Roger White argued for a principle of indifference. Hart and Titelbaum showed that White’s argument relied on an intuition about conditioning on biconditionals that, while widely shared, is incorrect. Hawthorne, Landes, Wallmann, and Williamson argue for a principle of indifference. Remarkably, their argument relies on the same faulty intuition. We explain their intuition, explain why it’s faulty, and show how it generates their principle of indifference. 1Introduction 2El Caminos and Indifference 2.1Overview 2.2Fins and antennas 2.3HLWW in the example 2.4The (...) restrictiveness of Condition 2 2.5Summary 3The Specifics of HLWW s Argument 3.1Mapping their conditions to our equations 3.2HLWW’s responses to objections. (shrink)

Roger White objects to interval-valued credence theories because they produce a counterintuitive “dilation” effect in a story he calls the Coin Game. We respond that results in the Coin Game were bound to be counterintuitive anyway, because the story involves an agent who learns a biconditional. Biconditional updates produce surprising results whether the credences involved are ranged or precise, so White's story is no counterexample to ranged credence theories.

Facial electromyography research shows that corrugator supercilii ('frowning muscle') activity tracks the emotional valence of linguistic stimuli. Grounded or embodied accounts of language processing take such activity to reflect the simulation or ‘reenactment’ of emotion, as part of the retrieval of word meaning (e.g., of “furious”) and/or of building a situation model (e.g., for “Mark is furious”). However, the same muscle also expresses our primary emotional evaluation of things we encounter. Language-driven affective simulation can easily be at odds with the (...) reader’s affective evaluation of what language describes (e.g., when we like Mark being furious). To examine what happens in such cases, we independently manipulated simulation valence and moral evaluative valence in short narratives. Participants first read about characters behaving in a morally laudable or objectionable fashion: this immediately led to corrugator activity reflecting positive or negative affect. Next, and critically, a positive or negative event befell these same characters. Here, the corrugator response did not track the valence of the event, but reflected both simulation and moral evaluation. This highlights the importance of unpacking coarse notions of affective meaning in language processing research into components that reflect simulation and evaluation. Our results also call for a re-evaluation of the interpretation of corrugator EMG, as well as other affect-related facial muscles and other peripheral physiological measures, as unequivocal indicators of simulation. Research should explore how such measures behave in richer and more ecologically valid language processing, such as narrative; refining our understanding of simulation within a framework of grounded language comprehension. (shrink)

The referent of the transcendental and indexical “I” is present non-ascriptively and contrasts with “the personal I” which necessity is presenced as having properties. Each is unique but in different ways. The former is abstract and incomplete until taken as a personal I. The personal I is ontologically incomplete until it self-determines itself morally. The “absolute Ought” is the exemplary moral self-determination and it finds a special disclosure in “the truth of will.” Simmel's situation ethics is useful for making more (...) precise Husserl's ethical position. (shrink)

Do the various ascriptions of “violence,” e.g., to rape, logical reasoning, racist legislation, unqualified statements, institutions of class and/or gender inequity, etc., mean something identically the same, something analogous, or equivocal and context-bound? This paper argues for both an analogous sense as well as an exemplary essence and finds support in Aristotle’s theory of anger as, as Sokolowski has put it, a form of moral annihilation, culminating in a level of rage that crosses a threshold. Here we adopt Sartre’s analysis (...) of the “threshold of violence” as indicating a basic “existential” possibility wherein persons may and do adopt a posture of anti-god. This has considerable symmetry with the mythic and theological figure in the Abrahamic religions who is called “Lucifer.” This personage, at a unique timeless moment, found himself empowered to assume the right to exercise an infinite will-act which tolerated no superior normative perspective. I argue that this mythic stance is a live option for persons. Further, modern day nation-state military preparedness, where nuclear weaponry is a major tool of foreign policy, is a way of putting on ice and holding in reserve, but button ready, the onto-logical madness of the Luciferian moment. (shrink)

Transcendental Phenomenology of language wrestles with the relationship of language to mind’s manifestation of being. Of special interest is the sense in which language is, like one’s embodiment, a medium of manifestation. Not only does it permit sharing the world because words as worldly things embody meanings that can be the same for everyone; not only does speaking manifest to others the common world from the speaker’s perspective; but also speaking, as a meaning to say, may achieve the manifestation of (...) the world also for the speaker herself. This requires finding the right words to form true propositions in a well-formed sentences. The manifest telos of proposition-rendering sentences is adumbrated and founded in the infant’s elemental formation of simple phonemic identity syntheses and syntax. This instinctual dynamism is founded in what Husserl names “the idea of truth” which supports the thesis of a universal language instinct. (shrink)

