This book is a defense of the methods of analytic philosophy against a recent empirical challenge to the soundness of those methods. The challenge is raised by practitioners of “experimental philosophy” and concerns the extent to which analytic philosophy relies on intuition—in particular, the extent to which analytic philosophers treat intuitions as evidence in arguing for philosophical conclusions. Experimental philosophers say that analytic philosophers place a great deal of evidential weight on people’s intuitions about hypothetical cases and thought experiments. This (...) book argues that this view of traditional philosophical method is a myth, part of “metaphilosophical folklore.” Analytic philosophy makes regular use of hypothetical examples and thought experiments, but philosophers argue for their claims about what is true or not true in these examples and thought experiments. It is these arguments, not intuitions, that are treated as evidence for the claims. The book discusses xphi and some recent xphi studies; critiques a variety of other metaphilosophical claims; examines such famous arguments as Gettier’s refutation of the JTB theory and Kripke’s Gödel Case argument against descriptivism about proper names, and shows that they rely on reasoning rather than intuition; and finds existing critiques of xphi, the “Multiple Concepts” and “Expertise” replies, to be severely lacking. (shrink)

An introduction to the long-forgotten healing methods of the Essenes—an ancient sect of Jewish mystics—that offers useful tools, meditations, and visualizations for modern-day practitioners Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946, there was little known about The Essenes, a brotherhood of holy men and women living together within a community over two thousand years ago. The Essenes considered themselves to be a separate people—not because of external signs like skin color or hair color, but because of the (...) illumination of their inner life and their knowledge of the hidden mysteries of nature unknown to other men. The Gate of Light is based on Lars Muhl’s lifelong search for God. It doesn’t claim any absolute truths but sets out to provide a practice based on Essene teachings that allows us to look at how we judge ourselves and how we live in the world. Muhl asks: What motivates us? How do we create a balance between thoughts, words, and actions? How do we align ourselves in relation to our higher self and become the universal light beings we are meant to be? The Essenes understood that everything is interactively connected and that everything is energy. For them, God was the name for the highest form of awareness, something omnipresent and—if a human wished to learn how—they could communicate with this ever-present energy; through this communication humans could realize their full potential. Drawing on this ancient knowledge, Muhl presents a complete practice to help us recognize and answer the above questions. He particularly looks at: Grief and Happiness, Balance and Awareness, Selflessness, Boredom and Renunciation, Loneliness, Gratitude, Silence and Thoughtfulness. (shrink)

Parts of the book date back to and some of the concluding remarks on ethics and the will may have been composed still earlier, when Wittgenstein admired ...

L’article esquisse une histoire de la notion de milieu en confrontant l’article de Georges Canguilhem, « Le vivant et son milieu » (1946), à celui de Leo Spitzer « Milieu et ambiance » (1942). Alors que Spitzer conteste l’opposition entre un milieu abstrait et un environnement « chaud », Canguilhem entend transformer les éléments d’une compréhension mécaniste du milieu en une idée vitaliste et productive de l’interaction mutuelle entre milieu et organisme. L’article se concentre ensuite sur la perspective littéraire et (...) esthétique de la discussion de la relation entre le vivant et son milieu, à partir de l’Histoire de la littérature anglaise de Taine. Dans deux textes de 1930 et 1931, Canguilhem présente une critique véhémente de Taine et oppose à la compréhension déterministe du milieu un concept esthétique qu’il réinvestit pour les sciences de la vie : le concept de création. En repensant la notion de milieu à travers une « esthétique du milieu », l’article conclut en opposant les critiques de Spitzer et de Canguilhem adressées à la compréhension déterministe du milieu et montre que l’opposition radicale entre détermination et création, que Canguilhem semble établir dans ses premiers textes, est reformulée dans son étude postérieure sur Le normal et le pathologique. La vie est créatrice relativement à son milieu au travers des déplacements vers un nouveau milieu, qui est lui-même, à son tour, vulnérable, précaire et inachevé. Pour penser une telle esthétique du milieu, il faut remodeler la notion d’activité artistique à partir d’un concept du vivant qui se forme dans sa confrontation constante avec son milieu. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Newly updated study surveys concept of space from standpoint of historical development. Space in antiquity, Judeo-Christian ideas about space, Newton’s concept of absolute space, space from 18th century to present. Extensive new chapter (6) reviews changes in philosophy of space since publication of second edition (1969). Numerous original quotations and bibliographical references. "...admirably compact and swiftly paced style."—Philosophy of Science. Foreword by Albert Einstein. Bibliography.

