Dr. Manjari Chakrabarty, from Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan will be delivering a seminar titled "Why should a pencil or a paper-clip matter to philosophy?".

Abstract

The present paper aims to explain how simple everyday objects like a paper-clip or a pencil can raise ontological, metaphysical and epistemological issues that philosophers can no longer afford to neglect. Pencils or paper-clips are the intended products of human intellectual and physical labour, in short, artefacts. Philosophers generally differentiate such artefacts made of natural objects by taking into account their history. Natural objects come into being without human intervention; artefacts in contrast seem mind-dependent in the sense that they would not exist were it not for the intellectual and physical activities of human beings who make and use them. This apparent mind-dependence of artefacts raises distinctive metaphysical suspicions against their existence because an object is traditionally assumed (by philosophers) to be real if it possesses a nature which is entirely independent of human beliefs, intentions, knowledge and practice and is open to scientific investigation. Artefacts, lead pencils for instance, do depend for their existence, nature and classification on human knowledge, practice, etc. But their inner structure consisting of graphite, clay and cedar wood is accessible to scientific examination as well. A simple pencil thus evokes philosophical problems like whether artefacts need to be classified into a class of real objects distinct from objects of the natural world or whether the mind-independence/ mind-dependence question holds any significance for the ontological status of any object or whether we should seek an image of reality broad enough to accommodate such mundane artefacts in the metaphysical scheme.

About the Speaker

Dr. Manjari Chakrabarty is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religion, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. She works in the area of analytic philosophy of technology and has published papers in that area. The ICPR sponsored research project she is presently carrying out is “The Epistemic Character of Material Culture.”