David Macarthur | The University of Sydney (original) (raw)

books edited by David Macarthur

This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationsh... more This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics, sociology and law. Reviews "The concept of normativity spans a series of interrelated dichotomies that lie at the heart of philosophical inquiry: fact and value, is and ought, the objective and the subjective, causes and reasons, the natural world and human sensibilities. Much philosophical effort has been devoted to accentuating the gaps between the concepts juxtaposed by each of these pairs, and the fallacies involved in their conflation. This volume, however, seeks to bridge these gaps. The papers collected here—all written expressly for this volume—set out to show that normative discourse must be sensitive to the facts, and that reasoning about facts is inherently value

Papers – Liberal Naturalism by David Macarthur

De Caro, M. & Macarthur, D. (eds.), The Handbook of Liberal Naturalism. London: Routledge., 2022

In this paper I shall consider the relationship between naturalism and aesthetics. In order to ad... more In this paper I shall consider the relationship between naturalism and aesthetics. In order to address this question I want to critically discuss Murray Smith’s book "Film, Art and the Third Culture" (2017) because it has the virtue of putting this question at the centre of its account of the aesthetics of film. I shall argue for two main ideas: firstly, that earning the label “non-reductive” in the setting of a scientific naturalism is a lot more problematic than Smith supposes and once one sees the difficulties that arise then the possibility of a non-scientific or liberal naturalism becomes attractive; and, secondly, whereas Smith thinks the way to thicken explanations in (film) aesthetics is to go sub-personal by invoking sub-personal neural mechanisms in the explanation of aesthetic phenomena, I suggest that such a move is optional and, in any case, philosophically problematic.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy: 1945-2015, ed. K. Becker & K.D. Thomson, 2019

Naturalism as a philosophy of nature, what it consists in, and our ways of knowing nature (so con... more Naturalism as a philosophy of nature, what it consists in, and our ways of knowing nature (so conceived) has a long history in philosophy. In the twentieth century the question of naturalism has been, for the most part, centrally concerned with the question of philosophy's relation to science, especially the natural (or "hard") sciences. Its moral is that philosophy can no longer continue to think of itself as an autonomous discipline or stance distinct from science. I will proceed by examining in some detail the naturalisms of W. V. O. Quine and David Armstrong, which seem to align as a result of a commitment to what, at first, seem the same doctrines of Physicalism, Empiricism, and Metaphysical Realism. Against this perception of near-alignment I want to argue that they do not neatly line up on the naturalist side of the long-standing opposition between idealism and naturalism. In fact, in some key respects, Quine's naturalism contains traces of idealism. The real opposition is between normativism and naturalism. I conclude by briefly contrasting two normativist positions-idealism and liberal naturalism-and come down in favour of the latter.

For a New Naturalism, Arran Gare & Wayne Hudson (eds.), Candor, NY: Telos., 2017

A Companion to Naturalism, Juliano Do Carmo (ed.), Pelotas, Brazil: Nepfil.

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted... more Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything… -Wittgenstein 1

Australasian Philosophy Review, vol. 18 no. 2: 179–183., 2019

Philosophia, vol. 43 no. 3, 2015

In their intriguing paper "The Natural Origins of Content" Daniel Hutto and Glenda Satne review t... more In their intriguing paper "The Natural Origins of Content" Daniel Hutto and Glenda Satne review the current state of play in "the game of naturalizing content" almost a quarter of a century after John Haugeland's well--known review article of 1990 comparing three prominent theoretical options: neo--Cartesianism (e.g. Fodor, Millikan); neo--Behaviourism (e.g. Dennett); and neo--Pragmatism (e.g. Brandom). 2 The program of naturalizing content is the philosophical attempt to solve what some have called the placement problem 3 : the problem of how to 'place' intentional content -or mental states or attitudes with intentional content (e.g. the belief that p), and the linguistic utterances that express them (e.g. the assertion that p) -in a world exhaustively characterized in terms of the posits of physics or, less starkly, the collective posits of the natural sciences.

