This paper provides a concise overview and summary of the positions on facts, events, and realism... more This paper provides a concise overview and summary of the positions on facts, events, and realism in the philosophy of history as developed in my work. This summary is then used to clarify and resolve confusions on these points found in various essays contained in the volume The Poverty of Anti-Realism.
As explicated in Matthieu Queloz’s ground-breaking book, The Practical Origin of Ideas: Genealogy... more As explicated in Matthieu Queloz’s ground-breaking book, The Practical Origin of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering, a genealogical method promises a distinctive type of naturalist origin story about norms. Yet conceptual inheritances come freighted. The dead hand of all past generations often weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. To relieve pressures bequeathed by troubled conceptual heritages, Queloz proposes a novel strategy by which to “reverse-engineer” concepts. This approach promises both to explain what proves worth valuing in received modes of thinking as well as to provide guidance regarding how to refine and improve conceptual kluges. But depicting historical relations of power/knowledge proves not to be the game afoot for Queloz. For in his hands, ‘practical’ reflects a purely presentist perspective. Present interests thus determine how the label ‘practical’ applies. From that perspective one then crafts a retrospective account of genesis—a genealogy. This relentlessly presentist perspective reveals that the subtitle of Queloz’s book stands in an unacknowledged but revealing tension with the main title. For while imagined genealogies look back from the present to identify a genesis, reverse engineering prescribes for a better future. This naturalism thus promises to retain for epistemology an explicitly evaluative and prescriptive role. But how can a naturalism transcend being something other than descriptive? Queloz’s understanding of naturalism bakes into the construction of any promised genealogy a teleology, one unknowable to those in the past (if only because not actual) but one which Queloz nonetheless takes as a means to improving on our understanding.
The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, 2023
What did Quine take himself to be contributing to the debate about meaning with regard to his cla... more What did Quine take himself to be contributing to the debate about meaning with regard to his claim about the indeterminacy of translation? This chapter offers a reconsideration of what to take as Quine's target in tracking the evolution of his debate with Carnap that crystallizes in the indeterminacy thesis. Quine, I claim, ultimately realizes that the only explanatory function a theory of meaning could serve would be to assume the presence of antecedent features that then permit a systematic determination delimiting the set of meaningful terms and meaningful statements. Such a theory explains because it provides non-accidental, indeed determinate reasons for membership in that set. This specific assumption therefore attributes a special metaphysical status to meaning. lt is metaphysical because it takes such features as in place prior to any empirical inquiry and in a way that can be tested for but not disconfirmed by evidence. This chapter documents Quine's efforts over time to articulate and specify how this issue about the nature of meaning separates him from Carnap.
The Routledge Companion to Historical Theory, ed. C. van den Akker, 2022
This is an overview of the origins and evolution of what has come to be known as analytical philo... more This is an overview of the origins and evolution of what has come to be known as analytical philosophy of history.
How did I come to write about the problems that I do? Certain accidents of fate determinatively i... more How did I come to write about the problems that I do? Certain accidents of fate determinatively impacted both my enduring intellectual interests as well as my opportunities to pursue them. Philosophy proved to provide an academic home that accommodated my peculiar interests. In this regard, a quote from White’s ‘Burden of History’ captured a challenge that I long sought to address: ‘We choose our past in the same way we choose our future’. Fashioning a philosophical rationale for this view guided much of my writing. Philosophers are not arbiters of matters of fact. But a defining feature of philosophy involves worries about how to avoid making weaker arguments appear the stronger. Rationality as I understand the notion requires making inferential structure explicit. My efforts to ‘revive’ analytical philosophy of history as with much of what I have written or hope to write reflect ongoing attempts to reconcile a sense of the contingency of what passes for rationality and a belief that some arguments are better than others. In this regard, reimagining logic to include a narrative form permits a rethinking of whether or not the ‘Burden of History’ proves unique to historiography. I argue not.
This article provides a survey and analysis of Danto's influential work in the philosophy of hist... more This article provides a survey and analysis of Danto's influential work in the philosophy of history.
Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social, 2021
Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how ... more Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how the history of social science stands littered with failed theories, ones that aspired to formulate a science of the social. But why? A key insight guiding his work from early to late has been a keen appreciation of a need to clarify what such a science is a science of. That is, Turner almost alone among the leading social theorists of the last several decades understood that resolving prospects for a science of the social required first achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such explanation. His guiding question is: Just what is it for something to be both social and yet sufficiently thing-like so there can be something for some science to explain? In tracking how his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the time from his first book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes explananda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a social science reshapes as it moves into the twenty-first century.
Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistem... more Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg's book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now "preempting" explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg's argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one.
Kalle Pihlainen’s book reworks seven essays published over the last dozen years. Pihlainen’s Pref... more Kalle Pihlainen’s book reworks seven essays published over the last dozen years. Pihlainen’s Preface and Hayden White’s Foreword articulate a cri de coeur. Both fear that something important has been missed. White’s Foreword somewhat cryptically characterizes Pihlainen’s book as “metacritical,” and locates Pihlainen in the role of being a “serious reader” for the community of theorists of history. What does it mean to be a “serious” reader? White never says. But following White’s hint, Pihlainen can be read as updating Marx’s conception of the task of unmasking sources of alienation by focusing on the reasons for the estrangement of histories from a wider audience. For him, “the core case is that the ‘historical’ (situated) nature of history itself needs to be acknowledged” (p. xiv). It remains unacknowledged so long as the source of meaning in history continues to be displaced. For even those who emphasize narrative form
tend to talk as if meanings were imposed by some factor other than human intervention, as if form magically imbues content with significance. But this is one more symptom, if such is needed, of collective bad faith, a denial that only people make meaning. By taking disembodied literary forms as repositories of significance, responsibility for meaning is once again deflected or deferred. In this key regard, Pihlainen’s claim to place “decided emphasis on its [historical theory’s] ethical-political momentum” (p. xv) signals that the issues he intends to foreground are not epistemological or discursive. Pihlainen rightly suspects that all the talk of “narrativism” and “discourse” serves only to evade confronting the truly difficult moral and political challenges that writing represents. His various chapters identify these evasions and the challenges that remain.
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy, Ed. P. Rawling & P. Wilson, 2019
This paper argues that philosophical skepticism about the existence of language famously articul... more This paper argues that philosophical skepticism about the existence of language famously articulated by Davidson—“there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed”—presupposes and has its roots in Quine’s criticisms of Carnap’s views on linguistic frameworks. Specifically, this paper examines the role of Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance in his account of linguistic frameworks, and reasons for Quine’s rejection of it. There exists a close link between Carnap’s advocacy of The Principle of Tolerance and his way of conceiving the relation of the Principle of Tolerance to metaphysics, practical reason, and pragmatics. Carnap’s emphasis assumes that practical choices are there to be made, once metaphysical constraints have been lifted. But if one sees, as does Quine, choices guided from the outset by pragmatic notions, the insistence that logic should not be based on prior prohibitions proves idle. I argue that there exists no prior (to framework formulation) sorting of the logical and the physical. This distinction achieves its clarity after a framework has been formulated. Frameworks make no claim to explain distinctions of this sort; rather, a virtue of a framework lies in making the distinctions precise. From Quine’s standpoint then, to imagine that a choice of Wissenschaftslogik somehow escapes such prior constraints would appear hopelessly naive. This in turn has sweeping consequences for how can conceive of a language insofar as the very notion of a language assumes some sort of framework. The argument does not mean to diminish the novelty and importance of Davidson’s claim, but to clarify and strengthen the character of the argument that it presupposes
This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Gre... more This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Greca under the same title of 'Globalizing Hayden White' at the III International Network for Theory of History Conference 'Place and Displacement: The Spacing of History' held at Södertörn University, Stockholm, in August 2018. In order to pay homage to Hayden White's life work 5 months after his passing we knew that what was needed-and what he himself would have wanted-was a vibrant intellectual exchange. Our 'celebra-tion by discussion' contains elaborated and revised versions of the presentations by scholars from China (Xin Chen), Latin America (María Inés La Greca, Veronica Tozzi Thompson), United States (Paul Roth), Western (Kalle Pihlainen) and East-Central Europe (Ewa Domańska). We took this opportunity of gathering scholars who represent different parts of the world, different cultures and approaches to reflect on White's ideas in a global context. Our interest was in discussing how his work has been read and used (or even misread and misused) and how it has influenced theoretical discussions in different parts of the globe. Rather than just offering an account as experts, we mainly wanted to reflect on the current state of our field and the ways that White's inheritance might and should be carried forward in the future.
