The main theme of the essay is the bodily nature of human existence according to Sartre. I will try to place Sartre’s account of bodily existence into the special context of phenomenological reduction. Though Sartre was rather skeptical toward this methodological operation as it was presented by Edmund Husserl, I have in mind the wider interpretation of reductions that was given by Jean-Luc Marion. According to Marion the phenomenological reduction means the focusing of the philosophical regard onto a (...) special field of phenomena, an operation that could be radicalized. In Marion’s interpretation the philosophy of Husserl and Heidegger belonged to the very same movement of philosophy, as two different phases, which involved a third phase.. I tried to show that Sartre’s phenomenology could be shown in this perspective, as a reduction to the bodily human existence. With this reduction Sartre opened a field of phenomena that had a fundamental importance to the French phenomenological tradition. (shrink)

When Edmund Husserl retired in 1928, ceding his chair at the University of Freiburg to his successor Martin Heidegger, he again began working intensively on synthesizing his philosophical efforts into a new “system of phenomenology.” This new presentation could, hopefully, displace his earlier presentation of 1913 in the Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, Book I, a work with which he had become dissatisfied in the meantime.

Use of network models to identify causal structure typically blocks reduction across the sciences. Entanglement of mental processes with environmental and intentional relationships, as Borsboom et al. argue, makes reduction of psychology to neuroscience particularly implausible. However, in psychiatry, a mental disorder can involve no brain disorder at all, even when the former crucially depends on aspects of brain structure. Gambling addiction constitutes an example.

In this paper I argue that the anti-reductionist thesis supports a case for the uselessness of intentional idioms in the interpretation of highly flexible, self-modifying agents that I refer to as “hyperplastic” agents. An agent is hyperplastic if it can make arbitrarily fine changes to any part of its functional or physical structure without compromising its agency or its capacity for hyperplasticity. Using Davidson’s anomalous monism (AM) as an exemplar of anti-reductionism, I argue that AM implies that no hyperplastic could (...) use intentional psychology to predict its future intentional states or the psychological consequences of self-alterations. This is because AM implies there would be no laws allowing the hyperplastic to infer the psychological consequences of its self-alterations. This implies that no generalisations linking current to future psychological states would hold either - these could always be defeated by a self-intervention carried out by the hyperplastic. By the same token, neither hyperplastics nor human interpreters could use intentional psychology to understand the behaviour of other hyperplastics. Radical interpretation of hyperplastic agents - if such there were - would be impossible. It follows that were humans to become hyperplastic posthumans, intentional psychology would have to be instrumentally eliminated because neither the capacity nor the linguistic idiom for attributing propositional attitudes would retain predictive or hermeneutic utility. (shrink)

In this paper, I wish to explore the contribution of the phenomenological reduction to a distinct form of empathy, which has been identified and called by Ratcliffe :473–495, 2012) radical empathy. This form of empathy brings to light the sense of reality experienced by the subject rather than a mere mental state. However, I shall consider whether and how the phenomenological reduction allows different interpretations of the same experience, thereby impacting on our understanding of another’s sense of (...) reality. Far from dismissing the role of the reduction, I propose a reconsideration of its relevance for radical empathy. In order to spell out my argument, I propose a case ex negativo that looks at Sartre’s and Merleau-Ponty’s different analyses of the sense of reality experienced by obsessive patients. I argue that this interpretative difference ultimately depends on two opposite uses of the reduction itself, and that Merleau-Ponty’s account offers a promising perspective to reintegrate and contextualize the phenomenological reduction into radical empathy. (shrink)

This text argues that Husserl’s late philosophy of temporal and bodily subjectivity can only be understood by means of the interplay between different reductions. For various reasons, this decisive methodological aspect has been largely overlooked by most interpreters. As a consequence, the co-originality of the constitution of space and time, which first enables a comprehensive grasp of the originary processes in the living streaming present, has remained virtually unknown. This also means that the proper understanding of egology and intersubjectivity has (...) been obfuscated. It is only by bringing out the bodily and temporal foundations of the lebendige Gegenwart as presented in the C-manuscripts that Husserl’s investigations of constitutive intersubjectivity in other texts can ultimately be clarified. Notably this calls for a renewed understanding of the role of Vergegenwärtigung, showing that the community of streams, not located in my ego but precisely in a manifold of streaming living presents, are united by means of an “intersubjective association”. The problem of the individualization of the “intersubjective streaming being” that characterizes the monadic totality here finds its solution, by means of a ceaselessly ongoing and self-altering duplicity that accounts for my pre-identity at the deepest genetic level. (shrink)

It is a perennial philosophical enterprise to propose the reduction of causal facts to facts of some other kind. Just as it is also a perennial enterprise to proclaim that certain such proposed reductions are doomed to failure. Here I shall champion a certain family of reductionist proposals—namely, those that quantify the notion of causality—referring to them as quantitative reductions. The opposition to quantitative reductionism proclaims that an antireductionist analysis of causation is to be preferred, because such an analysis (...) of causal matters can code for either more information, or for information of a radically nonquantitative sort also. The charge is that purely quantitative models have no means of handling this surplus. I will undertake to show that it is not so. (shrink)

The work of the Latvian phenomenologist Theodor Celms provides an interesting attempt to reinterpret Husserl’s phenomenological reduction in terms of Natorp’s subjectivation. This paper summarizes in broad outline some salient features of Celms’ theory of subjectivation and discusses some of its similarities and differences with Husserl’s and Natorp’s views. I focus on two more central points. First, Celms proposes to interpret Husserlian reduction as radicalizing or generalizing an operation of thought that is pervasive throughout all forms of cognition. (...) Secondly, he makes a distinction between epistemological and ontological subjectivation that leads him to adopt a critical stance toward both Husserl’s transcendental idealism and Natorp’s general psychology. (shrink)

Approaches to the naturalization of phenomenology usually understand naturalization as a matter of rendering continuous the methods, epistemologies, and ontologies of phenomenological and natural scientific inquiry. Presupposed in this statement of the problematic, however, is that there is an original discontinuity, a rupture between phenomenology and the natural sciences that must be remedied. I propose that this way of thinking about the issue is rooted in a simplistic understanding of the phenomenological reduction that entails certain assumptions about the subject (...) matter of phenomenology and its relationship to the natural sciences. By contrast, Merleau‐Ponty's first work, The Structure of Behavior, presents a radically different approach to the phenomenological reduction, one that traverses the natural sciences and integrates them into phenomenology from the outset. I outline the argument for this position in The Structure of Behavior and then discuss consequences for current methodological issues surrounding the naturalization of phenomenology, focusing on the relationship between empirical sciences of mind, phenomenological psychology, and transcendental phenomenology. This novel exegesis of Merleau‐Ponty's view on the reduction offers new insight into his oft‐quoted remark that the phenomenological reduction is impossible to complete. (shrink)

In order to introduce the question of tbe « given » and of its elaboration with respect to the motifs of reduction, construction and destruction, we take as a point of departure the first courses of Heidegger at the University of Freiburg in the years 1919-1920. Framed by a sustained debate with the different figures of Neokantianism that occupied the forefront of the philosophical scene in Germany, Heidegger’s aim is to take up and to radicalize Husserl’s phenomenological enterprise indexed (...) to intuition of an ultimate givenness, through the question : « Was heißt “gegeben”, “Gegebenheit” — dieses Zauberwort der Phänomenologie und der “Stein des Anstoßes” bei den anderen ? » This project of taking Husserl’s phenomenlogy will lead Heidegger to reopen the ongoing debate between Husserl and Natorp about the method of reconstruction vs. reduction. So we could venture the hypothesis, according to which the Heideggerian theme of Destruktion “destruction” or “deconstruction,” if it does inherit a sense from the Husserlian Abbau , from the de-sedimentation of accumulated strata that have come to obstruct the grasp of insight , this theme could all the same be understood as the taking up again — in a practical reversal — Rekonstruktion, Natorpian reconstruction. (shrink)