Naturalism and Normativity, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010

it is an unjustified leap to say that [good and right]… are not as real, objective, and nonrelati... more it is an unjustified leap to say that [good and right]… are not as real, objective, and nonrelative as any other part of the natural world. The temptation to make this leap comes partly from the great hold of natural science models on our entire enterprise of selfunderstanding in the sciences of human life." Taylor (1989, 56)

Analisis (Spain), vol. 1 no. 1, 2014

Philo, vol. 11 no. 1, 2008

This paper is a critical discussion of Quineʼs naturalist credos: 1) physicalism; 2) there is no ... more This paper is a critical discussion of Quineʼs naturalist credos: 1) physicalism; 2) there is no first philosophy; 3) philosophy is continuous with science; and 4) the only responsible theory of the world as a whole is scientific theory. The aim is to show that Quineʼs formulations admit of two readings: a strong reading (often Quineʼs own) which is compatible with reductive forms of naturalism but implausible; and a mild reading which is plausible but suggestive of more liberal forms of naturalism. The paper ends by claiming that naturalism is a normative doctrine that is inconsistent by its own lights.

Erkenntnis, vol. 61, 2004

Naturalism and Normativity, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010

This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationsh... more This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics, sociology and law. Reviews "The concept of normativity spans a series of interrelated dichotomies that lie at the heart of philosophical inquiry: fact and value, is and ought, the objective and the subjective, causes and reasons, the natural world and human sensibilities. Much philosophical effort has been devoted to accentuating the gaps between the concepts juxtaposed by each of these pairs, and the fallacies involved in their conflation. This volume, however, seeks to bridge these gaps. The papers collected here—all written expressly for this volume—set out to show that normative discourse must be sensitive to the facts, and that reasoning about facts is inherently value

De Caro, M. & Macarthur, D. (eds.), The Handbook of Liberal Naturalism. London: Routledge., 2022

In this paper I shall consider the relationship between naturalism and aesthetics. In order to ad... more In this paper I shall consider the relationship between naturalism and aesthetics. In order to address this question I want to critically discuss Murray Smith’s book "Film, Art and the Third Culture" (2017) because it has the virtue of putting this question at the centre of its account of the aesthetics of film. I shall argue for two main ideas: firstly, that earning the label “non-reductive” in the setting of a scientific naturalism is a lot more problematic than Smith supposes and once one sees the difficulties that arise then the possibility of a non-scientific or liberal naturalism becomes attractive; and, secondly, whereas Smith thinks the way to thicken explanations in (film) aesthetics is to go sub-personal by invoking sub-personal neural mechanisms in the explanation of aesthetic phenomena, I suggest that such a move is optional and, in any case, philosophically problematic.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy: 1945-2015, ed. K. Becker & K.D. Thomson, 2019

Naturalism as a philosophy of nature, what it consists in, and our ways of knowing nature (so con... more Naturalism as a philosophy of nature, what it consists in, and our ways of knowing nature (so conceived) has a long history in philosophy. In the twentieth century the question of naturalism has been, for the most part, centrally concerned with the question of philosophy's relation to science, especially the natural (or "hard") sciences. Its moral is that philosophy can no longer continue to think of itself as an autonomous discipline or stance distinct from science. I will proceed by examining in some detail the naturalisms of W. V. O. Quine and David Armstrong, which seem to align as a result of a commitment to what, at first, seem the same doctrines of Physicalism, Empiricism, and Metaphysical Realism. Against this perception of near-alignment I want to argue that they do not neatly line up on the naturalist side of the long-standing opposition between idealism and naturalism. In fact, in some key respects, Quine's naturalism contains traces of idealism. The real opposition is between normativism and naturalism. I conclude by briefly contrasting two normativist positions-idealism and liberal naturalism-and come down in favour of the latter.

For a New Naturalism, Arran Gare & Wayne Hudson (eds.), Candor, NY: Telos., 2017

A Companion to Naturalism, Juliano Do Carmo (ed.), Pelotas, Brazil: Nepfil.

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted... more Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness. I want to say here that it can never be our job to reduce anything to anything… -Wittgenstein 1

Australasian Philosophy Review, vol. 18 no. 2: 179–183., 2019

Philosophia, vol. 43 no. 3, 2015

In their intriguing paper "The Natural Origins of Content" Daniel Hutto and Glenda Satne review t... more In their intriguing paper "The Natural Origins of Content" Daniel Hutto and Glenda Satne review the current state of play in "the game of naturalizing content" almost a quarter of a century after John Haugeland's well--known review article of 1990 comparing three prominent theoretical options: neo--Cartesianism (e.g. Fodor, Millikan); neo--Behaviourism (e.g. Dennett); and neo--Pragmatism (e.g. Brandom). 2 The program of naturalizing content is the philosophical attempt to solve what some have called the placement problem 3 : the problem of how to 'place' intentional content -or mental states or attitudes with intentional content (e.g. the belief that p), and the linguistic utterances that express them (e.g. the assertion that p) -in a world exhaustively characterized in terms of the posits of physics or, less starkly, the collective posits of the natural sciences.

