The degree to which the early dharma literature was an extrapolation from the earlier ritual codes can be seen from a number of shared features of form and content. One of these that has not received more than passing notice is the fact that the Dharmaśāstric principle of regarding customary norms as a valid basis of dharma, both in general and in limited spheres, has its origins in ritual rules in the śrautasūtras and gṛhyasūtras. Passages from the Baudhāyanaśrautasūtra and numerous (...) gṛhyasūtras show that already in these rulebooks established practices of particular social groups were accepted as a valid authority in certain contexts where explicit textual warrant was lacking, and that a further distinction was there made between the general norms of experts and the valid particular norms of locality or social group. (shrink)

Explaining what made ancient Greek law unusual, Michael Gagarin observes that most premodern legal cultures “wrote extensive sets of laws for academic purposes or propaganda but these were not intended to be accessible to most members of the community and had relatively little effect on the actual operation of the legal system.” This article addresses the implications of writing for customary or regional law in South and Southeast Asia. The textual tradition of Dharmaśāstra, which canonizes a particular model of Brahmin (...) customary norms, can certainly be called a “scholarly” exercise, and it was also intended as propaganda for the Brahmanical cosmopolitan world order. But it also formulated a procedural principle to recognize the general validity of other, even divergent, customary norms, though for the most part such rules remained lex non scripta. On the other hand, inscriptions provide evidence that writing was used for diverse legal purposes and offers glimpses of actual legal practice. In these records, customary laws are sometimes laid down as statutes by decree of a ruler or community body, or are simply invoked as long-established customary rules. But even when Dharmaśāstra texts are not directly cited, their influence over the longue durée is discernable in the persistence of śāstric legal categories and terms of art. This influence is even more evident in Java, where legal codes on the Dharmaśāstra model were composed in Javanese, and where the inscriptions came to exhibit a closer connection with śāstric discourse than is found in India. (shrink)

In his edicts, the emperor Aśoka Maurya extols brāhmaṇas, usually alongside ascetics (śramaṇas), as deserving honor and generosity, though he never alludes to their connection with ritual, the central theme of early Brahmanical literature. On the other hand, in Rock Edicts I and IX, he disparages sacrifices, and ceremonies performed by women, advocating instead the practice of ethical virtues. Close attention to the wording of Rock Edict IX shows that Aśoka and the Brahmanical Gṛhyasūtras talk about domestic rites in very (...) similar terms, even describing them with the same adjective (uccāvaca). Both of them note the special role of women as a source of knowledge of such ceremonies, and differ only in how they evalute the value of such ceremonial: Aśoka disparages women’s rites, while some Gṛhyasūtras explicitly validate women as authorities in such matters. A comparison of these sources highlights the distinctive role of the term dhamma in Aśoka’s usage (in contrast to maṅgala (auspicious folk rites), and may provide some guidance for dating the Gṛhyasūtras. The fact that Aśoka does not explicitly connect such rites with the brāhmaṇas suggests that in his experience at least (i.e., in Magadha) Brahmins’ religious authority had nothing to do with domestic ritual. We may conclude that the Vedic canonization of Gṛhya ritual norms was not yet recognized outside of priestly circles, if it had developed yet at all. (shrink)

Many Hindu deities as known from classical sources have a very slender profile in the Vedic texts, appearing in only a few passages and often represented in ways that seem peripheral to their full, classical personae. Ritualists and devotees steeped in that older literature took pains to connect those deities to Vedic mantras and rites, in order to validate them with the prestige of venerable orthodoxy as well as to provide a basis for Brahmin priestly roles in their worship. The (...) case of the goddess Durgā is particularly striking in this respect, since her Vedic “footprint” is so small. This study carefully examines the Durgā Sūkta and related materials to show how Taittirīya and Ṛgveda Brahmins went about supplying a Vedic liturgy for Durgā worship. This account complements the one recently proposed to show how Atharvan priests in the service of rulers drew on Atharvavedic traditions to present Durgā as a patron goddess of arms and military strength. (shrink)

Knowledge and its Limits presents a systematic new conception of knowledge as a kind of mental stage sensitive to the knower's environment. It makes a major contribution to the debate between externalist and internalist philosophies of mind, and breaks radically with the epistemological tradition of analyzing knowledge in terms of true belief. The theory casts new light on such philosophical problems as scepticism, evidence, probability and assertion, realism and anti-realism, and the limits of what can be known. The arguments are (...) illustrated by rigorous models based on epistemic logic and probability theory. The result is a new way of doing epistemology and a notable contribution to the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious.

