Over the last twenty years, in all of these neighbouring fields, modal systems have been developed that we call multi-dimensional. (Our definition of multi ...

Relationalism maintains that perceptual experience involves, as part of its nature, a distinctive kind of conscious perceptual relation between a subject of experience and an object of experience. Together with the claim that perceptual experience is presentational, relationalism is widely believed to be a core aspect of the naive realist outlook on perception. This is a mistake. I argue that naive realism about perception can be upheld without a commitment to relationalism.

This volume explores the different aspects of the thinking of Marsilius of Inghen . It is devoted to the background of his philosophy and theology, to the significance of his many writings, and to the impact of his thought.

John Hyman insists that Frege-style cases for depiction show that any sound theory of depiction must distinguish between the ‘sense’ and the ‘reference’ of a picture. I argue that this rests on a mistake. Making sense of the cases does not require the distinction.

This book employs contemporary philosophy, scientific research, and clinical reports to argue that pain, though real, is not an appropriate object of scientific generalisations or an appropriate target for medical intervention. Each pain experience is instead complex and idiosyncratic in a way which undermines scientific utility. In addition to contributing novel arguments and developing a novel position on the nature of pain, the book provides an interdisciplinary overview of dominant models of pain. The author lays the needed groundwork for improved (...) models and targeted treatments at a time when pain science, pain medicine, and philosophy are explicitly searching for both and failing to find them. The Complex Reality of Pain will be of interest to a broad range of researchers and students, including those working in philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, health, cognitive and behavioural psychology, and pain science. (shrink)

Despite the conceptual problems in identifying the placebo effect, an increasing number of multidisciplinary inquiries rest on the assumption that there is a distinct class of effects, placebo effects. In this chapter, I argue against this assumption. I present cases and characterizations of the placebo effect as offered in the literature, and argue that the latter are subject to insurmountable problems. Moreover, I argue that identification of placebo effects as such is not useful for the three main purposes offered in (...) the literature. I then offer suggestions for why it may remain intuitive that some effects are placebo effects and close by noting the potential benefits of ultimately explaining away these intuitions. (shrink)

Het verhaal van de natuurkunde is ook een persoonlijk verhaal, want achter de feiten gaan altijd mensen schuil. Van Einstein, die Beethoven op zijn viool probeert te spelen, tot Van Swinden, die jarenlang in het planetarium in Franeker werkt. Cees Andriesse, die 'Titan kan niet slapen' schreef, een biografie over Christiaan Huygens, heeft veel gevoel voor deze verhalen. In deze nieuwe geschiedenis van de natuurkunde wordt dan ook ruim aandacht besteed aan de zoektocht en wederwaardigheden van grote figuren, maar ook (...) van collega's uit de tijd dat Andriesse in Groningen werkte. De wetenschap draait om onmiskenbare relaties tussen harde feiten; die gaan spreken onder de pen van Andriesse, die oog heeft voor de ontdekkers en zichtbaar maakt hoe zijn eigen begrip is ontstaan. Het is hem niet te doen om de mechanisering van de natuurkunde, maar om de historisering daarvan. Dit boek biedt een nieuw perspectief op grote ontdekkingen, waarbij zowel God, als literatuur als psychologie een rol spelen. (shrink)

Mimesis is a fundamental and pervasive human concept, but has attracted little attention from Johannine scholarship. This is unsurprising, since Johannine ethics, of which mimesis is a part, has only recently become a fruitful area of research. Bennema contends that scholars have not yet identified the centre of Johannine ethics, admittedly due to the fact that mimesis is not immediately evident in the Johannine text because the usual terminology for mimesis is missing. This volume is the first organized study on (...) the concept of mimesis in the Johannine literature. The aim of the study is to establish that mimesis is a genuine Johannine concept, to explain its particulars and to show that mimesis is integral to Johannine ethics. Bennema argues that Johannine mimesis is a cognitive, creative process that shapes the believer's identity and behaviour within the context of the divine family. Besides being instrumental in people's moral transformation, mimesis is also a vital mechanism for mediating the divine reality to people. (shrink)

This book discusses the Aristotelian setting of Thomas Hobbes' main work on natural philosophy, "De Corpore (1655).

