Few musical works loom as large in Western culture as Richard Wagner's four-part Ring of the Nibelung. In Finding an Ending, two eminent philosophers, Philip Kitcher and Richard Schacht, offer an illuminating look at this greatest of Wagner's achievements, focusing on its far-reaching and subtle exploration of problems of meanings and endings in this life and world. Kitcher and Schacht plunge the reader into the heart of Wagner's Ring, drawing out the philosophical and human significance of the text and (...) the music. They show how different forms of love, freedom, heroism, authority, and judgment are explored and tested as it unfolds. As they journey across its sweeping musical-dramatic landscape, Kitcher and Schacht lead us to the central concern of the Ring--the problem of endowing life with genuine significance that can be enhanced rather than negated by its ending, if the right sort of ending can be found. The drama originates in Wotan's quest for a transformation of the primordial state of things into a world in which life can be lived more meaningfully. The authors trace the evolution of Wotan's efforts, the intricate problems he confronts, and his failures and defeats. But while the problem Wotan poses for himself proves to be insoluble as he conceives of it, they suggest that his very efforts and failures set the stage for the transformation of his problem, and for the only sort of resolution of it that may be humanly possible--to which it is not Siegfried but rather Brünnhilde who shows the way. The Ring's ending, with its passing of the gods above and destruction of the world below, might seem to be devastating; but Kitcher and Schacht see a kind of meaning in and through the ending revealed to us that is profoundly affirmative, and that has perhaps never been so powerfully and so beautifully expressed. (shrink)

Fodor & Pylyshyn (1981) criticize J. J. Gibson's ecological account of perception for failing to address what I call the 'correlation problem' in visual perception. That is, they charge that Gibson cannot explain how perceivers learn to correlate detectable properties of the light with perceptible properties of the environment. Furthermore, they identify the correlation problem as a crucial issue for any theory of visual perception, what I call a 'primary problem'—i.e. a problem which plays a definitive role in establishing the (...) concerns of a particular scientific research program. If they are correct, Gibson's failure to resolve this problem would cast considerable doubt upon his ecological approach to perception. In response, I argue that both Fodor & Pylyshyn's problem itself and their proposed inferential solution embody a significant mistake which needs to be eliminated from our thinking about visual perception. As part of my response, I also suggest a Gibsonian alternative to Fodor & Pylyshyn's primary problem formulation. (shrink)

Over twenty years of research have examined the cognitive consequences of positive affect states, and suggested that positive affect leads to a broadening of cognition (see review by Fredrickson, 2001). However, this research has primarily examined positive affect that is low in approach motivational intensity (e.g., contentment). More recently, we have systematically examined positive affect that varies in approach motivational intensity, and found that positive affect high in approach motivation (e.g., desire) narrows cognition, whereas positive affect low in approach motivation (...) broadens cognition (e.g., Gable & Harmon-Jones, Citation2008a; Harmon-Jones & Gable, 2009). In this article we will review past models and present a motivational dimension model of affect that expands understanding of how affective states influence attentional and cognitive breadth. We then review research that has varied the motivational intensity of positive and negative affect and found that affect of low motivational intensity broadens cognitive processes, whereas affect of high motivational intensity narrows cognitive processes. (shrink)

David Lewis [1988; 1996] canvases an anti-Humean thesis about mental states: that the rational agent desires something to the extent that he or she believes it to be good. Lewis offers and refutes a decision-theoretic formulation of it, the 'Desire-as-Belief Thesis'. Other authors have since added further negative results in the spirit of Lewis's. We explore ways of being anti-Humean that evade all these negative results. We begin by providing background on evidential decision theory and on Lewis's negative results. We (...) then introduce what we call the indexicality loophole: if the goodness of a proposition is indexical, partly a function of an agent's mental state, then the negative results have no purchase. Thus we propose a variant of Desire-as-Belief that exploits this loophole. We argue that a number of meta-ethical positions are committed to just such indexicality. Indeed, we show that with one central sort of evaluative belief--the belief that an option is right--the indexicality loophole can be exploited in various interesting ways. Moreover, on some accounts, 'good' is indexical in the same way. Thus, it seems that the anti-Humean can dodge the negative results. (shrink)

Heuristics are necessary but far from sufficient explanations for moral judgment. This commentary stresses: (a) the need to complement cold, cognitive-economizing functionalist accounts with hot, value-expressive, social-identity-affirming accounts; and (b) the importance of conducting reflective-equilibrium thought and laboratory experiments that explore the permeability of the boundaries people place on the “thinkable.”.

