David Hume wrote that Berkeley's arguments `admit of no answer but produce no conviction'. This book aims at the kind of understanding of Berkeley's philosophy that comes from seeing how we ourselves might be brought to embrace it. Berkeley held that matter does not exist, and that the sensations we take to be caused by an indifferent and independent world are instead caused directly by God. Nature becomes a text, with no existence apart from the spirits who transmit and receive (...) it. Kenneth P. Winkler presents these conclusions as natural consequences of Berkeley's reflections on such topics as representation, abstraction, necessary truth, and cause and effect. In the closing chapters Proefssor Winkler offers new interpretations of Berkeley's view on unperceived objects, corpuscularian science, and our knowledge of God and other minds. (shrink)

A well-regarded scientist who offered expert testimony at the high-profile 2005 trial over the teaching of evolution in Dover, Pennsylvania, presents an ...

Anne Conway’s Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, first published in 1690, is probably the most ambitious contribution to early modern metaphysics by a woman writing in the English language. This beautifully prepared edition makes Conway’s treatise available to twentieth-century readers in an accessible English translation of the 1690 Latin text—itself a translation of an original English manuscript that has long been lost.

Referentialism has underappreciated consequences for our understanding of the ways in which mind, language, and world relate to one another. In exploring these consequences, this book defends a version of referentialism about names, demonstratives, and indexicals, in a manner appropriate for scholars and students in philosophy or the cognitive sciences. To demonstrate his view, Kenneth A. Taylor offers original and provocative accounts of a wide variety of semantic, pragmatic, and psychological phenomena, such as empty names, propositional attitude contexts, the (...) nature of concepts, and the ultimate source and nature of normativity. (shrink)

Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This article looks at one particular combination of theories: autism as theory of mind challenges and moral responsibility as requiring appropriate experience of the reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, we do not intend to endorse them. Our goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of especially prominent ideas about (...) autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults. We find that these theories point to a limited range of situations in which autists should not be blamed for transgressive actions for which neurotypical individuals should be blamed. We build on what others have written on these issues by bringing in a recent cognitive model of the role theory of mind plays in empathy, by discussing the social implications of the theoretical findings, and by raising questions about the compatibility of reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility with the neurodiversity approach to autism. (shrink)

Includes generous selections from the Essay, topically arranged passages from the replies to Stillingfleet, a chronology, a bibliography, a glossary, and an index based on the entries that Locke himself devised.

Dan Zahavi has argued persuasively that some versions of self- representationalism are implausible on phenomenological and dialectical grounds: they fail to make sense of primitive self-knowledge and lead to an infinite regress. Zahavi proposes an alternative view of ubiquitous prereflective self-consciousness.

This is a pre- publication copy of an article that appeared in "Debating Design from Darwin to DNA," edited by Michael Ruse and William Dembski. Debating Design..

It is widely held that there are no indigenous roots in China for the rule of law; it is an import from the West. The Chinese legal tradition, rather, is rule by law, as elaborated in ancient Legalist texts such as the Han Feizi. According to the conventional reading of these texts, law is amoral and an instrument in the hands of a central ruler who uses law to consolidate and maintain power. The ruler is the source of all law (...) and stands above the law, so that law, in the final analysis, is whatever pleases the ruler. This essay argues, to the contrary, that the instrumentalism of the Han Feizi is more sophisticated and more principled than the conventional reading acknowledges. It suggests that, by examining the text of the Han Feizi through the lens provided by American legal theorist Lon Fuller, we can detect an explicit articulation of what Fuller called the internal morality of law. The principles of this morality are elaborated and their importance explained. In this way, the Han Feizi is retrieved as a significant reference point for thinking about legal reform in China today. (shrink)

