The paper presents a new theory of perceptual demonstrative thought, the property-dependent theory. It argues that the theory is superior to both the object-dependent theory (Evans, McDowell) and the object-independent theory (Burge).

I raise a problem for common-factor theories of experience concerning the demonstrative thoughts we form on the basis of experience. Building on an insight of Paul Snowdon 1992, I argue that in order to demonstratively refer to an item via conscious awareness of a distinct intermediary the subject must have some understanding that she is aware of a distinct intermediary. This becomes an issue for common-factor theories insofar as it is also widely accepted that the general, pre-philosophical or ‘naïve’ (...) view of experience does not accept that in normal perceptual cases one is consciously aware of non-environmental (inner, mental) features. I argue then that the standard common-factor view of experience should be committed to attributing quite widespread referential errors or failures amongst the general, nonphilosophical populace – which seems an unattractively radical commitment. After clarifying the various assumptions I am making about experience and demonstrative thoughts, I consider a number of possible responses on behalf of the common-factor theorist. I finish by arguing that my argument should apply to any common-factor theory, not just avowedly ‘indirect' theories. (shrink)

Perception enables us to think demonstrative thoughts about the world around us, but what must perception be like in order to play this role? Does perception enable demonstrative thought only if it is conscious? This paper examines three accounts of the role of consciousness in demonstrative thought, which agree that consciousness is essential for demonstrative thought, but disagree about why it is. First, I consider and reject the accounts proposed by Gareth Evans in (...) The Varieties of Reference and by John Campbell in Reference and Consciousness before offering an alternative proposal of my own. My proposal is that consciousness plays an essential epistemic role in explaining the capacity for demonstrative thought about an object by enabling the subject to form immediately justified beliefs about the object. (shrink)

Attention plays a role in demonstrative thought: It sets the targets. Visual experience also plays a role. I argue here that it makes visual information available for use in the voluntary control of focal attention. To do so I use both introspection and neurophysiological evidence from projections between areas of attentional control and neural correlates of consciousness. Campbell and Smithies also identify roles for experience, but they further argue that only experience can play those roles. In contrast, I (...) argue that experience is not the only way in which visual information could be accessed for the voluntary control of attention. (shrink)

The status of the laws of nature in Hobbes’s Leviathan has been a continual point of disagreement among scholars. Many agree that since Hobbes claims that civil philosophy is a science, the answer lies in an understanding of the nature of Hobbesian science more generally. In this paper, I argue that Hobbes’s view of the construction of geometrical figures sheds light upon the status of the laws of nature. In short, I claim that the laws play the same role as (...) the component parts – what Hobbes calls the “cause” – of geometrical figures. To make this argument, I show that in both geometry and civil philosophy, Hobbes proceeds by a method of synthetic demonstration as follows: 1) offering a thought experiment by privation; 2) providing definitions by explication of “simple conceptions” within the thought experiment; and 3) formulating generative definitions by making use of those definitions by explication. In just the same way that Hobbes says that the geometer should “put together” the parts of a square to learn its cause, I argue that the laws of nature are the cause of peace. (shrink)

The policy makers or lawyers may face the need of legal research for reasons. The congressmen may plan to make new laws to address the challenges of their constituent or to the interest of nation. The lawyers may need to serve their clients who like to know the legal issues involved, the strategies to deal with their loss and recovery, and prospect for winning the case if the dispute has gotten worse. The lawyers may practice in a solo business or (...) might work as an associate lawyer in the law firms. A senior lawyer or partner in some cases may like to exploit the junior work force about the problems or grievances from the potential clients. Since he needs to focus their attention on other matters, such as the business expansion of his law firm or more lucrative cases in need of career hands, he may tap the junior lawyer for the legal research, who could assist with the basis of his final legal opinion. The memorandum, opinion letter and brief would be such forms of professional communication for the lawyers and legal researchers. The congressman also can be supplemented with the aid of staffs in terms of his legal expertise and grasp of the issues standing for carrying their responsibility more effectively. For the lawyers and legal researchers, the structure of state and federal legal system is the kind of important variants to orient their work direction and basic frame for the most efficient and adequate scope of search and analysis. The paradigm change also is revolutionary to impact the general base of people. Decades ago, the research or researcher only related with the class of professionals, such as professors, lawyers, career officers and cadres of enterprises. They would enjoy insulation and exploit their research work as an entrance barrier from lay people. Their large shelves at home study or in the room or corner of office thrust an impression that he or she is learned and knowledgeable. This impliedly communicates his or her prestige of social or professional success. The books and articles seem to symbolize a kind of monopoly which bears to exclude unclassified or non-professional workers. The change is remarkable that every citizen could benefit from the on-line sources of information, which, of course, is generally true of professional knowledge. Now professors fear of plagiarism that students often are the kind of suspect. The legal research would turn on the help of digitization which revolutionizes to incur a new mode of research operation. About the query, the citizens and people can readily verify its truth or falsity with one clique within the personal computer. An enormous amount of information is currently flowing on the internet and on-line sources of reference, which shapes an informative and knowledgeable society. As the medical doctors warned decades ago, the precept is any most effective, “forbear from your intelligence or knowledge work for your health.” Many of them now spend long hours a day to satisfy their curiosity and intelligent search. He or she may be well awarded an academic degree if to recognize their hard work on his PC. Nevertheless, this information age does not always bring a positive progress, which arouses the kind of issues, say, right of privacy, on-line fraud. In some cases, this transformation may lead to an inferior attitude of researcher. My today’s experience is one of exotic case. I have received an e-mail from Google CEO stating that I have been selected as one of twelve winners from the pool of Google users. The award money is enormous which stalls me for some time. The authenticity and reliability have hit my head, and I utilized a verification service website managed by the team of lawyers. It costs five dollars and remaining 24 dollars would be processed upon the progress of interaction. I am waiting for an answer from the team. Then the research nowadays is not limited to the basic context of our subsistence, but influences in any depth into the professional lives. (shrink)

