Introduction

This article introduces the papers from two video conferences recently held between philosophers at Moscow State University and the University at Albany, State University of New York. The overarching theme is philosophical progress in the past fifty years, but the conferences were designed also to illustrate the range of work now being done by American analytic philosophers and by Russian thinkers. The Albany essays focus on philosophy of science, philosophical logic, Kantian studies, applied ethics, and ethical and political theory. The Russian essays concern philosophy of culture, philosophy of mind, phenomenology, social philosophy, feminism, and postmodernism. This introductory essay notes similarities and differences that exist among American and Russian approaches to philosophy and the prospects for the convergence (or not) of these approaches. It also indicates ways in which contemporary Russian thinkers are striking out in new directions while seeking to recover those parts of their past that were silenced during much of the twentieth century.     

Redrawing Kant's philosophy of mathematics

This essay offers a strategic reinterpretation of Kant's philosophy of mathemat- ics in Critique of Pure Reason via a broad, empirically based reconception of Kant's conception of drawing. It begins with a general overview of Kant's philosophy of mathematics, observing how he differentiates mathematics in the Critique from both the dynamical and the philosophical. Second, it examines how a recent wave of critical analyses of Kant's constructivism takes up these issues, largely inspired by Hintikka's unorthodox conception of Kantian intuition. Third, it offers further analyses of three Kantian concepts vitally linked to that of drawing. It concludes with an etymologically based exploration of the seven clusters of meanings of the word drawing to gesture toward new possibilities for interpreting a Kantian philosophy of mathematics.     

The Kantian Roots of Merleau-Ponty's Account of Pathology

One of the more striking aspects of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception (1945) is his use of psychological case studies in pathology. For Merleau-Ponty, a philosophical interpretation of phenomena like aphasia and psychic blindness promises to shed light not just on the nature of pathology, but on the nature of human existence more generally. In this paper, I show that although Merleau-Ponty is surely a pioneer in this use of pathology, his work is deeply indebted to an earlier philosophical study of pathology offered by the German Neo-Kantian Ernst Cassirer in the third volume of the Philosophy of Symbolic Forms (1929). More specifically, I argue that Merleau-Ponty, in fact, follows Cassirer in placing Kant's notion of the productive imagination at the centre of his account of pathology and the features of existence it illuminates. Recognizing the debt Merleau-Ponty's account of pathology has to the Kantian tradition not only acts as a corrective to more recent interpretation of Merleau-Ponty's views of pathology (Dreyfus, Romdenh-Romluc), but also recommends we resist the prevailing tendency to treat Merleau-Ponty's philosophy as anti-Kantian. Instead, my interpretation seeks to restore Merleau-Ponty's place within the Kantian tradition.     

On the Structure of Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Abstract: It makes sense to ask from time to time where we are in the philosophical discussion. This article reviews the debate in the twentieth century. Michael Friedman has recently argued that the split between Continental and analytic philosophy is due to the inability, because of war, to carry forward a genuine debate begun by Heidegger and Carnap around the time of Heidegger's public controversy with Cassirer at Davos in 1929. I, however, argue that there was not even the beginning of a genuine debate between Heidegger and Carnap. I argue further that the split between analytic and Continental philosophy originated earlier, in the analytic attack on idealism at the beginning of the century. And finally I argue that the differences among analytic philosophy, Continental philosophy, and pragmatism, the third main current of twentieth‐century philosophy, can be traced to differing reactions to Kant.     

Philosophical research on cognition

At the turn of the twentieth century, a number of philosophers introduced the idea of philosophical research on cognition that could enter into competition with psychology, which was developing into an autonomous discipline at that time. In view of the problems of the traditional but still prevailing associationist theory, Ernst Cassirer demanded a more sophisticated theory that could explain the human ability to concentrate one’s thoughts on a topic, such as a problem or a task. He presented a representational theory of mind to explain this ability. This paper explicates the scope of this theory and Cassirer’s idea of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophers and psychologists.     

Comments on Guyer

Paul Guyer's paper “Naturalistic and Transcendental Moments in Kant's Moral Philosophy” raises a set of issues about how Kantian ethics should be understood in relation to present day “philosophical naturalism” that are very much in need of discussion. The paper itself is challenging, even in some respects iconoclastic, and provides a highly welcome provocation to raise in new ways some basic questions about what Kantian ethics is and what it ought to be. Guyer offers us an admirably informed and complex argument, both historical and philosophical, that tangles with some of the most difficult problems in Kant's moral philosophy. It begins with some ambitious and controversial claims about Kant's moral philosophy prior to the Groundwork of 1785. It then offers an interpretation, and also a fundamental criticism, of the Groundwork's attempt to establish the moral law based on the idea of freedom of the will. And finally, it raises – and expresses some opinions on – the large and vexed questions of the relationship between transcendental philosophy and philosophical naturalism, and whether Kantian ethics can be made consistent with a naturalistic philosophical outlook. In these comments I will have something to say on each of these three topics, without pretending (any more than Guyer does) to have exhausted what might be said about them.     