The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative... more The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative. Provocative because it claims to mark a move within philosophy that pivots on the work of Hayden White, and this despite the fact that White himself explicitly resists inclusion within such a classification, that is, as a philosopher of history. Indeed, another contributor, Arthur Danto, had as of 1995 declared passé the whole subfield of philosophy of history. Doran situates White, then, in a niche White rejects and in any case one largely abandoned by those who do academic philosophy. Thus a question that this title evokes concerns why—whatever philosophy of history happens to be before Hayden White— after him it becomes a topic of philosophical lack of interest, one pursued almost exclusively by those not associated with departments of philosophy. Given White's professional travails, his acquaintance with another undisciplined academic, Richard Rorty, and his long-standing friendship with preeminent philosophers of history such as Louis Mink, one might well assume that White eschews Doran's disciplinary labeling for a reason. In this regard, reframing him as this book's title does invites a worry that, if only unwittingly, the book elides discussion of why certain positions excite not merely disagreement but prompt rather a type of professional shunning. In failing to confront White's reception (or rather lack thereof) by historians and his position (or rather lack thereof) within philosophy, Doran passes over in silence a highly salient aspect of White's work.
Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of histo... more Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of history: What is history? Rüsen characterizes his project as meta-historical theorizing, claiming that only through such a lens can an answer to his opening question be discerned. Metahistory as Rüsen understands it turns out to concern, first, the characterization of the metaphysical basis of human history ; second, the cataloguing of those cognitive abilities involved in comprehending the past; and third, the intellectual issues concerning methodology, pedagogy, critique of sources, and scientific legitimacy of history. In short, in the space of 250 pages, Rüsen seeks to canvass all those intellectual and cogni-tive skills germane to the discipline.
This paper provides a concise overview and summary of the positions on facts, events, and realism... more This paper provides a concise overview and summary of the positions on facts, events, and realism in the philosophy of history as developed in my work. This summary is then used to clarify and resolve confusions on these points found in various essays contained in the volume The Poverty of Anti-Realism.
As explicated in Matthieu Queloz’s ground-breaking book, The Practical Origin of Ideas: Genealogy... more As explicated in Matthieu Queloz’s ground-breaking book, The Practical Origin of Ideas: Genealogy as Conceptual Reverse-Engineering, a genealogical method promises a distinctive type of naturalist origin story about norms. Yet conceptual inheritances come freighted. The dead hand of all past generations often weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. To relieve pressures bequeathed by troubled conceptual heritages, Queloz proposes a novel strategy by which to “reverse-engineer” concepts. This approach promises both to explain what proves worth valuing in received modes of thinking as well as to provide guidance regarding how to refine and improve conceptual kluges. But depicting historical relations of power/knowledge proves not to be the game afoot for Queloz. For in his hands, ‘practical’ reflects a purely presentist perspective. Present interests thus determine how the label ‘practical’ applies. From that perspective one then crafts a retrospective account of genesis—a genealogy. This relentlessly presentist perspective reveals that the subtitle of Queloz’s book stands in an unacknowledged but revealing tension with the main title. For while imagined genealogies look back from the present to identify a genesis, reverse engineering prescribes for a better future. This naturalism thus promises to retain for epistemology an explicitly evaluative and prescriptive role. But how can a naturalism transcend being something other than descriptive? Queloz’s understanding of naturalism bakes into the construction of any promised genealogy a teleology, one unknowable to those in the past (if only because not actual) but one which Queloz nonetheless takes as a means to improving on our understanding.
The Philosophical Project of Carnap and Quine, 2023
What did Quine take himself to be contributing to the debate about meaning with regard to his cla... more What did Quine take himself to be contributing to the debate about meaning with regard to his claim about the indeterminacy of translation? This chapter offers a reconsideration of what to take as Quine's target in tracking the evolution of his debate with Carnap that crystallizes in the indeterminacy thesis. Quine, I claim, ultimately realizes that the only explanatory function a theory of meaning could serve would be to assume the presence of antecedent features that then permit a systematic determination delimiting the set of meaningful terms and meaningful statements. Such a theory explains because it provides non-accidental, indeed determinate reasons for membership in that set. This specific assumption therefore attributes a special metaphysical status to meaning. lt is metaphysical because it takes such features as in place prior to any empirical inquiry and in a way that can be tested for but not disconfirmed by evidence. This chapter documents Quine's efforts over time to articulate and specify how this issue about the nature of meaning separates him from Carnap.
The Routledge Companion to Historical Theory, ed. C. van den Akker, 2022
This is an overview of the origins and evolution of what has come to be known as analytical philo... more This is an overview of the origins and evolution of what has come to be known as analytical philosophy of history.
