It has often been argued that Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem has major implications for our understanding of the human mind. Gödel himself hoped that the results of his theorem, combined with Turning’s work on computers and phenomenological analysis, would establish that the human mind contains an element totally different from a finite combinatorial mechanism. Decades of attempts to establish this by reasoning about Gödel’s theorem and Turing’s work are now widely taken to be unsuccessful. The present article, in accord with (...) Gödel’s suggestion, adds extended phenomenological analysis to the discussion. It also focuses on the “going outside the system” step central to Gödel’s method of proof, rather than on the implications of the theorem itself. Analysis of the “I-it” intentional structure, held by phenomenology to underlie all ordinary experience, yields a simple model that (i) resolves long-standing conceptual problems associated with the “I-it”, the most basic structure of phenomenology, (ii) clarifies the “going outside” step crucial to Gödel’s method of proof, (iii) avoids conceptual problems associated with this step, (iv) identifies the step as an instance of a natural pre-mathematical operation of ordinary thought, and (v) suggests that the step itself is intrinsically non-algorithmic. Logical analysis of role of this step in Gödel’s proof then shows, independently of phenomenological considerations, that anything (human or not) that can prove Gödel’s theorem soundly by his method cannot be entirely algorithmic. Further implications for the nature of the mind are then suggested. (shrink)

The study of conscious experience per se has not kept pace with the dramatic advances in PET, fMRI and other brain-scanning technologies. If anything, the standard approaches to examining the 'view from within' involve little more than cataloguing its readily accessible components. Thus the study of lived subjective experience is still at the level of Aristotelian science, leading to a widespread scepticism over the possibility of a truly scientific study of conscious experience. Drawing on a wide range of approaches -- (...) from phenomenology to meditation -- The View From Within examines the possibility of a disciplined approach to the study of subjective states. The focus is on the practical issues involved. (shrink)

In this book philosophers, physicists, psychologists, neurophysiologists, computer scientists, and others address this central topic in the growing discipline..

This paper proposes a third meditation-category—automatic self-transcending— to extend the dichotomy of focused attention and open monitoring proposed by Lutz. Automaticself-transcending includes techniques designed to transcend their own activity. This contrasts with focused attention, which keeps attention focused on an object; and open monitoring, which keeps attention involved in the monitoring process. Each category was assigned EEG bands, based on reported brain patterns during mental tasks, and meditations were categorized based on their reported EEG. Focused attention, characterized by beta/gamma activity, (...) included meditations from Tibetan Buddhist, Buddhist, and Chinese traditions. Open monitoring, characterized by theta activity, included meditations from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions. Automaticself-transcending, characterized by alpha1 activity, included meditations from Vedic and Chinese traditions. Between categories, the included meditations differed in focus, subject/object relation, and procedures. These findings shed light on the common mistake of averaging meditations together to determine mechanisms or clinical effects. (shrink)

"The Inner Dimension" examines the philosophical significance of a remarkable family of experiences central to Eastern philosophical and meditation traditions, and reported by creative geniuses in the West from Plato through Einstein. Empirical research on ordinary people practicing traditional Eastern meditation techniques now indicates that these otherwise rarely encountered experiences actually reflect widely accessible universal potentials of ordinary human awareness. The "Inner Dimension" responds to this research by exploring the significance of these experiences for a wide range of philosophical issues (...) - self, knowledge, mind-and-matter, creativity, values, and human potential - as articulated by major Western philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Mill, and Wittgenstein. Its analyses and approach throughout are straightforwardly empirical and non-metaphysical. Its implications, however, are revolutionary. (shrink)

It stands to reason that full understanding of what is involved in the ‘hard problem’ will emerge only on the basis of systematic scientific investigation of the subjective phenomena of consciousness, as well as the objective phenomena of matter. Yet the idea of such a systematic scientific investigation of the subjective phenomena of consciousness has largely been absent from discussions of the ‘hard problem’. This is due, apparently, both to philosophical objections to the possibility of such a science of consciousness, (...) and to the absence of appropriate subjective investigative methodologies. The present paper argues that cognitive-developmental research on the development of the mental/physical distinction in young children undercuts standard philosophical objections to the possibility of an appropriate scientific study of the phenomena of consciousness, that methodologies for exploring the contents and dynamics of onsciousness akin to those developed in Eastern cultures could play a significant role in the development of such a science of consciousness, and that the experience of ‘pure consciousness’ often reported in association with these methodologies suggests reformulation of our ordinary ideas about the relationships between consciousness, qualia, and the objective world that may prove particularly useful for resolution of the ‘hard problem’. (shrink)

