NOT SAUSSURE: A CRITIQUE OF POST?SAUSSUREAN LITERARY THEORY by Raymond Tallis London: Macmillan, 1988. 273 pp., £33 (£10.95 paper).

The Physical Intentionality Thesis claims that dispositions share the marks of psychological intentionality; therefore, intentionality is not exclusively a mental phenomenon. Beyond the standard five marks, Alexander Bird introduces two additional marks of intentionality that he argues dispositions do not satisfy: first, thoughts are extrinsic; second, the direction of causation is that objects cause thoughts, not vice versa. In response, this paper identifies two relevant conceptions of extrinsicness, arguing that dispositions show deep parallels to thoughts on both conceptions. Then, it (...) shows that Bird’s discussion of direction of causation overlooks complexities of dispositionality and intentionality that problematize apparent differences between thoughts and dispositions. The paper ends with a discussion of why we find these parallels between thoughts and dispositions. (shrink)

Este artigo apresenta a proposta de abordar o problema da lacuna explicativa na filosofia da mente. De modo alternativo às abordagens tradicionais, analiso o significado da lacuna explicativa segundo o pragmatismo de James em consonância com a perspectiva da filosofia da linguagem comum de Ryle, Austin e Wittgenstein. Como estratégia de desenvolvimento da proposta do artigo, procuro mostrar que a lacuna explicativa resulta de uma má compreensão dos usos dos termos psicológicos. O resultado é uma obsessiva insistência em entificar o (...) significado de ‘mente’ e a crença de que alguns termos psicológicos significam um tipo de entidade existindo além dos nossos usos dos termos psicológicos. Tal crença assume a forma de uma compreensão da visão fundacionalista do mental. O que procuro mostrar finalmente, e também em consonância com as recentes perspectivas enativistas, é que o significado dos termos psicológicos nada tem a ver com a existência de entidades. A crença em tais entidades, como condição de significação dos termos psicológicos, revela um mito filosófico derivado da aceitação da lacuna explicativa. A proposta do artigo é a desmitificação filosófica da lacuna explicativa. (shrink)

This article presents an alternative vision of the debate on the Cartesian dualism of mind and body. It is argued that the Cartesian dualism of substances does not serve to explain the human condition, which is notably marked by the compound mind and body. In this way I will try to show that the passions or emotions responsible for our mental states are derived from the interaction between the mind and the body, and can in no way be reduced to (...) the mind or body taken separately. They are properties that emerge, in the heterodox sense of the term emergence, from the relation of the mind to the body. (shrink)

This paper makes three points. First, empathy cannot be considered an epistemic basis for qualitative research and evaluation. Second, it is, however, a valuable method for understanding the private meanings of words and deeds. Third, this method is not completely reliable for purposes of what Popper called refutation, but is useful in what he dubbed scientific conjecture or the generation of theory. Basic researchers will need to take the necessary steps to subject empathetic hunches to critical examination. However, owing to (...) the exigencies of action settings and decision-making, disciplined conjectures are sometimes the most that evaluators can hope to record. (shrink)

Philosophers of science have by and large neglected technology. In this book, I have tried to do something about this lacuna by analyzing a few aspects of technical artifacts from a philosophical angle. The project was part of the research program "The Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts" based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Technical artifacts are both plain physical objects and objects that have been purposefully made for a purpose; which is to say they have a physical (...) structure and a technical function. As a result, they belong equally in a purely physical conceptualisation of the world "in which human intentions and goals seem to have no place" and in an intentional conceptualisation, which is used to describe and understand people and their mental lives. My main goal was to find out how these two philosophically very different aspects of artifacts are related to one another. To achieve this goal, I looked at two contexts in which these aspects are regularly brought together in a systematic fashion. First, the context of design; design can be characterized as a transition from a desired function or goal to a physical structure. In particular, I have studied and analyzed the role of functional decomposition in design processes. The second context is the explanation of how artifacts are able to fulfill their technical function in virtue of their specific physical structure. The result of this part of the project is a general account of such explanations. (shrink)

