This remarkable book is the most comprehensive study ever written of the history of moral philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Its aim is to set Kant's still influential ethics in its historical context by showing in detail what the central questions in moral philosophy were for him and how he arrived at his own distinctive ethical views. The book is organised into four main sections, each exploring moral philosophy by discussing the work of many influential philosophers of the (...) seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In an epilogue the author discusses Kant's view of his own historicity, and of the aims of moral philosophy. In its range, in its analyses of many philosophers not discussed elsewhere, and in revealing the subtle interweaving of religious and political thought with moral philosophy, this is an unprecedented account of the evolution of Kant's ethics. (shrink)

Episodic memory involves the sense that it is “first-hand”, i.e., originates directly from one’s own past experience. An account of this phenomenological dimension is offered in terms of an affective experience or feeling specific to episodic memory. On the basis of recent empirical research in the domain of metamemory, it is claimed that a recollective experience involves two separate mental components: a first-order memory about the past along with a metacognitive, episodic feeling of knowing. The proposed two-tiered account is contrasted (...) with other, reductionist two-tiered accounts as well as with reflexive accounts of episodic memory to be found in the literature. (shrink)

v. 1. A dialectical examination of the conceptions of freedom.--v. 2. A dialectical examination of the controversies about freedom.

Because most chemical reactions, by definition, cannot avoid breaking of bonds, weakly bonded species exist fleetingly in almost every chemical change. Historically, chemical quantum mechanics was aimed at explaining the nature of strong bonds. The theory involved a number of approximations to the full solution of the Schrödinger equation. The study of non‐Kekulé molecules provides an opportunity to test whether modern quantum chemical computations are competent to deal with the nature of molecules with very weak bonds. †To contact the author, (...) please write to: Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT: 06520‐8107; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The behaviours Flack and de Waal describe as origins of human morality lack the most essential features of the human ethical competence; namely, application of the concepts good and bad to events, the capacities for guilt and empathy for another's state, and the ability to suppress actions that would compromise the self's virtue. These serious differences between apes and humans challenge the suggestion that primate behaviour lies on a continuum with human morality.

Our utterances are typically if not always "situated," in the sense that they are true or false relative to unarticulated parameters of the extra-linguistic context. The problem is to explain how these parameters are determined, given that nothing in the uttered sentences indicates them. It is tempting to claim that they must be determined at the level of thought or intention. However, as many philosophers have observed, thoughts themselves are no less situated than utterances. Unarticulated parameters need not be mentally (...) represented. In this paper, I try to make precise the notion of representation at stake here. In one sense of 'representation', something is represented if it is inferentially relevant. In another, less demanding sense, something is represented if it is relevant to the construction of a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. Ad hoc concepts act as "proxies" for cognitively more demanding representations. They "imitate" the latter's epistemic and pragmatic roles while being inferentially less sophisticated. Thus, there are two senses in which a thought can be said to be situated: (1) its truth-value is relative to a non-represented contextual parameter, (2) its truth-value is not itself relative, but it involves a context-sensitive, ad hoc concept. (shrink)

A puzzling finding from research on strategic decision making concerns the effect that predictions have on future actions. Simply stating a prediction about an opponent changes the total probability (pooled over predictions) of a player taking a future action as compared to not stating any prediction. These interference effects are difficult to explain using traditional economic models, and instead these results suggest turning to a quantum cognition approach to strategic decision making.

Let T be a complete theory with infinite models in a countable language. The stability function g T (κ) is defined as the supremum of the number of types over models of T of power κ. It is proved that there are only six possible stability functions, namely $\kappa, \kappa + 2^\omega, \kappa^\omega, \operatorname{ded} \kappa, (\operatorname{ded} \kappa)^\omega, 2^\kappa$.

Situation theorists such as John Barwise, John Etchemendy, John Perry and François Recanati have put forward the hypothesis that linguistic representations are situated in the sense that they are true or false only relative to partial situations which are not explicitly represented as such. Following Recanati's lead, I explore this hypothesis with respect to mental representations. First, I introduce the notion of unarticulated constituent, due to John Perry. I suggest that the question of whether there really are such constituents should (...) divide in two issues, one concerning language and the other concerning thought. Then I formulate a dilemma that any friend of cognitive unarticulated constituents must face: alleged unarticulated constituents seem to be either articulated or non-constituents after all. The dilemma is strengthened by the fact that unarticulated constituents cannot be inferentially relevant. In §4, three constraints on entertaining situated representations are spelled out. First, although the situation within which one is immersed is not represented as such, there must be cognitive facts that make immersion possible, and explain why one is implicitly related to a particular situation as opposed to another. Second, the move from a given representation to one which articulates the situation requires the capacity to contrast the latter with others in the same range. Third, I suggest that conceptual representations differ from non-conceptual ones in the permanent possibility of detachment that they allow. I then illustrate how these constraints work in three sorts of cases. In the first, thoughts like It's raining and It's over are implicitly related to their situations via some practical capacity of keeping track of particular places or times. In the second sort of cases, the relevant situations are not given, but stipulated, like in In Constance, it's raining. Cases of the third sort are those in which an unarticulated constituent is relevant to a whole system of representations, for instance the perceptual system. In the last section, I use the notion of ad hoc representation to defend the cognitive application of situation semantics against an important objection. (shrink)

The Post-Information Age will see the merger of humans and their technologies, perhaps creating an entirely new species.

