I have recently been overwhelmed by a large number of scientific topics that bear one very important relation to one another. The relationship is the theme of holism; or, more accurately, the debate between reductive and holistic science. Plato’s notion of carving nature at its joints is one that the early modern through present scientific ventures embrace and take for granted. The point of the following post is not to rehash any of the points in the reduction/anti-reduction debate, but to present some perspective, without actually going into the debate. More or less, I was to touch on some of the philosophical features that have jumped out at me, as of late. Continue reading
Category Archives: Philosophy
Assessing the Explaining Away of Elements of the Human World Qua Experience
Filed under Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
“Nomos and Physis”: Duquesne University’s 7th Annual Graduate Conference in Philosophy
There was a very nice turnout at Duquesne University’s 7th Annual graduate conference in philosophy (themed “Nomos and Physis”). A big thanks goes to the Duquesne Department of philosophy and Matt Lovett for running such a well-organized event. The spread of papers presented was diverse array of subtopics: Phenomenology and Nature; Nature In Itself, Nature for Us; Nature in Ancient Philosophy; Contemporary Ontologies and Nature. The general sentiment around the room seemed to be that the questions, discussion, and commentary was productive. Probably the most fascinating element of the conference —I know not if it was by design or happenstance— was that the papers reflected holistic approaches to philosophical considerations pertaining to Nature. Continue reading
Why Emergence Doesn’t Emerge and Secondary Qualities Are Not Secondary
This is the full, uncut version of the paper I sent to the Harvard-MIT graduate philosophy conference. It is entitled, “Why Emergence Doesn’t Emerge and Secondary Qualities Are Not Secondary.” I may pursue this project further, depending on feedback. There are a number of shortcomings, among them being that I am not as well versed in Aristotle, and it has come to my attention (through al-Kindi, of all people!) that Aristotle’s epistemology contains the an idea of subtraction from perception to arrive at mental content. Contingent upon looking further into this, I may add a significant section on Aristotle, or just had his philosophy, insofar as it is applicable, to the Meillassoux-Objectivism discussion.
Also posted on my blog are two papers, “Cognition as Negation” and “The Onto-Epistemic Stance,” which line up with the purpose of this paper. If I take this collective project any further, I may look into writing a full-length monographic work for publication.
Again, this is the raw form of the paper, well over 5,000 words, and exceeding the 4,000-word limit imposed by the conference. Nonetheless, feel free to comment.
Cognition as Negation
The cognitive version of the onto-epistemic stance paper can be acquired by clicking on: Cognition as Negation. Unfortunately, due to length restrictions, I had to summarize the original onto-epistemic paper, which has grown to forty pages, and try to slip in how I think it can be extended to cognition. The headache of trying to organize the previous paper was trebly difficult, because I could not speak at length in this paper to describe in detail what was intended in: The Onto-epistemic Stance. I included a couple of modified portions of the earlier text in this newer paper, which is being sent to the joint conference on cognition held by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. As a result of the inordinate constraint placed on the text length of this paper, I did not have the space to do a ground-up presentation of how the onto-epistemic stance seems to be present already in cognitive science. In fact, I am wondering whether the totality of the venture might not merit full monographic treatment. With as little exposure as I have had to the sciences of mind, further research on, for instance, phonemes will assuredly thicken up the text, leading me to believe that a full-length endeavor might be necessary.
At any rate, please send me an e-mail or leave me a comment if you have any ideas on how to make the paper better, ideas that need to be explained further/clarified, or anything of that sort.
Humanity’s Relation to Nature: Hawthorne, Rappaccini and Blithedale
In his The Blithedale Romance and Rappaccini’s Daughter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates elements of an enduring clash between humanity and Nature, and humanity’s attempt to find an equilibrium point in its relation to the natural world. Though they take different forms, and even their primary subjects are quite different, there is a sense in which they can be viewed as two parts of a larger story; and the two parts may be viewed as having some amount of overlap, as well. For those who have not read The Blithedale Romance, the story is a very warm tale that ends grimly, postulating that communal living in close quarters to Nature is the aforementioned equilibrium point, and equally expostulating humanity’s inability to recognize and facilitate this fact. Continue reading
Filed under Literature, Natural Philosophy, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
Flat Ontology and the Onto-epistemic Stance
I have been working on an idea for a seminar, entitled “Unity of Science,” which involves collapsing epistemology and ontology into one branch of philosophy. The paper is called, “Abstraction as Dissection of a Flat “Ontology”: The Illusiveness of Levels” (click this sentence to view paper). One of the motivations for doing this is that I think pragmatism and theory-ladenness call for it; and the two notions, themselves, seem to be naturally married by van Fraassen’s pragmatics of explanation —not to mention having been sort of suggested by Peirce. I say “sort of” because theory-ladenness hadn’t been thought of, back then. Continue reading
Filed under Epistemology, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
The False Dichotomy of Theism/Deism and Atheism in Meillassoux’s “Spectral Dilemma”
One of the salient features of ideas I like to discuss is originality. That is an attribute that I see in much of Meillassoux’s work, the primary reason for my continued fascination with him. The idea discussed below is no different. One item that I have to get out of the way before continuing is that the following post has to do with religion, and I have said in the past that I will not touch on religion or politics because of the degree to which humanity has turned them into ideological battlegrounds. Therefore, in proceeding, one should be reminded of my epistemological stance (click here), before getting upset about anything I write. It should also be noted that some understanding of virtuality (non-static ontology) is necessary to understand this blog post, so clicking here will provide the necessary primer. Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, Pure Philosophy
Latour and Meillassoux: What Latour Told Me
Okay, so I have falsely advertised: I can’t actually say what Bruno Latour said in his e-mail to me, because he asked that it stay private. I am incredibly grateful for his response, and I respect his request and his reasons for the request; so I will comply. However, I assume the meta-information, such as what my initial email asked, is okay to discuss, as are those things that I thought before the email. I will say —again, this is meta-information— that what he said surprised and even shocked me, so let me get right to what I asked him. Continue reading
Filed under Philosophy
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