"Platonism" is not only an example of this movement, the first "in" the whole history of philosophy. It commands it, it commands this whole history. [But the "whole" of this history is conflictual, heterogenous; it gives place to only relatively stabilizable hegemonies. Thus, it is never totalized, never totalizes itself.] A philosophy as such (an effect of hegemony) would henceforth always be "Platonic." Hence the necessity to continue to try to think what takes place in Plato, with Plato, what is (...) shown there, what is hidden, so as to win there or lose there.1. (shrink)

Since the appearance of Plato’s Dialogues, philosophers have been preoccupied with the identity of Socrates and have maintained that successful interpretation of the work hinges upon a clear understanding of what thoughts and ideas can be attributed to him. In Descent of Socrates, Peter Warnek offers a new interpretation of Plato by considering the appearance of Socrates within Plato’s work as a philosophical question. Warnek reads the Dialogues as an inquiry into the nature of Socrates and in (...) doing so opens up the relationship between humankind and the natural world. Here, Socrates appears as a demonic and tragic figure whose obsession with the task of self-knowledge transforms the history of philosophy. In this uncompromising work, Warnek reveals the importance of the concept of nature in the Platonic Dialogues in light of Socratic practice and the Ancient ideas that inspire contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

The paper explores a connection between Schelling’s celebrated Freedom Essay and Plato’s Timaeus by considering the importance of Schelling’s translation of a phrase found in the Platonic dialogue in which Timaeus expresses the limits of human discourse, speaking of it as a kind of “bastard reasoning.” These limits are said to arise necessarily through the progression of the inquiry carried out by Timaeus. Schelling’s own resistance to viewing his inquiry determined by such limits and such necessity is highlighted by the (...) fact that he curiously translates the phrase as “false imagination” or sin. The paper questions the reasons for such resistance given the striking structural similarity between the Timaeus and Schelling’s own essay. The paper concludes that Schelling’s thinking of the “unground” is comparable to the chorological interruption enacted in the Timaeus, but that Schelling does not consider how such an interruption bears upon God’s word. The paper thus points to a self-estranging necessity at the heart of all discourse and thought. (shrink)

The paper considers the legacy of Empedocles as it bears upon the difficulty confronted by Hölderlin in his Death of Empedocles: how are we to understand Hölderlin’s failure to complete this ‘mourning play’ despite his continued and repeated efforts? This difficulty is elaborated through a reading of Hölderlin’s own understanding of “elemental tragedy” as it is presented and developed in the three dense so-called Homburg essays on tragedy. It is evident that the understanding of tragedy that emerges here entails a (...) dramatic poetry that would break with the prevailing tradition and its determination of poetry according to a mimetic operation. Aristotle’s own account of Empedocles and his apparent refusal to consider Empedocles as a poet is considered alongside other ancient accounts of Empedoclean poetry, notably those provided by Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Lucretius. In this context, Nietzsche’s account of the end of tragedy through his interpretation of another philosophical death, that of Socrates, is introduced as a counterpoint to help elucidate the difficulties faced by Hölderlin. This Nietzschean account of ‘the image of the dying Socrates’ also proves to be related to Nietzsche’s own brief but provocative statements concerning what is eclipsed with the loss of Empedoclean tragic philosophy and emergence of Socratism. The paper concludes by returning to Hölderlin’s letters to Böhlendorff as these letters make thematic an ‘elemental’ difference in the impossible recovery of the tragic in our time. (shrink)

The paper begins by taking seriously Heidegger's provocative claims concerning Hegel's relationship to the Greeks. Most notably, the enigmatic assertion that Hegel, as the "last Greek," brings Greek philosophy to its completion through a historical thinking is considered in terms of the strange sense of repetition it opens up: the Hegelian presentation of Greek philosophy must both present that philosophy, repeat its movement, but also, in the repetition, present the truth of that movement for the first time. It thus must (...) remain undecided whether Hegel's presentation only opens up a necessity already at work in Greek philosophical history or whether that presentation, in fact, first grants such necessity to that history. The singularity of Hegel's relation to the Greeks is then explored through an examination of Hegel's own statements concerning the singularity of Aristotle. In this way, it becomes apparent that Hegel's own thought, in its entirety, asserts itself as nothing other that a decisive repetition of the Aristotelian speculative thought of actuality. This exceptional position of Aristotle in Hegel's logic of history suggests that there is a need for another sense of history's movement, in which that movement does not simply progress but unfolds as the sin- gular dialogue between one Greek and one German. (shrink)

