For native English readers, masked presentations of past-tense verb primes produce faster lexical decision latencies to their present-tense targets than orthographically related or unrelated primes. This facilitation observed with morphologically related prime-target pairs is generally taken as evidence for strong connections based on morphological relationships in the L1 lexicon. It is unclear, however, if similar, morphologically based, connections develop in non-native lexicons. Several earlier studies with L2 English readers have reported mixed results. The present experiments examine whether past-tense verb primes (...) significantly facilitate target lexical decisions for Japanese-English bilinguals beyond any facilitation provided by prime-target orthographic similarity. Overall, past-tense verb primes facilitated lexical decisions to their present-tense targets relative to both orthographically related and unrelated primes. Replicating previous masked priming experiments with L2 readers, orthographically related primes also facilitated target recognition relative to unrelated primes, confirming that orthographic similarity facilitates L2 target recognition. The additional facilitation from past-tense verb primes beyond that provided by orthographic primes suggests that, in the L2 English lexicon, connections based on morphological relationships develop in a way that is similar to how they develop in the L1 English lexicon even though the connections and processing of lower level, lexical/orthographic information may differ. Further analyses involving L2 proficiency revealed that as L2 proficiency increased, orthographic facilitation was reduced, indicating that there is a decrease in the fuzziness in orthographic representations in the L2 lexicon with increased proficiency. (shrink)

Why is aesthetics important to Wittgenstein? What, according to him, is the function of the aesthetic? My answer consists of three parts: first, I argue that Wittgenstein finds himself in an aporia of normative consciousness – that is to say, a problem with regard to our awareness of the world in terms of its relation to a norm. Second, I argue that the function of Wittgenstein’s aesthetic writings is to deal with this aporia. Third, through a comparison with Friedrich Schlegel’s (...) writings on allegory, I try to show that the way in which Wittgenstein resolves the aporia renders him a Romanticist philosopher. The point of an aesthetic interaction, for Wittgenstein, is that it can render clear what cannot be described without running against the walls of our cage: the absolute. Through aesthetic interactions we are able to (indirectly) access a ground for norms by which we experience ourselves as unconditionally bound. (shrink)

Art-science, as its name suggests, combines art with science. The idea of combining art and science raises the question whether the outcome, art-scientific works, can succeed against a standard properly belonging to them. In other words: can there be such a thing as an art-scientific work, or do such works merely belong to either art or science while superficially seeming to belong to the other sphere as well? Surprisingly perhaps, these concerns overlap with a chief point of contention as regards (...) Adorno’s mature thinking, in particular his Aesthetic Theory ([1970] 2002): whether or not it is coherent to believe that knowledge can have an aesthetic form. This essay is motivated by the thought that Adorno’s reflections are useful for understanding contemporary art as well, and the burgeoning paradigm of art-science represents a welcome occasion to ask the reverse question: can art become theoretical? The first aim of this essay is, accordingly, to consider how Adorno’s negative dialectic of philosophy and art might illuminate the field of art-science, how its works might express sui generis truths. In turn, an examination of how the aestheticisation theme in Adorno might be appropriated for the business of art-science critique, might tell us something about the relationship between artistic content and philosophical interpretation, beauty and truth, in Adorno. (shrink)

Escapism as artistic politics: propaganda in Black Panther (2018) Escapism is omnipresent in contemporary mass art, even though it has a bad reputation. This article traces that reputation back to a pragmatist conviction that art should give expression to experiences, and morals, from everyday practical life. Through a philosophical conversation with two pragmatist aestheticians, W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul C. Taylor, and an art-critical discussion of an escapist film, Black Panther (2018), I provide a pragmatist defence of the use of (...) escapism as political-aesthetic motif. Works that set themselves the task of communicating standards of radical equality (among which: standards of racial equality applicable to white supremacist societies), cannot appropriately express what they want since they necessarily fail to appropriately address their audience. The only utopian course that remains is to react negatively to, by trying to escape, the norms that a present audience necessarily imports from white supremacist society. (shrink)

Becoming autonomous is a process of coming to realise oneself in shared, socio-historical practices. There can be no self before these practices, but their existence is no guarantee for selfhood either: one can be heteronomous through one's successful participation in various practices if that participation is not a genuine expression of one's own personhood. This means that the sheer capability to participate in the practices in which one finds oneself is not sufficient for personal autonomy. Something else is required before (...) the self is realised in shared, socio-historical practices. How can this be, if as we said, there can be no self before these practices? By what principle do we decide whether a particular expression of selfhood in a socio-historical practice is genuine? If there can only be a self within socio-historical practices, it stands to reason that we can find it only there. If, however, one's participation cannot be considered in advance as a genuine expression of oneself, what we may expect to find is perhaps only a fragment, a hint of autonomy always already entangled in heteronomous elements, or things that would be different if one could have so chosen. To come to an understanding of oneself, then, will require more than just a handle on one's existence in various practices. It will require the capacity to see one's participation in this socio-historically determined practice as a fragment of a whole, a particular instance of something more general which points beyond our present participation in these particular, socio-historically determined practices towards a horizon of possibility that recedes beyond our grasp whenever we try to make definitive sense out of a possibility for agency. (shrink)

