Steven Horst
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195317114
- eISBN:
- 9780199871520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195317114.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter examines the widespread assumptions that intertheoretic reductions are common in the natural sciences and that reducibility serves as a kind of normative constraint upon the legitimacy ...
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This chapter examines the widespread assumptions that intertheoretic reductions are common in the natural sciences and that reducibility serves as a kind of normative constraint upon the legitimacy of the special sciences. While this was the mainline view in philosophy of science in the mid‐twentieth century, it has received decisive criticism within philosophy of science since the 1970s. The basic reasons for this rejection of Carnap‐Nagel style reductionism are recounted in this chapter.Less
This chapter examines the widespread assumptions that intertheoretic reductions are common in the natural sciences and that reducibility serves as a kind of normative constraint upon the legitimacy of the special sciences. While this was the mainline view in philosophy of science in the mid‐twentieth century, it has received decisive criticism within philosophy of science since the 1970s. The basic reasons for this rejection of Carnap‐Nagel style reductionism are recounted in this chapter.
Phillip Wiebe
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- April 2005
- ISBN:
- 9780195140125
- eISBN:
- 9780199835492
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195140125.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion
This book advances three central propositions: (a) Claims about what is real, including a transcendent reality, if it exists, cannot be achieved by short, snappy proofs, but by the hard work of ...
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This book advances three central propositions: (a) Claims about what is real, including a transcendent reality, if it exists, cannot be achieved by short, snappy proofs, but by the hard work of examining phenomena closely, conjecturing about how they might explained, and critically scrutinizing the explanations that are suggested by the phenomena; (b) The methodology that is needed in a critical scrutiny of religion is neither deductive nor inductive argumentation, both of which have been prominent in philosophy of religion, but abductive argumentation, in which unobservable objects are tentatively postulated to exist, in an effort to determine how well they explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena; and (c) The phenomena that ought to be made central to the study of religion are the varied experiences that people have reported and continue to report, especially those that suggest to educated and articulate adults that an order of reality might exist that transcends the known natural one. Empirical grounds for advancing the existence of spirits are examined in several chapters, such as the phenomena of (alleged) demonic possession and exorcism, as well as other phenomena in biblical history and in contemporary life that suggest the existence of holy beings. These phenomena are used to reconstruct the theory of spirits in a critical realist way, according to which the postulated entities are contextually defined by the causal roles these entities are deemed to play. The abductive argumentation to unobservable objects that is advocated is perhaps best known from atomism, but it has also been vital to evolutionary theory, genetic theory, psychoanalysis, and to other well known fields of scientific inquiry. Various objections are examined against the thesis of the book, including the view that the concepts of religion are mythopoeic, the claim that naturalism as it is presently known is adequate to explain all phenomena, and the position that Christian theism is incoherent. The plausibility of contextual realism is defended according to which separate domains of critical inquiry have epistemic independence from one another, so that ontological reduction is neither routinely imposed on religious claims nor deemed to be impossible. The competing claims that theism is properly basic and that probabilistic argument affords the best approach toward theism are resisted. The author calls for “naturalizing epistemology” of religion, following W. V. O. Quine, which requires paying more attention than classical empiricism has given to the circumstances in which educated and articulate adults adopt beliefs, including beliefs that accommodate God and other spirits.Less
This book advances three central propositions: (a) Claims about what is real, including a transcendent reality, if it exists, cannot be achieved by short, snappy proofs, but by the hard work of examining phenomena closely, conjecturing about how they might explained, and critically scrutinizing the explanations that are suggested by the phenomena; (b) The methodology that is needed in a critical scrutiny of religion is neither deductive nor inductive argumentation, both of which have been prominent in philosophy of religion, but abductive argumentation, in which unobservable objects are tentatively postulated to exist, in an effort to determine how well they explain otherwise inexplicable phenomena; and (c) The phenomena that ought to be made central to the study of religion are the varied experiences that people have reported and continue to report, especially those that suggest to educated and articulate adults that an order of reality might exist that transcends the known natural one. Empirical grounds for advancing the existence of spirits are examined in several chapters, such as the phenomena of (alleged) demonic possession and exorcism, as well as other phenomena in biblical history and in contemporary life that suggest the existence of holy beings. These phenomena are used to reconstruct the theory of spirits in a critical realist way, according to which the postulated entities are contextually defined by the causal roles these entities are deemed to play. The abductive argumentation to unobservable objects that is advocated is perhaps best known from atomism, but it has also been vital to evolutionary theory, genetic theory, psychoanalysis, and to other well known fields of scientific inquiry. Various objections are examined against the thesis of the book, including the view that the concepts of religion are mythopoeic, the claim that naturalism as it is presently known is adequate to explain all phenomena, and the position that Christian theism is incoherent. The plausibility of contextual realism is defended according to which separate domains of critical inquiry have epistemic independence from one another, so that ontological reduction is neither routinely imposed on religious claims nor deemed to be impossible. The competing claims that theism is properly basic and that probabilistic argument affords the best approach toward theism are resisted. The author calls for “naturalizing epistemology” of religion, following W. V. O. Quine, which requires paying more attention than classical empiricism has given to the circumstances in which educated and articulate adults adopt beliefs, including beliefs that accommodate God and other spirits.
