Results for ' Baier concluding, the intuitive concept of basic action ‐ depending on failure to separate these questions'

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  1.  20
    Basic Actions and Individuation.Constantine Sandis - 2010 - In Timothy O'Connor & Constantine Sandis (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Action. Oxford, UK: Wiley‐Blackwell. pp. 10–17.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Basic Actions Action Individuation References Further reading.
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  2.  17
    Problems of life & death: a humanist perspective.Kurt Baier - 1997 - Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
    Noted scholar and humanist argues that we can find answers to important human questions without recourse to faith in a supernatural deity. What gives purpose to our existence? What happens to our mind and body when we die? What invests our lives with meaning and propels us to go on from day to day? These are some of the questions that have occupied humankind for centuries. Do solutions to these problems of life and death depend, as (...)
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  3.  40
    Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals.Don Locke & Annette Baier - 1981 - Philosophical Quarterly 36 (145):571.
    _Postures of the Mind _was first published in 1985. 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. Annette Baier develops, in these essays, a posture in philosophy of mind and in ethics that grows out of her reading of Hume and the later Wittgenstein, and that challenges several Kantian or analytic articles of faith. She questions the assumption that intellect has (...)
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  4.  52
    Postures of the Mind: Essays on Mind and Morals.Annette Baier - 1985 - University of Minnesota Press.
    _Postures of the Mind _was first published in 1985. 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. Annette Baier develops, in these essays, a posture in philosophy of mind and in ethics that grows out of her reading of Hume and the later Wittgenstein, and that challenges several Kantian or analytic articles of faith. She questions the assumption that intellect has (...)
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  5.  55
    Good men’s women.Annette Baier - 1979 - Hume Studies 5 (1):1-19.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:GOOD MEN'S WOMEN: HUME ON CHASTITY AND TRUST At the very heart of Hume's philosophy in the Treatise, namely between his discussion of the artificial and the natural virtues, he places a short chapter entitled "Of Chastity and Modesty." Its central position is appropriate, since these supposed virtues present something of a test case for Hume's account of the relation between nature and artifice, and, more generally, beyond (...)
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  6.  43
    Ways and Means.Annetie C. Baier - 1972 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 1 (3):275 - 293.
    In this paper I shall give reasons for rejecting one type of analysis of the basic constituents of action, and reasons for preferring an alternative approach. I shall discuss the concept of basic action recently presented by Alvin Goldman, who gives an interesting version of the sort of analysis I wish to reject. Goldman agrees with Danto that bodily movements are basic actions, and his definition of ‘basic’ resembles Danto's fairly closely. What is (...)
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  7. Natural Virtues, Natural Vices: ANNETTE C. BAIER.Annette C. Baier - 1990 - Social Philosophy and Policy 8 (1):24-34.
    David Hume has been invoked by those who want to found morality on human nature as well as by their critics. He is credited with showing us the fallacy of moving from premises about what is the case to conclusions about what ought to be the case; and yet, just a few pages after the famous is-ought remarks in A Treatise of Human Nature, he embarks on his equally famous derivation of the obligations of justice from facts about the cooperative (...)
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  8. Aspects of Quantum Non-Locality I: Superluminal Signalling, Action-at-a-Distance, Non-Separability and Holism.Joseph Berkovitz - 1998 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (2):183-222.
    In this paper and its sequel, I consider the significance of Jarrett’s and Shimony’s analyses of the so-called factorisability condition for clarifying the nature of quantum non-locality. In this paper, I focus on four types of non-locality: superluminal signalling, action-at-a-distance, non-separability and holism. In the second paper, I consider a fifth type of non-locality: superluminal causation according to ‘logically weak’ concepts of causation, where causal dependence requires neither action nor signalling. In this connection, I pay special attention to (...)
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    Aspects of Quantum Non-Locality I: Superluminal Signalling, Action-at-a-Distance, Non-Separability and Holism.Joseph Berkovitz - 1996 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 29 (2):183-222.
    In this paper and its sequel, I consider the significance of Jarrett’s and Shimony’s analyses of the so-called factorisability condition for clarifying the nature of quantum non-locality. In this paper, I focus on four types of non-locality: superluminal signalling, action-at-a-distance, non-separability and holism. In the second paper, I consider a fifth type of non-locality: superluminal causation according to ‘logically weak’ concepts of causation, where causal dependence requires neither action nor signalling. In this connection, I pay special attention to (...)
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  10. Ibn Ḥazm on Heteronomous Imperatives and Modality. A Landmark in the History of the Logical Analysis of Norms.Shahid Rahman, Farid Zidani & Walter Young - 2022 - London: College Publications, ISBN 978-1-84890-358-6, pp. 97-114., 2021.: In C. Barés-Gómez, F. J. Salguero and F. Soler (Ed.), Lógica Conocimiento y Abduccción. Homenaje a Angel Nepomuceno..
    The passionate and staunch defence of logic of the controversial thinker Ibn Ḥazm, Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī b. Aḥmad b. Saʿīd of Córdoba (384-456/994-1064), had lasting consequences in the Islamic world. Indeed, his book Facilitating the Understanding of the Rules of Logic and Introduction Thereto, with Common Expressions and Juristic Examples (Kitāb al-Taqrīb li-ḥadd al-manṭiq wa-l-mudkhal ilayhi bi-l-alfāẓ al-ʿāmmiyya wa-l-amthila al-fiqhiyya), composed in 1025-1029, was well known and discussed during and after his time; and it paved the way for the studies (...)
