Nature\u27s Goodness: An Aristotelian Account

Neo-Aristotelians have made major headway in moral theory, and it is now commonplace to find philosophers defending the reality of goodness through a teleological analysis of human being. Whatever the merits of this approach, it has suffered from a lack of a sustained defense of its pre-modern metaphysical panorama: the Aristotelian conception of the human good gets traction only if its decidedly pre-modern and `robust\u27 philosophy of nature is defensible in its own right. In this dissertation, I aim to give a partial breakdown of the particular sort of metaphysical project that the Aristotelian moral theorist assumes, but does not always explicate. In particular, I aim to show how neo-Aristotelians rely on a particular view of substance that, while certainly challenging to contemporary naturalist construals of the same, is nevertheless defensible in its own right. Moreover, it might well be the case that even `liberal\u27 contemporary naturalist construals of `moral facts\u27 face difficulties that cannot be overcome; for they might only be able to countenance the less deflationary moral ontologies they desire by first assuming a view of substance that puts pressure on the entirety of the `modern\u27 project. The first part of this dissertation will focus on the ways that an Aristotelian nature is defensible. The second part will show in more detail how this pre-modern vision of reality helps to locate and in some cases even `solve\u27 certain metaethical conundrums. The goal is to show why an Aristotelian moral theory can offer a credible alternative to the usual `moral realist\u27 positions in contemporary metaethics, by offering not just a more plausible view of human goodness, but a more plausible view of nature as a whole

Virtual Reality: Consciousness Really Explained! (Third Edition)

Employing the ideas of modern mathematics and biology, seen in the context of Ernst Cassirer's "Symbolic Forms, the author presents an entirely new and novel solution to the classical mind-brain problem. This is a "hard" book, I'm sorry, but it is the problem itself, and not me which has made it so. I say that Dennett, and, indeed, the whole of academia is wrong

The interpretation of artifacts : a critique of Dennett's design stance

The Interpretation of Artifacts; A Critique of Dennett’s Design Stance Technological artifacts are a pervasive part of human life. They are, however, largely ignored in the analytic philosophical tradition, especially by philosophical naturalists. Being mind-dependent phenomena, tied up with human intentionality, analytic philosophers have largely found the topic unscientific, not objective, or simply trivial. An important exception is Daniel Dennett, who puts design at the heart of his naturalistic theory of mind

Ecological realism and the tension of realism and idealism in Heidegger\u27s thought

I examine the question of realism and idealism in terms of a tension in Martin Heidegger’s thought between entity realism and being idealism. Entity realism is the idea that entities exist independently of humans, whereas being idealism is idea that the being of entities is dependent on humans in some way. The question then is how to reconcile entity realism and being idealism without collapsing to an unattractive position like subjectivism or naïve realism. I appropriate Heidegger’s tension to answer the question of realism and idealism in terms of what I call ecological realism. Ecological realism is a way to combine the insights of both realism and idealism without collapsing into logical inconsistency or an undesirable form of either realism or idealism. We want to account for how entities exist independently of us while their being depends on us. I account for these two theses in terms of the concept of sense-making, which concerns how we make sense of the entities we encounter. Appropriating insights from Heidegger as well from modern scientific theory, I defend ecological realism against several objections, and develop an answer to the question of realism and idealism that does justice to both the reality of entities and the ideality of their being

Richard Rorty\u27s map of political misreading

For more than a quarter century, Richard Rorty was one of the most controversial writers. Critics of Rorty have often clustered their remarks around distinct themes within Rorty’s body of literature. Is Rorty’s criticism of the correspondence theory of truth valid and what standard of validity could confirm that? Does Rorty’s treatment of pragmatists such as William James and John Dewey accurately reflect their writings? Is Rorty’s brand of liberalism defensible when it assumes no non-circular form of justification can be proffered? These are the questions most often addressed by Rorty’s critics. He responded to their objections for two decades. By taking a synoptic view of Rorty’s literary corpus, my goal is to change a few of the questions being asked and offer criticism of Rorty’s texts predicated on the validity of a new cluster of questions. I offer a reading of Rorty’s political theories that places Rorty’s debt to the literary critic Harold Bloom’s concepts higher than his avowed affiliation with pragmatism. I argue that in order to understand the nature of Rorty’s affiliation with pragmatism it is best to understand how Rorty was profoundly influenced by a cluster of Bloom’s concepts. These concepts include, “belatedness,” “anxiety,” “influence,” “strong poet,” “precursor,” and “misreading.” I propose a reading of Rorty’s text which, when taken together, make Bloom’s influence on Rorty central. I describe five features that make Rorty’s pragmatism peculiar. Next, I move to a discussion of Rorty’s exchanges with Donald Davidson revealing Rorty’s adaptations, contradictions, and peculiar allegiance to pragmatism. Next, I explain that allegiance by placing Bloom as the central figure in the late development of Rorty’s writings on the division of the private realm of self-creation and the public realm of solidarity. Finally, I discuss how Bloom’s concepts help explain how Rorty has wedged himself in a peculiar way between Rawlsian liberalism and communitarianism. Although Bloom is central, his centrality does not make Rorty’s writings more coherent. Placing Bloom at the center explains some of Rorty’s peculiarities while it raises other problems