James A. Steintrager
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231151580
- eISBN:
- 9780231540872
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231151580.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during ...
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What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous—and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.Less
What would happen if pleasure were made the organizing principle for social relations and sexual pleasure ruled over all? Radical French libertines experimented clandestinely with this idea during the Enlightenment. In explicit novels, dialogues, poems, and engravings, they wrenched pleasure free from religion and morality, from politics, aesthetics, anatomy, and finally reason itself, and imagined how such a world would be desirable, legitimate, rapturous—and potentially horrific. Laying out the logic and willful illogic of radical libertinage, this book ties the Enlightenment engagement with sexual license to the expansion of print, empiricism, the revival of skepticism, the fashionable arts and lifestyles of the Ancien Régime, and the rise and decline of absolutism. It examines the consequences of imagining sexual pleasure as sovereign power and a law unto itself across a range of topics, including sodomy, the science of sexual difference, political philosophy, aesthetics, and race. It also analyzes the roots of radical claims for pleasure in earlier licentious satire and their echoes in appeals for sexual liberation in the 1960s and beyond.
Anil Gupta
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195189582
- eISBN:
- 9780199868452
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195189582.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter addresses the problem: what is the contribution of experience to knowledge? It argues that the problem is best appreciated by reflection on two commonplace ideas about experience and ...
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This chapter addresses the problem: what is the contribution of experience to knowledge? It argues that the problem is best appreciated by reflection on two commonplace ideas about experience and knowledge—ideas that appear to be in some tension with one another. These ideas are labelled as “Insight of Empiricism” and the “Multiple-Factorizability of Experience”.Less
This chapter addresses the problem: what is the contribution of experience to knowledge? It argues that the problem is best appreciated by reflection on two commonplace ideas about experience and knowledge—ideas that appear to be in some tension with one another. These ideas are labelled as “Insight of Empiricism” and the “Multiple-Factorizability of Experience”.
Anthony Quinton
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199694556
- eISBN:
- 9780191731938
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199694556.003.0013
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Quine's ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ and ‘The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics’ treated meaning in a sceptical, dismissive fashion, in very much the same way that analytic philosophers themselves had ...
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Quine's ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ and ‘The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics’ treated meaning in a sceptical, dismissive fashion, in very much the same way that analytic philosophers themselves had relied on the notion of meaning to dispel the pretensions of metaphysics. In ‘Two Dogmas’ the topic of meaning is approached indirectly, by way of criticism of the analytic/synthetic distinction, in the first instance. Analytic truths are those that can be reduced with the aid of definitions to truths of logic. What, Quine enquired, are the criteria of synonymy implied by the claim of such definitions to correctness? In ‘Meaning in Linguistics’ the thesis of ‘Two Dogmas’ that ‘meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be abandoned’ is developed further. This chapter raises a number of questions about details in the complex fabric of Quine's arguments in order to draw attention to what seems to be unfinished business or holes that need to be stopped.Less
Quine's ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ and ‘The Problem of Meaning in Linguistics’ treated meaning in a sceptical, dismissive fashion, in very much the same way that analytic philosophers themselves had relied on the notion of meaning to dispel the pretensions of metaphysics. In ‘Two Dogmas’ the topic of meaning is approached indirectly, by way of criticism of the analytic/synthetic distinction, in the first instance. Analytic truths are those that can be reduced with the aid of definitions to truths of logic. What, Quine enquired, are the criteria of synonymy implied by the claim of such definitions to correctness? In ‘Meaning in Linguistics’ the thesis of ‘Two Dogmas’ that ‘meanings themselves, as obscure intermediary entities, may well be abandoned’ is developed further. This chapter raises a number of questions about details in the complex fabric of Quine's arguments in order to draw attention to what seems to be unfinished business or holes that need to be stopped.
