"Nietzsche on Mind and Nature" at Oxford in September 2009--Update

The deadline for abstracts for papers is now March 15. This promises to be one of the most philosophically substantial FNS events.

Katsafanas Reviews Leiter & Sinhababu (eds.), "Nietzsche and Morality"...

in Mind. Lots of interesting, substantive discussion, including of Hussain's fictionalist reading of Nietzsche, which we have discussed before.

More Thoughts on the Argument from "Moral Disagreement," Part I

These are some thoughts in response to the excellent set of comments by Justin Clarke-Doane (a PhD student at NYU doing fascinating work on disagreement in mathematics--he has a pertinent paper on his homepage for those interested) in the thread on my paper on "Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement in Nietzsche." Clarke-Doane raised so many interesting issues that they deserve their own posts, on which I hope he and others can then comment. (I'll refer to him hereafter as JCD.)

In my paper, I had argued from the fact of "persistent and apparently intractable disaggrement on foundational questions" in moral theory to the conclusion that we ought to be skeptical about the existence of moral facts or properties. JCD claims that we find the same kind of disagreement in mathematics. This might, of course, lead us to skepticism about mathematical facts or it might lead us to worry about this strategy of argument. JCD doesn't take a position on that issue here. He wants, in his first set of comments, to make the case that the situation, when it comes to disagreement, is the same in math as I claim it is in ethics. (His second set of comments raise a different set of issues, to which I'll turn in a second post.)

As an example of "persistent" disagreement in mathematics, JCD notes that, "There has been disagreement over the axioms for set-theory since their formulation."

As evidence that this disagreement is "apparently intractable," JCD notes that "there is not merely disaggrement over the truth-values of mathematical sentences, but also disagreement over what would count as evidence for those sentences' truth or falsity." JCD gives the examples of disagreement over the Choice and Replacement axioms.

As evidence that this disagreement has a "foundational character," JCD notes that disagreement over the axioms for set-theory is "epistemically foundational" for mathematics, since these are "the only serious candidates which might be thought to justify axioms which imply them." Such disagreement is also "metaphysically foundational" since "the axioms of our 'explanatorily' fundamental theory, set theory" are the metaphysical foundation of mathematics.

JCD has the significant advantage here of knowing a lot more mathematics than I do, though I hope to hear from readers also conversant in the underlying mathematical debates. I don't want to take issue with the question of whether the putative disagreements in questions are "foundational" (other readers are welcome to do so); I do want to pose some questions about whether they are "persistent" and "apparently intractable."

Set theory dates from the late 19th-century, so has been subject to about 140 years of development and dispute by mathematicians. How does the state of disagreement today compare to 100 years ago? To 50 years ago? To 25 years ago? Reading the SEP entry on set theory , one is left with the impression of a progressive discipline with gradual agreement on many basic ideas. Why is this? Could any entry on the foundations of morality read like the SEP entry on set theory?

The latter, purely sociological, observations bear on the question of intractability. It appears that many foundational issues in set theory have been resolved since the 1870s. (Is there any foundational issue about the criteria of right action that has been resolved since the 1870s? Or since the 1670s?) Evidence of 'intractability' has partly to do with persistence, but partly to do with the terms in which disagreement is carried out. Foundational debates in ethics devolve into clashing intuitions and accusations of moral corruption and obtuseness rather quickly! What are the terms on which apparently 'intractable' debates about set theory are carried out?

JCD makes the interesting sociological point that "the correlation between relevant mathematicians' views and thsoe of their mentor is impossible to miss." How long does that pattern last? Over multiple generations? Or do we find that the student of X often comes to reject the views of his teacher's teacher?

I don't presuppose answers to these questions. But their answers might well suggest which horn of JCD's dilemma we should embrace (i.e., mathematical skepticism or skepticiam about the argument from disagreement).

I should note that I don't quite understand JCD's reference, near the end of his first set of remarks, to the fact that fictionalists in philosophy of mathematics deny simple arithmetical truths. The argument from moral disagreement appeals to first-order disagreement in ethical theory about the criteria of right action, the nature of moral goodnes, and the relative priority of rightnes and goodness in the evaluatoin of actions and persons, among other considerations. It does not depend on claims about the metaphysics, epistemology, or semantics of these judgments. JCD is obviously skeptical about drawing the line between the meta- and first-order disagreements in mathematics. I would like some further explanation of why, and whether there is any reason for that skepticism to carry over to the meta-ethical case.

My Review of Shaw on "Nietzsche's Political Skepticism"

It is now on-line here.

"Nietzsche and Morality" (OUP, 2007) to be Released in Paperback Later This Year

If any readers have spotted typos or similar errors in the cloth version, I'd be grateful if you would let me know, so that we can ask OUP to correct them for the paperback version. Thanks.

