These essays by leading philosophers and scientists focus on recent ideas at the forefront of modern Darwinism, showcasing and exploring the challenges they raise as well as open problems.

The discussion of collective agency involves the reduction problem of the concept of a collective. Individualism and Cartesian internalism have long restricted orthodox theories and made them face the tension between an irreducible concept of a collective and ontological reductionism. Heterodox theories as functionalism and interpretationism reinterpret the concept of agency and accept it as realized on the level of a collective. In order to adequately explain social phenomena that have relations as their essence, in this paper we propose a (...) relational, holistic account of collective agency and argue that functionalism and interpretationism can be integrated into such an account. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a naïve realist conception of veridical perception in the light of the challenge from the argument from hallucination. The naïve realist claims that some sensory experiences are relations to mind-independent objects. That is to say, taking experiences to be episodes or events, the naïve realist supposes that some such episodes have as constituents mind-independent objects. In turn, the disjunctivist claims that in a case of (...) veridical perception like this very kind of experience that you now have, the experiential episode you enjoy is of a kind which could not be occurring were you having an hallucination. The common strategy of arguments from hallucination set out to show that certain things are true of hallucinations, and hence must be true of perceptions. For example, it is argued that hallucinations must have non-physical objects of awareness, or that such states are not relations to anything at all, but are at best seeming relations to objects. In insisting that veridical perceptual experience is of a distinct kind from hallucination, the disjunctivist denies that any of these conceptions of hallucination challenges our conception of veridical perceptions as relations to mind-independent objects. More specifically, I assume that the disjunctivist advocates naïve realism because they think that this position best articulates how sensory experience seems to us to be just through reflection. If the disjunctivist is correct in this contention, then anyone who accepts the conclusion of the argument from hallucination must also accept that the nature of sensory experience is other than it seems to us to be. In turn, one may complain that any such error theory is liable to lead to sceptical consequences. A Humean scepticism about the senses launches a challenge about our knowledge of the world through questioning the conception we have of what sense experience is, and how it can provide knowledge of the world. (shrink)

His article deals with general features of moral behaviour from an economic perspective. Moral rules act as an enforcement mechanism replacing external sanctions with internal emotional sanctions such as guilt and shame. It is shown in many experiments and real life situations that morals influence the decision-making process and the outcomes. Moral attitudes help to overcome social dilemma situations if the actors’ intrinsic motivation is relatively high and if these moral attitudes are wide-spread. It is argued that to reject the (...) moral dimension means to restrict the relevance of economic theory. This paper emphasizes the importance of moral behaviour and offers a simple model of the effects of morality. (shrink)

Del 4 al 8 de Mayo la ciudad de Donostia-San Sebastián reunió a más de 170 profesores de todo el mundo con ocasión de celebrar el Tercer Congreso Internacional de Ciencia Cognitiva, organizado por el departamento de Lógica y Filosofía de la Ciencia de la UPV/ehu. El enfoque que el simposio quiso otorgar al tratamiento de la ciencia cognitiva tuvo en general un aroma procedente del estudio que permiten los procesos cognitivos inherentes al lenguaje natural. Particularmente pudieron distinguirse cuatro temas (...) que constituyeron, pese a su íntima relación y por cuestiones de forma, diferentes bloques en torno a los cuales giraron las distintas ponencias y comunicaciones. (shrink)

This paper argues that the allure of conspiracy theories lies in their evolutionary origins, specifically in our capacity to communicate unrepresented threats. Drawing on threat-detection psychology and error management theory, it posits that these theories serve as adaptive responses to perceived threats and social coalition-building, rather than as flaws in reasoning.

Article copyright 2002. We provide a battery of examples of delusions against which theoretical accounts can be tested. Then we identify neuropsychological anomalies that could produce the unusual experiences that may lead, in turn, to the delusions in our battery. However, we argue against Maher's view that delusions are false beliefs that arise as normal responses to anomalous experiences. We propose, instead, that a second factor is required to account for the transition from unusual experience to delusional belief. The second (...) factor in the etiology of delusions can be described superficially as a loss of the ability to reject a candidate for belief on the grounds of its implausibility and its inconsistency with everything else that the patient knows, but we point out some problems that confront any attempt to say more about the nature of this second factor. (shrink)

Frame -- Perspective -- Approach and Encounter -- To See and Look Away -- And What If the Animal Replied? -- Discussion Questions.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Disjunctivism about perceptual appearances, as I conceive of it, is a theory which seeks to preserve a na.

A noted author defends his personal attitudes toward the fundamental issues of classical philosophy, discussing the awesome mystery surrounding science and life and explaining why he considers himself a theist.

