New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

The continental/analytic philosopher: texts and arguments

Over the last couple of days, I’ve been in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, for an ‘author-meets-critics’ symposium on my forthcoming book on formal languages. It is a real privilege for me to have my work be put under the scrutiny of such careful readers prior to publication, while there is still time to incorporate suggestions and comments to the final result. The discussions have been extremely fruitful, and the commentators – Alexandre Machado, Luis Carlos Pereira, Eros Carvalho and Paulo Faria – have done a great job at ‘deconstructing’ the text (in a constructive way, of course!). The philosophy department at UFRGS is perhaps the most ‘analytic’ of all philosophy departments in Brazil, with an impressive group of excellent philosophers. It is also one of the most congenial philosophy departments I’ve ever encountered; hardly any internal animosity, people are extremely nice and pleasant, and absolutely wonderful hosts (Alfredo Storck in particular). Should you ever be invited to pay them a visit, you must absolutely accept the invitation!

But anyway, this post is not only meant to be a bit of shameless self-promotion and to thank everybody in Porto Alegre for the lovely welcome; I actually have a point to make on one of the recurring themes here at New APPS, namely the analytic-continental divide. The four ‘critics’ were each assigned different chapters of the book to discuss, and besides raising questions and objections, they each also offered a summary of the chapters assigned to them for the audience (we couldn’t possibly assume that everybody would have read the whole thing). I was struck by the extreme accuracy of their accounts of the ideas and theses presented in the book; it was truly flabbergasting.

On Citations

The distinguished historian of philosophy (and fellow NewAPPSer), Dennis Des Chene, appeals to lack of citations to claim that Benardete's Infinity had no influence in the "real world." (For the record: I hope any of my works will get cited more than 70 times in the real world!) But as any historian of early modern philosophy can tell you, citations don't tell the whole story. Here's a relevant example from the recent history of metaphysics (I am recycling an earlier post): let's focus on the methodology of one of the classic papers of contemporary metaphysics (Hawthorne & Cortens, 1995), "Toward Ontological Nihilism." This piece follows the rhetorical/argumentative-methodology of Bennett's Rationality (which I like to call his Fable of the Bees) almost exactly. This is no surprise because Bennett (who was one of Hawthorne's teachers; I believe also Cortens but less sure) is generously cited in the paper, although Rationality isn't. I think this is a nice case of very plausible, unconscious influence (something Hawthorne proposed to me in correspondence after I asked him about it).

On the revival of analytic metaphysics.

For those of us under the domain of Lewisian metaphysics, it may seem like remote history to remind ourselves that the origin of analytic philosophy was, in part, a revolt against metaphysics. But when (more or less exactly) did metaphysics return to analytic philosophy? (Let's stipulate that when Quine turned his fire on the analytic-synthetic distinction and blurred the boundaries between philosophy and science, he not only opened the door to naturalism, but also to metaphysics.) Lewis' publishing career dates to the mid 1960s. An obvious earlier source is Strawson's Individuals (1959). But while clearly significant in all kinds of ways (and certainly Oxford philosophy has a starring role in the revival), this was essentially a conservative metaphysics of the everyday--leaving everything as is. (Michael Della Rocca would argue that this is characteristic of analytic metaphysics/philosophy more generally.)

Another, more easily overlooked source is José A. Benardete's Infinity: An Essay in Metaphysics (1964). This beautiful, megalomaniac book (284) defies easy summary. But despite the many references to Wittgenstein (and a very ironic epitaph from LW on the frontispiece), this monograph embraces the stance of the Metaphysician not content with the everyday; without shame it endorses the search for an actual infinite. In the austere climes of Upstate New York (Rochester/Syracuse) metaphysics was, thus, nurtured (especially after Bennett and Alston joined) with one of its indirect offspring now the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford. When future historians will write our history, they will discover this irony: in the preface, Infinity acknowledges its debt to analytic philosophy's unnameable other, Leo Strauss.

History of analytic philosophy anthologies

A graduate student writes with a request: What are some of the best anthologies that folk have used in teaching history of analytic philosophy?

Come on in, the water's fine!

Jon Cogburn invites "analytic pluralists" and other bi-curious types to join SPEP. 

Methodology of history of philosophy

During the last few weeks I have tried out so Download Philosophicprophecyandmethodologyoct21me ideas on you. [Special thanks to Jeff Bell, Dennis Des Chene, Michael Kremer!] Here is a VERY FIRST draft, please don't quote without permission. But your critical comments are very welcome.

Download Philosophicprophecyandmethodologyoct21

On the invention of analytic philosophy by Ernest Nagel (II)

Following the suggestion of Greg Frost-Arnold (as discussed by Catarina), I explored Ernest Nagel as a philosophic prophet who invented analytic philosophy as we know it in 1936. In response, Jeff called attention to an important paper by Sidney Hook. Now, I fully accept Jeff's point that Nagel's two papers are a clear response to Hook. Jeff offers five important observations on Hook's paper in which he tries to suggest that Hook and Nagel (who, as the splendid Melissa Zinkin pointed out, were close friends) were offering a shared response to German philosophy. But Jeff's reading is based on a misunderstanding of what Hook is saying--and the misunderstanding is caused by the success of Nagel's way of framing things. (So much so that Hook's philosophic universe becomes almost unimaginable to us.) To see what I am getting at, let me first quote the crucial third point in Jeff's post, and then show how even a sophisticated philosopher like Jeff becomes less than sure-footed: "3. In his observations concerning Husserl, Hook makes two points that are especially relevant considering contemporary discussions within and outside continental philosophy regarding realism. First, Hook identifies the phenomenological tradition spearheaded by Husserl as "the strongest analytical group in Germany and [secondly] closest to the English and American school of neo-realism." (p. 152). Whether justified or not, Hook sees Husserl as closely aligned with the Russellian tradition in anglo-american philosophy. What is important for Hook's fourth point is that the same is not true of Heidegger."

