In his discussion of conversion experience, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James draws attention to a variety of experience which has not been much investigated in the philosophy of religion literature, but which seems to be of some importance religiously—namely, an experience which consists in a re-vivification of the sensory world as a whole. In this paper, I develop four accounts of the nature of this kind of experience, and I show how the experience can inform our conception (...) of the spiritual life, considered as a world-directed mode of experience and practice. (shrink)

IntroductionEthical intuitionists have never known quite what to make of the emotions. Generally speaking, these philosophers fall into two camps: rational intuitionists and moral sense theorists. And by my lights, neither camp has been able to tell a convincing story about the exact role and significance of emotion in moral judgment. Rational intuitionists are for the most part too dismissive of the emotions, either regarding emotions as little more than distractions to moral judgment,Samuel Clarke, for instance, after naming our “faculties (...) of reason and will, whereby [we] are enabled to distinguish good from evil,” laments that these faculties are sometimes “imposed upon and deceived in matters of good and evil, right and wrong… by absurd passions and corrupt or partial affections” (A Discourse Concerning the Being and Attributes of God, the Obligations of Natural Religion, and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation (Glasgow: Richard Griffin and Co., 1823), pp. 166-167). (shrink)

It is sometimes claimed that we perceive people’s mental states in their expressive features. This paper clarifies the claim by contrasting two possible readings, depending on whether expression is conceived relationally or non-relationally. A crucial difference between both readings is that only a non-relational conception of expression ensures direct access to other minds. The paper offers an argument for a non-relational conception of expression, and therefore for the view that we directly perceive people’s mental states in their expressive features.

I distinguish three kinds of other minds problems—conceptual, epistemological and empirical. I argue that while Merleau-Ponty believes embodiment helps with tackling the conceptual and epistemological problems, he suggests that it is of no clear use in solving the empirical problem. I sketch some considerations that could lend support to Merleau-Ponty’s claims about the conceptual and epistemological problems, without claiming that these are conclusive. I then proceed to argue that Merleau-Ponty’s take on the empirical problem is essentially correct.

Much recent work on empathy in philosophy of mind and cognitive science has been guided by the assumption that minds are composed of intracranial phenomena, perceptually inaccessible and thus unobservable to everyone but their owners. I challenge this claim. I defend the view that at least some mental states and processes—or at least some parts of some mental states and processes—are at times visible, capable of being directly perceived by others. I further argue that, despite its initial implausibility, this view (...) receives robust support from several strands of empirical research. (shrink)

We are all familiar with the fact that moods change. But, what is the significance of this familiar fact? Is change merely a factual characteristic of moods or can it also offer us a lens for gaining a deeper understanding of mood’s essence?. The essay’s starting point is Heidegger’s treatment of moods and their manner of changing. Heidegger, I show, is interested in our ordinary shifts in mood as indicators of a fundamental existential structure that underlies the specificity of any (...) particular mood. Yet, is the changing of moods only a means to reveal the inherent depth – the “always already”-- of our givenness to moods, or is it a dimension significant onto itself? Moving beyond Heidegger, I thus explain why change should be understood as the grounding condition of our being-in-a mood, and consequently, what it means to embrace the relationality and intrinsic plurality - the being singular-plural -- of a subjectivity of changing moods. In doing so, I am concerned with the implications that such an analysis carries for the ethical question regarding the freedom and responsibility we have in and over our moods. (shrink)

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider whether those solutions (...) extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys. (shrink)

Scepticism is sometimes expressed about whether there is any interesting problem of other minds. In this paper I set out a version of the conceptual problem of other minds which turns on the way in which mental occurrences are presented to the subject and situate it in relation to debates about our knowledge of other people's mental lives. The result is a distinctive problem in the philosophy of mind concerning our relation to other people.

This contribution seeks to explicitly articulate two directions of a continuous phenomenal field: (1) the genesis of intersubjectivity in its bodily basis (both organic and phylogenetic); and (2) the re-investment of the organic basis (both bodily and cellular) as a self-transcendence. We hope to recast the debate about the explanatory gap by suggesting a new way to approach the mind-body and Leib/Körper problems: with a heart-centered model instead of a brain-centered model. By asking how the physiological dynamics of heart and (...) breath can become constitutive of a subjective (qua intersubjective) point of view, we give an account of the specific circular and systemic dynamic that we call “the rainbow of emotions.” This dynamic, we argue, is composed of both structural and experiential components and better evidences the seamless, non-dual articulation between the organic and the experiential. (shrink)

Christopher Peacocke’s Interlocking Account offers an example of the identity-based strategy for resolving the conceptual problem of other minds. According to the Identity Model, the sameness of meaning of a mental concept across inter-subjective domains is guaranteed by the sameness of the mental states to which the concept refers. Hence, for example, the meaning of the concept “pain” is fixed by the sameness of the sensation of pain to which the concept refers across inter-subjective fields. As an instance of this (...) model, the Interlocking Account draws its most fundamental strength from the claim that human beings are similar in so far as they are carriers of conscious mental states, and that similar mental concepts have similar mental contents across individuals. The implication of this is that when similar mental concepts are used to describe contents of experience by different persons, the meanings of the concepts used are fixed by the similarity of the contents of experience to which the concepts refer. This paper argues that this identity-based strategy fails for three main reasons: the identity relation it purports to establish between one’s own case and those of others is difficult to achieve; “the sense in which the relation of one's mind and those of others exhibits that identity is not clear;” and it is an argument by analogy in disguise. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the methodological issues related to the obstacles and potential horizons of approaching the philosophical traditions in Islam from the standpoint of comparative studies in philosophy, while also presenting selected case-studies that may potentially illustrate some of the possibilities of renewing the impetus of a philosophical thought that is inspired by Islamic intellectual history. This line of inquiry is divided into two parts: the first deals with questions of methodology, and the second focuses on ontology and phenomenology (...) of perception, by way of offering pathways in investigating the history of philosophical and scientific ideas in Islam from the viewpoint of contemporary debates in philosophy. A special emphasis will be placed on: (a) interpreting the ontology of the eleventh century metaphysician Ibn Sīnā (known in Latin as: Avicenna; d. 1037 CE) in terms of rethinking Heidegger’s critique of the history of metaphysics, and (b) analyzing the philosophical implications of the theory of vision of the eleventh century polymath Ibn al-Haytham (known in Latin as Alhazen; d. ca. 1041 CE) in terms of reflecting on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. (shrink)