1 There have been several editions of Fridugisus’ letter. I have consulted those in Jaques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus … series latina, 221 vols., (Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1844–1864), vol. 105, cols. 751–756; Francesco Corvino, “Il ‘De nihilo et tenebris’ di Fredegiso di Tours,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia (1956), pp. 273–286; and the most recent and authoritative edition, in Concettina Gennaro, Fridugiso di Tours e il “De substantia nihili et tenebrarum”: Edizione critica e studio introduttivo, (“Pubblicazioni dell’istituto (...) universitario di magistero di Catania,” serie filosofica — saggi e monografie, no. 46; Padua: Casa editrice Dott. Antonio Milani, 1963). Fridugisus’ letter survives in four manuscripts. Nevertheless the text is corrupt in places, and all editors have had to suggest emendations here and there. For my translation I have followed Gennaro’s edition, but not always her interpretation. There is another translation, by Hermigild Dressler, in John F. Wippel and Allan Wolter, eds., Medieval Philosophy from St. Augustine to Nicholas of Cusa, (New York: The Free Press, 1969), pp. 104–108. Note that references to the Psalms in this translation are given according to the numbering in the Revised Standard Edition. (shrink)

Consciousness is arguably the most important area within contemporary philosophy of mind and perhaps the most puzzling aspect of the world. Despite an explosion of research from philosophers, psychologists, and scientists, attempts to explain consciousness in neurophysiological, or even cognitive, terms are often met with great resistance. In The Consciousness Paradox, Rocco Gennaro aims to solve an underlying paradox, namely, how it is possible to hold a number of seemingly inconsistent views, including higher-order thought (HOT) theory, conceptualism, infant and (...) animal consciousness, concept acquisition, and what he calls the HOT-brain thesis. He defends and further develops a metapsychological reductive representational theory of consciousness and applies it to several importantly related problems. Gennaro proposes a version of the HOT theory of consciousness that he calls the "wide intrinsicality view" and shows why it is superior to various alternatives, such as self-representationalism and first-order representationalism. HOT theory says that what makes a mental state conscious is that a suitable higher-order thought is directed at that mental state. -/- Thus Gennaro argues for an overall philosophical theory of consciousness while applying it to other significant issues not usually addressed in the philosophical literature on consciousness. Most cognitive science and empirical works on such topics as concepts and animal consciousness do not address central philosophical theories of consciousness. Gennaro’s integration of empirical and philosophical concerns will make his argument of interest to both philosophers and nonphilosophers. (shrink)

This self-contained introduction to natural language semantics addresses the majortheoretical questions in the field. The authors introduce the systematic study of linguistic meaningthrough a sequence of formal tools and their linguistic applications. Starting with propositionalconnectives and truth conditions, the book moves to quantification and binding, intensionality andtense, and so on. To set their approach in a broader perspective, the authors also explore theinteraction of meaning with context and use (the semantics-pragmatics interface) and address some ofthe foundational questions, especially in connection (...) with cognition in general. They also introducea few of the most accessible and interesting ideas from recent research to give the reader a bit ofthe flavor of current work in semantics. The organization of this new edition is modular; after theintroductory chapters, the remaining material can be covered in flexible order. The book presupposesno background in formal logic (an appendix introduces the basic notions of set theory) and only aminimal acquaintance with linguistics. This edition includes a substantial amount of completely newmaterial and has been not only updated but redesigned throughout to enhance itsuser-friendliness. (shrink)

In The Dynamics of Meaning , Gennaro Chierchia tackles central issues in dynamic semantics and extends the general framework. Chapter 1 introduces the notion of dynamic semantics and discusses in detail the phenomena that have been used to motivate it, such as "donkey" sentences and adverbs of quantification. The second chapter explores in greater depth the interpretation of indefinites and issues related to presuppositions of uniqueness and the "E-type strategy." In Chapter 3, Chierchia extends the dynamic approach to the (...) domain of syntactic theory, considering a range of empirical problems that includes backwards anaphora, reconstruction effects, and weak crossover. The final chapter develops the formal system of dynamic semantics to deal with central issues of definites and presupposition. Chierchia shows that an approach based on a principled enrichment of the mechanisms dealing with meaning is to be preferred on empirical grounds over approaches that depend on an enrichment of the syntactic apparatus. Dynamics of Meaning illustrates how seemingly abstract stances on the nature of meaning can have significant and far-reaching linguistic consequences, leading to the detection of new facts and influencing our understanding of the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface. (shrink)

