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History of Philosophy Outlines from Wheaton College (IL)
Property of Wheaton College. HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 311 Arthur F. Holmes Office: Blanch ard E4 83 Fall, 1992 Ext. 5887 Texts W. Kaufman, Philosophical Classics (Prentice-Hall, 2nd ed., 1968) Vol. I Thales to Occam Vol. II Bacon to Kant S. Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre (McGraW Hill, 3rd ed., 1982, or 4th ed., 1988) For further reading see: F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy. A multi-volume set in the library, also in paperback in the bookstore. W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy Diogenes Allen, Philosophy for Understanding Theology A. H. Armstrong & R. A. Markus, Christian Faith and Greek Philosophy A. H. Armstrong (ed.), Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy Encyclopedia of Philosophy Objectives 1. To survey the history of Western philosophy with emphasis on major men and problems, developing themes and traditions and the influence of Christianity. 2. To uncover historical connections betWeen philosophy and science, the arts, and theology. 3. To make this heritage of great minds part of one’s own thinking. 4. To develop competence in reading philosophy, to lay a foundation for understanding contemporary thought, and to prepare for more critical and constructive work. Procedure 1. The primary sources are of major importance, and you will learn to read and understand them for yourself. Outline them as you read: they provide depth of insight and involve you in dialogue with the philosophers themselves. Ask first, What does he say? The, how does this relate to What else he says, and to what his predecessors said? Then, appraise his assumptions and arguments. -
Cheryl Misak Is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She Is the Author of Cambridge Pragmafis
Cheryl Misak is professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Cambridge Pragmasm: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wigenstein (2016). Her biography of Frank Ramsey (Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers) will be published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Edited by Sam Dresser. 1,200 words | source: aeon.co | License: CC‐BY‐ND 4.0 | 07 August, 2018 | download/print PDF Charles Sanders Peirce c. 1880. Photo by Gey Images hat is it for something to be true? One might think that the answer is obvious. A true belief gets reality right: our words correspond to objects and relaons in the world. But making sense of that idea involves one in ever more difficult workarounds to intractable problems. For instance, how do we account for the statement ‘It did not rain in Toronto on 20 May 2018’? There don’t seem to be negave facts in the world that might correspond to the belief. What about ‘Every human is mortal’? There are more humans – past, present and future – than individual people in the world. (That is, a generalisaon like ‘All Fs’ goes beyond the exisng world of Fs, because ‘All Fs’ stretches into the future.) What about ‘Torture is wrong’? What are the objects in the world that might correspond to that? And what good is it explaining truth in terms of independently exisng objects and facts, since we have access only to our interpretaons of them? Pragmasm can help us with some of these issues. The 19th‐century American philosopher Charles Peirce, one of the founders of pragmasm, explained the core of this tradion beaufully: ‘We must not begin by talking of pure ideas, – vagabond thoughts that tramp the public roads without any human habitaon, – but must begin with men and their conversaon.’ Truth is a property of our beliefs. -
Malebranche's Augustinianism and the Mind's Perfection
University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations Spring 2010 Malebranche's Augustinianism and the Mind's Perfection Jason Skirry University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History of Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Skirry, Jason, "Malebranche's Augustinianism and the Mind's Perfection" (2010). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 179. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/179 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/179 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Malebranche's Augustinianism and the Mind's Perfection Abstract This dissertation presents a unified interpretation of Malebranche’s philosophical system that is based on his Augustinian theory of the mind’s perfection, which consists in maximizing the mind’s ability to successfully access, comprehend, and follow God’s Order through practices that purify and cognitively enhance the mind’s attention. I argue that the mind’s perfection figures centrally in Malebranche’s philosophy and is the main hub that connects and reconciles the three fundamental principles of his system, namely, his occasionalism, divine illumination, and freedom. To demonstrate this, I first present, in chapter one, Malebranche’s philosophy within the historical and intellectual context of his membership in the French Oratory, arguing that the Oratory’s particular brand of Augustinianism, initiated by Cardinal Bérulle and propagated by Oratorians such as Andre Martin, is at the core of his philosophy and informs his theory of perfection. Next, in chapter two, I explicate Augustine’s own theory of perfection in order to provide an outline, and a basis of comparison, for Malebranche’s own theory of perfection. -
