This comprehensive Gandhi reader provides an essential new reference for scholars and students of his life and thought. It is the only text available that presents Gandhi's own writings, including excerpts from three of his books—An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Satyagraha in South Africa, Hind Swaraj —a major pamphlet, Constructive Programme: Its Meaning and Place, and many journal articles and letters, along with a biographical sketch of his life in historical context and recent essays by highly (...) regarded scholars. (shrink)

‘Ifs’ come washed or unwashed. The washed ifs are embedded in precise theories: the constantly strict implication of deductive inference, the variably strict implication of ‘nearness’ conditionals, and statements of conditional probability. By a nearness conditional I mean the common part of Stalnaker's and D. Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals, which depends on a notion that possible worlds are more or less near to each other, as a measure of their over-all similarity to each other.

I discuss three well-known interpretations of Aristotle’s doctrine of categories: the linguistic interpretation put forth by Gilbert Ryle, the logical interpretation to be found in Kant, and the ontological interpretation by Franz Brentano. As it turns out, only Brentano provides us with an accurate understanding of this Aristotelian doctrine, which also allows us to locate and assess it within the context of Aristotle’s metaphysics.

The article deals with Kant's theory of the self in Patricia Kitcher'sKant's Thinkerin three respects: (1) I argue that it is doubtful whether accompanying representations with the ‘I think’ as such yields a principle for the categories since it does not require any strong kind of connection between them. (2) I discuss textual evidence for and against Kitcher's attempt to make sense of Kant's claim that the ‘I think’ requires the continued existence of cognizersper se. (3) I ask whether Kitcher's (...) understanding of Kant's positive theory of the self leans towards minimal substantialism or towards functionalism. (shrink)

The paper puts Kant’s second paralogism in the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason into the context of eighteenth century debates on materialism. In the second paralogism, Kant argues that neither dualism nor materialism about the human mind can be established, while focusing on a received anti-materialist argument that he dubs the “Achilles argument”. The Achilles argument that Kant ultimately rejects is based on the assumption that the unity of thought requires a unified substratum and thus an immaterial (...) soul. I argue (1) that the second paralogism is not a paralogism formally but (2) nonetheless provides an illuminating discussion of the shortcomings of the Achilles argument. In doing so, I attempt to identify the contemporary background for Kant’s reconstruction of this argument. (shrink)

_“Emotion as an element of contemporary Criticism in the intellectual Environment of the Weimar Republic – A contextual Reading of the Presentation of the Affective in Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt”_ This article examines a specific use of emotional concepts as well as a particular understanding of the affective in general in the work of Heidegger and Schmitt during the years 1919-1933. The general character of this idea of the affective is that it is developed as an element of a (...) critical engagement with discourses regarding institutional change. Thus, I will be reading the two thinkers in the light of institutional disputes present in the Weimar Republic. Heidegger is read in relation to the question of university reform, with which he was deeply involved in the 1920´s. Schmitt will be analyzed through the political situation of the newly established liberal democracy. In both cases, I will argue that a conception of the affective is developed that serves to attack a perceived relativism. This is seen in the fact that, for both thinkers, certain affective categories are linked to stable existential categories: being for Heidegger and the dichotomy between friend and foe for Schmitt. (shrink)

You have invited me to speak about Morals without Faith . Briefly, I take it, this question means: is there any moral law for agnostics? But it might be more interesting to put it rather differently: to ask, not simply whether there is a moral law for those who do not believe in God, but whether there is any such law even for those who do independent of their belief? We are then asking: Does being under a moral law mean (...) nothing more than being commanded by God? Is the only incentive for obeying it in our love or fear of Him, the only criterion by which to judge the morality of actions in their conformity to a revealed standard? Or would it be more true to say that the law which God wishes us to obey is that law to which we ought to conform because it corresponds to our nature and conditions in this world, a law which, apart from being God's will, we can understand as being indispensable to the kind of beings we are? (shrink)

