Recent work in cognitive science suggests that conscious thought plays a much less central role in the production of human behavior than most think. Partially on the basis of this work, Peter Carruthers has advanced the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. This claim is of independent interest for action theory, and its potential truth poses a problem for theories of free will and autonomy, which often take our capacity to consciously decide to be of central importance. (...) In this article, I examine the nature of conscious deciding and I argue that Carruthers fails to establish the claim that humans never consciously decide to act. (shrink)

The ways in which we exercise intentional agency are varied. I take the domain of intentional agency to include all that we intentionally do versus what merely happens to us. So the scope of our intentional agency is not limited to intentional action. One can also exercise some intentional agency in omitting to act and, importantly, in producing the intentional outcome of an intentional action. So, for instance, when an agent is dieting, there is an exercise of agency both with (...) respect to the agent’s actions and omissions that constitute her dieting behavior and in achieving the intended outcome of losing weight. In our mental lives we exercise intentional agency both in performing mental actions and when we intentionally produce certain outcomes at which our mental actions are aimed. The nature and scope of our intentional agency in our mental lives with respect to controlling the acquisition of mental states such as belief, desire, and intention is a topic that is of interest in its own right. In this essay, I will focus solely on our control over coming to believe. Understanding what sort of control we have our beliefs has far-reaching implications. For instance, theorizing about self-deception and wishful thinking is aided by theorizing about what if any intentional agency we can exercise with respect to acquiring beliefs. Another often mentioned concern that motivates thinking about doxastic agency comes from religion (when conversion requires a change of belief). We also hold persons morally and epistemically responsible for beliefs they have or fail to have. Finally, some deontological theories of epistemic justification require that agents be able to exercise a robust form of doxastic control. Fruitful work on any of these problems requires that we have an account of our intentional agency in acquiring beliefs. There are at least three loci of doxastic control. The first is over acquiring beliefs. The second is over maintaining beliefs. The third is over how we use our beliefs. I am chiefly concerned with the first locus of doxastic control in this essay, but I will say something about the second locus along the way. Also, I will only consider one way we might exercise control over acquiring beliefs. Specifically, I will present an argument against direct doxastic voluntarism (DDV). By “DDV” I mean to refer to the thesis that it is conceptually possible for agents to consciously exercise the same sort of direct voluntary control over coming to acquire a doxastic attitude—such as belief, suspension of belief, and disbelief—that they exercise over uncontroversial basic actions. If DDV is correct, then coming to believe can be a basic action-type. DDV, or something very close to it, was Bernard Williams’ target in his 1973 paper, “Deciding to Believe.” Williams’s argument is widely regarded as having been a failure. But I think that Williams was on to something in his paper. Hence, in this paper, while I do not attempt to resurrect Williams’s argument, I develop and defend a revised argument for a thesis that is quite close to Williams’s. I will proceed as follows. First, I will discuss Bernard Williams’ (1973) failed attempt at showing that DDV is conceptually impossible. This will be followed by a discussion of some constraints on our belief-forming activities. I will then clarify my target a bit more than Williams does in his original paper. Finally, I will present my own argument against the conceptual possibility of DDV. (shrink)

The main argument in this book is the undeniable openness of every system to the unknown. And the fundamental question goes: What does this openness produce? We are a part of the infinite universe and an incorporation of its wholeness. Both for us means an individualized reality, through which the universe expresses itself and on the other hand through which it is built up with. It also means our necessity, importance and indestructibility for the sum of its incorporations. Most connections (...) among ourselves are hardly conscious for us. Meanwhile the infinitesimality structure of all consciousness guarantees not only the logical lack of inconsistency of these connections but also the freedom of choice of every individual. Our goal by no means can be to decide completely consciously. Responsibility contains spontaneity or rather trust in a meaningful working together of the forces. We increasingly become aware of our role in the entire relationship and we learn to contribute optimally to the value fulfillment of all individuals, ourselves included. Beyond the supposed differences between objective and subjective reality, we at some point of awareness comprehend that we create our reality out of our innermost depths. (shrink)

A commentary is given on Trevena and Miller . The comparability of their experimental task and of the potential they recorded with those used and recorded by Libet, Gleason, Wright, and Pearl is questioned. An interpretation is given for the similarity of event-related potentials recorded when subjects decided to move and when they decided not to move.

Phenomenality and accessibility are two aspects of conscious experience. “Phenomenality” refers to the felt, experiential aspect of experience, and “accessibility” to a cognitive aspect of it: its availability in general to thought processes, reasoning, decision making, etc. In this paper, I present a dilemma for theorizing about the connection between them. Either there is a conceptual connection linking phenomenality and accessibility (i.e., it is not possible to conceive of a phenomenal experience that is not cognitively accessible for the subject) (...) or there is none but then the empirical evidence will – for principled reasons – be unable to decide the exact nature of the relationship between the two. (shrink)

Neurological syndromes in which consciousness seems to malfunction, such as temporal lobe epilepsy, visual scotomas, Charles Bonnet syndrome, and synesthesia offer valuable clues about the normal functions of consciousness and ‘qualia’. An investigation into these syndromes reveals, we argue, that qualia are different from other brain states in that they possess three functional characteristics, which we state in the form of ‘three laws of qualia’. First, they are irrevocable: I cannot simply decide to start seeing the sunset as green, or (...) feel pain as if it were an itch; second, qualia do not always produce the same behaviour: given a set of qualia, we can choose from a potentially infinite set of possible behaviours to execute; and third, qualia endure in short-term memory, as opposed to non-conscious brain states involved in the on-line guidance of behaviour in real time. We suggest that qualia have evolved these and other attributes because of their role in facilitating non-automatic, decision-based action. We also suggest that the apparent epistemic barrier to knowing what qualia another person is experiencing can be overcome by using a ‘bridge’ of neurons; and we offer a hypothesis about the relation between qualia and one's sense of self. (shrink)

Phenomenal consciousness appears to be particularly normatively significant. For this reason, sentience-based conceptions of ethics are widespread. In the field of animal ethics, knowing which animals are sentient appears to be essential to decide the moral status of these animals. I argue that, given that materialism is true of the mind, phenomenal consciousness is probably not particularly normatively significant. We should face up to this probable insignificance of phenomenal consciousness and move towards an ethic without sentience.

Metaphysical underdetermination arises when we are not able to decide, through purely theoretical criteria, between competing interpretations of scientific theories with different metaphysical commitments. This is the case in which non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) finds itself in. Among several available interpretations, there is the one that states that the interaction with the conscious mind of a human observer causes a change in the dynamics of quantum objects undergoing from indefinite to definite states. In this paper, we argue that there (...) seems to be also a metaphysical underdetermination concerning London and Bauer’s theory of measurement between two methods of phenomenological reduction: the eidetic and the transcendental approaches. Recently, Steven French argued that both methods can be combined in order to interpret London and Bauer’s formalism. However, in this paper we argue that the eidetic one is the only viable phenomenological way to interpret this particular theory of measurement in QM based on the formalism presented by London and Bauer, hence breaking this phenomenological underdetermination. (shrink)

We discuss cases where subjects seem to enjoy conscious experience when the relevant first-order perceptual representations are either missing or too weak to account for the experience. Though these cases are originally considered to be theoretical possibilities that may be problematical for the higher-order view of consciousness, careful considerations of actual empirical examples suggest that this strategy may backfire; these cases may cause more trouble for first-order theories instead. Specifically, these cases suggest that (I) recurrent feedback loops to V1 (...) are most likely not the neural correlate of first-order representations for conscious experience, (II) first-order views seem to have a problem accounting for the phenomenology in these cases, and either (III) a version of the ambitious higher-order approach is superior in that it is the simplest theory that can account for all results at face value, or (IV) a view where phenomenology is jointly determined by both first-order and higher-order states. In our view (III) and (IV) are both live options and the decision between them may ultimately be an empirical question that cannot yet be decided. (shrink)

