Two of the most fundamental questions about language are these: what are languages?; and, what is it to know a given language? Many philosophers who have reflected on these questions have presented answers that attribute a central role to conventions. In one of its boldest forms such a view runs as follows. Languages are either social entities constituted by networks of social conventions or abstract objects where when a particular community speaks a given language they do so in virtue of (...) the conventions operative within that community. Consequently, for an individual to know a given language is for them to be party to the relevant conventions. Call this view conventionalism. In this article my aim is to evaluate conventionalism. I will argue that although there are linguistic conventions and that they do play an important role in language development and communication conventionalism should be rejected in favour of a more psychologistically orientated position. (shrink)

In this paper I address an important question concerning the nature of visual content: are the contents of human visual states and experiences exhaustively fixed or determined (in the non-causal sense) by our intrinsic physical properties? The individualist answers this question affirmatively. I will argue that such an answer is mistaken. A common anti-individualist or externalist tactic is to attempt to construct a twin scenario involving humanoid duplicates who are embedded in environments that diverge in such a way that it (...) appears to be necessary to attribute divergent contents to their respective visual states. In the first half of the paper I discuss some of the twin scenarios that are prominent in the literature and argue that they fail to undermine individualism. Indeed I argue that due to important facts about our internal workings, a convincing externalist twin scenario involving humanoid protagonists cannot be constructed. However, I argue that such a result does not conclusively establish an individualist thesis and that in order to settle the question at issue it is necessary to construct an independently motivated theory of visual content. I attempt to do this in the second half of the paper by developing a theory at the core of which is the idea that the contents of our visual states and experiences are determined by the causal powers vis-. (shrink)

In this article I will evaluate the popular view that we acquire most of our concepts by means of learning. I will do this through an examination of Jerry Fodor’s dissenting views and those of some of his most persistent and significant critics. Although I will be critical of Fodor’s central claim that it is impossible to learn a concept, I will ultimately conclude that we should be more sceptical than is normal about the power of learning when it comes (...) to concept acquisition, particularly with respect to natural kind concepts. Central to my argument for this conclusion will be an examination of the bearings of psychological essentialism on concept acquisition. (shrink)

In this paper I address the issue of the subject matter of linguistics. According to the prominent Chomskyan view, linguistics is the study of the language faculty, a component of the mind-brain, and is therefore a branch of cognitive psychology. In his recent book Ignorance of Language Michael Devitt attacks this psychologistic conception of linguistics. I argue that the prominent Chomskyan objections to Devitt's position are not decisive as they stand. However, Devitt's position should ultimately be rejected as there is (...) nothing outside of the mind of a typical speaker that could serve to fix determinate syntactic rules of her language or constitute the supervenience base of her connection to any such rules. (shrink)

Radical Concept Nativism (RCN) is the doctrine that most of our concepts are innate. In this paper I will argue in favour of RCN by developing a speculative account of concept acquisition that has considerable nativist credentials and can be defended against the most familiar anti-nativist objections. The core idea is that we have a whole battery of hard-wired dispositions that determine how we group together objects with which we interact. In having these dispositions we are effectively committed to an (...) implicit conceptual scheme and acquiring concepts is a matter of labelling the elements of that scheme. (shrink)

In this paper my concern is to evaluate a particular answer to the question of how we acquire mastery of the syntax of our first language. According to this answer children learn syntax by means of scientific investigation. Alison Gopnik has recently championed this idea as an extension of what she calls the ‘theory theory’, a well established approach to cognitive development in developntental psychology. I will argue against this extension of the theory theory. The general thrust of my objection (...) is that at the point at which children are acquiring knowledge of syntax they are not in a position to engage in far-reaching scientific investigation. Or, if they are, there are no mechanisms in place to ensure that their scientific investigations will generate a common body of knowledge so making linguistic convergence a mystery. That this is so is a product of two salient features of scientific confirmation. I will conclude that my objections to the theory theory put pressure on learning theories in general. (shrink)

