Collins’s incorrect depiction of Dreyfus’s critique of artificial intelligence

Harry Collins interprets Hubert Dreyfus’s philosophy of embodiment as a criticism of all possible forms of artificial intelligence. I argue that this characterization is inaccurate and predicated upon a misunderstanding of the relevance of phenomenology for empirical scientific research.

Weyl’s Appropriation of Husserl’s and Poincar“s Thought

This article locates Weyl's philosophy of mathematics and its relationship to his philosophy of science within the epistemological and ontological framework of Husserl's phenomenology as expressed in the Logical Investigations and Ideas. This interpretation permits a unified reading of Weyl's scattered philosophical comments in The Continuum and Space-Time-Matter. But the article also indicates that Weyl employed Poincaré's predicativist concerns to modify Husserl's semantics and trim Husserl's ontology. Using Poincaré's razor to shave Husserl's beard leads to limitations on the least upper bound theorem in the foundations of analysis and Dirichlet's principle in the foundations of physics. Finally, the article opens the possibility of reading Weyl as a systematic thinker, that he follows Husserl's so-called transcendental turn in the Ideas. This permits an even more unified reading of Weyl's scattered philosophical comments.     

Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language

Many philosophers have assumed, without argument, that Wittgenstein influenced Austin. More often, however, this is vehemently denied, especially by those who knew Austin personally. We compile and assess the currently available evidence for Wittgenstein’s influence on Austin’s philosophy of language. Surprisingly, this has not been done before in any detail. On the basis of both textual and circumstantial evidence we show that Austin’s work demonstrates substantial engagement with Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. In particular, Austin’s 1940 paper, ‘The Meaning of a Word’, should be construed as a direct response to and development of ideas he encountered in Wittgenstein’s Blue Book. Moreover, we argue that Austin’s mature speech-act theory in How to Do Things with Words was also significantly influenced by Wittgenstein.     

Neuroimaging of Wernicke’s Encephalopathy and Korsakoff’s Syndrome

There is considerable evidence that neuroimaging findings can improve the early diagnosis of Wernicke's encephalopathy (WE) in clinical settings. The most distinctive neuroimaging finding of acute WE are cytotoxic edema and vasogenic edema, which are represented by bilateral symmetric hyperintensity alterations on T2-weighted MR images in the periphery of the third ventricle, periaqueductal area, mammillary bodies and midbrain tectal plate. An initial bout of WE can result in Korsakoff's syndrome (KS), but repeated bouts in conjunction with its typical comorbidity, chronic alcoholism, can result in signs of tissue degeneration in vulnerable brain regions. Chronic abnormalities identified with neuroimaging enable examination of brain damage in living patients with KS and have expanded the understanding of the neuropsychological deficits resulting from thiamine deficiency, alcohol neurotoxicity, and their comorbidity. Brain structure and functional studies indicate that the interactions involving the thalamus, mammillary bodies, hippocampus, frontal lobes, and cerebellum are crucial for memory formation and executive functions, and the interruption of these circuits by WE and chronic alcoholism can contribute substantially to the neuropsychological deficits in KS.     

Heidegger’s Concept of Truth Reconsidered in Light of Tugendhat’s Critique

Ernst Tugendhat’s critique of Martin Heidegger’s conception of truth is an ongoing topic in Heideggerian scholarship. In this paper, I contribute to the ongoing exchange between defenders of Heidegger and those who are in agreement with Tugendhat. Specifically, I contend that Tugendhat’s criticisms fail to situate Heidegger’s account of truth within his broader phenomenological–hermeneutic project. In the end, Tugendhat’s critique is grounded upon philosophical assumptions that Heidegger is bringing under question by rethinking the concept of truth. I suggest that thinking through Tugendhat’s critique and attempting to formulate an adequate Heideggerian response gives us a richer understanding of both Heidegger’s account of truth and his general philosophical project.     

