This book is a study in the logic of questions (sometimes called erotetic logic). The central topics in erotetic logic have been the structure of questions and the question-answer relationship. This book doesn't neglect these problems, but much of it is focussed on other issues. The main subject is the logical analysis of certain relations between questions and the contexts of their appearance. And our aim is to elaborate the conceptual apparatus of the inferential approach to the logic of questions. (...) Questions are asked for many reasons and for different purposes. Yet, before a question is asked or posed, a questioner must arrive at it. In many cases arriving at a question resembles coming to a conclusion: there are some premises involved and some inferential thought processes take place. If we agree that a conclusion need not be "conclusive", we may say that sometimes questions can play the role of conclusions. But questions can also perform the role of premises: we often pass from some "initial" question to another question. In other words, there are inferential thought processes - we shall call them erotetic inferences - in which questions play the roles of conclusions or conclusions and premises. The inferential approach to the logic of questions focusses its attention on the analysis of erotetic inferences. This book consists of eight chapters. (shrink)

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)

Explores, at different levels, the social emotions of fellow-feeling, the sense of identity, love and hatred, and traces their relationship to one another and to the values with which they are associated. This book reviews the evaluations of love and sympathy in different historical periods and in different social and religious environments.

"The importance of questions is beyond doubt. But the degree of attention paid to them in logic and linguistics is still less than they deserve." What is a question? How to represent questions in formal languages? How to model reasoning in which questions are involved? Can we prove anything by means of pure questioning? How to model goal-directed problem solving? These are the main issues of Andrzej Wi niewski's "Questions, Inferences, and Scenarios." This book offers a state-of-the-art exposition of Inferential (...) Erotetic Logic, that is, an approach to the logic of questions focused on inferences which lead to questions as conclusions. Wi niewski characterizes semantic relations which determine validity of these inferences within the framework of Minimal Erotetic Semantics, applicable to a wide range of formal languages. He elaborates in detail the concept of erotetic search scenario, a tool for modelling problem solving. Moreover, the author presents some applications of Inferential Erotetic Logic in proof theory. Andrzej Wi niewski is one of the most prominent contemporary researchers in the logic of questions. Currently, he is a full professor at the Department of Logic and Cognitive Science, Institute of Psychology, Adam Mickiewicz University in Pozna, Poland. (shrink)

Standard models of concept learning generally focus on deriving statistical properties of a category based on data (i.e., category members and the features that describe them) but fail to give appropriate weight to the contact between people's intuitive theories and these data. Two experiments explored the role of people's prior knowledge or intuitive theories on category learning by manipulating the labels associated with the category. Learning differed dramatically when categories of children's drawings were meaningfully labeled (e.g., “done by creative children”) (...) compared to when they were labeled in a neutral manner. When categories are meaningfully labeled, people bring intuitive theories to the learning context. Learning then involves a process in which people search for evidence in the data that supports abstract features or hypotheses that have been activated by the intuitive theories. In contrast, when categories are labeled in a neutral manner, people search for simple features that distinguish one category from another. Importantly, the final study suggests that learning involves an interaction of people's intuitive theories with data, in which theories and data mutually influence each other. The results strongly suggest that straight‐forward, relatively modular ways of incorporating prior knowledge into models of category learning are inadequate. More telling, the results suggest that standard models may have fundamental limitations. We outline a speculative model of learning in which the interaction of theory and data is tightly coupled. The article concludes by comparing the results to recent artificial intelligence systems that use prior knowledge during learning. (shrink)

This paper replies to the first 36 commentaries on my target article on “Is human information processing conscious?” (Behavioral and Brain Sciences,1991, pp.651-669). The target article focused largely on experimental studies of how consciousness relates to human information processing, tracing their relation from input through to output, while discussion of the implications of the findings both for cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind was relatively brief. The commentaries reversed this emphasis, and so, correspondingly, did the reply. The sequence of topics (...) in the reply roughly follows that of the target article. The discussion begins with a reconsideration of the details of the empirical findings, whether they can be extrapolated to non-laboratory settings, and the extent to which one can rely on their use of subjective reports. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of what is meant by “conscious processing” and of how phenomenal consciousness relates to attentional processing. We then turn to broader philosophical and theoretical issues. I point out some of the reasons why I do not support epiphenomenalism, dualist-interactionism, or reductionism, and elaborate on how first- and third-person views of the mind can be regarded as complementary and mutually irreducible. I suggest how the relation of conscious experiences to their neural correlates can be understood in terms of a dual-aspect theory of information,and how this might be used to resolve some of the paradoxes surrounding the causal interactions of consciousness and brain. I also suggest that, viewed from a first-person perspective, consciousness gives purpose to existence, which allows a different way of viewing its role in evolution. (shrink)