E. W. Ch. Sartorius , a forgotten lutheran theologian of the 19th century, provides a comprehensive understandig of God as love in the three volumes of his dogmatics . He sees love as the intentional relative property of the surrrender of one self-conscious particular being to another. In applying this concept to the being of God, Sartorius develops the trinity of three divine persons from the statement ‘God is love’. However, this conception seems to fail because this particular concept of (...) love implicitly presupposes a concept of individual self-consciousness. Consequently, God is “loving selfconsciousness” – three times. The main problem consists in the fact, that Sartorius, although he is able to develop the trinity from the concept of love, he is unable to show how the persons are constituted by love. However, the relationship of the notions of ordo amoris and surrender, the concept of faith as trusting in being loved and his concept of a specific relationship of the doctrine of the trinity to soteriology in order to avoid forms of “panentheism” could provide interesting suggestions for the present discussion of the doctrine of God. (shrink)

Habermas passa a atribuir, a partir de 1990, um papel central ao mundo da vida que, como fonte da racionalidade comunicativa, é capaz de se opor ao processo de dominação sistêmica e manter a autonomia dos indivíduos. O texto explicita os argumentos que levam Habermas a considerar a espontaneidade do mundo da vida como fonte que assegura a validade cognitiva e normativa das ações dos indivíduos em interação e avalia o potencial crítico desse posicionamento na educação. A ideia orientadora é (...) que o entendimento da vida escolar só pode ser atingido se levar em conta a forma de produção do mundo da vida dos atores que a compõem. (shrink)

The claim, renewed some years ago, of being able to advise on personal questions of life seems to bring philosophy into a fundamental conflict with its other claim of promoting human self-determination. However, the conflict only arises if philosophy does not sufficiently distinguish between the social orientation of self-determination towards universality and the subjective orientation of action execution. This is the case both in subjectivist mentalism and in the tradition of philosophy of language. The insufficient distinction prevents philosophy not only (...) from being able to be helpful in the case of action but also from adequately explaining its object, the human orientation of validity. Plessner clarifies the basis of the practical distinction between social validity and subjective action orientation. Against this background we can better understand Socrates’ and Wittgenstein’s views on how philosophy must proceed in discourse if it is to provide assistance in personal questions without paternalism. (shrink)

This article argues that the concept of personhood is intrinsically relational and that a relational understanding of created personhood can be derived from divine personhood and understood systematically in relation to itself, the pre-personal world and to other persons. Insofar as this set of three relationships is understood to be dislocated by sinful self-enclosedness in the penultimate reality and standing in contradiction to the ultimate reality retrospectively constituting it, the article suggests that all created personhood at present could be called (...) ‘potential’ personhood. The article then examines the concept of personhood maintained by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva in their recent paper on ‘after-birth abortion’ in comparison to Johannes Fischer’s discussion of embryonic stem cell research and personhood. In response to both, the article concludes that it is not possible at present for humans to make a concrete external identification of the divine relation that internally constitutes created personhood. As a result, the article proposes adopting a veil of ignorance with reference to the status of embryonic personhood, as it would be worse to deny the status of personhood to an actual person than to attribute personhood to a non-person. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung Nach einer Besprechung der empirischen Ergebnisse und der unterschiedlichen ontologischen Voraussetzungen neurowissenschaftlicher Forschung hinsichtlich der Willensfrage fragt diese Untersuchung, ob der menschliche Wille als frei oder als gebunden zu charakterisieren ist und ob ein angemessenes Verständnis des menschlichen Willens in ein deterministisches oder indeterministisches Weltverständnis einzubetten ist. Nachdem eine Behandlung von Luthers Position zur Fragestellung und eine Untersuchung der gegenwärtigen Debatte vorgenommen wurde, werden die Hauptthesen formuliert: Unter der Voraussetzung eines Begriffs der menschlichen Person als eines partikularen, eschatisch konstituierten, (...) gegenwärtig prozedierenden Voneinander-und-Füreinanderseienden, das unter der Alternative steht, eine ver-rückte oder zurechtgerückte Selbsterschlossenheitslage zu besitzen, ist der menschliche Wille als solcher als gebunden an verschiedene Relate zu verstehen: zu extern und intern bestimmbar Bestimmendem sowie zu extern und intern kontingent-unbestimmbar Bestimmendem. Der menschliche Wille ist daher immer gebunden. Damit einher geht eine spezifische Form des Kompatibilismus, der eine Kompatibilität sowohl zu deterministischen als auch zu indeterministischen Weltverständnissen auszudrücken hat. Am Ende werden Vorschläge zur Willensfreiheitserfahrung unter der Bedingung eines ontisch gebundenen Willens unterbreitet und Konsequenzen für den Verantwortungsbegriff gezogen. (shrink)

