Papers by Xavier Meulders
It is commonplace to think of neoliberalism as an ideology. Qua ideology, it is often thought tha... more It is commonplace to think of neoliberalism as an ideology. Qua ideology, it is often thought that neoliberalism is a purely economic doctrine that justifies itself through a utilitarian ethics of welfare maximisation. Whereas this conception of neoliberalism is not entirely wrong, it overlooks that any ideology, including neoliberalism, borrows its vocabulary from an unarticulated manifest image that is at once a metaphysics, an ethics and an anthropology. In this sense, neoliberalism's indebtedness to utilitarianism is never fully acknowledged by its advocates. It is my contention that the success of neoliberalism, and perhaps of any modern ideology, depends on its tacit dissolution of ethical life into a purely descriptive 'sociology of morals'. Hence, neoliberal ideology attempts to justify itself by proclaiming itself 'value neutral'. It is my contention that this 'sociological turn' in the history of ethics took prominently place in the philosophy of David Hume, hence paving the way for neoliberal ideology. However, without a proper understanding of man and his place in the moral order, neoliberalism does more harm than good in the defence of individual freedom and political justice.
Explores some key ideas of Aristotle's theory on rhetoric, and how these ideas may foster a prope... more Explores some key ideas of Aristotle's theory on rhetoric, and how these ideas may foster a proper understanding of rhetoric as an art of finding the right means of persuasion instead of an instrumentalist account according to which rhetoric is a mere tool to manipulate an audience's beliefs.
The red rose is. A defense of Brentano's theory of existential judgements.
Franz Brentano's the... more The red rose is. A defense of Brentano's theory of existential judgements.
Franz Brentano's theory of existential judgements, as set forth in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, has been put under severe scrutiny from the very beginning. Some of Brentano's pupils, such as Edmund Husserl, criticized the theory because judgements already presuppose the existence of an intentional content bearing objective validity and therefore a certain kind of "being" independent of the intentional act. Whereas Husserl's critique may certainly hold when adopting realist ontology involving objective meanings, the critique nevertheless fails in showing a deficiency in Brentano's initial theory. Brentano never used 'existence' as denoting a real or even logical predicate (in the Kantian sense). Rather, existence pertains to the act of a judger judging with evidence, resulting in an evident judgement about the intentional object put under consideration. In this regard, Brentano rehearses the ancient and scholastic doctrine according to which the category of 'being' pertains to being in the sense of the true ( cf Aristotle's 'on hos alethes'). This contribution therefore attempts at reconstructing Brentano's fine-tuned arguments favoring his claim that all judgements are essentially existential, and demonstrating the phenomenological relevance of Brentano's cumbersome transpositions.
Most libertarians tend to agree that (institutionalized) democracy stands in an antagonistic oppo... more Most libertarians tend to agree that (institutionalized) democracy stands in an antagonistic opposition to the endorsed principles of a free society: having the option to choose by whom one will be robbed, does not make the burglar’s intentions less repugnant from a deontic standpoint which is inherent to libertarian political philosophy.
The line of argumentation promulgated against democracy, however, mostly passes through a (morally) evaluative analysis. This contribution is meant as an epistemological clarification of the concept of democracy, in which I will try to defend the thesis that democracy is an epistemic absurdity. In fact, from an epistemological point of view democracy is more akin to what Frank van Dun aptly called political systems of ‘unity’.
In this contribution, I will have the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege as a sound point of departure. The reader might therefore indeed remark that a lot of abstraction and omission regarding the normative aspect of democracy is involved in order to clarify my point. I nevertheless hope that this case against democracy, and in favor of individual freedom, is a fruitful endeavour.
Science is often considered as a set of propositions referring to an objective world existing ind... more Science is often considered as a set of propositions referring to an objective world existing independently of the human mind. Due to their very being, propositions are either true or false. This ultimately means that theories in which science is equated with a certain whole of propositions, must rely on a correspondence theory of truth. But when we try to incorporate the role of human knowledge into the scientific process, we discover that the correspondence theory simply breaks down. This leaves us with a coherence theory of truth, in which it are not propositions but judgements that form the most fundamental elements of a scientific theory. When examining the nature of judgement, we come to the conclusion that the notion of truth used in a coherence theory is fundamentally different from the one used in a correspondence theory. It is a primitive notion that cannot be defined or analysed, since the coherence theory has ‘bracketed’ the validity of the world of objective axioms and propositions. But examples of it can be given, such as the law of non-contradiction which brings our whole edifice of judgements into a coherent, non-contradictory whole. Nevertheless, the truth-standards of a coherence theory are not merely formal. They are in fact driven by a certain ‘telos’ toward an ever clearer disclosure of the world as it is in itself. But then it might be interesting to examine the very origin of this ‘telos’ or ‘drive’. Husserlian phenomenology, for instance, has searched for this drive in the notions of ‘transcendental subjectivity’ and ‘the lifeworld’. But even these notions are not self-sufficient in the sense that they can provide an adequate explanation of the directedness of our intentional life. And this ultimately leads us to the inevitable realm of the philosophy of God.