This paper argues for the idea that the logic of questions should focus its attention on the analysis of arguments in which questions play the role of conclusions. The relevant concepts of validity are discussed and the concept of the logic of questions of a semantically interpreted formalized language is introduced.

What, in essence, characterizes the mind? According to Searle, the potential to be conscious provides the only definitive criterion. Thus, conscious states are unquestionably "mental"; "shallow unconscious" states are also "mental" by virtue of their capacity to be conscious (at least in principle); but there are no "deep unconscious mental states" - i.e. those rules and procedures without access to consciousness, inferred by cognitive science to characterize the operations of the unconscious mind are not mental at all. Indeed, according to (...) Searle, they have no ontological status - they are simply ways of describing some interesting facets of purely physiological phenomena. (shrink)

Our aim is to express in exact terms the old idea of solving problems by pure questioning. We consider the problem of derivability: "Is A derivable from Δ by classical propositional logic?". We develop a calculus of questions E*; a proof (called a Socratic proof) is a sequence of questions ending with a question whose affirmative answer is, in a sense, evident. The calculus is sound and complete with respect to classical propositional logic. A Socratic proof in E* can be (...) transformed into a Gentzen-style proof in some sequent calculi. Next we develop a calculus of questions E**; Socratic proofs in E** can be transformed into analytic tableaux. We show that Socratic proofs can be grounded in Inferential Erotetic Logic. After a slight modification, the analyzed systems can also be viewed as hypersequent calculi. (shrink)

Three semantic relations are analyzed: the relation of implication of a question by a question and a set of declarative sentences, the relation of implication of a question by a question, and the relation of strong implication of a question by a question and a set of declarative sentences. The connections between these concepts and the concepts of relative soundness, partial answerhood and presupposition are examined. The principal results are theorems about, to speak generally, epistemic reducibility of well-posed questions to (...) sequences of implied yes-no questions. (shrink)

Upon Scheler’ s death in 1928, Martin Heidegger remarked that he was the most important force in philosophy at the time. Jose Ortega y Gasset called Scheler "the first man of the philosophical paradise." The Human Place in the Cosmos, the last of his works Scheler completed, is a pivotal piece in the development of his writing as a whole, marking a peculiar shift in his approach and thought. He had been asked to provide an initial sketch of his much (...) larger works on philosophical anthropology and metaphysics--works he was not able to complete because of his early demise. Frings' new translation of this key work allows us to read and understand Scheler's thought within current philosophical debates and interests. The book addresses two main questions: What is the human being? And what is the place of the human being in the universe? Scheler responds to these questions within contexts of said two projected much larger works but not without reference to scientific research. He covers various levels of being: inorganic reality, organic reality (including plant life and psychological life), all the way up to practical intelligence and the spiritual dimension of human beings, and touching upon the holy. Negotiating two intertwined levels of being, life-energy ("impulsion") and "spirit," this work marks not only a critical moment in the development of his own philosophy but also a significant contribution to the current discussions of continental and analytic philosophers on the nature of the person. (shrink)

First-order logic is formalized by means of tools taken from the logic of questions. A calculus of questions which is a counterpart of the Pure Calculus of Quantifiers is presented. A direct proof of completeness of the calculus is given.

The concept of search scenario is explicated in terms of erotetic logic, i.e., the logic of questions. Different kinds of erotetic search scenarios are characterized. The basic logical properties of erotetic search scenarios are analyzed.