June 2022 A Revolutionary New Metaphysics, Based on Consciousness, and a Call to All Philosophers We are in a unique moment of our history unlike any previous moment ever. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. As I write, the planet is in deep trouble, heat, fires, great storms, and record flooding, (...) weather patterns drastic everywhere. Capitalism has been so successful in supplying us with an endless array of consumer items, that we have never noticed there is a cost. But there is a cost, the cost is the very life of the Earth herself, and now the day of reckoning is here. Days of reckoning are most often days of rath. But I am hoping that this is a day of major Awakening over the entire planet. We have caused a crisis so great for the Earth we can hardly get our minds around it. But I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis are ideas, about who and what the Earth is, Ourselves, and what we are here for. I am proposing that this is a call to all philosophy and philosophers to rethink ourselves from the ground up. The human race has never gotten the Earth right and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. We are in deep trouble with the Earth, and it owes to the fact that the great male thinkers never got the Earth right, they could never make the connection between the life of mind and the life of the Earth. I am proposing that deeply embedded in the crisis we are in are ideas. And that in fact the planet is in the grip of a false metaphysics, and scientific image of nature that really comes most recently from Descartes. His conviction that matter, and with it the Earth, are simply the weighable, the measurable the extended in space and time, utterly devoid of any inner life of mind thoughts or Consciousness. This view of matter and the Earth goes back to the very dawn of thought, Descartes is just its most recent and comprehensive version of things. This view of matter is really a false metaphysics that dominates most of the modern world and underpins the whole scientific image of nature itself. I am proposing this is a false metaphysics and offering a new version of things based on Consciousness. If there is a single idea fueling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something without Consciousness. When you intend to ravage and savage the planet, turn it into consumer items to be converted into money in the bank, first pretend that all of the bright beings in the natural world are devoid of Consciousness, just “things” you do not have to have any conscious about destroying them. I am proposing that this term Consciousness, that has appeared as term and a problem for modern science, is the key to getting ourselves right with the Earth. I propose this new theory for science will ramify into every other disciplines as well, and the ways we think just about everything. This old paradigm based on a false theory of matter, has run its course, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction. We need new ideas, and we need them now. You will find my recent work in the Scientific God Journal under the title: Consciousness as the Organizing Principle, and a very complete version of my arguments for this term Consciousness, along with radical reinterpretation of modern science itself, on the Galileo Commission site. It is a radical moment for all of the thinkers among us, take this as my small contribution to rethinking ourselves in new terms, based on my understanding that the true basis for the whole of Being, the Universe, the Cosmos, and with them Ourselves, is this term Consciousness. And unpack it. And I predict that with this term Consciousness every intractable human problem in both science and the modern world will go down like a line of dominos before it. And so, here are a few new ideas I would offer you. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, a great Awakening as of Springtime after a long dark and lonely Winter. We are leaving behind us an old civilization based on male dominance, fear lies and control, now in decay, disease, and death disintegrating all around us. We are moving into a whole new civilization based on Love and Truth. A new civilization requires new basic terms values and first principles. And so, I return to Descartes. 1. Just over 300 years ago a young man travelling with the army found himself stranded in a foreign town in a bare room lit by a candle with nothing to do but think. And in a couple of nights Descartes laid the entire thought foundations for modern science and most of the modern world. It isn’t clear that modern philosophers with their funding sources of grants, their graduate students, their reputation and all the perks and privileges of academia can do any better. Descartes claimed there are just two principles in the Universe, Matter and Mind. God was pure mind; human beings were mind and matter. And we are the only ones on the planet with mind. Everything else all of the bright array of beings who share the planet with us are simply matter. And matter? The weighable the measurable the extended in space and time utterly devoid of any inner life of thoughts, feelings, or Consciousness This classification was a boon for developing science. Scientists did not have to worry about any inner life in nature, ideas or Consciousness, they could just set about weighing and measuring, as they have until the present day. But it was a disaster for the Earth. Earth was once worshiped as a Goddess. With Descartes she became almost overnight “things.” Simply commodities and resources, an endless of supply of consumer items, to be turned into money in the bank. And now Descartes concept of matter is up for us. If there is a single idea that is enabling and driving the destruction of the Earth, it is the conviction that Earth is something without Consciousness. This whole scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is driving the destruction of the Earth, and driving us all insane, and it needs to change. Ever since Descartes formulated Dualism, scientists and philosophers have been trying to get rid of it. They have done this by attempting to make matter the fundamental term of reality, and to explain mind or Consciousness in terms of matter. And now, Consciousness has emerged as term and a problem for modern science. 2. The prevailing Universe picture has been mainly based on the belief that Consciousness appears only at the end of evolution in ourselves and some of the higher animals when matter attains “a certain state of complexity” and it is produced by neurons in the brain. But Consciousness is nothing real in itself, the neurons are doing the work, Consciousness is simply a byproduct of neural activity. As William James summed up this position, not his: Consciousness is to the brain as a shadow to the runner, it runs beside him but never influences his stride. And so, the great problem of neuroscience: How do neurons produce Consciousness? So far, no one has been able to say how. All we have is parallelism. Two processes are running in parallel a train of neural events and a train of Consciousness events. And so, which one is primary? The face of neuroscience and much of the modern world is that the neural events are what is really real, Consciousness is secondary. The conviction that Consciousness is something produced by neurons is so deeply held and has been so for so long, that it seems like an obvious fact. It is in fact an assumption and a theory, and it could all well be the other way around. The scientific image of nature as something devoid of Consciousness is now up for us. It has enabled the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a unique place in our own evolution where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, there are the best reasons for rethinking Descartes concepts of matter. Scientists and philosophers have been trying to escape dualism by making matter the fundamental term. And now, this has not worked. In a nutshell: The mind body problem, the “hard problem of Consciousness” ---how do neurons in the brain, atoms and molecules give rise to ideas thoughts and feelings and who what and where is the “I” who sees them? And then, the near-death experience. I remind you of the truth of the near-death experience. The body in the bed is brain dead eeg flat, but the patient, pure Consciousness is hovering at the ceiling watching the doctors work over the body below, able to read dials he could not have seen from the bed, sometimes able to events in the corridor beyond the room, all subsequently confirmed by the doctors. Evidence as good as it gets that the patient really was out of his body. And so, the patient is able to see without eyes, hear without ears and to think and remember without a brain. There is not a single scientific principle that can account for this. And I am proposing that the near-death experience is a threshold and a key for a much deeper understanding of the Universe. These three problems are so hard they cannot be solved by present scientific principles and therefore call all present principles and ways of thought into question. When your axioms cannot account for the data, it is time to drop them and find better fundamental terms. We have not been able to solve the problems of Consciousness with the assumption that matter is the most basic and fundamental term. And so, if Cartesian dualism is to be overcome at all, we need to try it the other way around. 3. We are in the position of Copernicus. Remember Copernicus? He was making his calculations on the assumption that the Earth was the center of the Universe until they became so unwieldy that he decided to try it all the other way around. To make the sun the center, the Earth revolving around it. And lo, all of his data fell neatly into place. I am proposing a whole new Universe picture. Evolution makes us continuous with every other being, Consciousness would not be in us if it were not in them also, and then, in the atoms and molecules and cells that make up living beings. I propose to make Consciousness the most basic term and see what follows. I am in fact, proposing a new Copernican Revolution, that Consciousness is the true basis for the Universe and the right fundamental term, for science itself all other disciplines as well, and the whole of the modern world. And I predict that every intractable problem in science or the modern world, will go down like a line of dominos before it. In a nutshell: Consciousness and not matter is “first and fundamental” in the Universe, it is there from the very “Beginning” everything has it and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles belong to it. Not to matter. What then is matter? All matter is an Appearance of something much more real, Consciousness. All matter is an expression of Consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. And so, we revise the scientific image of nature. Science at present is two termed, matter/energy. It needs to become three termed: Matter/energy/Consciousness, with the recognition that all of the basic principles, the true causalities of events, and of the Universe belong to Consciousness. And now physics. To accommodate this new Universe picture physics needs to alter just one term, energy. All energy contains Consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. The animals the trees the plants are just as conscious as we are, as is the Earth herself, a continuum of many forms of Consciousness of which our own is one. The Earth consists of interacting and intersecting forms of Consciousness, Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness within Consciousness. A remarkable work has just appeared entitled “Beyond Words What Animals Feel and Think.” Describing in detail how like ourselves all of the animals are. And the more we can see how like us everything else really is, the harder it will be for us to do them all in, in the interest of turning them into consumer items. And so, here is a new principle of understanding, that entails completely new forms of explanation, and a whole new Universe picture to be spelled out in terms of Consciousness and its various properties. This is a Universe that is aware awake and Enspirited throughout. And so, there is only one principle, not two. And so, how does Consciousness work? There is “no mind/body problem.” My Consciousness is aligning the Consciousness of neurons in the brain, that aligns the Consciousness of all other cells in the body, that aligns the Consciousness of molecules and atoms themselves. Mainly from the top down, but also interactive, and not reduction to the purely physical forces. 4. And so, here is a radical new Universe picture, and with it a new way to think about the Universe itself, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. It requires a complete revision of both of the terms of modern science itself. The problem of the modern world owes in deep measure to Descartes concept of matter as something devoid of interior life. But he is only the most powerful and simple expression of a whole tradition of thought that predates him, that goes back to the very dawn of thought itself. It owes to the conviction of both Plato and Aristotle that the Earth was something devoid of reason, or mind, and therefore something to be held in complete contempt. We are emerging from a civilization based on contempt for the Earth, and down the road, it will become contempt for the body, sex, women, the Native people, and people of color everywhere. And so, this entire tradition is now up for us, it has brought us to the brink of our own extinction, and we need to get beyond it. I am proposing that this term Consciousness is the way out. The missing piece of the puzzle and the idea whose time has come. And it will enable us to move into a completely new civilization based on respect for the Earth, women, sex, people of color, that honors everyone and has a place for all. Revolutions in science occur when new data show up that cannot be accounted for by existing paradigms (Thomas Kuhns: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions). Consciousness, and all the properties and problems of Consciousness are just such data, and they compel a new scientific revolution. But we are a scientific age. A new Copernican revolution in science is such as revolution everywhere. And Consciousness is the key to getting every other reality at all levels and depths right as well. It will enable us finally to get the Earth right, get ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. Archimedes: Give me a place to stand, and I will move the world. I am proposing a new synthesis among our fundamental terms in which this term Consciousness is the new lynchpin. And so, I return once more to Descartes. Descartes in the Mediations was a dualist, they were two realities interacting in the pineal gland mind and body. But Descartes age was high on “Cartesianisms,” on Descartes concept of matter. Animals were simply cleverly wired machines (Hobbes called them automata). Rumor had it that Descartes followers went about kicking dogs reasoning that their howls were not due to any feelings of pain, but simply the wiring of the machine. We have been doing this to the Earth ever since, and now the Earth is not going to stand for it any longer. It is time we all woke up. There is no matter in Descartes sense of it, or in Plato and Aristotle’s sense of it. This old concept of matter is embedded in all of the crisis and catastrophes---fires, drought, pandemics, over population, the disintegrating economies, our ways of life, capitalism and consumerism themselves. All matter is Enspirited, contains Consciousness, and is an expression of Consciousness. Now I tell you something about Descartes you may not know. In the Mediations was a dualist, there are minds and bodies. But by the end of his life, he knew the truth. Descartes guided his whole life by these vivid dreams, and toward the end of his life he had this dream: He saw the Universe as a giant machine and in the heart of the machine propelling the whole, was Consciousness. And so, out of the shades and shadows and into the light of day. Here is a renewed and a new science, a new cosmology. And with it, a revolutionary new metaphysics. The whole of the modern world is in the grip of a false metaphysics, based on Descartes theory of matter. Here is a new, and finally true metaphysics based on the single term, Consciousness. 5. And in all my works, I spell out this new metaphysics based on Consciousness, and what it means for how we think about virtually everything: The Universe, the Earth, Ourselves, and Spirit. Of who, what and where Spirit is, that we may connect with Spirit everywhere. There is only one term for the Universe, and not two, this single term Consciousness, that manifests itself in two modes: Consciousness in Form, Consciousness Formless. And so, here is a sketch of what this new term Consciousness really means. For four great aspects of the real, four new cornerstones for a whole new civilization on Earth, based on Love and Truth. A. For the Universe: New causalities, all matter is an expression of Consciousness, awake and aware, Enspirited throughout, which has a place for the causalities of love ideas intent plan and purpose, what Aristotle called final causality, that for the sake of which. And it has a place for subjectivity, the greatest mystery in the whole of the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, but there in everything else as well, bedrock in the chain of causalities. The buck stops here. Here are two very different Universe pictures. The Cartesian Universe consists of things, pushed, and pulled around by the physical forces that function blind. The true Universe consists of selves and not things. Selves at least in ourselves, are organized and focused about an I, an I am, or a sense of self in everything, ever other being dear to itself. Just one aspect of subjectivity. And so, it is Consciousness all the way down, and subjectivity all the way down. Science proceeds on the basis of the negligible of what it can leave out as unimportant. Subjectivity is the ultimate animating principle of the Universe. What Descartes really did was to strip from nature what is most essential about it, its animating principle Consciousness. And so, we come out of a long history of “clunk.” The great male thinkers have killed creation. First in concepts and now in the lived life. And so, after centuries of fruitless search, not all of it in vain, finally, and just in time the true basic principle for the Universe has shown up in virtually all disciplines, this term Consciousness. B. And so, the Earth: What does this term Consciousness really mean for the Earth? It means that all of the bright array of beings around us have Consciousness. And the more we can realize how like us they are, the harder it will be to do them all in. Is this what it really means to be “made in the image of Spirit?” To destroy ever other living being? The god of Genesis is a creator god who has created billions and billions of living forms. Man, taking himself to be made in the image of Spirit has destroyed virtually all of it. The Earth is not things, not commodities and resources, not an endless array of consumer goods. The Earth consists of conscious living spiritual beings like ourselves, who need to be honored and respected, nurtured and cared for, to be Loved. And if the human race can finally pull it off and bring Love here and start helping the Earth rather than destroying her, even our vast numbers now at 8 billion, may not matter. Deeply embedded in the modern world is a false cosmology based on the hitherto useful but ultimately false metaphysics of Descartes. In particular it owes to Descartes concepts of matter, and of the Earth, as something devoid of Consciousness. And now this concept is up for us. If there is a single idea enabling and driving the destruction of the planet, it is the conviction that the Earth is something devoid of Consciousness. And we all have a vested interest in keeping this false concept in place. When you intend to ravage and savage the Earth, to turn it into consumer items, and money in the bank, first pretend she has no Consciousness that way we need not have any conscious about it. We are in deep trouble with the planet. Virtually all human economies are based on the destruction of the Earth, and we are now at a place in our history where we can foresee if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. And so, here are a few new guiding principles for the planet, based on Consciousness. Consciousness has field properties. The Earth is Consciousness throughout, connected and interconnected throughout, intersecting and interacting fields of Consciousness of which our own is one. To harm one is to harm all. Only this understanding of the Earth can set our destructive technologies, and capitalism, their goals, and their limits. The real problem with capitalism, and with civilization itself is it has no true understanding of the Earth, all the exquisite networks and webworks that connect all beings with one another. Nor it is about to admit that the Earth is our “life support system,” reason gone insane in the modern world. We are destroying our life support system, capitalism is the full expression of the human death wish in the modern world, and it needs to change. And now, let the barriers between ourselves and all other beings go down. C. And so, Ourselves. This new Universe picture based on Consciousness opens into and has a place for new concepts of human identity. In particular, it has a place for reincarnation, a process whereby one Consciousness dons’ bodies again and again and lays them down. This is a process wholly impossible on materialistic theories. This new view of things puts a higher perspective on Freudian determinism, which is a partial knowing in a greater account. We are something more than the victims of genes drives and childhood. We are immortally eternal evolving spiritual beings who take on a cycle of earthly lives in order to achieve certain goals and abilities, and then, our earthly cycle complete, we depart the Earth plane for other areas of the Universe physical or purely spiritual, to continue our evolution elsewhere. The scientific evidence for reincarnation is increasing on all sides, see for example the work of Michael Newton, a mainstream scientist forced to confront the fact of reincarnation. A completely new reincarnational picture is now emerging everywhere. We choose our parents for abilities we could acquire through them. We all come here with reasons for being here, and we all have free will, an original property of Consciousness, and we work out our issues accordingly. We all come here with the same reason for being here. It is to experience the Earth plane and human society at all levels and depths, in every social role, every climate, both sexes male and female and in all races. We are all here to acquire a deep understanding of the Earth plane with all its challenges and all of its present problems. We are not here to devour and consume the Earth, but to honor her for the learning experience she makes available for us. And so, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the fundamental basis for any bill of rights. Many of the problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. Reincarnation was the center piece of Jesus teachings. It was banned by a fourth century council that decided the populous could best be controlled through fear. They edited all mention of reincarnation from the scriptures, and inserted fear terms instead, a judgmental god, and so on. If reincarnation had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, but the gift of both sexes would have been honored and developed. And there would have been no reason for contempt for people of color because who they are, we have been or will be. There is no reason to look down on anyone when we know that our own identity includes membership in theirs. The truth of reincarnation needs to be the foundation for getting ourselves right with the Earth, and with one another. D. And so, Spirit. This new Universe picture, based on Consciousness, has a place for Spirit as simply Infinite Consciousness. All universes all worlds are formed out of this Consciousness, divine and sacred throughout. And Spirit is everywhere in the Earth and can be connected everywhere. And the Native North American people had things right. Everything has its own Spirit, and without contradiction is also an expression of Spirit. And what I am really doing in terms of concepts of modern science is presenting the Native North American version of the Real. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religions almost smothered by church tradition: Love. Not an emotion but a great Oneness, that can be found everywhere, even in a busy city street. But especially in the Earth, that is levels and depths of Oneness everywhere. And so, for the first time in their long and bitter antagonistic history, science and religion now share a common base with this term Spirit, the lynchpin in a new conceptual framework. And I offer an interpretation of where we are in our history, this present moment of historical grace, and these tumultuous times in which we live, the return of the Goddess and the Divine Feminine, the Reappearance of the Feminine in history, the Advent of Women, this great Awakening, as of Springtime after a long dark Winter, the Awakening, the Second Coming. And so, stay tuned! (shrink)

