This special issue addresses the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological viewpoint, especially contemporary phenomenological research on selfhood. In the introduction, we first offer a brief survey of the various classic questions related to personal identity according to Locke’s initial proposal and sketch out key concepts and distinctions of the debate that came after Locke. We then characterize the types of approach represented by post-Hegelian, German and French philosophies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We argue that whereas the (...) Anglophone debates on personal identity were initially formed by the persistence question and the characterization question, the “Continental” tradition included remarkably intense debates on the individual or the self as being unique or “concrete,” deeply temporal and—as claimed by some philosophers, like Sartre and Foucault—unable to have any identity, if not one externally imposed. We describe the Continental line of thinking about the “self” as a reply and an adjustment to the post-Lockean “personal identity” question. These observations constitute the backdrop for our presentation of phenomenological approaches to personal identity. These approaches run along three lines: debates on the layers of the self, starting from embodiment and the minimal self and running all the way to the full-fledged concept of person; questions of temporal becoming, change and stability, as illustrated, for instance, by aging or transformative life-experiences; and the constitution of identity in the social, institutional, and normative space. The introduction thus establishes a structure for locating and connecting the different contributions in our special issue, which, as an ensemble, represent a strong and differentiated contribution to the debate on personal identity from a phenomenological perspective. (shrink)

Mathematical notation includes a vast array of signs. Most mathematical signs appear to be symbolic, in the sense that their meaning is arbitrarily related to their visual appearance. We explored the hypothesis that mathematical signs with iconic aspects—those which visually resemble in some way the concepts they represent—offer a cognitive advantage over those which are purely symbolic. An early formulation of this hypothesis was made by Christine Ladd in 1883 who suggested that symmetrical signs should be used to convey commutative (...) relations, because they visually resemble the mathematical concept they represent. Two controlled experiments provide the first empirical test of, and evidence for, Ladd's hypothesis. In Experiment 1 we find that participants are more likely to attribute commutativity to operations denoted by symmetric signs. In Experiment 2 we further show that using symmetric signs as notation for commutative operations can increase mathematical performance. (shrink)

In order to take advantage of the potential offered by the medium of virtual reality, it will be essential to develop an understanding of how to maximize the desirable experience of ‘presence’ in a virtual space (‘being there’), and how to minimize the undesirable feeling of ‘cybersickness’ (a constellation of discomfort symptoms experienced in virtual reality). Although there have been frequent reports of a possible link between the observer’s sense of presence and the experience of bodily discomfort in virtual reality, (...) the amount of literature that discusses the nature of the relationship is limited. Recent research has underlined the possibility that these variables have shared causes, and that both factors may be manipulated with a single approach. This review paper summarizes the concepts of presence and cybersickness and highlights the strengths and gaps in our understanding about their relationship. We review studies that have measured the association between presence and cybersickness, and conclude that the balance of evidence favours a negative relationship between the two factors which is driven principally by sensory integration processes. We also discuss how system immersiveness might play a role in modulating both presence and cybersickness. However, we identify a serious absence of high-powered studies that aim to reveal the nature of this relationship. Based on this evidence we propose recommendations for future studies investigating presence, cybersickness, and other related factors. (shrink)

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Die Überwindung des mathematischen Erkenntnisideals" verfügbar.

The Mechanisation of Natural Philosophy is devoted to various aspects of the transformation of natural philosophy during the 16th and 17th centuries that is usually described as mechanical philosophy. Drawing the border between the old Aristotelianism and the « new » mechanical philosophy faces historians with a delicate task, if not an impossible mission. There were many natural philosophers who actually crossed the border between the two worlds, and, inside each of these worlds, there was a vast spectrum of doctrines, (...) arguments and intellectual practices. The expression mechanical philosophy is burdened with ambiguities. It may refer to at least three different enterprises: a description of nature in mathematical terms; the comparison of natural phenomena to existing or imaginary machines; the use in natural philosophy of mechanical analogies, i.e. analogies conceived in terms of matter and motion alone.However mechanical philosophy is defined, its ambition was greater than its real successes. There were few mathematisations of phenomena. The machines of mechanical philosophers were not only imaginary, but had little to do with the machines of mecanicians. In most of the natural sciences, analogies in terms of matter and motion alone failed to provide satisfactory accounts of phenomena.By the same authors: Mechanics and Natural Philosophy before the Scientific Revolution (Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 254). (shrink)

