P H I L O S O P H Y P A T H W A Y S ISSN 2043-0728 http://philosophypathways.com/newsletter/ Issue number 186 1st June 2014 Special Christopher Norris Issue CONTENTS I. 'Poetry as (a Kind of) Philosophy: for Richard Rorty' by Christopher Norris II. 'Hume A-Dying: notes from Boswell' by Christopher Norris Pathways News III. Academy of Romanian Scientists: Philosophy of Science Today 13-19 October 2014 -=- FROM THE LIST MANAGER I am delighted to have the opportunity to dedicate the bulk of this issue of Philosophy Pathways to the work of the philosopher and literary critic Christopher Norris, Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at Cardiff University. According to Wikipedia, Christopher Norris is '... one of the world's leading scholars on deconstruction, and the work of Jacques Derrida. He has written numerous books and papers on literary theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of music, philosophy of language and philosophy of science. More recently, he has been focussing on the work of Alain Badiou in relation with both the analytic tradition (particularly analytic philosophy of mathematics) and with the philosophy of Derrida.' Out of the blue, around three weeks ago, I received the following email from Christopher Norris: I am sending (by attachment) a poem -- actually a long verse-essay -- that you might wish to publish in a forthcoming number of Philosophy Pathways. I should perhaps explain that the piece originates in my various published exchanges with Rorty many years back, and that it responds to his challenge that philosophy should become more adventurous, exploratory, inventive, metaphorical, and -- in short -- poetic. Hence my otherwise rather odd choice of verse as a medium in which to conduct philosophical debate. I told Professor Norris that the issue was his to edit if he wanted it. Subsequently, he added a second, shorter poem, inspired by the famous visit of James Boswell, Dr Samuel Johnson's biographer, to the dying philosopher David Hume in Edinburgh on July 7th 1776. The Rorty poem is preceded by an introduction in which Norris fills in the background of his discussions with the philosopher Richard Rorty, and talks about his somewhat unusual choice of the verse form. The Hume poem is preceded by a short extract which Norris has selected from Boswell's journals. These two poems are instructive, not only about Richard Rorty and David Hume, but also about the literary art of verse writing in the tradition of Alexander Pope (1688-1744) and William Empson (1906-1984). They are also hugely enjoyable to read. I have added an item of news about a conference organized by the Academy of Romanian Sciences, 'Philosophy of Science Today' which will take place at the Andrei Saguna University, Constanta, Romania 13th-19th October 2014. The item was submitted by ISFP member Narcis Zarnescu, PhD. Geoffrey Klempner Email: klempner@fastmail.net -=- I. 'POETRY AS (A KIND OF) PHILOSOPHY: FOR RICHARD RORTY' BY CHRISTOPHER NORRIS This long poem (perhaps better called verse-essay) is one of a number that I've written over the past few years, most of them on philosophical, literary, musical, and cultural-historical themes. They are all composed in fairly strict rhyming iambic pentameter and use a variety of likewise regular stanza-schemes including (my favourite) terza rima and various permutations on the basic quatrain form. This one doubles up the quatrains into octaves (or octets) since the longer unit gives more leeway for internal variations of structure, emphasis, verse-rhythm, and devices like parallelism or grammatical inversion. I should say straight off that I'm an unashamed formalist who greatly enjoys exploring these possibilities and who tends to assume that my readers will share that perhaps rather curious predilection. But of course such formal techniques are no use if they don't serve to point up, qualify, complicate, or at least fall square with the sense so I hope that's more often than not the case here. I should also say -- in a likewise cautionary way -- that I favour syntactically complex forms with sentences that almost always run over line-endings and often extend across several stanzas. Again, I shouldn't want to apologise too much for this, since one of the things I'm trying to do here and in other poems is to reinvent for contemporary uses the kind of argumentative verse-essay that seems to have 'come naturally' to many eighteenth-century poets but has disappeared almost completely in the wake of symbolism, imagism, modernism, and their anti-discursive offshoots. No doubt my day-job as a professional philosopher has influenced my thinking on these matters, as well as supplying more than a few of my topics. But on the literary side it is William Empson's example, as poet and critic, that has meant most to me over the years and that readers familiar with his work will not fail to notice at various points. I should fill in some parts of the background picture for those who may otherwise be baffled on the one hand by various moderately 'technical' bits of discussion and on the other, especially toward the end, by the few personal or anecdotal passages. I met Richard Rorty on several occasions, mostly at conferences or seminars in the US and Britain. The context was usually a debate framed around the varied but associated issues of relativism, truth, pragmatism, critique, postmodernism, deconstruction, philosophy in relation to/conflict with literary theory, and the historical fortunes of the European enlightenment. He took a strongly pragmatist view which pretty much endorsed William James's laid-back characterization of truth (fiercely contested by Bertrand Russell) as what's by and large 'good in the way of belief', that is, what best serves to protect, preserve and promote the interests of human physical, moral, and cultural flourishing. At the same time he took a highly positive -- even quite exalted -- view of the US and its role as an ethically progressive force for good both in domestic social-political terms and as a matter of expanding global influence. His attachment to the American pragmatists, Dewey in particular, and their recasting of philosophy in the vernacular grain was very much a part of that outlook. This all went along, for Rorty, with a naturalised but non-reductive since language-oriented and culture-responsive epistemology; a rejection of Kantian or other 'foundationalist' approaches; a consequent suspicion of 'enlightenment' values like truth and critique; a scepticism toward most of what passed for reputable or valid academic philosophy in the analytic mainstream; a growing preference for its sundry 'continental' alternatives; a strong-revisionist, i.e., non-truth-based conception of interpretative practice across all disciplines or areas of thought; and a view of hermeneutics -- along with cultural and literary criticism -- as what philosophy ought to look like once rid of its delusory pretensions of intellectual grandeur. He had no time for Kant-derived transcendental or condition-of-possibility arguments, regarding them as relics of old-style 'armchair' philosophising, although he did devote a good deal of time to explaining and defending his reasons for thinking so. In his later years Rorty tended to mix more with people in departments of English, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies, and Ethnography rather than (at any rate analytically-inclined) Philosophy, a habit no doubt reinforced by his ex-colleagues' less than generous response to his perceived apostasy. This makes it doubly ironic that I, with an early background in literary studies, and having hopped across the disciplines to philosophy via literary theory, should have ended up opposing his position on most of these points. Our disagreements get a versified repeat airing here, most prominently those having to do with truth, critique, relativism, transcendental arguments, and (in a pointedly different sense of the term) the transcendental or visionary strain in US social, political and cultural thought. I take a much less rosy view of US politics and its various social and cultural expressions, although -- to be fair -- Rorty himself was increasingly prone to doubts