Models of psychological time / Richard A. Block -- Implicit and explicit representations of time / John A. Michon -- The evasive art of subjective time...

A possible solution is offered to help resolve the “two times problem” regarding the veridical and illusory nature of time. First it is recognized that the flow of time is part of a wider array of temporal experiences referred to as manifest time, all of which need to be reconciled. Then, an information gathering and utilizing system model is used as a basis for a view of manifest time. The model IGUS robot of Hartle that solves the “unique present” debate (...) is enhanced with veridical and illusory components of not only the flow of time but also the larger entity of manifest time, providing a dualistic IGUS robot that represents all of the important temporal experiences. Based upon a variety of prior experiments, that view suggests that the veridical system is a reflection of accepted spacetime cosmologies and through natural selection begets the illusory system for functional purposes. Thus, there are not two opposing times, one outside and one inside the cranium. There is just one fundamental physical time which the brain developed, now possesses and is itself sufficient for adaption but then enhances. The illusory system is intended to provide a more satisfying experience of physical time, and better adaptive behavior. Future experiments to verify that view are provided. With a complete veridical system of temporal experiences there may be less need to reify certain temporal experiences so that the two times problem is less of a problem and more of a phenomenon. (shrink)

A monumental work on the flow of time, from the universe's creation to "Now," by the best-selling author of Physics for Future Presidents. "Now" is a simple concept--you're reading this sentence now. Yet a real definition of "now" has eluded even the great Einstein. We know that time stretches and is affected by gravity and velocity. Yet, as eminent physicist Richard A. Muller points out, it is only today that we have all the physics at hand--relativity, entropy, entanglement, antimatter, (...) and the Big Bang--to explain the flow of time. With these building blocks in place, Muller reaches a startling conclusion: our expanding universe is continuously creating not only new space but also new time. The front edge of this new time is what we call "now," and this moment is truly unique--it is the only moment in which we can exercise our free will. Muller's thought-provoking vision is a powerful counter to established theories in science and philosophy, and his arguments will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe. (shrink)

There is a long standing debate as to whether or not time is ‘real’ or illusory, and whether or not human time is a direct reflection of physical time. Differing spacetime cosmologies have opposing views. Exactly what human time entails has, in our opinion, led to the failure to resolve this ‘two times’ problem. To help resolve this issue we propose a dualistic model of human time in which each component has both an illusory and non-illusory aspect. With the dualistic (...) model we are able to provide experimental tests for all of the human time assertions of 10 chosen spacetime cosmologies. The illusory aspect of the ‘present,’ i.e. a ‘unique present’ was confirmed. An information gathering and utilizing system was constructed using a virtual reality apparatus allowing the observer to experientially roam back and forth along the worldline ad lib. The phenomenon of ‘change’ was experimentally found to be illusory at high frequency observation and non-illusory at low frequency observation, the latter phenomenon coinciding with ‘change’ referred to in the ‘Order of Time’ and ‘Relativity Refounded’ views. Additional experiments are presented indicating that both motion and temporality are dualistic. In sum, the dualistic model of human time allows for the existence of both illusory and non-illusory aspects of human time that are not in conflict with one another. It also provides experimental evidence for various spacetime cosmological assertions regarding human time. (shrink)

