Family members can provide crucial support to individuals participating in clinical trials. In research on the “newest frontier” of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS)—the use of DBS for psychiatric conditions—family member support is frequently listed as a criterion for trial enrollment. Despite the significance of family members, qualitative ethics research on DBS for psychiatric conditions has focused almost exclusively on the perspectives and experiences of DBS recipients. This qualitative study is one of the first to include both DBS recipients and their (...) family members as interview participants. Using dyadic thematic analysis—an approach that takes both the individuals and the relationship as units of analyses—this study analyzes the complex ways in which family relationships can affect DBS trial participation, and how DBS trial participation in turn influences family relationships. Based on these findings, we propose ways to improve study designs to better take family relationships into account, and better support family members in taking on the complex, essential roles that they play in DBS trials for psychiatric conditions. (shrink)

I argue that the ability to compute phrase structure grammars is indicative of a particular kind of thought. This type of thought that is only available to cognitive systems that have access to the computations that allow the generation and interpretation of the structural descriptions of phrase structure grammars. The study of phrase structure grammars, and formal language theory in general, is thus indispensable to studies of human cognition, for it makes explicit both the unique type of human thought and (...) the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which this thought is made possible. (shrink)

The philosophy of measurement studies the conceptual, ontological, epistemic, and technological conditions that make measurement possible and reliable. A new wave of philosophical scholarship has emerged in the last decade that emphasizes the material and historical dimensions of measurement and the relationships between measurement and theoretical modeling. This essay surveys these developments and contrasts them with earlier work on the semantics of quantity terms and the representational character of measurement. The conclusions highlight four characteristics of the emerging research program in (...) philosophy of measurement: it is epistemological, coherentist, practice oriented, and model based. (shrink)

While Wittgenstein harked back to Romantic sentiments concerning the ineffable connection between musical depth and knowledge of human inner life, he nonetheless responded to them critically, while at the same time interweaving them into his forward thinking about the philosophic entanglements of language and the mind. In this paper I offer a thorough reading of Wittgenstein’s reorientation of metaphors of musical depth in a way that is conducive to a conception of knowledge of human beings which pushes beyond the inner/outer (...) dichotomy. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and writings attest the extraordinary importance that the art of music had for him. It would be fair to say even that among the great philosophers of the twentieth century he was one of the most musically sensitive. Wittgenstein’s Denkbewegungen contains some of his most unique remarks on music, which bear witness not only to the level of his engagement in thinking about music, but also to the intimate connection in his mind between musical acculturation, the perils (...) of modernity, and the challenge, which was very personal to Wittgenstein, of philosophizing amidst what he believed was a dissolution of the resemblances which unite his culture’s ways of life. In particular, Denkbewegungen contains unique remarks on modern music, the problem of Gustav Mahler’s music, and the music of the future. Also, it contains, among other things, some unusually forward-looking remarks on the differences between Brahms and Bruckner, which both probe deeply into the nature of musical creativity and anticipate his later philosophical move beyond the inner/outer divide in his last writings. I shall offer a close reading of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music in Denkbewegungen, which situates them in the broader context of his philosophical development in his middle-period and beyond. I aim to show the deep integration of Wittgenstein’s thinking about music with his philosophical development, his deep sense of cultural lamentation, and his development as a person and as a philosophical expositor. (shrink)

In this paper we explain Wittgenstein’s claim in a 1933 lecture that “aesthetics like psychoanalysis doesn’t explain anything away.” The discussions of aesthetics are distinctive: Wittgenstein gives a positive account of the relationship between aesthetics and psychoanalysis, as contrasted with psychology. And we follow not only his distinction between cause and reason, but also between hypothesis and representation, along with his use of the notion of ideals as facilitators of aesthetic discourse. We conclude that aesthetics, like psychoanalysis, preserves the verifying (...) phenomena in their fullness. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s later remarks on music, those written after his return to Cambridge in 1929 in increasing intensity, frequency, and elaboration, occupy a unique place in the annals of the philosophy of music, which is rarely acknowledged or discussed in the scholarly literature. These remarks reflect and emulate the spirit and subject matter of Romantic thinking about music, but also respond to it critically, while at the same time they interweave into Wittgenstein’s forward thinking about the philosophic entanglements of language and (...) the mind, and also his pervasive pessimism as a philosopher of culture. In this essay I explore and explicate some of the major tenets of this unique position. I argue that Wittgenstein appropriates the Romantic focus on the specificity of musical expression by means of the idea that gesture consists in complex vertical interrelations between language games. Understanding what a musical passage is about logically presupposes a myriad of correlate moves in the entire range of our language-games. Wittgenstein explicates the notion of musical aboutness in terms of intransitive understanding, which expresses an internal relation conjoining musical gesture and our culture, our entire life in practice, whereupon the related concepts cannot be identified independently of the relation which holds them together. Wittgenstein responds to the Romantic focus on the unique knowledge of human life which is afforded by musical experience with his idiosyncratic later notion of Menschenkenntnis. I conclude that, in the context of Wittgenstein’s late work, ineffability pertaining to musical meaning is not a shortcoming, but rather constitutional of the type of games, which admit what Wittgenstein calls ‘imponderable evidence’, or indefiniteness. (shrink)