The article takes up the question of the “truth” of images by means of a somewhat playful reflection upon our human kinship with canine life and by considering the recurrent images of dogs of all shapes and sizes within the philosophical tradition. Here there is occasion to consider both Socrates and Confucius, who had a special fondness for dogs and who were at times compared to dogs themselves. The paper begins with a reading of Kant’s schematism in the First Critique, (...) as an operation that would establish a mediating relation between the concepts of the understanding and sensible intuitions, and ends with a meditation upon the dog-themed painting, “Dark Room,” by the contemporary artist, Alan Loehle. Kant accounts for our ability to grasp that we see a dog by introducing a mysterious distortional skewing or Verzeichnung, which as a power of the imagination is able to freely sketch what appears for it within the sensible. The sense of this Kantian skewing or sketching thereby anticipates what Heidegger names the essential Verunstaltung belonging originally to the event of truth. The last half of the paper turns to Jean-Luc Nancy’s difficult but provocative work on the abysmal ground of images and attempts to show in this way how our human kinship with canine life exposes us to what Nancy would think, following Heidegger, as the elemental strife between earth and sky. (shrink)

The paper asks about the difficulty of reading Schelling's work today given the historical biases that dominate contemporary philosophical inquiry. But if we cannot succeed as the readers Schelling himself appears to be looking for, this does not already have to mean that his work cannot speak to our time. Such a possibility, however, presupposes that we consider Schelling's work as it is inseparably connected to a critique of the modern project and as it points thereby to the monstrous discord (...) that defines human philosophical discourse as such. In particular, the paper considers the Kantian opposition between faith and knowledge and claims that this opposition itself appears to establish a kind of limit for philosophical inquiry today. In this context, some reflections are offered on the history of European nihilism and the death of God. The paper concludes by giving several indications of how Schelling's thought promises to subvert this opposition and this limit. (shrink)

The paper begins by raising once again the question of the possible unity of Schelling’s work, despite the undeniable transformations the work undergoes. It isproposed that such unity is best considered by taking seriously the primacy of the philosophical task that Schelling confronts, rather than by emphasizing whatever doctrinal or doxographical positions he espouses. Such a view of Schelling’s work is confirmed if one considers his continual critique of predicative discourse. Philosophical thought remains irreducible to propositional content because the matter (...) of philosophy must already be presupposed if such propositions are to arise. This matter or “unprethinkable” source, given to thinking, can only be addressed in an explicit affirmation of freedom and life. Thus, Schelling’s work as it raises the question of freedom has to be encountered as itself a manifestation of freedom, and such an interpretation of Schelling for its part also must presuppose the freedom of the interpreter. The paper argues that this approach to Schelling makes it necessary to be attentive to the “performative dimension” of his work, to the way in which what is at issue in it becomes manifest indirectly. Schelling’s demand for a positive philosophy thus also calls for and makes possible a different relation to language and the word. The word can no longer be taken as the sensible marker for an intelligible content, but becomes the living bond of what is. (shrink)

The paper begins by raising once again the question of the possible unity of Schelling’s work, despite the undeniable transformations the work undergoes. It isproposed that such unity is best considered by taking seriously the primacy of the philosophical task that Schelling confronts, rather than by emphasizing whatever doctrinal or doxographical positions he espouses. Such a view of Schelling’s work is confirmed if one considers his continual critique of predicative discourse. Philosophical thought remains irreducible to propositional content because the matter (...) of philosophy must already be presupposed if such propositions are to arise. This matter or “unprethinkable” source, given to thinking, can only be addressed in an explicit affirmation of freedom and life. Thus, Schelling’s work as it raises the question of freedom has to be encountered as itself a manifestation of freedom, and such an interpretation of Schelling for its part also must presuppose the freedom of the interpreter. The paper argues that this approach to Schelling makes it necessary to be attentive to the “performative dimension” of his work, to the way in which what is at issue in it becomes manifest indirectly. Schelling’s demand for a positive philosophy thus also calls for and makes possible a different relation to language and the word. The word can no longer be taken as the sensible marker for an intelligible content, but becomes the living bond of what is. (shrink)

