Many philosophers who support a four-dimensionalist metaphysics of things also conceive of experience as a state of a mind having temporal extension or existing as a momentary feature of the dimension of time. This essay shows that such a strict four-dimensionalism — suggested in works by D. M. Armstrong, Mark Heller, and David Lewis — cannot be correct, since it cannot allow for the passing of time that is essential to awareness. The argument demonstrates that the positing of any temporal (...) process at all must compromise the strict four-dimensionalist view of the temporality of experience. This is not to say that the traditional endurantist view is left wholeheartedly endorsed. As I point out, this traditional view makes several questionable claims of its own that must be carefully scrutinized. Still, the criticism of the strict four-dimensionalist ontology indicates a direction to be followed in developing a successful metaphysics of experience. (shrink)

This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of (...) Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”. (shrink)

This essay argues against David Carr’s relativism by clarifying the in principle requirements appropriate to non-relative truths and showing that de facto differences of conceptual frameworks threaten none of them. Non-relative truths are not threatened by history. This defense of non-relative truth belongs to a larger defense of Husserlian “science” that shows how essences, even those “delivered” by history, have a universal “governance” and can be affirmed in nonrelative truths-as such science requires. If history also allows the other qualities of (...) Husserlian science to obtain, then, the essay concludes, such science can exist even as a “situated science.”. (shrink)

: Many philosophers interpret Edmund Husserl as relying upon his phenomenological epoché to escape contextual powers so as to recover a contextually unconditioned "constituting" consciousness. I show, however, that in both Ideas I and Cartesian Meditations Husserl relies upon the epoché for something more modest, though important: studying the immanent "reaches" of experience—experience providing, among other things, intuitive disclosures that ultimately legitimate all "science." For this study, experience is to be taken as it exists, even if contextually conditioned. The epoché (...) thus supports a study of experiential immanence—a study definitive of phenomenology—compatible with contextual conditioning. (shrink)

Between inventing the concept of a universal computer in 1936 and breaking the German Enigma code during World War II, Alan Turing, the British founder of computer science and artificial intelligence, came to Princeton University to study mathematical logic. Some of the greatest logicians in the world--including Alonzo Church, Kurt Gödel, John von Neumann, and Stephen Kleene--were at Princeton in the 1930s, and they were working on ideas that would lay the groundwork for what would become known as computer science. (...) Though less well known than his other work, Turing's 1938 Princeton PhD thesis, "Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals," which includes his notion of an oracle machine, has had a lasting influence on computer science and mathematics. This book presents a facsimile of the original typescript of the thesis along with essays by Andrew Appel and Solomon Feferman that explain its still-unfolding significance. A work of philosophy as well as mathematics, Turing's thesis envisions a practical goal--a logical system to formalize mathematical proofs so they can be checked mechanically. If every step of a theorem could be verified mechanically, the burden on intuition would be limited to the axioms. Turing's point, as Appel writes, is that "mathematical reasoning can be done, and should be done, in mechanizable formal logic." Turing's vision of "constructive systems of logic for practical use" has become reality: in the twenty-first century, automated "formal methods" are now routine. Presented here in its original form, this fascinating thesis is one of the key documents in the history of mathematics and computer science. (shrink)

What is the function of cognition? On one influential account, cognition evolved to co-ordinate behaviour with environmental change or complexity. Liberal interpretations of this view ascribe cognition to an extraordinarily broad set of biological systems—even bacteria, which modulate their activity in response to salient external cues, would seem to qualify as cognitive agents. However, equating cognition with adaptive flexibility per se glosses over important distinctions in the way biological organisms deal with environmental complexity. Drawing on contemporary advances in theoretical biology (...) and computational neuroscience, we cash these distinctions out in terms of different kinds of generative models, and the representational and uncertainty-resolving capacities they afford. This analysis leads us to propose a formal criterion for delineating cognition from other, more pervasive forms of adaptive plasticity. On this view, biological cognition is rooted in a particular kind of functional organisation; namely, that which enables the agent to detach from the present and engage in counterfactual inference. (shrink)