Naturalism and Normativity, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010

it is an unjustified leap to say that [good and right]… are not as real, objective, and nonrelati... more it is an unjustified leap to say that [good and right]… are not as real, objective, and nonrelative as any other part of the natural world. The temptation to make this leap comes partly from the great hold of natural science models on our entire enterprise of selfunderstanding in the sciences of human life." Taylor (1989, 56)

Analisis (Spain), vol. 1 no. 1, 2014

Philo, vol. 11 no. 1, 2008

This paper is a critical discussion of Quineʼs naturalist credos: 1) physicalism; 2) there is no ... more This paper is a critical discussion of Quineʼs naturalist credos: 1) physicalism; 2) there is no first philosophy; 3) philosophy is continuous with science; and 4) the only responsible theory of the world as a whole is scientific theory. The aim is to show that Quineʼs formulations admit of two readings: a strong reading (often Quineʼs own) which is compatible with reductive forms of naturalism but implausible; and a mild reading which is plausible but suggestive of more liberal forms of naturalism. The paper ends by claiming that naturalism is a normative doctrine that is inconsistent by its own lights.

Erkenntnis, vol. 61, 2004

Naturalism and Normativity, New York: Columbia University Press, 2010

Naturalism in Question, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Jan 1, 2004

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy 3rd Ed., Robert Audi (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press , 2015

European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], XII/1, 2020

Responses to Naturalism: Critical Perspective from Idealism to Pragmatism, ed. P. Giladi, 2020

The Blackwell Companion to Richard Rorty, ed. Alan Malachawski, 2020

Facts and Values: The Ethics and Metaphysics of Normativity, Giancarlo & Sarin Marchetti (eds.), London: Routledge.

Pragmatism, Kant and Transcendental Philosophy, Gabriele Gava & Robert Stern (eds.), London: Routledge., 2015

In this paper I argue for a new vision of pragmatism as democratic experimentalism, built around ... more In this paper I argue for a new vision of pragmatism as democratic experimentalism, built around an original understanding of the philosophical work done by the theory of inquiry (aka “the scientific method”) devised by Peirce and extended by James and Dewey. This conception of pragmatism involves putting aside the traditional problematic conception based on the pragmatic maxim and its various applications to truth. A major obstacle to this novel re-conception is Rorty’s paper “Pragmatism without Method”. The present paper challenges Rorty’s argument against conceiving of pragmatism as a scientific method, particularly his claim that this inevitably reduces to mere platitudes. I rebut this charge by appeal to the deep analogy between Kant’s epistemology of critique and the pragmatist method of inquiry concerning the work required to undogmatically secure rational authority for one’s beliefs.

Philosophical Topics, vol. 36 no. 1, Jan 1, 2009

New Pragmatists, Cheryl Misak (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press. , 2007

William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current o... more William James said that sometimes detailed philosophical argument is irrelevant. Once a current of thought is really under way, trying to oppose it with argument is like planting a stick in a river to try to alter its course: "round your obstacle flows the water and 'gets there just the same'". He thought pragmatism was such a river. There is a contemporary river that sometimes calls itself pragmatism, although other titles are probably better. At any rate it is the denial of differences, the celebration of the seamless web of language, the soothing away of distinctions, whether of primary versus secondary, fact versus value, description versus expression, or of any other significant kind. What is left is a smooth, undifferentiated view of language, sometimes a nuanced kind of anthropomorphism or "internal" realism, sometimes the view that no view is possible: minimalism, deflationism, quietism. Wittgenstein is often admired as a high priest of the movement. Planting a stick in this water is probably futile, but having done it before I shall do it again, and-who knows?-enough sticks may make a dam, and the waters of error may subside. (Blackburn, 1998a, 157) So begins Simon Blackburn's contribution to a symposium with Crispin Wright on 'Realism and Truth'. In opposing this "smooth, undifferentiated view of language", Blackburn takes issue, in particular, with Wright's view of the implications for expressivism of minimalism about truth. Wright is a leading advocate of a widespread view that semantic minimalism provides a straightforward argument for cognitivism, and hence against expressivism. For his part, of course, Blackburn is the principal proponent of a rather subtle version of expressivism, quasi-realism, which he takes to provide the most plausible treatment of a range of philosophical topics: moral, aesthetic, conditional, causal, and probabilistic judgements, for example. Quasi-realism depends on noting differences between discourses, and yet Blackburn himself is very sympathetic to semantic minimalism-hence his desire to resist the claim that minimalism is incompatible with expressivism, and to oppose the "undifferentiated view" in general.

