(Meta)PHILOSOPHY subject-matter

1
What are the objectives of philosophy? I ask this as that will determine what
meta-philosophy says about this question. What is the subject-matter or the
subjects of investigation of philosophy? Metaphysics informs us what philosophy
is, so one would guess that hints concerning the subject-matter or objects of
philosophy will be found in what metaphysics says.
2
It is suggested (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy) this is what philosophy
is about
Philosophy (from Greek , philosophia, literally "love of wisdom"[1][2][3][4])

Note: very vague, almost meaningless statement

is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge,
values, reason, mind, and language.[5][6]

note: this is more specific, but other disciplines also study these things or ideas

The term was probably coined by Pythagoras (c. 570 c. 495 BC). Philosophical methods include
questioning,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questioning Questioning with a certain purpose in mind and certain

ways or methods of questioning are employed by philosophy.

Note: now we turn to philosophy as asking questions, in other words we become involved in WHAT
is philosophizing? What is philosophy doing when it does philosophy?

So we have to analyse and investigate what the methods, the methodology the techniques are that are
being used to do philosophy or during the doing of philosophy/izing.

It is for this reason that I wrote the meta-philosophical article , Philosophy: methods, approaches,
methodology. https://www.academia.edu/30148411/Philosophy_methods_methodology

As a background to this article my other articles on philosophy, metaphysics, ontology, etc should be
read here -

1
https://independent.academia.edu/UlrichdeBalbian

Questioning is a major form of human thought and interpersonal communication. It involves

employing a series of questions to explore an issue, an idea or something intriguing. Questioning is
the process of forming and wielding that serves to develop answers and insight.

http://beyondpenguins.ehe.osu.edu/issue/energy-and-the-polar-environment/questioning-techniques-
research-based-strategies-for-teachers

https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTMC_88.htm

The result is a definition of philosophical questions as questions whose answers are in principle
open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement, ultimate but not absolute, closed under further
questioning, possibly constrained by empirical and logico-mathematical resources, but requiring
noetic resources to be ...

https://www.academia.edu/3891157/Philosophical_Enterprise-Final_Paper

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/phil/101q.php

http://operationmeditation.com/discover/65-deep-philosophical-questions/

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/meta.12035/abstract

HOW is a philosophical question?

http://www.sapere.org.uk/AboutP4C/PhilosophicalQuestions.aspx

Philosophical method (or philosophical methodology) is the study of how to do philosophy. A

common view among philosophers is that philosophy is distinguished by the ways that philosophers
follow in addressing philosophical questions. There is not just one method that philosophers use to
answer philosophical questions.

Formulate questions and problems

Another element of philosophical method is to formulate questions to be answered or problems to be
solved. The working assumption is that the more clearly the question or problem is stated, the easier
it is to identify critical issues.

A relatively small number of major philosophers prefer not to be quick, but to spend more time
trying to get extremely clear on what the problem is all about.

Enunciate a solution
Another approach is to enunciate a theory, or to offer a definition or analysis, which constitutes an
attempt to solve a philosophical problem. Sometimes a philosophical theory by itself can be stated

2
quite briefly. All the supporting philosophical text is offered by way of hedging, explanation, and
argument.

Not all proposed solutions to philosophical problems consist of definitions or generalizations.

Sometimes what is called for is a certain sort of explanation not a causal explanation, but an
explanation for example of how two different views, which seem to be contrary to one another, can
be held at the same time, consistently. One can call this a philosophical explanation.

Justify the solution

A argument is a set of statements, one of which (the conclusion), it is said or implied, follows from
the others (the premises). One might think of arguments as bundles of reasons often not just a list,
but logically interconnected statements followed by the claim they are reasons for. The reasons
are the premises, the claim they support is the conclusion; together they make an argument.

Philosophical arguments and justifications are another important part of philosophical method. It is
rare to find a philosopher, particularly in the Western philosophical tradition, who lacks many
arguments. Philosophers are, or at least are expected to be, very good at giving arguments. They
constantly demand and offer arguments for different claims they make. This therefore indicates that
philosophy is a quest for arguments.

A good argument a clear, organized, and sound statement of reasons may ultimately cure the
original doubts that motivated us to take up philosophy. If one is willing to be satisfied without any
good supporting reasons, then a Western philosophical approach may not be what one actually
requires.

https://philosophyofquestions.com/

The philosophy of questions explores the nature and value of questions and questioning in
our everyday lives. From the questions of daily life what is the time, where are my keys to the
questions of philosophy, science and religion that aim to deepen our understanding of the world
around us.

Questioning in all these contexts is at once an intriguing and indispensable human practice. The
philosophy of questions is about exploring this practice and so attempting to understand something
fundamental about what we do and how we live.

Explore the website to find out more about the philosophy of questions. Check out my recent posts or
my current research at the University of Edinburgh and take part in the project by completing this
questionnaire.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/questions/

After going over some preliminaries we will focus on three lines of work on questions: one located at
the intersection of philosophy of language and formal semantics, focusing on the semantics of what

3
Belnap and Steel (1976) call elementary questions; a second located at the intersection of philosophy
of language and philosophy of science, focusing on why-questions and the notion of explanation; and
a third located at the intersection of philosophy of language and epistemology, focusing on
embedded or indirect questions.

1. Preliminaries

o 1.1 Questions, answers, and presuppositions

o 1.2 Kinds of questions

2. The semantics of elementary questions

o 2.1 Classical semantic theories of questions

o 2.2 Questions in dynamic semantics

o 2.3 Inquisitive semantics

o 2.4 Structured question meanings

o 2.5 Pointers to further reading

3. Why-questions

o 3.1 A formal approach: abnormic laws and Bromberger's theory

o 3.2 A pragmatic approach: explanatory contrast and van Fraassen's theory

4. Embedded (or indirect) questions

o 4.1 Knowledge-wh and the imperative-epistemic theory of wh-questions

o 4.2 Wh-complements as meaningful units

o 4.3 Wh-complements contextually defined

o 4.4 Information provision versus contextualism

o 4.5 Question-relativity

o 4.6 Wh-complements as predicates

Bibliography

Academic Tools

4
 Other Internet Resources

Related Entries

https://www.academia.edu/30148411/Philosophy_methods_methodology

see pages 3 and 4.

critical discussion, (or the Socratic method)

2a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method

The Socratic method is a method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by
steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions.

Socratic method, also known as maieutics, method of elenchus, elenctic method, or Socratic
debate, is a form of cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and
answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying
presumptions. It is a dialectical method, often involving a discussion in which the defense of one
point of view is questioned; one participant may lead another to contradict themselves in some way,
thus weakening the defender's point. This method is named after the classical Greek philosopher
Socrates and is introduced by him in Plato's Theaetetus as midwifery (maieutics) because it is
employed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutors' beliefs, or to help them further their
understanding.

The Socratic method is a method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by
steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches
for general, commonly held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinizes them to determine their
consistency with other beliefs. The basic form is a series of questions formulated as tests of logic and
fact intended to help a person or group discover their beliefs about some topic, exploring definitions
or logoi (singular logos) and seeking to characterize general characteristics shared by various
particular instances. Aristotle attributed to Socrates the discovery of the method of definition and
induction, which he regarded as the essence of the scientific method.

Development
2 Method

Elenchus (Ancient Greek: elengkhos "argument of disproof or refutation; cross-examining,

testing, scrutiny esp. for purposes of refutation"[3]) is the central technique of the Socratic method.
The Latin form elenchus (plural elenchi ) is used in English as the technical philosophical term.[4]
The most common adjectival form in English is elenctic; elenchic and elenchtic are also current.

5
In Plato's early dialogues, the elenchus is the technique Socrates uses to investigate, for example, the
nature or definition of ethical concepts such as justice or virtue. According to Vlastos,[5] it has the
following steps:

1. Socrates' interlocutor asserts a thesis, for example "Courage is endurance of the soul", which
Socrates considers false and targets for refutation.

2. Socrates secures his interlocutor's agreement to further premises, for example "Courage is a
fine thing" and "Ignorant endurance is not a fine thing".

3. Socrates then argues, and the interlocutor agrees, that these further premises imply the
contrary of the original thesis; in this case, it leads to: "courage is not endurance of the soul".

4. Socrates then claims that he has shown that his interlocutor's thesis is false and that its
negation is true.

One elenctic examination can lead to a new, more refined, examination of the concept being
considered, in this case it invites an examination of the claim: "Courage is wise endurance of the
soul". Most Socratic inquiries consist of a series of elenchi and typically end in puzzlement known as
aporia.

Frede[6] points out that Vlastos' conclusion in step #4 above makes nonsense of the aporetic nature of
the early dialogues. Having shown that a proposed thesis is false is insufficient to conclude that some
other competing thesis must be true. Rather, the interlocutors have reached aporia, an improved state
of still not knowing what to say about the subject under discussion.

The exact nature of the elenchus is subject to a great deal of debate, in particular concerning whether
it is a positive method, leading to knowledge, or a negative method used solely to refute false claims
to knowledge.[7]

W. K. C. Guthrie in The Greek Philosophers sees it as an error to regard the Socratic method as a
means by which one seeks the answer to a problem, or knowledge. Guthrie claims that the Socratic
method actually aims to demonstrate one's ignorance. Socrates, unlike the Sophists, did believe that
knowledge was possible, but believed that the first step to knowledge was recognition of one's
ignorance. Guthrie writes, "[Socrates] was accustomed to say that he did not himself know anything,
and that the only way in which he was wiser than other men was that he was conscious of his own
ignorance, while they were not. The essence of the Socratic method is to convince the interlocutor
that whereas he thought he knew something, in fact he does not."{pg 74}

3 Application

3.1 Socratic Circles

A Socratic Circle (also known as a Socratic Seminar) is a pedagogical approach based on

the Socratic method and uses a dialogic approach to understand information in a text. Its
systematic procedure is used to examine a text through questions and answers founded on the
beliefs that all new knowledge is connected to prior knowledge, that all thinking comes from
asking questions, and that asking one question should lead to asking further questions.[8] A
Socratic Circle is not a debate. The goal of this activity is to have participants work together

6
 to construct meaning and arrive at an answer, not for one student or one group to win the
argument.[9]
This approach is based on the belief that participants seek and gain deeper understanding of
concepts in the text through thoughtful dialogue rather than memorizing information that has
been provided for them.[9]

o 3.1.1 Various approaches to Socratic Circles

o 3.1.2 Text selection

Pertinent elements of an effective Socratic text

Socratic seminar texts are able to challenge participants thinking skills by having these
characteristics:

1. Ideas and values

2. Complexity and challenge

3. Relevance to participants' curriculum

4. Ambiguity

1. Ideas and values - The text must introduce ideas and values that are complex and difficult to
summarize.[13] Powerful discussions arise from personal connections to abstract ideas and from
implications to personal values.

2. Complexity and challenge - The text must be rich in ideas and complexity [10] and open to
interpretation.[15] Ideally it should require multiple readings,[16] but should be neither far above the
participants' intellectual level nor very long.

3. Relevance to participants and curriculum - An effective text has identifiable themes that are
recognizable and pertinent to the lives of the participants.[14] Themes in the text should relate to the
curriculum.

4. Ambiguity - The text must be approachable from a variety of different perspectives, including
perspectives that seem mutually exclusive, thus provoking critical thinking and raising important
questions. The absence of right and wrong answers promotes a variety of discussion and encourages
individual contributions.[10][16]

o 3.1.3 Questioning methods in Socratic Circles

Socratic Circles specify three types of questions to prepare:

7
 Opening questions generate discussion at the beginning of the seminar in order to elicit
dominant themes.[10][15]

Guiding questions help deepen and elaborate the discussion, keeping contributions on topic
and encouraging a positive atmosphere and consideration for others.

Closing questions lead participants to summarize their thoughts and learning[10] and
personalize what theyve discussed.[15]

3.2 Law schools

3.3 Psychotherapy

The Socratic method has also recently inspired a new form of applied philosophy:
socratic dialogue, also called philosophical counseling. In Europe Gerd B.
Achenbach is probably the best known practitioner, and Michel Weber has also
proposed another variant of the practice.

4 See also
5 References
6 Further reading
7 External links

rational argument

2 b)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic

Dialectic or dialectics (Greek: , dialektik), also known as the dialectical method, is a

discourse between two or more people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to
establish the truth through reasoned arguments.

The term dialectic is not synonymous with the term debate. While in theory debaters are not
necessarily emotionally invested in their point of view, in practice debaters frequently display an
emotional commitment that may cloud rational judgment. Debates are won through a combination of
persuading the opponent, proving one's argument correct, or proving the opponent's argument
incorrect. Debates do not necessarily require promptly identifying a clear winner or loser; however
clear winners are frequently determined by either a judge, jury, or by group consensus. The term
dialectics is also not synonymous with the term rhetoric, a method or art of discourse that seeks to
persuade, inform, or motivate an audience.[1] Concepts, like "logos" or rational appeal, "pathos" or
emotional appeal, and "ethos" or ethical appeal, are intentionally used by rhetoricians to persuade an
audience.[2]

8
Socrates favoured truth as the highest value, proposing that it could be discovered through reason
and logic in discussion: ergo, dialectic. Socrates valued rationality (appealing to logic, not emotion)
as the proper means for persuasion, the discovery of truth, and the determinant for one's actions. To
Socrates, truth, not aret, was the greater good, and each person should, above all else, seek truth to
guide one's life. Therefore, Socrates opposed the Sophists and their teaching of rhetoric as art and as
emotional oratory requiring neither logic nor proof.[3] Different forms of dialectical reasoning have
emerged throughout history from the Indosphere (Greater India) and the West (Europe). These forms
include the Socratic method, Hindu, Buddhist, Medieval, Hegelian dialectics, Marxist, Talmudic, and
Neo-orthodoxy. rinciples
2 Western dialectical forms

2.1 Classical philosophy

o 2.1.1 Socratic dialogue

o 2.1.2 Aristotle

2.2 Medieval philosophy

2.3 Modern philosophy

o 2.3.1 Hegelian dialectic

o 2.3.2 Marxist dialectic

Dialectical method and dualism

Another way to understand dialectics is to view it as a method of thinking to overcome
formal dualism and monistic reductionism.[69] For example, formal dualism regards the
opposites as mutually exclusive entities, whilst monism finds each to be an epiphenomenon
of the other. Dialectical thinking rejects both views. The dialectical method requires focus on
both at the same time. It looks for a transcendence of the opposites entailing a leap of the
imagination to a higher level, which (1) provides justification for rejecting both alternatives
as false and/or (2) helps elucidate a real but previously veiled integral relationship between
apparent opposites that have been kept apart and regarded as distinct. For example, the
superposition principle of quantum physics can be explained using the dialectical method of
thinkinglikewise the example below from dialectical biology. Such examples showing the
relationship of the dialectic method of thinking to the scientific method to a large part negates
the criticism of Popper (see text below) that the two are mutually exclusive. The dialectic
method also examines false alternatives presented by formal dualism (materialism vs
idealism; rationalism vs empiricism; mind vs body, etc.) and looks for ways to transcend the
opposites and form synthesis. In the dialectical method, both have something in common, and
understanding of the parts requires understanding their relationship with the whole system.
The dialectical method thus views the whole of reality as an evolving process.
Criticisms
Dialectics has become central to "Continental" philosophy, but it plays no part in "Anglo-
American" philosophy. In other words, on the continent of Europe, dialectics has entered

9
 intellectual culture as what might be called a legitimate part of thought and philosophy,
whereas in America and Britain, the dialectic plays no discernible part in the intellectual
culture, which instead tends toward positivism. A prime example of the European tradition is
Jean-Paul Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason, which is very different from the works of
Popper, whose philosophy was for a time highly influential in the UK where he resided (see
below). Sartre states:
"Existentialism, like Marxism, addresses itself to experience in order to discover there
concrete syntheses. It can conceive of these syntheses only within a moving, dialectical
totalisation, which is nothing else but history orfrom the strictly cultural point of view
adopted here'philosophy-becoming-the world'."[70]
Karl Popper has attacked the dialectic repeatedly. In 1937 he wrote and delivered a paper
entitled "What Is Dialectic?" in which he attacked the dialectical method for its willingness
"to put up with contradictions".[71] Popper concluded the essay with these words: "The whole
development of dialectic should be a warning against the dangers inherent in philosophical
system-building. It should remind us that philosophy should not be made a basis for any sort
of scientific system and that philosophers should be much more modest in their claims. One
task which they can fulfill quite usefully is the study of the critical methods of science" (Ibid.,
p. 335).
In chapter 12 of volume 2 of The Open Society and Its Enemies (1944; 5th rev. ed., 1966)
Popper unleashed a famous attack on Hegelian dialectics, in which he held that Hegel's
thought (unjustly, in the view of some philosophers, such as Walter Kaufmann,[72]) was to
some degree responsible for facilitating the rise of fascism in Europe by encouraging and
justifying irrationalism. In section 17 of his 1961 "addenda" to The Open Society, entitled
"Facts, Standards and Truth: A Further Criticism of Relativism," Popper refused to moderate
his criticism of the Hegelian dialectic, arguing that it "played a major role in the downfall of
the liberal movement in Germany,... by contributing to historicism and to an identification of
might and right, encouraged totalitarian modes of thought. . . . [and] undermined and
eventually lowered the traditional standards of intellectual responsibility and honesty".[73]
Formalism
Main article: Logic and dialectic
In the past few decades, European and American logicians have attempted to provide
mathematical foundations for dialectical logic or argument. There had been pre-formal
treatises on argument and dialectic, from authors such as Stephen Toulmin (The Uses of
Argument), Nicholas Rescher (Dialectics), and van Eemeren and Grootendorst (Pragma-
dialectics). One can include the communities of informal logic and paraconsistent logic.
However, building on theories of defeasible reasoning (see John L. Pollock),

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeasible_reasoning

In logic, defeasible reasoning is a kind of reasoning that is rationally compelling though not
deductively valid.[1] The distinction between defeasibility and indefeasibility may be seen in the
context of this joke:

During a train trip through the countryside, an engineer, a physicist, and a mathematician
observe a flock of sheep. The engineer remarks, "I see that the sheep in this region are white."
The physicist offers a correction, "Some sheep in this region are white." And the
mathematician responds, "In this region there exist sheep that are white on at least one side."

10
The engineer in this story has reasoned defeasibly; since engineering is a highly practical discipline,
it is receptive to generalizations. In particular, engineers cannot and need not defer decisions until
they have acquired perfect and complete knowledge. But mathematical reasoning, having different
goals, inclines one to account for even the rare and special cases, and thus typically leads to a stance
that is indefeasible.

Defeasible reasoning is a particular kind of non-demonstrative reasoning, where the reasoning does
not produce a full, complete, or final demonstration of a claim, i.e., where fallibility and corrigibility
of a conclusion are acknowledged. In other words defeasible reasoning produces a contingent
statement or claim. Other kinds of non-demonstrative reasoning are probabilistic reasoning,
inductive reasoning, statistical reasoning, abductive reasoning, and paraconsistent reasoning.
Defeasible reasoning is also a kind of ampliative reasoning because its conclusions reach beyond the
pure meanings of the premises.

The differences between these kinds of reasoning correspond to differences about the conditional that
each kind of reasoning uses, and on what premise (or on what authority) the conditional is adopted:

Deductive (from meaning postulate, axiom, or contingent assertion): if p then q (i.e., q or not-
p)

Defeasible (from authority): if p then (defeasibly) q

Probabilistic (from combinatorics and indifference): if p then (probably) q

Statistical (from data and presumption): the frequency of qs among ps is high (or inference
from a model fit to data); hence, (in the right context) if p then (probably) q

Inductive (theory formation; from data, coherence, simplicity, and confirmation): (inducibly)
"if p then q"; hence, if p then (deducibly-but-revisably) q

Abductive (from data and theory): p and q are correlated, and q is sufficient for p; hence, if p
then (abducibly) q as cause

Defeasible reasoning finds its fullest expression in jurisprudence, ethics and moral philosophy,
epistemology, pragmatics and conversational conventions in linguistics, constructivist decision
theories, and in knowledge representation and planning in artificial intelligence. It is also closely
identified with prima facie (presumptive) reasoning (i.e., reasoning on the "face" of evidence), and
ceteris paribus (default) reasoning (i.e., reasoning, all things "being equal").

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reason

Reason is the capacity for consciously making sense of things, applying logic, establishing and
verifying facts, and changing or justifying practices, institutions, and beliefs based on new or
existing information.[1] It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as
philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art and is normally considered to be a definitive
characteristic of human nature.[2] Reason, or as aspect of it, is sometimes referred to as rationality.

11
Reasoning is associated with thinking, cognition, and intellect. Reasoning may be subdivided into
forms of logical reasoning (forms associated with the strict sense): deductive reasoning, inductive
reasoning, abductive reasoning; and other modes of reasoning considered more informal, such as
intuitive reasoning and verbal reasoning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_reasoning

Informally, two kinds of logical reasoning can be distinguished in addition to formal deduction:
induction and abduction. Given a precondition or premise, a conclusion or logical consequence and a
rule or material conditional that implies the conclusion given the precondition, one can explain that:

Deductive reasoning determines whether the truth of a conclusion can be determined for that
rule, based solely on the truth of the premises. Example: "When it rains, things outside get
wet. The grass is outside, therefore: when it rains, the grass gets wet." Mathematical logic and
philosophical logic are commonly associated with this type of reasoning.

Inductive reasoning attempts to support a determination of the rule. It hypothesizes a rule

after numerous examples are taken to be a conclusion that follows from a precondition in
terms of such a rule. Example: "The grass got wet numerous times when it rained, therefore:
the grass always gets wet when it rains." While they may be persuasive, these arguments are
not deductively valid, see the problem of induction. Science is associated with this type of
reasoning.

Inductive-creative reasoning this term has been coined by D. Iosif to combine the
specificity of the observation set from the inductive arena and the creativity (and intuition)
element from the abductive arena therefore providing a cogent view of the future. This
methodology will result in grounded creative thinking and can be used in strategy planning to
generate future as-yet unobserved phenomena. One example would be: "we observed a large
number of white swans on all continents and hypothesize that we need to protect by law all
swans that are white but also black (in existence but unobserved) and red (possibly to be re-
engineered in a distant future)". While inductive reasoning cannot yield an absolutely certain
conclusion, it can actually increase human knowledge (it is ampliative).

Abductive reasoning, aka inference to the best explanation, selects a cogent set of
preconditions. Given a true conclusion and a rule, it attempts to select some possible
premises that, if true also, can support the conclusion, though not uniquely. Example: "When
it rains, the grass gets wet. The grass is wet. Therefore, it might have rained." This kind of
reasoning can be used to develop a hypothesis, which in turn can be tested by additional
reasoning or data. Diagnosticians, detectives, and scientists often use this type of reasoning.

1 Etymology and related words

2 Philosophical history

2.1 Classical philosophy

2.2 Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy

2.3 Substantive and formal reason

12
 2.4 The critique of reason

3 Reason compared to related concepts

3.1 Compared to logic

3.2 Reason compared to cause-and-effect thinking, and symbolic thinking

3.3 Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory

3.4 Logical reasoning methods and argumentation

o 3.4.1 Deductive reasoning

o 3.4.2 Inductive reasoning

o 3.4.3 Abductive reasoning

o 3.4.4 Analogical reasoning

o 3.4.5 Fallacious reasoning

4 Traditional problems raised concerning reason

4.1 Reason versus truth, and "first principles"

4.2 Reason versus emotion or passion

4.3 Reason versus faith or tradition

5 Reason in particular fields of study

5.1 Reason in political philosophy and ethics

5.2 Psychology

o 5.2.1 Behavioral experiments on human reasoning

o 5.2.2 Developmental studies of children's reasoning

o 5.2.3 Neuroscience of reasoning

5.3 Computer science

o 5.3.1 Automated reasoning

o 5.3.2 Meta-reasoning

13
 5.4 Evolution of reason

Along these lines, a distinction is often drawn between discursive reason, reason proper, and
intuitive reason,[3] in which the reasoning processhowever validtends toward the personal and
the opaque. Although in many social and political settings logical and intuitive modes of reason may
clash, in others contexts, intuition and formal reason are seen as complementary, rather than
adversarial as, for example, in mathematics, where intuition is often a necessary building block in the
creative process of achieving the hardest form of reason, a formal proof.

Reason, like habit or intuition, is one of the ways by which thinking comes from one idea to a related
idea. For example, it is the means by which rational beings understand themselves to think about
cause and effect, truth and falsehood, and what is good or bad. It is also closely identified with the
ability to self-consciously change beliefs, attitudes, traditions, and institutions, and therefore with the
capacity for freedom and self-determination.[4]

In contrast to reason as an abstract noun, a reason is a consideration which explains or justifies some
event, phenomenon, or behavior.[5] The field of logic studies ways in which human beings reason
formally through argument.[6]

Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reason, e.g.
which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors affect the inferences that
people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may or may not be modeled
computationally. Animal psychology considers the question of whether animals other than humans
can reason.

Etymology and related words

2 Philosophical history
Etymology and related words
2 Philosophical history

2.1 Classical philosophy

2.2 Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy

In his search for a foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes deliberately decided to
throw into doubt all knowledge except that of the mind itself in the process of thinking:
At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely
nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason
words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant.[16]
This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it
is based on the knowing subject, who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of
objects to be studied, and successfully mastered by applying the knowledge accumulated
through such study. Breaking with tradition and many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly

14
 did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them as
one indivisible incorporeal entity.
This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it is
based on the knowing subject, who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects
to be studied, and successfully mastered by applying the knowledge accumulated through
such study. Breaking with tradition and many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not
divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them as one
indivisible incorporeal entity.
A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes described reason as a broader version of
"addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers.[17] This understanding of reason is
sometimes termed "calculative" reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No
discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come" but that "sense
and memory" is absolute knowledge.[18]
In the late 17th century, through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed
Descartes' line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction,
proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and
therefore no knowledge is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise.[19][20]
Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of
the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the
passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."[21] Hume
also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing, unlike his predecessors,
that human reason is not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual
ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas,[22] and that "reason is nothing but a wonderful
and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and
endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and
relations."[23] It followed from this that animals have reason, only much less complex than
human reason.

2.3 Substantive and formal reason

In the formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the
subject, the great achievement of reason is that it is able to exercise a kind of universal law-
making. Kant was able therefore to re-formulate the basis of moral-practical, theoretical and
aesthetic reasoning, on "universal" laws.
Here practical reasoning is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal
norms, and theoretical reasoning the way humans posit universal laws of nature.[24]
Under practical reason, the moral autonomy or freedom of human beings depends on their
ability to behave according to laws that are given to them by the proper exercise of that
reason. This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on religious
understanding and interpretation, or nature for their substance.[25]
According to Kant, in a free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals
however they see fit, so long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He
formulated such a principle, called the "categorical imperative"

In contrast to Hume then, Kant insists that reason itself (German Vernunft) has natural ends itself, the
solution to the metaphysical problems, especially the discovery of the foundations of morality. Kant

15
claimed that this problem could be solved with his "transcendental logic" which unlike normal logic
is not just an instrument, which can be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical
science in its own right and the basis of all the others.[27]

According to Jrgen Habermas, the "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern times,
such that it can no longer answer the question "How should I live?" Instead, the unity of reason has
to be strictly formal, or "procedural." He thus described reason as a group of three autonomous
spheres (on the model of Kant's three critiques):

1. Cognitive-instrumental reason is the kind of reason employed by the sciences. It is used to

observe events, to predict and control outcomes, and to intervene in the world on the basis of
its hypotheses;

2. Moral-practical reason is what we use to deliberate and discuss issues in the moral and
political realm, according to universalizable procedures (similar to Kant's categorical
imperative); and

3. Aesthetic reason is typically found in works of art and literature, and encompasses the novel
ways of seeing the world and interpreting things that those practices embody.

For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be mediated with
the "lifeworld" by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason, Habermas hoped to demonstrate
that the substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern societies had been able to answer questions
about the good life, could be made up for by the unity of reason's formalizable procedures.[28]

2.4 The critique of reason From subject to intersubjective (communal)

Hamann, Herder, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, Rorty, and many other
philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like
Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental
reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole. Others, including Hegel, believe that it has
obscured the importance of intersubjectivity, or "spirit" in human life, and attempt to reconstruct a
model of what reason should be.

Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other forms of reason, neglected but essential to
modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason.[10]

In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique of
reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason:

For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed a model of

communicative reason that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of
linguistic intersubjectivity.[29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_pragmatics

16
Universal pragmatics, more recently placed under the heading of formal pragmatics, is the
philosophical study of the necessary conditions for reaching an understanding through
communication. The philosopher Jrgen Habermas coined the term in his essay "What is Universal
Pragmatics?" (Habermas 1979), where he suggests that human competition, conflict, and strategic
action are attempts to achieve understanding that have failed because of modal confusions. The
implication is that coming to terms with how people understand or misunderstand one another could
lead to a reduction of social conflict.

By coming to an "understanding," he means at the very least, when two or more social actors share
the same meanings about certain words or phrases; and at the very most, when these actors are
confident that those meanings fit relevant social expectations (or a "mutually recognized normative
background"). (1979:3)

For Habermas, the goal of coming to an understanding is "intersubjective mutuality ... shared
knowledge, mutual trust, and accord with one another". (1979:3) In other words, the underlying
goal of coming to an understanding would help to foster the enlightenment, consensus, and good will
necessary for establishing socially beneficial norms. Habermas' goal is not primarily for subjective
feeling alone, but for development of shared (intersubjective) norms which in turn establish the
social coordination needed for practical action in pursuit of shared and individual objectives. (See
Communicative action of 1983)

As an interdisciplinary subject, universal pragmatics draws upon material from a large number of
fields, from pragmatics, semantics, semiotics, informal logic, and the philosophy of language,
through social philosophy, sociology, and symbolic interactionism, to ethics, especially discourse
ethics, and on to epistemology and the philosophy of mind.

Universal pragmatics (UP) seeks to overcome three dichotomies: the dichotomy between body and
mind, between theory and practice, and between analytic and continental philosophy.[citation needed] It is
part of a larger project to rethink the relationship between philosophy and the individual sciences
during a period of social crisis. The project is within the tradition of Critical Theory, a program that
traces back to the work of Max Horkheimer.

The term "universal pragmatics" includes two different traditions that Habermas and his collaborator,
colleague, and friend Karl-Otto Apel have attempted to reconcile. On the one hand, ideas are drawn
from the tradition of Plato, Aristotle, and Kant, wherein words and concepts are regarded as
universally valid idealizations of shared meanings. And, on the other hand, inspiration is drawn from
the American Pragmatist tradition (feat. Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, Charles W.
Morris), for whom words are arbitrary signs devoid of intrinsic meaning, and whose function is to
denote the things and processes in the objective world that surrounds the speakers.[citation needed]

UP shares with speech act theory, semiotics, and linguistics an interest in the details of language use
and communicative action. However, unlike those fields, it insists on a difference between the
linguistic data that we observe in the 'analytic' mode, and the rational reconstruction of the rules of
symbol systems that each reader/listener possesses intuitively when interpreting strings of words. In
this sense, it is an examination of the two ways that language usage can be analyzed: as an object of
scientific investigation, and as a 'rational reconstruction' of intuitive linguistic 'know-how'.

Goals and methods

Universal pragmatics is associated with the philosophical method of rational reconstruction.

17
The basic concern in universal pragmatics is utterances (or speech acts) in general. This is in contrast
to most other fields of linguistics, which tend to be more specialized, focusing exclusively on very
specific sorts of utterances such as sentences (which in turn are made up of words, morphemes, and
phonemes).

For Habermas, the most significant difference between a sentence and an utterance is in that
sentences are judged according to how well they make sense grammatically, while utterances are
judged according to their communicative validity (see section 1). (1979:31)

Universal pragmatics is also distinct from the field of sociolinguistics, because universal pragmatics
is only interested in the meanings of utterances if they have to do with claims about truth or
rightness, while sociolinguistics is interested in all utterances in their social contexts. (1979:31,33)

Three aspects of universal pragmatics

There are three ways to evaluate an utterance, according to UP. There are theories that deal with
elementary propositions, theories of first-person sentences, and theories of speech acts.

A theory of elementary propositions investigates those things in the real world that are being
referenced by an utterance, and the things that are implied by an utterance, or predicate it. For
example, the utterance "The first Prime Minister of Canada" refers to a man who went by the name
of Sir John A. Macdonald. And when a speaker delivers the utterance, "My husband is a lawyer", it
implies that the speaker is married to a man.

A theory of first-person sentences examines the expression of the intentions of the actor(s) through
language and in the first-person.

Finally, a theory of speech acts examines the setting of standards for interpersonal relations
through language. The basic goal for speech act theory is to explain how and when utterances in
general are performative. (1979:34) Central to the notion of speech acts are the ideas of
"illocutionary force" and perlocutionary force, both terms coined by philosopher J.L. Austin.
Illocutionary force describes the intent of the speaker, while perlocutionary force means the effect an
utterance has in the world, or more specifically, the effect on others.

