To understand why autistic people are misperceived in the way Jaswal & Akhtar suggest, we should embrace concepts like the “double empathy problem” and camouflaging and recognize the negative consequences these have for mental health in autism. Moreover, we need to value expertise from experience so that autistic people have a voice and indeed a stake in research into autism.

The belief that only free will supports assignments of moral responsibility -- deserved praise and blame, punishment and reward, and the expression of reactive attitudes and moral censure -- has fueled most of the historical concern over the existence of free will. Free will's connection to moral responsibility also drives contemporary thinkers as diverse in their substantive positions as Peter Strawson, Thomas Nagel, Peter van Inwagen, Galen Strawson, and Robert Kane. A simple, but powerful, reason for thinking that philosophers are (...) correct in making moral responsibility the prize of the free will problem is this: If we disassociate free will from deserved praise, blame, punishment and reward, reactive attitudes and moral censure, then why care about free will? If free will is not pinned down as that degree of freedom in our choices that we need for moral responsibility, it is difficult to see why anyone would or should care about free will. In this article I argue that some of the most prominent recent writing on free will becomes sidetracked from this key issue. For this reason, a good deal of the literature is so much spilled ink as philosophers misdirect their energies. In section 1 I elaborate just what I believe the key issue in the free will problem is. In section 2 I illustrate what an answer to the key issue requires. In section 3 I suggest motivations for misdirection. In sections 4, 5, and 6 I provide detailed examples of misdirection from compatibilists and libertarians. In sections 7 and 8 I describe some non-misdirected answers to the key question. (shrink)

John searle has recently claimed to have dissolved what daniel dennett calls 'hume's problem'--The question whether the explanation of behavior by appeal to mental representations can be done without circularity or infinite regress. Searle argues that a careful analysis of the concept of an intentional state shows that mental representations do not require intentional "homunculi" to explain how intentional states have their contents, And, Hence dennett's worry is groundless. I argue that searle's conceptual analysis of intentional states, Even if (...) correct, Provides no clue of an answer to the worry underlying hume's problem. (shrink)

Why is debate over the free will problem so intractable? In this broad and stimulating look at the philosophical enterprise, Richard Double uses the free will controversy to build on the subjectivist conclusion he developed in The Non-Reality of Free Will (OUP 1991). Double argues that various views about free will--e.g., compatibilism, incompatibilism, and even subjectivism--are compelling if, and only if, we adopt supporting metaphilosophical views. Because metaphilosophical considerations are not provable, we cannot show any free will (...) theory to be most reasonable. Metaphilosophy and Free Will deconstructs the free will problem and, by example, challenges philosophers in other areas to show how their philosophical argumentation can succeed. (shrink)

Psychiatry is increasingly dominated by the reductionist claim that mental illness is caused by neurobiological abnormalities such as chemical imbalances in the brain. Critical psychiatry does not believe that this is the whole story and proposes a more ethical foundation for practice. This book describes an original framework for renewing mental health services in alliance with people with mental health problems. It is an advance over the polarization created by the "anti-psychiatry" of the past.

Beginning Philosophy offers students and general readers a uniquely straightforward yet challenging introduction to fundamental philosophical problems. Readily accessible to novices yet rich enough for more experienced readers, it combines serious investigation across a wide range of subjects in analytic philosophy with a clear, user-friendly writing style. Topics include logic and reasoning, the theory of knowledge, the nature of the external world, the mind/body problem, normative ethics, metaethics, free will, the existence of God, and the problem of evil. (...) A concluding chapter outlines the worldview developed in the text and connects that view to questions about the meaning of life. The interconnection of philosophical problems and the relationship of philosophy and science are emphasized throughout. The book includes both extensive quotes from historical figures such as Aquinas, Descartes, and Hume and references to philosophically minded nonphilosophers like Dostoevski, Stephen Jay Gould, and Carl Sagan. Beginning Philosophy is designed for use in introductory philosophy courses at a wide range of institutions. It contains numerous pedagogical materials at the end of each chapter: sections called "misconceptions" list errors that introductory readers should avoid; guide questions prompt students to explain in their own words what the text is saying; review questions help students prepare for examinations; open-ended discussion questions call for independent judgment; and annotated bibliographies provide suggestions for further reading. The volume is further enhanced by a list of famous quotations from philosophers, a glossary of philosophical terms, a glossary of names of the most famous philosophers and scientists discussed in the text, and an extensive bibliography listing every work cited. (shrink)

