In this paper I examine Axel Honneth’s normative reconstruction of the market as a sphere of social freedom in his 2014 book, Freedom’s Right. Honneth’s position is complex: on the one hand, he acknowledges that modern capitalist societies do not realise social freedom; on the other hand, he insists that the promise of social freedom is implicit in the market sphere. In fact, the latter explains why modern subjects have seen capitalism as legitimate. I will reconstruct Honneth’s conception of social (...) freedom and investigate how it is realised in the sphere in which Honneth sees it most successfully at work, the sphere of interpersonal relations. I then move on to the sphere of the market economy and discuss two related problems of this view that stem from his interpretation of Hegel. Next, I consider Honneth’s method of “normative reconstruction” and his reconstructions of the sphere of consumption and, finally, the labour market. My conclusion will be that market institutions cannot realise social freedom, and that this insight should orient the philosophical direction of critical social theory. (shrink)

The theory of the organism-environment system starts with the proposition that in any functional sense organism and environment are inseparable and form only one unitary system. The organism cannot exist without the environment and the environment has descriptive properties only if it is connected to the organism. Although for practical purposes we do separate organism and environment, this common-sense starting point leads in psychological theory to problems which cannot be solved. Therefore, separation of organism and environment cannot be the basis (...) of any scientific explanation of human behavior. The theory leads to a reinterpretation of basic problems in many fields of inquiry and makes possible the definition of mental phenomena without their reduction either to neural or biological activity or to separate mental functions. According to the theory, mental activity is activity of the whole organism-environment system, and the traditional psychological concepts describe only different aspects of organisation of this system. Therefore, mental activity cannot be separated from the nervous system, but the nervous system is only one part of the organism­environment system. This problem will be dealt with in detail in the second part of the article. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Habermas’ conception of the market in The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA). Habermas’ characterization of the market as norm-free has been controversial and I discuss three objections to it: the claims that it (1) conflates of action types, types of action coordination and spheres of action, (2) cannot account for the normative structure of the social organization of labour, and (3) that it makes impossible to make moral judgments about behaviour in the market. I conclude (...) that while some of these objections are unfounded, we have reason to revise Habermas’ substantive claims about the market. I also stress the importance of distinguishing between the TCA’s methodology and its time-diagnostic thrust. Next, I assess the colonization thesis through a case study of the commodification of higher education. I conclude that this thesis remains plausible, but that it needs to be supplemented with a theory of ideology. (shrink)

This article considers the possibility of articulating a renewed understanding of the principle of political idealism on the basis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology. By taking its point of departure from one of the most interesting political applications of Husserl’s phenomenological method, the ordoliberal tradition of the so-called Freiburg School of Economics, the article raises the question of the normative implications of Husserl’s eidetic method. Contrary to the “static” idealism of the ordoliberal tradition, the article proposes that the phenomenological concept of (...) political idealism ought to be understood as a fundamentally dynamic principle. As opposed to the classical understanding of political idealism as the implementation of a particular normative model—political utopianism—the phenomenological reformulation of this idea denoted a radically critical principle of self-reflection that can only be realized on the basis of perpetual renewal. In order to illustrate this point, the article considers Husserl’s distinction between two types of ideals of perfection, the absolute and the relative, and argues for their relevance for political philosophy. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose social relations (...) are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

This three-part paper presents Gordon Pask’s conversation theory (CT) and interaction of actors theory (IA) and outlines ways to apply these cybernetic approaches to designing technologies and scenarios for both formal and informal learning. The first part of the paper covers concepts central to CT and IA, explaining the relationship between conceptual and mechanical operators, and machines mediating informal and formal learning. The second part of the paper applies visual representations of CT and IA to understanding the use of Pask’s (...) course assembly systems (CASTE and THOUGHTSTICKER), created between the late 1960s and the 1980s, and the ThoughtShuffler search interface, created in the 2010s. The third part proposes two pathways for design based on CT and IA: firstly, the potential for designers and observers to reformulate the qualities of tools and learning scenarios to augment human thinking and collective action; and secondly, the possibility to create tools with malleable interfaces that allow users to become intermediaries rather than consumers of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Adorno's metacritique of freedom in Negative Dialectics and related texts remains fruitful today. I begin with some background on Adorno's conception of ‘metacritique’ and on Kant's conception of freedom, as I understand it. Next, I discuss Adorno's analysis of the experiential content of Kantian freedom, according to which Kant has reified the particular social experience of the early modern bourgeoisie in his conception of unconditioned freedom. Adorno argues against this conception of freedom and suggests (...) that freedom is always conditioned by our embodiment and by our social and historical situation. Finally, I turn to Adorno's criticism of Kant's discussion of freedom and determinism in the Critique of Pure Reason and argue that while his philosophical argument against Kant fails, his metacritical argument remains suggestive. Scepticism about freedom arises when the standpoint of theoretical reason encroaches upon the standpoint of practical reason and assimilates persons to things. (shrink)

