It is well documented that training the rules employed in figural matrices tests enhances test performance. Previous studies only compare experimental conditions in which all or no rules were trained and therefore ignore the particular influence of knowledge about the easy and difficult rules. With the current study, we wanted to provide some first insights into this topic. Respondents were assigned to four groups that received training for no rules, only the easy rules, only the difficult rules, or for all (...) rules. The results show that a training only for the difficult rules was more effective than the other trainings. This applies also to performance in the easy rules that were actually not part of the training. A possible explanation for this finding is a facilitation of the solution process that is primarily driven by knowledge about the difficult rules. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that taking differences between the rules into account may provide a deeper understanding of the effects of trainings for figural matrices tests. (shrink)

Preface : consciousness redux -- What is consciousness? -- Who is conscious? -- Animal consciousness -- Consciousness and the rest -- Consciousness and the brain -- Tracking the footprints of consciousness -- Why we need a theory of consciousness -- Of wholes -- Tools to measure consciousness -- The uber-mind and pure consciousness -- Does consciousness have a function? -- Computationalism and experience -- Computers can't simulate experience -- Consciousness : here, there but not everywhere -- Coda : why this (...) matters -- References -- Notes. (shrink)

A philosopher argues that state-sponsored cyberattacks against central military or civilian targets are always acts of war. What is this philosopher doing? According to conceptual analysts, the philosopher is making a claim about our concept of war. According to philosophical realists, the philosopher is making a claim about war per se. In a quickly developing literature, a third option is being explored: the philosopher is engineering the concept of war. On this view, the philosopher is making a proposal about which (...) concept we should have – even if it deviates from the extant concept, and even if it does not capture ‘what war really is’. The activity or method of proposing such revisionary definitions, as well as the metaphilosophical reflection on it, has become known as conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Conceptual engineering concerns the assessment and improvement of our concepts. But how can proposals to engineer concepts be implemented in the real world? This is known as the implementation challenge to conceptual engineering. In this paper, I am concerned with the meta-philosophical implications of the implementation challenge. Specifically, must we overcome the implementation challenge prior to undertaking conceptual engineering? Some critics have recently answered this question affirmatively. I intend to show that they are mistaken. I argue as follows. First, successful (...) implementation is not an integral part of conceptual engineering. Second, the idea that the value of conceptual engineering relies on successful implementation is in tension with widespread assumptions about normative theorizing. (shrink)

What exactly do we need to do in order to make a promise, or to exercise some other normative power? On a view relied on by many philosophers writing on promising, consent, and related phenomena, the answer is that we must communicate a suitable kind of intention. On this view, power-conferring principles assert that specific normative consequences, determined in part by the content of the communicated intention, attach to such communicative acts, and these principles need not be socially practised or (...) accepted to be true. The paper offers a defense of this convention-independent view against the forceful challenge developed by Jed Lewinsohn in ‘The “Natural Unintelligibility” of Normative Powers’. Lewinsohn appeals to action-theoretic considerations to show that the relevant type of communicative act could not be performed under conditions of rationality and full information, and that therefore promissory power and other normative powers require the existence of social rules conferring such powers. The defense of the view targeted by Lewinsohn turns partly on the exact content of plausible constraints on the intelligibility of actions done with a particular aim, and partly on the question just how the social acceptance of power-conferring rules should be thought to matter. (shrink)

In den letzten Jahren ist der Begriff der ›Person‹ zu einem Schlüsselbegriff des philosophischen wie des gesellschaftlichen Diskurses geworden. Eine systematisch interessante und bisher vernachlässigte historische Rückversicherung in der Personendebatte bieten die Überlegungen Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis (1743–1819) und Johannes Paul Richters (1763–1825), genannt Jean Paul. Jean Paul ist um 1800 nicht nur ein erfolgreicher Autor humoristischer Romane, sondern auch ein gut informierter Beobachter der zeitgenössischen Philosophie und philosophischer Vertrauter Friedrich Heinrich Jacobis. Wie Jacobi in einer konstitutiv doppelsinnigen Bewegung Spinozas Ethik (...) und Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre als unwiderlegbare Entwürfe einer streng rationalen Immanenzphilosophie dechiffriert, um sie im Namen der ›Vernunft‹ zu überwinden, so verbindet auch Jean Pauls philosophisches und poetisches Werk die Wertschätzung der Transzendentalphilosophie unmittelbar mit einem transrationalen Widersprechen gegen die Ansprüche der neuen Systemphilosophie. Um Individualität, Zeitlichkeit und Handlungsfreiheit als Grunderfahrungen menschlichen Daseins philosophisch zureichend zu würdigen, bedarf es für Jean Paul wie für Jacobi einer grundsätzlichen Umwertung des Verhältnisses von individuellem personalem Dasein und rationaler Welt- und Selbsterklärung. (shrink)

