This thesis is about the conceptualization of persistence of physical, middle-sized objects within the theoretical framework of the revisionary ‘B-theory’ of time. According to the B-theory, time does not flow, but is an extended and inherently directed fourth dimension along which the history of the universe is ‘laid out’ once and for all. It is a widespread view among philosophers that if we accept the B-theory, the commonsensical ‘endurance theory’ of persistence will have to be rejected. The endurance theory says (...) that objects persist through time by being wholly present at distinct times as numerically the same entity. Instead of endurantism, it has been argued, we have to adopt either ‘perdurantism’ or the ‘stage theory’. Perdurantism is the theory that objects are four-dimensional ‘space-time worms’ persisting through time by having distinct temporal parts at distinct times. The stage theory says that objects are instantaneous temporal parts (stages) of space-time worms, persisting by having distinct temporal counterparts at distinct times. In the thesis, it is argued that no good arguments have been provided for the conclusion that we are obliged to drop the endurance theory by acceptance of the B-theory. This conclusion stands even if the endurance theory incorporates the claim that objects endure through intrinsic change. It is also shown that perdurantism and the stage theory come with unwelcome consequences. -/- Paper I demonstrates that the main arguments for the view that objects cannot endure in B-time intrinsically unchanged fail. Papers II and III do the same with respect to the traditional arguments against endurance through intrinsic change in B-time. Paper III also contains a detailed account of the semantics of the tenseless copula, which occurs frequently in the debate. The contention of Paper IV is that four-dimensional space-time worms, as traditionally understood, are not suited to take dispositional predicates. In Paper V, it is shown that the stage theory needs to introduce an overabundance of persistence-concepts, many of which will have to be simultaneously applicable to a single object (qua falling under a single sortal), in order for the theory to be consistent. The final article, Paper VI, investigates the sense in which persistence can, as is sometimes suggested, be a ‘conventional matter’. It also asks whether alleged cases of ‘conventional persistence’ create trouble for the endurance theory. It is argued that conventions can only enter at a trivial semantic level, and that the endurance theory is no more threatened by such conventions than are its rivals. (shrink)

I argue that Descartes' Second Causal Proof of God in the Third Meditation evidences, and commits him to, the belief that time is "strongly discontinuous" -- that is, that there is actually a gap between each consecutive moment of time. Much of my article attempts to reconcile this interpretation, the "received view," with Descartes' statements about time, space, and matter in his other writings, including his correspondence with various philosophers.

D. C. Dennett propounds a ?multiple drafts? conception of consciousness which is both materialist and anti?realist (in something like Dummett's sense). Thus there is no determinate truth as to what the components of someone's consciousness were over any particular period and the order in which they occurred. In opposition to this an anti?materialist form of psychical realism is defended here. There really is a precise something which it is like to be a conscious individual at each moment. The main difficulty (...) in accepting this view is that it seems to make it quite contingent what type of consciousness performs what function in the economy of the organism, e.g. that pleasure acts as a positive, pain as a negative, reinforcer of behaviour. There is a problem here which can only be avoided by abandoning the Humean doctrine that there cannot be necessary relations between distinct existences. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to show that Bergson and James defend a form of panpsychism, and that on this point, Bergson probably had an influence on James. For Bergson, matter has psychic characters, in particular a memory of the immediate past and a motor memory. These characters are necessary to explain causation within the physical world, understood then as analogous to automatic activity in living beings. However, according to Bergson, there is a radical distinction between the inert and (...) the living: only the living is capable of creation. Probably inspired by Bergson, James develops a similar idea: causation in the physical world is understandable only by admitting that matter has psychic characters. Nevertheless, unlike Bergson, James does not make a radical distinction between the inert and the living. This leads him to make a link between matter and consciousness. (shrink)

In Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, Richard Posner wrestles with the ghost of John Dewey for the mantle of pragmatist jurisprudence. Most commentators have seen this work as pitting Posner against Dewey in a contest of pragmatisms, the stakes for which are no less than their respective legacies for legal and democratic theory. Some have sided with Posner and others with Dewey. I contend that the commentators have misidentified the target of Posner’s critique. Posner had another legal theorist in mind and (...) he was disingenuous in naming Dewey. A careful reconstruction of Posner’s argument shows that Dewey’s pragmatism provides a genuine middle way between Posner’s position and that of his intended rival. (shrink)

