Book reviewed in this article: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales. By Oliver Sacks.

Kirk’s aim in this book is to bridge what he calls “the intelligibility gap,” expressed in the question, “How could complex patterns of neural firing amount to this?”. He defends a position that he describes as “broadly functionalist,” which consists of several theses. I will briefly review them.

In this paper I propose a model of demonstrative thought. I distinguish token-demonstratives, that pick out individuals, from type-demonstratives, that pick out kinds, or properties, and provide a similar treatment for both. I argue that it follows from my model of demonstrative thought, as well as from independent considerations, that demonstration, as a mental act, operates directly on mental representations, not external objects. That is, though the relation between a demonstrative and the object or property demonstrated is semantically direct, the (...) mechanism by which a demonstrative acquires its referent involves mediation by a perceptual representation. Finally, I argue that so-called 'demonstrative concepts'—which I treat as type-demonstratives—cannot perform the various philosophical functions that have been assigned to them. (shrink)

People typically show excellent memory for information that is central to an emotional event but poorer memory for peripheral details. Not all studies demonstrate memory narrowing as a result of emotion, however. Critically important emotional information is sometimes forgotten; seemingly peripheral details are sometimes preserved. To make sense of both the general pattern of findings that emotion leads to memory narrowing, and findings that violate this pattern, this review addresses mechanisms through which emotion enhances and impairs memory. Divergent approaches to (...) characterising information as central versus peripheral are also addressed. By directly contrasting these approaches, and the evidence supporting them, this review helps to clarify when and how emotion enhances memory and provides directions for future research. Evidence shows that memory narrowing as a result of emotion, and a number of violations of the memory narrowing pattern, can be explained by the view that emotion enhances memory for information relevant to currently active goals. (shrink)

According to Chalmers (2018), the meta-problem of consciousness is 'the problem of explaining why we think that there is a problem of consciousness'. In this paper I argue that the key to understanding both consciousness itself and addressing the meta-problem is to understand what acquaintance is and what its objects are. Unfortunately, I think there are still some serious mysteries lurking here, which I present briefly in this commentary. In particular, on the view of acquaintance I favour, it is unclear (...) how our acquaintance with the contents of experience can serve as data for our theory of conscious experience. I end with some speculations concerning how to address this mystery. (shrink)

This philosophical analysis of the phenomenon of racism brings together some of the most influential analytic philosophers writing on racism today. The introduction by Tamas Pataki outlines the historical and thematic development of conceptions of race and racism, and locates the following essays against the backdrop of contemporary reactions to that development. While the framework is primarily analytic, the volume also includes essays deeply informed by psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and feminist and social theory. The fourteen chapters in this collection address three (...) interrelated questions: What is racism? What are the causes of racism? and What are the moral and political implications of racism? Although their approaches are wide ranging, the contributors to Racism in Mind broadly endorse a psychological-characterological approach to the understanding of many aspects of racism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Brandom's two-ply theory of action. For Brandom, action is the result of an agent acknowledging a practical commitment and then causally responding to that commitment by acting. Action is social because the content of the commitment upon which one acts is socially conferred in the game of giving and asking for reasons. On my proposal, instead of seeing action as the coupling of a rational capacity to acknowledge commitments and a non-rational capacity to reliably (...) respond to these commitments, we should see action as the coupling, or potential coupling, of a capacity to reason practically and a capacity to act on habits and bodily skills. In putting forward this alternative model of action, I aim to replace Brandom's rationalist brand of Pragmatism with a more classical kind, one that will let us see action as social not only at the level of reasons but also at the level of bodily habits and skills. (shrink)

Philosophical writing on the welfare state has taken a defensive turn in recent years, largely in response to two related phenomena: the re-emergence of pro-market ideologies in the larger political culture and the imperiled condition of real world welfare states in a global economy in which national governments have diminishing capacities for shaping the social and economic lives of their citizens. But thanks in part to the tireless advocacy of Philippe Van Parijs, an even more radically redistributive form of public (...) provision than the welfare state has come onto the intellectual agenda—and the political agenda too, at least in Belgium and the Netherlands. Van Parijs proposes that all citizens be accorded an unconditional “basic income grant” as large as is compatible with the need to generate as much wealth as possible for redistribution. By now, this idea has many defenders. It also boasts a genealogy extending back to such writers as Tom Paine, François Huet, Edward Bellamy and G. D. H. Cole. But Van Parijs has become its best-known and most adept philosophical proponent, and this book represents his most sustained effort to date to investigate its normative foundations. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that color is a relational feature of the distal objects of perception, a way of appearing. I begin by outlining three constraints any theory of color should satisfy: physicalism about the non‐mental world, consistency with what is known from color science, and transparency about color experience. Traditional positions on the ontological status of color, such as physicalist reduction of color to spectral reflectance, subjectivism, dispositionalism, and primitivism, fail, I claim, to meet all three constraints. By (...) treating color as a relational property, a way of appearing, the three constraints can be met. However, serious problems for this view emerge when considering the relation between illusory color experiences and veridical color experiences. I do not propose a solution to these problems. (shrink)

