Philosophy

[DRAFT: PUBLISHED VERSION AVAILABLE AT:
http://romemetaphysics.org/wp-content/uploads/Actas_VICongresoMundialMetafi%CC%81sica.pdf]

[NOTE: I no longer agree with many of the propositions in this article.]

Special relativity inclines most contemporary interpreters (DiSalle, Maudlin, Penrose, Sider, Wheeler) away from the Thomistic three-dimensional, substance ontology. Most interpreters say space and time serve only as hermeneutics for accessing the deeper ontological foundation, four-dimensional spacetime. Unfortunately, this reigning narrative seems to replace the conventions of measuring rods and clocks with an even greater convention. Noticeably absent in the literature is a Thomistic interpretation of special relativity. Some Thomistic authors (Feser, Kiley, McLaughlin, Moreno) defend aspects of Aquinas’ metaphysics on the periphery of special relativity, and suggest misgivings about four-dimensionalism. But none have attempted to demonstrate the viability of a three-dimensional alternative. This paper attempts to do just that, to provide a three-dimensional, Thomistic interpretation of special relativistic phenomenon—specifically, length contraction and time dilation. Behind this phenomenon, I argue, is the ordinary physical structure of clocks and the fact that every Aristotelian motion involves multiple true velocities.

(Forthcoming: Draft version. Do not cite.) Thomistic commentators agree that Thomas Aquinas at least nominally allows for 'to be' (esse) to signify not only an act contrasted with essence in creatures, but also the essence itself of those creatures. Nevertheless, it is almost unheard of for any author to interpret Thomas's use of the word 'esse' as referring to essence. Against this tendency, this paper argues that Thomas's In V Metaphysics argument that every predication signifies esse provides an important instance of Thomas using esse to signify essence. This reading of In V Metaphysics, which this paper defends against an alternative interpretation, entails significant reinterpretations of Thomas's technical terms 'esse substantiale' and 'esse in rerum natura' as well as Thomas's use of 'is,' both as a copula and as a principal predicate.

[FORTHCOMING | PLEASE DO NOT CITE W/O PERMISSION] In a few texts, Thomas Aquinas says that the first operation of the intellect pertains to (respicit) “the quiddity of a thing” whereas the second operation pertains to “the to be itself of a thing” (esse). But Aquinas also says that quiddities are to the intellect as color is to the power of sight. Statements such as these seem to have led Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson to see esse as the proper object of the intellect’s second operation. Against this conclusion, Fr Régis and Ralph McInerny have argued—using Aquinas’s In I Peryermenias, lecture 5—that since ‘is’ is a verb and ‘is’ signifies existence, but all verbs signify the first operation of the intellect, we must be able to form a concept of existence in the first operation of the intellect. This paper does three things. First, it analyzes the nature of the claim made by Maritain and Gilson. Second, it shows from internal textual evidence that “respicit ipsum esse rei” cannot mean what Maritain and Gilson take it to mean. The second operation of the intellect cannot have a proper object distinct from the object of the first operation, which is quiddities. Finally, this paper provides an alternative interpretation of In I Peryermenias, lecture 5, to the one given by McInerny. In that text, Aquinas does not speak about a particular concept of existence in the first operation of the intellect and signified by the verbs ‘is’ or ‘exists.’ Rather, he uses the word ‘esse’ in indirect speech to include generally any form or act joined to a subject by the copula, ‘is.’ Aquinas’s focus is not on what ‘esse’ or ‘est’ signifies, but on the mode in which it signifies (per modum actualitas) absent additional qualifying terms. The conclusion of this paper is that, although the esse contrasted with essence in Aquinas’s metaphysics corresponds to a concept in the intellect’s first operation, nevertheless, like the notions of blindness and of genus, this esse cannot fall properly within the intellect’s object.

In Heidegger’s 1929 lecture, “What is Metaphysics?,” he poses the question of the nothing. His answer, once the question has been suitably formulated, is that the nothing is not the counter concept to beings, rather it is that which “makes possible the openedness of beings as such.” It belongs to the original unfolding of entities for Dasein. Near the end of this lecture, Heidegger pronounces, “Metaphysics is the basic occurrence of Dasein. It is Dasein itself.” 1929 is relatively early in Heidegger’s career, only two years after the original publication of Sein und Zeit. Later in his career, we see two notable developments. One, his writing calls more and more frequently for overcoming of metaphysics. Two, Dasein begins to disappear from his writing. From the point of view of the “What is Metaphysics?” lecture this makes perfect sense. If metaphysics is Dasein, and metaphysics must be overcome, Dasein must be overcome as well. In this essay I would like to elaborate on the link between overcoming metaphysics and the disappearance of Dasein. I will begin with an interpretation of “What is Metaphysics?” in order to show in what sense Heidegger makes the claim that metaphysics is Dasein and incorporate this into a broader view of what Heidegger takes metaphysics to be. Only by first understanding the essence of metaphysics and its link to Dasein can we then understand what Heidegger means when he talks about overcoming metaphysics. My assertion is that once we understand this, we can also understand the gradual disappearance of Dasein from Heidegger’s corpus.

