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The big picture on a recent development in philosophy


 A questioner in Quora asked what we, other Quorants, see as the most recent breakthrough in philosophy.  I replied:

An important breakthrough took place through the 1970s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, which we might call “Taking the Subject Seriously Again” or TSSA.

It can also be rendered “Taking SubjectIVITY Seriously Again”.

The human subject, and its subjectivity, was nearly written out of the higher echelons of philosophical and psychological consideration in the middle of the 20th century, by behavioralism, hard determinism/incompatibilism, “strong AI” and related developments. There were no people finding the world, so the Wittgensteinian phrase “the world as I found it” ceased to be meaningful. There were only objects, though some objects oddly talk as if they are subjects. Daniel Dennett, who passed away recently, was very much of the anti-subjectivity persuasion. It was a cause drenched with nostalgia through much of his working life BECAUSE of the TSSA breakthrough.

Figures like Thomas Nagel, John Searle, Robert Kane, Philip Cushman have all taken whacks at the anti-subjectivity orthodoxy, to good effect.

Now that TSSA has triumphed, what can we say about the new orthodoxy? Ah, that is a big subject. No pun intended.

What is the timeline of TSSA? Well, important dates are 1974 (Nagel on the subjectivity of a bat), 1980 (Searle on the Chinese room) and 1996 (Kane on free-will, indeterminism and incompatibilism).


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In the comments below this post, I acknowledge that I ought to have included another landmark date even in that short list: 1982 (Frank Jackson on Mary's Room -- what the color-blind expert on color perception doesn't know.) 

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