European Journal of Analytic Philosophy, vol. 4 no. 2 , 2008

Hilary Putnam refuses the title of 'pragmatist' on the grounds that he is critical of the central... more Hilary Putnam refuses the title of 'pragmatist' on the grounds that he is critical of the central tenets of classical pragmatism. He finds the early pragmatist accounts of truth

The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy 3rd Ed., Robert Audi (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Robert Audi (ed.) The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy 3 rd ed.

Wittgenstein and Naturalism, Kevin Cahill and Thomas Raleigh (eds.), London: Routledge., 2018

Wittgenstein has often been thought to be a naturalist but the question remains: Of what kind? In... more Wittgenstein has often been thought to be a naturalist but the question remains: Of what kind? In this paper I explore this question by first placing a significant constraint on available answers: namely, that Wittgenstein's philosophy is non-doctrinal. It tracks the restlessness of human thought, being both free of metaphysics and yet full of the temptation to metaphysics. I argue that Wittgenstein can be best understood as a liberal naturalist in a dialectical and reactive vein, one both curious about and skeptical of metaphysical assertion. Wittgenstein places a great deal of emphasis on human nature – as contrasted with nature as such – particularly our animality and natural (" primitive ") reactions. The work of philosophy is the never-ending task of returning us to the natural – ordinary and extraordinary – world in which we live and act from the perennial human temptation to unnaturalness in the form of two varieties of metaphysics: supernaturalism in one direction; and scientism in the other.

Al-Mukhatabat: Special Issue on Wittgenstein, No.9, Jan 2014

Hetherington, S. (ed.) What Makes a Philosopher Great?, 2018

The Cambridge Companion to Philosophical Methodology, G. D'Oro & S. Overgaard (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy" -Wittgenstein, §131. Metaphysical... more The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy" -Wittgenstein, §131. Metaphysical quietism threatens the projects of contemporary metaphysics, projects to which a large number of people have devoted their lives and energies; and it leaves many philosophers with the impression that the work of philosophy, so conceived, is entirely destructive -say, an end--of--philosophy stance. They feel it is unworthy of the aspirations and achievements of traditional philosophy, despite the fact that there is no consensus about what these achievements are. 2 Famously advocated by Wittgenstein, and championed in recent times by John McDowell and Richard Rorty, metaphysical quietism has been castigated by Crispin Wright -who is, in this respect, representative of many contemporary Anglo--American philosophers -1 I'd like to thank the editors of this volume, Giuseppina D'Oro and Søren Overgaard, as well as Robert Dunn, Andy Hamilton, Gavin Kitching and Talia Morag for comments on early drafts of this paper. 2 For a trenchant expression of this view see Hilary Putnam's criticism of the end--of-philosophy stance in Philosophy in an Age of Science, 65-66.

The Later Wittgenstein on Language, Daniel Whiting (ed.). London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009

Psychoanalysis Downunder, 2023

Neville Symington had a passion for philosophy. When training for the priesthood – before his dis... more Neville Symington had a passion for philosophy. When training for the priesthood – before his distinguished career in psychoanalysis – he attended lectures several times a week on the topic of ontology, the metaphysical theory of Being qua Being. These lectures were a revelation: “With [the teacher George’s] help I achieved some insight into existence. I believe it has been the most important realization of my life.” Here and elsewhere Neville presents himself to his readers as devoted to the question of Being, as if, at bottom, he is a metaphysician devoted to the task of discovering and articulating a theory of the essence or nature of Being. The Neville I knew was almost the exact opposite of that. In the face of the evidence it will not be easy to explain this but that is the burden of this paper.

Aspects of Knowing, ed. S. Hetherington, Elsevier., 2006

Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 81, Jan 1, 2003

Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 33, Jan 1, 2003

The Monist 103/4: 370-380, 2020

Análisis, vol. 5 no. 1, 2018

In this paper I present a positive progressive picture of Putnam's philosophy. According to this ... more In this paper I present a positive progressive picture of Putnam's philosophy. According to this way of seeing things, Putnam is a normative cartographer of our linguistic practices who has over time refined his understanding of the concepts of truth and verification and their complex relationship from discourse to discourse. Looked at in this way Putnam is primarily a philosopher of objective normativity, who explores the various conceptions of objectivity with which we operate as well as resisting the excesses of both metaphysics and skepticism which do violence to our ordinary and scientific practices. However, Putnam also sees himself as a philosopher of 'reality' focused on " the realism issue " , a metaphysically inflationary way of thinking that, I argue, stands in the way of his deepest insights.