on that score after the election of George W. Bush and the advent of his 'war on terror'. Still I try to keep the tone fairly relaxed, even chatty at times, so as not to let this rehearsal of old quarrels get in the way of my admiring and affectionate memories of him as a wonderfully generous host when I visited Virginia. He was also a genial though resolute opponent in debate, a patient and kindly interlocutor in print, and a fine advertisement for those progressive values to which his home culture has so far not managed to live up. Elsewhere I look back at our differing views about Heidegger and Derrida, the two 'continental' thinkers who -- along with Hegel -- were of greatest importance for Rorty's revisionist project, albeit on a suitably naturalised (or pragmatised) selective reading. As regards the vexed question of Heidegger's politics he thought that you could perfectly well drive a wedge between man and work and thereby hang on to the claim that Heidegger was a major thinker and source of vital new ideas while accepting, since the evidence left little choice, that he was also an unreconstructed 'Schwarzwald redneck'. In Derrida's case Rorty urged that we forget all the earnest philosophical stuff, especially the bits that people like me construed as 'negative transcendental' arguments or as couched in a 'conditions of impossibility' mode, and just enjoy those other, more 'literary' texts which gave free rein to his powers of metaphorical or fictive invention. I disagreed in both instances and hope that my reasons will be clear enough from the poem. Beyond that I think there is nothing that really needs explaining except perhaps the bit toward the end about 'Trotsky and the Wild Orchids'. This was the title of an unusually self-revealing essay where Rorty discusses -- among other things -- his father's left-wing union activism and the somewhat Kierkegaardian tension in his own life and work between the call of commitment and the desire for aesthetic pleasures untroubled by such queasy issues of conscience. Writing the poem and re-living some of those debates made me very aware of how remarkably good-humoured he remained despite my lining up, as it must have seemed, with every hostile bunch in town. Anyway I trust that this poem will be read as an unfeigned tribute despite the one or two waspish passages when it comes to those touchy matters of politics. -- Hope you won't take it as a backhand kind Of compliment, or something even worse, Like old-score settling, if I try to find Some way to talk our issues through in verse. At best it might be something that combined Word-magic with your talent to rehearse Deep issues in philosophy of mind, Language, or logic and yet intersperse The expert stuff with writing of the sort That takes a larger readership on board And never sells them or its topic short Since your prose-style was one that could afford To mingle idioms, like modes of thought, Unworried as to how they might accord With all the protocols set up to thwart Such ventures into regions unexplored By the rule-sticklers. Yet, it may be said, Why rhyme and metre? when you stuck to prose, Albeit of a kind that's likely read More often by non-specialists than those Whose academic caution bids them tread A style-path narrower than the one you chose As the best route for anyone who'd head Off on a high-ground hike that might disclose Perspectives on the intellectual scene Unglimpsed and unimagined from inside The mind-world of philosophers who've been Trained on the low road and thereafter tried To take short views. But that's not what you mean, Not rhyme and metre, when you set aside The plain-prose indicators of routine Guild-membership or signs of bona-fide Professional allegiance and advise Your colleagues in the academic game That, everything considered, they'd be wise To give up warming over all the same Old chestnuts in a slightly different guise, Or seeking out new idioms to frame The fixed agenda of an enterprise Well past its prime. Then theirs would be the aim Of coming up with such inventive tropes, Such metaphors or narratives, as might, If not too late, redeem the lost life-hopes Of those who'd suffered the perennial blight Brought on by being forced to learn the ropes As tenure-track required. So they should write Not just, you said, the sort of prose that copes With getting the main points across in tight, Well-structured form but rather try to do What poets (and some novelists) do best, That is, discover senses to pursue Far out beyond the denotations stressed By literalists or those who would eschew Such verbal licence since it fails the test Of making sense or coming as true According to the strictest standards pressed So hard on other language-games by just Those house-trained intellects who'd brought about The trahison des clercs or breach of trust By which philosophers presume to flout The rule that says all living language must Transform itself by always trying out Fresh metaphors to live by. So the thrust Of how you wrote was mainly to cast doubt On the old kinds of metaphor that held Philosophy in their Cartesian grip, Or classic narratives whose upshot spelled The moral that each ephebe be a chip Off the old block and strike a pose that quelled All notions of creative authorship By a strict etiquette whose code compelled Unruly types to give their guide the slip Each time they fancied penning the odd phrase Where some non-standard idiom revealed Thoughts out of kilter with such proper ways Of monologic speech. What lay concealed, You let us know, in such communiques Between the lines from somewhere out left-field Was everything suppressed by the malaise Of a style degree zero that appealed Only to those in whom the wonder-struck Thaumazein where philosophy began For Socrates has somehow come unstuck And left them, tenure-seekers to a man, Resolved that prose of theirs should have no truck With poetry but uphold Plato's ban On metaphor, mimesis, and what luck Or inspiration offered to the clan Of rhapsodes and enthusiasts so lost In their wild, word-intoxicated state As to allow no reckoning of its cost To reason's soul or pause to estimate The civic harms poetically glossed As due to gods or muses. Still you'd rate This verse-epistle evidence of crossed Wires or cross-purposes since to equate Your idea that philosophy should take A more poetic form with the idea That rhyme and meter might between them make Some big improvement seems a case of clear Misapprehension. What you thought would break The spirit-wasting hold of that austere Style without style -- and thereby help to shake The sense that went along with it of sheer Necessity that certain things be done In certain ways as laid down by the code Of analytic practice -- involved none Of those verse-features that might grace an ode By Pindar, Keats & Co., but that you'd shun (I guess) if they turned up, as here, bestowed On writing of a kind that shouldn't run To formal structures apt to overload The powers of concentration rightly trained, By readers of a less indulgent bent, On more substantive issues. Point sustained: You still found room for reasoned argument, Not least while telling us what's to be gained By taking on the freedom to invent New language-games beyond the sorts ordained By fealty to some one line of descent Against all others. So we'd better think That when you told us poetry could save Philosophy, or pull it from the brink Of a not undeserved nor early grave, The price of having its choice public shrink To miniscule proportions, this meant they've Gone wrong, the current lot, in ways that link Way back to many another short-lived wave Of intellectual fashion. They should learn More from the poets about how to spin Fresh-minted metaphors, or how to turn A life-enhancing phrase, but not begin On any verse-led binge that bids us spurn All remnants of analysis and pin Our best hopes to those language-games that yearn For something more upliftingly akin To that which rhyme and meter put in place Of dullard reason. So let's not deny The obvious: when you suggest we face Philosophy's low prospects with an eye To poetry's high hopes it's not the case That you're just asking us to versify The same old topics. What you want's