We present counterexamples to the widespread assumption that Moorean sentences cannot be rationally asserted. We then explain why Moorean assertions of the sort we discuss do not incur the irrationality charge. Our argument involves an appeal to the dual-process theory of the mind and a contrast between the conditions for ascribing beliefs to oneself and the conditions for making assertions about independently existing states of affairs. We conclude by contrasting beliefs of the sort we discuss with the structurally similar but (...) rationally impermissible beliefs of certain psychiatric patients. (shrink)

Dispute types can roughly be divided in two classes. One class in whichthe notion of justification is fundamental, and one in which thenotion of opposition is fundamental. Further, for every singledispute type there exist various types of protocols to conduct such adispute. Some protocols permit local search (a process in which oneis allowed to justify claims partially, with the possibility to extendjustifications on request later), while other protocols rely on globalsearch (a process in which only entire arguments count as justifications).This (...) paper integrates the two above-mentioned types of dispute withthe use of a protocol that permits local search. The locality aspect isrelatively new to computer scientists, while the detailed computationalelaboration of the approach is relatively new to philosophical logicians.The proposed protocol is demonstrated with the help of eight benchmarks.These benchmarks are centered around the problem that co-concludingarguments sometimes accrue, and sometimes do not. (shrink)

The grammarian Caesellius Vindex, writing under Trajan, criticized Furius Antias for his newly coined verbs lutescere, noctescere, opulescere and vīrescere. Their meanings in classical Latin are classified by Nicolaie as follows: becoming, the intensification of a quality, the acquisition of a quality. Their number increases in post-classical Latin, in which we also find them used causatively as transitive verbs, e.g. innotescere ‘make known’; Gellius' causative use of inolesco is mentioned below. Incohative verbs descend to Romance languages, where forms in -o (...) and in -sco both contribute to some conjugations, e.g. Fr. finir, finissant; It. finire, finisco, and to English. (shrink)

This book explores how the trans phenomenon can challenge the existing concept of the Self and its nature. The catalyst is Moore’s Paradox: can a trans person coherently state ‘I am a girl but I don’t believe that’? More deeply, three fundamental philosophical questions arise, of ontological, epistemological, and conceptual significance: what Self understands that the natal-gender is ‘wrong’? How does the trans person know that the natal-gender is ‘wrong’ and what counts as evidence? And finally, how does this effect (...) the concept of Self itself? Seeking answers, Brakel considers various theories of the Self, including classical accounts, modern views, and models developed by selected gender theorists. The book then takes a biological turn, first developing an evolutionary proper-function analysis of gender and trans-gender and subsequently proposing the possibility of a new ontological phenotype. With a review of cutting-edge neuroscientific research conducted over the last twenty-five years, Brakel propels this timely and important investigation toward the future, using experimental philosophy empirical studies adapted from classic thought experiments on the nature of the Self. (shrink)

The role of the prefrontal cortex is one of the most topical and important areas of research in contemporary neuropsychology. This cortical region appears to be linked with executive processes affecting many diverse areas of cognitive function. Working memory, information processing, behavioural organization, attention, judgement, and the ability to cope with novel experiences are just some of the diverse processes it affects. This book brings together contributions from some of the world's leading researchers on the prefrontal cortex. They discuss the (...) many recent theoretical and technical advances in the field - for example in our understanding of the neural architecture of the prefrontal cortex, in the development of comparable texts of cognition in humans and other primates, in our understanding of the relationships between neuronal activity and behaviour, and in the increasing use of functional neuroimaging to identify different levels of organization within the prefrontal cortex. These important developments make this an ideal time to address the many questions and debates that have arisen about the role and functional organization of this area of the brain. One of the first books to be written on the subject, The Prefrontal Cortex is a state-of-the-art account of our knowledge of this exciting subject. It will be welcomed by all researchers and students in neuro- and cognitive psychology, and neuroscience. (shrink)

After I had put myself the task of investigating the correctness of the results obtained by Heibges concerning the clausulae of Chariton, I decided to determine the frequency in which the different rhythmical forms appear in the authors of non-rhythmical works. For that purpose I investigated the prose works of Thucydides and Plutarch as carefully and in as specified a form as was possible. This I did with the intention to compare the percentages with those of Heibges. In this comparison, (...) however, I came to the conclusion that the figures for Thucydides and Plutarch differed considerably, and that in such a way that certain conclusions could be drawn concerning the manner in which Plutarch constructed his clausulae according to fixed rules. (shrink)

Of the topics found in psychoanalytic theory it is Freud's philosophy of mind that is at once the most contentious and enduring. Psychoanalytic theory makes bold claims about the significance of unconscious mental processes and the wish-fulfilling activity of the mind, citing their importance for understanding the nature of dreams and explaining both normal and pathological behaviour. However, since Freud's initial work, both modern psychology and philosophy have had much to say about the merits of Freudian thinking. Developments in psychology, (...) philosophy, and psychoanalysis raise new challenges and questions concerning Freud's theory of mind. This book addresses the psychoanalytic concept of mind in the 21st century via a joint scientific and philosophical appraisal of psychoanalytic theory. It provides a fresh critical appraisal and reflection on Freudian concepts, as well as addressing how current evidence and scientific thinking bear upon Freudian theory. The book centres upon the major concepts in psychoanalysis, including the notion of unconscious mental processes and wish-fulfilment and their relationship to dreams, fantasy, attachment processes, and neuroscience. (shrink)

To even approach the question regarding the scientific nature of psychoanalysis, a foundation comprising a sophisticated conceptual and philosophical framework is required. This volume represents the junction where philosophy, science, and psychoanalysis meet and presents arguments of the scientific standing of psychoanalysis.

