In this essay I will assume that all well-developed discussions of the authenticity of responsibility are metaphysical ones. But as I intend to make use of the notion of being at a number of crucial points, I will call responsibility ontic responsibility rather than metaphysical responsibility. If ontic responsibility should be authentic, both social responsibility and its most important particular instance, legal responsibility, will be qualified by it, and we shall not be able to capture their full meaning in terms (...) of de facto accountability. As for moral responsibility, its status will also depend upon whether or not ontic responsibility is authentic. Indeed, many readers might prefer to say that "ontic responsibility" is simply another name for moral responsibility--that the question whether we are so constituted in our ontological natures as to make accountability appropriate, just, and seemly is merely the question whether moral responsibility is authentic. But there are some grounds for thinking that ontic responsibility is a wider category and that, if it is authentic, moral responsibility is a special case of it--ontic responsibility exercised in certain well-defined and very important circumstances. It is clear, for instance, that ontic responsibility covers all acts whatsoever, or at least all acts that admit of degree of excellence, so that all our work in science, in the arts, and indeed in the entire practical-productive sphere comes under it. Thus, all Max Planck's work in science from his 1879 doctoral dissertation to his famous 1900 paper would exemplify it. But most of us would probably say that only some of the ontically responsible acts performed in the course of his scientific work were also instances of moral responsibility--perhaps only those which involved relations with other persons. At any rate, in this essay I will assume that, if ontic responsibility is authentic, moral responsibility is a special case of it. It will be clear, then, that we want the notion of ontic responsibility to function in many of the ways in which the notion of free will functions in other settings. We shall see that there is some advantage in thus avoiding that vexed notion in what follows. (shrink)

Both historical treatment and critical analysis, this work by a noted physicist takes a fascinating look at a fundamental of physics, tracing its development from ancient to modern times.

First published in 1941, Marxism: Is it Science? was written to present the author's criticisms of Marxism and, in doing so, to further exemplify his 'Method of Instruction' first proposed in an earlier work. The book is divided into six parts to provide six complete presentations of Marxism and why the author considers it unscientific. The six different approaches, varying in focus and complexity, work together to give the reader a detailed overview of Marxism and the authors critique of it.

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 article engages with Plato’s justification of art and its core category, the concept of μίμησις. It will be shown that there is a sound systematic difference between two basic meanings of μίμησις in Plato. The proper understanding of this difference has considerable bearing both on the understanding of Plato and on the philosophy of art, since it enables us to bridge two gaps: First, the gap between the standpoint of the early and middle Plato with its famous criticism of (...) art, on the one hand, and the affirmative re-evaluation of art in the late period, on the other hand. Second, the gap between the two principal pre-modern paradigms employed in justifying art: the ontological paradigm of art as (re)presentation on the one side, and the modern paradigm of art as expression on the other side. (shrink)

Rousseau exerts himself to prove that all was right originally: a crowd of authors that all is now right: and I, that all will be right.—Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1...

This paper summarised the main arguments presented in "Consciousness, brain and the physical world" Philosophical Psychology (1990) to introduce a symposium on that paper. This was the first symposium on Velmans' Reflexive Model of Perception (the departure point for Reflexive Monism). This summary of the 1990 paper was followed by three critiques (by Robert Rentoul, Norman Wetherick, and Grant Gillett) followed by two replies. At the time of this upload (25 years later) many of the points in the 1991 paper (...) have become common currency, however some of the confusions about the implications of the reflexive model persist, so the discussion continues to have contemporary relevance. See academia.edu link for the entire symposium. (shrink)

Much leading thought about consciousness in the inter-war period was associated with the British intellectual C. K. Ogden. His International Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method included landmark textbooks by major psychologists including Adler, Jung, Koffka, and Piaget. His journal Psyche, included work about Behaviorism, brain chemistry, and essays such as ‘Are we becoming more conscious?’ by literary critic I. A. Richards. The chapter surveys the work from Ogden’s projects which demonstrates the greatest acuity and foresight about questions concerning (...) consciousness which preoccupy us now. It concentrates on Ogden’s other book series – especially To-Day and To-Morrow. Some of the more provocative new thinking about consciousness is to be found among its speculations on the future. In one of the pioneering transhumanist texts in this series, J. D. Bernal’s The World, the Flesh and the Devil invents the electronic cyborg. He imagines increasing longevity by transferring brains to machine hosts; hot-wiring them to instruments providing extra senses – X-ray, chemistry, but above all radio. This would enable them to be in direct wireless contact with everyone else – effectively the internet before the invention of the computer. Such interconnectivity makes imaginable a form of collective consciousness. Such ideas mesh with new thinking about language and criticism; fields in which Ogden and Richards were also pioneers. These writers poised before the threshold of computing thus raise questions which anticipate work in subsequent neuroscience, and also our moment at the dawn of Artificial Intelligence, and the questions that raises about whether consciousness can be extended, synthesized, or indeed detected. (shrink)

