This dissertation seeks to explicate the fundamental contributions of phenomenology to the philosophy of language as it is presently conceived in the Anglo-American tradition for which John Searle serves as the representative. They are the essence of language in the later essays of Martin Heidegger and the perspicacious description of the experience of speaking in Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ;After roughly describing the subjectivistic assumptions, the questions, and the goals of the philosophy of language in the works of Searle, the study proceeds (...) to explore how phenomenology's characteristic search for essences and concern for lived-experience can set it on a more circumspect path. ;The study elicits the following conclusions. Despite significant contrasts, there is a solid complementarity between Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty as phenomenologists concerned with the language phenomenon. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty make substantial contributions to the philosophy of language. Specifically, its traditional subjectivistic assumptions are phenomenologically re-thought; answers to its customary questions are formulated from a pre-subjective and pre-objective perspective; and the traditional problem of how language and speaking can be creative is resolved. Finally, some of the concerns of a complete philosophy of language left unaddressed by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty are itemized. (shrink)

We report on an interview-based study of decision-making capacity in two classes of patients suffering from depression. Developing a method of second-person hermeneutic phenomenology, we articulate the distinctive combination of temporal agility and temporal inability characteristic of the experience of severely depressed patients. We argue that a cluster of decision-specific temporal abilities is a critical element of decision-making capacity, and we show that loss of these abilities is a risk factor distinguishing severely depressed patients from mildly/moderately depressed patients. We explore (...) the legal and clinical consequences of this result. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTime-consciousness has long been a focus of research in phenomenology and phenomenological psychology. We advance and extend this tradition of research by focusing on the character of temporal experience under conditions of mania. Symptom scales and diagnostic criteria for mania are peppered with temporally inflected language: increased rate of speech, racing thoughts, flight-of-ideas, hyperactivity. But what is the underlying structure of temporal experience in manic episodes? We tackle this question using a strategically hybrid approach. We recover and reconstruct three hypotheses (...) regarding manic temporality that were advanced and modeled by two pioneers of clinical phenomenology: Eugène Minkowski and Ludwig Binswanger. We then test, critique, and refine these hypotheses using heterophenomenological methods in an interview-based study of persons with a history of bipolar and a current diagnosis of acute mania. Our conclusions support a central hypothesis due to Minkowski... (shrink)

Thanks to Barton Palmer and John McMillan for these thoughtful commentaries. We found much to agree with and it is striking how so many of the issues relating to decision-making capacity assessment find resonances outside of an English jurisdiction. California and New Zealand are clearly grappling with a very similar set of issues and the commentaries speak to the international nature of these discussions.We will pick up on some main points the commentaries raise.As Palmer notes, DMC law is vulnerable to (...) the criticism that it does not attend to the authenticity of a decision. In ordinary language, this is the idea that someone is deciding while “not their self” or that it is the “illness speaking.” There is a... (shrink)

Assessment of decision-making capacity (DMC) can be difficult in acquired brain injury (ABI) particularly with the syndrome of organic personality disorder (OPD) (the “frontal lobe syndrome”). Clinical neuroscience may help but there are challenges translating its constructs to the decision-making abilities considered relevant by law and ethics. An in-depth interview study of DMC in OPD was undertaken. Six patients were purposefully sampled and rich interview data were acquired for scrutiny using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Interview data revealed that awareness of deficit (...) and thinking about psychological states can be present. However, the awareness of deficit may not be “online” and effectively integrated into decision-making. Without this online awareness of deficit the ability to appreciate or use and weigh information in the process of deciding some matters appeared absent. We argue that the decision-making abilities discussed are: (1) necessary for DMC, (2) threatened by ABI, and (3) assessable at interview. Some advice for practically incorporating these abilities within assessments of DMC in patients with OPD is outlined. (shrink)

