The theory of language that underlies Plotinus’ Enneads is considered in relation to his broader metaphysical vision. For Plotinus, language is neither univocal nor equivocal, but is something in-between, incapable of precisely describing reality, but nonetheless not completely useless. Propositional knowledge expressed discursively represents an imperfect shadow of reality which is defective in relation to the pure apprehension of Intellect. Passages in Plotinus which relate language to the sensible world are examined and it is argued that, although it plays a (...) useful role in relating the sensible world to Intellect, discursive reason is nonetheless intrinsically inferior to both as a mode of representation. Plotinus holds that the inadequacy of language is “global” in character; language cannot describe any aspect of reality precisely, from the mundane to the transcendent. Language as a whole is an inferior image or imitation of the world as a whole. Therefore, the flaws in our linguistic representations cannot all be untangled or conceptually unpacked by means of language. There are passages in the Enneads which hint at an underlying semantic holism. Plotinus’ theory implies that apparent verbal contradictions which occur in different contexts might nonetheless still represent the optimal linguistic description of a reality that strictly speaking is ineffable. Therefore, discursive logical deduction is not always reliable, and needs to be subordinated to a vision of Intellect. True philosophical reasoning (dialectic) represents ostension towards the transcendent. Those who are sufficiently liberated to attain to an apprehension of the Forms, thereby come to inhabit the same “higher world”, involving a shared mystical intersubjectivity, which can be expressed linguistically, but only in an approximate manner. Plotinus’ theory presents a potential way out of the nihilistic impasse into which contemporary philosophy has arguably become enmeshed. (shrink)

Phillips & Silverstein's focus on schizophrenia as a failure of “cognitive coordination” is welcome. They note that a simple hypothesis of reduced Gamma synchronisation subserving impaired coordination does not fully account for recent observations. We suggest that schizophrenia reflects a dynamic compensation to a core deficit of coordination, expressed either as hyper- or hyposynchronisation, with neurotransmitter systems and arousal as modulatory mechanisms.

4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended) is a relatively young and thriving field of interdisciplinary research. It assumes that cognition is shaped and structured by dynamic interactions between the brain, body, and both the physical and social environments. -/- With essays from leading scholars and researchers, The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition investigates this recent paradigm. It addresses the central issues of embodied cognition by focusing on recent trends, such as Bayesian inference and predictive coding, and presenting new insights, (...) such as the development of false belief understanding. -/- The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition also introduces new theoretical paradigms for understanding emotion and conceptualizing the interactions between cognition, language, and culture. With an entire section dedicated to the application of 4E cognition in disciplines such as psychiatry and robotics, and critical notes aimed at stimulating discussion, this Oxford handbook is the definitive guide to 4E cognition. -/- Aimed at neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers, The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition will be essential reading for anyone with an interest in this young and thriving field. (shrink)

Albert approaches critical rationalism as an alternative to other philosophical standpoints dominant in Germany: the conceptions of the Frankfurt School, hermeneutical thinking as represented by Gadamer, analytic philosophy, and logical empiricism. The author's purpose is to find a way out of the foundationalism of classical philosophy without falling back on the skeptical views so prevalent in today's philosophical thinking. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from (...) the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

We develop a version of a direct perception account of emotion recognition on the basis of a metaphysical claim that emotions are individuated as patterns of characteristic features. On our account, emotion recognition relies on the same type of pattern recognition as is described for object recognition. The analogy allows us to distinguish two forms of directly perceiving emotions, namely perceiving an emotion in the absence of any top-down processes, and perceiving an emotion in a way that significantly involves some (...) top-down processes ; and, in addition, an inference-based evaluation of an emotion. Our model clarifies the epistemology of emotion recognition. (shrink)

