Morten S. Thaning - Böcker

How does the idea that perception must provide reasons for our empirical judgements constrain our conception of our perceptual experiences? This volume presents ten new essays on perception which in different ways address this fundamental question. Charles Travis and John McDowell debate whether we need to ascribe content to experience in order to understand how it can provide the subject with reasons. Other essays address issues such as the following: What exactly is the Myth of the Given and why should it be worthwhile to try to avoid it? What constitutes our experiential reasons? Is it experiences themselves, the objects of experiences, or facts about our experiences? Should we conceive of experiential reasons as conclusive reasons? How should we conceive of the fallibility of our perceptual capacities if we think of experiences as capable of providing conclusive reasons? How should we conceive of the objects of experience? The contributors offer a variety of views on the reason-giving potential of experience, engaging explicitly and critically with each other's work.

By reading Foucault as a philosopher, it offers an extensive systematic assessment and discussion of his unique conception of philosophical practice and brings a unifying trajectory in his work to light.

By reading Foucault as a philosopher, it offers an extensive systematic assessment and discussion of his unique conception of philosophical practice and brings a unifying trajectory in his work to light.

This book reassesses Gadamer’s hermeneutics by bringing it into a dialogue with John McDowell’s minimal empiricism. It employs the resources of McDowell’s minimal empiricism to address the transcendental and ontological presuppositions for objective experience and understanding, while retaining Gadamer’s emphasis on the historicity of understanding. By means of the dialogue with McDowell, the book develops a hermeneutical conception of objectivity and perceptual experience, which also entails reinterpretations of Gadamer’s notions of tradition, practical wisdom and meaning. The book explores the philosophical space beyond the analytic-Continental divide and demonstrates that hermeneutics is not limited to a reflection on understanding as it is practiced in the human sciences, but can be revived as a distinct and cogent philosophical approach with a transcendental and ontological dimension.Thaning's book is a richly detailed, well-argued and coherent presentation of a defensible, and potentially very important, philosophical position. It demonstrates an impressively deep understanding of the literature both from the phenomenological tradition and from the part of the analytical tradition, inspired by Wilfred Sellars, to which John McDowell belongs. Being a substantial philosophical achievement in its own right, the book raises far-reaching questions that will be of interest to a wide audience.Dr. Steven Crowell, Rice University, Houston (USA) Morten Thaning’s book is an important contribution to the discourse of philosophical hermeneutics. Thaning extensively discusses a topic, which recent debates have touched upon, but which up to now has not been the subject matter of concentrated scholarly work: the relation between Gadamer’s hermeneutics and McDowell’s empiricism. With Thaning’s interpretation Gadamer’ work can be read anew as concerning the problem of hermeneutical objectivity.Prof. Dr. Günter Figal, University of Freiburg (Germany)