The issue of phenomenological reduction proceeds from the methodological requirement of the absence of presupposition : however, transcendental subjectivity as an actor of the reduction constitutes a presupposition that is inherent to Husserl’s approach. Radicality would then impose a reduction the subject submits to, not a reduction the subject chooses. That is how disease was considered by Nietzsche. Indeed, disease is the event through which subjective flesh shows itself from itself, in pathological phenomena, and shows itself (...) as the ground and origin of any sense and value. Disease encloses the subject in the sphere of his immanent lived-experiences, where the essence of being reveals itself as pathos : it operates what is to be called a pathological reduction. From this ordeal Nietzsche shows then that metaphysics is “pathologically determined”, and he discloses its pathogenic, i.e. nihilist, character. (shrink)

In this chapter, I discuss some lesser-known aspects of Husserl’s concept of the phenomenological reduction in relation to his use of the notion of reflection, and indicate how these topics connect to concerns in contemporary philosophy after the analytic-continental divide. Empathy, collective intentionality, non-representationalism, non-cognitivism, and the focus on the lived body as a source of sense-making and knowing-how are all domains in which Husserl’s conception of the reduction anticipates recent philosophical trends after the analytic-continental divide. They are (...) also interconnected parts of a unified conception of philosophy that arises from the phenomenological reduction when we reflect radically on experience in its full breadth as an embodied phenomenon that is both historical and communal. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of the phenomenological reduction is often explained by a radicalchange of attitude. Such an explanation is useful but sometimes misleading. TheIdea of Phenomenology clearly shows that the original idea of the reduction wasachieved through a radicalized critique of evidence. Although Husserl’s appealto evidence has often been criticized as an unjustified limitation of philosophicalthinking, a close examination of Husserl’s lectures reveals that the very ‘limitation’ to the phenomenological evidence breaks our naturalinclination toward objective identities and liberates our (...) thinking from the naturalbut misleading division between ‘transcendence’ and ‘immanence.’ Thus, thephenomenological reduction can be interpreted as a transition from the thinkingwithout regard to evidence to the philosophizing intrinsically mediatedby evidence, which can secure access for intuitive analysis to every conceivabletype of givenness insofar as it manifests itself. (shrink)

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash Introduction The problem of climate change raises some important philosophical, existential questions. I propose a radical solution designed to provoke reflection on the role of humans in climate change. To push the theoretical limits of what measures people are willing to accept to combat it, an extreme population control tool is proposed: allowing people to reproduce only if they make a financial commitment guaranteeing a carbon-neutral upbringing. Solving the problem of climate change in (...) the long run by halting the procreation of human beings is controversial. In the absence of human beings and consequent climate change, other animals and plant species would benefit from an atmosphere more conducive to prolonging their existence and even improving their ability to thrive. If someone were to invent something to reverse the effects of climate change and improve animals’ lives, then human beings’ presence would be justified by the invention. Whether the propagation of the human species is beneficial to anyone or anything but human beings themselves is difficult to answer. Perhaps human beings are unfit to tackle this issue, being unable to judge it objectively. Managing Procreation: An alternative to Piecemeal Approaches Measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by nudging individuals and corporations may have a positive effect, but if their behavior is not climate neutral, they continue to contribute to climate change. Consequently, as long as the number of people increases, reducing greenhouse gases is at best a mitigation tool. If humans could rely solely on renewable energy, decreasing the population arguably would not be necessary. Significantly reducing the number of people appears to provide a solution to both problems: people who do not exist do not contribute to climate change, and renewable energy could meet the demand of a smaller population. One option is to let only those who produce the problem pay for its solution. One could determine the expected annual emission of greenhouse gases per person, assuming an average life expectancy, and calculate the costs to compensate them by, e.g., installing extra solar panels. Those expected costs could then be paid by the parents of each new person annually over the first eighteen years of that person’s life by dividing the total expected costs by eighteen. There are also practical difficulties. It would be difficult to determine the payment necessary. What should be done if a child has been born whose parents cannot afford to pay? In addition, child benefits could be canceled, contrary to recent incentives for child births instated in Italy,[1] where additional benefits will be made available to pay for childcare, and Hungary,[2] where women with four children or more will be exempted for life from paying income tax. A transition period could exist once the policy has been adopted, since it would be unreasonable to confront those who are already pregnant with costs they could not reasonably have expected. While the analysis is both hypothetical and theoretical, the impracticality is a noteworthy obstacle. There are several practical issues that cannot be addressed here, like the difficulty of calculating the added negative effects of each new individual and the unlikelihood that many citizens will support politicians who propose adopting policies that discourage having children. The upshot of what I have proposed is that climate change can be solved in the long run without financial costs to society as a whole, notwithstanding the transitional measures that would bring costs with them. Managing Procreation to Reduce Suffering Should this be deemed too harsh a stance, it is important to consider the basic issue of whether it is justified to introduce measures to reduce the number of people in an already overpopulated world, especially if climate change leads to additional suffering. One need not agree with Benatar, but his perspective must at least be taken seriously: It is curious that while good people go to great lengths to spare their children from suffering, few of them seem to notice that the one guaranteed way to prevent all the suffering of their children is not to bring those children into existence in the first place.[3] Benatar argues that non-existence is preferable to existence,[4] which raises the question why new people should be created at all. Those who question whether this planet will be habitable for future generations presuppose that such generations will exist. If people are not brought into existence, they may be said to be deprived of what life has to offer, but life must not be presupposed to be something positive. Whether this is the case in fact merits an inquiry of its own. A solution to the problem of climate change despite an increased population does not equate to a positive outcome since it merely means that something negative is removed. After all, solving the problem is not a means to an end, but a means to a means, the latter means being a means to a happy life, which does not automatically ensue from a solution to the problem. Benatar, as an anti-natalist, argues that procreation is morally wrong. His basic idea is that there is an asymmetry between pleasure and pain and that the pleasure that is not experienced by someone because that person does not exist is not something bad whereas the absence of pain that is not experienced – for the same reason – is something good.[5] Accordingly, “The reason why we do not lament our failure to bring somebody into existence is because absent pleasures are not bad.”[6] One may question whether such a perspective suffices to prove that coming into existence is always a harm, but the assertion that coming into existence exposes a new being to potential harm is clear. Objections A drawback of the proposed radical solution, placing the financial impediment on procreation, is that it will not solve climate change in the short run. A significant drop in the number of people may have a positive effect in the long run, but for now the behavior of the people in existence is the problem. Other climate change mitigation policies would necessarily continue. Additionally, there are important practical reasons to continue to procreate. The benefits for the elderly are paid for by the labor force. It is a problem that new generations are created as mere means to benefit older people. Perhaps more troubling, a pyramid scheme is created: by the time those people have themselves become old, a new labor force must have been brought into existence, a process that must presumably continue. If a consideration for people in developing countries to have children is that they cannot provide for themselves at an advanced age, while benefits are either lacking or insufficient, developed countries could collectively fund a pension scheme.[7] This may be low-cost if it is tailored to the living standard in the countries in question and given the life expectancy. Such a pension scheme should be predicated on the countries’ efforts in reducing the birth rate. If the labor force decreases, the economy may suffer. The focus on economic growth is arguably one of the causes of climate change, but if the number of people is reduced, the living standard does not have to be compromised, since the economy can then still grow. If fewer people began to use natural resources and nonrenewable energy at higher per capita rates, then the procreation might not be beneficial to the climate. It would need to be accompanied by regulations on use. One may also object that only wealthy people will be able to afford children. This is correct, but there is no right to have a child one cannot afford. The right to procreate does not entail the right to have as many children as one wants.[8] Yet in many countries, like the United States, it is a fundamental right that is constitutionally protected. There are numerous social, emotional, and even biological reasons why people choose to procreate. These may include the joy of having a family, the hope that children may bring in society, and the intergenerational transference of knowledge. People may have a strong desire to raise children or even a religious duty. If someone procures a sports car that is highly polluting, it would be justifiable to impose a tax in such a case. Many taxes and fines are imposed on corporate polluters. Procreation is significantly different but if the issue is regarded with some distance, then a climate change prevention tax could be appropriate. Some may argue that raising children is expensive already, which nonetheless does not deter people from having children. The tax I propose would be additional and specifically dedicated to carbon neutrality, but it would be difficult to predict whether it would discourage procreation. One last objection may be that for those now dedicated to sustainability for preserving the earth for the sake of future generations, there would be little or no incentive to continue any climate change mitigation efforts at all. If they sense they cannot afford to procreate, they may simply use every natural resource rather than save the earth for animals or for next generations. In a democracy, this problem does not exist if the majority can afford to procreate and agree with legislation on the basis of which such behavior is discouraged or punished. CONCLUSION Prior to their existence, there is no obligation to bequeath the earth to next generations. Such generations will only exist if they are actually created, and there is no obligation to create them. The lack of existence should not be confused with harm. Climate change provides an important reason to stem overpopulation. Ironically, fast rates of procreation may lead to the earth becoming uninhabitable for humans altogether. The radical solution that has been proposed here is an unrealistic scenario. For now, the average global birth rate is just over 18 per thousand people, but there is a need to ensure that the number of people is not greater than the planet can endure. While it is better to prevent problems than to solve them, the interest in procreation and its associated joys, usefulness, and cultural value make mass reduction in the population unlikely. Some countries have smaller average family size than others and can act as models for reducing population in a less radical way. The need to continue efforts to reduce climate change persists. Whether it would curb population growth or not, an additional financial burden applied to neutralizing each person’s offspring’s carbon footprint provides a meaningful thought exercise that could help alleviate the pressure on current climate mitigation strategies. [1] The Local Italy, How Italy’s new ‘Family Act’ aims to increase the plunging birthrate, https://www.thelocal.it/20200612/what-you-need-to-know-about-italys-new-family-act/. [2] BBC, Hungary tries for baby boom with tax breaks and loan forgiveness, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47192612. [3] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 6. [4] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 44, 58. [5] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 14, 30, 38. [6] David Benatar, Better never to have been, 35. [7] Alastair Leithead, “Can Niger break out of its cycle of poverty?”, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-41018081; Sebastien Malo, “Fewer children, fewer climate risks? Niger ponders a controversial option”, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-niger-climate-change-familyplanning-idUSKBN1WM11E. [8] Sarah Conly, “The Right to Procreation: Merits and Limits,” American Philosophical Quarterly 42, no. 2 : 105-115, 105, 106. (shrink)

