Due to their reliance on constitutive higher-order representing to generate the qualities of which the subject is consciously aware, I argue that the major existing higher-order representational theories of consciousness insulate us from our first-order sensory states. In fact on these views we are never properly conscious of our sensory states at all. In their place I offer a new higher-order theory of consciousness, with a view to making us suitably intimate with our sensory states in experience. This theory relies (...) on the idea of ‘quoting’ sensory qualities, so is dubbed the ‘quotational higher-order thought theory’. I argue that it can capture something of the idea that we are ‘acquainted’ with our conscious states without slipping beyond the pale for naturalists, whilst also providing satisfying treatments of traditional problems for higher-order theories concerning representational mismatch. The theory achieves this by abandoning a representational mechanism for mental intentionality, in favour of one based on ‘embedding’. (shrink)

Due to their reliance on constitutive higher-order representing to generate the qualities of which the subject is consciously aware, I argue that the major existing higher-order representational theories of consciousness insulate us from our first-order sensory states. In fact on these views we are never properly conscious of our sensory states at all. In their place I offer a new higher-order theory of consciousness, with a view to making us suitably intimate with our sensory states in experience. This theory relies (...) on the idea of ‘quoting’ sensory qualities, so is dubbed the ‘quotational higher-order thought theory’. I argue that it can capture something of the idea that we are ‘acquainted’ with our conscious states without slipping beyond the pale for naturalists, whilst also providing satisfying treatments of traditional problems for higher-order theories concerning representational mismatch. The theory achieves this by abandoning a representational mechanism for mental intentionality, in favour of one based on ‘embedding’. (shrink)

In this paper it is argued that existing ‘self-representational’ theories of phenomenal consciousness do not adequately address the problem of higher-order misrepresentation. Drawing a page from the phenomenal concepts literature, a novel self-representational account is introduced that does. This is the quotational theory of phenomenal consciousness, according to which the higher-order component of a conscious state is constituted by the quotational component of a quotational phenomenal concept. According to the quotational theory of consciousness, phenomenal concepts help to account for the (...) very nature of phenomenally conscious states. Thus, the paper integrates two largely distinct explanatory projects in the field of consciousness studies: (i) the project of explaining how we think about our phenomenally conscious states, and (ii) the project of explaining what phenomenally conscious states are in the first place. (shrink)

This paper presents syntactic and semantic rules for a fragment of English with mixed quotation. The fragment shows that quotation has a recursive and compositional structure. Quoted expressions turn out to denote characters, so the semantics of quotation simulates the pragmatics of speech, including dependence on utterance contexts and reference to mental entities. The analysis also accommodates varieties of unquotation, pure quotation, and causal reference.

I begin by discussing an objection often lodged against higher-order theories of consciousness. The objection is that those theories do not preclude consciousness from misrepresenting the mental properties of our conscious states. I argue that there are several reasons why this objection cannot succeed. Sam Coleman agrees that the objection fails, but sees it as pointing to a related objection, which he argues poses difficulties the higher-order theorist cannot avoid. His solution is a variant theory of consciousness that invokes (...) mental quotation in the content of a higher-order awareness. I’ll argue that mental quotation cannot be understood in any way that helps with the objection. I’ll argue also that the objection Coleman articulates is question begging, since it in effect simply channels a first-order approach to consciousness, and has no independent basis apart from that. Resumo: Começo por discutir uma objeção muitas vezes apresentada contra as teorias da consciência de ordem superior. A objeção é que essas teorias não impedem a consciência de representar de modo errôneo as propriedades mentais de nossos estados conscientes. Eu argumento que existem várias razões pelas quais essa objeção não pode ter sucesso. Sam Coleman concorda que a objeção falha, mas a vê como apontando para uma objeção relacionada, que ele argumenta apresentar dificuldades que o teórico do pensamento de ordem superior não pode evitar. Sua solução é uma variante desta teoria, que invoca a “citação mental” como conteúdo da consciência de ordem superior. Eu argumentarei que a citação mental não pode ser entendida de alguma forma que satisfaça tal objeção. Argumentarei também que a objeção que Coleman articula incorre em petição de princípio, uma vez que, na prática, ela simplesmente escolhe uma abordagem de primeira ordem para a consciência, e não tem nenhuma justificativa independente para isso. (shrink)

continent. 1.4 (2011): 230—233. A word about the quotation marks. People ask about them, in the beginning; in the process of giving themselves up to reading the poem, they become comfortable with them, without necessarily thinking precisely about why they’re there. But they’re there, mostly to measure the poem. The phrases they enclose are poetic feet. If I had simply left white spaces between the phrases, the phrases would be read too fast for my musical intention. The quotation (...) marks make the reader slow down and silently articulate—not slur over mentally—the phrases at the pace, and with the stresses, I intend. They also distance the narrative form myself. I am not Alette. Finally they may remind the reader that each phrase is a thing said by a voice: this is not a thought, or a record of thought process, this is a story, told.(1) We read (reread) the poems that keep the discourse with ourselves going. —Wallace Stevens We have to break open words or sentences, too, and find what’s uttered in them. —Gilles Deleuze “The Descent of Alette” “is an allegorical poem” “in four books” “first published” “in 1992” “by Alice Notley.” “In the Descent of Alette,” “the double quotation mark” “is wrapped around” “words, phrases, sometimes whole sentences, and utilized as bones for structure and tonality.” “The winged” “dbl quotation” “like angels or devils” “descending from elsewhere” “function as” “poetic feet.” “Distance” “in the text through the use of dbl quotes,” “according to Notley,” “was a way to distance” “her self” “from the narrative.” I know someone who tattooed double quotes on her shoulder blades. In other words, the body is quotable. To be able to say that one is quotable. A body filled with other’s sayings. I never asked her what for, what is the double quote tattoo for and why on the shoulder blades? I prefer my own interpretation that keeps shifting every time I see her. First words of every poem in every book: Book One One ... On ... A ... There ... I ... We ... An ... A ... A ... I ... At ... A ... When ... When ... There ... I ... In ... At ... I ... Once ... A ... A ... In ... A ... A ... Two ... I ... I ... Eyeball ... In ... I... A ... I ... I ... On ... I ... There ... What ... As ... As Book Two I ... When ... I ... I ... As ... I ... I ... There ... I ... There ... I ... A ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I ... I Book Three The ... Presently ... I ... I’m ... I ... We ... What ... My ... I ... Who ... But ... Lay ... My ... I ... The ... Your ... The ... I ... It’s ... As ... The ... Talon’s ... When ... We ... I ... Slowly ... I ... I ... The ... How ... The Book Four I ... I ... You ... The ... Now ... She ... The ... There ... As ... Then ... The ... All ... Let’s I ... You ... The ... Thus ... The ... I ... The ... I ... There ... Have ... The ... As ... The Defamiliar Object “Poetry is a defamiliarized language, whose formations, so far from being simply formations of meaning, are aesthetic structures...”(2) “The same can be” “irresponsibly associated” “with the use of punctuation.” “The dbl quotation as a measure” “of poetic feet” “is treated as such” “because the author” “injects artfulness into it.” “The dbl quote is an object—” “a joystick” “to control breadth” “(of breath.)” “To de-familiarize” “said sign” “is also to” “impart the sensation of [it] as [it is] perceived and not as they are known.”(3) “The dbl quote” “nests previous words, phrasings and sayings.” “How many have come and gone” “through the doorway of this punctuation sign.” “There are also air quotes and virtual quotes.” “There is emphasis and there’s irony.” “It would be aggravating” “or interesting” “to watch a reading of” “The Descent of Alette” “with someone” “raising and curling” “fingers” “bent out of shape” “in what could be used as” “peace signs.” “I am trying to avoid” “scare quotes.” “I looked up” “what they are” “and supposedly they arose” “in the early 20th century.” “The scare quote” “is a mark around a word or phrase to indicate that it doesn’t signify conventional or literal meaning.” “This isn’t how Notley” “intended to use them” “in The Descent of Alette.” “The characters, places, and things” “signify nothing” “beyond” “their literal meaning” “ within the allegory .” “I’d like to stress” “within the allegory;” “that’s why its” “italicized.” “It is told through” “the main character/voice of” “Alette.” “The author reminds us she is not Alette.” “The author marvelously found a way” “to distance” “her self” “from the narrative.” “This was attempted” “by tonal and intimate” “affect of the dbl quote” “used as poetic feet.” “Its as though” “punctuation in this regard” “becomes a magical toy.” “Arguably, punctuation” “(as perceived)” “undergoes a kind of” “ defamiliar ” “make-over.” “The text” gently forces the reader” “to slow down,” “read slowly.” “At some point” “one begins to sense” “lines of text” “moving on its own.” “Broken words, phrases, and sentences” “shuttling left to right” “like a subway” “that stops” “from station to station;” “open quote to end quote.” Double Quote Occupied “There are two worlds; one above ground” “and one underground.” “The world above ground is where,” “the tyrant” “with a capital t” “lives.” “(The “T” gets tangled in the claws of the dbl quote.)” “Alette becomes an owl and kills him.” “In the last book the tyrant dies.” “ “...the tyrant” “a man in charge of” “the fact” “that we were” “below the ground” “endlessly riding” “our trains, never surfacing” “A man who” “would make you pay” “so much” “to leave the subway” “that you don’t” “ever ask” “how much it is” “It is, in effect,” “all of you & more” “Most of which you already” “pay to live below” “But he would literally” “take your soul” “Which is what you are” “below the ground” “Your soul” “your soul rides” “this subway” “I saw” “on the subway a” “world of souls” ”(4) “New York;” “the city of cities” “and its subways—” “worlds underground,” “above ground,” “& above the above ground.” “Skyscrapers,” “Wall Street,” “old money,” “new money,” “and falling further down a cleavage;” “the middle class” “slipping away.” “Contemporary artist ” “Ligorano Reece” “recently made” “a sculpture of ice ” “a block of ice” “carved to read” “middle class” “(in all upper case letters)” “and let it melt” “naturally” “for however long—” “hours,” “days.” “It didn’t take very long to melt.” A global uprise of mass demonstrations; a cacophony of bodies on the street, in parks and universities, on City Hall lawns, coastal ports, neighborhoods, etc., and for what? The reasons are endless and finite. Not a single body is unaffected by the movement even when not “occupying.” “Occupiers” “stormed into a Sotheby’s auction” “protesting” “via human microphone” “that the CEO takes home” “about” “six thousand dollars” “a day.” “(The a/Art market” “is not a reflection” “of a desire” “for a/Art” “but a reflection” “of a desire” “for money” “confused with a/Art.)” What could it mean to occupy that which has been written or said? Someone with double quotes tattooed on both shoulders attempts to reclaim the sign; re-invent it privately-publicly since the body is always split between both spheres. A genre of hide-and-seek; the speaking and silent body which can never mean what it says even while it so desires to mean something. To nest (and hold hostage) someone in double quotes is an act of violence; a gesture of displacement where one is arrested, dislocated, and scrutinized under a distant gaze. “The air quote” “also known as” “finger quote or ersatz quote” “supposedly” “harks back to” “1927.” “The brevity of this gesture” “ as something invisible” “like virtual money or credit” “doesn’t really exist” “though it take up space;” “its the ghostliest of all punctuation signs” “and one that requires the presence and appearance of a body.” “ “she made a form” “in her mind” “an imaginary” “form” “to settle” “in her arms where” “the baby” “had been” “We saw her fiery arms” “cradle air” “She cradled air...” ”(5) “The air” “gets occupied” “by one or two hands” “with thumb, forefinger, and middle finger” “which alternately could be used” “to shoot rubber bullets,” “pepper spray,” “tear gas.” “How three fingers” “could be responsible for so much:” “satire, sarcasm, irony” “and ultimately” “bruises, blood, death.” (“The violence of the dbl quote is to eagerly to place oneself inside a tornado.)” “The violence of this” “embodied punctuation mark” “stems from a discordance with others.” “Is the name, word, or phrase” “placed in dbl quotes” “heroic” “ or brave?” “An act of displacement;” “must there always be” “bright or negative lights—” “a leaderless act” “to inhabit, to occupy” “space removed” “from normative use.” “Of course” “I’m also wondering” “what it means to re-occupy” “public/private space—the street, neighborhood or page” “policed” “by laws, limits, and” “to some extent” “punctuation.” Echo, Mirror “There are first, second, and third voices interwoven.” “ “Braid of voices,”(6) ” “Some lines read as internal thoughts,” “dialogues,” “and scene descriptions,” “all of which make up the allegory.” “It seems appropriate” “for the word” “allegory” “to nest in dbl quotes” “for perhaps it might be” “a gesture to echo on and on” “eternally referencing” “whatever came before.” I notice the first tooth of the double quote, when paying too close attention, gets caught in the hook of the “f”. I space bar to untangle them; the f does not resist the closed bite of “deaf” and I resist to know what it could mean, because it could doubly mean nothing. “ “He looked” “so familiar” “to me...”(7) ” “The second-person” “echoes in one of two directions:” “further into” “or farther from” “me.” “Its as though” “the second-person amplifies” “or else the opposite” “in which he,” “who looks so familiar,” “retreats further” “like stars in a telescope.” “The dbl quote” “has this kind of affect” “concerning distance and dimension” “as also illusory” “as something twice removed” “and unreal” “in a similar way” “movie stars are unreal and far away.” “ “I entered” “a car” “in which I seemed” “to see double” “Each person I” “looked at seemed” “spread out” “as if doubled” “Gradually” “I perceived that” “each person” “was surrounded by a ghostly” “second image” “was encased in it” “& each” / “of those images,” “those encasings,” “was exactly the same” “each was in fact” “the tyrant...” ”(8) A daydream of a mirror-less world while staring through window blinds; a palm tree behind. It was dark with nothing there. A world with no mirrors “in my mind,” though my mind could only reflect what it knew: a palm tree. Naturally then, palm trees multiplied; a world of palm trees reflected the daydream with no mirror in sight. “The mirror” “(prior to obsidian manufacturing ca. 6000 B.C)” “was wherever water” “could be found.” “Its interesting” “mirrors have been around” “before humans—its funny” “animals and humans” “get born into” “a world of mirrors,” “therefore, simulation” “is always already” “a given—” “a sparkly consequence to be born with a dbl.” NOTES 1. Notley, Alice. “Author’s Note” in The Descent of Alette (New York, 1996) 2. Bruns, Gerald L. “ From Intransitive Speech to the Universe of Discourse” in Modern Poetry And The Idea of Language (New Haven & London, 1974), p.75 3. Ibid. p.77 4. Notley, Alice. The Descent of Alette (New York, 1996). p.3 5. Ibid. p.10 6. Ibid i. p.9 7. Ibid ii. p.16 8. Ibid iii. p.12. (shrink)

