An epistemology of art has seemed problematic mainly because of arguments claiming that an essential element of a theory of knowledge, truth, has no place in aesthetic contexts. For, if it is objectively true that something is beautiful, it seems to follow that the predicate “is beautiful” expresses a property – a view asserted by Plato but denied by Hume and Kant. But then, if the belief that something is beautiful is not objectively true, we cannot be said to know (...) that something is beautiful and the path to an epistemology of art is effectively blocked. The article places the existence aesthetic properties in the proper context; presents a logically correct argument for the existence of such properties; identifies strategies for responding to this argument; explains why objections by Hume, Kant, and several other philosophers fail; and sketches a realization account of beauty influenced by Hogarth. (shrink)

Degas, Manet, Picasso, Dali and Lipchitz produced works of art exemplifying a seeming impossibility: Not only combining incompatible attributes but doing so consistently with aesthetic strictures Horace formulated in Ars Poetica. The article explains how these artists were able to do this, achieving what some critics have called ‘a new art,’ ‘a miracle,’ and ‘a new metaphor.’ The article also argues that the author achieved the same result in sculpture by means of philosophical analysis – probably a first in the (...) history of art. (shrink)

Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. The one I propose (...) also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments. (shrink)

Following up on its predecessor in this Journal, the article defends philosophy as a guide to making and analyzing art; identifies Cubist solutions to the Prometheus Challenge, including a novel analysis of Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon; defines a new concept of aesthetic attitude; proves the compatibility of Prometheus Challenge artworks with logic; and explains why Plato would have welcomed such artworks in his ideal state.

W.V.O. Quine has famously objected that (1) properties are philosophically suspect because (2) there is no entity without identity and (3) the synonymy criterion for property identity won't do because there's no such concept as synonymy. (2) and (3) may or may not be right but do not prove (1). I reply that Leiniz's Law handles property identity, as it does for everything else, then respond to a variety of objections and confusions.

Mathematics textbooks teach logical reasoning by example, a practice started by Euclid; while logic textbooks treat logic as a subject in its own right without practical application to mathematics. Stuck in the middle are students seeking mathematical proficiency and educators seeking to provide it. To assist them, the article explains in practical detail how to teach logic-based skills such as: making mathematical reasoning fully explicit; moving from step to step in a mathematical proof in logically correct ways; and checking to (...) make sure inferences are logically correct. The methodology can easily be extended beyond the four examples analyzed. (shrink)

If I desire to drink some stuff thinking it is hot chocolate when actually it is hot mud, my desire is not a real one - it’s mistaken or only apparent. This example illustrates how a desire must always depend on a belief about its object, a belief about what it is and what it’s like. But beliefs are correctable, so desires are correctable. This leads us directly to a very sweeping principle - that I only really desire what I (...) would be desiring with a perfect grasp of everything involved. If there’s something that I desire only because my grasp of it is less than perfect, then it is not something that I really desire. I have no real reason for wanting it, and it would not be in my real self-interest to get it. The hypothetical perfect grasp that defines a real desire would have to have a God-like reach into all the relevant realities in all their actuality and all their potential. And it would have to include perfectly within it all the desires of all those affected by what the grasp was of. Therefore what would be wanted in a perfect grasp would be a reconciliation of all the systems of desire contained within it - not as they happen to be but as they would be corrected by a perfect grasp. This reconciliation of systems of desire is that which morality requires. Therefore what I really want - my own fully-corrected self-interest - is precisely the same as the requirements of morality. This sameness explains and justifies morality’s categorical character and over-riding authority. (shrink)

My visual cortex at the back of my brain processes the stimulation to my eyes and then causes other parts of the brain - like the speech centre and the areas involved in thought and movement - to be properly responsive to vision. According to functionalism the whole mental character of vision - the whole of how things look - is fixed purely in the pattern of responses to vision and not in any of the initial processing of vision in (...) the visual cortex. That this functionalist theory of vision is true can be proved with alarming ease. Imagine that just the left side of my visual cortex is replaced by a gadget that has precisely the same input/output relationship to the rest of the brain as the left visual cortex had. According to any view but functionalism, the character of my vision on the right side of my visual field (normally processed by the left visual cortex) would change radically with this change in all the intrinsic properties involved in the visual cortex, with this preservation of nothing but its functional role in bringing about my responses to vision. But, say I, we have enough here to be sure that in such a case there could be no change in the character of my vision. For we know by the stipulation of sameness of output that my responses in speech, thought and movement to the right side of my visual field will be precisely the same as they would have been with the natural left visual cortex and will harmonise just as they would have done with my responses to the other side of my vision. But if half my vision had disappeared or changed I’d be speaking, thinking and acting like someone with problems on the right side of his vision. It is impossible to separate my responses to vision from the character of my vision. The character of my vision is logically determined by the pattern of responses - by nothing but the functional role of my vision. (shrink)

