Resources
Key readings:
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics
M. Heidegger, Being and Time
Key secondary texts:
D’Oro, G., Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience
King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time
Assessment
Assessment Pattern
This module is assessed by:
One (3,000 words) essay (75%).
One (1,000 word) reader’s report (25%).
Essays and Other Assessment Tasks
The title must be taken from the list specified by the Module Co-ordinator. Any other essay titles will not be marked unless prior agreement has been sought from the Module Co-ordinator. You are required to write one (3,000 words) essay (75%) and one (1,000 word) reader’s report (25%).
Essay titles and report
Essay 1 (3,000 words) weighted at 75%. Please answer one question.
Note than many of these questions have overlapping content. You need not worry about this as you only have to answer one question.
• What is Collingwood’s metaphysics of absolute presuppositions and does it succeed in defending the feasibility of metaphysics against Ayer’s critique?
• What is Collingwood’s critique of logical positivism in An Essay on Metaphysics? Does it succeed in showing that Ayer’s critique of metaphysics is question begging because it is premised on the acceptance of a principle (the principle of verification) that is not empirically verifiable?
• What kind of metaphysics is Collingwood’s metaphysics? Should we rest content with the claim that we can only know what exists from the perspective of historians, natural scientists etc., but we could never know being qua being?
• Discuss the claim that there are different senses of causation at work in different explanatory contexts and that there is no sense of causation that is wholly independent of the explanatory goals of a given form of enquiry. What are the repercussions of this view? Should we accept it?
• Discuss and assess the Carnapian view that metaphysical questions are illegitimate external questions concerning the truth or falsity of frameworks and as such they are not simply hard to answer; they are unanswerable.
• If Dasein is not ‘in’ the world in the way in which a chair is ‘in’ a room, in what sense is Dasein a Being-in-the-World? How does Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis of the being of Dasein change the traditional conception of the relation between the subject and the world?
• “Only as Dasein is (that is, only as long as an understanding of Being is ontically possible), ‘is there’ Being.” In what sense does this statement make Being dependent upon mind and does it provide a solution to the problem of external world scepticism?
• What is the distinction between the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand? What is the significance of Heidegger’s claim that the ready-to-hand cannot be grasped by adding a bit of value or meaning onto the present-at-hand?
• What is the epistemological significance of the phenomenon of anxiety and what role does it play in Being and Time?
• What is Heidegger’s conception of truth? Do you agree with his critique of the traditional conception of truth as the correspondence of knowledge with its object?
• “Fundamental ontology is no ontology at all. Heidegger is just doing phenomenology and tells us nothing about the real structures of reality. That is what philosophers ought to be trying to know a priori. Not the structures of Dasein’s being and the way the world appears to Dasein, but the way the world really is”. Discuss this criticism and consider whether Heidegger can successfully respond to it.
Essay 2: reader’s report (1,000 words) weighted at 25%
Suppose one (and only one) of these books, Collingwood’s An Essay on Metaphysics or Heidegger’s Being and Time had not been published. Rather the manuscript, in the author’s own handwriting, has been languishing in a forlorn box in the basement of Oxford University Press and was recently discovered during a clear out. You are a reader for Oxford University Press and you have been asked to produce a reader’s report with your views on whether the manuscript deserves posthumous publication. Your recommendation should not be based on whether you agree or disagree with the views expounded on the manuscript but on whether you think the manuscript makes a valuable contribution to philosophy and is thus deserving of publication.
Please do not invent your own essay question. Essays that answer questions other than the ones listed above will not be marked unless they have been approved by the module co-ordinator.
Key primary Texts
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic
R.G. Collingwood, An Essay on Metaphysics
M. Heidegger, Being and Time
Key secondary texts:
D’Oro, G., Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience
King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time
Assessment Criteria
These are the criteria that will be used in marking the essays. You may want to ask yourself the following questions when writing it:
• Clarity of expression: how clearly are the ideas expressed?
• Direction/relevance: to what extent does the essay address the question?
• Understanding: to what extent does the essay display an understanding of the material?
• Exposition: if a summary of a text/argument was included, how thorough/accurate is it?
• Structure: how well structured is the material?
• Analysis/criticism: how analytical/critical is the essay?
• Research: how well researched is the essay?
• Originality/independence: how much independent thought does the essay display?
