Metaphysical Inquiry Research Articles

Developments in the Debate on Nanoethics: Traditional Approaches and the Need for New Kinds of Analysis

This paper aims to review different discourses within the emerging field of ethical reflection on nanotechnology. I will start by analysing the early stages of this debate, showing how it has been focused on searching for legitimacy for this sphere of moral inquiry. I will then characterise an ethical approach, common to many authors, which frames ethical issues in terms of risks and benefits. This approach identifies normative issues where there are conflicts of interest or where challenges to the fundamental values of our society arise. In response to the limitations of this approach, other commentators have called for more profound analysis of the limits of our knowledge, and have appealed to values, such as sustainability or responsibility, which should, they suggest, inform nanotechnological development (I will define this approach as a “sophisticated form of prudence”). After showing the ways in which these frameworks are limited, I will examine more recent developments in debates on nanoethics which call for the contextualisation of ethical discourse in its ontological, epistemic and socio-economic and political reflections. Such contextualisation thus involves inquiry into the ‘metaphysical research program’ (MRP) of nanotechnology/ies and analysis of the socio-economic, political and historical reality of nano. These ideas offer genuinely new insights into the kind of approach required for nanoethical reflection: they recover a sense of the present alongside the need to engage with the past, while avoiding speculation on the future.

Cuestiones de método: «eventualización» y problematización en Foucault

Tabula Rasa es una revista científica del área de las ciencias sociales con una periodicidad trimestral, dedicada principalmente a las disciplinas de la Antropología, Historia, Sociología, Trabajo Social, Geografía Humana y Estudios Culturales.

Writing Lough Derg: from William Carleton to Seamus Heaney

The overarching purpose of this volume is to show how a discrete tradition of writing about Lough Derg helped contemporary Irish poets rescue, metaphysical inquiry from the grip of nationalism. Linked with the supernatural from pagan times, Lough Derg had by the early twentieth century become an icon of the fusion of the Catholic Church and the Irish nation. Surveying literary treatments of Lough Derg from William Carleton through Denis Devlin, Patrick Kavanagh, and ultimately Seamus Heaney, Peggy O'Brien addresses the role of spirituality in an increasingly cosmopolitan, postmodern, post-Catholic Ireland. O'Brien's extended consideration of Heaney culminates in an insightful juxtaposition with Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish poet who also struggled with the conflation of Catholicism and patriotism.

