In §24 of the Transcendental Deduction, Kant remarks that his account of the capacity of the understanding to spontaneously determine sensibility explains how empirical self-knowledge is possible through inner-sense. Although most commentators consider Kant's conception of empirical self-knowledge through inner sense to be either a failure or at least drastically under-developed, I argue that (just as Kant claims) his account of the capacity of the understanding to determine sensibility - the "productive imagination" - can ground an attractive account (...) of self-knowledge. The account of inner sense I propose, however, may seem to conflict with some of Kant's views on time. I close the paper by arguing that the apparent conflict is not a fault specific to my account of inner sense, but rather indicative of a deeper tension, internal to Kant's views on time. (shrink)

Neoclassical economics assumes that individuals have stable and context-independent preferences, and uses preference satisfaction as a normative criterion. By calling this assumption into question, behavioural findings cause fundamental problems for normative economics. A common response to these problems is to treat deviations from conventional rational choice theory as mistakes, and to try to reconstruct the preferences that individuals would have acted on, had they reasoned correctly. We argue that this preference purification approach implicitly uses a dualistic model of the human (...) being, in which an inner rational agent is trapped in an outer psychological shell. This model is psychologically and philosophically problematic. (shrink)

In this paper, the thematic context for Fichte’s early concern with the character of the forms of intuition, and specifically inner intuition, is adumbrated. This context is provided by means of a brief exposition of Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense, and its dual role; its positive role in the “order of (synthetic) cognition” or ordo cognoscendi, and its negative role in the critique of Seelenlehre or “doctrine of the soul.” It is then (...) argued, on this basis, that Fichte’s critique of Kant’s doctrine can serve as a principle for our understanding both of the context for, and the content of, Fichte’s early, propaedeutic writings, and thus of the character of the development of post-Kantian theoretical philosophy and doctrine of knowledge. The paper develops in three parts; through (1) an introduction, in which the importance of the theme to the development of German idealism is intimated, to (2) an exposition of the basic theses of Kant’s Sinnenlehre in the Critique of Pure Reason, and to (3) a summary of Fichte’s critique thereof, as this is set out in the Grundriss. (shrink)

This article first outlines the importance of Brentano’s doctrine of inner perception both to his understanding of the science of psychology in general in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint and to his new science of descriptive psychology in particular which he later advances in his lecture courses on ‘Descriptive Psychology’ at the University of Vienna in the 1880s and early 1890s. It then examines Husserl’s critique of that doctrine in an ‘Appendix: Inner and Outer Perception: Physical (...) and Psychical Phenomena’, which Husserl added to the 1913 re-issue of his Logical Investigations. This article argues that, though Husserl promotes a very different method in phenomenology to the method of ‘inner perception’ which Brentano designs for descriptive psychology, one cannot fully understand the significance of the method that Husserl advocates in phenomenology, both in the Logical Investigations and in Ideas I, without distinguishing four different meanings for ‘inner perception’ in Brentano’s thought and addressing the problematic issue of the particular kind of scientific method for his new science of descriptive psychology which Brentano bequeaths to Husserl. (shrink)

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

This work identifies Kant’s doctrine of inner sense as a central element within the ‘architectonic of pure reason’ of the first Critique, exposes its variant construals, and considers the implications of its problematicity for Kant’s theoretical philosophy most generally.

Does inner sense, like outer sense, provide inner sensations or, in other words, a sensory manifold of its own? Advocates of the disparity thesis on inner and outer sense claim that it does not. This interpretation, which is dominant in the preexisting literature, leads to several inconsistencies when applied to Kant’s doctrine of inner experience. Yet, while so, the parity thesis, which is the contrasting view, is also unable to provide a convincing interpretation of inner (...) sensations. In this paper, I argue that this deadlock can be traced back to an inadequate understanding of inner sense shared by both sides. Drawing upon an analysis of the notion of obscure representations, I offer an alternative interpretation of inner sense with a special regard to self-affection, apprehension, and attention. From this basis, I will infer that outer sense delivers sensory content that is initially and intrinsically unaccompanied by phenomenal consciousness; inner sense contributes by endowing such content with phenomenal consciousness. Therefore, phenomenal qualities can be regarded as the sensory manifold of inner sense. This alternative interpretation solves the long-standing dispute concerning inner sensations and would further illuminate Kant’s notion of inner experience. (shrink)

Abstract: How it is that one's own thoughts can seem to be someone else's? After noting some common missteps of other approaches to this puzzle, I develop a novel cognitive solution, drawing on and critiquing theories that understand inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia as stemming from mismatches between predicted and actual sensory feedback. Considerable attention is paid to forging links between the first-person phenomenology of thought insertion and the posits (e.g. efference copy, corollary discharge) of current cognitive (...) theories. I show how deficits in the subconscious mechanisms regulating inner speech may lead to a 'fractured phenomenology' responsible for schizophrenic patients' reports of inserted thoughts and auditory verbal hallucinations. Supporting work on virtual environments is discussed, and lessons concerning the fixity of delusional belief are drawn. (shrink)