While classical pragmatism quickly became identified with the theory of truth that dominated critical discussions of it, both of its founders, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, understood pragmatism essentially as a method. The article compares Peirce’s conceptions of pragmatism with James’s view that the pragmatic method would allow us to resolve many disputes in philosophy, and argues that their differences undermine any purely ‘Peircian’ reading of James’s Pragmatic Maxim. It then examines the advantages and drawbacks of three other readings (...) of James’s maxim: the “activist” reading, the “subjectivist” reading, and the “practical” reading. (shrink)

When William James published Pragmatism, he gave it a subtitle: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. In this article, I argue that pragmatism is an epistemological method for articulating success in, and between, a plurality of practices, and that this articulation helped James develop radical empiricism. I contend that this pluralistic philosophical methodology is evident in James’s approach to philosophy of religion, and that this method is also exemplified in the work of one of James’s most famous (...) students, W.E.B. Du Bois, specifically in the closing chapter of The Souls of Black Folk, “Of the Sorrow Songs.” I argue that “Sorrow Songs” can be read as an epistemological text, and that once one identifies the epistemic standards of pragmatism and radical empiricism in the text, it’s possible to identify an implicit case for moderate fideism in “Sorrow Songs.” I contend that this case illuminates the pluralistic philosophical methodology James worked throughout his career to develop, and that the James-Du Bois approach to philosophy may even help locate the epistemic value of other religious practices, beyond the singing of hymns, and identify terrain mainstream philosophy has long neglected. (shrink)

Twelve years after his famous Essay on Some Problems Concerning the Normal and the Pathological (1943), the philosopher Georges Canguilhem (1904–1995) published a book-length study on the history of a single biological concept. Within France, his Formation of the Reflex Concept in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1955) contributed significantly to defining the “French style” of writing on the history of science. Outside of France, the book passed largely unnoticed. This paper re-reads Canguilhem’s study of the reflex concept with respect (...) to its historiographical and epistemological implications. Canguilhem defines concepts as complex and dynamic entities combining terms, definitions, and phenomena. As a consequence, the historiography of science becomes a rather complex task. It has to take into account textual and contextual aspects that develop independently of individual authors. In addition, Canguilhem stresses the connection between conceptual activities and other functions of organic individuals in their respective environments. As a result, biological concepts become tied to a biology of conceptual thinking, analogical reasoning, and technological practice. The paper argues that this seemingly circular structure is a major feature in Canguilhem’s philosophical approach to the history of the biological sciences. (shrink)

The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. Their shared notion of (...) “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary hilosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

Do the same epistemic standards govern scientific and religious belief? Or should science and religion operate in completely independent epistemic spheres? Commentators have recently been divided on William James’s answer to this question. One side depicts “The Will to Believe” as offering a separate-spheres defense of religious belief in the manner of Galileo. The other contends that “The Will to Believe” seeks to loosen the usual epistemic standards so that religious and scientific beliefs can both be justified by a unitary (...) set of evidentiary rules. I argue that James did build a unitary epistemology but not by loosening cognitive standards. In his psychological research, he had adopted the Comtian view that hypotheses and regulative assumptions play a crucial role in the context of discovery even though they must be provisionally adopted before they can be supported by evidence. “The Will to Believe” relies on this methodological point to achieve a therapeutic goal—to convince despairing Victorians that religious faith can be reconciled with a scientific epistemology. James argues that the prospective theist is in the same epistemic situation with respect to the “religious hypothesis” as the scientist working in the context of discovery. (shrink)

In this contribution, I comment on Raffaella Campaner’s defense of explanatory pluralism in psychiatry (in this volume). In her paper, Campaner focuses primarily on explanatory pluralism in contrast to explanatory reductionism. Furthermore, she distinguishes between pluralists who consider pluralism to be a temporary state on the one hand and pluralists who consider it to be a persisting state on the other hand. I suggest that it would be helpful to distinguish more than those two versions of pluralism – different understandings (...) of explanatory pluralism both within philosophy of science and psychiatry – namely moderate/temporary pluralism, anything goes pluralism, isolationist pluralism, integrative pluralism and interactive pluralism. Next, I discuss the pros and cons of these different understandings of explanatory pluralism. Finally, I raise the question of how to implement or operationalize explanatory pluralism in scientific practice; how to structure the “genuine dialogue” or shape “the pluralistic attitude” Campaner is referring to. As tentative answers, I explore a question-based framework for explanatory pluralism as well as social-epistemological procedures for interaction among competing approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Incoherence arguments are intended to demonstrate that some philosophical position should be rejected because it is fatally flawed. I review the kinds of fatal flaws targeted in incoherence arguments, and argue that such arguments are not conclusive against the position they target, but merely pose challenges that require greater imagination. Furthermore, I claim that apparently incoherent positions have an instrumental value in expanding the intellectual resources of philosophy.

