One often hears it said that our visual-perceptual contact with the world is “perspectival.” But this can mean quite different things. Three different senses in which our visual contact with the world is “perspectival” are distinguished. The first involves the detection or representation of behaviorally important relations, holding between a perceiving subject and the world. These include time to contact, body-scaled size, egocentric position, and direction of heading. The second perspective becomes at least explicitly manifest in taking up the “proximal (...) mode” and involves the representation of relational “appearance properties,” such as, perhaps , angular size and angular/projective shape at or from a viewpoint. The third perspective is associated with the pencil of rays structured by the position and geometry of the eyes. The relationships between these three perspectives are charted, and their connection with conscious experiential awareness discussed. So, e.g., there is no simple or direct route from the detection of the relations constitutive of perspective2 to detection of the relations constitutive of perspective1. The relations definitive of perspective3 are probably not themselves detected or represented by the visual system, but define the informational arena within which detection of the relations definitive of perspective1 and perspective2 takes place. (shrink)

A coin rotating back in depth in some sense presents a changing, elliptical shape. How are we to understand such (in this case) ‘appearances of ellipticality’? How is the experiential sense of such shifting shape appearances related to the experiential sense of enduring shape definitive of perceived shape constancy? Is the experiential recovery of surface shape based on the prior (perhaps more fundamental) recovery of point or element 3D spatial locations?—or is the perception of shape a largely independent perceptual achievement? (...) Do we gain access to enduring shape properties by first detecting and working from ‘shape appearances’? These are some of the topics taken up in this paper. (shrink)

Long tradition in philosophy and in empirical psychology has it that the perceptual recovery of enduring objective size and shape proceeds through initial spatial appearance experiences—like the sensed changing visual field size of a receding car, or the shifting shape appearance of a coin as it rotates in depth. The present paper carefully frames and then critically examines such proposals. It turns out that these are contingent, empirical matters, requiring close examination of relevant research in perception science in order to (...) decide. The paper concludes with extended discussions of the empirical study of the perception of slant, size, and shape. (shrink)

I develop a Russellian representationalist account of size experience that draws importantly from contemporary vision science research on size perception. The core view is that size is experienced in ‘body-scaled’ units. So, an object might, say, be experienced as two eye-level units high. The view is sharpened in response to Thompson’s (forthcoming) Doubled Earth example. This example is presented by Thompson as part of an argument for a Fregean view of size experience. But I argue that the Russellian view I (...) develop handles the Doubled Earth example in a natural and illuminating way, thereby avoiding the need to posit irreducible experiential ‘modes of presentation’. I also address a kind of neo-Fregean ‘reference-fixing’ view of size experience, that shares features with the Russellian view developed. I give reasons for favoring the latter. Finally, I argue that Peacocke’s claim that spatial experience is ‘unit free’ is not persuasive. (shrink)

An empirically based view of size and distance perceptual content and phenomenology is introduced, in which perceivers measure worldly size and distance against their bodies. Central principles of the formal, representational theory of the measurement of extensive magnitudes are then applied in framing the account in a precise way. The question of whether spatial-perceptual experience is “unit-free” is clarified. The framework is used to assess Dennis Proffitt's proposal that spatial setting is perceived in various “units,” “scales,” or “rulers”, some of (...) them non-spatial—distance in terms of calories burned to traverse and the like. The debate between Proffitt and Firestone about the commensurability of differing measurement scales held by Proffitt to be relied on by perceivers is then clarified and resolved. Finally, the measurement theory framed account of size and distance perception is used to illuminate Gibson’s famous but elusive contrasts between “geometrical optics” and “ecological optics” and between the “physical world” and the “animal environment”. (shrink)

