Mereotopology without Mereology

Mereotopology is that branch of the theory of regions concerned with topological properties such as connectedness. It is usually developed by considering the parthood relation that characterizes the, perhaps non-classical, mereology of Space (or Spacetime, or a substance filling Space or Spacetime) and then considering an extra primitive relation. My preferred choice of mereotopological primitive is interior parthood. This choice will have the advantage that filters may be defined with respect to it, constructing “points”, as Peter Roeper has done (“Region-based topology”, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 26 (1997), 25–309). This paper generalizes Roeper’s result, relying only on mereotopological axioms, not requiring an underlying classical mereology, and not assuming the Axiom of Choice. I call the resulting mathematical system an approximate lattice, because although meets and joins are not assumed they are approximated. Theorems are proven establishing the existence and uniqueness of representations of approximate lattices, in which their members, the regions, are represented by sets of “points” in a topological “space”.     

Everything Else Being Equal: A Modal Logic for <Emphasis Type="Italic">Ceteris Paribus</Emphasis> Preferences

This paper presents a new modal logic for ceteris paribus preferences understood in the sense of “all other things being equal”. This reading goes back to the seminal work of Von Wright in the early 1960’s and has returned in computer science in the 1990’s and in more abstract “dependency logics” today. We show how it differs from ceteris paribus as “all other things being normal”, which is used in contexts with preference defeaters. We provide a semantic analysis and several completeness theorems. We show how our system links up with Von Wright’s work, and how it applies to game-theoretic solution concepts, to agenda setting in investigation, and to preference change. We finally consider its relation with infinitary modal logics.     

Flowing Within the Text: A Discussion on He Lin’s Explanation of Zhu Xi’s Method of Intuition

The author examines He Lin’s interpretation of Zhu Xi’s method of intuition from a phenomenological-hermeneutical perspective and by exposing Zhu’s philosophical presuppositions. In contrast with Lu Xiangshan’s intuitive method, Zhu Xi’s method of reading classics advocates “emptying your heart and flowing with the text” and, in this spirit, explains the celebrated “exhaustive investigation on the principles of things (ge wu qiong li).” “Text,” according to Zhu, is therefore not an object in ordinary sense but a “contextual region” or “sensible pattern” that, when merged with the reader, generates meanings. Furthermore, by discussing the related doctrines of Lao Zi, Zhuang Zi, Hua-Yan Buddhism, Zhou Dunyi, and Zhu Xi’s own “One principle with many manifestations (li yi fen shu),” the author identifies the philosophical preconditions of Zhu’s method. Based on this analysis, the author goes on to illustrate Zhu’s understanding of “observing potential yet unapparent pleasure, anger, sorrow and happiness” and “maintaining a serious attitude (zhu jing).”     

Monads and Mathematics: G?del and Husserl

In 1928 Edmund Husserl wrote that “The ideal of the future is essentially that of phenomenologically based (“philosophical”) sciences, in unitary relation to an absolute theory of monads” (“Phenomenology”, Encyclopedia Britannica draft) There are references to phenomenological monadology in various writings of Husserl. Kurt G?del began to study Husserl’s work in 1959. On the basis of his later discussions with G?del, Hao Wang tells us that “G?del’s own main aim in philosophy was to develop metaphysics—specifically, something like the monadology of Leibniz transformed into exact theory—with the help of phenomenology.” (A Logical Journey: From G?del to Philosophy, p. 166) In the Cartesian Meditations and other works Husserl identifies ‘monads’ (in his sense) with ‘transcendental egos in their full concreteness’. In this paper I explore some prospects for a G?delian monadology that result from this identification, with reference to texts of G?del and to aspects of Leibniz’s original monadology.     

