question the importance of confirmatory experiences. (5) Nevertheless, he is more interested in negative experiences that are not designed and that cannot be repeated. Here experiences are events and even journeys. (6) When one "has" an experience in this sense, it simply happens: we enter into a situation with expectations and assumptions and are suddenly caught up short. …

Aristotelian Virtue Ethics and Modern Liberal Democracy

Abstract: VIRTUE ETHICS NOW CONSTITUTES one of three major approaches to the study of ethics by Anglophone philosophers (1) Its proponents almost all recognize the source of their approach in Aristotle, but relatively few of them confront the problem that source poses for contemporary ethicists According to Aristotle, ethike belongs and is subordinate to politike Because it [politike] makes use of the remaining sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would be the human good For even if this is the same thing for an individual and a city, to secure and preserve the good of the city appears to be something greater and more complete: the good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine (2) In the liberal democracies within which most, if not all Anglophone ethicists write, political authorities are not supposed to dictate or legislate the good of individuals; they are supposed merely to establish the conditions necessary for individuals to choose their own life paths If, as Aristotle argues, the good life for a human being is a virtuous life, and if, as he argues at the conclusion of his Nicomachean Ethics, (3) human beings cannot acquire the habits needed to make them virtuous if they do not receive a correct upbringing, and this upbringing needs to be supported and preserved by correct legislation, it is not clear how citizens of liberal democracies can become virtuous, because the laws of their regime do not explicitly identify, reward, and honor virtuous behavior Contemporary ethicists who have addressed this question have proposed three very different answers to the question of how virtue ethics ought to be related to politics in modern nation-states Martha Nussbaum advocates an "Aristotelian social democracy" which seeks to provide all human beings with the capacities--intellectual and moral as well as material--they need to choose the best way of life (4) Arguing that the modern nation-state is incapable of providing its citizens with the education they need to live a good life, Alasdair MacIntyre looks to smaller, tradition-based communities (5) But, because political action is coercive and truly ethical or virtuous action is voluntary, Douglas den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen insist, ethics and politics should be strictly separated In this article I will examine each of these attempts to revive an Aristotelian understanding of ethics, bringing out the advantages and problems involved, as well as showing the ways in which the three different proposals intersect All three of these contemporary attempts to appropriate an Aristotelian understanding of ethics in a liberal democratic political context begin by jettisoning some distinctions that he claims are natural Observing that rule of the human body by the mind is natural, because it is necessary in order to preserve both mind and body and thus serves the good of both, Aristotle argues that there is such a thing as "natural" slavery, which is good for both master and slave (although all or even most slavery is not, in fact, natural), and that women should generally be subordinate to their husbands, even though husband and wife form a "political" community of free and so equal human beings in the household, because women's reason is less "authoritative" (6) Nussbaum, MacIntyre, and Den Uyl and Rasmussen all begin by denying the legitimacy of such distinctions We have to ask, therefore, what they think the basis of the "Aristotelian" understanding of human "perfection" or "flourishing" they adopt is The problematic character of the foundation--natural or otherwise--of their notions of human "flourishing" is indicated by the fact that both Nussbaum and MacIntyre have changed their understandings of the basis of the human good or virtue they seek to foster--in opposite directions …

Is Phenomenology Necessary as Introduction to Philosophy

Abstract: In modern times, it has become virtually a natural assumption that before one can truly think what is, one first must investigate knowing to certify its objectivity

The Intellectual Phenomenology of De Ente et Essentia, Chapter Four

Abstract: During THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY Thomistic revival, Aquinas's reasoning at De Ente et Essentia, chapter four, for an act/potency composition in created intellectual substances was a flashpoint of conflicting interpretations. I wish to reopen this debate. My reason for doing so is twofold. First, a cogent understanding of chapter four is necessary to understand Aquinas's philosophical knowledge of God. Aquinas assigns the philosopher's knowledge of God to metaphysics. (1) The subject of the science of metaphysics is an intelligible object called being as being, ens qua ens, also ens inquantum ens, ens commune, and the ratio entis. A characteristic, if not the characteristic, of Aquinas's understanding of what it means to be a being, or an existent, is esse. (2) A being is a possessor of esse. So for example, just as to be a runner is for a human to have the act of running, so too to be a being is for a thing to have another act, esse. How Aquinas achieves this understanding of being I will try to explain, but at De Ente, chapter four, we find a paragraph explaining how the mind reasons from something that has esse to a first cause of esse. In that first cause esse is not possessed by the thing but is the thing. Aquinas calls this first cause esse tantum and also Deus. Second, a cogent understanding of chapter four will provided an invaluable hermeneutical tool for appropriating Aquinas's expressed proofs for God, for example, the Quinque Viae of Summa Theologicae I, q. 2, a. 3. Aquinas's rejection of Anselm's type of reasoning shows that Aquinas himself wishes to present arguments that resist philosophical critique. Hence, is it at all plausible that when Aquinas sets out to give his proofs for God, Aquinas sets aside his opinion that the philosopher proves God in metaphysics? The logic of the Be Ente paragraph in which Aquinas reaches Deus, as well as the preceding paragraphs, has been extensively investigated. I wish to provide my interpretation of these paragraphs in a way that critically navigates through the mine field of some recent discussion. (3) It is my contention that the background of the two operations of the intellect is crucial for understanding the texts and answering the many questions and objections brought up. Joseph Owens also has said as much. What, then, can I hope to add? In my opinion, Owens's remarks on the De Ente would be better appreciated if talk about conceptualization and judgment were relentlessly cued by what we are observing in our own mental life. It is this honest observing that I am calling an intellectual phenomenology. (4) For example, Owens has performed the inestimable service of distinguishing between the second operation that grasps the esse of the thing and the activity of forming propositions. In the writings of many other Thomists, this second operation appears to be identified with forming propositions. (5) Owens differentiates the two. The proposition is only the expression of what the second operation is already grasping. The proposition is related to the second operation, but not by way of identity. It is an effect of the second operation rather than the operation itself. (6)" Owens's distinction leaves as the more exciting philosophical issue, not the investigation of the proposition, but the description of the second operation. What is it? As far as I can tell, however, Owens fails to provide that description. Rather, he appears content to insist that the second act is a grasping, even an intuiting, (7) of the thing's act of existence. Likewise, he calls the second act dynamic, synthesizing, and conditioned by time. (8) Yet, we never have this grasping, intuiting, dynamic synthesizing further described. My phenomenology will attempt to describe this grasping and then apply the results to other interpretations of De Ente et Essentia, chapter four. II As mentioned, the section of chapter four in which I am interested is devoted to establishing an act/potency composition in separate substances other than God. …