Psychological essentialism is a prominent view within contemporary developmental psychology and cognitive science according to which children have an innate commitment to essentialism. If this view is correct then a commitment to essentialism is an important aspect of human nature rather than a culturally specific commitment peculiar to those who have received a specific philosophical or scientific education. In this article my concern is to explore the philosophical significance of psychological essentialism with respect to the relationship between the content of (...) our concepts and thoughts and the nature of the extra-cranial world. I will argue that, despite first appearances, psychological essentialism undermines a form of externalism that has become commonplace in the philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the most prominent and familiar features of Wittgenstein’s rule following considerations generate a powerful argument for the thesis that most of our concepts are innate, an argument that echoes a Chomskyan poverty of the stimulus argument. This argument has a significance over and above what it tells us about Wittgenstein’s implicit commitments. For, it puts considerable pressure on widely held contemporary views of concept learning, such as the view that we learn concepts by constructing (...) prototypes. This should lead us to abandon our general default hostility to concept nativism and be much more sceptical of claims made on behalf of learning theories. (shrink)

In recent decades cognitive science has revolutionised our understanding of the workings of the human mind. Philosophy has made a major contribution to cognitive science and has itself been hugely influenced by its development. This dynamic book explores the philosophical significance of cognitive science and examines the central debates that have enlivened its history. In a wide-ranging and comprehensive account of the topic, philosopher M.J. Cain discusses the historical origins of cognitive science and its philosophical underpinnings; the nature and (...) role of representations in cognition; the architecture of the mind and the modularity thesis; the nature of concepts; knowledge of language and its acquisition; perception; and the relationship between the brain and cognition. Cain draws upon an extensive knowledge of empirical developments and their philosophical interpretation. He argues that although the field has generated some challenging new views in recent years, many of the core ideas that initiated its birth are still to be taken seriously. Clearly written and incisively argued, The Philosophy of Cognitive Science will appeal to any student or researcher interested in the workings of the mind. (shrink)

In its comprehensive overview of Alain Locke's pragmatist philosophy this book captures the radical implications of Locke's approach within pragmatism, the critical temper embedded in Locke's works, the central role of power and empowerment of the oppressed and the concept of broad democracy Locke employed.

An understanding of human nature has been central to the work of some of the greatest philosophical thinkers including Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud and Marx. Questions such as 'what is human nature?', 'is there such a thing as an exclusively human nature?', 'through what methods might we best discover more about our nature?', and 'to what extent are our actions and beliefs constrained by it?' are of central importance not only to philosophy, but to our general understanding of (...) ourselves as part of the human species. This volume addresses such questions through the inclusion of special commissioned essays by specialists including John Cottingham, Hans-Johann Glock, P. M. S. Hacker, Wolfram Hinzen, Rosalind Hursthouse, Peter Kail, Sarah Patterson and Richard Samuels. (shrink)

An understanding of human nature has been central to the work of some of the greatest philosophical thinkers including Plato, Descartes, Hume, Hobbes, Rousseau, Freud and Marx. Questions such as 'what is human nature?', 'is there such a thing as an exclusively human nature?', 'through what methods might we best discover more about our nature?', and 'to what extent are our actions and beliefs constrained by it?' are of central importance not only to philosophy, but to our general understanding of (...) ourselves as part of the human species. This volume addresses such questions through the inclusion of special commissioned essays by specialists including John Cottingham, Hans-Johann Glock, P. M. S. Hacker, Wolfram Hinzen, Rosalind Hursthouse, Peter Kail, Sarah Patterson and Richard Samuels. (shrink)

Zoologist A. J. Cain began historical research on Linnaeus in 1956 in connection with his dissatisfaction over the standard taxonomic hierarchy and the rules of binomial nomenclature. His famous 1958 paper 'Logic and Memory in Linnaeus's System of Taxonomy' argues that Linnaeus was following Aristotle's method of logical division without appreciating that it properly applies only to 'analysed entities' such as geometric figures whose essential nature is already fully known. The essence of living things being unanalysed, there is no (...) basis on which to choose the right characters to define a genus nor on which to differentiate species. Yet Cain 's understanding of Aristotle, which depended on a 1916 text by H. W. B. Joseph, was fatally flawed. In the 1990s Cain devoted himself to further historical study and softened his verdict on Linnaeus, praising his empiricism. The idea that Linnaeus was applying an ancient and inappropriate method cries out for fresh study and revision. (shrink)

