Levels of Discourse in Leibniz's Metaphysics the Ontological Status of Bodies
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A Companion to Analytic Philosophy
A Companion to Analytic Philosophy Blackwell Companions to Philosophy This outstanding student reference series offers a comprehensive and authoritative survey of philosophy as a whole. Written by today’s leading philosophers, each volume provides lucid and engaging coverage of the key figures, terms, topics, and problems of the field. Taken together, the volumes provide the ideal basis for course use, represent- ing an unparalleled work of reference for students and specialists alike. Already published in the series 15. A Companion to Bioethics Edited by Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer 1. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy Edited by Nicholas Bunnin and Eric 16. A Companion to the Philosophers Tsui-James Edited by Robert L. Arrington 2. A Companion to Ethics Edited by Peter Singer 17. A Companion to Business Ethics Edited by Robert E. Frederick 3. A Companion to Aesthetics Edited by David Cooper 18. A Companion to the Philosophy of 4. A Companion to Epistemology Science Edited by Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa Edited by W. H. Newton-Smith 5. A Companion to Contemporary Political 19. A Companion to Environmental Philosophy Philosophy Edited by Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit Edited by Dale Jamieson 6. A Companion to Philosophy of Mind 20. A Companion to Analytic Philosophy Edited by Samuel Guttenplan Edited by A. P. Martinich and David Sosa 7. A Companion to Metaphysics Edited by Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa Forthcoming 8. A Companion to Philosophy of Law and A Companion to Genethics Legal Theory Edited by John Harris and Justine Burley Edited by Dennis Patterson 9. A Companion to Philosophy of Religion A Companion to African-American Edited by Philip L. -
Philosophical Theory-Construction and the Self-Image of Philosophy
Open Journal of Philosophy, 2014, 4, 231-243 Published Online August 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojpp http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpp.2014.43031 Philosophical Theory-Construction and the Self-Image of Philosophy Niels Skovgaard Olsen Department of Philosophy, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany Email: [email protected] Received 25 May 2014; revised 28 June 2014; accepted 10 July 2014 Copyright © 2014 by author and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract This article takes its point of departure in a criticism of the views on meta-philosophy of P.M.S. Hacker for being too dismissive of the possibility of philosophical theory-construction. But its real aim is to put forward an explanatory hypothesis for the lack of a body of established truths and universal research programs in philosophy along with the outline of a positive account of what philosophical theories are and of how to assess them. A corollary of the present account is that it allows us to account for the objective dimension of philosophical discourse without taking re- course to the problematic idea of there being worldly facts that function as truth-makers for phi- losophical claims. Keywords Meta-Philosophy, Hacker, Williamson, Philosophical Theories 1. Introduction The aim of this article is to use a critical discussion of the self-image of philosophy presented by P. M. S. Hacker as a platform for presenting an alternative, which offers an account of how to think about the purpose and cha- racter of philosophical theories. -
Expressions of Mind/Body Dualism in Thinspiration
MIND OVER MATTER: EXPRESSIONS OF MIND/BODY DUALISM IN THINSPIRATION Annamarie O’Brien A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS August 2013 Committee: Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Dr. Rebecca Kinney Dr. Jeremy Wallach © 2013 Annamarie O’Brien All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Marilyn Motz, Advisor Thinspiration images, meant to inspire weight-loss, proliferate online through platforms that encourage the circulation of user-generated content. Despite numerous alarmist critiques in mass media about thinspiration and various academic studies investigating ‘pro-anorexia’ sites, surprisingly little attention has been given to the processes of creation and the symbolic potential of thinspiration. This thesis analyzes the formal hybridity of thinspiration, and its use as an expressive medium. The particularities of thinspiration (including its visual characteristics, creative processes, and exhibition) may be considered carefully constructed instances of self- representation, hinging on the expression of beliefs regarding the mind and body. While these beliefs are deeply entrenched in popular body management discourse, they also tend to rely on traditional dualist ideologies. Rather than simply emphasizing slenderness or reiterating standard assumptions about beauty, thinspiration often evokes pain and sadness, and employs truisms about the transcendence of flesh and rebellion against social constraints. By harnessing individualist discourse and the values of mind/body dualism, thinspiration becomes a space in which people struggling with disordered eating and body image issues may cast themselves as active agents—contrary to the image of eating disorders proffered by popular and medical discourse. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First, I would like to thank my thesis committee chair, Dr. -
