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Philosophical Thought Experiments, Intuitions, and Cognitive Equilibrium

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

Drawing on literature from the dual‐processing tradition in psychology, the chapter tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that ... More

Drawing on literature from the dual‐processing tradition in psychology, the chapter tries to explain why contemplation of an imaginary particular may have cognitive and motivational effects that differ from those evoked by an abstract description of the same content, and hence, why thought experiments may be effective devices for conceptual reconfiguration. It suggests that by presenting content in a suitably concrete way, thought experiments recruit representational schemas that were otherwise inactive, thereby evoking responses that may run counter to those evoked by alternative presentations of relevantly similar content.Less

Beginning with Analysis

Peter Hylton

in Propositions, Functions, and Analysis: Selected Essays on Russell＇s Philosophy

This chapter critically discusses the idea, explicit in Russell but by no means confined to him, that philosophical thinking can and should begin with an analysis of propositions. Russell sometimes ... More

This chapter critically discusses the idea, explicit in Russell but by no means confined to him, that philosophical thinking can and should begin with an analysis of propositions. Russell sometimes presents the idea of a proposition, and of the analysis of propositions, as fundamental, as starting points for philosophy. It is argued, to the contrary, that they cannot be taken for granted in that way. The claim here is a general one: supposedly fundamental philosophical ideas have presuppositions, and one way to reveal those presuppositions is to see how the ideas develop and change over time. The chapter argues for this claim, and tracks some of the relevant changes, in the particular case of Russell's conceptions of a proposition and of the analysis of propositions.Less

Exceptional Persons: On the Limits of Imaginary Cases

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

When should we trust our judgments about far‐fetched imaginary cases? This chapter argues that if the imaginary scenario is adduced to illuminate a concept structured around a set of necessary and ... More

When should we trust our judgments about far‐fetched imaginary cases? This chapter argues that if the imaginary scenario is adduced to illuminate a concept structured around a set of necessary and sufficient conditions, and if these conditions play a role in how we identify candidates as falling under that concept, then our judgments about the far‐fetched imaginary cases may help us to separate essential features of the concept from accidental ones. But if the concept is not structured in that way, or if the features in question do not govern our application of the concept, then our judgments about imaginary cases are likely to be misleading. The chapter then argues that the concept of personal identity falls into the second of these classes, and hence that far‐fetched thought experiments may not illuminate the concept in the way that they have been purported to. The chapter includes detailed discussions of John Locke's Prince and Cobbler case, Derek Parfit's case of teletransportation, and Bernard Williams's A‐body/B‐body case.Less

THE ATTACK ON EMPIRICISM AND ATOMISM

David O. Brink

in Perfectionism and the Common Good: Themes in the Philosophy of T. H. Green

This chapter focuses on Green's attack on the empiricist programme that sees all knowledge as resting on the deliverances of the senses. In this view, knowledge is built up from a foundation of ... More

This chapter focuses on Green's attack on the empiricist programme that sees all knowledge as resting on the deliverances of the senses. In this view, knowledge is built up from a foundation of simple discrete sensory experiences. He believes that this empiricist programme suffers rot at the foundations, because simple sensory experience that is not relational and in which the mind plays a purely passive role is impossible. For Green, it is hard to see how there could be any mere or pure sensation that was not at least implicitly relational and, hence, the product of the understanding.Less

Personal Identity and Thought Experiments

Tamar Szabó Gendler

in Intuition, Imagination, and Philosophical Methodology

This chapter argues that judgments about far‐fetched thought experiments are not helpful in illuminating the concept of personal identity. This is because certain patterns of features that coincide ... More

This chapter argues that judgments about far‐fetched thought experiments are not helpful in illuminating the concept of personal identity. This is because certain patterns of features that coincide only fortuitously may nonetheless play a central role in the organization of our concepts, and to the extent that imaginary scenarios involve disruptions of these patterns, our first‐order judgments about them may be distorted or even inverted. The core of the essay consists of a detailed assessment and critique of Derek Parfit's widely discussed contention that fission cases reveal that “personal identity is not what matters.” It suggests that Parfit's argument rests on a subtle misapplication of Mill's Method of Agreement.Less

Envy in the Philosophical Tradition

Justin D’arms and Alison Duncan Kerr

in Envy: Theory and Research

This chapter explores philosophical thinking on envy. It argues that the philosophical tradition seems largely in accord in embracing the Competitive Function Account of envy, according to which envy ... More

