Graham Priest presents an expanded edition of his exploration of the nature and limits of thought. Embracing contradiction and challenging traditional logic, he engages with issues across philosophical borders, from the historical to the modern, Eastern to Western, continental to analytic.

Contributed articles presented at the National Seminar on the Limits of Thought and Beyond, organized by the Department of Philosophy, Assam University, Silchar, India, during 28-29 November 2011.

The Limits of Thought is a series of penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti and the renowned physicist, David Bohm. The starting point of their engaging exchange is the question: If truth is something different than reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Bohm and Krishnamurti explore the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire awareness, tradition, and (...) love. Limits of Thought is an important book by two very respected and important thinkers. Anyone interested to see how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this great work. (shrink)

Self-reference and the Limits of Thought. This paper explores the connection between the natural language and a formal language from a particular point of view: self-referential constructions. Such constructions lead to some kind of limits of thought, either in the form of paradoxical constructions (Liar-type or Grelling-type), or in the form of the so called limitative theorems in mathematical logic (e.g. Gödel’s theorem). By deriving Gödel’s significant results from paradoxical constructions the limitative character of such self-referential constructions is (...) preserved, but they open the ways for a new representation of a great variety of arguments in the field of logic, mathematics and philosophy. (shrink)

This paper gives an account of Colin McGinn's essay: "Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?". McGinn's answer to his own essay title is that the problem is forever beyond us due to the particular nature of our cognitive abilities.The present author offers a number of criticisms of the arguments which support this conclusion.

The inclosure schema has been proposed by Priest as the structure of many paradoxes. The inclosure analysis has many virtues, especially as a step toward a uniform solution to the paradoxes. Inclosure suggests that paradoxes arise at the limits of thought because the limits can be surpassed, and also not; and so dialetheism is true. I explore the consequences of accepting Priest’s proposal. From a thoroughly dialetheic perspective, then, I find that the import of inclosure changes: some limit (...) phenomena cannot be contradictory, on pain of absurdity, and true contradictions are better thought of as local, not “limit” phenomena. Dialetheism leads back from the edge of thought, to the inconsistent in the every day. (shrink)

This is a philosophical investigation of the nature of the limits of thought. Drawing on recent developments in the field of logic, Graham Priest shows that the description of such limits leads to contradiction, and argues that these contradictions are in fact veridical. Beginning with an analysis of the way in which these limits arise in pre-Kantian philosophy, Priest goes on to illustrate how the nature of these limits was theorised by Kant and Hegel. He offers new interpretations of (...) Berkeley's master argument for idealism and Kant on the antimonies. He explores the paradoxes of self reference, and provides a unified account of the structure of such paradoxes. The book concludes by tracing the theme of the limits of thought in modern philosophy of language, including discussions of the ideas of Wittgenstein and Derrida. (shrink)

The essays in this volume constitute a series of investigations into the limitations on thought and power as conceived by thinkers in the medieval West and they draw on material ranging from law to literature. The author deals with limits on the human desire for knowledge, the passion with which knowledge could legitimately be pursued, and the propriety of the knowledge sought, as well as the limits that might be tolerable and tolerated in the case of royal incapacity or (...) misbehaviour. One particular focus is the work of Dante Alighieri, and these ideas are traced across a wide range of his thought. Chronologically the essays run from Augustine and the Gnostics through to Shakespeare. (shrink)

_The Limits of Thought_ is a series of penetrating dialogues between the great spiritual leader, J. Krishnamurti and the renowned physicist, David Bohm. The starting point of their engaging exchange is the question: If truth is something different than reality, then what place has action in daily life in relation to truth and reality? We see Bohm and Krishnamurti explore the nature of consciousness and the condition of humanity. These enlightening dialogues address issues of truth, desire awareness, tradition, and love. (...) _Limits of Thought_ is an important book by two very respected and important thinkers. Anyone interested to see how Krishnamurti and Bohm probe some of the most essential questions of our very existence will be drawn to this great work. (shrink)

A growing movement in contemporary philosophy of mind is looking back on Indian thought to gain new insights into the problem of consciousness. This paper weighs the prospects of thinking about mentality through the lenses of Śaṅkaran Advaita Vedānta. To start, I outline micropsychist and cosmopsychist accounts of consciousness, introduce Śaṅkaran monism, and describe a potential reason of attraction of the framework over micropsychist and cosmopsychist alternatives. I then show that the eliminativist commitments of the view threaten to yield (...) a self-defeating account of ordinary experience, and that Advaitins took the accommodation of the issue to be beyond the reach of rational inquiry. Finally, I discuss how the analytical debate over Śaṅkaran monism might proceed based on these premises. (shrink)

