Ontological Presuppositions Research Articles

Ohne Satz vom Widerspruch keine Entität – der Satz vom Widerspruch als Strukturformel der Realität

This paper deals with some aspects of the strategy of defence that Aristotle dedicates to theprinciple of contradiction; the analysis is focussed on a number of passages of the chapterMetaphysica Gamma 4. The main thesis of the paper is that Aristotle’s strategy consists in anontological defence of the principle itself: the principle is being defended on the basis of theunacceptable consequences which would arise for the ontology in case of the absence of theprinciple itself. Among these consequences are, for instance, the disappearance of properties, ofessences, of individual entities and of the plurality of essentially distinguishable entities, sincethe contents of the properties, the role of properties as essences and the constitution of theindividual entities cannot hold good, if the principle of contradiction does not hold good. Theadversary of the principle of contradiction will be thus caught in the dilemma of either acceptingthe validity of the principle of contradiction or refusing the principle and, with it, the realityitself. The principle of contradiction appears to be, therefore, the ontological presupposition ofthe whole reality; it is the principle on which the whole reality depends: it shows itself to be notonly a logic law, but also, and more than this, the ontological presupposition for every kind ofentity: without the principle of contradiction there is no entity. The paper follows Aristotle inhis search for instruments in favour of the defence of the principle of contradiction; theseinstruments are, in the end, elements of the reality itself, such as properties, essences andindividual entities: since the disappearance of properties, of essences and of individual essences,which would arise as a result of the collapse of the principle of contradiction, cannot beaccepted, the principle of contradiction must conserve its validity.

Modifying Alun Munslow's classification of approaches to history

Alun Munslow distinguishes three approaches to historical knowledge: reconstructionism, constructionism and deconstructionism. This threefold classification proved to be an effective means for him to discuss recent developments concerning such topics as narrative, correspondence, reference, etc. Moreover, his classificatory framework has also been utilized by other authors to interpret various issues of historical work. In this paper, however, I modify his classification and make a distinction between direct realism and impositionalism. I argue that the latter categorization seems to be more appropriate if one wants to follow the most general epistemological and ontological presuppositions of the views on historical knowledge.

Comment to a paper of M. Villata on antigravity

In a recent paper of M. Villata [arXiv:1103.4937], it is claimed that "antigravity appears as a prediction of general relativity when CPT is applied." However, the present paper argues that Villata puts the cart before the horse qua methodology, and that the resulting theory cannot be reconciled with the ontological presuppositions of general relativity. The conclusion is that Villata's suggestion for the physics that might underlie a gravitational repulsion of matter and antimatter is not acceptable in its current state of development.

“Ardent Masturbation” (Descartes, Freud, and Others)

What is the status of ontological certainty in the work of Rene Descartes? A long tradition in Cartesian scholarship has taken that certainty for granted— even while frequently attacking the grounds of Descartes’s apparently secure assurance of being. In the third of the seven sets of Objections solicited by Descartes himself and published in the same volume as the first and second editions of the Meditations in 1641 and 1642, Thomas Hobbes (who had fled to France for political reasons in 1640) writes: “All philosophers make a distinction between a subject and its faculties and acts, i.e. between a subject and its properties and its essences.” But Descartes, he objects, “is identifying the thing which understands with intellection, which is an act of that which understands.” I think, Descartes argues, therefore I am a thinking thing (a res cogitans); “I might just as well say,” Hobbes comments, “I am walking, therefore I am a walk.”1 Closer to us, Martin Heidegger, in the critique of traditional ontological presuppositions that opens Being and Time, accuses Descartes of leaving “undetermined . . . the kind of Being which belongs to the res cogitans, or—more precisely—the meaning of the Being of the ‘sum.’” Descartes came to suppose, according to Heidegger, that the certainty inherent in the cogito “exempted him from raising the question of the meaning of the Being which this entity possesses.”2

