In order to account for how organisms can apprehend the contents of the external representations they manipulate in cognizing, the endorsement of representationalism fosters a situation of what I call cognitive overdetermination. I argue that this situation is problematic for the inclusion of these external representations in cognitive processing, as the hypothesis of extended cognition would like to have it. Since that situation arises from a commitment to representationalism (even minimal), it only affects the viability of representationalist versions of extended (...) cognition. (shrink)

We suffer from genealogical anxiety when we worry that the contingent origins of our representations, once revealed, will somehow undermine or cast doubt on those representations. Is such anxiety ever rational? Many have apparently thought so, from pre-Socratic critics of Greek theology to contemporary evolutionary debunkers of morality. One strategy for vindicating critical genealogies is to see them as undermining the epistemic standing of our representations—the justification of our beliefs, the aptness of our concepts, and so on. I argue that (...) this strategy is not as promising as it might first seem. Instead, I suggest that critical genealogies can wield a sort of meta-epistemic power; in so far as we wish to resist the genealogical critic, we are under pressure to see ourselves as the beneficiaries of a certain kind of good luck: what I call genealogical luck. But there is also a resolutely non-epistemic way of understanding the power of critical genealogies, one that is essential, I argue, for understanding the genealogical projects of various theorists, including Nietzsche and Catharine MacKinnon. For critical genealogies can reveal what it is that our representations do—and what we, in turn, might do with them. (shrink)

Since educators are always looking for ways to improve their practice, and since empirical science is now accepted in our worldview as the final arbiter of truth, it is no surprise they have been lured toward cognitive neuroscience in hopes that discovering how the brain learns will provide a nutshell explanation for student learning in general. I argue that identifying the person with the brain is scientism (not science), that the brain is not the person, and that it is the (...) person who learns. In fact the brain only responds to the learning of embodied experience within the extra-neural network of intersubjective communications. Learning is a dynamic, cultural activity, not a neural program. Brain-based learning is unnecessary for educators and may be dangerous in that a culturally narrow ontology is taken for granted, thus restricting our creativity and imagination, and narrowing the human community. (shrink)

_Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ , 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in _The Philosopher's Annual_ , Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23-68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., _Cognitive Science_ , Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp.210-274.

In a second there is also time enough, we might add. In his dichotomizing fervor, Bogen fails to realize that our argument is neutral with respect to the number of consciousnesses that inhabit the normal or the split-brain skull. Should there be two, for instance, we would point out that within the neural network that subserves each, no privileged locus should be postulated. (Midline location is not the issue--it was only a minor issue for Descartes, in fact.).

1. Metaphysical Realists have traditionally relied upon the skeptic to give substance to the idea that truth is, in the words of Hilary Putnam, 'radically non-episternic,’ forever outstripping, in principle at least, the reach of justification. What better model of truth so conceived, after all, than the skeptic's contention that even our firmest convictions might be mistaken in that we might be the victims of demonic deception or the machinations of an evil scientist? But the availability of this favorite model (...) of Realist truth, encapsulated in the claim that we might be ‘brains in a vat,’ has been called into question by Putnam in the opening chapter of Reason, Truth, and History. Putnam contends that, if we grant the Realist notion of truth, as referentially mediated correspondence to THE WORLD, then, given certain plausible constraints on reference, we can know that we are not brains in a vat. (shrink)

It is now over 15 years since Hilary Putnam first urged that we take the “narrow path” of internal realism as a way of navigating between “the swamps of metaphysics and the quicksands of cultural relativism and historicism” (1983, p. 226). In the opening lines of the Preface toRealism with a Human Face, a collection of Putnam's recent papers edited by James Conant, Putnam reaffirms his allegiance to this narrow path, unmoved by Realist murmurings from the swamps and laconic Rortian (...) suggestions that only the quicksands are a proper metaphilosophical abode for those willing to confront our lack of epistemological and metaphysical foundations. If there are changes to be discerned in these writings, Putnam avers, they pertain only to the burden allotted to different considerations in the overall economy of his argument: “It might be said that the difference between the present volume and my work prior toThe Many Faces of Realismis a shift in emphasis: a shift from emphasizing model-theoretic arguments against metaphysical realism to emphasizing conceptual relativity” (p. xi). (shrink)