From the late 20th century onwards, the idea of a free conscious will which we tend to attribute ... more From the late 20th century onwards, the idea of a free conscious will which we tend to attribute to each rational human being is coming under serious pressure. It seems that with the experiments of the psychologist Benjamin Libet and, more recently, John-Dylan Haynes, the idea of free conscious will has to sing its final swan song. But if the idea of free will might be a dogmatic relic from pre-scientific times, then this also counts for the famous proverb that science always ought to have the right on a last, final judgement. In this paper, we will examine both the 'weak' and 'hard' problem of experiments conducted in the positivist spirit of Libet and Haynes. Do the experiments have much explanatory power? What about the issue of causality and predictability? Can conscious experience be naturalized to its physical substratum? And what about the nature of deliberate action? These are the main questions that will be addressed in this paper.
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Papers by Xavier Meulders
Franz Brentano's theory of existential judgements, as set forth in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, has been put under severe scrutiny from the very beginning. Some of Brentano's pupils, such as Edmund Husserl, criticized the theory because judgements already presuppose the existence of an intentional content bearing objective validity and therefore a certain kind of "being" independent of the intentional act. Whereas Husserl's critique may certainly hold when adopting realist ontology involving objective meanings, the critique nevertheless fails in showing a deficiency in Brentano's initial theory. Brentano never used 'existence' as denoting a real or even logical predicate (in the Kantian sense). Rather, existence pertains to the act of a judger judging with evidence, resulting in an evident judgement about the intentional object put under consideration. In this regard, Brentano rehearses the ancient and scholastic doctrine according to which the category of 'being' pertains to being in the sense of the true ( cf Aristotle's 'on hos alethes'). This contribution therefore attempts at reconstructing Brentano's fine-tuned arguments favoring his claim that all judgements are essentially existential, and demonstrating the phenomenological relevance of Brentano's cumbersome transpositions.
The line of argumentation promulgated against democracy, however, mostly passes through a (morally) evaluative analysis. This contribution is meant as an epistemological clarification of the concept of democracy, in which I will try to defend the thesis that democracy is an epistemic absurdity. In fact, from an epistemological point of view democracy is more akin to what Frank van Dun aptly called political systems of ‘unity’.
In this contribution, I will have the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege as a sound point of departure. The reader might therefore indeed remark that a lot of abstraction and omission regarding the normative aspect of democracy is involved in order to clarify my point. I nevertheless hope that this case against democracy, and in favor of individual freedom, is a fruitful endeavour.
Franz Brentano's theory of existential judgements, as set forth in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, has been put under severe scrutiny from the very beginning. Some of Brentano's pupils, such as Edmund Husserl, criticized the theory because judgements already presuppose the existence of an intentional content bearing objective validity and therefore a certain kind of "being" independent of the intentional act. Whereas Husserl's critique may certainly hold when adopting realist ontology involving objective meanings, the critique nevertheless fails in showing a deficiency in Brentano's initial theory. Brentano never used 'existence' as denoting a real or even logical predicate (in the Kantian sense). Rather, existence pertains to the act of a judger judging with evidence, resulting in an evident judgement about the intentional object put under consideration. In this regard, Brentano rehearses the ancient and scholastic doctrine according to which the category of 'being' pertains to being in the sense of the true ( cf Aristotle's 'on hos alethes'). This contribution therefore attempts at reconstructing Brentano's fine-tuned arguments favoring his claim that all judgements are essentially existential, and demonstrating the phenomenological relevance of Brentano's cumbersome transpositions.
The line of argumentation promulgated against democracy, however, mostly passes through a (morally) evaluative analysis. This contribution is meant as an epistemological clarification of the concept of democracy, in which I will try to defend the thesis that democracy is an epistemic absurdity. In fact, from an epistemological point of view democracy is more akin to what Frank van Dun aptly called political systems of ‘unity’.
In this contribution, I will have the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege as a sound point of departure. The reader might therefore indeed remark that a lot of abstraction and omission regarding the normative aspect of democracy is involved in order to clarify my point. I nevertheless hope that this case against democracy, and in favor of individual freedom, is a fruitful endeavour.