In this article I revisit A. C. Bradley's account of form/content unity through the lens of both Peter Kivy's and Peter Lamarque's recent work on Bradley's lecture “Poetry for Poetry's Sake.” I argue that Lamarque gives a superior account of Bradley's argument. However, Lamarque claims that form/content unity should be understood as an imposition applied by the reader to poetry. Working with the counterexample of modernist poetry, I throw doubt on both this claim and some associated presuppositions found in Lamarque's (...) account. Modernist poetry appears to intermittently fail to exhibit form/content unity; its unique value also appears bound up with this intermittent failure. However—against the moderates, like Kivy and Kelly Dean Jolley, who this counterexample may seem to support—I claim Lamarque is nonetheless correct that form/content unity is intrinsic in response to poetic value. I argue form/content unity should be seen as a demand, which poems can intentionally frustrate. (shrink)

Though it is an attractive popular book dealing with some major episodes in the history of nineteenth‐century vertebrate paleontology, The Dragon Seekers fails to establish the connection between Darwin and his predecessors promised by its title. As scholarship, it is seriously deficient except when dealing with ichthyosaurs, about which its Canadian author, a paleontologist, is thoroughly knowledgeable.Of the several persons central to Christopher McGowan's topic, Mary Anning, William Conybeare, and Thomas Hawkins had little or no role in the discovery of (...) dinosaurs. All three of them were instead devoted to ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs; McGowan writes confidently and reliably about each of these impressive prehistoric families. Despite his subtitle, the fossil reptile depicted on McGowan's title page is not a dinosaur but an ichthyosaur—and an excessively “made up” one at that . He begins and ends the book with Mary Anning and her famously fossiliferous hometown. In the Blue Lias cliffs of Lyme Regis, both ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were found—but no dinosaurs. Though Lyell, Agassiz, and Darwin appear as dragon seekers also, none of them was associated importantly with saurians. Cuvier, a French seeker of dragons and much else, is mentioned only in passing.The three dinosaur discoverers important to McGowan's book are William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, and Richard Owen . A more energetic researcher than some, McGowan actually visited the Kirkdale and Paviland caves made famous by Buckland. He provides up‐to‐date information about each cave, as he does about other topics throughout the text. Unfortunately, his exploration of the available literature on Buckland, Mantell, and Owen is less impressive. McGowan is clearly unacquainted with major publications by all three; their later thinking in particular is generally ignored. More broadly, McGowan has too obviously written in haste. He never provides the more coherent reading of Victorian vertebrate paleontology and associated sciences that his audience‐seeking thesis requires.Persons familiar with early dinosaur discoveries will notice the absence from McGowan's book of many useful sources and studies. The weak notes and “further reading” bibliography that he provides are inadequate. Only direct quotations have been identified; all other matters of substance, frequently controversial, are left to be taken on faith. In some introductory remarks , McGowan tells us that fossils have been known since the time of classical Greece. They have actually been found among the grave goods of Neanderthals. Some persons, Greeks among them, realized the significance of fossils long before the latter eighteenth century. McGowan even fails to acknowledge that there were evolutionary theories before Vestiges . He ignores James Secord's recent facsimile of the latter and is apparently unaware that a magnificent new edition of Darwin's correspondence is appearing.A number of factual mistakes are disconcerting. Cuvier's seminal Recherches is dated 1799 . No other foreign publication is considered, though there were several of importance. Mantell and Owen are described as physicians, which they were not; both were instead surgeons, an occupation not involving university education. Mantell joined the Geological Society in 1818, not 1820. McGowan is significantly misleading when he describes the financing of Mantell's first book and the chronology of its writing. It appeared in May 1822, not four months later . The first chapter of Mantell's book was contributed by the Rev. Henry Hoper, not Harper . Mantell was surgeon to three parishes, not just one . McGowan fails to realize that the name “Megalosaurus” had been published by James Parkinson in 1822 . He also distorts the history of Buckland's famous 1824 paper on Megalosaurus by assuming that some later additions were already in it at the time of presentation . Once again, however, he includes some useful modern knowledge.On page 87 McGowan insists that Mantell and Conybeare had not yet met, though they were both present at the meeting of 20 February 1824 and had corresponded earlier. Mantell did not receive Conybeare's most recent letter “shortly after” 10 February 1825 but on 24 November 1824 . On page 89 Robert Trotter is not fully identified, and his later generosity to Mantell is ignored. Though Lyell's geological views influenced Mantell's, they would never be entirely congruent. Mantell was still very much a catastrophist in 1832 . On page 111 McGowan's explanation of British money is erroneous. According to page 113, Mantell and Benjamin Silliman never met. Yet they spent several days together in 1851. In January 1837 Darwin was actually living at Cambridge . On page 179 McGowan claims that “our present preoccupation with dinosaurs dates back less than three decades.” Finally, there is some inadequate editing, as with “their's” and “Gooses” . On page 229 a note from Lyell to Owen is quoted but not cited.Though many of these lapses will be of no consequence to the general reader, scholars should be forewarned. This is not a book on which one can rely, despite occasionally useful points. It should not be recommended to students, for whom better sources are available. It should not be taken as a model. Several would‐be popularizations of the history of the earth sciences have appeared recently, none of them based on sound historical arguments. The writing of defensible history is not so simple a task as these facile popularizers would like the public to believe. (shrink)