CC#12: Hook's "Impression" of German Philosophy circa 1930

Continuing with some thoughts and research related to posts that Eric, Catarina, and I have written regarding the history of the continental-analytic distinction (see here, here, and here) and the importance of turning the discussion to methodological differences in order to better understand this history, I stumbled across Sidney Hook's 1930 essay in the Journal of Philosophy, "A Personal Impression of Contemporary German Philosophy". After reading this essay I've concluded it's likely that Nagel's 1936 "Impressions and Appraisals" essay that Eric discusses in his post (linked above) was influenced by Hook's essay.

There are also 5 points I gleaned from this essay that are relevant to recent discussions regarding the methodologies of analytic and continental philosophy.

Nagel's Philosophic Prophecy...Or How Analytic Philosophy as We Know It Was Invented...

“A stranger frequently hears important truths at the fireside”—Tocqueville

[This post continues our recent discussion on NewAPPS (see, e.g., Catarina Dutilh Novaes, my plugs for Schlick here and earlier here, and especially Jeff Bell's terrific post and my response to Jeff); what follows below is also a draft of a section of a paper on the methodology of the history of philosophy I am writing, so there is some cross referencing to earlier stuff [much of what I blogged about], comments much appreciated. Special Thanks to Greg Arnold-Frost, who insisted I look at Nagel.]

The first part of this entry provides evidence for Nagel's significance as the source of the now present self-conception of the origin of analytic philosophy--it shows this. The second part of this entry argues that Nagel instantiates "true philosophic prophecy," even if *I* cast doubt on Nagel's narrative.

The way we think about the origins of analytic philosophy can be traced to a remarkable two-part narrative published in 1936 by the American philosopher, Ernest Nagel.[N1] Ostensibly it is a disarming report from his tour of the continent.[N2] Nagel was probably the first to coin “analytic philosophy” in the sense that became influential the next decades, but he also picked out the schools of thought associated with it (Cambridge of Bertrand Russel with Wittgenstein and Moore, the Vienna Circle with special focus on Carnap in Prague, and the Polish logicians in Lwow and Warsaw). In particular, he deliberately “excluded mention of the men whose thought does not bear directly on questions of logic and method.” (1936a, 5)

Feynman on precise definitions and philosophical methodology

Via Adolfo Neto on G+, I came across an interesting blog post, ‘Richard Feynman on the folly of crafting precise definitions’. Feynman is known not only for having been a brilliant physicist (he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1965), but also for his outspoken personality (see here for a collection of his memorable quotes). He was a keen popularizer of physics, but often expressed harsh opinions on other fields of inquiry, the humanities in particular. Indeed, the quote that is the starting point for the post on precise definitions just mentioned does not paint a very favorable picture of philosophers:

We can't define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers… one saying to the other: “you don't know what you are talking about!”. The second one says: “what do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you? What do you mean by know?”

It is harsh, but I’m afraid it is not entirely unfair. The Socratic method of questioning the exact meaning of concepts is of course at the heart of philosophy from the very start, and there is much to be commended about realizing that we often do not know exactly what we 'mean' with the terms and concepts we regularly employ.

On Esoteric philosophers...

And “While I was at Cambridge a letter from a friend in Vienna assured me that in certain circles the existence of Wittgenstein is debated with as much ingenuity as the historicity of Christ has been disputed in others. I have seen Wittgenstein, though only casually, and therefore feel competent to decide that question. I did not receive his permission to attend his lectures, and since except to small, exclusive groups at Cambridge and Vienna his present views are not accessible, I feel extraordinarily hesitant in reporting on the doctrines he holds. For various reasons Wittgenstein refuses to publish; and even among his students of years' standing there is considerable doubt as to what his beliefs are on crucial issues. My information about Wittgenstein's views depends upon certain notes on his lectures which are in circulation and upon conversations with students and disciples both at Cambridge and Vienna. Mystery and a queerly warped personality lend charm to many a philosophy which otherwise is not very significant; but in spite of the esoteric atmosphere which surrounds Wittgenstein, I think his views are both interesting and important.” (Ernest Nagel, 1936a, 16-17) [Gregory Frost-Arnold has urging me to look at this piece; cf. my discussion here.-_ES]

the road to me; the royal road to me; the road to a shared future (or how Soames is a Hegelian, and Michael Kremer a Skinnerian)