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  11. Cosmic Pessimism.Eugene Thacker - 2012 - Continent 2 (2):66-75.
    continent. 2.2 (2012): 66–75 ~*~ We’re Doomed. Pessimism is the night-side of thought, a melodrama of the futility of the brain, a poetry written in the graveyard of philosophy. Pessimism is a lyrical failure of philosophical thinking, each attempt at clear and coherent thought, sullen and submerged in the hidden joy of its own futility. The closest pessimism comes to philosophical argument is the droll and laconic “We’ll never make it,” or simply: “We’re doomed.” Every effort doomed to (...), every project doomed to incompletion, every life doomed to be unlived, every thought doomed to be unthought. Pessimism is the lowest form of philosophy, frequently disparaged and dismissed, merely the symptom of a bad attitude. No one ever needs pessimism, in the way that one needs optimism to inspire one to great heights and to pick oneself up, in the way one needs constructive criticism, advice and feedback, inspirational books or a pat on the back. No one needs pessimism, though I like to imagine the idea of a pessimist activism. No one needs pessimism, and yet everyone—without exception—has, at some point in their lives, had to confront pessimism, if not as a philosophy then as a grievance—against one’s self or others, against one’s surroundings or one’s life, against the state of things or the world in general. There is little redemption for pessimism, and no consolation prize. Ultimately, pessimism is weary of everything and of itself. Pessimism is the philosophical form of disenchantment—disenchantment as chanting, a chant, a mantra, a solitary, monophonic voice rendered insignificant by the intimate immensity surrounding it. In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. ~*~ We’re Still Doomed. No one has time for pessimism. After all, there are only so many hours in a day. Whatever our temperament, happy or sad, engaged or disengaged, we know pessimism when we hear it. The pessimist is usually understood as the complainer, forever pointing out what is wrong with the world without ever once offering a solution. But more often than not pessimists are the quietest of philosophers, submerging their own sighs within the lethargy of discontent. What little sound it makes is of interest to no one—“I’ve heard it all before,” “tell me something I don’t know,” sound and fury, signifying nothing. In raising problems without solutions, in posing questions without answers, in retreating to the hermetic, cavernous abode of complaint, pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. Pessimism fails to live up to the most basic tenet of philosophy—the “as if.” Think as if it will be helpful, act as if it will make a difference, speak as if there is something to say, live as if you are not, in fact, being lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied. Had it more self-assurance and better social skills, pessimism would turn its disenchantment into a religion, possibly calling itself The Great Refusal. But there is a negation in pessimism that refuses even such a Refusal, an awareness that, from the start, it has already failed, and that the culmination of all that is, is that all is for naught. Pessimism tries very hard to present itself in the low, sustained tones of a Requiem Mass, or the tectonic rumbling of Tibetan chant. But it frequently lets loose dissonant notes at once plaintive and pathetic. Often, its voice cracks, its weighty words abruptly reduced to mere shards of guttural sound. ~*~ Maybe It’s Not So Bad, After All. If we know pessimism when we hear it, this is because we’ve heard it all before—and we didn’t need to hear it in the first place. Life is hard enough. What you need is a change of attitude, a new outlook, a shift in perspective... a cup of coffee. If we have no ears for pessimism, this is because it is always reducible to something as reliably mutable as a voice. If pessimism is so frequently disparaged, it is because it brings everyone down, determined as it is to view each day as a bad day, if only by virtue of the fact that it is not yet a bad day. For pessimism the world is brimming with negative possibility, the collision of a bad mood with an impassive world. In fact, pessimism is the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world, a confusion that also prevents it from fully entering the hallowed halls of philosophy. If pessimism is so often dismissed, this is because it is often impossible to separate a “bad mood” from a philosophical proposition (and do not all philosophies stem from a bad mood?) The very term “pessimism” suggests a school of thought, a movement, even a community. But pessimism always has a membership of one—maybe two. Ideally, of course, it would have a membership of none, with only a scribbled, illegible note left behind by someone long forgotten. But this seems unrealistic, though one can always hope. ~*~ Anatomy of Pessimism. Though it may locate itself at the margins of philosophy, pessimism is as much subject to philosophical analysis as any other form of thought. Pessimism’s lyricism of failure gives it the structure of music. What time is to the music of sorrow, reason is to a philosophy of the worst. Pessimism’s two major keys are moral and metaphysical pessimism, its subjective and objective poles, an attitude towards the world and a claim about the world. For moral pessimism, it is better not to have been born at all; for metaphysical pessimism, this is the worst of all possible worlds. For moral pessimism the problem is the solipsism of human beings, the world made in our own image, a world-for-us. For metaphysical pessimism, the problem is the solipsism of the world, objected and projected as a world-in-itself. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism are compromised philosophically; moral pessimism by its failure to locate the human within a larger context, and metaphysical pessimism by its failure to recognize the complicity in the very claim of realism. This is how pessimism makes its music of the worst, a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos . Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. ~*~ Melancholy of Anatomy. There is a logic of pessimism that is fundamental to its suspicion of philosophical system. Pessimism involves a statement about a condition . In pessimism each statement boils down to an affirmation or a negation, just as any condition boils down to the best or the worst. With Schopenhauer, that arch-pessimist, the thinker for whom the philosopher and the curmudgeon perfectly overlap, we see a no-saying to the worst, a no-saying that secretly covets a yes-saying (through asceticism, mysticism, quietism), even if this hidden yes-saying is a horizon at the limits of comprehension. With Nietzsche comes the pronouncement of a Dionysian pessimism, a pessimism of strength or joy, a yes-saying to the worst, a yes-saying to this world as it is. And with Cioran yet another variation, futile yet lyrical, a no-saying to the worst, and a further no-saying to the possibility of any other world, in here or out there. With Cioran one approaches, but never reaches, an absolute no-saying, a studied abandonment of pessimism itself. The logic of pessimism moves through three refusals: a no-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-for-us, or Schopenhauer’s tears); a yes-saying to the worst (refusal of the world-in-itself, or Nietzsche’s laughter); and a no-saying to the for-us and the in-itself (a double refusal, or Cioran’s sleep). Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? ~*~ Cosmic Pessimism. Both moral and metaphysical pessimism point to another kind, a pessimism that is neither subjective nor objective, neither for-us nor in-itself, and instead a pessimism of the world-without-us. We could call this a cosmic pessimism ... but this sounds too majestic, too full of wonder, too much the bitter aftertaste of the Great Beyond. Words falter. And so do ideas. And so we have a cosmic pessimism, a pessimism that is first and last a pessimism about cosmos , about the necessity and possibility of order. The contours of cosmic pessimism are a drastic scaling-up or scaling-down of the human point of view, the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time, and all of this shadowed by an impasse, a primordial insignificance, the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought—all that remains of pessimism is the desiderata of affects—agonistic, impassive, defiant, reclusive, filled with sorrow and flailing at that architectonic chess match called philosophy, a flailing that pessimism tries to raise to the level of an art form (though what usually results is slapstick). ~*~ Song of Futility. An ethics of futility pervades pessimism. Futility, however, is different from fatality, and different again from simple failure (though failure is never simple). Failure is a breakage within the heart of relations, a fissure between cause and effect, a fissure hastily covered over by trying and trying again. With failure, there is always plenty of blame to go around; it’s not my fault, it’s a technical difficulty, it’s a miscommunication. For the pessimist, failure is a question of “when,” not “if”—failure as a metaphysical principle. Everything withers and passes into an obscurity blacker than night, everything from the melodramatic decline of a person’s life to the banal flickering moments that constitute each day. Everything that is done undone, everything said or known destined for a kind of stellar oblivion. When scaled up in this way, failure becomes fatality. Fatality is the hermeticism of cause and effect. In fatality, everything you do, whatever you do, always leads to a certain end, and ultimately to the end—though that end, or the means to that end, remain shrouded in obscurity. Nothing you do makes a difference because everything you do makes a difference. Hence the effects of your actions are hidden from you, even as you deceive yourself into thinking that, at last, this time you will outwit the order of things. By having a goal, planning ahead, and thinking things through carefully, we attempt, in a daily Prometheanism, to turn fatality to our advantage, to gain a glimpse of an order that seems buried deeper and deeper in the fabric of the universe. But even fatality has its comforts. The chain of cause and effect may be hidden from us, but that’s just because disorder is the order we don’t yet see; it’s just complex, distributed, and requires advanced mathematics. Fatality still clings to the sufficiency of everything that exists... When fatality relinquishes even this idea, it becomes futility. Futility arises out of the grim suspicion that, behind the shroud of causality we drape over the world, there is only the indifference of what exists or doesn’t exist; whatever you do ultimately leads to no end, an irrevocable chasm between thought and world. Futility transforms the act of thinking into a zero-sum game. ~*~ Song of the Worst. At the center of pessimism lies the term pessimus , “the worst,” a term as relative as it is absolute. The worst is about as bad as it gets, “the worst” as “the best” in disguise, shrouded by the passage of time or the twists and turns of fortune. For the pessimist, “the worst” is the propensity for suffering that gradually occludes each living moment, until it eclipses it entirely, overlapping perfectly in death... which, for the pessimist, is no longer “the worst.” Pessimism is marked by an unwillingness to move beyond “the worst,” something only partially attributable to a lack in motivation. In pessimism “the worst” is the ground that gives way beneath every existent—things could be worse, and , things could be better. “The worst” invariably implies a value judgment, one made based on scant evidence and little experience; in this way, pessimism’s greatest nemesis is its moral orientation. Pessimism’s propositions have all the gravitas of a bad joke. Perhaps this is why the true optimists are the most severe pessimists—they are optimists that have run out of options. They are almost ecstatically inundated by the worst. Such an optimism is the only possible outcome of a prolonged period of suffering, physical or metaphysical, intellectual or spiritual. But does this not also describe all the trials and tribulations of each day—in short, of “life?” It seems that sooner or later we are all doomed to become optimists of this sort (the most depressing of thoughts...) ~*~ Song of Doom. Rather than serving as a cause for despair, gloom and doom are the forms of consolation for any pessimist philosophy. Neither quite affects nor quite concepts, gloom and doom transform pessimism into a mortification of philosophy. Doom is not just the sense that all things will turn out badly, but that all things inevitably come to an end, irrespective of whether or not they really do come to an end. What emerges from doom is a sense of the unhuman as an attractor, a horizon towards which the human is fatally drawn. Doom is humanity given over to unhumanity in an act of crystalline self-abnegation. Gloom is not simply the anxiety that precedes doom. Gloom is literally atmospheric, climate as much as impression, and if people are also gloomy, this is simply the by-product of an anodyne atmosphere that only incidentally involves human beings. Gloom is more climatological than psychological, the stuff of dim, hazy, overcast skies, of ruins and overgrown tombs, of a misty, lethargic fog that moves with the same languorousness as our own crouched and sullen listening to a disinterested world. In a sense, gloom is the counterpoint to doom—what futility is to the former, fatality is to the latter. Doom is marked by temporality—all things precariously drawn to their end—whereas gloom is the austerity of stillness, all things sad, static, and suspended, a meandering smoke hovering over cold lichen stones and damp fir trees. If doom is the terror of temporality and death, then gloom is the horror of a hovering stasis that is life. At times I like to imagine that this realization alone is the thread that connects the charnel ground Aghori and the graveyard poets. ~*~ Song of Spite. There is an intolerance in pessimism that knows no bounds. In pessimism spite begins by fixing on a particular object of spite—someone one hardly knows, or someone one knows too well; a spite for this person or a spite for all of humanity; a spectacular or a banal spite; a spite for a noisy neighbor, a yapping dog, a battalion of strollers, the meandering idiot walking in front of you on their smart phone, large loud celebrations, traumatic injustices anywhere in the world regurgitated as media blitz, spite for the self-absorbed and overly performative people talking way too loud at the table next to you, technical difficulties and troubleshooting, the reduction of everything to branding, spite of the refusal to admit one’s own errors, of self-help books, of people who know absolutely everything and make sure to tell you, of all people, all living beings, all things, the world, the spiteful planet, the inanity of existence... Spite is the motor of pessimism because it is so egalitarian, so expansive, it runs amok, stumbling across intuitions that can only half-heartedly be called philosophical. Spite lacks the confidence and the clarity of hatred, but it also lacks the almost cordial judgment of dislike. For the pessimist, the smallest detail can be an indication of a metaphysical futility so vast and funereal that it eclipses pessimism itself—a spite that pessimism carefully places beyond the horizon of intelligibility, like the experience of dusk, or like the phrase, “it is raining jewels and daggers.” ~*~ Song of Sleep. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of ascetic practice. Sleep is the askesis of pessimism. If, while sleeping, we have a bad dream, we abruptly wake up, and suddenly the horrors of the night vanish. There is no reason to think that the same does not happen with the bad dream we call “life.” ~*~ Song of Sorrow. Nietzsche, commenting on pessimism, once castigated Schopenhauer for taking things too lightly. He writes: ...Schopenhauer, though a pessimist, really —played the flute. Every day, after dinner: one should read his biography on that. And incidentally: a pessimist, one who denies God and the world but comes to a stop before morality—who affirms morality and plays the flute... what? Is that really—a pessimist? We know that Schopenhauer did possess a collection of instruments, and we also know that Nietzsche himself composed music. There is no reason to think that either of them would ever banish music from the Republic of philosophy. But Nietzsche’s jibes at Schopenhauer are as much about music as they are about pessimism. For the pessimist who says no to everything and yet finds comfort in music, the no-saying of pessimism can only be a weak way of saying yes—the weightiest statement undercut by the flightiest of replies. The least that Schopenhauer could’ve done is to play the bass. I’m not a big fan of the flute, or, for that matter, wind instruments generally. But what Nietzsche forgets is the role that the flute has historically played in Greek tragedy. In tragedy, the flute ( aulos ) is not an instrument of levity and joy, but of solitude and sorrow. The Greek aulos not only expresses the grief of tragic loss, but it does so in a way that renders weeping and singing inseparable from each other. The classicist Nicole Loraux calls this the mourning voice . Set apart from the more official civic rituals of funerary mourning, the mourning voice of Greek tragedy constantly threatens to dissolve song into wailing, music into moaning, and the voice into a primordial, disarticulate anti-music. The mourning voice delineates all the forms of suffering—tears, weeping, sobbing, wailing, moaning, and the convulsions of thought reduced to an elemental unintelligibility. In the collapsed space between the voice that speaks and the voice that sings, pessimism discovers its mourning voice. Pessimism: the failure of sound and sense, the disarticulation of phone and logos . Have we rescued Schopenhauer from Nietzsche? Probably not. Perhaps Schopenhauer played the flute to remind himself of the real function of the mourning voice—sorrow, sighs, and moaning rendered indistinguishable from music, the crumbling of the human into the unhuman. Failure par excellence of pessimism. ~*~ Song of Nothing. In Buddhist thought, the First Noble Truth of existence is encapsulated in the Pali term dukkha , conventionally translated as “suffering,” “sorrow,” or “misery.” The Buddhist teachings are clear, however, that this is an objective claim, and not simply one point of view among others. Existence is suffering and sorrow—and yet this is not, the teachings tell us, a pessimistic attitude. It is likely that Schopenhauer, reading the Buddhist texts available to him, recognized some filiation with the concept of dukkha . But dukkha is a multi-faceted term. There is, certainly, dukkha in the usual sense of the suffering, strife, and loss associated with living a life. But this is, in turn, dependent on the finitude and temporality of dukkha , existence as determined by impermanence and imperfection. And this ultimately points to the way in which both suffering and finitude are grounded by the paradoxical groundlessness of dukkha as a metaphysical principle—the insubstantiality and the emptiness of all that is. Beyond what is worse to me, beyond a world ordered for the worst, there is the emptiness of dukkha as an impersonal suffering... the tears of the cosmos. In this context, it is easy to see how Schopenhauer’s pessimism attempts to compress all the aspects of dukkha into a nothingness at the core of existence, a Willlessness coursing through the Will. Though one thing for certain is that with Schopenhauer we do not find the “ever-smiling” countenance of Buddhism—or do we? The texts of the Pali Canon also contain lists of the different types of happiness—including the happiness of renunciation and the strange happiness of detachment. But Buddhism considers even the different types of happiness as part of dukkha , in this final sense of nothingness or emptiness. Perhaps Schopenhauer understood Buddhism better than he is usually given credit for. Thus the experiment of Schopenhauer’s philosophy—the point at which a Western pessimus and an Eastern dukkha overlap or exchange glances. Empty sorrow, a lyricism of indifference. The result is a strange, and ultimately untenable, nocturnal form of Buddhism. ~*~ Cioran once called music a “physics of tears.” If this is true, then perhaps metaphysics is its commentary. Or its apology. ~*~ Pessimism would be more mystical were it not for its defeatism. Mysticism is much too proactive for the pessimist, and pessimism too impassive even for the mystic. At the same time, there is something enviable about mysticism—despite its sufferings. There is a sense in which pessimists are really failed mystics. ~*~ You, the Night, and the Music. In a suggestive passage, Schopenhauer once noted that, “music is the melody to which the world is the text." Given Schopenhauer’s view on life—that life is suffering, that human life is absurd, that the nothingness before my birth is equal to the nothingness after my death—given all this, one wonders what kind of music Schopenhauer had in mind when he described music as the melody to which the world is text—was it opera, a Requiem Mass, a madrigal, or perhaps a drinking song? Or something like Eine kleine Nachtmusik , a little night music for the twilight of thought, a sullen nocturne for the night-side of logic, an era of sad wings sung by a solitary banshee. Perhaps the music Schopenhauer had in mind is music eliminated to non-music. A whisper would suffice. Perhaps a sigh of fatigue or resignation, perhaps a moan of despair or sorrow. Perhaps a sound just articulate enough that it could be heard to dissipate. ~*~ Teach me to laugh through tears. ~*~ Pessimism always falls short of being philosophical. My back aches, my knees hurt, I couldn’t sleep last night, I’m stressed-out, and I think I’m finally coming down with something. Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique. We didn’t really think we could figure it out, did we? It was just passing time, taking a piss, something to do, a bold gesture put forth in all its fragility, according to rules that we have agreed to forget that we made up in the first place. Every thought marked by a shadowy incomprehension that precedes it, and a futility that undermines it. That pessimism speaks, in whatever voice, is the singing testimony to this futility and this incomprehension—take a chance and step outside, lose some sleep and say you tried... ~*~ Is there a music of pessimism? And would such a music be audible? ~*~ The impact of music on a person compels them to put their experience into words. When this fails, the result is a faltering of thought and language that is itself a kind of music. Cioran writes: “Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.” ~*~ If a thinker like Schopenhauer has any redeeming qualities, it is that he identified the great lie of Western culture—the preference for existence over non-existence. As he notes: “If we knocked on the graves and asked the dead whether they would like to rise again, they would shake their heads.” In Western cultures it is commonly accepted that one celebrates birth and mourns death. But there must be a mistake here. Wouldn’t it make more sense to mourn birth and celebrate death? Strange though, because the mourning of birth would, presumably, last the entirety of that person’s life, so that mourning and living would the be same thing. ~*~ To the musical idea of the harmony of the universe corresponds the philosophical principle of sufficient reason. Like the music of mourning, pessimism gives voice to the inevitable breakdown of word and song. In this way, music is the overtone of thought. ~*~ The Patron Saints of Pessimism. The patron saints of pessimism watch over suffering. Laconic and sullen, the patron saints of pessimism never seem to do a good job at protecting, interceding, or advocating for those who suffer. Perhaps they need us more than we need them. Lest we forget, there do exist patron saints of philosophy, but their stories are not happy ones. There is, for instance, the fourth century Saint Catherine of Alexandria, or Catherine of the Wheel, named after the torture device used on her. A precocious fourteen year old scholar, Catherine was subject to continual persecution. After all forms of torture failed—including the “breaking wheel”—the emperor finally settled for her decapitation, a violent yet appropriate reminder of the protector of philosophers. There are also patron saints of music and musicians, but theirs too are sad stories. In the second century, Saint Cecilia was also subject to persecution and torture. As she knelt to receive the blade that would separate her head from her body, she ardently sang a song to God. It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. Does pessimism not deserve its own patron saints, even if they are unworthy of martyrdom? But in our search, even the most ardent nay-sayers frequently lapse into brief moments of enthusiasm—Pascal’s love of solitude, Leopardi’s love of poetry, Schopenhauer’s love of music, Nietzsche’s love of Schopenhauer, and so on. Should one then focus on individual works of pessimism? We could include Kierkegaard’s trilogy of horror— Sickness Unto Death , The Concept of Dread , and Fear and Trembling —but all these are undermined by their fabricated and unreliable authors. Besides, how can one separate the pessimist from the optimist in works like Unamuno’s The Tragic Sense of Life , Shestov’s Postetas Clavium , or Edgar Saltus’ under-read The Philosophy of Disenchantment ? Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete—witness Cioran’s trajectory, from his first book, On the Heights of Despair , to the last unpublished notebooks of acrid and taut aphorisms. And this is to say nothing of literary pessimism, from Goethe’s sorrowful Werther, to Dostoevsky’s underground man, to Pessoa’s disquiet scribbler; Baudelaire’s spleen and ennui, the mystical Satanism of Huysmans and Strindberg, the hauntologies of Mário de Sá-Carniero, Izumi Kyoka, H.P. Lovecraft, grumpy old Beckett... even the great pessimist comedians. All that remains are singular, perhaps anomalous statements of pessimism, a litany of quotes and citations crammed into fortune cookies. Patron saints are traditionally named after a locale, either a place of birth or of a mystical experience. Perhaps the better approach is to focus on the places where pessimists were forced to live out their pessimism—Schopenhauer facing an empty Berlin lecture hall, Nietzsche mute and convalescent at the home of his sister, Wittgenstein the relinquished professor and solitary gardener, Cioran grappling with Alzheimer’s in his tiny writing alcove in the Latin Quarter. ~*~ There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. ~*~ If pessimism has any pedagogical value, it is that the failure of pessimism as a philosophy is inextricably tied to the failure of pessimism as voice. I read the following, from Shestov’s The Apotheosis of Groundlessness : When a person is young he writes because it seems to him he has discovered a new almighty truth which he must make haste to impart to forlorn humankind. Later, becoming more modest, he begins to doubt his truths: and then he tries to convince himself. A few more years go by, and he knows he was mistaken all round, so there is no need to convince himself. Nevertheless he continues to write, because he is not fit for any other work, and to be accounted a superfluous person is so horrible. (shrink)
     
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  12. Meillassoux’s Virtual Future.Graham Harman - 2011 - Continent 1 (2):78-91.
    continent. 1.2 (2011): 78-91. This article consists of three parts. First, I will review the major themes of Quentin Meillassoux’s After Finitude . Since some of my readers will have read this book and others not, I will try to strike a balance between clear summary and fresh critique. Second, I discuss an unpublished book by Meillassoux unfamiliar to all readers of this article, except those scant few that may have gone digging in the microfilm archives of the École normale (...)
     
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  13.  17
    Broad, subjective, relative: the surprising folk concept of basic needs.Thomas Pölzler, Tobu Tomabechi & Ivar R. Hannikainen - 2024 - Philosophical Studies 181 (1):319-347.
    Some normative theorists appeal to the concept of basic needs. They argue that when it comes to issues such as global justice, intergenerational justice, human rights or sustainable development our first priority should be that everybody is able to meet these needs. But what are basic needs? We attempt to inform discussions about this question by gathering evidence of ordinary English speakers’ intuitions on the concept of basic needs. First, we defend our empirical approach (...)
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  14. On the intuitive understanding of nonlocality as implied by quantum theory.D. J. Bohm & B. J. Hiley - 1975 - Foundations of Physics 5 (1):93-109.
    We bring out the fact that the essential new quality implied by the quantum theory is nonlocality; i.e., that a system cannot be analyzed into parts whose basic properties do not depend on the state of the whole system. This is done in terms of the causal interpretation of the quantum theory, proposed by one of us (D.B.) in 2952, involving the introduction of the “quantum potential.” We show that this approach implies a new universal type of description, in (...)
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  15. Quantum Physics: an overview of a weird world: A primer on the conceptual foundations of quantum physics.Marco Masi - 2019 - Indy Edition.
    This is the first book in a two-volume series. The present volume introduces the basics of the conceptual foundations of quantum physics. It appeared first as a series of video lectures on the online learning platform Udemy.]There is probably no science that is as confusing as quantum theory. There's so much misleading information on the subject that for most people it is very difficult to separate science facts from pseudoscience. The goal of this book is to make you able (...)
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  16.  58
    Hume on Resentment.Annette Baier - 1980 - Hume Studies 6 (2):133-149.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:133. HUME ON RESENTMENT In his Enquiry version of the conditions of justice, Hume adds a third modified Hobbesian condition to the two, moderate scarcity and moderate selfishness, which he had listed in the Treatise. The new condition is a certain measure of equality, or limit ±o inequality—justice is owed, he says, only if there is a society of more-or-less equals; and only to those who are members of (...)
