This paper contrasts three different schemes of reference relevant to understanding systems of perceptual representation: a location-based system dubbed "feature-placing", a system of "visual indices" referring to things called "proto-objects", and the full sortal-based individuation allowed by a natural language. The first three sections summarize some of the key arguments (in Clark, 2000) to the effect that the early, parallel, and pre-attentive registration of sensory features itself constitutes a simple system of nonconceptual mental representation. In particular, feature integration--perceiving something as (...) being both F and G, where F and G are sensible properties registered in distinct parallel streams--requires a referential apparatus. Section V. reviews some grounds for thinking that at these earliest levels this apparatus is location-based: that it has a direct and nonconceptual means of picking out places. Feature-placing is contrasted with a somewhat more sophisticated system that can identify and track four or five "perceptual objects" or "proto-objects", independently of their location, for as long as they remain perceptible. Such a system is found in Zenon Pylyshyn's fascinating work on "visual indices", in Dana Ballard's notion of deictic codes, and in Kahneman, Treisman, and Wolfe's accounts of systems of evanescent representations they call "object files". Perceptual representation is a layered affair, and I argue that it probably includes both feature-placing and proto-objects. Finally, both nonconceptual systems are contrasted with the full-blooded individuation allowed in a natural language. (shrink)

I am very grateful to my commentators for their interest and their careful attention to A Theory of Sentience. It is particularly gratifying to find other philosophers attracted to the murky domain of pre-attentive sensory processing, an obscure place where exciting stuff happens. I can by no means answer all of their objections or counter-arguments, and some of the problems noted derive from failures in my original exposition. But a theory is a success if it helps spur the creation of (...) better successors. By those lights this one seems to be succeeding admirably. Would that every author could receive such commentaries! (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the third thesis is that (...) the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

El objetivo de este estudio es interpretar la relación entre el modelo anatómico de Descartes y el régimen disciplinario que M. Foucault propone en su tesis sobre el poder en la Modernidad. Se muestra cómo Foucault sitúa a Descartes como el iniciador de una medicina que convertiría el cuerpo humano en una máquina y al igual que esta, pasaría a concebirse como un sistema mecánico susceptible de ser explorable, controlable y manipulable.

Este estudio examina la tesis de Th. W. Adorno por la cual el arte es una actividad racional. En primer lugar, se focaliza la cuestión de la relación arte y racionalidad. En segundo lugar, se explora la cuestión de la participación del arte en el proceso de la dialéctica de la Ilustración. En tercer lugar, el trabajo indaga el potencial crítico del arte. Finalmente el estudio se aproxima a la noción de objetivación estética y concretamente la noción de experimentación como (...) actividad crítica. (shrink)

Michel Foucault aportó diferentes perspectivas sobre su propio trabajo. Así, en un principio, consideró sus libros como «cajas de herramientas». Más tarde, empezó a concebirlos como explosivos, para al final de su trayectoria intelectual abandonar esa perspectiva instrumental de sus trabajos y reconocer el ejercicio de la escritura como una praxis de transformación de sí mismo. Este estudio examina esas distintas perspectivas con el objeto de aportar un criterio a la hora de evaluar los usos actuales del trabajo de Foucault.

As research involving gene editing continues to advance, we are headed in the direction of being able to modify the human germline. Should we reach a point where an argument can be made that the benefits of preventing unborn children and future generations from inheriting genetic conditions that cause tremendous suffering outweigh the risks associated with altering the human germline, the next step will be to design clinical trials using this technology in humans. These clinical trials will likely require careful (...) follow-up and monitoring of future generations born with altered genes. This paper addresses some of the ethical issues raised by intergenerational monitoring and sets out to show that these issues can be avoided with careful consideration and clinical trial design. (shrink)

Drawing on work in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology, Clark analyzes the character and defends the integrity of psychophysical explanations of qualitative facts, arguing that the structure of such explanations is sound and potentially successful.

Many philosophers doubt that one can provide any successful explanation of sensory qualities - of how things look, feel, or seem to a perceiving subject. To provide such an explanation, one would need to explain qualitative facts in non-qualitative terms. Attempts to construct such explanations have seemed, in principle, doomed. Austen Clark examines the strategy used in psychophysics, psychometrics, and sensory neurophysiology to explain qualitative facts. He argues that this strategy could succeed: its structure is sound, and it can (...) answer the various philosophical objections lodged against it. On this basis Professor Clark presents an analysis of senosry qualities that offers the possibility of explaining at least some qualia, and he sketches how this scheme might eventually reduce to neurophysiology. If he is correct, we are not doomed to an eternity of mere acquaintance with our qualia. (shrink)

Consequentialist theories that directly assess multiple focal points face an important objection: that one right option may conflict with another. Robert Adams raises an instance of this objection regarding the possibility that the right act conflicts with the right motives. Whereas only partial responses have previously been given, assuming particular views of the relation between motives and acts, an exhaustive treatment is in order. Either motives psychologically determine acts, or they do not – and I defend direct consequentialism on each (...) assumption. Crucially, if motives determine acts, this may be compatible with the ability to act otherwise, but there remains a defense for consequentialism even on these assumptions. What clears consequentialism of conflict is not necessarily that the apparently right act is unavailable, but rather that its outcome is suboptimal once we account for necessary motives. Even if the agent remains free to perform the act, the act costs too much. (shrink)

This is part of a complete set of Jane Austen's novels collating the editions published during the author's lifetime and previously unpublished manuscripts. The books are illustrated with 19th century plates and incorporate revisions by experts in the light of subsequent research.

Drawing on the findings of neuroscience, this text proposes and defends the hypothesis that the various modalities of sensation share a generic form that the author, Austen Clark, calls feature-placing.

An examination of verbal hallucinations and thought insertion as examples of "alienated self-consciousness.".

"First edition 1954. Reprinted 1958, with revisions 1963, 1965, with further revisions by B.C. Southam 1969...".

In this paper I defend certain features of F. H. Bradley's moral, and to a lesser extent political, philosophy in the wake of recent feminist critiques of ethics. I attempt to establish congeniality with Bradley's ethical and political theory to current discussions in feminist ethics. Not only is Bradley's idealism consistent with feminist ethics, but it is able to meet several standard feminist objections to traditional moral theory. In spite of making sexist comments characteristic of the nineteenth century, Bradley's ethical-political (...) doctrine does not necessarily imply sexism, and is indeed coextensive with much current feminist theory. Before proceeding to this duscussion it is necessary to undertake a brief review of the intellectual origins of, and current state of debate in, feminist ethics. (shrink)

This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

University of Connecticut Storrs, CT 06279-2054. Recent versions of objectivism can reply to the argument from metamers. The deeper rift between subjectivists and objectivists lies in the question of how to explain the structure of qualitative similarities among the colors. Subjectivism grounded in this fashion can answer the circularity objection raised by Dedrick. It endorses skepticism about the claim that there is some one property of objects that it is the function of color vision to detect. Color vision may enable (...) us to detect differences in spectral composition without granting us the capacity to detect identities. (shrink)