Throughout its history, the relationship of phenomenology to historical reflection has appeared ambiguous. On the one hand, phenomenology—with the help of its founding figures—gave a promise to return from the world-historical speculations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to the phenomenon of lived historicity, that is, to the question of how historical time is experienced within the life of the individual. On the other hand, phenomenology could not resist the temptation to critically reconsider some of the fundamental historical narratives that (...) define our modern self-understanding—narratives that concerned the revolutionary effect of the natural sciences , the birth of the subject .. (shrink)

In this paper I criticise Axel Honneth's reactualization of reification as a concept in critical theory in his 2005 Tanner Lectures and argue that he ultimately fails on his own terms. His account is based on two premises: (1) reification is to be taken literally rather than metaphorically, and (2) it is not conceived of as a moral injury but as a social pathology. Honneth concludes that reification is ?forgetfulness of recognition?, more specifically, of antecedent recognition, an emphatic and engaged (...) relationship with oneself, others and the world, which precedes any more concrete relationship both genetically and categorially. I argue against this conception of reification on two grounds. (1) The two premises of Honneth's account cannot be squared with one another. It is not possible to literally take a person as a thing without this being a recognisable moral injury, and, therefore, I suggest that there are no cases of literal reification. (2) Honneth's account is essentially ahistorical, because it is based on an anthropological model of recognition that tacitly equates reification with autism. In conclusion, I suggest that any successful account of reification must (i) take reification metaphorically and (ii) offer a social-historical account of the origin(s) of reification. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to bring together the development of mental activity and consciousness in the framework of the organism-environment theory (Jarvilehto, 1998a, 1998b, 1999); the main question is how the development of mental activity and consciousness can be formulated if the starting point is not the separation of man and environment as in traditional cognitive psychology, but a unitary organism-environment system. According to the present formulation, mental activity is conceived as activity of the whole organism-environment system and (...) connected to the general development of life as a specific form of an organism-environment system comprising neurons. The advent of consciousness is regarded as a result of co-operation of such organism-environment systems. Consciousness is based on co-operation for the achievement of common results, and shared by the co-operating individuals (general consciousness), although each individual also makes it concrete from the perspective of his/her own body in the act of participation in common results (personal consciousness). Language is the means of formation of the co-operative system in the achievement of common results, and it is suggested that the use of language is related more to the type of co-operative system and intended common results than to any symbolic representation of the world. It is claimed that on this basis it is possible to develop psychology which takes seriously the concepts of mental activity and consciousness in the description of human action, but does not reduce these concepts either to biological or social factors. The present formulation should be regarded more as a conceptual outline than as a full-blown theory. (shrink)

The chapter tackles the complex, tension-ridden, and often paradoxical relationship between relativism and conservatism. We focus particularly on radical conservatism, an early twentieth-century German movement that arguably constitutes the climax of conservatism’s problematic relationship with relativism. We trace the shared genealogy of conservatism and historicism in nineteenth-century Counter-Enlightenment thought and interpret radical conservatism’s ambivalent relation to relativism as reflecting this heritage. Emphasizing national particularity, historical uniqueness, and global political plurality, Carl Schmitt and Hans Freyer moved in the tradition of historicism, (...) stopping short of full relativism. Yet they utilized relativistic elements – such as seeing irrational decisions or the demands of “life” as the basis of politics – to discredit notions of universal political morality and law, thereby underpinning their authoritarian agendas. Oswald Spengler, by contrast, took the relativistic impulses to the extreme, interweaving his conservative authoritarianism and nationalism with full-fledged epistemic, moral, and political relativism. Martin Heidegger has recently been perceived as the key philosopher of radical conservatism, and his thought arguably channeled antimodern aspects of historicism into contemporary political thought. We conclude by analyzing how some radical conservative arguments involving cultural relativism and plurality still reverberate in contemporary theorists such as Samuel Huntington, Aleksandr Dugin, and Alain de Benoist. (shrink)

