Short-term memory, nonattentional task effects and nonspatial extraretinal representations in the visual system are signs of cognitive penetration. All of these have been found physiologically, arguing against the cognitive impenetrability of vision as a whole. Instead, parallel subcircuits in the brain, each subserving a different competency including sensory and cognitive (and in some cases motor) aspects, may have cognitively impenetrable components.

A direct equivalence between neural function and neural structure does not provide a fruitful approach to understanding brain functioning. Arbib et al. describe a new and powerful approach to circumvent this problem, which they call schema theory. However, in examples they fall prey to the tradition of finding such equivalences, not doing schema theory justice.

Some combinations of attitudes--of beliefs, credences, intentions, preferences, hopes, fears, and so on--do not fit together right: they are incoherent. A natural idea is that there are requirements of "structural rationality" that forbid us from being in these incoherent states. Yet a number of surprisingly difficult challenges arise for this idea. These challenges have recently led many philosophers to attempt to minimize or eliminate structural rationality, arguing that it is just a "shadow" of "substantive rationality"--that is, correctly responding to one's (...) reasons. -/- In *Fitting Things Together*, Alex Worsnip pushes back against this trend--defending the view that structural rationality is a genuine kind of rationality, distinct from and irreducible to substantive rationality, and tackling the most important challenges for this view. In so doing, he gives an original positive theory of the nature of coherence and structural rationality that explains how the diverse range of instances of incoherence can be unified under a general account, and how facts about coherence are normatively significant. He also shows how a failure to focus on coherence requirements as a distinctive phenomenon and distinguish them adequately from requirements of substantive rationality has led to confusion and mistakes in several substantive debates in epistemology and ethics. -/- Taken as a whole, Fitting Things Together provides the first sustained defense of the view that structural rationality is a genuine, autonomous, unified, and normatively significant phenomenon. (shrink)

Necessary Existence breaks ground on one of the deepest questions anyone ever asks: why is there anything? Pruss and Rasmussen present an original defence of the hypothesis that there is a necessarily existing being capable of providing an ultimate foundation for the existence of all things.

Jacobi held a position of unparalleled importance in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century intellectual history. This includes his role in bringing about the close of the Enlightenment, his central part in shaping the reception of Kant's philosophy and German idealism, and his influence on the development of Romanticism and existentialism.

This important philosophical reflection on love and sexuality from a broadly Christian perspective is aimed at philosophers, theologians, and educated Christian readers. Alexander R. Pruss focuses on foundational questions on the nature of romantic love and on controversial questions in sexual ethics on the basis of the fundamental idea that romantic love pursues union of two persons as one body. _One Body_ begins with an account, inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas, of the general nature of love as constituted by (...) components of goodwill, appreciation, and unitiveness. Different forms of love, such as parental, collegial, filial, friendly, fraternal, or romantic, Pruss argues, differ primarily not in terms of goodwill or appreciation but in terms of the kind of union that is sought. Pruss examines romantic love as distinguished from other kinds of love by a focus on a particular kind of union, a deep union as one body achieved through the joint biological striving of the sort involved in reproduction. Taking the account of the union that romantic love seeks as a foundation, the book considers the nature of marriage and applies its account to controversial ethical questions, such as the connection between love, sex, and commitment and the moral issues involving contraception, same-sex activity, and reproductive technology. With philosophical rigor and sophistication, Pruss provides carefully argued answers to controversial questions in Christian sexual ethics. "This is a terrific—really quite extraordinary—work of scholarship. It is quite simply the best work on Christian sexual ethics that I have seen. It will become the text that anyone who ventures into the field will have to grapple with—a kind of touchstone. Moreover, it is filled with arguments with which even secular writers on sexual morality will have to engage and come to terms." —_Robert P. George, Princeton University __ "_One Body_ is an excellent piece of philosophical-theological reflection on the nature of sexuality and marriage. This book has the potential to become a standard go-to text for professors and students working on sex ethics issues, whether in philosophy or theology, both for the richness of its arguments, and the scope of its coverage of cases. " — Christopher Tollefsen, University of South Carolina_ "Alexander Pruss here develops sound and humane answers to the whole range of main questions about human sexual and reproductive choices. His principal argument for the key answers is very different from the one I have articulated over the past fifteen years. But his argumentation is at every point attractively direct, careful, energetic in framing and responding to objections, and admirably attentive to realities and the human goods at stake." —_John Finnis, University of Oxford _. (shrink)

Alexander X. Douglas situates Spinoza's philosophy in its immediate historical context, and argues that much of his work was conceived with the aim of rebutting the claims of his contemporaries. In contrast to them, Spinoza argued that philosophy reveals the true nature of God, and reinterpreted the concept of God in profound and radical ways.