The limits of definition: Gadamer’s critique of Aristotle’s ethics

ABSTRACT

There is a recent scholarly trend drawing similarities between Aristotle’s conceptions of ethics and demonstrative science. One such similarity has become widely and rightly recognized: for Aristotle both ethics and demonstrative science seek essential definitions of phenomena. The task of the paper is to show that German philosopher and classicist Hans-Georg Gadamer not only prefigured this interpretative trend, he also identified a problematic feature of Aristotle’s method so construed. The problematic feature is semantic. For Aristotle essential definitions must consist of univocal terms, but such univocity cannot be maintained if the definienda and definientes are concepts to be usefully employed in everyday ethical judgements. Gadamer therefore points out a problematic tension in Aristotle’s ethics. On the one hand, ethical inquiry should have practical application, but, on the other hand, the semantic assumptions underlying inquiry imply that it cannot.     

Prior’s defence of Hintikka’s theorem. A discussion of Prior’s ‘The logic of obligation and the obligations of the logician’

In his paper, The logic of obligation and the obligations of the logician, A.N. Prior considers Hintikka??s theorem, according to which a statement cannot be both impossible and permissible. This theorem has been seen as problematic for the very idea of a logic of obligation. However, Prior rejects the view that the logic of obligation cannot be formalised. He sees this resistance against such a view as an important part of what could be called the obligation of the logician. Prior argues that Hintikka??s theorem should not be seen as something paradoxical. On the contrary, it should be seen as a fully acceptable consequence of a basic and reasonable assumption in deontic logic, namely Hintikka??s rule.     

Somatic Apprehension and Imaginative Abstraction: Cairns’s Criticisms of Schutz’s Criticisms of Husserl’s Fifth Meditation

Dorion Cairns correctly interprets the preconstituted stratum of Edmund Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation to be the primordial ego and not the social world, as was thought by Alfred Schutz, who considered Husserl to be insufficiently attentive to the social world’s hold upon us. Following Cairns’s interpretation, which involves recovering and reconstructing strata that may never exist independently, one better understands how the transfer of sense “animate organism” involves automatic association, or somatic apprehension. This sense-transfer extends to any animate organism, not just humans, and draws on extensive unreflected-upon similarities despite the distinctive fact that the other’s body is never given to oneself as is one’s own. Following Cairns’s interpretation, one can also understand the second epoché as an imaginative, reconstructive abstraction rather than as an example of failed ascesis. Consequently, Husserl appears as less intellectualized in his approach to empathy than often thought to be and more confident in the phenomenologist’s capacity to imagine and attend selectively to experience.     

Logic’s Tower of Babel

Late in his life, Jung speculated that the natural numbers, the integers, “contain the whole of mathematics and everything yet to be discovered in this field.” This article presents the attempts by mathematicians to address this question in their terms; that is, whether arithmetic (the mathematics of the natural numbers) was complete and consistent.

Early in the twentieth century, mathematicians began to seek a formalism that could provide a solid foundation for mathematics. The first important product of this new formalism was Giuseppe Peano’s Postulates: five axioms from which the full arithmetic of the natural numbers or integers (i.e., 0, 1, 2, 3, …) can be derived. Inspired by Peano’s achievement, philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell began a project to show that mathematics could be reduced to logic. His overweening aim was to eventually show that all science could be reduced to logic.

Logician Kurt Gödel realized that the goal of the formalists and logicians was impossible. He produced a logically impeccable proof that no system at least as complex as arithmetic could be proved both complete and consistent within the system. In essence, he proved that the core of mathematical discovery must be intuitive: direct perception of reality, which then clothes itself in mathematical garb. This accords closely with Jung’s own insight, which was based on the idea that each number is qualitatively different from every other number. To this day, Gödel’s proof stands unchallenged.     

Sosa’s theory of knowledge

Synthese - This paper is a critical discussion of Ernest Sosa’s recent analysis of reflective knowledge.     

Adorno’s View of Life

The aim of this article is to reflect on the dialectic of the individual’s life and death in terms of Adorno’s moral philosophy, specifically through a thorough reading of his Negative Dialectics and other key works on the subject. I hold that there are two aspects of the dialectic of life within the context of Adorno’s “nonidentity”: one involves exploring the false identification, due to the reification of modern society, of the individual’s life experience with her or his death experience, while the other involves preserving the dialectical and irreducible tension between the theoretical contemplation of life and of historical conditions, as well as specific social systems. Heidegger’s ontological philosophy concerning Dasein and Kant’s categorical imperative will also be discussed in order to fully understand Adorno’s moral philosophy and his idea of nonidentity. From my point of view, Adorno’s moral philosophy is the prime motivator of his unique concept of nonidentity, and has influenced contemporary political philosophical concepts such as biopolitics (cf. G. Agamben).     