A performative utterance is a sentence where an action being performed is done by the utterance
itself. For example: "I inform you that you have a moustache", or "I promise you I will not burn
down the house". In these cases, the words are also taken as significant actions: the act of informing
and promising (respectively).

Habermas adds to this the observation that speech acts can either succeed or fail, depending on
whether or not they succeed on influencing another person in the intended way. (1979:35)

This last method of evaluationthe theory of speech actsis the domain that Habermas is most
interested in developing as a theory of communicative action.

Communicative action

18
There are a number of ways to approach Habermas's project of developing a formal pragmatic
analysis of communication. Because Habermas developed it in order to have a normative and
philosophical foundation for his critical social theory, most of the inroads into formal pragmatics
start from sociology, specifically with what is called action theory. Action theory concerns the
nature of human action, especially the manner in which collective actions are coordinated in a
functioning society.

The coordination and integration of social action has been explained in many ways by many theories.
Rational choice theory and game theory are two examples, which describe the integration of
individuals into social groups by detailing the complex manner in which individuals motivated only
by self-interest will form mutually beneficial and cooperative social arrangements. In contrast to
these, Habermas has formulated a theory of communicative action. (Habermas 1984; 1987) This
theory and the project of developing a formal pragmatic analysis of communication are inseparable.

Habermas makes a series of distinctions in the service of explaining social action. The first major
differentiation he makes is between two social realms, the system and the lifeworld. These designate
two distinct modes of social integration:

The kind of social integration accomplished in the system is accomplished

through the functional integration of the consequences of actions. It bypasses
the consciousness of individuals and does not depend upon their being oriented
towards acting collectively. Economic and industrial systems are great examples,
often producing complex forms of social integration and interdependence despite
the openly competitive orientations of individuals.

The social integration accomplished in the lifeworld, by contrast, depends upon

the coordination of action plans and the conscious action-orientations of
individuals. It relies on processes of human interaction involving symbolic and
cultural forms of meaning. More specifically, as Habermas maintains, the
coordination of the lifeworld is accomplished through communicative action.

Thus, communicative action is an indispensable facet of society. It is at the heart of the lifeworld
and is, Habermas claims, responsible for accomplishing several fundamental social functions:
reaching understanding, cultural reproduction, coordinating action-plans, and socializing individuals.

However, Habermas is quick to note, different modes of interaction can (in some ways) facilitate
these social functions and achieve integration within the lifeworld. This points towards the second
key distinction Habermas makes, which differentiates communicative action from strategic action.
The coordination of action plans, which constitutes the social integration of the lifeworld, can be
accomplished either through consensus or influence.

Strategic action is action oriented towards success, while communicative action is action oriented
towards understanding. Both involve the symbolic resources of the lifeworld and occur primarily
by way of linguistic interaction. On the one hand, actors employing communicative actions draw on
the uniquely impelling force of mutual understanding to align the orientation of their action plans. It
is this subtle but insistent binding force of communicative interactions that opens the door to an
understanding of their meanings. On the other hand, actors employing strategic actions do not exploit
the potential of communication that resides in the mutual recognition of a shared action-oriented
understanding. Instead strategic actors relate to others with no intention of reaching consensus or

19
mutual understanding, but only the intention of accomplishing pre-determined ends unrelated to
reaching an understanding. Strategic action often involves the use of communicative actions to
achieve the isolated intentions of individuals, manipulating shared understanding in the service of
private interests. Thus, Habermas claims, strategic action is parasitic on communicative action,
which means communicative action is the primary mode of linguistic interaction. Reaching a
reciprocally defined understanding is communication's basic function.

Keeping in mind this delineation of the object domain, the formal pragmatics of communication can
be more readily laid out. The essential insight has already been mentioned, which is that
communication is responsible for irreplaceable modes of social integration, and this is accomplished
through the unique binding force of a shared understanding. This is, in a sense, the pragmatic piece
of formal pragmatics: communication does something in the world. What needs to be explained are
the conditions for the possibility of what communication already does. This is, in a sense, the formal
piece of formal pragmatics: a rational reconstruction of the deep generative structures that are the
universal conditions for the possibility of a binding and compelling mutual understanding.

From here, Habermas heads the analysis in two directions. In 1) one direction is a kind of linguistic
analysis (of speech acts), which can be placed under the heading of the validity dimensions of
communication. The 2) other direction entails a categorization of the idealized presuppositions of
communication.

Communicative competence
Habermas argues that when speakers are communicating successfully, they will have to defend their
meaning by using these four claims.

1. That they have uttered something understandably or their statements are

intelligible;

2. That they have given other people something to understand or are speaking
something true;

3. That the speaker is therefore understandable or their intentions are

recognized and appreciated for what they are; and,

4. That they have come to an understanding with another person or, they have
used words that both actors can agree upon. (1979:4)

Habermas is emphatic that these claims are universalno human communication oriented at
achieving mutual understanding could possibly fail to raise all of these validity claims. Additionally,
to illustrate that all other forms of communication are derived from that which is oriented toward
mutual understanding, he argues that there are no other kinds of validity claims whatsoever. This is
important, because it is the basis of Habermas' critique of postmodernism.

The fundamental orientation toward mutual understanding is at the heart of universal pragmatics, as
Habermas explains:

"The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible
mutual understanding... other forms of social actionfor example, conflict, competition, strategic

20
action in generalare derivatives of action oriented toward reaching understanding. Furthermore,
since language is the specific medium of reaching understanding at the sociocultural stage of
evolution, I want to go a step further and single out explicit speech actions from other forms of
communicative action."[1]

Any meaning that meets the above criteria, and is recognized by another as meeting the criteria, is
considered "vindicated" or communicatively competent.

In order for anyone to speak validly and therefore, to have his or her comments vindicated,
and therefore reach a genuine consensus and understanding Habermas notes that a few more
fundamental commitments are required. First, he notes, actors have to treat this formulation of
validity so seriously that it might be a precondition for any communication at all. Second, he asserts
that all actors must believe that their claims are able to meet these standards of validity. And third,
he insists that there must be a common conviction among actors that all validity claims are either
already vindicated or could be vindicated.

Examining the validity of speech

Habermas claims that communication rests upon a non-egoistic understanding of the world,
which is an idea he borrowed from thinkers like Jean Piaget. A subject capable of a de-centered
understanding can take up three fundamentally different attitudes to the world. Habermas refers to
such attitudes as dimensions of validity. Specifically, this means individuals can recognize different
standards for validityi.e., that the validation of an empirical truth claim requires different methods
and procedures than the validation of subjective truthfulness, and that both of those require different
methods and procedures of validation than claims to normative rightness.

These dimensions of validity can be summarized as claims to truth (IT), truthfulness (I), and
rightness (WE). So the ability to differentiate between the attitudes (and their respective "worlds")
mentioned above should be understood as an ability to distinguish between types of validity claims.

M. Cooke provided the only book length treatment of Habermas's communication theory. Cooke
explains:

"when we adopt an objectifying attitude we relate, in the first instance to the

objective world of facts and existing states of affairs [IT]; when we adopt a norm-
conformative attitude we relate, in the first instance, to the social world of
normatively regulated interactions [WE]; when we adopt an expressive attitude
we relate, in the first instance to the subjective world of inner experience [I]".
(Cooke 1994)

This is fundamental to Habermas's analysis of communication. He maintains that the performance of

any speech act necessarily makes reference to these dimensions of validity, by raising at least three
validity claims.

One way to grasp this idea is to take an inventory of the ways in which an attempt at communication
can misfire, the ways a speech act can fail. A hearer may reject the offering of a speech act on the
grounds that it is invalid because it:

1. presupposes or explicates states of affairs which are not the case (IT);

21
 2. does not conform to accepted normative expectations (WE);

3. raises doubts about the intentions or sincerity of the speaker (I).

Of course from this it follows that a hearer who accepts the offering of a speech act does so on the
grounds that it is valid because it:

1. presupposes or explicates states of affairs that are true (IT);

2. conforms to accepted normative expectations (WE);

3. raises no doubts concerning the intentions or sincerity of the speaker (I).

This means that when engaging in communication the speaker and hearer are inescapably oriented to
the validity of what is said. A speech act can be understood as an offering, the success or failure of
which depends upon the hearer's response of either accepting or rejecting the validity claims it raises.
The three dimensions of validity pointed out above are implicated in any attempt at communication.

Thus, communication relies on its being embedded within relations to various dimensions of validity.
Any and every speech act is infused with inter-subjectively recognized claims to be valid. This
implicitly ties communication to argumentation and various discursive procedures for the redemption
of validity claims. This is true because to raise a validity claim in communication is to
simultaneously imply that one is able to show, if challenged, that one's claim is justified.
Communication is possible because speakers are accountable for the validity of what they say. This
assumption of responsibility on the part of the speaker is described by Habermas as a "warranty",
because in most cases the validity claims raised during communication are taken as justified, and
communication proceeds on that basis. Similarly, the hearer is accountable for the stance he or she
takes up in relation to the validity claims raised by the speaker. Both speaker and hearer are bound to
the validity claims raised by the utterances they share during communication. They are bound by the
weak obligations inherent in pursuing actions oriented towards reaching an understanding. Habermas
would claim that this obligation is a rational one:

"With every speech act, by virtue of the validity claims it raises, the speaker
enters into an interpersonal relationship of mutual obligation with the hearer:
The speaker is obliged to support her claims with reasons, if challenged, and the
hearer is obliged to accept a claim unless he has good reason not to do so. The
obligation in question is, in the first instance, not a moral one but a rational one
-- the penalty of failure to fulfill it is the charge not of immorality but of
irrationality -- although clearly the two will often overlap" (Cooke, 1994).

This begins to point towards the idea of communicative rationality, which is the potential for
rationality that is implicit in the validity basis of everyday communication, the shape of reason that
can be extracted from Habermas's formal-pragmatic analyses.

"The modern -- decentered -- understanding of the world has opened up different

dimensions of validity; to the extent that each dimension of validity has its own
standards of truth and falsity and its own modes of justification for determining
these, one may say that what has been opened up are dimensions of rationality"
(Cooke, 1994).

22
However, before the idea of communicative rationality can be described, the other direction of
Habermas's formal pragmatic analyses of communication needs to be explained. This direction
looks towards the idealized presuppositions of communication.

Ideal presuppositions of communication

When individuals pursue actions oriented towards reaching an understanding, the speech acts they
exchange take on the weight of a mutually recognized validity. This means each actor involved in
communication takes the other as accountable for what they have said, which implies that good
reasons could be given by all to justify the validity of the understanding that is being achieved.
Again, in most situations the redemption of validity claims is not an explicit undertaking (except in
discourses, see below). Instead, each actor issues a "warranty" of accountability to the other, which
only needs to be redeemed if certain validity claims are thrown into question. This suggests that the
validity claims raised in every communicative interaction implicitly tie communication to
argumentation.

It is here that the idealized presuppositions of communication arise. Habermas claims that all
forms of argumentation, even implicit and rudimentary ones, rest upon certain "idealizing
suppositions," which are rooted in the very structures of action oriented towards understanding.
These "strong idealizations" are always understood as at least approximately satisfied by participants
in situations where argumentation (and communication) is thought to be taking place. Thus, when
during communication it is discovered that the belief that these presuppositions are satisfied is not
justified it is always taken as problematic. As a result, steps are usually taken to reestablish and
maintain the belief that they are approximately satisfied, or communication is simply called off.

1. The most basic of these idealized presuppositions is the presupposition that

participants in communicative exchange are using the same linguistic
expressions in the same way. This is an obvious but interesting point, which
clearly illustrates what an idealized presupposition is. It is a presupposition
because communication would not proceed if those involved did not think it was
at least approximately satisfied (in this case that a shared language was being
used). It's idealized because no matter how closely it is approximated it is always
counterfactual (because, in this case, the fact is that all meanings are to some
degree personally defined).

2. Another, basic idealized presupposition of argumentation is the presupposition

that no relevant argument is suppressed or excluded by the participants.

3. Another is the presupposition that no persuasive force except that of the better
argument is exerted.

4. There is also the presupposition that all the participants are motivated only by a
concern for the better argument.

5. There is the presupposition of attributing a context-transcending significance to

validity claims. This presupposition is controversial but important (and becomes
expanded and clarified in the presuppositions of discourse, see below). The idea
is that participants in communication instill their claims with a validity that is
understood to have significance beyond the specific context of their agreement.

23
 6. The presupposition that no validity claim is exempt in principle from critical
evaluation in argumentation;

7. The presupposition that everyone capable of speech and action is entitled to

participate, and everyone is equally entitled to introduce new topics or express
attitudes needs or desires.

In sum, all these presuppositions must be assumed to be approximately satisfied in any situation of
communication, despite their being necessarily counterfactual. Habermas refers to the positing of
these idealized presuppositions as the "simultaneously unavoidable and trivial accomplishments that
sustain communicative action and argumentation".

Habermas calls discourses those forms of communication that come sufficiently close to actually
satisfying these presuppositions. Discourses often occur within institutionalized forms of
argumentation that self-reflectively refine their procedures of communication, and as a result have a
more rigorous set of presuppositions in addition to the ones listed above.

A striking feature of discourse is that validity claims tend to be explicitly thematized and there is the
presupposition that all possible interlocutors would agree to the universal validity of the conclusions
reached. Habermas especially highlights this in what he calls theoretical discourses and practical
discourses. These are tied directly to two of the three dimensions of validity discussed above:
theoretical discourse being concerned with validity claims thematized regarding objective states of
affairs (IT); practical discourse being concerned with validity claims thematized concerning the
rightness of norms governing social interactions (WE).

Habermas understands presupposition (5) to be responsible for generating the self-understanding and
continuation of theoretical and practical discourses. Presupposition (5) points out that the validity of
an understanding reached in theoretical or practical discourse, concerning some factual knowledge or
normative principle, is always expanded beyond the immediate context in which it is achieved. The
idea is that participants in discourses such as these presuppose that any understanding reached could
attain universal agreement concerning its universal validity if these discourses could be relieved of
the constraints of time and space. This idealized presupposition directs discourses concerning truth
and normative certainty beyond the contingencies of specific communicative situations and towards
the idealized achievements of universal consensus and universal validity. It is a rational
reconstruction of the conditions for the possibility of earnest discourses concerning facts and norms.
Recall that, for Habermas, rational reconstructions aim at offering the most acceptable account of
what allows for the competencies already mastered by a wide range of subjects. In order for
discourse to proceed, the existence of facts and norms must be presupposed, yet the certainty of an
absolute knowledge of them must be, in a sense, postponed.

Striking a Piagetian and Peircean chord, Habermas understands the deep structures of collective
inquiry as developmental. Thus, the presupposition shared by individuals involved in discourse is
taken to reflect this. The pursuit of truth and normative certainty is taken to be motivated and
grounded, not in some objective or social world that is treated as a "given", but rather in a learning
process. Indeed, Habermas himself is always careful to formulate his work as a research project,
open to refinement.

24
In any case, reconstructing the presuppositions and validity dimensions inherent to communication is
valuable because it brings into relief the inescapable foundations of everyday practices.
Communicative action and the rudimentary forms of argumentation that orient the greater part of
human interaction cannot be left behind. By reconstructing the deep structures of these Habermas has
discovered a seed of rationality planted in the very heart of the lifeworld. Everyday practices, which
are common enough to be trivial, such as reaching an understanding with another, or contesting the
reasons for pursuing a course of action, contain an implicit and idealized rationality.

In other words, communication is always somewhat rational. Communication could not occur if
the participants thought that the speech acts exchanged did not carry the weight of a validity for
which those participating could be held accountable. Nor would anyone feel that a conclusion was
justified if it was achieved by any other means than the uncoerced force of the better argument. Nor
could the specialized discourses of law, science and morality continue if the progress of knowledge
and insight was denied in favor of relativism.

That said, it is a question how appropriate it is to speak of "communication" tenselessly, and of

"everyday practices" as though they cut across all times and cultures. That they do cannot be
assumed, and anthropology provides evidence of significant difference. It is possible to ignore these
facts by limiting the scope of universal pragmatics to current forms of discourse, but this runs the
risk of contradicting Habermas's own demand for (5). Moreover, the initial unease with the classical
and liberal views of rationality had to do precisely with their ahistorical character and refusal, or
perhaps inability, to acknowledge their own origins in circumstances of the day. Their veneer of false
universality torn off by the likes of Foucault, it remains to be seen whether "universal" pragmatics
can stand up to the same challenges posed by deconstruction and skepticism.

. This view of reason is concerned with clarifying the norms and procedures by which
agreement can be reached, and is therefore a view of reason as a form of public
justification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_rationality

Nikolas Kompridis has proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of
practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus
on reason's possibilities for social change.[30]

The philosopher Charles Taylor, influenced by the 20th century German philosopher Martin
Heidegger, has proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of disclosure, which is tied to the
way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason.[31]

In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a concept of critique based on
Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason. This distinction, as suggested, has
two dimensions:

25
 Private reason is the reason that is used when an individual is "a cog in a machine" or when
one "has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be a soldier, to have taxes to pay, to be in
charge of a parish, to be a civil servant."

Public reason is the reason used "when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and not as a
cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable humanity." In these
circumstances, "the use of reason must be free and public."[32]

Communicative rationality, or communicative reason (German: kommunikative

Rationalitt), is a theory or set of theories which describes human rationality as a necessary
outcome of successful communication. In particular, it is tied to the philosophy of Karl-Otto
Apel, Jrgen Habermas, and their program of universal pragmatics, along with its related
theories such as those on discourse ethics and rational reconstruction. This view of reason is
concerned with clarifying the norms and procedures by which agreement can be reached, and
is therefore a view of reason as a form of public justification.
According to the theory of communicative rationality, the potential for certain kinds of reason
is inherent in communication itself. Building from this, Habermas has tried to formalize that
potential in explicit terms. According to Habermas, the phenomena that need to be accounted
for by the theory are the "intuitively mastered rules for reaching an understanding and
conducting argumentation", possessed by subjects who are capable of speech and action. The
goal is to transform this implicit "know-how" into explicit "know-that", i.e. knowledge, about
how we conduct ourselves in the realm of "moral-practical" reasoning.
The result of the theory is a conception of reason that Habermas sees as doing justice to the
most important trends in twentieth century philosophy, while escaping the relativism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism

Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity within
themselves, but rather only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception
and consideration.[1] As moral relativism, the term is often used in the context of moral
principles, where principles and ethics are regarded as applicable in only limited context.
There are many forms of relativism which vary in their degree of controversy.[2] The term
often refers to truth relativism, which is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that
truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture
(cultural relativism).[3]

Anthropological relativism refers to a methodological stance, in which the researcher suspends (or
brackets) his or her own cultural biases while attempting to understand beliefs and behaviors in their
local contexts. This has become known as methodological relativism, and concerns itself specifically
with avoiding ethnocentrism or the application of one's own cultural standards to the assessment of
other cultures.[4] Philosophical relativism, in contrast, asserts that the truth of a proposition depends
on the metaphysical, or theoretical frame, or the instrumental method, or the context in which the
proposition is expressed, or on the person, groups, or culture who interpret the proposition.[5]

Methodological relativism and philosophical relativism can exist independently from one
another, but most anthropologists base their methodological relativism on that of the philosophical
variety.[6]

The concept of relativism also has importance both for philosophers and for anthropologists in
another way. In general, anthropologists engage in descriptive relativism, whereas philosophers

26
engage in normative relativism, although there is some overlap (for example, descriptive relativism
can pertain to concepts, normative relativism to truth).

Descriptive relativism assumes that certain cultural groups have different modes of thought,
standards of reasoning, and so forth, and it is the anthropologist's task to describe, but not to evaluate
the validity of these principles and practices of a cultural group.

Normative relativism concerns normative or evaluative claims that modes of thought,

standards of reasoning, or the like are only right or wrong relative to a framework.
Normative is meant in a general sense, applying to a wide range of views; in the case
of beliefs, for example, normative correctness equals truth. This does not mean, of
course, that framework-relative correctness or truth is always clear, the first challenge
being to explain what it amounts to in any given case (e.g., with respect to concepts,
truth, epistemic norms). Normative relativism (say, in regard to normative ethical
relativism) therefore implies that things (say, ethical claims) are not simply true in
themselves, but only have truth values relative to broader frameworks (say, moral
codes). (Many normative ethical relativist arguments run from premises about ethics to
conclusions that assert the relativity of truth values, bypassing general claims about
the nature of truth, but it is often more illuminating to consider the type of relativism
under question directly.

The term "relativism" often comes up in debates over postmodernism, poststructuralism and
phenomenology. Critics of these perspectives often identify advocates with the label "relativism".
For example, the SapirWhorf hypothesis is often considered a relativist view because it posits that
linguistic categories and structures shape the way people view the world. Stanley Fish has defended
postmodernism and relativism.[9]

These perspectives do not strictly count as relativist in the philosophical sense, because they express
agnosticism on the nature of reality and make epistemological rather than ontological claims.
Nevertheless, the term is useful to differentiate them from realists who believe that the purpose of
philosophy, science, or literary critique is to locate externally true meanings. Important philosophers
and theorists such as Michel Foucault, Max Stirner, political movements such as post-anarchism

Post-anarchism or postanarchism is an anarchist philosophy that employs post-

structuralist and postmodernist approaches (the term post-structuralist anarchism
is used as well, so as not to suggest having moved beyond anarchism). Post-anarchism
is not a single coherent theory, but rather refers to the combined works of any number
of post-structuralists such as Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Lacan;
postmodern feminists such as Judith Butler; and post-Marxists such as Ernesto Laclau,
Chantal Mouffe, Jacques Rancire; with those of the classical anarchists, although he
wasn't an anarchist nor would he consider himself an anarchist with particular
concentration on ancient Chinese thinker and Warring states philosopher Zhuang Zhou,
Emma Goldman, Max Stirner, and Friedrich Nietzsche

Duane Rousselle has claimed post-anarchism is beginning to move away from the
epistemological characterization and toward an ontological characterization. [13] He has
written numerous articles and books on the topic

or post-Marxism can also be considered as relativist in this sense - though a better term might be
social constructivist.

27
The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic disciplines

The spread and popularity of this kind of "soft" relativism varies between academic
disciplines. It has wide support in anthropology and has a majority following in cultural
studies. It also has advocates in political theory and political science, sociology, and
continental philosophy (as distinct from Anglo-American analytical philosophy). It has
inspired empirical studies of the social construction of meaning such as those
associated with labelling theory, which defenders can point to as evidence of the
validity of their theories (albeit risking accusations of performative contradiction in the
process). Advocates of this kind of relativism often also claim that recent developments
in the natural sciences, such as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, quantum
mechanics, chaos theory and complexity theory show that science is now becoming
relativistic. However, many scientists who use these methods continue to identify as
realist or post-positivist, and some sharply criticize the association.

Relationism is the theory that there are only relations between individual entities, and
no intrinsic properties. Despite the similarity in name, it is held by some to be a position
distinct from relativismfor instance, because "statements about relational properties
[...] assert an absolute truth about things in the world

Relativism is not skepticism. Skepticism superficially resembles relativism, because

they both doubt absolute notions of truth. However, whereas skeptics go on to doubt all
notions of truth, relativists replace absolute truth with a positive theory of many equally
valid relative truths. For the relativist, there is no more to truth than the right context,
or the right personal or cultural belief, so there is a lot of truth in the world

which characterizes postmodernism,

Postmodernism describes both an era and a broad movement that developed in the mid to
late 20th century across philosophy, the arts, architecture, and criticism which marked a
departure from modernism.[1][2][3] While encompassing a broad range of ideas and projects,
postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism or distrust toward grand
narratives, ideologies, and various tenets of Enlightenment rationality, including the existence
of objective reality and absolute truth, as well as notions of rationality, human nature, and
progress.[4] Instead, it asserts that knowledge and truth are the product of unique systems of
social, historical, and political discourse and interpretation, and are therefore contextual and
constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to
epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, self-referentiality, and irony.[4]
The term postmodernism has been applied both to the era following modernity, and to a host
of movements within that era (mainly in art, music, and literature) that reacted against
tendencies in modernism.[5] Postmodernism includes skeptical critical interpretations of
culture, literature, art, philosophy, history, linguistics, economics, architecture, fiction, and
literary criticism. Postmodernism is often associated with schools of thought such as
deconstruction and post-structuralism, as well as philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Jean
Baudrillard, and Frederic Jameson.

Origins of term
2 Influential postmodernist philosophers
3 Deconstruction
4 Postmodernism and structuralism

28
 5 Post-postmodernism
Origins of term
2 Influential postmodernist philosophers
3 Deconstruction
4 Postmodernism and structuralism
5 Post-postmodernism

The connection between postmodernism, posthumanism, and cyborgism has led to a challenge of
postmodernism, for which the terms "postpostmodernism" and "postpoststructuralism" were first
coined in 2003:[22][23]

"In some sense, we may regard postmodernism, posthumanism, poststructuralism, etc., as

being of the `cyborg age' of mind over body. Deconference was an exploration in post-
cyborgism (i.e. what comes after the postcorporeal era), and thus explored issues of
postpostmodernism, postpoststructuralism, and the like. To understand this transition from
`pomo' (cyborgism) to `popo' (postcyborgism) we must first understand the cyborg era
itself."[24]

More recently metamodernism, post-postmodernism and the "death of postmodernism" have been
widely debated: in 2007 Andrew Hoberek noted in his introduction to a special issue of the journal
Twentieth Century Literature titled "After Postmodernism" that "declarations of postmodernism's
demise have become a critical commonplace". A small group of critics has put forth a range of
theories that aim to describe culture or society in the alleged aftermath of postmodernism, most
notably Raoul Eshelman (performatism), Gilles Lipovetsky (hypermodernity), Nicolas Bourriaud
(altermodern), and Alan Kirby (digimodernism, formerly called pseudo-modernism). None of these
new theories and labels have so far gained very widespread acceptance. The exhibition
Postmodernism - Style and Subversion 19701990 at the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, 24
September 2011 15 January 2012) was billed as the first show to document postmodernism as a
historical movement.

6 Influence on art
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art

Postmodern art is a body of art movements that sought to contradict some aspects of modernism or
some aspects that emerged or developed in its aftermath. In general, movements such as intermedia,
installation art, conceptual art and multimedia, particularly involving video are described as
postmodern.

There are several characteristics which lend art to being postmodern; these include bricolage, the use
of words prominently as the central artistic element, collage, simplification, appropriation,
performance art, the recycling of past styles and themes in a modern-day context, as well as the
break-up of the barrier between fine and high arts and low art and popular culture.[1][2]

Postmodernism describes movements which both arise from, and react against or reject, trends in
modernism.[22] General citations for specific trends of modernism are formal purity, medium
specificity, art for art's sake, authenticity, universality, originality and revolutionary or reactionary
tendency, i.e. the avant-garde. However, paradox is probably the most important modernist idea
against which postmodernism reacts. Paradox was central to the modernist enterprise, which Manet
introduced. Manet's various violations of representational art brought to prominence the supposed

29
mutual exclusiveness of reality and representation, design and representation, abstraction and reality,
and so on. The incorporation of paradox was highly stimulating from Manet to the conceptualists.

The status of the avant-garde is controversial: many institutions argue being visionary, forward-
looking, cutting-edge, and progressive are crucial to the mission of art in the present, and therefore
postmodern art contradicts the value of "art of our times". Postmodernism rejects the notion of
advancement or progress in art per se, and thus aims to overturn the "myth of the avant-garde".
Rosalind Krauss was one of the important enunciators of the view that avant-gardism was over, and
the new artistic era is post-liberal and post-progress.[23] Griselda Pollock studied and confronted the
avant-garde and modern art in a series of groundbreaking books, reviewing modern art at the same
time as redefining postmodern art.[24][25][26]

One characteristic of postmodern art is its conflation of high and low culture through the use of
industrial materials and pop culture imagery. The use of low forms of art were a part of modernist
experimentation as well, as documented in Kirk Varnedoe and Adam Gopnik's 199091 show High
and Low: Popular Culture and Modern Art at New York's Museum of Modern Art,[27] an exhibition
that was universally panned at the time as the only event that could bring Douglas Crimp and Hilton
Kramer together in a chorus of scorn.[28] Postmodern art is noted for the way in which it blurs the
distinctions between what is perceived as fine or high art and what is generally seen as low or kitsch
art.[29] Whilst this concept of 'blurring' or 'fusing' high art with low art had been experimented during
modernism, it only ever became fully endorsed after the advent of the postmodern era.[29]
Postmodernism introduced elements of commercialism, kitsch and a general camp aesthetic within
its artistic context; postmodernism takes styles from past periods, such as Gothicism, the
Renaissance and the Baroque,[29] and mixes them so as to ignore their original use in their
corresponding artistic movement. Such elements are common characteristics of what defines
postmodern art.

Fredric Jameson suggests postmodern works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of
expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity. Against this definition, Art and
Language's Charles Harrison and Paul Wood maintained pastiche and discontinuity are endemic to
modernist art, and are deployed effectively by modern artists such as Manet and Picasso.[30]

One compact definition is postmodernism rejects modernism's grand narratives of artistic direction,
eradicating the boundaries between high and low forms of art, and disrupting genre's conventions
with collision, collage, and fragmentation. Postmodern art holds all stances are unstable and
insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions critique or revision cannot
overturn. "Pluralism and diversity" are other defining features.[31]

In general, Pop Art and Minimalism began as modernist movements: a paradigm shift
and philosophical split between formalism and anti-formalism in the early 1970s caused
those movements to be viewed by some as precursors or transitional postmodern art.
Other modern movements cited as influential to postmodern art are conceptual art and
the use of techniques such as assemblage, montage, bricolage, and appropriation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_art#Movements_in_postmodern_art
Neo-expressionism and painting
Main article: Neo-expressionism

The return to the traditional art forms of sculpture and painting in the late 1970s and early 1980s seen
in the work of Neo-expressionist artists such as Georg Baselitz and Julian Schnabel has been

30
described as a postmodern tendency,[56] and one of the first coherent movements to emerge in the
postmodern era.[57] Its strong links with the commercial art market has raised questions, however,
both about its status as a postmodern movement and the definition of postmodernism itself. Hal
Foster states that neo-expressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the
Reagan-Bush era in the U.S.[50] Flix Guattari disregards the "large promotional operations dubbed
'neo-expressionism' in Germany," (an example of a "fad that maintains itself by means of publicity")
as a too easy way for him "to demonstrate that postmodernism is nothing but the last gasp of
modernism."[7] These critiques of neo-expressionism reveal that money and public relations really
sustained contemporary art world credibility in America during the same period that conceptual
artists, and practices of women artists including painters and feminist theorists like Griselda Pollock,
[58][59]
were systematically reevaluating modern art.[60][61][62] Brian Massumi claims that Deleuze and
Guattari open the horizon of new definitions of Beauty in postmodern art.[63] For Jean-Franois
Lyotard, it was painting of the artists Valerio Adami, Daniel Buren, Marcel Duchamp, Bracha
Ettinger, and Barnett Newman that, after the avant-garde's time and the painting of Paul Czanne and
Wassily Kandinsky, was the vehicle for new ideas of the sublime in contemporary art.[64][65]

Institutional critique
Main article: Institutional Critique
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_Critique

Critiques on the institutions of art (principally museums and galleries) are made in the work of
Michael Asher, Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren and Hans Haacke.

Institutional Critique is a form of commentary on the various institutions and conventions of art, as
well as a radical disarticulation of the institution of art. For instance, assumptions about the supposed
aesthetic autonomy or neutrality of painting and sculpture are often explored as a subject in the field
of art, and are then historically and socially mapped out (e.g. ethnographically, archaeologically) as
discursive formations, then (re)framed within the context of the museum itself. As such, Institutional
Critique seeks to make visible the historically and socially constructed boundaries between inside
and outside, public and private. Institutional Critique is often critical of the false separations often
made between distinctions of taste and supposedly disinterested aesthetic judgement, and affirms that
taste is an institutionally cultivated sensibility that may tend to differ according to the class, ethnic,
sexual and gender backgrounds of art's audiences.

One of the criticisms of Institutional Critique is its complexity. As many have noted, it is a practice
that often only advanced artists, theorists, historians, and critics can participate in. Due to its highly
sophisticated understanding of modern art and society, as part of a privileged discourse like that of
any other specialized form of knowledge, it can often leave layman viewers alienated and/or
marginalized.

Another criticism is that it can be a misnomer, since it could be argued that institutional critique
artists often work within the context of the very same institutions. Most institutional critique art, for
instance, is displayed in museums and galleries, despite its critical stance towards them.

31
 6.1 Architecture

6.2 Urban planning

6.3 Literature

6.4 Music

6.5 Graphic design

7 Criticisms
Origins of term
2 Influential postmodernist philosophers
3 Deconstruction
4 Postmodernism and structuralism
5 Post-postmodernism
6 Influence on art

6.1 Architecture

6.2 Urban planning

6.3 Literature

6.4 Music

6.5 Graphic design

7 Criticisms
6 Influence on art

6.1 Architecture

6.2 Urban planning

6.3 Literature

6.4 Music

6.5 Graphic design

7 Criticisms

32

and also providing necessary standards for critical evaluation.[1]

According to Habermas, the "substantive" (i.e. formally and semantically

integrated) rationality that characterized pre-modern worldviews has, since
modern times, been emptied of its content and divided into three purely "formal"
realms: (1) cognitive-instrumental reason; (2) moral-practical reason; and (3)
aesthetic-expressive reason. The first type applies to the sciences, where
experimentation and theorizing are geared towards a need to predict and control
outcomes. The second type is at play in our moral and political deliberations
(very broadly, answers to the question "how should I live?"), and the third type is
typically found in the practices of art and literature. It is the second type which
concerns Habermas.

