Taking Carnap’s classic exposition as a starting point, this paper develops a pragmatic account of the method of explication, defends it against a range of challenges and proposes a detailed recipe for the practice of explicating. It is then argued that confusions are involved in characterizing explications as definitions, and in advocating precising definitions as an alternative to explications. Explication is better characterized as conceptual re-engineering for theoretical purposes, in contrast to conceptual re-engineering for other purposes and improving exactness for (...) purely practical reasons. Finally, three limitations which call for further development of the method of explication are discussed. (shrink)

Carnap and Goodman developed methods of conceptual re-engineering known respectively as explication and reflective equilibrium. These methods aim at advancing theories by developing concepts that are simultaneously guided by pre-existing concepts and intended to replace these concepts. This paper shows that Carnap’s and Goodman’s methods are historically closely related, analyses their structural interconnections, and argues that there is great systematic potential in interpreting them as aspects of one method, which ultimately must be conceived as a component of theory development. The (...) main results are: an adequate method of conceptual re-engineering must focus not on individual concepts but on systems of concepts and theories; the linear structure of Carnapian explication must be replaced by a process of mutual adjustments as described by Goodman; Carnap’s condition of similarity can be analysed into two components, one securing a relation to the specific extensions of the pre-existing concepts, one regulating the transition to the new system of concepts; these two criteria of adequacy can be built into Goodman’s account of reflective equilibrium to ensure that the resulting concepts promote theoretical virtues while being sufficiently similar to the concepts we started out with. (shrink)

This volume distinguishes between two main traditions in the philosophy of science - the aristotelian, with its stress on explanation in terms of purpose and intentionality, and the galilean, which takes causal explanation as primary. It then traces the complex history of these competing traditions as they are manifested in such movements as positivism, idealism, Marxism and contemporary linguistic analysis. Hempels's theory of scientific explanation, the claims of cybernetics the rise of an analytic philosophy of action and the revival of (...) hermenuetics are all discussed. The volume also deals with causal explanation, intentionality and teleological explanation, and explanation in history and the social sciences. The author concludes that explanation of human actions cannot be reduced to simple causality, and discusses the implications of this conclusion for the disciplines of history and sociology. (shrink)

In moral epistemology, the method of reflective equilibrium is often characterized in terms of intuitions or understood as a method for justifying intuitions. An analysis of reflective equilibrium and current theories of moral intuitions reveals that this picture is problematic. Reflective equilibrium cannot be adequately characterized in terms of intuitions. Although the method presupposes that we have initially credible commitments, it does not presuppose that they are intuitions. Nonetheless, intuitions can enter the process of developing a reflective equilibrium and, if (...) the process is successful, be justified. Since the method of reflective equilibrium does not essentially involve intuitions, it does not constitute a form of intuitionism in any substantial sense. It may be classified as intuitionist only in the minimal sense of not reducing justification to a matter of inference relations alone. (shrink)

A series of essays treating, among other topics, the definition of orthodox Marxism, the question of legality and illegality, Rosa Luxemburg as a Marxist, the changing function of Historic Marxism, class consciousness, and the ...

This chapter provides an overview of the issues involved in recent debates about the epistemological relevance of emotions. We first survey some key issues in epistemology and the theory of emotions that inform various assessments of emotions’ potential significance in epistemology. We then distinguish five epistemic functions that have been claimed for emotions: motivational force, salience and relevance, access to facts and beliefs, non-propositional contributions to knowledge and understanding, and epistemic efficiency. We identify two core issues in the discussions about (...) such epistemic functions of emotions: First, even though it is plausible that emotions are involved in epistemic processes, it may be doubted whether they really matter for the normative question of what counts as knowledge or justified belief. Second, some of the epistemic functions claimed for emotions in general may only be attributed to some specifically epistemic emotions, which have been present all along in traditional epistemology, albeit under different labels such as ‘intuitions’. (shrink)

This book uncovers Kant s hidden theory of cosmopolitan education within the framework of his overall practical philosophy. The Kant brought out here turns out to be very different from current mainstream appropriations, which erroneously consider him one of the founding fathers of the new cosmopolitanism. Kant s Embedded Cosmopolitanism is a valuable source for students of political philosophy, cosmopolitanism, and Kant s ethics.".