Recently there has been a lively revival of interest in implicatures, particularly scalar implicatures. Building on the resulting literature, our main goal in the present paper is to establish an empirical generalization, namely that SIs can occur systematically and freely in arbitrarily embedded positions. We are not so much concerned with the question whether drawing implicatures is a costly option (in terms of semantic processing, or of some other markedness measure). Nor are we specifically concerned with how implicatures come about (...) (even though, to get going, we will have to make some specific assumptions on this matter). The focus of our discussion is testing the claim of the pervasive embeddability of SIs in just about any context, a claim that remains so far controversial. While our main goal is the establishment of an empirical generalization, if we succeed, a predominant view on the division of labor between semantics and pragmatics will have to be revised. A secondary goal of this paper is to hint at evidence that a revision is needed on independent grounds. But let us first present, in a rather impressionistic way, the reasons why a revision would be required if our main generalization on embedded SIs turns out to be correct. In the tradition stemming from Grice (1989), implicatures are considered a wholly pragmatic phenomenon and SIs are often used as paramount examples. Within such a tradition, 㳊 semantics is taken to deal with the compositional construction of sentence meaning (a term which we are using for now in a loose, non technical way), while pragmatics deals with how sentence meaning is actually put to use (i.e. enriched and possibly modified through reasoning about speakers’ intentions, contextually relevant information, etc.). Simply put, on this view pragmatics takes place at the level of complete utterances and pragmatic enrichments are a root phenomenon (something that happens globally to sentences) rather than a compositional one.. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary work contains the most sustained attempt at developing and defending one of the few genuine theories of consciousness.

Various psychopathologies of self-awareness, such as somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion in schizophrenia, might seem to threaten the viability of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness since it requires a HOT about one’s own mental state to accompany every conscious state. The HOT theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state a conscious mental state is that there is a HOT to the effect that “I am in mental state M” (Rosenthal 2005, Gennaro 2012). In a previous (...) publication (Gennaro 2015), I argued that a HOT theorist can adequately respond to this concern with respect to somatoparaphrenia. Somatoparaphrenia is a “depersonalization disorder” which is characterized by the sense of alienation from parts of one’s body. It is a bizarre type of body delusion where one denies ownership of a limb or an entire side of one’s body. My focus in the chapter, however, is on “inserted thoughts” which is a common symptom of schizophrenia, although it will also be useful to contrast it with somatoparaphrenia. Schizophrenia is a mental disorder which most commonly manifests itself through auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking. Thought insertion is the delusion that some thoughts are not “one’s own” in some sense or are somehow being inserted into one’s mind by someone else. Graham and Stephens (2000), for example, have suggested that thought insertion should be understood as alienated self-consciousness or meta-representation. I argue that HOT theory has nothing to fear from this phenomenon either and can consistently explain what happens in this admittedly unusual case. (shrink)

We treat emergence via reference to four ideas: (1) the different levels of emergence are characterised by distinct conservation laws, (2) the emergence process starts from some instability, (3) the driving force of emergence is given by selection processes allowing canalisation of specific (emerging) paths, and (4) new forms of stability are determined by new kinds of operations. At a quantum-mechanical level entropy is conserved in an isolated system or at global level and the only allowed operations are local shifts (...) in order and disorder – that implies weakening and strengthening correlations. The stable state is here represented by a highly symmetric state. Emergence of the classical physical world arises when energy is conserved and allowable operations include building and breaking of physical-chemical connections. The stable state is here the energy minimum. Emergence of the biotic world implies that the conserved quantity is energy efficiency. Energy is no longer locally conserved. The allowed operations are those that are consistent with the survival (persistence) of the organism. The emergence of the mind is grounded in selecting those operations that are rational (in the sense of maintaining biological self-organisation). Here, the rational value of behaviour is the quantity of interest. Mounting the ladder of (both cosmic and biological) evolution means to have more and more selection of the possible outcomes (and therefore of the relative operations) but in a growing space of possibilities: if selection would reduce more and more the space of possibilities, the final result would be a rigid order; at the other extreme, if we had only expansion of the possibilities without selection, the final result would be disorder. So growing complexity can be understood as a path in the evolutionary landscape of the systems in which a balance of order and disorder is maintained although each level emerges as a result of the selection. (shrink)

