The aim of the present work is to face Heidegger’s claim that philosophy has ended. Facing this claim for us has not taken the form of creating a new method or positing a new question but that of a search for anomalies in what Heidegger decrees as finished, which is philosophy as metaphysics. In his historical confrontation with the history of thought Heidegger seems to have left out, dismissed or forgotten those authors who do not fit into his definition of metaphysics. We have chosen Giordano Bruno and Baruch Spinoza, metaphysical thinkers who have undertaken a philosophical practice that does not intend to demolish subjectivity but actually begins without any need for it. The birth of the subject as grounding reality finds its affirmation with Descartes and inaugurates modernity that, according to Heidegger, exhausts philosophy and leads it into the arms of modern science and technology. Bruno and Spinoza respectively precede and follow the birth of modernity and of modern science, which they look at with an eye that is not that of the modern subject. Following their different approaches to philosophy, we shall also explore their relation to Renaissance Humanism, dismissed by Heidegger as a historical reiteration of the Roman world, perceived as a perversion of the Greek origin of thought. We shall show how hasty such a dismissal is. Our goal is to show not merely that Heidegger is wrong but that if Western thinking contains the seeds of its own end, it also contains the ones of a different understanding of the Western world and its achievements. The three authors will engage on the grounds of ontology, gnosiology and ethics and yet we have defined the whole enterprise of this work as an ethics overall. An ethics of thinking is a practice of thought that wishes to envisage the possibility for Western man of inhabiting his own world by understanding himself not as an isolated subject and master of nature but as the place where the unity and multiplicity of nature come to be thought at the same time.

Many philosophers have held that perceptual experience is fundamentally a matter of perceivers being in particular representational states. Such states are said to have representational content, i.e. accuracy or veridicality conditions, capturing the way that things, according to that experience, appear to be. In this thesis I argue that the case against representationalism — the view that perceptual experience is fundamentally and irreducibly representational — that is set out in Charles Travis’s ‘The Silence of the Senses’ (2004) constitutes a powerful, but much misunderstood and neglected argument against this prevailing philosophical orthodoxy. In chapter 2, I present an interpretation of Travis’s arguments that poses a dilemma for the representationalist concerning the indeterminacy and availability of perceptual content. Chapters 3 and 4 evaluate a variety of arguments in favour of such content based upon the nature of appearances, or ‘looks’, including those by Byrne (2009), Siegel (2010) and Schellenberg (2011b), each of which I find to be problematic. Finally, chapters 5 and 6 examine the relationship between representational content and phenomenal character, i.e. what perceptual experience is subjectively like, outlining some potential responses to Travis’s anti-representationalism. These include the external individuation of content and self-knowledge, and the operation of perceptual discriminatory capacities, the latter of which does not necessarily favour a representationalist account of experience. I conclude that Travis’s arguments establish substantive constraints upon the nature and role of perceptual content. Moreover, I argue that the debate centres less upon the existence of such content than its explanatory role, particularly in relation to phenomenal character and the contents of other mental states: belief, intention, thought, knowledge, and so on. This in turn highlights the need for representationalists to better clarify the role of the contents their theories posit, and why such theories constitute a better explanation of the relevant phenomena than the corresponding non-representational view.

This study compares two prevalent notions in postmodern philosophy and critical-cultural theory: the sacred and the icon. On the one hand, the sacred has often been described as the exposure to an abyssal reality that is completely foreign to human perception and control. This deeply subversive event is presented through two of its most influential thinkers, Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot. On the other hand, the icon marks the experience of a sensitivity to the singular selfhood of the other. It comprises a loving receptivity to its unique identity, in particular the identity of the human or divine stranger who is excluded or victimized by human narratives and structures. Intrinsic to the ethical scene, as I show through Emmanuel Levinas and Richard Kearney, is an interaction rather than a subjugation of the subject by the other. This project seeks to present the similarities and differences between the sacred and the icon. In particular, it calls for a certain relationship between them, allowing both to be observed in each other’s respective light. Both are thus re-examined through their relation to each other. Moreover, this bond is seen to be ethically significant for either phenomenon and it helps redefine the sacred and the icon in a manner that is closer to actual experience. It also perceives either one in terms of a practical efficacy. To exemplify these views, the Christian mystical experience known as the ‘passive dark night of the soul’ is explored insofar as it constitutes one of the most radical instances of the icon. Crucial to this relationship is its exposure of the possible shortcomings and misjudgements of previous conceptions of the sacred. A potential new role for the sacred is indicated: a function that is at once more ethical and constructive. Above all, the underlying concern of this study is the very nature of this interaction of the two extremes. Throughout, it shows this affiliation as dialectical by nature. Between the sacred and the icon, a process of a mutual coinciding and estranging takes place.