Cosmic Christology in the Thought of Zachary Hayes

Cosmic Christology in the Thought of Zachary Hayes The emergence of the new science in the twentieth century has radically shifted our understanding of the universe from a closed, fixed system to an open and dynamic one. While theology has traditionally taken its cue from cosmology, the exponential rate of scientific progress has largely relegated theology to a snail’s pace through the course of history. Slowly emerging from the confines of scholastic thought, however, theologians have begun to reconsider theological doctrine in light of the new science. Some principal areas of study include the doctrine of God, divine action, the role of suffering and evil in creation, and the nature of the human person. While these areas have received considerable attention over the last thirty years, less attention has been devoted to the significance of Christ, particularly in light of evolution. The Jesuit paleontologist, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, developed a spirituality of Christogenesis based on a unique synthesis of science and mystical insight which has had contemporary significance because of its originality and relevance; however, Teilhard’s doctrine lacks a theological metaphysics. It is not clear, for example, how Teilhard’s centrality of Christ relates to the Trinity or how the immanent Trinity relates to the economic Trinity vis-à-vis evolution. In the late 1960s Ewert Cousins introduced Bonaventure as a dialogue partner with Teilhard, seeing in Bonaventure’s doctrine of exemplarism a more reasonable theological basis for Teilhard’s Christogenic universe. Shortly afterwards, Zachary Hayes published several articles on Bonaventure ’s metaphysics, disclosing a theological relationship between Incarna- This essay was first presented March 11, 2006, at Saint Louis University during a symposium in honor of Zachary Hayes, OFM. See, for example, Ewert Cousins, “Christ and the Cosmos: Teilhard de Chardin and Bonaventure,” The Cord 16 (1966) 99-105; Ewert Cousins, “The Evolving Cosmos: Teilhard de Chardin and Bonaventure,” The Cord 16 (1966) 131-36; Ewert Cousins, “Teilhard de Chardin et Saint Bonaventure,” Études Franciscaines 19 (1969) 175-86. 107 Franciscan Studies 65 (2007) 06.Delio.indd 107 12/5/07 17:48:40 Ilia Delio 108 tion and creation that, when held up against the background of Teilhard’s Christology, could provide the metaphysical basis for understanding the significance of Christ in an evolutionary world. Although Hayes did not develop Bonaventure’s metaphysics in view of Teilhard, what he describes in this medieval doctor is a rich cosmic Christology that provides a theological framework for understanding the relationship between Christ and creation. My thesis is that Bonaventure’s cosmic Christology, developed by Hayes, offers a rich theological lens to explore the significance of Christ in an evolutionary universe. To examine this thesis, I will discuss several principal ideas: 1) Bonaventure’s development of a theological metaphysics , 2) the centrality of Christ as goal and perfection of the universe, and 3) the relationship between the human person and the cosmic Christ. I will conclude by suggesting future areas of study inspired by the writings of Zachary Hayes. Incarnation and Creation: Towards a Theological Metaphysics Anyone who has read the works of Zachary Hayes knows him as a clear thinker and methodical writer, whose writings betray his vested interest in cosmology and metaphysics. Indeed, most of his articles on Bonaventure’s Christology, apart from his commentaries on the scholastic works, show a dialogue between Bonaventure and contemporary scientific thought. Hayes explored the relationship between Bonaventure’s Christology and metaphysics beginning in the 1970’s, following the lead of the philosopher, A.N. Whitehead who described Christianity as a “religion seeking a metaphysics .” Hayes saw in Bonaventure one whose theology of Christ provided the basic clues for metaphysical inquiry. “Metaphysics,” Bonaventure wrote, “begins with consideration of the principles that govern particular, created substances, moving from that level to the consideration of the universal and uncreated. Thus, it considers reality under the aspect of principle, means and end.” In his Hexaemeron Bonaventure claimed that Christ is the center of reality, and it is from this center that one should begin the inquiry Zachary Hayes, “Incarnation and Creation in the Theology of St. Bonaventure ,” in Studies Honoring Ignatius Brady, Friar Minor, ed. Romano Stephen Almagno and Conrad Harkins (St. Bonaventure, NY: The...

Virtual Reality: An Empirical-Metaphysical Testbed[1

If the medium is the message, what is the message of virtual reality (VR)? This article examines virtual reality communications media. Some forms of VR, for example immersive virtual reality, literally situate the user inside an informed computational space. The essence of VR is the inclusive relationship between the participant and the virtual environment. Communication takes place through direct experience in the immersive, digital environment. Thus, these environments may directly implicate what we can say about our very ability to know, that is, about consciousness itself. In this sense, VR brings metaphysical inquiry within the purview of an empirical testbed that conjoins human psychology, or the psychological “presence” of the knowing self, with configurable digital phenomena to define “there.” This essay argues that a fundamental message of VR may be to illumine timeless philosophical inquiries concerning the nature of knowing and being and thus direct our attention to what Aristotle called the eternal question: What is reality? VR directs our attention to the nature of reality by directing our attention to consciousness as the experience of being.

It Is Time to Rename the DSM

Although the DSM purports to be a theoretical with respect to the etiology of mental disorders, its fundamental assumption that aberrant patterns of thought, emotion or behavior reflect mental disturbance is itself an unjustifiable a priori position. Within the DSM-IV-TR, the existence of compelling dysfunctional psychosocial etiological influences precludes the diagnosis of conduct disorder. Consistent with this precedent, the following principle needs to be expanded to virtually all the conditions found in the DSM: “Conditions reasonably attributable to psychosocial factors or medical conditions should not be considered mental disorders.” Following this principle could cause the very concept of mental disorder to evaporate, in favor of a nondualist perspective on explaining human behavior in favor of a consistently physicalistic one. This would promote the study of dysfunctional behavior as a legitimate field of natural science and not one of metaphysical enquiry.

