In its classical conception, game theory aspires to be a determinate decision theory for games, understood as elements of a structurally specified domain. Its aim is to determine for each game in the domain a complete solution to each player's decision problem, a solution valid for all real-world instantiations, regardless of context. "Permissiveness" would constrain the theory to designate as admissible for a player any conjecture consistent with the function's designation of admissible strategies for the other players. (...) Given permissiveness and other appropriate constraints, solution sets must contain only Nash equilibria and at least one pure-strategy equilibrium, and there is no solution to games in which no symmetry invariant set of pure-strategy equilibria forms a Cartesian product. These results imply that the classical program is unrealizable. Moreover, the program is implicitly committed to permissiveness, through its common-knowledge assumptions and its commitment to equilibrium. The resulting incoherence deeply undermines the classical conception in a way that consolidates a long series of contextualist criticisms. (shrink)

Marx criticized political economy for propounding an inverted, mystical view of economic reality. But he went beyond asserting the falsity and apologetic character of the doctrine to characterize it as reflecting a social practice of inversion or mystification — an inverted social world — in which individuals incorporate their own actions into a process whose dynamic lies beyond their control. Caught up in this process, individuals confront aspects of their own agency in the alien or reified form of a given, (...) determining reality. Marx leaves unclear exactly how the process exerts and maintains its hold on agents, the nature of the reasons they might have for wanting to free themselves of it, and under what conditions they could do so. However, it is possible to abstract somewhat from Marx's specific concerns and to model a self-reproducing practice of reification that works through the informational environment of decision. Though of wider interest, this more general conception can shed light on the nature and critique of Marx's inverted world. It draws on conceptual resources from decision theory, game theory and general equilibrium theory. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an increasing number of attempts to reconstruct Marxian theory in forms that can be assessed by reference to currently received standards in various disciplines. The work has even been said to establish a new paradigm: “analytical Marxism.” One doesn't have to endorse this claim to recognize a good deal of merit in the work. Through creative application of state-of-the-art methods to traditional Marxian issues, researchers have promoted productive cross-fertilization with non-Marxian programs and have revealed many (...) problems that must be resolved for fruitful development of Marxian theory. Marx's work can be relevant to today's problems only if it is examined from vantage points provided by subsequent scientific and philosophical achievements. Moreover, critical engagement with the best science of the day has been an essential part of the Marxian theoretical project from the beginning. (shrink)

Disjunctivism, as a theory of visual experience, claims that the mental states involved in a “good case” experience of veridical perception and a “bad case” experience of hallucination differ, even in those cases in which the two experiences are indistinguishable for their subject. Consider the veridical perception of a bar stool and an indistinguishable hallucination; both of these experiences might be classed together as experiences (as) of a bar stool or experiences of seeming to see a bar stool. This (...) might lead us to think that the experiences we undergo in the two cases must be of the same kind, the difference being that the former, but not the latter, is connected to the world in the right kind of way. Such a conjecture has been called a “highest common factor” or “common kind” assumption. At heart, disjunctivism consists in the rejection of this assumption. According the disjunctivist, veridical experiences and hallucinations do not share a common component. There are a host of interesting questions surrounding disjunctivism including: What is involved in the claims that good case and bad case experiences differ? Why might one might want to be a disjunctivist? What kinds of claims can the disjunctivist make about hallucination and illusion? These questions, and problems for the thesis, will be discussed as we proceed. (shrink)

Educational neutrality states that decisions about school curricula and instruction should be made independently of particular comprehensive doctrines. Many political philosophers of education reject this view in favor of some non-neutral alternative. Contrary to what one might expect, some prominent liberal neutralists have also rejected this view in parts of their work. This paper has two purposes. The first part of the paper concerns the relationship between liberal neutrality and educational neutrality. I examine arguments by Rawls and Nagel and argue (...) that some of the same arguments they use to justify liberal neutrality also justify educational neutrality; thus, if we accept these arguments for liberal neutrality, we should also accept educational neutrality. The second part of the paper defends educational neutrality against objections that it is impossible and objections that it is undesirable. (shrink)

