Philosophy of Science Commons^™

The Basic Dualism In The World, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Graham Harman writes that the “basic dualism in the world lies…between things in their intimate reality and things as confronted by other things.” This paper supports Harman’s assertion from a systems theoretic perspective and illustrates it with some examples, including conceptions about truth, ethics, value, and intelligence. But dualism implies irreconcilable difference; what Harman points to is better expressed as a dyad, where the two components not only imply one another but are related, and where this spatial dyad is usefully augmented with a temporal dimension, expressed in a third component or an additional orthogonal dyad.

Speculative Realism And Systems Metaphysics, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Recent developments in Continental philosophy have included emergence of a school of “speculative realism” which rejects the human-centered orientation that has long dominated Continental thought, but also opposes naïve realism or positivism. Proponents of speculative realism differ on several issues, but most agree on the need for an object-oriented ontology. Speculative realists who draw upon Marxist thought identify realism with materialism, while others accord equal reality to objects that are non-material, even fictional. Several thinkers retain a focus on difference, a well-established theme in Continental thought. This paper looks at speculative realism from the perspective of the metaphysics of systems …

Concerning Mostly Nonacademic Aspects Of My July 2006 Visit To Salzburg, Austria For The 6th International Whitehead Conference At Salzburg University, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Here are travel notes concerning mostly nonacademic aspects of my July 2006 visit to Salzburg, Austria for the 6th International Whitehead Conference at Salzburg University. These travel notes supplement the book Whiteheadian Ethics: Abstracts and Papers from the Ethics Section of the Philosophy Group at the 6th International Whitehead Conference at the University of Salzburg, July 2006 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008) edited by Theodore Walker Jr. and Mihály Toth.

Questions Concerning Attention And Stiegler’S Therapeutics, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The article sets out to develop the concept of attention as a key aspect to building the possible therapeutics that Bernard Stiegler’s recent works have pointed to (The Automatic Society, 2016, The Neganthropocene, 2018 and Qu’appelle-t-on Panser, 2018). The therapeutic aspect of pharmacology takes place through processes that are neganthropic; therefore, which attempt to counteract the entropic nature of digital technologies where there is flattening out to the measurable and the calculable of Big Data. The most obvious examples of this flattening out can be seen in relation to the use of natural language processing technologies for …

Course Syllabus (W19 Online) Coli 331t--Television Culture: "Lens, Mirror, Screen: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

Or a conjuncture of three moments in the dialectic of television as technical apparatus and cultural practice. In this course, we will read George Orwell’s 1984, view Michael Radford’s filmic adaptation of the novel, and consider a number of critical texts in order to think the psychological and social implications of television as an instrument of control, manipulation, and knowledge production. What, we ask, are the implications, in both 1984 and concrete experience, of light-speed communication capabilities for sense perception, consciousness, language, and awareness? In its dissemination of images and information, how does television impede and/or facilitate politics …

Another Scientific Revolution: Now Yielding A 'Cosmic Biology' Consistent With Natural Theology, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Beyond the Copernican revolution, another scientific revolution is now in process. Inspired by Sir Fred Hoyle and others, this contemporary extension of the Copernican revolution is replacing biology conceived as exclusively Earth science with biology conceived as including study of stellar evolution and cosmic evolution. Furthermore, astrobiology, panspermia, and cosmic biology (Hoyle and Wickramasinghe) are advancing in ways consistent with natural theology, especially with panentheism. Some of this was anticipated and advocated by Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and other philosophers of nature.

Hermeneutic Philosophies Of Social Science: Introduction, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Are They Good? Are They Bad? Double Hermeneutics And Citation In Philosophy, Asphodel And Alan Rickman, Bruno Latour And The ‘Science Wars, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

The attached file is a proof copy.