Outstanding translations by leading contemporary scholars--many commissioned especially for this volume--are presented here in the first single edition to include the entire surviving corpus of works attributed to Plato in antiquity. In his introductory essay, John Cooper explains the presentation of these works, discusses questions concerning the chronology of their composition, comments on the dialogue form in which Plato wrote, and offers guidance on approaching the reading and study of Plato's works. Also included are concise introductions by Cooper and Hutchinson (...) to each translation, meticulous annotation designed to serve both scholar and general reader, and a comprehensive index. This handsome volume offers fine paper and a high-quality Smyth-sewn cloth binding in a sturdy, elegant edition. (shrink)

The arts and nursing are profoundly connected. While the relationship between nursing and art has persisted over time, the majority of nursing scholarship on the arts has historically centered upon the art of nursing practice and the cultivation and application of aesthetic knowing. However, there is a burgeoning use of arts‐based strategies is nursing education, research, and practice. Correspondingly, there is a need to understand how such approaches can uniquely contribute knowledge to the nursing discipline in order to support arts‐integration (...) for nursing scholars. We structure our inquiry into arts’ contributions according to two dominant methods of engaging with arts‐based strategies: knowing about (e.g., phenomena) vis‐à‐vis art‐viewing, and knowing through (e.g., embodied knowing) vis‐à‐vis art‐making. In doing so, we explore critical contributions of art to nursing research and educational practices, including arts’ capacity to augment traditional research and communication approaches, democratize the research space, challenge issues of representation, and facilitate education, dissemination, and reflexivity. (shrink)

Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his contributions to aesthetics and social theory. Critics have always complained about the lack of a practical, political or ethical dimension to Adorno's philosophy. In this highly original contribution to the literature on Adorno, J. M. Bernstein offers the first attempt in any language to provide an account of the ethical theory latent in Adorno's writings. Bernstein relates Adorno's ethics to major trends in contemporary moral philosophy. He analyses the full range of Adorno's (...) major works, with a special focus on Dialectic of Enlightenment, Minima Moralia and Negative Dialectics. In developing his account Bernstein lays particular stress on Adorno's contention that the event of Auschwitz demands a new categorical imperative. This book will be widely acknowledged as the standard work on Adorno's ethics and as such will interest professionals and students of philosophy, political theory, sociology, history of ideas, art history and music. (shrink)

CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BRAIN SELF-REGULATION PARADOX The relationship of consciousness to biology has intrigued mankind thoroughout recorded history. However, little progress has been made not only in understanding these issues but also in raising fundamental questions central to the problem. As Davidson and Davidson note in their introduction, William James suggested, almost a century ago in his Principles of Psychology, that the brain was the organ of mind and be havior. James went so far as to suggest that the remainder (...) of the Principles was but a "footnote" to this central thesis. This volume brings together diverse biobehavioral scientists who are addressing the various aspects of the mindlbrainlbodylbehavior issue. Although some of the authors have previously published together in other volumes, by and large the particular combination of authors and topics selected by the editors makes this volume unique and timely. Unlike the Consciousness and Self-Regulation series (Schwartz & Shapiro, 1976, 1978), also published by Plenum, this volume is devoted entirely to a psychobiological approach to consciousness. Although readers will differ in their interest in specific chapters, the well-rounded investigator who is concerned with the psychobiology of consciousness will want to become intimately acquainted with all the views presented in this volume. As noted by the individual contributors, the topic of this volume stimulates fundamental questions which, on the surface, may appear trivial, yet, on further reflection, turn out to have deep significance. (shrink)