Ontology, Epistemology, and Multimethod Research in Political Science

Epistemologies and research methods are not free of metaphysics. This is to say that they are both, supported by (or presumed by), and support (or presume) fundamental ontologies. A discussion of the epistemological foundations of “multimethod” research in the social sciences—in as much as such research claims to unearth “causal” relations—therefore cannot avoid the ontological presuppositions or implications of such a discussion. But though there isn’t necessarily a perfect correspondence between ontology, epistemology, and methodology, they do constrain each other. As such it is possible to make methodological choices that are at odds with one’s (implicit) ontology or argue from an ontology that is inconsistent one’s choice of methods. Yet lack of recognition of this fact has hampered methodological discussions in political science, especially with respect to the discussion on the merits of multimethod research. The ontology implicitly accepted in such discussions is “reductionist” and “regularist,” that is, one that respectively defines causes in terms of noncausal relations and states of affair and affirms that such noncausal relations are regularities in nature. This article will argue that any attempt to fit “multimethod” research (where “multimethod” signifies some combination of inferential statistics and case studies) within this narrow ontology is destined to fail since such a metaphysics logically cannot accord case studies a necessary or sufficient role in the in the establishment of causal relations. However, there are metaphysical positions within the ambit of an empiricist philosophy of science that can accommodate multiple methods without contradiction. The article discusses two such ontologies and suggests ways in which they might allow the establishment of a coherent epistemological foundation for multimethod research, however, within a decidedly empiricist philosophy of science.

Who is that Masked Man? Candrakīrti’s Opponent in Prasannapadā I 55.11–58.13

The paper aims to determine the identity of an unnamed opponent in a passage of the first chapter of the Prasannapadā whose school affiliation eluded traditional Tibetan scholars and is disputed by modern scholars. The individual(s) in question, whose fundamental ontological views are made evident in the passage’s opening objection as presented by Candrakīrti, has/have alternatively been identified as the Mādhyamika Bhāviveka, as representatives of the Naiyāyika school and, following Stcherbatsky, as Dignāga and/or later members of his epistemological-logical tradition. Although textual evidence adduced by authors of recent publications has been viewed as supportive of the hypothesis that the interlocutor is Dignāga, the general nature of this evidence and awareness of Dignāga’s ontological presuppositions suggest that the matter requires reconsideration.

Illness as unhomelike being-in-the-world? Phenomenology and medical practice

Scientific medicine has been successful by ways of an ever more detailed understanding and mastering of bodily functions and dysfunctions. Biomedical research promises new triumphs, but discontent with medical practice is all around. Since several decades this has been acknowledged and discussed. The philosophical traditions of phenomenology and hermeneutics have been proposed as promising ways to approach medical practice, by ways of a richer understanding of the meaning structures of health and illness. In 2000, Swedish philosopher Fredrik Svenaeus published a book where he proposes that the phenomenological hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and also the reflections on health and illness of Hans-Georg Gadamer offer important ways to approach the nature of medicine. In particular, Svenaeus argues that the goal of medicine is to promote and restore health, and that health ought to be seen as "homelike being-in-the-world". Unhealth, illness, consequently should be understood as a situation where a person's "being-in-the-world" in characterized by that lack of the rhythm, balance and "tune" of everyday living that characterizes not "being at home". In this article, Svenaeus' position is briefly outlined. Questions are raised whether "unhomelikeness" is to be seen as a metaphor, and, if so, if it is a fruitful such. Furthermore, I discuss whether or not a discourse on health and illness in these terms may be misleading in a situation where the ontological presuppositions of Heidegger are lost out of sight and the popular understanding of health psychology predominates. I also approach the question whether Svenaeus' assumptions may inadvertently lead us to an unjustifiably broad understanding of the tasks of medicine. It is finally concluded that Svenaeus phenomenological and hermeneutical approach is both interesting and promising. There are, however, several questions that ought to be pursued further, and the step from philosophical analysis to everyday clinical discourse may be unexpectedly long and risky.

