Synaesthesia is a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces photisms, i.e. mental percepts of colours. R is a 20 year old colour blind subject who, in addition to the relatively common grapheme-colour synaesthesia, presents a rarely reported cross modal perception in which a variety of visual stimuli elicit aura-like percepts of colour. In R, photisms seem to be closely related to the affective valence of stimuli and (...) typically bring out a consistent pattern of emotional responses. The present case study suggests that colours might be an intrinsic category of the human brain. We developed an empirical methodology that allowed us to study the subject's otherwise inaccessible phenomenological experience. First, we found that R shows a Stroop effect elicited by photisms despite the fact that he does not show a regular Stroop with real colours. Secondly, by manipulating the colour context we confirmed that colours can alter R's emotional evaluation of the stimuli. Furthermore, we demonstrated that R's auras may actually lead to a partially inverted emotional spectrum where certain stimuli bring out emotional reactions opposite to the normal ones. These findings can only be accounted for by considering R's subjective colour experience or qualia. Therefore the present paper defends the view that qualia are a useful scientific concept that can be approached and studied by experimental methods. (shrink)

Kniga "Dar Blagorodstva" posvyaschena problemam vlasti i Upravleniya, dovol'no spetsificheski ponimaemym avtorom, kotoryj protivopolagaet ih drug drugu prezhde vsego v ih "germenevticheskih" i "politicheskih" aspektah. Pri etom, odnako, on ukorenyaet dannuyu problematiku v ekzistentsial'nom, "edinichnom" izmerenii, poskol'ku problema vlasti est', po mysli avtora, ekzistentsial'naya problema. Kniga "Dar Blagorodstva" est' neposredstvennoe prodolzhenie knigi "Filosofiya Bazilevsa" i yavlyaetsya ee svoeobraznym "vtorym tomom.".

The centenary of the birth of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) provided an opportunity for recovering some of the great Wittgensteinian subjects, for re-examining them and for discussing their implications and relevance. This volume is the result of the interchange that took place in Girona (Spain) among well-known scholars of Wittgenstein's work in different countries. The eleven contributions are organized into three main subjects: on Wittgenstein's method (B. McGuinness, E. Tugendhat and J.M. Terricabras), on knowledge and meaning (G.E.M. Anscombe, R. Bambrough, N. (...) Malcolm, and P.T. Geach), on language and use (D. Pears, E.v. Savigny, J. Bouveresse and J. Ferrater Mora). This volume is not only the result of the different and mature reflexions of its authors, but in two cases (Malcolm and Ferrater Mora) it has also unfortunately become their last contribution to the subject. (shrink)

This book comprises material on colour which was written by Wittgenstein in the last eighteen months of his life. It is one of the few documents which shows him concentratedly at work on a single philosophical issue. The principal theme is the features of different colours, of different kinds of colour and of luminosity—a theme which Wittgenstein treats in such a way as to destroy the traditional idea that colour is a simple and logically uniform kind of thing. This edition (...) consists of Wittgenstein's basic German text, together with an English translation. (shrink)

Features essays on moral philosophy written in honor of Elizabeth Flower's retirement.

One of the ways of dividing all philosophers into two kinds is by saying of each whether he is an ordinary man's philosopher or a philosophers' philosopher. Thus Plato is a philosophers' philosopher and Aristotle an ordinary man's philosopher. This does not depend on being easy to understand: a lot of Aristotle's Metaphysics is immensely difficult. Nor does being a philosophers' philosopher imply that an ordinary man cannot enjoy the writings, or many of them. Plato invented and exhausted a form: (...) no one else has written such dialogues. So someone with no philosophical bent, or who has left his philosophical curiosity far behind may still enjoy reading some of them. (shrink)

I discuss the treatment by Chisholm of the problem posed by the fact that one can produce some neuro-physiological changes by moving a limb, namely the ones which cause the motions. I concentrate largely on the treatment Chisholm gave to this question before Person and Object, and I compare it with von Wright's discussion of it, I conclude that there are correct elements about both but that both are unsatisfactory, Chisholm's because it entails that we must know something which we (...) manifestly need not know when we move. (shrink)

The article discusses major biographical milestones and provides a general evolution of philosophical views of the Russian philosopher Simon L. Frank. At the initial stage of the creative way, Frank is an economist and critical Marxist. Appeal to philosophy in the 1900s characterized by the influence of neo-Kantianism, the immanent philosophy and philosophy of life. Around 1908-12 Frank’s transition to the position of metaphysics begins to take shape his own philosophical system, absolute realism. One of the main features of the (...) work of Frank is consistency. Throughout his creative career, the philosopher developed the deepened and detailed original philosophical intuition - the intuition of the supra-rational unity of being - which was already fixed in his early philosophical works. Absolute being is a concrete metalogical reality, revealed in the living knowledge Simultaneously, the potentiality and transfiniteness of absolute being acts as the basis of individuality and creativity of man, the source of his freedom. The philosophical method of Frank, rational comprehension of rationally incomprehensible, based on the principle of antinomic monodualism. Philosophy of religion unfolds as a phenomenological analysis of religious experience. In the social political field Frank justifies the position of liberal conservatism and Christian realism. (shrink)

The issue of the theory-ladenness of observation has long troubled philosophers of science, largely because it seems to threaten the objectivity of science. However, the way in which prior beliefs influence the perception of data is in part an empirical issue that can be investigated by cognitive psychology. This point is illustrated through an experimental analogue of scientific data-interpretation tasks in which subjects judging the covariation between personality variables based their judgments on pure data, their theoretical intuitions about the variables, (...) or both data and prior theoretical beliefs. Results showed that the perceived magnitude of correlations was greatest when subjects relied solely on theoretical intuitions; that data-based judgments were drawn in the direction of those prior beliefs; but that exposure to data nonetheless moderated the strength of the prior theories. In addition, prior beliefs were found to influence judgments only after a brief priming interval, suggesting that subjects needed time to retrieve their theoretical intuitions from memory. These results suggest ways to investigate the processes mediating theory-laden observation, and, contrary to the fears of positivist philosophers, imply that the theory-ladenness of observation does not entail that theoretical beliefs are immune to data. (shrink)

This inaugural lecture considers three main aspects of the relationship between science and morality in Greco-Roman antiquity: first some of the ancient debates on the morality of particular scientific research programmes, especially in connection with the practice of human and animal dissection and vivisection; secondly ancient attempts to secure the autonomy and objectivity of natural scientific inquiry; and thirdly the continuing influence - in certain areas of ancient science - of values, including moral and political values, and of the assumption (...) of the privileged position occupied by human beings in the animal kingdom and the cosmos. (shrink)