Giuseppina D'Oro | Keele University (original) (raw)
Books by Giuseppina D'Oro
(2023) Why Collingwood Matters: A Defence of Humanistic understanding. Monograph, Bloomsbury. 2023
(Palgrave Macmillan), 2019
This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis.... more This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis. It explores questions, such as, is there anything distinctive about the activity of philosophising? If so, what distinguishes philosophy from other forms of inquiry? What is the relation between philosophy and science and between philosophy and history?
For much of the twentieth century, philosophers philosophised with little self-awareness; Collingwood was exceptional in the attention he paid to the activity of philosophising. This book will be of interest both to those who are interested in Collingwood's philosophy and, more generally, to all who are interested in the question 'what is philosophy?'
An Essay on Philosophical Method by R. G. Collingwood, James Connelly and Giuseppina D'Oro (eds.) 2005.
chapters in edited collections by Giuseppina D'Oro
(2023) “To reply or not to reply, that is the question: descriptive metaphysics and the sceptical challenge”. In Audun Bengtson, Benjamin De Mesel and Sybren Heyndels (eds.) P.F. Strawson and His Philosophical Legacy. OUP, 192-211.
P.F. Strawson and His Philosophical Legacy, 2023
The History of Understanding in Analytic Philosophy: Before and After Logical Empiricism, 2022
Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores 9.1. INTRODUCTION: THE RED HERRING OF THE MIND AS AN INNER THEATER ... more Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores 9.1. INTRODUCTION: THE RED HERRING OF THE MIND AS AN INNER THEATER The connection between meaning and inner inscrutable psychological items was immortalized by Locke, who claimed that a parrot does not speak a language stricto sensu , even though it can utter a word, because there is no idea in the parrot's mind for which the word is the outward expression. Without the underlying idea in the mind the word remains a mere sound and does not qualify as a linguistic item. The parrot does not
The Routledge Companion to History and Theory, C.M. van den Akker (ed.), 2021
in The Routledge Companion to History and Theory, 2021
In Jouni Matti-Kuukkanen (ed.), Philosophy of History: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives. Bloomsbury. , 2020
“Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historic... more “Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historical past?” asks Giuseppina D’Oro. D’Oro defends the view that the concept of the historical past is sui generis and distinct from that of the geological past against a new, Anthropocene-inspired challenge to the possibility of a humanistically oriented historiography. She argues that the historical past is not a short segment of geological time, the time of the human species on Earth, but the past investigated from the perspective of a distinctive kind of interest, that of uncovering the norms which governed historical agents in different periods of time. The past for the Egyptologist, or for the Roman historian, is not the same past studied by the palaeontologist or the geologist, not because it is infinitesimal short in comparison to geological time, but because the questions asked by historians concerned with the Egyptian or Roman civilization are not the same kind of questions asked by empirically minded scientists. She argues that the accusation that the distinction between the historical and the natural/geological past, rests on unacceptable form of human exceptionalism is based on the conflation of the concept of the historical past with that of the human past and that keeping alive the nature/culture distinction has important implications for praxis. If the distinction between nature and culture is collapsed, and the corollary that historical agents are not distinct in kind from natural agents (such as yeast and microbes) is accepted, then “the anticipation of the future would become a mere spectator’s sport analogous to the activity of predicting the weather”: collapsing the nature culture distinction, D’Oro argues, undermines the possibility of political action against the very threat (climate change) that motivates Anthropocene narratives in the first instance.
In Paul Giladi (ed.) Responses to Naturalism: From Idealism and Pragmatism, Routledge, pp. 216-236
Are there colours sounds and smells over and above the scientific properties of objects? Are ther... more Are there colours sounds and smells over and above the scientific properties of objects? Are there intentional states as well as brain states? If it turned out that there cannot be both the properties which belong to the so-called scientific image , and those which belong to the manifest image, then one kind would have to give way to the other. Some have been willing to accept that if the scientific image wins then the manifest image loses: claims such as “there are no chairs, no tables, and even “I do not exist” make frequent appearance on the pages of mainstream philosophical journals and eliminativism has become a fairly mainstream position (Merricks 2000; Unger 1979; Inwagen 1990). Others, on the other hand, have been reluctant to endorse eliminativism and have embarked on a rescue operation. One of the most widely endorsed rescue strategies seeks to save the manifest image from elimination by showing that there is no need to endorse eliminativist conclusions while accepting the eliminativist’s starting point (that the basic ingredients of reality are, for example, molecules). Manifest properties, so the standard defence of the manifest image goes, need not be excised if they can be located by showing that they are entailed (in a sense to be carefully explained) by more basic properties of objects.
The location strategy enjoys widespread popularity. The reason for its popularity, arguably, is the (perfectly reasonable) consideration that science has had a huge emancipatory potential, that at least those of us who have benefited from scientific research, live healthier, longer and wealthier lives and thus that, whatever views philosophers might endorse, they should not undermine the project of science on pain of advocating a retrograde step to the dark ages. This paper argues that these considerations, sound as they are, do not mandate the location strategy because they can be easily accommodated by a very different approach to defending the manifest image, one which views the manifest image as sui generis and denies that manifest features of reality can be derived (by entailment) from scientific ones. Having outlined the standard rescue operation of the manifest image, the paper proceeds to pull the rug from under its feet by arguing that the considerations which are invoked in its support can equally be invoked in support of a different approach to the defence of the manifest image, one which accepts the manifest image on its own terms and denies that manifest properties are entailed by scientific properties. There is therefore no need to espouse the location strategy in order to avoid pitting philosophy against science whilst saving the manifest image from the eliminativist’s guillotine.
I begin by outlining the standard strategy for rescuing the manifest image and the metaphilosophical framework which informs it. This metaphilosophical framework is elegantly expressed in Frank Jackson’s From Metaphysics to Ethics (1998) where Jackson advocates a modest role for conceptual analysis in metaphysics. Rather than seeking to establish ontological truths a priori or through reflection, philosophy’s starting point should be the ontological picture of reality that is handed over to it by physics. The role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics is not to determine what there is, but rather to determine which features of the manifest image can be accommodated within the scientific image. The manifest properties which cannot be legitimated through location are shown to be rogue concepts that have no place in serious metaphysics. Having outlined the standard rescue operation, according to which the manifest image is entailed by the scientific image, I consider the view that the manifest image is sui generis as it is articulated in Heidegger’s discussion of the distinction between the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand and argue that the claim that there are no entailment relations between scientific and manifest features of reality does not mean that the manifest image poses a threat to the project of science. The problem, I argue, lies neither with the manifest image, nor with the scientific image, but with the set of metaphilosophical assumptions which problematize the manifest image, foremost amongst these the assumption of a layered and hierarchical view of the sciences with physics at the base. The assumptions which problematize the manifest image, let it be clear, are not scientific ones; they are philosophical assumptions about how to conceptualize the relation between different sciences and their distinctive explanations and vocabularies.
Karim Dharamsi, Giuseppina D'Oro and Stephen Leach (Eds.) Collingwood on Philosophical Methodology Palgrave. Philosophers in Depth series
There is a widespread view according to which the denial that the conditions of knowledge are tru... more There is a widespread view according to which the denial that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable inevitably leads to a form of epistemic pluralism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. It is quietist because it undermines the possibility of genuine epistemic disagreement. It is internally incoherent because it simultaneously denies the existence of universal knowledge claims and makes the universal claim that there is no such knowledge. The goal of this paper is to show that denying that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable does not necessarily entail a commitment to a form of epistemic relativism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. To undermine the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values leads down the blind alley of epistemic relativism I mobilize a version of “hinge epistemology” which distinguishes between epistemic pluralism and epistemic relativism. This form of hinge epistemology is to be found in Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions (Collingwood, 1940). By teasing apart epistemic pluralism from epistemic relativism, the paper exposes the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values inevitably leads to a malignant form of epistemic relativism as a form of philosophical scaremongering.
