Philip Pettit has argued that all semantically basic terms are learned in response to ostended examples and all non-basic terms are defined via them. Michael Smith and Daniel Stoljar maintain that this “global response-dependence” entails noumenalism, the thesis that reality possesses an unknowable, intrinsic nature. Surprisingly Pettit acknowledges this, contending instead that his noumenalism, like Kant’s, can be construed ontologically or epistemically. Moreover, Pettit insists, construing his noumenalism epistemically renders it unproblematic. The article shows that construing noumenalism epistemically prevents Pettit (...) from knowing whether members of different communities respond to different properties in the world or the same properties differently. Pettit then faces a trilemma. He can construe noumenalism ontologically and confront Smith and Stoljar’s charge. He can construe noumenalism epistemically and confront the author’s charge. Or he can reject global response-dependence. After explaining why Pettit should choose the middle horn, the article closes with lessons about global response-dependence generally. (shrink)

According to Phillips, (1) genuine perception is attributable to the individual (i.e. it’s a personal state/event, as opposed to sub-personal states/events in the individual’s brain); (2) since unconscious perceptual representations are ill-suited to guide action, there’s no good reason to attribute them to the individual; (3) not being attributable to the individual, they don’t instantiate genuine perception, thereby failing to support the hypothesis that genuine perception can occur unconsciously. I argue that this reasoning is flawed and can’t be easily fixed. (...) Phillips contends that unconscious perceptual representations don’t guide action because they fail to meet certain conditions that are sufficient for action guidance. But those conditions may not be necessary for action guidance. Consequently, unconscious perceptual representations may guide action even if they don’t meet Phillips’ conditions. Furthermore, due to his commitment to the distinction between personal and sub-personal states/events, Phillips isn’t in a position to argue that his conditions are necessary for action guidance. For the distinction applies to action as well as to perception, and when genuine action is identified by personal-level criteria, Phillips’ conditions turn out unnecessary for action guidance. (shrink)

Zwischen Ethik und Religion besteht in der Philosophie Immanuel Kants ein enges Verhältnis. In seinem frühen Denken geht Kant davon aus, dass Ethik Metaphysik voraussetzt. Diese Position wird in seiner kritischen Philosophie zugunsten der bekannten These, dass Ethik keine Religion voraussetzt, zu ihr jedoch »unausweichlich« führt, abgelöst. Im Zentrum der Überlegungen des vorliegenden Buchs steht der Versuch einer plausiblen Erklärung, wie diese Unausweichlichkeit zu verstehen ist und warum Ethik in die Metaphysik mündet. Das Ziel der Untersuchung besteht darin zu zeigen, (...) dass die Religion oder bestimmte metaphysische Annahmen in der ethischen Systematik Kants eine konstitutive und konstruktive Rolle spielen. (shrink)

We consider collective quantification in natural language. For many years the common strategy in formalizing collective quantification has been to define the meanings of collective determiners, quantifying over collections, using certain type-shifting operations. These type-shifting operations, i.e., lifts, define the collective interpretations of determiners systematically from the standard meanings of quantifiers. All the lifts considered in the literature turn out to be definable in second-order logic. We argue that second-order definable quantifiers are probably not expressive enough to formalize all collective (...) quantification in natural language. (shrink)

This volume deals with philosophically grounded theories of animal generation as found in two different traditions: one, deriving primarily from Aristotelian natural philosophy and specifically from his Generation of Animals; and another, deriving from two related medical traditions, the Hippocratic and the Galenic. The book contains a classification and critique of works that touch on the history of embryology and animal generation written before 1980. It also contains translations of key sections of the works on which it is focused. It (...) looks at two different scholarly communities: the physicians and philosophers, that share a set of textual resources and philosophical lineages, as well as a shared problem, but that nevertheless have different concerns and commitments. The book demonstrates how those working in these two traditions not only shared a common philosophical background in the arts curricula of the universities, but were in constant intercourse with each other. This book presents a test case of how scholarly communities differentiate themselves from each other through methods of argument, empirical investigation, and textual interpretations. It is all the more interesting because the two communities under investigation have so much in common and yet, in the end, are distinct in a number of important ways. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 11, November 2019, Page 37-39.

