The precarious rights of senior citizens, especially those who are highly educated and who are expected to counsel and guide the younger generations, has stimulated the creation internationally of advocacy associations and opinion leader groups. The strength of these groups, however, varies from country to country. In some countries, they are supported and are the focus of intense interest; in others, they are practically ignored. For this is reason we believe that the creation of a network of all these associations (...) is essential. The proposed network would act as a support for the already-existing policies of the United Nations’ High Commission for Human Rights, of independent experts, and of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Older People. All three have long ago recommended the creation of a recognized instrument for uniting presently scattered efforts. The proposed network, therefore, will seek to promote the international exchange of relevant expertise, and it will reinforce the commitments and actions that single countries are currently taking to meet these objectives. For example, informative public events can be organised to promote particular support initiatives and to provide an opportunity for new members of the network to be presented. The network will promote health for senior citizens, disease prevention, senior mobility, safe free time for seniors, alimentary education, protection against new risks and dangers, as well as equity in the services necessary for seniors to adopt new information and communication technologies. In the case of retired academic members, the network will promote equality with respect to continuing use of digital technologies (particularly email), continuing access to research libraries, and the guaranteed ability for seniors to fund their own research programs and to deliver free seminars. (shrink)

Functionalism would be mistaken if there existed a system of deviant relations (an “anti-mind”) that had the same functional roles as the standard mental relations. In this paper such a system is constructed, using “Quinean transformations” of the sort associated with Quine’s thesis of the indeterminacy of translation. For example, a mapping m from particularistic propositions (e.g., that there exists a rabbit) to universalistic propositions (that rabbithood is manifested). Using m, a deviant relation thinking* is defined: x thinks* p iff (...) x thinks m(p). Such deviant relations satisfy the commonly discussed functionalist psychological principles. Finally, a more complicated system of deviant relations is constructed, one satisfying sophisticated principles dealing with the self-conscious rational mind. (shrink)

This paper concerns metaphysical indeterminacy and, in particular, the issue of whether quantum mechanics gives motivation for thinking the world contains it. In a previous paper (Darby G, Pickup M. Synthese 198:1685–1710, 2021), we have offered one way to think about metaphysical indeterminacy which we take to avoid some issues arising from certain features of quantum mechanics (such as the Kochen-Specker theorem). This approach has recently been criticised by Corti (Synthese, forthcoming), and we take this opportunity to respond. Our paper (...) will therefore reply to Corti’s argument, but we also take it as a case study in ‘naturalistic metaphysics’ and hence to contribute to a more general discussion of the relationship between philosophy of science and analytic metaphysics. (shrink)

This paper provides arguments for and against M.Lotman’s (2002) contention that Y.Lotman’s seminal concept of semiosphere is of post-modernist (post-structuralist; Posner 2011) orientation. A comparative reading of the definitional components of the semiosphere, their hierarchical relationship and their interactions is undertaken against the two principal axes of space and subjectivity in the light of Kantian transcendental idealism, as inaugural and authoritative figure of modernity, the Foucauldian discursive turn and the Deleuzian (post) radical empiricism (sic), as representative authors of the highly (...) versatile post-modernvernacular. This comparative reading aims at highlighting not only similarities and differences between the Lotmanian conceptualization of the semiosphere and the concerned modernist and postmodernist authors, but the construct’s operational relevance in a post-metanarratives cultural predicament that has been coupled with the so-called spatial turn in cultural studies (Hess- Luttich 2012). (shrink)

I’m to push back on Hill’s (2022) criticism in four ways. First: we need some context for the debate that occurred in the pages of the Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective that so concerns Hill. Second: getting precise with our terminology (and not working with stereotypes) is the only theoretically fruitful way to approach the problem of conspiracy theories. Third: I address Hill’s claim there is no evidence George W. Bush or Tony Blair accused their critics, during the build-up (...) the invasion of Iraq in 2003ACE, as being “conspiracy theorists.” Fourth (and finally): I will gently suggest that Hill has succumbed to a stereotypical view of work in Philosophy on conspiracy theories. (shrink)

