Deir el-Medina, the village of the workmen who built the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, is a uniquely rich source of information about life in Egypt between 1539 and 1075 BC. The abundant archaeological remains are complemented by tens of thousands of texts documenting the thoughts and activities of the villagers. Many of the texts are written on papyrus but most are on flakes of limestone which, being free and readily available, were used for even the most (...) casual and temporary of records. They include private letters, administrative accounts, magic spells, records of purchases, last wills and testaments, laundry lists, and love songs. The value of these rare glimpses of daily life is greatly enhanced by the concentration of texts in one time and place. This book combines translations of over 200 of these texts spanning the entire range of preserved genres with stunning illustrations. The reader will, therefore, be able to experience the life of the villagers through their own words whilst viewing places known to each individual writer. Each text is introduced by a commentary that provides the context and explains the contribution each text makes to our understanding of Egyptian society at this period. (shrink)

On the view proposed, the content of an intention in action is given by what one would say in expressing it, and the proper form for expressing such an intention is a statement about what one is doing: e.g. ‘I am doing such-and-such’. By contrast, some think that there are normative or evaluative elements to the content of an intention in action which would be left out of a form that merely stated facts. They think that the appropriate way to (...) express such an intention is a statement about what one should be doing. Davidson, for example, thinks that the statement must essentially be a verdict: that doing such-and-such is all-out desirable. But this is to assume that practical reason is reasoning towards the truth of a proposition, the very mistake which obscures its ‘true character’, as Anscombe correctly points out. Moreover, although Davidson's view helps him account for the possibility of weakness of will, his explanation of the phenomenon is strained and inferior by contrast with the account which the proposed view makes available. The proposed view fits into a broader picture in which intentional action is the exercise of a practical conceptual capacity. (shrink)

According to G. E. M. Anscombe, practical knowledge, an agent’s knowledge of what she is intentionally doing, is not contemplative or speculative; it does not owe its being knowledge to its being derived from what it knows. She argues for this on the ground that practical knowledge can be one of “two knowledges of the same thing”, where the other of the two is speculative. If we try to conceive practical knowledge as speculative, we fall into a hopeless picture in (...) which practical knowledge is provided by “a queer and special seeing eye in the middle of the acting”. I take Anscombe’s thought to be this: practical knowledge is knowledge concerning a happening that the agent may also know speculatively is her doing. I argue that this thesis is not threatened by the possibility of cases in which a happening that the agent knows as her doing would not be available to her to know as her doing if she did not know it speculatively. (shrink)

The history of philosophy risks a self-opacity whereby we overestimate or underestimate our proximity to prior modes of thinking. This risk is relevant to assessing Hegel’s appropriation by McDowell and Priest. McDowell enlists Hegel for a quietist answer to the problem with assuming that concepts and reality belong to different orders, viz., how concepts are answerable to the world. If we accept Hegel’s absolute idealist view that the conceptual is boundless, this problem allegedly dissolves. Priest enlists Hegel for (...) a dialetheist answer to the problem with assuming that truth and falsity are mutually exclusive, viz., how certain sentences are both true and false. If we accept Hegel’s dialectical view that certain contradictions are necessary, this problem allegedly dissolves. For both McDowell and Priest, we find a true friend in Hegel. I argue that McDowell’s and Priest’s appropriations of Hegel overestimate Hegel’s affinity with quietism and dialetheism. McDowell reads Hegel as a quietist who silences metaphysical claims and the skeptical questions they raise against commonsense, but neglects Hegel’s adaptation of ancient skepticism against commonsense. Priest reads Hegel as a dialetheist who subordinates formal logic to dialectical logic by affirming the truth of certain contradictions, but neglects Hegel’s commitment to resolving contradictions for the sake of truth qua whole. I diagnose their misreadings in terms of what Hegel regards as the three moments of logic and argue that while McDowell jumps to its third moment, Priest stalls at its second moment. According to Hegel’s Encyclopedia Logic, logic has three “moments”: the abstractive moment of the understanding, which “stops short” at fixed categories; the negative moment of dialectic, which discovers the “genuine nature” of the categories, viz., that each “passes over, of itself, into its opposite”; and the positive moment of speculation, which grasps the “unity” of categories through the “dissolution” of their inner opposition. Hegel warns that if these moments are “kept separate from each other […] they are not considered in their truth”. I suggest that quietist and dialetheist readings of Hegel fail to consider truthfully the unified moments of his logic. In his quietist critique of metaphysics, McDowell enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of concept and reality. But McDowell helps himself directly to the third moment of logic, where the unity of the categories, and hence the boundlessness of the conceptual, would be fully articulated. Since he arrives at the third moment prematurely, ignoring its prior moments, he obscures its truth (§1). In his dialetheist critique of formal logic, Priest enlists Hegel to dissolve the problem with assuming the duality of truth and falsity. But Priest restricts himself gratuitously to the second moment of logic, where contradictions within the categories are not yet resolved. Since he stalls at the second moment, severed from its final moment, he obscures its truth (§2). I argue we can extricate Hegel from quietist and dialetheist misreadings only if we grasp the truth of the three moments of logic. (shrink)