In this article I consider when the question of whether entities exist subjectively (only in the minds of subjects) or objectively (in themselves, independently of the minds of subjects) is important, both theoretically and practically. I argue that when it comes to the metaphysics underlying three types of moral questions, broadly conceived, the subjectivity question does not matter practically, although it is widely thought to matter. Subjectivism does not matter in these moral questions in the same way(s) it matters in (...) some nonmoral metaphysical issues. The moral questions I consider are the meaning of life, normative ethics, and the free‐will problem. The nonmoral issues I address are the existence of God, the traditional mind/body problem, and personal identity. I explain the difference by noting that certain metaphysical issues on the fact side of the fact/value distinction impinge on persons' lives more prominently than do the metaphysics behind the three moral questions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Eclecticism and Adolf Meyer’s Functional Understanding of Mental IllnessD. B. Double (bio)KeywordsAdolf Meyer, eclecticism, functionalism, biopsychosocial modelGhaemi’s Commentary and Meyer’s ‘Eclecticism’I am not against humanism. How could anyone be against the humanistic wisdom rooted in the worthy writings of Socrates, Hippocrates, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Osler, and the others listed by Nassir Ghaemi? Psychiatry should recognize the dignity and value of all people. The problem is that it may (...) not always do so, coming from a reductionist paradigm as it so often does.Ghaemi appreciates that Meyer’s compromising attitude meant that he was “unable to inoculate psychiatry from biological dogmatism.” My emphasis is on the challenge of Meyer’s psychobiology to biomedicine. In the same way, Engel’s biopsychosocial model acknowledged the need to neutralize the power of an impersonal and mechanical medicine. Doctors tend to overemphasize physical abnormalities at the expense of dealing with difficult personal issues.At the risk of oversimplification, I am juxtaposing biopsychosocial and biomedical models in psychiatry. Or in other terms, for our modern understanding, I am asserting a neo-Meyerian approach in contrast to neo-Kraepelinianism. Merely restating the Meyerian perspective will not do, because of Meyer’s ‘give and take,’ and his consequent failure to follow through the implication of his position. At least the ethical ramifications of his conceptual framework need to be acknowledged.Neo-Meyerianism also needs to be realized in the context of the reaction to anti-psychiatry. After anti-psychiatry’s attack, our modern understanding of mental illness has tended to be been subsumed into the binary opposition of ‘pro-psychiatry’ and ‘anti-psychiatry.’ But neo-Meyerianism is as much pro-psychiatric as biomedical psychiatry. It is in this sense that biopsychological approaches have been undermined by the biomedical reaction to anti-psychiatry. [End Page 355]I also agree with Ghaemi that there is a way in which the failures of the biopsychosocial model allowed the development of anti-psychiatry. For example, even though Laing quoted favorably from psychologically minded psychiatrists such as Manfred Bleuler, as far as I know he never made any reference to Meyer. There was never a systematic Meyerian theory to which Laing could refer. In fact, Laing wished to move beyond an interpretative understanding to abandon the metaphor of pathology (Double 2006). Perhaps if the biopsychosocial model had been more clearly defined, Laing would not have felt he needed to take this step. Or, at least in doing so, he would have been clearer about where he stood on this issue. When labeling Laing’s views as ‘anti-psychiatry,’ biomedical psychiatry would have had to state more precisely how Laing’s position was anti- rather than pro-psychiatric.My main disagreement with Ghaemi is his view of Meyer as eclectic. Meyer’s willingness to allow ‘anything goes’ in psychiatry meant that he did not oppose or challenge too much the views of those with whom he disagreed. Nonetheless, he did not combine together different sources to create an unintegrated philosophical and conceptual understanding. His theoretical position is internally consistent.Modern American psychiatry studied by participant observation is “of two minds,” in that there is a divided consciousness created between the practices of drug therapy and psychotherapy (Luhrmann 2000). In this sense, it is eclectic because there is no consistent theory that combines the two practice modes. True, psychiatry often claims that the foundation for this mixture is the biopsychosocial model. It asserts that everyday psychiatry is not as purely biomedical as is often maintained because it takes into account psychosocial factors that may precipitate mental disorders. It, therefore, says that it bring together the biological and psychosocial. This compromise avoids the adoption of any one model and was proposed to neutralize the dogmatism engendered by the anti-psychiatry debate (Clare 1980). I agree with Ghaemi that such eclecticism has outlived its usefulness.Where I think Ghaemi is mistaken is that he sees Meyer and Engel as the originators of this eclecticism. I regard the Meyerian approach as more genuinely pragmatic than Ghaemi suggests. Meyer’s dynamic psychology sought an integration of mind and brain as a way of dealing with the philosophical dilemma of the mind–body... (shrink)