The paper revisits the discussion of freedom in the Phenomenology of Perception and considers how according to Merleau-Ponty a phenomenology of freedom must challenge the tradition that attempts to account for experience and appearance through the filter of reflective consciousness. The paper begins by posing this problem in broad historical terms, as a distinctly modern predicament, and briefly considers Schelling’s philosophical engagement with negative philosophy as a provocation and historical precedent for reading the phenomenological work of Merleau-Ponty. It is noted (...) that Schelling’s criticism of the formal freedom of Kant prefi gures Merleau-Ponty’s polemic against Sartrean freedom, although the claim is also made that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of freedom remains irreducible to the terms established by this polemic, since what appears is a freedom no longer determined by consciousness and reflection. Before turning to the reading of the Phenomenology of Perception, a single passage is also adduced from The Visible and Invisible in order to demonstrate how the concern elaborated in the Phenomenology runs throughout Merleau-Ponty’s work, namely, that a phenomenological interrogation of experience must break down the boundaries of what is properly one’s own as this would be defined in and by the reflective act. The reading of the Phenomenology then proceeds by showing how the entire work is framed by the possibility of transforming philosophical practice through an overturning of the dominant paradigm of reflection. The paper interrogates in this light the Preface, the chapter on Descartes’ cogito and the concluding chapter on freedom. A connection is drawn between the appearance of the “tacit” cogito and the elaboration of freedom that ends by insisting upon the necessity of silence. (shrink)

This paper seeks to steer a way between a dogmatic and a skeptical reading of the Meno by taking up the performative dimension of Socrates’ responseto Meno. How does the philosophical inquiry into the definition of virtue promise to radicalize Meno’s alleged concern with the genesis of virtue? The paper shows that Socrates is acting, in a way, as an educator, in the sense that he attempts to awaken Meno to the task of self-knowledge as it bears upon the possibility (...) of virtue in his own life. Thus, a dogmatic response to Meno’s question could not succeed in interrupting his tendentious memorizing approach to philosophical questions. But the paper also develops this reading by retracing the way in which nature undergoes a transformation, or a doubling, during the course of the dialogue. It becomes evident that the apparently inconclusive answer at the end of the dialogue, which states that the origin of virtue is to be found in “divine dispensation” and “correct opinion,” is only understandable in light of this transformation or doubling of nature that is made manifest dialogically andmythically in Socrates’ interaction with the young and handsome Meno. Socrates thus appears as a kind of “Teiresias in Athens,” but his clear failure inimpacting Meno in any lasting way only demonstrates that the possibility of political health is irreducible to any and all technical production. (shrink)

This paper seeks to steer a way between a dogmatic and a skeptical reading of the Meno by taking up the performative dimension of Socrates’ responseto Meno. How does the philosophical inquiry into the definition of virtue promise to radicalize Meno’s alleged concern with the genesis of virtue? The paper shows that Socrates is acting, in a way, as an educator, in the sense that he attempts to awaken Meno to the task of self-knowledge as it bears upon the possibility (...) of virtue in his own life. Thus, a dogmatic response to Meno’s question could not succeed in interrupting his tendentious memorizing approach to philosophical questions. But the paper also develops this reading by retracing the way in which nature undergoes a transformation, or a doubling, during the course of the dialogue. It becomes evident that the apparently inconclusive answer at the end of the dialogue, which states that the origin of virtue is to be found in “divine dispensation” and “correct opinion,” is only understandable in light of this transformation or doubling of nature that is made manifest dialogically andmythically in Socrates’ interaction with the young and handsome Meno. Socrates thus appears as a kind of “Teiresias in Athens,” but his clear failure inimpacting Meno in any lasting way only demonstrates that the possibility of political health is irreducible to any and all technical production. (shrink)

Peter Warnek: Descent of socrates: Self-knowledge & cryptic nature in the platonic dialogues Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-5 DOI 10.1007/s11007-012-9214-0 Authors Christopher P. Long, The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA Journal Continental Philosophy Review Online ISSN 1573-1103 Print ISSN 1387-2842.

