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Philosophy is essentially dialectical. One gets into a dialectic by a puzzle, an aporia in thought and understanding. The point of philosophizing is not (necessarily) to get hold of the ultimate, objective, and immutably correct answers. The point is rather to come to be able to see one’s way out of the aporia, and to understand how one got into it in the first place.
The essay that follows – which I am submitting as my dissertation – is dialectical in two senses. As a piece of philosophizing, the essay is guided by a problem, the problem of understanding how laws of nature are possible, and how it is possible for us to know them. The movement of thought generated by attempts to get out of the problem then yields some ideas that do not stay in the original context in which the problem was felt to exist. Two important ones are, first, perceptual experience is not the only ultimate source of warrant we have for empirical knowledge claims, and second, perceptual experience is not the only epistemically significant experience we can have. Both are consequences of the idea that the mastery of skills is a form of interaction with nature that provides epistemic warrant for nomological claims. I shall leave it to the epilogue to examine how this view of skills contrasts with the ways skills are ordinarily thought of in philosophy and the implication of it for empiricism.
The other sense in which the essay is dialectical is more interesting, and it has to do with the way in which I approach the problem that got me into started, namely, by paying special attention to the dialectic exchange between the realists and the antirealists about the laws of nature. Antirealism about the lawfulness of nature has experienced something like a post-Humean revival since the publication of van Fraassen’s The Scientific Image. Most, including me, have strong realist intuitions about nomological “connections” in nature. Philosophical positions that are strongly counterintuitive have mostly not ended well in history. So it becomes something of a puzzle why antirealism about laws of nature manages to enjoy popularity every now and then.
The practical aim of this work is twofold. Firstly, it is to construct a theory of language based on historical-materialist premises, i.e. a theory which stresses the sociality and historicity of language, and finds in them the fundamental characteristics which make language one of the central phenomena of human life. Such a theory is inherently counterposed to the dominant theories and philosophies of language in the last century, be they Saussurean, idealistic, structuralist, psychologistic or Chomskyan etc. It also rejects vulgar materialistic accounts of language, where language is seen merely as a “reflection” of the economic base of society, as well as the version proposed in Stalin’s short pamphlet, Marxism and Linguistics, which sees language merely as a means of communication, regardless of society or class, therefore neutralised and consequently branded irrelevant for Marxist theory. In short, the first aim would be showing what language is not and what it cannot be by showing what it is.
The second aim is related to Marxist theory in general. Following the presuppositions of this work, a Marxist account of language proves to be an immensely important field of research for Marxism. The reasons are fairly simple, if one is willing to accept them: language is a certain type of social practice, it is related to the way people act, which also means that it is interconnected with consciousness, i.e. to the way people think and to the content of their thought. Language is ideological and political; it is an element of class rule and class struggle. Thus, understanding language should be of utmost importance for any socialist revolutionary project, as ideological struggle is central not only to a revolutionary period, but, perhaps even more, to a period where revolution is not even in sight. I do not wish to derogate other Marxist fields of research, but, on the contrary, to simply insist on their equal importance. Ideological phenomena should not be a secondary or inferior object of research to strictly economic phenomena, or vice-versa. In reality, those phenomena form a dialectic unity; only if theory follows suit, can a pregnant Marxist philosophy be formed.
The central aim of this dissertation is the defense of the metaphysical thesis of Physicalism against two anti-physicalist arguments, namely, the conceivability arguments and the knowledge argument. Both arguments confront Physicalism with apparently incompatible facts about consciousness, in particular, the so-called subjective character of consciousness. Both arguments depart from epistemic premisses to arrive at metaphysical conclusion that physicalism is false. This step will be justified through an inferential connection between conceivability and metaphysical possibility. The hypothesis is that the set of physicalist responses known as the Phenomenal Concept Strategy is the most promising way to respond to the anti-physicalist arguments. In this dissertation I have critically assed the so-called Phenomenal Concept Strategy and I have defended it from new formulated objections.
Canada’s geographic centre lies in the Territory Nunavut. From here the distance to the geographic North Pole is as far as to the US border. Nunavut takes up about 1/5 of the Canadian land mass but has by far the smallest population with currently about 38,000 residents. 85% of its population are Inuit whose culture dramatically changed within the last 70 years.