This paper shows why Kant's critique of empirical psychology should not be read as a scathing criticism of quantitative scientific psychology, but has valuable lessons to teach in support of it. By analysing Kant's alleged objections in the light of his critical theory of cognition, it provides a fresh look at the problem of quantifying first-person experiences, such as emotions and sense-perceptions. An in-depth discussion of applying the mathematical principles, which are defined in the Critique of Pure Reason (...) as the constitutive conditions for mathematical-numerical experience in general, to inner sense will demonstrate why it is in principle possible to justify a quantitative structure of psychological judgments on the grounds of Kant's critical thinking. In conclusion, it will propose how Kant's critique could be used in a constructive way to develop first steps towards a transcendental foundation of psychological knowledge. (shrink)

This paper defends the realist representationalist version of the Buddhist-Abhidharma account of consciousness. The account explains the intentionality and the phenomenality of conscious experiences by appealing to the doctrine of self-awareness. Concerns raised by Buddhist Mādhyamika philosophers about the compatibility of reflexive awareness and externality of the objects of perception are addressed. Similarly, the Hindu critiques on the incoherence of the Buddhist doctrine of reflexive awareness with the doctrines of no-self and momentariness are also answered.

The paper discusses Husserl’s method of historical reflection, radical Besinnung, as defined and used in Formale und transzendentale Logik (1929). Whereas Formal and Transcendental Logic introduces and displays Husserl’s usage of Besinnung in the context of the exact sciences, the paper seeks to develop it as a more general critical method with which to approach any rational goal-directed activity. Husserl defines Besinnung as a method that enables understanding agents and their actions by explicating agents’ typically implicit goals. It leads to (...) the inclusion of historical-teleological activities as part of Husserl’s natural understanding of the world. The transcendental reflection radicalizes Besinnung by clarifying the kinds of evidence sought for in activities and then suggesting revisions to the concepts and principles used. The result is inner critique, which means that the activities are criticized against the norms that arise from reflection on these activities themselves, and not from a comparison with external standards or measures. (shrink)

I critically engage Max Horkheimer’s “Art and Mass Culture” from Critical Theory. I split Horkheimer’s essay into three parts, which correspond to the three sections of my essay. The first section details the objective historical conditions that have lead up to Horkheimer’s diagnosis. The second section describes the change in consciousness that corresponds to these conditions, and the third section outlines Horkheimer’s critique of Mortimer Adler and art that belongs to “the amusement industry.” I describe the basic elements of (...) Horkheimer’s aesthetic theory, use several pieces of art as examples of the application of the theory, andprovide contemporary analogues in order to illustrate the relevance of the essay to today’s world. (shrink)

In several recent essays, Sydney Shoemaker argues that introspective knowledge lacks certain central features which parallel the conditions satisfied by ordinary cases of sense perception. In one influential paper, he discusses and criticizes the “broad perceptual” model of the nature of introspective knowledge of mental states, the view which claims that our introspective awareness of internal facts is analogous to our awareness of facts about the external world. This model may be characterized by its conformance to two conditions of ordinary (...) perceptual awareness which Shoemaker dubs the causation condition and the independence condition. Shoemaker attacks the broad perceptual model by arguing that certain mental facts are “self-intimating”, with the implication being that introspective awareness of mental states does not satisfy the independence condition, and hence its character is not adequately captured by the broad perceptual model. In what follows, I will discuss the main arguments of Shoemaker’s essay. I will argue that a broad perceptual model of introspection can successfully circumvent the central problems he raises; and along the way I will develop some criticisms regarding certain aspects of Shoemaker’s positive proposal.U nekolicini recentnih tekstova, Sydney Shoemaker tvrdi da introspektivnom znanju nedostaju određene ključne centralne značajke koje odgovaraju uvjetima zadovoljenima u običnim slučajevima osjetilne percepcije. U jednom utjecajnom radu on razmatra i kritizira »široki perceptualni « model prirode introspektivnog znanja mentalnih stanja, stajalište koje tvrdi da je naša introspektivna svijest unutrašnjih činjenica analogna našoj svijesti o činjenicama izvanjskoga svijeta. Ovaj model može biti okarakteriziran njegovom sukladnošću dvama uvjetima obične perceptivne svijesti koje Shoemaker naziva uvjet kauzacije i uvjet neovisnosti. Shoemaker napada široki perceptualni model tvrdeći da su određene mentalne činjenice »samozadane«, implicirajući da introspektivna svijest o mentalnim stanjima ne zadovoljava uvjet neovisnosti, te stoga njen karakter nije adekvatno obuhvaćen širokim perceptualnim modelom. U onome što slijedi razmotrit ću glavne argumente Shoemakerovoga rada. Tvrdim da široki perceptualni model introspekcije može uspješno zaobići centralne problem koje on ističe; i usput ću razviti neke kritike vezane uz određene aspekte Shoemakerovog pozitivnog prijedloga.Dans plusieurs essais récents, Sydney Shoemaker affirme que la connaissance introspective est dépourvue de certaines caractéristiques centrales correspondant aux conditions qui, elles, sont remplies dans les cas ordinaires de perception sensorielle. Dans un article influent, il examine et critique le modèle « perceptuel large » de la nature de la connaissance introspective des états mentaux, une position qui affirme que notre conscience introspective des faits internes est analogue à notre conscience des faits du monde externe. Ce modèle peut se définir par sa conformité à deux conditions de la conscience perceptuelle ordinaire que Shoemaker appelle condition de causation et condition d’indépendance. Shoemaker attaque d’abord le modèle perceptuel large en affirmant que certains faits mentaux se « laissent entendre d’eux-mêmes », impliquant que la conscience introspective des états mentaux ne remplit pas la condition d’indépendance et que, par conséquent, son caractère n’est pas saisi de manière adéquate par le modèle perceptuel large. Dans ce qui suit, j’examinerai les principaux arguments de l’essai de Shoemaker. J’affirmerai qu’un modèle perceptuel large de l’introspection peut contourner avec réussite les problèmes centraux qu’il soulève ; ce faisant, je développerai quelques critiques à l’égard de certains aspects de la proposition positive de Shoemaker.In ein paar rezenten Essays postuliert Sydney Shoemaker, das introspektive Wissen ermangele gewisser zentraler Spezifika, die den in herkömmlichen Fällen der Sinneswahrnehmung erfüllten Umständen gleichkommen. In einem wirkungsreichen Paper behandelt und kritisiert er das „breite perzeptive“ Modell der Natur des introspektiven Wissens von Mentalzuständen, eine Betrachtungsweise, die besagt, unser introspektives Bewusstsein der internen Tatsachen sei übereinstimmend mit unserem Bewusstsein der Tatsachen über die Außenwelt. Dieses Modell lässt sich aufgrund seiner Deckungsgleichheit mit zwei Voraussetzungen des ordinären perzeptiven Bewusstseins illustrieren, die Shoemaker Bedingung der Kausalität bzw. Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit nennt. Shoemaker attackiert das breite perzeptive Modell, indem er bekräftigt, bestimmte mentale Fakten seien „selbstimplizierend“; zudem befriedige das introspektive Bewusstsein der Mentalzustände nicht die Bedingung der Unabhängigkeit, weswegen dessen Charakterzug inadäquat vom breiten perzeptiven Modell umfasst werde. Im Folgenden gehe ich die Hauptargumente von Shoemakers Essay durch. Ich stelle die Behauptung auf, das breite perzeptive Modell der Introspektion könne die von ihm aufgeworfenen Kernprobleme erfolgreich umgehen. Nebenher erarbeite ich einige Kritik in puncto gewisser Aspekte von Shoemakers positivem Vorschlag. (shrink)