Delusions are explanations of anomalous experiences. A theory of delusion requires an explanation of both the anomalous experience _and _the apparently irrational explanation generated by the delusional subject. Hence, we require a model of rational belief formation against which the belief formation of delusional subjects can be evaluated. _Method. _I first describe such a model, distinguishing procedural from pragmatic rationality. Procedural rationality is the use of rules or procedures, deductive or inductive, that produce an inferentially coherent set of propositions. Pragmatic (...) rationality is the use of procedural rationality _in context_. I then apply the distinction to the explanation of the Capgras and the Cotard delusions. I then argue that delusions are failures of pragmatic rationality. I examine the nature of these failures employing the distinction between performance and competence familiar from Chomskian linguistics. _Results. _This approach to the irrationality of delusions reconciles accounts in which the explanation of the anomalous experience exhausts the explanation of delusion, accounts that appeal to further deficits within the reasoning processes of delusional subjects, and accounts that argue that delusions are not beliefs at all. (Respectively, one-stage, two-stage, and expressive accounts.) _Conclusion. _In paradigm cases that concern cognitive neuropsychiatry the irrationality of delusional subjects should be thought of as a performance deficit in pragmatic rationality. (shrink)

This article investigates the status of Norbert Elias’s conception of the sociology of knowledge as the means to provide a new epistemological security for sociology. The author of the article argues that this translates into an effective critique of the underlaboring model of the relationship between philosophy and the social sciences, which is consistent with Elias’s attempt to consolidate his own sociological theory. Nevertheless, the author argues that Elias’s sociology of knowledge runs into problems in its attempt to evade the (...) problem of relativism in explanation, and in its conception of human agency. (shrink)

Ces contributions tentent de dégager les enjeux littéraires, philosophiques, politiques et psychologiques des "Dialogues", oeuvre méconnue de Rousseau, afin de cerner sa signification dans le parcours de l'écrivain.

Delusions are currently characterised as false beliefs produced by incorrect inference about external reality (DSM IV). This inferential conception has proved hard to link to explanations pitched at the level of neurobiology and neuroanatomy. This paper provides that link via a neurocomputational theory, based on evolutionary considerations, of the role of the prefrontal cortex in regulating offline cognition. When pathologically neuromodulated the prefrontal cortex produces hypersalient experiences which monopolise offline cognition. The result is characteristic psychotic experiences and patterns of thought. (...) This bottom-up account uses neural network theory to integrate recent theories of the role of dopamine in delusion with the insights of inferential accounts. It also provides a general model for evolutionary psychiatry which avoids theoretical problems imported from evolutionary psychology. (shrink)

R. K. Meyer once gave precise form to the question of whether relevant implication can be defined in any modal system, and his answer was `no'. In the present paper, we extend S4, first with propositional quantifiers, to the system S4π+; and then with definite propositional descriptions, to the system S4π+ lp . We show that relevant implication can in some sense be defined in the modal system S4π+ lp , although it cannot be defined in S4π+.

The deposition of the political -- From paradox to partage : on citizenship and teletechnologies -- The disposition of being -- Being communist -- Seattle and the space of exposure.

In the context of continuous logic, this paper axiomatizes both the class \ of lattice-ordered groups isomorphic to C for X compact and the subclass \ of structures existentially closed in \; shows that the theory of \ is \-categorical and admits elimination of quantifiers; establishes a Nullstellensatz for \ and \; shows that \\in \mathcal {C}\) has a prime-model extension in \ just in case X is Boolean; and proves that in a sense relevant to continuous logic, positive formulas (...) admit in \ elimination of quantifiers to positive formulas. (shrink)

Since the 1970’s there has been a major increase in adventure sports participation but it seems that engagement in such sports comes with a stigma: adventure sports participants are often regarded as reckless ‘daredevils’. We approach the questions about people’s perception of risk and recklessness in adventure sports by combining empirical research with philosophical analysis. First, we provide empirical evidence that suggests that laypeople tend to assess the danger of adventure sports as greater than more mundane sports and judge adventure (...) sports participants as more reckless than participants in non-adventure sports. We contextualise these findings within existing psychological risk perception paradigms and outline new philosophical explanations of the identified pattern in laypeople’s risk perception. (shrink)

This essay considers the impact of digital networks in organizations on worker autonomy. Worker autonomy, the control that workers have over their own work situation, is claimed in this essay to be a key determinant for the quality of work, as well as an important moral goal. Digital networks pose significant threats to worker autonomy as well as opportunities for its enhancement. In this essay, the notion of worker autonomy is analyzed and evaluated for its importance and moral relevance. It (...) is then considered how digital networks both threaten worker autonomy and offer opportunities for its enhancement. Three major opportunities (enhanced communicative powers, increased informedness, teleworking) and threats (electronic monitoring, task prestructuring, and dependency creation) are discussed and analyzed. Finally, the dynamics that determine the impact on worker autonomy of the introduction of a digital network in organizations are investigated. A particular model for analyzing these dynamics and their impacts, Bryan Pfaffenberger's model of a technological drama. It will be illustrated how this model illuminates these dynamics by analyzing them as a dialectic of strategies of technological regularization by design constituencies and technological adjustment by impact constituencies. It will also be assessed what role network design has in this process. (shrink)