In this paper, the different theories about science and technology relationships are analyzed. All of them have some virtues, but also one main defect: these theories do not take into account other well-founded possible relationships. The origin of this problem is the narrow view about science and technology. In this paper another characterization about technology based on Ronald Giere’s perspective is suggested. In the light of this new description, six different relationships between science and technology arise. Some of these relations (...) had been explained in the before analyzed theories, but others emerge from the new portrayal. (shrink)

We examine the most famous controversy between economists as a means of shedding fresh light on the current debate about economic methodology. By focusing on the controversy as the primary unit of analysis, we show how methodological considerations are but one of a whole set of stratagems strategically employed by each opponent. We argue that each opponent's preference for a particular kind of stratagems expresses his own specific scientific style (within the general scientific and cultural style of an age). We (...) also describe a dynamic dimension of the controversy, independent of the participants' intentions. Such a dimension is analysed in a "cycle" of the controversy, which begins with a well-defined issue and expands to additional topics, without reaching a "solution" to the initial issue. The definition and re-definition of the issue(s) at stake and of the difference between both participants is an essential and recurrent feature of such cycles; the conclusion of a cycle does not imply a real "closure" of the controversy, but only that each opponent has reached a satisfying degree of self-clarification. The controversy, thus, does not yield persuasion -- its ostensible aim. Rather, its "benefit" seems to lie in an unintended result -- clarification and deepening of contrasting approaches to the discipline -- due to its peculiar dynamics. In so far as the history of a discipline requires a reconstruction of such contrasts, it is indispensable for it to take into account the controversies where they emerge, and to view both the positive doctrines and the methodological posture of the contenders as parts of a wider framework, that is a scientific style. (shrink)

This paper discusses the work of Noam Chomsky in the context of democracy, the media, and education. Through the analysis of selected works, a critical perspective emerges. This view demands that educators at all levels understand and confront the often deleterious effects the media can have on students' social and political views and further how the media can undermine democratic action in schools and society.

In 1993, biologist Margie Profet captured the attention of the popular press with the publication of her radical thesis: menstruation has a function. Traditional theories, she claims, typically view menstruation as a functionless by-product of cyclic flux. The details of Profet's functional account are similarly radical: she argues that menstruation has been naturally selected to defend the female reproductive tract from sperm-borne pathogens. There are a number of weaknesses in Profet's evolutionary analysis. However, I focus on a set of pragmatic (...) problems that arise prior to any details of her evolutionary account. In arguing for the importance of pragmatic considerations, I draw from the linguistic analyses of Nelson Goodman. I conclude that critical investigation of the evolutionary details of Profet's pathogen defense account will be more feasible if and when biologists more frequently feature the female system of pathogen defense in their inductive generalisations. The system needs to be better entrenched before its functional components, such as menstruation, can be thoroughly investigated. (shrink)

History and the modern sciences are characterized by what is sometimes called a “methodological naturalism” that disregards talk of divine agency. Some religious thinkers argue that this reflects a dogmatic materialism: a non-negotiable and a priori commitment to a materialist metaphysics. In response to this charge, I make a sharp distinction between procedural requirements and metaphysical commitments. The procedural requirement of history and the sciences—that proposed explanations appeal to publicly-accessible bodies of evidence—is non-negotiable, but has no metaphysical implications. The metaphysical (...) commitment is naturalistic, but is both a posteriori and provisional, arising from the fact that formore than 400 years no proposed theistic explanation has been shown capable ofmeeting the procedural requirement. I argue that there is nothing to prevent religious thinkers from seeking to overturn this metaphysically naturalistic stance. But in order to do so they would need to show that their proposed theistic explanations are the best available explanations of a range of phenomena. Until this has been done, the metaphysical naturalism of history and the sciences remains defensible. (shrink)

Whereas the Humean accounts of causality in terms of contiguity, temporal priority, constant conjunction, and contingency face difficulties of one sort, the dispositional explanations of causality...

