scholarly journals Philosophy as Total Axiomatics: Serious Metaphysics, Scrutability Bases, and Aesthetic Evaluation

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 272-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
URIAH KRIEGEL
Keyword(s):  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Total Theory

ABSTRACT:What is the aim of philosophy? There may be too many philosophical branches, traditions, practices, and programs to admit of a single overarching aim. Here, I focus on a fairly traditional philosophical project that has recently received increasingly sophisticated articulation, especially by Frank Jackson (1998) and David Chalmers (2012). In Section 1, I present the project and suggest that it is usefully thought of as ‘total axiomatics’: the project of attempting to axiomatize the total theory of the world. In Section 2, I raise a problem for the project that I call the ‘problem of multiple axiomatizations’. I consider some initially alluring but ultimately unpromising approaches to this problem in Section 3. In Section 4, I defend a surprising approach to the problem, according to which competing axiomatizations of the total theory of the world are effectively evaluated for their aesthetic virtues.

Consciousness and Fundamental Reality

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Goff
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Conceivability Argument ◽  
Animal Consciousness ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Russellian Monism

A core philosophical project is the attempt to uncover the fundamental nature of reality, the limited set of facts upon which all other facts depend. Perhaps the most popular theory of fundamental reality in contemporary analytic philosophy is physicalism: the view that the world is fundamentally physical in nature. The first half of this book argues that physicalist views cannot account for the evident reality of conscious experience and hence that physicalism cannot be true. However, the book also tries to show that familiar arguments to this conclusion—Frank Jackson’s form of the knowledge argument and David Chalmers’ two-dimensional conceivability argument—are not wholly adequate. The second half of the book explores and defends a radical alternative to physicalism known as “Russellian monism.” Russellian monists believe that (i) physics tells us nothing about the concrete, categorical nature of material entities, and that (ii) it is this “hidden” nature of matter that explains human and animal consciousness. Throughout the second half of the book various forms of Russellian monism are surveyed, and the key challenges facing it are discussed. Ultimately the book defends a cosmopsychist form of Russellian monism, according to which all facts are grounded in facts about the conscious universe.

What Is Living and What Is Dead in Classic European Philosophy of Technology?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carl Mitcham
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Modern Technology ◽  
Alan Turing ◽  
The World ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Jacques Ellul ◽  
Philosophical Project

Classic European philosophy of technology is the original effort to think critically rather than promotionally about the historically unique mutation that is anchored in the Industrial Revolution and has since progressively transformed the world and itself. Three representative contributions to this pivotal philosophical project can be found in texts by Alan Turing, Jacques Ellul, and Martin Heidegger. Despite having initiated analytic, sociological, and phenomenological approaches to philosophy of technology, respectively, all three are often treated today in a somewhat patronizing manner. The present chapter seeks to revisit and reconsider their contributions, arguing that, especially in the case of Ellul and Heidegger, what is commonly dismissed as their overgeneralizations about modern technology as a whole might reasonably be of continuing relevance to contemporary students in the philosophy of technology.

Philosophical and Conceptual Analysis

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey C. King
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Physical State ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Philosophical Analysis ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Paradox Of Analysis ◽  
Relevant Notion

This article examines the main lines of contemporary thinking about analysis in philosophy. It first considers G. E. Moore’s statement of the paradox of analysis. It then reviews a number of accounts of analysis that address the paradox of analysis, including the account offered by Ernest Sosa 1983 and others by Felicia Ackerman (1981, 1986, 1991); the latter gives an account of analysis on which properties are the objects of analysis. It also discusses Jeffrey C. King’s (1998, 2007) accounts of philosophical analysis, before turning to views of analysis that are not aimed at addressing the paradox of analysis, including those associated with David Lewis, Frank Jackson, and David Chalmers. In particular, it comments on Lewis’s argument that conceptual analysis is simply a means for picking out the physical state that occupies a certain role, where formulating what that role is constitutes a conceptual analysis of the relevant notion.

Colloquium 2 Saving the Appearances of Plato’s Cave

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-56
Author(s):  
Adriel M. Trott
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
The One

Abstract This article considers Plato’s view of philosophy depicted in his cave analogy in light of Arendt’s distinction between Socratic and Platonic philosophy. Arendt argues that philosophy functions, for Socrates, in an immanent world, characterized by examining and considering—in addition to refining opinions through persuasion about—the currency of politics, which thereby closely associates philosophy with politics. On her view, Plato makes philosophy transcend politics—the world of opinion—when Socrates fails to persuade the Athenians. The cave analogy seems to support Arendt’s view that Plato disparages the immanent philosophical project she associates with Socrates. I argue that Plato depicts in the cave analogy particular difficulties in judging the assertion of the one who claims to have left, since, in the cave, that assertion becomes an opinion among opinions because it cannot be evaluated with reference to a transcendent truth by those in the cave. As a result, those in the cave cannot discern whether the one claiming to have left has the knowledge required to rule justly or is a tyrant claiming to have such knowledge in order to secure power. I conclude that Plato depicts the cave and its difficulties to invite the reader to engage in a philosophical project of judging for oneself, rather than accepting the rule of another who claims to know.