We shall distinguish between sortal predication and standard predication. The former kind of predication necessarily involves sortal concepts but the latter, as it is customarily viewed, does not. It is generally thought that the only essential occurrence of a concept in a standard predication is the concept being predicated. In this paper, we shall put forward an alternative view. We shall propose to understand standard predication as a cognitive act essentially requiring sortal concepts. We shall call this view conceptual predication (...) sortalism and ground it on the basis of epistemic-semantic reasons. Concepts are understood as intersubjectively realizable capacities or abilities that fulfill particular cognitive roles, such as those of classification, categorization, individuation, and referring. (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)

Two eye-tracking experiments investigated how and when pointing gestures and location descriptions affect target identification. The experiments investigated the effect of gestures and referring expressions on the time course of fixations to the target, using videos of human gestures and human voice, and animated gestures and synthesized speech. Ambiguous, yet informative pointing gestures elicited attention and facilitated target identification, akin to verbal location descriptions. Moreover, target identification was superior when both pointing gestures and verbal location descriptions were used. These findings (...) suggest that gesture not only operates as a context to verbal descriptions, or that verbal descriptions operate as a context to gesture, but that they complement one another in reference resolution. (shrink)

In the middle period of the century of American thought with which our symposium is concerned, there was one idea which so far overshadowed all others that we may fairly confine our attention to it. That idea was evolution.