For Habermas, rational reconstruction is a philosophical and linguistic method that

systematically translates intuitive knowledge of rules into a logical form.[1] In other words, it
is an approach to science and philosophy which attempts to put meanings into language
properly.
The type of formal analysis called rational reconstruction is used by Jrgen Habermas to
name the task that he sees as appropriate for philosophy. This mode of philosophical
reflection can be compared to procedures traditionally taken up in philosophy and is
concerned with the questions traditionally posed. That is, rational reconstruction involves
making explicit and theoretically systematizing the universal and inescapable conditions for
the possibility of certain types of phenomena. Put more specifically, it can be said that
rational reconstruction is a manner of explicating the deep generative structures that give rise
to and allow for particular performances, behaviours, and other symbolically pre-structured
realities

There are a number of specific trends that Habermas identifies as important to twentieth century
philosophy, and to which he thinks his conception of communicative rationality contributes. To look
at these trends is to give a clear outline of Habermas's understanding of communicative rationality.
He labels all these trends as being post-metaphysical.[3] These post-metaphysical philosophical
movements have, among other things:

called into question the substantive conceptions of rationality (e.g. "a rational person thinks
this") and put forward procedural or formal conceptions instead (e.g. "a rational person thinks
like this");

replaced foundationalism with fallibilism with regard to valid knowledge and how it may be
achieved;

cast doubt on the idea that reason should be conceived abstractly beyond history and the
complexities of social life, and have contextualized or situated reason in actual historical
practices;

replaced a focus on individual structures of consciousness with a concern for pragmatic

structures of language and action as part of the contextualization of reason; and

33
 given up philosophy's traditional fixation on theoretical truth and the representational
functions of language, to the extent that they also recognize the moral and expressive
functions of language as part of the contextualization of reason.

Habermas' conception of communicative rationality moves along with these contemporary

currents of philosophy. Concerning (1) it can be said that:
[Communicative] rationality refers primarily to the use of knowledge in language and action,
rather than to a property of knowledge. One might say that it refers primarily to a mode of
dealing with validity claims, and that it is in general not a property of these claims
themselves. Furthermore...this perspective suggests no more than formal specifications of
possible forms of life... it does not extend to the concrete form of life...[4]
Concerning (2), Habermas clearly and explicitly understands communicative rationality
according to the terms of a reconstructive science. This means that the conception of
communicative rationality is not a definitive rendering of what reason is, but rather a fallible
claim. It can prescribe only formal specifications concerning what qualifies as reasonable,
being open to revision in cause of experience and learning.
On (3) and (4), Habermas's entire conceptual framework is based on his understanding of
social interaction and communicative practices, and he ties rationality to the validity basis of
everyday speech. This framework locates reason in the everyday practices of modern
individuals. This is in contradistinction to theories of rationality (e.g. Plato, Kant, etc.) that
seek to ground reason in an intelligible and non-temporal realm, or objective "view from
nowhere", which supposes that reason is able adequately to judge reality from a detached and
disinterested perspective.
While Habermas's notion of communicative rationality is contextualized and historicized, it is
not relativistic.
Many philosophical contextualists take reason to be entirely context-dependent and relative.
Habermas holds reason to be relatively context specific and sensitive. The difference is that
Habermas explicates the deep structures of reason by examining the presuppositions and
validity dimensions of everyday communication, while the relativists focus only on the
content displayed in various concrete standards of rationality.

Concerning (5), Habermas's communicative rationality emphasizes the equal

importance of the three validity dimensions, which means it sees the potential
for rationality in normative rightness (WE), theoretical truth (IT) and expressive
or subjective truthfulness (I). The differentiation of these three worlds is
understood as a valuable heuristic. This leaves each to its specific forms of
argumentation and justification. However, these validity dimensions should be
related to one another and understood as complementary pieces in a broader
conception of rationality. This points towards a productive interpenetration of the
validity dimensions, for example the use of moral insights by the sciences
without their having to sacrifice theoretical rigor, or the inclusion of psychological
data into resources of moral philosophy.

Critique

The theory of communicative rationality has been criticized for being utopian and idealistic,[5] for
being blind to issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality,[6] and for ignoring the role of conflict,
contest, and exclusion in the historical constitution of the public sphere.[7]

34
More recently, Nikolas Kompridis has taken issue with Habermas' conception of rationality as
incoherent and insufficiently complex, proposing a "possibility-disclosing" role for reason that goes
beyond the narrow proceduralism of Habermas' theory.[8]

Kompridis argues that Habermasian critical theory, which has in recent decades become the
main paradigm of that tradition, has largely severed its own roots in German Idealism, while
neglecting modernity's distinctive relationship to time and the utopian potential of critique.
While drawing on many of Habermas' own insights (along with the philosophical traditions
of German Idealism, American Pragmatism, and the work of many others), Kompridis
proposes an alternative approach to social criticism and what he sees as its role in facilitating
social change. This interpretation is guided by an engagement with Martin Heidegger's
concept of world disclosure, as well as alternative conceptions of key philosophical
categories, like critique, agency, reason, and normativity. Arguing against Habermas'
procedural conception of reason and in favour of a new paradigm Kompridis calls reflective
disclosure, the book suggests that critical theory should become a "possibility-disclosing"
practice of social criticism "if it is to have a future worthy of its past."
World disclosure (German: Erschlossenheit, literally development or comprehension) is a
phenomenon described by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his landmark book
Being and Time. It has also been discussed by philosophers such as John Dewey, Jrgen
Habermas, Nikolas Kompridis and Charles Taylor.[1] It refers to how things become
intelligible and meaningfully relevant to human beings, by virtue of being part of an
ontological world i.e., a pre-interpreted and holistically structured background of meaning.
This understanding is said to be first disclosed to human beings through their practical day-
to-day encounters with others, with things in the world, and through language.
Some philosophers, such as Ian Hacking and Nikolas Kompridis, have also described how
this ontological understanding can be re-disclosed in various ways (including through
innovative forms of philosophical argument).
Reflective disclosure is a model of social criticism proposed and developed by philosopher
Nikolas Kompridis. It is partly based on Martin Heidegger's insights into the phenomenon of
world disclosure, which Kompridis applies to the field of political theory. The term refers to
practices through which we can imagine and articulate meaningful alternatives to current
social and political conditions, by acting back on their conditions of intelligibility. This could
uncover possibilities that were previously suppressed or untried, or make us insightfully
aware of a problem in a way that allows us to go on differently with our institutions,
traditions and ideals.
In his book Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Kompridis
describes a set of heterogeneous social practices he believes can be a source of significant
ethical, political, and cultural transformation.[1] Highlighting the work of theorists such as
Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Michel Foucault and others, Kompridis calls such practices
examples of "reflective disclosure" after Martin Heidegger's insights into the phenomenon of
world disclosure. He also argues that social criticism or critique, and in particular critical
theory, ought to incorporate Heidegger's insights about this phenomenon and reorient itself
around practices of reflective disclosure if it is, as he puts it, "to have a future worthy of its
past".[2]
These practices, according to Kompridis, constitute what Charles Taylor calls a "new
department" of reason[3] which is distinct from instrumental reason, from reason understood
merely as the slave of the passions (Hume), and from the idea of reason as public justification
(Rawls). In contrast to theories of social and political change that emphasize socio-historical
contradictions (i.e., Marxist and neo-Marxist), theories of recognition and self-realization,

35
 and theories that try to make sense of change in terms of processes that are outside the scope
of human agency, Kompridis' paradigm for critical theory, with reflective disclosure at the
centre, is to help reopen the future by disclosing alternative possibilities for speech and
action, self-critically expanding what he calls the normative and logical "space of
possibility".[4]
Kompridis contrasts his own vision of critical theory with a Habermasian emphasis on the
procedures by which we can reach agreement in modern democratic societies. He claims the
latter has ignored the utopian concerns that previously animated critical theory, and narrowed
its scope in a way that brings it closer to liberal and neo-Kantian theories of justice.

3 Reason compared to related concepts

3.1 Compared to logic

3.2 Reason compared to cause-and-effect thinking, and symbolic thinking

3.3 Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory

3.4 Logical reasoning methods and argumentation

o 3.4.1 Deductive reasoning

o 3.4.2 Inductive reasoning

o 3.4.3 Abductive reasoning

o 3.4.4 Analogical reasoning

o 3.4.5 Fallacious reasoning

4 Traditional problems raised concerning reason

4.1 Reason versus truth, and "first principles"

4.2 Reason versus emotion or passion

4.3 Reason versus faith or tradition

5 Reason in particular fields of study

5.1 Reason in political philosophy and ethics

5.2 Psychology

o 5.2.1 Behavioral experiments on human reasoning

36
 o 5.2.2 Developmental studies of children's reasoning

o 5.2.3 Neuroscience of reasoning

5.3 Computer science

o 5.3.1 Automated reasoning

o 5.3.2 Meta-reasoning

5.4 Evolution of reason

2.1 Classical philosophy

2.2 Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy

2.3 Substantive and formal reason

2.4 The critique of reason

3 Reason compared to related concepts

3.1 Compared to logic

3.2 Reason compared to cause-and-effect thinking, and symbolic thinking

3.3 Reason, imagination, mimesis, and memory

3.4 Logical reasoning methods and argumentation

o 3.4.1 Deductive reasoning

o 3.4.2 Inductive reasoning

o 3.4.3 Abductive reasoning

o 3.4.4 Analogical reasoning

o 3.4.5 Fallacious reasoning

4 Traditional problems raised concerning reason

4.1 Reason versus truth, and "first principles"

4.2 Reason versus emotion or passion

37
 4.3 Reason versus faith or tradition

5 Reason in particular fields of study

5.1 Reason in political philosophy and ethics

5.2 Psychology

o 5.2.1 Behavioral experiments on human reasoning

o 5.2.2 Developmental studies of children's reasoning

o 5.2.3 Neuroscience of reasoning

5.3 Computer science

o 5.3.1 Automated reasoning

o 5.3.2 Meta-reasoning

5.4 Evolution of reason

systems have been built that define well-formedness of arguments, rules governing the
process of introducing arguments based on fixed assumptions, and rules for shifting burden.
Many of these logics appear in the special area of artificial intelligence and law, though the
computer scientists' interest in formalizing dialectic originates in a desire to build decision
support and computer-supported collaborative work systems.[74]

and systematic presentation.[7][8]

note: methods of philosophy see my article on this topic here -

https://www.academia.edu/30148411/Philosophy_methods_methodology

Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it?[9][10][11] What
is most real? However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as:
Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust (if one can get away with it)?[12] Do humans
have free will?[13]

Note: more general ideas as the subject-matter of philosophy

Historically, "philosophy" encompassed any body of knowledge.[14]

38
Note: take note of this!!

From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural philosophy"
encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics.[15]

note this!

For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified
as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic
philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize.[16][17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy#Professional_philosophy

note: the professionalization of philosophy and the consequences of that

In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate
academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology, linguistics and economics.

Note

Other investigations closely related to art, science, politics, or other pursuits remained part of
philosophy. For example, is beauty objective or subjective?[18][19] Are there many scientific methods
or just one?[20] Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy?[21][22][23] Major sub-fields of
academic philosophy include metaphysics ("concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and
being"),[24]

Note: so this is philosophys subject-matter, even today?

epistemology (about the "nature and grounds of knowledge [and]...its limits and validity"

note: and this

[25]
), ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science and the history of Western
philosophy.

Note: and this

Since the 20th century professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors,
researchers and writers. However, many of those who study philosophy in undergraduate or graduate
programs contribute in the fields of law, journalism, politics, religion, science, business and various
art and entertainment activities.[26]

39
Note: the praxis of philosophy became the activities of academics from all subjects and what that
includes

"Strong's Greek Dictionary 5385".

"Home : Oxford English Dictionary". oed.com.
"Online Etymology Dictionary". Etymonline.com. Retrieved 22 August 2010.
The definition of philosophy is: "1. orig., love of, or the search for, wisdom or knowledge 2.
theory or logical analysis of the principles underlying conduct, thought, knowledge, and the nature of
the universe". Webster's New World Dictionary (Second College ed.).
Jenny Teichmann and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginner's Guide (Blackwell
Publishing, 1999), p. 1: "Philosophy is a study of problems which are ultimate, abstract and very
general. These problems are concerned with the nature of existence, knowledge, morality, reason and
human purpose."
A.C. Grayling, Philosophy 1: A Guide through the Subject (Oxford University Press, 1998),
p. 1: "The aim of philosophical inquiry is to gain insight into questions about knowledge, truth,
reason, reality, meaning, mind, and value."
Adler, Mortimer J. (28 March 2000). How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great
Books of Western Civilization. Chicago, Ill.: Open Court. ISBN 978-0-8126-9412-3.
Quinton, Anthony, The ethics of philosophical practice, p. 666, Philosophy is rationally
critical thinking, of a more or less systematic kind about the general nature of the world
(metaphysics or theory of existence), the justification of belief (epistemology or theory of
knowledge), and the conduct of life (ethics or theory of value). Each of the three elements in this list
has a non-philosophical counterpart, from which it is distinguished by its explicitly rational and
critical way of proceeding and by its systematic nature. Everyone has some general conception of
the nature of the world in which they live and of their place in it. Metaphysics replaces the unargued
assumptions embodied in such a conception with a rational and organized body of beliefs about the
world as a whole. Everyone has occasion to doubt and question beliefs, their own or those of others,
with more or less success and without any theory of what they are doing. Epistemology seeks by
argument to make explicit the rules of correct belief formation. Everyone governs their conduct by
directing it to desired or valued ends. Ethics, or moral philosophy, in its most inclusive sense, seeks
to articulate, in rationally systematic form, the rules or principles involved. in Honderich 1995.
Greco, John, ed. (1 October 2011). The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism (1st ed.). Oxford
University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-983680-2.
Glymour, Clark (10 April 2015). "Chapters 16". Thinking Things Through: An Introduction
to Philosophical Issues and Achievements (2nd ed.). A Bradford Book. ISBN 978-0-262-52720-0.
"Contemporary Skepticism | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". www.iep.utm.edu.
Retrieved 25 April 2016.
"The Internet Classics Archive | The Republic by Plato". classics.mit.edu. Retrieved 25 April
2016.
"Free Will | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". www.iep.utm.edu. Retrieved 25 April
2016.
"Philosophy". www.etymonline.com. Online Etymological Dictionary. Retrieved 19 March
2016. The English word "philosophy" is first attested to c. 1300, meaning "knowledge, body of
knowledge."
Lindberg 2007, p. 3.
Shapin, Steven (1 January 1998). The Scientific Revolution (1st ed.). University Of Chicago
Press. ISBN 978-0-226-75021-7.
Briggle, Robert Frodeman and Adam. "When Philosophy Lost Its Way". Opinionator.
Retrieved 25 April 2016.
Sartwell, Crispin (1 January 2014). Zalta, Edward N., ed. Beauty (Spring 2014 ed.).

40
 "PLATO, Hippias Major | Loeb Classical Library". Loeb Classical Library. Retrieved 27
April 2016.
Feyerabend, Paul; Hacking, Ian (11 May 2010). Against Method (4th ed.). Verso. ISBN 978-
1-84467-442-8.
"Nozick, Robert: Political Philosophy | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy".
www.iep.utm.edu. Retrieved 25 April 2016.
"Rawls, John | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy". www.iep.utm.edu. Retrieved 25 April
2016.
More, Thomas (8 May 2015). Utopia. Courier Corporation. ISBN 978-0-486-11070-7.
"Merriam-Webster Dictionary". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
"Merriam-Webster Dictionary". www.merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 14 May 2016.
"Why Study Philosophy? An Unofficial "Daily Nous" Affiliate". www.whystudyphilosophy.com.
Retrieved 2016-05-02.

Perhaps we will get a few hints what philosophy is about from what metaphysics says it is concerned
with?

Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy investigating the fundamental nature of being and the world
that encompasses it.[1] Metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions:[2]

1. Ultimately, what is there?

2. What is it like?

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time,
cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into
the basic categories of being and how they relate to one another. Another central branch is
metaphysical cosmology: which seeks to understand the origin and meaning of the universe by
thought alone.

There are two broad conceptions about what "world" is studied by metaphysics. The strong, classical
view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer, so that the
subject is the most fundamental of all sciences. The weaker, more modern view assumes that the
objects studied by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of
introspection and conceptual analysis. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss both of these
"worlds" and what can be inferred about each one.

Some philosophers and scientists, such as the logical positivists, reject the entire subject of
metaphysics as meaningless, while others disagree and think that it is legitimate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysics

Central questions

Here we should get clues about what the subject-matter of philosophy is?
What are the things philosophy is investigating? We can therefore say what are the phenomena that it
is acceptable that philosophy may explore (should? Must? Must not explore?) -

41
 1.1 Being and ontology

1.2 Identity and change

1.3 Causality and time

1.4 Necessity and possibility

1.5 Cosmology and cosmogony

1.6 Mind and matter

1.7 Determinism and free will

1.8 Religion and spirituality

Below we will see how notions have changed of what metaphysics is about and what it should be
and the subject-matter it should be about. And how the questions being asked in philosophy have
changed -

History and schools of metaphysics

4.1 Pre-history

4.2 Bronze age

4.3 Pre-Socratic Greece

4.4 Ancient China

4.5 Socrates and Plato

Socrates is known for his dialectic or questioning approach to philosophy rather than a positive
metaphysical doctrine.

His pupil, Plato is famous for his theory of forms (which he places in the mouth of Socrates in the
dialogues he wrote to expound it). Platonic realism (also considered a form of idealism)[25] is
considered to be a solution to the problem of universals; i.e., what particular objects have in
common is that they share a specific Form which is universal to all others of their respective kind.

The theory has a number of other aspects:

Epistemological: knowledge of the Forms is more certain than mere sensory data.

Ethical: The Form of the Good sets an objective standard for morality.

42
 Time and Change: The world of the Forms is eternal and unchanging. Time and change
belong only to the lower sensory world. "Time is a moving image of Eternity".

Abstract objects and mathematics: Numbers, geometrical figures, etc., exist mind-
independently in the World of Forms.

ONTOLOGY in the two last sentences above.

Platonism developed into Neoplatonism, a philosophy with a monotheistic and mystical flavour that
survived well into the early Christian era.

4.6 Aristotle

Plato's pupil Aristotle wrote widely on almost every subject, including metaphysics. His
solution to the problem of universals contrasts with Plato's. Whereas Platonic Forms are
existentially apparent in the visible world, Aristotelian essences dwell in particulars.
Potentiality and Actuality[26] are principles of a dichotomy which Aristotle used throughout
his philosophical works to analyze motion, causality and other issues.
The Aristotelian theory of change and causality stretches to four causes: the material,
formal, efficient and final. The efficient cause corresponds to what is now known as a cause
simpliciter. Final causes are explicitly teleological, a concept now regarded as controversial
in science.[27] The Matter/Form dichotomy was to become highly influential in later
philosophy as the substance/essence distinction.
The opening arguments in Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book I, revolve around the senses,
knowledge, experience, theory, and wisdom. The first main focus in the Metaphysics is
attempting to determine how intellect "advances from sensation through memory,
experience, and art, to theoretical knowledge".[28] Aristotle claims that eyesight provides us
with the capability to recognize and remember experiences, while sound allows us to learn.

4.7 Classical India

o 4.7.1 Smkhya

o 4.7.2 Vednta

4.8 Islamic metaphysics

4.9 Scholasticism and the Middle Ages

4.10 Rationalism and Continental Rationalism

In the early modern period (17th and 18th centuries), the system-building scope of philosophy is
often linked to the rationalist method of philosophy, that is the technique of deducing the nature of
the world by pure reason. The scholastic concepts of substance and accident were employed.

43
 Leibniz proposed in his Monadology a plurality of non-interacting substances.

Descartes is famous for his Dualism of material and mental substances.

Spinoza believed reality was a single substance of God-or-nature.

4.11 British empiricism

British empiricism marked something of a reaction to rationalist and system-

building philosophy, or speculative metaphysics as it was pejoratively termed.
The sceptic David Hume famously declared that most metaphysics should be
consigned to the flames (see below). Hume was notorious among his
contemporaries as one of the first philosophers to openly doubt religion, but is
better known now for his critique of causality. John Stuart Mill, Thomas Reid and
John Locke were less sceptical, embracing a more cautious style of metaphysics
based on realism, common sense and science. Other philosophers, notably
George Berkeley were led from empiricism to idealistic metaphysics.

4.12 Kant

Immanuel Kant attempted a grand synthesis and revision of the trends already
mentioned: scholastic philosophy, systematic metaphysics, and skeptical
empiricism, not to forget the burgeoning science of his day. As did the systems
builders, he had an overarching framework in which all questions were to be
addressed.

Like Hume, who famously woke him from his 'dogmatic slumbers', he was suspicious of
metaphysical speculation, and also places much emphasis on the limitations of the human
mind. Kant described his shift in metaphysics away from making claims about an objective
noumenal world, towards exploring the subjective phenomenal world, as a Copernian
revolution, by analogy to (though opposite in direction to) Copernicus' shift from man (the
subject) to the sun (an object) at the center of the universe.
Kant saw rationalist philosophers as aiming for a kind of metaphysical knowledge he defined
as the synthetic apriorithat is knowledge that does not come from the senses (it is a priori)
but is nonetheless about reality (synthetic). Inasmuch as it is about reality, it differs from
abstract mathematical propositions (which he terms analytical apriori), and being apriori it is
distinct from empirical, scientific knowledge (which he terms synthetic aposteriori). The only
synthetic apriori knowledge we can have is of how our minds organise the data of the senses;
that organising framework is space and time, which for Kant have no mind-independent
existence, but nonetheless operate uniformly in all humans. Apriori knowledge of space and
time is all that remains of metaphysics as traditionally conceived. There is a reality beyond
sensory data or phenomena, which he calls the realm of noumena; however, we cannot know
it as it is in itself, but only as it appears to us. He allows himself to speculate that the origins
of phenomenal God, morality, and free will might exist in the noumenal realm, but these
possibilities have to be set against its basic unknowability for humans. Although he saw
himself as having disposed of metaphysics, in a sense, he has generally been regarded in
retrospect as having a metaphysics of his own, and as beginning the modern analytical
conception of the subject .

44


4.13 Kantians

Nineteenth century philosophy was overwhelmingly influenced by Kant and his

successors. Schopenhauer, Schelling, Fichte and Hegel all purveyed their own
panoramic versions of German Idealism, Kant's own caution about metaphysical
speculation, and refutation of idealism, having fallen by the wayside. The
idealistic impulse continued into the early twentieth century with British idealists
such as F. H. Bradley and J. M. E. McTaggart. Followers of Karl Marx took Hegel's
dialectic view of history and re-fashioned it as materialism.

4.14 Early analytical philosophy and positivism

During the period when idealism was dominant in philosophy, science had been making great
advances. The arrival of a new generation of scientifically minded philosophers led to a sharp
decline in the popularity of idealism during the 1920s.
Analytical philosophy was spearheaded by Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore. Russell and
William James tried to compromise between idealism and materialism with the theory of
neutral monism.
The early to mid twentieth century philosophy also saw a trend to reject metaphysical
questions as meaningless. The driving force behind this tendency was the philosophy of
logical positivism as espoused by the Vienna Circle.
At around the same time, the American pragmatists were steering a middle course between
materialism and idealism. System-building metaphysics, with a fresh inspiration from
science, was revived by A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne.

4.15 Continental philosophy

The forces that shaped analytical philosophythe break with idealism, and the influence of
sciencewere much less significant outside the English speaking world, although there was
a shared turn toward language. Continental philosophy continued in a trajectory from post
Kantianism.
The phenomenology of Husserl and others was intended as a collaborative project for the
investigation of the features and structure of consciousness common to all humans, in line
with Kant's basing his synthetic apriori on the uniform operation of consciousness. It was
officially neutral with regards to ontology, but was nonetheless to spawn a number of
metaphysical systems. Brentano's concept of intentionality would become widely influential,
including on analytical philosophy.
Heidegger, author of Being and Time, saw himself as re-focusing on Being-qua-being,
introducing the novel concept of Dasein in the process. Classing himself an existentialist,
Sartre wrote an extensive study of Being and Nothingness.
The speculative realism movement marks a return to full blooded realism.

4.16 Process metaphysics

45
 There are two fundamental aspects of everyday experience: change and persistence. Until
recently, the Western philosophical tradition has arguably championed substance and
persistence, with some notable exceptions, however. According to process thinkers, novelty,
flux and accident do matter, and sometimes they constitute the ultimate reality.
In a broad sense, process metaphysics is as old as Western philosophy, with figures such as
Heraclitus, Plotinus, Duns Scotus, Leibniz, David Hume, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, Gustav Theodor Fechner, Friedrich Adolf
Trendelenburg, Charles Renouvier, Karl Marx, Ernst Mach, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
mile Boutroux, Henri Bergson, Samuel Alexander and Nicolas Berdyaev. It seemingly
remains an open question whether major "Continental" figures such as the late Martin
Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, or Jacques Derrida
should be included.[58]
In a strict sense, process metaphysics may be limited to the works of a few founding fathers:
G. W. F. Hegel, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, Henri Bergson, A. N. Whitehead, and
John Dewey. From a European perspective, there was a very significant and early
Whiteheadian influence on the works of outstanding scholars such as mile Meyerson (1859
1933), Louis Couturat (18681914), Jean Wahl (18881974), Robin George Collingwood
(18891943), Philippe Devaux (19021979), Hans Jonas (19031993), Dorothy M. Emmett
(19042000), Maurice Merleau Ponty (19081961), Enzo Paci (19111976), Charlie Dunbar
Broad (18871971), Wolfe Mays (1912), Ilya Prigogine (19172003), Jules Vuillemin
(19202001), Jean Ladrire (1921), Gilles Deleuze (19251995), Wolfhart Pannenberg
(1928), and Reiner Wiehl (19292010).[59]

4.17 Later analytical philosophy

While early analytic philosophy tended to reject metaphysical theorizing, under the influence
of logical positivism, it was revived in the second half of the twentieth century. Philosophers
such as David K. Lewis and David Armstrong developed elaborate theories on a range of
topics such as universals, causation, possibility and necessity and abstract objects. However,
the focus of analytical philosophy generally is away from the construction of all-
encompassing systems and toward close analysis of individual ideas.
Among the developments that led to the revival of metaphysical theorizing were Quine's
attack on the analyticsynthetic distinction, which was generally taken to undermine Carnap's
distinction between existence questions internal to a framework and those external to it.[60]
The philosophy of fiction, the problem of empty names, and the debate over existence's status
as a property have all come of relative obscurity into the limelight, while perennial issues
such as free will, possible worlds, and the philosophy of time have had new life breathed into
them.[61][62]
The analytic view is of metaphysics as studying phenomenal human concepts rather than
making claims about the noumenal world, so its style often blurs into philosophy of language
and introspective psychology. Compared to system-building, it can seem very dry,
stylistically similar to computer programming or mathematics. Despite, or perhaps because
of, this scientific dryness, it is generally regarded as having made "progress" where other
schools have not. For example, concepts from analytical metaphysics are now routinely
employed and cited as useful guides in computational ontologies for databases and to frame
computer natural language processing and knowledge representation software.

46
 4

Note that in our search for WHAT philosophy is, we arrived at HOW philosophy is? How
philosophizing is done. Then, since Descartes, we realized that we cannot answer metaphysical or
Ontological questions

(Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy investigating the fundamental nature of being and the world
that encompasses it.[1] Metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions:[2]

1. Ultimately, what is there?

2. What is it like?

Topics of metaphysical investigation include existence, objects and their properties, space and time,
cause and effect, and possibility. A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into
the basic categories of being and how they relate to one another. Another central branch is
metaphysical cosmology: which seeks to understand the origin and meaning of the universe by
thought alone.

There are two broad conceptions about what "world" is studied by metaphysics. The strong, classical
view assumes that the objects studied by metaphysics exist independently of any observer, so that the
subject is the most fundamental of all sciences. The weaker, more modern view assumes that the
objects studied by metaphysics exist inside the mind of an observer, so the subject becomes a form of
introspection and conceptual analysis. Some philosophers, notably Kant, discuss both of these
"worlds" and what can be inferred about each one.

Some philosophers and scientists, such as the logical positivists, reject the entire subject of
metaphysics as meaningless, while others disagree and think that it is legitimate.)

Unless we ask questions about who is doing philosophy? Descartes therefore investigated the subject
of philosophizing. Kant took this line of questions further and realized that he need to investigate
underlying assumptions when the subject experiences, reasons, asks questions and do other
epistemological things. Kant revealed the transcendentals conditions that underlie all activities of the
subjects, namely the limits and conditions of the framework of human existence, actions, thinking,
etc.Hegel took this further in his on way, as did Marx, the Empiricists, Continental philosophers, the
logical positivist and Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophers. The latter ended up in some kind of self-
enclosed, professional, incestuous obsession with every greater micro-scopic details of reasoning,
thinking, perception, logic, etc. The results appear to have little to do with what original, creative
thinking philosophers did, why they did it, how they did it and the rationale and purpose of the
philosophical discourse.

Continental philosophers on the other hand also lost the steep, narrow road of authentic philosophy
by their indulgence in other minutiae, for example the deconstructionists. Some Germans like
Habermas on the other hand became an apostle, a saviour, by developing Hegel and Marx with the
assistance of an emphasis on certain aspects of socio-cultural practice. His emphasis on certain
features of inter-subjectivity, no longer the isolated subject of Descartes, or the static inter-subjective
transcendental limits, conditions and framework of experience, perception, thinking, understanding
and being of Kant, but a social reduction of Heidegger. The inter-subjective, social and oh so rational

47
communal Being has become both the new investigated subject-matter or object as well as the
investigating subject, the purpose of philosophy and philosophizing.

All what is necessary is to explore and map out all aspects and regions of the rational,
communicative, inter-subjective, socialized being/s. Philosophy, its subject-matter and its
investigating inter/subject/s have become reduced to a sociologism. This however was not a simple
process but required the invention or fabrication of endless domains, with many levels and numerous
dimensions and to be able to do this one had to contrive all sorts of neologisms. It seems the
German and French languages lend themselves very well to this kind of activity. The second
generation Critical Theory ism of Habermas has already gone through a third generation to a fourth
generation.

Regardless of the generation all individuals are invited to the public sphere to assist in revealing the
new ideal of of??? The public sphere (German: ffentlichkeit) is an area in social life
where individuals can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems,
and through that discussion influence political action. Communication scholar Gerard A.
Hauser has defined it as "a discursive space in which individuals and groups associate
to discuss matters of mutual interest and, where possible, to reach a common
judgment about them."[1] The public sphere can be seen as "a theater in modern
societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk" [2] and "a
realm of social life in which public opinion can be formed".

The basic ideal belief in public sphere theory is that the government's laws and policies
should be steered by the public sphere, and that the only legitimate governments are
those that listen to the public sphere. [10] "Democratic governance rests on the capacity
of and opportunity for citizens to engage in enlightened debate". [11] Much of the debate
over the public sphere involves what is the basic theoretical structure of the public
sphere, how information is deliberated in the public sphere, and what influence the
public sphere has over society.

And we have endless new social media to allow individuals to participate in the
construction by means of their phones, tablets, phablets, You Tube, Instagram, etc
posts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_sphere

Media

5.1 As actors in the political public sphere

5.2 YouTube as a public sphere

5.3 Limitations of media and the internet

5.4 The information age

5.5 The virtual public sphere

5.6 Mediated publicness

5.7 The public service model

48
 6 Non-liberal theories

6.1 Proletarian public spheres

6.2 Public spheres of production

6.3 Biopolitical public

We are presented with the nature of and the rules for doing this in these two bibles of Social Theory

Theory
2 Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1

3 Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2

The theory of communicative action is a critical project which reconstructs a concept of reason
which is not grounded in instrumental or objectivistic terms, but rather in an emancipatory
communicative act.[8] This reconstruction proposes "human action and understanding can be
fruitfully analysed as having a linguistic structure", [9] and each utterance relies upon the
anticipation of freedom from unnecessary domination.[10] These linguistic structures of
communication can be used to establish a normative understanding of society.[11][12][13] This
conception of society is used "to make possible a conceptualization of the social-life context that is
tailored to the paradoxes of modernity."[14]

This project started after the critical reception of Habermas's book Knowledge and Human Interests
(1968),[15][16] after which Habermas chose to move away from contextual and historical analysis of
social knowledge toward what would become the theory of communicative action.[17][18] The theory
of communicative action understands language as the foundational component of society and is
an attempt to update Marxism by "drawing on Systems theory (Luhmann), developmental
psychology (Piaget, Kohlberg), and social theory (Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Mead, etc.)".[9]

Based on lectures initially developed in On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction Habermas was able
to expand his theory to a large understanding of society.

