Undergraduate Philosophy Conference
Abstracts
Fritz Allhoff
Science vs. The Cosmological and Teleological
Arguments for the Existence of God
William and Mary (Williamsburg, VA)
The philosophical tradition abounds with attempts to prove the existence of God through both empirical and metaphysical arguments. Theologians and philosophers present five different arguments for the proof of God: the argument from contingency, the argument from design (teleological argument), the ontological argument, the argument for God as a presupposition of value and morals, and the argument for proof by religious experience. The arguments from contingency and design both center on the state of the world and shall be the focus of this paper.
An argument based on empirical evidence must be consistent with that evidence. The physical reality presupposed in the cosmological and teleological arguments defies modern physics' conception of the laws of nature which include quantum mechanics and relativity. These breakthroughs shattered the principal concepts of the Newtonian world view: "the notion of absolute space and time, the elementary solid particles, the strictly causal nature of physical phenomena, and the ideal of an objective description of nature" (Capra, The Tao of Physics, 61).
Kathryn Blum
Can a Utopia for the Masses Ever Exit?
Fordham University (New York, NY)
The paper imagines an exchange between Thomas More and Robert Nozick. Ultimately, it is argued, Nozick's position is the stronger one. A single utopia could never exist in the actual world. The only possible way that one utopia could exist, successfully, is in your mind. Otherwise you would run into too many conflicts with people who wanted the world their way -- that would only cause animosity between neighbors, war, and unhappiness leading ultimately to more of a hell than a utopia.
Daniel J.
Bristol
Great Perfection: The Practical Phenomenology
of Tibetan Buddhism
SUNY-Oneonta (Oneonta, NY)
Perhaps the most intriguing of the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism are the Dzogchen ("Great Perfection"). According to the Great Perfection teachings, the whole of phenomenal experience, including the basic nature of human awareness, is equal to the realization of the Buddha. Usually considered esoteric in nature, the Dzogchen teachings are a highly incisive form of phenomenology that combines theory and practice as inseparable elements. We will be examining three texts: Longchengpa's Great Perfection: The Nature of Mind, The Easer of Weariness, Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche's The Cycle of Day and Night, and the contemplative instructions of Padmasambhava as found in a collection entitled Advice From the Lotus Born.
Neal D. Carlson
More Human Than Human: A Critique of Life at
the Margins
United States Military Academy (West Point, NY)
The paper advances an argument concerning the Quality of Personhood. At the center is the fundamental equation of personhood as a function of genetic fabric and moral community. Subsequent sections concern implications for abortion, euthanasia, and animal rights. Specific authors whose views are critiqued include Aldous Huxley, John Noonon, Carl Sagan, Mary Anne Warren.
Erin Kathleen
Carter
Does the Ontological Argument Need Salvaging?
An Analysis of St. Anselm's and Plantinga's Theistic
Proofs
Taylor University (Upland, IN)
Since St. Anselm formulated the first ontological argument in the eleventh century, philosophers and theologians have debated whether such an argument is sound and thus succeeds in proving the existence of God. In the course of this paper, I examine whether St. Anselm's original formulation of the ontological argument succeeds as a theistic proof, and if not, whether Alvin Plantinga's modal version circumvents the problems in the Anselmian argument.
Ian Cashman
On the Impossibility of Deriving Moral Import
Solely From Reason
Marymount University (Arlington, VA)
I will argue in this essay that a rationalist foundation of ethics, as developed by Alan Gewirth and Immanuel Kant, depends upon a particular conception of the moral agent i.e., a rational agent. Given this conception, I will further argue that Gewirth's and Kant's theories of ethics do not necessarily follow from their notions of agency; in order to accomplish this task, an evaluation of the "is-ought" debate is developed. Additionally, I will argue that the notion of agency, as presented by Kant and Gewirth, is too simplistic to sufficiently account for moral experience.