The paper deals with the first book-length materialist treatise published in Germany in the 1770s, August Wilhelm Hupel’s Anmerkungen und Zweifel über die gewöhnlichen Lehrsätze vom Wesen der menschlichen und der thierischen Seele. Based on a “great chain of being” conception, he maintains that his materialist doctrine provides stronger grounds for belief in the immortality of the soul than those substance dualism has offered. He seeks to defend that the soul is a composite being, i.e. that it is material, but (...) at the same time he argues that the soul is not identical with the body or parts of it, but rather that it exists independently and composed of “subtle”, ether-like matter. Hupel also argues that the soul is immortal. This claim is particularly uncommon since most materialists, not only in Germany, subscribe to some version of mortalism, i.e. the doctrine that the mind either ceases to exist altogether with the death of the body, or that it remains in a death-like state until the resurrection. (shrink)

In this two-part essay I develop a theory of natural signs. Since even primordial signs signify values, in the first part I develop the theory’s valuative aspect. Goods are as primary in nature as facts are, and together facts and values generate semeiosis in all life without excess extrapolation from human psychology. To ward off over-extrapolating on values, I defend a major discontinuity between man and nature on the goods of ethics. In the essay’s second part I develop the semeiotic (...) dimensions of the negative feedback model of purposive systems. I provide tests for the truth and falsity of the primitive representations in these systems. I account for the holism of representational systems and their non-extensionality, and I define functions. I solve this important definitional problem by inverting the usual mode of thinking: Functions do not explain signs; signs explain functions. Finally I defend this theory’s way of understanding the continuity between human beings and the rest of living nature against several criticisms. (shrink)

In this two-part essay I develop a theory of natural signs. Since even primordial signs signify values, in the first part I develop the theory’s valuative aspect. Goods are as primary in nature as facts are, and together facts and values generate semeiosis in all life without excess extrapolation from human psychology. To ward off over-extrapolating on values, I defend a major discontinuity between man and nature on the goods of ethics. In the essay’s second part I develop the semeiotic (...) dimensions of the negative feedback model of purposive systems. I provide tests for the truth and falsity of the primitive representations in these systems. I account for the holism of representational systems and their non-extensionality, and I define functions. I solve this important definitional problem by inverting the usual mode of thinking: Functions do not explain signs; signs explain functions. Finally I defend this theory’s way of understanding the continuity between human beings and the rest of living nature against several criticisms. (shrink)

In 1941/42 Konrad Lorenz suggested that Kant's transcendental categories ofa priori knowledge could be given an empirical interpretation in Darwinian material evolutionary terms: a priori propositional knowledge was an organ subject to natural selection for adaptation to its specific environments. D. Campbell extended the conception, and termed evolution a process of knowledge. The philosophical problem of what knowledge is became a descriptive one of how knowledge developed, the normative semantic questions have been sidestepped, as if the descriptive insights would automatically (...) resolve them. This came at a time when the traditional concept of knowledge as universally true, justified beliefs had been challenged by subjectivist, intercommunicative coherence frameworks. Much of the literature on evolutionary epistemology claimed that knowledge in general, and science as its epitome in particular, evolved along lines analogous to organic biological evolution. I refer here only to the view of knowledge as an extension of material biological evolution. These theories of evolutionary epistemology, contrary to the relativist notions of naturalized epistemology, adopted strict realist positions.Although there is no contention with the claim that biological evolution provided the raw material and the constraints for human knowledge, cognition is not knowledge and knowledge is not constrained by it beyond some trivial truisms. The view that sees evolution as a knowledge/cognition process is coercing a loosely defined term into the status of a phenotypic trait on which selection could act. This disregards the intricate many-to-many relationship between correlates of knowledge and biological capacities. But even if we grant the correlates of knowledge the status of selectable traits, the heritability of alternative phenotypes would be low and unpredictable due to the high, open-ended environmental malleability of such complex characters in the course of development. Such concepts are therefore biologically inconsequential. (shrink)

When I engage in some routine activity, it will usually be the case that I mean or intend the present move to be followed by others. What does meaning the later moves consist in? How do I know, when I come to perform them, that they were what I meant? Problems familiar from Wittgenstein's and Kripke's discussions of linguistic meaning arise here. Normally, I will not think of the later moves. But, even if I do, there are reasons to deny (...) that thinking of them can constitute what it is to mean to perform them. I argue that the problem can be solved, in the case of routine action, by the notion that our behavioural routines are guided by what I callmodest agent memory. It will help explain both how wecan have future moves in mind and how we can be in a position to avow the fact. (shrink)