Philosophers and cognitive scientists address the relationships among the senses and the connections between conscious experiences that form unified wholes. In this volume, cognitive scientists and philosophers examine two closely related aspects of mind and mental functioning: the relationships among the various senses and the links that connect different conscious experiences to form unified wholes. The contributors address a range of questions concerning how information from one sense influences the processing of information from the other senses and how unified states (...) of consciousness emerge from the bonds that tie conscious experiences together. Sensory Integration and the Unity of Consciousness is the first book to address both of these topics, integrating scientific and philosophical concerns. A flood of recent work in both philosophy and perception science has challenged traditional conceptions of the sensory systems as operating in isolation. Contributors to the volume consider the ways in which perceptual contact with the world is or may be “multisensory,” discussing such subjects as the modeling of multisensory integration and philosophical aspects of sensory modalities. Recent years have seen a similar surge of interest in unity of consciousness. Contributors explore a range of questions on this topic, including the nature of that unity, the degree to which conscious experiences are unified, and the relationship between unified consciousness and the self. Contributors Tim Bayne, David J. Bennett, Berit Brogaard, Barry Dainton, Ophelia Deroy, Frederique de Vignemont, Marc Ernst, Richard Held, Christopher S. Hill, Geoffrey Lee, Kristan Marlow, Farid Masrour, Jennifer Matey, Casey O'Callaghan, Cesare V. Parise, Kevin Rice, Elizabeth Schechter, Pawan Sinha, Julia Trommershaeuser, Loes C. J. van Dam, Jonathan Vogel, James Van Cleve, Robert Van Gulick, Jonas Wulff. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern PracticeDavid DepewPrudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice. Ed. Robert Hariman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 337. $65.00, cloth."This volume," writes the editor, "is one contribution to the contemporary revival of interest in the concept of prudence" (ix). What interest? Notably, that of latter-day "virtue ethicists," whose discontents with the algorithmic decision-making procedures of modernism have given wings to a hope (...) that we (considered as members of some sort of imagined polis) will return to the context-sensitive "practical wisdom" of the ancients. (Prudentia is Cicero's Latin translation of the Greek phronesis, practical wisdom.)In theory, this line of reasoning was supposed to break the mold of contemporary politics. In practice, it has been captured by the political right. Virtue ethicists and civic republicans like Benjamin Barber have been outflanked by "virtuecrats" such as Bill Bennett (he of the gambling habit), the pompous columnist George Will, and Amitai Etzioni, the neo-corporatist founder of the Communitarian Party. It should be said right away, then, that few, if any, of the contributors to this collection are sympathetic to this sort of thinking. Admittedly, they share with virtuecrats a critique of rule-governed forms of decision-making, whether deontological or utilitarian, especially when these procedures masquerade as ways of "operationalizing" morality. Such calculi are indeed creatures of the institutional cultures of business firms and bureaucracies, which have increasingly affected law and politics. In addition, the authors of this volume are no less inclined than right-leaning virtuecrats to rake through intellectual history in order to come up with something relevant to the present and future. "There is a looking backward in order to see more clearly a mentality that is overlooked and undervalued in the present" (20). But they do so with a view to seeing what will come up when management of the topic of prudence is taken away from philosophers and reconnected (as it was from antiquity [End Page 167] until the nineteenth century) with the art of rhetoric, considered as an array of teachable discursive practices that are helpful in identifying and commending appropriate responses to contingent circumstances. The most salient features of the volume follow: a shift of the center of gravity from Aristotle to Cicero (ix), and a consideration of how, through rhetorical performances that involve the construction of a visible, embodied self, that strangest of creatures, a post-modern prudence, might be brought forth.I am pleased to report that changes of meaning in the collection's key term are discernible as we move from Cicero's prudentia to Machiavelli's prudenzia, and from the prudence that Edmund Burke invoked to justify American independence against his government's blind, imprudent rule-following to the quite different, and indeed incompatible, prudence that the Americans actually ended up with by the Jacksonian period, which is explored here by James Jasinski and Christine Oravec. Still, greater attention to the first great fracture in the concept, as phronesis moved across the Adriatic and became prudentia, would have made it clearer that, if there is to be a post-modern prudence, whether on terms set forth here by Maurice Charland or Hariman, or elsewhere by others, it cannot conceivably be seen as emerging out of a continuous root stock that managed to cross two seas intact, but as invented by doing repeated violence to a term, in part by providing it with a handsome pedigree that must be fitted up for the occasion.At this point let me register my only complaint. In spite of some useful remarks about Aristotle's notion of phronesis by Hariman and Charland, the volume lacks a systematic treatment of the Greek notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) even as a foil. This makes it difficult to see that the notion of phronesis was diversely interpreted by fourth-century Greeks; that Cicero's assimilation of phronesis to a Latin term already loaded with local associations—the subject of an informative essay by Robert Cape—might not preserve the Greek notion intact; that to the extent that Cicero does preserve aspects of Greek phronesis, his version is probably closer to Isocrates' rhetoric-friendly... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Otto Rudolph Ortmann, Music Philosophy, and Music EducationDavid J. GonzolWhat is music? What should we teach when we teach music? How should we? In the early twentieth century, these most foundational questions relating to music education were addressed by the highly regarded, though less well known, educator and researcher, Otto Rudolph Ortmann. In 1922, he published an article in which he outlined a theory of musical experience, developing aspects (...) of the physics of sound, qualitative theory, and Gestalt psychology, prefiguring important ideas in music philosophy. Ortmann highly valued his theory, utilized it in other research throughout his career, and influenced others such as Carl Seashore. Few, however, seem to be aware of his work or its implications for music education.1The seminal 1922 article, "The Sensorial Basis of Music Appreciation," was written while Ortmann was teaching at the Peabody Conservatory of Music and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.2 While this article has received little attention, much of his other research has been widely and well received.3 "Papa Ortmann," well beloved of family and students, had a career Gerig characterized as "a wedding between