So much for the philosophy of the mind

philosophy-of-mind

I think both mind/body are incommensurate descriptions that vie for the title of truth of ontology of objects. We aren’t finished with demythologizing our ideas, and by getting rid of the Cartesian self we are de-divinizing philosophy by disposing an underlying substantial metaphysical center that grounds existence.  Continue reading So much for the philosophy of the mind

Reading Rortys Philosophy & Mirror of Nature

Chubby sort of fellow
Rorty sketch (from marxists. org)

I’m still here in Italy on vacation, but I’ve kept on reading PaMoN, and currently I am on Part II (Theory of Knowledge).

Before we get into the nitty gritty, i have something to admit. For years I’ve always admired Rorty, and I’ve read his later works (Consequences of Pragmatism, several essays from Philosophical Papers, the later collected works) in order to combat those blinkered Platonists and recalcitrant analytical philosophers on the internet. It was too much fun slapping them silly for clinging on to outdated and outworn models of philosophy, when the game has obviously passed them by! But I never read his magnum opus, PMoN, till now. Yeah, yeah. Continue reading Reading Rortys Philosophy & Mirror of Nature

Critique of the Theory of Knowledge, part II

In the previous blog, I discussed the ontology presuppositions and the conditions of the theory of knowledge. Now, I will go over the limits of the theory of knowledge and the Bataillean concept of non-knowledge.

Georges Bataille

Limits of the theory of knowledge

The combination of classical empiricism, the platonic distinction and the natural sciences provided a fertile ground for the modern theory of knowledge (TK). This theory implies that knowledge is pre-structured and that it cannot be acquired independently of this structure. Kant implies as much in his critique of traditional metaphysics, with the categories and the synthetic a priori, and so does Husserl’s later phenomenology that was concerned with the transcendental conditions of knowledge. The same implication of knowledge is found in many other variants: paradigm, language games, lebenswelt, unconscious, hard core, and so on. Continue reading Critique of the Theory of Knowledge, part II

Critique of the Theory of Knowledge

The first part will cover the ontological implications and the necessary conditions of knowledge. The Limits of the Theory of Knowledge (ToK) is covered in here.

The ontology of the theory of knowledge

There is a schism, a fissure in philosophy that has been widening in the past 100 years between continental (French and German) philosophy and analytic (British-American) philosophy. Hopefully, I will explain how this gap, consisting of stylistic, temperamental, as well as methodological differences, owes much to the relationship between epistemology and ontology. Continue reading Critique of the Theory of Knowledge

Nihil est sine ratione

In Latin that spells “nothing is without reason.” We often say “everything has a reason” when we are trying to explain something, an object or an event. The appropriate philosophical terminology is a bit more technical: the principle of sufficient reason, (PSR) which means all contingent facts have an explanation. Continue reading Nihil est sine ratione

The irony of the Enlightenment

A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery, by Joseph Wright of Derby

The irony of the Enlightenment: Immanuel Kant, the late 18th century thinker, was indisputably the greatest philosopher of Enlightenment. But it is also interesting to note that his critical philosophy project resulted in a devastating blow to the foundation of Enlightenment itself- our trust in reason. The faculty of reason is essentially an impulse for the unconditioned condition, and constantly urges our understanding on. Kant made it clear that man will never know the true nature of reality, and is limited to mere appearances. Despite being championed as the great icon of Enlightenment, with his transcendentalism he set the ball rolling down the mountain of truth and shattered the ideals of the gilded age at the bottom, in the gulch of the 20th century.

We are picking among the remnants for whatever remains salvageable. The consequences of such absurd praise of reason or rationalism in Enlightenment resulted in two great wars in the 20th century, which were committed at the source of naturalistic humanism. Reason and rationalism, secular reasoning especially never achieved its vast promise of transforming a superstitious culture into a rational utopia. At least some of us realize that within this massive failure, liberation is never of the human, but always and only in a negatory manner: from the human. Where does that leave us? The ghost of a lost innocence haunts the age in the form of postmodernist reflections.

Review of The World as Will and Representation

In The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer spoke as a Teutonic philosopher, with mighty prose and thunderous proclamations from the lofty heights of classic Sophia and utterly uninfected by the pretentious delusions of grandeur that afflicted his German contemporaries. His distinctiveness among the early 19th century thinkers inspired Nietzsche to call him the “un-German to the point of genius,” (Beyond Good and Evil, 204) and Thomas Mann in turn called him the “most rational philosopher of the irrational.” Continue reading Review of The World as Will and Representation