This book is neither a biography nor an in-depth interpretation of Berkeley's philosophical system. There are numerous details about Berkeley's life, social relationships, and intellectual contributions, but Berman neither explores these matters in comprehensive depth nor claims to do so. What, then, does he do? Berman's answer is: "Advancing chronologically, I have focussed on Berkeley as homo religiosus". He uses biographical details to portray Berkeley as a Christian thinker who acted on his commitment both in and out of his study. (...) Berman also locates Berkeley's writings in their specific intellectual and social contexts while tracing a career that spanned over forty years and encompassed a wide range of interests and disciplines, from theology to economics. Attention is paid, for example, to Berkeley's Guardian essays and to Siris, which is characterized as his most popular book during his lifetime. Philosophers now concentrate almost exclusively on the Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, regarding their author only as a technical thinker offering immaterialism as a solution to free-standing philosophical problems. It is therefore salutary to be informed about the wide range of Berkeley's writings and regard them as diverse expressions of Christian idealism, a religiously inspired outlook about God, nature, and humanity which issued in, but transcends, immaterialism, the technical philosophical position. (shrink)

Robert cummins has recently attacked this line of argument: if p is a semantically primitive predicate of a first order language l, then p requires its own clause in the definition of satisfaction integral to a definition of truth of l. thus if l has infinitely many such p, the satisfaction clause cannot be completed and truth for l will remain undefined. against this cummins argues that a single clause in a general base theory for l can specify (...) satisfaction conditions for even infinitely many semantically primitive predicates of l. against cummins we argue that a general base theory contains a primitive expression 'applies to' and that to make his case cummins would need to prove this expression stands for a semantical relation sufficient to a truth definition for l. not only is such a proof lacking but we show the claim to be altogether dubious. (shrink)

The current debate over systematicity concerns the formal conditions a scheme of mental representation must satisfy in order to explain the systematicity of thought.1 The systematicity of thought is assumed to be a pervasive property of minds, and can be characterized (roughly) as follows: anyone who can think T can think systematic variants of T, where the systematic variants of T are found by permuting T’s constituents. So, for example, it is an alleged fact that anyone who can think the (...) thought that John loves Mary can think the thought that Mary loves John, where the latter thought is a systematic variant of the former. (shrink)

Husserlian phenomenology, as the study of conscious experience, has often been accused of solipsism. Husserl’s method, it is argued, does not have the resources to provide an account of consciousness of other minds. This chapter will address this issue by providing a brief overview of the multiple angles from which Husserl approached the theme of intersubjectivity, with specific focus on the details of his account of the concrete interpersonal encounter – “empathy.” Husserl understood empathy as a direct, quasi-perceptual form of (...) intentionality through which the sense of the Other is constituted. Furthermore, his account of empathy is holistically integrated with his overall theory of intersubjectivity, including his discussions of the objectivity of nature, and the social, historical, and communal aspects of subjectivity. Husserl’s theory of empathy continues to cast a long shadow, influencing both the analytic and continental approaches to the problem of other minds, as well as contemporary account of social cognition in the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

This article draws on the antebellum political thought of Black abolitionists Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany in critically assessing the efficacy of reasonableness in advancing the aims of emancipatory politics in political discourse. I argue, through a reading of Douglass and Delany, that comporting oneself reasonably in the face of oppressive ideology can be counterproductive, if one’s aim is to undermine such ideology and the institutions it supports. Douglass and Delany, I argue, also provide us with a framework for evaluating (...) alternative discursive strategies we might wish to employ in light of the limited value of reasonableness for emancipatory politics. (shrink)

For liberal contractarians, moral and political principles are justified if agreeable to persons as free and equals. But for critics of liberal contractarianism, this justification applies only to those capable of agreement. Understanding why contractarianism suffers from the problem of exclusion helps up understand the distinctive character of contractarianism and the importance of agreement in particular. I suggest contractarianism need not be objectionably exclusive. I first consider why agreement is important in contractarianism, and then introduce the main versions of contemporary (...) contractarianism and their different understandings of agreement. I discuss how agreement results in exclusion in each, and distinguish two kinds of response to the problem of exclusion: differential inclusion and permissive inclusion. Differential inclusion is unsuccessful because it offers those not fully capable of agreement unequal status. Permissive inclusion may either make the circumstances of agreement more open, or characterize the capacities required for inclusion more permissively. I advocate the latter as the most promising response to the problem of exclusion. I outline a more inclusive contractualism based on the capacity to share goals. (shrink)