Self-consciousness relates to important themes, such as sentience and personhood, and is often the cornerstone of moral theories (Warren, 1997). However, not much attention is given to future moral creatures of the earth: robots. This may be due to the unsettled status of their experience, which is why I have chosen to find the necessary features of self-consciousness in them. Philosophy of mind is also my interest which I have developed since I rejected the idea of souls and could not (...) account for my own phenomenal experiences. Among the current answers to the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995) one stood out to me – Daniel Dennett’s multiple drafts model of consciousness presented in “Consciousness Explained” (Dennett, 1991) and his other works. Daniel Dennett is a self-described illusionist (Dennett, 2016) and a functionalist. His position is synonymous to holding self-conscious experiences, such as deliberating over one’s pain or reflecting over one’s actions insufficient to postulate existence of a metaphysical self. He believes instead that experiences are functional realizations which do not require any self, and the feeling of being conscious or self-conscious is actually a ”user-illusion” (Dennett, 1991), a term describing the unjustified belief of being in control of one’s actions. In his views, a selfhood as it is popularly conceived is contradictory. Therefore, he rejects realism about mental events, a position also called naïve realism (Siegel, 2011), on the basis that it is unverifiable and there are insufficient grounds to accept mental events (Dennett, 1988). He adopts a similar scepticism towards other theories of minds, hence nearing eliminative materialism in self-consciousness and related theme of pain (Dennett, 1978). His multiple drafts model of consciousness seeks to ground our beliefs about self-consciousness in the specific architecture of mind, which is particular to every species and kind of being. As such it is a particularly flexible theory that examines experiences of non-humans without falling into binary thinking – believing that a being has as rich inner life as humans do or none. This is why it is a great starting point for establishing necessary conditions for consciousness in robots. In this essay, I will often use words computer, programme, robot interchangeably for the purpose of clarity and take as the working definition “autonomous machines capable of sensing their environment, making decision and performing tasks similar to human actions”. I chose to explore self-consciousness instead of committing to the issue of consciousness, because consciousness can be defined in a weak sense, in which even a thermostat is “conscious” of the temperature, and consciousness in a strong sense, which invokes the internalism and externalism debate that is less connected to the nature of experiences than self-consciousness. My exploration pertains first and foremost to the philosophy of mind, of which I will examine the most relevant positions and decide to commit to functionalism (Block, 1980). Then I will advocate for explaining away of some of phenomena of self-consciousness and believing self-consciousness to be a sort of illusion. From there I will conclude that robots could fall for the same illusion of self-consciousness and therefore become self-conscious. I will argue, that self-consciousness can be established using a modified Turing Test, which would determine if a robot believed in a meaningful narrative about itself (Ricoeur, 1991) and hence be self-conscious. This will lead to answering the question of this essay: what are the features necessary for a self-conscious robot in the light of “Consciousness Explained” by Daniel Dennett? (shrink)

After a lecture in Göteborg by the neuroscientist Benjamin Libet in 1993, the Göteborg-Post carried the headline, ‘Now it has been proven: we are all somewhat behind’. The paper was referring to Libet’s celebrated discovery that the neural precursors of some voluntary actions occur before the conscious awareness of the decision to act. In a series of experiments in the 1980s, Libet showed that in an experimental situation in which subjects were asked to perform a simple voluntary action – (...) raising a finger – these acts were preceded by a rise in electrical activity in the area of the brain responsible for the causation of action, called the ‘readiness potential’ (RP). But the striking discovery is that while the RP is activated 550 msec before the action, the subject’s awareness of their decision to act occurs only 150-200 msec before the action. The conclusion is drawn that the causes of our actions in our brains occur fractionally earlier than our conscious awareness of deciding to do them. Hence the frequent description of the result of Libet’s experiments, that we are ‘living in the past’. (shrink)

According to the traditional Western concept of freedom, the ability to exercise free will depends on the availability of options and the possibility to consciously decide which one to choose. Since neuroscientific research increasingly shows the limits of what we in fact consciously control, it seems that our belief in free will and hence in personal autonomy is in trouble. -/- A closer look at the phenomenology of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) gives us reason to doubt the traditional concept of freedom (...) in terms of conscious control. Patients suffering from OCD experience themselves as unfree. The question is whether their lack of freedom is due to a lack of will power. Do they have too little conscious control over their thoughts and actions? Or could it be the opposite: are they exerting too much conscious control over their thoughts and actions? -/- In this chapter, we will argue that OCD patients testify to the general condition that exercising an increased conscious control over actions can in fact diminish the sense of agency rather than increase the experience of freedom. The experiences of these patients show that the traditional conception of freedom in terms of ‘free will’ has major shortcomings. There is an alternative, however, to be found in the work of Hannah Arendt. She advocates a conception of freedom as freedom in action. Combined with phenomenological insights on action, Arendt’s account of freedom helps us to get a more adequate understanding of the role of deliberation in the experience of freedom. We argue that the experience of freedom depends on the right balance between deliberate control and unreflective actions. (shrink)

Rationalization in the sense of biased self-justification is very familiar. It's not cheating because everyone else is doing it too. I didn't report the abuse because it wasn't my place. I understated my income this year because I paid too much in tax last year. I'm only a social smoker, so I won't get cancer. The mental mechanisms subserving rationalization have been studied closely by psychologists. However, when viewed against the backdrop of philosophical accounts of the regulative role of truth (...) in doxastic deliberation , rationalization can look very puzzling. Almost all contemporary philosophers endorse a version of the thesis of deliberative exclusivity—a thinker cannot in full consciousness decide whether to believe that p in a way that issues directly in forming a belief by adducing anything other than considerations that he or she regards as relevant to the truth of p. But, as I argue, rationalization involves the weighing of considerations that the thinker kn.. (shrink)

Here, I review work from three lines of research in cognitive science often taken to threaten free will and moral responsibility. This work concerns conscious deciding, the experience of acting, and the role of largely unnoticed situational influences on behavior. Whether this work in fact threatens free will and moral responsibility depends on how we ought to interpret it, and depends as well on the nature of free and responsible behavior. I discuss different ways this work has been (...) interpreted and argue that though work on conscious deciding and the experience of acting presents no real threat, work on situational influences is more difficult to dismiss. This work may present a real threat, and it may require us to revise our commonsense understanding of free and responsible behavior. But this work may also present ways to augment free and responsible behavior. Determining whether and how advancing science threatens, enhances, or simply describes free will is an ongoing task for scientists and philosophers alike. (shrink)

Chalmers’ meta-problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining “problem reports”; i.e. reports to the effect that phenomenal consciousness has the various features that give rise to the hard problem. Chalmers suggests that solving the meta-problem will likely “shed significant light on the hard problem.” Against this, I argue that work on the meta-problem will likely fail to make the hard problem any easier. For each of the main stances on the hard problem can provide an account of problem reports, (...) and we have no way of deciding which of these accounts gives the correct explanation of an individual’s problem reports without presupposing a stance on the hard problem. We thus cannot determine which of the available solutions to the meta-problem is correct without having already solved the hard problem. (shrink)

This chapter presents the following hypothesis: There is a perfectly sensible conception of the mind, consciousness, the self, what we mean by ‘I,’ how we perceive and know, and how we remember and decide, all of which cohere amongst one another as well as with what we know about the brain, according to which it is possible for one person to experience directly the conscious states of another person. Not only can one person be directly aware of the (...) class='Hi'>conscious states of another person, he can be more aware of them than their original owner. He can even be aware of them when their original owner will never be aware of them. Mindmelding is possible, and this possibility removes much of the force from the mind-body problem by removing the impasse caused by the belief in privacy. It removes what some philosophers saw as a need to posit strange metaphysical categories. The subject's sense of self can be separated from the object of her conscious awareness which can be bound to another's sense of self. (shrink)

Phillips argues that blindsight is due to response criterion artefacts under degraded conscious vision. His view provides alternative explanations for some studies, but may not work well when one considers several key findings in conjunction. Empirically, not all criterion effects are decidedly non-perceptual. Awareness is not completely abolished for some stimuli, in some patients. But in other cases, it was clearly impaired relative to the corresponding visual sensitivity. This relative dissociation is what makes blindsight so important and interesting.

In his book “Galileo’s Error”, Philip Goff lays out what he calls “foundations for a new science of consciousness”, which are decidedly anti-physicalist (panpsychist), motivated by a critique of Galileo’s distinction into knowable objective and unknowable subjective properties and Arthur Eddington’s argument for the limitation of purely structural (physical) knowledge. Here we outline an alternative theory, premised on the Interface Theory of Perception, that too subscribes to a “post-Galilean” research programme. However, interface theorists disagree along several lines. 1. They note (...) that Galileo’s distinction should be replaced by a truly non-dual account, referring to a difference of degree only. 2. They highly appreciate the role of mathematics, in particular when it comes to actually engage scientifically with consciousness. Some notable features of the interface theory are its skepticism towards our epistemic capacities and its rejection of the existence of a public, mind-independent reality. In addition, some interface theorists further employ a thin concept of “conscious agency” to ground their theory. The interface theory leaves open many of the problems of consciousness science (e.g. what is a “self”?) as questions for further (scientific, mathematical) research. (shrink)

What are some metaphysical fundamentals which constitute the reality? This question has occupied philosophers for a long time. The western tradition once dealt with conceptions of earth, air, water, fire, ether whereas the eastern tradition has studied notions like yin-yang(陰陽), taiji(太極), lichi(理氣). The question is now being researched under the name of physicalism or naturalism, and yet what is not yet clarified is the relationship between electromagnetic force as the fundamental of the physical and consciousness as the fundamental of the (...) mental. What is puzzling is that most philosophers insist on the overcoming of the traditional dualism while they tend to accept the distinction between electromagnetic force and consciousness. If they decide that the metaphysical paradigm of the duality is plausible then they should first present the grammar of functions of those concepts like individual, identity, causation. If they can see that the prospect of that traditional metaphysical paradigms are not hopeful, then they better start to look for an alternative metaphysical picture where the world can be understood more holistically. There have been alternative paradigms such as metaphysics of process and integration. It’s time to take a look at one of these. This paper tries to interpret the latter. -/- The notion of integration(誠) has been the subject studied for a long time as a teaching of Zhongyong, one of the key Confucian texts. Many has taken the word “誠” of Zhongyong to mean sincerity or faithfulness. Certainly there are anthropological or ethical dimension to the meaning of the word. But the whole text seems to direct a reader to see how the world is, the metaphysical dimension of the world. I will interpret the major thrust of Zhongyong to say that integration is a metaphysical fundamental. If one is to accept the evolution thesis of the body of human being then she is also to concede the evolution thesis of the mind of human being. If one is positive toward the evolutionary theory of the human mind then she is more likely open-minded toward the powers of the mind of physical things. This may allow to proceed to a thesis that integration is an information consciousness(chapter 1). Suppose that physical things of the world are integrational. Then the integration is not to be given from the outside but from within. Then when things are integrational they become integrators. Integrators are bound to possess some sort of power. I will discuss the thesis that integration is a dispositional power(chapter 2). If all things are bundles of informations then information is ubiquitous(chapter 3) and things may be passive in certain contexts but are active toward their informations, processing them in their own ways. If these three hypotheses are reasonable then my thesis of integration as a metaphysical fundamental would be plausible. (shrink)

Spontaneous actions are preceded by brain signals that may sometimes be detected hundreds of milliseconds in advance of a subject's conscious intention to act. These signals have been claimed to reflect prior unconscious decisions, raising doubts about the causal role of conscious will. Murakami et al. (2014. Nat Neurosci 17: 1574–1582) have recently argued for a different interpretation. During a task in which rats spontaneously decided when to abort waiting, the authors recorded neurons in the secondary motor cortex. (...) The neural activity and relationship to action timing was parsimoniously explained using an integration-to-bound model, similar to those widely used to account for evidence-based decisions. In this model, the brain accumulates spontaneously occurring inputs voting for or against an action, but only commits to act once a certain threshold is crossed. The model explains how spontaneous decisions can be forecast (partially predicted) by neurons that reflect either the input or output of the integrator. It therefore presents an explicit hypothesis capable of rejecting the claim that such predictive signals imply unconscious decisions. We suggest that these results can inform the current debate on free will but must be considered with caution. (shrink)

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...) If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

Validity of physical laws for any aspect of brain activity and strict correlation of mental to physical states of the brain do not imply, with logical necessity, that a complete algorithmic theory of the mind-body relation is possible. A limit of decodability may be imposed by the finite number of possible analytical operations which is rooted in the finiteness of the world. It is considered as a fundamental intrinsic limitation of the scientific approach comparable to quantum indeterminacy and the theorems (...) of logical undecidability. An analysis of these limits, applied to dispositions of future behaviour, suggests that limits of decodability of the psycho-physic relation may actually exist with respect to brain states with self-referential aspects, as they are involved in mental processes. Limits for an algorithmic theory of the mind-body problem suggested by this study are formally similar to other intrinsic limits of the scientific method such as quantum indeterminacy and mathematical undecidability which are also related to self-referential operations. At the metatheoretical level, hard sciences, despite their reliability, universality and objectivity, depend on metatheoretical presuppositions which allow for multiple philosophical interpretations. -/- . (shrink)

