Several promising approaches have been developed to represent conscious experience in terms of mathematical spaces and structures. What is missing, however, is an explicit definition of what a ‘mathematical structure of conscious experience’ is. Here, we propose such a definition. This definition provides a link between the abstract formal entities of mathematics and the concreta of conscious experience; it complements recent approaches that study quality spaces, qualia spaces, or phenomenal spaces; and it provides a general method to identify and investigate (...) structures of conscious experience. We hope that ultimately this work provides a basis for developing a common formal language to study consciousness. (shrink)

One of the unconventional features of Wittgenstein’s _Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus_ is its use of an elaborated and detailed numbering system. Recently, Bazzocchi, Hacker und Kuusela have argued that the numbering system means that the _Tractatus_ must be read and interpreted not as a sequentially ordered book, but as a text with a two-dimensional, tree-like structure. Apart from being able to explain how the _Tractatus_ was composed, the tree reading allegedly solves exegetical issues both on the local and the global level. This (...) paper defends the sequential reading against the tree reading. After presenting the challenges generated by the numbering system and the two accounts as attempts to solve them, it is argued that Wittgenstein’s own explanation of the numbering system, anaphoric references within the _Tractatus_ and the exegetical issues mentioned above do not favour the tree reading, but a version of the sequential reading. This reading maintains that the remarks of the _Tractatus_ form a sequential chain: The role of the numbers is to indicate how remarks on different levels are interconnected to form a concise, surveyable and unified whole. (shrink)

This book defends and outlines the key issues surrounding the philosophy of content as demonstrated in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. The text shows how Wittgenstein's critical arguments concerning mind and meaning are destructive of much recent work in the philosophy of thought and language, including the representationalist orthodoxy. These issues are related to the work of Davidson, Rorty and McDowell among others.

Jaspers’s binary distinction between understanding and explanation has given way first to a proliferation of explanatory levels and now, in John Campbell’s recent work, to a conception of explanation with no distinct levels of explanation and no inbuilt rationality requirement. I argue that there is still a role for understanding in psychiatry and that is to demystify the assumption that the states it concerns are mental. This role can be fulfilled by placing rationality at the heart of understanding without a (...) commitment to the attempt to use rationality to shed light on interpretation and mindedness as though from outside those notions. Delusions still present a significant challenge to philosophical attempts at understanding, but this merely reflects the genuine clinical difficulties such states present. (shrink)

Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein (1993) is one of the very few films made about a philosopher’s life. Almost a parody of a late twentieth-century art-house movie, it contains a mimetic performance by Karl Johnson in the title role, plus cameos by Michael Gough (Bertrand Russell) and the ubiquitous Tilda Swinton (Russell’s lover, Ottoline Morrell). There is a green Martian (played by Nabil Shaban) who quizzes the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, and a collection of handsome young men sitting on deckchairs, looking puzzled (...) and gazing adoringly at the Master. The action, such as it is, takes place against a theatrical black background with a few props, and the whole thing lasts a brisk seventy minutes... (shrink)

‘Poor Bertie’ Beatrice Webb wrote after receiving a visit from Bertrand Russell in 1931, ‘he has made a mess of his life and he knows it’. In the 1931 version of his Autobiography, Russell himself seemed to share Webb’s estimate of his achievements. Emotionally, intellectually and politically, he wrote, his life had been a failure. This sense of failure pervades the second volume of Ray Monk’s engrossing and insightful biography. At its heart is the failure of Russell’s marriages to Dora (...) Black and Patricia (Peter) Spence, his poor relationships with his children John and Kate, and the decline in his reputation as a philosopher. Russell, who had changed the direction of philosophy irrevocably, was in later years unable to find permanent academic employment in Britain, ousted from his professorship at the City College of New York because of his views on sex and marriage, and was reduced to giving nonspecialist lectures at a foundation established by the Philadelphia philanthropist Albert C. Barnes. Eventually in 1944 he returned to Cambridge, but by then the philosophical world was in the grip of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas, and Russell was largely ignored. (shrink)

