The problem of knowledge is generally regarded as an essential part of philosophy, and since the time of Descartes at least, every philosopher has found it necessary to show that his own view can afford a solution to the problem. In this paper, however, the method of approach is psychological rather than philosophical, and an attempt is made to deal with the question from a point of view differing in several respects from those more commonly accepted.

Wittgenstein's scant remarks on the roots of language in instinctive behaviour have been both difficult to interpret and controversial, not least because they may seem to incline towards forms of explanation that elsewhere he eschewed. Nevertheless, they are of importance in philosophy, not least because they bear upon age-old questions of foundationalism and concept-formation. In a recent Discussion Note in this journal, H. O. Mounce is not only attracted by but also champions such explanation – though he finds Wittgenstein's own (...) “explanations” inadequate in important respects, as evidenced in his misguided criticisms of Moore in On Certainty and in his behaviouristic remarks on the roots of the “cause and effect” language-game. In this response, I try to identify the philosophical roots of this attraction and the points at which Mounce's account departs from the elucidatory and non-explanatory path established by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's scant remarks on the roots of language in instinctive behaviour have been both difficult to interpret and controversial, not least because they may seem to incline towards forms of explanation that elsewhere he eschewed. Nevertheless, they are of importance in philosophy, not least because they bear upon age-old questions of foundationalism and concept-formation. In a recent Discussion Note in this journal, H. O. Mounce is not only attracted by but also champions such explanation – though he finds Wittgenstein's own (...) “explanations” inadequate in important respects, as evidenced in his misguided criticisms of Moore in On Certainty and in his behaviouristic remarks on the roots of the “cause and effect” language-game. In this response, I try to identify the philosophical roots of this attraction and the points at which Mounce's account departs from the elucidatory and non-explanatory path established by Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Philosophical Investigations, EarlyView.

Rush Rhees identified the question of “what language is” as central to Wittgenstein's philosophy, but believed he failed to follow up adequately the connections between the reality of discourse and our reality as persons. Integral to this is Rhees's elaboration of the distinction between such investigations into language and approaches to philosophy restricted to elucidating “the grammars of particular expressions.” The failure to fully acknowledge Rhees's contribution to the understanding of these issues has vitiated recent New Wittgensteinian discussion of both (...) Wittgenstein and Rhees. (shrink)

The Editors’ Preface to the fourth edition of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is disparaging of the earlier editorial efforts of G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees and in particular of their inclusion and titling of the material in “Part II”. I argue, on both historical and philosophical grounds, that the Editors have failed to refute the editorial decisions of Rhees and Anscombe – a failure born both of a neglect of the historical circumstances and Wittgenstein's own expressed hopes and intentions (...) for his writings, and of a myopic understanding of his philosophy. Wittgenstein's legacy has not been well served by their interventions, which should be undone in future editions. (shrink)

In the first part of this article an attempt was made to clear the ground for a functional theory of knowledge, and the discussion of structure and function with which it concluded enables us to approach the problem of cognition. If the view already set forth is sound, it seems clear that the relation of the mind to its object is a function and not a structure of the mental processes involved. The mere existence of a mental content, however complex (...) it may be, however decorated with fringes or set off by a background, does not constitute an act of knowledge or give the content a meaning. In order to see a mental act as cognitive we must consider its function, its origin, its results, and in general the circumstances in which it stands. (shrink)

