In this paper I try to make as much sense aspossible of, first, the extensive philosophicalliterature concerned with the status of `Wateris H2O' and, second, the implications ofPutnam's invention of Twin Earth, anotherpossible world stipulated to be just like Earth, except that water is XYZ, notH2O.

Pragmatist philosopher John Dewey famously stated that man is a creature of habit, and not of reason or instinct. In this paper, I will assess Dewey’s explication of the habituated self and the potential it holds for radical transformative processes. In particular, I will examine the process of coming to feminist consciousness, and will show that a feminist-pragmatist reading of change can accommodate a view of the self as responsible agent. Following the elucidation of the changing self, I will appraise (...) key pragmatist concepts of inquiry, such as doubt and self-reflexivity, with regard to their treatment of deep-seated internalisations of oppressive norms and the initiation of change. Ultimately, I will argue that a feminist-pragmatist understanding of transformation is conducive not only to the project of personal transformation, but also to social and political change more generally. (shrink)

Amidst the progress being made in the various (sub-)disciplines of the behavioural and brain sciences a somewhat neglected subject is the problem of how everything fits into one world and, derivatively, how the relation between different levels of discourse should be understood and to what extent different levels, domains, approaches, or disciplines are autonomous or dependent. In this paper I critically review the most recent proposals to specify the nature of interdiscourse relations, focusing on the concept of supervenience. Ideally supervenience (...) is a relation between different discourses which has all the advantages of reduction, but without its disadvantages. I apply the more abstract considerations to two concrete cases: schizophrenia and colour. Usually an interlevel or interdiscourse relation is seen as asymmetrical: the overlaying discourse depends on the underlying discourse (and not vice versa), where the out- or un-spoken assumption is that the ultimate underlying discourse is physical. Instead I argue that scientific categories referred to in interdiscourse relations are, ultimately, dependent on common sense categories and common sense normative criteria. It is the manifest categories and common sense ideas about what is reasonable and what is right that determine the relevant categorisations at the deeper, underlying levels. I suggest that the implications of this are not merely methodological or epistemological. (shrink)

In this article, I look at those passages in the Zhuangzi usually associated with “uselessness.” I discuss in what way these passages may have been suggestive to Martin Heidegger to explain his ideas of the necessity of the other thinking and of the “waiting people” being entirely unusable to others. Then I make some brief comments concerning basic conditions of interpretation, using examples taken from the Zhuangzi passages discussed. These conditions include family resemblance across the board, a principle of agreement, (...) and the issue of “planetarization”. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate the soundness of the prototype paradigm, in particular its basic assumption that there are pan-human psychological essences or core meanings that refer to basic-level natural kinds, explaining why, on the whole, human communication and learning are successful. Instead I argue that there are no particular pan-human basic elements for thought, meaning and cognition, neither prototypes, nor otherwise. To illuminate my view I draw on examples from anthropology. More generally I argue that the prototype paradigm exemplifies (...) two assumptions that dominate cognitive science: (1) If human beings use words they mean something particular and what they mean can be discovered by scientific methods. (2) There is a fixed number of domains of categorization, each made up of a fixed number of basic categories. I suggest that these two assumptions lead to Brave New World. (shrink)

In this volume, Brakel raises questions about conventions in the study of mind in three disciplines—psychoanalysis, philosophy of mind, and experimental philosophy. She illuminates new understandings of the mind through interdisciplinary challenges to views long-accepted. Here she proposes a view of psychoanalysis as a treatment that owes its successes largely to its biological nature—biological in its capacity to best approximate the extinction of problems arising owing to aversive conditioning. She also discusses whether or not "the mental" can have any (...) real ontological standing, arguing that a form of reductive physicalism can be sufficient ontologically, but that epistemological considerations require a branch of non-reductive physicalism. She then notes the positive implications of this view for psychiatry and psychoanalysis, Finally, she investigates the role of "consistency" in method and content, toward which experimental philosophers strive. In essence, Brakel articulates the different sets of challenges pertaining to: a) ancient dilemmas such as the mind/body problem; b) longstanding debates about the nature of therapeutic action in psychoanalysis; and c) new core questions arising in the relatively young discipline of experimental philosophy. (shrink)

Kripke has argued that definitions of units of measurements provide examples of statements that are both contingent and a priori. In this paper I argue that definitions of units of measurement are intended to be stipulations of what Kripke calls "theoretical identities": a stipulation that two terms will have the same rigid designation. Hence such a definition is both a priori and necessary. The necessity arises because such definitions appeal to natural kind properties only, which on Kripke's account are necessary.