Materia Medica and Frau Musica."4 A prolific [End Page 160] researcher, superb musician, and excellent teacher, he published articles on music theory (one of which was reprinted and extended in 1983), musicology, music reading, ear training, synesthesia, and jazz.5 His research on piano performance, particularly his two books,6 is regarded as definitive; it has been discussed in a thesis and four dissertations; some of it has been replicated. In Famous Pianists and Their Technique, Gerig devoted a chapter to Ortmann.7 Ortmann's theory of listening types, in effect a theory of music cognition,8 was accepted by Robert Neidlinger, Doreen Rao, and Bennett Reimer.9 In the 1992 Handbook of Research on Music Teaching and Learning, F. R. Wilson and F. L. Roehmann praised the significance of Ortmann's body of research as undiminished in importance in music education.10It may be that Ortmann's "Sensorial Basis"theory received little attention at the time because too few were interested in such theories or in the synthesizing of science and psychology or the touching on philosophy that he employed. Although he influenced Seashore, the philosophical issues he began to explore would be developed more strongly only decades later, by philosophers such as Monroe Beardsley, Peter Kivy, and Jerrold Levinson. It seems that Ortmann's theory not only prefigures some ideas in recent music philosophy, but supports them as well. If it does, then our increased understanding of music can provide a firmer basis for developing better music education-one of Ortmann's aims. In this article I will describe his theory, sketch how it aligns with subsequent research, and consider its value today. Ortmann attempted a comprehensive explanation of music's nature; as far as his explanation is accurate, that far it can help us understand music and in turn music education.Three "Attributes"At the turn of the 1900s, it was popular to refer to "attributes" of sound. Ortmann posited that all sensation, including sound, has three types of attributes. The primary attribute he termed extensity, by which he meant the breadth of the sensation that is perceived. Extensity has three forms, transtensity (frequency), intensity (strength), and protensity (duration). These can be perceived individually but also as sound's secondary attributes, chief of which is quality. Tertiary attributes of sound are made through association, either by (a) contiguity, linking a sound's quality with things experienced near in time to the sound, or by (b) similarity, associating the quality with sensations of like extensity (for example, the expressive brightness of a sound and a light). Ortmann believed that tertiary attributes form "the threshold of musical imagination, and imagination in turn, of musical enjoyment."11 Accordingly, he concluded that music could express many things, and that this is dependent on listeners, their individual histories, and their entire field of sensations. [End Page 161]The Primary Attribute of ExtensityIn the Renaissance, Benedetti and Galileo found that pitch was related to frequency, and in 1702, Sauveur was the first to state that overtones affect timbre. In 1863, Helmholtz... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern PracticeDavid DepewPrudence: Classical Virtue, Postmodern Practice. Ed. Robert Hariman. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 337. $65.00, cloth."This volume," writes the editor, "is one contribution to the contemporary revival of interest in the concept of prudence" (ix). What interest? Notably, that of latter-day "virtue ethicists," whose discontents with the algorithmic decision-making procedures of modernism have given wings to a hope (...) that we (considered as members of some sort of imagined polis) will return to the context-sensitive "practical wisdom" of the ancients. (Prudentia is Cicero's Latin translation of the Greek phronesis, practical wisdom.)In theory, this line of reasoning was supposed to break the mold of contemporary politics. In practice, it has been captured by the political right. Virtue ethicists and civic republicans like Benjamin Barber have been outflanked by "virtuecrats" such as Bill Bennett (he of the gambling habit), the pompous columnist George Will, and Amitai Etzioni, the neo-corporatist founder of the Communitarian Party. It should be said right away, then, that few, if any, of the contributors to this collection are sympathetic to this sort of thinking. Admittedly, they share with virtuecrats a critique of rule-governed forms of decision-making, whether deontological or utilitarian, especially when these procedures masquerade as ways of "operationalizing" morality. Such calculi are indeed creatures of the institutional cultures of business firms and bureaucracies, which have increasingly affected law and politics. In addition, the authors of this volume are no less inclined than right-leaning virtuecrats to rake through intellectual history in order to come up with something relevant to the present and future. "There is a looking backward in order to see more clearly a mentality that is overlooked and undervalued in the present" (20). But they do so with a view to seeing what will come up when management of the topic of prudence is taken away from philosophers and reconnected (as it was from antiquity [End Page 167] until the nineteenth century) with the art of rhetoric, considered as an array of teachable discursive practices that are helpful in identifying and commending appropriate responses to contingent circumstances. The most salient features of the volume follow: a shift of the center of gravity from Aristotle to Cicero (ix), and a consideration of how, through rhetorical performances that involve the construction of a visible, embodied self, that strangest of creatures, a post-modern prudence, might be brought forth.I am pleased to report that changes of meaning in the collection's key term are discernible as we move from Cicero's prudentia to Machiavelli's prudenzia, and from the prudence that Edmund Burke invoked to justify American independence against his government's blind, imprudent rule-following to the quite different, and indeed incompatible, prudence that the Americans actually ended up with by the Jacksonian period, which is explored here by James Jasinski and Christine Oravec. Still, greater attention to the first great fracture in the concept, as phronesis moved across the Adriatic and became prudentia, would have made it clearer that, if there is to be a post-modern prudence, whether on terms set forth here by Maurice Charland or Hariman, or elsewhere by others, it cannot conceivably be seen as emerging out of a continuous root stock that managed to cross two seas intact, but as invented by doing repeated violence to a term, in part by providing it with a handsome pedigree that must be fitted up for the occasion.At this point let me register my only complaint. In spite of some useful remarks about Aristotle's notion of phronesis by Hariman and Charland, the volume lacks a systematic treatment of the Greek notion of practical wisdom (phronesis) even as a foil. This makes it difficult to see that the notion of phronesis was diversely interpreted by fourth-century Greeks; that Cicero's assimilation of phronesis to a Latin term already loaded with local associations—the subject of an informative essay by Robert Cape—might not preserve the Greek notion intact; that to the extent that Cicero does preserve aspects of Greek phronesis, his version is probably closer to Isocrates' rhetoric-friendly... (shrink)