Such contradictions arise “at the limits of thought” in the following sense: we have reason to set boundaries to certain conceptual processes, which, however, turn out to actually cross those boundaries. The boundaries cannot be crossed, yet they can, for they are crossed. For example, Kant regarded noumena as beyond the limit of the conceivable, yet he made judgments about them, so he did conceive of them. For another example, Russell’s theory of types cannot be expressed, yet he (...) does express it. And so on, from Aristotle’s notion of prime matter to Derrida’s différance. The boundaries that cannot be but are crossed may concern iteration, expression, cognition, or conception. In most cases, a single argument pattern is operative, according to Priest. He calls it the Inclosure Schema [=IS]. It is a contradiction-generating mechanism that works as follows: suppose we define a set Ω, on the basis of a condition φ ); suppose that Ω exists and that it has property ψ. Next, suppose we can define a function δ such that, for any subset x of Ω that has property ψ, we have both δ ∉ x and δ ∈ Ω. As Ω is a subset of itself and it has ψ by hypothesis, a contradiction follows: both δ ∈ Ω and δ ∉ Ω. The two sides of the contradiction—or perhaps the operations by which they are established—are called Closure and Transcendence. ). For example, take Burali Forti’s paradox that is greater than all members of On, and therefore not an ordinal). Here Ω = On, and δ is the function that assigns to x the least ordinal greater than all members of x is both an ordinal—δ ∈ Ω, “Closure”—and not a member of x ). The condition φ is just the property of being an ordinal. (shrink)

There is an aporia to finitude: if I am limited as a finite being, I cannot know what the limits of my finitude are, because if I knew what those limits are, then I would have transcended them. I refer to this aporia as the "hard problem of finitude," interpreted through Graham Priest's work on inclosure paradoxes. Here I offer an interpretation of François Laruelle's theory of the Philosophical Decision in terms of his attempt to resolve this aporia through his (...) suspension of standard philosophy's form of ontological dualism. Next, I apply non-standard philosophy to the problem of religious pluralism, presenting a novel theory of "standard religion" and the "Hierophanic Decision" through a non-standard reading of Mircea Eliade's philosophy of religion, and end by pointing towards what a consistently performative and finite form of religious pluralism might look like from within the "democracy-of-thought," here rendered as the "parliament of religions.". (shrink)

In this paper I shall argue that the kind of positivism influenced by radical empiricism has the resources to develop a reductionist program that still allows thought to reach beyond what is given in experience. In reaching this conclusion I also argue that it was always important for the positivist to distinguish limits on what can be verified from limits on what can be meaningfully thought.

Generalizing on some arguments due to Arthur Prior and Dmitry Mirimanoff, we provide some further limitative results on what can be thought.

: Nagarjuna seems willing to embrace contradictions while at the same time making use of classic reductio arguments. He asserts that he rejects all philosophical views including his own-that he asserts nothing-and appears to mean it. It is argued here that he, like many philosophers in the West and, indeed, like many of his Buddhist colleagues, discovers and explores true contradictions arising at the limits of thought. For those who share a dialetheist's comfort with the possibility of true contradictions (...) commanding rational assent, for Nagarjuna to endorse such contradictions would not undermine but instead confirm the impression that he is indeed a highly rational thinker. It is argued that the contradictions he discovers are structurally analogous to many discovered by Western philosophers and mathematicians. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of Kierkegaard’s view of the limits of thought and of what makes this view distinctive. With primary reference to Philosophical Fragments, and its putative representation of Christianity as unthinkable, I situate Kierkegaard’s engagement with the problem of the limits of thought, especially with respect to the views of Kant and Hegel. I argue that Kierkegaard builds in this regard on Hegel’s critique of Kant but that, against Hegel, he develops a radical distinction between (...) two types of thinking and inquiry: the ‘aesthetic-intellectual’ and the ‘ethico-religious’. I clarify this distinction and show how it guides Kierkegaard’s conception of a form of philosophical practice that involves drawing limits to the proper sphere of disinterested contemplation. With reference to two rival interpretations of Kierkegaard’s approach to the limits of thought—which I call ‘bullet-biting’ and ‘relativizing’—I further show how my ‘disambiguating’ account can better explain how, and why, his work courts a form of self-referential incoherence, in which it appears that certain limits of thought are at once affirmed and violated. (shrink)

