At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

On method, discursive logics, and epistemology -- Questions of medieval discursive practice -- From the middle ages to the (w)hole of Utopia -- Kepler, his Dream, and the analysis and pattern of thought -- Campanella and Bacon: concerning structures of mind -- The masculine birth of time -- Cyrano and the experimental discourse -- The myth of sun and moon -- The difficulty of writing -- Crusoe rights his story -- Gulliver's critique of Euclid -- Emergence, consolidation, and dominance of (...) a discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I seek to diagnose the sources of our dissatisfaction with answers to the question of the meaning of life. I contend that some of these have to do with the question (its polyvalence and persistent vagueness) and some have to do with life and meaningfulness themselves. By showing how dissatisfaction arises and the extent to which it is in-eliminable even by God, I hope to show that we should be satisfied with our dissatisfaction.

In this paper we defend the doxastic conception of delusions against the metacognitive account developed by Greg Currie and collaborators. According to the metacognitive model, delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by their subjects as beliefs: the Capgras patient, for instance, does not believe that his wife has been replaced by a robot, instead, he merely imagines that she has, and mistakes this imagining for a belief. We argue that the metacognitive account is untenable, and that the traditional conception of (...) delusions as beliefs should be retained. (shrink)

This collection of essays on the philosophy of Foucault assesses his various work from a variety of perspectives: his place in the history of philosophy; his style and method of philosophical expression; his notions of political power; his ethical thought; and his attitude to psychoanalysis.

We will introduce a partial ordering $\preceq_1$ on the class of ordinals which will serve as a foundation for an approach to ordinal notations for formal systems of set theory and second-order arithmetic. In this paper we use $\preceq_1$ to provide a new characterization of the ubiquitous ordinal $\epsilon _{0}$.

We will investigate patterns of resemblance of order 2 over a family of arithmetic structures on the ordinals. In particular, we will show that they determine a computable well ordering under appropriate assumptions.

A notation for an ordinal using patterns of resemblance is based on choosing an isominimal set of ordinals containing the given ordinal. There are many choices for this set meaning that notations are far from unique. We establish that among all such isominimal sets there is one which is smallest under inclusion thus providing an appropriate notion of normal form notation in this context. In addition, we calculate the elements of this isominimal set using standard notations based on collapsing functions. (...) This provides a capstone to the results in [2, 6, 8, 9, 7], using further refinement of ordinal arithmetic developed in [8] which then both allows for a simple characterization of normal forms for patterns of order one and will play a key role in the arithmetical analysis of pure patterns of order two, [5]. (shrink)

Contemporary epistemology has been moving away from classical foundationalism—the thesis that our empirical knowledge is grounded in perceptual beliefs we know with certainty. McGrew reexamines classical foundationalism and offers a compelling reconstruction and defense of empirical knowledge grounded in perceptual certainty. He articulates and defends a new version of foundationalism and demonstrates how it meets all the standard criticisms. The book offers substantial rebuttals of the arguments of Kuhn and Rorty and demonstrates the value of the classical analytic approach to (...) philosophy. 'Foundations' will interest philosophers of science, language, and the mind. (shrink)

Selected articles from the Naval War College Press on ethics and the twenty-first-century military professional."--Provided by publisher.

This volume focuses on naval leadership and ethics with respect to the individual leader and how his or her values and actions affect military cohesion, mission success, and the profession of arms. Moving beyond the "right and wrong" of personal ethics to examine the broader field of professional military ethics, this carefully selected collection of relevant materials from the Naval Institute's vast collection of articles recognizes the range of experience, perspectives, and opinions that are found in the sea services and (...) argues that diversity does not preclude acceptance of common core values and standards of performance within any unit."--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Previous research has suggested that bodily signals from internal organs are associated with diverse cortical and subcortical processes involved in sensory-motor functions, beyond homeostatic reflexes. For instance, a recent study demonstrated that the preparation and execution of voluntary actions, as well as its underlying neural activity, are coupled with the breathing cycle. In the current study, we investigated whether such breathing-action coupling is limited to voluntary motor action or whether it is also present for mental actions not involving any overt (...) bodily movement. To answer this question, we recorded electroencephalography (EEG), electromyography (EMG), and respiratory signals while participants were conducting a voluntary action paradigm including self-initiated motor execution (ME), motor imagery (MI), and visual imagery (VI) tasks. We observed that the voluntary initiation of ME, MI, and VI are similarly coupled with the respiration phase. In addition, EEG analysis revealed the existence of readiness potential (RP) waveforms in all three tasks (i.e., ME, MI, VI), as well as a coupling between the RP amplitude and the respiratory phase. Our findings show that the voluntary initiation of both imagined and overt action is coupled with respiration, and further suggest that the breathing system is involved in preparatory processes of voluntary action by contributing to the temporal decision of when to initiate the action plan, regardless of whether this culminates in overt movements. -/- . (shrink)

