Journal Description
Philosophies
Philosophies
is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal promoting re-integration of diverse forms of philosophical reflection and scientific research on fundamental issues in science, technology and culture, published bimonthly online by MDPI. The International Society for Information Studies (IS4SI) is affiliated with Philosophies and their members receive a discount on the article processing charge.
- Open Access— free for readers, with article processing charges (APC) paid by authors or their institutions.
- High Visibility: indexed within Scopus, ESCI (Web of Science), PhilPapers, and other databases.
- Journal Rank: JCR - Q2 (History and Philosophy of Science) / CiteScore - Q1 (Philosophy)
- Rapid Publication: manuscripts are peer-reviewed and a first decision is provided to authors approximately 32.5 days after submission; acceptance to publication is undertaken in 8.1 days (median values for papers published in this journal in the first half of 2024).
- Recognition of Reviewers: reviewers who provide timely, thorough peer-review reports receive vouchers entitling them to a discount on the APC of their next publication in any MDPI journal, in appreciation of the work done.
Impact Factor:
0.6 (2023)
Latest Articles
Revisiting Whitehead’s Abstractive Hierarchy
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 158; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050158 (registering DOI) - 19 Oct 2024
Abstract
In Whitehead’s theory of “events”, the primary focus is on the critical assessment of abstraction. Modern science’s heavy reliance on abstraction has resulted in what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, where the abstract is mistaken for the actual. To address this
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In Whitehead’s theory of “events”, the primary focus is on the critical assessment of abstraction. Modern science’s heavy reliance on abstraction has resulted in what Whitehead calls “the fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, where the abstract is mistaken for the actual. To address this issue, Whitehead replaces the traditional category of abstraction with eternal objects and defines the abstractive hierarchy. He aims to clarify the metaphysical status of abstraction and concreteness while dissolving their binary opposition. It is important to note that there are two possible approaches for interpreting an abstractive hierarchy. The differences between these approaches stem from the question of whether abstraction and complexity should be considered identical concepts. Based on their respective understandings, the abstractive hierarchy will exhibit different structural features, as well as varying positions for the concepts of abstraction and eternal objects within Whitehead’s metaphysical thought.
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Open AccessArticle
On the Human in Human Dignity
by
Isaac E. Catt
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 157; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050157 - 7 Oct 2024
Abstract
Only the incurious and philosophically challenged doubt the significance of dignity as a central issue in human interactions. Human dignity is much debated in religion, law, moral philosophy, anthropology, psychiatry, bioethics, sociology, philosophical anthropology, psychology, communication studies, and elsewhere. It is subject to
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Only the incurious and philosophically challenged doubt the significance of dignity as a central issue in human interactions. Human dignity is much debated in religion, law, moral philosophy, anthropology, psychiatry, bioethics, sociology, philosophical anthropology, psychology, communication studies, and elsewhere. It is subject to competing discourses of ontology, epistemology, axiology, and logic. It appears in intercultural and international discussions of rights, autonomy, race, ethnicity, economics, war, and peace. It is contrasted with guilt, shame, and humiliation, both ordinary and extreme. However, the dynamic roots of dignity are usually presupposed or ignored in favor of reductionist typologies and antinomies. Returning us to lived experience and with post-humanist animal studies and the medical model of psychiatry as exemplary cases of reductionism, I interpret H. Plessner’s semiotic phenomenology as a communicative philosophy of the humane in dignity.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communicative Philosophy)
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Intercorporeality, Moral Self-Development and Openness to Alterity: On Merleau-Ponty’s Redeeming of Childhood Experience
by
David M. Kleinberg-Levin
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 156; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050156 - 1 Oct 2024
Abstract
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945), written after his extensive research in psychology, anthropology, and the other social sciences and also after his intensive encounter with the thought of Husserl and Heidegger, is an attempt to leave those malevolent dualisms behind and replace them
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Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945), written after his extensive research in psychology, anthropology, and the other social sciences and also after his intensive encounter with the thought of Husserl and Heidegger, is an attempt to leave those malevolent dualisms behind and replace them with a phenomenology that engages with beings as befits their essence and the conditions of their being: a phenomenology that no longer imposes on our experience a morally irresponsible and offensive ontology; a phenomenology that, instead, reminds us of our responsibility as guardians of nature and life and brings to light very new possibilities for ethical life, community, and dwelling on the earth of this planet.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Merleau-Ponty and Rereading the Phenomenology of Perception)
