This article begins by presenting the two most important transformations that establish a genuine Husserlian approach to the imagination: the first lies in the grasping of imagination, despite its essential differences with perception and hallucination, as an intuitive, or sensuous consciousness ; the second lies in the insight that imagination, or better – phantasy –, requires no images, mental or otherwise. Further, the distinction between pure and perceptual phantasies and their respective fictional objects is drawn out. A comparison between pure (...) phantasy and memory, then leads to a closer look at the role of inner consciousness in pure phantasy and to a clarification of the ‘splitting of the subject’. The exploration of this split allows us to trace the role of the real-ego and the phantasy-ego in pure phantasy, which opens the exploration of phantasy as a consciousness of possibilities. This helps us gain clarity about the nature of both real and ideal possibilities and the respective modes of phantasy. Objects of phantasy also most easily lend themselves to an eidetic variation and to an insight into essences. Phenomenological essences concern the ideal possibility of real and ideal objects and of their experience. It is through their contribution to insight into the real and ideal conditions of possibility of different forms of intentional acts that acts of phantasy best show their potential for Husserl’s project of philosophy as a rigorous science. Imagination or fiction becomes, in his own words, the ‘vital element of phenomenology.’. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Moore attribuait l’idéalisme de Berkeley à sa négligence de la distinction entre l’acte d’appréhension et son objet. Bien que Berkeley ait justement tracé cette distinction dans le premier Dialogue, et l’ait rejetée, peu s’en sont aperçu, et ceux qui l’ont remarqué lui reprochent habituellement de confondre l’acte d’appréhension avec une action. La thèse ici développée est que Berkeley n’est pas coupable de cette confusion et qu’il rejette la distinction, en fait, pour de bonnes raisons à caractère empiriste, qui ont (...) à voir avec ce que l’on tient pour son argument principal. (shrink)

Coordination games show that all individuals can do what is right according to act‐consequentialism, even if they do not bring about the best outcome as a group. This creates two problems for act‐consequentialism. First, it cannot accommodate the intuition that there is some moral failure in these cases. Second, its formulation as a criterion of rightness conflicts with the underlying act‐consequentialist concern that the best outcome is brought about. The collectivist view solves these problems by holding that any group of (...) two or more individual agents, and only individual agents, is a collective agent who itself can act rightly or wrongly. When such a collective agent does what is wrong, there is a moral failure. When all collective agents do what is right, the best outcome is brought about. In this paper, I defend the collectivist view against the No Act Objection, according to which the doings of many so called disunified collectives are not acts. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to introduce the work of Leopold Blaustein — philosopher and psychologist, who studied under Kazimierz Twardowski in Lvov and under Husserl in Freiburg im Breisgau. In his short academic career Blaustein developed an original philosophy that drew upon both phenomenology and Twardowski’s analytical approach. One of his main publications concerns Husserl’s early theory of intentional act and object, introduced in Logische Untersuchungen. In the first part of the article I briefly present Blaustein’s biography (...) and some general features of his philosophy. The second part provides an overview of Blaustein’s dissertation concerning Husserl’s early phenomenology. In the third and final part I summarize Blaustein’s research, including the critical remarks of Roman Ingarden. (shrink)

This book presents 12 original essays on historical and contemporary philosophical discussions of judgment. The central issues explored in this volume can be separated into two groups namely, those concerning the act and object of judgment. What kind of act is judgment? How is it related to a range of other mental acts, states, and dispositions? Where and how does assertive force enter in? Is there a distinct category of negative judgments, or are these simply judgments whose objects are (...) negative? Concerning the object of judgment: How many objects are there of a given judgment? One, as on the dual relation theory of Frege and Moore? Or many as in Russell's later multiple relation theory? If there is a single object, is it a proposition? And if so, is it a force-neutral, abstract entity that might equally figure as the object of a range of intentional attitudes? Or is it somehow constitutively tied to the act itself? These and related questions are approached from a variety of historical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. istorical and contemporary perspectives. This book sheds new light on current controversies by drawing on the details of the distinct intellectual contexts in which previous philosophers' positions about the nature of judgment were formulated. In turn, new directions in present-day research promise to raise novel interpretive prospects and challenges in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

ACT, CONTENT, AND OBJECT THE TITLE I have chosen for this work is a mere label for a set of problems; the controversial views that have historically been ...