A layered interpretation of the history of chemistry is discussed through chemical revolutions. A chemical revolution mainly by emplacement, instead of replacement, procedures were identified by: a radical reinterpretation of existing thought recognized by contemporaries themselves, which means the appearance of new concepts and the arrival of new theories; the use of new instruments changed the way in which its practitioners looked and worked in the world and through exemplars, new entities were discovered or incorporated; the opening of new subdisciplines, (...) which produced, separated scientific communities. The fourth chemical revolution, fundamentally characterized by the incorporation of new instruments in chemical practices is discussed. (shrink)

The new terrorism is a major exemplifying case for complexity theory – for example, it exemplifies major disproportionalities between cause and effect, unpredictable outcomes, and self-organizing, emergent structures. It also illustrates, I argue in this article, the emergence of global microstructures: of forms of connectivity and coordination that combine global reach with microstructural mechanisms that instantiate self-organizing principles and patterns. Global systems based on microstructural principles do not exhibit institutional complexity but rather the asymmetries, unpredictabilities and playfulness of complex (and (...) dispersed) interaction patterns. The analysis of complex global microstructures helps to collect and assess empirical evidence for the architecture of the global structural forms of a world society. It also suggests a theory of microglobalization – the view that the texture of a global world becomes articulated through microstructural patterns that develop in the shadow of (but liberated from) national and local institutional patterns. (shrink)

En el presente artículo se muestra que en la cosmología cartesiana no resulta claro cómo se puede hablar o referir a cuerpos individuales en el marco de un universo absolutamente compacto. Se defiende que el concepto de cuerpo individual en el interior de dicha cosmología se puede construir como una ficción del espíritu. Un cuerpo individual se puede construir como la extensión que se encuentra encerrada en una superficie maximal cuyas subdivisiones carecen de movimiento relativo entre sí. Se muestra, también, (...) que la cosmología cartesiana puede presentarse como un modelo trivial de la Teoría M. (shrink)

Research seeking a scientific foundation for the theory of art appreciation has raised controversies at the intersection of the social and cognitive sciences. Though equally relevant to a scientific inquiry into art appreciation, psychological and historical approaches to art developed independently and lack a common core of theoretical principles. Historicists argue that psychological and brain sciences ignore the fact that artworks are artifacts produced and appreciated in the context of unique historical situations and artistic intentions. After revealing flaws in the (...) psychological approach, we introduce a psycho-historical framework for the science of art appreciation. This framework demonstrates that a science of art appreciation must investigate how appreciators process causal and historical information to classify and explain their psychological responses to art. Expanding on research about the cognition of artifacts, we identify three modes of appreciation: basic exposure to an artwork, the artistic design stance, and artistic understanding. The artistic design stance, a requisite for artistic understanding, is an attitude whereby appreciators develop their sensitivity to art-historical contexts by means of inquiries into the making, authorship, and functions of artworks. We defend and illustrate the psycho-historical framework with an analysis of existing studies on art appreciation in empirical aesthetics. Finally, we argue that the fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure can be amended to meet the requirements of the framework. We conclude that scientists can tackle fundamental questions about the nature and appreciation of art within the psycho-historical framework. (shrink)

Charles Taylor’s conception of the relationship between democracy and social creativity developed through a critical synthesis of various traditions, including the Romantic Movement and liberal political philosophy. However, it is argued that Taylor’s understanding of the implications of religion and revolution significantly differentiates his standpoint from that of pragmatism and theories of democratic creativity. Taylor’s defence of religious transcendence is shown to give rise to tensions with the latter perspective. The theorists of democratic creativity suggest that democracy originates in the (...) rupturing of religious significations and their closure of meaning. Taylor essentially inverts these arguments and perceives that the loss of transcendence may lead to a closed world structure. Taylor claims that the dilemmas of the modern immanent frame were prefigured in the French Revolution’s inability to generate an institutional form consistent with its understanding of democracy and that social creativity should be qualified in light of this historical experience. (shrink)

My perspective in this paper is to look at sport and other physical activities as a way of exploring and experimenting with the environing world. The human being is basically the homo movens – born...