This paper defends a version of the old empiricist claim that to think about unobservable physical properties a subject must be able to think perception-based thoughts about observable properties. The central argument builds upon foundations laid down by G. E. M. Anscombe and P. F. Strawson. It bridges the gap separating these foundations and the target claim by exploiting a neglected connection between thought about properties and our grasp of causation. This way of bridging the gap promises to introduce (...) substantive constraints on right accounts of perception and perception-based thought. (shrink)

According to a criterion of difference for thoughts derived from Frege, two thoughts are different if it is at the same time possible for a rational subject to take conflicting epistemic attitudes toward them. But applying this criterion to perception-based demonstrative thoughts seems to slice thoughts too finely and lead to their proliferation which makes the criterion implausible. I argue that such a proliferation of thoughts is blocked by transforming this criterion into a related one that is shown to (...) be essential in individuating thoughts as they are conceived of in this paper. This has to do with the fact that what makes demonstrative sense synchronically or diachronically the same is the subject’s unreflective taking-for-granted that the object that she is perceiving is a single object that does not require her to keep track of it in the sense supposed by Evans and Campbell. (shrink)

Demonstratives seem to have posed a severe difficulty for Frege’s philosophy of language, to which his doctrine of incommunicable senses was a reaction. In “The Thought,” Frege briefly discusses sentences containing such demonstratives as “today,” “here,” and “yesterday,” and then turns to certain questions that he says are raised by the occurrence of “I” in sentences (T, 24-26). He is led to say that, when one thinks about oneself, one grasps thoughts that others cannot grasp, that cannot be communicated. (...) However, nothing could be more out of the spirit of Frege’s account of sense and thought than an incommunicable, private thought. In the first part of the paper, I explain the problem demonstratives pose for Frege, and explore three ways he might have dealt with it. I argue that none of these ways provides Frege with a solution to his problem consistent with his philosophy of language. The first two are plausible as solutions, but contradict his identification of the sense expressed by a sentence with a thought. The third preserves the identification, but is implausible. In the second part, I suggest that Frege was led to his doctrine of incommunicable senses as a result of some appreciation of the difficulties his account of demonstratives faces, for these come quickly to the surface when we think about “I.” I argue that incommunicable senses won’t help. I end by trying to identify the central problem with Frege’s approach, and sketching an alternative. (shrink)

This dissertation is about the structure of thought. Following Gottlob Frege, I define a thought as the sort of content relevant to determining whether an assertion is true or false. The historical component of the dissertation involves interpreting Frege’s actual views on the structure of thought. I argue that Frege did not think that a thought has a unique decomposition into its component senses, but rather the same thought can be decomposed into senses in a (...) variety of distinct ways. I extend Frege’s position and use it to develop an account of the hierarchy of senses, the senses expressed by indexicals and demonstratives, and the distinction between logical and non-logical structure. I also discuss various connections with the nature of meta-representation, our capacity for reflective judgment, some aspects of the structure of conscious experience, the way we perceive regions of space and durations of time, and our conscious awareness of our own perceptions and events of thinking. (shrink)

As research on mind wandering has accelerated, the construct’s defining features have expanded and researchers have begun to examine different dimensions of mind wandering. Recently, Christoff and colleagues have argued for the importance of investigating a hitherto neglected variety of mind wandering: “unconstrained thought,” or, thought that is relatively unguided by executive-control processes. To date, with only a handful of studies investigating unconstrained thought, little is known about this intriguing type of mind wandering. Across two experiments, we (...) examined, for the first time, whether changes in task demand influence rates of constrained versus unconstrained thoughts. In both experiments, participants completed either an easy (0-back) or hard (2-back) task and responded to intermittently presented thought probes that gauged thought constraint throughout the task. In Experiment 1, we found that participants completing the easy task engaged in unconstrained thoughts more frequently than those completing the difficult task. In Experiment 2, we replicated this result and further demonstrated manipulations of unconstrained thought while also measuring task-relatedness (a common dimension of mind wandering). Finally, exploratory analyses showed associations between constrained thought and age, verbal intelligence, and an assessment of flow (‘deep effortless concentration’), thereby adding further evidence to indicate a dissociation between task-relatedness and constraint. We discuss the methodological and theoretical applications of our findings to the burgeoning field of research on unconstrained thought. (shrink)

One of the most pressing questions concerning singular demonstrative mental contents is what makes their content singular: that is to say, what makes it the case that individual objects are the representata of these mental states. Many philosophers have required sophisticated intellectual capacities for singular content to be possible, such as the possession of an elaborate scheme of space and time. A more recent reaction to this strategy proposes to account for singular content solely on the basis of empirical (...) models of visual processing. We believe both sides make good points, and offer an intermediate way of looking into singular content. Our suggestion is that singular content may be traced to psychological capacities to form flexible, abstract representations in the prefrontal cortex. This allows them to be sustained for increasingly longer periods of time and extrapolated beyond the context of perception, thus going beyond lowlevel sensory representations while also falling short of more sophisticated intellectual abilities. (shrink)

It is often thought that endowing a demonstrative with a Fregean sense leaves no room for maintaining that it is also a rigid designator. In addition, some philosophers claim that indexicals - surely the paradigms of singular reference - pose a serious threat to the Fregean sense/ reference approach as they do not comply with the view that singular terms have Fregean senses. In this paper I argue that neither of these is true.

