Philosophy Department

This paper brings together a number of threads in Nietzsche's thought to present a genealogy and critique of the ontological category of "things". These threads are: Nietzsche's "naturalisation" of Kant via Darwin, his evolutionary epistemology that went against classical empiricism and anticipated findings in modern psychology, his insights on language, consciousness and the self, his reflections on atomism and his contributions on how to overcome it via ideas of force and process which anticipated key ideas later proposed by A. N. Whitehead, and finally, his rejection of the Kantian thing-in-itself and how, paired with the notion of perspectivism, he anticipated developments in contemporary epistemology and metaphysics.

This paper is an effort to retrieve, connect and enhance certain ideas found throughout Nietzsche’s works that pertain to causality, in order to make a persuasive case of how our idea of causality came to be and what errors and naiveties were and may still be contained in it. The genealogy reveals the connections and roles played by our idea of the will, the ‘I’, our need for familiarity, the nature of language and how our interpretations of our own psychological processes shaped our notion of causality.

This essay is a product of a more general worry in Ethics. How do we adjudicate between moral systems that disagree? Are there rational ways with which can solve moral differences at the fundamental level? Can we create a general, impartial framework, which will help the adjudication? This worry led me to the current paper (written between 2002-2003 under Brad Hooker's supervision at the University of Reading during my MA in Philosophy). I figured that if there is such a thing as “evidence” for moral principles, then maybe that would be a way to adjudicate between different moral principles; we could ask, “Which moral principles enjoy the most evidence?” and if an answer to this question was possible, and there were ways with which we could impartially weigh the evidence for the disagreeing moral principles, we could then rationally decide which moral principles are more plausible. The majority of the essay is centred in a fruitful tangent regarding the possibility of evidence for moral principles, but in the end I think I at least managed to sketch a way towards a process of impartial adjudication.

S (in alphabetical order) 1 Moritz Appels 1 Melanie Arzberger 1 Gonzalo Conti 2 Simon Duempelmann* 3 Richard Endörfer 3 Friedrike Fröhlich 3 Adrian Gombert 4 Benedikt Kirner 5 Judith Klaiber* 6 Christian Kroll 6 Nils Kruse 7 Eva Kuhn 7 René Leibold 8 Chrys Margaritidis 8 Raphael Ng 9 Alexander Noßmann 10 Maja Petrushevska 10 Simon Piest 11 Alexander Reese 11 Rebecca Ruehle, Bart Engelen and Alfred Archer 12 Lasare Samartzidis 13 Lili Jassemi Schmidt-Thomé 13 Andreas Sorger 14 Josephina Steuber 14 Michaël Suurendonk 15 Andani Thakhathi 15 Magdalena Wallkamm 16 Elisabeth Widmer 17 Daniel Wiegand 17 TIMETABLE 19 ORGANISATORS AND SPONSORS 23

The central claim is that I is a deictic term, like the other singular personal pronouns You and He / She. This establishes the logical character, inferential role, referential function, expressive use and communicative role of all and only expressions used to formulate first-personal reference in any language. The first part of the book shows why we should reject the standard account of I as a ‘pure indexical’ (‘purism’). Purism requires three mutually supportive doctrines which turn out to be myths: a) that a simple rule is sufficient to give the meaning of I (‘rule theory’); b) that one can use I to express thoughts without having to identify what is being referred to (‘independence’); and c) that as a matter of the meaning of I, any use of the term is logically guaranteed against failure to refer (‘the guarantee’). The second part of the book shows why we should endorse the radically new account of I as a deictic term. Substitution instances and the behaviour of I in inference reveal that it has an obligatorily deictic logical character and inferential role. I fulfils its referential function in the deictic way, providing determinacy of reference by making an individual referentially salient in the extra-sentential context. The discriminability of the referent of an I-use depends on recognizing the referentially salient individual. This is true of its discriminability both to the reference-maker and to the audience. So I has the expressive use and communicative role of a deictic term. The conclusion of the book directs research towards the next step, showing how the meaning of I may be used to elucidate the thoughts expressed by the term, and from there questions relating to self-knowledge, practical reasoning, belief-acquisition, and belief-ascription.

Putnam is one of the most influential philosophers of recent times, and his authority stretches far beyond the confines of the discipline. There is a considerable challenge in presenting his work both accurately and accessibly. This is due to the width and diversity of his published writings and to his frequent spells of radical re-thinking. But if we are to understand how and why philosophy is developing as it is, we need to attend to Putnam’s whole career. He has had a dramatic influence on theories of meaning, semantic content, and the nature of mental phenomena, on interpretations of quantum mechanics, theory-change, logic and mathematics, and on what shape we should desire for future philosophy. By presenting the whole of his career within its historical context, I locate a basic unity in his work, achieved through repeated engagements with a small set of hard problems. By foregrounding this integrity, the book aims to be both true to Putnam and helpful to readers of his work.

Abstract: Kant and Strawson diverge on the first person. One influential explanation is as follows: Kant’s ‘criterionless self-ascription’ thesis (that the immediate self-ascription of thoughts and experiences involves no application of empirical criteria of personal identity) was an unparalleled insight; but, because of residual Cartesianism, Kant failed to press it home. The paper expresses certain reservations about this diagnosis; in particular about whether, for all Strawson shows, Kant held the thesis, and whether it would have been consistent, or even correct, for him to have done so.