At least after 1907, Husserl recognized that in the Phenomenology of the LI (1901), i.e., in Eidetic Descriptive or Pure Eidetic Psychology, elements that were silently presupposed were actually in need of phenomenological clarification and reconsideration. This was also the case with regard to the problematic ontological status of the world, as it is experienced in the natural attitude. In order to overcome this difficulty, Husserl invents the method of transcendental reduction and, on its basis, transforms the Eidetic Phenomenological (...) Psychology of the LI into the Transcendental Phenomenology, which, in a systematic form, is first expounded in the Ideas I (1913). The transcendental reduction is conceived of as a widening and a radicalization in comparison to the possibilities of the psychological reduction that was already at work, albeit silently, in the LI. [...] Despite this, as Husserl repeatedly complained, the meaning of Transcendental Phenomenology was never completely understood by even his closest disciples and collaborators. This is no surprise. As we know, the series of difficulties one must face in the effort to appropriate Husserl’s Phenomenology, let alone the passing from the LI to the Ideas I, are disheartening, if not totally repelling. In Chap. 2, we have already seen and confronted various difficulties in the exposition of the teaching of the reduction, as well as some representative recent misappropriations of the meaning of the transcendental reduction. We have done the same with regard to the specific confusions related to the—notorious—notion of “unintelligibility.” In the present chapter, we will focus on another misappropriation of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the one for which Heidegger himself was responsible, and which the Heideggerians continue to follow unquestioningly. (shrink)

Among the many difficulties, or even paradoxes, that phenomenology has imposed upon us by positing itself as a doctrine, or at least as a radical foundation for philosophy, one must first and foremost consider the operation typically referred to as the reduction. The reasons for detecting difficulties therein are many, but they take on even greater significance since Husserl proclaimed the reduction to be fundamental to any philosophy that wished to establish itself as a phenomenology. The history (...) of phenomenology, then, would appear not only as the history of all the difficulties encountered in the reduction, but principally as the history of Husserl’s own self-elucidation of his entire project. This brings us to the point of reformulating Ricoeur’s claim—that phenomenology is the sum of misinterpretations of Husserl’s doctrine—with this new contention: that phenomenology consists in the sum of discussions and disagreements about the doctrine and practice of the reduction. (shrink)

Based on some reflections found on Husserl’s C-manuscripts, the article focuses on the methodical path toward the disclosure of what I call the “primal-intentional-tension” (PIT)—namely, the differential relation between the I and the Not-I, at the most fundamental level of the constitution of time. In order to reach this essential structure of experience, I address the method of the reduction and its radicalization. I argue: first, that intentionality is for Husserl not only act-intentionality, since there are also other intentional (...) modes, such as the stream-intentionality; second, that the reduction is the leading method to the discovery of the operating and unthematic transcendental dimension of experience as well as to the disclosure of the multiple phenomenological dimensions and, by means of a radicalization, of the living present as primal-mode of transcendental life; third, that the reduction to the most fundamental level is an analytic and abstractive “deconstruction” (Abbau) of the concrete transcendental life of the living present; fourth, that the primal-phenomenal dimension shows itself as a PIT between the I (primal-I) and the Not-I (the primal-temporalization of primal-hyle) as the most intimate strangeness in me; and, fifth, I finally show that this PIT might be understood as a primal-difference in the originality of my experience. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal (Foundations of Chemistry, 7 (2005), 125–148) Lombardi and Labarca call into question a thesis of ontological reduction to which several writers on reduction subscribe despite rejecting a thesis of epistemological reduction. Lombardi and Labarca advocate instead a pluralistic ontology inspired by Putnam’s internal realism. I suggest that it is not necessary to go so far, and that a more critical view of the ontological reduction espoused by the authors they (...) criticise circumvents the need to resort to their radical alternative. (shrink)

