Pragmatic presupposition is analyzed in this paper as grounded on an implicit reasoning process based on a set of presumptions, which can define cultural differences. The basic condition for making a presupposition can be represented as a reasoning criterion, namely reasonableness. Presuppositions, on this view, need to be reasonable, namely as the conclusion of an underlying presumptive reasoning that does not or may not contain contradictions with other presumptions, including the ordering of the hierarchy of presumptions. Presumptions are in turn (...) analyzed considering their nature and their hierarchy, namely their object and their possible contextual backing, which eliminates some of their possible defaults. This analysis of presupposition brings to light the relationship between communicative infelicities or misunderstandings deriving from presuppositional failures and the underlying system of presumptions and presumptive reasoning. This approach can be applied to the investigation of communicative problems within the medical context, and more precisely the communication in diabetes cases. (shrink)

The antireductionist arguments of many philosophers (e.g., Baker, Fodor and Davidson) are motivated by a worry that successful reduction would eliminate rather than conserve the mental. This worry derives from a misunderstanding of the empiricist account of reduction, which, although it does not underwrite "cognitive suicide", should be rejected for its positivist baggage. Philosophy of psychology needs more detailed attention to issues in natural science which serve as analogies for reduction of the mental. I consider a range of central cases, (...) including water and H 2 O, genes and DNA, and common sense and scientific solidity. The last case is illuminated by Eddington's Two Tables paradox, a resolution which suggests the plasticity of the mental under reduction. If reduction of the mental is like any of these cases, it is neither empiricist nor eliminative. (shrink)

The Church–Turing Thesis (CTT) is often employed in arguments for computationalism. I scrutinize the most prominent of such arguments in light of recent work on CTT and argue that they are unsound. Although CTT does nothing to support computationalism, it is not irrelevant to it. By eliminating misunderstandings about the relationship between CTT and computationalism, we deepen our appreciation of computationalism as an empirical hypothesis.

A clarification of Naess's ?depth metaphor? is offered. The relationship between Naess's empirical semantics and communication theory and his deep ecology approach to ecophilosophy (DEA) is developed. Naess's efforts to highlight significant conflicts by eliminating misunderstandings and promoting deep problematizing are focused upon. These insights are used to develop the implications of the DEA for environmental policy. Naess's efforts to promote the integration of science, ethics, and politics are related to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The action?oriented (...) aspect of deep ecology, its focus upon redirecting environmental policy, is also highlighted. The discussion is framed by Brian Norton's contention, in Toward Unity Among Environmentalists, that Naess's deep/ shallow distinction is not consequential. In the final section some of the uniqueness of Naess's contribution is intimated, the ?sturdiness? of deep ecology's foundation is considered, and directions for future theoretical and practical contributions are suggested. As will be observed, Naess has many important insights to offer, but some vexing issues persist. (shrink)

At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false-positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal and belief stances); (...) the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Epicurean View of Death Death and Deprivation It's a Good Life… Conclusion Notes.

El presente artículo trata de hacer ver que el desencuentro entre la modernidad ilustrada y la religión católica, fue debido a una serie de factores y circunstancias desgraciadas, y no a una incompatibilidad inevitable. Es más, a pesar de los malentendidos y desencuentros, no son pocos los ideales de la modernidad ilustrada que, si profundizamos en ellos, descubriremos su inspiración y raíces cristianas. Es más, guste o no a algunos, el patrimonio espiritual y moral que ha ido configurando la identidad (...) europea ha tenido una de sus más importantes fuentes de inspiración en la tradición judeo-cristiana, sin menoscabar, por supuesto, la herencia griega, el derecho romano, la tradición liberal-ilustrada, y la revolución científica. Especialmente, hemos hecho hincapié en la autoridad moral del sufrimiento de la tradición judeocristiana, como una baza fundamental de cara la defensa de la dignidad humana. Para profundizar en esta compleja problemática hemos tenido en cuenta, entre otros, los análisis de Karl Löwith, Hans Blumenberg, J. Habermas, Benedicto XVI y J.B. Metz. Nuestra conclusión es que no tiene razón el actual secularismo-laicismo excluyente al pretender minusvalorar, o borrar simplemente del mapa, las raíces cristianas de Europa, como portadoras de valores y actitudes, que son tan necesarias ante el relativismo, el nihilismo postmoderno, y la crisis de valores de una sociedad, cada vez más deshumanizada. Frente al euroescepticismo que hoy sobrevuela amenazante, hay que reivindicar el “humanismo socrático-cristiano” como una seña de identidad irrenunciable. Otra cosa es el integrismo religioso, que no acaba de admitir la autonomía de la sociedad civil y del Estado, como presupuesto fundamental de una sana secularidad. Es precisamente en el seno de la sociedad civil donde la institución religiosa tiene derecho a dejar oír su voz, en diálogo respetuoso con las otras voces que en ella se ubican, de cara a consensuar soluciones frente a los graves problemas que nos acucian. Y sólo desde una identidad europea bien asentada, podremos enfrentarnos con el reto de la multiculturalidad al que Europa se ve inevitablemente abocada, en el contexto de la globalización.This article attempts to show, that the disagreement between enlightened modernity and Catholic religion, was due to a number of factors and unfortunate circumstances and not to an unavoidable incompatibility. There is more, despite misunderstandings and disagreements, there are many ideals of enlightened modernity that when we go deeper into them, we discover their Christian inspiration and roots. Even more, like it or not some people, spiritual and moral heritage, which has configured European identity, had Judeo- Christian tradition as one of its sources of inspiration, without underestimating, of course, Greek heritage, Roman law, liberal enlightenment tradition and scientific revolution. We have emphasized, especially, the moral authority of suffering of Judeo-Christian tradition as something basic to defend human dignity. To go deeper into this complex problem, we took into account, among others, the analyses of Karl Löwith, Hans Blumemberg, J. Habermas, Benedit XVI, and J:B: Metz. Our conclusion is that the current exclusive secularism is not right trying to underestimate or eliminate the Christian roots in Europe as carriers of values and attitudes, so necessary against relativism, postmodern nihilism and the crisis of values in a society increasingly dehumanized. Against an Euroscepticism which overflies threatening, we must claim a Socratic-Christian humanism as a sign of indispensable identity. Religious secularismis something different, it does not admit the authority of a civil society and state, as a fundamental prerequisite for a healthy secularity. It is precisely within a civil society where a religious institution has the right to be heard in a respectful dialogue with others voices that are located in there to agree on solutions against the problems we are facing and, only from a well established European identity, we will be able to face the challenge of multiculturalism to which Europe is inevitably doomed in a context of Globalization. (shrink)