Imagine that you and a duplicate of yourself are lying unconscious, next to each other, about to undergo a complete step-by-step exchange of bits of your bodies. It certainly seems that at no stage in this exchange of bits will you have thereby switched places with your duplicate. Yet it also seems that the end-result, with all the bits exchanged, will be essentially that of the two of you having switched places. Where will you awaken? I claim that one and (...) the same person possesses both bodies, occupies both places and will experience both awakenings, just as a person whose brain has been bisected must at once experience both of the unconnected fields of awareness, even though each of these will falsely appear to him as the entirety of his experience. I also claim that the more usual apparent boundaries of persons are as illusory as those in brain bisection; personal identity remains unchanged through any variation or multiplication of body or mind. In all conscious life there is only one person - I - whose existence depends merely on the presence of a quality that is inherent in all experience - its quality of being mine, the simple immediacy of it for whatever is having experience. One powerful argument for this is statistical: on the ordinary view of personhood it is an incredible coincidence for you (though not for others) that out of 200,000,000 sperm cells the very one required on each occasion for your future existence was first to the egg in each of the begettings of yourself and all your ancestors. The only view that does not make your existence incredible, and that is not therefore (from your perspective) an incredible view, is that any conscious being would necessarily have been you anyway. It is a consequence that self-interest should extend to all conscious organisms. (shrink)

Most people will agree that if my brain were made to have within it precisely the same pattern of activity that is in it now but through artificial means, as in its being fed all its stimulation through electrodes as it sits in a vat, an experience would result for me that would be subjectively indistinguishable from that I am now having. In ‘The Story of a Brain’ I ask whether the same subjective experience would be maintained in variations like (...) these: The hemispheres are in different vats but interacting with each other through radio transmission. Smaller chunks - and eventually the individual neurons - are interacting in this way. The hemispheres or the smaller chunks undergo internally the same pattern of activity but without interacting with each other. (shrink)

I critically examine Nietzsche’s argument in The Will to Power that all the detailed events of the world are repeating infinite times (on account of the merely finite possible arrangements of forces that constitute the world and the inevitability with which any arrangement of force must bring about its successors). Nietzsche celebrated this recurrence because of the power of belief in it to bring about a revaluation of values focused wholly on the value of one’s endlessly repeating life. Belief in (...) recurrence would bring joy to those who had achieved excellence in this life and crush those who had not. I point out, however, that this significance of recurrence must be spoiled by the consideration that within each of the long cycles of recurrence there would have to be, as well, countless variations of this life. And I consider the issue of personal identity within such recurrences. Is it the same person or merely resembling but distinct persons in the recurrences or the variations? If it is the same person in precise recurrences, should the subjectively identical experience be thought of as really additional for that person? (shrink)

I argue that a certain type of naturalist should not accept a prominent version of the no-miracles argument (NMA). First, scientists (usually) do not accept explanations whose explanans-statements neither generate novel predictions nor unify apparently disparate established claims. Second, scientific realism (as it appears in the NMA) is an explanans that makes no new predictions and fails to unify disparate established claims. Third, many proponents of the NMA explicitly adopt a naturalism that forbids philosophy of science from using any methods (...) not employed by science itself. Therefore, such naturalistic philosophers of science should not accept the version of scientific realism that appears in the NMA. (shrink)

This paper could be thought of as divided into two parts. In the first I show through a series of thought experiments that it is a mistake to think of one’s individual experience as necessarily belonging to only one particular place, time and organism. In repetitions across a universe large enough to host them, the particular experience that one finds oneself in, which can be individuated only by the detailed type that is the entirety of its momentary subjective content, would (...) exist equally in every occurrence of that type, much as a moment in the plot of a novel would exist equally in every copy of that novel. Each distinguishable subjective moment of experience is thus a ‘moment universal’. In the second part of the paper I draw from this the conclusion that there could not be any proper possessors of lines of experience - that there are no proper persons - no continuing subjects of consciousness and self-interest. About five years after writing this paper I came to see that the particular identity of an experience could not be confined by types of momentary subjective detail any more than it could be confined by particular places, times or organisms. All experience is equally here, now and mine and all conscious organisms are equally I. My argument for this crucial further development is presented in ‘One Self – The Logic of Experience’, Inquiry 33 (1991): pp. 39-68. (shrink)