Summary In chapter one I reject the thesis that a relation of partial entailment holds between probability evidence and conclusion, as also the claim that the propositions of applied geometry are synthetic a priori. By way of balance, I suggest that there may be a sense in which necessary conditions of discourse transcend the distinction between a priori and empirical. In chapter two I reject the claim that logical relations in the form of intrinsic probability enter into the no-miracles argument, which I suggest is frequency-connected in its more systematic applications, so that it belongs within a system. I begin chapter three with a critique of an attempted formal probability solution to Hume’s problem, and I now suggest that inductive inference has application only within a system in which its validity is pre-supposed in its premises, a concomitant of which is that the sceptic about induction cannot stop short of global scepticism. Since my aim is to show that global scepticism is self-refuting, given that intentionality may be analysed in terms of a system, I now develop that analysis by devoting chapter four to an examination of Wittgenstein on meaning and understanding. In chapter five I reject his thesis equating meaning and understanding with use, arguing instead that they are irreducible and subject to dispositionality conditions, and in furtherance of that argument I try to solve the problem of the authoritativeness of belief avowals by showing again that there are necessary conditions of discourse. These are such that selfascribing belief, crediting oneself with understanding and with being suitably disposed, are inherent in reasoning. In chapter six I weave the threads of the previous discussion into a solution by arguing that the sceptic about induction, who is committed to global scepticism, necessarily refutes himself. In chapter seven, on the problem of other minds, I attempt a solution by modifying the arguments used against inductive scepticism.

This thesis offers a naturalist revision of Alain Badiou’s philosophy. This goal is pursued through an encounter of Badiou’s mathematical ontology and theory of truth with contemporary trends in philosophy of mathematics (mathematical structuralism) and philosophy of science (ontic structural realism). I take issue with Badiou’s inability to elucidate the link between the empirical and the ontological, and his residual reliance on a Heideggerian project of fundamental ontology, which undermines his own immanentist principles. I will argue for both a bottom-up naturalisation of Badiou’s philosophical approach to mathematics (insisting on an account mindful of the socio-biological roots of our mathematical abilities and concepts – brains to universe) and a top-down naturalisation (arguing that our best physical theories seem to indicate a collapse of the distinction between the mathematical and the non-mathematical – universe to brains). Articulating my particular understanding of what realism and naturalism should commit us to, I propose a creative fusion of Badiou’s attention to metamathematical results with a structural-informational metaphysics, proposing a ‘matherialism’ uniting the more daring speculative insights of the former with the naturalist and empiricist commitments motivating the latter.

published_or_final_version / Public Health / Master / Master of Public Health

This thesis develops the view that the semantics of spatial prepositions are more fully realised within a framework of functionality, incorporating knowledge of the world, than within the spatial, geometrical framework more often used to analyse prepositions. It is argued that previous approaches which support full specification of lexical entries through the use of polysemy and prototype notions are not satisfactory or psychologically valid. It will also be shown that the minimal specification Classical approaches fail to account for all uses of the locatives described. It is suggested that minimal specification of lexical entries can be achieved by means of functional controls that can provide a more psychologically valid account of the semantics of spatial prepositions. Functional geometric control relations of fContainment, fSupport and fSuperiority are proposed for IN, ON and OVER respectively. These focus on the importance of location control in prepositional choice. It is argued that such controls underlie the use of spatial prepositions. The controls are suggested to be inherently dynamic and state that the relatum object is some way able to control the location of the referent object. For example, the use of the preposition IN is guided by the principle of fContainment which operates on the basic premise that the relatum (y) controls the location of the referent (x) such that when y moves there will be a correlated movement in x (or uncorrelated movement within the convex hull of y) by virtue of some degree of enclosure. The control relation that guides the use of OVER is fSuperiority and it operates on the basic premise that x threatens to come into contact with y as a consequence of gravitational force. Finally, the use of the preposition ON is suggested to be guided by notions of fSupport which operates on the premise that the relatum protects the referent from the force of gravity.

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No description available.

No description available.