This volume presents a selection of Hubert Dreyfus's pioneering work in bringing phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. Each of the thirteen essays interprets, develops, and extends the insights of his predecessors working in the European philosophical tradition. One of Dreyfus' central contributions to reading the historical canon of philosophy comes from his recognition that great philosophers help us to understand the -background practices- of a culture - the practices that shape (...) and embody our most basic understanding of ourselves and the things and situations we encounter in our world. Background practices are all too often overlooked completely, or else their importance is misunderstood. Each chapter in this volume shows in one way or another how a broad range of philosophical topics can only be properly understood when we recognize how they are grounded in the background practices that shape our lives and give meaning to our activities, our tasks, our normative commitments, our aims and our goals. (shrink)

Human intuition and perception are basic and essential phenomena of consciousness. As such, they will never be replicated by computers. This is the challenging notion of Hubert Dreyfus, Ph. D., archcritic of the artificial intelligence establishment. It's important to emphasize that he doesn't believe that AI is fundamentally impossible, only that the current research program is fatally flawed. Instead, he argues that to get a device (or devices) with human-like intelligence would require them to have a human-like being in (...) the world, which would require them to have bodies more or less like ours, and social acculturation (i.e. a society) more or less like ours. This helps to explain the practical problems in implementing artificial intelligence algorithms. (shrink)

BackgroundThe ageing of the population and the increased number of chronic diseases are associated with an increased frequency of end of life care in hospital settings. Residents rotating in hospital wards play a major part in their care, regardless of their specialty. General practitioner (GP) residents are confronted to such activities in hospital settings during their training. Our aim was to know how they feel about taking care of dying patients, as end-of-life care are very different from the clinical activity (...) they are trained to.MethodsWe surveyed all GP trainees of “Ile de France”. The survey was made of 41 questions regarding advanced directives divided in 7 sections about patients’ care, communication, mentoring and repercussion on personal life. The survey was done one time, during two pre-specified days.Results525 residents (53.8%) accepted to fulfill the survey. 74.1% of the residents thought that palliative care could have been better. Possible ways of improvements were: a reduction of unreasonable obstinacy (or therapeutic overkill, two terms defined in French law as curative treatment without reasonable hope of efficiency) (59.6%), patient’s (210 answers, 40%) and relative’s communication (information of patients and relatives about the severity of the disease and risk of death) (199 answers 37.9%). Residents also reported a lack of knowledge regarding end-of-life care specific treatments (411 answers, 79.3%) and 298 (47.2%) wished for better mentoring. Those difficulties were associated with repercussion on their private life (353 answers, 67.2%), particularly with their close relatives (55.4%). Finally, 56.2% of trainees thought that a systematic psychologic follow up should be instituted for those working in “at risk” hospital settings.ConclusionSelf-perception management of dying patients by GP resident emphasize their lack of training and supervision. The feeling of suboptimal care is associated with consequences on personal life. (shrink)

_Internet_ is een van de eerste boeken waarin het filosofische inzicht -van Plato tot Kierkegaard - betrokken wordt op het debat over de mogelijkheden en onmogelijkheden van het internet. Dreyfus laat zien dat de onstoffelijke, 'vrij zwevende' websurfer zijn oorsprong vindt in Descartes' scheiding van geest en lichaam, en hoe Kierkegaards inzichten in de opkomst van het moderne leespubliek vooruitlopen op de nieuwsgierige, maar elk risico vermijdende internet-junkie. Uitgaande van recente onderzoeken naar het isolement dat veel internetgebruikers ervaren, toont Dreyfus (...) aan hoe het internet, door zijn nadruk op privé-ervaringen, gebruikers berooft van wezenlijke, belichaamde vermogens zoals vertrouwen, stemmingen en betrokkenheid bij met anderen gedeelde lokale aangelegenheden. _Internet_ is verplichte kost voor iedereen die on line is en is geïnteressseerd in onze plaats in de 'e-revolutie'. (shrink)