Notwithstanding its phenomenological appeal, physicalists have tended to shun the notion that we are ‘acquainted’ with our mental states in consciousness, due to the fact that the acquaintance relation seems mysterious, irreducible, and consequently unnatural. I propose a model of conscious experience based on the idea of ‘mental quotation’, and argue that this captures what we want from acquaintance but without any threat to naturalism. More generally the chapter embodies a complaint that reductionists seem unable to look (...) past the representation relation to do the implementing of consciousness, and a call for theorists to investigate other relations to model our connection to our conscious states, like the constitution/part-whole relationship. This mundane relation has what it takes to give us natural acquaintance with our conscious-mental states. (shrink)

What has the self to be like such that introspective awareness of it is possible? The paper asks if Descartes’s idea of an inner self can be upheld and discusses this issue by invoking two principles: the phenomenal transparency of experience and the semantic compositionality of conceptual content. It is assumed that self-awareness is a second-order state either in the domain of experience or in the domain of thought. In the former case self-awareness turns out empty if experience is transparent. (...) In the latter, it can best be conceived of as a form of mental quotation. Various proposed analyses of direct and indirect quotation are discussed and tested regarding their applicability to thought. It is concluded that, on the assumption of compositionality, the inner self is only insofar accessible to awareness as it has an accessible phonological structure, as apparently only inner speech does. (shrink)

Papineau in his book provides a detailed defense of physicalism via what has recently been dubbed the “phenomenal concept strategy”. I share his enthusiasm for this approach. But I disagree with his account of how a physicalist should respond to the conceivability arguments. Also I argue that his appeal to teleosemantics in explaining mental quotation is more like a promissory note than an actual theory.

summaryMartin and Pfeifer have claimed“that the most typical characterizations of intentionality… all fail to distinguish … mental states from …dispositional physical states.”The evidence they present in support of this thesis is examined in the light of the possibility that what it shows is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. Of the five marks of intentionality they discuss a critical examination shows that three of them, Brentano's inexistence of the intentional object, Searle's (...) directedness and Anscombe's indeterminacy, are features which distinguish T‐inten Tional/dispositional The other two are either, as in the case of Chisholm's permissible falsity of a propositional attitude ascription, a feature of linguistic utterances too restricted in its scope to be of interest, or, as in the case of Frege's indirect reference/Quine's referential opacity, evidence that the S‐intenSional locution is a quotation either of what someone has said in the past or might be expected to say, if the question were to arise at some time in the future. (shrink)

Do you think the quotation in my title is reasonable or unreasonable? I find it unreasonable, but I know that many will not. Two people can react to the same idea, opinion, or data in opposite ways, and the reasons for this are often ideological. Ideology always has a political origin — in this case perhaps reflecting turf wars, career promotion, self-legitimation, the privileged status of science in post-industrial societies, and the need to say the right things in order (...) to get research funding. The very concept of ‘hard science’ is ideological, implying that one part of our experience is ‘objective’ (meaning that it confers authority on scientists) and the other part is ‘subjective’(meaning that the opinions of non-scientists are of little worth).What we call ‘objective’ is of course a mental model built on the basis of experiences which we call ‘subjective’. There are many possible ways of carving up experience, but none that leads to a useful or non-political distinction between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’. (shrink)

Two theme–setting quotations introduce this essay—that of Yeats's falcon, deaf to the falconer's call, adrift in space above the blood–dimmed tide, counterpoised to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's call to abandon old nationalistic prejudices and build the earth. With primary references to the thought of Teilhard, along with, among others, to Ewert Cousins, Andrew M. Greeley, Karl Jaspers, Marshall McLuhan, Ilya Prigogine, Karl Rahner, Leonard Swidler, David Tracy, and Alfred North Whitehead, I argue that the most crucial intellectual paradigm shift of (...) the twenty–first century will challenge humanity to take the turn from uncritical attachment to rigid absolutism or atomistic fragmentation toward a sense of open–ended, off–centered centeredness and fluid connections—from a static to a dynamic model of reality. Central to my argument is the Teilhardian reinterpretation of the Christian metaphors of creation, fall, incarnation, salvation, and the eschaton in the evolutionary terms of the emergence of cosmic consciousness from the chrysalis of the world of the past—from chaos to order, from biosphere via noosphere to theosphere. Facilitated by the exponential growth of populations, collaborative research, science, technology, and global communication (most dramatically manifested by the Internet), this emergent understanding of what it means to be human can, first, foster the awareness that in humanity evolution has become conscious of itself, and then, gradually, precipitate the formation of “the global village” (the mystical body of Christ), as respectful dialogue replaces diatribe and the dualistic pugilism of Samuel Huntington's “Clash of Civilizations” is gradually transformed into a nonadversarial mentality that values shared humanity and a common purpose. Thus, eons hence, empowered by love–energy, the transmutation of the human into the ultra–human can take the ultimate quantum leap into a yet higher dimension where spirit/energy is no longer in need of flesh/mass, and Earth can be safely left behind. (shrink)

