In this commentary, I examine John Tienson’s argument that reflection on the epistemic situation of the Cartesian meditator suggests that intentional content is narrow. My aim is to show how his argument is closely connected to another prominent objection to externalism—the McKinsey argument.

La notion d'espace sonore est devenue de plus en plus prégnante dans le domaine musical, plus particulièrement dans la musique électroacoustique. Mais comment la définir? Cette simple interrogation, dont la réponse semble évidente soulève cependant, lorsqu'elle est approfondie, une multitude d'ambiguïtés, sources de nouvelles réflexions. Comment l'écoute appréhende-t-elle l'espace? Comment s'immerge-t- elle en lui? Qu'appréhende-t-on lorsqu'on écoute? Et finalement, qu'est-ce qu'un son? Quelles en sont les limites spatiales et temporelles? Lorsque l'écoute se confronte à l'espace sonore, où se situe la (...) frontière entre perception et imagination? Tout au long du présent ouvrage, l'auteur essaie de mettre en évidence l'empreinte effective de l'écoute dans la structuration de l'espace. Il tente de montrer, en s'appuyant sur les théories esthétiques, pourquoi l'espace n'est pas pris en compte par les pensées sur la musique avant le XXe siècle. A partir de cette observation et des dernières recherches phénoménologiques de Maurice Merleau-Ponty, il met en lumière le rôle essentiel du corps de l'auditeur dans notre perception de l'espace. Ensuite, il témoigne de la façon dont les compositeurs, à partir de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle et jusqu'à aujourd'hui, n'ont cessé de développer une implication active de l'écoute, ce qui a progressivement favorisé l'émergence d'un espace musical dynamique et mouvant. Puis, au terme de sa réflexion, à l'aide des travaux sur l'énaction du neurobiologiste Francisco J. Varela, Renaud Meric s'emploie à reconstruire le lien esthétique étroit entre l'espace, l'écoute et l'imagination, lien encore peu examiné, pourtant fondamental pour comprendre notre relation complexe à la musique. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers argue that the mind is extended – that is, its boundary lies beyond the skin. In this essay, I will criticize this conclusion. However, I will also defend some of the more controversial elements of Clark and Chalmers's argument. I reject their conclusion because I think that their argument shows that a seemingly innocuous assumption, about internal states and processes, is flawed. My goal is not to conclusively refute Clark and Chalmers's conclusion. My aim is only to (...) reveal the best alternative for those who remain skeptical about the existence – or, perhaps, even the possibility – of extended minds. (shrink)

I elaborate and defend a set of metaphysical and epistemic claims that comprise what I call the acquaintance approach to introspective knowledge of the phenomenal qualities of experience. The hallmark of this approach is the thesis that, in some introspective judgments about experience, (phenomenal) reality intersects with the epistemic, that is, with the subject’s grasp of that reality. In Section 1 of the paper I outline the acquaintance approach by drawing on its Russellian lineage. A more detailed picture of the (...) approach emerges in succeeding sections, which respond to a range of objections. Some critics charge that approaches of this sort are overly idealized, in that they ignore the cognitive flaws and limitations of actual human beings. I begin to address these worries in Section 2, by arguing that the epistemic commitments of the acquaintance approach are in fact relatively modest. In Section 3, I sketch a picture of introspective reference that explains how phenomenal reality can intersect with the epistemic in a phenomenal judgment, as the acquaintance approach requires. Drawing on this picture of introspective reference, Section 4 sets out a practical strategy for achieving knowledge by acquaintance. Some contemporary acquaintance theorists (BonJour 2003, Fumerton 1996) employ demanding epistemic standards for knowledge by acquaintance, standards beyond those mandated by the acquaintance approach. In Section 5 I show that instances of introspective knowledge that meet less demanding standards can satisfy the acquaintance approach’s epistemic commitments. The final sections concern the most direct challenges to the acquaintance approach, which target the claim that phenomenal reality intersects with the epistemic. According to one such challenge, this claim is belied by the fact that possessing a phenomenal concept is a matter of having certain dispositions. Section 6 draws on a discussion by Sosa (2003) to articulate this challenge, and responds to it on behalf of the acquaintance approach. Section 7 addresses Stalnaker’s (2008) worry that, if phenomenal reality intersected with the epistemic, phenomenal information would be incommunicable. (shrink)

Alas, things are not quite so simple. As James implies, the term ‘introspection’ literally means ‘looking within’, but of course we do not visually inspect the interiors of our crania. What unites proponents of introspection is the claim that we can recognize our own mental states through some sort of attention—a non-visual ‘looking’—whose immediate objects are thoughts or sensations within oneself, in a non-spatial sense of ‘within’. (The term ‘introspection’ is occasionally given an ecumenical gloss, to refer to any method (...) of knowing one’s own mental states, and not just self-directed attention. But the more restrictive use is standard, and provides the topic of the current entry.) As we will see, some contemporary philosophers and psychologists doubt that any such introspective process underlies self-knowledge. (shrink)

Charles Siewert offers a persuasive argument to show that the presence of certain phenomenal features logically suffices for the presence of certain intentional ones. He claims that this shows that phenomenal features are inherently intentional. I argue that he has not established the latter thesis, even if we grant the logical sufficiency claim. For he has not ruled out a rival alternative interpretation of the relevant data, namely, that intentional features are inherently phenomenal.