This article has been written about the explanation of the scientific affair. There are the philosophical circles that a philosopher must consider their approaches. Postmodern thinkers generally refuse the universality of the rational affair. They believe that the experience cannot reach general knowledge. They emphasize on the partial and plural knowledge. Any human being has his knowledge and interpretation. The world is always becoming. Diversity is an inclusive epistemological principle. Naturally, in such a state, the scientific activity is a non-sense (...) process. The postmodern world is a post-scientific world. Another collection of approaches to science belongs to the analytical philosophy. The main part of analytical philosophy context centers around language. Language is the center of the world. We can study the world through language. Language is the possibility of knowledge. If we overcome the language games, we can study the world accurately. Generally, at present, it seems that the rational thoughts are marginal points in the sea of irrationality. We can probably talk about an anarchistic epistemological situation. Another issue is the role of observation to form a scientific activity. In this situation, the question is whether the observation is the technique of gathering information or the final reference of original scientific analysis. In relation to this issue, the confrontation of science with the families and the categories of the objects is the main problem. For more than two thousand years, the totalitarian heritage of the Aristotelian logic has been the guideline of categorizations for the human being. In order to reach an inclusive and applicable result, we should categorize everything; but it is not really known that if the method of the world categorization is the same or not. The accordance of the conceptual categories with their extensions in the world is one of the main problems which has malfunctioned the scientific system. It is better to say that it has deactivated science. Moreover, there are many interpretations for each event based on its occurrence conditions. For example, consider a fever; In order to diagnose its cause, the most significant factor is the role of a physician. There is no sense in saying that the observation has diagnosed the cause of the fever. This is the observer that plays a determinative role. Another problem is the disputes between realism and instrumentalism. Instrumentalists believe that to form a theory, the concepts are just the tools of scientific researches. Based on realism, but we confront the concepts in the original way. This chaos causes the scientific system to collapse. Now the question is what the solution is. I would like to propose my scheme that is constructed based on a main principle: there is no occurrence in the world unless we can trace the effect of consciousness back in that occurrence. In other words, there is no accident in the world. One can argue that it is the main problem that the effects of consciousness ---if there is such a concept--- is not traceable in the world. An immediate response to this problem is an inefficient technique . The observation is a technique . It is not the method of interpretation. Some people argue that the empirical approach cannot lead us to an authentic criterion to know the world. Because there is no criterion for truth, and if there is probably such a criterion, we can obtain it via several ways. The solution to the first problem is simple. Any occurrence is a truth; even we suppose it as a partial truth. Therefore we can say we face a multi-facial world. It can be the solution of the second problem: if consciousness is essentially the origin of the world and all occurrences, we face consciousness as a unique truth; even its creations contradict each other. If there is no consciousness as a creator of the world and we cannot trace it back in all existents, then what should we do? If there is consciousness, why its creations contradict each other. Since consciousness is a will, it is able to decide in any situation it intends. The issue of contradictory consciousness intentions has a teleological aspect. We cannot judge its teleological substance at present. If we are able to believe that there is no consciousness at all, it will contradict the main practical principle in our lives. Every action that we take in our lives is conjoined with consciousness. We learn many things from many sources. The substance of our instincts and emotions can be questioned. It is true that, infact we cannot analyze our instincts and emotions, but we can discuss explicitly about the rational elements of the instincts. What are these elements? These elements are the quality of their appearance. The quality of instinct appearance is different among beings. The strength and the depth and length of these irrational qualities are different in all beings. What factors or factor cause the differences among these aspects? There is certainly a determinative factor. The same factor which determines the occurrence of any event. Even if we believe in partial knowledge, we must accept the confrontation of the occurrences. Thus it is not possible to refuse the occurrences as the reference unit of knowledge. In spite of the difference, every occurrence, even as a single occurrence, happens and we can regard it as the reference unit of knowledge. Then we can consider every occurrence as an occurred object. When an occurrence happens, then it is a determined object. Everywhere there is a determination, there is certainly a determiner. Why do not we encounter a multi-determinative consciousness? Because there are a few aspects of the unique super-consciousness. These aspects are motion and growth and the amount of constituent material in every being. In all over the world, the difference in these factors creates all differences. Thus we do not encounter the plural consciousness. Is the world birth accidental? Infact, there is no accident. The accident has no meaning in the world. As explained above, the constructing element of the world is the occurrence. An occurrence can be analyzed. Therefore, we should not talk about the accident until we are not able to analyze all phenomena. We can look at every subject from different points of view at present. Thus there is theoretically no possibility to say that a certain matter is the consequence of the accident. The accident is a popular and inexact concept that has no philosophical content. Moreover, the definition of consciousness versus its contradiction causes the collapse of all epistemological axioms. We can ask why we must not define other logical principles against their contradictions. Thinkers who deny the role of logic usually ignore the role of logic. They have not been able to deny the logical function to form an epistemological system because it is not an easy task. In this article some other issues were discussed, such as the consideration of restriction as a stable and firm foundation of knowledge instead of the Descartes cogito. In addition to these philosophical points some other issues were propounded such as the role of instrumental mechanism to form the new science and the great alterations in philosophy and history of Europe. Many issues threaten human civilization. The only way to deal with such threats is certainly to use scientific facilities. The scientific possibilities undoubtedly come from a complete and inclusive scientific theory. The present article is an attempt to explain the scientific affair in order to develop human achievement, however small. -/- . (shrink)

The evolution of life on Earth has produced an organism that is beginning to model and understand its own evolution and the possible future evolution of life in the universe. These models and associated evidence show that evolution on Earth has a trajectory. The scale over which living processes are organized cooperatively has increased progressively, as has its evolvability. Recent theoretical advances raise the possibility that this trajectory is itself part of a wider developmental process. According to these theories, the (...) developmental process has been shaped by a yet larger evolutionary dynamic that involves the reproduction of universes. This evolutionary dynamic has tuned the key parameters of the universe to increase the likelihood that life will emerge and produce outcomes that are successful in the larger process (e.g. a key outcome may be to produce life and intelligence that intentionally reproduces the universe and tunes the parameters of ‘offspring’ universes). Theory suggests that when life emerges on a planet, it moves along this trajectory of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if organisms emerge that decide to advance the developmental process intentionally. The organisms must be prepared to make this commitment even though the ultimate nature and destination of the process is uncertain, and may forever remain unknown. Organisms that complete this transition to intentional evolution will drive the further development of life and intelligence in the universe. Humanity’s increasing understanding of the evolution of life in the universe is rapidly bringing it to the threshold of this major evolutionary transition. (shrink)

I argue that our best science supports the rationalist idea that, independent of reasoning, emotions aren’t integral to moral judgment. There’s ample evidence that ordinary moral cognition often involves conscious and unconscious reasoning about an action’s outcomes and the agent’s role in bringing them about. Emotions can aid in moral reasoning by, for example, drawing one’s attention to such information. However, there is no compelling evidence for the decidedly sentimentalist claim that mere feelings are causally necessary or sufficient for (...) making a moral judgment or for treating norms as distinctively moral. I conclude that, even if moral cognition is largely driven by automatic intuitions, these shouldn’t be mistaken for emotions or their non-cognitive components. Non-cognitive elements in our psychology may be required for normal moral development and motivation but not necessarily for mature moral judgment. (shrink)

In this paper I examine the dispute between Hakwan Lau, Ned Block, and David Rosenthal over the extent to which empirical results can help us decide between first-order and higher-order theories of consciousness. What emerges from this is an overall argument to the best explanation against the first-order view of consciousness and the dispelling of the mythological notion of phenomenological overflow that comes with it.

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter 2 argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic epistemic two-dimensional hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 3 provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter 4 advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter 5 applies the fixed points of the modal μ-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal μ-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal μ-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter 6 advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter 7 provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters 2 and 4 are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters 8-12 provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter 8 examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of Ω-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter 9 examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter 10 examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional Ω-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter 11 provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 12 avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities and truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter 13 examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter 14 examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

As it was shown in the Part I of this work, the driving of our life is determined by series of YES/NO - type elemental decision, which is actually the information unit (Bit), so we operate actually in an informational mode. The informational analysis and modeling of consciousness reveals seven informational systems, reflected at the conscious level by the cognitive informational centers suggestively called Iknow (Ik - memory), Iwant (Iw - decision center), Iove (Il-emotions), Iam (Ia-body status), Icreate (Ic-informational (...) genetic transmitter and educator), Icreated (I-cd genetic generator inherited from the parents) and Ibelieve, (Ib - connection to the informational field of the universe). As the mind can operate in a bipolar mode, we dispose of two alternatives to use our free will: in a positive (YES) or negative (NO) mode. Such modes can be applied as a function of the personal criteria, especially that inhered from the family, which are the fundamental ones, but also from that acquired during the life. The persistence to operate in a positive or a negative mode is fundamental for the designing of our personal trajectory and therefore for our destiny. The destiny and the role of our free will in deciding the course of our own life are analyzed therefore with respect to our YES/NO attitude, which is an integrated informational output composed by the contribution of all cognition centers, showing that when this is favorable to the life rules, it is avoided its deterioration determined by a permanently negative attitude and thinking mode. It is shown that our intervention should be directed both to the operating mode but also to the decision criteria, when it is ascertained that they do not correspond to the reality, allowing a favorable adaptation. As parents and therefore as forming and educator of the next generation, an activity specific for the center Ic, it is necessary to observe, discover and encourage the talents and predispositions of their Children, to put them on a privileged way of the destiny, because they will benefit of an advanced informational “budget” with respect to their generation and a certain sort of preparation. The comparative analysis between personal operating mode and the reality for adaptation necessities should guide permanently the selected trajectory way, to include new criteria, to change the older, or to reprogramming the operation mode, with the participation of all centers. The stereotype thinking chains triggered by repetitive negative thoughts acts on the informational system as stressing agents, leading to chronic, sometime serious disorders. Such thinking operation forms should be therefore detected and substituted or eliminated without delay, according to some recommended suggestions. Furthermore, it is shown that a specific self-control of the thoughts as positive or negative information and of the lifestyle, helps the health maintenance and the life prolongation under high qualitative. (shrink)

The reintroduction of Aristotle's Analytics to the Latin West—in particular, the reintroduction of the Posterior Analytics—forever altered the course of medieval epistemological discussions. Although the Analytics fell decidedly from grace in later centuries, the sophisticated account of human cognition developed in the Posterior Analytics appealed so strongly to thirteenth-century European scholars that it became one of the two central theories of knowledge advocated in the later Middle Ages. Robert Grosseteste's 'Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libro', written in the 1220s, is most (...) likely the first complete Latin commentary on the Posterior Analytics. As the thirteenth century wore on, Aristotle’s account of human cognition was generally set in opposition to the Augustinian-influenced theory of divine illumination that was de rigueur in the early thirteenth century. Although common consensus holds that this pattern of opposition was set already in Grosseteste’s CPA, I argue that the story of the Posterior Analytics’s early reception is, in fact, quite different. In particular, I maintain that, rather than seeing himself as forced to choose between his earlier theory of divine illumination and the “new” Aristotelian epistemology, Grosseteste is perfectly content to blend and bring together the diverse elements of these systems and to present a consciously synthetic rather than adversarial picture of these differing accounts of human cognition. (shrink)

The moot point of the Western philosophical rhetoric about free will consists in examining whether the claim of authorship to intentional, deliberative actions fits into or is undermined by a one-way causal framework of determinism. Philosophers who think that reconciliation between the two is possible are known as metaphysical compatibilists. However, there are philosophers populating the other end of the spectrum, known as the metaphysical libertarians, who maintain that claim to intentional agency cannot be sustained unless it is assumed that (...) indeterministic causal processes pervade the action-implementation apparatus employed by the agent. The metaphysical libertarians differ among themselves on the question of whether the indeterministic causal relation exists between the series of intentional states and processes, both conscious and unconscious, and the action, making claim for what has come to be known as the event-causal view, or between the agent and the action, arguing that a sort of agent causation is at work. In this paper, I have tried to propose that certain features of both event-causal and agent-causal libertarian views need to be combined in order to provide a more defendable compatibilist account accommodating deliberative actions with deterministic causation. The ‘‘agent-executed-eventcausal libertarianism’’, the account of agency I have tried to develop here, integrates certain plausible features of the two competing accounts of libertarianism turning them into a consistent whole. I hope to show in the process that the integration of these two variants of libertarianism does not challenge what some accounts of metaphysical compatibilism propose—that there exists a broader deterministic relation between the web of mental and extra-mental components constituting the agent’s dispositional system—the agent’s beliefs, desires, short-term and long-term goals based on them, the acquired social, cultural and religious beliefs, the general and immediate and situational environment in which the agent is placed, etc. on the one hand and the decisions she makes over her lifetime on the basis of these factors. While in the ‘‘Introduction’’ the philosophically assumed anomaly between deterministic causation and the intentional act of deciding has been briefly surveyed, the second section is devoted to the task of bridging the gap between compatibilism and libertarianism. The next section of the paper turns to an analysis of folk-psychological concepts and intuitions about the effects of neurochemical processes and prior mental events on the freedom of making choices. How philosophical insights can be beneficially informed by taking into consideration folk-psychological intuitions has also been discussed, thus setting up the background for such analysis. It has been suggested in the end that support for the proposed theory of intentional agency can be found in the folk-psychological intuitions, when they are taken in the right perspective. (shrink)