The paper outlines the theoretical and methodological complexity of the historical-philosophi- cal study of Georges Bataille’s literary and philosophical heritage, In: particular «Inner Expe- rience», one of his key works, which is about to be released in Ukrainian. To this end, I analyze the biographical and historical-philosophical contexts of writing «Inner Experience». I observe the main events of the thinker’s life, which led to the writing of this work and testify to Bataille’s opposition to the most common artistic (...) movements of the time (surrealism), philosophical theo- ries (existentialism), religious teachings, and, in fact, anti-systemic nature of his work. In addi- tion, the paper tends to identify sources of influence on the formation of philosophical views of Bataille in the period of «Inner Experience» writing. In particular, I analyze the theoretical and political relations of Bataille, especially with his critics (Belgian surrealists group, G. Marcel, J.-P. Sartre), but also allies (M. Blanchot, P. Klossowski, M. Leiris, H. Masson and others). Further, I study the genesis of the concept of «internal experience» formation, its inherent multi- faceted, multi-layered,and metaphorical nature, rooting in the tradition of Christian mysticism and reflecting the state after the loss of faith at the same time. Particularly, I study the image of the labyrinth as one of the most expressive synonyms of internal experience term, which empha- sizes the meaning of this fundamental word-concept of Bataille’s philosophy. To provide the in- tellectual context, I list main points of Bataille’s «Inner Experience» critique by representatives of the French intellectual communities of the 1940s, as well as the main Bataille’s arguments against this critique. Eventually, I analyze the main ideas of his «Inner Experience», as well as the ways how Bataille’s philosophy influenced the key representatives of the French poststruc- turalism (J. Derrida, M. Foucault, J. Kristeva, J.-F. Lyotard). (shrink)

Expression is the central concept in Wittgenstein’s philosophy of mind, and our experiences are reflected in our bodily expressions or gestures, facial expressions, behaviors and linguistic expressions. It seems true that we have no access of other people’s experiences but we can know or talk about them in so far as they are the common experiences of all. This inaccessibility of other’s experiences may create a genuine thinking that one’s experiences are private and the first person present tense psychological utterances (...) are not descriptive at all. They are understood solely as expressive and expression is the outer concept of a mental phenomenon. In this paper, an attempt will be made on the basis of Wittgenstein’s critique of the relationship between the concepts of experience and expression we shall argue that certain uses of the dichotomy between the inner and the outer are mistakes. According to Wittgenstein, the inner is not a set of experiences which are or are not expressed by our immediate (primitive) expressions or linguistic expressions rather it is the capacity of the subject to express himself genuinely. (shrink)