Despite all the criticism showered on Nagel’s classic account of reduction, it meets a fundamental desideratum in an analysis of reduction that is difficult to question, namely of providing for a proper identification of the reducing theory. This is not clearly accommodated in radically different accounts. However, the same feature leads me to question Nagel’s claim that the reducing theory can be separated from the putative bridge laws, and thus to question his notion of heterogeneous reduction. A (...) further corollary to the requirement that all the necessary conditions be incorporated in an adequate formulation of the putative reducing theory is that the standard example of gas temperature is not reducible to average molecular kinetic energy. As originally conceived, Nagel’s conception of reduction takes no account of approximate reasoning and this failure has certainly restricted its applicability, perhaps to the point of making it unrealistic as a model of reduction in science. I suggest approximation can be accommodated by weakening the original requirement of deduction without jeopardizing the fundamental desideratum. Finally, I turn to briefly consider the idea sometimes raised of the ontological reducibility of chemistry. (shrink)

Deflationism about truth is the claim that the concept of truth is completely explicated by the disquotational view of truth, where the latter is the specification of a device of semantic ascent that avoids the semantical paradoxes. Over the last twenty years, the plausibility of deflationism has been intensely debated by philosophers of language. A number of writers have argued that even though deflationism is a coherent view, it is false. Some maintain that this is because a complete account of (...) truth must reduce truth to purely physical concepts but that the disquotational view of truth provides no such reduction. Others hold that there are important uses of the truth predicate that cannot be assimilated to its use as a device of semantic ascent. (shrink)

This text provides an account of dissonance theory and reduction. It studies the evolution of cognitive dissonance theory, providing a review and a new interpretation of Festinger's original theory - the "radical conception". The authors present research arising from this new interpretation, adding to Festinger's theory by emphasizing the importance of the status of behaviour. Their research and evidence is intended to strengthen and clarify Festinger's original and innovative arguments.

The author juxtaposes two extreme approaches to the relationship between consciousness and the physical world: phenomenological-idealistic (represented by Edmund Husserl) and radically naturalistic (represented by Paul Churchland). These two positions are interpreted in terms of opposite if symmetrical types of reduction (on the one hand, the reduction of the world to a sense for consciousness, and on the other hand, the reduction of consciousness to an element of the physical world). They emerge as two ways of abstracting (...) from the ambivalence of ordinary experience, in which consciousness and the physical world are both mutually entangled and non-identical with each other. In conclusion, the author argues that contemporary philosophy, which follows both the idealistic and the naturalistic path, fails to solve the problem of this relationship. (shrink)

The paper gives a reconstruction of Donald Davidson’s theory of primary reasons in the context of the unified theory of meaning and action and its ontology of individual events. This is a necessary task to understand this philosophy of language and action because since his article “Actions, Reasons, and Causes” he has developed and modified his proposal on describing and explaining actions. He has expanded the “unified theory” to a composite theory of beliefs and desires as a total theory of (...) behavior. At first, the anomalous monism was a byproduct. Yet, the step to this philosophy of the mental is not contingent. It will be shown that the anomalous monism as the primary feature of the mental does not lead us to a materialic monism in our ontology. If the evidence of radical interpretation has no echo in natural science, we have to give up materialism.Following this, I will argue for a pure anomalism. Or, in other words, for the ascription of propositional attitudes given by the semantical analysis of sentences of such attitudes does not commit us to a materialistc framework in our ontological thinking. Yet, to understand Davidson’s unified theory, we have to grasp the role of individual events in this framework since the ontological reduction of individual events explains par example the relation between the mind and the body, and the possibility of autonomous action in the world of causality. I do not argue for a dualism of properties between the physical of the mental in the manner of other philosophers, since from the radical interpreters point the empirical restrictions of the speaker’s attitudes and behavior cannot be fixed for all cases. (shrink)

Obligations to reduce one’s green house gas emissions appear to be difficult to justify prior to large-scale collective action because an individual’s emissions have virtually no impact on the environmental problem. However, I show that individuals’ emissions choices raise the question of whether or not they can be justified as fair use of what remains of a safe global emissions budget. This is true both before and after major mitigation efforts are in place. Nevertheless, it remains difficult to establish an (...) obligation to reduce personal emissions because it appears unlikely that governments will in fact maintain safe emissions budgets. The result, I claim, is that under current conditions we lack outcome, fairness, promotional, virtue or duty based grounds for seeing personal emissions reductions as morally obligatory. (shrink)

Introduction of O2 to Earth's early biosphere stimulated remarkable evolutionary adaptations, and a wide range of electron acceptors allowed diverse, energy-yielding metabolic pathways. Enzymatic reduction of O2 yielded a several-fold increase in energy production, enabling evolution of multi-cellular animal life. However, utilization of O2 also presented major challenges as O2 and many of its derived reactive oxygen species are highly toxic, possibly impeding multicellular evolution after the Great Oxidation Event. Remarkably, ROS, and especially hydrogen peroxide, seem to play a (...) major part in early diversification and further development of cellular respiration and other oxygenic pathways, thus becoming an intricate part of evolution of complex life. Hence, although harnessing of chemical and thermo-dynamic properties of O2 for aerobic metabolism is generally considered to be an evolutionary milestone, the ability to use ROS for cell signaling and regulation may have been the first true breakthrough in development of complex life. The importance of Earth's oxygen cycle and reactive oxygen species produced on the evolution of complex life. The ability to detoxify oxygen species is not a trait that emerged as a response to increased O2 levels but rather crucial adaptation to the early Earth's weakly oxic microenvironments. (shrink)

RESUMO:O artigo discute a noção de esfera pública tematizada nos trabalhos habermasianos, defendendo que a íntima associação entre esfera pública e democracia permite pensar um modelo de política radical, no qual a aproximação entre Estado burocrático e partidos políticos profissionais com os movimentos sociais e as iniciativas cidadãs poderia superar a redução da práxis política a política partidária, concedendo a devida importância aos impulsos normativos e aos interesses generalizáveis advindos da sociedade civil rumo ao político, recuperando também uma concepção (...) de esfera pública não desvirtuada por formas de comunicação ideológicas ou distorcidas, inclusiva e crítica do poder. Para isso, entretanto, a práxis política necessitaria, correlatamente àquela aproximação, dar um passo além da própria esfera pública concentrada na mídia corporativa, adentrando nas esferas públicas informais desenvolvidas pelos movimentos sociais e pelas iniciativas cidadãs. Com efeito, as acusações, por Habermas, de subversão da esfera pública das democracias de massa contemporâneas somente poderiam ser superadas a partir de uma maior ênfase em tais esferas públicas informais, que também poderiam dinamizar uma organização administrativo-partidária atualmente marcada pelo distanciamento e pela sobreposição em relação à sociedade civil – situação possibilitada, em grande medida, pela mídia corporativa e pela burocracia e elitismo partidários. ABSTRACT:This paper discusses the Habermasian notion of public sphere. It is argued that the intrinsic association between the public sphere and democracy allows for the development of a model of radical politics in which the approximation between the bureaucratic state and professional political parties, along with social movements and citizen initiatives, could overcome the reduction of political praxis to partisan politics. This would include giving basic importance to normative impulses and universalistic claims coming from civil society. It would also involve regenerating a conception of the public sphere that is not undermined by ideological or distorted forms of communication, including the critique of power. For this, however, political praxis needs, along with such that approximation, to take a step beyond the public sphere concentrated in corporate media, focusing instead on the informal public spheres developed by social movements and citizen initiatives. In fact, Habermas’ claimed degeneration of the public sphere of contemporary mass democracies can only be overcome by a major emphasis on informal public spheres. This could energize administrative-party organizations, currently characterized by detachment and overlap in relation to civil society – a situation largely enabled by corporate media, the bureaucracy, and party elitism. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has argued that egalitarianism is exposed to a levelling down objection because it implies, implausibly, that a change, which consists only in the better-off sinking to the level of the worse-off, is in one respect better, though it is better for nobody. He claims that, in contrast, the prioritarian view that benefits to the worse-off have greater moral weight escapes this objection. This article contends, first, that prioritarianism is equally affected by the levelling down objection as is egalitarianism, (...) but that this objection lacks force. Secondly, prioritarianism is less plausible than egalitarianism because it implies that lowering the level of equality by diffusing a quantity of welfare equally over as many recipients as possible is for the better all things considered, and that the outcome of such welfare diffusion would still be better in one respect, even if the quantity of welfare was radically reduced. (shrink)