This collection of recent articles by leading scholars is designed to illuminate one of the greatest and most influential philosophical books of all time. It includes incisive commentary on every major theme and argument in the Meditations, and will be valuable not only to philosophers but to historians, theologians, literary scholars, and interested general readers.

On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contributions from (...) eighteen notable scholars of different disciplines, ranging from contemporary aesthetics and art theory through to philosophical approaches to religion, education and social anthropology. It also includes a bibliography of Hepburn’s writings. The essays were first published in two special issues of the Journal of Scottish Thought, vols. 10–11 (2018–2019). -/- Ronald William Hepburn was born in Aberdeen on 16 March 1927. He went to Aberdeen Grammar School, then he graduated with an M.A. in Philosophy (1951) and obtained his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen (1955). His tutor at Aberdeen was Donald MacKinnon (1913– 1994), a Scottish philosopher and theologian, the author of A Study in Ethical Theory (1957) and The Problem of Metaphysics (1974). Hepburn taught as Lecturer at the Department of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen (1956–60), and he was also Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University (1959–60). He returned from the United States as Professor of Philosophy at Nottingham University. In 1964, he was appointed as a Chair in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and between 1965 and 1968 he was also Stanton Lecturer in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. From 1975 until his retirement in 1996, he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. He died in Edinburgh on 23 December 2008. His philosophical interests ranged from theology and the philosophy of religion through moral philosophy and the philosophy of education to art theory and aesthetics. Notably, Hepburn is widely regarded as the founder of modern environmental and everyday aesthetics as a result of the influence of papers in the 1960s which pioneered a new approach to the aesthetics of the natural world. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to give an account of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities in a way which allows the distinction a useful place in an explanation of scientific enquiry. this is done by modifying certain of locke's criteria for primacy, and by showing that this procedure has certain advantages over keith campbell's account of the distinction. in particular, i argue that primary qualities cannot be specified in a theory-neutral way, and that this has important consequences (...) for an account of scientific observation and the relation between the scientific and everyday images of the world. (shrink)

