I modify Grice's theory of conversational implicature so as to accommodate acts of implicating propositions by asking questions, acts of implicating questions by asserting propositions, and acts of implicating questions by asking questions. I describe the relations between a declarative sentence's semantic content (the proposition it semantically expresses), on the one hand, and the propositions that a speaker locutes, asserts, and implicates by uttering that sentence, on the other. I discuss analogous relations between an interrogative sentence's semantic content (the question (...) it semantically expresses), and the questions that a speaker locutes, asks, and implicates by uttering that sentence. (shrink)

Cognitive ontology has become a popular topic in philosophy, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. At its center is the question of which cognitive capacities should be included in the ontology of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. One common strategy for answering this question is to look at brain structures and determine the cognitive capacities for which they are responsible. Some authors interpret this strategy as a search for neural mechanisms, as understood by the so-called new mechanistic approach. In this article, (...) I will show that this new mechanistic answer is confronted with what I call the triviality problem. A discussion of this problem will show that one cannot derive a meaningful cognitive ontology from neural mechanisms alone. Nonetheless, neural mechanisms play a crucial role in the discovery of a cognitive ontology because they are epistemic proxies for best systematizations. (shrink)

Many competent speakers initially judge that (i) is true and (ii) isfalse, though they know that (iii) is true. (i) Superman leaps more tallbuildings than Clark Kent. (ii) Superman leaps more tall buildings thanSuperman. (iii) Superman is identical with Clark Kent. Semanticexplanations of these intuitions say that (i) and (ii) really can differin truth-value. Pragmatic explanations deny this, and say that theintuitions are due to misleading implicatures. This paper argues thatboth explanations are incorrect. (i) and (ii) cannot differ intruth-value, yet (...) the intuitions are not due to implicatures, but ratherto mistakes in evaluating (i) and (ii). (shrink)

Alexis Anne-Braun Dans cet article, je présente quelques-uns des enjeux du débat en philosophie contemporaine sur la photographie. Ce débat, comme cela a déjà été noté dans un certain nombre de publications récentes, est en fait hanté par une question sceptique, qui fut posée à la photographie dès son invention : si l’image photographique s’excepte du régime traditionnel de la représentation et si elle est bien le résultat d’une prise de vue automatique, en quel sens pouvons-nous encore dire qu’elle (...) est artistique? Il me semble que le concept goodmanien d’exemplification permet de répondre au défi lancé par le sceptique. J’essaie de montrer pourquoi. Plus encore, je m’emploie à montrer comment le concept goodmanien d’exemplification pourrait s’accommoder assez bien de la spécificité du médium photographique. (shrink)

This new book by Beate Rossler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public. Rossler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, Rossler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. (...) The book develops a theory of freedom and autonomy which sees the ability to pose the "practical question" of how one wants to live, of what a person strives to be, at the centre of the modern idea of autonomy. The question of privacy is emerging as an increasingly important topic in social and political theory and is central to many current debates in law, the media and politics. The Value of Privacy will be widely recognised to be a classic contribution to the subject. (shrink)

This contribution aims to examine whether the notion of a »brutalization« or »un- leashing« of language is accessible to linguistic operationalization. Public com- plaints about a brutalization of language refer primarily to political communica- tion, especially the language use of right-wing populists. Examples are used to illustrate that the term »language brutalization« relates primarily to the breaking of linguistic taboos from the far right fringe of the political spectrum. These are deliberately committed attempts to extend the limits of what can (...) be said. At the same time, however, it is claimed that controversial topics remain taboo, making public controversy seemingly impossible. (shrink)

his monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage. It challenges a variant of reductionism with regard to higher-level phenomena, which has crystallized as a default position among these so-called New Mechanists. Furthermore, it opposes those philosophers who reject the possibility of interlevel causation. Contemporary philosophers believe that the explanation of scientific phenomena requires the discovery of relevant mechanisms. As a result, new mechanists are, in the main, concerned (...) solely with epistemological questions. But, the author argues, their most central claims rely on metaphysical assumptions. Thus, they must also take into account metaphysics, a system of thought concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world around it. This branch of philosophy does indeed matter to the empirical sciences. The chapters investigate the nature of mechanisms, their components, and the ways in which they can bring about different phenomena. In addition, the author develops a novel account of causation in terms of activities. The analysis provides the basis for many further research projects on mechanisms and their relations to, for example, the mind-body problem, realization, multiple realization, natural kinds, causation, laws of nature, counterfactuals, and scientific levels. (shrink)

