World disclosure
Encyclopedia
World disclosure is a phenomenon
described by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger
in his landmark book Being and Time
. It has also been discussed by philosophers such as John Dewey
, Jürgen Habermas
and Charles Taylor
. It refers to how things become intelligible (make sense) to human beings, by virtue of being part of an ontological world – i.e., a pre-interpreted and holistically structured
background of meaning. This understanding is said to be first disclosed to human beings through their practical encounters with things and other people, as well as through language.
Some philosophers have also described how this ontological understanding can be re-disclosed
in various ways (including through innovative forms of philosophical argument
), such as Ian Hacking
and Nikolas Kompridis
.
The implication is that we are always already "thrown" into these conditions, that is, thrown into a prior understanding of the things which we encounter on a daily basis – an understanding that is already somewhat meaningful and coherent. However, our understanding cannot be made fully conscious or knowable at one time, since this background understanding isn't itself an object:
According to Nikolas Kompridis
, the initial disclosure of an ontological world is said to be "pre-reflective" or first-order disclosure. However, this so-called first-order disclosure is not fixed, as it can vary across historical time and cultural space. As well, Kompridis has described a kind of second-order or reflective disclosure
. Whereas first-order disclosure involves an implicit, unconscious and largely passive relation to meaning, reflective disclosure is an explicit re-working of meaning and the terms used to make sense of ourselves and the world, through the "refocusing" or "de-centering" of our understanding. Reflective disclosure is thus a way of acting back upon conditions of intelligibility, in order to clarify or reshape our background understanding. Because of this, reflective disclosure also affects conditions of possibility by impacting on such basic questions as "what counts as a thing, what counts as true/false, and what it makes sense to do."
While some philosophers, notably Jürgen Habermas
and Richard Rorty
, claim that disclosure is an aesthetic phenomenon (supposedly, neither rational
nor cognitive, and therefore not philosophical), disclosive arguments have been employed in many contexts that are not primarily considered literary or "aesthetic," and a number of philosophers have argued for the importance of disclosure's place in human reason
, most notably Nikolas Kompridis and Charles Taylor
.
s with a distinctive form, sometimes called a style of reasoning, that start with a disclosive approach instead of, or in addition to methods that are deductive, inductive, etc. According to disclosure theorists, these forms of argument attempt to reveal features of a wider ontological or cultural-linguistic understanding (or "world," in a specifically ontological sense), in order to clarify or transform the background of meaning and "logical space" on which an argument implicitly depends. A major example of this type of argument is said to be that of immanent critique
, although it is not the only kind.
In deductive arguments, the "test" of the argument's success are said to be its formal validity
and soundness
. However, in a world-disclosing argument, the primary criterion for success is the solution of a problem that could not be successfully dealt with under some previous understanding or paradigm, for example, after an epistemological crisis (see Paradigm shift
). It is therefore said to be possibility disclosing rather than "truth-preserving" or "truth-tracking." The "claim" made by such an argument is that of a new insight, resulting from the adoption of a new stance or perspective that reveals, or discloses a new possibility for thinking and acting.
Nikolas Kompridis
has described two kinds of fallibilism
in this regard. The first consists in being open to new evidence that could disprove some previously held position or belief (the taken-for-granted position in normal science
). The second refers to the consciousness of "the degree to which our interpretations, valuations, our practices, and traditions are temporally indexed" and subject to historical change. This "time-responsive" (as opposed to "evidence-responsive") fallibilism consists in an expectant openness to some future possibility. According to Kompridis, world-disclosing arguments are fallible in both senses of the word.
Major examples of world disclosing arguments in philosophy are said to include:
Other modern philosophers
who are said to employ world-disclosing arguments include Hans-Georg Gadamer
, George Herbert Mead
and Maurice Merlau-Ponty.
Phenomenon
A phenomenon , plural phenomena, is any observable occurrence. Phenomena are often, but not always, understood as 'appearances' or 'experiences'...
described by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
in his landmark book Being and Time
Being and Time
Being and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...
. It has also been discussed by philosophers such as John Dewey
John Dewey
John Dewey was an American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. Dewey was an important early developer of the philosophy of pragmatism and one of the founders of functional psychology...
, Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
and Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor (philosopher)
Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
. It refers to how things become intelligible (make sense) to human beings, by virtue of being part of an ontological world – i.e., a pre-interpreted and holistically structured
Holism
Holism is the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone...
background of meaning. This understanding is said to be first disclosed to human beings through their practical encounters with things and other people, as well as through language.