True Qualifiers for Qualified Truths

Abstract: This PAPER AIMS TO THROW LIGHT on what predicative expressions like "is a(n)--truth," where an adjective is inserted on the line, mean. It aims to do so by unearthing a framework that specifies (i) various items that can be qualified by the adjectives, as well as (ii) various ways in which the adjectives perform their qualifying function. This framework forms the background against which, in the second half of this paper, the meaning of "is a relative truth" and "is an absolute truth" are studied. This paper, then, studies what alethic adjectives mean and how they work. I We use numerous alethic adjectives, that is, adjectives to fill the slot in the predicative expression "is a(n)--truth." Here is a sampling that includes some of the philosophically more interesting ones: "psychological," "historical," "logical"; "necessary," "contingent"; "a priori," "empirical," "revealed," "self-evident"; "literal," "metaphorical"; "objective," and "subjective"; "exclusive," "inclusive"; "relative," "absolute." Some of the philosophically less interesting ones are "important," "trivial," "shocking." Predicative expressions with alethic adjectives are often transformable or translatable into expressions with alethic adverbs, without change of meaning. "P is psychologically true," for instance, seems just another way of saying that "P is a psychological truth." For convenience's sake I will refer to both types of expressions as "AT-expressions" ("A" for adjective/adverb and "T" for truth/true). In the main, however, I will conduct the discussion in terms of alethic adjectives. The questions to be explored in this paper are what AT-expressions mean and how their meaning is to be understood. Since the meaning of an expression can be approached in terms of its intension as well as its extension, I should indicate that my question regards the intension of AT-expressions. (1) In the next section I shall develop a list that specifies a number of different items that alethic adjectives (and adverbs) are capable of qualifying. This list forms the backdrop against which next an illumination of the meaning of "is a relative truth" and "is an absolute truth" is attempted. For their widespread use notwithstanding, these expressions are dark and badly in need of either illumination or elimination. First, however, I will have to deal with some preliminaries and assumptions. AT-expressions contain the notion of "a truth." But what is a truth? I will follow G. E. Moore's lead and take a truth to be a proposition that is true. (2) I am going to use the plausible distinction between a proposition and a sentence that expresses that proposition. A proposition is a nonlinguistic entity that is distinct from but capable of being expressed by a sentence (which is a linguistic entity, that is, an item belonging to a language). (3) This distinction is closely related to another plausible distinction, namely, between what is said and the manner of saying it. (4) Connected with this plausible distinction is the idea that propositions, and not sentences, are the primary bearers of truth value. My interest in this paper concerns AT-expressions as used in everyday life as well as in science. A number of philosophers have argued, there are good reasons to consider, in those contexts, propositions and not sentences as the primary bearers of truth value. (5) It is not meaningless, however, to say that sentences have truth value. On the approach premised by the assumption now under discussion, however, sentences can only be considered true or false derivatively: their truth value derives from the truth value of the propositions they express. For present purposes we need not take a stance as to the ontological status of propositions. (6) What I am going to say in this paper is compatible with any of these views, provided they allow for the plausible distinction referred to earlier on. "A truth," then, is a proposition that is true. …