This article criticizes what it calls perspectival thought experiments, which require subjects to mentally simulate a perspective before making judgments from within it. Examples include Judith Thomson's violinist analogy, Philippa Foot's trolley problem, and Bernard Williams's Jim case. The article argues that advances in the philosophical and psychological study of empathy suggest that the simulative capacities required by perspectival thought experiments are all but impossible. These thought experiments require agents to consciously simulate necessarily unconscious features of subjectivity. (...) To complete these experiments subjects must deploy theory-theoretical frameworks to predict what they think they would do. These outputs, however, systematically mislead subjects and are highly prone to error. They are of negligible probative value, and this bodes poorly for their continued use. The article ends with two suggestions. First, many thought experiments are not problematically perspectival. Second, it should be possible to carry out “in-their-shoes” perspectival thought experiments by off-loading simulations onto virtual environments into which philosophers place subjects. (shrink)

Joseph Ratzinger has never produced one theological opus that would encompass his whole theological vision and its corollaries in particular matters. However, despite this, during his long and prolific theological career, in his many publications and interventions he has touched upon nearly every conceivable theological topic. Although these topics are often very diverse, they are also interrelated by the general intellectual framework on which Ratzinger operates. By analysing his insights about particular issues that, at first glance, may appear to have (...) little relationship with each other, it is possible to find some interesting connections that point to the existence of a greater vision. This article will examine the questions of power, authority and truth in Ratzinger's theology and will link the notions of politics and liturgy to demonstrate the existence of such a single, holistic approach. Questions that will be asked in this short study include: How does Ratzinger understand authority and power in general? What are some limits of power that, according to him, both secular and ecclesiastical authorities must recognise and respect? What are some threats to the correct understanding of legitimate authority in the church and in politics today? How do all these issues relate to the main principles of his theology as a whole? (shrink)

What is the relation of logic to thinking? My dissertation offers a new argument for the claim that logic is constitutive of thinking in the following sense: representational activity counts as thinking only if it manifests sensitivity to logical rules. In short, thinking has to be minimally logical. An account of thinking has to allow for our freedom to question or revise our commitments – even seemingly obvious conceptual connections – without loss of understanding. This freedom, I argue, requires that (...) thinkers have general abilities to respond to support and tension among their thoughts. And these abilities are constituted by following logical rules. So thinkers have to follow logical rules. But there isn’t just one correct logic for thinking. I show that my view is consistent with logical pluralism: there are a range of correct logics, any one of which a thinker might follow. A logic for thinking does, however, have to contain certain minimal principles: Modus Ponens and Non-Contradiction, and perhaps others. We follow logical rules by exercising logical capacities, which display a distinctive first-person/third-person asymmetry: a subject can find the instances of a rule compelling without seeing them as instances of a rule. As a result, there are two limits on illogical thinking. First, thinkers have to tend to find instances of logical rules compelling. Second, thinkers can’t think in obviously illogical ways. So thinking has to be logical – but not perfectly so. When we try to think, but fail, we produce nonsense. But our failures to think are often subjectively indistinguishable from thinking. To explain how this occurs, I offer an account of nonsense. To be under the illusion that some nonsense makes sense is to enter a pretence that the nonsense is meaningful. Our use of nonsense within the pretence relies on the role of logical form in understanding. Finally, while the normativity of logic doesn’t fall directly out of logical constitutivism, it’s possible to build an attractive account of logical normativity which has logical constitutivism as an integral part. I argue that thinking is necessary for human flourishing, and that this is the source of logical normativity. (shrink)

In a time of heightened demand for inter-religious, or inter-faith dialogue, especially from official political agents, a sound assessment of the possibilities and limitations of such endeavour seems imperative. Consequently, in the present paper serious doubts into the prospect of dialogue based on religious beliefs are raised. This is done, firstly, by criticising the rather optimistic discourse ethical concepts of Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas with the intervention of the analytical philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Secondly, the philosophical improbability of in (...) fact any kind of faith-based dialogue is illustrated by a survey of the Muslim discourse on inclusion into, and exclusion from their idealised discursive community, that is, the Muslim umma. This example shows vividly the difficulties, if not the impossibility, to engage in a rational and, thus, productive, debate on faith premises already within a self-perceived single and unified religious tradition, leaving alone traditions rooted in fundamentally different axiomatic propositions. (shrink)