This paper argues that McDowell wrongly assumes that “terror”, Cavell’s reaction to the radical contingency of our shared modes of knowing or our “attunement”, expresses a skepticism that is antinomically bound to an equally unacceptable dogmatism because Cavell rather regards terror as a mood that reveals the “truth of skepticism”, namely, that there is no conclusive evidence for necessary attunement on pain of a category error, and that a precedent for McDowell’s misunderstanding is Hegel’s argument for necessary attunement (...) in a system of knowing, whose refutation Schelling holds it is the “merit of skepticism” to provide. (shrink)

In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant diagnoses an antinomy of taste: either determinate concepts exhaust judgments of taste or they do not. That is to say, judgments of taste are either objective and public or subjective and private. On the objectivity thesis, aesthetic value is predicable of objects. But determining the concepts that would make a judgment of taste objective is a vexing matter. Who can say which concepts these would be? To what authority does one appeal? (...) On the subjectivity thesis, aesthetic value is not predicable of objects. But this threatens judgments of taste with a sort of relativism. Can we not firmly assert the aesthetic value of any object? Have we no authority to make criticisms of taste? Following John McDowell’s “Aesthetic Value, Objectivity and the Fabric of the World”, I will hold that aesthetic value is neither objective nor subjective, but rather intersubjective. But, contra McDowell, I will argue that the validity that intersubjective aesthetic value bestows on judgments of taste must assume an indeterminate absolute conception of reality, of the world as it is in itself. Only such a conceptual resource can in turn make intelligible the notion of a shared or common sense according to which a judgment of taste can be universally valid, that is, valid for all subjects. Finally, I will consider an objection to common sense in matters of taste. (shrink)

This essay deals with the problem of the status of colours, traditionally considered as the paradigmatic case of secondary qualities: do colours exist only as aspects of experience or are they real properties of objects, existing independently of human and animal perception? Recently, John Campbell has argued in favour of the simple view of colours, according to which colours are real properties of objects. I discuss the place of Campbell's position in a debated which was started by John Mackie and (...) continued by John McDowell, and defend it from a criticism due to Michael Smith. I conclude that the simple view is a philosophically credible position. Subsequently, I consider an alleged contradiction between the simple view and semantic externalism pointed out by Jim Edwards. I suggest that a supporter of the simple view may consistently maintain semantic externalism, if she also accepts epistemological externalism about the canonical warrant of perceptual judgements. (shrink)

