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loadofbunk.bsky.social
Paul L. Franco
@loadofbunk.bsky.social
1.6K followers 290 following 320 posts
Philosophy Professor // New Mexican 🛸 🌶️ in Washington ⛰️ 🌲
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loadofbunk.bsky.social
Mary Hesse on "the political aspect of...the Vienna Circle" and why analytic philosophers had "lost the urgency" of epistemological questions given that they "divorced their philosophy from ideological and practical interests" (1980, xiii).

archive.org/details/revo...
The revival of metaphysical realism after decades of positivism is one of the most remarkable features of current analytic philosophy. It may perhaps be traced to a fundamental difference of interest between analytic philosophers of the present generation and those who founded the positivist schools of epistemology. The difference may briefly be expressed by saying that the latter were concerned with what we can now to be true and wished to repudiate metaphysical claims to knowledge, specially because these tended to be associated with Hegelian tradition not only in philosophy but also in authoritarian religion and politcs. Liberalism and social democracy, the Vienna positivists though, were better defended in association with naturalistic knowledge. Modern analytic philosophers...have generally divorced their philosophical from their ideological and practical interests, and have therefore lost the urgency of the question 'How can we know?' Her reference: "R.S. Cohen, 'Neurath, Otto'...It is remarkable how little of the political aspect of the thought of the Vienna Circle was mentioned in connection with its philosophical history until recently." She tells the reader to contrast the articles in The legacy of logical positivism with Janik and Toulmin's Wittgenstein's Vienna.
November 11, 2025 at 3:32 AM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
A survey of North American grad students in history of science in 1970-1971 asked: "'Are there any works which are models, methodologically, of the kind of scholarship you would like to do?"

www.jstor.org/stable/284483
We also tried to examine the range of interests and approaches by asking, 'Are there any works which are models, methodologically, of the kind of scholarship you would like to do? (These can be papers, books, dissertations, etc. and need not necessarily be works in history of science.)' We suspect that people listed books they liked as often, or more often, than books whose approach they wished to emulate. About one-third of the respondents (twenty- five) did not reply to this question. Of those who did, thirteen cited the works of Thomas Kuhn, who was mentioned far more frequently than any other scholar except Alexandre Koyre, who was cited five times. Kuhn was cited primarily for The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, although his Copernican Revolution and his paper on energy conservation were also mentioned.6 Scholars whose works were cited by at least three respondents included: Ernst Cassirer, Robert Merton, George Rosen, A. I. Sabra, Max Weber, and Lynn White. Scholars mentioned by two students were: Stillman Drake, Charles Gillispie, Mary Hesse, A. 0. Lovejoy, J. T. Merz, Derek Price, and Frances Yates
November 10, 2025 at 6:08 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
D.J. O'Connor in 1959 on "The danger of the now fashionable 'Let's not be beastly to metaphysics' movement."

www.jstor.org/stable/3748624
The danger of the now fashionable "Let's not be beastly to metaphysics" movement is that it encourages the growth of irrationalism in philosophy. Philosophy is nothing if it is not an exercise of reason. It is not a matter for "sensitivity" or "imagination" or any of the other nebulous and euphemistic disguises for intellectual muzziness. The philosophers who wrote these essays are far too able and clear-headed to ignore this. But a sympathetic nostalgia for metaphysics coupled with an admission of its logical bankruptcy may encourage less able writers to believe that anything goes in philosophy. So too may their habit of decorating their essays with quotations from Donne, Eliot, Leopardi, Proust, Mrs. V. Woolf and the rest of the cultural circus of the day. As models of philosophical writing, Aquinas, Spinoza, Russell or Carnap are perhaps a little austere for present tastes. But at least they give no encouragement to confuse philosophy with belles lettres.
November 8, 2025 at 8:41 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Thought maybe I needed to figure out microfilm, but the Internet Archive is a modern marvel that makes it possible to find issues of The Listener from 1951 in which Michael Polyani criticizes Stephen Toulmin's interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics.