This thoughtful, learned, well-written, extensively illustrated, and heavily documented study deserves to be regarded as a landmark in art history. Traditional art history has dealt for the most part with the “fine arts” (chiefly painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture), whereas other human creations that take physical form (such as furniture, ceramics, textiles, and metal and glass items), whether utilitarian or decorative (or both at once), are considered “craft” or “applied art” and are studied by folklorists, anthropologists, and archaeologists and often (...) displayed in different museums. Cooke wishes to break down this “hierarchical taxonomy,” this “fragmented, hierarchical field,” that emerged from Western Europe's “misunderstanding of art,” which valued “the cerebral over the manual.” His goal, in other words, is to outline “a more inclusive human history of art”— “a connected art history.” This phrase from his subtitle refers not simply to connecting “fine art” with “applied art” but also to crossing temporal and regional boundaries. Still another act of connecting is to examine all parts of an object's life history, and thus the three main divisions of the book deal with the making of objects, their circulation from one person and place to another (and “their ability to transmit ideas” in the process), and their meaning for the persons who possessed or encountered them.Over the years I have repeatedly said that all objects made by human beings are worthy of preservation and study because they bring us into direct contact with the past and, as part of our surroundings, affect our thoughts in the present. Every object, I have argued, including copies of a single printed edition of a book (so-called duplicates), is an independent witness to the past. I am particularly pleased, therefore, to welcome a major book that explores in detail, with a wealth of examples from many centuries and cultures, the place of objects in human history. Cooke's pursuit is “object-driven,” beginning with the nature of the materials and finally coming to “the inherent power of the object itself to influence human thought and action.” (Compare the subtitle of Sherry Turkle's 2007 anthology Evocative Objects: Things We Think With.) Cooke's refusal to separate “materials” from “people,” or “technologies” from “values,” reminds me of John Szarkowski's approach to photographs. In Photography until Now (1989), Szarkowski points out that histories of photography generally treat technical matters separately from artistic ones—a split between the “empirical” and the “intuitive” that he finds indefensible, for “these two ways of knowing meet in the process of making things.” He adds, “The meeting can be cordially symbiotic or aggressively competitive, but its resolution defines the character and meaning of the thing that is made.” This statement has been a favorite of mine as an elegant characterization of the nature of art, and it is one that Cooke would clearly agree with.Cooke does not discuss photography, but he makes clear that he is not attempting a “comprehensive history that charts the complete ebb and flow of objects over time.” Rather, his book is meant to be a “suggestive guide” to the “principles of material literacy,” a “kit of tools for future complex constructions of history.” Even so, I find some of the omissions puzzling. Why, for example, are glass objects not taken up, when he so thoroughly deals with other common materials? More serious, in my opinion, is the exclusion of the fine arts. (Of the 215 illustrations, five are of oil paintings and one is of a Japanese print, but they are present only as the sources for information drawn from their pictorial content; one Hogarth engraving is shown because its image was often reproduced on punch bowls; and there is a very brief passage on the “uneasy relationship” between sculpture and material culture, but no sculptures are illustrated or used as examples for discussion.) Presumably Cooke felt it was unnecessary for his book to encompass the fine arts after demonstrating that functional objects are just as sophisticated artistically and culturally as products of the fine arts are. Yet those products also belong to the universe of “entangled objects” (How could they not?), and it would have been illuminating to see them adduced among the examples Cooke cites. One could argue that by excluding them—and by referring to the makers of the objects he does discuss as “artisans” and “craftspeople”—he comes close to reinforcing the division he wishes to eliminate.Less easy to explain is Cooke's omission of books, for they have been one of the largest and most widely circulated classes of utilitarian objects. Most people never think about books as objects, treating them only as disposable receptacles for transmitting verbal texts in tangible form (which is why so many books are destroyed when their texts supposedly become available in another form). Such people do not realize that texts have connections with their physical embodiments. (For example, books, whether manuscript or printed, often contain clues revealing how their texts were affected by the production process; and readers’ attitudes toward texts can be influenced by their presentation.) Cooke, however, with his deep understanding of the way objects function and his impressive knowledge of the scholarship, cannot be one of these uninformed people. He would obviously be aware of the vast literature devoted to leather and cloth bookbindings and their decoration, as well as to the myriad styles of letters and the varieties of paper and parchment; he would also know how letterforms and binding designs reflect a complex interplay of social, political, and artistic forces. Bibliographers have long studied books as Cooke advocates studying other objects: “working from the inside out,” beginning with the evidence in books themselves for reconstructing the routines that were followed in their creation. And book historians are recognizing the necessity for an international approach like Cooke's, since many of the books circulating in one country originated in other countries. Books would have been a prolific additional source for illustrating Cooke's analyses.My admiration for Cooke's book is not altered by these few disappointments. Even without discussions of paintings, sculptures, and books, it is still exhilarating in its scope and depth. One hopes that art and material-culture historians will pay attention to it. But it ought to have a wider audience, for the daily lives of all of us would be enriched by a greater appreciation of the objects that make up a significant part of our environment. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Non-Cartesian Frameworks”Rom Harré (bio)There are three points in Dr. Berger’s paper that seem to me to call for immediate comment:1. There is the familiar (but in Berger’s case, only a partial) misunderstanding of the upshot of the third phase of Wittgenstein’s private-language argument. Having shown that expressive and descriptive discourse are radically different, and that expressive discourse can be learned only in contexts of action in which (...) there are natural expressions of personal feeling, experience, and so on, Wittgenstein goes on to show that whatever furnishes the mind, it is not thing-like. He does this by showing that “sameness” of thoughts and feelings cannot be spelled out in the same terms as sameness of things, that is, in terms of numerical and qualitative identity. Yet there is a proper use for the concept of sameness of thoughts and feelings. It is to be found in the role that expressions of feelings and declarations of thoughts play in the language games that constitute a form of life. There is no “unresolved tension,” as Berger seems to think. Although pains are not thing-like, they do have a location, do endure, and do differ from one another.The introduction of the powerful expressive/descriptive distinction is the key to the fallacies of representationalism. Expressive acts do not represent but descriptive acts might. But we can draw on the demonstration that mental “somethings” are not thing-like to eliminate that possibility. The root of representationalism is the seventeenth-century conception of the mind as a container of mental entities: ideas. Ideas are to psychology what atoms are to physics. According to Hume, ideas are copies of impressions. In that disastrous thesis, representationalism was born, as a generalization of Locke’s grounding principle that the ideas of primary qualities resembled primary qualities. The cure for this complex mesh of mistakes must be deeply philosophical. It must not be confined to easy criticisms of Locke’s resemblance doctrine, not yet to more subtle Berkleyan strictures on the supposed distinction between ideas and qualities. It must cut at the very deepest assumption of representationalism—that there are mental entities. And on that matter, Wittgenstein’s analysis will, one hopes, prove to be final.2. With representationalism cast onto the midden of history, what account are we to give of mentation? In a sense, Wittgenstein’s insights abolish the inner/outer distinction, an offshoot of the concept of the container-mind. But they leave standing the distinction between what is done privately and what is done publicly. Yet these domains must be of the same nature, since in the expressive use of signs, we find a holism encompassing what we feel and our disposition to express it. Linguistic substitutes for natural forms [End Page 185] of expression must share that holism. But there are no natural expressions of propositional thoughts. Why? Because we are capable of private propositional thinking just insofar as we have mastered public uses of the instruments of propositional thought. These instruments are cultural products.The practice of psychotherapy can be nothing other than discursive. The quotations concerning praxis that Berger offers are disconcertingly vague. To add, as Berger does, that we must take theory into account does not cure the vagueness. We do not know what Berger takes theory to be, only that it is not theory as physicists have it; i.e., systems of hypotheses about hidden processes which bring about that which can be observed. Following Wittgenstein one step farther, we can say that the only thing that could be theory-like in the enterprises of psychotherapists would be grammars. Grammars express the often unformulated norms of discourses. Psychoanalytic theories could then be addressed as expressions of the norms of certain kinds of discourses. Incorporating a “theory” would then be nothing but determining to adopt a certain grammar in one’s therapeutic discourses. Freed of the idea that one of some set of theories must be true and preferred to all others, one is free to adopt and adapt grammars to occasions. Some grammars are tied to natural expressions and so to the ethology of the human form of life... (shrink)