In this paper I begin to develop an account of the acquaintance that each of us has with our own conscious states and processes. The account is a speculative proposal about human mental architecture and specifically about the nature of the concepts via which we think in first personish ways about our qualia. In a certain sense my account is neutral between physicalist and dualist accounts of consciousness. As will be clear, a dualist could adopt the account I will (...) offer while maintaining that qualia themselves are non-physical properties. In this case the non-physical nature of qualia may play no role in accounting for the features of acquaintance. But although the account could be used by a dualist, its existence provides support for physicalism. (shrink)

In this essay, I want to take another look at the phenomenon of transparency and its relevance to qualia realism and representationalism. I don’t suppose that what I have to say will cause those who disagree with me to change their minds, but I hope not only to clarify my position and that of others who are on my side of the debate but also to respond to various criticisms and objections that have arisen over the last 10–15 years or (...) so.The transparency thesisI begin with four quotations, two from G. E. Moore, one from Gilbert Harman, and one from an earlier paper of mine:…that which makes the sensation of blue a mental fact seems to escape us; it seems, if I may use a metaphor, to be transparent — we look through it and see nothing but the blue… (Moore 1903, p. 446).When we try to introspect the sensation of blue, all we can see is the blue: the other element is as if it were diaphanous (Moore 1903, p. 450).When Eloise sees a tree before her, the colors she experiences are all experien. (shrink)

The exceptional nature of poetic language – testified by its patent untranslatability – represents a problem for philosophy, and particularly for analytic philosophy, which aims to provide an overarching explanation of ordinary language. It is difficult to explain the peculiar creativity of poetic language, starting from a finite basic vocabulary and a finite set of rules to be used by an interpreter who has finite powers. Poetry seems indeed not to respect the semantic innocence, spreading new meanings not only according (...) to the context, but even to the graphic and phonological form of the words. Mechanisms, such as quotation and conversational implicatures, have been used to respect semantic innocence and to show at the same time that poetic language is not deviant from the ordinary use of language. This article suggests an alternative route, “imagistic”, to account for the specific creativity of poetic language, without violating the principle of semantic innocence and without hypothesizing a discontinuity with ordinary language. Particularly referring to metaphor, it aims to show that poetic language does not convey as much further meanings, implicit in the use of literal terms, but rather images, evoked by and dependent on these terms, which could explain both poetry emergent properties and untranslatability. “Imageability” is not a feature of the “poetic word”, but rather of any word and, particularly, of concrete words. The creativity of poetic language lies in deepening the multimodal nature of concrete language, which is different from the abstract and conceptual nature of philosophical language. (shrink)

Linguistic research has revealed several pathways of language change that may guide our understanding of the evolution of mental‐state attribution. In particular, it turns out that, in many languages, quotative verbs have been exapted for attributing a variety of mental states, including beliefs and intentions. In such languages, the literal translation of, “Betty said: ‘There will be war’”, may be used not only to quote Betty's words, but also to convey that she thought or intended there to be (...) war. This paper presents a model of the pragmatic shifts underlying this pathway, and proposes an evolutionary trajectory from quotation to the public practice of attributing beliefs and intentions, and thence to implicit belief/intention attribution. (shrink)

François Recanati describes a metarepresentation as a representation of linguistic and mental representations. Two levels of content are involved, that of a metarepresentation dS, and that of the object representation S. According to Recanati’s “iconicity thesis,” dS contains S semantically as well as syntactically, so that one cannot entertain dS without also entertaining S. Iconicity “suggests” the doctrine of semantic innocence, whereby an embedded object-representation has the same content it would have when uttered in isolation—its “normal” semantic value—and one (...) of Recanati’s principal aims is to show how the opacity of oratio obliqua and oratio recta constructions can be explained without sacrificing innocence. His treatment is set firmly within the framework of Kaplan 1989 and is inspired by the account of quotation in Davidson 1968. Though devoid of technical and metaphysical encumbrance, his book is not a lean display of a single vision, since Recanati spends considerable time on proposals that he ends up rejecting or modifying. Some readers might become impatient with the detailed comparisons, but the dedicated student will welcome the learned discussion of alternatives. In all, Recanati has given us an excellent study of metarepresentation, enlivened by state-of-the-art pragmatics and at the forefront of the latest discourse on attitudinal ascriptions. (shrink)

This contribution addresses major distinctions between the notions of determinism, causation, and prediction, as they are typically used in the sciences. Formally, this can be elegantly achieved by two ingredients: (i) the distinction of ontic and epistemic states of a system, and (ii) temporal symmetry breakings based on the mathematical concept of the affine time group. Key aspects of the theory of deterministically chaotic systems together with historical quotations from Laplace, Maxwell, and Poincare provide significant illustrations. An important point of (...) various discussions in consciousness studies (notably about 'mental causation' and 'free agency'), the alleged 'causal closure of the physical', will be analysed on the basis of the affine time group and the breakdown of its symmetries. (shrink)

Summarizes, with many quotations, a large body of recent psychological writing about the process of mental discovery and invention, and offers some practical suggestions for encouraging creative thinking.--R. H.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Transgressing the Boundaries: An Afterword*Alan D. SokalAlas, the truth is out: my article, “Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity,” which appeared in the spring/summer 1996 issue of the cultural-studies journal Social Text, is a parody. 1 Clearly I owe the editors and readers of Social Text, as well as the wider intellectual community, a non-parodic explanation of my motives and my true views. One of (...) my goals here is to make a small contribution toward a dialogue on the Left between humanists and natural scientists—“two cultures” which, contrary to some optimistic pronouncements (mostly by the former group), are probably farther apart in mentality than at any time in the past fifty years.Like the genre it is meant to satirize—myriad exemplars of which can be found in its reference list—my article is a mélange of truths, half-truths, quarter-truths, falsehoods, non sequiturs, and syntactically correct sentences that have no meaning whatsoever. (Sadly, there are only a handful of the latter: I tried hard to produce them, but I found that, save for rare bursts of inspiration, I just didn’t have the knack.) I also employed some other strategies that are well-established (albeit sometimes inadvertently) in the genre: appeals to authority in lieu of logic; speculative theories passed off as established science; strained and even absurd analogies; rhetoric that sounds good but whose meaning is [End Page 338] ambiguous; and confusion between the technical and everyday senses of English words (for example: linear, nonlinear, local, global, multidimensional, relative, frame of reference, field, anomaly, chaos, catastrophe, logic, irrational, imaginary, complex, real, equality, choice).I should emphasize that all works cited in my article are real, and all quotations are rigorously accurate; none are invented. Indeed, the most hilarious passages in my article were not written by me: they are direct quotes from the Masters.But why did I do it? I confess that I’m an unabashed Old Leftist who never quite understood how deconstruction was supposed to help the working class. And I’m a stodgy old scientist who believes, naively, that there exists an external world, that there exist objective truths about that world, and that my job is to discover some of them. (If science were merely a negotiation of social conventions about what is agreed to be “true,” why would I bother devoting a large fraction of my all-too-short life to it? I don’t aspire to be the Emily Post of quantum field theory.)But my main concern isn’t to defend science from the barbarian hordes of lit crit. Rather, my concern is explicitly political: to combat a currently fashionable postmodernist/poststructuralist/social-constructivist discourse—and more generally a penchant for subjectivism—which is, I believe, inimical to the values and future of the Left. 2 Alan Ryan said it well:It is, for instance, pretty suicidal for embattled minorities to embrace Michel Foucault, let alone Jacques Derrida. The minority view was always that power could be undermined by truth.... Once you read Foucault as saying that truth is simply an effect of power, you’ve had it.... But American departments of literature, history and sociology contain large numbers of self-described leftists who have confused radical doubts about objectivity with political radicalism, and are in a mess. 3Likewise, Eric Hobsbawm has decriedthe rise of “postmodernist” intellectual fashions in Western universities, particularly in departments of literature and anthropology, which imply that all “facts” claiming objective existence are simply intellectual constructions. In short, that there is no clear difference between fact and fiction. But there is, and for historians, even for the most militantly antipositivist ones among us, the ability to distinguish between the two is absolutely fundamental. 4 [End Page 339](Hobsbawm goes on to show how rigorous historical scholarship can refute the fictions propounded by reactionary nationalists in India, Israel, the Balkans and elsewhere.) And as the acerbic sociologist Stanislav Andreski noted long ago,So long as authority inspires awe, confusion and absurdity enhance conservative tendencies in society. Firstly, because clear and logical thinking leads to a cumulation of knowledge (of which the progress of... (shrink)

Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery is an easy to follow instruction manual that enables practitioners to tap into and express directly each of the sixty-four energies that exist throughout the eternal movement of Tao, as outlined and explained in the I Ching (The Book of Changes). By way of mindful illustration, multiple pictures of postures and movements, and careful attention to detailed description, the practitioner is carefully led through the various postures and transitional movements presented in (...) this form. The form is divided into two essential sequences: Heaven and Earth. Daily practice allows the practitioner to maintain physical, mental, energetic and spiritual alignment with Spirit -- the unspeakable Mystery that is Tao. In effect, the practitioner becomes the harmonizing link between Heaven and Earth! Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery brings together aspects of the Taoist tradition in a very unique way, by combining the philosophical insight of the Tao Te Ching, the spiritual understanding of the I Ching, with the practice of Tai Chi. It accomplishes this by offering practitioners a comprehensive understanding of themselves -- as both a part of nature and as Spirit. It is the unification of these three, typically separate, strands that truly makes this work a unique enterprise. • The Tao Te Ching is the most efficacious philosophical text in China, having now influenced millions of people throughout the world with its teachings concerning the relationship between self, nature and ultimate reality. • The I Ching is the most ancient spiritual system in China, describing in a very practical fashion, the way in which Tao -- the ultimate Mystery -- influences and reciprocates with us through sixty-four universal energies formed by the combination of the eight most basic elements in nature -- Heaven, Thunder, Water, Lake, Earth, Mountain, Fire and Wind, otherwise known as Pa Qua. • Tai Chi is a universal and most honorable practice, enabling individuals to work on understanding, strengthening and unifying body, breath, mind and spirit. What also makes this book unique is the bold claim that if understood thoroughly and practiced properly, the I Ching Tai Chi Form may enable an individual to not only become proficient at tai chi and martial arts, to not only increase one's ability to concentrate, to not only enhance one's physical and emotional well-being, but to actually move closer to full and complete realization of one's most essential being, that is, closer to enlightenment, the original purpose of movement meditation. In the presentation of this form, each of the sixty-four postures is accompanied with a philosophical insight describing the essence of the energy which the practitioner is meant to access and express through the movement. Along with these insights are appropriate quotations from the Tao Te Ching that assist the practitioner in understanding the way in which this form corresponds to the universal and eternal movement of Tao. In addition, Tai Chi: I Ching Form - Embracing the Mystery includes chapters on Tai Chi as a practice and a way of life for beginners and masters; on the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching, explaining their contributions to insight regarding the nature of the universe and oneself; on what the Tai Chi I Ching Form offers that other styles do not; on exercise, energy and health; on the integration of meditation, both theory and technique; on how to warm-up, practice and perform the Tai Chi I Ching Form, including what to wear, appropriate environments for practice, incorporating music, stances, exercises, and how to pace oneself. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:77 KEMP SMITH, HUME AND THE PARALLELISM BETWEEN REASON AND MORALITY In a letter to a physician written in 1734 Hume expressed a dissatisfaction with the current state of philosophy and criticism, a dissatisfaction which he said had led him to strike out on his own and "seek out some new Medium, by which Truth might be establisht." He then went on to claim success: "After much Study, & (...) Reflection on this, at last, when I was about 18 Years of Age, there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought, which transported me beyond Measure, & made me, with an Ardor natural to young men, throw up every other Pleasure or Business to apply entirely to it..." The wording suggests that the new Scene of Thought was a clear revelation, but nowhere does Hume tell us what the revelation was. (A clue, perhaps, is to be found in the "Abstract," where Hume says that if anything entitles him to the name of an inventor, "it is the use he makes of 2 the principle of the association of ideas.") Kemp Smith is convinced, however, that he knows what the new Scene of Thought was. According to Kemp Smith, Hume had already discovered that morality rests on feeling alone and depends in no way on insight or evidence, and the new discovery was simply the sudden realization that belief is equally independent of these considerations. I will argue in this paper that the great difficulty in this interpretation is that in those sections of the Treatise and the second Enquiry in which Hume expounds what could be called his moral epistemology he is concerned with pointing out what he considers to be important differences between reason and taste and between understanding and morality. I am not, however, questioning the validity of Kemp Smith's naturalistic interpretation, if it is broadly construed. 78 A curiosity of Kemp Smith's exposition is his citing of passages from Hume, which at first glance anyway seem to weaken, rather than strengthen, his case for the parallelism of moral and factual judgments. I will give two examples, the first being a quotation from the Green and Grose edition of the Enquiry. That Faculty, by which we discern Truth and Falsehood, and that by which we perceive Vice and Virtue had long been confounded with each other, and all Morality was suppos'd to be built on eternal and immutable Relations, which, to every intelligent Mind, were equally invariable as any Proposition concerning Quantity or Number. But a late Philosopher [Mr. Hutcheson, added as a note] has taught us, by the most convincing Arguments, that Morality is nothing in the abstract Nature of Things, but is entirely relative to the Sentiment or mental Taste of each particular [i.e. species] of Being; in the same Manner as the distinctions of sweet and bitter, hot and cold, arise from the particular feeling of each Sense or Organ. Moral Perceptions, therefore, ought not to be class 'd with the Operations of the Understanding, but with the Tastes or Sentiments. On the next page of this book Kemp Smith refers to this passage as part of the evidence for his claim that "the view here taken of our moral judgments of approval and disapproval can be extended to our beliefs regarding matters of fact and existence, and that 'logic', morals and 'criticism' may thus be brought 4 within the scope of the same general principles." The reference to "external and immutable Relations" may have led Kemp Smith to believe that Hume's thesis in this paragraph is the contrast between demonstrative and other kinds of judgment, but the last sentence is a decisive refutation of that interpretation. Hume frequently uses the term "understanding" to refer to causal reasoning, though in this sentence he seems to be using the term in 79 the more inclusive sense that would include demonstration and relations of ideas as well. But I know of no instances in which "understanding" is restricted to what Hume calls science, i.e., demonstration. Kemp Smith also quotes from the last section of Appendix I to the second Enquiry. This passage, appearing in the Selby-Bigge... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introducing a “Deleuze Effect” into PsychiatryLarry Davidson (bio) and Golan Shahar (bio)Keywordsdesire, intentionality, psychopathology, agency, action theory, desiring-production, active and reactive forcesYou have to keep small rations of subjectivity in sufficient quantity to enable you to respond to the dominant reality.(Deleuze and Guattari 1987160)We are very pleased with the variety of responses our article has generated thus far and hope that it continues to provoke dialogue. That was, we (...) think, our in tent—should we be allowed to hold on to any such “thing” as an intention. We also take the diversity of these responses to reflect one of our key challenges in using Deleuze’s thought to reform (as op posed merely to inform) psychiatric practice: How to make a radical philosophy accessible enough to a broad enough audience for it to bring about substantive, real change in an existing culture in the hic et nunc, the here and now. That is why we chose the quotation above from Mille Plateaux. Even Deleuze (with Guattari) encourages us to keep “small rations” of subjectivity at hand if we are interested in responding to the “dominant reality.” And that has been our main agenda; to engage with the dominant reality of deficit-based psychiatric theory and practice to overturn it, or, in Clegg’s terms, “explode” it from within.In this regard, we certainly agree with Evangelista and Clegg that much more remains to be done, both in developing our position and in exploring its implications for practice. We view our “Deficit to Desire” paper as simply a first step in this direction (e.g., Shahar and Davidson, in press). We thought it necessary first, as we wrote in the original paper, to articulate the theoretical underpinnings of an action model for clinical understanding and practice “at a philosophical level of discourse on the one hand, but also in such a way that they provide a concrete, substantially different point of departure for empirical studies of psychopathology, on the other.” But why is this important, and what implications does it have for our response to these three thoughtful commentaries?A first implication is that our primary aim is not to provide a comprehensive exposition of Deleuze’s thought. In our opinion, even attempting to give a comprehensive exposition of Deleuze’s thought would actually go directly against its main thrust, which we view as to ignite and propagate ever new and creative lines of flight which carry desiring-production into “a small plot of new land at all times” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 161). “Experiment,” entreats Deleuze, “don’t interpret” (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 139). We would guess, in fact, that Deleuze no more wanted to [End Page 243] produce Deleuzeans than Kierkegaard wanted disciples going around the Danish countryside after his death spreading the word that Kierkegaard did not want disciples going around the Danish countryside after his death (one of our favorites among his many ironies). So although we agree that there is much more in Deleuze’s thought than what is contained in our paper, we think that to some degree it misses its point. In Deleuzean fashion, we want to use the “Deleuze effect” to bring radical change to psychiatry (and we appreciate the irony of that too). Although both Evangelista and Clegg seem to welcome this effort, despite their misgivings, Weiner clearly is worried. Weiner also seems to have had the most intimate experience of the psychiatric system—that is, is most familiar with the world we are trying to change—so we focus in particular on his very understandable concerns.It also happens to be the case that focusing on Weiner’s concerns brings us immediately back to the nature of the effect we were hoping to have. Weiner explains that people with serious mental illnesses are “oppressed from within” and that their affliction seems to be coming “from a seemingly autonomous place” that is “within us, but not ultimately of us.” We could not agree more, and appreciate the lucidity and eloquence with which he makes this astute and important point. Several years ago, one of us even attempted a Husserlian-inspired analysis of how a person... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Anthropological Perspectives in Psychiatric NosologyJuan J. López-Ibor Jr. (bio) and María-Inés López-Ibor (bio)KeywordsDSM, etiology, Aristotelian causes, social dramasPsychiatry and clinical psychology, as we learn in this paper, are disciplines in need of an ontological perspective. Very few branches of contemporary learning share this characteristic. Probably only theoretical physic and theology—as the rest have long ago given up trying to define and understand the essence of their object, for example, (...) life in the case of biology or mind in psychology. Consequently, the paper by Pérez-Álvarez, Sass and García-Montes, “The Ontology of Mental Disorders in Constructivist Perspective,” (2008) should be welcomed and indeed included in the reading lists for trainees in psychiatry and clinical psychology.The authors propose an approach to the understanding of mental disorders that is extremely attractive and well articulated, and which also has practical implications for clinicians. It is not just another “philosophical divertimento” devoid of scientific and practical importance. Let us analyze the article in an orderly way.Less DsmThe authors of the target paper disapprove of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-III/IV approach to defining illnesses by starting from the symptoms that are present—on the grounds that this may lead clinicians to assume that their sole role is to identify, fight, and suppress the symptoms by whichever procedure. They propose an alternative that is dear to myself because it follows the path of the so-called “anthropological” psychiatry of Binswanger, von Gebsattel, Erwin Strauss, Zutt, López-Ibor, Sr., and others. In essence, this is a phenomenological approach to the meaning of mental diseases, one that emphasizes how the illness is revealed to the patient him- or herself.The target article’s criticism of DSM should be considered in the context of the abuses committed on its behalf. The DSM is not a textbook of psychiatric disorders, nor does it contain a definition of the diseases. The DSM does not tell what a disease is (Klerman et al. 1984)—something that is impossible with a classification system based on the manifestations of the diseases, the signs and symptoms. The DSM, as its title states, is just a diagnostic and statistical manual, which does not contain anything about the origin of [End Page 259] any disease nor an explanation of why it exists or what it means. The DSM is, in fact, just a tool to determine whether a disease is present, and therefore to facilitate communication between professionals and with other individuals, without saying anything about the disease’s aitia—a key term (associated with notions of essence as well as cause) to be discussed below. In theory, most clinicians should understand these limitations; it may be, however, that this is not really the case for many who read or use the DSM. In the world there are around 200,000 psychiatrists; since 1980 the number of DSM copies sold is in the order of several hundred thousand.The misuse of a classification system is even more noticeable in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-10 Research Version. The instructions for the use of this version recommend that the first step is to make an inventory of all the symptoms present, and then to construct a diagnosis based on them. This how all computer-assisted systems work. This procedure can, however, only be valid if the clinician has already reached a diagnostic conclusion by other means—a diagnosis then to be confirmed for research purposes. It may be that this is one of the reasons why the ICD-10 Research Version has almost never actually been used for research.Furthermore, the concept of symptoms in psychiatry applies only to organic mental disorders (Schneider 1959), conditions in which the patient’s attitude and way of experiencing the symptoms do not play the kind of role that they play in schizophrenia and other mental disorders. The quotation from the important paper by Sass and Parnas in this context is most appropriate. It is indeed that case that “subjective experience can play an important causal role in the progressive experiential transformations of a developing schizophrenic illness... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 304-305 [Access article in PDF] Wildfeuer, Armin G. Praktische Vernunft und System. Entwicklungsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur ursprünglichen Kant-Rezeption Johann Gottlieb Fichtes. Stuttgart-Bad/Cannstatt : Frommann-Holzboog, 1999. Pp. 596. Cloth, DM 168. The subtitle of this book, a slightly revised dissertation from the University of Bonn (1994), reads: "Investigations into the developmental history of Johann Gottlieb Fichte's original reception of Kant." The work comes (...) to almost 600 pages. The main text is heavily overlaid with detailed footnotes, extensive quotations and supplementary material in smaller print and narrow line spacing. To the reader who is patient enough to face this scholastic mode of presentation, there emerges behind it a valuable contribution to our overall understanding of Fichte's philosophical work in general and its core discipline, the Wissenschaftslehre or first, transcendental philosophy, in particular.In the grand narrative about the development of German idealism Fichte is placed between Kant and Schelling. More precisely, he is typically portrayed as continuing but also revising Kant's work under the double influence of the leading early post-Kantian, Karl Leonhard Reinhold (1758-1823), and the skeptical anti-Kantian and anti-Reinholdian, Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761-1833), called "Aenesidemus" after the title of his anonymous main work.Wildfeuer's investigations supplement this picture with a detailed consideration of what could be called "Fichte before Fichte": the early development of Fichte's thought, prior to his encounter with Reinhold and prior even to his encounter with Kant (1790). To be sure, Wildfeuer also deals with Fichte's continued philosophical development up through 1794, and he has many interesting things to say about the lasting presence of Fichte's earliest concerns in his more mature work. But the chief merit of the book is the sustained attention it pays to the very beginnings of Fichte's thought.Much of the prehistory of Fichtean philosophy has to be conjectured, given the scarcity of documents about Fichte's years of study (1780-84) and of his work as itinerant tutor (1785-1793). From Fichte's own testimony in his correspondence it is clear that prior to encountering Kant's three Critiques he held a determinist position regarding nature as well as human conduct. Based on some indications in Fichte's later works, Wildfeuer identifies as the chief source of Fichte's determinism the work of Karl Ferdinand Hommel (1722-1781), a professor of law at Leipzig, whom Fichte could have heard as a student and whose pseudonymous treatise Alexander von Joch... On Reward and Punishment According to Turkish Laws (1770) Fichte cites. Hommel (alias von Joch) maintains a deterministic view of human action, while justifying the social practice of punishment and reward. In particular, he maintains the dependence of the will on the intellect and of the latter on sensations or sensory impressions. Wildfeuer refers to this position, as it was temporarily adopted by Fichte, as that of the primacy of the understanding over the will.But Wildfeuer also shows that from early on Fichte's determinist leanings in speculation were counterbalanced by the conviction that feeling, especially feeling in religious matters, is an equally valid source of truth. For Wildfeuer, this early duality of speculation and feeling is the lasting basis of Fichte's life-long concern with reconciling the competing demands of head and heart. In particular this pre-Kantian key concern [End Page 304] in Fichte informs the latter's central systematic occupation with the unity of the mind amidst its differentiation into faculties or kinds of mental activity.Further texts which Wildfeuer examines in pursuit of the pre-Kantian Fichte are his Latin Valedictory Address, given upon graduating from one of Germany's finest secondary schools at the time, the Princely College of Pforta (1780), and the "Aphorisms on Religion and Deism" (1790).On the basis of this material Wildfeuer goes on to reconstruct the distinct reception that each of Kant's three Critiques received by Fichte. According to Wildfeuer, the Critique of Pure Reason originally was read by... (shrink)