"Self-knowledge" is commonly used in philosophy to refer to knowledge of one's particular mental states, including one's beliefs, desires, and sensations. It is also sometimes used to refer to knowledge about a persisting self -- its ontological nature, identity conditions, or character traits. At least since Descartes, most philosophers have believed that self-knowledge is importantly different from knowledge of the world external to oneself, including others' thoughts. But there is little agreement about what precisely distinguishes self-knowledge from knowledge in other (...) realms. Partially because of this disagreement, philosophers have endorsed competing accounts of how we acquire self-knowledge. These accounts have important consequences for the scope of mental content, for mental ontology, and for personal identity. (shrink)

How does one know one's own beliefs, intentions, and other attitudes? Many responses to this question are broadly empiricist, in that they take self-knowledge to be epistemically based in empirical justification or warrant. Empiricism about self-knowledge faces an influential objection: that it portrays us as mere observers of a passing cognitive show, and neglects the fact that believing and intending are things we do, for reasons. According to the competing, agentialist conception of self-knowledge, our capacity for self-knowledge derives from our (...) rational agency—our ability to conform our attitudes to our reasons, and to commit ourselves to those attitudes through avowals. This paper has two goals. The first is exegetical: to identify agentialism's defining thesis and precisely formulate the agentialist challenge to empiricism. The second goal is to defend empiricism from the agentialist challenge. I propose a way to understand the role of agency in reasoning and avowals, one that does justice to what is distinctive about these phenomena yet is compatible with empiricism about self-knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access to (...) dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze. (shrink)

Externalism about mental content is now widely accepted. It is therefore surprising that there is no established definition of externalism. I believe that this is a symptom of an unrecognized fact: that the labels 'mental content externalism' -- and its complement 'mental content internalism' -- are profoundly ambiguous. Under each of these labels falls a hodgepodge of sometimes conflicting claims about the organism's contribution to thought contents, the nature of the self, relations between the individual and her community, and the (...) epistemic availability of thoughts. This situation stems from the fact that contributors to debates about externalism differ in how they understand 'internal property'; these differences reveal (or, perhaps, generate) disparate conceptions of what is at issue in these debates. I argue that this situation is irremediable. There is no way to understand 'internal property' that will conform with prevailing beliefs about the nature of internalism and externalism, and with the usual taxonomy of leading positions. This ambiguity carries a heavy price: participants in these debates often argue at cross-purposes, disagreeing even on the nature of the evidence that could settle the question of externalism. Progress on the broad range of issues associated with these debates requires that we abandon the categories 'internalism' and 'externalism'. I close by suggesting a promising avenue for future research related to these issues. (shrink)

Some physicalists (Balog 2012, Howell 2013), and most dualists, endorse the acquaintance response to the Knowledge Argument. This is the claim that Mary gains substantial new knowledge, upon leaving the room, because phenomenal knowledge requires direct acquaintance with phenomenal properties. The acquaintance response is an especially promising way to make sense of the Mary case. I argue that it casts doubt on two claims often made on behalf of physicalism, regarding parsimony and mental causation. I show that those who endorse (...) the acquaintance response face special obstacles to invoking parsimony in an argument for physicalism. And I show how acknowledging the phenomenon of acquaintance can ease the dualist’s problems with mental causation, by dispelling three key objections to epiphenomenalism. The most challenging of these objections is that epiphenomenalism blocks an evolutionary explanation of the so-called “hedonic/utility match”. I propose that pleasures and pains, while themselves epiphenomenal, can nonetheless explain positive and negative associations with stimuli, associations that can contribute to fitness. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the method of transparency --determining whether I believe that p by considering whether p -- does not explain our privileged access to our own beliefs. Looking outward to determine whether one believes that p leads to the formation of a judgment about whether p, which one can then self-attribute. But use of this process does not constitute genuine privileged access to whether one judges that p. And looking outward will not provide for access to (...) dispositional beliefs, which are arguably more central examples of belief than occurrent judgments. First, one’s dispositional beliefs as to whether p may diverge from the occurrent judgments generated by the method of transparency. Second, even in cases where these are reliably linked — e.g., in which one’s judgment that p derives from one’s dispositional belief that p — using the judgment to self-attribute the dispositional belief requires an ‘inward’ gaze. (shrink)

