Hegel,Schelling and Laozi on Nothingness

This article looks at Hegel’s and Schelling’s discussions of Laozi’s wu 無 in History of Philosophy and Philosophy of Mythology respectively, and then relates them back to those two Western thinkers’ own understandings of the concept of nothingness. This exploration demonstrates that while Hegel sees nothingness more as a logical concept not different from being, Schelling equates Laozi’s wu with Nichtseiende of the first potency in his theory of the potencies of God. This article will further put the question in perspective by examining or speculating how the three philosophers would address the problem of ex nihilo nihil fit. Finally, it will highlight the striking similarity between the views of Schelling and Laozi regarding the role of the will or desire (yu 欲), in our knowledge about nothingness: While Schelling’s first potency, Nichtseiende, is a “not willing will,” the second potency is “willing” and therefore the beginning of existence. Laozi, on the other hand, believes that without desire we can discern the ultimate mystery, while with desire we can only see the outer fringe of things. However, Laozi differs from Schelling in that the latter’s willing God is absent in his philosophy.     

Bergson and Athleticism

The work of Henri Bergson has gone almost completely unnoticed in philosophy of sport literature. This in no way indicates the level of relevance his programme may carry for the subject. Many of the entrenched debates that have historically helped to shape the field are mirrored by Bergson's own concerns regarding perception and skill acquisition. As such, a thorough study of how the Bergsonian programme might approach the topic of athletic action is in no wise an idle pursuit – in fact, very much the opposite. My intention in this paper is twofold: first, to indicate the natural commerce that exists between Bergson's philosophy and the philosophy of sport; second, and perhaps more ambitiously, to demonstrate that his approach to perception and action not only anticipates, but in some cases may help to edify, certain unresolved issues within the field. The paper develops in three parts. In part I, I provide a brief summary of Bergson's theory of perception as it is developed in Matter and Memory (1896). Parts II and III will apply that theory to two of the central aspects of human motor activity: in part II, I investigate what it is to be in possession of skilled motor behaviour – to make that behaviour ‘automatic’, as it were; in part III, the controversial subject of what it is to acquire and modify skilled motor behaviour will be examined.     

Two Approaches to Reading the Historical Descartes

In this article I introduce a new reading of Jean-Paul Sartre's account of bad faith. The reading contrasts with previous accounts by denying that states of bad faith are exhausted by attitudes towards transcendence and facticity. Instead, I argue that bad faith can involve attitudes to many other aspects of the human being. I also respond to an argument which claims that affirmations of freedom are inconsistent with the motivations behind bad faith. The inconsistency is here resolved by demonstrating how in bad faith we can still affirm a restricted version of freedom which avoids us acknowledging the unpleasant aspects of our full freedom.     

Sartre and the Doctors

Abstract

This paper considers how the experience of illness fits within Sartre’s account of embodiment in Being and Nothingness. Sartre makes some remarks about illness, but does not develop a full account. I show that the anti‐naturalistic ontological framework in which Sartre’s discussion of the body is placed, which opposes my ‘being‐for‐Others’ to my ‘being‐for‐myself’, imposes a revisionary account of illness, and how Sartre’s model of interpersonal relations affects his view of doctors, and their role in the illness experience. I note and discuss the connection Sartre draws between illness and bad faith. I also point out that recent phenomenologically inspired criticisms of the medical establishment that draw on Sartre’s account of the body are limited by their failure to engage with Sartre’s ontology.     

Inheritance,Originality and the Will: Bergson and Heidegger on Creation

Abstract

In the work of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger we find different responses to traditional ideas of ‘creation’. Bergson advances a philosophy of creation, wherein ‘creation’ is presented as the production of a ‘radical’ or ‘absolute’ novelty, not only in art, but in all forms of human experience and biological life. Heidegger, in contrast, comes to criticise ideas of ‘creation’ in art as the expression of an alienated ‘humanism’ and ‘subjectivism’ essential to the modern age. This paper illuminates this divergence by showing how Bergson and Heidegger, despite appearances, grapple with the question of art-production – and with the attendant issues of inheritance and originality – in similar ways. It is only in recognising this proximity, I argue, that it is possible to perceive adequately what essentially distinguishes their approaches: Bergson’s conception of creation as a function of the will.     