Deleuze’s Critique of Representation

2018 ◽  
pp. 59-87
Author(s):  
Alex Tissandier
Keyword(s):  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Alternative Concept ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
First Time

This chapter introduces the motivations and method behind Deleuze’s philosophical project. It begins with a detailed reading of Deleuze’s review of Hyppolite’s Logic and Existence, in which Deleuze first articulates his claim that the goal of philosophy is to create a logic of sense, rather than a metaphysics of essence. This review introduces Deleuze’s central criticism that the history of philosophy has for too long given a foundational role to certain features of our naïve representation of the world, instead of explaining the genesis of these features. Among these is an understanding of difference as opposition that finds its ultimate expression in Hegelian contradiction. Deleuze briefly invokes Leibniz as a figure who is perhaps capable of providing an alternative concept of difference. The chapter then turns to the opening chapters of Difference and Repetition, where Deleuze again outlines a critique of the history of philosophy’s treatment of difference and its subordination to the structure of representation. This time Deleuze traces a history through Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz and Hegel. In Leibniz he identifies for the first time a world of “restless” infinitely small differences which will become central to all his later readings.

Knowledge argument

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torin Alter
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Colour Vision ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Knowledge Argument ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Television Monitor ◽  
Physical Chemical ◽  
The World

The knowledge argument is an argument against physicalism, the view that the world is wholly physical. It was developed by Frank Jackson (1943–) and is based on the following thought experiment. Everything that can be known through the physical, chemical, and biological sciences – the complete physical truth – has been discovered. Mary is a brilliant scientist who is raised in a black-and-white room. She has never had colour experiences. But she learns the complete physical truth, which includes the completed science of colour vision, by reading books and watching lectures on a black-and-white television monitor. Then she leaves the room and sees colours. Jackson’s argument runs roughly as follows. When Mary leaves the room, she learns something new. She learns what it is like to see in colour. Evidently, the complete physical truth is not the complete truth about the world. Ergo, physicalism is false. Some react by denying that Mary learns anything when she leaves the room. Others react by accepting that she learns something but denying that this refutes physicalism. Still others accept the argument as sound. The ensuing discussion has led to a variety of insights about consciousness and its place in the natural world.

Stroud, Colour, and Metaphysical Satisfaction

Dialogue ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-588
Author(s):  
Philip Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
The World ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Project

In The Quest for Reality, Subjectivism and the Metaphysics of Colour, Barry Stroud appraises various subjectivist theories of colour as they occur in the context of a philosophical project which he characterizes as the quest for reality. “It is meant to be a quest whose goal is the nature of reality—what the world is really like. And it involves distinguishing what is really so from what only appears to be so, or separating reality as it is independently of us from what is in one way or another dependent on us and so misleads us as to what is really there” (pp. 3–4). In a long metaphysical tradition, now more alive than ever, the systematic pursuit of the distinction finds colour on the misleading appearance and not-really-so side of things.

A POSITIVIST ROUTE FOR EXPLAINING HOW FACTS MAKE LAW

Legal Theory ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Plunkett
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Legal Norm ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Legal Institution ◽  
Frank Jackson ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Rational Relation ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Two Stages

In “How Facts Make Law” and other recent work, Mark Greenberg argues that legal positivists cannot develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets what he calls the “the rational-relation requirement.” He argues that this gives us reason to reject positivism in favor of antipositivism. In this paper, I argue that Greenberg is wrong: positivists can in fact develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets the rational-relation requirement. I make this argument in two stages. First, I offer an account of the rational-relation requirement. Second, I put forward a viable positivist account of law that I argue meets this requirement. The account that I propose is a version of Scott Shapiro's Planning Theory of Law. The version of Shapiro's account that I propose combines (1) the account of concepts and conceptual analysis put forward by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson with (2) the account of the conceptlegal institution(and its conceptual connections to the conceptlegal norm) that we get from a certain reading of Shapiro's Planning Theory. In addition to providing a compelling response to Greenberg's argument in “How Facts Make Law,” I argue that the explanation for why my response to Greenberg works underscores one of the central problems facing legal antipositivism: namely, its lack of a convincing account of the nature of legal institutions.

Introduction: Life and Works

Gersonides ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Seymour Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Divine Providence ◽  
Divine Attributes ◽  
Human Happiness ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

This chapter ranges over a lot of philosophical and theological territory, such as Gersonides' treatment of divine cognition that takes up Maimonides' theory of divine attributes. It provides an introduction to the immortality of the soul, dreams, divination, and prophecy, divine cognition and divine providence, the heavenly domain, and the creation of the world. The chapter also discusses two subsidiary theological issues: miracles, which is connected with the creation of the world, and “testing the prophet.” It talks about Gersonides' philosophical project, which he shared with several medieval philosophers. The project emphasized that human happiness is the perfection of what it is to be human, namely, the perfection of the intellect.

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