The eighth and final chapter of Aron Gurwitsch’s major book, Leibniz. Philosophy of Panlogism, a translation of which is presented here, lays the foundations for Gurwitsch’s phenomenological reading of Leibnizian thought as a whole, understood and interpreted as a transcendental philosophy : as an objective correlate of the divine thought that sustains its systematic unity and original coherence, the world is itself thoroughly understood as the realization and “incorporation” of logic, in a broader sense. Examining the ontological status of (...) relations, and Leibniz’s conception of divine understanding as the transcendental subject of “possible worlds”, this final chapter brings together the guidelines that support and sustain his entire interpretation. (shrink)

Building on the success and importance of three previous volumes, _Relational Psychoanalysis_ continues to expand and develop the relational turn. Under the keen editorship of Lewis Aron and Adrienne Harris, and comprised of the contributions of many of the leading voices in the relational world, _Volume 5_ carries on the legacy of this rich and diversified psychoanalytic approach by taking a fresh look at the progress in therapeutic process. Included here are chapters on transference and countertransference, engagement, dissociation and (...) self-states, analytic impasses, privacy and disclosure, enactments, improvisation, development, and more. Thoughtful, capacious, and integrative, this new volume places the leading edge of relational thought close at hand, and pushes the boundaries of the relational turn that much closer to the horizon. Contributors: Lewis Aron, Anthony Bass, Beatrice Beebe, Philip Bromberg, Steven Cooper, Jody Messler Davies, Darlene Ehrenberg, Dianne Elise, Glen Gabbard, Adrienne Harris, Irwin Hoffman, Steven Knoblauch, Thomas Ogden, Spyros Orfanos, Stuart Pizer, Philip Ringstrom, Jill Salberg, Stephen Seligman, Joyce Slochower, Donnel Stern, Paul Wachtel. (shrink)

Scheler’s impact on Non-conformism points to an affinity between the phenomenology of affectivity and the antibourgeois movement in interwar France. Scheler himself calls on the vitalism of Guyau and Bergson to argue against projective concepts of empathy. He broadens affective situations into an interaction between bourgeois tendencies to narrow ressentiment and generous cultural dynamics. Non-conformists appropriate these modes of affectivity, pried from faith contexts. Jankélévitch transforms Scheler’s value ethic into an aggressive virtue ethic. Corbin draws from Scheler the inspiration for (...) a syncretistic anthropology of responsiveness. With reference to Scheler, Aron develops an ethic of value decisions that is free from ressentiment. (shrink)

Émile-Auguste Chartier, dit Alain, a marqué de son intelligence, sa force et sa créativité la première moitié du XXe siècle. Mais qui était ce normalien, professeur de philosophie en khâgne au Lycée Henri-IV, lui-même philosophe, inventeur du ± Propos?, un genre littéraire jusque là inédit?00Que connaît-on de l'Alain engagé, militant républicain et radical, fervent défenseur de la laïcité, appelant à la paix au moment où l'Europe sombre dans le premier conflit mondial? Du pamphlétaire Alain? Et comment juger les polémiques récentes (...) à son sujet?00Alain, qui fut le maître de personnalités aussi diverses que Simone Weil, Raymond Aron, Georges Canguilhem, André Maurois et Julien Gracq, aura également été cet original, rebelle sauvage bousculant l'ordre établi et la pensée conforme. Tantôt admiré, tantôt critiqué, il fut un éveilleur d'esprits et un influenceur.00Thomas Chaline explore tout ce qui a forgé la pensée du philosophe et son tempérament dans son siècle, de sa vie personnelle à ses engagements et prises de position publiques ou privées. Enfin, cet ouvrage se plonge dans l'héritage intellectuel qu'a laissé Alain.00La biographie définitive du philosophe pour les 70 ans de sa disparition. (shrink)

