Philosophy of religion, fictionalism, and religious diversity

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept “God”, as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context.     

Philosophy,Logic, Science,History

Analytic philosophy is sometimes said to have particularly close connections to logic and to science, and no particularly interesting or close relation to its own history. It is argued here that although the connections to logic and science have been important in the development of analytic philosophy, these connections do not come close to characterizing the nature of analytic philosophy, either as a body of doctrines or as a philosophical method. We will do better to understand analytic philosophy—and its relationship to continental philosophy—if we see it as a historically constructed collection of texts, which define its key problems and concerns. It is true, however, that analytic philosophy has paid little attention to the history of the subject. This is both its strength—since it allows for a distinctive kind of creativity—and its weakness—since ignoring history can encourage a philosophical variety of “normal science.”     

The interpretation of Locke’s Two Treatises in Britain, 1778–1956

ABSTRACT

This paper describes how Locke’s Two Treatises of Government was read in Britain from Josiah Tucker to Peter Laslett. It focuses in particular upon how Locke’s readers responded to his detailed and lengthy engagement with the patriarchalist political thought of Sir Robert Filmer. In the second half of the eighteenth century, the debate between Locke and Filmer continued to provide the framework within which political obligation was discussed. A hundred years later that had changed, to the point where Locke’s readers found it unintelligible that he argued against Filmer and not Hobbes. I explain this in terms of the development in nineteenth-century Britain of a new conception of the history of political philosophy, the product of interest in the Hegelian theory of the state. The story told here is offered as one example of how understandings of the history of philosophy are shaped by understandings of philosophy itself.     

On Toleration,Charity, and Epistemic Fallibilism

In this paper I examine some presuppositions of toleration and pluralism and explore two models, viz., a deontological and a consequentialist model, respectively, which could support the view that rational agents should act in a tolerant way. Against the background which is offered by the first model, I give two arguments in favor of the view that people are better off and more rational if they act in a tolerant way. The first argument draws upon a principle of charity which is usually applied in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but which could, equally well, work with regard to foundational issues in ethics and philosophy of action. The second argument is built upon the epistemic principle of fallibilism and it is meant to show that acting in a tolerant way is the rational thing to do from this perspective.     

Philosophy,Its Pitfalls,Some Rescue Plans,and Their Complications

This article offers the motivation for organising a conference on philosophy as it is practised across several faculties and departments at the University of Cambridge. It also offers an overview of the main themes that emerge in the essays collected in this issue of Metaphilosophy, which derive from the aforementioned conference. In particular it focuses on the risk of scholasticism and dogmatism that philosophy faces when it divorces itself from its own history, other disciplines, and real life. It then discusses the potential problems that can arise from the practice of philosophy in close conjunction with other disciplines, such as the natural sciences and the history of philosophy. Finally, it briefly comments on how institutional/academic structures have an influence on the way philosophy is practised.     

Existential, theological, and psychological concepts of death: a personal retrospective

Before Freud, the study of death belonged strictly in the contexts of religion and philosophy, but in the 20th Century, death and dying began to enter into dialogue with the social sciences of psychology and sociology. The existentialists began to portray death differently in their literary-based philosophy, and by the end of the century four major American writers had dealt squarely with death in a theological framework. The author's own personal experiences and academic endeavors frame this evolution in theories about death and dying, beginning with a Master's thesis in college and ending with a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education in a shock trauma hospital. In this article the mystery of death is examined from three distinct points of view: literary (including existentialism, a philosophy as literature), theological and psychological, based upon the author's career as a professor of literature, as seminary student, and as a recent participant in Clinical Pastoral Education. An attempt at a synthesis of these three strands of inquiry is made at the end of this personal and academic journey.     

Experimental Philosophy: A Methodological Critique

This article offers a critique of research practices typical of experimental philosophy. To that end, it presents a review of methodological issues that have proved crucial to the quality of research in the biobehavioral sciences. It discusses various shortcomings in the experimental philosophy literature related to (1) the credibility of self‐report questionnaires, (2) the validity and reliability of measurement, (3) the adherence to appropriate procedures for sampling, random assignment, and handling of participants, and (4) the meticulousness of study reporting. It argues that the future standing of experimental philosophy will hinge upon improvements in research methods.     