University of Groningen Spinoza's Theory of the Human Mind
University of Groningen Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason Marrama, Oberto IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 2019 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Marrama, O. (2019). Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason. University of Groningen. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 27-09-2021 SPINOZA’S THEORY OF THE HUMAN MIND: CONSCIOUSNESS, MEMORY, AND REASON 1A_BW_Marrama .job © Oberto Marrama, 2019. All rights reserved. ISBN 978-94-034-1568-0 (printed version) ISBN 978-94-034-1569-7 (electronic version) 1B_BW_Marrama .job Spinoza’s Theory of the Human Mind: Consciousness, Memory, and Reason PhD thesis to obtain the degree of PhD at the University of Groningen on the authority of the Rector Magnificus Prof. -
The Origins and Legacy of Quine's Naturalism
The Origins and Legacy of Quine’s Naturalism 17-18 December 2019 ABSTRACTS Jansenn-Lauret and Macbride: W.V. Quine and David Lewis: Structural (Epistemological) Humility. In this paper we argue that W.V. Quine and D.K. Lewis, despite their differences and their different receptions, came to a common intellectual destination: epistemological structuralism. We begin by providing an account of Quine’s epistemological structuralism as it came to its mature development in his final works, Pursuit of Truth (1990) and From Stimulus to Science (1995), and we show how this doctrine developed our of his earlier views on explication and the inscrutability of reference. We then turn to the correspondence between Quine and Lewis which sets the scene for Lewis’s adoption of structuralism vis-a-vis set theory in the Appendix to his Parts of Classes (1990). We conclude, drawing further from Lewis’s correspondence, by arguing that Lewis proceeded from there to embrace in one of his own final papers, ‘Ramseyan Humility’ (2001), an encompassing form of epistemological structuralism, whilst discharging the doctrine of reference magnetism that had hitherto set Lewis apart from Quine. Rogério Severo: A change in Quine’s reasons for holophrastic indeterminacy of translation Up until the early 1970s Quine argued that the underdetermination of theories by observations is a reason for holophrastic indeterminacy of translation. This is still today thought of as Quine’s main reason for the thesis. Yet, his 1975 formulation of underdetermination renders that argument invalid. This paper explains why. It also indicates Quine’s reasons for holophrastic indeterminacy after 1975, and offers an additional reason for it. -
Philosophical Review
Philosophical Review Main Trends in Recent Philosophy: Two Dogmas of Empiricism Author(s): W. V. Quine Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Jan., 1951), pp. 20-43 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2181906 . Accessed: 19/01/2011 11:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=duke. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Philosophical Review are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Philosophical Review. http://www.jstor.org TWO DOGMAS OF EMPIRICISM' M ODERN empiricismhas been conditionedin large part by two dogmas. -
A Leibnizian Approach to Mathematical Relationships: a New Look at Synthetic Judgments in Mathematics
A Thesis entitled A Leibnizian Approach to Mathematical Relationships: A New Look at Synthetic Judgments in Mathematics by David T. Purser Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy ____________________________________ Dr. Madeline M. Muntersbjorn, Committee Chair ____________________________________ Dr. John Sarnecki, Committee Member ____________________________________ Dr. Benjamin S. Pryor, Committee Member ____________________________________ Dr. Patricia Komuniecki, Dean College of Graduate Studies The University of Toledo December 2009 An Abstract of A Leibnizian Approach to Mathematical Relationships: A New Look at Synthetic Judgments in Mathematics by David T. Purser Submitted to the Graduate Faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Arts Degree in Philosophy The University of Toledo May 2010 I examine the methods of Georg Cantor and Kurt Gödel in order to understand how new symbolic innovations aided in mathematical discoveries during the early 20th Century by looking at the distinction between the lingua characterstica and the calculus ratiocinator in the work of Leibniz. I explore the dynamics of innovative symbolic systems and how arbitrary systems of signification reveal real relationships in possible worlds. Examining the historical articulation of the analytic/synthetic distinction, I argue that mathematics is synthetic in nature. I formulate a moderate version of mathematical realism called modal relationalism. iii Contents Abstract iii Contents iv Preface vi 1 Leibniz and Symbolic Language 1 1.1 Introduction……………………………………………………. 