Penultimate (essentially final) version of "Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered" Now On-Line

Here. I am grateful to those who commented on it last year at this blog. This will appear in The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche (edited by Ken Gemes and John Richardson), due out later this year. There may be a few stylistic or citation tweaks, but this version is final as to substance, and is available for citation and quotation.

Additional comments are, of course, welcome, since these are topics and issues I'm still working on.

"Nietzsche on Mind and Nature" at Oxford in September 2009

Reminder: the deadline for paper proposals is February 1!

New Look for the Blog

Let me know if you prefer this new look to the old one--some readers complained, fairly I think, that the old format was hard to read, and that the links were hard to find. Thanks. Happy New Year to all readers!

Nietzsche's Relationship to Political Philosophy

I've posted my review essay of Tamsin Shaw's book Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (Princeton, 2007), which will appear in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews in January. Most of the review is given over to a detailed critique of Professor Shaw's argument. Those who have read my work for awhile know that I don't waste time doing detailed critiques of insignificant work, so even though I am skeptical about Shaw's main theses, I think they are very much worth engaging.

Here are the introductory and concluding paragraphs of my review essay:

Nietzsche's Political Skepticism (hereafter NPS) is a serious, learned, and novel contribution to the literature on Nietzsche’s relevance to political theory. Against the two dominant strands in the secondary literature—one attributing to Nietzsche a kind of flat-footed commitment to aristocratic forms of social ordering, the other denying that Nietzsche has any political philosophy at all—Shaw stakes out a new and surprising position: namely, that Nietzsche was very much concerned with the familiar question of the moral or normative legitimacy of state power, but was skeptical that with the demise of religion, it would be possible to achieve a practically effective normative consensus about such legitimacy that was untainted by the exercise of state power itself. Although, as I will argue below, there are reasons to be quite skeptical that Nietzsche was interested in anything like these questions, Shaw has laid down a clear and invigorating challenge to existing scholarship on Nietzsche’s politics, and it is one worth meeting.

=====================

NPS is meticulously footnoted, and Shaw displays a wide and generally deep knowledge of all the pertinent secondary literature. I believe this is the first time I have read a work that cites to book reviews I have written, though in each case the citation was substantive: there was a point made in the review that really was relevant to the issues at hand. Professor Shaw is also quite generous in her treatment of other commentators, even when they are, like Leo Strauss, fairly irresponsible. Her discussions of Burckhardt, Lange, Rankean nationalists, and other contemporaneous intellectual developments were learned, lucid, and helpful. The book is almost always quite well-informed about philosophical issues that affect her reading, and Shaw is particularly good, I thought, in her critique of Nadeem Hussain’s important “fictionalist” reading of Nietzsche (see esp. 92-94). Most books by political theorists on Nietzsche are unreadable for philosophers; this book is the exception that proves the rule. I would not hesitate to say that it is the best book on Nietzsche’s political theory I have ever read, even though I find it unpersuasive. Philosophers interested in Nietzsche’s political thought will have to read this book, and it certainly deserves critical attention and response.

New Preface to the Forthcoming Greek Edition of My "Nietzsche on Morality" Book

Some readers might find this of interest. The publisher was keen for me to talk about how I became interested in Nietzsche, and also to address what he described as the still widespread perception in Greece of Nietzsche as a figure of "the right."

Sorry for the Delay in Comments Appearing

I neglected to change my e-mail address from Texas to Chicago, and the Texas address had stopped forwarding, so there was a backlog. I've just now approved a whole bunch of comments, as well as changing my e-mail address to the current one for comment moderation. Thanks to all those who contributed, and my apologies for the mix up.

"Moral Skepticism and Moral Disagreement in Nietzsche"

I've posted a revised version of the paper I gave at the annual NYU "History of Modern Philosophy" conference in November (which generated an excellent and very helpful discussion). I hope the paper may interest moral philosophers generally, as well as Nietzsche scholars. Here is the abstract for the paper:

This essay offers a new interpretation of Nietzsche's argument for moral
skepticism (i.e., the metaphysical thesis that there do not exist any objective
moral properties or facts), an argument that should be of independent
philosophical interest as well. On this account, Nietzsche offers a version of
the argument from moral disagreement, but, unlike familiar varieties, it does
not purport to exploit anthropological reports about the moral views of exotic
cultures, or even garden-variety conflicting moral intuitions about concrete
cases. Nietzsche, instead, calls attention to the single most important and
embarrassing fact about the history of moral theorizing by philosophers over two
millennia: namely, that no rational consensus has been secured on any
substantive, foundational proposition about morality. Persistent and apparently
intractable disagreement on foundational questions, of course, distinguishes
moral theory from inquiry in the sciences and mathematics (perhaps in kind,
certainly in degree). According to Nietzsche, the best explanation for this
disagreement is that, even though moral skepticism is true, philosophers can
still construct valid dialectical justifications for moral propositions because
the premises of different justifications will answer to the psychological needs
of at least some philosophers and thus be deemed true by some of them. The essay
concludes by considering various attempts to defuse this abductive argument for
skepticism based on moral disagreement and by addressing the question whether
the argument "proves too much," that is, whether it might entail an implausible
skepticism about a wide range of topics about which there is philosophical
disagreement.

