In this paper, I work through the possible contours of an anti-genocide based on a framework informed by the work of Giorgio Agamben. Such a framework posits the inherent need to circumvent sovereign power within any form of normative activism. To begin, I show how the nascent anti-genocide movement promotes an ideal in which ?Western? states, particularly the USA, accept the global responsibility to protect persecuted life beyond national boundaries. Using Agamben, I argue that this vision also entails an acceptance (...) of a sovereign framework for the valuation of life, thus failing to confront the inherent power of the sovereign to condemn life in the first place. I then highlight the limitations that Agamben's ontology places on us in dealing with this inherent problem within the sovereign-subject relationship. By positing an alternative ontology, I suggest the possibility of establishing communities of solidarity that challenge the sovereign's self-ascribed role as the absolute valuator of life. Counter to Agamben, I argue that the basis for such communities could be a dedication to the universal sacredness of human life, which is maintained independently of, and in challenge to, sovereign power. (shrink)

Recently, several scholars have argued that scientists can accept scientific claims in a collective process, and that the capacity of scientific groups to form joint acceptances is linked to a functional division of labor between the group members. However, these accounts reveal little about how the cognitive content of the jointly accepted claim is formed, and how group members depend on each other in this process. In this paper, I shall therefore argue that we need to link analyses of joint (...) acceptance with analyses of distributed cognition. To sketch how this can be done, I shall present a detailed case study, and on the basis of the case, analyze the process through which a group of scientists jointly accept a new scientific claim and at a later stage jointly accept to revise previously accepted claims. I shall argue that joint acceptance in science can be established in situations where an overall conceptual structure is jointly accepted by a group of scientists while detailed parts of it are distributed among group members with different areas of expertise, a condition that I shall call a heterogeneous conceptual consensus. Finally, I shall show how a heterogeneous conceptual consensus can work as a constraint against scientific change and address the question how changes may nevertheless occur. (shrink)

Business scholars have recently proposed that the virtue of personal wisdom may predict leadership behaviors and the quality of leader–follower relationships. This study investigated relationships among leaders’ personal wisdom—defined as the integration of advanced cognitive, reflective, and affective personality characteristics (Ardelt, Hum Dev 47:257–285, 2004)—transformational leadership behaviors, and leader–member exchange (LMX) quality. It was hypothesized that leaders’ personal wisdom positively predicts LMX quality and that intellectual stimulation and individualized consideration, two dimensions of transformational leadership, mediate this relationship. Data came from (...) 75 religious leaders and 1–3 employees of each leader (N = 158). Results showed that leaders’ personal wisdom had a positive indirect effect on follower ratings of LMX quality through individualized consideration, even after controlling for Big Five personality traits, emotional intelligence, and narcissism. In contrast, intellectual stimulation and the other two dimensions of transformational leadership (idealized influence and inspirational motivation) did not mediate the positive relationship between leaders’ personal wisdom and LMX quality. Implications for future research on personal wisdom and leadership are discussed, and some tentative suggestions for leadership development are outlined. (shrink)

Exploring the conceptual baseline of Parsons's sociology and maintaining focus on its links with 20th century history, this book sheds light on the requirements of analytical rigor in the social sciences through examination of the debates in which Parsons was engaged throughout his life. In addition to revisiting Parsons's extensive oeuvre, Uta Gerhardt takes up various themes in current research and theory - including social inequality, civic culture, and globalization - thus demonstrating what the conceptual approaches of Parsons can (...) accomplish today. (shrink)

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its prequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In the prequel, we made this norm mathematically precise; in this paper, we derive its consequences. We show that the two core tenets of Bayesianism (...) follow from the norm, while the characteristic claim of the Objectivist Bayesian follows from the norm along with an extra assumption. Finally, we consider Richard Jeffrey’s proposed generalization of conditionalization. We show not only that his rule cannot be derived from the norm, unless the requirement of Rigidity is imposed from the start, but further that the norm reveals it to be illegitimate. We end by deriving an alternative updating rule for those cases in which Jeffrey’s is usually supposed to apply. (shrink)

In everyday life we either express our beliefs in all-or-nothing terms or we resort to numerical probabilities: I believe it's going to rain or my chance of winning is one in a million. The Stability of Belief develops a theory of rational belief that allows us to reason with all-or-nothing belief and numerical belief simultaneously.