In this chapter, I attempt to show that evil exists only if what I call Agent Causal Theism (ACT) is true. According to ACT, human beings are immaterial, conscious agents endued (by God) with a power of self-motion: the power to think, decide, and act for ends in light of reasons, but without being externally caused to do so (even by God himself). By contrast, I argue that there is no space for evil in the worldviews of naturalistic Darwinism (...) or theistic Calvinism. (shrink)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. – Albert Einstein -/- In my philosophical discussions with elementary school children, I use questions not just to uncover hidden assumptions the children may have, but to lead them to a place of aporia – puzzlement, a place of “not-knowing.” If some children assume that to be brave is to be fearless, (...) I not only ask why they assume this, but go on to ask how it is that we can be called brave, if we’re not even afraid? What’s there to be brave about? With this question, I try to bring the children to a place of “aporia,” a place of puzzlement. Aporia empowers thinking. -/- Philosophy is the pursuit of clear thinking; it is also the pursuit of wisdom, a deeper truth (see quote). -/- Wonder captivates us and connects us to the world around us. In “doing” philosophy with children, this sense of wonder is expanded upon. In their book, Journey of the Universe Swimme and Tucker state, “For or a young mammal, behavior is open-ended in a way that is rarer in adults… In a word, what often occupies their consciousness is play…. they enter into many kinds of relationships out of sheer curiosity.” -/- In doing philosophy with children, we play with ideas. Shobhan Lyons states in her article, “What makes a philosopher?”, in Philosophy Now, “Linking philosophy and truth is a common approach; but I believe that philosophy is less a search for truth and more an engagement with possibilities; …” For example, whereas fear may be a good thing in some instances, it may not be in others. Lying may be necessary in some instances and a good thing (although, it doesn’t imply that lying in itself is a good thing), and in other cases it may be harmful and hurtful. So how do you decide? This is where navigational skills come into play. What may work in some instances may in fact be the entirely wrong thing to do in other cases. So how can you tell? This is where you need to learn how to respond to complex situations. -/- I conclude with examples of aporia questions for 8 picture book stories. “Dragons and Giants,” in Frog and Toad Together, by Arnold Lobel: -/- The question is, are Frog and Toad brave? Children often conclude that to be brave you cannot be afraid. Since Frog and Toad are afraid, they cannot be brave. -/- An aporia question is, whether you can be brave without being afraid? If you are not in the least afraid, what makes you brave? Another aporia question is, whether Frog and Toad would be foolish rather than brave if they were not to jump out of the way of the snake, the avalanche or the hawk. A third aporia question has to do with the question how we know we are foolish or brave when dealing with that which is dangerous. -/- . (shrink)

Cosmopolis A Review of Cosmopolitics -/- 2015/3-4 -/- Editorial Dominique de Courcelles & Paul Ghils -/- This issue addresses the general concept of “spirituality” as it appears in various cultural contexts and timeframes, through contrasting ideological views. Without necessarily going back to artistic and religious remains of primitive men, which unquestionably show pursuits beyond the biophysical dimension and illustrate practices seeking to unveil the hidden significance of life and death, the following papers deal with a number of interpretations covering a (...) wide field extending from belief to theory, from emotions to concepts, from the wisdom of personal experience to the most sophisticated doctrines. Spirit and spirituality are indeed many-faceted notions. They may refer to the intricate world of the interacting spirits which inhabit living beings in animistic traditions, without excluding a “grand force” linking human beings within a dynamic whole on which their very existence rely . They also bear upon more atomistic and either/or approaches of Western philosophy, which have become embodied in Cartesian dualism against a monotheist background, to the point of freezing the essence of individuals and culminating in the extreme individualism that characterizes our contemporaries. However, this equally refers to the opposite conception of materialism, across times and cultures, from ancient India and Greece (Cārvāka, originally known as Lokāyata, or some Buddhist doctrines for the former, Democritus or Lucretius for the latter) to more contemporary materialistic schools, whether modern or postmodern. -/- The following papers look at the contrasting forms of the philosophy and spirit of the human factor set into a whole, with no artificial disjoint between the psychical and the physical levels, as Wittgenstein put it: “And how can a body have a soul?”. This approach is not unrelated to the notion of anthropocene examined in a recent issue of Cosmopolis, with provides another comprehensive framework open to a spiritual life emerging from the very environment that generated it. -/- *** The first section of this issue was edited by Dominique de Courcelles, director at the National French Research Centre (CNRS), whom we wish to thank for collecting relevant studies relating to the religious and political questions, with a view to focusing on the war of ideas inevitably waged behind images, concepts and perceptions, taking an asymmetrical approach. To the extent that they are mindful of global/local interactions and include representations, opinions and beliefs, such disciplines as philosophy, philology, history and social sciences can provide useful studies accounting for new practices in geopolitics and a fair diplomacy. -/- In her introduction, Dominique de Courcelles first poses the question of how the religious and political spheres interrelate, with their corresponding religious demands and humanistic values. She then suggests that the right question today may be breaking with the philosophy of human rights concerned with the defense of human beings against the hazards of arbitrary politics or the instrumental use of religion, in favour of a fair philosophy of humankind, a new humanism. This would consist in recognizing a common loyalty of all towards one interhuman, not only interstate community, to protect it from both the autonomy demanded by individuals and the instrumental use of minorities. -/- Considering the fact of diversity, so important today in terms of both politics and religion, Abdelhai Azarkan looks at the conditions under which tolerance could obtain the double status of right and duty. He revisits to two philosophers, John Locke and Voltaire, who thought about it from the historical reality of religious wars. The former made tolerance into a right, basing his analysis on the political-legal level, while the latter saw tolerance as a duty, from an analysis based on ethical-political criteria. -/- Mathieu Guidère examines what he calls semantic denominationalism, a term which implies religious attributes and identities, whichever national loyalties or personal belonging they may have at the same time. Since the early 2000s, thie phenomenon has expanded tremendously, compounded by the “war on terror” and the over media-oriented terrorist actions. Denominational expressions act as formal names for ordinary and high-profile players in domestic and foreign policies of democratic states. These systems reveal a receding secularization, while the powerful comeback of religious identities signals the failure of nation-states and the weakening of the humanist spirit. -/- Barbara De Poli retraces the history of a contemporary jihadism claiming its Islamic essence and asserting the truth of genuine coranic principles via the war on infidels, with a view to restoring the Caliphate. After defining the term jihad, she shows that even if this contemporary jiadism is spreading in the Muslim world, it radically departs from Islamic law and the received use of the term jihad, in so far as it is rooted in the early radical thinking of Islamic ideologues in the 20th century, starting with with Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. This current has been fueled by by international conflicts since the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan, in which the so-called Western countries bear a major responsibility. -/- Abderrazak Sayadi starts from the Tunisian experience to ask the question of humanist values and democracy within the relationships between the religious and political spheres. As a historian of religion, he is brought to demystify certain islamic principles and to paying attention to the reform of law, seeing the separation of religion and politics as a precondition to a successful democratic gamble and the establishment of a renewed humanism. -/- Dominique de Courcelles reminds us that getting a better knowledge of narrations and words makes it possible to better understand how logical and rhetorical thinking works for those who wage an asymetriccal war, re-enchanting and mystifying the world to better take control. As soon as 1932, an exchange of letters between Einstein and Freud made it clear that, in order to free man from fatality and war, education understood as culture was fundamental. Such illustrations as the exécution of Oussama ben Laden and the Caliph’s speech in Mossoul show that a premiminary analysis of images and words is essential to a fair diplomacy conducted by people from civil society, whose culture and wisdom allow justice and force to speak together and better resist war. -/- Marcel Boisard thinks that on the day the guns fall silent, exhausted by war, we will not return to the state borders that have prevailed for a century as an outcome of the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916. It is time to prepare the “day after”, which will be a huge challenge. To this end, a summit of Middle-East nations is urgently needed to globally decide the fate of those peoples. On the condition that we know who the enemy is and accept to name it, to understand the history of the countries, groups and alliances, and to question any false or self-interested sense of certainty. -/- *** In the second section, Paul Schafer provides the author’s experiences to explain how culture, from the artistic to the biological, has the power to to open the doors to spirituality, from the inner self to the global environment. He asks himself whether a relative permanence of spirituality can arise from the specific moments that characterize it. Laurent Ledoux synthesizes the conclusion of a symposium held on 22 January 2015 on the links between philosophy and management, on the basis of the spiritual dimension conceived as “natural” and the answers it may suggest to the issues that face the organizations in a “contemporaniversal” world. Jacques Rifflet makes that question in a secular perspective, based on the wellsprings of personal commitment before it can be caught by any religious creed or scientific theory. In this sense spirituality, in alliance with reason, both inspires human consciousness and illuminates its destiny. Sami Aldeeb asks himself whether Islam can be reconciled with human rights. Caught between the belief in an absolute and final Word descended from the sky, and evidence showing that any religion is the creation of a given culture and a society situated in time and space, the Makkan and … contexts et médinois call for differentiated, if not opposite answers and exegeses. Bernard Carmona provides the outline of a dialogical framework, which is known to be a feature of debates between the various philosophical schools of classical India, exemplified here by the transdisciplinary perspective of debates within a Buddhist context. *** The articles not focused on the previous topic include a study by Landry Signé on China’s strategy, competing with the United States to control African resources. The author deals with the specific case of China’s rapprochement with Southern Sudan since Sudan was broken up. In the last paper, Goran Fejić and Rada Iveković, return to the essential role that women should play, and comments upon the role of some international legal instruments related in particular to the elimination of all forms of discrimination. The perspective is transnational and transethnic and is based on secular criteria, as regards nation-building and more generally society-building. Considering the persistence of widespread violence, whether in times of armed conflict or in times of peace, the question remains whether it is possible to fully implement rights and justice instruments. (shrink)

Jean Hyppolite describes Hegel’s project in the Phenomenology of Spirit as “the development and formulation of natural consciousness and its progression to science, that is to say, to philosophic knowledge, to knowledge of the absolute” (Hyppolite 1974, 4). This development or progression is the “work of consciousness engaged in experience,” as phenomenal knowledge necessarily leads to absolute knowledge. Thus from the very nature of consciousness one is led toward the absolute, which is both substance as well as subject. This paper (...) will argue that Hegel’s account of the development of consciousness and its progression towards knowledge has certain commonalities with feminist philosophy of science. Frequently, feminist theorists cite Hegel specifically in reference to his discussion of the master/slave relationship, or his discussion of ethics, two sections of the Phenomenology of Spirit in which Hegel explicitly attempts to delineate a role or place for women. Many of these sections do have decidedly antifeminist implications, as has been correctly pointed out by many scholars. Especially in the section on Antigone, where Hegel ascribes the private sphere of life in the home to woman and the public sphere of life in the polis to man, Hegel is clearly unconcerned with the subordination of women, prescribing means of resistance, or finding alternatives to promote the removal of women’s oppression.1 Although Hegel’s political and moral theory does not reflect a feminist perspective, in this paper I will argue that Hegel’s theory of knowledge, the progress towards absolute knowledge described above, has much in common with recent feminist epistemology and philosophy of science. A central implication of this conclusion is that feminist theorists would do well to regard Hegel not merely politically, as an example of another “dead white male” philosopher who participated in the oppression of women; but also epistemologically, as a possible ally in the creation of better theories of knowledge that will regard the experience of culturally situated subjects as important sources of knowledge.2 This conclusion will be argued in two ways. First, I will illustrate how Hegel reconceptualizes the relationship between subject and object, and subject and community, and the related notion of objectivity. This type of objectivity will be shown to be a variety of “dialectical objectivity,” following Allan Megill’s delineation of four senses of objectivity. This reading of Hegelian subject-object relations and objectivity will then be compared to Sandra Harding’s concept of “strong objectivity,” a very similar type of dialectical objectivity which stands as an excellent example of current feminist epistemology and standpoint theory. From this similarity, it will be shown that Hegelian and feminist epistemology have much more in common than previously thought. (shrink)

Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, in which (...) a collaboration between Jacques Derrida and a group of architects interested in his concepts is commenced, and the third one, in which completed or only designed objects or new concepts of deconstruction created by architects gain their supremacy over philosophy. The following book analyses these three possible ways, first of all with the reference to Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi. -/- Peter Eisenman -/- Misreading… and Other Errors -/- The issue of relations between Peter Eisenman’s work and philosophy of deconstruction may be referred to his activity more than ten years preceding his direct collaboration with Jacques Derrida (in 1985) and organisation of the exhibition Deconstructivist Architecture at Museum of Modern Art in New York (in 1988). As soon as at the stage of designing the first houses (House I-III, 1967-1970), which almost entirely inscribed in formalistic aesthetics of Modernism, the architect analysed the problem of architecture dependence on its assumptions. All his later designs may be treated as consequence of this initial interest in relations between practice and theory, and at the same time as an introduction to manipulations later on led at the level of metaphysics of architecture. Beginning with the issue of presence, considered in comments to House VI (1972), the number of ideas having their analogies in philosophy of deconstruction increased. The text entitled The End of the Classical: The End of the Beginning, The End of the End (1984), in which Eisenman criticised questions of representation in architecture, its delusive strive for truth and comparably unattainable attempts at ultimate definition of elementary rules, should be acclaimed the breaking point. This attitude was extended by numerous strategies disturbing architecture rules defined at metaphysical level in an essay Moving Arrows, Eros, and Other Errors: an Architecture of Absence (1986). The issue of Eisenman’s passage from formalism to deconstruction has already been much discussed in the literature (Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Patin among others), still it should be mentioned that the threads similar to Derrida’s concept included in Eisenman’s writing reveal untranslatability of architecture and philosophy. -/- Choral Works or Separate tricks -/- In 1985-1986 a series of seven disputes between Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman took place. The pretext for them were designs concerning Parc de la Villette in Paris. The situation of many months of collaboration between a notable philosopher of the second half of the 20th c. and an architect that already had a huge theoretical oeuvre, ended up with a publication of a large volume entitled Chora L Works and it became at the same time a vast study area for historians of contemporary architecture and philosophers. Derrida’s contribution to concept works were his considerations over the idea of chôra, the properties related to this concept were about to be reflected in shapes of the park. Therefore, Chora L Works became an example of the abilities of contemporary art, both in its capability of translation from philosophical ideas to artistic forms and its resistance to tradition of representing in architecture some phenomena and values originating outside this discipline. In the final period of their collaboration both interlocutors started to polemicise with each other more decidedly, what became a separate part of their thought exchange. The exchange of letters between Derrida and Eisenman at the turn of 1989 ended up the period of their direct contacts, nevertheless, at this time precisely a large group of experts in issues of deconstruction joined the discussion and extended the revealed in the former dispute problems into more than ten years of further considerations and publications. Except for a long text by Jeffrey Kipnis, who had participated in the meetings of the philosopher and the architect, there appeared also comments of researchers of artistic theories (K. Michael Hays, Thomas Patin), philosophers (Andrew Benjamin), and even experts in Greek literature (Maria Theodorou or Ann Bergren). Following these debates a contemporary reflection on architecture has saturated with indeed numerous concepts originating in philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Architecture which imitates mute philosophy -/- The series of Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman meetings, which took place in the period of 1985-1987, induced many authors to make comments. Some of them (Jeffrey Kipnis, Ann Bergren, Maria Theodorou) developed the subject of chôra which was introduced to the discussion by Derrida. The problem that was about to be solved was the question of tying up the concept of chôra with architecture, including Eisenman’s architecture and the series of meetings within frames of Chora L Works project. Kipnis on this occasion paid attention to chôra and its character of anachronia which infects any being created within chôra. In other words any event has its counterpart (analogon) in another, earlier event. He demonstrated the similarity of structure of many events and statements from the times of Derrida and Eisenman’s meetings to the almost identical behaviour of figures in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus. The loss of beginning present in this phenomenon was appropriate to both features of chôra and the effects of typical analyses of philosophy of deconstruction. Bergren’s analyses focused on accentuating gender of chôra, which, according to this author, had been neglected hitherto in discussions. She collated chôra descriptions with characteristics of women in myths, early Greek epic and philosophy and she arrived at a conclusion that chôra has features of a single woman and a married one at the same time. And yet Theodorou’s studies showed that in the Homeric epics chôra is not treated as an idea but is related with single things and events. The other part of the comments (represented by Andrew Benjamin and K. Michael Hays’ utterances) concerns Eisenman’s attitude to tradition which was treated as a variety of iteration understood philosophically. Benjamin commenced his considerations at the point of closeness between a definition of tradition and a concept of chôra understood as perpetuation (placement). A problematic issue was for him Eisenman’s complex relation to tradition based on its contest and affirmation at the same time. Overcoming the simple subordination to tradition – according to Benjamin – was based on awareness of the role of repetition in culture not known before. Hays made an attempt to explain the pleasure and torment of repetition with the support of Sigmund Freud and Roland Barthes’ concepts. According to Hays repetitions are attempts of a single being to a certain primal state perceived as free of any tension. In a similar way Rosalind Krauss explained a motif of a grate present in Modernistic art and also exceptionally frequent in Eisenman’s work. -/- Annex Architecture is still writing Balzac novels. Peter Eisenman and literature -/- Architecture’s approach to writing, script or literature, present within Peter Eisenman’s work, is an exceptional phenomenon, furthermore a complex one. The article considers four possible relations. The first one relates to Eisenman’s characteristics as a person extremely gifted with the ability to wordplay, which very ‘play’ reveals skills to create architectural images. In the second approach the attention has been paid to Eisenman’s interests – in the first period of his oeuvre – in linguistic works by Noam Chomsky and his transformational-generative grammar. The third kind of relations applied to overcoming the need for autonomy of architecture (and of modernist aesthetics at the same time) and renew interests in questions of meaning in architecture. The fourth sort of relations occurred when Eisenman started to create reflections of historic or literary narrations in architecture – ‘stone stories’ and architectural fictions of their kind. -/- Bernard Tschumi -/- From perversion to deconstruction In Bernard Tschumi’s writings from the 1970s and 1980s we can find a transposition of important threads of post-structuralist ideas deriving from Georges Bataille, Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida’s works. The analysis of the architect’s writings also shows roots in Phillippe Sollers, Michel Foucault and Denis Hollier’s works. The analysis of borrowed elements from the beginnings of Tschumi’s theoretical activity may be helpful in explaining the contents of his later writings motre inspired by philosophy of deconstruction. The set of his earliest views was inspired by Marxism, Neo Marxism and French Structuralism, mainly by the writings of Henri Levebre and Guy Debord. From the thought of Levebre Tschumi took interest for city as not only a question of urbanistics but also a political issue. From Debord’s concepts he borrowed a conviction about the role of situational violation for changes in the society structure. Some of these beliefs were preserved in his own concepts of architecture as an event. From this period derived also his will to change conservative elements of social structure not by means of political revolution but of theoretical and creative activity. Tschumi acknowledged that the effective way of the proceedings towards achieving his aims would be accepting the role of both a critical intellectualist and architecture expert who would not hide away his left-wing orientation. The speculations defined by the architect as ‘revolting analyses’ were about to characterise contradictions which tear the society apart, penetrate architecture and constitute the basis of culture. Spreading away of the conscience of false assumptions hidden away in various disciplines could have weakened cohesion of a conservative society and influence the will to change among the elites. This way the beginnings of political revolution were rooted in philosophy of architecture. In 1977 Tschumi published his text entitled The Pleasure of Architecture inspired by Roland Barthes’s The Pleasure of the Text, it also included some concepts derived from Georges Bataille and Jacques Derrida. First of all the author used Barthes’s concept which made an assumption that literary activity is pervaded by the spirit of resistance towards social rules, and Tschudi transferred this remark onto architecture. From the ideas of Bataille, acquainted via Holier’s work, he derived his belief that two concepts of space, a conceptual one (defined as Pyramid) and a sensual one (defined as Labirynth), not losing their distinct features, they join in the concept of experienced space which exceeds contradictions. The exceeding itself was defined as the basic rule of architecture and it was referred to situations in which architecture not only negates social needs, but also disavows its own tradition. Crossing the borders applies not only to political issues or permanent rules of the very discipline but also interfering with other fields (especially literature and film). The fact that architecture is associated with organising events turned Tschumi’s attention to questions of violence that result from upsetting architectural order of a given building by its users and the one hand, and on the other from forcing the users to specific acts imposed by this very order. The analysis of the concepts used by Tschumi in his early writings indicates that they are close to definitions that would occur in his reflection in the following years influenced by philosophy of deconstruction. -/- Approaching deconstruction Tschumi in his theories developed in the 1980s presumed that the current social world had undergone a deep process of decay, and the reaction against which ought to be based on ordering-up actions, and also preserving the main outline of disintegration of the whole and its elements in the state of conflict. The statements concerning the nature of the contemporary to Tschumi social relations were applied by him to the world of architecture, this led him to coming up with designing strategies that took into consideration the destabilised character of conditions in which works of architecture were created. New ways of conduct invented by Tschumi drew their inspiration from literature and research on literature, psychoanalysis, structural linguistics, structuralism and post structuralism, and eventually also deconstruction philosophy. The proposed methods were opposed by their author both to functionalism continuity trends and postmodern architecture. Tschumi’s proposals contradicted any forms of conservatism or traditionalism in political sphere as well as in reference to tendencies in architecture. They were not simple contradictions of social or architectural rules, they intrude them from the inside, weaken or escalate the already existing incongruities, they move the boundaries between the areas. Revolutionary illusions about the possibility of radical changes were replaced with strategies which completed, tainted or test former rules in the series of formal games of permutation and combination. Quite different from avant-garde formalism Tschumi’s games were not about maintaining the autonomy of a given area, but on the contrary – polluting it with other areas’ influences. Tschumi enjoyed demonstrating illusions of architecture concerning simple relations between form and function, or between form and meaning. Making use of Freud, Lacan and Foucault’s research he introduced a category of “madness” into architecture allowing an observation that the recognised norms are nothing but merely ones of many possible principles of behaviour, and their recognised status resulted from unjustified hindering innovativeness which is crucial for architecture. To reborn architecture’s capability of changing Tschumi also made use of Barthes’s discoveries concerning rules of narration and works by writers who applied in their writing knowledge on linguistics. Making a work’s author unclear by various mechanical transformations of its elements was however apparent only, and formal rigours imposed on the process of designing liberated possibilities difficult to obtain in more traditional creative action. Another mode of acting introduced by Tschumi was combining his work of elements deriving from outside architecture; joining space records with notation of motion and events accompanying architectural objects among others. These architectural and extra-architectural elements were not unified, on the contrary their heterogenous and conflictual character was stressed. This is how shock, anxiety and instability, typical for live in great metropolises, infiltrated architecture. Taking some ideas of deconstruction philosophy as a pattern Tschumi also took into critical consideration in his essays traditional in architecture oppositions between form and figuration, or theory and practice. By combining various inspirations he eventually worked out an idea of architectural event, which he understood as a series of actions contesting its own field, redefining its sources, principles and elements. An event, understood in this way, was not so much producing works as rather creating conditions of their production and at the same time designing the society different from a hierarchic one. -/- Park of deconstruction Among numerous philosophical strategies of deconstruction most frequently used was questioning the practice of strong opposition of two reasons. In many cases Bernard Tschumi’s writings just consider functioning of the conflict juxtaposition of the ideas of structure and ornament or theory and practice in history of architecture. Violation of traditional relations between terms of this kind, both old and modern, raised Jacques Derrida’s objections, when he was induced for the first time to co-operate with architects’ milieu. During this long lasting thought exchange the philosopher eventually acknowledged Bernard Tschumi’s arguments for reasoning the encroachment of architecture’s fundamental rules. Deconstruction applied in architecture was not a simple transposition or analogy of practices that had been applied by philosophy of deconstruction. We may even say that considering architectural terms became an important formula of deconstruction. Architecture understood in philosophical way became something beyond the practice and theory of its own discipline, a sort of metaphysics of both philosophy and architecture. The deliberate encroachment of simplicity of dividing architecture into theory and practice, for the first time became a clear aim for Tschumi in his drawings and texts entitled The Manhattan Transcripts. The contents of this series of works was a record of characteristic features of this New York district in such a way that not only objects were the subject of the record but also relations between objects, people and events. The record was about to take into consideration a conflict character of elements of this representation and at the same time to avoid applying to them the rule of mimetism. The record became a form of reflection over the very record by an increased control over the ways of representation. Architecture which was considered in the The Manhattan Transcripts was not directed to fulfill the needs of inhabitation or production, it was rather related with hitherto usually marginalised liminal situations: building ostentatiously big monuments, religious cult, war etc. Architecture operating in these relations focused also the attention on the included in it continuous tendency to overpass its own restrictions, the role of violence as its not recognised factor, or the meaning of excess and shock in its operation. Architecture moving from reason towards madness became even more visible in the design of Parisian Parc de la Villette, whose pavilions were defined as folies (in French it means both small park buildings and follies). The park was supposed to be on the one hand a reflection of traditional society disintegration while on the other it questioned basic rules of producing a work of architecture. The traditional rules of designing, based on ordering up, were replaced with the strategies of dysfunction and dissociation. In Tschumi’s opinion methods of this kind may be equivalent of what Derrida named différance. Instead of aiming at mergence, any diversity, plays or variations were strengthen. Tschumi’s texts, in which he explained his attitude, were completed by Derrida’s extent statement entitled Point de folie – Maintenant l’architecture. Derrida’s article is the most significant of all his statements on architecture as a form of thinking and activity. According to the philosopher, architecture should divide space (in French defined as espacement), what enables both thinking and action – it arranges the space of an event. Tschumi’s buildings, defined as folies, in an essential way destabilise any created order, and at the same time they refresh it. Derrida’s statement suggests that architecture may become both metaphor of an order merging a language or a society but also of inner forces which deconstruct and reconstruct it. Therefore architecture is at the same time a construction, a deconstruction and a reconstruction. Parc de la Villette stands out in this system with its attempt to step beyond the scheme of an easy repetition and its heading for chances of achieving more radical otherness. -/- Conclusion Destruction as construction. Paradoxes of deconstruction in architecture -/- Scepticism about persistence and common importance of fundamental values of human culture evinced in philosophers and writers’ works as early as in Greek antiquity, nevertheless it was not expressed so strongly as in the second half of the 20th century. Especially in Heidegger’s work Being and Time (although originated in 1927, still influential in all later philosophy) the following states were characterised: the state of losing the ground (Abgrund), of being out of sight (Unheimlichkeit) and of being out of dwelling (Un-zuhause-sein) – as the basis of self-confidence of conscious being there (Dasein). The entire criticism of philosophy of home and dwelling draws the inspiration from this early writing of the German philosopher, it combines crisis of basic terms of metaphysics with social conditions which are dictated by living in large metropolis. The crisis of both metaphysical foundation and home appears to be similar to the situation of weakening the relations between a man and his dwelling in extensively expanding cities. Whereas philosophy, as well as many disciplines of social sciences, have diagnosed for a long time the destabilisation of fundamental ideas of Western culture and crucial changes in the ways of dwelling, architecture itself occurred to be “the last fortress of metaphysics” (J. Derrida). Among contemporary architects, Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi were the ones who engaged most decidedly in the issues of critical analysis of architecture foundation and its social role. Both the architects noticed new formulas of contemporary social and individual existence, tremendously different from the entire history, and at the same time they affirmed lack of adequacy of architecture concepts to new situations. Both Eisenman and Tschumi used to describe the existing architecture as a tool for consolidation of highly integrated and hierarchised societies, and also as a discipline extremely uncoincidental with the current character of social life based on ideas of freedom and diversity. The means to transform architecture and make a factor of further social changes out of it, was a concept that accentuated revealing the inner contradictions of this discipline, and considering them in designing strategies. Eisenman’s activity, in regard of what has just been noticed, was focused on questioning the basic rules of traditionally comprehended architecture, especially the rule of purpose. The American architect noticed that the concept of architecture as fulfilment the need of location, hides away the fact that the location has to be constantly reconsidered, and hence it is overtaken by change (dislocation). Therefore new concept of architecture propounded architectural activity to translocate the concept of location – more than before – but also to change its status perpetually. Such comprehended architecture should claim, as its main purpose, the constant revision of this purpose and create itself anew permanently. Even Eisenman’s earliest designs of houses nos. I-IV broke with such values as the sense of safety, closeness and familiarity, and just on the contrary they accentuated senses of strangeness, homelessness and loss of confidence. The contradictions within architecture noticed by Tschumi referred to combination of intellectual and sensual values in architecture, when their non-appropriation was defeated by an additional condition, namely the way of experience based on pleasure of excess, marked by insanity. The features of folly were especially visible in his designs of gardens, where the order of planning was mixed with sensual experience introduced by particular elements (both the ones created by nature, and the buildings defined as folies). Parc de la Villette designed by the French architect in Paris put in question not only the common understanding of purpose in architecture but also the ideas of order and integrity, as its plan was based on the combination of independent layers with records of grids of points, various lines and planes. The architecture that collides inadequate elements with each other was supposed to be a kind of an event with no beginning and no end. The architecture treated as an event became a form of a space weakened articulation that maintains its diversity and lack of accordance of the elements building it up. The analyses of Eisenman and Tschumi’s theoretical writings indicate how much the aims of architecture have actually changed; instead of supporting social persistence, the architecture is rather intensifying contradictions, and instead of providing people with the sense of safety, it sublimes danger. From simple acts of defamiliarisation, increasing the distance to itself and enhancing the role of theory, through discomfort, anxiety, not feeling someone at home, weirdness, excess, shock and violence, architecture reached the edge of stability and uncertainty, only to make an attempt at penetrating what is impossible and unutterable, and recording what cannot become the subject of any records. -/- . (shrink)

