From Posthuman Life, pp. 178-9 ‘[differences in phenomenology] can be significant obstructions to our understanding without being impassable barriers. It follows that the situation following phenomenological speciation might not preclude interpretation where it is technically possible to adapt human phenomenology to cope with posthuman phenomenology (See sections 5.5, 5.7). In extreme cases, no available technology […]
Tag: Davidson
Correlationist Spawn
(Image from http://eden.rutgers.edu/~kmg215/425/ewp-final/ewp-background.html) Recall Well’s time traveller on the terminal beach, billions of years in the future; his encounter with a tentacled creature on that dark shore. He learns nothing of it but only experiences an abject terror that results in his return to Edwardian Richmond. What if this entity is not only uninterpreted but, in […]
Interpretation and Idea of the Shared World
Just an attempt in progress to clarify an argument regarding the plausible dependence of pragmatist theories of intentionality on phenomenological worlds. ************** Interpreters can differ in many ways that are irrelevant to their interpreterhood – differences in language, embodiment, gender, etc. However, if there are essential features common to all interpreters these might show up […]
Reduction, Elimination and Radical Uninterpretability
Anti-reductionist physicalists or materialists deny that psychology can be theoretically reduced to physics but allow physics sovereignty concerning what exists. Anti-reductionist arguments vary but a common line of attack against reductionism is that psychology expresses rational or normative relationships between mental states; not causal or functional relationships of the kind expressed in theories of natural […]
Seminar on Brandom and Posthumanism – 4th March
I’ll be destruction testing my paper on Brandom and Posthumanism at the Open University in Milton Keynes, Wednesday 4 March at 2 pm in MR05 Wilson A 1st Floor. The piece is forthcoming in PHILOSOPHY AFTER NATURE Rosi Braidotti and Rick Dolphijn (eds.). Here’s the abstract: BRANDOM AND POSTHUMAN AGENCY: AN ANTI-NORMATIVIST RESPONSE TO BOUNDED POSTHUMANISM By […]
Robert Brandom and Posthumanism
Here’s a first draft of my paper for the Philosophy After Nature Conference in Utrecht, Sept 3-5. All feedback gratefully received! (For academia.edu users a pdf is available here) BRANDOM AND POSTHUMAN AGENCY: AN ANTI-NORMATIVIST RESPONSE TO BOUNDED POSTHUMANISM David Roden, Open University Introduction: Bounded Posthumanism Posthumanism can be critical or speculative in orientation. Both kinds […]
Functional Semantics meets Radical Quotation
Wilfred Sellars (1974) argues that we should not construe claims about meanings as expressing a semantic relation between a verbal entity (a word, sentence, etc.) and a language-independent entity (abstract or concrete) but as claims about the functional roles of linguistic tokens. Thus we should construe “chat” (in French) means cat as *chat*’s (in […]
Pluralism, Good Manners and The Idea of a Common World
People and cultures have some non-overlapping beliefs. Some folk believe that there is a God, some that there is no God, some that there are many gods. Some people believe that personal autonomy is a paramount value, while others feel that virtues like honour and courage take precedence over personal freedom. These core beliefs are […]
Interpretations are Tools, Concepts are Demons
I’m currently using Davidsonian radical interpretation as a model for understanding the obstructions presented by very alien minds and phenomenologies – posthumans, aliens, cats, etc. However, much as I admire Davidson’s writings I don’t really want to be a Davidsonian. For example, I don’t think that content is constituted by how others might interpret it in ideal […]
Donald Davidson
[Here’s an unpublished dictionary entry on Donald Davidson (from 2004). A modified version is to be found in the 2005 Edinburgh Dictionary of Continental Philosophy (John Protevi ed.)] Donald Davidson (b. 1917, d. 2003), American philosopher whose essays on language, mind and knowledge extend Quine’s attack on the reification of meaning and epistemological foundationalism. In […]
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