We investigate the rural resistance of one of the world’s largest social movements, La Via Campesina, as a powerful enactment of radical democracy in practice. More than this, the paper describes how the movement challenges the framework of radical democracy by pointing towards the ethical importance of recognizing the relationship of human dignity with nature and considering ethico-political values inherent in the peasants’ way of living. Their resistance is a rejection of depoliticizing silencing, and their everyday life is a commitment (...) to a “more than human” radical democracy in its most radical sense, as they are always already “in parliament with land”. We conclude by outlining a perspective which is both more than radical and more democratic, considering those who have not yet been heard but also that which, in the light of radical democracy, has never been counted as part of the political body at all: nature. (shrink)

In clinical practice, decision-making is not performed by individual knowers but by an assemblage of people and instruments in which no one member has full access to every piece of evidence. This is due to decision making teams consisting of members with different kinds of expertise, as well as to organisational and time constraints. This raises important questions for the epistemology of medicine, which is inherently social in this kind of setting, and implies epistemic dependence on others. Trust in these (...) contexts is a highly complex social practice, involving different forms of relationships between trust and reasons for trust: based on reasons, and not based on reasons; based on reasons that are easily accessible to reflection and others that are not. In this paper, we focus on what it means to have reasons to trust colleagues in an established clinical team, collectively supporting or carrying out every day clinical decision-making. We show two important points about these reasons, firstly, they are not sought or given in advance of a situation of epistemic dependence, but are established within these situations; secondly they are implicit in the sense of being contained or nested within other actions that are not directly about trusting another person. The processes of establishing these reasons are directly about accomplishing a task, and indirectly about trusting someone else’s expertise or competence. These processes establish a space of reasons within which what it means to have reasons for trust, or not, gains a meaning and traction in these team-work settings. Based on a qualitative study of decision-making in image assisted diagnosis and treatment of a complex disease called pulmonary hypertension (PH), we show how an intersubjective framework, or ‘space of reasons’ is established through team members forging together a common way of identifying and dealing with evidence. In dealing with images as a central diagnostic tool, this also involves a common way of looking at the images, a common mode or style of perception. These frameworks are developed through many iterations of adjusting and calibrating interpretations in relation to those of others, establishing what counts as evidence, and ranking different kinds of evidence. Implicit trust is at work throughout this process. Trusting the expertise of others in clinical decision-making teams occurs while the members of the team are busy on other tasks, most importantly, building up a framework of common modes of seeing, and common ways of identifying and assessing evidence emerge. It is only in this way that trusting or mistrusting becomes meaningful in these contexts, and that a framework for epistemic dependence is established. (shrink)

This volume deals with a variety of moments in the history of mechanics when conflicts arose within one textual tradition, between different traditions, or ...

It is widely known that dreams can be strongly affected by traumatic events, but there may be other ways in which dreams relate to trauma. In this paper, we argue that different types of dreams could both contribute to trauma and alleviate it according to the prediction errors that occur either in dreams or in response to them after waking. A prediction error occurs when an experience contradicts one’s expectation and it is often accompanied by surprise. Prediction errors are involved (...) in memory updating processes that can be long-lasting. Not only nightmares but also unpleasant, and surprisingly, even neutral and pleasant dreams have the potential to contribute to trauma, affecting our waking lives in a similar way to waking traumatic experiences. We postulate that certain dreams can also be beneficial for trauma alleviation. Further, clinical evidence suggests that working with prediction errors that occurred in dreams and during our response to dreams after waking can assist in alleviating the negative effects of trauma. (shrink)