Open AccessArticle
Death Images in Michael Haneke’s Films
by
Susana Viegas
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 155; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050155 - 1 Oct 2024
Abstract
Although meditating on death has long been a central philosophical practice and is gaining prominence in modern European public discourse, certain misconceptions still persist. The Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke does not shy away from confronting real and performed images of death, combining a
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Although meditating on death has long been a central philosophical practice and is gaining prominence in modern European public discourse, certain misconceptions still persist. The Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke does not shy away from confronting real and performed images of death, combining a denouncing cinematic approach with no less polemic aesthetic and ethical theories. Certainly, visually shocking and disturbing films can, in their own way, challenge the boundaries of what is thinkable, at times even touching upon the unthinkable. Images of death and death-related themes are particularly pervasive in Haneke’s films. His films raise significant philosophical and ethical questions about mortality, violence, death, and ageing. This analysis is a tentative attempt to map how Haneke explores representations of death and dying in Benny’s Video (1992) and Funny Games (1997), with particular reference to the rewind gesture depicted in both films. In doing so, it aims to examine the conversation such films prompt between moving images and the audience.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cinema and Philosophy: Exploring the Intersections of Time, Identity, Ethics and Aesthetics)
Open AccessArticle
The Time of a Missing People: Elliptically Uncovering the Workday of the “Extra” in Bruno Varela’s Papeles Secundarios (2004) and Cuerpos Complementarios (2022)
by
Byron Davies
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050154 - 29 Sep 2024
Abstract
This article examines some work by the Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker and video artist Bruno Varela in order to explore the sense of Gilles Deleuze’s view that modern political cinema is characterized by a “missing” people, to which the adequate response is the
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This article examines some work by the Oaxaca-based Mexican experimental filmmaker and video artist Bruno Varela in order to explore the sense of Gilles Deleuze’s view that modern political cinema is characterized by a “missing” people, to which the adequate response is the people-sustaining or people-generating trance. I argue that the element missing from Deleuze’s discussion is how the typical way for a people to go “missing” under capitalism involves the obfuscation of their labor, an idea that sustains the materially grounded trance in Varela’s Papeles Secundarios (2004) and Cuerpos Complementarios (2022), drawn from the filmmaker’s experience as casting director of Iranian artist Shirin Neshat’s production of her video installation Tooba (2002) in Oaxaca. The article discusses the “baroque critique” involved in Varela’s elliptically representing the workday of the non-professional Oaxacan actors employed in Neshat’s production, understood here as a critique articulated using the detritus of that production. The result is a paradigm of trans-temporal playfulness on film that also challenges the claims to trans-temporal experience sought in Neshat’s work. Thus, the article also locates these arguments within debates about whether films can “do philosophy”, including a hypothesis about the obfuscations of labor lying behind why making-of documentaries—and their capacities to critique the philosophical pretensions of their original subjects—have not figured more centrally in those debates.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cinema and Philosophy: Exploring the Intersections of Time, Identity, Ethics and Aesthetics)
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Landscape between Representation and Performativity
by
Paolo Furia
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 153; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050153 - 29 Sep 2024
Abstract
This article explores the concept of landscape through the lens of performativity, challenging the traditional visual-centric understanding rooted in Western art and culture but without denying the visual and representational character of landscape. It examines the evolution of landscape representation, from its origins
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This article explores the concept of landscape through the lens of performativity, challenging the traditional visual-centric understanding rooted in Western art and culture but without denying the visual and representational character of landscape. It examines the evolution of landscape representation, from its origins in linear perspective and Cartesian dualism to contemporary approaches that integrate performative practices. The analysis highlights the dialectical tension between visual representation and immersive, multisensory experiences, arguing for a more integrated view that acknowledges the performative aspects of the visual. By re-evaluating the role of distance, vision, and representation, the article advocates for a nuanced understanding of landscape that balances the visual with embodied practices, ultimately proposing that landscape should be seen as a dynamic interplay between seeing and performing.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Aesthetics of the Performing Arts in the Contemporary Landscape)
Open AccessArticle
Addressing Fascism: A New Politics of Experience?
