Recent work in economics has rediscovered the importance of belief-based utility for understanding human behaviour. Belief ‘choice’ is subject to an important constraint, however: people can only bring themselves to believe things for which they can find rationalizations. When preferences for similar beliefs are widespread, this constraint generates rationalization markets, social structures in which agents compete to produce rationalizations in exchange for money and social rewards. I explore the nature of such markets, I draw on political media to illustrate their (...) characteristics and behaviour, and I highlight their implications for understanding motivated cognition and misinformation. (shrink)

In the philosophy of language, conceptual role semantics (hereafter CRS) is a theory of what constitutes the meanings possessed by expressions of natural languages, or the propositions expressed by their utterance. In the philosophy of mind, it is a theory of what constitutes the contents of psychological attitudes, such as beliefs or desires. CRS comes in a variety of forms, not always clearly distinguished by commentators. Such versions are known variously as functional/causal/computational role semantics, and more broadly as use-theories of (...) meaning. Nevertheless, all are united in seeking the meaning or content of an item, not in what it is made of, nor in what accompanies or is associated with it, but in what is done with it, the use it is put to. Roughly, according to CRS, the meaning or propositional content of an expression or attitude is determined by the role it plays in a person’s language or in her cognition. Currently, many view CRS as the main rival to theories that take notions such as truth or reference as central (for example, Davidson 2001), although the relationship between the two is not straightforward. The following outlines the main varieties of CRS, provides a cursory survey of its history, introduces the central arguments offered in its favor, and provisionally assesses how the variants fair against a number of prominent criticisms. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that, in a number of publications in the early 1950s, Margaret Macdonald argues that art does not admit of definition, that art is—in the sense associated with Wittgenstein—a family resemblance concept, and that definitions of art are best understood as confused or poorly expressed contributions to art criticism. This package of views is most typically associated with a famous paper by Morris Weitz from 1956. I demonstrate that Macdonald advanced that package prior to Weitz, indeed, (...) prior to any other philosopher of art of the period. Despite this, Macdonald’s contribution is nowhere to be found in the subsequent literature on the definition of art. In closing, I raise the prospect that Macdonald was in fact the primary influence on the development of Weitz’s critique of the definitional project. (shrink)

In Lukács: Praxis and the Absolute, Daniel Andrés López reassembles Lukács’s philosophy of praxis on a Hegelian basis, as a conceptual-historical totality, both defending him and proposing an unprecedented, immanent critique that raises problems for Marxian philosophy as a whole.

In interpretations of the "Transcendental Aesthetic" section of the first Critique, there is a widespread tendency to present Kant as establishing that the representation of space is a condition for individuating or distinguishing objects, and to claim that it is on this basis that Kant establishes the apriority of this representation. The aim of this paper is to criticize this way of interpreting the "Aesthetic," and to defend an alternative interpretation. On this alternative, questions about the formation of the representation (...) of space figure more centrally, and the anti-Leibnizian character of Kant 's argument can be properly appreciated. (shrink)

A reconstruction of F.W.J. Schelling's philosophy of language based on a detailed reading of §73 of Schelling's lectures on the Philosophy of Art.

��People spent 5 min before sleep at home writing their stream of thought as they suppressed thoughts of a target person, thought of the person, or wrote freely after mentioning the person. These presleep references generally prompted people to report increased dreaming about the person. However, suppression instructions were particularly likely to have this in- fluence, increasing dreaming about the person as measured both by participants’ self-ratings of their dreams and by raters’ coding of mentions of the person in written (...) dream reports. This effect was observed regardless of emotional attraction to the person. (shrink)

Abstract In the present article, we provide a critical overview of the emerging field of ‘neuroeducation’ also frequently referred to as ‘mind, brain and education’ or ‘educational neuroscience’. We describe the growing energy behind linking education and neuroscience in an effort to improve learning and instruction. We explore reasons behind such drives for interdisciplinary research. Reviewing some of the key advances in neuroscientific studies that have come to bear on neuroeducation, we discuss recent evidence on the brain circuits underlying reading, (...) mathematical abilities as well as the potential to use neuroscience to design training programs of neurocognitive functions, such as working memory, that are expected to have effects on overall brain function. Throughout this review we describe how such research can enrich our understanding of the acquisition of academic skills. Furthermore, we discuss the potential for modern brain imaging methods to serve as diagnostic tools as well as measures of the effects of educational interventions. Throughout this discussion, we draw attention to limitations of the available evidence and propose future avenues for research. We also discuss the challenges that face this growing discipline. Specifically, we draw attention to unrealistic expectations for the immediate impact of neuroscience on education, methodological difficulties, and lack of interdisciplinary training, which results in poor communication between educators and neuroscientists. We point out that there should be bi-directional and reciprocal interactions between both disciplines of neuroscience and education, in which research originating from each of these traditions is considered to be compelling in its own right. While there are many obstacles that lie in the way of a productive field of neuroeducation, we contend that there is much reason to be optimistic and that the groundwork has been laid to advance this field in earnest. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Paper Pages 1-13 DOI 10.1007/s12152-011-9119-3 Authors Daniel Ansari, Numerical Cognition Laboratory, Department of Psychology, The University of Western Ontario, Westminster Hall, London, ON N6A 3K7, Canada Bert De Smedt, Parenting and Special Education Research Group, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Roland H. Grabner, Institute for Behavioral Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Journal Neuroethics Online ISSN 1874-5504 Print ISSN 1874-5490. (shrink)