This challenging paper presents an ingenious argument for a functionalist theory of mind. Part of the argument: My visual cortex at the back of my brain processes the stimulation to my eyes and then causes other parts of the brain - like the speech centre and the areas involved in thought and movement - to be properly responsive to vision. According to functionalism the whole mental character of vision - the whole of how things look - is fixed purely in (...) the pattern of responses to vision and not in any of the initial processing of vision in the visual cortex. That this functionalist theory of vision is true can be proved with alarming ease. Imagine that just the left side of my visual cortex is replaced by a gadget that has precisely the same input/output relationship to the rest of the brain as the left visual cortex had. According to any view but functionalism, the character of my vision on the right side of my visual field (normally processed by the left visual cortex) would change radically with this change in all the intrinsic properties involved in the visual cortex, with this preservation of nothing but its functional role in bringing about my responses to vision. But, say I, we have enough here to be sure that in such a case there could be no change in the character of my vision. For we know by the stipulation of sameness of output that my responses in speech, thought and movement to the right side of my visual field will be precisely the same as they would have been with the natural left visual cortex and will harmonise just as they would have done with my responses to the other side of my vision. But if half my vision had disappeared or changed I’d be speaking, thinking and acting like someone with problems on the right side of his vision. It is impossible to separate my responses to vision from the character of my vision. The character of my vision is logically determined by the pattern of responses - by nothing but the functional role of my vision. (shrink)

Imagine two urns, each with a thousand beads - in one all the beads are blue while in the other only one of the thousand is blue. If one of these urns is pushed forward (based on the toss of a fair coin) and the single bead then randomly drawn from it is blue, we must infer that it is a thousand times more probable that the urn pushed forward is the purely blue one. The hypothesis that this was instead (...) the urn with only one blue bead would require that the occurrence of the evidence, the blue bead being drawn, was something improbable - and it is improbable that something improbable is what has occurred. Next consider an example of only one urn with no prior description. By the same reasoning as above, if all the first beads randomly drawn are blue, it is becoming more and more probable that the beads in the urn are generally blue. (Otherwise something improbable would be happening in another colour not appearing; and what’s improbable is improbable.) It is therefore probable also that the next bead drawn will be blue. This is induction. As Hume would have said, we could not know a priori, given this evidence, that the next bead will be blue. But, as he overlooked, we can know a priori, given this evidence, that it is probable that the next bead will be blue. In neither urn example has the belief regarding the beads been formed as a Humean habit of expectation after many observations of beads. (In the first case there is only one observation. The second could be modified to have all the beads drawn out at once.) Rather the belief is a product of a priori reasoning about probability. Next imagine that a coin has been tossed a thousand times and landed heads every time. There was a fair and a loaded coin. According to the same reasoning, it is overwhelmingly more probable that the coin used was the loaded one. For that the fair coin had so landed is most improbable. The hypothesis that there is no external world makes the orderliness in my current experience improbable - much like getting all heads with a fair coin. (Uncaused sensation would most probably be chaotic.) The most probable hypothesis is that of things like those we believe in causing this orderliness - as the coin’s being loaded would have caused all heads. The hypothesis that my experience has been made to take this pattern by a Cartesian malicious demon or by scientists controlling my brain in a vat can only falsely seem to make the character of the experience probable by sneaking in an inherently improbable ad hoc specification that this sort of pattern of experience was that which they were aiming at producing - like an ad hoc specification that the fair coin was one that by chance landed heads all thousand times. We may thus reject such hypotheses as improbable. So this is the problem of induction solved and scepticism answered through a priori reasoning. (shrink)

Many philosophical positions wholly undermine themselves because to possess the truth that they claim for themselves they would have to be false. These are the theories that in one way or another reject the meaningfulness or attainability of objective truth.

Since anonymous agents can spread misinformation with impunity, many people advocate for greater accountability for internet speech. This paper provides a veritistic argument that accountability mechanisms can cause significant epistemic problems for internet encyclopedias and social media communities. I show that accountability mechanisms can undermine both the dissemination of true beliefs and the detection of error. Drawing on social psychology and behavioral economics, I suggest alternative mechanisms for increasing the trustworthiness of internet communication.

This article presents a paradox of inclusion, like Russell’s paradox but in a natural language.

It is argued that two observers with the same information may rightly disagree about the probability of an event that they are both observing. This is a correct way of describing the view of a lottery outcome from the perspective of a winner and from the perspective of an observer not connected with the winner - the outcome is improbable for the winner and not improbable for the unconnected observer. This claim is both argued for and extended by developing a (...) case in which a probabilistic inference is supported for one observer and not for another, though they relevantly differ only in perspective, not in any information that they have. It is pointed out, finally, that all probabilities are in this way dependent on perspective. (shrink)

