Metaphysical Import Research Articles

Analytic Philosophy: Compelled Reflection

The article deals with the history of analytic philosophy which involved periods when the importance of metaphysics was rejected, along with speculative philosophy and an accent was placed on the analysis of the language. The analytical tradition always presumed western philosophy as something self-evident. Until recently disputes on the importance of history of philosophy for analysts had not arisen. It not especially favored. However, the possibility of losing the self-reflection of analytic philosophy, the prob-ability of losing the analysis of one’s own foundation in the mirror of other traditions, having some-what other grounds than analytics, brought special attention to the history of philosophy. Compelled reflection revealed not only its attitude towards continental philosophy, but also threw light both on its success and its shortcomings. The strengthened work on an origin of analytical philosophy for the purpose of replacement of the developed myth with historical truth has begun. Now there are disputes concerning the term of interpretation «analytical philosophy» and the thinkers it involves. A problem is that is difficult to make exact definition of “analytical philosophy” as it is not so much a specific doc-trine as a liberal range of approaches to problems. The problem was to find a method of classification of analytical philosophers or to sort out their relations to the thought movement which history makes analytical tradition. Gradually for analysts it became clear that programs of analytical philosophy have replaced each other because the latent metaphysical assumptions lying in their basis have changed. The history of the historical-philosophical discussion of a problem is offered also by the given paper. Refs 31.

The Sensible and Insensible Value of the Shazdeh Garden of Mahan

Persian gardens are well known for the integration of indoors and outdoors. Shazdeh Garden reflect the profound metaphysical importance of natural beauty in Persian culture. There exists the special relation between sensible heritage and insensible of the humane spirit of the garden of Shazdeh. The Garden was not only a sensible invention but also an important carrier of the Iranian traditional culture. The Garden of Shazdeh showing the people to pursue the profound spiritual comfort of the living environment also were interrelated to the local custom. The Insensible heritage of humane spirit is a good example that the people and nature are in perfect harmony. Also it is impacting on the sensible and spiritual requirements of today

Bodies of Inference: Christian Wolff’s Epistemology of the Life Sciences and Medicine

This paper explores Christian Wolff’s attempt to introduce his scientific method in the life sciences and medicine. As one can expect in the light of recent scholarship, Wolff firmly relies on experience and shares Pitcairne’s conviction that physicians should imitate astronomers in basing their claims on observations. However, Wolff’s rational foundation of medicine also highlights the heuristic value of hypotheses, the use of a priori explanations in pathology, the teleological character and metaphysical import of physiological and medical concepts. Thus, his epistemological attitude towards living beings represents an interesting alternative to the purely empirical trend in early modern medicine.

Humean Supervenience, Composition as Identity and Quantum Wholes

In this paper, we focus on two related reductive theses in metaphysics—Humean Supervenience and Composition as Identity—and on their status in light of the indications coming from science, in particular quantum mechanics. While defenders of these reductive theses (at least those who do not simply deny the metaphysical import of empirical data and their proposed interpretation) claim that they can be updated so as to resist the quantum evidence, we provide arguments against this contention. We claim that physics gives us reason for thinking that both Humean Supervenience and Composition as Identity are at least contingently false, as the very process of composition determines, at least in some cases, the nature of composed systems. The argument has essentially to do with the fact that denying the reductive theses in question allows one to provide better explanations for the quantum evidence.

Phenomenology and Metaphysics

Moore claims, refreshingly, that Heidegger’s Being and Time is a metaphysical work. Moore also claims, strikingly, that Heidegger, indeed phenomenology more generally, would be better off dropping its metaphysical pretensions. Moore objects that phenomenology can have genuine metaphysical import only by incurring commitment to an untenable idealism. I defend Heidegger against this objection. Heideggerian phenomenology is metaphysical—it raises the question of, and makes commitments about, what it is for things to be—without any untenable idealism.

God’s creatures? Divine nature and the status of animals in the early modern beast-machine controversy

In early modern times it was not uncommon for thinkers to tease out from the nature of God various doctrines of substantial physical and metaphysical import. This approach was particularly fruitful in the so-called beast-machine controversy, which erupted following Descartes’ claim that animals are automata, that is, pure machines, without a spiritual, incorporeal soul. Over the course of this controversy, thinkers on both sides attempted to draw out important truths about the status of animals simply from the notion or attributes of God. Automatists – led by Nicolas Malebranche and Antoine Dilly – developed six such arguments, appealing to divine justice, providence, economy, glory (twice) and wisdom, while opponents to animal automatism developed two arguments, appealing to divine wisdom and goodness. In this article I shall examine the substance of all eight of these arguments, along with their origins, patronage, and variations, and the objections they elicited from opponents, with the aim of determining their suitability for use in contemporary debates about animal sentience and consciousness, and hence their relevance for contemporary philosophers.

