And yet, as one advances further in the present edition, one realizes that in several respects its format fits Condillac's thought surprisingly well, particularly his rigorous, intransigent rationalism and his strong sense of the structure of thought. Condillac's starting point is in Locke's empiricism and in a determined anti-metaphysical and anti-systematic conviction; he set out to go beyond even Locke's tabula rasa sensationalism. Not only should the entire content of our mind be traced back to sense impressions which had been (...) received from objects outside of us or by inner impressions, but even the faculties and acts of the mind which transform these data into ideas should be explained as the effect of characteristics that are inherent in sensations. This was the thesis and the intent. But as Condillac's philosophy developed, the constructive, Cartesian forces of his mind, his almost passionate demand for precision, mathematical cogency and radical analysis became more and more prevalent. Already the subtitle of the 1746 edition of the Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines announces the Cartesian heritage or parentage; the subtitle reads: "ouvrage où l'on réduit à un seul principe tout ce qui concerne l'entendement.". (shrink)

- La bibliographie de l'auteur - Les protagonistes du dialogue de Diderot, A et B, discutent du Voyage autour du monde du navigateur français Louis Antoine de Bougainville récemment paru (en 1771). B propose de parcourir un prétendu Supplément qui en remet en question certaines soi-disant évidences énoncées par Bougainville. Deux passages de ce supplément sont enchâssés dans la discussion: Les adieux du vieillard, et le long Entretien de l'aumônier et d'Orou.

Although the essays in this book vary a good deal in quality, they all distort the eighteenth century to some extent by concentrating on its "modernity," about the scope of which, to increase the confusion, none of the authors is very explicit. One essay treats the emergence of scientific thought quite superficially; another presents Jacobi as an anti-type of Goethe and a fore-runner of existentialism. Herbert Dieckmann argues against the common "from classic to romantic" view of eighteenth-century aesthetic (...) history. Ernest Mossner characterizes "the enlightenment of David Hume," seeing him as a liberator of the mind from its various idols and reiterating his view that Hume was only a "mitigated sceptic." Dietrich Ritschl emphasizes Semler's contribution to the historical study of the Bible; his essay also contains, but only implicitly, some warnings for today's aggiornamento theologians.—W. B. K. (shrink)

The author's primary aim is to help readers discover what is distinctive in Confucius & to learn what he can teach us.

Contends that Freud's theory of civilization is substantially sociological, and examines the philosophical and sociological implications of key Freudian ...

The Mental and the Physical was first published in 1967. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Professor Feigl's essay "The 'Mental' and the 'Physical'" has provoked a great deal of comment, criticism, and discussion since it first appeared as a part of the content of Volume II of the Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science about ten years ago. Now Professor (...) Feigl takes account of the critical discussions and presents his own comments with respect to the most important points raised in the criticisms. The essay itself is presented here in full, along with the postscript. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science has called the essay "a 'super-colossal' survey of the mind-body problem." In its review of the earlier book containing the essay, Thought said: "This essay deserves careful reading by every philosopher concerned with genuine philosophical dialogue.". (shrink)

Phenomenological Psychology in Phenomenological Philosophy [i] Introductory Remarks The chief purpose of the present chapter is to serve as a reminder. ...

Research on facial emotion expression has mostly focused on emotion recognition, assuming that a small number of discrete emotions is elicited and expressed via prototypical facial muscle configurations as captured in still photographs. These are expected to be recognized by observers, presumably via template matching. In contrast, appraisal theories of emotion propose a more dynamic approach, suggesting that specific elements of facial expressions are directly produced by the result of certain appraisals and predicting the facial patterns to be expected for (...) certain appraisal configurations. This approach has recently been extended to emotion perception, claiming that observers first infer individual appraisals and only then make categorical emotion judgments based on the estimated appraisal patterns, using semantic inference rules. Here we report two related studies to empirically investigate the facial action unit configurations that are used by actors to convey specific emotions in short affect bursts and to examine to what extent observers can infer a person’s emotions from the predicted facial expression configurations. The results show that 1) professional actors use many of the predicted facial action unit patterns to enact systematically specified appraisal outcomes in a realistic scenario setting, and 2) naïve observers infer the respective emotions based on highly similar facial movement configurations with a degree of accuracy comparable to earlier research findings. Based on estimates of underlying appraisal criteria for the different emotions we conclude that the patterns of facial action units identified in this research correspond largely to prior predictions and encourage further research on appraisal-driven expression and inference. (shrink)