Nous voulons mieux comprendre les lois circonscrivant le rôle social de l’Évaluation des technologies en santé (ETS) et les raisons empêchant l’inclusion de l’éthique en ETS. Nous avons ciblé un débat qui est au coeur du rôle perçu du droit réglementaire dans le développement de technologies en santé : l’opposition entre les enjeux environnementaux, sécuritaires et sanitaires (EHSI) et les enjeux éthiques, légaux et sociaux (ELSI), issus de la gouvernance technologique. La collecte de données est basée sur une revue de (...) la littérature issue de travaux antérieurs, et sur une analyse de cas où trois agences d’ETS ont été sélectionnées en utilisant différentes catégories d’obligation légale selon leur degré de force contraignante. La revue de littérature a révélé cinq thèmes relatifs au rôle social de l’ETS et une distinction entre le rôle/utilisation du droit dur et du droit souple dans le droit réglementaire, permettant ainsi de comprendre comment les agences ont utilisé le droit pour intégrer (ou non) l’éthique en ETS. Les deux approches ont démontré que le débat, EHSI/ELSI observé initialement dans la gouvernance et l’évaluation de technologies est reproduit en ETS. La principale tendance confirmée par ces analyses est la présence d’un pacte entre la science et le droit réglementaire. La demande sociale d’intégrer les ELSI, particulièrement l’évaluation éthique en ETS, n’est pas prise en compte par le droit réglementaire traditionnel régissant l’ETS et doit plutôt être considérée par le droit souple. Les difficultés d’intégration de l’éthique en ETS démontrent la nécessité de repenser la gouvernance juridique de l’ETS. (shrink)

Religiose Vielfalt ist nicht erst eine Erscheinung der "westlichen Moderne". Vielmehr existierten schon in fruhen Zeiten und an verschiedenen Orten der Welt oft mehrere Religionen nebeneinander, sei es dass diese unterschiedlichen Ursprungs waren oder sich aufgrund divergierender Auffassungen der religiosen Akteure innerhalb einer gemeinsamen Tradition ausdifferenzierten. Nicht immer war und ist diese Koexistenz eine friedliche. Die Religion der anderen wird haufig als "deviant" wahrgenommen oder gar als "nonkonformistisch" stigmatisiert und sanktioniert, bis hin zur physischen Vernichtung der "Devianten". Im vorliegenden Band (...) gehen vierzehn ausgewiesene Wissenschaftler_innen aus den Fachgebieten Religionswissenschaft, Soziologie, Sinologie und Judaistik aus ihrer jeweiligen fachlichen Perspektive und anhand diverser Fallbeispiele aus Geschichte und Gegenwart der Frage nach, unter welchen Umstanden, aus welchen Grunden und mit welchen Folgen religiose Pluralitat als Problem wahrgenommen wird. Das Buch verbindet so systematische Fragestellungen mit empirischen Fallbeispielen und liefert damit eine ausgezeichnete Grundlage fur die Erforschung des gesellschaftlichen Umgangs mit religioser Pluralitat. (shrink)

A Critique of Artificial Reason Hubert L. Dreyfus . HUBERT L. DREYFUS What Computers Still Can't Do Thi s One XZKQ-GSY-8KDG What. WHAT COMPUTERS STILL CAN'T DO Front Cover.

Dit boek is een hommage aan de filosoof Hubert Dethier (°21 juli 1933), die we zeker in de rij kunnen plaatsen van denkers als Jaap Kruithof, Hans Achterhuis en Etienne Vermeersch. Deze hommage is geen chronologische biografie. Het is daarentegen wel een verhaal waarin het leven van Hubert Dethier verweven wordt met de geschiedenis van zijn denken. Een denken dat zich situeert in de tweede helft van de vorige eeuw en het begin van de huidige eeuw en zich (...) moeiteloos projecteert naar de toekomst. Ontegensprekelijk een woelige en gewelddadige periode, maar ook een tijdgewricht van hoop en verwachting van het “nieuwe”.0. (shrink)