More consistently than Aron Gurwitsch, whose intrinsic account of consciousness4 was the topic of the previous two articles of the present series, David Woodruff Smith maintains that, within any objectivating act that is its object, inner awareness is inextricably interwoven with the outer awareness that is involved in the act. I begin here an examination of arguments Woodruff Smith proffers pro an understanding of inner awareness as intrinsic. However, in the present article, I give attention only to one of (...) his arguments, and my discussion focuses largely on how David M. Rosenthal, who holds instead that inner awareness is accomplished by a separate mental-occurrence instance, has interpreted the empirical evidence that Woodruff Smith cites. Woodruff Smith considers how a conscious4 mental-occurrence instance seems to its owner to be empirical evidence that lends support to intrinsic theory of inner awareness. When one introspects a mental-occurrence instance, one finds a single unified experience, not two of them as Rosenthal proposes. Rosenthal accepts this firsthand evidence as tending to support intrinsic theory, but tries to explain the appearances away, mentioning G.E. Moore's description of consciousness as "transparent.". (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch, phenomenologist and intrinsic theorist of consciousness4, contends that every objectivating mental act necessarily involves inner awareness; whenever an objectivating act occurs, it is an intentional object of unmediated apprehension. Moreover, inner awareness is literally intrinsic to every objectivating mental act, a part of its very own individual structure. Gurwitsch further argues that inner awareness is a merely concomitant part of that structure, taking place at the margin of the particular objectivating act, for the reason that the content (...) of inner awareness is not relevant to the content of the thematic process at the core of the act. However, Gurwitsch assigns an essential function to inner awareness by virtue of its content; namely, it helps to constitute the respective objectivating act as a unitary phenomenon over time. Perhaps, therefore, theoretically relegating inner awareness to the margin of an objectivating act amounts merely to an effort to allow for straightforward objectivation without falling into inconsistency. That is, some objectivating acts seem not to include inner awareness and, presumably, this would be explained by reference to intrinsic inner awareness that is no more than concomitant, as opposed to its being interwoven with outer awareness taking place in the central area of an objectivating act. (shrink)

Aron Gurwitsch, phenomenologist and intrinsic theorist of consciousness4, contends that every objectivating mental act necessarily involves inner awareness; whenever an objectivating act occurs, it is an intentional object of unmediated apprehension. Moreover, inner awareness is literally intrinsic to every objectivating mental act, a part of its very own individual structure. Gurwitsch further argues that inner awareness is a merely concomitant part of that structure, taking place at the margin of the particular objectivating act, for the reason that the content (...) of inner awareness is not relevant to the content of the thematic process at the core of the act. However, Gurwitsch assigns an essential function to inner awareness by virtue of its content; namely, it helps to constitute the respective objectivating act as a unitary phenomenon over time. Perhaps, therefore, theoretically relegating inner awareness to the margin of an objectivating act amounts merely to an effort to allow for straightforward objectivation without falling into inconsistency. That is, some objectivating acts seem not to include inner awareness and, presumably, this would be explained by reference to intrinsic inner awareness that is no more than concomitant, as opposed to its being interwoven with outer awareness taking place in the central area of an objectivating act. (shrink)

This collection of more than two dozen essays by philosophy scholars of international repute traces the profound impact exerted by Husserl’s Meisterwerk, known in its shortened title as Ideen, whose first book was released in 1913. Published to coincide with the centenary of its original appearance, and fifty years after the second book went to print in 1952, the contributors offer a comprehensive array of perspectives on the ways in which Husserl’s concept of phenomenology influenced leading figures and movements of (...) the last century, including, among others, Ortega y Gassett, Edith Stein, Martin Heidegger, Aron Gurwitsch, Ludwig Landgrebe, Dorion Cairns, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jacques Derrida and Giles Deleuze. -/- In addition to its documentation and analysis of the historical reception of these works, this volume also illustrates the ongoing relevance of the Ideen, offering scholarly discussion of the issues raised by his ideas as well as by the figures who took part in critical phenomenological dialogue with them. Among the topics discussed are autism, empathy, the nature of the emotions, the method and practice of phenomenology, the foundations of ethics, naturalism, intentionality, and human rights, to name but a few. Taken together, these specially commissioned original essays offer an unrivaled overview of the reception of Husserl‘s Ideen, and the expanding phenomenological enterprise it initiated. They show that the critical discussion of issues by phenomenologists continues to be relevant for the 21st century. (shrink)

