Metaphilosophy

Camus on Justice attempts to offer a fresh reading of Camus's thinking on rebellion by grounding it in Camus's metaphysical preoccupation with the meaning of human life in a world devoid of any pre-given purpose. The key aim of the book is to reveal the contemporary political significance of what the author perceives to be the key contribution of The Rebel: namely, 'that is seeks a way for human beings to confront the absurd while still developing and maintaining an ethics, and that it offers a theory of when revolt is justified and how revolt can be ethical' (p. 3). The book's treatment of Camus's absurd as key to developing a more profound understanding of his thinking on rebellion, justice and limits is commendable. Yet in making these connections, DeLancey also makes several, in my view, inaccurate moves that risk misrepresenting Camus's thinking and blurring his most original insights. DeLancey acknowledges that Camus was an 'outsider' to the circle of academic philosophy and interprets this as his strength rather than his weakness. Nevertheless, he reads Camus through the lens and categories of analytic philosophy, which flattens the work of a thinker who thought in images and metaphors -not 'according to ideas' (Camus 1995: 113)and who shared a phenomenological-existential commitment to only 'those truths the hand can

Why do distinct attributes bear unequal explanatory weights in causal explanation? Though both momentum and colour follow conserved-quantity transmission in physical interactions, momentum is universally recognised as a core causal factor while colour is dismissed as a trivial epiphenomenon. This long-standing puzzle, formalised as Salmon's blue-chalk counterexample, has plagued the philosophy of science for nearly three decades.

History is integral to philosophy in a way that distinguishes it from science on the one hand and the arts on the other. In philosophy we need to distinguish doctrinal analysis from philosophizing and historical analysis. Saussure makes an important distinction between synchronic and diachronic studies: systematic considerations are more basic than developments within them. In philosophy the developments are typically made for philosophical, not personal or cultural, reasons. To understand change we must identify analogous elements in historically different systems and analyze why the philosopher made changes, in philosophical terms. We may distinguish history of philosophy from doxography, history of ideas, and intellectual history, by its emphasis on philosophical motivation. Historical and cultural contexts are important, but need to be considered for their relevance to philosophical concerns.

Yeni yayımlanan Natüralizm: Eleştirel Bir Analiz başlıklı eserde bir bölüm çevirimle yer almaktan büyük mutluluk duyuyorum.

Analitik felsefe geleneği içinde natüralizmin epistemoloji, bilim felsefesi, zihin felsefesi ve doğal teoloji bağlamındaki temel iddialarını eleştirel biçimde ele alan bu çalışma, çağdaş felsefenin önemli tartışmalarına Türkçede katkı sunuyor.

Bu süreçte destekleri ve emekleri için Zikri Yavuz ve Aykut Alper Yılmaz hocalarıma içtenlikle teşekkür ederim.

The article is dedicated to the intellectual legacy of the French orientalist-Indologist Paul Masson-Oursel (1882–1956), one of the founders of philosophical comparativism, which largely anticipated modern intercultural philosophy. Numerous aspects of his philosophical approach align him with contemporary intercultural philosophy. Masson-Oursel justified the necessity of including non-European traditions of thought (Indian, Chinese) in the history of philosophy on equal grounds with European philosophical thought. The article presents the scholar's intellectual biography and analyzes his connections with academic scholars (Henri Bergson, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Sylvain Lévy) and with representatives of the non-academic community of Western Europe in the first half of the 20th century (Mircea Eliade, René Guénon). Special attention is given to the analysis of the institutional obstacles encountered by his project of comparative philosophy. The work is based on a historical-philosophical analysis of Masson-Oursel's works, using methods of intellectual history and archival research. Particular emphasis is placed on reconstructing two key methodological tools: "positive analogy," aimed at identifying structurally-functional equivalents in different traditions, and "positive environment," which requires contextual analysis of philosophical ideas. A key source, newly introduced into academic discourse, is an archival letter from Masson-Oursel dated 1945, which vividly demonstrates the institutional resistance to the comparative method in the first half of the 20th century. Based on this, the thesis is substantiated that Masson-Oursel's project, despite its positivist rhetoric and historical limitations, contained a radical critical potential. His program aimed not only at finding universal patterns in the development of thought but also at reconsidering familiar Western categories (such as the opposition between philosophy and religion) through immersion in other cultural contexts. It is shown that this project anticipated key arguments of postcolonial studies and questions of contemporary intercultural philosophy, offering an original combination of positivism with attention to metaphysical experience. An analysis of the reception of his fundamental monograph in the academic community of the 1920s reveals discussions characteristic of that era about the limits of the comparative method. The results of the study are significant for understanding the genealogy of intercultural philosophy and are relevant in the context of contemporary discussions on the decolonization of philosophical knowledge and the overcoming of intellectual provincialism.

