As part of a defense of a physicalist view of experiences, David Papineau has offered an explanation for the intuition that properties found in experiences are distinct from neural properties. After providing some necessary background, I argue that Papineau’s explanation is not the best explanation of the distinctness intuition. An alternative explanation that is compatible with dualism is offered. Unlike Papineau’s explanation, this alternative does not require us to suppose that the distinctness intuition rests on fallacious reasoning. Relations of the (...) alternative explanation to representationalism and to cases of genuine property identity are discussed. (shrink)

Défendant le point de vue physicaliste de l’expérience, David Papineau propose une explication à l’intuition que les propriétés contenues dans les expériences se distinguent des propriétés nerveuses. Après avoir présenté quelques éléments de contexte, je soutiens que l’hypothèse de Papineau n’est pas la meilleure pour expliquer l’intuition de la distinction. Il existe une explication alternative, compatible avec le dualisme. A la différence de celle de Papineau, cette explication ne demande pas de supposer que l’intuition de la distinction soit fondée sur (...) un raisonnement fallacieux. Le débat porte sur les rapports de cette explication alternative avec le représentationalisme et les cas de l’identité des propriétés innées. (shrink)

In diesem Essay analysiert der Autor Wittgensteins Kritik an einigen Annahmen, die für einen Großteil der Kognitionswissenschaft von zentraler Bedeutung sind. Diese umfassen die Konzepte von komputationalen Prozessen im Gehirn, die mentale Zustände und Prozesse hervorbringen, die algorythmische Informationsprozessierung im Gehirn , das Gehirn als Maschine, den psychophysischen Parallelismus, die Denkmaschine sowie die Konfusion der Regel, die dem Benehmen folgt im Einklang mit dieser Regel. Nach des Autors Meinung haben die Theoretiker der Kognitionswissenschaft Wittgensteins Kritik noch immer nicht ernsthaft erörtert, (...) so dass sie, was verwundern mag, häufig die Frage „Wie funktioniert das?“ mit der Frage „Was macht das?“ verwechseln. Doch ihr „verhängnisvollster“ Fehler besteht in der Verwechslung interner komputationaler Prozesse, die im Gehirn stattfinden mit sozialbegründeten, alltäglichen Kriterien des Erkennens und der Klassifizierung des Inhalts und des Wissens vom Inhalt mentaler Zustände. (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 article discusses several epistemological and methodological issues related to the analysis of discourse in general and of educational talk in particular. The theoretical framework provided by conversation analysis (CA) is applied and critically discussed in the analysis of an empirical example of educational talk. Several questions seem pertinent: Can we - as analysts - have direct access to talk "as it actually occurs", independent of any kind of theorizing and predefined categorization? What is the epistemological status of the conversation (...) analytic categories? What are the limitations of applying turn-taking as an analytical category in the study of talk? To what extent can we presume the knowledgeability of the interlocutors as a premise in our analysis? On the background of my own attempts at applying CA in the analysis of educational discourse, I argue for a widening of the perspective from a narrow, empiricist focus on conversational turn-takings and sequential organization of talk, for example in the handling of issues like silences and absences in talk. On the other hand, I also warn against the pitfalls of historicist, abstract social theory; here exemplified with some texts from theorists applying abstract philosophical categories from dialectical and historical materialism like "the law of contradiction" as explanatory tools in the study of situated action. In the study of educational meaning making we should avoid empiricist as well as historicist approaches and explanations. (shrink)

Recent contributions to discussions on paediatric cochlear implantation in Norway indicate two mutually exclusive doctrines prescribing the best course of post-operative support for a child with cochlear implants; bilingually with sign language and spoken language simultaneously or primarily monolingually with speech only. This conflict constitutes an ethical problem for parents responsible for choosing between one of the two alternatives. This article puts forth the precautionary principle as a possible solution to this problem. Although scientific uncertainty exists in the case of (...) both doctrines, there exists a scenario of possible irreversible harm to some of the children habilitated monolingually. An application of the precautionary principle may hence suggest that it is rational to agree on the bilingual approach, at least for the time-being. (shrink)

