Associated Products
Phenomenologically Rich Thought (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Phenomenologically Rich Thought
Author: Willem A. deVries
Abstract: Wilfrid Sellars has often been thought to hold that all thought is a linguistic affair; isn’t this his infamous ‘psychological nominalism’? Though it is clear Sellars thought that language is a necessary condition of conceptual thought, he never believed that thought is always linguaform. Furthermore, I argue here, he made explicit provision for phenomenologically rich non-linguaform episodes of thought. Sellars argues that we often think in color or in sounds or tastes. Unfolding Sellars’ thought here entails examining his treatment of the imagination and its relation to both thought and sensation.
Date: 11/8/2019
Conference Name: Northern New England Philosophy Association
‘What is the myth of the given?’ (Article)Title: ‘What is the myth of the given?’
Author: James O'Shea
Abstract: Clarification of the Myth of the Given
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03258-6Access Model: Open Access
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Synthese
Publisher: Synthese
Helmholtz, Cohen, and Frege on Progress and Fidelity: Sinning Against Science and Religion. (Book)Title: Helmholtz, Cohen, and Frege on Progress and Fidelity: Sinning Against Science and Religion.
Author: Terri Merrick
Abstract: This book examines the views of Hermann Helmholtz, Hermann Cohen and Gottlob Frege in reaction to the epistemic crises induced by rapid changes in 19th century scientific practice. Besides addressing longstanding interpretive puzzles of interest to Frege scholars, the book extracts precepts for rationally responding to paradigm shifts in scientific and religious traditions. Cohen’s work in particular is held up as an example of wisely navigating epistemic and hermeneutical crises in science and religion. The book will appeal to philosophers and historians of science or religion, especially to those concerned with the epistemic challenges posed by Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57299-0Access Model: hardcover, softcover, ebook
Publisher: Springer
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-3-030-5729
Copy sent to NEH?: No
Review of Michaela Koch Discursive Intersexions: Daring Bodies between Myth, Medicine, and Memoir, by Michaela Koch (Article)Title: Review of Michaela Koch Discursive Intersexions: Daring Bodies between Myth, Medicine, and Memoir, by Michaela Koch
Author: Terri Merrick
Abstract: Koch employed a Foucauldian method of literary analysis to late 19th, 20th, and early 21st century French, German, and North American (U.S) texts on ‘hermaphroditism’ and ‘intersex’. My review of the chapter where she analyzes the work of turn of the 20th century German doctor and gay activist Magnus Hirschfeld is certainly informed by what I learned of 18th and 19th century German discursive practice(s) at the seminar
Year: 2022
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Hypatia
Publisher: Hypatia
“Response to ‘The Testimony of the Lord is Sure: Science and the Place of Extra-Biblical Material in Biblical Thinking’ by C. John Collins” (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Response to ‘The Testimony of the Lord is Sure: Science and the Place of Extra-Biblical Material in Biblical Thinking’ by C. John Collins”
Author: Terri Merricck
Abstract: I was an invited respondent to Collins’ plenary lecture. In his paper, he argues for a model of integrating science, religion, and social philosophy that he entitles ‘critical co-opting.’ He then cites Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind as a resource in applying the findings of behavioral science to addressing issues in value theory (religious and secular). My response introduced questions about naturalizing ethics and social philosophy that were clearly informed by my participation in the NEH seminar.
Date: 7/29/2021
Primary URL:
https://network.asa3.org/mpage/asa-2021-agenda#plenary-iPrimary URL Description: web page for the primary lecture
Conference Name: American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) Virtual Annual Conference in Partnership with the Henry Center’s Creation Project, July 2021
“The Space of Intelligence” (Article)Title: “The Space of Intelligence”
Author: Willem A. deVries
Abstract: A discussion of Hegel's conception of intelligence as a "space".
