End Times archive

Stanley Cavell was a deeply original and creative thinker, one of the truly great American minds of the recent decades. While finding his philosophical voice, as he would say, in his encounters with Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations and Austin’s ordinary language philosophy, his own work reached out in a number of different directions, including aesthetics, political theory, epistemology (including skepticism), and the study of language. Espen Hammer Published on: Nov 23, 2018 @ 14:52

The theory of mind that story-telling relies on for its explanatory power is false. It’s not just that we can't get into the heads of historical agents to figure out exactly the beliefs and wants that paired up to determine their choices, decisions and actions. My argument is not that narrative history is underdetermined by the evidence. Alex Rosenberg Published on: Nov 22, 2018 @ 18:30

I believe that life is paradigmatic concept of our time. An array of disciplines under the umbrella term ‘life sciences’ dominate the theoretical discourse and have enormous practical impact. In fields such as medicine, pharmacology, and agriculture, numerous technological applications are changing our daily world as well. These applications can be understood as an indicator of the far-reaching implications that the scientific discourses on life have for society and culture. In the view of some, we are thus living in a “culture of life”. Johannes Steizinger Published on: Nov 17, 2018 @ 08:01

The cement of the universe is in the various species of dependence relations.  Things enter into dependence relations of one kind or another (including, as a species, causal dependence relations).  And there are no apriori restrictions as to which features are dependent and which independent. Mariam Thalos Published on: Nov 9, 2018 @ 16:13

Buddhist scripture speaks differently to every person who comes in front of it because people are unique individuals and the meaning and application will speak to them in their particularity.  In this sense, its meaning unfolds in ever new ways as it works in the imagination of every reader. Maria Heim Published on: Nov 3, 2018 @ 08:16

I have spent quite a bit of time over the last few months trying to put across an alternative to the dominant ‘inclusion’ narrative: trans women are trans women; they should be protected from all discrimination by the building of special resources for them, wherever they face violence and intimidation; and they should be provided with opportunities to participate equally in society (so perhaps, to get their own shortlists, prizes, and so on). But it is not a ‘right’ of a trans woman to enter a female-only space, or get access to a female-only opportunity, on the basis of saying they are a woman, or even legally counting as such; and it would harm females to allow this. Kathleen Stock Published on: Oct 19, 2018 @ 09:38

There can be no doubt that amour propre is the most important concept in Rousseau’s Second Discourse. Rousseau tells us that there, more than once, and it is the key to answering the main question of the Discourse: where does social inequality come from? Fred Neuhouser Published on: Oct 13, 2018 @ 01:23

For philosophy to exist within a corporate academy it takes on a defensive apologetic posture, which it has to defend itself against the measurement of making money within the economy. But this framework of “making money” or “job employability” isn’t something that philosophy can capitulate to; indeed it turns philosophy into a handmaiden of free market economics. Philosophy is more fundamental than economics historically and conceptually. This explains why philosophy departments within the USA have more and more turned to analytic versions and ignored entirely what philosophy calls us to in terms of everyday life, ethics and even what we eat. Creston Davis Published on: Sep 28, 2018 @ 23:06

Many Indian Buddhist philosophers, and other figures they influenced elsewhere, also believe that language does not have the traction with the world that we typically believe it to possess. That is, the words and concepts we employ, and that allow communities to function, do not actually reach out and grasp reality as such. Words and concepts do not magically mirror reality. Instead, they give us is a kind of conventional truth that makes social practices possible. Ultimate reality, however, is beyond the scope of language and concepts. William Edelglass Published on: Sep 14, 2018 @ 08:56

I see sparks of uprisings among economists following me on twitter, hoping to return economics to its glorious days as the leading Queen of causal analysis. This however requires that economists accept causal diagrams for a working language, as health scientists have done. Sadly, for economists, this cultural shift seems more traumatic than conversion to voodoo. Judea Pearl Published on: Sep 8, 2018 @ 08:16

In an absolute monarchy, the monarch thrives on fear, and usually finds many ways to engineer fear. But in a democracy we need to look one another in the eye as equals and to work together for common goals. This requires trust, the willingness to be vulnerable to what other people do. If I'm always defending myself against you I do not trust you. Trust breeds deceit and defensiveness rather than common efforts to solve problems. Martha Nussbaum Published on: Aug 31, 2018 @ 22:13

Materialism in India had nothing to do with nihilism as such. They were thorough-going realists. However, it could be, as you say, an attack on the dualistic system that spoke of consciousness and matter as two different entities, one can exist without the other. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya Published on: Aug 17, 2018 @ 20:00