Constitutive mechanistic explanations are said to refer to mechanisms that constitute the phenomenon-to-be-explained. The most prominent approach of how to understand this constitution relation is Carl Craver’s mutual manipulability approach to constitutive relevance. Recently, the mutual manipulability approach has come under attack (Leuridan 2012; Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Romero 2015; Harinen 2014; Casini and Baumgartner 2016). Roughly, it is argued that this approach is inconsistent because it is spelled out in terms of interventionism (which is an approach to causation), whereas (...) constitutive relevance is said to be a non-causal relation. In this paper, I will discuss a strategy of how to resolve this inconsistency, so-called fat-handedness approaches (Baumgartner and Gebharter 2015; Casini and Baumgartner 2016; Romero 2015). I will argue that these approaches are problematic. I will present a novel suggestion of how to consistently define constitutive relevance in terms of interventionism. My approach is based on a causal interpretation of mutual manipulability, where manipulability is interpreted as a causal relation between the mechanism’s components and temporal parts of the phenomenon. (shrink)

Recent findings in different areas of psychology and cognitive science have brought the unconscious mind back to center stage. However, the unconscious mind worry remains: What renders unconscious phenomena mental? I suggest a new strategy for answering this question, which rests on the idea that categorizing unconscious phenomena as “mental” should be scientifically useful relative to the explanatory research goals. I argue that this is the case if by categorizing an unconscious phenomenon as “mental” one picks out explanatorily relevant similarities (...) to a corresponding paradigmatically mental conscious phenomenon. Explanatory relevance is spelled out in terms of mechanistic norms. (shrink)

This new book by Beate Rossler is a work of real quality and originality on an extremely topical issue: the issue of privacy and the relations between the private and the public. Rossler investigates the reasons why we value privacy and why we ought to value it. In the context of modern, liberal societies, Rossler develops a theory of the private which links privacy and autonomy in a constitutive way: privacy is a necessary condition to lead an autonomous life. (...) The book develops a theory of freedom and autonomy which sees the ability to pose the "practical question" of how one wants to live, of what a person strives to be, at the centre of the modern idea of autonomy. The question of privacy is emerging as an increasingly important topic in social and political theory and is central to many current debates in law, the media and politics. The Value of Privacy will be widely recognised to be a classic contribution to the subject. (shrink)

When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of “ethics” and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

Written by a select international group of leading privacy scholars, Social Dimensions of Privacy endorses and develops an innovative approach to privacy. By debating topical privacy cases in their specific research areas, the contributors explore the new privacy-sensitive areas: legal scholars and political theorists discuss the European and American approaches to privacy regulation; sociologists explore new forms of surveillance and privacy on social network sites; and philosophers revisit feminist critiques of privacy, discuss markets in personal data, issues of privacy in (...) health care and democratic politics. The broad interdisciplinary character of the volume will be of interest to readers from a variety of scientific disciplines who are concerned with privacy and data protection issues. (shrink)

According to the new mechanistic approach, an acting entity is at a lower mechanistic level than another acting entity if and only if the former is a component in the mechanism for the latter. Craver and Bechtel :547–563, 2007. doi:10.1007/s10539-006-9028-8) argue that a consequence of this view is that there cannot be causal interactions between acting entities at different mechanistic levels. Their main reason seems to be what I will call the Metaphysical Argument: things at different levels of a mechanism (...) are related as part and whole; wholes and their parts cannot be related as cause and effect; hence, interlevel causation in mechanisms is impossible. I will analyze this argument in more detail and show under which conditions it is valid. This analysis will reveal that interlevel causation in mechanisms is indeed possible, if we take seriously the idea that the relata of the mechanistic level relation are acting entities and accept a slightly modified notion of a mechanistic level that is highly plausible in the light of the first clarification. (shrink)

The processing, representation, and perception of bodily signals (interoception) plays an important role for human behavior. Theories of embodied cognition hold that higher cognitive processes operate on perceptual symbols and that concept use involves reactivations of the sensory-motor states that occur during experience with the world. Similarly, activation of interoceptive representations and meta-representations of bodily signals supporting interoceptive awareness are profoundly associated with emotional experience and cognitive functions. This article gives an overview over present findings and models on interoception and (...) mechanisms of embodiment and highlights its relevance for disorders that are suggested to represent a translation deficit of bodily states into subjective feelings and self-awareness. (shrink)