The original essays in this volume, while written from diverse perspectives, share the common aim of building a constructive dialogue between two currents in philosophy that seem not readily allied: Wittgenstein, who urges us to bring our words back home to their ordinary uses, recognizing that it is our agreements in judgments and forms of life that ground intelligibility; and feminist theory, whose task is to articulate a radical critique of what we say, to disrupt precisely those taken-for-granted agreements in (...) judgments and forms of life. Wittgenstein and feminist theorists are alike, however, in being unwilling or unable to "make sense" in the terms of the traditions from which they come, needing to rely on other means—including telling stories about everyday life—to change our ideas of what sense is and of what it is to make it. For both, appeal to grounding is problematic, but the presumed groundedness of particular judgments remains an unavoidable feature of discourse and, as such, in need of understanding. For feminist theory, Wittgenstein suggests responses to the immobilizing tugs between modernist modes of theorizing and postmodern challenges to them. For Wittgenstein, feminist theory suggests responses to those who would turn him into the "normal" philosopher he dreaded becoming, one who offers perhaps unorthodox solutions to recognizable philosophical problems. In addition to an introductory essay by Naomi Scheman, the volume’s twenty chapters are grouped in sections titled "The Subject of Philosophy and the Philosophical Subject," "Wittgensteinian Feminist Philosophy: Contrasting Visions," "Drawing Boundaries: Categories and Kinds," "Being Human: Agents and Subjects," and "Feminism’s Allies: New Players, New Games." These essays give us ways of understanding Wittgenstein and feminist theory that make the alliance a mutually fruitful one, even as they bring to their readings of Wittgenstein an explicitly historical and political perspective that is, at best, implicit in his work. The recent salutary turn in philosophy toward taking history seriously has shown how the apparently timeless problems of supposedly generic subjects arose out of historically specific circumstances. These essays shed light on the task of feminist theorists—along with postcolonial, queer, and critical race theorists—to "rotate the axis of our examination" around whatever "real need[s]" might emerge through the struggles of modernity’s Others. Contributors are Nancy E. Baker, Nalini Bhushan, Jane Braaten, Judith Bradford, Sandra W. Churchill, Daniel Cohen, Tim Craker, Alice Crary, Susan Hekman, Cressida J. Heyes, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Christine M. Koggel, Bruce Krajewski, Wendy Lynne Lee, Hilda Lindemann Nelson, Deborah Orr, Rupert Read, Phyllis Rooney, and Janet Farrell Smith. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:72 Reviews RUSSELL VERSUS THE HAPPINESS INDUSTRY Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa [email protected] Tim Phillips. Bertrand Russell’sThe Conquest of Happiness; a Modern-Day Interpretation of a Self-Help Classic. Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2010. Pp. 118. 978-1906821 -27-2 (pb). us$11.95. German translation as Bertrand Russells Eroberung des Glücks in a “Business Classics” series (gabal Verlag, 2012). he popular writing Bertrand Russell undertook to make money has long roused (...) the indignation of those interested in his more technical specialized work, and his 1930 The Conquest of Happiness ranks among the more extreme examples of this pot-boiling genre. Ludwig Wittgenstein denounced Russell’s Conquest of Happiness as a “vomitive.” And the best ways of understanding Russell’s own assessments of his book are unclear, owing to the various sentiments his biographers report. According to Ronald Clark, he said: “… The Conquest of Happiness … I am not very proud of”;1 whereas Caroline Moorehead reports “he was later to say that, of all his books, he felt this had done the most good”.2 In his autobiography, Russell allows us how he wrote The Conquest of Happiness at a stage in his life “when I needed much self-command and much that I had learned by painful experience if I was to maintain any endurable level of happiness.”The emotional challenges to which he was subjected at the time he wrote the book “introduced an intolerable tension into every moment of daily life.” Beacon Hill School, which Russell had started with his second wife, Dora, in 1927, was in such dire straits financially by 1930 that Russell was compelled to resort to much popular writing and lecturing in order to remain solvent. In 1930, Dora gave birth to a daughter fathered by the American journalist Grif- fin Barry.This marked the beginning of the end to Russell’s marriage to Dora. Add to the foregoing Russell’s strained relations with Wittgenstein, when the ______ 1 The Life of Bertrand Russell, p. 448. 2 Bertrand Russell, p. 383. q= Reviews 73 former was asked to be one of the examiners for Wittgenstein’s phd at Cambridge. Although the phd was awarded and Wittgenstein secured a grant to conduct research at Trinity College, Cambridge for five years, Russell and Wittgenstein’s interaction at the time resulted in an end to their friendship. In general, however much control Russell may have had over matters at earlier points in his life, 1930 was a time he was largely at the mercy of unstable circumstances.The repose and leisure on which he had depended for his philosophic activity were not then available to him. Personal problems came to the fore and he was more prone to depression than usual. About The Conquest of Happiness, written primarily with the American market in mind, he remarked to the publisher Stanley Unwin: “I think they [Americans] mostly share Al Capone’s ideas of happiness, which are in a somewhat different vein from mine.”The book became a bestseller in America. Tim Phillips writes on business, technology, social change and innovation, and he has published more than a dozen expositions of other famous authors’ works. His book Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness is a faithful tour through this Russell classic. Phillips provides a readable account of the original ’s lucid points. The treatment is certainly not pretentious or obfuscatory, as it abounds with examples of Russell’s points from contemporary pop culture. It features corroborating quotations from other authors and is salted with some results of modern surveys. Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness has good reminders of the differences between the nature of Russell’s times and lifestyle and that of our own, the most notable being the absence during Russell’s day of a happiness industry. Nowadays, we are bombarded with “self-help” books “encouraging us to obsess about ourselves or manipulate others” (p. 9). Moreover, when Russell wrote The Conquest of Happiness, “the idea of an antidepressant pill was as likely as someone walking on the moon and the idea that people could ‘suffer from stress’ was thirty years into the future. For all... (shrink)