El amor y el instinto sexual en la antropología de Max Scheler

Starting from Scheler’s claim that eros is the essence of life, this paper examines his theory of sexuality. I firstly consider “sexual love”, taking into account Scheler’s doctrine of value-emotions, particularly his view on “appetite”. Then I consider “sexual instinct”, putting forward Scheler’s criticism of Freud’s ontogenetic theory. Lastly I discuss Scheler’s view on the metaphysical importance of human sexual intercourse.

Rejoinder to Dennis C. Hardin:

Abstract The author reiterates his thesis that the motivation for power lust in liberals, conservatives, and totalitarians cannot be explained by “metaphysical importance” (or even, as per Hardin's suggestion, “superior metaphysical importance”) of economic or noneconomic activity per se, but only by the metaphysical fear that voluntary action in one or both of these realms evokes in statists of whatever stripe. Rand actually made both of these arguments, but only the latter has psychological explanatory power and plausibility in terms of Rand's discussion of the benevolent and malevolent universe premises, and thus is to be preferred over the former.

Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century by Claudia Thomas Kairoff

Book Reviews Claudia Thomas Kairoff. Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012. Pp. xiii+308. $55. In an 1807 letter to Walter Scott, Anna Seward (1742-1809) disparaged Wordsworth as an “egotistic manufacturer of metaphysical importance upon trivial themes” (194). This Keatsian tidbit in Claudia Kairoff’s Anna Seward and the End of the Eighteenth Century underscores not only Seward’s at times acerbic wit but also her “defense ofprinciples threatened by emer­ gent Romantic values” (162). Such Augustan “principles” are everywhere on display in this comprehensive exploration of Seward’s verse. From her repeated use ofpersonification to her emphasis on decorum and propriety, Seward appears as “one of the last neoclassicists,” as Paula Backscheider puts it (162), or in Kairoff’s words, “essentially an eighteenth-century poet” (ix). As the monograph’s title also telegraphs, Kairoffclaims that Seward’s po­ etry stands as an inflection point, “the missing link between Augustan and Romantic writing, combining a sophisticated knowledge of prosody with her ability to dramatize sensibility” (17). Kairoff repeatedly finds Seward “anticipating” (3, 6, 7, 8, etc.) the canonic figures with whom she was con­ temporary in her later years: most often Wordsworth, but also Blake and Jane Austen. The Romanticism sketched by Kairoff is less than nuanced, with all the accent on feeling and solipsism, as though “sophisticated pros­ ody” were abandoned after the French Revolution. No one would deny that verse primitivism became vital with the Romantics, most famously through the ballad revival, but Byron, Shelley, and Keats are certainly as “sophisticated” prosodists as any of the 18th century. The second-generation Romantics are not really Kairoff’s concern so much as a subdisciplinary periodization that has “marginalized” (3) the poet she is championing. She aims to counteract “nearly two hundred years of critical neglect” (1) by showing how Seward’s work “elucidates the eighteenth-century roots of many Romantic-era trends” (3). And yet, at the same time, Kairoff assails the application of Romantic standards to Seward. Instead of treating Seward as “a victim” (26) as in her first chapter on the poet’s fall from critical grace, “Under Suspicious Circumstances,” Kairoff might have benefited from considering how other neoclassical po­ ets of the Romantic period (Samuel Rogers, Thomas Campbell, among SiR, 52 (Fall 2013) 459 460 BOOK REVIEWS others) have likewise been critically disappeared, and from considering in broader terms the era’s controversies over neoclassical poetics. Kairoff aims to rehabilitate Seward as “an important poet” (31) by dis­ crediting the apparently widespread belief that she wrote “indifferent verse,” in Germaine Greer’s words (26). Value is located in Seward’s “beautifully crafted lines” and “technical agility” (136). In Kairoff, Seward has found a most generous reader, who never fails to identify how the po­ ems “rewardf ] attentive reading” (44). This formal analysis forces us to concede that Seward did indeed “labor[ ] to create mellifluous sound pat­ terns in her verse” (230). But Kairoff’s stress on technique also makes patent Seward’s disavowal of “metaphysical importance.” From our Ro­ manticist perspective, we cannot help but notice the neoclassical tendency to subordinate complex issues to grand gestures and often-inconsequential “mellifluous” effect. We may be more sympathetic to Walter Scott and his Wordsworthian critiques ofthe poet than to Kairoff’s outrage at his “insid­ ious tone” (19) and “condescending attitude” (23). If we overlook this polemic on “neglected” genius, however, Kairoff’s study helpfully illuminates the social circumstances under which a “lady” might have composed poetry in Seward’s day. In chapters 2 and 3, we wit­ ness Seward’s first forays into verse at salons where poetic contests were held. Kairoff shows how poetry production featured in the life of the gen­ tility and how the “amateur” poet could practice for later “professional” excursions. At the same time, Kairoff reminds us that the locus romanticus of the solitary stroller was not one Seward could easily inhabit: “the typical lady, hardly ever expected to venture forth without a servant or compan­ ion, had no hope of approaching, let alone fulfilling, that ideal” (52). Such limitations did not force Seward into the role of “a retiring domes­ tic...