Many authors have turned their attention to the notion of constitution to determine whether the hypothesis of extended cognition (EC) is true. One common strategy is to make sense of constitution in terms of the new mechanists’ mutual manipulability account (MM). In this paper I will show that MM is insufficient. The Challenge of Trivial Extendedness arises due to the fact that mechanisms for cognitive behaviors are extended in a way that should not count as verifying EC. This challenge can (...) be met by adding a necessary condition: cognitive constituents satisfy MM and they are what I call behavior unspecific. (shrink)

A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics offers a much-needed survey of the entire field of early modern Spanish scholastic thought. The volume introduces main themes and contexts of scholastics inquiry (theology, philosophy, ethics, politics, economics, law, science and the senses) through close examination of a wide range of texts, debates, methods, and authors, as well as in-depth discussion of the relevant literature. Each chapter includes a useful bibliography and serves as point of departure for future research. The volume not only (...) draws the sum of existing research, but also challenges established notions and breaks new ground. (shrink)

The article first develops an account of autonomy, explaining individual autonomy by means of three normative components and then discussing two objections. The first objection claims that autonomy has to be thought of as essentially relational; this objection is refuted. The second objection, labeled the skeptical objection, claims that we simply do not live autonomously, nor could we ever. Reference is made to novels by Iris Murdoch to present a skeptical solution to this objection.

Que ce soit à l’occasion d’un exercice académique obligé, dans les marges de l’activité théorique, ou bien qu’il s’agisse d’un exercice philosophique destiné à tester la cohérence et la solidité d’un « système », la philosophie produit du biographique, selon les modalités et les régimes discursifs les plus divers. Depuis l’Antiquité, des philosophes compilent discours et anecdotes, et font l’exégèse d’une doctrine dans une perspective tantôt apologétique, tantôt critique – que l’on songe, par...

ABSTRACTSome political ads used in the 2016 U.S. election evoked feelings colloquially known as being moved to tears. We conceptualise this phenomenon as a positive social emotion that appraises and motivates communal relations, is accompanied by physical sensations, and often labelled metaphorically. We surveyed U.S. voters in the fortnight before the 2016 U.S. election. Selected ads evoked the emotion completely and reliably, but in a partisan fashion: Clinton voters were moved to tears by three selected Clinton ads, and Trump voters (...) were moved to tears by two Trump ads. Viewers were much less moved by ads of the candidate they did not support. Being moved to tears predicted intention to vote for the candidate depicted. We conclude that some contemporary political advertising is able to move its audience to tears, and thereby motivates support. (shrink)

Cet article porte sur les pratiques contemporaines d’écriture qui mêlent récit de soi et théorie. Je m’emploie à montrer qu’une intelligence du monde social (des rapports de classe, de genre, de race et d’autres formes de domination) s’exerce à l’étage des vécus singuliers. Ce n’est pas seulement que les gens sont différents les unes des autres – encore que j’insiste sur la vérité et la force d’une affirmation à première vue si banale –, mais aussi qu’un sens renouvelé de l’objectivité (...) s’obtient lorsque la production d’un savoir est réfléchie depuis la position particulière de celui qui l’énonce. Sans doute est-ce l’une des leçons fondamentales des épistémologies féministes. (shrink)

L’article de Nelson Goodman que nous traduisons ici, « Seven Strictures on Similarity», a été publié dans le recueil Problems and Projects [Goodman 1972]. Ce dernier ouvrage n’a pas fait l’objet d’une traduction exhaustive en français, sans doute parce qu’il contient nombre d’articles fort techniques, qui demandent une connaissance préalable des travaux de Goodman en logique, en épistémologie et en philosophie du langage. Cependant, plusieurs textes de ce recueil revêtent un intérêt majeur ta...

L’article de Nelson Goodman que nous traduisons ici, « Seven Strictures on Similarity», a été publié dans le recueil Problems and Projects [Goodman 1972]. Ce dernier ouvrage n’a pas fait l’objet d’une traduction exhaustive en français, sans doute parce qu’il contient nombre d’articles fort techniques, qui demandent une connaissance préalable des travaux de Goodman en logique, en épistémologie et en philosophie du langage. Cependant, plusieurs textes de ce recueil revêtent un intérêt majeur ta...