How did I come to write about the problems that I do? Certain accidents of fate determinatively i... more How did I come to write about the problems that I do? Certain accidents of fate determinatively impacted both my enduring intellectual interests as well as my opportunities to pursue them. Philosophy proved to provide an academic home that accommodated my peculiar interests. In this regard, a quote from White’s ‘Burden of History’ captured a challenge that I long sought to address: ‘We choose our past in the same way we choose our future’. Fashioning a philosophical rationale for this view guided much of my writing. Philosophers are not arbiters of matters of fact. But a defining feature of philosophy involves worries about how to avoid making weaker arguments appear the stronger. Rationality as I understand the notion requires making inferential structure explicit. My efforts to ‘revive’ analytical philosophy of history as with much of what I have written or hope to write reflect ongoing attempts to reconcile a sense of the contingency of what passes for rationality and a belief that some arguments are better than others. In this regard, reimagining logic to include a narrative form permits a rethinking of whether or not the ‘Burden of History’ proves unique to historiography. I argue not.
This article provides a survey and analysis of Danto's influential work in the philosophy of hist... more This article provides a survey and analysis of Danto's influential work in the philosophy of history.
Stephen Turner and the Philosophy of the Social, 2021
Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how ... more Stephen Turner, scholar that he is of the history of the social sciences, deeply appreciates how the history of social science stands littered with failed theories, ones that aspired to formulate a science of the social. But why? A key insight guiding his work from early to late has been a keen appreciation of a need to clarify what such a science is a science of. That is, Turner almost alone among the leading social theorists of the last several decades understood that resolving prospects for a science of the social required first achieving clarity regarding the constituent elements of any such explanation. His guiding question is: Just what is it for something to be both social and yet sufficiently thing-like so there can be something for some science to explain? In tracking how his concerns refocus and evolve in the several decades that span the time from his first book to his most recent with respect to the question of what makes explananda social, one achieves a synoptic view of how debate regarding the idea of a social science reshapes as it moves into the twenty-first century.
Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistem... more Alex Rosenberg's latest book purports to establish that narrative history cannot have any epistemic value. Rosenberg argues not for the replacement of narrative history by something more science-like, but rather the end of histories understood as an account of human doings under a certain description. This review critiques three of his main arguments: 1) narrative history must root its explanations in folk psychology, 2) there are no beliefs nor desires guiding human action, and 3) historical narratives are morally and ethically pernicious. Rosenberg's book reprises themes about action explanation he first rehearsed 40 years ago, albeit with neuroscience rather than sociobiology now "preempting" explanations that trade on folk psychological notions. Although Rosenberg's argument strategy has not altered, the review develops a number of reasons as to why his approach now lacks any plausibility as a strategy for explaining histories, much less a successful one.
Kalle Pihlainen’s book reworks seven essays published over the last dozen years. Pihlainen’s Pref... more Kalle Pihlainen’s book reworks seven essays published over the last dozen years. Pihlainen’s Preface and Hayden White’s Foreword articulate a cri de coeur. Both fear that something important has been missed. White’s Foreword somewhat cryptically characterizes Pihlainen’s book as “metacritical,” and locates Pihlainen in the role of being a “serious reader” for the community of theorists of history. What does it mean to be a “serious” reader? White never says. But following White’s hint, Pihlainen can be read as updating Marx’s conception of the task of unmasking sources of alienation by focusing on the reasons for the estrangement of histories from a wider audience. For him, “the core case is that the ‘historical’ (situated) nature of history itself needs to be acknowledged” (p. xiv). It remains unacknowledged so long as the source of meaning in history continues to be displaced. For even those who emphasize narrative form
tend to talk as if meanings were imposed by some factor other than human intervention, as if form magically imbues content with significance. But this is one more symptom, if such is needed, of collective bad faith, a denial that only people make meaning. By taking disembodied literary forms as repositories of significance, responsibility for meaning is once again deflected or deferred. In this key regard, Pihlainen’s claim to place “decided emphasis on its [historical theory’s] ethical-political momentum” (p. xv) signals that the issues he intends to foreground are not epistemological or discursive. Pihlainen rightly suspects that all the talk of “narrativism” and “discourse” serves only to evade confronting the truly difficult moral and political challenges that writing represents. His various chapters identify these evasions and the challenges that remain.