What is wrong with ad hoc hypotheses? Ever since Popper’s falsificationist account of adhocness, there has been a lively philosophical discussion about what constitutes adhocness in scientific explanation, and what, if anything, distinguishes legitimate auxiliary hypotheses from illicit ad hoc ones. This paper draws upon distinct examples from pseudoscience to provide us with a clearer view as to what is troubling about ad hoc hypotheses. In contrast with other philosophical proposals, our approach retains the colloquial, derogative meaning of adhocness, and (...) calls attention to the way in which the context of a theoretical move bears on the charge of adhocness. We also discuss the role of motivations implicit in the concept of adhocness, and the way ad hoc moves draw on theory-internal rationalizations. (shrink)

Painful pains are, paradigmatically, unpleasant and motivating. The dominant view amongst philosophers and pain scientists is that these two features are essentially related and sufficient for painfulness. In this article, I first offer scientifically informed characterizations of both unpleasantness and motivational oomph and argue against other extant accounts. I then draw on folk-characterized cases and current neurobiological and neurobehavioral evidence to argue that both dominant positions are mistaken. Unpleasantness and motivational oomph doubly dissociate and, even taken together, are insufficient for (...) painfulness. (shrink)

Sigmund Freud sah die Anziehungskraft christlich-religiöser „Illusionen“ in der möglichen Aussöhnung des Menschen mit dem Tod begründet. Heute hat die moderne Industriegesellschaft die Religion jedoch weitestgehend hinter sich gelassen, die Vorstellungen von Tod und Sterben haben sich gewandelt. Marina Brandes untersucht, wie, in welchem Alter, an welchen Orten und unter welchen Umständen heute im Vergleich zu vormodernen Epochen normalerweise gestorben wird. Sie zeigt, welche Assoziationen mit dem Tod verknüpft sind und entwickelt vor dem Hintergrund der Medizinalisierung, der Institutionalisierung des Sterbens (...) und der Ausgrenzung der Sterbenden, Perspektiven für ein versöhntes, gutes Sterben. (shrink)

Many people assume that fictional entities are encapsulated in the world of fiction. I show that this cannot be right. Some works of fiction tell us about pieces of poetry, music, or theatre written by fictional characters. Such creations are fictional creations, as I will call them. Their authors do not exist. But that does not take away that we can perform, recite, or otherwise generate actual instances of such works. This means we can bring such individuals actually into existence, (...) as the works they are. I conclude that the assumption about encapsulation is untenable, unless an exception is made for types. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists often assume that mirror reflections are optical illusions. According to many authors, what we see in a mirror appears to be behind it. I discuss two strategies to resist this piece of dogma. As I will show, the conviction that mirror reflections are illusions is rooted in a confused conception of the relations between location, direction, and visibility. This conception is unacceptable to those who take seriously the way in which mirrors contribute to our experience of the (...) world. My argument may be read as an advertisement of the neglected field of philosophical catoptrics, the philosophical study of the optical properties of mirrors. It enables us to recast familiar issues in the philosophy of perception. (shrink)

Johannine ethics was a problematic topic for a long time and has only been an acceptable and fruitful area of research since 2012. To stimulate and guide future research, this article proposes a model of Johannine ethics that consists of five aspects: Graeco-Roman virtue ethics is the broad ethical context for Johannine ethics; family is the theological context for Johannine ethics; mimesis is central to Johannine ethics; moral reasoning is the cognitive route to ethics; Spirit and community empower ethical living. (...) The argument is that the Johannine writings present ethics as divine family education that has mimesis at its centre and is facilitated by moral reasoning and the Spirit as the moral force. An Appendix contains a list of publications on Johannine ethics between 2012 and 2022. (shrink)

Many people have a fascination with ‘senseless violence’ and are concerned about its rise in our society. In the real world, however, violence is rarely senseless. It is not random and haphazard but driven by rational motives and justifications and governed by its own internal logic. The myth of ‘senseless violence’ taps into certain moral intuitions, but it has little or nothing to do with reality. If we want to prevent violent acts, we need to understand the motivations of the (...) perpetrators rather than portraying their violence as random, mysterious, devoid of reason. I apply these insights to the extreme atrocities committed by the group known as the Islamic State and show how the myth of senseless violence has led many policymakers and commentators astray. (shrink)