THE OPENING OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER'S summer of 1928 Marburg lectures on logic is, to use a word he himself invokes elsewhere about these matters, "dismaying"--providing perhaps additional evidence for the perennial charge that aspects of his work contain tendencies toward irrationalism, mysticism, and forms of nostalgic romanticism. In fact, the lectures show Heidegger calling for nothing less than a "destruction of logic," a move not only consistent with a similar destruction in Being and Time, published a year previously, but also (...) consistent with a context which its author describes as one in which "the inner rebellion against knowledge, the revolt against rationality, and the struggle against intellectualism have become fashionable." His ensuing condemnation of "the widespread sterility of academic courses" in this area and the call for "loosening up traditional logic," would seem to lead directly to the proclamation which would issue from Heidegger's struggle with Nietzsche in the decade thereafter, that "reason, glorified for centuries, is the most stiff-necked adversary of thought." The question of Heidegger's account in this regard has continually troubled those writing in its wake--not only in the continental traditional, such as Gadamer, Adorno, Habermas, Merleau-Ponty, or Derrida, but also those "beyond" it, such as Carnap, Ryle, Rorty, or Putnam. And yet, such claims seem only to provide added weight to the concern that the "retrieval of metaphysics" thought to be essential to these issues based upon the Daseinanalytik of Being and Time would only lead the classical issues in philosophy associated with justification and decidability into a quagmire. Its emphasis upon the conjunct in its title, being and time, could only lead, on the one hand, to anthropological reductionism--since it returned the interrogation of Being back to the commitments of the being through whom the questioning arose-and on the other hand, to a new version of historicism--since it claimed that questions concerning "truth" were tied essentially to time, and specifically, to the latter's appearance within the temporal horizon of the being to whom they appeared. Moreover, that even those closest to Heidegger viewed the matter similarly is clear, for example, in the criticisms his mentor, Edmund Husserl voiced in the 1931 response, "Phenomenology and Anthropology." There the strategy Husserl used in arguing against Dilthey's flirtation with relativism in a Logos essay of 1911 was reinvoked against Heidegger himself. In this regard, far from contributing to a retrieval of classical issues in philosophy, Heidegger would be simply guilty of effecting their ultimate dissolution, a claim which, like that of irrationalism, has accompanied his works ever since. (shrink)

Among the extensive literature on the first Critique, very few commentators offer a thorough analysis of Kant's conception of inner sense. This is quite surprising since the notion is central to Kant's theoretical philosophy, and it is very difficult to provide a consistent interpretation of this notion. In this paper, I first summarize Kant's claims about inner sense in the Transcendental Aesthetic and show why existing interpretations have been unable to dissolve the tensions arising from the conjunction (...) of these claims. Secondly, I present my own reconstruction of Kant's model of inner sense, relying essentially on Kantian considerations found in the B-version of the Transcendental Deduction. My main idea is that inner sense, for Kant, is a passive faculty that gets affected by the understanding performing its figurative synthesis on material given in outer sense. In the remainder of the paper, I highlight a few consequences of my interpretation and outline ways to deal with some objections. (shrink)

In current trends in cognitive sciences, the discussion on body crosses the classical divide between the body and the self in terms of nature and function. Embodiment theories have helped to bring in the importance of the role of subjective experiences to understand cognition, and place the process of knowing in a cultural and social context. This article is a critique of the growing trend in cognitive sciences, particularly in affective neurosciences, and approaches, to reduce the experiential self to (...) a nonentity. It is shown that though the apparent goal is to highlight the inner qualitative nature of experience, what is happening in the background is a role reversal. The outer body becomes the inner self. The inner self becomes the outer body. The nature and functions of the self are founded on the body by theorizing embodiment as an alternate to neural reductionism. This article argues that one of the negative consequences of embodiment theories is that age-old concepts of freewill, character and moral choices become flimsy and fleeting in the process of embodying cognition. (shrink)

During 2018, as part of a research project funded by the Deviant Practice Grant, artist Bruno Moreschi and digital media researcher Gabriel Pereira worked with the Van Abbemuseum collection (Eindhoven, NL), reading their artworks through commercial image-recognition (computer vision) artificial intelligences from leading tech companies. The main takeaways were: somewhat as expected, AI is constructed through a capitalist and product-focused reading of the world (values that are embedded in this sociotechnical system); and that this process of using AI is an (...) innovative way for doing institutional critique, as AI offers an untrained eye that reveals the inner workings of the art system through its glitches. This paper aims to regard these glitches as potentially revealing of the art system, and even poetic at times. We also look at them as a way of revealing the inherent fallibility of the commercial use of AI and machine learning to catalogue the world: it cannot comprehend other ways of knowing about the world, outside the logic of the algorithm. But, at the same time, due to their “glitchy” capacity to level and reimagine, these faulty readings can also serve as a new way of reading art; a new way for thinking critically about the art image in a moment when visual culture has changed form to hybrids of human–machine cognition and “machine-to-machine seeing”. (shrink)