Probably colour is the best worked-out example of allegedly neurophysiologically innate response categories determining percepts and percepts determining concepts, and hence biology fixing the basic categories implicit in the use of language. In this paper I argue against this view and I take C. L. Hardin's Color for Philosophers [1988] as my main target. I start by undermining the view that four unique hues stand apart from all other colour shades (Section 2) and the confidence that the solar spectrum is (...) naturally divided into four categories (Section 3). For such categories to be truly universal, they have to be true for all peoples and in Section 4 I show that Berlin and Kay's [1969] widely quoted theory of basic colour categories is not sufficiently supported to lend it any credibility.Having disposed of the view that inspection of language or ‘pure’ perception unveils the universal colour categories. I turn to neurophysiological and psychophysical theories of colour vision to see whether they provide a more solid basis for deciding what the innate response categories are. In Section 5 I show that Hardin's account of the opponent-process theory neither supports his view that ‘colour-coding’takes place early in the visual neural pathway, nor his view that knowledge of colour vision science will help us solve many philosophical mysteries about colour.In Section 6 I give a more detailed review of what is known today about the neurophysiology of colour vision and I show that there's nothing in the brain which could be called a colour module, let alone a module with homunculi for particular basic colour categories. In Section 7 I show that psychophysical models do not support such rigid constraints on category formation either. Hence (Section 8), at least in the case of colour, current science supports a plasticity in the formation of categories that goes far beyond the requirements of those naturalistic philosophers who would like to ground primitive concepts in biology. (shrink)

Case Reports Int J Psychoanal -/- . 1989:70 ( Pt 3):461-79. Negative hallucinations, other irretrievable experiences and two functions of consciousness L W Brakel -/- PMID: 2793325 -/- Abstract -/- After providing a psychodynamic exploration of negative hallucinations in four clinical cases, the focus of this paper was broadened in an attempt to understand the mechanism of negative hallucination. To this end, after defining the term 'irretrievable experiences', two other examples--preconscious perceptions and infantile amnesia, both analogues to negative hallucination--were (...) examined. A discussion followed concerning two types of 'consciousness': 'consciousness' as a synonym for 'awareness' and 'consciousness' as a distinct psychological state. Next, the role of different functions of each sort of consciousness in the processes of conferring, fixing and retrieving mental contents within particular categories of experience was taken up. Finally, integrating developmental aspects of these same functions, explanations were offered regarding the mechanisms involved in preconscious perception, infantile amnesia and negative hallucinations. -/- PubMed. (shrink)

Transnational corporations of a democratic and ethical calibre have the global reach to contribute to solving problems that they originally helped create, and are potentially better equiped than governments to make just and equitable decisions. In this article the transformation of organizations, and, as a result, of society, is seen as contingent on the way in which professionalism and values, seen as standards of a desirable and worth‐while life, contextualise each other. Corporations require adequate value maintenance and development, and a (...) number of ‘actionable items’ are suggested through which professionalism in the context of an inner ethical ‘base’ standards can enter into the ‘bloodstream’ of a corporation and help to achieve the ‘triple bottom line’. Each of these is discussed in terms of a complementary pair of values which need to be held in tension. Items include the development of norms in a professional context, the nature of leadership, recruiting practices, and the development and role of codes of conduct. (shrink)

Just what sort of a theory is psychoanalytic theory? -- Did Kant precede Freud on a-rational thought? -- Why primary process is hard to know -- Representational a-rational thinking : a proper function account for phantasy and wish -- Drive theory and primary process -- Phantasies, neurotic-beliefs, and beliefs-proper -- Desire and the readiness-to-act -- Compare and contrast : Gardner, Lear, Cavell, and Brakel.