1. In 1969 Quentin Skinner published a famous article that promoted the idea that in doing history of philosophy (or political theory) we really encountered "alien" ways of answering philosophic questions. We find an echo of Skinner's view in Bernard Williams' famous advocacy that history of "philosophy that can help us in reviving a sense of strangeness or questionability about our own philosophical assumptions.” [To be sure, Williams' distinction between the history of ideas and history of philosophy is not Skinner's. I couldn't find an online copy of Williams' article.] Skinner didn't just deny that there are perennial questions in philosophy, but he insisted that there were only individual answers to individual questions. In fact, together with the writings of Foucault, Skinner is the locus classicus for what I have called the cult of contingency. (He believes it is a "general truth" that there are no "timeless concepts" in the history of philosophy or in describing our social institutions, although he allows this may not be so in mathematics.) Skinner's embrace of the cult of contingency is interesting because he also extracts from it a Socratic moral, that is, "history" provides a "lesson in self-knowledge," if not the Kantian message that "we must learn to do our thinking for ourselves."
2. Now in his paper, Skinner briefly discusses and dismisses an alternative view (which he associates with Hegel) that the best way to write history of philosophy is from the "present" which is, after all, the most highly evolved. Scott Soames' massive (2003) Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century heartily embraces that Hegelian perspective. In a forthcoming paper, drawing on some distinctions from the historian of mathematics, Ivor Grattan-Guinness (1990), Michael Kremer has adopted the phrase “a royal road to me” for that kind of presentist history "which aims to provide an “account of how a particular modern theory arose out of older theories instead of an account of those older theories in their own right,” thus confounding the questions “How did we get here?” and “What happened in the past?” (Kremer is quoting Grattan-Guinness, in part). Kremer goes on to to suggest that "philosophical history is always in some sense a “road to me,” but only becomes objectionable if it is treated as a “royal road to me.” Properly carried out, philosophical history will shape its practitioner philosophically." That is to say, in effect Kremer criticizes Soames for writing a history of his [and Kripke's] prejudice(s), or to put this more politely (and closer to Kremer's own words) Soames doesn't merely mis-characterize the past, in Soames' approach we can't be surprised by the past (Kremer quotes Williams on this point). Now, Kremer's point isn't to bemoan that we forgo on an exciting emotion by following in Soames' footsteps. Rather his point is that Soames' self-congratulatory history of progress (the royal road to me) is not properly a philosophic activity. As opposed to Soames style "royal road to me," Kremer embraces "untimely" history of philosophy (quoting Williams, who is echoing Nietzsche) that is a kind of "road to me." In particular, untimely history of philosophy either upends present philosophy (this is why surprise matters so much to Williams) or makes the past useful to one's present (by making one revise/improve one's philosophic orientation/doctrine, etc).

On Carnap's criticism of Heidegger (post-script to Bell)

Several of us at NewAPPS (Protevi, Lance, Cogburn, maybe Jeff Bell) are explicitly committed to overcoming the analytic vs continental divide. (I see more value in ongoing rival schools and traditions of philosophy.) And as a group, we try not to be mean or sectarian about any way of doing philosophy (although most of us have strongly felt judgments, and we allow ourselves to provoke debate). So, it should come as no surprise that we regularly return to the topic (see Catarina Dutilh Novaes here and my own plugs for Schlick here and earlier here). But Jeff Bell's terrific post on Abe Stone's brilliant analysis the origins of the split, takes the discussion to a more important level. On Stone's reconstruction Heidegger and Carnap understood Husserl and each other quite well, and both offered conflicting approaches to the responsible use of language in response to Husserl's philosophy. In Stone's hands, the difference between Heidegger and Carnap (and their followers) is, thus, fundamentally ethical (in a Kantian sense). Now, some other time I want to return to Stone's motives for disclosing Carnap's "brief hints."

In the history of philosophy, "the nothing itself nothings," has, of course, a dubious status as either brilliant ridicule or very uncharitable reading. But as Stone has taught us, in context that sentence is a very charitable reading of Heidegger. No, the real insult to Heidegger occurs near the end of Carnap's (1931) paper [I have linked to an English translation]. Carnap ends his paper (which is rarely read, but often cited) with a two-fold insult to Heidegger: first, "Metaphysicians [that is, Heidegger] are musicians without musical ability." (Cf. Heidegger's Stimmen in "What is Metaphysics?") Second, Carnap THEN GOES ON TO PRAISE NIETZSCHE and his poetry. To say this as a serious joke: Heidegger's lecture courses on Nietzsche are a response to Carnap's two-fold insult.

But Carnap's praise for Nietzsche as (the right sort of) philosophical-metaphysical poet (cf. Heidegger's treatment of Nietzsche as a Metaphysician of being), should remind us that Carnap's writings as such are not the source of the way we are used to thinking of the split between analytic vs continental. (From an analytic point of view, Nietzsche belongs to 'them'--of course, that's been changing.) To understand the historic roots to the way we have been taught to think about the split, we must turn (as Gregory Arnold Frost has been urging us) to Ernest Nagel's two-part "Impressions and Appraisals of Analytic Philosophy," in JPhil 1936 (here and here). But about that gripping story (homo-erotic cults, ethnic and religious discrimination, esoteric teachings, etc) much more next week.

CC#10: Husserl and the history of analytic and continental thought

In Eric’s post of a few days ago (here), he continues with his argument that Moritz Schlick ought to be considered the “rightful father of analytic philosophy,” contrary to the more frequent claim that this honor belongs to Frege. This post led me to think yet again about the historical roots of the analytic-continental divide.

The usual story as I would tell it, simplified as it is, was that one could mark the bifurcation with Frege’s critique of Husserl’s habilitation dissertation, On the Concept of Number. In his critique, Frege rejected Husserl’s strong psychologistic tendencies. On this telling, we begin with shared concerns and problems in the foundations of mathematics but then divergence arises as Frege and Husserl set out addressing these problems and concerns, with Husserl taking up the issue  along Brentano’s psychologistic lines, and Frege (and subsequently Russell) rejecting this approach and moving in a decidedly realist direction.