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110673692-010Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: International Yearbook of German Idealism
Publisher: International Yearbook of German Idealism
Hegel's Pragmatism (Book Section)Title: Hegel's Pragmatism
Author: Willem A. deVries
Editor: Kenneth R. Westphal
Editor: Marina F. Bykova
Abstract: This article examines a number of points of agreement between G.W.F. Hegel and American Pragmatismf, although it is ultimately concluded that Hegel cannot be considered a proto-pragmatist by himself.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26597-7Access Model: buy the book; go to the library
Publisher: Palgrave
Book Title: The Palgrave Hegel Handbook
ISBN: 978-3-030-2659
“Brandom and A Spirit of Trust” (Article)Title: “Brandom and A Spirit of Trust”
Author: Willem A. deVries
Abstract: A critical discussion of central themes in A Spirit of Trust: A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology, by Robert
B. Brandom, Cambridge, MA and London, Harvard University Press, 2019. Three of the central themes in the book – Brandom calls them Hegel’s ‘master ideas’ (p. 636) – are examined. The first is Brandom’s general analysis of Hegel’s idealism; the second is the theory of normativity Brandom defends; and the third is Brandom’s analysis of the structure of rationality (or as he often calls it, discursive activity).
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2021.1918822Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: International Journal of Philosophical Studies,
Publisher: International Journal of Philosophical Studies (Taylor & Francis)
Hegel Today (Report)Title: Hegel Today
Author: Willem A. deVries
Abstract: A report on the resurgence of interest among Anglo-American Analytic philosophers in G. W. F. Hegel with special reference to the work of Robert Brandom.
Date: 10/26/2021
Primary URL:
https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-anglophone-world-is-rediscovering-hegels-philosophyAccess Model: open access on web
ISBN: --
Persons and their Categories (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Persons and their Categories
Author: Willem A. deVries
Abstract: discussion of the place, persistence, and nature of the category of persons in the thought of Wilfrid Sellars, with particular regard to its persistence in the scientific image of humanity.
Date: 08/11/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.gvsu.edu/sellars-conference/Conference Name: Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Sellars' Practical Philosophy
Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: A Critical Guide. (Book)Title: Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: A Critical Guide.
Editor: S. Stein
Editor: J. Wretzel
Abstract: Hegel regarded his Enyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences as the work which most fully presented the scope of his philosophical system and its method. It is somewhat surprising, therefore, that scholars regularly accord it only a secondary status. This Critical Guide seeks to change that, with sixteen newly-written essays from an international group of leading Hegel scholars that shed much-needed light on both the whole and the parts of the Encyclopedia system. Topics include the structure and aim of the Encyclopedia system as a whole, the differences between the greater and lesser Logics, the role of nature in Hegel's thinking, and the shapes of absolute spirit as art, religion, and philosophy. This book will be invaluable to students and scholars with an interest in Hegel and the history of philosophy.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108592000Access Model: on line and inprint
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9781108592000
Copy sent to NEH?: No
Hegel's Encyclopedic System. (Book)Title: Hegel's Encyclopedic System.
Editor: J. Wretzel
Editor: S. Stein
Abstract: This book discusses the most comprehensive of Hegel’s works: his long-neglected Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline. It contains original essays by internationally renowned and emerging voices in Hegel scholarship. Their contributions elucidate fundamental aspects of Hegel’s encyclopedic system with an eye to its contemporary relevance. The book thus addresses system-level claims about Hegel’s unique conceptions of philosophy, philosophical "science" and its method, dialectic, speculative thinking, and the way they relate to both Hegelian and contemporary notions of nature, history, religion, freedom, and cultural praxis.