Bazzocchi disposes the text of the Tractatus in a user-friendly manner, exactly as Wittgenstein's decimals advise. This discloses the logical form of the book by distinct reading units, linked into a fashioned hierarchical tree. The text becomes much clearer and every reader can enjoy, finally, its formal and literary qualities.

: According to Crane intentionality is nothing less than the mark of the mental. Nonetheless, there are many issues raised by this concept, beginning with the problem of non-existent relata. In this comment-article I discuss the concept of intentionality in its generality, trying to state its ontological status and to assess its explanatory dispensability. In particular, I focus on the argument, addressed by Crane, whereby Wittgenstein eliminates intentionality, characterizing it as a grammatical fiction, a pseudo-entity created by the grammar of (...) the language of mental states ascriptions. I will argue that: although Crane’s specific argument against Wittgenstein is not conclusive, Wittgenstein’s linguistic strategy does not work; and yet we should not be committed to a robust realist account of intentionality. Keywords : Intentionality; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Mark of the Mental; Ontological Commitment; Realism/Anti-realism. L’intenzionalità è sufficientemente reale? Riassunto : Il concetto di intenzionalità è l’autentico cuore della filosofia di Tim Crane, secondo il quale l’intenzionalità è niente di meno che il marchio del mentale. Nondimeno, vi sono diversi noti problemi sollevati da questo concetto. In questo articolo-commento discuto il concetto di intenzionalità nelle sue linee generali cercando, da un lato, di determinarne lo statuto ontologico e, dall’altro, di valutarne la dispensabilità esplicativa. Mi concentro in particolare sull’argomento, discusso da Crane, con cui Wittgenstein elimina l’intenzionalità, caratterizzandola come una finzione grammaticale, una pseudo-entità creata della grammatica del linguaggio con cui attribuiamo stati mentali. Sosterrò che: sebbene lo specifico argomento di Crane non sia conclusivo, la strategia “linguistica” di Wittgenstein non funziona e tuttavia non dovremmo indulgere a una concezione realista “robusta” dell’intenzionalità. Parole chiave : Intentionalità; Ludwig Wittgenstein; Marchio del mentale; Impegno ontologico; Realismo/Anti-realismo. (shrink)

