Archive for category Viewpoint
Perceptual experience: both relational and contentful
Posted by Lisa Evans in Viewpoint on March 27, 2012
We are pleased to invite you to the 2012 Mark Sacks lecture:
Perceptual experience: both relational and contentful
John McDowell
It seems right to say that perceptual experience puts experiencing subjects in (direct or immediate) relation with items in their environments. It is increasingly widely held that there is an inconsistency between that claim and the idea that perceptual experience has content. John McDowell will argue that there is no such inconsistency.
The paper from this lecture will be published in an upcoming issue of the European Journal of Philosophy and the lecture will be recorded and made available as a free podcast.
Date and time: 5.30pm, Friday 15th June 2012
Venue: Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, 34 Gell Street, S3 7QY, UK
All are welcome to attend the lecture which will be followed by a drinks reception hosted by Wiley-Blackwell.
The texts of previous lectures in this series (formerly known as the EJP Annual Lectures) have been published as follows:
2011: Identity, Individuation and Substance, David Wiggins
2010: Why Are You Betraying Your Class?, Avishai Margalit
2009: Danish Ethical Demands and French Common Goods: Two Moral Philosophies, Alasdair MacIntyre
2008: Ethics for Communication, Onora O’Neill
New Naturalistic Philosophy Editor for Philosophy Compass
Posted by Liam Cooper (Managing Editor) in Event, Teaching & Learning, Viewpoint on March 15, 2012
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of the new editor of the Naturalistic Philosophy section of Philosophy Compass, Edouard Machery.
Edouard is Associate Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, a Fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, and a member of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (Pittsburgh-CMU). His research focuses on the philosophical issues raised by psychology and cognitive neuroscience with a special interest in concepts, moral psychology, the relevance of evolutionary biology for understanding cognition, modularity, the nature, origins, and ethical significance of prejudiced cognition, and the methods of psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He has published more than 60 articles and chapters on these topics in venues such as Analysis, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Cognition, Mind & Language, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophy of Science. He is the author of Doing without Concepts (OUP, 2009), and he has been an associate editor of The European Journal for Philosophy of Science since 2009. He is also involved in the development of experimental philosophy, having published several noted articles in this field.
The Atheist’s Guide to Reality
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Although it came out late last year, Alex Rosenberg’s book, The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions hasn’t been getting the press it deserves. Indeed, the comparative attention lavished on Alain de Botton’s much less interesting Religion for Atheists seems downright unfair. Probably Rosenberg’s title is largely to blame. He has all but admitted choosing it as a marketing ploy. This was probably a mistake. The title does the book no justice, since one thing The Atheist’s Guide has relatively little to say about is atheism. This has led people like this Independent reviewer to focus on complaining that the book offers little to atheists (more sensitive to logical solecisms than de Botton, Rosenberg declines to offer them religion) while ignoring its real topic.
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50th Anniversary of the Southern Journal of Philosophy
Posted by Liam Cooper (Managing Editor) in Viewpoint, Research on March 12, 2012
The Southern Journal of Philosophy is celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2012! To commemorate this milestone and to honor all of those who have sustained this distinctive forum for the past half-century, each of the issues in this year’s volume has been specially commissioned, guest-edited, and dedicated to a timely topic from one of the areas in which the SJP regularly publishes (analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and history of philosophy):
- 50.1: “Epistemic Coherentism,” ed. Ted Poston
- 50.2: “Continental Philosophy: What and Where Will It Be?” ed. Ted Toadvine
- 50.3: “Newton and Newtonianism,” ed. Mary Domski
- 50.4: “Relativism about Value,” eds. Max Kölbel and Dan Zeman
Together, these issues will offer a “state of the discipline” look at key debates in contemporary philosophy.To be alerted when new issues publish, visit the SJP homepage and click “Get New Content Alerts” from the top left Journal Tools menu.
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New Editor-in-Chief for Philosophy Compass
Posted by Liam Cooper (Managing Editor) in Event, Teaching & Learning, Viewpoint on February 24, 2012
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of the new chief editor of Philosophy Compass, Elizabeth Barnes, who will be coming on as of today and continuing the great work begun by Brian Weatherson. Elizabeth is an Associate Professor in the department of philosophy at the University of Leeds. Her research interests are split between metaphysics and ethics. In metaphysics, she’s written on indeterminacy, emergence, truthmaking, and the open future. In ethics, her work has focused on disability and wellbeing.
The team would also like to extend their warm thanks and appreciation to Brian for the leadership and vision he has shown in the 6 years since launch. During his tenure, the journal has gone from being a largely unknown online novelty to now playing a unique and respected role in philosophical scholarship.
Welcome Elizabeth, and thanks Brian!
Are We Turning into Commodities?
Posted by fullyfleshed in Viewpoint on February 23, 2012
Slavoj Žižek, in a recent London Review of Books article, alleges that the capitalist mode of generating wealth has changed. Money can still be made through the production of material goods – but the big bucks are now being made by privatizing everyday life and leasing it back to consumers. So, for example,
“…Microsoft has imposed itself as an almost universal standard, practically monopolising the field [of computational technology], as one embodiment of what Marx called the ‘general intellect’, by which he meant collective knowledge in all its forms”
This example evinces what we can usefully think of as the capitalization in part of Wittgensteinian ‘forms of life’. A ‘form of life’ is a useful heuristic for capturing a community’s shared biological and cultural background, in terms of traditional and entrenched patterns of behaviour, in a single phrase. Žižek’s point is that these patterns of behaviour, which form the ‘general intellect’, are being exapted: parts are being adopted, built upon, and changed to create a new pattern of behaviour, which are then rented out or sold to consumers.