Abstract. The strong similarity between the use of ostension and that of a simple demonstrative to predicate something of an object seems to conflict with equally strong intuitions according to which, while “this” does usually refer to an object, the gesture of holding an object in your hand and showing it to an audience does not refer to the demonstrated object. This paper argues that the problem is authentic and provides a solution to it. In doing so, a more (...) general thought is given support by the approach used. Namely, the thought that our abilities to directly refer to things require some basic referential abilities exhibited in ostension and the use of demonstratives which, in their turn, rest upon our abilities to cooperate in performing non-communicative actions on our environment. Several concepts introduced in order to solve the initial problem can be used to articulate this thought in more detail. (shrink)

What should we make of claims by members of other groups to have moralities different from our own? Human Rights in Chinese Thought gives an extended answer to this question in the first study of its kind. It integrates a full account of the development of Chinese rights discourse - reaching back to important, though neglected, origins of that discourse in 17th and 18th century Confucianism - with philosophical consideration of how various communities should respond to contemporary Chinese claims (...) about the uniqueness of their human rights concepts. The book elaborates a plausible kind of moral pluralism and demonstrates that Chinese ideas of human rights do indeed have distinctive characteristics, but it nonetheless argues for the importance and promise of cross-cultural moral engagement. (shrink)

To what extent do I have a sense of agency over my thoughts while I dream? The sense of agency in dreams can alter in a variety of interesting ways distinct from normal, waking experience. In fact, dreams show many similarities to the experiences of individuals with schizophrenia. In this paper I analyze these alterations with a focus on distinguishing between reduced sense of agency and other cognitive features such as metacognition, confabulation and attention. I argue that some dream reports (...) demonstrate two interesting commonalities with schizophrenia: thought insertion (TI) and auditory hallucination (AH). This line of research has the potential to further our understanding of TI and AH in schizophrenia through the analysis of similar experience in a different conscious state. Through the analysis of dream reports, I found that although TI and AH both occur in dreams, TI is very rare. This is an interesting result since TI is common in patients with schizophrenia. I propose two speculative lines of explanation for the rarity of TI in dreams: first, the cognitive differences between the symptoms of schizophrenia and dreams, and second, the problem of dream reporting conditions. Dream reporting conditions are particularly important, as without controls, reports can be vague. Analysis of dream reports reveals that it is often unclear whether 'hearing voices' indicates sound phenomenology or thought phenomenology. I propose that dream reports could be disambiguated given the right experimental conditions and I suggest how this could be achieved in future experimental research. (shrink)

Metaethical non-analytical naturalism consists in the metaphysical thesis that normative properties are identical with or reducible to natural properties and the epistemological thesis that we cannot come to a complete understanding of the nature of normative properties via conceptual analysis alone. In On What Matters, Derek Parfit (2011) argues that non-analytical naturalism is either false or incoherent. In § 1, I show that his argument for this claim is unsuccessful, by showing that it rests on a tacit assumption about the (...) nature of normative thought that non-analytical naturalists need not accept. In § 2, I show that escaping Parfit’s argument in this way is no ad hoc maneuver; as I demonstrate, the idea that non-analytical naturalists can exploit to escape Parfit’s argument is a familiar one. (shrink)

This work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is (...) an intentional but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)

This paper is a comparison of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s theory of indexicals, especially concerning Frege’s remarks on time as “part of the expression of thought”. I analyze the most contrasting features of Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations of Frege’s remarks on indexicals. Subsequently, I try to identify a common ground between Kripke’s and Künne’s interpretations, and hint at a possible convergence between those two views, stressing the importance given by Frege to nonverbal signs in defining the content (...) of thought. I conclude by indicating a possible direction for further research. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to the debate on the epistemological status of thought experiments. I deal with the epistemological uniqueness of experiments in the sense of their irreducibility to other sources of justification. In particular, I criticize an influential argument for the irreducibility of thought experiments to general arguments. First, I introduce the radical empiricist theory of eliminativism, which considers thought experiments to be rhetorically modified arguments, uninteresting from the epistemological point of view. Second, I present (...) objections to the theory, focusing on the critique of eliminativism by Tamar Szabó Gendler based on the reconstruction of famous Galileo's Pisa experiment. I show that her reconstruction is simplistic and that more elaborate reconstruction is needed for an appropriate assessment of the epistemic power of general argument. I propose such a reconstruction and demonstrate that general version of Pisa experiment is epistemically equal to the particular one. Thus, from an epistemological perspective, Galileo's thought experiment is reducible to a straightforward argument without particular premises. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that the understanding one has of a proposition or a propositional content of a representational vehicle is a species of what contemporary epistemologists characterise as objectual understanding. Second, we demonstrate that even though this type of understanding differs from linguistic understanding, in many instances of successful communication, these two types of understanding jointly contribute to understanding a communicated thought.

