We identify a particular type of causal reasoning ability that we believe is required for the possession of episodic memories, as it is needed to give substance to the distinction between the past and the present. We also argue that the same causal reasoning ability is required for grasping the point that another person's appeal to particular past events can have in conversation. We connect this to claims in developmental psychology that participation in joint reminiscing plays a key role in (...) memory development. (shrink)
In the fall of 1967 I entered Princeton as a Freshman intending to major in physics but interested as well in history. The catalog listed a course on the history of science, taught by a Professor Thomas Kuhn with the assistance of Michael Mahoney that seemed nicely to fit both interests. The course proved to be peculiarly intense for something about what was, after all, obsolete science as, each week, hundreds of pages of arcana from the distant past had to (...) be absorbed. Professor Kuhn would pace back and forth in lecture, smoking intensely and talking rapidly to an elaborate outline drawn on the board at the beginning of each class. In tutorial, Mahoney (who passed away in 2009) developed Kuhn's points, forcing .. (shrink)
Nietzschean reminiscences of Schelling? The title seems to suggest either that Schelling can remember forward to Nietzsche or that some more positive reminiscence of Schelling lies hidden in Nietzsche’s work. Perhaps there is something like a forward-looking remembrance. Perhaps every thinker looks forward to those few who will pick up the thread of his or her thinking—not as the “unthought” of that thinking, but as the very thread that Ariadne ravels and allows to trail behind her. Perhaps too there (...) is something in Nietzsche’s work that demands a more sympathetic and protracted response to Schelling than the response Nietzsche appears to offer. (shrink)
This paper is partly a tribute to Richard Jeffrey, partly a reflection on some of his writings, The Logic of Decision in particular. I begin with a brief biography and some fond reminiscences of Dick. I turn to some of the key tenets of his version of Bayesianism. All of these tenets are deployed in my discussion of his response to the St. Petersburg paradox, a notorious problem for decision theory that involves a game of infinite expectation. Prompted by that (...) paradox, I conclude with some suggestions of avenues for future research. (shrink)
The common assimilation of Wittgenstein’s philosophical procedure to Freud’s psychoanalytic method is a mistake. The concurrence of Freudian analysands is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition of their unconscious thoughts having been detected. There are several sources of this error. One is the equivocal role Freud assign the patient’s recognition of the correctness of his interpretation and in particular the part played by ‘paradoxical reminiscence’: another, the surreptitious banalisation of Freud’s procedure by followers—the reinvention of psychoanalysis as a (...) phenomenological enterprise; still another, the appeal of the activity of giving fuller expression to one’s tantalisingly vague and inexplicit thoughts and suspicions. This activity has its own intrinsic value though it ought not to be permitted to usurp the place of empirical investigation, as futile as this often is. And yet both plausible hypotheses and felicitous ‘further descriptions’ must yield in desirability to the attainment of a state of reconciliation to the person one has become however this was caused and whatever this is suspected to be. (shrink)
Doubtless Descartes belongs in the rationalist tradition. Stating why is not so easy. He nowhere characterizes the view we call 'rationalism', nor does he describe himself as a rationalist. His express commitment to a doctrine of innateness is suggestive though not sufficient, for some philosophers (e.g., Kant) accept such a doctrine while rejecting rationalism. Further suggestive is that he links innateness with the achievement of knowledge: [W]e come to know them [innate truths] by the power of our own native intelligence, (...) without any sensory experience. All geometrical truths are of this sort – not just the most obvious ones, but all the others, however abstruse they may appear. Hence, according to Plato, Socrates asks a slave boy about the elements of geometry and thereby makes the boy able to dig out certain truths from his own mind which he had not previously recognized were there, thus attempting to establish the doctrine of reminiscence. Our knowledge of God is of this sort. (CSMK 222-23, AT 8b: 166-67). (shrink)
Using a metaphorical reminiscence upon holiday toys - and the hopes, challenges and possibilities they presented - this essay addresses the ways that the heuristics, outcomes and products of neuroscience have effected change in the human condition, predicament, and being. A note of caution is offered to pragmatically assess what can be done with neurotechnology, what can't, and what should and shouldn't - based upon the capacities and limitations of both the science, and our collective ability to handle knowledge, (...) power and the unknown. This is not an appeal to impede brain research. To the contrary, it is a call to engage neuroethics as a discipline and set of practices 1) to allow a deeper, more finely-grained understanding of brains and their functions in ecological dynamics (that we define as morality and ethics), and 2) to intuit how to engage neuroscientific research and its applications in the social sphere (inclusive of medicine, public life and national agenda), to more accurately perceive how neuroscience is changing human society and the human being, and to instantiate more relevant ethics and laws that are in step with advancing epistemological capital and technological capability. (shrink)
In the Symposium Socrates shows how Diotima initiated him into the mysteries of love in two stages. Yet, at first sight, the teachings offered at the two stages seem divergent and discontinuous. In this article I argue that we can understand the continuity between them if we regard Diotima’s notions of spiritual pregnancy and birth-giving as metaphors suggesting that the metaphysical horizon looming in the background of her teaching is that of Plato’s theory of recollection.Socrate explique dans le Banquet comment (...) Diotime l’a initié aux mystères de l’amour en suivant deux niveaux. Pourtant, de prime abord, les enseignements dispensés à ces deux niveaux semblent divergents et séparés par une solution de continuité. Je soutiens dans cet article qu’il est possible de comprendre la continuité entre ces deux niveaux si on considère les notions de grossesse spirituelle etd’enfantement avancées par Diotime comme des métaphores qui laissent entrevoir la théorie de la réminiscence à l’horizon métaphysique de cet enseignement. (shrink)