One of the enduring concerns of moral philosophy is deciding who or what is deserving of ethical consideration. Much recent attention has been devoted to the "animal question" -- consideration of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In this book, David Gunkel takes up the "machine question": whether and to what extent intelligent and autonomous machines of our own making can be considered to have legitimate moral responsibilities and any legitimate claim to moral consideration. The machine question poses a (...) fundamental challenge to moral thinking, questioning the traditional philosophical conceptualization of technology as a tool or instrument to be used by human agents. Gunkel begins by addressing the question of machine moral agency: whether a machine might be considered a legitimate moral agent that could be held responsible for decisions and actions. He then approaches the machine question from the other side, considering whether a machine might be a moral patient due legitimate moral consideration. Finally, Gunkel considers some recent innovations in moral philosophy and critical theory that complicate the machine question, deconstructing the binary agent--patient opposition itself. Technological advances may prompt us to wonder if the science fiction of computers and robots whose actions affect their human companions could become science fact. Gunkel's argument promises to influence future considerations of ethics, ourselves, and the other entities who inhabit this world. (shrink)

A familiar interpretation of quantum mechanics (one of a number of views sometimes labeled the "Copenhagen interpretation'"), takes its empirical apparatus at face value, holding that the quantum wave function evolves by the Schrödinger equation except on certain occasions of measurement, when it collapses into a new state according to the Born rule. This interpretation is widely rejected, primarily because it faces the measurement problem: "measurement" is too imprecise for use in a fundamental physical theory. We argue that this is (...) a weak objection, as there may be many ways of making "measurement" precise. However, measurement-collapse interpretations face a more serious objection: a dilemma tied to the quantum Zeno effect. Is measurement itself an observable that can enter superpositions? If yes, then the standard measurement-collapse dynamics is ill-defined. If no, then (at least if measurement is an observable), measurements can never start or finish. The best way out is to deny that measurement is an observable, but this leads to strong and revisionary consequences. This reinforces the view that there is no nonrevisionary interpretation of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This chapter describes three relatively specific forms such as destructive uploading, gradual uploading, and nondestructive uploading. Neuroscience is gradually discovering various neural correlates of consciousness, but this research program largely takes the existence of consciousness for granted. It presents an argument for the pessimistic view and an argument for the optimistic view, both of which run parallel to related arguments that can be given concerning teletransportation. Cryonic technology offers the possibility of preserving our brains in a low‐temperature state shortly after (...) death, until such time as the technology is available to reactivate the brain or perhaps to upload the information in it. Reconstructive uploading from brain scans is closely akin to ordinary (nongradual) uploading from brain scans, with the main difference being the time delay, and perhaps the continued existence in the meantime of the original person. (shrink)