Some philosophers have also described how this ontological understanding can be re-disclosed
Reflective disclosure
Reflective disclosure is a term coined by philosopher Nikolas Kompridis. In his book Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Kompridis describes a set of heterogeneous social practices he believes can be a source of significant ethical, political, and cultural transformation...
in various ways (including through innovative forms of philosophical argument
Argument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
), such as Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking, CC, FRSC, FBA is a Canadian philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science.- Life and works :...
and Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis is a professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney. His scholarly work addresses a wide range of subjects in contemporary social and political philosophy, as well as in aesthetics and philosophy of culture...
.
First and second order disclosure
The idea of disclosure supposes that the meaning of a word or thing depends upon the context in which we encounter it, including the way of life of which it is a part. For example, a table is part of a context with other things that give it its sense or purpose – e.g. chairs, food, a teapot, pencils, books – and we first learn about it through our everyday experience of it in particular contexts. Its meaning is "given" to us by virtue of its connection to various activities (e.g. writing, eating, conversation), and by qualities (e.g. conviviality) that give it value in relation to such activities. These constitute part of its "conditions of intelligibility."The implication is that we are always already "thrown" into these conditions, that is, thrown into a prior understanding of the things which we encounter on a daily basis – an understanding that is already somewhat meaningful and coherent. However, our understanding cannot be made fully conscious or knowable at one time, since this background understanding isn't itself an object:
According to Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis is a professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney. His scholarly work addresses a wide range of subjects in contemporary social and political philosophy, as well as in aesthetics and philosophy of culture...
, the initial disclosure of an ontological world is said to be "pre-reflective" or first-order disclosure. However, this so-called first-order disclosure is not fixed, as it can vary across historical time and cultural space. As well, Kompridis has described a kind of second-order or reflective disclosure
Reflective disclosure
Reflective disclosure is a term coined by philosopher Nikolas Kompridis. In his book Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Kompridis describes a set of heterogeneous social practices he believes can be a source of significant ethical, political, and cultural transformation...
. Whereas first-order disclosure involves an implicit, unconscious and largely passive relation to meaning, reflective disclosure is an explicit re-working of meaning and the terms used to make sense of ourselves and the world, through the "refocusing" or "de-centering" of our understanding. Reflective disclosure is thus a way of acting back upon conditions of intelligibility, in order to clarify or reshape our background understanding. Because of this, reflective disclosure also affects conditions of possibility by impacting on such basic questions as "what counts as a thing, what counts as true/false, and what it makes sense to do."
While some philosophers, notably Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
and Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was an American philosopher. He had a long and diverse academic career, including positions as Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, Kenan Professor of Humanities at the University of Virginia, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University...
, claim that disclosure is an aesthetic phenomenon (supposedly, neither rational
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
nor cognitive, and therefore not philosophical), disclosive arguments have been employed in many contexts that are not primarily considered literary or "aesthetic," and a number of philosophers have argued for the importance of disclosure's place in human reason
Reason
Reason is a term that refers to the capacity human beings have to make sense of things, to establish and verify facts, and to change or justify practices, institutions, and beliefs. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, ...
, most notably Nikolas Kompridis and Charles Taylor
Charles Taylor (philosopher)
Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...
.
World-disclosing arguments
World-disclosing arguments are a group of philosophical argumentArgument
In philosophy and logic, an argument is an attempt to persuade someone of something, or give evidence or reasons for accepting a particular conclusion.Argument may also refer to:-Mathematics and computer science:...
s with a distinctive form, sometimes called a style of reasoning, that start with a disclosive approach instead of, or in addition to methods that are deductive, inductive, etc. According to disclosure theorists, these forms of argument attempt to reveal features of a wider ontological or cultural-linguistic understanding (or "world," in a specifically ontological sense), in order to clarify or transform the background of meaning and "logical space" on which an argument implicitly depends. A major example of this type of argument is said to be that of immanent critique
Immanent critique
Immanent critique is the philosophical or sociological strategy that analyzes cultural forms by locating contradictions in the rules and systems necessary to the production of those forms...
, although it is not the only kind.
In deductive arguments, the "test" of the argument's success are said to be its formal validity
Validity
In logic, argument is valid if and only if its conclusion is entailed by its premises, a formula is valid if and only if it is true under every interpretation, and an argument form is valid if and only if every argument of that logical form is valid....
and soundness
Soundness
In mathematical logic, a logical system has the soundness property if and only if its inference rules prove only formulas that are valid with respect to its semantics. In most cases, this comes down to its rules having the property of preserving truth, but this is not the case in general. The word...
. However, in a world-disclosing argument, the primary criterion for success is the solution of a problem that could not be successfully dealt with under some previous understanding or paradigm, for example, after an epistemological crisis (see Paradigm shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
). It is therefore said to be possibility disclosing rather than "truth-preserving" or "truth-tracking." The "claim" made by such an argument is that of a new insight, resulting from the adoption of a new stance or perspective that reveals, or discloses a new possibility for thinking and acting.