Chapter One Transcendentalism and the Aesthetic Critique Of
Chapter One Transcendentalism and the Aesthetic Critique of Modernity Thinking of the aesthetic as both potentially ideological and potentially utopian allows us to understand the social implications of modern aes- thetics. The aesthetic experience can serve to evade questions of justice and equality as much as it offers the opportunity for a vision of freedom. If the Transcendentalists stand at the end of a Romantic tradition which has always been aware of the utopian dimension of the aesthetic, why should they have cherished the consolation the aesthetic experience of- fers while at the same time forfeiting its critical implications, which have been so important for the British and the early German Romantics? Is the American variety of Romanticism really much more submissive than European Romanticism with all its revolutionary fervor? Is it really true that “the writing of the Transcendentalists, and all those we may wish to consider as Romantics, did not have this revolutionary social dimension,” as Tony Tanner has suggested (1987, 38)? The Transcendentalists were critical of established religious dogma and received social conventions – so why should their aesthetics be apolitical or even adapt to dominant ideologies? In fact, the Transcendentalists were well aware of the philo- sophical and social radicalism of the aesthetic – which, however, is not to say that all of them wholeheartedly embraced it. While the Transcendentalists’ American background (New England’s Puritan legacy and the Unitarian church from which they emerged) is crucial for an understanding of their social, religious, and philosophical thought, it is worth casting an eye across the ocean to understand their concept of beauty since the Transcendentalists were also heir to a long- standing tradition of transatlantic Romanticism which addressed the re- lationship between aesthetic experience, utopia, and social criticism. -
Theory of Knowledge in Britain from 1860 to 1950
Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication Volume 4 200 YEARS OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY Article 5 2008 Theory Of Knowledge In Britain From 1860 To 1950 Mathieu Marion Université du Quéebec à Montréal, CA Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/biyclc This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Marion, Mathieu (2008) "Theory Of Knowledge In Britain From 1860 To 1950," Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Vol. 4. https://doi.org/10.4148/biyclc.v4i0.129 This Proceeding of the Symposium for Cognition, Logic and Communication is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Theory of Knowledge in Britain from 1860 to 1950 2 The Baltic International Yearbook of better understood as an attempt at foisting on it readers a particular Cognition, Logic and Communication set of misconceptions. To see this, one needs only to consider the title, which is plainly misleading. The Oxford English Dictionary gives as one August 2009 Volume 4: 200 Years of Analytical Philosophy of the possible meanings of the word ‘revolution’: pages 1-34 DOI: 10.4148/biyclc.v4i0.129 The complete overthrow of an established government or social order by those previously subject to it; an instance of MATHIEU MARION this; a forcible substitution of a new form of government. -
Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E
University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Psychology Faculty Publications Psychology 1982 Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E. Leary University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/psychology-faculty- publications Part of the Theory and Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Leary, David E. "Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology." In The Problematic Science: Psychology in Nineteenth- Century Thought, edited by William Ray Woodward and Mitchell G. Ash, 17-42. New York, NY: Praeger, 1982. This Book Chapter is brought to you for free and open access by the Psychology at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Psychology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Immanuel Kant and the Development of Modern Psychology David E. Leary Few thinkers in the history of Western civilization have had as broad and lasting an impact as Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). This "Sage of Konigsberg" spent his entire life within the confines of East Prussia, but his thoughts traveled freely across Europe and, in time, to America, where their effects are still apparent. An untold number of analyses and commentaries have established Kant as a preeminent epistemologist, philosopher of science, moral philosopher, aestheti cian, and metaphysician. He is even recognized as a natural historian and cosmologist: the author of the so-called Kant-Laplace hypothesis regarding the origin of the universe. He is less often credited as a "psychologist," "anthropologist," or "philosopher of mind," to Work on this essay was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant No. -
Aspects of Early Modern British Philosophy