Speaking of Invasion: Narratives over Arabs in Eksi Sozluk, a Virtual Community in Turkey

AbstractSince the day it was founded, Eksi Sozluk (sour dictionary) has been one of the most popular virtual communities in Turkey, fostering cultural and political discussions and acting as a public sphere. This paper examines contested narratives of hostility and hospitality over Arabs in Eksi Sozluk in order to trace the making of subjectivities in Turkey. I illustrate the ways Arab tourists are orientalized through the narratives of Eksi Sozluk authors who mark Arabs as dirty, disgusting, uncivilized, and backward. Next, I show contrary narratives that claim to welcome and embrace Arab tourists in Istanbul. I argue that a supposedly welcoming discourse towards Arabs also functions under the same ontological presuppositions of Orientalist fantasy. Finally, based on the conceptual framework of “Occidentalist fantasy,” I argue that the othering of Arabs in contemporary Turkey functions to create the illusion of a unified, sovereign subjectivity under the imagined Western gaze.

Reply to Amos Yong's "Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience"

Reply to Amos Yong's "Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience" Dennis Hirota Amos Yong has provided a detailed outline for a comparison of parallel topics in Shinran and Calvinist thought, as well as reflections on epistemological issues he believes confront both traditions in similar ways. I have long sensed that the turn of thought by which the Augustinian problematic of predestination and free will became the Calvinist idea of unconditional election reflects a kind of thoroughgoing critique of self-power characteristic of Japanese Pure Land perceptions. Nevertheless, in this limited reply, I will focus chiefly on the understanding of Shinran in Yong's paper. In my chapter in The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science, as well as my essay above, both of which Yong responds to, I suggest that the dominant Western paradigms for approaching Shinran have tended to obscure what is salient in his thought by presupposing the nature of religious engagement and focusing on conceptual analogues to Western ideas. For Shinran, however, self-power and Other Power are not simply subjective attitudes of the practitioner toward doctrinal teachings, but distinct modes of human existence; between them lies a transformative shift that Shinran terms the realization of shinjin. Thus, I wonder if, despite the resemblances Yong sets forth in his treatment of the Calvinist TULIP, Shinran's concern with the overcoming of the false reification of self and attainment, in some sense, of nondiscriminative wisdom or reality does not indicate a significant and persistent dissonance at the core of the thinking of the two religious figures. It appears that the central concern in the Calvinist narrative is the relationship between human beings and God as agents of will. From the bedrock predicament of estrangement and need for reconciliation emerges the problems of sin, election, atonement, grace, and preservation from apostasy. Although noteworthy structural analogies between the traditions might be pursued, of these terms, it is only grace, perhaps, that has an unforced counterpart in Shinran's thought. Amida Buddha is not sinned against and does not select, judge, make righteous, or forgive. The dilemma that beings face is not disobedience and expiation, but the pain arising from clinging to a delusional self, one falsely imagined to be an enduring, transcendent subject and autonomous agent. For this reason, moreover, Shinran's stance in his writings might better be characterized as phenomenological and hermeneutical than epistemological. When he [End Page 211] states, "Whether the nembutsu is truly the seed for being born in the Pure Land, or whether it is a karmic act that causes one to fall into hell, I do not know," he is manifesting a world of lived experience and challenging ontological presuppositions. From a Shin perspective, modern scientific knowledge belongs among human modes of apprehending the world but does not displace all others or resolve fundamental ignorance. Yong repeatedly refers to the notion of the last dharma-age, as though the times were a distorting medium that condemns its human inhabitants to lives of dissoluteness. Rather, for Shinran, human existence itself is irrevocably conditioned, and salvation lies in being pervaded by wisdom-compassion while remaining possessed of falsity and afflicting attachment. [End Page 212] Dennis Hirota Ryukoku University Copyright © 2011 University of Hawai'i Press

Ontologia deflacionária e ética objetiva: Em busca dos pressupostos ontológicos da teoria do reconhecimento

O presente estudo tem por objetivo contribuir para o projeto de reatualização da Filosofia do Direito hegeliana inaugurado por Axel Honneth, mas de um modo indireto: meu interesse aqui não é investigar tópicos específicos da Filosofia do Direito, nem mesmo examinar a teoria do reconhecimento como proposta por Honneth, mas iniciar uma caminhada no sentido de tornar explícitos os pressupostos ontológicos carregados por tal projeto de reatualização.