Les Presses universitaires de France ont publié, en 1994, une Encyclopédie universelle de philosophie, dans laquelle Hubert Mono Ndjana est présenté comme un spécialiste de la pensée des hommes politiques. Il avait en effet traduit en français Obiang Nguema Mbasogo en 1980 (Un Pari pour la liberté), publié un ouvrage en 1985 sur le chef d'Etat de son pays (L'Idée sociale chez Paul Biya), et deux autres sur la pensée et le pays de Kim Il Sung (Révolution et création (...) et Regard sur la Corée), en 1987. Sa pensée s'est également et abondamment préoccupée de la question du politique et des préoccupations épistémologiques. L'entretien que Jean-Philippe Nguemeta a eu le génie d'initier auprès d'Hubert Mono Ndjana permettra au lecteur d'avoir une vue synoptique de ce philosophe attentif, qui a passé toute sa vie à enseigner, sans négliger les grandes questions de son temps. Un décryptage exhaustif des énigmes de la civilisation, utile pour la culture générale et l'éducation... (shrink)

Exegesis of Blo rig and Rtags rigs, treatise in logic in Tibetan Buddhism.

-- v. 4. Tshad ma rig pa -- v. 5. Dbu ma -- v. 6. Mdzod ʼdul.

The concept of God's acting in the world has been seen to be problematic in light of the claims of scientific knowledge that the regularity of a law like universe rules out divine action. There are resources in both scientific knowledge and religion that can render meaningful and credible divine action. The new physics, chaos theory, cognitive psychology, and the concept of top‐down causation are used to understand how God acts in the world. God's action is not an intervention, but (...) is understood on the model of how the mind influences the brain in a downward causative manner. Suggestions for imagining God's actions are discussed. (shrink)

For Descartes, knowledge exists as ideas in the mind that represent the world. In a radical critique, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that knowledge consists of much more than the representations we formulate in our minds. They affirm our direct contact with reality—both the physical and the social world—and our shared understanding of it.

For fifty years Hubert Dreyfus has done pioneering work which brings phenomenology and existentialism to bear on the philosophical and scientific study of the mind. This is a selection of his most influential essays, developing his critique of the representational model of the mind in analytical philosophy of mind and mainstream cognitive science.

This book is the first to provide a sustained, coherent analysis of Foucault's work as a whole. To demonstrate the sense in which Foucault's work is beyond structuralism and hermeneutics, the authors unfold a careful, analytical exposition of his oeuvre. They argue that during the of Foucault's work became a sustained and largely successful effort to develop a new method - "interpretative analytics" - capable of explaining both the logic of structuralism's claim to be an objective science and the apparent (...) validity of the hermeneutical counterclaim that the human sciences can proceed only by understanding the deepest meaning of the subject and his tradition. (shrink)

McDowell's claim that "in mature human beings, embodied coping is permeated with mindedness",1 suggests a new version of the mentalist myth which, like the others, is untrue to the phenomenon. The phenomena show that embodied skills, when we are fully absorbed in enacting them, have a kind of non-mental content that is non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational and non-linguistic. This is not to deny that we can monitor our activity while performing it. For solving problems, learning a new skill, receiving coaching, and (...) so forth, such monitoring is invaluable. But monitoring what we are doing as we are doing it degrades performance to at best competence. On McDowell's view, there is no way to account for such a degradation in performance since the same sort of content would be involved whether we were fully absorbed in or paying attention to what we were doing. McDowell claims that it is an advantage of his conceptualism that it avoids any foundationalist attempt to build up the objective world on the basis of an indubitable Given or any other ground-floor experience. And, indeed, if the world is all that is the case and our minds are unproblematically open to it, all experience is on the same footing. But one must distinguish motor intentionality, and the interrelated solicitations our coping body is intertwined with, from conceptual intentionality and the world of propositional structures it opens onto. The existential phenomenologist can then agree with McDowell in rejecting traditional foundationalisms, while yet affirming and describing the ground-floor role of motor intentionality in providing the support on which all forms of conceptual intentionality are based. (shrink)

In this paper I would like to explain, defend, and draw out the implications of this claim. Since the intentional arc is supposed to embody the interconnection of skillful action and perception, I will first lay out an account of skill.