(2017) Collingwood's Idealist Metaontology: Between Therapy and Armchair Science
In Giuseppina D’Oro and Soren Overgaard (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 211-228, 2017
The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has m... more The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has made a comeback to the philosophical mainstream, so much so that the Kantian variety of metaphysics is no longer deemed to be deserving of its name. Not the real thing. On the other hand, in a tradition which is often traced back to Carnap, a number of philosophers have declared ontological disputes to be merely verbal and the disagreements which rage in the ontology room to be much ado about nothing. This paper tries to carve out a metaphilosophical space between a conception of philosophy as therapy and as armchair science. It argues that there are philosophical disputes which are substantive even if they are not ontologically deep by drawing on the idealist metaontology of R.G. Collingwood.
The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology edited by Giuseppina D'Oro and Soren Overgaard, CUP 2017, pp. 211-228.
The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has m... more The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has made a comeback to the philosophical mainstream, so much so that the Kantian variety of metaphysics is no longer deemed to be deserving of its name. Not the real thing. On the other hand, in a tradition which is often traced back to Carnap, a number of philosophers have declared ontological disputes to be merely verbal and the disagreements which rage in the ontology room to be much ado about nothing. This paper tries to carve out a metaphilosophical space between a conception of philosophy as therapy and as armchair science. It argues that there are philosophical disputes which are substantive even if they are not ontologically deep by drawing on the idealist metaontology of R.G. Collingwood.
This is the penultimate version of the chapter. Please refer to the published version.
forthcoming in Gunnar Schumann (ed.) Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches. Routledge
This paper considers Mele’s renewed defence of Davidson’s claim that causalism has an advantage o... more This paper considers Mele’s renewed defence of Davidson’s claim that causalism has an advantage over anti-causalism because the latter is unable to account for the distinction between confabulations or retrospective rationalizations and genuine explanations. The paper takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between a causalist, whose position is loosely modelled on Mele, and an anti-causalist (the author). The causalist first suggests that anti-causalists have no criteria to individuate practical arguments that are genuinely explanatory of an agent’s action. The anti-causalist replies that the reasons which motivate agents may be individuated through the use of counterfactual arguments. Whilst allowing that there will be cases which cannot be settled in this way, extreme scenarios should not undermine the robustness of the criteria in normal circumstances. The causalist then mounts a second line of attack and argues that anti-causalists treat real people as if they were fictional characters devoid of any inner psychological processes other than the ones which are written in by their author. The anti-causalist replies that the distinction between reasons which are genuinely explanatory of an agent’s action and mere rationalizations cannot be drawn in terms of real psychological processes versus idealized rationalizations. Important as the distinction between real and fictional characters may be, it cannot be used to motivate a shift to causalism because it has no bearing on the logical form of action explanation.
Key words: causalism, anti-causalism, action explanation
Papers by Giuseppina D'Oro
(2024) We must put an end to scientism: Reviving humanist explanations. iai tv: We must put an end to scientism | Giuseppina D'Oro » IAI TV
(2022) “Why the attempt to bury metaphysics failed”, 8th instalment of “The Return of Metaphysics”, iai news: an online magazine of big ideas: 24th October 2022: Why the attempt to bury metaphysics failed | Giussepina D’Oro » IAI TV.
(2021) Jonas Ahlskog and Giuseppina D’Oro, “Beyond Narrativism: the historical past and why it can be known”, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. 27(1): 5-33.
Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 2021
Defending Humanistic Reasoning (Please only cite published version)
Philosophy Now, Nov 2017
The year is 399 BCE. Socrates has just been sentenced to death by the Athenian Council for allege... more The year is 399 BCE. Socrates has just been sentenced to death by the Athenian Council for allegedly corrupting the youth. Sitting in his jail cell, Socrates is asked by his friends to explain why he is remaining in prison. How should Socrates’s action be explained? Should he provide a physicalist explanation, that is, an account of his bodily movements? Or should he provide a different kind of explanation, one that makes reference not to his physiology, but to his reasons for acting?
The two varieties of explanation appear to compete. They appear to compete, because both give rival explanations of the same action. To use another example: why did Caesar cross the Rubicon? Because of his leg movements? Or because he wanted to assert his authority in Rome over his rivals? But, there is a way in which scientific explanations (e.g. bodily movements) and humanistic explanations (e.g. motives/goals) need not compete. When we seek to interpret the actions of Caesar and Socrates and ask what reasons they had for acting so, we do not want their actions to be explained as we might explain the rise of the tides, or the motion of the planets, i.e. as physical events dictated by natural laws. Our curiosity is satisfied when the explanation enables us to see the purpose of their action, rather than treating them as simply another material entity. Providing an account of their physiology here would not adequately make sense of things.
Our aim in this article is to introduce a highly neglected tradition in the philosophy of mind, epistemological idealism, to see how scientific and humanistic explanations can co-exist.
(2023) Why Collingwood Matters: A Defence of Humanistic understanding. Monograph, Bloomsbury. 2023
(Palgrave Macmillan), 2019
This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis.... more This book discusses Collingwood's conception of the role and character of philosophical analysis. It explores questions, such as, is there anything distinctive about the activity of philosophising? If so, what distinguishes philosophy from other forms of inquiry? What is the relation between philosophy and science and between philosophy and history?
For much of the twentieth century, philosophers philosophised with little self-awareness; Collingwood was exceptional in the attention he paid to the activity of philosophising. This book will be of interest both to those who are interested in Collingwood's philosophy and, more generally, to all who are interested in the question 'what is philosophy?'
An Essay on Philosophical Method by R. G. Collingwood, James Connelly and Giuseppina D'Oro (eds.) 2005.
(2023) “To reply or not to reply, that is the question: descriptive metaphysics and the sceptical challenge”. In Audun Bengtson, Benjamin De Mesel and Sybren Heyndels (eds.) P.F. Strawson and His Philosophical Legacy. OUP, 192-211.
P.F. Strawson and His Philosophical Legacy, 2023
The History of Understanding in Analytic Philosophy: Before and After Logical Empiricism, 2022
Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores 9.1. INTRODUCTION: THE RED HERRING OF THE MIND AS AN INNER THEATER ... more Vulpes pilum mutat, non mores 9.1. INTRODUCTION: THE RED HERRING OF THE MIND AS AN INNER THEATER The connection between meaning and inner inscrutable psychological items was immortalized by Locke, who claimed that a parrot does not speak a language stricto sensu , even though it can utter a word, because there is no idea in the parrot's mind for which the word is the outward expression. Without the underlying idea in the mind the word remains a mere sound and does not qualify as a linguistic item. The parrot does not
The Routledge Companion to History and Theory, C.M. van den Akker (ed.), 2021
in The Routledge Companion to History and Theory, 2021
In Jouni Matti-Kuukkanen (ed.), Philosophy of History: Twenty-First-Century Perspectives. Bloomsbury. , 2020
“Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historic... more “Do Anthropocene narratives confuse an important distinction between the natural and the historical past?” asks Giuseppina D’Oro. D’Oro defends the view that the concept of the historical past is sui generis and distinct from that of the geological past against a new, Anthropocene-inspired challenge to the possibility of a humanistically oriented historiography. She argues that the historical past is not a short segment of geological time, the time of the human species on Earth, but the past investigated from the perspective of a distinctive kind of interest, that of uncovering the norms which governed historical agents in different periods of time. The past for the Egyptologist, or for the Roman historian, is not the same past studied by the palaeontologist or the geologist, not because it is infinitesimal short in comparison to geological time, but because the questions asked by historians concerned with the Egyptian or Roman civilization are not the same kind of questions asked by empirically minded scientists. She argues that the accusation that the distinction between the historical and the natural/geological past, rests on unacceptable form of human exceptionalism is based on the conflation of the concept of the historical past with that of the human past and that keeping alive the nature/culture distinction has important implications for praxis. If the distinction between nature and culture is collapsed, and the corollary that historical agents are not distinct in kind from natural agents (such as yeast and microbes) is accepted, then “the anticipation of the future would become a mere spectator’s sport analogous to the activity of predicting the weather”: collapsing the nature culture distinction, D’Oro argues, undermines the possibility of political action against the very threat (climate change) that motivates Anthropocene narratives in the first instance.