more space Between the words so language can supply The poetry that comes of hearing all The intertextual echoes that resound On cue to every signifier's call Or sundry connotations that surround Each letter, word and phrase when not in thrall To denotative sense but -- as you found With Derrida's best efforts to forestall The dead hand of the literal -- unbound From signified or referent. Thus freed, It takes the less thought-trodden path that winds Along whichever language-route may lead The Denker, like the Dichter, past what binds The intellect to some accustomed creed, Or idiolect to usage, for those minds Professionally groomed to meet the need That intellect conform to just the kinds Of usage certified to hold the line Against such vagrant thoughts. That's why you waged Ironic war on readings that, like mine, Took Derrida as one who still engaged With topics that the derriere-garde define As squarely philosophical since staged In just such terms as those that you'd consign To the scrap-heap of words that once assuaged Our craving for god-substitutes but now Should join the pile along with other such Time-honoured relics. These remind us how Hard we must struggle to escape the clutch Of outworn images or disavow Pythagorean echoes that still touch Some chord in us despite what we allow To be their false allure. The case was much The same -- your point again -- throughout the whole Unquestionably rich and varied tale Of Western metaphysics and the role Within it of those metaphors whose trail Leads back to the idea of mind or soul As glassy essence, taken to entail The message that philosophy's main goal Must be to see that clarity prevail, Mind apprehend that essence, and soul come, By constant mirror-polishing, to catch Its own reflection unimpaired by some Small imperfection or minutest scratch That might obstruct its gaze. Your rule of thumb With metaphors like this was: mix and match Them as a poet might till they succumb To ordinary usage, then dispatch Them to whatever limbo's set apart For tropes, as Nietzsche said, that masquerade As concepts or involve the subtle art (Amongst philosophers a stock-in-trade) Of un-remembering, as if by heart, Those metaphoric coinages that made Philosophy from Plato to Descartes And up to now a constant dress-parade Of figures that had undergone the shift From sensuous to abstract. This made sure Their advent as imagination's gift To thought was long forgotten and secure From prying intellects that gave short shrift To white mythologies in quest of pure Conceptual instruments by which to lift Themselves above the thought-distracting lure Of sensuous imagery and so attain Transcendent truths. Thus far one might agree And think you'd hit bang on a major strain Of self-delusion that might better be Put out of its long post-Cartesian pain By the shrewd mix of gentle mockery And counter-statement that you hoped would gain More converts than if tendered in a key Of odium scholasticum that left The opposition dug in deeper while, Merit aside, the case might seem bereft Of basic courtesies that civil style And decency should couple with the heft Of a good argument. The point that I'll Raise once again since, despite all your deft Rejoinders, it's the one I have on file Under 'unfinished business' is your use Of that word 'transcendental' to include Not only fictive entities like nous, Soul, spirit, mind, and all the abstract brood They fathered mainly as a poor excuse To smuggle God back in, but things that you'd Deem just as bad, like all claims to deduce, From certain basic principles construed As a priori warranted or backed By reasonings in a transcendental form, Such truths as otherwise we should have lacked The means to justify. This was a norm, You thought, that held up merely through the fact That dumping it would kick up such a storm Amongst philosophers who'd made their pact To play along that sticking with the swarm Seemed, on the face of it, a better bet Than opting out of their protective guild, Unlearning all the codes and passwords set For members, cancelling thought-routines instilled Through years of work, and striving to forget The job-security that came with skilled Observance of the local etiquette Requiring that the expert types fulfilled Conditions on sound usage of such big Load-bearing terms as 'transcendental' which, If downed in your way with a hefty swig Of irony, say you're about to ditch The whole caboodle and help that lot twig How they'd been taken in. The only hitch With this fine plan of yours was how to rig The grand exposure so as not to stitch The thing up so completely that there's no Room left for anything remotely like The discipline you practised years ago, One that -- an observation apt to strike Shrewd readers -- still engaged you even though You came to treat its bi-millennial Reich As more a kind of vaudeville roadshow With some enticing bits put in to spike The guns of those who'd say: let's just call time On the whole thing, cut funding where it hurts, And block philosophy's attempt to mime The natural sciences. Your view converts To a slight variant on this paradigm And (hard not to conclude) distinctly flirts With sceptic types who take it as their prime Objective to undo what disconcerts The currency of downright commonsense (For which read 'ideology') and try To rouse the populace in its defence By methods that more fittingly apply In contexts where the arguments dispense With protocols of reason. A far cry From the plain pragmatism you condense, In Jamesian style, as wanting to get by On a truth-notion that at last comes down To what's good as a matter of belief, Or what works out as the best game in town With 'good' and 'best' defined (to keep it brief) As tending by whatever means to crown Our efforts with success, or bring relief At other times when fortune seems to frown On our endeavours. Or -- for you a chief Plus-point -- it fits in with the pragmatist Desire to keep our truth-talk within reach Of practicalities too soon dismissed By those, like Kant, who much prefer to preach From the high moral ground and so enlist Some abstract universal rule for each New case-in-hand which then becomes more grist For the slow-grinding mill where every breach Of its strict regulations either throws A case-shaped spanner in the works or churns Out some case-crushing judgment to impose Its sovereign law. Agreed, your thinking earns High marks in this department since it goes So far toward showing what the Kantian learns, If ever, then most often at the close Of a rule-governed moral life that turns Out, with the unaccustomed gift of long- Range reckoning, to exhibit all the signs Of having gone life-damagingly wrong At just those points where circumstance confines The range of choice to seizing either prong Of some dilemma where instinct inclines To kindly acts and answers like a gong At nature's call, while reason undermines All that, decrees that precept substitute For practice, and demands that instinct grant Law's reason-based imperative to suit Mere inclination to its rule as Kant Sadistically enjoined. Such absolute Conceptions of the moral good got scant Respect from you since lying at the root Of all bad creeds whose technique is to plant Abstraction in the place where those to whom Such thoughts appeal had better cultivate Breadth of acquaintance as advised by Hume, Make reason slave to passion, and sedate Through social intercourse the will to doom All absolutes but theirs to the same fate Reserved for infidels by tribes with room For no gods but their own. At any rate Your laidback style does nothing to promote Such moralising and reminds us, when We're tempted by it, of how well you wrote About the need to stand back, now and then, From our most cherished values and devote Some uptime to imagining again, Like a good novelist, how to keep afloat In these high seas or, like the finest, pen Inventive variations on the way Your liberal ironist might come to view The issue from all sides and not betray That purpose by a sneaky will to skew The moral compass-points and so convey Home-truths as universal. Still, if you Think back a bit, you'll know I've kept at bay A bunch of issues that ensured we two Were seldom in accord beyond what