The creative aspect of language use provides a set of phenomena that a science of language must explain. It is the “central fact to which any signi- ficant linguistic theory must address itself” and thus “a theory of language that neglects this ‘creative’ aspect is of only marginal interest” (Chomsky 1964: 7–8). Therefore, the form and explanatory depth of linguistic science is restricted in accordance with this aspect of language. In this paper, the implications of the creative aspect of language (...) use for a scientific theory of language will be discussed, noting the possible further implications for a science of the mind. It will be argued that a corollary of the creative aspect of language use is that a science of language can study the mechanisms that make language use possible, but that such a science cannot explain how these mechanisms enter into human action in the form of language use. (shrink)

This article explains Wittgenstein's distinction between good, bad, and vacuous modern music which he introduced in a diary entry from January 27, 1931. I situate Wittgenstein's discussion in the context of Oswald Spengler's ideas concerning the decline of Western culture, which informed Wittgenstein's philosophical progress during his middle period, and I argue that the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, and Wittgenstein's critique thereof, served as an immediate link between Spengler's cultural pessimism and Wittgenstein's threefold distinction. I conclude that Wittgenstein's distinction (...) between bad and vacuous modern music is analogous to Schenker's distinction between the compositional fallacies of the progressive and the reactionary composers of his time. Concomitantly, Wittgenstein's philosophically problematic notion of good modern music transcended the conceptual framework of both Schenker and Spengler. In this context, I examine Wittgenstein's remarks on Gustav Mahler as well as his remark on the music of the future as monophony, which, I conclude, should be understood ultimately as an ellipsis of his much later view of musical meaning and intelligibility. (shrink)

I show that there are good arguments and evidence to boot that support the language as an instrument of thought hypothesis. The underlying mechanisms of language, comprising of expressions structured hierarchically and recursively, provide a perspective (in the form of a conceptual structure) on the world, for it is only via language that certain perspectives are avail- able to us and to our thought processes. These mechanisms provide us with a uniquely human way of thinking and talking about the world (...) that is different to the sort of thinking we share with other animals. If the primary function of language were communication then one would expect that the underlying mechanisms of language will be structured in a way that favours successful communication. I show that not only is this not the case, but that the underlying mechanisms of language are in fact structured in a way to maximise computational efficiency, even if it means causing communicative problems. Moreover, I discuss evidence from comparative, neuropatho- logical, developmental, and neuroscientific evidence that supports the claim that language is an instrument of thought. (shrink)

Klein, Nguyen, & Zhang (in press) argued that the evolutionary transition from respondent to agent during the Cambrian Explosion would be a promising vantage point from which to gain insight into the evolution of organic sentience. They focused on how increased competition for resources -- in consequence of the proliferation of new, neurally sophisticated life-forms -- made awareness of the external world (in the service of agentic acts) an adaptive priority. The explanatory scope of Klein et al (in (...) press) was limited to consideration of the conscious apprehension of externally sourced content – i.e., content delivered from the sensory registration of objects occupying phenomenal space. But consciousness – at least for humans -- takes its objects from internal as well as external sources. In the present article we extend their analysis to the question of how internally sourced content (i.e., mental states) became the object of conscious apprehension. (shrink)

In this article I want to alert investigators who are familiar only with our neuropsychological investigations of self-knowledge to our earlier work on model construction. A familiarity with this foundational research can help avert concerns and issues likely to arise if one is aware only of neuropsychological extensions of our work.

This essay explores Wittgenstein’s encounter with Stumpf’s work in Tone Psychology during a rarely studied period in Wittgenstein’s early career when he worked as a researcher in Myers’s laboratory for experimental psychology in Cambridge. I argue that Stumpf’s emphasis on the notion of musicality as the ability to characterize what is ‘musical’ about music troubled Wittgenstein’s initial formulation of his career-long adherence to the comparison between language and music. In the Tractatus the importance of internal projective relations far exceeds that (...) of arbitrariness in language. This results in the curious elision of musicality in the Tractatus, as shown in his gramophone analogy. The acknowledgment of the enormous complexity pertaining to the facts of human life remained underdeveloped in Wittgenstein’s philosophy until the anthropological turn in his middle-period. Only then do we see the blooming of the language-as-music simile and its eventual impact on Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. (shrink)

In their critique of Klein (2014a), Trafimow and Earp present two theses. First, they argue that, contra Klein, a well-specified theory is not a necessary condition for successful replication. Second, they contend that even when there is a well-specified theory, replication depends more on auxiliary assumptions than on theory proper. I take issue with both claims, arguing that (a) their first thesis confuses a material conditional (what I said) with a modal claim (T&E’s misreading of what I said), (...) and (b) their second thesis has the unfortunate consequence of refuting their first thesis. (shrink)