Shaping the Normative Landscape is an investigation of the value of obligations and of rights, of forgiveness, of consent and refusal, of promise and request. David Owens shows that these are all instruments by which we exercise control over our normative environment.

We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David (...) class='Hi'>Owens focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology. He proposes that the problems we confront today - scepticism, the analysis of knowlege, and debates on epistemic justification - can be tackled only once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. This can be resolved when we realise that our responsibility for beliefs is profoundly different from our rationality and agency, and that memory and testimony can preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which might be used to justify it. Reason Without Freedom should be of value to those interested in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and the history of 17th and 18th century. (shrink)

There have undoubtedly been ample reasons to discourage a translator from approaching this commentary on the Metaphysics. The reasons stem mainly from the lack of a critical text. As is well enough known, such a text is at present in preparation by the Dominicans. Until it appears, attempts even at discussing the many disconcerting problems about the commentary run the risk of proving futile. In consequence, discussions have fallen off in recent years. As Rowan is careful to point out in (...) his introduction, there is sufficient evidence not only that errors have been made through simple negligence in the editions of the commentary, but also that "all sorts of liberties" may have been taken with the text. What we have at present, moreover, might possibly be a running text based on redactions dating from different years in St. Thomas' teaching career. If one may judge from the way Rowan presents the different views, he personally prefers hypotheses that simplify the situation and allow the text now available to be considered as a single continuous writing left in its present form by Aquinas himself. (shrink)

My comments have two parts. I begin by laying out the argument that seems to me to be at the core of Olson’s thinking about human persons; and I suggest a problem with his reasons for accepting one of its premises. The premise is warranted by its platitudinous or commonsensical status; but Olson’s arguments lead him to conclusions that undermine the family of platitudes to which it belongs. Then I’ll raise a question about how Olson should construe the vagueness that (...) would seem to infect the boundaries of human animals. (shrink)

This paper proposes a subjectivist approach to color within the framework of an externalist form of representationalism about phenomenal consciousness. Motivations are presented for accepting both representationalism and color subjectivism, and an argument is offered against the case made by Michael Tye on behalf of the claim that colors are objective, physical properties of objects. In the face of the considerable difficulties associated with finding a workable realist theory of color, the alternative account of color experience set out, projectivist representationalism, (...) claims that the color properties we encounter in experience exist only in the representational contents of our experiences. Color experiences are caused by the physical structure of objects, but objects are never actually colored and color experiences systematically misrepresent objects as colored. However, despite being an error theory of color, projectivist representationalism does not do violence to our everyday use and understanding of color concepts and terms, nor does it undermine the role of color experience in aiding the perceiving subject in navigating through the world. (shrink)

The hypothesis that belief aims at the truth has been used to explain three features of belief: (1) the fact that correct beliefs are true beliefs, (2) the fact that rational beliefs are supported by the evidence and (3) the fact that we cannot form beliefs.

