(1) In the first part of this paper, I review Chomsky's meandering journey from the formalism/mentalism of Syntactic Structures, through several methodological positions, to the minimalist theory of his latest work. Infected with mentalism from first to last, each and every position vitiates Chomsky's repeated claims that his theories will provide useful guidance to later theories in such fields as cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. With the guidance of his insights, he claims, psychologists and neuroscientists will be able to avoid (...) costly dead-end lines of research. -/- (2) This never happened. As I have shown, this never could have happened. (See Johnston, 2018). What has happened, instead, is that current neurolinguistic research (with the arguable exception of the now-dated Lemma Model of Willem Levelt) proceeds without reference to Chomsky. It also wholeheartedly rejects the mentalism of the associated Language of Thought theory of Jerry Fodor. (See Johnston, 2018). -/- (3) I make this argument in the first part of this paper. I would also like to point out that most of my argument was developed in 1972, when I was a graduate student. I know of no other sustained criticisms of Chomsky at that time, and certainly none along the lines I had developed back then. -/- (4) In the second part of this paper, I present my own account of the methodology of science. When I was a graduate student, philosophy of science was dominated by an attempt to describe a methodology common to all the specific sciences, i.e. Hempel’s deductive-nomological model. These days, Hempel’s emphasis on the methodological unity of science has been rejected by such “dis-unity” philosophers of science as Ian Hacking, Patrick Suppes and Nancy Cartwright (see Cat, 2021). -/- (5) I view this change as the swing of a pendulum or, to change the metaphor, a journey from one end point of a continuum to another. As the level of abstraction at which one tries to describe scientific method is raised, the descriptions become increasingly general. Whether or not unity-of-science theories become so general as to be vacuous, is ultimately a subjective judgment. And so I expect that philosophers will eventually become tired of increasingly specific “close to the workbench” descriptions of how scientists work, and begin to turn back to methodological “big pictures”, finding in them powerful abstractions rather than empty irrelevancies. -/- (6) In the second part of this paper, I present my own account of the methodology of science, which I would situate somewhere between the “unity” and “dis-unity” accounts. However, I am not a scientist. My own views about scientific method have three origins: -/- (6a) my work as a graduate student from 1966 until I passed my comprehensive exams in 1973 (at a different university); -/- (6b) reading every issue of Scientific American from 1972 until nearly 2000, (at which point I continued to read it only sporadically, since I concluded that, around that time, it had evolved from a serious science magazine to a popular science magazine); and -/- (6c) my three-year immersion in the cognitive neuroscience of language after I retired, based on repeated study of and note-taking for (Banesh & Compton, 2018), (Kemmerer, 2015), several other books and, finally, numerous articles not hidden behind a paywall. -/- So, as always with my writings: caveat emptor. (shrink)

There has been increasing attention in sociology and internet studies to the topic of ‘digital remains’: the artefacts users of social network services (SNS) and other online services leave behind when they die. But these artefacts also pose philosophical questions regarding what impact, if any, these artefacts have on the ontological and ethical status of the dead. One increasingly pertinent question concerns whether these artefacts should be preserved, and whether deletion counts as a harm to the deceased user and therefore (...) provides pro tanto reasons against deletion. In this paper, I build on previous work invoking a distinction between persons and selves to argue that SNS offer a particularly significant material instantiation of persons. The experiential transparency of the SNS medium allows for genuine co-presence of SNS users, and also assists in allowing persons (but not selves) to persist as ethical patients in our lifeworld after biological death. Using Blustein’s “rescue from insignificance” argument for duties of remembrance, I argue that this persistence function supplies a nontrivial (if defeasible) obligation not to delete these artefacts. Drawing on Luciano Floridi’s account of “constitutive” information, I further argue that the “digital remains” metaphor is surprisingly apt: these artefacts in fact enjoy a claim to moral regard akin to that of corpses. (shrink)