Trust between a patient and a medical doctor is normally both justified and taken for granted, but sometimes it may need to be negotiated. In this paper I will present how trust can be interpreted as both an explicit and implicit phenomenon, drawing on literature from the social sciences and philosophy. The distinction between explicit and implicit interpretations of trust will be used to address problems that may arise in clinical consultations. Negotiating trust in any way very easily brings distrust (...) into a situation, but sometimes this can be helpful for building a more functional patient-doctor relationship. (shrink)

Within philosophy of medicine it has been a widespread view that there are important theoretical and practical reasons for clarifying the nature of basic health concepts like disease, illness and sickness. Many theorists have attempted to give definitions that can function as general standards, but as more and more definitions have been rejected as inadequate, pessimism about the possibility of formulating plausible definitions has become increasingly widespread. However, the belief that no definitions will succeed since no definitions have succeeded is (...) an inductive objection, open to realist responses. The article argues that an influential argument from philosophy of language constitutes a more fundamental objection. I use disease as an example and show that this argument implies that if a common understanding of disease can be analysed into a definition, then this is a non-trivial definition. But any non-trivial analysis must be viciously circular: the analysis must presuppose that disease can be defined, but this is what the analysis is supposed to yield as a result. This means, the article concludes, that disease and other controversial health concepts do not have analyses grounded in a common language. Stipulative and contextual definitions can have local significance, but the normative roles of such definitions are at the same time limited. (shrink)

This paper highlights the importance of inter-relationships between language, context, practice and interpretation. These inter-relationships should be of interest to AI researchers working in multi-disciplinary fields such as knowledge based systems, speech and vision. Attention is drawn to the importance of Part II, Section II of Wittgenstein'sPhilosophical Investigations for understanding the enormous complexity of the concept of seeing and how it is woven into an understanding of language and of human relations.

To understand the role of expert systems as a medium for transferring knowledge and skills within organisations requires an understanding of the nature of expertise within working life contexts. Central to this issue of transfer is the debate on the nature of tacit/implicit knowledge and the problem of formalising it in explicit form. This paper considers the British approach to the development of knowledge-based systems, which is regarded as being predominantly rationalistic, and compares it with the Scandinavian approach, which is (...) regarded as being predominantly humanistic. The paper proposes that crucial to the debate on the transfer of knowledge and skills is the development of expert systems as communications media which aims at enhancing and sharing the knowledge and skills of users. A human-centred approach for the future is proposed which brings the above two traditions together thereby providing a developmental framework for knowledge based systems. (shrink)

In 1974, David Best rightly contrasted purposive sports (exemplified by most sports) with aesthetic sports; and recently I was careful to exempt the issues for aesthetic sports from my critique of the prospects for an all-embracing philosophy of officiating. While discretion plays a part in umpiring or refereeing in both kinds of sports, it is especially important for aesthetic sports (such as gymnastic vaulting, ice-skating or diving), where the manner of execution determines victory. Here, it is urged that the issue (...) of objectivity for judgements in aesthetic sports is not the most crucial aspect: we have reason to expect correct accounts from knowledgeable, sensitive and experienced judges or umpires. Impartiality remains a concern, of course, not least between the training for judges or umpires might tend to favour particular styles of performing key movements. So that many past rule-changes are explained as attempts to improve fairness, with competitors getting their ‘just deserts’. In doing so, they have implicitly contributed to what is then valued in the manner of execution in aesthetic sports. The term ‘aesthetic’ is generally applied in its positive valence, although one must recognize the negative valence also. But, for aesthetic sports, the rules provide guidance as to what will or will not be regarded positively in the context of competition. And rule-changes here will sometimes be best explained as attempting to modify what is rewarded in such sports, the manner of performance. Such changes might be expected to bear on the character of the sport (here exemplified through men’s ice-skating). (shrink)

That the present day society profits from research in many areas is evident. This has stimulated a keen desire to emulate similarly advantageous contributions in other areas. It appears to imply not only a need to know how to (better) support action in general or any action, but also how to support the act of making "better" itself (better businesses, better houses, better emotions, better objectives, etc.). Developing the latter type of knowledge has proved to pose a major challenge, however. (...) Although the challenge has been taken up in areas such as social policy, economics, therapy, management, architecture, design, and others, leading to a number of responses, a complete characterisation seems still to be lacking. Such a characterisation is attempted in this article. Typical characteristics are the inclusion of non-observational experiences and a simultaneous striving for individual and collective high quality. (shrink)