I explore and outline Wittgenstein's original response to the Romantic discourse concerning musical depth, from his middle-period on. Schopenhauer and Spengler served as immediate sources for Wittgenstein's reliance on Romantic metaphors of depth concerning music. The onset for his philosophic intervention in the discourse was his critique of Schenker's view of music and his general shift toward the 'anthropological view', which occurred at the same time. In his post-PI period Wittgenstein was able to reimagine musical depth in terms of vertically (...) interrelated language-games which facilitate Menschenkenntnis. (shrink)

This article concerns the distinction between memory-time and information-time, which appeared in Wittgenstein’s middle-period lectures and writings, and its relation to Wittgenstein’s career-long reflection about musical understanding. While the idea of “information-time” entails a public frame of reference typically pertaining to objects which persist in physical time, the idea of pure “memory-time” involves the totality of one’s present memories and expectations that do now provide any way of measuring time-spans. I argue that Wittgenstein’s critique of Augustine notion of pure memory-time (...) entails ipso facto a critique of an influential idea of musical motion, which has been recurring in the work of some major philosophers of music up until the present day. The article connects Wittgenstein’s critical remarks on the confused foundations of such “Augustinian Picture of Music” with his emphasis on the notion of phrasing or characterization in language and music. Wittgenstein’s reversal of Augustinian priorities regarding musical time brings to surface the particularity of expression and the aesthetically “right” in music, evoked by Wittgenstein’s remarks on simultaneity and tempo in music and language. Wittgenstein renders musical simultaneity as enabled by a “protocol” which inheres in musizieren, in the aptly collaborative quest for drawing in significance by means of the phrasing and re-phrasing of a passage in order to characterize it, enabling by means of such comparative investigation meaningful distinctions between right and wrong. (shrink)

In this paper I suggest that, over and above the need to explore and understand the technological newness of computer art works, there is a need to address the aesthetic significance of the changes and effects that such technological newness brings about, considering the whole environmental transaction pertaining to new media, including what they can or do offer and what users do or can do with such offerings, and how this whole package is integrated into our living spaces and activities. (...) I argue that, given the primacy of computer-based interaction in the new-media, the notion of ‘ornamentality’ indicates the ground-floor aesthetics of new-media environments. I locate ornamentality not only in the logically constitutive principles of the new-media (hypertextuality and interactivity) but also in their multiform cultural embodiments (decoration as cultural interface). I utilize Kendall Walton’s theory of ornamentality in order to construe a puzzle pertaining to the ornamental erosion of information in new-media environments. I argue that insofar as we consider new-media to be conduits of ‘real-life’, the excessive density of ornamental devices prevalent in certain new-media environments forces us to conduct our inquiries under conditions of neustic uncertainty, that is, uncertainty concerning the kind of relationship that we, the users, have to the propositional content mediated. I conclude that this puzzle calls our attention to a peculiar interrogatory complexity inherent in any game of knowledge-seeking conducted across the infosphere, which is not restricted to the simplest form of data retrieval, especially in mixed-reality environments and when the knowledge sought is embodied mimetically. (shrink)

Wittgenstein composed five original musical fragments during his transitional middle period, in which he employs musical notation as a means by which to convey his philosophical thoughts. This is an overlooked aspect of the importance of aesthetics, and musical thinking in particular, in the development of Wittgenstein’s philosophy. We explain and evaluate the way the music interlinks with Wittgenstein’s philosophical thoughts. We show the direct relation of these musical examples as precursors to some of Wittgenstein’s most celebrated ideas (the push (...) beyond the inner/outer picture, the problem of rule-following, and aspect perception). We also show how important broad aesthetic notions such as style and composition concerning the very possibility of philosophizing were to Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s experiments on rhythm (1912-13) were based on Charles Myers’s 1911 written protocols for laboratory exercises. The experiments provided an early onset for Wittgenstein’s career-long exploration of the philosophically pervasive implications of aspects. Years before the Tractatus, Wittgenstein already got a glimpse of a philosophical angle, which was bound to become very important to him not only in aesthetics, but also for his overarching philosophical development. He became interested in the possibilities of aesthetic conversation, in what we actually do when (...) we re-phrase, compare, come up with good similes in order to illuminate something definite within the space of possibility. These initial insights were bound to recede into the background for a while by the mounting demands of the Tractatus framework, only to fully bloom in Wittgenstein’s later work. (shrink)

Visitors is a hybrid art film fusing photography and music into a complex abstract texture for the attention of the viewer. It is also a requiem for our ‘New Order for the Ages’ in which humanity grows more and more technologically interconnected and communality means being alone together. We argue that Visitors can be experienced as a seeing aid designed to situate the viewer bewilderingly as needing to reacquire the capacity to see human beings as human beings. This is achieved (...) by various cinematic strategies of dépaysement, which render the familiar uncommon again by enabling us to recapture the uncanniness of what it is to be human. Most strikingly, seeing one another anew is facilitated in Visitors by the autonomous gradual musical processes of Philip Glass’s minimalist score, which not only affords a musical narrative for the imagery but also binds the film ironically to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. (shrink)

