Culture not only influences human psychology and perceptions of self, others and reality, it also, in certain contexts, influences the quality and degree of consciousness itself. If the brain gives shape to consciousness, then we would expect culture to have a corresponding impact on the functional anatomy and microstructure of the brain. The concept of 'collective representations', as developed by Durkheim, refers to the often crucial components of human life that have meaningful existence only because we agree that they do-- (...) such as customs, money, religion, cosmology, language, games, laws, power structures and artistic genres. We present recent imaging research which illuminates the feedback relationship between these two types of representation-- the collective and the cortical-- and which demonstrates that collective representations can have well-defined cortical representations. (shrink)

The Buddhist concept of nonattachment refers to a flexible engagement with experience without fixation on achieving specified outcomes. The primary focus of this study was to qualitatively examine how nonattachment and attachment are experienced in individuals identified as having very high and low levels of nonattachment. Specifically, we examined individuals’ descriptions of how their levels of nonattachment and attachment developed, and how nonattachment and attachment affect their lives, their relationships, and their understanding of personal development. Twenty-four in-depth interviews were conducted (...) with participants (18 women, six men) aged 19 to 61 (mean = 36.20, standard deviation = 11.00), drawn from a larger sample of 1191, who scored very high or very low on nonattachment. Thematic analysis revealed highly nonattached individuals were psychologically mature, and flexibly engaged with their experiences, allowing their life to flow with minimal self-obstruction. In contrast, highly attached individuals were quite fixed in their thinking and often placed unachievable expectations on themselves and others. Interestingly, transformative suffering was crucial in the development of nonattachment, whereas unresolved experiences of suffering contributed to the development of attachment. (shrink)

Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as Hilbert developed systems of logic to formalize mathematics. These systems were meant to serve either as themselves foundational, or at least as formal analogs of mathematical reasoning amenable to mathematical study, e.g., in Hilbert’s consistency program. Similar efforts continue, but have (...) been expanded by the development of sophisticated methods to study the properties of such systems using proof and model theory. In parallel with this evolution of logical formalisms as tools for articulating mathematical theories (broadly speaking), much progress has been made in the quest for a mechanization of logical inference and the investigation of its theoretical limits, culminating recently in the development of new foundational frameworks for mathematics with sophisticated computer-assisted proof systems. In addition, logical formalisms developed by logicians in mathematical and philosophical contexts have proved immensely useful in describing theories and systems of interest to computer scientists, and to some degree, vice versa. Three examples of the influence of logic in computer science are automated reasoning, computer verification, and type systems for programming languages. (shrink)

The paper is a reply in Process Studies to a paper of mine that had earlier appeared in Process Studies on Wittgenstein and Whitehead. The paper considers both the “earlier” Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the “later” Wittgenstein beginning with the Philosophical Investigations. The paper discusses Wittgenstein’s idea that the philosophical truth is “open to view”, the centrality of the picture theory in the Tractatus, the Tractatus-dichotomy between “saying” and “showing”, the Tractatus-view that “one must be silent” about that (...) which can only be “shown”, the role of “logical atomism” in the Tractatus, the kind of “clarity” Wittgenstein sought in his ethical and his philosophical investigations, the Tractatus-notion of “logical space” and Ramal’s claim that the Tractatus posits a “transcendental space” for the mystical, the question whether Wittgenstein embraced the idea of ineliminable paradox in human life, the Tractatus-idea that logic is the basis of metaphysics, Wittgenstein’s “organicism” in both his “earlier” and “later” philosophies, Wittgenstein’s notion of essences in both his “earlier” and “later” philosophies, the “later” Wittgenstein’s and Whitehead’s respective views of the relation of philosophy and ordinary language, the question whether the “later” Wittgenstein and/or Whitehead uses words in a metaphorical sense in their philosophical works, the “later” Wittgenstein’s notion of “grammatical” propositions, the significance of cosmological language in both Wittgenstein and Whitehead. The paper is published at Academia [dot] edu -/- . (shrink)

Rendell and Whitehead argue persuasively that individual foraging specializations, if socially learned, are examples of cetacean culture. However, they discount ecological variation experienced by individuals within a population as a factor in such behavior. I suggest that ecological variation may play an important role in individual foraging specializations and describe several ecological parameters that may help us understand the high frequency of this interesting behavior in the marine habitat.