Sertraline is one of the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. Major depressive disorder (MDD) is characterized by spontaneous thoughts that are laden with negative affect-a "malignant sadness". Prior neuroimaging studies have identified abnormal resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the spontaneous brain networks of MDD patients. But how antidepressant medication acts to relieve the experience of depression as well as adjust its associated spontaneous networks and mood-regulation circuits remains an open question. In this study, we recruited 22 drug-naïve MDD patients along with (...) 35 normal controls and investigated whether the functional integrity of cortical networks associated with spontaneous thoughts is modulated by sertraline treatment. We attempted to predict post-treatment effects based upon what we observed in the pre-treatment rsFC of drug-naïve MDD patients. In the result, we demonstrated that (1) after the sertraline treatment, the medial temporal lobe of default network (DNMTL) and mood regulation pathway-the fronto-parietal control network (FPCN), the thalamus, and the salience network (SN)-were restored to normal connectivity, relative to the pre-treatment condition; however, the altered connections of FPCN-core DN (DNCORE), FPCN-SN, and intra-FPCN among MDD patients remained impaired; (2) thalamo-prefrontal connectivity provides moderate predictive power (r2 = 0.63) for the effectiveness of sertraline treatment. In summary, our findings contribute to a body of evidence that suggests salubrious effects of sertraline treatment primarily involve the FPCN-thalamus-SN pathway. The pre-treatment rsFC in this pathway could serve as a predictor of sertraline treatment outcome. (shrink)

Contrary to the dominant arguments put forth by Black feminist scholars, this essay argues that W.E.B. Du Bois’ pioneering role in establishing the principles of Black sociology, ethnological arguments and long-range development of Pan-Africanism as an ideological rival to colonial imperialism/Westernism suggests that the masculine roots informing his approach to the Black intellectual endeavor is a positive and humanistic rather than a restrictive marker of his thought. If Du Bois’ masculinization of Black agency and intellectual endeavors were simply indicative (...) of mimesis – his internalization of the very sexism against which he fought anchored to a view of freedom for Black people which materialized as a struggle among men over the control of the bodies of Black women – then there should be textual evidence demonstrating that he (like some of his Black female peers) supported the relegation of Black women to domesticity or was in favor of US imperialism against darker races abroad. But rather than an imitative aspiration towards Black nationalist patriarchy and the subordination of Black women to men’s will, the logical consequence of Du Bois’ masculinist (ethnological) thinking as it relates to the Black intellectual endeavor and the problem of race in America materialized as the formulation of Black sociology to study Black men and women as agents of history who were endowed with unique insights stemming from their experiences of marginalization, his articulation of an anti-colonial and egalitarian Black manhood, and his laying an intellectual basis for Pan-Africanism to emerge as an anti-colonial ideology. (shrink)

This article aims to analyze the functioning of thought experiments in ethics. We will demonstrate that although many thought experiments in ethics can be reconstructed as arguments, according to the thesis defended by John Norton, its reconstructed version does not have the same epistemic force. We will argue that the reconstructed versions are not capable of bringing the same type of understanding in relation to thought experiments, which have an explanatory advantage that arguments do not have. Therefore, (...) arguments are not a sufficient condition for solving problems within ethics and also within thought experiments in this area. We will argue that emotions can be one of the non-argumentative factors that can produce negative and positive interference on thought experimenters and thought experiment, which cannot be demonstrated accurately in the reconstructed version. In this way, the reconstructed version is not able to convey an adequate understanding of emotions and other influences. Finally, we will elaborate on two thought experiments that demonstrate the need to use emotions in moral actions based on the criticism produced by Flávio Williges against traditional moral theories. These thought experiments can be reconstructed as arguments, but without giving us the same understanding that thought experiments are capable of. (shrink)

An intuitively appealing argument for pluralism in economics can be made on the grounds that schools of economic thought complement one another. Let us call this the complementarity-based argument for pluralism (CAP). The concepts of complementarity, pluralism, and school of thought are scrutinized in this paper to evaluate this argument. I argue that the complementarity of schools is relative to scientific goals, which implies that discussing complementarity of schools of economic thought requires discussing the goals of economic (...) research. I also distinguish weak from strong complementarity and show that some alleged complementarity relations between schools are weak and thus provide little support for CAP. However, if strong complementarity relations, relative to a valuable goal, can be demonstrated to exist between specific schools, this is a strong reason for pluralism about those schools. Finally, I provide suggestions on how to distinguish strong from weak complementarity. (shrink)

The ecological crisis demonstrates the inadequacy of current modes of thought to grasp the nature of reality and to act accordingly. A more sophisticated metaphysical system is necessary. Arran Gare, a prominent Australian philosopher, has produced such a system, which takes into account the post modern sciences of non-linear thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, and complexity theory. The present article promotes a cosmology based on Gare's metaphysics. In contrast to modern science, the postmodern account offered here will come to terms with (...) a world governed by indifference, which is the same indifference that Albert Camus describes as "absurd". Camus will be interpreted in light of Gare's metaphysics. (shrink)

Sense-perceptions do not have to be deciphered if their contents are to be uploaded, the reason being that they are presentations, not representations. Linguistic expressions do have to be deciphered if their contents are to be uploaded, the reason being that they are representations, not presentations. It is viciously regressive to suppose that information-bearing mental entities are categorically in the nature of representations, as opposed to presentations, and it is therefore incoherent to suppose that thought is mediated by expressions (...) or, therefore, by linguistic entities. Attempts to neutralize this criticism inevitably overextend the concept of what it is to be a linguistic symbol, the result being that such attempts eviscerate the very position that it is their purpose to defend. Also, it is inherent in the nature of such attempts that they assume the truth of the view that for a given mental entity to bear this as opposed to that information is for that entity to have this as opposed to that causal role. This view is demonstrably false, dooming to failure the just-mentioned attempts to defend the contention that thought is in all cases mediated by linguistic symbols. (shrink)