by
Thaddeus D. Martin
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050152 - 27 Sep 2024
Abstract
(1) Background: The rise of fascism in American and, indeed, throughout the world, prompts a question: why does fascism remain persistent in human existence? The question is one that Karl Jaspers might have asked regarding the origin and goal of history. The political
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(1) Background: The rise of fascism in American and, indeed, throughout the world, prompts a question: why does fascism remain persistent in human existence? The question is one that Karl Jaspers might have asked regarding the origin and goal of history. The political description of fascism is not adequate to describe the lived experience of those drawn to it, and to assume such people to be irrational does not suffice. Rather, culture provides semiotic structure, which is phenomenologically embodied by people in a Mitwelt. (2) Results: Perhaps what is needed is not a political description of fascism but a communicological analysis that proceeds as a semiotic phenomenology of fascism as it is culturally embodied. Jaspers’ concept of evil frames fascism as colonialism turned against itself, disguised banally in such phenomena as Schadenfreude, as described by Lanigan. (3) I approach this question using a semiotic phenomenological method. (4) Conclusions: The fading colonial dominance in the form of cultural hegemony creates Laingian ontological insecurity and a desire for one’s inner fascist to identify itself in others. Addressing fascism requires new politics of experience.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communicative Philosophy)
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The Multiple Aspects of the Given—Ontological Remarks on Ernst Mach’s Empiricism
by
Jan-Ivar Lindén
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 151; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050151 - 27 Sep 2024
Abstract
Philosophers often rely on sciences of their own time. This is especially true for scientists writing philosophical works. In the case of Ernst Mach, the scientific references are mainly to physics, physiology, evolutionary biology and—in a somewhat different manner—the new discipline of psychology.
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Philosophers often rely on sciences of their own time. This is especially true for scientists writing philosophical works. In the case of Ernst Mach, the scientific references are mainly to physics, physiology, evolutionary biology and—in a somewhat different manner—the new discipline of psychology. Like so many authors in the late 19th century, Mach had extreme confidence in the methods of the natural sciences. However, this trait, often called scientism or positivism, can easily be used in polemical accounts that obscure other aspects of Mach’s thought. Mach is well-known for both his analysis of sensations and his evolutionary conception of perception and knowledge. The tension between the ambition to clarify the empirical basis of perception on the one hand and the focus on the natural origins of human perception on the other hand is, however, considerable. A comparison of these two perspectives can contribute to an ontological understanding of experience that sheds new light on the much-discussed topic of sense data and at the same time clarifies the difference between experience and observation and the role of experimental science in this context. In some respects, Mach seems closer to William James than to his followers in the Vienna circle. The accusation of idealism made by Lenin in his influential critique of positivism overlooks the implications of this naturalist approach but offers the occasion to dwell on the ontological implications of something that can be called natural historicity. Comparisons with Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes and Kant situate the empiricist theory of perception.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Vienna Circle: Shaping Contemporary Analytic Philosophy and Its History)
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‘Show Don’t Tell’: What Creative Writing Has to Teach Philosophy
by
David Musgrave
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050150 - 26 Sep 2024
Abstract
Poetry and philosophy have had a close but uneasy relationship in the western tradition. Both share an eschewal of the discovery of novel facts, but are somewhat opposed in that discovery is a central aim of poetry, but not at all the aim
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Poetry and philosophy have had a close but uneasy relationship in the western tradition. Both share an eschewal of the discovery of novel facts, but are somewhat opposed in that discovery is a central aim of poetry, but not at all the aim of philosophy. Through a close reading of W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ and a versification of part of G.E. Moore’s ‘A Defence of Common Sense’, I argue that what poetry shows corresponds, in a broadly symbolist sense, to Wittgenstein’s understanding of the miraculous nature of the world. In this regard, poetry can offer philosophy clarity, in the form of its tonal architecture, value, and ethics, and may also constitute a perspicuous representation. Poetry remains in a perpetual mode of potential, as well as being possessed of a vatic autonomy.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
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The Evanescence of Ritual and Its Consequences: Reflections on the Phenomenology of Human Communication in the Rise of Cybernetic Culture
by
Frank J. Macke
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 149; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050149 - 25 Sep 2024
Abstract
This paper addresses semiotic elements of ritual in human encounter. The notion of an essential ritual presence in the existential/communicative connection of persons has been established in the work of Langer, Gadamer, and Jakobson. Yet, as Richard Lanigan maintains, vital aspects of Jakobson’s