It is not unusual for even the very greatest polemics to proceed through some unfairness toward what they attack, indeed to draw strength from the very distortions which they impose upon their targets. In the same way that a good caricature of a person’s face enables us to see something that we feel was genuinely there to be seen all along, a conviction that persists in the face of, and may indeed be sustained by, our ongoing sense of the discrepancy (...) between the picture and the reality. Some such distortion may be necessary in order to point to or make visible a feature that is perfectly present, but is obscured by the mass of other details. In the case of ideas and systems of thought there is an additional reason for a positive concern with distortion, and that is that we do not encounter ideas in a social or intellectual void. Rather, they come to us through their admirers, detractors, followers and opponents. The social and intellectual reception and dissemination of Plato, or Marx, or the Bible are now and forever part of the meaning of those texts, and this remains true however demonstrable it may be that their reception involves a large distortion of what is actually there in those texts. To concern oneself with them must also be to concern oneself with what both their advocates and opponents have made of them, and in this or that context this image may be of greater social and intellectual importance than the question of strictly ‘correct’ readings. And of course for no contemporary school of philosophy has the social and cultural milieu of its reception been more important to its identity as a trend of thought than in the case of Existentialism, particularly in its French, Sartrean form. Today, of course, it has been a fact of intellectual life within the Academy for over 30 years that Existentialism has no friends, and is.. (shrink)

We do lots of things together in a shared manner. From the phenomenological point of view, does joint or shared agency need a conscious sense of shared agency? Yet there are many processes where we seem to just go along with the group without conscious intent. Building on the classic phenomenological accounts of Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schutz, Martin Heidegger (and the synthetic account of Berger & Luckmann), I want to emphasize the thick horizon of the life-world as a fundamental condition (...) for intentional shared agency. Joint agency has divergent forms with their own peculiar intentionality, attentivity, anticipations and expectations, and embeddedness in a pre-predicative tacit knowledge in the overall live-world. Phenomenology recognizes that even ego-centered activities that appear to be fully ‘agential’ can be carried out in an anonymous un-owned manner, in the manner which Heidegger calls ‘das Man’, or ‘the one’. This suggests that tacit belonging to the collective ‘we’ undergirds individual agency. Husserl, Heidegger, and Schutz all have accounts of this ‘anonymous’, pre-predicative kind of group participation. Phenomenology has rich accounts of anonymous, voluntary, shared, social participation that demand a new concept of agency, one neglected in the current literature in philosophy of action. (shrink)

Whilst previous observational studies have linked negative thought processes such as an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles with depression, the directionality of these associations and the potential role that these factors play in the transition to adulthood and parenthood has not yet been investigated. This study examined the association between locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression in young adulthood and whether parenthood moderated these associations. Using a UK prospective population-based birth (...) cohort study: the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, we examined the association between external locus of control and negative cognitive styles in adolescence with odds of depression in 4,301 young adults using logistic regression models unadjusted and adjusted for potential confounding factors. Interaction terms were employed to examine whether parenthood moderated these associations. Over 20% of young adults in our sample were at or above the clinical threshold indicating probable depression. For each standard deviation increase in external locus of control in adolescence, there was a 19% higher odds of having probable depression in young adulthood, after adjusting for various confounding factors including baseline mood and different demographic and life events variables. Similarly, for each SD increase in negative cognitive styles in adolescence, there was a 29% higher odds of having probable depression in the adjusted model. We found little evidence that parenthood status moderated the relationship between external locus of control or negative cognitive styles in adolescence and probable depression following adjustment for confounding factors. Effect estimates were comparable when performed in the complete case dataset. These findings suggest that having an external locus of control and holding negative cognitive styles in mid- to late adolescence is associated with an increased likelihood of probable depression in young adulthood. (shrink)

This paper examines the issue of global child labor. The treatment is grounded in the classical economics of Adam smith and the more recent writings of human capital theorists. Using this framework, the universal problem of child labor in newly industrializing countries is investigated. Child labor is placed in its historical context with a brief review of practices in the United States and Great Britain at the time those countries were industrializing. Then, child labor is examined in its contemporary global (...) context. We argue that, as countries industrialize, they tend to follow predictable patterns of development – including use of and eventual abandonment of child labor. We argue that this convergence under the logic of industrial capitalism supports a universalist approach to human rights (that would condemn child labor) over a more tolerant cultural relativist approach. (shrink)