For a while in this article it seems impossible to articulate a compelling reason for refraining from killing an innocent stranger with the press of a button when this would earn one a small prize and would be done with absolutely guaranteed immunity from any punishment or other harm (including even an instantaneous elimination of any chance of a guilty memory, achieved through hypnosis, and an ironclad commitment from God not to condemn the killing). After many failed attempts, a compelling (...) reason for not pushing the button is finally articulated. A distinction is demonstrated between merely apparent, mistaken desires and real desires. One might, for example, have merely an apparent, mistaken desire to be drinking the stuff in a mug of hot mud if one mistakenly believed that the stuff was hot chocolate. One would not really desire to be drinking that stuff. A desire, which must always be based on some belief about what its object is like, would always be open to correction along with the belief on which it depended. This realisation leads to the sweeping principle that one can only really desire what one would be desiring with a hypothetical perfect grasp of all that is involved. If one desires something only because of not fully grasping what that thing is, then one does not really desire it. What one really desires, then, regarding this stranger and pushing the button has to be what one would desire if fully experiencing, among other things, the entire value of the stranger's life from his own as well as every other angle along with the small value for oneself of the prize received on killing him. This equal concern for all is morality, and what is compelling in morality is that what it commands is what everyone really desires. (shrink)

The Pessimistic Induction over the history of science argues that because most past theories considered empirically successful in their time turn out to be not even approximately true, most present ones probably aren’t approximately true either. But why did past scientists accept those incorrect theories? Kyle Stanford’s ‘Problem of Unconceived Alternatives’ is one answer to that question: scientists are bad at exhausting the space of plausible hypotheses to explain the evidence available to them. Here, I offer another answer, which I (...) call the ‘Problem of Misleading Evidence.’ I argue that this proposal is, in important respects, superior to Stanford’s. (shrink)

In the progress of globalisation, the human being is exposed to effects of cultural dominance. For the individual, this exposure can be the stronger, the more autonomous his or her culture of origin used to be before the confrontation. Global consent with regard to behaviour patterns and cogni¬tive styles leads to the obliteration of traditional knowledge and behaviour upon which identity has been defined. The loss of identity in favour of belonging to the global society brings about a number of (...) problems, which can be demonstrated in functional models. These models, in turn, may sup¬port the planning of interventional strategies and rescue work. (shrink)

Strawson's view on punishment has been either neglected or recoiled from in contemporary scholarship on ‘Freedom and Resentment’ (FR). Strawson's alleged retributivism has made his view suspect and troublesome. In this article, we first argue, against the mainstream, that the punishment passage is an indispensable part of the main argument in FR (section 1) and elucidate in what sense Strawson can be called ‘a retributivist’ (section 2). We then elaborate our own hypothesis of symbolic retribution to explain the continuum between (...) moral reactive attitudes and punishment that Strawson only adumbrates (section 3). After this justification of the punitive response to wrongdoing, we compare and contrast our specific kind of retributivist hypothesis with other positions in the so-called ‘new retributivism’ (section 4). Our hypothesis differs from other subvarieties of expressive retributivism in putting centre stage the idea of punishment as taking up a reverential stance towards the victim. (shrink)

Suppose one believes that the historical record of discarded scientific theories provides good evidence against scientific realism. Should one adopt Kyle Stanford’s specific version of this view, based on the Problem of Unconceived Alternatives? I present reasons for answering this question in the negative. In particular, Stanford’s challenge cannot use many of the prima facie strongest pieces of historical evidence against realism, namely: superseded theories whose successors were explicitly conceived, and superseded theories that were not the result of elimination-of-alternatives inferences. (...) Attempts to accommodate and within Stanford’s framework are incompatible with other commitments Stanford holds, such as anti-realism being piecemeal instead of global. As separate lines of criticism, I argue that there are problems with Stanford’s claim that the PUA is the most important challenge to realism, and with his view of instrumentalist theory endorsement. (shrink)

Scientific anti-realists who appeal to the pessimistic induction (PI) claim that the theoretical terms of past scientific theories often fail to refer to anything. But on standard views in philosophy of language, such reference failures prima facie lead to certain sentences being neither true nor false. Thus, if these standard views are correct, then the conclusion of the PI should be that significant chunks of current theories are truth-valueless. But that is semantic anti-realism about scientific discourse—a position most philosophers of (...) science, anti-realists included, consider anathema today. Therefore, proponents of the PI confront a dilemma: either accept semantic anti-realism or reject common semantic views. I examine strategies (with particular emphasis on supervaluations) for the PI proponent to either lessen the sting of this argument, or learn to live with it. 1 Introduction2 Designation Failure 2.1 Designation failure leads to truth-valueless sentences2.1.1 Direct reference theory2.1.2 Fregeanism2.1.3 Accounts of reference-fixing: why ‘phlogiston’ fails to designate 2.2 Objection: sentences exhibiting designation failure are false not truth-valueless 2.3 Avoiding truth-valuelessness via controversial semantic positions3 What to do? Closing the Gaps4 Conclusion. (shrink)

