Robert Hanna works out a unified contemporary Kantian theory of rational human cognition and knowledge. Along the way, he provides accounts of intentionality and its contents, sense perception and perceptual knowledge, the analytic-synthetic distinction, the nature of logic, and a priori truth and knowledge in mathematics, logic, and philosophy. This book is specifically intended to reach out to two very different audiences: contemporary analytic philosophers of mind and knowledge, and contemporary Kantian philosophers or Kant-scholars. At the same time, it (...) rides the crest of a wave of exciting and revolutionary emerging new trends and new work in the philosophy of mind and epistemology, with a special concentration on the philosophy of perception. What is revolutionary in this new wave are its strong emphases on action, on cognitive phenomenology, on disjunctivist direct realism, on embodiment, and on sense perception as a primitive and proto-rational capacity for cognizing the world. Hanna makes a fundamental contribution to this philosophical revolution by giving it a specifically contemporary Kantian twist, and by pushing these new lines of investigation radically further. (shrink)

Robert Hanna presents a fresh view of the Kantian and analytic traditions that have dominated continental European and Anglo-American philosophy over the last two centuries, and of the connections between them. But this is not just a study in the history of philosophy, for out of this emerges Hanna's original approach to two much-contested theories that remain at the heart of contemporary philosophy. Hanna puts forward a new 'cognitive-semantic' interpretation of transcendental idealism, and a vigorous defense of (...) Kant's theory of analytic and synthetic necessary truth, making this compelling reading for all who are interested in these fundamental philosophical issues. (shrink)

B a c k g r o u n d. The article reveals the connection between the concept of nature of the transcendentalists R.W. Emerson and H.D. Thoreau and the Socio-Political Discourse of the 19th century United States of America. Specific socio-political aspects that formed the basis for the formation of manifestations about nature in the United States in the 19th century were: growing industrialization, the anti-slavery movement, and policies regarding the indigenous population. The article will note the impact of (...) these factors on the formation of the concept of nature. M e t h o d s. The method of historical reconstruction was used to reveal the socio-political context of the philosophy of nature of American transcendentalism. The hermeneutic method was used to interpret the philosophy of nature of R. V. Emerson and G. D. Thoreau, taking into account the socio-political context. A comparative method was used to find common and distinctive features in the philosophical views of American thinkers. The problem-based method made it possible to focus attention precisely on the problems in philosophical views and on the ways of their solution. And the contextual method, the purpose of which is to clarify the context of the appearance and development of a particular idea, this article focuses on the concept of "nature". R e s u l t s. As a result of the study, affinities between the theorization of abolitionism, reflection on industrialization, debate on the indigenous population and the philosophy of nature of American transcendentalism were revealed. C o n c l u s i o n s. The philosophy of the nature of American transcendentalism of R. W. Emerson and H. D. Thoreau is deeply rooted in the socio-political context of the United States of America before the Civil War and became the theoretical foundation of the abolitionist movement. The concept of nature in the philosophy of American transcendentalism is closely related to the socio-political discourse of the United States of America in the 19th century. Radical changes in society before the civil war stimulated the development of both social philosophy and the philosophy of nature. (shrink)

I argue that addiction is not a chronic, relapsing, neurobiological disease characterized by compulsive use of drugs or alcohol. Large-scale national survey data demonstrate that rates of substance dependence peak in adolescence and early adulthood and then decline steeply; addicts tend to “mature out” in their late twenties or early thirties. The exceptions are addicts who suffer from additional psychiatric disorders. I hypothesize that this difference in patterns of use and relapse between the general and psychiatric populations can be explained (...) by the purpose served by drugs and alcohol for patients. Drugs and alcohol alleviate the severe psychological distress typically experienced by patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders and associated problems. On this hypothesis, consumption is a chosen means to ends that are rational to desire: Use is not compulsive. The upshot of this explanation is that the orthodox view of addiction as a chronic, relapsing neurobiological disease is misguided. I delineate five folk psychological factors that together explain addiction as purposive action: strong and habitual desire; willpower; motivation; functional role; and decision and resolve. I conclude by drawing lessons for research and effective treatment. (shrink)

cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural science; it is both an objective or truth-oriented science (...) and a normative human science, as is logic itself. (shrink)

Hanna Pitkin argues that Wittgenstein's later philosophy offers a revolutionary new conception of language, and hence a new and deeper understanding of ourselves and the world of human institutions and action.