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current (...) fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion. (shrink)

Given the personalist's latitudinarian conception of rationality, what is progress toward wisdom? An answer is in C. I. Lewis's concept of the "congruence" of propositions, propositions so related that the antecedent probability of any one of them will be increased if the remainder can be assumed. This effect can be modelled in the probability calculus with due attention to the temporal sequencing of our learning of contingent propositions without ever becoming certain of them, as Jeffrey proposes. A diachronic bootstrapping effect (...) is obtained for Ockham's razor and premises of arguments about a god's existence. As a theory's probability rises with increased evidence, the probability of our earlier evidence rises too. (shrink)

There is a common view that as well as being conscious of the world in virtue of having thoughts about it, forming representations of its various states and processes, we are also conscious of it in virtue of feeling it. What I have in mind is not the fact that we have feelings about the world—indignation at this, pleasure at that—but that we sensorily feel its colours, sounds, textures and so on. And this feeling form of consciousness, it's often thought, (...) constitutes a peculiarly intimate and intense focus upon things. The feel of the first drops of rain on one's face and the sounds of the gull's cry will quickly be recognized for what they are; and the fact that events of this sort are occurring will thereafter hold one's attention just insofar as they are relevant to some current business. But what can also happen is that such experiences cut through any current concerns and cause a state in which, for a time, one does nothing except feel the soft coolness of the rain and the particular quality of the bird's cry. We can become absorbed, it seems, in the mere presence of these phenomena and this is an experience to which we attach great value. (shrink)

There is a common view that as well as being conscious of the world in virtue of having thoughts about it, forming representations of its various states and processes, we are also conscious of it in virtue of feeling it. What I have in mind is not the fact that we have feelings about the world—indignation at this, pleasure at that—but that we sensorily feel its colours, sounds, textures and so on. And this feeling form of consciousness, it's often thought, (...) constitutes a peculiarly intimate and intense focus upon things. The feel of the first drops of rain on one's face and the sounds of the gull's cry will quickly be recognized for what they are; and the fact that events of this sort are occurring will thereafter hold one's attention just insofar as they are relevant to some current business. But what can also happen is that such experiences cut through any current concerns and cause a state in which, for a time, one does nothing except feel the soft coolness of the rain and the particular quality of the bird's cry. We can become absorbed, it seems, in the mere presence of these phenomena and this is an experience to which we attach great value. (shrink)