1 1.2 Universal Characteristic……………………………………….. 4 1.2.1 Simple Concepts……………………………………….. 5 1.2.2 Arbitrary Signs………………………………………… 8 1.3 Logical Calculus………………………………………………. 11 1.4 Leibniz’s Legacy……………………………………………… 16 1.5 Leibniz’s Continued Relevance………………………………. -
Tee Problem of a Science of Ethics in Tee Philosophies
TEE PROBLEM OF A SCIENCE OF ETHICS IN TEE PHILOSOPHIES OF JOHN DEvŒÏ AND BERTRAND RUSSELL Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of tlie Requirements for tire Degree Doctor of PtLilosophy in tlie Graduate Sclaool of Tiie Ohio State University By John L* McKenney, B.A., The Ohio State University 1952 Approved by: Adviser Th.e beginning of ptillosophy is this : tbe being sensible of the disagreement of men witb each other; an enquiry into the cause of their disagreement; and a disapprobation and distrust of what merely seems; a careful examination into what merely seems, whether it seems rightly; and the discovery of some rule which shall serve like a balance, for the determination of weights; like a square for distinguishing straight and crooked. Epictetus, Discourses 11:11 SS0SS6 Preface To Professor Albert E. Avey % owe a great debt of gratitude for bis patient, critical, and scholarly guid ance not only during the writing of this present work, but throughout the past four years of graduate study. During those years I never once failed to receive from him a sympathetic hearing for my views or problems, ac- *Companied by guidance and clarification wherever such was possible. By holding up an ideal of scholarship guided by the true philosophic spirit. Dr. Avey is responsible for v/hatever merit this present study may possess. I also wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to all the other members of the Department of Philosophy and particularly to those who have served on my graduate com mittee, Professors D. Luther Evans, Albert R. Chandler, William H. -
Descartes and Spinoza
OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 229 chapter nine Descartes and Spinoza Two Approaches to Embodiment Alison Peterman 1. Introduction Descartes1 (1596– 1650) and Spinoza (1632– 1677) each gave us interest- ing and infuential approaches to answering what I’ll call “embodiment question”: what is the relationship between a mind and its body— the one that it seems to inhabit, feel, control or otherwise be uniquely involved with?2 In Spinoza we fnd (at least) three diferent answers, the ingenuity of all of which is attested to by their long reception in the philosophical tradition. Descartes was an important infuence on Spinoza, but on many others, too, ushering in the era of the “mind- body 1 I am grateful to Colin Chamberlain, Michael Della Rocca, Keota Fields, Kristin Primus, and Alison Simmons for discussion, and also to the other contributors to this volume. 2 Tis question is broader than one than one about the constitutive or essential relationship between a mind and its body. 229 02_acprof-9780190490447_Ch7-11.indd 229 12/29/2016 2:13:15 AM OUP UNCORRECTED PROOF – FIRSTPROOFS, Thu Dec 29 2016, NEWGEN 230 230 Embodiment problem” in the form that many philosophers still grapple with. Here, I’ll by no means attempt a comprehensive treatment of their contribu- tions. Instead I will try to uncover an unnoticed similarity between the two, and apply it to understanding the coherence of Spinoza’s account of embodiment. I’ll argue that Descartes and Spinoza both approach the embodiment question in two diferent ways: one approach starts with some metaphysical commitments about the kinds of entities, properties, and interactions there are in the world, and the other starts by attending to the experience of an embodied subject. -
Idealism: Problematic, Visionary, Critical
