Objects often manifest themselves in incompatible ways across perspectives that are epistemically on a par. The standard response to such cases is to deny that the properties that things appear to have from different perspectives are properties that things really have out there. This type of response seems worrying: too many properties admit of perspectival variance and there are good theoretical reasons to think that such properties are genuinely instantiated. So, we have reason to explore views on which things (...) can have the incompatible properties they appear to have across perspectives. This paper explores the view that things can have incompatible properties if the world is not a metaphysically unified place but is instead fragmented. There is a sensible notion of co-obtainment, on which two facts can each obtain without co-obtaining. Using this notion, we can step back from our embedded perspectives on the world without deeming the contents of those perspectives to be mere appearances. This renders th.. (shrink)

ABSTRACTHilary Putnam provides an anti-skeptical argument motivated by semantic externalism. He argues that our best theorizing about what it takes to experience, think, and so on, entails that the world is much as we take it to be. This fact eliminates the possibility of radical skeptical scenarios, where from our perspective everything seems as it does in the actual case, but we are widely and systematically mistaken. I think that this approach is generally correct, and that it is the most (...) promising strategy for undermining radical skepticism. There are, however, well-discussed difficulties with Putnam's way of pursuing this strategy. I argue that in order to avoid these objections we will have to be more radical externalists than Putnam proposed; in particular, we will have to beperspectival externalists. According to perspectival externalism, a subject's reliable relations to her environment play a crucial role in determining not only the contents of her mental events, but also what it is like for her to grasp those contents. While semantic externalism is widely accepted in epistemology, perspectival externalism is not. I argue that perspectival externalism is independently more plausible than mere semantic externalism, and that such an account can enable us to better pursue Putnam's anti-skeptical strategy. (shrink)

The usual visual experiences possess a perspectival phenomenology as they seem to present objects from a certain perspective. Nevertheless, it is not obvious how to characterise experiential content determining such phenomenology. In particular, while there are many works investigating perspectival properties of experienced objects, a question regarding how subject is represented in visual perspectival experiences attracted less attention. In order to address this problem, I consider four popular phenomenal intuitions regarding perspectival experiences and argue that the (...) major theories of perspectival experiences do not account for all of them. Relying on these observations, I show how a theory which accommodates all these intuitions can be developed by (a) recognising that visual perspectival experiences are, in fact, multimodal visuo-bodily experiences and (b) distinguishing between egocentric and structural contents. (shrink)

Building on self-professed perspectival approaches to both scientific knowledge and causation, I explore the potentially radical suggestion that perspectivalism can be extended to account for a type of objectivity in science. Motivated by recent claims from quantum foundations that quantum mechanics must admit the possibility of observer-dependent facts, I develop the notion of ‘perspectival objectivity’, and suggest that an easier pill to swallow, philosophically speaking, than observer-dependency is perspective-dependency, allowing for a notion of observer-independence indexed to an (...) agent perspective. Working through the case studies of colour perception and causal perspectivalism, I identify two places within which I claim perspectival objectivity is already employed, and make the connection to quantum mechanics through Bohr’s philosophy of quantum theory. I contend that perspectival objectivity can ensure, despite the possibility of perspective-dependent scientific facts, the objectivity of scientific inquiry. (shrink)

The starting point of this paper is the thought that the phenomenal appearances that accompany mental states are somehow only there, or only real, from the standpoint of the subject of those mental states. The world differs across subjects in terms of which appearances obtain. Not only are subjects standpoints across which the world varies, subjects are standpoints that we can ‘adopt’ in our own theorizing about the world (or stand back from). The picture that is suggested by these claims (...) has an appeal but is at the same time obscure and stands in need of regimentation. This paper explores and motivates a metaphysical account of what it is for subjects to be standpoints, what it is to adopt standpoints in our representations and, most importantly, how these notions might help us better understand the subjective character of conscious mental states. Some well-known observations by Thomas Nagel serve as starting points and the paper concludes by revisiting Nagel’s argument for the inevitable incompleteness of objective accounts of mental states, which will be reframed in terms of the central commitments of the proposed framework. (shrink)

Haneke’s 1997 adaptation of Franz Kafka’s Das Schloß is thus far his last work for television[1]. Although «the Austrian film almanac lists» it «as a feature film» and it «was released in Austrian cinemas before its television première» [2], Haneke has always professed The Castle to be a TV film adaption, «an honorable enterprise» aimed at «bring[ing] literature closer to an audience» [3]. This is a significant remark, as it conveys a belief that this specific double status – qua TV (...) product and qua adaption of a literary work –prevents film adaptation from being considered «autonomous art». For one, he states, a work destined for TV by definition «serves audience expectations». For another, as an adaptation, a work is necessarily dependent upon its original source. [1] Before being well-known as a very influential film director, Michael Haneke began working for television in 1967. His first TV film, i.e., After Liverpool, was released long before his first feature film, Der siebente Kontinent, which was issued in 1989. This should not come as a surprise, since «practically every German-speaking filmmaker» at that time «started out directing films for television, taking advantage of the relatively generous system of subsidies and the general openness of German and Austrian state television channels to aesthetic innovation». In any case, Haneke later specified that directing for television was not solely a matter of opportunity, but also a fitting milieu in which to develop his own style. [2] However, that reportedly happened against Haneke’s will: «The Castle, for example, was in fact made for television, even though it will now be shown in movie houses as well. In my view, film adaptations are not genuine works of art. And I don’t really know of any film adaptation that really worked very well». Later he will confirm this point: «I would not have dared to turn The Castle into a movie for the big screen». [3] Let us note that this does not imply that Haneke feels a work formally presented as an adaptation cannot result in a great feature film. However, properly speaking, such a film could no longer be called an adaptation, since «it is not possible to serve two masters at the same time». Haneke is quite categorical on this point: «Thus one has to decide. Either I use a book as a quarry for ideas for something that I want to create myself, then it is a failed project as a film adaptation, or it is to be a film for a television program that has a commitment to cultural standards». (shrink)

