What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? René Magritte's famous canvas provides the starting point for a delightful homage by French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Much better known for his incisive and mordant explorations of power and social exclusion, Foucault here assumes a more playful stance. By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, he finds the painter less removed than previously thought from (...) the pioneers of modern abstraction. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on sections iv and v of part II of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. In these sections Wittgenstein deals with two closely knit problems: our knowledge of other minds and the subject matter of psychology. The interpretation of Wittgenstein’s treatment of these problems cannot remain confined to these sections, however, as equally important references to these problems occur elsewhere in the Investigations as well as in the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology. Moreover, Wittgenstein’s very treatment of the two (...) problems is intertwined with his treatment of some other problems in the philosophy of psychology. For instance, in the context of his discussion of the subject matter of psychology, he points out analogies with problems pertaining to theories of perception. I take these analogies seriously and, therefore, a discussion of perception is interwoven as appropriately. Yet another preliminary remark. Although references to other philosophers and psychologists do not occur in sections iv and v, it does not follow that they were not written in response to others. On the contrary, a substantial part of these (and other) sections is the product of reflecting upon theories produced by Russell, James and Köhler. In my view, the best way to understand Wittgenstein is to involve the standpoints of his adversaries explicitly into the discussion. Otherwise seemingly trivial questions and condensed remarks, gain power and depth when explicitly seen as undermining and reversing dominant theories in philosophy and psychology. (shrink)

This paper discusses a neglected theme in Wittgenstein’s writings on meaning and psychology from the early 1930s until 1949. Throughout this period Wittgenstein deals with aspects of meaning of words and pictures that cannot be accounted for in dispositional terms but have to be related to experience and perception. Wittgenstein’s reading of William James, I argue, has sharpened his eye for the many pitfalls in coming to terms with this experiential notion of meaning. James’s treatment of experiences of (...) meaning succumbs to the temptation to postulate “meaning-bodies,” bearers of meaning apart from the way and context in which we use the particular words. I argue that the conflation of what Wittgenstein calls the transitive and intransitive use of words is at the root of postulating meaning-bodies. I also argue that contemporary treatments of experiences of meaning are similarly vulnerable to James’s confusion. (shrink)

At some moment in his life, James Joyce stopped writing Ulysses. If there had been at least one more thing he meant to fuss with or to fix, one more thing he meant to do to the book, he never did it. Ulysses was at that moment complete.The book reads to me as if it’s “harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement” from that very moment, as if Joyce anticipated coming to it all along.1 Because he knew it (...) would be a moment in which the book he was writing would become the book he had written, that moment backed up into the writing itself, it dictated to him that the narrator’s sentences must be in the past tense. For Joyce, each phrase of Ulysses was over and done with as soon as he found that he could let it stand as it was. I think it’s for this reason that his characters’ actions and words are narrated as if they too were in the past. “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned …” . The writing which empowers Buck Mulligan to speak and act had at some moment stopped being a present participle for Joyce and begun to be a noun, a piece of writing, that now-realized thing which had been written. It’s therefore in the past tense that the narrative proceeds.Not that along the way there isn’t interior monologue that offers what a given character thinks, each thought sounding very much as if it’s in the present. “Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I’m thirteen” . The illusion is that right here, right now, autonomously, Bloom is thinking about how many mourners there are at Dignam’s funeral and is trying to establish their number for himself. And yet while the sentence fragments “Twelve” and “I’m thirteen” interrupt the already completed past-tense narrative, the past-tense sentence which introduces the fragments implies an intelligence that has managed to narrate Bloom’s thoughts before Bloom himself has thought them. To narrate that Bloom is “counting the bared heads” in advance of that counting is paradoxically to review what hasn’t yet happened. It implies a knowledge that looks back on each present moment from a point outside of time. And it’s from precisely this point that the narrating intelligence closes off Bloom’s present-tense thoughts with past-tense news: “The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the gravetrestles” . James McMichael, professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, is completing a manuscript called Reading “Ulysses.” His most recent book of poems is Four Good Things. (shrink)

