Postmodern Absurdist Critique of Julian Barnes’s The Only Story

This research paper endeavors to examine the postmodern absurdism as a literary sub genre in postmodern fiction. It delves deep into the concept of absurdism by concentrating upon the characteristics that distinguish it as a postmodern sub genre. Through the analysis of the postmodern novel, The Only Story (2018), this research paper illustrates how the characteristics of absurdism haven impact upon a postmodern society characterized by boredom, meaninglessness, futility, and confusion. It also highlights how different characters, events, and places have been portrayed in the novel to depict the absurdity of human existence. The theoretical paradigm of the research is based upon Thomas Nagel’s Essay “The Absurd” which is about postmodern space of absurdism and was presented in the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division. The study limelight's how the absurd occurrences and bizarre characters found in the researcher's primary text depict the complexity of the postmodern absurd world in both literal and metaphoric dimensions.

Symposium on Suffering, the Self, and Self-conceptions

The papers that are included in this symposium where initially presented during a session of the International Society for Buddhist Philosophy, which was held at the American Philosophical Association in Baltimore on January 4, 2017. And over the course of the next year, these papers were revised to be included in a special issue of the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy. That special issue was never published; and since the papers were written as symposium, we have decided to present them together here.

The Absurd

Translation of: Nagel, T. 1971. “The Absurd.” Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division, Journal of Philosophy 68 (20): 716–727.

Tradução de “Realism and Reason” de Hilary Putnam

Texto apresentado na conferência de Abertura do 73º Encontro Anual da Associação Filosófica Americana (Divisão Leste), realizada em 29 de Dezembro de 1976, em Boston, Massachusetts e publicado em Proceedings and Address of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. 50, No. 6 (Aug., 1977), pp. 483-498

The Flying and the Masked Man, One More Time: Comments on Peter Adamson and Fedor Benevich, ‘The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man Argument’

This is a critical comment on Adamson and Benevich (2018), published in issue 4/2 of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association. I raise two closely related objections. The first concerns the objective of the flying man: instead of the question of what the soul is, I argue that the argument is designed to answer the question of whether the soul exists independently of the body. The second objection concerns the expected result of the argument: instead of knowledge about the quiddity of soul, I claim the argument yields knowledge about the soul's existence independently of the body. After the objections, I turn to the masked man fallacy, claiming that although the Adamson-Benevich interpretation does save the argument from the fallacy, this comes at the cost of plausibility. I then give a more modest interpretation that both avoids the fallacy and is plausible. The paper concludes with a remark about the metaphysical possibility of the flying man.

On Peter Olen’s Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity

All contributions included in the present issue were originally prepared for an “Author Meets Critics” session organized by Carl Sachs for the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Savannah, Georgia, on 5th January, 2018.

Response to Critics

All contributions included in the present issue were originally prepared for an “Author Meets Critics” session organized by Carl Sachs for the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Savannah, Georgia, on 5th January, 2018.

Peter Olen: Wilfrid Sellars and the Foundations of Normativity

All contributions included in the present issue were originally prepared for an “Author Meets Critics” session organized by Carl Sachs for the Eastern Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Savannah, Georgia, on 5th January, 2018.