An acceptable empiricist account of laws of nature would havesignificant implications for a number of philosophical projects. For example, such an account may vitiate argumentsthat the fundamental constants of nature are divinelydesigned so that laws produce a life permittinguniverse. On an empiricist account, laws do not produce the universe but are designed by us to systematize theevents of a universe which does in fact contain life; so any ``fine tuning'' of natural law has a naturalistic explanation.But there are problems for (...) the empiricist project. This paper develops a ``perspectival'' version of the Humean bestsystem approach and argues that this version solves the standard problems faced by the empiricist project.Furthermore, the paper argues, this version is best able to answer the proponents of divine design while leaving scientificlaw a suitably objective matter.[I]t is possible tocondense the enormous mass of results to a large extent – that is to find laws which summarize...Richard Feynman It has become fashionable in some circles to argue thatscience is ultimately a sham, that we scientists read order into nature, not out of nature, and that the laws of physicsare our laws, not nature's. I believe this is arrant nonsense. You would be hard-pressed to convince a physicist thatNewton's inverse square law of gravitation is a purely cultural concoction. The laws of physics, I submit, reallyexist in the world out there, and the job of the scientist is to uncover them, not invent them. True, at any giventime, the laws you find in the textbooks are tentative and approximate, but they mirror, albeit imperfectly, a reallyexisting order in the physical world. Of course, many scientists do not recognize that in accepting the reality of anorder in nature-the existence of laws `out there' – they are adopting a theological world view. P. C. W. Davies. (shrink)

In Making it Explicit Robert Brandom claims that perspectivally hybrid de re attitude ascriptions explain what an agent actually did, from the point of view of the ascriber, whether or not that was what the agent intended to do. There is a well-known problem, however, first brought to attention by Quine, but curiously ignored by Brandom, that threatens to undermine the role of de re ascriptions in the explanation of action, a problem that stems directly from the fact that, unlike (...) de dicto ascriptions, they permit the attribution of inconsistent attitudes to agents. I propose a solution to the problem which I believe is consistent with Brandom’s approach to the nature of intentionality and the explanation of action. (shrink)

We observe entropy decrease towards the past. Does this imply that in the past the world was in a non-generic microstate? I point out an alternative. The subsystem to which we belong interacts with the universe via a relatively small number of quantities, which define a coarse graining. Entropy happens to depends on coarse-graining. Therefore the entropy we ascribe to the universe depends on the peculiar coupling between us and the rest of the universe. Low past entropy may be due (...) to the fact that this coupling is non-generic. I argue that for any generic microstate of a sufficiently rich system there are always special subsystems defining a coarse graining for which the entropy of the rest is low in one time direction. These are the subsystems allowing creatures that “live in time” —such as those in the biosphere— to exist. I reply to some objections raised to an earlier presentation of this idea, in particular by Bob Wald, David Albert and Jim Hartle. (shrink)

Husserl famously argues that it is essential to perception to present the perceived object in perspectives. Hence, there is no – and there cannot be – perception without perspectival givenness. Yet, it seems that there are counterexamples to this essentialist claim, for we seem to be able to imagine beings that do not perceive in perspectives. Recently, there have been some accounts in the literature that critically discuss those counterexamples and assess to what extent they succeed in challenging Husserl’s (...) essentialist claim. In this paper I discuss three different answers to these counterexamples, all of them are found wanting. I offer a novel solution, taking into account some crucial findings of the contemporary debate about imagination and modality. I argue that this new solution is capable of fully vindicating Husserl’s essentialist claim. Finally, I reconstruct Husserl’s own way to treat such counterexamples, in order to showcase the notion of modality Husserlian phenomenology relies on. I argue for the hitherto widely underappreciated point that Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology cannot appeal to strictly absolute modality but that the kind of modality in Husserlian phenomenology is conditional on the facticity that we have the transcendental structure we do in fact have. (shrink)

The temporal, first-personal, and modal domains in metaphysics involve a range of perspectives on reality: the perspective of the present as opposed to those of other times, the perspective of one's own self as opposed to those of other subjects, and the perspective of the actual world as opposed to those of other possible worlds. In each case, we can ask about the metaphysical standing of these various perspectives with respect to one another: Is one perspective privileged above the rest? (...) There is a tension at the heart of our intuitive conception of the phenomena in these domains, motivating (at least in some of these cases) a pluralist conception of reality — a stance which attempts to take seriously the absoluteness of the present-tensed, first-personal, or actual-worldly facts, while also embracing the equal standing in reality of all perspectives of the relevant kind. My purpose in this paper is, first, to present an overview of recently popular forms of pluralism — or, what Fine (2005) calls non-standard realism — with a particular focus on fragmentalism. I'll then raise a worry for fragmentalist views, and finally, present an alternative form of pluralism about the perspectival. We'll see that, while in some ways more radical, the alternative form of pluralism I present has some conceptual advantages over more familiar non-standard realist views, and — more generally — can help illuminate the space of possible pluralist views about the perspectival. (shrink)

During his late period, Nietzsche is particularly concerned with the value that mankind attributes to truth. In dealing with that topic, Nietzsche is not primarly interested in the metaphysical disputes on truth, but rather in the effects that the "will to truth" has on the human being. In fact, he argues that the "faith in a value as such of truth" influenced Western culture and started the anthropological degeneration of the human type that characterizes European morality. To call into question (...) the value of truth is therefore necessary, if one wants to help mankind to find her way in the labyrinth of nihilism. -/- In this new addition to Nietzsche scholarship, Gori explores the origin and aim of the philosopher's late perspectival thought by merging the theoretical with the historical approach, with a special focus on the epistemological debate that influenced Nietzsche. As a result, the book provides a contextual reading of the issue that supports the idea that Nietzsche’s attitude in addressing the problem of truth is, in a broad sense, pragmatic. (shrink)