In his essayOn the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany, of 1834, Heinrich Heine suggested to his French audience that the German propensity for ‘metaphysical abstractions’ had led many people to condemn philosophy for its failure to have a practical effect, Germany having only had its revolution in thought, while France had its in reality. Heine, albeit somewhat ironically, refuses to join those who condemn philosophy: ‘German philosophy is an important matter, which concerns the whole of humanity, and only (...) the last grandchildren will be able to judge whether we should be blamed or praised for working out our philosophy before our revolution.’ He then makes the following prognosis:the German revolution will not be more mild and more gentle because it was preceded by Kantian critique, Fichtean transcendental idealism and even philosophy of nature. Revolutionary forces have developed via these doctrines which are just waiting for the day when they can break out and fill the world with horror and admiration. … Don't smile at my advice, the advice of a dreamer who warns you about Kantians, Fichteans and philosophers of nature. Don't smile at the fantast who expects the same revolution in the realm of appearance as took place in the realm of spirit. … A play will be performed in Germany in comparison with which the French Revolution could appear just as a harmless idyll (ibid., pp. 616–17). (shrink)

The first decisive steps of medicine towards becoming a science in its present shape happen to coincide with “the rise of the novel” in the eighteenth century. Before this well known and in our days still growing scientific specialization of medicine, the connections between literature and medicine were both many and close. By reading and analyzing a contemporary novel, The Death of a Beekeeper by the Swedish author Lars Gustafsson, this article is an attempt to explore to which extent a (...) fictional narrative about a unique case of cancer may illuminate challenges associated with the experience of serious illness. Our claim is that medicine might draw wisdom from literature, its ability to create connections through narrative, to illuminate the complexity of ethical dilemmas, and to intertwine symptoms, life stories, and contexts. We argue that by being in the company of literary narratives and philosophical questions, physicians as well as other health care professionals may acquire clinically relevant skills which help them reach the ethically defined goals of their profession. (shrink)

A number of objections to the style matrix that Arthur Danto introduced in “The Artworld” seem to have quelled most discussion of it. So telling have these arguments been that Danto himself later recanted the idea entirely. This situation is somewhat unfortunate. It may be that Danto's own interpretation of the style matrix is not tenable, but I believe we can articulate an alternative reading of it that escapes the aforementioned objections. While the interpretation I suggest cannot provide all that (...) Danto initially imagined for his style matrix, it does maintain much that was theoretically beneficial in it. (shrink)

This is a response to Jerry Fodor’s article, Fodor, J. (1980). "Methodological solipsism as a research strategy in cognitive psychology." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 63-109.

This paper proposes to test the ethical acceptability of four styles of agricultural resource management: (1) contemporary industrial integrated systems agriculture, (2) modern industrial input dependent agriculture, (3) continuous traditional agriculture and (4) non-continuous (or swidden) traditional agriculture. The test of ethical acceptability is whether or not these styles of agricultural resource management embrace or are even compatible with that pattern of practical reasoning and interaction among ethical agents which we have independent theoretic grounds for preferring. The preferred sorts of (...) practical reasoning and interaction are those which we find operating in ethical theories which are strongly committed to letting the discretion of ethical agents construct what is right for them to do. Thus the discussion distinguishes several different strengths of constructivist ethics relating them to the work of John Rawls, Immanuel Kant and Onora O'Neill. Then it argues for the theoretic preferability of one particular strength of constructivist ethic. The paper winds up by arguing that only traditional continuous agriculture embodies the preferred sort of practical reasoning and interaction among ethical agents. Further, I argue that this is the only style of agriculture which can embody such reasoning and patterns of interaction. Thus, as we consider the role of agriculture in our plans of international development, we have one reason to try to favor traditional continuous agriculture. To do otherwise would ignore the ethical superiority of the practical reasoning and patterns of interaction of traditional agriculturalists. (shrink)

This paper discusses the problematic use of the “pragmatic credo” – defined as a minimal set of basic pragmatist propositions – in practice, especially when facing creation. To do so, we analyze how managers deal with “art-based firms” and provide results from an in-depth case study of a small firm operating in garden art and design (Béjean 2015; 2008). The findings are interpreted in light of previous theoretical developments in management theory (Hatchuel European Management Review, 2(1): 36–47.), as well as (...) symbol theory (Goodman 1968; 1978). They suggest that, while appearing wise and reasonable, the pragmatic credo as embodied in practical management doctrines rather inhibits collective action and masks the necessary revision of symbolic “orders of action”, defined as the way action is itself pre-categorized by a special class of symbols. The paper concludes by providing further insights of how an “epistemology of action” could contribute to enriching both pragmatism and management, especially when action is no longer the solution to resort to but rather the enigma to unfold. (shrink)