Perceptual completion fills the gap for discrete perception to become continuous. Similarly, dynamic perceptual completion provides an experience of dynamic continuity. Our recent discovery of the ‘happening’ element of DPC completes the total experience for dynamism in the flow of time. However, a phenomenological explanation for these experiences is essential. The Snapshot Hypotheses especially the Dynamic Snapshot View provides the most comprehensive explanation. From that understanding the ‘two times’ problem can be addressed. The static time of spacetime cosmologies has been (...) irreconcilable with the dynamic FOT. Dismissing the FOT as an illusion is unsatisfactory. Therefore, we provide four hypotheses for the TTP.1) Since cosmological static time demands that all events are discrete, DPC elements for dynamism should likewise be expected to be discrete and accounted for by a snapshot phenomenology such as the DSV. 2) If temporality can be demonstrated to be similar to apparent motion by being a snapshot phenomenon and not demanding temporal extension it would confirm the DSV and permit reconciliation with static time. 3) If the ‘present moment’ is subjective as static time theories suggest, it should be possible experimentally for an observer to choose his own ‘present’ by moving to various points in the past with the aid of virtual reality. 4) If dynamism e.g. motion can be precluded without significant information loss or violating physics principles it is a cognitive add-on, thereby contradicting non-static time theories which suggest that time is ‘real.’ We confirm those hypotheses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical ReadingRichard A. S. Hall William James, A Pluralistic Universe. A New Philosophical Reading. Ed. H. G. Callaway. Newcastle, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.In 1907 William James was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. Initially he was reluctant to do so since he feared undertaking them would divert him from developing rigorously and systematically some metaphysical ideas (...) of his own that had preoccupied him for some time. [End Page 130]In the end, however, he relented and in the spring of 1908 gave the lectures which were subsequently published as A Pluralistic Universe.As it happened, though, in the course of these lectures James presented some of those metaphysical ideas, though in a popular and informal style appropriate to lecturing. Later on he did get down to working out a systematic metaphysics in proper academic style, but the project was cut short by his untimely death in 1910. The incomplete Some Problems of Philosophy,posthumously published in 1911, recapitulates some major themes of A Pluralistic Universe.When James addressed his Oxford audience, the time was ripe for the advancement of his own brand of metaphysical pluralism and radical empiricism in opposition to the still-regnant forms of monistic idealism as represented by Bradley, Green, and Royce. The hegemony in the philosophical world long enjoyed by idealism was beginning to break up—something noted by James in his first lecture—due in no small part to the very ideas aired in his lectures and the then newly emerging schools of pragmatism and realism. The period between 1914 and 1918 not only rings the death knell of European imperialism but also, significantly, marks the watershed between nineteenth-and twentieth-century philosophy.The argument of A Pluralistic Universerevolves around the Parmenidean conundrum of the one-and-the-many. It is the solution to this problem that was the main bone of contention between James and absolute idealists like F. H. Bradley, T. H. Green, and Josiah Royce. For them, the world in reality is but one thing, though appearing illusorily as many, with a pervasive unity throughout—it is a "block-universe," to use James's expression for it; for James, by contrast, the world is irreducibly many things whose unities are partial and shifting. The gravamen of James's objections to absolute idealism was its monism, though he objected no less strenuously to other ideas associated with it: its doctrine of internal relations; its determinism; and, in particular, its deprecation of experience in favor of concepts (what James condemns as "vicious intellectualism"). James proposed, against this monolithic idealism, the alternative hypothesis of metaphysical pluralism. Here he affirmed the reality of external relations (particularly conjunctions) among things and the continuities within experience, thereby making his empiricism "radical." He approached experience phenomenologically, finding it, not concepts, to be constitutive of reality, the value of concepts being more practical than theoretical. He conceived of the universe as being open-ended, where human agency can make a difference for the better.A subtext of A Pluralistic Universeis James's advocacy of something like [End Page 131]traditional theism in contradistinction to the pantheism of absolute idealism. He rightly notes that the Absolute is not the God of Christianity. He believes that his pluralistic ontology allows for, and the religious experiences of people abundantly attest to, the existence of a personal God, albeit a finite one, with whom communion and commerce is possible. At a deeper, psychological level, though, A Pluralistic Universeis an expression of James's own desire to feel "at home" in the universe, a desire, I should add, that he shares with many protagonists of classic American fiction, and which is perhaps intensified by the experience of inhabiting and accommodating one's self to the relatively unfamiliar New World. He complains about the "foreignness" of the Absolute in objective idealism and of that sovereign God, in traditional theisms, subsisting beyond all human influence or effects.Howard Callaway's recent edition of James's Hibbert Lectures joins the Harvard edition of them, with a foreword by Richard J. Bernstein, as an indispensable volume of James's... (shrink)

The modus operandi of this book is contextual—throughout he demonstrates how ideas emerge from or are inspired by particular environments. And the need to put philosophical ideas in their larger historical and cultural context so as to fully understand them is, as will be illustrated below, a facet of his philosophical method. Another of its facets is fallibilism, a deep commitment to subjecting all theories and concepts (in any field) to incessant scrutiny, testing, correction, and clarification. This suggests that a (...) totality of knowledge of the world or the absolute truth about things is a pair of ideals impossible of realization and approachable at best asymptotically. If his method is contextualist and fallilbilist, then his metaphysics is pluralistic. In his view reality is not reducible to just one single substance or principle but instead is constituted irreducibly of many different kinds of thing or principles. He is thus implacably opposed to any form of ontological monism—what James designates a “block-universe”—and Hegelian absolutism. Callaway conceives of the world as a Jamesian multiverse. Contextualism, fallibilism, and pluralism, then, are the themes brought to the fore in his book and which emerge from his travels at home and abroad. (shrink)

As the World Wide Web has grown in popularity, the propriety of linking to other web sites has achieved some prominence as an important moral and legal issue. Hyperlinks represent the essence of Web-based activity, since they facilitate navigation in a unique and efficient fashion. But the pervasive activity of linking has generated notable controversies. While most sites welcome and support incoming links, others block them or seek to license them in some way. Particularly problematic are so-called 'deep links,' (...) which bypass the home page along with the extensive advertising and promotional material that is usually found there. While some contend that a site's mere presence on the web is implicit permission for virtually any form of linking, others argue that at least in some circumstances deep linking is unfair and constitutes misappropriation of intellectual property.In this paper we will explore the issue of deep linking from a distinctly moral vantage point. While legal scholars have vigorously debated this issue, it has received little attention from moralists. But deep linking raises a plethora of complex property issues with subtle moral implications, and hence it deserves our careful scrutiny. The most fundamental question concerns the appropriate scope of property rights for a web site and how those rights can be properly balanced against the common good of free and open communications on the Web. It is our contention that there is no presumptive claim to the liberty of deep linking at will, since it may be disrespectful of property rights in certain situations. In order to defend this position we first make the case that a web site is a form of intellectual property, drawing support from the major theories that justify property ownership. Once we have established that a web site is really property, we consider the specific rights implied by such ownership. We conclude that on the basis of those rights, a prima facie case can be made that because of the potential for negative effects, users should not presume that deep linking is acceptable unless they first seek out the permission of the target web site.We also fully appreciate the dangers inherent in propertizing the web and the need to encourage the most flexible forms of linking. Therefore, we argue that any arbitrary or unnecessary restrictions against deep linking should be eschewed for the sake of the common good of open communications, flexibility, and maximum porosity in the Internet environment. While web site authors may indeed have a property right in their creative work they have a correlative obligation to promote the sharing and free flow of information when their specific ownership rights are not put in jeopardy by deep linking. (shrink)