Albert Castelo
An Explanation and Commentary of W. H. Walsh's
Analytical Theory of Historical Knowledge
Hunter College (New York, NY)
In his Introduction to Philosophy of History, W. H. Walsh presents an analytical theory of historical knowledge largely consisting of a synthesis incorporating elements from competing general theories of knowledge, including Idealism and Correspondence on one hand, and Positivism and Coherence on the other. Walsh arrives at his views by comparing the respective objectives and methods employed by science and history, noting that although both disciplines bear significant differences, history is, nevertheless, an autonomous enterprise with a distinctive subject matter and methodology, or "a kind of science in its own right." What ultimately separates historical from scientific knowledge, Walsh argues, is the fact that while scientists are concerned with the objective formulation of universal laws, historians seek to explain past human events by reliance on an a priori or subjective understanding of human nature. A fuller explanation of Walsh's theory of historical knowledge is the subject of the first half of this paper, followed by a demonstration of the inappropriateness of his comparison between historical and scientific knowledge, with the conclusion that historical knowledge is harder to achieve on account of the complexity of its subject matter, and thus subject to entirely different standards of objectivity.
John Costa
The Bed of Power
SUNY-Oneonta (Oneonta, NY)
Where does power come from, where does it lie, slumber? Conventional opinion seems to be that power is a dormant entity. Power traditionally lies in the hands of the "heavy weights"; power has weight. When somebody comes into a room with what society calls power, we might hear somebody say, "Here come the heavies." A lot of things change when Power is in the room. Ideologies change, truths change, privacy or lack- thereof changes, education changes. Why is it that power changes these things? Where does the perception of power as weight come from?
Michael D. Day
Anti-Essentialism and Re-Identification
Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY)
In this paper I argue for essentialism. I break down anti-essentialism into two camps, namely relativistic anti-essentialism (roughly the doctrine purporting that properties are essential or accidental only relative to background groupings) and accidentalism (roughly the position that all properties are accidental). After giving arguments that neither can be taken independently, I contend that we should be inclined to accept essentialism. In doing so, we will forgo the problems oriented with accepting either relativistic anti-essentialism or accidentalism independently.
The second portion of the paper is devoted to an exploration of the function of accidental properties in identification and diachronic re-identification. I contend that bundles of perceivable accidental properties are responsible for identification and re-identification. Moreover, I hold that the very thing responsible in identification and re-identification is not individual essential properties separate from this bundle of perceivable properties because such essential properties are often not accessible. I move that since we continue to pick out the same entity, namely a person, over time, even if most or all of the accidental properties have changed, there is an essence underlying the accidental properties. I suggest that this essence is a unique pattern of perceivable accidental properties. And since this essence is underlying the bundle of accidental properties it may count as a perceivable individual essential property, namely I suggest it is the haecceity of the bundle or a pattern-instance of the bundle.
Michael D. Day
Divine and Human Love
Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY)
In the following paper I argue that human parental love is a paradigmatic case of a human behavior mirroring a divine behavior, namely divine love. I discuss the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of divine love, and I explain two aspects of divine love from Aquinas: (1) God loves all things equally, and (2) God has greater love for "better" things. I argue that although both of these are aspects of divine love, human behaviors that come close to mirroring divine behaviors, even for a short amount of time, are more like the former rather than the latter. Although God can encompass both of these aspects, humans seem more divine when they exercise behaviors similar to aspect (1), i.e., those behaviors that are all-encompassing, stable and unchanging. For when human beings show variability or mutability in their behaviors toward others, they seem less like God, even though such behavior may be advantageous.
Robb E. Eason
The Thinker as Poet
University of New Hampshire (Durham, NH)
Martin Heidegger proposed in Being and Time that we, in the Western Philosophical tradition, must again "raise anew the question of the meaning of being" (p. xix). This question, since the ancients, has been forgotten, subtly put aside and has "ceased to be heard as a thematic question of actual investigation" (p. 1). This 'forgotten question' has permeated all of Western Metaphysics, leaving it ultimately unsatisfying in portraying an accurate account of how it is that we and other beings are in the world. According to Heidegger, Plato plays a constitutive role in leading metaphysics into an ultimately problematic position. This paper attempts to show that Heidegger's interpretation of Plato is, in fact, incomplete and thus inaccurate. A new interpretation of Plato's Symposium might reveal an understanding of Plato which reaches beyond the 'theory of the Forms', beyond "metaphysical language", and beyond Heidegger's interpretation.