LECTURE PROGRAMME READING
SESSION 1: Ayer’s logical positivist critique of metaphysics in Language Truth and Logic
While metaphysics is currently a growing area of research the mid-twentieth century was a time when metaphysics came under attack. Some philosophers thought that while metaphysics cannot be practiced in the traditional way, there still is a kernel of truth within it. Martin Heidegger, for example, tries to develop an ontology of a more fundamental kind than the one which is found in metaphysics normally understood, and Robin George Collingwood sought to develop what he called a ‘metaphysics without ontology’. Some attacks on the viability of metaphysics were on the other hand completely unfriendly. Ayer’s logical positivism, for example, updated Hume’s fork for the twentieth century and claimed that since metaphysical propositions are neither tautologies nor empirically verifiable, they are meaningless. In this session we will introduce different attitudes towards metaphysics: qualified criticisms, such as those of R.G. Collingwood and Martin Heidegger and unqualified critiques, such as the one exemplified in Ayer’s logical positivism. We will then focus on the latter.
Essential reading:
Either:
Ayer, A. J., “The Principle of Verifiability” in Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, Oswald Hanfling (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1981. You can find it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2250238?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents.
or:
Ayer, A.J., “Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics”, Mind 43, 1934, pp. 335-445.
You can find it here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2250354?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
or
A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic.
If you would like to hear A.J. Ayer himself talking about logical positivism go to u tube (Ayer on logical positivism section 1 – there are also sections 2,3,4, just look out for them):
For an overview of A.J. Ayer and logical positivism see:
A.J. Ayer: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayer/
Logical empiricism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/
On the logical positivists’ neo-empiricist critique of metaphysics:
A.J. Ayer: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ayer/
Logical empiricism: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logical-empiricism/
Ayer, A. J., “The Principle of Verifiability” in Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, Oswald Hanfling (ed.), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1981. Digitized item:
http://repository.keele.ac.uk:8080/intralibrary/IntraLibrary?command=open-preview&learning_object_key=i6255n301084t
Ayer, A.J., “Demonstration of the Impossibility of Metaphysics”, Mind 43, 1934, pp. 335-445.
Carnap, R. ‘The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language’ in A. J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism, Allen and Unwin, 1959 pp. 60-81.
Hempel, C. G., “The Empiricist Criterion of Meaning”, Language’ in A. J. Ayer (ed.) Logical Positivism, Allen and Unwin, 1959 pp. 108-129.
Russell, B., The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, especially chapters 7 and 8.
Kim, J. and Sosa, E. ed., A Companion to Metaphysics. See the following entries: “principle of verifiability”; “ empiricism”; “logical positivism”.
Hanfling, O. (ed.), Essential Readings in Logical Positivism, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1981, Introduction.
Joad, C. E. M., A Critique of Logical Positivism, Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1950, chapter 1 and 3.
Qadir, C. A., Logical Positivism, chapters 1-5.
SESSION 2: Collingwood’s claim that metaphysics is “a science of absolute presuppositions” in An Essay on Metaphysics.
Every question we ask rests on some presupposition or other. If I ask, for example, “Can you pass the salt, please?” this question presupposes that there is a pot of salt, that you are in the vicinity of the salt, that you can reach it, that salt exists and since salt is a thing, that things in general exist. It is in so far as we make these presuppositions that we can ask questions such as “can you pass the salt?” Without any presuppositions there would be no questions. Whereas some of our presuppositions are empirically verifiable (we can verify whether or not there is salt on the table) others may not be (can we genuinely verify that there is an external world?) and yet they are so essential that we cannot give them up. According to Collingwood metaphysics is the study of what he calls “absolute presuppositions”, presuppositions which are fundamental to our ways of thinking, give rise to many of the questions we ask for which we can find empirically true or false answers. The absolute presuppositions themselves, however, are neither true nor false but the precondition for asking questions to which there are true or false answers. In this session we will look at what Collingwood means by a metaphysics of absolute presuppositions and illustrate his views by showing, through the logic of question and answer, that there are some claims which we presuppose when asking questions but which are not themselves answers to questions.
Essential reading:
Collingwood, R.G., An Essay on Metaphysics, Part I, especially chapters IV and V (“On Presupposing; “The Science of Absolute Presuppositions”). Digitized item: http://repository.keele.ac.uk:8080/intralibrary/IntraLibrary?command=open-preview&learning_object_key=i2502n300564t
For an overview of Collingwood see:
D’Oro, G., http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/collingwood/
On absolute presuppositions see:
Connelly, J., Metaphysics, Method and Politics: the Political Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, chapter 3.
Copleston, F. Contemporary Philosophy, chapters 2 and 3.
D’Oro, G., Collingwood and the Metaphysics of Experience, chapter 1 and 4, especially from p. 61 ff.