I want to combine two hitherto largely independent research projects, scientific understanding and mechanistic explanations. Understanding is not only achieved by answering why-questions, that is, by providing scientific explanations, but also by answering what-questions, that is, by providing what I call scientific descriptions. Based on this distinction, I develop three forms of understanding: understanding-what, understanding-why, and understanding-how. I argue that understanding-how is a particularly deep form of understanding, because it is based on mechanistic explanations, which answer why something happens in (...) virtue of what it is made of. I apply the three forms of understanding to two case studies: first, to the historical development of thermodynamics and, second, to the differences between the Clausius and the Boltzmann entropy in explaining thermodynamic processes. (shrink)

Critical study on philosophical positions (sidhānta) of the Vaibhāṣika, Sautrāntika, Yogācārya, and Mādhyamika schools of Buddhism with Hinduism.

Study of Tshad ma rigs gter, classic work on logic and epistemology by Sa-skya Paṇḍi-ta.

Selected works of author's predominantly on Buddhist dialectical studies and mind training (Blo-sbyoṅ).

IN SEPTEMBER 1957, Herbert Simon, a pioneer in cognitive simulation, predicted that within ten years, i.e., by now, a computer would be world chess champion and would prove an important mathematical theorem. This prediction was based on Simon's early initial success in writing a program that could play legal chess and one able to prove simple theorems in logic and geometry. But the early successes turned out to be based on the solution of problems that were simple for machines, and (...) further progress turned out to be more and more difficult, until recently it has begun to be obvious to interested observers, and even to some workers in the field, that the original optimism of Simon and company was unfounded. (shrink)

It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie–Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in three-dimensional space. This approach hasn’t received the attention yet it really deserves. The aim of this paper is threefold: first, we show that the wave-function is naturally and straightforwardly construed as a multi-field; second, we show why this interpretation is superior to other interpretations (...) discussed in the literature; third, we clarify common misconceptions. (shrink)

L'acte d'éduquer est, parfois à l'insu de l'éducateur lui-même, fondé sur des présupposés à la fois fondamentaux et instrumentaux. Eduquer suppose que l'humanité soit capable de faire elle-même son bonheur et que l'homme soit perfectible... Eduquer suppose de même que l'éducation ne réalise pas seulement ce que l'environnement, sans elle, aurait réalisé. Eduquer, à l'école, suppose que le maître en ait la capacité et la volonté, que le message adressé à tous sera reçu par chacun, que la motivation de l'élève (...) ne soit pas feinte, que sa communication avec le maître ne soit pas simple subterfuge et, plus généralement, que l'éducation soit autre chose qu'une manipulation de celui qui ne sait pas par celui qui sait. Si l'on ne parvient pas à faire de ces suppositions des certitudes, c'est tout l'édifice de l'éducation qui risque de s'effondrer à l'image de la fameuse statue d'airain aux pieds d'argile. Hubert Hannoun rappelle les récentes conquêtes des sciences psychologiques, psychosociologiques, logiques et axiologiques pour conclure à ce que cette certitude n'est jamais totale, coexistant toujours avec un minimum d'incertitude. Rejetant alors à la fois le nihilisme négateur de toute valeur et le scientisme qui se drape d'une toute-puissance du raisonnement que récusent les sciences actuelles de la cognition, il propose de faire le pari de la vérité et de la valeur des fondements de 'l'éducation. Ce pari, pour lui, est un pari énactant, à savoir un projet qui, dans le même acte et le même temps, forge sa propre réalisation. Nous ne décidons ni ne subissons pas les valeurs de notre action : nous en faisons le pari en agissant de telle sorte que ce pari soit gagné. S'inspirant des thèses actuelles de la complexité, il situe la pensée et l'action comme composantes d'un même système. A partir de là, Hubert Hannoun jette les bases de ce qui pourrait être une morale de l'éducation, ce comportement de l'éducateur sans lequel elle perdrait tout son sens. (shrink)