Among the entities that can be mentally or linguistically represented are mental and linguistic representations themselves. That is, we can think and talk about speech and thought. This phenomenon is known as metarepresentation. An example is "Authors believe that people read books." -/- In this book François Recanati discusses the structure of metarepresentation from a variety of perspectives. According to him, metarepresentations have a dual structure: their content includes the content of the object-representation (people reading books) as well as (...) the "meta" part (the authors' belief). Rejecting the view that the object representation is mentioned rather than used, Recanati claims that since metarepresentations carry the content of the object representation, they must be about whatever the object representation is about. Metarepresentations are fundamentally transparent because they work by simulating the representation they are about. -/- Topics covered in this wide-ranging work include the analysis of belief reports and talk about fiction, world shifting, opacity and substitutivity, quotation, the relation between direct and indirect discourse, context shifting, semantic pretense, and deference in language and thought. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of death and certainty as reflected in Daoism and Japanese Buddhist philosophy. In the Buddhist context, the Japanese Pure Land theory is discussed. The Buddhist theories are illustrated with the quotations of Daoist philosophers, Zhuang Zi and Lao Zi {Dan dejing), which illuminate the problem of certainty related to the theory of body and its transformations through the mental and physical techniques used in visualizations that were used on the Buddhist path to truth (...) and certainty. (shrink)

This book deals with some large tracts of Wittgenstein’s writings concerning representation and the mental. Its defining characteristic, and one of its main strengths, is an extensive use of material in the background of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Investigations. Stern quotes from and discusses remarks from unpublished manuscripts, including the Big Typescript, little-studied published writings such as the Tractatus notebooks, “Some Remarks on Logical Form,” Philosophical Remarks, Philosophical Grammar, as well as lecture notes by Moore, King and Lee, and others. (...) How much of these writings the book reproduces is suggested by the fact that its appendix, giving the original German of the previously unpublished matter translated in the main text, is eleven small-print pages long; and there are far more quotations from the published part of the corpus. The result is a work in which, for a run of pages, the ratio of quoted material to comment can be as high as one to one ; and in which most pages contain a significant amount of indented quotation. The main justification offered for the wholesale inclusion of this material is that it provides a context that can help determine what problem Wittgenstein was addressing in a given passage from his two main works. Stern’s mastery of that material is impressive, as shown for example in his pellucid outline of Wittgenstein’s philosophical development after 1920. (shrink)

This book deals with some large tracts of Wittgenstein’s writings concerning representation and the mental. Its defining characteristic, and one of its main strengths, is an extensive use of material in the background of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Investigations. Stern quotes from and discusses remarks from unpublished manuscripts, including the Big Typescript, little-studied published writings such as the Tractatus notebooks, “Some Remarks on Logical Form,” Philosophical Remarks, Philosophical Grammar, as well as lecture notes by Moore, King and Lee, and others. (...) How much of these writings the book reproduces is suggested by the fact that its appendix, giving the original German of the previously unpublished matter translated in the main text, is eleven small-print pages long; and there are far more quotations from the published part of the corpus. The result is a work in which, for a run of pages, the ratio of quoted material to comment can be as high as one to one ; and in which most pages contain a significant amount of indented quotation. The main justification offered for the wholesale inclusion of this material is that it provides a context that can help determine what problem Wittgenstein was addressing in a given passage from his two main works. Stern’s mastery of that material is impressive, as shown for example in his pellucid outline of Wittgenstein’s philosophical development after 1920. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 62.1 (2001) 17-35 [Access article in PDF] Late Antiquity and the Florentine Renaissance: Historiographical Parallels Christopher S. Celenza Aulus Gellius, at the end of the second century, shows us the type of writer who was destined to prevail, the compiler. In his Noctes Atticae he compiles without method or even without any definite end in view.... After him there is only barrenness. The (...) third century is a literary Sahara.... Thoughtless admiration for mathematics keeps up or reintroduces the mentality of magic.... In the fourth century ad Iamblichus had his brain almost turned by the science of numbers. 1 --Ferdinand Lot The rapid progress of humanism after the year 1400 paralyzed native impulses. Henceforth men looked only to antiquity for the solution of every problem, and consequently allowed literature to sink into mere quotation. 2 --Jacob Burckhardt Various aspects of late antiquity in western Europe and the Florentine Renaissance bear certain similarities which, if properly examined and contextualized, can lead to a deeper understanding of both periods--of their social as well as intellectual significance, of the manner in which politics relates to culture, and [End Page 17] of the relationship between urban life in a specific sort of milieu to the mechanisms of religious and philosophical dynamism. 3 The parallels are not always exact, but various underlying patterns are present. Here the main line of argument will be that a number of aspects of late ancient thought and of Renaissance thought (especially Renaissance Latin literature of all genres) went ignored by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, thanks to certain underlying assumptions concerning what was appropriate to investigate. These assumptions were themselves related to the combination of two major factors: romantic essentializing ideas about the nature of language, inherited from the Enlightenment, and the development in the nineteenth century of nationalist, evolutionary historiographies. The results of these developments persisted into the twentieth century and can be seen to an extent even today. Nationalist Historiographies and the Problem of Language "Gentlemen, nations are thoughts of God." So Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) used to begin his history courses in Berlin, as Jacob Burckhardt (1818-97) later remembered. 4 While Ranke himself was concerned primarily with documentary history and the evolution of the modern state, he was also part of a larger trend in the German speaking world which sought to identify, in the study of the past, the spirit, or Geist, of a given era or people, a project which had been theorized by Hegel. Ranke and others, like Johann Gustav Droysen and August Böckh, taking their point of departure from Barthold Niebuhr and, more immediately, from Wilhelm von Humboldt, saw themselves as self-consciously transcending Hegel, basing their ideas on documentary sources as opposed to a priori theorizing. 5 But certain assumptions were similar, none more so than presuppositions relating to the Volksgeist. It is not that Ranke was relentlessly teleological; [End Page 18] history was made in the process of the unfolding of events. His primary mission was the documenting and understanding of modernity, a task which, despite their later divergences in practice, Burckhardt shared. 6 The goal was, following Niebuhr's approach in classical studies, to present history in an appealing way and in a manner useful to modernity. 7 This was bound up with a larger set of movements, encompassing the search for national identity and a tendency toward locating essential characteristics of a "people." 8 One of these characteristics was language, and a central preoccupation of scholars became the manner in which culture expressed itself through language, even as philology was becoming "the first historical discipline, the model for all other historical sciences" and the general view of scholarly fields as separate, specialized entities was growing. 9In their concern with language as a vehicle for cultural transmission and as a defining characteristic of a people, nineteenth-century scholars were the heirs of the Enlightenment. Ideas of a plurality of cultures had flourished; as it was put in the Encyclopédie, language expressed the "genius of a people." If... (shrink)

