One of the distinguishing features of mathematics is the exceptional level of consensus among mathematicians. However, an analysis of what mathematicians agree on, how they achieve this agreement, and the relevant historical conditions is lacking. This paper is a programmatic intervention providing a preliminary analysis and outlining a research program in this direction.First, I review the process of ‘negotiation’ that yields agreement about the validity of proofs. This process most often does generate consensus, however, it may give rise to another (...) kind of disagreement: whether the original and new proof are effectively the same, leading to potential disagreement about the validity of the original proof.Second, I historicize the phenomenon of consensus. I show that in earlier European mathematics and other mathematical cultures, consensus about the validity of arguments was substantially weaker or conceived differently than it is today. This means that contemporary consensus about the validity of mathematical proofs should be explained by historical changes in mathematical practice.Finally, I conjecture what brought about the contemporary form of mathematical consensus. Since a sharp rise in consensus occurs around the turn of the 20th century, it makes sense to explain this consensus by the concurrent formalization of mathematics. However, this explanation has a major flaw: it explains a really existing phenomenon (consensus) by something that hardly ever happens (writing proofs in formal languages). I will therefore explain the ways in which formalization does enter mathematical practice so as to account for contemporary forms of mathematical consensus. (shrink)

It has been argued that affordances are not meaningful and are thus not useful to be applied in contexts where specifically meaningfulness of experience is at stake (e.g. clinical contexts or discussions of autonomous agency). This paper aims to reconceptualize affordances such as to make them relevant and applicable in such contexts. It starts by investigating the ‘ambiguity’ of (possibilities for) action. In both philosophy of action and affordance research, this ambiguity is typically resolved by adhering to the agents intentions (...) and concerns. I discuss some recent accounts of affordances that highlight these concerns but argue that they tend to adopt an ‘atomistic’ approach where there is no acknowledgement of how these concerns are embedded in the agents wider concerns, values, projects and commitments. An holistic approach that does acknowledge this can be found in psychological research on agents having a sense of what they’re doing. I will discuss this research in the second part of the paper and argue that agents can analogously have a sense of what is afforded. This is deemed the entry point for understanding the meaningfulness of affordances. In the final part of the paper I apply this analysis to recent attempts which seek to make sense of authentic and autonomous agency in terms of affordances. (shrink)

Affordances are possibilities for action offered by the environment. Recent research on affordances holds that there are differences in how people experience such possibilities for action. However, these differences have not been properly investigated. In this paper I start by briefly scrutinizing the existing literature on this issue, and then argue for two claims. First, that whether an affordance solicits action or not depends on its relevance to the agent’s concerns. Second, that the experiential character of how an affordance solicits (...) action depends on the character of the concern to which it is relevant. Concerns are conceived of as bodily forms of responsiveness, and solicitations are experienced through this responsiveness. The main aim of this paper is to make clear that an understanding of experiential differences in solicitations has to be based on a phenomenological appreciation of how one experiences one’s responsiveness to those solicitations. In the remainder of the paper I show how such a phenomenological appreciation reveals several characteristics of our responsiveness and I briefly explore three of them: valence, force and mineness. In the final section I discuss the self-referentiality of affordances in light of the current proposal, and argue that this self-referentiality is broader than is typically acknowledged. (shrink)

The article provides a conceptualization of self(-illness) ambiguity and investigates to what extent self(-illness) ambiguity is ‘special’. First, we draw on empirical findings to argue that self-ambiguity is a ubiquitous phenomenon. We suggest that these findings are best explained by a multidimensional account, according to which selves consist of various dimensions that mutually affect each other. On such an account, any change to any particular self-aspect may change other self-aspects and thereby alter the overall structural pattern of self-aspects, potentially leading (...) to self-ambiguity. Second, we propose that self-ambiguity comes in degrees and should be understood as a spectrum (as opposed to there being qualitative differences among instances of self-ambiguity). Third, we argue that complexity is the most useful dimension to organize cases of self-ambiguity, with mundane instances of self-ambiguity on the one end and self-illness ambiguity on the other end of the spectrum. Fourth, we address the promises and perils of narrativity with regard to self-ambiguity. Finally, we link our deflationary account of self(-illness) ambiguity to pattern theories of self. (shrink)

The article proposes a theoretical model to account for changes in self due to Deep Brain Stimulation. First, we argue that most existing models postulate a very narrow conception of self, and thus fail to capture the full range of potentially relevant DBS-induced changes. Second, building on previous work by Shaun Gallagher, we propose a modified ‘pattern-theory of self’, which provides a richer picture of the possible consequences of DBS treatment.