In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all rational animals possess an innate cognitive "logic faculty." Hanna 's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or "topic-neutral" science irreconcilably separate from (...) the species- or individual-specific focus of empirical psychology.Logic and psychology went their separate ways after attacks by Frege and Husserl on logical psychologism--the explanatory reduction of logic to empirical psychology. Hanna argues, however, that--despite the fact that logical psychologism is false--there is an essential link between logic and psychology. Rational human animals constitute the basic class of cognizers or thinkers studied by cognitive psychology; given the connection between rationality and logic that Hanna claims, it follows that the nature of logic is significantly revealed to us by cognitive psychology. Hanna 's proposed "logical cognitivism" has two important consequences: the recognition by logically oriented philosophers that psychologists are their colleagues in the metadiscipline of cognitive science; and radical changes in cognitive science itself. Cognitive science, Hanna argues, is not at bottom a natural science; it is both an objective or truth-oriented science and a normative human science, as is logic itself. (shrink)

Addiction is standardly characterized as a neurobiological disease of compulsion. Against this characterization, I argue that many cases of addiction cannot be explained without recognizing the value of drugs to those who are addicted; and I explore in detail an insufficiently recognized source of value, namely, a sense of self and social identity as an addict. For people who lack a genuine alternative sense of self and social identity, recovery represents an existential threat. Given that an addict identification carries expectations (...) of continued consumption despite negative consequences, there is therefore a parsimonious explanation of why people who identify as addicts continue to use drugs despite these consequences: they self‐identify as addicts and that is what addicts are supposed to do. I conclude by considering how it is nonetheless possible to overcome addiction despite this identity, in part by imagining and enacting a new one. Importantly, this possibility requires the availability of social support and material resources that are all too frequently absent in the lives of those who struggle with addiction. (shrink)

In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitution. So minds like ours are necessarily alive. (...) The second claim is that essentially embodied minds are self-organizing thermodynamic systems. This entails that our mental lives consist in the possibility and actuality of moving our own living organismic bodies through space and time, by means of our conscious desires. The upshot is that we are essentially minded animals who help to create the natural world through our own agency. This doctrine--the Essential Embodiment Theory--is a truly radical idea which subverts the traditionally opposed and seemingly exhaustive categories of Dualism and Materialism, and offers a new paradigm for contemporary mainstream research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Robert Hanna argues for the importance of Kant's theories of the epistemological, metaphysical, and practical foundations of the "exact sciences"--relegated to the dustbin of the history of philosophy for most of the 20th century. In doing so he makes a valuable contribution to one of the most active and fruitful areas in contemporary scholarship on Kant.

Back in 2008, when I was still in the process of writing my PhD thesis on René Girard's mimetic theory and its applications to the narrative poetics of certain post-1960 Anglophone novels, I was struck by an interesting and perhaps inevitable geographical phenomenon. I had just been admitted to a European doctoral program that was centered in a German university but that included also other institutions, both north and south of our Central European headquarters. The "Northern" dimension was represented by (...) Sweden and my native Finland, whereas our "Southern" counterpart sent emissaries from Italy and Portugal. It did not take many sessions in our Pan-European research seminars for me to realize how valuable a... (shrink)

This essay explores Immanuel Kant’s notion of artistic genius and how it relates to the modern conception of the interrelated ideas of nature and freedom as they appear in his Critique of Judgement. Genius works as a unique concept in Kant’s oeuvre, showing how art provides a harmony within what, in Reformational philosophy, they call the “ground-motive” “nature-freedom.” The concept of originality as it relates to genius has the potential for an alternative reading to what was held subsequent to Kant (...) and what is still held today, one that puts the emphasis on a certain relationality. Hannah Arendt’s conception of freedom and Jacques Derrida’s reading of Kant are also relevant. This essay’s reading of Kant’s genius, defined by its multifaceted network of relational forces, shows a way out of the bind of the binary nature and freedom. By explicating Kant’s notion of artistic genius, one is able to better understand art and its function: probing the complex relationship that humans have with themselves and the rest of creation. (shrink)