My beliefs during the first stage of my philosophical career were a mixed brew of ingredients taken from the Greek and Christian traditions. My tastes were conservative and even reactionary. I believed in the reality of substance, material and mental; I held that there are universal and necessary connections in nature which can be known. In short, I was a naive objectivist about things and about structures. I was a realist about values too. I believed that there are such (...) traits in nature as good and bad, right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, independently of my preferences. I was convinced further that goodness was a supreme causal agent; that—to paraphrase the familiar quotation—righteousness is power. I believed in God. With Plato I maintained that causality is not only efficient but final too; that nature exhibits both a mechanical and a moral order. And these two propositions were, to my view, but twin aspects of the one proposition that nature will not deceive my expectations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Brian Boyd responds:In responding to my critical discussion, Lisa Zunshine restates the argument of Why We Read Fiction at some length but replies to none of my specific criticisms. These criticisms are all based on the evidence of the texts that she offers as case studies, especially Mrs Dalloway and Lolita. Although I—and the textual evidence—contradict her claims, she provides no answers to the criticisms.Let me respond to two (...) restatements. First: "Fictional narratives endlessly experiment with rather than automatically execute our evolved cognitive adaptations" (p. 190). This is often, but almost tautologically, true in the case of experimental fiction, as the work of Richardson, Woolf, and Nabokov (to cite Zunshine's key examples) was in their time. It is not necessarily true in the sense Zunshine especially means it—that authors give us a demanding cognitive workout of our capacity for Theory of Mind by incorporating multiple embedding, A's thoughts of B's thoughts of C's thoughts of D's thoughts of E—even in the case of fictional experimenters like Defoe, Tolstoy, or Joyce, and it is not true of the vast bulk of fiction, from folk tale or jokes to soap operas or pulp [End Page 196] novels, and it cannot therefore be an explanation for "why we read fiction," though it may explain why some of us read some fiction. And to identify overloaded embedding when it is not present, as Zunshine does in discussing Mrs Dalloway, constitutes a simple misreading.Second: "Our Theory of Mind makes literature as we know it possible" (p. 191). Granted, without Theory of Mind we would not have fiction. But nor would we have fiction without many other features of human nature: without sociality, episodic memory, language, childhood pretend play, empathy, the brain's inhibitory mechanisms, folk physics, our mental databases for individuals, and much, much more. An evolutionary and cognitive understanding of fiction needs to take into account many aspects of our capacity for understanding events and stories, not just one.Apart from one three-word phrase, Zunshine's sole quotation from my review is this: "To what extent has Zunshine benefited from the methodology, rather than results, of science?" (I refer to "the results of science" here because I note that although, for instance, she relies most heavily on Simon Baron-Cohen among Theory of Mind researchers, while ignoring major figures in the field like Janet Astington or Josef Perner, she does not even cite the book or any of the more than twenty papers of which Baron-Cohen has been primary author since his 1995 Mindblindness.) Her quotation from my review continues: "Alas, she appears to have learned less than one would have hoped.... Her formulations are often weak and indecisive, hedgings, rather than strong testable hypotheses. Rather than apply scientific stringency to her literary analysis, she seems more interested in exploiting than testing what she can find." She confesses herself puzzled by this charge. Let me explain one simple point.Science's core methodological principle is that claims should be subjected to the test of evidence, and accepted or rejected on the basis of their compatibility with the relevant evidence. Leo Spitzer long ago pointed out that good reading follows scientific method: we read, we make hypotheses about the text, and we either confirm or disconfirm the hypotheses according to what we find in the text, and search for ampler hypotheses when previous ones have been discredited.1 Literary scholarship has long been vitiated by a far flabbier methodology, by the naïve assumption that evidence for a proposition suffices: "I see a and b in the text, therefore my claim C is a valid interpretation." But if reading or interpretation C is incompatible with counter-evidence d and e in the text, it is a falsified hypothesis and needs to yield to a better [End Page 197] reading, an interpretation that can incorporate this counter-evidence. I showed that Zunshine's claims about her prime examples were not compatible with evidence in the texts. She does not challenge the textual counter-evidence I provide, but just ignores it. That is where literary criticism most urgently needs to learn from scientific... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 251-263 [Access article in PDF] Notes and Discussions Nietzsche's Knowledge of Kierkegaard I. TWO OF THE MOST INTERESTING and influential of nineteenth-century thinkers are Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. There exist many striking similarities between the two: they were both critics of rationality, of idealism, and of the building of philosophical systems. Instead, their approach was more existential and psychological and they both (...) strongly emphasized the central position of the individual, personality, and subjectivity. There also exist important differences and oppositions between their thinking—of which the most important is the fact that Kierkegaard was a profoundly Christian-religious thinker, while Nietzsche regarded Christianity and religion as his main object of attack.Kierkegaard (1813-55) certainly could have had no knowledge of Nietzsche (1844-1900), and it is generally assumed that Nietzsche, apart from the name, had no knowledge of Kierkegaard's thinking. What makes it particularly tempting to discuss Nietzsche's relation to Kierkegaard, apart from their inherent similarities and differences and the fact that they are often discussed together, is that Nietzsche, in a letter to Georg Brandes from February 19, 1888, claims that he intended to study Kierkegaard: Ich habe mir für meine nächste Reise nach Deutschland vorgesetzt, mich mit dem psychologischen Problem Kierkegaard zu beschäftigen, insgleichen die Bekanntschaft mit Ihrer älteren Litteratur zu erneuern. Dies wird für mich, im besten Sinn des Worts, von Nutzen sein,—und wird dazu dienen, mir meine eigne Härte und Anmaaßung im Urtheil "zu Gemüthe zu führen."1 [End Page 251]Nietzsche lived in Nice when he wrote this, and never returned to Germany before his mental collapse in January 1889. Nietzsche's intention to study Kierkegaard was expressed in response to a letter from Brandes, where he recommended Kierkegaard to him. Es giebt ein nordischer Schriftsteller, dessen Werke Sie interessiren würden, wenn Sie nur übersetzt wären, Sören Kierkegaard, er lebte 1813-55 und ist meiner Ansicht nach einer der tiefsten Psychologen, die es überhaupt giebt. Ein Büchlein, das ich über ihn geschrieben habe (übersetzt Leipzig 1879) giebt keine hinreichende Vorstellung von seinem Genie, denn dies Buch ist eine Art von Streitschrift, geschrieben um seinen Einfluss zu hemmen. Es ist wohl aber in psychologischer Hinsicht entschieden das feinste, was ich veröffentlicht habe.2Much has been written about Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. There exist more than thirty studies which extensively treat this topic, 3 and it has been briefly mentioned or discussed by hundreds of commentators. Every commentator so far seems to have assumed that Nietzsche had no knowledge of Kierkegaard—except the little Brandes had mentioned in his letter from 1888. 4It is a common belief that Kierkegaard was internationally discovered first after the turn of the century. This is, however, true only in a very qualified sense. 5 [End Page 252] There existed, counter to Brandes' assumption in the letter quoted above, a fairly large number of works by Kierkegaard in German translation already before 1889 which Nietzsche theoretically could have read. However, with very high probability he had not read any of them, because his statement to Brandes would then have been differently formulated.However, there exist other—until now unknown—sources for Nietzsche's knowledge about Kierkegaard. These sources are books Nietzsche read which contain discussions of, and quotations from, Kierkegaard. I have identified six such books which Nietzsche definitely read, some more and some less important. Together these accounts contain about five full pages of quotations from Kierkegaard and about fifty pages about him. To this can be added other sources such as Brandes' letter where he recommends Nietzsche to read Kierkegaard, and philosophical and theological journals which discuss Kierkegaard and personal relationships to those who had knowledge of Kierkegaard's thinking (such as Franz Overbeck and Lou Salomé).Nietzsche's encounter with Kierkegaard's thinking and writing through secondary sources are, in rough chronological order: 6(1) Nietzsche had already in the 1870s read (or, rather, had read to him) parts of Brandes... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Commentary on “Non-Cartesian Frameworks”Rom Harré (bio)There are three points in Dr. Berger’s paper that seem to me to call for immediate comment:1. There is the familiar (but in Berger’s case, only a partial) misunderstanding of the upshot of the third phase of Wittgenstein’s private-language argument. Having shown that expressive and descriptive discourse are radically different, and that expressive discourse can be learned only in contexts of action in which (...) there are natural expressions of personal feeling, experience, and so on, Wittgenstein goes on to show that whatever furnishes the mind, it is not thing-like. He does this by showing that “sameness” of thoughts and feelings cannot be spelled out in the same terms as sameness of things, that is, in terms of numerical and qualitative identity. Yet there is a proper use for the concept of sameness of thoughts and feelings. It is to be found in the role that expressions of feelings and declarations of thoughts play in the language games that constitute a form of life. There is no “unresolved tension,” as Berger seems to think. Although pains are not thing-like, they do have a location, do endure, and do differ from one another.The introduction of the powerful expressive/descriptive distinction is the key to the fallacies of representationalism. Expressive acts do not represent but descriptive acts might. But we can draw on the demonstration that mental “somethings” are not thing-like to eliminate that possibility. The root of representationalism is the seventeenth-century conception of the mind as a container of mental entities: ideas. Ideas are to psychology what atoms are to physics. According to Hume, ideas are copies of impressions. In that disastrous thesis, representationalism was born, as a generalization of Locke’s grounding principle that the ideas of primary qualities resembled primary qualities. The cure for this complex mesh of mistakes must be deeply philosophical. It must not be confined to easy criticisms of Locke’s resemblance doctrine, not yet to more subtle Berkleyan strictures on the supposed distinction between ideas and qualities. It must cut at the very deepest assumption of representationalism—that there are mental entities. And on that matter, Wittgenstein’s analysis will, one hopes, prove to be final.2. With representationalism cast onto the midden of history, what account are we to give of mentation? In a sense, Wittgenstein’s insights abolish the inner/outer distinction, an offshoot of the concept of the container-mind. But they leave standing the distinction between what is done privately and what is done publicly. Yet these domains must be of the same nature, since in the expressive use of signs, we find a holism encompassing what we feel and our disposition to express it. Linguistic substitutes for natural forms [End Page 185] of expression must share that holism. But there are no natural expressions of propositional thoughts. Why? Because we are capable of private propositional thinking just insofar as we have mastered public uses of the instruments of propositional thought. These instruments are cultural products.The practice of psychotherapy can be nothing other than discursive. The quotations concerning praxis that Berger offers are disconcertingly vague. To add, as Berger does, that we must take theory into account does not cure the vagueness. We do not know what Berger takes theory to be, only that it is not theory as physicists have it; i.e., systems of hypotheses about hidden processes which bring about that which can be observed. Following Wittgenstein one step farther, we can say that the only thing that could be theory-like in the enterprises of psychotherapists would be grammars. Grammars express the often unformulated norms of discourses. Psychoanalytic theories could then be addressed as expressions of the norms of certain kinds of discourses. Incorporating a “theory” would then be nothing but determining to adopt a certain grammar in one’s therapeutic discourses. Freed of the idea that one of some set of theories must be true and preferred to all others, one is free to adopt and adapt grammars to occasions. Some grammars are tied to natural expressions and so to the ethology of the human form of life... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza by Michael Della RoccaWilliam SackstederMichael Della Rocca. Representation and the Mind-Body Problem in Spinoza. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp xiv + 223. Cloth, $39.95.A first virtue in elucidating any great philosopher is stating exactly the project the commentator undertakes, showing what is to be concluded, and how, and what of necessity must be omitted. Here, Della Rocca’s success is (...) exemplary.I cannot do better than to paraphrase, with running quotations, his remarkably succinct preliminaries. He undertakes two problems “crucial to Spinoza’s philosophy of mind,” first, “the requirement for having a thought about a particular object,” and second, “the traditional problem of whether or not the mind is identical with the body.” These inquiries are to be interconnected systematically by showing their dependence on Spinoza’s “denial of causal or explanatory or conceptual relations between the mental and the physical.”With exceptions I note later, the nine chapters of this book follow precisely. Chapter 1 prepares basic concepts and claims, along with formulation of the principle indicated, now called “the barrier between thought and extension.” Chapters 2 through 5 present and question Spinoza’s “theory of representation” (the first problem, as in the title) with its consequences respecting the announced principle. Chapters 7 and 8 turn to insights on “the mind-body problem” (the second problem), as illuminated by these investigations and secured by the governing principle. Della Rocca tidily exemplifies ruling expository virtues, but I question whether this very exactitude does not inhibit a needed species of escapement. Any commentator is obliged to acknowledge and detach himself from his own assumptions, from mannerisms and jargon current in the profession, from his present status or mannered tics, and from accidental skewing subsequent to current practices of language and translation. For such commitments also govern his treatment and they may often occlude his or our understanding. Let me be picky in initial illustration. [End Page 136]On pages 25f., the author correctly warns about pitfalls occasioned by lack of articles, definite or indefinite, in Latin. Thus, as he is aware, both interpretation and translation are queasy and infected with responses and glosses insinuated by demands from our own language, especially our prevailing fondness for definite articles, for solidity, univocal designation, and instantiation. So far, so good. But I invite my readers here to reflect whether Della Rocca’s own pervasive use of the definite article in the quotations I indulged in surveying his task does not distort his whole conception of that project. Momentum from the word the converts issues and verbalisms entertained into furniture of the world.Perhaps even more insidiously, Della Rocca invokes a peculiar itemization whereby recent formulations impose “at least one” and “for any x” on all quantified inferential usages. Moderns need rather liberation from membership suggestions in set theory and its associated logic. His remarks about “extension” and “intension” help, but they do not remedy modernist ineptness regarding Spinoza’s use of ipse, per se, and in se. Further, like precision obscures care about subordinate and causal differentiations. A sort of subsumed merging under a unit whole simple in nature is dear to Spinoza, though such moves are uncongenial to us.My earlier account scanted chapters 6 and 9, which also follow from the basic project, though not as tidily. Chapter 6, “Falsity,” “solves certain thorny problems” in the account of that and its opposite; Chapter 9 gathers ruling materials to shed light on “substantive monism.” Their arrangement ought to assist our perplexities about involvement and simple grasp, whereas 6 is noticeably brief and 9 sketchy. Together, they scant (rather than illuminate) subtlety in Spinoza’s investigations of intellect and its involvment in the nature of things.Expository clarity also shows in current fashions for multiple cross-references between indented and numbered claims, paraphrases, inferential premisses, and glosses by others. But beyond hiding preference for propositional reductions, and beyond hindering smooth reflection, such dismemberment prejudices against modes of reasoning tracing “some certain sort of eternity” or “what is common to all and equally in part and whole.”Efforts to work rigorously with made-up words or adapted phrases only... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 10.4 (2003) 357-359 [Access article in PDF] Learning From Disunity Jennifer Radden In describing his four cases, Lloyd Wells (2003) throws out a challenge. He asks his readers to recognize similarities between their own more ordinary self-identity and the discontinuous narrative and seeming absence of a steady authorial subject resulting from disorders such as depression, schizophrenia, and Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). In light of these (...) cases, he implies, the unity of the self we have unreflectively assumed until now to be universal requires reconsideration. Psychopathology seems to force a sharpening, clarification, and closer conceptualization of our philosophical theories of self-identity.While acknowledging that philosophical categories and theories of narrative identity can help us to assess the ravages wrought by mental disorder, James Phillips (2003) is also respectful of the contribution of psychopathology to theorizing about identity: he ends his thoughtful discussion of Wells' cases by looking not at how philosophy can enlighten us about psychopathology but at how cases such as these can illuminate philosophical categories. Speculating on the tragic absence of narrative identity in schizophrenia and advanced Alzheimer's disease, Phillips concludes that, as he puts it, psychopathology "reconfigures the contours of our notion of narrative identity and requires a looser, minimized, nonsubstantial notion of the narrative self" and argues for a self that "transcends the limits and loss of narrative identity" (2003, 326).I also support the approach, shared by Wells and Phillips, that allows psychopathology to clarify and illuminate philosophical concepts and categories. Here, in a handful of footnotes to their insights, I want to point out ways that cases from psychopathology reveal distinguishable elements or aspects of self-identity often confused because, in the normal case, they form an unquestioned and apparently indissoluble unity. One of these is the difference between synchronic and diachronic subjective unity. Another is the difference between the elements of authorship and temporality in conceptions of narrative identity. And last is the difference between what I shall call constitutional identity and self-identity. Synchronic and Diachronic Identity The difference between synchronic and diachronic identity, elements so seamlessly blurred in more ordinary subjectivity, is nicely illustrated by Wells' cases. Mary's dissociative states leave her with interruptions in her diachronic identity: the memory of her experiences is fragmented and incoherent. Yet at any given moment, her synchronic unity is unimpaired. She recognizes and can describe the oneness of her experiences and their boundaries; she is aware which are her experiences and which are not. For all her scatteredness and dissociation, as Phillips puts it in describing Mary's case: "there is a strong and [End Page 357] articulate narrator... the fact remains that this I is there" (2003, 318).In contrast, the shy and self-conscious adolescent Edward seems to suffer not from diachronic but from synchronic disunity. (And if anything, as Melvin Woody [2003] points out, Edward's "narrative" seems to fuel the comparisons which so distress him about his uncomfortable and distressing subjective experiences.) Edward struggles to "delineate what's inside my mind and what's outside it... " When he thinks about what he sees as a firm boundary around the self in others which is not well demarcated in his own case, he remarks "... I completely lose any sense of myself" (p. 330).Thought insertion or "made" feelings in psychosis provide similar instances of such fracturing of their sufferer's synchronic identity (it is perhaps such experiences that Edward alludes to here; Wells' quotations are too sparse for us to tell). Just as Edward complains of losing any sense of himself, so other sufferers from these alarming conditions complain of losing a sense of the self's boundaries, of possession and mind control, and of being the unwelcome host to alien thoughts, feelings, and intentions.In normal experience diachronic and synchronic unity—my oneness across time and at a time—form a seamless whole. These cases, where one or the other is compromised, vividly remind us that these two forms of unity must be distinguished. Narrative Identity Phillips (2003) explicates an analysis of narrative identity which comprises entwined but distinguishable features: a narrating... (shrink)