This book draws the limits of our thoughts and consciousness between the mind and mind-independent reality by using mathematical logic with the support of neurology. The author combines the Analytical and Continental traditions with each other's virtues. If Kant were alive today, he would have had to write such a book. Diagnosing the limits between immanence and transcendence of the consciousness depends on defining some transcendental a priori categories in between as some basic axioms of the mind. Although this is (...) a paradoxical attempt every philosopher falls into, the author non-paradoxically identifies these non-intentional cognitive categories by using mathematical category theory. This basic model of the mind allows us to follow the logical possibilities in between that the mind can set up in its relationship with mind-independence. In this way, the author defines the intentional categories of consciousness by using mathematical set theory and obtains a self-representational higher-order theory of consciousness (SHOT). Finally, he combines the intentional and non-intentional categories with an algebraic topography and obtains a model of the mind. The architectural structure of the mind is the problematic skeleton of philosophy with all its sub-branches as a human aura that can be traced throughout the six Cartesian meditations. The philosophical anthropology depicted eventually emerged as a purely naturalistic, shamanic prototype metaphysics radically different from the monotheistic Western tradition that began with Plato. The reasoning had started from mathematics, but unexpectedly arrived at an archaic metaphysics. This philosophical theory is called "Anthropogonia", after Hesiod's Theogonia. After Anthropogonia, logically, truth-seekers in these ancient, imperial religions must retreat from their historically constructed Platonic realist theology to their shamanic roots. The naturalist architecture of the mind requires such a naturalized doctrine and art. (shrink)

The plain man thinks that material objects must certainly exist, since they are evident to the senses. Whatever else may be doubted, it is certain that anything you can bump into must be real; this is the plain man’s metaphysic. This is all very well, but the physicist comes along and shows that you never bump into anything: even when you run your hand along a stone wall, you do not really touch it. When you think you touch a thing, (...) there are certain electrons and protons, forming part of your body, which are attracted and repelled by certain electrons and protons in the thing you think you are touching, but there is no actual contact. … The electrons and protons themselves, however, are only crude first approximations, a way of collecting into a bundle either trains of waves or the statistical probabilities of various different kinds of events. Thus matter has become altogether too ghostly to be used as an adequate stick with which to beat the mind. —Bertrand Russell, “What is the Soul?” 193.. (shrink)

The main claim of the famous paper “The Extended Mind”, written by Clark and Chalmers (CC), is that the mind could literally extend into the external world. Among the many opponents of this claim, Robert Rupert has raised two main objections against it. The first, depending on the acceptance or denial of the possible 4th feature the hypothesis of extended cognition (HEC) is either insignificant or implausible and the second, external cognitive states are so immensely different from internal ones that (...) they should be counted as distinct. In this paper, I will not only answer Rupert’s criticisms through system-respond and differences in R-properties, but I will, in the end, also respond to the criticisms on extended mind, which are based on the observation that it is not as groundbreaking as it first appeared to be, and claim that even if that is the case, it doesn’t posit a problem to its significance. (shrink)

Goldberg (2003) defends externalism from Boghossian's (1998) version of the "armchair knowledge" objection. I argue here that, while Goldberg's challenge blocks a different version of this objection, it does not directly block Boghossian's version. And Goldberg's approach is not promising as a response to Boghossian's version of the armchair knowledge objection.

My dissertation has three interrelated aims: to defend introspectivism, the view that the deliverances of introspection should be basic data for philosophical theories of the mind, from pivotal objections which inspire the currently prevailing anti-introspectivist approach to mentality; to advance a substantive account of introspection; and to lay the groundwork for a more general theory about the mental. ;I begin by analyzing a host of philosophical problems about the mind; in each, I isolate the source of perplexity in an epistemic (...) factor. The body of the thesis is devoted to elucidating the ontological and epistemological status of mind by considering, in turn, phenomenality and intentionality. ;Physicalism lacks the resources to explain the individual subject's greater epistemic authority regarding the phenomenal as compared to the physical. My detailed account of phenomenal state introspection is therefore preferable to the physicalist explanations of phenomenal knowledge; its consequences include a counterexample to a widely-accepted constraint on concept possession and a minor modification to one familiar theory of de se reference. ;Similarly, functionalist reduction of intentional states cannot countenance our refusal to defer to empirical science regarding one's occurrent mental states to the same extent that we defer regarding physical states. My account of introspection, which does justice to the measure of authority we retain about our own intentional states, undermines both functionalism and content externalism about such states. ;Grave difficulties face each of the four currently popular views about the relation between phenomenality and intentionality. According to my alternative, occurrent phenomenal states and occurrent intentional states are importantly different yet share an epistemic feature which distinguishes them from physical states: our deference to empirical science regarding such occurrent states is limited in a way that our deference regarding physical states is not. The key to understanding the mind is thus intimately related to the primary source of philosophical problems about it, namely, the disparity between our knowledge of the mental and our knowledge of the physical. (shrink)