This paper addresses a hitherto unexamined issue in the work of Michel Henry, namely, his critical interpretation of Martin Heidegger’s analysis of “appearing” and “speaking.” Throughout his distinguished career, Henry went to great philosophical lengths to distance himself from traditional phenomenology and from the work of Heidegger. However, for the most part, Henry’s critical reading of Heidegger has received little attention from phenomenologists and even that has been cursory. Hence, the central aim of this paper is twofold: (1) to show (...) that Henry’s critique of the “appearing” and “speaking” of the world remains unanswered; and (2) to show that a proper reading of Heidegger throws light on the shortcomings of Henry’s own project. Hence, because the second objective follows necessarily from having achieved the first, this paper submits that what is first needed is a re-assessment of Henry’s critique in light of a more accurate understanding of the depth-dimension of “appearing” and “speaking,” which is, I argue, evinced in the analysis of the voice of conscience in Being and Time. The paper subsequentlyoffers what I see as a more appropriate interpretation of the call of conscience in terms of a radicalised “transcendence in immanence” which is not reducible to the mere exteriority of inner-worldly beings. The paper concludes by arguing that the voice of conscience underscores the shortfalls of Henry’s critique of the “appearing” and “speaking” of the world in Heidegger. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:To Paul Lachance, ioculator Domini1. IntroductionWith the expression “inner experience” we refer to a complex linguistic and philosophical problem which is present even in the most recent theology. If, in general, this concept expresses the experience of something which is perceived by an individual in the absence of external stimulus or observable sensations, in Christian and mystical tradition it indicates more precisely the action and the transformation which (...) God arouses in the inner conscience. I propose investigating the specific way the Provençal Franciscan Pierre de Jean Olieu used this concept and presented it, both philosophically and theologically, in a small collection of writings which critical tradition has defined in various ways, but which I continue defining, with a term which maintains a Franciscan suggestion, as opuscula.1 These short devotional texts were written by Olieu and his followers in both Provençal and in Latin, and explicitly addressed the Beguins of the so-called “poverty houses,” as well as the laity which congregated around the Franciscan Order.2 Unlike the prayers and treatises concerning prayer by Olieu, these texts are not completely set but are conceived and written as models of continuous meditation on the part of the reader.3 In view of the critique I am editing, I here furnish a list of these texts, with the aim of updating the incomplete lists complied by Efrem Bettoni4 and Antonio Ciceri:5Cavalier armat Exercens se sacris orationibus et meditationibus Informatio Petri Ioannis De 14 gradibus amoris gratiosi 12De [12/10] gradibus humilitatis 13Grases de vera penitentia 14Modus quomodo quilibet potest referre gratias Deo de Beneficiis ab eo receptis Brevis monitio ad amorem Dei obtinendum 17Remedia contra temptationes spirituales De 7 sentimentis Christi Jhesu 20 Tractatus de 7 tentationibus 21Tractatulus de fugiendis, desiderandis, meditandis 22This approach is particularly interesting, because it is my conviction that, in these texts the author focuses on the paths and transformations of conscience, on the inter-communication of them and on the potential of repeating and recreating, autonomously, an uninterrupted process of spiritual transformation and strengthening. In this sense, as we will see, the concept of “inner experience” is central to the opuscula and, anticipating the results of my analysis, I can say that being in a significant position of the spiritual and meditative path delineated by the text, it constitutes its structural core. Such a placement finds meaning and justification within the philosophical, theological and apocalyptical reflections of the author.23 For Olieu, inwardness and outer activity, although remaining distinct, are balanceable and organizable in a reassemblage founded on devotio. We can say that the devotion of the reader, confirmed and strengthened by the inner experience of his personal reflection on mercy, is the element which allows this reassembling. We will see in what sense we can speak about an element of fracture and an entirely new forma mentis, which opens the way to modern secular spirituality.2. Inner Experience and the Structure of the opusculaI begin with the text entitled Informatio ad virtutum opera. This could be considered the manifesto text of the opuscula, because in this work Pierre de Jean Olieu clarifies the principle subject of the meditations offered to the reader, and proposes a stylistic, structural model which is respected, more or less precisely, in all the other texts of the corpus. This structure is very simple: the author lists twenty-eight subjects which the reader is invited to reflect upon during his personal endeavor towards virtuous perfection. The text is divided in two parts: the first presents fourteen orderly reflections centered on pedagogical-moral subjects like the meditation on God and the Passion of Christ, on the example of the Saints, the awareness of one’s sins, and on the coming of the Day of Judgement; in the second, the author.. (shrink)

The concept of negative liberty as non-interference is operative in the concept of a free market and stipulates that market relations remain outside the purview of social control. As a purported self-regulating system, however, the market functions as a system of necessity that facilitates and rules social life. I argue that Isaiah Berlin’s defense of negative liberty leads to a paradox as it entails subjection to the external necessity of a self-regulating market. The argument for the self-defeating nature of negative (...) liberty relies on two philosophical insights that have their roots in G. W. F. Hegel’s theory of self-determination. First, negative liberty fails to account for the inner and outer conditions of freedom and thus reduces to mere whim or arbitrariness, subject to heteronomous forces but masquerading as license. Second, individual freedom is intersubjectively mediated in its deliberative process and framed by social and political institutions in its exercise; thus, free agency must be theorized as embedded agency. I challenge the association of freedom and the market and the automatic and unchallenged implication of deregulation and freedom. Deregulation, rather, leaves the community’s future development to the whims of economic players using a rhetoric of freedom as both lure and principle. (shrink)

“Bohr was primarily a philosopher, not a physicist, but he understood that natural philosophy... carries weight only if its every detail can be subjected to the... test of experiment”. As a result his approach differed from that of the school-philosophers whom he regarded with a somewhat “sceptical attitude, to say the least” and whose lack of interest in “the important viewpoint which had emerged during the development of atomic physics” he noticed with regret. But it also differed, and to a (...) considerable degree, from the spirit of what Professor T. S. Kuhn has called a “normal science.” Looking at Bohr's method of research we see that technical problems, however remote, are always related to a philosophical point of view; they are never treated as “tiny puzzles” whose solution is valuable in itself, even if one has not the faintest idea what it means, and where it leads: “For me” Bohr writes to Sommerfeld in 1922 “[the quantum theory] is not a matter for petty didactic details, but a serious attempt to reach... an inner coherence.” Emphasis is put on matters of principle and minor discrepancies, or “puzzles” in the sense of Kuhn, instead of being deemphasized, and assimilated to the older paradigm, are turned into fundamental difficulties by looking at them from a new direction, and by testing their background “in its furthest consequences by exaggeration”. A noteworthy example of Bohr's “non-normal” and rather metaphysical approach to physics is his scepticism in the face of the success of his own atomic model. (shrink)