This research tried to make a contribution to the discussion around the conditions, under which the ontological shift of the philosophical hermeneutics can be done. It began with an analysis of Gadamer's well-known formula: " Being that can be understood is language. (Sein, das verstanden werden kann, ist Sprache.)". Scholars interpret it differently. By means of the grammatical analysis, I showed on the one hand an interpretation of the formula from the perspective of pan‐lingualism as absurd, because they regard Being (...) and language as identical. On the other hand, an interpretation from the perspective of the linguistic ontology should be eliminated, according to which the being possesses a linguistic character, so that its unconcealment can complete itself without the effort ofunderstanding. The two interpretations come from a misunderstanding that they regard the subordinate clause of that formula as descriptive relative clause. There is still another interpretive problem, if we regard the subordinate clause as restrictive relative clause and thus interpret Gadamer's theory as linguistic idealism. However Gadamer indicates that such an interpretation remains on the level of German idealism, because it limits understanding to an intellectual grasping. Another reading of the subordinate clause as restrictive relative clause is appropriate, because it takes understanding as a practical ability (Können) into its consideration and at the same time emphasizes the non-identity between Being and language despite their ontological inseparableness. Gadamer finds out a linguistic theory, in order to support such kind of reading. He extends his principle of aesthetic non-differentiation to the range of language. By means of thislinguistic non-differentiation, the ontological shift of the hermeneutics can complete itself. (shrink)

Eliminativism is a position most readily associated with the eliminative materialism of the Churchlands, denying that there are such things as propositional states. This position has created much controversy, despite the fact that intentionality has long been seen as perhaps the core problem for naturalistic philosophy. There is a more radical interpretation of eliminativism, however, denying not only mental states, such as beliefs and desires, but also intentionality (i.e., aboutness) on a global level. This position traces its contemporary origin back (...) to Quine, but has generally been assumed to undermine naturalism or, worse, to be incoherent by the majority of philosophers who maintain that there clearly are things or mental states that are about others. In a recent paper, Hutto and Satne (2015a) offer an update that tries to revive John Haugeland’s baseball analogy from his influential 1990 review paper The Intentionality All-Stars on the state of the game to argue that the failure of Neo-Cartesians, Neo- Behaviorists, and Neo-Pragmatists should urge us to make them work together to naturalize content and “win the game.” But Hutto and Satne misunderstand what the game is ultimately about. The goal of the Intentionality All-Stars is not to naturalize content against eliminativism but to defend a naturalist “thirdperson” view of the problem against first-person phenomenalists. For this goal, a naturalist defense of global content eliminativism would equally enable them to emerge victorious. Revisiting Haugeland, I will offer my own analysis of the current state of play to argue that global content eliminativism has not received sufficient attention and deserves a more prominent place in the debate than it currently occupies. (shrink)

Patricia Williams made a number of claims concerning the methods and practise of cladistic analysis and classification. Her argument rests upon the distinction of two kinds of hierarchy: a divisional hierarchy depicting evolutionary descent and the Linnean hierarchy describing taxonomic groups in a classification. Williams goes on to outline five problems with cladistics that lead her to the conclusion that systematists should eliminate cladism as a school of biological taxonomy and to replace it either with something that is philosophically coherent (...) or to replace it with pure methodology, untainted by theory (Williams 1992, 151). Williams makes a number of points which she feels collectively add up to insurmountable problems for cladistics. We examine Williams' views concerning the two hierarchies and consider what cladists currently understand about the status of ancestors. We will demonstrate that Williams has seriously misunderstood many modern commentators on this subject and all of her five persistent problems are derivable from this misunderstanding. Some persons believe and argue, on grounds approaching faith it seems to me, that phylogeny comes from our knowledge of evolution. Others have found to their surprise, and sometimes dismay, that phylogeny comes from our knowledge of systematics. Nelson (1989, 67). (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. Considering a scientific truth as a process is connected with the understanding a concrete truth as unity of absolute and relative moments of such process. Beginning by Hegel, truth was regarded as linear process with final point of its development. It was absolute truth, as return of absolute idea to itself in absolute spirit by Hegel. It was the third world by Popper as the world of objective truth. Ukrainian philosopher (...) Pavlo Kopnin opened development of truth for future, eliminating from it the final point in his materialistic interpretation of the truth as a process. However, such process was still regarded as linear process. It was natural for the stage of linear science. As I have already wrote (Dobronravova, 2017), modern stage of nonlinear science actualizes the considering of a scientific truth as nonlinear process. In situation of many variants of nonlinear dynamics the understanding of concrete truth needs to be updated. Such updating is the goal of the article. M e t h o d s. Dialectic method in addition to scientific realism is the most natural approach to research the modern nonlinear science. Methodologic conception of genetic constructivism by V. Stepin is foundation to consider the relations between theoretical and empirical levels of nonlinear knowledge. Criticism of correspondent conception of truth in internal realism by H.Putnam is initiative position in looking for right epistemolology of nonlinear science. Concrete truth as nonlinear process means the description of real nonlinear dynamics with knowledge about a choice, made by a self-organizing system between alternatives in bifurcation point. Nonlinear theories reconstruct few options of further development for nonlinear system. To explain a real situation in certain moment of such development means to describe the real choices by system in points of branching the possibilities. It means that nonlinear science becomes historical one that describes irreversible change of events. Methodologically it means the restriction for claim to repeat the results of empirical checking the predictions of theory, because of choice by chance in bifurcation points. This claim can work for nonlinear medium if different options can be realized in it simultaneously (like Benar's cells in layer of heated liquid or different parties in democratic societies). Otherwise things are going in the situations of historical kind, where the irreversible choice between alternatives has place (like historical choice between right-hand and left-hand traffic in different countries). Repetitions in empirical checking the predicted variants are not possible in principle because of random nature of choice in bifurcation points. R e s u l t s. Non-linear physical theories are descriptive, just like biological, geological and geographic theories. So arrogant condemnation of such theories by physicists and philosophers of science who took physics as a sample in many previous years founded on misunderstanding the specificity of different kinds of theories and their objects. Logical structure of explanation and prediction are not the same in non-linear theories. Non-linear theory can predict a set of possibilities but not the realization of certain one in certain moment. Concrete truth can be justified if human intervention provides the realization of special condition to choose selected variant. C o n c l u s i o n s. We have to understand that such task is more complicated, if we take into account the quantitative way to solve the nonlinear equations. The chain of iterations in approximate solution of such equations can rather give computer simulation of non-linear dynamics. Exact prediction with iteration formula of each next step of unfolding non-linear dynamics, does not guarantee the long scale prediction of complex nonlinear system state. It does not mean that knowledge we got about nonlinear phenomena are not useful for human practice. Thus, the change of dimension in fractal structures of "noise" in cardiograms lets to admit the first signs of heart illness and to cure heart in time. Meteorologists can warn pilots about oncoming storm, defining speed of rising flows in atmosphere by fractal dimension of pictures on the screen of radar. Those are the predictions in nonlinear science. Are they the proofs of concrete truth? Perhaps, yes, they are if we recall old formulation about practice as criteria of truth. (shrink)