Plato’s Rational Souls

Abstract: The TERM "SOCRATIC INTELLECTUALISM" is often deployed to set the philosophy of Socrates apart from the philosophy of Plato. Typically, the "philosophy of Socrates" refers to the ideas and arguments found in a selected set of dialogues designated as "early"; by contrast, the philosophy of Plato is supposedly found only in the so-called middle and late dialogues. Whether the alleged philosophy of Socrates found in the early dialogues does or does not accurately reflect the philosophy of the historical Socrates is a vexed question, one in which I am not here interested. (1) What I do propose to focus on is the supposed decisive break between the intellectualism of the early dialogues and something else, usually unnamed, but at any rate amounting to a rejection of that intellectualism in the middle dialogues. Specifically, Socratic intellectualism is supposed to maintain, roughly, that virtue is knowledge; that if one knows what the good or the right requires, then one cannot but do it. But, so it is claimed, Plato rejects this position in Republic at least, insofar as he acknowledges the existence of nonrational desires in the soul. (2) As exemplified by the acratic, it is possible for one to know what the good or the right requires and still fail to act on it. Like the pathetic Leontius, one can be overcome by such nonrational desires, thereby rendering impotent the supposed knowledge of right and wrong or good and bad. Consequently, the Socratic claim that virtue is knowledge (and all this entails about the nature of philosophical inquiry and of philosophical living) is rejected. For some scholars, this rejection represents a disastrous mistake on Plato's part; for others, especially those who think that Aristotle has more or less the right approach to these matters, it represents progress. I shall in this paper argue that the so-called Socratic intellectualism is thoroughly Platonic, that in fact there are no grounds for holding that Plato abandoned the Socratic position. In particular, Republic gives us no reason to believe that Plato came to deny that virtue is in some sense knowledge or that no one does wrong willingly. On the side of those who hold that Plato abandons Socratic intellectualism is the apparent fact that in one dialogue--labeled "early" in the relevant sense--namely, Protagoras, Socrates argues against the possibility of incontinence, whereas in Republic, he argues for the possibility of incontinence on the basis of the tripartition of the embodied human soul. It is thought that the rejection and then acceptance of the possibility of incontinence is what distinguishes Socratic intellectualism from Plato's later view. Against this position is the fact that the claim that "no one does wrong willingly," often thought to encapsulate Socratic intellectualism, is found in dialogues where this intellectualism is supposedly abandoned. Thus, proponents of the so-called split between Socrates and Plato or, if you will, between the early Plato and the middle Plato, must maintain that Plato gives to the claim "no one does wrong willingly" a new meaning after he abandons Socratic intellectualism. I shall return at the end of this paper to the supposed new meaning for I think that understanding the issue requires some background. For now I want to concentrate on the central piece of evidence for the abandonment of Socratic intellectualism, namely, the apparent recognition by Plato of the existence of nonrational springs of action. The principal passage that is supposed to support the idea of nonrational behavior is a part of the analysis of the tripartite soul in Republic. So, a particular type of thirst is for a particular type of drink. Thirst itself, however, is not for much drink or little, nor for good or bad drink, nor, in a word, for a particular type of drink; rather, it is, by nature, only for drink. (3) The text goes on to distinguish the appetite for drink from the calculation that the drink is good or bad. …

On heisenbergs key statement concerning ontology

Abstract: In PHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY: The Revolution in Modern Science, (1) Werner Heisenberg aims, "in a not too technical language," to clarify the "change in the concept of reality manifesting itself in quantum theory." He means to contribute to an articulation of "the ontology" (not only the "epistemology") that "underlies" quantum theory's "modified logical patterns." (2) To a highly unusual degree, Heisenberg is gripped by a sense of the responsibility of the modern quantum physicist to convey, in language immediately intelligible to the thinking public, his most serious and far-reaching reflections on the metaphysical implications of his scientific work. One may go so far as to say that there is substantial evidence, partly within Physics and Philosophy, that Heisenberg regards such reflections and their public communication as his most important task. Heisenberg is especially apt for this intensely self-conscious contribution to humanity's historical-cultural development because his stature as a principal originating architect of quantum theory at its most fundamental level is complemented by his deployment of an unusually broad and deep erudition in and a lifelong preoccupation with philosophic and artistic ontology from Anaximander through Kant and Goethe to Heidegger. No thinker has yet appeared who possesses such an authoritative combination of the decisively necessary learning in quantum physics and in the historical development of philosophic ontology. Despite a flurry of renewed scholarly interest in the development of Heisenberg's scientific work, (3) and in his complex relation to the dramatic unfolding of German cultural history in his time, (4) there has yet to be executed a sustained and philosophically critical interpretative commentary on this book that is his crucial philosophical-ontological legacy. Given the profound ontological puzzles that continue to attend quantum physics and its implications for humanity's past as well as present and future conception of reality, such a critical exegesis of this text is overdue. In what follows I try to extricate the central nerve of Heisenberg's sinuously unfolding, dialectical exposition, and in the process to elucidate its strengths but also its deep ambiguities and perplexities--which express, I believe, fundamental dilemmas that pervade contemporary ontology. I Heisenberg makes the inviolability of the principle of noncontradiction a cornerstone of his discussion. Unlike Aristotle (5) Heisenberg does not wrestle with the challenge posed by a possible denial of the principle. He understands the nonmathematical articulation of quantum theory to escape what would otherwise be devastating contradictions--most obviously the contradiction in the wave/particle character of the basic entities described by the theory--through Bohr's famous principle of "complementarity" (which Heisenberg closely associates with von Weizsacker's notion of "coexistent states"), combined with Heisenberg's own principle of "potentia," "potentiality," "potentialities." (6) II After a brief introduction, Heisenberg in his second chapter sketches the "history of quantum theory" and in the process begins to explain what he means by "potentia." In 1924 Bohr and his colleagues "tried to solve the apparent contradiction between the wave picture and the particle picture by the concept of the probability wave." The "electromagnetic waves were treated not as 'real' waves" but as "abstract" mathematical descriptions of the "probabilities," in every point in the relevant space, for "the absorption (or induced emission) of a light quantum by an atom at this point." Later this idea of the probability wave was applied more effectively to a much more abstract mathematical wave "in a many-dimensional configuration space that was discovered through the researches of Schrodinger." Heisenberg reinterprets this mathematical "probability wave" in ontological tenus, as signaling a "tendency [Tendenz]" for "a definite happening [einem bestimmten Geschehen]," thus "introducing a remarkable kind of physical reality, standing in the middle between possibility and actuality": "a quantitative version of the old concept of 'dunamis' or 'potentia' in the philosophy of Aristotle. …