In den Aufsätzen dieses Bandes präsentiert Anton Friedrich Koch Hegels theoretische Philosophie als diejenige Nichtstandard-Metaphysik, in der sich die Metaphysik, nicht aber die Philosophie vollendet. Jenseits von Hegels Evolutionstheorie des Absoluten gilt es von einem Standpunkt der Endlichkeit aus neu zu philosophieren.

The continental tradition in philosophy has gotten more "materialistic" over the last two hundred years. This has resulted from a combination of some very specific moves with regard to the epistemological parameters of understanding and the assertion that ideas may have material force in history. Therefore, the materialism within the continental tradition is not a materiality of being, but a materiality of understanding and action. Such an inquiry opens up space between the activities of sensation and the mental faculty of (...) cognition. 'I think, therefore I am,' is not an empirical statement, but a statement of cognition. It is assumed that this distinction is at the core of continental philosophy. Cognition is always interpretive. Experience is the start of cognition, but not its final product. Our cognitions cannot be separated from our experience of the physical, social, and cultural environment around us. The symbolic nature of language reinforces the interpretive nature of our thoughts and ideas. Our language is, therefore, always projecting an implicit image of the world. Language is, therefore, always political. The materiality of these cognitive world-views is manifested in two ways. First, in their formation. They are the products of sensual contact with the world. Second, in their effects. They move people. It is a picture of the world which serves to shape the content and character of human behavior. Whether we want to call these phantoms of the mind, world-view, ideas, thoughts, cognitions, or any other term, the dual character of their materiality is secure. This work examines the threads of materialist ideas running through the efforts of some major authors in the continental tradition in philosophy. A model of materialism is constructed in Chapter One and used to assess the materialist elements in works from Kant, Marx, Weber, Nietzsche, and contemporary poststructuralism. The work demonstrates the evolution of materialist thinking within the tradition and asserts an evolving and developing articulation of materialism in relation to the thoughts and activities of human beings." -- Publisher's description. (shrink)

This paper discusses the logical space of alternative conceptual engineering projects, with a specific focus on (1) the processes, (2) the targets and goals, and (3) the methods of such projects. We present an overview of how these three aspects interact in the contemporary literature and discuss those alternative projects that have yet to be explored based on our suggested typology. We show how choices about each element in a conceptual engineering project constrain the possibilities for the others, thereby giving (...) rise to distinct groupings of possible projects under the banner of conceptual engineering. We conclude with a critical reflection on the potential ethical issues that arise as a result of effectively putting conceptual engineering into practice. (shrink)

What is mathematics about? And if it is about some sort of mathematical reality, how can we have access to it? This is the problem raised by Plato, which still today is the subject of lively philosophical disputes. This book traces the history of the problem, from its origins to its contemporary treatment. It discusses the answers given by Aristotle, Proclus and Kant, through Frege's and Russell's versions of logicism, Hilbert's formalism, Gödel's platonism, up to the the current debate on (...) Benacerraf's dilemma and the indispensability argument. Through the considerations of themes in the philosophy of language, ontology, and the philosophy of science, the book aims at offering an historically-informed introduction to the philosophy of mathematics, approached through the lenses of its most fundamental problem. (shrink)