istovremeno otkriva Božje tragove. Štoviše, po njemu je upravo pomoću prirodnih znanosti moguće uhvatiti i shvatiti Božju za-misao. Ovakvo gledanje na prirodu u XVIII. stoljeću je sačinjavalo sukus »prirodne teologije«. No, Einsteinov život i djelo se smještaju cijela dva stoljeća kasnije. Stoga je sasvim na mjestu istraživanje nekih teoloških implikacija Einsteinove fizikalne slike svijeta. Jer upravo je Einstein svojim najvažnijim prirodoznanstvenim otkrićima, točnije specijalnom teorijom relativnosti i općom teorijom relativnosti istovremeno »pokopao« dva i pol stoljeća dugu vladavinu newtonovske slike svemira, (...) bazirane na fizikalnim postulatima klasične mehanike, i postavio solidne temelje za uspostavu nove slike svemira, bazirane na fizikalnim postulatima kvantne mehanike i na načelu neodređenosti. Tom je epohalnom obratu, u smislu znanstvene revolucije i smjene paradigme , kumovao Einstein, koji je doslovno potkopao tradicionalne temelje poimanja stvarnosti, svodeći takoreći sav problem na jednu konstataciju: »Jedina stvar koja je neshvatljiva o svijetu jest ta da je on shvatljiv« . A ta je činjenica uvjetovala burnu filozofsku i teološku raspravu koja traje do danas. No, na pitanje canterburyjskog nadbiskupa R. Th. Davidsona: »Kakav bi učinak relativnost mogla imati na religiju?«, Einstein je bez oklijevanja odgovorio: »Nikakav. Relativnost je čisto znanstvena stvar i nema ništa s religijom.« Istina, direktno ne baš, ali indirektno veoma kompleksan i izazovan učinak. Stoga su u istraživanjima teoloških implikacija Einsteinove fizikalne slike svijeta dva teološka pitanjaneizbježna. Prvo, što točno znači riječ ‘Bog’ za Einsteina? Drugo, koje implikacije ima priziv na Boga za Einsteinovu matematiku i fiziku? Budući da, nasuprot uvjerenju mnogih u Einsteinov ateizam, postoji također uvjerenje mnogih u njegovo duboko religiozno iskustvo koje se temeljilo na štovanju »misterija« svemira, nameće se i treće, najzahtjevnije teološko pitanje, čiji odgovor doduše ne ovisi o odgovorima na prethodna dva pitanja, ali itekako može baciti dragocjeno svjetlo na njihov smisao i značenje. Naime, i židovska i kršćanska i islamska teologija polaze od vjere u jednoga Boga kao Stvoritelja svijeta. Svijet je, stoga, eminentno stvorenje, tj. učinak Božje stvarateljske volje, dakako, misleći pritom pod pojmomsvijeta cjelokupnu materijalnu stvarnost, a ne samo ljudski svijet. Teologija, dakle, govori o svijetu kao stvorenju, dok prirodne znanosti govore o svijetu kao prirodi, tj. govore o prirodnom svijetu. To je razlog zašto kršćanska teologija ne može ostati postrance glede načina prirodoznanstvenog opisivanja svijeta, budući da je u samu narav teologije upisan zahtjev za neprestanim preispitivanjem uvjeta i mogućnosti usklađivanja tih opisivanja s pretpostavljenomvjerom u Bog kao Stvoritelja svijeta. Židovska i kršćanska vjera u stvaranje svijeta potvrđuje da ama baš ništa ne postoji što ne bi bilo stvoreno od Boga, pa tako ni materija. Dakle, treće teološko pitanje možemo formulirati ovako: Kakav je odnos realno moguć između Boga i njegova stvorenja u kontekstu nove – prirodoznanstvene – slike svijeta?The research of religious experience of great minds since ever represents demanded, but yetprovocative and controversial enterprise. And when that research is focused on one of the mostrenowned physicists of the twentieth century, which could also mean of all times, Albert Einstein, than the subject obtains in weight, but no doubt also in attractiveness. Thisfactis due to the pureevidence of Einstein’svery often mentions of religionand God in hisscientificand popular writings. Maybe often mentions of Einstein’spersonal views of religionandGod arefar moresignificant in his private letters and various public meetings with people.For example, Max Jammer,a philosopher,physicist, and former Rector of the Bar-IlanUniversityof Jerusalem in Israel, illuminating meticulously Einstein’sintimate, e.g. personal,andprofessional,e.g. scientific, relationto religion,affirms that his physical cognitions andhis understanding of religion are profoundly bound. For Einstein, in such supposed complex ofrelations, the cognition of nature simultaneously reveals Divine traces. Moreover, according tohim precisely by means of natural sciences becomes possible to capture and comprehend Divinethought. Indeed, such view of nature in eighteenth century formed a core of natural theology.However, Einstein’s life and work find place two and a half centuries later. Therefore it is aright place to research some theological implications of Einstein’s physical, e.g. scientific, viewof world, because just Einstein by his most important scientific discoveries, more exactly byspecial and general theory of relativity, simultaneously “buried” two anda half centuries dominated Newtonean mechanistic worldview, based on physical postulates ofclassical mechanics, and placed solid foundations for later establishing a new worldview, basedon physical postulates of quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. Behind this epochmakingturn, in terms of scientific revolutionand paradigm shift , was Einstein wholiterallyundermined the traditional foundations of comprehensionsof reality,reducing,so tospeak,a whole issue at one sentence: “The only thing that is incomprehensibleabout the worldisthat it is comprehensible”. This whole story has stipulated tempestuous philosophicaland theological debates, and these debates aregoing on up to nowadays. On the quest ofRandallThomas Davidson, the Archbishopof Canterbury: “What effect relativitywould haveonreligion?”Einstein without hesitation replied:“None. Relativity is a purelyscientific matterandhas nothing to do with religion”.Is this true? Indeed, none could be true for directeffects,butthose indirectprovokedvery complex and defiant challenges for theological explanations ofthecreatedreality.Thereforetwo theological questions seem to be unavoidable within researchoftheological implications of Einstein’sworldview.First, what exactly means a word‘God’forEinstein?Second, what implications have an appeal to God for Einstein’smathematics andphysics?Since vis-à-vis conviction of many in Einstein’satheism, thereis also conviction ofmanyin his deep religiousexperience originally based on devotion of “mystery” of the universe,than raises the thirdand the most demanded theological question, whose answer to be suredoesn’tdepend upon answers on previoustwo, but can cast some light on their true meaning.Namely,Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theology is presupposinga faith in one God as Creatorofthe world. Thereforethe world is eminently creationor directeffect of the agency of Divinecreativewill. The word‘world’embraces herean entirematerial reality,and not only the worldofman. Consequently,theology speaks about world as creation,while natural sciences speakaboutworld as naturethat is as natural world. This is the motive why Christian theology cannotremainat a distance fromfashion of natural-scientific description of the world, since it is inscribedin the same coreof theology a demand for continuous reexaminationof conditions andpossibilitiesfor harmonizing of those descriptions with supposed faith in one God as Creatorofthe world. Jewish and Christian faith in the creationof the world confirms that just nothingexists,neither matter as well, without Divine creativewill. Now the thirdtheological questionsoundslike this: What a relationis reallypossible between God and His creationin the contextofa new – natural-scientific – worldview? (shrink)