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This paper addresses semiotic elements of ritual in human encounter. The notion of an essential ritual presence in the existential/communicative connection of persons has been established in the work of Langer, Gadamer, and Jakobson. Yet, as Richard Lanigan maintains, vital aspects of Jakobson’s model of communication are typically missed in the application of his work, a consequence of which is that social science no longer differentiates between “communication” and “information”. As such, everything perceived as meaningful is reducible to “message”, and thus, effective communication means merely “finding the right message”. The regression to our current cybernetic world, along with the intellectual paradigms enabling it, was never a foregone conclusion, but the entrenchment of social science in information theory makes it clear that an epistemological commitment to a semiotic phenomenology of communicative existence—and the visibility of ritual life—may well be our only way out.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communicative Philosophy)
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From Subjects to Assemblages: Insights from Oldboy
by
Gordana Lazić
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 148; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050148 - 20 Sep 2024
Abstract
Drawing on the insights of media ecology, this essay explores the potential of media to mobilize representations, feelings, and habits to transform individuals into extensions of media themselves. Specifically, I undertake an analysis of the South Korean film Oldboy, which I argue
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Drawing on the insights of media ecology, this essay explores the potential of media to mobilize representations, feelings, and habits to transform individuals into extensions of media themselves. Specifically, I undertake an analysis of the South Korean film Oldboy, which I argue demonstrates how, in the contemporary moment, media narratively and affectively mobilize individuals to become not only ideological subjects but also media appendages that, consequently, carry out cinema’s central functions.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Communication Technology)
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The Non-Anthropocentric Other in Film: Towards a Spectral Ethics of Film
by
Christine Reeh-Peters
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 147; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050147 - 19 Sep 2024
Abstract
This article aims to add a further perspective to the discussion of the relationship between film and ethics. This perspective is important in today’s context, as the omnipresence of digital and mobile audiovisual images in everyday life increasingly determines our thinking and behaviour.
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This article aims to add a further perspective to the discussion of the relationship between film and ethics. This perspective is important in today’s context, as the omnipresence of digital and mobile audiovisual images in everyday life increasingly determines our thinking and behaviour. However, there is a lack of appropriate critical reflection and ethical understanding of these images and their ontology. This article proposes a machine ethics of film from a film-philosophical perspective. Such an ethics draws on critical posthumanism, namely on Karen Barad’s “ethics of mattering”, which explicitly relates to Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy of the Other and their death. Thereby, special attention is given to the ontological nexus of film and death, as well as to the idea of film’s spectrality (drawing on, e.g., Derrida, Barthes, and Leutrat), a context that is discussed along with Barad’s diffractive view on quantum entanglement. Following from the author’s earlier approaches to Barad’s agential realism in the context of film-philosophy and certain Heidegger-based arguments set out in earlier writings about film and death, this article introduces the figure of what is called the “machinic spectre of film”. From here, the outline of a possible spectral ethics of film is considered by giving reasons for the exploration of further questions.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cinema and Philosophy: Exploring the Intersections of Time, Identity, Ethics and Aesthetics)
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Horror as Film Philosophy
by
Lorenz Engell
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050146 - 18 Sep 2024
Abstract
The article starts from Gilles Deleuze’s assumption of film being a philosophy in its own right and applies it to the horror genre. It reads Stanley Cavell’s concept of genre, Timothy Jay Walker’s work on the Horror of the Other (1) and Eugene
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The article starts from Gilles Deleuze’s assumption of film being a philosophy in its own right and applies it to the horror genre. It reads Stanley Cavell’s concept of genre, Timothy Jay Walker’s work on the Horror of the Other (1) and Eugene Thacker’s understanding of philosophical horror (2). It researches horror film as philosophically relevant access to nothingness (3) and shifts to the operations of assigning places to nothingness according to its respective place of access (off screen, on screen, behind the screen/behind the camera) (4). It then gives short analyses of Midsommar (5), Hereditary (6), Tarantula (7), and The Conjuring (8). In Tarantula, the screen functions as a shield against the agent of nothingness residing behind it. Once surmounted from behind by nothingness, the screen is finally purged. In Hereditary and Midsommar, nothingness is always already here, in full light, constantly transforming everything into nothing. In The Conjuring, the morphings and vectorial movements have nothingness evaporate from the screen to what lies behind it, namely (digital) picture technology. The screen turns into a membrane between nothingness and its condition, technology. As a consequence, we have to switch from philosophical horror to technological horror as access to nothingness (9).