This paper begins with a brief summary of the Self-consciousness Argument, developed in the author’s paper “Self-consciousness.” (This argument is designed to refute the extant versions of functionalism -- American functionalism, Australian functionalism, and language-of-thought functionalism.) After this summary is given, two thesis are defended. The first is that the Self-consciousness Argument is not guilty of a Fregean equivocation regarding embedded occurrences of mental predicates, as has been suggested by many commentators, including Mark McCullagh. The second thesis is that the (...) Self-consciousness Argument cannot be avoided by weakening the psychological theory upon which Ramsified functional definitions are based. Specifically, it does no good to excise psychological principles involving embedded mental predicates. Why? Because functional definitions based on the resulting sparse theories are exposed to an interesting new family of counterexamples. (shrink)

Ontological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can be defined wholly in terms of the general pattern of interaction of ontologically prior realizations. Ideological functionalism's defining tenet is that mental properties can only be defined nonreductively, in terms of the general pattern of their interaction with one another. My Self-consciousness Argument establishes: ontological functionalism is mistaken because its proposed definitions wrongly admit realizations into the contents of self-consciousness; ideological functionalism is the only viable alternative for functionalists. Michael Tooley's critique (...) misses the target: he offers no criticism of - except for an incidental, and incorrect, attack on certain self-intimation principles - and, since he himself proposes a certain form of nonreductive definition, he tacitly accepts. Finally, as with all other nonreductive definitions, Tooley's proposal can be shown to undermine functionalism's ultimate goal: its celebrated materialist solution to the Mind-Body Problem. The explanation of these points will require a discussion of: Frege-Russell disagreements regarding intensional contexts; the relationship between self-consciousness and the traditional doctrine of acquaintance; the role of self-intimation principles in functionalist psychology; and the Kripke-Lewis controversy over the nature of theoretical terms. (shrink)

Intuitions play an important role in contemporary philosophy. It is common for theories in epistemology, morality, semantics and metaphysics to be rejected because they are inconsistent with a widely and firmly held intuition. Our goal in this paper is to explore the role of epistemic intuitions in epistemology from a naturalistic perspective. Here is the question we take to be central: (Q) Ought we to trust our epistemic intuitions as evidence in support of our epistemological theories? We will understand this (...) question as employing an epistemic ‘ought’ – insofar as we aim at developing a correct epistemological theory, ought we to trust our epistemic intuitions as evidence for or against our epistemological theories? As it stands, (Q) needs further clarification. Whether something is trustworthy is relative to what (a) what it is and (b) what we’re asking it to do. Sam might trust Marie but not George to care for his children, while he might trust both to care for his pet fish. So in order to address (Q), we first need to explore two questions: What are epistemic intuitions? And what sort of epistemological theories do we want? We will take up each of these questions in the following sections. (shrink)

This project was provoked by the almost nonexistent pushback from the Democratic liberal establishment to the (2020) exoneration of Kyle Rittenhouse, despite his acknowledged killing of two Black Lives Matters protesters against the police murder of George Floyd. It builds on three prior articles arguing for the revival of ancient Dionysian practice, Haitian Vodou, and Indigenous South American shamanism to empower leftist revolution. In essence, I propose an assemblage of spiritual practices that are accessible today for the neo-colonized 99% of (...) the global population, by synthesizing and reconstructing three democratic, lower-SES, Indigenous religions, all of which share a militant defiance of their respective tyrannical plutocracies. To avoid cultural appropriation, I center these reconstructed spiritual practices on the figure of the “mage,” a psychosocial healer loosely analogous to a shaman. And the mage’s signature activity, “magic,” I redefine naturalistically as free interpersonal performative action, practiced using two theoretical disciplines (philosophy and psychology) and two practical disciplines chosen by each mage. More precisely, Spirit/Dance channels the “spirits” of dead ancestors, historical figures, legendary heroes, mythical beings, and fictional characters, into the three ultimate objectives of “mindfulness” for psyches/souls, “liberation” for mindful bodies, and “social justice” for liberated communities, indirectly empowering long-term revolution. (shrink)