This paper argues that egalitarian theories should be judged by the degree to which they meet four different challenges. Fundamentalist egalitarianism, which contends that certain inequalities are intrinsically bad or unjust regardless of their consequences, fails to meet these challenges. Building on discussions by T.M. Scanlon and David Miller, we argue that egalitarianism is better understood in terms of commitments to six egalitarian objectives. A consequence of our view, in contrast to Martin O'Neill's “non-intrinsic egalitarianism,“ is that egalitarianism is better (...) understood as a family of views than as a single ethical position. (shrink)

Standard models of adolescent risk taking posit that the cognitive abilities of adolescents and adults are equivalent, and that increases in risk taking that occur during adolescence are the result of socio emotional differences in impulsivity, sensation seeking, and lack of self-control. Fuzzy-trace theory incorporates these socio emotional differences. However, it predicts that there are also cognitive differences between adolescents and adults, specifically that there are developmental increases in gist-based intuition that reflects understanding. Gist understanding, as opposed to (...) verbatim-based analysis, generally has been hypothesized to have a protective effect on risk taking in adolescence. Gist understanding is also an essential element of informed consent regarding risks in medical decision- making. Evidence thus supports the argument that adolescents’ status as mature minors should be treated as an exception rather than a presumption, because accuracy in verbatim analysis is not mature gist understanding. Use of the exception should be accompanied by medical experts’ input on the bottom-line gist of risks involved in treatment. (shrink)

The neo-Kantian Hermann Cohen is famously anti-empiricist in that he denies that sensations can make a definable contribution to knowledge. However, in the second edition of Kant’s Theory of Experience (1885), Cohen considers a proposition that contrasts with both his other work and that of his followers: a Kantian who studies scientific claims to truth—and the grounds on which they are made—cannot limit himself to studying mathematics and logical principles, but needs to also investigate underlying presuppositions about the empirical (...) element of science. Due to his subjectivist approach, Cohen argues, Kant not only failed to explain how scientific observation and experiments are possible, but also misconceived the role of the ideas, particularly the idea of a system of nature. (shrink)

If we acknowledge that a perceptual experience’s sensory phenomenology is not inherently representational, we face a puzzle. On the one hand, sensory phenomenology must play an intimate role in the perception of ordinary physical objects; but on the other hand, our experiences’ purely sensory element rarely captures our attention. I maintain that neither indirect realism nor the dual component theory provides a satisfactory solution to this puzzle: indirect realism is inconsistent with the fact that sensory phenomenology typically goes (...) unnoticed by perceivers; while, the dual component theory cannot do justice to the important role that sensory phenomenology plays in our perceptual awareness of physical objects. I argue that in order to avoid the difficulties with each of the standard alternatives, we must characterize sensory phenomenology as functioning in the way that linguistic symbols function in thought. (shrink)

Epicurus claimed that „all sensations are true”, and that the false is only in the opinions. This paradoxical theory, very much criticized both by ancient and modern commentators, for it seems counterfactual, draws on Aristotle’s theory of sensations. Aristotle holds that sensations and opinions must be distinguished. As long as sensations stick to their „proper domain”, they remain trustworthy and cannot refute each other, regardless of whether they are similar or different in kind. Yet they can fail to (...) perceive the truth, when they pass beyond their proper domain into what one can call their „improper domain”. At this moment sensations resemble opinions and become fallible. So, to a certain extent, the divide between sensations and opinions becomes blurred. Epicurus seems to have taken up much of this theory. Yet he submitted it to a radical simplification: now, there is no room for the „improper domain”, so that all one sensation seizes always belongs to its „proper domain”. Thus it can never be refuted neither by a similar, nor by a dissimilar sensation in kind; therefore it is always and in every circumstance trustworthy. One can add that, in reshaping Aristotle’s theory of senses by removing the „improper domain”, Epicurus purged the theory of senses of all elements that could involve uncertainty and imprecision – which is typical for his strenuous attempt to achieve calm and serenity. (shrink)