Life Takes Place argues that, even in our mobile, hypermodern world, human life is impossible without place. Seamon asks the question: why does life take place? He draws on examples of specific places and place experiences to understand place more broadly. Advocating for a holistic way of understanding that he calls "synergistic relationality," Seamon defines places as spatial fields that gather, activate, sustain, identify, and interconnect things, human beings, experiences, meanings, and events. Throughout his phenomenological explication, Seamon recognizes that places (...) are multivalent in their constitution and sophisticated in their dynamics. Drawing on British philosopher J. G. Bennett's method of progressive approximation, he considers place and place experience in terms of their holistic, dialectical, and processual dimensions. Recognizing that places always change over time, Seamon examines their processual dimension by identifying six generative processes that he labels interaction, identity, release, realization, intensification, and creation. Drawing on practical examples from architecture, planning, and urban design, he argues that an understanding of these six place processes might contribute to a more rigorous place making that produces robust places and propels vibrant environmental experiences. This book is a significant contribution to the growing research literature in "place and place making studies.". (shrink)

A new theory of moral and aesthetic value for the age of remix, going beyond the usual debates over originality and appropriation. Remix—or the practice of recombining preexisting content—has proliferated across media both digital and analog. Fans celebrate it as a revolutionary new creative practice; critics characterize it as a lazy and cheap (and often illegal) recycling of other people's work. In Of Remixology, David Gunkel argues that to understand remix, we need to change the terms of the debate. (...) The two sides of the remix controversy, Gunkel contends, share certain underlying values—originality, innovation, artistic integrity. And each side seeks to protect these values from the threat that is represented by the other. In reevaluating these shared philosophical assumptions, Gunkel not only provides a new way to understand remix, he also offers an innovative theory of moral and aesthetic value for the twenty-first century. In a section called “Premix,” Gunkel examines the terminology of remix (including “collage,” “sample,” “bootleg,” and “mashup”) and its material preconditions, the technology of recording. In “Remix,” he takes on the distinction between original and copy; makes a case for repetition; and considers the question of authorship in a world of seemingly endless recompiled and repurposed content. Finally, in “Postmix,” Gunkel outlines a new theory of moral and aesthetic value that can accommodate remix and its cultural significance, remixing—or reconfiguring and recombining—traditional philosophical approaches in the process. (shrink)

Addressing a challenge and opportunity that is definitive of life in the 21st century, this book provides a range of possible solutions that serve to motivate and structure future research and debate around the concept of 'the other' in communication.

Zizek Studies: The Greatest Hits (So Far) assembles and presents the best work published in the field of Zizek Studies over the last ten years, providing teachers, students, and researchers with a carefully curated volume of leading-edge scholarship addressing the unique and sometimes eclectic work of Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Zizek. The chapters included in this collection have been rigorously tested in and culled from the (virtual) pages of the International Journal of Zizek Studies, a leading open access (...) journal that began publication in 2007. The book is organized into three sections or subject areas where Zizek and his seemingly indefatigable efforts have had significant impact: philosophy, politics, and popular culture. As a "greatest hits," the book offers the long-time fan and uninitiated newcomer alike a comprehensive overview of the wide range of opportunity in the field of Zizek studies and a remarkable collection of truly interdisciplinary "hits" from a diverse set of innovative and accomplished writers. (shrink)

Introduction -- Repression, ignorance, and undone science -- The epistemic dimension of the political opportunity structure -- The politics of meaning: from frames to design conflicts -- The organizational forms of counterpublic knowledge -- Institutional change, industrial transitions, and regime resistance politics -- Contemporary change: liberalization and epistemic modernization -- Conclusion.