I've Set out as valid warrant just enough For my verse-aided efforts to contrive This late rapprochement. Where the seas got rough On previous trips was when we took a dive Into that choppy 'transcendental' stuff And you said that the best way to survive The maelstrom was to call Poseidon's bluff, Go with the flow and take it all in stride, As pragmatists commend, by holding fast To something large and light enough to ride The storm out -- empty barrel, chunk of mast, Your choice -- since centrifugued out to the side And buoyed up high as all the rest streamed past, Then corkscrewed down. Most likely I've applied This metaphor in ways that must be classed Pedestrian or frankly bottom-grade For creativity when set against The scale you drew up as a reader's aid For sorting texts conservatively fenced Around with the exclusion-signs displayed By faithful exegetes, from texts that sensed Quite other possibilities but strayed Only so far, and then texts that dispensed With the whole rule-book drawn up just to vex Free spirits -- poets, critics, novelists, Philosophers, all those who long to flex Creative muscles -- since the book insists They not relax the standard range of checks That help to straighten out the teasing twists Of connotation that can so perplex Plain readers. It's the transcendentalist Gene-sequence in your DNA, I'd guess, That evokes Blake and Wordsworth, maybe Keats, With Shelley, Byron, and -- by more or less Predestined westward passage -- what completes Their project in the visionary sagesse Of Emerson and Thoreau, then retreats (If that's the word) to an downtown address In pragmatism's stroller-friendly streets. That's the back-story that has most to tell About the two ways 'transcendental' went, The Kantian way that cast its lingering spell On each new cohort in the regiment Of armchair ruminants whom it befell Like Noah's curse, the other what you meant By telling us they go together well, The canny pragmatist and those whose bent Runs more to the imaginative heights Of a sublime whose transcendental modes Would stretch the power of reason that unites Our faculties until the thing explodes, Except that even in its furthest flights Of streamlined uplift still the mind bears loads That keep it tending earthward since, by rights, Its journey's end is that of all the roads You said converged on the one truth-shaped thing Worth seeking. This was how to keep the charm Of fantasy alive, and maybe bring Its wish to pass, yet let it not do harm As you thought every fine utopian fling So far had done, and thus helped to rearm The thought-crusade of those who sought to swing Opinion round by sounding the alarm And tarring liberals with McCarthy's brush. The trouble is, this fell in all too pat With something very like that same old rush To judgement, and too comfortably sat With what you took as freedom's cause: to push, If not all things American, then that Transcendent form of them that, at first blush, Might seem a fine thing to be aiming at, Yet loses something of its first appeal When thoughts of all that's happened in the name Of those high sentiments begin to steal Upon us and suggest that we reframe Our notions of how real world and ideal Should properly relate. Then what's to blame, In large part, for the regular raw deal Inflicted on the losers in this game, Misfits or rogue-states, is that very knack Of managing to mix the highest-toned Professions of intent with a laid-back Or downright cynic outlook that condoned, As fit for its good purposes, a stack Of wrongs, home and abroad, that you disowned Only in passing. It's that curious lack Of joined-up thought by which a double-zoned Philosophy -- the transcendental linked With a pragmatic view of things that veered, At times, way off the moral path and winked At motes and beams alike -- adroitly cleared Its conscience, though the issues stood distinct, By a well-practised trick of thought that steered A zigzag course from high to low and blinked At just the moments when its pilot feared Too close a view of what might else have posed A real and present danger to its hard- Won sense of certain moral truths disclosed Only to some choice few. The message jarred, As you found out, not just on folk disposed By hopes long disappointed to regard The holdout hopers from a mindset closed Against them, or on those too deeply scarred By various gods that failed, but on a bunch Of new-left radicals, like us, who shared A lot of your beliefs but had this hunch, Quite early on, that we should be prepared To work out why, when it came to the crunch Of prime allegiance openly declared, You'd count the US-bashers out-to-lunch And start to say more plainly that we'd erred By thinking its high beacon might be crazed, Cracked, and its beams distorted so that we Could best do a repair-job on the glazed Top dome by calculating the degree To which its beams were incorrectly phased With more enlightened thoughts. Then we might see Clean through the ideology that dazed Believers in that old 'land of the free'- Type spirit-raising stuff cooked up to fool Us into swallowing the usual lies Put out by those whose most effective tool For mind-manipulation in the guise Of soul-perfection came straight from a school Where the all-round achiever's annual prize Went to the firmest sticker to that rule Which said: give them the transcendental highs Once in a while and then there'd be no end To the stuff they'd put up with when required, Or benefit of doubt they'd soon extend When principle and circumstance conspired To make sure any principle would bend As circumstance decreed. No doubt you tired Of having all the while to dodge and fend Off brickbats from a bunch of people fired By social passions you'd have thought in tune, At least on all the basic points, with your Idea of how our best selves might commune In a pragmatic way that knew the score And saw small chance of any big change soon, Yet still had social hopes worth living for Since neither prone nor yet auto-immune To disappointment. They said: don't ignore The history of failures and the sad Track-record, most especially, of calls For social transformation that went bad Or came to naught but rather seek what falls Within the range of upgrades we can add Without the plane becoming one stalls Because its rate of climb's more than a tad Too rapid. Yet if their response still galls You now, the types (like me) who started out Your backers in the literary camp But later found increasing room for doubt, Then maybe it's because they saw the stamp Of ideals turned ironically about And so deployed first shrewdly to revamp Those social hopes, then as a way to scout Their proper limits and, if need be, cramp Their militant or rebel-rousing style By timely inculcation of the taste For solvent ironies that bid us smile With fond indulgence on that chronic waste Of energies. All this, remember, while Us lefties, whether Brits or US-based, Saw their beliefs chucked on the rubbish-pile By neocons who cynically embraced High-minded and hard-headed in the clinch That an old pragmatist like William James Could still keep more than decent at a pinch, And even turned right round against the aims Of warhawk palaeocons -- men every inch The dark precursors of the bunch whose names I'll spare you now -- since not a man to flinch At chronicling his nation's sins and shames Along with better aspects. Let's be clear: There's nothing in the least ad hominem About the issues I've been raising here, Or nothing that would please the likes of them, Those analytic types who chose to sneer At your supposed apostasy, condemn Your style as an affront to their austere Word-habits, and avoid a more ad rem Engagement with your work. Thus nod and wink Implied that you'd now given up the sort Of real tough-minded stuff they wouldn't blink At and elected rather to hold court In the soft company of such as think Philosophy's an intertextual sport Or just one more excuse for spilling ink In literary ways that won't support Close scrutiny of the analytic kind That tells which arguments have hit the mark, At least for colleagues of a kindred mind. Thus it presents, or so they'd say, a stark Memento of the world you left behind When, mid-career, you opted to embark On a