Originally presented as the author's thesis, Munich, 1972.

() Baul sadhana: introduction The word 'baul, in popular interpretation, is generally equated with singing: with folk song of Bengal or, more concretely, ...

I exist, but I am not a thing among things; X exists if and only if there is something such that it=X. This is consistent, and it is a view that can be supported. Calvino’s novel The Non‐Existent Knight can be read so as to illustrate this view. But what is my relation to the things there are if I am not identical with any of them – things such as my arms, my garden, the city I live in? I (...) name this the Gurduloo problem, after the Knight’s page. This relation must be one that admits of degrees; I suggest that we say that I manifest myself through the things thus associated with me. Several pseudo‐problems, pertaining to volitional action, supervenience, observability, and the emergence of consciousness, dissolve upon inspection. (shrink)

After Hume, attempts to forge an empiricist epistemology have taken three forms, which I shall call the First, Middle, and Third Way. The First still attempts an a priori demonstration that our cognitive methods satisfy some criterion of adequacy. The Middle Way is pursued under the banners of naturalism and scientific realism, and aims at the same conclusion on non-apriori grounds. After arguing that both fail, I shall describe the general characteristics of the Third Way, an alternative epistemology suitable for (...) empiricism. (shrink)

Science tends to find a solution to the problem of the unreliability of human perception by understanding objectivity as the absence of subjectivity. However, from a phenomenological point of view, subjectivity is not so much a problem as an inevitable starting-point. That does not mean that the problem of the correctness of people’s accounts of their own perceptions is no problem at all—in fact the problem is so great that the authority of a person’s knowledge of his or her own (...) mind can be doubted. The problem of subjectivity can only be solved when it is related to the problem of interpretation. Analyses of narratives are interpretations of interpretations. The phenomenologist must make sure that the data he or she analyses are lived interpretations and not interpretations of interpretations. (shrink)

O notável lugar de destaque e o papel central das mulheres nas sociedades africanas pré-coloniais tem sido inferiorizado em empreendimentos coloniais de devastação dos modos de ser africano, com desdobramentos particulares sobre as mulheres em função da instrusão da hierarquia de gênero e da consequente generificação do trabalho. A descaracterização e criminalização das organizações socioeconômicas autóctones, matrifocalizadas, expressa-se pela nomenclatura de “economias informais”. À vista disso, o presente artigo teórico-empírico tem como objetivo articular como a categoria “matriarcado” se aplica à (...) lógica de organização socioeconômica reinventada na contemporaneidade, produzindo autonomia e independência de mulheres. Iniciamos com o embate ontológico e epistemológico que incita a resiliência das estruturas familiares e econômicas matriarcais nas Améfricas. Em seguida, na etapa empírica, constatamos as manifestações da matrifocalidade partir de relatos de lideranças de organizações econômicas e religiosas de matriz africana. Tais tecnologias econômicas matricentradas representam fonte de geração de vida individual e coletiva e – sobretudo – a capacidade de reinvenção dos princípios do matriarcado nas Améfricas contemporâneas. (shrink)

The Nature of This Work Out Philosophy is a collection of our basic notions concerning the world and our way of considering it. For this reason, the book, ...

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This Inspirational Guide To An Open, Critical Exchange Between India And The West Is Framed As A Tribute To Dr. Bettina Baumer, An Eminent Scholar Of Indology. Comprising 32 Essays, Segregated Into Three Sections Indian Philosophy And Spirituality, Indian Arts And Aesthetics, And Interreligious And Intercultural Dialogue.

In response to parts I-III of G Rosen's "What is Constructive Empiricism?", "Philosophical Studies", 74, 1994, 143-178, this paper examines several construals of the position of constructive empiricism. At issue, in part, is the equation of intentional aspects of science with the intentions and opinions of scientists. In addition it is necessary to distinguish the constructive empiricist -- a philosopher holding that acceptance of theories in science need not involve belief that they are true -- from the scientific agnostic' who (...) accepts but does not believe current science. What is at stake for empiricism is a view of science that will admit it as a paradigm for rational inquiry. (shrink)

This volume contains the papers read at the conference on 'Semantics from different points of view' that took place at Konstanz University in Septem ber 1978. This interdisciplinary conference Vias organized by the':Sonderfor schungsbereich 99 - Linguistik' and sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsge meinschaft. Li~guists, philosophers, logicians, and psychologists met to dis cuss recent developments in the study of the semantics of natural language from the point of view of their disciplines. But this is not to say that there was (...) one particular topic shared by all the participants. The conference was organized because the seven research groups that constitute the Sonderforschungsbereich wanted to discuss their results in an international context and to get advice and guidance for the work still to be done. Therefore, quite a number of topics were covered, though at different levels of precision, under the general label 'semantics'. And the selection of topics, as well as the relative importance given to them, is due to the research interests currently represented in the Sonderforschungs bereich. (shrink)