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Cinema and Philosophy: Exploring the Intersections of Time, Identity, Ethics and Aesthetics)
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Making Waves: Fanon, Phenomenology, and the Sonic
by
Michael J. Monahan
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 145; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050145 - 12 Sep 2024
Abstract
Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial setting. I argue that this is at least in part due to Fanon’s background in phenomenology, and the crucial role that intersubjectivity plays in the phenomenological account of
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Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks opens with a discussion of language in the colonial setting. I argue that this is at least in part due to Fanon’s background in phenomenology, and the crucial role that intersubjectivity plays in the phenomenological account of the subject. I begin by demonstrating the phenomenological underpinnings of Fanon’s chapter on language. I then further develop the background phenomenological account of the subject, showing how this informs Fanon’s project. I then develop a sonic account of the subject, arguing that metaphors of sound best represent the phenomenological account of the subject. Finally, I build on this sonic account to draw out the implications for our thinking about communication and liberation in Fanon’s work and beyond.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communicative Philosophy)
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Poetic Judgement in Everyday Speech
by
Paul Magee
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 144; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050144 - 11 Sep 2024
Abstract
Speaking is a highly conventional enterprise. But unusual usages are, nonetheless, frequently encountered. Some of these novelties fall flat, while others find favour, to the extent of entering common usage. He considered to say something will sound wrong to most native speakers, while
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Speaking is a highly conventional enterprise. But unusual usages are, nonetheless, frequently encountered. Some of these novelties fall flat, while others find favour, to the extent of entering common usage. He considered to say something will sound wrong to most native speakers, while The military disappeared her husband, which was more or less unsayable prior to the 1960s, has come to seem fine. Linguist Adelle E. Goldberg has recently argued that speakers display a remarkable openness to new words, phrases and even grammatical forms, when there is no current way of communicating whatever it is those novel strings serve to express. My paper exegetes Goldberg’s findings to illuminate the question of poetic judgement. It proposes that there is a strong parallel between how people judge linguistic innovation in everyday speaking, and the way poets and critics judge innovative poetic diction: in both cases there is a premium on what cannot otherwise be said. The paper proceeds to deepen the analogies between these two modes of judgement. It starts by linking the lack of rules for determining the acceptability of new words and phrases in everyday speaking with the indifference to prior rules associated with aesthetic judgement in Kant’s third critique, and apparent in the appraisals of many a contemporary poetry critic. It turns to consider the claim that what motivates the judgements under consideration is a preference in the human conceptual system for distinct symbols to have mutually exclusive meanings. A fourth section concerns what Construction Grammar, the broad field of Goldberg’s intervention, has to reveal about the conditions under which new words and phrases can take on meaning in the first place. This too has something to suggest about why we judge certain poetic efforts poor, others landed.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Poetry and (the Philosophy of) Ordinary Language)
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Didier Eribon vs. ‘The People’—A Critique of Chantal Mouffe’s Left Populism
by
Pascal Oliver Omlin
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050143 - 9 Sep 2024
Abstract
In this article, I develop a critique of Chantal Mouffe’s leftist populism and its construction of ‘the people’ against an opposed ‘them’, from a perspective informed by the thought of Didier Eribon. I draw on both his public interventions and his theoretical work,