Knepper criticizes existing efforts in the philosophy of religion for being out of step with, and therefore useless to, the academic study of religion, then forwards a new program for philosophy of religion that is in step with, and therefore useful to, the academic study of religion.

According to the Fragmentation Analysis, epistemic akrasia is a state of conflict between beliefs formed by the linguistic and non-linguistic belief-formation systems, and epistemic akrasia is irrational because it is a state of conflict between beliefs so formed. I argue that there are cases of higher-order epistemic akrasia, where both beliefs are formed by the linguistic belief-formation system. Because the Fragmentation Analysis cannot accommodate this possibility, the Fragmentation Analysis is incorrect. I consider three objections to the possibility of higher-order epistemic (...) akrasia. Along the way, I offer a revision of the Fragmentation Analysis that can allow for the possibility of higher-order akrasia while avoiding the problems I point out for the original view. (shrink)

Second-order logic and modal logic are both, separately, major topics of philosophical discussion. Although both have been criticized by Quine and others, increasingly many philosophers find their strictures uncompelling, and regard both branches of logic as valuable resources for the articulation and investigation of significant issues in logical metaphysics and elsewhere. One might therefore expect some combination of the two sorts of logic to constitute a natural and more comprehensive background logic for metaphysics. So it is somewhat surprising to find (...) that philosophical discussion of secondorder modal logic is almost totally absent, despite the pioneering contribution of Barcan. (shrink)

In this global introduction to philosophy of religion you begin not with a single tradition, but with religious philosophies from East Asia, South Asia, West Africa, and Native North America, alongside the classical Abrahamic and modern European traditions. Matching this diversity of traditions, chapters are organized around questions that acknowledge there is no single understanding of any god or ultimate reality. Instead you approach six different traditions of philosophizing about religion by asking questions about the journeys of both the self (...) and the cosmos such as "What is my path?" and "Where did the cosmos come from?" Accompanied by introductory materials and an extensive glossary, each chapter includes learning objectives, questions for discussion, and suggested primary and secondary sources. The categories of religion and philosophy are interrogated throughout. Equipped with study tools and universal questions about the self and the cosmos, Philosophies of Religion: A Global and Critical Introduction shows you how to philosophize about religions around the world. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter 2 argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic epistemic two-dimensional hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 3 provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter 4 advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter 5 applies the fixed points of the modal μ-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal μ-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal μ-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter 6 advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter 7 provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters 2 and 4 are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters 8-12 provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter 8 examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of Ω-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter 9 examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter 10 examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional Ω-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter 11 provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter 12 avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities and truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter 13 examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter 14 examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a family of responses to the evidential problem of evil. What unifies this family is two general claims. First, that even if God were to exist, we shouldn’t expect to see God’s reasons for permitting the suffering we observe. Second, the previous claim entails the failure of a variety of arguments from evil against the existence of God. In this essay, we identify three particular articulations of skeptical theism—three different ways of “filling in” those two claims—and describes (...) their role in responding to evidential arguments of evil due to William Rowe and Paul Draper. But skeptical theism has been subject to a variety of criticisms, several of which raise interesting issues and puzzles not just in philosophy of religion but other areas of philosophy as well. Consequently, we discuss some of these criticisms, partly with an eye to bringing out the connections between skeptical theism and current topics in mainstream philosophy. Finally, we conclude by situating skeptical theism within our own distinctive methodology for evaluating world views, what we call “worldview theory versioning.”. (shrink)

The paper explores the main competing interpretations of Aristotle's view of the relation between happiness and external goods in the Nicomachean Ethics. On the basis of a careful analysis of what Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics (and other works such as the Eudemian Ethics, Politics, Rhetoric, etc.) it is argued that it is likely that Aristotle takes at least some external goods to be actual constituents of happiness provided that (1) they are accompanied by virtuous activity and (2) the (...) agent enjoying and using those external goods does so in ways compatible with the continuous aim of acting virtuously. (shrink)

This is the first single volume to offer a comprehensive and systematic account of British and American aesthetics from the early eighteenth century to the late twentieth century.

