Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

Writing from a scientifically and philosophically informed perspective, the authors provide a critical overview of the conceptual difficulties encountered in many current neuroscientific and psychological theories.

The book "Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience" is an engaging criticism of cognitive neuroscience from the perspective of a Wittgensteinian philosophy of ordinary language. The authors' main claim is that assertions like "the brain sees" and "the left hemisphere thinks" are integral to cognitive neuroscience but that they are meaningless because they commit the mereological fallacy—ascribing to parts of humans, properties that make sense to predicate only of whole humans. The authors claim that this fallacy is at the heart of Cartesian (...) dualism, implying that current cognitive neuroscientists are Cartesian dualists. Against this claim, we argue that the fallacy cannot be committed within Cartesian dualism either, for this doctrine does not allow for an intelligible way of asserting that a soul is part of a human being. Also, the authors' Aristotelian essentialistic outlook is at odds with their Wittgensteinian stance, and we were unconvinced by their case against explanatory reductionism. Finally, although their Wittgensteinian stance is congenial with radical behaviorism, their separation between philosophy and science seems less so because it is based on a view of philosophy as a priori. The authors' emphasis on the a priori, however, does not necessarily commit them to rationalism if it is restricted to conceptual or analytical truths. (shrink)

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author (...) of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

Collection of essays around the work of H.L.A. Hart.

... 243-) INTRODUCTION §§243- constitute the eighth 'chapter' of the book. Its point of departure is a natural query with respect to the conclusion of the ...

This major study examines the most fundamental categories in terms of which we conceive of ourselves, critically surveying the concepts of substance, causation, agency, teleology, rationality, mind, body and person, and elaborating the conceptual fields in which they are embedded. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad (...) categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

This major new study by one of the most penetrating and persistent critics of philosophical and scientific orthodoxy, returns to Aristotle in order to examine the salient categories in terms of which we think about ourselves and our nature, and the distinctive forms of explanation we invoke to render ourselves intelligible to ourselves. The culmination of 40 years of thought on the philosophy of mind and the nature of the mankind Written by one of the world’s leading philosophers, the co-author (...) of the monumental 4 volume _Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations_ Uses broad categories, such as substance, causation, agency and power to examine how we think about ourselves and our nature Platonic and Aristotelian conceptions of human nature are sketched and contrasted Individual chapters clarify and provide an historical overview of a specific concept, then link the concept to ideas contained in other chapters. (shrink)

Throughout much of human history most people conceived of death as a transitional event. An alternative, secular, conception of death is as the permanent cessation of all life‐sustaining biological functions. The death of the physical organism is the death of the person or human being. However death be conceived, human beings are the only creatures that are aware of their mortality. The death penalty is often thought to be the most severe punishment of all, far worse than life imprisonment. Attitudes (...) towards death vary according to the acceptance or rejection of belief in an afterlife. Death in old age is generally held to be less deplorable than death in one's prime. Premature death, however, is commonly deemed to be tragic, but not because merely being alive is a good of one kind or another, let alone good in itself. Lucretius exaggerated the symmetry between prenatal and post‐ mortem events. (shrink)

In ‘Wittgenstein on Language and Rules’, Professor N. Malcolm took us to task for misinterpreting Wittgenstein's arguments on the relationship between the concept of following a rule and the concept of community agreement on what counts as following a given rule. Not that we denied that there are any grammatical connections between these concepts. On the contrary, we emphasized that a rule and an act in accord with it make contact in language. Moreover we argued that agreement in judgments and (...) in definitions is indeed necessary for a shared language. But we denied that the concept of a language is so tightly interwoven with the concept of a community of speakers as to preclude its applicabilty to someone whose use of signs is not shared by others. Malcolm holds that ‘This is an unwitting reduction of Wittgenstein's originality. That human agreement is necessary for “shared” language is not so striking a thought as that it is essential for language simpliciter .’ Though less striking, we believe that it has the merit of being a true thought. We shall once more try to show both that it is correct, and that it is a correct account of Wittgenstein's arguments. (shrink)

This fourth and final volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations covers pp 428-693 of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis.

