Pragmatism as philosophical tool design

by Dave Maier One problem plaguing contemporary anti-Cartesians (pragmatists, Wittgensteinians, hermeneutic philosophers, etc.) is that it can seem that we are competing against each other, trying to do better than everyone else what we all want to do: get past the dualisms and other infelicities of the modern picture while at the same time absorbing…

Escaping The Prison Of (Philosophical) Modernity, Part 2: Meaning as Truth-Conditions in Taylor and Davidson

by Dave Maier Last time, in part 1, I distinguished two strategies for combating philosophical modernism of a certain dated kind: a pluralistic post-empiricism (the exact nature of which I left open for now), and a more narrowly focused post-phenomenological approach which regards the former (and/or its main components) as merely another form of the…

Escaping the prison of (philosophical) modernity, part 1: post-analytics and phenomenologists in dialogue

by Dave Maier By the beginning of the 20th century, it had become clear to an influential minority of philosophers that something was badly amiss with modern philosophy. (There had been gripes of innumerable sorts since the beginning of modernity in the 17th century; but our subject today is the present.) “Modern” here means something…

Cool summer ambience (or winter, for those down under)

by Dave Maier Perhaps imprudently, your humble blogger continues to toil in the philosophy mines for blogging material, even in this stressful time. And there will be such postage eventually, of that you can be sure! However, prudence enough remains to prevent him from posting half-baked nonsense; so in the interim, let us return once…

Interpretation and truth, part 1: History

by Dave Maier The word “interpretivism” suggests to most people a particularly crazy sort of postmodern relativism cum skepticism. If our relations to reality are merely interpretive and perspectival (I will use these terms interchangeably as needed, the idea being that each interpreter has her own distinct perspective on a world not reducible to any single…

Don’t even think about operating heavy machinery while listening to this mix

by Dave Maier Another not-necessarily-the-best-of-the-year mix, but there do seem to be a number of 2019 releases. Warning: this one’s pretty drony, so don’t be driving or anything. Sequencers next time, I promise! (A few anyway.) 0:00 Anne Chris Bakker – Norge Svømmer (Reminiscences [Dronarivm]) 4:50 FRAME – Earth (The Journey [Glacial Movements]) 12:30 Strom…

A list of books of some sort or another

by Dave Maier Here we have either a) a holiday gift guide; b) just another ordinary book roundup; or c) a bunch of mini-reviews each of which just didn’t have the oomph to deserve its own post. Answer provided below! First up: Theodore M. Bernstein – Miss Thistlebottom’s Hobgoblins: The Careful Writer’s Guide to the Taboos, Bugbears, and Outmoded Rules of…

“Math Ethnic Studies” in Seattle

by Dave Maier The blog post screams: “If you think 2 + 2 always equals 4, you’re a racist oppressor.” It then proceeds to attribute this ghastly sentiment to the Seattle Public School district, on the basis of a preliminary document for a proposed curriculum in “Math Ethnic Studies.” Other critics of this pseudo-educational abomination are…