Traditionally, the language faculty was supposed to be a device that maps linguistic inputs to semantic or conceptual representations. These representations themselves were supposed to be distinct from the representations manipulated by the hearer’s perceptual and motor systems. Recently this view of language has been challenged by advocates of embodied cognition. Drawing on empirical studies of linguistic comprehension, they have proposed that the language faculty reuses the very representations and processes deployed in perceiving and acting. I review some of the (...) evidence and arguments in favor of the embodied view of language comprehension, and argue that none of it is conclusive. Moreover, the embodied view itself blurs two important distinctions: first, the distinction between linguistic comprehension and its typical consequences; and second, the distinction between representational content and vehicles. Given that these distinctions are well-motivated, we have good reason to reject the embodied view of linguistic understanding.Keywords: Language; Comprehension; Perception; Action; Embodied cognition; Representation. (shrink)

We often think about the alternatives to a decision that has been made. Thinking in this way is known as counterfactual thinking, that is, thinking about what could have been had an alternative dec...

The post-confinement phase of the COVID-19 pandemic will require that governments navigate more complex ethical questions than had occurred in the initial, ‘curve-flattening’ phase, and that will occur when the pandemic is in the past. By looking at the unavoidable harms involved in the confinement and quarantine methods employed during the initial phase of the pandemic, we can develop a harm reduction approach to managing the phase during which society will be gradually reopened in a context of managed risk. The (...) principles that are at the heart of such an approach include a reckoning with all of the harms involved in policy choice, including harms that might be given rise to by policy implementation itself; a focus on the harms to which already vulnerable populations are susceptible; and a strong preference for policies that economize on the use of prohibitions and of coercive state enforcement, and that instead emphasize the agency of citizens in realizing health-promoting behavior change. This framework is applied to a policy proposal that has been discussed in policy circles in a number of countries, that of immunity ‘passports’, and to policies that emphasize the creative use of space and time to achieve physical distancing goals. (shrink)

The authors examined how a perceiver’s identification of a target person’s actions covaries with attributions of mind to the target. The authors found in Study 1 that the attribution of intentionality and cognition to a target was associated with identifying the target’s action in terms of high-level effects rather than low-level details. In Study 2, both action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, and in Study 3, they were reduced for a target suffering misfortune. In Study (...) 4, it was again found that action identification and mind attribution were greater for a liked target, but like that for the self or a liked other, positive actions were identified at higher levels than negative actions, with the reverse being true for disliked others. In Study 5, the authors found that instructing participants to adopt the target’s perspective did not affect mind attribution but did lead to higher level identifications of the.. (shrink)

Ludwig Wittgenstein's notoriously elusive later writings are dominated by remarks on language. However, while the textual analysis of Wittgenstein's writings is presently a booming industry, the tendency is to focus narrowly on exegetical matters with little attention to their bearing on philosophy at large. Moreover, one finds in contemporary philosophy of language various ideas with a distinctively Wittgensteinian ring to them but whose pedigree is uncertain. This volume brings together distinguished Wittgenstein scholars and renowned philosophers of language in order to (...) examine just what Wittgenstein has to say about language and to assess its significance for current philosophy. The topics discussed include the connection between the meaning of a word and its use, the bearing the context of utterance has on how words are to be understood, the role of rules in the employment of language and whether Wittgenstein's reflections on these issues encourage sceptical or relativist thoughts."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

A downward-entailing context has the property that the replacement of the predicate in the context by a stronger predicate preserves truth. So, for instance, presuppositions aside, the context after “every” in (1) where the NPI “ever” appears is downward entailing.

The thesis of this article is that implicit memory does not exist. Implicit memory.