Wittgenstein’s experiments on rhythm, conducted in Charles Myers’s laboratory in Cambridge during the years 1912–13, are his earliest recorded engagement in thinking about music, not just appreciating it, and philosophizing by means of musical thinking. In this essay, I set these experiments within their appropriate intellectual, scientific, and philosophical context in order to show that, its minor scientific importance notwithstanding, this onetime excursion into empirical research provided an early onset for Wittgenstein’s career-long exploration of the philosophically pervasive implications of aspects. (...) Dramatically moving beyond the conceptual limitations, which were inscribed by Charles Myers’s scientific program, Wittgenstein got a glimpse of a philosophical angle, which was bound to become very important to him not only in aesthetics, but also for his overarching philosophical development. He became interested in what we actually do when we re-phrase, compare, come up with good similes in order to illuminate something definite within the space of possibility, so a new aspect may come to life. (shrink)

Georg Henrik von Wright was not only the first interpreter of Wittgenstein, who argued that Spengler’s work had reinforced and helped Wittgenstein to articulate his view of life, but also the first to consider seriously that Wittgenstein’s attitude to his times makes him unique among the great philosophers, that the philosophical problems which Wittgenstein was struggling, indeed his view of the nature of philosophy, were somehow connected with features of our culture or civilization. -/- In this paper I draw inspiration (...) and courage from Von Wright’s insistence that trying to understand Wittgenstein in relation to his times is a philosophic task in its own right in order to probe into a relatively obscure region in Wittgenstein’s thought: his relation to the music of his times. It is a topic, on which Von Wright, and most other prominent Wittgenstein scholars, have said very little, but it is also one, which Wittgenstein himself attested was so important to him that he felt without it he was sure to be misunderstood. -/- I offer textual and historical evidence in support of my claim that, parallel to Wittgenstein’s exposure to Spengler’s Decline of the West in 1930, he was also introduced to the music theory of Heinrich Schenker, which helped him to articulate, partly by way of critique, a complex and unique position concerning the modern music of his times, which exhibits his rejection of what Von Wright later dubbed ‘the myth of progress’. As Von Wright observed in other regions of Wittgenstein’s work, he believed also with regards to the arts and to music in particular, neither in a brilliant future nor in the good old days. -/- I argue that Wittgenstein actually made a distinction between three kinds of modern music: (a) bad modern music, which is clearly a case of confusing means for ends, the hallmark of the myth of progress, as Von Wright observed; (b) vacuous modern music, which embodies some sort of diffidence, a difficulty to see through the omnipresence of what Von Wright called (following Habermas) a ‘colonialization’ of reified measures of progress; (c) good modern music, a paradoxical notion for Wittgenstein, which betokens the unlikely yet possible striving to penetrate through what appears as dissolution of the resemblances which unite this culture’s ways of life by rendering this condition as expressible and intransitively understandable. In the context of this third category, I offer an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s complex remarks on the music of Gustav Mahler, which palpably show that the problem of good modern music and the problem of philosophizing in the time of civilization were one and the same in Wittgenstein’s mind. -/- I conclude that, with regards to Von Wright’s own critical view of the modern myth of progress, we can learn from Wittgenstein that progress in the realm of art is closely aligned with the ideal of the perfection of man, yet transcending a social or political context. It is the ideal of cultural cohesion: affinity that the arts show to other human practices and cultural artifacts of its period. Wittgenstein’s tentative notion of good modern music (and its circumscription by his notion of the music of the future) may show its true colors when viewed in the context of Von Wright’s plea not to abandon work for progress as a critical task. (shrink)

Susanne Langer’s idea of the primary apparition of music involves a dichotomy between two kinds of temporality: ‘felt time’ and ‘clock time’. For Langer, musical time is exclusively felt time, and in this sense, music is ‘time made audible’. However, Langer also postulates a ‘strong suspension thesis’: the swallowing up of clock time in the illusion of felt time. In this essay, we take issue with the ‘strong suspension thesis’, its philosophic foundation and its implications. We argue that this thesis (...) is overstated and misdirecting insofar as it purports to describe what we experience when we hear music with understanding, and that it rests on a contested presupposition concerning the conceptual primacy of memory-time. (shrink)

In this study we offer a new way of applying Kendall Walton’s theory of make-believe to musical experiences in terms of psychologically inhibited games of make-believe, which Walton attributes chiefly to ornamental representations. Reading Walton’s theory somewhat against the grain, and supplementing our discussion with a set of instructive examples, we argue that there is clear theoretical gain in explaining certain important aspects of composition and performance in terms of psychologically inhibited games of make-believe consisting of two interlaced game-worlds. Such (...) complex games can accommodate a continuous rich spectrum of congruent modes of listening, which broaches both the formalist-type and the narrativist-type. We conclude that this sort of oblique reading of Walton’s original theory actually complements and completes Walton’s recent theoretic angle concerning thoughtwriting in music by way of affording it with a suitable conception for a mechanism of appropriation for music. (shrink)