The accent on scientific and empirical character of alchemy, especially from the field of the history of science, promotes the idea that one can understand the cryptic and metaphorical language of alchemy mainly through the laboratory chemical practice. As a result, the tendency is to interpret the spiritual and esoteric language of alchemy, as metaphors for laboratory work and the most representative research on historiography of alchemy that point the spiritual character as being contaminated by esoteric sciences and Victorian occultism. (...) This paper is paying attention to this dichotomy by attempting to understand the exclusivist position of the position that alchemy is a proto-chemistry and to see the consequences of such an interpretation. It is reviewed one of the most representative voices that interpret alchemy as spiritual by Carl. G. Jung and Mircea Eliade, and their rejection, as it is illustrated by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, showing the boundaries of both approaches and the hazarded character of understanding alchemy merely as part of the history of chemistry. (shrink)

In the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we created and implemented from November 2020 to February 2021 a monthly educational pilot program of philosophical management of stress based on Science, Humanism and Epicurean Pragmatism, which was offered to employees of 26 municipalities in the Prefecture of Attica, Greece. The program named “Philosophical Distress Management Operation System” (Philo.Di.M.O.S.) is novel and unique in its kind, as it combines a certain Greek philosophical tradition (Epicurean) that concurs with modern scientific knowledge. The (...) program was designed to be implemented in a period of crisis; therefore, it used a fast-paced, easy to learn and practice philosophical approach to stress management, based on cognitive psychotherapy. The philosophical approach to stress management has the advantage that it can be offered to most people, regardless of age and educational level. The pilot program was effective in achieving its objectives, shown by statistical comparisons of the trainees’ responses to anonymous questionnaires before and after the month-long training. The successful Philo.Di.M.O.S. program, thus, based on a solid scientific and philosophical basis, offers a paradigm of stress management during crises and could be useful in Greece and internationally. (shrink)

The chapter approaches the hermeneutic concept of experience introduced by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method (1960) from the perspective of the conceptual history of experience in the Western philosophical tradition. Through an overview of the concept and the epistemological function of experience (empeiria, experientia, Erfahrung) in Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Hegel, it is shown that the tradition has considered experience first and foremost in methodological terms, that is, as a pathway towards a form of scientific knowledge that is (...) itself increasingly immune to experience. Science strives “beyond” experience because of the limitations inherent in the fundamentally contingent, singular, and negative character of experience: experience comes to us through unpredictable chance encounters and in singular situations and negates, tests, or “imperils” previous knowledge, thereby transforming it. By contrast, philosophical hermeneutics rethinks experience precisely in terms of these limitations. In the hermeneutic approach articulated by Gadamer and Claude Romano, experience is an encounter with the irreducible finitude and historical situatedness of one’s understanding and conceptual framework, an encounter with an otherness that puts our preunderstanding to test and requires us to revise it. Hermeneutic experience is thus a singular event that irreparably transforms us. (shrink)

This essay—part of a larger project of constructing a new, historically informed philosophy of dance, built on four phenomenological constructs that I call “Moves”—concerns the second Move, “gesture,” the etymology of which reveals its close connection to the Greek word “metaphor.” More specifically, I examine the treatments of gesture by the philosophers George Herbert Mead and Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, both of whom view it as the foundation of language. I conclude by showing how gesture can be used in analyzing (...) various types of dance, which in turn suggests transformational potential for philosophy, dance, and society as a whole. (shrink)

Translation of "Von der Armut am Geiste; ein Dialog des jungen Lukács," by Ágnes Heller. This translation originally appeared in The Philosophical Forum, Spring-Summer 1972.

Preface/Introduction: The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself. -/- (...) What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only). -/- I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism. -/- Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.) -/- “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness. -/- As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imaginary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210) -/- Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers). -/- I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries. -/- References -/- Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP. -/- Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. -/- Gregory M. Nixon University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Email: [email protected] Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx. (shrink)

In a monograph published last year, literary theorist Mark Noble notes that, in the way Deleuze understands the relationship between materialism and subjectivity, Deleuze “also sounds curiously like Santayana.” For example, the work of both philosophers “locates human value in a source at once immanent and alien.” Noble also wonders “whether the lesson of Santayana’s own negotiation with his tendency to humanize the non-human ground of experience also anticipates the thrill Deleuze chases when positing the univocity of being.” In the (...) present article, I will attempt to elaborate on this “anticipation,” the implications of which include a greater appreciation of Santayana on the part of Deleuze enthusiasts, an understanding of both philosophers as U.S.-influenced, European quasi-pragmatists, and a decision in favor of Michael Brodrick’s recent interpretation of Santayana as a “total natural event” philosopher of mind. (shrink)

