CURRICULUM VITAE: Seth Holtzman
Assistant
Professor of Philosophy Married: Lisa Boguslaw
(704)
637-4229 www.faculty.catawba.edu/sholtzma/index.htm
B.A. 1983, M.A.
1988, Ph.D. 1997: A Philosophical Reexamination of
Presupposition
AREAS OF SPECIALIZATION
Metaphysics, Epistemology,
Philosophical Method, from a broadly analytic perspective
Modern Philosophical and Cultural History,
Philosophy of Religion, Value Theory, Logic,
Ethics, Philosophy of Mind,
Philosophy of Language
Granted academic tenure at
Helped develop a proposal at
grant
for theological exploration of vocation, 2002
Templeton Foundation grant to support a
course on science, religion and philosophy, 1999
Griffith Award (best philosophy paper),
Southern Society for Philosophy & Psychology, 1997
Chosen to attend the 1996 Teaching Seminar
for Advanced Graduate Students,
American Association of Philosophy
Teachers Conference
Mellon Fellowship
in the Humanities, 1984
"E. Maynard Adams”
Encylopedia of American Philosophy, eds. John Lachs & Robert
Talisse. NY: Routledge, 2007
"C. I. Lewis” (forthcoming)
Encylopedia of American Philosophy, eds. John Lachs & Robert
Talisse. NY: Routledge,
2007
”
Encylopedia of American Philosophy, eds. John Lachs & Robert
Talisse. NY: Routledge,
2007
TEACHING
EXPERIENCE
Advanced:
Philosophy of
Religion
Philosophy and the
Integration of Knowledge (HONORS
interdisciplinary course)
Genes, Genesis, & God
(Templeton award from the Center for Theology & the
Natural Sciences)
Science and Religion: A New
Perspective (HONORS
Templeton course)
Intermediate:
Philosophy and Religion in Literature, Principles of Philosophy (intro
for majors)
Introductory:
Freshman Orientation and Freshman Seminar, Critical Thinking, Ethics,
Philosophy and Culture (intro
for non-majors), Introduction to Logic,
Environmental
Ethics, Topics: Finding Meaning in Life
Western
Humanities Tradition
Humanities
in the Modern World
Introduction
to Logic
Introduction
to Philosophy
Philosophical
Knowledge: Necessary Truth in Philosophy
Introduction
to Philosophy, Introductory Symbolic Logic, Morality and Law
Philosophy
of Religion, Ethics of Peace, War and Defense (teaching assistant)
Governor's School: in
summers; North
Carolina, 1988-91,
1993-94;
in
A course in philosophy in the
integration of knowledge for gifted high school students
"Liberal
Education: What Is Its Purpose?", Alpha Chi Honorary Society Induction,
"Philosophy
and the Environment", John Calvin
Presbyterian Church, 2001
"Public Ceremony & the Need
for Meaning", Tri-Beta
Honorary Society Induction,
Panel Discussion on Science and Religion,
"What a Presupposition Tells Us"
--
--
"Reexamining Presupposition"
-- Southern
Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 1997
--
-- Intermountain Philosophy Conference, 1996
--
--
"The
Cultural Context of Philosophy",
"Philosophy and the Integration of
Knowledge"
-- American Association of Philosophy Teachers
Conference, 1996
-- Intermountain Philosophy Conference,
1995
-- NC Governor's School,
Advanced:
Metaphysics; Epistemology; Philosophy and the Integration of Knowledge;
Philosophy of Religion; Philosophical
Knowledge: Necessary Truth in Philosophy;
Intermediate:
Principles of Philosophy; Philosophy and
Religion in Literature; Value
Theory; Morality and Law;
Introductory:
Philosophy and Culture; Critical Thinking; Humanities;
Introduction to Logic;
Ethics;
Environmental
Ethics; Finding
Meaning in Life
Protoseminar [on Hume and Dennett];
Symbolic Logic;
Topics in Medieval Philosophy;
Philosophy of
Natural Science; Philosophy of Social
Sciences; Aristotle; Value Theory;
Philosophy of
Language; History
of Moral Philosophy; Contemporary Moral
Philosophy;
Plato; Kant; Metaphysics;
Epistemology; Directed
My work is on a theory of presupposition. I contend that we have misunderstood the
notion of presupposition and that this is one reason why we resist the idea of a priori knowledge of the world. My goal is not simply to offer a better
account of a central philosophical concept.