Individualism, Externalism and Idiolectical Meaning

Semantic externalism in contemporary philosophy of language typically – and often tacitly – combines two supervenience claims about idiolectical meaning (i.e., meaning in the language system of an individual speaker). The first claim is that the meaning of a word in a speaker’s idiolect may vary without any variation in her intrinsic, physical properties. The second is that the meaning of a word in a speaker’s idiolect may vary without any variation in her understanding of it. I here show that a conception of idiolectical meaning is possible that accepts the “anti-internalism” of the first claim while rejecting (what I shall refer to as) the “anti-individualism” of the second. According to this conception, externally constituted idiolectical meaning supervenes on idiolectical understanding. I begin by trying to show that it is possible to disentangle anti-internalist and anti-individualist strands of argument in Hilary Putnam’s well-known and widely influential “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’.” Having once argued that the latter strand of argument is not cogent, I then try to show that individualism (in the sense above) can be reconciled with perhaps the most plausible reconstruction of Putnam’s well-known and widely accepted “indexical” theory of natural kind terms. Integral to my defense of the possibility of an individualist externalism about idiolectical meaning are my efforts to demonstrate that, pace Putnam, there is no “division of linguistic labor” when it comes to the fixing the meanings of such terms in a speaker’s idiolect. The fact that average speakers sometimes need defer to experts shows that not reference, but only reliable recognition of what belongs in the extension of a natural kind term is a “social phenomenon.”

Wittgenstein (1958, 14).

     

The enigma of reversibility and the genesis of sense in Merleau-Ponty

This article clarifies Merleau-Ponty’s enigmatic, later concept of reversibility by showing how it is connected to the theme of the genesis of sense. The article first traces reversibility through “Eye and Mind” and The Visible and the Invisible, in ways that link reversibility to a theme of the earlier philosophy, namely an interrelation in which activity and passivity reverse to one another. This linkage is deepened through a detailed study of a passage on touch in the Phenomenology’s chapter on “Sensing,” which shows how reversibility is important to the genesis of sense, not from some already given origin, but through a creative operation within being, beyond the perceiver, wherein the field of perception internally diverges into active and passive moments. The article connects this point about the genesis of sense to themes in Merleau-Ponty’s lectures on institution and passivity. Altogether the article shows how reversibility is a sign of a divergence and thence of a sort of gap or excess in being that allows for a genesis of sense within being itself.     

Room for a view: on the metaphysical subject of personal identity

Sydney Shoemaker leads today’s “neo-Lockean” liberation of persons from the conservative animalist charge of “neo-Aristotelians” such as Eric Olson, according to whom persons are biological entities and who challenge all neo-Lockean views on grounds that abstracting from strictly physical, or bodily, criteria plays fast and loose with our identities. There is a fundamental mistake on both sides: a false dichotomy between bodily continuity versus psychological continuity theories of personal identity. Neo-Lockeans, like everyone else today who relies on Locke’s analysis of personal identity, including Derek Parfit, have either completely distorted or not understood Locke’s actual view. Shoemaker’s defense, which uses a “package deal” definition that relies on internal relations of synchronic and diachronic unity and employs the Ramsey–Lewis account to define personal identity, leaves far less room for psychological continuity views than for my own view, which, independently of its radical implications, is that (a) consciousness makes personal identity, and (b) in consciousness alone personal identity consists—which happens to be also Locke’s actual view. Moreover, the ubiquitous Fregean conception of borders and the so-called “ambiguity of is” collapse in the light of what Hintikka has called the “Frege trichotomy.” The Ramsey–Lewis account, due to the problematic way Shoemaker tries to bind the variables, makes it impossible for the neo-Lockean ala Shoemaker to fulfill the uniqueness clause required by all such Lewis style definitions; such attempts avoid circularity only at the expense of mistaking isomorphism with identity. Contrary to what virtually all philosophers writing on the topic assume, fission does not destroy personal identity. A proper analysis of public versus perspectival identification, derived using actual case studies from neuropsychiatry, provides the scientific, mathematical and logical frameworks for a new theory of self-reference, wherein “consciousness,” “self-consciousness,” and the “I,” can be precisely defined in terms of the subject and the subject-in-itself.     

A Butterfly Dream in a Brain in a Vat

Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream story can be read as a skeptical response to the Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum solution, for it presents I exist as fundamentally unprovable, on the grounds that the notion about “I” that it is guaranteed to refer to something existing, which Descartes seems to assume, is unwarranted. The modern anti-skepticism of Hilary Putnam employs a different strategy, which seeks to derive the existence of the world not from some “indubitable” truth such as the existence of myself, but from the meaning of some particular assertion I make. In this paper, I argue, however, that Putnam’s argument fails to deliver on the promise of showing the self-refuting nature of the skeptical hypothesis, as it relies on a double use of “I”, a fallacy of equivocation, reflecting an unsolved tension between the argument’s general premise, which is rather Zhuangzian in spirit, and his unwitting adoption of that unwarranted notion about “I”. I try to show further that the skepticism in Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream not only can be used to refute the proofs of the existence of the empirical I, but also is effective against accounts concerning the existence of the transcendental I.     