Where does the study of the flow of time belong: physics, the cognitive sciences, philosophy, or somewhere else? Physicists and philosophers have set themselves up into two camps: those who believe there is genuine flow or becoming in the world and those who believe there is just a block of events. What had not been considered is whether the subjective feeling of flow of time is the same the world over, whether it could be tampered with by brain injury, or (...) whether it is present at all developmental stages. We lay out the problem, explain terms, and provide synopses of relevant ideas. (shrink)

In an important departure from theories of causation, David Owens proposes that coincidences have no causes, and that a cause is something which ensures that its effects are no coincidence. In Causes and Coincidences, he elucidates the idea of a coincidence as an event which can be analysed into constituent events, the nomological antecedents of which are independent of each other. He also suggests that causal facts can be analysed in terms of non-causal facts, including relations of necessity. Thus, (...) causation is defined in terms of coincidence, and coincidence without reference to causation. David Owens challenges the ideas associated with Hume, Davidson and Lewis, constructing a theory which distinguishes nomological necessity and sufficiency from their logical counterparts. He is able to offer novel solutions to the major problems of causation, including the direction of causation, the logical form of causal statements, the distinction betwen causal connections and logical connections, and the relationship between psychological and physical causation. (shrink)

Why do human beings make and accept promises? What human interest is served by this procedure? Many hold that promising serves what I shall call an information interest, an interest in information about what will happen. And they hold that human beings ought to keep their promises because breaches of promise threaten this interest. On this view human beings take promises seriously because we want correct information about how other human beings are going to act. Some such view is taken (...) for granted by most philosophical accounts of promissory obligation.1 I agree that human beings do want such information and that they often get it by accepting promises. But I doubt that promising exists because it serves this information interest. (shrink)

Brings together a lifetime of work on the problems presented by the notion of a Christian philosophy, debates whether a Christian philosophy is possible, and outlines the steps for its development.

There are theoretical limitations to what can be implemented by a computer program. In this paper we are concerned with a limitation on the strength of computer implemented deduction. We use a version of the Curry paradox to arrive at this limitation.

The difficulty in finding well‐matched kidneys for transplantation into black Americans is compounded by the disproportionately low rate of black donation. A program of directed donation that privileged black‐to‐black transplant could ease the chronic shortage of organs.

In biomedicine, practitioners often treat risk of disease as an illness in itself—suitable for monitoring and intervention. In some cases, increased diagnostics improve health outcomes by detecting problems early. Recently, however, science and technology studies scholars and medical practitioners have noted that the treatment of risk can also lead to unnecessary intervention and possible harm. Despite these findings, it is often hard to see changes in practice. Childbirth serves as an illuminating case because two models of health risk operate simultaneously—in (...) addition to the model valuing frequent intervention, there is another that seeks to mitigate risk by refusing medical surveillance. Based on interviews with birth providers and an analysis of professional documents, this article uses the case of fetal heart rate monitoring in American childbirth to demonstrate how some health providers are framing “intentional non-knowing” as a moral imperative to reduce medical risk. Studying the success and limitations of this “risk counterculture” illuminates how risk societies are changing in response to data suggesting that more information can have hurtful effects. This case integrates well-developed theories of knowledge production with less-developed theories of knowledge nonproduction, leading to a more fruitful discussion of the boundaries of responsible knowledge in risk management. (shrink)

Based on the deontological ethical perspective and concepts from blame psychology such as the defensive attribution hypothesis and culpable control, it is argued that people are predisposed to blame a transportation company when it is involved in an accident. This was tested in a scenario of an airline accident of uncertain cause, finding that respondents blamed the airline the most among a list of five blamable entities (pilots, mechanics-maintenance-inspectors, the weather, ground crew-air traffic control, and airline). Additionally, based on the (...) virtue theory of ethics and the moral character perspective of blame psychology, it was hypothesized that manipulation of the virtue of the airline (mercenary versus altruistic) would result in less blame assigned to the altruistic airline in a quasi-experiment where the other factor was outcome of the accident (safe landing with a few injuries versus crash with many fatalities). However, the two factors significantly interacted in an unexpected way. The mercenary airline suffering a crash was blamed less than the altruistic airline that crashed, while the mercenary airline that safely landed was blamed more than the altruistic airline that safely landed. The managerial implications of blame bias toward the company are addressed. (shrink)

From Indra’s Net to Internet: Communication, Technology, and the Evolution of Buddhist Ideas, by Daniel Veidlinger. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018. 273pp. Hb $68. ISBN-13: 9780824873400.

