Please join us this Monday at 6:15 pm in Cobb 112 for Tom Evnen’s presentation of his paper, “The Immanent Development of Thought: On the Speculative Method of Hegel’s Science of Logic.” As usual, the paper will not be read during the meeting, so please try to read the paper in advance. Here is an abstract of Tom’s paper:
This essay is an attempt to understand Hegel’s methodology for the deduction of the pure forms of thought in the Science of Logic. I begin by articulating two theses that underly Hegel’s conviction that a deduction of the pure forms of thought about thought must be nothing other than thought’s own immanent self-development. I then raise a question about how an immanent development of thought could deduce pure forms of thought in such a way that meets certain requirements the satisfaction of which is necessary in order for this deduction to provide us with knowledge. Articulating Hegel’s response to this question, I then give an account of Hegel’s method in the Logic, and I provide an example of the deployment of this method by examining one stage of the argument of the Logic. Finally, I conclude by answering a pair of common objections to Hegel’s method and by arguing for the indispensability of this method for gaining insight into an important contemporary approach to a family of philosophical problems about the idea of logical form. The essay as a whole constitutes the first stage of a larger project that seeks to develop the intellect’s absoluteness and creativity. I say little about this larger project in the essay, but I would be happy to discuss it at the workshop.
As usual, pizza and other refreshments will be served. See you there!
A defining issue in the philosophy of mind is the so-called “problem of mental causation”, which is the problem of explaining how the various phenomena of our mental lives can make a difference to what happens in the world more generally, as when I raise my hand at a lecture because I want to ask a question. Among contemporary philosophers of mind, there is widespread consensus that the most serious obstacle to making sense of such mental causation is to show how it is consistent with the plausible idea that the physical domain is “causally and explanatorily self-sufficient” (Kim 2005:19), insofar as that fact would appear to exclude mental phenomena from having physical effects. The argument to this conclusion is known as the “Argument from Causal Exclusion” (ACE), and in this paper, I argue that ACE faces an eviscerating dilemma. On the one hand, a construal of the causal self-sufficiency of the physical domain that is strong enough to generate a problem for mental causation is implausible on its face and unsupported by the commitment to science that its proponents argue militates in favor of it. On the other hand, a plausible construal of the causal self-sufficiency of the physical domain is too weak to support ACE’s conclusion that we cannot make nonreductivist sense of mental causation, even when that plausible construal is combined with a reasonable ban on the systematic overdetermination of effects by their causes.
Proponents of the predicate view of names explain the reference of an occurrence of a name NN by invoking the property of bearing NN. They avoid the charge that this view involves a vicious circularity by claiming that bearing NN is not itself to be understood in terms of the reference of actual or possible occurrences of NN. I argue that this approach is fundamentally mistaken. Bearing NN should be explained in terms of the possibilities of reference with NN. Proponents of the predicate view can embrace a virtuous form of circularity by thoroughly rethinking the contribution of convention to the distribution of name-bearing properties. The upshot is a new picture of the structure of name-using practices and the role that such practices have in discourse.
