DOCSLIB.ORG

The Person at the Crossroads a Philosophical Approach

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Person at the Crossroads a Philosophical Approach The Person at the Crossroads A Philosophical Approach Edited by James Beauregard Rivier University Giusy Gallo University of Calabria, Italy Claudia Stancati University of Calabria, Italy Series in Philosophy Copyright © 2020 by the Authors. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Vernon Art and Science Inc. www.vernonpress.com In the Americas: In the rest of the world: Vernon Press Vernon Press 1000 N West Street, C/Sancti Espiritu 17, Suite 1200, Wilmington, Malaga, 29006 Delaware 19801 Spain United States Series in Philosophy Library of Congress Control Number: 2019956379 ISBN: 978-1-62273-888-5 Product and company names mentioned in this work are the trademarks of their respective owners. While every care has been taken in preparing this work, neither the authors nor Vernon Art and Science Inc. may be held responsible for any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. Cover design by Vernon Press using elements designed by vectorpouch / Freepik. Table of contents From the Editors vii Author Biographies ix Introduction xiii Randall Auxier Southern Illinois University Carbondale Part 1 The Personal Dimension: The Thread of History 1 Chapter 1 Augustine of Hippo on the Concept of Person: A Philosophical Analysis 3 Matteo Scozia University of Calabria, Italy Chapter 2 Personal Identity as Political System in David Hume 19 Spartaco Pupo University of Calabria, Italy Chapter 3 The Organic Child: Horace Bushnell’s Methods of Child-Rearing in Nineteenth-Century America and its Implications for an Organic Anthropology (Personhood) 35 Elisabeth M. Yang Rutgers University Chapter 4 The Anonymous and the Personal Body in Merleau-Ponty 57 Marc Djaballah Université du Québec à Montréal, Canada Chapter 5 Epistemology and/or Person? Some Historico-Critical Considerations 69 Carlo Vinti University of Perugia, Italy Chapter 6 Reconstruction of the Self. Based on the Theory of Michael Polanyi 81 Endre J. Nagy Semmelweis University, Hungary Chapter 7 Why Personalism Needs the ‘Dismal Science’ 97 R.T. Allen Independent Scholar Chapter 8 Humanity (Ren) and Relations in Confucianism and Christian Personalism 113 Yong Lu Cardinal Stefan Wyszy ński University in Warsaw, Poland Part 2 Perspectives on Persons 147 Chapter 9 The Person as an Emergent Reality. Some Critical Remarks 149 Grzegorz Holub Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland Chapter 10 Forgetting and Remembering Ourselves: Techn ē, Metaphor and the Unity of Persons 163 James Beauregard Rivier University Chapter 11 Beyond Universality: Shaping One’s Own Agency 187 Xiaoxi Wu Southeast University, China Chapter 12 Critical Moral Attention and its Role in Forming a ‘Beloved Community’ 207 Carol J. Moeller Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA Chapter 13 The Good Fortune to be Persons Besides Individuals: The Impact of Exemplars, Leaders and Models over Individuality 227 Bianca Bellini Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Italy Chapter 14 Bodily Self-Determination and the Limits of Being One-Self 255 Peter Reynaert University of Antwerp, Belgium Chapter 15 The Person and Her Pathologies: A Kantian View of Depression and Suicide 269 Laura J. Mueller Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota Index 291 From the Editors This book flows from the International Conference on Persons held at the University of Calabria, Italy, in 2017. The ICP itself grew out of conversations between philosophers Thomas O. Buford and Charles Conti as a way to provide a forum for discussion and interaction among scholars interested in the personalist philosophical tradition. The first International Conference on Persons was held at Mansfield College, Oxford, in the summer of 1989. Since then, the conference has met biannually: 1989 Mansfield College, Oxford 1993 St Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana 1995 Oriel College, Oxford 1997 Charles University, Prague 1999 St John’s College, Santa Fe, New Mexico 2001 Gaming, Austria 2003 University of Memphis, Tennessee 2005 Cardinal Stefan Wyszy ński University, Warsaw 2007 Asheville, North Carolina 2009 University of Nottingham 2011 Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 2013 Lund University, Sweden 2015 Boston University, USA 2017 University of Calabria, Italy The editors would like to extend their heartfelt thanks first to the individual authors who have contributed chapters to this book. We are also grateful to Randall Auxier, who wrote the introduction. Last, but certainly not least, our thanks go to the good people at Vernon Press who have brought this book into the world, Argiris Legatos, Carolina Sanchez and Javier Rodriguez. James Beauregard Rivier University, USA Giusy Gallo University of Calabria, Italy