The fundamental concepts of the theory of knowledge ofKant—“transzendental”, “apriori”, and “aposteriori”, “konstitutiver” and “regulativer Vernunftgebrauch”, “Ding an sich”, “Erkenntnisvermögen”, etc.—are exemplified and examined by the modern theory of axiomatics. Therefrom essential consequences result in respect of modern theoretical biology as well as the elimination of usual misunderstandings about the relation between physics and biology in the philosophical system ofKant. The usual view thatKant would have admitted to physics only the causal-constitutive method of thinking, and on the contrary would (...) have admitted to biology merely a teleologic-regulative process, has to be rejected being entirely erroneous. — Then the theory of the “Ding an sich” is interpreted metabiologically, not metaphysically and finallyKants terminology of knowledge is explained biologically.Les notions fondamentales de la théorie de connaissance deKant — „transzendental”, „apriori” et „aposteriori”, „konstitutiver” et „regulativer Vernunftgebrauch”, „Ding an sich”, „Erkenntnisvermögen” etc. — sont mises en évidence et examinées par la théorie de l'axiomatique moderne. De là s'ensuivent des conséquences essentielles pour la biologie théorique moderne, ainsi que la suppression de malentendus en égard au rapport de la physique et de la biologie dans le système philosophique deKant. L'interprétation usuelle, selon laquelleKant aurait voulu accorder le raisonnement causal-constitutif à seule la physique, et, au contraire, n'aurait voulu accorder qu'un procédé téléologique-régulatif à la biologie, doit être rejetée comme étant entièrement erronnée. Ensuite, la doctrine de la „Ding an sich” est interprétée métabiologiquement au lieu de métaphysiquement, et enfin, la terminologie de la connaissance deKant est expliquée biologiquement. (shrink)

Martin Jones has criticized my account of the methodology of experimental economics on three points: the impossibility of testing external validity claims in the laboratory, my reconstruction of external validity inferences as analogical arguments, and the distinction between laboratory and non-laboratory sciences. I defend my account here and try to eliminate some misunderstandings that may have prompted Jones’s criticism.

Williams argued that Darwin replaced teleology by natural selection. This article argues that this idea is based on a misunderstanding of Darwin’s critique of the argument from design. Darwin did not replace teleology by evolutionary explanations but showed that we can understand teleology without referring to a Designer. He eliminated the concept of design and rehabilitated Aristotelian teleological explanations. The implication is that adaptations should not be investigated as if designed, but with the help of both teleological and evolutionary explanations. (...) It is argued that elaborations of teleological explanations enable us to reconcile evolutionary theory and other fields in science. (shrink)

ZUSAMMENFASSUNGDer Einfluss Heinrich Barths auf die diastatische Auffassung der Gott-Mensch-Beziehung in der »dialektischen Theologie« seines Bruders Karl scheint bedeutend gewesen zu sein. Der Autor des vorliegenden Beitrags vertritt jedoch die Ansicht, dass sowohl Karl Barth wie auch eine gängige Einschätzung des Sachverhalts im Blick auf Heinrich Barths Position Opfer eines Missverständnisses geworden sind, demgegenüber diese Position in ihrem dauerhaft haltbaren Sinn zu rekonstruieren und zu rehabilitieren ist. Die für Heinrich Barths philosophisches Werk insgesamt in der Tat kennzeichnende Akzentuierung der Transzendenz (...) muss mit Bezug auf die Platonische Idee des Guten in erster Linie als Transzendenz gegenüber einer theoretischen Gesamtschau verstanden werden, welche die ethische Lebensproblematik bedenkenlos vereinnahmt und damit um ihre Aktualität bringt. So verstanden bedeutet Heinrich Barths Betonung der Transzendenz nicht das Aufreißen einer kaum mehr überbrückbaren Kluft, sondern verweist vielmehr auf die Aufgabe, das Gott-Mensch-Verhältnis, den Begriff einer »Gotteserkenntnis« und letztlich die Problematik der Transzendenz als solche von einem Gesichtspunkt aus neu zu bestimmen, für den die ethische Lebensproblematik im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit steht.SUMMARYHeinrich Barth's influence on the diastatical conception of the God-man-relationship in his brother Karl's Dialectical Theology seems to be important. The author of the following contribution however suggests the opinion, that both Karl Barth himself and a common view of the matter have been victims of a misunderstanding of Heinrich Barth's position, in contrast to which this position has to be reconstructed and rehabilitated in its durable sense. The accentuation of transcendence, relative to the transcendental principles respectively God, which is indeed significant of Heinrich Barth's work as a whole, has to be understood, in reference to Plato's Idea of the Good, first of all as transcendence in relation to a theoretical view of the whole, which does not hesitate to integrate the problematic of life and ethics by eliminating its actuality. In this understanding Heinrich Barth's emphasis of transcendence does not mean to tear open a gap which is hardly ever to be bridged, but refers to the task of a redefinition of the God-man-relationship, the notion of “Gotteserkenntnis” and, in last terms, the problem of transcendence as such, starting from a point of view for which the problematic of life and ethics is in the centre of attention. (shrink)