"Die medienästhetische Rede vom Inkarnieren, der Verkörperung oder dem embodiment teilt mit dem theologischen Verständnis der Inkarnation als ›Fleischwerdung‹ die Annahme eines möglichen Übergangs von einem immateriellen Prinzip zu etwas genuin Materiellem. Ästhetische Verkörperungen wurden zuletzt vermehrt unter dem Schlagwort des reenactment diskutiert, das darauf abzielt, eine historische Situation nach-erlebbar und damit zugänglicher zu machen. Verkörpernde Nachstellungen müssen aber nicht ausschließlich einer solchen identitären Logik verpflichtet sein, sie können vielmehr auch exzessive, hypermimetische Effekte produzieren, wie anhand der Besessenheitsrituale der Hauka (...) und ihrer filmischen Verarbeitung durch Jean Rouch in Les Maîtres Fous gezeigt werden kann. Just as the theological notion of incarnation, the media-aesthetic term ›embodiment‹ implies a transition from an immaterial principle to something genuinely material. Aesthetic embodiments are increasingly discussed un- der the keyword ›reenactment,‹ which aims to re-experience a historical situation and thus make it more accessible. Reenactments, how- ever, do not have to be bound exclusively to such a logic of identity; instead, they can also produce excessive, hypermimetic effects, as can be shown with reference to the obsession rituals of the Hauka and their cinematic adaptation in Les Maîtres Fous by Jean Rouch. ". (shrink)

The text considers the possibility of a mediatic historiography, that is, a form of historiographic writing in which the media, in this case images, participate. The central object of investigation is the strategy of reenactment that is traditionally regarded as a means of eventorientated historiography. Contemporary art has recently questioned these strategies and proposed to replace the totalizing or globalizing approach of history and historiography with a more fragmentary and critical perspective. On the backdrop of Michel Foucault’s methodological reflections on (...) history that he develops in Archeology of Knowledge, the text analyzes different forms of a politics of history of the images through three examples of reenactment taken from film, theatre and the fine arts. (shrink)

No primeiro volume de História da Sexualidade, Michel Foucault apresenta o que iria tornar-se um conceito polêmico em sua obra, bem como para seus intérpretes. Desde então, a noção de biopolítica tem polarizado as leituras da teoria de poder de Foucault e talvez haja desempenhado um papel bem mais importante do que ele jamais pretendeu. Para propor um estudo genealógico do termo “biopolítica”, é importante olhar mais de perto a noção de vida que pode haver inspirado a análise foucaultiana. Foucault (...) opera com uma noção de vida que ele não determina: vida é um correlato de técnicas e estratégias de poder e de saber, ela carece de qualquer status ontológico e é ela mesma “produzida” pela constelação de poder-saber. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps, and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may (...) freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This monograph constitutes a response to the criticisms of Christianity outlined in Nietzsche's GENEOLOGY OF MORALS, in which Nietzsche argues that Christianity is a "slave revolt" of the weak--an attempt by the impotent to bring down the vitality of the capable nobility. Scheler's response is multi-faceted but centers on Nietzsche's failure to understand the nature of Christian love. Christianity is not a destructive enterprise trying to bring everyone down to the same low level of its impotent faithful, who must put (...) their trust in the next world because they can get nowhere in this one. Rather, it attempts constructively to bring everyone up to a new level of human flourishing. Christianity's preoccupation with the poor, weak, and marginalized stems from a recognition, through divine love, of the miracle of God's creation and infinite possibilities present even in them. (shrink)

A variety of theoretical frameworks predict the resemblance of behaviors between two people engaged in communication, in the form of coordination, mimicry, or alignment. However, little is known about the time course of the behavior matching, even though there is evidence that dyads synchronize oscillatory motions (e.g., postural sway). This study examined the temporal structure of nonoscillatory actions—language, facial, and gestural behaviors—produced during a route communication task. The focus was the temporal relationship between matching behaviors in the interlocutors (e.g., facial (...) behavior in one interlocutor vs. the same facial behavior in the other interlocutor). Cross-recurrence analysis revealed that within each category tested (language, facial, gestural), interlocutors synchronized matching behaviors, at temporal lags short enough to provide imitation of one interlocutor by the other, from one conversational turn to the next. Both social and cognitive variables predicted the degree of temporal organization. These findings suggest that the temporal structure of matching behaviors provides low-level and low-cost resources for human interaction. (shrink)

(From the book cover in 2007) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness is the most thorough and comprehensive survey of contemporary scientific research and philosophical thought on consciousness currently available. Its 55 newly commissioned, peer-reviewed chapters combine state-of-the-art surveys with cutting edge research. Taken as a whole, these essays by leading lights in the philosophy and science of consciousness create an engaging dialog and unparalleled source of information regarding this most fascinating and mysterious subject.

