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"McDonough, Richard"
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The Meaning of the Liar Paradox in Randall Jarrell's 'Eighth Air Force'
Do logical paradoxes, like Eubulides's liar paradox (the claim that \"I am now lying\" is true if and only if it is false), have any \"existential\" significance or are they mere brain puzzles for the mathematically minded? This paper argues that Randall Jarrell's poem \"Eighth Air Force\" contains a poetic use of Eubulides's liar paradox, spoken by Pontius Pilate's wife in her statements about the \"murder\" of Jesus, in order to capture, symbolically, the inherent universal duplicity (inauthenticity) of human life, specifically, the fact that human life, even in its true statements, is an inseparable blend of \"truth\" and \"lies.\"
Journal Article
Sartre's Nausea as Liar Paradox
My paper argues that Sartre builds a literary variation of the liar paradox into Nausea in order to capture the paradoxical ontology of human life in Being and Nothingness, that is, to illustrate in literary form his view that the human being is-not-what-it-is and is-what-it-is-not. Sartre thereby attempts to express in literary form his view that it is impossible consistently or truly to represent human life in stories, that is, it is impossible consistently or truly to put human life into words. Indeed, Sartre holds that the expression of human life in words is the opposite of human life.
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WITTGENSTEIN'S \PRIVATE LANGUAGE ARGUMENT\ AND THE ISSUE OF GOD'S OMNISCIENCE
In his \"private language argument,\" Wittgenstein argues that the notion of a private language, a language that it is logically impossible for anyone other than the language user themselves to understand, is incoherent. For example, it is sometimes claimed that since no one but oneself can be directly aware of one's own sensations, everyone speaks their own private sensation language that cannot be understood by others. Wittgenstein argues that this is an illusion because, since there are no objective standards for what one means by the words in one's private language, those words have no meaning at all, not even for oneself. After presenting a summary of the private language argument, and explaining Wittgenstein's crucial distinction between criteria and symptoms, the paper argues that Wittgenstein's own prima facia religious beliefs about God provide a counterexample to his private language argument - which shows that it is fallacious. The paper then considers whether Wittgenstein's striking remark that even if God looked into our minds he would not be able to see what we are thinking about enables him to escape this criticism and argues that it does not. Finally, the paper shows how the present interpretation of Wittgenstein's private language argument is different from Kripke's interpretation, with which it is superficially similar in some respects, and sketches a positive model of how an omniscient God can know the truth about N's private use of words. Wittgenstein's elusive notion of God is illuminated in the course of the exposition.
Journal Article
THE DAO THAT CANNOT BE NAMED
This essay claims that the first stanza of the Dao-de Jing (DDJ) attempts to formulate the sense of paradox—and loss—in the transition from pre-linguistic humanity to the first linguistically self-aware Chinese generation. Hegel's account of the silence of the Sphinx is employed to lay the ground for a Kantian conjectural account of this paradoxical transition. Nagel's question \"What is it like to be a bat?\" is employed as a model for the \"Kantian\" conjectural question posed in the first stanza of the DDJ: \"What is it like to be a member of this primordial linguistically self-aware generation?\" Also discussed here is the question whether there is a Kantian metaphysical dimension to the DDJ. Finally, an explanation is offered as to why understanding such primordial texts is both so difficult and so important for modern thinkers.