In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Among other things, it found that states may refuse to expand Medicaid to all individuals earning less than 133% of the federal poverty line. In this article, I evaluate the strongest conservative objection to the Medicaid expansion, which runs as follows: "Defenders of the ACA promised that the Medicaid expansion (and all other parts of the ACA) would be paid for with compensating (...) cuts. However, it’s arguable that that claim is false and that the government is likely to follow its well-worn pattern of charging at least some of the increased spending to the national debt. Debt is already at dangerous levels, and adding to it increases the risk of a serious fiscal crisis. We should therefore oppose the Medicaid expansion." After laying out this argument, I evaluate its central claims and draw three main conclusions. First, some people could reasonably believe the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus reasonably oppose the Medicaid expansion as well. Second, despite the fact that reasonable critics could hold those assumptions, most critics do not, and so they should not reject the Medicaid expansion on these fiscal grounds. Third, supporters of the ACA and the Medicaid expansion can reasonably reject the assumptions behind the fiscal objection, and thus the objection itself. (shrink)

A compelling requirement on normative theories is that they should be satisfiable, that is, in every possible choice situation with a finite number of alternatives, there should be at least one performable act such that, if one were to perform that act, one would comply with the theory. In this paper, I argue that, given some standard assumptions about free will and counterfactuals, Objective Act Consequentialism violates this requirement.

Act-utilitarianism comes in two standard varieties: ‘subjective’ act-utilitarianism, which tells agents to attempt to maximize utility directly, and ‘objective’ act-utilitarianism, which permits agents to use non-utilitarian decision-making procedures. This article argues that objective actutilitarianism is exposed to a dilemma. On one horn of it is the contention that objective act-utilitarianism makes inconsistent claims about the rightness of acts. On the other horn of it is the contention that objective act-utilitarianism collapses back into what is, essentially, subjective act-utilitarianism. Three objective act-utilitarian (...) responses to this dilemma are explored and rejected. The recommended conclusion is that a consistent utilitarian must either embrace subjective act-utilitarianism, or abandon act-utilitarianism altogether. Key Words: act-utilitarianism • subjective • objective • decision-making procedure • criterion of rightness • dilemma. (shrink)

A key question has been underexplored in the literature on conscientious objection: if a physician is required to perform ‘medical activities,’ what is a medical activity? This paper explores the question by employing a teleological evaluation of medicine and examining the analogy of military conscripts, commonly cited in the conscientious objection debate. It argues that physicians (and other healthcare professionals) can only be expected to perform and support medical acts – acts directed towards their patients’ health. That is, physicians cannot (...) be forced to provide or support services that are not medical in nature, even if such activities support other socially desirable pursuits. This does not necessarily mean that medical professionals cannot or should not provide non-medical services, but only that they are under no obligation to provide them. (shrink)

This chapter traces a significant strand in Ayn Rand's intellectual development, showing how an idea that figures prominently in her early vision of a hero develops into the central concept for which she named her mature philosophy. It provides a brief sketch on objectivity. Rand's earliest surviving reference to valuing as an activity occurs in notes she made in 1928 for a novel that she intended to call The Little Street. Both The Little Street and We the Living are set (...) in nightmare environments where the valuers are sacrificed to placate the petty resentments and short‐range desires of those who do not know how to value. The Fountainhead shows that the spiritual activity that Rand sees as the essence of human life is incompatible with a primary orientation toward other people. Atlas Shrugged contains Rand's presentation of her mature philosophy. This includes her moral theory and her view of character. (shrink)

This paper argues for a distinction between fictional characters, as parts of intentionally created abstract artifacts, and intentional objects, as nonexistent objects generated by referential acts that fail to refer. It argues that intentional objects as the nonexistent objects of imagination and other objectual attitudes are well-reflected in natural language, though in a highly restricted way, reflecting their ontological dependence on referential acts. The paper elaborates how that ontological dependence can be understood.

SummaryIn this article the thesis is defended that all objects of intentional attitudes are of one sort, while the thesis is rejected that epistemic attitudes can be assimilated.

It is well known that the discussion concerning the relations between content and object is a central theme in Brentano’s school after the decisive essay by Twardowski in 1894. However, less known is the fact that this discussion also takes place outside the aforementioned school and that the distinction between content and object is already present before 1893 amongst other authors.