In this Master's dissertation, I try to show that the causal theory of memory, which is the only theory developed so far that at first view seems more plausible and that could be integrated with psychological explanations and investigations of memory, shows some conceptual and ontological problems that go beyond the internal inconsistencies that each version can present. On one hand, the memory phenomenon analyzed is very limited: in general it is reduced to the conscious act of remembering expressed (...) in a propositional format: the idea of an agent who can control his memory reports, in contrast to a passive subject who merely retrieve his encoded memories, is not even considered. Furthermore, the representational function of memory is the only function taken into account; and all the diachronic changes that could entail a dynamic conception of memory are ignored, as is the consideration of context in a broad sense of the term. On the other hand, causal theories make some implicit assumptions that are obviously questionable (e.g., the difference between facts and events) and leave some of their key concepts unexplained, like the nature of the causality, the isomorphism between the memory trace and the memory event, etc. Nonetheless, the principal point that we criticized is the idea of a correspondence between a past event or representation of it, the correspondent memory trace and the memory representation of it. Psychological models of memory, with the exception of the spatial analogy, question some of these assumptions and suggest that memory information is organized in a way other than that implied by the causal theory. But it is distributed connectionism that actually challenges the causal theory of memory, not only through some of its basic postulates, like the superpositional conception of memory traces, their mutual influence and constant state of change, but also because it is compatible with a more situated approach to memory phenomena as well as with the idea that memory in reality accomplishes a variety of functions that go beyond the representational one. The explicit and implicit ideas provided by distributed connectionism, together with the previous criticisms that we made to of causal theory, clearly suggest the possibility of developing another kind of philosophical theory of memory, different from existing theories. This task, nonetheless, implies: (a) A much deeper study of connectionism principles and memory models, as well as of the rival candidate, symbolism, plus the evaluation of these models in the light of psychological and neurophysiological empirical research, which unfortunately I have not dealt with in this work. (b) An analysis of the metaphysical nature of events and facts, in order to see if we should decide in favor of a realist or a non-realist account. It is also clear that this decision can’t be taken without an examination of perception studies (and not exclusively philosophical ones) which would be crucial for determining what is encoded in memory, and studies devoted to language, which, I suspect, plays an important role in the segmentation of reality. (c) A clarification of the notion of causality, because we wouldn’t like to deny any kind entail the complete disappearance of boundaries between memory and imagination. And even if I suspect that my future work will question the existence of absolute boundaries between these two capacities, the notion of causality can’t be completely erase from the theory of memory without erasing the memory phenomenon itself. But this causality, as we’ve already showed, can’t consist in the naïve conception adopted by the causal accounts of memory, nor can it be explained in counterfactual terms. If we think of the reconsolidation concept, of the interdependence between all the memory system, and of the deciding influence of context, it’s almost sure that more than one notion of causality will need to be invoked in order to explain memory. (d) Because I do not want to reduce the study of memory exclusively to cases of remembering, it’s essential to analyze how memory intervenes not only in imagination, but also in perception, reasoning and future projection, for example. In this respect, we could quote the interesting articles of Atance & O’Neill (2001) and Bucker & Carroll (2006), the first concerning the relationship between episodic memory and episodic future thinking, the second concerning the relationship between episodic memory and all kinds of self-projection, such as navigation and theory of mind, relations that would also have to be explored from a philosophical perspective, in particular to overcome the tendency to suppose that representation is the only function of memory. I will also mention the necessity of combining the notion of metamemory with that of memory to some extent; as I have already remarked, it is implausible to suppose that a subject who consciously remembers something is unable to exert any kind of control over his memory reports. (e) Finally, in order to integrate a situated conception of memory into a philosophical account, it will also be indispensable to take into consideration what is known as “everyday memory research” as well as studies in social and collective memory. (shrink)

Religious experience is one of the fundamental problems of the philosophy of religion. Although it has entered the literature as a proof of God; discussions focus on its nature. The basic approaches to the nature of religious experience are: religious experience as a feeling, religious experience as a perception, religious experience as a comment. The main reason that makes the nature of religious experience controversial is that it consists of two concepts that have a wide range of meaning, such as (...) religion and experience. The meanings that individuals and traditions attach to these two concepts determine the understanding of religious experience. The beginning of religious experience as a term corresponds to the periods of Protestantism. With the emphasis of Enlightenment on the mind, the meanings attributed to religious experience have been reduced and narrowed. In the literature, religious experience is unclear, cannot be transferred to others, instant and extraordinary experiences. The preliminary acceptance of this article is that the meanings attributed to the term religious experience are narrowed and it is wrong to use the term in the same sense for different traditions. This article assumes that the reader knows the current discussion of the problem. Rather than reacting to the concerns of current debate, it takes a more proactive and pre-opener approach. Rather than reacting to the concerns of the current debate, it takes a more proactive approach to the subject. This paper will present a different reading of religious experience than the literature as a problem of the Philosophy of Religion. In this context, the concept of God, universe and human being in al-Ghazali will be firstly revealed as the ontological background of religious experience; then a description of the concept of religious experience will be proposed on this ontological basis. If you mean an experience related to religion, which is within religious boundaries with religious experience; Islam for a Muslim, that all experiences that cater to all aspects of human existence and religious boundaries cannot be the person to enter into any human experience that is experienced throughout the religious life. Certainly, here we can talk about the experiences that religion has ordered and forbidden, or in other words, experiences that religion regards as positive or negative. If an experience related to God is meant for religious experience, here are two cases: when the truth comes to the essence and attributes of God, the human experience does not reach there and in this sense, a religious experience is not possible. If the acts of God are mentioned; all the experiences that people live in are religious in this sense, because everything outside of their own is a deed of God, and whatever happens in the world of being, takes place within God's deeds. Here, too, whether or not people are aware of it, can be mentioned in other words, from conscious and unconscious religious experiences, which is the deciding factor. Faith, then, can be regarded as the first step of the conscious religious experience. If you are referring to experiences that seem to be unusual for those who are religious and have no religious experience, it is an extraordinary experience to go on a journey itself, compared to not going on a journey. That is to say, the faith itself, which is to ascend to a journey to perfection, is an extraordinary experience compared to those who are not on this path, that is, those who do not have it. For instance for children, the experiences of the elders are extraordinary, and therefore being ordinary and extraordinary is a relative concept. It is necessary to acknowledge the differences in conscious religious experiences mentioned above in the meaning of intense and deep living in themselves. There is a deeper and more intense experience that expresses progress in a journey that leads to God in the sense of the strengthening of faith. This is the kind of experience that most people have not experienced in this sense that the task of the person who is experienced in his own journey is not to stick to them and continue on their way. So living out of order for a Muslim is seen as a barrier that must be encountered and which should not be lingered on, while experiencing something extraordinary has a distinctive place for religious experience in current debates. The issue is not that they cannot be explained but they are not deliberately explained due to the fear of misunderstanding. This can be regarded as a method of education that older adults use to train minors. As a result, if we would define a religious experience according to al-Ghazali, we can say that religion is a journey made towards God, and religious experience is the experience of traveling to God. Traveling to him means to get close to Him, but this approach is not in spatial means but in perfection means. So, religious experience is the journey to perfection of the man himself. Man's perfection is to have the attributes of God who have absolute perfection. These attributes are present in man's own essence. What a person must do, is to place an effort to make these virtual adjectives real. This journey is basically an existential necessity as it provides the happiness that is essential to human existence. In this journey, which can be understood as becoming a human being who was born as a human being. It should also be added that it is not possible to be absolutely perfect and to reach the reality of God himself in this endless journey of perfection. Therefore, the absolute perfection belongs to God, and it is necessary to understand the concept of perfect human being as a person who has traveled in the journey to perfection. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Attributing different titles to the activity of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers is related to the perspective of those who conduct this activity. If Turkish Language teaching centres are sub-units of Schools of Foreign Languages and Departments of Foreign Languages of our Universities or teachers have a foreign language background, then the title “Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language” is adopted and claimed to be universal. In determining success at teaching and learning, the psychological perception of the educational activity (...) and the associational power of the words used are far more important factors than the teacher, students, educational environment and educational tools. For this reason, avoiding the negative connotations of the adjective “foreign” in the activity of teaching foreigners Turkish as spoken in Turkey would be beneficial. In order for the activity of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers to be successful, it is crucial to dwell on the formal and contextual quality of the books written for this purpose. Almost none of the course books and supplementary books in the field of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers has taken Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers into consideration. The books written for the purpose of teaching Turkish to non-speakers should be examined thoroughly in terms of content and method and should be organized in accordance with the purpose and level of readiness of the target audience. Activities of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers are still conducted at public and private primary and secondary schools and colleges as well as private courses by self-educated teachers who are trained within a master-apprentice relationship. Turkic populations who had long been parted by necessity have found the opportunity to reunite and turn towards common objectives after the dissolution of The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This recent state of affairs resulting from the use of various alphabets such as Arabic, Kirill, Latin by Turkic republics that declared independence and by autonomous and semi-autonomous Turkic communities or Turkic minorities living in various regions in the World have risen the need for a common communicative language and alphabet among the cognate people of those communities. For this reason, Activities of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers have gained a particular significance today. Activities of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers are still handled within the scope of “Teaching Turkish to Foreigners” and people who have no background of Turkish language are given the same curriculum as Turkic speakers. This causes students who have zero Turkish language background and the ones who have the basic structural knowledge of the language at a native level to be given the same education in the same classroom environment and same tests. In these classrooms where the students’ levels of readiness vary dramatically, half of the students are unable to follow the lesson. While teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to the Turkic speakers, the equivalence level of the words in the dialect to be taught must be taken into consideration. You can teach someone who knows nothing about a subject better than the ones that have different or inaccurate knowledge of the subject. The same applies to teaching Turkish spoken in Turkey to Turkic speakers. In order to decide which of The Turkic dialects is to be the common communicative language, we must pay attention to factors such as the geographical size of the land that the dialect is spoken in, the domain, the level of appeal and the power of the dialect in visual and print media. As Turkish spoken in Turkey is number one in almost all of these factors, it should be the common communicative language among Turkic speakers. When taught consciously in a classroom environment, the similarities and associations between the dialects would help Turkic speakers to learn Turkish language more easily; but when neglected, the result would be the opposite. To form the first texts with the common words in Turkic dialects in the books to be written for Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers would facilitate language learning. There is a need for a systematic study in terms of every aspect such as the title, the common alphabet, the books and materials to be produced and teaching methods to be used in Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers. The characteristics of Turkish dialect spoken in Turkey and other Turkic dialects are still not considered in the activities conducted on the subject; and the activity is considered as foreign language teaching instead of teaching another dialect of Turkish language. It is considered that Turkish as spoken in Turkey should be the common communicative language among the Turkish world and for this reason it is crucial to teach it to people who speak other dialects of Turkic languages. First of all, common and similar semantic, vocal and structural units in the dialects must be identified and texts and methods that emphasize these similarities must be determined. Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey should be divided into two main sections as “Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to Native Turkic speakers” and “Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to Non-native Speakers” and teaching methods and educational tools should be determined accordingly. “Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to Native Turkic speakers” should also be classified into groups. For example, under the sub title of “Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to Turkic speakers”, specific course books for “Azerbaijan Turks, Kirghiz Turks, Kazakh Turks, Uzbek Turks and Turkman Turks, etc.” should be prepared in order to teach them Turkish as spoken in Turkey. In addition, instead of grammar based methods, techniques that give grammatical knowledge subtly should be preferred in Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers. While teaching Turkish to adults that come from various parts of the world with various language knowledge and skills, we should benefit from the power of pictures and shapes which are considered the common language of humankind. The sentence, which is the basic component that states a meaningful idea, should be taken as basis while teaching the language; and for the ones who do not know the Turkish alphabet, firstly letters, which are the smallest units of written language, should be comprehended by means of alphabets with pictures. Instead of making students memorize words, the meanings and forms of the words should be presented within the sentences while tenses and personal pronouns and endings should be comprehended within the sentence. While teaching sentences; first, correct pronunciation of the sentence, the meaning and correct articulation (first oral and then written) of the sentence, and then how to analyse the sentence structure and produce similar sentences should be taught; stress, intonation and spelling rules should be comprehended by means of sentences. Teaching Turkish as spoken in Turkey to Turkic speakers and Teaching Turkish to foreigners are still considered the same. A state policy has to be formed on this matter; the scope, content and teaching method of teaching Turkish to non-native speakers must be evaluated based on scientific criteria and measures must be taken in terms of professional Turkish language teaching. In a word, new measures must be taken and scientific studies must be conducted for the activity of Teaching Turkish as Spoken in Turkey to Turkic Speakers in terms of fields varying from raising course teachers, producing course books, determining the method and location of the class to the production and selection of educational tools. (shrink)