Blogging about Nietzsche's Theory of Value

Michael Drake is a lawyer with a philosophy background who has been blogging quite a bit about aspects of Nietzsche's theory of value, touching on many issues and authors noted here in the past. There are also opportunities to comment on his postings at his site.

Call for Papers for Nietzsche Society Conference on "Nietzsche on Mind and Nature" at Oxford, September 2009

Nietzsche on Mind and Nature
11 – 13 September 2009
St Peter’s College, University of Oxford

The Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford will host the 2009 International
Conference of Friedrich Nietzsche Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 11-13
September 2009, at St. Peter’s College, Oxford.

Keynote speakers include:

Prof. Günter Abel, Faculty of Philosophy, TU Berlin, Germany.
Prof. Brian Leiter, Faculty of Law, University of Chicago, USA.
Prof. Graham Parkes, Faculty of Philosophy, Cork, Ireland.
Dr. Peter Poellner, Faculty of Philosophy, Warwick University, UK.
Prof. Bernard Reginster, Faculty of Philosophy, Brown University, USA.
Prof. John Richardson, Faculty of Philosophy, NYU, USA.
Prof. Galen Strawson, Department of Philosophy, Reading University, UK.

This conference seeks for the first time to consider Nietzsche’s philosophy of mind in
relation to his philosophical naturalism. We hope to consider papers by Nietzsche
experts with a background in analytical or continental philosophy as well as from those
working in the fields of philosophy of mind and naturalism with a strong interest in
Nietzsche. Potential topics include:

Nietzsche’s theory of subjectivity
Nietzsche and the body
Intentionality
Memory and self
Consciousness and self-consciousness
Nietzsche and biology
Epiphenomenalism
Nietzsche and psychology
Mind-body problem
Awareness, emotion, cognition
Unconsciousness
Perspectivism and the self
Self and otherness
Self-awareness and self-knowledge
Mind as emergent phenomenon
Nietzsche and neuroscience
Nietzsche’s naturalism
Agency and freedom
Mind, world, brain
Intersubjectivity and value

We invite submissions for 30-minute papers on the above or related topics. Please send
an abstract of a maximum of 400 words and a short CV (no longer than one page) via
email by 1 February 2009 to fnsox /at/ philosophy.ox.ac.uk. Notification of acceptance
will be sent no later than 1 March 2009.

For further details, please visit the conference website at
http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/events/nietzsche_mind_conference
or contact the organizers at
fnsox/at/philosophy.ox.ac.uk

Organization:
Dr. Manuel Dries and Dr. Peter Kail, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford.

Gott ist tot!

But not at this small college in Texas. Pretty pathetic.

UPDATE: Temple College, to its credit, reversed itself.

Life is peachy...

...which, alas, will just encourage mispronunciations of "Nietzsche."

(Thanks to John Turri for this amusing link.)

Nietzsche for your IPhone

Really.



(Thanks to Iain Thomson for the pointer.)

Nietzsche Society Conference at Oxford, September 2009

Details here. I'm not certain yet what I will be talking about, but it will probably concern agency and freedom, in a (no doubt futile!) effort to put a stop to the moralizing misreadings of Nietzsche on this topic emanating from certain corners of Southern England!

Greek Translation of "Nietzsche on Morality" Due Out in 2009

On the off chance this might be of interest to some reader(s), I thought I'd mention that I was pleasantly surprised to learn not long ago that a Greek translation of Nietzsche on Morality (Routledge, 2002) will be published in 2009. The book will be published by Okto (Athens). I have been very impressed by the conscientious work of the translator, Yorgos Lamprakos, who has been checking the citations in the English version, and found a number of errors, which will be corrected in the Greek version (citation errors, e.g., citing to GM I:15 instead of GM III:15, that kind of thing).

Comedian Gervais Offers His Rendition of Hitler Talking to Nietzsche

Here. Slightly amusing, though he, oddly, calls Nietzsche "a political philosopher."

(Thanks to Victor Caston for the pointer.)