Inferential erotetic logic and inquisitive semantics give accounts of questions and model various aspects of questioning. In this paper we concentrate upon connections between inquisitiveness, being the core concept of INQ, and question raising, characterized in IEL by means of the concepts of question evocation and erotetic implication. We consider the basic system InqB of INQ, remain at the propositional level and show, inter alia, that: a disjunction of all the direct answers to an evoked question is always inquisitive; a (...) formula is inquisitive if, and only if it evokes a yes–no question whose affirmative answer expresses a possibility for the formula; inquisitive formulas evoke questions whose direct answers express all the possibilities for the formulas, and each question erotetically implies a question whose direct answers express the possibilities for the direct answers to the implying question. (shrink)

The concept of erotetic argument is introduced. Two relations between sets of declarative sentences and questions are analysed; and two classes of erotetic arguments are characterized.

This paper develops a new proof method for two propositional paraconsistent logics: the propositional part of Batens' weak paraconsistent logic CLuN and Schütte's maximally paraconsistent logic Φv. Proofs are de.ned as certain sequences of questions. The method is grounded in Inferential Erotetic Logic.

By and large, Inferential Erotetic Logic (IEL, for short) is an approach to the logic of questions which puts in the centre of attention inferential aspects of questioning. IEL is not an enterprise of the last few years only. The idea originates from the late 1980s. It evolved through time. Initially, the stress was put on the phenomenon of question raising. This changed gradually, as some forms of reasoning that involve questions have appeared to be analyzable by means of the (...) conceptual apparatus developed. In this essay I present the basics of IEL and comment on them. Most, though not all, of the ideas discussed here have been scattered across my earlier publications. The invitation from the organizers of the Asking and Answering workshop (Greifswald, September 2020) resulted in an attempt of presenting the themes of IEL in a concise but, as I hope, also comprehensible way. (shrink)

Abstract. This introductory chapter was written in 1996, for a new book of review articles on the emerging science of consciousness, specifically aimed at undergraduate and postgraduate students by experts in the relevant fields. Following on a brief history, the chapter moves on to definitions of consciousness and background philosophical issues, and then introduces a unified, non-reductionist scientific approach. It then summarises major issues for studies of consciousness in cognitive psychology, including studies of attention, memory, the extent of preconscious analysis (...) and the relation of consciousness more generally to human information processing. It then turns to the neuropsychology of consciousness, starting with some apparent neural requirements for the transition from preconscious to conscious states, various clinical dissociations of consciousness, conditions for integration (or binding) and, finally, clinical applications, including different forms of mind/body interaction and evidence for the causal efficacy of mental states. The chapter concludes that while some of the ancient problems of consciousness remain unsolved, its study has become the subject of a rapidly developing science. (shrink)

In their contribution ‘Ethics of the algorithmic prediction of goal of care preferences’1 Ferrario et al elaborate a from theory to practice contribution concerning the realisation of artificial intelligence (AI)-based patient preference prediction (PPP) systems. Such systems are intended to help find the treatment that the patient would have chosen in clinical situations—especially in the intensive care or emergency units—where the patient is no longer capable of making that decision herself. The authors identify several challenges that complicate their effective development, (...) application and evaluation—and offer solutions to them. One of these issues is the question of who should ultimately use said systems. While it is undisputed that clinicians should use these AI systems for their decision-making process, there is an ongoing debate about whether next of kin should use them as well. The authors advocate that ‘’access should be provided to both clinicians and loved ones with due explanations and as desired’. We will disagree with this assessment and explain in our commentary why it is important that surrogates provide their own assessments with as little external (AI) influence as possible. Why do next of kin actually participate in the process of preference finding and treatment decision-making? A key reason is that clinicians usually …. (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)

Author: Wiśniewski Ryszard Title: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ’S LESSON OF PHILOSOPHY (Lekcja filozofii Władysława Tatarkiewicza) Source: Filo-Sofija year: 2011, vol:.13/14, number: 2011/2-3, pages: 473-485 Keywords: WŁADYSŁAW TATARKIEWICZ, THE ORDER OF TERMS, THE METHOD SEMANTIC-HISTORIC, HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, AXIOLOGY, POLISH PHILOSOPHY Discipline: PHILOSOPHY Language: POLISH Document type: ARTICLE Publication order reference (Primary author’s office address): E-mail: www:The article discusses the important lessons that flow from the study of the way of philosophizing by Władysław Tatarkiewicz. Based on the study of his multi-scientific achievements, the (...) author has selected several core philosophical teachings, which in his opinion, should consider adopting today: 1 The primary task of philosophy is to organize concepts shaping the image of the world. 2nd Order and clarity of thought are achieved by using the method of semantic-historical analysis. 3rd The need for order and clarity leads to the history of philosophy, exploring the origin and evolution of concepts. 4th Philosophy is not yet a personal belief of man. 5th Organizing the world picture has axiological sense. 6th The most difficult issues arise in the theories of the middle range in the space between the general and very detailed, specified scientific studies. 7th The duty of the philosopher is to be interested in the history of native (Polish) philosophy. (shrink)