This contribution defends two claims. The first is about why thought experiments are so relevant and powerful in mathematics. Heuristics and proof are not strictly and, therefore, the relevance of thought experiments is not contained to heuristics. The main argument is based on a semiotic analysis of how mathematics works with signs. Seen in this way, formal symbols do not eliminate thought experiments (replacing them by something rigorous), but rather provide a new stage for them. The formal (...) world resembles the empirical world in that it calls for exploration and offers surprises. This presents a major reason why thought experiments occur both in empirical sciences and in mathematics. The second claim is about a looming aporia that signals the limitation of thought experiments. This aporia arises when mathematical arguments cease to be fully accessible, thus violating a precondition for experimenting in thought. The contribution focuses on the work of Vladimir Voevodsky (1966–2017, Fields medalist in 2002) who argued that even very pure branches of mathematics cannot avoid inaccessibility of proof. Furthermore, he suggested that computer verification is a feasible path forward, but only if proof is not modeled in terms of formal logic. (shrink)

It is often held that people have a moral right to believe and say whatever they want. For instance, one might claim that they have a right to believe racist things as long as they keep those thoughts to themselves. Or, one might claim that they have a right to pursue any philosophical question they want as long as they do so with a civil tone. In this paper I object to those claims and argue that no one has such (...) unlimited moral rights. In Part 1 I explore the value of the freedoms of thought and expression. In Part 2 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free expression, focusing in particular on the special obligations and moral constraints that obtain for academics. In Part 3 I argue against the unlimited moral right to free thought. (shrink)

This article serves as an introduction to central ideas and thoughts formulated by Valery Podoroga. The author undertakes a task of interpreting “anthropogram,” a key tool and procedure developed in Podoroga’s analytical anthropology. In order to clarify this notion, the article discusses a highly original conception of mimesis, first introduced in Podoroga’s book of the same name, as well as Podoroga’s own method of analysis, based on the experience of Russian literature. Examining the important function that the concept of death (...) has in Podoroga’s systematic, the author points to essential links between the philosopher’s mental strategy and the ideas of Russian formalism and deconstruction. The death becomes directly related to the mimetic capacity and deprived of its negative component. This is one more way to overcome metaphysics: to turn death into an analytical tool, which in the space of literature revives the archaic layer of sensuality, where thought and action come to be indistinguishable, and a sign of their plexus is anthropogram. (shrink)

It has recently been proposed that the framework of semantic relativism be put to use to describe mental content, as deployed in some of the fundamental operations of the mind. This programme has inspired in particular a novel strategy of accounting for the essential egocentricity of first-personal or de se thoughts in relativist terms, with the advantage of dispensing with a notion of self-representation. This paper is a critical discussion of this strategy. While it is based on a plausible appeal (...) to cognitive economy, the relativist theory does not fully account for the epistemic profile that distinguishes de se thinking, as some of its proponents hope to do. A deeper worry concerns the reliance of the theory on a primitive notion of “centre” that hasn’t yet received enough critical attention, and is ambiguous between a thin and a rich reading. I argue that while the rich reading is required if the relativist analysis of the de se is to achieve its most ambitious aims, it also deprives the theory of much of its explanatory power. (shrink)

This chapter investigates how a reading of Wittgenstein along the lines laid out by Cora Diamond makes room for a novel approach to ethical truth. Following Diamond, I develop the connection between the kinds of elucidatory propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain the shape of our theoretical thinking, such as “‘someone’ is not the name of someone” and “five plus seven equals twelve,” and the kind of propositions by means of which we spell out and maintain (...) the shape of ethical thinking, such as “slavery is unjust.” As Diamond points out in connection with the last example, this is a proposition that we take to be an undeniable truth; for anyone who would attempt to negate it would become unintelligible to us. In this sense this ethical truth spells out the limits of ethical thinking. And yet what counts as coherent thought about such matters tends to shift over time. Indeed the great difficulty of overcoming ethical disagreements has to do with the fact that what is at stake in them is not just the content, but the form and limits of thought. Nonetheless, Diamond proposes that ethical propositions may count as genuine truths. For this to make sense, a middle path between realism and relativism must be found. In order to show how this is possible, and in order to defend Diamond’s view, I propose to approach ethical truth by means of a disjunctivist strategy. On this approach, while we, just as much as our interlocutor, may at times be misled in our ethical thinking, and while we may at times fail to shape our ethical thought in ways that prevent us from gaining clarity on ethical matters, this does not detract from the fact that we may at times be right, and that we may then genuinely possess ethical truth. (shrink)

