Alexander Rueger
Biographic Data
| ID | 1112486 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alexander Rueger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alexander |
| FAMILY NAME | Rueger |
| SIGNATURE | RUEGER A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Alberta |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 80 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 18 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Eternal Recurrence, the Identity of Indiscernibles, and “Recurrence Awareness”
The doctrine of eternal recurrence (ER), understood as a cosmological theory, violates the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII): if cycles of events are supposed to recur qualitatively identically, then there is actually only one cycle. Given Nietzsche’s views about logical principles, this conflict may not be too worrisome—were it not for the fact that he does seem to apply the principle within cycles. This article suggests that thi…
Nietzsche’s “Sensualism” from 1885 to 1888
After having held through much of his career the view that our senses and our intellect falsify the world, Nietzsche published in Twilight of the Idols the claim that the senses do not lie at all. A preparation for this apparent change of mind has often been seen in BGE 15, where Nietzsche seems to recommend “sensualism,” at least for scientists working on the physiology of the senses. I try to characterize in some detail what “sensualism” means …
Kant on Feelings, Sensations and the Gap Between Rationality and Morality
In §3 of the Critique of Judgement Kant argues that if the feeling of pleasure were a sensation distinct from whatever representation gives rise to the feeling, then we would be – in the terminology of the Metaphysics of Morals – rational beings ( vernünftige Wesen ) but not moral beings ( Vernunftwesen ); we would inescapably (and blamelessly) be hedonists. I reconstruct this at first glance strange argument and suggest, first, that Kant’s actua…
Some perspective on perspectivism: Michela Massimi and Casey D. McCoy (eds): Understanding perspectivism. Scientific challenges and methodological prospects. New York: Routledge, 2020, 200pp
Kant on Beauty and Morality circa 1784
Idealized and perspectival representations: Some reasons for making a distinction
Hierarchies and levels of reality
Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature
I try to identify the characteristic and distinguishing features of a theory of natural beauty (as opposed to the sublime) that can be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Lest this may seem superfluous, I argue first that, contrary to a common view, Kant's theory does not take the experience of beauty in nature as theoretically basic and that he does not deal with beauty in art only as a derivative case of aesthetic experience. I then try to u…
Functional reduction and emergence in the physical sciences
Perspectival Models and Theory Unification
Given that scientific realism is based on the assumption that there is a connection between a model's predictive success and its truth, and given the success of multiple incompatible models in scientific practice, the realist has a problem. When the different models can be shown to arise as different approximations to a unified theory, however, one might think the realist to be able to accommodate such cases. I discuss a special class of models (…
The Role of Symbolic Presentation in Kant's Theory of Taste
Beauty, or at least natural beauty, is famously a symbol of the morally good in Kant's theory of taste. Natural beauty is also, we argue, a symbol of the systematicity of nature. This symbolic connection of beauty and systematicity in nature sheds light on the relation between the principles underlying the use of reflecting judgement. The connection also motivates a more general interpretive proposal: the fact that the imagination can symbolize i…
Reduction, Autonomy, and Causal Exclusion Among Physical Properties
Physical Emergence, Diachronic And Synchronic
Robust Supervenience and Emergence
Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structura…
Experiments, Nature and Aesthetic Experience in the Eighteenth Century
Journal Article EXPERIMENTS, NATURE AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Get access Alexander Rueger Alexander Rueger Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta4-108 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 37, Issue 4, October 1997, Pages 305–322, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/37.4.305 Published: 01 October 1997
Risk and diversification in theory choice
Simple Theories of a Messy World: Truth and Explanatory Power in Nonlinear Dynamics
Philosophers like Duhem and Cartwright have argued that there is a tension between laws' abilities to explain and to represent. Abstract laws exemplify the first quality, phenomenological laws the second. This view has both metaphysical and methodological aspects: the world is too complex to be represented by simple theories; supplementing simple theories to make them represent reality blocks their confirmation. We argue that both aspects are inc…
The Cultural Use of Natural Knowledge: Goethe's Theory of Color in Weimar Classicism
THE ROLE PLAYED BY THE SCIENCES in the liberation of poetics from the traditional canons of rules early in the eighteenth century has received much attention.1 It is well-known that poets at times tried to profit from the glory and authority of great scientists like Newton2; literature was supposed to borrow justification for innovations and a kind of power over a skeptical reading public by referring to knowledge of nature. The work of Johann Wo…
Physical Emergence, Diachronic And Synchronic
Perspectival Models and Theory Unification
Given that scientific realism is based on the assumption that there is a connection between a model's predictive success and its truth, and given the success of multiple incompatible models in scientific practice, the realist has a problem. When the different models can be shown to arise as different approximations to a unified theory, however, one might think the realist to be able to accommodate such cases. I discuss a special class of models (…
Robust Supervenience and Emergence
Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structura…
Functional reduction and emergence in the physical sciences
The Role of Symbolic Presentation in Kant's Theory of Taste
Beauty, or at least natural beauty, is famously a symbol of the morally good in Kant's theory of taste. Natural beauty is also, we argue, a symbol of the systematicity of nature. This symbolic connection of beauty and systematicity in nature sheds light on the relation between the principles underlying the use of reflecting judgement. The connection also motivates a more general interpretive proposal: the fact that the imagination can symbolize i…
Hierarchies and levels of reality
Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature
I try to identify the characteristic and distinguishing features of a theory of natural beauty (as opposed to the sublime) that can be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Lest this may seem superfluous, I argue first that, contrary to a common view, Kant's theory does not take the experience of beauty in nature as theoretically basic and that he does not deal with beauty in art only as a derivative case of aesthetic experience. I then try to u…