Amy Katrin
Ferrara
A Woman's Place: French Neoplatonic Feminism
vs. Platonic Love
SUNY-Oneonta (Oneonta, NY)
What is love? So simple a question and yet so difficult to answer, for to each of us the mere idea of love encompasses so many possibilities and emotions making it a concept both relative and, at the same time, universal. I will begin by examining the viewpoints presented in Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. Following this, I will explore parallels and differences in the French Neoplatonic concept of love through the exploration and careful dissection of the poetry of Lousie Labe and Pernette de Guillet. Many of the poems used in this paper have never before been translated from their original middle French.
Michael Frazer
A Critical Re-Evaluation of the Esoteric Character
of Maimonides'Guide of the Perplexed
Yale University (New Haven, CT)
It is impossible for the modern student of the Guide of the Perplexed to escape the esotericist school of Leo Strauss. Maimonides' philosophical opus is now widely agreed to be a work meant for a learned elite that can only be understood if one, to use a dead metaphor, is willing to read between the lines. This view has in the past few decades led to a full re-appraisal of almost all of Maimonides' treatise. Strangely, however, one essential section of the Guide has not been critically re-evaluated, those very passages dealing with the esoteric nature of the work itself. After discussing the nature of an esoteric text and examining a number of rival esoteric interpretive techniques, this paper will apply these techniques to passages in the Guide which discuss the treatise's "secrets." When interpretive techniques based on the assumption that the Guide is an esoteric work are applied to Maimonides' description of his work as esoteric, then one must confront the possibility that the work may not be esoteric at all. It will become evident that to solve this scholarly liar's paradox will require an examination of the subtle conflict between religious law and philosophy in the Middle Eastern Jewish communities of Maimonides' day.
Kevin Goetz
Wittgensteinian Hermeneutics? Preliminary Sketch
of a Reading of Wittgenstein's On Certainty in Comparison to Ricoeur's
From Text to Action
SUNY-Oneonta (Oneonta, NY)
Published in 1969, On Certainty is a compilation of a number of the personal notes of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The notes found were written towards the end of his life, and center on the difference between the common use and the proper use of the word "Knowledge," especially in the form of knowledge claims. Many commentators (e.g. A.J. Ayer) find the book to be a commentary on the logical positivism which was fashionable at the time in Cambridge, where Wittgenstein held a chair in philosophy. There is some difficulty with such a reading of the book. To say that the work addresses only the positivists of the day is to leave out many incidentals -- those things which are found on the way to the ascribed end - - which are also dealt with in the collection. An assumption of this paper is that many of these "incidentals," the ideas and arguments which are passed through on the way, form a philosophy which takes its place in a larger area than only the logical empiricist community, which positivism was a part of. That, along with the empiricist reading of Wittgenstein, there are also other traditions addressed in the text of On Certainty in specific, and Wittgenstein's philosophy in general.
The thesis of this paper is that one of the traditions which may also be addressed in Wittgenstein's notes, though it remains fairly underdeveloped, is one which had developed as a philosophical tradition a century earlier, and was one of the aspects of philosophy which was being addressed during Wittgenstein's life by Martin Heidegger: the Hermeneutic tradition. As a result of this possibility, there is a place for a non-positivist reading of Wittgenstein's work. The arguments for the thesis will be drawn from the similarity which Wittgenstein's writings and method shared with the thought of some of the ideas which are important in the history of the hermeneutic tradition. A comparative view will be taken to determine the extent of the possibility of a hermeneutical reading.
John Hartmann
Nietzsche's Use of Metaphor
Alfred University (Alfred, NY)
This paper is an examination of Nietzsche's metaphoric style and thought, and the structure of the genealogy that maintains it. Perhaps the most interesting result of this line of thinking is the idea that post-metaphysical philosophy is indeed possible, insofar as post-metaphysical thought can generate interpretations that derive concepts from active metaphorizing. Epistemology is replaced with an economy of forces, with an aesthetic. In this light, our understanding of ideas like the Will to Power and the Eternal Return must be reinterpreted as metaphoric, and this reinterpretation has certain implications both for the scholarship surrounding Nietzsche's works, as well as our reading of the works themselves.