D’Oro, G., “Between the old metaphysics and the new empiricism: Collingwood’s defence of the autonomy of philosophy” Ratio 25/1 March 2012, pp. 34-50. Pre-print available from my page of academia.edu: http://keele.academia.edu/GiuseppinaDOro/Papers
Johnson, P., R. G. Collingwood: An Introduction, chapter 5. Digitized item:
http://repository.keele.ac.uk:8080/intralibrary/IntraLibrary?command=open-preview&learning_object_key=i10008n225393t
Donagan, A., The Later Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood, Chapter IV: Question and Answer. Digitized item: http://repository.keele.ac.uk:8080/intralibrary/IntraLibrary?command=open-preview&learning_object_key=i7506n676089t
Mink, L. O., Mind, History and Dialectic, part II, chapter 5 (The Logic of Thought: #1-6)
Krausz, M., “The Logic of Absolute presuppositions” in Krausz, M., ed., Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood
Passmore, J. A., A Hundred Years of Philosophy, chapter XVI.
Walsh, W. H., “Collingwood and Metaphysical Neutralism” in Krausz, M., ed., Critical Essays on the Philosophy of R. G. Collingwood
White, Alan R., Methods of Metaphysics, Croom Helm, London, 1987, chapter 7. Digitized item:
http://repository.keele.ac.uk:8080/intralibrary/IntraLibrary?command=open-preview&learning_object_key=i1251n683199t
SESSION 3: Collingwood’s critique of Ayer’s logical positivist critique of metaphysics
In this session we will consider how Collingwood mobilizes his conception of metaphysics as a science of absolute presuppositions to simultaneously criticise a) traditional metaphysics (which he describes as the science of being qua being) and b) logical positivism. Collingwood’s critique of logical positivism is motivated by an attempt to return to or defend the very metaphysics that Ayer sought to undermine. Collingwood rather seeks to show that the principle of empiricism, as advocated by Hume and then by Ayer, suffers from a self-reflexivity problem since it is neither an analytical proposition nor an empirical one and looks suspiciously like an absolute presupposition of natural science.
Essential reading for session 3:
Collingwood, R. G., An Essay on Metaphysics, part III, especially, XXIX, XXX, XXXI, XXXII.
Connelly, J., 2009. “R.G. Collingwood, Analytical Philosophy and Logical Positivism” The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication, Vol 4 pp. 1-15. Available here: http://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1016&context=biyclc
SESSION 4: Carnap’s critique of metaphysics in “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology”
The Carnap of “Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology” is becoming an increasingly important figure in contemporary debates because he is seen as a champion of deflationary approaches to metaphysical disputes. According to Carnap metaphysical disputes (such as those between realists and idealists, materialists and immaterialists) cannot be settled because they require us to find answers to what he calls “external questions”. Such questions, he would claim, are not just difficult to answer, they are unanswerable. In fact they are ill posed. Take for example the question “is there an external world?” Realists would answer the question by saying “yes”. Phenomenalists by saying “no” and the metaphysical dispute between them goes on and on. Carnap claims that the question “is there an external world?” unlike the question “is there a cat on the mat?” is an illegitimate metaphysical question about the framework which makes questions about the objects internal to the framework possible. “Is there a cat on the mat?” is a question that one can ask if one works from within the spatio-temporal framework. Frameworks are not true or false, they are rather entailed by assertions (such as “there is a cat on the mat”) that are internal to them. Metaphysics, for Carnap, is the pointless search for true or false answers to external questions.
Essential reading:
Carnap, R. 1950. Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology. Revue Internationale de Philosophie 4 (2):20-40. Available here: http://www.ditext.com/carnap/carnap.html#*
On the contemporary metaontological debate see:
On the distinction between curiosity and quizzicality see Yablo, S. and Gallois, A. 1998. Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 72 (1):229 – 269 and is available here: file:///C:/Users/GIUSE/Downloads/yablo%20-%20does%20ontology%20rest%20on%20a%20mistake-.pdf
On Carnap and the contemporary metaonological debate see Price H. Avaliable here: “Carnap, Quine and the fate of Metaphysics”. Available here: http://ejap.louisiana.edu/EJAP/1997.spring/price976.html
D’Oro, G. “Unlikely Bedfellows? Collingwood, Carnap and the Internal/External Distinction”. Available here: https://www.academia.edu/10389616/Unlikely_Bedfellows_Collingwood_Carnap_and_the_Internal_External_Distinction
SESSION 5: Heidegger and the project of fundamental ontology in Being and Time
Both Collingwood and Heidegger sought to trace a third way between traditional metaphysics and logical empiricism. Collingwood developed a metaphysics of absolute presuppositions, Heidegger by contrast sought to articulate a more fundamental kind of ontology, one concerned not with the structures of reality but with the question of the meaning of Being. What is the question raised in Being and Time? Who (what kind of being) can grasp the meaning of what it is to be?
Background reading:
M.W. Wheeler, “Heidegger”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/
Essential reading:
Heidegger, M. Being and Time, §1-8
*King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, Part I (What is the Question?) pp. 1-25 and part II (Basic features and problems of Being and Time) pp. 29-50.