The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically (...) pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. (shrink)

Italian and English factives differ from each other in interesting and puzzling ways. English emotive factives license Negative Polarity Items, while their Italian counterparts don’t. Moreover, when factives of all kinds occur in the scope of negation in Italian an intervention effect emerges that interferes with NPI licensing way more robustly than in English. In this paper, I explore the idea that this contrast between Italian and English may be due to a difference in the Complementizer -system of the two (...) languages that parallels a difference that has been noted in the literature between the singular and the plural definite determiner the with respect to NPI licensing. Understanding how factives differ across languages with respect to polarity phenomena is not only interesting in its own right, but also because it sheds further light on how logical contradictions may affect grammaticality judgments. (shrink)

There has been an explosion of work on consciousness in the last 30–40 years from philosophers, psychologists, and neurologists. Thus, there is a need for an interdisciplinary, comprehensive volume in the field that brings together contributions from a wide range of experts on fundamental and cutting-edge topics. The Routledge Handbook of Consciousness fills this need and makes each chapter’s importance understandable to students and researchers from a variety of backgrounds. Designed to complement and better explain primary sources, this volume is (...) a valuable "first-stop" publication for undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in any course on "Consciousness," "Philosophy of Mind," or "Philosophy of Psychology," as well as a valuable handbook for researchers in these fields who want a useful reference to have close at hand. The 34 chapters, all published here for the first time, are divided into three parts: Part I covers the "History and Background Metaphysics" of consciousness, such as dualism, materialism, free will, and personal identity, and includes a chapter on Indian philosophy. Part II is on specific "Contemporary Theories of Consciousness," with chapters on representational, information integration, global workspace, attention-based, and quantum theories. Part III is entitled "Major Topics in Consciousness Research," with chapters on psychopathologies, dreaming, meditation, time, action, emotion, multisensory experience, animal and robot consciousness, and the unity of consciousness. -/- Each chapter begins with a brief introduction and concludes with a list of "Related Topics," as well as a list of "References," making the volume indispensable for the newcomer and experienced researcher alike. (shrink)

In the absence of any plausible reductionist account of consciousness in nonmentalistic terms, the HOT theory says that the best explanation for what makes a mental state conscious is that it is accompanied by a thought (or awareness) that one is in that state. I discuss HOT theory with special attention to how Leibnizian theses can help support it and how it can shed light on Leibniz's theory of perception, apperception, and consciousness. It will become clear how treating Leibniz as (...) a HOT theorist can solve some of the problems he faced and some of the puzzles posed by commentators, e.g. animal mentality and the role of reason and memory in self-consciousness. (shrink)

I argue that recent developments in animal cognition support the conclusion that HOT theory is consistent with animal consciousness. There seems to be growing evidence that many animals are indeed capable of having I-thoughts, including episodic memory, as well as have the ability to understand the mental states of others.

This essay explores the topic of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly called “Multiple Personality Disorder”) with special attention to such Quadrophenia masterpieces as “Dr. Jimmy” and “The Real Me.” A number of major philosophical questions arise: Can two or more “persons” really inhabit the same body? How can we hold Dr. Jimmy morally responsible for the reprehensible actions of Mr. Jim? Wouldn’t it be wrong to do so if they are really different people? What is it to be the “same” person (...) over time? Does Dr. Jimmy really have free will? The focus is on the much discussed and important notions of personal identity, free will, and moral responsibility. (shrink)

The higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness is a reductive representational theory of consciousness which says that what makes a mental state conscious is that there is a suitable HOT directed at that mental state. Although it seems that any neural realization of the theory must be somewhat widely distributed in the brain, it remains unclear just how widely distributed it needs to be. In section I, I provide some background and define some key terms. In section II, I argue (...) against the view that HOT theory should treat first-order (i.e. world-directed) conscious states as requiring prefrontal cortical activity though it is reasonable to suppose that conscious states are realized in the brain. In section III, I then explore some of the key background metaphysical issues involved in understanding the nature of consciousness, such as the debate between realism and idealism as well as the prospects for solving the so-called “hard problem” of consciousness. Some of the differences in question often mirror the traditional differences between Western and Eastern perspectives on the nature of consciousness. Overall, I argue that some form of realism and physicalism is more plausible than the opposing views. I also argue that materialists (and especially HOT theorists) can offer plausible replies to the hard problem. (shrink)

