Awe and wonder are theorised to be distinct from other positive emotions, such as happiness. Yet little empirical or theoretical work has focused on these emotions. This investigation explored differences in language used to describe experiences of awe and wonder. Such analyses can provide insight into how people conceptualise these emotional experiences, and whether they conceptualise these emotions to be distinct from other positive emotions, and each other. Participants wrote narratives about experiences of awe, wonder and happiness. There were differences (...) in the language used to describe these positive emotional states, consistent with the theorised functions of each emotion. Awe was related to observing the world, reflected in greater use of perception words. Wonder was related to trying to understand the world, reflected in greater use of cognitive complexity and tentative words. Language use for both emotions reflected an environmental focus, whereas language use for happiness reflected a social/relationship focus. (shrink)

This work is an essay in Peirce's epistemology, with about an equal emphasis on the "epistemology" as on the "Peirce's." In other words our intention has not been to write exclusively a piece of Peirce scholarshiJ> hence, the reader will find no elaborate tying in of Peirce's epistemology to other portions of his thought, no great emphasis on the chronology of his thought, etc. Peirce scholarship is a painstaking business. His mind was Labyrinthine, his terminology intricate, and his writings are, (...) as he himself confessed, "a snarl of twine." This book rather is intended perhaps even primarily as an essay in epistemology, taking Peirce's as the focal point. The book thus addresses a general philosophical audience and bears as much on the wider issue as on the man. I hope therefore that readers will give their critical attention to the problem of knowledge and the sugges tions we have developed around that problem and will not look here in the hope of finding an exhaustive piece of Peirce scholarship. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I provide the logical foundation for a solution to the mind-body problem, a solution which is directly based upon Wilfrid Sellars' analogical theory of thought and sensation. Chapters I-IV are devoted to an interpretation, analysis, and constructive criticism of Sellars' notions of the inner thought episode and the sensing state. My analysis is offered in support of three general contentions: I argue that the postulation of inner thought episodes and sensing states is necessary for adequate explanations of (...) agent behavior; I hope to show how the analogical theory of inner thought episodes and sensing states actually generates a legitimate problem concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical; and I demonstrate the importance of the notion of analogy in philosophical theory construction. I suggest that the role of analogy provides the key for the solution to the mind-body problem. ;Chapter One is essentially introductory in nature. I offer an interpretation and reconstruction of Sellars' illustrative story entitled "The Jonesean Myth" . The "Myth" provides a suitable representation of Sellars' overall philosophy of mind. But perhaps more importantly, the "Myth" is a paradigm example of what I shall call the analogical method of inquiry, a method employed for the introduction of the notions of inner thought episodes and sensing states. In brief, I want to show how the "Myth" provides the logical basis for a theory adequate for explanations of the mental activity of agents. ;Chapters II and III are closely related. In Chapter II, I present a theory of linguistic representation which will serve as the analogical base for the introduction and characterization of the inner thought episode. In Chapter III, I develop the notion of the inner thought episode , and I examine its nature and status as a theoretical construct. Chapters II and III are thus related by the Sellarsian thesis that the concept of mental representation is to be understood in terms which apply, primarily, to characterizations of the features of the linguistic framework presented in Chapter II. ;In Chapter IV, I argue, again following Sellars' lead, that the explication of the notion of the perceptual thought episode requires the introduction of a second distinct sort of inner episode, namely, that of the sense experience or sensing state. The argument offered in Chapter IV is designed to show that sensing states are theoretical constructs, the reference to which is essential for explanations concerning the occurrence and nature of perceptual representations. Sensing states are introduced and characterized by an analogical extension of families of predicates which are suitable for the identification and description of ordinary physical objects . ;In Chapter V, I propose a solution to the mind-body problem, as the latter is generated by the analysis given to the thought episode and the sensing state . In general terms, I argue that any purported solution to the mind-body problem must provide an explanatory basis for agent behavior, and it is for this reason that I reject "reductionistic" theories of mind of the kind represented by logical behaviorism, type-identity physicalism, and Turing Machine functionalism. My solution, instead, involves a commitment to what I shall call token physicalism, a thesis which is contingent upon the development of a theory of neurophysiology which is rich enough to capture, in an analogical sense, both the intentional features of the thought episode, and the occurrent-like qualities which are exemplified by the sensing state. (shrink)

A fresh but controversial look at the fallacies of the business world by the bestselling international author of "Merger Mania" and "It's No Sin to Be Rich". Davis attacks such sacred cows as the national debt, economic science, the financial knowledge of banks, and the "information society".