Theories of children's understanding of mind benefit from rigorous interpretations of demonstrations of similar understandings in closely related species. This commentary describes how Carpendale & Lewis's (C&L's) argument could be made more persuasive with a more rigorous interpretation of the studies of chimpanzees' understanding of mind.

ABSTRACT:Drawing upon the collective action model of institutional change, I reconceptualize moral imagination as both a social process and a cognitive one. I argue that moral outcomes are not produced by individual actors alone; rather, they emerge from collective action processes that are influenced by political conditions and involve behaviors that include issue framing and resource mobilization. I also contend that individual moral imagination involves the integration of moral sensitivity with consideration of collective action dynamics. I illustrate my arguments with (...) a case study of the Chad-Cameroon oil project. The paper suggests new directions in teaching and research on moral imagination. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

The target paper by Noë and Thompson is a very welcome addition to the literature on the neural correlates of consciousness. It raises a number of important issues, and the debate it will generate should go some way towards clarifying the conceptual terrain that we’re in. In this commentary I focus on three issues: the link between isomorphism and the matching-content doctrine; the argument against the matching-content doctrine; and the argument against experiential internalism.

I begin with a quotation from Thomas Reid.

I begin with a quotation from Thomas Reid.

We discuss three varieties of affective dynamics. In each case, we suggest how these affective dynamics should be operationalized and measured in daily life using time-intensive methods, like ecological momentary assessment or ambulatory assessment, and recommend time-sensitive analyses that take into account not only the variability but also the temporal dependency of reports. Studies that explore how these affective dynamics are associated with psychological disorders and symptoms are reviewed, and we emphasize that these affective processes are within a nexus of (...) other components of emotion regulation. (shrink)

Secondary education around the world has been significantly disrupted by covid-19. Students have been forced into new ways of independent learning, often using remote technologies, but without the social nuances and direct teacher interactions of a normal classroom environment. Using data from the School Attitudes Survey—which surveys students regarding the perceived level of difficulty, anxiety level, self-efficacy, enjoyability, subject relevance, and opportunities for creativity with regards to each of their school subjects—this study examines students' responses to this disruption from two (...) very different schools with two very different experiences of the pandemic. This paper reports on the composite attitudinal profiles of students in the senior secondary levels at each school. The findings challenged our expectation that the increased difficulty and anxiety caused by the disruption would reduce perceived opportunities for creativity. Indeed, our analyses showed that the students at both schools demonstrated generally positive attitudes toward their learning and strongly associated opportunities for creativity with other attitudinal constructs including enjoyability, subject relevance, and self-efficacy. These complex associations made by the students appear to have buffered the impacts of the disruption, and they may even have supported creative resilience. (shrink)

Marking a close, genre-specific reading of the multiple "languages" within al-Ghaz l 's writings, this book seeks to excavate his most intimate thoughts on life and death. In doing so, it takes the reader into the very heart of the master's epistemology, psychology, and eschatology.

This essay suggests that changes in economic practices which we associate with capitalism brought about deep changes in understandings of culture, and especially of Christianity; that, given that capitalism is driving global warming, changes in the way in which we structure the economy, which for many of us have religious roots, will have to be adopted if we are going to survive; that six priorities for an alternative economy may be identified.

The paper argues, first, that the range of problems confronting humanity constitutes a global emergency; next, that this cannot be addressed by moral exhortation but by the building of ‘arks’; finally, that community, cultivation of the virtues, and place may be considered key aspects of such ark building.

