Tied to the apron strings of the church -- Researcher, teacher, philosopher -- Philosophical discourse -- Interpretation, objectivity and nonsense -- Unitary experience and philosophical life -- Philosophical discourse as spiritual exercise -- Philosophy as life and as a quest for wisdom -- From Socrates to Foucault : a long tradition -- Inacceptable? -- The present alone is our happiness.

Tied to the apron strings of the church -- Researcher, teacher, philosopher -- Philosophical discourse -- Interpretation, objectivity and nonsense -- Unitary experience and philosophical life -- Philosophical discourse as spiritual exercise -- Philosophy as life and as a quest for wisdom -- From Socrates to Foucault : a long tradition -- Inacceptable? -- The present alone is our happiness.

Present-bias is the preference, all else being equal, for positive events to be located in the present rather than the non-present, and for negative events to be located in the non-present rather than the present. Very little attention has been given to present-bias in the contemporary literature on time biases. This may be because it is often assumed that present-bias is not a distinctive psychological kind; that what explains people’s being present-biased is (...) just what explains them displaying various other time-biases. According to this view, there is no need to investigate present-bias independently of investigating these other biases, since present-bias is really just a manifestation of these other biases. We call this the manifestation thesis. We take up the question of whether the manifestation thesis is true, and argue that it is not. Thus, by failing to investigate present-bias in its own right we are failing fully to understand the spectrum of ways in which people display time biases. In turn, we suggest, this may have implications for the ways we evaluate whether present-bias is rationally permissible. (shrink)

Memory of historical trauma has a unique power to generate works of art. This book analyzes the relation of public memory to history, forgetting, and selective memory in Berlin, Buenos Aires, and New York—three late-twentieth-century cities that have confronted major social or political traumas. Berlin experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the city’s reemergence as the German capital; Buenos Aires lived through the dictatorships of the 1970s and 1980s and their legacy of state terror and disappearances; and New (...) York City faces a set of public memory issues concerning the symbolic value of Times Square as threatened public space and the daunting task of commemorating and rebuilding after the attack on the World Trade Center. Focusing on the issue of monumentalization in divergent artistic and media practices, the book demonstrates that the transformation of spatial and temporal experience by memory politics is a major cultural effect of globalization. (shrink)

George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) had a powerful influence on the development of American pragmatism in the twentieth century. He also had a strong impact on the social sciences. This classic book represents Mead's philosophy of experience, so central to his outlook. The present as unique experience is the focus of this deep analysis of the basic structure of temporality and consciousness. Mead emphasizes the novel character of both the present and the past. Though science is predicated on the (...) assumption that the present is predictable based on a thorough knowledge of the past, the experience of the present, says Mead, is an utterly unique moment comparable to no other, and when it is past the novel character of that unique experience is irrevocable. The emergence of novelty within the perceived rational order of reality is the crux of the problem that Mead explores. The present, in his words, is "the emergent event . . . something which is more than the processes that have led up to it and which by its change, continuance, or disappearance, adds to later passages a content they would not otherwise have possessed." The present as "the seat of reality" heavily conditions our retrospective view of the past as much as it helps to shape the future. The novelty of every present experience causes us to reconstruct our preceding experiences to make sense of the past, which is naturally assumed to be the main cause of what we presently experience. Our perspective on reality is thus relative to the conditioning of each new event and it changes continuously as the effects of the present shift our view of the past and future. This emphasis on the integrative, holistic nature of reality, in which everything past, present, and future is a condition of everything else, makes Mead's philosophy highly relevant to today's scientific picture of a quantum universe, where chance and probability play a role in the emergence of reality. Also of great interest is the way in which he extends his basic analysis of temporal-spatial reality to the emergence of mind and consciousness as a natural development of the evolutionary process. This stimulating and provocative work attests to John Dewey's praise of Mead as "the most original mind in philosophy in America" of his generation. (shrink)

But Findlay's remark, like so much that has been written on the subject of time in the present century, was provoked in the first place by McTaggart's ...

At the core of Presenting the Past is the dramatic and troubling case of a woman who during the course of her analysis began to recall scenes of her own ...