Vor allem die philosophische Religionskritik fokussiert sich zu oft auf die Kritik an der Annahme der Existenz Gottes. Dabei gerät aus dem Blick, dass Religionen nicht allein in Überzeugungen bestehen, sondern komplexe soziale Praktiken darstellen, die das Leben ihrer Gläubigen strukturieren, orientieren, stabilisieren und/oder irritieren. Die hier versammelten Beiträge thematisieren diesen Aspekt von Religion in Auseinandersetzung mit dem von Rahel Jaeggi konzipierten Modell einer "Kritik von Lebensformen". Dieser Band liefert damit einen Beitrag sowohl zur Religions-, als auch zur Sozialphilosophie."-- Back (...) cover. (shrink)

Metaphor theory has shifted from asking whether metaphor is 'conceptual' or 'linguistic' to debating whether it is 'embodied' or 'discursive'. Although recent work in the social and cognitive sciences has yielded clear opportunities to resolve that dispute, the divide between discourse- and cognition-oriented approaches has remained. To unite the field, this book brings together leading metaphor researchers from a number of disciplines. It collects major arguments and presents a wide variety of empirical evidence, placing special emphasis on the embodiment and (...) socio-cultural embeddedness of cognition, as well as the multi-modal and social-interactive nature of communication. It shows that metaphor theory can only profit from an approach that takes multiple perspectives into consideration and tries to account for findings yielded by multiple methodologies. By doing so, it works towards a dynamic, multi-dimensional, socio-cognitive model of metaphor that goes beyond what research traditions have separately achieved. (shrink)

Die Studie untersucht die Entstehung der modernen Philosophiegeschichte, wie sie sich im Übergang vom Barock zur Aufklärung als philosophische Disziplin innerhalb des gelehrten Diskurses der historia literaria konstituierte. Die Auffassung, daß Philosophie ein Produkt menschlicher Verstandestätigkeit sei und mit dem Denken der Griechen beginne, erweist sich dabei als Resultat eines Traditionsbruchs, mit dem die entstehende Aufklärung sich vom christlichen Aristotelismus der Schulphilosophie sowie von den platonisch-hermetischen Spekulationen der Schwärmer und Pansophen absetzte. In der Umbruchphase zwischen Barock und Aufklärung entsteht so (...) der moderne philosophiegeschichtliche Kanon, der sich fundamental von der zuvor gültigen historischen Logik der Wissenschaftsgeschichte unterscheidet. Die Geschichte der Philosophie wird nun nicht länger als Sammelbecken unterschiedlich perfekter Ausformulierungen einer archetypischen Weisheit verstanden, sondern im Kontext der 'Entdeckung der geschichtlichen Welt' als ein kontingenter temporaler Prozeß menschlicher Wissenschaftsentwicklung begriffen. Wie es zu dieser Entdeckung der Philosophiegeschichte kam und worin ihre wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Implikationen bestehen, ist Gegenstand der Darstellung, die gegenüber der bisherigen Forschung verstärkt die Interdependenzen zwischen theologischem, philosophischem, rechts- und literärgeschichtlichem Diskurs berücksichtigt. (shrink)

: When reproductive and genetic technologies spurred an extended German policy debate, the issues at stake went beyond the technologies to include the very meaning of "ethics" and the respective roles of ethicists and of the public in thinking about ethical questions.

Many philosophers as well as psychologists hold that implicit biases are due to unconscious attitudes. The justification for this unconscious-claim seems to be an inference to the best explanation of the mismatch between explicit and implicit attitudes, which is characteristic for implicit biases. The unconscious-claim has recently come under attack based on its inconsistency with empirical data. Instead, Gawronski et al. (2006) analyze implicit biases based on the so-called Associative-Propositional Evaluation (APE) model, according to which implicit attitudes are phenomenally conscious (...) and accessible. The mismatch between the explicit and the implicit attitude is explained by the Cognitive Inconsistency Approach (CIA) (as I will call it): implicit attitudes are conscious but rejected as basis for explicit judgments because the latter lead to cognitive inconsistency with respect to other beliefs held by the subject. In this paper, I will argue that the CIA is problematic since it cannot account for the fact that implicit attitudes underlying implicit biases typically are unconscious. I will argue that a better explanation of the attitude-mismatch can be given in terms of a Neo-Freudian account of repression. I will develop such an account, and I will show how it can accommodate the merits of the APE model while avoiding the problems of the CIA. (shrink)

Millian theories of proper names say that the meaning of a proper name is just its referent. These theories have an appealing kind of simplicity to them, but they also have an apparently serious problem with names that fail to refer. Consider, for example, sentence.

Millian theories of proper names say that the meaning of a proper name is just its referent. These theories have an appealing kind of simplicity to them, but they also have an apparently serious problem with names that fail to refer. Consider, for example, sentence.

