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THE CRITIC OF NATURE AND GENIUS

Mark Wilson

in Wandering Significance: An Essay on Conceptual Behaviour

The vital role of ‘concept’ as our chief means for expressing an evaluation of our present capacities for semantic diagnosis and control is reviewed, leading to chastened expectations that lie ... More

The vital role of ‘concept’ as our chief means for expressing an evaluation of our present capacities for semantic diagnosis and control is reviewed, leading to chastened expectations that lie intermediate between the excessive optimism of classical thinking and the radical pessimism endemic to pragmatism. These considerations indicate a crucial need for a temperate form of semantic scepticism within our philosophical thinking, a lesson that the present chapter applies to a number of controversies prominent in current debate. An allied viewpoint is brought to bear upon familiar worries about the role of ‘truth’ in our thinking and the problems involved in ‘understanding’ another culture.Less

Diversity and Sexual Equality: The Challenge of Incommensurability

Avigail Eisenberg

in Reasons of Identity: A Normative Guide to the Political and Legal Assessment of Identity Claims

This chapter examines the first sceptical reservation to the public assessment of identity claims, namely that identity claims are incommensurable. The problem of incommensurability rests on the idea ... More

This chapter examines the first sceptical reservation to the public assessment of identity claims, namely that identity claims are incommensurable. The problem of incommensurability rests on the idea that no coherent basis exists upon which to evaluate conflicting views about how identity matters and how it is to be weighed against other putatively fundamental considerations at play in any given conflict. This challenge is explored in relation to conflicts that arise between claims to sexual equality and minority claims to cultural accommodation or autonomy. Two approaches, one of which is rights‐based and the other which focuses on resolving conflicts through democratic processes, often lead to inadequate resolutions. The identity approach is shown to provide a more helpful approach that does not founder on the problem of incommensurability. The chapter compares the three approaches in relation to conflicts about sexist membership rules in Indigenous communities, and in relation to polygamy.Less

Conclusion: Contrapuntal Colonialism

D. R. M. Irving

in Colonial Counterpoint: Music in Early Modern Manila

This chapter emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the geocultural boundaries of Europe in the writing of music history. It calls for a neostructuralist approach to global music histories, one ... More

This chapter emphasizes the importance of looking beyond the geocultural boundaries of Europe in the writing of music history. It calls for a neostructuralist approach to global music histories, one that seeks to transcend the incommensurabilities of distinct (and seemingly irreconcilable) musical cultures within colonial contexts by reading sources contrapuntally and analyzing them with reference to macro‐historical frameworks. The conclusion goes on to summarize the main arguments of the book, and reiterates the proposal that European musical counterpoint mirrored many of the objectives of early modern imperialism, in terms of attempting to rationalize sound and society. Yet it also acknowledges that the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis embodied in colonial counterpoint can be subjected to more nuanced interpretations, and that contrapuntal structures could be inverted and subverted by subaltern societies.Less

Addressing Possible Objections

EYAL ZAMIR and BARAK MEDINA

in Law, Economics, and Morality

This chapter tackles a number of methodological and principled objections to the incorporation of deontological constraints into economic analysis. It discusses the claims that such incorporation ... More

This chapter tackles a number of methodological and principled objections to the incorporation of deontological constraints into economic analysis. It discusses the claims that such incorporation would adversely affect the normative neutrality of economic analysis; that monetizing deontological constraints faces insurmountable obstacles; that it would lead to setting too low thresholds for constraints; and that it is incompatible with the expressivist role of the law. It concludes that most of these objections are unpersuasive, and none is conclusive.Less

Incommensurability and the Priority of Metaphysics *

Michael Devitt

in Putting Metaphysics First: Essays on Metaphysics and Epistemology

This chapter rejects ‘Incommensurability’ — the semantic doctrine attributed to Kuhn and Feyerabend, who also subscribe to the neo-Kantian metaphysical doctrine of ‘Constructivism’. According to ... More

This chapter rejects ‘Incommensurability’ — the semantic doctrine attributed to Kuhn and Feyerabend, who also subscribe to the neo-Kantian metaphysical doctrine of ‘Constructivism’. According to Constructivism, we make ‘phenomenal’ worlds with our theories. Different theories make different worlds; the worlds we live in are theory-relative. Constructivism is clearly opposed to ‘Realism’. The chapter argues that the Incommensurability issue comes down to the Realism issue. On that issue, four arguments for Constructivism are rejected. Two Kantian arguments make the mistake of not putting metaphysics first: rather they proceed from an a priori epistemology or semantics to an a priori metaphysics. Two arguments by Hoyningen–Huene and co-authors support relativism but do nothing to support the Kantian core of Constructivism. Without Constructivism, Incommensurability is left unsupported. The chapter concludes by arguing against ‘meta-incommensurability’.Less