P. F. Strawson
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199587292
- eISBN:
- 9780191728747
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199587292.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
In his article ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Professor Quine advances a number of criticisms of the supposed distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and of other associated notions. It ...
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In his article ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Professor Quine advances a number of criticisms of the supposed distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and of other associated notions. It is, he says, a distinction which he rejects. This chapter shows that his criticisms of the distinction do not justify his rejection of it.Less
In his article ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’, Professor Quine advances a number of criticisms of the supposed distinction between analytic and synthetic statements, and of other associated notions. It is, he says, a distinction which he rejects. This chapter shows that his criticisms of the distinction do not justify his rejection of it.
Erik J. Hammerstrom
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780231170345
- eISBN:
- 9780231539586
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231170345.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Buddhism
Looks at the Buddhist argument that both science and Buddhism emphasize the empirical verification of theories, and explains why this rhetoric would have been appealing to Chinese Buddhists in the ...
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Looks at the Buddhist argument that both science and Buddhism emphasize the empirical verification of theories, and explains why this rhetoric would have been appealing to Chinese Buddhists in the 1920s in light of the prevailing ideologies of the day. Although they argued that Buddhism and science shared a common commitment to empiricism, these Buddhists believed that the practice of Buddhism represented a higher empiricism because it allowed for the attainment of supersensory powers that science could not match. This argument was made using the tools of classical Buddhist logic, which attained unprecedented popularity in China in the 1920s and 1930s.Less
Looks at the Buddhist argument that both science and Buddhism emphasize the empirical verification of theories, and explains why this rhetoric would have been appealing to Chinese Buddhists in the 1920s in light of the prevailing ideologies of the day. Although they argued that Buddhism and science shared a common commitment to empiricism, these Buddhists believed that the practice of Buddhism represented a higher empiricism because it allowed for the attainment of supersensory powers that science could not match. This argument was made using the tools of classical Buddhist logic, which attained unprecedented popularity in China in the 1920s and 1930s.
Eugene Fontinell
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823220700
- eISBN:
- 9780823284863
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823220700.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, American Philosophy
This chapter explores how William James' doctrine of the self seemed to have developed through three stages. Beginning with a methodological dualism in his Principles of Psychology, James apparently ...
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This chapter explores how William James' doctrine of the self seemed to have developed through three stages. Beginning with a methodological dualism in his Principles of Psychology, James apparently moved to a “no-self” doctrine in the Essays on Radical Empiricism, and finally to the affirmation of a substantive self in A Pluralistic Universe. This three-stage view is basically sound and helpful as long as it is not understood as suggesting any clear, linear, and unequivocal development. The chapter then shows that throughout, James is much less clear and confident about his positive affirmations and solutions than he is in describing the problems and what he wishes to avoid.Less
This chapter explores how William James' doctrine of the self seemed to have developed through three stages. Beginning with a methodological dualism in his Principles of Psychology, James apparently moved to a “no-self” doctrine in the Essays on Radical Empiricism, and finally to the affirmation of a substantive self in A Pluralistic Universe. This three-stage view is basically sound and helpful as long as it is not understood as suggesting any clear, linear, and unequivocal development. The chapter then shows that throughout, James is much less clear and confident about his positive affirmations and solutions than he is in describing the problems and what he wishes to avoid.
Georges Dicker
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190662196
- eISBN:
- 9780190662233
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190662196.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This book is essentially a commentary on John Locke’s masterwork, his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which is the foundational work of classical Empiricism. It aims to be accessible to ...