As a neurodevelopmental condition that affects cognitive functioning, autism has been used as a test case for theories of moral responsibility. Most of the relevant literature focuses on autism’s impact on theory of mind and empathy. Here I examine aspects of autism related to executive function. I apply an account of how we might fail to be reasons responsive to argue that autism can increase the frequency of excuses for transgressive behavior, but will rarely make anyone completely exempt from moral (...) responsibility in general. On this account, although excuses may apply more often to autists than to others, the excuses that apply to autists are just the same excuses that can apply to anyone. (shrink)

Kenneth Winkler's esteemed edition of Berkeley's _Principles_ is based on the second edition, the last one published in Berkeley's lifetime. Life other members of Hackett's philosophical classics series, it features editorial elements found to be of particular value to students and their teachers: analytical table of contents; chronology of the author's life; selected bibliography; note on the text; glossary; and index.

I consider Ralph Waldo Emerson’s creative appropriation of a philosophical doctrine that helps to make sense of an attitude towards life, its gifts and its burdens, that is often expressed in Puritan diaries. The doctrine, now known as the doctrine of continuous creation, holds that in conserving the world, God re-creates it at every moment, making the same creative effort at each ever-advancing now that God made at the very beginning. Continuous creation was explicitly endorsed by at least one Puritan (...) diarist, Jonathan Edwards, and it helps to explain the intense self-inspection and valiant response to life to which other Puritan diarists (including Emerson's aunt, Mary Moody Emerson) testify. Continuous creation was an important ingredient in the idealism of Edwards and, once translated, it became an important ingredient in the idealism of Emerson. My primary aim to describe Emerson’s creative translation of the doctrine as Edwards understood it, but I also discuss Emerson's relation to the Puritan diary, considered as a literary form. I close by suggesting that for us, a version of the doctrine of continuous creation can perhaps be a source of optimism and an incentive to action, as I believe it was for Emerson. I also comment briefly on Emerson's grateful reliance on text-to-text translations. When Emerson studied translations of sacred texts from around the world, what he heard was not difference and dissent, but agreement: agreement on the very points that united him with Edwards, different as they were in other ways. (shrink)

This paper explores the logical consequences of the the thesis that all of the essential properties of consciousness can be known introspectively (Completeness, called "Strong Transparency" in the paper, following D.M. Armstrong's older terminology). It is argued that it can be known introspectively that consciousness does not have complete access to its essential properties; and it is show how this undermines conceivability arguments for dualism.

Some philosophers think that intentionality is ontologically distinct from phenomenal consciousness; call this the Thesis of Separation. Terence Horgan and John Tienson (2002, p. 520) call this.

_Mirroring and Attunement_ offers a new approach to psychoanalysis, artistic creation and religion. Viewing these activities from a broadly relational perspective, Wright proposes that each provides a medium for creative dialogue: the artist discovers himself within his self-created forms, the religious person through an internal dialogue with ‘God’, and the analysand through the inter-subjective medium of the analysis. Building on the work of Winnicott, Stern and Langer, the author argues that each activity is rooted in the infant’s preverbal relationship with (...) the mother who ‘holds’ the emerging self in an ambience of mirroring forms, thereby providing a ‘place’ for the self to ‘be’. He suggests that the need for subjective reflection persists throughout the life cycle and that psychoanalysis, artistic creation and religion can be seen as cultural attempts to provide the self with resonant containment. They thus provide renewed opportunities for holding and emotional growth. _Mirroring and Attunement_ will provide essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, and art therapists and be of interest to anyone working at the interface between psychoanalysis, art and religion. _ _. (shrink)

The dominant conception of educational equality in the United States is meritocratic: an individual's chances of educational achievements should track only talent and effort, not social class or other morally irrelevant factors. The meritocratic conception must presuppose that natural talent and effort can be isolated from social class — and environmental factors in general — if it is to provide guidance in the world of educational policy and practice. In this article Kenneth R. Howe challenges that presupposition and related (...) elements of the meritocratic conception having to do with the role of competition and education as a positional good. Howe argues that, in use, the meritocratic conception unavoidably distributes education based on developed talent and motivation that cannot be isolated from the effects of social class, thus masking the real basis of the distribution and contributing to the perpetuation of illicit group privilege. Howe then entertains and rejects several rejoinders to his critique, including that the meritocratic conception might eliminate the presupposition of isolatable natural talent. Finally, Howe sketches an alternative conception of educational equality based on Elizabeth Anderson's adaptation of Rawls's “democratic equality.”. (shrink)