XENOLOGY AND XENOTOPOGRAPHY OF BERNHARD WALDENFELS The paper strives to adapt Bernhard Waldenfels’ xenology and so called ‘xenotopography’ for the philosophico-literary studies in fantastic world-building with a special concern of the ‘portal-quest’ model of fantasy and SF. Following Waldenfel’s remarks on the nature of post- Husserlian diastasis of our world [Heimwelt] and otherworld [Fremdwelt] and acknowledging the consequences of allocating one’s attitude towards the otherness in the symbolical borderland [‘sphere of intermonde’] in between, it is examined whether such a model (...) can occur in the fantastic literature and what may be the consequence of xenotopographic reconsideration of its basic ontological premises. Additionally, the article offers an original xenotopograpfic model of worldbuilding which addresses three carefully chosen case studies of fantastic worlds from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game tetralogy, Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and George R. R. Martin’s The Song of Ice and Fire. In the end, it is suggested that hitherto presented xenotopography gravely inspired a postmodern shift in the genres of fantasy and SF which results in more ethically conscious representations of the otherness and even more concise and alien comprehensive world-building. (shrink)

Although recent work has been done on the Barnes Foundation and its philosophical and pedagogical background, almost all the research effort has been focused on the friendship and intellectual link between John Dewey and Albert C. Barnes. Unfortunately, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of George Santayana’s philosophy on the Foundation has not been systematically examined. The hypothesis that we present and develop in this article is that Santayana’s thought is essential for the aesthetic theories elaborated within the (...) framework of the Barnes Foundation: Barnes’ theory of art criticism; Dewey’s aesthetic theory, and even Lawerence Buermeyer’s aesthetic theory. This article is a first approximation with the purpose of clarifying these philosophical, theoretical and historical relationship so as to start to fill the existing gap in contemporary literature on the topic. (shrink)

In this paper, I present and make a critical analysis of the thoughts of the Sierra Leonean philosopher George M. Carew, who is the author of one of the broadest contemporary visions of the political future of Africa. The significance of Carew's views consists mainly in the fact that he points out the importance of the concept of deliberative democracy for the African countries looking after their interests, as now they do not have any effective instruments of acting in the (...) global environment. Published in: Re-Visions and Re-Orientations: Non-European Thought in International Relations Studies, ed. by J. Zajączkowski, M.F. Gawrycki and A. Bógdał Brzezińska, Bloomsbury, London 2014, pp. 112-129. (shrink)

Review of George Berkeley. Siris. Łańcuch filozoficznych refleksji i dociekań wraz z Dodatkami. Trans. A. Grzeliński and M. Szymańska-Lewoszewska. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2013.

The persistent interpretation problem for quantum mechanics may indicate an unwillingness to consider unpalatable assumptions that could open the way toward progress. With this in mind, I focus on the work of David Bohm, whose earlier work has been more influential than that of his later. As I’ll discuss, I believe two assumptions play a strong role in explaining the disparity: 1) that theories in physics must be grounded in mathematical structure and 2) that consciousness must supervene on material processes. (...) I’ll argue that the first assumption appears to lead us toward Everett’s many worlds interpretation, which suggests a red flag. I’ll also argue that the second assumption is suspect due to the persistent explanatory gap for consciousness. Later, I explore ways that Bohm’s later work holds some promise in providing a better fit with our world, both phenomenologically and empirically. Also, I’ll address the possible problem of realism. (shrink)