The main interpretive claim of this book is that both Wittgenstein’s mature philosophical method and his much misunderstood critique of private language have their roots in his critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space–that is, the misleading, figurative analogy between physical space, or space simpliciter, and phenomenal space, or the “space” of appearances. His critique of this metaphor extends from his rejection of sense-data (Chapters 2 and 3), to his investigation of the asymmetry between first- and other-person pronouns in (...) conjunction with psychological vocabulary (Chapter 4), to his discussion of noticing aspects (Chapter 3), and, of course, to his revolutionary critique of the privacy of the mental (Chapter 3) and of the related, but more general, misleading metaphor of the inner and the outer. Wittgenstein’s critique of the idea of phenomenal space is, at the same time, the prototype for his new philosophical method–the method of grammatical investigation, which holds that many of the persistent problems of philosophy arise from failing to command a clear view of the grammar of various regions of our language and finding ourselves, as a result, vulnerable to misleading pictures of our mental lives, of our linguistic practices, of mathematics, and of countless fundamental elements of our world view(s), whose misunderstanding is the locus of the traditional problems of metaphysics (Chapter 3). Chapters 5, 6 and 7 argue for the continued relevance of Wittgenstein's critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space by showing how it applies to contemporary discussions of first-person authority, recent attempts to revive sense-datum theories, and the ongoing debate about sensory qualia. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Pragmatic Element in Knowledge And whatever our concepts or meanings may be, there is a truth about them just as absolute and just as definite and certain as in the case of mathematics. In other fields we so seldom try to think in the abstract, or by pure logic, that we do not notice this. But obviously it is just as true. Wherever there is any set of interrelated concepts, there, quite apart from all questions of (...) application or the things we use them of, we have generated a whole complex array of orderly relations or patterns of meaning. And there must be a truth about these - a purely logical truth, in abstracto, and a truth which is certain apart from experience - even though this is only a part of the truth which we want to discover, and the rest of it is of a quite different sort which depends upon experience. Ordinarily we do not separate out this a'priori truth, because ordinarily we do not distinguish the purely logical significance of concepts from the application of words to sensible things. In fact it is only the mathematician who is likely to do this at all. But I should like to indicate that this separation is always possible and that it is important for the understanding of knowledge. To this end, let me use the term 'concept' for this element of purely logical meaning. We can then discriminate the conceptual element in thought as the element which two minds must have in common - not merely may have or do have but absolutely must have in common - when they understand each other. I suppose it is a frequent assumption that we are able to apprehend one another's meanings because our images and sensations are alike. But a little thought will Show that this assumption is very dubious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

Film theory has for so long been concerned with sociological, empirical and psychoanalytic approaches that its place within our aesthetic sensibilities seems to have been forgotten.Deleuze and Cinema aims to bring back debates about film as an art form - as part of an aesthetic process which incorporates the 'bodies' of our material, technological and molecular worlds. While much film theory has looked at desire in terms of (visual and spectator) pleasure, Barbara Kennedy suggests, in this provocative new (...) study, that these different perceptions of 'body' are responsible, as well as the brain/mind, for the ways in which visual elements of colour, movement, rhythm and sensation are acquired within, through and beyond our consciousness.Film is visceral, vital and dynamic, and wider frameworks of understanding are needed to explain these aesthetic resonances. Deleuze and Cinema asks: how can we begin to understand the cinematic experience as one of material capture, processuality and movement - as opposed to a spectator/text relationship - where desire and pleasure are part of a complex 'aesthetics of sensation'?Through discussions of Orlando, The English Patient, Romeo and Juliet, Strange Days and Leon the book offers a new and creative collusion between Deleuzian philosophy - specifically Deleuze's ideas about desire, pleasure, sensation, affect and 'becoming-woman' - and contemporary film studies. (shrink)