I believe that there are only a select few topics, which arouse a similar level of interest and curiosity among academics and laymen alike, as does the study of mind and brain. Although mind and brain have been capturing the attention of philosophers for centuries, it is the "scientific investigation" of age old philosophical queries by socalled cognitive scientists, which is distinctive of the developments of the last few decades and which, in times to come, may well be considered the (...) hallmark of the study of mind in the 20th and early 21st centuries. In the past, advances in the natural sciences underlay or boosted a plethora of developments in the technological, economic and political spheres that not only improved the standard of living and prolonged the average life span for a vast number of people, but also fuelled hopes that a new and improved understanding of the nature of man was also within reach. Despite all the benefits mankind derived from scientific and technological progress past and present, the success of the natural sciences also helped spread and foster a virulent and nowadays quasi-ubiquitous and unquestioned believe in the omnipotence of science and technology. In the context of the study of mind, in particular, it fostered the widespread conception that in order for an investigation leading to insight and understanding a "scientific" approach is a sine qua non. This thesis highlights the danger of such an approach. By investigating the framework of explanation adopted by cognitive scientists, the cognitive view, and by examining its inherent conceptions of mind and thought, it will be shown that the scientific, or rather scientistic, approach inherent in the views depicted above is highly questionable, and in the case of the study of mind and brain, does not further insight and understanding, but rather prevents it. In the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein has been one of the few philosophers who recognized the fallaciousness of these ideas and who opposed the inherent scientism. His later philosophy, which provides the philosophical mise en scène for the following investigations, provides a much-needed antidote against the misconceptions common among cognitive scientists today. Although, many of the shortcomings of the ideas and views of cognitive scientists have, with a certain regularity, been discussed by philosophers working in the tradition of the later Wittgenstein their criticisms, more often than not, fell on deaf ears. I believe that one of the main reasons underlying the imperviousness of the community of cognitive scientists to the criticism of the kind of analytic philosophy inspired by the later Wittgenstein, is that it mainly focused on select misconceptions inherent in the cognitive view, but regularly failed to point out their place in the overall framework of thought for cognitive scientists. As a result, it was easy to dismiss these criticisms with excuses of the sort "but that does not bear any direct relevance to the work I do...". For this reason, this thesis aimed to portray and examine the cognitive view in its entirety, i.e. to depict the intricate interconnections existing between the premises that provide the foundation of the cognitive view, and to point out their disastrous consequences for our understanding not only of a select view aspects of mental phenomena, but to our understanding of the mind in its entirety. In order to provide such a "big picture", and to describe the numerous often very subtle interconnections between the various ideas making up the cognitive view in all their breadth and depth, a lot of well-trodden ground had to be revisited and reviewed. Thus, Anthony Kenny's and Peter Hackers' discussions of the mereological fallacy will provide the "base camp" from which we will visit less familiar aspects of the cognitive view via novel routes on our way to the peak of this "philosophical mountain". Where required, my indebtedness to the works of these philosophers will be highlighted throughout the text. (shrink)

Resumen En la historia de la filosofía, la oposición entre episteme y téchne ha sido convencional. Ya sea que se interprete a Platón o Aristóteles, o se revisen las invenciones de Arquímedes, Ctesibio, Filón de Bizancio o Herón de Alejandría, hay una marginalidad temática de la téchne frente a la jerarquía epistémica de un pensamiento puro (logis-mós). En este artículo se propone una interpretación diferente, de carácter arqueológico y genealógico, según la cual se podría postular una episteme en la téchne (...) y una téchne en la episteme. La indagación inicia con una lectura de fuentes, recurriendo a la etimología como téchne hermenéutica (o método hermenéutico). Como fuente primaria principal se utilizan los Tratados hipocráticos.In the history of philosophy, the opposition between episteme and téchne has been conventional. Whether Plato or Aristotle is interpreted, or whether Archimedes, Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium or Heron of Alexandria are revised, there is a margi-nalization of the téchne as compared to the epistemic hierarchy of pure thought (logismós). I propose a different interpretation of an archaeological and genealogical nature, according to which an episteme in the téchne and a téchne in the episteme could be postulated. The inquiry begins with a reading of sources making use of ety-mology as a hermeneutic téchne (or hermeneutic method). The Hippocratic treatises have been used as the principal primary source. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I reconcile our knowledge of our own minds with philosophical naturalism. Philosophers traditionally hold that our knowledge of our own minds is especially direct and authoritative in comparison with other domains of knowledge. I introduce the subject in the first chapter. In the second and third chapters, I address the idea that we know our own minds directly. If self-knowledge is direct, it must not be grounded on anything more epistemically basic. This creates a puzzle for all (...) epistemologists. For the naturalist, the puzzle is especially tricky. To say that self-knowledge has no epistemic ground threatens the naturalist's ability to understand it as psychologically real. I argue that the idea that self-knowledge is direct is not well motivated and that models of direct self-knowledge have fundamental problems. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine first-person authority. I distinguish between epistemic authority, or being in a better position than others to know, and non-epistemic authority, or being immune to challenge according to some conventional norm. I argue that we have only limited epistemic authority over our own minds. I then consider whether there may be an interesting non-epistemic authority attached to the first-person perspective. This would locate first-person authority in connection with our responsibility for our own minds. I argue that this sort of authority may exist, but is unlikely to threaten naturalism without further anti-naturalist commitments in the philosophy of mind. In the final two chapters, I explore the possibility that the underlying disagreements between naturalists and anti-naturalists are about the nature of belief. I consider what failures of self-knowledge might demonstrate about the nature of belief. I show how, with the proper understanding of belief, a theory of self-knowledge can assuage some of these worries. Having adopted a conception of belief that makes sense for philosophy and empirical psychology, I outline a positive theory of self-knowledge and suggest directions for future research. (shrink)