In Paul Giladi (ed.) Responses to Naturalism: From Idealism and Pragmatism, Routledge, pp. 216-236
Are there colours sounds and smells over and above the scientific properties of objects? Are ther... more Are there colours sounds and smells over and above the scientific properties of objects? Are there intentional states as well as brain states? If it turned out that there cannot be both the properties which belong to the so-called scientific image , and those which belong to the manifest image, then one kind would have to give way to the other. Some have been willing to accept that if the scientific image wins then the manifest image loses: claims such as “there are no chairs, no tables, and even “I do not exist” make frequent appearance on the pages of mainstream philosophical journals and eliminativism has become a fairly mainstream position (Merricks 2000; Unger 1979; Inwagen 1990). Others, on the other hand, have been reluctant to endorse eliminativism and have embarked on a rescue operation. One of the most widely endorsed rescue strategies seeks to save the manifest image from elimination by showing that there is no need to endorse eliminativist conclusions while accepting the eliminativist’s starting point (that the basic ingredients of reality are, for example, molecules). Manifest properties, so the standard defence of the manifest image goes, need not be excised if they can be located by showing that they are entailed (in a sense to be carefully explained) by more basic properties of objects.
The location strategy enjoys widespread popularity. The reason for its popularity, arguably, is the (perfectly reasonable) consideration that science has had a huge emancipatory potential, that at least those of us who have benefited from scientific research, live healthier, longer and wealthier lives and thus that, whatever views philosophers might endorse, they should not undermine the project of science on pain of advocating a retrograde step to the dark ages. This paper argues that these considerations, sound as they are, do not mandate the location strategy because they can be easily accommodated by a very different approach to defending the manifest image, one which views the manifest image as sui generis and denies that manifest features of reality can be derived (by entailment) from scientific ones. Having outlined the standard rescue operation of the manifest image, the paper proceeds to pull the rug from under its feet by arguing that the considerations which are invoked in its support can equally be invoked in support of a different approach to the defence of the manifest image, one which accepts the manifest image on its own terms and denies that manifest properties are entailed by scientific properties. There is therefore no need to espouse the location strategy in order to avoid pitting philosophy against science whilst saving the manifest image from the eliminativist’s guillotine.
I begin by outlining the standard strategy for rescuing the manifest image and the metaphilosophical framework which informs it. This metaphilosophical framework is elegantly expressed in Frank Jackson’s From Metaphysics to Ethics (1998) where Jackson advocates a modest role for conceptual analysis in metaphysics. Rather than seeking to establish ontological truths a priori or through reflection, philosophy’s starting point should be the ontological picture of reality that is handed over to it by physics. The role of conceptual analysis in metaphysics is not to determine what there is, but rather to determine which features of the manifest image can be accommodated within the scientific image. The manifest properties which cannot be legitimated through location are shown to be rogue concepts that have no place in serious metaphysics. Having outlined the standard rescue operation, according to which the manifest image is entailed by the scientific image, I consider the view that the manifest image is sui generis as it is articulated in Heidegger’s discussion of the distinction between the present-at-hand and the ready-to-hand and argue that the claim that there are no entailment relations between scientific and manifest features of reality does not mean that the manifest image poses a threat to the project of science. The problem, I argue, lies neither with the manifest image, nor with the scientific image, but with the set of metaphilosophical assumptions which problematize the manifest image, foremost amongst these the assumption of a layered and hierarchical view of the sciences with physics at the base. The assumptions which problematize the manifest image, let it be clear, are not scientific ones; they are philosophical assumptions about how to conceptualize the relation between different sciences and their distinctive explanations and vocabularies.
Karim Dharamsi, Giuseppina D'Oro and Stephen Leach (Eds.) Collingwood on Philosophical Methodology Palgrave. Philosophers in Depth series
There is a widespread view according to which the denial that the conditions of knowledge are tru... more There is a widespread view according to which the denial that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable inevitably leads to a form of epistemic pluralism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. It is quietist because it undermines the possibility of genuine epistemic disagreement. It is internally incoherent because it simultaneously denies the existence of universal knowledge claims and makes the universal claim that there is no such knowledge. The goal of this paper is to show that denying that the conditions of knowledge are truth-evaluable does not necessarily entail a commitment to a form of epistemic relativism that is both quietist and internally incoherent. To undermine the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values leads down the blind alley of epistemic relativism I mobilize a version of “hinge epistemology” which distinguishes between epistemic pluralism and epistemic relativism. This form of hinge epistemology is to be found in Collingwood’s account of absolute presuppositions (Collingwood, 1940). By teasing apart epistemic pluralism from epistemic relativism, the paper exposes the view that the denial that the conditions of knowledge have truth-values inevitably leads to a malignant form of epistemic relativism as a form of philosophical scaremongering.
(2017) Collingwood's Idealist Metaontology: Between Therapy and Armchair Science
In Giuseppina D’Oro and Soren Overgaard (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 211-228, 2017
The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has m... more The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has made a comeback to the philosophical mainstream, so much so that the Kantian variety of metaphysics is no longer deemed to be deserving of its name. Not the real thing. On the other hand, in a tradition which is often traced back to Carnap, a number of philosophers have declared ontological disputes to be merely verbal and the disagreements which rage in the ontology room to be much ado about nothing. This paper tries to carve out a metaphilosophical space between a conception of philosophy as therapy and as armchair science. It argues that there are philosophical disputes which are substantive even if they are not ontologically deep by drawing on the idealist metaontology of R.G. Collingwood.
The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology edited by Giuseppina D'Oro and Soren Overgaard, CUP 2017, pp. 211-228.
The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has m... more The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has made a comeback to the philosophical mainstream, so much so that the Kantian variety of metaphysics is no longer deemed to be deserving of its name. Not the real thing. On the other hand, in a tradition which is often traced back to Carnap, a number of philosophers have declared ontological disputes to be merely verbal and the disagreements which rage in the ontology room to be much ado about nothing. This paper tries to carve out a metaphilosophical space between a conception of philosophy as therapy and as armchair science. It argues that there are philosophical disputes which are substantive even if they are not ontologically deep by drawing on the idealist metaontology of R.G. Collingwood.