objectif de ce chapitre est de réévaluer succinctement les relations entre la phénoménologie et la psychologie expérimentale naissantes à partir des positions de Franz Brentano et de Wilhelm Wundt. Contrairement à une idée reçue, je suggère, d’une part, que les programmes analytiques de Brentano et de Wundt reposent tous deux sur un procédé expérimental consistant à faire varier les parties des phénomènes psychiques étudiés. Mais je suggère aussi, d’autre part, que les théories de l’analyse psychique défendues par Wundt et Brentano (...) diffèrent sur plusieurs points essentiels – le plus manifeste étant que l’analyse brentanienne considère les actes (et non les sensations) comme éléments ou unités psychiques de référence. (shrink)

A curious irony hangs over the two similes of the lantern and the clepsydra which Empedocles used to describe his theories of seeing and breathing. Similes were a feature of Empedocles' style, and it is clear that on these two in particular he has lavished considerable care. They have been preserved in their entirety, as almost the longest continuous quotations which Aristotle makes from any author. Despite such auspicious beginnings, these two similes have proved peculiarly resistant to modern attempts at (...) interpretation. The reason for this, I shall try to show, is that certain features in the two similes took on a spurious significance as a result of Plato's remodelling of Empedocles' theories. Difficulties of interpretation have been caused by trying to read back these innovations of Platonic theory into details of the similes that in their original context were fortuitous and inessential.In Plato vision occurs when fire leaves the eye and joins fire outside to form a single compacted body, along which movements from the visible object are communicated as sensations to the eye.According to Theophrastus, Empedocles explained vision as the result of effluences which are given off from objects and enter the appropriate pores of the eye. Dark effluences enter the watery pores of the eyes, and bright effluences enter the fiery pores of the eye. As I have tried to show in an earlier article, Empedocles distinguished good and bad vision, by day and by night, for eyes with a predominance of fire and for eyes with a predominance of water. Good vision results when the dark and light elements which enter the eye are equally balanced. Poor vision results either when there is too much fire in the eye, so that we are dazzled, or when there is too much water in the eye, so that our vision is dimmed. In the whole of his detailed and one would have thought exhaustive account, Theophrastus says nothing about fire leaving the eye as a factor in the act of vision. (shrink)

The dissertation analyzes the theory of "logical space" developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I show how this idea represents a development of arguments first put forward by Hermann von Helmholtz, the physicist and physiologist. Helmholtz--instead of honouring Kant's distinction between on the one hand time and space, and, on the other, empirical qualia --stretched the Kantian spatial manifold to cover the other qualia as well: the qualia are also organized in manifolds; and this new, extended manifold (...) is the "space" of all possible human experience. He explained this a priori mesh as being a consequence of the physiological constitution of our bodies, and the physical constitution of the world in which they are situated. The subject is enclosed in an inner world whose structure is the network of possible sensation; outside of her is a world of unknown complexity; and separating the two is what Heinrich Hertz called the "no-man's-land" of sense-physiology, a border zone regulating all traffic between the two realms, common to both, yet proper to neither. ;Wittgenstein, in his Tractatus, adapted the picture-theories of Helmholtz and Hertz to his analysis of logic. He too was confronted with the problem of defining a field of possible experience, of possible facts: his analysis of Russell's and Frege's logical theories had led him to the conclusion that the fundamental properties of logic could not be accounted for without assuming such an a priori space. Thus he assimilated Russell's types to the dimensions of a manifold, the elements of which were his Sachverhalte, or elementary facts. The truth-functions of our logic are defined on top of this space: it is the basis on which all symbolic systems, including those of the natural sciences, are erected. (shrink)