Our intention is to construct the conditions for a new position that more closely explains the reality of the object (its location, concreteness, possibility of being seen, extension, instantaneousness, etc.), but also the object’s movement, the “situation” in which it is or becomes a potential agent that “works,” influences us and incites us to _movement _towards us, indeed gives us a _turn_ towards an ideal object and its realization. Using a variety of texts that thematize the (...) class='Hi'>object, a few passages from Hegel, we attempt to reveal connections between key architectural (and not only architectural) concepts, form a given epistemological order, and differentiate amongst basic acts and operations that could be ascribed to the object. (shrink)

In his ‘When conscientious objection runs amok: A physician refusing human immunodeficiency virus preventative to a bisexual patient’, Brummett has argued that Catholic physicians should not be able to raise conscientious objections to HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis for bisexual patients, as this constitutes discrimination. Brummett argues that such a conscientious objection represents an instance of conscience creep, which he argues is undesirable. Here I re-analyse the case presented by Brummett using a teleological framework and making reference to Catholic teaching on cooperation (...) with evil. While I agree with Brummett that in this case the physician should not have had the right to conscientiously object, I argue that the teleological framework offers advantages over the argument Brummett has presented. I also comment on why only considering empirically measurable harm as a publicly defensible reason for one to hold a conscientious objection is problematic, as well as on the difficulties associated with cases of discrimination in a pluralistic society. (shrink)

Berkeley holds that objects in the world are constituted of ideas. Some commentators argue that for Berkeley, ideas are identical to acts of perception; this is taken to proceed from his view that ideas are like pains. In this paper, I evaluate the identity claim. I argue that although it does not follow from the pain analogy, nonetheless the texts suggest that Berkeley does think ideas and acts are identical. I show how Berkeley can account for objects persisting over time (...) and being perceivable by multiple observers, even if the ideas that constitute them are intermittent and dependent on particular actors. (shrink)

I shall begin with the assumption that there are, among our mental acts. some which stand in direct contact with ohjects in the material world. The aim of this paper will he to clarify and to draw out certain implications of this somewhat trivial assumption, and ultimately to say something about the ontological structure of those of our acts which effect the function of bringing us into contact with material acts which serve. as we might say, as the most external (...) points of consciousness which touch the objects consciousness is trying to grasp. Amongst material objects I shall include not only material things such as tables. (shrink)

Three experiments investigated young children’s ability to use a causal property, making a machine light up and play music, to sort objects together (sorting task), and then to predict how to make the machine work (action task). The results show that the performance of 30-month-old children is guided in both tasks by the causal properties of the objects. This suggests that causal information is used to categorize objects even in a task that does not involve naming. The causal interpretation of (...) the results is supported by data showing that non-causal temporal association and perceptual prominence cannot account for the results. Finally, 36-month-olds, but not 30-month-olds, sorted objects together on the basis of a “negative” feature, namely, the fact that they lacked a particular causal property. © 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. (shrink)

Many standard definitions of ‘argument’ that recognise an ambiguity between its active and objective senses seek to subsume these in various ways into a single, composite whole. This, it is argued, glosses over the distinction instead of exploiting its elucidatory potential. Whilst optimistic about the prospects of theory integration, the paper recommends a methodology of differentiation as a first necessary step towards any such goal. It starts by assuming that ‘argument’ refers —simultaneously and independently— to two different things, making space (...) between them for a theory of argument based on the then necessary externality of the relation between them. (shrink)

This article discusses the theory of perception of Peter Auriol. Arguing for the active nature of the senses in perception, Auriol applies the Scotistic doctrine of objective being to the theory of perception. Nevertheless, he still accepts some parts of the theory of species. The paper introduces Auriol's view on the mechanism of perception and his account of illusions. I argue for a direct realist reading of Auriol's theory of perception and propose that his position becomes clearer if we use (...) the distinction between the first- and third-person perspectives which he seems to presuppose. (shrink)