This is the penultimate version of the chapter. Please refer to the published version.
forthcoming in Gunnar Schumann (ed.) Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches. Routledge
This paper considers Mele’s renewed defence of Davidson’s claim that causalism has an advantage o... more This paper considers Mele’s renewed defence of Davidson’s claim that causalism has an advantage over anti-causalism because the latter is unable to account for the distinction between confabulations or retrospective rationalizations and genuine explanations. The paper takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between a causalist, whose position is loosely modelled on Mele, and an anti-causalist (the author). The causalist first suggests that anti-causalists have no criteria to individuate practical arguments that are genuinely explanatory of an agent’s action. The anti-causalist replies that the reasons which motivate agents may be individuated through the use of counterfactual arguments. Whilst allowing that there will be cases which cannot be settled in this way, extreme scenarios should not undermine the robustness of the criteria in normal circumstances. The causalist then mounts a second line of attack and argues that anti-causalists treat real people as if they were fictional characters devoid of any inner psychological processes other than the ones which are written in by their author. The anti-causalist replies that the distinction between reasons which are genuinely explanatory of an agent’s action and mere rationalizations cannot be drawn in terms of real psychological processes versus idealized rationalizations. Important as the distinction between real and fictional characters may be, it cannot be used to motivate a shift to causalism because it has no bearing on the logical form of action explanation.
Key words: causalism, anti-causalism, action explanation
(2024) We must put an end to scientism: Reviving humanist explanations. iai tv: We must put an end to scientism | Giuseppina D'Oro » IAI TV
(2022) “Why the attempt to bury metaphysics failed”, 8th instalment of “The Return of Metaphysics”, iai news: an online magazine of big ideas: 24th October 2022: Why the attempt to bury metaphysics failed | Giussepina D’Oro » IAI TV.
(2021) Jonas Ahlskog and Giuseppina D’Oro, “Beyond Narrativism: the historical past and why it can be known”, Collingwood and British Idealism Studies. 27(1): 5-33.
Collingwood and British Idealism Studies, 2021
Defending Humanistic Reasoning (Please only cite published version)
Philosophy Now, Nov 2017
The year is 399 BCE. Socrates has just been sentenced to death by the Athenian Council for allege... more The year is 399 BCE. Socrates has just been sentenced to death by the Athenian Council for allegedly corrupting the youth. Sitting in his jail cell, Socrates is asked by his friends to explain why he is remaining in prison. How should Socrates’s action be explained? Should he provide a physicalist explanation, that is, an account of his bodily movements? Or should he provide a different kind of explanation, one that makes reference not to his physiology, but to his reasons for acting?
The two varieties of explanation appear to compete. They appear to compete, because both give rival explanations of the same action. To use another example: why did Caesar cross the Rubicon? Because of his leg movements? Or because he wanted to assert his authority in Rome over his rivals? But, there is a way in which scientific explanations (e.g. bodily movements) and humanistic explanations (e.g. motives/goals) need not compete. When we seek to interpret the actions of Caesar and Socrates and ask what reasons they had for acting so, we do not want their actions to be explained as we might explain the rise of the tides, or the motion of the planets, i.e. as physical events dictated by natural laws. Our curiosity is satisfied when the explanation enables us to see the purpose of their action, rather than treating them as simply another material entity. Providing an account of their physiology here would not adequately make sense of things.
Our aim in this article is to introduce a highly neglected tradition in the philosophy of mind, epistemological idealism, to see how scientific and humanistic explanations can co-exist.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2012
Journal of The Philosophy of History, Nov 7, 2017
The philosophy of history is undergoing something of a revival. Much has happened since its heyda... more The philosophy of history is undergoing something of a revival. Much has happened since its heydays in the 1960s when methodological discussions concerning the structure of explanation in history and the natural sciences were central to the philosophical agenda. This introduction revisits Collingwood's contribution to the philosophy of history, his views on the relation between science and history, and the possibility of historical knowledge suggesting his work is of enduring relevance to contemporary debates. It locates his contribution in the context of the hermeneutic tradition and locates his defence of the methodological autonomy of history in the context of recent debates concerning the relation between science and the history of the philosophy of science.
Collingwood and Ryle on the Concept of Mind
Philosophical Explorations, 2003
... In this paper I wish to revisit Collingwood’s and Ryle’s dis- cussions of the concept of mind... more ... In this paper I wish to revisit Collingwood’s and Ryle’s dis- cussions of the concept of mind. I would like to do so for two reasons. ... the Concept of Mind ...
Philosophia, 2008
This paper seeks to explain why mainstream analytic philosophy lost interest in the philosophy of... more This paper seeks to explain why mainstream analytic philosophy lost interest in the philosophy of history. It suggests that the reasons why the philosophy of history no longer commands the attention of mainstream analytical philosophy may be explained by the success of an ontological backlash against the linguistic turn and a view of philosophy as a form of conceptual analysis. In brief I argue that in the 1950s and 1960s the philosophy of history attracted the interest of mainstream analytical philosophers because the defence of the autonomy of historical explanation championed by the likes of Collingwood, Dray, Melden Winch, Von Wright and others was in tune with the predominant conception of philosophy as a conceptual enterprise concerned primarily with clarifying different explanatory practices. As this conception of philosophy as an essentially conceptual enterprise became recessive, the purely methodological non-reductivism advocated by defenders of the autonomy of history was accused of ontological escapism and the discussion concerning the autonomy of psychological explanations became the province of the philosophy of mind and action. In mid-twentieth century thought the philosophy of history occupied centre stage in key philosophical debates, such as that concerning the nature of action and event explanation. Since the study of history appeared to require an investigative method that is qualitatively different from that of the natural sciences, the philosophy of history became the battleground for a discussion of the action/event distinction in the Philosophia
forthcoming in Inquiry
metaphilosophical assumptions that give rise to the question "how can mind fit within nature?", a... more metaphilosophical assumptions that give rise to the question "how can mind fit within nature?", and the difficulties encountered by forms of non-reductivism which seek to accommodate the mind in the natural world, we will turn to consider forms of non-reductivism which question the very idea that the task of the philosophy of mind is to solve the location problem. The view that the location problem is the central problem of the philosophy of mind has been questioned in (at least) two different ways. On the one hand the problem has been dismissed as arising from a mistaken conception of the relation between method and metaphysics. If ontological questions are internal to methodological ones, then the subject matter of a form of inquiry is determined by its method, a method that will have been devised to answer the questions characteristic of that form of inquiry. Further, if there are no external ontological questions, then it would make no sense to ask how can mind fit within nature, since, on this view, nature is the explanandum of natural science, not an inquiry-independent reality into which mind must somehow fit. This way of dissolving the placement problem ultimately entails that the reality investigated by science is the correlative of a certain form of inference, which is characteristically deemed to be nomological, and that it is a mistake to assume that science uncovers inquiry-independent truths. This form of non-reductivism is to be found in the neo-Kantian tradition of Windelband and Rickert, the hermeneutic tradition of Dilthey and Gadamer, and is informed by a Kantian rejection of pre-critical, dogmatic metaphysics. This view of the relation between method and metaphysics also
Philosophical Explorations 21/1: Philosophy of Action from Suarez to Anscombe edited by Constantine Sandis., 2018
It is the ambition of natural science to provide complete explanations of reality. Collingwood ar... more It is the ambition of natural science to provide complete explanations of reality. Collingwood argues that science can only explain events, not actions. The latter are the distinctive subject matter of history and can be described as actions only if they are explained historically. This paper explains Collingwood's claim that the distinctive subject matter of history is actions and why the attempt to capture this subject matter through the method of science inevitably ends in failure because science explains events, not actions. It argues that Collingwood's defence of the methodological autonomy of history vis-à-vis natural science is not based on a commitment to human exceptionalism, i.e. the exclusion of human beings and their doings from the rest of nature, but on the view that explanations which appeal to norms are different in kind from explanations which appeal to empirical regularities. Given the close relationship between the method and the subject matter of a distinct form of inquiry, actions elude any attempt to explain them through the scientific method because the application of this method entails that what is thus explained is not an action but an event.