Inhaltsverzeichnis/Table of Contents: Rudolf HALLER: Zwei Vorworte in einem. Evelyn DÖLLING: Alexius Meinong: "Der blinde Seher Theiresias". Jaakko HINTIKKA: Meinong in a Long Perspective. Richard SYLVAN: Re-Exploring Item-Theory. Francesca MODENATO: Meinong's Theory of Objects: An Attempt at Overcoming Psychologism. Jan WOLE??N??SKI: Ways of Dealing with Non-existence. Karel LAMBERT: Substitution and the Expansion of the World. Terence PARSONS: Meinongian Semantics Generalized. Reinhardt GROSSMANN: Thoughts, Objectives and States of Affairs. Peter SIMONS: Meinong's Theory of Sense and Reference. Barry SMITH: (...) More Things in Heaven and Earth. Michele LENOCI: Meinongs unvollständige Gegenstände und das Universalienproblem. Maria E. REICHER: Gibt es unvollständige Gegenstände? Dale JACQUETTE: Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing. Herbert HOCHBERG:s, Functions, Existence and Relations in the Russell-Meinong Dispute, the Bradley Paradox and the Realism-Nominalism Controversy. Jacek PA_NICZEK: Are Contradictions Still Lurking in Meinongian Theories of Objects? Marie-Luise SCHUBERT KALSI: Apriorische Elemente im Denken. Liliana ALBERTAZZI: Forms of Completion. Johann Ch. MAREK: Zwei Gegenstände und ein Inhalt. Zur Intentionalität bei Meinong. Wolfgang KÜNNE: Some Varieties of Thinking. Reflections on Meinong and Fodor. Alberto VOLTOLINI: Is Meaning Without Actually Existing Reference Naturalizable? Markus S. STEPANIANS: Russells Kritik an Meinongs Begriff des Annahmeschlusses. Nenad MIŠ_EVI_: Imagination and Necessity. R.D. ROLLINGER: Meinong on Perception: Two Questions Concerning Propositional Seeing. Wolfgang G. STOCK: Die Genese der Theorie der Vorstellungsproduktion der Grazer Schule. Rudolf HALLER: Über Meinongs Wissenschaftstheorie. Alfred SCHRAMM: Meinongs Wahrscheinlichkeit. Karl SCHUHMANN: Der Wertbegriff beim frühen Meinong. Wilhelm BAUMGARTNER: Wertpräsentation. Ursula ZEGLÉN: Meinong's Analysis of Lying. Seppo SAJAMA: Hitting Reality: France Veber's Concept of Zadevanje. Matja_ POTR_: Sensation According to Meinong and Veber. Róbert SOMOS: Zwei Schüler Brentanos: Ákos von Pauler und Meinong. J.C. NYÍRI: Palágyis Kritik an der Gegenstandstheorie. David M. ARMSTRONG: Reaction to Meinong. (shrink)

In a work recently published as part of the Cambridge Elements series, Janet Levin brings together the most important contemporary theories that attempt to answer the question of the mental. In her book, The Metaphysics of Mind (2022), she acknowledges that the metaphysical questions surrounding the mind should be distinguished from the epistemological and moral ones. While taking into consideration the implications of the epistemological and moral questions for the metaphysics of mind, Levin focuses primarily on the metaphysical questions. To (...) accomplish the task at hand, she analyzes Dualism, Type-Identity Theory, Role Functionalism, Russellian Monism, and Eliminativism (or Illusionism). As she makes clear at the outset of her book, the aim of her text is not to argue for or against a certain metaphysical theory of mind, but rather to assess the merits and demerits of each theory objectively. A good metaphysics of mind should account for certain elements that are taken to be key to the controversy over the mental. These elements range from the qualitative character of sensations and perceptual experiences, the outer-directedness of intentional states (beliefs, desires, etc.) to — basically— the space the mind occupies in nature as a whole. In this piece, I review each theory of mind separately, as approached by Levin. Then I conclude my review with some critical remarks about the book. (shrink)