In this paper I assess the relation between philosophy of chemistry and philosophy of science, focusing on those themes in the philosophy of chemistry that may bring about major revisions or extensions of current philosophy of science. Three themes can claim to make a unique contribution to philosophy of science: first, the variety of materials in the world; second, extending the world by making new stuff; and, third, specific features of the relations between chemistry and physics.

Patients with psychotic disorders experience a range of reality distortions. These often include auditory-verbal hallucinations, and thought insertion to a lesser degree; however, their mechanisms and relationships between each other remain largely elusive. Here we attempt to establish a integrative model drawing from the phenomenology of both AVHs and TI and argue that they in fact can be seen as ‘spectra’ of experiences with varying degrees of agency and ownership, with ‘silent and internal own thoughts’ on one extreme and ‘fully (...) external and clearly audible voices’ in the absence of a speaker on the other. We believe a spectral model will add emphasis to the continuity of experience and help to better understand how one type of psychotic symptom may interact with another, and put forward the argument that the experience of TI itself is not sufficient to classify as a delusion. In addition we aim to discuss some of the conceptual issues surrounding AVHs and TI with first-person accounts and current philosophical and neuropsychological theories in mind. We propose that the mechanisms behind AVHs and TI are more complex than source-monitoring deficits; indeed, to understand such phenomena one must appreciate that their very ‘existence’ and ‘reality’ as experienced by the individual have much deeper implications and meaning, both philosophically and clinically. (shrink)

(2002). Phantasy and Wish: A Proper Function Account for Human A-Rational Primary Process Mediated Mentation. Australasian Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 80, No. 1, pp. 1-16.

Recent years have witnessed a focus on feeling as a topic of reinvigorated scholarly concern, described by theorists in a range of disciplines in terms of a “turn to affect.” Surprisingly little has been said about this most recent shift in critical theorizing by philosophers, including feminist philosophers, despite the fact that affect theorists situate their work within feminist and related, sometimes intersectional, political projects. In this article, I redress the seeming elision of the “turn to affect” in feminist philosophy, (...) and develop a critique of some of the claims made by affect theorists that builds upon concerns regarding the “newness” of affect and emotion in feminist theory, and the risks of erasure this may entail. To support these concerns, I present a brief genealogy of feminist philosophical work on affect and emotion. Identifying a reductive tendency within affect theory to equate affect with bodily immanence, and to preclude cognition, culture, and representation, I argue that contemporary feminist theorists would do well to follow the more holistic models espoused by the canon of feminist work on emotion. Furthermore, I propose that prominent affect theorist Brian Massumi is right to return to pragmatism as a means of redressing philosophical dualisms, such as emotion/cognition and mind/body, but suggest that such a project is better served by John Dewey's philosophy of emotion than by William James's. (shrink)

In Gendered Readings of Change, Clara Fischer develops a unique theory of change by drawing on American philosophy and contemporary feminist thought. Via a select history of ancient Greek and Pragmatist philosophies of change, she argues for a reconstruction of transformation that is inclusive of women's experiences and thought. With wide-ranging analysis, this book addresses ontological, moral, epistemological, and political questions, and includes an insightful exploration of the philosophies of Parmenides, Aristotle, John Dewey, Iris Young, and Jane Addams.

Bottom lines and codes provide a corporation with guidelines for dealing with the inside and outside world. Bottom lines have the oldest papers through Frederic Taylor's Scientific Management, dated beginning 20th century. Codes came into existence in its midst with the emerging sustainability agenda, referring both to technical detail and human judgement. Corporate codes present themselves as a policy document with collective rules handed down by way of a top-down approach. Since an effective code is dependent on the motivation of (...) individual employees, this article proposes the additional view of a bottom-up approach. By sharing values in concrete work employees become co-owners of the code. Top-down and bottom-up approaches thus emerge in a complementary relationship. A relevant organisational context would be a parallel structure of action and reflection, thus facilitating balanced thinking in the sustainability domain and contributing to an 'ethical calibre' or 'moral standard' of a corporation. (shrink)