The being-with of being-there

In Being and Time, Heidegger affirms that being-with or Mitsein is an essential constitution of Dasein but he does not submit this existential to the same rigorous analyses as other existentials. In this essay, Jean-Luc Nancy points to the different places where Heidegger erased the possibility of thinking an essential with that he himself opened. This erasure is due, according to Nancy, to the subordination of Mitsein to a thinking of the proper and the improper. The polarization of Being-with between an improper face, the Anyone, and a proper one, the people, which is also, as Nancy shows, a polarization between everydayness and historicity, between a being-together in exteriority (indifference and anonymity) and a being-together in interiority (union through destiny), between a solitary dying and the sacrificial death in combat, leaves the essential with unthought. This essay shows not only the tensions that arise out of Heidegger’s own analyses of Mitsein and affect the whole of Being and Time but also underlines in the end a “shortfall in thinking” inherent not only to Heidegger’s work but, as Nancy claims, to our Western tradition, a shortfall which Nancy has attempted to remedy in his Being Singular Plural. A slightly different version has been published under the title “L’être-avec de l’être-là” in Lieu-Dit 19 “Communauté” (Spring 2003). All additions in square brackets are the translators’ unless otherwise indicated. The German words in parentheses are Nancy’s additions. For the translation of citations from Being and Time, we have used the Macquarrie & Robinson’s translation which we have modified only when constrained by Nancy himself. Overall, we have tried to be faithful to the Heideggerian tone of Nancy’s text by using the accepted English translation of the central concepts of Being and Time. When we depart from the accepted translations, it is to remain true to Nancy’s paraphrases, emphases, and displacements. For example, we refrain from using “authentic” and “inauthentic.” Translated by Marie-Eve Morin Department of Philosophy, 4-97 Humanities Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E5 e-mail: mmorin1@ualberta.ca

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A secular age? Reflections on Taylor and Panikkar

During the last few years two major volumes have been published, both greatly revised versions of earlier Gifford Lectures: Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007) and Raimon Panikkar’s The Rhythm of Being (2010). The two volumes are similar in some respects and very dissimilar in others. Both thinkers complain about the glaring blemishes of the modern, especially the contemporary age; both deplore above all a certain deficit of religiosity. The two authors differ, however, both in the details of their diagnosis and in their proposed remedies. Taylor views the modern age—styled as “secular age”—as marked by a slide into secular agnosticism, into “exclusive humanism”, and above all into an “immanent frame” excluding theistic “transcendence”. Although sharing the concern about “loss of meaning”, Panikkar does not find its source in the abandonment of (mono)theistic transcendence; on the contrary, both radical transcendence and agnostic immanence are responsible for the deficit of genuine faith. For him, recovery of faith requires an acknowledgment of our being in the world, as part of the “rhythm of being” happening in a holistic or “cosmotheandric” mode. In classical Indian terminology, while Taylor’s emphasis on the transcendence-immanence tension reflects ultimately a dualistic perspective (dvaita), Panikkar’s holistic notion of the rhythm of being captures the core of Advaita Vendanta.     

On the Mind Dependence of Truth

The claim that truth is mind dependent has some initial plausibility only if truth bearers are taken to be mind dependent entities such as beliefs or statements. Even on that assumption, however, the claim is not uncontroversial. If it is spelled out as the thesis that “in a world devoid of mind nothing would be true”, then everything depends on how the phrase ‘true in world w’ is interpreted. If ‘A is true in w’ is interpreted as ‘A is true of w’ (i.e. ‘w satisfies A’s truth conditions’, the claim need not be true. If on the other hand it is interpreted as ‘A is true of w and exists in w’ then the claim is trivially true, though devoid of any antirealistic efficacy. Philosophers like Heidegger and Rorty, who hold that truth is mind dependent but reality is not, must regard such principles as “A if and only if it is true that A” as only contingently true, which may be a good reason to reject the mind dependence of truth anyway.     

