The aim of this paper is to reinterpret success semantics, a theory of mental content, according to which the content of a belief is fixed by the success conditions of some actions based on this belief. After arguing that in its present form, success semantics is vulnerable to decisive objections, I examine the possibilities of salvaging the core of this proposal. More specifically, I propose that the content of some very simple, but very important, mental states, the immediate mental antecedents (...) of action, can be explained in this manner. (shrink)

Pragmatism is the most famous single work of American philosophy. Its sequel, The Meaning of Truth, is its imperative and inevitable companion. The definitive texts of both works are here available for the first time in one volume, with an introduction by the distinguished contemporary philosopher A. J. Ayer. In Pragmatism James attacked the transcendental, rationalist tradition in philosophy and tried to clear the ground for the doctrine he called radical empiricism. When first published, the book caused an uproar. It (...) was greeted with praise, hostility, ridicule. Determined to clarify his views, James collected nine essays he had written on this subject before he wrote Pragmatism and six written later in response to criticisms by Bertrand Russell and others. He published The Meaning of Truth in 1909, the year before his death. These two works show James at his best full of verve and good humor. Intent upon making difficult ideas clear, he is characteristically vigorous in his effort to make them prevail. (shrink)

This article builds on conclusions drawn in the article “Eyeless in America,” by the same author and considers how 50 American films about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan intended to function as what Jacques Ellul called “integration propaganda,” fared. This article considers and rejects a number of theories about why most feature war films failed between 2002 and 2012 and proposes what war films might look like in the near future.

In what follows, I want to discuss three audience responses to ‘Kierkegaard: The Movie’, a paper I delivered at the Cultural Studies Association of Australia’s annual conference in December 2001, and to show where those responses led me. The reason I am doing so is that I am more and more convinced that our theories of ideology suffer a fundamental flaw. They fail to incorporate the richest source of data that we, as humanities academics, have at our disposal: the fact (...) that we are all teachers. What richer source could we have for studying the transmission of ideas and beliefs than our own social practices? I am referring not only to the classroom, but also to our conferences, and even to our collegial visits to the pub. Wherever it is that university people garner new ideas and directions, that is where we will be most likely to learn about the mechanisms of cultural and indeed political transmission. (shrink)

Une œuvre de fiction contient une mise en suspens si elle se termine au moment où un personnage central se retrouve dans des circonstances périlleuses. Le but de cet article est d’établir que les intentions narratives des auteurs déterminent ce qui se passe ensuite dans les œuvres qui se terminent par des mises en suspens et pour lesquelles aucune suite n’est produite. À cette fin, j’argumente à partir de l’idée qu’une suite écrite par l’auteur original résoudrait de façon unique une (...) œuvre de fiction qui aboutit à une mise en suspens; je conclus que les intentions narratives de l’auteur servent de vérifacteur pour des affirmations sur ce qui arrive ensuite en l’absence d’une telle suite. (shrink)

Jacques Maritain's The Degrees of Knowledge has rightly been recognized as one of the milestones of the 20th century Thomistic renaissance, but what is virtually unknown is that after The Degrees of Knowledge his thought underwent a profound transformation which could have a significant impact on the future of Thomism.

The nature of matter was as intriguing a question for ancient philosophers as it is for contemporary physicists, and Matter, Space, and Motion presents a fresh and illuminating account of the rich legacy of the physical theories of the Greeks from the fifth century B.C. to the late sixth century A.D.

This volume concludes the two-volume sequel to Masao Abe's Zen and Western Thought. Like its companion, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, this work contains many previously published essays and papers by Abe. Here he clarifies the true meaning of Buddhist emptiness in comparison with the Aristotelian notion of substance and the Whiteheadean notion of process.

The "Theaetetus" and the "Sophist" both stand in the shadow of the "Parmenides," to which they refer. I propose to interpret these two dialogues as Plato's first move in the project of reshaping his metaphysics with the double aim of avoiding problems raised in the "Parmenides" and applying his general theory to the philosophy of nature. The classical doctrine of Forms is subject to revision, but Plato's fundamental metaphysics is preserved in the "Philebus" as well as in the "Timaeus." The (...) most important change is the explicit enlargement of the notion of Being to include the nature of things that change. This reshaping of the metaphysics is prepared in the "Theaetetus" and "Sophist" by an analysis of sensory phenomena in the former and, in the latter, a new account of Forms as a network of mutual connections and exclusions. The division of labor between the two dialogues is symbolized by the role of Heraclitus in the former and that of Parmenides in the latter. Theaetetus asks for a discussion of Parmenides as well, but Socrates will not undertake it. For that we need the visitor from Elea. Hence the "Theaetetus" deals with becoming and flux but not with being; that topic is reserved for Eleatic treatment in the "Sophist." But the problems of falsity and Not-Being, formulated in the first dialogue, cannot be resolved without the considerations of truth and Being, reserved for the later dialogue. That is why there must be a sequel to the "Theaetetus.". (shrink)