The Two Selves takes the position that the self is not a "thing" easily reduced to an object of scientific analysis. Rather, the self consists in a multiplicity of aspects, some of which have a neuro-cognitive basis (and thus are amenable to scientific inquiry) while other aspects are best construed as first-person subjectivity, lacking material instantiation. As a consequence of their potential immateriality, the subjective aspect of self cannot be taken as an object and therefore is not easily amenable to (...) treatment by current scientific methods. -/- Klein argues that to fully appreciate the self, its two aspects must be acknowledged, since it is only in virtue of their interaction that the self of everyday experience becomes a phenomenological reality. However, given their different metaphysical commitments (i.e., material and immaterial aspects of reality), a number of issues must be addressed. These include, but are not limited to, the possibility of interaction between metaphysically distinct aspects of reality, questions of causal closure under the physical, the principle of energy conservation. -/- After addressing these concerns, Klein presents evidence based on self-reports from case studies of individuals who suffer from a chronic or temporary loss of their sense of personal ownership of their mental states. Drawing on this evidence, he argues that personal ownership may be the factor that closes the metaphysical gap between the material and immaterial selves, linking these two disparate aspects of reality, thereby enabling us to experience a unified sense of self despite its underlying multiplicity. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I explain Wittgenstein’s ambivalent remarks on the music of Gustav Mahler in their proper musico-philosophical context. I argue that these remarks are connected to Wittgenstein’s hybrid conception of musical decline and to his tripartite scheme of modern music. I also argue that Mahler’s conundrum was indicative of Wittgenstein’s grappling with his own predicament as a philosopher, and that this gives concrete sense to Wittgenstein’s admission that music was so important to him that without it he was sure (...) to be misunderstood. (shrink)

Memory of past episodes provides a sense of personal identity — the sense that I am the same person as someone in the past. We present a neurological case study of a patient who has accurate memories of scenes from his past, but for whom the memories lack the sense of mineness. On the basis of this case study, we propose that the sense of identity derives from two components, one delivering the content of the memory and the other generating (...) the sense of mineness. We argue that this new model of the sense of identity has implications for debates about quasi-memory. In addition, articulating the components of the sense of identity promises to bear on the extent to which this sense of identity provides evidence of personal identity. (shrink)

Sentences that are ungrammatical and yet intelligible are instances of what I call perfectly thinkable thoughts. I argue that the existence of perfectly thinkable thoughts is revealing in regard to the question of why syntactic islands should exist. If language is an instrument of thought as understood in the biolinguistics tradition, then a uniquely human subset of thoughts is generated in narrow syntax, which suggests that island constraints cannot be rooted in narrow syntax alone and thus must reflect interface conditions (...) imposed on the output of the computational system and its mapping to external systems. (shrink)

I argue that appreciation of the phenomenon of forgetting requires serious attention to its origins and place in nature. This, in turn, necessitates metaphysical inquiry as well as empirical backing – a combination likely to be eschewed by psychological orthodoxy. But, if we hope to avoid the conceptual vacuity that characterizes too much of contemporary psychological inquiry (e.g., Klein, 2012, 2014a, 2015a, 2016a), a “big picture” approach to phenomena of interest is essential. Adopting this investigative posture turns the “received (...) view” of the relation between remembering and forgetting on its head: Rather than treated as the result of breakdowns and limitations of biologically engineered systems of remembering, forgetting is accorded elevated status as the driving force behind the evolution of organic systems of information retention. (shrink)

In this Element, the author set out to answer a twofold question concerning the importance of music to Wittgenstein's philosophical progression and the otherness of this sort of philosophical importance vis-à-vis philosophy of music as practiced today in the analytic tradition. The author starts with the idea of making music together and with Wittgenstein's master simile of language-as-music. The author traces these themes as they play out in Wittgenstein early, middle, and later periods. The author argues that Wittgenstein's overarching reorientation (...) of the concept of depth pertaining to music in the aftermath of his anthropological turn, and against the backdrop of the outlook of German Romanticism, culminates in his unique view of musical profundity 'knowledge of people'. This sets Wittgenstein's view in sharp contrast with certain convictions and debates that typify current analytically bent philosophy of music. (shrink)

This article challenges a widespread assumption, arguing that Wittgenstein and the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg had little in common beyond their shared cultural heritage, overlapping social circles in fin-de-ciecle Vienna. The article explores Wittgenstein's aesthetic inclinations and the intellectual and philosophical influences that may have reinforced them. The article culminates in an attempt to form a Wittgensteinian response to Schoenberg's dodecaphonic language and to answer the question as to why Wittgenstein and Schoenberg arrived at very different ideas about contemporary music (...) and the music of the future. (shrink)

This study explored the experiences of the newly-hired faculty in the university to acquire an in-depth and profound understanding of these experiences. It involved eight purposively chosen faculty in a semi-structured interview and focus group discussion documented in voice and video recorders. Using Colaizzi’s seven step-approach to data analysis, results revealed three paradoxical themes: the joys and struggles of teaching, successes and pains of learning, and the privileges and challenges of serving. On the one hand, the joys and struggles of (...) teaching were brought about by their adjustments in instruction. On the other hand, successes and pains of learning centered on professional growth. Finally, the privileges and challenges of serving incorporated the experiences in research, production, and extension. Generally, these teachers have experienced ups and downs in their first two years of teaching at a higher education institution. On the basis of study findings, implications and recommendations are discussed. (shrink)