Wonder Woman's co‐creator William Marston believed that sexual bondage was key to achieving a peaceful society. Though Marston intended Wonder Woman to provide an alternative to the masculinity of the superheroes of his day, Marston's vision remains relevant today. The behavior and attitude of Marston's Wonder Woman anticipated contemporary feminist philosophers' contributions to the ethics of care. There is also an underlying ethics of care in Wonder Woman's role as what Marston calls a "Love Leader", and that combination of kink (...) and care is itself reflected in contemporary BDSM. Marston's stated goal in his academic writing was to promote "a new code of conduct, based on love supremacy". Marston's comic‐book creation, Wonder Woman, fit his depiction of an ideal Love Leader: a sexually alluring and powerful, yet loving, mistress whose feminine charms would make women and men submit to her authority. (shrink)

In the paper I try to interpret Fichte’s Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters as a reflective self-critique of the Enlightenment. Identifying the ›third historical period‹ of Fichte with the time of Enlightenment, I try to read his lectures as an ambitious and differentiated critique of it. The aim of Fichte’s devastating criticism on dominant characteristics of the Enlightenment (egoism, superficiality and self-interest) is in my opinion not to refuse it entirely. It is rather to continue it with an increased sense of (...) self-criticism. The proposed reading enables to place Fichte’s arguments in the context of today’s debates over issues like the role of religion in civil society, or the meaning and fundamental values of Europe’s integration. For all his critique on modernity, Fichte refrains from treading a conservative, communitarian or collectivist path. This can be seen as the great advantage of his standpoint. What he intends is rather the »enlightenment of Enlightenment«, the continuous differentiation of knowledge and liberating the human being from the constrained form of modern consciousness. Der Beitrag bildet einen Versuch, Fichtes Grundzüge des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters als eine reflexive (Selbst-)Kritik der Aufklärung zu deuten. Ich identifiziere Fichtes ›drittes Zeitalter‹ aus den Grundzügen mit der als Aufklärung verstandenen Moderne. Sie bildet, meines Erachtens, den Gegenstand einer anspruchsvollen und differenzierten Kritik: das vernichtende Urteil über die in ihr dominierenden ›Züge‹ des Egoismus, der Oberflächlichkeit und des Selbstinteresses haben keineswegs den Zweck, Modernität als solche zu desavouieren. Vielmehr handelt es sich um eine zukunftsorientierte Fortsetzung der Aufklärung im Sinne einer gesteigerten (Selbst-)Reflexivität. Durch eine solche Deutung kann Fichtes Position in die gegenwärtigen Debatten – etwa um die Rolle und Funktion der Religion innerhalb der säkularen Gesellschaft oder um die Grundwerte und den Sinn der europäischen Einigung – einbezogen werden. Aus der Sicht der heutigen Debatten besteht die Originalität des Fichteschen Standpunktes genau darin, dass er, bei aller Kritik der egoistischen Zügen der aufklärerischen Kultur weder auf konservative, noch auf kommunitaristische oder kollektivistische Lösungen zurückgreift. Gemeint ist von ihm eher eine ›Aufklärung der Aufklärung‹, weitere Differenzierung des Wissens, aber auch Befreiung der Menschen von dem zwanghaften Charakter ihres modernen Bewusstseins. (shrink)

