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Added by: Andrea Blomqvist, Contributed by: Ehsan ShahwahidPublisher's Note: The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam is Muhammad Iqbal's major philosophic work: a series of profound reflections on the perennial conflict among science, religion, and philosophy, culminating in new visions of the unity of human knowledge, of the human spirit, and of God. Iqbal's thought contributed significantly to the establishment of Pakistan, to the religious and political ideals of the Iranian Revolution, and to the survival of Muslim identity in parts of the former USSR. It now serves as new bridge between East and West and between Islam and the other Religions of the Book. With a new Introduction by Javed Majeed, this edition of The Reconstruction opens the teachings of Iqbal to the modern, Western reader. It will be essential reading for all those interested in Islamic intellectual history, the renewal of Islam in the modern world, and political theory of Islam's relationship to the West
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Added by: Franci Mangraviti and Viviane FairbankAbstract: This paper enumerates Irigaray's main arguments and thoughts regarding the gendered nature of language and "the logos".
Comment: available in this Blueprint
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Simon FoktAbstract: The Hard Problem is surrounded by a vast literature, to which it is increasingly hard to contribute to in any meaningful way. Accordingly, the strategy here is not to offer any new metaphysical or 'in principle' arguments in favour of the success of materialism, but to assume a Type Q approach and look to contemporary consciousness science to see how the concept of consciousness fares there, and what kind of explanations we can hope to offer of it. It is suggested that while they will be materialist explanations, they will not be of the form that many scientists and philosophers would have us believe, but instead prompt a very different set of expectations and research projects.
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Added by: M. Jimena Clavel Vázquez and Andrés Hernández VillarrealAbstract:
In this chapter, Laack analyzes a migration account visually depicted in the Mexican early colonial pictorial manuscript known as the Mapa de Cuauhtinchan No. 2. This pictographic map tells the story of a group of Aztecs leaving their primordial home, changing their social, cultural, and religious identity through migration and the passing of ordeals, and finally settling in the town of Cuauhtinchan. It is painted in the style of Aztec pictography, which used visual imagery to convey thoughts and meanings in contrast to alphabetical scripts using abstract signs for linguistic sounds. Drawing on the theories of embodied metaphors and embodied meaning by philosopher Mark L. Johnson and cognitive linguist George P. Lakoff, I argue that Aztec pictography offers efficient and effective means to communicate embodied metaphors on a visual level and evokes complex layers of embodied meaning. In doing so, I intend to change perspective on the narrative powers of religious stories by transcending textual patterns of analysis and theory building and opening up to non-linguistic modes of experience and their influence on narrative structures and strategies.
Comment (from this Blueprint): This paper analyses the embodied metaphors found in the pictorial manuscript Mapa de Cuauhtinchan no. 2 (the map of Cuauhtinchan number 2) based on the theory of embodied cognition proposed by Lakoff and Johnson. According to the latter, our concepts are grounded on embodied metaphors. Laack’s proposal is that Aztec pictographic manuscript exploits these kinds of concepts to enable the communication of non-propositional meaning. It is useful to read it accompanied by Newman, Sarah E.. Sensorial experiences in Mesoamerica
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Added by: Jamie CollinAbstract: This chapter addresses the worry that the existence of causal antecedents to your choices means that you are causally compelled to act as you do. It begins with the folk notion of cause, leads the reader through recent developments in the scientific understanding of causal concepts, and argues that those developments undermine the threat from causal antecedents. The discussion is then used as a model for a kind of naturalistic metaphysics that takes its lead from science, letting everyday concepts be shaped and transformed by scientific developments.
Comment: This would be useful in a course on metaphysics (either in sections on causation or free will), philosophy of science, or naturalism. The paper is quite long, but it is clearly written and not too technical. It provides a nice overview of the folk notion of causation, and how this may be amended in the light of scientific developments. It also serves as a good example of peculiarly naturalistic metaphyisics more generally.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Milena IvanovaAbstract: Poincare is well known for his conventionalism and structuralism. However, the relationship between these two theses and their place in Poincare's epistemology of science remain puzzling. In this paper I show the scope of Poincare's conventionalism and its position in Poincare's hierarchical approach to scientific theories. I argue that for Poincare scientific knowledge is relational and made possible by synthetic a priori, empirical and conventional elements, which, however, are not chosen arbitrarily. By examining his geometric conventionalism, his hierarchical account of science and defence of continuity in theory change, I argue that Poincare defends a complex structuralist position based on synthetic a priori and conventional elements, the mind-dependence of which precludes epistemic access to mind-independent structures.
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Milena IvanovaAbstract: This paper challenges the appeal to theory virtues in theory choice as well as the appeal to the intellectual and moral virtues of an agent as determining unique choices between empirically equivalent theories. After arguing that theoretical virtues do not determine the choice of one theory at the expense of another theory, I argue that nor does the appeal to intellectual and moral virtues single out one agent, who defends a particular theory, and exclude another agent defending an alternative theory. I analyse Duhem's concept of good sense and its recent interpretation in terms of virtue epistemology. I argue that the virtue epistemological interpretation does not show how good sense leads to conclusive choices and scientific progress.