Kierkegaard's Mirrors: Interest,Self, and Moral Vision

This paper advances the view that the history of philosophy is both a kind of history and a kind of philosophy. Through a discussion of some examples from epistemology, metaphysics, and the historiography of philosophy, it explores the benefit to philosophy of a deep and broad engagement with its history. It comes to the conclusion that doing history of philosophy is a way to think outside the box of the current philosophical orthodoxies. Somewhat paradoxically, far from imprisoning its students in outdated and crystallized views, the history of philosophy trains the mind to think differently and alternatively about the fundamental problems of philosophy. It keeps us alert to the fact that latest is not always best, and that a genuinely new perspective often means embracing and developing an old insight. The upshot is that the study of the history of philosophy has an innovative and subversive potential, and that philosophy has a great deal to gain from a long, broad, and deep conversation with its history.     

Alterity,Analectics, and the Challenges of Epistemic Decolonization

This essay explores some conceptual and diagnostic frameworks to advance epistemic decolonization in the US philosophical profession. A central focus is the distinction between those philosophies of formerly colonized peoples that are culturally alterior or, simply, alterior and those that are analectical in the Dusselian sense of emerging from a subordinated political position. The paper begins by reflecting upon connections between coloniality, the alterior, and the analectical to frame the discussion of epistemic decolonization in the philosophy profession. It then considers a knower's core theoretic reconstruction in the task of epistemic decolonization and identifies some ambiguities in reconciling alterior traditions with analectical theoretical reconstruction. The work of Charles Mills and Enrique Dussel are considered as case studies. The paper concludes with critical reflections on the institutional network of canon, curriculum, and other conceptual and credentialization structures that constitute institutional Eurocentrism.     

On historicity,context and the existence of African philosophy

Abstract

The author reviews the second edition of Philosophy from Africa by comparing it with the first edition and with other anthologies in African philosophy. Questions regarding the existence and identity of African philosophy receive special attention. It is argued that a negation of the existence of African philosophy results from monolithic, ahistorical and decontextualized thinking about Africa and about philosophy. The roots and development of African philosophy are inseparably bound up with the continent’s historical, political, cultural and economic complexities. The challenge facing African philosophers is twofold: deconstructing the notion of philosophy as constructed and conceived by the West; and reconstructing the history of African philosophy.     

NATURE, REALITY, AND THE SACRED: A MEDITATION IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. Many scientists now recognize the participation of the knower in the known. Not many admit, however, that scientists rely upon intuitions about reality commonly attributed to philosophy and religion: that sensory experience relates us to an order in nature congruent with our minds and of value congruent with our fulfilled being. Nature has disclosed itself to scientists—albeit fragmentarily—as power, life, order, and unity or meaning. In science these remain limit questions, raised but unanswered. In the unity of these qualities, assumed by science, the sacred begins to appear. Addressing the limit questions, not only of scientific but of human experience, is the province of philosophy and religion.     

试论壮医药的哲学基础

壮医药有深厚的传统哲学基础,壮医药在漫长的发展历程中广泛吸收了壮族先民的哲学思想,凝聚着壮族先民的智慧。壮族传统哲学对壮医药的影响,有朴素的唯物自然观、辩证发展观以及关怀互助的医疗价值取向等积极影响,也有客观唯心、经验积累占较大比重、小农经济思想等非积极因素。     

Die neo-inklusivistiese benadering tot religieuse pluraliteit

Abstract

Neo-pragmatists Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish have recently argued that philosophy has no consequences for legal practice (except, in the case of Fish, in so far as it carries rhetorical force). They have asserted not only that philosophy cannot provide absolute metaphysical foundations for legal practice, but also that philosophy cannot be used to criticise law. This essay examines Fish and Rorty’s reasons for denying the practical force of philosophy. Although I agree with Rorty and Fish’s non-foundationalism, I argue that in practice lawyers employ discursive categories and concepts that can be described as philosophical. I suggest also that philosophy has a critical function and that the characterisation of philosophy offered by these theorists amounts to a conservative assertion of the formal completeness and substantive justice of existing liberal legal systems. Against Fish and Rorty, I argue and selectively demonstrate that lawyers can usefully draw upon ‘public ironists’ such as Nietzsche, Foucault and Derrida to criticise and improve upon extant legal practices.     