George M. Searle (1839-1918) and Charles S. Peirce worked together in the Coast Survey and the Harvard Observatory during the decade of 1860: both scientists were assistants of Joseph Winlock, the director of the Observatory. When in 1868 George, a convert to Catholicism, left to enter the Paulist Fathers, he was replaced by his brother Arthur Searle. George was ordained as a priest in 1871, was a lecturer of Mathematics and Astronomy at the Catholic University of America, and became the (...) fourth superior general of his congregation from 1904 to 1909. Among the books he wrote for non-Catholic audiences was Plain Facts for Fair Minds (1895). On the 8th of August of 1895, Peirce found that book in a bookstore and the following day wrote a letter to George Searle developing his strong reservations about the question of the infallibility of the Pope. This letter (L 397) is almost unknown amongst Peirce's scholars. -/- After describing these historical circumstances as a framework, the aim of my paper is to describe Peirce's arguments against papal infallibility presented by George Searle in his book, and the contrast between the genuine scientific attitude and the putative metaphysical notion of absolute truth that is —according to Peirce— behind Searle's defense of infallibility. In this sense, Peirce's fallibilism will be explained with some detail, giving an account also of his practical infallibilism: "The assertion that every assertion but this is fallible, is the only one that is absolutely infallible. But though nothing else is absolutely infallible, many propositions are practically infallible; such as the dicta of conscience" (Minute Logic, CP 2.75, c. 1902). -/- Finally, having in mind the present interest in Peirce's religious ideas it will be suggested that some of Peirce's ideas on infallibility are nearer to contemporary understanding of that issue than Searle's defense. "I would with all my heart join the ancient church of Rome if I could. But your book," —Peirce writes to Searle— "is an awful warning against doing so." -/- . (shrink)

For the theorists of crisis, the revolutionary state comes into existence through violence, and due to its inability to provide an authoritative katechon (restrainer) against internal and external violence, it perpetuates violence until it self-destructs. Writing during extreme economic depression and growing social and political violence, the crisis theorists––Joseph de Maistre, Juan Donoso Cortés, and Carl Schmitt––each sought to blame the chaos of their time upon the Janus-faced postrevolutionary ideals of liberalism and socialism by urging a return to pre-revolutionary moral (...) and religious values. They are united by three counterrevolutionary principles, all of which are purported to remedy revolutionary violence: traditional constitutional fidelity, the philosophy of the decision, and opposition to bourgeois liberalism. This essay is followed by the first complete English translation and publication of Donoso’s letter of October 24, 1851, which contains Donoso’s only reference to the “discussing class,” a political entity later popularized by Schmitt in his 1922 work Political Theology. (shrink)

In much of the current academic and public discussion, conspiracy theories are portrayed as a negative phenomenon, linked to misinformation, mistrust in experts and institutions, and political propaganda. Rather surprisingly, however, philosophers working on this topic have been reluctant to incorporate a negatively evaluative aspect when either analyzing or engineering the concept conspiracy theory. In this paper, we present empirical data on the nature of the concept conspiracy theory from five studies designed to test the existence, prevalence and exact form (...) of an evaluative dimension to the ordinary concept conspiracy theory. These results reveal that, while there is a descriptive concept of conspiracy theory, the predominant use of conspiracy theory is deeply evaluative, encoding information about epistemic deficiency and often also derogatory and disparaging information. On the basis of these results, we present a new strategy for engineering conspiracy theory to promote theoretical investigations and institutional discussions of this phenomenon. We argue for engineering conspiracy theory to encode an epistemic evaluation, and to introduce a descriptive expression—such as ‘conspiratorial explanation’—to refer to the purely descriptive concept conspiracy theory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that both defence and criticism of the claim that humans act ‘under the guise of the good’ neglects the metaphysical roots of the theory. I begin with an overview of the theory and its modern commentators, with critics noting the apparent possibility of acting against the good, and supporters claiming that such actions are instances of error. These debates reduce the ‘guise of the good’ to a claim about intention and moral action, and in so (...) doing have become divorced from the theory's roots in classical and medieval philosophy. Aristotle and Aquinas’ ‘guise of the good’ is primarily a metaphysical claim resting on the equivalence between actuality and goodness, from which conclusions about moral action are derived. I show the reasoning behind their theory and how it forms the basis for the claims about intention and action at the centre of the modern debate. Finally, I argue that the absence of its original foundation is apparent in recent attacks on the ‘guise of the good’. It is unsurprising that modern action theory and ethics have not always been able to comfortably accommodate the ‘guise of the good’; they are only telling half of the story. (shrink)

Much discussion about experimental philosophy and philosophical methodology has been framed in terms of the reliability of intuitions, and even when it has not been about reliability per se, it has been focused on whether intuitions meet whatever conditions they need to meet to be trustworthy as evidence. But really that question cannot be answered independently from the questions, evidence for what theories arrived at by what sorts of inferences? I will contend here that not just philosophy's sources of evidence, (...) but also its inferential resources, are in great need of closer examination. (shrink)