This story of the diverging approaches of Husserl and Frege supports the claims of those who read continental thought as being more anti-realist than analytic thought, though there are notable exceptions of course (Deleuze, among others, is more appropriately placed among the realists while the later writings of Putnam have a strong anti-realist flavor).

Thanks to Eric’s post, and to his recommendation of an excellent essay by Abraham Stone, “Heidegger and Carnap on the Overcoming of Metaphysics,” (this and other essays can be found here), I am beginning to rethink the history of the analytic-continental divide.

Hurry up, January 2012

UPDATE WHICH MAKES A HASH OF THE TITLE: Apparently I was on the Australia site for CUP. Moore's book will be availble in the US in November 2011, according to this page.

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Because that's when The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things by Adrian (AW) Moore will be released by Cambridge UP.

Blurb: This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide range, A. W. Moore's study refutes the tired old cliché that there is some unbridgeable gulf between analytic philosophy and philosophy of other kinds. It also advances its own distinctive and compelling conception of what metaphysics is and why it matters. Moore explores how metaphysics can help us to cope with continually changing demands on our humanity by making sense of things in ways that are radically new.

Contents: Preface; Introduction; Part I. The Early Modern Period: 1. Descartes: metaphysics in the service of science; 2. Spinoza: metaphysics in the service of ethics; 3. Leibniz: metaphysics in the service of theodicy; 4. Hume: metaphysics committed to the flames?; 5. Kant: the possibility, scope, and limits of metaphysics; 6. Fichte: transcendentalism versus naturalism; 7. Hegel: transcendentalism-cum-naturalism; or, absolute idealism; Part II. The Late Modern Period I: The Analytic Tradition: 8. Frege: sense under scrutiny; 9. The early Wittgenstein: the possibility, scope, and limits of sense; or, sense, senselessness, and nonsense; 10. The later Wittgenstein: bringing words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use; 11. Carnap: the elimination of metaphysics?; 12. Quine: the ne plus ultra of naturalism; 13. Lewis: metaphysics in the service of philosophy; 14. Dummett: the logical basis of metaphysics; Part III. The Late Modern Period II: Non-Analytic Traditions: 15. Nietzsche: sense under scrutiny again; 16. Bergson: metaphysics as pure creativity; 17. Husserl: making sense of making sense; 18. Heidegger: letting being be; 19. Collingwood: metaphysics as history; 20. Derrida: metaphysics deconstructed?; 21. Deleuze: something completely different; Conclusion.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating,* and I'm not sure about "non-analytic traditions" as a category, but just to have that last section in the book is an extremely hopeful sign (see the first category I'm putting this post under). Anyone interested in participating in a New APPS discussion on this book please email me (protevi AT lsu DOT edu).

*The paracite is I think "the proof is in the pudding," which is something mischevious British students might do with their friend's logic homework.

h/t Simon Glendinning on FB.

With friends like these

Toward the end of Alex Rosenberg's "Why I am a Naturalist" piece in the NYT, we find this line. 

If semiotics, existentialism, hermeneutics, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction and post-modernism transparently flout science’s standards of objectivity, or if they seek arbitrarily to limit the reach of scientific methods, then naturalism can’t take them seriously as knowledge.

Now I'm a minimal naturalist of the ontological monism / no supernatural entities type, which is a very low bar to clear, to be sure. But even if were a naturalist of the "only science gives us knowledge" school I don't think I'd be happy with Rosenberg's column, as my title indicates. Now usually I take a "Forget it, Jake, it's the blogosphere" line on these things -- is it really worth reading seriously or even semi-seriously a blog post? But what the hell, let's go through this sentence. 

First: what is the principle of unity of this list of bogeys? Elsewhere the post mentions "literary theory" or "literary criticism," but those two fields are by no means identical, nor do they provide a principle of unity for this list.

Second: is this list anything more than an intonation of shibboleths? Let's examine them one-by-one. I'm not going to claim inside knowledge, but I think any philosopher should know what I'm about to say about these names.

a. Semiotics, aka the study of signs. How could Peirce or Saussure "flout" that to which they aspired? 

b. Existentialism. Really? Let's be naturalists about this. What experimental / observational method would enable us to find flesh-and-blood existentialists walking the halls of American universities in 2011? 

"philosophy, that noblest of intellectual pursuits,"--Moritz Schlick

As some loyal readers may recall, I have promoted Moritz Schlick (one of the great martyrs to philosophy) as the rightful father of analytic philosophy (against the misguided, partisan claims by those that point to Frege, who is often held up by those that wish to emphasize either the so-called linguistic turn or the significance of the developments in symbolic logic, or Sidgwick, who is often held up by those that wish to emphasize a number of intellectual virtues that are supposedly emblematic of analytic philosophy or who wish to promote the significance of particular set of questions in moral philosophy).

Now my advocacy of Schlick turns on four aspects of his thought. First, his recognition of coining concepts as a distinct philosophic activity within and outside the sciences. Second, when these concepts are quantitative they are part of a possible of science; when the concepts are qualitative they are part of a possible philosophy. (This is a view that he defended in 1910 and, perhaps, not later.) Third, Schlick's willingness throughout his life to embrace a vantage point for philosophy that while being scientifically very informed could reflect on science from without, without accepting its claims merely on authority. The mature Schlick did so as an “unrelenting” or “true” “empiricist.” In particular, he explicitly contrasted his “true” empiricism with the presumably false empiricists.(See See Moritz Schlick (1935) “Facts and Propositions” Analysis, 2(5): 65-70.) As I have argued on this blog, philosophic prophets tend to deploy a dialectic between true and false philosophies.

