Category: Butchvarov
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Butchvarov’s Paradox of Antirealism and Husserl’s Paradox of Human Subjectivity
Top o' the Stack. UPDATE (8/4/2025). Matteo writes, "As for your latest post on Substack about the dehumanization of the ego, there is this Italian philosopher who holds a very similar view (consciousness and the world are the very same thing, we literally ARE the world etc." https://archive.org/details/spreadmindwhycon0000manz
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Semirealism about Facts: An Exchange with Butchvarov
Facts are the logical objects corresponding to whole declarative sentences, or rather to some of them. When it comes to facts, Panayot Butchvarov appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of both realism and anti-realism. For the realist, there are facts. For the anti-realist, there are no facts. Let us briefly review why both positions are attractive…
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Butchvarov’s Paradox of Antirealism and Husserl’s Paradox of Human Subjectivity
New and improved! Originally posted in October, 2015. For a longish review and critique of the Butchvarov volume mentioned below, see my "Butchvarov on the Dehumanization of Philosophy," Studia Neoaristotelica, vol. 13, no. 2 (2016), pp. 181-195. Butchvarov and Husserl are clearly related to my present and ongoing rehearsal of the problematic of Kantian transcendental…
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Knowledge of Existence: Is Existence Hidden?
1) I see a tree, a palo verde. Conditions are optimal for veridical perception. I see that the tree is green, blooming, swaying slightly in the breeze. The tree is given to my perceptual acts as having these and other properties. Now while I do not doubt for a second the existence of the tree,…
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Butchvarov: Knowledge as Requiring Objective Certainty
We begin with an example from Panayot Butchvarov's The Concept of Knowledge, Northwestern University Press, 1970, p. 47. [CK is the red volume on the topmost visible shelf. Immediately to its right is Butch's Being Qua Being. Is Butch showing without saying that epistemology is prior to metaphysics?] But now to work. There is a bag containing 99 white…
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Is ‘Justified Belief’ a Solecism?
Panayot Butchvarov, Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 33: As used in epistemology, "justified" is a technical term, of obscure meaning and uncertain reference, indeed often explicitly introduced as a primitive. In everyday talk, it is a deontic term, usually a synonym of 'just' or 'right,' and thus 'justified belief'…
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Wittgenstein and Butchvarov on the Self
This entry supplements the earlier entry on what Wittgenstein in the Tractatus calls the metaphysical subject. (5.633) Wittgenstein As I read him, Wittgenstein accepts Hume's famous rejection of the self as an object of experience or as a part of the world. "There is no such thing as the subject that thinks or entertains ideas."…
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The Metaphysical Subject :Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.63
I take Wittgenstein to be saying at 5.63 that the seeing eye is not in the visual field. I can of course see my eyes via a mirror. But these are seen eyes, not seeing eyes. The eyes I see in the mirror are objects of visual consciousness; they are not what do the…
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Butchvarov on Semirealism about Facts
Facts are the logical objects corresponding to whole declarative sentences, or rather to some of them. When it comes to facts, Butchvarov appreciates the strengths and weaknesses of both realism and anti-realism. For the realist, there are facts. For the anti-realist, there are no facts. Let us briefly review why both positions are attractive yet…
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Posits or Inventions? Butchvarov and Geach on Intentionality
One philosopher's explanatory posit is another's mere invention. In his rich and fascinating article "Direct Realism Without Materialism" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, vol. XIX, 1994, pp. 1-21), Panayot Butchvarov rejects epistemic intermediaries as "philosophical inventions." Thus he rejects sense data, sensations, ways of being appeared to, sense experiences, mental representations, ideas, images, looks, seemings, appearances,…
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Butchvarov’s Paradox of Antirealism and Husserl’s Paradox of Human Subjectivity
From Kant on, transcendental philosophy has been bedeviled by a certain paradox. Here again is the Paradox of Antirealism discussed by Butchvarov, as I construe it, the numbers in parentheses being page references to his 2015 Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: PA: On the one hand, we cannot know the world as it is in itself, but only…
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Sartrean Consciousness as Nothing and as Something: Contradiction?
I put the following questions to Professor Butchvarov: 1. Are you troubled by the following apparent contradiction to which you are apparently committed, namely, that consciousness is both nothing and something? This (apparent) contradiction comes out clearly in your 1994 Midwest Studies in Philosophy paper "Direct Realism Without Materialism," p. 10. 2. You say above…
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The Paradox of Antirealism and Butchvarov’s Solution
In his highly original Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism (Walter de Gruyter 2015) Panayot Butchvarov argues that philosophy in its three main branches, epistemology, ethics, and metaphysics, needs to be freed from its anthropocentrism. Philosophy ought to be “dehumanized.” This entry will examine how Butchvarov proposes to dehumanize metaphysics. These Butchvarov posts are exercises toward…
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Personal and Impersonal Uses of the First-Person Singular Pronoun
Panayot Butchvarov in his latest book claims that the first-person singular pronoun as it functions in such typical philosophical contexts as the Cartesian cogito is "a dangling pronoun, a pronoun without an antecedent noun." (Anthropocentrism in Philosophy: Realism, Antirealism, Semirealism, Walter de Gruyter, 2015, p. 40) In this entry I will try to understand and…
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Fused Participles and Ontology
Let's begin by reviewing some grammar. 'Walking' is the present participle of the infinitive 'to walk.' Present participles are formed by adding -ing to the verb stem, in our example, walk. Participles can be used either nominally or adjectivally. A participle used nominally is called a gerund. A gerund is a verbal noun that shares…