The phenomenology of a priori intuition is explored at length (where a priori intuition is taken to be not a form of belief but rather a form of seeming, specifically intellectual as opposed to sensory seeming). Various reductive accounts of intuition are criticized, and Humean empiricism (which, unlike radical empiricism, does admit analyticity intuitions as evidence) is shown to be epistemically self-defeating. This paper also recapitulates the defense of the thesis of the Autonomy and Authority of Philosophy given in the (...) author’s “A Priori Knowledge and the Scope of Philosophy” (Philosophical Studies, 1996). (shrink)

The topic of a priori knowledge is approached through the theory of evidence. A shortcoming in traditional formulations of moderate rationalism and moderate empiricism is that they fail to explain why rational intuition and phenomenal experience count as basic sources of evidence. This explanatory gap is filled by modal reliabilism -- the theory that there is a qualified modal tie between basic sources of evidence and the truth. This tie to the truth is then explained by the theory of concept (...) possession: this tie is a consequence of what, by definition, it is to possess (i.e., to understand) one’s concepts. A corollary of the overall account is that the a priori disciplines (logic, mathematics, philosophy) can be largely autonomous from the empirical sciences. (shrink)

In _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_, Julian Jaynes presents a philosophy of mind with radical implications for contemporary discussions about artificial intelligence (AI). The ability of AI to replicate the cognitive functions of human consciousness has led to widespread speculation that AI is itself conscious (or will eventually become so). Against this functionalist theory of mind, Jaynes argues that consciousness only arises through the mythopoetic inspiration of metaphorical language. Consciousness develops and enacts new forms (...) of self-understanding, continually evolving new "metaphors of mind," metaphors which must now account for the emergence of AI. (shrink)

It is argued that, because of scientific essentialism, two currently popular arguments against the mind-body identity thesis -- the multiple-realizability argument and the Nagel-Jackson knowledge argument -- are unsatisfactory as they stand and that their problems are incurable. It is then argued that a refutation of the identity thesis in its full generality can be achieved by weaving together two traditional Cartesian arguments -- the modal argument and the certainty argument. This argument establishes, not just the falsity of the identity (...) thesis, but also the metaphysical possibility of disembodiment. (shrink)

Presented here is an argument for the existence of universals. Like Church's translation- test argument, the argument turns on considerations from intensional logic. But whereas Church's argument turns on the fine-grained informational content of intensional sentences, this argument turns on the distinctive logical features of 'that'-clauses embedded within modal contexts. And unlike Church's argument, this argument applies against truth-conditions nominalism and also against conceptualism and in re realism. So if the argument is successful, it serves as a defense of full (...) ante rem realism. The argument emphasizes the need for a unified treatment of intensional statements -- modal statements as well as statements of assertion and belief. The larger philosophical moral will be that ante rem universals are uniquely suited to carry a certain kind of modal information. Linguistic entities, mind-dependent universals, and instance-dependent universals are incapable of serving that function. (shrink)

This study provides a unified theory of properties, relations, and propositions (PRPs). Two conceptions of PRPs have emerged in the history of philosophy. The author explores both of these traditional conceptions and shows how they can be captured by a single theory.

Son dönemde yapılan araştırmalarda en mutlu şehir olarak seçilen Sinop’un yüzyıllar öncesinde bir sakini vardı ki insanlık için mutlu olmanın doğru yolunu bulmayı kendine dert edinmişti. Öğretileri Roma İmparatorluğu’nun resmi dini gibi benimsenecek, Marcus Aurelius gibi Roma Krallarının filozofu olmaktan gurur duyacağı Stoa Okulunun ve Dünya Hükümdarı Büyük İskender’in büyük övgüsüne mazhar olmuş, Sinoplu Diogenes.