Reading Putnam, Maria Baghramian (ed.). London: Routledge, 2012

Philosophical Explorations, vol. 7, Jan 1, 2004

Philosophy in the Age of Science: Essays of Hilary Putnam. De Caro & Macarthur (eds.), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." C. S. Pierce "Even... more Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts." C. S. Pierce "Even the hugest telescope has to have an eye-piece no larger than the human eye." Ludwig Wittgenstein

The Harvard Review of Philosophy, issue 24, 2017

Sartre and Analytic Philosophy, ed. T. Morag. London: Routledge, 2023

Stanley Cavell's writings on external world skepticism (which he speaks of as “the repudiation of... more Stanley Cavell's writings on external world skepticism (which he speaks of as “the repudiation of criteria” and "an attack on the ordinary") are profound but also widely misunderstood. Part of the reason for this is Cavell's commitment to the claim that his understanding of skepticism is continuous with that of Descartes, Hume and Kant. Another is the painful ambiguity of his pronouncements on the "truth" in skepticism. In this paper I argue that key passages in Sartre's 1938 novel "Nausea" are an expression of Cavellian skepticism, and so, provide an interpretation of it. According to this Sartre-inspired reading, Cavellian skepticism is not a form of Cartesian skepticism. Cavellian skepticism is not a matter of unanswerable doubts about our knowledge of the external world. Rather, such skepticism is nihilism, the stripping of meaning and value from the world. According to this understanding, Cavellian skepticism Is closer to the post-Kantian thought of Jacobi than to Kant; and a rethinking of the relationship between skepticism and romanticism is required.

Conversations: The Journal of Cavellian Studies, Jul 2014

Morality in a Realistic Spirit: Essays for Cora Diamond, Ed. Craig Taylor and Andrew Gleeson (Routledge), 2019

SubStance, vol. 45 no. 3, 2016

In Stanley Cavell's ethical universe no concept is of more moment than that of acknowledgement. O... more In Stanley Cavell's ethical universe no concept is of more moment than that of acknowledgement. On Cavell's view the question of acknowledgement is not a matter of choice but is at issue whenever we confront, or are confronted by, others. To acknowledge is to admit or confess or reveal to someone, typically another, those things about oneself and one's relations to the world and others that one, being human, cannot fail to know -except that "nothing is more human than to deny them" (Must, 96). The question of whether I acknowledge others and whether others acknowledge me and the character, depth or failures of our reciprocal acknowledgement, are central to Cavell's 1 The occasion of this paper was a Cinematic Thinking Workshop organized by Lisa Trahair and Robert Sinnerbrink at UNSW, Dec. 9-11, 2013. As the title ["Cinema and/as Ethics"] suggests participants were invited to reflect on the relation between cinema and ethics. I'd like to thank Lisa and Robert for comments on an earlier version of this paper. SubStance, vol. 45 no. 3 (2016): 120-136. 2 articulation and exploration of the ethical dimension of our lives together. 2 What motivates the present paper is the intensely paradoxical character of Cavell's treatment of the question of the acknowledgement of the human drama we witness on film. In both theatre and film there is no question of the performers acknowledging us, the audience. We are, by convention or mechanical means, simply not present to the characters in a play or a film. But this does not stop Cavell from inquiring, in relation to the characters we confront in theatre, what acknowledgement of them requires of us. 3 So, too, even if we are not in the presence of the "human something[s]" (World, 26 4 ) we witness on film there is, presumably, an analogous call upon us for some acknowledgement of them.

The title of the book under review 1 brings to mind a memorable passage from Stanley Cavell's The... more The title of the book under review 1 brings to mind a memorable passage from Stanley Cavell's The Claim of Reason, in which he remarks, In philosophizing, I have to bring my own language and life into imagination. What I require is a convening of my culture's criteria, in order to confront them with my words and life as I pursue them and as I may imagine them; and at the same time to confront my words and life as I pursue them with the life my culture's words may imagine for me: to confront the culture with itself, along the lines in which it meets in me.