This was a paper for a Ph.D. seminar, Heidegger from Dasein to Kehre. I am happy to provide a copy if you are interested in reading it, but I have removed it from Academia.edu because I only want to catalog my published work on this site.

In this paper I intend to show how a phenomenology of the body, more specifically MauriceMerleau-Ponty‟s conception of the body, should come to the fore in Paul Ricoeur's account of narrative identity found in Oneself as Another. I will do this by first showing the integral role of the body in the mode of permanence in time expressed by ipse-identity and second that Merleau-Ponty's conception of
motor intentionality is required to account for in the “I-can” of self ascription that is required in Ricoeur‟s “little ethics.” In doing this I intend to go beyond where Ricoeur himself draws attention to the role of the body as flesh – where Ricoeur makes explicit reference to Merleau-Ponty – in his tenth study, “What Ontology in View?”

This was a paper for a Ph.D. seminar on Merleau-Ponty's thought. I am happy to provide a copy if you are interested in reading it, but I have removed it from Academia.edu because I only want to catalog my published work on this site.

An Explication of Husserl‟s Description of the Ego in the fourth
Cartesian Meditation. In this paper, I intend to sketch Husserl‟s characterization of the ego as found in the fourth Cartesian Meditation. In this meditation, Husserl describes the building up of the ego in four distinct but interwoven layers. These layers move from the abstract ego as the subjective pole of identity to the concrete ego as monad and universe of all possible forms of consciousness. His description of the layers of the ego allows us to understand them in a mutually supportive substructure relationship. By this I mean that each layer of the ego supports the other from below and is in some way taken up in to each of the next layers. The ego as subjective pole of identity underlies and reaches up and through the ego as the substrate of habitualities. The ego as substrate of habitualities forms the basis for the concretization of the world in the ego as monad,and the concrete monad together with the previously described layers of the ego allow it to be described as the universe of possible forms of conscious processes.

This was a paper for a Ph.D. seminar on the phenomenology of embodiment. I am happy to provide a copy if you are interested in reading it, but I have removed it from Academia.edu because I only want to catalog my published work on this site.

This presentation will argue that it is conceivable that a community can have lifepower. I begin with an exegesis of Edith Stein’s notion of lifepower as found in her book, Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities. I then consider what I call the “Sentient States Argument.” This argument uses Stein’s own analysis to conclude that a community cannot have lifepower because it cannot have sentient states. I hope to counter this argument by suggesting that if communities can “have” sentience in the limited sense of being made up of individuals who can share lifepower and sentient states, then a community can “have” lifepower. Communal lifepower is lifepower shared between individuals. I conclude with an examination of a recent study of a group ritual in Spain, which I suggest offers the kind of evidence that should count as evidence of sentient states shared between individuals.

In this article, I explicate Husserl’s phenomenology of the person as found in Ideen II by examining the most important aspects of persons in this work. In the first section, I explicate the concept of the surrounding world (Umwelt) with special attention to the difference between the different attitudes (Einstellungen) that help determine the sense of constituted objects of experience. In the second section, I investigate Husserl’s description of the person as a founded, higher order, spiritual (geistig) objectivity. I consider this description of the person by examining the symmetry between the organization of Ideen II as a whole and the order of the constitution of the person. In the final section, I look at the relationship between the constitution of the person and the spiritual (geistig) world.

(I am currently editing a version of this presentation for publication. It should be forthcoming in 2015).
A meta-debate has arisen in recent literature on the possibility and nature of plural subjects. This is the debate over “intentionalism” (Gilbert 1989, Sheehy 2002). Intentionalism consists of the claim that in order for a social group to exist, the subjects who comprise the group must both stand in the appropriate relations to one another and have mutual knowledge of said relations (Sheehy 2002). To put this another way, members of a group must see themselves as members in order for a group to form. Paul Sheehy has tried to argue against the intentionalism he finds in Margaret Gilbert’s work. However, in this paper, I will argue that Sheehy’s account is also implicitly intentionalist. I then turn to Edith Stein’s phenomenology of sociality to present a theory of social groups that avoids intentionalism (Stein 2000).
The paper has three parts. First, I outline an intentionalist theory of social groups drawn primarily from the works of Gilbert. Second, I review Sheehy’s argument against Gilbertian intentionalism and show that his alternative is itself an intentionalist account (Sheehy 2002). His primary counterexample fails to overcome intentionalism because he is insufficiently rigorous in identifying both the group and the group action in question. Third, I turn to Stein’s Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities for an alternative account of social groups that I argue avoids intentionalism. The key to avoiding intentionalism is her distinction, between two types of social formations, community (Gemeinschaft) and association (Gesellschaft). It turns out that associations are intentionalist, but they are impossible without at least some measure of community. Community is thus more primitive than association, and community may form organically and non-intentionally.