With reference to recently proposed theoretical models accounting for reduction in terms of a unified dynamics governing all physical processes, we analyze the problem of working out a worldview accommodating our knowledge about natural phenomena. We stress the relevant conceptual differences between the considered models and standard quantum mechanics. In spite of the fact that both theories describe systems within a genuine Hilbert space framework, the peculiar features of the spontaneous reduction models limit drastically the states which are (...) dynamically stable. This fact by itself allows one to work out an interpretation of the formalism which makes it possible to give a satisfactory description of the world in terms of the values taken by an appropriately defined mass density function in ordinary configuration space. A topology based on this function and which is radically different from the one characterizing the Hilbert space is introduced, and in terms of it the idea of similarity of macroscopic situations is precisely defined. Finally, the formalism and the interpretation are shown to yield a natural criterion for establishing the psychophysical parallelism. The conclusion is that, within the considered theories and at the nonrelativistic level, one can satisfy all sensible requirements for a completely satisfactory macro-objective description of reality. (shrink)

All suggested notions of reduction of two scientific theories are critically reviewed and analyzed. In particular those applied to the case of the alleged reduction of Chemistry to Quantum mechanics are examined. Since it is recognized that the weakness of this field of research is the lack of a definition of a scientific theory, it is suggested that a scientific theory is characterized by two choices regarding two dichotomies, that is, the kind of mathematics and the kind of (...) logic. According to this view a reduction is only possible between two theories in which the same choices are shared. As a consequence, only one case of reduction in the history of physics is recognized: physical optics to electromagnetism, a case that is commonly accepted. The other cases of claimed reductions are recognized as impossible, owing to the different choices of the two theories at issue and hence the radical variations in meaning of their shared basic notions. In particular, the claimed reduction of Chemistry to Quantum mechanics is disproved in detail. (shrink)

Criticism of orthodox models of prejudice reduction is particularly relevant for lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals, particularly when considering stage models of coming-out. If social change is to be effected regarding endemic homonegativity and heterosexism, then it is argued that a radical rethink is needed to the understandable but misinformed desire to get us to like each other more.

In order to appreciate the rich implications of the transcendental reduction, one has to distinguish the different contexts where it acquires different meanings. The present paper focuses on a particular epistemological context and clarifies the contribution of the reduction within this context. The contribution consists in the formulation and solution of the problem of exhibiting the evidence supporting the belief in the world’s existence. In a nutshell, world-experience grounds the world-belief and world-experience entails a bedrock of experience legitimizing (...) the positing of others. I argue that this contribution is possibly an enduring achievement of Husserl’s transcendental philosophy against common objections that are raised against it. I show that both the necessity and the viability of the transcendental reduction are a consequence of the general structure of critical examination. Overall, a picture of Husserl’s philosophy emerges that emphasizes embodiment, intersubjectivity, and facticity without giving up the rigor of radical epistemological analysis, aiming at overcoming both naïve pseudo-problems and subtle forms of dogmatism. (shrink)

Technological development plays a critical role in society’s ability to address environmental issues. Building on Teece’s profiting from innovation framework, we articulate how a double-externality problem weakens the appropriability regime surrounding pollution reduction technology (PRT). We then develop a theoretical framework articulating how weak appropriability induces firms to modify their innovation strategies for PRT development by increasing the extent to which they engage in organizational exploration (rather than exploitation) and emphasizing incremental (rather than radical) technologies. Noting that the (...) effects of weak appropriability are unlikely to be static, we detail how the accumulation of organizational capabilities for reducing pollution diminishes the extent to which firms modify their innovation strategies for PRT. That is, firms become less exploratory and less focused on incremental technology as they gain experience with pollution reduction. Results of broad-sample empirical analyses of 206,277 patents held by 203 U.S. manufacturing firms over a 20-year period provide support for our framework. (shrink)

Owing in part to Rorty’s energetic promotional efforts, Davidson’s philosophy of language has received much attention in recent decades from quarters most diverse, creating at times a sense of an almost protean versatility. Conspicuously missing from the rapidly growing literature on the subject is a sustained discussion of the relationship between Davidson’s interpretive theory and history: an omission all the more surprising since a comparison between Davidson and Gadamer has been pursued at some length and now, it seems,abandoned—all without as (...) much as a mention of history, which does, of course,play a prominent role in Gadamer’s thought. The issue, moreover, is hardly negligible. Davidson understood his work as an attempt to reconcile the demands of rigorous naturalism with the Kantian picture of human rationality,thereby salvaging what he considered to be important and interesting features of the human world from mechanistic reduction. For many thinkers of the 20th century, including Dewey and Gadamer, the irreducibly human had to do with the historical being of mankind, with historicity as the unique mark of our species. Yet, Davidson has virtually nothing to say about history and, in fact, a recent study by Giuseppina D’Oro (2004b), comparing Collingwood and Davidson, concludes that Davidson’s model of interpretation results in a distorted picture of understanding, as judged by the standards of a historically informed interpretive practice. Examining the causes of their disagreement, then,should help us make some headway towards a clearer sense of what it means to understand historically, by gleaning some additional constraints that the requirement of historicity imposes upon an interpretive theory. We start with D’Oro’s criticism of Davidson and discuss the alternative account of interpretation she proposes. Afterwards, we turn to Collingwood to see if either account does justice to his central insights, ending with some suggestions about the conceptual adjustments required to accommodate them. (shrink)