This study examines the cross‐cultural generality of Hering's (1878/1964) color‐opponent theory of color appearance. English‐speaking and Somali‐speaking observers performed variants of two paradigms classically used to study color‐opponency. First, both groups identified similar red, green, blue, and yellow unique hues. Second, 25 English‐speaking and 34 Somali‐speaking observers decomposed the colors present in 135 Munsell color samples into their component Hering elemental sensations—red,green,blue, yellow, white, and black—or else responded “no term.” Both groups responded no term for many samples, notably purples. (...) Somali terms for yellow were often used to name colors all around the color circle, including colors that are bluish according to Hering's theory. Four Somali Grue speakers named both green and blue elicitation samples by their term for green. However, that term did not name the union of all samples called blue or green by English speakers. A similar pattern was found among three Somali Achromatic speakers, who called the blue elicitation sample black or white. Thus, color decomposition by these Somali‐speaking observers suggests a lexically influenced re‐dimensionalization of color appearance space, rather than a simple reduction of the one proposed by Hering. Even some Somali Green‐Blue speakers, whose data were otherwise similar to English, showed similar trends in yellow and blue usage. World Color Survey data mirror these results. These within‐ and cross‐cultural violations of Hering's theory do not challenge the long‐standing view that universal sensory processes mediate color appearance. However, they do demonstrate an important contribution of language in the human understanding of color. (shrink)

La conception des mathématiques chez Poincaré est une pièce maîtresse de sa théorie de la connaissance. Les mathématiques y jouent un rôle constitutif et médiateur, très proche de celui que Kant leur avait assigné dans sa Critique. Afin d’éclaircir les rapports complexes entre les notions d’intuition, de construction et de convention chez Poincaré, nous nous appuyons sur les analogies et les contrastes avec la source kantienne. La continuité et la cohérence de la théorie de la connaissance de Poincaré en sortent (...) renforcées.Poincaré’s philosophy of mathematics plays a key role in his general philosophy of knowledge. Mathematics is considered, by Poincaré, as a constitutive element of experience and it plays a “schematic” role between the conventional frameworks of geometry and theoretical physics on one hand and, on the other hand, sensations. We stress the Kantian roots of such a conception of mathematics, trying to explain the respective importance of the notions of intuition, construction and convention in Poincaré’s theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Walter Benn Michaels's The Shape of the Signifier: 1967 to the End of History makes the ostensive cul-de-sac of identity politics the dominant symptom of postmodernism per se. The Shape connects its argument to the controversy over intention and interpretation created by Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels's twenty-year-old essay "Against Theory." This very connection, however, highlights the not-quite-acknowledged presence of a certain type of romanticism in both works that each also wants to attack. Misunderstanding Paul de Man's notion (...) of materiality, Michaels becomes the latest thinker hoping to free us from the inchoateness of romantic sensation, both as the indulgence of sensory experience and the cognitive sloppiness of nonmeaning as the sense of meaning. Far from a Fukuyama-inspired postmodern condition, Michaels's scenario actually adumbrates a basic problem between romanticism and modernism-as-modernity. (shrink)

We give a short proof of the fundamental theorem of central element theory. The original proof is constructive and very involved and relies strongly on the fact that the class be a variety. Here we give a more direct nonconstructive proof which applies for the more general case of a first-order class which is both closed under the formation of direct products and direct factors.

Curiously, Charles Sanders Peirce and Maurice Merleau-Ponty raise the same objection to British empiricism: its foundational tenet is nominalist. In his 1869 review of a new edition of James Mill's Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind, Peirce traces the foundational tenet of Mill's work back to Hume's Copy Principle—that all of our ideas are fainter copies of our impressions—and then remarks, If I compare a red book and a red cushion, there is, according to them [the "English psychologists," (...) among whom Peirce includes Mill, Hume, and Berkeley], no general sensation red which enters into both these images, nor is there any idea of a general respect... (shrink)

Modifications of current theories of ordinal, interval and extensive measurement are presented, which aim to accomodate the empirical fact that perfectly exact measurement is not possible (which is inconsistent with current theories). The modification consists in dropping the assumption that equality (in measure) is observable, but continuing to assume that inequality (greater or lesser) can be observed. The modifications are formulated mathematically, and the central problems of formal measurement theory--the existence and uniqueness of numerical measures consistent with data--are re-examined. (...) Some results also are given on a problem which does not arise in current theories: namely that of determining limits of accuracy attainable on the basis of observations. (shrink)