What is a Sophistical Refutation?

From Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutations the following classifications are put forward and defended through extensive excerpts from the text. (AR-PFC) All sophistical refutations are exclusively either ‘apparent refutations’ or ‘proofs of false conclusions’. (AR-F) ‘Apparent refutations’ and ‘fallacies’ name the same thing. (ID-ED) All fallacies are exclusively either fallacies in dictione or fallacies extra dictionem. (ID-nAMB) Not all fallacies in dictione are due to ambiguity. (AMB-nID) Not all fallacies due to ambiguity are fallacies in dictione. (AMB&ID-ME) The set of fallacies due to ambiguity and fallacies in dictione together comprise the set of arguments said to be “dependent on mere expression”. Being “dependent on mere expression” and “dependent on language” are not the same (instances of the latter form a proper subset of instances of the former). (nME-FACT) All arguments that are not against the expression are “against the fact.” (FACT-ED) All fallacious arguments against the fact are fallacies extra dictionem (it is unclear whether the converse is true). (MAN-ARG) The solutions of fallacious arguments are exclusively either “against the man” or “against the argument.” (10) (F-ARG) Each (type of) fallacy has a unique solution (namely, the opposite of whatever causes the fallacy), but each fallacious argument does not. However, each fallacious argument does have a unique solution against the argument, called the ‘true solution’ (in other words, what fallacy a fallacious argument commits is determined by how it is solved. However, if the solution is ‘against the man’ then this is not, properly speaking, the fallacy committed in the argument. It is only the ‘true solution’—the solution against the argument, of which there is always only one—that determines the fallacy actually committed).     

Rawls and Research on Cognitively Impaired Patients: A Reply to Maio

In his paper, “The Relevance of Rawls’ Principle of Justice for Research on Cognitively Impaired Patients” (Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 23 (2002):45–53), Giovanni Maio has developed athought-provoking argument for the permissibility of non-therapeutic research on cognitively impaired patients. Maio argues that his conclusion follows from the acceptance of John Rawls’s principles of justice, specifically, Rawls’s “liberty principle” Maio has misinterpreted Rawls’s “libertyprinciple” – correctly interpreted it does notsupport non-therapeutic research on cognitivelyimpaired patients. Three other ‘Rawlsian’ arguments are suggested by Maio’s discussion –two “self-respect” arguments and a “presumed consent” argument – but none of them are convincing. However, an alternative argument developed from Rawls’s discussion of “justice in health care” in his most recent book, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, may justify certain kinds of non-therapeutic research on some cognitively impaired patients in special circumstances. We should not expect anything more permissive from a liberal theory of justice. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Phenomenological Reading of Hegel’s Concept of History of Philosophy: An Analysis of “The Gallery of Opinions”, “The Gallery of Knowledge” and “The Gallery of Dresden”

From a phenomenological perspective of game-space and horizon, this paper tries to make a deconstructive reading of Hegel’s “two galleries”, namely, “the gallery of opinions” and “the gallery of knowledge”, which are mentioned in the introduction of Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. The reading shows that the Game-space or the ab-gruendiger Grund of the Hegelian concept of philosophical history lies in an originally differencing space that is keeping in absence, which is called by Edmund Husserl and Jacques Derrida “the gallery of Dresden”. Translated from Zhexue Yanjiu, 2005:6     

Advice for fallibilists: put knowledge to work

We begin by asking what fallibilism about knowledge is, distinguishing several conceptions of fallibilism and giving reason to accept what we call strong epistemic fallibilism, the view that one can know that something is the case even if there remains an epistemic chance, for one, that it is not the case. The task of the paper, then, concerns how best to defend this sort of fallibilism from the objection that it is “mad,” that it licenses absurd claims such as “I know that p but there’s a chance that not p” and “p but it there’s a chance that not p.” We argue that the best defense of fallibilism against this objection—a “pragmatist” defense—makes the following claims. First, while knowledge that p is compatible with an epistemic chance that not-p, it is compatible only with an insignificant such chance. Second, the insignificance of the chance that not-p is plausibly understood in terms of the irrelevance of that chance to p’s serving as a ‘justifier’, for action as well as belief. In other words, if you know that p, then any chance for you that not p doesn’t stand in the way of p’s being properly put to work as a basis for action and belief.