Argues that a pluralistic understanding of truth can foster productive conversations about common concerns involving religion, science, ethics, politics, economics, and ecology without falling into relativism. In this book, Donald A. Crosby defends the idea that all claims to truth are at best partial. Recognizing this, he argues, is a necessary safeguard against arrogance, close-mindedness, and potentially violent reactions to differences of outlook and practice. Crosby demonstrates how “partial truths” are inevitably at work in conversations and debates about religion, science, (...) morality, economics, ecology, and social and political progress. He then focuses on the concept in the discipline of philosophy, looking at a number of distinctions that are taken to be strictly binary—those between fact and value, continuity and novelty, rationalism and empiricism, mind and body, and good and evil—and demonstrates how in all of these cases, each on its own can offer only an incomplete picture. Partial Truths and Our Common Future invites ongoing dialogue with others for the sake of mutual enlargements of understanding rather than mere civility, and provides incentive for continuing open-minded and shared inquiries into the important issues of life. “This is a transdisciplinary philosophical work that moves with grace across traditions, time periods, and thinkers. It is a master class in the existential and public relevance of philosophy and a rare example of a book that is both timely and timeless.” — Michael S. Hogue, author of The Promise of Religious Naturalism. (shrink)

Understanding ecological boundaries is recognized by ecologists as important for understanding ecosystem dynamics. All borders are borders in relation to some organism. However, much of the literature on habitat change ignores this basic ecological fact. In addition, borders are highly influenced by accidental or historical features of ecosystems, and researchers have in many cases defined them only in terms of convenience. Several viewpoints explored in this article reflect this skepticism about identifying ecosystems as real structured entities. I draw on Ghiselin’s (...) hypothesis that species are not natural kinds but individuals, to develop a relational approach to ecological boundaries. I argue that with regard to ecology a border is always a border for a specific organism, and is a border in a specific manner for that organism. I draw on studies of two species of tsetse fly found in the Mauhoun river basin in Burkina Faso to illustrate why this relational approach is important. This approach may also help identify weaknesses in conservation efforts that have not properly asked the question, “Boundary for what?”. (shrink)

Privileged-perspective realism (PPR) is a version of metaphysical realism that takes certain irreducibly perspectival facts to be partly constitutive of reality. PPR asserts that there is a single metaphysically privileged standpoint from which these perspectival facts obtain. This chapter discusses several views that fall under the category of privileged-perspective realism. These include presentism, which is PPR about tensed facts, and non-multiverse interpretations of quantum mechanics, which the chapter argues, constitute PPR about world-indexed facts. Using (...) the framework of the bird perspective and the frog perspective, it argues that PPR views methodologically treat the frog perspective as metaphysically primary. This chapter considers case studies of metaphysical interpretations of special relativity and quantum mechanics in order to demonstrate that such motivations for PPR are non-naturalistic. Further, it considers psychological factors that motivate the appeal of PPR views and offers naturalistic explanations of why we should not expect them to produce an adequate metaphysics of science. (shrink)

In this chapter, I offer a constructivist account of practical reasoning as both generative and transformative in response to calls from philosophers as diverse as Iris Murdoch and Gilbert Harman, who have urged the development of a more nuanced picture of reasoning that incorporates revisionary and revelatory changes in viewpoint. Within this context, I describe sensitivity to facts as a form of emotional engagement that is also partially constitutive of facts. I consider both the epistemological and ontological aspects (...) of this claim. From an epistemological point of view, my claim is that agents strengthen their discernment of relevant facts through emotional engagement. From an ontological point of view, my claim is that, through emotional engagement, agents alter their immediate relationship to objects, changing not only “what matters” but also the “facts of the matter”. To an important extent, then, facts are inseparable from the subjective concerns of the agent. This is not to say that there are no subject-independent facts of the matter, nor that objects are mere projections of an agent’s sensibility onto the cold, colorless canvass of valueless reality. Rather, my claim is that the ontological boundary between facts and values—and the normative status of facts—are both internal to the practical perspective, defined by an agent’s particular concerns and within shared practices of mutual recognition. The most relevant implications of the constructivist view are found at the level of prospective rationality, that is, within the temporal dimension of rationality. Emotional engagement fosters changes in perspective, but this should not be read as simply arbitrary fluctuations. Despite being perspectival, such changes are applied to a subject-independent field, which gains further intelligibility through the agent’s altered relationship to those circumstances. By examining the dynamics of such changes, we acquire a more nuanced theoretical vocabulary to help make sense of the prospective dimension of practical reasoning within which ordinary agents are engaged. (shrink)

There is widespread belief among realists that it is consistent to think of the world as a totality of absolute facts and of our representation of the world as perspectival. As a pluralist Michael Lynch has challenged this view by arguing that relativism about representational content en tails relativism about facts. Lynch's 'T-argument' is presented and discussed in detail. It is argued not only that the 'T-argument' fails and that content relativism and fact absolutism are compatible, but (...) also that content absolutism entails fact absolutism. These two points add up to a serious challenge of pluralists in committing them to the view that there are many actual worlds. (shrink)

According to perspectival realism, reality is (at least partially) constituted by “purely perspectival” facts, that is, facts that appear to describe reality only from a given “perspective”. Fragmentalism is a form of perspectival realism that maintains both that no perspective is privileged and that perspectival facts constitute reality absolutely. Assuming that reality is sufficiently variegated, fragmentalism entails that reality is absolutely constituted by incompatible facts. Given that incompatible facts can never obtain (...) together, reality must be divided into a plurality of “fragments” that never compose a coherent, unitary whole. The main aim of this paper is to provide the first rigorous, detailed map of fragmentalism and its rivals. First, we will argue that fragmentalism is best construed as having two “unitist” (that is, non-fragmentalist) boundaries, which we will call ‘coherent’ and ‘incoherent unitism’. Second, we will present what we take to be the six main viable versions of fragmentalism and show how they can be categorized according to whether they take the logical operations of conjunction and negation to be either “local” or “global”. (shrink)