O objeto dinâmico possui um lugar proeminente na semiótica peirciana. Considerando-se que o objeto imediato é o objeto como é representado “no signo”, o objeto dinâmico é aquilo que determina o signo, que está por trás e proporciona agência ao intercâmbio semiótico e, por fim, sobre o qual o interpretante final eventualmente estabeleceria. Na certa, atos criativos improvisados, ilustrados aqui pelo exemplo do design de fontes tipográficas, o empreendimento criativo é uma das estilísticas inventivas. Como oposto aos empreendimentos de descoberta, (...) tal como é encontrado nas ciências físicas, na qual busca-se uma realidade fixada por meio de árduas investigações pela “comunidade de estudiosos,” em atos criativos improvisados, ou “abertos,” não parece haver um “real” oculto. Improvisações inventivas são, muitas vezes, feitas em base individual e privada, em vez de uma base comunitária probatória. Em tais casos, o objeto dinâmico, se ele existir, é quase indistinguível da opinião, vontade, desejo, ou mero acaso. Esses processos de design, em especial, em seus estágios iniciais, são divergentes em caráter em vez de convergirem para um interpretante final. Isso dito, a semiose que ocorre mesmo nos mais divertidos e excêntricos processos de design começa, eventualmente, com um processo de conformação para a harmonia e unidade. Ainda que esse elemento restritivo emergente se adeque, até certo ponto, à noção de um objeto dinâmico, atos criativos abertos não podem ser totalmente explicados pelo simples objeto dinâmico peirciano que é um determinador alegado pré-existente do signo. O objeto dinâmico peirciano, que é o objeto dinâmico empírico, deve ser suplementado pelas duas variedades adicionais do objeto dinâmico: o motivacional e o estilístico/afetivo. Somente o objeto dinâmico empírico determina o signo; o objeto dinâmico motivacional desenvolve simultaneamente com o signo, enquanto o objeto dinâmico estilístico é, de muitos modos, determinado pelos signos. (shrink)

In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambigu-ity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argu-ment’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments?

This paper endorses a view of argumentation and arguments that relates both to a special type of speech action, namely, the performance of speech acts of arguing. Its aim is to advance an analysis of those acts that takes into account two kinds of norms related to their correct performance, namely, felicity conditions and objective requirements related to the “correspondence with the facts.” It assumes that the requirement that certain objective conditions be satisfied is among the set of felicity conditions (...) of speech acts of arguing. Taking this into account helps clarify the position and role of warrants in the performance and assessment of these acts. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to revise Boolos’ reinterpretation of second-order monadic logic in terms of plural quantification ([4], [5]) and expand it to full second order logic. Introducing the idealization of plural acts of choice, performed by a suitable team of agents, we will develop a notion of plural reference . Plural quantification will be then explained in terms of plural reference. As an application, we will sketch a structuralist reconstruction of second-order arithmetic based on the axiom of infinite (...) à la Dedekind, as the unique non-logical axiom. We will also sketch a virtual interpretation of the classical continuum involving no other infinite than a countable plurality of individuals. (shrink)

Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences--and show how the concept differs from its alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences--from anatomy to crystallography--are those featured in (...) scientific atlases, the compendia that teach practitioners what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity--or truth-to-nature or trained judgment--is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to anyone interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity-- and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically. Lorraine Daston is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, Germany. She is the coauthor of Wonders and the Order of Nature, 1150-1750 and the editor of Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science. Peter Galison is Pellegrino University Professor of the History of Science and of Physics at Harvard University. He is the author of Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time, How Experiments End, and Image and Logic: A Material Culture of Microphysics, and other books, and coeditor of The Architecture of Science. (shrink)

This paper examines the recent prominent view in medical ethics that withdrawing life-sustaining treatment is an act of killing. I trace this view to the rejection of the traditional claim that withdrawing LST is an omission rather than an act. Although that traditional claim is not as problematic as this recent prominent view suggests, my main claim is that even if we accepted that withdrawing LST should be classified as an act rather than as an omission, it could still be (...) classified as letting die rather than killing. Even though omissions are contrasted with acts, letting die need not be, for one can let die by means of acts. The remainder of the paper is devoted to establishing this claim and addresses certain objections to it. (shrink)

The author offers, first, an account of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Aristotelian-inspired understanding of the object of a moral act and of what morally that species contributes to the act of which it is a part. Then, with special (but not sole) attention to two passages in Aquinas cited frequently by the proponents of the new natural law theory—that is, Summa theologiae 2-2.64.7 and the commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences 2.40.1.2—the author argues that a close analysis of Aquinas’s remarks on (...) objects and intentions does not support the claim that the new natural law theory is Thomistic. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.1 (Spring 2013): 79–104. (shrink)

This paper argues for a reorientation of speech act theory towards an Austin-inspired conception of speech acts as context-changing social actions. After an overview of the role assigned to context by Austin, Searle, and other authors in pragmatics, it is argued that the context of a speech act should be considered as constructed as opposed to merely given, limited as opposed to extensible in any direction, and objective as opposed to cognitive. The compatibility of such claims with each other is (...) discussed. Finally, the context-changing role of speech acts is analyzed differentiating between the illocutionary and the perlocutionary dimension. (shrink)