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In this article, I develop a critique of Chantal Mouffe’s leftist populism and its construction of ‘the people’ against an opposed ‘them’, from a perspective informed by the thought of Didier Eribon. I draw on both his public interventions and his theoretical work, employing his concepts of return, society as verdict, and his two principles of critical thinking to question the desirability of crafting ‘the people’ in the first place. I contend that Eribon’s critique renders Mouffe’s proposal problematic on three accounts. First, her approach is too politically volatile; its instability leaves it devoid of a critical analysis of the differences between concrete social positions, struggles, and subjectivities within ‘the people’. Consequently, the political becomes merely a function of the social. Yet, the social and its determining power remain mostly unaddressed by her framework. Second, its simplistic opposition of an overly generalised ‘the people’ against ‘the oligarchy’ is susceptible to right-wing populist appropriations. Third, for a shot at hegemony and a general appeal, it eclipses plurality and dissensus within ‘the people’. In contrast, Eribon encourages a connection between the social and the political by suggesting that a self-critical analysis be mutually intertwined with social analysis. Instead of merely mobilising affects, they must be critically interrogated. Instead of summoning ‘the people’, a return to their respective genesis must be attempted. Unless both principles of critical thinking, the insights of return, and societal verdicts are deployed to come to terms with the social determinisms at hand, the ‘people’s’ mobilisation against an opposed ‘them’ risks sacrificing pluralism and equality alike and neglecting the criteria of the desirability of specific changes in favour of a “whatever it costs” attempt at hegemony.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Theories of Plurality and the Democratic We)
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Decolonial Philosophies and Complex Communication as Praxis
by
Colette Sybille Jung
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 142; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050142 - 6 Sep 2024
Abstract
Coalitional communication is a dwelling amidst non-dominant differences that requires introspective, complex communicative philosophy and practice. My concern is with differentiation in hierarchies. They are understood and shaped by colonial modernity. They are historical logics and practices of settler colonialism, enslavement, and citizenship.
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Coalitional communication is a dwelling amidst non-dominant differences that requires introspective, complex communicative philosophy and practice. My concern is with differentiation in hierarchies. They are understood and shaped by colonial modernity. They are historical logics and practices of settler colonialism, enslavement, and citizenship. My perspective is feminist, decolonial critiques of modern, capitalist social systems. The analysis is grounded in communicative philosophy in intercultural contexts where folks intend justice and equality. For example, in political democracies, localized social alliances actually harm one another being hegemonic by taking routes of familiarity through structures of linguistic and practical cultural systems. Communicative projects of liberation across oppressions (with monologic and single-axis perceptions) tend to miss intersections of our raced and gendered experiences. The result is unintelligibility among us. In this state, one can sense in the body the space of the liminal—with both a communicative impasse and opening. Rather than aligning liberation and domination in the impasse, I describe the creativity of liminal space as a communicative opening. The opening is a recognition of multiplicity and a refusal to assimilate each other’s lived experiences into familiar, complex codes of habituated thought and action. Examining communication hostilities in oppressed–oppressing relations is a necessary condition for coalition. Thus, coalitional communication is a call to engage a full sense of listening to one another as relevant. Ways that decipher codes and signals of resistance come to constitute the project of creating relevant intelligibility together. Praxis as critical, dialectical, and intersectional thinking is part of this method.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Communicative Philosophy)
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Belarus’s Sound Body
by
Justin Eckstein
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 141; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050141 - 5 Sep 2024
Abstract
This study delves into the creative protest tactics of Belarusian activists in 2011, highlighting their use of “sound bodies” created through clapping to challenge authoritarian constraints. The research posits that these ethereal sound bodies exert significant normative pressure on the regime by challenging
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This study delves into the creative protest tactics of Belarusian activists in 2011, highlighting their use of “sound bodies” created through clapping to challenge authoritarian constraints. The research posits that these ethereal sound bodies exert significant normative pressure on the regime by challenging the regime’s legitimacy. By analyzing the clapping protests as civil disobedience, this study illustrates the effectiveness of this non-visual form of protest in compelling the authoritarian regime to address the collective call for change. Through this lens, this paper contributes a nuanced understanding of how decentralized protest strategies, particularly those leveraging sound, can serve as potent mechanisms for challenging oppressive governance in a digitally connected global landscape. This essay thus intervenes into the realms of argumentation theory and sound studies.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Communication Technology)