In his late works Husserl interprets the crisis of European sciences as the loss of their meaning for life. The diagnosis seems to suggest therapeutic strategy: to overcome the crisis, phenomenology must return to the evidences of the life-world. The article argues that the husserlian strategy of overcoming the crisis consists not in the elimination of the break with the prescientific evidences of the natural attitude, but, on the contrary, in the radicalization of the breach. Thus, I want to show (...) that Husserl seeks to overcome the crisis of sciences by means of more radical crisis of phenomenology. In Husserl’s view, phenomenology must become the only science, which does not presuppose the life-world, since it problematizes it. I am going to argue also, that the counterintuitive strategy is not just of the historico-philosophical interest, but is meaningful for the actual philosophical understanding of the life-world. To justify those claims, I will proceed in three stages. In the first section of the article, I analyze the difference between the objective world and the life-world, which is the point of departure of husserlian interpretation of the crisis of sciences in Crisis. Bringing into correlation the difference between the objective world and the life-world in Crisis with the distinction of the ideal world and the real one in Ideas I, I disclose the ambiguity of husserlian interpretation of the crisis of European sciences. According to Husserl, the crisis arises, when science transcends the life-world through the idealizations, and, at the same time, presupposes the immediate prescientific evidences as something that is taken for granted. In the second section, I argue that the strategy of overcoming the crisis in Crisis is based on the phenomenological epoche, which allows for the porblematization of the life-world without presupposing it, Within this context I demonstrate the motivational unity of two reductions, performed by Husserl in Crisis—the reduction to the life-world, stripping the reality of the garb of ideas mistakingly taken to be the reality itself, and the reduction of the life-world, turning it into horizon and depriving phenomenologist of a right of relying on the life-worldly evidences, which is taken for granted in the natural science and renders it possible. The unity of the reductions indicates that phenomenological descent back down to the life-world is treated by Husserl as the radical break with the evidences of the natural life. The third section discusses the question, whether the problematical character of the life-world can be revealed only from the point of view of disinterested spectator, or it can be discovered, in a way, from within, in pretheoretical experience, which capacitates the life to problematizing itself and motivates phenomenological epoche. I argue that, although the question is not answered in a suitable way within husserlian analyses of the motivation for the epoche, the key to the solution of the problem is provided by the genetic phenomenology, since it thematizes the historicity of the life-world. I interpret the historicity as the ambivalent pretheoretical experience, constituting both the self-evidence and the problematical character of the life-world. (shrink)

This chapter provides an overview of Rorty’s ethical pluralism along with a sketch of some of its main sources and implications. I also address Rorty’s thesis, notorious among some critics, about the incommensurability of a private “ironic” stance and a public commitment to the reduction of cruelty. A central argument is that Rorty’s “private-public” distinction is best read as an expression of the often under-appreciated “tragic” dimension that runs through Rorty’s thought. The main goal of the chapter is to (...) show how Rorty’s views on these issues hang together in a coherent – if nevertheless highly controversial – whole. (shrink)

Tännsjö’s book Setting Health-Care Priorities defends the view that there are three main normative theories in the domain of distributive justice, and that these theories are both highly plausible in themselves, and practically convergent in their normative conclusions. All three theories point to a somewhat radical departure from the present distribution of medical resources: in particular, they suggest redirecting resources from marginal life extension to the care of mentally ill patients. In this paper I wish to argue, firstly, that (...) prioritarianism should not be considered as an amendment to utilitarianism, as it is in Tännsjö’s view, but as a distinctive fourth option. This can best be appreciated if we focus on a reading of the theory that emphasizes its derivation from egalitarianism and its attempt to develop an intermediate approach between utilitarian and egalitarian intuitions. Secondly, in response to Tännsjö’s central objection to prioritarianism, I will argue that the theory does not apply in intrapersonal cases but is only relevant for decisions regarding the interpersonal distribution of benefits. Finally, I will suggest that a practical convergence of the four theories on specific issues such as artificial reproduction or mood enhancement is far less likely than Tännsjö seems to believe. (shrink)

This paper presents parts of a theory of radical translation with applications to the problem of construing reference. First, in sections 1 to 4 the general standpoint, inspired by Goodman's approach to induction, is set forth. Codification of sound translational practice replaces the aim of behavioral reduction of semantic notions. The need for a theory of translational projection (manual construction on the basis of a finite empirical correlation of sentences) is established by showing the anomalies otherwise resulting (e.g. (...) from Quine's position). Then in section 5 a partial characterization of what constitutes an "admissible translation manual" is developed in the form of rules of translational projection governing correspondence of sentence-parts of a language-pair. Finally, in section 6, we give applications of the theory to the problem of construing reference. The general rules of section 5 suffice to rule out deviant referential schemes which have been held inscrutable alternatives to standard schemes. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action by Rhiannon FirthJohn-Erik HanssonRhiannon Firth. Disaster Anarchy: Mutual Aid and Radical Action. London: Pluto Press, 2022. Paperback, 243 pp. ISBN 9780745340463The COVID-19 pandemic and the unfolding climate crisis, with the multiplication of unprecedented weather events, have shown how urgent it is to reflect on our responses to disaster. Following up on themes she first broached in Coronavirus, Class, and (...) Mutual Aid in the United Kingdom, Rhiannon Firth throws a fresh, anarchist, and utopian light on disaster relief in Disaster Anarchy.1 In this work, Firth seeks to “consider how [anarchist] social movements’ impressive efforts in mutual aid might contribute to a radical and revolutionary reconceptualisation of disasters and the processes of relief and recovery efforts” (19). To do so, she begins by surveying the dominant approaches to disaster relief (chapters 2 and 3) before offering a comprehensive anarchist theoretical critique of these perspectives (chapter 4). Firth then fleshes out her anarchist theory of disaster and community response through two empirical case studies of grassroots relief efforts. In chapter 5 she looks into the Occupy Sandy movement, a New York area community-based response to the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy’s passage in October 2012 in the United States. The final chapter is then dedicated to the COVID-19 Mutual Aid Groups that emerged in the United Kingdom during the pandemic.In building her argument, Firth mobilizes anarchist (and more broadly radical) theory and interviews with participants in both movements. She engages with how activists motivated and understood their participation in mutual aid groups, perceived disaster and relief organizing, sought to solve practical and political problems, and reflected on their experiences. The empirical sections of Disaster Anarchy are thus reminiscent of investigations into the anarchist connections and orientations of contemporary social movements, such as Occupy Wall Street.2 However, Firth’s is a work [End Page 606] of political theory. Her interviews were not conducted simply to describe and analyze the anarchist components of disaster relief social movements. Echoing Uri Gordon, she proposes to take the “worldviews of activists seriously as sources of theoretical knowledge,” leading us to rethink both anarchism and the politics of disaster as a whole (16).3 There lies a key part of the originality of Firth’s contribution to both anarchist theory and to the study of disaster relief. The utopian core of Disaster Anarchy also shines through this movement-based theoretical elaboration of an anarchist challenge to the dominant theories and practices of disaster relief. By examining mutual aid groups in critical dialogue with anarchist theory, Firth raises the possibility of more egalitarian and democratic “utopian alternatives to the status quo,” though, as she reminds us, they always run the risk of being co-opted (20).To set the scene for the desirability of anarchist approaches to disaster relief, Disaster Anarchy opens with Firth’s dissatisfaction with what she identifies as the two main sets of approaches to disaster studies. The first represents “the dominant neoliberal paradigm of disaster politics” and falls under the umbrella of “Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR)” (21). Firth contends that, despite some internal variety, all DRR approaches share the three same basic assumptions. First, DRR considers disasters to be “ruptures in the normal functioning of society.” They become a “management problem” that must be dealt with using the tools of political governance to restore order and ensure “systemic stability” (39–40). This can be done both directly through state institutions, and through civil society-based nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that cooperate with state institutions. DRR then evaluates responses using the categories of “efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” leaving aside “the affects and human impacts of disasters” (40). Second, DRR tends to flatten out differences between disasters, and in the ways in which individuals and groups respond to them. Disaster becomes abstract, and authorities can design sets of responses taken to be effective regardless of local contexts and demands. DRR approaches are therefore particularly congenial to the growth of large governmental “specialised agencies like DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]” that produce knowledge and practices linked to the vertical “management of disaster” (41). Finally... (shrink)

