Chapter One THE MAN-APES A Lesson for Thomas Hobbes Probably the most exciting development in modern anthropology is the discovery of the australopithecines ...

Intellectualism about knowledge-how is the view that practical knowledge is a species of propositional knowledge. I argue that this view is undermined by a difference in properties between knowledge-how and both knowledge-that and knowledge-wh. More specifically, I argue that both knowledge-that and knowledge-wh are easily transmitted via testimony while knowledge-how is not easily transmitted by testimony. This points to a crucial difference in states of knowledge. I also consider Jason Stanley's attempt to subsume knowledge-how under an account of de se (...) knowledge. I argue that there are crucial differences between de se knowledge and knowledge-how. Thus, this paper advances both the discussion of intellectualism and the literature on the nature of de se knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that attention to the intricacies relating to belief illustrate crucial difficulties with Schellenberg's hiddenness argument. This issue has been only tangentially discussed in the literature to date. Yet we judge this aspect of Schellenberg's argument deeply significant. We claim that focus on the nature of belief manifests a central flaw in the hiddenness argument. Additionally, attention to doxastic subtleties provides important lessons about the nature of faith.

This paper takes as a starting point a recent development in privacy-debates: the emphasis on social and institutional environments in the definition and the defence of privacy. Recognizing the merits of this approach I supplement it in two respects. First, an analysis of the relation between privacy and autonomy teaches that in the digital age more than ever individual autonomy is threatened. The striking contrast between on the one hand offline vocabulary, where autonomy and individual decision making prevail, and on (...) the other online practices is a challenge that cannot be met in a social approach. Secondly, I elucidate the background of the social approach. Its importance is not exclusively related to the digital age. In public life we regularly face privacy-moments, when in a small distinguished social domain few people are commonly involved in common experiences. In the digital age the contextual integrity model of Helen Nissenbaum has become very influential. However this model has some problems. Nissenbaum refers to a variety of sources and uses several terms to explain the normativity in her model. The notion ‘context’ is not specific and faces the reproach of conservatism. We elaborate on the most promising suggestion: an elaboration on the notion ‘goods’ as it can be found in the works of Michael Walzer and Alisdair Macintyre. Developing criteria for defining a normative framework requires making explicit the substantive goods that are at stake in a context, and take them as the starting point for decisions about the flow of information. Doing so delivers stronger and more specific orientations that are indispensible in discussions about digital privacy. (shrink)

I begin by identifying an ambiguity in the post-Hegelian literature on Immanent Critique, distinguishing two possible definitions: judging an object against its ‘internal’ norms; and accounting for one’s own standpoint with reference to the object. I then claim that both definitions are represented in Hegel’s Phenomenology, and develop extended interpretations of material from the Introduction in order to clarify and substantiate this thesis. This yields revisionist readings of the famous ‘internal criteria’ and ‘self examination’ tropes. My discussion builds towards elucidating (...) the relation between the two definitions of Immanent Critique I have distinguished, as it is developed in the Phenomenology. (shrink)

There is a discrepancy between Stoffregen & Bardy's concept with experimental work on human self-motion perception. We suggest an alternative: (1) higher brain centers are informed by a given sensory cue in a direct and rapid way (direct perception), and (2) this information is then used to prime and shape a more complex mechanism that usually involves several cues and processing steps (inferential).

This summarizes of some prominent views about the metaphysics of possible worlds.

In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Richard Rorty presents powerful arguments against traditional epistemology, conceived as a quest both for empirical grounds that provide certainty and for necessary truths that provide a conceptual framework within which to couch empirical findings. Rorty finds traditional epistemology in general, and specifically any appeal to representation that might ground knowledge, to be an unmitigated failure. In this paper, I show that Rorty at least considered but ultimately rejected the possibility of a type of (...) epistemically relevant, foundational representation with a normative status. Drawing on the work of Tyler Burge, I argue that Rorty was too quick in dismissing the important, epistemically foundational role of perceptual representation. A new and improved picture of foundational epistemology emerges. Throughout the paper, I aim to shed light on the fundamental disconnect between Rorty’s and Burge’s approaches to epistemology, and to philosophical investigation more generally. (shrink)

I discuss the ubiquity of power law distributions in language organisation (and elsewhere), and argue against Miller’s (The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature, William Heinemann, London, 2000) argument that large vocabulary size is a consequence of sexual selection. Instead I argue that power law distributions are evidence that languages are best modelled as dynamical systems but raise some issues for models of iterated language learning.

Asserting that traditional Western religious groundings for ethics neither reach a modern international audience nor solve the interpersonal and global problems ...

Das Nachdenken von Wissenschaftlern und Kunstlern uber das Verhaltnis von Natur und Kunsten, uber die begrundende, orientierende Qualitat der Kunst, ihr Bearbeitungs-, Veranderungs-, Deutungsrecht an der Natur oder ihre Abhangigkeit von der Natur ist alt. Das in den sechziger Jahren erwachte Interesse an der Barockliteratur hat der Literatur der fruhen Neuzeit in vielen Bereichen ganz neue und andere, vor allem in einzelne Kunste und Nationalkulturen ubergreifende Zusammenhange gelehrt, mit bis heute unabsehbaren und weiterwirkenden Folgen fur die Kulturgeschichte der Epoche.Die 65 (...) Vortrage des Kongresses gehen der Programmatik und den Perspektiven des Verhaltnisses von Natur und Kunsten nach, untersuchen die Konstanz und den Wandel im kunsttheoretischen Diskurs, betrachten Fragen der Kunstnormierung und der Entwicklung neuer Gattungen, beschreiben Institution und Medien der Diskussion und der Entwicklung von Kunstlehren. (shrink)

Despite evidence in college students indicating a hunger for spiritual insight and spirituality’s application in health care, there continues to be guardedness within the academy towards inclusion of curricula that address spirituality. The purpose of this article is to examine the ethical considerations of teaching spirituality in the academy by describing current trends, issues relevant to nursing education and practice, legitimate concerns of the academy, and the importance of an ethical instructional response when teaching about spirituality. Data supporting the interest (...) and desire by students to explore meaning and purpose in the context of spirituality will be presented. Challenges and barriers inherent in teaching this topic will be described, including the affective response, the lack of a universally accepted definition of spirituality, and spirituality’s relationship to religion. Pedagogical strategies consistent with an ethical instructional response will be discussed as the key to eliciting trust within the academy. A model of teaching spirituality and health will be offered to illustrate these possibilities. (shrink)

Recent developments point to a breakdown in the generalized second law of thermodynamics for theories with Lorentz symmetry violation. It appears possible to construct a perpetual motion machine of the second kind in such theories, using a black hole to catalyze the conversion of heat to work. Here we describe and extend the arguments leading to that conclusion. We suggest the inference that local Lorentz symmetry may be an emergent property of the macroscopic world with origins in a microscopic second (...) law of causal horizon thermodynamics. (shrink)