This concise monograph argues that experiments on patients who have had radical commissurotomies disconnecting their right and left cerebral hemispheres do not show that such patients, or nonpatients in general, are not unified persons. For Marks "the split-brain patient has one mind and is one person, although he has on occasion, a disunified consciousness. The experimental results pose no special threat to our concept of the unity of a person". Marks's position relies on three sources: the Wittgensteinian view that philosophical (...) problems are often created by philosophers' seduction by inept metaphors where careful attention to language is needed; the functionalist view that the mind just is that which the most satisfactory scientific explanation of human behavior postulates; and a burden-of-proof attack against his opponent. (shrink)

_GPs serve in a double role of treatment provider and expert in certain social insurance systems, such as the Norwegian one. Some physicians assert that the ethical obligations of the two roles conflict with each other. The objective of this article is to show that social insurance medical ethics, which are based on recognised principles of medical ethics, unite the physicians’ obligations associated with these roles. The method applied is a medical ethics conceptual analysis. The material consists of literature (...) on normative SIME. The study shows that SIME expands the role of the treatment provider to a wider societal context. Here, physicians should attempt to balance the perspectives of sympathy with empathy, as treatment providers, with the impartiality in their role as experts. Five principles of medical ethics are fundamental. Respect for human dignity is the overarching principle of medical ethics. The four others are nonmaleficence, beneficence, autonomy, and social justice. The article discusses two areas where it is asserted that the roles of treatment provider and expert conflict with each other: the application of beneficence and justice, and the duty of confidentiality versus the duty to provide information to the National Insurance service. The study concludes that there are no basic ethical conflicts between the two roles. The ethical problems that may arise when exercising this duality should be viewed in the same way as other ethical problems in medicine. Actual application and balancing of the principles may necessitate negotiations between patients and physicians. _ _Keywords_: dual roles, professionalism, deliberation, impartiality, medical principle ethics, values of welfare state. (shrink)

A central diagnostic and anecdotal feature ofautismis difficulty with socialcommunication. We take the position that communication is a two-way,intersubjectivephenomenon—as described by thedouble empathy problem—and offer uprelevance theory(a cognitive account of utterance interpretation) as a means of explaining such communication difficulties. Based on a set of proposed heuristics for successful and rapid interpretation of intended meaning, relevance theory positions communication as contingent on shared—and, importantly,mutuallyrecognized—“relevance.” Given that autistic and non-autistic people may have sometimes markedly different embodied experiences of the (...) world, we argue that what is most salient to each interlocutor may be mismatched. Relevance theory would predict that where this salient information is not (mutually) recognized or adjusted for, mutual understanding may be more effortful to achieve. This paper presents the findings from a small-scale, linguistic ethnographic study of autistic communication featuring eight core autistic participants. Each core autistic participant engaged in three naturalistic conversations around the topic of loneliness with: (1) a familiar, chosen conversation partner; (2) a non-autistic stranger and (3) an autistic stranger. Relevance theory is utilized as a frame for the linguistic analysis of the interactions. Mutual understanding was unexpectedly high across all types of conversation pairings. In conversations involving two autistic participants, flow, rapport and intersubjective attunement were significantly increased and in three instances, autistic interlocutors appeared to experience improvements in their individual communicative competence contrasted with their other conversations. The findings have the potential to guide future thinking about how, in practical terms, communication between autistic and non-autistic people in both personal and public settings might be improved. (shrink)