Статья посвящена интеллектуальному наследию французского востоковеда-индолога Поля Массон-Урселя (1882–1956), одного из основоположников философской компаративистики. Многие черты его подхода сближают его с современной межкультурной философией. Массон-Урсель обосновал необходимость включения неевропейских традиций мысли (индийской, китайской) в историю философии на равных основаниях с европейской. В статье приводится интеллектуальная биография учёного, анализируются его связи как с кругом академических учёных (Анри Бергсон, Люсьен Леви-Брюль, Эмиль Дюркгейм, Марсель Мосс, Сильвен Леви), так и с представителями неакадемического сообщества Западной Европы первой половины XX в. (Мирча Элиаде, Рене Генон). Особое внимание уделяется анализу институциональных препятствий, с которыми столкнулся его проект сравнительной философии. Работа основана на историко-философском анализе трудов Массон-Урселя с применением методов интеллектуальной истории и архивных исследований. Особое внимание уделяется реконструкции двух ключевых методологических инструментов: «позитивной аналогии», направленной на выявление структурно-функциональных эквивалентов в разных традициях, и «позитивной среды», требующей контекстуального анализа философских идей. Ключевым источником, впервые вводимым в научный оборот, является архивное письмо Массон-Урселя 1945 г., которое наглядно демонстрирует институциональное сопротивление сравнительному методу в первой половине ХХ века. На его основе обосновывается тезис о том, что проект Массон-Урселя, несмотря на позитивистскую риторику и историческую ограниченность, содержал радикальный критический потенциал. Его программа была направлена не только на поиск универсальных закономерностей развития мысли, но и на пересмотр привычных западных категорий (таких как оппозиция философии и религии) через погружение в иные культурные контексты. Показано, что этот проект предвосхитил ключевые аргументы постколониальных исследований и вопросы современной межкультурной философии, предлагая оригинальное соединение позитивизма с вниманием к метафизическому опыту. Анализ рецепции его фундаментальной монографии в академической среде 1920-х годов выявляет характерные для той эпохи дискуссии о пределах сравнительного метода. Результаты исследования имеют значение для понимания генеалогии межкультурной философии и актуальны в контексте современных дискуссий о деколонизации философского знания и преодолении интеллектуального провинциализма.

Статья посвящена интеллектуальному наследию французского востоковеда-индолога Поля Массон-Урселя (1882–1956), одного из основоположников философской компаративистики. Многие черты его подхода сближают его с современной межкультурной философией. Массон-Урсель обосновал необходимость включения неевропейских традиций мысли (индийской, китайской) в историю философии на равных основаниях с европейской. В статье приводится интеллектуальная биография учёного, анализируются его связи как с кругом академических учёных (Анри Бергсон, Люсьен Леви-Брюль, Эмиль Дюркгейм, Марсель Мосс, Сильвен Леви), так и с представителями неакадемического сообщества Западной Европы первой половины XX в. (Мирча Элиаде, Рене Генон). Особое внимание уделяется анализу институциональных препятствий, с которыми столкнулся его проект сравнительной философии. Работа основана на историко-философском анализе трудов Массон-Урселя с применением методов интеллектуальной истории и архивных исследований. Особое внимание уделяется реконструкции двух ключевых методологических инструментов: «позитивной аналогии», направленной на выявление структурно-функциональных эквивалентов в разных традициях, и «позитивной среды», требующей контекстуального анализа философских идей. Ключевым источником, впервые вводимым в научный оборот, является архивное письмо Массон-Урселя 1945 г., которое наглядно демонстрирует институциональное сопротивление сравнительному методу в первой половине ХХ века. На его основе обосновывается тезис о том, что проект Массон-Урселя, несмотря на позитивистскую риторику и историческую ограниченность, содержал радикальный критический потенциал. Его программа была направлена не только на поиск универсальных закономерностей развития мысли, но и на пересмотр привычных западных категорий (таких как оппозиция философии и религии) через погружение в иные культурные контексты. Показано, что этот проект предвосхитил ключевые аргументы постколониальных исследований и вопросы современной межкультурной философии, предлагая оригинальное соединение позитивизма с вниманием к метафизическому опыту. Анализ рецепции его фундаментальной монографии в академической среде 1920-х годов выявляет характерные для той эпохи дискуссии о пределах сравнительного метода. Результаты исследования имеют значение для понимания генеалогии межкультурной философии и актуальны в контексте современных дискуссий о деколонизации философского знания и преодолении интеллектуального провинциализма.