The chapter argues that a model‐building methodology like that widespread in contemporary natural and social science already plays a significant role in philosophy. One neglected form of progress in philosophy over the past fifty years has been the development of better and better formal models of significant phenomena. Examples are given from both philosophy of language and epistemology. Philosophy can do still better in the future by applying model‐building methods more systematically and self‐consciously, with consequent readjustments to its methodology. Although (...) it is neither likely nor desirable for model‐building to become the sole or even main philosophical method, its use enhances the power and reliability of philosophical thinking. (shrink)

Things in common: an introduction -- Life -- Specters -- Subscendence -- Species -- Kindness.

Jecker and colleagues open (2024) a critical and needed dialogue about the ethics of international conferencing. In particular, they focus on proposing a set of principles in selecting the location...

The philosophical relevance of experimental psychology is hard to dispute. Much more controversial is the so‐called negative program's critique of armchair philosophical methodology, in particular the reliance on ‘intuitions’ about thought experiments. This chapter responds to that critique. It argues that, since the negative program has been forced to extend the category of intuition to ordinary judgments about real‐life cases, the critique is in immediate danger of generating into global scepticism, because all human judgments turn out to depend on intuitions. (...) Recently, some proponents of the negative program have tried to demarcate the target of their critique more narrowly. However, their attempts are still far too indiscriminate, and over‐generate scepticism. Nevertheless, once experimental philosophy has refined its own methodology, it may contribute to the refinement of the methodology of mainstream philosophy, by filtering out the effects of cognitive bias, although it offers no prospect of doing without judgments on real or imaginary cases. (shrink)

The general process view of learning, which guided research into learning for the first half of this century, has come under attack in recent years from several quarters. One form of criticism has come from proponents of the so-called biological boundaries approach to learning. These theorists have presented a variety of data showing that supposedly general laws of learning may in fact be limited in their applicability to different species and learning tasks, and they argue that the limitations are drawn (...) by the nature of each species' adaptation to the particular requirements of its natural environment. The biological boundaries approach has served an important critical function in the move away from general process learning theory, but it is limited in its ability to provide an alternative to the general process approach. In particular, the biological boundaries approach lacks generality, it is in some respects subservient to the general process tradition, and its ecological content is in too many cases limited toex post factoadaptive explanations of learning skills. A contrasting, ecological approach to learning, which can provide a true alternative to general process theory, is presented. The ecological approach begins by providing an ecological task description for naturally occurring instances of learning; this step answers the question:Whatdoes this animal learn to do? The next step is an analysis of the means by which learning occurs in the course of development, answering the question:Howdoes the animal learn to do this? On the basis of such analyses, local principles of adaptation are formulated to account for the learning abilities of individual species. More global principles are sought by generalization among these local principles and may form the basis for a general ecological theory of learning. (shrink)

Lewisian reference magnetism about linguistic content determination [Lewis 1983 has been defended in recent work by Weatherson [2003] and Sider [2009], among others. Two advantages claimed for the view are its capacity to make sense of systematic error in speakers' use of their words, and its capacity to distinguish between verbal and substantive disagreements. Our understanding of both error and disagreement is linked to the role of usage and first order intuitions in semantics and in linguistic theory more generally. I (...) argue, partially on the basis of these more general considerations, that reference magnetism delivers implausible results. Specifically, I argue that the proponent of reference magnetism maintains her analysis of genuinely systematic error at the cost of an empirically unjustifiable error theory regarding ordinary usage. In response, I describe an alternative view of content determination—MUMPS, or Meaning is Use Minus Pragmatics—which is not committed to such error theories. Despite this advantage, MUMPS has high prima facie costs. On such a view, there is a great deal of variation in linguistic meaning across speakers and times. As a result, a large number of seemingly mistaken claims are analysed as expressing true propositions. Correspondingly, a large number of seemingly substantive disagreements are analysed as terminological. However, I argue that these consequences are not as costly as they seem. Despite appearances, MUMPS is consistent with objective, metaphysically realist adjudication of disagreements, even in cases where meanings are not shared and where both parties to a dispute speak truly. MUMPS thus allows for a more nuanced understanding of linguistic usage, change, and variation, without imposing a commitment to any form of metaphysical anti-realism. (shrink)

Operational epistemology is, to a first approximation, the attempt to provide cognitive rules such that one is in principle always in a position to know whether one is complying with them. In Knowledge and its Limits, I argue that the only such rules are trivial ones. In this paper, I generalize the argument in several ways to more thoroughly probabilistic settings, in order to show that it does not merely demonstrate some oddity of the folk epistemological conception of knowledge. Some (...) of the generalizations involve a formal semantic framework for treating epistemic probabilities of epistemic probabilities and expectations of expectations. The upshot is that operational epistemology cannot work, and that knowledge-based epistemology has the right characteristics to avoid its problems. (shrink)