Abstract‘Assisted dying’ (an umbrella term for euthanasia and/or assisted suicide) is frequently defended as an act of autonomous self-determination in death but, given a choice, between 93.3% and 100% of patients are reluctant to self-administer (median 99.5%). If required to self-administer, fewer patients request assisted death and, of these, a sizable proportion do not self-administer but die of natural causes. This manifest avoidance runs counter to the concept of autonomous self-determination, even on the supposition that suicide could truly be autonomous. (...) The avoidance of self-administration does not show that self-administration, when it occurs, is necessarily autonomous. It suggests, rather, that there are other frames by which assisted dying is being understood. One such is desire for medical control, a desire shared by patients and doctors. Such a frame is not directed towards an exacting autonomy (self-directed action by the patient) but towards a comforting heteronomy (letting the doctor take control). (shrink)

The debate about direct perception encompasses different topics, one of which concerns the richness of the contents of perceptual experiences. Can we directly perceive only low-level properties, like edges, colors etc., or can we perceive high-level properties and entities as well? The aim of the paper is to defend the claim that the content of our perceptual experience can include emotions and also person impressions. Using these examples, an argument is developed to defend a liberal-content view for core examples of (...) social cognition. This view is developed and contrasted with accounts which claim that in the case of registering another person’s emotion while seeing them, we have to describe the relevant content not as the content of a perceptual experience, but of a perceptual belief. The paper defends the view that perceptual experiences can have a rich content yet remain separable from beliefs formed on the basis of the experience. How liberal and enriched the content of a perceptual experience is will depend upon the expertise a person has developed in the field. This is supported by the argument that perceptual experiences can be systematically enriched by perceiving affordances of objects, by pattern recognition or by top-down processes, as analyzed by processes of cognitive penetration or predictive coding. (shrink)

Albert Dzur proposes an approach he calls "democratic professionalism" to build bridges between specialists in domains like law, medicine, and journalism and the lay public in such a way as to enable and enhance broader public engagement ...

L’article part de l’observation que la recherche sur les théories du complot est actuellement en plein développement, mais qu’elle est également fragmentée. En particulier, il y a une division croissante entre les disciplines aux approches culturelles et qualitatives, telles que l’histoire, les études culturelles et l’ethnologie, et les disciplines aux approches quantitatives et empiriques telles que la psychologie et la science politique. L’article affirme que ce « grand fossé » doit être comblé pour que la recherche arrive à une compréhension (...) authentique des théories du complot. Comme première étape dans ce processus de rapprochement, l’article examine, du point de vue des études américanistes, des recherches conduites de l’autre côté du « grand fossé », en psychologie et science politique. Il résume les travaux conduits dans ces domaines et en fait une évaluation critique, se centrant sur la méthodologie, les hypothèses considérant les croyances conspirationnistes comme dysfonctionnelles, les arguments parfois circulaires, le centrage sur les aspects individuels plutôt que sociaux et collectifs, l’indifférence quant à la définition du phénomène et l’ignorance des différences culturelles et historiques. L’article conclut en présentant des recommandations pour de futurs projets de recherches en collaboration. (shrink)

Albert and De Ruiter provide an introduction to the Conversation Analytic approach to ‘repair’: the ways in which people detect and deal with troubles in speaking, hearing and understanding in conversation. They explain the basic turn‐taking structures involved, provide examples, explain recent developments in the field and highlight some important points of contact and contrast with work in the Cognitive Sciences.

ABSTRACTA paper in two parts, the first is a critique of the commonly held view among both cognitivist and non-cognitivist sport philosophers that conscious mental representation of knowledge that is a necessary condition for skill acquisition. The second is a defense of a necessary causal condition for skill acquisition, a necessary causal condition that is mimetic, physically embodied, and socially embedded. To make my case I rely throughout on a common thought experiment in and beyond the philosophy of sport literature, (...) the seminal work of Kuhn and Quine counter the representational theory of knowledge, and recent argument in the philosophy of sport related to neurophysiology, cognition, and intentionality. Ultimately I conclude that the failure of a necessary representational condition and its replacement by a necessary casual condition in skill acquisition jeopardizes much of what has been said in the philosophy of sport about not just skill acquisition but the more popular topic of high-level skill. It does, because it challenges the assumption that there is some necessary baseline knowledge that which, according to cognitivists, is brought forward in some way into highly skillful performance or, according to non-cognitivists, is somehow left behind or subsumed into a background in highly skillful performance. (shrink)

Volume 30, Issue 1, March 2024, Page 80-83.