Thomas A. McCarthy states that

The Theory of Communicative Action has three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of
rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic
premises of modern philosophy and social theory; (2) to construct a two-level concept of society
that integrates the lifeworld and systems paradigms; and, finally, (3) to sketch out, against this
background, a critical theory of modernity which analyzes and accounts for its pathologies in a
way that suggests a redirection rather than an abandonment of the project of enlightenment.

The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1 sets out "to develop a concept of
rationality that is no longer tied to, and limited by, the subjectivistic and individualistic
premises of modern philosophy and social theory." [4] With this failure of the search for
ultimate foundations by "first philosophy" or "the philosophy of consciousness", an

49
empirically tested theory of rationality must be a pragmatic theory based on science
and social science. (reductionistsic sociologism) This implies that any universalist
claims can only be validated by testing against counterexamples in historical (and
geographical) contexts not by using transcendental ontological assumptions.

In other words a transformation of Kant assisted by Marx.

This 'purposive rational action' is steered by the "media" of the state, which substitute for oral
language as the medium of the coordination of social action. An antagonism arises between these two
principles of societal integrationlanguage, which is oriented to understanding and collective well
being, and "media", which are systems of success-oriented action.

Following Weber, Habermas sees specialisation as the key historical development, which leads to the
alienating effects of modernity, which 'permeate and fragment everyday consciousness'

Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 2

Habermas finds in the work of George Herbert Mead (18631931) and mile Durkheim (1858
1917) concepts which can be used to free Weber's theory of rationalisation from the aporias of the
philosophy of consciousness. Mead's most productive concept[citation needed] is his theoretical base of
communication and Durkheim's[citation needed] is his idea of social integration. Mead also stressed the
social character of perception: our first encounters are social.[22]

From these bases, Habermas develops his concept of communicative action: communicative action
serves to transmit and renew cultural knowledge, in a process of achieving mutual understandings. It
then coordinates action towards social integration and solidarity. Finally, communicative action is the
process through which people form their identities.[23]

Society is integrated socially both through the actions of its members and systemically by the
requirements of the economic/hierarchical/oppressive system in a way that tends to interpenetrate
and overwhelm autonomous action orientations.[who?] This gives rise to a dual concept of modern
society; the internal subjective viewpoint of the "lifeworld" and the external viewpoint of the
"system".

Following Weber again, an increasing complexity arises from the structural and institutional
differentiation of the lifeworld, which follows the closed logic of the systemic rationalisation of our
communications. There is a transfer of action co-ordination from 'language' over to 'steering media',
such as money and power, which bypass consensus-oriented communication with a 'symbolic
generalisation of rewards and punishments'. After this process the lifeworld "is no longer needed for
the coordination of action". This results in humans ('lifeworld actors') losing a sense of responsibility
with a chain of negative social consequences. Lifeworld communications lose their purpose
becoming irrelevant for the coordination of central life processes. This has the effect of ripping the
heart out of social discourse, allowing complex differentiation to occur but at the cost of social
pathologies.[24]

50
Disciples of the new religion do not have to fear this project is never ending one only needs to
analyse existing work to draw out endless implications, more contrived concepts, levels and
dimensions. It reminds one of the endless publications by Scientology, discovering more and more
work by their founder, or the Transcendental Meditation crowd and the numerous other sects.

For example the following

There is a transfer of action co-ordination from 'language' over to 'steering media', such as money
and power, which bypass consensus-oriented communication with a 'symbolic generalisation of
rewards and punishments'. After this process the lifeworld "is no longer needed for the coordination
of action". This results in humans ('lifeworld actors') losing a sense of responsibility with a chain of
negative social consequences. Lifeworld communications lose their purpose becoming irrelevant for
the coordination of central life processes. This has the effect of ripping the heart out of social
discourse, allowing complex differentiation to occur but at the cost of social pathologies.[24]

"In the end, systemic mechanisms suppress forms of social integration even in those areas where a
consensus dependent co-ordination of action cannot be replaced, that is, where the symbolic
reproduction of the lifeworld is at stake. In these areas, the mediatization of the lifeworld assumes
the form of colonisation".[25] Habermas argues that Horkheimer and Adorno, like Weber before them,
confused system rationality with action rationality. This prevented them from dissecting the
effects of the intrusion of steering media into a differentiated lifeworld, and the rationalisation of
action orientations that follows. They could then only identify spontaneous communicative actions
within areas of apparently 'non-rational' action, art and love on the one hand or the charisma of the
leader on the other, as having any value.

According to Habermas, lifeworlds become colonised by steering media when four things happen:[26]

1. Traditional forms of life are dismantled.

2. Social roles are sufficiently differentiated.

3. There are adequate rewards of leisure and money for the alienated labour.

4. Hopes and dreams become individuated by state canalization of welfare and culture.

These processes are institutionalised by developing global systems of jurisprudence.

Crucial terms are international, global, cosmopolitan etc all really very cool!

He here indicates the limits of an entirely juridified concept of legitimation and practically calls for
more anarchistic 'will formation' by autonomous networks and groups.

"Counterinstitutions are intended to dedifferentiate some parts of the formally organised domains of
action, remove them from the clutches of the steering media, and return these 'liberated areas' to the
action co-ordinating medium of reaching understanding".[27]

51
Once we have extricated ourselves from Weber's overly negative use of rationalisation, it is possible
to look at the Enlightenment ideal of reason in a fresh light. Rationality is redefined as thinking that
is ready to submit to criticism and systematic examination as an ongoing process. A broader
definition is that rationality is a disposition expressed in behaviour for which good reasons can be
given.

Habermas is now ready to make a preliminary definition of the process of communicative

rationality: this is communication that is "oriented to achieving, sustaining and reviewing consensus
and indeed a consensus that rests on the intersubjective recognition of criticisable validity claims".
[28]
With this key definition he shifts the emphasis in our concept of rationality from the
individual to the social. This shift is fundamental to the Theory of Communicative Action. It is
based on an assumption that language is implicitly social and inherently rational.

Language has almost taken on a life of its own it no longer has a history, or related to humans
and societies and cultures or has it?

Argument of some kind is central to the process of achieving a rational result. Contested validity
claims are thematised and attempts are then made to vindicate or criticise them in a systematic
and rigorous way. This may seem to favour verbal language, but allowance is also given for
'practical discourses' in which claims to normative rightness are made thematic and pragmatically
tested. Non-verbal forms of cultural expression could often fall into this category.

Habermas proposes three integrated conditions from which argumentative speech can produce valid
results:

"The structure of the ideal speech situation (which means that the discourse is) immunised against
repression and inequality in a special way The structures of a ritualised competition for the better
arguments The structures that determine the construction of individual arguments and their
interrelations".[29]

If we accept such principles of rational argumentation, Communicative Rationality is:

1. The processes by which different validity claims are brought to a satisfactory resolution.

2. The relations to the world that people take to forward validity claims for the expressions they
deem important.[30]

Habermas then discusses three further types of discourse that can be used to achieve valid results in
addition to verbal argument: these are the Aesthetic, the Therapeutic and the Explicative. Because
these are not followed through in the Theory of Communicative Action the impression is given that
these are secondary forms of discourse.

1. Aesthetic discourses work by mediators arguments bringing us to consider a work or performance

which itself demonstrates a value.

52
"A work validated through aesthetic experience can then in turn take the place of an argument and
promote the acceptance of precisely those standards according to which it counts as an authentic
work.[31]

Habermas considers the mediation of the critic, the curator or the promoter as essential to bring
people to the revelatory aesthetic experience.

Assistance and disciples of the saviour and his message

This mediation is often locked into economic interests either directly or through state agency.

When Habermas considers the question of context he does refer to culture.

Every process of understanding takes place against the background of a culturally ingrained
preunderstanding... The interpretative task consists in incorporating the others interpretation of the
situation into one's own... this does not mean that interpretation must lead in every case to a stable
and unambiguously differentiated assignment.[32]

Speech acts are embedded in contexts that are also changed by them. The relationship is dynamic and
occurs in both directions. To see context as a fixed background or preunderstanding is to push it out
of the sphere of communicative action.

2. Therapeutic discourse is that which serves to clarify systematic self-deception. Such self-
deceptions typically arise from developmental experiences, which have left certain rigidities of
behaviour or biases of value judgement. These rigidities do not allow flexible responses to present
time exigencies. Habermas sees this in terms of psychoanalysis but does not expand on this in TCA.
(Habermas discusses psychoanalysis in Knowledge and Human Interests (1972))

A related aspect of this discourse is the adoption of a reflective attitude, which is a basic condition of
rational communication.[31]

But the claim to be free from illusions implies a dimension of self-analysis if it is to engage with
change. The most intractable illusions are surely embedded within our subconscious.

3. Explicative discourse focuses on the very means of reaching understanding the means of
(linguistic) expression. Rationality must include a willingness to question the grammar of any
system of communication used to forward validity claims. The question of whether visual language
can put forward an argument is not broached by Habermas. Although language is broadly defined as
any communicative action upon which you can be reflective it is verbal discourse that is prioritised
in Habermas' arguments. Verbal language certainly has the prominent place in his model of human
action. Oral contexts of communication have been relatively little studied and the distinction between
oral and literary forms is not made in Theory of Communicative Action.

As the System colonises the lifeworld most enterprises are not driven by the motives of their
members. The bureaucratic disempowering and desiccation of spontaneous processes of opinion and
will formation expands the scope for engineering mass loyalty and makes it easier to uncouple
political decision making from concrete, identity forming contexts of life.[33]

53
The system does this by rewarding or coercing that which legitimates it from the cultural spheres.
Such conditions of public patronage invisibly negate the freedom that is supposedly available in the
cultural field.

Reception

The Theory of Communicative Action was the subject of a collection of critical essays
published in 1986,[34] has inspired many responses by social theorists and philosophers,
and in 1998 was listed by the International Sociological Association as the eighth most
important sociological book of the 20th century, behind Norbert Elias' The Civilizing
Process (1939) but ahead of Talcott Parsons' The Structure of Social Action (1937).[7

For more on sociologism see here -

https://sites.google.com/site/philosophyphilosophizing/home and on the left
hand side of that page look for sociologism

We have seen how philosophy has been reduced to epistemology after Descartes and the result of
that in Anglo-Saxon analysis and Critical Theorys sociologism. Perhaps we can find hints in
Ontology of what philosophy is, what its subject-matter is, what the limits and conditions of the
philosophical discourse is and what philosophizing can do, cannot do and must do and other norms
of this intersubjective (!) socio-cultural practice.

Of course Ontology has been reduced by analysis and critical theory to some sort of sociologism,
be it of the social kind, the norms of professional philosophers, language, language use, linguistic
analysis, the analysis of the logic being employed for such analyses, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or

reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.[1] Traditionally listed
as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals
with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such
entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to
similarities and differences. Although ontology as a philosophical enterprise is highly
theoretical, it also has practical application in information science and technology, such
as ontology engineering.

Types
Philosophers can classify ontologies in various ways using criteria such as the degree of abstraction
and field of application: Vesselin Petrov (2011). "Chapter VI: Process ontology in the context of
applied philosophy". In Vesselin Petrov, ed. Ontological Landscapes: Recent Thought on Conceptual
Interfaces Between Science and Philosophy. Ontos Verlag. pp. 137 ff. ISBN 3868381074.

54
 1. Upper ontology: concepts supporting development of an ontology, meta-ontology

2. Domain ontology: concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest, for

example, information technology or computer languages, or particular branches
of science

3. Interface ontology: concepts relevant to the juncture of two disciplines

4. Process ontology: inputs, outputs, constraints, sequencing information, involved

in business or engineering processes

Ontology and language

Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of usage rather
than a question about facts.[20] This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by Donald
Davidson: Suppose a person refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a
cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that
this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is explained.[21] Analogously, if we find people
asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that 'such-and-such' exist, we
might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'), they simply
use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of What is? is at least partially a topic in the
philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself.[22] This viewpoint has been
expressed by Eli Hirsch.[23][24]

Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something"
can be correct.[24] This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out
that different 'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property.[24][25] How to
determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation.

https://www.ontology.co/

Ontology is the theory of objects and their ties. It provides criteria for distinguishing different types
of objects (concrete and abstract, existent and nonexistent, real and ideal, independent and
dependent) and their ties (relations, dependencies and predication).

We can distinguish: a) formal, b) descriptive and c) formalized ontologies.

a) Formal ontology was introduced by Edmund Husserl in his Logical Investigations (1): according
to Husserl, its object is the study of the genera of being, the leading regional concepts, i.e., the
categories; its true method is the eidetic reduction coupled with the method of categorial intuition.
The phenomenological ontology is divided into two: (I) Formal, and (II) Regional, or Material,
Ontologies.

55
The former investigates the problem of truth on three basic levels: (a) Formal Apophantics, or formal
logic of judgments, where the a priori conditions for the possibility of the doxic certainty of reason
are to be sought, along with (b) the synthetic forms for the possibility of the axiological, and (c)
"practical" truths. In other words it is divided into formal logic, formal axiology, and formal praxis.

In contemporary philosophy, formal ontology has been developed in two principal ways. The first
approach has been to study formal ontology as a part of ontology, and to analyze it using the tools
and approach of formal logic: from this point of view formal ontology examines the logical features
of predication and of the various theories of universals. The use of the specific paradigm of the set
theory applied to predication, moreover, conditions its interpretation.

This approach is best exemplified by Nino Cocchiarella; according to whom "Formal Ontology is the
result of combining the intuitive, informal method of classical ontology with the formal,
mathematical method of modern symbolic logic, and ultimately of identifying them as different
aspects of one and the same science. That is, where the method of ontology is the intuitive study of
the fundamental properties, modes, and aspects of being, or of entities in general, and the method of
modern symbolic logic is the rigorous construction of formal, axiomatic systems, formal ontology,
the result of combining these two methods, is the systematic, formal, axiomatic development of the
logic of all forms of being. As such, formal ontology is a science prior to all others in which
particular forms, modes, or kinds of being are studied." (2)

The second line of development returns to its Husserlian origins and analyses the fundamental
categories of object, state of affairs, part, whole, and so forth, as well as the relations between parts
and the whole and their laws of dependence -- once all material concepts have been replaced by their
correlative form concepts relative to the pure 'something'. This kind of analysis does not deal with
the problem of the relationship between formal ontology and material ontology." (3).

b) Descriptive ontology concerns the collection of information about the list of objects that can be
dependent or independent items (real or ideal).

c) Formalized ontology attempts to constructs a formal codification for the results descriptively
acquired at the preceding levels.

http://protege.stanford.edu/publications/ontology_development/ontology101-noy-mcguinness.html

What is in an ontology?
The Artificial-Intelligence literature contains many definitions of an ontology; many of these
contradict one another. For the purposes of this guide an ontology is a formal explicit description of
concepts in a domain of discourse (classes (sometimes called concepts)), properties of each concept
describing various features and attributes of the concept (slots (sometimes called roles or
properties)), and restrictions on slots (facets (sometimes called role restrictions)). An ontology
together with a set of individual instances of classes constitutes a knowledge base. In reality, there
is a fine line where the ontology ends and the knowledge base begins.

Classes are the focus of most ontologies. Classes describe concepts in the domain.

56
http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/ontology_pic.pdf

Philosophical Ontology
Ontology as a branch of philosophy is the science of what is, of the kinds and structures of objects, properties,
events, processes and relations in every area of reality. Ontology is often used by philosophers as a synonym of
metaphysics (a label meaning literally: what comes after the Physics), a term used by early students of Aristotle to
refer to what Aristotle himself called first philosophy. Sometimes ontology is used in a broader sense, to refer to the
study of what might exist; metaphysics is then used for the study ofwhich of the various alternative possible ontologies
is in fact true of reality. (Ingarden 1964) The term ontology (or ontologia) was coined in 1613, independently, by two
philosophers, Rudolf Gckel (Goclenius), in his
Lexicon philosophicumand Jacob Lorhard (Lorhardus), in his Theatrum philosophicum Its first occurrence in English
asrecorded by the OED appears in Baileys dictionary of 1721, which defines ontology as an Account of being in the
Abstract. Ontology seeks to provide a definitive and exhaustive classification of entities in
all spheres of being. The classification should be definitive in the sense that it can serve as an answer to such questions
as: What classes of entities are needed for a complete description and explanation of a
ll the goings-on in the universe? Or: What classes of entities are needed to give an account of what makes true all
truths? It should be exhaustive in the sense that all types of entities should be included in the
classification, including also the types of relations by which entities are tied together to form larger wholes.
Different schools of philosophy offer different approaches to the provision of such classifications.
One large division is 1) that between what we might call substantialists and fluxists, which is to say between those who
conceive ontology as a substance- or thing- (or continuant-) based discipline and 2) those who favour an ontology
centred on events or processes (or occurrents). Another large division is between a) what we might call adequatists and
b) reductionists.a) Adequatists seek a taxonomy of the entities in reality at all levels of aggregation, from the
microphysical to the cosmological, and including also the middle world (the
mesocosmos) of human-scale entities in between. b) Reductionists see reality in terms of some one
privileged level of existents; they seek to establish the ultimate furniture of the universe by decomposing reality into
its simplest constituents, or they seek to reduce in some other way the apparent variety
of types of entities existing in reality. It is the work of adequatist philosophical ontologists such as Aristotle, Ingarden
(1964), and Chisholm (1996) which will be of primary importance for us here.
Their taxonomies are in many ways comparable to the taxonomies produced by sciences such as biology or chemistry,
though they are of course radically more general than these. Adequatists transcend the dichotomy between substantialism
and fluxism, since they accept categories of both continuants and occurrents. They study the totality of those objects,
properties, processes and relations that make up the world on different
levels of focus and granularity, and whose different parts and moments are studied by the different scientific disciplines.
Ontology, for the adequatist, is then a descriptive enterprise. It is thus distinguished from
the special sciences not only a) in its radical generality but b) also in its goal or focus: it seeks not predication, but
rather taxonomy. The methods of ontology henceforth in philosophical contexts always used in the adequatist sense
are the methods of philosophy in general. They include the i) development of theories of wider or narrower scope
and ii) the testing and refinement of such theories by measuring them up, a) either against difficult counter
examples or b) against the results of science. These methods were familiar already to Aristotle himself.
In the course of the twentieth century a range of new formal tools became available to ontologists for the
development and testing of their theories. Ontologists nowadays have a choice of 1) formal frameworks (deriving from
algebra, category theory, mereology, set theory, topology) in terms of which their theories can be
formulated. These new formal tools, along with the language of formal logic, allow philosophers to express intuitive
principles and definitions in clear and rigorous fashion, and, 2) through the a application of the
methods of formal semantics, they can allow also for the testing of theories for a) consistency and b) completeness.
With the work of Quine (1953) there arose in this connection a new conception of
the proper method of ontology according to which the ontologists task is to establish
what kinds of entities scientists are committed to in their theorizing. The ontologist
studies the world by drawing conclusions from the theories of the natural sciences,
which Quine takes to be our best sources of knowledge as to what the world is like.
Such theories are extensions of the theories we develop and use informally in
everyday life, but they are developed with closer attention to certain special kinds of
evidence that confer a higher degree of probability on the claims made. Quine takes
ontology seriously. His aim is to use science for ontological purposes, which means: to
find the ontology in scientific theories.

57
Ontology is then a network of claims, derived
from the natural sciences, about what exists coupled with the attempt to establish what
types of entities are most basic. Each natural science has, Quine holds, its own
preferred repertoire of types of objects to the existence of which it is committed. Each
such theory embodies only a partial ontology. This is defined by the vocabulary of the
corresponding theory and (most importantly for Quine) by its canonical formalization
in the language of first-order logic.

Note that ontology is for Quine himself not the meta-level study of the ontological
commitments or presuppositions embodied in the different natural-scientific theories.
Ontology is rather these commitments themselves. Quine moves to the meta-level,
making a semantic ascent to consider the statements in a theory, only in setting out to
establish those expressions which definitively carry its commitments. Quine fixes
upon the language of first-order logic as the medium of canonical representation not
out of dogmatic devotion to this particular form, but rather because he holds that this is
the only really clear form of language. First-order logic is itself just a regimentation of
corresponding parts of ordinary language, a regimentation from which, in Quines
eyes, logically problematic features have been excised. It is then, Quine argues, only
the bound variables of a theory that carry its definitive commitment to existence. It is
sentences like There are horses, There are numbers, There are electrons, that do
this job. His so-called criterion of ontological commitment is captured in the slogan:
To be is to be the value of a bound variable.

Quines approach is thus most properly conceived not as a reduction of ontology to

the study of scientific language, but rather as a continuation of ontology in the
traditional sense. When viewed in this light, however, it can be seen to be in need of
vital supplementation. For the objects of scientific theories are discipline-specific.
This means that the relations between objects belonging to different disciplinary
domains fall out of bounds for Quinean ontology. Only something like a philosophical
theory of how different scientific theories (or their objects) relate to each other can
fulfil the task of providing an inventory of all the types of entities in reality. Quine
himself would resist this latter conclusion. For him the best we can achieve in
ontology lies in the quantified statements of particular theories, theories supported by
the best evidence we can muster. We have no way to rise above the particular theories
we have; no way to harmonize and unify their respective claims.

Quine is a realist philosopher. He believes in a world beyond language and beliefs, a

world which the theories of natural science give us the power to illuminate.

another tendency in twentieth-century analytic philosophy, a tendency often

associated with Quine but inspired much rather by Kant and promulgated by thinkers
such as Carnap and Putnam, according to which ontology is a meta-level discipline
which concerns itself not with the world itself but rather only with theories or
languages or systems of beliefs.

Ontology as a first-level discipline of the world beyond ontology as what these philosophers call
external metaphysics is
impossible. The best we can achieve, they hold, is internal metaphysics, which means
precisely the study of the ontological commitments of specific theories or systems of
beliefs. Strawsonian descriptive metaphysics is one example of such internal

58
metaphysics. Model-theoretic semantics, too, is often implicitly understood in
internal-metaphysical terms the idea being that we cannot understand what a given
language or theory is really about, but we can build models with more or less nice
properties. What we can never do is compare these models to some reality beyond.
Ontology in the traditional philosophical sense thus comes to be replaced by the study
of how a given language or science conceptualizes a given domain. It becomes a
theory of the ontological content of certain representations. Traditional ontologists are
seeking principles that are true of reality. The practitioners of internal metaphysics, in
contrast, are seeking to elicit principles from subjects or theories. The elicited
principles may or may not be true, but this, to the practitioner of internal metaphysics,
is of no concern, since the significance of these principles lies elsewhere for instance
in yielding a correct account of the taxonomical system used by speakers of a givenlanguage or by
the scientists working in a given discipline.
certain extra-philosophical disciplines, as linguists, psychologists and
anthropologists have sought to elicit the ontological commitments (ontologies, in the
plural) of different cultures and groups. Thus, they have sought to establish the
ontology underlying common-sense or folk theories of various sorts by using the
standard empirical methods of the cognitive sciences
Ontology and Information Science
The methods used in the construction of ontologies thus conceived are derived on
the one hand from earlier initiatives in database management systems. But they also
include methods similar to those employed in philosophy (as described in Hayes
1985), including the methods used by logicians when developing formal semantic
theories.
The initial project of building one single ontology, even one single top-level ontology,
which would be at the same time non-trivial and also readily adopted by a broad
population of different information systems communities, has largely been abandoned.
The reasons for this can be summarized as follows. The task of ontology-building
proved much more difficult than had initially been anticipated (the difficulties being at
least in part identical to those with which philosophical ontologists have grappled for
some 2000 years). The information systems world itself, on the other hand, is very
often subject to the short time horizons of the commercial environment. This means
that the requirements placed on information systems change at a rapid rate, so that
already for this reason work on the construction of corresponding ontological
translation modules has been unable to keep pace.
The newly fashionable usage of ontology as meaning just conceptual model is by
now firmly entrenched in many information systems circles.

A conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to

represent for some purpose. Every knowledge base, knowledge-based system, or
knowledge-level agent is committed to some conceptualization, explicitly or
implicitly. (Gruber 1995)
What can Information Scientists learn from Philosophical Ontologists?
As we have seen, some ontological engineers have recognized that they can improve
their models by drawing on the results of the philosophical work in ontology carried
out over the last 2000 years. This does not in every case mean that they are ready to
abandon their pragmatic perspective. Rather, they see it as useful to employ a wider
repertoire of ontological theories and frameworks and, like philosophers themselves,
they are willing to be maximally opportunistic in their selection of resources for
purposes of ontology-construction. Guarino and his collaborators, for example, use

59
standard philosophical analyses of notions such as identity, set-theoretical
subsumption, part-whole subsumption and the like in order to expose inconsistencies
in standard upper-level ontologies such as CYC, and they go on from there to derive
meta-level constraints which all ontologies must satisfy if they are to avoid
inconsistencies of the sorts exposed.
Given what was said above, however, it appears that information ontologists may
have sound pragmatic reasons to take the philosopher ontologists traditional concern
for truth more seriously still. For the very abandonment of the focus on mere
conceptualisations and on conceptualisation-generated object-surrogates may itself
have positive pragmatic consequences.
Where ontology is directed in this fashion, towards the real world of flesh-and-blood
objects in which we all live, then this itself reduces the likelihood of inconsistency and
systematic error in the theories which result,

HOW does this work?

and, conversely, it increases the
likelihood of our being able to build a single workable system of ontology that will be
at the same time non-trivial. On the other hand, however, the ontological project thus
conceived will take much longer to complete and it will face considerable internal
difficulties along the way. Traditional ontology is a difficult business. At the same
time, however, it has the potential to reap considerable rewards not least in terms of
a greater stability and conceptual coherence of the software artefacts constructed on its
basis.
To put the point another way: it is precisely because good conceptualizations are
transparent to reality that they have a reasonable chance of being integrated together in
robust fashion into a single unitary ontological system. The fact that the real world
itself plays a significant role in ensuring the unifiability of our separate ontologies thus
implies that, if we are to accept a conceptualization-based methodology as one
stepping stone towards the construction of adequate ontologies, then we must abandon
the attitude of tolerance towards both good and bad conceptualizations. For it is this
very tolerance which is fated to undermine the project of ontology itself.
What Can Philosophers Learn from Information Systems Ontologists?
Developments in modal, temporal and dynamic logics as also in linear, substructural
and paraconsistent logics have demonstrated the degree to which advances in
computer science can yield benefits in logic benefits not only of a strictly technical
nature, but also sometimes of wider philosophical significance. Something similar can
be true, I suggest, in relation to the developments in ontological engineering referred
to above. The example of the successes and failures of information systems ontologists
can first of all help to encourage existing tendencies in philosophical ontology
(nowadays often grouped under the heading analytic metaphysics) 1) towards opening
up new domains of investigation, for example the domain of social institutions
(Mulligan 1987, Searle 1995), of patterns (Johansson 1998), of artefacts (Dipert 1993,
Simons and Dement 1996), of boundaries (Smith 2001), of dependence and
instantiation (Mertz 1996, Degen et al., 2001), of holes (Casati and Varzi 1994), and
parts (Simons 1987). 2) Secondly, it can shed new light on the many existing
contributions to ontology, from Aristotle to Goclenius and beyond (Burkhardt and
Smith 1991), whose significance was for a long time neglected by philosophers in the
shadow of Kant and other enemies of metaphysics.3) Thirdly, if philosophical ontology
can properly be conceived as a kind of generalized chemistry, then information
systems can help to fill one important gap in ontology as it has been practiced thus far,

60
which lies in the absence of any analogue of chemical experimentation. For one can,
as C. S. Peirce remarked (1933, 4.530), make exact experiments upon uniform
diagrams. The new tools of ontological engineering might help us to realize Peirces
vision of a time when operations upon diagrams will take the place of the experiments
upon real things that one performs in chemical and physical research.
4) Finally, the lessons drawn from information systems ontology can support the
efforts of those philosophers who have concerned themselves not only with a) the
development of ontological theories, but b) also in a field sometimes called applied
ontology (Koepsell 1999, 2000) with the application of such theories in domains
such as law, or commerce, or medicine. The tools of philosophical ontology have been
applied to solve practical problems, for example concerning the nature of intellectual
property or concerning the classification of the human foetus at different stages of its
development. Collaboration with information systems ontologists can support such
ventures in a variety of ways, i) first of all because the results achieved in specific
application-domains can provide stimulation for philosophers, but ii) also and not least
importantly because information systems ontology is itself an enormous new field of
practical application that is crying out to be explored by the methods of rigorous
philosophy.

Did we learn anything of relevance to what philosophy is, must be, must not be and might from
Smiths treatment of Ontology? About the subject-matter, or objects of study, of philosophy? Of the
methods employed during the doing of philosophy or the different stages of the process and activities
of philosophizing?

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-94-011-7638-5_1#page-

https://philgcg11chd.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/nature-of-philosophy/

Informs us about

three basic problems of philosophy

Branches of Philosophy

Methods of Philosophy

common features of the methods

Doubt: Notice doubts that one has about the meaning or justification of some common, everyday
belief one has.

Formulate a problem; Formulate the doubts in a philosophical problem, or question. Explain the
problem very clearly and carefully.

Offer a solution: Offer a solution to the problem: either something like a philosophical analysis or a
philosophical explanation.

61
Argument; Give an argument or several arguments supporting the solution.

Dialectic :Present the solution and arguments for criticism by other philosophers, and help them
judge their own.

Methods

1. The Socratic Method

2. The Rational Dialogue

3. The Method of Criticism

4. The Speculative Method

5. The Descriptive Method

6. Inductive Method

7. Deductive Method

8. Dialectical Method

9. The. Method of Analysis

10.The Method of Synthesis

11.Method of Intuition

https://www.ontology.co/subject-metaphysics.htm

"As it now exists, the subject of metaphysics can be described by a distinction that
became standard in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. (*) According to this
distinction, metaphysics has two principal divisions: general metaphysics and special
metaphysics. General metaphysics includes ontology and most of what has been called
universal science; it is concerned, on the whole, with the general nature of reality: with
problems about abstract and concrete being, the nature of particulars, the distinction
between appearance and reality, and the universal principles holding true of what has
fundamental being. Special metaphysics is concerned with certain problems about
particular kinds or aspects of being. These special problems are associated with the
distinction between the mental and the physical, the possibility of human freedom, the
nature of personal identity, the possibility of survival after death, and the existence of
God. The traditional subject of what is real as opposed to what is mere appearance is
treated in both general and special metaphysics, for some of the issues relevant to it
are more general or fundamental than others."

http://www.uefap.com/reading/exercise/ess2/berlin.htm

From an article by Sir Isaiah Berlin in The Sunday Times, 14th November, 1962

62
https://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10113.pdf

The Purpose of Philosophy

http://www.ditext.com/broad/st/st-intro.html

The Subject-matter of Philosophy, and its Relations to the special Sciences

this task of clearing up the meanings and determining the relations of fundamental
concepts

Now the most fundamental task of Philosophy is to take the concepts that we
daily use in common life and science, to analyse them, and thus to determine
their precise meanings and their mutual relations. Evidently this is an
important duty. In the first place, clear and accurate knowledge of anything is
an advance on a mere hazy general familiarity with it. Moreover, in the
absence of clear knowledge of the meanings and relations of the concepts that
we use, we are certain sooner or later to apply them wrongly or to meet with
exceptional cases where we are puzzled as to how to apply them at all. For
instance, we all agree pretty well as to the place of a certain pin which we are
looking at. But suppose we go on to ask: "Where is the image of that pin in a
certain mirror; and is it in this place (whatever it may be? in precisely the
sense in which the pin itself is in its place?" We shall find the question a very
puzzling one, and there will be no hope of answering it until we have carefully
analysed what we mean by being in a place. Philosophy has another and closely connected
task. We not only make continual use of vague and unanalysed concepts. We have also a number of uncriticised
beliefs, which we constantly assume in ordinary life and in the sciences. We constantly assume, e.g. that every
event has a cause, that nature obeys uniform laws, that we live in a world of objects whose existence and
behaviour are independent of our knowledge of them, and so on. Now science takes over these beliefs without
criticism from common-sense, and simply works with them. We know by experience, however, that beliefs
which are very strongly held may be mere prejudices. Negroes find it very hard to believe that water can
become solid, because they have always lived in a warm climate. Is it not possible that we believe that nature as
a whole will always act uniformly simply because the part of nature in which the human race has lived has
happened to act so up to the present? All such beliefs then, however deeply rooted, call for criticism. The first
duty of Philosophy is to state them clearly; and this can only be done when we have analysed and defined
the concepts that they involve. Until you know exactly what you mean by change and by cause you cannot
know what is meant by the statement that every change has a cause. And not much weight can be attached to a
person's most passionate beliefs if he does not know what precisely he is passionately believing. The next duty
of Philosophy is to test such beliefs; and this can only be done by resolutely and honestly exposing them to
every objection that one can think of oneself or find in the writings of others. We ought only to go on believing a
propositions if, at the end of this process, we still find it impossible to doubt it. Even then of course it may not
be true, but we have at least done our best.