Ornamentality is pervasive in the new media and it is related to their essential characteristics: dispersal, hypertextuality, interactivity, digitality and virtuality. I utilize Kendall Walton's theory of ornamentality in order to construe a puzzle pertaining to the new media. the ornamental erosion of information. I argue that insofar as we use the new media as conduits of real life, the excessive density of ornamental devices which is prevalent in certain new media environments, forces us to conduct our inquiries under conditions (...) of neustic uncertainty, that is, uncertainty concerning the kind of relationship we, the users, have to the propositional content mediated. I suggest that this puzzle calls upon us to consider what would be a viable logic of virtual discovery. (shrink)

Mirvac chief executive Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, not one usually associated with sympathy for tenants on the rental market, said earlier this year that ‘renting in Australia is generally a very miserable customer experience…the whole industry is set up to serve the owner not the tenant’ Her observation is basically correct and the solution she offers is to change the current situation where small investors, supported by generous government tax concessions, provide effectively all of the country’s private rental housing. Lloyd-Hurwitz wants Mirvac, (...) a property group currently managing over $15 billion of assets, to become an apartment landlord that would own not one or several properties like small investors currently do but rather thousands of properties to rent out. The proposal is for Mirvac to build apartment blocks and then, instead of selling individual apartments, rent them out on long-term or indefinite leases. This build-to-rent housing scheme would of course make the real estate–investment company a great deal of money. At the same time it would do very little to alleviate the current housing crisis. Such schemes are a nonstarter for people who want the security, stability and independence of home ownership, which is a very Australian aspiration that is increasingly becoming unobtainable not only for those experiencing homelessness, but also for the poor and middle-class. Those of us who care about finding a real solution to the housing crisis would do well to consider how we got into this situation in the first place, and then consider how this might inform what we do next. The following then, traces some of the historical and philosophical roots of our understanding of property and their institutionalisation via various levels of government, especially in the Australian context. (shrink)

In this essay I take the opportunity to recast some insights from my extensive study over the last decade of Wittgenstein’s remarks on music into a coherent and concise portrayal of Wittgenstein’s philosophical underpinning and upshots pertaining to his perception of the modern music scene in interwar Austria. The gist of the present essay is to show that, for better or for worse, Wittgenstein’s personal taste in music was powered by philosophical reasoning, which was organic to his philosophical development, and (...) that ultimately his philosophical attitude to the music scene of interwar Austria manifests a deeply probing gradation. I are argue that we can distinguish between four varieties of the absurd in the music of interwar Austria, according to Wittgenstein. First is the nonsensical absurd of the incapability of seeing that the nonsensicality of the form of progress is incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which straightforwardly tries to emulate the various maxims and formulations derived from the form of progress. Such nonsensically absurd music typifies progressive Romantic composers such as Richard Strauss, Max Reger, and the early Arnold Schoenberg. Second is the vacuous absurd of the incapability of seeing what the form of progress renders incomprehensible. This category pertains to music which denounces the predominantly nonsensical maxims and formulations of modernity, thus destining itself to keeping on groping for something which it cannot express. Such vacuously absurd music is best exemplified, in Wittgenstein’s mind, by Josef Labor. Third is the philosophical absurd of rendering what is incomprehensible (from the perspective of a cultured person) comprehensible within the same purview. For Wittgenstein, Mahler’s music betokens such incommensurability, evoking a relativist philosophical puzzle: whether cultural progress is real, and it is us who have been left behind, or whether culture has really been vanquished, and we are the only ones left to notice it. The very thought of an artwork of “a totally different sort” remains invariably hypothetical. Fourth is the praxeological absurd of giving rise to an auxiliary, praxeologically dislodged musical language, replacing the transparency of human gesture with exact rules of comprehensibility. From Wittgenstein’s perspective, the shunning of the expanse of lived experience in a musical language fit for the meaning-blind would be the inglorious spot assigned to Arnold Schoenberg’s vision of the music of the future. (shrink)

The epistemic position of an agent often depends on their position in a larger network of other agents who provide them with information. In general, agents are better off if they have diverse and independent sources. Sullivan et al. [19] developed a method for quantitatively characterizing the epistemic position of individuals in a network that takes into account both diversity and independence; and presented a proof-of-concept, closed-source implementation on a small graph derived from Twitter data [19]. This paper reports on (...) an open-source reimplementation of their algorithm in Python, optimized to be usable on much larger networks. In addition to the algorithm and package, we also show the ability to scale up our package to large synthetic social network graph profiling, and finally demonstrate its utility in analyzing real-world empirical evidence of ‘echo chambers’ on online social media, as well as evidence of interdisciplinary diversity in an academic communications network. (shrink)