There is a temptation associated with the question, which must be exposed before the question can be properly addressed. This is the temptation to think that there are perspectival features of reality that figure in perspectival facts, and that what makes true perspectival representations true is the obtaining of such facts. I argue that this is incoherent, and that the absolute/perspectival distinction applies exclusively to representations, not to what is represented. I also consider why (...) the temptation exists, and how it can be resisted. (shrink)

This paper proposes a view of time that takes passage to be the most basic temporal notion, instead of the usual A-theoretic and B-theoretic notions, and explores how we should think of a world that exhibits such a genuine temporal passage. It will be argued that an objective passage of time can only be made sense of from an atemporal point of view and only when it is able to constitute a genuine change of objects across time. This requires that (...) passage can flip one fact into a contrary fact, even though neither side of the temporal passage is privileged over the other. We can make sense of this if the world is inherently perspectival. Such an inherently perspectival world is characterized by fragmentalism, a view that has been introduced by Fine in his ‘Tense and Reality’ (2005). Unlike Fine's tense-theoretic fragmentalism though, the proposed view will be a fragmentalist view based in a primitive notion of passage. (shrink)

The idea that the dynamical properties of quantum systems are invariably relative to other systems has recently regained currency. Using Relational Quantum Mechanics (RQM) for a case study, this paper calls attention to a question that has been underappreciated in the debate about quantum relativism: the question of whether relativity iterates. Are there absolute facts about the properties one system possesses relative to a specified reference, or is this again a relative matter, and so on? It is argued that (...) RQM (in its best-known form) is committed to what I call the Unrestricted Iteration Principle (UIP), and thus to an infinite regress of relativisations. This principle plays a crucial role in ensuring the communicability and coherence of interaction outcomes across observers. It is, however, shown to be incompatible with the widespread, conservative reading of RQM in terms of relations, instead necessitating the adoption of the more unorthodox notion of perspectival facts. I conclude with some reflections on the current state of play in perspectivist versions of RQM and quantum relativism more generally, underscoring both the need for further conceptual development and the importance of the iteration principle for an accurate cost-benefit analysis of such interpretations. (shrink)

The A-theory of time says that it is an objective, non-perspectival fact about the world that some events are present, while others were present or will be present. I shall argue that the A-theory has some implausible consequences for inductive reasoning. In particular, the presentist version of the A-theory, which holds that the difference between the present and the non-present consists in the present events being the only ones that exist, is very much in trouble.

Modern societies depend on a growing production of scientific knowledge, which is based on the functional differentiation of science into still more specialised scientific disciplines and subdisciplines. This is the basis for the paradox of scientific expertise: The growth of science leads to a fragmentation of scientific expertise. To resolve this paradox, the present paper investigates three hypotheses: 1) All scientific knowledge is perspectival. 2) The perspectival structure of science leads to specific forms of knowledge asymmetries. 3) Such (...) perspectival knowledge asymmetries must be handled through second order perspectives. We substantiate these hypotheses on the basis of a perspectivist philosophy of science grounded in Peircean semiotics and autopoietic systems theory. Perspectival knowledge asymmetries are an unavoidable and necessary part of the growth of scientific knowledge, and more awareness of this fact can help avoid blind and futile struggles between scientific perspectives, and direct efforts toward more appropriate ways of handling these fundamental knowledge asymmetries. Concretely, we show how different kinds of scientific knowledge, expertise, disagreement and learning can be correlated to the perspectival structure of science, and propose how polyocular communication based on observations of the observations made by specialised perspectives can be used to handle such perspectival knowledge asymmetries. This can help overcome the observed problems in carrying out cross-disciplinary research and in the collective use of different kinds of scientific expertise, and thereby make society better able to solve complex, real-world problems. (shrink)

Craig Callender claims that ‘time is the great informer’, meaning that the directions in which our ‘best’ physical theories inform are temporal. This is intended to be a metaphysical claim, and as such expresses a relationship between the physical world and information-gathering systems such as ourselves. This article gives two counterexamples to this claim, illustrating the fact that time and informative strength doubly dissociate, so the claim cannot be about physical theories in general. The first is a case where physical (...) theories inform in directions that we have no reason to regard as temporal. The second is a case where our best physical theories fail to inform in directions that we have independent (pre-theoretic) reasons to regard as temporal. Taking these two cases into account suggests that the connection Callender makes between time and informativeness is perspectival. The second case demonstrates that although scientists often seek information in temporal directions, the behaviour of the physical world can present serious difficulties for finding it. In response, this article proposes a perspectival reading of Callender’s claim, according to which the connection between time and informative strength has more to do with the aims and objectives of science than the workings of the physical world. (shrink)

Objectivists about obligation hold that obligations are determined by all of the normatively relevant facts. Perspectivalists, on the other hand, hold that only facts within one’s perspective can determine what we are obligated to do. This chapter argues for a perspectivalist view. It argues that what you are obligated to do is determined by the normative reasons you possess. This view is anchored in the thought that our obligations have to be action-guiding in a certain sense—we have to (...) be able to act for the reasons that obligate us. The chapter argues that we have this ability—the ability to act for the right reasons—only if we possess those reasons. Thus, objectivism is false. The second half of the chapter argues that problems having to do with new information do not plague the particular perspectival view presented. (shrink)