A correct theory of presupposition can support a robust account of philosophical
a priori knowledge. We should reject the idea that any a priori claim is meaningless or simply
uninformative about the world. I will
defend the view that we can reason to a
priori commitments (in the form of categorial concepts and precepts)
presupposed by inescapable human states and acts such as experiencing, knowing,
acting, reasoning, and thinking.
If we can
establish commitments of this sort, then we can defend them as inescapable
commitments and as a kind of philosophical and cultural foundation. These foundational commitments tell us about
the necessary structure of knowledge as well as about the necessary, categorial
structure of the world.
Many cultural
critics agree that our modern Western culture is poorly integrated and
therefore deeply flawed and destructive of selfhood and world. Our culture is rife with serious
philosophical conflicts and confusion of various kinds. Often the conflicts and confusion are in the
end about categorial commitments.
We find
categorial conflicts between disciplines such as physics and religion and find
ourselves unable to integrate the two areas of thought. Do the basic categories of modern empirical
natural science make possible a unified scientific world view and an integrated
culture? Or are there humanistic
categories, which religion relies on, that we must acknowledge in order to have
a defensible world view and an integrated culture?
We also
find categorial conflicts between schools of thought in a discipline, such as
behaviorist versus humanistic psychology, and find ourselves unable to
integrate knowledge and concepts about the same subject matter. Should we think of a human solely as a
complex physical organism exhibiting observable behaviors, agreeing with
Skinner that "person" is a pre-scientific, superstitious
concept? Or must we conceive of a human
as a person, a rational agent, with value requirements such as needs, and with
a mental dimension that includes intentions that can be linguistically and
behaviorally expressed and understood?
I believe
we can rationally resolve conflicts and questions even at the categorial level
of a subject. This work is complex and
contentious but, if successful, holds great promise. It promises that we may conceive of
philosophy as a search for objective truth about basic matters of cultural
importance. It promises an objective
(but not neutral) standpoint for judging philosophical alternatives. It promises that epistemological skepticism
is false, that our knowledge and culture can be integrated under a unified
world view governed by undeniable categories.
Students who learn to find and
reason about the underlying philosophical categories of our thought are better
able to rationally grasp and rationally reconstruct the culture they have
internalized. This deeper mastery of the
culture, this deeper cultural freedom, profoundly affects their experiences and
lives. My work has implications for
philosophy, for my teaching, and for the culture in its search for coherence
and objectivity.
-- Started and directed
Philosophy Club, 2002-03, changed to a Religion & Philosophy club
called “Catawba
Conversations”, 2003-06
-- Instructional Support
Committee, 2005-06
-- Curriculum and Instruction
Committee, 2000-03
-- Academic Policies and
Standards Committee, 1998-2000, 2003-05
--
Institutional Review Board, 1998-99, 2003-05; Chair, 1999-2000
--
Scholarship subcommittee, 2003-05
--
ad hoc subcommittee on revised audit policy, chair,
2004-05
-- Alcohol
Commission: evaluating campus alcohol policies; 1999-2000
--
Technology Advisory Committee, 1999-2001
-- Lifelong
Learning Program Advisory Board, 1999-2000; 2001-02
-- Faculty
Colloquium program co-chair, 2000-02
-- substantially
restructured the philosophy curriculum 1998-2001
Richard
M. Griffith Memorial Award Committee, Southern Society for Philosophy and
Psychology, 1998 and 1999
Directed the
Reviewed Morality
Play: Case Studies in Ethics, by Jessica Pierce, for McGraw-Hill, 2003
Planned a Catawba
College Forum on the ethics of care; speakers were Rosemarie Tong and
Laura Duhan Kaplan from the
Planned a Catawba
College Forum panel on Science and Religion, 2000
Freshman advisor, Catawba College, 1999-2001, 2003-04:
pre-semester orientation meetings,
semester-long
orientation course, and advising
Designed and maintain a departmental webpage,
Catawba College, 1999-present
Advisor for Dr. Glenn Blackburn on his
intellectual biography of E. M. Adams, 1998-present
Adjunct Instructor, Philosophy &
Religious Studies Dept., Murray State University, 1996-98
Organized,
coordinated, and conducted a UNC-CH Philosophy department-sponsored project
to
audiotape 20 discussions with E. M. Adams on philosophy, political and
historical events,
and
his life for the UNC-CH Southern Historical Collection, 1995-96.