As I write this, in November 1971, people are dying in East Bengal from lack of food, shelter, and medical caxc. The suffering and death that are occurring there now axe not inevitable, 1101; unavoidable in any fatalistic sense of the term. Constant poverty, a cyclone, and a civil war have turned at least nine million people into destitute refugees; nevertheless, it is not beyond Lhe capacity of the richer nations to give enough assistance to reduce any further suffering to (...) very small proportions. The decisions arid actions of human beings can prevent this kind of suffering. Unfortunately, human beings have not made the necessary decisions. At the individual level, people have, with very few exceptions, not responded to the situation in any signihczmt way. Generally speaking, people have not given large sums to relief funds; they have not written t0 their parliamentaxy representatives demanding increased government assistance; they have not demonstrated in the streets, held symbolic fasts, or done anything else directed toward providing thc refugees with the means to satisfy their essential needs. At thc government level, no govcrmmcnt has given the sort of massive aid that would enable the refugees to survive fm: more than a few days. Britain, for instance, has given rather more than most countries. It has, to date, given £14,750,000. For comparative purposes, B1~itain’s share of thc nonreccverabla development costs of the Anglo-French Concorde project is already in excess of £275,000,000, and on present estimates will reach £440,000,¤00. The implication is that the British government values a supersonic transport more than thirty times as.. (shrink)

This paper argues that a set of questioning attitudes are among the foundations of human and animal minds. While both verbal questioning and states of curiosity are generally explained in terms of metacognitive desires for knowledge or true belief, I argue that each is better explained by a prelinguistic sui generis type of mental attitude of questioning. I review a range of considerations in support of such a proposal and improve on previous characterizations of the nature of these attitudes. I (...) then broaden their explanatory scope to include a number of forms of exploratory search. The paper has three main goals: to characterize the nature of the questioning attitudes, outlining their causal role and type of content; to argue that they are fundamental components of the mind, being widespread among animals and not constructed during ontogeny out of other attitudes; and to suggest that they explain a great deal more behavior than one might think. (shrink)

Since its original publication in 1975, this groundbreaking work has awakened millions of people to the existence of "speciesism"—our systematic disregard of nonhuman animals—inspiring a worldwide movement to transform our attitudes to animals and eliminate the cruelty we inflict on them. In Animal Liberation, author Peter Singer exposes the chilling realities of today’s "factory farms" and product-testing procedures—destroying the spurious justifications behind them, and offering alternatives to what has become a profound environmental and social as well as moral issue. (...) An important and persuasive appeal to conscience, fairness, decency, and justice, it is essential reading for the supporter and the skeptic alike. (shrink)

Single-premise epistemic closure is the principle that: if one is in an evidential position to know that P where P entails Q, then one is in an evidential position to know that Q. In this paper, I defend the viability of opposition to closure. A key task for such an opponent is to precisely formulate a restricted closure principle that remains true to the motivations for abandoning unrestricted closure but does not endorse particularly egregious instances of closure violation. I focus (...) on two brands of epistemic theory that naturally incorporate closure restrictions. The first type holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant question. The second holds that the truth value of a knowledge ascription is relative to a relevant topic. For each approach, I offer a formalization of a leading theory from the literature and use this formalization to evaluate the theory’s adequacy in terms of a precise set of desiderata. I conclude that neither theory succeeds in meeting these desiderata, casting doubt on the viability of the underlying approaches. Finally, I offer a novel variant of the topic-sensitive approach that fares better. (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

Political decisions have the potential to greatly impact our lives. Think of decisions in relation to abortion or climate change, for example. This makes political legitimacy an important normative concern. But what makes political decisions legitimate? Are they legitimate in virtue of having support from the citizens? Democratic conceptions of political legitimacy answer in the affirmative. Such conceptions righly highlight that legitimate political decision-making must be sensitive to disagreements among the citizens. But what if democratic decisions fail to track what (...) there is most reason to do? What if a democratically elected government fails to take measures necessary to protect its population from threats related to climate change? Peter argues that the legitimacy of political decisions doesn't just depend on respect for the citizens' will; and defends a novel hybrid conception of political legitimacy, called the Epistemic Accountability conception. According to this conception, political legitimacy also depends on how political decision-making responds to evidence for what there is most reason to do. Grounds for Political Legitmacy starts with an overview of the main ways in which philosophers have thought about political legitimacy, and identifies the epistemic accountability conception as an overlooked alternative. It then develops the epistemic accountability conception of political legitimacy and discusses its implications for legitimate political decision-making. Considering the norms that should govern political debate, it examines the role of experts in politics, and probes the responsibilities of democratically elected political leaders and as well as of citizens. (shrink)

