O artigo investiga a concepçáo de reduçáo de Searle no que se refere à compatibilidade entre redutibilidade causal e simultânea irredutibilidade ontológica da consciência à atividade cerebral. A reduçáo causal da consciência – a explanabilidade causal de suas características por processos cerebrais e a identidade de suas capacidades causais (seçáo 2) – é incompatível com a irredutibilidade ontológica (seçáo 3), porque a diferença ontológica entre características subjetivas e objetivas torna a identidade das capacidades causais incompreensível (seçáo 4). O principal problema (...) é que a teoria de Searle afirma e nega simultaneamente a identidade entre consciência e processos cerebrais (seçáo 5). (shrink)

John Searle’s argument that social-scientific laws are impossible depends on a special open-ended feature of social kinds. We demonstrate that under a noncontentious understanding of bridging principles the so-called "counts-as" relation, found in the expression "X counts as Y in (context) C," provides a bridging principle for social kinds. If we are correct, not only are social-scientific laws possible, but the "counts as" relation might provide a more perspicuous formulation for candidate bridge principles.

This paper reclaims the idea that human society is a form of life, an idea once vibrant in the work of Toennies, Durkheim, Simmel, Le Bon, Kroeber, Freud, Bion, and Follett but moribund today. Despite current disparagements, this idea remains the only and best answer to our primary experience of society as vital feeling. The main obstacle to conceiving society as a life is linguistic; the logical form of life is incommensurate with the logical form of language. However, it is (...) possible to extend our conceptual reach by appealing to alternative symbolisms more congenial to living form such as, and especially, art. (shrink)

There is wide agreement that background infrastructure is unconsciously applied and is not formally representable, but views diverge as to whether this sort of skill should be considered knowledge in the proper sense. In this paper I attempt to show that background infrastructure is a type of skilled knowledge which serves as a precondition for the mind to be about things in the world. Contrary to the common understanding that background is primarily mechanical, the view presented here affirms that it (...) as a totality of knowing taken up by the body and converted into an implicit ‘know-how’. It appears as a mode of mind’s ‘enworldment’, as well as an organ of potentiality. (shrink)

Explores the science and creative process behind Poe’s cosmological treatise. Silver Winner for Philosophy, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards In 1848, almost a year and a half before Edgar Allan Poe died at the age of forty, his book Eureka was published. In it, he weaved together his scientific speculations about the universe with his own literary theory, theology, and philosophy of science. Although Poe himself considered it to be his magnum opus, Eureka has mostly been overlooked (...) or underappreciated, sometimes even to the point of being thought an elaborate hoax. Remarkably, however, in Eureka Poe anticipated at least nine major theories and developments in twentieth-century science, including the Big Bang theory, multiverse theory, and the solution to Olbers’ paradox. In this book—the first devoted specifically to Poe’s science side—David N. Stamos, a philosopher of science, combines scientific background with analysis of Poe’s life and work to highlight the creative and scientific achievements of this text. He examines Poe’s literary theory, theology, and intellectual development, and then compares Poe’s understanding of science with that of scientists and philosophers from his own time to the present. Next, Stamos pieces together and clarifies Poe’s theory of scientific imagination, which he then attempts to update and defend by providing numerous case studies of eureka moments in modern science and by seeking insights from comparative biography and psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and evolution. David N. Stamos teaches philosophy at York University in Toronto. He is the author of several books, including Darwin and the Nature of Species, also published by SUNY Press. (shrink)