The "great debate" in cognitive science today is about the nature of mental images. One side says images are basically pictures in the head. The other side says they are like the symbol structures in computers. If the picture-in-the-head theorists are right, then computers will never be able to think like people.This book contains the most intelligible and incisive articles in the debate, articles by cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and philosophers. The most exciting imagery phenomena are described, phenomena that indicate (...) that mental images can be rotated and scanned, that smaller images are harder to see than larger ones, that when mental images are made larger they eventually overflow, that the "screen" they overflow from has a determinable shape (elliptical), and that this "screen" subtends a determinate visual angle, the angle of vision of the mind's eye.Such experiments cry out for explanation. If images are pictures in the head, who (or what) looks at them? Why haven't brain scientists found them? Such questions are the subject of the great debate.IMAGERY is an excellent choice for courses in cognitive psychology, perception: artificial intelligence, computer science; philosophy of mind, of psychology and of science; minds and machines, science and society.Contributors include: Roger Brown and Richard Herrnstein (on the work of Roger N. Shepard), Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, Robert Schwartz, Stephen Kosslyn, Steven Pinker, George Smith, Steven Shwartz, and Zenon Pylyshyn,. (shrink)

_An exploration of the uncomfortable connections among performances in life, art, and politics_ “All the world’s a stage,” declares the melancholy Jacques in Shakespeare’s_ As You Like It._ Today that’s an unhappy thought. A cluster of demagogues has recently dominated the public realm through their powers as actors; they are brilliant performers. More unsettling, the demagogue, the dancer, and the musician all share the same nonverbal realm of bodily gestures, lighting and blocking, costuming, and stage architecture. So, too, the roles (...) and rituals of everyday life and everyday acting can be malign or sublime, repressive or liberating. Performing constitutes one art—an ambiguous art. In this book, the acclaimed sociologist Richard Sennett explores uncomfortable connections among performances in life, art, and politics. He draws on his own early career as a professional cellist as well as histories both Western and non-Western. He is not a pessimist; at the end of his study, he shows how this ambiguous art might become more ethical. (shrink)

The key to action control is one’s ability to adequately predict the consequences of one’s actions. Predictive processing theories assume that forward models enable rapid “preplay” to assess the match between predicted and intended action effects. Here we propose the novel hypothesis that “reading” another’s action intentions requires a rich forward model of that agent’s action. Such a forward model can be obtained and enriched through learning by either practice or simulation. Based on this notion, we ran a series of (...) studies on soccer goalkeepers and novices, who predicted the intended direction of penalties being kicked at them in a computerized penalty-reading task. In line with hypotheses, extensive practice in penalty kicking improved performance in penalty reading among goalkeepers who had extensive prior experience in penalty blocking but not in penalty kicking. A robust benefit in penalty reading did not result from practice in kinesthetic motor imagery of penalty kicking in novice participants. To test whether goalkeepers actually use such penalty-kicking imagery in penalty reading, we trained a machine-learning classifier on multivariate fMRI activity patterns to distinguish motor-imagery-related from attention-related strategies during a penalty-imagery training task. We then applied that classifier to fMRI data related to a separate penalty-reading task and showed that 2/3 of all correctly read penalty kicks were classified as engaging the motor-imagery circuit rather than merely the attention circuit. This study provides initial evidence that, in order to read our opponent’s action intention, it helps to observe their action kinematics, and use our own forward model to predict the sensory consequences of “our” penalty kick if we were to produce these action kinematics ourselves. In sum, it takes practice as a penalty kicker to become a penalty killer. (shrink)

To explain social learning without invoking the cognitively complex concept of imitation, many learning mechanisms have been proposed. Borrowing an idea used routinely in cognitive psychology, we argue that most of these alternatives can be subsumed under a single process, priming, in which input increases the activation of stored internal representations. Imitation itself has generally been seen as a This has diverted much research towards the all-or-none question of whether an animal can imitate, with disappointingly inconclusive results. In the great (...) apes, however, voluntary, learned behaviour is organized hierarchically. This means that imitation can occur at various levels, of which we single out two clearly distinct ones: the a rather detailed and linear specification of sequential acts, and the a broader description of subroutine structure and the hierarchical layout of a behavioural Program level imitation is a high-level, constructive mechanism, adapted for the efficient learning of complex skills and thus not evident in the simple manipulations used to test for imitation in the laboratory. As examples, we describe the food-preparation techniques of wild mountain gorillas and the imitative behaviour of orangutans undergoing to the wild. Representing and manipulating relations between objects seems to be one basic building block in their hierarchical programs. There is evidence that great apes suffer from a stricter capacity limit than humans in the hierarchical depth of planning. We re-interpret some chimpanzee behaviour previously described as and suggest that all great apes may be able to imitate at the program level. Action level imitation is seldom observed in great ape skill learning, and may have a largely social role, even in humans. (shrink)

Memories of our personal past are the building blocks of our narrative identity. So, when we depend on objects and other people to remember and construct our personal past, our narrative identity is distributed across our embodied brains and an ecology of environmental resources. This paper uses a cognitive niche construction approach to conceptualise how we engineer our memory ecology and construct our distributed narrative identities. It does so by identifying three types of niche construction processes that govern how we (...) interact with our memory ecology, namely creating, editing, and using resources in our memory ecology. It also conceptualises how identity-relevant information in objects and (family) stories is transmitted vertically, i.e., across different generations of people. Identifying these processes allows us to better understand the cultural information trajectories that constitute our memory ecologies. Thus, what I’ll argue is that our memory ecology distributes our narrative identity and that engineering our memory ecology is a form of narrative niche construction. (shrink)