“Seeing, seeing, seeing”: Deafness, Knowledge, and Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen

Research Article| September 01 2013 “Seeing, seeing, seeing”: Deafness, Knowledge, and Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen Maren Linett Maren Linett Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Twentieth-Century Literature (2013) 59 (3): 465–493. https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2013-4005 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Maren Linett; “Seeing, seeing, seeing”: Deafness, Knowledge, and Subjectivity in Elizabeth Bowen. Twentieth-Century Literature 1 September 2013; 59 (3): 465–493. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0041462X-2013-4005 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsTwentieth-Century Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 by Hofstra University2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Essays You do not currently have access to this content.

Historian or Philosopher? Ian Hunter on Kant and Vattel

SummaryIan Hunter's essay pursues several lines of argument, one explicit and the others not. The first is that of an historian correcting the mistaken view among Kantian commentators that Kant's conception of international justice had displaced Vattel's as the dominant one in nineteenth- and twentieth-century international thought. The second, which is not acknowledged, is that of a philosopher entering a debate over the relative cogency of the two conceptions. To accomplish this unacknowledged philosophical task, Hunter exaggerates the importance of Kant's metaphysics in his treatment of international justice and understates the element of raison d'état in Vattel's casuistical ethics. The subtext in both lines of argument is criticism, political rather than either historical or philosophical, of Kant's effort to articulate principles of international justice, together with implicit advocacy of Vattelian ethics as a corrective to Kantian ideology.

Knowing the Essence of the State in Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico‐Politicus

AbstractThis paper argues that Spinoza's main political writings are concerned, in part, with knowledge of essences as detailed in the Ethics. It is further argued that knowledge of the essences of states, and essential properties that belong to states, may be an example of the elusive scientia intuitiva or third kind of knowledge. The paper concludes by considering Spinoza's goals in his political writings and the importance of metaphysics and the theory of knowledge more broadly for early modern political philosophers.

The staccato roller coaster: a simple physical model of the staccato run

I present a simple model of Grunbaum’s staccato run in classical mechanics, the staccato roller coaster. It consists of a bead sliding on a frictionless wire shaped like a roller coaster track with infinitely many hills of diminishing size, each of which is a one-dimensional variant of the so-called Norton dome. The staccato roller coaster proves beyond doubt the dynamical (and hence logical) possibility of supertasks in classical mechanics if the Norton dome is a proper system of classical mechanics with metaphysical import. If not, challenges raised against the metaphysical significance of the Norton dome are shown to be challenges against various arguments for the dynamical possibility of supertasks, and the staccato roller coaster clearly shows the importance of meeting these challenges. And the staccato roller coaster can provide, as well as interesting lessons, illuminating analyses of Burke’s (Mod Schoolman 78:1–8, 2000) attempt to refute the dynamical possibility of the staccato run and Perez Laraudogoitia’s (Synthese 148:433–441, 2006) rebuttal of it.

PRIMITIVE CAUSAL RELATIONS AND THE PAIRING PROBLEM

AbstractThere is no doubt that spatial relations aid us in pairing up causes and effects. But when we consider the possibility of qualitatively indiscernible things, it might seem that spatial relations are more than a mere aid – they might seem positively required. The belief that spatial relations are required for causal relations is behind an important objection to Cartesian Dualism, the pairing problem. I argue that the Cartesian can answer this objection by appeal to the possibility of primitive causal relations, a possibility I defend. This topic is of importance beyond the philosophy of mind; the possibility that causal relations might sometimes hold brutely is of general metaphysical importance. I close with a discussion of what Cartesians should say about embodiment, and how that bears on issues of mental causation.