Die Idee zu der in diesem Band dokumentierten Tagung ist im Rahmen des disziplinübergreifenden Nachwuchswissenschaftsnetzwerkes THESIS entstanden. Der Dialog über die fachlichen und disziplinären Grenzen hinweg hat bei THESIS seit dessen Gründung im Jahre 1990 stets einen großen Raum eingenommen. Anderen Fächern Respekt und Interesse entgegenzubringen und sich nicht von stereotypen Vorurteilen leiten zu lassen, ist konstitutiver Bestandteil im Selbstverständnis des Netzwerkes. Selbstverständlich gibt es in einem solchen Verbund eine Reihe von Gelegenheiten (darunter auch den einen oder anderen entwicklungsfördernden Konflikt), (...) das eigene Bild vom Anderen und das andere Bild vom Eigenen zur Sprache zu bringen und zu hinterfragen. Auf der Basis dieser bestehenden Kommunikationsstrukturen trafen sich am 11. Oktober 2003 in Göttingen 12 junge Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler zwischen, über und auch auf den Grenzen ihrer eigenen Herkunftsdisziplinen, um den Trendbegriff [alpha]Transdisziplinarität" auf seine Substanz zu prüfen. (shrink)

Part of the distinction between artefacts, objects made by humans for particular purposes, and natural objects is that artefacts are subject to normative judgements. A drill, say, can be a good drill or a poor drill, it can function well or correctly or it can malfunction. In this paper I investigate how such judgements fit into the domain of the normative in general and what the grounds for their normativity are. Taking as a starting point a general characterization of normativity (...) proposed by Dancy, I argue how statements such as ‘this is a good drill’ or ‘this drill is malfunctioning’ can be seen to express normative facts, or the content of normative statements. What they say is that a user who has a desire to achieve a particular relevant outcome has a reason to use, or not to use, the artefact in question. Next this analysis is extended to show that not just statements that say that an artefact performs its function well or poorly, but all statements that ascribe a function to an artefact can be seen as expressing a normative fact. On this approach the normativity of artefacts is analyzed in terms of reasons on grounds of practical, and to a lesser extent theoretical, rationality. I close by investigating briefly to what extent reasons on moral grounds are, in the analysis adopted here, involved in the normativity of artefacts.Keywords: Artefact; Normativity; Instrumental reason; Practical rationality; Function; Use. (shrink)

The present study examined whether individuals with full-blown memories of highly implausible events are prone to commit source monitoring errors. Participants reporting previous-life memories and those without such memories completed a false fame task. This task provides an index of source monitoring errors . Participants with previous-life memories had a greater tendency to judge the names of previously presented non-famous people as famous than control participants. The two groups did not differ in terms of correct recognition of new non-famous names (...) and famous names. Although dissociation, cognitive failures, sleep-related experiences, depressive symptoms, and signs of psychological distress were all significantly higher in participants with previous-life memories than in controls, these variables did not predict the false fame illusion. (shrink)

For a long time, philosophers of science have expressed little interest in the so-called demarcation project that occupied the pioneers of their field, and most now concur that terms like “pseudoscience” cannot be defined in any meaningful way. However, recent years have witnessed a revival of philosophical interest in demarcation. In this paper, I argue that, though the demarcation problem of old leads to a dead-end, the concept of pseudoscience is not going away anytime soon, and deserves a fresh look. (...) My approach proposes to naturalize and down-size the concept, anchoring it in real-life doctrines and fields of inquiry. First, I argue against the definite article “the” in “the demarcation problem”, distinguishing between territorial and normative demarcation, and between different failures and shortcomings in science apart from pseudoscience. Next, I argue that pseudosciences can be fruitfully regarded as simulacra of science, doctrines that are not epistemically warranted but whose proponents try to create the impression that they are. In this element of imitation or mimicry, I argue, lies the clue to their common identity. Despite the huge variety of doctrines and beliefs gathered under the rubric of “pseudoscience”, and the wide range of defects from which they suffer, pseudosciences all engage in similar strategies to create an impression of epistemic warrant. The indirect, symptomatic approach defended here leads to a general characterization of pseudosciences in all domains of inquiry, and to a useful diagnostic tool. (shrink)

Traditional eliminativism is the view that a term should be eliminated from everyday speech due to failures of reference. Following Edouard Machery, we may distinguish this traditional eliminativism about a kind and its term from a scientific eliminativism according to which a term should be eliminated from scientific discourse due to a lack of referential utility. The distinction matters if any terms are rightly retained for daily life despite being rightly eliminated from scientific inquiry. In this article, I argue that (...) while scientific eliminativism for pain may be plausible, traditional eliminativism for pain is not. I discuss the pain eliminativisms offered by Daniel Dennett and Valerie Hardcastle and argue that both theorists, at best, provide support for scientific eliminativism for pain, but leave the folk-psychological notion of pain unscathed. One might, however, think that scientific eliminativism itself entails traditional eliminativism—for pain and any other kind and corresponding term. I argue that this is not the case. Scientific eliminativism for pain does not entail traditional eliminativism about anything. (shrink)