This book discusses the two main construals of the explanatory goals of semantic theories. The first, externalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of a hermeneutic and interpretive explanatory project. The second, internalist conception, understands semantic theories in terms of the psychological mechanisms in virtue of which meanings are generated. It is argued that a fruitful scientific explanation is one that aims to uncover the underlying mechanisms in virtue of which the observable phenomena are made possible, and that a scientific (...) semantics should be doing just that. If this is the case, then a scientific semantics is unlikely to be externalist, for reasons having to do with the subject matter and form of externalist theories. It is argued that semantics construed hermeneutically is nevertheless a valuable explanatory project. (shrink)

In this paper, I first consider a famous objection that the standard interpretation of the Lockean account of diachronicity (i.e., one’s sense of personal identity over time) via psychological connectedness falls prey to breaks in one’s personal narrative. I argue that recent case studies show that while this critique may hold with regard to some long-term autobiographical self-knowledge (e.g., episodic memory), it carries less warrant with respect to accounts based on trait-relevant, semantic self-knowledge. The second issue I address concerns the (...) question of diachronicity from the vantage point that there are (at least) two aspects of self—the self of psychophysical instantiation (what I term the epistemological self) and the self of first person subjectivity (what I term the ontological self; for discussion, see Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). Each is held to be a necessary component of selfhood, and, in interaction, they are appear jointly sufficient for a synchronic sense of self (Klein SB, The self and its brain, Social Cognition, 30, 474–518, 2012). As pertains to diachronicity, by contrast, I contend that while the epistemological self, by itself, is precariously situated to do the work required by a coherent theory of personal identity across time, the ontological self may be better positioned to take up the challenge. (shrink)

This Target paper is about the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness (i.e., how is subjective experience possible given the scientific presumption that everything from molecules to minerals to minds is wholly physical?). I first argue that one of the most valuable tools in the scientific arsenal (metaphor) cannot be recruited to address the hard problem due to the inability to forge connections between the stubborn fact of subjective experience and physically grounded models of scientific explanation. I then argue that adherence (...) to the physicalist tenets of contemporary science has a limiting effect on a full appreciation of the phenomenon under discussion. (shrink)

In this paper we analyses the work of the first century Chinese philosopher Wang Chong as in part grappling with epistemology of testimony. Often portrayed as a curmudgeonly skeptic, Wang Chong actually best seen as a demanding piecemeal non-reductionist, which is to say he believed that testimony was a basic source of evidence unless subject to a defeater (non-reductionism), but also that we should evaluate testimony on a claim-by-claim basis (piecemeal) rather than accepting a whole source on the strength of (...) its reputation or authority, and finally he thought one has a strong duty to search for defeaters (demanding). We defend each of these claims as well as the fruitfulness of applying such anachronistic terminology to an ancient thinker. We end with a discussion of how Wang Chong's epistemology relates to his rhetorical method and then consider some problems he faces because of his epistemic commitments. (shrink)

I argue that our current practice of ascribing the term “ memory ” to mental states and processes lacks epistemic warrant. Memory, according to the “received view”, is any state or process that results from the sequential stages of encoding, storage and retrieval. By these criteria, memory, or its footprint, can be seen in virtually every mental state we are capable of having. This, I argue, stretches the term to the breaking point. I draw on phenomenological, historical and conceptual considerations (...) to make the case that an act of memory entails a direct, non-inferential feeling of re-acquaintance with one’s past. It does so by linking content retrieved from storage with autonoetic awareness during retrieval. On this view, memory is not the content of experience, but the manner in which that content is experienced. I discuss some theoretical and practical implications and advantages of adopting this more nuanced view of memory. -/-. (shrink)

This article builds on ideas presented in Klein (2015a) concerning the importance of a more nuanced, conceptually rigorous approach to the scientific understanding and use of the construct “memory”. I first summarize my model, taking care to situate discussion within the terminological practices of contemporary philosophy of mind. I then elucidate the implications of the model for a particular operation of mind – the manner in which content presented to consciousness realizes its particular phenomenological character (i.e., mode of presentation). (...) Finally, I discuss how the model offers a reconceptualization of the technical language used by psychologists and neuroscientists to formulate and test ideas about memory. (shrink)

The current debate concerning musical profundity was instigated, and set up by Peter Kivy in his book Music Alone (1990) as part of his comprehensive defense of enhanced formalism, a position he championed vigorously throughout his entire career. Kivy’s view of music led him to maintain utter skepticism regarding musical profundity. The scholarly debate that ensued centers on the question whether or not (at least some) music can be profound. In this study I would like to take the opportunity to (...) relate Wittgenstein’s ideas on music to this current debate, thereby achieving a twofold goal: not only to reintroduce Wittgenstein’s ideas into the current debate, but also to use the current debate as a foil to better appreciating Wittgenstein’s otherness as a philosopher of music. I argue that Wittgenstein’s unique philosophical response to the Romantic framing of the discourse concerning musical profundity —specifically, its threefold emphasis on the specificity, aboutness, and artistically exalted status of music— occasioned a view, which was bound to be glossed over by a philosophical tradition, whose origins had made it inimical to Wittgenstein’s original philosophical insights. I conclude that, in a sense, Wittgenstein occasions a paradigm shift by his philosophical thrust to undo the gravitational forces which form the current debate: the very idea of aboutness pertaining to music, and the very idea that a clear line could ever be drawn between music and language. (shrink)