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Quantum Mechanics and Inclusive Materialism
by
Javier Pérez-Jara
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 140; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050140 - 3 Sep 2024
Abstract
Since its inception, the intricate mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics has empowered physicists to describe and predict specific physical events known as quantum processes. However, this success in probabilistic predictions has been accompanied by a profound challenge in the ontological interpretation of the
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Since its inception, the intricate mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics has empowered physicists to describe and predict specific physical events known as quantum processes. However, this success in probabilistic predictions has been accompanied by a profound challenge in the ontological interpretation of the theory. This interpretative complexity stems from two key aspects. Firstly, quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory that, so far, is not derivable from any more basic scientific theory. Secondly, it delves into a realm of invisible phenomena that often contradicts our intuitive and commonsensical notions of matter and causality. Despite its notorious difficulties of interpretation, the most widely accepted set of views of quantum phenomena has been known as the Copenhagen interpretation since the beginning of quantum mechanics. According to these views, the correct ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics is incompatible with ontological realism in general and with philosophical materialism in particular. Anti-realist and anti-materialist interpretations of quantum matter have survived until today. This paper discusses these perspectives, arguing that materialistic interpretations of quantum mechanics are compatible with its mathematical formalism, while anti-realist and anti-materialist views are based on wrong philosophical assumptions. However, although physicalism provides a better explanation for quantum phenomena than idealism, its downward reductionism prevents it from accounting for more complex forms of matter, such as biological or sociocultural systems. Thus, the paper argues that neither physicalism nor idealism can explain the universe. I propose then a non-reductionistic form of materialism called inclusive materialism. The conclusion is that the acknowledgment of the qualitative irreducibility of ontological emergent levels above the purely physical one does not deny philosophical materialism but enriches it.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Philosophy and Quantum Mechanics)
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Tense-Logic and the Revival of Philosophical Theology
by
David Jakobsen
Philosophies 2024, 9(5), 139; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9050139 - 31 Aug 2024
Abstract
The article discusses Nicholas Wolterstorff’s explanations for the flourishing of philosophical theology in analytic philosophy by taking Arthur Norman Prior’s (1914–1969) development of tense-logic into account. Prior’s work challenged the prevailing anti-metaphysical norms in analytic philosophy and introduced an alternative understanding of the
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The article discusses Nicholas Wolterstorff’s explanations for the flourishing of philosophical theology in analytic philosophy by taking Arthur Norman Prior’s (1914–1969) development of tense-logic into account. Prior’s work challenged the prevailing anti-metaphysical norms in analytic philosophy and introduced an alternative understanding of the relationship between logic and metaphysics. Prior’s application of tense-logic to an analysis of the concept of existence in quantified tense-logic and his exploration of future contingency in branching time semantics provide a strong reason for why analytic philosophy naturally incorporates philosophical theology. These considerations lead us to modify Wolterstorff’s emphasis on the importance of meta-epistemology for the resurgence of philosophical theology. A development in logic was necessary. Furthermore, Prior’s importance questions the assumption that philosophical theology was a consequence of theistic philosophers seeking ways to defend theistic beliefs in analytic philosophy. This is not true for Prior. His invention of tense-logic and discussion of omniscience was driven by an existential interest in finding answers to philosophical problems concerning divine foreknowledge and human freedom which ultimately led him to reject his Christian beliefs.
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(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Concepts of Time and Tense)
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