I argue that Plato's purpose in the discussion of false belief in the "Theaetetus" is to entertain and then to reject the idea that thinking is a kind of mental grasping. The interpretation allows us to make good sense of Plato's discussion of 'other-judging' (189c-190e), of his remarks about mathematical error (195d-196c), and most importantly, of the initial statement of the puzzle about falsity (188a-c). That puzzle shows that if we insist on conceiving of the relation between thought and its (...) objects on the model of holding or grasping something in our hands, we will be unable to account for the possibility of false identity judgments: For no one who is literally grasping two things in his hands would seriously entertain the idea that one of the things is numerically identical with the other. (shrink)

I argue that Plato's purpose in the discussion of false belief in the "Theaetetus" is to entertain and then to reject the idea that thinking is a kind of mental grasping. The interpretation allows us to make good sense of Plato's discussion of 'other-judging' (189c-190e), of his remarks about mathematical error (195d-196c), and most importantly, of the initial statement of the puzzle about falsity (188a-c). That puzzle shows that if we insist on conceiving of the relation between thought and its (...) objects on the model of holding or grasping something in our hands, we will be unable to account for the possibility of false identity judgments: For no one who is literally grasping two things in his hands would seriously entertain the idea that one of the things is numerically identical with the other. (shrink)

For Slavoj Zizek the empty place or void stands for ‘Drive/Death Drive’: “a drive is not a primordial, positive force but a purely geometrical, topological phenomenon, the name for the curvature of the space of desire.” (Zizek 2005: 361) This paper examines this ‘empty space’ in two recent cultural texts relating to Taiwan: one a multi-media presentation at the Taipei Biennial and the other the movie, Orz Boyz. The connecting topology belongs to the topography of islands found in the rivers (...) of Taipei. Both the film and the multi-media project make explicit use of the islands in ways which this paper relates to the psychoanalytic project of Zizek/Lacan. The possible discourses, besides psychoanalysis emerging from these two cultural objects are outlined, but in particular the notion of childhood and underdevelopment/overdevelopment are discussed. From this vantage point, childhood/drive and the symbolic order this paper examines the current predicament of Taiwan from a psychoanalytic point of view. (shrink)

This collection brings together eleven of Fodor's recent essays about mental content and cognitive processing. All of them have been previously published, save for the title-essays "A Theory of Content I" and "A Theory of Content II.".