Selective scientific realists disagree on which theoretical posits should be regarded as essential to the empirical success of a scientific theory. A satisfactory account of essentialness will show that the (approximate) truth of the selected posits adequately explains the success of the theory. Therefore, (a) the essential elements must be discernible prospectively; (b) there cannot be a priori criteria regarding which type of posit is essential; and (c) the overall success of a theory, or ‘cluster’ of propositions, (...) not only individual derivations, should be explicable. Given these desiderata, I propose a “unification criterion” for identifying essential elements. (shrink)

In general, seventeenth‐century philosophers seem to have assumed that intentionality is an essential characteristic of our mental life. Malebranche is perhaps the only philosopher in the period who stands out clearly against the prevailing orthodoxy; he is committed to the thesis that there is a large class of mental items ‐ sensations ‐ which have no representational content. In this paper I argue that due attention to this fact makes it possible to mount at least a partial defence of his (...) notorious doctrine of ‘the rainbow‐coloured soul’; Malebranche's doctrine is a striking anticipation of modern adverbial theories of sensation. I then argue that failure to appreciate the non‐intentional character of sensations for Malebranche vitiates one recent attempt to explain why he accepted the Cartesian doctrine of the beastmachine; in contrast to the Radners, I suggest that Malebranche has the philosophical resources to offer an interesting theory of animal consciousness, and that his failure to develop such a theory rests largely on his acceptance of certain theological arguments. The paper ends by speculating about how Malebranche's theological commitments may have encouraged him to adopt the philosophically important thesis that intentionality is not the mark of the mental. (shrink)

This paper explores the truism that people think about what they say. It proposes that, to satisfy their own goals, people often plan their speech acts to affect their listeners' beliefs, goals, and emotional states. Such language use can be modelled by viewing speech acts as operators in a planning system, thus allowing both physical and speech acts to be integrated into plans. Methodological issues of how speech acts should be defined in a planbased theory are illustrated by defining (...) operators for requesting and informing. Plans containing those operators are presented and comparisons are drawn with Searle's formulation. The operators are shown to be inadequate since they cannot be composed to form questions (requests to inform) and multiparty requests (requests to request). By refining the operator definitions and by identifying some of the side effects of requesting, compositional adequacy is achieved.The solution leads to a metatheoretical principle for modelling speech acts as planning operators. (shrink)

In general, seventeenth‐century philosophers seem to have assumed that intentionality is an essential characteristic of our mental life. Malebranche is perhaps the only philosopher in the period who stands out clearly against the prevailing orthodoxy; he is committed to the thesis that there is a large class of mental items ‐ sensations ‐ which have no representational content. In this paper I argue that due attention to this fact makes it possible to mount at least a partial defence of his (...) notorious doctrine of ‘the rainbow‐coloured soul’; Malebranche's doctrine is a striking anticipation of modern adverbial theories of sensation. I then argue that failure to appreciate the non‐intentional character of sensations for Malebranche vitiates one recent attempt to explain why he accepted the Cartesian doctrine of the beastmachine; in contrast to the Radners, I suggest that Malebranche has the philosophical resources to offer an interesting theory of animal consciousness, and that his failure to develop such a theory rests largely on his acceptance of certain theological arguments. The paper ends by speculating about how Malebranche's theological commitments may have encouraged him to adopt the philosophically important thesis that intentionality is not the mark of the mental. (shrink)

