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.crisis of individuation.

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. (in opposition to intellectualism). 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

French 19th century anarchist. Mutualism: free markets exist within common ownership. What is property: property is theft. Anarchy is the sovereignty of reason. Communism dictates moral law through the individual - Anarchism is discovered through natural intuition. Equality is better found in mutualism. Mutual respect and reciprocity are communal values that can be extended into politics and exonomics. government is inherently parasitic and unnecessary, while mutual cooperation directly benefits everyone. Parasidic becayse extracts power without adding something of equal value

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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Val Plumwood

Australian contemporary ecofeminist. “feminism and the mastery of nature”. Critiqued dualism of western philosophy: superior and inferior side. This is the logic of domination. Anthropocentrism encourages instrumental reasoning, To dismantle ecological hierarchies, need to dismantle sexism. Humanities desire to help the other is within all of us.

Peter Singer

Contemporary Australian philosopher - preference utilitarianism. Animal liberation: ability to suffer grants moral consideration. Anti-specist. Life without dignity has less value - justifies euthanasia and infanside. If you can prevent suffering by sacrifice something with less comparable importance, you should. Effective altruism is practical weath distribution. Preference includes everything. 

Aristotle

Critiques of Plato’s Republic: universal definitions are overly abstract and do not depend on context. Essence exists within things itself, through immanent realism: justice is in laws ect. Knowledge is not sufficient for virtuous action, many people know what is right yet fail according to emotions ect. Virtue thus requires balance and habit. Forms fo not guide us in real situations.

Robert Nozick

Anarchy, state and utopia. Justice is within acquisition, transfer and the rectification of injustice. Justifies capitalism and property rights. Proponent of a minimal state. Maximises natural rights.

WEB Du Bois

Early 20th century African American philosopher. Double consciousness. Experienced by subordinated or colonised groups in oppressive society. Live through their own eyes and that of the dominate culture. Negro identity (shaped by common experience) and American identity. Internalised racial gaze whilst trying to maintain individuality: Two-ness. Mirrors Hegel's master-slave dialectic: identity is not reciprocated, second-sight is developed. Racial materialism. Opposed to Satre, gaze is not neutral. Publication was the souls of black folk.

Focus on the white gaze may imply that the Black self cannot exist independently, reinforcing the very relational dependency that he critiques. Also, if consciousness formed under oppression is never united, is black identity ever mediated?

Simone de Beauvoir 

Focused on physical world. Ethics of ambiguity - ethical imperitive to create our own life’s meaning. One is not born, but rather becomes a woman. Men are the ideal subject. Women are systematically denied the pursuit of freedom. Body conditions limit freedom. Our freedom always exists with concrete conditions. We are free subjects (who can choose) and objects (bound my material conditions). The body itself is not deterministic, but rather, is given limits by society. 

Judith Butler

Gender trouble. Not a fixed or stable essence, Gender is an effect, not a cause. Gender performativity is unconscious and repeated.

Thomas Nagel

Contemporary American phenomenologist and poltiical philosopher. Tenseion between personal (subjective) and impersonal (objective). Political philosophy is reconciling these two standpoints. Justice is egalitarian, but you need to recognise himan motivation. Therefore, rationalistic theories misunderstand transcendent self-interest. Governemnts will always rule over pluralistic socieites, thus, their coersive power will only be legitimate to an extent. Justice is not consmpolitan - against Singer. We can’t live enterly in the View from nowhere. Justice is not a moral idea. we have personal moral duties, but have state accountability. Nozick’s idea of property undermines the important influence that states have in creating property. Critiques would pose why do state boarders matter if everyone is equal (and so to should be the application of justice). Impersonal/personal standpoint it critiqued by communitarians and communists.