In The Varieties of Reference, Gareth Evans argues that the content of perceptual experience is nonconceptual, in a sense I shall explain momentarily. More recently, in his book Mind and World, John McDowell has argued that the reasons Evans gives for this claim are not compelling and, moreover, that Evans’s view is a version of “the Myth of the Given”: More precisely, Evans’s view is alleged to suffer from the same sorts of problems that plague sense-datum theories of perception. (...) In particular, McDowell argues that perceptual experience must be within “the space of reasons,” that perception must be able to give us reasons for, that is, to justify, our beliefs about the world: And, according to him, no state that does not have conceptual content can be a reason for a belief. Now, there are many ways in which Evans’s basic idea, that perceptual content is nonconceptual, might be developed; some of these, I shall argue, would be vulnerable to the objections McDowell brings against him. But I shall also argue that there is a way of developing it that is not vulnerable to these objections. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian PhilosophyHarold CowardSemantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy. By Jonardon Ganeri. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 266.In Semantic Powers: Meaning and the Means of Knowing in Classical Indian Philosophy, Jonardon Ganeri adds to our understanding of the Nyāya philosophy of language in the modern English-speaking world. Building on Bimal (...) Matilal's introduction to Nyāya thought in Matilal's foundational Epistemology Logic and Grammar in Indian Philosophical Analysis (1971) and on Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika from Gangeśa to Raghunatha Siromani (1993), Ganeri's clearly written book valuably extends our knowledge of the Nyāya philosophy of language by its exposition of the seventeenth-century Nyāya philosopher Gadādhara's Saktivāda or "Essay on Semantic Power." Ganeri's exposition is based on having read the first half of the Saktivāda text with Matilal, before the latter's untimely death, and the second half with Bhattacharyya in Calcutta.In the Saktivāda, Gadādhara defends key Nyāya claims as to how language conveys meaning. In the first half of the text, the author deals with such questions as whether languages are convention-based, whether the central function of language is as an instrument of knowing, whether word meaning or sentence meaning is conceptually prior, and whether the notion of meaning is reducible to physical and/or psychological concepts. In the second half, Gadādhara looks at the semantic problems connected with particular constructions: notably proper and theoretical names, anaphors, indexicals, and the quantifiers. The English exposition of Gadādhara's text offered by Ganeri in this book covers the same topics.According to Gadādhara and the Nyāya philosophy, "the language faculty is a sui generis epistemic faculty, reducible to neither perception nor inference nor some combination of these two. The question for the Naiyāyika is: what properties must the language faculty have if it is in this way to be a source of knowledge?" (p. 15). The Nyāya approach also places an emphasis on testimony as a valid source of knowledge (pramāna), which it understands simply as the transmission by language of knowledge from the speaker to the hearer. The "Communication-intention" variable, discussed by recent thinkers such as McDowell, is not dealt with by Nyāya thinkers, who would deny that the acquisition of knowledge by testimony involves anything like the recognition of the speaker's intentions. Rather, the Nyāya thesis is "that understanding typically consists in direct, non-inferential assent, is in sharp contrast to the assumption implicit in McDowell's position: that assenting to another's utterance is never direct, but always depends on the speaker's intentions, or of the speech-act performed by the speaker" (p. 17). In supporting the Nyāya position, Ganeri appeals to Frege's theory of understanding.The basic idea in the Nyāya philosophy of language is that each of us is endowed with a language faculty, analogous to our perceptual faculty, which generates beliefs from perceived utterances. It has a meaning function. As Ganeri puts it: [End Page 419]My testimonial faculty fixes, as it were, a mapping from utterances of a given language to belief contents. The 'meaning' of a statement for me is, by definition, the belief content to which it is mapped by my testimony faculty. If I am able to understand every statement I hear, the language processing mechanism which underpins this faculty must have a certain compositional structure, and that leads to an assignment of belief-content components to subsequential elements in the language, (p. 29)This thought of Gadādhara, dating from about 1700 C.E., resonates with Chomsky's contemporary ideas of "deep structure" and, in classical Indian philosophy, with Bhartṛhari's fifth-century notion of innate-structuring ideas within consciousness (see Coward and Raja, Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. 5). Like Bhartṛhari, Gadādhara takes the sentence to be the irreducible meaning-bearing unit of language.While Karl Potter and Sibajiban Bhattacharyya's volume 6 of The Encyclopedia... (shrink)