The editors, Thomas Nenon and Hans Rainer Sepp, of Husserl's Aufsdtze und Vortri~ge (1922-1937) (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989) have given us a fascinating present with quite a few surprises. I would like to take this occasion to thank them publicly for their able and selfless labors. Here we have Husserl attempting to address himself to a large philosophically untrained audience for funds of which he had dire need: he had two children getting married and the real value of his inflated German (...) annual income was worth $160.00. But, as he told a friend, what he was doing was as genuine philosophical work as what he would do for his Jahrbuch ffir Philosophie und phginomenologische Forschung. In many ways it is regrettable the work did not come to full fruition for the publication in the Jahrbuch because then the tensions and ambiguities we find here would have been perhaps less severe. (shrink)

This book is a rounded well-informed study of violence, especially from a hermeneutical and social-studies perspective. It is relevant to peace studies. It raises key issues about the phenomenology of the person, of violence, of the foundations of ethics. Although it tends to skirt normative phenomenological, eidetic as well as moral issues they are always insistently on the edge of the rich discussions philosophical-hermeneutical issues and contemporary writings on these matters.

The dialogue between Blondel and Husserl carried on by Maréchal and Duméry and other thinkers has been silent for almost fifty years. Yet Husserl's Nachlass provides reasons for deepening the dialogue, especially in the area of the basic Blondelian themes: the willing-will and the teleological and religious nature of consciousness. Nevertheless there are intriguing differences in their respective philosophical theologies.

I can be aware of myself and refer to myself without it being necessary to think of any third-personal characteristics; indeed one may be aware of oneself without having to be aware of anything except oneself. This consideration raises issues in phenomenological ontology of identity, individuation, and substance.

The objective of the study was to investigate the relationship between childhood IQ of parents and characteristics of their adult offspring. It was a prospective family cohort study linked to a mental ability survey of the parents and set in Renfrew and Paisley in Scotland. Participants were 1921-born men and women who took part in the Scottish Mental Survey in 1932 and the Renfrew/Paisley study in the 1970s, and whose offspring took part in the Midspan Family study in 1996. There (...) were 286 offspring from 179 families. Parental IQ was related to some, but not all characteristics of offspring. Greater parental IQ was associated with taller offspring. Parental IQ was inversely related to number of cigarettes smoked by offspring. Higher parental IQ was associated with better education, offspring social class and offspring deprivation category. There were no significant relationships between parental IQ and offspring systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose, lung function, weight, body mass index, waist hip ratio, housing, alcohol consumption, marital status, car use and exercise. Structural equation modelling showed parental IQ associated with offspring education directly and mediated via parental social class. Offspring education was associated with offspring smoking and social class. The smoking finding may have implications for targeting of health education. (shrink)

When firms face crisis, the instant and open channels of social media communication create a double-edged sword. While corporations can more quickly communicate with stakeholders, any missteps will have drastic and nearly immediate repercussions. What are the relationships among social media, subjective norms, attitudes, and intentions during corporate crisis? We explore this phenomenon via a study of a crisis faced by Lowe’s, an international home improvement store, and how current and potential customers reacted. By utilizing a structural equations model to (...) examine an integrated model of multiple constructs, we find that Facebook usage is associated with behavioral intent, perceptions of ethicality, and attitudes toward the organization. Counter intuitively, we find that an increase in participant Facebook usage is negatively related to felt subjective norms. Our findings indicate that beyond the traditional relationships examined by the Theory of Reasoned Action (e.g., norms, attitudes, and behavioral intent), that social media and subjective norms have a strong relationship with general attitudes and ethical attitudes toward an organization. (shrink)

Reflection is the basic attitude of transcendental phenomenology. However, as we shall see in this essay, prereflective experiencing may make a unique claim for philosophical foundations - albeit a claim which can only occur when mediated by reflection.

Here is a philosophical examination of some themes presented by Milan Kundera in The Art of the Novel, as well as in his novels Immortality and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. The discussions of the first-personal perspectives of the novel’s author, both as appearing in and as contrasted with that of a character in the novel, as these unfold in implicit subtle comic, social-political contexts, prescind from these contexts and dwell instead on fictional renditions of the senses of personhood and (...) its individuality especially as embodied in the face and as implied in relations of love. Of special interest is Kundera’s thesis that the irreplaceable uniqueness of the individual is one of Europe’s finest illusions. (shrink)

The works of Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank argue that consciousness is fundamentally a self-awareness antecedent to reflection. This essay picks up the suggestion that consciousness itself is a field or medium of manifestation. As such it is a “metafact,” the anonymity of which transcendental philosophy seeks to overcome. This is required because the “facts” of the light of the mind and the intelligibility of what the mind discloses elude philosophical investigation as long as the anonymity reigns. Clarifying self-consciousness illuminates (...) what essentially must elude normal categorial and predicative investigation which presuppose the light of the mind and intelligibility. The seemingly esoteric issue of the discovery of the primacy of the pre- or non-reflective self-presence at the foundation of first-person reference may be said to found metaphysics in so far as this requires evidence for the inseparability of being from manifestation. (shrink)