Please see the printed version. Das interpretative Universum

The Question Of Fiction – Nonexistent Objects, A Possible World Response From Paul Ricoeur, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The question of fiction is omnipresent within the work of Paul Ricoeur throughout his prolific career. However, Ricoeur raises the questions of fiction in relation to other issues such the symbol, metaphor and narrative. This article sets out to foreground a traditional problem of fiction and logic, which is termed the existence of non-existent objects, in relation to the Paul Ricoeur’s work on narrative. Ricoeur’s understanding of fiction takes place within his overall philosophical anthropology where the fictions and histories make up the very nature of identity both personal and collective. The existence of non-existent objects demonstrates a dichotomy between …

Course Syllabus (W17 Online) Coli 211m: "Superhero Film And Contemporary Culture", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description:

What might the current popularity and ubiquity of superhero film say about contemporary culture? This course will explore three possible implications of this question: (1) that the superhero genre reflects a moment in our species’ history of reconciling the human being-technology relation, which we shall view as a complex system constituted by our productive relations to material and ideological tools and their ensembles, the needs and aspirations that determine how we conceptualize and activate these relations, and the technically rationalized social reality that is their result, (2) that this ongoing process of reconciliation evinces, at once, the …

A Case For Monistic Idealism: Connecting Idealistic Thoughts From Leibniz To Kant With Support In Quantum Physics, Erik Haynes

Masters Theses

Through the analysis of idealistic arguments and evidence from physics, it will be demonstrated that monistic idealism has a great deal of explanatory power as a metaphysical system for the reality that one experiences. Some of the arguments that support this claim include the inadequateness of Cartesian matter, the seemingly infinite divisibility of atoms, matter being reducible to sensations, the unnecessary aspect of matter, and simplicity. Evidence from quantum physics includes such factors as the necessary role of an observer in the collapse of a quantum wave function and the element of nonlocality. Psychological experiments including nonlocal communication, the power …

Turn Me On Or Off: A Study On Epigenetics And Merleau-Ponty In Angela Carter’S “The Lady Of The House Of Love”, Solsiree Lynn Skarlinsky

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study aims to trace points of intersection between the too often divorced disciplines of literature, continental philosophy, and the hard sciences in Angela Carter’s “The Lady of the House of Love.” In short, this thesis will not only explore how such conversations surface within the short story, but will also serve as an explication of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of body and space, and the theory of epigenetics. Through these explications, the thesis itself will also gear one discipline towards the other as both theories intimately bind the environment with the body, and the body with the environment. Thus, …

Scientific Fictionalism And The Problem Of Inconsistency In Nietzsche, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

In this article, I begin to develop Nietzsche’s scientific fictionalism in order to make headway toward resolving a central interpretive issue in his epistemology. For Nietzsche knowledge claims are falsifications. Presumably, this is a result of his puzzling view that truths are somehow false. I argue that Nietzsche thinks knowledge claims are falsifications because he embraces a scientific fictionalist view according to which inexact representations, which are false, can also be accurate, or true, and that this position is not inconsistent.

The Spirit Molecule: Dmt, Brains, And A Theoneurological Model To Explain Spiritual Experiences, Shaun Smith

Masters Theses

This thesis attempts to address the philosophical implications of the N, N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) research of Dr. Rick Strassman. Strassman concludes that the psychedelic properties of DMT represent a proper biological starting point for discussing spiritual and near-death experiences. My research attempts to incorporate philosophical elements from the philosophy of mind and philosophy of religion/mysticism to give an accurate account of some of the philosophical issues worth exploring for future research. One of the essential patterns in this thesis is to trace the research and conclusions of Strassman, compare them with the philosophical issues in the contemporary philosophy of mind and …

Naturalism, Causality, And Nietzsche's Conception Of Science, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

There is a disagreement over how to understand Nietzsche’s view of science. According to what I call the Negative View, Nietzsche thinks science should be reconceived or superseded by another discourse, such as art, because it is nihilistic. By contrast, what I call the Positive View holds that Nietzsche does not think science is nihilistic, so he denies that it should be reinterpreted or overcome. Interestingly, defenders of each position can appeal to Nietzsche’s understanding of naturalism to support their interpretation. I argue that Nietzsche embraces a social constructivist conception of causality that renders his naturalism incompatible with the views …

The Uncertainty Relations, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

The Philosophical Differences Between Heisenberg And Bohr, Patrick Heelan

Research Resources

Chapter from: Patrick Aidan Heelan, The Observable: Heisenberg’s Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. With a foreword by Michel Bitbol. Edited and with a foreword by Babette Babich. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2015.