Book Reviews

In his famous lecture on Kant's essay 'An Answer to the Question What is Enlightenment' Foucault distinguished between two traditions in modern philosophy coming out of Kant's work: 'an analytic of truth' and 'an ontology of present reality [ actualité ]' or 'a genealogy of ourselves'. The paper presents this distinction as a fruitful displacement of the distinction between 'analytic' and 'continental' philosophy,which gives the latter precise cultural and philosophical meaning. The paper clarifies the distinction and argues that almost without exception, analytic philosophers are not interested -in their capacity as philosophers - in interpreting and understanding their historical present. Some possible reasons and some possible consequences of this lack of interest are examined briefly. Within the continental tradition itself, two major contemporary forms of 'an ontology of present reality' are distinguished, one exemplified by Habermas and the other by Foucault. The difference between these two forms of 'taking aim at the heart of the present' (to use Habermas' phrase) is explicated as a difference between distinct genres of critical discourse, or forms of critique. The difference is presented in respect to two major aspects: historical time and historicity, and critique's mode of engagement with 'an analytic of truth'. The last point, namely the presence of a crucial analytic moment in the philosophical interpretation of present reality, suggests a possible modification of the initial distinction between the two philosophical traditions.     

Kantian Themes in Contemporary Philosophy: Michael Friedman

This paper considers the extent to which Kant's vision of a distinctively 'transcendental' task for philosophy is essentially tied to his views on the foundations of the mathematical and physical sciences. Contemporary philosophers with broadly Kantian sympathies have attempted to reinterpret his project so as to isolate a more general philosophical core not so closely tied to the details of now outmoded mathematical-physical theories (Euclidean geometry and Newtonian physics). I consider two such attempts, those of Strawson and McDowell, and argue that they fundamentally distort the original Kantian impulse. I then consider Buchdahl's attempt to preserve the link between Kantian philosophy and the sciences while simultaneously generalizing Kant's doctrines in light of later scientific developments. I argue that Buchdahl's view, while not adequate as in interpretation of Kant in his own eighteenth century context, is nonetheless suggestive of an historicized and relativized revision of Kantianism that can do justice to both Kant's original philosophical impulse and the radical changes in the sciences that have occurred since Kant's day.     

Kant and Kantian Themes in Recent Analytic Philosophy

This article notes six advances in recent analytic Kant research: (1) Strawson's interpretation, which, together with work by Bennett, Sellars, and others, brought renewed attention to Kant through its account of space, time, objects, and the Transcendental Deduction and its sharp criticisms of Kant on causality and idealism; (2) the subsequent investigations of Kantian topics ranging from cognitive science and philosophy of science to mathematics; (3) the detailed work, by a number of scholars, on the Transcendental Deduction; (4) the clearer understanding of transcendental idealism sparked by reactions to Allison's epistemic account; (5) the resulting need—prompted also by new studies of the thing in itself—to face up to the old question of the philosophical defensibility of such idealism; and (6) the active engagement with Kant's ethics and political philosophy that derives from Rawls's and others' work.     

NEWTON AND HAMILTON: IN DEFENSE OF TRUTH IN ALGEBRA

Although it is clear that Sir William Rowan Hamilton supported a Kantian account of algebra, I argue that there is an important sense in which Hamilton's philosophy of mathematics can be situated in the Newtonian tradition. Drawing from both Niccolo Guicciardini's (2009 ) and Stephen Gaukroger's (2010 ) readings of the Newton–Leibniz controversy over the calculus, I aim to show that the very epistemic ideals that underpin Newton's argument for the superiority of geometry over algebra also motivate Hamilton's philosophy of algebra. Namely, Hamilton's defense of algebra, like Newton's defense of geometry, is driven by the claim that a mathematical science must have a proper object and thus a basis in truth. In particular, Hamilton aims to show that algebra is not a mere language, or tool, or a mere “art”; instead, he argues, algebra is a bona fide mathematical science, like geometry, because its methods also provide true and accurate insight into a genuine subject matter, namely, the pure form of temporal intuition.     

Idealistische Häresien in der Wissenschaftsphilosophie: Cassirer, Carnap und Kuhn

Idealist Heresies in Philosophy of Science: Cassirer, Carnap, and Kuhn. As common wisdom has it, philosophy of science in the analytic tradition and idealist philosophy are incompatible. Usually, not much effort is spent for explaining what is to be understood by idealism. Rather, it is taken for granted that idealism is an obsolete and unscientific philosophical account. In this paper it is argued that this thesis needs some qualification. Taking Carnap and Kuhn as paradigmatic examples of positivist and postpositivist philosophies of science it is shown that these accounts share important features with Cassirer's idealist philosophy of science developed in the first half of this century. As it turns out, often Cassirer is more modern than those classical philosophers of (post)posivitist philosophy of science. For instance, Quine's criticism against Carnap's empiricist philosophy of science launched in Two Dogmas of Empiricism is anticipated by Cassirer for several decades. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

New Work on Kant's Doctrine of Right

Super-substantivalism is the thesis that space is identical to matter; it is currently under discussion – see Sklar (1977, 221–4), Earman (1989, 115–6) and Schaffer (2009) – in contemporary philosophy of physics and metaphysics. Given this current interest, it is worth investigating the thesis in the history of philosophy. This paper examines the super-substantivalism of Samuel Alexander, an early twentieth century metaphysician primarily associated with (the movement now known as) British Emergentism. Alexander argues that spacetime is ontologically fundamental and it gives rise to an ontological hierarchy of emergence, involving novel properties such as matter, life and mind. Alexander's super-substantivalism is interesting not just because of its historical importance but also because Alexander unusually attempts to explain why spacetime is identical to matter. This paper carefully unpacks that explanation and shows how Alexander is best read as conceiving of spacetime as a Spinozistic substance, worked upon by evolution.     