Descartes and the Real Distinction between Mind and Body

Abstract: ... everything I wrote on the subject of God and truth in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Meditations contributes to the conclusion that there is a real distinction between the mind and the body, which I finally established in the Sixth Meditation.--Fourth Replies (1) In THIS PAPER I EXAMINE DESCARTES'S ARGUMENT for the real distinction between mind and body in Meditation Six. (2) As a real distinction, it is a distinction between kinds of substances, (3) that is, a distinction based upon essences. Descartes's argument is epistemic. It rests upon the contention that God can create anything we clearly and distinctly conceive as we conceive it. Given the epistemic basis for an ontological distinction, commentators find the argument puzzling. (4) Descartes told Amauld that virtually everything in Meditations Three through Five was germane to the real distinction between mind and body. (5) I shall argue that an adequate understanding of the distinction between material and formal truth is sufficient to ground the argument for the real distinction. Since Descartes provides no account of material truth, (6) I begin by extrapolating an account of material truth by examining Descartes's discussions of material falsity. Given that Descartes claimed that clarity and distinctness is the mark of possibility, (7) Margaret Wilson argued that he identified material truth with possibility. (8) I shall argue that material truth is properly de dicto possibility: an idea is materially true if it is possible that there exists something corresponding to it and, therefore, it is possible for the idea to represent a distinct kind of thing. After proving that God is not a deceiver, Descartes returns to the notion of clarity and distinctness at the end of Meditation Four, arguing that all clear and distinct ideas are true. I shall argue that this is a concern with formal truth, and given the appeals to true and immutable natures at the beginning of Meditation Five, it reflects de re possibility--it claims that there is something in virtue of which it is possible that x is a thing of a certain kind--and this is all that is required for the real distinction between mind and body. (9) I Material Truth. In the opening paragraphs of Meditation Three, Descartes introduces notions that are crucial for understanding his philosophy, but each is accompanied by a puzzle. He famously tells us that "whatever I clearly and distinctly perceive is true," (10) but he neither gives us criteria for clarity and distinctness nor tells us what he means by "true." He introduces his notion of an idea and tells us that, properly speaking, all ideas are representatives of things distinct from themselves. (11) Two sentences later asks us to consider ideas "solely in themselves" and "not refer[ing] them to anything else." (12) While he presents no account of truth, he posits a distinction between formal and material falsity, telling us that formal falsity pertains to judgments while material falsity pertains to ideas, but his account of material falsity is, at best, obscure. Nonetheless, there are clues. Formal truth and falsity pertain to judgments concerning ideas as representations. As Descartes remarks, "the chief and most common mistake which is to be found here consists in my judging that the ideas which are in me resemble, or conform to, things located outside me." (13) Thus, formal truth is presumably correct representation (correspondence), although what it represents remains an open question. Similarly, the Fourth Replies makes clear that that there is a close connection between the absence of clarity and distinctness and material falsity. (14) Thus, it is reasonable to infer that clear and distinct ideas are at least materially true. So, let us begin by briefly considering clarity and distinctness. Anyone who reads the Meditations will grant (1) that clear and distinct ideas are capable of representing things distinct from themselves, (2) that they typically represent the essences of kinds of things, (15) and (3) that the ideas of essences divide things in the world into kinds. …

Avicenna and the Principle of Sufficient Reason

Abstract: The TERM, "PRINCIPLE OF SUFFICIENT REASON" (hereafter, PSR) was coined by Leibniz, and he is often regarded as its paradigmatic proponent. But as Leibniz himself often insisted, he was by no means the first philosopher to appeal to the idea that everything must have a reason. (1) Histories of the principle attribute versions of it to various ancient authors. (2) A few of these studies include, or at least do not exclude, medieval philosophers; one finds the PSR in Abelard, another finds it in Aquinas. (3) And while Leibniz retains pride of place in these histories, Spinoza is sometimes said to precede him "in appreciating the importance of the Principle and placing it at the center of his philosophical system." (4) In this paper, I shall argue that the same should be said of the Islamic philosopher Avicenna. Writing six hundred years before his early modern counterparts, Avicenna routinely and consistently appeals to the PSR in generating his metaphysical system. The paper aims first to establish that Avicenna deserves a position of prominence in histories of the PSR ([section] 1), and then to consider how he addresses certain challenges to the PSR, especially the threat posed by necessitarianism ([section] 11). Some contemporary philosophers argue that the PSR entails necessitarianism and thus conflicts with the intuition that things could have been otherwise. (5) That the PSR entails necessitarianism is judged to count against the PSR. To consider Avicenna's response to this threat is important: it not only helps us understand the nature and extent of his commitment to the PSR but also helps us assess the PSR itself. I will argue that Avicenna disputes the veracity of the intuition that things could have been otherwise by showing that it may be rooted in ignorance of the determining causes of some events. I will also argue that Avicenna's modal ontology calls into question the view that the PSR entails necessitarianism. The paper's initial aim--namely, to establish that Avicenna deserves a position of prominence in histories of the PSR--is important for three reasons. The first of these is historical accuracy. The PSR is sometimes said to be "as old as philosophy." (6) It has played a supporting role in several major philosophical systems. Its truth, its implications, and its pemiciousness remain a subject of philosophical debate. An adequate history of philosophy requires an accurate history of the PSR. A second reason has to do with the relationship of the PSR to rationalism. Commitment to the PSR is considered a hallmark of rationalism. (7) And rationalism is closely associated with seventeenth-century European philosophers. Indeed, the thoroughgoing rationalism of Spinoza and Leibniz is sometimes thought to distinguish them from their predecessors, whether ancient or medieval. Avicenna, by contrast, is still too often deemed an "Eastern" or mystical philosopher. Showing that Avicenna no less than Spinoza and Leibniz places the PSR at the center of his philosophy may help establish that familiar but inaccurate divisions in the history of philosophy require revision. (8) A third reason has to do with the possibility of historical influence. My discussion of Avicenna's commitment to the PSR focuses primarily on its role in the Metaphysics of the Shifa', his philosophical magnum opus. This work offers the most detailed and sophisticated version of his metaphysical system. It was read in Arabic and in Hebrew by medieval Jewish philosophers, and it was translated into Latin in the twelfth century. Our knowledge of the reception of the Metaphysics of the Shifa' is not extensive, but it is already clear that its account of God and its theory of causation influenced diverse authors in both the Hebrew and Latin traditions, including Moses Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, and John Duns Scotus. (9) While this paper will not attempt to demonstrate historical influence, readers of Spinoza and Leibniz will find some Avicennian doctrines discussed in the paper very familiar. …