El presente artículo se interesa por los retratos fotográficos. Para ello, se considera la propuesta visual de Lariza Hatrick –artista lesbiana argentina dedicada a retratar la comunidad sexo-disidente que ella misma habita–. Aquí interesa el modo en que sus retratos dan cuenta de la irrupción de los cuerpos como lugar ontológico de contestación política no reductible al plano de la significación. En esta dirección, se recorren algunos vínculos entre identidad y representación a partir del trabajo precursor de Michel Foucault, de (...) la mirada queer de Judith Butler y de las conocidas fotografías de Cindy Sherman. Finalmente, se realiza un contrapunto entre, por un lado, estas aproximaciones teóricas y estéticas, y, por otro lado, el registro ontológico que anida en las fotografías de Hatrick –aquí ponderadas como soporte donde reverbera lo abyecto, es decir, una alteridad radical que circula en una materialidad corporal que desborda todo marco normativo. (shrink)

Western theology struggles with the rise of secularism and postmodernism. The Radical Orthodoxy sensibility asserts that the ancient principles of methexis (participation) and theosis (deification) presents an alternative metaphysical narrative to the narrative of secularism and the onto-theological tradition. This article addresses the problems of the onto-theological metaphysical tradition in Western theology by analyzing Radical Orthodoxy's rediscovery of the philosophical and theological principles of participation and theosis as articulated in the patristic tradition and in the thought of Thomas (...) Aquinas. Using historical and analytical methods, this article will survey the biblical and patristic literature on theosis, as well as John Milbank's understanding of methexis and theosis in Thomas Aquinas. The result of this study will be to offer theosis, rooted in participation in God, as not only a soteriological model to reclaim for the West, but also a core metaphysical principle for Christian ethics that contravenes both onto-theology and the materialistic reduction of ontology in secularism. (shrink)

Determinist thought with its sui generis view on life, nature and being as a whole is a point of view that could be observed in many different cultures and beliefs. It was thanks to Greek thought that it ceased to be a cultural element and transformed into a systematic cosmology. Schools such as Leucippos, then Democritos and Stoa attempted to integrate the determinist philosophy into ontology and cosmology. In the course of time, physics and metaphysics-based determinism approaches were introduced, and (...) a wide spectrum has emerged from genetics to behaviorism, from culture to psychology, from atomism to divinity. Determinism, whether physical or metaphysical origin, ignores freedom of will and deny agency competence over human behavior. Due to this feature, it is opposed by ethical theories, legal philosophies and religions. When the arguments for determinism are possible to disprove logically and philosophically, this is not so easy when the claims base themselves on scientific base. As the logical consequence of this novel fact, it is important to question the epistemological value of scientific knowledge and critically analyze the data of experiments and clinical studies in terms of methodology when answering any hypothesis such as neuro-biological, neuro-psychological, or neuro-theological argumentations. On the other hand, it is necessary to reach alternative experiments on the same subject or to show that it is possible to interpret them in different ways, as in the example of the Libet experiment. The neurobiological determinism based on biological reductionism, emerged as the result of ignoring the ontological difference of the mind, equating the mind with the brain, or defining mentality as an epiphenomenon of the brain. The main divergence stems from the acceptance of materialist philosophy. Paradigms that reduce existence only to matter do not take the metaphysical possibilities into account. In this case, although the problems called qualia or subjective experience stand there unresolved, the claim is preserved. Although many new developments such as the discovery of the entropy law, the big bang theory, and quantum physics have shaken the materialist philosophy, modern science resists an epistemological revision. However, with the current epistemology, it does not seem possible to grasp both the universe and the being as a whole. This is the most important reason why every attempt to understand the nature and spiritual side of human beings fails despite numerous experiments on the brain. However, the human brain is an organ that seems sophisticated and its secrets cannot be easily solved. Since there is not enough information about the brain, there is not enough evidence to claim that the brain, and therefore the mind, are part of the deterministic universe. Increasing brain researches since the last quarter of the twentieth century has revealed that genes, neurons and particularly brain chemistry claim much greater role than expected in human behavior. These results have been instrumentalized by some researchers for a radical claim that free will is an illusion, while by others it has led to the acceptance of will as less important over actions than was thought. Both ideas adopted a model of biological determinism in which freedom of will was ignored. Hypotheses based on controversial interpretations of various experiments raised concerns about religious, moral, and legal responsibility. Although man cannot be thought of as a non-free being from the point of view of common sense, the smog screen over the truth would not be lifted unless the scientific data in question had a correct interpretation. At first glance, it seems unreasonable to discuss universal determinism in the quantum universe. Nevertheless, the claim that strong causality prevails in the material world, including consciousness, remains in place. Therefore, firstly criticizing determinism and then examining biological determinism will help to fix the conceptual framework. This article aims to explain why genetics and neurobiology, while acknowledging their importance in the realization of behavior, can’t completely abolish moral agency. Some hypotheses attribute consciousness and free will to the physico-shimic structure of the brain, the random activity of neurons, or the ability to automatically transform inputs into outputs with the advantage of genetic information. This is the most sensitive and important point of being human; it attacks free will. Paradoxically, while global civilization of our time promises infinite freedom to human beings the science of the same age tries to prove that it is not free. (shrink)

En este artículo presentamos el concepto de vida humana como texto eterno en el pensamiento de Ortega y sus consecuencias para el problema de la interpretación. La filosofía de la razón vital de Ortega se fundamenta en el concepto de vida humana como realidad radical y principio interpretativo universal, y por esta razón se presenta desde el principio como una filosofía hermenéutica de la vida y no como una reducción hacia la conciencia trascendental. Esta hermenéutica se practica especialmente en (...) el ámbito del arte. Pero para Ortega todo texto es hermenéutico y necesita por tanto la interpretación, porque ningún texto posee en sí mismo su verdad. ENGLISH: In this article we present the concept of human life as eternal text in Ortega’s thought, and its consequences for the problem of interpretation. Ortega’s philosophy of vital reason is grounded in the concept of human life as radical reality and universal interpretive principle, and for this reason his philosophy appears from the beginning as a hermeneutic philosophy of life and not as reduction to transcendental consciousness. This hermeneutic is especially carried out in the sphere of art. For Ortega, however, all text is hermeneutic and therefore needs interpretation, because no text has its own truth in itself. (shrink)

Some revisionary ontologies are highly parsimonious: they posit far fewer entities than what we quantify over in ordinary discourse. The most radical examples are minimal ontologies, on which physical simples are the only things that exist. Highly parsimonious ontologies, and especially minimal ones, face the challenge of either accounting for the truth of our ordinary quantificational discourse, or paraphrasing such discourse away. Common strategies for addressing this challenge include classical reduction, paraphrase nihilism, and a distinction between ontological and (...) existence commitments. I argue, however, that these strategies are either implausible or fail to provide truth conditions consistent with minimal or parsimonious ontologies. I then discuss, defend, and suggest ways to strengthen an alternative framework for reduction, on which the sentences of reducing theories ground those of reducible theories. Relative to the other options for defending minimal ontology, a strengthened grounding-reductive approach can provide more defensible truth conditions for minimal ontology, better preserve scientific realist intuitions, set a more attainable standard for reduction, and allow our existence commitments to be more responsive to empirical evidence and scientific expertise. As a result, I argue that minimal ontology becomes more defensible—though not certain—on a grounding-reductive framework. But even if minimal ontology were wrong, the grounding-reductive framework makes other parsimonious but non-minimal ontologies more plausible. (shrink)

Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon both argue that oppression fundamentally constrains the subject’s relationship to and embodied experience of time, yet their accounts of temporality are rarely brought together. This paper will explore what we might learn about the operation of different types of reductive temporality if we read Beauvoir and Fanon alongside each other, focusing primarily on the early works that arguably lay out the central concerns of their respective temporal frameworks. At first glance, it seems that these (...) two models of temporality have radically different emphases. While Beauvoir suggests that reductive temporalities work to sever the future from the past and present, Fanon locates this destructive operation in the heightening of their entanglement. However, I will contend that there are deep affinities between these accounts: For both Beauvoir and Fanon, freedom is bound up with futurity, with its lack therefore cashed out in terms of stagnation, repetition, and the entrapment within a hollow moment that prevents authentic projection. Both resist teleological perspectives; problematize the endeavor to describe the structures of lived temporality in neutral terms; and show that temporality is crucial to the pursuit of a political phenomenology. These resonances, however, should only serve to recast rather than dissolve the tension between their approaches; ultimately, we need to acknowledge the distinctiveness of their differing concerns and aims. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch wants to introduce a theory of organization developed by Gestalt psychology into Husserlian phenomenology. The problem is to show how it is possible to introduce a theory developed within a positive science into philosophical phenomenology. His solution is to show that aspects of this theory already are or can be phenomenological through what he calls an incipient phenomenological reduction. Specifically, it is the dismissal of the constancy hypothesis in which he identifies the possibility moving from an explanatory (...) science to a descriptive one. If the temptation can be resisted of returning to an explanatory approach and description can be radicalized, Gurwitsch believes that this reduction can become phenomenological and even attain transcendental levels. This possibility of reduction makes it possible for scientists, especially psychologists, to have a firsthand understanding of phenomenology, perhaps to convince them of this approach and realize the continuity of philosophy and the sciences and the need to maintain cooperation via phenomenology. (shrink)

In 1988, the California state legislature passed the California Street Terrorism Enforcement and Prevention Act, which allowed courts to “enhance” the sentences of offenders who have been proven to "promote, further, or assist in any criminal conduct by gang members." It bundled together criminality, policing, and incarceration in ways that drew upon the fears of the black/latino Others that were imminent in panics surrounding the “crack epidemic” and inner-city crime. Jumping to April 2016, the Salvadoran government has passed strikingly similar (...) legislation, which centers on reclassifying gang-associated crimes as terroristic; in essence under their new laws gang affiliation is a terrorist. This, too, has been enacted in the midst of panic about gang violence and low-level warfare between gangs and the Salvadoran state. The adoption of US-style anti-gang approaches by the Salvadoran government is not new. In 2003, the right-wing government passed mano dura [“iron fist”] policies that sought to address increases in gang associate crime with zero-tolerance, tough-on-crime measures. Law enforcement received expanded leeway to target and arrest gang members, especially those from Mara Salvatrucha 13 and Barrio 18. Despite the lack of sustained reductions in violent crime, the mano dura policies have remained and will only be exacerbated by the new legislation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Descartes and Husserl. The Philosophical Project of Radical BeginningsMichael K. ShimPaul S. MacDonald. Descartes and Husserl. The Philosophical Project of Radical Beginnings. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. 285. Paper, $21.95.The enormous influence exerted by Descartes on Husserl's phenomenological philosophy cannot be underestimated. Not only is Husserl quite open and explicit about his philosophical debt to Descartes, but the fundamental motivation of the (...) phenomenological [End Page 593] method (directed towards apodeicticity and the purification of consciousness) would most likely be meaningless without reference to the Cartesian precedent. Consequently, almost every exegetical approach to Husserlian phenomenology has at least mentioned the relevance of the Cartesian tradition. Unfortunately, rare has been the phenomenological treatment of Descartes current with the latest scholarship. As an exception to this general shortcoming, MacDonald's book is a most welcome entry into Husserl scholarship.One of MacDonald's main theses is that Descartes and Husserl shared similarities in historical circumstances and, thus, shared similar motives for their "radical beginnings" in philosophy. With regards to Descartes' historical circumstances, by providing a breathtaking overview of sixteenth-century skepticism, MacDonald gives a cogent account of what led to Descartes' attempted construction of an absolute epistemological foundation for philosophy. However, the "conceptual confusions and collapses" of neo-skepticism will "survive the Cartesian overthrow and, like a persistent contagion" (31) reappear in the form of nineteenth-century psychologism. MacDonald does a convincing job of highlighting the skeptical profile of psychologism by providing systematic parallels between the mainstays of neo-skepticism and nineteenth-century psychologism: namely, distrust of objective knowledge, subjective reductionism and epistemological relativism. Accordingly, what motivates Husserl's epoché has both historical and systematic resources in the Cartesian reduction. The point itself is nothing new, and Husserl himself stresses the skepticism of nineteenth-century psychologism, but the scholarship and erudition that inform MacDonald's detailed historical account is to be commended.The truly ambitious aspect of the book, however, is the painstakingly worked out systematic comparison between the respective philosophical projects. In this respect, MacDonald takes two correlated approaches. The first approach takes up the metaphors of discovery and "voyage of exploration" (5) common to both thinkers' writings in order to explicate the meaning of philosophical transformation or "conversion," a "cognitive-affective reorientation of the whole self" (227). However, these metaphors are to be understood as symptomatic of deeper formal parallels between the two thinkers.The second approach begins with the daring claim that "Descartes' and Husserl's formal ontologies are... functionally equivalent" (95), a claim MacDonald proposes to reinforce by examining the structural parallels between Descartes' simple-complex dyad on the one hand and Husserl's part-whole theory as introduced in the Third Logical Investigations. This claim is brought into relief by a reformation of Descartes' conception of "ideas." Rather than restrict the Cartesian conception of ideas to "objective content," MacDonald emphasizes the act-quality of Cartesian ideas (125-7). Thereby an intentional conception of Cartesian ideas is made possible. Anyone familiar with Husserl should not find this surprising: what MacDonald is trying to suggest is a division of Cartesian ideas into noesis and noema, with the "material" aspect of act-ideas finding phenomenological restoration in Husserl's "hyletic data." With these elements in place, MacDonald largely succeeds in constructing a fuller and richer than usual comparison between methodical doubt and the phenomenological reduction (151ff), centered on a non-mystical eidetic intuitionism. MacDonald's ultimate conclusion is [End Page 594] that Husserlian phenomenology, as "first philosophy," is thoroughly consistent with Cartesian metaphysics, now understood as "second philosophy" (243).MacDonald's systematic conclusions are much bolder than one might think, since they are adduced by running against the letter of Husserl's own interpretation of Descartes. The background claim is that Husserl himself did not fully appreciate his debt to Descartes, and it is this exegetical failure that has led to his eventual abandonment of the "Cartesian Way." However, in order to make such an assertion, MacDonald would be obligated to demonstrate the Cartesian influences on the phenomenological pillars of the later Husserl: i.e., temporalization, genetic analysis and the theory of intersubjectivity—as programmatically outlined in the Fourth and... (shrink)

The trivial neuron doctrine (TND) holds that psychology merely depends on neurobiology. The radical neuron doctrine (RND) goes further and claims that psychology is superfluous in that neuroscience can “replace it.” Popular among RND notions of “replacement” is “reduction,” and in our commentary we challenge Gold & Stoljar (G&S) to make clear their distinction between merely depends on (TND) and is reducible to (RND). G&S give us a TND–RND distinction that is a distinction without a difference; a defensible (...) TND–RND distinction must have a metaphysical basis. We suggest a denial of compositionalism as such a basis. (shrink)