" Il faut philosopher " : cette formule se rencontre en diverses oeuvres de l'Antiquité destinées à exhorter un public à pratiquer la sagesse ou la philosophie, et, en particulier, dans certains des rares témoignages sur le Protreptique d'Aristote désormais perdu. Plusieurs philologues, à partir de la fin du me siècle, crurent retrouver un vaste ensemble de " fragments " de celui-ci dans l'ouvrage homonyme du néoplatonicien Jamblique. Cette " découverte " déboucha sur de nombreux travaux autour de l'authenticité aristotélicienne (...) des chapitres V à XII du livre de Jamblique, et sur différentes tentatives, au demeurant hypothétiques, pour " reconstruire " l'original aristotélicien. Le statut des extraits de Jamblique est paradoxal : si leur contenu correspond, en majorité, aux doctrines du corpus aristotélicien et semble formulé dans le cadre d'une exhortation, jamais, toutefois, l'auteur ne se réfère explicitement au Stagirite. La perspective du présent ouvrage tient compte de ce paradoxe : pour désigner l'ensemble comprenant les quelques témoignages et les rares citations de l'ouvrage aristotélicien extérieures à Jamblique, ainsi que les extraits de ce dernier, nous avons donc préféré au titre de Protreptique d'Aristote celui d'Exhortations aristotéliciennes. Cet appel à la prudence est aussi un moyen de déplacer l'intérêt de ces textes. Cet intérêt a été souvent grevé, en effet, par les questions de l'authenticité aristotélicienne, sans doute trop présentes, au détriment de ce que la traduction et le commentaire proposés dans cette édition veulent mettre en évidence : la richesse des réflexions sur le sens et la valeur de la philosophie développées dans ces extraits, source d'inspiration pour de nombreux auteurs de l'Antiquité plus tardive. L'introduction montre ainsi que la philosophie des Exhortations aristotéliciennes se situe au croisement de deux modèles conceptuels fondamentaux : elle est tantôt technique et science, tantôt accomplissement des facultés naturelles de l'homme. Ce qui explique aussi l'attention apportée, dans cette édition, à l'argumentation des Exhortations et aux questions rhétoriques, largement abordées dans une dernière partie de l'introduction. (shrink)

This article defends a selective eliminativist position with respect to the concept of “biological lineage” as used in certain areas of contemporary evolutionary biology. We argue that its primary epistemic roles in these contexts—explaining social evolution and cumulative selection—clash with empirical evidence, and that enforcing the concept of “lineage” even obstructs fruitful research avenues in several biological research fields, including phylogenetic research. Drawing on this, we suggest that, in many instances, it would be best to get rid of the concept (...) of “lineage” and think in terms that are more closely aligned with the empirical complexity of the biological world. Specifically, this entails that, instead of looking for the lineage that may have given rise to the entities possessing certain biological characteristics, biologists should generally look for any potential process allowing such possession, with the formation of a lineage just one possibility among many. (shrink)

The “Encyclopedia of DNA Elements” (ENCODE) project was launched by the US National Human Genome Research Institute in the aftermath of the Human Genome Project (HGP). It aimed to systematically map the human transcriptome, and held the promise that identifying potential regulatory regions and transcription factor binding sites would help address some of the perplexing results of the HGP. Its initial results published in 2012 produced a flurry of high-impact publications as well as criticisms. Here we put the results of (...) ENCODE and the work on epigenomics that followed in a broad theoretical and historical context, focusing on three strands of research. The first is the history of thinking about the organization of genomes, both physical and regulatory. The second is the history of ideas about gene regulation, primarily in eukaryotes. Finally, and connecting these two issues, we suggest how to think about the role of genetic material in physiology and development. (shrink)

Cet article examine comment, par leur discours, les femmes se construisent comme mère, dans leurs interactions avec leurs enfants adolescent-e-s, occasionnellement avec leurs maris, contribuant ainsi à la reproduction sociale des stéréotypes de masculinité et de féminité ou, au contraire, de quelle façon elles rompent avec la tradition et proposent des modèles alternatifs. Acceptent-elles ou non leur héritage symbolique en matière de genre? En voulant la reproduire, comment réinvestissent-elles la dimension genrée dans un contexte d’interactions verbales avec leurs adolescent-e-s, les (...) renvoyant ou pas à leurs « origines » culturelles? Les mères dépassent-elles le modèle de binarité des sexes traditionnel pour parvenir à un modèle agentif? À travers le continuum de normativité et d’agentivité, l’entre-deux prend tout son sens : en quoi l’imaginaire linguistique constitue-t-il un espace à construire, un « à travers »? This research paper examines the way women discursively construct themselves as mothers, in their interactions with their teenage children, and occasionally with their husbands, and the way they thus contribute to the social reproduction of manhood and womanhood stereotypes or on the contrary break with the tradition to propose alternative models. Do they or don’t they accept their symbolic heritage as regards sex and gender? While intending to reproduce this heritage, how do they reinvest the gendered dimension in the context of verbal interaction with their teen-agers, sending them back or not to their cultural “origins”? Do the mothers go beyond the traditional binary model of sex and gender to reach an agentive model? Through the continuum that goes from normativity to agentivity, the idea of an in-between stage makes sense: in what way does the linguistic imaginary constitute an area to be forged, a crossing space? (shrink)

This commentary focuses on evidence from autism concerning the relation between metacognition and mindreading. We support Carruthers' rejection of models 1 (independent systems) and 3 (metacognition before mindreading), and provide evidence to strengthen his critique. However, we also present evidence from autism that we believe supports model 2 (one mechanism, two modes of access) over model 4 (mindreading is prior).