Kant, Spinoza, and the Metaphysics of the Ontological Proof

This paper provides an interpretation and evaluation of Spinoza’s highly original version of the ontological proof in terms of the concept of substance instead of the concept of perfection in the first book of his Ethics. Taking the lead from Kant’s critique of ontological arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason, the paper explores the underlying ontological and epistemological presuppositions of Spinoza’s proof. The main topics of consideration are the nature of Spinoza’s definitions, the way he conceives of the relation between a substance and its essence, and his conception of existence. Once clarity is shed upon these fundamental issues, it becomes possible to address the proof in its own terms. It is then easy to see that Kant’s objections miss their target and that the same is true of those advanced by another of the ontological argument’s most famous critics, Bertrand Russell. Finally, several interpretations of Spinoza’s proof are proposed and critically evaluated; on all of them, the argument turns out to be either invalid or question-begging.

Métodos de repartição dos custos indirectos utilizados pelas PME’s industriais portuguesas

The objectives of this study are to characterize the way in which indirect costs are treated within Portuguese firms, classified as SME (small and medium-sized) of excellence. The ontological presuppositions and epistemological subjacent to this study are compatible with the paradigm of positive accounting research. Interviews were held with the persons responsible for the management accounting in 58 companies situated in 11 districts of Portugal. The results obtained led to the conclusion that all the companies analyzed use distribution bases for indirect costs that are influenced both by the volume of production and of sales. None of the companies use activity based costing. Future research is necessary to establish another cause for the use of traditional distribution bases.

Understanding the diversity of conceptions of well-being and quality of life

The concepts of well-being and quality of life concern evaluative judgements. There is insufficient understanding in current literature that these judgements are made variously due to the use of not only differing values and differing research instruments but also differing standpoints, differing purposes, and differing theoretical views and ontological presuppositions. The paper elucidates these sources of differences and how they underlie the wide diversity of current conceptions.

Commuting Bodies Move, Creatively

In this paper, I sketch out the way our bodies are engaged while commuting in order to elucidate several key aspects of the bodily experience of “in-between-ness.” I discover that within the rhythm and movement of the in-between, our bodies can open to a specific kind of conceptual creativity—an insight that I unfold in reference to the unanticipated innovation and transformation that accompanies other bodily experiences of in-between-ness more generally. This sketch, however, also demands that I reflect on phenomenological methodology, and our ontological presuppositions about the “things” that we intend to “go back to.” I conclude by suggesting that while Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizomatic ontology helps us explain the findings of my phenomenological sketch of commuting, Merleau-Ponty’s embodied phenomenology can help to flesh out (quite literally) Deleuze and Guattari’s suggestion that all the work happens in “the logic of the AND” (A Thousand Plateaus 25). While the method I call on in this paper is decidedly phenomenological, the conclusions I reach invite me to explore further the promise of a more “rhizomatic phenomenological” practice.

From Fragmentation to Ontologically Reflexive Pluralism

Considerable attention has recently been directed towards the analysis of pluralism in social science, not least in economics. Plurality is often taken as a mark of pluralism. But it is not the same thing, and often indicates little more than a disconnected fragmentation of contributions to a topic. We believe, in fact, that such fragmentation is rife in modern social theorising, and identify numerous causes. We subsequently examine the possibility of using an ontologically reflexive form of pluralism to achieve a greater degree of theoretical integration between various strands of thought than has hitherto been the case. We conclude by stressing the need to be aware of ontological presuppositions in social theorising. Our motivation is a concern with advancing a 'the pluralist project' in which, where feasible, an integration of ideas takes centre stage.