This article is about a very important metaphysical concept, macrocosm/microcosm and its appearance in Doric thought which in turn influenced Socrates and Plato. But since this concept has been gainsaid and negated in recent articles and distorted by some ancient thinkers it will be necessary to conduct reconstructive surgery to restore it to its pristine condition. Hopefully, this paper will illustrate how metaphysics is done with the use of the Mind's eye, in the reading of reality that was part (...) and parcel of the Greek mind but also in understanding the ancient Greeks themselves and their culture especially in the creation of the classical republican form of government. This account will discuss what macrocosm/microcosm is, its part in the Cosmos and hence its centrality in the Natural Law and in philosophy (wisdom). Second, it will prove the concept thru another natural law principle, righteousness. Third, point out it's provenance in Doric thought. In a corollary, it points to what the impact macrocosm/microcosm has on the true meaning "to be a lover of wisdom" and its importance in the concept of theosis. More than a research/academic article, this paper is also an exposition in which it will attempt to demonstrate the use and the mechanics of this principle by using a saying of Homer and the tripartite paradigm of the family. (shrink)

In an era of dramatic technological progress, the consequent economic transformations, and an increasing need for an adaptable workforce, the importance of education has risen to the forefront of the social discourse. The concurrent increase in the awareness of issues pertaining to social justice and the debate over what this justice entails and how it ought to be effected, feed into the education policy more than ever before. From the nexus of the aforementioned considerations, a concern over the so-called education (...) gap has emerged, with worldwide efforts to close it. I analyse the premises behind such efforts and demonstrate that they are founded upon fundamentally flawed ideas. I show that in a society in which education is delivered equitably, education gaps emerge naturally as a consequence of differentiation due to talents, the tendency for matched mate selection, and the heritability of intellectual traits. Hence, I issue a call for a refocusing of efforts from the ill-founded idea of closing the education gap, to the understanding of the magnitude of its unfair contributions, as well as to those social aspects which can modulate it in accordance to what a society deems fair according to its values. (shrink)

Intellectual attention, like perceptual attention, is a special mode of mental engagement with the world. When we attend intellectually, rather than making use of sensory information we make use of the kind of information that shows up in occurent thought, memory, and the imagination (Chun, Golomb, & Turk-Browne, 2011). In this paper, I argue that reflecting on what it is like to comprehend memory demonstratives speaks in favour of the view that intellectual attention is required to understand memory demonstratives. (...) Moreover, I argue that this is a line of thought endorsed by Gareth Evans in his Varieties of Reference (1982). In so doing, I improve on interpretations of Evans that have been offered by Christopher Peacocke (1984), and Christoph Hoerl & Theresa McCormack (a coauthored piece, 2005). In so doing I also improve on McDowell’s (1990) criticism of Peacocke’s interpretation of Evans. Like McDowell, I believe that Peacocke might overemphasize the role that “memory-images” play in Evans’ account of comprehending memory demonstratives. But unlike McDowell, I provide a positive characterization of how Evans described the phenomenology of comprehending memory demonstratives. (shrink)

This chapter examines two premises of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) - that emotions are caused by beliefs and that those beliefs are represented in the mind as words or images. Being a philosophical examination, the chapter also seeks to demonstrate that these two premises essentially are philosophical premises. The chapter begins with a brief methodological suggestion of how to properly evaluate the theory of CBT. From there it works it way from examining the therapeutic practice of capturing the mental representations that (...) supposedly elicit emotional reactions to examining the assumption that emotions are caused by beliefs. The chapter ends by briefly pointing to some consequences of what has been said to the practice of CBT. (shrink)

In this article, I draw attention to the value of community in John Mbiti’s philosophy using his famous axiom by reconciling the tension between the individual and community his philosophy envisages. To do this, I offer a reconstruction of Mbiti’s communitarian axiom: “I am because we are; and since we are, therefore I am.” Mbiti is considered one of the forerunners of the communitarian debate in African philosophy. His axiom, which describes his idea of Afro-communitarianism, accounts for the importance of (...) individual and community in thinking about social existence in African thought. However, Mbiti’s argument for the direct influence of the community in the formation of the individual is taken to mean the supremacy of the community over the individual. Mbiti’s concept of community has implications for the idea of personhood in that it raises the question of individual agency. This has affected the reception of Mbiti’s contribution to the idea of community in African political thought. While Mbiti’s contributions to Afro-communitarianism transcend the discourse of personhood, I argue that maximising the potential of his idea requires reconstruction and a critical analysis of his axiom. In doing that, I demonstrate that a possible relationship exists between the “I” and “we” in his axiom that represents a harmony between the community and individual and does not suggest a primacy of either but the significance of community. This analysis will enable fair engagement with Mbiti’s conception of community. (shrink)

