Reichle et al. show that saccades in reading are controlled by linguistic processing. The authors' Figure 13 shows the parietal and frontal eye fields as parts of a neural implementation. This commentary presents data from dyslexics performing nonreading saccade tasks. The dyslexics exhibit deficits in antisaccade control. Improvement of the deficits is achieved in 85% of the cases and results in advantages in learning how to read.

Two visual phenomena are described in which oculomotor activity (saccades) changes our conscious perception: (1) some geometrical visual illusions disappear when saccades are suppressed, and (2) misperceptions occur in an antisaccade task with attentional precues. The first phenomenon shows that what we consciously perceive depends on how we look. The second phenomena indicates that a saccade itself may remain unconscious together with the accompanying changes of the retinal image.

This commentary considers experimental material – some new, some from earlier studies – challenging the model presented by Findlay & Walker. It concentrates on the role of voluntary and involuntary visual attention versus fixation in saccade control and on the generation of antisaccades, reflexive prosaccades, and corrective saccades. The data of a large number of subjects are presented to show the systematic relationship between voluntary saccade generation, error production, and error correction in an antisaccade task.

This is a selection of essays on moral responsibility that represent the major components of John Martin Fischer's overall approach to freedom of the will and moral responsibility. The collection exhibits the overall structure of Fischer's view and shows how the various elements fit together to form a comprehensive framework for analyzing free will and moral responsibility. The topics include deliberation and practical reasoning, freedom of the will, freedom of action, various notions of control, and moral accountability. The (...) essays seek to provide a foundation for our practices of holding each other (and ourselves) morally and legally accountable for our behavior. A crucial move is the distinction between two kinds of control. According to Fischer, "regulative control" involves freedom to choose and do otherwise ("alternative possibilities"), whereas "guidance control" does not. Fischer contends that guidance control is all the freedom we need to be morally responsible agents. Further, he contends that such control is fully compatible with causal determinism. Additionally, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alternative possibilities in order for there to be a legitimate point to practical reasoning. Fischer's overall framework contains an argument for the contention that guidance control, and not regulative control, is associated with moral responsibility, a sketch of a comprehensive theory of moral responsibility (that ties together responsibility for actions, omissions, consequences, and character), and an account of the value of moral responsibility. On this account, the value of exhibiting freedom (of the relevant sort) and thus being morally responsible for one's behavior is a species of the value of artistic self-expression. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn diesem Artikel diskutieren wir Michel Foucaults Hauptwerke zum Thema „Wahnsinn und Psychiatrie“ von den Frühschriften bis in die siebziger Jahre. Zum einen rekonstruieren wir die globale theoretische und methodologische Entwicklung seiner Positionen im Lauf der verschiedenen Werkperioden. Zum anderen arbeiten wir Foucaults philosophische Überlegungen zum Gegenstand seiner Untersuchungen heraus. Nach der einleitenden Problemstellung zeigen wir entsprechend der neueren Forschung, inwiefern Foucaults frühe Positionen von 1954 (in der Einführung zu Binswangers Traum und Existenz sowie in Geisteskrankheit und Persönlichkeit) das spätere (...) Werk durch eine phänomenologische Deskription des Gegenstands und einen historisch-kritischen Anspruch vorbereitete. Davon ausgehend thematisieren wir die zentralen inhaltlichen und methodologischen Prämissen in Foucaults Wahnsinn und Gesellschaft von 1961. Seine Thesen zur „Abwesenheit des Wahnsinns“ in der Moderne verstehen wir als einen in sich widersprüchlichen Versuch, den Gegenstand der Untersuchung von gängigen Vorannahmen zu befreien. Anschließend situieren wir Foucaults Vorlesungen Die Macht der Psychiatrie von 1973/74 im Kontext seiner machtanalytischen Werkphase und betonen seinen erneuten Standpunktwechsel in den Annahmen zur „Produktivität“ des Wahnsinns als Machteffekt. Abschließend resümieren wir unsere Kritik im Zusammenhang mit der Rezeptionsgeschichte der dargestellten Studien und fragen nach der möglichen Bedeutung dieser Werke für die philosophische und historische Reflexion des psychiatrischen Gegenstandsfeldes. (shrink)

Populärwissenschaftliche Analyse des alten und neuen Ehrbegriffs in der Bundesrepublik anhand aktueller Beispiele aus Politik, Wirtschaft und Internet.