The double empathy problem theory posits that autistic social difficulties emerge from an interpersonal misalignment in social experiences and expectations between autistic and non-autistic people. Supporting this, emerging research reveals better social outcomes in interactions within than across neurotypes among autistic and non-autistic people, emphasizing the need to examine the role of the interpersonal context in autistic social outcomes. However, research on peer relationships among autistic youth primarily focuses on individual characteristics in isolation from the interpersonal context. (...) To address this, this preliminary study explored the effects of student-peer neurotype match on peer relationships among autistic and non-autistic youth in an integrated educational setting. We plotted the peer relationship networks among youth in a school club based on systematic observations of peer interactions over eight 45-min sessions. Descriptive network statistics showed that both autistic and non-autistic youth had more and stronger peer relationships with their same- than cross-neurotype peers. Assortativity coefficients revealed a tendency for youth to connect with peers of the same neurotype, rather than with peers with similar social popularity or activity. We further modeled the effects of student-peer neurotype match on peer relationships using exponential random graph models. The findings suggested that student-peer neurotype match predicted the total strength of peer relationships above and beyond the effects of student neurotype, individual heterogeneity in social popularity and activity, and the tendency of mutuality in social relationships. We discussed the strengths and limitations of this study and the implications for future research and inclusion practice. (shrink)

Empathy is commonly regarded as an essential attribute for doctors and there is a conviction that empathy must be taught to medical students. Yet it is not clear exactly what empathy is, from a philosophical or sociological point of view, or whether it can be taught. The meaning, role and relevance of empathy in medical education have tended to be unquestioningly assumed; there is a need to examine and contextualise these assumptions. This paper opens up that (...) debate, arguing that ‘empathy’, as it is commonly understood, is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee good medical or ethical practice. (shrink)

Gilbert Ryle is most famous for accusing the Cartesian dualist of committing a category mistake. Yet the nature of this accusation, and the idea of a category mistake more generally, remains woefully misunderstood. The aim of this paper is to rectify this misunderstanding. I show that Ryle does not conceive of category mistakes as mistakes of predication, as is so widely believed. Instead I show category mistakes are mistakes of conjunction and quantification. This thesis uniquely unifies and explains the wide (...) variety of Ryle’s remarks, judgments, and arguments. (shrink)

One of the reasons why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. When we think of a baby about to be born it seems absurd to think that the next few minutes or even hours could make so radical a difference to its status; yet as we go back in the life of the fetus (...) we are more and more reluctant to say that this is a human being and must be treated as such. No doubt this is the deepest source of our dilemma, but it is not the only one. For we are also confused about the general question of what we may and may not do where the interests of human beings conflict. We have strong intuitions about certain cases; saying, for instance, that it is all right to raise the level of education in our country, though statistics allow us to predict that a rise in the suicide rate will follow, while it is not all right to kill the feeble-minded to aid cancer research. It is not easy, however, to see the principles involved, and one way of throwing light on the abortion issue will be by setting up parallels involving adults or children once born. So we will be able to isolate the “equal rights” issue and should be able to make some advance... (shrink)

This Article discusses the impact of the international financial crisis on Brazilian capital markets. While the banking industry was not severely affected, leading nonfinancial corporations experienced severe financial turmoil. Two Brazilian corporations cross-listed in the United States - Sadia S.A. and Aracruz Celulose S.A. - suffered billion-dollar losses when the Brazilian real unexpectedly plummeted in relation to the dollar. Despite earlier disclosure that these companies had engaged only in pure hedging activity, these great losses were found to be the result (...) of their highly speculative trading in currencyderivatives. Consequently, several private lawsuits were filed both in the United States and in Brazil. This Article takes a novel approach to the transnational securities litigation debate by examining the particular consequences of private litigation in a developed and in an emerging country. It compares the types of lawsuits filed and their final outcomes. Despite substantially similar alleged wrongdoing, the outcomes for securities holders in each jurisdiction contrast strikingly. Only U.S. investors of both companies were able to obtain substantial financial recoveries; Brazilian investors obtained none. This Article examines the reasons behind these discrepant results and the consequent economic distributional effects on global securities markets after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Morrison. The Article argues that Morrison aggravates such shareholder cross-border non pro rata compensation and transfers of company value from foreign to U.S. investors. It identifies a set of costs borne by foreign investors, and so far neglected by scholars, as a consequence of the current status of U.S. and international securities law regimes. These costs are the result not only of the typical “circularity problem” in securities litigation, but also of a “double circularity problem” as they fall on foreign shareholders who also suffered equivalent damages to those experienced by the U.S. class being compensated. The Article then discusses potential policy reforms for fixing transnational securities litigation. (shrink)