Following a previous article published in Biological Theory, in this study we present a mathematical theory for a science of qualities as directly perceived by living organisms, and based on morphological patterns. We address a range of qualitative phenomena as observables of a psychological system seen as an impredicative system. The starting point of our study is the notion that perceptual phenomena are projections of underlying invariants, objects that remain unchanged when transformations of a certain class under consideration are applied. (...) The study develops with the observables, the entailed total order and metric, whence the algebra and the geometry of such a science, presenting a formal phenomenological model for phenomena that are not rigidly Euclidean. We show how non-Euclidean perception can have many useful Euclidean formalizations, as well as locally-homeomorphic-to-Euclidean-space models. The mathematical models we provide are tested on the basis of results from experimental psychology, in particular from the field of color, time, and space perception. (shrink)

Zen and the Modern World: a Third Sequel to Zen and Western Thought. Masao Abe and Steven Heine. xvi, 169 pp. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, Press 2003. £23.50. ISBN 0824826655.

1 Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Its Significance and Future Task1 The contemporary world is rapidly shrinking due to the remarkable advancement of science ...

In this broad overview of culture, ancient and modern, Patrick Madigan examines an historical series of philosophical failures, each more serious than the last: the incompleteness of Aristotelian analysis; the weakness of the Plotinian synthesis; the limited Cartesian response to the arch skeptic; the "distinction without a difference" in the Leibnizian/Kantian strategy; and the ensuing current romantic settlement as a victory which is indistinguishable from defeat since it leaves everything as it found it. All this leads to our current insecurity (...) and instability as focused on by Nietzsche. And so we come ultimately full swing to the origins of Christianity and Jesus' role as the experience of the "fidelity of God.". (shrink)

SOCREAL 2007: International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality. Sapporo, Japan, 2007-03-09/10. Session 3: Obligation and Rationality.

The act of confession plays a crucial and recurring role in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. Alienation between individuals, Hegel suggests, can be overcome only through a mutual confessing and forgiving between two alienated consciousnesses. Thus the dramatic climax of the text occurs at the close of the “Spirit” section, with the breaking of the hard heart and the reciprocal acts of confession and forgiveness on the parts of the acting and judging consciousnesses. Leading up to this act of mutual confession (...) are a series of confessional scenes, whose insufficiency arises from one of two failings: Either they fail to be direct, or they fail to be mutual. The paradigmatic cases of each of these types of failure can be found, respectively, in the section on the unhappy consciousness and in the section on the ethical realm. The unhappy consciousness’s admission of misery to the mediating consciousness is a type of confession. Presumably, both the subjugator and the subjugated confess at this point. However, they do not confess directly to each other; they confess only to the mediator. Thus the gesture of confessing to the other remains something merely intended and not yet carried out in the deed. This failure is compensated for at the level of the ethical realm, where the defender of the divine law performs a double deed: First, she carries out the deed of violating the human law, then the deed of confessing directly to the antagonist from whom she is alienated. However, the defender of the human law does not recognize his own guilt and so refuses either to confess or to forgive. The structure of this latter scene of confession is eventually repeated at the level of spirit. For so long as the judging consciousness refuses to recognize his own evil, he remains stubbornly Creonic. Only when he recognizes that he too is evil does the hard heart reciprocate the confession of the other. Mutual and direct confessing now takes place. (shrink)

Written by one of Japan's foremost contemporary thinkers and scholars, Zen and Modern Society is the third in a series of essay collections on Zen Buddhism as seen in the context of Western thought. Throughout his career, Masao Abe has articulated the meaning of Zen thought in a uniquely compelling way - at once, true to the original tradition and appropriately relevant to a variety of comparative standpoints, ranging from Biblical Judeo-Christianity to modern existentialism, phenomenology, and postmodernism. As a leading (...) representative of the Kyoto School, which has sought a critical, comparative linking of Eastern and Western thought, Abe has based his approach on constructive, mutually respectful yet critical intellectual interaction and dialogue with some of the leading figures in the West (including Paul Tillich, Hans Kung, and Eugene Borowitz) as well as dozens of colleagues, students, and disciples. Together with the previous volumes, this work examines and exemplifies some key features of Kyoto School thought. While the essays presented here should be read in light of the socio-political criticism that has since been lodged against the Kyoto School and, more particularly, i. (shrink)

Almost simultaneous emergence of Existentialism and Marxism at end of the Little Ice Age had coincided with rapid urbanization and prevalence of mood disorder in northern Europe. This historic configuration is cast against Relph’s notion of place in his critique of urban planning. During the LIA street walking had mitigated mood disorder triggered by sunlight deprivation of indoor spaces while, at the same time, it had also buoyed a place. It was the unplanned place in the open air—a dilapidated street (...) corner in St. Petersburg or Romanesque streetscape of Old Copenhagen—that offered authenticity, cerebral restitution, and for ardent minds also discernment and acumen. Relph’s critique continues to be of pressing relevance to winter-cities designed for automotive access, and also for the interpretation it offers on the thought and events of the late LIA and following it. (shrink)

A present-day continuation of the philosophical narrative presented in G.W.F. Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit that confronts every major post-Hegelian philosophical position and arrives at an original reconception of the purpose of dialectical phenomenology.