Sher’s defense of blame

In his In Praise of Blame, George Sher aims to provide an analysis and defense of blame. In fact, he aims to provide an analysis that will itself yield a defense by allowing him to argue that morality and blame “stand or fall together.” He thus opposes anyone who recommends jettisoning blame while preserving (the rest of) morality. In this comment, I examine Sher’s defense of blame. Though I am much in sympathy with Sher’s strategy of defending blame by providing an analysis that shows its connection to our commitment to morality, I question his execution of this strategy. Sher hopes to defend our blaming practices by showing our dispositions to them to be a merely contingent consequence of a belief–desire pair that is itself justified by whatever justifies our commitment to morality. I doubt our blaming practices can be defended in this way. In explaining my doubts, I provide a short comparison of Sher’s approach with that of P. F. Strawson in “Freedom of Resentment.” I suggest that we might do better by exploring the connection between our commitment to morality and our blaming practices themselves.

Grice’s Analysis of Utterance-Meaning and Cicero’s Catilinarian Apostrophe

The pragmatics underlying Paul Grice’s analysis of utterance-meaning provide a powerful framework for investigating the commitments arguers undertake. Unfortunately, the complexity of Grice’s analysis has frustrated appropriate reliance on this important facet of his work. By explicating Cicero’s use of apostrophe in his famous “First Catilinarian” this essay attempts to show that a full complex of reflexive gricean speaker intentions in essentially to seriously saying and meaning something.

Arendt’s genealogy of thinking

This paper presents what I will call Arendt’s genealogy of thinking. My purpose in doing so is to strengthen Arendt’s critique of thoughtlessness which I believe is both a powerful, but underappreciated analytic tool and a consistent, but under-examined thread that occurs throughout Arendt’s oeuvre. To do so I revisit her phenomenology of thinking and the distinction between thinking and cognition she introduces in her last, unfinished work, The Life of the Mind. When read alongside the genealogy of action in The Human Condition to create a parallel genealogy of thinking, we can begin to see that the implications of this distinction between thinking and cognition are radical, challenging, and deeply important.     

Field’s logic of truth

T. M. Scanlon’s buck-passing account of value (BPA) has been subjected to a barrage of criticisms. Recently, to be helpful to BPA, Roger Crisp has suggested that a number of these criticisms can be met if one makes some revisions to BPA. In this paper, I argue that if advocates of the buck-passing account accepted these revisions, they would effectively be giving up the buck-passing account as it is typically understood, that is, as an account concerned with the conceptual priority of reasons or the right vis-à-vis value or the good. I conclude by addressing some of the broader implications of my arguments for the current debate about the buck-passing account of value.     

Foucault’s politicization of ontology

The paper explicates a politicized conception of reality with the help of Michel Foucault’s critical project. I contend that Foucault’s genealogies of power problematize the relationship between ontology and politics. His idea of productive power incorporates a radical, ontological claim about the nature of reality: Reality as we know it is the result of social practices and struggles over truth and objectivity. Rather than translating the true ontology into the right politics, he reverses the argument. The radicality of his method lies in showing how the ontological order of things is in itself the outcome of a political struggle: Ontology is politics that has forgotten itself. I argue that Foucault’s thought accomplishes the politicization of ontology with two key theoretical moves. The first is the contestation and provocation of all given and necessary ontological foundations. He affirms the ontological view that there is a discontinuity between reality and all ontological schemas that order it, and a subsequent indeterminacy of reason in establishing ultimate truths or foundations. After this initial step whereby ontology is denaturalized—made arbitrary or at least historically contingent—the way is open for explanations that treat the alternative and competing ontological frameworks as resulting from historical, linguistic and social practices of power. The second key move is thus the exposure of power relations and their constitutive role in our conception of reality. I conclude by considering the implications of Foucault’s politicization of ontology for our understanding of politics.     

Frege’s philosophy of geometry

Synthese - In this paper, I critically discuss Frege’s philosophy of geometry with special emphasis on his position in The Foundations of Arithmetic of 1884. In Sect. 2, I argue that...