On observe aujourd'hui un intérêt croissant pour la philosophie et pour les spiritualités comme la mystique chrétienne, le bouddhisme tibétain ou zen, l'advaitavedânta ou le taoïsme. Ce livre cherche à construire des ponts entre philosophie et mystique, entre rationalité et intuition et à réunir ce qui n'aurait pas dû être séparé. Ainsi à travers des études sur des philosophes et des mystiques orientaux et occidentaux (Nicolas de Cuse, Bergson, Berkeley, Maître Eckhart, Vasubandhu, Rumi...), l'auteur éclaire de façon nouvelle la véritable (...) signification de l'éveil et trace un chemin vers lui. Il montre qu'une voie philosophique peut et doit conduire au sommet de la mystique, c'est-à-dire à l'éveil non-duel. Érudit mais simple, ce livre intéressera à la fois le lecteur passionné de philosophie en quête de sens et le chercheur en spiritualité. (shrink)

Édouard Le Roy as early as 1901 observed the existence of an intellectual movement seeking to break from traditional positivism and set for himself the task of drawing up the program of this new positivism. Noting that this program precedes the Vienna Circle, I endeavor to determine its nature and to evaluate its impact on logical positivism. Viewed in this light, the discussions between Le Roy, Poincaré and Duhem appear more prolonged and substantial than is usually thought. What we have (...) here is perhaps not a homogeneous doctrine but a vigorous intellectual movement, from which logical positivists were able to borrow specific theses in their attempts to mitigate Mach's strict positivism; more important still, they had before them an example of neopositivism. History is not the only concern: among the issues debated, one encounters the claim that facts are theory-laden. This claim still stirs controversy today. An inquiry into the origins of the claim is one way of clarifying the arguments involved. (shrink)

In the spring of 1987, I was in Havana, Cuba, where I was participating in planning a large-scale longitudinal study of the neurophysiological, neurochemical, and behavioral characteristics of cohorts of patients with cerebrovascular disease, depression, senile dementia, schizophrenia, or learning disabilities; and also part of this study were their first-degree blood relatives. This study was the outgrowth of a long-term project on the practical application of computer methods for the evaluation of brain electrical activity related to anatomical integrity, maturational development, (...) and sensory, perceptual;·-and cognitive processes, especially in chil dren. For many years, that project had been supported by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the National Scientific Research Center of Cuba (CNIC), and the Ministries of Public Health and of Education of Cuba. Since its inception, I had served as a technical advisor to the UNDP project. When the project began, I became acquainted with Dr. Jose M. Miyar Barrueco, who was at that time the Rector of the Medical School of the University of Havana. Because of his keen interest in the new computer technology and its potential utility in developing countries, we met from time to time during my visits. These occasional meetings continued after he became Secretary of the Cuban Council of State, so that he could remain apprised of progress and problems with which he might help. (shrink)

This article proposes an object properties approach to object perception. By thinking about objects as clusters of co-instantiated features that possess certain canonical higher-order object properties we can steer a middle way between two extreme views that are dominant in different areas of empirical research into object perception and the development of the object concept. Object perception should be understood in terms of perceptual sensitivity to those object properties, where that perceptual sensitivity can be explained in a manner consistent with (...) the graded representation approach adopted by some connectionist modellers. The object properties approach does justice to the differences between a perceptual system solving the binding problem, on the one hand, and genuinely perceiving objects, on the other, without running into the theoretical problems associated with treating young infants as 'little scientists'. (shrink)

Editor's Preface Roy Wood Sellars's contributions to philosophy have been epochal. The originator and persistent elaborator of critical realism, ...

At the center of the following essay is an analysis of At the Mind's Limits by Jean Améry––philosopher and survivor of Auschwitz. The essay tries to define and refine, via comparison and contrast with works by Hannah Arendt and René Descartes, the unique conception of morality that arises from Améry's text. “Victim morality,” as it will be called here, is a non-normative morality which is patient and victim-based rather than agent or actor-based. It is grounded in a heightened exposure and (...) sensitivity to reality and suffering, which results from a reduction of a human being to “a bundle of reactions.” This process cannot be voluntarily undertaken but is violently undergone. The claim is that morality not only survives the loss of humanity but is only fully exposed where humanity falters. My torturers were not interested in degrees of pain. They were interested only in demonstrating to me what it meant to live in a body, as a body, a body that can entertain notions of justice only as long as it is whole and well …. They did not come to force the story out of me of what I had said to the barbarians and what the barbarians had said to me …. They came to my cell to show me the meaning of humanity, and in the space of an hour they showed me a great deal. –J. M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians. (shrink)

The problem of determinism arises in all the major areas of philosophy. The first part of this book, first published in 1991, is a critical and historical exposition of the problem and the most important ideas and arguments which have arisen over the many years of debate. The second part considers the various forms of determinism and the implications that they engender.