Contrary to Block's assertion, “identity-crowding” does not provide an interesting instance of object-seeing without object-attention. The successful judgments and unusual phenomenology of identity-crowding are better explained by unconscious perception and non-perceptual phenomenology associated with cognitive states. In identity-crowding, as in other cases of crowding, subjects see jumbled textures and cannot individuate the items contributing to those textures in the absence of attention. Block presents an attenuated sense in which identity-crowded items are seen, but this is irrelevant to the (...) debate about phenomenal experience of an object in the absence of object-attention. Finally, even unconscious object perception in identity-crowding likely involves an attention-like selective process. (shrink)

One goal of this paper is to argue that autobiographical memories are extended and distributed across embodied brains and environmental resources. This is important because such distributed memories play a constitutive role in our narrative identity. So, some of the building blocks of our narrative identity are not brain-bound but extended and distributed. Recognising the distributed nature of memory and narrative identity, invites us to find treatments and strategies focusing on the environment in which dementia patients are situated. A second (...) goal of this paper is to suggest various of such strategies, including lifelogging technologies such as SenseCams, life story books, multimedia biographies, memory boxes, ambient intelligence systems, and virtual reality applications. Such technologies allow dementia patients to remember their personal past in a way that wouldn’t be possible by merely relying on their biological memory, in that way aiding in preserving their narrative identity and positively contributing to their sense of well-being. (shrink)

One class of argument against cloning human beings in the contemporary literature focuses on the bad consequences that will befall the clone or “later-twin.” In this paper I consider whether this line of argumentation can be blocked by invoking Parfit’s non-identity problem. I canvass two general strategies for solving the non-identity problem: a consequentialist strategy and a non-consequentialist, rights based strategy. I argue that while each general strategy offers a plausible solution to the non-identity problem as applied to the cases (...) most frequently discussed in the non-identity problem literature, neither provides a reason for puttingaside the non-identity problem when applied to cloning. I conclude (roughly) that the non-identity problem does serve to block this class of argument against cloning. (shrink)

In recent years, global corporations and national governments have been enacting a growing number of codes of conduct and public regulations to combat dangerous and degrading work conditions in global supply chains. At the receiving end of this activity, local producers must contend with multiple regulatory regimes, but it is unclear how these regimes interact and what results, if any, they produce. This article examines this dynamic in the sugar sector in Brazil. It finds that although private and public agents (...) rarely communicate, let alone coordinate with one another, they nevertheless reinforce each other’s actions. Public regulators use their legal powers to outlaw extreme forms of outsourcing. Private auditors use the trust they command as company insiders to instigate a process of workplace transformation that facilitates compliance. Together, their parallel actions block the low road and guide targeted firms to a higher road in which improved labor standards are not only possible but even desirable. (shrink)

Theories of consciousness can be separated into those that see it as cognitive in nature, or as an aspect of cognitive functioning, and those that see consciousness as importantly distinct from any kind of cognitive functioning. One version of the former kind of theory is the higher-order-thought theory of consciousness. This family of theories posits a fundamental role for cognitive states, higher-order thought-like intentional states, in the explanation of conscious experience. These states are higher-order in that they represent the subject (...) herself as being in various world-directed first-order states and thus constitute a kind of cognitive access to one's own mental life. This distinctive cognitive access is postulated to account for what it is like for one to have a conscious experience. One important challenge to this approach is Block's case for phenomenological overflow (Block, 2007, 2011, 2012). The basic argument is that, overall, the balance of evidence favors the identification of phenomenal consciousness with first-order non-cognitive states rather than our cognitive access to those states. Emerging clearly from the ensuing debate is that Block's argument is meant to establish that phenomenology overflows working memory. This is important because, unlike other theories, the higher-order thought theory can allow that our conscious experience overflows working memory. In addition, it can account for the subjective impression that there is overflow even if there isn't. (shrink)

Since 9/11 politicians, preachers, conservatives and the media are all speaking about evil. In the past the dicourse about evil in our religious, philosophic and literary traditions has provoked thinking, questioning and inquiry. But today the appeal to evil is being used as a political tool to obscure compex issues, block serious thinking and stifle public discussion and debate. We are now confronting a clash of mentalities, not a clash of civilisations. One mentality is drawn to absolutes, moral certainties, (...) and simplistic dichotomies of good and evil. The other seriously questions an appeal to absolutes in politics and criticizes the simplistic division of the world into the forces of evil and the forces of good. In The Abuse of Evil Bernstein challenges the claim that without an appeal to absolutes, we lack the grounds for acting decisively in fighting our enemies. The post 9/11 abuse of evil corrupts both democratic politics and religion. The stakes are high in this clash of mentalities in shaping how we think and act in the world today - and in the future. (shrink)