Recent scholarship indicates that Quine’s “Truth by Convention” does not present the radical critiques of analytic truth found fifteen years later in “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” This prompts a historical question: what caused Quine’s radicalization? I argue that two crucial components of Quine’s development can be traced to the academic year 1940–1941, when he, Russell, Carnap, Tarski, Hempel, and Goodman were all at Harvard together. First, during those meetings, Quine recognizes that Carnap has abandoned the extensional, syntactic approach to philosophical (...) analysis, an approach espoused in Carnap’s 1934 Logical Syntax of Language, and which Quine endorsed his entire career. Second, Tarski presents Quine with a philosophically well-motivated reason to think that an apparently analytic discipline, arithmetic, could be synthetic; this reflects one of the central assertions found in “Two Dogmas” but not in “Truth by Convention.” I use this account of Quine’s development to resolve a dispute between Creath and Mancosu concerning the timeline for Quine’s evolving critiques of analyticity. (shrink)

The underdetermination of theory by data obtains when, inescapably, evidence is insufficient to allow scientists to decide responsibly between rival theories. One response to would-be underdetermination is to deny that the rival theories are distinct theories at all, insisting instead that they are just different formulations of the same underlying theory; we call this the identical rivals response. An argument adapted from John Norton suggests that the response is presumptively always appropriate, while another from Larry Laudan and Jarrett Leplin suggests (...) that the response is never appropriate. Arguments from Einstein for the special and general theories of relativity may fruitfully be seen as instances of the identical rivals response; since Einstein’s arguments are generally accepted, the response is at least sometimes appropriate. But when is it appropriate? We attempt to steer a middle course between Norton’s view and that of Laudan and Leplin: the identical rivals response is appropriate when there is good reason for adopting a parsimonious ontology. Although in simple cases the identical rivals response need not involve any ontological difference between the theories, in actual scientific cases it typically requires treating apparent posits of the various theories as mere verbal ornaments or computational conveniences. Since these would-be posits are not now detectable, there is no perfectly reliable way to decide whether we should eliminate them or not. As such, there is no rule for deciding whether the identical rivals response is appropriate or not. Nevertheless, there are considerations that suggest for and against the response; we conclude by suggesting two of them. (shrink)

Many commentators on Alfred Tarski have, following Hartry Field, claimed that Tarski's truth-definition was motivated by physicalism—the doctrine that all facts, including semantic facts, must be reducible to physical facts. I claim, instead, that Tarski did not aim to reduce semantic facts to physical ones. Thus, Field's criticism that Tarski's truth-definition fails to fulfill physicalist ambitions does not reveal Tarski to be inconsistent, since Tarski's goal is not to vindicate physicalism. I argue that Tarski's only published remarks that speak approvingly (...) of physicalism were written in unusual circumstances: Tarski was likely attempting to appease an audience of physicalists that he viewed as hostile to his ideas. In later sections I develop positive accounts of: (1) Tarski's reduction of semantic concepts; (2) Tarski's motivation to develop formal semantics in the particular way he does; and (3) the role physicalism plays in Tarski's thought. (shrink)

Confused terms appear to signify more than one entity. Carnap maintained that any putative name that is associated with more than one object in a relevant universe of discourse fails to be a genuine name. Although many philosophers have agreed with Carnap, they have not always agreed among themselves about the truth-values of atomic sentences containing such terms. Some hold that such atomic sentences are always false, and others claim they are always truth-valueless. Field maintained that confused terms can still (...) refer, albeit partially, and offered a supervaluational account of their semantic properties on which some atomic sentences with confused terms can be true. After outlining many of the most important theoretical considerations for and against various semantic theories for such terms, we report the results of a study designed to investigate which of these accounts best accords with the truth-value judgments of ordinary language users about sentences containing these terms. We found that naïve participants view confused names as capable of successfully referring to one or more objects. Thus, semantic theories that judge them to involve total reference failure do not comport well with patterns of ordinary usage. (shrink)

To investigate cultural lifestyle preferences in different cultural contexts, a forced-choice questionnaire was constructed, based on Thurstone's Law of Comparative Judgement, an almost forgotten statistical method of 1927, which is a useful tool for assessing groups. This study's questionnaire items targeted job and living conditions in the spectrum from traditional to globalised lifestyles. Subjects were indigenous representatives at the UNO in Geneva, and students in Nigeria, Cameroon, South Africa and Germany. The preferences ascertained reflect attitudes on a scale ranging from (...) very traditional to very globalised lifestyles. Although being an uncommon assessment tool, Thurstone's Comparative Judgement indicates to yield highly valid outcomes, as the results of the African university students, though from three different countries, resembled each other, but were complementary to the results of the indigenous representatives, which, in turn, mirrored the Berlin controls' profiles, according to expectations. Findings are discussed in light of the Symbolic Self-Completion Theory. (shrink)