The paper offers a survey of four key moments in which symbolisms for quantification were first introduced: §§11–2 of Frege’s Begriffsschrift (1879); Peirce’s ‘Algebra of Logic’ (1885); Peano’s ‘Studii di Logica matematica’ (1897); and *9 (‘replaced’ by *8 in the second edition) of Whitehead and Russell’s Principia Mathematica (1910). Despite their divergent aims, these authors present substantially equivalent visions of what their differing symbolisms express. In each case, some passage suggests that one (but not the only) way to render (...) one of the symbols into ordinary-language words (German, English and Italian) is to say that there is something or some thing(s) exist(s). Exactly how this comes out varies from language to language, but the point remains the same. As a result, in almost all recent logic manuals that introduce ‘∃’, some passage says that the symbol means ‘there is’ or ‘there exists’, and the tradition has grown up of labelling ‘∃’ ‘the existential quantifier’. Some considerations are offered for deprecating this reading of ‘∃’ and the label adopted for it, and for preferring to read it as ‘for some (at least one)’ and for speaking of the ‘particular quantifier’. (shrink)

In this article I criticize the treatment of the relationship between Wittgenstein and Whitehead asserted by Jerry Gill in a 2014 article in Process Studies. I argue that Wittgenstein s later philosophy is much more sympathetic to Whitehead s view than Gill thinks.

Addressing 1) the problem of nihilism in Nietzsche and his response with the advocacy of self-creation; 2) Heidegger's response to Nietzsche's culmination of Western metaphysics by means of being as will to power in his later works; and 3) whether a remedial position occurs in the works of A.N. Whitehead.

There are close affinities between James' theory of time as discussed in A Pluralistic Universe and the so-called epochal theory of time offered by Alfred North Whitehead. In this paper I examine James' theory and compare it with the views of Henri Bergson.

“Ordinary algebra in its modern developments,” Whitehead observed in 1897, “is studied as being a large body of propositions, inter-related by deductive reasoning, and based upon conventional definitions which are generalizations of fundamental conceptions.” The use of ‘based upon’ here is perhaps too weak, for some “propositions” must of course be picked out as determinative of the kind of algebra in question by way of axioms. The definitions are then ancillary devices of notational abbreviation and may or may not (...) be of terms or phrases previously introduced, and may or may not be of a “generalized” form. “Thus a science is being created [ordinary algebra in its modern developments],” Whitehead continues, “which by reason of its fundamental character has relation to almost every event, phenomenal or intellectual, which can occur…. Such algebras are mathematical sciences which are not essentially concerned with number or quantity; and this bold extension beyond the traditional domain of pure quantity forms their peculiar interest. The ideal of mathematics should be to erect a calculus to facilitate reasoning in connection with every province of thought, or of external experience, in which the succession of thought, or of events can be definitely ascertained and precisely stated. So that all serious thought which is not philosophy, or inductive reasoning, or imaginative literature, shall be mathematics developed by means of a calculus.”. (shrink)