This essay develops a joint theory of rational (all-or-nothing) belief and degrees of belief. The theory is based on three assumptions: the logical closure of rational belief; the axioms of probability for rational degrees of belief; and the so-called Lockean thesis, in which the concepts of rational belief and rational degree of belief figure simultaneously. In spite of what is commonly believed, this essay will show that this combination of principles is satisfiable (and indeed nontrivially so) and that the principles (...) are jointly satisfied if and only if rational belief is equivalent to the assignment of a stably high rational degree of belief. Although the logical closure of belief and the Lockean thesis are attractive postulates in themselves, initially this may seem like a formal “curiosity”; however, as will be argued in the rest of the essay, a very reasonable theory of rational belief can be built around these principles that is not ad hoc and that has various philosophical features that are plausible independently. In particular, this essay shows that the theory allows for a solution to the Lottery Paradox, and it has nice applications to formal epistemology. The price that is to be paid for this theory is a strong dependency of belief on the context, where a context involves both the agent's degree of belief function and the partitioning or individuation of the underlying possibilities. But as this essay argues, that price seems to be affordable. (shrink)

Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions became the most widely read book about science in the twentieth century. His terms 'paradigm' and 'scientific revolution' entered everyday speech, but they remain controversial. In the second half of the twentieth century, the new field of cognitive science combined empirical psychology, computer science, and neuroscience. In this book, the theories of concepts developed by cognitive scientists are used to evaluate and extend Kuhn's most influential ideas. Based on case studies of the Copernican revolution, (...) the discovery of nuclear fission, and an elaboration of Kuhn's famous 'ducks and geese' example of concept learning, this volume, first published in 2006, offers accounts of the nature of normal and revolutionary science, the function of anomalies, and the nature of incommensurability. (shrink)

Transfers of critically ill neonates are frequent phenomena. Even though parents’ participation is regarded as crucial in neonatal care, a transfer often means that parents and neonates are separated. A systematic review of the parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer is lacking. This paper describes a meta‐study addressing qualitative research about parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer. Through deconstruction and reflections of theories, methods, and empirical data, the aim was to achieve a deeper understanding of theoretical, empirical, contextual, historical, and methodological issues (...) of qualitative studies concerning parents’ experiences of neonatal transfer over the course of this meta‐study (2000–2017). Meta‐theory and meta‐method analyses showed that caring, transition, and family‐centered care were main theoretical frames applied and that interviewing with a small number of participants was the preferred data collection method. The meta‐data‐analysis showed that transfer was a scary, unfamiliar, and threatening experience for the parents; they were losing familiar context, were separated from their neonate, and could feel their parenthood disrupted. We identified ‘wavering and wandering’ as a metaphoric representation of the parents’ experiences. The findings add knowledge about meta‐study as an approach for comprehensive qualitative research and point at the value of meta‐theory and meta‐method analyses. (shrink)

Based on fieldwork in northern Senegal, this paper shows how some pastoralists in Ferlo have managed to use market opportunities as a means to maintain their “pastoral way of life” Increased market involvement has enlarged the field of opportunities for pastoral activities as well as the vulnerability of these activities. This has given rise to a dialectic process of diversification and specialization. The paper is concerned with the portfolio of livelihood activities pastoralists use in order to respond to adverse socio-economic (...) and environmental conditions. Depending on the possibilities and values of a household, a certain combination of activities is chosen and this may change from one year to another. Hence, the activities are used in a dynamic way within households. On the basis of pastoral livelihood activities, four ideal types of pastoral livelihood strategies can be constructed: “agro-pastoralism,” “Tabaski pastoralism,” “commercial pastoralism,” and “non-herding pastoralism.” These four types illustrate how pastoralists re-invent their livelihoods in order to continue a pastoral way of life. (shrink)

One of the fundamental problems of epistemology is to say when the evidence in an agent’s possession justifies the beliefs she holds. In this paper and its sequel, we defend the Bayesian solution to this problem by appealing to the following fundamental norm: Accuracy An epistemic agent ought to minimize the inaccuracy of her partial beliefs. In this paper, we make this norm mathematically precise in various ways. We describe three epistemic dilemmas that an agent might face if she attempts (...) to follow Accuracy, and we show that the only inaccuracy measures that do not give rise to such dilemmas are the quadratic inaccuracy measures. In the sequel, we derive the main tenets of Bayesianism from the relevant mathematical versions of Accuracy to which this characterization of the legitimate inaccuracy measures gives rise, but we also show that Jeffrey conditionalization has to be replaced by a different method of update in order for Accuracy to be satisfied. (shrink)