These two branches of Philosophy -- the analysis and definition of our fundamental concepts,
and the clear statement and resolute criticism of our fundamental beliefs -- I call Critical
Philosophy.

Philosophy is mainly concerned, not with remote conclusions, but with the analysis and
appraisement of the original premises. For this purpose analytical power and a certain kind of
insight are necessary, and the mathematical method is not of much use.

Before ending this chapter I will say a word about the three sciences which are commonly
thought to be specially philosophical. These are Logic, Ethics, and Psychology. Logic simply is the

63
most fundamental part of Critical Philosophy. It deals with such concepts as truth, implication,
probability, class, etc. In fact it may be defined as the science which deals with propositional
forms, their parts, their qualities, and their relations. Its business is to analyse and classify
forms, and to consider the formal relations that can subsist between them. Now all science
consists of definite propositions, and each of these is of one of the forms which Logic studies;
but it is not the business of any other science explicitly to discuss propositional forms. Similarly
all science is full of inferences, good and bad, and all inference depends on relations that are
supposed to subsist between premises and conclusion. But it is for Logic, and for it alone, to
decide what relations do in fact justify inference, and whether these relations do actually subsist
in a given case. Thus Logic is that part of Critical Philosophy which deals with the most general
and pervasive of all concepts, and with those fundamental beliefs which form the "connective
tissue" of all knowledge.

Note: This typical Broad who first worked in Science and Mathematics. According to him those
disciplines were too difficult so he moved to philosophy. He became professor of philosophy at a
number of univ ersities in the UK. This work had the title of: THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTS OF
MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS, AND THEIR GRADUAL MODIFICATION WITHIN THE REGION OF PHYSICAL
SCIENCE

http://psc.sagepub.com/content/14/2/203.extract

Paul Ricoeur the human being as the subject(matter?) of philosophy

Here is another article on The Philosophical Approaches to the Study of Man

"Existentialism and Man's Search form Meaning" by Manuel Dy, Jr.

as there are many definitions of philosophy and many schools of philosophy, so there are many
approaches to the philosophical reflection/inquiry on man.
- In our course, we will not examine all the different approaches in a specific and elaborate
manner.
- Rather, using Manuel Dy's article,
- first, we just study the fundamental approaches which could be discerned if we survey
the three periods in the History of Western Philosophy and examine what is distinctive in each
period in its philosophical reflection on man:
- we could characterize the distinctive fundamental approach of each period as:
- Ancient Philosophy: COSMOCENTRIC
Man
- is seen, conceived and understood as part of the cosmos, in relation to the
cosmos
- he might be different from other things, but he is similar to the cosmos
- in fact, man is a cosmos in miniature, a microcosm; there is a proper
proportionality between cosmos and man
- to understand the cosmos is to understand man
- if the cosmos is made of material stuff, then man is a material reality
- if the cosmos is a duality of the world of things and world of ideas, then man is
a duality of Body and Soul
- if the cosmos is one world of matter and form, man is one substance made up
of body (matter) and soul (form).
- Medieval: THEOCENTRIC
with the collapse of the Graeco-Roman civililzation, and the coming and
predominance of Christianity in Medieval Europe, there was a shift in the content and
method of philosophizing.
i. Primary and Central Concern of Philosophical Inquiry/Reflection
- GOD/FAITH:

64
- Not as known by man himself using reason
- God of Revelation: God as he revealed himself, what he has revealed about
himself, about Man and the World
- Everything is seen in relation to God and what he has revealed
- Philosophy is used to explicitate, defend, explain and systematize the faith.
- And philosophical issues, speculation, insight arose out of faith and were
referred back to faith.
- In this sense, philosophy became a handmaid of theology/faith.
Man
- Part of Nature, Cosmos
- Cosmos:
- is not seen in itself, not simply in terms of its own consistency, harmony, unity
and stability but in relation to God, the Absolutely Transcendent Reality
- Creator-Creation relationship
- Though man is part of nature, he has unique and special relationship with God
compared to anything, compared to the totality of the things or created order
- Thus, man is seen not simply in relation to the cosmos, but in his unique
relationship with God and God's unique relationship with him.
- Modern: ANTHROPOCENTRIC
General Remarks:
- shift in primary and central concern: from the cosmos, from God to man
himself
- everything is seen in relation to man, and man is starting point, point of
departure for any philosophical reflection
- subjective turn/shift:
- subject: the one who philosophizes, the one who knows about nature, about
God, has now become the important, primary, fundamental and central object of
philosophical reflection.
- These three fundamental approaches do not explain away the uniqueness, and the subtle
and nuanced distinction of the different philosophies within each period nor they are true in
the same extent to all philosophers in each period.
- then, we will study in details one particular approach: Existentialism, which is the
approach taken in this course.
Pre-Socratics Totality of Things Material Stuff
Plato World of Things and World of Ideas
Ideas
Aristotle One World of ConcreteThings made up of matter and form.
4 Causes or Principle:material, efficient, formal,

Did the notion of the Anthropocene strengthen the idea of us being in the Anthropo-centrc age
of man? Or is it a new idea, so that we now live in or as the Anthropocene age?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is a proposed epoch dating from when human activities started to have a
significant global impact on Earth's geology and ecosystems.[1][2][3] As of August 2016, neither the
International Commission on Stratigraphy nor the International Union of Geological Sciences has yet
officially approved the term as a recognized subdivision of geological time,[3][4][5] although the
Working Group on the Anthropocene (WGA) voted to formally designate the epoch Anthropocene
and presented the recommendation to the International Geological Congress on 29 August 2016.[6]

Scientists in the Soviet Union appear to have used the term "Anthropocene" as early as the 1960s to
refer to the Quaternary, the most recent geological period.[7] Ecologist Eugene F. Stoermer
subsequently used "Anthropocene" with a different sense in the 1980s[8] and the term was widely
popularized in 2000 by atmospheric chemist Paul J. Crutzen,[9] who regards the influence of human
behavior on Earth's atmosphere in recent centuries as so significant as to constitute a new geological
epoch for its lithosphere. A January 2016 paper in Science investigating climatic, biological, and

65
geochemical signatures of human activity in sediments and ice cores suggested the era since the mid-
20th century should be recognised as a distinct geological epoch from the Holocene.[10]

In 2008 a proposal was presented[by whom?] to the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society
of London to make the Anthropocene a formal unit of geological epoch divisions.[3][11] A large
majority of that Stratigraphy Commission decided the proposal had merit and should be examined
further. Independent working groups of scientists from various geological societies have begun to
determine whether the Anthropocene will be formally accepted into the Geological Time Scale.[12]

Scientists have begun to use the term "anthropocene",[13] and the Geological Society of America
entitled its 2011 annual meeting: Archean to Anthropocene: The past is the key to the future.[14] The
Anthropocene has no agreed start-date, but some scientists propose that, based on atmospheric
evidence, it may be considered[by whom?] to start with the Industrial Revolution (late eighteenth
century).[11][15] Other scientists link the new term to earlier events, such as the rise of agriculture and
the Neolithic Revolution (around 12,000 years BP). Evidence of relative human impact - such as the
growing human influence on land use, ecosystems, biodiversity, and species extinction - is
substantial; scientists think that human impact has significantly changed (or halted) the growth of
biodiversity.[16][17] Those arguing for earlier dates posit that the proposed Anthropocene may have
begun as early as 14,000 to 15,000 years before present, based on lithospheric evidence; this has led
other scientists to suggest that "the onset of the Anthropocene should be extended back many
thousand years";[18]:1 this would be closely synchronous with the current term, Holocene.

In January 2015, 26 of the 38 members of the International Anthropocene Working Group published
a paper suggesting the Trinity test on July 16, 1945 as the starting point of the proposed new epoch.
[19]
However a significant minority supports one of several alternative dates.[19] In March 2015, a
paper published in Nature suggested either 1610 or 1964 as the beginning of Anthropocene.[20] Other
scholars point to the diachronous character of the physical strata of the Anthropocene, arguing that
onset and impact are spread out over time, not reducible to a single instant or date of start.[21]

The Anthropocene Working Group met in Oslo in April 2016 to consolidate evidence supporting the
argument for the Anthropocene as a true geologic epoch.[22] Evidence was evaluated and the group
voted to recommend "Anthropocene" as the new geological age in August 2016.[6] Should the
International Commission on Stratigraphy approve the recommendation, the proposal to adopt the
term will have to be ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences before its formal
adoption as part of the geologic time scale.[5]

Etymology
2 Nature of human effects

2.1 Biodiversity

2.2 Biogeography

2.3 Climate

2.4 Geomorphology

66
 2.5 Stratigraphy

o 2.5.1 Sedimentological record

o 2.5.2 Fossil record

o 2.5.3 Trace elements

3 Anthropocene temporal limit

3.1 "Early anthropocene" model

3.2 Antiquity

3.3 Industrial Revolution

3.4 Anthropocene marker

4 In culture
5 See also
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

http://www.anthropocene.info/

https://www.academia.edu/29839267/The_Anthropocene_Event_in_Social_Theory_On_Catching_
Up_with_Non-_Humans in social theory

Abstract
Signaling
that
humanity
now
carries
the
burden
of
having
radically
changed
the
Earths
environmental
parameters,
the
notion
of
the

67
Anthropocene
currently
generates
debate
across
the
social
sciences.
In
this
paper,
we
examine
new
mate--
rialist
and
neo--Marxist
responses
to
this
novel
situation.
Yet,
while
we
share
their
conviction
that
the
Anthropocene
holds
the
potential
to
institute
a
genuine
event
for
social
theory
and
practice,
we
argue
that
the

68
pathways
cleared
so
far
largely
move
us
backwards.
Hence,
rather
than
social
science
finally
catching
up
with
the
natural
sciences
by
learning
to
take
material
reality
seriously,
we
find
ourselves
in
a
situation
where
the
natural
sciences
(and
some
traditions
within
social
science)
are
finally
beginning
to
catch
up

69
with
the
inseparability
of
nature
and
society,
which
has
been
key
to
science
and
technology
studies
(STS)
for
decades.
In
search
of
a
viable
pathway
for
social
theory
into
the
Anthropocene,
we
turn
to
Isabelle
Stengers
argument
that
we
must
accept
the
reality
of
Gaia.
In
dialogue
with
STS

70
analyses
of
nonhuman
agency,
Stengers
proposition
is
a
call
for
a
situated,
non--foundational,
and
experimental
reconstruction
of
social
theo--
ry.
This
reconstruction,
we
argue,
requires
developing
an
art
of
immanent
atten--
tion
to
the
politics
of
matter
across
the
planet.
A
social
theory
adequate
to
the
Anthropocene
event
would

71
thus
be
committed
to
following,
learning
to
be
affect--
ed
by,
and
experimenting
with
the
divergent
knowledges
and
practices
of
natural
science,
environmental
activism,
and
concerned
publics
that
make
up
our
ecolo--
gy
of
practices.
Keywords:
Anthropocene;
event;
Gaia;
Isabelle
Stengers;
new
materialism;
neo--
Marxism;
science
and
technology
studies

72
(STS)
The
stories
of
both
the
Anthropocene
and
the
Capitalocene
teeter
con--
stantly
on
the
brink
of
becoming
much
Too
Big.
Marx
did
better
than
that,
as
did
Darwin
(Haraway
2016:
50)
In
recent
years,
the
Anthropocene
has
become
something
of
a
clarion
call
across
the
natural
and
social

73
sciences,
and
extending
well
into
the
humanities.
http://quaternary.stratigraphy.org/workinggroups/anthropocene

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/aug/29/declare-anthropocene-epoch-experts-urge-geological-congress-
human-impact-earth

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-is-the-anthropocene-and-are-we-in-it-164801414/

https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Anthropocene

https://www.scribd.com/document/129590630/Lecture-2-Different-Approaches

http://www.slideshare.net/SircDb/philosophy-of-man-51413270

http://www.acgrayling.com/philosophy-1-a-guide-through-the-subject

http://evolvingthoughts.net/2011/09/what-is-philosophy/

https://cas.umkc.edu/philosophy/vade-mecum/apaguide.htm

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01.html

It is said that ontology and therefore philosophy lost more of its traditional subject-matter with
the development of the physical sciences such as Theoretical Physics.

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence or

reality as well as the basic categories of being and their relations.[1] Traditionally listed
as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology often deals
with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist and how such
entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to
similarities and differences. Although ontology as a philosophical enterprise is highly
theoretical, it also has practical application in information science and technology, such
as ontology engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

Principal questions of ontology include:

"What can be said to exist?"

74
 "What is a thing?"[3]

"Into what categories, if any, can we sort existing things?"

"What are the meanings of being?"

"What are the various modes of being of entities?"

Various philosophers have provided different answers to these questions. One common approach
involves dividing the extant subjects and predicates into groups called categories. Of course, such
lists of categories differ widely from one another, and it is through the co-ordination of different
categorical schemes that ontology relates to such fields as library science and artificial intelligence.
Such an understanding of ontological categories, however, is merely taxonomic, classificatory.
Aristotle's categories are the ways in which a being may be addressed simply as a being, such as:

what it is (its 'whatness', quiddity, haecceity or essence)

how it is (its 'howness' or qualitativeness)

how much it is (quantitativeness)

where it is, its relatedness to other beings [4]

Further examples of ontological questions include:[citation needed]

What is existence, i.e. what does it mean for a being to be?

Is existence a property?

Is existence a genus or general class that is simply divided up by specific

differences?

Which entities, if any, are fundamental?

Are all entities objects?

How do the properties of an object relate to the object itself?

Do physical properties actually exist?

What features are the essential, as opposed to merely accidental attributes of a

given object?

How many levels of existence or ontological levels are there? And what
constitutes a "level"?

What is a physical object?

Can one give an account of what it means to say that a physical object exists?

75
 Can one give an account of what it means to say that a non-physical entity
exists?

What constitutes the identity of an object?

When does an object go out of existence, as opposed to merely changing?

Do beings exist other than in the modes of objectivity and subjectivity, i.e. is the
subject/object split of modern philosophy inevitable?

Concepts
Essential ontological dichotomies include:

universals and particulars

substance and accident

abstract and concrete objects

essence and existence

determinism and indeterminism

monism and dualism

idealism and materialism

Philosophers can classify ontologies in various ways using criteria such as the degree of abstraction
and field of application:[5]

1. Upper ontology: concepts supporting development of an ontology, meta-ontology

2. Domain ontology: concepts relevant to a particular topic or area of interest, for

example, information technology or computer languages, or particular branches
of science

3. Interface ontology: concepts relevant to the juncture of two disciplines

4. Process ontology: inputs, outputs, constraints, sequencing information, involved

in business or engineering processes

5. The concept of 'ontological formations' refers to formations of social relations understood as

dominant ways of living. Temporal, spatial, corporeal, epistemological and performative
relations are taken to be central to understanding a dominant formation. That is, a particular
ontological formation is based on how ontological categories of time, space, embodiment,
knowing and performing are livedobjectively and subjectively. Different ontological
formations include the customary (including the tribal), the traditional, the modern and the
postmodern. The concept was first introduced by Paul James' Globalism, Nationalism,
Tribalism[14] together with a series of writers including Damian Grenfell and Manfred Steger.

76
 6. In the engaged theory approach, ontological formations are seen as layered and intersecting
rather than singular formations. They are 'formations of being'. This approach avoids the
usual problems of a Great Divide being posited between the modern and the pre-modern.

Here it can be seen the areas of ontology lost to social sciences. And below to
biology, ecology and cognitive sciences. Schools of subjectivism, objectivism and
relativism existed at various times in the 20th century, and the postmodernists and
body philosophers tried to reframe all these questions in terms of bodies taking
some specific action in an environment. This relied to a great degree on insights
derived from scientific research into animals taking instinctive action in natural and
artificial settingsas studied by biology, ecology,[17] and cognitive science and
philosophy of language.

Some philosophers suggest that the question of "What is?" is (at least in part) an issue of usage rather
than a question about facts.[20] This perspective is conveyed by an analogy made by Donald
Davidson: Suppose a person refers to a 'cup' as a 'chair' and makes some comments pertinent to a
cup, but uses the word 'chair' consistently throughout instead of 'cup'. One might readily catch on that
this person simply calls a 'cup' a 'chair' and the oddity is explained.[21] Analogously, if we find people
asserting 'there are' such-and-such, and we do not ourselves think that 'such-and-such' exist, we
might conclude that these people are not nuts (Davidson calls this assumption 'charity'), they simply
use 'there are' differently than we do. The question of What is? is at least partially a topic in the
philosophy of language, and is not entirely about ontology itself.[22] This viewpoint has been
expressed by Eli Hirsch.[23][24]

Hirsch interprets Hilary Putnam as asserting that different concepts of "the existence of something"
can be correct.[24] This position does not contradict the view that some things do exist, but points out
that different 'languages' will have different rules about assigning this property.[24][25] How to
determine the 'fitness' of a 'language' to the world then becomes a subject for investigation -=

As well as to human geography In human geography there are two types of ontology: small "o"
which accounts for the practical orientation, describing functions of being a part of the group,
thought to oversimplify and ignore key activities. The other "o", or big "O", systematically, logically,
and rationally describes the essential characteristics and universal traits. This concept relates closely
to Plato's view that the human mind can only perceive a bigger world if they continue to live within
the confines of their "caves". However, in spite of the differences, ontology relies on the symbolic
agreements among members. That said, ontology is crucial for the axiomatic language frameworks.

And here to physics - There is an established and long philosophical history of the concept of atoms
as microscopic physical objects.They are far too small to be visible to the naked eye. It was as recent
as the nineteenth century that precise estimates of the sizes of putative physical atoms began to
become plausible. Almost direct empirical observation of atomic effects was due to the theoretical
investigation of Brownian motion by Albert Einstein in the very early twentieth century. But even
then, the real existence of atoms was debated by some. Such debate might be labeled 'microcosmic
ontology'. Here the word 'microcosm' is used to indicate a physical world of small entities, such as
for example atoms.

Subatomic particles are usually considered to be much smaller than atoms. Their real or actual
existence may be very difficult to demonstrate empirically.[29] A distinction is sometimes drawn

77
between actual and virtual subatomic particles. Reasonably, one may ask, in what sense, if any, do
virtual particles exist as physical entities? For atomic and subatomic particles, difficult questions
arise, such as do they possess a precise position, or a precise momentum? A question that continues
to be controversial is 'to what kind of physical thing, if any, does the quantum mechanical wave
function refer?' http://ontologia.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Programa-XII-IOC54.pdf
http://ontologia.net/ Physics in XII International Ontology Congress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTsaZWzVJ4c

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/

An article that shows the intersections of ontology and logic.

A number of important philosophical problems are at the intersection of logic and ontology. Both
logic and ontology are diverse fields within philosophy and, partly because of this, there is not one
single philosophical problem about the relation between them. In this survey article we will first
discuss what different philosophical projects are carried out under the headings of logic and
ontology and then we will look at several areas where logic and ontology overlap.

1. Introduction

2. Logic

o 2.1. Different conceptions of logic

o 2.2. How the different conceptions of logic are related to each other

3. Ontology

o 3.1. Different conceptions of ontology

As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of
what ontology is, so it's only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are
problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of
universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a
certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. But ontology is usually also taken to encompass
problems about the most general features and relations of the entities which do exist. There are
also a number of classic philosophical problems that are problems in ontology understood this way.
For example, the problem of how a universal relates to a particular that has it (assuming there are
universals and particulars), or the problem of how an event like John eating a cookie relates to the
particulars John and the cookie, and the relation of eating, assuming there are events, particulars and
relations. These kinds of problems quickly turn into metaphysics more generally, which is the
philosophical discipline that encompasses ontology as one of its parts. The borders here are a
little fuzzy. But we have at least two parts to the overall philosophical project of ontology: first, say
what there is, what exists, what the stuff is reality is made out off, secondly, say what the most
general features and relations of these things are.

This way of looking at ontology comes with two sets of problems which leads to the philosophical
discipline of ontology being more complex than just answering the above questions. The first set of

78
problems is that it isn't clear how to approach answering these questions. This leads to the
debate about ontological commitment. The second set of problems is that it isn't so clear what
these questions really are. This leads to the philosophical debate about meta-ontology. Lets look
at them in turn.

One of the troubles with ontology is that it not only isn't clear what there is, it also isn't so clear how
to settle questions about what there is, at least not for the kinds of things that have traditionally been
of special interest to philosophers: numbers, properties, God, etc. Ontology is thus a philosophical
discipline that encompasses besides the study of what there is and the study of the general features of
what there is also the study of what is involved in settling questions about what there is in general,
especially for the philosophically tricky cases. How we can find out what there is isn't an easy
question to answer. It seems simple enough for regular objects that we can perceive with our eyes,
like my house keys, but how should we decide it for such things as, say, numbers or properties? One
first step to making progress on this question is to see if what we believe already rationally settles
this question. That is to say, given that we have certain beliefs, do these beliefs already bring with
them a rational commitment to an answer to such questions as Are there numbers? If our beliefs
bring with them a rational commitment to an answer to an ontological question about the existence of
certain entities then we can say that we are committed to the existence of these entities. What
precisely is required for such a commitment to occur is subject to debate, a debate we will look at
momentarily. To find out what one is committed to with a particular set of beliefs, or acceptance of a
particular theory of the world, is part of the larger discipline of ontology.

Besides it not being so clear what it is to commit yourself to an answer to an ontological

question, it also isn't so clear what an ontological question really is, and thus what it is that
ontology is supposed to accomplish. To figure this out is the task of meta-ontology, which
strictly speaking is not part of ontology construed narrowly, but the study of what ontology is.
However, like most philosophical disciplines, ontology more broadly construed contains its own
meta-study, and thus meta-ontology is part of ontology, more broadly construed. Nonetheless it is
helpful to separate it out as a special part of ontology. Many of the philosophically most
fundamental questions about ontology really are meta-ontological questions. Meta-ontology has
not been too popular in the last couple of decades, partly because one meta-ontological view, the one
often associated with Quine, has been accepted as the correct one, but this acceptance has been
challenged in recent years in a variety of ways. One motivation for the study of meta-ontology is
simply the question of what question ontology aims to answer. Take the case of numbers, for
example. What is the question that we should aim to answer in ontology if we want to find out if
there are numbers, that is, if reality contains numbers besides whatever else it is made up from? This
way of putting it suggest an easy answer: Are there numbers? But this question seems like an easy
one to answer. An answer to it is implied, it seems, by trivial mathematics, say that the number 7 is
less than the number 8. If the latter, then there is a number which is less than 8, namely 7, and thus
there is at least one number. Can ontology be that easy? The study of meta-ontology will have to
determine, amongst others, if Are there numbers? really is the question that the discipline of
ontology is supposed to answer, and more generally, what ontology is supposed to do. We will pursue
these questions below. As we will see, several philosophers think that ontology is supposed to answer
a different question than what there is, but they often disagree on what that question is.

The larger discipline of ontology can thus be seen as having four parts:

(O1) the study of ontological commitment, i.e. what we or others are committed to,

(O2) the study of what there is,

79
 (O3) the study of the most general features of what there is, and how the things there are
relate to each other in the metaphysically most general ways,

(O4) the study of meta-ontology, i.e. saying what task it is that the discipline of ontology
should aim to accomplish, if any, how the questions it aims to answer should be understood,
and with what methodology they can be answered.

o 3.2. How the different conceptions of ontology are related to each other

o The relationship between these four seems rather straightforward. (O4)

will have to say how the other three are supposed to be understood. In
particular, it will have to tell us if the question to be answered in (O2)
indeed is the question what there is, which was taken above to be only a
first approximation for how to state what ontology is supposed to do.
Maybe it is supposed to answer the question what is real instead, or what
is fundamental, some other question. Whatever one says here will also
affect how one should understand (O1). We will at first work with what is
the most common way to understand (O2) and (O1), and discuss
alternatives in turn. If (O1) has the result that the beliefs we share commit
us to a certain kind of entity then this requires us either to accept an
answer to a question about what there is in the sense of (O2) or to revise
our beliefs. If we accept that there is such an entity in (O2) then this
invites questions in (O3) about its nature and the general relations it has
to other things we also accept. On the other hand, investigations in (O3)
into the nature of entities that we are not committed to and that we have
no reason to believe exist would seem like a rather speculative project,
though, of course, it could still be fun and interesting

4. Areas of overlap

o 4.1. Formal languages and ontological commitment. (L1) meets (O1) and
(O4)

Formal ontologies are theories that attempt to give precise mathematical formulations of the
properties and relations of certain entities. Such theories usually propose axioms about these
entities in question, spelled out in some formal language based on some system of formal
logic. Formal ontology can been seen as coming in three kinds, depending on their
philosophical ambition. Let's call them representational, descriptive, and systematic. We will
in this section briefly discuss what philosophers, and others, have hoped to do with such
formal ontologies.
A formal ontology is a mathematical theory of certain entities, formulated in a formal,
artificial language, which in turn is based on some logical system like first order logic, or
some form of the lambda calculus, or the like

o 4.2. Is logic neutral about what there is? (L2) meets (O2)

o 4.3. Formal ontology. (L1) meets (O2) and (O3)

80
 o 4.4. Carnap's rejection of ontology. (L1) meets (O4) and (the end of?) (O2)

One interesting view about the relationship between formal languages, ontology, and meta-
ontology is the one developed by Carnap in the first half of the 20th century, and which is one
of the starting points of the contemporary debate in ontology, leading to the well-known
exchange between Carnap and Quine, to be discussed below. According to Carnap one crucial
project in philosophy is to develop frameworks that can be used by scientists to formulate
theories of the world. Such frameworks are formal languages that have a clearly defined
relationship to experience or empirical evidence as part of their semantics. For Carnap it was
a matter of usefulness and practicality which one of these frameworks will be selected by the
scientists to formulate their theories in, and there is no one correct framework that truly
mirrors the world as it is in itself. The adoption of one framework rather than another is thus
a practical question.
Carnap distinguished two kinds of questions that can be asked about what there is. One are
the so-called internal questions, questions like Are there infinitely many prime numbers?

What the philosophers aim to ask, according to Carnap, is not a question

internal to the framework, but external to it. They aim to ask whether the
framework correctly corresponds to reality, whether or not there really are
numbers. However, the words used in the question Are there numbers?
only have meaning within the framework of talk about numbers, and thus
if they are meaningful at all they form an internal question, with a trivial
answer. The external questions that the metaphysician tries to ask are
meaningless.

Carnap's rejection of ontology, and metaphysics more generally, has been

widely criticized from a number of different angles. One common criticism
is that it relies on a too simplistic conception of natural language that ties
it too closely to science or to evidence and verification. In particular,
Carnap's more general rejection of metaphysics used a verificationist
conception of meaning, which is widely seen as too simplistic. Carnap's
rejection of ontology has been criticized most prominently by Quine, and
the debate between Carnap and Quine on ontology is a classic in this field

Carnap's arguments for the rejection of ontology are presently widely

rejected. However, several philosophers have recently attempted to revive
some parts or others of Carnap's ideas.

Yablo, See (Hofweber 2000) and (Hofweber 2005). Putnam, for example in
(Putnam 1987), has developed a view that revives some of the pragmatic
aspects of Carnap's view. See (Sosa 1993) for a critical discussion of
Putnam's view, and (Sosa 1999) for a related, positive proposal.

Although ontology is often understood as the discipline that tries

to find out what there is, or what exists, this is not universally
accepted. Some philosophers think that the job of ontology is something
different, and there is disagreement among them what it is more precisely.
Among the proposed options are the projects of finding out what is
real, or what is fundamental, or what the primary substances are,
or what reality is like in itself, or something like this. Proponents of
these approaches often find the questions about what there is too
inconsequential and trivial to take them to be the questions for ontology.

81
 Some philosophers have proposed that natural language might be
unsuitable for the purposes of ontology. It might be unsuitable since it
carries with it too much baggage from our particular conceptual scheme.
See (Burgess 2005) for a discussion.

o 4.5. The fundamental language. (L1) meets (O4) and (the new beginning
of?) (O2)

o 4.6. The structure of thought and the structure of reality. (L4) meets (O3)

o One way to understand logic is as the study of the most general

forms of thought or judgment, what we called (L4). One way to
understand ontology is as the study of the most general features
of what there is, our (O3). Now, there is a striking similarity between
the most general forms of thought and the most general features
of what there is. Take one example. Many thoughts have a subject of
which they predicate something. What there is contains individuals that
have properties. It seems that there is the same structure in thought as
well as in reality. And similarly for other structural features. Does this
matching between thought and the world ask for a substantial
philosophical explanation? Is it a deep philosophical puzzle?

5. Conclusion

Bibliography

Academic Tools

Other Internet Resources

Related Entries

https://www.ontology.co/

For details see Table of Ontologists of 19th and 20th Centuries

82


https://www.ontology.co/ontologists.htm

Detailed information (bibliographies, abstract of relevant publications, and selections of
critical judgments) for the thinkers mentioned in the Table of Ontologists are partly available
and will be completed in the near future; I will publish also pages in French and Italian with
selections of critical studies available in these languages, but not translated in English.
An important feature of this site will be the bibliographies about the history of ontology,
selected authors and ontological topics that have not yet been covered in such detail;
bibliographical entries will not only include the most relevant books, but also a selection of
articles from about one hundred philosophical reviews; attention will be paid to the relations

83
 with logic, semantics and semiotics, in particular to the theories of predication and reference
and to the relation between thought, language and the world.
The completion of this job will require some years; more than 15,000 bibliographic
references are already available in the following languages, in decreasing order of frequency:
English, French, German, Italian, Spanish; the Bibliographies will be constantly expanded
and updated, and new abstracts of existing entries will be added.
I wish to apologize to readers of other languages, not included only because of my foreign
language limitations (my mother tongue is Italian), but I hope that students and researchers
will find sufficient material for a more thorough study and will enjoy discovering many
philosophical treasures, some little known, but in no way less significant.

For lists of past and present Ontologists see here https://www.ontology.co/ontologists.htm

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/contemporary.htm

National Center for Ontological Research

Basic Formal Ontology

The Philosophome

Ontology and Education

Information as Ontologization

Information Artifact Ontology

Peter Simons: Against Set Theory

Applied Ontology (journal)

Jan Berg: Aristotle's Theory of Definition

Cambridge Social Ontology Group

Ontospace (University of Bremen)

General Ontology for Linguistic Description

Analytic Metaphysics Portal

Ontologies: Philosophical and Computational

Formal Ontology in Information Systems

84
 Vagueness

The New Ontology of the Mental Causation Debate

Logic and Ontology

Standard Upper Ontology

Formal Models of Common-Sense Geographic

Worlds

Ontology: A Resource Guide for Philosophers

Ingarden and the Ontology of Cultural Objects

Geographic Categories

Geographic Ontology

Ontology of Environments

Ontology of Boundaries

Conference on Applied Ontology, April 1998

What is an Ontology?

Ontology of Text

The Monist: Topology for Philosophers

The Monist: The Ontology of Scientific Realism

The Monist: Temporal Parts

Metaphysics Research Lab

https://ontologynetwork.wordpress.com/

http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/ontology-and-metaontology-9781441182890/

http://www.spep.org/conferences/the-ontological-turn-in-contemporary-philosophy-october-3-to-
5-pucrs-brazil/

85
The Ontological Turn in Contemporary Philosophy October
3 to 5, PUCRS, Brazil
The so-called linguistic turn is widely regarded as the defining trait of 20th century philosophy in
the continental as well as the analytic tradition. Prepared since the 18th century by the critical
impulse which elevated the question of the human access to the world to the position of primary
philosophical problem, it has, however, led to a number of impasses that are both internal and
external: to what extent can we accept the pretence of doing philosophy in a way that would be
entirely free from implicit ontological presuppositions and commitments? To what extent is not
critique today a matter of exposing and criticising these presuppositions, as well as proposing
others? To what extent can we accept the paradoxically autarchic role that this turn, in its
extreme versions, ascribes to language in regard to being? How to navigate between the two
equally untenable reductionisms of a common sense, logicism or scientism devoid of self-
reflexivity, on the one hand, and the sacrifice of all objectivity at the altar of the signifiers free play,
on the other?

