Children are not simply molded by the environment; through constant inference and interpretation, they actively shape their own social world. This book is about that process. Elliot Turiel's work focuses on the development of moral judgment in children and adolescents and, more generally, on their evolving understanding of the conventions of social systems. His research suggests that social judgements are ordered, systematic, subtly discriminative, and related to behavior. His theory of the ways in which children generate social knowledge through (...) their social experiences will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and students in child development and education. (shrink)

Elliot R. Wolfson is Professor of Religious Studies and the Marsha and Jay Glazer Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Elliot R. Wolfson intervenes in the debate over Martin Heidegger and Nazism from a unique perspective, as a scholar of Jewish mysticism and philosophy who has been profoundly influenced by Heidegger's work. He reveals crucial aspects of Heidegger's thinking that betray an affinity with dimensions of Jewish thought.

Descartes is widely portrayed as the arch proponent of “the epistemological transparency of thought” (or simply, “Transparency”). The most promising version of this view—Transparency-through-Introspection—says that introspecting (i.e., inwardly attending to) a thought guarantees certain knowledge of that thought. But Descartes rejects this view and provides numerous counterexamples to it. I argue that, instead, Descartes’s theory of self-knowledge is just an application of his general theory of knowledge. According to his general theory, certain knowledge is acquired only through clear and distinct (...) intellection. Thus, in his view, certain knowledge of one’s thoughts is acquired only through clear and distinct intellection of one’s thoughts. Introspection is a form of intellection and it can be clear and distinct. Ordinarily, however, introspection isn’t clear and distinct but is instead confused with dubitable perceptions of bodies. To make introspection clear and distinct, we need to “sharply separate” it from all perceptions of bodies by doubting all perceptions of bodies. Without such radical doubt, introspection remains confused and we lack certain knowledge not just of the specific features of our thoughts, but even of the minimal claim that a thought exists. Far from being the high priest of Transparency, Descartes is radically opposed to it. (shrink)

This entry provides a substantive overview of research and debates concerning creativity in philosophy and related fields. Topics covered include definitions of creativity, whether creativity can be learned, whether it can be explained, attempts to explain creativity in cognitive science, and whether computer programs or AI systems can be creative.

Clear and distinct perception is the centrepiece of Descartes’s philosophy — it is the source of all certainty — but what does he mean by ‘clear’ and ‘distinct’? According to the prevailing approach, what it means for a perception to be clear is that its content has a certain objective property, like truth. I argue instead that clarity is at least partly a subjective, phenomenal quality whereby a content is presented as true to the perceiving subject. Clarity comes in degrees. (...) Any weak degree of clarity, available to the senses, can be merely subjective, since what it presents as true may not actually be true. But complete clarity, available to intellectual perception, has an objective dimension, since what it presents as true is always some truth, some bit of reality. Further, I argue that the other perceptual qualities that Descartes identifies — obscurity, confusion, and distinctness — are all defined in terms of clarity. Of particular note is the fact that distinctness is not a positive feature to be added to clarity: a distinct perception is just a completely clear perception. (shrink)

Three kinds of things may be creative: persons, processes, and products. The standard definition of creativity, used nearly by consensus in psychological research, focuses specifically on products and says that a product is creative if and only if it is new and valuable. We argue that at least one further condition is necessary for a product to be creative: it must have been produced by the right kind of process. We argue furthermore that this point has an interesting epistemological implication: (...) when you judge a product to be creative--attributing creativity--you are not just judging it to be new and valuable. Even if you did not witness how it was produced, you are also making a judgement about how it was produced. (shrink)

In Matters of Life and Death Elliot Dorff thoroughly addresses this unavoidable confluence of medical technology and Jewish law and ethics.

Since late antiquity, a connection was made between Jews and the psychological state of despondency based, in part, on the link between melancholy and Saturn, and the further association of the Hebrew name of that planet, Shabbetai, and the Sabbath. The melancholic predisposition has had important anthropological, cosmological, and theological repercussions. In this essay, I focus on various perspectives on melancholia in thinkers as diverse as Kafka, Levinas, Blanchot, Rosenzweig, Benjamin, Bloch, Scholem, and Derrida. A common thread that links these (...) thinkers is the hopelessness of hope imparted by the messianic belief in a future that must be perpetually deferred. (shrink)

This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation to (...) those of his Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary ‘perceptual model of intuition’, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty. (shrink)

