History of Philosophy Commons^™

Kant's Concept Of Freedom In The Metaphysics Lectures, Alin Paul Varciu

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I argue that we can make use of Kant's metaphysics lectures to have a better understanding of the concepts of practical and transcendental freedom used within the Critique of Pure Reason. Based on Kant's metaphysics lectures I will argue that practical freedom and transcendental freedom are different predicates that apply to our power of choice and that each comprises different sorts of abilities. Practical freedom concerns the abilities we use in choosing the motives for our actions, while transcendental freedom concerns the ability to act otherwise than what nature necessitates through its causal laws. In terms of Kant's free …

The Forgetting Of Fire: An Archaeology Of Technics, Thomas A. Doerksen

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This dissertation applies the methods of Bachelard and Foucault to key moments in the development of science. By analyzing the attitudes of four figures from four different centuries, it shows how epistemic attitudes have shifted from a participation in non-human, natural realities to a construction of human-centred technologies. The idea of an epistemic attitude is situated in reference to Foucault’s concept of the episteme and his method of archaeology; an attitude is the institutionally-situated and personally-enacted comportment of an epistemic agent toward an object of knowledge. This line of thought is pursued under the theme of elemental fire, which begins …

The Cave And The Stars: On The People And Democracy Of Non-Philosophy, Jeremy R. Smith

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This monograph dissertation explores the work of François Laruelle and the democratic nature of his non-philosophy. In four separate chapters, this dissertation argues for identifying non-philosophy as the introduction of democracy into thought and seeks to instantiate a necessary theoretical delimitation for its programme, which explores the relationships between people, thought, and power. Chapter One analyzes previous philosophical frameworks from thinkers such as Edmund Husserl, Max Horkheimer, and Louis Althusser on their respective stances toward philosophy’s role for people. Chapter Two investigates the work of François Laruelle for the past fifty years as the development of non-philosophy or “human philosophy.” …

Human Extinction In The Pessimist Tradition, Ignacio L. Moya

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Faced with countless threats that pose a danger to the continued existence of the human species, there has emerged a new field in philosophy known as Existential Risk Management. This discipline proposes to understand, quantify, classify and ultimately defeat the risks that exist and that threaten our continued existence. These philosophers accept that human life is good and that it should be promoted. And because of the tremendous value that is found in human life, they argue we should do whatever we can to avert our disappearance.

Philosophical pessimists hold that life is always filled with suffering and that …

You Unseen Cathedrals: A Study Of The Conceptual Conditions Of Negativity, Anda Pleniceanu

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This dissertation addresses a gap in contemporary negativity studies by examining twentieth-century texts that engage with negativity beyond the subject. Starting with the premise that the concepts of negativity and subjectivity are intertwined, I argue that the predominant tendency in scholarship has been to conceptualize subjectivity as a circular structure that incorporates negativity as its dynamic foundation. However, when negativity is defined in subordination to the subjective circle, its radical features are diminished, resulting in “weak negativity.” In Chapter 1, I exemplify my arguments using the works of Alexandre Kojève, Jean Hyppolite, and Judith Butler. In contrast to weak negativity, …

Craft And Virtue In Plato's Early Dialogues, Cecilia Z. Li

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Ancient philosophers are preoccupied with the idea of craft (technê)—art, expertise, skill, and not infrequently translated as knowledge or science. The idea is often seen by ancient thinkers as the pinnacle of rational agency and offers them a vital paradigm for thinking about the world and our place within it. One longstanding tradition is the view that virtue shares important features with the sort of expertise involved in practicing a craft. In this thesis, I investigate the relationship between craft and virtue in Plato, focusing especially on the early dialogues. The overarching aim of this thesis is to …

Civil War And Power: A Theoretical Inquiry, Can Guven

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This dissertation is a theoretical project that explores the conceptual nexus between civil war and power. It maps out a lineage of thought which posits civil war as a framework for explicating politics, not as a pre-political stage of savagery or a deteriorated condition of the socio-political order. Starting with Michel Foucault’s radical yet short-lived civil war thesis, which situates civil war as the matrix of relations of power, this investigation traverses the work of several theorists and philosophers who have drawn on, or departed from, this line of thought. It critically evaluates Giorgio Agamben’s use of the concept …

Imagination As Thought In Aristotle's De Anima, Matthew Small

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Aristotle appears to indicate in various passages in the De Anima that imagination is a kind of thought, and my thesis attempts to make some sense out of this claim. I examine three possible interpretations of the claim that imagination is a kind of thought and eliminate two of them. The first states that Aristotle only calls imagination a kind of thought in a superficial “in name only” sense. The second, more radical interpretation, identifies images as the most basic kind of thoughts. My final chapter defends a more moderate position—inspired by Avempace and the early Averroes—which steers between the …

Thomas Reid On Language And Mind, Alastair L.V. Crosby

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The dissertation concerns Thomas Reid’s philosophy of language. In the first three chapters, I discuss his philosophy of language in relation to his developmental psychology. More specifically, I discuss his answers to two questions: (i) what does the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs make possible? and (ii) what makes the ability to understand artificial linguistic signs possible? The focus is on Reid’s claim that the mind’s ability to understand artificial linguistic signs makes it possible for it to acquire a number of distinct mental abilities, such as to conceive universals, to judge, and to reason. I argue this claim …