UK-Japan Special Conference Aspects of Early Modern British Philosophy Organized by the University of Oxford and Japanese Society for British Philosophy, under the auspices of Musashino University Date: 11th and 12th September 2019. Venue: St Peter’s College of the University of Oxford Programme 11 September 9:00-10:15am Hiroyuki Yorozuya (Assistant Professor, Hiroshima Institute of Technology) “Hume, Causation and Agentive Experience” 10:15-11:30 am Jonathan Cottrell (Lecturer, University of Edinburgh) “Interpreting Hume on Mental Representation” 11:30 am Coffee 11:45am-1:00pm Shigeyuki Aoki (Associate Professor, Chuo University) “Locke versus Berkeley revisited – an interpretive essay on historiography” 1:00 pm Lunch 2:15-3:30pm Ruth Boeker (Assistant Professor, University College Dublin) “Shaftesbury on Liberty and Self-Mastery” 3:30 pm Tea 3:45-5:00 pm Masaki Ichinose (Professor of Musashino University, Emeritus Professor of UTokyo) “Locke on language and its privateness” 12 September 9:00-10:15am Clare Moriarty (Visiting Research Associate, King's College London) “Berkeley and Anti-Mathematicism” 10:15-11:30 am Tomokiyo Nomura (Regular Lecturer, Shumei University) “Let others think for you: Berkeley and Assent” 11:30 am Coffee 11:45am-1:00pm James Harris (Professor, University of St Andrews) “Between Locke and Filmer: Hume on allegiance” 1:00 pm Lunch 2:15-3:30pm Taro Okuda (Professor, Nanzan University) “Hume's Moral Sentiments and Moral Particularism” 3:30 pm Tea 3:45-5:00 pm Peter Kail (Associate Professor, University of Oxford) “Berkeley and the Material Attitude” Contact Organiser in Japan: Masaki Ichinose, Musashino University, Tokyo, JAPAN Email: [email protected] Abstracts ●“Hume, Causation and Agentive Experience” Hiroyuki Yorozuya (Assistant Professor, Hiroshima Institute of Technology) In the contemporary philosophy of action, David Hume has widely been assumed to defend the causal theory of action. -
How Hume Became a Sceptic
2005 How Hume Became a Sceptic c Jennifer McRobert Contents Preface 3 Introduction 11 1 Reading Hume's Treatise 12 2 The Hume Affair 29 3 The First Enquiry 42 4 Hume and the Revolutionary Lens 63 5 Dangerous Philosophy 77 6 Edinburgh Debates the Causal Relation 92 7 Spurious Connections 111 8 The Treatise Revisited 122 9 How Hume Became a Sceptic 139 Postscript 152 Appendix 172 Notes 227 Bibliography 241 2 Preface This book tells the story of how Edinburgh philosopher, David Hume, author of one of the most important works in the history of Western philosophy, became a sceptic. The account, which begins with the 1739-40 publication of A Treatise of Human Nature, draws together two plausible, but quite different, perspectives on Hume and his philosophy. One of these perspectives is philosophical; the other historical. Considered independently, neither gets at the whole of the truth. However, when taken together, the two perspectives yield a rich account of the development of Hume's philosophy and reputation that merits our careful consideration. The first account is that Hume earned his reputation as a sceptic when he wrote and published, in 1739-40, A Treatise of Human Nature. This book, so it was claimed, rejected widely accepted tenets of metaphysics. Book I, Part IV, for example, treats of scepticism with regard to reason and the senses. There, Hume questions the presuppositions that reason supplies a foundation for causal belief, that the senses give rise to notions of independent, continued, external existences, that the soul is immaterial, and so on. -
1 Hutcheson and Kant
1 Hutcheson and Kant: Moral Sense and Moral Feeling Michael Walschots University of St. Andrews [email protected] The eighteenth century is a rich and fascinating period in the history of Germany philosophy for a variety of reasons. Not least among these is the fact that German authors of the period somewhat extensively engaged with the writings of those in other European countries and beyond. The extent to which German philosophers engaged with eighteenth century British philosophy is an excellent example. Describing the reception of British philosophy in eighteenth century Germany, Manfred Kuehn writes that The works of Locke, Shaftsbury, Hutcheson, Hume, Smith, Ferguson, and almost every other British philosopher of note were full of problems that needed solutions and observations that needed to be explained, if German philosophy of the traditional sort was to succeed. (Kuehn 2001, 183-4) Although many German philosophers of the period could read English, the wide reception of these British authors was made possible in large part by the, in some cases rapid, translation of their texts into German. This is certainly true of the Scottish philosopher who will be the focus of this paper: Francis Hutcheson (1694-1747). A translation of Hutcheson’s posthumous System of Moral Philosophy, first published in 1755, was published just one year later in 1756. Translations of Hutcheson’s An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions (1728) and An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725) followed somewhat soon thereafter, appearing in 1760 and 1762 respectively. One of the “problems” that Hutcheson introduced to the German philosophical scene was the existence and nature of a “moral sense”, a concept first introduced by Shaftesbury but given a much more systematic treatment by 2 Hutcheson. -