Year: 2022
Access Model: in print and ebook
Publisher: Routledge
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9780367077495
Copy sent to NEH?: No
Hegel's Critique of Materialism (Book Section)Title: Hegel's Critique of Materialism
Author: J. Wretzel
Abstract: I argue that Hegel’s immaterialist metaphysics provides a viable alternative to those dissatisfied with a “disenchanted” materialism. I defend a “minimalist critique of materialism.” I show that what Hegel criticizes in materialism is not the reality of matter, but only its ultimate reality. I show that he maintains a “minimalist conception of immateriality.” I argue that he operates with a very specific notion of matter referring to mutually independent entities formed by means of external action upon them. So he is referring to entities that are not material, i.e. that are not mutually interrelated and/or are formed by means of their internal activity upon themselves. Adopting this “minimalist conception,” Hegel thinks, changes how we see the way things are. He thus starts to speak about how all things strive toward some ultimate immateriality. This is the “transformational conception of immateriality.” While this part of Hegel’s critique is problematic, I contend that Hegel’s extravagances are just his way of incorporating an expansive, “re-enchanted” conception of nature that allows material reality to exist alongside immaterial entities as Hegel conceives them.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
http://doi:10.1017/9781108592000Access Model: in print, on line
Publisher: Cambridge U. P.
Book Title: Hegel’s Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences: A Critical Guide.
ISBN: 9781108592000
“Truth and Method in Hegel’s Encyclopedia,” (Book Section)Title: “Truth and Method in Hegel’s Encyclopedia,”
Author: J. Wretzel
Abstract: In this paper, I defend the claim that Hegel employs a transcendental methodology to the study of mind in his Philosophy of Spirit. I focus on a key passage from §441 Anm., which sets the trajectory for his study of “the intelligence.” I argue that this passage reveals a profound, novel, and entirely overlooked commitment to a transcendental methodology in his work. I distinguish, following Franks, between types of transcendental argument, and I demonstrate that the approach Hegel follows here differs from the one Taylor finds in the “Consciousness” chapter of the Jena Phenomenology. Rather, as I argue, Hegel employs a circular or, as we may also call it, an organic transcendental approach to the study of mind. I show that his methodological approach is not a one-size-fits-all, mechanistic crank that churns out dialectic outputs from given inputs. Rather, it displays a surprising sensitivity to a study of the subject matter at hand: as Hegel himself avows at several points, the dialectic must allow a moment of passivity, whereby it conforms itself to meet the varying complexity of the objects of study.
Year: 2022
Access Model: in print and ebook
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: Hegel's Encyclopedic System
ISBN: 9780367077495
“Constraint and the Ethical Agent: Hegel Between Constructivism and Second-Naturalism,” (Book Section)Title: “Constraint and the Ethical Agent: Hegel Between Constructivism and Second-Naturalism,”
Author: J. Wretzel
Editor: J. Gledhill
Editor: S. Stein
Abstract: This paper seeks a middle ground between two prevailing approaches to moral constraint in Hegel’s philosophy: the post-Kantian constructivism defended, for instance, in Pippin (2008) and the moral realism on offer, most prominently, in McDowell’s various works (especially (1996)). Briefly, the constructivist argues that moral values like freedom, right, and the good are distinctively human achievements that are, so to speak, “made more than found.” The realist argues that moral values are “there,” or may be read off as moral situational facts by those who are properly attuned to them. Such beings, McDowell says, are open to a “second nature,” the reception of which contains moral valuations that are not, themselves, products of the spontaneity of thought. In this paper, I seek a moderate position between these two. I argue that, for Hegel, the values of an ethical order are constituted from out of introspectively accessible moral “impulses” [Triebe]. Participation in an ethical life involves treating those impulses as the basic “contents” of one’s thinking about practical matters.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://www.routledge.com/Hegel-and-Contemporary-Practical-Philosophy-Beyond-Kantian-Constructivism/Gledhill-Stein/p/book/9780815383734Access Model: in print and ebook
Publisher: Routledge
Book Title: German Idealism and Contemporary Political Philosophy: Beyond Kantian Constructivism
ISBN: 9780815383734
Review of Hegel's Theory of Normativity by Kevin S. Thompson. (Report)Title: Review of Hegel's Theory of Normativity by Kevin S. Thompson.