The Aesthetic Field develops an account of aesthetic experience that distinguishes four mutually interacting factors: the creative factor represented primarily by the artist; the appreciative one by the viewer, listener, or reader; the objective factor by the art object, which is the focus of the experience; and the performative by the activator of the aesthetic occurrence. Each of these factors both affects all the others and is in turn influenced by them, so none can be adequately considered apart from them. (...) Thus aesthetic appreciation, for example, has creative, objective, and performative aspects. This situation of four factors, together with social, cultural, technological, and historical influences on them, is called the aesthetic field. Although the factors are theoretically distinguishable, they are experienced as a unity. It is important, therefore, not to confound the theoretical explanation of aesthetic experience with the experience, itself. The aesthetic field has important implications for understanding the various individual arts, new developments in the arts, and the critical appraisal of the arts. Moreover, the concept transforms traditional issues in aesthetics. (shrink)

Human beings define their identity primarily by the way they present, design and style their bodies. In doing so, individuals make statements about their affiliation to a social context. Globalisation implies a change of identity among the members of less industrialised cultures, as they are exposed to effects of cultural dominance. For the individual, this exposure can be the stronger, the more autonomous his or her culture of origin used to be before the confrontation. There is a bias of cultural (...) elements that are being transferred, so that the industrialised culture has a strong impact on other cultures. Global consent with regard to behaviour patterns, especially to bodily self-presentation and the related cognitive styles, leads to the obliteration of traditional knowledge, which is interwoven with the behaviour upon which identity had been defined previously. The cultural elements transferred are being used for the construction of globally standardised personal identities, whereat elements concerning the visual design of the human body are of major relevance for defining the self. The loss of variegated identities in favour of belonging to the global society brings about a number of problems, which can be demonstrated in functional models. These models, in turn, may support the planning of interventional strategies and rescue work. In this article, the role of the body within the destabilising effects of cultural change are analysed, and chances for intervention are discussed. (shrink)

En 2007, la Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas fue adoptada por la Asamblea General con la mayoría de los estados miembros de las Naciones Unidas. La declaración tiene relevancia para cualquiera que esté al mando o en contacto con los pueblos indígenas. Un efecto central de la dominancia de la cultura globalizada sobre culturas indígenas es la asimetría de la percepción e influencia mutua. Debido a los efectos de la presión social externa de la globalización los pueblos (...) indígenas tienen poca libertad de elección. Ejercer su derecho a una autonomía cultural en educación y estilo de vida es muy difícil para los indígenas. Por parte de gobiernos, problemas con los derechos sobre la tierra son un obstáculo para reconocer la autonomía de los pueblos indígenas. Algunos artículos de la declaración de derechos indígenas son presentados que tienen relevancia para personas externas, como investigadores o turistas, en contacto con personas indígenas. -/- The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples is an instrument to combat inequalities on an international level. However, the implementation is still a matter of disregard and conflict, as states are reluctant to give up their privileges. Yet, with the Declaration, a foundation has been laid to claim acceptance and respect of indigenous lifestyles, the use of their territories by themselves, the passing-on of culturally specific knowledge to the next generations, and other aspects. The new situation of International Law also brought along consequences for any external person contacting an indigenous culture, be it scientists, tourists or others. (shrink)

Mobile phones are part of a major growth industry in so-called Third World countries. As in other places, the use of this technology changes communication behaviour. The influence of these changes on indigenous social structures was investigated with a mixed-type questionnaire that targeted parameters such as: in-group vs. out-group communication, involvement with dominant industrial culture and the use of financial resources. Data was collected from indigenous representatives at the United Nations, as well as in Africa from subjects of various cultural (...) backgrounds, and from a control group in Berlin. The results reflect widespread use of mobile phones among indigenous persons, having a segregating effect within the indigenous community, but also enhancing ingroup communication and especially the use of the indigenous language. Mobile phones also facilitate moves from village to town, with the opportunity of frequently communicating with other in-group members. (shrink)

This paper examines the Kalam Cosmological Argument, as expounded by,William Lane Craig, insofar as it pertains to the premise that it is metaphysically impossible for an infinite set of real entities to exist. Craig contends that this premise is justified because the application of the Cantorian theory to the real world generates counterintuitive absurdities. This paper shows that Craig’s contention fails because it is possible to apply Cantorian theory to the real world without thereby generating counterintuitive absurdities, provided one avoids (...) positing that an infinite set of real entities is technically a set within the meaning of such theory. Accordingly, this paper proposes an alternative version of the application of Cantorian theory to the real world thereby replacing the standard version of such application so thoroughly criticized by Craig. (shrink)