Internalism about a person's good is roughly the view that in order for something to intrinsically enhance a person's well-being, that person must be capable of caring about that thing. I argue in this paper that internalism about a person's good should not be believed. Though many philosophers accept the view, Connie Rosati provides the most comprehensive case in favor of it. Her defense of the view consists mainly in offering five independent arguments to think that at least some form (...) of internalism about one's good is true. But I argue that, on closer inspection, not one of these arguments succeeds. The problems don't end there, however. While Rosati offers good reasons to think that what she calls 'two-tier internalism' would be the best way to formulate the intuition behind internalism about one's good, I argue that two-tier internalism is actually false. In particular, the problem is that no substantive theory of well-being is consistent with two-tier internalism. Accordingly, there is reason to think that even the best version of internalism about one's good is in fact false. Thus, I conclude, the prospects for internalism about a person's good do not look promising. (shrink)

The essence and basic methods of the pure theory -- The state and the law -- Law and its "others" : natural law, morality and social policy -- Constitution and normative hierarchy -- The basic norm and efficacy of the legal system -- The rule of law -- Conclusion -- Index.

As a public director of a NASDAQ stock exchange listed public corporation, I have seen how quickly the reforms in corporate governance imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act have changed procedures and policies in public corporations. In areas such as transparency of financial records and other financial matters including compensation of top executives and conflict of interest policies affecting both corporate boards of directors and employees of the corporation the reforms of this new federal law have quickly changed corporate practices in (...) many corporations. Many persons who have studied this new law believe that these changes will benefit the public, shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders in the modern corporation by increasing the reputation of these organizations for integrity and transparency. Stock exchanges such as NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange now require all listed companies to have (after a transition time) a majority of independent directors on their boards of directors. Only independent directors may serve on the audit, nominating and compensation committees of boards in most cases. Some exceptions are made to these rules for foreign and domestic issues of companies where a majority of the voting power is held by one person. According to Morrison & Foster LLP, Corporate Board Advisory March , 2004, NASDAQ requires that the board of directors of a listed company determine that an independent director does not have a relationship that would “interfere with the exercise of independent judgment” in carrying out the responsibilities of a director. (shrink)

As Baudelaire’s poetics are founded in an understanding of inspiration as an expression of reflexion, they coin the fundamentals of modern aesthetics. In another perspective, these poetics are linked to an epistemological tradition, in which ›enthousiasmos‹ as the subjective capacity of mind does not only intend to assimilate itself to the idea, but claims to give form to the idea by its own creativity. The preforms of this thought might be found in Neo-Platonism, respectively in its early modern remodelling in (...) Bruno’s ›Eroici Furori‹ that award metaphysical qualities to the intellect as an ›infinite movement‹, taking in account that this movement does no longer target the cognition of intelligibility, but produces intelligibility by itself. (shrink)

Can philosophy be a source of hope? Today it is common to believe that the answer is no - that providing hope, if it is possible at all, belongs either to the predictive sciences or to religion. In this exciting and simulating book, however, Alexander Douglas argues that the philosophy of Spinoza can offer something akin to religious hope. Douglas shows how Spinoza is able, without appealing to belief in any traditional afterlife or supernatural grace, to develop a profound (...) and original theory of how humans can escape from the conditions of death and sin. Douglas argues that this theory of escape, which Spinoza calls beatitude, is the centrepiece of his entire philosophy, though scholars have often downplayed or ignored it. One reason for this scholarly neglect might be the difficulty of understanding Spinoza's theory, which departs from the standard doctrines and methods of Western philosophy. Douglas's interpretation therefore seeks inspiration beyond the Western tradition, drawing especially on the classical Daoist text Zhuangzi and its commentaries. Here, Douglas argues, surprising resonances with Spinoza's core ideas can be found, leading to a new way of understanding his strange yet compelling theory of beatitude. (shrink)

Mental causation is notoriously threatened by the causal exclusion argument. A prominent strategy to save mental causation from causal exclusion consists in subscribing to an interventionist account of causation. This move has, however, recently been challenged by several authors. In this paper, we do two things: We (i) develop what we consider to be the strongest version of the interventionist causal exclusion argument currently on the market and (ii) propose a new way how it can in principle be overcome. In (...) particular, we propose to replace strict supervenience in the assumption that the mental supervenes on the physical by probabilistic supervenience and show how this move has the potential to license the inference to mental causation. Finally, we argue that probabilistic supervenience captures some of the most important intuitions that strict supervenience captures and discuss possible objections to weakening strict supervenience in the way we suggest. (shrink)

