Towards the conclusion of the First Section of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant describes a process whereby a subject can undergo a kind of moral corruption. This process, which he calls a “natural dialectic”, can cause one to undermine one’s own or¬dinary grasp of the demands of morality. Kant also claims that this natural dialectic is the basis of the need for moral philosophy itself, since first-order moral reasoning is insufficient to protect against it. I show that (...) this passage is closely related to another in the First Section, one where Kant warns against the threat of “misology”, or the hatred of reason. I argue that both these passages must be read as engaging with specific claims from Rousseau’s writings. Uncovering the historical context and rhetorical function of Kant’s account of moral self-deception can re-orient the reader to his ambitions for the Groundwork itself. (shrink)

Cooperation can evolve in the context of cognitive activities such as perception, attention, memory, and decision making, in addition to physical activities such as hunting, gathering, warfare, and childcare. The social insects are well known to cooperate on both physical and cognitive tasks, but the idea of cognitive cooperation in humans has not received widespread attention or systematic study. The traditional psychological literature often gives the impression that groups are dysfunctional cognitive units, while evolutionary psychologists have so far studied cognition (...) primarily at the individual level. We present two experiments that demonstrate the superiority of thinking in groups, but only for tasks that are sufficiently challenging to exceed the capacity of individuals. One of the experiments is in a brain-storming format, where advantages of real groups over nominal groups have been notoriously difficult to demonstrate. Cognitive cooperation might often operate beneath conscious awareness and take place without the need for overt training, as evolutionary psychologists have stressed for individual-level cognitive adaptations. In general, cognitive cooperation should be a central subject in human evolutionary psychology, as it already is in the study of the social insects. (shrink)

The role of analogy appears in surprisingly different areas of the first Critique. On the one hand, Kant considered the concept to have a specific enough meaning to entitle the principle concerned with causation an analogy; on the other hand we can find Kant referring to analogy in various parts of the Transcendental Dialectic in a seemingly different manner. Whereas in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant takes some time to provide a detailed (if not clear) account of the meaning of the (...) term ‘analogy’ and his reasons for his employment of it, in the Transcendental Dialectic on the other hand, Kant’s employment of the term seems far less technical. It would seem on the face of it, that Kant has two senses of ‘analogy’: one technical sense reserved for those constitutive principles of the understanding as laid out in the Analytic, and another casual and commonplace use of the term. This picture, although it contains elements of truth, is ultimately misleading. I argue for three claims in this paper. Firstly, I suggest that there can be found in the first Critique a unified conception of analogy. Secondly, I argue that Kant self-consciously differentiated his employment of analogy from the employment that can be found in many early modern philosophers, e.g. Locke. Thirdly, I will tentatively suggest that this interpretation of analogy can aid us in addressing certain contentious areas of transcendental idealism, most notably the account of causation. (shrink)

It is often maintained that one insight of Kant's Critical philosophy is its recognition of the need to distinguish accounts of knowledge acquisition from knowledge justification. In particular, it is claimed that Kant held that the detailing of a concept's acquisition conditions is insufficient to determine its legitimacy. I argue that this is not the case at least with regard to geometrical concepts. Considered in the light of his pre-Critical writings on the mathematical method, construction in the Critique can be (...) seen to be a form of concept acquisition, one that is related to the modal phenomenology of geometrical judgement. (shrink)

Strawson's philosophical attitude towards scepticism is frequently thought to have undergone a significant shift from the “strong” or “robust” employment of transcendental arguments in Individuals to a more “modest” understanding of the efficacy of such arguments in Skepticism and Naturalism: Some Varieties. I argue that this interpretation is based upon a misunderstanding of the function of transcendental arguments in Strawson's earlier works. Examining the continuity of Strawson's modest naturalistic approach to scepticism can offer some insight as to the continuing overestimation (...) of the anti-sceptical efficacy of transcendental arguments. (shrink)

Peripersonal space (PPS) is frequently defined as a plastic, pragmatic and goal-directed multisensory buffer that connects the brain-body with its immediate environment. While such characterisations indicate that peripersonal spatiality is profoundly embodied and enactive, comparatively few attempts have aimed to systematically synthesise PPS literature with compatible phenomenological accounts of lived space provided by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. Moreover, in traditional cognitive neuroscience, neurophysiological activity is thought to map onto discrete ‘cognitive correlates’. In contemporary 4E approaches to cognition, however, phenomenology-derived notions such (...) as ‘pre-reflective cognition’ and ‘motor-intentionality’ frequently appear, yet their neural correlates may be comparatively difficult to pin down. Pre-reflectively, agents seemingly do not thematise spatial properties as operationalised in key experimental paradigms (e.g., spatial rotation tasks) but are instead inherently spatially embedded within the world. To refine this distinction, I survey how tools co-determine this distinctly spatial ‘world-embeddedness’ using a neurophenomenological methodology (Varela, _Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3_(4), 330–349, 1996 ). Specifically, I conduct two neurophenomenological analyses of tool-perception and tool-use, examining both how distance modulates affordance-perception and how tool-use remaps bodily space via the withdrawal of tools from intentional-objects into co-constituting motor-intentionality itself. I conclude by briefly distinguishing this interpretation of spatial cognition from cognitivist frameworks. Thereafter, I briefly highlight the temporal scaffolding underlying PPS while conceptually grounding my account within Embodied Simulation Theory (Gallese, _Reti, Saperi, Linguaggi_, (1), 31–46, 2018 ). What is at stake is thus both an explicitly embodied-enactive account of bodily space that is qualitative and situational instead of quantitative and positional, as well as a viable, interdisciplinary strategy for unifying pre-reflective cognition with neurophysiological data. (shrink)