Many have tackled the question ‘What (if anything) is analytic philosophy?’ I will not attempt to answer this vexed question. Rather, I address a smaller, more manageable set of interrelated questions: first, when and how did people begin using the label ‘analytic philosophy’? Second, how did those who used this label understand it? Third, why did many philosophers we today classify as analytic initially resist being grouped together under the single category of ‘analytic philosophy’? Finally, for the first generation who (...) described themselves as analytic philosophers, what was their intended contrast class? Relatedly, when did ‘continental philosophy’ become the standard opposition? Some evidence I present justifies received answers to these questions; other evidence supports surprising and unorthodox answers to these questions. (shrink)

In order to protect indigenous cultures, their knowledge and their ways of living, it is necessary to analyse the mechanisms of cultural change, with a special focus on those factors that lead to the destabilisation, and even deletion, of formerly autonomous social systems. -/- Cultures consist of human beings, and the mechanisms and interactions within and between cultures consist of human behaviour. Generally, the mutual influences between cultures do not occur in a symmetrical way. Rather, one side is usually exposed (...) to effects of the cultural dominance, which the other side exercises upon it. Within the macrostructure of intercultural influences, cultural elements of indigenous cultures are deleted and replaced by the cultural elements of the dominant culture. In the progress of globalisation, consent among the participants with regard to behaviour patterns and cognitive styles leads to the obliteration of traditional knowledge and behaviour which until then had been characteristic for the respective cultural group. -/- Meanwhile, indigenous cultures are endangered worldwide, and the process of globalisation is determined predominantly by the industrial culture. The transfer of the dominant cultural elements does not only lead to the deletion of specific knowledge of indigenous cultures, but also of context-relevant behaviour patterns of those concerned, who then participate in the destruction of the environment with the further effects of erosion, loss of species, and climate change. Yet, a representation of those mechanisms in functional models helps to define effective methods of intervention. (shrink)

Culture is a key resource for tourism. Any destabilisation of a local culture makes a destination less attractive for visitors. It is therefore in the interest of tour providers to protect and re-stabilise culture. There is great need for such efforts with regard to indigenous cultures, which are endangered worldwide. In this chapter, it is being elaborated why tourism needs to employ policies that ensure the maintenance of indigenous cultures. In their idiosyn-cratic physical appearance, which, in tropical areas, is often (...) unclothed, indigenous persons would have a slim chance to be acknowledged as citizens. This situation contrasts sharply with some basic claims of the global culture. (shrink)

Aesthetics is fundamentally a theory of sensible experience. Its scope has expanded greatly from an initial centering on the arts and scenic nature to the full range of appreciative experience. Expanding the range of aesthetics raises challenging questions about the experience of appreciation. Traditional accounts are inadequate in their attempt to identify and illuminate the perceptual experiences that these new applications evoke. Considering the range of environmental and everyday occasions aesthetically changes aesthetics into a descriptive and not necessarily celebratory study (...) of sensible experience, for it must now accommodate a complete range of negative as well as positive values. Th is paper develops an analysis of the multiple dimensions of environmental sensibility. (shrink)

This paper proposes a radical re-examination of the foundations of modern aesthetics. It urges that we replace the tradition of eighteenth century aesthetics, with its insistence on disinterestedness and the separateness of the aesthetic, and its problematic oppositions, such as the separation of sense from cognition. In their place it appeals to a more process-oriented, pluralistic account, one that takes note of varying cultural traditions in aesthetics, that recognizes the aesthetic as a complex of many forces and factors, and that (...) considers the aesthetic as part of a complexity of values, including moral, practical, social, and political ones. It urges, further, an aesthetic-based criticism, not only of the arts, but of culture and knowledge. Central to this account is the idea of aesthetic engagement, which not only recognizes and extends the many connections of and in aesthetic experience, but invites our total involvement as active participants. (shrink)

Ecology has become a popular conceptual model in numerous fields of inquiry and it seems especially appropriate for environmental philosophy. Apart from its literal employment in biology, ecology has served as a useful metaphor that captures the interdependence of factors in a field of research. At the same time as ecology is suggestive, it cannot be followed literally or blindly. This paper considers the appropriateness of the uses to which ecology has been put in some recent discussions of architectural and (...) environmental aesthetics, and develops a critique of the differing ecological aesthetics of Jusuck Koh and Xiangzhan Cheng. (shrink)

The idea of aesthetic disinterestedness has been a central concept in aesthetics since the late eighteenth century. This exchange offers a contemporary reconsideration of disinterestedness from different sides of the question.