Drug use and drug addiction are severely stigmatised around the world. Marc Lewis does not frame his learning model of addiction as a choice model out of concern that to do so further encourages stigma and blame. Yet the evidence in support of a choice model is increasingly strong as well as consonant with core elements of his learning model. I offer a responsibility without blame framework that derives from reflection on forms of clinical practice that support change and recovery (...) in patients who cause harm to themselves and others. This framework can be used to interrogate our own attitudes and responses, so that we can better see how to acknowledge the truth about choice and agency in addiction, while avoiding stigma and blame, and instead maintaining care and compassion alongside a commitment to working for social justice and good. (shrink)

Meeting the net zero emission targets set by many states after the Paris Agreement to help keep global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels will require carbon dioxide removal technologies (CDRs). Several moral concerns arise if the contribution of CDRs to achieving net zero is not specified, but such concerns can be met by defining a permissible target for CDRs. This paper proposes a framework for defining the permissible contribution of CDRs to the net zero targets of individual states. (...) The framework identifies three categories of emissions for which the permissibility of CDRs varies depending on the ethical costs of both emission abatement and CDRs. We argue that a) luxury emissions should be reduced without using CDRs; b) emissions for full membership in society should be abated by structural efforts, although using CDRs is permissible, given certain conditions; and c) CDRs are permissible for residual emissions because otherwise net zero targets cannot be reached. (shrink)

This paper argues that perception of one's body ‘from the inside’ provides one with an awareness of acting, and that this awareness explains a previously overlooked feature of one's knowledge of one's own actions. Actions are events: they occur during periods of time. Knowledge of such events must be sensitive to their course through time. Perception of one's body ‘from the inside’ allows one to monitor one's actions as they unfold, thereby sustaining one's knowledge of what one is doing over (...) the period of time in which one is doing it. (shrink)

There are perceptual states whose representational content cannot even in principle be conceptual. If that claim is true, then at least some perceptual states have content whose semantic structure and psychological function are essentially distinct from the structure and function of conceptual content. Furthermore the intrinsically “orientable” spatial character of essentially non-conceptual content entails not only that all perceptual states contain non-conceptual content in this essentially distinct sense, but also that consciousness goes all the way down into so-called unconscious or (...) subpersonal mental states. Both my argument for the existence of essentially non-conceptual content and my theory of its structure and function have a Kantian provenance. (shrink)

This article offers an insight into Yoḥanan Alemanno’s study of the ‘art of thinking’ through his notes from Averroes’s commentaries on Posterior Analytics, De anima and Parva naturalia. This case study represents an important example of the 15th-century Jewish learning based on the Arabic-Hebrew philosophical tradition and shows the continuity between the Provençal world and the Italian Renaissance. The textual appendix included at the end of the article aims at showing how Alemanno selected portions of Averroes’s commentaries on logic and (...) psychology that define the role of the faculty of imagination and the processes through which we acquire true knowledge. (shrink)

Popular and neurobiological accounts of addiction tend to treat it as a form of compulsion. This contrasts with personality disorder, where most problematic behaviours are treated as voluntary. But high levels of co-morbidity, overlapping diagnostic traits, and the effectiveness of a range of comparable clinical interventions for addiction and personality disorder suggest that this difference in treatment is unjustified. Drawing on this range of clinical interventions, we argue that addiction is not a form of compulsion. Rather, the misuse of drugs (...) and alcohol is like many of the problematic behaviours associated with personality disorder: it is typically a way of coping with psychological distress. We suggest that a satisfying explanation of why many addicts struggle to control their use can be given without departing from concepts employed in our basic folk psychological understanding of agency. In particular, we appeal to five rough-and-ready folk psychological factors to explain addiction: (i) strength of desire and habit; (ii) willpower; (iii) motivation; (iv) functional role; and (v) decision and resolve. (shrink)

Effective treatment of disorders of agency presents a clinical conundrum. Many of the core symptoms or maintaining factors are actions and omissions that cause harm to self and others. Encouraging service users to take responsibility for this behavior is central to treatment. Blame, in contrast, is detrimental. How is it possible to hold service users responsible for actions and omissions that cause harm without blaming them? A solution to this problem is part conceptual, part practical. This chapter offers a conceptual (...) framework that clearly distinguishes between ideas of responsibility, blameworthiness, and "detached" and "affective" blame. It argues that affective blame is detrimental to effective treatment. And it suggests that affective blame can be avoided by attention to service users' past history, which directly evokes compassion and empathy. Finally, the chapter briefly considers whether the clinical stance of responsibility without blame should be adopted in non-clinical interpersonal and social contexts. (shrink)