Pragmatism is often thought to be incompatible with realism, the view that there are knowable mind-independent facts, objects, or properties. In this article, I show that there are, in fact, realist versions of pragmatism and argue that a realist pragmatism of the right sort can make important contributions to such fields as religious ethics and philosophy of religion. Using William James's pragmatism as my primary example, I show (1) that James defended realist and pluralist views in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and (...) philosophy of religion, and (2) that these views not only cohere with his pragmatism but indeed are basic to it. After arguing that James's pragmatism provides a credible and useful approach to a number of basic philosophical and religious issues, I conclude by reflecting on some ways in which we can apply and potentially improve James's views in the study of religion. (shrink)

The disciplined investigation of consciousness is of three main types: eidetic, anthropological , and psychophysical. The first concerns the essence of consciousness in general and of its main modes. Its method involves introspection, empathy, and insight into necessities present in what these reveal. As the study of the essence of that which is the locus of all value it is of unique importance, and it is also essential as a foundation of the other inquiries. Such inquiry has been the main (...) task set for itself by phenomenology as a philosophical school, but engagement in it need not imply acceptance of distinctive doctrines of this school. English language?philosophy has developed in ways which discourage the eidetic investigation of consciousness, especially through insistence that modes of consciousness, conceived as a private possession, cannot be the referent of socially shared meanings. Its great mistake has been to expect ?consciousness? to refer to some elusive phenomenon to be looked for in the world and able to be studied as a distinctive reality only if conceptually isolable from what it reveals. Study of consciousness, however, is not primarily study of a phenomenon to be found within the world, but of the variety of ways in which the world can be present to us. (shrink)

The author examines the history of pragmatism and maintains that a thematic continuity runs through the classical pragmatists, neopragmatitsts and contemporary pragmatists. This continuity can be vaguely characterized as an integration of theory and practice, but experience gives theory its content such that action is always guiding the formation of knowledge. There are four implications of this continuity. Pragmatists are centrally concerned with the human relationship to a process-oriented and evolving conception of nature. For pragmatists, our beliefs are regarded not (...) as propositions that map onto a separate and fixed reality, but instead their truth emerges out of the habits beliefs generate. Pragmatism emphasizes an openness to possibility since our access to the world of experience is mediated by a variety of selective interests, intellectual histories, varying linguistic and discursive practices. Pragmatists are deeply concerned with the social and political problems that confront us on a daily basis. The author also examines the manner in which James understands the term “metaphysics” given that pragmatism is a method for settling “metaphysical disputes.” Jamesian existential pluralism implies to maximize all possibilities that can satisfy everyone as much as possible without impeding and harming another's capacity to experience a rich and novel world. The author analyzes Todd May’s approach to the analytic-continental divide and concludes that if settlement embraces James’s thick conception of experience, then the resulting ontological pluralism is the best settlement possible, and this commitment to pluralism requires dissolving the exclusionary practices the analytic-continental divide suggests philosophically. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to explain how the Heraclitean doctrine of universal flux must be rejected, while the notion of flux should and can be preserved. Against the reductionist account of subjectless change, a modern version of the Heraclitean doctrine advocated by revisionist metaphysics, I argue that (1) the idea of subjectless change is one that can and should be formulated in the established conceptual framework, and (2) subjectlessness is a feature that most aptly characterizes material changes. In (...) essence, I seek to provide a proper accommodation for the notion of flux in a conceptual framework that is traditionally understood (or rather misunderstood) as decidedly excluding it. (shrink)

Abstract: This article offers a perspective on the role of philosophy in relation to other academic disciplines and to society in general. Among the issues treated are the delimitation of philosophy, whether it is a science, its role in the community of knowledge disciplines, its losses of subject matter to other disciplines, how it is influenced by social changes and by progress in other disciplines, and its role in interdisciplinary work. It is concluded that philosophy has an important mission in (...) promoting clarity, precision, and open-mindedness in academic research and in society at large. (shrink)

One’s philosophical points of view, which form the bases for assumptions that we bring to management theory and practice matter, and matter deeply, to management thinking and corporate behavior. In this paper I outline three related threads of philosophical conversations and explain how they are important in management theory and practice: the “linguistic turn” in philosophy, deriving from the later writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein, a social constructionist perspective: a set of theories at least implicitly derived from the linguistic turn in (...) philosophy, and the notion of the impartial spectator. I then use these three theories to analyze the idea of the corporation, corporate cultures and corporate mission statements, stakeholder theories and their differences, and the limitations of the popular notion of “corporate social responsibility.” I conclude that how one frames these management ideas makes a difference, a difference in theory and in practice. (shrink)