As this book makes clear, current use of data structures such as frames, scripts, and stereotypes in psychology, artificial intelligence, and all the other disciplines now grouped together as Cognitive Science develop ideas already explored by Husserl who believed that the analysis of mental representations was the proper subject of philosophy, psychology, and other disciplines that deal with the mind. This new anthology will serve as an ideal introduction to phenomenology for analytic philosophers, both as a text and as the (...) single most useful source book on Husserl for cognitive scientists. An MIT Press/Bradford Book. (shrink)

being, culminating in the technological understanding of being, in order to help us understand and overcome our current way of dealing with things as objects and resources, Foucault analyzes several regimes of power, culminating in modern bio-power, in order to help us free ourselves from understanding ourselves as subjects.

Existential phenomenologists hold that the two most basic forms of intelligent behavior, learning, and skillful action, can be described and explained without recourse to mind or brain representations. This claim is expressed in two central notions in Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception: the intentional arc and the tendency to achieve a maximal grip. The intentional arc names the tight connection between body and world, such that, as the active body acquires skills, those skills are stored, not as representations in the mind, (...) but as dispositions to respond to the solicitations of situations in the world. A phenomenology of skill acquisition confirms that, as one acquires expertise, the acquired know-how is experienced as finer and finer discriminations of situations paired with the appropriate response to each. Maximal grip names the body's tendency to refine its responses so as to bring the current situation closer to an optimal gestalt. Thus, successful learning and action do not require propositional mental representations. They do not require semantically interpretable brain representations either.Simulated neural networks exhibit crucial structural features of the intentional arc, and Walter Freeman's account of the brain dynamics underlying perception and action is structurally isomorphic with Merleau-Ponty's account of the way a skilled agent is led by the situation to move towards obtaining a maximal grip. (shrink)

The ArgumentDevelopments in theoretical physics, even when they are revolutionary for physics, usually donotenter public awareness. The reaction to the special relativity theory is one of the few exceptions. The conceptual changes brought by special relativity to our notions of space and time, induced a lively debate not only within intellectual circles but in many strata of the educated middle class. In this article, I focus on a particular moment of public reaction to special and general relativity theory and to (...) its creator Albert Einstein. I try to paint a picture of the anti-Einstein campaign in Germany of 1920, with finer brush strokes than those applied previously by others. My aim is to embed the campaign into the cultural and political climate of the Weimar republic. Without leaving the realm of physics only a superficial understanding of what happened seems possible. My thesis is that the anti-Einstein-campaign was organized, and the physicists involved in it used, mainly in order to rally support for one of the German right-wing parties, the Deutschnationale Volkspartei. (shrink)

The article discusses the connection between theory formation and historical research in the study of religion. It presupposes that the study of religion is conceived of as an empirical discipline. The empirical basis of theories is provided primarily by historical research, including research in the very recent past, that is, the present time. Research in the history of religions, therefore, is an indispensable part of the study of religion. However, in recent discussions on the methods, aims, and theoretical presuppositions of (...) the discipline, research in the history of religions largely is ignored. To shed some light on this blind spot, the article builds on the philosophy of science of Critical Realism. While the first part deals with the role of historical research in theoretical discourses of the discipline, the second part explains fundamental ontological and epistemological positions of Critical Realism and their implications for empirical research. On this basis, some methodological problems of theory formation in the study of religion are discussed in the third part. In particular, it is argued that it is impossible to validate empirically theories of religion that aim to explain what religion is. The concluding part sketches ways of theory formation in the study of religion that does not take religion as the explanandum but as the theoretical perspective that guides research. (shrink)

The ontological models framework distinguishes ψ-ontic from ψ-epistemic wave- functions. It is, in general, quite straightforward to categorize the wave-function of a certain quantum theory. Nevertheless, there has been a debate about the ontological status of the wave-function in the statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics: is it ψ-epistemic and incomplete or ψ-ontic and complete? I will argue that the wave- function in this interpretation is best regarded as ψ-ontic and incomplete.