In this paper I will examine the embodied dimension of emotions, and of inner life more generally, according to Wittgenstein’s anti-subjectivistic account of expression. First of all, I will explore Wittgenstein’s critique of a Cartesian disembodied account of the inner life, and the related argument against the existence of a private language. Secondly, I will describe the constitution of inner life as the acquisition of embodied ways of expressing oneself and of responding to others within a (...) shared context, against the background of an inherited weave of cultural expressive practices. Here, I will analyze Wittgenstein’s embodied account of expression, the ‘modified concept of sensing’ and ‘seeing’ which is involved in seeing the emotions of others as their expressions, and consequently Wittgenstein’s critique of an epistemological account concerning our ‘knowledge’ of others’ minds. Finally, with reference to Cavell’s and Mulhall’s readings, I will reflect on the figure of the ‘aspect-blind’, one who ‘just knows’ the emotion of others but cannot acknowledge it, and accordingly is not able to see it as the embodied expression of the other’s inner life. In this way, I wish to argue that Wittgenstein not only calls into question a disembodied account of the inner life from a theoretical point of view, but also shows the ethical consequences of a disembodied account of self through the figure of the aspect-blind. (shrink)

This essay attempts to show how a particular view of the self and the mind has ignored its Other-related, world-related and thus embodied character. This view, whose origins in the history of ideas can be traced back to René Descartes, has led to important theories of mind and language. It has also generated a certain hegemony of binaries, such as the inner and the outer, the mind and the world, the self and the other, the subjective and the objective, (...) or the intrinsic and the extrinsic. This picture of the self and the mind thus portrayed as epistemologically insulated entities has begotten serious problems in the philosophies of mind and language as well as in the cognitive sciences. It is a view that has pervaded many recent developments in these fields and bears the name of Representationalism. The essay therefore starts with a critique of the Cartesian conception of the mind and the ensuing inner/outer or self/other dualities that it creates, then turns to Representationalism as found in the analytical philosophical tradition. (shrink)

In German Idealism and the Jew , Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason. Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental thinkers in (...) the German idealist tradition--Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner--argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened--a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it. (shrink)

: We offer a response to four themes that result from the commentators’ inquiries and critiques: the psychodynamic perspective in contemplative research; the limitations of self-….

The object of this paper is to put Hume's criticism of the �fashionable theory� of the original contract within its proper contexts. This will enable us to show the inner coherence of Hume's arguments, but also their pronounced difference from those characteristically modern versions of contract theory which, like Rawls's, appeal to the notion of a hypothetical contract. We begin, however, with a few observations on the history of contract theories.

The recent debate between liberals and their communitarian critics has reached a false plateau, with liberals conceding more than they should. After explicating the central communitarian thesis, the four ways that thesis could be understood, and the corresponding four senses of "independence," I argue that communitarians are right that liberalism requires a view of the self as 'unencumbered,' but I defend that view as superior to the alternatives. This allows me to defend true moral impartiality and universality as well as (...) the full normative primacy of the individual. I also present three variable factors of the 'inner citadel' model of the self and argue that communitarianism paradoxically presupposes a variant of that model which causes it internal contradictions. My discussion of these issues leads to a brief list of mandates for acceptable conceptions of personhood. After listing these, I briefly indicate implications of my analysis for the broader political and ethical realm. (shrink)

This paper deals with the philosophical problems concerned with research in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular with problems arising out of claims that AI exhibits ‘consciousness’, ‘thinking’ and other ‘inner’ processes and that they simulate human intelligence and cognitive processes in general. The argument is to show how Cartesian mind is non-mechanical. Descartes’ concept of ‘I think’ presupposes subjective experience, because it is ‘I’ who experiences the world. Likewise, Descartes’ notion of ‘I’ negates the notion of (...) computationality of the mind. The essence of mind is thought and the acts of thoughts are identified with the acts of consciousness. Therefore, it follows that cognitive acts are conscious acts, but not computational acts. Thus, for Descartes, one of the most important aspects of cognitive states and processes is their phenomenality, because our judgments, understanding, etc. can be defined and explained only in relation to consciousness and not in relation to computationality. We can only find computationality in machines and not in the mind, which wills, understands and judges. (shrink)

In response to Robert Young's critical comments concerning Hermeneutics and Education I clarify two issues. First, I suggest that a more detailed account of interpretation and learning could be developed in a hermeneutically informed cognitive psychology. This would be an account that escapes the textual model of silent reading construed as private mental experience, and that acknowledges the social and communicative dimensions of understanding. Second, in contrast to Young's view, I contend that phronesis is not reducible to a set of (...) inner thought processes and that it has a role to play even in a critical social theory of education. (shrink)

Sartre draws a sharp distinction between consciousness, on the one hand, and inner sense or knowledge of (it)self, on the other: ‘La conscience n’est pas un mode de connaisance particullier, appelé sens intime ou connaisance de soi’ (B& N: 7). I explore in detail the meaning of the terms involved in that distinction with a view to highlight its significance.