Some authors have recently claimed that relativism about knowledge sentences accommodates the context sensitivity of our use of such sentences as well as contextualism, while avoiding the counterintuitive consequences of contextualism regarding our inter-contextual judgments, that is, our judgments about knowledge claims made in other contexts. I argue that relativism, like contextualism, involves an error theory regarding a certain class of inter-contextual judgments.

Some authors have recently claimed that relativism about knowledge sentences accommodates the context sensitivity of our use of such sentences as well as contextualism, while avoiding the counterintuitive consequences of contextualism regarding our inter-contextual judgments, that is, our judgments about knowledge claims made in other contexts. I argue that relativism, like contextualism, involves an error theory regarding a certain class of inter-contextual judgments.

In this paper we present an overview, with historical and critical remarks, of two articles by S. Jaśkowski ([20, 21] 1948 and [22, 23] 1949), which contain the oldest known formulation of a paraconsistent logic. Jaśkowski has built the logic – he termed discussive (D2) – by defining two new connectives and by introducing a modal translation map from D2 systems into Lewis’ modal logic S5. Discussive systems, for their formal details and their original philosophical justification, have attracted discrete attention (...) among experts. Indeed, in what follows, after having introduced Jaśkowski methodology of building D2 and his main philosophical motivations for providing such a system, we will explore some of the main contributions to the development of D2. (shrink)

In these essays, written between 1909 and 1954 and first published as a collection in 1957, the eminent philosopher relates the "I-Thou" dialogue to such varied fields as religion, social thought, philosophy, myth, drama, literature, and art. Buber thus responds to the crises and challenges of the 20th century and enables the reader to follow his lifelong struggles toward "authentic existence.".

Feminist philosophers have long worried that intersectionality undermines the viability of the concept and category of woman, thereby undermining feminist theory and politics. Some have responded to this problem by abandoning intersectionality; others have attempted to find some suitably inclusive way of reconceptualizing woman. I provide a novel solution that focuses on conceptualizing oppression in light of intersectionality, rather than trying to provide an account of what it is to be a woman. By enabling us to understand feminism as responding (...) to gender oppression, this account shows that intersectionality does not conceptually undermine and fragment feminism. Feminism should be intersectional. (shrink)

Two more or less standard methods exist for the systematic, logical construction of classical mathematics, the so-called theory of types, due in the main to Russell, and the Zermelo axiomatic set theory. In systems based upon either of these, the connective of membership, “ε”, plays a fundamental role. Usually although not always it figures as a primitive or undefined symbol.Following the familiar simplification of Russell's theory, let us mean by alogical typein the strict sense any one of the following: (i) (...) the totality consisting exclusively of individuals, (ii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively individuals, (iii) the totality consisting exclusively of classes whose members are exclusively classes whose members in turn are exclusively individuals, and so on. Any entity from (ii) is said to beone type higherthan any entity from (i), any entity from (iii), one type higher than any entity from (ii), and so on. In systems based upon this simplified theory of types, the only significant atomic formulae involving “ε” are those asserting the membership of an entity in an entity one type higher. Thus any expression of the form “(x∈y)” is meaningless except where “y” denotes an entity of just one type higher than the type of the entity denoted by “x” It is by means of general type restrictions of this kind that the Russell and other paradoxes are avoided. (shrink)

Dream is a state of consciousness characterized by internally-generated sensory, cognitive and emotional experiences occurring during sleep. Dream reports tend to be particularly abundant, with complex, emotional, and perceptually vivid experiences after awakenings from rapid eye movement sleep. This is why our current knowledge of the cerebral correlates of dreaming, mainly derives from studies of REM sleep. Neuroimaging results show that REM sleep is characterized by a specific pattern of regional brain activity. We demonstrate that this heterogeneous distribution of brain (...) activity during sleep explains many typical features in dreams. Reciprocally, specific dream characteristics suggest the activation of selective brain regions during sleep. Such an integration of neuroimaging data of human sleep, mental imagery, and the content of dreams is critical for current models of dreaming; it also provides neurobiological support for an implication of sleep and dreaming in some important functions such as emotional regulation. (shrink)

Richard Rorty (1931 - 2007) ist einer der wichtigsten amerikanischen Philosophen der Gegenwart, der die analytische Philosophie sowohl geprägt als auch maßgeblich zu ihrer Kritik beigetragen und damit die Wiederentdeckung des Pragmatismus vorangetrieben hat. In diesem Handbuch werden alle wichtigen Aspekte seines Lebens und seiner philosophischen Arbeit dargestellt und einer wissenschaftlichen Diskussion unterzogen.