In what follows I offer an explanation for the evils in our world that should be a live option for theists who accept middle knowledge. My explanation depends on the possibility of a multiverse of radically different kinds of universes. Persons must pass through various universes, the sequence being chosen by God on an individual basis, until reaching God’s goal for them. Our universe is depicted as governed much by chance, and I give a justification, in light of my thesis, (...) for why God would have people pass through a universe of just such a sort. (shrink)

We prove a local normal form theorem of the Gaifman type for the infinitary logic L∞ωω whose formulas involve arbitrary unary quantifiers but finite quantifier rank. We use a local Ehrenfeucht-Fraïssé type game similar to the one in [9]. A consequence is that every sentence of L∞ωω of quantifier rank n is equivalent to an infinite Boolean combination of sentences of the form ψ, where ψ has counting quantifiers restricted to the -neighborhood of y.

Kagan ponders a series of important nodes of debate while challenging us to examine what we know and why we know it. Most critically he presents an elegant argument for functions of mind that cannot be replaced with sentences about brains while acknowledging that mind emerges from brain activity. He relies on the evidence to argue that thoughts and emotions are distinct from their biological and genetic bases. In separate chapters he deals with the meaning of words, kinds of knowing, (...) the powerful influence of social class, the functions of education, emotion, morality, and other issues. And without fail he sheds light on these ideas while remaining honest to their complexity." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

1 Action Theory q What is it to be an agent? • What is it to be passive rather than active? q What is an action? • On what basis do we make the distinction ...

Connecting aesthetic experience with our experience of nature or with other cultural artifacts, Aesthetics as Phenomenology focuses on what art means for cognition, recognition, and affect—how art changes our everyday disposition or behavior. Günter Figal engages in a penetrating analysis of the moment at which, in our contemplation of a work of art, reaction and thought confront each other. For those trained in the visual arts and for more casual viewers, Figal unmasks art as a decentering experience that opens further (...) possibilities for understanding our lives and our world. (shrink)

Volume 23 of _The Annual of Psychoanalysis _departs from its predecessors in offering three lengthy studies of unususal interest. Fred Levin's three-part examination of psychoanalysis and knowledge is a simulating, timely effort to relate "a psychoanalyst's thinking about knowledge" to both the clinical situation and what is now known about learning, memory, and knowledge formation in the neurosciences. The late Roy R. Grinker, Sr.'s history of analysis in Chicago was solicited by _The Annual_ in 1975 but declined for publication at (...) the time as too abrasive in tone and too critical in content. It is published here in unexpurgated form, and emerges as both a provocative historical document and a valuable commentary on the state of psychoanalytic education 20 years ago. Finally, in a fascinating contribution to applied analysis, Carol M. Ravenal reexamines Matisse's artwork in the context of the painter's arrested development and subsequent adult conflicts in "Henri Matisse: Love as Art - A Psychobiographical Study." These major contributions are supplemented by clinical and theoretical papers of characteristic excellence. John Gedo's probing evaluation of the "pragmatics of empathy" highlights how empathic responsiveness obliges analysts "to tailor our manner of discourse to the specific requirements of the analysand's current state." Michael Hoit argues that the hermeneutic point of view is an important addition to clinical theory, allowing analysts to understand phenomena outside the boundaries of specific schools and theories. Otto Kernberg examines the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of eating-disorder patients with borderline personality organization. Alice Rosen Soref proffers a revised understanding of the etiology and treatment of narcissistic pathology on the basis of three decades of infant research. And Samuel Weiss discusses the resistance to child analysis of parents who know their children need help but balk at the actual recommendation for treatment. In all, Volume 23 is a worthy response to the ferment of the present time. Encompassing a key period in psychoanalytic history, a scholarly investigation in applied analysis, and a thoughtful assessment of psychoanalysis and brain research, it offers a fine overview of the major tributaries of contemporary analytic scholarship. Supplement these monographic efforts with a careful selection of clinical and theoretical studies and you have an exemplary contribution to the literature. (shrink)

The issue of same-gender sexual identity has challenged our understanding of psychological development and psychological intervention throughout the century just past and continues to provoke discussion in the century upon us. Over the past three decades, psychoanalysis advanced toward a contemporary perspective, which holds that the dynamics of sexual orientation must be an important element of the psychoanalytic process, but must be approached without prejudice regarding the outcome of analytic exploration of wish and desire. Taken together, the essays in _Rethinking (...) Psychoanalysis and the Homosexualities, a thematic volume of The Annual of Psychoanalysis_, provide a developmentally grounded and clinically consequential enlargement of this basic premise. The result is a timely overview of contemporary approaches to the study of sexual orientation within psychoanalysis that highlights issues salient to clinical work with lesbian and gay patients. The section on "The Meaning of Sexualization in Clinical Psychoanalysis" demonstrates the importance of psychoanalytic study of same-gender desire and sexual orientation for analyst and analysand alike. Philips considers the analyst's own sexual identity as a factor shaping the analysand's experience of sexuality, whereas Shelby, Lynch, Roughton, and Young-Bruehl, from their various perspectives, address the problem of stigma and prejudice as they distort same-gender desire and same-gender sexual identity. Two concluding sections of the book explore the implications of a clinical psychoanalytic perspective for the study of gay and lesbian lives. Timely and essential reading for all mental health professionals, _Rethinking Psychoanalysis and the Homosexualities_ underscores the profound distance traversed by psychoanalysis in arriving at its contemporary understandings of gender, sexual identity, and sexual desire. (shrink)