There is a strong presumption that mental disorder injures a person's autonomy, understood as a set of capacities and as an ideal condition of agency which is worth striving for. However, recent multidimensional approaches to autonomy have revealed a greater diversity in ways of being autonomous than has previously been appreciated. This presumption, then, risks wrongly dismissing variant, neuro-atypical sorts of autonomy as non-autonomy. This is both an epistemic error, which impairs our understanding of autonomy as a phenomenon, and a (...) moral error, which withholds recognition and respect that autonomous agents are due. I argue that careful attention to the different 'shapes' of agent's autonomy reveals that there are indeed distinctive kinds of neuro-atypical autonomy that are widely mistaken for non-autonomy. This project argues for two propositions. First, that there is a kind of autonomy, with a distinctive shape and texture, available to bipolar agents. This is a variant sort of autonomy, but not a defective or deficient sort. It is the ideal of autonomy that it is worth bipolar agents striving for, given the range and intensity of experiences that they will have to confront. Whilst bipolar autonomy will look unlike more neurotypical kinds of autonomy, it continues to be owed recognition. The second proposition is that we should understand the ideal of autonomy to be both pluralist and highly context sensitive. Given the range of starting points from which agents will strive to an ideal of autonomy, there will be some variation in the ideals worth striving for. The variation in ideals will reflect the existential realities they are local to. Theory of autonomy must be adapted to recognise bipolar, and other neuro-atypical, kinds of autonomy, and to reflect this wider pluralism. These propositions will be argued for with careful attention to the experiences and agency of people living with bipolar, or related, disorders. Understanding the ways that manic or depressive episodes, and the shifts between them, alter and apply pressure to our agency will inform an account of the distinctively bipolar autonomy that can be built on top of it. (shrink)

Schizophrenia is characterised by marked language deficits, but it is not clear how these deficits arise from the alteration of genes related to the disease. The goal of this paper is to aid the bridging of the gap between genes and schizophrenia and, ultimately, give support to the view that the abnormal presentation of language in this condition is heavily rooted in the evolutionary processes that brought about modern language. To that end we will focus on how the schizophrenic brain (...) processes language and, particularly, on its distinctive oscillatory profile during language processing. Additionally, we will show that candidate genes for schizophrenia are overrepresented among the set of genes that are believed to be important for the evolution of the human faculty of language. These genes crucially include (and are related to) genes involved in brain rhythmicity. We will claim that this translational effort and the links we uncover may help develop an understanding of language evolution, along with the aetiology of schizophrenia, its clinical/linguistic profile, and its high prevalence among modern populations. (shrink)

No one theory of time is pursued in the essays of this volume, but a major theme that threads them together is Wolfson’s signature idea of the timeswerve as a linear circularity or a circular linearity, expressions that are meant to avoid the conventional split between the two temporal modalities of the line and the circle.

In this study, I examine Susan Taubes’s criticism of Heidegger’s Seinsdenken that pivots around her contention that he absolutized the nothingness of being in a manner that is analogous to but yet significantly different than the role assigned to the Godhead on the part of many mystical visionaries. The common denominator is in Heidegger’s insistence on being to the neglect of fully engaging with the rhythms of life. As a consequence, there is no purchase on the chaotic, which falls outside (...) the purview of what can be signified, and in the absence of the unsignifiable, there can be no signification. Every attempt to reconstruct the broken world into a totality contains the flaw of an ontological untruth. The effort at totalization is not only the methodological weakness of tragedy and mysticism, but it is also the nihilistic basis of the role accorded to the nothingness of being in Heidegger’s Seinsdenken. The erroneous nature of the world is not denied by Susan, but she struggled to uphold the ontological untruth that what is most wrong in our existence is what is most precious. The paradoxical retrieval of the truth of this untruth affords the poetic soul the opportunity to confront the limit by breaking it, an infringement of boundary that is redolent equally with the enduring transience of love and the transient endurance of death. (shrink)

This paper explicates Descartes’ theory of intuition (intuitus). Departing from certain commentators, I argue that intuition, for Descartes, is a form of clear and distinct intellectual perception. Because it is clear and distinct, it is indubitable, infallible, and provides a grade of certain knowledge he calls ‘cognitio’. I pay special attention to why he treats intuition as a form of perception, and what he means when he says it is ‘clear and distinct’. Finally, I situate his view in relation to (...) those of his Scholastic predecessors on one hand and current theories on the other. His view anticipates the contemporary ‘perceptual model of intuition’, though it is much bolder with its promise of certainty. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 10, October 2022.