The relation between mental processes and brain activity is studied from the point of view of the theory of the organism-environment system. It is argued that the systemic point of view leads to a new kind of definition of the primary tasks of neurophysiology and to a new understanding of the traditional neurophysiological concepts. Neurophysiology is restored to its place as a part of biology: its task is the study of neurons as living units, not as computer chips. Neurons are (...) living units which are organised as metabolic systems in connection with other neurons; they are not units which would carry out some psychological functions or maintain states which are typical only of the whole organism-environment system. Psychological processes, on the other hand, are processes always comprising the whole organism-environment system. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to give - in the frame of the theory of the organism - environment system - a new interpretation to the role of efferent influences on receptor activity and to the functions of senses in the formation of knowledge. It is argued, on the basis of experimental evidence and theoretical considerations, that the senses are not transmitters of environmental information, but they create a direct connection between the organism and the environment, which makes the (...) development of a dynamic living system, the organism - environment system, possible. In this connection process the efferent influences on receptor activity are of particular significance, because with their help the receptors may be adjusted in relation to the parts of the environment which are most important in the achievement of behavioral results. Perception is the process of joining of new parts of the environment to the organism - environment system ; thus, the formation of knowledge by perception is based on reorganization of the organism - environment system, and not on transmission of information from the environment. With the help of the efferent influences on receptors each organism creates its own peculiar world which is simultaneously subjective and objective. The present considerations have far reaching influences as well on experimental work in neurophysiology and psychology of perception as on philosophical considerations of knowledge formation. (shrink)

Functional decomposition is an important goal in the life sciences, and is central to mechanistic explanation and explanatory reduction. A growing literature in philosophy of science, however, has challenged decomposition-based notions of explanation. ‘Holists’ posit that complex systems exhibit context-sensitivity, dynamic interaction, and network dependence, and that these properties undermine decomposition. They then infer from the failure of decomposition to the failure of mechanistic explanation and reduction. I argue that complexity, so construed, is only incompatible with one notion of decomposition, (...) which I call ‘atomism’, and not with decomposition writ large. Atomism posits that function ascriptions must be made to parts with minimal reference to the surrounding system. Complexity does indeed falsify atomism, but I contend that there is a weaker, ‘contextualist’ notion of decomposition that is fully compatible with the properties that holists cite. Contextualism suggests that the function of parts can shift with external context, and that interactions with other parts might help determine their context-appropriate functions. This still admits of functional decomposition within a given context. I will give examples based on the notion of oscillatory multiplexing in systems neuroscience. If contextualism is feasible, then holist inferences are faulty—one cannot infer from the presence of complexity to the failure of decomposition, mechanism, and reductionism. (shrink)

The standard assumption for what perception must do in order to represent a “higher level” content—say, tiger—is that it must represent the kind as such. I argue that this “as such condition” is not constitutive of what it means for a content to be “higher‐level”, and that embracing it produces a range of unfortunate dialectical consequences. After offering this critique, I give an alternative construal, the “extended perceptual space” view of higher‐level contents. This view captures the phenomena targeted by the (...) “higher‐level content” thesis, is empirically supported, and avoids the negative dialectical consequences of the as such condition. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the value of epistemic justification cannot be adequately explained as being instrumental to truth. I intend to show that false belief, which is no means to truth, can nevertheless still be of epistemic value. This in turn will make a good prima facie case that justification is valuable for its own sake. If this is right, we will have also found reason to think that truth value monism is false: assuming that true belief does (...) have value, there is more of final epistemic value than mere true belief. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Lukács’ claim that the overcoming of reification amounts to the realization of the identity philosophies of Fichte and Hegel. I suggest that Lukács does indeed contrast reification with a Hegelian conception of social freedom that remains plausible today. Reification occurs when the preconditions of freedom and social participation are eroded through practices such as commodification and juridification. I conclude with the claim that reification diminishes freedom, and that criticism of reification is itself a form of (...) freedom. (shrink)

A discussion of a number of ways that information can be present in a computer program without being explicitly represented.

The standard treatment of conditional probability leaves conditional probability undefined when the conditioning proposition has zero probability. Nonetheless, some find the option of extending the scope of conditional probability to include zero-probability conditions attractive or even compelling. This article reviews some of the pitfalls associated with this move, and concludes that, for the most part, probabilities conditional on zero-probability propositions are more trouble than they are worth.