This chapter explores philosophical thinking on envy. It argues that the philosophical tradition seems largely in accord in embracing the Competitive Function Account of envy, according to which envy is a response to circumstances in which a rival within some status hierarchy gains an advantage over the subject. Envy then serves to motivate actions that would improve the subject's comparative position. This makes envy an amoral emotion, concerned with the subject's comparative position, not with questions of justice or desert. There is no such thing as wholly benign envy, because all envy involves a desire that the rival lose the advantage. This is why envy is plausibly regarded as morally problematic. Nonetheless, it is compatible with this picture to grant that envy may be an accurate assessment of the circumstances. Whether that is so depends on whether a rival's advantage can actually be bad for the subject as such. In other words, it depends on whether positional goods really make a difference to wellbeing.Less

Causation and Explanation

P. F. Strawson

in Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy

This chapter discusses the relation between causation and explanation. Causality is perceived as a natural relation that holds in the natural world between particular events or circumstance and it is ... More

This chapter discusses the relation between causation and explanation. Causality is perceived as a natural relation that holds in the natural world between particular events or circumstance and it is often associated with explanation. But if causality is a relation then explanation may not be related to it. These two levels of relationship are easily confused in philosophical thought because (they are not clearly distinguished from ordinary thought, and they are clearly distinguished in ordinary thought because doing so would often serve no practical purpose.).Less

. Walking Humbly with Your God: Jñanadev and the Warkari Movement

Fred Dallmayr

in In Search of the Good Life: A Pedogogy for Troubled Times

This chapter discusses three main topics. The first is the lifeworld of Jñanadev as the nourishing soil of his writings. The second is the central direction of his philosophical thought, which was ... More

This chapter discusses three main topics. The first is the lifeworld of Jñanadev as the nourishing soil of his writings. The second is the central direction of his philosophical thought, which was revealed chiefly in the Amritanubhava. The third and final topic discussed is the so-called Warkari Panth, which is a popular movement largely inspired by Jñanadev's work and centered on periodic pilgrimages to the sacred city of Pandharpur.Less

Order, Exteriority and Flat Multiplicities in the Social

Paul Patton

in Deleuze and the Social

This chapter examines the issues of order, exteriority, and flat multiplicities in the social in relation to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It discusses Deleuze and Guattari's ... More

This chapter examines the issues of order, exteriority, and flat multiplicities in the social in relation to the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It discusses Deleuze and Guattari's suggestion in What is Philosophy? that all thinking is a way of bringing order out of chaos, whether it takes place in the form of art, philosophy or science. It also explains their argument that certain contingent features of social life in ancient Greece provided the conditions under which philosophical thought could emerge and that all philosophy is geophilosophy in the sense that it is marked by certain features of the time and place in which it is carried out.Less

Sensory Experience and Cultural Identity

Kathryn Linn Geurts

in Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community

This chapter aims to provide an interpretive framework for the study of sensoriums and sensory experience and their place in one's understanding of cultural difference, discussing four arguments that ... More

This chapter aims to provide an interpretive framework for the study of sensoriums and sensory experience and their place in one's understanding of cultural difference, discussing four arguments that help structure the ethnographic descriptions of Anlo-Ewe sensory experiences and philosophical thought. The first argument is that sensoriums differ due to cultural tradition, and the second is that a sensorium is embodied, and that sensory orientations are acquired through processes of child socialization. The last two arguments state that sensoriums help shape notions of the person and guarantee that persons differ culturally and yet appear natural, and that the notions of the person and engagement with other intentional persons are central to health and well-being.Less

Sigmund Freud

Ronald Bogue

in Deleuze's Philosophical Lineage

This chapter investigates the influence of Sigmund Freud on Gilles Deleuze's philosophical thought. It explains that Deleuze was intrigued with the possibilities offered by Freud for the creative ... More

This chapter investigates the influence of Sigmund Freud on Gilles Deleuze's philosophical thought. It explains that Deleuze was intrigued with the possibilities offered by Freud for the creative reconfiguration of philosophical issues, and that he took up several Freudian concepts and gave them a prominent position in his thought. The chapter argues that whatever the shortcomings Deleuze saw in Freud and the Freudian psychoanalytic movement, they provided him with the key insight that desire and the unconscious are fundamental constituents of thought.Less