This article offers a critical review of the Ukrainian translation of Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason. Translations of classical works should serve a twofold function. They do not only facilitate the adoption of the terminology within the academic community but should first and foremost allow those unacquainted with the language of the original to engage with a foreign philosophical tradition meaningfully. The translation of a philosophical text has to preserve terminological rigidity and strictly follow the letter of the (...) original while simultaneously being a product of interpretation and, to a certain extent, a paraphrase, the result of cooperation between the author and the translator. Decent knowledge of the original language does not suffice to successfully deal with the outdated vocabulary and the peculiarities of authorial language use, as many of the crucial translation decisions cannot be justified without understanding the inner logic of the argument. However, my detailed analysis of terminological patterns and Ukrainian renderings of complex and ambiguous syntactic constructions proves that none of these tasks were achieved here. Unfortunately, despite the efforts, the quality of this translation does not correspond to the standards of consistency and does not reflect the letter and spirit of Kant’s original due to numerous mistakes, misreadings, and distortions. Neither the impressive list of translator’s notes nor the occasional practice of giving German equivalents in the brackets is of any help to the reader in understanding Kane’s practical philosophy unless they already possess sufficient knowledge of the German language. This translation, therefore, cannot be used as teaching material at universities and stands in the way of a wider reception of Kant’s philosophy and productive public discussions. (shrink)

This paper provides a systematic exposition of what Wittgenstein took to be the fundamental error committed by James George Frazer, author of the classic anthropological work The Golden Bough, in his account of ritual practices. By construing those rituals in scientific or rationalistic terms, as aimed at the production of certain effects, Frazer ignores, according to Wittgenstein, their expressive and symbolic dimension. It is, moreover, an error to try to explain the powerful emotions evoked even today by traditions such as (...) fire festivals (which may once have involved human sacrifice) by searching for their causal origins in history or prehistory; the disquieting nature of such practices needs to be understood by attending to the inner meaning they already have in our human lives. Certain important general lessons are drawn about the necessarily limited power of scientific and causal explanations when it comes to alleviating many of our fundamental perplexities not just in the area of anthropology but in philosophy as well.1. (shrink)

The author interprets Lopez's work as a case of mythologizing a historical figure for the Filipino masses. It is therefore a proletarian myth in contrast to bourgeois myths which Roland Barthes talks about. Myth indeed is a language - a metalanguage - and Lopez made use of it to express the theme of emulation and the responsibility of the proletarian man through traits that endure in the Filipino psyche: his loob (inner self), budhi (conscience), hiya (shame), and sense of (...) responsibility. The author agrees with Barthes that history and myth do not mix. Where a piece of work does not portray historical facts faithfully it should not be taken as a historical document but - in the context of Lopez's awit - as a piece of literary work that must be enjoyed. (shrink)

In _German Idealism and the Jew_, Michael Mack uncovers the deep roots of anti-Semitism in the German philosophical tradition. While many have read German anti-Semitism as a reaction against Enlightenment philosophy, Mack instead contends that the redefinition of the Jews as irrational, oriental Others forms the very cornerstone of German idealism, including Kant's conception of universal reason. Offering the first analytical account of the connection between anti-Semitism and philosophy, Mack begins his exploration by showing how the fundamental thinkers in the (...) German idealist tradition—Kant, Hegel, and, through them, Feuerbach and Wagner—argued that the human world should perform and enact the promises held out by a conception of an otherworldly heaven. But their respective philosophies all ran aground on the belief that the worldly proved incapable of transforming itself into this otherworldly ideal. To reconcile this incommensurability, Mack argues, philosophers created a construction of Jews as symbolic of the "worldliness" that hindered the development of a body politic and that served as a foil to Kantian autonomy and rationality. In the second part, Mack examines how Moses Mendelssohn, Heinrich Heine, Franz Rosenzweig, and Freud, among others, grappled with being both German and Jewish. Each thinker accepted the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, in varying degrees, while simultaneously critiquing anti-Semitism in order to develop the modern Jewish notion of what it meant to be enlightened—a concept that differed substantially from that of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Wagner. By speaking the unspoken in German philosophy, this book profoundly reshapes our understanding of it. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is strict about the limits of self-knowledge: our inner sense gives us only appearances, never the reality, of ourselves. Kant may seem to begin his inquiries with an uncritical conception of cognitive limits, but in Kant and the Subject of Critique, Avery Goldman argues that, even for Kant, a reflective act must take place before any judgment occurs. Building on Kant’s metaphysics, which uses the soul, the world, and God as regulative principles, Goldman demonstrates how Kant (...) can open doors to reflection, analysis, language, sensibility, and understanding. By establishing a regulative self, Goldman offers a way to bring unity to the subject through Kant’s seemingly circular reasoning, allowing for critique and, ultimately, knowledge. (shrink)

The central thesis of Dooyeweerd's book concerns this point. He insists that a religiously neutral, objective, and in this sense scientific philosophy is an inner and intrinsic impossibility. Modern philosophy was mistaken in its assumption that it was merely "theoretical" and therefore as valid in its methods, principles, theories and doctrines as mathematics or physics. It was rather the result of a kind of religious conviction, although this conviction was humanistic and secular: a belief in the sovereignty of the (...) human personality and in the possibility of dominating nature by means of scientific discovery of nature's processes and energies. These quasi-religious convictions were not theoretically demonstrable but presuppositions guiding man's labour and all his cultural purposes and procedures. (shrink)

