Stanford Howdyshell

In this paper, I will discuss the need for a theory of essences within Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO) and then formulate one. I will do so by drawing on Graham Harman’s work on OOO and Martin Heidegger’s thought on the essence of being, presented in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Harman touches on essences, describing them as the tension between a withdrawn object and its withdrawn qualities, but fails to distinguish between essential and inessential qualities within this framework. To fill in the gaps, I will turn to Heidegger’s explication of phusis in order to show that an essential aspect of being is how one enters into causal relations and continually reveals oneself to other beings. In bringing OOO and Heidegger together, I will find that each object has a unique way of exerting itself in the world and that the domestic relations that make up this unique profile are essential to it, while other domestic relations, those that do not influence its particular way of exerting itself, are inessential. Thus, the essence will be found to be the set of domestic relations that make up the determinate form, or unique causal profile, of the object.

While Maurice Merleau-Ponty thought that the natural sciences could offer partial explanations of the world, he maintained that they were incomplete and further understanding required an existential analysis or a study of the pre-theoretical and pre-reflective structures that are the conditions of the possibility of experience. He offered a series of arguments against both the possibility of the sciences explaining the world in general and their ability to explain the phenomenon of perception in particular.In his paper, "Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenological Critique of Natural Science," Thomas Baldwin pushes back on both of these positions, arguing that Merleau-Ponty offered insufficient proof of his...

In this paper I will discuss the Pessimistic Meta-Induction put forth by Larry Laudan in his paper A Confutation of Convergent Realism and discuss how it overcomes the No Miracles argument for scientific realism. I will then reconcile these two positions through the theory that scientific terms posit and refer to models of reality that are relevantly similar to how the world is. This paper will begin with a discussion of the No Miracles argument and Pessimistic Meta-Induction, resulting in doubt that scientific terms genuinely refer to objects in the world. In order to overcome the anti-realist position that the Pessimistic Meta-Induction has resulted in, I will then put forth a form of realism that does not rely on the genuine reference of terms. This being that scientific terms refer to models and structures that are relevantly similar to objects in reality. This will be done with a brief discussion in the history of science, particularly with a discussion of the caloric fluid theory of heat and the evolution of the theory of light, first as a wave in either, then as a wave in space, and finally as a ‘wavicle’. This will result in the aforementioned position that retains a form of realism, but is still able to overcome the Pessimistic Meta-Induction.

The following dissertation explains the psychologism debate as it played out in the 19thand early 20th Centuries and then shows how Martin Heidegger radicalized the debate by undermining its key themes and assumptions. First, I explain each side of the psychologism debate, starting with the psychologicists. I explore the philosophies of Jakob Friedrich Fries and John Stuart Mill in order to encapsulate the full spectrum of psychologism in the 19th Century, from Neo-Kantian to British Empiricist. The investigation will show a set of common themes within psychologism, such as the grounding of logic in the constitution of the human subject, a reliance on introspection, and the prioritization of epistemology over metaphysics. I then turn to the logicists, focusing on Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl. I start by explaining two influential arguments against psychologism: that it treats logical objects as mental entities and that it devolves into relativism. I analyze how both Frege and Husserl developed alternate explanations for the foundations of logic, where Frege grounded logic in the relationships of objects in an ideal third realm and Husserl founded them on the relationships between the ideal objects of intentional experience. I end the section with a brief explanation of logicism’s relationship to the themes highlighted in the prior part, namely that logicism founded logic on the object side of the subject-object dichotomy but agreed with the prioritization of epistemology. The final part of the dissertation will be Heidegger’s critique and radicalization of the psychologism debate and his own understanding of logic. It starts with his critique of Husserl, v followed by a Heideggerian critique of Frege, and finally his critique of psychologism. I show that Heidegger undermined the debate by arguing that theoretical modes of engagement with the world were derivative of our more fundamental ontological structure, that the subject-object dichotomy is illegitimate, and that the psychologism debate relies on a flawed understanding of truth. Afterward, I explain Heidegger’s philosophy and construct a Heideggerian understanding of logic based on his understanding of truth and the logos.

This paper seeks to bring together two trends in contemporary phenomenological research: an investigation of the sciences and a re-exam­ination of Martin Heidegger’s understanding of logic and inference. I will do so by examining the foundations of the “just-as” truth found in the sciences, finding that scientific truth claims rest on apophantic speech, the contextual nature of disclosure, and, ultimately, the as-structure of Dasein. This leads to the implication that the laws of inference for the sciences are based on how beings show themselves within a science rather than preceding the sciences. I will finish by showing that this implies logical and scientific pluralism and the rejection of philosophical naturalism.