The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Philosophy, Ed. P. Rawling & P. Wilson, 2019
This paper argues that philosophical skepticism about the existence of language famously articul... more This paper argues that philosophical skepticism about the existence of language famously articulated by Davidson—“there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed”—presupposes and has its roots in Quine’s criticisms of Carnap’s views on linguistic frameworks. Specifically, this paper examines the role of Carnap’s Principle of Tolerance in his account of linguistic frameworks, and reasons for Quine’s rejection of it. There exists a close link between Carnap’s advocacy of The Principle of Tolerance and his way of conceiving the relation of the Principle of Tolerance to metaphysics, practical reason, and pragmatics. Carnap’s emphasis assumes that practical choices are there to be made, once metaphysical constraints have been lifted. But if one sees, as does Quine, choices guided from the outset by pragmatic notions, the insistence that logic should not be based on prior prohibitions proves idle. I argue that there exists no prior (to framework formulation) sorting of the logical and the physical. This distinction achieves its clarity after a framework has been formulated. Frameworks make no claim to explain distinctions of this sort; rather, a virtue of a framework lies in making the distinctions precise. From Quine’s standpoint then, to imagine that a choice of Wissenschaftslogik somehow escapes such prior constraints would appear hopelessly naive. This in turn has sweeping consequences for how can conceive of a language insofar as the very notion of a language assumes some sort of framework. The argument does not mean to diminish the novelty and importance of Davidson’s claim, but to clarify and strengthen the character of the argument that it presupposes
This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Gre... more This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Greca under the same title of 'Globalizing Hayden White' at the III International Network for Theory of History Conference 'Place and Displacement: The Spacing of History' held at Södertörn University, Stockholm, in August 2018. In order to pay homage to Hayden White's life work 5 months after his passing we knew that what was needed-and what he himself would have wanted-was a vibrant intellectual exchange. Our 'celebra-tion by discussion' contains elaborated and revised versions of the presentations by scholars from China (Xin Chen), Latin America (María Inés La Greca, Veronica Tozzi Thompson), United States (Paul Roth), Western (Kalle Pihlainen) and East-Central Europe (Ewa Domańska). We took this opportunity of gathering scholars who represent different parts of the world, different cultures and approaches to reflect on White's ideas in a global context. Our interest was in discussing how his work has been read and used (or even misread and misused) and how it has influenced theoretical discussions in different parts of the globe. Rather than just offering an account as experts, we mainly wanted to reflect on the current state of our field and the ways that White's inheritance might and should be carried forward in the future.
The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative... more The title of Robert Doran's collection of essays on Hayden White proves provocative and evocative. Provocative because it claims to mark a move within philosophy that pivots on the work of Hayden White, and this despite the fact that White himself explicitly resists inclusion within such a classification, that is, as a philosopher of history. Indeed, another contributor, Arthur Danto, had as of 1995 declared passé the whole subfield of philosophy of history. Doran situates White, then, in a niche White rejects and in any case one largely abandoned by those who do academic philosophy. Thus a question that this title evokes concerns why—whatever philosophy of history happens to be before Hayden White— after him it becomes a topic of philosophical lack of interest, one pursued almost exclusively by those not associated with departments of philosophy. Given White's professional travails, his acquaintance with another undisciplined academic, Richard Rorty, and his long-standing friendship with preeminent philosophers of history such as Louis Mink, one might well assume that White eschews Doran's disciplinary labeling for a reason. In this regard, reframing him as this book's title does invites a worry that, if only unwittingly, the book elides discussion of why certain positions excite not merely disagreement but prompt rather a type of professional shunning. In failing to confront White's reception (or rather lack thereof) by historians and his position (or rather lack thereof) within philosophy, Doran passes over in silence a highly salient aspect of White's work.
Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of histo... more Jörn Rüsen's project proposes to answer one of the most puzzling questions in philosophy of history: What is history? Rüsen characterizes his project as meta-historical theorizing, claiming that only through such a lens can an answer to his opening question be discerned. Metahistory as Rüsen understands it turns out to concern, first, the characterization of the metaphysical basis of human history ; second, the cataloguing of those cognitive abilities involved in comprehending the past; and third, the intellectual issues concerning methodology, pedagogy, critique of sources, and scientific legitimacy of history. In short, in the space of 250 pages, Rüsen seeks to canvass all those intellectual and cogni-tive skills germane to the discipline.