Логіка та метафізика у Лейбніца Стаття 2

Leibniz sought to solve the metaphysical problem of reality, avoiding ontological premises. His intensional method was aimed at the logical solution of the problem, preserving the objectivity and unobstructed metaphysical research. Metaphysics can provide a certain level of coherence to the phenomena of physics and make them more real. Leibniz was convinced that physics, for its part, should be grounded in metaphysical principles. This promotes a reciprocal relationship between physics and metaphysics, where metaphysical principles derive their reality from physical principles, and the two fields are interrelated. If we recognize the reality of the laws of physics, then we must also recognize the reality of the concept of substance. His position is that the laws of mathematical physics predict the existence of real substances, which makes it possible to move from mathematical objects to real substances. This method of substantiating the reality of substance and metaphysical principles can be considered as the foundations of the transcendental method. Leibniz's metaphysical approach is that necessary truths exist by themselves and do not depend on specific objects of study or perception. He regarded these truths as eternal.

One and the Same? Ethics, Aesthetics, and Truth

The aim of this article is to come to terms with the implications of Wittgenstein's remark that “ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.” Arguing that ethics, truth, and aesthetics have been implicitly or explicitly part of literary discourse for many years, despite being constantly disavowed, I suggest that the recent movement called the “New Aestheticism” can contribute much to understanding the relationship between ethics and literature. The article discusses Heidegger's concept ofaletheia—and correlations in Wittgenstein—and its relation to art. I then suggest that this, in conjunction with an understanding of metaphysical inquiry as ethical, offers a deeper and as yet unexplored sense of “ethics and literature” as an expression of truth. This sense of truth contrasts with what I take to be the two“wings” of recent “ethical criticism” (roughly, a more narrative-based neo-Aristotelian “wing” and a more deconstructive“wing”) and brings to light a shared presupposition in both“wings”: that a literary text offers a certain sort of positivist knowledge. This means that neither “wing” comes to terms with the“world revealing” aspect of literature and the ways in which“ethics and aesthetics are one and the same.”

Pain does not suffer misprision: an inquiry into the presence and absence that is pain

The reigning questions of metaphysics generate passion. These are questions such as concern death, a hereafter, and the meaning of suffering. They are questions that haunt us. Philosophical inquiries into...

THE BOUNDED LIFE: ADORNO, DICKENS, AND METAPHYSICS

THEODOR ADORNO'S LATE LECTURESonMetaphysicspropose a “shocking thesis”: “metaphysics began with Aristotle” (15). A “doubly shocking” thesis, Adorno tells his audience, because it gives credit where credit is not usually given, and declines to give it where most students of philosophy would understand that it belongs–with Plato (18). The Platonic doctrine of Ideas misses the essential criterion for metaphysics. Plato never fully accepted that the tension between the sphere of transcendence and the sphere of “direct experience” is not merely an adjunct of metaphysical inquiry but its defining subject matter (18). Aristotle understood this, and understood also that metaphysics has always a “twofold aim”; for, even as Aristotelian metaphysics criticizes Plato's attempt to define essence in opposition to the world of the senses, it tries to “extract an essential being from the sensible, empirical world, and thereby to save it.” True metaphysics, Adorno claims, is an effort to go beyond thought in the very act of defining the boundaries of thought. In his words, it is “the exertion of thought to save what at the same time it destroys” (20).