Habit and time in nineteenth-century French philosophy: Albert Lemoine between Bergson and Ravaisson

This paper shows how reflection on habit leads in nineteenth-century French philosophy to Henri Bergson’s idea of duration in 1888 as a non-quantifiable dimension irreducible to time as measured by clocks. Historically, I show how Albert Lemoine’s 1875 L’habitude et l’instinct was crucial, since he holds – in a way that is both Ravaissonian and Bergsonian avant la lettre – that for the being capable of habit, the three elements of time are fused together. For that habituated being, Lemoine claims, it is not true to say that the past is no longer, nor even that the future is not yet. This historical link between Ravaisson and Bergson, however, only sharpens the philosophical question of how a dynamic conception of habit involves and requires a conception of real duration, of a temporality more original than clock-time, and, conversely, of how reflection on duration prior to clock-time involves a notion of habit. With reference to the work of Gilles Deleuze, the paper concludes by showing that there is an internal connection between these two grand philosophical themes of nineteenth- and then twentieth-century French thought: habit and time.     

Bergson and the holographic theory of mind

Bergson’s model of time (1889) is perhaps the proto-phenomenological theory. It is part of a larger model of mind (1896) which can be seen in modern light as describing the brain as supporting a modulated wave within a holographic field, specifying the external image of the world, and wherein subject and object are differentiated not in terms of space, but of time. Bergson’s very concrete model is developed and deepened with Gibson’s ecological model of perception. It is applied to the problems of consciousness, direct realism, qualia and illusions. The model implies an entirely different basis for memory and cognition, and a brief overview is given for the basis of direct memory, compositionality and systematicity.     

"我思":从笛卡儿到萨特

Cogito, as the first principle of Descartes’ metaphysical system, initiated the modern philosophy of consciousness, becoming both the source and subject of modern Western philosophical discourse. The philosophies of Maine de Biran, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others developed by answering the following questions? Is consciousness substantial or not? Does consciousness require the guarantee of a transcendental subject? Is Cogito epistemological or ontological? Am I a being-for-myself or a being-for-others? Outlining the developmental history of the idea of Cogito from Descartes to Sartre is important for totally comprehending the evolution and development of Western philosophy.     

Henri Bergson: Evolution,time and philosophy

Evolutionary theory is hindered by the conflict between the apparently antagonistic principles of its two founding figures, Darwin and Lamarck. Bergson's Creative Evolution outlines the means of transcending this impasse. If the evolutionary process is conceived as enduring then the atomistic model of static genetic states is never fully realisable. In the light of this, Bergson considers the germ‐plasm to be essentially “fluid.” If there is to be influence on the germ‐line it will be primarily in terms of the manner in which the genetic data is unfolded. In order to designate this influence Bergson introduces the concept of the “tendency.” The tendency will be explicated in relation to contemporary evolutionary biology. However, as the concept signifies that which is given only in the duration in which information is elaborated, it is precluded from representation. Bergson demonstrates that it is the evolutionary principle of continuous transformation which constitutes the limit to any scientific of view. For this reason, science needs to be complemented by a philosophical account of the duration of process.     

Sartre,Developmental Psychology and Burgeoning Self-Awareness: Ricocheting from Being to Nothingness

While the genesis of self-awareness at approximately 18 months old is a dramatic landmark in human development, there is at this stage no explicit awareness on the toddler's part of his/her truly standing apart from others. Only much later does a distinct sense of self shift into focus, and here Sartre provides us with a compelling theory of a first reflective experience of self-awareness. He explains this phenomenon by emphasizing a violent shift in ontological status, one in which the pre-adolescent child is precipitated from functional unity with a primary caregiver to an individuated state involving self-awareness as privative, i.e. where the child becomes aware of existing only in the form of not-being-the-adult. For Sartre this new experience of self is not therefore positive but rather formal or empty; there has in fact been a psychic transition, from being to nothingness. In addition, Sartre also states that all children first explicitly experience themselves in this fashion. These claims find support in the work of developmental psychologist Margaret Mahler. In fact, in spite of the vast developmental discrepancies between toddler and pre-adolescent child, given the appropriate environmental triggers privative subjectivity will be shown to involve a regression to the much earlier rapprochement stage of development described by Mahler.     