Language has been argued to arise, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, from specific patterns of brain wiring. We argue that it can further be shown that core features of language processing emerge from particular phasal and cross-frequency coupling properties of neural oscillations; what has been referred to as the language ‘oscillome’. It is expected that basic aspects of the language oscillome result from genetic guidance, what we will here call the language ‘oscillogenome’, for which we will put forward a list of (...) candidate genes. We have considered genes for altered brain rhythmicity in conditions involving language deficits: autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, specific language impairment and dyslexia. These selected genes map on to aspects of brain function, particularly on to neurotransmitter function. We stress that caution should be adopted in the construction of any oscillogenome, given the range of potential roles particular localized frequency bands have in cognition. Our aim is to propose a set of genome-to-language linking hypotheses that, given testing, would grant explanatory power to brain rhythms with respect to language processing and evolution. (shrink)

Environmentalists express concern at the destruction/exploitation of areas of the natural environment because they believe that those areas are of intrinsic value. An emerging response is to argue that natural areas may have their value restored by means of the techniques of environmental engineering. It is then claimed that the concern of environmentalists is irrational, merely emotional or even straightforwardly selfish. This essay argues that there is a dimension of value attaching to the natural environment which cannot be restored no (...) matter how technologically proficient environmental engineers become. The argument involves highlighting and discussing analogies between faking art and faking nature. The pivot of the argument is the claim that genesis is a significant determinant of an area's value. (shrink)

Here I argue that wild nature has intrinsic value, which gives rise to obligations both to preserve it and to restore it. First, an account of intrinsic value, which permits core environmentalist claims, is outlined and defended. Second, connections between intrinsic value and obligation are discussed. Third, it is argued that wild nature has intrinsic value, in part, in virtue of its naturalness.

Abstract:Bipolar or related disorders (BoRD) present unique practical and existential problems for people who live with them. All agents experience changes in the things they care about over time. However people living with BoRD face drastic shifts in what seems valuable to them, which upset their longitudinal values (if, indeed, any stable longitudinal values are available in the first place). Navigating these evaluative high seas presents agents living with BoRD with a distinctive existential question, not shared by those on calmer (...) waters. I draw out two contrasting ways in which someone living with BoRD might seek to support their self-determination in these circumstances, by crafting appropriate self care and support regimes. The first strategy involves managing one’s affective episodes so that they do not interrupt one’s plans and long-term agency over time. The second involves a regimen that allows one the greatest degree of freedom in adapting to changes in one’s experiences of value. What distinguishes these sorts of self-determination is the scope at which they are predicated. Although both sorts of self-determination allow an individual to rule themselves, they alter the overall shape of one’s autonomy in quite different ways. (shrink)

We learned from Good that there is no saying whether a black raven confirms the generalization that all ravens are black unless one is prepared to make substantive background assumptions. The same point, applied to the problem of other minds, is that the mere observation that Self and Other share certain behaviors and that Self has a mind is not enough. The problem of other minds turns into the problem of searching out common causes. This paper presents a probabilistic representation (...) of the problem of other minds, and shows that the likelihood concept provides a framework for understanding the Self and Other problem. (shrink)

Elliot Eisner has spent the last 40 years researching, thinking and writing about some of the key and enduring issues in Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research. He has contributed over 20 books and 500 articles to the field. In this book, Professor Eisner has compiled a career-long collection of his finest pieces-extracts from books, key articles, salient research findings and major theoretical contributions-so the world can read them in a single manageable volume. Starting with a specially written (...) Introduction, which gives an overview of Professor Eisner's career and contextualizes his selection, the chapters cover a wide range of issues, including: · Children and art · The use of educational connoisseurship · Aesthetic modes of knowing · Absolutism and relativism in curriculum theory · Education reform and the ecology of schooling · The future of education research This is a must-have book for anyone wishing to know more about the development of Arts Education, Curriculum Studies and Qualitative Research over the last four decades, and about Elliot Eisner's contribution to these exciting fields. This book is part of the World Library of Educationalists series, which celebrates the contributions made to education by leading figures. Each scholar has selected his or her own key writings from across numerous books and journal articles, and often spread across two or more decades to be presented in a single volume. Through these books, readers can chase up the themes and strands that have been lodged in a lifetime's work, and so follow the development of these scholars' contributions to the field, as well as the development of the fields themselves. Other scholars included in the series: Richard Aldrich, Stephen J. Ball, John Elliott, Howard Gardner, John Gilbert, Ivor F. Goodson, David Hargreaves, David Labaree, E.C. Wragg, John White. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

V tejto stati je najprv predstavená filozofia informácie (FI) a demarkácia jej predmetu v metodologicky ucelenej forme, to nadviazaním na koncepciu FI L. Floridiho. V porovnaní s jeho návrhom je vyčlenený i predmet metafilozofie informácie, a takisto je ujasnené aj označenie,,filozofie prima“. Floridi tvrdí, že jeho koncepcia FI ho môže voči iným filozickým disciplínam nadobudnúť. Problém chápania FI ako filozofie prima sa však ani po dvadsiatich rokoch od jeho uvedenia výraznejšej priamej reflexie nedočkal. V tejto štúdii je zodpovedaná otázka, či (...) je tento problém stále otvoreným problémom FI a ak áno, v akom zmysle. Je obhajovaná téza, že problém chápania FI ako filozofie primaje otvoreným problémom metafilozofie informácie, pričom vzhľadom na výsledky práce v FI sú identifikované niektoré oblasti, relatívne ku ktorým v súčasnosti môžeme, nemôžeme a nedokážeme FI označiť ako prima. (shrink)

