Legein to What End?

In the 5th century a number of sophists challenged the orthodox understanding of morality and claimed that practicing injustice was the best and most profitable way for an individual to live. Although a number of responses to sophistic immoralism were made, one argument, in fact coming from a pair of sophists, has not received the attention it deserves. According to the argument I call Immortal Repute, self-interested individuals should reject immorality and cultivate virtue instead, for only a virtuous agent can win the sort of everlasting reputation that makes a life truly admirable and successful

Ex Nihilo (2017-2018)

Table of Contents: Sex is About Power: Dissecting Pornography’s Role in the Sexual Language Game / by Hitaxhe Kupa; The University of Pennsylvania (p. 8-14) -- "Point and Proclaim": Possible Response to the Grounding Problem / by Eli Barrish; The University of Texas at Austin (p. 15-21) -- Choosing Eudaemonic Emotions: Aristotle and the Proto-Stoic Theory of Emotions / by Abdulwausay I. Ansari; The University of Houston (p. 22-29) -- Affirming Neo-Aristotelian Teleology And its Applications in Normative Medical Ethics / by Nathan Wong; The University of Texas at Austin (p. 30-40)Philosoph

Being-for. Purposes and Functions in Artefacts and Living beings

The paper argues for the need to think differently about the attribution of functions and purposes in artifacts and in living organisms. A unified notion of function for artefacts and organisms presupposes the assumption of an artefact model of nature. In order to defende a difference between natural teleology and the teleology of artifacts it is necessary to re-think the Kantian notion of internal purposiveness and the Heideggerian distinction between organ and instrument

Pragmatism and the pragmatic turn in cognitive science

This chapter examines the pragmatist approach to cognition and experience and provides some of the conceptual background to the “pragmatic turn” currently underway in cognitive science. Classical pragmatists wrote extensively on cognition from a naturalistic perspective, and many of their views are compatible with contemporary pragmatist approaches such as enactivist, extended, and embodied-Bayesian approaches to cognition. Three principles of a pragmatic approach to cognition frame the discussion: First, thinking is structured by the interaction of an organism with its environment. Second, cognition develops via exploratory inference, which remains a core cognitive ability throughout the life cycle. Finally, inquiry/problem solving begins with genuinely irritating doubts that arise in a situation and is carried out by exploratory inference

Gender Is a Natural Kind with a Historical Essence

Traditional debate on the metaphysics of gender has been a contrast of essentialist and social-constructionist positions. The standard reaction to this opposition is that neither position alone has the theoretical resources required to satisfy an equitable politics. This has caused a number of theorists to suggest ways in which gender is unified on the basis of social rather than biological characteristics but is “real” or “objective” nonetheless – a position I term social objectivism. This essay begins by making explicit the motivations for, and central assumptions of, social objectivism. I then propose that gender is better understood as a real kind with a historical essence, analogous to the biologist’s claim that species are historical entities. I argue that this proposal achieves a better solution to the problems that motivate social objectivism. Moreover, the account is consistent with a post-positivist understanding of the classificatory practices employed within the natural and social sciences

From ends to causes (and back again) by metaphor: the paradox of natural selection

Natural selection is one of the most famous metaphors in the history of science. Charles Darwin used the metaphor and the underlying analogy to frame his ideas about evolution and its main driving mechanism into a full-fledged theory. Because the metaphor turned out to be such a powerful epistemic tool, Darwin naturally assumed that he could also employ it as an educational tool to inform his contemporaries about his findings. Moreover, by using the metaphor Darwin was able to bring his theory in accordance with both the dominant philosophy of science in his time and the respected tradition of natural theology. However, as he introduced his theory of evolution by natural selection in On the origin of species in 1859, the metaphor also turned out to have a serious downside. Because of its intentional overtones, his contemporaries systematically misunderstood his metaphor not as a natural mechanism causing evolution to occur but as an agent who works towards particular ends. The difference in success between natural selection as an epistemic tool and its failure as an educational tool is labelled as a paradox. We explain the paradox from a cognitive perspective and discuss the implications for teaching evolution

Between emancipation and domination: Habermasian reflections on the empowerment and disempowerment of the human subject

Habermas’s ‘linguistic turn’ can be regarded as a systematic attempt to locate the normative foundations of critical theory in the rational foundations of language. This endeavour is motivated by the insight that any theoretical framework that is committed to the emancipation of the human condition needs to identify the normative grounds on which both its critique of social domination and its pursuit of social liberation can be justified. Just as Habermas’s firm belief in the possibility of human emancipation manifests itself in the concept of the ‘ideal speech situation’, his radical critique of human domination cannot be separated from the concept of ‘systematically distorted communication’. Although the significance of these two concepts for Habermas’s communication-theoretic approach to the social has been widely recognised and extensively debated in the literature, their overall importance for a critical theory of human empowerment and disempowerment has hardly been explored in a satisfying manner. Drawing upon Habermas’s communication-theoretic conception of human coexistence, this paper makes a case for the view that a comprehensive critical theory of society needs to account for both the emancipatory and the repressive potentials of language if it seeks to do justice to both the empowering and the disempowering potentials of the subject

The Chronotopic Imagination in Literature and Film

In this contribution, I would like to examine the way in which Bakhtin, in the two essays dedicated to the chronotope, lays the foundations for a theory of literary imagination. […] His concept of the chronotope may be interpreted as a contribution to a tradition in which Henri Bergson, William James, Charles Sander Peirce and Gilles Deleuze have been key figures. Like these four authors, Bakhtin is a philosopher in the school of pragmatism. His predilection for what Gary Saul Morson and Caryl Emerson have called “prosaics” puts him right at the heart of a philosophical family that calls forth multiplicity against metaphysical essentialism, and prefers the mundane to the universal. It seems wise to proceed carefully in the attempt to reconstruct Bakhtin’s theory of imagination. In this contribution to the debate, I choose to develop a philosophical dialogue between Bakhtin and the above-mentioned philosophical family. More specifically, it seems to me that the ideal point of departure for examining the way in which Bakhtin attempts to get to the bottom of the mysteries of literary imagination is Gilles Deleuze’s synthesis of Bergson’s epistemological view on knowledge as “the perception of images”, as well as Peirce’s theory of experience based on a typology of images. In the following, I show that Bakhtin’s view of the temporal-spatial constellations in literature demonstrates a strong affinity to the Bergsonian view that perception of the spatial world is colored by the lived time experienced by the observer. Based on this observation, I then develop a typology of images which places the concept of the chronotope in a more systematic framework

The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement

A movement dedicated to applying neuroscience to traditional philosophical problems and using philosophical methods to illuminate issues in neuroscience began about twenty-five years ago. Results in neuroscience have affected how we see traditional areas of philosophical concern such as perception, belief-formation, and consciousness. There is an interesting interaction between some of the distinctive features of neuroscience and important general issues in the philosophy of science. And recent neuroscience has thrown up a few conceptual issues that philosophers are perhaps best trained to deal with. After sketching the history of the movement, we explore the relationships between neuroscience and philosophy and introduce some of the specific issues that have arise