Critics have argued that behaviorism must necessarily be inadequate to account for complex human behavior whereas cognitive psychology is adequate to account for such behavior. Recently, Fodor has focused this criticism on certain situations in which humans choose among a set of alternatives. We argue that this criticism applies to forms of behaviorism that are reductionistic but not to non-reductionistic behaviorisms like that of Skinner. Non-reductionistic behaviorism can be used to interpret human choice situations of varying degrees of complexity. Such (...) interpretations run into difficulty in accounting for certain aspects of verbal behavior, but so do cognitive theories. Although nothing, in principle, prohibits either type of theory from accounting for complex human behavior, neither current behavioral theory nor current cognitive theory is developed enough at the present time to do so. (shrink)

Recent empirical work calls into question the so-called Simple View that an agent who A’s intentionally intends to A. In experimental studies, ordinary speakers frequently assent to claims that, in certain cases, agents who knowingly behave wrongly intentionally bring about the harm they do; yet the speakers tend to deny that it was the intention of those agents to cause the harm. This paper reports two additional studies that at first appear to support the original ones, but argues that in (...) fact, the evidence of all the studies considered is best understood in terms of the Simple View. (shrink)

In this essay I shall argue that the state should require all parents to be licensed. My main goal is to demonstrate that the licensing of parents is theoretically desirable, though I shall also argue that a workable and just licensing program actually could be established.

The purpose of this paper is to defend the view that the bodily actions of men typicaly involve a mental action of voliton or willing, and that such mental acts are, in at least one important sense, the basic actions we perform when we do things like raise an arm, move a finger, or flex a muscle.

I have been told that for some twenty minutes after reading this paper Kripke believed I had shown that proper names could be non-rigid designators. (Then, apparently, he found a crucial error in the set-up.) I take great pride in this (alleged) fact.

El «Didascalicon» es una obra de capital importancia dentro de la literatura de carácter pedagógico surgida en la Edad Media. El autor, que redactó su obra en 1130, selecciona y define todas las áreas de conocimiento vigentes en su época, demostrando que no solo están totalmente integradas entre ellas, sino que resultan necesarias para el logro de la perfección tanto en lo referente a la vida terrenal como en lo tocante a la eterna. Dividida en seis libros, presenta una clasificación (...) nueva de la ciencia. Divide la Filosofía en cuatro ramas: Teórica, Práctica, Mecánica y Lógica. La Teórica, a su vez, comprende la Teología, la Matemática y la Física. La Filosofía Práctica consta de tres partes: moral personal, moral administrativa o privada y moral civil o pública. La Mecánica tiene seis ramas: el lanificio o arte textil, la fabricación de armas, la agricultura la caza, la medicina y el arte teatral. La Lógica abarca la gramática y la teoría de la argumentación. La obra fue escrita para los estudiantes que acudían a la Escuela de San Víctor y su finalidad, que el mismo Hugo señala en el prefacio, es establecer normas para sacar el máximo provecho a su estudio. La obra se presenta aquí por primera vez en edición bilingüe latín-castellano, con una traducción ampliamente contrastada y un completo estudio preliminar. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper takes issue with the idea that there is a variety of moral theories available which can in some way usefully be applied to problems in ethics. The idea is reflected in the common view that those favouring a systematic approach would do well to abandon consequentialist thinking and turn to some alternative theory. It is argued here that this is not an option, since each of the usual supposed alternatives lacks the independent resources to meet the minimal (...) requirements of being a moral theory at all. The aim is to demonstrate that virtue ethics, rights theory and deontology lack the different forms of explanation that would make them genuinely alternative theories. The conclusion is that this part of ethics is much more of a unity than is standardly assumed and that, far from our being able to move on from consequentialism, certain problems that arise from its very nature are bound to remain central to any attempt at moral theory. (shrink)

The last two decades have witnessed a virtual explosion of research in Socratic philosophy. This volume collects essays that represent the range and diversity of that vast literature, including historical and philosophical essays devoted to a single Platonic dialogue, as well as essays devoted to the Socratic method, Socratic epistemology, and Socratic ethics. With lists of suggested further readings, an extensive bibliography on recent Socratic research, and an index locorum, this unique and much-needed anthology makes the study of Socratic philosophy (...) accessible to both scholars and non-specialists. (shrink)