In spite (or because) of the infinity of (the) voice, of the boundless mystery it carries and exhales, of its disembodied traversing and joining, sayings follow barely traced courses. They travel along fragile lines of memory, often discontinuous bridges, transpositions into notational forms. They travel alone, exposed to corruption, consuming friction, repetition - their beginning and final destination often lost to those who listen to them and send them past. In spite of the power of memory and its arts, there (...) are sayings and stories handed down to us in fragments, like decapitated Níke and disfigured Diónysos. There are poems reaching us, race of diggers and preservers, through somebody else's reminiscence, recovery, or loving quotation. In turn, our receiving and sending (stretching) forth, our being thus traversed, shares something with the destiny of these sayings and sculpted deities - being sent, crossing and (un)covering distances, in the fragmented continuity of dialogues, or what remains of them. The present essay is devoted to a meditation on the question of temporality and history in its epistemologico-metaphysical implications. It is developed mainly by reference to Aristotle, after Heidegger. (shrink)
Selon l'argument adopté ici, aucune des grandes théorisations traditionnelles de la mémoire en Occident — la réminiscence platonicienne, la mémoire comme garant de l'identité personnelle au sens de Locke, la remémoration hégélienne du parcours de l'Esprit — n'est en mesure de nous aider à dégager la spécificité de ce phénomène, tel qu'il se montre dans le contexte contemporain. A la suite du défi lancé par Nietzsche dans la Seconde considération intempestive, et en tenant compte des sombres épreuves du xxe siècle, (...) nous nous trouvons face à l'obligation de repenser ce que signifie « se souvenir » . Cet article réfléchit sur la possibilité d'envisager une théorie de la mémoire qui, tout en évitant les connotations métaphysiques de la réminiscence platonicienne, ne se trouve pas pour autant cantonnée au domaine lockien de l'identité personnelle. Il s'agit alors de promouvoir le thème d'une mémoire plurielle qui, en renonçant à la certitude absolue au sens de Hegel, nous permet de sonder une mémoire collective qui serait moins du côté de la légitimation identitaire que de celui de la manifestation des inconsistances, des failles, des refoulements touchant au coeur de notre existence plurielle contemporaine. According to this article, none of the great traditions of reflection on memory in the West — neither Platonic reminiscence, nor Lockean memory at the foundation of personal identity, nor Hegelian remémoration of the movement of the Spirit— is capable of helping us comprehend the exact character of memory in the contemporary context. Following the challenge of Nietzsche's Second Untimely Meditation, and in view of the somber experience of the 20th century, it has become necessary to rethink the meaning of memory. This article reflects on the possibility of formulating a theory of memory which, in avoiding the metaphysical connotations of Platonic reminiscence, does not for this reason enclose itself within the domain of Lockean personal identity. The problem of memory thus becomes one of envisaging a plural memory which, in renouncing absolute certitude in the Hegelian sense, permits us to focus on collective memory which would serve less as a means of legitimization of identity than as a mode of manifestation of incoherence, inconsistency, and repression that reach to the heart of our contemporary socio-political existence. (shrink)
Gregory Chaitin has done seminal work on the foundations of mathematics, especially the meaning of randomness and undecidability. In Meta Maths, he offers his ideas in a new popular version, which has a special interest because it comes directly from their originator. Long associated with the IBM Watson Research Center, Chaitin comes across as a kind of mathematical Richard Feynman, intuitive and high-spirited, irreverent and plain-spoken. Through this jovial persona, he presents many serious ideas in an engagingly dishevelled way, mixing (...) autobiography and reminiscence with exposition and example. He presents his insights so agreeably that it all seems a grand lark. (shrink)
The paper is a reminiscence of T.W. Hutchison by way of a retrospective view of our debate over the relationship between the ideas of Karl Popper, F. A. Hayek, and Ludwig von Mises on methodology. Our dispute was part of a larger debate over the relevance of Popper's thought for economic methodology. Its place within the larger debate is also explored.
Context: On 12 November 2010, Ernst von Glasersfeld passed away. He was one of the most important, if not the most important, proponents of constructivist philosophy. Problem: In his life Ernst influenced many other scientists and philosophers. By whom was he himself influenced; who shaped his intellectual development? By collecting contributions from those who knew him closely or have an excellent understanding of radical constructvism we aim at presenting a cartography of the past and current state of affairs of radical (...) constructivism. These contributions should also shed light on the question of the legacy that Ernst leaves behind. Method: Some 25 authors accepted our invitation to contribute to this commemorative issue. Some texts are reminiscence essays expressing their friendship with Ernst, others are academic papers that investigate Ernst’s influence in various disciplines. Two contributions Ernst von Glasersfeld authored himself. Results: Ernst von Glasersfeld is described as an intellectual mentor for many of his students. His legacy is alive in many disciplines ranging from education science to linguistics. Implications: Ernst’s impact on mathematics education is described in some detail in these articles. However, his impact on science education has also been extensive. Constructivism is a foundation stone in the thinking behind the curriculum in many countries and this collection of papers should be useful to practitioners and researchers in education. We think that the work on conceptual analysis could be used more fully as a tool for modelling emerging concepts and hope that the articles here will facilitate interest in this aspect of Ernst’s work. (shrink)
Upshot: Michael Tomasello is Director of the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology and Co-Director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. He completed his PhD with Ernst as his supervisor in 1980. In his reminiscence essay he describes the “total enculturation” he experienced on encountering Ernst von Glasersfeld.