One way of discerning what sort of control we have over our mental lives is to look at cases where that control is not exercised. This is one reason why philosophers have taken an interest in the phenomenon of akrasia, in an agent's ability to do, freely and deliberately, something that they judge they ought not to do. Akrasia constitutes a failure of control but not an absence of control. The akratic agent is not a compulsive; an akratic agent has (...) the ability to control their action, to make it conform to their judgement, but they fail to exercise that ability. They freely and deliberately give in to temptation. (shrink)

How do we know what other speakers say? Perhaps the most natural view is that we hear a speaker's utterance and infer what was said, drawing on our competence in the syntax and semantics of the language. An alternative view that has emerged in the literature is that native speakers have a non-inferential capacity to perceive the content of speech. Call this the perceptual view. The disagreement here is best understood as an epistemological one about whether our knowledge of what (...) speakers say is epistemically mediated by our linguistic competence. The present paper takes up the question of how we should go about settling this issue. Arguments for the perceptual view generally appeal to the phenomenology of speech comprehension. The present paper develops a line of argument for the perceptual view that draws on evidence from empirical psychology. The evidence suggests that a speaker's core syntactic and semantic competence is typically deployed sub-personally. The point is not just that the competence is tacit or unconscious, but that the person is not the locus of the competence. I argue that standing competence can enter into the grounds for knowledge only if it is subject to a certain sort of epistemic assessment, an assessment that is appropriate only if the person is the locus of that competence. If the person is not the locus of a speaker's core linguistic competence, as the psychological evidence suggests, then that competence does not enter into the grounds for our knowledge of what speakers say. If this line of argument is right, it has implications for the epistemology of perception and for our understanding of how empirical psychology bears on epistemology generally. (shrink)

We develop a functional abstraction principle for the type-free algorithmic logic introduced in our earlier work. Our approach is based on the standard combinators but is supplemented by the novel use of evaluation trees. Then we show that the abstraction principle leads to a Curry fixed point, a statement C that asserts C ⇒ A where A is any given statement. When A is false, such a C yields a paradoxical situation. As discussed in our earlier work, this situation leaves (...) one no choice but to restrict the use of a certain class of implicational rules including modus ponens. (shrink)

There is growing interest in nature-based interventions to improve human health and wellbeing. An important nascent area is exploring the potential of outdoor therapies to treat and prevent common mental health problems like depression. In this conceptual analysis on the nature–depression nexus, we distil some of the main issues for consideration when NBIs for depression are being developed. We argue that understanding the mechanisms, or ‘active ingredients’ in NBIs is crucial to understand what works and for whom. Successfully identifying modifiable (...) mediating intervention targets will pave the way for interventions with increased efficacy. We highlight a non-exhaustive list of five clinically relevant putative, candidate mechanisms which may underly the beneficial effects of NBIs on depression: stress, rumination, mindfulness, sleep and exercise. We also make the case that when developing NBIs it is important to not neglect young people, explore personalised approaches and focus on both treatment and prevention approaches. To achieve these aims methodologically rigorous programmes of clinical research are needed that include well-powered and controlled experimental designs including randomised controlled trials, qualitative research, longitudinal studies and large prospective cohorts. (shrink)

Some well-known translations of the words attributed to the Master in Analects 6.25, "gu bu gu gu zai gu zai," are analyzed and sorted out. It is argued that this passage can be given a consistent reading and an interpretation that coheres with a major theme of the text, namely that the ontological status of a thing, like that of a person, is relative to the practice of constitutive rules and conventions.