When read as demands for justification, these questions seem absurd. We don’t normally ask people to substantiate assertions like “I think it will rain tomorrow” or “I have a headache”. There is, at the very least, a strong presumption that sincere self-attributions about one’s thoughts and feelings are true. In fact, some philosophers believe that such self-attributions are less susceptible to doubt than any other claims. Even those who reject that extreme view generally acknowledge that there is some salient epistemic (...) difference between (a) one’s belief that she thinks it will rain tomorrow, or that she has a headache, and (b) her belief that it is raining, or that another person has a headache. (shrink)

Farkas’ ambitious agenda is to advance a strongly internalist account of the mental. She makes impressive strides towards achieving this goal. Along the way, she presents important new arguments on a number of topics, including: how best to understand the ‘twin’ cases used in debates about content, the alleged incompatibility of content externalism and privileged access, and the prospects for defending Frege’s claim that sense determines reference. In this review, I survey a number of her arguments and raise some questions (...) about her proposed criterion for "mental". (shrink)

I defend one leading strand of Descartes's thought against feminist criticism. I will show that Descartes's “first-person” approach to our knowledge of minds, which has been criticized on feminist grounds, is at least compatible with key feminist views. My argument suggests that this strand of Cartesianism may even bolster some central feminist positions.

The definitive statement of the Knowledge Argument was formulated by Frank Jackson, in a paper entitled “Epiphenomenal Qualia” that appeared in The Philosophical Quarterly in 1982. Arguments in the same spirit had appeared earlier (Broad 1925, Robinson 1982), but Jackson’s argument is most often compared with Thomas Nagel’s argument in “What is it Like to be a Bat?” (1974). Jackson, however, takes pains to distinguish his argument from Nagel’s. This entry will follow standard practice in focusing on Jackson’s argument, though (...) I will also describe the main points of alleged similarity and dissimilarity between these two arguments. (shrink)

In self-attributing beliefs and desires, we exploit a method that is different from our methods for attributing such states to others. On one traditional diagnosis, this difference stems from the subject’s exclusive access to introspective evidence. Gallois rejects the “access to evidence” model of the epistemic difference between self-knowledge and other-knowledge; in this ambitious book he provides a non-introspectivist alternative account of first-person authority. His intriguing proposal is that rational subjects can know their consciously held propositional attitudes without observing their (...) own states. While he allows that we sometimes have introspective evidence for our own propositional attitudes, he is deeply suspicious about the power often accorded to such evidence. Robust conceptions of rationality and state consciousness weigh heavily in Gallois’ arguments and, I think, threaten to trivialize his claim that we enjoy first-person authority. But by departing from introspectivist accounts of self-knowledge, Gallois has made a provocative opening move in a gambit which promises to advance our understanding of the epistemic difference between self-knowledge and other-knowledge. (shrink)

With this provocative book, Quassim Cassam aspires to reorient the philosophical study of self-knowledge so as to bring its methodology and subject matter into line with recognizably human concerns. He pursues this reorientation on two fronts. He proposes replacing what he sees as the field’s standard subject, an ideally rational being he calls Homo Philosophicus, with a more realistic Homo Sapiens. And he proposes shifting the field’s primary focus from ‘narrow epistemological concerns’ to issues reflecting ‘what matters to humans’, such (...) as knowledge of one’s own character and the moral significance of self-knowledge. Cassam also contributes to this field: he advances an inferentialist account of self-knowledge and a moderate instrumentalism about self-knowledge’s value. (shrink)

Gertler argues that, in some introspective judgments about experience, phenomenal reality intersects with one's grasp of that reality to the effect that one can have knowledge by acquaintance. This new version of the acquaintance theory depends on the idea that some introspective judgments about experience can be justified by the fact that the phenomenal property of an experience is a component of the introspective judgment about the experience. The goal of this paper is to show that even this most (...) promising version of the acquaintance theory is not successful. For this goal, in particular, I argue that even if we grant that, in the relevant cases, the phenomenal property of an experience is a component of an introspective judgment, this fact can hardly play the epistemic role that Gertler envisions. I establish this on the basis of two internalist requirements for reasons, namely, the evaluability condition and the endorsement condition. On the former condition, a reason for justifying a judgment must be the kind of thing that can be evaluated as correct or incorrect. And on the latter condition, having a reason for justifying a judgment requires that the subject endorse the reason as correct. (shrink)

Privileged Access provides a very valuable survey of contemporary philosophical views and issues on the classical topic of self-knowledge. The book is in part an anthology of previously published papers, but it also contains nine new essays, most of which deal directly with the issue of privileged access to one’s own mental states.