Organisations have implemented intensive home-based teleworking in response to global COVID-19 lockdowns and other pandemic-related restrictions. Financial pressures are driving organisations to continue intensive teleworking after the pandemic. Understanding employees’ teleworking inclinations post COVID-19, and how these inclinations are influenced by different factors, is important to ensure any future, more permanent changes to teleworking policies are sustainable for both employees and organisations. This study, therefore, investigated the relationships between the context of home-based teleworking during the pandemic, productivity perceptions during home-based (...) teleworking, and employees’ future teleworking inclinations beyond the pandemic. Specifically, the study examined whether pandemic-teleworking conditions related to the job, and the physical and social environments at home, influenced employees’ FTI, and if perceptions of improved or reduced productivity mediated these relationships. Data were collected during April and May 2020 with a cross-sectional online survey of teleworkers in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and other countries during the first COVID-19 lockdowns. Reported FTI were mixed. Most participants reported wanting to telework more post-pandemic compared to before the pandemic; however, 18% wanted to telework less. Hierarchical multiple regression analysis revealed that some teleworking conditions were positively associated with FTI. Other teleworking conditions were not associated with FTI. Perceived changes in productivity mediated the relationship between work privacy fit and FTI. Findings highlight the role of work privacy fit and job demands in influencing pandemic productivity perceptions and teleworking inclinations post-pandemic. Results raise questions about the suitability and sustainability of home-based teleworking for all staff. As organisations plan to increase the proportion of teleworking post-pandemic, this study suggests there is a need to support employees who perceived their productivity to be poor while home-working during the pandemic. (shrink)

In this paper we extend Wittgenstein’s notion of family resemblance to translation, interpretation, and comparison across traditions. There is no need for universals. This holds for everyday concepts such as green and qing 青, philosophical concepts such as emotion and qing 情, as well as philosophical categories such as form of life and dao 道. These notions as well as all other concepts from whatever tradition are family resemblance concepts. We introduce the notion of quasi-universal, which connects family resemblance concepts (...) from a limited number of traditions. The possibility and necessity of extending family resemblance concepts across traditions dissolves the false antinomy of universalism versus relativism. (shrink)

In this article, I give a counterexample to a claim made in that empirically equivalent theories can often be regarded as theoretically equivalent by treating one as having surplus structure, thereby overcoming the problem of underdetermination of theory choice. The case I present is that of Lorentz's ether theory and Einstein's theory of special relativity. I argue that Norton's suggestion that surplus structure is present in Lorentz's theory in the form of the ether state of rest is based on a (...) misunderstanding of the role that the ether plays in Lorentz's theory, and that in general, consideration of the conceptual framework in which a theory is embedded is vital to understanding the relationship between different theories. (shrink)

In the field of clinical practice, there does not seem to be too much contention about what schizophrenia is, at least from a high level. After all, there are various diagnostic systems and guidelines, all of which point toward schizophrenia as a psychotic syndrome which likely forms a continuum with other psychotic disorders. It may sound obvious that, according to the current definitions, the major commonality between schizophrenia and all other psychoses is psychotic symptoms; more precisely, delusions and hallucinations. Any (...) description, or ‘phenomenology’ as most clinicians view it, can be found in these diagnostic manuals. However, is there anything at all that sets schizophrenia apart from the other... (shrink)

We present counterexamples to the widespread assumption that Moorean sentences cannot be rationally asserted. We then explain why Moorean assertions of the sort we discuss do not incur the irrationality charge. Our argument involves an appeal to the dual-process theory of the mind and a contrast between the conditions for ascribing beliefs to oneself and the conditions for making assertions about independently existing states of affairs. We conclude by contrasting beliefs of the sort we discuss with the structurally similar but (...) rationally impermissible beliefs of certain psychiatric patients. (shrink)

We address a recent proposal concerning ‘surplus structure’ due to Nguyen et al.. We argue that the sense of ‘surplus structure’ captured by their formal criterion is importantly different from—and in a sense, opposite to—another sense of ‘surplus structure’ used by philosophers. We argue that minimizing structure in one sense is generally incompatible with minimizing structure in the other sense. We then show how these distinctions bear on Nguyen et al.’s arguments about Yang-Mills theory and on the hole argument.