Marko Jurjako’s article “Self-deception and the selectivity problem” (Jurjako 2013) offers a very interesting discussion of intentionalist approaches to self-deception and in particular the selectivity objection to anti-intentionalism raised in Bermúdez 1997 and 2000. This note responds to Jurjako’s claim that intentionalist models of self-deception face their own version of the selectivity problem, offering an account of how intentions are formed that can explain the selectivity of self-deception, even in the “common or garden” cases that Jurjako emphasizes.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Schlegel developed an influential theory of irony that anticipated some of the central concerns of postmodernity. His most vocal contemporary critic, the philosopher Hegel, sought to demonstrate that Schlegel’s theory of irony tacitly relied on certain problematic aspects of Fichte’s philosophy. While Schlegel’s theory of irony has generated seemingly endless commentary in recent critical discourse, Hegel’s critique of Schlegelian irony has gone neglected. This essay’s primary aim is to defend Hegel’s critique of (...) Schlegel by isolating irony’s underlying Fichtean epistemology. Drawing on Søren Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Irony in the final section of this essay, I argue that Hegel’s critique of irony can motivate a dialectical hermeneutics that offers a powerful alternative both to Paul de Man’s poststructuralist hermeneutics and to recent cultural-studies-oriented criticism that tends to reduce literary texts to sociohistorical epiphenomena. (shrink)

Sooner or later, every paradox is accused of equivocation. Usually sooner. For equivocation is a simple, well understood fallacy. People first try to explain a mystery in terms of what is familiar. If postulating a simple ambiguity fails, more subtle ambiguities will be postulated. Those who persist with this diagnosis elaborate the charge of equivocation into an esoteric form.

This commentary on Jacob and Jeannerod’s Ways of Seeing evaluates the conclusions that the authors draw from the two visual systems hypothesis about the nature and phenomenology of visual experience.

Desde su primera juventud, inquietó a José Antonio Maravall la pregunta acerca de quién hace la Historia y hasta qué punto ésta determina nuestra vida. Este ensayo, donde aborda el tema con profusión, lo escribió durante los cuatro años siguientes a su regreso de París en 1954. En el lustro que estuvo allí al frente del Colegio de España, el trato asiduo con varios de los historiadores que entonces dominaban la escena internacional, abrió sus horizontes de respuesta a la pregunta (...) apuntada, respuesta que es, a la vez, un mentís a los determinismos históricos de la Europa de preguerra, y una cortapisa a las utopías del liberalismo individualista. En la Teoría del saber histórico se abordan también los problemas epistemológicos y metodológicos del momento, con la preocupación por la introducción de conceptos y categorías tomadas de las ciencias sociales, y la apertura a nuevos campos de investigación. Pionera en su terreno, y durante tiempo ejemplar único, la obra gozó de gran respeto y mucha influencia. (shrink)

SummaryThis article surveys recent scholarship on the early history of British geology. It finds that many of the developments called for a decade ago by Dr Eyles and Dr Rappaport have not yet been realized. However, there has been progress in the broader understanding of geological ideas in their historical context, and a start has been made on the social history of the science. Some suggestions are offered as to a field of problems for the future, and a selective bibliography (...) of secondary materials, thematically arranged, is appended. (shrink)

Myin, Erik (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (2)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Concepts and the Priority Principle (10)Bermúdez, José Luis (2000) Circularity, "I"-Thoughts and the Linguistic Requirement for Concept Possession (11)Meeks, Roblin R. (2000) Withholding Immunity: Misidentification, Misrepresentation, and Autonomous Nonconceptual Proprioceptive First-Person Content (12)Newen, Albert (2001) Kinds of Self-Consciousness (13)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) Direct Self-Consciousness (4)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) Prelinguistic Self-Consciousness (5)Gallese, Vittorio (2000) The Brain and the Self: Reviewing the Neuroscientific Evidence (6)Bermudez, Jose Luis (2000) The Cognitive Neuroscience (...) of Primitive Self-Consciousness (7) [Currently Displayed]Robbins, Philip (2000) Paradox Twice Lost (8)Fuller, Gary and Slater, Carol W. (2000) "I"-Thoughts: Criteria, Constitution, and Concept Possession (9)Evans, Cedric Oliver (2000) Prelinguistic Self-Consciousness (3)Bermudez, Jose Luis and Polytechnique, CREA Ecole (1999) The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (representation and Mind) (1). (shrink)