Beauty is a contested concept insofar as it seeks to mark a categorical distinction among the sources of pleasure, typically in terms of oppositions such as objective/subjective, universal/particular, necessity/contingency. Kant represents a culmination of this tradition in defining the judgment of beauty in terms of the requirement for universal agreement, modeling the judgment of beauty as closely as possible to ordinary factual judgments. A different tradition of thinking about beauty, however, while still seeking to mark a categorical distinction by reference (...) to the idea of necessity, finds the relevant sense of necessity not in conditions of agreement but necessities of erotic love and the sense of requirement felt toward its objects. This paper explores the consequences of taking this other tradition seriously, using Proust as a representative exemplar, as a way both of making sense of some of the features Kant ascribes to the concept of the beautiful, while avoiding the paradoxes stemming from his focus on the conditions for universal agreement. (shrink)

Of course in every act of this kind, there remains the possibility of putting this act into question – insofar as it refers to more distant, more essential ends.... For example the sentence which I write is the meaning of the letters I trace, but the whole work I wish to produce is the meaning of the sentence. And this work is a possibility in connection with which I can feel anguish; it is truly my possibility...tomorrow in relation to it (...) my freedom can exercise its nihilating power. (shrink)

I distinguish three matters about which decisions have to be made in scientific activities: (1) adoption of strategy; (2) acceptance of data, hypotheses, and theories; and (3) application of scientific knowledge. I argue that, contrary to the common view that only concerning (3) do values have a legitimate role, value judgments often play indispensable roles in connection with decisions concerning (1)—that certain values may not only be furthered by applications of the scientific knowledge gained under a strategy, but they may (...) also provide a primary reason for conducting research under the strategy. However, this is compatible with making decisions concerning (2) that in no way draw upon values. While, in my opinion, this account applies to all the sciences, it has special salience in the behavioral and cognitive sciences. The behavioral scientist, qua scientist, makes value judgments when making decisions about which strategy to adopt, but not when deciding which theories to accept as providing knowledge and understanding of specified domains of phenomena. (shrink)

John Broome argues that when all claims cannot be perfectly fairly satisfied in outcome, the contribution to fairness from entering claims into a lottery, and so providing them some surrogate satisfaction, ought to be weighed against, and can outweigh, what fairness can be achieved directly in outcome. I argue that this is a mistake. Instead, I suggest that any contribution to fairness from entering claims into a lottery is lexically posterior to fairness in outcome.

It is undeniable that the assumption of sincerity is important to assertion, and that assertion is central to the transmission of beliefs through human testimony. Discussions of testimony, however, often assume that the epistemic importance of sincerity to testimony is that of a (fallible) guarantee of access to the actual beliefs of the speaker. Other things being equal, we would do as well or better if we had some kind of unmediated access to the beliefs of the other person, without (...) the risks involved in the overt act of speaking, and the assumption of sincerity in speech is the closest we can come to this access. Contrary to this picture, I argue that sincerity has a quite different epistemic role to play in testimony than that of an indicator of the speaker's beliefs. The epistemology of testimony requires reference to the speaker as agent, and not just the speaker's beliefs, as well as a sense of 'expression of belief' that links it to the specifically addressive relation to another person. (shrink)

It is a little understood fact that the system of formal logic presented in Wittgenstein?s Tractatusprovides the basis for an alternative general semantics for a predicate calculus that is consistent and coherent, essentially independent of the metaphysics of logical atomism, and philosophically illuminating in its own right. The purpose of this paper is threefold: to describe the general characteristics of a Tractarian-style semantics, to defend the Tractatus system against the charge of expressive incompleteness as levelled by Robert Fogelin, and to (...) give a semantics for a formal language that is the Tractarian equivalent of a first-order predicate calculus. Of note in regard to the latter is the fact that a Tractatusstyle truth-definition makes no appeal to the technical trick of defining truth in terms of the satisfaction of predicates by infinite sequences of objects, yet is materially equivalent to the usual Tarski-style truth-definitions. (shrink)