This paper presents the pure consciousness theory of self, derived from Eastern meditation traditions, and uses it to unravel some of the paradoxes of Western philosophical models of the self. The theory is ontologically neutral and compatible with the widest variety of different ontologies. However the theory does, I think, have significant implications for questions of personal identity, emotional maturity and moral values, but exploring these topics here would take us too far afield. The article attempts to show something of (...) the potential value for our traditional philosophical discussions of self of taking into account the pure consciousness experience, widely discussed in Eastern, but not Western, philosophical traditions. For if the phenomenological analyses are even roughly correct, it would appear that the experience is capable of resolving some major Western issues about self, clarifies our commonsense intuition, and is properly identified by philosophical analysis as being experience of self itself. (shrink)

How, from a scientific standpoint, should we understand mystical experiences? On the one hand such experiences are obviously capable of being studied scientifically. Nevertheless there is a sense in which such experiences often seem strongly opposed to our ordinary scientific views of reality, for they often seem to point to a domain quite outside that examined by naturalistic empirical science. Indeed, this is often precisely what seems to be ‘mystical’ about them. The present essay takes a hard look at specific (...) question of the possible significance of these experiences for scientific naturalism. (shrink)

We agree with Josipovic that a fundamental differentiating feature of meditation techniques is whether they remain within the dualistic subject–object cognitive structure, or they transcend this structure to reveal an underlying level of non-dual awareness. Further discussion is needed to delineate the basic non-dual experience in meditation, where all phenomenal content is absent, from the more advanced experience of non-duality in daily life, where phenomenal content is obviously present as well. In this discussion, it is important to recognize that the (...) experiencer–object relation makes the experience dual or non-dual, rather than the nature of the object experienced. (shrink)

There is a long history of inquiry about human nature and the nature of the self. It stretches from the ancient tradition of Socratic self-knowledge in the context of ethical life to contemporary discussions of brain function in cognitive science. At the beginning of the modern era, Descartes was led to the conclusion that self-knowledge provided the single Archimedean point for all knowledge. His thesis that self is a single, simple, continuing, and unproblematically accessible mental substance resonated with common sense, (...) and quickly came to dominate European thought. Against this background, the philosophical problem pertaining to self-identity arises and continues to define much of the contemporary discussion. Notably, it arises in the context of the first sustained discussion of consciousness in the philosophical literature, and at a precisely definable point in space, time, and text, in the pages of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Locke defines it as the problem of personal identity. Briefly stated, the problem involves finding criteria that can account for the unity of the self in conscious experience over time. Locke's solution -- that consciousness maintains its identity over time only so far as memory extends to encompass past experience -- almost immediately produced philosophical controversies that have not abated to this day. (shrink)

Response to the Commentary on ‘The View from Within’ The numerous commentators to this Special Issue have greatly enhanced its focus and usefulness. We thank them all very sincerely for their efforts. Within the restricted space of this rejoinder we cannot respond in detail to all the issues raised. Instead, we shall concentrate first on some fundamental criticisms.The remaining additions and complementary ideas will only be touched on briefly, merely to see them in perspective. We shall start with our two (...) main critics of the global enterprise, Baars and Nixon. They both offer arguments that our enterprise is misguided, but their arguments fall on two opposite extremes: empirical and hermeneutical. (shrink)

How should one understand knowledge-wh ascriptions? That is, how should one understand claims such as ‘‘I know where the car is parked,’’ which feature an interrogative complement? The received view is that knowledge-wh reduces to knowledge that p, where p happens to be the answer to the question Q denoted by the wh-clause. I will argue that knowledge-wh includes the question—to know-wh is to know that p, as the answer to Q. I will then argue that knowledge-that includes a contextually (...) implicit question. I will conclude that knowledge is a question-relative state. Knowing is knowing the answer, and whether one knows the answer depends (in part) on the question. (shrink)

Discovering someone disagrees with you is a common occurrence. The question of epistemic significance of disagreement concerns how discovering that another disagrees with you affects the rationality of your beliefs on that topic. This book examines the answers that have been proposed to this question, and presents and defends its own answer.