We examined the effects of three different training conditions, all of which involve the motor system, on kindergarteners’ mental transformation skill. We focused on three main questions. First, we asked whether training that involves making a motor movement that is relevant to the mental transformation—either concretely through action or more abstractly through gestural movements that represent the action —resulted in greater gains than training using motor movements irrelevant to the mental transformation. We tested children prior to training, immediately after training, (...) and 1 week after training, and we found greater improvement in mental transformation skill in both the action and move-gesture training conditions than in the point-gesture condition, at both posttest and retest. Second, we asked whether the total gain made by retest differed depending on the abstractness of the movement-relevant training, and we found that it did not. Finally, we asked whether the time course of improvement differed for the two movement-relevant conditions, and we found that it did—gains in the action condition were realized immediately at posttest, with no further gains at retest; gains in the move-gesture condition were realized throughout, with comparable gains from pretest-to-posttest and from posttest-to-retest. Training that involves movement, whether concrete or abstract, can thus benefit children's mental transformation skill. However, the benefits unfold differently over time—the benefits of concrete training unfold immediately after training ; the benefits of more abstract training unfold in equal steps immediately after training and during the intervening week with no additional training. These findings have implications for the kinds of instruction that can best support spatial learning. (shrink)

I examine Robert Brandom's reading of the classical pragmatists, as given in his new book Perspectives on Pragmatism: Classical, Recent, and Contemporary. I argue that his reading is deficient in certain fundamental respects, and that this deficiency illuminates important blind spots in Brandom's overall theoretical project. Specifically, I focus on Brandom's rationalist pragmatism and its rejection of the classical pragmatic conception of experience. I argue that this rejection is based on an overly instrumental reading of the classical figures, as well (...) as on an incorrect interpretation of them as succumbing to the Myth of the Given. My overall goal is to demonstrate that Brandom is lead astray in his encounter with the classical pragmatists because of his unwillingness to integrate into his theoretical picture the essentially embodied nature of human cognitive and practical activity. (shrink)

Various theories of moral cognition posit that moral intuitions can be understood as the output of a computational process performed over structured mental representations of human action. We propose that action plan diagrams—“act trees”—can be a useful tool for theorists to succinctly and clearly present their hypotheses about the information contained in these representations. We then develop a methodology for using a series of linguistic probes to test the theories embodied in the act trees. In Study 1, we validate the (...) method by testing a specific hypothesis (diagrammed by act trees) about how subjects are representing two classic moral dilemmas and finding that the data support the hypothesis. In Studies 2–4, we explore possible explanations for discrete and surprising findings that our hypothesis did not predict. In Study 5, we apply the method to a less well‐studied case and show how new experiments generated by our method can be used to settle debates about how actions are mentally represented. In Study 6, we argue that our method captures the mental representation of human action better than an alternative approach. A brief conclusion suggests that act trees can be profitably used in various fields interested in complex representations of human action, including law, philosophy, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, computer science, robotics, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The proposal of Rips et al. is motivated by discontinuity and input claims. The discontinuity claim is that no continuity exists between early (nonverbal) numerical representations and natural number. The input claim is that particular experiences (e.g., cardinality-related talk and object-based activities) do not aid in natural number construction. We discuss reasons to doubt both claims in their strongest forms.

I argue for the role of trust and cooperation as part of the foundation of digital commerce by expanding the reach of the Integrative Social Contract Theory of Donaldson and Dunfee. I propose that a digital business community can be a community in the morally relevant ways that Donaldson and Dunfee describe, and that the basic framework of ISCT can apply to the digital business world similarly to its application in the offline business world. I then analyze the roles of (...) trust and cooperation in e-commerce, showing how they are important to the digital business community and explaining their moral relevance under a digital form of ISCT. I use the ISCT framework to show that trust and cooperation are an instantiation of the hypernorm of necessary social efficiency, and that authentic microsocial norms developed for the ends of trust and cooperation carry moral responsibility. (shrink)

The view that species are individuals, as developed by Ghiselinand Hull, has been touted as explaining the role of type specimens intaxonomy. The kinship of this explanation with the Kripke-Putnam theoryof names has long been recognized. In light of this kinship, however,Hull's account of type specimens can be seen to entail two relatedinscrutability problems – unreasonable limits placed on the natureand extent of biological knowledge. An appreciation for these problemsinvites us to consider the proper relation between metaphysical andepistemological inquires in (...) the philosophy of science. (shrink)

Stem cell science, using both embryonic and a variety of tissue-specific stem cells, is advancing rapidly and offers promise to improve medical care in the future. Yet, with the notable exception of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, a long-established approach to treating certain cancers of the blood system, this promise is long term and most stem cell research focuses on basic scientific questions or the collection of pre-clinical data. Although some clinical trials are underway, most are focused on safety, and novel (...) effective therapy is likely a long way off. Despite the preliminary nature of most stem cell research, however, numerous clinics around the world offer stem cell “therapies” to patients today outside the context of a clinical trial. Although the number of patients who have received these stem cell-based interventions is unknown, anecdotal reports suggest a substantial population of patients is willing to try them, despite unresolved questions about their safety and efficacy. (shrink)

