The Problem of "The World"
Avner Baz(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Will be published approx. on 23. December 2026
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-0-19-786214-8 (ISBN)
Description
Contemporary analytic philosophy abounds with invocations of something called 'the world' (or, similarly, 'reality'); but, Avner Baz argues, it is none too clear what is meant by 'the world' in such invocations. The Problem of "The World" demonstrates case by case-from the metaphysics of magnitudes, through cognitive science, epistemology, and the philosophy of language, all the way to metaethics-that those invocations of 'the world' are meant to refer to the world as captured or reflected in our objective representations-paradigmatically, but not exclusively, those of the natural sciences-when those representations are true. At the same time, however, the philosophers making them take that world-as thus captured or reflected-to be altogether independent of our representations of it, and hence independent as well of the conditions under which those representations have whatever sense they have for us. These philosophers thus reveal themselves as transcendental realists, in Kant's sense.
Drawing on Kant, but revising and expanding his ideas under the inspiration of (the Later) Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell, Baz argues that transcendental realism ultimately amounts to no more than an empty gesture. At the same time, his critique of transcendental realism has a positive, transcendental idealist upshot: it reveals our sense-making as conditioned, or situated, and shows that, and how, philosophers get themselves in philosophical trouble when they try to hold on to sense apart from its (worldly-historical) conditions.
Drawing on Kant, but revising and expanding his ideas under the inspiration of (the Later) Wittgenstein, Cora Diamond, Merleau-Ponty, and Stanley Cavell, Baz argues that transcendental realism ultimately amounts to no more than an empty gesture. At the same time, his critique of transcendental realism has a positive, transcendental idealist upshot: it reveals our sense-making as conditioned, or situated, and shows that, and how, philosophers get themselves in philosophical trouble when they try to hold on to sense apart from its (worldly-historical) conditions.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 140 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-19-786214-8 (9780197862148)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Avner Baz is a Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University. He has written on topics in moral philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of perception, and philosophy of language, with special focus on the question of philosophical method. He published two books-When Words are Called For (2012), and The Crisis of Method in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy (Oxford, 2017)-that aim to dispel the widespread notion that the insights and procedures of ordinary language philosophy may safely be ignored by contemporary analytic philosophers. More recently, he published two books on aspect perception: The Significance of Aspect Perception (2020), and Wittgenstein on Aspect Perception (2020).
Author
Professor, Department of PhilosophyProfessor, Department of Philosophy, Tufts University
Content
- Introduction
- Chapter 1: Kripke, Wittgenstein, and the Argument for Transcendental Idealism at the Level of Empirical Cognition
- Chapter 2: The Argument for Transcendental Idealism at the Level of Pre-Objective Perceptual Experience
- Chapter 3: Transcendental Idealism After Wittgenstein
- Chapter 4: More on the Ethical-Existential Significance of the Disagreement Between Transcendental Realism and Transcendental Idealism