This essay presents an analysis in the area of the theory of human action. Philosophers and pschologists are interested in theories of action because action defines those behaviors that are under our control as opposed to behaviors that in some sense just happen. In its wider context, a theory of action has implications for legal reasoning or moral reasoning. Throughout the history of this topic, one of the leading theories of action has been the volitional theory. Volition, in its simplest (...) sense, refers to an act of will. In this essay, I evaluate the work of Carl Ginet, who is one of the leading modern advocates of the Volitional theory of action. I argue below that Ginet's sophisticated volitional theory of action suffers from certain internal problems that result from Ginet's project of removing causal relations from his account of action. Ultimately, I argue that when he does this, Ginet reduces the theoretical resources for explaning how volition is connected to both overt behavior and to the agent. Furthermore, I belive that elucidating such problems is valuable just because this process reveals why we should focus our efforts upon a leading alternative to the volitional theory, namely the belief/desire theory of action. In the way, my analysis of Ginet reveals the strengths of an externalist rather than an internalist approach to the problem of action. (shrink)

My objective in this article is to question whether the problem of free will can, within our current conceptual system, be framed coherently. It is already widely recognized that a mental faculty, the will, needed to initiate action, no longer fits with current thought. However, we can still ask whether human decisions and actions are determined by something other than the agent. So the important question is whether we still have a cogent concept of determinism. The two prevalent alternatives are (...) a closed set of deterministic laws of nature, and a simple distillation of the principle of sufficient reason: all events must have a cause. I first provide examples showing that philosophical concepts come and go as categorial frameworks change. The modern concept of deterministic laws of nature was developed during the latter half of the modern period and is now being called seriously into question. G. W. Leibniz’s principle of sufficient reason could only be justified in theological terms, which most contemporary Western scholars reject. I end with an inadequate account of a dawning worldview based on complex adaptive systems theory, in which most human actions are best described in terms of non-necessitating propensities. (shrink)

The guiding question for this essay is: who is the learner? The aim is to examine and criticize one answer to this question, sometimes referred to as the theory of the learning brain, which suggests that the explanation of human learning can be reduced to the transmitting and storing of information in the brain’s formal and representational architecture, i.e., that the brain is the learner. This essay will argue that this answer is misleading, because it cannot account for the way (...) people strive to learn in an attempt to lead a good life as it misrepresents the intentional life of the mind, which results in its counting ourselves out of the picture when it attempts to provide a scientific theory of the learning process. To criticize the theory of the learning brain, this essay will investigate its philosophical foundation, a theory of mind called cognitivism, which is the basis for the cognitive sciences. Cognitivism is itself built on three main tenets: mentalism, the mind-brain identity theory and the computer analogy. Each of these tenets will be criticized in turn, before the essay turns to criticize the theory of the learning brain itself. The focus of this essay is, in other words, mainly negative. The hope is that this criticism will lay the groundwork for an alternative view of mind, one that is better equipped to give meaningful answers to the important questions we have about what it means to learn, i.e., what we learn, how we do it and why. This alternative will emphasize the holistic and intentional character of the human mind, and consider the learning process as an intentional activity performed, not by isolated brains, but by people with minds that are extended, embodied, enacted and embedded in a sociocultural and physical context. (shrink)

_Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics_ offers a new paradigm approach which advocates reengaging the importance of metaphysics in psychoanalytic theorizing. The emergence of the relational trend has witnessed a revitalizing influx of new ideas, reflecting a fundamental commitment to the principle of dialogue. However, the transition towards a more pluralistic discourse remains a work in progress, and those schools of thought not directly associated with the relational shift continue to play only a marginal role. In this book, Robin S. (...) Brown argues that for contemporary psychoanalysis to more adequately reflect a clinical ethos of pluralism, the field must examine the extent to which a theoretical commitment to the notion of relationship can grow restrictive. Suggesting that in the very effort to negotiate theoretical biases, psychoanalytic practice may occlude a more adequate recognition of its own evolving assumptions, Brown proposes that the profession’s advance requires a return to first principles. Arguing for the fundamental role played by faith in supporting the emergence of consciousness, this work situates itself at the crossroads of relational, Jungian, and transpersonal approaches to the psyche. Psychoanalysis Beyond the End of Metaphysics will be of significant interest to all psychodynamically oriented clinicians, alongside scholars of depth psychology and the philosophy of mind. It will also be helpful to advanced and postgraduate students of psychoanalysis seeking to orient themselves in the field at present. (shrink)

Die Kulturwissenschaften besitzen ein Interesse an einer positiven inkompatibilistischen Antwort auf die Frage nach der Freiheit des Willens. Wäre es nicht möglich, einen gehaltvollen inkompatibilistischen Begriff von Willensfreiheit zu entwickeln, besäßen die Kulturwissenschaften einen gegenüber den Naturwissenschaften defizienten Status in dem Sinne, dass ihre hermeneutische Vorgehensweise nur provisorischen Wert hat, solange bis eine verlaufsgesetzliche Erklärung des je betreffenden menschlichen Verhaltens etabliert ist. Im Beitrag wird zunächst der Begriff der Willensfreiheit diskutiert. Im Anschluss daran wird zum einen der deterministische Versuch widerlegt, (...) die Existenz einer (inkompatibilistisch bestimmten) Freiheit des Willens zu negieren und zum anderen aber auch die übichen antideterministischen Verteidigungsversuche als unzureichend ausgewiesen. Im letzten Abschnitt wird die Willensfreiheit als die Fähigkeit verstanden, sein Handeln an (als gut bzw. besser erkannten) Gründen ausrichten zu können. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the philosophy of human knowledge from a multitude of perspectives, with a particular emphasis upon the justification component of the classical analysis of knowledge and with an excursion along the way to explore the role of knowledge in Texas Hold ‘Em poker. An important theme of the collection is the role of knowledge in religion, including a detailed argument for agnosticism. A number of the essays touch upon issues in philosophical logic, among them a fascinating (...) new counter-example to Modus Ponens. The collection is rounded out with essays on causality and the philosophy of mind. The author’s perspective on the philosophy of human knowledge is fresh and challenging, as evidenced by essays entitled “On Epistemic Preferability;” “On Being Unjustified;” “The Logic of ‘Unless’” and “Is ‘This sentence is true.’ True?” An interesting feature of The Logic of Philosophy: Pesky Essays is the inclusion of responses to several of its key essays, contributed by such prominent contemporary philosophers as Roderick Chisholm, Ted Sider and Tomas Kapitan. (shrink)

Ovaj rad istražuje mogućnost davanja kompatibilističkog argumenta iz aspekta umjetne inteligencije. Ključna pretpostavka našeg rada jest da je umjetna inteligencija načelno moguća i da se realizira na računalnim arhitekturama u bitnome nalik današnjim. Uz taj je uvjet moguće dati definiciju slobode koja je pomirljiva s determiniranim izračunom, uz pomoć načelne nedokučivosti inteligentnog procesa. Ovo se temeljem funkcionalizma može translatirati u filozofiju uma. Pitanje je li moguće naš argument adaptirati za drugačije teorije filozofije uma ostavljamo otvorenim.