For better or for worse, I find myself in the company of the `misers' of Galen Strawson's portrayal who, in response to the question, `Is there such a thing as the self?' rejoin: `Well, there is something of which the sense of the self is an accurate representation, but it does not follow that there is any such thing as the self'. Far from representing a form of `metaphysical excess', the rejoinder seems faithfully and reliably phenomenological. We need not assume (...) that reflection is mere fabrication, or that it crucially distorts the thematic posit that funds our sense of self. The focus, recognition and contextual sensitivity that condition perception may, and admittedly do, limit and modify the activity of reflection as well. Observation disturbs the observed. And likewise, reflection may well compromise its object. But the product of this `compromise', the object as disturbed, the reflective posit as distorted, is nonetheless `there', for reflection. If the way a given object appears to us is a function of our perspectival insertion into the visible world, we need not deny that the world still appears to us in just this way. And analogously, our `sense of self' may represent -- in fact, faithfully represent -- the resultant `distortion', but it would be a breach of logic to infer from this that our `sense of self' therefore represents a self untouched by distortion, an independent, `undistorted' self. Indeed, if reflection distorts, we would have no reflective access to an undistorted self, and would thus have no phenomenological warrant for assuming its existence. Pace Strawson, however, the `something' represented by our `sense of self' is not some thing. It is not `as much a thing or object as any... grain of salt', but rather, as we shall see, an atmospheric haze, or at best, an adventitious `sheen'. (shrink)

Media and Moral Education demonstrates that the study of philosophy can be used to enhance critical thinking skills, which are sorely needed in today’s technological age. It addresses the current oversight of the educational environment not keeping pace with rapid advances in technology, despite the fact that educating students to engage critically and compassionately with others via online media is of the utmost importance. -/- D’Olimpio claims that philosophical thinking skills support the adoption of an attitude she calls critical perspectivism, (...) which she applies in the book to international multimedia examples. The author also suggests that the Community of Inquiry – a pedagogy practised by advocates of Philosophy for Children – creates a space in which participants can practise being critically perspectival, and can be conducted with all age levels in a classroom or public setting, making it beneficial in shaping democratic and discerning citizens. -/- This book will be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the areas of philosophy of education, philosophy, education, critical theory and communication, film and media studies. (shrink)

Apparently, people who are aware of the relevant facts and experiences in a belief forming situation, sometimes reasonably disagree about whether to believe and why. This study argues that such disagreements are possible, and that some purportedly fully informed reasonable disagreements are genuine, including cases involving disagreement about which beliefs about God are reasonably taken to be properly basic, given the facts of religious diversity and cases in which phenomenologically similar religious experiences properly ground a variety of religious (...) beliefs. Drawing on the work of Alasdair MacIntyre, it also argues that Tradition-Based Perspectivalism - roughly, the view that foundational beliefs about what is reasonable to believe and why, are tradition-based and perspectival in nature, originating in and appropriately grounded only from the perspective of some tradition of inquiry or other - is true, and that its truth provides additional support for the claim that fully informed reasonable disagreement actually occurs. (shrink)

Abstract The rise of social neuroscience has brought the second-person perspective back into the focus of philosophy. Although this is not a new topic, it is certainly less well understood than the first-person and third-person perspectives, and it is even unclear whether it can be reduced to one of these perspectives. The present paper argues that no such reduction is possible because the second-person perspective provides a unique kind of access to certain facts, namely other persons' mental states, particularly, (...) but not only, in social contexts. The paper starts with the idea that perspectives are ways of epistemic access that determine an epistemic subject's recognition of a certain object. While the first-person perspective is subjective because it is based on, and directed at, the epistemic subject's experiences, the third-person perspective, which is based on objective evidence and gives access to all kinds of entities, is objective. The second-person perspective, by contrast, is intersubjective because it is a relation between an epistemic subject and another sentient being's mental states. It involves the epistemic subject's replication of those states, a basic self/other distinction and a basic awareness of the relevant situational differences between the epistemic subject and the other being. This is why the second-person perspective is a perspective on a perspective, which involves a basic awareness of perspectivalness, even if second-person perspective taking may be subpersonal to a large extent. (shrink)