This presentation looks at just one way that Munich psychologist and philosopher, Theodor Lipps, influenced the thought of early phenomenologists, viz., his concept of Einfühlung (empathy). Lipps originally posited empathy as important both in understanding aesthetic experience and in understanding why we succumb to certain geometrical illusions. However, he later expanded his theory, intending for the concept to explain the experience of other selves. I begin by explicating his theory that empathy operates in accordance with two tendencies or instincts, expression and imitation. In short, Lipps observed that mental states tend toward expression in the body and that embodied subjects tend to imitate expressions they observe. This imitation gives rise to a similar experience as the one perceived, and thus we come to understand experiences had by a foreign self (Fremderfahrung). Lipps theory had a significant impact upon early phenomenologists even if that influence was primarily negative. The second half of my presentation looks at the reception of Lipps’ theory by his phenomenological peers, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, and Max Scheler. Husserl rejects Lipps’ theory because he believes that the Munich thinker’s emphasis on expression unwittingly assumes what Husserl takes it he is out to explain. Scheler and Stein share a similar worry vis-à-vis Lipps description of empathy in terms of imitation. If time permits, the longer version of the presentation goes through Husserl and Stein’s competing, positive accounts of empathy in an effort to argue that Stein is able to overcome difficulties that Lipps and Husserl cannot.

It is commonplace to speak of social groups as if they were capable of the same sorts of activities as individuals. We say, “Germany won the World Cup;” “The United States invaded Iraq;” and “The world mourned the passing of Nelson Mandela.” In so doing, we attribute agency, belief, and emotional states to groups themselves. In recent years, much literature devoted to analyzing these statements, and others like them, and their implications has emerged. While some are downright dismissive of the idea of a group agent, others have argued that there are genuinely social agents (List and Pettit 2011, Stoutland 2008). Others focus on how commitments, beliefs, or actions must be understood in order to be “shared” (Searle 1990, Bratman 1999, Martell 2010). And, some attention has been paid to what it can mean, assuming that the aforementioned commitments etc. are understood as mental states, for individual minds to share in a mind (Szanto 2013).
Within this literature, a meta-debate has arisen which receives surprisingly little attention. This is the debate over “intentionalism” (Gilbert 1989, Sheehy 2002). Intentionalism is the thesis that “individual human beings must see themselves in a particular way in order to constitute a collectivity” (Gilbert 1989: 12). However, Paul Sheehy has criticized this position, claiming that individuals could be related in such a way as to constitute a collective without their realizing it (2002: 383). The purpose of this article is to contribute to the intentionalism debate. I will argue, drawing from Edith Stein’s phenomenology of social groups, that intentionalism, as Gilbert defines it, is false. However, Sheehy’s argument against it is unsuccessful because of his own implicit intentionalism. I begin by establishing Gilbert’s position, Sheehy’s counter-position, and its shortcomings. I then explicate Stein’s phenomenology of social groups, arguing that it shows that plural subjects who do not meet intentionalist requirements can exist. Since this is the case, intentionalism is false. Because the intentionalism debate takes it for granted that there are irreducibly social agents, I do not argue for this claim.

In everyday language, it is common place to attribute experiences to groups themselves. One might say, “Spain celebrated winning the European Cup;” “The market was shocked at the failure of the tech giant’s IPO;” or “The uncovering of corruption caused the union to think long and hard about its internal structure.” In each case, the attribution makes sense. Almost no one is confused as to what they mean. However, when one attempts to explain precisely what one of these statements means, it is not unusual to feel like Augustine who, trying to explain the nature of time, said, “I know well enough what it is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled” (1961, p. 264). After all, celebrating requires certain kinds of mental states; Spain is a nation, and it is not at all obvious that nations have mental states. What, then, is meant by such strange statements? While there is much work already being done in this area, there is no consensus on what it means to say that a group has an experience. The goal of this article is to survey the terrain from the point of view of a phenomenological analysis of communal experience and use this as a tool to interpret the findings of an empirical study of a collective ritual. This article will succeed if it is able to identify general conditions, both phenomenologically and empirically grounded, which a more specific theory of collective experience must meet in order to be coherent.

Recent years have seen a resurgence in work on Edith Stein’s theory of empathy (Jardine 2015; Moran 2004; Szanto 2015; Taipale 2015; Vendrell Ferran 2015; Zahavi 2010) and of community and collective intentionality (Burns 2015; Caminada 2015; Calcagno 2014). Notably absent, however, is an account of the relationship between empathy and community. This chapter begins the work of making this relationship explicit. This can be of at least two-fold service to future research. First, it will show the conceptual richness and complexity of Stein’s theory of empathy, demonstrating that it cannot be confined to the theory-of-mind debate between simulation theorists, theory-theorists, and advocates of a direct perception model. Second, it may also serve to orient future research into collective intentionality by elucidating her original theory of communal experience. After establishing Steinian accounts of empathy and communal experience, I argue that empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for community.