The political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls’s a priori specification of the welfare state. An inductively derived specification of ideal-typical welfare states (...) suggests that horizontal redistribution, in line with the principle of social savings, is more important than vertical redistribution. Rawls’s preference for a social dividend or negative income tax scheme can be contrasted with the use of social insurance, but the latter has a claim to instantiate Rawlsian ideals better than a social dividend. There is a potential problem with the pre-emption of private savings in the welfare state, but this turns out not to be troublesome empirically or conceptually. The irony of the discussion is that those who have interpreted Rawlsian theory as justifying the welfare state have the better of the argument, despite Rawls’s own views. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity “the true and only turning point in history.” For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the (...) nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of _Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism_. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it_ _has remained one of Camus’ least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine’s “second revelation” of the Christian faith. Ronald Srigley’s translation of this seminal document helps illuminate these aspects of Camus’ work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus’ thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book’s literary value and supersedes the extant McBride translation by retaining a greater degree of literalness. Srigley has fully annotated _Christian Metaphysics_ to include nearly all of Camus’ original citations and has tracked down many poorly identified sources. When Camus cites an ancient primary source, whether in French translation or in the original language, Srigley substitutes a standard English translation in the interest of making his edition accessible to a wider range of readers. His introduction places the text in the context of Camus’ better-known later work, explicating its relationship to those mature writings and exploring how its themes were reworked in subsequent books. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of _Christian Metaphysics_ in Camus’ oeuvre. As the only stand-alone English version of this important work—and a long-overdue critical edition—his fluent translation is an essential benchmark in our understanding of Camus and his place in modern thought. (shrink)

Dissertação: LOPES, Albert Drummond. A infecção da alma: um estudo do combate à imoralidade no jornal O Diário no período do Estado Novo. 2014. Dissertação , Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciências da Religião, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte.

Hans Albert is the leading critical rationalist in the German-speaking world and the main critic of the hermeneutic tradition. He is well-known for applying the idea of critical reason to various kinds of human practice, including economics, politics, and law. But he has also improved on Popper's methodology by introducing the idea of rational heuristics. This collection of essays presents the core of his work on epistemology, philosophy of the social sciences, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of law. Most (...) of Albert's works have not been available in English. It is enormously useful to have these articles collected in a single volume. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, beyond a philosophy of sport, space should be made for a ‘philosophy from sport.’ A philosophy from sport is one that can allow us to see sport as more than instantiating broader social values or possessing an isolated set of unique values. It can, as I believe a philosophy from sport, by paying special attention to the actual practice of sport, bring with it ways of developing, informing, even justifying a set of broader social (...) values. Using as a test case Michael Sandel’s arguments counter markets in What Money Can’t Buy, with a particular focus on his critique of naming rights for stadiums and arenas, I maintain that sport shows how markets can be reformed in order not to suffer the charge that they breed inequality and corruption or indecency. In fact, with sport, I argue it is possible to see exactly how markets can serve equality, decency, and ultimately the pursuit of excellence. Relying, in part, on the work of philosophers of sport from div.. (shrink)

Our understanding of the nature and processing of figurative language is central to several important issues in cognitive science, including the relationship of language and thought, how we process language, and how we comprehend abstract meaning. Over the past fifteen years, traditional approaches to these issues have been challenged by experimental psychologists, linguists, and other cognitive scientists interested in the structures of the mind and the processes that operate on them. In Figurative Language and Thought, internationally recognized experts in the (...) field of figurative language, Albert Katz, Mark Turner, Raymond W. Gibbs Jr., and Cristina Cacciari, provide a coherent and focused debate on the subject. The book's authors discuss a variety of fundamental questions, including: What can figures of speech tell us about the structure of the conceptual system? If and how should we distinguish the literal from the nonliteral in our theories of language and thought? Are we primarily figurative thinkers and consequently figurative language users or the other way around? Why do we prefer to speak metaphorically in everyday conversation, when literal options may be available for use? Is metaphor the only vehicle through which we can understand abstract concepts? What role do cultural and social factors play in our comprehension of figurative language? These and related questions are raised and argued in an integrative look at the role of nonliteral language in cognition. This volume, a part of Counterpoints series, will be thought-provoking reading for a wide range of cognitive psychologists, linguists, and philosophers. (shrink)