A striking feature of our world is that we only seem to have records of the past. To explain this ‘record asymmetry’, Albert and Loewer claim that the Past Hypothesis induces a narrow probability density over the world’s possible past macrohistories, but not its future macro- histories. Because we’re indirectly acquainted with this low-entropy initial macrostate, our observations of records allow us to exploit the associated narrow density to infer the past. I will argue that Albert and Loewer cannot make (...) sense of why this probabilistic structure ex- ists without falling back on the very records they wish to explain. To avoid this circularity, I offer an alternative account: the ‘fork asymmetry’ explains the record asymmetry, and this in turn explains the narrow density - not vice versa. (shrink)

Le présent dossier a pour vocation d’introduire le lectorat francophone à une analyse philosophique de la conceptualité dont la riche postérité outre-Manche et outre-Atlantique fut inversement proportionnelle à l’intérêt qu’elle a suscité ailleurs, notamment en France, durant un demi-siècle. L’auteur de cette analyse, Walter Bryce Gallie, est un philosophe écossais relativement...

A blindfolded clairvoyant walks into a room and immediately knows how it is arranged. You walk in and immediately see how it is arranged. Though both of you represent the room as being arranged in the same way, you have different experiences. Your experience doesn’t just represent that the room is arranged a certain way; it also visually presents the very items in the room that make that representation true. Call the felt aspect of your experience made salient by this (...) contrast its presentational phenomenology. Many philosophers have observed that perceptual experiences have presentational phenomenology. In this paper I explore its nature, scope, and significance. I argue that in addition to perceptual experiences, presentational phenomenology can be found in intuitive, introspective, imaginative, and recollective experiences. I also argue that presentational phenomenology is epistemologically significant: it plays a central role in explaining why the experiences that have it justify beliefs and give us knowledge. (shrink)

This introductory chapter reviews research on future-oriented mental time travel to date (the past), provides an overview of the contents of the book (the present), and enumerates some possible research directions suggested by the latter (the future).

This article is concerned with the alleged incompatibility between presentism and specious present theories of temporal experience. According to presentism, the present time is instantaneous (or, near-instantaneous), while according to specious present theories, the specious present is temporally extended—therefore, it seems that there is no room in reality for the whole of a specious present, if presentism is true. It seems then that one of the two claims—presentism or the specious present theory—has to go. (...) I shall argue that this kind of worries is mislead. Once we understand properly how our phenomenal experience as of passage and as of change, such as it is understood by specious present theorists, comes into being, the apparent phenomenologico-metaphysical conflict will disappear. In short, the mistake here is to presuppose that there is a link between phenomenology and metaphysics stronger than it actually is. Presentism is a metaphysical theory about what exists. Specious presentism is a phenomenological theory about how things appear to us in experience. As we will see, the two claims are not in conflict, and are in fact entirely orthogonal. (shrink)

Considering a range of present-day phenomena, from the immediacy effects of literature to the impact of hypercommunication, globalization, and sports, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht notes an important shift in our relationship to history and the passage of time. Although we continue to use concepts inherited from a "historicist" viewpoint, a notion of time articulated in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the actual construction of time in which we live in today, which shapes our perceptions, experiences, and actions, is no longer (...) historicist. Without fully realizing it, we now inhabit a new, unnamed space in which the "closed future" and "ever-available past" (a past we have not managed to leave behind) converge to produce an "ever-broadening present of simultaneities." This profound change to a key dimension of our existence has complex consequences for the way in which we think about ourselves and our relation to the material world. At the same time, the ubiquity of digital media has eliminated our tactile sense of physical space, altering our perception of our world. Gumbrecht draws on his mastery of the philosophy of language to enrich his everyday observations, traveling to Disneyland, a small town in Louisiana, and the center of Vienna to produce striking sketches of our broad presence in the world. (shrink)