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This book is essentially a commentary on John Locke’s masterwork, his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which is the foundational work of classical Empiricism. It aims to be accessible to students who are reading Locke for the first time, to be a useful research tool for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, and to make a contribution to Locke scholarship. It is designed to be read alongside the Essay, but does not presuppose familiarity with it. It expounds and critically discusses the main theses and arguments of each of the Essay’s four books, on the innatism that Locke opposes, the origin and classification of ideas, language and meaning, and knowledge, respectively. It analyzes Locke’s influential explorations of related topics, including primary and secondary qualities, substance, identity, personal identity, free will, nominal and real essence, and external-world skepticism, among others. It is written in an analytical style that strives for clarity and that offers step-by-step reconstructions of Locke’s arguments. It references and engages with relevant work of other major philosophers and Locke commentators, including, among others, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Thomas Reid, John Yolton, James Gibson, R. M. Chisholm, Michael Ayers, John Perry, John Mackie, Roger Woolhouse, Saul Kripke, Jonathan Bennett, E. J. Lowe, Vere Chappell, Samuel Rickless, Galen Strawson, Gideon Yaffe, and Matthew Stuart.Less
This book is essentially a commentary on John Locke’s masterwork, his An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which is the foundational work of classical Empiricism. It aims to be accessible to students who are reading Locke for the first time, to be a useful research tool for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students, and to make a contribution to Locke scholarship. It is designed to be read alongside the Essay, but does not presuppose familiarity with it. It expounds and critically discusses the main theses and arguments of each of the Essay’s four books, on the innatism that Locke opposes, the origin and classification of ideas, language and meaning, and knowledge, respectively. It analyzes Locke’s influential explorations of related topics, including primary and secondary qualities, substance, identity, personal identity, free will, nominal and real essence, and external-world skepticism, among others. It is written in an analytical style that strives for clarity and that offers step-by-step reconstructions of Locke’s arguments. It references and engages with relevant work of other major philosophers and Locke commentators, including, among others, Descartes, Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Thomas Reid, John Yolton, James Gibson, R. M. Chisholm, Michael Ayers, John Perry, John Mackie, Roger Woolhouse, Saul Kripke, Jonathan Bennett, E. J. Lowe, Vere Chappell, Samuel Rickless, Galen Strawson, Gideon Yaffe, and Matthew Stuart.
Paul Shaffer
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199676903
- eISBN:
- 9780191756269
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676903.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Development, Growth, and Environmental
This chapter links defining characteristics of the consumption and dialogical poverty approaches to the epistemological traditions of Empiricism and hermeneutics, or critical hermeneutics, ...
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This chapter links defining characteristics of the consumption and dialogical poverty approaches to the epistemological traditions of Empiricism and hermeneutics, or critical hermeneutics, respectively. The consumption approach draws on utility theory and nutrition science to define poverty in terms of inadequate basic consumption, proxied by levels of consumption expenditure below a poverty threshold.In the dialogical approach, the chosen dimensions and thresholds of poverty are determined discursively by participants in dialogue. The basic units of knowledge in these two epistemological traditions, brute data and intersubjective meanings respectively, explain, in part, distinguishing features of the concepts of consumption and dialogical poverty. Such epistemological considerations also help explain the validity criteria used in the two poverty approaches based on intersubjective observability and discursive validation, respectively.Less
This chapter links defining characteristics of the consumption and dialogical poverty approaches to the epistemological traditions of Empiricism and hermeneutics, or critical hermeneutics, respectively. The consumption approach draws on utility theory and nutrition science to define poverty in terms of inadequate basic consumption, proxied by levels of consumption expenditure below a poverty threshold.In the dialogical approach, the chosen dimensions and thresholds of poverty are determined discursively by participants in dialogue. The basic units of knowledge in these two epistemological traditions, brute data and intersubjective meanings respectively, explain, in part, distinguishing features of the concepts of consumption and dialogical poverty. Such epistemological considerations also help explain the validity criteria used in the two poverty approaches based on intersubjective observability and discursive validation, respectively.
Jon Roffe
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748632992
- eISBN:
- 9780748652570
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748632992.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, General
This chapter examines the influence of David Hume on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It discusses the central tenets of Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity and evaluates the extent to which this ...