An Uncultured Rhymer and His Cultural Critics: Henry Lawson, Class Politics, and Colonial Literature

IN THE 1950S AND 60S ACADEMICS CONTESTED THE VIEW WHICH WAS BEING promoted by many prominent Australian intellectuals that HenryLawson was an exemplary representative of the Australian national character. They also quickly dismissed the socialist principles which cultural workers in the Communist Party of Australia were rediscovering in the famous Australian's work. In the "end of ideology" climate of the Cold War, academics were justifying the inclusion of Australian literature in the academic curriculum by establishing a canon of the "very best" Australian writing. Admission to this canon was achieved through a professionally authorized process of critical evaluation that concentrated upon formal analysis and metaphysical inquiry. Canonization was understood as an aesthetic judgment, while political ideology, formal convention, and the social purchase of popularity were considered as anathema to both creative genius and academic discipline. 2 Accordingly, Lawson's short fiction was re-evaluated for its evidence of technical sophistication, formal innovation, and the presentation of existential themes that linked Australian writing to the modernist traditions of other nations. Lawson's politics were seen as a destructive influence on his art, and his significant body of poetic work was largely considered unworthy of professional attention.

Hot Picks

Metaphysical inquiry. This site's MetaPhys documents search engine combs through physics preprint servers such as that of Los Alamos, major publishers' sites, and even papers posted on departmental servers. You'll also find an international directory of physics departments, conferences, and other resources.

An Islamic Subversion of the existence‐essence distinction? Suhrawardi's visionary hierarchy of lights1

The distinction between existence and essence in contingent beings is one of the foundational doctrines of medieval philosophy. Building upon Neoplatonic precursors, thinkers such as Avicenna and Aquinas debated its nature. However, one Islamic philosopher, who had an enormous influence on the development of philosophical discourse in Iran, subverted the traditional Peripatetic vision of reality and disputed the ontological nature of existence. Through a critique of the Peripatetic notion of existence, Suhrawardi demonstrated the irrelevance of the distinction for metaphysical inquiry, which should, instead, rely upon an eidetic vision of the ‘hierarchy of lights’. I shall explain why the later tradition advocated an essentialist (mis)reading of Suhrawardi and suggest that the Platonic hermeneutic of essential vision which Suhrawardi expounds, might be the reason for it. Later philosophers in the Islamic tradition had mistaken methodology for a description of reality.

The Use and Abuse of Sir Karl Popper

Karl Popper has been one of the few philosophers of sciences who has influenced scientists. I evaluate Popper's influence on our understanding of evolutionary theory from his earliest publications to the present. Popper concluded that three sorts of statements in evolutionary biology are not genuine laws of nature. I take him to be right on this score. Popper's later distinction between evolutionary theory as a metaphysical research program and as a scientific theory led more than one scientist to misunderstand his position on evolutionary theory as a scientific theory. In his later work Popper also introduced what he took to be “improvements” of evolutionary theory. Thus far these improvements have had almost no influence on evolutionary biology. I conclude by examining the influence of Popper on the reception of cladistic analysis.

Rescher's Metaphilosophy

Books reviewed in this article:Nicholas Rescher, Philosophical StandardismNicholas Rescher, The Strife of SystemsNicholas Rescher, A System of Pragmatic Idealism. Vol. III, Metaphysical Inquiries

Wittgenstein on the metaphysics of the self: the dialectic of solipsism in philosophical investigations

Wittgenstein’s later efforts to exorcise the attractions of solipsism involve descriptions of the uses of ‘I’ which may be taken to show that ‘I’ does not refer in its philosophically most salient uses. This point of “grammarrdquo;, however, would not by itself provide a direct refutation of solipsism; Philosophical Investigations ¶¶398‐410, of which this paper is a reading, traces a complex dialectic by which Wittgenstein elicits and questions the solipsist’s commitments. In challenging the intelligibility of the solipsist’s starting‐points, Wittgenstein raises a forceful demand for an explanation of the motivations behind metaphysical inquiry into the nature of the self.

