Behaviorism was a peculiarly American phenomenon. As a school of psychology it was founded by John B. Watson (1878-1958) and grew into the neobehaviorisms of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Philosophers were involved from the start, prefiguring the movement and endeavoring to define or redefine its tenets. Behaviorism expressed the naturalistic bent in American thought, which came in response to the prevailing philosophical idealism and was inspired by developments in natural science itself. There were several versions of naturalism in (...) American philosophy, and also several behaviorisms. Most behaviorists paid homage to Darwinian functionalism; all forswore introspection and made learned changes in behavior the primary subject matter and explanatory domain of psychology. They differed in their descriptions of behavior, modes of explanation, and attitudes toward mentalistic concepts. Watson was a strict materialist who wanted to eliminate all mentalistic talk from psychology. Edward Chace Tolman (1886-1959) regarded mind as a biological function of the organism. He permitted mentalistic terms such as 'purpose' in behavioral description, and posited intervening processes that included 'representations' of the environment, while requiring such processes be studied only as expressed in behavior. Clark L. Hull (1884-1952) developed a hypothetical-deductive version of behaviorism, akin to Tolman's functionalism in positing intervening variables but without his cognitivist constructs. B. F. Skinner (1904-90) rejected intervening variables and developed his own account of the behavior of the whole organism, based on the laws of operant conditioning. The naturalism in American philosophy of the early twentieth century showed respect for the natural sciences, especially biology and psychology. John Dewey (1896, 1911), George Santayana (1905, 1920), and F. J. E. Woodbridge (1909, 1913) expressed this attitude. It animated the neorealism of E. B. Holt and Ralph Barton Perry, who gave special attention to psychology, and the evolutionary naturalism and critical realism of Roy Wood Sellars. This naturalism differed from Watson's in regarding mind as part of nature from a Darwinian and functionalist perspective, and treating behavior as the product of the mental functioning. It fed Tolman's version of behaviorism. It was not materialistic or physical-reductionist. Only later, with Quine and logical empiricism, was behaviorism seen as essentially physicalistic. (shrink)

_ Virtue Ethics_ collects, for the first time, the main classical sources and the central contemporary expressions of virtue ethics approach to normative ethical theory. Edited and introduced by Stephen Darwall, these readings are essential for anyone interested in normative theory. Introduced by Stephen Darwall, this collection brings together classic and contemporary readings which define and advance the literature on virtue ethics. Includes six essays which respond to the classic sources. Includes a contemporary discussion on character and virtue by (...) class='Hi'>Gary Watson. Includes classic essays by Aristotle, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume, and recent reactions to this work by philosophers including Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Alasdair MacIntyre, Annette Baier, Rosalind Hursthouse, and Michael Slote. (shrink)

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive ...

Gary L. Cesarz - Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 166-167 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gary L. Cesarz Southeast Missouri State University Eric Watkins. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 451. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $32.99. Eric Watkins' book is a substantial contribution to Kant scholarship, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. (...) It could change the debate on the nature of causality, for it illuminates the advantages of Kant's critical conception of causality over the Humean theories favored today and outlines how Kant's analysis clarifies certain contemporary issues clustered around the notion of causality. Watkins' interpretation of Kant on.. (shrink)

Cybersecurity research often describes people as understanding internet security in terms of metaphorical mental models (e.g., disease risk, physical security risk, or criminal behavior risk). However, little research has directly evaluated if this is an accurate or productive framework. To assess this question, two experiments asked participants to respond to a statistical reasoning task framed in one of four different contexts (cybersecurity, plus the above alternative models). Each context was also presented using either percentages or natural frequencies, and these tasks (...) were followed by a behavioral likelihood rating. As in previous research, consistent use of natural frequencies promoted correct Bayesian reasoning. There was little indication, however, that any of the alternative mental models generated consistently better understanding or reasoning over the actual cybersecurity context. There was some evidence that different models had some effects on patterns of responses, including the behavioral likelihood ratings, but these effects were small, as compared to the effect of the numerical format manipulation. This points to a need to improve the content of actual internet security warnings, rather than working to change the models users have of warnings. (shrink)

Donald Davidsons classic argument for the impossibility of reducing mental events to physicallistic ones is analyzed and formalized in relational logic. This makes evident the scope of Davidsons argument, and shows that he is essentially offering a negative transcendental argument, i.e., and argument to the impossibility of certain kinds of logical relations. Some final speculations are offered as to why such a move might, nevertheless, have a measure of plausibility.

In Good and Real, Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our ...

Three correctives can get researchers out of the trap of constructing unitary theories of “thinking”: (1) Strong inference methods largely avoid problems associated with universal prescriptive normativism; (2) theories must recognize that significant modularity of cognitive processes is antithetical to general accounts of thinking; and (3) consideration of the domain-specificity of rationality render many of the present article's issues moot.