In this collection of essays on the metaphysical issues pertaining to death, the meaning of life, and freedom of the will, John Martin Fischer argues that death can be a bad thing for the individual who dies. He defends the claim that something can be a bad thing--a misfortune--for an individual, even if he never experiences it as bad. Fischer also defends the commonsense asymmetry in our attitudes toward death and prenatal nonexistence: we are indifferent to the time (...) before we are born, but we regret that we do not live longer. Further, Fischer argues, that immortal life could be desirable, and shows how the defense of the badness of death and the goodness of immortality exhibit a similar structure; on Fischer's view, the badness of death and the goodness of life can be represented on spectra that display certain continuities. Building on Fischer's previous book, My Way a major aim of this volume is to show important connections between issues relating to life and death and issues relating to free will. More specifically, Fischer argues that we endow our lives with a certain distinctive kind of meaning--an irreducible narrative dimension of value--by exhibiting free will. Thus, in acting freely, we transform our lives so that our stories matter. (shrink)

In this paper I explore in a preliminary way the interconnections among narrative explanation, narrative value, free will, an immortality. I build on the fascinating an suggestive work of David Velleman. I offer the hypothesis that our acting freely is what gives our lives a distinctive kind of value - narrative value. Free Will, then, is connected to the capacity to lead a meaningful life in a quite specific way: it is the ingredient which, when aded to others, enows us (...) with a meaning over an above the cumulative value erived from ading together levels of momentary welfare. In acting freely, we are writing a sentence in the story of our lives, and the value of acting freely is thus a species of the value of artistic creativity or self-expression (understood appropriately). Finally, I contend that the fact that our lives are stories need not entail that they have endings, or that immortality would necessarily be unimaginable or essentially different from ordinary, finite human life. Yes, a certain sort of narrative understanding of our lives as a whole would be impossible in the context of immortality; but much of what we care about, and value, in our stories might remain. (shrink)

In the near future we may be able to manipulate human embryos through genetic intervention. Jürgen Habermas has argued against the development of technologies which could make such intervention possible. His argument has received widespread criticism among bioethicists. These critics argue that Habermas's argument relies on implausible assumptions about human nature. Moreover, they challenge Habermas's claim that genetic intervention adds something new to intergenerational relationships pointing out that parents have already strong control over their children through education. In this paper (...) a new approach to Habermas's theory is suggested which makes clear that he has a strong point against genetic intervention. A more charitable reading of Habermas with respect to his assumptions concerning human nature is presented. Moreover, Habermas's assumption concerning the power of genetic controlling is evaluated. By means of a close comparison of genetic and educational control it is shown that Habermas's argument relies on much weaker assumptions than generally understood. (shrink)

In his recent book on the problem of evil, Peter van Inwagen argues that both the global and local arguments from evil are failures. In this paper, we engagevan Inwagen’s book at two main points. First, we consider his understanding of what it takes for a philosophical argument to succeed. We argue that while his criterion for success is interesting and helpful, there is good reason to think it is too stringent. Second, we consider his responses to the global and (...) local arguments from evil. We argue that although van Inwagen may have adequately responded to each of these arguments, his discussion points us toa third argument from evil to which he has yet to provide a response. (shrink)

I am going to argue that it is a cost of libertarianism that it holds our status as agents hostage to theoretical physics, but that claim has met with disagreement. Some libertarians regard it as the cost of doing business, not a philosophical liability. By contrast, Peter van Inwagen has addressed the worry head on. He says that if he were to become convinced that causal determinism were true, he would not change his view that humans are free and morally (...) responsible. Rather, he would give up at least one of the formerly-thought-to-be a priori truths that are elements in his argument for the incompatibility of causal determinism and the relevant sort of freedom. Thus, according to van Inwagen, our status as free and morally responsible agents would not be held hostage to the physicists or hang on a thread I think that van Inwagen’s strategy for securing our freedom and responsibility is unattractive. Somewhat tendentiously, I have called the rejection of an a priori ingredient in the incompatibilist’s argument, contingent upon learning that causal determinism is true, ‘metaphysical fip-flopping.’ -/- And it does seem that van Inwagen’s approach is implausible insofar as he is open to such metaphysical fip-fopping. That he is open to it—that he would fip-fop if he became convinced of the truth of causal determinism—is a problem for his actual philosophical position. Or so I will argue. (shrink)

A definition of the concept of "Intuitionist Modal Analogue" is presented and motivated through the existence of a theorem preserving translation from MIPC to a bimodal S₄-S₅ calculus.