Calling Science Pseudoscience: Fleck’S Archaeologies Of Fact And Latour’S ‘Biography Of An Investigation’ In Aids Denialism And Homeopathy, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Fleck’s Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact foregrounds claims traditionally excluded from reception, often regarded as opposed to fact, scientific claims that are increasingly seldom discussed in connection with philosophy of science save as examples of pseudo-science. I am especially concerned with scientists who question the epidemiological link between HIV and AIDS and who are thereby discounted—no matter their credentials, no matter the cogency of their arguments, no matter the sobriety of their statistics—but also with other classic examples of so-called pseudo-science including homeopathy and other sciences, such as cold fusion. The pseudo-science version of the demarcation problem turns …

The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’S Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

There is in Professor Kockelmans’s works from the 1950s a gradual transition from Nikolai Hartmann’s theory of the ontological modalities and categories (addressed in its capacity to serve as a prerequisite for reconstructing the ontological assumptions of basic scientifi c theories) to a kind of hermeneutic ontology. This transition is especially palpable in his reading of Hartmann’s “Philosophy of Nature.” In Hartmann’s categorial metaphysics of knowledge Dasein and Sosein (as ways of being) are subordinated to the modes and spheres of being. The transition was by no means accomplished via a direct borrowing of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein . It …

Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Patrick A. Heelan Sj

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

Two hundred years ago Friedrich Schleiermacher modified Kant’s notion of anthropology—‘hermeneutically,’ as he said — so as to make it inclusive of the tribes that Captain Cook found in the South Sea Islands. This paper honors the late Joseph J. Kockelmans for making a similar hermeneutic move to update Kant’s notion of natural science so as to make it inclusive of the phenomenological lifeworld (For ‘lifeworld,’ see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1954, 121–148, and the ‘lifeworld’ theme throughout the Crisis. ) syntheses of classical, relativity, and quantum physics. The new synthesis is in fact …

The Multidimensionality Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Philology Through Science And Technology To Theology, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

Consciousness, Quantum Physics, And Hermeneutical Phenomenology, Patrick Aidan Heelan S.J.

Research Resources

Two hundred years ago Friedrich Schleiermacher modified Kant’s notion of anthropology—‘hermeneutically,’ as he said — so as to make it inclusive of the tribes that Captain Cook found in the South Sea Islands. This paper honors the late Joseph J. Kockelmans for making a similar hermeneutic move to update Kant’s notion of natural science so as to make it inclusive of the phenomenological lifeworld (For ‘lifeworld,’ see Husserl’s The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Philosophy, 1954, 121–148, and the ‘lifeworld’ theme throughout the Crisis. ) syntheses of classical, relativity, and quantum physics. The new synthesis is in …

Constellating Technology: Heidegger’S Die Gefahr/The Danger, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Heidegger’s question concerning technology was originally posed in lectures to the Club of Bremen. This essay considers the totalizing role of technology in Heidegger’s day and our own, including a discussion of radio and calling for a greater integration of Heidegger’s thinking and critical theory. Today’s media context and the increasing ecological pressures of our time may provide a way to think, once again, the related notions of event [ Ereignis] and ownedness [ Eigentlichkeit ].