Huw Price has argued that on an interventionist account of cause the distinction is perspectival, and the claim prompted some interesting responses from interventionists and in particular an exchange with Woodward that raises questions about what it means to say that one or another structure is perspectival. I’ll introduce his reasons for claiming that the distinction between cause and effect on an interventionist account is perspectival. Then I’ll introduce a distinction between different ways in which a class (...) of concepts can be said to depend on facts about their users. Three importantly different forms of dependence will emerge from the discussion: Pragmatic dependence on us: truth conditions for x-beliefs can be given by a function f \ of more fundamental physical structures making no explicit reference to human agents. But there are any other number of functions ) ontologically on a par with x and what explains the distinguished role f plays in our practical and epistemic lives are facts about us. Implicit relativization: truth conditions for x-beliefs are relative to agent or context; the context supplies the value of a hidden parameter that determines the truth of x-beliefs. Indexicals: like implicit relativization except that the surface syntax contains a term whose semantic value is context-dependent. I suggest that Price’s insights are best understood in the first way. This will draw a crucial disanalogy with his central examples of perspectival concepts, but it will refine the thesis in a way that is more faithful to what his arguments show. The refined thesis will also support generalization to other concepts, and clarify the foundations of the quite distinctive research program that Price has been developing for a number of years. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics and Politics in Tagore, Coetzee, and Certain Scenes of TeachingGayatri Chakravorty Spivak (bio)It is practically persuasive that the eruption of the ethical interrupts and postpones the epistemological—the undertaking to construct the other as object of knowledge, an undertaking never to be given up. Lévinas is the generic name associated with such a position. A beautiful passage from Otherwise than Being lays it out, although neither interruption nor postponement (...) is mentioned. That connection is made by Derrida [Adieu 51-59].Here, then, is Lévinas, for whom Kant's critical perspectivization of the subject and the rigorous limits of pure theoretical reason seem to have been displaced by the structuralist hermeneutics of suspicion. For Lévinas, structuralism did not attend to what in Kant was the mechanism that interrupted the constrained and rigorous workings of pure reason: "The interests that Kant discovered in theoretical reason itself, he subordinated to practical reason, become mere reason. It is just these interests that are contested by structuralism, which is perhaps to be defined by the primacy of theoretical reason" [Otherwise than Being 58; trans. modified].The relationship between the postponement of the epistemological in Lévinas and the subordination of pure reason in Kant is a rich theme, beyond the scope of this essay. Let us return to what Lévinas will perceive as a general contemporary hermeneutics of suspicion, related to the primacy of theoretical reason: "The suspicions engendered by psychoanalysis, sociology and politics weigh on human identity such that we never know to whom we are speaking and what we are dealing with when we build our ideas on the basis of the human fact."1 The political calculus thematizes this suspicion into an entire code of strategy defined as varieties of game theory and rational choice. This can be verified across cultural difference, backwards through history, and in today's global academic discourse. Over against this Lévinas posits the ethical with astonishing humility: "but we do not need this knowledge in the relationship in which the other is the one next to me [le prochain]" [Otherwise 59].Kant thought that the ethical commonality of being (gemeines Wesen—repeatedly mistranslated as "the ethical state") cannot form the basis of a state. Surprisingly, there is a clear line from the face-to-face of the ethical to the state in Lévinas.2 It has long [End Page 17] been my habit to scavenge and tinker in the field of practical philosophy. I will conserve from Kant the discontinuity between the ethical and the political, from Lévinas the discontinuity between the ethical and the epistemological. I will suggest that the discontinuities between the ethical and the epistemological and political fields are tamed in the nestling of logic and rhetoric in fiction.3Enabled by such a suggestion, I can move to another bit of prose on that page in Lévinas: "for reasons not at all transcendental but purely logical, the object-man must figure at the beginning of all knowing."The figure of the "I" as object: this representation of the holy man in Lévinas does not match our colloquial and literal expectations. My general suggestion, that the protocol of fiction gives us a practical simulacrum of the graver discontinuities inhabiting (and operating?) the ethico-epistemic and the ethico-political, can, however, take such a figure on board. I will continue to want to say that fiction offers us an experience of the discontinuities that remain in place "in real life." That would be a description of fiction as an event—an indeterminate "sharing" between writer and reader, where the effort of reading is to taste the impossible status of being figured as object in the web of the other. Reading, in this special sense, is sacred.In this essay I consider not only fiction as event but also fiction as task. I locate in Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) and J. M. Coetzee (1940-) representations of what may be read as versions of the "I" figured as object and weave the representations together as a warning text for postcolonial political ambitions.4 I am obviously using "text" as "web," coming from Latin texere—"to... (shrink)

Although, Feyerabend himself seems never to have used the term ‘perspectivism’ to designate a philosophical position, I think his views about science are very well characterized as perspectival. In fact, his later writings contain much that contributes to current thinking about perspectivism. I would like, therefore, to distinguish my own perspectivism from Feyerabend's. In the end, I will argue, his perspectivism is lacking enough of the critical bite that the younger Feyerabend found so attractive in Popper's philosophy.

Thomas Reid's Geometry of Visibles, according to which the geometrical properties of an object's perspectival appearance equal the geometrical properties of its projection on the inside of a sphere with the eye in its centre allows for two different interpretations. It may (1) be understood as a theory about phenomenal visual space – i.e. an account of how things appear to human observers from a certain point of view – or it may (2) be seen as a mathematical model (...) of viewpoint-relative but mind-independent relational properties of objects. This paper makes a systematic and a historical claim. I shall argue, first, that given certain features of the human visual system phenomenal visual space differs in several aspects from Reidean visual space. Secondly, I suggest that, since Reid was aware of some of these empirical facts, we should interpret Reid as endorsing the second interpretation of the Geometry of Visibles. (shrink)

Some critics argue that Marx has conflicting models of history: a "continuist" model that interprets history as a unified, evolutionary movement, and a "discontinuist" model that sees capitalist society as a break from all preceding social formations. I argue that Marx in fact does have multiple models of history, but that these are not incompatible or contradictory. Rather, Marx adopts a "perspectival" or "contextualist" approach that employs different models to gain different perspectives on the historical process. I provide a (...) close reading of the "discontinuity" model based on an analysis of Marx's Grundrisse. (shrink)

Epistemic possibilities are relative to bodies of information, or perspectives. To claim that something is epistemically possible is typically to claim that it is possible relative one’s own current perspective. We generally do this by using bare, unqualified epistemic possibility (EP) sentences, ones that don’t mention our perspective. The fact that epistemic possibilities are relative to perspectives suggests that these bare EP sentences fall short of fully expressing propositions, contrary to what both contextualists and relativists take for granted. Although they (...) rightly reject propositional invariantism, the implausible view that a bare EP sentence expresses the same classical (absolutely true or absolutely false) proposition in any context, they maintain that a change in perspective shifts either the sentence’s propositional content (to a proposition involving a different perspective) or its truth-value (the same perspectivally neutral proposition now evaluated from a different perspective). I deny that the semantic contents of bare EP sentences shift at all. But I also deny that these contents have truth-values. Rather, according to the radical invariantism I defend, these contents are not full-fledged propositions but merely propositional radicals. Only explicitly relativized EP sentences manage fully to express propositions, and these perspective-involving propositions are the only EP propositions there are. Nevertheless, bare EP sentences are perfectly capable of being used to assert EP propositions, because utterances of them implicitly allude to the relevant perspective. Various problem cases challenge radical invariantism to explain pragmatically which perspective is read into the utterance of a given bare EP sentence. Unlike contextualism and relativism, it can do this without having to resort to any semantic bells and whistles.. (shrink)

Responding to Cappelen and Dever’s claim that there is no distinctive role for perspectivality in epistemology, I argue that facts about the outcomes of one’s own reasoning processes may have a different evidential significance than facts about the outcomes of others’.