Contemporary critical social theories face the question of how to justify the ideas of the good society that guide their critical analyses. Traditionally, these more or less determinate ideas of the good society were held to be independent of their specific sociocultural context and historical epoch. Today, such a concept of context-transcending validity is not easy to defend; the "linguistic turn" of Western philosophy signals the widespread acceptance of the view that ideas of knowledge and validity are always mediated linguistically (...) and that language is conditioned by history and context. In Re-Presenting the Good Society, Maeve Cooke addresses the justificatory dilemma facing critical social theories: how to maintain an idea of context-transcending validity without violating anti-authoritarian impulses. In doing so she not only clarifies the issues and positions taken by other theorists--including Richard Rorty, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Judith Butler--but also offers her own original and thought-provoking analysis of context-transcending validity.Because the tension between an anti-authoritarian impulse and a guiding idea of context-transcending validity is today an integral part of critical social theory, Cooke argues that it should be negotiated rather than eliminated. Her proposal for a concept of context-transcending validity has as its central claim that we should conceive of the good society as re-presented in particular constitutively inadequate representations of it. These re-presentations are, Cooke argues provocatively, regulative ideas that have an imaginary, fictive character. (shrink)

Erwin Schrödinger holds a prominent place in the history of science primarily due to his crucial role in the development of quantum physics. What is perhaps lesser known are his insights into subject-object duality, consciousness and mind. He documented himself that these were influenced by the Upanishads, a collection of ancient Hindu spiritual texts. Central to his thoughts in this area is that Mind is only One and there is no separation between subject and object. This chapter aims to bridge (...) Schrödinger’s view on One Mind with the teachings of Dōgen, a twelfth century Zen master. This bridge is formed by addressing the question of how time relates to One Mind, and subject-object duality. Schrödinger describes the experience of One Mind to be like a timeless now, whereas subject-object duality involves a linear continuum of time. We show how these differing positions are unified in the notion of ‘absolute present’, which was put forward in the philosophy of Nishida Kitarō (1871–1945). In addition, we argue that it is in this notion of absolute present that the views of Schrödinger, Dōgen and Nishida meet. (shrink)

How should we interpret the popular objection that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals? The Eidelson View claims that stigma, because of its connection to stereotypes, violates an instance of the general requirement to respect autonomy. The Self-Presentation View claims that stigma inhibits the functioning of certain morally important capacities, notably the capacity for self-presentation. I argue that even if we are right to think that stigma violates a requirement to respect autonomy, this is insufficient to account for the (...) full weight of the charge that stigmatised subjects are not treated as individuals. We need the Self-Presentation View to explain a special threat to agency. I then address the worry that focusing on a concern with being treated as individuals opens the door to the suggestion that treating as superior can be just as morally troubling as stigma. This objection is fatal for the Eidelson View. But the Self-Presentation View has a number of resources for deflating the worry. We should not exclude the possibility of a moral symmetry between some cases of stigma and some cases of treating as superior. Rather, we should provide a nuanced account of the circumstances in which either phenomenon is detrimental for self-presentation. (shrink)

This paper is an introduction to the dossier on “the present and the future of doing philosophy with children”, which itself drew inspiration from a conference on the same topic that was held in University College Dublin on the 24th of June 2022. While the conference aimed at building a case for the importance of engaging pre-college students in philosophical thinking, it also aspired to function as a forum where the participants can critically reflect on the practice of doing (...) philosophy with children. The participants were asked to reflect on 1) the ways in which philosophy prepares children to engage with an increasingly complex world; 2) the future challenges of the P4wC movement; 3) the ways in which and the extent to which P4wC practice contributes to the decolonization of childhood discourses; 4) the ways in which and the extent to which the philosophy with children initiative addresses issues of epistemic injustice and educational and social inequalities. Building on the discussions that took place during and after the conference, the authors in this dossier interrogate the hierarchical opposition between child and adult, and cast a critical gaze on adultist assumptions that prevent Philosophy for/with Children initiatives from achieving their full potential. (shrink)