Detailed studies of people who have experienced the Capgras delusion (the delusion that certain other people, usually close relatives, have been replaced by impostors) have led to advances in constructing an account which can deal with the basic symptomatology, testing alternative possibilities, generating and testing non‐trivial predictions, and broadening the scope of the basic account to encompass other delusions. This paper outlines these developments. It uses them to explore implications for understanding the formation and maintenance of beliefs, and to discuss (...) basic principles of what has come to be known as cognitive neuropsychiatry. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 9.1 (2002) 55-59 [Access article in PDF] One Stage Is Not Enough Andrew W. Young and Karel W. de Pauw Keywords: delusions, Cotard delusion, Capgras delusion, cognitive neuropsychiatry. WE WELCOME THE OPPORTUNITY to offer our reflections on Philip Gerrans' interesting paper. Our opinion is that on fundamental issues we agree quite a bit—but there are clear differences when it comes to details.The most basic (...) issue concerns the nature of the enterprise. Like Gerrans, we think that it is possible to create testable accounts of the formation and maintenance of what would otherwise seem bizarre and inexplicable delusions, and that these accounts should be grounded in theoretical models of factors that underpin our everyday perception and reasoning. This general approach certainly forms part of what has been called cognitive neuropsychiatry. However, we disagree with Gerrans in that we see cognitive neuropsychiatry as an attempt to draw on the underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychology, rather than (as Gerrans implies) its current methods. The underlying logic of cognitive neuropsychological approaches has been to try to understand the effects of brain injury in terms of disruption of different components of theoretical models of normal abilities. In this approach, a model of normal performance is tested by its ability to account for the effects of brain injury. Where the model of normal performance also provides a convincing account of brain injury it is retained, and when it fails to account for effects of brain injury, it is revised or abandoned. In cognitive neuropsychiatry, the key theoretical move has been to argue that an adequate model of normal performance should be able to account for any disordered pattern (Ellis and Young 1990). The same logic of seeking to explain disordered performance by reference to models of normal function is then attempted, but for disorders that would usually fall within the province of psychiatry.In our opinion, however, cognitive neuropsychiatry will not simply involve importing the methods of cognitive neuropsychology into the new domain; they will need to be developed and adapted to fit the new agenda (Young 2000).In cognitive neuropsychology, progress has often come from the careful investigation of people with stable, selective deficits of fundamental cognitive functions involved in sensory analysis, memory, and verbal or motor output. In contrast, delusional beliefs can be relatively unstable; often they are only held for a few weeks or even days. When the delusions change, patients may modify or abandon them as suddenly as they seemed to form them, or they may give them up much more slowly and reluctantly. At the very least, this creates difficulties in the timing of investigations and in interpreting the relation of deficits and symptoms, which may be recorded on separate dates. These methodological problems [End Page 55] are exacerbated by the fact that deficits linked to complex abnormal experiences such as delusions may be multifaceted and diffuse, even when the delusions themselves have a specific content or theme. Such complications do not invalidate cognitive neuropsychiatry, but they do mean it will need to develop its own methods for dealing with them and making appropriate inferences.One of the key complexities that has surfaced already involves the idea that delusional beliefs might reflect the interaction of two or more contributory factors. Gerrans discusses a particular variant of this idea, which had been suggested by Young and Leafhead (1996) as an approach to understanding the Cotard delusion: The Cotard delusion represents a depressed person's attempt to account for abnormal perceptual experiences. It follows that the delusion is based on an unfortunate interaction between different contributory factors. One set of factors creates the abnormal perceptual experiences, which are characterised by lack of emotional responses and feelings of emptiness, depersonalisation and derealisation. The other factors result in a misinterpretation of these perceptual changes, in which the patients' depressed moods lead them correctly to attribute the changes to themselves, but to exaggerate their consequences. (Young and Leafhead, 1996, 166) Gerrans describes this as a two-stage account, but argues that a one-stage account based only on abnormal perceptual... (shrink)

Foucault on Politics, Society and War interrogates Foucault's controversial genealogy of modern biopolitics. By insisting on 'life' as the key referent of power in the modern age, Foucault argues that politics grounds society in war, specifically race war, in ways that come to threaten the very human existence it is pledged to promote. These essays situate Foucault's arguments, clarify the correlation of sovereign- and bio-power and examine the relation of bios, nomos and race in relation to modern war.