The classification of medical interventions as either invasive or non-invasive is commonly regarded to be morally important. On the most commonly endorsed account of invasiveness, a medical intervention is invasive if and only if it involves either breaking the skin (‘incision’) or inserting an object into the body (‘insertion’). Building on recent discussions of the concept of invasiveness, we show that this standard account fails to capture three aspects of existing usage of the concept of invasiveness in relation to medical (...) interventions—namely, (1) usage implying that invasiveness comes in degrees, (2) that the invasiveness of an intervention can depend on the characteristics of the salient alternative interventions, and (3) that medical interventions can be invasive in non-physical ways. We then offer the beginnings of a revised account that, we argue, is able to capture a wider range of existing usage. Central to our account is a distinction between two properties: basic invasiveness and threshold invasiveness. We end by assessing what the standard account gets right, and what more needs to be done to complete our schematic account. (shrink)

AI-based technologies are increasingly pervasive in a number of contexts. Our affective and emotional life makes no exception. In this article, we analyze one way in which AI-based technologies can affect them. In particular, our investigation will focus on affective artificial agents, namely AI-powered software or robotic agents designed to interact with us in affectively salient ways. We build upon the existing literature on affective artifacts with the aim of providing an original analysis of affective artificial agents and their distinctive (...) features. We argue that, unlike comparatively low-tech affective artifacts, affective artificial agents display a specific form of agency, which prevents them from being perceived by their users as extensions of their selves. In addition to this, we claim that their functioning crucially depends on the simulation of human-like emotion-driven behavior and requires a distinctive form of transparency—we call it emotional transparency—that might give rise to ethical and normative tensions. (shrink)

I discuss Clark’s predictive processing/extended mind hybrid, diagnosing a problem: Clark’s hybrid suggests that, when we use them, we pay attention to mind-extending external resources. This clashes with a commonly accepted necessary condition of cognitive extension; namely, that mind-extending resources must be phenomenally transparent when used. I then propose a solution to this problem claiming that the phenomenal transparency condition should be rejected. To do so, I put forth a parity argument to the effect that phenomenal transparency cannot be a (...) necessary condition on cognitive extension: roughly, since internal cognitive resources can fail to be transparent when used, by parity, external resources can fail to be phenomenally transparent too. Further, I argue that phenomenal transparency is not even a reliable indicator of cognitive extension; hence its absence should not be considered a problem for Clark’s extended mind-predictive processing hybrid. Lastly, I consider and allay a number of worries my proposal might raise, and conclude the paper. (shrink)

Dans le De fato, Alexandre construit une théorie péripatéticienne du destin et réfute les Stoïciens, partisans dune conception dure du destin. Par là il offre un document majeur sur le déterminisme dans lAntiquité. Louvrage montre comment lexégèse dAristote lui permet de proposer une conception nouvelle de la responsabilité.

In so far as the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu are life-philosophies, they are philosophies of solitude. My aim in the following pages is to explain and defend this claim, clarifying the distinctive kind of solitude that is taught by Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu.

Das sinnliche Bewusstsein, abstrakt einzeln betrachtet, bietet ein Sinnesdaten- Konglomerat in einem raumzeitlich ausgedehnten sensorischen Bewusstseinsfeld, welches affektiv in Leib und Gegenwartsbewusstsein des Menschen verankert und so auf dessen „Begehrungsvermögen“ bezogen ist, jedoch kein Bewusstsein von Subjekt und Objekt. Dieses entsteht erst durch die freie begriffliche Synthesis, die mit Fichte als intellektuelle Anschauung unseres eigenen Handelns – des Verbindens und dadurch Objektivierens sowie „Subjektivierens“/Selbstbewusstsein-Erzeugens – verstanden werden kann. In konservativer Projektion der verbindenden Verstandesbegriffe lässt sie uns erkennen, was das sinnliche (...) Bewusstsein – das Epistemische quasi vorzeichnend – zeitlich geordnet lediglich wahrnimmt. (shrink)