The problem this article is concerned with is the failure ofmany large organizations in formerly socialist countries and inpublic sectors of market economies to make effective, peaceful,and ethical transformation from command to market responsiveorganization and privatization. There are at least threeimportant behavioral causes of this problem. First, organizationtransformation is blocked because the organization tries tochange "all at once" before the organization has learned how toact successfully in a new for the organization environment as amarket responsive instead of a command organization (...) (Churchman,1971; Quinn, 1980; Nystrom and Starbuck, 1984; Mintzberg andWaters, 1985; Mintzberg, 1994; Goldman, 1994). Second,organization transformation is blocked because "all at oncechange" stimulates so much fear and political opposition thatchange is politically not possible (Argyris and Schon, 1974;Argyris, 1990; Goldman, 1994; Sachs, 1992). Third, organizationtransformation is blocked because the "guardian" ethics syndromeof command organization is less appropriate for market responsiveorganization than a "commercial" ethics syndrome (Jacobs, 1992;Harris, 1995). Gradual intrapreneurship (Burgelman, 1983; Nielsenet al., 1985) can serve as a peaceful and ethical transitionstrategy. Intrapreneurship can help bridge some of thecontradictions between "commercial" vs. "guardian" ethicssyndromes (Jacobs, 1992; Nielsen, 1996). (shrink)

My assigned task in today’s colloquium is to review philosophers’ perspectives on the broad question of whether health care rationing ought to target the elderly. This is a revolutionary question, particularly in a society that is so sensitive to apparent discrimination, and the question must be approached carefully if it is to be successfully dealt with. Three subordinate questions attend this one and must be addressed in the course of answering it. The first such question has to do with the (...) issue of justice: how is it fair to target the elderly in achieving reductions in health care costs? Isn’t the proposal, or for that matter, isn’t targeting any age group, morally objectionable as a species of ageism, just as targeting members of a particular race or sex would be racist or sexist? The second subordinate question has to do with the issue of fittingness. Given that we can show in some way that targeting the elderly is not inherently unjust, why would limiting health care to them be a fitting thing for medicine to do? How would it fit, for example, with the traditional commitments of medicine, to sustain life, to relieve suffering, to heal and cure and restore function? And in particular, if medicine has the ability to save and relieve and restore the elderly, why should it replace that set of commitments with a different set for this particular population? The third subordinate question seems political, an arena reserved for one of my speaker colleagues today. There are, I believe, some underlying philosophical dimensions to its answer, and so I will say something about it. The philosophical/political questions is, Given that rationing health care to the elderly is not patently unjust, and given that a case can be made out that the ends of medicine are not violated by such limitation, shy should the elderly, as a group, assent to such a limitation? I want to address these subordinate questions, for I believe them to be the chief stumbling blocks for the possibility of an affirmative answer to our... (shrink)

IT is the major stumbling block to the claim that machines could one day possess true intelligence. The question is not whether machines would be able to produce outputs indistinguishable from those of a person, as proponents of “artificial intelligence” have traditionally maintained. Searle has shown, rather, that the real question is whether machines could ever be conscious of objects in the way we know ourselves to be. That would seem to make it, at least in part, a phenomenological (...) problem. By means of microphenomenology, then, I shall try to show that the basic structure of IT, as detected in reflection, can be analyzed in terms of an even more primitive factor, FA. Since attentional processes can be correlated with neurological selectivity, it will be argued that any machine constructed to perform such processes would be capable of IT. I shall, in short, attempt to support the possibility of creating automata capable of intentional activities by trying to describe how they occur in ourselves. (shrink)

IT is the major stumbling block to the claim that machines could one day possess true intelligence. The question is not whether machines would be able to produce outputs indistinguishable from those of a person, as proponents of “artificial intelligence” have traditionally maintained. Searle has shown, rather, that the real question is whether machines could ever be conscious of objects in the way we know ourselves to be. That would seem to make it, at least in part, a phenomenological (...) problem. By means of microphenomenology, then, I shall try to show that the basic structure of IT, as detected in reflection, can be analyzed in terms of an even more primitive factor, FA. Since attentional processes can be correlated with neurological selectivity, it will be argued that any machine constructed to perform such processes would be capable of IT. I shall, in short, attempt to support the possibility of creating automata capable of intentional activities by trying to describe how they occur in ourselves. (shrink)

Since 9/11 politicians, preachers, conservatives and the media are all speaking about evil. In the past the dicourse about evil in our religious, philosophic and literary traditions has provoked thinking, questioning and inquiry. But today the appeal to evil is being used as a political tool to obscure compex issues, block serious thinking and stifle public discussion and debate. We are now confronting a clash of mentalities, not a clash of civilisations. One mentality is drawn to absolutes, moral certainties, (...) and simplistic dichotomies of good and evil. The other seriously questions an appeal to absolutes in politics and criticizes the simplistic division of the world into the forces of evil and the forces of good. In The Abuse of Evil Bernstein challenges the claim that without an appeal to absolutes, we lack the grounds for acting decisively in fighting our enemies. The post 9/11 abuse of evil corrupts both democratic politics and religion. The stakes are high in this clash of mentalities in shaping how we think and act in the world today - and in the future. (shrink)

While Rawls himself put contractualism to work at the national level, his more cosmopolitan followers have argued that the full requirements of international justice can be reached only by way of a global contractualist argument. Both positions neglect a resource from within the contractualist tradition, The need for iteration of the nation-level contract gives rise to strong and reasonably definite moral requirements. A good-faith adoption of the contractual argument entails, first, a duty to assist those whose potential recourse to just (...) arrangements is blocked by tyranny or political collapse. Second, understood as a net risk-reducing project, a nation-level contract entails a duty not to impede the iterated risk-reduction projects of other national soceties. Envisaging the duty in this contractualist way avoids problems that beset both "natural duty" and "interactionist" approaches to international justice. The non-impedance requirement bears especially on international economic arrangements. The institutional representation of those affected by such arrangements would connect this abstract requirement with practical conclusions. (shrink)