The principle of energy conservation is widely taken to be a se- rious difficulty for interactionist dualism (whether property or sub- stance). Interactionists often have therefore tried to make it satisfy energy conservation. This paper examines several such attempts, especially including E. J. Lowe’s varying constants proposal, show- ing how they all miss their goal due to lack of engagement with the physico-mathematical roots of energy conservation physics: the first Noether theorem (that symmetries imply conservation laws), its converse (that conservation (...) laws imply symmetries), and the locality of continuum/field physics. Thus the “conditionality re- sponse”, which sees conservation as (bi)conditional upon symme- tries and simply accepts energy non-conservation as an aspect of interactionist dualism, is seen to be, perhaps surprisingly, the one most in accord with contemporary physics (apart from quantum mechanics) by not conflicting with mathematical theorems basic to physics. A decent objection to interactionism should be a posteri- ori, based on empirically studying the brain. (shrink)

I argue that the conjunction of perdurantism (the view that objects are temporally extended) and universalism (the thesis that any old class of things has a mereological fusion) gives rise to undesired complications when combined with certain plausible assumptions concerning the semantics of tensed statements.

We discuss at some length evidence from the cognitive science suggesting that the representations of objects based on spatiotemporal information and featural information retrieved bottomup from a visual scene precede representations of objects that include conceptual information. We argue that a distinction can be drawn between representations with conceptual and nonconceptual content. The distinction is based on perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in conceptually unmediated ways. The representational contents of the states induced by these mechanisms that are available to a (...) type of awareness called phenomenal awareness constitute the phenomenal content of experience. The phenomenal content of perception contains the existence of objects as separate things that persist in time and time, spatiotemporal information, and information regarding relative spatial relations, motion, surface properties, shape, size, orientation, color, and their functional properties. (shrink)

Epistemic paternalism is the thesis that a paternalistic interference with an individual's inquiry is justified when it is likely to bring about an epistemic improvement in her. In this article I claim that in order to motivate epistemic paternalism we must first account for the value of epistemic improvements. I propose that the epistemic paternalist has two options: either epistemic improvements are valuable because they contribute to wellbeing, or they are epistemically valuable. I will argue that these options constitute the (...) foundations of a dilemma: either epistemic paternalism collapses into general paternalism, or a distinctive project of justified epistemic paternalism is implausible. (shrink)

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

Panksepp (2001) has kindly provided an unexpected and critical commentary on my article “Feeling as knowing” (published in two parts in Consciousness & Emotion; Jarvilehto, 2000b, and 2001), in which I try to clarify some conceptual problems in emotion research on the basis of the theory of the organism-environment system (Järvilehto, 1998a, b, 1999, 2000a). While I am always grateful for any criticism of my ideas, because it is the only way to develop them further, the commentary does not contain (...) much substantial criticism of my theoretical considerations, but it is rather related to science politics (“Jarvilehto’s holistic approach would … discourage investigators…”; Panksepp, 2001, p. ), and to the problem what kind of theory could be useful in guiding neuroscientific experimental work. The commentary seems to contain also some misunderstanding of my basic ideas, indicating that I didn’t formulate them well enough in the two articles. Therefore, I try to elucidate in this reply somewhat more the background of my approach, and to move the discussion to a more substantial theoretical level. (shrink)

One of the attractions of the Humean instrumentalist theory of practical rationality is that it appears to offer a special connection between an agent's reasons and her motivation. The assumption that Humeanism is able to assert a strong connection between reason and motivation has been challenged, most notably by Christine Korsgaard. She argues that Humeanism is not special in the connection it allows to motivation. On the contrary, Humean theories of practical rationality do connect reasons and motivation in a unique (...) and attractive way, though the nature of this connection has sometimes been misunderstood by both defenders and detractors of the theory. (shrink)

In previous work I have argued that talk about negative events should not be taken at face value: typically, what we are inclined to think of as a negative event (John’s failure to go jogging) is just an ordinary, positive event (his going to the movie instead); it is a positive event under a negative description. Here I consider more closely the difficulties that arise in those cases where no positive event seems available to do the job, as with putative (...) cases of causation by omission. In particular, I elaborate on Helen Beebee’s idea that not all causal explanations are reports of causation. When we mention John’s failure to turn off the gas as an explanans of why there was an explosion, we do not say what caused the explosion. We do not mention any of the relevant causes. We just remark that one sort of event that was supposed to occur, and whose occurrence would have prevented the explosion, did not in fact occur. (shrink)