A general form is proposed for epistemological theories, the relevant factors being: the family of epistemic judgments, the epistemic state, the epistemic commitment , and the family of possible epistemic inputs . First a simple theory is examined in which the states are probability functions, and the subject of probability kinematics introduced by Richard Jeffrey is explored. Then a second theory is examined in which the state has as constituents a body of information and a recipe that determines the accepted (...) epistemic judgments on the basis of this corpus. Through an examination of several approaches to the statistical syllogism, a relation is again established with Jeffrey's generalized conditionalization. (shrink)

A general form is proposed for epistemological theories, the relevant factors being: the family of epistemic judgments, the epistemic state, the epistemic commitment, and the family of possible epistemic inputs. First a simple theory is examined in which the states are probability functions, and the subject of probability kinematics introduced by Richard Jeffrey is explored. Then a second theory is examined in which the state has as constituents a body of information and a recipe that determines the accepted epistemic judgments (...) on the basis of this corpus. Through an examination of several approaches to the statistical syllogism, a relation is again established with Jeffrey's generalized conditionalization. (shrink)

Measures of retrieval speed for recently presented events show a sharp dichotomy between representations in focal attention and representations that are recently processed but no longer attended. When information is presented over time, retrieval measures show that focal attention and rapid privileged access is limited to the most recently processed unit or chunk, not the last 3–5 chunks that Cowan estimates from various recall procedures.

Sentences attributing beliefs, doubts, wants, and the like (propositional attitudes, in Russell's terminology) have posed a major problem for semantics. Recently the pragmatic description of language has become more systematic. I shall discuss the formalization of pragmatics, and propose an analysis of belief attribution that avoids some main problems apparently inherent in the semantic approach.

For a long time people have been trying to develop probability theory starting from ‘finite’ events rather than collections of infinite events. In this way one can find natural replacements for measurable sets and integrable functions, but measurable functions seemed to be more difficult to find. We present a solution. Moreover, our results are constructive.

Vague subjective probability may be modeled by means of a set of probability functions, so that the represented opinion has only a lower and upper bound. The standard rule of conditionalization can be straightforwardly adapted to this. But this combination has difficulties which, though well known in the technical literature, have not been given sufficient attention in probabilist or Bayesian epistemology. Specifically, updating on apparently irrelevant bits of news can be destructive of one’s explicitly prior expectations. Stability of vague subjective (...) opinion appears to need a more complex model. (shrink)

This paper formalizes part of a well-known psychological model of emotions. In particular, the logical structure underlying the conditions that trigger emotions are studied and then hierarchically organized. The insights gained therefrom are used to guide a formalization of emotion triggers, which proceeds in three stages. The first stage captures the conditions that trigger emotions in a semiformal way, i.e., without committing to an underlying formalism and semantics. The second stage captures the main psychological notions used in the emotion model (...) in dynamic doxastic logic. The third stage introduces a BDI-based framework (belief–desire–intention) with achievement goals, which is used to firmly ground the preceding stages. The result is a formalization of emotion triggers for BDI agents with achievement goals. The idea of proceeding in these stages is to provide different levels of commitment to formalisms, so that it remains relatively easy to extend or replace the used formalisms without having to start from scratch. Finally, we show that the formalization renders properties of emotions that are in line with the psychological model on which it is based. (shrink)

This book challenges the common view that classical education in 19th-century Germany was dominated by a progressive ideal called neohumanism. The prevailing ideal of education at the German Gymnasien was emphatically traditional and is best described as classical humanism. Moreover, this 19th-century classical humanism dynamically related to modern society and should therefore be seen as the continuation of a living tradition.".

Sensibel für die politischen, sozialen und geistig-kulturellen Umbrüche seiner Zeit entwickelt Friedrich Schlegel in der Auseinandersetzung mit Fichtes transzendentalem Idealismus ein systemkritisches, ironisches, experimentelles und zur Poesie hin sich öffnendes Philosophiekonzept, das als frühromantischer Idealismus charakterisiert wird. Teil 1 führt anhand der Wissenschaftslehre von 1794/95 in Fichtes Philosophie ein. Die Teile 2 bis 5 verfolgen Schlegels kritische Fichterezeption und seine Konzipierung philosophischer Alternativen. Dabei legt Teil 2 Schlegels Fragmente und kleinere Prosatexte zugrunde. Teil 3 erörtert seine philosophischen Vorlesungen von 1800/01 (...) und 1804/05. Teil 4 ist den besonderen Leistungen Schlegels für ein modernes Poesiekonzept und der Bedeutung seiner programmatischen Forderung der Synthese von Philosophie und Poesie gewidmet. Dabei wird u.a. auf die Konzepte von romantischer Poesie, Transzendentalpoesie und Mythologie eingegangen. Teil 5 behandelt Schlegels Ironiekonzept als innovativen philosophischen Beitrag für ein antimetaphysisches, offenes, plurales Weltbild. (shrink)