Empiricist Roots of Modern Psychology
Raymond Martin Department of Philosophy Union College Schenectady, NY 12308 USA Empiricist Roots of Modern Psychology From the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries, European philosophers were preoccupied with using their newfound access to Aristotle’s metaphysics and natural philosophy to develop an integrated account, hospitable to Christianity, of everything that was thought to exist, including God, pure finite spirits (angels), the immaterial souls of humans, the natural world of organic objects (plants, animals, and human bodies) and inorganic objects. This account included a theory of human mentality. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, first in astronomy and then, later, in physics, the tightly knit fabric of this comprehensive medieval world view began to unravel. The transition from the old to the new was gradual, but by 1687, with the publication by Isaac Newton (1642-1727) of his Principia Mathematica, the replacement was all but complete. Modern physical science had fully arrived, and it was secular. God and angels were still acknowledged. But they had been marginalized. Yet, there was a glaring omission. Theorists had yet to expand the reach of the new science to incorporate human mentality. This venture, which initially was called “moral philosophy” and came to be called “the science of human nature,” became compelling to progressive eighteenth century thinkers, just as British empiricism began to seriously challenge an entrenched Cartesian rationalism. Rationalism and Empiricism The dispute between rationalists and empiricists was primarily over concepts and knowledge. In response to such questions as, where does the mind get its stock of concepts, how do humans justify what they take to be their knowledge, and how far does human knowledge extend, rationalists maintained that some concepts are innate, and hence not derived from experience, and that reason, or intuition, by itself, independently of experience, is an important source of knowledge, including of existing [25] 1 things. -
Contemporary British Philosophy
» CRITICAL AND SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY By G. D. BROAD Born 1887. Dulwich and Trinity College^ Cambridge. Lecturer in Philosophy and Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge. BIOGRAPHICAL § I. I UNDERSTAND that it is the wish of the Editor of this collection of essays that each contributor should describe his own system of philosophy. Were I to interpret this demand literally I could not contribute anything at all, for two excellent reasons. In the first place, I have nothing worth calling a system of philosophy of my own, and there is no other philosopher of whom I should be willing to reckon myself a faithful follower. If this be a defect I see no likelihood of its ever being cured. Secondly, if I had a system of my own, I should doubt the propriety of pushing*’ my crude philosophical wares in competition with the excellent products of older firms with well-earned reputations. The best I can do is to state in outline my own quite unoriginal views about the subject-matter of philosophy, and about the kind and degree of certainty which we may hope to reach in different branches of philosophical inquiry. § 2. A man’s philosophy cannot be altogether separated from his history; for Mr. Bra^ey’s saying, that “metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe on instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct,” is as near the truth as any epigram can well be without sacrificing that brevity which is the soul of wit. On this ground, and on this alone, a few autobiographical details are necessary, and may escape the charge of impertinence. -
Truth and Logical Structure in Strawson's Early Work
Aporia vol. 22 no. 1—2012 Truth and Logical Structure in Strawson’s Early Work STEVE TENSMEYER n his reply to Strawson’s “On Referring,” Bertrand Russell claims that he is responding to Strawson’s argument because of pressure Ifrom others; if it were up to him, he would not even dignify it with a response (261). He seems to think that Strawson’s thesis rests not on any significant disagreement, but rather on what Russell considers matters of mere linguistic convenience. The most important of these issues is the definition of the word “false.” While Strawson held that certain sentences were rightly called “neither true nor false,” Russell maintained a notion of falsity that rendered every meaningful sentence either true or false. But, Russell claimed, “this is purely a verbal question”; that is, using the word “false” as he does helps to clarify his theory, but it is by no means essential to it (263). This may be true; in fact, I intend to argue that it is. But it’s not particularly helpful. Surely there is some substantive disagreement between the two—Strawson does not seem to be shadow boxing, and truth and falsity don’t seem to be concepts that could be entirely dependent on convention. But this difference is difficult to pin down; Strawson doesn’t quite capture it, and Russell doesn’t seem to really care what it is. I will argue that a closer look into this disagreement reveals that though they differ on one important point, the two are perhaps not as different as is commonly thought.