Interpretive political science focuses on the meanings that shape actions and institutions, and the ways in which they do so. This Handbook explores the implications of interpretive theory for the study of politics. It provides the first definitive survey of the field edited by two of its pioneers. This Handbook is an invaluable resource for students, scholars and practitioners in the areas of international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, political psychology and public administration.

This book is concerned with the history of metaphysics since Descartes. Taking as its definition of metaphysics 'the most general attempt to make sense of things', it charts the evolution of this enterprise through various competing conceptions of its possibility, scope, and limits. The book is divided into three parts, dealing respectively with the early modern period, the late modern period in the analytic tradition, and the late modern period in non-analytic traditions. In its unusually wide range, A. W. Moore's (...) study refutes the tired old cliché that there is some unbridgeable gulf between analytic philosophy and philosophy of other kinds. It also advances its own distinctive and compelling conception of what metaphysics is and why it matters. Moore explores how metaphysics can help us to cope with continually changing demands on our humanity by making sense of things in ways that are radically new. (shrink)

A. W. Moore argues in this bold and unusual book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude. 'imaginative, original, and ambitious' Robert Brandom, Times Literary Supplement.

The paper builds on the postulate of “myths we live by,” which shape our imaginative life (and hence our social expectations), but which are also open to reflective study and reinvention. It applies this principle, in particular, to the concepts of love and vulnerability. We are accustomed to think of the condition of vulnerability in an objectifying and distancing way, as something that affects the bearers of specific (disadvantaged) social identities. Against this picture, which can serve as a pretext for (...) paternalist and controlling attitudes to the groups in question – notably to women – Anderson urges us to reimagine our vulnerability as a condition not merely of exposure to violence but of openness to mutual affection, love, and friendship. Hegel’s celebrated image of the owl of Minerva, which takes wing only with the coming of dusk, suggests an association of (philosophical) wisdom with negativity – with the experience of death or loss. Anderson, by contrast, proposes an alternative and more hopeful image of the dawn of enlightenment, in the guise of new ethical dispositions shaped by an emancipatory (and so, no longer an oppressive or sexist) conception of our capacity for love. Her main interlocutors or influences in this piece are Judith Butler (who contributes the idea of a “relational ontology”), Michèle Le Doeuff, and Mary Midgley. (shrink)

A.W. Moore presents eighteen of his philosophical essays, written since 1986, on representing how things are. He sketches out the nature, scope, and limits of representation through language, and pays particular attention to linguistic representation, states of knowledge, the character of what is represented, and objective facts or truths.

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

As earthquakes expose geological faults, so mental conflict reveals tendencies to rupture within the mind. Dissension is rife not only between people but also within them, for each of us is subject to a contrariety of desires, beliefs, motivations, aspirations. What image are we to form of ourselves that might best enable us to accept the reality of discord, or achieve the ideal of harmony? Greek philosophers offer us a variety of pictures and structures intended to capture the actual and (...) the possible either within a reason that fails to be resolute, or within a split soul that houses a play of forces. Reflection upon them alerts us to the elusiveness at once of mental reality, and of the understanding by which we hope to capture and transform it. Studying in turn the treatments of _Mental Conflict_ in Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics, A.W. Price demonstrates how the arguments of the Greeks are still relevant to philosophical discussion today. (shrink)

Although a common clinical phenomenon, delusions are difficult to explain and have a problematic conceptual status. Advances in understanding delusions have come from studies which involve detailed investigation of particular types of delusion. Some of this work is summarised, with the Capgras and Cotard delusions as specific examples. These are used to high-highlight questions for which there is the potential for fruitful dialogue with philosophers. Such questions include the criteria for deciding that a statement represents a belief, the extent to (...) which we integrate our beliefs into a coherent web, and the nature and limits of human rationality. (shrink)

How do artifacts get their functions? It is typically thought that an artifact’s function depends on its maker’s intentions. This chapter argues that this common understanding is fatally flawed. Nor can artifact function be understood in terms of current uses or capacities. Instead, it proposes that we understand artifact function on the etiological model that Ruth Millikan and others have proposed for the biological realm. This model offers a robustly normative conception of function, but it does so naturalistically by employing (...) our best scientific theories, in particular natural selection. To help make this case, it proposes “living artifacts” (organisms designed for human purposes through artificial selection) as a bridge between the artifactual and the biological realms. (shrink)