For patients under anesthesia, it is extremely important to be able to ascertain from a scientific, third person point of view to what extent consciousness is correlated with specific areas of brain activity. Errors in accurately determining when a patient is having conscious states, such as conscious perceptions or pains, can have catastrophic results. Here, I argue that the effects of (at least some kinds of) anesthesia lend support to the notion that neither basic sensory areas nor the prefrontal cortex (...) (PFC) is sufficient to produce conscious states. I also argue that it this is consistent with and supportive of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness. I therefore disagree in some ways with Mehta and Mashour (2013), who argue that evidence from anesthesia mainly favors a first-order representational (FOR) theory, as opposed to HOT theory (and many other theories, for that matter). (shrink)

This paper studies the distribution of ‘list readings’ in questions like who does everyone like? vs. who likes everyone?. More generally, it focuses on the interaction between wh-words and quantified NPs. It is argued that, contrary to widespread belief, the pattern of available readings of constituent questions can be explained as a consequence of Weak Crossover, a well-known property of grammar. In particular, list readings are claimed to be a special case of ‘functional readings’, rather than arising from quantifying into (...) questions. Functional readings are argued to be encoded in the syntax as doubly indexed traces, which straightforwardly leads to a Crossover account of the absence of list readings in who likes everyone?. Empirical and theoretical consequences of this idea for the syntax and semantics of questions are considered. (shrink)

We started from the fact that type theory, in the way it was implemented in IL, makes it costly to deal with nominalization processes. We have also argued that the type hierarchy as such doesn't play any real role in a grammar; the classification it provides for different semantic objects is already contained, in some sense, in the categorial structure of the grammar itself. So, on the basis of a theory of properties (Cocchiarella's HST*) we have tried to build a (...) language (IL*) whose syntax does not contain any explicit typing of expressions. Some of the consequences that this move brings about in the overall organization of the grammar can be summarized as follows:it allows for a simple treatment of infinitives, gerunds, factives and, in general, all those phenomena which might be analyzed as cases of nominalization;it provides a simpler and more constrained semantics than IL, since IL* doesn't go beyond second order, and its non-modal basis is axiomatizable;it suggests that the role of logical form in a theory of grammar could be that of a family of theories of semantic objects;it eliminates the extrinsic limitations of a type hierarchy on the choice of the system of syntactic categories.I think that it is interesting to notice how having an explicit semantic framework helps to provide a sense in which it is legitimate to regard the syntax of a language as ‘autonomous’. (shrink)

This collection presents some of the most vital and original recent writings on Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, the three greatest rationalists of the early modern period. Their work offered brilliant and distinct integrations of science, morals, metaphysics, and religion, which today remain at the center of philosophical discussion. The essays written especially for this volume explore how these three philosophical systems treated matter, substance, human freedom, natural necessity, knowledge, mind, and consciousness. The contributors include some of the most prominent writers (...) in the field, including Jonathan Bennett, Michael Della Rocca, Jan A. Cover, Catherine Wilson, Stephen Voss, Edwin Curley, Don Garrett, and Margaret D. Wilson. (shrink)