Abstract: It is assumed that thought experiments are devices of imagination that can yield us beliefs constituting knowledge. Nevertheless, how thought experiments work to provide positive epistemic status is a controversial matter. One of the main approaches available in the literature to account for thought experiments is the so-called Argument View. Advocates of this view argue that thought experiments have no epistemic significance. They claim that there is not anything distinctive about thought experiments because they (...) work just like arguments. In this paper, we challenge the argument view by presenting several objections that expose its implausibility. Explicitly, we examine fundamental aspects of the view – which involve the notions of “argument” and “inference” – to demonstrate that a thinker who comes to know something through the execution of a thought experiment will hardly be considered as effectively having executed an argument or a process of inferential reasoning. -/- . (shrink)

This essay examines the contributions of Greek philosopher and theologian Christos Yannaras to the question of the relationship between faith and reason. Although a comprehensive analysis of the entire body of his work is beyond the scope of this project, we will attempt to demonstrate through a selective survey, from the early `On the Absence and Unknowability of God' (1970) to the later `The Effable and the Ineffable' (1999), that he presents a convincing `third way' between rationalism and deism. We (...) will argue that Yannaras accomplishes this by methodologically deconstructing the presuppositions of rationalism and advocating for a more `empirically correct' approach grounded in apophaticism and social verification of knowledge. In doing so, he introduces a paradigm that not only challenges the binary opposition between faith and reason but also establishes a distinctive point of encounter between Orthodox Christian theology and contemporary philosophical discourse. (shrink)

Against several recent interpretations, I argue in this paper that Immanuel Kant's support for enlightened absolutism was a permanent feature of his political thought that fit comfortably within his larger philosophy, though he saw such rule as part of a transition to democratic self-government initiated by the absolute monarch himself. I support these contentions with (1) a detailed exegesis of Kant’s essay "What is Enlightenment?" (2) an argument that Kantian republicanism requires not merely a separation of powers but also (...) a representative democratic legislature, and (3) a demonstration that each stage of a democratic transition can potentially be in an absolute monarch’s short-run self-interest. I conclude the paper by defending Kant's theory of democratization against charges of consequentialism and paternalism and by pointing out its similarity to other accounts of democratic transitions (for example, those of Samuel Huntington and Guillermo O'Donnell), suggesting a previously unnoticed opportunity for cross-fertilization between political philosophy and comparative politics. (shrink)

The idea about this special issue came from a paper published as an updated and upridged version of an older memorial lecture given by Brian D. Josephson and Michael Conrad at the Gujarat Vidyapith University in Ahmedabad, India on March 2, 1984. The title of this paper was “Uniting Eastern Philosophy and Western Science” (1992). We thought that this topic deserves to be revisited after 25 years to demonstrate to the scientific community which new insights and achievements were attained (...) in this fairly broad field during this period. (shrink)

At present universities are devoted to the acquisition of specialized knowledge and technological know-how. They fail to do what they most need to do: help the public acquire a good understanding of what our problems are, what needs to be done to solve them. Universities do not even conceive of their task in that way. The result is that the public, by and large, fails to appreciate just how serious the problems that face us are, and so fails to put (...) pressure on governments to act in the ways that are required. -/- Modern science and technology make possible modern industry and agriculture, modern power production and travel, modern hygiene and medicine, modern armaments: these in turn have led to much that is of great benefit, but also to the global problems that threaten our future. Science divorced from the capacity to solve problems of living wisely is a disaster. It is that disaster that academia, as at present constituted, is designed to produce – and has produced: the modern world. We have to learn how to solve the grave global problems that confront us. That in turn requires that our institutions of learning – our schools and universities – are designed and devoted to the job. At present they are not. In giving priority to the pursuit of knowledge, they fail to do what most needs to be done and, even worse, are the source of our problems. It is absolutely vital, for the future of humanity, that universities are transformed radically so that they give absolute priority to the all-important task of helping the public come to understand what our problems are, and what we need to do about them. And as a result get governments to act. -/- The book demonstrates that universities as at present constituted violate reason and, as a result, betray humanity. Cure universities of their structural irrationality, and they would come actively to promote actions required to solve global problems, and help humanity make progress toward a better world. The book spells out in detail the changes that need to be made to academic inquiry, why they need to be made, and how they would enable universities to empower humanity to solve current global problems. (shrink)

This book's core is exploring Islam Tan Malaka, later characterized as progressive Islamic thought. To demonstrate this, the author uses the theory sociology of knowledge formulated by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, as well as the philosophy of science of critical realism formulated by Roy Bhaskar, as an approach to analysis. The result is the concept of Madilog as a progressive Islamic method that gave birth to the concept of monotheism as the foundation for the existence of social (...) justice, which later became the foundation for Human Rights (HAM), gender equality, pluralism, and unity of ummah. These concepts are conditionally interconnected based on the principle of causality and the laws of dialectics. This conceptual construction is what the author calls progressive Islam Tan Malaka. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 47, Issue 1, pp 85 - 107 The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of Henri Bergson to the philosophical development of Jean-Paul Sartre’s thought. Despite Sartre’s early enthusiasm for Bergson’s description of consciousness, and the frequent references to Bergson in Sartre’s early work, there has been virtually no analysis of the influence of Bergson’s thought on Sartre’s development. This paper addresses this deficit. The first part of the paper explores Sartre’s analysis (...) of the function of the imagination in his two early works on the subject, _The Imagination_, and _The Imaginary_. I argue that many of Sartre’s central criticisms of what he calls “the illusion of immanence” can be traced back to Bergson, and that, despite Sartre’s rejection of Bergson’s account of consciousness, Sartre’s account of the imagination is still heavily indebted to Bergson’s logic of multiplicities. The second part argues that Sartre’s analysis of the imagination leads, in _Being and Nothingness_, to an account of freedom that still bears traces of his early Bergsonism, even if it reverses the direction of Bergson’s own analysis of freedom. (shrink)