Claudia Stancati University of Calabria, Italy Author Biographies R.T. Allen read philosophy at Nottingham University and later earned a Ph.D from King’s College, University of London, with a thesis, later published, on Polanyi’s philosophy and Christian Theism. He has also published Beyond Liberalism: The Political Thought of F.A. Hayek and Michael Polanyi , and many other articles, and has made several contributions to collections on Polanyi. He has also edited Science, Economics and Philosophy: Selected Articles by Michael Polanyi , and co-edited Emotion, Reason and Tradition: Essays on the Social, Political and Economic Thought of Michael Polanyi . He founded Appraisal, now the journal of the British Personalist Forum. Randall Auxier is Professor of Philosophy and Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Along with many articles and reviews, he is author of Metaphysical Graffiti (2017) and Time, Will, and Purpose (2013), and co-author of The Quantum of Explanation (2017). He was primary editor of eight volumes of the Library of Living Philosophers and numerous other books; he edited the journal The Personalist Forum and re-made it into The Pluralist (now the official journal of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy); he is deputy chief editor of Eidos: A Journal of the Philosophy of Culture . He is co-founder of the American Institute of Philosophical and Cultural Thought (www.americanphilosophy.net) and was the Green Party candidate for US Congress, Illinois District 12 in 2018. James Beauregard is a Lecturer in the psychology doctoral program at Rivier University, Nashua, New Hampshire, USA, where he teaches Neuropsychology, Biological Bases of Behavior, Psychology Health Care Ethics and Aging. His research interests are in the fields of bioethics, neuroethics, and personalist philosophy, including the intersection of these two areas as they impact our understandings of personhood. He is a member of the Spanish Personalist Association, and is on the board of directors of the International Conference on Persons. Bianca Bellini obtained her Ph.D in 2018 from Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Milan), where she graduated with a bachelor ’s degree focused on the link between phenomenology and self-knowledge and a master’s degree focused on the link between phenomenology and literature. During her Ph.D, her interest in literature has led her to approach the topic of imagination, whereas her interest in individuality has led her to approach the topic of self-shaping: these interests flowed together into a project that aimed to argue for the role of imaginative experiences in the process of self-shaping. Specifically, she argued that fantasy is a x Author Biographies fundamental force that nourishes self-shaping and that such a force goes along with two other forces that constitute pivotal keystones of the same process, namely exemplariness and repentance. This research project relied on Scheler’s stance on individuality and Husserl’s stance on fantasy. Her participation in international conferences has enabled her to develop the main theses underlying this project, and a research period at the Husserl Archives in Leuven (2016) enabled her to improve her knowledge of Husserl’s manuscripts. In Leuven, she met the co-tutor of her Ph.D. thesis, Nicolas De Warren, who, along with Roberta De Monticelli, guided her through her doctoral work. Marc Djaballah is Associate Professor of Professor of Philosophy at Université du Québec à Montréal. He is the author of Kant, Foucault, and Forms of Experience (2008). Giusy Gallo is adjunct professor of Philosophy of Language at University of Calabria, Italy. She obtained the National Scientific Qualification to function as associate professor in Philosophy of Language. She has been the managing editor of the journal Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio since 2009. Her main research interest is the concept of practice between language and science in a semiological dimension, and its development in connection to social networks, creativity, and design. Grzegorz Holub is an associate professor of philosophy at the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow, Poland. He is involved in ethics, bioethics and the philosophy of the human person. Among his publications are three books "The Problem of the Person in the Contemporary Bioethics Debates," "The Person in the Labyrinth of Moral Decisions. Bioethics in the
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Presidential Address