Idea and Ontology. An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas (review)

Reviewed by: Idea and Ontology. An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas Ericka Tucker Marc A. Hight. Idea and Ontology. An Essay in Early Modern Metaphysics of Ideas. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 278. Cloth, $58.00. "Based on a true story: the early modern tale." In Idea and Ontology, Marc Hight argues that the story we have been told about early modern philosophy is false. What Hight calls the "early modern tale" tells us that beginning with Descartes and ending with Berkeley, metaphysics began its slide into the historical dustbin, replaced by epistemology as first philosophy. The categories of medieval metaphysics, substance and mode, so the story goes, could no longer serve the needs of the moderns, specifically their questions about the nature of ideas. Ideas could not easily be categorized as either substances or modes, and because of this difficulty, metaphysical questions were abandoned in favor of epistemological questions about the nature of representation and certainty. Hight reexamines the early modern tradition to find the metaphysicians behind the epistemologists' masks supposed by the early modern tale. Once the metaphysical questions are revealed as central to early modern philosophy, Hight argues that Berkeley's immaterialism, rather than ridiculous, is the final and triumphant conclusion of the metaphysical speculations of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. By showing that ideas were neither independent substances nor fully dependent modes, Berkeley solves the metaphysical problem of ideas that had vexed Descartes, Arnauld, Malebranche, Leibniz, Locke, and Hume. Only once we have seen the metaphysical character of early modern debates and abandoned the early modern tale can we finally recognize, Hight argues, the importance of metaphysics for contemporary philosophy, and thus the current relevance of Berkeley. One could criticize Hight for failing to properly identify the tellers of this early modern tale, and for attributing too much to those he finally identifies: Yolton, Lennon, and Watson. But surely this is a story we all have heard. Although outside the Vienna Circle it might be hard to find anyone willing to express this sentiment explicitly, Anglo-American philosophy in the twentieth century hardly celebrated metaphysics. To be taken seriously, historians working on philosophers like Berkeley, a metaphysician if ever there was one, needed to rehabilitate them. Hight argues that by turning early modern philosophers into epistemologists, historians have done violence to those figures who were clearly metaphysicians and to debates that clearly concerned metaphysical questions. Although I am sympathetic to Hight's project, I did not find the strongest form of his thesis, that these figures were primarily interested in the metaphysical status of ideas, completely convincing. Part of the difficulty resides in Hight's criteria for what counts as "doing metaphysics." For Hight, using a substance-mode ontology is enough to make one a metaphysician, but even if this is what we might assume today, it is not at all clear that this was true for early modern thinkers. Because he identifies metaphysics "by our lights," Hight manages to side-step the central issue in the early modern tale, namely, were the early moderns abandoning metaphysics as they knew it? The problem of the ontological status of ideas was neither virgin territory nor scorched earth in the seventeenth century; on the contrary, it was well-tilled ground. Bracketing metaphysical questions leading to unwelcome conclusions was a genuine strategy that early modern philosophers adopted to avoid what they took to be scholastic quagmires or theological-political minefields. Trying to understand the status of metaphysics in the early modern period without this background is problematic, and without explicitly addressing it, Hight's case that these figures were primarily interested in metaphysical questions is weaker than it should be. Hight's book persuasively shows that the early moderns were exploring the ways in which the scholastic metaphysical categories could and could not be extended to answer questions about the nature of ideas. While Hight sees only Berkeley as having innovated within this history, creating a concept of "quasi-substances," and thus as the only philosopher who broke the chains of substance-mode ontology to finally solve "the early modern problem of ideas," each of the figures he covers could be seen...

Faith, Reason and Metaphysical Thinking: A Process Response to Fides et Ratio

Faith, Reason and Metaphysical Thinking: A Process Response to Fides et Ratio Metaphysics has been subjected to much criticism from various quarters, including philosophy. The document Fides et Ratio affirms and defends its significance for religious belief. Strongly supporting the link between faith and reason, it endorses the tradition of using philosophy, with specific reference to metaphysics, to express, develop and defend theological doctrines. The encyclical also discusses the importance of metaphysics for one's philosophical outlook in life.