Understanding Wittgenstein, Understanding Modernism, Anat Matar (ed.). London: Bloomsbury , 2017

A Companion to Philosophy in Australia and New Zealand, ed. Graham Oppy & Nick Trakakis, Monash University Press., 2010

The Modernist World, ed. Allana Lindgren & Stephen Ross. Routledge, 2015

The Philosophy of Rhythm, Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton & Max Paddison (eds.), Oxford, OUP, 2019

Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, 2016

Curator: The Museum Journal, 2019

In this commentary I interpret Thomas Demand’s photographic work “Modell/Model” (2000) as undermi... more In this commentary I interpret Thomas Demand’s photographic work “Modell/Model” (2000) as undermining the strong temptation to think that when we view a photograph – a light-capturing mechanism – seeing is believing. Demand provides a regress of models of models (recalling Plato’s skeptical view of art as unknowing copies of copies) that, ultimately, proves unfathomable, hence uncanny. Demand is the Socrates of contemporary art photography: here seeing is not-knowing. What we do not know is that Demand’s photograph is based on a partially erased paper and cardboard model of the scene depicted in a Nazi era photograph of a model of the German Pavilion (Hoffman, 1937) – which recalls the global ambitions of Nazism and the aesthetic connection Hitler wanted to make between neo-classical fascist architecture and the “new man” of the Third Reich.

Name of the Work, Tel Hai, Israel: Tal Hei Museum Press. , 2012

The work of art compels us-as one might say-to see it in the right perspective, but without art t... more The work of art compels us-as one might say-to see it in the right perspective, but without art the object is a piece of nature like any other..." 1 -Ludwig Wittgenstein The Socratic question "What is photography?" lies at the heart of all of Yanai Toister's memorable, chromatically seductive, and self-reflexive photographic compositions. Toister's is a philosophical art. His images provoke one to meditate on questions about the nature of photographic images, the possibility of photographic meaning, and about what implications photography has for our conception of seeing, our idea of art, our relation to technology, and what notion we have of objective reality and our cognitive and sensuous engagement with it. Since his earliest public exhibition in 2000 Toister has shown a rigorous, investigative, almost 'scientific', approach to photography: (1) challenging, by complicating, the culturally and theoretically dominant documentary or "realist" conception of photography; (2) experimenting with modes of abstraction (especially the role of colour) in photographic images -a study that is becoming increasingly more radical over time; and (3) sensitively and methodically 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture & Value (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 7.

Film Philosophy, vol. 21 no. 3, 2017

Despite its oft-noted ambiguities, critical reception of Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner" (Theatrica... more Despite its oft-noted ambiguities, critical reception of Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner" (Theatrical Cuts (1982); Director’s Cut (1992); Final Cut (2007)) has tended to converge upon seeing it as a futuristic sci-fi film noir whose central concern is what it means to be human, a question that is fraught given the increasingly human-like replicants designed and manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation for human use on off-world colonies. Within the terms of this way of seeing things a great deal of discussion has been devoted to putative criteria of being human and the question whether the once-retired blade runner, Rick Deckard, is or is not a replicant. I aim to explore a radically different course of interpretation, which sees the film in fundamentally moral and religious terms. Put in the starkest light, the film is not about what makes us human but whether we can be saved from ourselves, from our terrifying inhumanity, our moral blindness.

Footprint: Delft Architecture Theory Journal, 2017

Two recent collections on architectural theory and practice invoke the name of pragmatism as mark... more Two recent collections on architectural theory and practice invoke the name of pragmatism as marking the hope of a new more intimate alignment of theory and practice after a period of what I call " philosophical vampirism ". This paper examines what role the philosophical tradition of pragmatism might play in relation to architecture. I argue that pragmatism is best understood as a method of overcoming intellectualist and metaphysical obstacles to clear thinking as opposed to a philosophical ideology of some kind. Against Rem Koolhaas's argument for post-­‐criticality I show that we are always already critical. Pragmatism's task is to make criticism better. I end by invoking the craft ethos as articulated by Richard Sennett in his book " The Craftsman " (2001), as perhaps the best model of what a pragmatist architecture might look like.