Sorely needed by scholars of nineteenth-century philosophy is a researdh bibliography on Francis Herbert Bradley (1846-1924). The existent bibliographic tools presently available on Bradley are very incomplete, inaccurate, and outdated, making them valueless for serious philosophical research on this very important contemporary philosopher. Every major book, review, doctoral dissertation, article, and note is cited exactly and completely. Approximately a thousand different citations are given indicating the tremendous influence Bradley's thought had on subsequent thinkers and movements. It is no minor thinker (...) who could influence deeply a Russell, James, or Whitehead. Like Plotinus before'him, Bradley's place in philosophy has not been fully appreciated because of the artificial divisions of philosophy proposed by its historians. In any event, this bibliography is offered to scholars whose interests are English Idealism in general and Bradley's philosophic contributions in particular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 461 Whitehead moved beyond classical accounts of "points" and "instants" toward a relativistic understanding of space/time. Lowe is cautious about reading too much of the later thinking into the pre-191o writings. Whitehead's interest in philosophy was satisfied mainly through his discussions with fellow members of the Cambridge Apostles who met regularly to discuss issues of a general nature. Among the Apostles McTaggart stands out as (...) having had the most important influence on Whitehead's philosophical development. McTaggart 's staunch neo-Hegelianism served as a stimulus to Whitehead but he retained an independent outlook throughout. Readers of Process and Reality will be interested in Lowe's treatment of Whitehead's flirtation with Roman Catholicism and his subsequent agnosticism during the last decade of the nineteenth century. By 19~5 he had regained his theism and found a place for it in his system. Much care is given to the collaboration with Russell on Principia Mathematica during the first decade of the new century. Lowe corrects the oft-held belief that Whitehead let Russell do most of the work on the text. By a careful study of the correspondence, Lowe shows that Whitehead continually guided the joint enterprise toward more detailed proofs and elaborations. Russell frequently remained content with truncated arguments for his fundamental logical principles. Whitehead demanded that each argument receive sufficient articulation so as to enhance the pedagogical value of the work. Russell's atomic pluralism, which insisted that all relations were external to their relata, never appealed to Whitehead. During the period of the Principia, Whitehead chose to ignore that aspect of Russell's perspective. One difficult dimension of this decade-long collaboration is Russell's alleged affair with Evelyn Whitehead. Lowe argues that this relationship was never consummated even though Evelyn was and remained one of the three great loves of Russell's life. Whitehead somehow managed to overlook what must have been an obvious threat to the integrity of his marriage. Lowe's brilliant and definitive account in this first volume of a two-volume work brings us to the Whiteheads' move from Cambridge to London. Difficulties with University officials and a need for larger horizons compelled Whitehead to emerge from the cozy atmosphere of Trinity College where he had spent thirty highly creative years working on the frontiers of mathematics and logic. The second volume will take us from the years in London to Whitehead's life at Harvard, and should, no doubt, be as rich and insightful as the first. ROBERT S. CORRINGTON The Pennsylvania State University Allan Janik. Essays on Wittgenstein and Weininger. Studien zur OsterreichischenPhilosophie, Band 9. Amsterdam: Rodopi B.V., 1985. Pp. 161. Paper, $18.95. In 1973, Allan Janik and Stephan Toulmin published Wittgenstein's Vienna in which they explored the intellectual atmosphere of the city in which Wittgenstein grew to intellectual maturity. Both Toulmin, who had been a student of Wittgenstein's at 46~ JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~5:3 JULY 1987 Cambridge, and Janik, who was interested in Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer, suspected that Wittgenstein might more accurately be seen as a Viennese intellectual dealing with the problems pervading the late Habsburg empire than simply as the successor of Frege and Russell who comes to dominate English and American philosophy. In the section on method in Wittgenstein's Vienna, Janik and Toulmin carefully avoided claiming that their picture of Wittgenstein and Vienna explained the Tractatus or the Philosophical Investigations, but they suggested that Wittgenstein is more intelligible as both a man and a thinker when viewed against his complete historical context, rather than when he is seen solely as a misfit in Cambridge in his last years. Janik has continued exploring themes connected with pre-World War I Austrian philosophy and has emphasized the connection between thinkers in this milieu with the new image of Wittgenstein which is emerging from the wealth of Wittgensteiniana now appearing. The present volume is a group of non-consecutive essays written from 1966 to 1984 in which Janik argues in favor of recognizing Austrian philosophy as something to be understood in terms of the special circumstances of the late Hapsburg empire and its demise. One of its... (shrink)