In this book, Hannes Charen presents an alternative examination of kinship structures in political theory. Employing a radically transdisciplinary approach, On the Politics of Kinship is structured in a series of six theoretical vignettes or frames. Each chapter frames a figure, aspect, or relational context of the family or kinship. Some chapters are focused on a critique of the family as a state-sanctioned institution, while others cautiously attempt to recast kinship in a way to reimagine mutual obligation through the (...) generation of kinship practices understood as a perpetually evolving set of relational responses to finitude. In doing so, Charen considers the ways in which kinship is a plastic social response to embodied exposure, both concealed and made more evident in the bloated, feeble, and broken individualities and nationalities that seem to dominate our social and political landscape today. On the Politics of Kinship will be of interest to political theorists, feminists, anthropologists, and social scientists in general. (shrink)

Scientific Change How do scientific theories, concepts and methods change over time? Answers to this question have historical parts and philosophical parts. There can be descriptive accounts of the recorded differences over time of particular theories, concepts, and methods—what might be called the shape of scientific change. Many stories of scientific change attempt to give […].

In Glas Derrida asserts that Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, in its reading of Antigone, favors consciousness (over the unconscious) by first acknowledging the achievement of ethical plenitude by Antigone, as she comes to full recognition of two contradictory laws, that of the divine and that of the communal spheres, and consequently repressing this speculative accomplishment by her fateful disappearance from both texts. This article complicates the argument by looking at the role that literature takes not only in philosophy, but in (...) the expression of speculative dialectics as such. What for Hegel can be included in a system? How does the impossible figure (Antigone), its expression and then exclusion enter and abandon the system? This text looks at war, burial and incest expressed by the role of Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit. (HC) © 2011 by The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System . (shrink)

In “On what matters: Personal identity as a phenomenological problem” (2020), Steven Crowell engages a number of contemporary interpretations of Husserl’s account of the person and personal identity by noting that they lack a phenomenological elucidation of the self as commitment. In this article, in response to Crowell, I aim to show that such an account of the self as commitment can be drawn from Husserl’s work by looking more closely at his descriptions from the time of Ideas and after (...) of the self as ego or I and egoic experience as attentive experience. I specifically aim to sketch the beginning of a response to three questions I take Crowell to be posing to a Husserlian account of the person and personal identity: (1) What more than pre-reflective self-awareness can be attributed to the self on phenomenological grounds so that we can understand, phenomenologically speaking, how selves become persons? (2) How can what characterizes the self in addition to pre-reflective self-awareness be discerned in both our commitment to truth and our feeling bound by love and other emotive commitments that cannot be fully rationally justified, which Husserl acknowledges are both sources of personal self-constitution? And (3), do all selves become persons? In the paper I elaborate how my answers to the first two questions turn on the self not just being self-aware but active in a particular sense. And to begin to address the third question, I suggest that while any form of wakeful conscious experience is both self-aware and active, this activity of the self makes a difference for those who are socio-historically embedded in the way we are. Specifically, on the proposed Husserlian account, selves that are socio-historically embedded become persons in and through their active relating to what they attentively experience. In concluding, I indicate how this Husserlian account might compare to Crowell’s claim that “self-identity (ipseity) is not mere logical identity (A=A) but a normative achievement […] which makes a ‘personal’ kind of identity possible” (2020). (shrink)

This article introduces, studies, and applies a new system of logic which is called ‘HYPE’. In HYPE, formulas are evaluated at states that may exhibit truth value gaps and truth value gluts. Simple and natural semantic rules for negation and the conditional operator are formulated based on an incompatibility relation and a partial fusion operation on states. The semantics is worked out in formal and philosophical detail, and a sound and complete axiomatization is provided both for the propositional and the (...) predicate logic of the system. The propositional logic of HYPE is shown to contain first-degree entailment, to have the Finite Model Property, to be decidable, to have the Disjunction Property, and to extend intuitionistic propositional logic conservatively when intuitionistic negation is defined appropriately by HYPE’s logical connectives. Furthermore, HYPE’s first-order logic is a conservative extension of intuitionistic logic with the Constant Domain Axiom, when intuitionistic negation is again defined appropriately. The system allows for simple model constructions and intuitive Euler-Venn-like diagrams, and its logical structure matches structures well-known from ordinary mathematics, such as from optimization theory, combinatorics, and graph theory. HYPE may also be used as a general logical framework in which different systems of logic can be studied, compared, and combined. In particular, HYPE is found to relate in interesting ways to classical logic and various systems of relevance and paraconsistent logic, many-valued logic, and truthmaker semantics. On the philosophical side, if used as a logic for theories of type-free truth, HYPE is shown to address semantic paradoxes such as the Liar Paradox by extending non-classical fixed-point interpretations of truth by a conditional as well-behaved as that of intuitionistic logic. Finally, HYPE may be used as a background system for modal operators that create hyperintensional contexts, though the details of this application need to be left to follow-up work. (shrink)