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This chapter examines the influence of David Hume on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It discusses the central tenets of Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity and evaluates the extent to which this work provides an implicit foundation for the metaphysics of Difference and Repetition. The chapter suggests that Hume's continued influence on Deleuze is irreducible to a homology of doctrine. It explains that while the philosophy of association in its Humean form has no place in Deleuze's transcendental empiricism, Deleuze's philosophy remains Humean.Less
This chapter examines the influence of David Hume on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. It discusses the central tenets of Deleuze's Empiricism and Subjectivity and evaluates the extent to which this work provides an implicit foundation for the metaphysics of Difference and Repetition. The chapter suggests that Hume's continued influence on Deleuze is irreducible to a homology of doctrine. It explains that while the philosophy of association in its Humean form has no place in Deleuze's transcendental empiricism, Deleuze's philosophy remains Humean.
Thomas Docherty
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526132741
- eISBN:
- 9781526138965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526132741.003.0004
- Subject:
- Education, Educational Policy and Politics
The contemporary institution fails to understand the real meaning of ‘mass higher education’. A mass higher education should address the concerns of those masses of ‘ordinary people’ who, for ...
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The contemporary institution fails to understand the real meaning of ‘mass higher education’. A mass higher education should address the concerns of those masses of ‘ordinary people’ who, for whatever reasons, do not attend a university. Instead, the contemporary sector simply admits more individuals from lower social and economic classes. Behind this is a deep suspicion of the intellectual whose knowledge marks them out as intrinsically elitist and not ‘of the people’. An intellectual concerned about everyday life is now seen as suspicious, given the normative belief that a university education is about individual competitive self-advancement. This intellectual is now an enemy of ‘the people’, and incipiently one who might even be regarded as criminal in dissenting from conformity with social norms of neoliberalism. There is a history to this, dating from 1945; and it sets up a contest between two version of the university: one sees it as a centre of humane and liberal values, the other as the site for the production of individuals who conform to and individually benefit from neoliberal greed. The genuine exception is the intellectual who dissents; but dissent itself is now seen as potentially criminal.Less
The contemporary institution fails to understand the real meaning of ‘mass higher education’. A mass higher education should address the concerns of those masses of ‘ordinary people’ who, for whatever reasons, do not attend a university. Instead, the contemporary sector simply admits more individuals from lower social and economic classes. Behind this is a deep suspicion of the intellectual whose knowledge marks them out as intrinsically elitist and not ‘of the people’. An intellectual concerned about everyday life is now seen as suspicious, given the normative belief that a university education is about individual competitive self-advancement. This intellectual is now an enemy of ‘the people’, and incipiently one who might even be regarded as criminal in dissenting from conformity with social norms of neoliberalism. There is a history to this, dating from 1945; and it sets up a contest between two version of the university: one sees it as a centre of humane and liberal values, the other as the site for the production of individuals who conform to and individually benefit from neoliberal greed. The genuine exception is the intellectual who dissents; but dissent itself is now seen as potentially criminal.
Abigail Zitin
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780300244564
- eISBN:
- 9780300255713
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300244564.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
This chapter surveys the manifestations of empiricist antiformalism in some early texts that ground the tradition of eighteenth-century thought on the subjects of taste and beauty, beginning with ...
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This chapter surveys the manifestations of empiricist antiformalism in some early texts that ground the tradition of eighteenth-century thought on the subjects of taste and beauty, beginning with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke argues for an attenuated version of form, one that eschews any trappings of scholastic or Platonic philosophy. After Locke, form cannot name anything related to substance or essence; Locke endorses its use only as a synonym for figure, that is, shape or pattern, extension in space or duration in time. Drawing on Locke's Essay, both Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson theorize beauty as a secondary quality that emanates from an object, distinct from form, which they understand as a primary quality residing in that object.Less
This chapter surveys the manifestations of empiricist antiformalism in some early texts that ground the tradition of eighteenth-century thought on the subjects of taste and beauty, beginning with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke argues for an attenuated version of form, one that eschews any trappings of scholastic or Platonic philosophy. After Locke, form cannot name anything related to substance or essence; Locke endorses its use only as a synonym for figure, that is, shape or pattern, extension in space or duration in time. Drawing on Locke's Essay, both Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson theorize beauty as a secondary quality that emanates from an object, distinct from form, which they understand as a primary quality residing in that object.
Petrus Liu
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9789888455874
- eISBN:
- 9789882204294
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888455874.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Asian Studies
This chapter argues that the conventional understanding that we live in a post-Cold War world order is part of an imperialist aesthetic logic for two important reasons. On the one hand, traditional ...