Bracken synthesizes Polanyi’s notion of morphogentic field and Whitehead’s notion of societies of actual occasions. These comments emphasize the implications of the metaphors involved in these notions. The rnetaphor of plants growing in afield lies beyond the concept of a morphogenetic field, and the metaphor of a society of interacting persons lies behind the concept of a society of actual occasions. I suggest that one of the implications of this metaphor is that there is not, as Bracken argues, a (...) problem of continuity in Whitehead’s metaphysics of events. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 127 seems to imply. Of course, this critique can easily be dismissed as asking for a book that Krieger did not wish to write. His method has produced important results, for Krieger has discerned developmental trends overlooked by others. Otherwise, the only area that I think needs further discussion is Ranke's conception of the nature and function of science. Krieger seems to imply that science automatically means (...) a nomological approach modeled upon the mechanical physical sciences. But Ranke was nourished in an atmosphere where science was often equated with Naturphilosophie. Certainly, Ranke's language is filled with images and terms popularized by Naturphilosophen. Ranke's quest for a science of history may fit very nicely with the ideal dimension of his thought if the science that he is talking about is analogous to Naturphilosophie. It may turn out that the basic polarity in Ranke's idea of history is an analytic construct that has little meaning for Ranke's own intentions. Krieger ends his study with a chapter devoted to the meaning of Ranke's work for modem historiography. It is the dialectical synthesis of the whole study. After recapitulating Ranke's achievements, Krieger then emphasizes the breach that separates Ranke from our conceptual world. We no longer share Ranke's beliefs or values. In fact, for most of us "he must seem simply archaic, and the more he is himself historically restored the more archaic he must seem" (p. 355). For the reader who had to struggle through this difficult book and to contend with Professor Krieger's passion for complex dependent clauses, this announcement appears as a grand denouement. But the shock is only temporary. Krieger's assertion of the differences that separate Ranke from us serves as a warning to those who still take Ranke's approach as an objective model for historical reconstruction. The deeper meaning of Ranke's view of history is the affirmation of history as an autonomous and independent form of knowledge. "History is an inimitable way of rendering comprehensible modes of humanity which must otherwise be incomprehensible" (p. 356). This form of knowledge, which is devoted "to the actual but equipped with a language of common sense organized around the categorical," proceedes by arranging things along a time line (p. 357). Here Krieger launches a spirited counterattack against those modem theorists who have questioned the viability of history as an independent form of knowledge or who have minimized the importance of developmental analysis, preferring instead to concentrate upon relatively static deep structures. Krieger's study affirms Ranke's project in its most general sense; that history is a cumulative logic of the actual, "the meeting ground of philosophy, science, and cataclysmic experience" (p. 356). And it serves, at the same time, as a positive demonstration that a developmental analysis does impart knowledge that other approaches cannot achieve. In this sense, Krieger's masterful study of Ranke reaffirms Ranke's central position as a founding father of modem historical thought. PETER HANNS REILL University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Quinn. The Confidence of British Philosophers:An Essay in Historical Narrative. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977. Pp. xii + 289. Gld. 80. This is a remarkable book. Almost all of it is a study, very well researched and presented, of four major English philosophical movements: Newtonians, the Utilitarians, the Oxford Hegelians, and the Russell, G. E. Moore, and Whitehead group. The study shows the initial enthusiasm, optimism, and confidence of each of the groups. Each believed that it had found a way to solve the intellectual and perhaps moral and social problems of mankind. As each movement developed, the confidence slowly eroded when philosophical problems and difficulties failed to disappear. The picture Quinn presents of these movements is very interesting. He has grouped together 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY much detail that makes us see the original intentions of the leaders of each of these movements. He also deftly shows how as stumbling blocks arose each movement lowered its goals and began to fade. Employing a very wide range of printed sources, Quinn presents a series of convincing vignettes, and in so doing be often reveals features of these movements that have been... (shrink)