This edition makes available an entirely new version of Hegel's lectures on the development and scope of world history.

Social scientists, political scientists and philosophers debate key concepts such as democracy, power and autonomy. Contested concepts like these pose questions: Are terms such as “democracy” hopelessly ambiguous? How can two theorists defend alternative accounts of democracy without talking past each other? How can we understand debates in which theorists disagree about what democracy is? This paper first discusses the popular strategy to answer these questions by appealing to Rawls’s distinction between concepts and conceptions. According to this approach, defenders of (...) rival conceptions of, e.g. justice can disagree without talking past each other because they share the concept of justice. It is argued that this idea is attractive but limited in application and that it fails to do justice to the dynamic and normative aspects of concept formation. Reflective equilibrium is then suggested as an alternative approach. It replaces the static contrast between a conceptual ‘core’ and competing conceptions by a dynamic perspective of concept formation as a partly normative undertaking: pre-theoretic language use and commitments can provide a shared starting point for developing alternative accounts which yield different concepts of, e.g. justice. This perspective provides a new understanding of how it is possible that different theorists defend rival accounts of, e.g. justice, without talking past each other. (shrink)

This novel approach plunges the reader into the depths of our own brain.

In this paper, we develop an understanding of recognition in terms of individuals’ capacity for conflict. Our goal is to overcome various shortcomings that can be found in both the positive and negative conceptions of recognition. We start by analyzing paradigmatic instances of such conceptions—namely, those put forward by Axel Honneth and Judith Butler. We do so in order to show how both positions are inadequate in their elaborations of recognition in an analogous way: Both fail to make intelligible the (...) fundamental nexus between relations of recognition and individuals’ capacity for conflict. We then move on to reconsider aspects of Hegel's view of recognition—ones that, from our viewpoint, have been unjustly neglected in the debate about recognition: his focus on the constitution of relations of recognition in conflict and on the status of being an author of acts of recognition. On this basis, we then spell out in a more systematic way what we take to be a more convincing conception of recognition. This puts us in the position to gesture at some consequences of this conception in practical contexts, above all with regard to the justification, role and structure of political institutions. (shrink)

For Descartes, minds were essentially non-extended things. Contemporary cognitive science prides itself on having exorcised the Cartesian ghost from the biological machine. However, it remains committed to the Cartesian vision of the mental as something purely inner. Against the idea that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the situated and embodied nature of cognition have long stressed the importance of dynamic brain-body-environment couplings, the opportunistic exploitation of bodily morphology, the strategic performance of epistemically potent actions, the generation (...) and use of external representations, and the cognitive scaffolding provided by artifacts and social-cultural practices. According to the “extended mind” thesis, a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and its environment. My goal in this book is to clarify the nature and scope of this thesis, and to defend its central insight that cognition is not confined to the boundaries of the biological individual. (shrink)

In this paper we consider two major issues: conceptual–experimental approaches to the self, and the neuroanatomical substrate of the self. We distinguish content- and processed-based concepts of the self that entail different experimental strategies, and anatomically, we investigate the concept of midline structures in further detail and present a novel view on the anatomy of an integrated subcortical–cortical midline system. Presenting meta-analytic evidence, we show that the anterior paralimbic, e.g. midline, regions do indeed seem to be specific for self-specific stimuli. (...) We conclude that future investigation of the self need to develop novel concepts that are more empirically plausible than those currently in use. Different concepts of self will require novel experimental designs that include, for example, the brain’s resting state activity as an independent variable. Modifications of both conceptual and anatomical dimensions will allow an empirically more plausible account of the relationship between brain and self. (shrink)