The paper presents and defends a Bayesian theory of trust in social networks. In the first part of the paper, we provide justifications for the basic assumptions behind the model, and we give reasons for thinking that the model has plausible consequences for certain kinds of communication. In the second part of the paper we investigate the phenomenon of overconfidence. Many psychological studies have found that people think they are more reliable than they actually are. Using a simulation environment that (...) has been developed in order to make our model computationally tractable we show that in our model inquirers are indeed sometimes better off from an epistemic perspective overestimating the reliability of their own inquiries. We also show, by contrast, that people are rarely better off overestimating the reliability of others. On the basis of these observations we formulate a novel hypothesis about the value of overconfidence. (shrink)

The phenomenon of base-rate neglect has elicited much debate. One arena of debate concerns how people make judgments under conditions of uncertainty. Another more controversial arena concerns human rationality. In this target article, we attempt to unpack the perspectives in the literature on both kinds of issues and evaluate their ability to explain existing data and their conceptual coherence. From this evaluation we conclude that the best account of the data should be framed in terms of a dual-process model of (...) judgment, which attributes base-rate neglect to associative judgment strategies that fail to adequately represent the set structure of the problem. Base-rate neglect is reduced when problems are presented in a format that affords accurate representation in terms of nested sets of individuals. (shrink)

According to the Argument from Disagreement (AD) widespread and persistent disagreement on ethical issues indicates that our moral opinions are not influenced by moral facts, either because there are no such facts or because there are such facts but they fail to influence our moral opinions. In an innovative paper, Gustafsson and Peterson (Synthese, published online 16 October, 2010) study the argument by means of computer simulation of opinion dynamics, relying on the well-known model of Hegselmann and Krause (J Artif (...) Soc Soc Simul 5(3):1–33, 2002; J Artif Soc Soc Simul 9(3):1–28, 2006). Their simulations indicate that if our moral opinions were influenced at least slightly by moral facts, we would quickly have reached consensus, even if our moral opinions were also affected by additional factors such as false authorities, external political shifts and random processes. Gustafsson and Peterson conclude that since no such consensus has been reached in real life, the simulation gives us increased reason to take seriously the AD. Our main claim in this paper is that these results are not as robust as Gustafsson and Peterson seem to think they are. If we run similar simulations in the alternative Laputa simulation environment developed by Angere and Olsson (Angere, Synthese, forthcoming and Olsson, Episteme 8(2):127–143, 2011) considerably less support for the AD is forthcoming. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that the field of cultural evolution can usefully inform attempts to understand and influence the long-term future. First, I provide an overview of cultural evolution, covering what it means for culture to evolve, the mechanisms by which it happens, the crucial importance of cumulative cultural evolution for hunan history, and how cultural evolution (and in particular intergroup competition) has driven the rise of large-scale cooperation. Second, I draw out some possible lessons from cultural evolution for (...) thinking about the long-term future. In particular, I suggest we should be careful not to prematurely ”lock in” certain values or other cultural features, and instead aim for a society open to variation and competition. I also consider whether the future will bring greater selection pressure for particular kinds of values, such as patience. (shrink)