In this study of events and their places in our language and thought, Bennett propounds and defends views about what kind of item an event is, how the language of events works, and about how these two themes are interrelated. He argues that most of the supposedly metaphysical literature is really about the semantics of their names, and that the true metaphysic of events--known by Leibniz and rediscovered by Kim--has not been universally accepted because it has been tarred with the (...) brush of a false semantic theory. (shrink)

Davidson's account of weakness of will dependsupon a parallel that he draws between practicaland theoretical reasoning. I argue that theparallel generates a misleading picture oftheoretical reasoning. Once the misleadingpicture is corrected, I conclude that theattempt to model akratic belief on Davidson'saccount of akratic action cannot work. Thearguments that deny the possibility of akraticbelief also undermine, more generally, variousattempts to assimilate theoretical to practicalreasoning.

Students of perception have long puzzled over a range of cases in which perception seems to tell us distinct, and in some sense conflicting, things about the world. In the cases at issue, the perceptual system is capable of responding to a single stimulus — say, as manifested in the ways in which subjects sort that stimulus — in different ways. This paper is about these puzzling cases, and about how they should be characterized and accounted for within a general (...) theory of perception. After rehearsing the sort of case at issue (§1), I’ll examine critically some of the strategies by which philosophers and perceptual psychologists have attempted to account for them (§2). Finally, I’ll present an alternative computational account of the puzzle cases, argue that this view is superior to its competitors, and examine some of its implications (§3). (shrink)

The boldest and most unsettling of the major early modern philosophers, Spinoza, had a much greater, if often concealed, impact on the international intellectual scene and on the early Enlightenment than philosophers, historians, and political theorists have conventionally tended to recognize. Europe-wide efforts to prevent the reading public and university students learning about Spinoza, the man and his work, in the years immediately after his death in 1677, dominated much of his early reception owing to the revolutionary implications of his (...) thought for philosophy, religion, practical ethics and lifestyle, Bible criticism, and political theory. Nevertheless, contrary to what has sometimes been maintained, his general impact was immediate, very widespread, and profound. One of the main objectives of the book is to show how early and how deeply Leibniz, Bayle, Arnauld, Henry More, Anne Conway, Richard Baxter, Robert Boyle, Henry Oldenburg, Pierre-Daniel Huet, Richard Simon, and Nicholas Steno, among many others, were affected by and led to wrestle with his principal ideas. (shrink)

The revised edition of this highly successful text provides a clear and accessible introduction to some of the most important questions of political philosophy. Organized around major issues, Wolff provides the structure that beginners need, while also introducing some distinctive ideas of his own.

Epistemic Courage is a timely and thought-provoking exploration of the ethics of belief, which shows why epistemology is no mere academic abstraction - the question of what to believe couldn't be more urgent. Jonathan Ichikawa argues that a skeptical, negative bias about belief is connected to a conservative bias that reinforces the status quo.

Various scientists and philosophers have heavily criticized what they see as problematic forms of ‘nutritional reductionism’ or ‘nutritionism’ whereby studying food–health interactions at the level of isolated food components produces largely misguided science and misleading interpretations. However, the exact target of these diverse criticisms remains elusive, and its implications are overstated, which may hinder scientific understanding. To better identify the types of flaws supposedly hindering reductionist research, we disentangle three types of reductionist claims to better determine what the debate is (...) about and to propose ways to move it forward. We then present a qualified defence of the reductionist programme that hinges on the ability to identify nutritional causes that make a difference, which we illustrate through central examples in the history of nutrition. This defence is taken further by using insights from the philosophy of mechanisms to analyse how the field of nutritional ecology offers a synthetic framework to explain, generate, and test predictions about nutrient–organism interactions, which is premised on the biological mechanisms of nutrient-specific appetite regulation. The result, which we call ‘synthetic reductionism’, avoids many, though perhaps not all, of the challenges raised by anti-reductionists, and also highlights the potential of reductionism to identify nutritional difference makers. (shrink)

An examination of the philosophy of Anne Conway (1631-1679) and the main aspects of her fascinating work, Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy.