Heidegger And Our Twenty-Fi Rst Century Experience Of Ge-Stell Theodore Kisiel, Theodor Kisiel

Research Resources

I propose an etymological translation of Ge-Stell, Heidegger’s word for the essence of modern technology, from its Greek and Latin roots as “synthetic com-posit[ion]ing,” which presciently portends our twenty-first century experience of the internetted WorldWideWeb with its virtual infinity of websites in cyberspace, Global Positioning Systems, interlocking air traffic control grids, world-embracing weather maps, the 24-7 world news coverage of cable TV-networks like CNN, etc., etc.—all of which are structured by the complex programming based on the computerized and ultimately simple Leibnizian binary-digital logic generating an infinite number of combinations of the posit (1) and non-posit (0). The sharp …

The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’S Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev

Research Resources

In an autobiographical sketch, Joseph Kockelmans (2008) reflects on his Denkweg in a manner that allows him to delineate the profile of his version of hermeneutic phenomenology. Based essentially on this sketch, I should like in what follows to bring into focus three principal moments of his “journey into phenomenological philosophy” that allude to his idea of the universality of interpretation in all culturally specified modes of being-in-the-world. I will call these moments respectively (a) the phenomenological reformulation of the Greek episteme; (b) the integration of the ontological difference in the theory of scientific truth; and (c) the historicity of …

The Multidimensionality Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology: From Philology Through Science And Technology To Theology, Babette Babich

Research Resources

Studies of hermeneutics have historically invoked and even enumerated dimensions and hermeneutic phenomenology is inherently multidimensional. In part this is due to the essential connection between hermeneutics and philology, which one cannot overlook. But it is also the legacy of Wilhelm Dilthey in particular. Hence Joseph J. Kockelman’s 2003 *Ideas for a Hermeneutic Phenomenology of the Natural Sciences* invokes “The Importance of Methodical Hermeneutics.” With this description, echoing the contributions of his friend and long-time colleague, Thomas Seebohm, Kockelmans relates Dilthey to Boeckh and thus to the classic tradition of hermeneutics including but also well in advance of Gadamer. Hence …

The Universality Of Hermeneutics In Joseph Kockelmans’ Version Of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, Dimitri Ginev

Research Resources

There is in Professor Kockelmans’s works from the 1950s a gradual transition from Nikolai Hartmann’s theory of the ontological modalities and categories (addressed in its capacity to serve as a prerequisite for reconstructing the ontological assumptions of basic scientifi c theories) to a kind of hermeneutic ontology. This transition is especially palpable in his reading of Hartmann’s “Philosophy of Nature.” In Hartmann’s categorial metaphysics of knowledge Dasein and Sosein (as ways of being) are subordinated to the modes and spheres of being. The transition was by no means accomplished via a direct borrowing of Heidegger’s concept of Dasein . It …

Course Syllabus (Fa13) Coli 211 Literature & Psychology: "Power, The Subject, And Technological Rationality", Christopher Southward

Comparative Literature Faculty Scholarship

Course Description and Objectives:

In this course, we will examine mechanisms of power and the processes by which these produce categories of subjectivity. Theoretically speaking, we will begin by considering these processes at the level of society and then dwell on their human experience at the level of the psyche. Here, we will aim to discover processes by which the subject reproduces conditions of domination by power at the level of psychic experience. Power-practices assume their condition of possibility by positing, on the one hand, that the category of the subject is a priori existent and, on the other, that …

Staffan Müller-Wille And Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, A Cultural History Of Heredity, Charles H. Pence

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Schrödinger And Nietzsche On Life: The Eternal Recurrence Of The Same, Babette Babich

Working Papers

Schrödinger and Nietzsche on Life: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same

This essay explores Schrödinger’s reflections on measurement, consciousness, and personal identity. Schrödinger’s, What Is Life? is read together with Nietzsche’s own reflections on the same question, in his aphorism What is Life? together with Nietzsche’s teaching of the eternal return of the selfsame. Schrödinger’s own thinking is influenced as is Nietzsche’s by Schopenhauer but Schrödinger also has the Vedic tradition as this influenced Schopenhauer himself in view.