The movement called Experimental Philosophy (‘x-Phi’) has now passed its tenth anniversary. Its central insight is compelling: When an argument hinges on accepting certain ‘facts’ about human perception, knowledge, or judging, the evoking of relevant intuitions by thought experiments is intended to make those facts seem obvious. But these intuitions may not be shared universally. Experimentalists propose testing claims that traditionally were intuition-based using real experiments, with real samples. Demanding that empirical claims be empirically supported is certainly reasonable; though (...) experiments are not necessarily the only means available. When experiments are conducted, adequately interpreting their results requires understanding the study’s design (and possibly flaws) that produced them. Experiment-based reports should document the design clearly. If Plato, writing his Meno, replaced accounts of Socrates demonstrating geometry to a slave-boy, with a survey of 100 real boys—some grasping his demonstrations, others not—what conclusions could be reached? Before answering, the reader needs details on key design questions, including (among others): (a) What population are these samples intended to represent? (E.g., ‘all slave boys’?; ‘math-ignorant people’?; ‘everyone’?) (b) What statistical tests were conducted, on what assumptions? (c) How was ‘significance’ of results determined? (d) Was the test instrument’s validity established? For readers wishing to explore x-Phi’s potentials, as contributors or as interpreters of their findings, this paper offers some cautionary considerations. Throughout their literature, examples can be found casting doubt on some experimentalists’ findings, due to design-related issues. Increased awareness of methodological questions would tighten the x-phi literature, going forward . (shrink)

This is a very short book review of a recent volume on the philosophy of Gareth Evans with special attention to work on first-person reference.

This paper is largely exegetical/interpretive. My goal is to demonstrate that some criticisms that have been leveled against the program Gareth Evans constructs in The Varieties of Reference (Evans 1980, henceforth VR) misfire because they are based on misunderstandings of Evans’ position. First I will be discussing three criticisms raised by Tyler Burge (Burge, 2010). The first has to do with Evans’ arguments to the effect that a causal connection between a belief and an object is insufficient for that belief (...) to be about that object. A key part of Evans’ argument is to carefully distinguish considerations relevant to the semantics of language from considerations relevant to the semantics (so to speak) of thought or belief (to make the subsequent discussion easier, I will henceforth use ‘thought’ as a blanket term for the relevant mental states, including belief). I will argue that Burge’s criticisms depend on largely not taking account of Evans’ distinctions. Second, Burge criticizes Evans’ account of ‘informational content’ taking it to be inconsistent. I will show that the inconsistency Burge finds depends entirely on a misreading of the doctrine. Finally, Burge takes Evans to task for a perceived over-intellectualization in a key aspect of his doctrine. Burge incorrectly reads Evans as requiring that the subject holding a belief be engaged in certain overly intellectual endeavors, when in fact Evans is only attributing these endeavors to theorists of such a subject. Next, I turn to two criticisms leveled by John Campbell (Campbell, 1999). I will argue that Campbell’s criticisms are based on misunderstandings – though they do hit at deeper elements of Evans’ doctrine. First, Campbell reads Evans’ account of demonstrative thought as requiring that the subject’s information link to an object allows her to directly locate that object in space. Campbell constructs a case in which one tomato (a) is, because of an angled mirror, incorrectly seen as being at a location that happens to be occupied by an identical tomato (b). Campbell claims that Evans’ doctrines require us to conclude that the subject cannot have a demonstrative thought about the seen tomato (a), though it seems intuitively that such a subject would be able to have a demonstrative thought about that tomato, despite its location is inaccurately seen. I show that Evans’ position in fact allows that the subject can have a demonstrative thought about the causal-source tomato in this case because his account does not require that the location of demonstratively identified objects be immediately accurately assessed. What is crucial is that the subject have the ability to accurately discover the location. Second, Campbell criticizes Evans’ notion of a fundamental level of thought. I show that this criticism hinges on view of the nature and role of the fundamental level of thought that mischaracterizes Evans’ treatment of the notion. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate that in Emmanuel Levinas’ thinking, justice is the necessary opening – and dissolution- of the “I” which makes fecundity – procreation – possible, and that in that same measure makes possible that the Logos transforms into a “desire to say” and the world into a “among us”. At the same time it wants to demonstrate that this notion of justice is directly related to the ideas of expression and nudity. Due to which the “Other” imposes (...) itself in front of the “same” , as man, singular and vulnerable, and that in the same measure it is linked to the notion of the Face and its particular mode of manifestation. In this respect, we propose that justice. As long as necessary condition, can fund an ethically constituted world, where an “erotic order” mandates over logic orderings. (shrink)

It is often supposed one can draw a distinction, among the assumptions on which an inference rests, between certain background assumptions and certain more salient, or foregrounded, assumptions. Yet what may such a fore-v-background structure, or such structures, consist it? In particular, how do they relate to consciousness? According to a ‘Boring View’, such structures can be captured by specifying, for the various assumptions of the inference, whether they are phenomenally conscious, or access conscious, or else how easily available they (...) are to such consciousness. According to an ‘Interesting View’, there are fore-v-background structures over and above such classifications. The chapter gestures at reasons for thinking that an Interesting View at least merits exploration. The paper discusses some recent contributions to such a view in analytical philosophy; some remarks in Husserl on what he dubbed the horizonal dimension of acts of consciousness; and psychological work on the role of gist or schema representations in perception and memory. It is proposed that background assumptions can figure in consciousness by being as it were condensed into a consciously, though inattentively, entertained notion of their overall thematic gist, where this thematic gist gives the drift of a possible elucidation of how or why such-and-such salient grounds mean that so-and-so conclusion holds. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine a number of justifications for environmental concern, and show why all except for the (broadly) anthropocentric demonstrate problematic conservative logics that incline them towards socially conservative positions. Environmentalists would do best to take up an anthropocentric, or at least anthropogenic, defence of green values if they want to pair it with a progressive social politics.