This chapter suggests a scheme of reconstruction, which explains how scenarios, questions and arguments figure in thought experiments. It then develops a typology of ethical thought experiments according to their function, which can be epistemic, illustrative, rhetorical, heuristic or theory-internal. Epistemic functions of supporting or refuting ethical claims rely on metaethical assumptions, for example, an epistemological background of reflective equilibrium. In this context, thought experiments may involve intuitive as well as explicitly argued judgements; they can be used to generate moral (...) commitments, to explore consequences of moral theories, and to show inconsistencies within or between moral commitments and moral theory; but the results of thought experiments by themselves do not settle what is epistemically justified and may also be rejected. Finally, some prominent challenges are discussed: do unrealistic scenarios undermine epistemic thought experiments? Are ethical thought experiments misleading? Do they rely on weak analogies? Are there specifically moral objections to ethical thought experiments? (shrink)

Since Kant, many philosophers have struggled to overcome the problems of an empiricist conception of the self. In this paper I argue that Heidegger’s philosophy in Being and Time has to be considered as one of the most powerful attempts to gain an anti-empiricist conception of the self and its unity. I highlight the power of Heidegger’s conception by contrasting it with contemporary empiricist conceptions, namely those of Dennett and Velleman. The basic aspect of Heidegger’s conception can be captured by (...) the claim that the unity of the subject is constituted by relations to an open future. (shrink)

In this paper, we approach the idea of group cognition from the perspective of the “extended mind” thesis, as a special case of the more general claim that systems larger than the individual human, but containing that human, are capable of cognition (Clark, 2008; Clark & Chalmers, 1998). Instead of deliberating about “the mark of the cognitive” (Adams & Aizawa, 2008), our discussion of group cognition is tied to particular cognitive capacities. We review recent studies of group problem-solving and group (...) memory which reveal that specific cognitive capacities that are commonly ascribed to individuals are also aptly ascribed at the level of groups. These case studies show how dense interactions among people within a group lead to both similarity-inducing and differentiating dynamics that affect the group's ability to solve problems. This supports our claim that groups have organization-dependent cognitive capacities that go beyond the simple aggregation of the cognitive capacities of individuals. Group cognition is thus an emergent phenomenon in the sense of Wimsatt (1986). We further argue that anybody who rejects our strategy for showing that cognitive properties can be instantiated at multiple levels in the organizational hierarchy on a priori grounds is a “demergentist,” and thus incurs the burden of proof for explaining why cognitive properties are “stuck” at a certain level of organizational structure. Finally, we show that our analysis of group cognition escapes the “coupling-constitution” charge that has been leveled against the extended mind thesis (Adams & Aizawa, 2008). (shrink)

Die vorliegende Untersuchung verfolgt hauptsachlich systematische Zwecke. Sie verlaBt jedoch an keiner Stelle den Weg einer Interpretation der Phanomenologie der Erfahrbarkeit fremder Subjektivitat im Ge­ samtzusammenhang des Husserlschen Projektes einer transzendental­ phanomenologischen Philosophie aufder Grundlage der aus dem Nach­ laB verOffentlichten Schriften zu einer Phanomenologie der Intersubjek­ tivitat. Das systematische Ziel gibt jedoch die Erlaubnis, aus den ge­ danklichen Bestanden dieses Werkes einen philosophischen Gedanken­ gang zu entwickeln, der in vielem nicht mit den bisherigen Auslegungen iibereinstimmt. Die Untersuchung ist nicht (...) in erster Linie bemiiht, den Text nur getreulich nachzuzeichnen, sondern nimmt Gewichtungen vor und stellt Zusammenhange her, die es erlauben, zu einem neuen Entwurf zu kommen, der in mancher Hinsicht so nicht in den zu Husserls Lebzei­ ten veroffentlichten Texten steht. Die Aufgabe lautet folglich: auf der Grundlage von Husserls NachlaB-Texten zum Thema Intersubjektivitat eine philosophische Theorie auszuarbeiten, die iiber ein historisches In­ teresse hinaus systematische Bedeutung gewinnen kann. Aufgrund des systematischen und rekonstruktiven Interesses bleibt im folgenden die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Husserlschen Denkens weitgehend unberiicksichtigt. Dariiber hinaus beschrankt sich die Un­ tersuchung auf das transzendentalphilosophische Stadium der Husserl­ schen Philosophie und beschaftigt sich nicht mit dem Versuch einer rein deskriptiven Phanomenologie. Fiir die Interpretationen werden ohne Ausnahme nur die bereits verOffentlichten Schriften einschlieBlich der in den Gesammelten Werken edierten Texte aus Husserls NachlaB be­ nutzt. (shrink)

