Assistive technology is widely used in contemporary special needs education. Our interest is in the extent to which we can conceive of certain uses of AT in this educational context as a form of extended cognition. It is argued that what is critical to answering this question is that the relationship between the student and the AT is more than just that of subject-and-instrument, but instead incorporates a fluidity and spontaneity that puts it on a functional par with their use (...) of the student’s biological cognitive traits. It is claimed that AT use in special needs education offers an especially plausible case of extended cognition for just this reason. It is further maintained that understanding AT in this fashion has some important philosophical and practical ramifications, including how we should conceive of mainstream education, given that this is increasingly conducted within highly technologically-embedded environments. (shrink)

It is proposed that our memory is made up of individual, unconnected Records, to each of which is attached a Heading. Retrieval of a Record can only be accomplished by addressing the attached Heading, the contents of which cannot itself be retrieved. Each Heading is made up of a mixture of content in more or less literal form and context, the latter including specification of environment and of internal states (e.g. drug states and mood). This view of memory allows an (...) easy account of a number of natural memory phenomena as well as a variety of laboratory findings such as the differences between recall and recognition. The theory further proposes that Headed Records can neither be deleted nor modified. Data apparently against such a hypothesis can be accounted for in terms of the retrieval process. (shrink)

The practice of personal autonomy is a dynamic event that consists of a vital interplay between the self, socio-cultural reality, meaning, and being epistemically responsible. Autonomy is not static, something that we simply possess by virtue of a status as 'rational beings'. Therefore, in this dissertation, I examine the traditional notion of autonomy as it has been developed by Kant and subsequently influenced the current debate between 'liberals' and 'communitarians'. Primarily from the standpoint of the critiques developed by Charles Taylor, (...) I argue that the fundamental disagreement between these two camps is over the concept of the self. While this landscape stands divided, some middle ground can be found in the work of Joseph Raz, who postulated the need for a combination of individual abilities and an autonomy-supporting environment as necessary conditions for practicing personal autonomy. His characterization of 'personal autonomy', distinct from Kantian autonomy, forms the underlying paradigm for this work. (shrink)

This chapter presents some rather different ideas about the organization of the prefrontal cortex. Rather than fixed functional specialization, it emphasizes adaptability of neural coding to fit a behavioral context. In particular, it presents both neuroimaging and single-unit electrophysiological evidence to suggest that, in selected regions of the prefrontal cortex, neurons adapt their properties to code just that information of relevance to current behavior. This adaptation is a major contributor to the achievement of cognitive focus and control. Although this adaptive (...) coding model recognizes important regional specializations within the prefrontal cortex, it suggests a perspective on these that is rather different from that presumed in the traditional divide-and-conquer approach. (shrink)

In this essay I look at The Birth of Tragedy in order to explore two related issues. First, beginning with Nietzsche’s own later critical look back at the book, I argue that in lamenting both the influence of Schopenhauer, and the inclusion of an extended discussion of contemporary German culture, Nietzsche underplayed the interdependence of these elements and his analysis of tragedy and its significance in the book. Second, I argue that to understand Nietzsche's Schopenhauerian concept of tragedy we may (...) begin from the perspective of the term's common usage, attending to phenomena often labelled tragic, and glimpsing what holds sway just beneath their surfaces. Ultimately, although Nietzsche's expressed understanding of tragedy in these early years drew heavily on Schopenhauerian pessimism, it nevertheless exceeded that influence. (shrink)

"First published as Metaphilosophy volume 45, nos. 4-5, except for 'Luck as risk and the lack of control account of luck,' first published in Metaphilosophy volume 46, no. 2 "--Title page vers.

(for Adam Morton's half) I argue that if we take the values of persons to be ordered in a way that allows incomparability, then the problems Broome raises have easy solutions. In particular we can maintain that creating people is morally neutral while killing them has a negative value.

In this article, I situate and reconstruct Sartre's rejections of subjective and objective idealism in order both to sketch his realism-all-the-way-down and to contrast it with Richard Rorty's pragmatic, anti-essentialist contextualism. The contrast with Rorty is important because his contextualism is one of the most prominent approaches within the relatively recent proliferation of antiessentialist views mobilized under the banners of pragmatism, hermeneutics, postmodernism, constructivism, etc. Although Rorty's contextualism is both compelling and comparable to Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down, I shall argue that the (...) latter does not throw out the baby that the former throws out with the bathwater. Realism-all-the-way-down is not compelled to throw out realism along with subjective and objective idealism, whereas contextualism must throw out the whole lot. If compelling intuitions recommend realism to us, and if Rorty's rejection of realism is unconvincing, there are good reasons to prefer Sartre's realism-all-the-way-down. (shrink)