John Hartmann
The Hard Problems in Dennett's Evolutionary Account
Alfred University (Alfred, NY)
In this paper, I will attempt to show that Dennett's evolutionary account of consciousness is lacking in two key areas, both of which might best be described as the "hard" problems in Dennett's work, after the term popularized by David Chalmers. First, I will consider what Polger and Flanagan call "the other hard problem" -- that of explaining consciousness through evolutionary means. My argument here is that any evolutionary account of consciousness runs into the problem of explaining qualia -- what could the selective advantage of qualia be? This leads directly into my second criticism of Dennett's account. He, despite his own beliefs, falls prey to the problem of the explanatory gap between qualia and the (perhaps futile) search for neural correlates.
Phil Jenkins
The Republic and Totalitarianism: Did
Plato Have A Political Philosophy?
Hunter College (New York, NY)
Plato's description of a good city in the Republic appears to be an extreme form of conservatism at best, totalitarianism at worst, upon a literal reading. Some scholars have criticized Plato by focusing on these political ideas as presented by Socrates and attributing them directly as doctrines held by Plato. But the setting up of the city in the Republic is done for the aim of giving a comparison with the soul in the course of defining justice in the person. I argue that Socrates' description of what makes a good state is primarily a literary device Plato uses for examining his theories on what makes a good person and the details were never meant to be taken literally as an example of Plato's ideas of what would make a good state. Examining examples from different parts of the Republic as well as from other dialogues, it is shown that inconsistencies between Socrates' city cannot be explained if Plato is held doctrinally responsible for every detail of Socrates' political explications. I suggest that if one reads the founding of the city in the Republic with more attention to Plato's general vision and less attention to an analysis of literal political details one will more likely encounter Plato's intended thought.
Julie Kirsch
The Transcendental Ideality of Space and Its
Fundamental Assumption
SUNY-Buffalo (Buffalo, NY)
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant attempts to transform metaphysics into a science. He initiates this project by providing an account of the sensibility in terms of its necessary parts. Fundamental to this investigation are the pure forms of the intuition: time and space. Kant contends that both time and space exist as transcendental idealities and resemble no qualities whatsoever in the Ding-an-Sich. In particular, Kant argues that the most rudimentary attributes of our spatial reality, such as extension, figure, and relations between objects, are aspects of our subjective experience which are independent of all sensation. Kant, however, offers no substantial proof of this claim.
Thus, in my paper, I shall propose several possible rationales for Kant's position. The first view considers the presence of beings who might have modes of perceiving different from our own; the second examines problems with contemporaneous views of Newtonian space; and the third position deals with the inability humans have to sense space, (such as is the case with other empirical matters), and the problems which this condition entails. Still, while each of these arguments are tacitly included in the Transcendental Aesthetic, not one of these is strong enough to verify Kant's assertion.
Joanne Molina
Whiteness: Being and Seeing White
American University (Washington, DC)
This piece has multiple aims. First it will give an account of bad faith and how it perpetuates anti-black racism. Lewis Gordon's account of the Sartrean model, as it applies to racism, allows us to understand the existential foundations that shape our relationship with race. Using this model, we can turn to a discussion of how race is addressed in the classroom. As we examine multicultural education, I hope to anticipate claims of conservative agendas by exploring how whiteness is created through the discussions and activities in these classrooms, and how the classroom atmosphere can be used to create a format for discussion that focuses on how race is part of everyone's identity. This will include both an examination of the structural constraints that define whiteness and also the way the forms of our discourse can allow for the shaping of racial identities. George Lipsitz will provide the structural analysis that is necessary to see how racial categories are formed and maintained through social policies. Ruth Frankenberg and Phyllis Palmer will provide examples of reconstructive narratives of racial identity that defy the category of bad faith and promote an important segue for the emergence of a society where everyone has the tools to combat racism.
Jeffrey M.J.
Murphy
Temporal Incongruity in Zeno of Elea and its
Philosophical Consequences
Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH)
When the antinomies and paradoxes of Zeno of Elea are analyzed specifically with respect to their treatment of the nature of time, one can observe a dual description of temporality. In the antinomies against plurality, Zeno treats time conceptually as if it were continuous, non-discrete (not comprised of units), infinitely divisible, and not composed of individual "nows," whereas in the paradoxes against motion, time is treated as discontinuous and finitely divisible into indivisible units ("nows") of no temporal magnitude, beyond which no further division is possible. The conclusions to be drawn from Zeno's treatment of the nature of time are that: (1) time is treated conceptually in two different ways by Zeno -- as infinitely divisible in proofs against plurality and as finitely divisible in proofs against motion, and (2) in order to disprove motion, Zeno was forced to concede to a lesser species of theoretical plurality and in order to disprove plurality, he was forced to concede to a lesser species of theoretical motion.