Defending the ancient thesis, that being and the true, or being and manifestation, are necessarily inseparable, is at the heart of transcendental phenomenology. The transcendental “reduction” disengages the basic “natural” naïve doxastic belief which permits the world to appear as essentially indifferent to the agency of manifestation. The massive work of transcendental phenomenology is showing the agency of manifestation of “absolute consciousness.” Yet the foundations of this agency of manifestation are pervaded by issues which, when addressed, reveal that the question (...) of a “second absolute” is basic and opens Husserlian phenomenology to metaphysical questions. This has to do not merely with the teleology of the agency of manifestation, i.e., the “whither” of the teleology of presencing, but also, in some sense, with the constituting “whence” of the transcendental I. Husserl argues for the teleology of truth pointing to both a divine subject as well as a divine entelechy. (shrink)

The ancient theme of the metaphysical-theological extremes of being-human is revisited by asking about the condition for the readiness to engage in the form of violence which is nuclear war. Sartre’s analysis of the extreme form of anger which crosses a threshold resulting in a self-legitimating righteous indignation which admits of no superior mollifying standpoint is appropriated to account for the complacency with the institution of nuclear weapons. The god-like anti-God characteristics of extreme rage are put on ice but ready (...) to be thawed quickly in the three-quarter of a century old disposition to destroy the world in which all life that we know is lived. The parallels with the myth of Lucifer invite themselves. This raises the question of what there is in being-human which is the condition for the possibility of such Luciferian impulses. Features of being human explicated by Husserlian transcendental phenomenology serve as lures to the unique form of pride that here is called Luciferian. Here it is argued that these features can also be lures to a sense of pride, analogous to the ancient magnanimitas, as developed by Aquinas. (shrink)

Technologies and services provided to resource-poor farmers need to be relevant and compatible with the context in which they operate. This paper examines the contribution of extension services to the food security of resource-poor farmers in a rural village in South Africa. It considers these in terms of the local context and the production of African vegetables in household food plots. A mixture of participatory, qualitative and quantitative research tools, including a household survey, is used to argue that local production (...) practices contribute more to food security requirements than the extension services. This is because of the ability of African vegetables to grow relatively well in semi-arid areas where other exotic plants do not, their ability to provide at least two foodstuffs during their life cycle, and the ability of either the fruit or the leaves, or both, to be dried and stored for consumption in the winter months. These crops can make a significant contribution in terms of household food security, but a number of social and agroecological factors are constraining their production and placing their availability under threat. Despite this, the extension services remain focused on certain activities within vegetable garden projects, even when these are not meeting their proposed purpose—food security by means of cash-crop production. The paper concludes that social and agroecological constraints could be improved if the extension services were changed. This could include the use of context specific and low-cost technologies to ensure that these crops are able to increase their contribution to household food security for resource-poor farmers in semi-arid areas. (shrink)

Reference to persons with personal pronouns raises the issue of the primary referent and its nature. “I” does not refer to a property or cluster of properties. This contrasts with our identifying grasp of persons. A person is a radical singularity and thus stands in contrast to a kind or sortal term. The individuation of persons is not adequately grasped by “definite descriptions” or “eidetic singularities.” In spite of the seeming possibility of persons being wholly identical in terms of properties, (...) in other words, “doubles,” the core referent of reference to persons is not to what is individuated merely by mere numerical differences or spatial-temporal, and essential-eidetic determinations. Rather we have to do with a “non-sortal unique essence.” What “I” refers to is a self-individuating substance. This raises questions for the proper referent of “love.” What is it that love intends or loves if persons are basically radical singularities. What does one love and why does one love if whom one loves is most essentially non-sortal? The question of the ontological status of persons requires integrating the status of being transcendental I’s, and thus being non-temporal, non-spatial, non-sortal, simple substances and thus not homogenous with the experienced world. (shrink)

Although a key aspect of the phenomenological movement is its contribution to value theory and value perception, there has been relatively little attention paid to these themes. This volume in part makes up for this lacuna by being the first anthology on value-theory in the phenomenological movement. It indicates the scope of the issues by discussing, e.g., the distinctive acts of valuing, openness to value, the objectivity of values, the summation and combination of values, the deconstruction of values, the value (...) of absence, and the value of nature. It also contains discussions of most of the major representative figures not only in their own right but also in relationship to one another: Von Ehrenfels, Brentano, Scheler, Hartmann, Husserl, Heidegger, Schutz, and Derrida. (shrink)