This book explores the relation between agape (or Christian charity) and social justice. Timothy Jackson defines agape as the central virtue in Christian ethical thought and action and applies his insights to three concrete issues: political violence, forgiveness, and abortion. Taking his primary cue from the New Testament while drawing extensively from contemporary theology and philosophy, Jackson identifies three features of Christian charity: unconditional commitment to the good of others, equal regard for others' well-being, and passionate service open to (...) self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Charity, prescribed by Jesus for his disciples and named by Saint Paul as the "greatest" theological virtue, is contrasted with various accounts of justice. Jackson argues that agape is not trumped by justice or other goods. Rather, agape precedes justice: without the work of love, society would not produce persons capable of merit, demerit, and contract, the elements of most modern conceptions of justice. Jackson then considers the implications of his ideas for several questions: the nature of God, the relation between Christian love and political violence, the place of forgiveness, and the morality of abortion. Arguing that agapic love is to be construed as a gift of grace as well as a divine commandment, Jackson concludes that love is the "eternal life" that makes temporal existence possible and thus the "first" Christian virtue. Though foremost a contribution to Christian ethics, Jackson's arguments and the issues he takes up will find a broader readership. (shrink)

The range of topics in this volume covers a multitude of historical periods and topics, which in turn figure in the new media environments of contemporary life. These include discussions of the Aristotelian and classical models of a "good life" that inform animated fairy tales today, 1930s French and Hollywood films which respond to the dire need for productive human relationships in a turbulent decade, the polemical positions of black film criticism through the lens of James Baldwin's work, a discussion (...) of contemporary filmic quests for happiness, the challenges for women filmmakers today in mapping the values of their own world, landscapes of austerity and poverty in the cinematic homelands today, the scientific, psychological, and philosophical base for human value, and the shifting media frames of modern society and selves. (shrink)

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; Process Physics [ontological interpretation of (...) relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the nature of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality, and to the applications of the latter to absolute decidability. Rather than countenancing the interpretational type of mathematical modality as a primitive, I argue that the interpretational type of mathematical modality is a species of epistemic modality. I argue, then, that the framework of two-dimensional semantics ought to be applied to the mathematical setting. The framework permits of a formally precise account of the priority (...) and relation between epistemic mathematical modality and metaphysical mathematical modality. The discrepancy between the modal systems governing the parameters in the two-dimensional intensional setting provides an explanation of the difference between the metaphysical possibility of absolute decidability and our knowledge thereof. I also advance a topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, if hyperintensional approaches are to be preferred to possible worlds semantics. I examine the relation between two-dimensional hyperintensional states and epistemic set theory, providing two-dimensional hyperintensional formalizations of the modal logic of ZFC, large cardinal axioms, $\Omega$-logic, and the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis. (shrink)

In this article, I criticize Véronique Zanetti on the topic of moral compromise. As I understand Zanetti, a compromise could only be called a “moral compromise” if (i) it does not originate under coercive conditions, (ii) it involves conflict whose subject matter is moral, and (iii) “the parties support the solution found for what they take to be moral reasons rather than strategic interests.” I offer three criticisms of Zanetti. First, Zanetti ignores how some parties may not have reason to (...) seek social peace at all. Zanetti’s claim that there is consensus on the aim of social peace can involve idealising away from disagreement in a manner that Zanetti accuses Rawls of. Second, even if there is consensus on the aim of seeking social peace, this leaves open the possibility of disagreement about which society different people should belong to. This idealises away from real world conflict concerning borders. Indeed, Zanetti does not mention that her ‘central example’ of moral disagreement, the German Abortion compromise, was enacted in the wake of German reunification. Third, there are at least two things that can be called the ‘German Abortion compromise.’ The compromise that Zanetti speaks of was imposed by the German Federal Constitutional Court. The court declared unconstitutional a law passed in 1992 that had been negotiated in parliament. Zanetti does not dwell on this lack of democratic credentials. Even the substance of the court-imposed solution is itself a dubious example of a moral compromise between parties based on what is acceptable to their reason. -/- (penultimate version - If you would like the .pdf of the final version for personal scholarly use, please contact me through the email address on my profile or my CV.). (shrink)