Disgust (Ekel, dégoût) is a state of high alert. It acutely says "no" to a variety of phenomena that seemingly threaten the integrity of the self, if not its very existence. A counterpart to the feelings of appetite, desire, and love, it allows at the same time for an acting out of hidden impulses and libidinal drives. In Disgust, Winfried Menninghaus provides a comprehensive account of the significance of this forceful emotion in philosophy, aesthetics, literature, the arts, psychoanalysis, and (...) class='Hi'>theory of culture from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics addressed include the role of disgust as both a cognitive and moral organon in Kant and Nietzsche; the history of the imagination of the rotting corpse; the counter-cathexis of the disgusting in Romantic poetics and its modernist appeal ever since; the affinities of disgust and laughter and the analogies of vomiting and writing; the foundation of Freudian psychoanalysis in a theory of disgusting pleasures and practices; the association of disgusting "otherness" with truth and the trans-symbolic "real" in Bataille, Sartre, and Kristeva; Kafka's self-representation as an "Angel" of disgusting smells and acts, concealed in a writerly stance of uncompromising "purity"; and recent debates on "Abject Art.". (shrink)

St. Augustine's just war theory involves eight principal elements: a) a punitive conception of war, b) assessment of the evil of war in terms of the moral evil of attitudes and desires, c) a search for authorization for the use of violence, d) a dualistic epistemology which gives priority to spiritual goods, e) interpretation of evangelical norms in terms of inner attitudes,f) passive attitude to authority and social change, g) use of Biblical texts to legitimate participation in war, and (...) h) an analogical conception of peace. It does not include non-combatant immunity or conscientious objection. A contemporary assessment of the elements is offered. (shrink)

Emotional experiences typically labelled “being moved” or “feeling touched” may belong to one universal emotion. This emotion, which has been labelled “kama muta”, is hypothesised to have a positive valence, be elicited by sudden intensifications of social closeness, and be accompanied by warmth, goosebumps and tears. Initial evidence on correlations among the kama muta components has been collected with self-reports after or during the emotion. Continuous measures during the emotion seem particularly informative, but previous work allows only restricted inferences on (...) intra-individual processes because time series were cross-correlated across samples. In the current studies, we instead use a within-subject design to replicate and extend prior work. We compute intra-individual cross-correlations between continuous self-reports on feeling moved and (1) positive and negative affect; (2) goosebumps and subjective warmth and (3) appraisals of closeness and morality. Results confirm the predictions of kama muta theory that feeling moved by intensified communal sharing cross-correlates with appraised closeness, positive affect, warmth and (less so) goosebumps, but not with negative affect. Contrary to predictions, appraised morality cross-correlated with feeling moved as much as appraised closeness did. We conclude that strong inferences on emotional processes are possible using continuous measures, replace earlier findings, and are largely in line with theorising. (shrink)

The article tries to inquire a third way in normative ethics between consequentialism or utilitarianism and deontology or Kantianism. To find such a third way in normative ethics, one has to analyze the elements of these classical theories and to look if they are justified. In this article it is argued that an adequate normative ethics has to contain the following five elements: (1) normative individualism, i. e., the view that in the last instance moral norms and values can only (...) be justified by reference to the individuals concerned, as its basis; (2) consideration of the individuals’ concerns and interests—aims, desires, needs, strivings—insofar as they have a justificatory function; (3) a pluralism of references of these concerns and hence of moral norms and values to all possible elements of actions; (4) the necessity of a principle of aggregation and weighing with regard to these concerns; (5) finally, as a central principle of aggregation and weighing, the principle of relative reference to self and others, operating as a generalizing meta-principle that guides the application of concrete principles and decisions. (shrink)

In formal semantics, structure is treated as the essential ingredient in the creation of sentence meaning from individual word meaning. This book introduces some of the foundational concepts, principles and techniques in the formal semantics of natural language and outlines the mathematical principles that underlie linguistics meaning. Using English examples, Yoad Winter presents the most useful tools and concepts of formal semantics in an accessible style and includes a variety of practical exercises so that readers can learn to utilize these (...) tools effectively. For readers with an elementary background in set theory and linguistics or with an interest in mathematical modelling, this fascinating study is an ideal introduction to natural language semantics. Designed as a quick yet thorough introduction to one of the most vibrant areas of research in modern linguistics today this volume reveals the beauty and elegance of the mathematical study of meaning. (shrink)