On moments (or Cogburn's Irritation with Derrida)

A clever blog by Graham Harman prompted discussion on our blog. The appearance of Harman's post coincided with ten year anniversary of (the event) 9/11; this is not an insignificant fact when Harman's blog takes Derrida to task for his "compulsive unwillingness to stand anywhere" and sets up a philosophical opposition (and temporal succession) between Derrida and Žižek, who is said to be "such a perfect post-Derrida leading actor, I believe, is the compelling force of his dogmatic assertions and his willingness to take responsibility for the thing he says." Force, action, dogmatism, responsibility...are sometimes historically necessary (Tahrir Square) and sometimes historic blunders (GWB). But philosophy is not only a historical-theatrical morality play...

I am no expert on Harman at all, but his blog is not about Derrida. It is (rhetorically--and I mean this as a compliment) about promoting a certain philosophical-political agenda (Force, action, dogmatism, responsibility, etc). This lack of honest engagement with Derrida becomes clear by a momentary reflection on the quote that is exhibit A in Harman's (and Cogburn's) prosecution: “In what you call my books, what is first of all put into question is the unity of the book and the unity ‘book’ considered as a perfect totality, with all the implications of such a concept. And you know that these implications concern the totality of our culture, directly or indirectly. At the moment when such a closure demarcates itself, dare one maintain that one is the author of books, be they one, two, or three?”

First, the quote does not deny that one can take a stand. In fact, to my untrained eyes the surface meaning of Derrida is all about the courage/daring of taking a stand. (Echoes of Will to Power, no?) So, second, it is completely silly to use this as evidence for Derrida's unwillingness a) either to take a stand or b) to be held responsible for one's texts. Third, the quote is from AN INTERVIEW! (So, some allowance, if it were necessary, would have to be made for that; better think carefully or explore hesitantly before one asserts with over-confidence something that ought to be denied.) Fourth, in context the interview is discussing to what degree Derrida's books form a "system" (and "strange geometry") and how each individual book is organized. And Derrida goes on to assert all kinds of things about his system and individual books. In doing so, Derrida's language is demanding and technical, but (even to an outsider like myself) not un-intelligible.

So, Exhibit A is terrible evidence for the content of Harman's point. (This is why I call it rhetorical.) What about Cogburn's moments of irritation? Cogburn writes, "On the other hand, trying to read Derrida never, ever, ever ends well for me. One memorable evening I actually got hives. It's as bad as how Martin Amis describes the effects of the novels of Richard Tull, the protagonist of The Information. No one can finish his last modernist experiment before getting ill. At one point a case of the books almost causes a plane crash. That's exactly how Derrida's prose effects me." Wow! How awesome! Derrida is capable of causing powerful somatic effects -- of the sort that promote the start of inquiry -- in Cogburn's world. I prefer to treat Cogburn's attraction to Harman's proposed anesthetic as a momentary lapse in a philosophically fearless mind.

I finally realize what irritates me about Derrida

I'm in a really strange position vis-à-vis Derrida. On the one hand I love Samuel Wheeler's Deconstruction as Analytic Philosophy, Martin Hagglund's Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life, and Lee Braver's discussion of Derrida in A Thing of This World: A History of Continental Anti-Realism. I mean, I've learned a lot from Derrida through Wheeler, Hagglund, and Braver. And have learned a lot talking about Derrida with my friend and oftimes co-writer Mark Silcox and with my colleague Francois Raffoul.

On the other hand, trying to read Derrida never, ever, ever ends well for me. One memorable evening I actually got hives. It's as bad as how Martin Amis describes the effects of the novels of Richard Tull, the protagonist of The Information. No one can finish his last modernist experiment before getting ill. At one point a case of the books almost causes a plane crash. That's exactly how Derrida's prose effects me.

And I never managed to figure out why this was the case until reading Graham Harman's blog today.

Set theory vs category theory and foundations of mathematics.

I have been mulling the following remarks in a critical and striking (because it ends with a series of quotes from Pierre Bourdieu) review by Mary Tiles of a recent book by Penelope Maddy, "The conclusion would seem thus to be that there are no philosophical foundations for set theory; its grounding lies in the mathematical practices for which it was once proposed as a foundation. And since presumably the same could be said for category theory there should be no question of which is the correct foundational theory, although Maddy makes no mention of category theory." (The thought is anticipated earlier in the review by a parenthetical remark: "in this mathematical sense set theory is not unique; category theory can also play that foundational-in-the-sense-of-unifying role.") Tiles' claim is not idiosyncratic because one can find it repeated in the Stanford Encyclopedia: "Category theory is an alternative to set theory as a foundation for mathematics." I find all of this a bit odd because according to the same textbook definition of a category seems to rely on sets, but compared to my fellow bloggers here at NEWAPPS I am terrible at math (and have not yet read Steve Awodey textbook on category theory!) so maybe others can enlighten me...

Continental Connections Thursday #7: what is philosophy?

In this week’s Friday version of continental connections (I was too swamped with beginning of the semester duties to get this done earlier), I want to expand upon a couple of points that were made in posts on this blog in the last week. In her post on methodological pluralism (here), Catarina called for a conjunction of four different methodologies that, when done together, will result in a more thoroughgoing philosophical inquiry. In the comments, David Chalmers argued that there was something else besides the four methodologies Catarina listed, what he called “substantive philosophical thinking and reasoning,” or “philosophical abduction,” and he argued that it is at the core of philosophy.