Architectural Theory Review, 2014

How are we to understand the relation between Wittgenstein's philosophy and architecture as exemp... more How are we to understand the relation between Wittgenstein's philosophy and architecture as exemplified by Wittgenstein's only architectural commission, the house in Kundmanngasse, Vienna (1926--8)? That there is some intimate relation worthy of our attention is attested to by Wittgenstein's stature as a philosopher and the close connection between Wittgenstein's life and thought. Since the Wittgenstein House was built shortly after Wittgenstein published the Tractatus (1921) standard interpretations have seen the House in terms of this book's method, style or ethics. In this paper I shall suggest a new perfectionist reading, which takes seriously Wittgenstein's ethical aim of "working on oneself" by overcoming the temptation to instruct others, from some imagined higher plane, about how to live the examined life.

Paragrana, Special Issue: "Art & Gesture", 2014

This paper is an extended meditation on Wittgenstein’s remark, “Architecture is a gesture” by way... more This paper is an extended meditation on Wittgenstein’s remark, “Architecture is a gesture” by way of a many-sided contrast and comparison with Adolf Loos’s influential architectural criticism. The paper makes the case for the artistic status of architecture according to what I call Wittgenstein’s communicative action model of art. The conception of architecture as frozen gestures is an apt metaphor for the power of architecture to express (aesthetic) ideas that glorify its purpose. The final section of the paper is a discussion of the modern architectural gesture of anti-ornamentalism.

This issue of Footprint explores the potential role of analytic philosophy in the context of arch... more This issue of Footprint explores the potential role of analytic philosophy in the context of architecture’s typical affinity with continental philosophy over the past three decades. In the last decades of the twentieth century, philosophy became an almost necessary springboard from which to define a work of architecture. Analytic philosophy took a notable backseat to continental philosophy. With this history in mind, this issue of Footprint sought to open the discussion on what might be offered by the less familiar branches of epistemology and logic that are more prevalent and developed in the analytic tradition.

The papers brought together here are situated in the context of a discipline in transformation that seeks a fundamental approach to its own tools, logic and approaches. In this realm, the approaches of logic and epistemology help to define an alternate means of criticality not subjected to personalities or the specialist knowledge of individual philosophies. Rather the various articles attempt to demonstrate that such difference of background assumptions is a common human habit and that some of the techniques of analytic philosophy may help to leap these chasms. The hope is that this is a start of a larger conversation in architecture theory that has as of yet not begun.

For full issue see:
http://footprint.tudelft.nl/

Philosophical Investigations, 2022

Gavin Kitching's Capitalism and Democracy in the 21 st Century: A Global Future Beyond Nationalis... more Gavin Kitching's Capitalism and Democracy in the 21 st Century: A Global Future Beyond Nationalism is a remarkable work that surprizes the reader both by its combination of grim sobriety and optimism in the face of momentous real-world problems as well as its unexpected intellectual orientation. We are told that it "is a work of philosophy" (xii) although its ostensible subject-matter is "the current disconnect between global economics and national politics" (129) which has come to light over the past 30-40 years. During this period of globalization there has been a rapid shift of manufacturing from developed western countries to cheap labour economies in China, India, Latin America and SouthEast Asia; and, in the West, there has been a concomitant sharp rise in service industries. This reorganization has resulted in decreasing public expenditure, growing economic inequality and "the relative economic decline of western capitalist economies" (39). Coupled with "increased migratory pressures" (39) due to large first world/third world

Philosophical Books, Jan 1, 2007

This lucid, closely argued, and stimulating book offers Horwich's latest formulation and defence ... more This lucid, closely argued, and stimulating book offers Horwich's latest formulation and defence of his Use Theory of Meaning (UTM) – a version of what is commonly called conceptual role semantics-in light of objections provoked by earlier presentations of it, especially his Meaning (1998). All but one of its chapters have appeared previously, although their contents have been modified and revised, in some cases substantially, for the current publication. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the philosophical issues that bear on the question of what linguistic meaning is. The second chapter is devoted to the important task of presenting the UTM. Chapter 3 argues against imposing a certain explanatory requirement on reductive accounts of meaning. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the nature of vagueness and the normativity of meaning respectively. The sixth chapter examines the relationship between the rules that constitute word-meaning and epistemic rationality. The penultimate chapter concerns how UTM looks from the perspective of Chomskian psycho-linguistics. And the last chapter focuses on the issue of compositionality. Despite being inspired by Wittgenstein's famous reminder that meaning is use, UTM is intended to show something far stronger and more controversial than that suggests, namely, how literal semantic meaning is explained in terms of a purely naturalistic conception of use as (roughly) the disposition to accept various marks and noises or their mentalese correlates. The theory, as Horwich puts it,