To Exist and to Count: a Note on theMinimalist View

Sometimes mereologists have problems with counting. We often don't want to count the parts of maximally connected objects as full-fledged objects themselves, and we don't want to count discontinuous objects as parts of further, full-fledged objects. But whatever one takes full- fledged to mean, the axioms and theorems of classical, extensional mereology commit us to the existence both of parts and of wholes - all on a par, included in the domain of quantification - and this makes mereology look counterintuitive to various philosophers. In recent years, a proposal has been advanced to solve the tension between mereology and familiar ways of counting objects, under the label of Minimalist View. The Minimalist View may be summarized in the slogan: Count x as an object iff it does not overlap with any y you have already counted as an object. The motto seems prima facie very promising but, we shall argue, when one looks at it more closely, it is not. On the contrary, the Minimalist View involves an ambiguity that can be solved in quite different directions. We argue that one resolution of the ambiguity makes it incompatible with mereology. This way, the Minimalist View can lend no support to mereology at all. We suggest that the Minimalist View can become compatible with mereology once its ambi- guity is solved by interpreting it in what we call an epistemic or conceptual fashion: whereas mereology has full metaphysical import, the Minimalist View may account for our ways of selecting conceptually salient entities. But even once it is so disambiguated, it is doubtful that the Minimalist View can help to make mereology more palatable, for it cannot make it any more compatible with commonsensical ways of counting objects.

“My Most Mature Poèma”: Pushkin's Poltava and the Irony of Russian National Culture

Written in 1828, Pushkin's narrative poem Poltava ushered in a new period in the poet's creative life, one in which Pushkin's task was to become a national bard (or, using the romantic terminology of the day, a national “genius”) whose poetry expressed Russia's innermost “spirit” and uncovered the metaphysical import of the nation's historical destiny. Pushkin (whose career already included two political exiles and the authorship of a number of scathing epigrams directed against Alexander I and several prominent statesmen) recognized that in order to ascend to a new artistic phase he had to find a new voice and a more mature literary persona. However, “maturity,” which for the ancients was synonymous with political freedom, presented a considerable problem for the generation whose early youth coincided with the Napoleonic wars and the romantic revolution in poetry, but whose coming of age fell during the post-Napoleonic reaction. How could a spirited youth “mature” without capitulating before such mundane demands as financial security and social advancement and, consequently, without turning into a philistine? More specifically, how could Pushkin reach the next phase of his career without renouncing his politically compromising youth? In this essay I argue that Poltava is Pushkin's answer to these questions.Named after the historical battle that launched Russia as a European power, Poltava was, I suggest, the product of both Pushkin's long-standing wish to compose a national epic celebrating Peter's “young Russia,” a Russia no longer fettered by its “Byzantine” roots and with a glorious future, and his more recently developed desire to create for his homeland what Hannah Arendt has called a “foundational narrative”—that is, a narrative that not only announces the advent of a “new world order,” but also legitimizes this new order by linking it to some prior historic or legendary event. Furthermore, if Poltava seems to “waver,” as many critics have suggested, between the Byronic narrative poem and the historical novel as popularized by Walter Scott, I argue that the poem's idiosyncratic form indicates that Pushkin was not yet sure whether he was standing on the threshold of an Augustan or Neronian age. Pushkin's acquaintances among Moscow Slavophiles made him for the time being more attentive to the positive parallels between Russian and Roman history than to the darker ones. In essence, then, Pushkin's glorification of Peter and Peter's empire meant to serve a higher goal: that of spreading culture and enlightenment throughout the Slavic lands.

The Metaphysical Status of the Embryo: Some Arguments Revisited

abstract This paper re‐examines some well‐known and commonly accepted arguments for the non‐individuality of the embryo, due mainly to the work of John Harris. The first concerns the alleged non‐differentiation of the embryoblast from the trophoblast. The second concerns monozygotic twinning and the relevance of the primitive streak. The third concerns the totipotency of the cells of the early embryo. I argue that on a proper analysis of both the empirical facts of embryological development, and the metaphysical importance or otherwise of those facts, all three arguments are found wanting. None of them establishes that the embryo is not an individual human being from the moment of conception.

The importance of multimedia principle and emergence principle for the knowledge civilisation age

The paper discusses two basic principles derived from results of studies concerning foundations of micro-theories of knowledge creation; these are Multimedia Principle and Emergence Principle. Their epistemic, systemic and metaphysical importance is discussed, together with their relations to the episteme of technology treated as a separate cultural sphere. A spiral of evolutionary knowledge creation is presented, in which an extended Falsification Principle plays the role of an objectifying feedback; this spiral is related to an episteme of Evolutionary Constructive Objectivism proposed earlier for the coming knowledge civilisation age.