Cassirer’s critique of culture

My purpose in this paper is to look at Cassirer’s relation to critical philosophy from a new perspective. Most discussions concerning Cassirer’s Kantianism have so far centered on his relation to neo-Kantianism and the Marburg school. My focus will not be on neo-Kantianism but on Cassirer’s notion of a “critique of culture.” In an often cited paragraph from the introduction to The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, Cassirer says that his aim is to broaden Kant’s critical approach to all various forms of culture, to language as well as myth and art, and thus to transform the “critique of reason” into the “critique of culture.” I will explore Cassirer’s concept of the “critique of culture” and suggest that it can best be understood by placing it in the context of early twentieth century German philosophy. More precisely, I will aim to show that Cassirer’s critique can be seen as an effort to find a middle path between Lebensphilosophie and the positivism of the Vienna Circle.     

Towards the origin of modern technology: reconfiguring Martin Heidegger’s thinking

Martin Heidegger’s radical critique of technology has fundamentally stigmatized modern technology and paved the way for a comprehensive critique of contemporary Western society. However, the following reassessment of Heidegger’s most elaborate and influential interpretation of technology, “The Question Concerning Technology,” sheds a very different light on his critique. In fact, Heidegger’s phenomenological line of thinking concerning technology also implies a radical critique of ancient technology and the fundamental being-in-the-world of humans. This revision of Heidegger’s arguments claims that “The Question Concerning Technology” indicates a previous unseen ambiguity with respect to the origin of the rule of das Gestell. The following inquiry departs from Heidegger’s critique of modern technology and connects it to a reassessment of ancient technology and Aristotle’s justification of slavery. The last part of the paper unfolds Heidegger’s underlying arguments in favor of continuity within the history of technology. According to these interpretations, humans have always strived to develop “modern” technology and to become truly “modern” in the Heideggerian sense. The danger stemming from the rule of das Gestell is thus not only transient and solely directed toward contemporary Western society, but also I will argue that humans can only be humans as the ones challenged by the rule of das Gestell.     

哲学的教化与教化的哲学——论儒学精神的根本特质

Edification 教化 is one of the central concepts of Confucianism. The metaphysical basis of the Confucian edification is the “philosophical theory” in the sense of rational humanism rather than the “religious doctrine” in the sense of pure faith. Confucianism did not create a system of ceremony and propriety owned by Confucians only. The system of ceremony and propriety on which Confucians depend to carry out their social edification is that of “rites and music,” the common life style of ancient China. After continual metaphysical explanation and elevation, the system of ceremony and propriety and that of rites and music have undergone a sort of ever-evolving historical fluctuation, and evinced a sort of openness and forgiveness comparable to that of any other religious form. Compared with typical religious practices, whose ceremonies and rituals that have their own special fixity and exclusivity, Confucian ceremonies and rituals are fundamentally different. The edification of Confucianism can be labeled as “edification in the sense of philosophy.” As a “philosophy”, Confucianism’s vision did not focus on cognition but on completion and realization. Translated by Lei Yongqiang from Tianjin Shehui Kexue 天津社会科学 (Tianjin Social Sciences), 2005, (6): 19–26     

Rhetoric, technical writing, and ethics

Many outside science and engineering, especially social scientists and “rhetoricians”, claim that rhetoric, “the art of persuasion”, is an important part of technical communication. This claim is either trivial or false. If “persuasion” simply means “effective communication”, then, of course, rhetoric is an important part of technical communication. But, if “persuasion” has anything like its traditional meaning (a specific art of winning conviction), rhetoric is not an important part of technical communication; indeed, its use in technical communication would be unethical. [By] an advocate is meant one whose business it is to smooth over real difficulties, and to persuade where he cannot convince. —Thomas Henry Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature ^{1 (p. 238)} As a profession, engineers frown on persuasiveness and find it suspect. —Dorothy A. Winsor, Writing Like an Engineer ^{2 (p. 12), A} Michael Davis’s research interests are in the areas of engineering ethics and the social contract. Recent published books include Thinking Like an Engineer, 1998, Oxford, and Ethics and the University, 1999, Routledge.