Ḥadīths have been preserved and recorded in various ways since the Companions. These activities continued dur-ing the Tābiīn (the successors of the Companions) Period. So much so that these methods have formed the infra-structure of other methods that will emerge later. In this context, before the 70's (A.H.), works named al-Aṭrāf appeared. However, these first works consisted of the notes that they wrote some of the ḥadīths before coming to the science assemblies to help students remember in ḥadīth learning. Ḥadīth (...) scholars have adopted and applied this method in a very short time. Thus, this method also provided the opportunity for the formation of the first written ḥadīth documents. In addition, with the writing of ḥadīth works, it has turned into a system of al-Taṣnīf and al-Takhrīj in order to make maximum use of these books and to reach the source of a narration that is tried to be found. As a result, al-Aṭrāf literature, which can be evaluated as index, has emerged. As a matter of fact, the first examples of this literature, arranged alphabetically according to the names of the Companions or ḥadīth texts, started to be given since the 4th (A.H.) century. In this way, the way to quickly benefit from the accumulation of the ḥadīth area has been opened. This article focuses on the historical adventure of al-Aṭrāf and their contributions to the ḥadīth field, as well as literature knowledge of the works of al-Aṭrāf which are of great importance for both al-Kitābah, al-Taṣnīf and al-Takhrīj.Summary: In order to understand and practice the religion of Islām, great efforts have been made both in the past and later periods in order to convey the words, verbs, interpretations and qualifications of the Prophet to the next genera-tions as they are protected from all kinds of falsification and changes. This process, which started with memoriza-tion and partly writing at the beginning, has gained momentum with the use of other methods since the period of Tābiīn. In this context, the method of aṭrāf was started to be used to facilitate memorization, to be a reminder, and to transmit the ḥadīth through the hearing of the ḥadīth sheikh. The first examples of this method were seen by Muḥammad b. Sīrīn during his participation of his teacher Abīde/Ubayda Salmān in the scholarly assembly. At this stage, the relevant method was manifested as writing a passage from the beginning of the ḥadīth. Thus, the aforementioned method, which had great contributions in recording and memorizing ḥadīths in accordance with the original, has gained widespreadness and application among the ḥadīth scholars like Ubeydullaḥ b. Omar, Shu’bah b. al-Ḥajjāj, Sufyān as-Sawrī, Mālik b. Anas, Ismāīl b. Ayyāş and Vakī b. Jarrāḥ in a very short time. In this context, Yazīd b. Zuray’ stated that he went to his teacher without his aṭrāf work of ḥadīths which he transmitted from Shu’bah and listened to ḥadīth in this way. Therefore, this mentioned event is important in terms of putting forth that Shu’bah allowed the aṭrāf method in his assemblies. The method was used by Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal, who traveled to Madīnah to convey the reports recorded with the mentioned method of his teacher Abū Alḳama al-Farawī and at the same time listen to the related transfers from him, but who could not reach his goal. Therefore, the related narrations show that aṭrāf method was used effectively by ḥadīth scholars to remember the ḥadīths in the 1st and 2nd centuries, so sections from the narrations were written during the preparatory stage before coming to the scholarly assembly. Ultimately, the importance of these works, which manifest in different ways and offer great contributions to writing, is an undeniable reality for the history of ḥadīth.Aṭrāf, the plural form of taraf that literally means the side and edge of something, mean a section, phrase or first part that indicates the whole of the ḥadīth. This method, along with the formation of ḥadīth literature, has been started to be given as a name to the works organized alphabetically according to the name of the Companions or ḥadīth texts by mentioning some of the ḥadīths with the 4th century. In this sense, aṭrāf has started to become a unique literature in a sort of taṣnīf and takhrīj method in order to make use of the ḥadīth writing easier.Aṭrāf studies may aim to bring together the isnāḍs (chains of transmitters) in all books, or they can be limited to the chains in certain books. Aṭrāf books contain the ḥadīths in the Ṣaḥīḥān or Kutub al-Sittah and are written in alphabetical form based on the name of the companions or according to the texts of ḥadīth. The first of these, which has the attribute of the musnad in a sense, is arranged in alphabetical order according to the name of the Companion, and if there are many people who narrate from him, according to the names of the tābiīn and taba-i tābiīn (successors of the tābiīn). Accordingly, the narrations of each companion were determined and listed in al-phabetical order in aṭrāfs in musnad-type, and a passage was written from the ḥadīths and marked as books/chapters in the places of relevant narration. On the other hand, the second type of aṭrāf books were ar-ranged by giving a few words from a section that allows remembering the head or all of the ḥadīths without in-cluding chains, and then placing these texts in alphabetical order.The type of aṭrāf offers the opportunity to see different chains of narrations together and provides many facilities for the ḥadīth researchers. Therefore, ḥadīth researchers show great interest in this genre. Aṭrāfs provide many benefits for both ḥadīth chain and text. In this respect, it is possible to talk about many advantages of the ḥadīth to its transmister such as the determination of mutawātīr, garīb, azīz, mashhūr, mutābī or the testimony of ḥadīth; to provide facility to make a reputation research of a riwāyah (narration), to provide an opportunity to determine the location of the narrations in the primary sources; to detect the link or any blackout in the chain, to reach the nu-merical knowledge of ḥadīth narrated by a companion or other narrators, to obtain information about narrators whose identity is not explicitly stated, to know the first narrator, to provide the protection of the ḥadīths from taḥrīf or alteration, to give the opportunity to identify the subject they contain, to be able to obtain text integrity by getting various chains, the detection of the sabab al-wurūd (the context of ḥadīth).Due to the contributions we have mentioned above, many books on aṭrāf literature that started with Abu’l-Ḥasen Ali b. Omar ad-Dārakutnī have been published. Among them Aṭrāfu’s-ṣaḥīḥayn/el-Jem`u bayna’s-ṣaḥīḥayn by Abū Mas`ūd Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Ubayd ad-Dimashkī, Aṭrāfu’s-ṣaḥīḥayn by Abū Muḥammad Ḥalaf b. Muḥammad b. Ali al-Vasiṭī, Zaḫāiru’l-mavārīs fi’d-dalālati alā mavāzi`i’l-hadīs by Abdülganī b. İsmāīl en-Nāblūsī and Tuḥfatu’l-ashrāf bi ma`rifati’l-aṭrāf by Abu’l-Ḥajjāj Yūsuf b. Abdurrahman el-Mizzī can be mentioned. Some of the related works are arranged in musnad style while others are arranged according to the first word of ḥadīth texts. As a result, the method of aṭrāf has become a kind of indexer in order to facilitate reaching the source of the re-ports and make the highest level of use required by the classification and bookings of the ḥadīths in the 3rd centu-ry. These works, arranged alphabetically in the name of the Companions or according to the texts of the ḥadīth, have taken their place in the history of the ḥadīth with their many examples, both in the form of taṣnīf and the method of takhrīj by mentioning a part of the ḥadīth by the head. (shrink)