Realism in Financial Reporting: What’s Really at Stake in the Disputes

This paper develops the arguments in several recent papers in both the philosophical literature and the accounting literature concerning the nature of economic reality and the stake of preserving realism as an ontological presupposition in financial reporting. We base much of our analysis on Searle (1965, 1995) as well as on his later works (Searle 2005, 2006a, 2006b) which have not yet been taken into consideration in accounting ontological debates, and his claims to defend a heavily nuanced (read: watered down) version of external reality. The analysis is a critical one, as we fear that both the attempts to explain the ontology of accounting information by means of different philosophical theories, as well as the very theories chosen for such purposes are subject to inconsistencies which need to be made explicit in the account.

Particularity and Exceptions: On Jews and Animals

This essay presents a critical engagement with Giorgio Agamben's conception of “bare life.” Central to the argument is that bareness is produced, and therefore, that which is produced as “bare life” is always marked in advance by the process. What this means is that bareness cannot escape the mark of particularity. This has important implications for how concepts such as sovereignty are understood. The limits of Agamben's position are to be found in the ontological presuppositions that underlie it. In order to counter the inability of Agamben's position to deal with problems of practicality, a relational ontology is proposed as an alternative. The essay centers on Agamben's discussion of the animal and the Jew in the context of his books The Open and Homo Sacer.

Merleau-Ponty Between Subjectivity and Power

Merleau-Ponty Between Subjectivity and Power Michael Brownstein (bio) Diana Coole. Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism. Plymouth, UK: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007. 288 pages. $29.95 (pbk). ISBN: 0742533387 Existential phenomenology is political. This could be a scholastic claim, given the wide-ranging influence of canonical existential phenomenologists like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty on prominent continental political theorists such as Habermas, Foucault, Derrida, Arendt, Rorty, Butler and Taylor. Or it might be an historical claim, given Merleau-Ponty and Sartre’s personal involvement in political struggles, for example (and Heidegger’s own unhappy involvement, which is political in a different way). But the central, and original, claim of Diana Coole’s Merleau-Ponty and Modern Politics After Anti-Humanism is that existential phenomenology, at its best, is political.1 Coole focuses on Merleau-Ponty because more than any other existential phenomenologist, she argues, he came to develop an account of being-in-the-world that showed how everyday “coexistence,” as uncovered by phenomenological inquiry, is always suffused with practices of power and conflict. Furthermore, because he recognizes that power as well as rationality is woven into the fabric of the intersubjective world, Merleau-Ponty is uniquely capable, Coole claims, of situating embodied agents between an antiquated “philosophy of the subject” and an overzealous antihumanist “philosophy of power.” Her central task is twofold, then: to show how existential phenomenology is political, and to show how Merleau-Ponty’s political existential phenomenology succeeds where others do not. In contrast to those who interpret Merleau-Ponty’s later political writings as a substantive departure from his earlier, more traditionally phenomenological studies, Coole argues that Merleau-Ponty’s politics represented a radicalization and critical deepening of his earlier work. (2007, 13–14) The relatively early Phenomenology of Perception, she argues, “presents something of a methodological schema for Merleau- Ponty studies, including those of politics.” (126) This argument for continuity is founded by the claim that Merleau-Ponty, following Husserl, understood modern philosophy and politics alike to be held captive by various manifestations of a singular crisis. (160) The crisis was modern rationalism, and Merleau-Ponty’s abiding goal was to find alternatives to it. Coole defines rationalism: “this kind of reason either claims certainty for its knowledge of nature, history, or society and uses it as a means to control them or, inversely, it sees such phenomena as inert forms immune to knowledge but available for subjection to the will.” (26) In other words, modern rationalism separates an ideal realm of values and thought from material life but fails to recognize the relativity of its own presuppositions. (42) Rationalist philosophy and practices have no account of their own genealogy or contingency. Of greatest consequence, then, is that rationalism is dangerous because collective practices and political institutions enact the founding ontological presuppositions of a culture; problems with mind-body and subject-object dualisms, for example, manifest in unhealthy social relations. “Ideas become diffused across lifeworlds as taken-for-granted horizons for thought and action,” Coole writes, often with tragic and violent consequences. (69 and 78) The creativity, erudition, and even risky nature of Coole’s account turns up most strikingly where she traces Merleau-Ponty’s critique of rationalism through his many disparate interests. Merleau-Ponty’s critique of intellectualism and empiricism in Phenomenology of Perception can be analogized to his critique of liberalism and communism, she argues. Throughout the book Coole suggests, directly and indirectly, that all of the following dualities are in some sense manifestations of rationalist assumptions: • Intellectualism/Empiricism • Idealism/Realism • Mental/Material • Liberalism/Communism • Morality/Positivism • Early Marx/Late Marx • Rationality/Power • The West/The Other • Agency/Structure The former of these dualities are all attributes, outgrowths, or entailments of subject-centered philosophy; the latter are various terms of force. In each case, subjectivist and objectivist prejudices represent two sides of the same rationalist coin, the baleful effects of which are as notable in theories of perception as they are in political life. And in contrast to all of them, as Merleau-Ponty writes in the preface to the Phenomenology, “the question is always how I can be open to phenomena that transcend me, and which nevertheless exist...