In a time when we as a society are in the process of deciding what our basic rights to health care are, it is critically important for us to have a full and complete understanding of what constitutes health. We argue for an analysis of health according to which certain states are healthy not in themselves but because they allow an individual to reach actual goals. Recognizing that the goals of an individual considered from the point of view of biology (...) and the goals of the same individual considered as an agent in the world might be different, we introduce a distinction between the health of an individual qua organism and the health of an individual qua person. We then argue that this distinction characterizes the evaluations made by patients and healthcare providers better than the widely discussed distinction between disease and illness. (shrink)

We observed that despite international declarations on child-rights, outsourced domestic girl-child labour still persists. Raising the question whether outsourced domestic girl-child labour constitutes hermeneutical injustice, we respond affirmatively. Relying on two indigenous victimology-narratives that are newspaper reports, we expose some of the horrors that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer. Comparing these reports with other victimology-narratives of hermeneutical injustice as reported by Miranda Fricker and Hilkje Hänel, we argue that the victims of outsourced domestic girl-child labour suffer a (...) hermeneutical gap and hermeneutical interference; and that the perpetuators of this practice, help to foster what we call ‘hermeneutical obstruction’. We recommend different counteracting measures such as: a radical feminization of educational curricula, which will allow for the introduction of the relevant hermeneutical resources that female children need in making sense of their experiences, into the classrooms and other places of learning; establishing feminist liberation agencies in all schools, religious institutions and hospitals, as ways of increasing the level of awareness about the rights of the girl-child in children and adults; feminizing legislation and legislative processes, to allow for the enactment of laws to protect the rights of the girl-child; and campaigning for a more rigorous enforcement of child-rights laws. (shrink)

Michelle Garcia Winner’s Social Thinking Curriculum is widely used by schools across the USA and has garnered attention internationally. The curriculum addresses social language and behavior deficits among those on the autism spectrum. Although many embrace this curriculum without reservation, the emphasis on social conformity, including avoiding behaviors that make others uncomfortable, merits scrutiny. Individuals who have difficulty understanding social cues and conventions can derive tremendous benefit from learning to fit in, for example, or learning what is likely to make (...) others uncomfortable and why. However, too much emphasis on pleasing others can reinforce undesirable tendencies. For example, autism is already linked to avoidant personality disorder. An emphasis on avoiding making others uncomfortable may also inhibit the development of principled ethical thinking and action. Reframing social thinking to treat it not (or not only) as an end in itself, but as a way to achieve a variety of social and personal goals would go a long way toward addressing the weaknesses of the Social Thinking Curriculum. (shrink)

Special Issue: The Material Bases of Cognition Guest Editors: Fred Adams · Kenneth Aizawa -/- Compositional Explanatory Relations and Mechanistic Reduction K.L. Theurer 287 -/- Constitution, and Multiple Constitution, in the Sciences: Using the Neuron to Construct a Starting Framework C. Gillett 309 -/- The Mark of the Cognitive F. Adams · R. Garrison 339 -/- Dynamics and Cognition L.A. Shapiro 353 -/- Causal Parity and Externalisms: Extensions in Life and Mind P. Huneman 377 -/- Did I Do That? (...) Brain–Computer Interfacing and the Sense of Agency P. Haselager 405 . (shrink)