Personal reflections on the philosophical career of Henry Johnstone, B.S. Haverford College, 1942, and Ph.D. Harvard, 1950, professor at Williams College 1948-1952 and Pennsylvania State University, 1952 - 2000. Founder and editor of Philosophy and Rhetoric, Johnstone wrote eight books, including two logic texts, three monographs, and over 150 articles or reviews. The focus is on his efforts to resolve problems stemming from the conflict between the logical empiricism Johnstone embraced in his dissertation, and the arguments of his absolute idealist (...) colleagues at Williams, efforts he pursued in Philosophy and Argument (1959), and Validity and Rhetoric in Philosophical Argument (1978). (shrink)

Based mainly on research conducted as part of a doctoral thesis (Guimond-Plourde, 2004), this paper introduces an epistemological and methodological framework based on the foundations and characteristics of a qualitative/interpretative approach rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology as conducive to disclosing the meaning that healthy adolescents, aged 15 to 17, attribute to the stress they experience in school and to their coping behaviour. Moving from the empirical to the phenomenal makes it possible to evoke a return to dimensions of meaning which have (...) been set aside or forgotten in the lived experience of stress-coping. By thus bringing stress-coping into focus in a new way, it enables us to glimpse the phenomenon anew, with the prospect of revealing what we haven't yet appreciated. A dual philosophical approach is outlined: a phenomenological perspective apprehends stress-coping as an existential phenomenon, while the hermeneutic focus is on interpreting the links between lived experience and meaning. The kind of knowledge generated by means of this approach offers a new way of understanding that focuses on the unique and personal nature of healthy adolescents' daily life at school and, as such, provides educators with a sensitive account of adolescents' experiences of stress in the school context. (shrink)

The following paper explores the foundations of phenomenology, and seeks to provide those new to the discipline with ways of understanding its claims to assist knowers to attend to 'the things themselves'. Practical applications of this mode of inquiry are linked to adult education practice which is the author's field of practice but most of the ideas are readily applicable to social events and practices such as nursing, social work, recreation, history and the like. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume (...) 1, Edition 1 April 2001. (shrink)

Reason, objectivity, and human nature are now suspect ideas. Among postmodern thinkers, Richard Rorty has advanced an especially forceful critique of these notions. Drawing partly on Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, Rorty contends that objectivity is no more than a metaphysical name for intersubjective agreement, and that “human nature” is an empty category, there being nothing beneath history and culture. Wittgenstein himself, however, recognized within the world's many civilizations “the common behavior of mankind,” without which Rorty's ethnocentric “solidarity” would be inconceivable. (...) This common form of life—the life of those who speak—encompasses countless human activities that presuppose and are interwoven with the concepts of reason and objectivity. (shrink)

In his later lectures, published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault surveys different modalities of obtaining ‘truth’ about one's self and the world: from Socrates to the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and early church writers. Genealogically tracing this opposition between knowing self and world, he occasionally invites phenomenological enquiry into how this epistemic couplet bears on education. Drawing on three vignettes familiar to educators, my investigation explores modes of discovering self and world through counselling, distributed governance in the classroom (...) and the arts of writing. In each case we confront a paradox of freedom, in that agency is needed, already, to liberate the self from the world. An exegetical task is to show how Foucault worked through this philosophical problem, of relevance to many situations in education, by re-reading Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger. (shrink)

The article presents several adaptive fuzzy hedge logics. These logics are designed to perform a specific kind of hedge detection. Given a premise set Γ that represents a series of communicated statements, the logics can check whether some predicate occurring in Γ may be interpreted as being (implicitly) hedged by technically, strictly speaking or loosely speaking, or simply non-hedged. The logics take into account both the logical constraints of the premise set as well as conceptual information concerning the meaning of (...) potentially hedged predicates (stored in the memory of the interpreter in question). The proof theory of the logics is non-monotonic in order to enable the logics to deal with possible non-monotonic interpretation dynamics (this is illustrated by means of several concrete proofs). All the adaptive fuzzy hedge logics are also sound and strongly complete with respect to their [0,1]-semantics. (shrink)

The mental and the social are ‘two sides of the same coin’. In other words, ‘social relations are internal relations’. In showing how this was the point of Wittgenstein’s discussion of the practice of ‘following a rule’, Peter Winch has made an important contribution to social philosophy.