The article proposes a theoretical model to account for changes in self due to Deep Brain Stimulation. First, we argue that most existing models postulate a very narrow conception of self, and thus fail to capture the full range of potentially relevant DBS-induced changes. Second, building on previous work by Shaun Gallagher, we propose a modified ‘pattern-theory of self’, which provides a richer picture of the possible consequences of DBS treatment.

This paper studies Paul Cohen’s philosophy of mathematics and mathematical practice as expressed in his writing on set-theoretic consistency proofs using his method of forcing. Since Cohen did not consider himself a philosopher and was somewhat reluctant about philosophy, the analysis uses semiotic and literary textual methodologies rather than mainstream philosophical ones. Specifically, I follow some ideas of Lévi-Strauss’s structural semiotics and some literary narratological methodologies. I show how Cohen’s reflections and rhetoric attempt to bridge what he experiences as an (...) uncomfortable tension between reality and the formal by means of his notion of intuition. (shrink)

Can affordances help in understanding psychiatric illness and psychopathological experience? In recent work on the philosophy of psychiatry and phenomenology, the answer appears to be a clear ‘yes’, but some recent worries have emerged that the affordance-concept might be “insufficiently discerning” and thus ill-suited to make sense of psychiatric illness and experience. In this paper I briefly review recent attempts to use the affordance-concept to make sense of psychopathology, as well as the worries voiced by the critics. I argue that (...) much of this criticism is, in fact, best understood as a call for more research and offer some exploratory considerations on how this research might proceed. Specifically, I argue that an improved understanding of the self-referentiality that is inherent to experiencing affordances can be useful for psychiatry. (shrink)

Episodic memories can no longer be seen as the re-activation of stored experiences but are the product of an intense construction process based on a memory trace. Episodic recall is a result of a process of scenario construction. If one accepts this generative framework of episodic memory, there is still a be big gap in understanding the role of the narrative self in shaping scenario construction. Some philosophers are in principle sceptic by claiming that a narrative self cannot be more (...) than a causally inefficacious attributed entity anyway. Thus, we first characterize a narrative self in detail and second we clarify its influential causal role in shaping our episodic memories by influencing the process of scenario construction. This happens at three stages, namely at the level of the input, the output and the process of scenario construction. (shrink)

1. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario: Sarah is often called an expert on depression: after all, she graduated from medical school and has a PhD in neuroscience. She knows all theories of...

Self-regulation refers to the self's ability to control its own thoughts, emotions, and actions. Through self-regulation, we consciously control how much we eat, whether we give in to impulse, task performance, obsessive thoughts, and even the extent to which we allow ourselves recognition of our emotions. This work provides a synthesis and overview of recent and long-standing research findings of what is known of the successes and failures of self-regulation. People the world over suffer from the inability to control their (...) finances, their weight, their emotions, their craving for drugs, their sexual impulses, and more. The United States in particular is regarded by some observers as a society addicted to addiction. Therapy and support groups have proliferated not only for alcoholics and drug abusers but for all kinds of impulse control, from gambling to eating chocolate. Common to all of these disorders is a failure of self-regulation, otherwise known as "self-control." The consequences of these self-control problems go beyond individuals to affect family members and society at large. In Losing Control, the authors provide a single reference source with comprehensive information on general patterns of self-regulation failure across contexts, research findings on specific self-control disorders, and commentary on the clinical and social aspects of self-regulation failure. Self-control is discussed in relation to what the "self" is, and the cognitive, motivational, and emotional factors that impinge on one's ability to control one's "self." Discusses the importance of the concept of self-regulation to general issues of autonomy and identity Encompasses self-control of thoughts, feelings, and actions Contains a special section on the control of impulses and appetites First book to integrate recent research into a broad overview of the area. (shrink)

Using labelled formulae, a cut-free sequent calculus for intuitionistic propositional logic is presented, together with an easy cut-admissibility proof; both extend to cover, in a uniform fashion, all intermediate logics characterised by frames satisfying conditions expressible by one or more geometric implications. Each of these logics is embedded by the Gödel–McKinsey–Tarski translation into an extension of S4. Faithfulness of the embedding is proved in a simple and general way by constructive proof-theoretic methods, without appeal to semantics other than in the (...) explanation of the rules. (shrink)

There is thought to be a rich connection between the self and the phenomenology of episodic memory. Despite the emphasis on this link, the precise relation between the two has been underexplored. In fact, even though it is increasingly acknowledged that there are various facets of the self, this notion of the multifaceted self has played very little role in theorizing about the phenomenology of episodic memory. Getting clear about the complex phenomenology of episodic memory involves getting clear about various (...) components that contribute to the sense of self. Inspired by work on 4E cognition, and focusing on the phenomenological feature of felt connections, we show that the phenomenology of episodic memory can be modulated by focusing on different facets — embodied, extended, embedded, and ecological — of the self. (shrink)

In their target article, Moore and colleagues offer a valuable overview of the various ambivalence-related phenomena that may impede swift clinical decision-making. They argue that patients...