There is a growing trend in contemporary philosophy to consider that the reduction of each
and every philosophical question to the theme of the relation between human and world,
however defined what Quentin Meillassoux has famously called correlationism , not only
leaves us spinning in a void, but also renders us incapable of giving answers to the challenges
that call for thought in the present: the environmental crisis, the blurring of the boundaries
between nature and technique, the different political and cultural dimensions of what is understood as
life, the questions raised by contemporary biology, cognitive science, mathematics and physics.
Saturated of a play of mirrors that ultimately seem to reflect nothing, are we ready for an ontological
turn in philosophy? Should such a movement in philosophy prosper, it would certainly not be
through a return to pre-critical metaphysics, but through deepening and transforming modernitys
reflexive task.

https://materialismos.wordpress.com/

http://philosophy.ou.edu/Websites/philosophy/images/irvin/Contemporary_Art--Ontology.pdf

Oxford University Press CONTEMPORARY ART: ONTOLOGY

The
ontology
of
visual
artworks
might
be
thought
comparable
to
the
ontology
of
other
sorts

86
of
artifacts:
a
work
of
painting
seems
to
be
materially
constituted
by
a
particular
canvas
with
paint
on
it,
just
as
a
spoon
is
constituted
by
a
particular
piece
of
metal
(Baker,
2000;
Thomson,
1998).
But
recent
developments
have
complicated
the
situation,
requiring
a
new
account
of
the
ontology

87
of
contemporary
art.
These
developments
also
shed
light
on
the
ontology
of
works
from
earlier
historical
eras.
New
Developments
On
a
common--sense
conception
of
the
nature
of
visual
artworks
such
as
paintings,
the
following
are
true:
1. The
artwork
is
a
particular
material
object.
2. The
appearance
of
the
painted
surface

88
is
central
to
the
works
identity.
3. Extensive,
irreversible
change
to
the
painted
surface
is
sufficient
for
destruction
of
the
work.
Can
analogous
claims
be
made
of
modern
and
contemporary
artworks?
Consider
some
examples.
Saburo
Murakami
stipulated
that
flaking
paint
is
integral
to
his
Peeling
Off
Paintings
(1957),
not
damage

89
to
be
avoided
or
repaired.
Gerald
Fergusons
Maintenance
Paintings
(c.
1979--1982).

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.820.6778&rep=rep1&type=pdf

The above are merely a few examples of the type of work that forms part of Contemporary Ontology.
What does it tell us about the subject-matter of philosophy as far as the field of ontology is concerned?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------.
7

Other disciplines that absorbed and differentiated questions, sets of questions and fields that traditionally
formed part of philosophy are cognitive psychology cognitive sociology and cognitive sciences. These and all
other disciplines, even art and meta-art, have developed or are in need of development of its own ontology.

Cognitive sociology is a sociological sub-discipline devoted to the study of the

social and cultural contingencies and consequences of human cognition. Notable
authors include, but are not limited to, Eviatar Zerubavel, Aaron Cicourel, Barry
Schwartz, Karen A. Cerulo and Paul DiMaggio.
Cognition and cognitive notions have become one of the major and most fashionable
impulses, attractions and notions in contemporary sociology.
Here are a few examples
http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_sociology
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve
this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (February 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this
template message)

Cognitive sociology is a sociological sub-discipline devoted to the study of the social and cultural
contingencies and consequences of human cognition. Notable authors include, but are not limited to,
Eviatar Zerubavel, Aaron Cicourel, Barry Schwartz, Karen A. Cerulo and Paul DiMaggio.[1]

The term 'cognitive sociology' was used already in 1974 by Cicourel.[2] However, in 1997
DiMaggio[3] published what has been referred to as a now classic paper[4] of Cognitive Sociology in
its current form.

Special journal issues on the topic of Cognitive Sociology has been published by the scientific
journals Poetics[5] and the European Journal of Social Theory in 2010 and 2007 respectively.

Graduate-level courses in cognitive sociology has been organized at the University of Copenhagen in
2014 and 2016 .

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/socf.12131/abstract

90
Based on remarks delivered at a special session on What Should the Sociology of Cognition Look
Like? organized by Karen A. Cerulo at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society,
Baltimore, MD, February 2014

The sociology of cognition could serve as a more effective bridge between sociology and other
disciplines, and more of a two-way thoroughfare, if we would consider doing the following two
things, which we are already doing here and there. First, we need to take a stand in philosophy of
social science debates. Second, we need to show how what we do contributes to sociological
methods, and not only say that what we do contributes to sociological theory, however fundamental
that contribution may be.

https://www.academia.edu/427279/On_the_Contributions_of_Cognitive_Sociology_for_the_Sociolo
gical_Study_of_Race

https://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Cognitive_Sociology

https://www.academia.edu/29377441/Brekhus_Wayne_H_Culture_and_Cognition_Patterns_in_the_
Social_Construction_of_Reality

https://www.academia.edu/27109564/Sciences_et_pseudo-sciences_Recension

https://www.academia.edu/19673939/Toward_a_New_Materialism_in_Sociology_How_the_Sociolo
gy_of_Culture_Killed_Culture_and_Why_thats_a_Good_Thing

https://www.academia.edu/16199192/Culture_Cognition_and_Embodimen

https://www.academia.edu/15034217/Beyond_the_Comtean_Schema_The_Sociology_of_Culture_a
nd_Cognition_Versus_Cognitive_Social_Science

http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/4420/what-is-the-relationship-between-sociology-and-
cognitive-sciences

What is the relationship between sociology and cognitive

sciences?
up vote 7 I want to know what is the relationship between sociology and cognitive sciences. Let
down vote me start by short consideration of both:
favorite
2 1. Sociology - well established discipline or a field of research Sociology
is a part of social sciences.

2. Cognitive sciences - a bit more recent field of research. Cognitive

science cannot be considered a discipline, it lacks core basics, there is
bigger and less connected variety of research methods and objects.
Cognitive sciences is also part of social sciences, but has stronger ties
with biomedicine (neurology, pharmacology).

Sociology considers that main causes of our behavior lie outside, in the social
environment. At the same time cognitive sciences look for causation within

91
 psyche/brain.

I believe that there are three ways of looking into relations:

1. Connections between sociological and cognitive-science journals?

2. Semantic relations like use of similar concepts and definitions?

3. Interdisciplinary projects that include both sociology and cognitive

sciences?

http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/901%20syllabus.pdf

1
Culture and Cognition
Sociology 901
John Levi Martin
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Spring 2005
Overview:
In recent years there has been a buddi
ng of a new interest in culture that has
revolved around the incantation of culture and cogn
ition. In any abstract, formal sense, it is
hard to defend this as a new field, but in the soci
ological sense (which is
all that really matters)
there is clearly something new afoot. This inte
rest is different from the sociology of culture
generally conceived in two ways. First, it is
not specifically concerned with Culture in the
narrow sense of productions, but culture in th
e wider anthropologica
l sense (although specific
cultural products may be used to get at this culture).
*
Second, it is not inte
rested in the vague,
evanescent and global leve
l of culture involving things such
as symbols unless these can be

92
made concrete and related to defensible models of
cognition. This interest
is also different from
social psychology as currently cons
tituted, basically because of a l
ack of interest in the problems
that (largely for historical r
easons) became central to social
psychology as it currently stands.
(The substitution of cognition for psychol
ogy also seems to imply that conventional
psychological models are considered to be exhausted.)
Instead
, the study of culture and cogniti
on is an attempt to look at patternings in subjectivity that
arise because of the placement of that cogni
zing apparatus which we call the human mind in
institutional settings. How exactly this is to
be done, however, is not
yet worked out. This
makes the field incredibly exciting. This class
will be in modest form a contribution to the
projectfortunately, there is littl
e enough work that we need not simply survey what has been
done. We are also free to determine the lines
of what should be done.
This class will both
survey what there is in this area and de
termine where further work should take place.

http://sociology.rutgers.edu/documents/graduate-course-syllabi/fall-2013-graduate-courses/231-
cognitive-sociology/file

Welcome to C
ognitive Sociology,

where we
w
ill
venture to
ex

93
plor
e
the fascinating relations between
the social and the mental.
Using
classical and contemporary works in sociology, anthropology,
psychology,
history,
geography, linguistics, and
phil
osophy
, we will ex
amin
e the sociocultural
underpinnings of
major
mental processes
(
perception, attention, memory, classification,
signification
)
as well as the sociocognitive foundations of identity
. In so doing
, we will be drawing on major
theoretical
traditions such as
phenomenology, social constructionism, ethnomethodology, symbolic
anthropology, structuralism,
fra
me analysis,
and semiotics.
Throughout
the s
emester, you
will
use
these traditions
in a variety of substantive
contexts, acquire a
n intellectually
pluralistic
perspective
that promotes engagement with
different
theoretical perspectives, and produce original, thematically
-
inspired pieces of sociological thinking.
There are s

94
ix
books we will be using extensively t
hroughout the course

Eviatar Zerubavels
Social
Mindscapes
(ISBN 0
-
674
-
81390
-
1), Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmanns
The Social Construction
of Reality
(ISBN 0
-
385
-
05898
-
5), Eviatar Zerubavels
The Fine Line
(ISBN 0
-
226
-
98159
-
2), Christena
Nippert
-
Engs
H
ome and Work
(ISBN 0
-
226
-
58146
-
2), Wayne Brekhuss
Peacocks, Chameleons,
Centaurs
(ISBN 0
-
226

95
-
07292
-
4), and Eviatar Zerubavels
Ancestors and Relatives
(ISBN 978
-
0
-
19
-
933604
-
3).
http://www.sacra.cz/2011-2/3_Sacra_9-2011-2_6.pdf

40
Jan Krtk

Cognitive sociology and the study of human

Cognition: A
critical point
Jan Krtk, FF MU, Departement for the Study of Religions
e-mail: jan.kratky@mail.muni.cz
Abstract
I
base my paper on review of a
leading texts from the field of cognitive sociology
with the attempt to compare the implicit notion of cognition with the conceptions
elaborated in the field of cognitive science and allied disciplines (e.g. cognitive
psychology, cognitive anthropology, cognitive science of religion, cognitive
archeology etc.). I
will refer mainly to Cerulo (2002a, 2009), DiMaggio (2002),
Vaughan (2002), Wakefield (2002) and Zerubavel (1997, 2002, 2003). The exemplar
issues will be presented in the course of four steps. First, I
problematize the notion
of cognition limited merely to habituated behavioral forms related to specific
local situations as presented in study by Vaughan (2002). Second, I
discuss the
excessive focus on local structures of meaning that are conceived as one of the goals
of sociology of mind presented by Zerubavel (1997). I
point out the problematic
position of sociology of mind, since it draws a
substantial focus on intersubjectivity
defined in contrast to cognitive individualism and universalism. I
present this
methodological stance in relation to interpretative program of social sciences.
Consequently, I
show that this type of cognitive theorizing casts vital doubts on
results emerging from the field itself as well as on cross-disciplinary relevancy of
that investigation. Viable forms of collaboration between cultural theorizing based

96
on interpretative and descriptive methods and cognitive science will be explained
throughout the paper as well as in its final conclusion
http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/?tag=cognitive-sociology

http://jura.ku.dk/icourts/news/cognitive-sociology-culture-and-international-law/

https://digilib.phil.muni.cz/handle/11222.digilib/124443

The above are only a few examples of the proliferation of articles, lectures, conferences, books, etc
concerned cognitive sociology. This new dream child sociology gave birth to appears as if it is giving
life to this discipline by means of providing it with a new ontology, a frame of reference, other
transcendentals such as assumptions and pre-suppositions, endless new concepts and ways of
generating more concepts and ideas, methodologies, techniques, methods and a treasure of new
topics for sociological investigation, research, lectures, theses and publications.

Most important in this context is the effect of that and the implications for philosophy and its
subject-matter. More fields of what used to be considered philosophy has been usurped by cognitive
sociology, cognitive psychology, law etc, etc. The most important discipline is sociology because it
has been prepared for this new differentiation of sociological subject-matter by developments in the
discipline during the last century for example by second generation Critical Theory such as
Habermas and the work surrounding him and others of that school and developments in philosophy
and other fields in France, deconstruction, Derrida, phenomenology, semiotics, etc. And, with the
sociologization of reason, cognition and the introduction of social theory into philosophy and
philosophizing boundaries between the disciplines of philosophy and sociology have been blurred
and intentionally so. The latter led to sociologism not only in the discipline of sociology, but also he
introduction of it into the discourse of philosophy and the doing of philosophy this was initially
restricted to Germany, then later top other geographical areas of Western Europe and gradually into
North America.

And, so far I have only pointed to cognitive sociology and not even mentioned other disciplines that
are involved in the cognitive sciences bandwagon. When we look at them we will no doubt discover
that a similar process of de-philosophizing (transformation of fields, questions, investigation,
concepts, conceptual practices, etc of the philosophical discourse and socio-cultural practice and
intersubjectivity) has occurred because of the involvement of other disciplines involved in cognitive
sciences.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognition

Cognition is "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through
thought, experience, and the senses."[1] It encompasses processes such as knowledge, attention,
memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and "computation", problem
solving and decision making, comprehension and production of language, etc. Human cognition is
conscious and unconscious, concrete or abstract, as well as intuitive (like knowledge of a language)
and conceptual (like a model of a language). Cognitive processes use existing knowledge and
generate new knowledge.

97
The processes are analyzed from different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields
of linguistics, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy,
anthropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science.[2][page needed] These and other different
approaches to the analysis of cognition are synthesised in the developing field of cognitive science, a
progressively autonomous academic discipline. Within psychology and philosophy, the concept of
cognition is closely related to abstract concepts such as mind and intelligence. It encompasses the
mental functions, mental processes (thoughts), and states of intelligent entities (humans,
collaborative groups, human organizations, highly autonomous machines, and artificial
intelligences).[3]

Thus, the term's usage varies across disciplines; for example, in psychology and cognitive science,
"cognition" usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological
functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes,
attribution, and group dynamics.[4] In cognitive psychology and cognitive engineering, cognition is
typically assumed to be information processing in a participants or operators mind or brain.[3]

Cognition can in some specific and abstract sense also be artificial.[5]

The term "cognition" is often incorrectly used to mean "cognitive abilities" or "cognitive skills."

Look at the role cognition and related ideas played in philosophy - Cognition is a word that dates
back to the 15th century, when it meant "thinking and awareness".[7] Attention to the cognitive
process came about more than eighteen centuries ago, beginning with Aristotle and his interest in the
inner workings of the mind and how they affect the human experience. Aristotle focused on cognitive
areas pertaining to memory, perception, and mental imagery. The Greek philosopher found great
importance in ensuring that his studies were based on empirical evidence; scientific information that
is gathered through observation and conscientious experimentation.[8] Centuries later, as psychology
became a burgeoning field of study in Europe and then gained a following in America, other
scientists like Wilhelm Wundt, Herman Ebbinghaus, Mary Whiton Calkins, and William James, to
name a few, would offer their contributions to the study of cognition.

Wilhelm Wundt (18321920) heavily emphasized the notion of what he called introspection:
examining the inner feelings of an individual. With introspection, the subject had to be careful to
describe his or her feelings in the most objective manner possible in order for Wundt to find the
information scientific.[9][10] Though Wundt's contributions are by no means minimal, modern
psychologists find his methods to be quite subjective and choose to rely on more objective
procedures of experimentation to make conclusions about the human cognitive process.

Hermann Ebbinghaus (18501909) conducted cognitive studies that mainly examined the function
and capacity of human memory. Ebbinghaus developed his own experiment in which he constructed
over 2,000 syllables made out of nonexistent words, for instance EAS. He then examined his own
personal ability to learn these non-words. He purposely chose non-words as opposed to real words to
control for the influence of pre-existing experience on what the words might symbolize, thus
enabling easier recollection of them.[9][11] Ebbinghaus observed and hypothesized a number of
variables that may have affected his ability to learn and recall the non-words he created. One of the
reasons, he concluded, was the amount of time between the presentation of the list of stimuli and the
recitation or recall of same. Ebbinghaus was the first to record and plot a "learning curve," and a

98
"forgetting curve."[12] His work heavily influenced the study of serial position and its effect on
memory, discussed in subsequent sections.

Mary Whiton Calkins (18631930) was an influential American pioneer in the realm of psychology.
Her work also focused on the human memory capacity. A common theory, called the recency effect,
can be attributed to the studies that she conducted.[13] The recency effect, also discussed in the
subsequent experiment section, is the tendency for individuals to be able to accurately recollect the
final items presented in a sequence of stimuli. Her theory is closely related to the aforementioned
study and conclusion of the memory experiments conducted by Hermann Ebbinghaus.[14]

William James (18421910) is another pivotal figure in the history of cognitive science. James was
quite discontent with Wundt's emphasis on introspection and Ebbinghaus' use of nonsense stimuli.
He instead chose to focus on the human learning experience in everyday life and its importance to
the study of cognition. James' major contribution was his textbook Principles of Psychology that
preliminarily examines many aspects of cognition like perception, memory, reasoning, and attention,
to name a few

Cognitive studies and notions presented psychology, as it did with sociology, with a new life, areas
of research, conceptual schemes and much else - The sort of mental processes described as cognitive
are largely influenced by research which has successfully used this paradigm in the past, likely
starting with Thomas Aquinas, who divided the study of behavior into two broad categories:
cognitive (how we know the world), and affective (how we understand the world via feelings and
emotions)[disputed discuss].[citation needed] Consequently, this description tends to apply to processes such as
memory, association, concept formation, pattern recognition, language, attention, perception, action,
problem solving and mental imagery.[15][16] Traditionally, emotion was not thought of as a cognitive
process. This division is now regarded as largely artificial, and much research is currently being
undertaken to examine the cognitive psychology of emotion; research also includes one's awareness
of one's own strategies and methods of cognition called metacognition and includes metamemory.

Empirical research into cognition is usually scientific and quantitative, or involves creating models to
describe or explain certain behaviors.

While few people would deny that cognitive processes are a function of the brain, a cognitive theory
will not necessarily make reference to the brain or other biological process (compare
neurocognitive). It may purely describe behavior in terms of information flow or function. Relatively
recent fields of study such as cognitive science and neuropsychology aim to bridge this gap, using
cognitive paradigms to understand how the brain implements these information-processing functions
(see also cognitive neuroscience), or how pure information-processing systems (e.g., computers) can
simulate cognition (see also artificial intelligence). The branch of psychology that studies brain
injury to infer normal cognitive function is called cognitive neuropsychology. The links of cognition
to evolutionary demands are studied through the investigation of animal cognition. And conversely,
evolutionary-based perspectives can inform hypotheses about cognitive functional systems'
evolutionary psychology.

The theoretical school of thought derived from the cognitive approach is often called cognitivism.

99
The phenomenal success of the cognitive approach can be seen by its current dominance as the
core model in contemporary psychology (usurping behaviorism in the late 1950s).

And, of course the role it plays in sociology and social sciuences - For every individual, the social
context in which he or she is embedded provides the symbols of his or her representation and
linguistic expression. The human society sets the environment where the newborn will be socialized
and develop his or her cognition. For example, face perception in human babies emerges by the age
of two months: young children at a playground or swimming pool develop their social recognition by
being exposed to multiple faces and associating the experiences to those faces. Education has the
explicit task in society of developing cognition. Choices are made regarding the environment and
permitted action that lead to a formed experience.

Language acquisition is an example of an emergent behavior. From a large systemic perspective,

cognition is considered closely related to the social and human organization functioning and
constrains. For example, the macro-choices made by the teachers influence the micro-choices made
by students..

The semantic network of knowledge representation systems has been studied in various paradigms.
One of the oldest is the leveling and sharpening of stories as they are repeated from memory studied
by Bartlett. The semantic differential used factor analysis to determine the main meanings of words,
finding that value or "goodness" of words is the first factor. More controlled experiments examine
the categorical relationships of words in free recall. The hierarchical structure of words has been
explicitly mapped in George Miller's Wordnet. More dynamic models of semantic networks have
been created and tested with neural network experiments based on computational systems such as
latent semantic analysis (LSA), Bayesian analysis, and multidimensional factor analysis. The
semantics (meaning) of words is studied by all the disciplines of cognitive science.

Other disciplines increasing involved in cognitive studies

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_biology

Cognitive biology is an emerging science that regards natural cognition as a biological function.[1] It
is based on the theoretical assumption that every organismwhether a single cell or multicellular
is continually engaged in systematic acts of cognition coupled with intentional behaviors, i.e., a
sensory-motor coupling.[2] That is to say, if an organism can sense stimuli in its environment and
respond accordingly, it is cognitive. Any explanation of how natural cognition may manifest in an
organism is constrained by the biological conditions in which its species survives to evolve.[3] And
since by Darwinian theory the species of every organism is evolving from a common root, three
further elements of cognitive biology are required: (i) the study of cognition in one species of
organism is useful, through contrast and comparison, to the study of another species cognitive
abilities;[4] (ii) it is useful to proceed from organisms with simpler to those with more complex
cognitive systems,[5] and (iii) the greater the number and variety of species studied in this regard, the
more we understand the nature of cognition.[6

While cognitive science endeavors to explain human thought and the conscious mind, the work of
cognitive biology is focused on the most fundamental process of cognition for any organism. In the
past several decades, biologists have investigated cognition in organisms large[7] and small,[8] both

100
plant[9] and animal.[10] Mounting evidence suggests that even bacteria grapple with problems long
familiar to cognitive scientists, including: integrating information from multiple sensory channels to
marshal an effective response to fluctuating conditions; making decisions under conditions of
uncertainty; communicating with conspecifics and others (honestly and deceptively); and
coordinating collective behaviour to increase the chances of survival.[11] Without thinking or
perceiving as humans would have it, an act of basic cognition is arguably a simple step-by-step
process through which an organism senses a stimulus, then finds an appropriate response in its
repertoire and enacts the response. However, the biological details of such basic cognition have
neither been delineated for a great many species nor sufficiently generalized to stimulate further
investigation. This lack of detail is due to the lack of a science dedicated to the task of elucidating the
cognitive ability common to all biological organisms. That is to say, a science of cognitive biology
has yet to be established.[12] A prolegomena[13] for such science was presented in 2007 and several
authors[14] have published their thoughts on the subject since the late 1970s. Yet as the examples in
the next section suggest, there is neither consensus on the theory nor widespread application in
practice.

Although the two terms are sometimes used synonymously,[15] cognitive biology should not be
confused with the biology of cognition in the sense that it is used by adherents to the Chilean School
of Biology of Cognition.[16] Also known as the Santiago School, the biology of cognition is based on
the work of Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana,[17] who crafted the doctrine of autopoiesis.
Their work began in 1970 while the first mention of cognitive biology by Brian Goodwin (discussed
below) was in 1977 from a different perspective.[18]

More and more disciplines are drawn into cognitive studies and consequently areas of spcialization
in such studies are differentiated in those disciplines. The words cognitive and biology are also
used together as the name of a category. The category of cognitive biology has no fixed content but,
rather, the content varies with the user. If the content can only be recruited from cognitive science,
then cognitive biology would seem limited to a selection of items in the main set of sciences
included by the interdisciplinary conceptcognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics,
philosophy, neuroscience, and cognitive anthropology.[39] These six separate sciences were allied to
bridge the gap between brain and mind with an interdisciplinary approach in the mid-1970s.[40]
Participating scientists were concerned only with human cognition. As it gained momentum, the
growth of cognitive science in subsequent decades seemed to offer a big tent to a variety of
researchers.[41] Some, for example, considered evolutionary epistemology a fellow-traveler. Others
appropriated the keyword, as for example Donald Griffin in 1978, when he advocated the
establishment of cognitive ethology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santiago%27s_theory_of_cognition

Initiated by Humberto Maturana in 1978 with the publication of his Biology of Cognition, his
subsequent work in partnership with Francisco Varela in Santiago eventually came to be called the
Santiago theory of cognition. They and their work, their cohorts and like-minded intellectuals
similarly came to be known as the Santiago School.[1] The theory can be encapsulated in two
sentences:

Living systems are cognitive systems, and living as a process is a process of cognition. This
statement is valid for all organisms, with or without a nervous system.[2]

101
This theory contributes a perspective that cognition is a process present at other organic levels.

The Santiago theory of cognition is a direct theoretical consequence of the theory of autopoiesis.
Cognition is considered as the ability of adaptation in a certain environment. That definition is not as
strange as it seems at first glance: for example, one is considered to have a good knowledge of
Mathematics if he can understand and subsequently solve a Mathematical problem. That is, one can
recognize the mathematical entities, their interrelations and the procedures used to view other aspects
of the relevant phenomena; all these, are the domain of Mathematics. And one with knowledge of
that domain, is one adapted to that domain, for he can tweak the problems, the entities and the
procedures within the certain domain.

Cognition emerges as a consequence of continuous interaction between the system and its
environment. The continuous interaction triggers bilateral perturbations; perturbations are considered
problems therefore the system uses its functional differentiation procedures to come up with a
solution (if it doesn't have one handy already through its memory). Gradually the system becomes
"adapted" to its environment that is it can confront the perturbations so as to survive. The resulting
complexity of living systems is cognition produced by the history of bilateral perturbations within
the system/environment schema.

This theory contributes to the philosophical discussion of awareness, consciousness, cognition

and the philosophy of mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_computing

Cognitive computing (CC) describes technology platforms that, broadly speaking, are based on the
scientific disciplines of Artificial Intelligence and Signal Processing. These platforms encompass
machine learning, reasoning, natural language processing, speech and vision, human-computer
interaction, dialog and narrative generation and more

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_cognition

Comparative cognition is the comparative study of the mechanisms and origins of cognition in
various species. From a biological point of view, work is being done on the brains of fruit flies that
should yield techniques precise enough to allow an understanding of the workings of the human
brain on a scale appreciative of individual groups of neurons rather than the more regional scale
previously used. Similarly, gene activity in the human brain is better understood through examination
of the brains of mice by the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science (see link below), yielding
the freely available Allen Brain Atlas. This type of study is related to comparative cognition, but
better classified as one of comparative genomics. Increasing emphasis in psychology and ethology
on the biological aspects of perception and behavior is bridging the gap between genomics and
behavioral analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genomics

Genomics refers to the study of the genome[1] in contrast to genetics which refers to the study of
genes and their roles in inheritance.[1] Genomics can be considered a discipline in genetics. It applies
recombinant DNA, DNA sequencing methods, and bioinformatics to sequence, assemble, and

102
analyze the function and structure of genomes (the complete set of DNA within a single cell of an
organism).[2][3] Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research to
understand even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.[4] The field includes efforts
to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_processing_technology_and_aging

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_thought

Thought (also called thinking) the mental process in which beings form psychological
associations and models of the world. Thinking is manipulating information, as when we form
concepts, engage in problem solving, reason and make decisions. Thought, the act of thinking,
produces thoughts. A thought may be an idea, an image, a sound or even an emotional feeling that
arises from the brain.

Types of thoughts

Concept

o Abstract concept

o Concrete concept

Conjecture

Decision (see Decision-making below)

Definition

Explanation

Hypothesis

Idea

Logical argument

Logical assertion

Mental image

Percept / Perception

Premise

Proposition

Syllogism

Thought experiment

103
Content of thoughts

Argument

Belief

Data

Information

Knowledge

Schema

Human thought
Main article: Human thought

Analysis

Awareness

Calculation

o Estimation

Categorization

Causal thinking

Cognitive restructuring

Computational thinking

Convergent thinking

Counterfactual thinking

Critical thinking

Divergent thinking

Evaluation

Integrative thinking

Internal monologue (surface thoughts)

Introspection

104
 Learning and memory

Parallel thinking

Prediction

Recollection

Stochastic thinking

Strategic thinking

Visual thinking

Classifications of thought

Bloom's taxonomy

Dual process theory

Fluid and crystallized intelligence

Higher-order thinking

Theory of multiple intelligences

Three-stratum theory

Williams' taxonomy

Creative processes

Brainstorming

Cognitive module

Creativity

Creative problem solving

Creative writing

Creativity techniques

Design thinking

Imagination

Lateral thinking

Noogenesis

105
 Six Thinking Hats

Speech act

Stream of consciousness

Thinking outside the box

Decision-making
Main article: Decision-making

Choice

Cybernetics

Decision theory

Executive system

Goals and goal setting

Judgement

Planning

Rational choice theory

Speech act

Value (personal and cultural)

Value judgment

Erroneous thinking
See also: Error and Human error

Black and white thinking

Catastrophization

Cognitive bias

Cognitive distortions

Dysrationalia

Emotional reasoning

Exaggeration

Foolishness

106
 Fallacies (see also List of fallacies)

o Fallacies of definition

o Logical fallacy

Groupthink

Irrationality

Linguistic errors

Magical thinking

Minimisation (psychology)

Motivated reasoning

Rationalization (psychology)

Rhetoric

Straight and Crooked Thinking (book)

Target fixation

Wishful thinking

Emotional intelligence (emotionally based thinking)

Main article: Emotional intelligence

Acting

Affect logic

Allophilia

Attitude (psychology)

Curiosity

Elaboration likelihood model

Emotions and feelings

Emotion and memory

Emotional contagion

Empathy

107
 Epiphany (feeling)

Mood (psychology)

Motivation

Propositional attitude

Rhetoric

Self actualization

Self control

Self-esteem

Self-determination theory

Social cognition

Will (philosophy)

Volition (psychology)

Problem solving
Main article: Problem solving

Problem solving steps

o Problem finding

o Problem shaping

Process of elimination

Systems thinking

o Critical systems thinking

Problem-solving strategy steps one would use to find the problem(s) that are in
the way to getting to ones own goal. Some would refer to this as the problem-
solving cycle (Bransford & Stein, 1993). In this cycle one will recognize the
problem, define the problem, develop a strategy to fix the problem, organize the
knowledge of the problem cycle, figure-out the resources at the user's disposal,
monitor one's progress, and evaluate the solution for accuracy.

o Abstraction solving the problem in a model of the system before applying

it to the real system

o Analogy using a solution that solves an analogous problem

108
 o Brainstorming (especially among groups of people) suggesting a large
number of solutions or ideas and combining and developing them until an
optimum solution is found

o Divide and conquer breaking down a large, complex problem into

smaller, solvable problems

o Hypothesis testing assuming a possible explanation to the problem and

trying to prove (or, in some contexts, disprove) the assumption

o Lateral thinking approaching solutions indirectly and creatively

o Means-ends analysis choosing an action at each step to move closer to

the goal

o Method of focal objects synthesizing seemingly non-matching

characteristics of different objects into something new

o Morphological analysis assessing the output and interactions of an entire

system

o Proof try to prove that the problem cannot be solved. The point where
the proof fails will be the starting point for solving it

o Reduction transforming the problem into another problem for which

solutions exist

o Research employing existing ideas or adapting existing solutions to

similar problems

o Root cause analysis identifying the cause of a problem

o Trial-and-error testing possible solutions until the right one is found

o Troubleshooting

Problem-solving methodology

o 5 Whys

o Decision cycle

o Eight Disciplines Problem Solving

o GROW model

o How to Solve It

o Learning cycle

o OODA loop (observe, orient, decide, and act)

109
 o PDCA (plandocheckact)

o Problem structuring methods

o RPR Problem Diagnosis (rapid problem resolution)

o TRIZ (in Russian: Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadatch, "theory of

solving inventor's problems")

Reasoning
Main article: Reasoning

Abstract thinking

Adaptive reasoning

Analogical reasoning

Analytic reasoning

Case-based reasoning

Critical thinking

Defeasible reasoning from authority: if p then (defeasibly) q

Diagrammatic reasoning reasoning by means of visual representations.

Visualizing concepts and ideas with of diagrams and imagery instead of by
linguistic or algebraic means

Emotional reasoning (erroneous) a cognitive distortion in which emotion

overpowers reason, to the point the subject is unwilling or unable to accept the
reality of a situation because of it.

Fallacious reasoning (erroneous) logical errors

Heuristics

Historical thinking

Intuitive reasoning

Lateral thinking

Logic / Logical reasoning

o Abductive reasoning from data and theory: p and q are correlated, and q
is sufficient for p; hence, if p then (abducibly) q as cause

o Deductive reasoning from meaning postulate, axiom, or contingent

assertion: if p then q (i.e., q or not-p)

110
 o Inductive reasoning theory formation; from data, coherence, simplicity,
and confirmation: (inducibly) "if p then q"; hence, if p then (deducibly-but-
revisably) q

o Inference

Moral reasoning process in which an individual tries to determine the difference

between what is right and what is wrong in a personal situation by using logic. [4]
This is an important and often daily process that people use in an attempt to do
the right thing. Every day for instance, people are faced with the dilemma of
whether or not to lie in a given situation. People make this decision by reasoning
the morality of the action and weighing that against its consequences.

