In Principles of Human Knowledge Berkeley speaks of the sensible qualities of an apple as being its parts. The paper argues that our words for sense-qualities play a role so unlike that of part-words that verbal atrocities would result from treating qualities as parts. Berkeley lends a surface plausibility to this move by focusing on a narrow selection of the normal linguistic accompaniment of the noun 'apple'. He puts out of mind the language of 'doing things with apples'— peeling, dicing, (...) and so on— which when recalled shows how strikingly far apart are the two categories he tries to mingle. (shrink)

Much of the literature on the question “Is a human essentially distinct from every possible machine?” proceeds on the assumption that we know what a man essentially is, namely a living body with such attributes as consciousness, freedom, feeling and linguistic competence. Is a man essentially that? The paper contrasts that picture of man with Kierkegaard’s account of man as essentially self. Hard limits of machine subjectivity begin to appear in the failure of certain everyday concepts involving ‘self’ to engage (...) at all with the concept ‘machine’. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness arises when we accept that humans are subject to conscious experiences, and that these experiences resist explanations of a kind that other puzzling phenomena permit. I first consider the case that such experiences exist and then the reasons for taking a pessimistic view of our chances of explaining them. I argue that the fact that conscious experience is ineffable makes the problem even harder than Chalmers allows, as it undermines a presentation of the problem of reductive (...) explanation in this case. The fact that conscious phenomena require a first-person perspective provides a further reason for taking a pessimistic view of the chances for the kind of theory that Chalmers seeks. In a final section I consider what form solutions to the problem, as revised, might take. (shrink)

Dutch science flourished in the late sixteenth and in the seventeenth century thanks to the immigration of cartographers, botanists, mathematicians, astronomers and the like from the Southern Netherlands after the Spanish army had captured the city of Antwerp in 1585, and thanks to the religious and the socio‐economic situation of the country. A strong impulse for practical scientific activities started from the Reformation, mainly thanks to its anti‐traditional attitude, which had an anti‐rationalistic tendency. Therefore, in the Northern Netherlands there was (...) no ‘warfare’ between science and religion and the biblical arguments leading to Galileo's condemnation were not used.Although the growth of the exact sciences and of technology in the late sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries in Protestant cirles may be partly attributed to the expansion of trade, industry, navigation and so on, this does not explain why there was also at the same time a great interest in subjects as botany and zoology, which had no immediate economic utility. There were discussions about Copernicanism and Cartesianism. So a number of astronomers and theologians rejected the earth's movement on scientific and religious grounds, but there were also those who did not reject the Copernican system on biblical grounds. In the seventeenth century there was much discussion between science and religion in the Northern Netherlands, but that discussion was not followed by censure by the Church of the State. In the Republic there was a large amount of intellectual freedom in the study of the natural sciences, thanks to practical and ideological considerations. In the eighteenth century the seventheenth century tension between science and religion changed into a physicotheological natural science. It was believed that investigations into the workings of nature should lead to a better understanding of its Creator. So Bernard Nieuwentijt in his well‐known book: The right use of‐world views for the conviction of atheists and unbelievers (1715) intended to prove the existence of God on the basis of teleological arguments. (shrink)

This paper supports the scientific position that panpsychism is a valid category of possible resolutions to the hard problem of consciousness, and it focuses on a solution to the 'combination problem' in panpsychism. I argue for a new way of thinking about consciousness in which consciousness is not viewed in reference to subjects, and that the concept of a 'subject' is borne of the illusion of self. Therefore, we don't face a combination problem if the notion of a subject is (...) superfluous and consciousness itself is pervasive in the form of a field. The paper is also a more general discussion about the importance of pursuing this scientific question in the twenty-first century: is consciousness a more fundamental aspect of the universe than we have previously assumed? (shrink)

The ordinary justification for my not doubting that the next bread I eat will nourish me as in the past is that we humans do not bother ourselves with doubts except where life actually prompts a doubt. Hume, however, represents this not-doubting as an inference we repeatedly draw, and not a very strong one since it concludes to a future-tense judgement from past-tense premisses. Thus Hume creates the impression that the commonest ways of leaning on past experience as a guide (...) involve a woefully weak type of inference, and this paper challenges that impression. (shrink)