Collingwood on Re-Enactment and The Identity of Thought
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2000
Collingwood's The Idea of History is often discussed in the context of the issue of the redu... more Collingwood's The Idea of History is often discussed in the context of the issue of the reducibility/non-reducibility of explanations in the social sciences to explanations in the natural sciences. In the 1950s and 60s, following the publication of Hempel's influential article, ...
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 23(4): 802-817, Jul 2015
Abstract. Idealism is often associated with the kind of metaphysical system building which was su... more Abstract. Idealism is often associated with the kind of metaphysical system building which was successfully disposed of by logical positivism. As Hume’s fork was intended to deliver a serious blow to Leibnizian metaphysics so logical positivism invoked the verificationist principle against the reawakening of metaphysics, in the tradition of German and British idealism. In the light of this one might reasonably wonder what Carnap’s pragmatism could possibly have in common with Collingwood’s idealism. After all, Carnap is often seen as a champion of the logical positivist’s critique of metaphysics, whilst Collingwood is renowned for his defence of the possibility of metaphysics against the attack to which Ayer subjected it. The answer is that they have more in common than one might suspect and that, once the relevant qualifications are made, there is as much convergence as there is contestation between Carnapian pragmatism and Collingwoodian idealism.
Robin George Collingwood
Brand new entry for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood/, 2020
The Myth of Collingwood's Historicism
Inquiry, 2010
Abstract This paper seeks to clarify the precise sense in which Collingwood's m... more Abstract This paper seeks to clarify the precise sense in which Collingwood's metaphysics without ontology is a descriptive metaphysics. It locates Collingwood's metaphysics against the background of Strawson's distinction between descriptive and revisionary metaphysics ...
Since the publication of Davidson’s “Actions, Reasons and Causes” the philosophy of action has be... more Since the publication of Davidson’s “Actions, Reasons and Causes” the philosophy of action has been dominated by the view that rational explanations are a species of causal explanations. Although there are dissenting voices, anti-causalism is for the most part associated with a position that tended to be defended in the 1960s and that was successfully buried by Davidson’s criticism of the logical connection argument. In the following I argue that the success of causalism cannot be fully accounted for by considering the outcome of first-order debates in the philosophy of action and that it is to be explained instead by a shift in meta-philosophical assumptions. It is the commitment to a certain second-order view of the role and character of philosophical analysis, rather than the conclusive nature of the arguments for causalism, that is largely responsible for the rise of the recent causalist consensus. I characterise the change in meta-philosophical assumptions in Strawsonian terms as a change from a descriptive to a revisionary conception of metaphysics and argue that since the disagreement between causalists and non-causalists cannot be settled at the level of first-order debates, causalists cannot win the philosophical battle against anti-causalists without fighting the meta-philosophical war.
forthcomin in The British Journal of the History of Philosophy
Abstract: In the contemporary literature, transcendental arguments are presented either as ambiti... more Abstract: In the contemporary literature, transcendental arguments are presented either as ambitious truth-directed arguments with an anti-sceptical agenda (only to be castigated soon afterwards for failing to deliver robust ontological conclusions) or they are interpreted as intending (and succeeding) to deliver only modest epistemic conclusions about the structures of knowledge. Either way the discussion of transcendental arguments has been governed by the question of how transcendental arguments position themselves in relation to the sceptical challenge. This paper explores a transcendental strategy that is neither truth-directed nor epistemically modest and offers an alternative to the dichotomy between ontologically immodest and epistemically humble transcendental arguments that has characterized much of the contemporary discussion concerning the role and character of transcendental arguments.
Key words: transcendental arguments, pragmatism, Kant, Collingwood
Re-Enactment and Radical Interpretation
History and Theory, 2004
Page 1. ? Wesleyan University 2004 ISSN: 0018-2656 RE-ENACTMENT AND RADICAL INTERPRETATION GIUSEP... more Page 1. ? Wesleyan University 2004 ISSN: 0018-2656 RE-ENACTMENT AND RADICAL INTERPRETATION GIUSEPPINA D'ORO ABSTRACT ... 200 GIUSEPPINA D'ORO Page 4. RE-ENACTMENT AND RADICAL INTERPRETATION ...
Collingwood and British idealism Studies 2017, Vol 23(1), pp.1-8., 2017
fluent undergraduate paper that it was written at a time when the philosophy of history was an im... more fluent undergraduate paper that it was written at a time when the philosophy of history was an important part of the undergraduate curriculum and considerations concerning the methodologies at work in the human and natural sciences were central to the philosophical agenda in a way in which, regrettably, they are no longer. Kripke's paper offers a critical assessment of Collingwood's philosophy of history which is very prescient in fending off some of the standard misunderstandings of Collingwood's defence of the methodological autonomy of history. One such misunderstanding concerns Collingwood's claim that whereas the natural sciences investigate events, history is concerned with actions, and the latter have an inside, which the former lack. Much ink has been spilled on this claim since Kripke's undergraduate paper, but now something resembling a consensus has been reached, and today many would agree that Collingwood's inside/outside distinction was a highly metaphorical (and possibly misleading) way of expressing the much less controversial claim that actions (unlike events) are best explained by establishing meaningful conceptual conceptions rather than inductively, by extrapolating general laws from empirical observations. But at the time at which Kripke was writing many considered Collingwood's talk of an inside/outside distinction to be clear evidence of a commitment to a Cartesian theory of the mind. The philosopher most associated with this view was Gilbert Ryle. Even though Ryle did not mention Collingwood by
Collingwood and British idealism Studies 2017, 23(1): 41-56., 2017
Abstract: It is sometimes assumed that justification is factive. A negative implication of this c... more Abstract: It is sometimes assumed that justification is factive. A negative implication of this claim is that reasons are not psychological entities such as believings or desirings. Another, positive, implication of this claim is that there is an important connection between justification and truth. If it is not raining, Paul is not justified in taking the umbrella not only because his believing it is raining is not the sort of thing which can play a justificatory role, but also because no action can be justified by something that is not the case. Elaborating on the work of Collingwood and Dray, this paper argues that there is a notion of justification at work in a hermeneutic context that is weaker than the one used in an epistemic context in so far as it severs the connection between justification and truth, but that it is nonetheless sufficiently robust to support the view that explanatory reasons are normative and that the explanation of action is a species of justification rather than causal explanation.
Collingwood, Dray, action explanation, externalism, internalism, psychologism, causalism, anti-causalism, explanatory reasons.
The everyday use of the term “action” is indeterminate as it includes doings which are explained ... more The everyday use of the term “action” is indeterminate as it includes doings which are explained causally as well as doings which are explained rationally. Elaborating on the work of R.G. Collingwood this paper defends the view that there is a narrower and somewhat technical sense of the term “action” which is of particular concern to philosophers. In this narrower sense a doing is an action only to the extent that there is an internal connection between the doing and the thought it expresses. Philosophical analysis teases this technical sense of action out of our ordinary, broader use of the term, a use which is heterogeneous since it is employed to explain what human beings “do” sometimes rationally and sometimes causally. This more determinate, less ambiguous sense of the term “action” is of particular interest to philosophers because it is by appealing to this narrow sense of the term that it becomes possible to validate distinctions which are part and parcel of ordinary ways of thinking.
