CURRICULUM VITAE February 2012 DANIEL GARBER
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Would ''Direct Realism'' Resolve the Classical Problem of Induction?
NOU^S 38:2 (2004) 197–232 Would ‘‘Direct Realism’’ Resolve the Classical Problem of Induction? MARC LANGE University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill I Recently, there has been a modest resurgence of interest in the ‘‘Humean’’ problem of induction. For several decades following the recognized failure of Strawsonian ‘‘ordinary-language’’ dissolutions and of Wesley Salmon’s elaboration of Reichenbach’s pragmatic vindication of induction, work on the problem of induction languished. Attention turned instead toward con- firmation theory, as philosophers sensibly tried to understand precisely what it is that a justification of induction should aim to justify. Now, however, in light of Bayesian confirmation theory and other developments in epistemology, several philosophers have begun to reconsider the classical problem of induction. In section 2, I shall review a few of these developments. Though some of them will turn out to be unilluminating, others will profitably suggest that we not meet inductive scepticism by trying to justify some alleged general principle of ampliative reasoning. Accordingly, in section 3, I shall examine how the problem of induction arises in the context of one particular ‘‘inductive leap’’: the confirmation, most famously by Henrietta Leavitt and Harlow Shapley about a century ago, that a period-luminosity relation governs all Cepheid variable stars. This is a good example for the inductive sceptic’s purposes, since it is difficult to see how the sparse background knowledge available at the time could have entitled stellar astronomers to regard their observations as justifying this grand inductive generalization. I shall argue that the observation reports that confirmed the Cepheid period- luminosity law were themselves ‘‘thick’’ with expectations regarding as yet unknown laws of nature. -
The Shortcomings of a Concept Inertia and Conatus in the Philosophy of Spinoza
http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/8142-286-4.36 Alexandre Rouette Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Canada THE SHORTCOMINGS OF A CONCEPT INERTIA AND CONATUS IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SPINOZA n the third part of the Ethics, Spinoza express the desire to talk about “human actions and appetites just as if it were a question of lines, planes, and bodies” (E3, Appendix).1 With this sentence, it seems clear that Spinoza sides with Hobbes and Descartes and that he wants to con- struct a mechanistic theory of the affects. In the same part of the Ethics, Spinoza also introduces the concept of conatus: “Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its being” (E3P6), Spinoza says. One will immedi- ately understand this concept of conatus as the core concept of his mechanistic theory of the affects, the concept without which this mechanistic account of the affects would be impossible. However, in the second part of the Ethics, there is another concept that could have accomplished that same goal, namely, the principle of inertia. In the words of Spinoza, “A body which moves or is at rest must be determined to motion or rest by another body, which has also been determined to motion or rest by another, and that again by another, and so on, to infinity” (E2L3). Inter- estingly enough, in the philosophy of Hobbes, the concept of endeavour/conatus is much nearer to the Spinozistic principle of inertia in its meaning than it is to the Spinozistic version of the conatus. -
François Duchesneau, Leibniz, Le Vivant Et L'organisme, Paris: J. Vrin
François Duchesneau, Leibniz, le vivant et l’organisme, Paris: J. Vrin, 2010. 348 p. Reviewed by Justin E. H. Smith, Concordia University or some time, this reviewer has been championing the translation into English of François Duchesneau’s many books on the natural philosophy of Leibniz. GreaterF availability of his work in the English-speaking world, along with that of Michel Fichant and, more recently, the contributions of Anne-Lise Rey, Raphaële Andrault, and Arnaud Pelletier, would in combination play a powerful role in helping scholars to form a richer picture of Leibniz’s natural-philosophical model of the corporeal world, and of this model’s centrality to his deepest and most mature philosophical project. With the publication of his most recent book, Duchesneau has reconfirmed the urgency of learning about this side of Leibniz. The principal purpose of this review will be simply to summarize the recent book and to impart in a synoptic way the picture of Leibniz it draws for readers who may not have the time or capacity to work through the French text. If I am successful, this synopsis might then serve as an argument for the eventual publication of a translation. Following this, I will conclude by raising a few questions that I see as arising from this rich study, questions that might in turn serve as the germs of future research along the path Duchesneau has carved. Duchesneau’s book has six principal theses. First, he argues that Leibniz is committed to the need for a distinct philosophical account of the living being within the order of nature, as well as of the integrated and functional character of the micromachines that compose it. -
