Philosophers to work on 2.0

Hilary Putnam

20th century functionalist. Inputs (stimuli) turn into behaviour. Did regard qualia (feeling of subjective experience as important. Proposed internal realism. Multiple realizability argument is the transferable role of inputs. Pragmatist.

Bernard Stiegler

20th century, "philosophy of technics”. Technologies are pharmaka (both cure and poison). Critiqued capitalism and attention economy, causing symbolic misery (cognitive impoverishment marked by the decline in critical reasoning and creativity). Tertiary retention produced by technology, can be defeated by the economy of contribution. Phenomenological experience → memory of experience → tertiary retention.

Bertrand Russell

20th century English humanist. Reason over religion because it fosters rationality and responsibility. Neutral monism: reality is neither purely mental nor purely physical. Ethical non-cognitavist and secular humanist: morality is grounded in universal human desires. Anti-absolutist philosophy.

Martin Heidegger

20th century phenomenologist. Dasein is a pre-ontological concept; before we can be, we have to experience. Temporality creates existence as to be, you have to experience. Dasein has three components: facticity, falling (conforming to das man) and existentiality. Ontic → Ontology → fundamental ontology. Reader-to-hand → present at hand. Dasein is always in-der-welt-sein. Need to escape everydayness. Need to live in harmony with the fourfold: earth, sky, mortals and divinities. Critiques enframing (viewing the world through an explotative lens - the world is a standing reserve). Env. issues come from living inauthentically. Dwelling means harmony with the world around us. 

Henry David Thoreau

19th century transcendentalist. Truth is in nature. Most people live their life in quiet desperation. Major works were "Walden” (nature) and civil disobedience (responsibility).

John Dewey

20th century American pragmatist. Major work was 1916 “democracy and education”. Universalism freezes truth in a changing world. Ideas and theory are not mirrors of reality, but rather tools for guiding collective action: instrumentalism. Promoted learning by doing.

St Augustine of Hippo

5th century Christian theologian. Source of morality is God’s unchanging nature. Evil is the privation of god. Eternal law. Bridge between Platoism and emerging Christian world view. Faith and reason and mutually supportive. Summum Bonum God is the source of all morality. Scripture is the most authoritative revelation. God cannot be contrary to his nature.

William of Ockham

14th century English voluntarist. Disobedience from god’s will is evil. To follow God you need divine revelation. Risks moral arbitrariness. Nominalist: universals do not exist independently. Ockham’s razor.

Thomas Aquinas

Eternal law is accessible through natural law. Esse (existence) has been given by god. Moderate realist. Natural theology: spiritual morality accessible through reason. Everything has telos built into its nature.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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Joseph Fletcher

20th century situational ethics. Proposed framework between legalistic christianity and antinomianism. Agape is unconditional Christian love. Conscience is the process of thinking morally, this can involve the for working principles: pragmatism, relativism, positivism and personalism. Six propositions presuppose Christian love. Agapeic love.

Alasdair MacIntyre

Contemporary Scottish American ethicist. 1981’s After Virtue. Morality is a practice. Dichotomy of internal and external goods. Emphasises justice, courage and honesty. Practices rely on a shared commitment to excellence. Need focus on Telos - human purpose is eudaimonia. Enlightenment theories fragment the human experience: morality should consider everything.

Michel Foucault

20th century french post-structualist. Knowledge is never neutral. Discourse is a system. Disciplinary power through the Panopticon. Biopower through anatomo-politics and biopolitics. Process of normalisation establishes norms and compares individuals to them.

GWF Hegel

19th century German idealist. Identity is a process of becoming: a seed is not a tree yet the seed becoming a tree is within its identity. Identity is classified through what it is not. Identity emerges through mutual self recognition Reality and thought develop through thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis: we recognise ourselves as something, we know we are not the other thing, so we are therefore another thing. Neglects the role of power.

Derek Parfit

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