The purpose of college and university ranking mainly resides to assist with the students in choosing their schools and programs at the level they wish to study. The US News and World Report (USNWR) graduate programs ranking is notable that evaluates the graduate level programs uniquely and in contrast with other general subject rankings. Along with the reputation of source, this specificity enables to enjoy a number of subscribers in making an application decision about which school or program is competitive (...) and personally fits. Given the study of national research council is most exhaustive and authoritative ranking source on research doctorates, called Ph.Ds, the ranking of professional schools, for instance, law schools, medical schools, nursing schools and on, as presented to the students in USNWR is very determinative in deciding which school I choose. In this light, the following tables show a ranking that has been yielded on the diversity and quality of graduate and research doctorate programs as well as law studies specifically. Therefore, the tables can be referred to a vast of interested people on the graduate studies in the United States. The last part of reference can be referred not only by JD students, but also by researchers in the graduate law programs. Since some small or exclusively JD-oriented law schools are not available of LL.M or graduate study, the users of table are expected to read consciously. The ranking table has a threshold to qualify so as to be enlisted that the top 44 law schools in all specialties exclusively had been selected and ranked according to the average of two subjects. As said, it could be used secondarily to refer in deciding the schools on the application of general LL.M program. Given the junior scholarly nature of LL.M. or graduate law programs, it is considered that the legal writing program is half factored to select the schools. The column 1 and 2 transcribes the US ranking, which are added for a sum in column 3. Least number is placed at top and less number attains a high ranking correspondingly thorough the end of institution. The first and second parts of this work show the top universities according to the number of programs, whose possible highest rating is placed within the range 1st -17th in either R or S rank of most recent 2010 NRC assessment and roughly same range in the USNWR graduate programs ranking. They are prepared from the revised NRC report published in 2011, which is most recent as well as based on the 2021 version of USNWR. Both data will be incorporated into my current project concerning the American higher education and graduate studies. (shrink)

There is virtually universal agreement in the scientific community that religion does not meet the requirements of science and that its contents can consequently be largely ignored. Yet what exactly is wrong with religion from a scientific point of view and why is religion still so widely spread around the globe? -/- This article, which is strongly influenced by Harris 2005, identifies three items - widespread ignorance of the empirical (2.1), rational (2.2), and fallibilist attitude (2.3) - as religion's primary (...) epistemological or methodological faults. It is then attempted to show that philosophy and science, due to adhering to this "Holy Trinity of Science," do an equal or much better job than religion at satisfying five deep-seated and knowledge-related human needs - the meaning of life (3.1), the origin of morals and ethics (3.2), stopping the infinite regress (3.3), comfort and security (3.4), spirituality (3.5) - for whose satisfaction many people still (incorrectly) turn to religion. The article concludes with an attempt to reconcile science and religion by adopting a decidedly nonphysicalist position, by making a near death experience based case for the natural immortality of the soul/consciousness, and by generally putting spirituality on a scientific and epistemologically sound footing. (shrink)

1. How do human organizations, as designed by humans, govern polities? -/- Current web-site analyses indicate that the medical-sites register the heaviest use. Humans are concerned with their health in a variety of iterations. If you will, it is the choice of the marketplace. But, humans must tend to the business of life. The humans live in communities, which necessarily choose definitions for their polities. Polities cannot exist without explicitly appointed and generally known socio-legal laws. In defining those rules, societies (...) decide how they are going to be organized and ruled---either consciously or by default---and how the common functions of the community are going to be financed. (shrink)

Once again the decision and court opinion are an element within the general understanding of law at least in the common law countries. A lawyerly way has implications in shaping the pattern of public administration, but in differing extent of public attraction or normative impact. -/- First, while the Constitution of United States had brought a popular democracy and Constitution-based structure of government, the Ancient Regime had been overhauled in new land. The “nobility” as a basis of government was dispelled, (...) and people arose as a main class or pillar of nation. As we take a precept of chaotic years from the Articles of Confederation thorough the Constitution, the earlier ambition was mixed between the diplomatic unity and one strong national government. This context implicates much over the centuries and can also be illustrated with a residue of classic and present practice of international politics. The characteristics as temporal for the years would more properly be sensible with the kinds of description, for example, “atmosphere of war, interstate comity or discredit, chaos from the heterogeneous regional power and social incongruence nationally.” A threat from the mainland Europe had been constant at considerable period of time upon the independence. For the nation, it is more urgent to make it clear who will decide the will of nation, how to effectively consolidate the function of government, or how to manage the least of nation with the subjects than active interaction with the people, although the people are one distinct element of new Constitution and ideologically pronounced in the preamble of Constitution. This generally led to recognition that the role of Constitution and Supreme Court were minimal in terms of public policy making and that their policy contained in the opinion often is sheer of internal issues among the public power other than those of people. The kind of Kantian ambition for the universal justice on liberty and equality, hence, should wait for more prosperous time afterwards that people tend to be conscious of their basic rights or public good from the arbitrary rule of majority, given our concocted recognition from the kind of public policy ideals from Bentham, “the greatest happiness of greatest number,” and “revolutionary spirit on people.” It perhaps would not be irrelevant, in understanding of the impact of judicial rulings on public policy, that the US is other than unitary system of government. Oftentimes the kind of rulings on criminalization of adultery or right to privacy would surprise the people, but the kind of oxymoron or public debate, as likely persistent over the decades and diverse reaction, would normally not be present in the jurisdictions of unitary system. The people of such jurisdictions would be more than receptive, and be readily marshaled to adapt with the public guidelines elucidated by the court ruling. We also chat on the multiculturalism in the society and workplace. Given the judicial activism, the Supreme Court justices might be clairvoyant, who would be equipped with goodwill, wisdom and almighty intelligence to assuage an untreatable scope of interests and state specificities. Foreign lawyers would find such ample source of laws in surprise, who might envy a wide coverage of judicial interests. They perhaps would take the US context as the kind of insightful classroom and learn the lessons from their case laws. (shrink)

It is well known that the nature of consciousness is elusive, and that attempts to understand it generate problems in metaphysics, philosophy of mind, psychology, and neuroscience. Less appreciated are the important – even if still elusive – connections between consciousness and issues in ethics. In this chapter we consider three such connections. First, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding an entity’s moral status. Second, we consider the relevance of consciousness for questions surrounding moral responsibility for action. (...) Third, we consider the relevance of consciousness for the acquisition of moral knowledge. (shrink)

Does consciousness have non-instrumental aesthetic value? This paper answers this question affirmatively by arguing that consciousness is sublime. The argument consists of three premises. (1) An awe experience of an object provides prima facie justification to believe that the object is sublime. (2) I have an awe experience about consciousness through introspecting three features of consciousness, namely the mystery of consciousness, the connection between consciousness and well-being, and the phenomenological complexity of consciousness. (3) There is no good defeater of the (...) justificatory force of my feeling of awe for the sublime of consciousness. To defend the third premise, I argue against two potential defeaters: The first is that most people do not regard consciousness as sublime. The second is that there do not seem to be physical properties that can ground the sublimity of consciousness. I conclude by emphasizing an important ethical implication of the thesis that consciousness is sublime, namely that it explains why even conscious subjects who cannot have valenced experiences deserve moral consideration. (shrink)

Could a sufficiently detailed computer simulation of consciousness replicate consciousness? In other words, is performing the right computations sufficient for artificial consciousness? Or will there remain a difference between simulating and being a conscious system, because the right computations must be implemented in the right way? From the perspective of Karl Friston's free energy principle, self-organising systems (such as living organisms) share a set of properties that could be realised in artificial systems, but are not instantiated by computers with (...) a classical (von Neumann) architecture. I argue that at least one of these properties, viz. a certain kind of causal flow, can be used to draw a distinction between systems that merely simulate, and those that actually replicate consciousness. Since this property is instantiated by all systems that conform to the free energy principle (not just conscious beings), the account on offer here can be extended to draw a distinction between simulating and being a certain type of system, more generally. In particular, this may inform meta-ethical accounts of artificial moral status and artificial moral agency. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between implicit self-related information and explicit self-representation and argues that the latter is required for self-consciousness. It is further argued that self-consciousness requires an awareness of other minds and that this awareness develops over the course of an increasingly complex perspectival differentiation, during which information about self and other that is implicit in early forms of social interaction becomes redescribed into an explicit format.

Realism about consciousness conjoins a claim that consciousness exists with a claim that the existence is independent in some interesting sense. Consciousness realism so conceived may thus be opposed by a variety of anti-realisms, distinguished from each other by denying the first, the second, or both of the realist’s defining claims. I argue that Dennett’s view of consciousness is best read as an anti-realism that affirms the existence of consciousness while denying an important independence claim.

Let a smooth experience be an experience with perfectly gradual changes in phenomenal character. Consider, as examples, your visual experience of a blue sky or your auditory experience of a rising pitch. Do the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences have continuous or discrete structures? If we appeal merely to introspection, then it may seem that we should think that smooth experiences are continuous. This paper (1) uses formal tools to clarify what it means to say that an experience is continuous (...) or discrete, and (2) develops a discrete model of the phenomenal characters of smooth experiences. As a result, I'll argue that introspection leaves open whether smooth experiences are continuous or discrete. Yet I’ll also argue—perhaps surprisingly—that the discrete theory may better fit our introspective evidence. (shrink)

Consciousness is connected with the fact that a subject is aware and open to the manifestation of whatever appears. Existence, by contrast, is used to express the fact that something is given in experience, is present, or is real. Usually, the two notions are taken to be somehow related. This chapter suggests that existence is at best introduced as a metaphysical (or meta-experiential) concept that inevitably escapes the domain of conscious experience. In order to illustrate this claim, two case (...) studies are considered. The first case is provided by Descartes’s famous treatment of consciousness and existence in his Meditations on First Philosophy. The second case is meant to contrast the Cartesian approach by taking the opposite route, as delineated by Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) in his ‘fundamental ontology’. (shrink)