We argue that the projective geometrical component of the Projective Consciousness Model can account for key aspects of pre-reflective self-consciousness and can relate PRSC intelligibly to another signal feature of subjectivity: perspectival character or point of view. We illustrate how the projective geometrical versions of the concepts of duality, reciprocity, polarity, closedness, closure, and unboundedness answer to salient aspects of the phenomenology of PRSC. We thus show that the same mathematics that accounts for the statics and dynamics of perspectival character (...) also accounts for PRSC. More generally, we argue that introducing higher-level geometrical concepts into the theory of PRSC, and into the theory of consciousness broadly, as the PCM does, promises to break longstanding theoretical impasses and dialectical stalemates. (shrink)

Genesis suggests that God is the creator of kinds. Kinds as Locke understands them are what are nowadays called "social constructions". They are social constructions because the boundaries between them reflect our interests, perspectives, and desires, but in Locke's view those boundaries are not altogether arbitrary, because they also reflect natural or God‐given similarities among things. This chapter looks more closely at the story of creation, and explains how, in John Locke's view, kinds in particular, those kinds whose members Locke (...) calls "substances", come to be. It further comments on the simplicity and explanatory strength of Locke's story. In spite of its strengths, Locke's view is open to many objections and attended by many complications, one of which is considered here. One objection is that the story of creation pays only glancing attention to entities that must exist in order for the story to be true. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to give an interpretation of what Kant takes to be the moral importance of aesthetic experience. On my interpretation aesthetic experience pleases since, in general, it is the experience of our finding an object first the aim of our reflective judging efforts. However, satisfying such an aim only makes sense within Kant 's further account of beauty as the expression of aesthetic ideas. In the end I hold that on Kant 's account it is (...) only because beauty can express aesthetic ideas that aesthetic experience can be of moral importance. (shrink)

In this dissertation, the author articulates and defends a version of the historically important view that all consciousness involves self-consciousness. In Chapter 1, the author defends a certain conception of the role of phenomenology in the theory of consciousness. The author argues that any theory of consciousness must account for the properties that phenomenology reveals consciousness to have. The most important properties in this regard are structural: temporality, synchronic unity, and self-referentiality. It is argued that these properties can be given (...) a rigorous description and that mathematical models of the structure of consciousness can be developed. ;In Chapter 2, the author argues that there are no phenomenological data that preclude a theory that identifies consciousness with a brain process. By carefully attending to what consciousness can and cannot reveal about itself in introspection, the author argues, one can see clearly that phenomenology can play its necessary role in the theory of consciousness without at the same time undermining physicalism. ;In Chapter 3, the author discusses the structural phenomenological data. The discussion is informed by the classic work of William James as well as the work of the Phenomenological philosophers, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Aron Gurwitsch. ;In Chapter 4, the author examines various versions of the view that all consciousness involves self-consciousness. The author argues that any adequate theory of the type must maintain that states or phases of consciousness must be genuinely self-referential. The author then goes on to present a model of the self-referential structure of consciousness using some tools from contemporary Set Theory. ;In Chapter 5, the author replies to certain important objections to the self-referentialist theory of consciousness. ;In Chapter 6, the author examines some connections the theory defended bears to the mathematico-computational theory of consciousness suggested by Douglas Hofstadter and to the outstanding neurobiological theories of consciousness presented by Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman. ;In Chapter 7, the author argues that the supposition that consciousness is the embodiment of a certain self-referential structure implies elegant solutions to some outstanding problems in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

It is one of Karl Popper's great distinctions that he has an intense—some would say too intense—awareness of the history of philosophy within which he works. He knows not only its patterns, but also its comedies, and sometimes he plays rhetorically against their grain. He knows, for example, that the drive to consistency tends to turn philosophy into compositions of related doctrines, each seeming to involve the others. Religious belief, for example, tends to go with idealism and free will, religious (...) scepticism with materialism and determinism. Popper does not believe in a religion, was for long some kind of a socialist, and takes his bearings from the philosophy of science. Aha! it seems we have located him. Here is a positivist, a materialist, probably a determinist. But of course he denies he is any of these things. Again, like many modern thinkers, he wants to extend scientific method not only to the social sciences but also to history. So far so familiar, until we discover that he regards nature as no less ‘cloudy’ than human societies. (shrink)