Human languages vary in terms of which meanings they lexicalize, but this variation is constrained. It has been argued that languages are under two competing pressures: the pressure to be simple (e.g., to have a small lexicon) and to allow for informative (i.e., precise) communication, and that which meanings get lexicalized may be explained by languages finding a good way to trade off between these two pressures. However, in certain semantic domains, languages can reach very high levels of informativeness even (...) if they lexicalize very few meanings in that domain. This is due to productive morphosyntax and compositional semantics, which may allow for construction of meanings which are not lexicalized. Consider the semantic domain of natural numbers: many languages lexicalize few natural number meanings as monomorphemic expressions, but can precisely convey very many natural number meanings using morphosyntactically complex numerals. In such semantic domains, lexicon size is not in direct competition with informativeness. What explains which meanings are lexicalized in such semantic domains? We will propose that in such cases, languages need to solve a different kind of trade‐off problem: the trade‐off between the pressure to lexicalize as few meanings as possible (i.e, to minimize lexicon size) and the pressure to produce as morphosyntactically simple utterances as possible (i.e, to minimize average morphosyntactic complexity of utterances). To support this claim, we will present a case study of 128 natural languages' numeral systems, and show computationally that they achieve a near‐optimal trade‐off between lexicon size and average morphosyntactic complexity of numerals. This study in conjunction with previous work on communicative efficiency suggests that languages' lexicons are shaped by a trade‐off between not two but three pressures: be simple, be informative, and minimize average morphosyntactic complexity of utterances. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare two concepts which tend to be treated as synonymous, and to show the difference between them: these are critical thinking and logical culture. Firstly, we try to show that these cannot be considered identical or strictly equivalent: i.e. that the concept of logical culture includes more than just critical thinking skills. Secondly, we try to show that Christian philosophers, when arguing about philosophical matters and teaching philosophy to students, should not (...) focus only on critical thinking skills, but rather also consider logical culture. This, as we argue, may help to improve debate both within and outside of Christian philosophy. (shrink)

Deciding the conflict between various rights and interests, especially in medical ethics where health and lives are in question, has significant challenges, and to obtain appropriate outcomes, it is necessary to properly apply the principles of non-discrimination and proportionality. Using the example of mandatory vaccination policies, we show that this task becomes even more difficult when these principles lead us to counterintuitive and paradoxical results. Although the general purpose of these principles is to ensure that decisions and policies seek the (...) highest and broadest possible enjoyment of rights for all (ie, the least restrictive solution), they achieve the complete opposite when applied to mandatory vaccination policies. To highlight and explain these paradoxical results, we present a typology of fifteen hypothetical mandatory vaccination policies containing various degrees of restriction and apply well-established non-discrimination and proportionality tests from constitutional law to each. We argue that mandatory vaccination policies exhibit two characteristics, namely the non-linear relationship between their general purposes and specific goals and the involvement of life and health, suggesting that more restrictive policies should prevail even though less restrictive policies might fail these tests. Using clearly structured and rigorous methodology from constitutional law, the proposed approach delivers a fresh view on the core ethical principles of non-discrimination and proportionality and a potentially useful tool in helping resolve also other challenges encountered in medical ethics beyond mandatory vaccination policies. (shrink)

The prohibition of commercialisation of the human body and its parts is not applied consistently and suffers from many exceptions in the human biological material (HBM) market. Examples include the possibility of patenting certain HBM-derived products and their commercial marketing or payments for blood donations. Thus, the current practice of marketing HBM-derived products makes the altruistic donor most vulnerable to exploitation while being deprived of benefits. There seem to be two ways to improve this state of affairs. The first is (...) to apply consistently the prohibition of commercialisation of the body and its parts to commercially marketed tissue and cell products as well. This would require limiting the possibility of financial gain associated with the processing, distribution and sale of HBM-based products. Such a solution, however, does not seem to gain wide acceptance or have a chance of implementation in the near future. Therefore, introducing more transparent rules and greater donor empowerment seems more reasonable by exempting HBM from the ban on commercialisation under certain conditions and with clear limitations. (shrink)

Sanford C. Goldberg presents a novel account of the speech act of assertion. He argues that this type of speech act is answerable to an epistemic, context-sensitive norm. On this basis he shows the philosophical importance of assertion for key debates in philosophy of language and mind, epistemology, and ethics.

Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon that describes the human tendency to see human-like shapes in the environment. It has considerable consequences for people’s choices and beliefs. With the increased presence of robots, it is important to investigate the optimal design for this tech- nology. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits and challenges of building anthropomorphic robots, from both a philosophical perspective and from the viewpoint of empir- ical research in the fields of human–robot interaction and social psychology. We believe (...) that this broad investigation of anthropomorphism will not only help us to understand the phenomenon better, but can also indicate solutions for facil- itating the integration of human-like machines in the real world. (shrink)