Nothing seems more possible to me than that people some day will come to the definite opinion that there is no copy in the… nervous system which corresponds to a particular thought, or a particular idea, or, memory.WittgensteinIn a recent essay it was emphasized that brain and mind appear to the mind as complementary and reciprocally recursive domains of a hermeneutic circle (Fischer, 1987). An outstanding and not yet recognized feature of this hermeneutic circle is that interpretation within this (...) circle is not rule-governed and hence appears self-organized: individual features of the world (or the brain) become intelligible in terms of the whole context (of the mind)… while the entire context becomes intelligible through individual features (or brain functions). How, or from where then is significance arising? (shrink)

Brain functions are stochastic processes without intentionality whereas mind emerges from brain functions as a Hegelian “change from quantity”, that is, on the order of 1012 profusely interconnected neurons, “into a new quality”: the collective phenomenon of the brain's self-experience. This self-referential and self-observing quality we have in mind is capable of (recursively) observing its self-observations, i.e., interpreting change that is meaningful in relation to itself. The notion of self-interpretation embodies the idea of a “hermeneutic circle”, that is, (in interpretation (...) theory) the treatment of the whole in relation to its parts. (shrink)

Generalizing the notion of a tight almost disjoint family, we introduce the notions of a tight eventually different family of functions in Baire space and a tight eventually different set of permutations of $\omega $. Such sets strengthen maximality, exist under $\mathsf {MA} (\sigma \mathrm {-centered})$ and come with a properness preservation theorem. The notion of tightness also generalizes earlier work on the forcing indestructibility of maximality of families of functions. As a result we compute the cardinals $\mathfrak {a}_e$ and (...) $\mathfrak {a}_p$ in many known models by giving explicit witnesses and therefore obtain the consistency of several constellations of cardinal characteristics of the continuum including $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p = \mathfrak {d} < \mathfrak {a}_T$, $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p < \mathfrak {d} = \mathfrak {a}_T$, $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p =\mathfrak {i} < \mathfrak {u}$, and $\mathfrak {a}_e=\mathfrak {a}_p = \mathfrak {a} < non(\mathcal N) = cof(\mathcal N)$. We also show that there are $\Pi ^1_1$ tight eventually different families and tight eventually different sets of permutations in L thus obtaining the above inequalities alongside $\Pi ^1_1$ witnesses for $\mathfrak {a}_e = \mathfrak {a}_p = \aleph _1$.Moreover, we prove that tight eventually different families are Cohen indestructible and are never analytic. (shrink)

In this collection of essays -- a follow up to My Way and Our Stories -- John Martin Fischer defends the contention that moral responsibility is associated with "deep control." Fischer defines deep control as the middle ground between two untenable extreme positions: "superficial control" and "total control."Our freedom consists of the power to add to the given past, holding fixed the laws of nature, and therefore, Fischer contends, we must be able to interpret our actions as (...) extensions of a line that represents the actual past. In "connecting the dots," we engage in a distinctive sort of self-expression. In the first group of essays in this volume, Fischer argues that we do not need genuine access to alterative possibilities in order to be morally responsible. Thus, the line need not branch off at crucial points. In the remaining essays in the collection he demonstrates that deep control is the freedom condition on moral responsibility. In so arguing, Fischer contends that total control is too much to ask--it is a form of "metaphysical megalomania." So we do not need to "trace back" all the way to the beginning of the line in seeking the relevant kind of freedom or control. Additionally, he contends that various kinds of "superficial control"--such as versions of "conditional freedom" and "judgment-sensitivity" are too shallow; they don't trace back far enough along the line. In short, Fischer argues that, in seeking the freedom that grounds moral responsibility, we need to carve out a middle ground between superficiality and excessive penetration. Deep Control is the "middle way."Fischer presents a new argument that deep control is compatible not just with causal determinism, but also causal indeterminism. He thus tackles the luck problem and shows that the solution to this problem is parallel in important ways to the considerations in favor of the compatibility of causal determinism and moral responsibility. (shrink)

The word “real” (from the Latin “res” = thing) was coined in the 13th century to signify “having Properties” (Pierce. 1958, p. 358), whereas a “model” refers to an analogical representation, the structure of which should correspond to the structure or properties of that which it represents. For Scudder the mind is a system of models and each mind develops different models. We all have a different reality in mind and so we each live in a slightly different world (Scudder, (...) 1975). Hence the real nature of the model and the model nature of reality are often indistinguishable. A snail, for example, when exposed to four tactile stimuli per second (with a rod on his belly) will be compelled to crawl upon that non-existing coherent spatial surface (Brecher, 1966). For the snail four tactile stimuli per second correspond to, or are isomorphic with, the structure of a spatial surface, but it is impossible for the snail to “know” which of the two structures is real. (shrink)