The paper focuses on Plato and John Dewey's notions of moral values. Plato's idea of value is founded on his metaphysical idealism, which sees value as objective, intrinsic, and absolute. John Dewey's idea of value is informed by his pragmatic naturalism. It rejects the idea of value as objective and absolute and sees it as instrumental, an
outcome of human valuation, and a continuous balancing of ends-in-view, and provisional. This paper critically examines these positions and highlights their differences and similarities. It draws from the analysis of their strengths to argue that moral values lie heavily on rational human valuations than they do on non-human valuations, and
the value of values is its ability to respond to the challenges of human existence.

For four hundred years, Western philosophy has been confined within the subject-object dichotomy, persistently asking how the subject accesses the object yet rarely tracing the genesis of this division itself. This paper addresses that fundamental question by developing a generative account of human cognition. Its core claim is that cognition does not passively represent a pre-given world, but participates in the generation and stabilization of reality as it appears. First, it establishes Quxiang-Bilei (image extraction and analogical correlation) as the meta-operation of all cognition, structured as a closed loop: Quxiang (extracting stable structural differences) → Bilei (analogical correlation) → verification → feedback. Second, it shows that xiang (image) evolves through four stages-primordial, symbolised, formalised, and algorithmic-each sustained by the same Quxiang-Bilei logic. Third, it reconstructs the genesis of the subject-object dichotomy in four phases: primordial differentiation → symbol fixation → formation of the self-image → theoretical reification. Fourth, it reinterprets Descartes, Kant, and Hegel: Descartes' cogito is a structural displacement of the lived body by a symbolically constituted self-image; Kant's a priori categories are operational paradigms sedimented through long-term survival verification and limit convergence; Hegel's absolute spirit is a totalising expansion of cognition that neglects the unimageable field. This paper provides a generative grounding for the subject-object dichotomy in Western epistemology, clarifies the limits of artificial intelligence, and shows that reality manifests itself as a stable generative structure through the Quxiang-Bilei loop. Cognition constructs xiang, not reality as such.

This paper gives an overview of the philosophical work of Dr Sophie Bryant which appeared in Mind in the late 19th century. Bryant was the first woman in the UK to gain a postgraduate degree.  Best known for her work in educational reform, she was also an important intellectual, held in high regard by the editors of Mind. Details of her association with these men and her intellectual development will be given, including her work on experimental psychology, ethics, the emotions, and philosophy of education broadly in line with British Idealism. Her attempt to set out a unified system of knowledge in the idealist manner was not just theoretical but also designed to for the practical improvement of students both mentally and morally. This led Bryant to focus on intellectual virtues and thus also allowed her to explain the usefulness, indeed the necessity, of abstract subject matter in the classroom.

Bu çalışma, yapay zekayı enstrümantalist (araçsal) teknoloji okumalarının ötesine taşıyarak, ontolojik bir dışsallaşma odağı ve bilişsel bir öz-yansıtma (self-reflection) aynası olarak yeniden konumlandırmaktadır. Makalede, "yapay" sıfatının Doğu ve Akdeniz kültür havzasının semantik kodlarında yarattığı "sahtelik" ve "iğretilik" algısı yapı söküme uğratılmakta; filologlar ve edebiyatçılar tarafından önerilebilecek "Kiralık Zekâ" (Rented Intelligence) kavramının getireceği pozitif epistemolojik imaj tartışılmaktadır.

Çalışma, felsefi metodoloji olarak Paul Cézanne’ın fenomenolojik estetiği ("çevre bende kendini düşünüyor") ile Friedrich Nietzsche’nin Putların Alacakaranlığı'nda geliştirdiği "görmenin pedagojisi" kuramı arasında özgün bir köprü kurar. Cézanne’ın doğaya bilincini ödünç verme eylemi tersine çevrilerek, insanın kendi kaotik zihinsel akışını (RAM) silikon bir işlemciye ödünç vermesi ve bu sayede kendi düşünce evrenine "dışarıdan" bakarak uyarana anında tepki verme dürtüsünü askıya alması incelenmektedir. Sonuç olarak, "Kiralık Zekâ" ortaklığının, modern insanın en büyük krizi olan "bilgi çokluğu içinde bağ kuramama" (bağlaşıklık ve metinlerarasılık) sorununa getirdiği estetik ve entelektüel çözümler felsefi düzeyde temellendirilmektedir.