Locke claims that a person’s identity over time consists in the unity of consciousness, not in the sameness of the body. Similarly, the phenomenological approach refuses to see the criteria of identity as residing in some externally observable bodily features. Nevertheless, it does not accept the idea that personal identity has to consist either in consciousness or in the body. We are self-aware as bodily beings. After providing a brief reassessment of Locke and the post-Lockean discussion, the article draws on (...) phenomenological arguments that show the body as lived, that is, lived as one’s own body, but also possibly as “other” or “strange.” Against what has been claimed in recent writing, especially in literature on Merleau-Ponty, the author argues that the “mineness” of the body and its “alterity” are not two mutually exclusive features. In the final part of the article, the author suggests that the becoming strange of one’s own body may legitimately be considered as a prominent experience of what it means to be a person. (shrink)

While there is a general consensus around the role of religion in the abolition of the Slave Trade, historians continue to give little to no detail on exactly how Christian theology influenced the abolitionist movement. This article seeks to interrogate one major theological factor inherent in the spirituality that underpinned the activism of the British abolitionists, namely their notion of Divine Providence, and particularly its moral-emotive correlate: the fear of God’s wrath. These theological notions are discussed based mainly on the (...) analysis of the primary sources and within the theoretical framework of judicial providentialism, aptly captured by John Coffey among others. (shrink)

A special section of papers on the evolution, current status, and future development of self psychology highlights _The Evolution of Self Psychology_, volume 7 of the Progress in Self Psychology series. A critical review of recent books by Basch, Goldberg, and Stolorow et al. is part of this endeavor. Theoretical contributions to Volume 7 examine self psychology in relation to object relations theory and reconsider the relationship of psychotherapy to psychoanalysis. Clinical contributions deal with an intersubjective perspective on countertransference, (...) the trauma of incest, and envy in the transference. (shrink)

Sandford C. Goldberg puts forward a theory of epistemic normativity that is grounded in the things we properly expect of one another as epistemic subjects. This theory has far-reaching implications not only for the theory of epistemic normativity, but also for the nature of epistemic assessment itself.

“Is every definition persuasive?” If essentialist views on definition are rejected and a pragmatic account adopted, where defining is a speech act which fixes the meaning of a term, then a problem arises: if meanings are not fixed by the essence of being itself, is not every definition persuasive? To address the problem, we refer to Douglas Walton’s impressive intellectual heritage—specifically on the argumentative potential of definition. In finding some non-persuasive definitions, we show not every definition is persuasive. The persuasiveness (...) lies not in syntactic or semantic properties, but the context. We present this pragmatic account and provide rules for analysing and evaluating persuasive definition—a promising direction for further research. (shrink)

Elkhonon Goldberg's groundbreaking The Executive Brain was a classic of scientific writing, revealing how the frontal lobes command the most human parts of the mind. Now he offers a completely new book, providing fresh, iconoclastic ideas about the relationship between the brain and the mind. In The New Executive Brain, Goldberg paints a sweeping panorama of cutting-edge thinking in cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology, one that ranges far beyond the frontal lobes. Drawing on the latest discoveries, and developing complex (...) scientific ideas and relating them to real life through many fascinating case studies and anecdotes, the author explores how the brain engages in complex decision-making; how it deals with novelty and ambiguity; and how it addresses moral choices. At every step, Goldberg challenges entrenched assumptions. For example, we know that the left hemisphere of the brain is the seat of language--but Goldberg argues that language may not be the central adaptation of the left hemisphere. Apes lack language, yet many also show evidence of asymmetric hemispheric development. Goldberg also finds that a complex interaction between the frontal lobes and the amygdale--between a recently evolved and a much older part of the brain--controls emotion, as conscious thoughts meet automatic impulses. The author illustrates this observation with a personal example: the difficulty he experienced when trying to pick up a baby alligator he knew to be harmless, as his amygdala battled his effort to extend his hand. In the years since the original Executive Brain, Goldberg has remained at the front of his field, constantly challenging orthodoxy. In this revised and expanded edition, he affirms his place as one of our most creative and insightful scientists, offering lucid writing and bold, paradigm-shifting ideas. (shrink)

David Theo Goldberg engages Achille Mbembe in a wide-ranging conversation on the key lines of analysis of Mbembe’s book, The Critique of Black Reason. The discussion ranges across a broad swath of key themes: the constitutive feature of racisms in the making of modernity and modern capitalism as conceived through the global black experience; the African and French archives in constituting, resisting, and refashioning ‘black reason’ and its multiple registers; the centrality of slavery to this constitution and resistance; thinghood (...) and humanity; liberalism as the basis for racial pessimism. The discussion closes with Mbembe’s plea for a shared being and an exchange about repair and reparation. (shrink)

