David Lewis (1941-2001) was Class of 1943 University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His contributions spanned philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. In On the Plurality of Worlds, he defended his challenging metaphysical position, "modal realism." He was also the author of the books Convention, Counterfactuals, Parts of Classes, and several volumes of collected papers.

Tn this paper I explore and to an extent defend HS. The main philosophical challenges to HS come from philosophical views that say that nomic concepts-laws, chance, and causation-denote features of the world that fail to supervene on non-nomic features. Lewis rejects these views and has labored mightily to construct HS accounts of nomic concepts. His account of laws is fundamental to his program, since his accounts of the other nomic notions rely on it. Recently, a number of philosophers (...) have criticized Lewis's account, and Humean accounts of laws generally, for delivering, at best, a pale imitation ofthe genuine item. These philosophers think that the notion of law needed by science requires laws-if there are any-to be fundamental features of our world that are completely distinct from and not supervenient on the particular facts that they explain. I side with Lewis against these philosophers. Here I will argue that although Lewis-laws don't fulfill all our philosophical expectations, they do play the roles that science needs laws to play. The metaphysics and epistemology of Humean laws, and more specifically, Lewis-laws, are in much better shape than the metaphysics and epistemology of the main anti-Humean alternatives. However, I do have inisgivings about Lewis's account. Both he and his critics assume that the basic properties are so individuated so that the laws are not metaphysically necessary. If this assumption is rejected, then the question of Humean supervenience lapses. I conclude with a brief discussion of this position. (shrink)

C. S. Lewis sets out to disentangle this knotty issue but wisely adds that in the end no intellectual solution can dispense with the necessity for patience and ...

This article explores five ways in which philosophy could be colonized: (1) racial and ethnic origins, (2) coloniality of its norms, (3) market commodification, (4) disciplinary decadence, (5) solipsism—and what the author calls a teleological suspension of philosophy as consideration among other practices of thought.

First published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

European Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

In this paper, Tyson E. Lewis challenges the dominant theoretical and practical educational responses to globalization. On the level of public policy, Lewis demonstrates the limitations of both neoliberal privatization and liberal calls for rehabilitating public schooling. On the level of pedagogy, Lewis breaks with the dominant liberal democratic tradition which focuses on the cultivation of democratic dispositions for cosmopolitan citizenship. Shifting focus, Lewis posits a new location for education out of bounds of the common sense (...) of public versus private, nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, inclusion versus exclusion, human versus civil rights. This is the space of the commonwealth whose actors cannot be identified as ‘citizens’ but are rather the anonymous multitude. In conclusion, Lewis finds a model for organizing this commonwealth in the work of Ivan Illich, whose learning networks speak to the urgent political and pedagogical need for exodus from the conceptual vocabulary that defines much of the contemporary field of educational theory. (shrink)

This article distinguishes thought on phenomenology and psychoanalysis versus doing phenomenology and psychoanalysis and argues that while Fanon was primarily concerned with the latter, his thought also offers contributions to the former. They include methodological critique and an interrogation into the human sciences that includes a psychoanalytical decolonial critical reflection on science linked to open possibilities of human conditions.

Discourse dynamics, pragmatics, and indefinites Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-30 DOI 10.1007/s11098-012-9882-y Authors Karen S. Lewis, Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116.

Originally delivered to mark the fiftieth anniversary of both Frantz Fanon’s death and the publication of his seminal discourse on decolonization, The Wretched of the Earth, these remarks seek to offer a preliminary outline of Fanon’s continuing relevance to the present. Conceptually spanning such touchstone elements of Fanon’s thought as sociogeny, race, violence, the human, and the relation between decolonial ethics and decolonial politics, the authors turn our attention to diagnosing the neoliberal face of contemporary coloniality/modernity and contributing to movements (...) from the Arab (or North African) Spring to the Occupy movement, from Philadelphia’s “flash mobs” to the new Latin American Left. (shrink)

An account of Socrates' encounter with divine revelation.

This memoriam essay begins with a reflection on the author’s relationship to Drucilla Cornell, the famed activist, revolutionary legal theorist, social and political philosopher, playwright, and biographer. It then proceeds to examine her contributions to Africana existential revolutionary thought and the Caribbean-inspired project of shifting the geography of reason.

This chapter examines race in film through exploring what the author calls “cinema beyond the veil.” This involves addressing several themes. The first is historical—namely, the story of racial portraits in film. The second is hermeneutical—that is, interpreting the portrayal of race in film. The third is philosophical—pertaining particularly to the aesthetic quality of film where race emerges. And the fifth is political—whether race can be in film without subordinating aesthetic aims to political imperatives. Conceptual tools rallied in the service (...) of this analysis include audiovisuality, allegory, monstrosity, political aesthetics, and potentiated double consciousness. (shrink)

The author discusses Jane Anna Gordon’s proposal, in the 2006 international meeting of the Caribbean Philosophical Association, of creolizing theory. He summarizes the research it generated, including Gordon’s monograph on creolizing political theory, and the set of articles in this forum on creolizing social and political identities and theory.

A mistaken view of Africana philosophy is that it is parasitic on Western philosophy, and that it is so in a way that limits its legitimacy as an area of thought. This misconception is often alluded to, although not intended, in the phrase “philosophy and the black experience” or “philosophy and the Africana experience”.

The wide range of disciplines represented here enables the volume to stand as a contextualizing work in Fanon studies. It contains new original essays on Africana philosophy, the human sciences, dialectical humanism, women of color studies, neocolonial and postcolonial studies, violence, and tragedy.

The first part of this memoriam essay focuses on the author’s relationship with the famed Bajan intellectual George Lamming during his years at Brown University. The second part explores Lamming’s most famous work, In the Castle of My Skin (1953), which offers important tropes in Black existential thought that are synchronous with Frantz Fanon’s Peau noir, masques blancs (1952), but with a more detailed exploration of the concept of political complicity through Lamming’s portrait of the phenomenon of slime and its (...) correlate, the slimy individual. The author also discusses Lamming’s treatment of the Fanonian motif of colonizing notions of normative development. (shrink)

De nombreux philosophes noirs donneraient cher pour avoir pris un café avec Jean-Paul Sartre. Si nous en avions la possibilité, beaucoup d’entre nous commenceraient par le remercier de son courage. Il a lutté non seulement contre les forces anti-humaines de la société française et de la société américaine, mais aussi contre ces forces en lui qui proposaient toujours la séduction d’une...