Kant | Prolegomena 11 Idealism: problematic, visionary, critical There are many passages in the Prolegomena where Kant distances himself from a particular variety of idealism (e.g., Notes II and III, §32, Appendix), even though he is explicitly defending a version of idealism himself. In broadest outline, realism is the view that things in the external world are independent of human cogition; their nature and existence is unrelated to us. (This is how Kant charcterises ‘transcendental realism’ in CPR A368–9.) In contrast, idealism is the view that reality is mind-dependent or mind-correlative. An onto- logical reading suggests that there are no mind-independent things, that there is no ‘ready-made’ world out there; or it is the view that the external world exists only as an object of the mind. But it can also be the view that the fundamental entities are ideas (as opposed to matter), and thus something that is essentially mental or non-material. This is Berkeley’s ‘dogmatic’ idealism (cf. the sheet with extracts). An epistemic reading suggests that what we can know about reality is largely due to our cognitive faculties, and hence our grasp of reality is shaped not by the things themselves, but by the way in which we cognise that reality. This is Kant’s ideal- ism, which thus by no means rejects the claim that there is a world out there, for it plays a role in making possible experience as we have it. But we lack epistemic access to it: we do not have insight into ‘the inner [das Innere, roughly, the intrinsic nature] of things’ (CPR A277/B333), regardless of our cognition of them. -
What Is a Mode Account of Collective Intentionality? Michael Schmitz
What is a mode account of collective intentionality? Michael Schmitz (Penultimate draft; final version published in Gerhard Preyer & Georg Peter (eds.), Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality: Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with his Responses; Springer 2017, pp. 37-70; please refer to the published version.) 1. Mode vs. content and subject approaches to collective intentionality Many attempts to understand collective intentionality have tried to steer between two extremes. We want to understand how the members of a group are bound together, what turns them into a group, so we don’t want to think of the group as a mere sum of individuals. At the same time, we don’t want the group to be free-floating with regard to the members. It should not come out as just another individual, as an additional person as it were, nor should it be emergent in a radical sense. It’s useful to distinguish attempts to accomplish this balancing act in terms of where they solely or predominantly locate collectivity: in the content of relevant intentional states (or speech acts), in their mode, or in their subject(s) (Schweikard and Schmid 2012). A content approach tries to understand collectivity in terms of the contents of the subjects’ intentionality, where content is understood in the standard fashion, namely as what the subjects believe, intend, hope, feel, and so on. So on this kind of view, collectivity is just a matter of certain kinds of things that individuals believe, intend, and feel with regard to each other. On this perspective, the best- known representative of which is Michael Bratman (1992; 2014), there may be a ‘we’ of joint action as represented in the content of intentions, but these intentions are always of the form ‘I intend that we J’, so that no collective ‘we’-subject of intentional states is represented.1 Now, this kind of approach is in danger of erring on the side of being too individualistic. -
Perception and Representation in Leibniz
PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION IN LEIBNIZ by Stephen Montague Puryear B.S., Mechanical Engineering, North Carolina State University, 1994 M.A., Philosophy, Texas A&M University, 2000 M.A., Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, 2004 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2006 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY This dissertation was presented by Stephen Montague Puryear It was defended on December 5, 2005 and approved by Nicholas Rescher University Professor of Philosophy Robert B. Brandom Distinguished Service Professor of Philosophy Stephen Engstrom Associate Professor of Philosophy J. E. McGuire Professor of History and Philosophy of Science Dissertation Director: Nicholas Rescher University Professor of Philosophy ii Copyright °c by Stephen Montague Puryear 2006 iii PERCEPTION AND REPRESENTATION IN LEIBNIZ Stephen Montague Puryear, Ph.D. University of Pittsburgh, 2006 Though Leibniz’s views about perception and representation go to the heart of his philosophy, they have received surprisingly little attention over the years and in many ways continue to be poorly understood. I aim to redress these shortcomings. The body of the work begins with an exploration of Leibniz’s proposed analysis of representation (Chapter 2). Here I argue that on this analysis representation consists in a kind of structural correspondence— roughly an isomorphism—between representation and thing represented. Special attention is given to the application of this analysis to the challenging cases of linguistic and mental representation. The next two chapters concern what I take to be the central issue of the work: the nature of distinct perception.