La présente contribution s’attache à l’étude, dans un corpus d’articles scientifiques en sciences humaines, de la zone préverbale, c’est-à-dire des éléments initiaux (EI) et du sujet préverbal. Il s’agit de déterminer les combinaisons attestées des différents EI (11 catégories définies par des critères sémantiques et morpho-syntaxiques) en relation avec la nature du sujet. L’étude permet tout d’abord de déterminer que les séquences sans EI (sujet initial) excèdent celles avec EI, et que, parmi ces dernières, celles avec un seul EI sont, (...) de loin, les plus fréquentes. L’analyse porte ensuite sur la fréquence des différents EI (viennent en tête les éléments logico-pragmatiques, spatio-temporels et les relations logiques), ainsi que sur les chaînes dans lesquelles ils entrent préférentiellement, tant du point de vue du nombre d’EI possible et de leur catégorie, que de leur position dans ces chaînes. La première position s’avère ainsi associée de manière nettement préférentielle aux EI logico-pragmatiques. La nature du sujet apparaît par ailleurs corrélée à certaines caractéristiques des EI. Il ressort de l’étude que les textes du corpus présentent une relative homogénéité, même si des divergences ponctuelles apparaissent entre certaines disciplines. (shrink)

Le rêve et l’imagination jouent un rôle fondamental dans la démarche de Philosophie personnifiée, qui, au début de l’ouvrage de Boèce, apparaît au prisonnier sous la forme d’une personnification et entreprend de le reconduire progressivement au bien suprême. Notre enquête suivra trois lignes directrices : tel un rêve, les illusions et les images trompent le prisonnier et l’empêchent de discerner le vrai bien. Cependant, Philosophie valorise l’ imagination reproductrice, dont elle fait le premier degré d’un parcours cognitif ascensionnel. Pour élever (...) le prisonnier, et le lecteur avec lui, jusqu’au terme de ce parcours téléologique, elle recourt enfin à l’ imagination créatrice, nourrie des ressources littéraires. (shrink)

L’article « D’une Affaire aux autres » de Josquin Debaz et Sophie Roux, montre combien il est difficile de délimiter ce qu’on appelle « l’Affaire Sokal » et analyse, par un recensement aussi systématique que possible des articles de presse, la différence entre l’affaire américaine et l’affaire française.

Cet ouvrage collectif porte sur la place qu’occupent les femmes dans différentes parties de l’Empire romain d’Orient hellénophone. Il résulte de trois rencontres scientifiques organisées dans le cadre du programme GRECS d’ANIHMA entre 2012 et 2014. Comme l’explique Sophie Lalanne dans son introduction, le volume ne reflète que partiellement le contenu de ces rencontres ; l’éditrice formule d’ailleurs des réflexions intéressantes sur la place de l’histoire des femmes et du genre dans le domain...

This book develops a unique phenomenology of plurality by introducing Hannah Arendt’s work into current debates taking place in the phenomenological tradition. Loidolt offers a systematic treatment of plurality that unites the fields of phenomenology, political theory, social ontology, and Arendt studies to offer new perspectives on key concepts such as intersubjectivity, selfhood, personhood, sociality, community, and conceptions of the "we." _Phenomenology of Plurality_ is an in-depth, phenomenological analysis of Arendt that represents a viable third way between the "modernist" and (...) "postmodernist" camps in Arendt scholarship. It also introduces a number of political and ethical insights that can be drawn from a phenomenology of plurality. This book will appeal to scholars interested in the topics of plurality and intersubjectivity within phenomenology, existentialism, political philosophy, ethics, and feminist philosophy. (shrink)

The Flight from Reason by Arnold Lunn (1932).

The conservation laws do not establish the central premise within the argument from causal overdetermination – the causal completeness of the physical domain. Contrary to David Papineau, this is true even if there is no non-physical energy. The combination of the conservation laws with the claim that there is no non-physical energy would establish the causal completeness principle only if, at the very least, two further causal claims were accepted. First, the claim that the only way that something non-physical could (...) affect a physical system is by affecting the amount of energy or momentum within it, or redistributing the energy and momentum within it. Second, the claim that redistribution of energy and momentum cannot be brought about without supplying energy or momentum. Both of these claims, however, are exceedingly difficult to defend in the context of the argument. (shrink)