The article defends the thesis that Skovoroda is a representative of syncretic culture and thinking, which combines philosophy, religion (faith), poetry (literature), theology into an unity. His universality, as a talented and comprehensively developed personality, also lies in this combining different sphere of a human activity. To combine all this, Skovoroda must be the bearer of syncretic thinking and perception of the world. But, such combination includes also philosophy and, therefore, subordinates it to spirituality. Skovoroda is a sage, who imparts (...) wisdom and sets an example of a morally clean life and strong faith. The works of Skovoroda should be viewed from the standpoint of syncretism. He did not create a new philosophy for Ukrainian culture, as did, for example, Socrates for Ancient Greek culture, Descartes for French culture, and Kant for German culture. To consider Skovoroda only a philosopher means to reduce him to a «highly specialized mental worker». It is necessary to read Skovoroda's works universally and syncretically, not philosophically (analytically and critically). The article examines also the weak and strong aspects of the syncretic creativity of Skovoroda for Ukrainian culture in general and Ukrainian philosophy in particular. In Skovoroda's works, there is no analysis and criticism of philosophical problems, there is no consistent rational-logical (step-by-step) construction of a philosophical conception, which he would defend with arguments. Instead, we find in Skovoroda's works many biblical quotations and their interpretation, that is, he uses the Bible to confirm his position and way of life. The authority of the Bible for Skovoroda is indisputable, so it is a source of wisdom for him. The author argues that Skovoroda is «internally new» for Ukrainian culture. He brings into Ukrainian culture Christianity, which differs from the traditional church, biblical symbolic hermeneutics and vegetarianism as a way of life. Skovoroda's life represents a life of integrated personality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Wittgenstein on Non-Mediative CausalityJames C. KlaggeIn the late autumn of 1947 Wittgenstein dictated a selection of manuscript material to a typist1 that contains some remarks so striking that they merit extensive quotation:903. No supposition seems to me more natural than that there is no process in the brain correlated with associating or with thinking; so that it would be impossible to read off thought-processes from brain-processes. I mean (...) this: if I talk or write there is, I assume, a system of impulses going out from my brain and correlated with my spoken or written thoughts. But why should the system continue further in the direction of the centre? Why should this order not proceed, so to speak, out of chaos? The case would be like the following—certain kinds of plants multiply by seed, so that a seed always produces a plant of the same kind as that from which it was produced—but nothing in the seed corresponds to the plant which comes from it; so that it is impossible to infer the properties or structure of the plant from those of the seed that it comes out of—this can only be done from the history of the seed. So an organism might come into being even out of something quite amorphous, as it were causelessly; and there is no reason why this should not really hold for our thoughts, and hence for our talking and writing. (Zettel 608)904. It is thus perfectly possible that certain psychological phenomena cannot be investigated physiologically, because physiologically nothing corresponds to them. (Z 609)905. I saw this man years ago; now I have seen him again, I recognize him, I remember his name. And why does there have to be a cause of this remembering in my nervous system? Why must something or other, whatever it may be, be stored-up there in any form? Why must a trace have been left behind? Why should there not be a psychological regularity to which no physiological regularity corresponds? If this upsets our concepts of causality, then it is high time they were upset. (Z 610) [End Page 653]906. The prejudice in favor of psycho-physical parallelism is also a fruit of the primitive conception of grammar. For when one admits a causality between psychological phenomena, which is not mediated physiologically, one fancies that in doing so one is making an admission of the existence of a soul alongside the body, a ghostly soul-nature. (cf. Z 611)909. Why should not the initial and terminal states of a system be connected by a natural law, which does not cover the intermediary state? (Only don’t think of efficacy/influence [Wirkung]!) (Z 613)918. …Well—but now that the structure of the eye is known—how does it come about that we act, react, in this way? But must there be a physiological explanation here? Why don’t we just leave explaining alone?—But you would never talk like that, if you were examining the behavior of a machine!—Well, who says that a living creature, an animal body, is a machine in this sense?— (Z 614)Lest you think, or hope, these ideas were just a passing fancy of Wittgenstein’s, it is worth noting that these passages were among the ones that he cut from this typescript to save in a box and rearrange and perhaps revise for future use. They were published posthumously as Zettel.2What are we to make of these striking ideas? Do they hint at “mystical vitalism”? Is there an intellectual trajectory along which they can be located and appreciated, even if perhaps ultimately rejected? Or is he simply making a “natural” objection to reductionism about memory?3In an earlier publication I briefly offered a motivation for these views,4 but I now have more to say and wish to try again. Earlier I saw these passages primarily in relation to Wittgenstein’s other views about mental phenomena, but I now think something can be gained by seeing them in relation to his views about causality. Unfortunately causality is not a topic about which Wittgenstein had... (shrink)