ZusammenfassungEs werden zwei Begriffe, «Prozess» und «Funktion», besprochen, welche in der heutigen Philosophie zu Grundbegriffen zweier, miteinander unvereinbarer philosophischer Systeme geworden sind, die sich beide auf die Wissenschaft stützen. In dieser hingegen werden die beiden genannten Begriffe nicht als einander ausschliessend angesehen, sondern funktionieren als Leitbegriffe zweier nebeneinder stehenden Hypothesen, welche zu verschiedenen Methoden der Forschung führen. Im ersten Teil des vorliegenden Aufsatzes wird der Begriff «Prozess» im Hinblick auf die gegenwärtige Physik untersucht und vier Grundstellungen unterschieden, die sich in (...) der Relativitätstheorie Whiteheads, in der Einsteinschen einheitlichen Feldtheorie, in der mit dieser unvereinbaren Auffassung der führenden Quantenphysiker und dem Bridgmanschen Operationismus ausprägen. Im zweiten Teil wird der Begriff «Funktion» im Hinblick auf die heutige Biologie erörtert. Die beiden oben erwähnten philosophischen Systeme zeigen aber, dass philosophisch Funktionen als Prozesse und umgekehrt Prozesse als Funktionen aufgefasst werden können. Andererseits beeinflusst jeder Begriff von «Prozess», der in der Physik entwickelt wird, die Biologie und jeder Begriff von «Funktion», der in der Biologie auftritt, hat Bedeutung für die Physik. Im Grunde genommen, sind die beiden genannten Begriffe die Grenzpunkte des Weges, den die Entwicklung der, aus der antiken Philosophie stammenden Begriffe «Sein» und «Substanz» genommen hat. Beide haben ihre berechtigte methodische Verwendung in der Wissenschaft. Vielleicht könnte die Philosophie, deren Grundfragen in den Wissenschaften eine fundamentale Rolle spielen, aus diesem Vorgehen der Wissenschaften lernen, ihre Begriffe genauer zu präzisieren, indem sie, statt ihre Thesen zu verabsolutieren, diese als Forschungshypothesen auffasst, deren Folgen zu untersuchen sind. Auch könnte man auf diese Weise dazu kommen, die philosophischen Thesen nicht als absolute, ausschliessende Gegensätze, sondern als «komplementär» aufzufassen und diese «komplementären» Gesichtspunkte für die wissenschaftliche Forschung auszuwerten. (shrink)

This slim volume contains many concise, jargon-free expositions of Alfred North Whitehead's thought, which it presents as a "metaphysics of construction". The main principle of this metaphysics is that everything is a product of creative self-ordering. Rose presents Whitehead as belonging to the Kantian tradition. But, whereas Kant limited self-ordering to the constitution of rational subjectivity, Whitehead broadens and ontologizes the domain of self-ordering. Simply put, Kant's set of categories applies only to the human subject, whereas (...) class='Hi'>Whitehead's larger and different set of categories applies universally with the human subject being one application. (shrink)

The writings of Joseph Henry Woodger (1894–1981) are often taken to exemplify everything that was wrongheaded, misguided, and just plain wrong with early twentieth-century philosophy of biology. Over the years, commentators have said of Woodger: (a) that he was a fervent logical empiricist who tried to impose the explanatory gold standards of physics onto biology, (b) that his philosophical work was completely disconnected from biological science, (c) that he possessed no scientific or philosophical credentials, and (d) that his work was (...) disparaged – if not altogether ignored – by the biologists and philosophers of his era. In this paper, we provide the first systematic examination of Woodger’s oeuvre, and use it to demonstrate that the four preceding claims are false. We argue that Woodger’s ideas have exerted an important influence on biology and philosophy, and submit that the current consensus on his legacy stems from a highly selective reading of his works. By rehabilitating Woodger, we hope to show that there is no good reason to continue to disregard the numerous contributions to the philosophy of biology produced in the decades prior to the professionalization of the discipline. (shrink)

In this dissertation I offer a theory of intrinsic value based on contextualist principles drawn from the value theories of John Dewey and Alfred North Whitehead. The point of departure for the argument is the contextualist view that the qualitative patters representing in experience objects of states of affairs to which we attribute values provide necessary, but not sufficient, conditions to elicit particular valuations, and ground the evaluative judgments we make. The sufficient conditions for valuation include a broader context (...) of memories, beliefs, and peripheral qualia that combine in an integral experiential whole whose value is not reducible to that of its parts. It is first argued that value is, as G.E. Moore suggested, a simple, indefinable property. This property is emergent from experiential qualitative patterns in the sense that value is conditioned by the patterns, but is not itself a condition of them. An analysis of experiential qualitative pattern is then offered, which indicates how some parts of these patterns are focused on in evaluative judgment as crucial for the reproduction of particular values through practical action, whereas the influence of other parts is largely ignored, thus forming a relatively constant experiential context. Finally, a theory of evaluative judgment is offered based on contextualist principles. It is suggested that a contextualist theory can answer the challenge of value relativism by showing how evaluative judgment is 'position relative' rather than 'author relative'. That is, two subjects many come to different evaluative judgments on account of their differing positions or situations, while both may agree that the other's judgment is sound given his or her situation. (shrink)