One of the main problems plaguing neo-logicism is the Bad Company challenge: the need for a well-motivated account of which abstraction principles provide legitimate definitions of mathematical concepts. In this article a solution to the Bad Company challenge is provided, based on the idea that definitions ought to be conservative. Although the standard formulation of conservativeness is not sufficient for acceptability, since there are conservative but pairwise incompatible abstraction principles, a stronger conservativeness condition is sufficient: that the class of acceptable (...) abstraction principles be strictly logically symmetrically class conservative . The article concludes with an examination of which classes of abstraction principles meet this criteria. (shrink)

"This philosophical study offers a representation of the logical structure of classical Hindu ethics and argues for the availability of at least the core of this ethical system to Westerners."--Page [4] Cover.

A neologicist set theory based on an abstraction principle (NewerV) codifying the iterative conception of set is investigated, and its strength is compared to Boolos's NewV. The new principle, unlike NewV, fails to imply the axiom of replacement, but does secure powerset. Like NewV, however, it also fails to entail the axiom of infinity. A set theory based on the conjunction of these two principles is then examined. It turns out that this set theory, supplemented by a principle stating that (...) there are infinitely many nonsets, captures all (or enough) of standard second-order ZFC. Issues pertaining to the axiom of foundation are also investigated, and I conclude by arguing that this treatment provides the neologicist with the most viable reconstruction of set theory he is likely to obtain. (shrink)

The argument proceeds by exploiting the gradually decreasing vagueness of a certain sequence of predicates. the vagueness of 'vague' is then used to show that the thesis that all vague predicates are incoherent is self-defeating. a second casualty is the view that the probems of vagueness can be avoided by restricting the scope of logic to nonvague predicates.

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

This chapter examines the debate between advocates of classical logic and advocates of intuitionistic logic. It examines the semantic and epistemic issues on which this debate is usually conducted. After introducing the idea that logic is a model of correct reasoning, the chapter explores the viability of a logic intermediate between classical and intuitionistic.

Opinions about cognitive enhancement (CE) are context-dependent. Prior research has demonstrated that factors like peer pressure, the influence of authority figures, competition, moral relevance, familiarity with enhancement devices, expertise, and the domain of CE to be enhanced can influence opinions. The variability and malleability of patient, expert, and public attitudes toward CE is important to describe and predict because these attitudes can influence at-home, clinical, research, and regulatory decisions. If individual preferences vary, they could influence opinions about practices and regulations (...) due to disagreements about the desirable levels of risks and benefits. The study of attitudes about CE would benefit from psychological theories that explain judgments. In particular, we suggest that variability in risk and benefit sensitivity could psychologically mediate judgments about CE in many contexts. Drawing from prospect theory, which originated in behavioral economics, it is likely that framing effects, shifted reference points, and the tendency to weigh losses (risks) more heavily than gains (benefits) predict decisions about CE. We suggest that public policy could benefit from a shared conceptual framework, such as prospect theory, that allows us to describe and predict real-world decisions about CE by patients, experts, and the public. (shrink)

Can the early Yogācāra be said to present a systematic theory of meaning? The paper argues that Sthiramati’s bhāṣya on Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā, in which he argues that all language-use is metaphorical, indeed amounts to such a theory, both because of the text’s engagement with the wider Indian philosophical conversation about reference and meaning and by virtue of the questions it addresses and its motivations. Through a translation and analysis of key sections of Sthiramati’s commentary I present the main features of (...) this theory of meaning and discuss the ways in which it is distinct from Vasubandhu’s ideas. I demonstrate how this theory of meaning enabled Sthiramati to present a unique understanding of discourse that distinguishes between varying levels of truth within the conventional realm. This understanding sat well with the Yogācāra soteriological and theoretical needs, and most importantly, enabled him to establish the meaningfulness of the school’s own metaphysical discourse. Securing this meaningfulness was especially important to Sthiramati in meeting the challenge posed by the radical conventionalism of the Madhyamaka, and his response as I interpret it suggests that one of the main disputes between the early Yogācāra with the Mādhyamika, at least as reflected in the Triṃśikā-bhāṣya, in fact turns on linguistic rather than ontological issues. (shrink)

This essay aims to explore the meaning of freedom from a comparative perspective, focusing on critical comparisons between the discourses of liberalism and Neo-Confucianism. In so doing, my specific purpose is to characterize one of the possible, and perhaps the most plausible, presentations of Confucian liberalism as a perfectionist form of Hegelian liberalism. The contents are organized into three major sections.To begin with, thanks largely to Isaiah Berlin’s “Two Concepts of Liberty” and Chang Fo-ch’üan’s Tzu-yu yü jen-ch’üan, an asymmetry emerged (...) in conceptualizing negative and positive freedom in the Chinese context; this development suggests that whereas negative.. (shrink)