This article aims to supplement our understanding of later developments within European universities, that is, Scholastic thought, by attending to how certain pre-Scholastics, namely, Peter Abelard and other twelfth-century philosophers, thought about artifacts and social constructions more generally. It focuses on the treatment of artifacts that can be cobbled together out of Abelard’s Dialectica. The article argues that Abelard attempts to sharply distinguish the world of things from the world of human-made objects. This is most apparent in his treatment of (...) creation and human acts of making. Yet there are places in his thought where we see some hesitancy. Many of Abelard’s peers seem to have drawn on the reasons why Abelard hesitates, and they blur the line between human-made objects such as houses and substances such as rocks and humans. Others seem to go further than Abelard—perhaps inspired by some of the thoughts that Abelard also entertains about social constructions such as days and speeches—and assert that even houses are merely convenient fictions. (shrink)

Anne Conway (1631–1679) is sometimes said to be a Monist. I present several kinds of Monism and then investigate whether any of these adequately capture Conway’s theory of substance and individuals. I outline Conway’s reasons for postulating that there are three irreducibly distinct kinds of essence or substance, which by itself demonstrates that she is not an unrestricted Token Monist. I then examine her various remarks about created substance, which she sometimes refers to as “a creature” and other times as (...) “creatures.” Here I argue that, while the texts are ambiguous, there are compelling reasons—especially given her views about salvation and justice—to believe that she is merely a Type Monist at the level of created substances. I then examine two theses that result from her relativized Type Monism. First, there are no substantial barriers between, say, horses and humans, and thus all created things can convert into one another as they improve or regress morally. Second, there is no substantial difference between minds and bodies. I suggest that Conway’s arguments against Descartes’ Type Pluralism could easily be included as part of a more inclusive philosophy syllabus. (shrink)

In Act 1 scene iv of Macbeth, Duncan reflects that: 'There's no art to find the mind's construction in the face'. In contrast, the claim that Andy Young sets out in this book is that we are now developing a science of face perception which can indeed shed light on certain aspects of mentallife. Face and Mind consists of a series of seminal research and review papers on face perception published by the author and his colleagues over the last 12 (...) years. A comprehensive introductory chapter, written especially for this volume, serves to draw together the various themes explored in thedifferent contributions. The book examines the question of how faces are special, in terms of their social, biological, and theoretical roles. In particular, Face and Mind seeks to determine what our understanding of the face can tell us about the human brain. It discusses the evidence for anevolved neural substrate for face perception, and the question of whether we are innately predisposed to recognise faces, to find them attractive, and to decode the many social signals they give us. The ability of the human brain to process and remember the many different faces that we see andsubsequently recall is analysed. Young includes detailed studies of the types of impairment to face perception which can follow brain injury or psychiatric illness, and uses them to address these questions, as well as other issues of high intrinsic and interdisciplinary interest. These include theextent to which our mental lives result from the operation of discrete components devoted to different purposes, the differences between conscious and non-conscious processes, and how we use evidence to support our beliefs about the world. Because of the huge variety of social signals read from theface, it can offer unique theoretical and philosophical insights into these questions. This fascinating book will be of interest not only to psychologists and neuropsychologists working in the field of visual perception, but to cognitive scientists generally. It provides an excellent summary ofthe most important theorietical and empirical work done on face perception in recent years, and as such will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and post-graduate students in psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Pietraszewski exemplifies the need for computational theory using group conflict; I complement this with an example of group cooperation. He criticizes past theories for having black boxes; I suggest his theory also has a black box – the concept of costs. He divides what mentally constitutes a group from mere ancillary attributes; I hazard that some of these attributes are essential.