Achieving space situational awareness requires, at a minimum, the identification, characterization, and tracking of space objects. Leveraging the resultant space object data for purposes such as hostile threat assessment, object identification, and conjunction assessment presents major challenges. This is in part because in characterizing space objects we reference a variety of identifiers, components, subsystems, capabilities, vulnerabilities, origins, missions, orbital elements, patterns of life, operational processes, operational statuses, and so forth, which tend to be defined in highly heterogeneous and sometimes inconsistent (...) ways. The Space Domain Ontologies are designed to provide a consensus-based realist framework for formulating such characterizations in a way that is both consistent and computable. Space object data are aligned with classes and relations in a suite of ontologies built around the existing Space Object Ontology. They are stored in a dynamically updated Resource Description Framework triple store, which can be queried to support space situational awareness and the needs of spacecraft operators and analysts. This paper provides an overview of the Space Domain Ontologies and their development and use. It presents the motivation for and advantages of the Space Domain Ontologies, including the benefits they provide for enhancing and maintaining long-term space situational awareness. (shrink)

To what extent are cognitive capacities, especially perceptual capacities, informationally encapsulated and to what extent are they cognitively penetrable? And why does this matter? Two reasons we care about encapsulation/penetrability are: (a) encapsulation is sometimes held to be definitional of modularity, and (b) penetrability has epistemological implications independent of modularity. I argue that modularity does not require encapsulation; that modularity may have epistemological implications independently of encapsulation; and that the epistemological implications of the cognitive penetrability of perception are messier than (...) is sometimes thought. (shrink)

These essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual..

Human cognitive acts are directed towards objects extended in space of a wide range of different types. What follows is a new proposal for bringing order into this typological clutter. The theory of spatially extended objects should make room not only for the objects of physics but also for objects at higher levels, including the objects of geography and of related disciplines. It should leave room for different types of boundaries, including both the bona fide boundaries which we find in (...) the physical world and the fiat (or human-demarcation-induced) boundaries with which much of geography has to deal. Two distinct axiomatic theories of boundaries are accordingly presented, and the need for both is examined in some detail. The resultant dual framework is shown to have application above all for our understanding of issues involving contact, division, and separation, issues which have posed serious difficulties for the ontological theories of boundaries that have been proposed hitherto. (shrink)

This paper investigates the prospects of Rodney Brooks’ proposal for AI without representation. It turns out that the supposedly characteristic features of “new AI” (embodiment, situatedness, absence of reasoning, and absence of representation) are all present in conventional systems: “New AI” is just like old AI. Brooks proposal boils down to the architectural rejection of central control in intelligent agents—Which, however, turns out to be crucial. Some of more recent cognitive science suggests that we might do well to dispose of (...) the image of intelligent agents as central representation processors. If this paradigm shift is achieved, Brooks’ proposal for cognition without representation appears promising for full-blown intelligent agents—Though not for conscious agents. (shrink)

Epistemic internalism, by stressing the indispensability of the subject’s perspective, strikes many as plausible at first blush. However, many people have tended to reject the position because certain kinds of beliefs have been thought to pose special problems for epistemic internalism. For example, internalists tend to hold that so long as a justifier is available to the subject either immediately or upon introspection, it can serve to justify beliefs. Many have thought it obvious that no such view can be correct, (...) as it has been alleged that internalism cannot account for the possibility of the justification of beliefs stored in memory. -/- My aim in this paper is to offer a response that explains how memory justification is possible in a way that is consistent with epistemic internalism and an awareness condition on justification. Specifically, I will explore the plausibility of various options open to internalists, including both foundationalist and non-foundationalist approaches to the structure of justification. I intend to show that despite other difficult challenges that epistemic internalism might face, memory belief poses no special problems that the resources of internalism cannot adequately address. (shrink)

The paper introduces measurement of fixation-speech intervals as an important tool for the study of the reading process. Using the theory of the organism-environment system, we developed experiments to investigate the time course of reading. By combining eye tracking with synchronous recording of speech during reading in a single measure, we issue a fundamental challenge to information processing models. Not only is FSI an authentic measure of the reading process, but it shows that we exploit verbal patterns, textual features and, (...) less directly, reading experience. Reading, we conclude, is not a matter of decoding linguistic information. Far from being a text-driven process, it depends on integrating both sensory and motor processes in an anticipatory meaning generation based on the history of experience and cultural context of the reader. Finally, we conclude with remarks on the social character and cognitive history of reading. (shrink)