It has been argued that St. Thomas Aquinas’s anthropological views fall prey to the problem of “Too Many Thinkers.” The worry, roughly, is that his views entail that I—a human person—am able to think, but that my soul—which is not a human person—is also able to think. Hence, too many thinkers: there are too many ofus having my thoughts. In this paper, I show why this is not a problem for St. Thomas. Along the way, I also address Peter Unger’s (...) argument for substance dualism. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary book that is thematically tied to Charles Darwin’s extensively detailed observations of all forms of animate life across the global world—humans included—shows how neuroscience and phenomenology are complementary and how the driving force of wonder—what Darwin called “an intellectual emotion”—propels them both.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in (...) the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Incompatibilism about responsibility and determinism is sometimes directly construed as the thesis that if we found out that determinism is true, we would have to give up the reactive attitudes. Call this "the consequence". I argue that this is a mistake: the strict modal thesis does not entail the consequence. First, some incompatibilists (who are also libertarians) may be what we might call *resolute responsibility theorists* (or "flip-floppers"). On this view, if we found out that determinism is true, this would (...) not be to find out that no one is responsible; instead, what this would suggest is that incompatibilism is after all false. Second, some incompatibilists may instead deny the claim that if we found out that no one deserves the reactiveattitudes, we would have to give up the reactive attitudes. Call this position *innocent incompatibilism*. I explore several different reasons why the fact that no one deserves the reactive attitudes likely does not translate into a requirement for us to give up the reactive attitudes. The upshot: incompatibilism may be practically irrelevant, even if true. (shrink)

Abstract: There is no such thing as ‘the’ hylemorphic account of personal identity. There are several views that count as hylemorphic, and these views can be grouped into two main families—the corruptionist view, and the survivalist view. The differentiating factor is that the corruptionist view holds that the persistence of the soul is not sufficient for the persistence of the person, while the survivalist view holds that the persistence of the soul is sufficient for the persistence of the person. In (...) this paper, I argue that hylemorphists should prefer the corruptionist view. This project ought to be of interest to anyone working on issues of personal identity, not only because hylemorphic views are historically important, but also because they are currently receiving significant attention in the personal identity literature. (shrink)

At the most general level, "manipulation" refers one of many ways of influencing behavior, along with (but to be distinguished from) other such ways, such as coercion and rational persuasion. Like these other ways of influencing behavior, manipulation is of crucial importance in various ethical contexts. First, there are important questions concerning the moral status of manipulation itself; manipulation seems to be mor- ally problematic in ways in which (say) rational persuasion does not. Why is this so? Furthermore, the notion (...) of manipulation has played an increasingly central role in debates about free will and moral responsibility. Despite its significance in these (and other) contexts, however, the notion of manipulation itself remains deeply vexed. I would say notoriously vexed, but in fact direct philosophical treatments of the notion of manipulation are few and far between, and those that do exist are nota- ble for the sometimes widely divergent conclusions they reach concerning what it is. I begin by addressing (though certainly not resolving) the conceptual issue of how to distinguish manipulation from other ways of influencing behavior. Along the way, I also briefly address the (intimately related) question of the moral status of manipulation: what, if anything, makes it morally problematic? Then I discuss the controversial ways in which the notion of manipulation has been employed in contemporary debates about free will and moral responsibility. (shrink)

Veltman’s test semantics and developments thereof reject the canon about semantic contents and attitude ascriptions in favor of dynamic alternatives. According to these theories the semantic content of a sentence is not a proposition, but a context change potential (CCP). Similarly, beliefs are not taken to be relations between agents and propositions, but agents and CCPs. These deviations from the canon come at the cost of an elegant explanation about the correctness of belief. Standardly, it is taken that the content (...) of a belief is correct just in case the content of that belief is true. The proponent of the test semantics cannot appeal to this explanation since they hold that certain contents, namely epistemically modalized contents, do not express propositions, and are neither true nor false. After motivating the need for an account of the correctness of belief within the dynamic framework, I argue that the few extant accounts in the literature are unsatisfactory. A novel account is proposed that avoids the problems of competing views. (shrink)

Since St. Thomas Aquinas holds that death is a substantial change, a popular current interpretation of his anthropology must be mistaken. According to that interpretation – the ‘survivalist’ view – St. Thomas holds that we human beings survive our deaths, constituted solely by our souls in the interim between death and resurrection. This paper argues that St. Thomas must have held the ‘corruptionist’ view: the view that human beings cease to exist at their deaths. Certain objections to the corruptionist view (...) are also met. (shrink)

This chapter analyses the views of Soren Kierkegaard about the concept of death. It examines the historical reasons why death might have featured with especial prominence in the work of a writer concerned with the parlous state of post-Hegelian Christianity and explains that Kierkegaard saw more of death before his thirtieth birthday than most people see in a lifetime. The chapter also explains the meaning of death in the mention of death in some of his works, including Either/Or, For Self-Examination, (...) and The Sickness Unto Death. (shrink)

Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral - Bonn) under the title: Perfektionistischer Liberalismus - Analyse, Kritik und Verteidigung einer Alternative zu einem Politischen Liberalismus.

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, Volume 44, Issue 1, Page 239-259, December 2019.