Participated in a UNC-CH Philosophy
Department project to recover and restore a series of
30-year old film
interviews conducted by the Philosophy Department with important
philosophers
for preservation in UNC-CH archives, 1993-94.
Served as an event planner for
"Conversations with E. M. Adams", videotaped interviews of
Dr. Adams by former
UNC-system President William C. Friday, Dr. Warren Nord, and myself,
1993,
as a UNC-CH Bicentennial event sponsored by the Philosophy Department.
American Philosophical Association
American Association of Philosophy Teachers
Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology
E. Maynard Adams, deceased
Kenan
Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus,
J. Glenn
Blackburn, Professor Emeritus of History and Senior
Scholar
jgb@uvawise.edu
Philip Acree
Cavalier, Assistant Dean of the College and Associate Professor of English,
On Fullbright
Grant in
ecreecav@voliacable.com
Terry Foreman, Professor
of Philosophy & Religious Studies Emeritus
terry.foreman@murraystate.edu
William G.
Lycan, William Rand Kenan,
Jr., Professor of Philosophy
CB #3125, Caldwell Hall
ujanel@email.unc.edu
Warren A. Nord, Director, Program in the
Humanities and Human Values (retired),
& Lecturer in
Philosophy, UNC-Chapel Hill
wnord@email.unc.edu
A Philosophical
Reexamination of Presupposition
(E. M. Adams, Director;
Edward Galligan; William G. Lycan; Richard Smyth;
Roderick Long)
My work examines presuppositions and their role
within philosophy. Traditionally,
philosophers appealed to fundamental presuppositions they thought were central
to the world view they were defending.
Contemporary philosophy shows little interest in world views or
fundamental presuppositions; yet, philosophers still appeal to presuppositions.
I begin by
explicating the concept of presupposition.
Philosophers have often misconceived presupposition, conflating it with
related concepts, such as assumption. I
find reasons to preserve a distinction between presupposition and these related
concepts. On my account of the nature of
a presupposition, it is a necessary condition of something being meaningful per se, not, as Strawson
maintained, a condition of something having a truth-value. Analysis of the presupposition relation shows
it to be a logical one holding primarily between semantic states and acts.
Our
commitments take many forms: to beliefs or statements being true or false, to
experiences being veridical or not, to actions being rational or not, etc. For any commitment even to be meaningful (in
the sense of well-formed), the committed person is logically committed to its
presuppositions. In this way, presuppositional commitments are perhaps our most
fundamental kind of logical commitment.
We can reason back to presuppositions using ad hominem arguments that discover what
we must be committed to given the meaningfulness of our commitments.
There are different levels of
presuppositions. Some have a very
limited scope; others govern an entire conceptual system such as that of
natural science. Most presuppositions
are in principle avoidable by rejecting the commitments which carry them. But some presuppositions are unavoidable, for
they are presuppositions of basic and inescapable human activities or powers,
such as reasoning itself. These
transcendental presuppositions cannot be denied on pain of
self-inconsistency. On this kind of
basis, philosophers have claimed both that we can discover
"categories" or categorial commitments revelatory in some way of the
basic structure of reality and that dialectical argumentation leads all to
acknowledge these categorial commitments.
The categorial truths philosophy establishes in this manner provide an important
objective foundation for philosophical thought and the culture.