Wittgenstein held that Russell’s multiple relation theory of judgment fails to explain an atomic judgment’s representation of entities as combined. He demonstrated this failure as follows. Under the multiple relation theory, an atomic judgment is a complex whose relating relation is judgment, the universal, and whose terms include the entities the judgment represents as combined. Taking such a complex we may arrive through the substitution of constituents at a complex whose relating relation is again judgment but whose terms do not (...) include entities which are logically suited for combination. This second judgment complex will not represent any of its terms as combined, for entities that are logically uncombinable are unrepresentable as combined. Russell’s theory does not, however, explain how the original judgment differs from the complex arrived at by the substitution of constituents such that the former but not the latter represents certain of its terms as combined. (shrink)

Madness and Modernism is undoubtedly one of the most profound and perspicacious treatments of an illness that is utterly baffling to most laypersons and academics alike. Sass artfully brings together two obscure, complex, and unnerving realms -- the schizophrenic and the modern and postmodern aesthetic -- into mutual enlightenment. The comparisons between schizophrenic symptoms such as loss of ego boundaries, perspectival switching, and world catastrophe with modern literature and art is so adroit that it is almost eerie. The reader finds (...) herself peering into a borderline incomprehensible realm with increasing levels of clarity, by which she gains insight into the utterly chaotic, confused, and bizarre. The lucidity Sass brings to the obscure and confused is a reflection of the many contradictions he introduces to his readers as being entirely paradigmatic of both madness and modernism: that of desiring human contact but also shunning it entirely, of being both afflicted by disease but also exercising a sort of agency, and indeed, an ideal intellectual freedom within the confines of such an affliction, of moving both towards an objectifying materiality of the external world and a total subjectivization of perception, of the tendency towards the hyperabstract and the utterly concrete (between being too "far away" or "too close," respectively). Sass is able to make sense of a world in which these contradictions exist side by side simultaneously, and the disconcerting confusion this causes is palpable to the reader. Sass demonstrates not only his penetrating intellect, but also his unwavering patience and empathy, both in the treatment of the subject matter and the treatment of the subjects suffering from this extraordinary illness. The book is required reading for anyone interested in phenomenological psychiatry, or even psychiatry more generally. (shrink)

Conceptualism is the thesis that, for any perceptual experience E, (i) E has a Fregean proposition as its content and (ii) a subject of E must possess a concept for each item represented by E. We advance a framework within which conceptualism may be defended against its most serious objections (e.g., Richard Heck's argument from nonveridical experience). The framework is of independent interest for the philosophy of mind and epistemology given its implications for debates regarding transparency, relationalism and representationalism, (...) class='Hi'>demonstrative thought, phenomenal character, and the speckled hen objection to modest foundationalism. (shrink)

Perceptual processes differ from cognitive, this paper argues, in functioning to be causally controlled by proximal stimuli, and being modular, at least in a modest sense that excludes their being isotropic in Jerry Fodor's sense. This claim agrees with such theorists as Jacob Beck and Ben Phillips that a function of stimulus-control is needed for perceptual status. In support of this necessity claim, I argue, inter alia, that E.J. Green's recent architectural account misclassifies processes deploying knowledge of grammar as perceptual. (...) _Pace_ Beck and Phillips, however, I argue a function of stimulus-control is insufficient for perceptual as opposed to cognitive status. One consideration in favour of such insufficiency, noted but (I argue) not convincingly rebutted by these theorists, concerns perpetually grounded demonstrative thought. Two other considerations trade on the fact that a function of stimulus-control can arise not from blind nature but intentional design or social institutions, where so-functioning processes may but need not be perceptual. I offer two cases where such processes are cognitive, viz. skilful play-by-play announcing of ongoing events, and voluntary visualizing of ongoing events under the guidance of apt play-by-play announcements, dubbed announcement-driven visualizing (ADV). The cognitive status of these three diverse phenomena cannot be explained by an absence of a perception-like representational format or content (for ADV has such) or by a presence of personal-level mental states causally mediating between stimuli and outputs (for perception has such). A bettter explanation invokes, I argue, the non-modular character of the generating process. (shrink)

Perception of a property (e.g. a colour, a shape, a size) can enable thought about the property, while at the same time misleading the subject as to what the property is like. This long-overlooked claim parallels a more familiar observation concerning perception-based thought about objects, namely that perception can enable a subject to think about an object while at the same time misleading her as to what the object is like. I defend the overlooked claim, and then use (...) it to generate a challenge for a standard way of thinking about the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. Put informally, that view holds that just as we can mislead others by saying something false, illusory experience misleads by misrepresenting how things stand in the world. I argue that we ought to abandon this view in favour of some radical alternative account of the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. (shrink)