Symposium on Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche’s Constructivism: a Metaphysics of Material Objects (Routledge, 2018)

Philosophia - Like Kant, the German Idealists, and many neo-Kantian philosophers before him, Nietzsche was persistently concerned with metaphysical questions about the nature of objects. His texts...     

Alcoff’s Rape and Resistance: A Précis

Philosophical Studies - This article summarizes Linda Martin Alcoff's Rape and Resistance (Polity, Cambridge, 2018). Alcoff's analysis centers on a political and philosophical defense of...     

Indeterminate Interests: Comments on Justin Remhof’s Nietzsche’s Constructivism

Philosophia - In his book Nietzsche’s Constructivism: A Metaphysics of Material Objects Justin Remhof defends, using resources from Nietzsche’s thought, the constructivist view that all...     

A (R)evaluation of Nietzsche’s Anti-democratic Pedagogy: The Overman,Perspectivism, and Self-overcoming

In this paper, I argue that Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of self-overcoming has been largely misinterpreted in the philosophy of education journals. The misinterpretation partially stems from a misconstruction of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, and leads to a conception of self-overcoming that is inconsistent with Nietzsche’s educational ideals. To show this, I examine some of the prominent features of the so-called “debate” of the 1980s surrounding Nietzsche’s conception of self-overcoming. I then offer an alternative conception that is more consistent with Nietzsche’s thought, and provides a more nuanced understanding of Nietzsche’s “anti-democratic” pedagogy. Ultimately, I argue that while Nietzsche’s educational philosophy is not egalitarian, it can be effectively utilized in “democratic” classrooms, assuming his concept of self-overcoming is properly construed.

Précis of memory: a philosophical study

This is a response to three critical discussions of my book Memory: A Philosophical Study (Oxford University Press 2010): Marya Schechtman, “Memory and Identity”, Fred Adams, “Husker Du?”, and Sanford Goldberg “The Metasemantics of Memory”.     

Précis of "Lifelines: biology, freedom, determinism"

There are many ways of describing and explaining the properties of living systems; causal, functional, and reductive accounts are necessary but no one account has primacy. The history of biology as a discipline has given excessive authority to reductionism, which collapses higher level accounts, such as social or behavioural ones, into molecular ones. Such reductionism becomes crudely ideological when applied to the human condition, with its claims for genes "for" everything from sexual orientation to compulsive shopping. The current enthusiasm for genetics and ultra-Darwinist accounts, with their selfish-gene metaphors for living processes, misunderstand both the phenomena of development and the interactive role that DNA and the fluid genome play in the cellular orchestra. DNA is not a blueprint, and the four dimensions of life (three of space, one of time) cannot be read off from its one-dimensional strand. Both developmental and evolutionary processes are more than merely instructive or selective; the organism constructs itself, a process known as autopoiesis, through a lifeline trajectory. Because organisms are thermodynamically open systems, living processes are homeodynamic, not homeostatic. The self-organising membrane-bound and energy-utilising metabolic web of the cell must have evolved prior to socalled naked replicators. Evolution is constrained by physics, chemistry, and structure; not all change is powered by natural selection, and not all phenotypes are adaptive. Finally, therefore, living processes are radically indeterminate; like all other living organisms, but to an even greater degree, we make our own future, though in circumstances not of our own choosing.     

Précis of Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution

The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is "interpretive." The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity.     

Précis of Neural organization: structure, function, and dynamics

NEURAL ORGANIZATION: Structure, function, and dynamics shows how theory and experiment can supplement each other in an integrated, evolving account of the brain's structure, function, and dynamics. (1) STRUCTURE: Studies of brain function and dynamics build on and contribute to an understanding of many brain regions, the neural circuits that constitute them, and their spatial relations. We emphasize Szentágothai's modular architectonics principle, but also stress the importance of the microcomplexes of cerebellar circuitry and the lamellae of hippocampus. (2) FUNCTION: Control of eye movements, reaching and grasping, cognitive maps, and the roles of vision receive a functional decomposition in terms of schemas. Hypotheses as to how each schema is implemented through the interaction of specific brain regions provide the basis for modeling the overall function by neural networks constrained by neural data. Synthetic PET integrates modeling of primate circuitry with data from human brain imaging. (3) DYNAMICS: Dynamic system theory analyzes spatiotemporal neural phenomena, such as oscillatory and chaotic activity in both single neurons and (often synchronized) neural networks, the self-organizing development and plasticity of ordered neural structures, and learning and memory phenomena associated with synaptic modification. Rhythm generation involves multiple levels of analysis, from intrinsic cellular processes to loops involving multiple brain regions. A variety of rhythms are related to memory functions. The Précis presents a multifaceted case study of the hippocampus. We conclude with the claim that language and other cognitive processes can be fruitfully studied within the framework of neural organization that the authors have charted with John Szentágothai.     