Unmasked religion as a given of religion in the secularized everyday-life

The article raises the hypothesis that religion is not an internal feature of the secularized everyday-life, but religion is given in its undisguised semblance. The character of unmasking of religion in the secularized everyday-life is explained with reference to J. Baudrillard’s interpretation of simulation and simulacra and to P. Sloterdijk’s analysis of cynical consciousness. The object of the article is the ontological presuppositions of such unmaskings. It is supposed that the presupposition of all unmaskings of religion is the tumbling acceptance of God’s absolute reality. The atheistic denial of God is analyzed as a form of unmasking. Further the unmasking of religion as simulacra is examined. It discloses religion as a spectacle, which masks true dimension of reality – power, mental reality or economical dimension. According to this various forms of unmasking are distinguished. The character of unmasking thinking is explained with the reference to H. G. Gadamer’s concept of pre-text ant to P. Sloterdijk’s interpretation of the cynical truth as naked truth. It is revealed how the unmasking thought learns to find the pre-text behind every text, the naked truth behind every truth. Finally raises the question about the limits of unmaskings and the possibility of religion in the periphery of these unmaskings.

Ontology, All the Way Down

Agents, Structures, and International Relations: Politics as Ontology. By Colin Wight. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 360 pp., $85.00 cloth (ISBN: 0-521-85752-X), $34.99 paper (ISBN: 0-521-67416-6). It is generally assumed that an academic discipline passes the threshold of maturity when it becomes self-reflective regarding its deep-seated presuppositions, theoretical developments, and practical consequences. Agents, Structures, and International Relations by Colin Wight skillfully proves this point. Wight's main objective is to provide a comprehensive ontological investigation of the basic units and processes that underpin the theory and practice of international relations. Given that the epistemological differences that structure theoretical debate in international relations (IR) are dependent upon prior ontological positions, it becomes imperative to examine the social ontologies that are embedded within dominant theories of the field, along with the epistemological and methodological consequences associated with them (pp. 7–8). The central argument that Wight develops in Agents, Structures, and International Relations is that by losing sight of ontology in favor of epistemology, IR scholars have fundamentally misapprehended the role of theory in explaining international politics. Human action and social life occur at four different levels: material, intersubjective, social role, and personal subjectivity (pp. 296–298). Each of these levels has distinct causal and moral responsibilities and, therefore, overarching theories that attempt to explain the totality of interactions in the international system are rather “impossible projects” (p. 294). From a broader theoretical perspective, Agents, Structures and International Relations represents the most recent contribution to the post-Cold War debate in international relations regarding the role of metatheory (that is, the role of ontological and epistemological presuppositions and commitments) in informing and shaping the analytical constructs of international politics (Lapid 1989). In …