Journal Article
Plato's cosmic animal vs. the Daoist cosmic plant: Religious and ideological implications
Heidegger claims that it is the ultimate job of philosophy to preserve the force of the \"elemental words\" in which human beings express themselves. Many of these elemental words are found in the various cosmogonies that have informed cultural ideologies around the world. Two of these \"elemental words,\" which shape the ideologies (ethics, aesthetics, and religion of a culture) are the animal-model of the cosmos in Plato's Timaeus and the mechanical models developed in the 17th-18th centuries in Europe. The paper argues that Daoism employs a third, and neglected, plant-model of cosmogony and of human life that provides an illuminating contrast to the other more well-known models. First, Plato's animal-model of the cosmos and, second, the alternative Daoist plant-model of the cosmos are discussed. Third, the paper replies to the objection that the organic model in general and the plant-model in particular cannot accommodate human freedom. Fourth, it is shown how the Daoist plant-model supports a novel account of the central Daoist notion of wu-wei (doing nothing, but everything gets done). Fifth, the paper rebuts the objection that the Daoist plant-model of the cosmos and human life is fatally nihilistic. Sixth, the paper argues that the Daoist account of the origin of human religion, art and historical feeling cannot be properly understood apart from its plant-model of the cosmos and human life.
Journal Article
The Gale–Pruss cosmological argument: Tractarian and advaita Hindu objections
The article criticizes Gale and Pruss's new cosmological argument (hereafter GP) which purports to prove that the world is created/designed by a powerful intelligent necessarily existing supernatural being (not the full-fledged God of theism). First, the article employs a ‘necessitist’ counterexample to GP's modal premise, S5. Second, it is argued that GP presupposes a restricted range of possible accounts of the generation of the universe. Third, it is argued that GP's argument that the creator is a necessary being is flawed. Fourth, it is argued that GP's argument against Quinn's objection, modelled on the advaita Hindu view of creation by an impersonal being, also fails.
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Wittgenstein: from a religious point of view?
Wittgenstein's remark to Drury that he looks at philosophical problems from a religious point of view has greatly puzzled commentators. The paper argues that the readings given by commentators Malcolm, Winch and Labron are illuminating, but inadequate. Second, using Wittgenstein's \"use-conception of meaning\" as an example, the paper proposes a more adequate reading that emphasizes Wittgenstein's view that \"nothing is hidden\" (Philosophical Investigations, para. 435). In this connection, the paper examines Fodor's critique of Wittgenstein's \"use-conception\" and shows how Fodor only refutes a \"misuse-conception meaning\" because he presupposes a kind of linguistic meaning, the kind that Wittgenstein emphasizes, that is \"already before his eyes\" (and, therefore, prior to Fodor's theories of meaning). Wittgenstein's view that the truth is already before one's eyes is further explained by employing an ethical analogy with Raskolnikov's enlightenment in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. Finally, the paper addresses the difficult question whether Wittgenstein is, despite his own denials, \"a religious man\", and argues that there is a non-trivial religious dimension in Wittgenstein's life but that there are several important senses in which Wittgenstein is correct that he is not a religious person.
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WITTGENSTEIN'S AUGUSTINIAN COSMOGONY IN ZETTEL 608
Most commentators see Wittgenstein's Zettel 608 as suggesting that language and thought might arise out of chaos at the neural center- but this contradicts Wittgenstein's signature view that philosophers must not advance theories. Following Wittgenstein's remark to Drury that he cannot help looking at problems from a religious point of view, the paper argues that Zettel 608 employs religious creation language of the sort found in Augustine to suggest a new paradigm in the philosophies of language and mind-that language and thought arise, not out of neural processes, but out of the \"chaos\" of actions at the center of human forms of life.
Journal Article
Religious fundamentalism: a conceptual critique
The article argues that religious fundamentalism, understood, roughly, as the view that people must obey God's commands unconditionally, is conceptually incoherent because such religious fundamentalists inevitably must substitute human judgement for God's judgement. The article argues, first, that fundamentalism, founded upon the normal sort of indirect communications from God, is indefensible. Second, the article considers the crucial case in which God is said to communicate directly to human beings, and argues that the fundamentalist interpretation of such communications is also incoherent, and, on this basis, argues that religious fundamentalism is actually an extreme form of irreligiousness. Finally, the article considers Kierkegaard's prima facie defence of unconditional religious faith, and argues that, despite some similarity with the fundamentalists, Kierkegaard's appreciation of human finitude leads him to a profoundly anti-fundamentalist stance.
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