Following the basic claim of the project to offer an alternative to the contemporary (speculative) realism, the paper endeavors to think a new relation between philosophy and scientific realism. On the basis of a series of philosophical and scientific topoi, the article examines the relation between reality as a field which is seemingly independent from the subject and the Real as the place of the subjective inscription into it. This relation manifests itself in many domains, for instance, in Plato's metaphor of the cave, the status of consciousness in neuro-science, the critique of ideology, as well as quantum mechanics. In all these cases, the same pattern is visible: even though the existence of an original, substantial subject can never be assumed, only the subjective inscription enables the emergence of a consistent reality. This relation may well be said to exhibit the form of the Klein bottle which is made of one geometrical surface and yet produces its own inside as distinguished from its outside; the subject represents merely the twist of the surface into itself, thus remaining its bind spot, necessary for the inside of the bottle to maintain the illusion of a complete and consummate reality.
COBISS.SI-ID: 44181037
The monograph is the most important result of the research of the project's second section, one whose objective is to point out a certain, thus far neglected, tendency in the relation of philosophy and science and provide a new reading of the history of philosophy, in order to revise the usual understanding of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy as a final parting of philosophy and realism and an absolute scission between philosophy and science. The author criticizes the common diagnosis according to which the entire Continental philosophy after Kant is synonymous with antirealism. Instead, the realist side of the methods of Kant, Hegel, the philosophers of linguistic turn, and others, is pointed out. The book explores the relations between the processes of idealization and de-symbolization of the world. Its thesis is thus that the paradigms of consciousness and language are not necessarily incompatible with realism, but rather open new possibilities to disclose the world beyond consciousness and language. Within the project Excellence in Science by ARRS, the book was named as one of the five excellent achievements in the field of humanities for 2017.
COBISS.SI-ID: 62800482
The article investigates the relation between truth and reality in light of the relation of indifference between philosophy and science, which represents the third main objective of the project. It interprets Hegel’s theory as being based on the assumption that the immediate reality is unfit to give rise to truth, that truth therefore arises spontaneously and is subsequently entitled to take possession of reality. As such, it represents the final embodiment and escalation of the logic of self-consciousness. In order to point to a limit of Hegel, the text now deduces three fallacies of self-consciousness, i.e., self-reflexivity, pre-temporality, and negation, and raises the question of whether a new kind of idealism can be conceived of on the ground of the inversion of the three impasses. It is an “idealism without self-consciousness,” hence, an idealism of the essential emergence of truth, its historicity, and the positivation of reality. By identifying a specific impotence of the Hegelian Concept to elucidate a scientific realist stance, the article finally advocates a return to Hegel, but not to the Hegel of self-consciousness and the social construction of meaning, but to the Hegel of the emergent idealism of truth.
COBISS.SI-ID: 63737186
The article deals with Leibniz’s plan for a universal language, the so-called “universal characteristic”. First, I underline the fact that Leibniz’s plan is based on a certain semiotic aspect of mathematics, which represents an innovation in the context of the early modern idea of mathematization of all sciences. Leibniz’s ambitious scheme of course has some serious shortcomings, which had undoubtedly contributed to the fact that he never even began to carry out his project. However, I claim that Leibniz was optimistic about his plan because of his strictly Platonist epistemology, on which the characteristic is founded. In its very theoretical core, the characteristic is possible only insofar Leibniz adopts classic Platonic realism and renounces the kind of philosophy of consciousness advocated by Descartes and Locke. Based on the promises and the inherent Platonism of characteristic it then seems that, as a language of nature, the scheme exhibits some striking similarities with a certain tradition of linguistic thought, which started with Plato’s Cratylus and still had its advocates in Leibniz’s days.
COBISS.SI-ID: 44180781
In our contribution “Condorcet – Knowledge, Society, and History” we place Condorcet’s book in the historical context of the French Enlightenment and the tradition of philosophy of history. In the 18th century, the problem of the origin of languages was at the forefront of linguistic interests, however, particularly the French enlightenment had not completely renounced the Leibnizian rationalist ideals of »linguistic realism«. In this context, we emphasize Condorcet’s achievements in the field of the mathematization of social sciences, particularly the importance of statistics and the calculus of probabilities for his understanding of the “social art” and the ever growing complexity of modern societies. This element, together with Condorcet’s renewal of the idea of scientific language which would primarily serve to stabilize knowledge rather than facilitate communication, is acknowledged as the heritage of Leibniz’s philosophy, particularly his project of the so called “universal characteristic”, i.e., a universal symbolism which was intended to directly represent the logical structure of the world. Unlike Latin, such language would yield emancipatory potential according to Condorcet.
COBISS.SI-ID: 63665250