In ‘Fair Infinite Lotteries’ (FIL), Wenmackers and Horsten use non-standard analysis to construct a family of nicely-behaved hyperrational-valued probability measures on sets of natural numbers. Each probability measure in FIL is determined by a free ultrafilter on the natural numbers: distinct free ultrafilters determine distinct probability measures. The authors reply to a worry about a consequent ‘arbitrariness’ by remarking, “A different choice of free ultrafilter produces a different ... probability function with the same standard part but infinitesimal differences.” They illustrate (...) this remark with the example of the sets of odd and even numbers. Depending on the ultrafilter, either each of these sets has probability 1/2, or the set of odd numbers has a probability infinitesimally higher than 1/2 and the set of even numbers infinitesimally lower. The point of the current paper is simply that the amount of indeterminacy is much greater than acknowledged in FIL: there are sets of natural numbers whose probability is far more indeterminate than that of the set of odd or the set of even numbers. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of technological citizenship as a status for individuals consisting of rights and obligations within bounded technological polities enforced by statist structures. The model reconciles freedom to innovate with the affirmation of the autonomy and dignity of laypersons and the assimilation of laypersons with their world. It seeks lay control over the introduction and ongoing management of environmental hazards and self-verification of safety. The rights and obligations of TC compose a "new social contract of complexity." Even (...) with different values stressed, the name, concept, and terms of TC would streamline studies of peril. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 617-619.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Separated Soul and the Human PersonPhilip-Neri Reese O.P.What happens when we die? Do our bodies go on existing while our souls cease to be? Do our souls go on existing while our bodies cease to be? Most importantly of all, do we go on existing, or do we simply cease to be?Questions like these have been raised and wrestled with by just about every philosophical school in just (...) about every philosophical tradition—and Thomism is no exception. Indeed, these very questions lie at the heart of what is surely the single biggest ongoing debate in recent Thomistic philosophy. For roughly the last quarter-century, philosophers in the Thomistic tradition have been arguing over the status of the human soul after death. More specifically, they have been arguing over whether the separated soul is a person—is it me?In this paper, I would like to both present and weigh in on that debate. To that end, it will proceed in five parts. First, I will canvas and discuss the motivations behind the core positions in the debate. Second, I will identify three kinds of questions and two types of disagreement that I think it is important for participants in that debate to distinguish. Then, in the third, fourth, and fifth sections, I will do my best to answer the relevant exegetical, systematic, and speculative questions, respectively.An Overview of the DebateIn debating the status of the separated soul, almost all contemporary Thomists align themselves with one of three core positions: [End Page 943]Corruptionism holds that the separated soul is not a person.1Survivalism holds that the separated soul is a person.2 [End Page 944]Incompletionism holds that the separated soul is an incomplete person.3 [End Page 945]To motivate each of these views, I would like to present what I take to be a few central arguments in favor of each. I will not discuss these arguments in detail, nor will I even take much time to explain them. My goal is simply to show that none of the three core positions is either obviously right or obviously wrong.So, without further ado, why be a corruptionist? Here are three arguments:The Simplest Argument1. I die.2. Dying is corrupting.3. I corrupt.The Mereological Argument1. No proper part is identical to the whole of which it is a part.2. The soul is a proper part of the human person.3. The soul is not identical to the human person.The Essential Part Argument1. Nothing continues to exist after losing one of its essential parts.2. At death, the human person loses one of its essential parts.3. At death, the human person does not continue to exist.These are by no means the only arguments in favor of corruptionism. But I have picked them because they draw attention to two important aspects of the corruptionist position: first, it is deeply intuitive, as the simplest argument makes clear; second, it is metaphysically robust, as the mereological and essential-parts arguments make clear.What about survivalism? Why be a survivalist? Here, again, are three arguments: [End Page 946]The Proper Operations Argument1. Whatever engages in operations proper to a human person is a human person.2. The separated soul engages in operations proper to a human person (e.g., knowing and loving).3. The separated soul is a human person.The Moral Argument1. The only thing that God punishes for my wickedness and rewards for my good deeds is me.2. God punishes the separated soul for my wickedness and rewards the separated soul for my good deeds.3. The separated soul is me.The Intercessory Prayer Argument1. Only persons can be the agents and objects of intercessory prayer.2. Separated souls can be the agents and objects of intercessory prayer.3. Separated souls are persons.These, again, are by no means the only arguments in favor of survivalism. But, like the basic arguments in favor of corruptionism, these survivalist arguments draw attention to two important points: the first is that the corruptionists do not have a monopoly on metaphysical foundations, as the... (shrink)