Several current theories have essences as primary drivers of inductive potential: e.g., people infer dogs share properties because they share essences. We investigated the possibility that people take occupational roles as having robust inductive potential because of a different source: their position in stable social institutions. In Studies 1–4, participants learned a novel property about a target, and then decided whether two new individuals had the property (one with the same occupation, one without). Participants used occupational roles to robustly generalize (...) rights and obligations, functional behaviors, personality traits, and skills. In Studies 5–6, we contrasted occupational roles (via label) with race/gender (via visual face cues). Participants reliably favored occupational roles over race/gender for generalizing rights and obligations, functional behaviors, personality traits, and skills (they favored race/gender for inferring leisure behaviors and physiological properties). Occupational roles supported inferences to the same extent as animal categories (Studies 4 and 6). In Study 7, we examined why members of occupational roles share properties. Participants did not attribute the inductive potential of occupational roles to essences, they attributed it to social institutions. In combination, these seven studies demonstrate that any theory of inductive potential must pluralistically allow for both essences and social institutions to form the basis of inductive potential. (shrink)

The posterior cortex, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex in the Leabra architecture are specialized in terms of various neural parameters, and thus are predilections for learning and processing, but domain-general in terms of cognitive functions such as face recognition. Also, these areas are not encapsulated and violate Fodorian criteria for modularity. Anderson's terminology obscures these important points, but we applaud his overall message.

Writing in the cosmopolitan metropolis of Baghdad, Alfarabi (870-950) is unique in the history of premodern political philosophy for his extensive discussion of the nation, or Umma in Arabic. The term Umma may be traced back to the Qur'ān and signifies, then and now, both the Islamic religious community as a whole and the various ethnic nations of which that community is composed, such as the Turks, Persians, and Arabs. Examining Alfarabi's political writings as well as parts of his logical (...) commentaries, his book on music, and other treatises, Alexander Orwin contends that the connections and tensions between ethnic and religious Ummas explored by Alfarabi in his time persist today in the ongoing political and cultural disputes among the various nationalities within Islam. According to Orwin, Alfarabi strove to recast the Islamic Umma as a community in both a religious and cultural sense, encompassing art and poetry as well as law and piety. By proposing to acknowledge and accommodate diverse Ummas rather than ignoring or suppressing them, Alfarabi anticipated the contemporary concept of "Islamic civilization," which emphasizes culture at least as much as religion. Enlisting language experts, jurists, theologians, artists, and rulers in his philosophic enterprise, Alfarabi argued for a new Umma that would be less rigid and more creative than the Muslim community as it has often been understood, and therefore less inclined to force disparate ethnic and religious communities into a single mold. Redefining the Muslim Community demonstrates how Alfarabi's judicious combination of cultural pluralism, religious flexibility, and political prudence could provide a blueprint for reducing communal strife in a region that continues to be plagued by it today. (shrink)

Das Bild vom glaubwürdigen Wissenschaftler? vom Universalgelehrten der Renaissance zu modernen Laborspezialist*innen - ist ein kulturelles Konstrukt, das die Ansprüche seiner Zeit widerspiegelt. Wie es entsteht, wird im Galvanismusdiskurs um 1800 deutlich.Dieser Band beschäftigt sich mit den Fragen: Wer gilt um 1800 als Naturwissenschaftler? Wie findet man als junger Forscher Aufnahme in die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft? Und worin manifestieren sich die wissenschaftskulturellen Unterschiede in Deutschland und Großbritannien zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts? Anhand der frühen Publikationen der jungen aufstrebenden Naturforscher Alexander (...) von Humboldt, Johann Wilhelm Ritter und Christian Heinrich Pfaff sowie ihrer britischen Kollegen untersucht der Autor die Konstruktion vom modernen Naturwissenschaftler durch die wissenschaftliche Gemeinschaft. (shrink)

Lazarus Revived shows how two thought experiments provide the foundation for arguments for the existence of conscious life after death. The theories of pluriverses and the Big Bang are examined and a substitute equation for E=MC² is presented.