Somatoparaphrenia is a pathology of self characterized by the sense of alienaton from parts of one’s body. It is usually construed as a kind of delusional disorder caused by extensive right hemisphere lesions. Lesions in the temporoparietal junction are common in somatoparaphrenia but deep cortical regions (for example, the posterior insula) and subcortical regions (for example, the basal ganglia) are also sometimes implicated (Valler and Ronschi 2009). Patients are often described as feeling that a limb belongs to another person and (...) thus attribute ownership of the limb and bodily sensation to someone else. There is also some question as to whether or not the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness can plausibly account for the depersonalization psychopathology of somatoparaphrenia (Liang and Lane 2009, Rosenthal 2010, Lane and Liang 2010). Liang and Lane argue that it cannot. The HOT theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state a conscious mental state is that it is the target of a HOT to the effect that “I am in mental state M” (Rosenthal 2005, Gennaro 2012). When the HOT is itself is unconscious, the conscious state is still outer-directed. When the HOT is conscious, we have introspection and so the conscious thought is directed at the mental state. In section I, I briefly review the previous exchange between Lane and Liang and David Rosenthal. In section II, I further explore somatoparaphrenia and the nature of delusion while offering a number of additional replies to Lane and Liang. In section III, I examine the central notions of “mental state ownership” and “self-concepts” in an effort to account especially for the depersonalization aspect of somatoparaphrenia against the background of HOT theory. In section IV, I argue that to the extent that somatoparaphrenia casts doubt on the notion that some thoughts are “immune to error through misidentification” (IEM), the most fundamental aspect of IEM is still consistent with HOT theory. Overall, I argue that HOT theory is left unscathed by the pheneomenon of somatoparaphrenia and can even help to explain what happens in these cases. (shrink)

The main interpretations of the quantum-mechanical wave function are presented emphasizing how they can be divided into two ensembles: The ones that deny and the other ones that attribute a form of reality to quantum waves. It is also shown why these waves cannot be classical and must be submitted to the restriction of the complementarity principle. Applying the concept of smooth complementarity, it is shown that there can be no reason to attribute reality only to the events and not (...) to the wave or to the initial state of a given system. Thereafter, an experiment proposed by the authors is presented, where it is shown that the wave-like behaviour allows predictions that are not allowed on the grounds of a particle-like behaviour. In conclusion, we upheld that quantum waves must be real even if they do not belong to the same ontological level of events, which connected with particle detections. (shrink)

Various psychopathologies of self-awareness, such as somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion in schizophrenia, might seem to threaten the viability of the higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness since it requires a HOT about one’s own mental state to accompany every conscious state. The HOT theory of consciousness says that what makes a mental state a conscious mental state is that there is a HOT to the effect that “I am in mental state M.” I have argued in previous work that a (...) HOT theorist can adequately respond to this concern with respect to somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion. There is also Cotard syndrome which is a rare neuropsychiatric disorder in which people hold the delusional belief that they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their blood or internal organs. In this paper, I argue that HOT theory has nothing to fear from it either and can consistently account for what happens in such unusual cases. I analyze Cotard syndrome in light of my previous discussion of somatoparaphrenia and thought insertion, and argue that HOT theory can provide a somewhat analogous account without the worry of inconsistency. It is crucial to recognize that there are multiple “self-concepts” and levels of HOTs which can help to provide a more nuanced explanation. With regard to the connection between consciousness and self-consciousness, it is proposed that Cotard patients are indeed capable of having some “I-thoughts” about their bodies and mental states. (shrink)

Diego Velasquez's Las Meninas (The Maids of Honour) is an intriguing work of representational art. It seems to me that there are two central ways to analyse the painting as involving some kind of 'representation of a representation'.

SUMMARY The apothecary occupied a liminal position in early modern society between profit and healing. Finding ways to distance their public image from trade was a common problem for apothecaries across Europe. This article uses the case of a Bolognese apothecary, Filippo Pastarino, to address the question of how early modern apothecaries chose to represent themselves to political authorities and to the wider public. ‘Mercy’, alongside ‘craft’, was a pillar of apothecaries’ social identity. By contrast, no matter how central financial (...) transactions (‘money’) were to their activity, apothecaries did not want to be perceived as merchants. Thus, the assistance and advice apothecaries provided to patients and customers resulted as central aspects of their social role. In this context, Bolognese apothecaries aimed to defend their current status, which had been challenged by naturalist Ulysses Aldrovandi, city authorities and local monasteries. However, Pastarino's claims can also be seen as antecedents to the self-legitimizing strategy that seventeenth-century artisans deployed when faced with the need to enhance their new status as natural philosophers. The present study attributes a name, a date of birth and a shop to Filippo Pastarino, revising previous interpretations. More broadly, by focusing on how these artisans defended their position in the city it enriches our understanding of the self-representation of apothecaries. (shrink)