Common wisdom, philosophical analysis and psychological research share the view that memory is subjectively positioned toward the past: Specifically, memory enables one to become re-acquainted with the objects and events of his or her past. In this paper I call this assumption into question. As I hope to show, memory has been designed by natural selection not to relive the past, but rather to anticipate and plan for future contingencies -- a decidedly future-oriented mode of subjective temporality. This is not (...) to say memory makes no reference to the past. But, I argue, past-oriented subjectivity is a by-product of a system designed by natural selection to help us face and respond to the "now and the next". I discuss the implications of the proposed temporal realignment for research agendas as well as the potential limitations of measures designed to explore memory by focusing on its retentive capabilities. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the Enkratic principle of rationality, according to which rationality requires that if an agent sincerely and with conviction believes she ought to X, then X-ing is a goal in her plan. We analyze the logical structure of Enkrasia and its implications for deontic logic. To do so, we elaborate on the distinction between basic and derived oughts, and provide a multi-modal neighborhood logic with three characteristic operators: a non-normal operator for basic oughts, a non-normal operator for (...) goals in plans, and a normal operator for derived oughts. We prove two completeness theorems for the resulting logic, and provide a dynamic extension of the logic by means of product updates. We illustrate how this setting informs deontic logic by considering issues related to the filtering of inconsistent oughts, the restricted validity of deontic closure, and the stability of oughts and goals under dynamics. (shrink)

I suggest that the recent, highly visible, and often heated debate over failures to replicate the results in the social sciences reveals more than the need for greater attention to the pragmatics and value of empirical falsification. It also is a symptom of a serious issue -- the underdeveloped state of theory in many areas of psychology. While I focus on the phenomenon of “social priming” -- since it figures centrally in current debate -- it is not the only area (...) of psychological inquiry to which my critique applies. I first discuss some of the key issues in the “social priming” debate and then attempt to show that many of the problems thus far identified are traceable to a lack of specificity of theory. Finally, I hint at the possibility that adherence to the materialist tenets of modern psychological theory may have a limiting effect on our full appreciation of the phenomena under scrutiny. (shrink)

Susanne Langer’s idea of the primary apparition of music involves a dichotomy between two kinds of temporality: “felt time” and “clock time.” For Langer, musical time is exclusively felt time, and in this sense, music is “time made audible.” However, Langer also postulates what we would call ‘a strong suspension thesis’: the swallowing up of clock time in the illusion of felt time. In this paper we take issue with the ‘strong suspension thesis’ and its implications and ramifications regarding not (...) only musical meaning, but also the purported metaphysics of music construed as essentially inhering in felt time. We argue that this thesis is overstated and misdirecting insofar as it purports to describe what we experience when we hear music with understanding. We discuss a selection of examples of repetitive formations, from mediaeval music to contemporary music, which show that persistent, motion-inhibiting repetition undermines the listener’s ability to identify order and coherence due to a relative inability to anticipate the next occurrence of a differentiating musical event. We argue that Langer’s one-sided view of musical temporality, which patently relies on the conceptual framework of memory time and the specious present, exemplifies what we propose to call ‘the searchlight model of musical understanding,’ wherein the constant span of illumination of the searchlight (representing the span of the specious present) moves continuously parallel to, and along, its postulated target, i.e., the music heard, as it ‘illuminates’ it. We argue that, in the last analysis, memory time conceptually presupposes the publicly identifiable means of chronometric length. One maintains the ‘strong suspension thesis’ on pain of conceptual confusion. (shrink)

This is the third draft of a paper that aims to clarify the apparent contradictions in the views presented in certain standards and other specifications of health informatics systems, contradictions which come to light when the latter are evaluated from the perspective of realist philosophy. One of the origins of this document was Klein’s discussion paper of 2005-07-02 entitled “Conceptology vs Reality” and the responses from Smith, as well as the several hours of discussions during the 2005 MIE meeting (...) in Geneva. (shrink)

Drawing on ideas from philosophy (in particular, epistemology), I argue that one of memory’s most important functions is to provide its owner with knowledge of the physical world. This knowledge helps satisfy the organism’s need to confer stability on an ever-changing reality so the objects in which it consists can be identified and reidentified. I then draw a distinction between sources of knowledge (i.e., from physical vs. subjective reality) and argue—based on evolutionary principles—that because memory was designed by natural selection (...) to interface with the physical world, knowledge acquired via sensory/perceptual experiences should be better remembered than internally generated knowledge made available by introspection. A study conducted to test this hypothesis provides support. I conclude that a serious interdisciplinary approach to issues typically considered the purview of psychology best enables researchers to craft well-specified, theoretically based hypotheses that directly target functions of the mind. (shrink)