On the basis of an initial reference to a number of critical appraisals of H. Dooyeweerd’s philosophy, this article proceeds by provisionally focusing on the image of Franz Xavier Von Baader1 — who was intellectually active during the first part of the nineteenth century — in secondary literature . The main concern, however, is to enter into a more detailed evaluation of the claim made by J.G. Friesen,2 namely that all the basic systematic insights and distinctions found in the philosophy (...) of Herman Dooyeweerd are already present in the thought of Von Baader. That Dooyeweerd was indeed influenced by numerous philosophers and philosophical insights spanning the entire history of philosophy is beyond doubt. However, that there is any direct influence on his thought from Von Baader cannot be substantiated on the basis of the available sources even though it is not unlikely that he might have been aware of the existence of Von Baader. Both the quotations used by Friesen in support of his thesis and an extensive reading of the original Collected Works of Von Baader serve as a basis for the assessment of the claims made by Friesen. In fact, there are a number of philosophical distinctions found in the original works of Von Baader that, considered in isolation, are much closer to views of Dooyeweerd. However, once these are placed within the context of Von Baader’s thought, the striking and significant distance between the thought of Von Baader and Dooyeweerd once again become apparent. (shrink)

The last decade of the Qing dynasty and Republican period saw intensive efforts to revise the Qing Code, promulgate modern legal codes based on Japanese and German law, establish a modern system of courts, and develop a professional corps of lawyers and jurists. These institutional reforms were implemented as part of the drive to have extraterritoriality rescinded and safeguard the sovereignty of the Qing dynasty and then Republic of China. The reforms were accompanied by new categories within civil and criminal (...) law, new conceptions of legal knowledge and expertise, and rich discussions over sources of law which took place within the legal realm as well as the readership of Republican newspapers and journals. If, as Roger Berkowitz writes in his study of scientific codification in continental Europe, “in a legal system, there must be some way that the law comes to be known,” how did ways of knowing law change during this period of legal reform and broader intellectual change? Through a survey of jurisprudence textbooks and other legal publications, this paper argues that writers in early 20th-century China came to define jurisprudence in positivistic terms, ultimately using new conceptions of science and social science to identify its place within a new ordering of modern knowledge. (shrink)

This book offers sweeping and cogent arguments as to why analytic philosophers should take experimental cinema seriously as a medium for illuminating mechanisms of meaning in language. Using the analogy of the movie projector, Barnett deconstructs all communication acts into functions of interval, repetition and context. He describes how Wittgenstein's concepts of family resemblance and language games provide a dynamic perspective on the analysis of acts of reference. He then develops a hyper-simplified formula of movement as meaning to discuss, with (...) true equivalence, the process of reference as it occurs in natural language, technical language, poetic language, painting, photography, music, and of course, cinema. Barnett then applies his analytic technique to an original perspective on cine-poetics based on Paul Valery's concept of omnivalence, and to a projection of how this style of analysis, derived from analog cinema, can help us clarify our view of the digital mediasphere and its relation to consciousness. Informed by the philosophy of Quine, Dennett, Merleau-Ponty as well as the later work of Wittgenstein, among others, he uses the film work of Stan Brakhage, Tony Conrad, A.K. Dewdney, Nathaniel Dorsky, Ken Jacobs, Owen Land, Saul Levine, Gregory Markopoulos Michael Snow, and the poetry of Basho, John Cage, John Cayley and Paul Valery to illustrate the power of his unique perspective on meaning. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 64 Heft: 5 Seiten: 768-779.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will by Günter ZöllerDaniel BreazealeGünter Zöller. Fichte’s Transcendental Philosophy: The Original Duplicity of Intelligence and Will. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvii + 169. Cloth, $49.95.The subtitle says it all: “Original Duplicity,” which is to say, interdependent duality, or perhaps “equiprimordiality.” The thesis defended by Günter Zöller in this meticulously documented and elegantly written new book is that (...) the traditional emphasis upon the “primacy of the practical” in Fichte’s thought is seriously misleading and obscures one of the most striking aspects of his highly original transcendental analysis of consciousness and experience.Limiting his exegesis to the period of the “early” or “Jena” Wissenschaftslehre, Zöller carefully explains how “practical” and “theoretical” elements are inextricably linked at every stage of Fichte’s analysis. While it is certainly true that Fichte made a brilliant effort to demonstrate the dependence of “thinking” upon “willing,” of “knowing” upon “doing,” and hence of “theory” upon “practice,” it is no less true that, in doing so, he also established that there can be no “willing” without some prior awareness, and hence some “knowledge,” both of one’s present condition (“what is”) and of some particular goal to be accomplished by free activity (“what ought to be”). The Kantian distinction between “theoretical” and “practical” reason is, therefore, on Fichte’s analysis, simply a reflection of a more fundamental distinction between the “theoretical” and “practical” activities or powers of the I, neither of which can function in the absence of the other. [End Page 374]What Fichte proposes is, in Zöller’s phrase, a truly “integrated theory of reason,” one that begins by positing a pure and original unity of intellect and will in the mere concept of selfhood, that proceeds to a discursive, transcendental analysis of the dynamic and dialectical interplay between “theoretical” and “practical” moments in the constitution of experience (or of empirical self-consciousness), and that concludes by positing, albeit only as a regulative ideal, or as a necessary but unobtainable goal of infinite striving, the final, empirically achieved unity of theory and practice: an ideal of a self that is no longer divided against itself or others and of a world that has been wholly transformed by intellectually guided human activity. As Fichte’s account proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear not only that we must distinguish the will from the intellect—even as we continue to insist upon their systematic interdependence—but that we must also modify our original understanding of both. This conclusion is most unambiguously presented in those works of 1796–99 that collectively constitute the “second” or “revised” version of the Jena Wissenschaftslehre, including the lectures on Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) nova methodo and the System of Ethics, and it is upon an analysis of these texts that Zöller’s interpretation is chiefly based. According to the latter, an adequate theory of willing must not merely contrast and relate “the will” to “the intellect,” but must recognize that even pure volition contains a certain cognitive core and presupposes some guiding law that is simply integral to the will itself. Similarly, “mere cognition” will always be found to contain within itself, in the form of “feeling,” a certain “practical” dimension of its own.Zöller’s careful account of Fichte’s genetic deduction of the necessary interplay between theoretical and practical elements in the constitution of selfhood and experience is by far the most detailed and accurate one available in English, and forms the core of his book. It is by no means, however, the only topic he discusses. The first two chapters, for example, constitute an excellent general introduction to Fichte’s entire Jena project and include a fine discussion of the relationship between Kantian and Fichtean idealism. Chapter 3, which explicates the key notions of “positing” and “determining,” will be of immense help to anyone trying to understand German idealism in general and Fichte’s philosophy in particular. Like Kant’s ethical theory, Fichte’s is often treated in isolation from his larger system, but Zöller’s Chapter 4 clearly explicates the... (shrink)