Author: J Wretzel
Abstract: Book Review
Date: 1/1/2022
Primary URL:
https://ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/hegels-theory-of-normativity-the-systematic-foundations-of-the-philosophical-science-of-right/Access Model: Online
“Knowledge as a Collective Status,” (Article)Title: “Knowledge as a Collective Status,”
Author: Jeremy Koons
Abstract: Abstract: While social epistemology is a diverse field, much of it still understands knowledge as an individual status—albeit an individual status that crucially depends on various social factors (such as testimony). Further, the literature on group knowledge until now has primarily focused on limited, specialized groups that may be said to know this or that as a group. I wish to argue, to the contrary, that all knowledge-attributions ascribe a collective status; and that this follows more or less directly from an essential function of entitlement-ascriptions: Ascriptions of knowledge and entitlement serve a primarily social function in that they facilitate coordination by maintaining consensus around true beliefs, true theories, and truth-producing methodologies. This conclusion will shed light on ways in which traditional theories of knowledge (such as foundationalism and coherentism) fail to capture a central function of our epistemic practice.
Year: 2021
Primary URL:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/phib.12224Access Model: in print and on line
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: Analytic Philosophy
Publisher: Analytic Philosophy (Wiley)
“Doxastic Coordination and the Social Function of Reason-Giving,” (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: “Doxastic Coordination and the Social Function of Reason-Giving,”
Author: Jeremy Koons
Abstract: Abstract: Many programs in social epistemology—which reject the individualistic assumptions of much traditional epistemology—hold that our practice of belief-regulation should be evaluated chiefly by how it promotes narrowly epistemic goals (e.g., truth, or justified belief, or knowledge). However, promotion of narrowly epistemic goals cannot be the only function of a healthy epistemic practice. Human community—indeed, rational agency itself—cannot exist without a vast store of common ground: shared background beliefs about norms and institutions, but also factual beliefs about the shared world we inhabit. Given this, it follows that a central function of any society’s epistemic practice must be doxastic coordination—that is, the production of consensus sufficient to enable community, communication, and coordination.
Date: 10/19/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.uhk.cz/en/philosophical-faculty/about-faculty/departments/department-of-philosophy-and-social-sciences/news/aPrimary URL Description: conference site
Conference Name: Why and How We Give and Ask For Reasons: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives
"Knowledge as a Commons" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: "Knowledge as a Commons"
Author: Jeremy Koons
Abstract: Traditional analyses of knowledge (such as JTB+ conceptions of knowledge, and even many conceptions from within the social epistemology tradition) treat knowledge as an individual status or state, analyzable largely in terms of individual epistemic agents. I argue that most knowledge is better represented as a collective resource—literally, a commons (in the traditional sense of a resource that is available and usable by an entire community). Further, to the extent that we can talk about knowledge as something possessed by individual agents, such possession will usually be not merely causally but instead logically dependent upon the existence of the knowledge commons. Thus, individual instances of knowing are generally strongly parasitic on the existence of the knowledge commons.
Previous work on knowledge as a commons has overwhelmingly addressed itself to a specific issue, namely, the ‘fencing off’ of the commons represented by placing knowledge (such as academic articles) behind paywalls. I instead propose to pursue the more radical understanding of the knowledge commons outlined above. It will turn out that understanding knowledge in this way forces us to reconceive of much of our epistemic practice, including the very goal of epistemic assessment itself.
Date: 10/15/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/tilps/calendar/rrc-workshopPrimary URL Description: conference website
Conference Name: Reasons, Rationality, and Culture Workshop
Sellars on External Reasons (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: Sellars on External Reasons
Author: Jeremy Koons
Abstract: Bernard Williams’s essay “Internal and External Reasons” presents a now-classic challenge to the categorical bindingness of moral reasons. I argue that for Sellars, moral reasons are internal (in Williams’s sense), but nevertheless categorically valid for rational beings. This conclusion follows largely because of Sellars’s radically social conception of reasons.
Reasons internalism is often tied to the Humean theory of reasons (HTR). Sellars’s anti-reductionist and anti-individualist conception of reasons presents a powerful challenge to the HTR: A significant range of reasons have a social and intersubjective dimension that resists a Humean analysis. Indeed, most reasons we have display this anti-Humean character; and to focus only on reasons that admit of a Humean, individualistic analysis is to leave us with a violently truncated agent—indeed, one who might not even be a rational agent.