As a result, the territory is dealing with several generations of Inuit that are traumatized or at least severely affected by cultural and economic changes that started after World War 2 with the resettlement from the land into permanent communities. No matter if we are talking about the actual elders, mid-age adults or pre-teenagers, each of this generation experienced and still experiences various personal and cultural challenges of identity, financial and housing insecurity, food insecurity, substance abuse education, change of social values ranging from inter-generational and gender relationships to the introduction of a foreign political and legal system.
On the other side, a lot of the traditional societal values are still being practiced in Inuit families. Despite all the tragedies that several generations of Inuit have experienced by now, the society keeps generating the strength and cultural pride that allows many Inuit both, as individuals and as a collective under the umbrella of either Inuit Land Claims or not for profit organizations to advocate on behalf of Inuit culture, to fight for more acknowledgement of Inuit culture and to enhance pride in the historic and present day cultural achievements of Nunavut’s indigenous population.
The social issues, inter- and intra-cultural processes described in my thesis are not exclusive to the situation in Nunavut or to Inuit. Studies from other regions, in Canada or from around the world (LaPrairie 1987; Jensen 1986; Nunatsiaq News 6/30/2010) reveal similar challenges.
Though many structural similarities can be identified by comparing these studies with each other, e.g. marginalization of the indigenous local population, colonization, paternalism and resulting issues like personal and cultural identity loss, it is important to have a more in depth look into the single cases to determine which individual events and developments causes and maybe still cause such a devastating social situation as it is found among many indigenous peoples across the world. From my perspective effective improvements of the situation of a group, a respective community or region can only happen when particularities of socialization, communication and philosophy in the single cultural entities are being considered.
That is why my thesis will exclusively focus on developments in Nunavut and use various case studies of communities. The case studies shall help to identify local differences in historic and recent developments and thus provide starting points for explanations of different developments in different Nunavut communities.
The thesis is looking at both, historic and recent root causes for the many issues in Nunavut.
The data that my my thesis is based on are a combination of literature and about 60 formal and informal interviews that I conducted in three Nunavut communities (Iqaluit, Whale Cove, Kugluktuk) during my 18 months of field work between October 2008 and March 2010. Many more spontaneous unstructured conversations between me and community members added to the pool of first-hand information that I gathered.
Since my field work is limited to those three communities it has a very strong qualitative character. The quantitative side, which allows me to confidently apply my research analyses to entire Nunavut, comes from literature research as well as many informal conversations and a few formal interviews that I conducted with people who had some experience in other communities than Iqaluit, Kugluktuk and Whale Cove.
Furthermore, while I was living at the old residence of the Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, I spend time with college students from across Nunavut. Through them, I obtained „case studies “from following communities: Iqaluit, Qikiqtarjuaq, Kimmirut, Pangnirtung, Clyde River, Pond Inlet, Igloolik, Repulse Bay, Cape Dorset, Chesterfield Inlet, Baker Lake, Rankin Inlet, Whale Cove, Arviat, Taloyoak, Kugluktuk.
My general categorization of “early contact period”, “contact”, “1st generation” and “2nd generation” is very similar to Damas’ terms of “early contact phase”, “contact – traditional”, “resettlement” that he uses to create a timeline that describes the major phases of impact for Inuit society (Damas 2002: 7, 17).
Chapters 2 is meant to provide an inventory of the key aspects of current social issues in Nunavut. In this context I am looking at the four major aspects that in my opinion shape Nunavut’s society:
1) violence and other forms of social dysfunctions
2) the associated services and delivering agencies that try to address those matters
3) Education
4) Inuit cultural particularities in communication and socialization
Those four areas are forming the foundation for the rest of my work. The following chapters will guide the reader through the historic transformation process of Inuit pre-colonial semi-nomadic society to a society that is living in permanent settlements, strongly influenced if not in many ways dominated by Euro-Canadian culture. Each of those chapters will be referring to the social and cultural changes that happened in the different time periods that I labeled with “Pre-settlement, First, Second, and Third Generation”. The relevance of violence and other social dysfunctions, their context and strategies how each generation dealt with those matters will be analyzed while I will be also referring to the impacts that non-Inuit, primarily Euro-Canadians and Euro-Americans had and have on Inuit society.
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