Online research in philosophy

In this paper I offer an innovative interpretation of Nietzsche's metaethical theory of value which shows him to be a kind of constitutivist. For Nietzsche, I argue, valuing is a conative attitude which institutes values, rather than tracking what is independently of value. What is characteristic of those acts of willing which institute values is that they are owned or authored. Nietzsche makes this point using the vocabulary of self-mastery. One crucial feature of those who have achieved this feat, and (...) have consequently become agents, is that they possess a diachronic or long will and are consequently capable of the rational governance of future behaviour. The possession of a will of this sort is crucial because it is a necessary condition for engaging in temporally unified activities which are a requisite of authorship. Nietzsche, I argue, makes these points in his doctrine of eternal recurrence which provides a test that acts of will must pass to count as laws. In the final section of the paper I argue for the superiority of this interpretation over some of its competitors. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of perception endorse an input–output model: perception is the input from world to mind and action is the output from mind to world. In contrast, enactive accounts propose action to be constitutive of perception. We focus on Noë's sensorimotor version of enactivism, with the aim of clarifying the proper limits of enactivism more generally. Having explained Noë's particular version of enactivism, which accounts for the contents of perceptual experience in terms of sensorimotor knowledge, we use taste as a (...) test for his central thesis. We conclude that taste and other similar senses do not display the central features which Noë claims apply to all perceptual experience. (shrink)

In their excellent book The Phenomenological Mind Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi demonstrate that analytic philosophy of mind and cognitive science have much to learn from work conducted in the phenomenological tradition. In particular, they show how discussions about embodied cognition, about the self, and about mind-reading could be greatly enhanced if the lessons of phenomenology were heeded to. However, their discussion of the structure of intentionality is, in my view, less successful in this regard.

The first glossary to cover the theories, debates, concepts, problems and philosophers within the philosophy of language in one volume.

In particular, this book contains extensive discussions of topics such as objectivity, rationality, power, and the subject.