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.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Kilka uwag o aktualności filozofii metafizycznej

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-197
Author(s):  
Michał Borda ◽  
Rafał Tetela
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition

The article discusses the characteristics of a philosophical and cultural dispute with metaphysics and about metaphysics itself. The criticism of metaphysics and its revival in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is discussed here. In the first part, the most important philosophical directions dealing with issues of metaphysics are presented: metaphysical idealism, anti-metaphysical positivism and neo-positivism, analytic philosophy versus metaphysics on the example of L. Wittgenstein, the revision of the metaphysical tradition and new investigations in metaphysics. The second part of the article concerns the picture of natural metaphysics including the mathematical-empirical method of researching the world. In the conclusion of the article, a thesis is put forward on searching for new metaphysics which will include a wider sphere of rationality and existential and spiritual experience.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Quentin Meillassoux. Realismo especulativo y Narrativas desde la Contingencia.

Sincronía ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol XXV (80) ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Carlos Alberto Navarro Fuentes ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Geological Factor ◽  
Metaphysical Tradition ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

The objective of this work is to introduce Quentin Meillassoux's 'speculative materialist realism', establishing a critical stance against the metaphysical tradition of the 'absolute' that has prevailed in post-Kantian Western philosophy, based on the need for contingency that he proposes. This implies making a critique of what has been understood as realism, necessity and existing. To do this, key concepts of Meillassoux's philosophy are broken down, exemplifying its influence -and possible presence back in time- on other thinkers and artists in their respective narratives such as Graham Harman, Timothy Morton, Nick Land, and Florian Hecker, who delve into issues that generate discomfort, amazement, nihilism and pessimism in contemporary societies, such as probability and prediction in financial markets, the Anthropocene and nature, the conflictive relationship between subject and object, truth and chaos, between other things, subtracting ourselves from the humanist discourse on which the scientific, financial and environmental paradigms of our time rest and which have ended up cracking the identity of man, with capitalist production being the most determining geological factor. Let us to reflect on the following questions. What narratives can give an account of the current condition of the world? What narratives emerge when we stop focusing our attention on man? What habits of thought force us to change the awareness that everything around us is contingent?

Husserl's Legacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Zahavi
Keyword(s):  
Transcendental Idealism ◽  
Transcendental Philosophy ◽  
Fundamental Importance ◽  
Husserlian Phenomenology ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Project

What is ultimately at stake in Husserl’s phenomenological analyses? Are they primarily to be understood as investigations of consciousness, and if so, must they be classified as psychological contributions of some sort? If Husserl is engaged in a transcendental philosophical project, is phenomenological transcendental philosophy then distinctive in some way, and what kind of metaphysical import, if any, might it have? Is Husserlian phenomenology primarily descriptive in character, is it supposed to capture how matters seem to us, or is it also supposed to capture how things really are? Husserl’s Legacy offers an interpretation of the more overarching aims and ambitions of Husserlian phenomenology and engages with some of the most contested and debated questions in phenomenology. Central to its interpretive efforts is the attempt to understand Husserl’s transcendental idealism. The book argues that Husserl was not a sophisticated introspectionist, nor a phenomenalist, nor an internalist, nor a quietist when it comes to metaphysical issues, and not opposed to all forms of naturalism. On a more positive note, Husserl’s Legacy argues that Husserl’s phenomenology is as much about the world as it is about consciousness, and that a proper grasp of Husserl’s transcendental idealism reveals the fundamental importance of facticity and intersubjectivity.

scholarly journals Schopenhauer's Contraction of Reason: Clarifying Kant and Undoing German Idealism

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 375-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Gardner
Keyword(s):  
German Idealism ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
The World ◽  
Metaphysical Claim ◽  
Philosophical Project

AbstractSchopenhauer's claim that the essence of the world consists in Wille encounters well-known difficulties. Of particular importance is the conflict of this metaphysical claim with his restrictive account of conceptuality. This paper attempts to make sense of Schopenhauer's position by restoring him to the context of post-Kantian debate, with special attention to the early notebooks and Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. On the reconstruction suggested here, Schopenhauer's philosophical project should be understood in light of his rejection of post-Kantian metaphilosophy and his opposition to German Idealism.

scholarly journals Plotinus on Care of Self and Soul

Plato Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 149-164
Author(s):  
Daniel Regnier
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Philosophical Project ◽  
Embodied Self ◽  
Care Of Self

Plotinus’ philosophical project includes an important Socratic element. Plotinus is  namely interested in both self-knowledge and care of soul and self.  In this study I examine how through his interpretation of three passages from Plato (Timaeus 35 a, Phaedrus 246 band Theatetus 176 a-b), Plotinus develops an account of the role of care in his ethics.  Care in Plotinus’ ethical thought takes three forms. First of all, care is involved in maintaining the unity of the embodied self.  Secondly, situated in a providential universe, our souls – as sisters to the world soul - take part in the providential order by caring for ‘lower’ realities.  Finally, Plotinus develops an ethics of going beyond virtue, a process which involves care for the higher, potentially divine, self.

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