Probabilistic reasoning from combinatorics and indifference: if p then (probably)

q

Proportional reasoning using "the concept of proportions when analyzing and

solving a mathematical situation."[5]

Rational thinking

Semiosis

Statistical reasoning from data and presumption: the frequency of qs among ps

is high (or inference from a model fit to data); hence, (in the right context) if p
then (probably) q

Synthetic reasoning

Verbal reasoning understanding and reasoning using concepts framed in words

Visual reasoning process of manipulating one's mental image of an object in

order to reach a certain conclusion for example, mentally constructing a piece
of machinery to experiment with different mechanisms

Machine thought
Main articles: Machine thought and Outline of artificial intelligence

Artificial creativity

Automated reasoning

o Commonsense reasoning

o Model-based reasoning

o Opportunistic reasoning

o Qualitative reasoning automated reasoning about continuous aspects of

the physical world, such as space, time, and quantity, for the purpose of
problem solving and planning using qualitative rather than quantitative
information

111
 o Spatialtemporal reasoning

o Textual case based reasoning

Computer program (recorded machine thought instructions)

Human-based computation

Natural language processing (outline)

Organizational thought
Organizational thought (thinking by organizations)

Management information system

Organizational communication

Organizational planning

o Strategic planning

Strategic thinking

Systems thinking

Aspects of the thinker

Aspects of the thinker which may affect (help or hamper) his or her thinking:

Attitude

Cognitive style

Common sense

Experience

Instinct

Intelligence

Metacognition

Mind's eye

Mindset

Rationality

Wisdom

112
 o Sapience

Properties of thought

Accuracy

Cogency

Dogma

Effectiveness

Efficacy

Efficiency

Freethought

Frugality

Meaning

Prudence

Rights

Skepticism

Soundness

Validity

Value theory

Wrong

Fields that study thought

Linguistics

Philosophy

o Logic

o Philosophy of mind

Neuroscience

o Cognitive science

o Psychology

113
 Cognitive psychology

Social psychology

o Psychiatry

Mathematics

Operations research

Thought tools and thought research

Cognitive model

Design tool

Diagram

o Argument map

o Concept map

o Mind map

DSRP

Intelligence amplification

Language

Meditation

Six Thinking Hats

Synectics

History of thinking
Main article: History of reasoning

History of artificial intelligence

History of cognitive science

History of creativity

History of ideas

History of logic

History of psychometrics

114
Organizational thinking concepts
Main articles: Organizational studies and Organizational psychology

Attribution theory

Communication

Concept testing

Evaporating Cloud

Fifth discipline

Groupthink

Group synergy

Ideas bank

Interpretation

Learning organization

Metaplan

Operations research

Organization development

Organizational communication

Organizational culture

Organizational ethics

Organizational learning

Rhetoric

Smart mob

Theory of Constraints

Think tank

Wisdom of crowds

Teaching methods and skills

Main articles: Education and Teaching

115
 Active learning

Classical conditioning

Directed listening and thinking activity

Discipline

Learning theory (education)

Mentoring

Operant conditioning

Problem-based learning

Punishment

Reinforcement

Scholars of thinking

Aaron T. Beck

Edward de Bono

David D. Burns author of Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy and The Feeling
Good Handbook. Burns popularized Aaron T. Beck's cognitive behavioral therapy
(CBT) when his book became a best seller during the 1980s. [6]

Tony Buzan

Noam Chomsky

Albert Ellis

Howard Gardner

Douglas Hofstadter

Ray Kurzweil

Marvin Minsky

Steven Pinker

Baruch Spinoza

Robert Sternberg

Related concepts

116
 Cognition

Knowledge

Multiple intelligences

Strategy

Structure

System

Awareness and perception

Main articles: Awareness and Perception

Attention

Cognition

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive map

Concept

Concept map

Conceptual framework

Conceptual model

Consciousness

Domain knowledge

Heuristics in judgment and decision making

Information

Intelligence

Intuition

Knowledge

Memory suppression

Mental model

Metaknowledge (knowledge about knowledge)

117
 Mind map

Mindfulness (psychology)

Model (abstract)

Percept

Perception

Self-awareness

Self-concept

Self-consciousness

Self-knowledge

Self-realization

Sentience

Situational awareness

Understanding

Learning and memory

Main articles: Education, Learning, and Memory

Autodidacticism

Biofeedback

Cognitive dissonance

Dual-coding theory

Eidetic memory (total recall)

Emotion and memory

Empiricism

Feedback

Feedback loop

Free association

Heuristics

118
 Hyperthymesia

Hypnosis

Hypothesis

Imitation

Inquiry

Knowledge management

Language acquisition

Memorization

Memory and aging

Memory inhibition

Memory-prediction framework

Method of loci

Mnemonics

Neurofeedback

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)

Observation

Pattern recognition

Question

Reading

Recall

Recognition

Recollection (recall)

Scientific method

Self-perception theory

Speed reading

Study Skills

119
 Subvocalization

Transfer of learning

Transfer of training

Visual learning

See also

Thinking portal

Artificial intelligence

o Outline of artificial intelligence

Human intelligence

o Outline of human intelligence

Neuroscience

o Outline of neuroscience

Psychology

o Gestalt psychology (theory of mind)

o Outline of psychology

Place these

Adaptation

Association of Ideas

Attacking Faulty Reasoning

Autistic thinking (see Glossary of psychiatry)

Backcasting

Causality

Chunking (psychology)

Cognition

Cognitive biology

120
 Cognitive computing

Cognitive deficit

Cognitive dissonance

Cognitive linguistics

Cognitive module

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive science

Cognitive space

Cognitive style

Communicating

Comparative cognition

Concept-formation

Conceptual metaphor

Conceptual thinking

Conscience

Consciousness

Constructive criticism

Conversation

Criticism

Dereistic thinking (see Glossary of psychiatry)

Design (and re-design)

Dialectic

Discovery (observation)

Distinction (philosophy)

Distributed cognition

Distributed multi-agent reasoning system

121
 Educational assessment

Emotion

Empirical knowledge

Empiricism

Epistemology

Evidential reasoning (disambiguation)

Evidential reasoning approach

Expectation (epistemic)

Experimentation

Explanation

Extension (semantics)

Facilitation (business)

Fantasy

Fideism

Figure Reasoning Test

Fuzzy logic

Fuzzy-trace theory

Generalizing

Gestalt psychology

Group cognition

Heuristics in judgment and decision making

Holism

Human multitasking

Human self-reflection

Hypervigilance

Identification (information)

122
 Inductive reasoning aptitude

Intellect

Intelligence (trait)

Intentionality

Inventing

Judging

Kinesthetic learning

Knowledge management

Knowledge representation and reasoning

Language

Linguistics

List of cognitive scientists

List of creative thought processes

List of emotional intelligence topics

List of emotions

List of organizational thought processes

List of perception-related topics

Mathematics Mechanization and Automated Reasoning Platform

Mental function

Mental model theory of reasoning

Meta-analytic thinking

Meta-ethical

Methodic doubt

Mimesis

Mind

Models of scientific inquiry

123
 Morphological analysis (problem-solving)

Natural language processing

Nonduality

Nous

Object pairing

Pattern matching

Personal experience

Personality psychology

Persuasion

Philomath

Philosophical analysis

Philosophical method

Planning

Po (term)

Practical reason

Preconscious

Prediction

Procedural reasoning system

Pseudoscience

Pseudoskepticism

Psychological projection

Psychology of reasoning

Qualitative Reasoning Group

Rationality and Power

Reasoning Mind

Reasoning system

124
 Recognition primed decision

Reflective disclosure

Scientific method

SEE-I

Self-deception

Semantic network

Semantics

Semiotics

Sensemaking

Situated cognition

Situational awareness

Skepticism

Source criticism

Spatial Cognition

Speculative reason

Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning

Storytelling

Stream of consciousness (psychology)

Subconscious

Substitution (logic)

Suspicion (emotion)

Theories

Thinking processes (theory of constraints)

Thought disorder

Thought sonorization (see Glossary of psychiatry)

Translation

125
 Truth

Unconscious mind

Understanding

VPEC-T

wikt:entrained thinking

wikt:synthesis

Working memory

World disclosure

Thinking

Buckminster Fuller: Thinking Out Loud (documentary)

Critical-Creative Thinking and Behavioral Research Laboratory

History of political thinking

Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines

Partial concurrent thinking aloud

Po (lateral thinking)

Six Thinking Hats

SolidThinking

Straight and Crooked Thinking

Systematic Inventive Thinking

The Art of Negative Thinking

The Lake of Thinking

The Leonardo da Vinci Society for the Study of Thinking

The Magic of Thinking Big

The Year of Magical Thinking

Thinking about Consciousness

Thinking about the immortality of the crab

126
 Thinking Allowed (PBS)

Thinking Allowed

Thinking Cap Quiz Bowl

Thinking processes (Theory of Constraints)

Thinking Skills Assessment

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking

Unified structured inventive thinking

When You're Through Thinking, Say Yes

World Thinking Day

Lists

List of neurobiology topics

List of cognitive science topics

List of philosophical theories

List of psychology topics

List of cognitive scientists

Glossary of philosophical isms

List of cognitive biases

List of emotions

List of memory biases

List of mnemonics

List of neurobiology topics

List of NLP topics

List of psychometric topics

List of thought processes

127
NOTE: note all the fields, concepts, ideas etc concerning thought/thinking that
traditionally formed part of philosophical subject-matter that are already differentiated
and form part of other disciplines and/or fields in other disciplines.

A similar observation can be made concerning the notion of intelligences -

NOTE: note all the fields, concepts, ideas etc concerning intelligence that traditionally
formed part of philosophical subject-matter that are already differentiated and form
part of other disciplines and/or fields in other disciplines.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_human_intelligence

Contents

1 Traits and aspects

2 Emergence and evolution

3 Augmented with technology

4 Capacities

5 Types of people, by intelligence

6 Models and theories

7 Related factors

8 Fields that study human intelligence

9 History

10 Organizations

11 Publications

12 Scholars and researchers

13 See also

14 Further reading

15 External links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noogenesis

Noogenesis (Ancient Greek: =mind + = origin, becoming) is the

emergence and evolution of intelligence

Contents

128
 1 Term origin
2 Recent developments

2.1 Modern understanding

2.2 Interdisciplinary nature

Interdisciplinary nature

The term "noogenesis" can be used in a variety of fields i.e. medicine,[11][12]

biophysics,[13] semiotics,[14] mathematics,[15] information technology,[16]
psychology etc. thus making it a truly cross-disciplinary one. In astrobiology
noogenesis concerns the origin of intelligent life and more specifically
technological civilizations capable of communicating with humans and or
traveling to Earth.[17] The lack of evidence for the existence of such
extraterrestrial life creates the Fermi paradox.

3 Aspects of emergence and evolution of mind

The emergence of the human mind is considered to be one of the five phenomena of emergent
evolution.[18] To understand the mind, necessary to determine what the reasonable person's thinking
differs from other thinking beings. Such differences include the ability to generate calculations, to
combine dissimilar concepts, to use mental symbols, to think abstractly.[19] The knowledge of the
phenomenon of intelligent systems - the emergence of reason (noogenesis) boils down to:

Emergence and evolution of the "sapiens" (phylogenesis);

A conception of a new idea (insight, creativity synthesis, intuition, decision-

making, eureka);

Development of an individual mind (ontogenesis );

Appearance of the Global Intelligence concept

3.1 To the parameters of the phenomenon "noo", "intellectus"

3.2 Aspects of evolution "sapiens"

Historical evolutionary development[21] and emergence of H.sapiens as species,[22] include

emergence of such concepts as anthropogenesis, phylogenesis, morphogenesis, cephalization,
[23]
systemogenesis ,[24] cognition systems autonomy.[25]

On the other hand, development of an individuals intellect deals with concepts of

embryogenesis, ontogenesis,[26] morphogenesis, neurogenesis,[27] higher nervous function of
I.P.Pavlov and his philosophy of mind.[28] Despite the fact that the morphofunctional maturity
is usually reached by the age of 13, the definitive functioning of the brain structures is not
complete until about 1617 years of age

129


3.3 The future of intelligence

Bioinformatics, genetic engineering, noopharmacology, cognitive load, brain

stimulation, the efficient use of altered states of consciousness, use of non-
human cognition, information technology (IT), artificial intelligence (AI) are all
believed to be effective methods of intelligence advancement.

4 Issues and further research prospects

The development of the human brain, perception, cognition, memory and

neuroplasticity are unsolved problems in neuroscience. Several megaprojects are being
carried out in the American BRAIN Initiative and the European Human Brain Project in
attempt to better our understanding of the brain's functionality along with the intention
to develop human cognitive performance in the future with artificial intelligence,
informational, communication and cognitive technology.

Autopoiesis

Biological neural network

Cognitive science

Collective consciousness

Collective intelligence

Digital ecosystem

Emergence

Global brain

Human evolution

Information society

Knowledge commons

Knowledge ecosystem

Digital ecology

Knowledge management

Knowledge tagging

Management cybernetics

130
 Media ecology

Mind

Neuroinformatics

Psychophysics

Sensory system

Technological singularity

Social organism

Sociology of knowledge

Superorganism

Territoriality (nonverbal communication)

World Brain

Evolutionary biology portal

Earth sciences portal

Logic portal

Mind and brain portal

Neuroscience portal

Psychology portal

Thinking portal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noogenesis#Interdisciplinary_nature

Interdisciplinary nature

The term "noogenesis" can be used in a variety of fields i.e. medicine,[11][12] biophysics,
[13]
semiotics,[14] mathematics,[15] information technology,[16] psychology etc. thus
making it a truly cross-disciplinary one. In astrobiology noogenesis concerns the origin
of intelligent life and more specifically technological civilizations capable of
communicating with humans and or traveling to Earth.[17] The lack of evidence for the
existence of such extraterrestrial life creates the Fermi paradox.

131
Cognitive epidemiology is a field of research that examines the associations
between intelligence test scores (IQ scores or extracted g-factors) and health, more
specifically morbidity (mental and physical) and mortality. Typically, test scores are
obtained at an early age, and compared to later morbidity and mortality. In addition to
exploring and establishing these associations, cognitive epidemiology seeks to
understand causal relationships between intelligence and health outcomes.
Researchers in the field argue that intelligence measured at an early age is an
important predictor of later health and mortality difference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_epidemiology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_human_intelligence

History

1.1 Hominidae

1.2 Homininae

1.3 Homo

1.4 Homo sapiens

o 1.4.1 Homo sapiens intelligence

2 Models

2.1 Social brain hypothesis

2.2 Social exchange theory

2.3 Sexual selection

2.4 Intelligence as a disease resistance sign

2.5 Ecological dominance-social competition model

2.6 Intelligence dependent on brain size

2.7 Group selection

2.8 Nutritional status

132
 Dates approximate, consult articles for details

(From 2000000 BC till 2013 AD in (partial) exponential notation)

See also: Java Man (1.75e+06), Yuanmou Man (1.75e+06 : -0.73e+06),

Lantian Man (1.7e+06), Nanjing Man (- 0.6e+06), Tautavel Man (- 0.5e+06),

Peking Man (- 0.4e+06), Solo Man (- 0.4e+06), and Petera cu Oase (- 0.378e+05)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes.[2] It
examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition. Cognitive scientists study intelligence
and behavior, with a focus on how nervous systems represent, process, and transform information.
Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include language, perception, memory, attention,
reasoning, and emotion; to understand these faculties, cognitive scientists borrow from fields such as
linguistics, psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology.[3] The
typical analysis of cognitive science spans many levels of organization, from learning and decision to
logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organization. The fundamental concept of
cognitive science is that "thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in
the mind and computational procedures that operate on those structures."[3]

The cognitive sciences began as an intellectual movement in the 1950s, called the cognitive
revolution, arguably initiated by Noam Chomsky.

133
 Principles

1.1 Levels of analysis

Marr[5] gave a famous description of three levels of analysis:

the computational theory, specifying the goals of the computation;

representation and algorithms, giving a representation of the inputs and outputs

and the algorithms which transform one into the other; and

the hardware implementation, how algorithm and representation may be

physically realized.

1.2 Interdisciplinary nature

Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field with contributors from various fields, including
psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy of mind, computer science, anthropology,
sociology, and biology. Cognitive scientists work collectively in hope of understanding the
mind and its interactions with the surrounding world much like other sciences do. The field
regards itself as compatible with the physical sciences and uses the scientific method as well
as simulation or modeling, often comparing the output of models with aspects of human
cognition. Similarly to the field of psychology, there is some doubt whether there is a unified
cognitive science, which have led some researchers to prefer 'cognitive sciences' in plural.[6]

Many, but not all, who consider themselves cognitive scientists hold a functionalist view of
the mindthe view that mental states and processes should be explained by their function -
what they do. According to the multiple realizability account of functionalism, even non-
human systems such as robots and computers can be ascribed as having cognition.

1.3 Cognitive science: the term

2 Scope
Cognitive science is a large field, and covers a wide array of topics on cognition.
However, it should be recognized that cognitive science has not always been equally
concerned with every topic that might bear relevance to the nature and operation of
minds. Among philosophers, classical cognitivists have largely de-emphasized or
avoided social and cultural factors, emotion, consciousness, animal cognition, and
comparative and evolutionary psychologies. However, with the decline of behaviorism,
internal states such as affects and emotions, as well as awareness and covert attention
became approachable again. For example, situated and embodied cognition theories
take into account the current state of the environment as well as the role of the body in
cognition. With the newfound emphasis on information processing, observable behavior
was no longer the hallmark of psychological theory, but the modelling or recording of
mental states.

134
 2.1 Artificial intelligence

2.2 Attention

2.3 Knowledge and processing of language

The ability to learn and understand language is an extremely complex process. Language is
acquired within the first few years of life, and all humans under normal circumstances are
able to acquire language proficiently. A major driving force in the theoretical linguistic field
is discovering the nature that language must have in the abstract in order to be learned in such
a fashion. Some of the driving research questions in studying how the brain itself processes
language include: (1) To what extent is linguistic knowledge innate or learned?, (2) Why is it
more difficult for adults to acquire a second-language than it is for infants to acquire their
first-language?, and (3) How are humans able to understand novel sentences?

The study of language processing ranges from the investigation of the sound patterns of
speech to the meaning of words and whole sentences. Linguistics often divides language
processing into orthography, phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics. Many aspects of language can be studied from each of these components and
from their interaction.

2.4 Learning and development

A major question in the study of cognitive development is the extent to which

certain abilities are innate or learned. This is often framed in terms of the nature
and nurture debate. The nativist view emphasizes that certain features are
innate to an organism and are determined by its genetic endowment. The
empiricist view, on the other hand, emphasizes that certain abilities are learned
from the environment. Although clearly both genetic and environmental input is
needed for a child to develop normally, considerable debate remains about how
genetic information might guide cognitive development. In the area of language
acquisition, for example, some (such as Steven Pinker)[9] have argued that
specific information containing universal grammatical rules must be contained in
the genes, whereas others (such as Jeffrey Elman and colleagues in Rethinking
Innateness) have argued that Pinker's claims are biologically unrealistic. They
argue that genes determine the architecture of a learning system, but that
specific "facts" about how grammar works can only be learned as a result of
experience.

2.5 Memory

2.6 Perception and action

Perception is the ability to take in information via the senses, and process it in some way.
Vision and hearing are two dominant senses that allow us to perceive the environment. Some
questions in the study of visual perception, for example, include: (1) How are we able to
recognize objects?, (2) Why do we perceive a continuous visual environment, even though
we only see small bits of it at any one time? One tool for studying visual perception is by

135
 looking at how people process optical illusions. The image on the right of a Necker cube is an
example of a bistable percept, that is, the cube can be interpreted as being oriented in two
different directions.

The study of haptic (tactile), olfactory, and gustatory stimuli also fall into the domain of
perception.

Action is taken to refer to the output of a system. In humans, this is accomplished through
motor responses. Spatial planning and movement, speech production, and complex motor
movements are all aspects of action.

2.7 Consciousness

Consciousness is the awareness whether something is an external object or

something within oneself. This helps the mind having the ability to experience or
to feel a sense of self.

3 Research methods

3.1 Behavioral experiments

In order to have a description of what constitutes intelligent behavior, one must

study behavior itself. This type of research is closely tied to that in cognitive
psychology and psychophysics.

3.2 Brain imaging

Brain imaging involves analyzing activity within the brain while performing
various tasks. This allows us to link behavior and brain function to help
understand how information is processed. Different types of imaging techniques
vary in their temporal (time-based) and spatial (location-based) resolution. Brain
imaging is often used in cognitive neuroscience.

3.3 Computational modeling

Computational models require a mathematically and logically formal

representation of a problem. Computer models are used in the simulation and
experimental verification of different specific and general properties of
intelligence. Computational modeling can help us understand the functional
organization of a particular cognitive phenomenon. There are two basic
approaches to cognitive modeling. The first is focused on abstract mental
functions of an intelligent mind and operates using symbols, and the second,
which follows the neural and associative properties of the human brain, is called
subsymbolic.

3.4 Neurobiological methods

136
Research methods borrowed directly from neuroscience and neuropsychology can also help us to
understand aspects of intelligence. These methods allow us to understand how intelligent behavior is
implemented in a physical system.

Single-unit recording

Direct brain stimulation

Animal models

Postmortem studies

4 Key findings
Cognitive science has given rise to models of human cognitive bias and risk perception,
and has been influential in the development of behavioral finance, part of economics. It
has also given rise to a new theory of the philosophy of mathematics, and many
theories of artificial intelligence, persuasion and coercion. It has made its presence
known in the philosophy of language and epistemology - a modern revival of
rationalism - as well as constituting a substantial wing of modern linguistics. Fields of
cognitive science have been influential in understanding the brain's particular
functional systems (and functional deficits) ranging from speech production to auditory
processing and visual perception. It has made progress in understanding how damage
to particular areas of the brain affect cognition, and it has helped to uncover the root
causes and results of specific dysfunction, such as dyslexia, anopia, and hemispatial
neglect.
5 History

The cognitive sciences began as an intellectual movement in the 1950s, called the cognitive
revolution. Cognitive science has a prehistory traceable back to ancient Greek philosophical texts
(see Plato's Meno and Aristotle's De Anima); and includes writers such as Descartes, David Hume,
Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Cabanis, Leibniz and John
Locke. However, although these early writers contributed greatly to the philosophical discovery of
mind and this would ultimately lead to the development of psychology, they were working with an
entirely different set of tools and core concepts than those of the cognitive scientist.

The modern culture of cognitive science can be traced back to the early cyberneticists in the 1930s
and 1940s, such as Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, who sought to understand the organizing
principles of the mind. McCulloch and Pitts developed the first variants of what are now known as
artificial neural networks, models of computation inspired by the structure of biological neural
networks.

Another precursor was the early development of the theory of computation and the digital computer
in the 1940s and 1950s. Alan Turing and John von Neumann were instrumental in these
developments. The modern computer, or Von Neumann machine, would play a central role in
cognitive science, both as a metaphor for the mind, and as a tool for investigation.

137
The first instance of cognitive science experiments being done at an academic institution took place
at MIT Sloan School of Management, established by J.C.R. Licklider working within the social
psychology department and conducting experiments using computer memory as models for human
cognition.[11]

In 1959, Noam Chomsky published a scathing review of B. F. Skinner's book Verbal Behavior. At the
time, Skinner's behaviorist paradigm dominated psychology. Most psychologists focused on
functional relations between stimulus and response, without positing internal representations.
Chomsky argued that in order to explain language, we needed a theory like generative grammar,
which not only attributed internal representations but characterized their underlying order.

The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on
the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research.[12] In
the same decade, the journal Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society were founded.[13]
The founding meeting of the Cognitive Science Society was held at the University of California, San
Diego in 1979, which resulted in cognitive science becoming an internationally visible enterprise.[14]
In 1982, Vassar College became the first institution in the world to grant an undergraduate degree in
Cognitive Science.[15] In 1986, the first Cognitive Science Department in the world was founded at
the University of California, San Diego.[14]

In the 1970s and early 1980s, much cognitive science research focused on the possibility of artificial
intelligence. Researchers such as Marvin Minsky would write computer programs in languages such
as LISP to attempt to formally characterize the steps that human beings went through, for instance, in
making decisions and solving problems, in the hope of better understanding human thought, and also
in the hope of creating artificial minds. This approach is known as "symbolic AI".

Eventually the limits of the symbolic AI research program became apparent. For instance, it seemed
to be unrealistic to comprehensively list human knowledge in a form usable by a symbolic computer
program. The late 80s and 90s saw the rise of neural networks and connectionism as a research
paradigm. Under this point of view, often attributed to James McClelland and David Rumelhart, the
mind could be characterized as a set of complex associations, represented as a layered network.
Critics argue that there are some phenomena which are better captured by symbolic models, and that
connectionist models are often so complex as to have little explanatory power. Recently symbolic
and connectionist models have been combined, making it possible to take advantage of both forms of
explanation

6 Notable researchers

Some of the more recognized names in cognitive science are usually either the most controversial or
the most cited. Within philosophy familiar names include Daniel Dennett who writes from a
computational systems perspective, John Searle known for his controversial Chinese room, Jerry
Fodor who advocates functionalism.

David Chalmers who advocates Dualism, also known for articulating the hard problem of
consciousness, Douglas Hofstadter, famous for writing Gdel, Escher, Bach, which questions the

138
nature of words and thought. In the realm of linguistics, Noam Chomsky and George Lakoff have
been influential (both have also become notable as political commentators). In artificial intelligence,
Marvin Minsky, Herbert A. Simon, Allen Newell, and Kevin Warwick are prominent.

Popular names in the discipline of psychology include George A. Miller, James McClelland, Philip
Johnson-Laird, John O'Keefe, and Steven Pinker. Anthropologists Dan Sperber, Edwin Hutchins,
Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer, Michael Posner, and Joseph Henrich have been involved in collaborative
projects with cognitive and social psychologists, political scientists and evolutionary biologists in
attempts to develop general theories of culture formation, religion, and political association.

Affective science

Cognitive anthropology

Cognitive biology

Cognitive linguistics

Cognitive neuropsychology

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive science of religion

Computational neuroscience

Computational-representational understanding of mind

Concept Mining

Decision field theory

Decision theory

Dynamicism

Educational neuroscience

Educational psychology

Embodied cognition

Embodied cognitive science

Enactivism

Epistemology

139
 Heterophenomenology

Human Cognome Project

Human-Computer Interaction

Indiana Archives of Cognitive Science

Informatics (academic field)

List of cognitive scientists

List of institutions granting degrees in cognitive science

Malleable intelligence

Neural Darwinism

Personal information management (PIM)

Quantum Cognition

Simulated consciousness

Situated cognition

Society of Mind theory

Spatial Cognition

Speech-Language Pathology

Outline of human intelligence - topic tree presenting the traits, capacities,

models, and research fields of human intelligence, and more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_human_intelligence

Outline of thought - topic tree that identifies many types of thoughts, types of
thinking, aspects of thought, related fields, and more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_thought

After this journey through different concepts, conceptual sets and fields concerning
cognition, thought/thinking, intelligence, consciousness etc we might have a more
subtle and complex idea of these things that originally formed part of philosophical
subject-matter and the discourse of philosophy.

140
As we have noticed many disciplines, sub-disciplines and endless topics of research and
specialization have been and are differentiated.

Have we learned anything from these things concerning the subject-matter of

philosophy? What are the implications of this diversity and complexity of research
topics and disciplines for philosophy? Are there anything, any phenomena, any topics,
any ideas, concepts, sets of concepts and fields that can be explored by philosophy
alone? That are unique to philosophizing? Are there anything that can be explore by
philosophy, anything that must form the subject-matter of philosophizing? Anything
that may form part of philosophical investigation? If so, what are these things?

Perhaps branches in philosophy, other than metaphysics, ontology and epistemology,

should be explored to find uniquely and still existing philosophical subject-matter?

http://www.oswego.edu/~delancey/100_DIR/100_LECTURES/0.Branches.pdf

http://www.nti-nigeria.org/nti-pgde/PGDE-9.pdf

http://www.slideshare.net/RightJungle/the-branches-of-philosophy-pdf

https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_Philosophy/The_Branches_of_Philosophy

1.1 Epistemology
1.2 Metaphysics
1.3 Logic

1.4 Ethics

Philosophy of Education: Fairly self-explanatory. A minor branch, mainly concerned with what is
the correct way to educate a person. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Locke's Thoughts
Concerning Education, and Rousseau's Emile.

Philosophy of History: Fairly minor branch (not as minor as education), although highly important
to Hegel and those who followed him, most notably Marx. It is the philosophical study of history,
particularly concerned with the question whether history (i.e. the universe and/or humankind) is
progressing towards a specific end? Hegel argued that it was, as did Marx. Classic works include
Vico's New Science, and Hegel and Marx's works.

Philosophy of Language: Ancient branch of philosophy which gained prominence in the last
century under Wittgenstein. Basically concerned with how our languages affect our thought.
Wittgenstein famously asserted that the limits of our languages mark the limits of our thought.
Classic works include Plato's Cratylus, Locke's Essay, and Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus.

Philosophy of Law: Also called Jurisprudence. Study of law attempting to discern what the best
laws might be, how laws came into being in the first place, attempting to delimit human laws from

141
natural laws, whether we should always obey the law, and so on. Law isn't often directly dealt with
by philosophers, but much of political philosophy obviously has a bearing on it.

Philosophy of Mathematics: Concerned with issues such as, the nature of the axioms and symbols
(numbers, triangle, operands) of mathematics that we use to understand the world, do perfect
mathematical forms exist in the real world, and so on. Principia Mathematica is almost certainly the
most important work in this field.

Philosophy of Mind: Study of the mind, attempting to ascertain exactly what the mind is, how it
interacts with our body, do other minds exist, how does it work, and so on. Probably the most
popular branch of philosophy right now, it has expanded to include issues of AI. Classic works
include Plato's Republic and Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, although every major
philosopher has had some opinion at least on what the mind is and how it works.

Philosophy of Politics: Closely related to ethics, this is a study of government and nations,
particularly how they came about, what makes good governments, what obligations citizens have
towards their government, and so on. Classic works include Plato's Republic, Hobbes' Leviathan,
Locke's Two Treatises, and J.S. Mill's On Liberty.

Philosophy of Religion: Theology is concerned with the study of God, recommending the best
religious practices, how our religion should shape our life, and so on. Philosophy of religion is
concerned with much the same issues, but where Theology uses religious works, like the Bible, as it's
authority, philosophy likes to use reason as the ultimate authority.

Philosophy of Science: It is the Study of science concerned with whether scientific knowledge can
be said to be certain, how we obtain it, can science really explain everything, does causation really
exist, can every event in the universe be described in terms of physics and so on. Also popular in
recent times, classic works include Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, Kripke's Naming and
Necessity, Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

http://philosophy.atmhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/LO1.1-The-Branches-of-
Philosophy.pdf

http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/FiveBranchesMain.html

https://philgcg11chd.wordpress.com/category/main-branches-of-philosophy/

https://s3.amazonaws.com/booklibrartytom2/8%20branches%20of%20philosophy.pdf

http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch.html

Only the traditional, major branches are mentioned by the above resources.

http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html

Working through the Stanford above more specialized areas will be revealed.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/

http://philpapers.org/

142
http://philpapers.org/browse/all

Areas and Area Editors

Metaphysics and Epistemology Value Theory (Daniel Star)

Epistemology (Matthew McGrath)
Metaphilosophy (Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa)
Metaphysics (Jonathan Schaffer)
Philosophy of Action (Constantine Sandis)
Philosophy of Language (Berit Brogaard)
Philosophy of Mind (David Chalmers, David
Bourget)
Philosophy of Religion (Thomas Senor)
Aesthetics (Rafael De Clercq)
Applied Ethics (Ezio Di Nucci)
Meta-Ethics (Daniel Star)
Normative Ethics (Jussi Suikkanen)
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
(Lynne Tirrell)
Philosophy of Law (Aness Webster)
Social and Political Philosophy
Value Theory, Miscellaneous (Gwen Bradford)

Science, Logic, and Mathematics History of Western Philosophy

Logic and Philosophy of Logic (Aleksandra Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy (Robin
Samonek) Smith)
Philosophy of Biology (Manolo Martnez) Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
Philosophy of Cognitive Science (Gualtiero (Margaret Cameron)
Piccinini) 17th/18th Century Philosophy (Brandon Look)
Philosophy of Computing and Information 19th Century Philosophy (Michelle Kosch)
(Giuseppe Primiero) 20th Century Philosophy (Jack Alan Reynolds,
Philosophy of Mathematics (ystein Linnebo) James Chase)
Philosophy of Physical Science (Hans
Halvorson)
Philosophy of Social Science (Michiru Nagatsu)
Philosophy of Probability (Darrell Rowbottom)
General Philosophy of Science (Howard
Sankey)
Philosophy of Science, Misc

Philosophical Traditions
African/Africana Philosophy (Barry Hallen)
Asian Philosophy (JeeLoo Liu)
Continental Philosophy (Paul Livingston)
European Philosophy
Philosophy of the Americas (Susana Nuccetelli)
Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
Metaphysics and Epistemology (247,231)
1 Epistemology (28,119)
Epistemology of Specific Domains (365 | 192)Ted Poston
Aesthetic Knowledge* (44)
Epistemology of Mathematics* (774 | 127)Alan Baker
Epistemology of Logic* (101)Joshua Schechter
Epistemology of Philosophy* (220 | 2)Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa

143
Epistemology of Religion* (2,064 | 126)Matthew A. Benton
Epistemology of Specific Domains, Misc (173)
Evidence and Proof in Law* (94)
Knowledge of Consciousness* (135)
Knowledge of Language* (502)Guy Longworth
Modal Epistemology* (426 | 1)Anand Vaidya
Moral Epistemology* (1,360 | 2)Christopher Michael Cloos
The Problem of Other Minds* (448 | 186)
Self-Knowledge* (1,082 | 258)

2 I list the entire section with all sub-sections for metaphilosophy as 1) it is of special
interest to me and 2) it still contains uniquely philosophical subject-matter.