According to Paul Ricoeur, the Freudian unconscious invalidates the ability of Husserlian phenomenology to explicate human psychology. The stumbling block is said to be the mechanism of repression, which can not only obviate conscious access to certain ideas and motives but also distort consciousness itself. The whole enterprise of phenomenology would seem to be at stake. But we must carefully distinguish being a conscious object from being a conscious process. By means of ?micro?phenomenology?, the reflective analysis of focal dynamics, (...) I shall try to reconstruct the so?called unconscious as certain conscious processes we are unable to reflect on as conscious objects. This reconstruction utilizes two motivational principles of attention, motive attraction and motive repulsion, which affect the manner in which attention addresses its object. The principles explain how reflective consciousness can be so repelled by certain directly conscious events that it withdraws with subliminal rapidity, leaving those events reflectively unconscious. Various sorts of evidence, including experimental results in subliminal psychology, can be used to support this phenomenological hypothesis. Though hypothetical, the theory at least demonstrates that the existence of unconscious processes is not an a priori basis for dismissing phenomenological methodology. (shrink)

IT is the major stumbling block to the claim that machines could one day possess true intelligence. The question is not whether machines would be able to produce outputs indistinguishable from those of a person, as proponents of “artificial intelligence” have traditionally maintained. Searle has shown, rather, that the real question is whether machines could ever be conscious of objects in the way we know ourselves to be. That would seem to make it, at least in part, a phenomenological (...) problem. By means of microphenomenology, then, I shall try to show that the basic structure of IT, as detected in reflection, can be analyzed in terms of an even more primitive factor, FA. Since attentional processes can be correlated with neurological selectivity, it will be argued that any machine constructed to perform such processes would be capable of IT. I shall, in short, attempt to support the possibility of creating automata capable of intentional activities by trying to describe how they occur in ourselves. (shrink)

The past twenty or so years have seen the sorites paradox receive a good deal of philosophical air-time. Yet, in what is surely a sign of a good puzzle, no consensus has emerged. It is perhaps a good time to stop and take stock of the current status of the sorites paradox. My main contention is that the proposals offered to date as ways of blocking the paradox are seriously deficient, and hence there is, at present, no acceptable solution to (...) the sorites. In the final section I argue that, although vagueness is the source of the threat to modus ponens engendered by the sorites, it is also vagueness that protects modus ponens from clear counterexample. (shrink)

The past twenty or so years have seen the sorites paradox receive a good deal of philosophical air-time. Yet, in what is surely a sign of a good puzzle, no consensus has emerged. It is perhaps a good time to stop and take stock of the current status of the sorites paradox. My main contention is that the proposals offered to date as ways of blocking the paradox are seriously deficient, and hence there is, at present, no acceptable solution to (...) the sorites. In the final section I argue that, although vagueness is the source of the threat to modus ponens engendered by the sorites, it is also vagueness that protects modus ponens from clear counterexample. (shrink)

In his Moderate Realism and Its Logic (Yale, 1996), Donald Mertz argues that the traditional ontology of nonpredicable substances and predicable universals is beset by “intractable problems,” “harbors an insidious error,” and constitutes a “stumbling block” for the ontologist. By contrast, a onecategory ontology consisting of relation instances (and combinations thereof) is sustainable, and indeed the only way of avoiding commitment to bare particulars. The success of the project turns on Mertz’s claim that every relation instance has a linking (...) aspect, so that (in a sense) even Socrates is a predicate. I argue that, ironically, it is this very feature of a relation instance that undermines Mertz’s entire theory of predication, effectively preventing any connections from being formed between the instances that allegedly compose an ordinary individual such as Socrates. (shrink)

A block of an orthoalgebra (or of an orthomodular lattice) is a maximal Boolean subalgebra. A site is the intersection of two distinct blocks. L is block (site)-finite if there are only finitely many blocks (sites). We introduce a certain type of subalgebra of an orthoalgebra which is a subortholattice if the orthoalgebra is an ortholattice (and therefore an orthomodular lattice) and which is block finite if the orthoalgebra is site finite. The construction yields a cover of (...) a site-finite orthoalgebra or orthomodular lattice L by block-finite substructures of the same type and having the same center as L. Every site-finite orthomodular lattice is commutator finite. (shrink)