*Mulhall, S., Heidegger and Being and Time, Introduction.
Further reading:
Dreyfus, H. L., Being-in-the-World, chapters 1 and 2
Guignon, C. B., Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, selectively, (use index).
Wrathall, M.A., How to read Heidegger, chapters 1 and 2.
SESSION 6: Dasein as a Being-in-the world and the false problem of scepticism
Heidegger claims that the only way in which we can get a handle on the question of the meaning of Being is by investigating a being Dasein, for whom things matter. Dasein is Heidegger’s term for the subject, but he means something quite different from what previous philosophers, such as, for example, Descartes, have understood by the subject. Dasein is a being who is always already in the world. The world is not something that requires a proof but part of the very being of Dasein. The view that the world is something that is in need of a proof is part and parcel of a theoretical attitude which fundamentally misrepresents the nature of our relationship to the world. Heidegger therefore embarks in the project of explaining the true nature of subjectivity in what he calls the analytic of Dasein. This is an account of Dasein’s existential structures.that undermines the very conception of subjectivity which gives rise to sceptical questions.
Essential reading:
Heidegger, M. Being and Time, and §9-24 against the Cartesian conception of subjectivity) and §25-32 (on passions and projects)
*King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, Part II, chapter II, pp. 51-74.
*Mulhall, S., Heidegger and Being and Time, chapters 1 and 2.
Further reading:
Guignon, C. B., Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, selectively (use index).
Dreyfus, H. L., Being-in-the-World, chapters 3-7.
Blattner, W., “Is Heidegger a Kantian Idealist?”, Inquiry 37, 1994, pp. 185-201.
Blattner, W.,”Heidegger’s Kantian Idealism Revisited”, Inquiry 2004, 47/4, pp. 321-337
Wrathall, M.A., How to Read Heidegger, chapters 3 and 4.
SESSION 7: Inauthenticity and Anxiety
Dasein hides its true being from itself. It denies to itself that it is the source of meaning and value. When it does so it lives inauthentically. Inauthenticity is, according to Heidegger, an attempt to flee away from the experience of anxiety, which is what we feel when we realize that we are the source of all value and meaning. In this session we will look at the account of inauthenticity and anxiety that has greatly influenced the philosophy of existentialist thinkers such Jean Paul Sartre.
Essential reading:
Heidegger, M. Being and Time, §34-38 (on inauthenticity) and §39-42 (on anxiety).
*King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, part II chapter IV and V pp. 75-100
*Mulhall, S., Heidegger and Being and Time, chapter 4.
Further reading:
Wrathall, M.A., How to Read Heidegger, chapters 5 and 6
Carman, T., “Authenticity” A Companion to Heidegger. H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall, eds. Blackwell, 2005, chapter 17.
SESSION 8: Heidegger on language, truth and reality
Like Collingwood Heidegger rejects the view that truth and falsity is simply a matter of correspondence with the facts. Where Collingwood claims that true and false claims only become possible against the background of presuppositions which determine the kind of questions we ask and the kind of answers it makes sense to give, Heidegger argues that true and false claims become possible only against the background of a priori horizon of meaning. He therefore thinks of truth not as correspondence but as a form of world disclosure. In this session we will consider Heidegger’s critique of the traditional conception of truth and his alternative to it.
Essential reading:
Heidegger, M. Being and Time, §33-44 and §43-44.
*King, M., A Guide to Heidegger’s Being and Time, Part II chapter VI , pp. 101-109.
*Mulhall, S., Heidegger and Being and Time, chapter 3.
Further reading:
*Dahlstrom D., Heidegger’s concept of truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001.
Dreyfus, H. L., Being-in-the-World, chapters 12 and 15.
Guignon, C. B., Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, selectively (use index)
Taylor, C., “Engaged Agency and background” in The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, 2nd ed. C. Guignon, ed. Cambridge, 2006.
On Heidegger’s conception of truth:
*Tugendhat, E., ‘Heidegger’s Idea of Truth’ in Christopher Macann ed: Critical Heidegger. Routledge 1996. Pp. 227-240.
Carman, T. (2007). Heidegger on correspondence and correctness. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 28/2. Avaliable here: http://cas.uchicago.edu/workshops/germanphilosophy/files/2011/12/Correspond-and-Correct.pdf
Wrathall, M. “Heidegger and Truth as Correspondence,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 7, 1999, p. 69-88
Wrathall, M. (2002). Heidegger, Truth, and Reference. Inquiry 45 (2):217 – 228.
Wrathall, M. “Unconcealment.” A Companion to Heidegger. H. Dreyfus and M. Wrathall, eds. Blackwell, 2005, chapter 21.
———. “Truth and the Essence of Truth.” The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, 2nd ed. C. Guignon, ed. Cambridge, 2006.
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