The received understanding of Winch’s critique of social science is that he propounded a radically relativist, anti-explanatory and a-critical conception of the legitimate task of ‘social studies’. This conception is presumed to be predicated upon an extension of Wittgenstein’s critique of philosophy. I argue, against this view, that Winch reads Wittgenstein through a Kantian framework, and that in fact he advanced a rigorously essentialist and universalist picture of ‘social phenomena’. It is Winch’s underlying Kantian metaphysics that has made his ideas (...) attractive to contemporary architects of critical social theory, such as Giddens and Habermas. However, in opposition to the latter, and in spite of his Kantianism, I discern in Winch a genuinely critical attitude towards social understanding. (shrink)

This article takes up Peter Winch’s remarks concerning ‘the “fragility” of the conditions under which ethical conceptions can be active in social life’. It explores Winch’s discussion of political concepts and his account of the nature of politics. There are two related themes: a concern with the nature of political concepts; and a recognition (a reminder?) of the way in which disagreement belongs to our idea of politics.

This article argues that two significant implications of Wittgenstein’s writings for social thought are (1) that people are constitutively social beings and (2) that the social context of an individual life is nexuses of practice. Part one concretizes these ideas by examining the constitution of action within practices. It begins by criticizing three arguments of Winch’s that suggest that action is inherently social. It then spells out two arguments for the practice constitution of action that are extractable from Wittgenstein’s remarks. (...) Part two contrasts the conception of the social context of individual life as practices with three historically significant conceptions of such a context: totality; sui generis reality; and abstract structure. It also circumscribes that contemporary movement - practice theory - that develops the Wittgensteinian position and represents, perhaps, his most significant legacy for social thought. (shrink)

Paul Hirst claimed that Richard Peters ?revolutionised philosophy of education?. This does not accord with my experience in the Antipodean periphery. My experience of the work of Wittgenstein, Austin and Kovesi before reading Peters and Dewey, Kuhn and Toulmin subsequently meant that Peters was a major but not revolutionary figure in my understanding of philosophy of education.

In this article I describe the analytic approach adopted by Peters, his colleagues and followers of the ?London line? in the 1960s and 1970s and argue that, even in those times, other approaches to philosophy of education were being valued and practised. I show that Peters and his colleagues later became aware of the need for philosophy of education to become aware of and take in hand a new set of agendas and address the list of substantive issues inherent in (...) the contexts and political considerations beginning to impinge on education in the 1980s and beyond. I argue that there is much to be said for adopting a postempiricist problem-solving approach and point to the ways in which an evolutionary epistemology may be usefully applied to many of the problems of modern educational discourse. But I also seek to show how the abiding axiological concerns of Peters may still serve as the substantive background and definition of the value emphasis of the aims and directions in which philosophers of education are currently still working. (shrink)

This article will begin by examining the extent to which R. S. Peters merited the charge of analytic philosopher. His background in social psychology allowed him to become more pragmatic and grounded in social conventions and ordinary language than the analytic philosophers associated with empiricism, and his gradual shift from requiring internal consistency to developing a notion of ?reasonableness?, in which reason could be tied to passion, grounded him in an idiosyncratic notion of ethics which included compassion and virtue as (...) well as reason. I describe his position on ethics as a systemic one of principled pragmatism. (shrink)

This article examines the ‘integrated conception of competence’ as conceived by Paul Hager and David Beckett and suggests that its characterization in terms intended to distance it from behaviouristic and reductionist notions of competence is not sufficient to differentiate it from other models. Taking up Hager and Beckett’s idea that competence must be inferred from behaviour, it is suggested that this indicates how the integrated conception is more properly distinguished by virtue of the method used rather than what it is (...) that is assessed. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein and Donald Davidson, it is argued that it is possible to discern two logically distinct methodological approaches to competence assessment, allowing a clear distinction to be made between the integrated conception and the kind of approach which predominates in the UK’s framework of vocational qualifications. While the latter is shown to be rightly criticized for its deficiencies, in contrast the integrated conception is seen to suggest a methodological approach that is capable of acknowledging the full richness of occupational practice. (shrink)

There is a long history of interest in ‘strangers’ and ‘strangeness’ in the West. Over the past 100 years, the concept of the stranger has been analysed by philosophers, sociologists and anthropolo...