Hegel’s Account of the Unconscious and Why It Matters

Abstract: I In 1842 FRANZ EXNER, professor of philosophy in Prague, notoriously characterized the entire enterprise of Hegelian psychology as "an undisciplined fooling about with empty concepts, which not infrequently lapses into being completely scatterbrained." (1) Given the difficulty of Hegel's terminology and the tendentious character of his method of description, determined by the scheme of the teleological development of categories in The Science of Logic, it will be best to begin with fairly straightforward preliminary claims about what is interesting and important in Hegel's philosophical psychology. This philosophical psychology appears primarily in Hegel's Anthropology and Phenomenology, that is, the first two subsections of Section 1, Mind Subjective, of Part 3, Philosophy of Mind, of his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences, published in 1817, revised and reissued in 1827 and 1830, and supplemented with Additions from Hegel's lecture notes, published by Boumann in 1845. Why might Hegel's philosophical psychology, that is, his treatment of Subjective Mind in his Anthropology and Phenomenology, be important? Four interrelated features of Hegel's treatment of mindedness in individuals are of particular interest. 1. That treatment is resolutely nondualist but also nonreductionist and noneliminativist. "The soul," Hegel writes, "is no separate immaterial entity." (2) In fact, it is no entity at all, but rather, as in Aristotle, a form or mode of organization of a natural being that determines that being's capacities or powers, that is, its second-order abilities to develop explicit first-order abilities. Nor are the capacities and abilities in question themselves understood in solely material terms. The organization of the human being rather makes it the case that, under suitable conditions, that being actively, from its own organized activity, grows into participation in rational life in culture. That is, human beings by nature possess capacities for free and meaningful life. Or, as Hegel puts it, "The soul stands midway between Nature, which lies behind her, on the one hand, and the world of ethical freedom which extricates itself from natural mind, on the other hand." (3) Nowadays we might call such an account of mindedness as a set of powers for self-determining rational activity emergentist, though that is more a promissory-note label than an explanation of what goes on in human cognitive and ethical development. In any case, the account that Hegel puts forward is, again, interestingly nondualist but also nonreductionist and noneliminativist. 2. Abstracting from his reliance on the categories of the Logic, Hegel's general way of proceeding in giving an account of mindedness can be characterized as a contribution to developmental-cognitive ethology. Hegel describes the development of forms of behaving in the human being from initial sensory responsiveness to the emergence of a primitive sense of self, to the development of concepts, and ultimately to higher forms of thinking and rational action. As Murray Greene usefully notes, like Kant, Hegel takes it for granted that possession and employment of concepts is a necessary condition for discursive self-consciousness and apperceptive identity over time, but beyond Kant, Hegel undertakes to describe how concepts, including the Kantian categories, are actually developed within a course of initially sensate, emergently rational life, hence to trace, as Greene puts it, "the emergence of a thinking ego as a sublation of feeling subjectivity." (4) Without yet trying to unpack what actually goes on in this sublation, it is nonetheless clear that Hegel rejects representationalism as well as dualism. That is, his account specifically aims at avoiding reliance on any language of thought or any set of innate, inherent representers somehow simply built into mind as substance. Instead, as already noted, mindedness or soul is not a substance at all but rather a mode of organization of a physical being, and thinking, in the sense of the possession and deployment of concepts on the part of a thinking being with a continuing, discursively-structured self-identity, will be described as developing naturally out of more primitive processes and activities. …