Alfred Tarski was a nominalist. But he published almost nothing on his nominalist views, and until recently the only sources scholars had for studying Tarski’s nominalism were conversational reports from his friends and colleagues. However, a recently-discovered archival resource provides the most detailed information yet about Tarski’s nominalism. Tarski spent the academic year 1940-41 at Harvard, along with many of the leading lights of scientific philosophy: Carnap, Quine, Hempel, Goodman, and (for the fall semester) Russell. This group met frequently to (...) discuss logical and philosophical topics of shared interest. At these meetings, Carnap took dictation notes, which are now stored in the Archives of Scientific Philosophy. Interestingly, and somewhat surprisingly, the plurality of notes covers a proposal Tarski presents for a nominalist language of unified science. This chapter addresses the following questions about this project. What, precisely, is Tarski’s nominalist position? What rationales are given for Tarski’s nominalist stance—and are these rationales defensible? Finally, how is Tarskian nominalism of 1941 related to current nominalist projects? (shrink)

From the earliest times art has been integral to human culture. Both fascinated and perplexed by the arts, people have tried, since the age of classical Greece, to understand how they work and what they mean. Philosophers wondered at first about the nature of art: what it is and how it relates to the cosmos. They puzzled over how art objects are created, and extolled human skills that seem at times godlike in their powers. But perhaps the central question for (...) such philosophers as Plato and Aristotle concerned our involvement with art: the response we have to beautiful things, the moral and salubrious powers of art, and perhaps most of all, the power of art to transform and transcend, leading us into a condition of enhanced perception that may be wondrous, dangerous, and at times overwhelming. The classical age displayed a richness of discussion that centered on art as an activity: an activity that is at once cosmic, social, and individual; an activity that brings understanding of a sort; an activity that may be salutary and even exalting, as in Aristotle's celebrated discussion of tragedy and its cathartic effects. Since the eighteenth century, however, this has changed. Questions about art have shifted to the idea of experience, paralleling the great change in the focus of philosophy from matters of ontology to those of epistemology. In place of starting from an examination of the nature of the universe and moving to the human position in the order of things, we have come to realize, since Descartes and Kant, that all inquiry has its inception in a human locus. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, we have finally recognized that the human factor in every kind of awareness and knowledge is structurally unavoidable. Art has become both a symptom of this change and a standard for grasping it. (shrink)

Attempts to justify the objectivity and universality of aesthetic judgment have traditionally rested on unsupported assumptions or mere assertion. This paper offers a fresh consideration of the problem of judgments of taste. It suggests that the problem of securing universal agreement is false and therefore insoluble since it imposes an inappropriate logical criterion on the extent of agreement, which is irrevocably empirical. The variability of judgments of taste actually forms a subject ripe for inquiry by sociologists, psychologists, historians and anthropologists, (...) as well as by aestheticians. Scenic beauty provides a vivid test for the variability of these judgments. (shrink)

The range of the aesthetic has expanded to cover not only a wider range of objects and situations of daily life but also to encompass the negative. This includes terrorism, whose aesthetic impact is central to its use as a political tactic. The complex of positive and negative aesthetic values in terrorism are explored, introducing the concept of the sublime as a negative category to illuminate the analysis and the distinctive aesthetic of terrorism.

Allen Carlson finds three central problems in my book, Aesthetics and Environment : that it lacks a criterion of the aesthetic itself, that my proposal, aesthetic engagement, is excessively subjective, and that we cannot therefore distinguish between ‘easy’ and ‘serious’ beauty. I respond by uncovering the metaphysical assumptions on which his critique rests and offer more plausible alternatives. I argue, further, that their implications are not only acceptable but fully satisfactory.

Stone represents the firmness and intransigence of the world within which we live and act. But beyond the perception and appropriations of stone, diverse meanings lie hidden between the hardness of stone and its uses. At the same time meaning must be grounded in the stabilizing presence of a common world. Yet if all that can be said is not about stone simpliciter but only an aesthetics of its perception, uses, and meanings, have we not gained the whole world but (...) lost its reality? The underlying issue is therefore not aesthetic but ontological. (shrink)

In this time of increasing international involvement, one cannot but be struck by the fact of sharply different traditions concerning art and its practice.3 Recognizing that the arts are a salient part of every culture may lead us to wonder about their features and may make us curious about how and why the arts of other cultures differ from what we find more familiar. Perhaps we hope that the arts will offer us some insight into different cultures and their distinctive (...) worlds. This, then, is in part an essay in comparative aesthetics. Numerous examples of diverse artistic practices evoke our curiosity. Many of those I shall cite here are environmental and this is deliberate, for environments are a pervasive and powerful material embodiment of cultural practice and sensibility. They provide salient and inescapable evidence of this influence, and they bridge the distance sometimes assumed to lie, quite wrongly, in my opinion, between material culture and its artistic manifestations. (shrink)