Subtraction is a procedure for exhibiting this constitutive “gap” between thought and reality. In Alain Badiou’s ontological writings - where subtraction has been most rigorously explored and formalized - it is pursued in tandem with a rati…ry and reality because it is possible to permutate even the Lord’s Theory, shuffling around the meanings of the symbols to produce a distinct but equally true and empirically adequate theory.[^3] However, subtraction goes further than Putna…lae of bricolage and “demontology,” untying even the minimal conceptual framework with which SP originally sought to regiment our relation to the deep future. Its scope is correspondingly indeterminate, perhaps closer to hand, and philosoph…
Hilary Putnam
philosopher · 8 mentions across 5 readings
In this course
Putnam's work on semantic indeterminacy—the idea that multiple distinct theories can be equally empirically adequate despite assigning different meanings to their terms—provides a philosophical foundation that the course readings both invoke and exceed through concepts like Badiou's subtraction. The course uses Putnam to establish the constitutive gap between thought and reality, then pushes beyond his semantic relativism toward more radical ontological claims about what cannot be fully captured by any single conceptual framework.
Mentioned in 5 readings
Reality can be studied at different levels, so forms of “levelism” have often been advocated in the past.[^1] In the 1970s, levelism nicely dovetailed with the computational turn and became a standard approach both in science and in philoso…Hughes, P., & Brecht, G. (1976). Vicious circles and infinity: A panoply of paradoxes. London: Cape. Originally published: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1975.
Kant, I. (1998). Critique of pure reason repr. w. corr. (trans: Guyer, P., & Woo…
Appears alongside
People mentioned in the same passages — sorted by co-occurrence weight.
Alain Badiou 3Daniel Dennett 2Allen Newell 2David Marr 2Paul Oppenheim 2John Eccles 1Joseph Margolis 1Karl Popper 1Graham Harman 1Levi Bryant 1Nick Srnicek 1Oliver Feltham 1Ray Brassier 1Tracy McNulty 1David Hume 1Eliezer Yudkowsky 1Nelson Goodman 1Nick Bostrom 1Reza Negarestani 1A. Iles 1G. Di Giovanni 1Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel 1John Niemeyer Findlay 1M. Artiach 1Robert Lucas 1Allen W. Wood 1Dennis Macko 1George Brecht 1Grover Maxwell 1Herbert Feigl 1