Webページ:http://abelard.flet.keio.ac.jp/seminar/JocelynBenoistLectures/
I will criticize the Platonic motif of an acontextual ontology: so, of a metaphysical ontology in one traditional sense of the term 'metaphysics'. I will criticize this view by reflecting on the purposelessness of mathematical platonism, which serves as a model for such a philosophical misconception, and by showing how, in mathematics, it is the use that largely determines what is meaningful to say that there is.
In this talk I am going to endorse, against Platonism, a contextualist view in philosophy. I will clear a common misunderstanding about contextualism lurking in Contemporary philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. Contextualism should not be confused with relativism, as it is very commonly. Far from aiming at weakening the logical content and its truth-value, contextualism is a principle of content determination, providing the only kind of determination that content can ever have.
Western metaphysics is based on the opposition between reality and appearance. This construction essentially rests on a visual model. I am going to question the basis of this metaphysics, by affirming the reality of appearances and reflecting on their various uses, in particular artistic ones. This path will be taken in the first place by shifting the focus of philosophical analysis from visual to acoustic models. Thus I will envisage a possible renewed realism as a metaphysics of ‘echoes’ - as opposed to shadows.
In this talk, I will continue to clarify the idea of contextualism by discussing the possibility and meaning of transposing this requirement from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. I will show how to avoid the pitfall of believing that, in order to be a contextualist in the field of the mind as well, one would have to accept the idea of "representation" as what, at this level, should be put into context.