Both patients and clinicians frequently report problems around communicating and assessing pain. Patients express dissatisfaction with their doctors and doctors often find exchanges with chronic pain patients difficult and frustrating. This chapter thus asks how we could improve pain communication and thereby enhance outcomes for chronic pain patients. We argue that improving matters will require a better appreciation of the complex meaning of pain terms and of the variability and flexibility in how individuals think about pain. We start by examining (...) the various accounts of the meaning of pain terms that have been suggested within philosophy and suggest that, while each of the accounts captures something important about our use of pain terms, none is completely satisfactory. We propose that pain terms should be viewed as communicating complex meanings, which may change across different communicative contexts, and this in turn suggests that we should view our ordinary thought about pain as similarly complex. We then sketch what a view taking seriously this variability in meaning and thought might look like, which we call the “polyeidic” view. According to this view, individuals tacitly occupy divergent stances across a range of different dimensions of pain, with one agent, for instance, thinking of pain in a much more “bodycentric” kind of way, while another thinks of pain in a much more "mindcentric” way. The polyeidic view attempts to expand the multidimensionality recognised in, e.g., biopsychosocial models in two directions: first, it holds that the standard triumvirate— dividing sensory/cognitive/affective factors— needs to be enriched in order to capture important distinctions within the social and psychological dimensions. Second, the polyeidic view attempts to explain (at least in part) why modulation of experience by these social and psychological factors is possible in the first place. It does so by arguing that because the folk concept of pain is complex, different weightings of the different parts of the concept can modulate pain experience in a variety of ways. Finally, we argue that adopting a polyeidic approach to the meaning of pain would have a range of measurable clinical outcomes. (shrink)

Raimo Tuomela is one of the pioneers of social action theory and has done as much as anyone over the last thirty years to advance the study of social action and collective intentionality. Social Ontology: Collective Intentionality and Group Agents (2013) presents the latest version of his theory and applications to a range of important social phenomena. The book covers so much ground, and so many important topics in detailed discussions, that it would impossible in a short space to do (...) it even partial justice. In this brief note, I will concentrate on a single, though important, theme in the book, namely, the claim that we must give up methodological individualism in the social sciences and embrace instead irreducibly group notions. I wish to defend methodological individualism as up to the theoretical tasks of the social sciences while acknowledging what is distinctive about the social world and collective intentional action. -/- Tuomela frames the question of the adequacy of methodological individualism in terms of a contrast between what he calls the I-mode and the we-mode. He argues that we-mode phenomena are not reducible to I-mode phenomena, and concludes that we must reject methodological individualism. I will argue that the irreducibility of the we-mode to the I-mode, given how the contrast is set up, does not entail the rejection of methodological individualism. In addition, I will argue that the three conditions that Tuomela places on genuine we-mode activities, the group reason, collectivity, and collective commitment conditions, if they are understood in a way that does not beg the question, can plausibly be satisfied by a reductive account. Finally, I will argue that the specific considerations advanced in the book do not give us reason to think that a reductive account cannot be adequate to the descriptive and explanatory requirements of a theory of the social world. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's work remains, undeniably, now, that off one of those few philosophers who will be read by all future generations.

This article addresses ontological negotiations in the Global South through three case studies of community-based research in Brazil and Ghana. We argue that ontological perspectives of Indigenous people and local communities require an ontological pluralism that recognizes both the plurality of representational tools and of ways of being in the world. Locating these two readings of ontological pluralism in the politics of the Global South, the article highlights a wider dynamic from ontological paternalism to ontological diversity to ontological decolonization. We (...) conclude by arguing that this dynamic provides important lessons for the state for social ontology in academic philosophy and for the design of politically reflexive development interventions. (shrink)

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein: three parallel tree-structured editions. (1) Tree-structured arrangement of the German text, edited by David G. Stern, Joachim Schulte and Katia Saporiti. (2) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Ogden and Ramsey, edited by David G. Stern. (3) Tree-structured arrangement of the English translation by Pears and McGuinness, edited by David G. Stern.