This book explores the effects of technology on the education of digital generations and the technology-mediated interaction that will prepare these generations for an unpredictable future. It discusses strategies and approaches for curriculum design, professional development, and other aspects of school organization involving technology.

I worked for many years constructing my version of the global case but, as I continued to try to strengthen it, I slowly began to lose confidence. My unease began with several personal experiences. One of our children had a common but annoying physical ailment, for which our pediatrician prescribed a very expensive nasal spray. When I inquired about its cost, the pharmacist informed me that it was a new, genetically engineered, product. The spray worked, and Karen and I never (...) batted an eye. (shrink)

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity links the metrical structure of the cosmic order (or "cosmology") to the contingent distributions of matter and energy throughout the universe, one of the chief areas of investigation in astrophysics. However, presently we have neither devised nor discovered system of uniform relations whereby we can make our cosmological measurements intelligible. This is "the measurement problem of cosmology." Using both historical ideas (such as A.N. Whitehead's work in the 1920s) and contemporary evidence and theories, argue that (...) the measurement problem has neither been fully understood nor rightly interpreted. With better grasp of this problem, such as am attempting to provide, the prospects for solution look brighter. (shrink)

Both the theoretical frameworks that organize the first part of Barbey & Sloman's (B&S's) target article and the empirical evidence marshaled in the second part are marked by distinctions that should not exist (i.e., false dichotomies), conflations where distinctions should be made, and selective omissions of empirical results that create illusions of theoretical and empirical favor.

Most people care about animals, but only a tiny fraction are vegan. The rest often think of veganism as an extreme position. They certainly do not believe that they have a moral obligation to become vegan. Gary L. Francione—the leading and most provocative scholar of animal rights theory and law—demonstrates that veganism is a moral imperative and a matter of justice. He shows that there is a contradiction in thinking that animals matter morally if one is also not vegan, (...) and he explains why this belief should logically lead all who hold it to veganism. Francione dismantles the conventional wisdom that it is acceptable to use and kill animals as long as we do so “humanely.” He argues that if animals matter morally, they must have the right not to be used as property. That means that we cannot eat them, wear them, use them, or otherwise treat them as resources or commodities. Why Veganism Matters presents the case for the personhood of nonhuman animals and for veganism in a clear and accessible way that does not require any philosophical or legal background. This book offers a persuasive and powerful argument for all readers who care about animals but are not sure whether they have a moral obligation to be vegan. (shrink)

"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement, Logical Empiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

Despite influencing the social sciences since the 1930s, S. S. Stevens' "operationist" philosophy of science has yet to be adequately understood. I reconstruct Stevens' operationism from his early work and assess the influence of various views (logical positivism, behaviorism and the "operational viewpoint" of P. W. Bridgman, among others) on Stevens. Stevens' operationism emerges, on my reconstruction, as a naturalistic methodological directive aimed at agreement, founded in turn on the belief that agreement is constitutive of science, the scientific community, and (...) objectivity. Further, I show that operationism is historically and philosophically independent of the views mentioned above. (shrink)