'These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself' -/- Reveries of the Solitary Walker is Rousseau's last great work, the product of his final years of exile from the society that condemned his political and religious views. Returning to Paris the philosopher determines to keep a faithful record of the thoughts and ideas that come to him on his perambulations. Part reminiscence, part reflection, enlivened by anecdote and encounters, the (...) Reveries form a kind of sequel to his Confessions, but they are more introspective and less defensive: Rousseau finds happiness in solitude, walks in nature, botanizing, and meditation. Writing an account of his walks becomes a means of achieving self-knowledge and safeguarding for himself the pleasure that others, he is convinced, seek to deny him. The Reveries, shaped by the unmediated nature of Rousseau's thought processes, give powerfully lyrical expression to a painfully tortured soul in search of peace. -/- This new translation is accompanied by an introduction and notes that explore the nature of the work and its historical, literary, and intellectual contexts. (shrink)
Stuart, Jennie Review(s) of: Hands off not an option! The reminiscence museum mirror of a humanistic care philosophy, by Professor Dr Hans Marcel Becker assisted by Inez van den Dobbelsteen- Becker and Topsy Ros. Eburon Academic Publishers, Delft, 2011 272 pp.
In a late reminiscence, Goethe recalled that during his close association with the poet Friedrich Schiller, he was constantly defending “the rights of nature" against his friend's “gospel of freedom.”1 Goethe’s characterization of his own view was artfully ironic, alluding as it did to the French Revolution's proclamation of the "Rights of Man." His remark implied that values lay within nature, values that had authority comparable to those ascribed to human beings by the architects of the Revolution. During the (...) time Goethe made his defense, he also faced another revolution, in which Schiller was a partisan—that of Kant in the intellectual sphere. Both upheavals had undermined the autonomy of nature, replacing her authority with that of human will and understanding. Previous papers in this volume have recorded the shifting fortunes of nature that brought her to this stage of jeopardy. In the early classical period, nature as a unified whole had not yet arisen. Animate and inanimate objects had natures— characteristic modes of action—but there was as yet, according Slatkin, no articulate concept of nature as a whole standing over against human beings. Park has described a long period of transition, when nature became personified in the form of a didactic female, a figure imaginatively based, it would seem, upon the system of a 1 natural philosophy (philosophia naturalis) that stood in contrast to the revealed wisdom of God. Nature in this guise yet derived her authority and nurturing capacity from that higher, divine power. During the seventeenth century, writers like Mandeville, as Allen has shown, began to suspect that nature might be a chimera, a fictive creature that disguised humanity's own hidden desires and inclinations. These doubts grew during the next century—with the likes of Hume accelerating the skepticism—till finally, in the two revolutions that so troubled Goethe, nature was completely stripped of her authority. Goethe had become confirmed in his defense of the rights of nature during his travels to Italy during the years 1786-1788.. (shrink)
This paper provides an informal guide to young researchers in science and engineering as they progress for their first 10 or so years from the time that they first started thinking about doing a PhD. This advice is drawn, with examples and anecdotes, from my own research career which started at the Cambridge Engineering Department in 1958, and progressed through 48 years at University College London to a part-time chair that I now hold in Aberdeen. I hope it may encourage (...) and help tomorrow's scientists on whom the Earth's future very much depends. (shrink)
picture and image of the universe? How much can he mirror of the illimitable cosmos, material and spiritual, knowable or unknowable? How much can he realize the abstruse relation between its two antithetical but complementary sides? That is how to judge in any deeper and wider sense of a brain and its capacity. I was talking once in a London drawing-room with Cotter Morison and a famous and able literary hostess. I happened to say, as I say now, that Spencer (...) seemed to me by far the greatest mind I had ever met with. “What?” cried the lady surprised; “would you put him above George Eliot?” To me, I confess, the question seemed almost ludicrous. Imaginative work is beautiful and attractive, just as artistic work is; but to suppose it can be put on a par, so far as the measure of intellect is concerned, with scientific or philosophic work seems to me to betoken a certain lack of just standards of capacity. “Vanity Fair” is great in its way; and its way is just as incommensurate with the greatness of the “Principia” or of the “Principles of Biology” as is the greatness of the Transfiguration or the Venus of Milos. But if we want to measure minds, as minds, one against another, I say fearlessly that scientific and philosophic grasp is the one true standard of the highest attainment, and that no man who ever yet trod our planet gave proof of such mastery in both these lines as Herbert Spencer. (shrink)
Isaiah Berlin: A Celebration gathers tributes, reflections, and commentaries on the great thinker and his philosophy, politics, and life-including contributions from Michael Ignatieff, Leon Wieseltier, Ronald Dworkin, Stephen Spender, and many others. "Some [essays], like Joseph Brodsky's tribute, are touchingly personal. Others, like G. A. Cohen's 'Isaiah's Marx, and Mine,' mingle personal reminiscences with a more theoretical look at Berlin's ideas. . . . The volume is a fitting tribute to a thinker famed for his erudition, eclecticism, and clarity of (...) style."--Merle Rubin, The Christian Science Monitor "One of the many merits of this rich and rewarding collection is the sense-very imperfectly conveyed here-it transmits of the tone of Berlin's writings and conversation, of the multiplicity of his interests and the variety of his achievements. . . . The essays testify to the character of Berlin's mind as a luminous prism, in which the cultural traditions of Russia, England and Judaism are marvelously refracted."--John Gray, Times Literary Supplement "[T]he collection testifies to the learning and profundity of Berlin's thought and, by way both of reminiscence and influence, to the charm and gaity of its expression."--Anthony Quinton, The Times of London. (shrink)