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  17. Modeling the concept of truth using the largest intrinsic fixed point of the strong Kleene three valued semantics (in Croatian language).Boris Culina - 2004 - Dissertation, University of Zagreb
    The thesis deals with the concept of truth and the paradoxes of truth. Philosophical theories usually consider the concept of truth from a wider perspective. They are concerned with questions such as - Is there any connection between the truth and the world? And, if there is - What is the nature of the connection? Contrary to these theories, this analysis is of a logical nature. It deals with the internal semantic structure of language, the mutual (...)
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  18.  77
    Breve storia dell'etica.Sergio Cremaschi - 2012 - Roma RM, Italia: Carocci.
    The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...)
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  19. Separating the evaluative from the descriptive: An empirical study of thick concepts.Pascale Willemsen & Kevin Reuter - 2021 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 10 (2):135-146.
    Thick terms and concepts, such as honesty and cruelty, are at the heart of a variety of debates in philosophy of language and metaethics. Central to these debates is the question of how the descriptive and evaluative components of thick concepts are related and whether they can be separated from each other. So far, no empirical data on how thick terms are used in ordinary language has been collected to inform these debates. In this paper, we present the (...)
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  20. Epistemically Responsible Action.Kenneth Boyd - 2014 - Dissertation,
    We are often, as agents, responsible for the things we do and say. This responsibility can come in a number of different forms: here I propose and defend a view of how we are epistemically responsible for our actions and assertions. In other normative areas, we can be responsible for our actions when those actions violate a norm (for example, we can be morally responsible when we violate some moral norm). I argue that we can similarly be epistemically responsible when (...)
     
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  21.  19
    Interpretation in Legal Theory.Andrei Marmor (ed.) - 1990 - Hart Publishing.
    Chapter 1: An Introduction: The ‘Semantic Sting’ Argument Describes Dworkin’s theory as concerning the conditions of legal validity. “A legal system is a system of norms. Validity is a logical property of norms in a way akin to that in which truth is a logical property of propositions. A statement about the law is true if and only if the norm it purports to describe is a valid legal norm…It follows that there must be certain conditions which render certain norms, (...)
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  22. Filozofia praw człowieka. Prawa człowieka w świetle ich międzynarodowej ochrony.Marek Piechowiak - 1999 - Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL.
    PHILOSOPHY OF HUMAN RIGHTS: HUMAN RIGHTS IN LIGHT OF THEIR INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION Summary The book consists of two main parts: in the first, on the basis of an analysis of international law, elements of the contemporary conception of human rights and its positive legal protection are identified; in the second - in light of the first part -a philosophical theory of law based on the tradition leading from Plato, Aristotle, and St. Thomas Aquinas is constructed. The conclusion contains an application (...)
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  23. New Slant on the EPR-Bell Experiment.Peter Evans, Huw Price & Ken Wharton - 2013 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64 (2):297-324.
    The best case for thinking that quantum mechanics is nonlocal rests on Bell's Theorem, and later results of the same kind. However, the correlations characteristic of Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR)–Bell (EPRB) experiments also arise in familiar cases elsewhere in quantum mechanics (QM), where the two measurements involved are timelike rather than spacelike separated; and in which the correlations are usually assumed to have a local causal explanation, requiring no action-at-a-distance (AAD). It is interesting to ask how this is possible, in the (...)
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  24.  21
    On Equilibrium: The Six Qualities of the New Humanism.John Ralston Saul - 2004 - Four Walls Eight Windows.
    Is it moral to sacrifice one's life for a higher goal? Why do many in the U.S. think it admirable to join the army but despicable for Palestinians to sign up with Hamas? How can we actually determine "evil" and "good" in the daily world? These practical questions cut to the heart of what it means to be human. John Ralston Saul, in his matter-of-fact discussion of six basic human qualities — ethics, common sense, intuition, imagination, memory, (...)
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  25. Supporting Solidarity.Claire Moore, Ariadne Nichol & Holly Taylor - 2023 - Voices in Bioethics 9.
    Photo ID 72893750 © Rawpixelimages|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Solidarity is a concept increasingly employed in bioethics whose application merits further clarity and explanation. Given how vital cooperation and community-level care are to mitigating communicable disease transmission, we use lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to reveal how solidarity is a useful descriptive and analytical tool for public health scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. Drawing upon an influential framework of solidarity that highlights how solidarity arises from the ground up, we reveal how structural forces (...)
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  26. Practical Philosophy and the Concept of Autonomy: A Critique of Kantian Ethics.Paul G. Stern - 1984 - Dissertation, Boston University
    This dissertation examines the conceptual limitations of Kant's ethical theory with the purpose of assessing its suitability as a model of practical philosophy based upon the idea of autonomy. My aim is not only to exhibit the specific weaknesses in Kant's treatment of morality, but also to explore a contrast between two different approaches in ethical theory. This contrast can be characterized in terms of an opposition between a 'formal-individualistic' and a 'social-historical' model for the analysis and derivation of ethical (...)
     
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  27.  69
    Non-rational action in the face of disagreement: an argument against (strong) non-conformism.Nikolaj Pedersen - 2016 - Synthese 195 (7):2935-2966.
    Recently there has been a surge of interest in the intersection between epistemology and action theory, especially in principles linking rationality in thought and rationality in action. Recently there has also been a surge of interest in the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement: what, epistemically speaking, is the rational response in light of disagreement with someone whom one regards as an epistemic peer? The objective of this paper is to explore these two issues—separately, but also in (...)
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  28. Mad Speculation and Absolute Inhumanism: Lovecraft, Ligotti, and the Weirding of Philosophy.Ben Woodard - 2011 - Continent 1 (1):3-13.
    continent. 1.1 : 3-13. / 0/ – Introduction I want to propose, as a trajectory into the philosophically weird, an absurd theoretical claim and pursue it, or perhaps more accurately, construct it as I point to it, collecting the ground work behind me like the Perpetual Train from China Mieville's Iron Council which puts down track as it moves reclaiming it along the way. The strange trajectory is the following: Kant's critical philosophy and much of continental philosophy which has followed, (...)
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  29.  46
    Does the harm component of the harmful dysfunction analysis need rethinking?: Reply to Powell and Scarffe.Jerome C. Wakefield & Jordan A. Conrad - 2019 - Journal of Medical Ethics 45 (9):594-596.