Despite their popularity, relatively scant attention has been paid to the upshot of Bayesian and predictive processing models of cognition for views of overall cognitive architecture. Many of these models are hierarchical ; they posit generative models at multiple distinct "levels," whose job is to predict the consequences of sensory input at lower levels. I articulate one possible position that could be implied by these models, namely, that there is a continuous hierarchy of perception, cognition, and action control comprising levels (...) of generative models. I argue that this view is not entailed by a general Bayesian/predictive processing outlook. Bayesian approaches are compatible with distinct formats of mental representation. Focusing on Bayesian approaches to motor control, I argue that the junctures between different types of mental representation are places where the transitivity of hierarchical prediction may be broken, and I consider the upshot of this conclusion for broader discussions of cognitive architecture. (shrink)

Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs (...) as objects of beliefs. These requirements raise questions about the number of tokens of the belief representation language needed to represent believers and propositions in their normal roles and in their roles as objects of beliefs. In this paper, we explicate the relations among nodes, mental tokens, concepts, actual objects, concepts in the belief spaces of an agent and the agent's model of other agents, concepts of other cognitive agents, and propositions. We extend, deepen, and clarify our theory of intensional knowledge representation for natural-language processing, as presented in previous papers and in light of objections raised by others. The essential claim is that tokens in a knowledge-representation system represent only intensions and not extensions. We are pursuing this investigation by building CASSIE, a computer model of a cognitive agent and, to the extent she works, a cognitive agent herself. CASSIE's mind is implemented in the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. (shrink)

Vann McGee has recently argued that Belnap’s criteria constrain the formal rules of classical natural deduction to uniquely determine the semantic values of the propositional logical connectives and quantifiers if the rules are taken to be open-ended, i.e., if they are truth-preserving within any mathematically possible extension of the original language. The main assumption of his argument is that for any class of models there is a mathematically possible language in which there is a sentence true in just those models. (...) I show that this assumption does not hold for the class of models of classical propositional logic. In particular, I show that the existence of non-normal models for negation undermines McGee’s argument. (shrink)

The notion of representation in neuroscience has largely been predicated on localizing the components of computational processes that explain cognitive function. On this view, which I call “algorithmic homuncularism,” individual, spatially and temporally distinct parts of the brain serve as vehicles for distinct contents, and the causal relationships between them implement the transformations specified by an algorithm. This view has a widespread influence in philosophy and cognitive neuroscience, and has recently been ably articulated and defended by Shea. Still, I am (...) skeptical about algorithmic homuncularism, and I argue against it by focusing on recent methods for complex data analysis in systems neuroscience. I claim that analyses such as principle components analysis and linear discriminant analysis prevent individuating vehicles as algorithmic homuncularism recommends. Rather, each individual part contributes to a global state space, trajectories of which vary with important task parameters. I argue that, while homuncularism is false, this view still supports a kind of “vehicle realism,” and I apply this view to debates about the explanatory role of representation. (shrink)

Many advocate practices of ‘local food’ or ‘locavorism’ as a partial solution to the injustices and unsustainability of contemporary food systems. I think that there is much to be said in favor of local food movements, but these virtues are insufficient to immunize locavorism from criticism. In particular, three duties of international ethics—beneficence, repair and fairness—may provide reasons for constraining the developed world’s permissible pursuit of local food. A complete account of why (and how) the fulfillment of these duties constrains (...) locavorism will require extensive empirical evidence about the relationship between agricultural demand-led industrialization, international trade (rules), and local food practices. In this paper I can only gesture at some of this evidence and, for that reason, my policy prescriptions are merely provisional. Instead, the upshot of this paper is that advocates of locavorism ought to be attentive to the empirical-dependence of the moral permissibility of their projects. As local food ‘scales up’—and comes to be embraced as a goal of political communities—these concerns should receive even greater attention. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that Socrates is a cognitivist about emotions, but then ask how the beliefs that constitute emotions can come into being, and why those beliefs seem more resistant to change through rational persuasion than other beliefs.