There has been much discussion about what, if any, legal and moral duties professionals have to disclose relevant genetic information to the family members of someone with an identified disease predisposing mutation. Here, we present a case report where dissemination of such a genetic test result did not take place within a family. In contrast to previous literature, there appeared to be no deliberate withholding of information, instead distant relatives were unable to communicate relevant information appropriately. When communication was facilitated (...) through the follow-up of a chance remark, the patient was able to avoid planned major surgery, with its attendant morbidity, and her high anxiety levels were much reduced. We believe this case highlights the need for an ongoing debate on how genetic services can best support patients and their families with disclosing relevant genetic information to other family members. (shrink)

O artigo critica a posição filosófica neopirrônica defendida por Oswaldo Porchat Pereira (Porchat 5). Argumentamos que uma de suas noções básicas, a de fenômeno, carece de uma definição apropriada. Além disso, mostramos que o neopirronismo abre as portas para o irracionalismo e que a ciência moderna traz problemas para essa postura.

Logic today is a ramified discipline existing on many levels. It is actively pursued by philosophers, mathemeticians, and computer specialists. The reason is that it is widely employed to solve a number of problems both in the theory of knowledge and in mathematics and computer science. But the broad spectrum of application of contemporary logic does not change the fact that its basic content has the nature of philosophical methodology. In contemporary logic it is the forms of thought and the (...) methods of scientific cognition, the modes of organization of scientific knowledge, and the procedures for the introduction of various concepts, abstractions, and idealizations that are studied. This places logic in intimate contact with epistemology and methodology. The distinctiveness of the approach taken by formal logic to this particular subject consists simply of its studying all these procedures pertaining to concrete cognition through the use of special formal languages, of algebraic, topological, and other exact techniques. (shrink)

My paper is motivated by two thoughts: that there’s significant overlap between J. G. Herder’s romanticism and, what I call, the ‘late’ conceptualism of John McDowell; that recognizing this helps to settle a dispute in contemporary epistemology concerning the contents of perception. I argue, on the basis of that overlap, that “romantic conceptualism” avoids two pressing criticisms of conceptualism: It offers a reply to the argument from the fineness of grain of perceptual experience and it explains the relationship between (...) human perceptual experience and the perceptual experiences of non-human animals. I start with the interpretation of McDowell’s views, tracing the significant revisions in the period following the publication of Mind and World; then I try to compare his views with Herder’s, trying to establish a framework for responding to the more trenchant criticisms of McDowell’s non-conceptualist opponents, and the explanatory force of conceptualist hypotheses beyond the context of contemporary epistemology. The first arc of the paper, therefore, traces the evolution of McDowell’s thought concerning perceptual contents. The second attempts to demonstrate where that view converges with a romantic philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Mitchell et al.'s claim, that their propositional theory is a single-process theory, is illusory because they relegate some learning to a secondary memory process. This renders the single-process theory untestable. The propositional account is not a process theory of learning, but rather, a heuristic that has led to interesting research.

This book presents a comprehensive and detailed exploration of the relationship between the thought of G.W.F. Hegel and that of John McDowell, the latter of whom is widely considered to be one of the most influential living analytic philosophers. It serves as a point of entry in McDowell’s and Hegel’s philosophy, and a substantial contribution to ongoing debates on perceptual experience and perceptual justification, naturalism, human freedom and action. The chapters gathered in this volume, as well as (...) class='Hi'>McDowell’s responses, make it clear that McDowell’s work paves the way for an original reading of Hegel’s texts. His conceptual framework allows for new interpretive possibilities in Hegel’s philosophy which, until now, have remained largely unexplored. Moreover, these interpretations shed light on various aspects of continuity and discontinuity between the philosophies of these two authors, thus defining more clearly their positions on specific issues. In addition, they allow us to see Hegel’s thought as containing a number of conceptual tools that might be useful for advancing McDowell’s own philosophy and contemporary philosophy in general. (shrink)