Einstein's Dreams

Abstract: ALBERT EINSTEIN WAS DIFFERENT. He was aloof; in the popular image, he was the definition of a dweller in the Ivory Tower. He was socially and politically concerned, but only occasionally became involved. He was not a seeker of companions, personal or scientific, yet his writings show deep insights into the psychology of other people; his technical communications, both papers and personal letters, were voluminous. There might be room for a reasonable person to disagree with his social and political opinions, but they cannot be dismissed as naive or shallow. Einstein's physics was different, too. It may not always seem so because his work is woven into just about all of modern physics, but there is a thread of the truly different running through his many and varied technical contributions. Einstein never followed the crowd, and the crowd, even while incorporating many of his results directly into the main stream, never really followed him. This paper explores one of the reasons for the unique quality of Einstein's contributions to physics. I will try to show that he had a unique take on fundamental problems, and that this unique approach resulted in answers that, time and again, were so profound as to be the final word on the topic, at least for the last 100 years or so. Einstein had an ability to focus on problems that were sometimes simple but always profound. He could identify and hold to elementary governing principles that, when applied, drove the answers to contain an uncommon degree of universality. Albert Einstein approached many of his key problems as if he had seen the underlying situation in a dream, with all of a dream's vibrant reality and stark simplicity. I do not maintain that he always had such dreams but rather that the dream metaphor is a useful way of describing this element of his unique approach to physics. What I will discuss are particularly vibrant examples of Einstein's gedankenexperiments, or thought-experiments, a technique that permeated much of his work. Most of Einstein's thought-experiments were emphatically not dreamlike; these were always intricate and usually required long and hard effort to devise. Many of his attempts at formulating counter-examples to quantum mechanics were in this category. (1) Although the two images I will focus on are certainly examples of gedankenexperiments Einstein reported them both to have arisen as dreams, or at least as daydreams. In each of these dreams of Albert Einstein, some central part of the problem was depicted in a simple and elegant way. These images made it profoundly obvious that there were assertions that must be true for any solution to the problem. In the cases I will describe, Einstein held to his dream throughout the process of finding the answer, bringing the dream image into reality as a piece of physical theory while maintaining the truth of the associated assertions. My two shining examples of Einstein's dreams concern the Special Theory of Relativity, completed in 1905, and the General Theory of Relativity, which reached final form in 1915. I will also discuss his search for a unified theory of the gravitational and electromagnetic fields, a search that is notable for its lack of a keynote dream, and one in which he was unsuccessful. I Special Relativity and Einstein's Annus Mirabilis. Einstein's physics career had a rocky start. He completed his formal training in 1900, but in spite of great academic accomplishment, he left a universally bad impression on his professors. For that reason, Einstein was unable to obtain the references and other support needed to obtain an entry-level university appointment. He made do with temporary work and freelance tutoring until he obtained a position in the Swiss patent office in 1902. He began his physics research in this period, focusing on statistical mechanics and publishing several papers. His independent researches intensified once he had settled in at the patent office. …

Quietism or Description? McDowell in Dispute with Dreyfus

Abstract: I won't say anything which anyone can dispute. Or, if anyone does dispute it, I will let that point drop and pass on to say something else. (1) I IN MIND AND WORLD John McDowell set out to dispel once and for all the so-called Myth of the Given. This term of art was of course coined by Wilfrid Sellars to denote the traditional empiricist assumption that the senses passively take in information from the environment that arrives, mythically as it were, already suitable for entering into rational relations. (2) At the same time as he tried to dispel this myth, McDowell worked to preserve the idea that thought and belief must be rationally responsive to nature, and so to avoid the kind of coherentism he finds in Donald Davidson, a view in which McDowell sees our rational capacities remaining permanent aliens in the natural world. McDowell's way of attempting to find this balance is to argue that conceptual capacities are drawn into action in sensual perception. (3) McDowell writes in the introduction to his book, The mistake here is to forget that nature includes second nature. Human beings acquire a second nature in part by being initiated into conceptual capacities, whose interrelations belong in the logical space of reasons.... Once we remember second nature, we see that operations of nature can include circumstances whose descriptions place them in the logical space of reasons, sui generis though that logical space is.... Conceptual capacities, whose interrelations belong in the sui generis logical space of reasons, can be operative not only in judgements ... but already in the transactions in nature that are constituted by the world's impacts on the receptive capacities of a suitable subject; that is, one who possesses the relevant concepts. Impressions can be cases of its perceptually appearing--being apparent--to a subject that things are thus and so. (4) In his 2005 Presidential Address to the Pacific Division of the APA, Hubert Dreyfus, building on his reading of existential phenomenologists such as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, argued that for all of McDowell's admirable advances in Mind and World, he had nevertheless succumbed to many of the same intellectualist biases as traditional cognitivist philosophers, who, Dreyfus thinks, have systematically neglected and ignored the role played by embodied coping in intelligent behavior. (5) Dreyfus claimed in his talk that in assuming that all intelligibility, even perception and skillful coping, must be, at least implicitly, conceptual--in effect, that intuitions without concepts must be blind, and that there must be a maxim behind every action--Sellars and McDowell join Kant in endorsing what we might call the Myth of the Mental. (6) This paper is primarily concerned with an important feature of McDowell's contribution to the exchange with Dreyfus, which appeared in the literature after Dreyfus's APA address. (7) My main claim is that their dispute makes manifest a significant tension between two important strands in McDowell's thought: his quietist nonfoundationalism, on the one hand, and, at least in this significant public dispute with Dreyfus, what amounts to a tacit commitment to a kind of descriptive metaphysics of rationality and intelligibility, on the other. First, McDowell wishes to resist Dreyfus's phenomenological attempt to ground rationality in coping skills. This is consistent with his mistrust of purportedly foundational explanations in philosophy. But second, he seems unwilling to relinquish, or even set aside temporarily, important parts of the traditional philosophical vocabulary, even though this refusal is evidently obstructing the discussion. I will show how this suggests that McDowell is simultaneously pursuing two different philosophical projects which do not sit well together. II McDowell's view of philosophy is substantially inspired by so-called therapeutic or quietist readings of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. …