‘Language death’ is an undeniable phenomenon of our modern times as languages have started to disappear at an alarming rate. This has led linguists, anthropologists, philosophers and educationists to engage with this issue at various levels in an attempt to try to understand the decline in this rich area of human communication and culture. In this article I refer to some interesting and innovative educational projects in the Amazon region of Brazil, which are revitalizing local languages, cultures and communities. I (...) analyse these projects in the light of some of Paulo Freire’s ideas, particularly his views on conscientization, praxis and contextualization, and will argue that these educational ventures might be viewed as useful templates for other countries and peoples seeking to reverse or avoid ‘language-culture’ death. (shrink)

This article explains how teachers might navigate inquiry learning despite the experience of a constant tension between abandoning their students and controlling them. They do this by conceiving of themselves as guides who decide the path with students, not for them. I build on a conception of teaching as guiding from Burbules, and argue that inquiry teachers should take the particular stance of an expedition-educator (rather than the stance of either a tour-leader or an expedition-leader). They should guide students to (...) make progress during co-inquiry, rather than leading them to follow the teacher’s agenda. This stance gives a heuristic they can use to balance control and abandonment in their pedagogical practice—they judge which pedagogical actions to take, and when, according to which actions are likely to help their students to engage in autonomous inquiry and hence learn to guide themselves. Students thus can learn to inquire by participating in an inquiry which is guided, but not controlled, by their teacher. (shrink)

The authors examined cultural preferences for formal versus intuitive reasoning among East Asian (Chinese and Korean), Asian American, and European American university students. We investigated categorization (Studies 1 and 2), conceptual structure (Study 3), and deductive reasoning (Studies 3 and 4). In each study a cognitive conflict was activated between formal and intuitive strategies of reasoning. European Americans, more than Chinese and Koreans, set aside intuition in favor of formal reasoning. Conversely, Chinese and Koreans relied on intuitive strategies more than (...) European Americans. Asian Americans' reasoning was either identical to that of European Americans, or intermediate. Differences emerged against a background of similar reasoning tendencies across cultures in the absence of conflict between formal and intuitive strategies. (shrink)

What constitutes our human capacity to engage and be in the same frame of mind as another human? How do we come to share a sense of what ‘looks good’ and what ‘makes sense’? How do we handle differences and come to coexist with them? How do we come to feel that we understand what someone else is experiencing? How are we able to walk in silence with someone familiar and be sharing a peaceful space? All of these aspects are (...) part of human ‘interaction’. In designing interactive technologies designers have endeavoured to explicate, analyse and simulate, our capacity for social adaptation. Their motivations are mixed and include the desires to improve efficiency, improve consumption, to connect people, to make it easier for people to work together, to improve education and learning. In these endeavours to explicate, analyse and simulate, there is a fundamental human capacity that is beyond technology and that facilitates these aspects of being, feeling and thinking with others. That capacity, we suggest, is human entrainment. This is our ability to coordinate the timing of our behaviours and rhythmically synchronise our attentional resources. Expressed within the movements of our bodies and voices, it has a quality that is akin to music. In this paper, disparate domains of research such as pragmatics, social psychology, behaviourism, cognitive science, computational linguistics, gesture, are brought together, and considered in light of the developments in interactive technology, in order to shape a conceptual framework for understanding entrainment in everyday human interaction. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is twofold: (1) to present an artistic experiment on how to use artificial intelligence to develop a “different kind” of DJ, and (2) to test a cognitive model on how music expresses emotions. Based on a former model conceived by the author, electronic music loops were tagged according to the type and intensity of the expressed emotion. Then, using a feedback model, an artificial personality was arranged, which was affected by the music and played the (...) loops depending on the emotional state the artificial personality was in. The efficiency and credibility of the model was tested in a “live event” during the Z2000 art festival in Berlin, with encouraging results. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is presented as a set of tools with which we can try to come to terms with human problems, and with the assistance of which, some human problems can be solved. Artificial intelligence is located in its social context, in terms of the environment within which it is developed, and the applications to which it is put. Drawing on social theory, there is consideration of the collaborative and social problem-solving processes which are involved in artificial intelligence and society. (...) In a look ahead to the coming generations of highly parallel computing systems, it is suggested that lessons can be learnt from the highly parallel processes of human social problem-solving. (shrink)