Now that we have looked at the characteristics of mystical experience, we are ready to discuss the assumption made in this paper that mystical experience can be translated into an understanding of “integration” or the drive for meaning which Fingarette pursues in a much more analytic fashion. Reviewing the conversion process as an “integration” process we have seen that for the sick-souled, beset with the meaninglessness or melancholy which paralyzes his will, his own awareness of wrong in his situation prevents (...) him from opening up to larger views of reality. But, as James has described, at the same time as the subject is attending so strongly to his own sense of worthlessness, “all the while the forces of mere organic ripening within him are going on towards their own prefigured result, and his conscious strainings are letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way work toward rearrangements.” Yet the “rearrangements” can only come about by obeying the command of Chaung-Tse: “Cease striving.” The result is self-transformation in “reconciling, unifying states.” There is achieved “a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness; facts already objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection with our active life.”However, James cautions us to realize that the same incursions of the subconscious which produce such “reconciling, unifying states” can also produce pathological states, “a diabolical mysticism, a sort of religious mysticism turned upside down.” In such a state the “meanings” of events become dreadful and the ruling emotion is pessimism. To this possibility James applied the pragmatic test, “By their fruits...,” and concluded that the mystical experience which brings optimism to the individual is a genuine experience and one which brings truth. In our context then, we would say that real “integration” brings the subject away from the “melancholy” and meaninglessness he felt into the “genuinely insightful resolution” of which Fingarette speaks.Conversion, then, is a process in James's analysis of religious experience analogous to the process of integration and meaning-discovery while mysticism is analogous to the state in which integration or meaning-discovery is achieved. Conversion is climaxed by self-surrender; mysticism is characterized by new determination, self-transformation: two ways of describing an indivisible event. Furthermore, the four characteristics James applies to mysticism are indeed characteristic of the experience of integration.Two other points should be added here which are much in line with James's treatment of experience. In the first place, one of the basic principles of radical empiricism is that not only objects but relations between objects are the subject of experience. Such an experience of relationships, of wholeness, is exactly what characterizes integration. At the same time, the five senses are suspended, and the “insight” is experienced with such a strong immediacy that it is almost sensed. James refers to this quality of mystical states: The records show that even though the five senses be in abeyance in them, they are absolutely sensational in their epistemological quality, if I may be pardoned the barbarous expression, - that is, they are face to face presentations of what seems immediately to exist.I am not saying that every integration is a mystical experience. Rather I have been saying that James's discussion of religious experiences such as healthy-minded, sick-souled, melancholy, conversion, and mysticism provide analogues for better understanding the phenomenological processes and characteristics of the drive for meaning and integration which Fingarette analyzes. In fact, the very notion of religion itself for James bears not just an analogous resemblance but perhaps an identification with integration. For in his personal letters James had defined religious experience as “Any moment of life that brings the reality of spiritual things more ‘home’ to one.” And in Varieties James defines religion as “a man's total reaction upon life....; his attitude towards what he felt to be the primal truth.”If we look upon this outlook of James toward religion as an “exaggeration” of the reality of integration, we can follow James to what he perceives as the importance of religion upon an individual's life. The man of religious feeling possesses “the excitement of a higher kind of emotion,” an “enthusiastic temper of espousal in regions where morality strictly so called can at best but bow its head and acquiesce.” So we are brought again to the area of creativity in which an individual has experienced the widening of the area of his immediate experience and is “re-born” in the karmic pattern, a valid pattern for both James and Fingarette. As Fingarette describes it, the “converted” individual “creates” values which the dead reality he had previously faced did not possess. The result of the achieved integration is explained by James when referring to religious experience as “an excitement of the cheerful, expansive, ‘dynamogenic’ order which, like any tonic, freshens our vital powers.” This emotion “overcomes temperamental melancholy [meaninglessness] and imparts endurances to the subject, or a zest, or a meaning, or an enchantment and glory to the common objects of life.”We might sum up this discussion not by a criticism of the shortcomings of James's treatment of the religious life, such as his apparent insensitivity to the part played by institutions in the religious experience itself, but rather by underscoring the richness of the phenomenological analysis James has undertaken. James Edie acknowledges that James's studies of religious experience itself rather than of religion. ... are not only more sound phenomenologically than some of the studies which have, under the influence of Husserl, up to now explicitly invoked the phenomenological method, but they are also the first to establish any solid basis for a true phenomenology of religious experience.And John Wild has pointed out the parallel between James's concept of melancholy and Heidegger's concept of anxiety as the genesis of the process of becoming: beginning with the prospect of death and nothingness, the individual gropes toward new birth.As we have seen, then, James's analysis of the varieties of religious experience leads to a fruitful discussion of the psychological processes involved in melancholy and meaninglessness, rearrangement and integration. In all such experiences, a sense of inner unity is reached to which the following words of Fingarette would apply by analogy: The soul-racking death which leads to blissful “rebirth” is the death of the subjectively experienced, anxiety-generated “self” perception; it is the emergence into the freedom of introspective “self-forgetfulness” of the psychically unified self. (shrink)

Encyclopedia entry for the British mathematician and American Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Usefully summarizes his life and work for non-specialists and, more especially, interested persons outside of the philosophical disciplines per se.