I consider the questions, central to recent disagreements between Longino and Kitcher: Is it constitutive of making judgments of the cognitive acceptability of theories that they be made under certain social relations (that embody specific social values) that have been cultivated among investigators (Longino)? Or is making them (sound ones) just a consequence of social interactions that occur under these relations (Kitcher)? While generally endorsing the latter view, I make a distinction, not made by Longino, between sound acceptance and endorsement (...) of a theory, and argue that her view applies to endorsement. (shrink)

Anti-vivisectionists charge that animal experimenters are speciesists people who unjustly discriminate against members of other species. Until recently most defenders of experimentation denied the charge. After the publication of `The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research' in the New England Journal of Medicine , experimenters had a more aggressive reply: `I am a speciesist. Speciesism is not merely plausible, it is essential for right conduct...'1. Most researchers now embrace Cohen's response as part of their defense of animal (...) experimentation. Cohen asserts that both rights and utilitarian arguments against the use of animals in research fail because they `refuse to recognize the moral differences among species'.2 If we appreciate the profound differences between humans and non-human animals, he says, we would understand why animals do not and could not have rights and why animal pain does not have as much moral weight as human pain. Animal liberationists think speciesism is immoral because they mistakenly equate it with racism and sexism. Cohen claims this equation is `unsound', `atrocious', `utterly specious', and `morally offensive'. Doubtless Cohen is right that the charge of speciesism is founded on an analogy with racism and sexism. He is mistaken, however, in asserting that the comparison is categorically illicit. (shrink)

Gurwitsch is the philosopher of consciousness par excellence. This paper presents a systematic exposition of Aron Gurwitsch’s main contribution to phenomenology, namely his theory of the ‘field of consciousness’ with its a priori structure of theme, thematic field, margin. I present Gurwitsch as an orthodox defender of Husserlian descriptive phenomenology, albeit one who rejected Husserl’s reduction to the transcendental ego and Husserl’s overt idealism. He maintained with Husserl the priority of consciousness as the source of all meaning and validity but (...) he rejected Husserl’s transcendental idealism in favour of a ‘levels of existence’ approach. Gurwitsch’s project was to show the continuity between Gestalt psychology and Husserlian eidetics. I explain his concepts of theme, thematic field, margin and horizon as a consistent development of Husserlian thought. I conclude by claiming that neither Gurwitsch nor Husserl fully appreciate how the horizons of an entity can support radical novelty and the application of entirely new contexts. (shrink)

The concept of habit enfolds an enormous richness and diversity of meanings. According to Husserl, habit, along with association, memory, and so on, belongs to the very essence of the psychic.1 Husserl even speaks of an overall genetic “phenomenology of habitualities”. In this paper, as an initial attempt to explicate the complexity of phenomenological treatments of habit, want to trace Husserl’s conception of habit as it emerged in his mature genetic phenomenology, in order to highlight his enormous and neglected original (...) contribution in this area. I shall show that Husserl was by no means limited to a Cartesian intellectualist explication of habitual action (as commentators such as Bourdieu and Dreyfus have claimed), but attempted to characterize its complexity across the range of human individual, sub-personal, personal, social and collective experience. Habit, as we shall see, for Husserl, is intimately involved in the constitution of meaningfulness (Husserl’s Sinnhaftigkeit) and forms of sense (Sinnesgestalten) at all levels, from the level of perceptual experience, through the formation of the ego, to the development of society, history and tradition, indeed to our whole sense of the harmonious course of worldly life and to the genetic constitution of worldhood as such. Habituality, furthermore, is a key structural principle in the genetic constitution of the transcendental ego itself, as it unfolds as a concrete living and acting person in an intersubjective, cultural and historical world. (shrink)