This thesis consists of two essays and an introduction. The main theme is technological knowledge that is not based on the natural sciences.The first essay is about rules of thumb, which are simple instructions, used to guide actions toward a specific result, without need of advanced knowledge. Knowing adequate rules of thumb is a common form of technological knowledge. It differs both from science-based and intuitive technological knowledge, although it may have its origin in experience, scientific knowledge, trial and error, (...) or a combination thereof. One of the major advantages of rules of thumb is the ease with which they can be learned. One of their major disadvantages is that they cannot easily be adjusted to new situations or conditions. Engineers commonly use rules, theories and models that lack scientific justification. How to include these in introductory technology education is the theme of the second essay. Examples include rules of thumb based on experience, but also models based on obsolete science or folk theories. Centrifugal forces, heat and cold as substances, and sucking vacuum all belong to the latter group. These models contradict scientific knowledge, but are useful for prediction in limited contexts where they are used when found convenient. The role of this kind of models in technology education is the theme of the second essay. Engineers’ work is a common prototype for pupils’ work with product development and systematic problem solving during technology lessons. Therefore pupils should be allowed to use the engineers’ non-scientific models when doing design work in school technology. The acceptance of these could be experienced as contradictory by the pupils: a model that is allowed, or even encouraged in technology class is considered wrong when doing science. To account for this, different epistemological frameworks must be used in science and technology education. Technology is first and foremost about usefulness, not about the truth or even generally applicable laws. This could cause pedagogical problems, but also provide useful examples to explain the limitations of models, the relation between model and reality, and the differences between science and technology. (shrink)

In this paper, I use the comparison between human beings and intelligent machines to shed light on the concept of teleology. What characterizes human beings and distinguishes them from a robot capable of achieving complex objectives? In the first place, by stipulating that what characterizes human beings are mental states, I consider the mark of the mental. A smart robot probably has no consciousness but we might have reason for doubt while interacting with it. And a smart robot shows intentionality. (...) I focus on the type of naturalized intentionality that is at stake here. Then I go back to the traditional idea of teleology, and to the scientific criticism of it, through the question of the kind of purposes that artificial intelligence (AI) may set itself. Husserl's basic idea of teleology therefore serves to have an authoritative term of comparison and to introduce the intuitive difference between human beings and intelligent machines based on the homo pictor thought experiment proposed by Jonas. My conclusion is that a specific finalism, understood in a non-criterial sense, is what qualifies the human being and differentiates the latter (for now) from smart robots. (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to defend the deductive-nomological model of explanation against a number of criticisms that have been made of it. It has traditionally been thought that scientific explanations were causal and that scientific explanations involved deduction from laws. In recent years, however, this three-fold identity has been challenged: there are, it is argued, causal explanations that are not scientific, scientific explanations that are not deductive, deductions from laws that are neither causal explanations nor scientific explanations, and (...) causal explanations that involve no deductions from laws. The aim of the present essay is to defend the traditional identities, and to show that the more recent attempts at invalidating them fail in their object. More specifically, this essay argues that a Humean version of the deductive-nomological model of explanation can be defended as the correct account of scientific explanation of individual facts and processes, and as the correct account of causal explanations of individual facts and processes. The deductive-nomological model holds that to explain an event E, say that a is G, one must find some initial conditions C, say that a is F, and a law or theory T such that T and C jointly entail E, and both are essential to the deduction. (shrink)

O modelo causal de introspecção tem recebido muitas críticas e, de fato, nos últimos anos, tem caído em desuso no mundo filosófico. Neste artigo defendo o modelo e sustento que ele é um excelente candidato, dado um compromisso realista para com o mental, para explicar o nosso acesso introspectivo peculiar, mas contingente, às crenças.