Yelena Paranyuk
Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Moral-Legal Tensions
Adelphi University (Garden City, NY)
One of the most controversial issues in today's medical world is the dilemma of physician-assisted suicide, or PAS, defined as an act during which a physician provides the medical means for a patient to commit suicide. Can a civilized society morally absolve an action that ultimately results in a death of a human being? While some argue that PAS cannot be morally justified, the majority of opinions today seems to reflect the opposite. However, in spite of the overall positive attitude towards assisted suicide, helping someone die continues to be prohibited by law and legal actions are frequently taken against those physicians who do assist their patients in dying. It seems as though the law fails to reflect the moral convictions of the society. Moreover, the hesitation to legalize assisted suicide seems to stem from the fear of the possible abuse of the legal system. In attempt to resolve the issue I would like to propose a set of guidelines designed to protect such a law and minimize its abuse. Among some of the requirements outlined in the policy are: patient's own initiative in the request of assisted suicide, a careful investigation of each individual case, the presence of a physically unbearable suffering and the provision of all kinds of palliative care available. I believe that a similar policy would make legalization of physician-assisted suicide possible, thus, helping to release the tension created between the moral and the legal sides of the issue.
Harjeet S.
Parmar
Descartes' Recurring Problems with Circles
Clark University (Worcester, MA)
Historically, the focal point of dispute over Descartes' philosophy stems from his view that clear and distinct propositions are required to justify the existence of a non-deceiving God, while God's veracity is utilized to guarantee our clear and distinct propositions. This is how I have interpreted the charge of circularity traditionally applied to Descartes. The new charge of circularity, a consequence of my interpretation of Descartes' writings, involves Descartes' philosophical beliefs on remembering (henceforth recollection). Descartes insists that clear and distinct propositions currently under the focus of the mind's eye do not require God's guarantee (henceforth divine veracity), because they are not susceptible to methodological doubt. However, all clear and distinct propositions will at one time of another require divine veracity insofar as it is Descartes' position that our ephemeral attention span cannot keep focused on those propositions with the requisite mental acuity so as to keep perceiving it clearly. Once the mind's eye loses focus, Descartes presumes that the demonstration, as well as the belief that the demonstration was carried out, is stored in memory.
In the process of recollecting from memory's store, awareness of divine veracity is employed to guard against methodological doubt. If the clear and distinct propositions utilized to justify divine veracity do not themselves require reliance on recollecting the demonstration of or belief in divine veracity, then Descartes has been exonerated from the charge of circularity; but under my interpretations of the text, this involves him in another kind of circle. Furthermore, this contradicts Descartes' assertions that all clear and distinct propositions, including divine veracity, require the use of divine veracity. On the other hand, if the clear and distinct propositions utilized to demonstrate divine veracity do require reliance on recollecting divine veracity, then Descartes' argument is obviously circular. In either case, I will show that Descartes' philosophy entails a circularity of some kind.
Litia Perta
"Hear Say Yes in
Joyce": Otherness, Gender, and Derridian Repetition
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
The paper, written as a response to a piece by Jacques Derrida entitled "Ulysses Gramophone: Hear Say Yes in Joyce", focuses primarily on the role of affirmation in communication, and on the role of communication within human reality. The question of self hood is raised, and whether or not this self is compromised by the necessary externality surrounding linguistic communication. The mechanization of communication in the age of technological convenience is also explored, with particular focus on the absentminded repetition of the affirming Yes.
Litia Perta
Poetry, Time, and the In Between
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
The essay is primarily concerned with the similarities of Poetry, Time, and Mankind, as existents which lie always in between. The notion of a temporal instant, and its relation to an uttered poetic phrase, is explored. The status of man as an in between is drawn largely from "...Poetically, Man Dwells...", in which Martin Heidegger discusses the wonder of man's cognition, which will allow him to see all that he can, without allowing him to always have it.
Amanda Joy
Schwarz
Rousseau Roulette
SUNY-Oneonta (Oneonta, NY)
Using Rousseau's Émile as a primary text, this paper examines a series of interconnected issues concerning human nature, gender identity, and education. Specific attention is given to the relationship between children and parents, the lessons of the tutor, the supposed separation between nature and society, the differential treatment of boys and girls (Émile and Sophie), and the unique role which teachers play in the lives of their students.