Abstract:In this article I stage an encounter between Adriana Cavarero's account of uniqueness and Hortense Spillers's account of the flesh. Doing so is valuable for two reasons: First, it forces Cavarero's thought to consider not only the exclusion of women from the Western tradition, but also the anti-Blackness foundational to this tradition. This both expands and contorts Cavarero's thought, affirming her key claims while also altering them in the process. Second, reading Cavarero and Spillers together allows me to explore the (...) way forms of life that evade representation can be known. Both uniqueness and the flesh are evasive of representation; by reading them together—supplementing Cavarero's consideration of the embodied character of uniqueness with Spillers's distinction between body and flesh—I develop an account of apprehension that emphasizes touch as a way of knowing apart from representation. Apprehension takes seriously the ambivalence in Spillers's account of the flesh, whereby it is both revealed through violence as well as through practices of care, which, as Saidiya Hartman has made clear, are often in a proximate relation in the ongoing legacies of transatlantic slavery. (shrink)

This article addresses a difficult case at the intersection of philosophical theology and truthmaker theory. I show that three views, together, lead to difficultiesin providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication, such as that the bread is white. These three views are: the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, astandard truthmaker theory, and a trope (or accident) view of properties. I present and explain each of these three views, at each step noting their connections to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. After (...) presenting the three views, I show why they entail a difficulty for providing truthmakers for truths of contingent predication,drawing on two cases that are not impossible, for all we know. I then present four ways that one can respond to this difficulty, afterward noting some shortcomingsof those responses. (shrink)

Although the notion can be found in Anscombe.

Solon's extraordinary claim, that we should call "no one happy who is still living", presents a fascinating and distinctive argument about happiness and the length of a human life. The issues Solon raises are important, and even if we think his pessimistic conclusion is an exaggeration we can still appreciate his central concern how conceptions of happiness and the length of a human life are connected. The purpose of this paper is to explore a few of these problems, in particular (...) the reason why Aristotle's reply to Solon in the Nicomachean Ethics is somewhat ambiguous. We find Aristotle addressing Solon's claim at the outset of Eth. Nic. A 10, troubled in one sense by its conclusion, yet struck by its partial truth. On the one hand, he thinks that requires a "complete life" or at the very least, a sufficient and "complete span of time", both of which are compatible with Solon's advice that we should postpone calling someone happy until a later point in life. But on the other hand Aristotle defines in such a way that raises the question whether he needs to accept Solon's claim in any form. In particular, if happiness is defined in terms of excellent activity as Aristotle repeatedly claims, why should we wait until a person dies to call him or her happy? Why shouldn't excellent actions, at the very time they are performed, count someone as happy? The puzzle, in short, is the fact that Aristotle defines happiness in terms of activities that are complete without developing over time, and yet also claims that happiness requires a "complete lifetime". (shrink)

One of the fundamental components of the concept of economic rationality is that preference orderings are “complete,” i.e., that all alternative actions an economic agent can take are comparable. The idea that all actions can be ranked may be called the single utility assumption. The attractiveness of this assumption is considerable. It would be hard to fathom what choice among alternatives means if the available alternatives cannot be ranked by the chooser in some way. In addition, the efficiency criterion makes (...) sense only if one can infer that an individual's choice reflects the best, in expected welfare terms, among all choices that individual could have made. The possibility that a rearrangement of resources could make someone “better off” without making others “worse off” can be understood only if the post-rearrangement world is comparable with the pre-rearrange-ment world. (shrink)

The social psychologist George Herbert Mead and the cognitive linguist Noam Chomsky both investigated the nature of language and mind during the 20th century. They approached the issues broadly, pursuing both philosophical and scientific lines of reasoning and evidence. This comparative analysis of Mead and Chomsky identifies fourteen questions that summarize their collective effort, and which animated much of the debate concerning language and mind in the 20th century. These questions continue to be relevant to 21st century inquiries. This paper (...) identifies which questions have been resolved and which have not, and discusses each in the context of relevant literature. The net result is a set of questions that inform interdisciplinary-minded inquiries today into the nature of language and mind. (shrink)