The _Platform Sutra_ records the teachings of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, who is revered as one of the two great figures in the founding of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. This translation is the definitive English version of the eighth-century Ch'an classic. Phillip B. Yampolsky has based his translation on the Tun-huang manuscript, the earliest extant version of the work. A critical edition of the Chinese text is given at the end of the volume. Dr. Yampolsky also furnishes a lengthy and detailed (...) historical introduction which contains much information hitherto unavailable even to scholars, and provides the context essential to an understanding of Hui-neng's work. He gives an account of the history and legends of Ch'an Buddhism, with particular attention to the traditions associated with Hui-neng, quoting or summarizing the most important narratives. He then discusses the various texts of the _Platform Sutra_, and analyzes its contents. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Constitutive panpsychism is the doctrine that macro-level consciousness—that is, consciousness of the sort possessed by certain composite things such as humans—is built out of irreducibly mental features had by some or all of the basic physical constituents of reality. On constitutive panpsychism, changes in macro-level consciousness amount to changes in either the way that micro-conscious entities ‘bond’ or the way that micro-conscious qualities ‘blend’. I pose the ‘Selection Problem’ for constitutive panpsychism—the problem of explaining how high-level functional states of (...) the brain ‘select’ micro-conscious qualities for bonding or blending. I argue that there are no empirically plausible solutions to this problem. (shrink)

Certain recurring themes have emerged from research on intelligent behavior from literatures as diverse as developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, human reasoning and problem solving, and primatology. These themes include the importance of sensitivity to goal structure rather than action sequences in intelligent learning, the capacity to construct and manipulate hierarchically embedded mental representations, and a troubling domain specificity in the manifestation of each.

The questions -- The purpose of morality and law -- The past and the future -- What is religion? -- What is the rule of law? -- The families of religion : western religions -- The families of religion : eastern religions -- The families of law -- A brief tour of secular law -- Money, banks and corporations -- Secularisation and religious decline -- Reasons for the decline of religiosity -- Secularisation of government -- The rise of the lawyers (...) -- Who rules the world : lawyers or economists? -- What is wrong with the law? -- Scientific progress and the law -- A way of living -- A billion years from now. (shrink)

Dominance hierarchies are ubiquitous in the societies of human and non-human animals. Evidence from comparative, developmental, and cognitive psychological investigations is presented that show how social dominance hierarchies shaped the evolution of the human mind, and hence, human social institutions. It is argued that the pressures that arise from living in hierarchical social groups laid a foundation of fundamental concepts and cognitive strategies that are crucial to surviving in social dominance hierarchies. These include recognizing and reasoning transitively about dominance relations, (...) fast-track learning of social norms (permissions, prohibitions, and obligations), detecting violations of social norms (cheating), monitoring reciprocal obligations, and reading the intentions of others. (shrink)

It is intuitive that free action depends on consciousness in some way, since behavior that is unconsciously generated is widely regarded as un-free. But there is no clear consensus as to what such dependence comes to, in part because there is no clear consensus about either the cognitive role of consciousness or about the essential components of free action. I divide the space of possible views into four: the Constitution View (on which free actions metaphysically consist, at least in part, (...) in phenomenally conscious episodes of a special sort), the Causal-Dependence View (on which free actions are necessarily caused by conscious episodes), the Counterfactaul-Dependence View (on which free actions necessarily counterfactually dependent on conscious episodes of certain types), and the Independence View (on which there are no necessary dependence-relations that hold between free action and conscious episodes). After surveying recent empirical literature that purports to show that consciousness plays a smaller role in generating action than is usually supposed, I conclude that it is plausible that free action depends on consciousness in two ways. First, free action causally depends on consciousness control. Second, free action counterfactually depends on the agent's being responsive to certain reasons. (shrink)

Philosophy and AI presents invited contributions that focus on the different perspectives and techniques that philosophy and AI bring to the theory of ...

I discuss three tiers of technological innovation: mild innovation, or the acceleration by technology of a human activity aimed at a good; moderate innovation, or the obviation by technology of an activity aimed at a good; and radical innovation, or the altering by technology of the human condition so as to change what counts as a good. I argue that it is impossible to morally assess proposed innovations within any of these three tiers unless we rehabilitate a natural-law ethical framework. (...) And I offer some moral starting points within such a framework, in connection with innovations of each of the three types. (shrink)

But what are functions? Here, 15 leading scholars of philosophy of psychology and philosophy of biology present new essays on functions.