    In ‘Rethinking Disease’, Powell and Scarffe1 propose what in effect is a modification of Jerome Wakefield’s2 3 harmful dysfunction analysis of medical disorder. The HDA maintains that ‘disorder’ is a hybrid factual and value concept requiring that a biological dysfunction, understood as a failure of some feature to perform a naturally selected function, causes harm to the individual as evaluated by social values. Powell and Scarffe accept both the HDA’s evolutionary biological function component and its incorporation of a (...)
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  30. How Wide Is Hume's Circle? (A question raised by the exchange between Erin I. Kelly and Louis E. Loeb, Hume Studies, November 2004).Annette C. Baier - 2006 - Hume Studies 32 (1):113-117.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 113-117 How Wide Is Hume's Circle? (A question raised by the exchange between Erin I. Kelly and Louis E. Loeb, Hume Studies, November 2004) ANNETTE C. BAIER Hume's version, in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, section 9,2 of the viewpoint from which moral assessments are made, and from which traits are recognized as virtues or vices, is (...)
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  31.  39
    Action-dependent perceptual invariants: From ecological to sensorimotor approaches.Matteo Mossio & Dario Taraborelli - 2008 - Consciousness and Cognition 17 (4):1324-1340.
    Ecological and sensorimotor theories of perception build on the notion of action-dependent invariants as the basic structures underlying perceptual capacities. In this paper we contrast the assumptions these theories make on the nature of perceptual information modulated by action. By focusing on the question, how movement specifies perceptual information, we show that ecological and sensorimotor theories endorse substantially different views about the role of action in perception. In particular we argue that ecological invariants are characterized (...)
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  32.  28
    On the self-ascription of deafferented bodily action.Víctor M. Verdejo - 2023 - Philosophical Explorations 26 (3):324-342.
    Subjects suffering from extreme peripheral deafferentation can recruit vision to perform a significant range of basic physical actions with limbs they can’t proprioceptively feel. Self-ascriptions of deafferented action – just as deafferented action itself – fundamentally depend, therefore, on visual information of limb position and movement. But what’s the significance of this result for the concept of self patently at work in these self-ascriptions? In this paper, I argue that these cases show that bodily (...)
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  33.  15
    Does the Conception of Spirit of the Muteqaddimūn Period Theologians Have a Correspondence in Modern Science?Mehmet Ödemi̇ş - 2023 - Kader 21 (1):270-300.
    The nature of the human being in general and the existence and nature of the soul in particular has been discussed throughout the history of thought. As a knowing subject, man firstly tried to know himself. While making this questioning, he not only wondered about his phenomenal existence (body), but also about his spiritual identity, which he did not doubt was out there somewhere. This curiosity has created an ongoing scientific journey from anatomy to physiology, from science to philosophy, from (...)
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  34. The Relevance of Folk Intuitions to Philosophical Debates.Adam Feltz - 2008 - Dissertation, Florida State University
    A large portion of philosophy done in the Western analytic tradition attempts to provide conceptual analyses which are tested by examples that elicit intuitions. These intuitions are, in turn, used as evidence either for or against a given analysis. In recent years, there has been much discussion of the uses of intuitions from empirically minded philosophers and psychologists. The basic strategy is to discover empirically how “normal” folks think about certain topics in philosophy. This application of folk intuitions (...)
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  35. On the morality of artificial agents.Luciano Floridi & J. W. Sanders - 2004 - Minds and Machines 14 (3):349-379.
    Artificial agents (AAs), particularly but not only those in Cyberspace, extend the class of entities that can be involved in moral situations. For they can be conceived of as moral patients (as entities that can be acted upon for good or evil) and also as moral agents (as entities that can perform actions, again for good or evil). In this paper, we clarify the concept of agent and go on to separate the concerns of morality and responsibility of (...)
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  36. Architecture and Deconstruction. The Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi.Cezary Wąs - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Wrocław
    Architecture and Deconstruction Case of Peter Eisenman and Bernard Tschumi -/- Introduction Towards deconstruction in architecture Intensive relations between philosophical deconstruction and architecture, which were present in the late 1980s and early 1990s, belong to the past and therefore may be described from a greater than before distance. Within these relations three basic variations can be distinguished: the first one, in which philosophy of deconstruction deals with architectural terms but does not interfere with real architecture, the second one, (...)
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  37.  16
    How Wide Is Hume's Circle? (A question raised by the exchange between Erin I. Kelly and Louis E. Loeb, Hume Studies, November 2004).Annette C. Baier - 2006 - Hume Studies 32 (1):113-117.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume 32, Number 1, April 2006, pp. 113-117 How Wide Is Hume's Circle? (A question raised by the exchange between Erin I. Kelly and Louis E. Loeb, Hume Studies, November 2004) ANNETTE C. BAIER Hume's version, in An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, section 9,2 of the viewpoint from which moral assessments are made, and from which traits are recognized as virtues or vices, is (...)
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  38. 12. Feuerbach and the Image of Thought.Henry Somers-Hall - 2015 - In Craig Lundy & Daniela Voss (eds.), At the Edges of Thought: Deleuze and Post-Kantian Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp. 253-271.
    ‘The Image of Thought’ could be considered to be the most important piece of writing in the entire Deleuzian corpus. This is the chapter of Difference and Repetition that several decades later, Deleuze claims is the ‘most necessary and the most concrete’ (Deleuze 1994: xvii) section of the book, and the one that provides a basis for his later work with Guattari. Here, Deleuze engages with two basic issues. First, he separates out his conception of thinking, and with it, (...)
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  39. Teaching & learning guide for: Art, morality and ethics: On the moral character of art works and inter-relations to artistic value.Matthew Kieran - 2010 - Philosophy Compass 5 (5):426-431.
    This guide accompanies the following article: Matthew Kieran, ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value’. Philosophy Compass 1/2 (2006): pp. 129–143, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2006.00019.x Author’s Introduction Up until fairly recently it was philosophical orthodoxy – at least within analytic aesthetics broadly construed – to hold that the appreciation and evaluation of works as art and moral considerations pertaining to them are conceptually distinct. However, following on from the idea that artistic value is (...)