Paul Feyerabend
Against Method Fourth Edition Paul Feyerabend VERSO London • New York Analytical Index Being a Sketch of the Main Argument Introdnction 1 Science is an essentially anarchic enterprise: theoretical anarchism is more humanitarian and more likely to encourage progress than its law-and-order alternatives. 1 7 This is shown both by an examination of historical episodes and by an abstract analysis of the relation between idea and action. The only principle that does not inhibit progress is: anything goes. 2 13 For example, we may use hypotheses that contradict well-confirmed theories and/or well-established experimental results. We may advance science by proceeding counterinductively. 3 17 The consistency condition which demands that new hypotheses agree with accepted theories is unreasonable because it preserves the older theory, and not the better theory. Hypotheses contradicting well-confirmed theories give us evidence that cannot be obtained in any other way. Proliferation of theories is beneficial for science, while uniformity impairs its critical power. Uniformity also endangers the free development of the individual. 4 ~ There is no idea, however ancient and absurd, that is not capable of improving our knowledge. The whole history of thought is absorbed into science and is used for improving every single theory. Nor is political interference rejected. It may be needed to overcome the chauvinism of science that resists alternatives to the status quo. xxx ANAL YTICAL INDEX 5 33 No theory ever agrees with all the facts in its domain, yet it is not always the theory that is to blame. Facts are constituted by older ideologies, and a clash between facts and theories may be proof ofprogress. -
SPINOZA's ETHICS: FREEDOM and DETERMINISM by Alfredo Lucero
SPINOZA’S ETHICS: FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM by Alfredo Lucero-Montaño 1. What remains alive of a philosopher's thought are the realities that concern him, the problems that he addresses, as well as the questions that he poses. The breath and depth of a philosopher's thought is what continues to excite and incite today. However, his answers are limited to his time and circumstances, and these are subject to the historical evolution of thought, yet his principal commitments are based on the problems and questions with which he is concerned. And this is what resounds of a philosopher's thought, which we can theoretically and practically adopt and adapt. Spinoza is immersed in a time of reforms, and he is a revolutionary and a reformer himself. The reforming trend in modern philosophy is expressed in an eminent way by Descartes' philosophy. Descartes, the great restorer of science and metaphysics, had left unfinished the task of a new foundation of ethics. Spinoza was thus faced with this enterprise. But he couldn't carry it out without the conviction of the importance of the ethical problems or that ethics is involved in a fundamental aspect of existence: the moral destiny of man. Spinoza's Ethics[1] is based on a theory of man or, more precisely, on an ontology of man. Ethics is, for him, ontology. He does not approach the problems of morality — the nature of good and evil, why and wherefore of human life — if it is not on the basis of a conception of man's being-in-itself, to wit, that the moral existence of man can only be explained by its own condition. -
CURRICULUM VITAE January, 2018 DANIEL GARBER
CURRICULUM VITAE January, 2018 DANIEL GARBER Position: A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy Address: Department of Philosophy 1879 Hall Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544-1006 Address (September 2017-July 2018) Institut d’études avancées 17, quai d’Anjou 75004 Paris France Telephone: 609-258-4307 (voice) 609-258-1502 (FAX) 609-258-4289 (Departmental office) Email: [email protected] Erdös number: 16 EDUCATIONAL RECORD Harvard University, 1967-1975 A.B. in Philosophy, 197l A.M. in Philosophy, 1974 Ph.D. in Philosophy, 1975 TEACHING EXPERIENCE Princeton University 2002- Professor of Philosophy and Associated Faculty, Program in the History of Science 2005-12 Chair, Department of Philosophy 2008-09 Old Dominion Professor 2009- Associated Faculty, Department of Politics 2009-16 Stuart Professor of Philosophy Garber -2- 2016- A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Philosophy University of Chicago 1995-2002 Lawrence Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in Philosophy, the Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, the Morris Fishbein Center for Study of History of Science and Medicine and the College 1986-2002 Professor 1982-86 Associate Professor (with tenure) 1975-82 Assistant Professor 1998-2002 Chairman, Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science (formerly Conceptual Foundations of Science) 2001 Acting Chairman, Department of Philosophy 1995-98 Associate Provost for Education and Research 1994-95 Chairman, Conceptual Foundations of Science 1987-94 Chairman, Department of Philosophy Harvard College 1972-75 Teaching Assistant and Tutor University of Minnesota, Spring 1979, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Johns Hopkins University, 1980-1981, Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy Princeton University 1982-1983 Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1985-1986, Member École Normale Supérieure (Lettres) (Lyon, France), November 2000, Professeur invitée. -