According to the traditional Bayesian view of credence, its structure is that of precise probability, its objects are descriptive propositions about the empirical world, and its dynamics are given by conditionalization. Each of the three essays that make up this thesis deals with a different variation on this traditional picture. The first variation replaces precise probability with sets of probabilities. The resulting imprecise Bayesianism is sometimes motivated on the grounds that our beliefs should not be more precise than the evidence (...) calls for. One known problem for this evidentially motivated imprecise view is that in certain cases, our imprecise credence in a particular proposition will remain the same no matter how much evidence we receive. In the first essay I argue that the problem is much more general than has been appreciated so far, and that it’s difficult to avoid without compromising the initial evidentialist motivation. The second variation replaces descriptive claims with moral claims as the objects of credence. I consider three standard arguments for probabilism with respect to descriptive uncertainty—representation theorem arguments, Dutch book arguments, and accuracy arguments—in order to examine whether such arguments can also be used to establish probabilism with respect to moral uncertainty. In the second essay, I argue that by and large they can, with some caveats. First, I don’t examine whether these arguments can be given sound non-cognitivist readings, and any conclusions therefore only hold conditional on cognitivism. Second, decision-theoretic representation theorems are found to be less convincing in the moral case, because there they implausibly commit us to thinking that intertheoretic comparisons of value are always possible. Third and finally, certain considerations may lead one to think that imprecise probabilism provides a more plausible model of moral epistemology. The third variation considers whether, in addition to conditionalization, agents may also change their minds by becoming aware of propositions they had not previously entertained, and therefore not previously assigned any probability. More specifically, I argue that if we wish to make room for reflective equilibrium in a probabilistic moral epistemology, we must allow for awareness growth. In the third essay, I sketch the outline of such a Bayesian account of reflective equilibrium. Given that this account gives a central place to awareness growth, and that the rationality constraints on belief change by awareness growth are much weaker than those on belief change by conditionalization, it follows that the rationality constraints on the credences of agents who are seeking reflective equilibrium are correspondingly weaker. (shrink)

“A foreign culture is not revealed in its entirety and its depth except by its view of another culture […] A meaning is revealed in its depth for having encountered and come into contact with another meaning, a foreign meaning: between the two something like a dialogue is installed which because of the closed and onesided nature, inherent in the meaning and culture taken alone […]The dialogue of the meeting of two cultures does not bring about their fusion, their confusion—each (...) of them keeps its own unity and open totality, but they are mutually enriched.”Mikhail M. BakhtiniThe dialogue that we contemporary historians try to have with past cultures is at the same time imperceptibly the beginning of a dialogue with coming generations. The historian of culture in fact has a double and heavy responsibility. On the one hand, his mission is to “resuscitate” the past. His period requires him to do justice to the culture of vanished peoples, to bring life to their thoughts and feelings, even though he knows that a complete and adequate reconstruction of their spiritual universe is only an ideal, a utopia of the scholar. It is in this sense that each scientific reconstruction can only be a modern reconstruction. (shrink)

Performing surgery in the developing world presents unique challenges and dilemmas for the visiting physician from an industrialized country. Language barriers, widespread, profound pathology, and lack of adequate facilities are obvious hurdles. A more subtle problem, though every bit as significant, is that the principles and procedures we routinely utilize at home to uphold ethical standards of care and to aid us in decision-making are often poorly applicable in the developing world. Acknowledging that cultural factors play a primary role in (...) every aspect of their interaction with patients, physicians must scrutinize and even modify the tools they employ when attempting to deliver ethical care in foreign .. (shrink)

Aron Vinegar’s essay explores art history and visual culture’s dependence on a phenomenological conception of world, which is based on a hermeneutics of facticity, intentionality, and ontological difference. He argues that the ‘basic concept’ of world has structured the field of art history and visual culture in implicit and explicit ways, thus dictating many of its commitments and concerns. One of the primary limitations of this commitment to world, is that it has resulted in art history and visual culture’s (...) tendency to concern itself with a very small portion of existence, usually human existence, in its emphasis on hermeneutics and facticity, thus foreclosing on a more generous and speculative ontology, ethics, and politics. The concept of “world” suggests an overarching totality, an interconnected field of meaning and sense, often indicated by a tacit and resonate tonality. But there is no overarching “world” or “world-view” that can provide us with an overview of or container for the myriad worlds of things. An art history that is willing to consider that the world does not exist would acknowledge and embrace the fact that there is no overall focus, which can encompass things and events in all their spatio-temporal complexity. It would entail a practice attentive to a “supple and inflected bathmology” (Vinegar prefers this phrase to “flat ontology”) in its refusal to emphasize “privileged ontological scenes” predicated on hierarchies of ontological difference, and subsuming things and experience within the structures of phenomenological intentionality. To initiate such a practice, Vinegar suggests an embrace of what he terms “ontological indifference,” a robust notion of habit, and a temporal logic that would be fully attentive to a pluriverse of multiple existences and eruptions of substance, which extend well beyond ‘our’ realms of significance and meaning, cares and concerns, laughter and joy, losses and mournings. (shrink)