Global fatalism is an attitude towards life, an attitude of resignation and acceptance of what happens. Global fatalism in the form of predestinarianism is typically, but not exclusively, associated with monotheism rather than with polytheism, and in particular with Christianity and Islam. An individual form of fatalism consists in the belief that specific incidents in a person's life are preordained. Local fatalism appears to be common to many different cultures and societies. Individual fatalism is associated with other important events in (...) human life, such as meeting the person with whom one is destined to fall in love. The ubiquity of the various forms of individual fatalism suggests that they have a deep appeal to human sentiment. Descartes's successors, lumbered with dualism but rejecting causal interaction, struggled to preserve human freedom while acknowledging nomological determinism. Global nomological determinism is a picture, a preconception of the nature of change in all its forms. (shrink)

Happiness has been at the centre of philosophical reflection ever since Plato and Aristotle. Epicureans thought of happiness as the satisfaction of one's minimal needs and the absence of further desires. True happiness may be the love of another, or successful and virtuous public service recognized by society, or successful engagement in a favoured activity. Youthful happiness involves intensity of feeling, engagement with the passing moment, the discovery of first love and of sexuality, and the joys of dedication to a (...) beloved. The different forms of human engagement involve different kinds of happiness. Physical normality and good health are patently preconditions of happiness inasmuch as physical abnormalities and persistent diseases are barriers to leading a healthy and normal human life. A person's social conditions are highly relevant to the possibility of happiness. Happiness can be marred or shattered by a multitude of accidents of fate and by human malice, political upheavals, and economic disasters. (shrink)

A life devoid of meaning is a life without happiness. But one may find meaning in one's life and in one's activities without being happy. Like pleasure and happiness, goodness and beauty, the meaningfulness one may find in one's life comes in degrees. Many achievements may mean something to a person without being of sufficient significance to lend meaning to their life, such as winning in some competitive activity or passing an important examination. Forms of illusory meaning, that is meaning (...) that rests on false or misconceived beliefs, can impart meaning to a person's life and make it genuinely meaningful, as long as it involves neither evil doing nor evil beliefs. The human condition as language‐using, self‐conscious social animals with limited capacities for good and evil, with highly competitive and killer instincts is anything but ludicrous, farcical, silly, or ridiculous. (shrink)

The key to a perspicuous overview of axiology is the realization that all values arise from life. This chapter provides a brief overview of von Wright's categories, or ‘varieties’, of goodness. Medical goodness is the most elemental variety of natural value and disvalue. Any language‐using creature that has the skills to make and to use tools, instruments, and other artefacts is going to need the concepts of artefactual goodness and its subcategory of instrumental goodness. Morality is essentially a social phenomenon (...) – it is an aspect of the form of life of a community. In evolved societies, it overlaps with and fades into law, into social mores or small morals, and into individual critical morality. Virtue, or moral goodness, as well as the moral virtues, which are moral character traits, are attributes of social beings who are, and who identify themselves as being, members of a community, people, or nation. (shrink)

Von Wright argued that moral goodness is a derivative form of goodness. He proceeded to give an account of the moral goodness of an act, in terms of the good of man. Philosophical anthropology must render the phenomenon of morality intelligible. This chapter suggests that the roots of moral value lie in human sympathy, in maternal love, in intuitive recognition of the humanity of others, and in the nature of loving friendship. The sentiment of sympathy is virtually ubiquitous, but sympathetic (...) propensities vary from person to person, being partly a function of their imagination. Sympathy is an emotional tap‐root of moral reasons and a presupposition of moral reasoning. Kant's argument in support of a requirement of equal formal respect for human beings as moral agents is problematic. The explicit emergence of the idea of formal respect is one of the great advances in our evolving understanding of human nature and our conception of ourselves. (shrink)

Entertainments and celebrations are meant to give audiences and participants pleasure. Pleasure and enjoyment are an integral part of flourishing human life, and the desire for pleasure and enjoyment is a distinctive aspect of human nature. Psychological hedonism is a descriptive doctrine concerned with giving an account of actual human motivation. Ethical hedonism is a prescriptive doctrine that advances the view that human beings ought to pursue pleasure and avoid pain, that prospective pleasure and pain are severally the only good (...) reasons for action. ‘Pleasure’, ‘enjoyment’, and ‘being pleased’ are three graces that stand at the intersection of psychology, axiology, and practical reasoning. The relation between pleasure and awareness or consciousness of pleasure is subtle and unlike the corresponding relation to having a pain. To live the life of a practical hedonist is to live a life guided by the pursuit of pleasure. (shrink)

The powers of intellect and will, possession of which is constitutive of having a mind, are not powers of the mind, but of the being that has a mind. The Platonic metaphysical conception of the soul is of great interest irrespective of its informing both ancient and Renaissance neo‐Platonist ideas about the soul and its immortality, and, via Augustine, ultimately moulding the misconceived Cartesian conception of the soul. The dividing line between the soul and the flesh is quite different from (...) that between the mind and the body. The soul is associated with aesthetic sensibility and with the appreciation of beauty and pathos, with which conscience has no connection. The evil‐doer commonly aims, explicitly or implicitly, to destroy the moral order of humanity and the moral restraints on behaviour that are constitutive of moral beings. Evil‐doers have to suppress the voice of conscience. (shrink)