    Empowering Philosophy Christia Mercer COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Presidential Address delivered at the one hundred sixteenth Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Philadelphia, PA, on January 10, 2020. The main goal of my presidential address in January 2020 was to show that philosophy’s past offers a means to empower its present. I hoped to encourage colleagues to make the philosophy we teach and practice more inclusive (both textually and topically) and to adopt a more public- facing engagement with our discipline. As I add these introductory remarks to my January lecture, it is June 2020 and the need to empower philosophy has never seemed more urgent. We’ve witnessed both the tragic death of George Floyd and the popular uprising of a diverse group of Americans in response to the ongoing violence against Black lives. Many white Americans—and many philosophers—have begun to realize that their inattentiveness to matters of diversity and inclusivity must now be seen as more than mere negligence. Recent demonstrations frequently contain signs that make the point succinctly: “Silence is violence.” A central claim of my January lecture was that philosophy’s status quo is no longer tenable. Even before the pandemic slashed university budgets and staff, our employers were cutting philosophy programs, enrollments were shrinking, and jobs were increasingly hard to find. Despite energetic attempts on the part of many of our colleagues to promote a more inclusive approach to our research and teaching, the depressing truth remains:
    [Show full text]
  • What to Be Realist About in Linguistic Science
    What to be realist about in linguistic science Geoffrey K. Pullum School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences University of Edinburgh This paper was presented at a workshop entitled ‘Foundation of Linguistics: Languages as Abstract Objects’ at the Technische Universitat¨ Carolo-Wilhelmina in Braunschweig, Germany, June 25–28. At the end of his viva, Hilary Putnam asked him, “And tell us, Mr. Boolos, what does the analytical hierarchy have to do with the real world?” Without hesitating Boolos replied, “It’s part of it.” [From the Wikipedia article on the MIT logician George Boolos] Prefatory remarks on realism I need to begin by clarifying what is meant (or at least, what I and others have meant) by ‘realism’. That such clarification is necessary is indicated by the fact that the subtitle of this workshop (‘Lan- guages as Abstract Objects’) clearly pays homage to Katz (1981) (Language and Other Abstract Objects). What the late Jerrold J. Katz meant by the word ‘realism’ does not comport with the usage of most philosophers. Katz shows little interest in defining his terms. He barely even waves a hand in that direc- tion. The third page of Language and Other Abstract Objects book announces that he has had an epiphany: there is “an alternative to both the American structuralists’ and the Chomskian concep- tion of what grammars are theories of, namely, the Platonic realist view that grammars are theories of abstract objects (sentences)” (Katz 1981, 3). Neither ‘Platonic’ nor ‘realist’ are analysed, expli- cated, or even glossed at this point. ‘Platonic realism’ is thereafter abbreviated to ‘Platonism’ and simply assumed to be understood.
    [Show full text]
  • On Moral Understanding
    COMMENTTHE COLLEGE NEWSLETTER ISSUE NO 147 | MAY 2003 TOM WHIPPS On Moral Understanding DNA pioneers: The surviving members of the King’s team, who worked on the discovery of the structure of DNA 50 years ago, withDavid James Watson, K Levytheir Cambridge ‘rival’ at the time. From left Ray Gosling, Herbert Wilson, DNA at King’s: DepartmentJames Watson and of Maurice Philosophy Wilkins King’s College the continuing story University of London Prize for his contribution – and A day of celebrations their teams, but also to subse- quent generations of scientists at ver 600 guests attended a cant scientific discovery of the King’s. unique day of events celeb- 20th century,’ in the words of Four Nobel Laureates – Mau- Orating King’s role in the 50th Principal Professor Arthur Lucas, rice Wilkins, James Watson, Sid- anniversary of the discovery of the ‘and their research changed ney Altman and Tim Hunt – double helix structure of DNA on the world’. attended the event which was so 22 April. The day paid tribute not only to oversubscribed that the proceed- Scientists at King’s played a King’s DNA pioneers Rosalind ings were relayed by video link to fundamental role in this momen- Franklin and Maurice Wilkins – tous discovery – ‘the most signifi- who went onto win the Nobel continued on page 2 2 Funding news | 3 Peace Operations Review | 5 Widening participation | 8 25 years of Anglo-French law | 11 Margaret Atwood at King’s | 12 Susan Gibson wins Rosalind Franklin Award | 15 Focus: School of Law | 16 Research news | 18 Books | 19 KCLSU election results | 20 Arts abcdef U N I V E R S I T Y O F L O N D O N A C C O M M O D A T I O N O F F I C E ACCOMMODATION INFORMATION - FINDING SOMEWHERE TO LIVE IN THE PRIVATE SECTOR Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy WARNING: Under no circumstances inshould the this University document be of taken London as providing legal advice.