In at least some cases of justified perceptual belief, our perceptual experience itself, as opposed to beliefs about it, evidences and thereby justifies our belief. While the phenomenon is common, it is also mysterious. There are good reasons to think that perceptions cannot justify beliefs directly, and there is a significant challenge in explaining how they do. After explaining just how direct perceptual justification is mysterious, I considerMichael Huemers (Skepticism and the Veil of Perception, 2001) and Bill Brewers (Perception and (...) Reason, 1999) recent, but radically different, attempts to eliminate it. I argue that both are unsuccessful, though a consideration of their mistakes deepens our appreciation of the mystery. (shrink)

This book offers a reassessment of the political philosophy of the British Idealists, a group of once influential and now neglected nineteenth-century Hegelian philosophers, whose work has been much misunderstood. Peter Nicholson focuses on F. H. Bradley's idea of morality and moral philosophy; T. H. Green's theory of the Common Good, of the social nature of rights, of freedom, and of state interference; and Bernard Bosanquet's notorious theory of the General Will. By examining the arguments offered by the Idealists (...) and by their critics the author is able to penetrate the deep layers of hostile comment laid down by several generations of later writers and to show that these ideas, once properly understood, are not only defensible but interesting and important. (shrink)

In the Western world it is usually taken as given that we all want happiness, and our educational arrangements tacitly acknowledge this. Happiness, Hope, and Despair argues, however, that education has an important role to play in deepening our understanding of suffering and despair as well as happiness and joy. Education can be uncomfortable, unpredictable, and unsettling; it can lead to greater uncertainty and unhappiness. Drawing on the work of Søren Kierkegaard, Miguel de Unamuno, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Simone Weil, Paulo Freire, (...) and others, Peter Roberts shows why these features of educational life need not be feared; to the contrary, they can be seen as a source of hope and human fulfilment. After years of negotiating an education system dominated by the language of competition, performance, and economic advancement, students and teachers often long for something different; they seek not just measurable success but also opportunities to ask searching questions of themselves and the world they encounter. Happiness, Hope, and Despair makes an important contribution toward meeting this need. It fosters a rethinking of the nature, purpose, and value of education, and opens up possibilities for further scholarly and professional inquiry. (shrink)

This book presents and evaluates the late philosophy (Spätphilosophie) of F. W. J. Schelling (1775-1854) across a wide range of issues, ranging from relation between pure thinking and being, to the philosophy of mythology and religion, to the philosophy of history, to questions concerning the philosophy of nature and freedom. Simultaneously, it discusses Hegel's treatment of similar issues, and systematically compares the two thinkers. This is the first time, in an English-language publication, that these two major German Idealists have been (...) compared in such detail along such a broad front. The book begins with three chapters exploring the development of Schelling's thinking concerning transcendental philosophy, nature and teleology, human freedom, and the theory of history, from his earliest publications up to his middle years. Against this background, the book then presents Schelling's distinction between "positive" and "negative" philosophy, the defining mark of his late philosophy. It explores his theory of pure a priori thinking (negative philosophy), and his account of the transition from negative to positive philosophy. The major components of Schelling's positive philosophy, including his conception of "un-pre-thinkable being", and his theories of mythology and revelation, are then discussed. Throughout, a comparative assessment of Hegel's approach similar issues is sustained. Schelling emerges as a philosopher who traced his own highly distinctive path through the thicket of problems bequeathed by Kant, and whose systematic responses to these problems still merit serious consideration as alternatives to those of Hegel. (shrink)

Our topic is the theory of topics. My goal is to clarify and evaluate three competing traditions: what I call the way-based approach, the atom-based approach, and the subject-predicate approach. I develop criteria for adequacy using robust linguistic intuitions that feature prominently in the literature. Then I evaluate the extent to which various existing theories satisfy these constraints. I conclude that recent theories due to Parry, Perry, Lewis, and Yablo do not meet the constraints in total. I then introduce the (...) issue-based theory—a novel and natural entry in the atom-based tradition that meets our constraints. In a coda, I categorize a recent theory from Fine as atom-based, and contrast it to the issue-based theory, concluding that they are evenly matched, relative to our main criteria of adequacy. I offer tentative reasons to nevertheless favour the issue-based theory. (shrink)