The intermediate conclusion is that most reasons are social—we are subject to them not qua individuals but qua members of a society, occupying various roles and identities. The strategy suggested by Sellars’s approach—which holds to the inherently social nature of reasons—is to argue that reasons are already, by their nature, inherently public; that to occupy the standpoint of rational agency is to occupy the standpoint of the ‘we’ and to be bound by its norms, including its moral norms.
Date: 8/12/2021
Primary URL:
https://www.gvsu.edu/sellars-conference/Primary URL Description: Conference website
Conference Name: Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Sellars’s Practical Philosophy
"C. I. Lewis was a Foundationalist After All" (Article)Title: "C. I. Lewis was a Foundationalist After All"
Author: Griffin Klemick
Abstract: While C. I. Lewis was traditionally interpreted as an epistemological foundationalist throughout his major works, virtually every recent treatment of Lewis’s epistemology dissents. But the traditional interpretation is correct: Lewis believed that apprehensions of “the given” are certain independently of support from, and constitute the ultimate warrant for, objective empirical beliefs. This interpretation proves surprisingly capable of accommodating apparently contrary textual evidence. The non-foundationalist reading, by contrast, simply cannot explain Lewis’s explicit opposition to coherentism and his insistence that only apprehensions of the given enable us to answer the regress problem—and so vindicate the possibility of empirical justification.
Year: 2020
Primary URL:
https://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/?id=hpqPrimary URL Description: U of Illinois Press
Access Model: subscription
Format: Journal
Periodical Title: History of Philosophy Quarterly
Publisher: History of Philosophy Quarterly
"The Problem with Picturing: Sellars's Failed Quest for Transcendental Friction" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: "The Problem with Picturing: Sellars's Failed Quest for Transcendental Friction"
Author: Griffin Klemick
Abstract: independent reality. His theory of picturing is meant to fill this gap, but I offer two arguments that it cannot. First, if our talk of objects in general is not really intentionally related to mind-independent objects, then this is also true of our talk of objects’ bearing picturing relations to our language, in which case the appeal to picturing provides no additional constraint. Second, Sellars’ deflationary analysis of causal statements precludes an adequate defense of our justification for taking statements to picture the world adequately.
Date: 11/24/2019
Primary URL:
https://richardrortysociety.org/conference/2019-conference/program/Primary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Richard Rorty Society
"C. I. Lewis's Two Pragmatisms: Empirical Meaning, the A Priori, and How They Fit Together" (Conference Paper/Presentation)Title: "C. I. Lewis's Two Pragmatisms: Empirical Meaning, the A Priori, and How They Fit Together"
Author: Griffin Klemick
Abstract: C. I. Lewis’s epistemology is chiefly remembered for his “pragmatic a priori,” on which our choice of conceptual schemes is pragmatically grounded. But Lewis also defended an independent pragmatism about empirical meaning, on which our conception of an object just is our conception of its manifestations in experience. There is significant apparent tension between these two pragmatisms: the former suggests a proto-Quinean rejection of immutable analytic truth and epistemically significant “given” experience, while the latter presupposes these features of the empiricism Quine attacks. Recent interpreters have read Lewis as a proto-Quinean on these issues, but I argue that on both, Lewis affirmed the empiricist position. I then offer an interpretation of the function of the pragmatic a priori consistent with this empiricist reading: namely, supplying grounds for selection of a particular logical system, as well as of a particular theory or conceptual scheme in cases of underdetermination by given experience.
Date: 10/19/2019
Primary URL:
http://www.roycesociety.org//Meetings/2019-Nashville/Douglas%20MacDonald%20Conference%20(Print).pdfPrimary URL Description: conference program
Conference Name: Douglas McDonald Conference (Josiah Royce Society/Vanderbilt University Dept. of Philosophy)