Reclaiming Rationality Experientially: The New Metaphysics of Human Spirit in Hegel’s Phenomenology

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is typically read as a work that either rehabilitates the metaphysical tradition or argues for a new form of idealism centred on social normativity. In the following, I show that neither approach suffices. Not only does the metaphysical reading ignore how the Phenomenology demonstrates that human rationality can never adequately capture ultimate reality because ultimate reality itself has a moment of brute facticity that resists explanation, which prevents us from taking it as a logically self-contained, self-justifying metaphysical zone traditionally known as ‘substance,’ but it also ignores how the Phenomenology equally demonstrates that human rationality creates a historically self-unfolding universe of meaning that is, because it displays a rational systematicity and consistency unlike anything else in the world, the closest thing we have to substance, but which, given its freedom, is more correctly called ‘subject.’ Consequently, while the non-metaphysical reading rightly recognizes that the Phenomenology develops a radically innovative account of intersubjectivity, it neglects how the social theory that it develops comes fully equipped with various metaphysical commitments concerning nature, spirit, and the relationship between them without which this theory would be unintelligible

Science Under Attack

Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox conception of science, taken for granted by scientists and non-scientists alike, is irrational because it suppresses problematic assumptions, inherent in the aims of science, having to do with metaphysics, values, and political and social issues. We urgently need a more rigorous conception of science to be adopted and implemented that honestly acknowledges the problematic character of the aims of science, and seeks to improve them as science proceeds

Freedom, Morality, and the Propensity to Evil

In Book I of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason Kant offers an explanation of freedom and moral good and evil that is different from that offered in the Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals. My primary goal in this paper is to analyze and elucidate this new theory. My secondary goal is to contrast this new theory with the older one that it is replacing. I argue that the new theory, which centers on the idea that evil involves a sort of misprioritizing, enables Kant to get around two problems associated with the older theory

From Reason to Wisdom: Heidegger’s Interpretation of Logos

Heraclitus’ “all things are one” carries a classic metaphysical structure, which signifies that Being was already concealed at the beginning of Western thought. Heidegger delves into early Greek thought to reveal people’s understanding of nature before the deviation between logos (λόγος) and nature (φύσις). He argues that the light of Being flashed at the beginning of Western thought and then immediately vanished. The consequence of the concealment of Being was the formal opening of the path of Western metaphysics centered on rationality, which was taken as the path of wisdom. Western metaphysics ultimately led humanity to the realm of nihilism. Therefore, one possible way to address the nihilism problem caused by rationality is to return to early Western thought (pre-Socratic period), explore the original meaning of logos and nature, re-understand what wisdom is, and gain insight in wisdom to deal with nihilism

Communicative rationality in the standardization of legal relevant criminal conduct

Abstract/Keywords: Theory of communicative action, ontology of the sentence, systems, subsystems, role, function, crime of breach of duty, compensation, general and special prevention, rule of law, breach of communicative rationality, institutional rivalry and competition for organization, lord of the fact, the duty of guarantor, facticity and validity, counterfactual assertion, public use of reason, prosecution, transcendental ego, self, idealism, voyage, cognitive subject, object of knowledge, hermeneutics of criminal conduct and public servan

Toward a Lockean Unification of Formal and Traditional Epistemology

Can there be knowledge and rational belief in the absence of a rational degree of confidence? Yes, and cases of "mistuned knowledge" demonstrate this. In this paper we leverage this normative possibility in support of advancing our understanding of the metaphysical relation between belief and credence. It is generally assumed that a Lockean metaphysics of belief that reduces outright belief to degrees of confidence would immediately effect a unification of coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. Scott Sturgeon has suggested that the unification is effected by understanding the relation between outright belief and confidence as an instance of the determinable-determinate relation. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge”—knowledge and rational belief in the absence of rational confidence. We contend that there are genuine cases of mistuned knowledge and that, therefore, epistemological unification must forego token identity of belief and high confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence even without token-identity. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification

Time-Slice Rationality and Self-Locating Belief

The epistemology of self-locating belief concerns itself with how rational agents ought to respond to certain kinds of indexical information. I argue that those who endorse the thesis of Time-Slice Rationality ought to endorse a particular view about the epistemology of self-locating belief, according to which ‘essentially indexical’ information is never evidentially relevant to non-indexical matters. I close by offering some independent motivations for endorsing Time-Slice Rationality in the context of the epistemology of self-locating belief

Nature, Science, Bayes' Theorem, and the Whole of Reality

A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of each model or hypothesis. Thomas Bayes' Theorem relates the data and prior information to posterior probabilities associated with differing models or hypotheses and thus is useful in identifying the roles played by the known data and the assumed prior information when making inferences. Scientists, philosophers, and theologians accumulate knowledge when analyzing different aspects of reality and search for particular hypotheses or models to fit their respective subject matters. Of course, a main goal is then to integrate all kinds of knowledge into an all-encompassing worldview that would describe the whole of reality