Adventures of the Diagonal: Non-Euclidean Mathematics and Narrative

Arkady Plotnitsky

Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur (eds)

in Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative

This chapter explores the relationship between narrative and non-Euclidean mathematics. It considers how non-Euclidean mathematics and the narratives accompanying it are linked: first, to the ... More

This chapter explores the relationship between narrative and non-Euclidean mathematics. It considers how non-Euclidean mathematics and the narratives accompanying it are linked: first, to the question of the potentially uncircumventable limits of thought and knowledge; and second, to the question of a certain heterogeneous and yet interactive multiplicity of concepts and of different fields such as algebra and geometry. The chapter starts with the Pythagoreans' discovery of the concept of “incommensurability,” or the irrationality of certain numbers, specifically the side and the diagonal of the square, and the narrative associated with this discovery. It then examines the transition from non-Euclidean physics to non-Euclidean mathematics by focusing on quantum mechanics and its relation to non-Euclidean epistemology. It also discusses the algebraic aspects of non-Euclidean geometry and concludes with the suggestion that non-Euclidean thinking retains the essential, shaping role of the movement of thought.Less

Philosophical implications

G. E. R. Lloyd

in Being, Humanity, and Understanding

This chapter draws out the philosophical implications of the previous studies in relation to four problems in particular, objectivity, truth, realism and relativism, and incommensurability. A measure ... More

This chapter draws out the philosophical implications of the previous studies in relation to four problems in particular, objectivity, truth, realism and relativism, and incommensurability. A measure of objectivity is attainable provided that (as Chapter 2 argued) our conceptual systems are revisable. While we can never attain total, theory-free, objectivity, that does not mean that all judgements are arbitrarily subjective. Neither a correspondence nor a coherence theory of truth is satisfactory: but we do not need a single overarching model of truth, good for all contexts. Rather we should focus on the contexts in which truth-telling and warranting are important (in evaluating witnesses for instance). Neither realism nor relativism is a single well-defined position and we should resist any idea that we have to choose between them. The multidimensionality of the phenomena and plural styles of inquiry enable features associated with both positions to be combined. Finally on incommensurability: it is undeniably the case that major shifts in the senses and references of key terms have occurred during theory change. But that does not mean that no communication is possible across paradigms. Rather the puzzles that conflicting views on being, humanity, and understanding generate should serve as a stimulus to learn from others, with implications for how we should live, particularly in the matter of how we should understand one another.Less

Paul Samuelson's Mach

Rod Cross

in Samuelsonian Economics and the Twenty-First Century

This final chapter analyzes Samuelson's methodology through the work of the physicist, psychologist, and philosopher Ernst Mach, categorizing Mach's thoughts with a big ‘M’. Thoughts of Mach range ... More

This final chapter analyzes Samuelson's methodology through the work of the physicist, psychologist, and philosopher Ernst Mach, categorizing Mach's thoughts with a big ‘M’. Thoughts of Mach range from sensory observation to phenomenology, including other disciplines such as psychology to the extent that such disciplinary thoughts are in harmony with the stability of the concept. The chapter ventures that Samuelson's methodology arises from the consideration of many views of science. Faced with a blurred distinction between facts and theory, which highlighted by Orman Quine, and the argument that economics deals with the world of social phenomena, Samuelson maintains firm feet in reality, letting the facts tell their story. Samuelson also acknowledges that new thoughts such as Thomas Kuhn's paradigm regarding the notions of cumulative knowledge, and incommensurability contribute to the theory of science. He accepted that facts are numerous and therefore must be carefully sampled for their economy. Yet Samuelson maintains that we should be able to tell the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of things and phenomena of the economic world.Less

Aristophanes’ Frogs and the Failure of Criticism

Stephen Halliwell

in Between Ecstasy and Truth: Interpretations of Greek Poetics from Homer to Longinus

This chapter provides a new reading of the contest of tragedians in Aristophanes' Frogs. It rejects the current consensus which finds a teleological impetus, with endorsement of a ‘civic poetics’ of ... More