Ernst Mach stands as a representative figure of the positivist philosophy of science at the turn of the twentieth century, yet he is by far the most misunderstood scientist-philosopher. The misunderstanding is largely caused by his epistemological rejection of the use of hypothetical entities that are ordinarily posited by scientists. He also argued against the mechanistic worldview which dominated scientific investigations in the nineteenth century. This essay will demonstrate that Mach’s positivism differs from the earlier positivism of August Comte. His (...) anti metaphysical stance is deeply-rooted in his physical phenomenology, guided by the economy of thought in pursuit of the unity of science. In Mach’s view, scientific theories are merely biological tools for organizing experience by means of the fewest possible concepts, and all metaphysical elements are to be eliminated from science as methodologically and epistemologically superfluous. But Mach’s thesis of the unification of science does not share the common concern of the logical positivists to reduce various scientific statements to physical language. While Mach’s philosophy of science clearly exhibits a miscalculation of the strength of scientific conceptual tools, his physical phenomenology serves as a bridge between theory and experiment which has proved to be fruitful. Keywords: The economy of thought, evolution, element, physical phenomenology, the unity of science, instrumentalism, emphirical realism. Abstrak: Ernst Mach tampil sebagai tokoh representatif dari Filsafat Ilmu Pengetahuan positivis pada peralihan menuju abad ke-20, sekaligus sebagai ilmuwan-filsuf yang paling disalahpahami. Kesalahpahaman tersebut sebagian besar disebabkan oleh penolakan epitemologisnya terhadap penggunaan wujud-wujud hipotetis yang kerap diajukan oleh para ilmuwan. Ia juga melawan cara pandang mekanistis yang mendominasi penyelidikan ilmiah pada abad ke-19. Artikel ini memperlihatkan bahwa positivisme Mach berbeda dengan positivisme August Comte yang mendahuluinya. Pandangan anti-metafisis Mach berakar sangat dalam pada fisika fenomenologi yang dipandu oleh ekonomi pikiran untuk mencapai sains terpadu. Dalam pandangan Mach, teori-teori ilmiah semata-mata sarana biologis untuk menata pengalaman dengan memanfaatkan sesedikit mungkin konsep, dan semua elemen metafisika perlu disingkirkan dari sains karena secara metodologis dan epistemologis tidak bermanfaat. Namun, tesis Mach tentang sains terpadu tidak sejalan dengan gagasan para positivis logis yang mereduksi berbagai macam pernyataan ilmiah ke dalam bahasa fisika. Sementara Filsafat Ilmu Pengetahuan Mach jelas-jelas keliru dalam memperhitungkan kekuatan piranti-piranti konseptual sains, fisika fenomenologi yang menjembatani teori dan eksperimen telah terbukti sangat bermanfaat. Kata-kata kunci: Ekonomi pikiran, evolusi, elemen, fisika fenomenologi, sains terpadu, instrumentalisme, realisme empiris. (shrink)

Modal intuitions are the primary source of modal knowledge but also of modal error. According to the theory of modal error in this paper, modal intuitions retain their evidential force in spite of their fallibility, and erroneous modal intuitions are in principle identifiable and eliminable by subjecting our intuitions to a priori dialectic. After an inventory of standard sources of modal error, two further sources are examined in detail. The first source - namely, the failure to distinguish between metaphysical possibility (...) and various kinds of epistemic possibility - turns out to be comparatively easy to untangle and poses little threat to intuition-driven philosophical investigation. The second source is the local misunderstanding of one's concepts . This pathology may be understood on analogy with a patient who is given a clean bill of health at his annual check-up, despite his having a cold at the time of the check-up: although the patient's health is locally disrupted, his overall health is sufficiently good to enable him to overcome the cold without external intervention. Even when our understanding of certain pivotal concepts has lapsed locally, our larger body of intuitions is sufficiently reliable to allow us, without intervention, to ferret out the modal errors resulting from this lapse of understanding by means of dialectic and/or a process of a priori reflection. This source of modal error, and our capacity to overcome it, has wide-ranging implications for philosophical method - including, in particular, its promise for disarming skepticism about the classical method of intuition-driven investigation itself. Indeed, it is shown that skeptical accounts of modal error are ultimately self-defeating. (shrink)

Unusual atmospheric phenomena (UAPs) were observed in daylight by multiple observers on board two civil aircraft in widely separated locations. We summarise results of an investigation based on radio communications reporting events in real time to Air Traffic Control (ATC), ATC radar and weather radar recordings, Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) documents, witness interviews and statements, and other sources. We describe attempts to explain the phenomena with the help of expert specialist advisers and professional resources in the fields of meteorology, atmospheric (...) optics, oceanography and geophysics. We are able to show that widespread media stories describing enormous phenomena up to a mile wide and detected by radar were based on speculation and misunderstandings. Many news reports were grossly exaggerated and inaccurate. However, we are unable to conclusively identify the UAPs observed. It proves possible to eliminate a number of theories with a fairly high level of confidence, leaving us with two types of phenomena—a rare atmospheric-optical effect or an earthquake precursor—both of which have the potential to explain at least some, although not all, features of the reports. We highlight certain features that appear to leave open the possibility of unusual physical processes. Keywords: UAP—atmospheric optics—anomaly—mirage—earthquake lights—EQL. (shrink)

The philosophical history of metaphysics of mind can be narrowed into two problems: Mind and body causation and issues of the self or persons. Due to the rise of the scientific revolution the nature of mental states and its possessors has been reduced to brain and cognitive functioning or eliminated instead of the ontological basic substance of a soul. The other criticism of soul identity or substance dualism is the problem of mental causation. In The Blackwell Companion to Substance Dualism (...) (2018), Jaegwon Kim argues against the intelligibility of Cartesian dualism and further extends that argument to any form of substance dualism by raising the question of mental causation or the traditional mind-body problem. His main attack comes from the essence of mind and the causal closure of the physical, together these provide an argument against the non-physical view of persons. The question, “can mental events cause physical events?” Is a problem for the dualist which he calls “the pairing problem.” Since causation requires a spatiotemporal relation between two bodies, and mind and body are distinct substances or properties, there’s no cause-and-effect pairing relation between minds and physical objects or bodies. Thus, according to Kim, the essence of an immaterial thinking substance, such as a soul, is unintelligible and should be rejected since it fails to answer the pairing problem. However, Kim has a misunderstanding of substance dualist views of the independent ontological status of a substantial self or soul. Further, Kim’s challenge does not take into account a causal powers ontology in which primitive is the free agentive causal subject. I’ll argue that a soul, though embodied, is a non-material primitive substance that has basic faculties to exemplify mental properties. One of the faculties of the soul is the instantiation of active agency. Further, the postulation of Gods existence, having a metaphysical internal structure and powers, is grounds for the existence of a soul with its own metaphysical, unified structure in which the dispositional properties of consciousness are located and exemplified. I conclude that mental causation is a coherent notion especially in light of the active powers of agent causation. Thus, Kim’s problem of mental causation becomes no problem at all. (shrink)

Once upon a time, logical conventionalism was the most popular philosophical theory of logic. It was heavily favored by empiricists, logical positivists, and naturalists. According to logical conventionalism, linguistic conventions explain logical truth, validity, and modality. And conventions themselves are merely syntactic rules of language use, including inference rules. Logical conventionalism promised to eliminate mystery from the philosophy of logic by showing that both the metaphysics and epistemology of logic fit into a scientific picture of reality. For naturalists of all (...) stripes, this was paradise. Alas, paradise was lost. By the end of the twentieth century, logical conventionalism had been almost universally abandoned. But more recently, it has been revitalized. This chapter provides an overview of logical conventionalism and its history, clears away misunderstandings, and briefly responds to both the canonical objections to conventionalism (from Quine, Dummett, Boghossian, and many others) as well as new objections (from Field and Golan). From paradise lost, to paradise regained: logical conventionalism is back. (shrink)