Breaking off the ordinary flow of experience, the passions create a state of exception. In their suddenness and intensity, they map a personal world, fix and qualify our attention, and impel our actions. Outraged anger drives us to write laws that will later be enforced by impersonal justice. Intense grief at the death of someone in our life discloses the contours of that life to us. Wonder spurs scientific inquiry. The strong current of Western thought that idealizes a dispassionate world (...) has ostracized the passions as quaint, even dangerous. Intense states have come to be seen as symptoms of pathology. A fondness for irony along with our civic ideal of tolerance lead us to prefer the diluted emotional life of feelings and moods. Demonstrating enormous intellectual originality and generosity, Philip Fisher meditates on whether this victory is permanent-and how it might diminish us. From Aristotle to Hume to contemporary biology, Fisher finds evidence that the passions have defined a core of human nature no less important than reason or desire. Traversing the Iliad, King Lear, Moby Dick, and other great works, he discerns the properties of the high-spirited states we call the passions. Are vehement states compatible with a culture that values private, selectively shared experiences? How do passions differ from emotions? Does anger have an opposite? Do the passions give scale, shape, and significance to our experience of time? Is a person incapable of anger more dangerous than someone who is irascible? In reintroducing us to our own vehemence, Fisher reminds us that it is only through our strongest passions that we feel the contours of injustice, mortality, loss, and knowledge. It is only through our personal worlds that we can know the world. (shrink)

In Working Virtue: Virtue Ethics and Contemporary Moral Problems, leading figures in the fields of virtue ethics and ethics come together to present the first ...

I.1. Two reasons for studying inference. Inference is studied for two distinct reasons: for its bearing on justification and for its bearing on learning. By and large, philosophy has focused on the role of inference in justification, leaving its role in learning to psychology and artificial intelligence. This difference of role leads to a difference of conception. An inference based theory of learning does not require a conception of inference according to which a good inference is one that justifies its (...) conclusion, whereas, obviously, an inference based theory of justification does require such a conception.1 Because of its focus on normative issues of justification, philosophy has taken a retrospective approach to inference, whereas a focus on learning naturally leads to a prospective approach. A focus on learning leads us to ask, "Given what is known, what should be inferred? How can what is known lead, via inference, to new knowledge?" A focus on justification has led philosophers to concentrate instead on a retrospective question: "Given a belief, can it be validly inferred from what is known? How can what is known justify, via inference, a new belief?" Thus, for philosophy, inference can be regarded as permissive: one needn't worry about what to infer, only about whether what has been arrived at somehow or other is or can be inferentially justified. A theory of learning, on the other hand, requires a conception of inference that is directive, for the problem of inference based learning is precisely the problem of what to infer. (shrink)

It is commonly supposed that evolutionary explanations of cognitive phenomena involve the assumption that the capacities to be explained are both innate and modular. This is understandable: independent selection of a trait requires that it be both heritable and largely decoupled from other ”nearby’ traits. Cognitive capacities realized as innate modules would certainly satisfy these contraints. A viable evolutionary cognitive psychology, however, requires neither extreme nativism nor modularity, though it is consistent with both. In this paper, we seek to show (...) that rather weak assumptions about innateness and modularity are consistent with evolutionary explanations of cognitive capacities. Evolutionary pressures can affect the degree to which the development of a capacity is canalized by biasing acquisition/learning in ways that favor development of concepts and capacities that proved adaptive to an organism’s ancestors. (shrink)

This volume is dedicated to the drawing of the implications of the contemporary 'post-secular' social transformation for education. Contributions discuss such topics as the mystical tradition and its social and pedagogic implications; transformative and ecological education; and the relations between secular and religious education in different local contexts.

Examines rationality from Aristotle to Foucault, seeking to place reason in a historical context within the Western tradition.

In exploring the nature of psychological explanation, this book looks at how psychologists theorize about the human ability to calculate, to speak a language and the like. It shows how good theorizing explains or tries to explain such abilities as perception and cognition. It recasts the familiar explanations of "intelligence" and "cognitive capacity" as put forward by philosophers such as Fodor, Dennett, and others in terms of a theory of explanation that makes established doctrine more intelligible to professionals and their (...) students.In particular, the book shows that vestigial adherence to the positivists' D-N model has distorted the view of philosophers of science about what psychologists (and biologists) do and has masked the real nature of explanation. Major sections in the book cover Analysis and Subsumption; Functional Analysis; Understanding Cognitive Capacities; and Historical Reflections.Robert Cummins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

Patients and physicians often perceive the current health care system to be unfair, in part because of the ways in which coverage decisions appear to be made. To address this problem the Ethical Force Program, a collaborative effort to create quality improvement tools for ethics in health care, has developed five content areas specifying ethical criteria for fair health care benefits design and administration. Each content area includes concrete recommendations and measurable expectations for performance improvement, which can be used by (...) those organizations involved in the design and administration of health benefits packages, such as purchasers, health plans, benefits consultants, and practitioner groups. (shrink)

Looks at accounts by Locke, Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan concerning the nature of mental representation, and discusses connectionism and representation.