I agreed and argued that what I take to be the core of philosophy, following Deleuze and others, is problematics, or the creation of concepts vis-à-vis problems. Catarina argues that problematics falls under her fourth methodology, what she calls "conceptual reflection," and she is probably right.  In a follow-up comment John Protevi pointed out that a subsequent way to think of the history of philosophy would be as a genealogy of problematics, an analysis of how one problematic changed into another – e.g., how did Descartes’s problematic become Kant’s? Understood this way, the history of philosophy is not to be understood in terms of progress, and John, rightly I think, points out that this may well leave us with another point of bifurcation within philosophy, but one that spans both continental and analytic philosophies, and this would be between those who would argue for and those who would argue against progress in philosophy.

On "meso-physics" and metaphysics

We've had wonderful discussions here lately on philosophy, physics, and metaphysics. The "physics" in question is quantum and relativity physics, AFAICT.

So I'd like to ask whether and / or to what extent the sort of "meso-physics" of dynamical systems theory (DST) is discussed in either philosophy of physics and / or analytic metaphysics. 

I have a number of reasons to ask about DST and metaphysics. 

1. There's a lot of diversity in "post-structuralist French philosophy," and one of the big breaks is between Derrida's "end of metaphysics" position and Deleuze, who once said: “I feel myself to be a pure metaphysician. . . . Bergson says that modern science hasn't found its metaphysics, the metaphysics it would need. It is this metaphysics that interests me.”
2. There's a school of thought that sees DST as one of the sciences (or perphaps better, one of the scientific tools) that Deleuze targets in his metaphysics. The pioneers here are Brian Massumi and Manuel DeLanda (see here as well) and a number of others including Jeff Bell and Miguel de Beistegui have followed them, as have I. 
3. DST often shows up in 4EA cognitive science; among the major works here are the Naturalizing Phenomenology volume of 1999, and Evan Thompson's 2007 Mind in Life. (I try here to "add Deleuze to the mix" of DST-inflected 4EA work.)
4. I'm going to put this post in the "analytic - continental divide (and its overcoming)" category, because I think / hope there's a way adding Deleuze to the mix of a "post-divide" metaphysics would be very interesting, as Jeff Bell has argued in a number of his excellent "Continental Connections Thursday" posts.

Methodological pluralism in philosophy

UPDATE: I've changed the term used to describe the fourth category in the taxonomy below from 'conceptual analysis' to 'conceptual reflection'. I hope the new term is better able to cover the many approaches suggested by commenters which did not seem to fit the original description in a straighforward way.

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In light of the very interesting methodological discussions we’ve been having here at New APPS on the relations between physics and metaphysics, I’d like to put forward a tentative taxonomy of different strands within philosophical methodology. I suspect it can also be useful for discussions on the analytic vs. continental divide and its overcoming, which is also a recurrent theme in this blog.

Indeed, looking at past and present work in philosophy (and trying to be as encompassing as possible), it would seem that we can identify four main strands of methods used for philosophical analysis:

• Formal methods – these correspond to applications of mathematical and logical tools for the investigation of philosophical issues. As examples one could cite the development of possible world semantics for the analysis of the concepts of necessity and possibility, applications of the Bayesian framework to issues in epistemology (giving rise to so-called formal epistemology), Carnapian explication, and many others.
• Historical methods – they rely on the assumption that, to attain a better understanding of a given philosophical concept/problem, it is useful (or even indispensable) to trace its historical origins in philosophical theorizing. Of course, the study of the history of philosophy has intrinsic value as such (emphasis on ‘history’) but at this point I’m interested in what Eric Schliesser has once described as ‘instrumental history of philosophy’ (emphasis on ‘philosophy’).
• Empirical methods – these are the methodological approaches that systematically bring in elements from empirical sciences, such as the sciences of the mind (particularly relevant for philosophy of mind, epistemology, but to my mind also for philosophy of logic and mathematics), physics (possibly relevant for metaphysics), biology (arguably relevant for ethics, and everywhere else where evolutionary concepts come into play) etc. Sometimes this approach is described as ‘naturalistic’, but as we know there are (too?) many variations of the concept of naturalistic philosophy (many self-described naturalistic approaches are not sufficiently empirically-informed to my taste).
• Conceptual reflection – arguably the most traditional philosophical method, consisting in unpacking concepts and drawing implications, introducing new and hopefully useful concepts, problems, conceptual frameworks etc.

So we seem to have a plurality of methods actually being used for philosophical theorizing. Are they all equally legitimate and adequate, both in general and in specific cases? I submit that the correct response to this plurality is methodological pluralism.

has anyone here yet read this book by Badiou on Wittgenstein?

Badiou is a formidable person to start up (I'm kicking myself for not having sat in on Protevi's course, and I would have were it not for all of the time-killing coffee spoon minutiae in my first semester as Director of philosophy), but this book looks really, really fascinating to me. It's just out in English, but I have no idea when a French version was written.

There are deep, deep connections between the work of Badiou's excellent student Quentin Meillassoux and some of the deepest ideas Graham Priest (e.g. in Beyond the Limits of Thought), but from the Amazon blurb, of Badiou on Wittgenstein I think there are some from Badiou as well. Anyhow, anyone who has read this or who knows a good web discussion of the book, please let us know!