A recalled memory is deemed authentic when it accurately represents how one experienced the original event. However, given the convincing research in cognitive science on the constructive nature of memory, this inevitably leads to the question of the ‘bounds of authenticity’. That is, how similar does a memory have to be to the original experience to still count as authentic? In this paper we propose a novel account of ‘Situated Authenticity’ which highlights that the norms of authenticity are context-dependent. In (...) particular, we show that each of the three core functions of episodic memory (self, social and directive) is correlated with patterned changes in levels of conceptualization (e.g., concrete construal versus abstract construal of the event). We support this theoretical account with existing empirical data. We conclude the paper by showing how our account of Situated Authenticity supplements ongoing discussions on memory contextualism, and providing an outline of how our account, which is currently elaborated targeting a phenomenological level, may also be elaborated on a processing level using the concept of representational format. (shrink)

Social psychology is a flourishing discipline. It explores the most essential questions of the human psyche, and it does so with clever, ingenuitive research methods. This edited volume is a textbook for advanced social psychology courses. Its primary target audience is first-year graduate students in social psychlogy, although it is also appropriate for upper-level undergraduate courses in social psychology and for doctoral students in disciplines connecting to social psychology. The authors of the chapters are world-renowned leaders on their topic, and (...) they have written these chapters to be engaging and accessible to students who are just learning the discipline. After reading this book, you will be able to understand almost any journal article or conference presentation in any field of social psychology. You will be able to converse competently with most social psychologists in their primary research domain, a use skill that is relevant not only in daily life but also when interviewing for a faculty position. And, most importantly, you will be equipped with the background knowledge to forge ahead more confidently with your own research. (shrink)

Although the concept of self-illness ambiguity is relatively new, the phenomenon is not. It seems likely that people have struggled with the oftentimes ambiguous relation between themselves and the...

Mecacci and Haselager's (2014) proposal is to reduce maladaptation after DBS treatment by revising the patient's conceptual scheme of the self. We are sympathetic to such an approach, but we want t...

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

Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. Knowledge does not colonize the space of ignorance in the progressive march of science; rather, knowledge and ignorance are mutually shaped in social and political domains of partial, shifting, and temporal relationships. This volume’s ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and (...) secrecy, as well as the wider implications these ideas have for anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

This essay argues that Pyrrhonian skeptics, including Fogelin, are conditional skeptics, and hence not really skeptics at all. Conditional skeptics refute themselves, for when they assert conditionals, they make assertions. Since these conditionals are philosophical in content, Pyrrhonians do not avoid all philosophical assertions as they claim to do.

We introduce a hitherto overlooked phenomenon in the cognitive and psycholinguistic study of metaphors that we termed imposed metaphoricity. We propose that a metaphorical reading can be imposed on a given expression regardless of its semantic content. We suggest that there is a class of constructions that impose metaphorical interpretation. We present findings from three experiments and from corpus-based analyses that support our proposal. Experiments 1–2 compared interpretations of expressions that can have both a literal and a metaphorical meaning when (...) embedded in a standard metaphorical form and in a form that imposes metaphoricity. In Experiment 3 we examine reaction time to such forms in an attempt to identify interference of form with early metaphorical processing. Two corpus-based analyses characterize the use of these two metaphorical constructions in natural language. We discuss the independence of metaphoricity from semantics, as demonstrated by forms that impose metaphorical interpretations. (shrink)

Ockham's razor is popularly phrased as a prohibition against multiplying entities beyond necessity. This prohibition should extend to the receptacle for these entities. To state my thesis more positively and precisely, both qualitative and quantitative parsimony apply to space, time, and possibility. All other things equal, we ought to prefer a hypothesis that postulates less space. Smaller is better. Admittedly, scientists are ambivalent about economizing on the void. They praise simplicity. Yet astronomers have a history of helping themselves to as (...) much empty space as they wish—staggering common sense with the vastness of the universe. This largesse is abetted by an aesthetic bias for sublime hypotheses. Whereas abductions based on beauty converge with parsimony, abductions based on the sublime diverge from parsimony. Awe stifles our inner accountant. Both types of abduction are popular. Both are dubious because we lack independent assurance that the universe is beautiful or sublime. The analogy between space and time supports an extension of parsimony to time. Uniformitarian geologists regarded time as a free resource. However, geologists and cosmologists must justify their postulation of an immense past. Possibility follows suit. Contrary to David Lewis, possible worlds should be minimized. Parsimony about possibilities provides a rationale for parsimony about absences. Absences are possibilities that are not actual. So proliferation of absences entails proliferation of possibilities. We should admit only those absences which do explanatory work. (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)