This article deals with some phenomena of the Hungarian legal language from a historical point of view, with special regard to the terminology of private law going back to Roman law tradition. The author aims, on the one hand, to present the historical background of the current terminology of Hungarian private law by means of some representative examples. On the other hand, it is attempted at demonstrating that “false friends” and some further misunderstandings in the current terminology of Hungarian (...) private law can be led back to the historical determination of the concepts/terms in question. A certain Hungarian legal language existed already in the 16th c., however it reached the common European level by the middle of the 19th c. This development took place mainly under the influence of the Austrian and German law and legal science. Due to the translation of foreign legal terms to Hungarian since the 19th c. there emerged some “global” difficulties of legal terminology also in the Hungarian legal language. As the most important example, the reception of bona fides can be mentioned. It was an amendment of the Hungarian Civil Code in 2006 which tried to eliminate the misunderstandings as regards the principle of good faith conceived formerly by many Hungarian jurists exclusively in subjective sense. The history of reception of the German notions of Gültigkeit and Wirksamkeit in Hungary is extremely intriguing, too. Hungarian jurists did not follow the pattern of the German BGB but developed this pair created by Windscheid by drawing a clear distinction between the validity and effectiveness of legal transactions, similar to the Italian terminology. Sometimes the reception of German notions happened in a less successful way. Despite the important foreign, especially German impacts, the Hungarian legal language is an autonomous one having several remarkable features which deserve attention also in comparison with terminology of the Western legal cultures. (shrink)

: This paper deals with the subject of mushākala, ta'rīz, kināya and ijāz in terms of language and the using of Qur’ān's verb and noun forms, human genre and adjective nouns in terms of style and some other related problems. The punishment or retribution from Allāh as mushākala form, which sometimes occurs at the level of a gradual diminution or collapse, is a punishment that gradually destroys the sinner without his realizing it. However, it is possible to say that there (...) is another dimension in Müshākala, destiny, and the formula of the working mechanism of destiny. According to this formula, it is understood that whatever behavior a person exhibits, Allah responds with a similar behavior. Based on this dimension of destiny, it is understood that in one aspect, man determines his own destiny relatively, and that his destiny is shaped as a result of his own actions. Some verses and expressions with indirect narrative content were misinterpreted by some people because they implied something too deep to understand by human beings and had a profundity of meanings as well as secret wisdom. The fact is that about the 6th verse of the chapter of al-Mâida: "O you who have believed, when you rise to prayer, wash your faces and your fore arms to the elbows and your heads too." Shiites misunderstand Ibn Abbas's statement pointed out as "I can find nothing but wiping the feet in Allah's book, but they did not accept anything but washing", and their anointing of their feet is due to such a misunderstanding. In the Qur’ān, indirect expression is used in places that mention about the adab of maram affairs in marital relationships; and that which should not be said openly. With such a form of expression, the Qur’ān is descended upon human beings from Allah to be expressed in indirect expressions in situations where it is not welcome to express clearly. In the same way, it can be said that when the Qur’ān mentions a negative situation, it refers to it with closed expressions, and It can also be said that it uses Kinâya as a politeness and courtesy style. However, in any case, the customary usage should not be ignored while giving meaning to the verse expressions with allusions. In expressions of the Qur’ān, ijāz is used extensively; It is possible to say that a large part of the ijāz is the eliminate of words in expressions. For this reason it should not be overlooked that in some verses that are not understood, some part of it may be deleted for ijāz. In terms of the style of the Qur’ān in the article, there are important points in terms of rhetoric in the use of verb and noun form, which is one of the topics discussed. (shrink)

The problem of how we can be both animals living in a causal world and agents acting through norms, principles, and rules in that same world persists. Many have understood this as a clash between science and our ordinary ways of talking. For many, this clash has been resolved in favour of the scientific image, either by reducing the intentional and normative to the causal laws of behaviourism or by eliminating our 'folk psychology' altogether in favour of a syntactic (...) or computational model of mind. Drawing on Wittgenstein, I argue that this mislocates the problem and so misunderstands what is required for its resolution. Our sophisticated language games are grounded in a bedrock of normative similarity judgments. The role these play in our language games can be seen most clearly in the initiate learning situation, that of the child just learning language or the pupil receiving first instruction in arithmetic. It is here that we can look for an accommodation of causality and normativity by understanding the relation between the novice and the master of the practice. (shrink)

L'article s'attaque aux racines mêmes du « mystère platonicien » en partant du constat de son caractère proprement « inexplicable »: qu'un auteur, dont on possède l'ensemble de l'œuvre écrite autorise des lectures, non seulement diverses, ce qui est légitime, mais également contradictoires, n'a aucun sens. L'article indique brièvement les éléments qui expliquent cette situation paradoxale et met en valeur les contributions de l'École de Tübingen (Krämer, Gaiser), qui insistent sur les « auto-témoignages » de Platon et sur la tradition (...) indirecte en vue d'une compréhension tout à fait nouvelle de Platon. L'auteur tente ensuite de dissiper quelques-unes des équivoques les plus graves qui grèvent le débat qu'elles ont suscité. L'article expose les analyses de Reale, qui éclairent d'un jour nouveau la valeur paradigmatique de cette nouvelle position, et l'apport de Szlezák, qui produit l'analyse des techniques d'écriture employées par Platon. Les commentaires de Movia et de Migliori prouvent finalement la puissance herméneutique du « nouveau paradigme » et apportent une série d'approfondissements explicatifs, surtout au sujet de la dialectique. The article tackles the roots of the « Plato mystery », beginning with its « inexplicable » existence. It is a nonsensical that an author, whose written corpus we possess, is not only open to different valid interpretations, but even to contradictory ones. After pointing out the elements behind this paradoxical situation, the contributions of the Tübingen school (Krämer, Gaiser) that enhance Plato's own testimony and the indirect tradition in respect of a renewed Platonic comprehension, are underlined. The author then attempts to eliminate some of the major misunderstandings which blocked the previous debate. The article exposes Reale's analysis, who clarifies the paradigmatic value of the new proposal, and the Szlezák's contribution, who threats the analysis of the writing techniques of Plato. Finally Movia's and Migliori's commentaries verify the hermeneutical capabilities of the « new paradigma » and bring a set of thorough examination of the dialectic mainly. (shrink)

Mander's book is a welcomed addition to the recent interest in Francis Herbert Bradley's philosophy, especially his metaphysics. The formation of the new Bradleian Society and the soon to be published proceedings of papers written by contemporary philosophers like R. Wollheim, T. Sprigge, T. Baldwin, and S. Candlish and D. Holdcroft, among others, for the very successful F. H. Bradley Colloquium at Oxford attest to this renewed burst of scholarly energy in a thinker whom many believe had been disposed of (...) by Russell and Moore. However, it is not easy to eliminate the thought of a great philosopher, and especially one who made epoch-making contributions to logic, metaphysics, and ethics in our century and who has profoundly influenced philosophers like Whitehead and Russell, James and Dewey, Eliot and Blanshard. Caricatures and misrepresentations are the lot of every metaphysician from Parmenides to Whitehead; Bradley is no exception. A main objective of Mander's book is to expose these misunderstandings and to assess recent Bradleian scholarship with respect to several primal metaphysical notions developed principally in Bradley's Appearance and Reality and Essays on Truth and Reality. (shrink)