The concept of the future is re-emerging as an urgent topic on the academic agenda. In this article, we focus on the ‘politics of the future’: the social processes and practices that allow particular imagined futures to become socially performative. Acknowledging that the performativity of such imagined futures is well-understood, we argue that how particular visions come about and why they become performative is underexplained. Drawing on constructivist sociological theory, this article aims to fill this gap by exploring the question (...) ‘how do imagined futures become socially performative’? In doing so, the article has three aims to identify the leading social–theoretical work on the future; conceptualize the relationship of the imagination of the future with social practices and the performance of reality; provide a theoretical framework explaining how images of the future become performative, using the concepts ‘techniques of futuring’ and ‘dramaturgical regime’. (shrink)

For an arbitrary similarity type of Boolean Algebras with Operators we define a class of Sahlqvist identities. Sahlqvist identities have two important properties. First, a Sahlqvist identity is valid in a complex algebra if and only if the underlying relational atom structure satisfies a first-order condition which can be effectively read off from the syntactic form of the identity. Second, and as a consequence of the first property, Sahlqvist identities are canonical, that is, their validity is preserved under taking canonical (...) embedding algebras. Taken together, these properties imply that results about a Sahlqvist variety V van be obtained by reasoning in the elementary class of canonical structures of algebras in V. We give an example of this strategy in the variety of Cylindric Algebras: we show that an important identity called Henkin's equation is equivalent to a simpler identity that uses only one variable. We give a conceptually simple proof by showing that the firstorder correspondents of these two equations are equivalent over the class of cylindric atom structures. (shrink)

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their func- tionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adapta- tions, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In (...) particular, the analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an oppor- tunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would sug- gest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to imple- ment novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engi- neering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engi- neering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)

Er is de laatste decennia nogal wat te doen over de metafoor en haar functie. En vaak wordt daarbij verwezen naar een belangrijke tekst van de Griekse filosoof Aristoteles. Ik wil in het hierna volgende nagaan wat Aristoteles over de metafoor zegt. Ik begin met de hierboven bedoelde passage in haar verband zo letterlijk mogelijk te vertalen. Dan bezie ik verder wat Aristoteles met de metafoor die hij als voorbeeld gebruikt, doet en vervolgens bezien we wat Aristoteles verder over de (...) ‘overdracht’ zegt, en wat enkele geleerden zeggen over Aristoteles-en-de-metafoor. Tenslotte stel ik de vraag of, afgezien van Aristoteles, er reden is om te denken dat de metafoor een ‘cognitief extra’ heeft boven een mededeling in normale bewoordingen, en speciaal de wat soms genoemd wordt ‘levende’ metafoor. Ik zelf kan daar niet van overtuigd raken. (shrink)

One way to address such questions about artifact kinds is to look for clues in the available literature on parallel questions that have been posed with respect to kinds in the natural domain. Philosophers have long been concerned with the ...

Though pain scientists now understand pain to be a complex experience typically composed of sensation, emotion, cognition, and motivational responses, many philosophers maintain that pain is adequately characterized by one privileged aspect of this complexity. Philosophically dominant unitary accounts of pain as a sensation or perception are here evaluated by their ability to explain actual cases—and found wanting. Further, it is argued that no forthcoming unitary characterization of pain is likely to succeed. Instead, I contend that both the motivating intuitions (...) behind unitary accounts and the wide range of pain phenomena are best accommodated by a componential view of pain that does not privilege any single component as necessary or sufficient. (shrink)