The idea of human cruelty to animals so consumes novelist Elizabeth Costello in her later years that she can no longer look another person in the eye: humans, especially meat-eating ones, seem to her to be conspirators in a crime of stupefying magnitude taking place on farms and in slaughterhouses, factories, and laboratories across the world. Costello's son, a physics professor, admires her literary achievements, but dreads his mother’s lecturing on animal rights at the college where he teaches. His colleagues (...) resist her argument that human reason is overrated and that the inability to reason does not diminish the value of life; his wife denounces his mother’s vegetarianism as a form of moral superiority. At the dinner that follows her first lecture, the guests confront Costello with a range of sympathetic and skeptical reactions to issues of animal rights, touching on broad philosophical, anthropological, and religious perspectives. Painfully for her son, Elizabeth Costello seems offensive and flaky, but—dare he admit it?—strangely on target. In this landmark book, Nobel Prize–winning writer J. M. Coetzee uses fiction to present a powerfully moving discussion of animal rights in all their complexity. He draws us into Elizabeth Costello’s own sense of mortality, her compassion for animals, and her alienation from humans, even from her own family. In his fable, presented as a Tanner Lecture sponsored by the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, Coetzee immerses us in a drama reflecting the real-life situation at hand: a writer delivering a lecture on an emotionally charged issue at a prestigious university. Literature, philosophy, performance, and deep human conviction—Coetzee brings all these elements into play. As in the story of Elizabeth Costello, the Tanner Lecture is followed by responses treating the reader to a variety of perspectives, delivered by leading thinkers in different fields. Coetzee’s text is accompanied by an introduction by political philosopher Amy Gutmann and responsive essays by religion scholar Wendy Doniger, primatologist Barbara Smuts, literary theorist Marjorie Garber, and moral philosopher Peter Singer, author of Animal Liberation. Together the lecture-fable and the essays explore the palpable social consequences of uncompromising moral conflict and confrontation. (shrink)

In this unflinching look at the experience of suffering and one of its greatest manifestations—torture—J.M. Bernstein critiques the repressions of traditional moral theory, showing that our morals are not immutable ideals but fragile constructions that depend on our experience of suffering itself. Morals, Bernstein argues, not only guide our conduct but also express the depth of mutual dependence that we share as vulnerable and injurable individuals. Beginning with the attempts to abolish torture in the eighteenth century, and then sensitively examining (...) what is suffered in torture and related transgressions, such as rape, Bernstein elaborates a powerful new conception of moral injury. Crucially, he shows, moral injury always involves an injury to the status of an individual as a person—it is a violent assault against his or her dignity. Elaborating on this critical element of moral injury, he demonstrates that the mutual recognitions of trust form the invisible substance of our moral lives, that dignity is a fragile social possession, and that the perspective of ourselves as potential victims is an ineliminable feature of everyday moral experience. (shrink)

In this 1974 book a practising scientist and gifted expositor sets forth an exciting point of view on the nature of science and how it works.

Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory offers one of the most powerful and comprehensive critiques of art and of the discipline of aesthetics ever written. The work offers a deeply critical engagement with the history and philosophy of aesthetics and with the traditions of European art through the middle of the 20th century. It is coupled with ambitious claims about what aesthetic theory ought to be. But the cultural horizon of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory was the world of high modernism, and much has (...) happened since then both in theory and in practice. Adorno's powerful vision of aesthetics calls for reconsideration in this light. Must his work be defended, updated, resisted, or simply left behind? This volume gathers new essays by leading philosophers, critics, and theorists writing in the wake of Adorno in order to address these questions. They hold in common a deep respect for the power of Adorno's aesthetic critique and a concern for the future of aesthetic theory in response to recent developments in aesthetics and its contexts. (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Just War Tradition and the Restraint of War: A Moral and Historical Inquiry. By James Turner Johnson.

Aesthetic alienation may be described as the paradoxical relationship whereby art and truth have come to be divorced from one another while nonetheless remaining entwined. J. M. Bernstein not only finds the separation of art and truth problematic, but also contends that we continue to experience art as sensuous and particular, thus complicating and challenging the cultural self-understanding of modernity. Bernstein focuses on the work of four key philosophers—Kant, Heidegger, Derrida, and Adorno—and provides powerful new interpretations of their views. Bernstein (...) shows how each of the three post-Kantian aesthetics to construct a philosophical language that can criticize and displace the categorical assumption of modernity. He also examines in detail their responses to questions concerning the relations among art, philosophy, and politics in modern societies. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas' construction of a critical social theory of society grounded in communicative reason is one of the very few real philosophical inventions of recent times that demands and repays extended engagement. In this elaborate and sympathetic study which places Habermas' project in the context of critical theory as a whole past and future, J. M. Bernstein argues that despite its undoubted achievements, it contributes to the very problems of ethical dislocation and meaninglessness it aims to diagnose and remedy. Bernstein (...) further argues that the precise character of the failures of Habermas' program demonstrate the necessity for a return to the first generation critical theory of Adorno. Reading across nearly the whole range of Habermas' corpus, Recovering Ethical Life traces the development of the theory of communicative reason from its inception in Knowledge and Human Interests through its elaboration in The Theory of Communicative Action and into its defense against postmodernism in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity . In separate chapters Habermas' readings of Freud, Durkheim amd Mead, Adorno and Foucault, Castoriadis and Taylor are critically examined. The focus of Bernstein's analyses, however, is always problem centered and thematic rather than textual psychoanalytic theory as an account of self knowledge, the competing claims of ethical identity and moral reason, the place of judgment in practical reason, and the debate between philosophies of language based communities versus those oriented towards world-disclosure. Critical theory is unique among current philosophies in engaging with the problems of social injustice and nihilism by siding with an abstract moral reason that forfeits the processes of intersubjective recognition it intended to salvage. Even in the fine grain of Habermas' account of performative contradictions and the theory of discourses of application, Bernstein perceives a squandering of the resources of an ethical life in need of transfiguration. (shrink)