Suppositions can be introduced in either the indicative or subjunctive mood. The introduction of either type of supposition initiates judgments that may be either qualitative, binary judgments about whether a given proposition is acceptable or quantitative, numerical ones about how acceptable it is. As such, accounts of qualitative/quantitative judgment under indicative/subjunctive supposition have been developed in the literature. We explore these four different types of theories by systematically explicating the relationships canonical representatives of each. Our representative qualitative accounts of indicative (...) and subjunctive supposition are based on the belief change operations provided by AGM revision and KM update respectively; our representative quantitative ones are offered by conditionalization and imaging. This choice is motivated by the familiar approach of understanding supposition as `provisional belief revision' wherein one temporarily treats the supposition as true and forms judgments by making appropriate changes to their other opinions. To compare the numerical judgments recommended by the quantitative theories with the binary ones recommended by the qualitative accounts, we rely on a suitably adapted version of the Lockean thesis. Ultimately, we establish a number of new results that we interpret as vindicating the often-repeated claim that conditionalization is a probabilistic version of revision, while imaging is a probabilistic version of update. (shrink)

Questions about the ontology of color matter because colors matter. Colors are extremely pervasive and salient features of the world. Moreover, people care about the distribution of these features: they expend money and effort to paint their houses, cars, and other possessions, and their clear preference for polychromatic over monochromatic televisions and computer monitors have consigned monochromatic models to the status of rare antiques. The apparent ubiquity of colors and their importance to our lives makes them a ripe target for (...) ontological questions such as the following: " • What is the nature of colors? " • Are they, as they seem to be, properties of objects? (shrink)

Le plus ancien exemple de l'utilisation de statues féminines pour remplacer des colonnes se trouvant à Delphes, l'article suggère que ce sont les exigences du sanctuaire, avec son espace réduit, qui sont en quelque sorte à l'origine de ce type. Ces figures peuvent être mises en relation avec un petit groupe de trésors éoliques et ioniques de Delphes qui étaient ornés d'une profusion de moulures au décor élaboré. La richesse de l'architecture y était rehaussée par l'addition de la sculpture et (...) par l'introduction d'une frise ionique sculptée continue à la place des denticules. La grande taille des moulures suggère qu'à Delphes les architectes ioniens tentèrent de reproduire en miniature la profusion et l'élégance des grands temples monumentaux de leur patrie. C'est dans le cadre de ce processus de miniaturisation que la figure féminine isolée aurait été introduite, à la place des tambours de colonnes sculptés utilisés dans les temples colossaux d'Ionie de l'Est. L'idée, reprise ensuite par l'architecte de l'Érechthéion, se serait répandue à partir d'Athènes. (shrink)

How do we know what's (metaphysically) possible and impossible? Arguments from Kripke and Putnam suggest that possibility is not merely a matter of (coherent) conceivability/imaginability. For example, we can coherently imagine that Hesperus and Phosphorus are distinct objects even though they are not possibly distinct. Despite this apparent problem, we suggest, nevertheless, that imagination plays an important role in an adequate modal epistemology. When we discover what is possible or what is impossible, we generally exploit important connections between what is (...) possible and what we can coherently imagine. We can often come to knowledge of metaphysical modality a priori. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of some recent debates about the relationship between reasons and rational requirements of coherence - e.g. the requirements to be consistent in our beliefs and intentions, and to intend what we take to be the necessary means to our ends.