Gary Jay
Schwenk
Apollonian, Dionysian and Socratic Views: A Nietzschian
Exegesis
Nazareth College (Rochester, NY)
In his Birth of Tragedy Through the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche describes the two basic impulses of human psychological behavior in relation to the world, and art's role in that dichotomy. This monumental work gives us revolutionary insight into Greek Attic Tragedy (470-410 B.C.). For the Apollonian, life is an illusion; for the Dionysian, Reality is warded off by an intoxicated state of revelry and Bacchic ritual. But, this work does merely explain the audience's viewpoint of sixty years in Greek theatre; it gives us a glimpse into the mind of the ancient Greek, as well as ourselves. What do we learn about the Greek gods by understanding this theory? What psychological significance does this have for us? Who is the theoretical man -- represented in the text by Socrates -- whom Nietzsche speaks of, and what connections can we find between this aspect and our own scientifically-oriented 20th-21st century world?
Gary Jay
Schwenk
The Representative Theory of Memory:
A Basic Exegesis of Hobbes, Locke and Hume
Nazareth College (Rochester, NY)
There have been many areas in which philosophers have been plagued with difficulty; the nature and existence of God, ethics, ontology, phenomenology, metaphysics, and so forth. However, one of the most significant areas of debate which has received little notice outside of philosophical circles is the problem of the human mind -- specifically memory, which was first brought into interest by Aristotle. For Hobbes, Locke, and Hume -- there are both similarities and contrasts in their understanding of what our mental ideas are of and how they are connected, decay and so forth. What is an idea? What is a memory? How do we know our memories are reliable, or even real? Using the primary epistemological works of these three British empiricists, this paper examines how they would answer these classic questions to what until recently has been the most widely accepted theory as to the nature of the human mind: The Representative Theory of Memory.
Anton Soderman
Alarm Security, Cyborgs, and Foucault
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY)
Foucault's concept of bio-power provides insight into the development of the modern world (seventeenth century to the twentieth century), but within the last century Foucault's bio-power has come into question. By tracing a changing social space we can discover a transformation occurring within the workings of bio-power; by focusing specifically on the electromagnetic space of home security systems we can observe bio-power's new forms emerging -- new actualizations of regulation and discipline. The home security industry provides us with a medium to watch bio-power at work, generating new force relations and pushing itself forward until the critical moment when it transforms itself -- the cyborgian movement.
Meghan Tadel
Counter-Intuitive Ethics
George Washington University (Washington, DC)
This paper investigates the plausibility of conscience and intuitive thought as an epistemic foundation for ethics as proposed by Joseph Butler (1692-1752) and Wang Yang-Ming (1472-1529). It is found that although both philosophers offer significant contributions to the study of ethics, neither one succeeds in successfully and absolutely asserting conscience or intuition as the basis for ethical systems. Instead, both fail to clearly delineate intuition from other internal faculties and therefore allow for other internal ethical foundations such as sentiment or reason. Moreover, due to a lack of anchoring ethics in intuition and conscience, both philosophers leave open the possibility for an external source of ethical systems, in fact, their suppositions almost require such a source. Although this point is not argued as a more plausible solution, it is used to demonstrate the difficulty in locating a precise fundamental ethical principle.
Clinton Tolley
Putnam, Realism and Perception
Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL)
Hilary Putnam
has spent much of his time trying to navigate a via media between
the Scylla of Relativism and the Charybdis of a Metaphysical Realism with
a capital "R." En route, Putnam has come to espouse an epistemology
of "direct realism" in his defense against charges of relativism: the mind
perceives the real world directly, not through some intermediary such as
the modern "way of ideas" or the positivist's "sense data." The mind just
perceives the world. The Realists (such as John Haldane) appear delighted
at such a move, for if the mind is to apprehend the real world directly,
and one gives any kind of weight to the notion of intentionality, it would
seem that the world must already be divided into "objects" in itself
prior to perception for the mind to then have something to intend. Can
Putnam maintain this insistence on a direct encounter with the world
which endures independently of the mind, and still escape the Realist's
other (unwanted) metaphysical baggage?
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