It was the explicit aim of my paper ‘Indexical Relativism versus Genuine Relativism’ to ‘characterize and compare’ (p. 297) two different forms of relativism. One form, exemplified by Harman’s and Dreier’s moral relativism (Harman, 1975 and Dreier, 1990), involves the claim that certain sentences express different propositions in different contexts of utterance, much like indexical sentences – hence the name ‘indexical relativism’. The other form involves the claim that the truth-value of certain contents or propositions depends on certain non-standard parameters, (...) i.e. depends not just on a possible world. The explicit conclusion of the paper was that the two forms differ significantly. Dan López de Sa (2007) seems quite happy to grant my main conclusion, namely that there is a significant difference between these two forms of relativism. However, López de Sa raises two worthwhile issues. First, he proposes a taxonomy of relativist views, one on which my ‘genuine relativism’ turns out to be the disjunction of two distinct views. Secondly, he offers an answer to a difficulty I raised for some forms of indexical relativism. I shall comment on each point. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A review of two of the strands of cultural studies that Mark Fenster contends are superior to Murray Edelman’s analysis of mass public opinion—Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, and Bourdieu’s sociology—and a more general look at work in the field of cultural studies suggests that all of these alternatives suffer from severe theoretical and methodological limitations. Future studies of culture and politics need to pose questions similar to the ones that preoccupied Edelman, but they must move beyond the political and (...) interpretive biases that have dominated cultural studies (some of which Edelman shared), as well as the questionable view of “ideology” as a matter of elite domination of the masses, rather than as a mediating, constitutive force in the process of individual opinion formation. (shrink)

What has traditionally been labelled ‘Aristotle's theory of causes’ would be more intelligible if construed as ‘Aristotle's theory of explanations’, where the term ‘explanation’ has substantially the sense of Hempel and Oppenheim, who construe explanations as deductions. For Aristotle, specifying ‘causes’ is constructing demonstrations.

Mona Simion has recently argued for a function-first norm of moral assertion. According to function-first accounts, the norm of any kind of assertion is determined by the function of that kind of assertion. She argues that, on the assumption that moral understanding is the goal of moral inquiry, the function of moral assertion is reliably generating moral understanding in others and that the norm of moral assertion should fall out of that function. In particular, she thinks the norm should be (...) such that satisfying it is the most reliable way for one’s moral assertions to generate moral understanding in others—at least when all else goes well. With this in mind, she proposes The Explanation Proffering Account of Moral Assertion. First, I argue that satisfying EPNMA is not the only or most reliable way for one’s moral assertion to generate moral understanding in one’s audience. I propose an alternative norm on which one must accompany one’s moral assertions with a maieutic speech act, i.e., an utterance in the form of a question or assertion that aims to elicit knowledge or other epistemic states from an audience. Second, I present counterexamples to EPNMA wherein speakers make moral assertions that violate EPNMA and yet they are not intuitively epistemically criticizable for their assertion. I conclude by briefly sketching an alternative account that avoids the pitfalls of EPNMA. (shrink)

In the visual system, the represented features of individual objects (shape, colour, movement, and so on) are distributed both in space and time within the brain. Representations of inner and outer event sequences arrive through different sense organs at different times, and are likewise distributed. Objects are nevertheless perceived as integrated wholes - and event sequences are experienced to form a coherent "consciousness stream." In their thoughtful article, Dennett & Kinsbourne ask how this is achieved.

