The practice of personal autonomy is a dynamic event that consists of a vital interplay between the self, socio-cultural reality, meaning, and being epistemically responsible. Autonomy is not static, something that we simply possess by virtue of a status as 'rational beings'. Therefore, in this dissertation, I examine the traditional notion of autonomy as it has been developed by Kant and subsequently influenced the current debate between 'liberals' and 'communitarians'. Primarily from the standpoint of the critiques developed by Charles Taylor, (...) I argue that the fundamental disagreement between these two camps is over the concept of the self. While this landscape stands divided, some middle ground can be found in the work of Joseph Raz, who postulated the need for a combination of individual abilities and an autonomy-supporting environment as necessary conditions for practicing personal autonomy. His characterization of 'personal autonomy', distinct from Kantian autonomy, forms the underlying paradigm for this work. (shrink)

To generate coherent behaviour, the brain needs to attend selectively to the many objects that are present in the environment, but this poses several questions. How does the brain know which objects 'belong together'? How does the information from different senses get combined? How does this help to plan and carry out actions? The subject of attentional mechanisms has a long history in cognitive psychology, as it is the key to making sense of the visual world. However, new developments in (...) cognitive neuroscience, and greater understanding of how attention and action are integrated, have transformed the field. This book is the first to bring together leading researchers to discuss the convergence of experimental findings in the following areas: Visual selective attention Attention and perceptual integration Spatial representation and attention Visual attention and action Control of attention Attention, Space, and Action provides a unique combination of perspectives that will appeal to students and researchers from psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, and neuroanatomy. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to present Sartre’s early philosophical anthropology and later existential Marxism as part of the development of a pure Critical Theory that, with respect to its content and with respect to the context of its production, informs a trajectory that runs through the events of May ’68. Both Sartre’s pure Critical Theory and the events of May ’68 share deep commitments to possibility, agency, and ethics. A different trajectory that runs through May ’68 is the (...) post-humanism of Foucault, which both contrasts directly with Sartrean Critical Theory, and traces useful boundaries around it and its application. In the twenty-first century, significant elements of a Critical Theory that remains committed to possibility, agency, and ethics, but that pays heed to Foucauldian boundaries, may be seen in the contestation of mainstream politics that at the same time stands on its own as an activism best exemplified by the alternative press. The contestation of propaganda is possible, and its completion requires that agents pit subjects against subjection as the way to a better future. (shrink)

This chapter presents some rather different ideas about the organization of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than fixed functional specialization, it emphasizes adaptability of neural coding to fit a behavioral context. In particular, it presents both neuroimaging and single-unit electrophysiological evidence to suggest that, in selected regions of the prefrontal cortex, neurons adapt their properties to code just that information of relevance to current behavior. This adaptation is a major contributor to the achievement of cognitive focus and control. Although this adaptive (...) coding model recognizes important regional specializations within the prefrontal cortex, it suggests a perspective on these that is rather different from that presumed in the traditional divide-and-conquer approach. (shrink)

In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)

In this essay I look at The Birth of Tragedy in order to explore two related issues. First, beginning with Nietzsche’s own later critical look back at the book, I argue that in lamenting both the influence of Schopenhauer, and the inclusion of an extended discussion of contemporary German culture, Nietzsche underplayed the interdependence of these elements and his analysis of tragedy and its significance in the book. Second, I argue that to understand Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian concept of tragedy we may (...) begin from the perspective of the term's common usage, attending to phenomena often labelled tragic, and glimpsing what holds sway just beneath their surfaces. Ultimately, although Nietzsche's expressed understanding of tragedy in these early years drew heavily on Schopenhauerian pessimism, it nevertheless exceeded that influence. (shrink)

This chapter considers how dynamic brain states continuously fine-tune processing to accommodate changes in behavioural context and task goals. First, the authors review the extant literature suggesting that content-specific patterns of preparatory activity bias competitive processing in visual cortex to favour behaviourally relevant input. Next, they consider how higher-level brain areas might provide a top-down attentional signal for modulating baseline visual activity. Extensive evidence suggests that working memory representations in prefrontal cortex are especially important for generating and maintaining biases in (...) preparatory visual activity via modulatory feedback. Although it is often proposed that such working memory representations are maintained via persistent prefrontal activity, the authors review more recent evidence that rapid short-term synaptic plasticity provides a common substrate for maintaining the content of past experience and the rules for guiding future goal-directed processing. (shrink)

The chapters in is collection examine various aspects of JJ Rousseau's work as it relates to the concept of desire.

"First published as Metaphilosophy volume 45, nos. 4-5, except for 'Luck as risk and the lack of control account of luck,' first published in Metaphilosophy volume 46, no. 2 "--Title page vers.

Assistive technology is widely used in contemporary special needs education. Our interest is in the extent to which we can conceive of certain uses of AT in this educational context as a form of extended cognition. It is argued that what is critical to answering this question is that the relationship between the student and the AT is more than just that of subject-and-instrument, but instead incorporates a fluidity and spontaneity that puts it on a functional par with their use (...) of the student’s biological cognitive traits. It is claimed that AT use in special needs education offers an especially plausible case of extended cognition for just this reason. It is further maintained that understanding AT in this fashion has some important philosophical and practical ramifications, including how we should conceive of mainstream education, given that this is increasingly conducted within highly technologically-embedded environments. (shrink)

The year 2022 marks a century since the death of Reverend John Knox Bokwe, a minister of the United Free Church of Scotland Mission in South Africa. Although little known, Bokwe was an important member of the emerging African intellectual elite towards the end of the 19th century. He demonstrated the creative tension that arises when two cultures encounter each other as he confronted and made sense of the historical meaning of modernity. He emphasised the value of his traditional (...) culture in a context where western culture was making a significant transforming impact on African life, which produced a creative tension throughout his working life in various contexts. This paper analyses his particular contribution as an active committed Christian through a number of overlapping lenses – his life in clerical work, journalism, literature, theology, education, music and his involvement in social and political issues and ministry. In all this he operated with a holistic vision. The paper offers an assessment of his life’s work using a combination of primary and secondary sources. Contribution: This article adds to the growing body of work that is derived from studies on the emergence of indigenous leadership in South Africa by looking at the life, work and Christian witness of Rev John Knox Bokwe from the perspective of the creative tension that he experienced and navigated in the varied professional and vocational perspectives he engaged in during his life. (shrink)

The value of knowledge has always been a central topic within epistemology. Going all the way back to Plato’s Meno, philosophers have asked, why is knowledge more valuable than mere true belief? Interest in this question has grown in recent years, with theorists proposing a range of answers. But some reject the premise of the question and claim that the value of knowledge is ‘swamped’ by the value of true belief. And others argue that statuses other than knowledge, such as (...) justification or understanding, are distinctively valuable. We will call the general question of why knowledge is valuable the value problem. (shrink)