_A timely call for recovering the true meanings of the nineteenth‑century terms that are hobbling current political debates__ “Masterful.... James cuts through the tangled terminological and conceptual jungle of modern globalist discourse... [with] fascinating discussions of the origins and meanings of the words.”—G. John Ikenberry, ___Foreign Affairs___ “James delves into the often-surprising intellectual origins of key concepts in the arguments about globalisation—and illuminates the debate in the process.”—Gideon Rachman, _Financial Times_, "Best Books of 2021: Politics"_ Nationalism, conservatism, liberalism, (...) socialism, and capitalism are among the most fiercely debated ideas in contemporary politics. Since these concepts hark back to the nineteenth century, much of their nuanced meaning has been lost, and the words are most often used as epithets that short-circuit productive discussion. In this insightful book, Harold James uncovers the origins of these concepts and examines how the problematic definition and meaning of each term has become an obstacle to respectful communication. Noting that similar linguistic misunderstandings accompany such newer ideas as geopolitics, neoliberalism, technocracy, and globalism, James argues that a rich historical knowledge of the vocabulary surrounding globalization, politics, and economics—particularly the meaning and the usefulness that drove the original conceptions of the terms—is needed to negotiate the gaps between different understandings and make fruitful political debate once again possible. (shrink)

Structural realism is considered by many realists and antirealists alike as the most defensible form of scientific realism. There are now many forms of structural realism and an extensive literature about them. There are interesting connections with debates in metaphysics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of mathematics. This entry is intended to be a comprehensive survey of the field.

Moral philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. As Socrates said, it's about "how we ought to live"-and why. It would be helpful if we could begin with a simple, uncontroversial definition of what morality is. Unfortunately, we cannot. There are many rival theories, each expounding a different conception of what it means to live morally, and any definition that goes beyond Socrates's simple formula-tion is bound to offend at least one of them. (...) This should make us cautious, but it need not paralyze us. In this chapter, I will describe the "minimum conception" of morality. (shrink)

"The lectures that follow were delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in November and December, 1906, and in January, 1907, at Columbia University, in New York."-Preface, pg. 3.

This book is about Karl Popper's early writings before he began his career as a philosopher. The purpose of the book is to demonstrate that Popper's philosophy of science, with its emphasis on the method of trial and error, is largely based on the psychology of Otto Selz, whose theory of problem solving and scientific discovery laid the foundation for much of contemporary cognitive psychology. By arguing that Popper's famous defence of the method of falsification as well as his elaboration (...) of an evolutionary theory of knowledge are equally indebted to German psychology, Michel ter Hark challenges the received view of the development of Popper's philosophy. The book concludes with a reinterpretation of Popper's theory of the mind-body problem, emphasizing its contemporary relevance. (shrink)

For this 1897 publication, the American philosopher William James brought together ten essays, some of which were originally talks given to Ivy League societies. Accessible to a broader audience, these non-technical essays illustrate the author's pragmatic approach to belief and morality, arguing for faith and action in spite of uncertainty. James thought his audiences suffered 'paralysis of their native capacity for faith' while awaiting scientific grounds for belief. His response consisted in an attitude of 'radical empiricism', which deals (...) practically rather than ideologically with real-world phenomena. When facing a 'momentous' decision about belief, he says, we both can and must choose the best hypothesis. The first four essays apply this principle to religious faith, and the rest explore the pragmatic approach to such topics as determinism, ethics and individual achievement. James developed his ideas further in The Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism, both of which are reissued in this series. (shrink)

The Gifford Lectures were established in 1885 at the universities of St Andrews, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Edinburgh to promote the discussion of 'Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God', and some of the world's most influential thinkers have delivered them. The 1901–2 lectures given in Edinburgh by American philosopher William James are considered by many to be the greatest in the series. The lectures were published in book form in (...) 1902 and have been reprinted many times. James, who was educated in the United States and Europe, and spent much of his career teaching philosophy at Harvard, was very influential in the development of modern psychology, and in these twenty lectures he explores the personal experience of religion. Some of the topics include religion and neurology, 'the sick soul', saintliness, and mysticism. (shrink)