more wayward course and then fly blind Since the payback of that free-as-a-lark Or giddy aerobatic stuff's to leave You looping wildly just when their technique Of concept-parsing might have helped retrieve Terrestrial reference-points by which to seek Familiar landmarks. Talk like that would peeve A saint at length, so you did well to tweak Their verbal dress-codes now and then, or weave New styles around them, rather than critique The enterprise head-on since then you'd just Be falling back on something like the ruse -- As you perceived it -- that the Kantians trust As a good fall-back strategy to use, Either when momentarily nonplussed Or else when there's some point too big to lose So that the game-plan says: just go for bust With transcendental back-up and j'accuse As set refrain. No question: you emerge Much better placed on all the tick-box counts Of moral decency than those who'd urge We read your work in readiness to pounce On anything that might invite the scourge Applied so vigorously to denounce That work, and you, as teetering on the verge Of 'continental', or -- what this amounts To in their language-game -- far out beyond The intellectual pale. Thus devotees Of Kant are just as likely to respond That way as all those others prone to seize Their every chance to reinforce the bond Of guild-endorsed philosophers and squeeze Out all such dwellers in the demi-monde Of disrepute where hard-won expertise Like theirs sells at a discount while the price Of shares in Continentals Inc is chalked Sky-high and sure to double in a trice (They grumble) when some current fad gets talked Up in a hybrid style that lets you splice The chat with old philosophemes that stalked Mind's corridors till Ockham's fine device Henceforth ensured that all sound thinkers balked At such scholastic garbage. Let's accept That they were wrong, that you were far from sold On all things continental, that you kept Close ties within the analytic fold, And -- above all -- that you were too adept At finding subtler ways to break the mould Than to wish their whole culture might be swept Away and so give them good cause to scold Your Jacobin designs. Then there's the deep And not just anecdotal link between The various sides of you that often leap Together off the page -- the sense of keen Yet gentle irony, the will to keep All aspects of the intellectual scene Somewhere in view, the scintillating sweep Of Ideengeschichte that could glean So much from a review of past ideas, Like Hegel pragmatised, the root belief That we do best to hold a course that steers As far as can be from the moral reef Marked 'cruelty to others', the two-cheers- For-reason outlook that takes half a leaf From Hume the sceptic's book, and then the fears That thought too closely tied to the motif Of sovereign Truth might readily be pressed Into the routine service of some Grand Inquisitor whose idea of the test For truthfulness will certainly not stand Much scrutiny when tried against the best Of your unholy virtues. This I'd planned To bring out all along, but then (you guessed!) The argument got somewhat out of hand Or (more like) tended to revert to type And re-stage quarrels that are running still In quarters where they've not absorbed the hype About how everyone's now had their fill Of truth-talk and forgotten the old gripe That Socrates once aimed at those whose skill In speaking well enabled them to pipe Such pleasing tunes that they subdued the will To truth in their rapt auditors. It's more, For me, the snag that comes up every time We want to find some intimate rapport, Some near-equivalent of perfect rhyme, Between a thinker's predilection for The one thought-ladder that could help them climb Above their own life-indurated store Of prejudices, and (the point that I'm Now keen to make in case I've seemed to pick Too many bones) all those integral traits Of mind and character -- what made you tick, In short -- which, present orthodoxy states, May have their proper role in any thick Description or biography that rates Them on their proven tendency to click With readers, but a stricter code dictates Can shed no further light. The only place You really take a line on this is where You talk about a different sort of case -- Flat opposite to yours -- and say that there Can be no valid reason to embrace A creed that has us solemnly declare, As touching on the amply-vouched disgrace, Political and moral, of one Herr Professor Heidegger, the need to take Account of man and work viewed in the round And therefore not permit ourselves to make Exceptions from the rule for such renowned Philosophers, if only for the sake Of hanging on to some last common ground Where intellect and ethics hope to stake Their claim of being each-to-other bound In virtue's cause. You didn't go for that High-minded but, you thought, misguided brand Of earnest moralising since the flat Refusal, among some, to understand How great minds might just not know where it's at, Ethically speaking, or have morals and Behaviour like those of an alley-cat, Was too apt to promote the sort of bland Consensual thinking currently the most Conspicuous trademark of a discipline That's raised conformity to a high boast And used group-feeling as its means to pin A 'Steer well clear of this one!' sign or post A 'Keep off!' notice, then proceed to bin The offending work. For readers over-dosed On warnings, you advised: give it a spin, Give him a hearing, and allow (since it's Now pretty much beyond dispute) that there's Another label that quite aptly fits The thinker in whose work the logos shares Deep truths unplumbed by all the sharpest wits From Plato down, and that's the one he bears In your phrase 'Schwarzwald redneck'. So the bits In Heidegger worth saving for the heirs Of Western metaphysics can be cut And pasted so as to produce a script Less vibrant with the call of Being but Much likelier to chime with those who've skipped A lot of that historic stuff and shut The book on Dasein's epic. What this stripped- Down version also skimps is how the hut He famously hung out in, though equipped With stove and other basics, put across The same old tale incessantly rehearsed Throughout his lucubrations on the loss Of truth's authentic voice, as in the worst Of those texts that the faithful try to gloss As aberrations but which readers versed In his life-history won't be apt to toss So blithely out of court. Granted, my first Intention here (remember?) was to press, Despite your offstage ironies, the need That thinking hold its nerve and not regress To the idea that arguments succeed By suasive force alone (since what's success, You might ask, if not getting folk agreed To see things our way?) or that answering 'yes, That notion fits in very well indeed With my belief-set' adds up to a good Or half-way adequate account of what Most rightly is -- or should be -- understood When words like 'truth' or 'knowledge' fill a slot That 'best belief' won't fill. I said it would Be better for philosophy (and not Just so as to provide a livelihood Or timely academic booster-shot For tired philosophers) if it hung on To the most basic item in the stock Of brand-name goods you thought had long since gone The way of all such woefully adhoc Contrivances or strategies to con The laggards into putting up a mock Display of expertise whereby to don The robes of science. This means, pace Locke, Still searching for some last sine qua non Of true philosophy, that is, the mode Of transcendental reasoning that alone -- Or so its adepts claim -- offers a road To a priori truths that can be known For sure and quite aside from knowledge owed To mere sense-certainty. Although we've grown Suspicious of ideas like this that load (As you'd say) such a deal of otiose Conceptual baggage on the heaven-hook Left dangling from the days of grandiose High-flying metaphysics, still the book May not be shut or epilogue be close In that long thought-adventure that it took For Geist to bid a first brave adios To myth or criticism cock a snook At custom-bound belief. I'd say that we've A middle course to steer that won't just tip This way or that and resolutely cleave To 'honest Uncle Kant' or simply flip, Like you, the other way, resolve to heave That stuff clean