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

In a response to my recent article in this journal, Shahram Shahryari argues that I fail to present a third position between absolutism and relativism. He makes two points: first, that fallibilism is insufficient as an alternative, because it is compatible with both relativism and absolutism. The second point is that my argument that experience can lead to objective judgment without being a new absolute fails. I discuss these in turn, showing that both critiques fail and that pragmatism is a (...) genuine alternative between absolutism and relativism. (shrink)

What are the philosophical views of professional philosophers, and how do these views change over time? The 2020 PhilPapers Survey surveyed around 2000 philosophers on 100 philosophical questions. The results provide a snapshot of the state of some central debates in philosophy, reveal correlations and demographic effects involving philosophers' views, and reveal some changes in philosophers' views over the last decade.

A collection of essays focusing on the relationship between concepts of the holy and the unholy in western European medieval culture. Demonstrates how religion, magic, and science were all modes of engagement with a natural world that was understood to be divinely created and infused with mysterious power"--Provided by publisher.

This book describes various Western musical ecologies of the cosmos developed from the ancient world to the present, ecologies that seek to define the creation and preservation of the universe through musical principles. The author explores centuries of musical treatises, hymns, and Western fiction.

I will present two examples of influential (and incorrect) interpretations of Poincaré, pinpointing their errors and documenting some of their diffusion. The first example, which appears to have been initiated by Moritz Schlick, is the widespread misinterpretation of Poincaré’s argument for geometric conventionalism by basing it on the underdetermination of theories in science. The second example, having to do with Poincaré’s claim that Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries are inter-translatable, stems from Louis Rougier and was spread in the English language literature (...) by Max Black. I will then reflect on whether it is possible to avoid fragmentation in the interpretation of Poincaré, using Jeremy Gray’s admirable attempt at completeness in his intellectual biography of Poincaré as an example. Finally, I will propose one possible new direction for study of Poincaré that might enrich our view of him substantially by achieving a level of detail that has so far been lacking. (shrink)

[This is an edited version of a keynote talk at the conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) on November 28, 2022, with some minor additions and subtractions.] -/- There has recently been widespread discussion of whether large language models might be sentient or conscious. Should we take this idea seriously? I will break down the strongest reasons for and against. Given mainstream assumptions in the science of consciousness, there are significant obstacles to consciousness in current models: for example, their (...) lack of recurrent processing, a global workspace, and unified agency. At the same time, it is quite possible that these obstacles will be overcome in the next decade or so. I conclude that while it is somewhat unlikely that current large language models are conscious, we should take seriously the possibility that successors to large language models may be conscious in the not-too-distant future. (shrink)

Through a philosophical lens, this book explores the powerful educational capabilities of classic psychedelics.

A short, reader-friendly introduction to a complex philosophical topic. One that encompasses not just philosophical and literary topics but technological ones as well.

Terra nova 2.0 -- The real problem -- Social contract 2.0 -- In the face of others -- Open-ended conclusions.

This book argues against the common view that there are no essential differences between Plato and the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus, on the issues of mysticism, epistemology, and ethics. Beginning by examining the ways in which Plato and Plotinus claim that it is possible to have an ultimate experience that answers the most significant philosophical questions, David J. Yount provides an extended analysis of why we should interpret both philosophers as mystics. The book then moves on to demonstrate that both (...) philosophers share a belief in non-discursive knowledge and the methods to attain it, including dialectic and recollection, and shows that they do not essentially differ on any significant views on ethics. Making extensive use of primary and secondary sources, Plato and Plotinus on Mysticism, Epistemology and Ethics shows the similarities between the thought of these two philosophers on a variety of philosophical questions, such as meditation, divination, wisdom, knowledge, truth, happiness and love. (shrink)