Metaphilosophy (4,229)

Epistemology of Philosophy (220 | 2)Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa

Epistemology of Philosophy, Misc (76)Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
Metaphilosophical Skepticism (142)Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa
Modal Epistemology* (426 | 1)Anand Vaidya
Philosophical Methods* (1,017 | 49)Joachim Horvath
Metaphilosophical Views (1,188 | 306)
Empiricism* (197 | 151)
Naturalism (268 | 223)
Moral Naturalism and Non-Naturalism* (783 | 17)Cristian Constantinescu
Arguments from Naturalism against Theism* (37)
Normativity and Naturalism* (97)
Naturalism and Intentionality* (94)
Naturalism in Economics* (29)
Naturalism in Jurisprudence* (6)
Mathematical Naturalism* (48)
Metaphysical Naturalism* (94)
Naturalism, Misc (45)
Pragmatism (222 | 175)

144
Pragmatism, Misc (47)
Pragmatism about Truth* (82)Patrick Greenough
Feminist Pragmatism* (154)
American Pragmatism* (2,051 | 1,722)
Rationalism* (123 | 94)Magdalena Balcerak Jackson
Metaphilosophical Views, Misc (72)
Philosophical Methods (1,017 | 49)Joachim Horvath
Argument* (454)Steven W. Patterson
Conceptual Analysis (261)Joachim Horvath
Computational Philosophy (22)
Experimental Philosophy* (1,146 | 1)Wesley Buckwalter
Formal Philosophy (12)
Intuition* (555 | 168)
Methodology in Metaphysics* (197)Frederique Janssen-Lauret
Linguistic Analysis in Philosophy (60)
Philosophical Methods, Misc (190)
Thought Experiments (358)Magdalena Balcerak Jackson
Transcendental Arguments (65)
Experimental Philosophy (1,146 | 1)Wesley Buckwalter
Experimental Philosophy of Action (233 | 2)Jonathan Phillips
Experimental Philosophy: Free Will (91)Jonathan Phillips
Experimental Philosophy: Intentional Action (120)Jonathan Phillips
Experimental Philosophy of Action, Misc (20)Jonathan Phillips
Experimental Philosophy of Language (101 | 1)Justin Sytsma
Experimental Philosophy: Reference (29)Justin Sytsma
Experimental Philosophy: Semantics (44)Shen-yi Liao
Experimental Philosophy of Language, Misc (27)Justin Sytsma
Experimental Philosophy of Mind (118)Adam Arico
Experimental Philosophy: Consciousness (46)Adam Arico
Experimental Philosophy of Mind, Misc (72)Adam Arico
Experimental Philosophy: Ethics (273 | 5)Jennifer Zamzow
Experimental Philosophy: Folk Morality (170)

145
Experimental Philosophy: Ethics, Misc (98)
Experimental Philosophy: Epistemology (109)Jennifer Nado
Experimental Philosophy: Contextualism and Invariantism (33)Nat Hansen
Experimental Philosophy: Epistemology, Misc (82)David Rose
Experimental Philosophy: Metaphysics (74)David Rose
Experimental Philosophy: Causation (31)David Rose
Experimental Philosophy: Persons (19)Vilius Dranseika
Experimental Philosophy: Metaphysics, Misc (24)David Rose
Foundations of Experimental Philosophy (161 | 32)John Philip Waterman
Critiques of Experimental Philosophy (60)
Foundations of Experimental Philosophy, Misc (69)
Experimental Philosophy, Miscellaneous (99 | 30)
Experimental Philosophy: Crosscultural Research (9)
* (2)
Experimental Philosophy, Misc (60)
Metaphilosophy, Miscellaneous (502 | 43)
Disagreement in Philosophy (63)
Kinds of Philosophy (8)
Metaontology* (1,002 | 114)Frederique Janssen-Lauret
Metaphilosophy, Misc (87)
The Nature of Philosophy (82)
The Nature of Analytic Philosophy (53)
Philosophical Language (14)
Philosophical Progress (34)
The Role of Philosophy (55)
The Value of Philosophy (32)
Traditions in Philosophy (32)
Verbal Disputes* (12)
Women in Philosophy* (55)
3
Metaphysics (32,551)
Metaontology (1,002 | 114)Frederique Janssen-Lauret

146
Metaontology, Misc (119)
Ontological Commitment (174)Henry Laycock
Ontological Conventionalism and Relativism (62)
Ontological Disagreement (54)Nurbay Irmak
Ontological Fictionalism (86)
Ontological Pluralism (49)Nurbay Irmak
Ontological Realism (148)Penelope Rush
Quantification and Ontology* (156)
Methodology in Metaphysics* (197)
4
Ontology (3,772 | 1,421
5
Philosophy of Action
6
Philosophy of Language (34,767
7
Philosophy of Mind (62,786)
8
Philosophy of Religion (56,298

9
M&E, Misc (159)
Value Theory (385,427)Daniel Star
10 I list 2 sections as they are of special interest to me -
Aesthetics
Aesthetic Cognition (3,628 | 1,192)
Aesthetic Cognition, Misc (42)
Aesthetic Attitudes (40)
Aesthetic Concepts (100)
Aesthetics and Emotions (373)
Aesthetic Experience (404)
Aesthetic Judgment (385)

147
Aesthetic Perception (201)Dustin Stokes
Aesthetic Interpretation (25)
Aesthetic Imagination (274)
Aesthetic Pleasure (174)
Aesthetic Taste (122)
Aesthetic Knowledge* (44)
Aesthetic Understanding (127)
Aesthetics and Cognitive Science (124)Dustin Stokes
Aesthetics and Psychoanalysis (1)
Aesthetic Realism and Anti-Realism (152 | 18)Fabian Dorsch
Aesthetic Realism (13)
Aesthetic Relativism (38)
Aesthetic Subjectivism (24)
Aesthetic Universality (23)
Aesthetic Realism and Anti-Realism, Misc (36)
Aesthetic Qualities (412 | 191)
Aesthetic Qualities, Misc (35)
Beauty (42)
Humour* (516)
Style (29)
The Sublime (85)Robert R. Clewis
The Tragic (30)
Aesthetic Representation (102 | 17)
Aesthetic Symbol Systems (22)
Depiction* (613)Ben Blumson
Intention and Interpretation (28)
Aesthetic Representation and Meaning, Misc (35)
Aesthetic Value (484 | 115)
Aesthetic Criticism (37)
Aesthetic Evaluation (54)
Aesthetic Normativity (32)
Aesthetics and Ethics (213)Aaron Smuts

148
The Value of Art* (131)
Aesthetic Value, Misc (34)
Aesthetics and Culture (184 | 46)
Aesthetic Universals (9)
Crosscultural Aesthetics (22)
Pop Culture (28)
Aesthetics and Culture, Misc (79)
Topics in Aesthetics (284 | 112)
Aesthetic Education (28)
Aesthetics of Nature (144)
Aesthetics and Race (0)Shen-yi Liao
Art and Artworks (534 | 24)Nicholas Riggle
Artworks (134)
The Artworld (46)
The Definition of Art (104)
The Value of Art* (131)
Art and Artworks, Misc (95)
Philosophy of Visual Art (1,772 | 41)Nicholas Riggle
Depiction* (613)Ben Blumson
Painting and Drawing (366)
Photography (592)Dan Cavedon-Taylor
Sculpture (66)
Philosophy of Visual Art, Misc

11
Applied Ethics (117,068)
Meta-Ethics (9,471)
Normative Ethics (25,627)

12
Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality (20,671
13

149
Philosophy of Law (12,440)
14
Social and Political Philosophy (81,453)
15
Philosophy of Social Science* (42,969)
16
Political Theory (7,630)
Political Views (7,493 | 442

Rights

17
Value Theory, Miscellaneous (43,201

18
Science, Logic, and Mathematics (290,352)
Logic and Philosophy of Logic

19
Philosophy of Biology (24,269)
20
Philosophy of Cognitive Science (64,474
21
Philosophy of Psychology (3,864 | 1,299)
22
Philosophy of Neuroscience (4,866 | 3,285
23
Philosophy of Consciousness (17,368 | 5,603)
Theories of Consciousness
Representationalism* (340)David Bourget
Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness (472 | 15)Richard Brown
Higher-Order Thought Theories of Consciousness (243)Richard Brown

150
Higher-Order Perception Theories of Consciousness (10)Richard Brown
Self-Representational Theories of Consciousness (179)Uriah Kriegel
Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness, Misc (24)Richard Brown
Functionalist Theories of Consciousness (175 | 53)
Dennett's Functionalism (117)
Functionalism and Qualia* (156)Andrew Bailey
Absent Qualia* (50)Andrew Bailey
Cognitive Models of Consciousness* (166)
Functionalist Theories of Consciousness, Misc (5)
Biological Theories of Consciousness (99 | 46)
Searle's Biological Naturalism (44)
Consciousness and Biology* (600 | 135)
Neurobiological Theories and Models of Consciousness* (177)
Mind-Brain Identity Theory* (333)Istvn Aranyosi
Biological Theories of Consciousness, Misc (9)
Panpsychism (259 | 208)Sam Coleman
The Combination Problem for Panpsychism (25)
Neutral Monism* (55)
Russellian Monism* (138)Tom McClelland
History: Panpsychism (5)
Panpsychism, Misc (21)
Theories of Consciousness, Misc (379 | 32)
Dualism about Consciousness (88)
Eliminativism about Consciousness (26)
Idealism* (168)A. P. Taylor
Phenomenalism* (77)Michael Pelczar
Neutral Monism* (55)
Russellian Monism* (138)Tom McClelland
Theories of Consciousness, Miscellaneous (40)
24
Philosophy of Linguistics (5,977 | 915)
25

151
Philosophy of Psychiatry and Psychopathology (4,904 | 961)
26
Science of Consciousness (17,681 | 2,455)
27
Philosophy of Computing and Information (2,906
28
Philosophy of Mathematics (11,889)
29
Philosophy of Physical Science (19,608)
30
Philosophy of Social Science (42,969)
Philosophy of Anthropology (810)Terence Rajivan Edward
Philosophy of Archaeology (383)Adrian Currie
Philosophy of Economics (6,856

31
Philosophy of Education (20,859 |
32
Philosophy of Geography (596)
Philosophy of History (6,062)Jonathan Lamb Gorman
Philosophy of Law* (12,440)Aness Webster
Philosophy of Political Science (

33
Philosophy of Sociology (1,286
Sociology of Science* (1,083)Markus Seidel
Sociology of Knowledge* (130)Markus Seidel
Philosophy of Sociology, Misc (36)
Philosophy of Social Science, Miscellaneous (2,898 | 772)
Functional Explanation in Social Science (58)
Holism and Individualism in Social Science (91)
Objectivity and Value in Social Science (86)

152
Rational Choice Theory (321)
Reduction in Social Science (28)
Social Ontology (260)Robert Keith Shaw
Philosophy of Social Science, General Works (879)
Philosophy of Social Science, Misc (403
34
Philosophy of Probability (5,567)
35
General Philosophy of Science (36,843)
Philosophy of Science, Misc (
36
History of Western Philosophy (248,967)
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy

Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy (24,091

17th/18th Century Philosophy (71,249)
17th/18th Century French Philosophy
17th/18th Century German Philosophy (28,957 | 234)Corey W. Dyck
Alexander Baumgarten (49)Courtney Fugate
Christian August Crusius (52)Jonas Jervell Indregard
Johann Georg Hamann (83)
Johann Gottfried Herder (136)
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (39)
Immanuel Kant (21,885 | 4,536)

17th/18th Century Philosophy, Miscellaneous (5

19th Century Philosophy (33,211)
20th Century Philosophy (39,119)
20th Century Analytic Philosophy (23,276 | 444)
20th Century Continental Philosophy (5,299 | 3,324

37

153
Philosophical Traditions (175,353)

African/Africana Philosophy (2,510)

Asian Philosophy (25,851)JeeLoo Liu
Arabic and Islamic Philosophy* (1,508 | 1,326)
Asian Philosophy, Misc (337)
Chinese Philosophy (12,674 | 3,823

Japanese Philosophy (928)Curtis Rigsby

Indian Philosophy (7,214 |
38
Continental Philosophy (101,888)

39
European Philosophy (36,643)
40
Philosophy of the Americas (6,689)
41
Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous (1,738)
42
Philosophy, Misc (2,827)
Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies (174)
Philosophy, General Works (1,482)
Teaching Philosophy (162)
Philosophy for Children (11)
Teaching Philosophy, Misc (38)
Philosophy, Miscellaneous (790)
Other Academic Areas (48,190)
Natural Sciences (4,574)

Natural Sciences (4,574)

Biological Sciences (4,088)

154
Chemistry (18)
Earth Sciences (24)
Physics (357)
Space Sciences (14)
Natural Sciences, Misc (50)
Social Sciences (6,471)
Archaeology (57)
Anthropology (307)
Communication (179)
Cultural Studies (153)
Economics (197)
Education* (388)
Gender Studies (62)
Geography (23)
History (367)
Political Science (771)
Semiotics (3,864)
Sociology (241)
Social Sciences, Misc (166)
Cognitive Sciences (13,256)
Linguistics (505)
Neuroscience (190)
Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (168)
Psychology (774)
Cognitive Sciences, Misc (280)
Formal Sciences (737)
Computer Science (107)
Information Science (70)
Mathematics (62)
Statistics (13)
Mathematical Logic (449)
Systems Science (9)

155
Formal Sciences, Misc (17)
Arts and Humanities (21,671)
Architecture and Design (64)
Classics (20,004)
Film and Television (69)
Literature (317)
Medieval Studies (278)
Modern Languages (42)
Music (64)
Religious Studies (296)
Theater (19)
Visual Arts (112)
Arts and Humanities, Misc (304)
Professional Areas (913)
Agriculture (34)
Business (43)
Education* (388)
Engineering (54)
Health Sciences (49)
Medicine (139)
Nursing (12)
Journalism and Media (23)
Law (116)
Marketing (10)
Military Studies (19)
Transportation (3)
Professional Areas, Misc (21)
Other Academic Areas, Misc (266)

156
https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/

Home Products

LOGIN

PRODUCTS

MEMBERSHIPS

E-COLLECTION

SERVICES

ABOUT

Journals and Series

Alphabetical(All A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T W)
The Acorn
Akten des XIV. Internationalen Kongresses fr Philosophie
Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review
American Association of Philosophy Teachers Studies in Pedagogy
American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
The American Journal of Semiotics
The American Philosophical Association Centennial Series
Ancient Philosophy

157
Arendt Studies
Atti del IV Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia
Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia
Augustinian Studies
Augustinianum
Balkan Journal of Philosophy
Bibliothque du Congrs International de Philosophie
Binghamton Journal of Philosophy
Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy
Bradley Studies
Bulletin de la Socit Amricaine de Philosophie de Langue Franaise
Bulletin of Literary Semiotics
Business and Professional Ethics Journal
Business Ethics Journal Review
Business Ethics: The Magazine of Corporate Responsibility
Cahiers du Centre dtudes Phnomnologiques
Canadian Journal of Philosophy
Catholic Social Science Review
The Chesterton Review
The Chesterton Review em Portugus
The Chesterton Review en Espaol
The Chesterton Review en Franais
The Chesterton Review in Italiano
Chiasmi International
Chra
Chromatikon
The CLR James Journal
Cogito
Croatian Journal of Philosophy
Cultura
Der 16. Weltkongress fr Philosophie
Dialectics and Humanism
Dialogue and Universalism
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophy Review
Die Philosophin
Duquesne Studies in Phenomenological Psychology
Environmental Ethics
Environmental Philosophy
Environment, Space, Place
Epistemology & Philosophy of Science
Epoch: A Journal for the History of Philosophy
tudes Phnomnologiques
Faith and Philosophy
Fichte-Studien
Forum Philosophicum
Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal
Grazer Philosophische Studien
The Harvard Review of Philosophy
Heidegger Studies
History of Communism in Europe
Hume Studies

158
Idealistic Studies
Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines
International Corporate Responsibility Series
International Directory of Philosophy
International Journal of Applied Philosophy
International Philosophical Quarterly
International Studies in Philosophy
International Studies in Philosophy Monograph Series
Irish Philosophical Journal
Journal for Peace and Justice Studies
Journal of Buddhist Philosophy
Journal of Business Ethics Education
Journal of Catholic Social Thought
The Journal of Critical Analysis
Journal of Croatian Studies
Journal of Early Modern Studies
Journal of Indian Philosophy and Religion
Journal of Islamic Philosophy
Journal of Japanese Philosophy
Journal of Philosophical Research
The Journal of Philosophy
The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods
The Journal of Philosophy, Science & Law
Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry
Journal of Pre-College Philosophy
Journal of Religion and Violence
Kilikya Felsefe Dergisi / Cilicia Journal of Philosophy
The Leibniz Review
Levinas Studies
Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture
Logos & Episteme
The Lonergan Review
Mayutica
Mediaevalia
Medieval Philosophy and Theology
Memorias del XIII Congreso Internacional de Filosofa
The Modern Schoolman
The Monist
The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly
New Nietzsche Studies
The New Scholasticism
New Vico Studies
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy
Newman Studies Journal
Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy
NTU Philosophical Review
Overheard in Seville: Bulletin of the Santayana Society
The Owl of Minerva
The Personalist Forum
Perspektiven der Philosophie
Phenomenology 2005

159
Phenomenology 2010
Philo: A Journal of Philosophy
The Philosophers' Magazine
philoSOPHIA
Philosophia Africana
Philosophical Inquiry
The Philosophical Review
Philosophical Studies
Philosophical Studies of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
Philosophical Topics
Philosophie et Culture: Actes du XVIIe congrs mondial de philosophie
Philosophy and History
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Philosophy and Theology
Philosophy in Context
Philosophy in the Contemporary World
Philosophy Now
Philosophy of Management
Philosophy Research Archives
Philosophy Today
PhilPapers
PhilPapers with Full Text
Pierre d'angle
Polish Journal of Philosophy
Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association
Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress
Proceedings of the Hegel Society of America
Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society
Proceedings of the Sixth International Kant Congress
Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of Philosophy
The Proceedings of the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy
The Proceedings of the Twenty-First World Congress of Philosophy
Proceedings of the XIth International Congress of Philosophy
Proceedings of the XVth World Congress of Philosophy
Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy
Process Studies
Professional Ethics
Quaestiones Disputatae
Questions: Philosophy for Young People
Radical Philosophy Review
Radical Philosophy Review of Books
Radical Philosophy Today
Raven: A Journal of Vexillology
Renascence
Res Philosophica
The Review of Metaphysics
Roczniki Filozoficzne
The Ruffin Series in Business Ethics
The Ruffin Series of the Society for Business Ethics
The Saint Augustine Lecture Series
Schutzian Research

160
Semiotic Scene
Semiotics
Sign Systems Studies
Social Imaginaries
Social Philosophy Today
Social Theory and Practice
The Southern Journal of Philosophy
Southwest Philosophy Review
The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy
Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
Studi Internazionali di Filosofia
Studia Neoaristotelica
Studia Phaenomenologica
Studia Philosophica
Studies in Practical Philosophy
Symposion
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy
Teaching Ethics
Teaching Philosophy
Techn: Research in Philosophy and Technology
Theoria
Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children
Thought: Fordham University Quarterly
Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya
Tradition and Discovery
Travaux du IXe Congrs International de Philosophie
Tulane Studies in Philosophy
The Works of Francis William Newman on Religion
World Congress of Philosophy Collection
By Category
Analytic Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy
Applied Philosophy
Business and Professional Ethics
Catholic Tradition
Classical Studies
Conference Proceedings
Contemporary Philosophy
Continental Philosophy
General Interest
History
History of Philosophy
Language and Literature
Major Philosophers
Philosophy and Religion
Philosophy for Children
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
Reference Works
Religious Studies

161
Research Databases
Semiotics
Social and Political Philosophy
Social Science
Teaching Philosophy
Zeta Books

Books and other Media

Alphabetical(All A B C D E F G H I K L M N P Q R S T W)
A l'preuve de l'exprience
A Survey of International Corporate Responsibility
Actes du huitime Congrs International de Philosophie
Ambiente, Tecnologa y Justificacin
Analyse Rflexive
Analytic Philosophy and Logic
Anlise reflexiva
Animism, Adumbration, Willing and Wisdom
Apparition des formes urbaines
ARISTOTLE'S POETICS
Aristotle Then and Now
At Play in the Field of Possibles
Atti del V Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia
Autonomy, Responsibility, and Health Care
Bericht ber den III. Internationalen Kongress fr Philosophie
Boethiana mediaevalia
Branching Off
Business, Science, and Ethics
Civic Virtue, Divided Societies, and Democratic Dilemmas
Communication, Conflict, and Reconciliation
Congrs International de Philosophie, IIme session
Contemporary Philosophy
Controversies in International Corporate Responsibility
Cosmopolitanism without Foundations
Croises de la Modernit
DAO DE JING
Deception
Democracy, Racism, and Prisons
Demonstrating Philosophy
Des compositions de lexprience
Die Vision eines postmodernen Lebens
Dieu hte
Directory of American Philosophers, 2014-2015
Directory of American Philosophers, 2016-2017
Documents from the XIX World Congress of Philosophy
Documents from the XVIII World Congress of Philosophy
Education and Social Justice
Eidos et Pathos
Emmanuel Levinas 100
Environmental Challenges to Business
Environmental Philosophy as Social Philosophy

162
Environment, Technology, Justification
Epistemology
Ethical Issues for the Twenty-First Century
Ethics
Ethics and Entrepreneurship
Ethics and the Life Sciences
tre sans mot dire
tre(s) de passage
Food
Forgiveness
Franz Brentano's Metaphysics and Psychology
Freedom, Religion, and Gender
Freedom, Will, and Nature
From Chile To The World: 70 Years of Gabriela Mistral's Nobel Prize
Gender, Diversity, and Difference
Guidebook for Publishing Philosophy
Historical Essays in 20th Century American Philosophy
History, Apocalypse, and the Secular Imagination
Human Rights, Religion, and Democracy
HUME'S DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION
Individuation et vision du monde
Intercultural Philosophy
International Directory of Philosophy and Philosophers, 2015-2016
International Law and Justice
Invitation to ArchiPhen
KANT'S FOUNDATIONS OF ETHICS
L'absolu dans la philosophie du jeune Schelling
LArgument infini
La conscience perceptive
La gense du monde fantastique en littrature
La Mtaphysique du Dasein
La philosophie et le sens de son histoire
La prudence de lhomme desprit
Le Savoir en appel
Les deux morts de Maurice Blanchot
Letters of Francis William Newman, Chiefly on Religion
Liberation between Selves, Sexualities, and War
Library of Congress Subject Headings in Philosophy
Memory, Humanity, and Meaning
Metaphysics
Mtaphysique et thologie chez Nicolas Malebranche
MILL'S ON LIBERTY
Modern Philosophy
New Approaches to Business Ethics
Paris Chic, Tehran Thrills
Perspectives on International Corporate Responsibility
Phenomenology and Human Science Research Today
Phenomenology and Media
Philosophy Against Empire
Philosophy and Culture
Philosophy and Language

163
Philosophy in America at the Turn of the Century
Philosophy in the Abrahamic Tradition
Philosophy of Education
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Religion, Art, and Creativity
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy Through Teaching
PLATO'S APOLOGY
PLATO'S CRITO
PLATO'S EUTHYPHRO
PLATO'S PHEADO
Poverty, Justice, and Markets
Power, Protest, and the Future of Democracy
Premire, deuxime, troisime personne
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1901-1910
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1911-1920
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1921-1930
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1931-1940
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1941-1950
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1951-1960
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1961-1970
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1971-1980
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1981-1990
Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 1991-2000
Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society - Volume 26
Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Philosophy
Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Philosophy
Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy
Pueblos indgenas, plantas y mercados Amazona y Gran Chaco
Quappelle-t-on la pense?
Quappelle-t-on un sminaire?
Quest-ce quun hritage?
Race and Diversity in the Global Context
Race, Social Identity, and Human Dignity
Raison et mystique dans le noplatonisme
Reason in Context
Reflective Analysis
Schleiermachers Icoses
Science, Reason, and Religion
Science, Technology, and Social Justice
Selected Papers from the XXII World Congress of Philosophy
Selected Papers from the XXIII World Congress of Philosophy
Selected Papers in Honor of William P. Alston
Semiotics 2000
Semiotics 2003
Semiotics 2008
Semiotics 2009
Semiotics 2010
Semiotics 2011
Semiotics 2012
Semiotics 2013

164
Semiotics 2014
Semiotics 2015
Smallest Mimes
Social and Political Philosophy
Spiritual Goods: Faith Traditions and the Practice of Business
Teaching New Histories of Philosophy
Teaching Philosophy Today
Teaching Philosophy (anthology)
The American Philosophical Association Centennial Series
The Art of Experimental Natural History
The Exasperating Gift of Singularity
The Hardwick Library and Hobbes's Early Intellectual Development
The Idea of Values
The Lived Experience of Violation
The Philosopher's Index Thesaurus
The Philosophical Habit of Mind
The Public and The Private in the Twenty-First Century
The Theory and Practice of Husserls Phenomenology
Thinking and Be-ing in Heideggers Beitrge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)
Thinking in Dialogue with Humanities
Thought and Practice in African Philosophy
Thoughts on Images
Translation and Interpretation
Translational Hermeneutics
Transparency, Information and Communication Technology
Truth and Objectivity in Social Ethics
bersetzung und Hermeneutik
War and Terrorism
By Category
Analytic Philosophy
Ancient Philosophy
Applied Philosophy
Audio Files and E-Books
Business and Professional Ethics
Catholic Tradition
Conference Proceedings
Contemporary Philosophy
Continental Philosophy
General Interest
History of Philosophy
Language and Literature
Major Philosophers
Philosophy and Religion
Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of Science
Reference Works
Religious Studies
Research Databases
Semiotics
Social and Political Philosophy

165
Social Science
Teaching Philosophy
Zeta Books

Online Resources
PDC E-Collection Search Articles

International Directory of Philosophy

Titles by category
Analytic Philosophy

Ancient Philosophy

Applied Philosophy

Business and Professional Ethics

Catholic Tradition

Conference Proceedings

Contemporary Philosophy

Continental Philosophy

General Interest

History

History of Philosophy

Language and Literature

Major Philosophers

Philosophy and Religion

Philosophy for Children

Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Science

Religious Studies

166
 Semiotics

Social and Political Philosophy

Social Science

Teaching Philosophy

Zeta Books

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/nature.shtml

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/what.shtml

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/life.shtml

Let us end where we began

http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/character.shtml

Characteristics of a Philosophical Problem

Abstract: A working definition of philosophy is proposed and a few philosophical problems are
illustrated.

1. Some general comments about the nature of philosophy can be summarized

from the previous tutorial.

1. Etymologically, "philosophy" can be broken into the following roots and

examples.

philofond of, affinity for; e.g., the name "Philip" means "lover of
horses."

sophiawisdom; e.g., the name "Sophie" means "wisdom."

2. Hazarding a beginning definition and some general characteristics of

philosophy might be of help.

Philosophy is the systematic inquiry into the principles and

presuppositions of any endeavor.

1. Almost any area of interest has philosophical aspects. For

example, name an area and place the phrase philosophy of
in front of it as in philosophy of science, philosophy of art,

167
 and philosophy of science. Or name the area and place the
word philosophy after it as in political philosophy and
ethical philosophy.

2. Recently, philosophy of sport, medical ethics, and ethics of

genetics have generated much interest.

3. Some restaurants have printed on the back of the customer's

bill their philosophy of restaurant management.

In general, philosophy questions often are a series of "why-

questions," whereas science is often said to ask "how-questions."

E.g., asking "Why did you come to class today?" is the beginning of
a series of why-questions which ultimately lead to the answer of the
principles or presuppositions by which you lead your life.

I.e., Answer: "To pass the course."

Question: "Why do you want to pass the course?"

Answer: "To graduate from college."

Question: "Why do you want to graduate?"

Answer: "To get a good job."

Question: "Why do you want a good job?"

Answer: "To make lots of money."

Question: "Why do you want to make money?"

Answer: "To be happy."

Hence, one comes to class in order to increase the chances for

happiness.

2. As I remember Avrum Stroll and Richard H. Popkin, in their highly readable book,
Introduction to Philosophy, isolate seven characteristics of a philosophical
problem. These characteristics serve as a good introduction to mark some of the
perplexing kinds of problems which can arise in philosophy.

Philosophical Thought-Experiments from Metaphysics and Epistemology

Characteristics Typical Examples

1. A reflection about If I take a book off my hand, what's left on my hand? If I take away
the world and the the air, then what's left? If I take away the space? With the space
things in it. gone, nothing is left. Does everything exist in nothing?

According to Newton's gravitation theory, as the ballerina on a

New York stage moves, my balance is imperceptibly affected.
2. A conceptual
Since the earth's circumference is about 25,000 miles, and the
rather than a
earth spins around once every 24 hours, as I sit at my desk, I am
practical activity.
in reality looping through space in giant arcs at over 25,000 miles
per hour.

168
 Does a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it, make a
sound? To solve, we distinguish two senses of "sound": (1) hearing
3. The use of reason
a phenomenological perception and (2) vibrationa longitudinal
and argumentation
wave in matter. So if no one is there to hear, there is no sound of
to establish a point.
type 1, but there is sound of type 2, as can be determined by the
prior leaving a recording device on the scence.

Does a mirror reverse left and right? If I move my right hand, the
4. An explanation of image's left hand moves. But why then doesn't the mirror reverse
the puzzling up and down? Why aren't the feet in the mirror image at the top of
features of things. the mirror? Why doesn't it change the situation if I lie down or I
rotate the mirror 90 degrees?

What is a fact? In science, facts are collected. Is a book a fact? Is it

a big or little fact? Is the book a smaller fact than the earth which
5. Digging beyond
is a larger fact. If the book is brown, is that a brown fact? If facts
the obvious.
don't have size, shape, and color, then in what manner do they
exist in the world? And how can they be found?

6. The search for

Is a geranium one flower or is it a combination of many small
principles which
flowers bunched together? If I turn on a computer, does one event
underlie
occur or do many events occur?
phenomena.

Is nature discrete or continuous? E.g., Consider Zeno's paradoxes

7. Theory building of motion. If you are to leave the classroom today, isn't it true that
from these you will have to walk at least half-way to the door? And then when
principles. you get half-way, you will have to at least walk another half? How
many "halves" are there? How will you ever get out?

3. In practice, philosophy is an attitude, an approach, or even a calling to answer,

to ask, or to comment upon certain peculiar kinds of questions. As we saw
previously, the problems are often relegated to the main divisions of philosophy:
Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Axiology (Ethics and sthetics).

1. Attitudea curiosity arising from questions such as the following.

Under the assumption that time is a dimension just like any other,
the case of the problem of the surprise examination can arise:
Suppose students obtain the promise from their teacher that a
surprise quiz scheduled be given next week will not be given, if the
students demonstrate how they can know, in advance, the day the
teacher will give the exam. Thus, the students can argue as follows:
Assuming the class meets only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,
the students know the surprise exam cannot be given on Friday
because everyone would know Thursday night that the following
day is the only period left in which to give the exam. One would
think that the teacher could give the exam Wednesday, but since
Friday has been eliminated as a possibility, on Tuesday night, the
students would know that the only period left in the week would be
Wednesday (since Friday has already been eliminated; hence, the
exam could not be given Wednesday either. Monday, then, is the
only possible period left to offer the exam. But, of course, the

169
 teacher could not give the exam Monday because the students
would expect the exam that day. Consequently, the teacher cannot
give a surprise examination next week.

In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Richard Feynman explained that from the
perspective of quantum electrodynamics, if an electron is seen as
going forward in time, a positron is the same particle moving
backwards in time. Is time- reversal really possible?

1. Is a positron, or even the earlier tachyon, discussed above,

associated with backward causation a possible event?
Consider this paradoxical result. Suppose a "positron gun" or
a "tachyon gun" would fire a particle going backward in time
it could "trigger" an off-switch to turn off the gun before it
could be fired.

2. This example is, of course, a thought-experiment. As

Feynman noted in his Lectures on Physics, "Philosophers say
a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science,
and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and
probably wrong.

2. Approachto devise a methodology to answer such puzzles. Very often,

all that is needed is to invoke old maxim, "When there is a difficulty, make
a distinction."

E.g., for the problem of the sound of a tree falling in a forest with no
one around to hear, all we need do is distinguish two different
senses of "sound."

If by "sound" is meant a "phenomenological perception by a

subject," then no sound ("hearing") would occur. If by "sound" is
meant "a longitudinal wave in matter," then a sound is
discoverable.

3. Calling if a person has had experiences of curiosity, discovery, and

invention at an early age, these experiences could leave an imprint on
mind and character to last a lifetime.

Further Reading:

Ask a Philosopher Archive. Submitted philosophical questions are answered in

some detail by philosophers, a project maintained by the International Society for
Philosophers. You may submit your questions on the Ask a Philosopher page.

Backward Causation. Jan Fey's entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

examines several paradoxes based on the notion where an effect temporally, but
not causally, precedes its cause.

Paradox. An extensive reference list of paradoxes in Wikipedia is summarized by

topic in mathematics, logic, practice, philosophy, psychology, physics and
economics with links to more extensive discussion.

170
 Unexpected Hanging Paradox. Eric W. Weisstein at the site Wolfram MathWorld
provides another version of the Surprise Examination Paradox with a list of
further references.

203. Language is a labyrinth of paths. You approach from one side and know your way about; you
approach the same place from another side and no longer know your way about. Ludwig
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, 3rd. ed. (New York: The
Macmillan Company), 1958), 82e.

171
172