The central fact in the delineation of radical behaviorism is its conceptual avoidance of propositional content. This eschewal of the intentional stance sets it apart not only from cognitivism but from other non-behaviorisms. Indeed, the defining characteristic of radical behaviorism is not that it avoids mediating processes per se but that it sets out to account for behavior without recourse to propositional attitudes. Based, rather, on the contextual stance, it provides definitions of contingency-shaped, rule-governed verbal and private behaviors which are (...) non-intentional. However, while the account provided by radical behaviorism fulfills the pragmatic criteria of prediction and control of its subject matter, it has problems of explanation that stem from the failure of radical behaviorist interpretation to address the personal level of analysis, to provide for the continuity of behavior, and to show how its accounts can be delimited in the face of causal equifinality. This leaves gaps in its explanation that radical behaviorists choose either to ignore or to fill with the very intentional locutions that they formally abhor but which I argue are essential. As a result, many psychologists who style themselves radical behaviorists have already moved beyond radical behaviorism as a philosophy of science. They have done so primarily as a result of adopting the language of intentional psychology in order to explain behavior; where they have not done this, they have resorted to the unscientific assumption that somewhere there is a learning history that explains their data. While it is indeed the case that a learning history precedes all operant behavior, the explanatory gap that is revealed by the search for this unobtainable information reveals the inescapability of intentionality. Hence, psychologists, including radical behaviorists, are right to employ it. The challenge is to understand why this is so and to celebrate rather than denigrate the resulting extension of behavioral science. In this response, I first raise and seek to answer two questions: what is radical behaviorism, and what is intentional explanation? I go on to discuss the incompleteness of radical behaviorism. There follows a summary of the argument with respect to intentional behaviorism and super-personal cognitive psychology. And, finally, I bring the discussion back to Daniel Dennett, the philosopher who initiated so much of it. (shrink)

The question of how a physical system gives rise to the phenomenal or experiential (olfactory, visual, somatosensitive, gestatory and auditory), is considered the most intractable of scientific and philosophical puzzles. Though this question has dominated the philosophy of mind over the last quarter century, it articulates a version of the age-old mind-body problem. The most famous response, Cartesian dualism, is on Daniel Dennett’s view still a corrosively residual and redundant feature of popular (and academic) thinking on these matters. Fifteen years (...) on from his anti-Cartesian theory of consciousness (Consciousness Explained, 1991), Dennett’s frustration with this tradition is still palpable. This frustration is primarily aimed at philosophers. (shrink)

The essays presented in this collection were written over a long period. The first two : "On the Classification of Verbs and Actions" and "On von Wright's Theory of Action" constitute steps in my preparation for the book Events, Actions, and Ordinary Language, Lund 1977. Much of the contents of the former paper was carried over to the book, whereas the analyses in the latter paper were more or less completely left out. These papers have not been published before. "On (...) Various Forms of Interaction" is a development of soroe ideas in Events, Actions, and Ordinary Language. This paper was previously published in Swedish in Henschen-Dahlqvist A-M ed. Filosofiska smulor, Festskrift tillägnad Kon rad Marc- Wogau på hans 75-årsdag, Uppsala 1977. "Action- Explanations Reconsidered" was wri t ten in 1981 and has not been previously published. It is a short presentation of a basic idea in my dissertation Explanation of Human Actions, Uppsala 1974, as well as a commentary on sorne criticisrns that could be directed against it. "On Not Being Able To Act", finally, is a slightly modified version of a paper previously published in Pauli T. ed, Philosophical essays dedicated to Lennart Åqvist on his fiftieth birthday, Uppsala 1982. The analysis sketched in this paper has been more fully developed in my Disabilities and Their Classification, Linköping 1983. (shrink)

The Epiphenomenal Mind is both a deflationary attack on the powers of the human mind and a defence of human subjectivity. It is deflationary because in the thesis I argue that consciousness is an epiphenomenal consequence of events in the brain. It is a defence of human subjectivity because I argue that the mind is sui generis real, irreducible, and largely an endogenous product (i.e. not dependent on society or its resources). Part I is devoted to arguing that the conscious (...) mind is epiphenomenal. Arguing from, the irreducibility of mental states, the causal closure of the physical domain, and the principle of causal explanatory exclusion, I seek to demonstrate that all theories of mental causation necessarily violate one or more of these premises. Contemporary approaches to mental causation come under two broad categories, those that argue that mental events are supervenient on physical events (such as Davidson, Kim and Horgan) and those (like Haskar) who argue that the mind is an emergent property of the brain. Supervenience based theories, I argue, end up reducing mental states in their search for a theory of mental causation and emergence based theories end up violating the principle of the causal closure of the physical. In part II, I explore some of the consequences of epiphenomenalism for social theory. This exploration comes in the context of a defence of human subjectivity against (i.) those sociological imperialists who view the mind and self as a 'gift of society', and (ii.) social situationalists who have abandoned the concept of action and an interest in 'what's in the head' of the actor, in favour of a concept of social action which views behaviour as action only to the extent that it is socially meaningful. The conclusion is that the social sciences should return to an interpretative style (Weberian) methodology. (shrink)