Vindicating Evans: A Defence Of Evans' Theory Of Singular Thought, Dylan A. Hurry

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A singular thought can intuitively be understood as a thought that is directly about a particular thing, e.g., a non-conceptual thought about B.B. King, Mont Blanc, or your most beloved pet. The consensus within the singular thought literature has been that Gareth Evans (1982) develops a theory of singular thought throughout his posthumously published work The Varieties of Reference. However, Evans never claims to be developing a theory of singular thought, nor does the locution ‘singular thought’ appear more than a handful of times throughout the work. The singular thought literature lacks any substantial exegetical engagement with the theory …

Aristotle's Account Of Time: A Moderate Realism, Pierre-Luc Boudreault

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This dissertation proposes an interpretation of Aristotle’s theory of time as a whole from a study of Physics IV. 10-14. It addresses interpretive issues and objections pertaining to Aristotle’s view about the nature of time, its existence, as well as its unity and universality. In response to these problems, the interpretation of some ancient and medieval commentators – Themistius, Simplicius, Philoponus, Albert the Great and in particular, Thomas Aquinas – is by and large defended against recent interpretations. It is argued that by defining time as “the number of movement with respect to the “before” and “after” (Phys. IV. …

An Archaeology Of Contemporary Speculative Knowledge, Justas Patkauskas

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This dissertation investigates contemporary speculative knowledge grounded in the immanence episteme, which is struggling to emerge as a foundation for a new kind of absolute knowledge. Regarding method, I use Michel Foucault’s concept of archaeology, situating archaeology in the context of deconstruction. In general, by delineating the various differences and genealogies within immanence theory, I show that immanence is neither a monolithic homogeneity nor a schizophrenic multiplicity but a coherent, if troubled, ground for speculative thought.

In Chapter 1, I define deconstruction as a broad philosophical project concerned with the order of knowledge and the University and its disciplines. I …

"Second Sight": Acknowledging W.E.B. Du Bois's "Double Consciousness" As A Step Towards Dissolution, Alexandra M. Hudecki

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This project examines American scholar W.E.B.’s DuBois’ idea of “double consciousness”, from his book The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The idea of “double consciousness” has and continues to be utilized by Black scholars and artists in literary, theoretical, and psychological contexts, some of which I hope my paper will adequately survey. I begin by examining “double consciousness” from the perspective of particulars by understanding Du Bois’s original idea and the specificities of the American context he himself was a part, considering the legacy of slavery. Then, by focusing primarily on writers such as Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright and Paul …

Marin Mersenne And Pierre Gassendi As Descartes’ Questioners, Alejandra Velázquez Zaragoza, Leonel Toledo Marín

Western Ontario Early Modern Philosophy (WOEMP) Online Events

In the following pages, we will explore the proximity of Marin Mersenne and Pierre Gassendi’s arguments against Descartes’ "Meditations." We will study how, in some of their objections, both Mersenne and Gassendi adopted a nominalist and an empiricist view regarding central topics in Cartesian epistemology, such as the idea of God, and the origin and classification of ideas in the mind. We propose that the assessment of the confrontation between the two objectors and Descartes may provide us a better picture of the complex intellectual debates that took place at the very beginnings of modern philosophy.

Dreams And Ideas: Baxter On Berkeley, Melissa Frankel

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In this paper I look at a particular narrative, famously articulated by Reid, that holds that Descartes’s ‘Way of Ideas’ leads inevitably to Berkeley’s immaterialism. In the service of examining this narrative more closely, I consider Andrew Baxter’s early 18^th century criticisms of Berkeley, and especially Baxter’s view that immaterialism begins with a dream hypothesis and is therefore self-undermining. I suggest that a careful consideration of Baxter’s criticism(s) is illuminating in a number of ways: in so far as it anticipates future criticisms of and engagements with Berkeleyan immaterialism, in so far as it helps to reveal the actual …

Lunch Break!, Bon Appetit

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No abstract provided.

Are Animal Machines? Gómez Pereira And Descartes On Animal Minds, Enrique Chávez-Arvizo

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Forty two years before Descartes’ birth, in his Antoniana Margarita (Medina del Campo, 1554), Spanish physician and philosopher Gómez Pereira explicitly argues the following assertions:

(1) Animals lack reason

(2) Animals lack understanding

(3) Animals do not think

(4) Animals cannot feel (Bruta non sentire)

(5) Animals cannot see as we do

(6) Animals are machines

(7) Animals have no rational soul

(8) Animals have no indivisible soul

(9) Animals have no language

The above claims on animal automatism are commonly thought to have originated with Descartes. In this paper I will expound Gómez Pereira’s arguments, contra the School and …