Edited by Marthe Chandler and Ronnie Littlejohn, this work is a collection of expository and critical essays on the work of Henry Rosemont, Jr., a prominent and influential contemporary philosopher, activist, translator, and educator in the field of Asian and Comparative Philosophy. The essays in this collection take up three major themes in Rosemont's work: his work in Chinese linguistics, his contribution to the theory of human rights, and his interest in East Asian religion. Contributions include works by the leading (...) scholars in Chinese philosophy in the Western world and Rosemont's close associates: Roger T. Ames, Bao Zhiming, Mary Bockover, Marthe Chandler, Ewing Y. Chinn, Erin M. Cline, Fred Dallmayr, Jeffrey Dippmann, Herbert Fingarette, Harrison Huang, Eric Hutton, Philip J. Ivanhoe, David Jones, William La Fleur, Ronnie Littlejohn, Ni Peimin, Michael Nylan, Harold Roth, Sumner Twiss, Tu Weiming, David Wong, with responses from Henry Rosemont, Jr. and a brief Reminiscence by Noam Chomsky. (shrink)
This volume is a collection of essays in appreciation, analysis and honor of Paul Ziff, one of the leading American philosophers of the post-World War II period. The essays address questions that loomed large in Ziff's own work. Essays by Zeno Vendler, Jay Rosenberg, and Tom Patton address topics in philosophy of language: understanding, misunderstanding, rules, regularities, and proper names. Michael Resnik examines the nature of numbers, Rita Nolan addresses `mutant predicates', and Peter Alexander discusses microscopes and corpuscles. Douglas C. (...) Long ruminates on Ziff's claim that machines can neither think nor feel. The essays of Dale Jamieson, Bill E. Lawson, Douglas Dempster, and Joseph Ullian address various questions in aesthetics: aesthetic appreciation and morality, expression, the scope of appreciation, and the aesthetics of sport. In the spirit of Ziff, Douglas Stalker criticizes some of the `mush' that looms large in our intellectual lives. The volume begins with a reminiscence by Paul Benacerraf, and ends with selections from an unpublished volume of plays by Paul Ziff. The volume should appeal to anyone whose work has been influenced by Ziff, or is interested in central philosophical problems concerning language, mind, and art. (shrink)
This paper discusses Wittgenstein's take on the problem of other minds. In opposition to certain widespread views that I collect under the heading of the “No Problem Interpretation,” I argue that Wittgenstein does address some problem of other minds. However, Wittgenstein's problem is not the traditional epistemological problem of other minds; rather, it is more reminiscent of the issue of intersubjectivity as it emerges in the writings of phenomenologists such as Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, and Heidegger. This is one sense in which (...) Wittgenstein's perspective on other minds might be called “phenomenological.” Yet there is another sense as well, in that Wittgenstein's positive views on this issue resemble the views defended by phenomenologists. The key to a proper philosophical grasp of intersubjectivity, on both views, lies in rethinking the mind. If we conceive of minds as essentially embodied we can understand how intersubjectivity is possible. (shrink)
In a way reminiscent of Hume's approach in the Treatise, a reviving moral sentimentalism can use the notion of empathy to ground both its normative account of moral obligation and its metaethical account of moral language. A virtuous person is empathically caring about others and expresses such feeling/motivation in her actions. But the judgment that something is right or good is also based in empathy, and the sentimentalist can espouse a form of moral realism by making use of a Kripkean (...) reference-fixer theory of the role of feelings of approval and disapproval in moral judgment. (shrink)
Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read become more likely to cheat or engage in vindictive behaviour. One possible explanation is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism undermines their belief that they are morally responsible. I suggest a different explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I contend that one aspect of (...) the phenomenology is our impression that maintaining a resolution requires effort—an impression well supported by a range of psychological data. Determinism can easily be interpreted as showing that such effort will be futile: in effect determinism is conflated with fatalism, in a way that is reminiscent of the Lazy argument used against the Stoics. If this interpretation is right, it explains how belief in determinism undermines moral motivation without needing to attribute sophisticated incompatibilist beliefs to subjects; it works by undermining subjects' self-efficacy. It also provides indirect support for the contention that this is one of the sources of the phenomenology of free will. (shrink)
According to Locke, what are ideas? I argue that Locke does not give an account of the nature of ideas. In the Essay, the question is simply set to one side, as recommended by the “Historical, plain Method” that Locke employs. This is exemplified by his characterization of ‘ideas’ in E I.i.8, and the discussion of the inverted spectrum hypothesis in E II.xxxii. In this respect, Locke’s attitude towards the nature of ideas in the Essay is reminiscent of Boyle’s diffident (...) attitude the nature of matter. In posthumously published work, however, Locke suggests that the enquiry into the nature of ideas is one of the things that the enquiry into the extent of human knowledge undertaken in the Essay actually shows to lie beyond the “compass of human understanding”. In this respect, Locke’s attitude towards the nature of ideas is reminiscent of Sydenham’s attitude towards the nature of diseases. (shrink)