A crucial debate currently raging in the fields of cognitive and social science centers around general and specific approaches to understanding the actions of others. When we understand the actions of another person, do we do so on the basis of a general theory of psychology, or on the basis of an effort to place ourselves in the particular position of that specific person? Hans Herbert Kögler and Karsten R. Stueber's Empathy and Agency addresses this other issues vital to (...) current social science in an advanced and diverse analysis of the foundations of social-scientific methodology based on recent cognitive psychology. The book serves as both an introduction to the debate for non-academic audiences and as a catalyst for further discussion for serious theorists. Empathy and Agency provides a solid foundation of the fundamental issues in social and cognitive science, but also presents the most influential paradigms in the field at this time. (shrink)

These are the working notes/handouts given to the resident philosophers and scholars for the de Nobili Endowment Lecture held at Chennai, on 27th October, 2022. These have been printed and circulated among the attendees before the lecture. The lecture itself will be published in a book form. The de Nobili Endowment Lecture was given by the author at Satya Nilayam International Jesuit Centre for Philosophical Excellence affiliated to the University of Madras and which is part of Loyola (Autonomous) College, Chennai (...) on 27th October, 2022 at 6.20 pm in an offline event. The main contention of the paper is that Dr. Edith Stein through her work on Empathy resolves problems of Empathy encountered in Advaita Vedanta. (shrink)

This paper looks at the Catholic justification of medical interventions in ectopic pregnancies. The paper first shows that the way how Double Effect Reasoning is often applied to ectopic pregnancies is not consistent with the way Aquinas introduces this mode of reasoning. The paper then shows certain problems in common defences of the use of salpingectomies. The paper then re-evaluates the medical interventions used in the management of ectopic pregnancies, with both a focus on the aim of the treatment (...) and the timing of the treatment. (shrink)

In this commentary on Michael Slote’s paper “The Many Faces of Empathy,” I assess the ways in which his theory of empathy aligns with simulation theory, as well as the problems that he needs to address because of this. Overall, I present three problems that need to be addressed: How do we know that we have caught the other’s emotion and not merely reacted on our own; What exactly is it about the other’s emotion or attitude that I (...) am mimicking and catching; and Does empathy provide us with objective or subjective ethical knowledge? (shrink)

There is a defeasible constraint against double counting. When I count colours, for instance, I can’t freely count both a colour and its shades. Once we properly grasp this constraint, we can solve the problem of the many. Unlike other solutions, this solution requires us to reject neither our counting judgments, nor the metaphysical principles that seemingly conflict with them. The key is recognizing that the judgments and principles are compatible due to the targeted effects of the defeasible (...) constraint. (shrink)

In the Trolley Case (Figure 1), as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley (i.e. tram) is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.

In this article, I discuss how things go with the "Nothing" in the work of Alain Badiou, a topic which is evidently central to his thought, and which has received a great deal of attention in the commentary to date. As this problem is inaccessible outside of Badiou’s deployment of mathematics, I will suggest how accounts of Badiou’s work remain flawed insofar as they evade his mathematical demonstrations, and I attempt to clarify how mathematics operates in his system. I (...) then examine the consequences that such a use of mathematics has for Badiou’s doctrine of the nothing. I conclude with a discussion of some of the difficulties that the nothing continues to pose to Badiou, which have not (yet) been satisfactorily resolved. These difficulties devolve from the problematic of the incessantly doubling void. (shrink)