Peter Finch's translation of Wittgenstein's remarks on culture and value presents all entries chronologically, with the German text alongside the English and a subject index for reference. "It was Wittgenstein's habit to record his thoughts in sequences of more or less closely related 'remarks' which he kept in notebooks throughout his life. The editor of this collection has gone through these notebooks in order to select those 'remarks' which deal with Wittgenstein's views abou the less technical issues in his philosophy. (...) So here we have Wittgenstein's thoughts about religion, music, architecture, the nature of philosophy, the spirit of our times, genius, being Jewish, and so on. The work is a masterpiece by a mastermind."—Leonard Linsky. (shrink)

This book on the philosophy of science argues for an empiricism, opposed to the tradition of David Hume, in which singular rather than general causal claims are primary; causal laws express facts about singular causes whereas the general causal claims of science are ascriptions of capacities or causal powers, capacities to make things happen. Taking science as measurement, Cartwright argues that capacities are necessary for science and that these can be measured, provided suitable conditions are met. There are case studies (...) from both econometrics and quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This essay is the first act of a two-act play. My ultimate aim is to defend a simple proposition: time passes. To be more precise, I want to defend the claim that the passage of time is an intrinsic asymmetry in the structure of space-time itself, an asymmetry that has no spatial counterpart and is metaphysically independent of the material contents of space-time. It is independent, for example, of the entropy gradient of the universe. This view is part of common-sense, (...) but has been widely attacked by philosophers. The passage of time, we are told, is a myth, an illusion, even an incoherent notion. Because the notion that time passes is common sense, it perhaps requires little positive defence; if there are no weighty objections to the view, it ought to be accepted. So the first, and more important, act of the play is defusing the arguments which have been used to cast doubt on the passage of time. I have positive arguments to give, but not having space for them here, I will confine myself to an examination of the common philosophical arguments that have been used to cast doubt on the passage of time. (shrink)

Notes taken by these last four are the basis for the thirty-one lectures in this book.

The Divine Attributes explores the traditional theistic concept of God as the most perfect being possible, discussing the main divine attributes which flow from this understanding - personhood, transcendence, immanence, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, perfect goodness, unity, simplicity and necessity. It argues that the atemporalist's conception of God is to be preferred over the temporalist's on the grounds of perfect being theology, but that, if it were to be the case that the temporal God existed, rather than the atemporal God, He'd (...) still be 'perfect enough' to count as the God of Theism. (shrink)

I call into question a pair of closely related assumptions that are almost universally shared in the literature on predicates of taste. The assumptions are, first, that predicates of taste – words like ‘tasty’ – are semantically evaluative. In other words, that it is part of the meaning of a word like ‘tasty’ to describe an object as in some sense good, or to say that it is pleasing. And second, that the meaning of predicates of taste is in some (...) way relativized to an experiencer or standard – the person that the object is pleasing to or the standard according to which the object is good. Parties to the literature on these terms tend to disagree about the role of context in determining the truth of claims involving predicates of taste, or in determining which proposition is expressed. But they agree that to call some dish ‘tasty’ is to say something positive about that dish, to suggest that someone or other finds, or is disposed to find, the dish pleasing. I suggest instead that ‘tasty’, and indeed... (shrink)

The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.

Abstract The only biologically respectable notion of human nature is an extremely permissive one that names the reliable dispositions of the human species as a whole. This conception offers no ethical guidance in debates over enhancement, and indeed it has the result that alterations to human nature have been commonplace in the history of our species. Aristotelian conceptions of species natures, which are currently fashionable in meta-ethics and applied ethics, have no basis in biological fact. Moreover, because our folk psychology (...) finds this misleading Aristotelian conception highly tempting, we are in fact better off if we refrain from mentioning human nature altogether in debates over enhancement. Content Type Journal Article Category Special Issue Pages 1-16 DOI 10.1007/s13347-012-0063-x Authors Tim Lewens, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Lane, Cambridge, CB2 3RH UK Journal Philosophy & Technology Online ISSN 2210-5441 Print ISSN 2210-5433. (shrink)

Truth and Paradox largely consists of three connected technical projects together with a more general account of the nature of truth. The first project is the most familiar: providing an account of how logically complex sentences get assigned truth values on the basis of the truth values assigned to the logically atomic sentences. The second is construction of valid, syntactically specifiable inference rules for a language that includes the familiar logical connectives and the truth predicate. The third is an account (...) of the normative rules governing the assertion of sentences. Let me sketch these in order. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Limits for Uncommunicative Partners How Much Does a Particle Need to Know? Evaluation of Results Simulators Does Nature Simulate?

