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19The False Prison: A Study of the Development of Wittgenstein's PhilosophyNoûs 25 (3): 377-380. 1991.
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15The Meaning of the Liar Paradox in Randall Jarrell's "Eighth Air Force"Philosophy and Literature 46 (1): 195-207. 2022.Do logical paradoxes, like Eubulides’s Liar Paradox (the claim that the sentence “I am now lying” is true if and only if it is false), have any “existential” significance or are they mere brain puzzles for the mathematically minded? The paper argues that Randall Jarrell’s poem, “Eighth Air Force”, contains a poetic use of Eubulides’ Liar Paradox, spoken by Pontius Pilate’s wife in her statements about the “murder” of Jesus, in order to capture, symbolically, the inherent universal duplicity (in…Read more
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23Leibniz’s Opposition to Mechanistic Cognitive ScienceIdealistic Studies 25 (2): 175-194. 1995.Norbert Weiner, one of the major founders of computer science in this century, considered Leibniz its “patron saint”. In his own words, Weiner writes that the step from.
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The paper is a reply in Process Studies to a paper of mine that had earlier appeared in Process Studies on Wittgenstein and Whitehead. The paper considers both the “earlier” Wittgenstein of the Tractatus and the “later” Wittgenstein beginning with the Philosophical Investigations. The paper discusses Wittgenstein’s idea that the philosophical truth is “open to view”, the centrality of the picture theory in the Tractatus, the Tractatus-dichotomy between “saying” and “showing”, the Tractatus-vie…Read more
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Wittgenstein's "Private Language Argument" and the Limits of LanguageHumanities Bulletin 1 (1). forthcoming.
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Wittgenstein, his "Private Language Argument", and the Concept of GodJournal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies 19. forthcoming.
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12Kant’s Microcosmic Doctrine(s) and his Transcendental PhilosophyMeta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 8 (1): 99-120. 2016.Despite Conger’s classic view that one can find very little of the microcosmic doctrine in any of the Idealists, the paper argues that Kant develops several little known microcosmic doctrines over the course of his development from his first Critique to his second Critiqueto his Opus Postumum and that these are intimately connected with his various notions of “transcendental” philosophy. First, the roots of the microcosmic doctrine in Plato are explored. Second, Kant’s most basic microcosmic doc…Read more
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63Referential Opacity and Hermeneutics in Plato’s Dialogue FormMeta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 5 (2): 251-278. 2013.The paper argues that Plato’s dialogue form creates a Quinean “opaque context” that segregates the assertions by Plato’s characters in the dialogues from both Plato and the real world with the result that the dialogues require a hermeneutical interpretation. Sec. I argues that since the assertions in the dialogues are located inside an opaque context, the forms of life of the characters in the dialogues acquires primary philosophical importance for Plato. The second section argues that the thesi…Read more
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Melvilleʼs New Seafarerʼs Philosophy in Moby-DickAthens Journal of Humanities and Arts. forthcoming.
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22A Gestalt-Model of Zettel 608Idealistic Studies 46 (2): 163-182. 2016.Most scholars understand para. 608 of Zettel to suggest that language and thought might arise from chaos at the neural centre. However, this contradicts Wittgenstein’s signature view that the philosopher must not advance theories. The paper proposes an alternative model of Z608 based on the Austrian Gestalt-movement that influenced Wittgenstein. Z608 does not suggest that language and thought might arise from chaos in the brain but that they may arise in a different non-causal sense from the “ch…Read more
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23Malcolm, NormanInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.Norman Malcolm Norman Malcolm was instrumental in elaborating and defending Wittgenstein’s philosophy, which he saw as akin to a kind of “ordinary language” philosophy, in America. He also defended a novel interpretation of Moore’s “common sense philosophy” as a version of ordinary language philosophy, although Moore himself disagreed. Malcolm criticized Descartes’ account of mind … Continue reading Malcolm, Norman →
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33Kant's Argument against the Possibility of Cognitive ScienceProceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress 2 37-45. 1995.
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26Martin Heidegger's Being and TimePeter Lang. 2006.The ideas of Martin Heidegger, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, have had a profound influence on work in literary theory and aesthetics, as well as on mainstream philosophy. This book offers a clear and concise guide to Heidegger's notoriously complex writings, while giving special attention to his major work Being and Time. Richard McDonough adds historical context by exploring Heidegger's intellectual roots in German idealism and ancient Greek philosophy, and in…Read more
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31The Argument of the Tractatus: Its Relevance to Contemporary Theories of Logic, Language, Mind, and Philosophical TruthState University of New York Press. 1986.The Argument of the "Tractatus" presents a single unified interpretation of the Tractatus based on Wittgenstein's own view that the philosophy of logic is the real foundation of his philosophical system.
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56Religious fundamentalism: a conceptual critiqueReligious Studies 49 (4): 561-579. 2013.The article argues that religious fundamentalism, understood, roughly, as the view that people must obey God's commands unconditionally, is conceptually incoherent because such religious fundamentalists inevitably must substitute human judgement for God's judgement. The article argues, first, that fundamentalism, founded upon the normal sort of indirect communications from God, is indefensible. Second, the article considers the crucial case in which God is said to communicate directly to human b…Read more
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56Kant’s “Historicist” Alternative to Cognitive ScienceSouthern Journal of Philosophy 33 (2): 203-220. 1995.
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105Wittgenstein's reversal on the `language of thought' doctrinePhilosophical Quarterly 44 (177): 482-494. 1994.
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"Wittgenstein in the Midst of Life, Death, Sanity, Madness - and Mathematics"In Garry L. Hagberg (ed.), Stanley Cavell on Aesthetic Understanding, Springer Verlag. 2018.
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23"University of Michigan Philosophers: Roy Wood Sellars (1880-1973) and Wilfrid Sellars (1912-1989)"Michigan Philosophy 1 14-15. 2017.
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Perspectives on the Phenomenological Foundations of PsychologyIn John D. Greenwood (ed.), The Idea of Psychology: Conceptual and Methodological Issues, Singapore University Press, National University of Singapore. pp. 111-130. 1987.
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48Hegel’s Organic Account of Mind and Critique of Cognitive ScienceGraduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 19 (1): 67-97. 1996.Organic metaphors appear as early as §2 of the Phenomenology and throughout Hegel’s major works. The culmination of the dialectic is the moment where Life understands itself. Hegel even identifies the Notion with the “principle of all life”. Yet despite Hegel’s emphasis on the notion of Life, there is no general agreement about the significance of his notion of organism. Some commentators emphasize Hegel’s organicism only in connection with the notion of organic unities in Hegel’s social philoso…Read more
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27Heidegger on Kant on the Alternative to the Scientism of the EnlightenmentJournal of the British Society for Phenomenology 28 (3): 236-254. 1997.The paper argues that a philosopher who describes his main works as "critiques" of reason cannot be the simple defender of rational science that he is sometimes taken to be. Rather, as Heidegger argues, Kant's program is much deeper and more problematic.