In non-philosophical discourse, “identity” is often used when the specific character of artefacts is described or evaluated. We argue that this usage of “identity” can be explicated as referring to the symbol properties of artefacts as they are conceptualized in the symbol theory of Goodman and Elgin. This explication is backed by an analysis of various uses of “identity”. The explicandum clearly differs from the concepts of numerical identity, qualitative identity and essence, but it has a range of similarities with (...) the notion of self-concept used in psychology and practical philosophy. The proposed explication is used to analyse claims about identity-pluralism and identity-conflicts. Firstly, the explication allows us to distinguish various ways how the same artefact can have a plurality of identities. Secondly, more or less sharp conflicts within an identity or between identities of an artefact are distinguished. Thirdly, many phenomena called “identity-conflicts” are only apparently identity-conflicts and can be analysed as involving some other form of tension. (shrink)

This article discusses how the legal systems in several Western countries, with a special focus on Italy, address our present day animal rights movement and how these legal systems can faithfully reflect the movement’s values as well as promote them in a manner that will ultimately change the rights themselves and their cultural context: this is an extremely interesting issue for the semiotic study of the “humanization of animals”. Therefore, I will summarize several semiotic arguments using the model of the (...) four ontologies by Philippe Descola and the concept of prospectivism by Eduardo Viveiros De Castro. I expect several important changes will come about thanks to the ties between philosophical animal rights discourse and legal discourse and I also believe that the two most interesting issues will be animal labor and reproduction. I will concentrate on the debate over zoophilia laws in Denmark, Germany and Italy in order to propose a way to understand the threshold which separates humans and animals in our naturalistic ontology. Nowadays, “becoming animals” and “becoming humans” seem to be two central and open-ended semiotic processes: legal rights and animal rights philosophy help bring several issues into focus such as animal subjectivity and informed consent. (shrink)

The purported fact that geometric theories formulated in terms of points and geometric theories formulated in terms of lines are “equally correct” is often invoked in arguments for conceptual relativity, in particular by Putnam and Goodman. We discuss a few notions of equivalence between first-order theories, and we then demonstrate a precise sense in which this purported fact is true. We argue, however, that this fact does not undermine metaphysical realism.

Bioethics has now become a burgeoning interdisciplinary field of scholarly investigation which has in the past decades migrated from bedside consultations to public policy debates and wider cultural and social consultations that privilege all discourse about everyday life issues. It has made exponential progress in addressing moral issues in science, technology and medicine in the world. In spite of this progress, core bioethics issues, approaches and values are still exclusively Western dominated and largely foreign to most African societies. Although medical (...) ethics has existed since the time of Hippocrates, in Africa, there is a noted sluggish growth and low prestige of ethics education as bioethics is not taught in most higher educational systems of learning, low understanding of its processes as researchers manifest a general lack of appreciation for bioethics and general ignorance characterize those involved in research about ethical practices. This is unfortunate, considering that various research that aim at finding solutions to the multiple problems affecting African societies and the need to address and assess these problems in ethical terms are of crucial importance to Africans. In this work, I argue that Africa lacks human, institutional, infrastructural capacities and a real African authenticity in bioethics. Additionally, African views on bioethics are neither sufficiently developed nor heard. Africans need to confront these current challenges of bioethics to their lives and communities and to develop African conceptions to incorporate African specificities and approaches. (shrink)

Using the example of architecture, this article defends the thesis that designing should not be regarded as a kind of experimenting. This is in contrast to a widespread methodological claim that design processes are equivalent to experimentation processes. The contrary thesis can be proven by focusing on actual practices, techniques and design strategies. Closely connected with the thesis is an even more important epistemological claim, which contends that designing serves not only to develop artefacts but is also a means of (...) acquiring genuine knowledge. When the epistemic relevance of said practices, techniques and strategies is reassessed, designing emerges clearly as an independent epistemic praxis. To defend the thesis, the present article draws on and analyses empirical material from an ethnographic field study in order to back up the conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Some scientific categories seem to correspond to genuine features of the world and are indispensable for successful science in some domain; in short, they are natural kinds. This book gives a general account of what it is to be a natural kind and puts the account to work illuminating numerous specific examples.