The debate over the semantics of demonstratives is in a stalemate between those positions attributing some referential significance to a speaker's referential intentions and those not doing so. The latter approach is supported by cases driving the non-intentional intuition in which the speakers mistakenly point at objects other than the ones they intend to refer to. The intentionalists, such as Martin Montminy, reply that once we think of potential extensions of such cases in which the speaker explains to the hearer (...) what her referential intention was, it is the intentionalist intuition that prevails. In this paper, I develop a semantics for demonstratives whose task is to accommodate both of these seemingly contradictory intuitions within the general non-intentionalist framework. The proposed idea is that the reference of a use of a demonstrative can change over time, as the discourse develops. This idea is handled formally by the addition of a parameter of the index of evaluation that represents the referentially relevant aspects of the state of the discourse. Also, I provide reasons for preferring my view over two rival positions: one by Palle Leth, and one that I adjust to the demands of the semantics of demonstratives from the theory that Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies offer for epistemic modals, and from Laura Delgado's polyreferentialism for proper names. (shrink)

This volume on the semantic complexity of natural language explores the question why some sentences are more difficult than others. While doing so, it lays the groundwork for extending semantic theory with computational and cognitive aspects by combining linguistics and logic with computations and cognition. -/- Quantifier expressions occur whenever we describe the world and communicate about it. Generalized quantifier theory is therefore one of the basic tools of linguistics today, studying the possible meanings and the inferential power of quantifier (...) expressions by logical means. The classic version was developed in the 1980s, at the interface of linguistics, mathematics and philosophy. Before this volume, advances in "classic" generalized quantifier theory mainly focused on logical questions and their applications to linguistics, this volume adds a computational component, the third pillar of language use and logical activity. This book is essential reading for researchers in linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, logic, AI, and computer science. (shrink)

Sanford Goldberg investigates the role that others play in our attempts to acquire knowledge of the world.

The first part of this essay is basically historical. It introduces the explanation–understanding divide, focusing in particular on the general–unique distinction. The second part is more philosophical and it presents two different claims on action. In the first place, I will try to say what it means to understand an action. Secondly, we will focus on the explanation of action as it is seen in some explanatory sciences. I will try to argue that in some cases these sciences commit what (...) I call an “external contradiction”. (shrink)

Studie se zaměřuje na motiv receptivity vnímání v Husserlově a Merleau-Pontyho fenomenologii. V první části rekonstruuje teorii počitkových dat, neboť kritika této teorie je pro oba autory důležitá. Ve druhé části představuje Husserlův návrh chápat receptivitu vnímání s pomocí modelu uchopovaná látka – uchopující forma. Třetí část stručně rekapituluje Merleau-Pontyho kritiku Husserlovy teorie smyslové látky a nastiňuje Merleau-Pontyho vlastní výklad receptivity, který se opírá o synestetický a motorický význam smysly vnímaných kvalit.

Marks individually or in combination constitute images that represent objects. How do those images represent those objects? Marks vary in style, both between and within images. Images also vary in style. How do those styles relate to each other and to the objects that those images represent? Referencing a diverse range of images, we answer the first question with a response-dependence theory of image representation derived from Mark Johnston, differentiating Lockean primary qualities of marks from secondary qualities of images. We (...) answer the second question with a perceptual theory of style derived from Paul Grice, differentiating physical style from image style, and representing conventionally from representing conversationally. (shrink)

We introduce and study model-theoretic connected components of rings as an analogue of model-theoretic connected components of definable groups. We develop their basic theory and use them to describe both the definable and classical Bohr compactifications of rings. We then use model-theoretic connected components to explicitly calculate Bohr compactifications of some classical matrix groups, such as the discrete Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {Z}})$, the continuous Heisenberg group ${\mathrm {UT}}_3({\mathbb {R}})$, and, more generally, groups of upper unitriangular and invertible upper triangular (...) matrices over unital rings. (shrink)

A key component of the susceptibility to cognitive biases is the ability to monitor for conflict between intuitively cued “heuristic” answers and logical principles. While there is evidence that pe...