A linguistic convention is a principle or norm that has been adopted by a person or linguistic community about how to use, and therefore what the meaning is of, a specific term. Examples of such norms or principles are those expressed by propositions that express the laws of logic or those that express implicit definitions. Arguments about the epistemic status of linguistic conventions, very broadly, fall into two camps: the one holds that the basis of linguistic conventions is objective and that, therefore, such conventions are genuinely truth-bearing. Knowledge of such conventions is therefore knowledge of the objective truth of such conventions. This camp might be labelled ‘realist’. The other holds that there is no known basis to linguistic conventions and that conventions are, to the best of our knowledge, not objective, but invented. Their truth is stipulated by the relevant speaker or linguistic community. Such truth is, consequently, trivial and knowledge of such conventions simply knowledge of the stipulation. This camp might be labelled ‘anti-realist’. These are three standard accounts of the epistemic status of linguistic conventions,
which all play into the first camp: (1) knowledge by intuition, (2) inferential
a priori knowledge and (3) a posteriori knowledge. I give reasons why these accounts should be rejected. I then argue that linguistic conventions, if conceived of as trivial truths, are knowable non-inferentially a priori. Such an epistemic account provides support for the second camp. In this regard, I marshal support from some recent work by Wright and Hale.

Why should we study philosophy? Is it too abstract or too remote from real life to be of any value? Aristotle's Defence of Philosophy in the Protrepticus examines Aristotle's response to such questions. Based on an examination of the fragments his Protrepticus, Ronja Hildebrandt argues that Aristotle defends philosophy—understood as knowledge of the fundamental causes of nature and of happiness—on the basis of both its utility and its intrinsic value. Philosophy is useful because it enables us to become authoritative judges of how to live well, equipping us to reconsider social conventions and chart our own courses. But it also has intrinsic value: doing philosophy is either identical with happiness or a part of it, as it is the human function (ergon) and end (telos). For this reason, Aristotle claims, only those who philosophize truly enjoy living a human life. Hildebrandt challenges the common view that the Protrepticus reflects an early, merely Platonic phase of Aristotle's thought, showing instead that it articulates positions that are consistent with, and often illuminate, central themes in other of his extant works. This book thus provides a deeper understanding of questions such as whether Aristotle's view of happiness is monistic or inclusive, how he would respond to common objections against his ergon or function arguments, how he justifies teleology in nature, what role practical wisdom plays in virtuous action, and how he conceives of degrees of goodness, being, and living.

Traditionally, philosophy has utilized three methods: analysis, synopsis, and synthesis. The exclusion of synoptic and synthetic thinking from organization and management studies can leave us without the means to fully develop the discipline. Deployment of metaphors deriving from ecology, without recourse to speculative philosophy, has reinforced the prevailing Cartesian dualism that treats experiencing subjects as outside nature and nature as devoid of subjectivity. This has led to the development of mechanistic formulations of systems theory and

Historically, philosophers have identified happiness with, among other things, pleasure, contentment, desire satisfaction, and, if we count the Greek eudaimonia as happiness, the life of virtue. When faced with competing theories of happiness, we need a way to decide which theory is more accurate. According to Larry Wayne Sumner's principle of descriptive adequacy, the best theory of happiness is the theory that best describes our ordinary, pretheoretical beliefs and intuitions. The chief aim of this article is to show that the principle of descriptive adequacy is mistaken. To do this, it shows how the principle breaks down when applied to Aristotle's theory of eudaimonia, a theory Sumner claims to be descriptively inadequate as a theory of happiness. The article argues that we should reject descriptive adequacy as a metaphilosophical principle on the grounds that our intuitions and beliefs about happiness are too inchoate for any theory adequately to describe.