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  40. Must There Be Basic Action?Douglas Lavin - 2012 - Noûs 47 (2):273-301.
    The idea of basic action is a fixed point in the contemporary investigation of the nature of action. And while there are arguments aimed at putting the idea in place, it is meant to be closer to a gift of common sense than to a hard-won achievement of philosophical reflection. It first appears at the stage of innocuous description and before the announcement of philosophical positions. And yet, as any decent magician knows, the real work so often (...)
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  41.  30
    On the Śaiva Concept of Innate Impurity (mala) and the Function of the Rite of Initiation.Diwakar Acharya - 2014 - Journal of Indian Philosophy 42 (1):9-25.
    This paper tries to trace the roots of the Śaiva Mantramārga concept of innate impurity. Since innate impurity is regarded as one of the three bonds fettering bound individual souls, this paper begins with the Pāśupata and early Śaiva views on these bonds. It examines the Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti’s criticism of the Śaiva idea that initiation removes sin, and discusses the Pāśupata concept of sin-cleansing and two different concepts of innate impurity found in two early Śaiva scriptures: (...)
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  42.  20
    How to Do Things with Emotions: The Morality of Anger and Shame across Cultures.Andrew Beatty - 2023 - Common Knowledge 29 (2):236-239.
    Publishers love titles that begin How or Why. Better still, How and Why, combining edification with utility. The target group is that overlap between the self-help audience and the idly curious—which is to say, most of us. And since emotions are very much about self-help and self-harm, they offer rich pickings in a burgeoning market. Flanagan's How to Do things with Emotions is a philosopher's take on moral emotions, the allusion to J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words (...)
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  43. From The Principle Of Least Action To The Conservation Of Quantum Information In Chemistry: Can One Generalize The Periodic Table?Vasil Penchev - 2019 - Chemistry: Bulgarian Journal of Science Education 28 (4):525-539.
    The success of a few theories in statistical thermodynamics can be correlated with their selectivity to reality. These are the theories of Boltzmann, Gibbs, end Einstein. The starting point is Carnot’s theory, which defines implicitly the general selection of reality relevant to thermodynamics. The three other theories share this selection, but specify it further in detail. Each of them separates a few main aspects within the scope of the implicit thermodynamic reality. Their success grounds on that selection. Those aspects (...)
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  44.  11
    Reply to Laÿna Droz’s Review of Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger.David W. Johnson - 2023 - Journal of Japanese Philosophy 9 (1):167-188.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: I would like to begin by thanking the Journal of Japanese Philosophy for making space in these pages for a review of my monograph Watsuji on Nature: Japanese Philosophy in the Wake of Heidegger. Although book reviews do not usually receive a reply from the author—much less one as lengthy as the article that follows—one seemed necessary in this instance because my ideas, unfortunately, have been seriously (...)
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  45. Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science.Shaun Gallagher - 2000 - Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (1):14-21.
    Although philosophical approaches to the self are diverse, several of them are relevant to cognitive science. First, the notion of a 'minimal self', a self devoid of temporal extension, is clarified by distinguishing between a sense of agency and a sense of ownership for action. To the extent that these senses are subject to failure in pathologies like schizophrenia, a neuropsychological model of schizophrenia may help to clarify the nature of the minimal self and its neurological underpinnings. (...)
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  46.  41
    Exploring the Public Understanding of Basic Genetic Concepts.Sharon L. R. Kardia, Jane P. Sheldon, Elizabeth M. Petty, Merle Feldbaum, Elizabeth S. Anderson, Angela D. Lanie & Toby Epstein Jayaratne - unknown
    It is predicted that the rapid acquisition of new genetic knowledge and related applications during the next decade will have significant implications for virtually all members of society. Currently, most people get exposed to information about genes and genetics only through stories publicized in the media. We sought to understand how individuals in the general population used and understood the concepts of ???genetics??? and ???genes.??? During in-depth one-on-one telephone interviews with adults in the United States, we asked questions exploring (...)
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  47.  17
    The Epistemic Puzzle of Perception. Conscious Experience, Higher-Order Beliefs, and Reliable Processes.Harmen Ghijsen - 2014 - Dissertation, Ku Leuven
    This thesis mounts an attack against accounts of perceptual justification that attempt to analyze it in terms of evidential justifiers, and has defended the view that perceptual justification should rather be analyzed in terms of non-evidential justification. What matters most to perceptual justification is not a specific sort of evidence, be it experiential evidence or factive evidence, what matters is that the perceptual process from sensory input to belief output is reliable. I argue for this conclusion in the following way. (...)
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  48.  48
    Criticism of individualist and collectivist methodological approaches to social emergence.S. M. Reza Amiri Tehrani - 2023 - Expositions: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities 15 (3):111-139.
    ABSTRACT The individual-community relationship has always been one of the most fundamental topics of social sciences. In sociology, this is known as the micro-macro relationship while in economics it refers to the processes, through which, individual actions lead to macroeconomic phenomena. Based on philosophical discourse and systems theory, many sociologists even use the term "emergence" in their understanding of micro-macro relationship, which refers to collective phenomena that are created by the cooperation of individuals, but cannot be reduced to individual actions. (...)
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  49.  10
    The cognitive science of religion: A critical evaluation for theology.Sungho Lee - 2021 - HTS Theological Studies 77 (4):1-7.
    This article explores the cognitive science of religion to discover the challenges and implications for theology by providing a critical evaluation through the lenses of philosophy, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Four positive implications of the cognitive science of religion are identified. Firstly, the cognitive science of religion can function as a strong hermeneutics of suspicion through which theologians can criticise dogmatic and authoritative religions and theologies. Secondly, the cognitive science of religion invites scholars of religion and theology to consider the (...)
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  50.  12
    The Three-Case Argument against the Moral Justificatory Significance of Basic Desert.Aleksandr Mishura - 2021 - Philosophia 50 (3):1327-1340.
    This paper challenges the moral justificatory significance of the notion of basic desert. The notion of basic desert is commonly used in the literature to distinguish a specific sense of moral responsibility that depends on free will. In this sense, a person is morally responsible for an action if this action belongs to her in such a way that she would deserve to be blamed if she understood that it was morally wrong, and she would deserve (...)
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