Volume 1, Issue 2

The paper deals with an analogy between two philosophical positions: (1) the kind of methodological solipsism associated with Carnapian logical positivism and, more generally, with the entire post-Cartesian tradition in epistemology and in the philosophy of mind and language, and (2) the more socially oriented, late-Wittgensteinian philosophy of language, which constitutes the background of several influential philosophical treatments of the conditions of understanding human cultures and social forms of life. In the latter, the solipsistic “I”, the locus of all experience and meaning, is replaced by a social subject, “we”, but the position remains methodologically solipsistic, since experiences and meanings are still created from a first person point of view, on the basis of what is “given” to the (social) subject. The solipsism issue turns out to be fundamentally relevant to some basic concerns in the philosophy of science and of the social sciences, because even pragmatic and constructivist currents based on Wittgenstein's later work employ solipsistic methodological assumptions.

It is my contention that a number of prominent commentators on the problem of radical epistemological scepticism labour under a certain erroneous conception of what this problem involves. In particular, I argue that they tend to both underestimate and overestimate the issue that faces them. On the one hand, they are confused as to what would constitute a satisfactory answer to the sceptic. On the other, they concede far too much to the sceptic by failing to recognise that there are a number of defensive moves available to them, especially insofar as they endorse a version of epistemological externalism. In order to illustrate these claims, I focus upon Edward Craig's analysis of knowledge that, by his own admission, is unable to satisfactorily answer the challenge of radical scepticism

According to deontologists, morality includes constraints. These constraints are (in part) intended to cater for our moral intuitions about various cases in which an agent can prevent harm to some by seeing to it that someone (else) is harmed. I briefly argue that neither the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing nor the Doctrine of Double Effect quite match our intuitions about such cases, and suggest that our intuitions are better explained in terms of a psychological mechanism that Peter Unger has called ‘projective separating’. Furthermore, I argue that projective separating has no moral merit and that this casts some doubt on the enterprise of defending constraints.

The concept of Stimmung – attunement or mood – is a key notion in Heidegger's existential ontology as this is articulated in Sein und Zeit. Not only does it designate a significant aspect of human existence, which Heidegger portrays as “tuned” throughout its different comportments; it also plays a decisive role as a methodological step within the course of the ontological analysis. Only through the cultivation of specific moods can the route to a qualified philosophical contemplation be accessed. Throughout his life Heidegger remained a devoted reader of Aristotle, who plays a particularly important role during the early twenties when the existential analytic is developed. This background is one important key to understanding the philosophical implications of Heidegger's analysis of Stimmung. In the end this theme also invites us to distinguish in very broad terms how the relation between passion and reason has been articulated in Greek and Christian thinking respectively. Against the background of such a general account, it is my purpose here to situate Heidegger's analysis of Stimmung in a context in which it can hopefully both be better appreciated and critically assessed.