Engendering Dialogue website now active; Bodies of Thought audio available

Here is the description for the Engendering Dialogue project: 

Engendering Dialogue: Feminist Thought and Contemporary Debates in Art, Science, and Education

This project is funded by a Royal Society of Edinburgh Research Network Award for the Arts and Humanities. Its aim is to build links between feminist philosophers, and researchers and practitioners in other key areas of philosophical, cultural and educational debate. By targeting debates in education, the visual arts, and cognitive science (a field in which Scottish HEIs have an internationally recognised expertise), the Network will increase awareness of the significance of gender in key areas of intellectual and cultural activity as well as in the development of educational policies and practices.

Much of the work undertaken in recent feminist thought – on areas such as the body and materiality, representation and power relations, or relational identities and difference – is also relevant to key issues in the philosophy of cognitive science (particularly embodied cognition and extended mind) as well as to the concerns of contemporary artistic and educational practice. The Network aims to make space for greater dialogue in each of these areas. Three Network conferences will bring together established thinkers and practitioners with those in earlier stages of their research or practice, while the Network website will publicise and document these events, house papers, offer links to further resources, and provide an opportunity for building further connections between Network participants.

The Network is organised by Dr Rachel Jones (Philosophy, University of Dundee) together with Project Assistant Carrie Giunta (Doctoral Researcher, Philosophy, University of Dundee). For further information or to be added to the email list for the project, please contact us at: [email protected]

The audio files for the "Bodies of Thought" conference are here. A summary of the conference is reproduced below the fold.

pluralism versus balkanization

In the previous post on pluralism by Mark Lance, he focused on three qualities in assessing the level of departmental pluralism:

1. Historical coverage.  There would be people working in all the main areas of "common" history - ancient, medieval, early modern, Kant, etc. - as well as "both" other histories.  An idea department would have people working specifically on figures in early analytic, history of logic, pragmatists, 20th c French philosophers, post-Kantian German idealism, and more.

2. Integration of multiple historical figures, multiple approaches, multiple styles into work in contemporary philosophy.  The idea department would be stocked with people who are eager to engage with Foucault and with Carnap in their work on epistemology. And so on for all the various areas.  If metaphysics is treated as a uniquely "analytic" (or "continental") field, that is non-ideal.  Same for ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, etc.  Ideal is for the production of philosophy to come from a place of pluralism.

3. Social engagement.  A department with five ghettos that collectively cover everything but with no serious engagement across them, is not ideal.  Not close.  Ideal is a department in which the cognitive scientists talk to the Heidegger experts, in which the NYU educated metaphysician talks regularly with the Deleuze expert, in which the epistemologist from Arizona seeks out the New School social epistemologist.

I think this final point is so incredbily important and one we must operationalize a bit more. The "five ghettos" type balkanization is I think what led to 95% of what has been toxic about the so-called analytic/continental split for the past four decades or so. While balkanization doesn't necessarily lead to rancor/animosity/upheaval/resource competition/philosophical blindness/general idiocy/etc., it is a pretty good precondition for all of these problems. And even when it doesn't lead to these things, it is I think still very bad for students in all sorts of ways, producing even more "party line" students from schools where one would think just the opposite would occur.

Since it is so important, and since a balkanized department can be so incredibly toxic to everyone involved, I'm trying to think of ways to further operationalize the pluralization/balkanization distinction. Here's a first stab at some notable goodmaking features (again, just for pluralism, we're not talking about absolute ranking of depatments!):

1. Individual faculty with publications from diverse AOC and AOSs that cross invidious divides,
2. Faculty who co-write with people with different AOC and AOSs, 
3. Lots of faculty with radically different AOS and AOCs who serve together productively on MA and Ph.D committees of students who go on to thrive,
4. A pluralistic speaker series attended by the whole department where a spirit of good will and collective purpose reigns,
5. Well attended reading groups and classes that focus on thinkers who bridge the gaps (McDowell, Braver, phenomenology cog science work, etc.),
6. Well attended reading groups and classes that involve issues as treated by different traditions (e.g. a Davidson, Putnam, and Derrida versus the Language of Thought, Heidegger and Brandom versus representationalism, etc.)

I realize that examples of (5) and (6) could probably be found very easily with respect to ethics and aesthetics.

Actually, by the above metrics my own department (and I include John Protevi, who's appointment is in French, but who is a humongous resource to philosophical community and education at LSU) is very pluralistic with respect to different appropriations of Heidegger, pretty pluralistic with respect to the philosophy of mind, and a little bit (but still enough to be slightly praiseworthy) pluralistic with respect to metaphysics. On the other hand, we are massively balkanized with respect to ethics and aesthetics (we've got a couple of very good people in diverse traditions, but manifest complete failure with respect to the above tests for issues concerning value theory), and scattershot with respect to everything else.This particular kind of balkanization, (which is probably much hard to fight in a smaller non Ph.D program), certainly explains my inability to come up with better examples for (5) and (6) above.

I think Lance's kind of anti-party line pluralism is a very, very good and important thing, and that by further operationalizing them we can come up with a clearer vision of how to better embody these virtues in our own communities. So any additions either to Lance's initial list or further ways to operationalize the virtues would be much appreciated.

Genuinely pluralist - along the A/C dimension - departments

I'm going to follow up on my last post by asking people to nominate departments that they believe to be genuinely pluralist in the sense that I roughly defined in my previous post.  There are some ground rules for this one that will be enforced with draconian precision.

1. Only positive nominations.  If we get a reasonable response here, I may open the list of nominated up for discussion where you will be able to say that the department isn't really pluralist.