overboard, and thereby clip Pure reason's wings. That is, we'd best conceive Some way that reason can retain its grip On our beliefs yet, so as not to yield Straight off to the assorted booby-traps You laid down for it, come prepared to wield The kind of argument that fills the gaps In any concept-system vacuum-sealed On a priori grounds against a lapse Of knowledge with the sorts of truth revealed By opting to revise the mental maps That drew such clear-cut demarcation lines Between the twin imperia of Hume's 'Matters of fact' and 'truths of reason'. Mine's Not the conclusion everyone assumes Must follow if one takes the force of Quine's 'Two Dogmas' as an argument that dooms All such distinctions or that undermines Thought's last defence against the threat that looms (Although of course you'd find the claim absurd) When the whole question as to what's a sound, Truth-apt, or reputable case fit to be heard And acted on, and what's with justice found Deficient on that count, goes by the word Of those best placed to put the word around Amongst those likewise placed. So it gets blurred, The precept most philosophers felt bound To honour until recently, that truth May come apart from any of its near (Or not-so-near) replacement terms for sooth- Saying generally, or -- lest this appear A choice of phrase offensive or uncouth -- Those sundry substitutes for the idea Of truth sans phrase. These the Sherlockian sleuth Would deem defective since designed to steer Far wide of any thought that 'truth' defined As 'best belief', or even as what stands At journey's end for those brave souls inclined To seek it, cannot all the same join hands With truth in the objective sense assigned To word and concept by the strict demands Of those whose compasses remain aligned With true magnetic North and point to lands As yet unreachable by any routes Marked on our atlases. So there's the nub Of all I've said: that this, like most disputes That periodically disturb the club Of old philosophy's new-found recruits, Is one where both belligerents could rub Along quite well if those false absolutes, Like truth and reason, that you'd have us scrub From our vocabularies don't reside Above, beyond, or in a realm remote From the mundane contingencies you tried To make us see were all that underwrote The shape and meaning that events supplied To lives whose genre was the anecdote, Not grand recit, and whose narrators vied One with another not just to promote Their own-brand truths but more in hope to lend A new spin to the old roman a fleuve Of braided story-lines. This then might bend The talk toward new topics that could serve At last to knock away all those dead-end Delusion-props that helped supply the nerve For spirit's age-old hankering to transcend Necessity's iron grip without the swerve Of hooked Lucretian atoms whose slight nudge This way or that did nothing to assuage Such all-too-human yearnings. Though you'd judge It merely a reversion to the stage Of Kantian tutelage or a hopeless fudge, Still we need some thought-instrument to gauge Just what philosophy can do to budge Our stubborn preconceptions or engage Creatively yet critically with ways Of story-telling that may strike a chord So sympathetic as to gain straight A's From everyone or get them all on board And yet, by some unlooked-for turn of phrase Or stray plot-detail, show how they'd ignored The one thing that, when hit upon, betrays How many of the reasons why it scored So high in their consensus really came Down chiefly to group-pressure plus a touch Of wishful thinking and the need to frame A tale around all this that bears no such Unwelcome implications as to shame Our better selves. No doubt we'll often clutch At straws, or straw-polls, so as to disclaim All thought of leaning on the feeble crutch Of self-reliance that the poor old moi Haissable uses to fend off the gibes Aimed at it by the crowd whose guiding star Is one whose kindly light gives back the tribe's Own predilections, whether such as are Reliably adjusted to the vibes Of a whole culture and its thought-bazaar, Or else the sort the specialist imbibes Once they're inducted (by all the techniques Of guild-recruitment you exposed to view As an ex-member) into various cliques Or expert subdivisions like the crew Of trained philosophers. Yet this bespeaks Another requisite that maybe you Don't emphasise enough: that any tweaks To their consensus not go in for too Much talk of how philosophy has run its course, Run out of steam, run all its rivers dry, And so forth, since this might seem to endorse A narrative denouement that would fly Clean in the face of your big plan: to force, Or better yet persuade, that lot to try Some way around the guild-approved divorce Between what lets the tenured types get by With least risk and what lets those with a yen For certain riskier, more inventive 'kinds Of writing' claim entitlement to pen Texts of the sort no rule of genre binds, Or no such rule as served, time and again, To house-train undomesticated minds And save them from their own devices when Some tell-tale touch of metaphor yet finds Their weakness out. That's how you seem to treat The two types as flat opposite, as if Inventiveness were something so offbeat, So apt to run a syncopating riff On thought's four-in-a-bar, that a complete Exclusion-rule (or else another tiff Like Plato's with the rhapsode) must defeat All efforts to remove the lingering whiff Of scandal that attaches to topoi Such as -- think Nietzsche/Derrida -- the role Of figural devices they employ, Those concept-frontiersmen, whilst on patrol To make sure nothing like the fate of Troy Befall philosophy should that old mole, Horse-shaped or metaphoric, redeploy Within its city limits. What this whole Verse-colloquy has tried to do is state The case (I hope not too perverse a slant On things) that all your arguments relate Both ways, that is, to concepts that transplant By metaphoric means or conjugate 'Poetically' and metaphors that can't Be subject to exchange at some low rate Arrived at through our willingness to grant 'Poetic licence'. Curious, then, that it's Avowedly your one great aim to coax Us off all versions of the creed that splits Apart the unity our mind evokes When not compelled to test its native wits Against a thought-predicament that pokes Up only if the intellect permits Itself to perpetrate a crafty hoax Of just that sort. I trust your genial shade Won't take it ill that I've seen fit to nag Once more at issues you'd hoped to persuade Us we'd do best at this late stage to tag 'Cut-price old stock', or just allow to fade From view like those (as Hegel said) that lag Behind the Zeitgeist in a dull parade Called by the Owl of Minerva to drag Out their sad afterlives. Then there's the now Far off yet vivid memory of a walk With you round Monticello and of how, Predictably enough perhaps, the talk Turned toward Jefferson (no sacred cow For you but better than the tales they hawk About him currently), his splendid vow Against all tyrants, and -- where our paths fork, Now as back then -- your faith (that seems an apt Word here) that 'our America', though yet To be achieved, was the sole nation mapped By dream-cartographers with compass set For gorgeous palaces and towers cloud-capped, To me a baseless fabric though a threat Should it materialise beyond such rapt Imagining, to you the unpaid debt Thought owes to hope. Truth is, although I try To sort out man from work, or get a fix On how far hopes like that may underlie (Let's not say 'undermine') the various tricks Of your old trade you'd later re-apply To non-trade purposes, the effort sticks Each time around at the same point where I Can't manage to disintricate the mix Of reasons, motives, causes, temperament, (Let's say it) ideology, effects Of US academe on one whose bent Ran counter, and what any eye detects, In 'Trotsky and Wild Orchids', as intent To make amends as well as pay respects To him, your father-activist, who'd spent His life (a self-reproach your piece deflects But can't quite lay to rest) in ways that went To further emphasise the disconnects So keenly felt in yours. Yet you present, As well, a case for writing that neglects ('On its own time') that duty to augment The public good and, in its place, elects To cherish private virtues and invent New styles of self-description that the sects May do with as they wish. But, since you've lent My verse a lot more time than it expects, Best if I now let go (or 'circumvent' -- Your favourite word) these issues one suspects You never had much time for and content My quibbling soul with what it recollects Of welcoming the Rorty text-event As most benign of modern grapholects. (c) Christopher Norris 2014 Email: NorrisC@cardiff.ac.uk -=- II. HUME A-DYING: NOTES FROM BOSWELL' BY CHRISTOPHER NORRIS On Sunday forenoon the 7 of July 1776, being too late for church, I went to see Mr David Hume, who was returned from London and Bath, just a-dying... I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been, as Lucretius observes. 