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This fresh collection of essays questions how the historical
process affects our conception of science, including our
understanding of its validity as well as our general conception of
knowledge. The essays in this book consider the philosophical
labours spanning the work of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, still the
philosophical basis of our modern understanding of science, as well
as recent selected philosophers and historians of science such as
Kuhn and Feyerbend. Themes raised include the philosophical basis
for the validity of science, the possibility of ever knowing the
independent world as it truly is, and the intelligibility of
construing scientific knowledge as a historical. Taken separately
and together, these essays provide a sustained analysis of
scientific claims to objective standing, the historicity of thought
and inquiry. They point toward unfinished philosophical business
and the need for a new beginning.
This fresh collection of essays questions how the historical
process affects our conception of science, including our
understanding of its validity as well as our general conception of
knowledge. The essays in this book consider the philosophical
labours spanning the work of Descartes, Kant and Hegel, still the
philosophical basis of our modern understanding of science, as well
as recent selected philosophers and historians of science such as
Kuhn and Feyerbend. Themes raised include the philosophical basis
for the validity of science, the possibility of ever knowing the
independent world as it truly is, and the intelligibility of
construing scientific knowledge as a historical. Taken separately
and together, these essays provide a sustained analysis of
scientific claims to objective standing, the historicity of thought
and inquiry. They point toward unfinished philosophical business
and the need for a new beginning.
"Pragmatism Ascendent" is the last of four volumes on the
contribution of pragmatism to American philosophy and Western
philosophy as a whole. It covers the period of American
philosophy's greatest influence worldwide, from the second half of
the 20th century through the beginning of the 21st. The book
provides an account of the way pragmatism reinterprets the
revolutionary contributions of Kant and Hegel, the significance of
pragmatism's original vision, and the expansion of classic
pragmatism to incorporate the strongest themes of Hegelian and
Darwinian sources. In the process, it addresses many topics either
scanted or not addressed at all in most overviews of the
pragmatism's relevance today.
Noting the conceptual stalemate, confusion, and inertia of much of
current Western philosophy, Margolis advances a new line of
inquiry. He considers a fresh conception of the human agent as a
hybrid artifact of enlanguaged culture, the decline of all forms of
cognitive privilege, the pragmatist sense of the practical adequacy
of philosophical solutions, and the possibilities for a
recuperative convergence of the best resources of Western
philosophy's most viable movements.
This book addresses the rift between major philosophical factions
in the United States, which the author describes as a
"philosophically becalmed" three-legged creature made up of
analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism. Joseph
Margolis offers a modified pragmatism as the best way out of this
stalemate. Whether he is examining Heidegger or rethinking the
foibles of Dewey, Rorty, and Peirce, much of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Western philosophy comes into play as Margolis
presents his history of philosophy's evolution and defends his
views. He does not, however, mean for philosophy to turn to the
pragmatism of yore or even to its revival in the 1970s. Rather, he
finds in recent approaches to pragmatism a middle ground between
analytic philosophy's scientism (and its disinterest in analyzing
human nature)and continental philosophy's reliance on attributing
transcendental powers to mere mortals.
Culture and Cultural Entities provides an original philosophical
analysis of the nature and explanation of cultural phenomena, with
special attention to ontology and methodology. It addresses in
depth such topics as: the relation between physical and biological
nature and cultural phenomena; the analysis of intentionality; the
nature and explanation of action; causality; causal explanation and
the unity of science; theories of language; historicity; animal and
human intelligence; psychological and social phenomena; technology
and evolution. Its approach features a form of non-reductive
materialism, examines a wide range of views, and is highly
readable, making it suitable for professionals, advanced
undergraduate and graduate students, and an informed general
audience. A new chapter was added to give a sense of pertinent
trends since the appearance of the first edition, particularly with
respect to the history of philosophy, pragmatism, the unity of
science, and evolution. The unity, scope, and simplicity of the
theory are well-regarded.