The Role of Philosophy of History conference, Oulu, 5-7 October 2017 BEYOND SCIENTIM AND HISTORI... more The Role of Philosophy of History conference, Oulu, 5-7 October 2017
BEYOND SCIENTIM AND HISTORICISM: COLLINWOOD AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY
Giuseppina D’Oro
Keele University
g.d’oro@keele.ac.uk
This paper revisits the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood with a view to suggesting a solution to two problems that are often discussed in the philosophy of history. The first concerns the conflictual relation between science and the history of the philosophy of science. Science aims to be delivering timeless truths about the structure of reality while the history of the philosophy of science seems to show that the timeless truths that science aims to uncover are relative to historical paradigms. Since it cannot be the case both that there are and there are not timeless truths the claims of science conflict with those of the history of the philosophy of science. I argue that for Collingwood the conflict between science and the history of the philosophy of science is an instance of the more general case concerning the relation between history and science understood as forms of inquiry governed by different absolute presuppositions. By locating Collingwood’s philosophy of history against the background of his conception of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions the paper aims to show that while the presuppositions of historical inquiry and of natural science are incompatible there is no deep ontological conflict between the two and the choice between history and natural science can be made on the basis of pragmatic considerations concerning which explanatory framework is best suited to address the question one wants answered. To understand Collingwood’s handling of the conflictual relation between history (including the history of the philosophy of science) and science it will be necessary to undermine the widespread view that the primary goal of Collingwood’s metaphysics was to historicise knowledge, including, scientific knowledge. If Collingwood’s metaphysics is understood as arguing that there is no presuppositionless knowledge (rather than as claiming that all knowledge is time-bound) the possible co-existence of history and natural science is defended not by reducing scientific knowledge to historical knowledge (which would make historicism into a topsy-turvy version of scientism), but by showing that the methodological practices at work in these different forms of inquiry provide answers to different kinds of why-questions.
The second problem concerns whether the past can be objectively known. It has often been claimed that since history is written retrospectively, from a later point in time, there can be no such thing as access to the past as it is in-itself because the historian will view the past through the lens of his own zeitgeist. Collingwood would agree that there is no such thing as knowledge of the past in its immediacy wie es eigentlich gewesen, but denied that one can infer from the impossibility of knowing the past in its immediacy the impossibility of knowing the past from the perspective of historical agents with a different mindset from that of the historian. For to view reality from the point of view of historical agents with very different epistemic, moral and aesthetic norms is not equivalent to knowing the past in-itself or in its immediacy; it is rather to understand it through a different form of cultural mediation. His re-enactment doctrine is meant precisely to show that there is no principled barrier to understanding reality as the Greeks or the Romans did. The claim that it is at least in principle possible to adopt the perspective of past agents does not therefore entail that the past can be known wie es eigentlich gewesen or in-itself. It is one thing to deny that the past can be known in-itself; it is another to assert that we cannot understand the world as it was understood by the Greeks, Romans and so on. The task of understanding past agents is not different in kind from that of understanding agents from other cultures that might be contemporaneous to the historian. Thus, unless one is willing to commit to the view that it is impossible to understand other (contemporaneous) cultures in their own terms there is no reason to hold, as Gadamer did, for example, that each new generation of historians necessarily must understand the past in a different way or, as Quine claimed, that there is no identity of meaning and that translation from past cultures must remain necessarily indeterminate.
The questions which arise from the consideration that historians do not share the same zeitgeist as those of the historical agents they study should be carefully distinguished from the questions which arise from a slightly different consideration, namely that historian stand at a different point in time from the facts that they are investigating. The claims that a) historians do not have the same mindset as the agents they investigate and that b) they write about the past from a future standpoint in time are distinct and they ought to be kept apart because they give rise to two very different kinds of “objectivity” questions. The first, as we have seen, is whether historians can view the world as past agents did or whether on the other they necessarily view reality through their own cultural norms. The second is whether it is possible to provide objective accounts of what happened on the basis of the evidence available. These questions speak to two very different philosophical concerns. The first is a conceptual concern with what is required to understand agents who do not share the mindset of the historian and how the study of these past agents differs from the study of the past history of nature. Collingwood’s answer to this question is that understanding other agents requires viewing their actions as responding to norms rather than as instantiating laws of nature and that the study of the human past is therefore based on very different presuppositions from those that govern the study of nature. The second is an epistemological concern with whether it is possible to provide objective accounts of the course of events. In answer to this second epistemological concern Collingwood likened the historian to the detective who seeks to answer the question “who’s done it?” by piecing the evidence together. Collingwood’s answer to this second (epistemological) concern with objectivity is that well-corroborated historical hypotheses are more compelling than the probabilistic conclusions of inductive arguments. Sources are to the historian what clues are to the detective. They have to be pursued and discarded until something like a water tight solution is found.
In so far as Collingwood sees historical hypotheses to be the conclusion of a type of inference analogous to that at work in the detection of crimes he would have a great deal of sympathy with Kuukkanen’s recent suggestion that historical explanations are not narratives but arguments in support of certain conclusions. But while Collingwood would welcome the post-narrativist suggestion that historical construction is not, or need not be arbitrary, he would be suspicious of the distinction between inquiry-independent facts and their presentation in the context of historical explanation that seems to be implied by talk of historians as establishing relations between non-inferentially known, representational truths.
Collingwood agrees that an event can count as an historical fact only once it is integrated in the historian’s explanation of what happened. Much as the chemical composition of the grit under a victim’s fingernails becomes incriminating evidence only once it is located in the context of the detective’s explanation of what happened, so a fact becomes a historical fact only once it is explained historically. But he would deny that we can infer from this consideration that there are types of (non-historical) facts which are representational and which are known non-inferentially. The chemical composition of the grit under the victim’s finger nail, for example, is not a historical fact; it is a scientific fact. But scientific facts are not representational truths which are known non-inferentially; they are rather facts which are known through a different kind of (scientific) inference. Collingwood’s claim that historical facts are the correlative of historical explanations should therefore not be taken as supporting a form of piecemeal anti-representationalism, one which is confined to the domain of historical inquiry. Collingwood may therefore be enlisted amongst the ranks of historical constructivists only once an important proviso is made: the relation between explanations and the facts which they explain is a reciprocal relation which holds across the board in all domains of inquiry: historical facts are the correlative of historical inference; scientific facts are the correlative of scientific inference. His commitment to constructivism in history is therefore not premised on a localized form of anti-representationalism which applies to history only, because in this case the evidence is neither available for observation nor can it be reproduced under laboratory conditions. His metaphysics of absolute presuppositions is committed not to a localized historical anti-representationalism but to a global anti-representationalism based on the view that there is no such thing as knowledge of pure being, no truths which can be known non-inferentially, or independently of the explanatory framework of a form of inquiry. Just as the historical past is the explanandum of history, so nature is the explanandum of science. Yet no scepticism concerning the possibility of historical knowledge follows from his commitment to global anti-representationalism.
Metaphysical questions are illegitimate because they are existential questions about frameworks.
The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has m... more The contemporary metaontological debate is polarized. On the one hand “serious” metaphysics has made a comeback to the philosophical mainstream, so much so that the Kantian variety of metaphysics is no longer deemed to be deserving of its name. Not the real thing. On the other hand, in a tradition which is often traced back to Carnap, a number of philosophers have declared ontological disputes to be merely verbal and the disagreements which rage in the ontology room to be much ado about nothing. This paper tries to carve out a metaphilosophical space between a conception of philosophy as therapy and as armchair science. It argues that there are philosophical disputes which are substantive even if they are not ontologically deep by drawing on the idealist metaontology of R.G. Collingwood.