Variation in addiction suggests that a good definition will be précising: it should serve a purpose. The authors canvass the various purposes served by a definition of addiction in psychiatric, social, legal, economic, interpersonal and scientific contexts. They argue that addiction is a strong and habitual want that significantly reduces control and leads to significant harm. What counts as significant varies relative to purpose and context. The authors offer a basic account of the nature of control and how and why (...) it can be reduced. The chapter explores the nature of harm and why it is part of the definition. And it concludes by suggesting that progress in understanding addiction depends on bearing in mind the various purposes and contexts of enquiry, together with the common-sense but often neglected point that both control and harm come in degrees. (shrink)

I argue that denial plays a central but insufficiently recognized role in addiction. The puzzle inherent in addiction is why drug use persists despite negative consequences. The orthodox conception of addiction resolves this puzzle by appeal to compulsion; but there is increasing evidence that addicts are not compelled to use but retain choice and control over their consumption in many circumstances. Denial offers an alternative explanation: there is no puzzle as to why drug use persists despite negative consequences if these (...) consequences are not straightforwardly known. I describe the nature of the causal knowledge that one's drug use is causing negative consequences; map the conceptual landscape of denial and explain how it can block such knowledge; and explore some of the processes and mechanisms that have been studied by philosophy and the cognitive sciences and which may underpin denial in addiction, including well-established information-processing biases, motivational influences on belief formation and self-deception, and cognitive deficits with respect to insight and self-awareness. I conclude by suggesting that addiction is as much a disorder of cognition as a disorder of conation. (shrink)

Background: Today’s healthcare environment is often characterized by an ethically demanding work situation, and nursing students need to prepare to meet ethical challenges in their future role. Moral sensitivity is an important aspect of the ethical decision-making process, but little is known regarding nursing students’ moral sensitivity and its possible development during nursing education. Objectives: The aims of this study were to investigate moral sensitivity among nursing students, differences in moral sensitivity according to sample sub-group, and the relation between demographic (...) characteristics of nursing students and moral sensitivity. Research design: A convenience sample of 299 nursing students from one university completed a questionnaire comprising questions about demographic information and the revised Moral Sensitivity Questionnaire. With the use of SPSS, non-parametric statistics, including logistic regression models, were used to investigate the relationship between demographic characteristics and moral sensitivity. Ethical considerations: The study followed the regulations according to the Swedish Ethical Review Act and was reviewed by the Ethics Committee of South-East Sweden. Findings: The findings showed that mean scores of nursing students’ moral sensitivity were found in the middle to upper segment of the rating scale. Multivariate analysis showed that gender (odds ratio = 3.32), age (odds ratio = 2.09; 1.73), and parental status (odds ratio = 0.31) were of relevance to nursing students’ moral sensitivity. Academic year was found to be unrelated to moral sensitivity. Discussion and conclusion: These demographic aspects should be considered when designing ethics education for nursing students. Future studies should continue to investigate moral sensitivity in nursing students, such as if and how various pedagogical strategies in ethics may contribute to moral sensitivity in nursing students. (shrink)

An observation of Hume’s has received a lot of attention over the last decade and a half: Although we can standardly imagine the most implausible scenarios, we encounter resistance when imagining propositions at odds with established moral (or perhaps more generally evaluative) convictions. The literature is ripe with ‘solutions’ to this so-called ‘Puzzle of Imaginative Resistance’. Few, however, question the plausibility of the empirical assumption at the heart of the puzzle. In this paper, we explore empirically whether the difficulty we (...) witness in imagining certain propositions is indeed due to claim type (evaluative v. non-evaluative) or whether it is much rather driven by mundane features of content. Our findings suggest that claim type plays but a marginal role, and that there might hence not be much of a ‘puzzle’ to be solved. (shrink)

This book is thus a battle of wits. . . . [A] vivid sketch of the conflict between two basic outlooks."—Library Journal "[O]ne leaves this book feeling enriched and challenged.