Online research in philosophy

The aim of this article is to argue for a conception of critical social science based on the model of constitutive rules. The author argues that this model is pragmatically superior to those models that employ notions like "illusion" and " ideology," as it does not demand a specification of the "real (but hidden) interests" of social actors. Key Words: constitutive rules • critical theory • ideology • recommendations • social facts.

The proposition that feedback is never necessary in speech recognition is examined for utterances consisting of sequences of words. In running speech the features near word boundaries are often modified according to language-dependent rules. Application of these rules during word recognition requires top-down processing. Because isolated words are not usually modified by rules, their recognition could be achieved by bottom-up processing only.

Increased legal harmonization reinforces the need for a new way to test legal rules. As legal diversity decreases, there are fewer alternate rules to draw from, and thus potentially useful de facto experimentation with alternative rules becomes rarer and more difficult. This article argues that the ability to test legal rules in virtual worlds could help to solve a long-running, and worsening problem in the design of legal rules - the barriers to experimentation caused by an increasing tendency to the harmonization of law. In a world where real world experimentation with legal rules is likely to be useful, but also difficult and expensive, experimentation with legal rules in Virtual Worlds may be a valuable substitute. Large numbers of enthusiastic players in Virtual Worlds could test legal rules in an environment closer to the real world than many of the experiments that behavioral economists run to test economic behavior.

Evidence from language acquisition suggests that words are powerful mechanisms in the acquisition of substance concepts. Infants initially approach language with the general expectation that words refer to real kinds, regardless of grammatical cues to the contrary.

Alberto Coffa used the phrase "the Copernican turn in semantics" to denote a revolutionary transformation of philosophical views about the connection between the meanings of words and the acceptability of sentences and arguments containing those words. According to the new conception resulting from the Copernican turn, here called "the Copernican view", rules of use are constitutive of the meanings of words. This view has been linked with two doctrines: (A) the instances of meaning-constitutive rules are analytically and a priori true or valid; (B) to grasp a meaning is to accept its rules. The pros and cons of different versions of the Copernican view, ascribable to Wittgenstein, Carnap, Gentzen, Dummett, Prawitz, Boghossian and other authors, will be weighed. A new version will be proposed, which implies neither (A) nor (B).

The likeness of sound between rhyming words is arbitrary, but words have meanings. Thus rhyme schemes carry an implicit meaning over against the explicit meaning of the lines in which they occur. The use of "death" and "breath" and other rhymes in Swinburne illustrates this duality, especially in his great sonnet addressed to Death. This prompts a discussion of the role of meter and rhyme in the physiology of dreams and memory, the human propensity to make rules, translations of Dante, the comic rhymes of Noel Coward, and the real meaning of Seinfeld.

If consciousness has no influence on my behaviour,what shall I do with it ? In this paper it is contended, that even if neuroscience is right, if some conscious experiences such as emotional experiences have no influence on our behavior, they still constitute a significant part of our world, our existence. For understanding the significance of conscious experiences we should go beyond behaviour, biology and biological evolution. This paper and its understanding of consciousness and natural science is based on an idealist philosophy maintaining, that only conscious experience is real. Conscious experience is supposed to be known directly or intuitively, it cannot be explained. Key words: Consciousness as existence; behaviour; communication; language; free will; idealist philosophy; collective conscious experience; cognition.

Analytic rejections of extreme traditional views, especially scepticism, as ?absurd? in some sense of violating ?rules? of discourse, arc considered. References to linguistic and pragmatic rules are discussed and found inadequate as bases for rejecting scepticism. References to logical principles alone are found to lead into scepticism. The claim that epistemology and scepticism take for granted an inadequate theory of words like ?know?, or ?knowledge?, as descriptive predicates, is considered. Alternatives, construing such words as appraisive or performative, are discussed, but are not found to provide any real escape from the traditional epistemological issues, or from scepticism.

Analytic rejections of extreme traditional views, especially scepticism, as 'absurd' in some sense of violating 'rules' of discourse, arc considered. References to linguistic and pragmatic rules are discussed and found inadequate as bases for rejecting scepticism. References to logical principles alone are found to lead into scepticism. The claim that epistemology and scepticism take for granted an inadequate theory of words like 'know', or 'knowledge', as descriptive predicates, is considered. Alternatives, construing such words as appraisive or performative, are discussed, but are not found to provide any real escape from the traditional epistemological issues, or from scepticism.

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