Comment: Philosophy of Science, Virtue Epistemology Theory Choice, Intellectual virtues
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Milena IvanovaAbstract: There has been a significant interest in the recent literature in developing a solution to the problem of theory choice which is both normative and descriptive, but agent-based rather than rule-based, originating from Pierre Duhem's notion of 'good sense'. In this paper we present the properties Duhem attributes to good sense in different contexts, before examining its current reconstructions advanced in the literature and their limitations. We propose an alternative account of good sense, seen as promoting social consensus in science, and show that it is superior to its rivals in two respects: it is more faithful to Duhemian good sense, and it cashes out the effect that virtues have on scientific progress. We then defend the social consensus account against objections that highlight the positive role of diversity and division of labour in science
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Added by: Giada FratantonioSummary: The author argues that experience constraints the nature of imagination in such a way that this results having a justificatory role.
Comment: Good to use as further reading in a course on the topic of the epistemology of imagination.
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract: Abstract. Philosophers frequently invoke our ability to imagine, conceive or suppose various thing in order to explain how we achieve our cognitive goals when we make decisions about future actions, when we perform thought experiments, and when we engage in games of pretense. But what is the relationship between imaginings, conceivings, and supposings? And what exactly are the epistemic roles they play in the cognitive projects in which they are involved? This chapter provides answers to these questions by first bringing out a contrast between what we do when we imagine and what we do when we suppose, and then by showing how to fit conceivings into the emerging systematic picture of the ways we use different forms of hypothetical thinking to acquire knowledge.
Comment: Good resource as further reading in an undergraduate course on epistemology of imagination, or as core reading in a graduate class on a similar topic.
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract: According to Conceptualism, philosophy is an independent discipline that can be pursued from the armchair because philosophy seeks truths that can be discovered purely on the basis of our understanding of expressions and the concepts they express. In his recent book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, Timothy Williamson argues that while philosophy can indeed be pursued from the armchair, we should reject any form of Conceptualism. In this paper, we show that Williamson's arguments against Conceptualism are not successful, and we sketch a way to understand understanding that shows that there is a clear sense in which we can indeed come to know the answers to (many) philosophical questions purely on the basis of understanding.
Comment: The author argues, contra Williamson, for the role of understanding as a way of gaining knowledge and providing answer to lots of philosophical questions. Good to use as a further reading for postgraduate courses in epistemology of understanding, as well as philosophical methodology.
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Added by: Laura JimenezAbstract: It is often assumed that contemporary physics is more hospitable to divine action (and human freedom) than classical mechanics. The article criticizes this assumption on the grounds of both physics and theology. Most currently discussed models of divine action do not challenge the physicalist assumption that physics provides a true and complete description of nature's causal web. Thus they resemble physicalism-plus-God. Taking up suggestions from Herman Dooyeweerd and Henri Blocher, I propose an alternative framework for divine action in the world. It takes creation as the starting-point to understand the world and leads to a non-reductionist, multidimensional picture of reality
Comment: Good article for undergraduate students. It is valuable for studying the relation between science and divinity.
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Added by: Laura JimenezSummary: This article explores the idea that we can assuage our physicalist qualms by embracing "ontological physicalism", the claim that all that exists in space-time is physical, but, at the same time, accept "property dualism", a dualism about psychological and physical attributes, insisting that psychological concepts or properties form an irreducible, autonomous domain. The issue the author explores is whether or not a robust physicalist can, consistently and plausibly, swear off reductionism - that is, whether or not a substantial form of physicalism can be combined with the rejection of psycho-physical reduction. The author argues that a middle-of-the road position of the sort just described is not available. More specifically, he claim that a physicalist has only two genuine options, eliminativism and reductionism.
Comment: This is a very important paper for both philosophy of mind and philosophy of science. Previous knowledge of key concepts such supervenience, physicalism or reductionism is needed to fully understand the paper. It is then more suitable for postgraduate students.
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Added by: Jie GaoAbstract: This paper analyzes and evaluates quine's influential thesis that epistemology should become a chapter of empirical psychology. quine's main point, it is argued, is that normativity must be banished from epistemology and, more generally, philosophy. i claim that without a normative concept of justification, we lose the very concept of knowledge, and that belief ascription itself becomes impossible without a normative concept of rationality. further, the supervenience of concepts of epistemic appraisal shows that normative epistemology is indeed possible.
Comment: This is a very good introductory reading on naturalised epistemology. It is often used in combination with Quine's paper "Epistemology Naturalized". Suitable for a lower-level undergraduate courses in epistemology.
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Added by: Chris Blake-Turner, Contributed by: Wayne RiggsAbstract: This paper argues that, by construing emotion as epistemologically subversive, the Western tradition has tended to obscure the vital role of emotion in the construction of knowledge. The paper begins with an account of emotion that stresses its active, voluntary, and socially constructed aspects, and indicates how emotion is involved in evaluation and observation. It then moves on to show how the myth of dispassionate investigation has functioned historically to undermine the epistemic authority of women as well as other social groups associated culturally with emotion. Finally, the paper sketches some ways in which the emotions ofunderclass groups, especially women, may contribute to the development of a critical social theory.
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Comment: Philosophy on Islamic reform, progress and development.