What does ordinary language philosophy contribute to the solution of the problems it diagnoses as violations of linguistic use? One of its biggest challenges has been to account for the epistemic asymmetry of mental states experienced by the subject of those states and the application of psychological properties to others. The epistemology of other minds appears far from resolved with reference to how sensation words are used in everyday language. In this paper, I revisit the Wittgensteinian arguments and show how (...) they engage the ordinary language method (in the modified form of grammatical investigation) to ‘dissolve’ the problem. Several important results are generated by way of this reconstruction. An expressive view of the vocabulary of sensation is defended which facilitates a discussion of sensation discourse emphasising the normative grammatical conditions for the communication of psychological states. This motivates a reassessment of criterial justification for the ascription of psychological concepts in the third person. In the final sections, I mobilise a normative approach to expose the moral relevance of the epistemology of other minds. Even if it is conceded that belief in other minds lacks warrant from an epistemological standpoint, this does not justify adopting the skeptical attitude from an ethical standpoint. In light of this, a normative justification for the a priori belief that others are subjects of consciousness is defended. (shrink)

Context: Although there are rich descriptive accounts of skill acquisition in the literature, there are no satisfactory explanatory models of the cognitive processes involved. Problem: The aim of the paper is to explain some key phenomena frequently observed in the acquisition of motor skills: the loss of conscious access to knowledge of the structure of a skill and the awareness that an error has been made prior to the receipt of knowledge of results. Method: In the 1970s, the first author (...) implemented a computer program model of the cognitive processes involved in learning and skill acquisition, based on a series of empirical investigations. Recently, with assistance from the second author, the model has been reviewed, updated and re-implemented. Result: The model provides a constructivist account of skill acquisition and associated phenomena. Implications: The model adds to the understanding of motor skill acquisition and will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in physical therapy and sports science. It is also provides a constructivist cognitive architecture that can be fruitfully contrasted with non-constructivist cognitive architectures well-known in cognitive science. (shrink)

A recent New York Times article1 has focused attention on Charles Miller's Commission on the Future of Higher Education and its interest in addressing the quality of student learning and its adequacy to the demands of practice. The commission has initiated a debate on the possibility of using “standardized testing” in universities and colleges in order “to prove that students are learning and to allow easier comparisons on quality.”2 Miller is quoted as saying, on the one hand, that “what is (...) clearly lacking is a nationwide system for comparative performance purposes, using standard formats,” and, on the other, that “there…. (shrink)

Purpose: Demonstrate that cognitive and social approaches towards understanding do not at all oppose but rather they complement each other. Constructivist concepts of understanding paved the way to conceive of understanding as a cognitive-social "mechanism" which mutually regulates processes of social structuration and, at the same time, cognitive constructions and processing. Findings: Constructivist approaches bridge the gap between the cognitive and the social faces of understanding. They demonstrate how comprehension and cultivation, cognition and cultural reproduction are mutually linked to each (...) other by the cognitive-social "mechanism" of understanding. As a consequence, the unavoidable immunisation against communicative demands from others jeopardizes the achievements of our communicative culture. Practical implications: Communicators are even more responsible for success or failure of communication than recipients. Moreover, as educators they are responsible for both cultural reproduction and the reinforcement of creativity and innovation. This double bind can only be managed with strong and resistant personal relations. All construction of meaning and all interpretation should be conceived of as a pro-construction, a hypothetical provisional reading made for the tough going of public or scholarly discourse. Original value: Concept of understanding integrating philosophical, psychological and sociological approaches within a constructivist theory of communication and reception. (shrink)

