David Boersema describes how two very different thinkers were on the trail of similar ideas about the nature of consciousness. Charles Peirce (1839-1914) and Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) were two towering figures in philosophy who wrestled with issues of consciousness and the ego, or self. These are matters that have long concerned philosophers and cross the …
Michael Allen Fox argues that old approaches to the problem don’t work. Who am I? That’s a difficult question to tackle, and each of us must do so for him- or herself, if it is to be tackled at all. But importantly related to this question is another: Am I the same person now as …
Brian Breeze takes time to think. Everyone knows what time is: don’t they? But perhaps, when we look more closely, we will find that our initial confidence is not entirely justified. St. Augustine wrote around 397 AD: “What… is time? I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I …
Patricia Railing explains the philosophical ideas behind some of abstract art’s most famous abstractions. There has been much philosophical speculation on the relationship between artistic materials and artistic experience down through the centuries. Christopher Perricone pointed this out in his article ‘Does the Philosophy of Art Have a Mind/Body Problem?’ back in Issue 46. Now …
Art As Sensation: Four Painters As Philosophers Of Art Read More »
Dzifa Benson is compelled to consider the nature of performance. Shakespeare’s melancholic hero Jacques is a libertine-turned-philosopher. He has turned to philosophy in his quest for a new identity, and as a philosopher he questions much of what he sees around him, causing him to offer the soliloquy from which the above excerpt is taken. …
Jeffrey Gordon rereads a correspondence on war between Einstein and Freud. In 1932 the greatest genius of the Twentieth Century wrote an urgent letter to the century’s most influential psychologist. In that letter, Albert Einstein asked Sigmund Freud, “Is there any way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” It was the same year …
Gordon Marino explains how we talk ourselves out of doing the right thing. There is a strong movement afoot calling for more ethics classes, workshops and review boards. The presumption is that our citizenry is in dire need of more knowledge of ethics, and more practice in the art of analysis. While all this may …
Stop Kidding Yourself: Kierkegaard on Self-Deception Read More »
Mathias Brochhausen envisages Wittgenstein Hitchhiking around the Galaxy. There are probably many people who have had the following experience in recent years: When confronted with the question of the meaning of life, the number forty-two automatically and almost compulsively crosses their minds – only to be banished in favour of a long and elaborate answer …
Don’t Panic! It’s the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Read More »
Kile Jones explains the differences between these ways of thinking. Shakespeare never met Wittgenstein, Russell, or Ryle, and one wonders what a conversation between them would have been like. “What’s in a name, you ask?” Wittgenstein might answer “A riddle of symbols.” Russell might respond “An explanation of concepts,” and Ryle might retort “Many unneeded …
Russell Berg has fifteen criteria for scientificness and he knows how to use them. The ‘scientific method’ is a group of methods and procedures. But since Thomas Kuhn argued in the 1960s that the concept of ‘falsification’ formulated by Karl Popper is insufficient on its own to determine the scientificness of an idea, there has …