archive.org/details/list...
Sir. I agree with Mr Toulmin in his talk published in the Listener of March 8, that we should not worry about the running-down of the universe--for I think we have not enough evidence for it--but I am disturbed by the methods of his argument. Mr Toulmin suggests that there is a logical impossibility involved in applying the Second Law of Thermodynamics to the universe, and he illustrates this by the impossibility of weight fire. He ascribes this impossibility to the fact that in our present system of chemical classification, the word 'fire' does not figure as the name of a stuff'. But surely, whatever limitations are imposed on the verbal context in which we may use the word 'fire' are derived from our knowledge of fire, and it is therefore wholly circular to derive any knowledge about fire from the way the word 'fire' may be used. In playing with 'fire' Mr Toulmin is playing with fire; his linguistic critique, bent on casting out verbalism, lets it in with a vengeance." Polanyi continues to note the half a dozen formulations of the second law of thermodynamics.
November 8, 2025 at 7:53 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Was it history or philosophy of science that had to make alimony payments after the divorce? Did they ever discuss staying together for the kids, Indy and Pitt? Who got to stay friends with Stephen Toulmin? Too many unanswered questions in HOHAPOS.
November 8, 2025 at 3:29 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
I lied. The actual best part is that once you have all the individual chapters combined, you then have to delete the JSTOR title page that is at the beginning of all the individual chapters.
loadofbunk.bsky.social Paul L. Franco @loadofbunk.bsky.social · 3d
The best part of doing research is having to download individual chapters of works on JSTOR or OxfordOnline or whatevs and combining them into a PDF. (Note: I understand I can go to the stacks for a physical copy in which chapters are bound together between two covers in something called a "book".)
November 8, 2025 at 12:22 AM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
The best part of doing research is having to download individual chapters of works on JSTOR or OxfordOnline or whatevs and combining them into a PDF. (Note: I understand I can go to the stacks for a physical copy in which chapters are bound together between two covers in something called a "book".)
November 8, 2025 at 12:17 AM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
BREAKING: Quad cherry blossom trees also nice in Fall.
View of UW Quad from an office. On left is building with a little gargoyley dude hanging out. Then some bright orange cherry blossom trees. On the right is a big California redwood. A different view of the cherry blossom trees with slightly fewer leaves, but still bright orange. Gray skies, sun not visible and won't be for like three more months.
November 7, 2025 at 7:30 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
<THREAD> I’m now hearing this meme that says speech acts have to be things we do with words and can't be pictures, middle fingers, sandwiches, etc.

Guys. It’s time for some speech act theory.
joolia.bsky.social Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 4d
is a sandwich a speech act
November 6, 2025 at 8:38 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Lord, give me the strength to not make a 6-7 reference in my lecture for college students today.
November 6, 2025 at 4:30 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
If you have grad students working on climate change and global justice, please share with them this call for abstracts for a conference put on by grad students in the University of Washington's philosophy department.

philevents.org/event/show/1...
Climate Change and Global Justice
The Department of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle is proud to announce a graduate conference titled Climate Change and Global Justice to be held on the UW Seattle campus on April 1...
philevents.org
November 4, 2025 at 10:34 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
I hope my Cartesian wife will read the Ethics and be moved by what I was moved by and convert to Spinozism already.
November 4, 2025 at 4:10 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Feigl, to existentialists who despair and fall into irrational action: "Skill issue."
Our age of scientific enlightenment requires a new form of emotional and moral maturity: We shall have to learn to live with our knowledge about ourselves: to combine scientific, penetrating insight with serious moral and social commitments; to acquire the ability to use our knowledge wisely and humanely. There are many who find no difficulty in this. But there are others who do not feel secure except within the frame of dogmatic creeds. And there are still others who, having lost their religious or their social-political absolute faiths, feel completely at sea and resort to a "philosophy" of nausea, despair, and spasmodic irrational action. Such a philosophy is exemplified in some of the German and French forms of existentialism.
October 31, 2025 at 8:57 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
One of my favorite recurring things in 20th century philosophy is a philosopher, in this case Feigl, being open to the existence of phenomena like extrasensory perception and "mediumism."
"But he will also be very reluctant in attributing to the alleged facts of extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, mediumism, etc., any considerable weight as evidence for dualism. It is quite possible that these "facts" (if indeed they are not the result of self-deception, experimental or statistical error, or outright fraud) merely indicate new and strange forms of physical causality which may, however, still be quite compatible with psychophysiological monism. Nevertheless a cautious attitude of open-minded research in this area is the only one that an empiricist can afford to recommend."
October 31, 2025 at 8:24 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
My new #HOPOS project is to (1) figure out where Carnap lived in NM, (2) investigate whether Carnap and Feigl ever ate New Mexican enchiladas, and, if so, (3) determine what their answers were to "Red or Green?"
For me [i.e., Feigl], personally, it was also and primarily my frequent visits with Carnap (in Chicago, Princeton, Los Angeles, and for a while at his summer home in the hills outside Santa Fe, New Mexico) that I always found instructive, encouraging, and helpful.
October 29, 2025 at 5:36 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Going to write a paper about the conceptual inflation of 'all' and 'every' by logicians.
October 28, 2025 at 6:48 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
The heat is currently not working well in my office so the first two pages of this Feigl paper have really gripped me.*^