I begin this paper by examining what MacIntyre has to tell us about radical disagreements: how they have arisen, and how to deal with them, within a polity. I conclude by radically disagreeing with Macintyre: I shall suggest that he offers no credible alternative to liberalism’s account of radical disagreements and how to deal with them. To put it dilemmatically: insofar as what MacIntyre says is credible, it is not an alternative to liberalism; insofar as he presents a genuine alternative (...) to liberalism, this alternative is not credible. In large part the credibility problems that I see for MacIntyre’s project arise from the history on which he bases it; it is with this history that I begin. Reflection on MacIntyre’s profound and subtle political philosophy thus fails to dislodge liberalism from its contemporary intellectual supremacy-a supremacy which I think liberalism has well earned. If anything, such reflection enhances the hegemony of liberalism still further. And a good thing too. (shrink)

Comparative philosophy is dependent upon translation, often translations that will help preserve some fundamental commitments: to linguistic mastery, to the recovery or preservation of an original, and to the protection of an authenticity that will ground these commitments. Such a view can sometimes obscure a nostalgia for questionable causes. Comparative philosophy, especially with continental affinities, often relies on two moves: first, a boundary must be found (or produced) between philosophy itself and other forms of writing (literature or fiction, say), to (...) ensure proper grounding. Second, it must be understood that this boundary depends upon an underlying philosophy of language: language speaks us, it speaks Being; to dwell in a different language is to dwell in a different house of being (Martin Heidegger). But how might this project – its historiography of return and grounding, and its mythologizing of linguistic and ontological recovery – be challenged by the very practice of translation itself? Perhaps this challenge is one of translation’s philosophical benefits. (shrink)

An introduction to the special issue on Hobbes and Locke: Meaning, Method, Modernity.

I. An argument is presented for the conclusion that the hypothesis that no one will ever decide a given proposition is intuitionistically inconsistent. II. A distinction between sentences and statements blocks a similar argument for the stronger conclusion that the hypothesis that I have not yet decided a given proposition is intuitionistically inconsistent, but does not block the original argument. III. A distinction between empirical and mathematical negation might block the original argument, and empirical negation might be modelled on Nelson''s (...) strong negation, but only on intuitionistically unacceptable assumptions. IV. Intuitionists may have to accept the original argument, and therefore be committed to a dubious view of time on which there cannot be merely inductive evidence for statements about the infinite future. (shrink)

Explores moral progress in the American military.

For millennia self has been conjectured to be necessary for consciousness. But scant empirical evidence has been adduced to support this hypothesis. Inconsistent explications of “self” and failure to design apt experiments have impeded progress. Advocates of phenomenological psychiatry, however, have helped explicate “self,” and employed it to explain some psychopathological symptoms. In those studies, “self” is understood in a minimalist sense, sheer “for-me-ness.” Unfortunately, explication of the “minimal self” (MS) has relied on conceptual analysis, and applications to psychopathology have (...) been hermeneutic, allowing for many degrees of interpretive latitude. The result is that MS’s current scientific status is analogous to that of the “atom,” at the time when “atom” was just beginning to undergo transformation from a philosophical to a scientific concept. Fortunately, there is now an opportunity to promote a similar transformation for “MS.” Discovery of the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN) opened the door to neuroimaging investigations of self. Taking the DMN and other forms of intrinsic activity as a starting point, an empirical foothold can be established, one that spurs experimental research and that enables extension of research into multiple phenomena. New experimental protocols that posit “MS” can help explain phenomena hitherto not thought to be related to self, thereby hastening development of a mature science of self. In particular, targeting phenomena wherein consciousness is lost and recovered, as in some cases of Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome (UWS), allow for design of neuroimaging probes that enable detection of MS during non-conscious states. These probes, as well as other experimental protocols applied to NREM Sleep, General Anesthesia (GA), and the waking state, provide some evidence to suggest that not only can self and consciousness dissociate, MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. Finally, these findings have implications for the science of consciousness: it has been suggested that “levels of consciousness” (LoC) is not a legitimate concept for the science of consciousness. But because we have the conceptual and methodological tools with which to refine investigations of MS, we have the means to identify a possible foundation—a bifurcation point—for consciousness, as well as the means by which to measure degrees of distance from that foundation. These neuroimaging investigations of MS position us to better assess whether LoC has a role to play in a mature science of consciousness. (shrink)