In our everyday discourse, most of us use modal statements to express possibility, necessity, or contingency. Logicians, linguists, and philosophers of language tend to use the possible world discourse to analyse the semantics of this kind of sentences. There is a disadvantage of this method: in the usual Quinean meta-ontology it commits the users to the existence of possible worlds. Even though there are many theories on metaphysics of these possible worlds, I will focus on the fictionalist approach, which aims (...) to suspend the undesired ontological commitment. Therefore it is an anti-realist theory. The fictionalist strategy is based on the idea that according to our common-sense ontology, fictions and fictional entities do not exist, and one can treat the possible world discourse as a fiction, and the possible worlds as fictional entities. However, in the last two decades, realist theories about fictions and fictional entities have arisen, especially the abstract artefact theory. In this paper I try to revise the fictionalist approach to modality by keeping the main idea that possible worlds are fictional entities, while accepting that fictional entities are abstract artefacts. The result is a new realist theory of modal fictionalism. (shrink)

l / Some Aspects and Developments of Gestalt Psychology1 [I] The Development and Status of the Problem At the basis of the constitution of the physical ...

Interoception in the broader sense refers to the perception of internal states, including the perception of the actual state of the internal organs and the motor system. Dimensions of interoception include interoceptive accuracy, i.e., the ability to sense internal changes assessed with behavioral tests, confidence rating with respect to perceived performance in an actual behavioral test, and interoceptive sensibility, i.e., the self-reported generalized ability to perceive body changes. The relationship between dimension of cardioceptive and proprioceptive modalities and their association with (...) affect are scarcely studied. In the present study, undergraduate students filled out questionnaires assessing positive and negative affect, interoceptive sensibility, and body competence. Following this, they completed a behavioral task assessing cardioceptive accuracy and two tasks assessing proprioceptive accuracy with respect to the tension of arm flexor muscles and the angular position of the elbow joint. Confidence ratings were measured with visual analog scales after the tasks. With the exception of a weak association between cardioceptive accuracy and the respective confidence rating, no associations between and within modalities were found with respect to various dimensions of interoception. Further, the interoceptive dimensions were not associated with state and trait positive and negative affect and perceived body competence. In summary, interoceptive accuracy scores do not substantially contribute to conscious representations of cardioceptive and proprioceptive ability. Within our data, non-pathological affective states are not associated with the major dimensions of interoception for the cardiac and proprioceptive modalities. (shrink)

What does it mean for an agent faced with choice under uncertainty to “know” something? While a variety of mathematical methods are available to construct formal models to answer this question, the combination of different approaches may lead to unsettling paradoxes. I propose a unified theory that eliminates such inconsistencies by relying on a sharp conceptual distinction between information the decision-maker observes and how much of that information she can cognitively process. The resulting model allows for natural decision-theoretic characterizations of (...) comparing different amounts of information. (shrink)

Traditional Bayesianism requires that an agent’s degrees of belief be represented by a real-valued, probabilistic credence function. However, in many cases it seems that our evidence is not rich enough to warrant such precision. In light of this, some have proposed that we instead represent an agent’s degrees of belief as a set of credence functions. This way, we can respect the evidence by requiring that the set, often called the agent’s credal state, includes all credence functions that are in (...) some sense compatible with the evidence. One known problem for this evidentially motivated imprecise view is that in certain cases, our imprecise credence in a particular proposition will remain the same no matter how much evidence we receive. In this article I argue that the problem is much more general than has been appreciated so far, and that it’s difficult to avoid it without compromising the initial evidentialist motivation. _1_ Introduction _2_ Precision and Its Problems _3_ Imprecise Bayesianism and Respecting Ambiguous Evidence _4_ Local Belief Inertia _5_ From Local to Global Belief Inertia _6_ Responding to Global Belief Inertia _7_ Conclusion. (shrink)

The commentaries indicate a general agreement that one source of reduction of base-rate neglect involves making structural relations among relevant sets transparent. There is much less agreement, however, that this entails dual systems of reasoning. In this response, we make the case for our perspective on dual systems. We compare and contrast our view to the natural frequency hypothesis as formulated in the commentaries.