We give an overview of the role of equicontinuity of sequences of real-valued functions on [0,1] and related notions in classical mathematics, intuitionistic mathematics, Bishop’s constructive mathematics, and Russian recursive mathematics. We then study the logical strength of theorems concerning these notions within the programme of Constructive Reverse Mathematics. It appears that many of these theorems, like a version of Ascoli’s Lemma, are equivalent to fan-theoretic principles.

Cet article étudie les transformations que les sciences de Dieu, de l’âme et de l’esprit dans le Système figuré des connaissances humaines ainsi que dans son commentaire explicatif publiés par Diderot dans le Prospectus de l’ Encyclopédie ont subies dans la reprise dans le tome I. Emprunté à Bacon mais aussi à Chambers, l’arbre encyclopédique présente un schéma conventionnel que le classement épistémologique des trois sciences dans l’« Explication détaillée » des éditeurs subvertit en les assimilant à la pneumatologie, qui (...) traite des êtres abstraits considérés par Diderot comme « vides de sens ». (shrink)

This paper traces the history of the philosophical and political justification of religious tolerance from the late 17th century to modern times. In the Anglo-Saxon world, John Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) gave birth to the doctrine of the separation of Church and State and to what is now called secularization. In France, Pierre Bayle refuted, in his Philosophical Commentary (1685), the justification of intolerance taken from Saint Augustine. Following him, Voltaire campaigned for tolerance following the Calas affair (1763), and (...) the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) imposed religious freedom which, a century later, resulted in the uniquely French notion of laïcité, which denies religion any supremacy, and any right to organize life in its name. Equality before the law takes precedence over freedom: the fact of being a believer does not give rise to the right to special statutes or to exceptions to the law. (shrink)

When do children acquire a propositional attitude folk psychology or theory of mind? The orthodox answer to this central question of developmental ToM research had long been that around age 4 children begin to apply “belief” and other propositional attitude concepts. This orthodoxy has recently come under serious attack, though, from two sides: Scoffers complain that it over-estimates children’s early competence and claim that a proper understanding of propositional attitudes emerges only much later. Boosters criticize the orthodoxy for underestimating early (...) competence and claim that even infants ascribe beliefs. In this paper, the orthodoxy is defended on empirical grounds against these two kinds of attacks. On the basis of new evidence, not only can the two attacks safely be countered, but the orthodox claim can actually be strengthened, corroborated and refined: what emerges around age 4 is an explicit, unified, flexibly conceptual capacity to ascribe propositional attitudes. This unified conceptual capacity contrasts with the less sophisticated, less unified implicit forms of tracking simpler mental states present in ontogeny long before. This refined version of the orthodoxy can thus most plausibly be spelled out in some form of 2-systems-account of theory of mind. (shrink)

It is a commonly raised argument against the family resemblance account of concepts that there is no limit to a concept's extension. An account of family resemblance which attempts to provide a solution to this problem by including both similarity among instances and dissimilarity to non-instances has been developed by the philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. Similar solutions have been hinted at in the literature on family resemblance concepts, but the solution has never received a detailed investigation. I shall provide (...) a reconstruction of Kuhn's theory and argue that his solution necessitates a developmental perspective wchich builds on both the transmission of taxonomies between generations and a progressive development through history. (shrink)

TABLE OF CONTENTS -/- * Inhalt * Verletzende Worte. Eine Einleitung * Sprache als Gewalt oder: Warum verletzen Worte? * Bedingungen für den Erfolg von Degradierungszeremonien * Gesichtsbedrohende Akte * Die Dialektik von Herausforderung und Erwiderung der Herausforderung * Sprechakte und unsprechbare Akte * Diskriminierende Sprechakte. Ein funktionaler Ansatz * Symbolische Verletzbarkeit und sprachliche Gewalt * Über die Körperkraft von Sprache * Die geraubte Stimme * Nach dem angeblichen Ende der ›Sprachvergessenheit‹: Vorläufige Fragen zur Unvermeidlichkeit der * Verletzung Anderer in (...) und mit Worten * Verletzende Anerkennung. Über das Verhältnis von Anerkennung, Subjektkonstitution und ›sozialer Gewalt‹ * Zur Praxis verbaler Gewalt unter Schülerinnen und Schülern * Sprachliche Strategien verbaler Ablehnung in öffentlichen Diskussionsforen im Internet * Zur Sprache der Sprachlosen. Ebenen der Gewalt in der diskursiven Produktion von Behinderung * Words like violence. Konstellationen des Unvernehmens * Die Autorinnen und Autoren * Nachweise. (shrink)