Kant’s Transcendental Functionalism

Abstract: It IS NO LONGER A NOVELTY TO VIEW KANT as a functionalist about the mind or self. Wilfrid Sellars may have been the first to bring this line of interpretation onto the agenda, (1) and a number of scholars including Andrew Brook, Patricia Kitcher, Ralf Meerbote, Thomas Powell, and Jay Rosenberg have further explored different functionalist interpretations of Kant. (2) These interpreters credit Kant with original insights into the nature of self-consciousness, mental representation, and human cognition, but they tend to uncouple Kant's psychology from his epistemology and metaphysics. Brook, for example, considers Kant's epistemology "merely a cultural artefact," (3) which belongs to what is dead in Kant, while maintaining that what is still living is his analysis of the cognitive mind. (4) Kitcher concedes that Kant's transcendental psychology, being incompatible with the ideality of time, does not fit well into the metaphysics of transcendental idealism. (5) Separating Kant's epistemology and metaphysics from his psychology has a long tradition, which can be traced back to neo Kantianism, (6) but this antipsychological interpretation has become particularly influential since Peter Strawson called for an abandonment of "the imaginary subject of transcendental psychology" in favor of "the strictly analytical argument" for the necessary structure of objective experience. (7) By contrast, functionalist interpretations attempt to revive the "subjective" side of Kant's Critique, at the cost of surrendering certain central tenets of transcendental idealism. Yet, I think both Strawson and the functionalist interpreters fail to do justice to Kant's strategy to reveal the necessary structure of cognition and reality by analyzing the faculty of cognition (Erkenntnisvermogen). The way that Kant characterizes cognitive faculties such as sensibility, understanding, and apperception does give prima facie evidence for a functionalist interpretation. The problem is how a functionalist interpretation can be brought into line with Kant's overall position of transcendental idealism. In this paper I will develop an interpretation called transcendental functionalism, which explains Kant's way to account for the objective structure of reality based on a theory of necessary cognitive functions. While ordinary functionalism of the mind describes mental states in terms of their functional roles, transcendental functionalism determines what functions the mind has to realize if it is to be capable of objective cognition. It is not directly about the human cognitive system, neither at the phenomenal nor the noumenal level, but about an abstract functional structure that Kant refers to as the transcendental subject. Accordingly, Kant's cognitive psychology does not aim directly at factual knowledge of the human mind's workings, but rather, by analyzing the concept and structure of objective cognition, to reveal the cognitive functions that are necessary for all potential cognizers including, but not limited to, human beings. It is a theory of rational cognition as such, which at the same time accounts for the basic structure of reality that can be cognitively accessible to any finite rational agents. This paper begins with an analysis of Kant's faculty of cognition, followed by an examination of the apparent conflicts of the ordinary functionalist interpretations with Kant's transcendental idealism (I). Kant's faculty of cognition represents a theoretical construct of the transcendental subject, but if human beings can be qualified as rational cognizers, they must have somehow realized the functional constraints that define the transcendental subject (II). It is important for a coherent interpretation of Kant to distinguish between two ways of viewing the faculty of cognition: it can either be considered transcendentally as a set of abstract functional constraints that are valid to all potential cognizers, or empirically as a particular realization by a complicated system of mental operations that take place in time (III). …

Directing Philosophy: Aquinas, Studiousness, and Modern Curiosity

Abstract: Writing FOR A FRENCH AUDIENCE in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Abbe Narcisse Cacheux sought to capture Thomas Aquinas's energy with a bit of colorful prose: "S. Thomas, travaille, tourmente d'une curiosite passionnee, insurmontable, inextinguible pour l'etude, portait sans flechir le poids de la science." (1) What else but a passionate curiosity, he thought, could yield so much in so short a time? On the other side of the Atlantic, an Episcopalian divine named John Elmendorf appealed to the same term in describing Aquinas's presentation of the universal desire for knowledge. "Curiosity," he explained, "begets philosophy, asking, what? whence? whither? why?" (2) Both descriptions show the new, positive signification attached to the term "curiosity" in the modern world. What goes today by the name "good curiosity" once assumed other identities--the desiderium ad sciendum, or even admiratio. Critiques of medieval teachings against vana curiositas are commonplace among partisans of modern science. The corresponding problem of how the quest for knowledge should begin and be directed, however, has never drawn the same attention. The scandal of "forbidden knowledge" is naturally compelling, and so treatments of medieval educational philosophy, scholastic curricula, and the like have instead been primarily for scholarly audiences. Yet directing the human desire for knowledge was arguably more important for the scholastics than simple prohibitions of curiosity. The difficulty in directing knowledge comes to the fore in Aquinas's account of studiousness or studiositas, the virtue that he used to describe the proper habits of intellectual inquiry. The key difficulty arises in avoiding the temptation to understand beyond one's means, or to understand things that should not be known. Studiousness is helpful in describing the virtues necessary to succeed in a prescribed course of study. It does not, however, tell one whether to begin such a study, or whether one has fulfilled one's quest. That uncertain space on the border between curiositas and studiositas proves to be the point at which the modern defense of curiosity can make its entrance. I The term which Cicero first fashioned for a one-off usage sprouted among Christian writers after Apuleius, and from that time its history becomes more vexed. (3) Nowadays perhaps the closest our language comes to blaming the quest for knowledge is with the word "misguided." But even that word does not suggest the worthiness of some sorts of knowledge over others. The possibility of a wrongful quest for knowledge seems today less plausible than the notion of knowledge's wrongful use. (4) The vitium curiositatis was a thicket of aspects of human knowing each errant in its own way. Speaking of Augustine's view alone, Richard Newhauser called curiositas that disturbance of the human will which led to an intemperate desire for the knowledge of perishing, worldly, temporal things for the mere sake of acquiring such knowledge alone, which treated the divine mysteries as if they fit into these categories, and which, furthermore, replaced even the desire for God. (5) Not every instance of curiosity involved all these senses; a certain instance of the sin might relate to the eyes rather than to the mind, or to human gossip rather than divine esoterica. (6) With ample room for nuance, subsequent treatments of curiositas in ascetic literature sound one or another note of Augustine's chord. Anselm, by Edward Peters's count, offered almost fifty varieties of curiositas, "which range from careful study to learn the secrets of others to 'numbering, measuring and considering [how far away are] the sun and moon.'" (7) Subsequent developments saw a magnification of curiositas by Bernard of Clairvaux, and the word's deployment throughout the scholastic controversies of the subsequent centuries. (8) A separate narrative has grown up around Hans Blumenberg's treatment of curiositas in Die Legitimat der Neuzeit and its later revisions. …