Descartes' Optics
Descartes’ Optics Jeffrey K. McDonough Descartes’ work on optics spanned his entire career and represents a fascinating area of inquiry. His interest in the study of light is already on display in an intriguing study of refraction from his early notebook, known as the Cogitationes privatae, dating from 1619 to 1621 (AT X 242-3). Optics figures centrally in Descartes’ The World, or Treatise on Light, written between 1629 and 1633, as well as, of course, in his Dioptrics published in 1637. It also, however, plays important roles in the three essays published together with the Dioptrics, namely, the Discourse on Method, the Geometry, and the Meteorology, and many of Descartes’ conclusions concerning light from these earlier works persist with little substantive modification into the Principles of Philosophy published in 1644. In what follows, we will look in a brief and general way at Descartes’ understanding of light, his derivations of the two central laws of geometrical optics, and a sampling of the optical phenomena he sought to explain. We will conclude by noting a few of the many ways in which Descartes’ efforts in optics prompted – both through agreement and dissent – further developments in the history of optics. Descartes was a famously systematic philosopher and his thinking about optics is deeply enmeshed with his more general mechanistic physics and cosmology. In the sixth chapter of The Treatise on Light, he asks his readers to imagine a new world “very easy to know, but nevertheless similar to ours” consisting of an indefinite space filled everywhere with “real, perfectly solid” matter, divisible “into as many parts and shapes as we can imagine” (AT XI ix; G 21, fn 40) (AT XI 33-34; G 22-23). -
SEEING ALL THINGS in SPACE Kant and the Reality of Space in the Context of Early Modern Philosophy
Reports from the Department of Philosophy Vol. 43 SEEING ALL THINGS IN SPACE Kant and the Reality of Space in the Context of Early Modern Philosophy Jan Johansson University of Turku Finland Copyright © 2020 Jan Johansson SERIES EDITORS: Olli Koistinen Juha Räikkä Department of Philosophy University of Turku FI-20014 Finland ISSN 1457-9332 ISBN 978-951-29-7813-7 (print) ISBN 978-951-29-7814-4 (pdf) Painosalama Oy, Turku 2020 Written by Jan Johansson Doctoral Programme of Social and Behavioural Sciences, University of Turku, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science Supervised by Professor Olli Koistinen Dr Hemmo Laiho University of Turku, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science Reviewed by Professor Corey W. Dyck University of Western Ontario Dr Anssi Korhonen University of Helsinki Opponent Professor Corey W. Dyck University of Western Ontario Chairperson (custos) Professor Olli Koistinen University of Turku, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science Turun yliopiston laatujärjestelemän mukaisesti tämän julkaisun alkuperäisyys on tarkastettu Turnitin OriginalityCheck-järjestelmällä. The originality of this dissertation has been checked in accordance with the University of Turk quality assurance system using the Turnitin OriginalityCheck service. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In May 2006, at a seminar on Leibniz in Uppsala, with Lilli Alanen and John Carriero, I had the great pleasure and honour of making acquaintance with Olli Koistinen. I made a remark on Kant’s metaphysics, which Olli did not think was particularly accurate. But to my surprise, Olli later chatted me up, and it turned out that he had taken keen interest in Kant’s lectures on metaphysics. -
The Epistemology of Testimony
Pergamon Stud. His. Phil. Sci., Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 1-31, 1998 0 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0039-3681/98 $19.004-0.00 The Epistemology of Testimony Peter Lipton * 1. Introduction Is there anything you know entirely off your own bat? Your knowledge depends pervasively on the word of others. Knowledge of events before you were born or outside your immediate neighborhood are the obvious cases, but your epistemic dependence on testimony goes far deeper that this. Mundane beliefs-such as that the earth is round or that you think with your brain-almost invariably depend on testimony, and even quite personal facts-such as your birthday or the identity of your biological parents--can only be known with the help of others. Science is no refuge from the ubiquity of testimony. At least most of the theories that a scientist accepts, she accepts because of what others say. The same goes for almost all the data, since she didn’t perform those experiments herself. Even in those experiments she did perform, she relied on testimony hand over fist: just think of all those labels on the chemicals. Even her personal observations may have depended on testimony, if observation is theory-laden, since those theories with which it is laden were themselves accepted on testimony. Even if observation were not theory-laden, the testimony-ladenness of knowledge should be beyond dispute. We live in a sea of assertions and little if any of our knowledge would exist without it. If the role of testimony in knowledge is so vast, why is its role in the history of epistemology so slight? Why doesn’t the philosophical canon sparkle with titles such as Meditations on Testimony, A Treatise Concerning Human Testimony, and Language, Truth and Testimony? The answer is unclear. -