Social Constructionism as Cognitive Science

Social constructionism is a broad position that emphasizes the importance of human social processes in psychology. These processes are generally associated with language and the ability to construct stories that conform to the emergent rules of 'language games'. This view allows one to espouse a variety of critical postures with regard to realist commitments within the social and behavioural sciences, ranging from outright relativism (language constructs all of our concepts) to a more moderate respect for the 'barrier' that linguistic descriptions can place between us and reality. This paper first outlines some possible social constructionist viewpoints and then goes on to show how each of them conforms to the basic principles of information theory. After establishing this relation the paper then argues that this leads to a deal of commonality between social constructionist positions and the baseline aims of cognitive science. Finally, the paper argues that if information theory is held in common this both suggests future research collaborations and helps to 'mop up' some of the arguments surrounding realist commitments

Natural anti-realism

The thesis defines and examines a position ('natural anti-realism') which combines an anti-realist semantics with an evolutionary epistemology. An anti-realist semantics, by requiring that a theory of meaning be also a theory of understanding, cries out for an explicit epistemological component. In urging an evolutionary epistemology as such a component, I seek to preserve and underscore the semantic insights of the anti-realist whilst deflecting the common criticism that the anti-realist must perforce embrace some form of noxious idealism. An evolutionary epistemology, I argue, can provide a distinctive content for the belief that reality is independent of human thought without needing to claim that anything we can say or think about the world can be conceived as being true or false in full independence of our capacity to know it as such. This content is to be secured in two ways. The first is to observe that language is best understood as a tool of minds which are themselves best understood as the products of a natural process operating in an independently real world. The second is to form a non-transcendent conception of transcendent facts. The accessible evidence concerning the form of the selective process, it is argued, warrants the claim that reality may exceed its humanly accessible contours. For it warrants the claim that man is probably cognitively limited and biased in ways rooted in our peculiar, and somewhat contingent, evolutionary past. The natural anti-realist thus conceives of reality as both independent of, and potentially transcending the limits of, man's particular mental orientation. A largely realistic metaphysics may thus accompany an anti-realist semantics without the lapse into vacuity or incoherence which some commentators seem to fear

Social ontology and agency. Methodological holism naturalised.

Contemporary philosophy of the social sciences is dominated by methodological individualism. Intentional agency is assumed to be conceptually and explanatorily prior to social facts and social practices. In particular, it is generally thought that denials of methodological individualism are bound to include ontologically unnatural and, thereby, unacceptable views. This dissertation provides a comprehensive criticism of this orthodoxy. Part I argues that social facts do not have to be understood as aggregates of actions and attitudes of essentially asocial individuals. Rather, the construction of social facts requires that acting as a member of a group rather than as a disparate individual is a fundamental building block of social reality and social facts. This idea is explicated in the anti-individualistic terms of the theory of collective intentionality. Part II tackles the accusation that the theory of collective intentionality is indefensibly anti-naturalistic in the sense that its picture of humans is essentially incompatible with evolutionary biology. This accusation is answered in terms of detailed analyses of evolutionary models of human sociality and empirical studies of the nature of social action. Part II concludes that it is actually the methodologically individualistic picture of social action as strategic individual action that is unacceptable. The theory of collective intentionality is compatible with and supported by scientific naturalism. Part III, then, defends full-blown methodological holism. It is argued that intentional action and agency as we know them actually require that individual agents (qua agents and not qua physical objects) are essentially constituted by social practices. Intentional action must be explained and understood in terms of social practices. However, this view is argued to be perfectly naturalistic both in the sense of not assuming any ontologically suspect entities and in the sense of being supported by the natural sciences. Indeed, it is the individualistic orthodoxy that has to apply unnatural notions

The Usefulness of Truth : An Enquiry Concerning Economic Modelling

This thesis attempts to justify a normative role for methodology by sketching a pragmatic way out of the dichotomy between two major strands in economic methodology: empiricism and postmodernism. I discuss several methodological approaches and assess their aptness for theory appraisal in economics. I begin with the most common views on methodology (i.e. empiricism and postmodernism) and argue why they are each ill-suited for giving methodological prescriptions to economics. Then, I consider positions that avoid the errors of empiricism and postmodernism. I specifically examine why the two major strands of methodological criticism fail to give helpful methodological advice to economists and sketch out a pragmatic approach that can do this