The idea that we acquire knowledge by trial and error has been one of the truly great ideas of the twentieth century. As no reader of his philosophical and autobiographical work could have failed to notice, Karl Popper credits himself for having invented this idea. The theory of trial and error or, in Popper's words, the Searchlight theory of knowledge and mind, is not just a part of Popper's comprehensive philosophy but rather one of its key features. It is at (...) the bottom of some of his most spectacular achievements in methodology, epistemology, the philosophy of biology, and even political philosophy. Indeed, it is put forward at once as a model for the growth of individual knowledge (both human and animal), the growth of life (Darwin's theory of evolution), and the growth of scientific knowledge (philosophy of science). As happens so often with innovative ideas, the Searchlight theory derives much of its glamour from the theory it rejects: the view of the mind being a tabula rasa and sense perception the origin of all (human) knowledge. Popper nicknames this empiricists' view as the Bucket theory since it conceives of the mind as nothing but the conduit for sense-impressions, an empty bucket to be filled by the accumulation and storage of information. 1 In his hands the Bucket theory collapses under the strain of philosophical arguments and scientific facts and is replaced by a theory which maintains that our knowledge of the physical world is drawn from our mind and constructed from the repertoire of knowledge dispositions we already possess. Acquiring dispositions proceeds according to the method of trial and error elimination. This method, Popper contends, consists essentially of three stages: forming a problem or expectation, trying out a number of solutions of the problem, and eliminating or discarding false solutions as erroneous. 2 A key feature of Popper's theory of trial and error elimination, and the reason for speaking of a Searchlight theory of knowledge and mind, is his insistence that problems or expectations take precedence over observations. Observations are always preceded by expectations, points of view, questions or problems which, as a searchlight, illuminate a certain area, thereby enabling the organism or the scientist to know what to observe in the first place. -/- The question arises how and when did Popper come to this theory of the growth of knowledge and mind which was to have such radical implications for the philosophy of science, epistemology, and the philosophy of psychology? My aim in this article is to trace the roots of his theory of the Searchlight. The earliest traces of the theory are to be found in his unpublished dissertation, Zur Methodenfrage der Cognitive psychology (1928). Here I will focus upon this "hasty last minute affair" written in the tradition of early German cognitive psychology and supervised by one of its most outstanding proponents, Karl Bühler. Scrutiny of this manuscript, however, reveals not so much the formative influence of Bühler as that of Otto Selz. Indeed, I will argue that Popper borrowed his crucially important Searchlight theory from Selz. Thus having found the origin of the key notion of his epistemology in psychology, the relation between psychology and philosophy in Popper's work, always fraught with tension, is up for thorough reconsideration. (shrink)

One of the most influential men of his time, philosopher, psychologist, educator, and author William James (1842-1910) helped lead the transition from a predominantly European-centered nineteenth-century philosophy to a new "pragmatic" American philosophy. Helping to pave the way was his seminal book Pragmatism (1907), in which he included a chapter on "Truth," an essay which provoked severe criticism. In response, he wrote the present work, an attempt to bring together all he had ever written on the theory of knowledge, (...) including an article on the function of cognition, later polemic and expository contributions, and some replies to previous criticism. The result was a full and definitive expression of the pragmatist "epistemology" from James' point of view. In the book, he urges the reader to "turn away from abstractions, verbal solutions, fixed principles, and pretended absolutes and look for concreteness and facts, action and power," arguing that "the ultimate test for us of what a truth means is the conduct it dictates or inspires." For students, scholars--anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought--this book offers an in-depth exposition of the influential ideas of one of the greatest American thinkers. Unabridged republication of the edition originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York and London, 1909. (shrink)

We have several intuitive paradigms of defeating evidence. For example, let E be the fact that Ernie tells me that the notorious pet Precious is a bird. This supports the premise F, that Precious can fly. However, Orna gives me *opposing* evidence. She says that Precious is a dog. Alternatively, defeating evidence might not oppose Ernie's testimony in that direct way. There might be other ways for it to weaken the support that Ernie's testimony gives me for believing F, without (...) the new evidence itself intuitively constituting reasons to believe one way or the other about Precious's flight ability. An example: Ursula tells me that Ernie has no idea what Precious's species is; he's just guessing. She may not herself want to or be in a position to weigh in about Precious's real species or flight ability. I call defeating evidence of this sort *undermining evidence. (shrink)

On the basis of his unpublished thesis ‘Gewohnheit und Gesetzerlebnis in der Erziehung’ a historical reconstruction is given of the genesis of Popper's ideas on induction and demarcation which differs radically from his own account in Unended quest. It is shown not only that he wholeheartedly endorses inductive epistemology and psychology but also that his ‘demarcation’ criterion is inductivistic. Moreover it is shown that his later demarcation thesis arises not from his worries about, on the one hand, Marxism and psychoanalysis (...) and, on the other hand, Einstein's physics, but rather from his urgent preoccupation with providing pedagogy with a psychological foundation, which has its sources in Karl Bühler's cognitive psychology as well as, surprisingly, Adler's Characterology. Aside from Adler some lesser known psychologists, such as Karl Groos, will also be seen to have played a formative role on Popper's early thinking. (shrink)

Two books bound together, from the religious period of one of the most renowned and representative thinkers. Written for laymen, thus easy to understand, it is penetrating and brilliant as well. Illuminations of age-old religious questions from a pragmatic perspective, written in a luminous style.