*Not claiming it's comparable to a winter night in Minnesota, though.
^ Currently waiting for the full PDF from ILL to see how things are resolved.

brill.com/view/journal...
brill.com
October 27, 2025 at 7:46 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
The world if Churchman and Ackoff had gotten their "Institutes of Experimental Method" instead of ending up at business schools.

www.jstor.org/stable/185209
We take the future of science to depend upon a unification through devices such as "Institutes of Experimental Method",whose organization conforms to the broad outline offered below. The suggested organization grows out of the realization that experimental science has now reached the stage where it recognizes that certain individuals qualify as specialists in the field of methodology. The progressive research worker of today is learning that he must rely more and more upon the information contributed by experts in this field. There have been outstanding examples in America of statistical groups which have effectively cooperated as methodological experts with research organizations. Flying cars, a guy walking a robot dog, generally taken to be a vision of technological utopia. Futuristic looking buildings, etc. The meme image.
October 26, 2025 at 11:48 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
My phenomenal self might be subject to the rule according to which everything that happens in it proceeds from a cause but my noumenal self is just built different.
October 25, 2025 at 10:39 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Socrates: The soul must learn, by degrees, to contemplate Being. This is the Good, agreed?

Glaucon: Agreed.

S: We have made progress in investigating justice, but do you find it difficult to work nutrient-dense leafy greens into your daily diet?

G: It is as you say.

S: That's why I take Athleti
October 25, 2025 at 4:10 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Finally, an example in the wild that I can give to skeptical philosophy of language students to show them the power of Russell's theory of descriptions.
Billups was not a named defendant in this investigation, but for context, Co-Conspirator 8 is described in the indictment only as "an NBA player from approximately 1997 through 2014, and an NBA coach since at least 2021," which would uniquely designate him.
October 23, 2025 at 8:56 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
One neat fact about some mid-20th century analytic philosophers is that "the average person with philosophical interests" could hear them talk about performative utterances (Austin) or construction and analysis (Strawson) on public radio (BBC), or at their local Unitarian society meetings (Feigl).
October 17, 2025 at 4:32 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
I did actually show the diagonal elevator video in my proseminar yesterday.
0. Doing research Here’s a video on diagonal elevators in video games that I’m using—somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but also somewhat seriously—to illustrate one way of going about research. • Identify something that grabs your attention. It’s usually good for that thing to be narrower—diagonal elevators in video games meeting specific criteria—than broader—elevators in video games. o Of note: The person who made the video became interested in the topic via something that is widely accepted as influential/important. Often, that will happen for us in philosophy too as we read and engage arguments by others. • Look around to see if anyone has looked into the topic: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and any relevant reference page; philpapers.org; citations to the paper you’ve read (via Google Scholar); etc. o It can be hard to know when to stop, but you do have to at some point. o In a course context, think about the topic/narrative of the course: How does the thing you’re interested in relate? What other relevant things are you reading; what and who do they cite? o Someone also mentioned that the video above was “also a cross-domain/field research, as the initial example comes from Akira, an anime, but the video mainly deals with videogame instances of those elevators.” Is there something related in a different field you’re familiar with? • If you don’t find anything, then perhaps there’s a literature gap; if there are others who have looked into it, find some way to distinguish your angle, e.g., by narrowing or widening your scope or exploring some connection someone else hasn’t. • Find a hook that will draw in the interest of others. • Now, for the easy part: Start writing…
October 16, 2025 at 4:17 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Philosophy only appears to not make progress because we tend to ignore the discipline's history. For example, I keep seeing new books and papers about causation come out when we've known for at least a few hundred years that either causation doesn't exist or God makes everything happen.
October 14, 2025 at 8:25 PM
loadofbunk.bsky.social
Just once I'd like to will something stupid and not have God take it as an occasion to make my will casually efficacious.
October 12, 2025 at 6:57 PM