In this article I consider whether and how Husserl’s transcendental phenomenological method can initiate a phenomenological way of life. The impetus for this investigation originates in a set of manuscripts written in 1926 (published in Zur phänomenologischen Reduktion) where Husserl suggests that the consistent commitment to and performance of phenomenological reflection can change one’s life to the point where a simple return to the life lived before this reflection is no longer possible. Husserl identifies this point of no return with (...) becoming a transcendental idealist. I propose a way of understanding Husserl’s claim that transcendental idealism makes a simple return to life before phenomenological reflection impossible. I then suggest that a phenomenological way of life is characterized by an epistemic modesty that follows from Husserl’s transcendental idealism and consider whether and how such a phenomenological way of life is a life worth living. (shrink)

This paper spells out Husserl’s account of the exercise of rationality and shows how it is tied to the capacity for critical reflection. I first discuss Husserl’s views on what rationally constrains our intentionality. Then I localize the exercise of rationality in the positing that characterizes attentive forms of intentionality and argue that, on Husserl’s account, when we are attentive to something we are also pre-reflectively aware of what speaks for and against our taking something to be a certain way. (...) After discussing the conditions under which this pre-reflective awareness gives way to reflective deliberation, I contrast this account to a compelling Kantian-inspired account of the activity of reason that has recently been developed by Matthew Boyle. In particular, I argue that Husserl delimits the scope of the exercise of rationality differently than Boyle, and I show how this implies different accounts of the self. (shrink)

Thomas Reid's Geometry of Visibles, according to which the geometrical properties of an object's perspectival appearance equal the geometrical properties of its projection on the inside of a sphere with the eye in its centre allows for two different interpretations. It may (1) be understood as a theory about phenomenal visual space – i.e. an account of how things appear to human observers from a certain point of view – or it may (2) be seen as a mathematical model of (...) viewpoint-relative but mind-independent relational properties of objects. This paper makes a systematic and a historical claim. I shall argue, first, that given certain features of the human visual system phenomenal visual space differs in several aspects from Reidean visual space. Secondly, I suggest that, since Reid was aware of some of these empirical facts, we should interpret Reid as endorsing the second interpretation of the Geometry of Visibles. (shrink)

The relation between Kant’s conception of modalities in the Postulates of Empirical Thought and Hegel’s conception in the Logic of Essence has not been addressed in the current scholarship. I argue that there is in fact a close connection that becomes visible if the desideratum which is implied by Kant’s conceptions is understood. Thus, after an analysis of the Kantian modal postulates, the article shows that they are sufficient to characterize the necessity of Kant’s Grundsätze and, hence, a specific form (...) of synthetic propositions a priori. However, I will prove that they are insufficient to characterize Kant’s synthetic propositions a priori about transcendental philosophy. This insufficiency in the characterization of transcendental philosophy itself brings into the arena Hegel, who supplements the Kantian modalities with a self-reflexive form of transcendental modality. (shrink)

This article investigates the deep-rooted logical structures underlying our thinking about other animals with a particular focus on topics relevant for cognitive primate research. We begin with a philosophical propaedeutic that makes perspicuous how we are to differentiate ontological from epistemological considerations regarding primates, while also accounting for the many perplexities that will undoubtedly be encountered upon applying this difference to concrete phenomena. Following this, we give an account of what is to be understood by the assertion of a thesis (...) of anthropological difference, identifying, inter alia, a property that fulfils the exclusivity, universality, and constitution criteria and demarcates the differentia specifica between humans and other animals. Also, we systematically develop how such theses can be formulated more moderately. Furthermore, we account for different theoretical frameworks, argumentative schemes, and sociological factors whose employment is associated with theses as such. This endeavor is carried out under the guise of anthropomorphism and anthropodenial. Doing so, we show that both are favored by the logic of cognitive primate research. Put briefly, concepts like cladistic parsimony and arguments by analogy favor anthropomorphism whereas concepts like traditional parsimony and Morgan’s canon favor anthropodenial. We close by framing these topics in the light of the self-other category mistake that lies in ascribing exclusive self-properties to some other. Lastly, we probe this category mistake for potency and scope of implications and find it to be central to and unavoidably ingrained in our thinking about other animals. (shrink)