This paper explores the nature of the dispute between the competing theses of intentionality and physicalism, as discussed by A. Marras in his paper "Intentionality and Physicalism: a Resolvable Dispute". Although as originally conceived neither thesis is viable, it is apparent that a physicalist account of human behavior must take into consideration the intentionality of human behavior. This paper reviews a recent attempt to give a physicalist reconstruction of intentionality and shows that such an approach succeeds in providing scientifically acceptable (...) explanations of human behavior without needing to answer the metaphysical questions that this dispute implies. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Zeitschrift für kritische Sozialtheorie und Philosophie Jahrgang: 3 Heft: 1 Seiten: 209-241.

Using the work of Richard Wright and personal interviews to portray racial interactions in the Jim Crow South, I illustrate how law enforcement used racial and sexual assaults to maintain black subordination. Jim Crow racism constituted a caste system in which one’s race was determined, not primarily by how one looked, but by one’s ancestry. I review and reject Oliver Cox’s thesis that caste did not exist in the Jim Crow South, and cite continuing examples of physical and sexual assaults (...) against individuals based on racial, gender, and caste differences. (shrink)

In this article I engage with Foucault’s reading of the Platonic dialogue Alcibiades in his Hermeneutics of the Subject, developing his view that this text offers a model of the self-constitution of the subject. Foucault’s reading is part of his larger aim to find alternative conceptualizations of subjectivity besides the Cartesian ones that he thinks have dominated modern thought. His reading has been contested; but I argue that the Alcibiades does indeed develop a notion of subjectivity as reflexive and self-constituting. (...) Moreover, two aspects of the text that Foucault misrepresents make even clearer the distance of its notion of subjecthood from a Cartesian view. First, the reflexive subject of the Alcibiades, though viewed as essentially intellectual, is the result of an ascetic practice of self-constitution. Second, this practice is essentially interpersonal, operating through reciprocal and equal dialectic. (shrink)

Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA präsentieren seit ihrer Gründung durch Paul Wilpert im Jahre 1962 Arbeiten des Thomas-Instituts der Universität zu Köln. Das Kernstück der Publikationsreihe bilden die Akten der im zweijährigen Rhythmus stattfindenden Kölner Mediaevistentagungen, die vor über 50 Jahren von Josef Koch, dem Gründungsdirektor des Instituts, ins Leben gerufen wurden. Der interdisziplinäre Charakter dieser Kongresse prägt auch die Tagungsakten: Die MISCELLANEA MEDIAEVALIA versammeln Beiträge aus allen mediävistischen Disziplinen - die mittelalterliche Geschichte, die Philosophie, die Theologie sowie die Kunst- und Literaturwissenschaften (...) sind Teile einer Gesamtbetrachtung des Mittelalters. (shrink)

David Haig propounds and illustrates the unity of a radically revised set of definitions of the family of terms at the heart of philosophy of cognitive science and mind: information, meaning, interpretation, text, choice, possibility, cause. This biological re-grounding of much-debated concepts yields a bounty of insights into the nature of meaning and life. An interpreter is a mechanism that uses information in choice. The capabilities of the interpreter couple an entropy of inputs to an entropy of outputs is (...) dispelled by observation. The second entropy is dispelled. I propose that an interpreter’s response to inputs meaning of the information for the interpreter. In this conceptual framework, the mechanisms of interpreters provide the much-debated link between Shannon information and semantics. (shrink)

At the time of writing, a British Member of Parliament has just been suspended from his Party for posting a Tweet in which he compared the level of serious adverse events after vaccination for COVI...