Essai : Thirty Years On: From Organizational Structures to the Organization of Thought

The Aston Studies have proved a seminal reference point for the development of mainstream organization theory. This essay examines and critiques the meta physical underpinnings of positivism as well as attempts to show up the inad equacies of other recent alternatives such as epistemological realism for the development of organizational analysis. It maintains that common organiza tional attributes which positivists and realists claim to discover are in fact mirror images of their own deeply-entrenched thought structures. It therefore proposes that commitment to an alternative process-based becoming ontology opens up the possibilities for rethinking 'organization' as first and fundament ally a process of 'world-making'. The modem world that we find so immedi ately necessary and familiar is one such outcome of organization and it is the analysis of this logic of organization, rather than the current preoccupations of mainstream organization theory, which will provide truly useful insights to management practitioners and to leaders of society. Understood thus, organiza tional analysis becomes a form of metaphysical inquiry.

Kant, Boole and Peirce's Early Metaphysics

Charles Peirce is often credited for being among the first, perhaps even the first, to develop a scientific metaphysics of indeterminism. After rejecting the received view that Peirce developed his views from Darwin and Maxwell, I argue that Peirce's view results from his synthesis of Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy and George Boole's contributions to formal logic. Specifically, I claim that Kant's conception of the laws of logic as the basis for his architectonic, when combined with Boole's view of probability, yields Peirce's metaphysics of probabilistic laws. Indeterminism provides, therefore, an excellent illustration of how Peirce attempted to use logic to clarify metaphysical problems.“Since everyone must have conceptions of things in general, it is most important that they should be carefully constructed. I shall enter into no criticism of the different methods of metaphysical research, but shall merely say that in the opinions of several great thinkers, the only successful mode yet lighted upon is that of adopting our logic as our metaphysics”. (W1: 490, 1866)2

Feminism and the critique of political theory

Must political theorists, in their deliberations about justice, engage in philosophical speculation about the nature of the self or the foundations of knowledge? Controversy rages on this matter. Communitarians, for example, fault liberalism for its atomistic premises about personhood, arguing that without an adequate understanding of the ways in which the person is socially constituted, our efforts at conceptualizing the good society will fail. John Rawls, in contrast, maintains that as political theorists and as citizens, we must set aside metaphysical questions in order to forge an overlapping consensus on basic governmental structures; hence his slogan that our theories of justice should be 'political not metaphysical'. The rise of views influenced by postmodernism complicates this picture in interesting ways. On the one hand, postmodernism has generated a plethora of writings that address questions of subjecthood and knowledge in an intensely theoretical idiom. On the other, these enquiries seek to deconstruct philosophy itself precisely because philosophy is deemed incurably metaphysical. The idea of the individual subject, the project of finding foundations for reason, the aspiration to neutrality: all have been 'unmasked' as features of the Enlightenment's totalizing, but ultimately self-defeating, project. Indeed, there is a sense in which the postmoderns share Rawls's concern to displace metaphysical enquiry with overtly political concerns. After all, this anti-philosophical critique has been carried out in the name of an oppressed 'other', the voices silenced or 'normalized' by traditional ways of philosophizing. It is thus not surprising that postmodern views have found support from within feminism. For if women remain disadvantaged after the granting of liberal rights and liberties, there may be some force in the argument that rights and liberties are the paraphernalia of a masculinist order which should be rejected wholesale. Yet some feminists are wary of the allure of postmodernism, fearing that its deconstruction of modernity and its philosophies is so thorough-going that it

Abductive inferences and the structure of scientific knowledge

The received theories of epistemology identify abductive inferences with the cognitive patterns of speculation (hypothesis formation) and insist that they cannot verify or confirm hypotheses. I criticize various descriptions of abduction, offer a structural analysis of abductive inference,, characterize abduction without alluding to its putative role in inquiry, and then demonstrate that some abductions do provide evidence and that not all scientific hypotheses derive from abductive inferences. This result challenges those notions of scientific k knowledge that dismiss some central scientific ideas (for example, evolution) as ‘meta-physical research programs’ or ‘just theories’ when they are instead well substantiated by abductive evidence.