‘Ifs’ come washed or unwashed. The washed ifs are embedded in precise theories: the constantly strict implication of deductive inference, the variably strict implication of ‘nearness’ conditionals, and statements of conditional probability. By a nearness conditional I mean the common part of Stalnaker's and D. Lewis's theory of counterfactual conditionals, which depends on a notion that possible worlds are more or less near to each other, as a measure of their over-all similarity to each other.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rita Gross as Colleague and CollaboratorNancy Auer FalkWhen this panel in honor of Rita was first listed in the AAR Annual Meeting program, I found myself listed as Rita's "colleague." This was accurate only in the broadest sense of the term "colleague." I have never worked on the same faculty as Rita or watched her teaching her students. A more appropriate description of my relationship to her would be (...) "collaborator," and perhaps, for a time, mentor—although Rita never needed mentoring for very long. I coedited with Rita three editions of the volume Unspoken Worlds and was in frequent communication with her during the several years in which she chaired the AAR's Women's Studies Section.I knew Rita best during a very early stage of both our lives' work when I was the one doing Buddhist studies and she was still a convert to Judaism, busily castigating every male scholar who had written about Australian Aborigines for their failure to recognize the secret and sacred religious practices of women. Many years later, by the way, I had the privilege of visiting the Pitjantjatjara cultural center at the Australian site called Uluru/Ayers Rock and discovered that Rita had been right on target with that criticism. The center's exhibits are full of references to women's important roles and practice, while the path to the women's sacred cave at the rock's base is clearly marked and barred to casual visitors.Although I am well aware of Rita's contributions to women's studies in general, to Buddhist studies, and to the American Buddhist community, I shall leave those for others to discuss. I want to point to three aspects of her contributions that might otherwise be missed, because hardly anyone other than myself is aware of them. These are her initial critique, while still a graduate student, of our mutual field of study, History of Religions; her work with me in conceiving and editing Unspoken Worlds; and her work as AAR Women's Studies chair.To me, it has been especially fitting that I was asked to discuss my collaboration with Rita at a panel convening in Atlanta. This is because it was at an AAR annual meeting in Atlanta that my link to Rita began—as did the constellation of circumstances that would make her a major force in women's studies. It was in 1971 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. That year the annual meeting program held an announcement of a meeting for women scholars, scheduled within a room so tiny that many who [End Page 63] came could not get all the way in. I was one of those left standing in the doorway, craning my neck and trying hard to hear what was going on. That meeting planned a coup that challenged the AAR's previously all-male leadership. One of its decisions was to pack the annual business meeting with women. At that time AAR officers were elected at that meeting. A slate of nominees was presented, with the provision that additional nominations could be made from the floor. Normally very few members attended that business meeting. But this time the AAR women showed up in force, and then nominated and elected Christine Downing, the first AAR woman to become a line officer and therefore, in succession, an annual meeting program chair and AAR president. Rosemary Reuther of this panel was one of that coup's ringleaders. A second component of the original meeting, more relevant for Rita and myself, was establishment of a working group on women and religion, to begin its deliberations at the following year's annual meeting.As I left that original meeting in its tiny room and walked into the Hyatt's immense central atrium, I heard a voice behind me: "Hello, Nancy." I turned and found myself looking at a young woman whom I could have sworn I had never seen before. She introduced herself—Rita Gross, a first-year student at Chicago when I had been a last-year student, preoccupied with exams, job interviews, and dissertation and oblivious to everything else—including the group of entering students. We sat down... (shrink)

In a well?known passage, Wittgenstein suggests that claims about what I would have said if asked, offered as an elucidation of what I meant, are hypotheses. Some have argued that Wittgenstein commits himself here to the view that claims about what I meant are hypotheses. I argue that this is to misinterpret the relevant passages and is at odds with central themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, particularly what he has to say about the first?person relation to meaning. This is not of (...) the external kind that the hypothesis model would suggest. Claims about what I would in fact have said are indeed hypotheses; but claims about what I would have said that are used to explicate what I meant have a quite different status. In a final section, I consider Wittgenstein's belief that the regularity of our meaning?governed behaviour need continue ?no further in the direction of the centre? and may emerge out of ?chaos?. I offer an account of these claims which gives no support to the hypothesis theory. (shrink)

I define the Gaia hypothesis as the descriptive claim, supposedly supported by biology and the earth sciences, that there's a fitness for one-and-all, and the owner of that fitness is Gaia. Much of the argument for Gaia turns on the supposed discovery of negative feedback loops serving its fitness. I present an argument against such a fitness, and so against Gaia. I distinguish two types of negative feedback systems. Systems in the engineering sense are information exploiters, whereas systems in the (...) Boolean sense are simply producers of stability. I address three arguments presented by the advocates of Gaia for thinking that they have discovered a special variety of the Boolean system that is most supportive of Gaia's reality. I show that these arguments are specious. Furthermore I show that systems in the engineering sense would be the most supportive of the Gaia hypothesis, and no global feedback systems of that type have ever been found. These analyses have a constructive consequence of fundamental importance to biology: a theory of the way negative feedback, taken in the purely quantitative sense of information theory, comes to acquire the semantic character of being information about various features of an organism's niche. (shrink)

Reflection on the self's way of being "in" consciousness yields two arguments for a theory of self-reference not based in any way all all on self-cognition. First, I show that one theory of self-reference predicts an experience of the self because the theory inadequately analyzes the semantical facts about indexicality. I construct a dilemma for this cognitivism, which it cannot get out of, for it requires even solitary self-reference to be based on some original self-knowledge, which is not available. I (...) describe my "kinetic model" of unspoken self-reference, and I show how it fits the facts of four forms of consciousness, all of which presuppose self-reference, rather than yield it. Second, a speaker uses the first person pronoun in sentences because she is aware of the unmediated role in agency of the beliefs she would express, and not because she is aware of herself in their content. The cognitive model, in contrast, succumbs to a vicious regress and is exposed as an obstacle to an understanding of consciousness. (shrink)