Necessitism is the view that necessarily everything is necessarily something; contingentism is the negation of necessitism. The dispute between them is reminiscent of, but clearer than, the more familiar one between possibilism and actualism. A mapping often used to ‘translate’ actualist discourse into possibilist discourse is adapted to map every sentence of a first-order modal language to a sentence the contingentist (but not the necessitist) may regard as equivalent to it but which is neutral in the dispute. This mapping enables (...) the necessitist to extract a ‘cash value’ from what the contingentist says. Similarly, a mapping often used to ‘translate’ possibilist discourse into actualist discourse is adapted to map every sentence of the language to a sentence the necessitist (but not the contingentist) may regard as equivalent to it but which is neutral in the dispute. This mapping enables the contingentist to extract a ‘cash value’ from what the necessitist says. Neither mapping is a translation in the usual sense, since necessitists and contingentists use the same language with the same meanings. The former mapping is extended to a second-order modal language under a plural interpretation of the second-order variables. It is proved that the latter mapping cannot be. Thus although the necessitist can extract a ‘cash value’ from what the contingentist says in the second-order language, the contingentist cannot extract a ‘cash value’ from some of what the necessitist says, even when it raises significant questions. This poses contingentism a serious challenge. (shrink)
Scott Soames’ Reference and Description contains arguments against a number of different versions of two-dimensional semantics. After early chapters on descriptivism and on Kripke’s anti-descriptivist arguments, a chapter each is devoted to the roots of twodimensionalism in “slips, errors, or misleading suggestions” by Kripke and Kaplan, and to the two-dimensional approaches developed by Stalnaker (1978) and by Davies and Humberstone (1981). The bulk of the book (about 200 pages) is devoted to “ambitious twodimensionalism”, attributed to Frank Jackson, David Lewis, and (...) me. After a quick overview of two-dimensional approaches, I will focus on Soames’ discussion of ambitious twodimensionalism. I will then turn to a system advocated by Soames that is itself strikingly reminiscent of a two-dimensional approach. Two-dimensional semantic theories are varieties of possible-worlds semantics on which linguistic items can be evaluated relative to possibilities in two different ways, yielding two sorts of intensional semantic values, which can be seen as two “dimensions” of meaning. The second dimension is the familiar sort of Kripkean evaluation in metaphysically possible worlds, so that necessarily coextensive terms (such as ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ or ‘water’ and ‘H2O’) always have the same semantic value. The first dimension behaves differently, so that there are typically at least some cases where necessarily coextensive terms have different semantic values on the first dimension. For this reason, the two-dimensional framework is sometimes seen as a way of granting many of the insights of a Kripkean approach to meaning (on the second dimension), while retaining elements of a Fregean approach to meaning (on the first dimension). (shrink)
Both sides in the debate about scientific realism have argued that their view provides a better account of actual scientific practice. For example, it has been claimed that the practice of theory conjunction presupposes realism, and that scientists' use of multiple and incompatible models presupposes some form of instrumentalism. Assuming that the practices of science are rational, these conclusions cannot both be right. I argue that neither of them is right, and that, in fact, all scientific practices are compatible with (...) both realism and instrumentalism. I also repudiate van Fraassen's argument to the effect that the instrumentalist account of scientific practice is logically weaker, hence better, than the realist account. In the end, there are no scientific practice arguments on the table that support either side of the debate. It is also noted that the deficiencies of van Fraassen's argument are recapitulated in Putnam's miracle argument for realism. My pessimistic assessment of the state of the debate is reminiscent of Arthur Fine's. However, Fine's argument for the ‘natural ontological attitude’ once again repeats the problems of van Fraassen's and Putnam's arguments. (shrink)
What would it be like to have never learned English, but instead only to know Hopi, Mandarin Chinese, or American Sign Language? Would that change the way you think? Imagine entirely losing your language, as the result of stroke or trauma. You are aphasic, unable to speak or listen, read or write. What would your thoughts now be like? As the most extreme case, imagine having been raised without any language at all, as a wild child. What—if anything—would it be (...) like to be such a person? Could you be smart; could you reminisce about the past, plan the future? (shrink)
Reminiscing about his early views on the continuum problem in a dialogue penned in 1689,2 Leibniz recalled the period in his youth when he had enthusiastically subscribed to the "New Philosophy", embracing the composition of the continuum out of points and the doctrine that “a slower motion is one interrupted by small intervals of rest.”3 Speaking of himself through the character Lubinianus, he continues: And I indulged other dogmas of this kind, to which people are prone when they are willing (...) to entertain every imagination, and do not notice the infinity lurking everywhere in things. But although when I became a geometer I relinquished these opinions, atoms and the vacuum held out for a long time, like certain relics in my mind rebelling against the idea of infinity; for even though I conceded that every continuum could be divided to infinity in thought, I still did not grasp that in reality there were parts in things exceeding every number, as a consequence of motion in a plenum. That “atoms and the vacuum held out for a long time” among Leibniz’s cherished views is readily confirmed by an examination of his manuscripts. One may find papers containing some measure of commitment to atomism intermittently throughout the period from 1666 to 1676; moreover, if his later memory is to be trusted, he first “gave himself over to” atomism as early as 1661.4 As for his reasons for rejecting atoms, Leibniz’s mature.. (shrink)