Workplace AI is transforming labor but decisions on which AI applications are developed or implemented are made with little to no input from workers themselves. In this piece for AI & Society, I argue for nationalization as a strategy for democratizing AI.

Elisabeth Pacherie is a research fellow in philosophy at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris. Her main research and publications are in the areas of philosophy of mind, psychopathology and action theory. Her publications include a book on intentionality (_Naturaliser_ _l'intentionnalité_, Paris, PUF, 1993) and she is currently preparing a book on action and agency.

ABSTRACT In “Temporal Passage and the ‘No Alternate Possibilities Argument’”, Jonathan Tallant takes up one objection based on the observation that if time passes at the rate of one second per second there is no other possible rate at which it could pass. The argument rests on the premise that if time passes at some rate then it could have passed at some other rate. Since no alternative rate seems to be coherent, one concludes that time cannot pass at all. (...) The obvious weak point of the NAP is the premise itself. (shrink)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that quantum mechanics is (somehow or other) screwy. That is, the ‘picture of the world’ presented by quantum mechanics i.

Appeals to nature are ubiquitous in Epicurean ethics and politics. The foundation of Epicurean ethics is its claim that pleasure is the sole intrinsic good and pain the sole intrinsic evil, and this is supposedly shown by the behavior of infants who have not yet been corrupted, "when nature's judgement is pure and whole." Central to their recommendations about how to attain pleasure is their division between types of desires: the natural and necessary ones, the natural but non-necessary ones, and (...) the vain and empty ones. Elsewhere, the Epicureans talk about the "natural goods" of political power and fame, and they contrast "natural wealth" with wealth as "defined by empty opinion." Finally, in their politics, Epicurus claims that the "the justice of nature is a pledge of reciprocal usefulness, [i.e.,] neither to harm one another nor to be harmed." This paper explores two questions regarding these various appeals to nature. The first is: what is it for these things to be natural, i.e., what notion of "natural" or "nature" is at play here? (Furthermore, is there a single notion being used across these appeals, and if not, how are they related?) The second is: what normative work does a thing's being natural do? That is, what reason, if any, does a desire's being natural give me for pursuing the object of that desire and trying to fulfill that desire, as opposed to not doing so and trying to eliminate it, and similarly for the other appeals to nature? (shrink)

Australia’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic has been widely perceived to have been a successful one, based on the relatively few number of lives lost to the virus compared to the rest of the world. There remain, nonetheless, serious ethical challenges at the heart of the Australian response to COVID-19. The broadly positive outcomes of Australia’s pandemic response mask more troubling developments within its political culture, and the costs it has imposed on its society. This article examines two concerns in (...) particular: the normalisation of fear and emergency through the language and policy responses adopted by governments, and the significant diminution of individual freedoms and human rights. (shrink)

While the challenges workers face in the gig economy are now well-known, reflections on emancipatory solutions in political philosophy are still underdeveloped. Some have pleaded for enhancing workers' bargaining power through unionisation; others for enhancing exit options in the labour market. Both strategies, however, come with unin-tended side-effects and do not exhaust the full potential for worker self-government present in the digital gig economy. Using the republican theory of freedom as non-domination , I argue that G.D.H. Cole's 20th-century defence of (...) guild socialism offers a promising avenue for enhancing worker autonomy in the gig economy. Platform companies rely on relational and structural domination to undermine worker autonomy, but Cole's guild socialism was specifically designed to enhance autonomy in the workplace. Following Cole's advice today would amount to a defence of worker-owned cooperative platforms. By putting workers in control of platform design and governance, cooperative platforms create new opportunities for worker autonomy. However, platform coopera-tivism faces serious challenges if it plans on becoming a realistic alternative to the traditional gig economy. (shrink)