This work by an accomplished and respected comparative philosopher criticizes the Western ideology of individualism from the perspective of a Confucian morality of the family. Individualism is a name for the Enlightenment era ideology of the autonomous individual. The philosophical pillars of this ideology are Locke and especially Kant, and it runs through practically all modern moral philosophy. It is the moral psychology of classical liberalism, no less than of its libertarian and communitarian critics. They are different politically, but ontologically (...) of a piece. Individual selves—rational, calculating, selfish, autonomous—are what we are. Rosemont thinks this ideology is philosophically wrong, morally, politically, and ecologically destructive, but also optional. We sometimes feel painted into a corner where the only alternatives seem to be unrestrained freedom or totalitarian dictatorship. Moral philosophy still awaits the end of the Cold War. It would be good for people to understand that there are more options. Rosemont thinks Confucianism is one of them—a Confucianism for post-modern or even post-Western Westerners, with an ideology of the family that Rosemont thinks is more amenable than indigenous alternatives to our moral and ecological crises. “The vision of classical Confucianism can be reclaimed today with its integrity basically intact.” Rosemont advances two points. First, Confucian moral psychology conceives of the person as the bearer of roles. We are our roles as the onion is its leaves, without a an essential core self. Placing roles at the center of moral psychology eliminates the value of impersonal rules or universal principles. There are many ways to be a good father, teacher, friend, or son. Moral decency acquires an almost aesthetic quality, as our approach to roles (our own and those of others) expresses such qualities as zest, grace, or tenderness. His second point is that the moral center of Confucian philosophy is the family. The family is largely ignored in Western ethical tradition. Plato wanted to eliminate family life for his guardians. Kant, Bentham, and Mill have nothing useful to say about the family. For Rosemont the family is the first and best school for morality. It is there, if at all, that we learn to love, trust, cooperate, and obey. Rosemont’s best pages describe the important Confucian concept of family reverence (xiao). The gist is unswerving loyalty to parents, obligations extending even beyond death. It is easy for Western people to misunderstand that. Confucian tradition has a carefully worked out idea of filial reverence, and it should not be dismissed with a label (paternalistic, dogmatic, Asiatic). Obedience is expected, but not servility. In the inter-generational family, the child obeys the parents, but also sees parents obeying grandparents. Remonstrance is expected when appropriate. Deference motivated by gratitude can be genuinely appreciative without fawning, and dissent can remain respectful and polite. Rosemont believes that filial reverence is a way of life as open to anyone today as it was to Chinese two thousand years ago. Confucianism is a relentlessly secular philosophy. It entails practically no theological or metaphysical commitments, and contains little if anything to offend modern scientific sensibilities. This moral philosophy is at once remote (from individualism) and close, familiar, a fairly straightforward account of how we actually live our lives. Rosemont carefully argues that Confucian ideas of family are flexible enough to accommodate progressive ideals, and may even be our best hope against sexism, racism, homophobia, and other anti-humanistic altitudes and behaviors. He urges this version of Confucianism as a human-centered spirituality for a global civilization suspicious of discredited universalism. All cultures are made of families. How alien can they be? Respect for and accommodation with diversity begins in the family, when people learn from infancy to enjoy contributing to the well-being of others. While it would be wrong to expect Western people to abandon their Greek or Abrahamic heritage, those values might be reordered in light of Confucian thought, which deserves to be better understood in the West. A traditional Confucian might be baffled and dismayed by things that pass for normal in modern families, but our families could be better at what they have to be anyway by absorbing Confucian wisdom. There is a growing body of literature on Confucianism and virtue ethics. It is worth noting that Rosemont’s thought is probably the leading alternative to this paradigm in comparative moral philosophy. He takes an uncompromisingly critical attitude toward this particular effort to build a bridge from West to East by attributing to the Confucians a Western virtue ethics, which is, he thinks, objectionably individualistic in all its usual forms. (shrink)

The changes in the short version of Leontios of Neapolis’ Life of John the Almsgiver are analyzed in order to evaluate their cause and to expose their literary character. It is shown that the saint’s oaths are suppressed due to a misunderstanding of a passage in the Prologue, and by respect of the Evangelical commandment. The short version also eliminates pagan concepts of fortune, emphasises the social hierarchy, the accordance between words and thoughts, the action of God as a cause (...) of miracles, and avoids to name God as a reason. The short version raises the stylistical level of the text using the methods of the Metaphrast which is common in the 10th century. The textual tradition also allows to date it into this century. The long version is surely the original text, and the changes made to it show a cultural change between the 7th and 10th centuries. (shrink)

The author draws attention to the fact that the new millennium has not lived up to the high expectations that the ideological project of «tolerant universalism» and «multicultural liberalism», with its focus on consensus, solidarity, respect for the Other, and emphasis on universal liberal values, could become the ideology of global progress in the 21st century. Instead, misunderstandings, wars, conflicts, and violence have not disappeared from the world stage. On the contrary, there is an observable «budding» of new and (...) new conflicts and wars. Conflict, like evil in general, has deep roots in both historical and psychological experience, as well as in the very ontology of humanity. Therefore, the issue is not about eliminating conflict but about qualitatively changing the direction of conscious human efforts – whether individual, collective, or socially organized. The author argues that, if restraint and tolerance are not cultivated, mutual destruction remains the alternative. We enter the modern world (which is not unified, but globalized) through the intersubjective space, through dialogical truths, and so on. This requires the establishment of new forms of worldview, new approaches to examining phenomena in nature, society, and the human being. Clearly, today there is a preference for research ideas and principles related to the synergistic approach, self-organization, self-creation, and self-reproduction, both at the level of the macrocosm and the microcosm. Philosophically, these ideas resonate with existentialist and phenomenological narratives and philosophies. The author currently points to the presence of such approaches in the thought of domestic philosophers. (shrink)

Counterpart theorists need not posit the counterpart relation in addition to the identity relations as an Additional relation relating objects across possible worlds. Identity can be viewed as a relation applicable to individuals within possible worlds, while the counterpart relation replaces identity in translations of ordinary utterances which correlate individuals in different possible worlds and, hence, in all modal utterances. CT is, in other words, a theory of modal discourse — it proposes a way of understanding all modal predications. As (...) such, it is not to be seen as providing a second ‘looser’ sense of identity across worlds, in addition to the ‘narrow’ sense. Perhaps Lewis' original formulation encourages this misunderstanding insofar as it (see, especially, P2) denies strict identity across possible worlds. Accordingly, I have suggested a modification of CT whereby syntactic restrictions upon variables eliminates any temptation to posit two parallel relations applicable to entities existing in different possible worlds. (shrink)

Besides seeing a rabbit or seeing that the rabbit is grayish, do we also sometimes see barely just the particular animal (not as an animal or as anything) or the feature rabbitness or grayness? Such bare, nonverbalizable perception is called "indeterminate perception" (nirvikalpaka pratyakṣa) in Nyāya. Standard Nyāya postulates such pre-predicative bare perception in order to honor the rule that awareness of a qualified entity must be caused by awareness of the qualifier. After connecting this issue with the Western debate (...) concerning the "myth of the given," seven distinct arguments are presented showing that the very notion of such indeterminate perception is epistemically otiose and that the Nyāya theory of perception is better off without it. (shrink)