Picornaviruses can be divided into at least six receptor families based on results of competition binding and receptor antibody studies. It has been proposed that a canyon present within the virion capsid harbors the viral attachment site for this group of viruses. Cell surface proteins involved in viral attachment have been identified for both rhinoviruses and coxsackie B viruses. Several monoclonal antibodies have been isolated which specifically block the binding of some picornaviruses.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 127 seems to imply. Of course, this critique can easily be dismissed as asking for a book that Krieger did not wish to write. His method has produced important results, for Krieger has discerned developmental trends overlooked by others. Otherwise, the only area that I think needs further discussion is Ranke's conception of the nature and function of science. Krieger seems to imply that science automatically means (...) a nomological approach modeled upon the mechanical physical sciences. But Ranke was nourished in an atmosphere where science was often equated with Naturphilosophie. Certainly, Ranke's language is filled with images and terms popularized by Naturphilosophen. Ranke's quest for a science of history may fit very nicely with the ideal dimension of his thought if the science that he is talking about is analogous to Naturphilosophie. It may turn out that the basic polarity in Ranke's idea of history is an analytic construct that has little meaning for Ranke's own intentions. Krieger ends his study with a chapter devoted to the meaning of Ranke's work for modem historiography. It is the dialectical synthesis of the whole study. After recapitulating Ranke's achievements, Krieger then emphasizes the breach that separates Ranke from our conceptual world. We no longer share Ranke's beliefs or values. In fact, for most of us "he must seem simply archaic, and the more he is himself historically restored the more archaic he must seem" (p. 355). For the reader who had to struggle through this difficult book and to contend with Professor Krieger's passion for complex dependent clauses, this announcement appears as a grand denouement. But the shock is only temporary. Krieger's assertion of the differences that separate Ranke from us serves as a warning to those who still take Ranke's approach as an objective model for historical reconstruction. The deeper meaning of Ranke's view of history is the affirmation of history as an autonomous and independent form of knowledge. "History is an inimitable way of rendering comprehensible modes of humanity which must otherwise be incomprehensible" (p. 356). This form of knowledge, which is devoted "to the actual but equipped with a language of common sense organized around the categorical," proceedes by arranging things along a time line (p. 357). Here Krieger launches a spirited counterattack against those modem theorists who have questioned the viability of history as an independent form of knowledge or who have minimized the importance of developmental analysis, preferring instead to concentrate upon relatively static deep structures. Krieger's study affirms Ranke's project in its most general sense; that history is a cumulative logic of the actual, "the meeting ground of philosophy, science, and cataclysmic experience" (p. 356). And it serves, at the same time, as a positive demonstration that a developmental analysis does impart knowledge that other approaches cannot achieve. In this sense, Krieger's masterful study of Ranke reaffirms Ranke's central position as a founding father of modem historical thought. PETER HANNS REILL University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Quinn. The Confidence of British Philosophers:An Essay in Historical Narrative. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977. Pp. xii + 289. Gld. 80. This is a remarkable book. Almost all of it is a study, very well researched and presented, of four major English philosophical movements: Newtonians, the Utilitarians, the Oxford Hegelians, and the Russell, G. E. Moore, and Whitehead group. The study shows the initial enthusiasm, optimism, and confidence of each of the groups. Each believed that it had found a way to solve the intellectual and perhaps moral and social problems of mankind. As each movement developed, the confidence slowly eroded when philosophical problems and difficulties failed to disappear. The picture Quinn presents of these movements is very interesting. He has grouped together 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY much detail that makes us see the original intentions of the leaders of each of these movements. He also deftly shows how as stumbling blocks arose each movement lowered its goals and began to fade. Employing a very wide range of printed sources, Quinn presents a series of convincing vignettes, and in so doing be often reveals features of these movements that have been... (shrink)

Block has attempted to reduce the confusion and controversy concerning the term “consciousness” by suggesting that there are two forms or types of consciousness, each of which has several characteristics or properties. This suggestion appears to further becloud the topic, however. Perhaps consciousness cannot be defined adequately and should not be considered as a topic that can be studied scientifically.

The lead text of this book is based on primatologist Frans de Waal’s 2003 Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, to which he adds three short appendices. There are commentaries by Robert Wright, Christine Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher, and Peter Singer, followed by a 20-page response. Josiah Ober and Stephen Macedo provide a brief introduction. As befits a Tanner lecturer, de Waal’s scope is broad, his writing accessible, and the pace lively. He continues his crusade against the “veneer theory”—the idea that humans (...) are naturally sociopaths and that empathy, altruism, and morality are the result of recent cultural forces. The extent to which de Waal dichotomizes this debate, however, masks much of interest. One can agree with the seemingly obvious fact that humans are obligatorily gregarious organisms—replete with various prosocial mechanisms—while still expressing reasonable doubt that our capacity to make moral judgments is the result of an innate mechanism dedicated to that task. De Waal is an unparalleled source of rich first-hand primatological data, arguing cogently that humans show continuity with other apes regarding empathy, consolation behavior, peacemaking, and reciprocal relations. Yet he admits these “building blocks” are “by no means sufficient” for morality, and in his Response discusses two further levels of morality: rule enforcement for the community’s good, and disinterested moral reasoning. He doesn’t address whether this third, uniquely human, level is a distinct innate adaptation, apparently not appreciating that if it isn’t, and yet is necessary for being literally accorded a “moral sense”, then moral nativism is false and at least some of human morality is “veneer.” In characteristic non-philosopher manner, de Waal ultimately rejects the question as “semantics” and thus “mostly a waste of time”. It seems a surprising blemish that the author of a book subtitled “How Morality Evolved” should grow impatient with those wondering what precisely is necessary and sufficient for morality, and what specifically has evolved. (shrink)