Toward a Metaphysics of Culture provides an initial, minimal, and
original analysis of the concept of uniquely enlanguaged cultures
of the human world and of the distinctive metaphysical features of
whatever belongs to the things of that world: preeminently,
persons, language, actions, artworks, products, history, practices,
institutions, and norms. Emphasis is placed on the artifactual and
hybrid nature of persons, naturalistic and post-Darwinian
evolutionary considerations, and the bearing of the account on a
range of disputed inquiries largely centered on the relationship
between physical nature and human culture and between the natural
and human sciences. The schema offered lays a foundation for a
closer analysis of the human mind, cognition, interpretation,
nomologicality, normativity, intentionality, realism, and related
matters. The central thesis advances the heterodox notion,
congruent with post-Darwinian studies in paleoanthropology, that
the human person is a natural artifact, a functional transform of
the primate members of Homo sapiens, by way of a complexly
intertwined biological and encultured evolution, primarily
dependent on the invention, transmission, and mastery of true
language and the novel hybrid abilities that that makes possible.
The emergence of persons is taken to be the obverse side of the
mastery of language itself.
The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium was launched in the
early eighties. It began during a particularly lean period in the
American economy. But its success is linked as much to the need to
be in touch with the rapidly changing currents of the philosophical
climate as with the need to insure an adequately stocked
professional community in the Philadelphia area faced, perhaps
permanently, with the threat of increasing attrition. The member
schools of the Consortium now include Bryn Mawr College, the
University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Villanova
University, that is, the schools of the area that offer advanced
degrees in philosophy. The philosophy faculties of these schools
form the core of the Consortium, which offers graduate students the
instructional and library facilities of each member school. The
Consortium is also supported by the associated faculties of other
regional schools that do not offer advanced degrees - notably,
those at Drexel University, Haverford College, La Salle University,
and Swarthmore College - both philosophers and members of other
departments as well as interested and professionally qualified
persons from the entire region. The affiliated and core
professionals now number several hundreds, and the Consortium's
various ventures have been received most enthusiastically by the
academic community. At this moment, the Consortium is planning its
fifth year of what it calls the Conferences on the Philosophy of
the Human Studies.
The Greater Philadelphia Philosophy Consortium was launched in the
early eighties. It began during a particularly lean period in the
American economy. But its success is linked as much to the need to
be in touch with the rapidly changing currents of the philosophical
climate as with the need to insure an adequately stocked
professional community in the Philadelphia area faced, perhaps
permanently, with the threat of increasing attrition. The member
schools of the Consortium now include Bryn Mawr College, the
University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Villanova
University, that is, the schools of the area that offer advanced
degrees in philosophy. The philosophy faculties of these schools
form the core of the Consortium, which offers graduate students the
instructional and library facilities of each member school. The
Consortium is also supported by the associated faculties of other
regional schools that do not offer advanced degrees - notably,
those at Drexel University, Haverford College, La Salle University,
and Swarthmore College - both philosophers and members of other
departments as well as interested and professionally qualified
persons from the entire region. The affiliated and core
professionals now number several hundreds, and the Consortium's
various ventures have been received most enthusiastically by the
academic community. At this moment, the Consortium is planning its
fifth year of what it calls the Conferences on the Philosophy of
the Human Studies.
Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of
materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however,
with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories,
and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "can
accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of
the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative
possibilities of discovery and technology" (p. 8). In an
extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and
criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative
materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are
reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and
embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account
both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of
their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask,
what is an em bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the
plain physical body as such, but culture. "Persons," he writes,
"are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural
contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer ence to their
mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose
such mastery" (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's
account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical
endowment. Thus he writes, " . . . their characteristic powers - in
effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical
causes in a distinctive way" (p. 246)."
Toward a Metaphysics of Culture provides an initial, minimal, and
original analysis of the concept of uniquely enlanguaged cultures
of the human world and of the distinctive metaphysical features of
whatever belongs to the things of that world: preeminently,
persons, language, actions, artworks, products, history, practices,
institutions, and norms. Emphasis is placed on the artifactual and
hybrid nature of persons, naturalistic and post-Darwinian
evolutionary considerations, and the bearing of the account on a
range of disputed inquiries largely centered on the relationship
between physical nature and human culture and between the natural
and human sciences. The schema offered lays a foundation for a
closer analysis of the human mind, cognition, interpretation,
nomologicality, normativity, intentionality, realism, and related
matters. The central thesis advances the heterodox notion,
congruent with post-Darwinian studies in paleoanthropology, that
the human person is a natural artifact, a functional transform of
the primate members of Homo sapiens, by way of a complexly
intertwined biological and encultured evolution, primarily
dependent on the invention, transmission, and mastery of true
language and the novel hybrid abilities that that makes possible.