This paper provides a new approach to a family of outstanding logical and semantical puzzles, the most famous being Frege's puzzle. The three main reductionist theories of propositions (the possible-worlds theory, the propositional-function theory, the propositional-complex theory) are shown to be vulnerable to Benacerraf-style problems, difficulties involving modality, and other problems. The nonreductionist algebraic theory avoids these problems and allows us to identify the elusive nondescriptive, non-metalinguistic, necessary propositions responsible for the indicated family of puzzles. The algebraic approach is also (...) used to defend antiexistentialism against existentialist prejudices. The paper closes with a suggestion about how this theory of content might enable us to give purely semantic (as opposed to pragmatic) solutions to the puzzles based on a novel formulation of the principle of compositionality. (shrink)

Cicero’s "Academica" offers a particularly rich demonstration of how the unhappy dialectic between stoicism and skepticism engages Roman historical self-consciousness. The Hegelian thesis of philosophy as mediated through historical development is given a clear articulation in the “derivative” Romans, precisely through their reception of a tradition, their experience of philosophy as inseparable from the self-consciousness of historical relation. The dispute happening in the "Academica" between a dogmatic stoicism and academic skepticism thus directly echoes the problems of contemporary 21st century philosophy (...) insofar as the structures of the unhappy consciousness endure in the “academic” give and take between the authority of received doctrine (say, of mainstream post-classical analytic philosophy) and their subversion in skeptical critique. (shrink)

Past research has identified a number of asymmetries based on moral judgments. Beliefs about what a person values, whether a person is happy, whether a person has shown weakness of will, and whether a person deserves praise or blame seem to depend critically on whether participants themselves find the agent's behavior to be morally good or bad. To date, however, the origins of these asymmetries remain unknown. The present studies examine whether beliefs about an agent's “true self” explain these observed (...) asymmetries based on moral judgment. Using the identical materials from previous studies in this area, a series of five experiments indicate that people show a general tendency to conclude that deep inside every individual there is a “true self” calling him or her to behave in ways that are morally virtuous. In turn, this belief causes people to hold different intuitions about what the agent values, whether the agent is happy, whether he or she has shown weakness of will, and whether he or she deserves praise or blame. These results not only help to answer important questions about how people attribute various mental states to others; they also contribute to important theoretical debates regarding how moral values may shape our beliefs about phenomena that, on the surface, appear to be decidedly non-moral in nature. (shrink)

The paper begins with an argument against eliminativism with respect to the propositional attitudes. There follows an argument that concepts are sui generis ante rem entities. A nonreductionist view of concepts and propositions is then sketched. This provides the background for a theory of concept possession, which forms the bulk of the paper. The central idea is that concept possession is to be analyzed in terms of a certain kind of pattern of reliability in one’s intuitions regarding the behavior of (...) the concept. The challenge is to find an analysis that is at once noncircular and fully general. Environmentalism, anti-individualism, holism, analyticity, etc. provide additional hurdles. The paper closes with a discussion of the theory’s implications for the Wittgenstein-Kripke puzzle about rule-following and the Benacerraf problem concerning mathematical knowledge. (shrink)

The National Library of Finland and the Von Wright and Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Helsinki keep the collected correspondence of Georg Henrik von Wright, Wittgenstein’s friend and successor at Cambridge and one of the three literary executors of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. Among von Wright’s correspondence partners, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees are of special interest to Wittgenstein scholars as the two other trustees of the Wittgenstein papers. Thus, von Wright’s collections held in Finland promise to shed light on (...) the context of decades of editorial work that made Wittgenstein’s later philosophy available to all interested readers. In this text, we present the letters which von Wright received from Anscombe and Rhees during the first nine months after Wittgenstein’s death. This correspondence provides a vivid picture of the literary executors as persons and of their developing relationships. The presented letters are beautiful examples of what the correspondence as a whole has to offer; it depicts – besides facts of editing – the story of three philosophers, whose conversing voices unfold the human aspects of inheriting Wittgenstein’s Nachlass. Their story does not only deal with editing the papers of an eminent philosopher, but with the attempt to do justice to the man they knew, to his philosophy and to his wishes for publication. (shrink)

The paper begins with a clarification of the notions of intuition (and, in particular, modal intuition), modal error, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, and epistemic possibility. It is argued that two-dimensionalism is the wrong framework for modal epistemology and that a certain nonreductionist approach to the theory of concepts and propositions is required instead. Finally, there is an examination of moderate rationalism’s impact on modal arguments in the philosophy of mind -- for example, Yablo’s disembodiment argument and Chalmers’s zombie argument. A less (...) vulnerable style of modal argument is defended, which nevertheless wins the same anti-materialist conclusions sought by these other arguments. (shrink)