Elsewhere I have tried to provide the justification of both the irreducible distinction of science and philosophy and their inevitable complementarity. Unlike empirical science, philosophy has no limit whatever as far as its possible objects are concerned. To say that there is no limit whatever to the possible objects of philosophy is to say that, strictly speaking, it has no object at all and must find its object outside itself, that is, in common sense knowledge and the natural and human (...) sciences. Against the background of this conception, the paper argues that philosophy of science, as a critical reflection on common sense knowledge and the natural or human sciences, inherits from philosophy in general this two-faced Janus nature, which in the philosophy of science shapes the epistemological status of the discipline in an even more prominent way. To show this in detail, the paper enunciates eleven theses that derive from the intimate connection of unity and distinction that exists between philosophy of science on the one hand and the particular and specialized scientific knowledge on the other. (shrink)

At the core of pragmatism is the idea of an active projection of experience into the future. William James’s contribution to pragmatism included an emphasis on emotions in the apprehension of possible futures and related processes. After presenting a summary of Jamesian pragmatism, and especially the significance of emotions in it, the article notes the reception of James’s writings in Europe and their influence on European intellectual developments. Max Weber, for instance, studied James closely. He treated James’s approach to religion (...) as a negative example. While Emile Durkheim rejected the individualist approach of James, he nevertheless found much of value in James’s conceptualization of religious experience, including its emotional underpinnings. Discussion below explores the neglected Jamesian quality of Durkheim’s account of religion. It is noted in conclusion that the more recent sociological neglect of James and the failure to appreciate his particular approach in pragmatism, coincided with the rise of Freudian psychology in the early decades of the twentieth century. (shrink)

Psychogenic depersonalization is an altered mental state consisting of an unusual discontinuity in the phenomenological perception of personal being; the individual is engulfed by feelings of unreality, self-detachment and unfamiliarity in which the self is felt to lack subjective perspective and the intuitive feeling of personal embodiment. A new sub-feature of depersonalization is delineated. 'Prosthesis' consists in the thought that the thinker is a 'mere thing'. It is a subjectively realized sense of the specific and objective 'thingness' of the particular (...) object thought about. I show that prosthesis is an important cognitive feature of depersonalization, and may be psychologically connected with the tendency of depersonalized individuals to report 'philosophical' types of thinking. Indeed, several philosophical issues concerning the identity of the self appear to have been enhanced by prosthesis experiences. Thus, far more efficient than William James's experimental attempts to uncover philosophical truths under the influence of nitrous oxide intoxication, prosthesis may be a safe and recommended experience for philosophers. The history of depersonalization theories is presented from Krishaber to Freud, and the main approaches to prosthesis criticized. Finally, a fresh approach to psychogenic depersonalization is outlined on the basis of certain cognitive similarities with visual agnosia. This paper may be understood as continuing the Jamesian tradition 'experimental abnormal psychology', that is, of examining extraordinary mental states with an eye to their philosophical implications. (shrink)

This paper argues that John McDowell’s conceptualism distorts a genuine phenomenological account of perception. Instead of the seemingly forced choice between conceptualism and non-conceptualism as to what accounts for perceptual and discursive meaning, I provide an argument that there is a preconceptual intelligibility already in the perceptual field. With the help of insights from certain nonconceptualists I sketch out an argument that there is a teleological directedness in the way in which latent order and structure can be discriminated at the (...) level of perceptual content. This content can then be brought to discursive, conceptual clarity by understanding in such a way that it is guided by the order already discovered in perception. With the help of Husserlian phenomenology of perception, I argue that the fundamental roots of epistemic normativity lie in the discriminating intelligence or mindedness operative below the level of the explicitly conceptual. By preconceptual is meant the directedness of explication of the structures present in the sensory manifold toward fully explicit conceptual judgments. (shrink)