There is no consensus about appropriate philosophical method that can be relied on to settle philosophical questions and instead of established findings, there are multiple conflicting arguments and positions, and widespread disagreement and debate. Given this feature of philosophy, it might seem that philosophy has proven to be a worthless endeavour, with no possibility of philosophical progress. The challenge then is to develop a conception of philosophy that reconciles the lack of general or lasting agreement with the possibility of philosophical (...) progress. I present such a conception in this paper. I argue that the aim of philosophy is to resolve philosophical problems, which is different from establishing settled and final answers or positions. Philosophical problems involve inadequate or incongruous conceptions that cannot be settled once and for all but can be resolved by transforming our conceptions so they are now congruous and adequate. There is philosophical progress every time a warranted, defensible position is developed that resolves a philosophical problem, even if there are competing resolutions and further problems to resolve, as there always are in philosophy. (shrink)

In his Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language , Saul Kripke presents his influential reading of Wittgenstein’s later writings on language. One of the largely unexplored features of that reading is that Kripke makes a small number of suggestive remarks concerning the possible threat that Wittgenstein’s arguments pose for Chomsky’s linguistic project. In this paper, we attempt to characterise the relevance of Wittgenstein’s later work on meaning and rule-following for transformational linguistics, and in particular to identify the potentially negative impact (...) it has on that project. Although we use Kripke’s remarks to articulate some of the pertinent issues, we return to Wittgenstein’s later writings to address them. We argue that Wittgenstein’s main target in the relevant sections of the Philosophical Investigations is the notion of ‘logical compulsion’, which involves assuming that there is more to applying a word or rule than how we are naturally or “psychologically” compelled to apply. We characterise two of the main lines of argument in the Investigations in terms of the rejection of logical compulsion. We thus propose to address the relevance of Wittgenstein’s writings for Chomsky by considering whether Chomsky’s linguistics presupposes the targeted notion of logical compulsion. We argue that Chomsky’s conception of linguistic competence in terms of successive states of the “language faculty” (containing the principles of universal grammar) does presuppose this problematic notion. Chomsky responded to Kripke by devoting a chapter of his Knowledge of Language to defending this conception of linguistic competence against the Wittgensteinian arguments. We evaluate his response and argue that he has misidentified the threat to his linguistic project as consisting in the attack on its ‘individual psychology’ standpoint, rather than its commitment to logical compulsion. We conclude by arguing that Chomsky’s attempts at defending his individualist or non-communitarian standpoint are undermined by his inability to give a decisive response to Wittgenstein’s attack on logical compulsion. (shrink)

According to expressivism about avowals, the meaning of typical self-ascriptions of mental states is a matter of expressing an attitude, rather than describing a state of affairs. Traditionally, expressivism has been glossed as the view that, qua expressions, avowals are not truth-evaluable. Contemporary neoexpressivists like Finkelstein and Bar-On have argued that avowals are expressions, and truth-evaluable besides . In contrast, this paper provides a defence of the view that avowals are, qua expressions, truth-evaluable. This defence is based on an argument (...) from disagreement, to the effect that an adequate explanation of the existence of disagreement involving both cases of avowals and cases of nonlinguistic expression (like winces) supports a view according to which genuine (sincere, truthful) expression is what truth amounts to in avowals. (shrink)

The concept of dignity is notoriously vague. In this paper it is argued that the reason for this is that there are three versions of dignity that are often confused. First we will take a short look at the history of the concept of dignity in order to demonstrate how already from Roman Antiquity two versions of dignity can be distinguished. Subsequently, the third version will be introduced and it will be argued that although the three versions of dignity hang (...) together, they should also be clearly distinguished in order to avoid confusion. The reason for distinguishing the three versions is because all three of them are only partially effective. This will be demonstrated by taking the discussion about voluntary ‘dying with dignity’ as an example. Inspired by both Paul Ricoeur’s concept of ethics and the ethics of care a proposition will be done as to how the three versions of dignity may sustain each other and help achieve what neither one of the versions can do on its own. (shrink)

In this paper I shall offer a reconsideration of three main arguments in the current debate on the mind-body problem, on the light of a peculiar way of conceiving mental concepts: I shall defend the view that mental concepts have to be considered as natural kind concepts. In the first part, I shall develop this proposal and in the second part I shall examine Kripke´s arguments against the identity theory, the zombi´s argument against functionalism and Churchland´s argument for eliminativism. I (...) conclude the paper with an sketchy answer to the mind-body problem, in the middle of the road between functionalism and the identity theory. (shrink)