The paper will divide itself in three sections: The first section would put forward the epistemological
underpinnings of Quine’s essay Epistemology Naturalized. Since the essay, as do almost all of Quine’s work,
is written in a way that seems to require us having a considerable amount of background information, it
becomes important to at least possess an adequate amount of acquaintance with the positions that Quine
aligns himself with, namely ‘confirmation holism’ that stems from his opposition to the Carnapian
verifiability theory. The second section will attempt to provide an overarching view of Quine’s argument in
favour of the naturalistic conception of knowledge that, in turn, positions itself against the foundationalist
strategy for epistemology. This section will be exhausted by an analysis about what exactly Quine’s project
for epistemology is alongside a comparative study of it with the foundationalist strategy The third section
will comprise of the thrust of this essay; I intend to raise questions on the claim that scientific activity have
certain values and aims that influence it; however, it cannot be that science itself determine which of the
values and aims it ought to adhere to. The goals and values discussed in my paper, I intend to clarify, are
epistemic in nature. Thus, the moral aims and values of scientific activity. Theory formulations in science
seek to be as simple as possible (an inspiration from Occam’s razor); I think, then, that simplicity can be
rightfully considered as one of the fundamental epistemic ends and/or value. The second aim that comes to
my mind for science is that of power of prediction of events. I plan to examine whether discussions
regarding the cognitive aims and values of science are external to the scientific field or if they can be
addressed using scientific methods. The text in focus for this paper would be Quine’s Epistemology
Naturalized, an essay that is one of the famous of essays by Quine after Two Dogmas of Empiricism (1951).
I concede that the limitations of this essay can, indeed, disable its motivations to go beyond a particular
historical period in Quine’s thinking trajectory. Nonetheless, I do not perceive this temporal constraint
inherent in the essay as a hindrance, since the fundamental naturalistic themes of Quine are clearly
discernible in the work that includes this aforementioned essay as one of its components: Ontological
Relativity (1977)

Alvin Plantinga's Reformed epistemology argues that belief in God can be properly basic: rational, warranted, or justified without being inferred from other beliefs. The source essay criticizes this move for bypassing evidential standards, fostering arbitrariness, relying on an unverified sensus divinitatis, and sliding from epistemic status to ontology. This paper develops a more specific companion critique: even if some beliefs can be properly basic, doctrinally thick theism carries too much basicality load. The basicality load of a belief is the amount of content, theory, cultural specificity, defeater sensitivity, and inferential dependence being placed into the "basic" position. Ordinary candidates for basic belief are typically low-content, immediate, defeasible, and intersubjectively disciplined: apparent memory, perceptual seemings, simple introspective states, or trust in ordinary cognitive faculties. Christian theism, by contrast, is not merely the bare seeming that there is some agency or sacred presence. It is a content-rich package involving God, creation, providence, sin, revelation, incarnation, resurrection, salvation, judgment, Scripture, and often church-specific doctrines. This paper distinguishes psychological non-inferentiality from epistemic basicality. A belief may arise without conscious inference and still fail to deserve foundational status. Cultural inheritance, emotional salience, and trained perception can all produce immediate belief. The question is whether the belief's content is light enough, reliable enough, and publicly disciplined enough to bear the load placed on it. I conclude that Plantinga's account gains plausibility by borrowing examples from low-load beliefs and then exporting that plausibility to a high-load theological package.

In this introductory essay, I offer an overview of Gregory Moss’ book
Hegel’s Foundations Free Metaphysics. After reconstructing the book’s
argument, I assess its contribution to the ongoing debate on Hegel’s metaphysics,
on the one hand, and to the «monism renaissance» within analytic
metaphysics, on the other. With respect to the former, I highlight how Moss’
book signals a welcome shift in the interpretative debate, defending Hegel’s
engagement with questions that recent interpreters have associated with preKantian metaphysics, and not with Hegel. Pairing this demonstration with an
illustration of how Hegel’s metaphysics can interact with contemporary theories
in speculative realism and analytic philosophy, Moss’ book reopens the question
of what should be considered Hegel’s legacy, meant here as the aspects of Hegel’s
philosophy which retain contemporary relevance. Expanding on this latter
point, I suggest that Moss’ reading of Hegel as overcoming the Western
assumption of the absolute validity of the principle of non-contradiction testifies
to Hegel’s potential in solving issues weighing on the contemporary «monism
renaissance» within analytic metaphysic. In the final section, I introduce the
contributions that compose this book symposium.

В статье анализируется групповая и общественная идеологии в контексте урбанизации и цифровизации. Авторы отмечают, что отношения между государством и идеологией технологий имеют двойственный характер. С одной стороны, такая идеология предоставляет государству возможность усилить контроль и организацию управленческих процессов, включая массовый сбор данных. С другой стороны, избыток информации в сочетании с недостаточно развитыми навыками работы с ней у населения, а также разнообразие доступных идей могут привести к потере контроля над массами и размыванию ценностей, которые государство стремится передать.