Western societies today are coming unmoored in the face of an earth-shaking ethical and cultural paradigm shift. At its core is the question of what it means to be human and how we are meant to live. The old answers are no longer accepted; a dizzying array of options are offered in their stead. Underpinning this smorgasbord of lifestyles is a thicket of unquestioned assumptions, such as the separation of gender from biological sex, which not so long ago would have (...) been universally rejected as radical notions. In the spring of 2019, a group of Orthodox Christian scholars drawn from a wide variety of academic disciplines met together to offer responses to the moral crisis our generation faces, elaborating upon its various forms and facilitating a fuller understanding of some of its theological and philosophical foundations. In doing so they offer support to all those who question the claims that are so forcefully insisted upon today--a clarity that will aid them in standing up and resisting trends that have already shown to be the cause of great suffering and unhappiness. (shrink)

The article reconstructs and critically discusses the energetic metaphysics of Dimitar Vatsov, which may be regarded as an important event in the philosophical life in Bulgaria. The article consists of two parts. The first part situates Vatsov's project in the context of the contemporary development of metaphysics and presents the evolution and logic of its realization, emphasizing the central ideas of actuality, energy, and codification. The second part presents a series of critical observations on the realization of the project, related (...) to conceptual ambiguities and problematic theoretical moves. It is argued that the modal aspects of energetic metaphysics need conceptual clarification and theoretical justification. The article also aims to provoke a broader discussion on the state and future of metaphysical research in Bulgarian philosophy. (shrink)

Hyperlogic is a hyperintensional system designed to regiment metalogical claims (e.g., “Intuitionistic logic is correct” or “The law of excluded middle holds”) into the object language, including within embedded environments such as attitude reports and counterfactuals. This paper is the first of a two-part series exploring the logic of hyperlogic. This part presents a minimal logic of hyperlogic and proves its completeness. It consists of two interdefined axiomatic systems: one for classical consequence (truth preservation under a classical interpretation of the (...) connectives) and one for “universal” consequence (truth preservation under any interpretation). The sequel to this paper explores stronger logics that are sound and complete over various restricted classes of models as well as languages with hyperintensional operators. (shrink)

Kennedy (Linguist Philos 30:1–45, 2007) forcefully proposes what is now a widely assumed semantics for absolute gradable adjectives. On this semantics, maximum standard adjectives like “straight” and “dry” ascribe a maximal degree of the underlying quantity. Meanwhile, minimum standard adjectives like “bent” and “wet” merely ascribe a non-zero, non-minimal degree of the underlying quantity. This theory clashes with the ordinary intuition that sentences like “The stick is straight” are frequently true while sentences like “The stick is bent” are frequently informative, (...) and fans of the indicated theory of absolute gradable adjectives appeal to loose talk in response. One goal of this paper is to show that all extant theories of loose talk are inconsistent with this response strategy. Another goal is to offer a revised version of Hoek’s (Philos Rev 127:151–196, 2018, in: Proceedings of the 22nd Amsterdam Colloquium, 2019) recent theory of loose talk that accommodates absolute gradable adjectives after all, while being defensible against a range of important concerns. (shrink)

This article proposes an exposition and analysis of perceptions intrinsic to rituals carried out with the use of the jurema plant, especially when mixed with Syrian rue (juremahuasca) in contexts of contemporary esoteric re-actualizations in Brazil. These rituals are conducted by people who look at jurema as a spiritual path, once acquainted with its psychedelic properties. We highlight the mystical attributes and the cultural bricolage elaborated by these individuals, who conduct ceremonies in ritual spaces in which participants experience altered states (...) of perception and consciousness. Considered as an entheogen, jurema leads to states of mystical transformation in people. Such personal changes are often considered by users as the rhetoric of healing. Life stories and ethnographic contexts form the background of the article, which seeks to advance understandings about jurema based on speculations around the intertwining of the themes of consciousness, mysticism, and healing. (shrink)

Hans Wagner, einer der profiliertesten Erneuerer einer Transzendentalphilosophie im Geiste Immanuel Kants, ist am 1. Februar nach längerer schwerer Krankheit in Bonn gestorben.

Hans Wagner, einer der profiliertesten Erneuerer einer Transzendentalphilosophie im Geiste Immanuel Kants, ist am 1. Februar nach längerer schwerer Krankheit in Bonn gestorben.

. Whether to use privileged information as a basis for a decision to sell stock is the central issue in thiscase. A conflict between a stockbrokers perceived obligations to maximize clients stock values and protect their investments (fiduciary responsibility) and violating Security and Exchange Commission insider trading regulations must be resolved.

.Whether to use privileged information as a basis for a decision to sell stock is the central issue in this␣case. A conflict between a stockbroker’s perceived obligations to maximize clients stock values and protect their investments and violating Security and Exchange Commission insider trading regulations must be resolved.