Hume's Reception in Early America: Expanded Edition brings together the original American responses to one of Britain's greatest men of letters, David Hume. Now available as a single volume paperback, this new edition includes updated further readings suggestions and dozens of additional primary sources gathered together in a completely new concluding section. From complete pamphlets and booklets, to poems, reviews, and letters, to extracts from newspapers, religious magazines and literary and political journals, this book's contents come from a wide variety (...) of sources published in colonial America and the early United States between 1758 and 1850. As well as classics by Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, it contains scores of unknown and hard-to-locate items, many of which have not been reprinted since their original publication. These responses are divided into four parts covering Hume's Essays; his Philosophical Writings; his History of England; and his Character and Death. Each of those parts has a separate introductory essay, and every selection is introduced by a short headnote that sets the piece in its historical context and provides bibliographical references. Packed with new insights into Hume and American thought and culture, Hume's Reception in Early America reveals the relevance and impact of Hume on American political, philosophical, historical, religious, and aesthetic debates. (shrink)

Biological evolution is a complex blend of ever changing structural stability, variability and emergence of new phe- notypes, niches, ecosystems. We wish to argue that the evo- lution of life marks the end of a physics world view of law entailed dynamics. Our considerations depend upon dis- cussing the variability of the very ”contexts of life”: the in- teractions between organisms, biological niches and ecosys- tems. These are ever changing, intrinsically indeterminate and even unprestatable: we do not know ahead of (...) time the ”niches” which constitute the boundary conditions on selec- tion. More generally, by the mathematical unprestatability of the ”phase space”, no laws of mo- tion can be formulated for evolution. We call this radical emergence, from life to life. The purpose of this paper is the integration of variation and diversity in a sound concep- tual frame and situate unpredictability at a novel theoretical level, that of the very phase space. Our argument will be carried on in close comparisons with physics and the mathematical constructions of phase spaces in that discipline. The role of symmetries as invariant preserving transformations will allow us to under- stand the nature of physical phase spaces and to stress the differences required for a sound biological theoretizing. In this frame, we discuss the novel notion of ”enablement”. Life lives in a web of enablement and radical emergence. This will restrict causal analyses to differential cases. Mutations or other causal differ- ences will allow us to stress that ”non conservation princi- ples” are at the core of evolution, in contrast to physical dynamics, largely based on conservation principles as sym- metries. Critical transitions, the main locus of symmetry changes in physics, will be discussed, and lead to ”extended criticality” as a conceptual frame for a better understanding of the living state of matter. (shrink)

This is a welcome reprint of a book that continues to grow in importance.

This entirely new work guides the reader through the most basic systems of modal propositional logic up to systems of modal predicate with identity, dealing with both technical developments and discussing philosophical applications.

Throughout his career, Schelling assigns knowledge of the absolute first principle of philosophy to intellectual intuition. Schelling's doctrine of intellectual intuition raises two important questions for interpreters. First, given that his doctrine undergoes several changes before and after his identity philosophy, to what extent can he be said to “hold onto” the same “sense” of it by the 1830s, as he claims? Second, given that his doctrine of intellectual intuition restricts absolute idealism to what he calls a “science of reason”, (...) which he says cannot prove the absolute’s existence, what other doctrine does he require in order to prove this? I will answer these questions by tracing the shifts in Schelling’s doctrine of intellectual intuition from the 1790s to the 1830s and drawing out its evolving methodological role within his science of intelligibility. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This paper aims to show that Godel's ontological argument can be parodied in much the same kind of way in which Gaunilo parodied Anselm's Proslogion argument. The parody in this paper fails; there is a patch provided in "Reply to Gettings" (Analysis 60, 4, 2000, 363-7).

This paper is a critical examination of Stephen Neale's *The Philosophical Significance of Godel's slingshot*. I am sceptical of the philosophical significance of Godel’s Slingshot (and of Slingshot arguments in general). In particular, I do not believe that Godel’s Slingshot has any interesting and important philosophical consequences for theories of facts or for referential treatments of definite descriptions. More generally, I do not believe that any Slingshot arguments have interesting and important philosophical consequences for theories of facts or for referential (...) treatments of definite descriptions. Friends of facts and referential treatments of definite descriptions can, and should, proceed with the construction of their theories, blithely ignoring the many Slingshots which now litter the landscape. (Of course, there may be other considerations which should give such theorists pause -- but those are other considerations.). (shrink)

This article presents the results of a qualitative study on the ethical aspects of inclusion practice for radiotherapy patients taking part in clinical research. The study focused on the standards and values of this process. Patients and physicians were interviewed about their views and experiences. Analysis of these interviews showed that candidate research participants need better protection from unwanted factors that could influence their choice about participation. Researchers need proper education about regulation, codes and directives in the field of research (...) ethics, and they should be aware of the underlying ethical concepts of these regulations. A sound institutional ethics policy is necessary in order to guide medical staff in decisions about the inclusion of patients in trials. (shrink)