Mander's book is a welcomed addition to the recent interest in Francis Herbert Bradley's philosophy, especially his metaphysics. The formation of the new Bradleian Society and the soon to be published proceedings of papers written by contemporary philosophers like R. Wollheim, T. Sprigge, T. Baldwin, and S. Candlish and D. Holdcroft, among others, for the very successful F. H. Bradley Colloquium at Oxford attest to this renewed burst of scholarly energy in a thinker whom many believe had been disposed of (...) by Russell and Moore. However, it is not easy to eliminate the thought of a great philosopher, and especially one who made epoch-making contributions to logic, metaphysics, and ethics in our century and who has profoundly influenced philosophers like Whitehead and Russell, James and Dewey, Eliot and Blanshard. Caricatures and misrepresentations are the lot of every metaphysician from Parmenides to Whitehead; Bradley is no exception. A main objective of Mander's book is to expose these misunderstandings and to assess recent Bradleian scholarship with respect to several primal metaphysical notions developed principally in Bradley's Appearance and Reality and Essays on Truth and Reality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Richard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New PragmatismRichard RumanaRichard Rorty: Prophet and Poet of the New Pragmatism, by David L. Hall; xii & 290 pp. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994, $49.50 cloth, $16.95 paper.David Hall has written a highly creative, original—and idiosyncratic—work on Rorty, with its idiosyncrasy another aspect that makes the book well worth reading. This does not mean that it is always satisfying, however, and (...) since Hall tries to find a blend of “exuberant praise and testy complaint” (p. 7), this review will adopt the same method.On the positive side, perhaps there is no better way to approach Rorty than by employing Rorty’s own method of reading philosophical and literary works: narrative recontextualization. Since Hall states, “Deductive and dialectical logics are irrelevant to (Rorty’s) thought” (p. 9), he had to find a means of avoiding the point/counterpoint strategy of direct argumentation so as to do justice to Rorty’s own conversational strategy of reading texts. Thus, Hall (compared, for example, to Konstantin Kolenda) is unique in his willingness “to follow Rorty through the looking glass” (a reference to Rorty’s discarding the traditional metaphor of the mind as a mirror) and to take seriously Rorty’s thinking as “beyond the philosophical pale” (p. 3). Hall makes a virtue of his strategy: “The best one can do is to judge the relative attractiveness of Rorty’s views by recourse to alternative visions” (p. 4). The breadth of Hall’s background in philosophy, both Eastern and Western, his fine ear for irony, and his acute sense of history make him an exemplary reader who can offer attractive alternate visions by which to examine Rorty’s own vision.The subtitle of the book (“Poet and Prophet of the New Pragmatism”) announces Hall’s underlying theme; he takes his cue from the pragmatic Deweyan aspect of Rorty’s work, with the phrase “new pragmatism” referring to Rorty’s reinterpretation of pragmatism along linguistic lines. Where the original emphasis of pragmatism was on ideas as habits through which experience could be guided for the satisfaction of desires in terms of either private or public goods, Rorty’s neopragmatism replaces ideas and experience with language and alternate vocabularies as the medium through which desires are fulfilled. With this emphasis on language comes Hall’s reading of Rorty as poet and prophet. The desire for self-creation is accomplished through poetry and literature. The desire for social tolerance is marked by Rorty’s commitment to a form of Utopian Democracy. Hall’s reading of Rorty is well grounded in the mutations of Pragmatism from Peirce to Davidson and from aesthetics to social theory.On the negative side, a number of Hall’s claims are open to objection, some of them are minor, some more substantive. Of the minor variety is a footnote for Chapter 2: “Rorty’s Ph.D. dissertation was on Whitehead and Aristotle”—whereas, in Rorty’s dissertation, The Concept of Potentiality (Yale, 1956), Whitehead appears only in the bibliography and is not mentioned in the text at all. [End Page 144]On more substantive issues, Hall’s contention in Chapter One, where he discusses Rorty’s historicism, is that Rorty is unable to free himself from the Kantian problematic of the autonomy of value; he remains, thus, an heir to the “aims of the Enlightenment” (p. 51). This seems to be a narrowly conceived interpretation. Admittedly, Rorty has recently said that he would now not define his thinking as “postmodern” since the term has become laden with excess baggage from other disciplines (although, he still accepts Lyotard’s definition, “distrust of metanarratives,” as pertinent to what he is doing). On the other hand, except for an acceptance of the secularization of the public realm, there seems to be little in his thinking that characterizes him as an “Enlightenment” figure, and Hall himself seems to concede this when he later refers to Rorty as a “Nihilist” (p. 170). Is it possible to be both a nihilist and committed to the Enlightenment? I find it even harder to follow Hall in his belief that Rorty’s nihilism “expresses itself directly in Rorty... (shrink)