Kant, Cicero, And The Stoic Doctrine Of The Highest Good, Corey Dyck

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In this presentation I consider the context for Kant's discussion of the highest good in the Dialectic of the second Critique. I begin by showing how his original account of the highest good in the Canon of the first Critique addresses deficiencies in ancient accounts, particularly in the Stoic identification of virtue and happiness. I then consider the defense of the Stoic conception in Christian Garve's influential translation and commentary on Cicero's De officiis in 1783. It is, I contend, this account, which engages with Kant's discussion in the Canon at a number of junctures, that spurs Kant's decision …

Introduction, Benjamin Hill, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

On The Ancient Roots Of Berkeley Immaterialist Idealism, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

It's Alive: Margaret Cavendish On Matter, Order, And God, Marleen Rozemond

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Margaret Cavendish is widely regarded as a vitalist: she considers all matter as alive, including an endowment with mental capacities, and rejects dualism. She rejects two important motives for dualism in the period. She agrees with her Cambridge Platonist contemporaries, More and Cudworth (and many others) that the order in nature ultimately comes from God’s plans. But she rejects their view that matter can’t execute God’s commands and that their execution requires immaterial entities. For Cavendish matter is shot through with rationality and the power to implement plans. This conception of matter comes with an utter rejection of the other …

Descartes And Our Philosophies, Juan Carlos Moreno Romo

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We propose to show that, although we think of Descartes as a "modern Parmenides" or as the "father of Modernity", otherwise for excellent reasons, this condition is at least as ambiguous as different are the cultures or societies that arose from the breakdown of Christianity. Where the Protestant Reformation triumphed, the dominant conception of philosophy is manifestly anticartesian, although they recognize, curiously, a debt to Cartesian philosophy; for example, we recognize this due in Wittgenstein and Heidegger. Neither empiricist nor rationalist, neither analytical nor continental, nor national or identitarian either, more than a "French", "European" or "Western" philosopher, Descartes would …

Leibniz’S Analysis Of Change: Vague States, Physical Continuity, And The Calculus, Richard Arthur

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One of the most puzzling features of Leibniz’s deep metaphysics is the apparent contradiction between his claims (1) that the law of continuity holds everywhere, so that in particular, change is continuous in every monad, and (2) that “changes are not really continuous,” since successive states contradict one another. In this paper I try to show in what sense these claims can be understood as compatible. My analysis depends crucially on Leibniz’s idea that enduring states are “vague,” and abstract away from further changes occurring within them at a higher resolution—consistently with his famous doctrine of "petites perceptions." As Leibniz …

Spinoza On Language, Luis Ramos-Alarcón

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Some scholars have understood that Spinoza’s extreme rationalism, nominalism, conventionalism, and rejection of a semantic theory of truth make his philosophy incapable to use language for philosophical and scientific purposes; insofar he considered language a source of inadequate knowledge, falsity, and error. Thus Spinoza finds contradiction in his inevitable use of language to express his philosophy. This paper has four aims: first, propose an explanation on why language is inadequate knowledge for Spinoza; second, present differences between inadequacy, falsity, and error in language; third, argue on the Spinozian use of the geometrical method as a solution for the adequate use …

Introduction, Benjamin Hill, Alberto Luis López

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No abstract provided.

Berkeley On Infinite Divisibility, David Mwakima

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Berkeley, arguing against Barrow, claims that the infinite divisibility of finite lines is neither an axiom nor a theorem in Euclid The Thirteen Books of The Elements. Instead, he suggests that it is rooted in ancient prejudice. In this paper, I attempt to substantiate Berkeley’s claims by looking carefully at the history and practice of ancient geometry as a first step towards understanding Berkeley’s mathematical atomism.

Berkeley On Perceptual Discrimination Of Physical Objects, Keota Fields

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Commentators are divided over whether Berkeley holds that physical objects are immediately perceived by sense. As I read Berkeley, discrimination is necessary for perceiving physical objects by sense. Berkeley says that discrimination requires perceiving motion. Since motions can only be mediately perceived according to Berkeley, physical objects can only be mediately perceived by sense. I defend this reading against the following objections. First, that perception of physical objects is non-conceptual. Second, that physical objects are divinely instituted collections of ideas rather than psychologically associated collections of ideas. Third, that some physical objects are small enough to be immediately perceptually discriminated …

Browne’S Critique Of Religious Propositions In Berkeley: A Reply To Pearce, Benjamin Formanek

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No abstract provided.

Does Berkeley Anthropomorphize God, Kenneth Pearce

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Berkeley occasionally says that we use analogy in thinking and speaking of God (Alc, §4.21). However, the scholarly consensus is that Berkeley rejects the traditional doctrine of divine analogy and holds instead that words like ‘wise’ apply to God in precisely the same way as they apply to Socrates. The difference is only a matter of degree (Daniel 2011; Curtin 2014; Pearce 2018; Fasko 2018). Univocal theories of the divine attributes have historically been charged with anthropomorphism—that is, with imagining God to be too similar to human beings (see Maimonides, Guide, ch. 1.1). Can Berkeley fairly be charged with anthropomorphizing …

Day 3 Schedule, Benjamin Hill

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No abstract provided.