The scientific study of living organisms is permeated by machine and design metaphors. Genes are thought of as the ‘‘blueprint’’ of an organism, organisms are ‘‘reverse engineered’’ to discover their functionality, and living cells are compared to biochemical factories, complete with assembly lines, transport systems, messenger circuits, etc. Although the notion of design is indispensable to think about adaptations, and engineering analogies have considerable heuristic value (e.g., optimality assumptions), we argue they are limited in several important respects. In particular, the (...) analogy with human-made machines falters when we move down to the level of molecular biology and genetics. Living organisms are far more messy and less transparent than human-made machines. Notoriously, evolution is an opportunistic tinkerer, blindly stumbling on ‘‘designs’’ that no sensible engineer would come up with. Despite impressive technological innovation, the prospect of artificially designing new life forms from scratch has proven more difficult than the superficial analogy with ‘‘programming’’ the right ‘‘software’’ would suggest. The idea of applying straightforward engineering approaches to living systems and their genomes— isolating functional components, designing new parts from scratch, recombining and assembling them into novel life forms—pushes the analogy with human artifacts beyond its limits. In the absence of a one-to-one correspondence between genotype and phenotype, there is no straightforward way to implement novel biological functions and design new life forms. Both the developmental complexity of gene expression and the multifarious interactions of genes and environments are serious obstacles for ‘‘engineering’’ a particular phenotype. The problem of reverse-engineering a desired phenotype to its genetic ‘‘instructions’’ is probably intractable for any but the most simple phenotypes. Recent developments in the field of bio-engineering and synthetic biology reflect these limitations. Instead of genetically engineering a desired trait from scratch, as the machine/engineering metaphor promises, researchers are making greater strides by co-opting natural selection to ‘‘search’’ for a suitable genotype, or by borrowing and recombining genetic material from extant life forms. (shrink)

Promiscuous realism is the thesis that there are many equally legitimate ways of classifying the world’s entities. Advocates of promiscuous realism are typically taken to hold the further the- sis, often undistinguished, that kind terms usefully deployed in scientific generalisations are no more natural than those deployed for any other purposes. Call this further thesis promiscuous nat- uralism. I here defend a version of promiscuous realism which denies promiscuous naturalism. To do so, I introduce the notion of a promiscuous kind: (...) a kind that is maximally usefully referenced in predictive and explanatory generalisations, none of which are scientific generalisations. I first defend the claim that pain is a promiscuous kind before extending these considerations to everyday mental kinds more generally. I draw on further reflections from both everyday life and contem- porary psychology to make credible the novel suggestion that our everyday theory of our minds is for the explanation and prediction of individuals. Combined with the complex idiosyncrasy of individual minds, this suggested aim of everyday theory gives us reason to think that promiscuity is prevalent among everyday mental kinds. (shrink)

This paper offers an epistemological discussion of self-validating belief systems and the recurrence of ?epistemic defense mechanisms? and ?immunizing strategies? across widely different domains of knowledge. We challenge the idea that typical ?weird? belief systems are inherently fragile, and we argue that, instead, they exhibit a surprising degree of resilience in the face of adverse evidence and criticism. Borrowing from the psychological research on belief perseverance, rationalization and motivated reasoning, we argue that the human mind is particularly susceptible to belief (...) systems that are structurally self-validating. On this cognitive-psychological basis, we construct an epidemiology of beliefs, arguing that the apparent convenience of escape clauses and other defensive ?tactics? used by believers may well derive not from conscious deliberation on their part, but from more subtle mechanisms of cultural selection. (shrink)

In coarse-grained environments specialists are generally predicted to dominate. Empirically, however, coexistence with generalists is often observed. We present a simple, but previously unrecognized, mechanism for coexistence of a habitat generalist and a number of habitat specialist species. In our model all species have a metapopulation structure in a landscape consisting of patches of different habitat types, governed by local extinction and colonization. Each specialist is limited to its specific type of habitat. The generalist can use more types of habitat, (...) has a lower local competitive ability but can exploit patches left open by the specialists. Our modeling shows that coexistence is easily possible. The mechanism amounts to a colonization/competition trade-off at the landscape level, where the colonization advantage of the inferior competitor does not arise from a higher colonization rate but from its ability to use more types of habitat. Habitat availability has to be intermediate: when there are few patches of each habitat, only the generalist is able to maintain itself and when there are many patches, high propagule pressure of the specialists excludes the generalist. Habitat selection or temporal variations in relative habitat quality are not necessary for coexistence. Increased niche-width, colonization rate or local competitive ability of the generalist enhances its performance compared to the specialists. Various types of habitat degradation favour generalism. When able to use a broad range of habitats, generalists can generate so much propagule pressure that only a low level of local competitive ability is needed to globally exclude the specialists. Hence, in a reversal of the original problem, the question is why there are so many specialist metapopulations? (shrink)