¿Cómo pensar hoy la naturaleza y el valor de la reflexión filosófica? La influencia omnipresente del modelo del conocimiento experto parece exigir una autocomprensión de la filosofía como una disciplina entre las disciplinas. Este artículo propone que la filosofía debe resistirse a esta tentación. Defenderé, por tanto, una especie de "excepcionalismo" para la filosofía basado en la idea de que no puede pretender ser una disciplina. Sea o no cierto que hoy en día las actividades filosóficas estén legitimadas institucionalmente por (...) los principios de un Canon, voy a sugerir una estrategia de transgresión del Canon al rechazar cualquier asimilación de la filosofía a una disciplina, aunque fuera "anómala". La filosofía debe contribuir a la comprensión de nuestros diversos modos de conceptualizar y de transformar el mundo y dar sentido a la experiencia humana. La filosofía debe reclamar para sí una "estado de excepción" y abrir un espacio para cuestionar todo aquello que parece obvio e incuestionable. How to think today about the nature and value of the philosophical reflection? The pervasive influence of the model of expert knowledge seems to require a selfunderstanding of philosophy as a discipline among the disciplines. This paper argues that philosophy should resist this move. So I will defend a kind of "exceptionalism" for philosophy based on the idea that philosophy cannot pretend to be a discipline. Be true or not that philosophical activities are nowadays institutionally legitimized by the principles of a Canon, I will suggest a strategy of transgression of the Canon by rejecting any assimilation of philosophy to a discipline, even if an "anomalous" one. Philosophy must contribute to the understanding of our different ways of conceptualizing and transforming the world and to make sense of human experience. The thesis of this paper is that philosophy must claim a "state of emergency" for itself a open a space for freely questioning what it appears as obvious and unchallengeable. (shrink)

One of the principal objections to a tensed or dynamic theory of time is the ancient puzzle about the extent of the present. Three alternative conceptions of the extent of the present are considered: an instantaneous present, an atomic present, and a non-metrical present. The first conception is difficult to reconcile with the objectivity of temporal becoming posited by a dynamic theory of time. The second conception solves that problem, but only at the expense of making change discontinuous. The third (...) conception is the most plausible: that "the present" is a non-metrical notion which must be completed by the mention of some event or interval in order to have a measure, in which case what is present varies with one's context. (shrink)

From the standpoint of an intercultural communication trainer in an exploration mode, the author starts by analyzing and evaluating two Third Culture models in order to sort out their contributions to practically improving intercultural communicative performance with the stranger. In his exploration he strives to move from competence to performance by shifting the focus of the abstract potential of competence to the body as an experiencing organism and its environment, the point in a situation where performance takes place. Along his (...) path he also discovers interfaces with related discussions. All of these interfaces together the author found are internally commensurable with each other. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to discuss the philosophical premises of Whitehead's definition of time in _The Concept of Nature and other works of the same period. Whitehead probably introduced this definition, which depends on what he calls the "method of extensive abstraction," in 1913, just after the publication of the _Principia Mathematica with Russell. He only published his results in 1919. However, Russell takes up the method, with slight modifications, after personal communication with Whitehead, as soon as 1914, (...) in _Our Knowledge of the External World. It is also carefully studied by G. Mead, in particular in _Philosophy of the Present, and by Merleau-Ponty, in his lectures at the Collège de France. (edited). (shrink)

Elaboramos aquí una nueva interpretación propuesta recientemente de la teoría cuántica, según la cual las partículas cuánticas son consideradas como entidades conceptuales que median entre los pedazos de materia ordinaria los cuales son considerados como estructuras de memoria para ellos. Nuestro objetivo es identificar qué es lo equivalente para el ámbito cognitivo humano de lo que el espacio-tiempo físico es para el ámbito de las partículas cuánticas y de la materia ordinaria. Para ello, se identifica la noción de "historia" como (...) el equivalente en la esfera cognitiva humana de lo que la materia ordinaria es en el ámbito físico cuántico. Analizamos también el papel desempeñado por los conectivos lógicos de disyunción y de conjunción con respecto a la noción de localidad. De manera similar a lo que hemos hecho en investigaciones anteriores referidas a esa nueva interpretación de la teoría cuántica, se utiliza el entorno cognitivo específico de la Internet para dilucidar las comparaciones que hacemos entre el ámbito cognitivo humano y el ámbito físico cuántico. We elaborate the new interpretation of quantum theory that we recently proposed, according to which quantum particles are considered conceptual entities mediating between pieces of ordinary matter which are considered to act as memory structures for them. Our aim is to identify what is the equivalent for the human cognitive realm of what physical space-time is for the realm of quantum particles and ordinary matter. For this purpose, we identify the notion of 'story' as the equivalent within the human cognitive realm of what ordinary matter is in the physical quantum realm, and analyze the role played by the logical connectives of disjunction and conjunction with respect to the notion of locality. Similarly to what we have done in earlier investigations on this new interpretation of quantum theory, we use the specific cognitive environment of the Internet to elucidate the comparisons we make between the human cognitive realm and the physical quantum realm. (shrink)