This book provides a focus for future discussion in one of the most important debates within historical theology within the protestant tradition - the debate about the definition of a category of analysis that operates over five centuries of religious faith and practice and in a globalising religion. In March 2009, TIME magazine listed ‘the new Calvinism’ as being among the ‘ten ideas shaping the world.’ In response to this revitalisation of reformation thought, R. Scott Clark and D. G. (...) class='Hi'>Hart have proposed a definition of ‘Reformed’ that excludes many of the theologians who have done most to promote this driver of global religious change. In this book, the Clark-Hart proposal becomes the focus of a debate. Matthew Bingham, Chris Caughey, and Crawford Gribben suggest a broader and more historically responsible definition for ‘Reformed,’ as Hart and Scott respond to their arguments. (shrink)

Nam-In Lee’s impressive study of “instinct” in Husserl1 gives a new sense to Husserl’s self-description of his work as a preoccupation with beginnings (see p. x) because it seeks not only to integrate the theme of instinct systematically into Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology but to demonstrate that it has a fundamental position. I believe the author has successfully demonstrated his contention that other students of Husserl who have treated the theme of instinct as a marginal consideration failed to see that Husserl’s (...) genetic phenomenology requires the theory of instinct as its fundamental ingredient (Urstück, 10). The theme of instinct therefore informs the sense of Husserl’s later understanding of transcendental subjectivity and monadology. The book is so packed with discussions that the inevitable omissions of a review run the risk of distorting the merits of the work. (shrink)

Although the connections of Hedwig Conrad-Martius’ ontological phenomenology, what she called, “realontology,” to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology were constant concerns that usually remained in the background of her work, on occasion they became foreground. Similarly the problems surrounding the individuation of the person and spirit were persistent but rather marginal in her writings. In this paper I want first to review some of the issues as they are connected to ontological and transcendental phenomenology. Then I want to relate them to the (...) cosmological and theological issues that were no less important for Conrad-Martius. (shrink)

In this rich little volume, Roderick Chisholm gives us a taste of the rich tapestry of Brentano's thought. Besides being an original analysis, which the reader expects from this thinker, this work is a contribution to Brentano scholarship.

This, for the most part, is a collection of informative and original interpretations and readings of Husserl and Husserlian themes based on a 1985 lecture series.

Let T be simple, work in Ceq over a boundedly closed set. Let p ∈ S(θ) be internal in a quasi-stably-embedded type-definable set Q (e.g., Q is definable or stably-embedded) and suppose (p, Q) is ACL-embedded in Q (see definitions below). Then Aut(p/Q) with its action on pC is type-definable in Ceq over θ. In particular, if p ∈ S(θ) is internal in a stably-embedded type-definable set Q, and pC υ Q is stably-embedded, then Aut(p/Q) is type-definable with its action (...) on pC. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses a (...) rich variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

In recent years there have been evergrowing concerns regarding environmental decline, causing some companies to focus on the implementation of environmentally friendly supply, production and distribution systems. Such concern may stem either from the set of beliefs and values of the company's management or from certain pressure exerted by the market - consumers and institutions - in the belief that an environmentally respectful management policy will contribute to the transmission of a positive image of the company and its products. Sometimes, (...) however, ethics and market rules are not enough to deal with this situation and specific laws must be considered. This is the case when companies base their activity on the 'ethics of self-interest' concentrating their efforts on projecting an adequate image - e.g. environmental respect - rather than fundamentally behaving in environmentally respectful ways. This article, taking as reference the SME context, discusses the reasons for implementing environmentally friendly systems. Both ethics and business seem to be relevant and, therefore, a certain balance between market and interventionism seems to be necessary. (shrink)

There is more engagement with philosophy—Western and Eastern—in my work than you will find anywhere in the history of black American literature.1the coss dialogues, which began in 1995, resulted from a generous endowment provided to SAAP from the estates of Herbert W. Schneider and Albert G. Redpath, both students of John J. Coss at Columbia University. The dialogues are intended to promote conversation between philosophers in the “classic” American tradition and accomplished specialists in other fields. They seek to bridge the (...) seeming distance across disciplinary boundaries, thus promoting shared inquiry around themes, issues, questions of common interest to American philosophy and, for example, the social and... (shrink)

In recent years there have been ever-growing concerns regarding environmental decline, causing some companies to focus on the implementation of environmentally friendly supply, production and distribution systems. Such concern may stem either from the set of beliefs and values of the company’s management or from certain pressure exerted by the market – consumers and institutions – in the belief that an environmentally respectful management policy will contribute to the transmission of a positive image of the company and its products. Sometimes, (...) however, ethics and market rules are not enough to deal with this situation and specific laws must be considered. This is the case when companies base their activity on the ‹ethics of self-interest’ concentrating their efforts on projecting an adequate image – e.g. environmental respect – rather than fundamentally behaving in environmentally respectful ways. This article, taking as reference the SME context, discusses the reasons for implementing environmentally friendly systems. Both ethics and business seem to be relevant and, therefore, a certain balance between market and interventionism seems to be necessary. (shrink)