2. Only nominations that actually explain and try to justify the claim that the department in question is "reasonably pluralist".  I'm interested in informed and supported claims.  So if you simply want to say "x is obviously pluralist" don't bother.  I don't require a detailed 20 page analysis, but some discussion of the various criteria I lay out below is needed.  Ideally, please note strengths and weaknesses.

3. No discussion of other dimensions of pluralism.  Yes, I know they are important.  I'm eager to help on them.  If anyone wants to start similar discussions along other dimensions I'll be glad to help.  And yes, I acknowledge that from many reasonable perspectives, this is a trivial matter to be worrying about.  No one is required to engage on this issue.  But this is not a meta-thread on whether this is a good thread.  (If you have a positive and serious suggestion for tweaking the methodology, feel free and I will use my discretion in posting that.  But ideally, just note that you are defending a department on slightly different grounds in your defense.) 

4. No comments about Brian Leiter, the PGR, the PR, SPEP, etc.  I'm interested here in positive suggestions of departments that are doing it well, not denunciations.

Queering the "analytic"/"continental" distinction

A great deal of the discussion around the new Pluralist's Guide has, in my view, gone completely off the rails.  People are debating whether it is a SPEP guide, whether Brian Leiter, or the PGR, is a positive influence on the field and other such, well, issues.  Worse, it is serving to further reinforce the worst wagon-circling, dismissiveness, and mutual distrust in the profession.

So I'd like to use this opportunity to return to one of the founding themes of this blog - that is one of the issues we all care about, and one of the issues that largely motivated the selection of people to participate: namely the stupidity and destructiveness of the analytic/continental distinction.  I return to this now, because a founding feature of the PG is that it is offering recommendations on places to study "continental philosophy".  My main claim is that this is a terrible idea, because on any recognizable sense of the terms "analytic philosophy" and "continental philosophy" it would be unethical to encourage a philosophy student to study (just) one or the other.  The only responsible advise, in my view, to a student who asked "where should I go to study continental philosophy?" is "Nowhere.  Go somewhere to study philosophy. Preferably somewhere that they don't justify their ignorance by inventing pseudo-categories."  That is, I'm going to argue for pluralism - though in a sense that is pretty directly opposed to the way that is meant by the PG and, I hasten to add, equally directly opposed to how it is meant by many departments that rank highly on the PGR.

Report on the Extended Cognition workshop

Here is a short report on the Extended Cognition Workshop, which just took place over the last days in Amsterdam. The general goal of the workshop was to bring together people interested in the concept of extended cognition in the spirit of ‘second wave EM’ (EM: extended mind) (Sutton) and ‘cognitive integration’ (Menary). The main characteristic of this general approach is emphasis on what is often described as the complementarity principle:

In extended cognitive systems, external states and processes need not mimic or replicate the formats, dynamics, or functions of inner states and processes. Rather, different components of the overall (enduring or temporary) system can play quite different roles and have different properties while coupling in collective and complementary contributions to flexible thinking and acting. (Sutton, ‘Exograms and Interdisciplinarity’)

The contrast is with versions of EM which emphasize the parity principle:

Cognitive states and processes extend beyond the brain and into the (external) world when the relevant parts of the world function in the same way as do unquestionably cognitive processes in the head.(Sutton, ‘Exograms and Interdisciplinarity’)

Has Dennett gotten it right?

I just finished the first draft of a paper on Daniel Dennett’s so-called heterophenomenology; actually against it. It bears the title “Phenomenological Skillful-Coping: Another Counter-Argument to Dennett’s Heterophenomenology” and I go on to explain the gist of Dennett’s heterophenomenology in order to criticize it from the point of view of European phenomenology. As everybody knows, with heterophenomenology Dennett attempts to provide a neutral method accounting for people’s utmost subjective experiences, what Dennett persistently calls their ‘own phenomenologies’. He has described heterophenomenology as “the neutral path leading from objetive physical science and its insistence on the third-person point of view, to a method of phenomenological description that can (in principle) do justice to the most private and ineffable subjetive experiences, while never abandoning the methodological principles of science” (Consciousness Explained).

I really don’t want to get into technicalities. Suffice it to say that there’s nothing easier than weeding out Dennett’s interpretation of phenomenology as introspection because —as Dan Zahavi has consistently pointed out—  “all the major figures in the phenomenological tradition have openly and unequivocally denied that they are engaged in some kind of introspective psychology and that the method they employ is a method of introspection” (for example, Husserl, Heidegger, Gurwitsch and Merleau-Ponty in several passages). Moreover, introspection is actually antiphenomenological from the outset for the very point of departure of phenomenology in Husserl’s breakthrough work, Logische Untersuchungen (1900-1901), was precisely a call to abandon the dichotomy (Scheidung) between inner and outer perceptions, which Husserl associated with a naïve commonsensical metaphysics left behind with the concept of intentionality. And of course, introspection is parasitic of this Scheidung which endorses the idea that consciousness is somewhat inside the head and the world outside.

So when for example Thomas Metzinger, following Dennett, affirms (cf. Being No One, 2003) phenomenology is so absurd for it must clumsily settle conflicting statements such as the following: “This is the purest blue anyone can perceive!” versus “No, it isn’t, it has a faint but perceptible trace of green in it!” or, “This conscious experience of jealousy shows me how much I love my husband!” versus “No, this emotional state is not love at all, it is a neurotic, bourgeois fear of loss!”… well, then we laugh with scorn. By ‘we’ I mean, of course, the ones acquainted with the phenomenological tradition.