Noted psychologist and philosopher develops his own brand of pragmatism, based on theories of C. S. Peirce. Emphasis on "radical empiricism," versus the transcendental and rationalist tradition. One of the most important books in American philosophy. Note.

The aim of this article is to show that one of Popper's key ideas in epistemology, his so-called theory of the searchlight, is derived from early German Denkpsychologie, in particular the theory of schematic anticipations of Otto Selz. With his theory of schematic anticipations Selz intended to replace various forms of association psychology. Likewise Popper's theory of the searchlight aims to replace empiricism in epistemology (the Bucket theory, as he calls it). On the basis of Popper's still unpublished manuscripts on (...) psychology between 1927 and 1931, it is shown that his position became increasingly Selzian. The term "Bucket theory" is used by him for the first time in an article in which he defends Selz, and in his earlier Ph.D. thesis there occur passages which show him in complete agreement with the theory of schematic anticipations. It is argued that Popper's Selzian stance in psychology finally enabled him to develop his characteristic deductive stance in epistemology and philosophy of science. It is also emphasized that Popper never credits Selz for this formative role. (shrink)

Consider the following facts about the average, philosophically untrained moral relativist: (1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality (...) without endorsing relativistic views about science or mathematics. (1.4) The average moral relativist takes moral relativism to be non-relatively true and does not think there is anything contradictory about doing so. (1.5) The average moral relativist adopts an egalitarian attitude toward a wide range of moral values, practices and beliefs, claiming they are all equally legitimate or correct. (1.6) The average moral relativist often admonishes others to be more tolerant of those who engage in alternative ethical practices and to refrain from making negative moral judgments about them. (1.7) The average moral relativist sometimes makes negative moral judgments about the behavior of others—e.g., by harshly judging moral absolutists to be intolerant—but is less inclined to do so when the relativist’s metaethical views are salient in a context of judgment. (1.8) The average moral relativist takes anthropological evidence concerning the worldwide diversity of ethical views and practices to support moral relativism. (shrink)

From the bestselling author of Assholes: A Theory, a book that--in the tradition of Shopclass as Soulcraft, Barbarian Days and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--uses the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. The existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once declared "the ideal limit of aquatic sports...is waterskiing." The avid surfer and lavishly credentialed academic philosopher Aaron James vigorously disagrees, and in Surfing with Sartre he intends to expound the thinking surfer's view of (...) the matter, in the process elucidating such philosophical categories as freedom, being, phenomenology, morality, epistemology, and even the emerging values of what he terms "leisure capitalism." In developing his unique surfer-philosophical worldview, he draws from his own experience of surfing and from surf culture and lingo, and includes many relevant details from the lives of the philosophers, from Aristotle to Wittgenstein, with whose thought he engages. In the process, he'll speak to readers in search of personal and social meaning in our current anxious moment, by way of doing real, authentic philosophy. (shrink)

Yoga is hugely popular around the world today, yet until now little has been known of its roots. This book collects, for the first time, core teachings of yoga in their original form, translated and edited by two of the world's foremost scholars of the subject. It includes a wide range of texts from different schools of yoga, languages and eras: among others, key passages from the early Upanisads and the Mahabharata, and from the Tantric, Buddhist and Jaina traditions, with (...) many pieces in scholarly translation for the first time. Covering yoga's varying definitions across systems, models of the esoteric and physical bodies, and its most important practices, such as posture, breath control, sensory withdrawal and meditation, Roots of Yoga is a unique and essential source of knowledge. (shrink)

Experimental philosophy brings empirical methods to philosophy. These methods are used to probe how people think about philosophically interesting things such as knowledge, morality, and freedom. This paper explores the contribution that qualitative methods have to make in this enterprise. I argue that qualitative methods have the potential to make a much greater contribution than they have so far. Along the way, I acknowledge a few types of resistance that proponents of qualitative methods in experimental philosophy might encounter, and provide (...) reasons to think they are ill-founded. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, (...) 2018; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, many contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect. (shrink)

Louis Agassiz.--Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord.--Robert Gould Shaw.--Francis Boott.--Thomas Davidson: a knight-errant of the intellectual life.--Herbert Spencer's autobiography.--Frederick Myers' services to psychology.--Final impressions of a psychical researcher.--On some mental effects of the earthquake.--The energies of men.--The moral equivalent of war.--Remarks at the peace banquet.--The social value of the college-bred.--The university and the individual: The Ph.D. octopus. The true Harvard. Stanford's ideal destiny.--A pluralistic mystic.