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 was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. 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. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. 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)

Is it possible to give an explicit definition of belief in terms of subjective probability, such that believed propositions are guaranteed to have a sufficiently high probability, and yet it is neither the case that belief is stripped of any of its usual logical properties, nor is it the case that believed propositions are bound to have probability 1? We prove the answer is ‘yes’, and that given some plausible logical postulates on belief that involve a contextual “cautiousness” threshold, there (...) is but one way of determining the extension of the concept of belief that does the job. The qualitative concept of belief is not to be eliminated from scientific or philosophical discourse, rather, by reducing qualitative belief to assignments of resiliently high degrees of belief and a “cautiousness” threshold, qualitative and quantitative belief turn out to be governed by one unified theory that offers the prospects of a huge range of applications. Within that theory, logic and probability theory are not opposed to each other but go hand in hand. (shrink)

"Edmund Husserl is widely regarded as the principal founder of phenomenology, one of the most important movements in twentieth-century philosophy. His work inspired subsequent figures such as Martin Heidegger, his most renowned pupil, as well as Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, all of whom engaged with and developed his insights in significant ways. He also made important contributions to logic and philosophy of mathematics and his work on fundamental problems such as intentionality, consciousness and subjectivity continues to animate philosophical research (...) and argument. The Husserlian Mind is an outstanding reference source to the full range of Husserl's philosophy. Forty chapters by a team of international contributors are divided into seven clear parts covering the following areas: Husserl's major works, Husserl's phenomenological method, Phenomenology of consciousness, Epistemology, Ethics and social and political philosophy, Science, Metaphysics. Contained in these sections are chapters on many of the key aspects of Husserl's thought, including intentionality, transcendental philosophy, reduction, perception, time, self and subjectivity, personhood, logic and mathematics, psychology, ontology and idealism. Offering an unparalleled guide to the enormous range of his thought, The Husserlian Mind is essential reading for students and scholars of Husserl, phenomenology, and the history of twentieth-century philosophy. It will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as religion and sociology"--. (shrink)

According to a predominant view, reflection is constitutive of personhood. In this paper I first indicate how it might seem that such an account cannot do justice to the socially embedded nature ofpersonhood. I then present a phenomenologically-inspired account of reflection as critical stance taking and show how it accommodates the social embeddedness of persons. In concluding, I outline how this phenomenological account is also not vulnerable to a number of additional challenges that have been raised against accounts that consider (...) reflection to be constitutive of personhood and what matters for responsibility. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Bonn, 1976.

Thomas Reid argued that the geometrical properties of visible figures equal the geometrical properties of their projections on the inside of a sphere centred around the eye. In recent scholarship there are only a few suggestions of which sources might have inspired Reid. I point to a widely ignored body of early eighteenth-century literature – introductions into projective geometry, the use of celestial globes and astronomy – in which the model of the eye in the centre of a sphere was (...) immensely popular. Moreover, I argue that Reid's account results naturally from some astronomical doctrines in conjunction with George Berkeley's theory of vision. (shrink)

In discussions about whether the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is compatible with structuralist ontologies of mathematics, it is usually assumed that individual objects are subject to criteria of identity which somehow account for the identity of the individuals. Much of this debate concerns structures that admit of non-trivial automorphisms. We consider cases from graph theory that violate even weak formulations of PII. We argue that (i) the identity or difference of places in a structure is not to be (...) accounted for by anything other than the structure itself and that (ii) mathematical practice provides evidence for this view. We want to thank Leon Horsten, Jeff Ketland, Øystein Linnebo, John Mayberry, Richard Pettigrew, and Philip Welch for valuable comments on drafts of this paper. We are especially grateful to Fraser MacBride for correcting our interpretation of two of his papers and for other helpful comments. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

In this article, I develop how the phenomenological understanding of the intentionality of consciousness allows us to formulate a theory of personal identity that can at least account for the continuity of consciousness through time, provide an account of a certain aspect of what it means to be a person, namely to be able to appropriate one’s past as one’s own, and give an original answer to the question of personal identity and state in what the identity of a person (...) through time consists. After having developed the outlines for such a phenomenological theory of personal identity, I conclude that the provided account of the person is the correlate of the phenomenological concept of world. (shrink)