By age 85, most adults manifest some degree of motor impairment. However, in most individuals a specific etiology for motor decline and treatment to modify its inexorable progression cannot be identified. Recent clinical-pathologic studies provide evidence that mixed-brain pathologies are commonly associated with late-life motor impairment. Yet, while nearly all older adults show some degree of accumulation of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias pathologies, the extent to which these pathologies contribute to motor decline varies widely from person to person. Slower (...) or faster than expected motor decline in the presence of brain injury and/or pathology has been conceptualized as more or less “resilience” relative to the average person This suggests that other factors, such as lifestyles or other neurobiologic indices may offset or exacerbate the negative effects of pathologies via other molecular pathways. The mechanisms underlying neural motor resilience are just beginning to be illuminated. Unlike its cousin, cognitive resilience which is restricted to neural mechanisms above the neck, the motor system extends the total length of the CNS and beyond the CNS to reach muscle and musculoskeletal structures, all of which are crucial for motor function. Building on prior work, we propose that by isolating motor decline unrelated to neuropathologies and degeneration, investigators can identify genes and proteins that may provide neural motor resilience. Elucidating these molecular mechanisms will advance our understanding of the heterogeneity of late-life motor impairment. This approach will also provide high value therapeutic targets for drug discovery of therapies that may offset the negative motor consequences of CNS pathologies that are currently untreatable. (shrink)

1. Although a number of personality variables have been identified by various authors as the determinants of religious behavior, independent of specific religious denomination, the results of the studies under consideration certainly appear to be inconsistent with such claims. It is suggested instead that the personality correlates of religious behavior vary with the specific religious denomination. 2. For most people religious belief and religious observance are acquired or learned in the socialization process. In a culture in which there is no (...) social pressure to conform in relation to religious behavior , individual differences in adult religious behavior may be a result of certain personality differences. In the Israeli Jewish sample a number of personality variables were found to covary with religious belief and/or observance. Religious belief and observance, however, were also highly significant sources of variance in subjects' values. These value differences probably influence the what and how of the socialization process which in turn may be responsible for some-although probably not all-of the personality variables associated with religious behavior. 3. In cultures which are characterized by strong social pressure in relation to religious conformity, e. g. the culture represented by our United States Protestant sample, the religious behavior of many individuals will be a result of their need to conform rather than other personality variables directly related to their religious behavior as such. Thus in the United States Protestant sample conformity and variables associated with it were the only significant sources of variance in subjects' religious behavior. The results of our studies indicate the importance of differentiating between religious belief and observance which is merely the result of social conformity and religious belief and observance which is also the result of other variables which are more directly related to religious behavior as such. Presently we are in the process of constructing instruments to measure these two types of religious behavior. 4. Finally, it is suggested that in trying to discover the determinants of individual differences in religious behavior there has been too much emphasis on motivational variables and not enough on environmental factors. A social learning model may be the best suited for the investigation of the sources of individual differences in religious behavior. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 2 Seiten: 472-494.

It is currently common practice in social and business research, to lift concepts and theories from one country context—and extending the validity of the results—using them in another. This paper discusses the question relating to such generalisability in the context of global, innovative industries. Statistical methods are applied to compare results of a quantitative investigation of firm life-cycle theory between two developed countries. Such comparison implemented with statistical rigour on a quantitative basis is not common, and difficult to execute. Results (...) show that even though life-cycle theory has been found meaningful and valid on both country-specific populations, the quantitative comparison of these results has highlighted a substantial amount of statistically significant differences. This leads to the conclusion that extension of social theory between various country contexts needs to consider a variety of contextual parameters, cautioning computer scientists offering solutions to various problems around the world coming from their own, unique, country-specific perspectives to keep an open mind. (shrink)