‘Exclusivity’ is the claim that when deliberating about whether to believe that p one can only be consciously motivated to reach one's conclusion by considerations one takes to pertain to the truth of p. The pragmatist tradition has long offered inspiration to those who doubt this claim. Recently, a neo-pragmatist movement, Keith Frankish (), and Conor McHugh ()) has given rise to a serious challenge to exclusivity. In this article, I defend exclusivity in the face of this challenge. First, I (...) dispute a crucial assumption underlying the challenge, namely, that one can have evidence sufficient to enable but not compel belief. Secondly, I examine several cases that McHugh in particular offers to call exclusivity into question and argue on independent grounds that these cases do not threaten exclusivity. Whether or not exclusivity holds, in addition to being of intrinsic interest, has a decisive consequence for the contemporary debate over Bernard Williams’ () claim that “beliefs aim at truth”. If exclusivity is true, as David Owens () has argued, the deliberator cannot be said to literally aim at truth. So, in defending exclusivity, I thereby show that the notion of ‘aiming’ fails to illuminate the nature of belief. (shrink)

There are many conflicting attitudes to technological progress: some people are fearful that robots will soon take over, even perhaps making ethical decisions for us, whilst others enthusiastically embrace a future largely run for us by them. Still others insist that we cannot predict the long term outcome of present technological developments. In this paper I shall be concerned with the impact of the new technology on medicine, and with one particularly agonizing ethical dilemma to which it has already given (...) rise. (shrink)

This paper offers the perspective of a behavioural scientist advising and providing evidence for Ireland's government during the coronavirus pandemic. It describes how behavioural research informed the public response in the early months of the crisis, but lost influence as political conflict increased. It proposes some broader lessons for managing public health crises, one of which is to recognise the potential wisdom of crowds.

The social thought and outreach philosophy of the Emergent Church offers a revolutionary take on global Christian mission. In particular, according to this new paradigm, the mission of the church requires nothing short of a radical revision of today’s economic system. A review of writings by leading emergent thinkers such as McLaren and Chalke, however, raises questions about the extreme economics being proposed. There are also deep concerns from an evangelical theological perspective.

People experiencing mental distress and illness are frequently on the receiving end of stigma, epistemic injustice, and social isolation. A range of strategies are required to alleviate the subsequent marginalisation. We ran a series ‘philosophy of mind’ workshops, in partnership with a third-sector mental health organisation with the aim of using philosophical techniques to challenge mental health stigma and build resources for self-understanding and advocacy. Participants were those with lived experience of mental distress, or unusual beliefs and experiences; mental health (...) advocates; and mental health service providers. We draw on a shared perspective as a participant and facilitator of the workshop series to assess their impact. We discuss the following benefits: the opportunity for structured discussion of experiences and models; dialogue across different mental health backgrounds; the potential to reduce self-stigma and to increase self-understanding and advocacy; and the potential to alleviate epistemic injustice. We invite researchers and mental health practitioners to consider further opportunities to investigate the potential benefits of philosophy groups in mental health settings to establish whether they generalise. (shrink)

Epistemologists often assume that rationality bears an important connection to the truth. In this paper I examine the implications of this commitment for permissivism: if rationality is a guide to the truth, can it also allow some leeway in how we should respond to our evidence? I first discuss a particular strategy for connecting permissive rationality and the truth, developed in a recent paper by Miriam Schoenfield. I argue that this limited truth-connection is unsatisfying, and the version of permissivism that (...) supports it faces serious challenges; so, for mainstream permissivism, the truth problem is still unsolved. I then discuss a strategy available to impermissivists, according to which rationality bears a quite strong connection to truth. I argue that this second strategy is successful. (shrink)

The philosophical difficulties presented by self-deception are vexed and multifaceted. One such difficulty is what I call the ‘doxastic problem’ of self-deception. Solving the doxastic problem involves determining whether someone in a state of self-deception that ∼p both believes that p and believes that ∼p, simply holds one or the other belief, or, as I will argue, holds neither. This final option, which has been almost entirely overlooked to-date, is what I call ‘ nondoxasticism ’ about self-deception. In this article, (...) I present a negative case for nondoxasticism according to which, in the paradigm case of self-deception, there is no explanatory need to attribute the self-deceived person either their undesired belief that p, or their desired belief that ∼p. Folk psychology is replete with concepts other than belief, and if we bear this in mind, it becomes clear that the explanatory roles for which the self-deceived person's purported beliefs have traditionally been enlisted can be comfortably filled without recourse to belief. (shrink)