Maxwell's equations are established for the free electromagnetic field in two-dimensional space-times. In Minkowski space they are solved under the boundary conditions set by a pair of uniformly accelerated “plates.” With the help of these solutions we determine the regularized energy-momentum tensor of the canonically quantized electromagnetic field at the position of one of the “plates.” Thereby (as a new result) we arrive at a Casimir effect in an accelerated reference frame.

This article presents and compares Frege’s and Husserl’s conceptions of sense, also taking into account their 1891 and 1906 correspondence. It is argued that while the similarities between their views speak in favour of a Fregean interpretation of Husserl’s notion of noematic sense, there are also important differences. With regard to the latter, it is argued that Husserl’s view yields a more general criterion of propositional difference and also provides a more detailed conception of the use of indexicals and non-descriptive (...) singular terms, and of their reference. In this context, Husserl’s conceptions of constitution and genetic constitution analysis, respectively, are invoked and interpreted in terms of the epistemic notion of processing mental files or individual “concepts”. (shrink)

During the past three decades the Utrecht scholar Jaap Mansfeld has built up a formidable reputation in the field of the history of ancient philosophy. This state-of-the-art collection of articles is presented to him by colleagues and friends on his sixtieth birthday.

John Searle''s hypothesis of the Background seems to conflict with his initial representationalism according to which each Intentional state contains a particular content that determines its conditions of satisfaction. In Section I of this essay I expose Searle''s initial theory of Intentionality and relate it to Edmund Husserl''s earlier phenomenology. In Section II I make it clear that Searle''s introduction of the notion of Network, though indispensable, does not, by itself, force us to modify that initial theory. However, a comparison (...) of this notion to the notion of horizon from Husserl''s later phenomenology and an interpretation of Husserl''s conception of the determinable X as providing a solution to the problem of perceptual misidentification lead me to conclude that in his discussion of ''twin examples'' Searle had better modified his initial theory. Finally, I critically examine Searle''s claim that anyone who tries seriously to follow out the threads in the Network will eventually reach a bedrock of non-Intentional capacities. In Section III I show in detail, partly in a rather Husserlian vein, that Searle''s four official arguments for the Background thesis, though containing some very valuable contributions to a theory of linguistic skills, are not convincing at all if they are to be understood as going beyond the scope of Searle''s ''content-cum-Network'' picture of Intentionality. The upshot of these considerations is that the Background thesis should be read as a thesis concerning the causal neurophysiological preconditions of human Intentionality rather than concerning the logical properties of Intentional states in general. Recently Searle himself has come to the same result, but he does not say for which reasons. The present essay makes it clear why Searle just had to arrive at this important result. (shrink)

The present contribution elucidates Husserl’s relationship to Lotze in the light of Winthrop Bell’s notes on Husserl’s 1912 seminar on Lotze’s theory of knowledge. Once again, these notes make it clear that Husserl highly appreciated the chapter on Plato’s theory of ideas from Lotze’s 1874 Logic and his anti-psychologistic view of logic, as far as it goes. However, it also becomes clear that Husserl rejected both Lotze’s account of the origins of objectivity in terms of the doctrine of “achievements of (...) thinking (Denkleistungen)” and the discussion of skepticism in the 1874 Logic against the background of his own (Bolzano-inspired) conception of intentionality and his treatment of the epistemological “problem of transcendence” in the framework of the “phenomenological reduction”. (shrink)

This essay aims to morally evaluate psychotherapy as it is currently practiced through the lens of sales/exchange ethics. The main focus of the essay is on psychotherapists’ claims to special expertise at diagnosing and treating mental illness. I review the research evidence relevant to these claims and conclude that these claims are not supported by the available evidence. Psychotherapists do not appear to be any better than actuarial tests at diagnosing mental illnesses, and meta-analyses of psychotherapy outcome studies casts serious (...) doubt on the existence of treatment expertise. Given that the expertise that psychotherapists claim to have is lacking, those seeking psychotherapy are not adequately informed about the quality of the product that they are seeking. Using Holley’s principles of sales ethics as a springboard, I argue that this situation is morally unacceptable; thus the current practice of psychotherapy is morally impermissible. I provide and evaluate some suggestions for rectifying this problem. The most important of these is Dawes’s suggestion that psychotherapists be licensed according to their use of experimentally confirmed diagnostic and treatment methods. (shrink)

The notion of empathy has more recently seen a considerable revival—notably (first) in connection with Quine's empathy model of radical interpretation, in contrast to which Davidson has developed his triangulation model, and (secondly) in the context of the debate between simulation theory vs. theory theory about propositional attitude ascription. So far, these debates have been carried on fairly independently of each other. This paper is an attempt to utilize the interpretation-theoretical discussion in order to argue for a moderate version of (...) simulation theory. To this end, Davidson's explanation of the radical interpretation scenario in terms of triangulation is reconstructed by comparison to some relevant ideas of Husserl's. (shrink)

Twenty-five years ago, drawing on her fieldwork among the Zapotec, the legal anthropologist Laura Nader proposed the term harmony ideology to characterize postcolonial systems of justice. She found outward social harmony to be the result of coercion, as people were denied access to legal means and were forced either into alternative dispute resolution or into autocoercion, in which marginalized people presented unity to outsiders to avoid state interference. This proposition constitutes a relevant advance in relation to previous approaches to conflict (...) and harmony in the social sciences, but it falls short by failing to account for indigenous notions of and demands for harmony. Ethnographic data from rural Kyrgyzstan and the South Omo region of Ethiopia indicate that there are models of harmony active at various social levels and that harmony is a genuine concern of communities. Demands for harmony are performatively integrated into social practices. The authors argue that, rather than searching for a scale of sociality where harmony might be “organic,” it is necessary to critically assess proclamations of and demands for harmony as means of coercion even within small communities. A focus on social practice in such places reveals that the experience of community partly derives from acts of collectively condemning and sanctioning deviance. (shrink)