Three perspectives on international trade are present in current debates. From the first perspective, trade is regarded as a set of individual transactions among consenting parties and considerations of fairness and justice barely feature, if at all. The second perspective underlines the importance of background structures for trade, maintained by states, which gives rise considerations of fairness and justice. One prominent version of this perspective, for example as defended by Aaron James, views all trading states as having in principle equal (...) claims to the gains from trade. A third perspective puts the focus on exploitation. In this special issue, Mathias Risse and Gabriel Wollner claim that the first perspective should be abandoned and that the type of approach that is instantiated by James fails. This article does not follow them in dismissing the second perspective in its entirety. It suggests that there is a different version of this perspective that is defensible and develops key elements of that version. In a second step, the article seeks to show that, even if there were no plausible account of fairly dividing gains from trade among states, fairness in trade would still generate demanding normative requirements – that can be and should be integrated into a theory of global justice. (shrink)

In this article, I trace the politics of shame in the context of the problematization of women’s bodies as markers of sexual immorality in modern Ireland. I argue that the post-Independence project of national identity formation established women as bearers of virtue and purity and that sexual transgression threatening this new identity came to be severely punished. By hiding women, children, and all those deemed to be dangerous to national self-representations of purity, the Irish state, supported by Catholic moral values (...) and teaching, physically removed its embodied instances of national shame through a system of mass institutionalization. Just as shame entails the covering of one’s blemishes, so the shaming of women deemed to be deviant by church and state involved their covering via incarceration in Magdalen laundries, among other institutions. By assessing recent events highlighted by inquiries into Irish institutions—Magdalen laundries, reformatory and industrial schools, and soon mother and baby homes—in terms of the politics of shame, this article aims to shed light on the pervasiveness of institutionalization in Ireland and the complex relationship between said institutions, gender, sexuality, and nation building in the early decades of the Irish state. (shrink)

In this paper I present a historiography of the recent emergence of philosophy of chemistry. Special attention is given to the interest in this domain in Eastern Europe before the collapse of the USSR. It is shown that the initial neglect of the philosophy of chemistry is due to the unanimous view in philosophy and philosophy of science that only physics is a proper science (to put in Kant's words). More recently, due to the common though incorrect assumption that chemistry (...) can in principle be reduced to physics, the neglect continued, even when interest in sciences such as biology and psychology entered more strongly in philosophy of science. It is concluded that chemistry is an autonomous science and is perhaps a more typical science than physics. (shrink)

We argue that several apparently distinct responses to the hole argument, all invoking formal or mathematical considerations, should be viewed as a unified “mathematical response.” We then consider and rebut two prominent critiques of the mathematical response before reflecting on what is ultimately at issue in this literature.

Blocks distinction between “phenomenal feel” consciousness and “thought/cognition” consciousness is a cultural construction. Consciousness (and its “subspecies”) is not a natural kind. Some crosscultural data are presented to support this.

While in the research area known,as ’philosophy of science' there is a growing interest in separate disciplines of the empirical sciences, applied sciences and even technologies, one can find hardly any reference to the discipline of chemistry other than some preliminary discussions of chemical concepts or studies concerning the rational reconstruction of the history of chemistry. No analyses, which might be called 'philosophy of chemistry’ can be found to date. It is hoped that this review paper on what has been (...) published on the philosophy of chemistry will show that chemistry is a philosophically rich field. After an introduction, in section 2, a more detailed classification is given of the various areas from which a (marginal) interest in the philosophy of chemistry has emerged.In section 3 there is a review of the opinions on the subject matter of chemistry, be it straightforward definition or indications of the relation to other natural sciences, in particular physics. In section 4 publications on the philosophy of chemistry are reviewed which fit the conventional format of the philosophy of science (discussing laws, theories,explanations, models). In section 5 some of the literature on the concept of chemical species is reviewed. In section 6 and 7 a review of the literature on the concepts of chemical structure and chemical reactions is presented. (shrink)