Rethinking History The Journal of Theory and Practice , 2019
This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Gre... more This conversation originated in a plenary session organized by Ewa Domańska and María Inés La Greca under the same title of ‘Globalizing Hayden White’ at the III International Network for Theory of History Conference ‘Place and Displacement: The Spacing of History’ held at Södertörn University, Stockholm, in August 2018. In order to pay homage to Hayden White’s life work 5 months after his passing we knew that what was needed – and what he himself would have wanted – was a vibrant intellectual exchange. Our ‘celebrationby discussion’ contains elaborated and revised versions of the presentations by scholars from China (Xin Chen), Latin America (María Inés La Greca, Veronica Tozzi Thompson), United States (Paul Roth), Western (Kalle Pihlainen) and East-Central Europe (Ewa Domańska). We took this opportunity of gathering scholars who represent different parts of the world, different cultures and approaches to reflect on White’s ideas in a global context. Our interest was in discussing how his work has been read and used (or even misread and misused) and how it has influenced theoretical discussions in different parts of the globe. Rather than just offering an account as experts, we mainly wanted to reflect on the current state of our field and the ways that White’s inheritance might and should be carried forward in the future.
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tend to talk as if meanings were imposed by some factor other than human intervention, as if form magically imbues content with significance. But this is one more symptom, if such is needed, of collective bad faith, a denial that only people make meaning. By taking disembodied literary forms as repositories of significance, responsibility for meaning is once again deflected or deferred. In this key regard, Pihlainen’s claim to place “decided emphasis on its [historical theory’s] ethical-political momentum” (p. xv) signals that the issues he intends to foreground are not epistemological or discursive. Pihlainen rightly suspects that all the talk of “narrativism” and “discourse” serves only to evade confronting the truly difficult moral and political challenges that writing represents. His various chapters identify these evasions and the challenges that remain.
There exists a close link between Carnap’s advocacy of The Principle of Tolerance and his way of conceiving the relation of the Principle of Tolerance to metaphysics, practical reason, and pragmatics. Carnap’s emphasis assumes that practical choices are there to be made, once metaphysical constraints have been lifted. But if one sees, as does Quine, choices guided from the outset by pragmatic notions, the insistence that logic should not be based on prior prohibitions proves idle. I argue that there exists no prior (to framework formulation) sorting of the logical and the physical. This distinction achieves its clarity after a framework has been formulated. Frameworks make no claim to explain distinctions of this sort; rather, a virtue of a framework lies in making the distinctions precise. From Quine’s standpoint then, to imagine that a choice of Wissenschaftslogik somehow escapes such prior constraints would appear hopelessly naive. This in turn has sweeping consequences for how can conceive of a language insofar as the very notion of a language assumes some sort of framework. The argument does not mean to diminish the novelty and importance of Davidson’s claim, but to clarify and strengthen the character of the argument that it presupposes
tend to talk as if meanings were imposed by some factor other than human intervention, as if form magically imbues content with significance. But this is one more symptom, if such is needed, of collective bad faith, a denial that only people make meaning. By taking disembodied literary forms as repositories of significance, responsibility for meaning is once again deflected or deferred. In this key regard, Pihlainen’s claim to place “decided emphasis on its [historical theory’s] ethical-political momentum” (p. xv) signals that the issues he intends to foreground are not epistemological or discursive. Pihlainen rightly suspects that all the talk of “narrativism” and “discourse” serves only to evade confronting the truly difficult moral and political challenges that writing represents. His various chapters identify these evasions and the challenges that remain.
There exists a close link between Carnap’s advocacy of The Principle of Tolerance and his way of conceiving the relation of the Principle of Tolerance to metaphysics, practical reason, and pragmatics. Carnap’s emphasis assumes that practical choices are there to be made, once metaphysical constraints have been lifted. But if one sees, as does Quine, choices guided from the outset by pragmatic notions, the insistence that logic should not be based on prior prohibitions proves idle. I argue that there exists no prior (to framework formulation) sorting of the logical and the physical. This distinction achieves its clarity after a framework has been formulated. Frameworks make no claim to explain distinctions of this sort; rather, a virtue of a framework lies in making the distinctions precise. From Quine’s standpoint then, to imagine that a choice of Wissenschaftslogik somehow escapes such prior constraints would appear hopelessly naive. This in turn has sweeping consequences for how can conceive of a language insofar as the very notion of a language assumes some sort of framework. The argument does not mean to diminish the novelty and importance of Davidson’s claim, but to clarify and strengthen the character of the argument that it presupposes
scholars who represent different parts of the world, different cultures and
approaches to reflect on White’s ideas in a global context. Our interest was in discussing how his work has been read and used (or even misread and misused) and how it has influenced theoretical discussions in different parts of the globe. Rather than just offering an account as experts, we mainly wanted to reflect on the current state of our field and the ways that White’s inheritance might and should be carried forward in the future.