This textbook is designed for an Introduction to Proofs course organized around the themes of number and space. Concepts are illustrated using both geometric and number examples, while frequent analogies and applications help build intuition and context in the humanities, arts, and sciences. Sophisticated mathematical ideas are introduced early and then revisited several times in a spiral structure, allowing students to progressively develop rigorous thinking. Throughout, the presentation is enlivened with whimsical illustrations, apt quotations, and glimpses of mathematical history and (...) culture. Early chapters integrate an introduction to sets, logic, and beginning proof techniques with a first exposure to more advanced mathematical structures. The middle chapters focus on equivalence relations, functions, and induction. Carefully chosen examples elucidate familiar topics, such as natural and rational numbers and angle measurements, as well as new mathematics, such as modular arithmetic and beginning graph theory. The book concludes with a thorough exploration of the cardinalities of finite and infinite sets and, in two optional chapters, brings all the topics together by constructing the real numbers and other complete metric spaces. Designed to foster the mental flexibility and rigorous thinking needed for advanced mathematics, Introduction to Mathematics suits either a lecture-based or flipped classroom. A year of mathematics, statistics, or computer science at the university level is assumed, but the main prerequisite is the willingness to engage in a new challenge. (shrink)

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the ability to (...) ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (shrink)

Tracing the background of Davidson’s work in the positivists’ philosophical emigration of the 30’s and in Quine, Evnine’s “Introduction” offers a “map of the terrain to be covered” which stresses the “rationalistic” character of Davidson’s views on holism and rationality. Thus, “his main philosophical concerns ... language, the mental and action...are the ingredients of a philosophical anthropology.” In spite of Quinean roots, the view is that “Davidson has now wholly removed himself, philosophically speaking, from the empiricist tradition.” The result: (...) a “rationalism,...a genuine, non-empiricist philosophical vision.” Though appealing to those of a “rationalist” leaning, this theme seems to generalize Davidson’s criticisms of Quine’s behaviorism as a lapse from empiricism. Often, it arises from interpretive gloss just where the tough-minded reader seeks quotation. (shrink)

This paper considers the connection between automaticity, control and agency. Indeed, recent philosophical and psychological works play up the incompatibility of automaticity and agency. Specifically, there is a threat of automaticity, for automaticity eliminates agency. Such conclusions stem from a tension between two thoughts: that automaticity pervades agency and yet automaticity rules out control. I provide an analysis of the notions of automaticity and control that maintains a simple connection: automaticity entails the absence of control. An appropriate analysis, however, shows (...) that actions are forms of control and pervasively automatic even if automaticity implies the absence of control. Consequences are drawn for the theory of mental agency and the psychological concepts of automaticity and control. (shrink)

In 1635 a Latin translation was published of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems , which had occasioned his condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633. The Latin translation bore the title Systema Cosmicum. It had been organized by Elia Diodati , a Protestant of Italian origin born in Geneva and living in Paris, where he was a Parliament lawyer. Diodati, a confidante of Galileo, had gone into action after receiving a letter that may be regarded as Galileo's intellectual (...) testament, written the same day his legal testament was registered and he decided to journey from Florence to Rome to stand trial. Galileo's letter stated that “from reliable sources I hear the Jesuit Fathers have managed to convince some very important persons that my book is execrable and more harmful to the Holy Church than the writings of Luther and Calvin.”The translator was Mathias Bernegger , the Austrian‐born Protestant rector of the University of Strasbourg, who taught history and political science but had a background in mathematics. The publisher was the influential Dutch firm of the Elseviers, based in Leiden but with branches in several cities. The place of publication was Strasbourg, which at that time was a free city within the Holy Roman Empire. The book had two appendixes: a five‐page selection from Kepler's introduction to his Astronomia Nova , arguing that Scripture carries no weight in natural philosophy; and a Latin translation of Paolo Foscarini's 1615 booklet that had been condemned and banned by the Decree of the Index of 5 March 1616 for arguing that the earth's motion is compatible with Scripture. The book's frontispiece reproduced the one from the original edition—that of Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Copernicus engaged in conversation—but with the figure of Copernicus looking much younger than the original. And the title page carried two epigraphs: a Greek quotation from the Platonist philosopher Alcinous meaning “One must be mentally free if one wants to become a philosopher” and a Latin quotation from Seneca meaning “It is especially among philosophers that one must have equal liberty.”A year later , there appeared also in Strasbourg with the Elseviers and edited by Bernegger the first publication ever of Galileo's “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina,” which he had written in 1615. It had both the Italian text and a Latin translation by Diodati and bore the revealing title Nov‐antiqua Sanctissimorum Patrum et Probatorum Theologorum Doctrina de Sacrae Scripturae Testimoniis, in Conclusionibuis mere Naturalibus, Quae Sensata Experientia et Necessariis Demonstrationibus Evinci Possunt. It had a preface in which Diodati praised Galileo's astronomical accomplishments, blamed his trial on jealous rivals, and justified the depth and purity of his piety and religiousness. Diodati used the pseudonym Robertus Robertinus, which corresponded to the name of a Prussian poet named Robert Roberthin .These are some of the factual details in Nonnoi's book. Other chapters deal, in a similar vein, with the ambiguities of Galileo's atomism; with icons, models, and symbols in Galileo's Copernican propaganda; and with the image of Galileo in the astronomical writings of John Wilkins .Such details are fascinating and important for understanding Galileo's work and its aftermath, and so Nonnoi's book is useful for contributing such necessary spadework—in particular, the bibliographical documentation is especially valuable and the analysis of the pictures found in the works discussed shows considerable originality. Regrettably, Nonnoi does not integrate such details into an overarching thesis that might elaborate their significance; thus, the work of assimilating them remains to be done. (shrink)