Australasian Journal of Popular Culture

Jennifer A. McMahon, Elizabeth Burns Coleman, David Macarthur, James Phillips, Daniel Von Sturmer

Why Philosophy?, 2017

In this essay I offer an account of the public and private faces of philosophy, and so, of two di... more In this essay I offer an account of the public and private faces of philosophy, and so, of two directions of its relevance to us. Philosophy is fundamentally a form of self-knowledge and so, its relevance is bound up with the importance of self-knowledge. I argue that we all need to overcome our tendency for living a merely passive and conformist existence by thinking for ourselves. When the ancient Greeks created philosophy some 2500 years ago it was possible to suppose, with Plato and Aristotle, that philosophy is humankind's highest calling, the most exulted use of the powers of reason with which nature has endowed us. Plato even goes so far as to imagine that a truly just society would be one ruled over by none other than philosophers! 1 Philosophy was not only relevant to leading what Socrates calls "an examined life" but also to the public good of a well-run society. 2 But when one considers the modern world, the role of philosophy is almost the opposite of that imagined by Plato. To many it

M/C Journal

Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“Let us not doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt... more Photograph by Gonzalo Echeverria (2010)“Let us not doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.” (C. S. Peirce) Introduction Doubting has always had a somewhat bad name. A “doubting Thomas” is a pejorative term for one who doubts what he or she has not witnessed first-hand, a saying which derives originally from Thomas the Apostle’s doubting of the resurrected Christ. That doubt is the opposite of faith or conviction seems to cast doubt in a bad light. There is also the saying “He has the strength of his convictions” which seems to imply we ought correspondingly to say, “He has the weakness of his doubts”. One might recall that Socrates was likened to an electric eel because his peculiar form of questioning had the power to stun his interlocutors by crushing their pet convictions and cherished beliefs under the weight of the wise man’s reasonable doubts. Despite this bad press, however, doubting is a rational activity motivated by a vitally important concern for the...

Literature Aesthetics, Sep 27, 2011

This is a short, admirably lucid, introduction to the philosophy of art centred around the questi... more This is a short, admirably lucid, introduction to the philosophy of art centred around the question "What is Art?" Warburton follows tradition in understanding this Socratic question as a demand for the nature or essence of art; or, in modern analytic terms, the specification of the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as a work of art. The book aims "to lay bare a range of indefensible positions, revealing the counter-arguments and counterexamples that undermine these positions" (p. 4). After a brief opening chapter on the relation of the art question to philosophy, Warburton discusses in successive chapters, the limitations and inadequacies of Clive Bell's Theory of Significant Form, R.G. Collingwood's Expressive Theory, the Family Resemblance Theory of Morris Weitz, and the Institutional Theory of George Dickie. The book ends by casting doubt on whether art has an essence at all, and so, on the whole project of pursuing the art question. Despite the freshness and ease of the writing style, the approach is rather hackneyed. Although Warburton does a good job of summarizing the relevant theories, particularly Collingwood, the book cannot help but strike one as a rehearsal of all too familiar criticisms of an all too familiar project. Surely we know by now that essentialist definitions in any area of philosophy confront a dilemma: either they are trivial, or false. One horn is the danger of vicious circularity, defining the key concept narrowly in terms that simply presuppose it e.g. art-significant form-that which produces aesthetic emotion. The other horn is the threat of drawing the wrong boundary, say, by excluding genuine artworks and/or including within the category of art objects that it seems implausible to count as such. Unsurprisingly, Warburton's critique takes the form of pinning his victims on one or other of these horns. So why ask "the art question"? One might be forgiven for thinking that Warburton thinks the search for a strict definition of art is the first, or perhaps the only, question that matters in reflecting upon art philosophically. But in the final chapter-aptly, but puzzlingly, titled "So What?"-Warburton shows his hand by concluding that the search for an all-encompassing definition of art is a waste of time. It is "probably not answerable" (p. 133) and "almost certainly a futile [pursuit]" (p. 126). Philosophers who engage in this fruitless quest are criticized for being more concerned for "crossword-puzzle-like technicalities" (p. 133) than the

Mind, 2001

PLACE AND EXPERIENCE A Philosophical Topography While the 'sense of place' is a familia... more PLACE AND EXPERIENCE A Philosophical Topography While the 'sense of place' is a familiar theme in poetry and art, philosophers have generally given little or no attention to place and the human relation to place. In Place and Experience, JE Malpas seeks to remedy this by ...