Joel Feinberg : In Memoriam. Preface. Part I: INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURE AND VALUE OF PHILOSOPHY. 1. Joel Feinberg: A Logic Lesson. 2. Plato: "Apology." 3. Bertrand Russell: The Value of Philosophy. PART II: REASON AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 1. The Existence and Nature of God. 1.1 Anselm of Canterbury: The Ontological Argument, from Proslogion. 1.2 Gaunilo of Marmoutiers: On Behalf of the Fool. 1.3 L. Rowe: The Ontological Argument. 1.4 Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Five Ways, from Summa Theologica. 1.5 Samuel (...) Clarke: A Modern Formulation of the Cosmological Argument. 1.6 William L. Rowe: The Cosmological Argument. 1.7 William Paley: The Argument from Design. 1.8 Michael Ruse: The Design Argument. 1.9 David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 2. The Problem of Evil. 2.1 Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Rebellion. 2.2 J. L. Mackie: Evil and Omnipotence. 2.3 Peter van Inwagen: The Argument from Evil. 2.4 Michael Murray and Michael Rea: The Argument from Evil. 2.5 B. C. Johnson: God and the Problem of Evil. 3. Reason and Faith. 3.1 W. K. Clifford: The Ethics of Belief. 3.2 William James: The Will to Believe. 3.3 Kelly James Clark: Without Evidence or Argument. 3.4 Blaise Pascal: The Wager. 3.5 Lawrence Shapiro: Miracles and Justification. 3.6 Simon Blackburn: Infini-Rien. Part III. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: ITS GROUNDS AND LIMITS. 1. Skepticism. 1.1 John Pollock: A Brain in a Vat. 1.2 Michael Huemer: Three Skeptical Arguments. 1.3 Robert Audi: Skepticism. 2. The Nature and Value of Knowledge. 2.1 Plato: Knowledge as Justified True Belief. 2.2 Edmund Gettier: Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? 2.3 James Cornman, Keith Lehrer, and George Pappas: An Analysis of Knowledge. 2.4 Gilbert Ryle: Knowing How and Knowing That. 2.5 Plato: "Meno". 2.6 Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Good and The Good Life. 3. Our Knowledge of the External World. 3.1 Bertrand Russell: Appearance and Reality and the Existence of Matter. 3.2 René Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy. 3.3 John Locke: The Causal Theory of Perception. 3.4 George Berkeley: Of the Principles of Human Knowledge. 3.5 G. E. Moore: Proof of an External World. 4. The Methods of Science. 4.1 David Hume: An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. 4.2 Wesley C. Salmon: An Encounter with David Hume. 4.3 Karl Popper: Science: Conjectures and Refutations. 4.4 Philip Kitcher: Believing Where We Cannot Prove. Part IV: MIND AND ITS PLACE IN NATURE. 1. The Mind-Body Problem. 1.1 Brie Gertler: In Defense of Mind--Body Dualism. 1.2 Frank Jackson: The Qualia Problem. 1.3 David Papineau: The Case for Materialism. 1.4 Paul Churchland: Functionalism and Eliminative Materialism. 2. Can Non-Humans Think? 2.1 Alan Turing: Computing Machinery and Intelligence. 2.2 John R. Searle: Minds, Brains, and Programs. 2.3 William G. Lycan: Robots and Minds. 3. Personal Identity and the Survival of Death. 3.1 John Locke: The Prince and the Cobbler. 3.2 Thomas Reid: Of Mr. Locke’s Account of Our Personal Identity. 3.3 David Hume: The Self. 3.4 Derek Parfit: Divided Minds and the Nature of Persons. 3.5 Shelly Kagan: What Matters. 3.6 John Perry: A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. Part V: DETERMINISM, FREE WILL, AND RESPONSIBILITY. 1. Libertarianism: The Case for Free Will and Its Incompatibility with Determinism. 1.1 Roderick M. Chisholm: Human Freedom and the Self. 1.2 Robert Kane: Free Will: Ancient Dispute, New Themes. 2. Hard Determinism: The Case for Determinism and its Incompatibility with Its Incompatibility with Any Important Sense of Free Will. 2.1 James Rachels: The case against Free Will. 2.2 Derk Pereboom: Why We Have No Free Will and Can Live Without It. 3. Compatibilism: The Case for Determinism and Its Compatibility with the Most Important Sense of Free Will. 3.1 David Hume: Of Liberty and Necessity. 3.2 Helen Beebee: Compatibilism and the Ability to do Otherwise. 4. Freedom and Moral Responsibility. 4.1 Galen Strawson: Luck Swallows Everything. 4.2 Harry Frankfurt: Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility. 4.3 Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. 4.4 Susan Wolf: Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility. Part VI: MORALITY AND ITS CRITICS. 1. Changes to Morality. 1.1 Joel Feinberg: Psychological Egoism. 1.2 Plato: The Immoralist’s Challenge. 1.3 Friedrich Nietzche: Master and Slave Morality. 1.4 Richard Joyce: The Evolutionary Debunking of Morality. 2. Proposed Standards and Right of Conduct. 2.1 Russ Shafer-Landau: Ethical Subjectivism. 2.2 Mary Midgley: Trying Out One’s New Sword. 2.3 Aristotle: Virtue and the Good Life. 2.4 Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan. 2.5 Plato: Euthyphro. 2.6 Immanuel Kant: The Good Will and the Categorical Imperative. 2.7 J.S. Mill: Utilitarianism, Chapters 2 and 4. 2.8 W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? 2.9 Hilde Lindemann: What Is Feminist Ethics? 3. Ethical Problems. 3.1 Kwame Anthony Appiah: What Will Future Generations Condemn Us For? 3.2 Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. 3.3 John Harris: The Survival Lottery. 3.4 James Rachels: Active and Passive Euthanasia. 3.5 Mary Anne Warren: The Moral and Legal Status of Abortion. 3.6 Don Marquis: Why Abortion Is Immoral. 4. The Meaning of Life. 4.1 Epicurus: Letter to Menoeceus. 4.2 Richard Taylor: The Meaning of Life. 4.3 Richard Kraut: Desire and the Human Good. 4.4 Leo Tolstoy: My Confession. 4.5 Susan Wolf: Happiness and Meaning. 4.6 Thomas Nagel: The Absurd. (shrink)

