Category Archives: seventeenth century
Times Best and Worst
Times Best and Worst We’re living through what are — like all times — the best and worst of times. As our calendar wends its way toward the New Year, we can’t help asking ourselves how it is with us … Continue reading
Posted in Absolute Freedom and Terror, absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, bigotry, books, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cults, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, Gnosticism, guilt and innocence, Hegel, hegemony, heroes, hidden God, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, identity, ideology, immorality, institutional power, legal responsibility, life and death struggle, male power, master/slave relation, memoir, memory, mind control, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, oppression, past and future, Phenomenology of the Mind, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, race, radicalism, reading, reductionism, relationships, roles, science, scientism, secular, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, sexuality, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, status of women, suffering, terror, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, victims, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged Analytic philosophy, Antonio Gramsci, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, Australian philosophy, best of times, computational perceptional psychology, Continental philosophy, cultural relativism, culture and dialectic, culture and truth, David Stove, ecological psychology, epistemology of doubt, fashionable nihilism, Foucault's Birth of the Clinic, Foucault's Madness and Civilization, Freudian unconscious, human norms, insanity and social power, J.J. Gibson, life adventures, life review, masters of suspicion, Michel Foucault, moral reality, nature and convention, New Year, objective fact, objective guilt v intentions, ordinary language, perceiving reality, Phyllis Chesler's Women and Madness, prevailing opinions, purge trials, Reign of Terror, relativism, revolution and delusion, Sartre's critique of Freud, Sartre's for-itself, Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, science and experience, scientific objectivity, sense data, skepticism, skepticism as a fashion, the fact/value split, the hermeneutics of suspicion, The Vienna Circle, thought leaders, totalitarian tactics, true narrative, trusting experience, Tyler Burge's Four Inheritances from Classical Empiricism Re Perception, virtue epistemology, Woke bully, worst of times
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Proceedings and Addresses
Proceedings and Addresses Proceedings is the shared forum, like the Athenian agora, where American philosophers who have managed to command the attention of their colleagues publish their invited addresses. Since 2000, I’ve stepped down from active faculty status (though not … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, afterlife, alienation, American politics, anthropology, art of living, atheism, autonomy, bad faith, beauty, book reviews, books, bureaucracy, chivalry, cities, class, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cool, courage, cultural politics, culture, desire, dialectic, erotic life, eternity, ethics, evil, existentialism, exploitation, faith, fashion, female power, femininity, feminism, freedom, friendship, gender balance, glitterati, guilt and innocence, hegemony, heroes, hierarchy, history of ideas, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, immorality, institutional power, life and death struggle, love, male power, masculinity, memoir, memory, modern women, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, morality, mortality, non-violence, ontology, oppression, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, propaganda, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, roles, romance, romantic love, science, scientism, seduction, self-deception, seventeenth century, sex appeal, social climbing, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, sociobiology, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, status, status of women, suffering, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, victimhood, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged 17th century thought, Abigail's Adages, academic gossip, academic infighting, academic papers, academic politics, academic wives, agora, American philosophers, American Philosophy, APA, APA’s Memorial Minutes, APA’s Presidential Address, Athenian agora, Authenticity, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn College Philosophy Department, confirmation bias, Contemporary philosophy, cut throat business, discrediting reason, dog eat dog, epistemolgy, faculty status, finding oneself, giving a paper, good advice, high-power husband, human trustworthiness, impartial criteria, intellectual competition, intimate ties, invited addresses, Julia Driver, mathematical physics, misology, modern philosophy, moral criteria, moral prioritization, New York diner, one thought too many, pecking order, Penelope Maddy, personal v universal, philosophic argument, physicalism, primary and secondary qualities, Proceedings and Addresses, science and human values, search for truth, self-realization, sense of belonging, sense of decency, shared reasoning, snubbing, social forces, social prudence, The American Philosophical Association, The Enlightenment, the football field, the human zoo, the latest stuff, the longest conversation, the measurement of nature, theory of knowledge, universal criteria, universal ties, wives and widows, women philosophers
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The Fallacy of Misplaced Vagueness
The Fallacy of Misplaced Vagueness The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead spotlighted a previously unrecognized mistake in reasoning: “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” It happens when we confuse an abstract concept for something concrete. Medieval knights set out in quest of … Continue reading
Posted in absurdism, academe, action, alienation, autonomy, books, chivalry, Christianity, conformism, contemplation, contradictions, cultural politics, culture, dialectic, eighteenth century, eternity, faith, fashion, hegemony, hierarchy, history, history of ideas, idealism, ideality, identity, ideology, idolatry, institutional power, law, literature, love, medieval, memory, mind control, modernism, moral action, moral evaluation, moral psychology, mysticism, ontology, past and future, philosophy, politics of ideas, postmodernism, power, presence, promissory notes, psychology, public facade, public intellectual, reading, reductionism, relationships, religion, roles, science, scientism, secular, seventeenth century, social construction, social conventions, social ranking, spiritual journey, spiritual not religious, spirituality, status, the examined life, the problematic of men, the problematic of woman, the profane, the sacred, theology, time, twentieth century, twenty-first century, Utopia, work, writing, Zeitgeist
Tagged abstract concept, Alfred N. Whitehead, atomic facts, confusing abstract for concrete, economics and human wickedness, Einstein and quantum theory, Einstein’s laws of nature, Einstein’s space/time, ensemble of probabilities, fallacies, fallacy of misplaced concreteness, history of money, holiness, holiness as a practice, Holy Grail, Isaac Newtown, John Locke, laws of nature, Locke’s view of money, measuring a wave, Medieval knights, medium of exchange, mind of God, modern finance, money, Newtown and money, physics, picturing the world, quantum entanglement, quantum entanglement and observer, Thomas Levenson’s Money for Nothing, value of money, wave collapse, wave into particle
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