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis
Nikolas Kompridis is a professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney. His scholarly work addresses a wide range of subjects in contemporary social and political philosophy, as well as in aesthetics and philosophy of culture...
has described two kinds of fallibilism
Fallibilism
Fallibilism is the philosophical principle that human beings could be wrong about their beliefs, expectations, or their understanding of the world...
in this regard. The first consists in being open to new evidence that could disprove some previously held position or belief (the taken-for-granted position in normal science
Normal science
Normal Science is a concept originated by Thomas Samuel Kuhn and elaborated in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. The term refers to the routine work of scientists experimenting within a paradigm, slowly accumulating detail in accord with established broad theory, not actually challenging or...
). The second refers to the consciousness of "the degree to which our interpretations, valuations, our practices, and traditions are temporally indexed" and subject to historical change. This "time-responsive" (as opposed to "evidence-responsive") fallibilism consists in an expectant openness to some future possibility. According to Kompridis, world-disclosing arguments are fallible in both senses of the word.
Major examples of world disclosing arguments in philosophy are said to include:
- "Transcendental" argumentsTranscendental argumentsA transcendental argument is a deductive philosophical argument which takes a manifest feature of experience as granted, and articulates that which must be the case so that experience as such is possible...
, in which an understanding of some feature of experience is shown to logically entail certain necessary conceptual pre-suppositions (e.g. Kant's transcendental self; Heidegger's elucidation of ontological being in Being and TimeBeing and TimeBeing and Time is a book by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. Although written quickly, and despite the fact that Heidegger never completed the project outlined in the introduction, it remains his most important work and has profoundly influenced 20th-century philosophy, particularly...
);
- Dialectical arguments, where the premises argued from are shown to be logically weaker than the argument's conclusion (e.g. Hegel's master-slave dialecticMaster-slave dialecticThe Master-Slave dialectic is a famous passage of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. It is widely considered a key element in Hegel's philosophical system, and has heavily influenced many subsequent philosophers...
and T.W. Adorno's Dialectic of EnlightenmentDialectic of EnlightenmentDialectic of Enlightenment , is one of the core texts of Critical Theory explaining the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Enlightenment...
);
- Historical ontologies, such as those articulated by Michel FoucaultMichel FoucaultMichel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
(the historical ontology of power), Jacques DerridaJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
(the historical ontology of meaning) and philosopher of science Ian HackingIan HackingIan Hacking, CC, FRSC, FBA is a Canadian philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science.- Life and works :...
(scientific revolutions); and
- Forms of argument that, "through the use of hermeneutic arguments and creative redescriptions" of our practices and cultural paradigms, re-disclose the background of cultural meaning and "logical space of possibility."
Other modern philosophers
Modern philosophy
Modern philosophy is a type of philosophy that originated in Western Europe in the 17th century, and is now common worldwide. It is not a specific doctrine or school , although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.The 17th and...
who are said to employ world-disclosing arguments include Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Hans-Georg Gadamer was a German philosopher of the continental tradition, best known for his 1960 magnum opus, Truth and Method .-Life:...
, George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead was an American philosopher, sociologist and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded as one of the founders of social psychology and the American sociological tradition in general.-...
and Maurice Merlau-Ponty.
See also
- Aletheia
- Reflective disclosureReflective disclosureReflective disclosure is a term coined by philosopher Nikolas Kompridis. In his book Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, Kompridis describes a set of heterogeneous social practices he believes can be a source of significant ethical, political, and cultural transformation...
- Heideggerian terminologyHeideggerian terminologyMartin Heidegger, the 20th-century German philosopher, introduced to the world a large body of work which intended a profound change of direction for philosophy...
- Martin HeideggerMartin HeideggerMartin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
- Hubert DreyfusHubert DreyfusHubert Lederer Dreyfus is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley....
- Ian HackingIan HackingIan Hacking, CC, FRSC, FBA is a Canadian philosopher, specializing in the philosophy of science.- Life and works :...
- Nikolas KompridisNikolas KompridisNikolas Kompridis is a professor at the Centre for Citizenship and Public Policy at the University of Western Sydney. His scholarly work addresses a wide range of subjects in contemporary social and political philosophy, as well as in aesthetics and philosophy of culture...
- Charles TaylorCharles Taylor (philosopher)Charles Margrave Taylor, is a Canadian philosopher from Montreal, Quebec best known for his contributions in political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and in the history of philosophy. His contributions to these fields have earned him both the prestigious Kyoto Prize and the...