According to Nozick’s tracking theory of knowledge, an agent a knows that p just in case her belief that p is true and also satisfies the two tracking conditionals that had p been false, she would not have believed that p , and had p been true under slightly different circumstances, she would still have believed that p . In this paper I wish to highlight an interesting but generally ignored feature of this theory: namely that it is reminiscent of (...) a dispositional account of knowledge: it invites us to think of knowledge as a manifestation of a cognitive disposition to form true beliefs. Indeed, given a general account of dispositions in terms of subjunctive conditionals, the two tracking conditionals are satisfied just in case the belief in question results from some cognitive disposition to form true beliefs. Recently, such a conditional account of dispositions has, however, been criticised for its vulnerability to so-called ‘masked’, ‘mimicked’ and ‘finkish’ counterexamples. I show how the classical counterexamples to Nozick’s theory divide smoothly into four corresponding categories of counterexamples from epistemic masking, mimicking and finkishness. This provides strong evidence for the thesis that satisfaction of the two tracking conditionals is symptomatic of knowledge and that knowledge is instead constituted by a dispositional capability to form true beliefs. The attempt to capture such a cognitive, dispositional capability in terms of the tracking conditionals, although providing a good approximation in a wide variety of cases, still comes apart from the real thing whenever the epistemic layout is characterised by masking-, mimicking- and finkish mechanisms. In the last part of the paper I explore the prospect of improving the tracking theory in the light of these findings. (shrink)
The debate surrounding the issue of collective moral responsibility is often steeped in metaphysical issues of agency and personhood. I suggest that we can approach the metaphysical problems surrounding the issue of collective responsibility in a roundabout manner. My approach is reminiscent of that taken by P.F. Strawson in "Freedom and Resentment" (1968). Strawson argues that the participant reactive attitudes - attitudes like resentment, gratitude, forgiveness and so on - provide the justification for holding individuals morally responsible. I argue that (...) the framework of the reactive attitudes extends to collectives and provides the justification for holding collectives morally responsible. (shrink)
Michel Foucault’s formative years included the study not only of history and philosophy but also of psychology: two years after he took license in philosophy at the Sorbonne in 1948, he took another in psychology, and then obtained, in 1952, a Diplôme de Psycho Pathologie . From his earliest years at the Ecole Normale Superieur he had taken courses on general and social psychology with one of most influential psychologists of the time, Daniel Lagache, who was attempting to integrate psychoanalysis (...) with clinical methods.(Eribon 1991, 42) Foucault’s studies included experimentation and clinical instruction in which patients were presented in an amphitheatre just as in the days of Charcot. For several years after he had received his Diplôme, Foucault continued research in psychopathology, observing practices in mental hospitals, reportedly sometimes volunteering in experiments himself. He purchased the material required to administer Roschach tests, subjecting numerous friends to the inkblots, and became, when it was founded, the honorary president of the French Rorschach organization. Foucault’s first books were on the topic of the psychological characterization of madness and the development of clinical medicine, and his last books addressed the development of psychological norms within the establishment of modern prisons as well as within an increasingly scientific approach to sex. Thus, he worked at the intersections of philosophy and psychology throughout his life. Nonetheless, Foucault reported feeling an intense aversion to psychology no less than to philosophy.(Sheridan 1980, 5) Foucault’s oeuvre is almost exclusively focused on particular knowledges in the human sciences, especially those aspects which pertained to psychological theories of human behavior, capacity, and normative functioning. His historical approach to these, and his emphasis on the role of discourse, is readily reminiscent of Thomas Kuhn’s similarly historical approach to scientific method with its emphasis on the role of paradigms and the untranslatability of paradigm dependent objects.. (shrink)
There is a pattern of miscommunication bedeviling the people working on consciousness that is reminiscent of the classic Abbott and Costello ‘Who’s on First?’ routine. With (...) class='Hi'>the best of intentions, people are talking past each other, seeing major disagreements when there are only terminological or tactical preferences — or even just matters of emphasis — that divide the sides. Since some substantive differences also lurk in this confusion, it is well worth trying to sort out. Much of the problem seems to have been caused by some misdirection in my apologia for heterophenomenology (Dennett, 1982; 1991), advertised as an explicitly third-person approach to human consciousness, so I will try to make amends by first removing those misleading signposts and sending us back to the real issues. On the face of it, the study of human consciousness involves phenomena that seem to occupy something rather like another dimension: the private, subjective, ‘first-person’ dimension. Everybody agrees that this is where we start. What, then, is the relation between the standard ‘third-person’ objective methodologies for studying meteors or magnets (or human metabolism or bone density), and the methodologies for studying human consciousness? Can the standard methods be extended in such a way as to do justice to the phenomena of human consciousness? Or do we have to find some quite radical or revolutionary alternative science? I have defended the hypothesis that there is a straightforward, conservative extension of objective science that handsomely covers the ground — all the ground — of human consciousness, doing justice to all the data without ever having to abandon the rules and constraints of the experimental method that have worked so well in the rest of science. This third-person methodology, dubbed heterophenomenology (phenomenology of another not oneself), is, I have claimed, the sound way to take the first person point of view as seriously as it can be taken.. (shrink)