Collingwood is often but mistakenly associated with the volitional theory of action according to ... more Collingwood is often but mistakenly associated with the volitional theory of action according to which actions are not mere bodily movements but bodily movements plus an additional inner ingredient, a thought. According to the volitional theory, it is the addition of the inner ingredient that turns a bodily movement into an action. He has therefore been wrongly accused of endorsing what Ryle has described as the Cartesian doctrine of the ghost in the machine. The ascription of this view to Collingwood is largely due to a misunderstanding of his claim that actions, unlike events, have an “inside” that events lack. In the following I argue that whilst like volitional theorists Collingwood was indeed motivated by the need to explain the distinction between mere bodily movements and actions, Collingwood rejected the view that the concept of action may be analysed in two discrete components: the inner volition and the outer behaviour. On the contrary he held the (opposite) view that the concept of action is explanatorily basic and non-analysable into further more basic components, such as an inner volition and outer behaviour. On this view the self is not distinct from the action; it is expressed in the action. Collingwood thus held an expressivist (rather than causal) theory of action, which is captured in his motto that “when a historian knows what happened he already knows why it happened” and which bears remarkable but so far unexplored similarities to Anscombe’s account of intentional action.
The Philosopher and the Grapes: on Descriptive Metaphysics and why it is not 'Sour Metaphysics'
Collingwood on the Everyday and Philosophical Sense of Action
In everyday speech we use the term “action” in a variety of ways to encompass pretty much anythin... more In everyday speech we use the term “action” in a variety of ways to encompass pretty much anything that a human being does from involuntary bodily movements such as knee-jerk reactions to voluntary movements such as waving one’s arms whilst giving a paper and fully fledged intentional actions, such as getting married and making a promise. This is not to say that the average person in the street is insensitive to subtle distinctions that could be made between the various meanings that the everyday term has. Children protest loudly if blamed for accidentally spilling their juice. And the strong sense of injustice at being reprimanded for something that they did in one sense (for they did knock the glass) and did not do in another (for they did not intentionally spill the juice) shows that whereas we are using one word we are, from an early age, quite aware of the fact that it has different meanings. When a child protests that he should not be blamed, for he didn’t intentionally spill the juice, just accidentally knocked the glass, he shows an implicit and yet firm grasp of the various meanings that the term “do” has.
Collingwood was aware that the term action in its everyday use gathers a variety of meanings. He isolated, out of the ordinary use, one sense of the term “action” that corresponds to a particular form of explanation, where to explain means to establish a conceptual connection. He called actions in this narrower sense, res gestae, and argued that it is actions in this technical sense of the term that a) constitute the subject matter of the human sciences and b) inform the claim that the distinction between the human and the natural sciences is a distinction in kind rather than degree. In the narrow sense of res gestae actions are sui generis, not a species of the genus “event” which differs from the genus in virtue of a distinctive characteristic or feature (the differentia) that the genus lacks. In its ordinary use the concept “actions” is a heterogeneous concept that is employed to refer both to what is done intentionally (or as Collingwood would put it, as an expression of thought or mind), and to what is done in a much weaker sense of “doing”, where even a mere bodily movement is something that an agent does. For Collingwood whilst bodily movements are indeed species of the genus “events” which differ from the genus because they have internal rather than external causes, actions in the sense of res gestae are not. The task of philosophical analysis is to clarify what we mean when we use the term action and isolate, from the ordinary use, a philosophical or technical sense that enables us to distinguish between things which we do intentionally and things we are merely causally responsible for.
The Philosopher and the Grapes: on descriptive metaphysics and why it is not "sour" metaphysics
• locate Collingwood in the history of the reasons/causes debate • show that he is not an intelle... more • locate Collingwood in the history of the reasons/causes debate • show that he is not an intellectual loner • demonstrate his ideas bear a close family resemblance to the kind of non-reductivism that was argued for in mid-century
Collingwood and the autonomy of the human sciences
Colloque L’Explication de l’action THE CONCEPT OF ACTION Giuseppina d’Oro (Keele University) : ... more Colloque L’Explication de l’action
THE CONCEPT OF ACTION
Giuseppina d’Oro (Keele University) : g.d'oro@phil.keele.ac.uk
Abstract. What kind of distinction is the distinction between the concept of action and that of event? What is the best way of capturing the distinction between the action of opening a window and the event of muscular movement? This paper argues that the action/event distinction is best understood as a distinction of descriptive metaphysics (broadly understood in Strawsonian terms) and that as a concept of descriptive metaphysics, the concept of action does not stand to the concept of event in a relationship of supervenience. Within descriptive metaphysics the concepts of action and event have the same categorial status as meta-level concepts which determine the verification conditions appropriate in different explanatory contexts. This understanding of the action/event distinction underpins a form of non-reductivism that is not vulnerable to the problem of explanatory exclusion.
The paper thus locates the action/event distinction and the reasons/causes debate against the background of broader meta-philosophical assumptions about the role and character of philosophical analysis. I argue that the shift from an anti-causalist to a causalist consensus in the philosophy of action is largely motivated by an ontological backlash against the linguistic turn and a revival of a conception of metaphysics as a revisionary enterprise. I also suggest that inscribing the action/event distinction within a revisionary conception of metaphysics generates more problems than it solves and advocate a return to a conception of metaphysics as a descriptive enterprise as the proper background for a discussion of the action/event distinction.
Résumé. De quel ordre est la distinction qui existe entre le concept d’action et celui d’événement ? Quelle est la meilleure façon de décrire la distinction entre l’action d’ouvrir une fenêtre et l’événement qu’est le mouvement musculaire ? Cette contribution défend l’idée qu’il est préférable de la voir comme appartenant à la métaphysique descriptive (comprise dans ses grandes lignes au sens de Strawson) et que, en tant que concept de métaphysique descriptive, le concept d’action ne se tient pas dans une relation de survenance avec celui d’événement. Au sein de la métaphysique descriptive, les concepts d’action et d’événement ont le même statut catégoriel : celui de concepts de méta-niveau qui déterminent les conditions de vérification appropriées à tel ou tel contexte explicatif. Cette conception de la distinction action / événement fonde une forme de non-réductionnisme qui n’est pas vulnérable au problème de l’exclusion explicative.
La contribution situe ainsi la distinction action / événement et le débat des raisons et des causes sur un arrière-plan de suppositions métaphilosophiques plus larges portant sur le rôle et le caractère de l’analyse philosophique. Je soutiens que le passage d’un consensus anti-causaliste à un consensus causaliste en philosophie de l’action est largement motivé par une réaction ontologique contre le tournant linguistique et à la reviviscence d’une conception révisionnaire de la métaphysique. Je suggère également que le fait d’inscrire la distinction action / événement au sein d’une conception révisionnaire de la métaphysique engendre davantage de problèmes qu’elle n’en résout et je plaide en faveur de l’idée que le retour à une conception de la métaphysique comme effort descriptif est l’arrière-plan approprié à une discussion de la distinction action / événement.
Collingwood and the rise of analytic philosophy
A quick look at the history of the philosophy of mind shows that many things have changed since t... more A quick look at the history of the philosophy of mind shows that many things have changed since the heyday of the mind-brain identity theory in the 1950s when the orthodoxy was reductivist and the agenda was to show that the mind could be explained solely in physical terms. By the 1960s, Davidson's work gave expression to the frustration that many felt towards the reductivist project: in the wake of his anomalous monism, many philosophers took their task to be not that of reducing the mental to the physical but to defend the autonomy of the mental. The philosophical consensus changed and the agenda became non-reductivist. Yet although the orthodoxy in the philosophy of mind became non-reductivist, the metaphilosophical assumptions underlying the debate concerning the relation between the mind and the body remained naturalist, so much so that the question posed by many philosophers was not "How can one defend the autonomy of the mental?" but rather "How does the mind fit in the natural world?" The latter question gave away a particular view of the relation between the sciences according to which there is a basic level which enjoys some form of ontological priority on which the special science supervene. So while nonreductivism had won the philosophical battle, naturalism won the all-important metaphilosophical war.