What can--and what can't--philosophy do? What are its ethical risks--and its possible rewards? How does it differ from science? In Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline, Bernard Williams addresses these questions and presents a striking vision of philosophy as fundamentally different from science in its aims and methods even though there is still in philosophy "something that counts as getting it right." Written with his distinctive combination of rigor, imagination, depth, and humanism, the book amply demonstrates why Williams was one of (...) the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century. Spanning his career from his first publication to one of his last lectures, the book's previously unpublished or uncollected essays address metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, as well as the scope and limits of philosophy itself. The essays are unified by Williams's constant concern that philosophy maintain contact with the human problems that animate it in the first place. As the book's editor, A. W. Moore, writes in his introduction, the title essay is "a kind of manifesto for Williams's conception of his own life's work." It is where he most directly asks "what philosophy can and cannot contribute to the project of making sense of things"--answering that what philosophy can best help make sense of is "being human." Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline is one of three posthumous books by Williams to be published by Princeton University Press. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument was published in the fall of 2005. The Sense of the Past: Essays in the History of Philosophy is being published shortly after the present volume. (shrink)

Rudolf Carnap is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. Born in Germany and later a US citizen, he was a founder of the philosophical movement known as Logical Empiricism. He was strongly influenced by a number of different philosophical traditions, and also by the German Youth Movement, the First World War, and radical socialism. This book places his central ideas in a broad cultural, political and intellectual context, showing how he synthesised many different (...) currents of thought to achieve a philosophical perspective that remains strikingly relevant in the twenty-first century. Its rich account of a philosopher's response to his times will appeal to all who are interested in the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This essay constitutes an attempt to probe the very idea of a saying/showing distinction of the kind that Wittgenstein advances in the Tractatus—to say what such a distinction consists in, to say what philosophical work it has to do, and to say how we might be justified in drawing such a distinction. Towards the end of the essay the discussion is related to Wittgenstein’s later work. It is argued that we can profitably see this work in such a way that (...) a saying/showing distinction arises there too. In particular, in the final sub-section of the essay, it is suggested that we can see in Wittgenstein’s later work an inducement to say what we are shown. (shrink)

In this bold and innovative new work, A.W. Moore poses the question of whether it is possible for ethical thinking to be grounded in pure reason. In order to understand and answer this question, he takes a refreshing and challenging look at Kant’s moral and religious philosophy. Identifying three Kantian Themes – morality, freedom and religion – and presenting variations on each of these themes in turn, Moore concedes that there are difficulties with the Kantian view that morality can be (...) governed by ‘pure’ reason. He does however defend a closely related view involving a notion of reason as socially and culturally conditioned. In the course of doing this, Moore considers in detail, ideas at the heart of Kant’s thought, such as the categorical imperative, free will, evil, hope, eternal life and God. He also makes creative use of the ideas in contemporary philosophy, both within the analytic tradition and outside it, such as ‘thick’ ethical concepts, forms of life and ‘becoming those that we are’. Throughout the book, a guiding precept is that to be rational is to make sense, and that nothing is of greater value to use than making sense. (shrink)

In this essay, we aim to provide an overview of the political and philosophical issues pertaining to asexuality. The first section, “What Is Asexuality?,” offers an account of asexuality. The second section, “Asexuality as a Unique Sexual Orientation,” argues that asexuality should be understood as a unique sexual orientation. The third section, “Asexuality and Oppression,” discusses the various forms of oppression facing asexual persons today. The fourth section, “The Goods of Asexuality,” articulates some goods that asexuality brings to human lives, (...) and we do this with an eye toward conceiving of asexuality as something other than a mere deficit. (shrink)

I shall argue that the central doctrines of Locke's politics have a theological basis, a doctrine of Creation similar to the Thomist one. Locke does not elaborate this doctrine; he presupposes it. It is not a hidden, esoteric element in his thought; it is there on the surface, but in a scattered and fragmentary form.I shall proceed in this fashion: First, I shall set out this doctrine of Creation and show its connexion with Locke's moral theory by way of an (...) examination of his doctrines of property and power. I shall then show that Locke extends this doctrine of Creation to human productive activity with crippling results for his political theory. (shrink)

The Human A Priori is a collection of essays by A. W. Moore, one of them previously unpublished and the rest all revised. These essays are all concerned, more or less directly, with something ineliminably anthropocentric in our systematic pursuit of a priori sense-making. Part I deals with the nature, scope, and limits of a priori sense-making in general. Parts II, III, and IV deal with what are often thought to be the three great exemplars of the systematic pursuit of (...) such sense-making: philosophy in the case of Part II, ethics in the case of Part III, and mathematics in the case of Part IV. Much of the attention throughout is devoted to the work of other philosophers: Kant and Wittgenstein feature prominently, and five of the essays take the form of reviews or critical notices of recent work in philosophy. But the interest in never purely exegetical. One of the lessons that emerges from the essays, either in opposition to the views of these other philosophers or by invocation of their views, is that we humans achieve nothing of real significance in philosophy, ethics, or mathematics except from a human point of view, and hence that all three of these pursuits can be said to betoken what may reasonably be called 'the human a priori'. (shrink)