'Well,' said I, 'Mr Hume, I hope to triumph over you when I meet you in a future state; and remember you are not to pretend that you was joking with all this infidelity.' 'No, no,' said he. 'But I shall have been so long there before you come that it will be nothing new.' In this style of good humour and levity did I conduct the conversation. Perhaps it was wrong on so awful a subject. But as nobody was present, I thought it could have no bad effect. I however felt a degree of horror, mixed with a sort of wild, strange, hurrying recollection of my excellent mother's pious instructions, of Dr. Johnson's noble lessons, and of my religious sentiments and affections during the course of my life. I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive inquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated. (from James Boswell, 'An Account of my Last Interview with David Hume, Esq., partly recorded in my journal, partly enlarged from memory', 3 March 1777) -- It seemed a chance too splendid to be missed. Johnson sent Boswell up there to report, From Edinburgh, how the atheist And sceptic Hume would finally resort To God in his last hours. That he'd resist And spurn such comfort the good Doctor thought A crass conjecture so far down the list Of likelihoods that nothing now could thwart The godly folk in their intent to spin Hume's long awaited death-bed change of heart As showing both how 'the wages of sin Is death' and how divine grace can impart Such nick-of-time redemption. Thus they'd win The whole debate despite that dodgy start When faith's best intellects had failed to pin Down where the errors lay in all his smart Yet manifestly false (so faith decreed) Attempts to prove that miracles were just The joint effect of priest-craft and our need For fictive consolation. Then our trust In revelation was a sign that we'd Been hoodwinked and -- his clincher -- that we must, If capable of reason, pay no heed To schoolmen-books best left to gather dust Since stuffed with metaphysics and the kind Of reasoning fit for fools. So Boswell took Off speedily, perhaps in hopes to find A death-bed convert (though it doesn't look The sort of mission he'd have most in mind, That reprobate), but maybe just to book A bedside place amongst the others lined Up there as witnesses of how it shook Hume's atheist creed, and then to take away, For his (not Johnson's) benefit, a nod, Wink, jest, or anything that might convey, To minds alert, that he'd no time for God, Now or in that mere emptiness that lay Just hours ahead. This meant the death-watch squad Could carry off the pious fraud that they Came solely to promote while his long plod All the way up from London hadn't been A waste of time since he'd be well supplied With thoughts of that un-melancholy scene Whenever Johnson hit his moral stride, Found some new sign that Boswell was unclean In thought or deed, and seized the chance to chide His loyal yet wayward sidekick, caught between All those conflicting impulses that vied In him for some brief moment of control Over what Hume would call the seamless flow Of sentiments and Johnson the wracked soul Enslaved to its desires. Yet even so, When the last act began, the leading role Was one the dramaturge would not let go Since, despite all their stratagems, what stole A march on them along with the whole show Was quite in character and went as Hume Intended, rather than the way they'd planned, Whether the God-fixated lot with whom He'd long since learned to deal like an old hand Or those, like Boswell, predisposed to plume Themselves on membership of that small band Of fellow-ironists with mental room For any hint by which to understand His subtler drift. Truth is, both parties went Astray along their preferential lines In pretty much the different ways he'd meant Them each to go as readers of the signs, The Christian lot ignoring his intent Since focused purely on their own designs To make the very most of this event For godly purposes, while what defines The Boswell error has far more to do With how interpretations tend to veer Off course when the sophisticated crew Of secular decoders choose to steer A privy course known only to the few. Thus they suppose that any meaning clear Enough to twig without a cryptic clue Must be construed either as insincere Or else as calling for the kind of gloss -- Ironic, polysemic, hedged about With queasy qualifiers -- that would toss All notions of the simple message out In quest of other codes that cut across That message and so license them to flout The basic speech-act maxims. Any loss Of mutual understanding brought about By this infraction of the normal modes Of human intercourse would then be more Than compensated by the way such codes, Once brought to notice, prove an open door Through which the literal sense of things explodes -- To use the sort of hybrid metaphor Much favoured in this context -- till the nodes Of stable usage lose their guarantor, Authorial or divine, and meaning spills Out on all sides. Absurd to saddle him, Poor Boswell, with promoting all the ills That follow when the merest verbal whim, Once joined to certain dialectic skills, Enable the interpreter to skim- Read with a fine dexterity that thrills The more for going way out on a limb Of hermeneutic licence. Let's recall Hume's point about the Jesuits, how they said One thing but thought another, or how all Their words and outward show could be misread At any time since, as at a masked ball, Put on in order that the talking head Belie the man within, or guile forestall The aim of those who'd surely see him dead Did he but speak his mind. The point's best made By picturing the scene as he conversed With friends on all the usual topics, played Another game of cards, calmly rehearsed The practical arrangements, and conveyed His Epicurean message: that the worst Of death's privations was no worse than they'd Non-suffered through for aeons before they first Drew breath. Not (vide Larkin) quite the knock- Down argument it seems, but still the chief Reason, I'd guess, that he could gently mock The pious lot who thought he'd take a leaf From some book in the ever-ready stock Of edifying tales whose main motif Was Faust redeemed or how, just as the clock Struck twelve, and to the infinite relief Of all beholders, the lost sheep was found Or (if we cross to Graham-Greeneland) saved Midway 'between the stirrup and the ground'. Yet he foiled all their projects and behaved With such accustomed grace that all were bound To deem him neither pious nor depraved But perfectly himself and still of sound Mind enough to perceive just what they craved And turn it to ironic use despite The many clashing hopes and wishes pinned To him by those who'd thought to overwrite His preferred script. They ended up chagrined To find their crafty strategies played right Off the game-field by his good humour twinned With a shrewd sense of how the whole thing might, In future, get believers to rescind Their fideist allegiance rather than The atheists and sceptics to resile From the beliefs by which their leading man Showed more adeptly how to hit the style That might in time persuade those who began Their vigil wishing solely to revile His vita ante acta that their plan For its last scene was a non-starter, while His civilizing irony eschewed Such sentiments and added just a touch More wit to make its point. They might well brood, Like Johnson, on the consequence of such Subversive