Husserl introduces a phenomenological concept called “motivation” early in the First Investigation of his magnum opus, the Logical Investigations. The importance of this concept has been overlooked since Husserl passes over it rather quickly on his way to an analysis of the meaningful nature of expression. I argue, however, that motivation is essential to Husserl’s overall project, even if it is not essen- tial for defining expression in the First Investigation. For Husserl, motivation is a relation between mental acts whereby (...) the content of one act make some fur- ther meaningful content probable. I explicate the nature of this relation in terms of “evidentiary weight” and differentiate it from Husserl’s notion of Evidenz, often translated as “self-evidence”. I elucidate the importance of motivation in Husserl’s overall phenomenological project by focusing on his analyses of thing-perception and empathy. Through these examples, we can better understand the continuity between the Logical Investigations and Husserl’s later work. (shrink)

"This is an important new Cummins work.

Arendt Contra Sociology re-assesses the relationship between Hannah Arendt's work and the theoretical foundations of sociology, bringing her insights to bear on key themes within contemporary theoretical sociology. Departing from the view of Arendt as a political theorist who sought to rescue politics from society, and political theory from the social sciences, this book re-examines her distinctions between labour, fabrication and action as a theory of the fundamental ontology of human societies, revisiting her criticism of the tendency of many sociological (...) paradigms to conflate the activity of fabrication with that of action. (shrink)

In late March of 2020, a new hashtag, #FilmYourHospital, made its first appearance on social media. The hashtag encouraged people to visit local hospitals to take pictures and videos of empty hospitals to help “prove” that the COVID-19 pandemic is an elaborate hoax. Using techniques from Social Network Analysis, this case study examines how this conspiracy theory propagated on Twitter and whether the hashtag virality was aided by the use of automation or coordination among Twitter users. We found that while (...) much of the content came from users with limited reach, the oxygen that fueled this conspiracy in its early days came from a handful of prominent conservative politicians and far right political activists on Twitter. These power users used this hashtag to build awareness about the campaign and to encourage their followers to break quarantine and film what is happening at their local hospitals. After the initial boost by a few prominent accounts, the campaign was mostly sustained by pro-Trump accounts, followed by a secondary wave of propagation outside the U.S. The rise of the #FilmYourHospital conspiracy from a single tweet demonstrates the ongoing challenge of addressing false, viral information during the COVID-19 pandemic. While the spread of misinformation can be potentially mitigated by fact-checking and directing people to credible sources of information from public health agencies, false and misleading claims that are driven by politics and supported by strong convictions and not science are much harder to root out. (shrink)

The present volume contains a collection of papers presented at the 21st annual meeting “Sinn und Bedeutung” of the Gesellschaft fur Semantik, which was held at the University of Edinburgh on September 4th–6th, 2016. The Sinn und Bedeutung conferences are one of the leading international venues for research in formal semantics.

From the legendary inventor Daedalus to Goethe's tragic Faust, from the automata-making magicians of E.T.A Hoffmann to Mary Shelley's Victor Frankenstein – ...

The notion of risk plays a central role in economics, finance, health, psychology, law and elsewhere, and is prevalent in managing challenges and resources in day-to-day life. In recent work, Duncan Pritchard (2015, 2016) has argued against the orthodox probabilistic conception of risk on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how probable it is, and in favour of a modal conception on which the risk of a hypothetical scenario is determined by how modally close it is. (...) In this article, we use Pritchard’s discussion as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion of the notion of risk. We introduce three different conceptions of risk: the standard probabilistic conception, Pritchard’s modal conception, and a normalcy conception that is new (though it has some precursors in the psychological literature on risk perception). Ultimately, we argue that the modal conception is ill-suited to the roles that a notion of risk is required to play and explore the prospects for a form of pluralism about risk, embracing both the probabilistic and the normalcy conceptions. (shrink)