This chapter provides a new reading of the contest of tragedians in Aristophanes' Frogs. It rejects the current consensus which finds a teleological impetus, with endorsement of a ‘civic poetics’ of tragedy, in the design of the play. It argues instead that Frogs is best seen as a comic dramatization of the difficulty of establishing authoritative standards of poetic criticism. The contest is interpreted with special reference to Dionysus' trajectory of experience in the course of the play: starting out as a passionate lover of poetry, he is gradually reduced to radical instability of judgement by the clashing and partly incommensurable values of Aeschylus and Euripides. Stressing the failure of attempts to rationalize Dionysus' eventual choice of Aeschylus, and drawing out a number of peculiarities in the play's finale, the chapter finds in Frogs a brilliant exposé of some of the hardest problems of Greek poetics.Less

1 The Durability of Goodness

Alan Mittleman

in Judaic Sources and Western Thought: Jerusalem's Enduring Presence

This chapter argues that the Book of Genesis, both in itself and as refracted by subsequent Jewish interpretation, affirms the goodness of being. Goodness is primary (vis-à-vis evil, which is ... More

This chapter argues that the Book of Genesis, both in itself and as refracted by subsequent Jewish interpretation, affirms the goodness of being. Goodness is primary (vis-à-vis evil, which is derivative) and immanent in creation. Jewish understandings of metaphysics and ethics are informed by this radical assertion of the goodness of creation. Platonic and Aristotelian understandings of goodness overlap with biblical and Jewish ones but differ crucially as well. The nature and consequences of these differences are explored with particular attention to the significance of tragedy. The discussion connects biblical themes with some central issues of metaethics.Less

CULTURAL RELATIVISM ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS

William Talbott

in Which Rights Should Be Universal?

In this chapter, Talbott explains why one of the most attractive arguments for extreme cultural relativism about morality, the moral imperialism argument, is incoherent. The incoherence of the ... More

In this chapter, Talbott explains why one of the most attractive arguments for extreme cultural relativism about morality, the moral imperialism argument, is incoherent. The incoherence of the cultural imperialism argument shows that extreme cultural relativism is too wishy-washy. Talbott distinguishes between internal and external moral norms and articulates a less extreme form of cultural relativism that is compatible with the cultural imperialism argument, cultural relativism about internal norms. This sets the stage for an evaluation of this less extreme form of cultural relativism.Less

Life Beyond Land: Aspirations, Ambivalence, and the Double Life of Development

Sarasij Majumder

in People's Car: Industrial India and the Riddles of Populism

The introduction frames the context and events that inform the central theme of the book. It also raises the theoretical questions regarding contradictory trends in populist politics. The declaration ... More

The introduction frames the context and events that inform the central theme of the book. It also raises the theoretical questions regarding contradictory trends in populist politics. The declaration of incommensurability between money and land is, the chapter claims, an index of villagers’ desires and aspirations, which remain largely unacknowledged in the dominant political representations of rural Indian villages as purely agricultural and populated by farmers, peasants, cultivators, or laborers. It argues that Landownership is a pause, a distance and a vantage point from which the world and the totalizing narratives of development and modernity make sense enabling them to imagine themselves as subjects of mobility and aspiration.Less

Land Is Like Gold: (In)commensurability and the Politics of Land

Sarasij Majumder

in People's Car: Industrial India and the Riddles of Populism

This chapter examines how local discourses and narratives about land and development connect property as things and property as relationships. “Land is our mother; it cannot be bought and sold,” ... More

This chapter examines how local discourses and narratives about land and development connect property as things and property as relationships. “Land is our mother; it cannot be bought and sold,” “Land is like gold, it is good even if weeds grow on it,” “We are the proprietors,” “Cash vanishes, land remains,” “We (the landed) are more civilized and developed than the landless.” These statements and the local political contexts of their emergence together provide landowning villagers with rhetorical strategies to imagine, talk about, and take positions regarding their relationships with the state, the political regime, and the landless lower caste.Less

Value Versus Values?

Sarasij Majumder

in People's Car: Industrial India and the Riddles of Populism

This chapter foregrounds three interrelated issues that run through the book: (1) the incommensurability between land and money, (2) the double life of development, and (3) structural power and ... More

This chapter foregrounds three interrelated issues that run through the book: (1) the incommensurability between land and money, (2) the double life of development, and (3) structural power and value. It emphasizes that the incommensurability between land and money that led to protests over state compensation for land takings are neither a case of pure rejection of industrialization nor of simple irrational thought and institutional failure. To understand the impasse, one has to look at the local iterations of development.Less