Neuroscience, brain based learning and education -- Collaborative reports in neuroscience and education -- A local paradigmatic example, founded on an international research phenomenon -- The mereological fallacy -- First-person/third-person asymmetry -- Neuroscience and irreducible uncertainty -- Inner and outer : the epistemology of the mind -- Inner and outer : the challenges of crypto-cartesianism, materialism and reductionism -- Intrinsic and relational models of education -- Education, psychology and physics -- Bohr's philosophy of physics and its application to (...) psychology and education -- A new educational philosophy based on Bohr's interpretation of quantum physics -- Conclusions : wittgenstein-bohr model of education. (shrink)

Through a critique of Karl Rahner and an exegesis of John of Damascus, the article argues that there is no difference in essential logic between Greek and Latin Trinitarianism. In particular, both traditions establish an epistemic gap between the doctrine of the immanent Trinity and the doctrine of the economic Trinity, which (contrary to prevailing theological opinion) is well-placed, but does not imply that the inner self of the Trivine God remains hidden and unknown in the economy of (...) salvation. (shrink)

Schopenhauer shares with Spinoza the basic idea that “the world exists by its own inner power and through itself”. Spinoza's system, Schopenhauer maintains, elaborately captures the observation, at the core of both pantheism and Schopenhauer's own theory, that all experienced phenomena share a single metaphysical substratum, and that in this sense everything is one. Any view or system of thought upholding optimism must confront the challenge of accounting for those features of the world that appear to be less than (...) optimal. For Schopenhauer, Judaism is committed to the goodness of the world given its creation by a personal God. It has been suggested that Schopenhauer ought not to criticize the rejection of personal immortality, since he himself thinks individual lives are perishable. Apart from the theoretical problems that Schopenhauer locates in maintaining optimism, he also takes issue with its practical implications. (shrink)

The present article is an attempt to set forth and examine the conclusions of what is perhaps Husserl’s finest piece of philosophical investigation, and one of the finest pieces in the whole history of philosophy: the investigation of the consciousness of time, with its extraordinary combination of an unchanging form with an absolute flux of which it is none other than the very form itself. This investigation puts Husserl on a level with the wisest heads on the matter, with Aristotle (...) in Books IV and VI of the Physics, with Augustine in Book X of the Confessions, and with Kant, whose whole Critique of Pure Reason may be said to be an examination of what is necessary to temporal experience. In Husserl’s work we have, we may say, the greatest of recent philosophers tackling the greatest of philosophical problems, one in which contradiction is always appearing in novel forms, to be evaded only by the naïve superficiality of a Minkowski or a Grünbaum, or by such infinitely useful subtlety as Husserl himself practises. As Husserl himself put it near the beginning of his 1905 Lectures. (shrink)

I seek to show in this paper how, in addressing the concept of “I” and the question of self-knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason, one encounters a paradox, which is essentially a consequence of the doctrine of transcendental idealism. I point to Kant's concept of “I” and its three co-constitutive perspectives. The importance of the concept of subject and its intertwining with the concept of reason is pointed out, as also how these two concepts appear in the text (...) of the Critique of Pure Reason as presuppositions. Subsequently, I deal with some basic questions of transcendental idealism. Finally, I briefly present the three perspectives of the "I": as a phenomenon, as a transcendental structure, and as a noumenon. I conclude by bringing back what Kant himself conceives as a paradox, which is the subject’s self-affection, and the relation between the subject as noumenon and as inner sense. (shrink)

This paper explores an analogy between two approaches to teleology in nature and two theories of authorship. I argue that Spinoza’s attempt (as Kant criticizes it in the Third Critique) to explain all natural unity, and explain away apparent teleological unity, in terms of inhering in the same subject (God) or proceeding causally from God’s essence mirrors the view Proust lays out in the essay “Gustave Moreau” that the features of a work of art are unified in virtue of (...) occurring together in, and proceeding from the laws of, the artist’s inner soul. Meanwhile, the strategy Kant favors for understanding interdependent natural systems like organisms—provisionally considering them as purposively designed—resembles the one Alexander Nehamas recommends in “The Postulated Author” (1981) for interpreting a work of art: imagining the agent who could have intended all its features. I propose that this analogy sheds light on the unity of the two parts of the Third Critique by pointing to the similarity between interpreting beautiful objects and interpreting nature. (shrink)

To balance radical changes in the built environment that accompany urban renewal, many cities deploy historical design elements to provoke a sense of physical and temporal continuity. By examining the theory and practice of nostalgia in renewal projects, I argue that this strategic deployment of historical signifiers is more complex and normatively problematic than it first appears. Analysing the design and construction of Baltimore’s Oriole Park at Camden Yards through Walter Benjamin’s theories of cultural production and historical succession, I show (...) the problematic political effect of such image-led regeneration projects. The stadium exemplifies a system of urban and historical design and construction that uses material artifice to make totalizing political claims, deploying specific historical signifiers as a means to silence others. Drawing from Benjamin’s materialist historiography, I conclude with a survey of the resources that remain for the practice of an architecture of memory in light of my critique. (shrink)