The practice of medicine—and especially the patient-doctor relationship—has seen exceptional shifts in ethical standards of care over the past few years, which by and large originate in occidental countries and are then extrapolated worldwide. However, this phenomenon is blind to the fact that an ethical practice of medicine remains hugely dependent on prevailing cultural and societal expectations of the community in which it serves. One model aiming to conceptualise the dichotomous efforts for global standardisation of medical care against differing sociocultural (...) expectations is the individualism-collectivism model, with the ‘West’ being seen as individualistic and the ‘East’ being seen as collectivistic. This has been used by many academics to explain differences in approach towards ethical practice on key concepts such as informed consent and patient autonomy. However, I argue that this characterisation is incomplete and lacks nuance into the complexities surrounding cross-cultural ethics in practice, and I propose an alternative model based on the ethics of clinical care in Hong Kong, China. Core ethical principles need not be culture-bound—indeed, their very existence mandates for them to be universal and non-derogable—but instead cultural alignment occurs in the particular implementation of these principles, insofar as they respect the general spirit of contemporary ethical standards. (shrink)

The concepts of question evocation and erotetic implication play central role in Inferential Erotetic Logic. In this paper, deduction theorems for question evocation and erotetic implication are proven. Moreover, it is shown how question evocation by a finite non-empty set of declaratives can be reduced to question evocation by the empty set, and how erotetic implication based on a finite non-empty set of declaratives can be reduced to a relation between questions only.

ABSTRACT The Habermasian ideal of deliberation has long been seen as an extension of, and complement to, political action. But Diana Mutz's empirical studies of face-to-face interactions reveal a conflict between political participation and political deliberation: The more likely people are to be exposed to diverse political opinions, the less likely they are to participate, and those who participate most tend to have the least exposure to diverse political opinions. She hypothesizes, however, that the infrastructure of the Internet might allow (...) for the creation of a forum for online political debate that is sufficiently generalizable to result in deliberation. Champions of the Internet's democratic potential similarly praise its diversifying influence on political discussion and the ways in which it lowers barriers to access. Yet there is little evidence to suggest that new technologies have truly transformed political action or produced meaningful deliberation at significant levels. It appears that many of the trends and behaviors Mutz identifies in face-to-face interaction apply to digital interaction as well. (shrink)

This is a prepublication version of the final chapter from the Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. In it I re-examine the basic conditions required for a study of conscious experiences in the light of progress made in recent years in the field of consciousness studies. I argue that neither dualist nor reductionist assumptions about subjectivity versus objectivity and the privacy of experience versus the public nature of scientific observations allow an adequate understanding of how studies of consciousness actually proceed. The chapter (...) examines the sense in which the experimenter is also a subject, the sense in which all experienced phenomena are private and subjective, the different senses in which a phenomenon can nevertheless be public and observations of it objective, and the conditions for intra-subjective and intersubjective repeatability. The chapter goes on to re-examine the empirical method and how methods used in psychology differ from those used in physics. I argue that a reflexive understanding of these relationships supports a form of “critical phenomenology” that fits consciousness studies smoothly into science. (shrink)

How can one investigate phenomenal consciousness? As in other areas of science, the investigation of consciousness aims for a more precise knowledge of its phenomena, and the discovery of general truths about their nature. This requires the development of appropriate first-person, second-person and third-person methods. This book introduces some of the creative ways in which these methods can be applied to different purposes, e.g. to understanding the relation of consciousness to brain, to examining or changing consciousness as such, and to (...) understanding the way consciousness is influenced by social, clinical and therapeutic contexts. To clarify the strengths and weaknesses of different methods and to demonstrate the interplay of methodology and epistemology, the book also suggests a number of “maps” of the consciousness studies terrain that place different approaches to the study of consciousness into a broader, interdisciplinary context. (shrink)

This paper analyses the hegemony of the growth paradigm through the example of its naturalisation in capitalist production and consumption relations. Applying a combination of theoretical elements from the Marxian tradition, the Regulation approach and Bourdieusian sociology, emphasis is placed on how the growth imperative is reflected in people's minds and bodies. It becomes hegemonic because it appears to be the natural way of steering economy and society. As a result, all people – including working people – benefit from the (...) continuation of growth. To overcome the growth paradigm, activists would need to build on a crisis of the ‘objective’ structures of economy and society. (shrink)

THE "LOCATION" OF THE FEELING OF SHAME AND MAN'S WAY OF EXISTING The curious difficulties a phenomenology of shame, and of the feeling of shame, ...