The flight from foundationalism in the earlier part of this century left several options in its wake. Distress over the possibility of foundationalist replies to the regress problem, coupled with consternation over the thought of circular reasoning mysteriously becoming acceptable as the circle gets large led to the attraction of holistic theories of a coherentist variety. Yet, such coherentisms seemed to leave the belief system cut off from the world, and perhaps a better idea was to abandon the approach to (...) epistemology that centered on the concepts of evidence and justificatory relations and focus instead on connections between our thoughts and the world which they are about, an idea leading to causal and reliability theories. (shrink)

I argue that “consent” language presupposes that the contemplated action is or would be at someone else’s behest. When one does something for another reason—for example, when one elects independently to do something, or when one accepts an invitation to do something—it is linguistically inappropriate to describe the actor as “consenting” to it; but it is also inappropriate to describe them as “not consenting” to it. A consequence of this idea is that “consent” is poorly suited to play its canonical (...) central role in contemporary sexual ethics. But this does not mean that nonconsensual sex can be morally permissible. Consent language, I’ll suggest, carries the conventional presupposition that that which is or might be consented to is at someone else’s behest. One implication will be a new kind of support for feminist critiques of consent theory in sexual ethics. (shrink)

The Indian Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu is known for his critical contribution to Buddhist Abhidharma thought, his turn to the Mahayana tradition, and his concise, influential Yogacara-Vijñanavada texts. _Paving the Great Way_ reveals another dimension of his legacy: his integration of several seemingly incompatible intellectual and scriptural traditions, with far-ranging consequences for the development of Buddhist epistemology and the theorization of tantra. Most scholars read Vasubandhu's texts in isolation and separate his intellectual development into distinct phases. Featuring close studies of Vasubandhu's (...) _Abhidharmakosabhasya_, _Vyakhyayukti_, _Vimsatika_, and _Trisvabhavanirdesa_, among other works, this book identifies recurrent treatments of causality and scriptural interpretation that unify distinct strands of thought under a single, coherent Buddhist philosophy. In Vasubandhu's hands, the Buddha's rejection of the self as a false construction provides a framework through which to clarify problematic philosophical issues, such as the nature of moral agency and subjectivity under a broadly causal worldview. Recognizing this continuity of purpose across Vasubandhu's diverse corpus recasts the interests of the philosopher and his truly innovative vision, which influenced Buddhist thought for a millennium and continues to resonate with today's philosophical issues. An appendix includes extensive English-language translations of the major texts discussed. (shrink)

The larger philosophical world has on the whole turned from a mix of averted gaze and outright antipathy toward x‐phi, to a mix of grudging acceptance and enthusiastic embrace. This chapter explains that the experimental philosophy is relevant, and that it is dangerous, and explains some ways that people can do more to remain both. Experimental philosophy's semi‐official sigil of the burning armchair has advertised its dangerousness for the past decade and a half as well. The chapter explains that it (...) is a threat that is every bit as potently present in positive program x‐phi as it is in negative program work. To explore the idea that experimental philosophy's positive contributions will still be primarily negative in nature, the chapter interrogates the passage from Timothy Williamson. It focuses on the wheat‐from‐chaff project of separating signal from noise in the evidence produced by intuitions and the like. (shrink)

D. M. Armstrong famously claims that deterministic laws of nature are contingent relations between universals and that his account can also be straightforwardly extended to irreducibly probabilistic laws of nature. For the most part, philosophers have neglected to scrutinize Armstrong’s account of probabilistic laws. This is surprising precisely because his own claims about probabilistic laws make it unclear just what he takes them to be. We offer three interpretations of what Armstrong-style probabilistic laws are, and argue that all three interpretations (...) are incompatible either with some feature of Armstrong’s broader metaphysics or with essential features of his account of laws (or both). (shrink)

Humans often attribute the things that happen to one or another actual cause. In this chapter, we survey some recent philosophical and psychological research on causal attribution. We pay special attention to the relation between graphical causal modeling and theories of causal attribution. We think that the study of causal attribution is one place where formal and experimental techniques nicely complement one another.

Conditional sentences are among the most intriguing and puzzling features of language, and analysis of their meaning and function has important implications for, and uses in, many areas of philosophy. Jonathan Bennett, one of the world's leading experts, distils many years' work and teaching into this Philosophical Guide to Conditionals, the fullest and most authoritative treatment of the subject. An ideal introduction for undergraduates with a philosophical grounding, it also offers a rich source of illumination and stimulation for graduate (...) students and professional philosophers. (shrink)