Confidence ratings have often been integrated into reasoning and intelligence tasks as a means for assessing meta-reasoning processes. Although it is often assumed that eliciting these judgements throughout reasoning tasks has no effect on the underlying performance outcomes, this is yet to be established empirically. The current study examines whether eliciting CR from participants during a fluid-reasoning task influences their performance and how this effect is moderated by their initial self-confidence in their own reasoning abilities. In a first experiment, we (...) found that participants performing CR during Raven's Progressive Matrices significantly outperformed a control group who did not provide ratings. Additionally, a second experiment demonstrated that CR only facilitated performance in participants who have a high level of initial self-confidence in their reasoning ability, whereas they were detrimental to participants low in self-confidence. (shrink)

Aim To study the views on the acceptability of physician-assisted-suicide of lay people and health professionals in an African country, Togo.Method In February–June 2012, 312 lay people and 198 health professionals in Togo judged the acceptability of PAS in 36 concrete scenarios composed of all combinations of four factors: the patient's age, the level of incurability of the illness, the type of suffering and the patient's request for PAS. In all scenarios, the patients were women receiving the best possible care. (...) The ratings were subjected to cluster analysis and analyses of variance.Results Most lay people were not systematically opposed to PAS, whereas most health professionals were systematically opposed to it. The most important factors in increasing acceptability among people not systematically opposed were advanced age of the patient and incurability of the illness. Additional acceptability was provided by the patient's request to have her life ended, although much less so than in studies in Western countries, and by suffering characterised by complete dependence rather than by extreme physical pain.Conclusions These empirical findings—the first ones gathered in the African continent—suggest that most Togolese lay people are not categorically for or against PAS, but judge its degree of acceptability as a function of concrete circumstances. (shrink)