Many assume that whenever government is entitled to make a law, it is entitled to enforce that law coercively. I argue that the justification of legal authority and the justification of governmental coercion come apart. Both in ideal theory and in actual human societies, governments are sometimes entitled to make laws that they are not entitled to enforce coercively.

Many countries are experiencing increasing levels of demand for access to assisted reproductive technologies. Policies regarding who can access ART and with what support from a collective purse are highly contested, raising questions about what state responses are justified. Whilst much of this debate has focused on the status of infertility as a disease, we argue that this is something of a distraction, since disease framing does not provide the far-reaching, robust justification for state support that proponents of ART seem (...) to suppose. Instead, we propose that debates about appropriate state responses should consider the various implications for health and broader well-being that may be associated with difficulties starting a family. We argue that the harms and disruption to valued life projects of subfertility-related suffering may provide a stronger basis for justifying state support in this context. Further, we suggest that, whilst ART may alleviate some of the harm resulting from subfertility, population-level considerations can indicate a broader range of interventions aimed at tackling different sources of subfertility-related harm, consistent with broader public health aims. (shrink)

This article investigates the philosophical history of European universalism with the aim of differentiating between its two senses: the modern and the Ancient. Based on Edmund Husserl’s late interpretations on the unique character of Greek philosophy, this distinction is articulated in terms of “substantial” and “formal” accounts of universalism. Against the modern (substantial) idea of universalism, which took its point of departure especially from the natural law theories of the early modern period, Husserl conceived Greek universalism as an essentially formal (...) notion, which relied on the critique of one’s cultural-historical situation on the basis of the shared faculty of reason. Instead of a ready-made position, this idea of universalism is best described in terms of a “task”, which has its peculiar temporal horizon in infinity. By discussing the political implications of philosophical universalism, the article aims at uncovering its latent cultural implications, that is, the ideas of self-critique and self-renewal nurturing the utopian motive of culture. Thus by broadening the philosophical scope of universalism, the article will insist on its relevance for contemporary debate on Eurocentrism. (shrink)

In proof-theoretic semantics, meaning is based on inference. It may be seen as the mathematical expression of the inferentialist interpretation of logic. Much recent work has focused on base-extension semantics, in which the validity of formulas is given by an inductive definition generated by provability in a ‘base’ of atomic rules. Base-extension semantics for classical and intuitionistic propositional logic have been explored by several authors. In this paper, we develop base-extension semantics for the classical propositional modal systems K, KT , (...) K4, and S4, with □ as the primary modal operator. We establish appropriate soundness and completeness theorems and establish the duality between □ and a natural presentation of ♢. We also show that our semantics is in its current form not complete with respect to euclidean modal logics. Our formulation makes essential use of relational structures on bases. (shrink)

Maurice Merleau-Ponty is often interpreted as claiming that opportunities for action are directly present in perceptual experience. However, he does not provide much evidence for how or why this would occur, and one can doubt that this is an appropriate interpretation of his phenomenological descriptions. In particular, it could be argued the Merleau-Pontyian descriptions mistakenly attribute pre-perceptual or post-perceptual elements such as allocation of attention or judgment to the perceptual experience itself. This paper argues for the Merleau-Pontyian idea that opportunities (...) for action are present in perceptual experience. It further argues that the phenomenological descriptions can be supported and explained via reference to contemporary research on motor imagery. In particular, it will be argued that non-conscious, covert motor imagery is used to prepare for and regulate skilled actions, and that it is plausible that this imagery combines with perception (likely vision) to create a single experience of the environment as enabling action. The paper will also show that contemporary views on motor imagery are broadly compatible with Merleau-Ponty’s aims. (shrink)

The positions of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the priority of complexes over (propositional) functions are sketched, challenging those who take the "judgment centered" aspects of the Tractatus to be inherited from Frege not Russell. Frege's views on the priority of judgments are problematic, and unlike Wittgenstein's. Russell's views on these matters, and their development, are discussed in detail, and shown to be more sophisticated than usually supposed. Certain misreadings of Russell, including those regarding the relationship between propositional functions and (...) universals, are exposed. Wittgenstein's and Russell's views on logical grammar are shown to be very similar. Russell's type theory does not countenance types of genuine entities nor metaphysical truths that cannot be put into words, contrary to conventional wisdom. I relate this to the debate over "inexpressible truths" in the Tractatus. I lastly comment on the changes to Russell's views brought about by Wittgenstein's influence. (shrink)