One of the challenges facing complex democratic societies marked by deep normative disagreements and differences along lines of race, gender, sexuality, culture and religion is how the perspectives of diverse individuals and social groups can be made effectively present in the deliberative process. In response to this challenge, a number of political theorists have argued that empathetic perspective-taking is critical for just democratic deliberation, and that a well-functioning democracy requires the cultivation in citizens of empathetic skills and virtues. In this (...) paper, we begin by distinguishing several kinds of imaginative projection and corresponding kinds of empathy. On the basis of this analysis, we suggest that genuine empathetic perspective-taking, especially across gendered, racial and embodied differences, is more challenging than is often assumed in the literature. This poses a dilemma for theorists who place great store on the role of empathetic imagination to overcome the challenges of democratic deliberation. On the one hand, placing responsibilities for empathetic perspective-taking primarily on the socially privileged raises risks of inaccurate and inappropriate projection. On the other hand, mitigating the risks of projection by calling on the socially marginalised to articulate their experiences and feelings in a way that can engage the imagination of the socially privileged, risks perpetuating epistemic injustice. We suggest that while this dilemma may be difficult to overcome, its effects can nevertheless be mitigated through both the cultivation of individual deliberative virtues and pragmatic institutional responses. (shrink)

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my (...) approach to this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work 'On the Problem of Empathy', to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

Husserl’s theory of empathy plays a crucial role in his transcendental phenomenology and has ever since been critically examined. Among various critiques leveled at Husserl, the issue of bodily similarity between oneself and the other lies at the core, not only because Husserl conceives of it as the motivating factor of empathy but also because his account of it has been taken to be problematic. In this article, I review a main interpretation of the issue of bodily similarity (...) in Husserl, which takes the bodily similarity in question to be a visual resemblance between oneself and the other. By contrast, I give a new interpretation of bodily similarity by taking into account Husserl’s emphasis on tactual experience with regard to the constitution of one’s own lived body and the foreign body. I argue that the bodily similarity in question amounts to a similar manner of twofold bodily manifestation in oneself and the other, and I also suggest that this interpretation further enables a new understanding of interpersonal relation in Husserl. (shrink)

This book digs into the complex archaeology of empathy illuminating controversies, epistemic problems and unanswered questions encapsulated within its cross-disciplinary history. The authors ask how a neutral innate capacity to directly understand the actions and feelings of others becomes charged with emotion and moral values associated with altruism or caregiving. They explore how the discovery of the mirror neuron system and its interpretation as the neurobiological basis of empathy has stimulated such an enormous body of research and how (...) in a number of these studies, the moral values and social attitudes underlying empathy in human perception and action are conceptualized as universal traits. It is argued that in the humanities the historical, cultural and scientific genealogies of empathy and its forerunners, such as Einfühlung, have been shown to depend on historical preconditions, cultural procedures, and symbolic systems of production. The multiple semantics of empathy and related concepts are discussed in the context of their cultural and historical foundations, raising questions about these cross-disciplinary constellations. This volume will be of interest to scholars of psychology, art history, cultural research, history of science, literary studies, neuroscience, philosophy and psychoanalysis. (shrink)

The Doctrine of Double Effect has been defended not only as a test of character but also as a criterion of wrongness for action. This paper criticises one attempt to justify the doctrine in the latter capacity. The justification, first proposed by Warren Quinn, traces the wrongness of intending harm as a means to the objectionable features of certain reasons for making this our intention. As I argue, however, some of the actions which seem to us to be permissible, (...) and whose permissibility the DDE is supposed to explain, can be performed for these objectionable reasons. Since the proposed justification implies that any action is wrong when performed for these reasons, it renders the DDE incapable of accommodating the very intuitions about action which its proponents would have it explain. (shrink)

Originally published: New York: Random House, 1972.

Søren Kierkegaard 's account of faith in Philosophical Fragments claims that the historical Incarnation is necessary for faith, but that historical evidence for the Incarnation is neither necessary nor sufficient for faith. It has been argued that the defence of these two claims gives rise to a faith /history problem for Kierkegaard and that it is incoherent to defend an account of faith which affirms both the necessity of the historical Incarnation and rejects the necessity and sufficiency of the (...) historical evidence for the Incarnation. I argue that this problem can be solved by applying Eleonore Stump's account of divine–human union. I argue that the Incarnation is necessary because it allows us to enjoy a kind of mutual empathy with Christ which is the basis of divine–human union and that the historical evidence is neither necessary nor sufficient since faith is grounded in a second-person experience of Christ. I claim that this solves the faith /history problem and offers a way of defending Kierkegaard 's account of faith as coherent. (shrink)