First Things First: On the Priority of the Notion of Being

Abstract: In THIS PAPER I WANT TO CONSIDER three propositions: 1. "First to arise within intellectual awareness is the notion of Being." (1) 2. The human being is defined as "rational animal." (2) 3. Knowing involves "the complete return of the subject into itself." (3) What are the conditions for the possibility of recognizing what is involved in those claims? In exploring them, I want to open up a way into Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle as well as Aquinas, Spinoza, Nietzsche, Hegel, Heidegger, and Derrida--a rather ambitious task. I Instead of weighing in at the deep level, let us begin very simply and immediately with what is functionally, though not theoretically, indubitable, but which is also necessary for communicating the approach to and articulation of the theoretically indubitable. Let us begin with what is first, namely, the word "First" and with what is first in that, namely, the capital letter "F" as it appears on the printed page. After all, we could never practice Cartesian doubt, or at least know that we are doing so, without Descartes's having written about it. Even more, Descartes could not have formulated the method and the successive elimination of the dubitable without the French or Latin he employed in the application of the method and thus without knowing his ABCs. Even though the three propositions listed above are grand in their scope, I prefer that we begin now at the most obvious and most humble level that in our grander aspirations we are prone to ignore. I begin with it because it is always already given but usually overlooked when we carry on our literate lives. The capital letter "F" is an immediately given visual object, given outside in the environment where we each, alone and together, conduct our lives: it appears on a white page separate from its viewer across phenomenally empty space filled with light. It is a visual object on its empirical outside, but on its intelligible inside it carries a universal function as an alphabetical unit whose job is to enter into the construction of words (or function in the E-chart for visual testing). "F" is part of an alphabet, a constructed eidetic system, a system of conventionally fashioned universais whose meaning is invariant across all empirical instances, no matter how different they might be empirically. It appears visually on the current page as the upper case of ITCCentury Book "F" and subsequently in lower case "f" about fourteen times. It could also appear in a Gothic lower case "f" and upper case "F" or in any other typeface or handwritten script, empirical variations of which are endless. What is remarkable, if we give it some thought--banal if we do not--is that the "f" is not only identical in all instances of its visual presentation, it is empirically different in each case of its being written, obviously if the typeface is different, but even when it is the same. Both as ingredient in and as apart from its different modes of empirical instantiation, its function is recognizable as identically the same. That seems to give the lie to nominalism at the very level of its names: we apprehend constructed universais that transcend their empirically available instances as a type of apprehension that operates in linguistic use generally and that we have come to call "intellectual." The conditions for the possibility of such an operation is our apprehension of the universals involved in the universal orientation of our own powers, their corresponding kinds of objects, and the kinds of things that exhibit them. Each power, such as vision, is a power oriented ahead of time to all instances of the kind of feature correlative to the power; in the case of vision, it is color. Seeing, though individual in each seer, is universally oriented; but though universally oriented, it is actualized only in revealing individual instances of its corresponding type of object. …

Human Reason and a Common World: Why Wittgenstein and Rawls Are Both Wrong

Abstract: Science and techno logy preceded the great period of Greek philosophy. However, in a unique development in intellectual history, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle sought a reasoned understanding of the world — that is, a mutually understandable account of the world, of things in it, and of relationships among them — based upon a synoptic understanding of the science of their age. Key elements of the accounts of the three philosophers depended upon identity, an invariant relationship between concepts and at least some elements of the world.

Negation and Truth

Abstract: The place of negation in truth has been acknowledged yet misunderstood ever since Aristotle remarked that truth involves stating the being of what is and the nonbeing of what is not, whereas falsity involves affirming the being of what is not and the nonbeing of what is.1 Following Aristotle’s observation, negation has been treated as if it only truthfully figured in the denial of what is not. Negation has otherwise been held to be absent from the being of what is as well as from its affirmation.