    [Show full text]
  • Cultural Naturalism and the Market God David Timothy Denenny Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected]
    Southern Illinois University Carbondale OpenSIUC Theses Theses and Dissertations 12-1-2018 Cultural Naturalism and the Market God David Timothy Denenny Southern Illinois University Carbondale, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses Recommended Citation Denenny, David Timothy, "Cultural Naturalism and the Market God" (2018). Theses. 2464. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/2464 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at OpenSIUC. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses by an authorized administrator of OpenSIUC. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CULTURAL NATURALISM AND THE MARKET GOD by David Denenny B.A. Eastern Washington University, 2015 A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree Department of Philosophy in the Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale December 2018 Copyright by David Denenny, 2018 All Rights Reserved THESIS APPROVAL CULTURAL NATURALISM AND THE MARKET GOD by David Denenny A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the field of Philosophy Approved by: Kenneth William Stikkers, Chair Randall Auxier Alfred Frankowski Graduate School Southern Illinois University Carbondale November 8, 2018 AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF David Denenny, for the Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, presented on November 8, 2018, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: CULTURAL NATURALISM AND THE MARKET GOD MAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Kenneth William Stikkers This work employs John Dewey's cultural naturalism to explore how and why the orthodox economic tradition functions as a religious faith.
    [Show full text]
  • The Epistemology of Racism and Community-Based
    THE EPISTEMOLOGY OF RACISM AND COMMUNITY-BASED ASSESSMENT PRACTICE By ASAO B. INOUE A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Department of English May 2005 © Copyright by ASAO B. INOUE, 2005 All Rights Reserved © Copyright by ASAO B. INOUE, 2005 All Rights Reserved To the Faculty of Washington State University: The members of the Committee appointed to examine the dissertation of ASAO B. INOUE find it satisfactory and recommend that it be accepted. ___________________________________ Chair ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Victor Villanueva, Dr. Rory Ong, and Dr. William Condon for their careful reading of earlier drafts of this dissertation. Additionally, I appreciate Dr. Peter Elbow’s gracious help and copious suggestions on an earlier version of chapter five, a version of which appeared in the journal Assessing Writing 10.1 (2005). Most of all, I thank kelly Inoue for supporting me, keeping my life in order, and making it possible for me to do the work required for this dissertation. iii iv THE EPISTEMOLGY OF RACISM AND COMMUNITY-BASED ASSESSMENT PRACTICE Abstract by Asao B. Inoue, Ph.D. Washington State University May 2005 Chair: Victor Villanueva, Jr. This is a discussion that theorizes the epistemology of racism and incorporates it into a critical writing pedagogy. It uses primarily a critical sophistic pedagogy, a set of community- based assessment practices, and a rhetoric of hard agreements, all theorized. This discussion draws primarily from three areas: (1) sophistic rhetorical and pedagogical theory, primarily discussions around nomos-physis, Protagoras’ man-measure doctrine and his antilogical heuristics for rhetorical invention; (2) cultural theory and theories surrounding the ideological and rhetorical construction of race, class, and power; and (3) composition theory, primarily assessment theory and critical pedagogical theory.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Epistemology
    Social Epistemology Franz Dietrich1 and Kai Spiekermann2 May 2019 Abstract Social epistemology studies knowledge in social contexts. Knowledge is ‘social’ when its holder communicates with or learns from others (Epistemology in groups), or when its holder is a group as a whole, literally or metaphorically (Epistemology of groups). Group knowledge can emerge explicitly, through aggregation procedures like voting, or implicitly, through institutions like deliberation or prediction markets. In the truth-tracking paradigm, group beliefs aim at truth, and group decisions at ‘correctness’ – in virtue of external facts that are empirical or normative, real or constructed, universal or relativistic, etc. Procedures and institutions are evaluated by epistemic performance: Are they truth-conducive? Do groups become ‘wiser’ than their members? We review several procedures and institutions, discussing epistemic successes and failures. Jury theorems provide formal arguments for epistemic success. Some jury theorems misleadingly conclude that ‘huge groups are infallible’ – an artefact of inappropriate premises. Others have defensible premises, and still conclude that groups outperform individuals, without being infallible. Social Epistemology is the branch of Epistemology which studies knowledge in social contexts. In this review, we first set the stage by introducing clarifications, distinctions, and applications (Section 1). We then discuss formal procedures (Section 2) and informal institutional arrangements (Section 3) which generate collective beliefs or decisions that ‘track the truth’, or instead lead to epistemic failures (Section 4). 1 Scope and problems of social epistemology 1.1 Epistemology in groups versus epistemology of groups A first distinction pertains to the knowledge holder, who is either a group member or the group as a whole.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Aspects of Scientific Knowledge