This book is a synthesis of more than three decades of research into the concept of time and its semiotic nature. If traditional philosophy – and philosophy of time should be no exception – in the shadow of advancing biology can be said to have reached an impasse, one important reason for this, in harmony with Wittgenstein’s vision, appears to have been its lack of appropriate tools for explicating language. The present theory of time proceeds, accordingly, from the exploration of (...) temporal expressions in language as an evolutionary fact. It derives in a hypothetical, coherent feedback process of hierarchically ordered distinctions the semantics of time from its biologically dictated perceptual and cognitive-pragmatic origins. The corresponding abductive-regulative model is anchored in the assumption of biological rhythmization as the very foundation of perception and mental/physical action. Understood to originate in space and spatial perspective, time reveals itself as an instrument for temporal perspective on motion (events and situations) in a process of analysis, i.e., discontinuation of chaos made divisible and continuous by the rhythmical screen. Whereas traditional philosophy of time paid attention almost exclusively to the temporal category of tense, the biopragmatic model sees strong evidence in the perspectival nature of time for ascribing the decisive, and probably universal, role in temporal analysis to the linguistic category of aspect. Aspect may, according to the present findings, be assumed to partake already of change-of-state and cause-effect analysis without which man’s adaptation to new situations – and precondition for survival – would be inconceivable. The proposed model of space/time cognition, inspired by Hegelian dialectics, Heidegger-Gadamer’s hermeneutic circle and Peircean logic, makes Kantian a priori superfluous and liberates time from its enigmatic appearance. For the first time in temporal studies it thus appears possible to derive hypothetically linguistic expressions of time all the way from pretemporal, homogeneous continuity effected by biological rhythmization, via pretemporal metonymic (Gestalt), chunk-wise partitioning – as a general precondition for the perception and, based on primary metaphorization, the cognition of things, space and motion – to temporal analysis/discontinuation proper, primarily by aspectual perspective, and the subsequent synthesized, heterogeneous continuity of temporally ordered events. The conception of time, so disastrous for modern temporal logic, i.e., as moving object assigned extension, divisible continuity (‛linearity’) and direction, can be shown to have emerged as a result of secondary metaphorization. (shrink)

We argue that the temporal asymmetry of influence is not merely the result of thermodynamics: it is a consequence of the fact that modal structure of the universe must admit only processes which cannot give rise to contradictions. We appeal to the process matrix formalism developed in the field of quantum foundations to characterise processes which are compatible with local free will whilst ruling out contradictions, and argue that this gives rise to ‘consistent chaining’ requirements that explain the temporal asymmetry (...) of influence. We compare this view to the perspectival account of causation advocated by Price and Ramsey. (shrink)

Criteria of adequacy for scientific representation of the phenomena pertain to accuracy and truth. But that representation is selective and may require distortion even in the selected parameters; this point is intimately connected with the fact that representation is intentional, and its adequacy relative to its particular purpose. Since observation and measurement are perspectival and the appearances to be saved are perspectival measurement outcomes, the question whether this “saving” is an explanatory relation provides a new focus for the (...) realist/antirealist debate. The Born rule and von Neumann's “collapse” postulate in quantum mechanics provide a telling case for this question in recent physics. (shrink)

The objective of the current paper is to provide a critical analysis of Dretske's defense of the naturalistic version of the privileged accessibility thesis. Dretske construed that the justificatory condition of privileged accessibility neither relies on the appeal to perspectival ontology of phenomenal subjectivity nor on the functionalistic notion of accessibility. He has reformulated introspection (which justifies the non-inferentiality of the knowledge of one's own mental facts in an internalist view) as a displaced perception for the defense of (...) naturalistic privileged accessibility. Both internalist and externalist have been approved the plausibility of first-person authority argument through privileged accessibility; however, their disagreement lies on the justificatory condition of privileged accessibility. Internalist hold the view that the justificatory warrant for privileged accessibility is grounded on phenomenal subjectivity. In contrast to the internalist view, externalists uphold the view that the justificatory condition for privileged accessibility lies outside the domain of phenomenal subjectivity. As a proponent of naturalistic content externalism, Dretske defends the view that subject's privileged accessibility is not due to having access to the particular representational state (hence, they have the privilege of getting sensory representational information) and the awareness of mental fact rather the awareness of the whole representational mechanism. Having the knowledge of a particular representational state through privileged access is not the sufficient condition for the accuracy of knowledge about one’s own mental facts. The justificatory warrant lies external to the subject. Even though Dretske’s naturalistic representation is not plausible enough while dealing with the reduction of phenomenal qualities of experience, however, provides a new roadmap to compatibilists for the defense of privileged accessibility and has a major impact on transparency theorists. (shrink)

It is widely recognized that scientific theories are often associated with strictly inconsistent models, but there is little agreement concerning the epistemic consequences. Some argue that model inconsistency supports a strong perspectivism, according to which claims serving as interpretations of models are inevitably and irreducibly perspectival. Others argue that in at least some cases, inconsistent models can be unified as approximations to a theory with which they are associated, thus undermining this kind of perspectivism. I examine the arguments for (...) perspectivism, and contend that its strong form is defeasible in principle, not merely in special cases. The argument rests on the plausibility of scientific knowledge concerning non-perspectival, dispositional facts about modelled systems. This forms the basis of a novel suggestion regarding how to understand the knowledge these models afford, in terms of a contrastive theory of what-questions. (shrink)

The stories we live by: On narrative self-constitution and self-understanding In spite of what Galen Strawson defends, it is claimed that a narrative attitude – as a psychological fact – is of great use for self-reflective beings in making their experiences understandable and managing their lives. Secondly, there is doubt about the existence of what Marya Schechtman called a ‘narrative self’, i.e. a self that is constituted by the stories people tell about themselves. It is proposed to leave the constitution (...) question aside and to choose, like Peter Goldie did before, for the ‘narrative sense of self’ as an anchor point when we want to understand how people think about their lives and themselves in narrative terms. Finally, it is disputed that narrative self-understanding would be impossible or should be banished to the world of fiction, as anti-narrativists contend. Although the life stories of people are inevitably perspectival and in essence contestable, they are always factual stories that can be true and false and thus play a significant role in better understanding ourselves and others. (shrink)