Disgrace , by J.M. Coetzee, is a story of a rape; more, it is a tale in which the victim of the rape, Lucy Lurie, is silent. She demands neither sympathy nor justice for what happens toher, presenting herself as neither a victim nor someone seeking revenge. Instead she stands as a witness, and does so by adopting an attitude reminiscent of the thinking of Simone Weil—rejecting the possibility of rights, and not looking for explanations. Rape, Coetzee thus suggests, is (...) an act without meaning, a trauma whose reality cannot be exorcised through narration. Fittingly, therefore, the novel ends with a tableau of Lucy growing flowers in her garden; living, like Candide, without rationalisation or consolatory myth. (shrink)
First, some reminiscences. In the years 1973-80, when I was an undergraduate and then graduate student at Oxford, Michael Dummett’s formidable and creative philosophical presence made his arguments impossible to ignore. In consequence, one pole of discussion was always a form of anti-realism. It endorsed something like the replacement of truth-conditional semantics by verification-conditional semantics and of classical logic by intuitionistic logic, and the principle that all truths are knowable. It did not endorse the principle that all truths are known. (...) Nor did it mention the now celebrated argument, first published by Frederic Fitch (1963), that if all truths are knowable then all truths are known. (shrink)
This book is presumably a collection of essays delivered at a conference, though it's hard to say. There is no cover description and the editors' introduction, where this information might have been found, is missing from the volume (at least from my copy) in spite of being listed in the table of contents. A curious editorial slip. In fact, from an editorial perspective this book is a disaster. Not only is the format reminiscent of those camera ready volumes that jammed (...) our libraries in the late Eighties, when word processors began to spread and people started using them to produce entire books without knowing how to handle line spacing and hyphenation -- not to mention orphans and widows, footnotes, tabs, apostrophes, etc. There are also lots of typos, English infelicities, punctuation disorders. Obviously nobody checked the page proofs. There are even formulas that were not properly converted from the original files and have been printed with the infamous boxes in place of the logical symbols. Publishing academic books in analytic philosophy is becoming increasingly difficult and not every publisher can afford serious copy editing. But charging 74 euros for such a poorly manufactured item is appalling. (shrink)
Kripke and Dummett disagree over whether or not there could have been unicorns. Kripke thinks that there could not have been; Dummett thinks otherwise. I argue that Kripke is correct: there are no counterfactual situations properly describable as ones in which there would have been unicorns. In attempting to establish this claim, I argue that Dummett's critique of an argument (reminiscent of an argument of Kripke's) to the conclusion that there could not have been unicorns, is vitiated by a conflation (...) of two superficially similar, though importantly different, claims. I then attempt to provide an account of the counter-intuitiveness of Kripke's position, arguing that the claim that there could not have been unicorns is best understood as a semantic, rather than metaphysical, claim. Finally, I provide a brief argument on behalf of the semantics of species terms that appears to underpin Kripke's position. (shrink)
What Gödel accomplished in the decade of the 1930s before joining the Institute changed the face of mathematical logic and continues to influence its development. As you gather from my title, I’ll be talking about the most famous of his results in that period, but first I want to indulge in some personal reminiscences. In many ways this is a sentimental journey for me. I was a member of the Institute in 1959-60, a couple of years after receiving my PhD (...) at the University of California in Berkeley, where I had worked with Alfred Tarski, another great logician. The subject of my dissertation was directly concerned with the method of arithmetization that Gödel had used to prove his theorems, and my main concern after that was to study systematic ways of overcoming incompleteness. Mathematical logic was going through a period of prodigious development in the 1950s and 1960s, and Berkeley and Princeton were two meccas for researchers in that field. For me, the prospect of meeting with Gödel and drawing on him for guidance and inspiration was particularly exciting. I didn’t know at the time what it took to get invited. Hassler Whitney commented for an obituary notice in 1978 that “it was hard to appoint a new member in logic at the Institute because Gödel could not prove to himself that a number of candidates shouldn’t be members, with the evidence at hand.” That makes it sound like the problem for Gödel was deciding who not to invite. Anyhow, I ended up being one of the lucky few. (shrink)
The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between Friedrich Nietzsche's notion of the agon (Greek for contest) and the construction of athletic ability. In 'Homer's contest', Nietzsche claims that the ancient Greek agon was a contest that included only the most qualified competitors battling each other for honour and victory. Nietzsche seeks to restore the agon in contemporary society. Nietzsche believes that contests have lost this agonistic meaning since they are no more than contrived competitions between underqualified (...) opponents. I am extending the discussion to the domain of sport. If we stage an agon reminiscent of Greek antiquity, we could have a genuine competition between the most qualified athletes. (shrink)