The Joy of Philosophy

Claire Colebrook

in Deleuze and the Contemporary World

This chapter investigates the sociability of philosophical thinking. It argues that the singularity of perception is what brings us into connection with the inhuman, and that this is what opens the ... More

This chapter investigates the sociability of philosophical thinking. It argues that the singularity of perception is what brings us into connection with the inhuman, and that this is what opens the self up to difference and becoming, and criticises the utilitarian principles operating at the heart of the contemporary world. The chapter explains that the becoming-imperceptible of thought which Gilles Deleuze's philosophical project advances resists colonising life with an anthropocentric model of thought or a utilitarian focus on ends.Less

On Becoming Humanly Wise

Robert J. O'Connell

in William James on the Courage to Believe

This concluding chapter briefly discusses why William James' positions, if understood as the book has interpreted them, remain valid reformulations of a long-standing and quite honorable view of what ... More

This concluding chapter briefly discusses why William James' positions, if understood as the book has interpreted them, remain valid reformulations of a long-standing and quite honorable view of what philosophical thinking is truly about: reformulations which signpost some escape routes out of the impasse in which the philosophical profession, and the business of philosophical education, find themselves mired at present. The chapter also explains how often Western philosophy has found itself compelled by the developments of its history to take the turn James that proposes, and proclaim the revenge of that forgotten truth: that the pursuit of wisdom inexorably grips the whole human being, not merely brain and mind, but heart, emotions, imagination, and sensibility as well.Less

Introduction: Altered States, Affect and Film

Anna Powell

in Deleuze, Altered States and Film

This book sets out to accomplish a distinctive remapping of the film experience as altered state, using both the film-philosophical insights of Gilles Deleuze and his broader investigations with ... More

This book sets out to accomplish a distinctive remapping of the film experience as altered state, using both the film-philosophical insights of Gilles Deleuze and his broader investigations with Félix Guattari as inspiration. It extends Deleuze's work in deploying art as a tool to investigate the nature of cinematic perception, and mobilises a productive assemblage with the work of other practitioners from the fields of both art and philosophy. The book aims to approach film in its specificity, as an experiential process as well as a stimulus to philosophical thought; discusses inductive film techniques and their functions; and describes the aesthetics of special effects pivotal to altered states film.Less

Philosophical Systems and Their History

Alan Nelson

in Philosophy and Its History: Aims and Methods in the Study of Early Modern Philosophy

This chapter advocates a method that strives to interpret important historical figures in philosophy as presenting philosophical systems of thought. This kind of systematic interpretation begins with ... More

This chapter advocates a method that strives to interpret important historical figures in philosophy as presenting philosophical systems of thought. This kind of systematic interpretation begins with the supposition that the philosophy being interpreted is itself systematic. This sometimes requires recovering the obscured systematicity. Section I gives a positive characterization of systematic interpretations. Section II notes some of the special obstacles that these interpretations must overcome if they are to be successful. Section III gives a brief sketch of how one might systematically approach Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. That text is a good test case because Locke professes systematicity, but historians have produced daunting arguments for the conclusion that the text fails to present a coherent system.Less

Conclusion

in From Man to Ape: Darwinism in Argentina, 1870-1920

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of Darwinism in Argentina. It suggests that Argentine Darwinism grew in response to the needs of nation building that characterized ... More

This chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the history of Darwinism in Argentina. It suggests that Argentine Darwinism grew in response to the needs of nation building that characterized the second half of the nineteenth century and Argentine intellectuals attempted to integrate all civilized ideas into the country's civilizatory process. It discusses the cultural and political analogies of Charles Darwin's evolutionary thought and highlights the success of Argentine philosophical thinking in developing its own national characteristics.Less

Community and the Self

Timothy C. Baker

in George Mackay Brown and the Philosophy of Community

This chapter discusses Brown's nonfiction prose. It tries to explain how Brown's own analyses of his life and fiction both differ from and confirm previous findings. It looks at the sense of ... More

This chapter discusses Brown's nonfiction prose. It tries to explain how Brown's own analyses of his life and fiction both differ from and confirm previous findings. It looks at the sense of community as a geographico-historical rootedness, and then considers the idea of the community, which has become a dominant strand of modern philosophical thought. It notes that the parallels between Nancy, Blanchot and Georges Bataille's complex views of community and that of Brown explain Brown's focus on individual death.Less