Call For Abstracts: Collingwood and the Philosophy of History Abstracts are invited for a spec... more Call For Abstracts: Collingwood and the Philosophy of History
Abstracts are invited for a special issue of the Journal of the Philosophy of History on the theme of Collingwood and the philosophy of history to be co-edited by Giuseppina D’Oro and James Connelly.
The abstracts (between 500 and 1,000 words) should be emailed as an attachment to g.d’oro@keele.ac.uk March 1st 2016. Authors will be notified of decisions within one month of this deadline.
The papers (between 6,000 and 8,000 words) should be submitted by 1st September 2016.
Description: Collingwood’s The Idea of History was a key text in the philosophy of history and social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s. It articulated a powerful defence of the autonomy of historical understanding invoked by W.H. Dray in his unrelenting attempts to defend methodological pluralism in the sciences against the argument for methodological unity revived by Hempel’s 1942 paper “The Function of General Laws in History”. Although Collingwood’s philosophy of history witnessed a small renaissance after the discovery of portions of the lost manuscript of The Principles of History in the basement of the Oxford University Press in the 1990s, his philosophy of history no longer commands the attention of the philosophical mainstream. In the English speaking world, as the philosophy of action gradually emancipated itself from the philosophy of history and social science, the debate also moved away from the concerns that had animated much of the methodological discussions about the subject matter of humanistically oriented historiography in the philosophy of history and social sciences. Additionally, as one of the few English speaking philosophers engaging with the Verstehen/Erklären distinction, Collingwood’s philosophy of history is also rarely discussed in the context of neo-Kantian attempts to defend the autonomy of historical understanding in the German speaking world. Last, and not least, the Davidsonian critique of the anti-causalist consensus that dominated the defence of methodological non-reductivism in the 1950s and 60s inaugurated a new causalist orthodoxy that dismissed Collingwood’s anti-causalism as obsolete. Yet Collingwood’s philosophy of history still has so much to offer to contemporary debates. In the philosophy of mind the view that a methodological defence of the autonomy of the human sciences can be articulated against the backdrop of naturalistic assumptions concerning the nature of reality has failed to deliver the promised land in which methodological non-reductivism could live alongside the ontological primacy ascribed to the methodological practices of the natural sciences; in the philosophy of history the post-modern reaction against grand teleological narratives lost some of its initial attraction once the full extent of its sceptical implications were uncovered. Collingwood’s defence of the autonomy of historical understanding, articulated as it is against the background of a non-naturalistic conception of reality, and his views concerning the knowability (at least in principle) of the past, are therefore worth a second look. One of the 2017 issues of the Journal of the Philosophy of History will therefore be dedicated to the theme of “Collingwood and the philosophy of history”, broadly construed.
We invite contributions which explore Collingwood’s conception of the role and character of historical knowing from either an analytical or historical perspective. Contributions which locate Collingwood in thematic discussions concerning the methodology of history and the human sciences are welcome.
Possible themes (this is only an indicative list) include:
The presuppositions of historical knowledge
Collingwood and the debate concerning the unity and disunity of science
Collingwood and the autonomy of historical understanding
Collingwood’s philosophy of history and the Verstehen/Erklären distinction
Collingwood and the causalism/anti-causalism debate in the philosophy of action
Collingwood’s philosophy of history and hermeneutics
Collingwood and the methodology of history
Collingwood and postmodern philosophies of history
Collingwood and idealist philosophy of history
Collingwood, the metaphysics of time and the philosophy of history
Historical understanding, empathy and the contemporary simulation vs theory-theory debate.
Re-enactment, radical translation and radical interpretation
Beyond Scientism and Historicism: Collingwood and the role of the Philosophy of History
This paper revisits the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood with a view to suggesting a solution to tw... more This paper revisits the philosophy of R.G. Collingwood with a view to suggesting a solution to two problems that are often discussed in the philosophy of history. The first concerns the conflictual relation between science and the history of the philosophy of science. Science aims to be delivering timeless truths about the structure of reality while the history of the philosophy of science seems to show that the timeless truths that science aims to uncover are relative to historical paradigms. Since it cannot be the case both that there are and there are not timeless truths the claims of science conflict with those of the history of the philosophy of science. I argue that for Collingwood the conflict between science and the history of the philosophy of science is an instance of the more general case concerning the relation between history and science understood as forms of inquiry governed by different absolute presuppositions.
By locating Collingwood’s philosophy of history against the background of his conception of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions the paper aims to show that while the presuppositions of historical inquiry and of natural science are incompatible there is no deep ontological conflict between the two and the choice between history and natural science can be made on the basis of pragmatic considerations concerning which explanatory framework is best suited to address the question one wants answered. To understand
Collingwood’s handling of the conflictual relation between history (including the history of the philosophy of science) and science it will be necessary to undermine the widespread view that the primary goal of Collingwood’s metaphysics was to historicise knowledge, including, scientific knowledge. If Collingwood’s metaphysics is understood as arguing that there is no presuppositionless knowledge (rather than as claiming that all knowledge is time-bound) the possible co-existence of history and natural science is defended not by reducing scientific knowledge to historical knowledge (which would make historicism into a topsy-turvy version of scientism), but by showing that the methodological practices at work in these different forms of inquiry provide answers to different kinds of why-questions.
The second problem concerns whether the past can be objectively known. It has often been claimed that since history is written retrospectively, from a later point in time, there can be no such thing as access to the past as it is in-itself because the historian will view the past through the lens of his own zeitgeist. Collingwood would agree that there is no such thing as knowledge of the past in its immediacy wie es eigentlich gewesen, but denied that one can infer from the impossibility of knowing the past in its immediacy the impossibility of knowing the past from the perspective of historical agents with a different mindset from that of the historian. For to view reality from the point of view of historical agents with very different epistemic, moral and aesthetic norms is not equivalent to knowing the past initself or in its immediacy; it is rather to understand it through a different form of cultural mediation. His re-enactment doctrine is meant precisely to show that there is no principled barrier to understanding reality as the Greeks or the Romans did. The claim that it is at least in principle possible to adopt the perspective of past agents does not therefore entail that the past can be known wie es eigentlich gewesen or in-itself.
It is one thing to deny that the past can be known in-itself; it is another to assert that we cannot understand the world as it was understood by the Greeks, Romans and so on. The task of understanding past agents is not different in kind from that of understanding agents from other cultures that mightbe contemporaneous to the historian. Thus, unless one is willing to commit to the view that it is impossible to understand other (contemporaneous) cultures in their own terms there is no reason to hold, as Gadamer did, for example, that each new generation of historians necessarily must understand the past in a different way or, as Quine claimed, that there is no identity of meaning and that translation from past cultures must remain necessarily indeterminate.
Understanding Other Humans
Reading dialogue by & w/ Giuseppina D'Oro, Why Humanities Matter, Ashmolean Museum, 15 Nov 2015
Collingwood and British idealism Studies, 2017
With contributions by: Richard Allen, James Camien, Susan Daniels, Rodrigo Díaz-Maldonado, Vasso ... more With contributions by: Richard Allen, James Camien, Susan Daniels, Rodrigo Díaz-Maldonado, Vasso Kindi, Elena Popa, Constantine Sandis and Maarten Steenhagen.