This is the first volume of a projected three-volume set on the subject of innateness. The extent to which the mind is innate is one of the central questions in the human sciences, with important implications for many surrounding debates. By bringing together the top nativist scholars in philosophy, psychology, and allied disciplines these volumes provide a comprehensive assessment of nativist thought and a definitive reference point for future nativist inquiry. The Innate Mind: Structure and Content, concerns the fundamental architecture (...) of the mind, addressing such question as: What capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections are innate? How do these innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal kingdom? The editors have provided an introduction giving some of the background to debates about innateness and introducing each of the subsequent essays, as well as a consolidated bibliography that will be a valuable reference resource for all those interested in this area. The volume will be of great importance to all researchers and students interested in the fundamental nature and powers of the human mind. Together, the three volumes in the series will provide the most intensive and richly cross-disciplinary investigation of nativism ever undertaken. They point the way toward a synthesis of nativist work that promises to provide a new understanding of our minds and their place in the natural order. (shrink)

Epistemic defeat is standardly understood in either evidentialist or responsibilist terms. The seminal treatment of defeat is an evidentialist one, due to John Pollock, who famously distinguishes between undercutting and rebutting defeaters. More recently, an orthogonal distinction due to Jennifer Lackey has become widely endorsed, between so-called doxastic (or psychological) and normative defeaters. We think that neither doxastic nor normative defeaters, as Lackey understands them, exist. Both of Lackey’s categories of defeat derive from implausible assumptions about epistemic responsibility. Although Pollock’s (...) evidentialist view is superior, the evidentialism per se can be purged from it, leaving a general structure of defeat that can be incorporated in a reliabilist theory that is neither evidentialist nor responsibilist in any way. (shrink)

In the mid-seventeenth century a movement of self-styled experimental philosophers emerged in Britain. Originating in the discipline of natural philosophy amongst Fellows of the fledgling Royal Society of London, it soon spread to medicine and by the eighteenth century had impacted moral and political philosophy and even aesthetics. Early modern experimental philosophers gave epistemic priority to observation and experiment over theorising and speculation. They decried the use of hypotheses and system-building without recourse to experiment and, in some quarters, developed a (...) philosophy of experiment. The movement spread to the Netherlands and France in the early eighteenth century and later impacted Germany. Its important role in early modern philosophy was subsequently eclipsed by the widespread adoption of the Kantian historiography of modern philosophy, which emphasised the distinction between rationalism and empiricism and had no place for the historical phenomenon of early modern experimental philosophy. The re-emergence of interest in early modern experimental philosophy roughly coincided with the development of contemporary x-phi and there are some important similarities between the two. (shrink)

Explores how to identify future-proof science. Peter Vickers takes a transdisciplinary approach in his analysis of 'scientific fact' in order to defend science against potentially dangerous scepticism.

An introduction to the life and work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida.

Framed by the theory of evolution, this volume offers a new understanding of the mechanisms by which we transfer information from narrative make-believe to real life. Ranging across game theory and philosophy of science, as well as poetics and aesthetics, Peter Swirski explains how literary fictions perform as a systematic tool of enquiry, driven by thought experiments. Crucially, he argues for a continuum between the cognitive tools employed by scientists, philosophers, and scholars or writers of fiction."--Jacket.

This chapter investigates the extent to which claims of massive modular organization of the mind (espoused by some members of the evolutionary psychology research program) are consistent with the main elements of the simple heuristics research program. A number of potential sources of conflict between the two programs are investigated and defused. However, the simple heuristics program turns out to undermine one of the main arguments offered in support of massive modularity, at least as the latter is generally understood by (...) philosophers. So one result of the argument will be to force us to re-examine the way in which the notion of modularity in cognitive science should best be characterized, if the thesis of massive modularity isn’t to be abandoned altogether. What is at stake in this discussion, is whether there is a well-motivated notion of ‘module’ such that we have good reason to think that the human mind must be massively modular in its organization. I shall be arguing (in the end) that there is. (shrink)

This essential introduction to the philosopher and his thought, combines passages from Wittgenstein with detailed interpretation. Hacker leads us into a world of philosophical investigation in which "to smell a rat is ever so much easier than to trap it". Wittgenstein defined humans as language-using creatures. The role of philosophy is to ask questions which reveal the limits and nature of language. Taking the expression, description and observation of pain as examples, Hacker explores the ingenuity with which Wittgenstein identified the (...) rules and set the limits of language. (shrink)