Visual forms of episodic memory and anticipatory imagination involve images that, by virtue of their perspectival organization, imply a notional subject of experience. But they contain no inbuilt reference to the actual subject, the person actually doing the remembering or imagining. This poses the problem of what (if anything) connects these two perspectival subjects and what differentiates cases of genuine memory and anticipation from mere imagined seeing. I consider two approaches to this problem. The first, exemplified by Wollheim and Velleman, (...) claims that genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations are phenomenally unselfconscious, with the co-identity of the notional and actual subjects secured by a determinate causal history. The second approach posits some distinctive phenomenal property that attaches to genuinely reflexive memories and anticipations and serves to experientially conflate the notional and actual subject. I consider a version of the second approach, derived from Kierkegaard’s discussions of phenomenal contemporaneity, and argue that this approach can better account for the possibility of affective alienation from the selves we were and will be: the way in which our sense of self and awareness of our causal history can sometimes come apart. (shrink)

Social media is full of dead people. What should we do with all these digital souls? Can we delete them, or do they have a right to persist? Patrick Stokes claims that we have a moral duty towards the digital dead. Modern technology helps them to persist in various ways, but - with such developments as AI-driven chatbots simulating the dead - it also makes them vulnerable to new forms of exploitation and abuse. This provocative book explores a range (...) of questions about the nature of death, identity, grief, and the moral status of digital remains. (shrink)

The details of St. Thomas Aquinas’s anthropological view are subject to debate. Some philosophers believe he held that human persons survive their deaths. Other philosophers think he held that human persons cease to exist at their death, but come back into being at the general resurrection. In this paper, I defend the latter view against one of the most significant objections it faces, namely, that it entails that God punishes and rewards separated souls for the sins or merits of something (...) else: the (non-existent) persons to whom those souls once belonged. The objector takes this entailment to be problematic. I argue that it fits in well with St. Thomas’s views about punishment and about persons. (shrink)

Ausgehend von einer Kritik an der Kultur der Aufklärung entwickelt Friedrich Schiller eine Anthropologie echter idealistischer Denkungsart. In seiner ästhetischen Lehre vom Menschen spürt er den Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Freiheit und Humanität nach und entdeckt in der Schönheit die Voraussetzung einer jeden Bildung. Mittels einer transzendentalen Explikation wird in der vorgelegten Studie Schillers anthropologischer Entwurf kritisch geprüft und der Zusammenhang von Schönheit, Freiheit und Bildung philosophisch entfaltet. Auf diese Weise kann die ungebrochene Bedeutung ästhetischen Denkens für die Pädagogik der (...) Gegenwart aufgezeigt werden"--Back cover. (shrink)

L'ambition de cet ouvrage est d'éclairer la figure du philosophe telle que Nietzsche la redéfinit à travers dix études, chacune articulée autour d'une notion clé de la réflexion nietzschéenne. Ce que Nietzsche appelle la "philosophie de l'avenir" ne désigne pas un genre ni une variante de la philosophie, mais explicite la notion même de philosophie, une fois celle-ci mise en accord avec son exigence de radicalité en matière de questionnement - ambition que, selon Nietzsche, les philosophes ne sont jamais parvenus (...) à réaliser véritablement. Habitée par cette exigence, la philosophie se doit de prendre pour objet de réflexion ce qu'il y a de plus radical, ce qui conditionne toute pensée et plus largement toute activité humaine - c'est-à-dire le mode de conditionnement lui-même, ce que Nietzsche désigne par le terme de "valeurs". A titre de conséquence, on découvre alors que c'est le façonnement de l'homme et l'élaboration d'une nouvelle forme de vie qui est au coeur de son entreprise. (shrink)