The phenomenological approach to schizophrenia has undergone something of a renaissance in Anglophone psychiatry in recent years. There has been a proliferation of works that focus on the nature of subjectivity in schizophrenia and related disorders, and that take inspiration from the work of such German and French philosophers as Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, and such classical psychiatrists as Minkowski, Blankenburg, and Binswanger (Rulf 2003; Sass 2001a, 2001b). This trend includes predominantly theoretical articles, which typically incorporate clinical material as well (...) as reviews of empirical and experimental findings in psychopathology. Some very recent examples (since 2000) are studies of .. (shrink)

This paper proposes three principles for the ethical design of online social environments aiming to minimise the unintended harms caused by users while interacting online, specifically by enhancing the users’ awareness of the moral load of their interactions. Such principles would need to account for the strong mediation of the digital environment and the particular nature of user interactions: disembodied, asynchronous, and ambiguous intent about the target audience. I argue that, by contrast to face to face interactions, additional factors make (...) it more difficult for users to exercise moral sensitivity in an online environment. An ethics for social media user interactions is ultimately an ethics of human relations mediated by a particular environment; hence I look towards an enactive inspired ethics in formulating principles for human interactions online to enhance or at least do not hinder a user’s moral sensitivity. This enactive take on social media ethics supplements classical moral frameworks by asking us to focus on the relations established through the interactions and the environment created by those interactions. (shrink)

Solving the problem of moral luck—the problem of dealing with conflicting intuitions about whether moral blameworthiness varies with luck in cases of negligence—is like repairing a dented fender in front of two kinds of critic. The one keeps telling you that there is no dent, and the other sees the dent but keeps warning you that repairing it will do more harm than good. It is time to straighten things out. As I argue elsewhere, the solution to the problem of (...) moral luck is finally revealed. Our task now is twofold: to hold a magnifying glass up to the initial problem, so that all might finally see it; and to dismiss unfounded fears about solving that problem, so that all might finally stop grinning and bearing it. (shrink)

Using the Implicit Association Test, recent experiments have demonstrated a strong and automatic positive evaluation of White Americans and a relatively negative evaluation of African Americans. Interpretations of this finding as revealing pro-White attitudes rest critically on tests of alternative interpretations, the most obvious one being perceivers’ greater familiarity with stimuli representing White Americans. The reported experiment demonstrated that positive attributes were more strongly associated with White than Black Americans even when pictures of equally unfamiliar Black and White individuals were (...) used as stimuli and differences in stimulus familiarity were statistically controlled. This experiment indicates that automatic race associations captured by the IAT are not compromised by stimulus familiarity, which in turn strengthens the conclusion that the IAT measures automatic evaluative associations. © 2000 Academic Press. (shrink)

General-elimination harmony articulates Gentzen’s idea that the elimination-rules are justified if they infer from an assertion no more than can already be inferred from the grounds for making it. Dummett described the rules as not only harmonious but stable if the E-rules allow one to infer no more and no less than the I-rules justify. Pfenning and Davies call the rules locally complete if the E-rules are strong enough to allow one to infer the original judgement. A method is given (...) of generating harmonious general-elimination rules from a collection of I-rules. We show that the general-elimination rules satisfy Pfenning and Davies’ test for local completeness, but question whether that is enough to show that they are stable. Alternative conditions for stability are considered, including equivalence between the introduction- and elimination-meanings of a connective, and recovery of the grounds for assertion, finally generalizing the notion of local completeness to capture Dummett’s notion of stability satisfactorily. We show that the general-elimination rules meet the last of these conditions, and so are indeed not only harmonious but also stable. (shrink)

Problem: What alternative strategies from our experiences using a Piaget-based radical constructivist pedagogy might have more and better results than the current practice of responding in debate form, each side trying to prove the other wrong? Method: Use of Slezak’s paper to illuminate the point that the central problem with the interpretation of RC generally used in such writing is that the authors seem not to be able to operate from the central tenet of RC, which is the opposite of (...) that used in realism. Description of how this failure to use the central tenet of RC results in claims that RC is irrelevant to education and to definitions of good teaching. Results: A specific approach shown to be useful in facilitating the construction of new understanding in science is adapted in order to guide interaction between an RC and a realist, which can result in the realist understanding the RC point of view. Implications: Instead of debating with critics of RC, where each side is trying to prove the other side wrong, we need to change the interaction to one in which members of opposing sides attempt to understand the other’s position. In this situation we are in a position to use a pedagogical strategy in which the realist examines her own fundamental assumption that we can know a mind-independent world, and considers the implications of a starting assumption that is exactly the opposite. (shrink)

Recent debates about memetics have revealed some widespread misunderstandings about Darwinian approaches to cultural evolution. Drawing from these debates, this paper disputes five common claims: (1) mental representations are rarely discrete, and therefore models that assume discrete, gene-like particles (i.e., replicators) are useless; (2) replicators are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution; (3) content-dependent psychological biases are the only important processes that affect the spread of cultural representations; (4) the “cultural fitness” of a mental representation can be inferred from its (...) successful transmission; and (5) selective forces only matter if the sources of variation are random. We close by sketching the outlines of a unified evolutionary science of culture. (shrink)

A semantic embedding of quantified conditional logic in classical higher-order logic is utilized for reducing cut-elimination in the former logic to existing results for the latter logic. The presented embedding approach is adaptable to a wide range of other logics, for many of which cut-elimination is still open. However, special attention has to be payed to cut-simulation, which may render cut-elimination as a pointless criterion.

Advocates of eliminative materialism (EM) assure us that our current, ordinary approach to describing the mind will eventually be eliminated, instead of reduced, by a matured neuroscience. However, once we take into account the flexibility, explanatory power, and overall sophistication of ordinary language, then the promissory note offered by eliminative materialism loses all credibility. To bolster the preceding claim, we present three original problems for EM: the accountability problem, the substitution problem, and the discourse dependence problem.

This paper argues that vice-charging, the practice of charging other persons with epistemic vice, can itself be epistemically vicious. It identifies some potential vices of vice-charging and identifies knowledge of other people as a type of knowledge that is obstructed by epistemically vicious attributions of epistemic vice. The hazards of vice-charging are illustrated by reference to the accusation that parents who hesitate to give their children the MMR triple vaccine are guilty of gullibility and dogmatism. Ethnographic and sociological research is (...) used to make the case that this charge is, in a significant range of cases, epistemically unjust and hinders attempts to make sense of vaccine hesitancy. This epistemic injustice consists in the representation of vaccine hesitant parents as less than full epistemic agents. A case is made for a more tolerant and inclusive approach, not only to vaccine hesitancy but also to other forms of unorthodoxy or non-compliance. The primary objective in these cases should be to achieve Verstehen of seemingly alien outlooks and practices so that policy makers and practitioners in public services can more effectively educate a sceptical public about the risks of vaccine hesitancy. (shrink)