The emergence of persons is taken to be the obverse side of the
mastery of language itself.
Joseph Margolis, known for his considerable contributions to the
philosophy of art and aesthetics, pragmatism, and American
philosophy, has focused primarily on the troublesome concepts of
culture, history, language, agency, art, interpretation, and the
human person or self. For Margolis, the signal problem has always
been the same: how can we distinguish between physical nature and
human culture? How do these realms relate?
"The Cultural Space of the Arts and the Infelicities of
Reductionism" identifies a conceptual tendency that can be drawn
from the work of the twentieth century's best-known analytic
philosophers of art: Arthur Danto, Richard Wollheim, Kendall
Walton, Nelson Goodman, Monroe Beardsley, No?l Carroll, and Jerrold
Levinson, among others. This trend threatens to impoverish our
grasp and appreciation of the arts by failing to do justice to the
culturally informed nature of the arts themselves. Through his
analysis, Margolis sets out to retrieve an adequate picture of the
essential differences between physical nature and human
culture--particularly through language, history, meaning,
significance, the emergence of the human self or person, and the
essential features of human life--all to explain how such
difference bears on our perception of paintings and literature.
Clearly argued and provocatively engaging, Margolis's work
reestablishes what is essential to a productive encounter with
art.
This book addresses the rift between major philosophical factions
in the United States, which the author describes as a
"philosophically becalmed" three-legged creature made up of
analytic philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism. Joseph
Margolis offers a modified pragmatism as the best way out of this
stalemate. Whether he is examining Heidegger or rethinking the
foibles of Dewey, Rorty, and Peirce, much of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century Western philosophy comes into play as Margolis
presents his history of philosophy's evolution and defends his
views. He does not, however, mean for philosophy to turn to the
pragmatism of yore or even to its revival in the 1970s. Rather, he
finds in recent approaches to pragmatism a middle ground between
analytic philosophy's scientism (and its disinterest in analyzing
human nature)and continental philosophy's reliance on attributing
transcendental powers to mere mortals.
Culture and Cultural Entities provides an original philosophical
analysis of the nature and explanation of cultural phenomena, with
special attention to ontology and methodology. It addresses in
depth such topics as: the relation between physical and biological
nature and cultural phenomena; the analysis of intentionality; the
nature and explanation of action; causality; causal explanation and
the unity of science; theories of language; historicity; animal and
human intelligence; psychological and social phenomena; technology
and evolution. Its approach features a form of non-reductive
materialism, examines a wide range of views, and is highly
readable, making it suitable for professionals, advanced
undergraduate and graduate students, and an informed general
audience. A new chapter was added to give a sense of pertinent
trends since the appearance of the first edition, particularly with
respect to the history of philosophy, pragmatism, the unity of
science, and evolution. The unity, scope, and simplicity of the
theory are well-regarded.
"The Arts and the Definition of the Human" introduces a novel
theory that our selves--our thoughts, perceptions, creativity, and
other qualities that make us human--are determined by our place in
history, and more particularly by our culture and language.
Margolis rejects the idea that any concepts or truths remain fixed
and objective through the flow of history and reveals that this
theory of the human being (or "philosophical anthropology") as
culturally determined and changing is necessary to make sense of
art. He shows that a painting, sculpture, or poem cannot have a
single correct interpretation because our creation and perception
of art will always be mitigated by our historical and cultural
contexts. Calling upon philosophers ranging from Parmenides and
Plato to Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein, art historians from Damisch
to Elkins, artists from Van Eyck to Michelangelo to Wordsworth to
Duchamp, Margolis creates a philosophy of art interwoven with his
philosophical anthropology which pointedly challenges prevailing
views of the fine arts and the nature of personhood.