The fortunes and misfortunes of Shylock and Antonio are pervaded with economic and legal ideas. Both characters tend to overlap and confuse in several dimensions–the most celebrated one is to believe that the Jew is the merchant–and are alternatively victim and victimizer. The analysis of the play focusing in money and contract, economics and the law, market and morality, allows us to delve into the nuances of one of the most engaging characters in the history of literature and to ponder (...) the classical liberal message of justice and charity. (shrink)

In this 1999 study, Beat Wyss provides a critical analysis of Hegel's theories of art history. Analogous to his philosophy of history, Hegel viewed the history of art in dialectical terms: with its origins in the Ancient Near East, Western art culminated in Classical Greece, but began its decline already in the Hellenistic period. Yet, as Wyss posits, art refuses its programmed demise. He highlights the political dimension of this contradiction, showing the implication of theories which subordinate art to the (...) will of absolute rule. Wyss follows his analysis of Hegel's theories with a discussion of the work of four modern successors - Nordau, Spengler, Sedlmayr and Lukacs - all of whom adapted Hegel's dialectical model, in an effort to demonstrate the central contradictions of twentieth-century aesthetics. (shrink)

Historian Dmitry Peretolchin quotes several of my publications on the creation and application of political technologies in the United States in his program about Saul Alinsky on the House of Cards podcast on the Den TV channel. An advertisement for the conference "Russian World Against the Global Reich" was inserted into this broadcast. This article: analyzes the statements of the podcast about Alinsky and his main ideas; showes that the main source of Alinsky's political technologies is the experience of professional (...) revolutionaries in Russia and that they in no way confirm the idea of a global Reich; describes the political technology that Alexander Prokhanov and his media complex uses to implement the Fifth Empire project, which is currently merged with the ideology of the Russian World; analyzes the ideological orientation of the House of Cards podcast and the Picture of the World club on the Den channel. The articles illustrates how the authors of the podcast are working to substantiate the propaganda direction of the media complex. The article also aims to show that political technologies, in particular, technologies of co-organization continue to develop and be implemented in countries with different political systems and can be applied to various types of social movements. (shrink)

L’interactivité est communément perçue comme la marque caractéristique des technologies digitales et, par extension, de différentes formes de fictions, de médias ou d’œuvres numériques – de la littérature hypertextuelle et des jeux vidéo au net art. On peut toutefois s’interroger sur le sens précis qu’il convient de donner à cette notion, ainsi que sur les promesses auxquelles elle est souvent associée. À défaut de pouvoir cerner un concept unique et maxi-englobant d’interactivité, nous suggérons qu’il est plus profitable de tenter d’identifier (...) des types et des degrés d’interactivité. Nous tentons de montrer pourquoi cette théorie pluraliste et gradualiste est plus attrayante que d’autres approches développées dans la littérature récente. Nous mettons enfin cette conception à l’épreuve du jeu vidéo, en montrant qu’elle permet de réévaluer le rôle que joue l’interactivité dans ce médium, mais qu’elle met aussi au jour les limitations inhérentes des fictions interactives que l’on y trouve. (shrink)

The relationship between topological explanation and mechanistic explanation is unclear. Most philosophers agree that at least some topological explanations are mechanistic explanations. The crucial question is how to make sense of this claim. Zednik (Philos Psychol 32(1):23–51, 2019) argues that topological explanations are mechanistic if they (i) describe mechanism sketches that (ii) pick out organizational properties of mechanisms. While we agree with Zednik’s conclusion, we critically discuss Zednik’s account and show that it fails as a general account of how and (...) when topological explanations are mechanistic. First, if topological explanations were just mechanism sketches, this implies that they could be enriched by replacing topological terms with mechanistic detail. This, however, conflicts how topological explanations are used in scientific practice. Second, Zednik’s account fails to show how topological properties can be organizational properties of mechanisms that have a place in mechanistic explanation. The core issue is that Zednik’s account ignores that topological properties often are _global_ properties while mechanistic explanantia refer to _local_ properties. We demonstrate how these problems can be solved by a recent account of mechanistic completeness (Craver and Kaplan in Br J Philos Sci 71(1):287–319, 2020; Kohár and Krickel in Calzavarini and Viola (eds) Neural mechanisms—new challenges in the philosophy of neuroscience, Springer, New York, 2021) and use a multilayer network model of Alzheimer’s Disease to illustrate this. (shrink)

: The article first develops an account of autonomy, explaining individual autonomy by means of three normative components and then discussing two objections. The first objection claims that autonomy has to be thought of as essentially relational; this objection is refuted. The second objection, labeled the skeptical objection, claims that we simply do not live autonomously, nor could we ever. Reference is made to novels by Iris Murdoch to present a skeptical solution to this objection.