В монографии представлены несколько смысловых блоков, связанных с восприятием и интерпретацией человеком исторического бытия. Ранние греческие мыслители пытались получить доступ к исходникам (началам) бытия, и эти интенции легли в основу научного знания, а также привели к появлению метафизики. В классической (и в неклассической) метафизике за основу была принята догма Пифагора и Платона о неизменности подлинной реальности, из чего следовало отрицание бытийного характера времени. Автор монографии отказывается от этой догмы и предлагает стратегию обновления метафизики и перехода ее к новому — постнеклассическому (...) — этапу. Поскольку трансформационный потенциал реальности наиболее явно представлен в историческом становлении, авторская стратегия реализуется в метафизике истории. При этом выявляются начала истории, в каком качестве выступают «дух», «культурно-историческая матрица» и «метафизический проект организации бытия» («онтологический проект»). Исследуются формы и механизмы «работы» человека с прошлым, обсуждаются вопросы, связанные с постижением логики исторического процесса, а также с ролью (творческой) личности в истории. Анализируются причины цивилизационных кризисов и очерчиваются возможные пути их разрешения, предлагается метафизическая интерпретация социальных и военных конфликтов. Завершает исследование рассмотрение трансформации человеческого естества под влиянием информационных, био- и нанотехнологий. (shrink)

How should the metaphysical hypothesis of materialism be formulated? What strategies look promising for defending this hypothesis? How good are the prospects for its successful defense, especially in light of the infamous "hard problem" of phenomenal consciousness? I will say something about each of these questions.

Some theorists have argued that we should understand the notion of free will from a functional perspective: free will just is our ability to choose effectively and adaptively in an ever-changing environment. Although far from what many philosophers normally mean by free will, those who adopt this biological-evolutionary perspective can clearly define and defend a notion of personal responsibility. One consequenceof this point of view is that addicts become responsible for their actions, for at each choice point, there is a (...) real sense in which the addict could have elected not to use or abuse. As a result, it has been argued that addiction is not a disease, that addictive behavior is voluntary, and that sometimes it is even rational. This paper defends a different way of thinking about addiction, one that aligns it with other complex chronic illnesses. The perspective put forth here suggests that these discussions about responsibility and free will represent an over-simplified and neuropsychologically inaccurate portrait of basic human capacities for behavioral choice. (shrink)

2. The Contingency and A posteriority Constraint: A formulation of the thesis must make physicalism come out contingent and a posteriori. First, physicalism is a contingent truth, if it is a truth. This means that physicalism could have been false, i.e. there are counterfactual worlds in which physicalism is false, for example, counterfactual worlds in which there are miracle -performing angels.[9] Moreover, if physicalism is true, our knowledge of its truth is a posteriori. This is to say that there are (...) ways the world could turn out to be such that physicalism is false. For example, if there are miracle -performing angels, then physicalism is false. So there are worlds considered as actual in which physicalism is false.[10] For short, call this ‘the a posteriority constraint’.[11]. (shrink)

Perhaps more controversial than whether physicalism is true is what exactly would have to be true for physicalism to be true. Everyone agrees that, intuitively at least, physicalism is the thesis that there is nothing over and above the physical. The disagreements arise in how to get beyond this intuitive formulation. Until about ten years ago, participants in this debate were concerned primarily with answering two questions. First, what is it for a property, kind, relation, or individual to be a (...) physical one? (shrink)

Frank Jackson has argued that only if we have a priori knowledge of the extension-fixers for many of our terms can we vindicate the methodological practice of relying on intuitions to decide between philosophical theories. While there has been much discussion of Jackson’s claim that we have such knowledge, there has been comparatively little discussion of this most powerful argument for that claim. Here I defend an alternative explanation of our intuitions about possible cases, one that does not rely on (...) a priori extension-fixers. This alternative explanation provides a vindication of our reliance on intuitions, while blocking Jackson’s abductive argument for a priori semantic knowledge. In brief, I argue that we should regard our armchair intuitions as providing an important, a priori source of evidence for hypotheses about the contents of our implicit referential policies with regard to our terms. But all such hypotheses have a potential falsifier that is only discoverable empirically. In other words, gold-standard evidence for such hypotheses is always empirical. (shrink)

Stephen Finlay’s proposed methodology for defending the central theses of his impressive Confusion of Tongues is an underexplored aspect of this work.1 1 His official methodology is analytic : A reduction of normative to non-normative vocabulary. Here, I argue that taking this official line at face-value forces the reader to conclude that the reductions at the heart of that book cannot be correct. In contrast, a philosophical methodology that does not proceed via analyses would better support those reductions, then understood (...) as non-analytic. As we’ll see below, there are independent, empirical reasons to reject a philosophical methodology that proceeds via analyses. I conclude that there is a method for the study of ethical language that better serves Finlay’s primary philosophical aims. The lesson, though, is generalizable: Given the array of normative and meta-normative theories, we want a semantics for normative discourse to be capable of expressing, we should expect that the more plausible such views will not be defended via analyses. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of simple and complex objects in metaphysical research. It is stated that the ultimate simplification of reality theoretical models follows from the nature of metaphysical knowledge. The modern metaphysical conceptions of fundamental simplicity and fundamental complexity of existing objects are discussed. They are the conceptions of full and distributional monism, mereological nihilism, and the traditional binary or binary-based models of the foundations of reality, ascending to Aristotle. The paper shows that these conceptions and ideas (...) do not simplify reality as much as possible. The problematic and ambiguous nature of the conceptions considered is that all complicating factors are not excluded in them. This leads to a situation where further grounding of the entities that are accepted as the simplest ones is required. The state of the full simplification in metaphysics is defined. It is argued that ultimate simplification requires the exclusion of qualitative multiplicity and quantitative definiteness, the exclusion of the distinction between substance and its qualities, between the entity and the law, the relation or condition which ground it. The entity identified in the process of ultimate simplification must be quantitatively indefinite, identical to its quality and substratum, indistinguishable from the law, the condition or the relationship of its grounding. Such an entity can be the starting point for the construction of a metaphysical model of the world as a consistent complication of entities. (shrink)