Charting the Road of Inquiry: Deleuze's Humean Pragmatics and the Challenge of Badiou

This essay responds to Badiou's charge that Deleuze fails to set forth a philosophy that is “beyond Gategorical oppositions.” It is argued that this criticism of Deleuze is founded upon a misreading of the Deleuzean distinction between the virtual and the actual, a reading that carries forward Badiou's misreading of Spinoza and, hence, of Deleuze's Spinozism. With this corrected, we show how the virtual‐actual distinction operates within the experimental philosophy, or pragmatics, that Deleuze, and later Deleuze and Guattari, sets forth. It is this pragmatics that is precisely the philosophy of difference that is beyond categorical oppositions. Through a comparison of Deleuzean pragmatics with the work of Hume and Peirce, we are able to respond to Badiou's further criticism that Deleuze's philosophy fails to understand the conditions for creativity in thought and culture. This criticism is itself resolved once one corrects for Badiou's misreading of Deleuze's virtual‐actual distinction.     

HOW I SEE PHILOSOPHY IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND BEYOND

Abstract: This article raises some questions about the relevance and value of philosophy at present and suggests some ways in which philosophy can become relevant again. It challenges philosophers to become more actively engaged in the world and to restore Western philosophy's original vision of “love of wisdom,” a value sorely lacking in the present‐day world and abandoned by much of contemporary Western philosophy. The pursuit of wisdom would involve the quest for sound judgment and synoptic insights regarding the ends humankind should strive to realize, including moral visions to help Homo sapiens emerge from the atavistic jungle. It would also involve sound judgment regarding the proper means for the attainment of these desirable ends. For these things to be possible, philosophy would need to draw upon humankind's collective wisdom in philosophy, religion, and myth, and on advances in scientific knowledge, thereby gaining an ever‐deeper understanding of ourselves and of our place in the cosmos.     

The Engagement of French Protestantism in Solidarism

It is conventional to think of modernity as being characterised by the irremediable separation of philosophy and theology, of reason and faith. Failing to reconsider the idea of such a divorce, post-modernity has pushed this postulate to its very limits by attempting to abolish all types of normativity whether on the grounds of reason or any other basis. Against these prevailing conceptions, we argue that there exist, within philosophy and theology, processes of differentiation as well as original combinations. To illustrate the possibility of mutually enriching exchanges between the philosophical and the theological ethical traditions we will call upon the historical example of solidarism. This will enable us to show that the two traditions are not so heterogeneous as may be first thought by those who underestimate the importance of identifying the conditions, both pragmatic and ideological, that govern practical in situation ethical judgements.     

Feminist philosophy of science: history,contributions, and challenges

Feminist philosophy of science has led to improvements in the practices and products of scientific knowledge-making, and in this way it exemplifies socially relevant philosophy of science. It has also yielded important insights and original research questions for philosophy. Feminist scholarship on science thus presents a worthy thought-model for considering how we might build a more socially relevant philosophy of science—the question posed by the editors of this special issue. In this analysis of the history, contributions, and challenges faced by feminist philosophy of science, I argue that engaged case study work and interdisciplinarity have been central to the success of feminist philosophy of science in producing socially relevant scholarship, and that its future lies in the continued development of robust and dynamic philosophical frameworks for modeling social values in science. Feminist philosophers of science, however, have often encountered marginalization and persistent misunderstandings, challenges that must be addressed within the institutional and intellectual culture of American philosophy.     

The Model Theoretic Argument, Indirect Realism, and the Causal Theory of Reference Objection

Abstract: Hilary Putnam has reformulated his model-theoretic argument as an argument against indirect realism in the philosophy of perception. This new argument is reviewed and defended. Putnam's new focus on philosophical theories of perception (instead of metaphysical realism) makes better sense of his previous responses to the objection from the causal theory of reference. It is argued that the model-theoretic argument can also be construed as an argument that holders of a causal theory of reference should adopt direct realism in the philosophy of perception.     

论《周易》的阴阳和谐思维

阴阳和谐思维是建构<易经>体系和<易传>解释系统的灵魂,它的形成与中国社会、历史条件密切相关,是古代"五行"、"阴阳"、"天人合一"等观念发展的必然结果.<周易>的阴阳和谐思维充分彰显了中国哲学与文化和谐思维的特色,它逐渐积淀成尚中求和的思维模式,对其后中国哲学与文化发生了广泛而深刻的影响.