The double negation has always been considered by the logical systems from ancient times to the present. In fact, that is an issue that the current syntactic theories studying human reasoning, for example, the mental logic theory, address today. However, in this paper, I claim that, in the case of some languages such as Spanish, the double negation causes problems for the cognitive theories mainly based on formal schemata and supporting the idea of a universal syntax of thought (...) in the human mind. Thus, I propose that, given those problems, semantic frameworks such as that of the mental models theory seem to be more appropriate for explaining the human inferential activity. (shrink)

The domain of phenomenological investigation delineated by the Husserlian term authentic empathy presents us with an immediate tension. On the one hand, authentic empathy is supposed to grant the subject access (in some sense that remains to be fully specified) to the Other’s experience. On the other hand, foundational phenomenological considerations pertaining to the apprehension of a foreign subjectivity determine that it is precisely a disjunction in subjective processes that is constitutive of the Other being other. In my (...) approach to this problem, I seek, within the context of a reading of Edith Stein’s work On the Problem of Empathy, to clarify the place of ascription in authentic empathy, and to render more explicit a certain notion of “contiguity” that I take to be informing Stein’s understanding of the co-givenness of the Other’s mental life. I go on to argue that a resolution to the problem of empathy lies in the idea that the respective lived experiences of self and Other are, as a matter of descriptive fact, phenomenally connected by a relation of resemblance, and that, consonantly, the essential structure of authentic empathy is characterised in its mature phases by an homological relation to picture consciousness. (shrink)

The paper enters contemporary discourse concerning the examination of history of Russian philosophy, which initiates a new reading of the Russian thinkers’ works. These contemporary examinations problematize the phenomenon of so called intellectual doubles as well. The contribution proceeds from the definition of these issues which was published in journal Problems of Philosophy by M. A. Maslin in 2013. In this work, Maslin mentions A. I. Herzen among the examples of intellectual doubles phenomenon, who is one of the founders of (...) the Russian Narodism. Following from this basis, the contribution shifts an attention toward issues of intellectual doubles in the context of the Russian Narodism. The work represents an endeavour to deepen the existing problematization of this phenomenon on the basis of examination the N. K. Mikhailovsky’s creative legacy. There can be found two faces in works of this Narodnik thinker. The first one can be figuratively designed as a Petersburgian and the second one as a Yaltian. These designations are borrowed from the notes of Sergey Elpatevsky, who had been Mikhailovsky’s friend. The two faces express the specificity of the problem of doubleness in Mikhailovsky and his qualitative shift in relation to contemporary examinations of the reflected phenomenon. (shrink)

In the Trolley Case, as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.

I will discuss Stein’s first major philosophical work, On the Problem of Empathy. I’ll first present some of the background context to the composition of this work and then discuss some of the themes of the work that I find intriguing.

In the Trolley Case (Figure 1), as devised by Philippa Foot and modified by Judith Jarvis Thomson, a runaway trolley (i.e. tram) is headed down a main track and will hit and kill five unless you divert it onto a side track, where it will hit and kill one.

In this paper I present the double disjunction task as introduced by Johnson-Laird. This experiment is meant to show how mental model theory explains the discrepancy between logical competence and logical performance of individuals in deductive reasoning. I review the results of the task and identify three problems in the way the task is designed, that all fall under a lack of coordination between the subject and the experimenter, and an insufficient representation of the semantic/pragmatic interface. I then propose (...) a reformulation of the task, that makes explicit the underlying semantic reasoning and emphasizes the difference of interpretation of the DDT between the experimenter and the subjects. (shrink)

Inspired by two-dimensional modal logic, some have sought to provide analyses of the notion of the contingent a priori which identify the a priori with truths which have a necessary diagonal. I argue that these analyses fail insofar as they miss the crucial epistemic aspect of the a priori. Augmenting these analyses with specifically epistemic accounts might be possible, but the interest would then reside in these epistemic accounts of the a priori and not in the formal models.

The six essays presented in this volume afford the English-reading public the first serious and considered overview of the uniquely Germanic movements of psychological aesthetics and Kunstwissenschaft.