John. R. Searle’s account of perception is often called the intentionality theory of perception (ITP). ITP maintains direct realism. According to direct realism, physical objects are directly perceived. Searle denies Locke's representational theory of perception since the latter is an antithesis of direct realism. Searle's contention is that, first, according to the representational theory of perception, subjective ideas (mind-dependent entities) are the only object of perception, we do not perceive physical objects at all. Second, Searle says that on the face (...) of the resemblance thesis, the representational theory of perception is not secured because the former is insufficient to explain the latter. This paper is an attempt to reflect on these two charges raised by Searle. First, I will try to show how we can conceive physical objects are objects (indirect) of perception within Locke’s representational theory of perception. Then, it will be argued that Locke’s representationalist theory of perception can be upheld without the support of the resemblance thesis. (shrink)

In a few short paragraphs of The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell presents his theory of introspective knowledge based on the concept of knowledge by acquaintance. In this article, I critically analyze these comments by Russell and their proposed application by contemporary authors, including Brie Gertler (2001; 2011) and Laurence BonJour (2003). I show how these theories differ from the competing ‘inner‑sense theories’ and try to show that they are inconsistent with Gareth Evans’s ‘transparency’ observation. Then I compare acquaintance (...) theories with Alex Byrne’s (2005; 2012) ‘transparency’ theory and show that Byrne’s theory offers a simpler account of mechanisms governing introspection and attribution of mental states to other agents. The AAM version available on PhilPapers iis licensed under CC BY 4.0. (shrink)

Collingwood’s “Libellus de Generatione: An Essay in Absolute Empiricism” was a tract of strenuous philosophical revisionism; never published, perhaps unpublishable, supposedly destroyed, it survived. He begins by stressing his obligations to David Hume; he offers his thematic: “absolute denial of any such concept as substance and the resolution of all reality into the reality of experience.” “The reality of mind is the process of its experience, its life, and nothing else”. Or, “the mind is a mirror... whose being is solely (...) the activity of reflecting”; it has no “substance of its own of which this activity is only a reflection”. Collingwood’s entire career as student and teacher... (shrink)

This article is about self-knowledge on one's own mental states. Considering human as rational beings, this study aims to problematize the position of subject in process of self-knowledge, as well as to realize the state of knowledge about self-knowledge. In this way, Richard Moran constitutes the method of transparency about the knowledge of one's own mental states. Such a method receives some criticism from the philosopher Quassim Cassam and the philosopher Brie-Gertler. In the same extent, both authors problematize some (...) characteristics of self-knowledge, in which criticism reaches some points studied by Brazilian philosophers, namely Paulo Farias, Waldomiro Silva Filho and André Abath. The latter two authors are based on Moran's methodology and thus constitute his reflections on conditions of daily life as well as the incomplete understanding of human beings. (shrink)

In Seeing Things as They Are (Searle 2015), Searle developed a direct realist’s theory of perception. According to direct realism, physical objects are directly and immediately perceived. Searle claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception goes against direct realism. For Searle, Berkeley’s theory suggests that only subjective experiences (ideas) are directly and immediately perceived, not physical objects. Contrary to Searle, G. S. Pappas claims that Berkeley’s theory of perception is consistent with the view that physical objects are immediately perceivable (Pappas 1982; (...) Pappas 1987). Given the conflicting interpretations of Berkeley’s theory of perception, this paper attempts to defend Searle’s position on Berkeley’s theory of perception. It refutes Pappas’ interpretation by arguing that he is inconsistent with Berkeley’s theses of ontological phenomenalism and heterogeneity thesis. (shrink)

A version of nonstandard analysis, Internal Set Theory, has been used to provide a resolution of Zeno's paradoxes of motion. This resolution is inadequate because the application of Internal Set Theory to the paradoxes requires a model of the world that is not in accordance with either experience or intuition. A model of standard mathematics in which the ordinary real numbers are defined in terms of rational intervals does provide a formalism for understanding the paradoxes. This model suggests that in (...) discussing motion, only intervals, rather than instants, of time are meaningful. The approach presented here reconciles resolutions of the paradoxes based on considering a finite number of acts with those based on analysis of the full infinite set Zeno seems to require. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the classical and quantum mechanics of performing an infinite number of acts in a finite time. (shrink)

The problem of self-knowledge is one of the most fascinating in all of philosophy and has crucial significance for the philosophy of mind and epistemology. Gertler assesses the leading theoretical approaches to self-knowledge, explaining the work of many of the key figures in the field: from Descartes and Kant, through to Bertrand Russell and Gareth Evans, as well as recent work by Tyler Burge, David Chalmers, William Lycan and Sydney Shoemaker. -/- Beginning with an outline of the distinction between (...) self-knowledge and self-awareness and providing essential historical background to the problem, Gertler addresses specific theories of self-knowledge such as the acquaintance theory, the inner sense theory, and the rationalist theory, as well as leading accounts of self-awareness. The book concludes with a critical explication of the dispute between empiricist and rationalist approaches. (shrink)