    1 Social Aspects of Scientific Knowledge Ilkka Niiniluoto ABSTRACT. From its inception in 1987 social epistemology has been divided into analytic (ASE) and critical (CSE) approaches, represented by Alvin I. Goldman and Steve Fuller, respectively. In this paper, the agendas and some basic ideas of ASE and CSE are compared and assessed by bringing into the discussion also other participants of the debates on the social aspects of scientific knowledge – among them Raimo Tuomela, Philip Kitcher and Helen Longino. The six topics to be analyzed include individual and collective epistemic agents; the notion of scientific community; realism and constructivism; truth-seeking communities; epistemic and social values; science, experts, and democracy. KEYWORDS. democracy, epistemic values, experts, scientific community, scientific realism, social epistemology, truth-seeking, Introduction: Analytic and Critical Social Epistemology Social epistemology studies knowledge from a social point of view. As a complement to empirical studies, such as the sociology of knowledge and the sociology of science, social epistemology aims to provide a normative philosophical account of knowledge as a collective achievement. Even though the term dates from the 1950s, the work in this field started in 1987 with a special issue of Synthese, edited by Frederick Schmitt, and the new journal Social Epistemology – A Journal of Knowledge, Culture, and Policy, founded by Steve Fuller. In the next year Fuller published a monograph with the title Social Epistemology. Alvin I. Goldman, who published in the 1987 Synthese issue an article on “Social Epistemics”, developed his reliabilist epistemology in the direction of social practices in his Knowledge in a Social World (1999).
    [Show full text]
  • Socrates, Phil Inquiry & the Elenctic Method (F11new)
    PLATO, PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY & THE ELENCTIC METHOD All human beings, by their nature, desire understanding. — Aristotle, Metaphysics (Book 1) The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. — Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality The elenctic method (part 1): on Meno’s enumerative THE BIG IDEAS TO MASTER definition of (human) virtue • Theory • Socratic humility On Platonic realism & Socratic definitions. According to Plato, a • The elenctic method central part of philosophical inquiry involves an attempt to • Platonic realism understand the Forms. This implies that he is committed the view • Platonic Forms we will call Platonic realism, namely, the view that • Socratic definitions • Essences Platonic realism. The Forms exist. • Natural kinds vs. artefacts • Abstract vs. concrete entities So, according to this theory, Reality contains the Forms. But what • Essential vs. accidental properties are the Forms? That question is best answered as follows. Much of • Counterexample the most important research that philosophers and other scholars do • Reductio ad absurdum argument involves an attempt to answer questions of the form ‘what is x?’ • Sound argument Physicists, for instance, ask ‘what is a black hole?’; biologists ask • Valid argument ‘what is an organism?’; mathematicians ask ‘what is a right triangle?’ • The correspondence theory of truth Let us call the correct answer to a what-is-x question the Socratic • Fact definition of x. We can say, then, that physicists are seeking the Socratic definition of a black hole, biologists investigate the Socratic definition of an organism, and mathematicians look to determine the Socratic definition of a right triangle.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Epistemology and the Project of Mapping Science
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2015 Social Epistemology and the Project of Mapping Science Kamili Posey Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1097 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY AND THE PROJECT OF MAPPING SCIENCE BY KAMILI POSEY A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York. 2015 © 2015 KAMILI POSEY All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Nikolas Pappas ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Iakovos Vasiliou ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ Date Executive Officer Samir Chopra ______________________________________________ Linda Alcoff ______________________________________________ Robert Sinclair ______________________________________________ Supervisory Committee THE
    [Show full text]