The problem of 'no fault' compensation for patients who suffer adverse effects as a result of their participation in clinical trials is discussed in the light of the guidelines issued by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI) and our recent experiences in reviewing protocols submitted to the local ethics of surgical research sub-committee. We have found a variety of qualifications being applied by pharmaceutical firms which are not in the spirit of the guidelines, let alone the interests of (...) the patient, and we suggest a means whereby the patients can be assured of fair treatment in the event of 'no fault' injury. (shrink)

Arguably, the most promising and compelling route to demonstrating the significance of Hegel’s thought to contemporary philosophy has been the series of recent readings that construe Hegel as continuing and completing Kant’s Copernican turn. Paul Redding explicitly locates his interpretation within this program, seeing the hermeneutic dimension of Hegel’s thought as providing for the possibility of continuing the Kantian project. Kant’s Copernican turn can be loosely stated as the procedure of reflectively uncovering unexperienced conditions of experience that contribute to the (...) nature of experience in ways that require its further re-determination and re-description. What a hemeneutic take on this reflective procedure adds is that foremost among those conditions are contexts of intersubjective or dialogical relations—structures of recognition. While perhaps disappointing to anyone interested in the problem of textual interpretation, there is finally nothing more to Redding’s account of Hegel’s “hermeneutics” than the establishing of recognitive structures as forming the ultimate horizon of human experience. I take Redding’s relentless tracking of the problem of recognition to be one of his book’s virtues. (shrink)

The theory of emotion developed by William James has been subject to four criticisms. First, it is held that Jamesian emotion is without function, that it plays no role in cognition and behavior. Second, that James ignores the role of experience in emotion. Third, that James overstated the role of physical processes in emotion. Fourth, that James’ theory of emotion has been experimentally demonstrated to be false. A fifth point, less an explicit criticism than an assumption, holds that James has (...) nothing to offer a social psychology of emotions. It will be shown in this paper that not one of these criticisms of James' theory of emotion can be sustianed. (shrink)

Following the lead of Annette Baier, this essay argues that trust relations provide the ethical substance of everyday living. When A trusts B, A unreflectively allows B to approach sufficiently close so as to be able to harm A. In order for this to be possible, A practically presupposes that B perceives A as a person and will hence act accordingly. Trust relations are relations of mutual recognition in which we acknowledge our mutual standing and vulnerability with respect to one (...) another. A robust account of trust assumes: first, trust relations are primary and practical, and while monitored by reason, they are not rationally constituted; second, trust can sustain its practical primacy over moral reason because it is developmentally prior to reason; and third, trust relations can be the bearers of our worth and vulnerability because they are the developmental products of first love. (shrink)

Philosophical discussion tends to converge on the view that narratives are at the center of the emotion of grief. In this article, I expand on this kind of view. On the one hand, I argue that key strands of phenomenological and neuroscientific studies suggest that grief consists in a complex emotional process of disconfirmation-and-updating of the narrative self-model. By heuristically drawing on an analogy between binocular rivalry and grief, I show that certain salient aspects of the phenomenology of grief, such (...) as self-alienation and ambiguity, are straightforwardly reflected by this account. On the other hand, I argue that this hierarchical approach has the resources to: (i) show that both narratable and unnarratable experiences of personal loss are both instances of grief; and (ii) differentiate between narratable and unnarratable experiences of grief, without compromising the view that self-constituting narratives are at the center of the phenomenon. (shrink)