Reductionist forms of moral realism, such as naturalist realism, are often thought immune to epistemological objections that have been raised against nonnaturalist realism in the form of reliability worries or evolutionary debunking arguments. This article establishes that reductionist realist views can only explain the reliability of our moral beliefs at the cost of incurring repugnant first-order conclusions.

This reply to five continuing commentaries on my 1991 target article on “Is human information processing conscious” focuses on six related issues: 1) whether focal attentive processing replaces consciousness as a causal agent in third-person viewable human information processing, 2)whether consciousness can be dissociated from human information processing, 3) continuing disputes about definitions of "consciousness" and about what constitutes a “conscious process” , 4) how observer-relativity in psychology relates (and does not relate) to relativity in physics, 5) whether the first-person (...) viewable causal efficacy of consciousness counts as ‘real’ causal efficacy and 6) a clarification of the sense in which first- and third-person causal accounts of mental processing are complementary and mutually irreducible. (shrink)

This paper raises a challenge to Jonathan Schaffer's priority monism. I contend that monism may be true at the actual world but fail to hold as a matter of metaphysical necessity, contrary to Schaffer's view that monism, if true, is necessarily true. My argument challenges Schaffer for his reliance on contingent physical truths in an argument for a metaphysically necessary conclusion. A counterexample in which the actual laws of physics hold but the physical history of the universe is different shows (...) that priority monism is contingently true at best. I suggest some general lessons for discussion of metaphysical dependence. (shrink)

The notion of reality in the physical world has become, during the last century, somewhat problematic. The contrast between the simple and obvious reality of the innumerable instruments, machines, engines, and gadgets produced by our technological industry, which is applied physics, and of the vague and abstract reality of the fundamental concepts of physical science, as forces and fields, particles and quanta, is doubtlessly bewildering. There has already developed a gap between pure and applied science and between the groups of (...) men devoted to the one or the other activity, a separation that may lead to a dangerous estrangement. Physics needs a unifying philosophy, expressible in ordinary language, to bridge this gulf between "reality" as thought of in practice and in theory. I am not a philosopher but a theoretical physicist. I cannot provide a well balanced philosophy of science that would take due account of the ideas developed by differing schools, but I shall endeavor to formulate some ideas which have helped me in my own struggle with these problems. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION: In accounts of the two-factor theory of delusional belief, the second factor in this theory has been referred to only in the most general terms, as a failure in the processes of hypothesis evaluation, with no attempt to characterise those processes in any detail. Coltheart and Davies attempted such a characterisation, proposing a detailed eight-step model of how unexpected observations lead to new beliefs based on the concept of abductive inference as introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce. METHODS: In this (...) paper, we apply that model to the explanation of various forms of delusional belief. RESULTS: We provide evidence that in cases of delusion there is a specific failure of the seventh step in our model: the step at which predictions from hypotheses are considered in the light of relevant evidence. CONCLUSIONS: In the two-factor theory of delusional belief, the second factor consists of a failure to reject hypotheses in the face of disconfirmatory evidence. (shrink)

Pessimists think that there is something wrong with relying on deference for one’s moral beliefs—at least if one is morally mature. Call this no deference. They also tend to think that what explains our aversion to cases of moral deference is the fact that they involve deference about moral claims. Call this moral explanation. Recently, both no deference and moral explanation have come under attack. Against no deference, some philosophers offer purported counterexamples involving moral advice. I argue that proponents of (...) this objection face a trilemma depending on how they spell out the details of their counterexamples. Against moral explanation, some philosophers offer debunking explanations of our aversion to moral deference. They present cases of non-moral deference that are troubling and argue that the feature that explains our aversion to this non-moral deference also explains our aversion to moral deference. I argue that none of these explanations (nor their conjunction) can explain all troubling cases of moral deference and that they face objections of their own. I conclude that we should be optimistic about the prospects of moral deference pessimism. (shrink)

The identity of a natural kind can be construed in terms of its causal profile. This conception is more appropriate to science than two alternatives. The identity of a natural kind is not determined by one causal role because one natural kind can have many causal roles and several functions and because some functions are shared by different kinds. Furthermore, the microstructuralist thesis is wrong: The identity of certain natural kinds is not determined by their microstructure. It is true that (...) if A and B have the same microstructural composition then a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B. However, the reverse does not hold. It is not the case that if a sample of a chemical substance A is of the same chemical substance as a sample of B then A and B have the same microstructural composition. This is because a macroscopic NK can be “multiconstituted” by different microstructures. (shrink)