V tejto stati je najprv predstavená filozofia informácie (FI) a demarkácia jej predmetu v metodologicky ucelenej forme, to nadviazaním na koncepciu FI L. Floridiho. V porovnaní s jeho návrhom je vyčlenený i predmet metafilozofie informácie, a takisto je ujasnené aj označenie,,filozofie prima“. Floridi tvrdí, že jeho koncepcia FI ho môže voči iným filozickým disciplínam nadobudnúť. Problém chápania FI ako filozofie prima sa však ani po dvadsiatich rokoch od jeho uvedenia výraznejšej priamej reflexie nedočkal. V tejto štúdii je zodpovedaná otázka, či (...) je tento problém stále otvoreným problémom FI a ak áno, v akom zmysle. Je obhajovaná téza, že problém chápania FI ako filozofie primaje otvoreným problémom metafilozofie informácie, pričom vzhľadom na výsledky práce v FI sú identifikované niektoré oblasti, relatívne ku ktorým v súčasnosti môžeme, nemôžeme a nedokážeme FI označiť ako prima. (shrink)

E. L. Grant Watson, an English field naturalist, zoologist, and one of England's best-loved nature writers, spent a lifetime trying to bring nature and...

For the past two decades, it has widely been assumed by linguists that there is a single computational operation, Merge, which is unique to language, distinguishing it from other cognitive domains. The intention of this paper is to progress the discussion of language evolution in two ways: (i) survey what the ethological record reveals about the uniqueness of the human computational system, and (ii) explore how syntactic theories account for what ethology may determine to be human-specific. It is shown that (...) the operation Label, not Merge, constitutes the evolutionary novelty which distinguishes human language from non-human computational systems; a proposal lending weight to a Weak Continuity Hypothesis and leading to the formation of what is termed Computational Ethology. Some directions for future ethological research are suggested. (shrink)

We present a criterion for the use of thought experiments as a guide to possibilia that bear on important arguments in philosophy of religion. We propose that the more successful thought experiments are closer to the world in terms of phenomenological realism and the values they are intended to track. This proposal is filled out by comparing thought experiments of life after death by Peter van Inwagen and Dean Zimmerman with an idealist thought experiment. In terms of realism and values (...) we contrast an exemplary thought experiment by Iris Murdoch with one we find problematic by William Irwin. (shrink)

Incarceration served as a primary apparatus by which abolition democracy was defeated after Reconstruction. Carceral institutions—such as the penitentiary, the convict-lease system, and the chain gang—functioned to demarcate the racial limits of citizenship and to impede equal political power. This article turns to W. E. B. Du Bois to argue that incarceration constrains democratic political equality. Turning to Du Bois’s treatment of crime and imprisonment in works including The Philadelphia Negro (1899), “The Spawn of Slavery” (1901), and The Souls of (...) Black Folk (1903), alongside archival material, I situate incarceration in Du Bois’s democratic thought. According to Du Bois, carceral institutions bounded ideas of full citizenship, fueled panic over Black “criminality,” fomented feelings of inferiority, and hampered the possibility for abolition democracy, a multiracial, multiclass movement committed to worker democracy and a future rid of slavery and subjugation. Du Bois shows us how carceral institutions run into tension with democratic ideals. (shrink)

This essay concerns two forms of moral non-naturalism according to which general moral principles or laws enter into the grounding explanations of particular moral facts. According to bridge-law non-naturalism, the laws are themselves partial grounds of the moral facts; whereas according to grounding-law non-naturalism, the laws explain the grounding connections that obtain between particular natural facts and particular moral facts. I pose and develop an objection to BLNN concerning moral worth: as compared to GLNN, BLNN has trouble accommodating the common (...) intuition that actions performed out of motivation for rightness de dicto are, at least in paradigm cases, deficient in their moral worth as compared to those performed out of motivation for rightness de re. After presenting the moral worth objection to BLNN, I respond to a possible defense of the view and explain why GLNN is not itself imperiled by an analogous objection. I finally argue that in light of the moral worth objection, a purported analogy between the law and morality fails to give us any reason to prefer BLNN to GLNN. I conclude that non-naturalists who accept the existence of general and explanatory moral principles should adopt GLNN rather than BLNN. (shrink)