Analytic philosophy, 1925–69: emergence,management and nature

ABSTRACT

This paper shows that during the first half of the 1960s The Journal of Philosophy quickly moved from publishing work in diverse philosophical traditions to, essentially, only publishing analytic philosophy. Further, the changes at the journal are shown, with the help of previous work on the journals Mind and The Philosophical Review, to be part of a pattern involving generalist philosophy journals in Britain and America during the period 1925–69. The pattern is one in which journals controlled by analytic philosophers systematically promote a form of critical philosophy and marginalize rival approaches to philosophy. This pattern, it is argued, helps to explain the growing dominance of analytic philosophy during the twentieth century and allows characterizing this form of philosophy as, at least during 1925–69, a sectarian form of critical philosophy.     

DARWINISM: STILL A CHALLENGE TO PHILOSOPHY

Charles Darwin died in 1882—more than a hundred years ago. His doctrine, however, is still alive. Recently there has been particular interest in his ideas among philosophers. These ideas are indeed a challenge to (traditional) philosophy: To take Darwin seriously means to revise—or even to destroy—some positions in (traditional) philosophy. Among the philosophical disciplines which have been affected by Darwin's ideas are epistemology and moral philosophy (ethics). In the present paper I shall discuss the epistemological and ethical consequences of Darwin's doctrine from the point of view of contemporary philosophy of biology; I shall give a brief outline of evolutionary epistemology and evolutionary ethics which both have caused many controversies.     

Beauty in Proofs: Kant on Aesthetics in Mathematics

It is a common thought that mathematics can be not only true but also beautiful, and many of the greatest mathematicians have attached central importance to the aesthetic merit of their theorems, proofs and theories. But how, exactly, should we conceive of the character of beauty in mathematics? In this paper I suggest that Kant's philosophy provides the resources for a compelling answer to this question. Focusing on §62 of the ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, I argue against the common view that Kant's aesthetics leaves no room for beauty in mathematics. More specifically, I show that on the Kantian account beauty in mathematics is a non‐conceptual response felt in light of our own creative activities involved in the process of mathematical reasoning. The Kantian proposal I thus develop provides a promising alternative to Platonist accounts of beauty widespread among mathematicians. While on the Platonist conception the experience of mathematical beauty consists in an intellectual insight into the fundamental structures of the universe, according to the Kantian proposal the experience of beauty in mathematics is grounded in our felt awareness of the imaginative processes that lead to mathematical knowledge. The Kantian account I develop thus offers to elucidate the connection between aesthetic reflection, creative imagination and mathematical cognition.     

A Dogma of Naturalism

One of the major historical effects of Quine's attacks upon the analytic‐ synthetic distinction has been to popularise the belief that philosophy is continuous with science. Currently, most philosophers believe that such continuity is an inevitable consequence of naturalism. This article argues that though Quine's semantic holism does imply that there is no sharp distinction between truths discoverable by scientific investigation and truths discoverable by philosophical investigation, it also implies that there is a perfectly sharp and natural distinction between natural science and naturalistic philosophy.     

The scientific positivism of Michael Oakeshott

Seventeenth-century philosopher Margaret Cavendish wrote not only several philosophical treatises, but also many fictional works. I argue for taking the latter as serious objects of study for historians of philosophy, and sketch a method for doing so. Cavendish's fiction is full of conflicting viewpoints, and many authors have argued that this demonstrates that she did not intend her literary works to serve serious philosophical purpose. But if we consider philosophers more central to the canon, such as Plato or Kierkegaard, who sometimes used literary forms to do serious philosophy, we see that these arguments are unfounded. Like those philosophers, Cavendish had several philosophical motivations for pursuing value-theoretic issues through the flexible formats of literary genres. This suggests that Cavendish's literary corpus may be fruitful and largely unexplored ground for the history of philosophy.     

The Significance and Research Methods of Enhancing Studies on William James’s Philosophy

William James is one of the first philosophers with significant international influence in the history of American philosophy. James played an extremely important role in the emergence and development of American pragmatism, striving to show cultural self-confidence and pursuing the localization as well as independence of philosophy in the development of America. It is of great importance to further study James’s philosophy in the context of contemporary academics. Academia should value the collection, editing, translation and research of the philosophical classics of James and important literatures, pay attention to the clues of development and academic trends of the important concepts and ideas of James’s pragmatism philosophy, and rethink the status and influence of James’s philosophy in modern Western philosophy, trying to carry out comparative studies between James’s philosophy and traditional Chinese philosophy.