Sense data and logical relations: Karin Costelloe-Stephen and Russell’s critique of Bergson

ABSTRACT

Though scholarship has explored Karin Costelloe-Stephen’s contributions to the history of psychoanalysis, as well as her relations to the Bloomsbury Group, her philosophical work has been almost completely ignored. This paper will examine her debate with Bertrand Russell over his criticism of Bergson. Costelloe-Stephen had employed the terminology of early analytic philosophy in presenting a number of arguments in defence of Bergson’s views. Costelloe-Stephen would object, among other things, to Russell’s use of an experiment which, as she points out, was first conducted by Carl Stumpf. Russell appeals to Stumpf's experiment in his attempt to prove that sense data are terms in logical relations, a thesis presupposed by the project of logical analysis outlined in Our Knowledge of the External World. A reformulated version of Costelloe-Stephen's argument put forth by this paper shows that Russell's argument fails to provide adequate proof for his thesis. Further modifications of the argument can also address a reconstruction (based on contemporary reports) of Russell's reply to Costelloe-Stephen. In his reply, Russell would use, already in 1914, the term ‘analytic philosophy’ in contrasting his and Moore’s approach to a continental one, exemplified by Bergson and Costelloe-Stephen.     

Sartre and Fanon: The Phenomenological Problem of Shame and the Experience of Race

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that existing accounts of shame are incomplete in so far as they don’t take account of the problem of shame. This is the problem concerning the possibility of a primary experience of shame. It is the problem Sartre considers under the terms of a “primitive shame” or shame “in its primary structure” that grounds other more complex experiences of shame. This problem is centred on the tension between shame as an immediate, pre-reflective experience and the requirement that shame must involve an awareness of some definitive aspect of the self. I’m going to suggest, correlatively, how by trying to resolve this problem we end up with a more nuanced understanding of shame. In the second part of the paper, I go on to look at how this new interpretation of shame helps us understand race. Looking at Fanon, I explore how a fundamental and overlooked ineffability in our relation to others impacts upon responses to racialized shame.     

Disagreement about Taste: Commonality Presuppositions and Coordination

This paper confronts the disagreement argument for relativism about matters of taste, defending a specific form of contextualism. It is first considered whether the disagreement data might manifest an invariantist attitude that speakers have pre-reflectively. Semantic and ontological enlightenment should then make the impressions of disagreement vanish, or at least leave them as lingering ineffectual Müller-Lyer-like illusions; but it is granted to relativists that this does not fully happen. López de Sa's appeal to presuppositions of commonality and Sundell's appeal to metalinguistic disagreement are discussed, and it is argued that, although they help to clarify the issues, they do not fully explain why such impressions remain under enlightenment. To explain it, the paper develops a suggestion that other writers have made, that the lingering impression of disagreement is a consequence of a practical conflict, appealing to dispositions to practical coordination that come together with presuppositions of commonality in axiological matters.     

Scientists' Uncertainty and Disagreement about Global Climate Change: A Psychological Perspective

Since there are major gaps in scientific knowledge about the greenhouse effect, policy makers are forced to rely on scientists' judgments about the rate of climate change and its effects. It now appears that significant policy decisions will have to be made despite continuing uncertainty and disagreement among scientists. The best that policy makers can do is look for guidance in the best available expert judgment. But when the best experts express great uncertainty and disagree, as seems to be the case with the greenhouse effect, policy makers are unsure about how to proceed. Despite its importance, scientific judgment about the greenhouse effect has not been systematically studied. Psychological research on expert judgment and decision making provides theory, methods, and empirical results that can be used to study judgments based on uncertain and incomplete data and can help to explain the sources of expert uncertainty and disagreement regarding the greenhouse effect. Possible explanations are discussed.     

康德道德研究中道德规律与道德史的内在矛盾

康德从抽象的个人建立道德规律,与他所谓的人类的道德史相矛盾。解决的办法:是团体、社会性与集体思想作为个人先在的规定性与责任与道德的源泉。     

A Cognitive Prototype Model of Moral Judgment and Disagreement

Debates about moral judgments have raised questions about the roles of reasoning, culture, and conflict. In response, the cognitive prototype model explains that over time, through training, and as a result of cognitive development, people construct notions of blameworthy and praiseworthy behavior by abstracting out salient properties that lead to an ideal representation of each. These properties are the primary features of moral prototypes and include social context interpretation, intentionality, consent, and outcomes. According to this model, when the properties are uniform and coherent, they depict a promoral or immoral prototype, relative to the orientations of the properties. A promoral prototype is represented by an action that is supported by the culture, intentionally benevolent or other-regarding, consensual, and resulting in positive outcomes. An immoral prototype is an action that is condemned by the culture, intentionally malevolent or self-serving, lacking consent, and resulting in negative outcomes. It is hypothesized that moral prototypes will result in a high level of agreement and require effortless processing. Alternatively, when properties conflict or the situation deviates from the prototype, a nonprototype will result. It is hypothesized that nonprototypical situations will act as a source of moral disagreement and may require more effortful processing.