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This chapter argues that the conventional understanding that we live in a post-Cold War world order is part of an imperialist aesthetic logic for two important reasons. On the one hand, traditional history creates a teleological narrative that conflates the intellectual history of Marxism—which continues to thrive in China and other locations today—with the political structure of the USSR that collapsed in 1991. According to this narrative, Marxism is merely an "ideology" that is inimical to free thinking and free speech, and, since humanity has entered a distinctly new phase called the "end of history" or the "end of ideologies" in 1991, any current effort to rebuild Marxist or socialist programs must be anachronistic, utopian, or naive. On the other hand, the conventional definition of the Cold War as the period from the Truman Doctrine of 1941 to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 naturalizes a Western-centered explanatory framework that completely overlooks the experience and agency of East Asia. The presumption that Cold War studies must begin (and end) with the United States and its Western rival(s) is therefore part of the imperialist aesthetics that organizes our temporal-spatial life worlds into the rise and fall of Western empires.Less
This chapter argues that the conventional understanding that we live in a post-Cold War world order is part of an imperialist aesthetic logic for two important reasons. On the one hand, traditional history creates a teleological narrative that conflates the intellectual history of Marxism—which continues to thrive in China and other locations today—with the political structure of the USSR that collapsed in 1991. According to this narrative, Marxism is merely an "ideology" that is inimical to free thinking and free speech, and, since humanity has entered a distinctly new phase called the "end of history" or the "end of ideologies" in 1991, any current effort to rebuild Marxist or socialist programs must be anachronistic, utopian, or naive. On the other hand, the conventional definition of the Cold War as the period from the Truman Doctrine of 1941 to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991 naturalizes a Western-centered explanatory framework that completely overlooks the experience and agency of East Asia. The presumption that Cold War studies must begin (and end) with the United States and its Western rival(s) is therefore part of the imperialist aesthetics that organizes our temporal-spatial life worlds into the rise and fall of Western empires.
Krister Dylan Knapp
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781469631240
- eISBN:
- 9781469631264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631240.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religious Studies
Chapter four examines James's role as an investigator of physical mediums purporting to levitate tables and materialize ghostly forms of the deceased, and recounts the instances when he revealed ...
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Chapter four examines James's role as an investigator of physical mediums purporting to levitate tables and materialize ghostly forms of the deceased, and recounts the instances when he revealed several of them to be frauds including the notorious Eusapia Palladino.Less
Chapter four examines James's role as an investigator of physical mediums purporting to levitate tables and materialize ghostly forms of the deceased, and recounts the instances when he revealed several of them to be frauds including the notorious Eusapia Palladino.
Seth Lobis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780300192032
- eISBN:
- 9780300210415
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300192032.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
This chapter examines the complex legacy of Shaftesburianism and reveals the enduring vitality of natural and magical conceptions of sympathy through the first half of the eighteenth century. In so ...
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This chapter examines the complex legacy of Shaftesburianism and reveals the enduring vitality of natural and magical conceptions of sympathy through the first half of the eighteenth century. In so doing, it revises the standard model of treating sympathy in eighteenth-century studies, according to which sympathy “rose” after the Restoration as an exclusively moral and social principle. Both David Fordyce’s Dialogues Concerning Education and James Thomson’s Seasons reinforced Shaftesbury’s version of a sympathetic worldview, and both works demonstrate the extent to which natural and moral conceptions of sympathy remained in active conversation. With the widening impact of skepticism and empiricism among the intellectual elite, strong claims for the naturalness of sympathetic response in society functioned to secure an idea of order that was becoming more and more uncertain in the universe as a whole. As the case of Thomson shows, the aesthetic was an increasingly hospitable environment for a universal conception of sympathy that was increasingly out of place in mainstream scientific accounts of the natural world. At the same time, poets and philosophers appealed to Newtonianism as a means of bolstering a sympathetic worldview; represented as analogous to gravity, sympathy could be reuniversalized as a scientific principle.Less
This chapter examines the complex legacy of Shaftesburianism and reveals the enduring vitality of natural and magical conceptions of sympathy through the first half of the eighteenth century. In so doing, it revises the standard model of treating sympathy in eighteenth-century studies, according to which sympathy “rose” after the Restoration as an exclusively moral and social principle. Both David Fordyce’s Dialogues Concerning Education and James Thomson’s Seasons reinforced Shaftesbury’s version of a sympathetic worldview, and both works demonstrate the extent to which natural and moral conceptions of sympathy remained in active conversation. With the widening impact of skepticism and empiricism among the intellectual elite, strong claims for the naturalness of sympathetic response in society functioned to secure an idea of order that was becoming more and more uncertain in the universe as a whole. As the case of Thomson shows, the aesthetic was an increasingly hospitable environment for a universal conception of sympathy that was increasingly out of place in mainstream scientific accounts of the natural world. At the same time, poets and philosophers appealed to Newtonianism as a means of bolstering a sympathetic worldview; represented as analogous to gravity, sympathy could be reuniversalized as a scientific principle.