From at least the time of the writing of The Philosophical Fragments , Søren Kierkegaard's work takes a special interest in both the transition from unbelief to faith and the character of the life of true faith. Trained in Lutheran dogma and convinced of the radical nature of human freedom, his work on this subject demonstrates a profound concern for and grasp of Lutheran orthodoxy, as well as a remarkable degree of subtlety. After all, it is no simple task to (...) give an account of the central features of the Christian life that is faithful to both a libertarian conception of human freedom and the doctrines of the church founded by the author of The Bondage of the Will . This paper proposes to accomplish two things: first, to state a problem that lies on the surface of Kierkegaard's account of the transformation involved in Christian conversion and second to present a resolution of the problem that is faithful to Kierkegaard's intentions. (shrink)

Peace and Prosperity in an Age of Incivility presents a comprehensive theory about peace and prosperity. It asserts that three core political values—liberty, order, and equality—must be allocated by societies through law and policy.

This book investigates intersections between the philosophy of nature and Hellenism in British and German Romanticism, focusing primarily on five central literary/philosophical figures: Friedrich Schelling, Friedrich Hölderlin, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron. Near the end of the eighteenth century, poets and thinkers reinvented Greece as a site of aesthetic and ontological wholeness, a move that corresponded with a refiguring of nature as a dynamically interconnected web in which each part is linked to the living whole. This (...) vision of a vibrant materiality that allows us to become “one with all that lives,” along with a Romantic version of Hellenism that wished to reassemble the broken fragments of an imaginary Greece as both site and symbol of this all-unity, functioned as a two-pronged response to subjective anxiety that arose in the wake of Kant and Fichte. The result is a form of resistance to an idealism that appeared to leave little room for a world of beauty, love, and nature beyond the self. (shrink)

This book is the result of a discontent on my part with (r) the super ficial and offhand way many determinists set forth their arguments, without the slightest hint of the difficulties which have been raised against those arguments, and (2) the fact that the chief and best argu ments of the libertarians are scattered allover the literature and are seldom if ever brought together in one package. may be taken as an effort to gather into one place Mostly this (...) work and to express as cogently as possible the arguments for freewill. So far as I know all of the arguments we treat have been made before. Only toward the end of this work do I attempt to elaborate a point not heretofore emphasized. That point is that freedom of the will is a concept intimately entangled with the human power to reason, so that if one of these powers goes, the other must also go. Moreover, both the will and the reason are intimately tied up with our moral sensitivities, so that no one of these phenomena is intelligible without the others. Hints of these ideas abound, of course, in the literature, and the degree of originality claimed is minimal. The interconnections, however, between these three basic concepts of the will, the reason, and the good, are of such great importance and are so usually ignored that I feel our short statement of the situation warrants the reader's sympathetic attention. (shrink)

Is artificial satisfaction of our need for pleasure something we should develop? Article considered some of the possibilities.

Volume 27, Issue 6, December 2019, Page 1254-1256.

For Thomas Reid, moral knowledge is a matter of having "good evidence" supplied by a sense-like moral faculty concerning moral reality, and the purpose of this work is to show that such a view can be both consistent and plausible. The first chapter attempts to characterize the state of moral epistemology and the assumptions that were considered uncontroversial when Reid wrote. The second chapter opens with a brief recounting of Reid's central claims about the moral sense and the progress of (...) moral knowledge, and then seeks to describe the various problems that confront those who would explain and defend his views. Three features in particular of his account turn out to be in need clarification: his reasons for using the moral sense analogy, his understanding of the object apprehended by the moral faculty, and his conception of evidence. ;Reid's expectations about moral ontology are handled somewhat briefly in chapter 2, and the rest of the work concentrates on the more purely epistemological issues of evidence and the process of moral belief-formation. Chapter 2 concludes with an explanation of the difficulty Reid's text poses for understanding his doctrine of evidence, and the third chapter lays the foundation for resolving those difficulties by detailing an epistemological conception of evidence which parallels the legal conception of evidence in use in the Scottish courts of Reid's day. Chapter 4 builds on this foundation, developing Reid's general epistemological strategy and showing that Reid's various claims about evidence and self-evidence are best understood in light of the legal model detailed in chapter 3. ;The fifth chapter returns to Reid's claims about moral knowledge, explaining his understanding of the primary task of the moral faculty--practical deliberation--and defending his invocation of the moral sense analogy. With these clarifications secured, chapter 6 characterizes and attempts to make plausible Reid's account of moral knowledge, both concerning individual actions and the truth of moral principles. The final chapter sketches brief responses to twentieth-century worries about "moral sense" constructions, and offers a final assessment of the success of Reid's project. (shrink)