In the most inclusive sense, psychological mechanisms offer a type of causal explanation of mental states and behavior, often with reference to underlying processes, systems, activities, or entities. By postulating and investigating such mechanisms, researchers have sought explanations of a wide range of psychological phenomena. However, the concept has been deployed in dramatically different ways, with very different meanings, depending upon the particular school or tradition of psychology (and specific research program therein). In fact, usage has been so diverse as (...) to defy easy categorization or definition. But a historical perspective, even if rather selective, can trace the broad outlines of the significance of psychological mechanisms for the study of the mind. Perhaps most notable is the role they have played in the psychoanalytic tradition; research efforts within behaviorism and cognitive science have also made liberal use of versions of the concept in their explanatory frameworks (for discussion of evolutionary psychology, see the entry “evolved psychological mechanisms”). Cutting across all of these traditions are several key themes relating to psychological mechanisms, including questions concerning the scope of the relevant causal claims, debates about causal determinism and regularity, and the unresolved relation between mind and body. (shrink)

This chapter reviews past and present debates about the therapeutic relationship in order to draw out the ethical implications of relational practices in psychotherapy. The therapeutic relationship has been understood differently across psychotherapeutic approaches, with each tradition responding to the attendant ethical challenges in distinctive ways. Aside from practitioners’ theoretical and practical commitments, the therapeutic relationship has also been, and continues to be, shaped by broader societal influences. The chapter discusses the shifting ethical implications of relational practices, then, as situated (...) in their theoretical and historical contexts. The variability of concerns raised by the therapeutic relationship requires continued ethical analysis in order to confront the diversity and complexity of contemporary clinical practice. (shrink)

The paper presents and discusses the Hubble tension with respect to recent results in cosmology. I shall argue that the measurements from the James Webb Space Telescope and TRGB stars calibrations allow us to infer that the estimates of H0 with late universe methods are robust. Building on from robustness analysis, I conclude that the resolution of the tension cannot be expected to come from new systematics, but rather from new physics.

In the last decades it has become clear that medicine must find some way to combine its scientific and humanistic sides. In other words, an adequate notion of medicine requires an integrative position that mediates between the analytic-reductionist and the normative-holistic tendencies we find therein. This is especially important as these different styles of reasoning separate “illness” (something perceived and managed by the whole individual in concert with their environment) and “disease” (a “mechanical failure” of a biological element within the (...) body). While the demand for an integrative view has typically been motivated by ethical concerns, we claim that it is also motivated, perhaps even more fundamentally, by epistemological and methodological reasons. Evidence-based bio-medicine employs experimental and statistical techniques which eliminate important differences in the ways that conscious humans evaluate, live with, and react to disease and illness. However, it is precisely these experiences that underpin the concepts and norms of bio-medicine. Humanistic disciplines, on the other hand, have the resources to investigate these experiences in an intersubjectively testable way. Medicine, therefore, cannot afford to ignore its nature as a human science; it must be concerned not only with disease and illness, but also with the ways in which patients as persons respond to malady. Insofar as attitudes and expectations influence the criteria of illness and disease, they must be studied as part of the genuine subject matter of medicine as a human science. In general, we urge that this is a necessary step to overcome today's trend to split evidence-based and clinical medicine. (shrink)

Munch-Jurisic’s book thoroughly describes several cases of severe distresses reported and expressed by perpetrators of tremendous acts such as mass murders. Arguing against a simplistic reading according to which these signs of distress are straightforward manifestations of some innate moral nature, and against the optimistic reading according to which they will lead to prosocial behaviors, Munch-Jursic offers compelling reasons to adopt a more complex theory of emotion. In this commentary, I aim to stress the implications of her book for the (...) debate on moral enhancement and for emotion theory in general. However, while I concur with Munch-Jurisic that emotion theory must make room for complexity and indeterminacy, I challenge her claim that motivational theories of emotion are ill-equipped to face the challenges she poses. (shrink)

We investigated motor resonance in children using a priming paradigm. Participants were asked to judge the weight of an object shortly primed by a hand in an action-related posture or a non action-related one . The hand prime could belong to a child or to an adult. We found faster response times when the object was preceded by a grasp hand posture . More crucially, participants were faster when the prime was a child’s hand, suggesting that it could belong to (...) their body schema, particularly when the child’s hand was followed by a light object . A control experiment helped us to clarify the role of the hand prime. To our knowledge this is the first behavioral evidence of motor simulation and motor resonance in children. Implications of the results for the development of the sense of body ownership and for conceptual development are discussed. (shrink)