What becomes of our clearest theories of explanation, when faced with the unpalatable quantum phenomena that seem to undermine the direct conceptual connection between the fundamental material entities and the self-standing material objects of everyday parlance? The general explanatory theory advocates unification of explanatory concepts with everyday discourse, identification of essentially similar characteristics between direct experience and the hypothesised explanatory ontology, and a conceptualisation of phenomena in terms of objects enduring causally regulated change. On the other hand quantum theory feeds (...) antirealist suspicions about the worth of realist explanatory endeavour with examples of phenomena in which the structure of material separation and individuation based on spatial extension is insufficient for construction of deeper explanatory narratives. An example from history of science, that of Newton’s law-constitutive definition of objects in response to D escartes problem of bodies is used to suggest a possible strategy for explanations unifying the quantum and common-sense conceptual domains, provided the anti-realist challenge to such enterprise is read as questioning the epistemological justification of interpretation of experience in both cases.Što se događa s najjasnijim dostupnim teorijama objašnjenja kada se suoče s problematičnim kvantnim pojavama koje naizgled potkopavaju neposrednu konceptualnu poveznicu između fundamentalnih materijalnih entiteta i samoopstojnih materijalnih predmeta iz svakodnevnog govora? Opća teorija objašnjenja preporuča objedinjenje teoretskih eksplanatornih pojmova sa svakodnevnim govorom, određenje esencijalno sličnih karakteristika između neposrednog iskustva i hipotetske eksplanatorne ontologije te konceptualizaciju pojava kroz predmete koji istraju kroz uzročno regulirane promjene. S druge strane, kvantna teorija potkrjepljuje antirealistične sumnje o valjanosti eksplanatornog nastojanja realizma primjerima pojava u kojima je struktura materijalne razdvojenosti i individuacije temeljene na prostornoj protežnosti nedovoljna za izgradnju dubljih eksplanatornih narativa. Primjerom iz povijesti znanosti, Newtonovom definicijom predmeta temeljenom na zakonima kao odgovorom na Descartesov problem materijalnih tijela, daje se moguća strategija izgradnje objašnjenja koja objedinjuju kvantne i “zdravorazumske” konceptualne domene, ukoliko se antirealistična kritika te izgradnje u oba slučaja shvati kao propitivanje epistemološkog opravdanja tumačenja iskustva. (shrink)

The "anthropology of moral life", or "moral anthropology", is an approach to moral philosophy which I take to have been initiated by Peter Strawson, and developed, independently and in different ways, by David Wiggins and Daniel Dennett. I take the respective moral anthropologies of Wiggins and Dennett to be complementary, and I propose to synthesize them within a Dennettian framework. The framework involves the definition of a "rationally acceptable language". Descriptions and accounts stated in that language are ontologically interpreted in (...) the light of Dennett's ontology, and the knowledge claims made in the language are assessed in the light of his epistemology, which I take to include a "thesis of anthropocentricity". That thesis, also propounded by Wiggins, confers a vindicatory character to those philosophical accounts to which it is directly related. Thus, both Wiggins' and Dennett's respective moral anthropologies have a strong vindicatory character in regard to common moral life. Moral anthropology shows how the dispositional constitution of the human species "underdetermines" the standards of correctness by reference to which we morally assess conduct, sentiments and judgments, including judgments about what is "morally meaningful". Wiggins' moral anthropology proposes a largely Humean theory of human nature, as well as an insightful description of morality, and of the "unforsakeable" concerns, motives, purposes, needs, aspirations and expectations that are attached to it, and which as such vindicate it. Dennett's moral anthropology proposes an evolutionary theory of human nature, and relates it to a compatibilist account of moral responsibility, free will, and moral decision-making. Regarding the latter, Dennett emphasizes, given our predicament as limited but committed beings, the importance of deliberation-stopping maxims, which I take to play in his moral anthropology a role similar to that. (shrink)