Précis of statistical significance: rationale, validity, and utility

The null-hypothesis significance-test procedure (NHSTP) is defended in the context of the theory-corroboration experiment, as well as the following contrasts: (a) substantive hypotheses versus statistical hypotheses, (b) theory corroboration versus statistical hypothesis testing, (c) theoretical inference versus statistical decision, (d) experiments versus nonexperimental studies, and (e) theory corroboration versus treatment assessment. The null hypothesis can be true because it is the hypothesis that errors are randomly distributed in data. Moreover, the null hypothesis is never used as a categorical proposition. Statistical significance means only that chance influences can be excluded as an explanation of data; it does not identify the nonchance factor responsible. The experimental conclusion is drawn with the inductive principle underlying the experimental design. A chain of deductive arguments gives rise to the theoretical conclusion via the experimental conclusion. The anomalous relationship between statistical significance and the effect size often used to criticize NHSTP is more apparent than real. The absolute size of the effect is not an index of evidential support for the substantive hypothesis. Nor is the effect size, by itself, informative as to the practical importance of the research result. Being a conditional probability, statistical power cannot be the a priori probability of statistical significance. The validity of statistical power is debatable because statistical significance is determined with a single sampling distribution of the test statistic based on H0, whereas it takes two distributions to represent statistical power or effect size. Sample size should not be determined in the mechanical manner envisaged in power analysis. It is inappropriate to criticize NHSTP for nonstatistical reasons. At the same time, neither effect size, nor confidence interval estimate, nor posterior probability can be used to exclude chance as an explanation of data. Neither can any of them fulfill the nonstatistical functions expected of them by critics.     

Politics,Friendship and Solitude in Nietzsche (Confronting Derrida’s reading of Nietzsche in ‘Politics of Friendship’)

The paper offers a counter-reading to Derrida’s “utopian” reading of Nietzsche, focussing instead on Nietzsche’s cynical view of friendship, based on the impossibility of being a friend to oneself. Unlike Aristotle, who sees the basis of human political nature in their shared rationality and mutual friendship, Nietzsche sees not only politics, but human beings themselves as being constituted by a violent act of submission, and characterised by an ongoing struggle for power.

The paper further examines two intellectual traditions about friendship and politics, one (primarily associated with Aristotle) according to which the two are positively related and no real tension could exist between them. Another tradition (primarily associated with Montaigne) holds friendship to be irreconcilable with politics.

Elements of both traditions can be recognised in Nietzsche who, finding the radical deceptive nature of friendship unacceptable, moves to a solitude which is equally unbearable. For it is precisely the hermit that knows that his solitude makes him into an other to himself; which turns out to be a motive for real friendship, the third element which prevents the lonely hermit from sinking into the depth of self-interrogation. The paper concludes with the recognition that friendship, for Nietzsche, can only have an intermediary function on the way to full realisation of friendship, which will be a friendship of an inner difference or plurality, i.e. on our way to what is ultimately beyond the human condition, to the “overman”.     

Précis of neuroconstructivism: how the brain constructs cognition

Neuroconstructivism: How the Brain Constructs Cognition proposes a unifying framework for the study of cognitive development that brings together (1) constructivism (which views development as the progressive elaboration of increasingly complex structures), (2) cognitive neuroscience (which aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying behavior), and (3) computational modeling (which proposes formal and explicit specifications of information processing). The guiding principle of our approach is context dependence, within and (in contrast to Marr [1982]) between levels of organization. We propose that three mechanisms guide the emergence of representations: competition, cooperation, and chronotopy; which themselves allow for two central processes: proactivity and progressive specialization. We suggest that the main outcome of development is partial representations, distributed across distinct functional circuits. This framework is derived by examining development at the level of single neurons, brain systems, and whole organisms. We use the terms encellment, embrainment, and embodiment to describe the higher-level contextual influences that act at each of these levels of organization. To illustrate these mechanisms in operation we provide case studies in early visual perception, infant habituation, phonological development, and object representations in infancy. Three further case studies are concerned with interactions between levels of explanation: social development, atypical development and within that, developmental dyslexia. We conclude that cognitive development arises from a dynamic, contextual change in embodied neural structures leading to partial representations across multiple brain regions and timescales, in response to proactively specified physical and social environment.