Monthly Archives: December 2010

philosophical degeneracy

Posted on December 31, 2010 by

Focused as I have been on issues in continental thought, I have not read as much in the analytic tradition as I should, and hence I am often late to books I probably should have read a long time ago. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments

From Normative to Problematizing Semantics

Posted on December 21, 2010 by

In my previous posts on Brandom, I may have come across as unduly critical, or as dismissive. That couldn’t be further from the truth. There is much that I find in Brandom’s work that is important, and that I will … Continue reading →

Posted in Deleuze, Robert Brandom | 2 Comments

reculer pour mieux sauter

Posted on December 18, 2010 by

Whether knowingly drawing from Nietzsche’s claim or not, from Human All-too-Human, which asserts that ‘He who strays from tradition becomes a sacrifice to the extraordinary; he who remains in tradition is its slave. Destruction follows in any case’, David Lewis’s … Continue reading →

Posted in David Lewis, Robert Brandom | Leave a comment

Spinoza, appetites, and inferentialism

Posted on December 18, 2010 by

Appetite, as Spinoza makes clear, is nothing but our striving to persevere in our being, and this striving, “as related to the mind and body together, it is called appetite” (3P9S). As related to our body, therefore, our appetite is … Continue reading →

Posted in Dialetheism, Robert Brandom, Spinoza | 2 Comments

Parrots and Concepts

Posted on December 17, 2010 by

In one of his favorite examples, Robert Brandom points out that while a parrot may very well respond differentially to colors, and even say “red” when presented with a red swatch, the parrot is nonetheless responding much as a thermometer … Continue reading →

Posted in Hume, Robert Brandom | 7 Comments

Intellectual Mitosis

Posted on December 15, 2010 by

One does not have to do more than a cursory review of intellectual history to find intellectual bifurcations everywhere. There’s nominalism vs. realism, rationalism vs. empiricism, analytic vs. continental, and so on. Earlier this month at the Claremont Conference Steven … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Dialetheism

Posted on December 14, 2010 by

Having just finished Graham Priest’s book, in contradiction, a book central to the logical tradition Priest calls dialetheism, I’ve decided to post some thoughts to the blog. Logic is not my area of specialization, nor do I have much to … Continue reading →

Posted in Dialetheism, Graham Priest | 3 Comments