In his book Truth and Justification Habermas replaces his long-held discourse-theoretic conception of truth with what he calls a pragmatic theory of truth. Instead of taking truth to originate in the communicative interactions between subjects, this new theory ties truth to the action contexts of the lifeworld, contexts where the existence of the world is ratified in practice. This, Habermas argues, overcomes the relativism and contextualism endemic to the linguistic turn. This article has two goals: (1) to chart in detail (...) how Habermas’ new theory of truth overcomes relativism and contextualism; and (2) to argue for the thesis that Habermas’ specific way of meeting this objective is flawed insofar as he resists relativism and contextualism by yoking truth to a concept of objectivity that is not consistent with the larger pragmatic transformation of his thought. (shrink)

I explore the implications of recognizing two forms of access that might be constitutively related to phenomenal consciousness. I argue, in support of Block, that we don't have good reason to think that the link to reporting mechanisms is the kind of access that distinguishes an experience from a mere state.

Extract: Clearly, academic life takes place at the intersection of many social practices. If MacIntyre is right, the role-specific virtues of academic life should be understood in terms of these practices.2 Academic virtues are those excellences required to obtain the internal goods of the social practices constituting academic life. And the social practices of academic life are sustained, competitive and cooperative attempts to achieve a set of academic goals and realize academic forms of excellence. They are also sustained attempts to (...) expand and improve conceptions of these goals and forms of excellence. They emerge out of traditions—for instance the tradition of scientific argument— and must be understood in terms of these traditions. MacIntyre argues that this preliminary account of virtues in relation to social practices needs to be deepened in two ways: connecting it to the unity of an individual’s life on the one hand and to a coherent historical tradition on the other. Virtues are not just any set of traits delivering the internal goods of social practices, but those that serve to make coherent a person’s life and her place in an on-going tradition. They are crucial to lending meaning to one’s life and its struggles. (shrink)

The recent publication by Wylie et al. is reviewed, demonstrating that the p53 protein regulates the movement of transposons. While this work presents genetic evidence for a piRNA‐mediated p53 interaction with transposons in Drosophila and zebrafish, it is herein placed in the context of a decade or so of additional work that demonstrated a role for p53 in regulating transposons and other repetitive elements. The line of thought in those studies began with the observation that transposons damage DNA and p53 (...) regulates DNA damage. The presence of transposon movement can increase the rate of evolution in the germ line and alter genes involved in signal transduction pathways. Transposition can also play an important role in cancers where the p53 gene function is often mutated. This is particularly interesting as recent work has shown that de‐repression of repetitive elements in cancer has important consequences for the immune system and tumor microenvironment. (shrink)

Abstract.There is ample evidence that humans (and other primates) possess a knowledge instinct—a biologically driven impulse to make coherent sense of the world at the highest level possible. Yet behavioral decision‐making data suggest a contrary biological drive to minimize cognitive effort by solving problems using simplifying heuristics. Individuals differ, and the same person varies over time, in the strength of the knowledge instinct. Neuroimaging studies suggest which brain regions might mediate the balance between knowledge expansion and heuristic simplification. One region (...) implicated in primary emotional experience is more activated in individuals who use primitive heuristics, whereas two areas of the cortex are more activated in individuals with a strong knowledge drive: one region implicated in detecting risk or conflict and another implicated in generating creative ideas. Knowledge maximization and effort minimization are both evolutionary adaptations, and both are valuable in different contexts. Effort minimization helps us make minor and routine decisions efficiently, whereas knowledge maximization connects us to the beautiful, to the sublime, and to our highest aspirations. We relate the opposition between the knowledge instinct and heuristics to the biblical story of the fall, and argue that the causal scientific worldview is mathematically equivalent to teleological arguments from final causes. Elements of a scientific program are formulated to address unresolved issues. (shrink)

In his debate with Dreyfus McDowell defends the ‘pervasiveness thesis’, the thesis that rational mindedness pervades the lives of rational animals, their perceptual experiences and exercises of agency. To counter this idea, Dreyfus introduces the notion of ‘social standing’: the culturally inculcated yet non-conceptual sense of the appropriate distance that one should stand from another person. McDowell claims that social standing is not a counter-example to the pervasiveness thesis because it stands altogether outside of it. In this paper I argue (...) that this response is a misstep, that we should see social standing as fallingwithinthe pervasiveness thesis. While such phenomena do not normally fall within the scope of a subject's practical self- knowledge they are still pervaded by rational mindedness. They are because the dispositions and habits that comprise our second nature, although not the realization of an exercise of conceptual capacities, can be brought within the scope of a subject's practical self-knowledge and in fact changed, and this is enough to establish that they are pervaded by rational mindedness. I argue that we can find a picture like this in a Hegelian-pragmatist account of our habitual second nature. (shrink)