  • John William Miller and Josiah Royce
    Idealist Affinities: John William Miller and Josiah Royce By Mark D. Moorman [Posted with permission of Mark D. Moorman. Presented at the 39th annual meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, New York City, March 15-17, 2012.] This paper will compare the philosophies of John William Miller and Josiah Royce with regard to philosophical idealism. We hope to highlight the idealist strain in Miller’s thought by showing some affinities with similar themes in Royce. The relaxed term “affinity” suits the vagaries of the term “idealism” itself.(1) Royce was well aware of this malleable breadth. Post-Kantian idealism, viewed in its whole range of manifestation, is not any one theory so much as a tendency, a spirit, a disposition to interpret life and human nature and the world in a certain general way—a tendency, meanwhile, so plastic, so manifold, so lively, as to be capable of appealing to extremely different minds, and of expressing itself in numerous hostile teachings.(2) The equivocity of the term idealism renders our comparison more a matter of loose ‘family resemblances’ than of clear cut categories. There is second difficulty with idealism as a point of comparison, its reputation. Discussing certain impediments to the reception of Miller’s work, Vincent Colapietro points out that Miller’s idealism is “likely to make him seem outdated and even quaint.”(3) Much of the revolt against idealism in the Twentieth century took the form of hasty ab extra dismissals which left caricatures and low regard in their wake.(4) Association with German idealism came to imply, not depth, but a lack of rigor.
    [Show full text]
  • Social Epistemology: Theory and Applications
    1 2 Social Epistemology: Theory and 3 Applications 4 5 6 ALVIN I. GOLDMAN 7 8 9 1. Mainstream Epistemology and Social Epistemology 10 11 Epistemology has had a strongly individualist orientation, at least 12 since Descartes. Knowledge, for Descartes, starts with the fact of 13 one’s own thinking and with oneself as subject of that thinking. 14 Whatever else can be known, it must be known by inference from 15 one’s own mental contents. Achieving such knowledge is an individ- 16 ual, rather than a collective, enterprise. Descartes’s successors largely 17 followed this lead, so the history of epistemology, down to our own 18 time, has been a predominantly individualist affair. 19 There are scattered exceptions. A handful of historical epistemolo- 20 gists gave brief space to the question of knowing, or believing justifi- 21 ably, based on the testimony of others. Testimony-based knowledge 22 would be one step into a more social epistemology. Hume took it for 23 granted that we regularly rely on the factual statements of others, and 24 argued that it is reasonable to do so if we have adequate reasons for 25 trusting the veracity of these sources. However, reasons for such 26 trust, according to Hume, must rest on personal observations of 1 27 people’s veracity or reliability. Thomas Reid took a different view. 28 He claimed that our natural attitude of trusting others is reasonable 29 even if we know little if anything about others’ reliability. 30 Testimony, at least sincere testimony, is always prima facie credible th 31 (Reid, 1970: 240–241).
    [Show full text]
  • CHAPTER 1 and Unexemplified Properties, Kinds, and Relations
    UNIVERSALS I: METAPHYSICAL REALISM existing objects; whereas other realists believe that there are both exemplified CHAPTER 1 and unexemplified properties, kinds, and relations. The problem of universals I Realism and nominalism The objects we talk and think about can be classified in all kinds of Metaphysical realism ways. We sort things by color, and we have red things, yellow things, and blue things. We sort them by shape, and we have triangular things, circular things, and square things. We sort them by kind, and 0 Realism and nominalism we have elephants, oak trees, and paramecia. The kind of classification The ontology of metaphysical realism at work in these cases is an essential component in our experience of the Realism and predication world. There is little, if anything, that we can think or say, little, if anything, that counts as experience, that does not involve groupings of Realism and abstract reference these kinds. Although almost everyone will concede that some of our 0 Restrictions on realism - exemplification ways of classifying objects reflect our interests, goals, and values, few 0 Further restrictions - defined and undefined predicates will deny that many of our ways of sorting things are fixed by the 0 Are there any unexemplified attributes? objects themselves.' It is not as if we just arbitrarily choose to call some things triangular, others circular, and still others square; they are tri- angular, circular, and square. Likewise, it is not a mere consequence of Overview human thought or language that there are elephants, oak trees, and paramecia. They come that way, and our language and thought reflect The phenomenon of similarity or attribute agreement gives rise to the debate these antecedently given facts about them.
    [Show full text]