The communitarian critique of liberal agency is reminiscent of two earlier critiques: C. B. Macpherson's theory of possessive individualism and Marx's theory of alienation. As with the communitarian critique, Macpherson and Marx saw the liberal individual as being in some way 'disembodied'. Where they differed from communitarians was in the attention they paid to the actual social relations that gave rise to such an image. The comparison is thus fruitful because the emphasis Macpherson and Marx give to the concrete circumstances (...) of disempowerment highlights the overly abstract nature of the communitarian critique, demonstrating how it, and other similarly abstract normative theories, might maintain a focus on actual social relations. Key Words: alienation • communitarism • disembodiment • labor • liberalism • Macpherson • Marx • self. (shrink)
In Literature, Life, and Modernity Richard Eldridge focuses on the question of a reader's or a viewer's response to a literary or dramatic work in a specific historical epoch ("modernity"). That is, in contrast with many other philosophical approaches to literature, he avoids fixing attention on any putative doctrinal (moral or political or diagnostic) claims in a literary work. Thereby, and in many other admirable ways, he avoids the danger of treating literature as philosophy manqué, concedes the distinctness of literary (...) experience, and only then asks about the significance of this experience. (In this way his approach is reminiscent to some extent of Schiller's; not bad company to be keeping.) This all amounts to a philosophy of literature of sorts,[1] but avoids a forced "philosophy in literature" or "literature as philosophy" treatment. There are themes and ideas at stake of course, but for distinct historical reasons, Eldridge also thinks of what he generally calls "modern" literature as characterized precisely by the absence of any thematic resolution, and so by a kind of play of possibilities, unsettledness, even homelessness. But, he argues, this is a play of ambiguity that. (shrink)
Studies into corporate social responsibility (CSR) in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have suggested that small businesses are different to the large companies on which CSR research usually focusses. Extending this argument, this article raises the question what differences in approaches to CSR there are within the SME category. Analysing the CSR strategy and performance of a medium-sized fashion retailer in the United Kingdom through manager interviews as well as customer and employee surveys, the article develops an analytical framework of (...) CSR in small, medium and large firms. The argument is developed that medium-sized firms occupy a transition stage, where some CSR features that are reminiscent of small enterprises are still important but get overlaid with aspects that are more typical of large companies. (shrink)
The NeuroGenderings project is reminiscent of an interdisciplinary program called Critical Neuroscience. But the steps towards a feminist/queer Critical Neuroscience are complicated by the problematic ways in which critical neuroscientists conceive of their critical practices. They suggest that we work and talk across disciplines as if neuroscientists were from Mars and social scientists from Venus, assigning the latter to the traditional feminine role of assuaging conflict. This article argues that brain science studies scholars need to clarify how we want to (...) frame our critical practices—a critique of what and for whom?—and promote interdisciplinarity. The challenge is to articulate a critical stance that could not be collapsed into the all-encompassing claims of neuroscience, Critical Neuroscience included. I suggest we shift focus: from enhanced communication to the study of controversies (but also non-controversies, failed controversies, etc.) and conflicts. I explore the productiveness of this shift through two examples: the non-controversial notion of brain plasticity, and the controversial question of whether gender identity formation in intersex people is a function of their brain or their genitals. Socializing neuroscience with insights from gender and science studies is good; highlighting the conflicting dimensions of social life in the same gesture is even better. (shrink)
The objective of this book is to produce a theory of rational decision making for realistically resource-bounded agents. My interest is not in “What should I do if I were an ideal agent?”, but rather, “What should I do given that I am who I am, with all my actual cognitive limitations?” The book has three parts. Part One addresses the question of where the values come from that agents use in rational decision making. The most comon view among philosophers (...) is that they are based on preferences, but I argue that this is computationally impossible. I propose an alternative theory somewhat reminiscent of Bentham, and explore how human beings actually arrive at values and how they use them in decision making. Part Two investigates the knowledge of probability that is required for decision-theoretic reasoning. I argue that subjective probability makes no sense as applied to realistic agents. I sketch a theory of objective probability to put in its place. Then I use that to define a variety of causal probability and argue that this is the kind of probability presupposed by rational decision making. So what is to be defended is a variety of causal decision theory. Part Three explores how these values and probabilities are to be used in decision making. In chapter eight, it is argued first that actions cannot be evaluated in terms of their expected values as ordinarily defined, because that does not take account of the fact that a cognizer may be unable to perform an action, and may even be unable to try to perform it. An alternative notion of “expected utility” is defined to be used in place of expected values. In chapternine it is argued that individual actions cannot be the proper objects of decision-theoretic evaluation. We must instead choose plans, and select actions indirectly on the grounds that they are prescribed by the plans we adopt. However, our objective cannot be to find plans with maximal expected utilities. Plans cannot be meaningfully compared in that way.. (shrink)