"The Arts and the Definition of the Human" introduces a novel
theory that our selves--our thoughts, perceptions, creativity, and
other qualities that make us human--are determined by our place in
history, and more particularly by our culture and language.
Margolis rejects the idea that any concepts or truths remain fixed
and objective through the flow of history and reveals that this
theory of the human being (or "philosophical anthropology") as
culturally determined and changing is necessary to make sense of
art. He shows that a painting, sculpture, or poem cannot have a
single correct interpretation because our creation and perception
of art will always be mitigated by our historical and cultural
contexts. Calling upon philosophers ranging from Parmenides and
Plato to Kant, Hegel, and Wittgenstein, art historians from Damisch
to Elkins, artists from Van Eyck to Michelangelo to Wordsworth to
Duchamp, Margolis creates a philosophy of art interwoven with his
philosophical anthropology which pointedly challenges prevailing
views of the fine arts and the nature of personhood.
"Pragmatism Ascendent" is the last of four volumes on the
contribution of pragmatism to American philosophy and Western
philosophy as a whole. It covers the period of American
philosophy's greatest influence worldwide, from the second half of
the 20th century through the beginning of the 21st. The book
provides an account of the way pragmatism reinterprets the
revolutionary contributions of Kant and Hegel, the significance of
pragmatism's original vision, and the expansion of classic
pragmatism to incorporate the strongest themes of Hegelian and
Darwinian sources. In the process, it addresses many topics either
scanted or not addressed at all in most overviews of the
pragmatism's relevance today.
Noting the conceptual stalemate, confusion, and inertia of much of
current Western philosophy, Margolis advances a new line of
inquiry. He considers a fresh conception of the human agent as a
hybrid artifact of enlanguaged culture, the decline of all forms of
cognitive privilege, the pragmatist sense of the practical adequacy
of philosophical solutions, and the possibilities for a
recuperative convergence of the best resources of Western
philosophy's most viable movements.
In this remarkable book, Joseph Margolis, one of America's leading
and most celebrated philosophers, examines the relationship between
two apparently contradictory philosophical tendencies - realism and
relativism. In order to examine the relationship between the two,
Margolis establishes a taxonomy of different kinds of realism and
different kinds of relativism. Drawing on both the analytic and
Continental traditions, he examines (from a pragmatic point of
view) the various relationships between these two tendencies in the
light of two major developments in modern philosophy - the concern
for praxis and the concern for historicity. Twenty years after it
was first published to great acclaim, Margolis has updated
"Pragmatism Without Foundations" in the light of his most recent
work and the development of pragmatism in the intellectual world.
This second edition includes an updated preface and a brand new
epilogue addressing these developments and their implications for
his earlier work.
In this remarkable book, Joseph Margolis, one of America's leading
and most celebrated philosophers, examines the relationship between
two apparently contradictory philosophical tendencies - realism and
relativism. In order to examine the relationship between the two,
Margolis establishes a taxomony of different kinds of realism and
different kinds of relativism. Drawing on both the analytic and
Continental traditions, he examines (from a pragmatic point of
view) the various relationships between these two tendencies in the
light of two major developments in modern philosophy - the concern
for praxis and the concern for historicity. Twenty years after it
was first published to great acclaim, Margolis has updated
Pragmatism Without Foundations in the light of his most recent work
and the development of pragmatism in the intellectual world. This
second edition includes an updated preface and a brand new epilogue
addressing these developments and their implications for his
earlier work.
Joseph Margolis is an extremely rare kind of author - a
renowned, world-class philosopher who is prepared to write
accessibly for the non-specialist reader. Here Margolis introduces
the reader to all of the central questions of Western philosophy,
showing not only philosophical arguments progress but also how the
most fundamental questions relate to each other. This lucid
introduction enables the reader to experience a first-rate
philosophical intelligence at work.
"I have tried to keep the issues clean and bare and to
presuppose as little as possible in addressing the attentive
reader. My intention is to attract readers, either in agreement or
disagreement, either amateurs or professionals, to attend to the
issues without the sort of scholarly paraphernalia that positively
obscures arguments" - Joseph Margolis
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