Simple Theories of a Messy World: Truth and Explanatory Power in Nonlinear Dynamics
Philosophers like Duhem and Cartwright have argued that there is a tension between laws' abilities to explain and to represent. Abstract laws exemplify the first quality, phenomenological laws the second. This view has both metaphysical and methodological aspects: the world is too complex to be represented by simple theories; supplementing simple theories to make them represent reality blocks their confirmation. We argue that both aspects are inc…
Reduction, Autonomy, and Causal Exclusion Among Physical Properties
Risk and diversification in theory choice
Idealized and perspectival representations: Some reasons for making a distinction
Experiments, Nature and Aesthetic Experience in the Eighteenth Century
Journal Article EXPERIMENTS, NATURE AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Get access Alexander Rueger Alexander Rueger Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta4-108 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 37, Issue 4, October 1997, Pages 305–322, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/37.4.305 Published: 01 October 1997
The Cultural Use of Natural Knowledge: Goethe's Theory of Color in Weimar Classicism
THE ROLE PLAYED BY THE SCIENCES in the liberation of poetics from the traditional canons of rules early in the eighteenth century has received much attention.1 It is well-known that poets at times tried to profit from the glory and authority of great scientists like Newton2; literature was supposed to borrow justification for innovations and a kind of power over a skeptical reading public by referring to knowledge of nature. The work of Johann Wo…
Risk and diversification in theory choice
Simple Theories of a Messy World: Truth and Explanatory Power in Nonlinear Dynamics
Philosophers like Duhem and Cartwright have argued that there is a tension between laws' abilities to explain and to represent. Abstract laws exemplify the first quality, phenomenological laws the second. This view has both metaphysical and methodological aspects: the world is too complex to be represented by simple theories; supplementing simple theories to make them represent reality blocks their confirmation. We argue that both aspects are inc…
Experiments, Nature and Aesthetic Experience in the Eighteenth Century
Journal Article EXPERIMENTS, NATURE AND AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY Get access Alexander Rueger Alexander Rueger Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta4-108 Humanities Centre, Edmonton, Canada Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The British Journal of Aesthetics, Volume 37, Issue 4, October 1997, Pages 305–322, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjaesthetics/37.4.305 Published: 01 October 1997
Physical Emergence, Diachronic And Synchronic
Robust Supervenience and Emergence
Non-reductive physicalists have made a number of attempts to provide the relation of supervenience between levels of properties with enough bite to analyze interesting cases without at the same time losing the relation's acceptability for the physicalist. I criticize some of these proposals and suggest an alternative supplementation of the supervenience relation by imposing a requirement of robustness which is motivated by the notion of structura…
Reduction, Autonomy, and Causal Exclusion Among Physical Properties
Perspectival Models and Theory Unification
Given that scientific realism is based on the assumption that there is a connection between a model's predictive success and its truth, and given the success of multiple incompatible models in scientific practice, the realist has a problem. When the different models can be shown to arise as different approximations to a unified theory, however, one might think the realist to be able to accommodate such cases. I discuss a special class of models (…
The Role of Symbolic Presentation in Kant's Theory of Taste
Beauty, or at least natural beauty, is famously a symbol of the morally good in Kant's theory of taste. Natural beauty is also, we argue, a symbol of the systematicity of nature. This symbolic connection of beauty and systematicity in nature sheds light on the relation between the principles underlying the use of reflecting judgement. The connection also motivates a more general interpretive proposal: the fact that the imagination can symbolize i…
Functional reduction and emergence in the physical sciences
Kant and the Aesthetics of Nature
I try to identify the characteristic and distinguishing features of a theory of natural beauty (as opposed to the sublime) that can be found in Kant's Critique of Judgement. Lest this may seem superfluous, I argue first that, contrary to a common view, Kant's theory does not take the experience of beauty in nature as theoretically basic and that he does not deal with beauty in art only as a derivative case of aesthetic experience. I then try to u…
Hierarchies and levels of reality
Idealized and perspectival representations: Some reasons for making a distinction
Kant on Beauty and Morality circa 1784
Kant on Feelings, Sensations and the Gap Between Rationality and Morality
In §3 of the Critique of Judgement Kant argues that if the feeling of pleasure were a sensation distinct from whatever representation gives rise to the feeling, then we would be – in the terminology of the Metaphysics of Morals – rational beings ( vernünftige Wesen ) but not moral beings ( Vernunftwesen ); we would inescapably (and blamelessly) be hedonists. I reconstruct this at first glance strange argument and suggest, first, that Kant’s actua…
Some perspective on perspectivism: Michela Massimi and Casey D. McCoy (eds): Understanding perspectivism. Scientific challenges and methodological prospects. New York: Routledge, 2020, 200pp
Eternal Recurrence, the Identity of Indiscernibles, and “Recurrence Awareness”
The doctrine of eternal recurrence (ER), understood as a cosmological theory, violates the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII): if cycles of events are supposed to recur qualitatively identically, then there is actually only one cycle. Given Nietzsche’s views about logical principles, this conflict may not be too worrisome—were it not for the fact that he does seem to apply the principle within cycles. This article suggests that thi…
Nietzsche’s “Sensualism” from 1885 to 1888
After having held through much of his career the view that our senses and our intellect falsify the world, Nietzsche published in Twilight of the Idols the claim that the senses do not lie at all. A preparation for this apparent change of mind has often been seen in BGE 15, where Nietzsche seems to recommend “sensualism,” at least for scientists working on the physiology of the senses. I try to characterize in some detail what “sensualism” means …
Philosophy (17 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Metaphysics (9 works) · Philosophy and History of Science (8 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Mathematics (6 works) · Philosophy of language (6 works) · Philosophy of science (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works)