Intentionality occurs in connectionist nets among those traits of the nets that scientists call flaws. This label has obscured for philosophers the fact that the naturalistic basis of intentionality has been discovered. I show this while staying on our profession's common ground of discourse about ancient philosophy. In the "Theaetetus", Plato invokes a homunculus to explain perceptual misrecognition, and in "On Memory and Recollection", Aristotle invokes a mental operation of disregarding in order to overcome the extraneous determinateness of mental images. (...) I develop a connectionist alternative to images that does not invoke a homunculus or spurious mental operations. I describe in detail an ultra-simple Hopfield net that provides an inus (indispensable part of a sufficient) condition for misrecognition. In addition, it exhibits properties that make it an inus condition for two marks of the intentionality of singular terms, namely, failures of existential generalization and of intersubstitutability of names. I also define the sense of a singular term. (shrink)

Neurofeedback has been suggested as a potential complementary therapy to different psychiatric disorders. Of interest for this approach is the prediction of individual performance and outcomes. In this study, we applied functional connectivity-based modeling using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) modalities to (i) investigate whether resting-state connectivity predicts performance during an affective neurofeedback task and (ii) evaluate the extent to which predictive connectivity profiles are correlated across EEG and fNIRS techniques. The fNIRS oxyhemoglobin and deoxyhemoglobin concentrations and the (...) EEG beta and gamma bands modulated by the alpha frequency band (beta-m-alpha and gamma-m-alpha, respectively) recorded over the frontal cortex of healthy subjects were used to estimate functional connectivity from each neuroimaging modality. For each connectivity matrix, relevant edges were selected in a leave-one-subject-out procedure, summed into “connectivity summary scores” (CSS), and submitted as inputs to a support vector regressor (SVR). Then, the performance of the left-out-subject was predicted using the trained SVR model. Linear relationships between the CSS across both modalities were evaluated using Pearson’s correlation. The predictive model showed a mean absolute error smaller than 20%, and the fNIRS oxyhemoglobin CSS was significantly correlated with the EEG gamma-m-alpha CSS (r = −0.456, p = 0.030). These results support that pre-task electrophysiological and hemodynamic resting-state connectivity are potential predictors of neurofeedback performance and are meaningfully coupled. This investigation motivates the use of joint EEG-fNIRS connectivity as outcome predictors, as well as a tool for functional connectivity coupling investigation. (shrink)

The term “exchange paradox” refers to a situation in which it appears to be advantageous for each of two holders of an envelope containing some amount of money to always exchange his or her envelope for that of the other individual, which they know contains either half or twice their own amount. We review several versions of the problem and show that resolving the paradox depends on the specifics of the situation, which must be disambiguated, and on the player's beliefs. (...) The latter psychological variables are part and parcel of the resolution. Assuming reasonable subjective distributions, exchanging cannot always be advantageous for both players. We suggest several deep-rooted psychological reasons for the considerable difficulty people demonstrably have in dealing with this problem. Implicit widespread and compelling assumptions—that affect judgement in diverse contexts—obstruct the solution. Analysing this paradox underscores the close connection between psychology and probability theory. (shrink)

Boehm reasons that human morality began when several heads of households formed a coalition to limit the despotic bullying of an alpha male. The logic is clear and the argument is persuasive. The premises require that: dominant individuals behave like chimpanzees, bullying their subordinates, early humans somehow developed one-male units from a chimpanzee like society and, the power of a despot is limited by group consensus and political activities. Not all alpha males behave like chimpanzees; most primate societies show little (...) evidence of bullying. One-male units are formed by some monkeys but there is little evidence of such tendencies in chimpanzees and bonobos. Hamadryas males do not compete with familiar males for females or possessions regardless of their dominance relationships, but this inhibition is not based on group consensus or coalitions repressing alpha males. Boehm's argument is, nonetheless, possible and plausible but cannot be empirically tested. (shrink)