Hélène Ibata
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781526117397
- eISBN:
- 9781526136114
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526117397.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This first chapter emphasises what Burke’s Enquiry owes to the existing discourse on the sublime (to Longinus and Addison in particular), in order to highlight its innovations, more specifically its ...
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This first chapter emphasises what Burke’s Enquiry owes to the existing discourse on the sublime (to Longinus and Addison in particular), in order to highlight its innovations, more specifically its aesthetically stimulating irrationalism and sensualism. It then focuses on Burke’s unique distinction between visual and verbal representation, his rejection of their common mimetic basis, and his argument that only the non-mimetic, suggestive medium of the verbal arts, language, may impart the sublime. At a time when parallels between the arts prevailed, this was an isolated point of view, which introduced a new paragone situation, and a challenge to visual artists. The end of the chapter examines a number of competing theories of the sublime that were compatible with painting, which makes it possible to enhance the specificity of the Enquiry and the paradox of its appeal to visual artists.Less
This first chapter emphasises what Burke’s Enquiry owes to the existing discourse on the sublime (to Longinus and Addison in particular), in order to highlight its innovations, more specifically its aesthetically stimulating irrationalism and sensualism. It then focuses on Burke’s unique distinction between visual and verbal representation, his rejection of their common mimetic basis, and his argument that only the non-mimetic, suggestive medium of the verbal arts, language, may impart the sublime. At a time when parallels between the arts prevailed, this was an isolated point of view, which introduced a new paragone situation, and a challenge to visual artists. The end of the chapter examines a number of competing theories of the sublime that were compatible with painting, which makes it possible to enhance the specificity of the Enquiry and the paradox of its appeal to visual artists.
Dave Boothroyd
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748640096
- eISBN:
- 9780748693795
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748640096.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This chapter presents a philosophical analysis of Levinas's account of the empiricism of the ethical Subject, comparing the ‘radical empiricisms of both Levinas and Deleuze. It develops its argument ...
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This chapter presents a philosophical analysis of Levinas's account of the empiricism of the ethical Subject, comparing the ‘radical empiricisms of both Levinas and Deleuze. It develops its argument on the basis of the critique of the ethics of recognition to be found in the philosophy of Hegel. By doing so it aims to establish the value of identifying the moment of immanence in Levinas's thinking of the Subject as ‘separation’ – contrary to the tradition of reading him solely as the great thinker of transcendence and alterity – as central to recovering the ground for thinking the Subject in terms of its materiality. The Levinasian notion of the modality of the Subject as ‘separation’ and as ethicality itself is then carried forward into the following chapters’ discussions of various ‘ethical subject matters’ and ‘life situations’ which are expressive of ethicality so understood.Less
This chapter presents a philosophical analysis of Levinas's account of the empiricism of the ethical Subject, comparing the ‘radical empiricisms of both Levinas and Deleuze. It develops its argument on the basis of the critique of the ethics of recognition to be found in the philosophy of Hegel. By doing so it aims to establish the value of identifying the moment of immanence in Levinas's thinking of the Subject as ‘separation’ – contrary to the tradition of reading him solely as the great thinker of transcendence and alterity – as central to recovering the ground for thinking the Subject in terms of its materiality. The Levinasian notion of the modality of the Subject as ‘separation’ and as ethicality itself is then carried forward into the following chapters’ discussions of various ‘ethical subject matters’ and ‘life situations’ which are expressive of ethicality so understood.
Craig Smith
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474413275
- eISBN:
- 9781474460187
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413275.003.0002
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
This chapter outlines Ferguson’s commitment to an empirical, observation based, form of moral science. It begins by looking at Ferguson’s critique of the philosophical vices of existing schools of ...