The variety and complexity of the eight papers in this Symposium issue are evidence that immigration is a tough nut to crack both as a matter of policy and application. There is no way that any short summary can do justice to these papers, which take a variety of moral, economic, historical, and empirical approaches to some of the recurrent issues in the field, so it is best in this short issue to try to situate the problem in a general (...) classical liberal context, to show where the pressure points are most likely to appear.The initial way to approach this problem is to start with the simple proposition that the world today is divided into national territories where the practical norm is well-nigh universal: That each sovereign state has exclusive control over its own territory, which, among other things, allows it to decide which individuals are members of that state. These citizens have privileges that may be exercised, no questions asked, on such key matters as entering labor markets, owning property, voting, and otherwise participating in political affairs. All these activities may be denied or granted, at will, to any and all outsiders by the territorial sovereign.No one doubts the need for having some form of territorial control. The need to have some monopoly of force could not be achieved if the entire world, with its infinite diversity of locations and populations, were under a single sovereign. Indeed, in many cases, the divisions within a given country may be so pronounced that separation rather than aggregation is the norm. Thus, at the end of the British Raj, India split into India and Pakistan, and later Pakistan split into Pakistan and Bangladesh. Less dramatically, Czechoslovakia split into two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, while the former Yugoslavia split into five nations, starting from the northwest: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, and Macedonia. Clearly, these ethic differences, be they large or small, are a major obstacle to the expansion of the size of the state. And today, the territorial instinct reasserts itself as the member states of the European Union impose more restrictions on immigration.Yet at the same time, the normative foundations of this system seem elusive. There is the following deep skepticism about the importance of these borders, expressed in these essays by Jeremy Waldron and Ilya Somin, that these national boundary lines should have such a pronounced role in political economy. Michael Blake pursues this theme further by asking the extent to which classical liberals can justify exclusion through the use of violence—or is it force? The inquiry into the dominant role of territoriality can then be expanded, as by Peter Margulies, to examine all sorts of negative externalities that could be created both by easy and strict rules of admission.Taken as a whole, there is no doubt that these national barriers are a serious obstacle to the free trade in goods and services between two individuals, one inside the boundary and one outside. The general view is that these barriers block the gains from trade, which is what drives economic progress, so that ideally all tariffs and quantitative restrictions should give way to a system of free trade in which petty objections by domestic competitors of foreign firms should not dictate local policies.It should, of course, be evident that powerful conflicting forces on free trade and protectionism ebb and flow over time. It should therefore come as no surprise that the stakes are even higher where what is at stake is the movement of people across national boundaries. The loss to any given country from keeping out potential citizens can be enormous, and we see powerful political forces clamp down on open immigration, so many of these gains from trade are lost. The situation can be even more heartbreaking when the ability to leave a country exposes innocent people to imprisonment or death.So what is the explanation for so many nations closing their borders? Much of the explanation comes from old-fashioned protectionism. Your computer programmers will take the jobs of our specialists. There is all sorts of occupational licensing and other barriers to entry within a domestic economy, so there is no reason to expect that these forces will not exert even greater influence against outsiders who do not, after all, have a voice in the local economy and who, therefore, as Alex Nowrasteh, Michael Howard, and Andrew Forrester observe, have little ability to influence domestic policy even after they enter a country. In addition, as Gabriel Chin discusses, strong racial prejudices also lead to exclusions from the domestic economy. Not only are there objections in, say, the United States and much of Western Europe, of exclusion on straight racial grounds, as exemplified by Chinese exclusion acts. The force of these exclusions are also subject to political change. Thus, the Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act) was part of a white supremacist program, which gave way two decades later to a very different legal regime with the Immigration Act of 1965, which put an end to the venerable system of national-origin quotas.Yet two other reasons for exclusion are constantly at issue. Immigrants not only bring in their labor but also their families, cultures, and traditions that, in public spaces, may clash with local norms and cultures on such elementary and critical matters as to whether women should dress modestly and wear head coverings. Will freewheeling Danes and Swedes feel comfortable if large numbers of Muslims continue their traditional practices with strong barriers between men and women? There are no obvious market mechanisms that will mitigate these issues, and the situation becomes even more fraught if there are large welfare or educational costs that fall, at least in the short run, on local citizens. These are compounded by the fact that immigrants will typically gain political rights that could easily skew the balance of political power between established and newly arrived ethnic groups by altering the outcome of national and local elections. And letting people in is not just done on a simple open-borders policy. Thus, in many countries, as Lance Pritchett discusses, there is the controversial option of letting foreigners in on short-term labor visas that require them to leave after a certain period. And there are further questions about whether people should be deported if they lied on their entry applications or committed some crime while in the new country, as has occurred in the United States. The numbers of cases can be high and their complexity great, so it is fair to ask, along with Jill Family, whether some self-conscious exceptions to the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, analogous statutes elsewhere, should be regarded as part of the new normal.It is therefore necessary to deal with the thrust and counterthrust on all these issues. It is also fair to ask whether classical liberalism has a distinctive view on these issues, or whether the combination of private gains and multidirectional externalities gives rise to empirical questions that, as always, require further reflection, even when certain situations—the major influx of illegal immigrants on the US southern border—will generate such powerful emotions that detached intellectual inquiry is ever more difficult. We cannot answer these questions, and thus offer to you a set of essays that take a stab at these difficult topics. (shrink)

It is true for many disciplines within the humanities that there are numerous excellent works that introduce the beginner to the basic building blocks of the discipline, and also many advanced studies for the accomplished scholar, but few works that help the student get from the beginning stage to the advanced level. That has certainly been true of the discipline of Sanskrit. Once a student has devoted a couple of years to working through one of the excellent introductions to the (...) language by Ashok Aklujkar, Michael Coulson, Madhav Deshpande, Robert Goldman, or Walter Maurer, there have been hardly any intermediate texts to help the student systematically progress to more advanced levels. Now, however, with the publication of Scholastic Sanskrit, an important step has been taken toward filling that lacuna. This book assumes that the student has learned enough about Sanskrit grammar and syntax to be ready to begin plunging into the vast corpus comprising the many genres of Sanskrit literature. It is built on the conviction that even a student at the early stages of exploring Sanskrit literature can benefit from the work of traditional commentators; it is also built on the observation that until now there have not been reliable guides to help the student make intelligent use of Sanskrit commentaries. (shrink)