This chapter explores the term “landscape” and its utility for indigenous people. If indigenous people do not have an understanding of the term, the question is posed whether “landscape” is merely a form of “restricted” speech that is meant to signify power and authority over them and the land they call home. In Australia, certain literary works describe the rich relationship indigenous people have with their land, providing a foundation for the study of “cultural landscapes.” These works share the common (...) trait of presenting a way in which landscape becomes evidence of the cosmological processes that define kinship, group alignments, and cultural practices. (shrink)

The parahippocampal cortex and hippocampus are brain structures known to be involved in memory. However, the unique contribution of the parahippocampal cortex remains unclear. The current study investigates memory for object identity and memory of the configuration of objects in patients with small thermo-coagulation lesions to the hippocampus or the parahippocampal cortex. Results showed that in contrast to control participants and patients with damage to the hippocampus leaving the parahippocampal cortex intact, patients with lesions that included the right parahippocampal cortex (...) (RPH) were severely impaired on a task that required learning the spatial configuration of objects on a computer screen; these patients, however, were not impaired at learning the identity of objects. Conversely, we found that patients with lesions to the right hippocampus (RH) or left hippocampus (LH), sparing the parahippocampal cortex, performed just as well as the control participants. Furthermore, they were not impaired on the object identity task. In the functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiment, healthy young adults performed the same tasks. Consistent with the findings of the lesion study, the fMRI results showed significant activity in the RPH in the memory for the spatial configuration condition, but not memory for object identity. Furthermore, the pattern of fMRI activity measured in the baseline control conditions decreased specifically in the parahippocampal cortex as a result of the experimental task, providing evidence for task specific repetition suppression. In summary, while our previous studies demonstrated that the hippocampus is critical to the construction of a cognitive map, both the lesion and fMRI studies have shown an involvement of the RPH for learning spatial configurations of objects but not object identity, and that this takes place independent of the hippocampus. (shrink)

Many Protestant denominations have or recently had policies that prohibit “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained. By only prohibiting “practicing” homosexuals, proponents of these policies claim that they do not discriminate against homosexuals as a group since, technically, a homosexual can still be ordained as long as she is “non-practicing.” In other words, a condemnation of homosexual practice is not the same as a condemnation of homosexual persons. I argue that this is not the case; the rhetoric of homosexual practice (...) does, in fact, amount to a condemnation of gays and lesbians. It does so by conflating the two things it claims to keep separate—homosexual conduct and homosexual identity. I demonstrate this conflation by analyzing the history of this rhetoric and how it has been adjudicated in church court decisions from the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA). (shrink)

A short review of Contemporary Kantian Metaphysics.

Rapaport, a professor of literature, differs from many literary critics interested in the thought of Jacques Derrida insofar as he seeks to locate Derrida within the philosophical tradition and problematic out of which Derrida's ideas, so significant for critical theory, emerge. While Rapaport considers Derrida in relation to thinkers as diverse as Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Husserl, Blanchot, Joyce, and Celan, he focuses his attention on Heidegger, and Derrida's reflections on Heidegger, for there the relation between time and language central to (...) Derrida's deconstructionism is most fruitfully to be examined. (shrink)

Longer review of Waxman's recent book, Kant's Anatomy of the Intelligent Mind.

This is a beautifully clear, detailed, and compelling revision of the received histories of late eighteenth and nineteenth-century German psychology and philosophy of mind. It focuses on the seemingly constant tension between what Hatfield calls normativism and naturalism. Participants in this story are often both philosophers and psychologists, in a mix in which it is difficult to see the differences. Hatfield presents us with the formative history of our present, uneasy distinction between "philosophical" and "psychological" approaches to the mind.

The rift which has long divided the philosophical world into opposed schools-the "Continental" school owing its origins to the phenomenology of Husserl and the "analytic" school derived from Frege-is finally closing.

Abstract:This essay places the writings of John Lachs in the tradition of classical American philosophy through an appreciative and critical analysis of several central ideas: pluralism, individualism, mediation, meddling, the cost of comfort, and Stoic pragmatism. I focus on the need to move pluralism from the conceptual to practical realm, and on the need for a less self-contained, libertarian, and ultimately Romantic form of individualism. I also stress the importance of viewing philosophies as personal expressions of temperament.