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This chapter outlines Ferguson’s commitment to an empirical, observation based, form of moral science. It begins by looking at Ferguson’s critique of the philosophical vices of existing schools of thought. Ferguson criticises these as being excessively abstract, imprecise in the use of language and overly complex, or subtle, in their arguments. The chapter argues that Ferguson sought to create a practical philosophy for use in the real world and was in the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to use history as data for social theory. The chapter then discusses the various underlying universals of human nature and social life that form the basis of Ferguson’s moral science. A central claim is that Ferguson believed it to be a fact that all humans are censorial creatures who pass judgement on each other leading to the claim that morality is a human universal even while humans disagree on its content.Less
This chapter outlines Ferguson’s commitment to an empirical, observation based, form of moral science. It begins by looking at Ferguson’s critique of the philosophical vices of existing schools of thought. Ferguson criticises these as being excessively abstract, imprecise in the use of language and overly complex, or subtle, in their arguments. The chapter argues that Ferguson sought to create a practical philosophy for use in the real world and was in the mainstream of the Scottish Enlightenment’s attempts to use history as data for social theory. The chapter then discusses the various underlying universals of human nature and social life that form the basis of Ferguson’s moral science. A central claim is that Ferguson believed it to be a fact that all humans are censorial creatures who pass judgement on each other leading to the claim that morality is a human universal even while humans disagree on its content.
Wayne Waxman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199328314
- eISBN:
- 9780199369348
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199328314.001.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
In a 2005 editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian, Kant was declared “the undefeated heavyweight philosophy champion of the world” because he had the “great insight . . . to remove psychology ...
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In a 2005 editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian, Kant was declared “the undefeated heavyweight philosophy champion of the world” because he had the “great insight . . . to remove psychology from epistemology, arguing that knowledge is inevitably mediated by space, time and forms within our minds.” This is an accurate reflection of the consensus view of philosophers and scientists of mind alike that Kant’s accounts of space, time, nature, mathematics, and logic on the Critique of Pure Reason are rationalist, normativist, and nativist. Wayne Waxman argues that all of this is untrue. (1) Kant neither asserted nor implied that Euclid and Newton are the final word in their respective sciences and deemed nothing specific to them innate. (2) Rather than supposing that the psyche derives its fundamental forms from epistemology, he traced the first principles of ordinary, scientific, mathematical, and even logical knowledge to the psyche. (3) Aristotelean logic, in particular, exhausts the sphere of the logical for Kant precisely because he deduced it entirely from psychological principles of the unity of consciousness, resulting in a demarcation of logic from mathematics that would almost certainly set virtually everything regarded as logic today on the mathematical side of the ledger. And (4) although Kant’s conception of the unity of consciousness derives from Descartes, he gave it new life by eliminating its epistemological and metaphysical baggage, reducing it to its logical essence and grounding what remained on a wholly original conception of the a priori unity of sensibility.Less
In a 2005 editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian, Kant was declared “the undefeated heavyweight philosophy champion of the world” because he had the “great insight . . . to remove psychology from epistemology, arguing that knowledge is inevitably mediated by space, time and forms within our minds.” This is an accurate reflection of the consensus view of philosophers and scientists of mind alike that Kant’s accounts of space, time, nature, mathematics, and logic on the Critique of Pure Reason are rationalist, normativist, and nativist. Wayne Waxman argues that all of this is untrue. (1) Kant neither asserted nor implied that Euclid and Newton are the final word in their respective sciences and deemed nothing specific to them innate. (2) Rather than supposing that the psyche derives its fundamental forms from epistemology, he traced the first principles of ordinary, scientific, mathematical, and even logical knowledge to the psyche. (3) Aristotelean logic, in particular, exhausts the sphere of the logical for Kant precisely because he deduced it entirely from psychological principles of the unity of consciousness, resulting in a demarcation of logic from mathematics that would almost certainly set virtually everything regarded as logic today on the mathematical side of the ledger. And (4) although Kant’s conception of the unity of consciousness derives from Descartes, he gave it new life by eliminating its epistemological and metaphysical baggage, reducing it to its logical essence and grounding what remained on a wholly original conception of the a priori unity of sensibility.