Nietzsche's perspectivism claims that every view is only one view. This claim raises serious self-referential difficulties: if Nietzsche's view is not to refute itself, then any argument offered on its behalf must be merely perspectival, but no such reasons would be convincing to Nietzsche's dogmatic opponents. This dissertation takes a historical approach, arguing that Nietzsche's perspectivism is a development and transformation of Kant's transcendental idealism. Our perspectival notions, like the Kantian categories, are conceptual resources that we bring to (...) experience to organize it. Nietzsche does not accept Kant's transcendental interpretation of our conceptual scheme, however. He offers arguments against the claims to necessary knowledge on which Kant's transcendental approach is based, and also against the coherence of the notion of the thing in itself, which Kant shares with traditional metaphysical realism. These arguments have the force of "internal reasons" against Kant and the realist; they are given from within Nietzsche's own perspective, but they appeal to cognitive standards which Nietzsche shares in common with his dogmatic opponents. They therefore count as reasons in favor of perspectivism, even within the terms of the alternative perspectives, despite the fact that they make no claim to universal, aperspectival validity. Nietzsche can thereby avoid the self-referential difficulties facing his argument. This interpretation also allows Nietzsche to develop "theory-internal" conceptions of truth and objectivity. These conceptions are found to provide a better account of our cognitive practices than the traditional, externalist alternatives. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism, relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely, Bohr’s relational approach, the modal interpretation by Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the (...) relational interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational literature. This possibility is to consider relations in ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum mechanics is really talking about. (shrink)

This paper discusses the question of stable facts in relational quantum mechanics (RQM). I examine how the approach to quantum logic in the consistent histories formalism can be used to clarify what infomation about a system can be shared between different observers. I suggest that the mathematical framework for Consistent Histories can and should be incorporated into RQM, whilst being clear on the interpretational differences between the two approaches. Finally I briefly discuss two related issues: the similarities and differences (...) between special relativity and RQM and the recent Cross-Perspectival Links modification to RQM. (shrink)

The paper argues a certain parallelism between the perception and the conception of real-world objects. Just as the former is always incomplete, perspectival, and error-prone, so is the latter. We can never claim ultimate correctness for our conception of things. This fact is crucial for communication, because if our own conceptions were claimed as definitive, then we could never be secure in our confidence that we are in communicative touch with one another regarding a common, shared object of communication.

The paper argues a certain parallelism between the perception and the conception of real-world objects. Just as the former is always incomplete, perspectival, and error-prone, so is the latter. We can never claim ultimate correctness for our conception of things. This fact is crucial for communication, because if our own conceptions were claimed as definitive, then we could never be secure in our confidence that we are in communicative touch with one another regarding a common, shared object of communication.

How do people and institutions manage to bring their different perspectives into an effective and productive interplay? How can we overcome obstacles for the creative potentials of distributed perspectives? Traditionally, the perspectives of people and institutions are considered to be fixed and isolated points of view. In such a picture, the perspectives seem determined in advance by positions and persons seem trapped within their perspectival horizons. In contrast, the new approach of this volume’s contributions focuses on the simple but (...) fundamental fact that people always already refer to fellow human beings and coordinate their own perspectives with those of other persons and institutions. The contributions of the present volume concentrate on the structures, mechanisms, and dynamics of the interplays of different perspectives of interacting, communicating, and cooperating persons and institutions. The volume focuses on how the creative potentials as well as the organizational effectiveness of distributed perspectives can be set free. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to propose a way to study the role of perspectives in both the production and justification of experimental knowledge claims. My starting point for this will be Anjan Chakravartty’s claim that Ronald Giere’s perspectival account of the role of instruments in the production of such claims entails relativism in the form of irreducibly incompatible truths. This led Michela Massimi to argue that perspectivism, insofar as it wants to form a realist position, is only (...) concerned with the justification of such claims: whether they are produced reliably is, on her view, a perspective-independent fact of the matter. Following a suggestion by Giere on how scientists handle incompatible experimental results, I will then argue that Massimi’s perspectivism can be extended to also cover the production of such claims, without falling into relativism. I will elaborate this suggestion by means of Uljana Feest’s work on how scientists handle incompatible experimental results. I will argue that, if we reconceptualize perspectives as embodied and situated ways of going about in experimentation that can be made explicit through interpretation, we can obtain a fruitful understanding of the role of perspectives in both the production and justification of experimental knowledge. While this role is primarily exploratory, it can still allow for a substantial form of realism. (shrink)

This is a piece of experimental multi-perspectival writing in which four different personae adopt different methods and intellectual relationships to writing as a means of research, by using the topics of fiction, counterfactual history and not-being. The narrative line is provided by a novelist who retells Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon. In Saramago’s novel a wayward proof-reader mischievously adds the word “not” to the historical account, creating a fictional, counterfactual history. This “bringing into being” of a (...) fiction – of what didn’t actually happen – sets in train a series of perspectives or thought experiments by the four personae of the present text on the nature of “not-being”. They deploy methods from fictional writing and phenomenological practice informed by Saramago and Sartre, and phenomenological theory informed by Husserl and Meinong, thereby investigating the topic from four different perspectives. As a result, it is proposed that the legitimacy gap suffered by fiction-as-research may be bridged by so-called Meinongian objects, and the problem of whether such inexistent objects are facts, is less important than deciding whether they are useful. The conclusion is that artistic research methods offer techniques and a space to discuss the agency of not-being, of what-if, and of omission, through the legitimate deployment of fiction and falsehoods; and the benefits of so doing outweigh the existential discomfort that such ideas usually induce in researchers. (shrink)