Cairns, D. My own life.--Chapman, H. The phenomenon of language.--Embree, L. E. An interpretation of the doctrine of the ego in Husserl's Ideen.--Farber, M. The philosophic impact of the facts themselves.--Gurwitsch, A. Perceptual coherence as the foundation of the judgment of prediction.--Hartshorne, C. Husserl and Whitehead on the concrete.--Jordan, R. W. Being and time: some aspects of the ego's involvement in his mental life.--Kersten, F. Husserl's doctrine of noesis-noema.--McGill, V. J. Evidence in Husserl's phenomenology.--Natanson, M. Crossing the Manhattan Bridge.--Spiegelberg, (...) H. Husserl's way into phenomenology for Americans: a letter and its sequel.--Zaner, R. M. The art of free phantasy in rigorous phenomenological science.--Cairns, D. An approach to Husserlian phenomenology.--Cairns, D. The ideality of verbal expressions.--Cairns, D. Perceiving, remembering, image-awareness, feigning awareness.--Bibliography of the writings of Dorion Cairns (p. [263]-264). (shrink)

The use of the symbol ∨for disjunction in formal logic is ubiquitous. Where did it come from? The paper details the evolution of the symbol ∨ in its historical and logical context. Some sources say that disjunction in its use as connecting propositions or formulas was introduced by Peano; others suggest that it originated as an abbreviation of the Latin word for “or,” vel. We show that the origin of the symbol ∨ for disjunction can be traced to Whitehead (...) and Russell’s pre-Principia work in formal logic. Because of Principia’s influence, its notation was widely adopted by philosophers working in logic (the logical empiricists in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Carnap and early Quine). Hilbert’s adoption of ∨ in his Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik guaranteed its widespread use by mathematical logicians. The origins of other logical symbols are also discussed. (shrink)

This volume's aim is to clarify, criticize and theoretically develop some of Whitehead's major philosophic ideas and insights. Eighteen distinguished contributors follow Whitehead in his unique attempt to integrate the often disparate concerns of science , art, religion, social life and common sense. They manage to avoid the twin pitfalls of uncritical acceptance and impatient rejection of Whitehead's thought. They delineate Whitehead's indebtedness to and divergence from the philosophic traditions of Plato, Leibniz, Hume, Hegel, Bergson and (...) others. Some of the distinguished philosophers contributing to this volume are: Charles Hartshorne, William Ernest Hocking, Richard M. Rorty, Gregory Vlastos, William A. Christian, Sr., Nathaniel Lawrence, Ivor Leclerc, Victor Lowe, Robert M. Palter, and Donald W. Sherburne. Originally published in 1963 by Prentice-Hall, this edition contains a new preface by the editor. (shrink)

Rorty's aversion to metaphysics is well known, so the extent of his early work on Whitehead might come as a surprise. This article examines the young Rorty's critical assessment of Whitehead to show how it demonstrates the consequences of diverging metaphilosophical orientations. It argues that Rorty's insistence on judging Whitehead's work through an exclusively epistemological frame causes him to miss its more radical existential and epistemic implications. After examining how Rorty and Whitehead operate with different cost-benefit (...) analyses as to the risks and benefits of speculative philosophy, it suggests that closer attention to the fuller stakes of Whitehead's project shows that his metaphysics are not opposed to the “poeticized” culture that Rorty calls for, one where the distinction between making and finding is no longer metaphysically foundational. (shrink)

Alfred North Whitehead's SCIENCE AND THE MODERN WORLD, originally published in 1925, redefines the concept of modern science.