CG Jung and the Inheritance of Immanence
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Middle Tennessee State University: Journals@MTSU C. G. Jung and the Inheritance of Immanence C.G. Jung and the Inheritance of Immanence: Traces of Spinozistic, Nietzschean, and Freudian Influence in Analytical Psychology Christopher Myers Abstract Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, was heavily influenced by both Nietzsche and Freud, both of whom were influenced, as Yovel notes in his The Adventures of Immanence, by Spinoza. Through his years of collaboration with Freud and his long-lasting fascination with Nietzsche (combined with Jung’s own semi-mystical tendencies, Jung became more of a Spinozian, than Nietzschean or Freudian. These Spinozistic traces can be detected in the framework of analytical psychology. A comparison is presented on the views of Spinoza, Nietzsche, Freud, and Jung on historical religion, the source of human motivation, and the liberating power of self- knowledge. Middle Tennessee State University 69 Scientia et Humanitas: A Journal of Student Research his investigation explores the intellectual genealogy that links seventeenth-cen- tury rationalist and Jewish ex-communicant, Baruch Spinoza, to the founder of analyticalT psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. In Spinoza and Other Heretics: The Adventures of Immanence, Yirmiyahu Yovel describes Spinoza’s influence upon Nietzsche and Freud. In Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C.G. Jung, Marilyn Nagy investigates the inspiration of Plato, Kant, Schopenhauer and others on Jung. However, no effort has been made to in- vestigate the possibility that Spinozism might have trickled into Jungian thought through Nietzsche and Freud. -
The Curious Case of Baruch Spinoza in Walter BenJaMin’S “Toward the Critique of Violence”
The Curious Case of Baruch Spinoza in Walter Ben ja min’s “Toward the Critique of Violence” MASSIMO PALMA abstract Although Baruch Spinoza was im por tant for think ers of his gen er a tion, Walter Ben ja min seems to have com pletely ig nored the phi los o pher. Spinoza’s name ap pears just a few times in Ben ja min’s works, and Spinoza’s thought never seems to have been rel e vant to him. The only place where Ben ja min quotes a text of Spinoza’s, al beit be tween the lines, is in “Toward the Critique of Violence” (1921). Still, in this essay Ben ja min is far from enthu si as tic about the au thor of the Ethics. He names Spinoza as a pro po nent of nat u ral law the o ry, which Ben ja min dismisses in his search for a cri te rion with which to judge Gewalt. This ar ti cle seeks to in ves ti gate Ben ja min’s ap par ent hos til ity to Spinoza and to reexamine the re la tion ship be tween the two, from both a the o ret i cal and a po lit i cal per spec tive. keywords Walter Ben ja min, Baruch Spinoza, le gal vi o lence, nat u ral law, mi gra tion The names of Walter Ben ja min and Baruch Spinoza rarely ap pear along side one an other in the lit er a ture on Ben ja min. -
Anubav Vasudevan
Anubav Vasudevan University of Chicago Tel: (773) 702-4234 Department of Philosophy Email: [email protected] 1115 E. 58th St. Office: Rosenwald Hall 218C Chicago, IL 60637 Education 2012 Ph.D., Philosophy, Columbia University 2004 M.A., Philosophy, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University 2002 B.S., Physics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, summa cum laude Employment 2011- Assistant Professor, Philosophy Department, University of Chicago 2009-2011 Core Curriculum Preceptor, Columbia University Publications Malink, M. and Vasudevan, A. (2018). Leibniz on the Logic of Conceptual Containment and Coincidence. In de Risi, V., editor, Leibniz on the Structure of Sciences: Modern Essays in Logic, Mathematics, Dynamics. Forthcoming from Springer International Publishing Vasudevan, A. (2018). Chance, Determinism and the Classical Theory of Probability. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A, 67:32{43 Vasudevan, A. (2017). Entropy and Insufficient Reason: A Note on the Judy Benjamin problem. Forthcoming in British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. Vasudevan, A. (2017). Biased Information and the Exchange Paradox. Forthcoming in Synthese. Malink, M. and Vasudevan, A. (2017). Leibniz's Theory of Propositional Terms: A reply to Massimo Mugnai. The Leibniz Review, 27:139{55 Kim, B. and Vasudevan, A. (2017). How to Expect a Surprising Exam. Synthese, 194:3101{33 Malink, M. and Vasudevan, A. (2016). The Logic of Leibniz's Generales inquisitiones de analysi notionum et veritatum. Review of Symbolic Logic, 9:686{751 Vasudevan, A. (2013). On the A Priori and A Posteriori Assessment of Probabilities. Journal of Applied Logic, 11(4):440{451 Gaifman, H. and Vasudevan, A. (2012).