Thought experiment is one of the most widely-used and least understood techniques in philosophy. A thought experiment is a process of reasoning carried out within the context of a well-articulated imaginary scenario in order to answer a specific question about a non-imaginary situation. The aim of my dissertation is to show that both the powers and the limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new (...) knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases. ;The dissertation has five chapters: an introduction, three case studies and a conclusion. My main contention is that certain patterns of features which coincide only fortuitously may nonetheless play a central role in the organization of our concepts, and that to the extent that imaginary scenarios involve disruptions of these patterns, our first-order judgments about them are often distorted or even inverted. ;In the introduction and conclusion, I discuss the role of imaginary exceptions in the acquisition of new knowledge. I argue that appeal to imaginary cases is unavoidable because the world is neither maximally replete nor effortlessly navigable, and that appeal to exceptional cases is indispensable if we wish to avoid mistaking accidental regularities for regularities that reflect deeper truths about the world. ;In the first case study, I discuss a famous thought experiment of Galileo's, and I try to show that the guided contemplation of an imaginary scenario can provide us with new scientific knowledge in a way that argument alone cannot. In the second case study, I try to show that standard interpretations of the puzzle of the Ship of Theseus founder because they ignore the importance of the background norms against which we can make sense of local instances of extrinsically-determined identity. And in the third case study, I try to show that thought experiments in the personal identity literature are inconclusive because they disregard the explanatory role played by contingent facts about the ways human beings come into existence. (shrink)

What are the limits of the imagination in morality? What role does fiction play in moral thought? My starting point in addressing these questions is Tamar Szabo Gendler's ‘puzzle of imaginative resistance’, the problem of explaining the special difficulties we seem to encounter in imagining to be right what we take to be morally wrong in fiction, and Gendler's claim that those difficulties are due to our unwillingness to imagine these things, rather than our inability to imagine what is (...) logically or conceptually impossible. Using a wide range of examples, I argue that there is no puzzle of imaginative resistance and that to think that there is such a puzzle is to miss almost entirely the role fiction plays in moral thought. That, however, does not mean that there are no limits to what we can imagine in morality. In fact, I argue, the imagination is limited in morality, as elsewhere, by what is logically or conceptually possible. Together, those claims suggest that fiction and the imagination play a fundamental role in shaping our conception of the moral landscape. The paper concludes by drawing some of the consequences of these views for the nature of moral thought. (shrink)

Gennaro Chtjerchia, Dynamics of meaning: anaphora, presupposition, and the the of grammar. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.xv+ 270 pp, £59.95, £31.95 G. Pr...

Forms of thinking that involve thinking about thought are only available to creatures participating in a public language. Thoughts can only be the objects of further thoughts if they have suitable vehicle and the only suitable vehicle is public language sentences. These language-dependent cognitive abilities range from second-order reflection on one's own beliefs and desires and the capacity to attribute thoughts to others to the ability to entertain tensed thoughts and to deploy logical concepts. Many of these language-dependent cognitive (...) abilities, however, have primitive analogues that do not involve intentional ascent and hence are available at the nonlinguistic level. This chapter considers the practical implications this has for the scope and limits of nonlinguistic thought. The chapter explores the question: what types of thinking are in principle unavailable to nonlinguistic creatures? There are two types of intentional ascent, which might be termed explicit and implicit intentional ascent respectively. (shrink)

The present article critically examines three aspects of Graham Priest's dialetheic analysis of very important kinds of limitations (the limit of what can be expressed, described, conceived, known, or the limit of some operation or other). First, it is shown that Priest's considerations focusing on Hegel's account of the infinite cannot be sustained, mainly because Priest seems to rely on a too restrictive notion of object. Second, we discuss Priest's treatment of the paradoxes in Cantorian set-theory. It is (...) shown that Priest does not address the issue in full generality; rather, he relies on a reading of Cantor which implicitly attributes a very strong principle concerning quantification over arbitrary domains to Cantor. Third, the main piece of Priest's work, the so-called “inclosure schema”, is investigated. This schema is supposed to formalize the core of many well-known paradoxes. We claim, however, that formally the schema is not sound. (shrink)

This book offers a novel analysis of the widely-used but ill-understood technique of thought experiment. The author argues that the powers and limits of this methodology can be traced to the fact that when the contemplation of an imaginary scenario brings us to new knowledge, it does so by forcing us to make sense of exceptional cases.