One version of the desire satisfaction theory of well-being (i.e., welfare, or what is good for one) holds that only the satisfaction of one's present desires for present states of affairs can affect one's well-being. So if I desire fame today and become famous tomorrow, my well-being is positively affected onlyif tomorrow, when I am famous, I still desire to be famous. Call this the present desire satisfaction theory of well-being. I argue, contrary to this theory, that (...) the satisfaction of past desires that are no longer held does indeed affect one's well-being. The satisfaction of past desires is good for one in that the present satisfaction of past desires positively affects one's past well-being. I argue for this view in stages, starting with the recognition that many of our desires are satisfied not at an instant but over an interval of time, and that it is during this interval of time that our well-being is positively affected. Once we get our foot in the door with some temporal thickness to desire satisfaction and the associated well-being, I argue, the door must open more widely to allow for greater temporal distance between present desire satisfaction and past well-being. I defend my thesis that present satisfaction of past desires increases one's past welfare against objections, including the claim that it involves backward causation and Velleman's claim that the view is highly counterintuitive whether or not it involves backward causation. I argue that some of the objections rely on hedonistic intuitions, intuitions that most desire satisfaction theories of welfare aim to correct. Once properly understood and applied, my counterintuitive and controversial thesis is really quite innocuous. (shrink)

Surveys and extens work that has been done in the past two years on 'tense logic' and is a sequel to the author's book, Time and Modality.

This small book is intended to play a part in a larger scheme.

Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice? While philosophy is experienced at admiring, resenting, celebrating, and, at times, renouncing language, philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it. Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy's concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective, propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice. In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual presence in language. In pursuing (...) the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice, Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the "personal." He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language, necessary for intelligibility, and the ways in which we, as individuals, remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner. _The Present Personal_ fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, drawing on Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka, Kundera, and others. By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain, Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language; _The Present Personal_, and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language, uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language. Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard's existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self. He then compares two attempts to subvert the "hegemony of content": the pragmatic turn of J. L. Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger. Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty. Kenaan's reconceptualization of philosophy's approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while, at the same time, permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content. (shrink)

Is philosophy deaf to the sound of the personal voice? While philosophy is experienced at admiring, resenting, celebrating, and, at times, renouncing language, philosophers have rarely succeeded in being intimate with it. Hagi Kenaan argues that philosophy's concern with abstract forms of linguistic meaning and the objective, propositional nature of language has obscured the singular human voice. In this strikingly original work Kenaan explores the ethical and philosophical implications of recognizing and responding to the individual presence in language. In pursuing (...) the philosophical possibility of listening to language as the embodiment of the human voice, Kenaan explores the phenomenological notion of the "personal." He defines the personal as the irresolvable tension that exists between the public character of language, necessary for intelligibility, and the ways in which we, as individuals, remain riveted to our words in a contingently singular manner. _The Present Personal_ fuses phenomenology and aesthetics and the traditions of Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, drawing on Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, Kant, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger as well as literary works by Kafka, Kundera, and others. By asking new questions and charting fresh terrain, Kenaan does more than offer innovative investigations into the philosophy of language; _The Present Personal_, and its concern with the intimate and personal nature of language, uncovers the ethical depth of our experience with language. Kenaan begins with a discussion of Kierkegaard's existential critique of language and the ways in which the propositional structure of language does not allow the spoken to reflect the singularity of the self. He then compares two attempts to subvert the "hegemony of content": the pragmatic turn of J. L. Austin and the poetic path of Heidegger. Kenaan concludes by turning to Kant and discovering an analogy between the experience of meaning in language and the aesthetic experience of encountering beauty. Kenaan's reconceptualization of philosophy's approach to language frees the contingent singularity of language while, at the same time, permitting it to continue to dwell within the confines of content. (shrink)

Philosophy often at least implicitly includes and depends on a logical structure which is also that of jokes. This is the case when philosophy involves questioning or establishing concepts in their own right, and when it involves the kinds of metaphysics which ask about reality and the world as a whole or as such. Taking this humour-like structure into account in presenting philosophy helps, among other things, to lay open part of the character of philosophy itself, to underscore the radical (...) self-perspective that is constitutive of philosophy, and to contextualise the often confusing experience of coming to grips with an unfamiliar philosophical framework. (shrink)

In this introduction to the new edition of Durkheim and Mauss's Primitive Classification, I flesh out Durkheim and Mauss’s account of the acquisition of the concept of class, and I argue that their account steers a middle course between traditional strands of rationalism and empiricism.