Professor Fletcher challenges the traditional account of the development of tort doctrine as a shift from an unmoral standard of strict liability for directly causing harm to a moral standard based on fault. He then sets out two paradigms of liability to serve as constructs for understanding competing ideological viewpoints about the proper role of tort sanctions. He asserts that the paradigm of reciprocity, which looks only to the degree of risk imposed by the parties to a lawsuit on each (...) other, and to the existence of possible excusing conditions, provides greater protection of individual interests than the paradigm of reasonableness, which assigns liability instrumentally on the basis of a utilitarian calculus. Finally, Professor Fletcher examines stylistic differences between the two paradigms which may explain the modern preference for the paradigm of reasonableness. (shrink)

This commentary makes Plato’s Philebus accessible to second-year Greek readers and for scholars who read Greek only infrequently. We aim to help readers who wish to study the text more closely than translations permit. We hope readers new to Plato will be at ease with him by the time they complete the dialogue, but each page is self-contained: readers interested in only one passage need not worry that they have missed earlier remarks. Each page of the commentary contains about eight (...) numbered lines of Greek, grammar notes, and glossary. The grammar notes are numbered in correspondence with the text and identify sentence constructions, verb conjugations, and forms of nouns and adjectives that may impede readers. Each word identified in the grammar notes also offers in italics a translation that aims at intelligible—if not idiomatic—English that mirrors the grammatical construction of the Greek as far as possible. The glossary at the bottom of the page is an alphabetized list of words and idioms that appear 16 times or fewer in the text. There is a complete glossary at the back of the book. (shrink)

Revised and reprinted in Handbook of Philosophical Logic, volume 10, Dov Gabbay and Frans Guenthner (eds.), Dordrecht: Kluwer, (2003). -- Two sorts of property theory are distinguished, those dealing with intensional contexts property abstracts (infinitive and gerundive phrases) and proposition abstracts (‘that’-clauses) and those dealing with predication (or instantiation) relations. The first is deemed to be epistemologically more primary, for “the argument from intensional logic” is perhaps the best argument for the existence of properties. This argument is presented in the (...) course of discussing generality, quantifying-in, learnability, referential semantics, nominalism, conceptualism, realism, type-freedom, the first-order/higher-order controversy, names, indexicals, descriptions, Mates’ puzzle, and the paradox of analysis. Two first-order intensional logics are then formulated. Finally, fixed-point type-free theories of predication are discussed, especially their relation to the question whether properties may be identified with propositional functions. (shrink)

The history of philosophy is replete with attempts at invoking rationality as a means of directing and even subduing human desire and emotion. Understood as that which moves human beings to action, desire and emotion come to be associated with human freedom and rationality as a means of curbing that freedom. Plato, for instance, takes for granted a separation between thought and action that drives a wedge between our rational ability to exercise self-discipline and the free expression of desire and (...) emotion. Hobbes, on the other hand, replaces our internal ability for rational self-control with the external authority of the political State. So long as freedom and control are pitted against one another, human beings are incapable of attaining a symbiosis of these two elements of human action so essential to realizing true democracy. Unlike Plato, John Dewey sees in democracy the greatest potential for individual and social life. The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate how the educational philosophy of Dewey, which culminates in an educational aesthetic, appeals to and makes the most of the symbiosis of freedom and self-control, emotion and reason. Dewey’s educational aesthetic not only offers an alternative to traditional methods of education, but also demonstrates how the goal of a democratic way of life is made feasible by means of intelligently guided self-discipline—a form of self-control guided by intelligence that is not a constraint upon freedom, but instead embodies greater opportunity for freedom. I trace the basis for this synthesis, in the social-political and pedagogical principles of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Both Locke and Rousseau offer educational theories that begin turning our attention toward the essential partnership required of rationality and emotion. Dewey's educational aesthetic is then considered as a response to alienating forms of education that continue to pit control and freedom against one another, and which thwart the intellectual and emotional development necessary for autonomy and democratic forms of social organization. (shrink)