An approach to argument macrostructure -- The dialectical nature of argument -- Toulmin's problematic notion of warrant -- The linked-convergent distinction, a first approximation -- Argument structure and disciplinary perspective : the linked-convergent versus multiple-co-ordinatively compound distinctions -- The linked-convergent distinction, refining the criterion -- Argument structure and enthymemes -- From analysis to evaluation.

History and Systems of Psychology provides an engaging introduction to the rich story of psychology's past. Retaining the clarity and accessibility praised by readers of earlier editions, this classic textbook provides a chronological history of psychology from the pre-Socratic Greeks to contemporary systems, research, and applications. The new edition also features expanded coverage of Eastern as well as Western traditions, influential women in psychology, professional psychology in clinical, educational, and social settings, and new directions in twenty-first century psychology as a (...) cognitive and a positive science. Assuming little prerequisite knowledge, the authors discuss the people, places, and concepts that have shaped psychology's story, and show that we remain fascinated by the same enduring questions that confronted our ancestors - namely, our wonder at our subjectivity and consciousness of self. The seventh edition is fully supported by robust pedagogical features, instructor resources, and a companion website to aid student learning. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Contact‐Period Indigenous Andean Philosophy Contact‐Era Aztec or Nahua Philosophy Conclusion References.

Background -- The moral manualists -- Initiating reform : Odon Lottin -- Retrieving Scripture and charity : Fritz Tillman and Gérard Gilleman -- Synthesis : Bernard Häring -- The neo-manualists -- New foundations for moral reasoning, 1970-89 -- New foundations for a theological anthropology, 1980-2000 -- Toward a global discourse on suffering and solidarity -- Afterword: The encyclicals of Pope Benedict XVI.

Episodic memory is usually regarded in a Conceptualist light, in the sense of its being dependent upon the grasp of concepts directly relevant to the act of episodic recollection itself, such as a concept of past times and of the self as an experiencer. Given this view, its development is typically timed as being in the early school‐age years (Perner, 2001;Tulving, 2005). We present a minimalist, Non‐Conceptualist approach in opposition to this view, but one that also exists in clear contrast (...) to the kind of minimalism (‘episodic‐like’) espoused byClayton and Dickinson (1998)with regard to memory in food‐caching birds. While emphasising the nonconceptual elements of episodic memory (in common with the ‘episodic‐like’ approach) we also insist on the essentially phenomenological nature of the memory (as does the Conceptualist approach). We propose the third year of life as a plausible onset period. Our view is rooted in Kantian assumptions about the spatiotemporal content of experience (and thus of re‐experience) and about the synthetic unity of experience—and thus of re‐experience. We answer two objections to this position. (shrink)

Emotion regulation has the odd distinction of being a wildly popular construct whose scientific existence is in considerable doubt. In this article, we discuss the confusion about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can and should be distinguished from one another. We describe a continuum of perspectives on emotion, and highlight how different (often mutually incompatible) perspectives on emotion lead to different views about whether emotion generation and emotion regulation can be usefully distinguished. We argue that making differences in perspective (...) explicit serves the function of allowing researchers with different theoretical commitments to collaborate productively despite seemingly insurmountable differences in terminology and methods. (shrink)

In 1896 William James published an essay entitled The Will to Believe, in which he defended the legitimacy of religious faith against the attacks of such champions of scientific method as W.K. Clifford and Thomas Huxley. James's work quickly became one of the most important writings in the philosophy of religious belief. James Wernham analyses James's arguments, discusses his relation to Pascal and Renouvier, and considers the interpretations, and misinterpretations, of James's major critics. Wernham shows (...) convincingly that James was unaware of many destructive ambiguitities in his own doctrines and arguments, although clear and consistent in his view that our obligation to believe in theism is not a moral but a prudential obligation -- a foolish-not-to-believe doctrine, rather than a not-immoral-to-believe one. Wernham also shows that the doctrine is best read as affirming the wisdom of gambling that God exists, a notion which James failed to distinguish from believing and which, among other things, he explicitly identified with faith. James's pragmatism, a theory concerning the meaning of truth, is shown to be quite distinct from the doctrine of The Will to Believe. In concentrating on a careful analysis of this doctrine of the will-to-believe, Wernham not only makes a major contribution to understanding James's philosophy, but also clarifies issues in the philosophy of religion and in the analysis of belief and faith. (shrink)

This new critical edition is an examination of William James's Essays in Radical Empiricism in light of the scientific naturalism prominent in James's Principles of Psychology (1890) and the subsequent development of Darwinian, functional psychology and functionalism in psychology, the philosophy psychology and the philosophy of mind.