One of the earliest and most influential treatises on the subject of this volume is Aristotle's Categories. Aristotle's title is a form of the Greek verb for speaking against or submitting an accusation in a legal proceeding. By the time of Aristotle, it also meant: to signify or to predicate. Surprisingly, the "predicates" Aristotle talks about include not only bits of language, but also such nonlinguistic items as the color white in a body and the knowledge of grammar in a (...) man's soul. (Categories I/ii) Equally surprising are such details as Aristotle's use of the terms 'homonymy' and 'synonymy' in connection with things talked about rather than words used to talk about them. Judging from the evidence in the Organon, the Metaphysics, and elsewhere, Aristotle was both aware of and able to mark the distinction between using and men tioning words; and so we must conclude that in the Categories, he was not greatly concerned with it. For our purposes, however, it is best to treat the term 'predication' as if it were ambiguous and introduce some jargon to disambiguate it. Code, Modrak, and other authors of the essays which follow use the terms 'linguistic predication' and 'metaphysical predication' for this. (shrink)

There are methodological problems with the new techniques reviewed by Posner & Raichle. Some brain mechanisms are not detected by the temporal and spatial resolution. Questions are also raised by the stimulation paradigms.

INDIVIDUALITY has given philosophers considerable trouble. There are conflicting views as to how to understand it and even as to its intelligibility in spite of what appears to be its fundamental character in our experience. For, on the one hand, we seem to experience the world in terms of individuals, but when we try to explain what their individuality is we run into difficulties. Indeed, even a view which at first sight appears quite innocuous, defining individuality formally as a feature (...) which characterizes individuals as individuals, is strongly rejected by many. They argue that individuality cannot be a feature at all in the strict sense of the word, since its being a feature would presuppose that something else could share on it or have it, and that seems to contradict the very notion of individuality. At any rate, this is of no concern to us presently since it is an issue which pertains to the ontological status of individuality rather than its intension. It suffices to point out for the moment that there is ample disagreement concerning the proper understanding of individuality. (shrink)

Descriptions of battles in ancient authors are not mirrors of reality, however dim and badly cracked, but are a form of literary production in which the real events depicted are filtered through the literary, intellectual, and cultural assumptions of the author. By comparing the battle descriptions of Julius Caesar to those of Xenophon and Polybius this paper attempts to place those battle descriptions in their intellectual and cultural context. Here Caesar appears as a military intellectual engaged in controversies with experts (...) in the Greek tradition of military theory-rejecting materialist strains of Greek thinking-and also as a Roman soldier whose military experience and cultural conceptions about how battles work could not be fully accommodated by Greek models. Caesar adapts from the Greeks an intellectual model of tactics based on physical metaphors, but adjusts Greek theory to Roman experience: Caesar's tactical physics ramifies from the crash-impetus-of the legionary charge rather than the push of the phalanx. Caesar also adapts from the Greeks a simplifying model of military psychology, adjusting a Greek binary scheme of morale into a three-level model to accommodate a Roman military ethos of steadiness in combat. Greek military thinking downplayed the role in battle of innate differences in courage between armies or nations, concentrating instead on tactics and stratagems; Roman culture encouraged Caesar to reject this dismissive view and elaborate a detailed understanding of the role of courage-virtus-in the mechanics of battle. The prominence of virtus in Caesar's battle descriptions illustrates its survival as an important Roman cultural norm and tempts speculation as to its historical consequences. Attempts to reconstruct ancient battles must take into account the cultural and intellectual traditions which guide ancient battle descriptions. (shrink)

The discussion of the relation of levels of reality to categories is important because categories have often been interpreted as constituting levels of reality. This article explores whether this view is correct, and argues it is not. Categories as such should not be understood to constitute levels of reality, although particular categories may. The article begins with a discussion of levels of reality and then turns to specific questions about categories and how they are related to these levels.

My focus here is on two questions: Does philosophy have a place in contemporary American public life? and should philosophy have a place in American public life? Because my answer to the first question is negative, I also will discuss some of the reasons why I believe philosophy does not play a role in American public life. I suggest that philosophers have been excluded from the public conversation in part because the work of philosophy entails criticism and challenge—activities best accomplished (...) from “outside” of the structures of power. This means that we have a role in public life, but it is an indirect role, as teachers and critics, not as advisers and active participants. (shrink)

Despite predictions that Hispanics will soon outnumber all other minority groups combined in the United States, philosophy has remained indifferent to the growing Hispanic population. This paper offers several hypotheses why this is the case, arguing that Hispanics and Hispanic thought are perceived as unphilosophical (or only narrowly philosophical) and are thus perceived as ill-suited for academia and academic discussions in the United States. The author concludes by proposing strategies for overcoming this marginalization of Hispanics and Hispanic philosophy.

This chapter contains section titled: Linguistic Rights for Latinos Pogge's Argument for English—first A Worrisome Suspicion Language Priority in the Education of Latino Children.

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 6, June 2022.