May 2013 – Huenemanniac

May 24, 2013

Philosophical progress?

David Chalmers recently addressed the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge, and he jokingly announced at the beginning that everything he was about to say was not to leave the room. Of course, there are links to the talk everywhere now, and here is another one. His joke makes sense as a joke because of the… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning

May 23, 2013

Kantian philosophy, part 5: what to do about space

The invention or discover of non-Euclidean geometry really messed up philosophers’ claims to apriori knowledge. For centuries, philosophers were sure that claims like, “The angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles” are paradigmatically clear examples of apriori truths. But these claims are false in any geometry other than Euclid’s, as has been… Continue reading

Kant and/or Hume, Metaphysical musings

May 14, 2013

Kantian philosophy, part 4: whether our fixed paradigm is natural

In the previous posts, I’ve been pursuing the idea that our ability to understand experience – interpret it and offer explanations and justifications – requires making a Kantian move: we should postulate some structure inherent to our minds that formats experience and makes our understanding of it possible. I have also argued that this Kantian… Continue reading

Kant and/or Hume, Metaphysical musings

May 13, 2013

From Jacques Barzun to his grandson

Recalled here: “When you have worked through it, by further reflection and some decision as to the immediate future it will turn into something like a path marked on a map, to be followed for a good while and possibly for the rest of your life. To put it another way, you will have made… Continue reading

Items of the academy / learning, Meanings of life / death / social & moral stuff

May 8, 2013

Book review: why the Enlightenment still matters

Book review by Ollie Cussan of Pagden, The Enlightenment and why it still matters, in Prospect: The Enlightenment’s great achievement, Pagden argues, was to repair the bonds of mankind. Its distinctive feature was not that it held history, nature, theology and political authority to the scrutiny of reason, as most of its critics and many… Continue reading

Books, Historical episodes

May 6, 2013

Kantian philosophy, part 3: from thin to thick Kantianism

The central claim in Kant’s philosophy is that our experience is somehow formatted by the nature of our understanding. Why think this is so? In part 2, I made a general case for thinking that humans are special in that we can understand – we can explain and offer justifications. We misunderstand and get many… Continue reading

Kant and/or Hume, Metaphysical musings