thinking should it be pursued Beyond those Scots (who didn't count for much, In the good Doctor's book) to what ensued Whenever folly kicked away the crutch Of faith and -- the catastrophe that loomed So fearful in the not-so-distant past -- Left social order and religion doomed To civil strife since nothing could hold fast, It seemed, unless our inner lives assumed The providential shape that their lot classed Mere superstition. That's just why he fumed So much at Milton: God's decrees miscast As politics became the very bane Of any soul, like his, resolved to seek Its own salvation far from the profane Arena of a millenarian clique Whose vaunted freedoms gestured to the reign Of Christ on earth but reached their devilish peak (He thought) when there was nothing to restrain The sceptics' final push. Let's not critique His view of all this from a standpoint based On Humean principles but try to think Just how a soul, like Johnson's, firmly braced Against its private demons came to link That psychomachia with the terrors faced By a whole nation standing on the brink Of what, they feared, would in a moment waste All their brave efforts to remove the kink Of prejudice that drove the strongest minds To self-destructive zeal. What flipped their stance From high to low was the same force that binds Affect to intellect and may enhance The power of thought yet regularly blinds The self to all those motives that may chance To spur it into thought. If Hume then finds No choreographer behind the dance Of streaming atoms jolted in the void And randomly assembling into some Configuration soon to be destroyed By whatsoever clinamen might come To break their fragile shape, it needs no Freud To figure out why he'd choose to keep mum About all that as death approached, avoid The wished-for showdown, and prefer to thumb His nose at all the pious brethren not By some shrewdly premeditated coup De grace but more with reference to what, By grace of sceptic intellect, he knew Would later on ensure the other lot Belonged to unlamented temps perdu And so in good time grant the genial Scot (No thanks to Johnson) all that should accrue To mankind's benefactors. It's a tale Of how Hume's civil irony induced A major shake-up on the Richter scale Of values, and -- since I've just cited Proust -- How subtle shifts of feeling may prevail At length against the value-codes we're used To holding sacrosanct and so derail Those one-track rulers of the moral roost Who'd certainly have counted Boswell mad For any sceptic wavering he confessed To after the event although he'd had To keep them well concealed at the behest Of his great master. Plus, they said, his bad Past conduct was itself a manifest And cautionary token of how glad He should be to embrace this as a test Of his devotion to the truth of those Same doctrines Hume professed to hold in scorn Yet surely must have clung to in the throes Of his last sickness. Scarcely to be borne, By them at least, the idea that he chose Quite simply not to let himself be worn Down by their constant rubbing of his nose In their bleak view of 'human nature' torn From the worst bits of that pernicious text They took as holy writ, but to enact, In dying, the humanity that vexed Those pious scandal-mongers since it lacked All sense of what so mightily perplexed Poor Boswell, let alone what terrors racked His friend and mentor waiting for the next And last report. For Johnson, the mere fact Of Hume's demise would also bring such news As either served more deeply to inure His mind to self-assault or turned the screws Down hard and let him know he'd now endure The utmost of its powers to disabuse His stricken faith of all that might procure Brief respite till some new vicarious ruse Of sceptic doubt regained its old allure. (c) Christopher Norris 2014 Email: NorrisC@cardiff.ac.uk -=- III. ACADEMY OF ROMANIAN SCIENTISTS: PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE TODAY 13-19 OCTOBER 2014 International Conference Philosophy of Science Today: Concepts, Paradigms and Trends Bucharest University Faculty of Philosophy Andrei Saguna University Constanta With the support of the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (DLMPS) of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science (IUHPS) 13-19 October 2014 Constanta ROMANIA -- Objectives * To introduce participants to concepts, theories and trends of philosophy of science, mind philosophy, law philosophy, communication philosophy * To investigate topics of cognitivism, epistemological pluralism, scientific knowledge * To discuss today's subjects of philosophy of science and religion * To promote networks of young scholars and officials of the field -- Who should attend? * Participants are university staff and researchers of all degrees, personalities of the field, young scholars, and students. * The members and collaborators of the Section of Philosophy, Psychology, Theology and Journalism of the Academy of Romanian Scientists. * World-known personalities from abroad: France, USA, England, Finland, Germany, China, Austria etc. -- Section Topics 1. Historical Aspects of Philosophy of Science 2. The New Philosophy of Science: T. Kuhn, St. Toulmin, P. Feyerabend, I. Lakatos and others 3. French Representatives of Contemporary Epistemology: Canguilhem, Koyre, Bachelard, Gilles Gaston Granger and others 4. Ancient Chinese philosophy and the holistic and syncretistic philosophy of science 5. Romanian Philosophy: Aspects of Epistemology (at C. Radulescu-Motru, I. Petrovici, M. Florian, L. Blaga, C. Noica 6. Mind Philosophy 7. Philosophy of Law 8. Philosophy of Communication -- Round tables * Science and Religion * DLMPS Congresses: Over 40 Years Since the 4th Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Bucharest 1971) -- Books and journals presentations * Thomas Kuhn: On Revolution and Paradigm in the Development of Science (Book) * Journals and reviews on philosophy of science (foreign and Romanian) -- Programme management Coordinators Professor Angela Botez, PhD, President of the Section of Philosophy, Psychology, Theology and Journalism, ASR angela_botez@yahoo.com Professor Aurel Papari, PhD, President of Andrei Saguna University Constanta, MT, ASR aurelpapari@andreisaguna.ro Researcher Henrieta Serban, PhD, MC, ASR henrietaserban@gmail.com Associate researcher Oana Vasilescu PhD, editor ASR Oanavasilescu78@yahoo.com Secretary Ing. Mihai Carutasu edituraaosr@gmail.com -- Venue The conference will take place at the University Andrei Saguna in Constanta. Access ways * By plane to Bucharest * By car E 60, E 70, E 81, E 87 * By train: the railway station Constanta CITY INFORMATION: Pleasant weather, delightful landscape with large orchards and vineyards. Interesting remnants of ancient town(s) from Hellenic, Roman and Ottoman civilizations. -- General Conference Information The working language is English and French. Participation fee is 100 Euro. The most interesting contributions shall be published in Annals of Philosophy ASR, Proceedings and the volume of the conference, for maximum dissemination. There will be conducted a tour of Constanta city, Roman poet Ovidius' monument and surroundings, the Danube Delta, the sacred places of the Saint Andrew, and Andrei Saguna's, Aromanian Metropolitan Bishop -- Application Form If you wish to join in the programme, please copy and fill in the following application form: Name and academic position........ Mailing address........ Telephone and email........ Topic of the paper........ Section........ Payment of registration fee of 100 Euro, including printed materials, and attendance fee. Accommodation and meals are partially sponsored. In cash at arrival 150 Euro or by bank transfer one month in advance. Please send the filled in application by the 1st of September 2014 to programme coordinators. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Philosophy Pathways is the electronic newsletter for the Pathways to Philosophy distance learning program To subscribe or cancel your subscription please email your request to philosophypathways@fastmail.net The views expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect those of the Editors. -----------------------------------------------------------------