Machine Math?
Posted by fullyfleshed in Viewpoint on February 16, 2012
Calculators are an often used example in the philosophy of mind. Sometimes they’re used analogously, to show how computational algorithms can be implemented in a variety of mediums (say, the very different circuitries of the calculator and the human brain). Other times, they’re used metaphorically, as objects that we can attribute intentional states: the calculator ‘knows’ how to add and ‘believes’ that 2+2=4. But how appropriate are comparisons between calculators and humans? Is it a matter of implementing the same (or nearly the same) algorithm? Or is the comparison a mere metaphor? Stanislas Dehaene is the champion of the surprising view that neither of these (caricatured) approaches can be right: calculation is neither a matter of merely attributing intentional states, nor do humans and calculators implement algorithms in the same way.
(Apologies if this topic seems old hat to any – if you are a person already familiar with Dehaene, ‘cultural re-mapping’, number sensing, and the like, the payoff to re-reading this extremely cool and interesting stuff about human mathematical capabilities, is some very exciting and interesting new advances in brain localization and machine-learning)
Dehaene’s view is that our mathematical abilities result from the mixture of two evolved mechanisms, and, importantly, a sprinkling of language. The first of these evolved mechanisms is a capacity to distinguish a certain amount of discrete quantities, or numerosity: the ability to tell apart one, two, three, and maybe four and five. Then, there is the capacity to distinguish differences in quantity: that six is bigger than one, or that twenty is less than sixty. Both of these abilities can be found in animals, and, yes, human children. And it’s easy to understand why such mechanisms might persist over time*: as an organism, it is very handy to have a capacity to determine between alternatives; whether option (a) was better than (b) because more nutrients, or less competition, or what have you. Read the rest of this entry »
Tradition and Politics
Detail from James Gillray's 'New Morality'. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
‘Without a tradition, everything is impermanence and flux.’ Thus writes David Brooks in a New York Times piece giving advice to the rebellious and dissatisfied youth of today. If you are one of these youth, Brooks’ advice is that your rebellion should be grounded in a past tradition:
‘If I could offer advice to a young rebel, it would be to rummage the past for a body of thought that helps you understand and address the shortcomings you see. Give yourself a label. If your college hasn’t provided you with a good knowledge of countercultural viewpoints — ranging from Thoreau to Maritain — then your college has failed you and you should try to remedy that ignorance.’
The Philosophy of Safety Nets
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Achieving happiness is easy. I don’t mean eudaimonia – that oversophisticated happiness for Pinot-snuffling yuppies. I mean ordinary, practical happiness for ordinary, practical folk: utility. Achieving eudaimonia is definitely not easy; at your very approach it dances away like a will-o’-the-wisp on gossamer winds of pretentiousness. But utility? Utility is solid and graspable. In fact, Australians say ‘utility’ to refer to what Americans call a ‘pick-up truck’. A ute, we normally say. What’s more blunt and practical than that? Eudaimonia is a concept for sprinkling on your puy lentils to add that certain je ne sais quoi. Utility, on the other hand, is a concept you could change your sparkplugs with.
So, achieving ute is easy. Here’s how you do it. Start with the things you have. Now exchange them with people for other things you would prefer to have. People will participate in these exchanges whenever their preferences are different to yours. This will be often, since humans are psychologically diverse. Keep exchanging for as long as your preferences fail to be maximised, and you’ll always be getting closer to full happiness.
Irritating ‘Philosophy’
Posted by fullyfleshed in Viewpoint on January 21, 2012
I have a little bugbear.
A little pet peeve.
So there are a ton of different usages of the word ‘philosophy’. Leaving aside its double-life as a verb, the OED lists nine noun entries for ‘philosophy’ – and one of them really grinds my gears. I might be the only philosopher that gets the irritated, nails-on-chalkboard sensation when someone uses the term in this way, but I suspect not. Not only are philosophers incredibly sensitive to their own use of language, splitting already split hairs, I find that they’re almost preternaturally attuned to the misuse of words in others. Maybe we’re just all jerks. Number six in the OED list is the spine-shivering offender, particularly, entry (b): “In extended use: a set of opinions or ideas held by an individual or group; a theory or attitude which acts as a guiding principle for behaviour; an outlook or world view.”
Maybe now you’re starting to sympathize with me. Read the rest of this entry »
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You are currently browsing the archives for the Viewpoint category.
New from Philosophy Compass:- The Concept of Sovereignty in Contemporary Continental Political Philosophy Verena Erlenbusch
- Agamben’s Fictions Colin McQuillan
- Berkeley and God in the Quad Melissa Frankel
- Foundational Semantics I: Descriptive Accounts Manuel García-Carpintero
- Foundational Semantics II: Normative Accounts Manuel García-Carpintero
- Is There a Distinctively Feminist Philosophy of Religion? Elizabeth D. Burns
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