Some of human evil is a function of the historical stage of society. The evils and wickednesses of bureaucracy are as old as well‐developed bureaucratic hierarchies. Evil‐doers have character traits that may form recognizable patterns with explanatory weight. Evil‐doers produce reasons for their evil‐doing and offer justifications for their evil deeds. Psychological experiments may indeed establish important correlations and statistical probabilities that may be crucial for the formation of intelligent social policy. The greatest students of the place of evil in (...) human life and of the subjective psychology of evil in a complex social setting are great novelists, dramatists, and poets. From the late eighteenth century onwards ideological beliefs played a major role in stimulating evil, not for the greater glory of God but for the future glory of man. The first major social movement that bent an ideology to wholly evil policies were the Jacobins during the French Revolution. (shrink)

The most common form of determinism in the first quarter of the twenty‐first century is neuroscientific determinism. Global neuroscientific determinism is a blank cheque on a non‐existent bank. Neuroscientists have discovered the character of the neural activity in the premotor cortex immediately antecedent to movement, and the nature of the neural impulses from the brain to the muscles in the relevant limb that will make them severally contract or relax. Being rational, being free, and being responsible for our actions and (...) omissions are essential species characteristics of mankind. Various forms of responsibility have been distinguished by philosophers and lawyers: causal responsibility, capacity responsibility, act responsibility, liability responsibility, role responsibility, and responsibility as a character trait. At the heart of the very idea of responsibility lies the notion of a normal rational human agent with normal human faculties. (shrink)

Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil. Natural evils are simply natural catastrophes that destroy human life, property, crops, and means of livelihood such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, floods, and droughts. Some people may never recover from such evils and be incapable of leading a normal human life. The evil of (...) evil‐doers can therefore be explained away by showing that they themselves are victims. The existence of human evil is explained by reference to the wickedness of those who choose of their own will to do evil. The idea that evil is privative, that is, it consists in the absence of good, stripped of its theological trappings, is unconvincing. (shrink)

Modern utilitarianism has its roots in the eighteenth century, its philosophical blossom in the works of Bentham and the Mills, and its practical fruit in the works of nineteenth‐century radical legal and political utilitarian reformers. Utilitarians held that pleasure, and hence too happiness, are sensations. Human beings are in effect mere pleasure or happiness receptacles or desire‐satisfying mechanisms. The idea of a science of happiness appealed to some economists and social theorists who rightly felt increasingly ill at ease about measuring (...) national welfare and progress in terms of growth in gross national product. The goal of profit maximization dominated economic science. One stimulus for the development of a putative science of happiness was dissatisfaction with economists’ attempts to evaluate the success of an economic system and the progress of a society by measuring gross national product. In a happy society alienation is minimal, and freedom and dignity are respected and preserved. (shrink)

Incorporating significant editorial changes from earlier editions, the fourth edition of Ludwig Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ is the definitive _en face_ German-English version of the most important work of 20th-century philosophy The extensively revised English translation incorporates many hundreds of changes to Anscombe’s original translation Footnoted remarks in the earlier editions have now been relocated in the text What was previously referred to as ‘Part 2’ is now republished as _Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment_, and all the remarks in it (...) are numbered for ease of reference New detailed editorial endnotes explain decisions of translators and identify references and allusions in Wittgenstein's original text Now features new essays on the history of the _Philosophical Investigations_, and the problems of translating Wittgenstein’s text. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Tractatus and rules of logical syntax From logical syntax to philosophical grammar Rules and rule‐formulations Philosophy and grammar The scope of grammar Some morals.

This volume collects P. M. S. Hacker's papers on Wittgenstein and related themes written over the last decade. Hacker provides comparative studies of a range of topics--including Wittgenstein's philosophy of psychology, conception of grammar, and treatment of intentionality--and defends his own Wittgensteinian conception of philosophy.

Law, Morality and Society Essays in Honour of H.L.A Hart.

The concept of consciousness has been the source of much philosophical, cognitive scientific and neuroscientific discussion for the past two decades. Many scientists, as well as philosophers, argue that at the moment we are almost completely in the dark about the nature of consciousness. Stuart Sutherland, in a much quoted remark, wrote that.

This chapter contains section titled: The Emergence of the Philosophers' Self The Illusion of the Philosophers' Self The Body The Relationship Between Human Beings and Their Bodies.

Throughout its history philosophy has been thought to be a member of a community of intellectual disciplines united by their common pursuit of knowledge. It has sometimes been thought to be the queen of the sciences, at other times merely their under-labourer. But irrespective of its social status, it was held to be a participant in the quest for knowledge – a cognitive discipline.

This paper is an examination of Donald Davidson's writings on the idea of a conceptual scheme--and idea which he famously rejects. O relevance in this is the notion of linguistic relativity and the famous Whorf-Sapir thesis.

This fourth and final volume of the monumental commentary on Wittgenstein's _Philosophical Investigations_ covers pp 428-693 of the book. Like the previous volumes, it consists of philosophical essays and exegesis.