Not long ago, interreligious conversations were regulated by the ideals of truth, goodness, and beauty. We are suspicious of these noble sounding ideals today. In a world of liberation theology, feminist criticism, and the hermeneutics of suspicion, can there be any new, “postmodern,” rules to govern our religious dialogues? Not able to consult any general theory, or “metanarrative,” in order to provide the answer, I simply tell the story of the only postmodern Catholic I have ever known. On the basis (...) of that experience, I argue that something like the old rules will have to accompany us into the new age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Leibniz on Purely Extrinsic DenominationsGary L. CesarzDennis Plaisted. Leibniz on Purely Extrinsic Denominations. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2002. Pp. viii + 128 Cloth, $70.00.Interpreting Leibniz is like trying to flatten a balloon without deflating it; press it here and it bulges there. Press one of his controversial principles and problems result for another. Leibniz on contingent and necessary truths exemplifies this difficulty. So does Leibniz's denial that (...) there are "extrinsic denominations which have no foundationin the denominated thing" (NPE).Plaisted questions the meaning and challenges the current interpretations of this principle. Does "foundation" mean "included in a thing," or "reducible to an intrinsic denomination"? Furthermore, what is the thing denominated? Is it the individual concept of a substance, or an intrinsic denomination in the concept of the substance? Leibniz holds, "for all truths the predicate is contained in the subject" (PS) which, in some sense, includes both denominations (Leroy E. Loemker, ed., Gottfried Wilhelm Liebniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters [Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976], 268). This suggests that both denominations have the same status as predicates. However, such statements as, "there is no denomination so extrinsic that it does not have an intrinsic denomination as its basis" (Loemker, 527) and "all extrinsic denominations are founded in intrinsic denominations" (Benson Mates, The Philosophy of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989], 225) suggest that the former reduce to the latter. The last two quotes seem to trump all hands. But textual citations are seldom enough to settle disputes of this sort.This has inspired two approaches to the question, one reductionistic, the other non-reductionistic. Plaisted adopts a non-reductionistic approach but regards those prior to his as implausible and unsatisfactory (1, 113 n.34). As for reductionism, he claims to "stand [End Page 494] [it] on its head" (1) and denies its "textual merit" (14). Given Plaisted's broad grasp of Leibniz's writings, this is not an oversight of the passages quoted above. Rather, his case depends on reinterpreting the same passages in light of his version of NPE.A reduction, according to some, requires that a relational proposition be logically equivalent (or at least truth-functionallyequivalent) to a set of non-relational propositions. For others, implication is sufficient, i.e., for a given relational proposition z, and two non-relational propositions x and y, it is impossible that (x & y) is true but z false (Mates, 218). In response, Plaisted examines NPE from four angles, including Leibniz's predicate-in-subject notion of truth, the identity of indiscernibles, and two others. However, since all that follows rides on his understanding of PS, let us focus on it.Plaisted's interprets NPE to mean "There are no extrinsic denominations of an individual... that are not included in that individual's concept" (11). To support this, he observes that Leibniz applies PS to all truths and often derives NPE from PS. But to justify substituting "included in" for Leibniz's use of "foundation in," Plaisted elects to interpret PS in a troubling way. Now, Leibniz insists that necessary truths state an identity between a subject and predicate, either explicit or implicit, and that the latter are reducible to the former by an a priori proof of finite length. Leibniz further says that identity, as explained above, is the reason that PS holds for necessary truths. Thus, Plaisted infers that "identity" and "having a reason" are equivalent, that this sense of PS generalizes to all truths (24-25), and claims support for his version of NPE. This is a positive result for Plaisted, for from it he infers that extrinsic denominations are included in the individual's concept as directly as intrinsic denominations, hence the latter cannot serve as the foundation for the former (25ff.). But this is problematic.First, it leads him to affirm that some denominations are both extrinsic and intrinsic (75). This is a strange conclusion to consider positive, for it implies that there are two types of intrinsic plus extrinsic denominations. Surely this strains the boundaries of "textual merit" at least as much as Plaisted charges against reductionists. More importantly, even if the equivalence Plaisted presses holds for necessary... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction The Inscrutability of Objectual Reference Empiricism, Naturalism, and Provincialism References.

Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction: in the spirit of Zora : traveling with the "eternal feminine" -- Returning to the margin : changed -- African American literature : like a bridge over troubled water -- Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes : envisioning the (new) "Negro artist" -- Striking down colorism in color struck : a play in four scenes -- We are not tragically colored -- Langston Hughes writing about the "the Negro artist and the racial mountain" -- Transgressing (...) boundaries of white male power in the ways of white folks -- Blackness from the inside out -- Seeing "women loving women" -- Black female journey to sexual in(sight)fullness -- "What if Mama finds out?" : entering a life-changing place of self-liberation -- When "nobody was lesbian, nobody was feminist, nobody was gay" -- Higher education that makes a difference -- "Still children of the night" : survivors against the odds -- Black boys' lives still matter : in search of a loving father -- "Spilled salt" on a Black mother's table and the struggle for maternal survival -- No shame: recovering our mother's way(s) of being -- Remembering where we came from -- Getting to the heart of the lessons : Black women teaching "other" ways of loving -- Epilogue: continuing to teach in the image of "an alternative Black man" -- It's about revolutionary manhood. (shrink)

Reasoning about social groups and their associated markers was investigated as a particular case of human reasoning about cue-category relationships. Assertions that reasoning involving cues and associated categories elicits specific probabilistic assumptions are supported by the results of three experiments. This phenomenon remains intact across the use of categorical syllogisms, conditional syllogisms, and the use of social groups that vary in their perceived cohesiveness, or entitativity. Implications are discussed for various theories of reasoning, and additional aspects of social group/coalitional reasoning (...) are also discussed. (shrink)

Special design criteria are largely unable to discriminate between claims that specific competencies in judgements under uncertainty are a result of an adaptation for representing naturally sampled frequencies, or due only to inherent properties of such a format. Because divisions between these perspectives are thin, evidence via additional criteria are persuasive only in combination, using inference to the best available explanation.