Kant, Fichte, and the Legacy of Transcendental Idealism contains ten new essays by leading and rising scholars from the United States, Europe, and Asia who explore the historical development and conceptual contours of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy.

The philosophical thought of J. G. Fichte, particularly his later work, is at the very center of the paradigm shift under way in the field of German idealism. Crucial to this reassessment is Fichte's _Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo_ of 1796 to 1799, the manuscript at the heart of this essay colleciton and an articulation of the philosopher's _Wissenschaftslehre,_ or overall system of philosophy, which he discussed in lectures at the University of Jena. Coherent, comprehensive, and edited by two of the foremost (...) Fichte scholars in the world, the essays provide a much needed introduction to the major themes of the most important period of Fichte's philosophical thought--and thus to German idealism itself--and make a persuasive case for the originality and continuing significance of the later Jena _Wissenschaftslehre._. (shrink)

Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, EarlyView.

Analytic judgements are contingent and a posteriori.

The apportionment of responsibility for health policy within multi‐level states should be sensitive to a number of conflicting normative pressures, some of which militate for placing decision‐making authority at the higher reaches of policy‐making structures, while others would seem to require placing them lower down this structure. The principle of subsidiarity is a structural principle that addresses in a manner that is neutral with respect to these values a way of addressing the conflicting claims of these values. Standard accounts of (...) federalism fare poorly with respect to the criterion of subsidiarity. While central governments are at first glance better equipped to apply such a principle to the issue of the distribution of authority, there are strong empirical grounds for thinking that centralized governments will non‐neutrally privilege central authorities in applying the principle. Federal structures that admit of overlapping jurisdictions, and that therefore require that deliberation among federal parties occur as a condition of the problem of the distribution of powers over health care being solved, are most amenable to solving problems of distribution of authority. (shrink)

Understanding the pattern by which complex sentences inherit the presuppositions of their parts (presupposition projection) has been a major topic in formal pragmatics since the 1970s. Heim’s classic paper “On the Projection Problem for Presuppositions” (1983) proposed a replacement of truth-conditional semantics with a dynamic semantics that treats meanings as instructions to update the common ground. Heim’s system predicts the basic pattern of presupposition projection quite accurately. The classic objection to this program (including other versions of dynamic semantics) is that (...) the treatment of binary connectives is stipulative, and other, equally natural treatments fail to make the right predictions about presupposition projection. I give a variation on Heim’s system that is designed to escape this objection. I show that the most liberal possible version of this variant is equivalent to a strong-Kleene system in terms of its definedness conditions. (shrink)