Le matérialisme que ce livre interroge et construit n'est pas une « philosophie », mais la condition de possibilité et l'outil de la connaissance objective. Historiquement, il se confond, de fait, avec l'élaboration de la science moderne s'affranchissant graduellement des contrats de parole qui l'asservirent longtemps à la métaphysique et à la théologie. Comment cette émancipation s'est-elle effectuée en des temps où une croyance instituée dictait sa loi théologico-politique aux efforts de la connaissance en leur imposant a priori la limite (...) de l'Inconnaissable? Comment d'autre part, face à cet affranchissement toujours inachevé, une métaphysique résiduelle impose-t-elle encore aux artisans de la connaissance objective, sans qu'ils s'en doutent, des cadres, des frontières, des démarches et des représentations? Ce livre montre qu'une analyse savante des complexes de discours dans l'histoire, à travers ce qu'elle explique du passé, peut permettre de comprendre et d'améliorer ce qui constitue proprement aujourd'hui l'acte de connaître. De redéfinir la « conscience ». De sortir des leitmotivs exténués sur le « hasard ». De penser plus authentiquement la singularité émergente du vivant. De s'éloigner d'un modèle strictement nécessitariste du « déterminisme ». De sortir des impasses avérées du réductionnisme. De résoudre les contradictions tacitement acceptées entre matérialisme et morale, ou entre déterminisme et conduites autonomes. D'entrevoir l'origine du symbolisme. De comprendre la nature originellement et fondamentalement politique de la religion. De penser l'articulation évolutive entre « nature » et « civilisation », et un lien cohérent et critique entre sciences de la nature et sciences de la société. D'identifier les comportements discursifs récurrents de ce que l'on nomme l'« idéologie ». Et d'édifier sur de nouvelles bases une histoire naturelle et sociale de la liberté. Revenant sur une part essentielle de son oeuvre, Patrick Tort invite ici à une véritable réforme logique de l'initiative de connaissance, et, simultanément, à instruire la méthode capable d'éclairer les mécanismes qui la favorisent et la combattent dans l'univers infini des discours. (shrink)

Complexe, énigmatique car radicalement novatrice, la pensée nietzschéenne donne le sentiment d'être trop dispersée pour pouvoir être saisissable. Du reste, y a-t-il un ou plusieurs Nietzsche? Celui de L'Antéchris et d'Ecce Homo est-il le même que celui de La Naissance de la tragédie? Mais complexe ne signifie pas chaotique, et l'incertitude se dissipe si l'on repère les moments où se constituent ses positions fondamentales: quand la notion de pulsion se met-elle en place? Avec quel ouvrage la théorie des valeurs apparaît-elle? (...) À quel moment la logique du sentiment de puissance est-elle identifiée? Quand la philosophie est-elle comprise comme un dire-oui? Dans quel livre la tentative de lire la réalité tout entière comme volonté de puissance se fait-elle jour? Cet ouvrage apporte une réponse à ces questions. Il caractérise l'apport des principaux textes de Nietzsche, et montre que l'évolution de sa réflexion n'est pas faite de revirements ni d'abandons de thèses au profit de thèses nouvelles, mais d'un affinement progressif au sein d'une problématique invariante: conquête d'un mode de pensée réformé dont les grandes lignes sont dessinées dès son premier livre, La Naissance de la tragédie"--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Subtle-body practices are found particularly in Indian, Indo-Tibetan and East Asian societies, but have become increasingly familiar in Western societies, especially through the various healing and yogic techniques and exercises associated with them. This book explores subtle-body practices from a variety of perspectives, and includes both studies of these practices in Asian and Western contexts. The book discusses how subtle-body practices assume a quasi-material level of human existence that is intermediate between conventional concepts of body and mind. Often, this level (...) is conceived of in terms of an invisible structure of channels, associated with the human body, through which flows of quasi-material substance take place. Contributors look at how subtle-body concepts form the basic explanatory structure for a wide range of practices. These include forms of healing, modes of exercise and martial arts as well as religious practices aimed at the refinement and transformation of the human mindbody complex. By highlighting how subtle-body practices of many kinds have been introduced into Western societies in recent years, the book explores the possibilities for new models of understanding which these concepts open up. It is a useful contribution to studies on Asian Religion and Philosophy. (shrink)

This expanded second edition carries forward the initial insights into the biological and existential significances of animation by taking contemporary research findings in cognitive science and philosophy and in neuroscience into critical and constructive account. It first takes affectivity as its focal point, elucidating it within both an enactive and qualitative affective-kinetic dynamic. It follows through with a thoroughgoing interdisciplinary inquiry into movement from three perspectives: mind, brain, and the conceptually reciprocal realities of receptivity and responsivity as set forth in (...) phenomenology and evolutionary biology, respectively. It ends with a substantive afterword on kinesthesia, pointing up the incontrovertible significance of the faculty to cognition and affectivity. Series A. (shrink)

Joseph Déjacque was a sailor a mere nineteen years of age when he heard for the first time the gentle, “feminine” tone of anarchy: The voice was not of a woman; it was an odd officer’s soft words, not even “four words,”1 which did not command anything but instead permitted the things to be done and the sailors to do things their own way. Anarchy is not the absence of orders; it is the absence of butch command. And this absence, (...) gently maneuvered, produces “harmony”. This efficient and enthusiastic maneuver of anarchy was to be discovered by the young Parisian proletarian Joseph Déjacque far away from his native Faubourg Saint-Antoine, amid “the Oriental seas,” aboard a frigate of war, in 1841. It.. (shrink)