Das Buch vermittelt methodische Grundlagen für die Arbeit mit Texten in den Wissenschaften, besonders die Fähigkeit, Inhalt und Argumentation komplexer Texte zu erfassen, wiederzugeben und zu beurteilen. Die Einführung entspricht den fachlichen Standards der Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften, ist fachübergreifend konzipiert und setzt kein spezifisches Wissen voraus. Der Band richtet sich an Studierende verschiedener Fachrichtungen sowie an Personen, die sich mit dem Wissen anderer Fachrichtungen auseinandersetzen oder im Dialog mit der Öffentlichkeit stehen. Mit Fallbeispielen aus verschiedenen Wissensbereichen und kommentierten Literaturhinweisen.

Hilbert's plan for understanding the concept of infinity required the elimination of non‐finitist machinery from proofs of finitist assertions. The failure of the original plan leads to a hierarchy of progressively less elementary, but still constructive methods instead of finitist ones . A mathematical proof of this failure requires a definition of « finitist ».—The paper sketches the three principal methods for the syntactic analysis of non‐constructive mathematics, the resulting consistency proofs and constructive interpretations, modelled on Herbrand's theorem, and their (...) mathematical and logical consequences. A characterization of finitist proofs is sketched. A remark on the completeness of the predicate calculus concludes the paper. Throughout open problems and alternative approaches are emphasized.ZusammenfassungHilbert sah das Verstehen des Begriffs des Unendlichen in der Eliminierung nichtfiniter Methoden aus Beweisen finiter Sätze. Das Versagen dieses Unternehmens führt zu einer Hierarchic progressiv weniger elementarer, aber noch konstruktiver Methoden, statt der finiten . Ein Unmöglichkeitsbeweis des ursprünglichen Planes setzt eine Definition von « finit » voraus.—Die drei wichtigsten Methoden der syntaktischen Analyse nichtkonstruktiver mathematischer Theorien, die daraus gewonnenen Widerspruchsfreiheitsbeweise and konstruktiven Interpretationen and deren mathematische and logische Anwendungen werden besprochen. Eine Prazisierung des Begriffs « finit » wird skizziert. Eine Bemerkung zur Vollstandigkeit des engeren Funktionenkalküls beschliesst die Abhandlung.—Oflene Fragen and komplementare Fragestellungen werden betont. (shrink)

The article presents the conceptual groundwork for an understanding of the essentially improvisational dimension of human rationality. It aims to clarify how we should think about important concepts pertinent to central aspects of human practices, namely, the concepts of improvisation, normativity, habit, and freedom. In order to understand the sense in which human practices are essentially improvisational, it is first necessary to criticize misconceptions about improvisation as lack of preparation and creatio ex nihilo. Second, it is necessary to solve the (...) theoretical problems that derive from misunderstandings concerning the notions of normativity, habit, and freedom – misunderstandings that revolve around the idea that rationality is a form that is developed out of itself and thus works in a way similar to algorithms. One can only make sense of normativity, habit, and freedom if one understands that they all involve conflictual relationships with the world and with others, which in turn enables one to adequately take into account their constitutive connection to improvisation, properly understood. In outlining these conceptual connections, we want to prepare the foundations for an explanation of rational practices as improvisational practices. The article concludes by stating that human rational life is improvisatory because the conditions of human practice arise out of practice itself. (shrink)

This paper provides a historically sensitive discussion of Carnaps theory will be assessed with respect to two interpretive issues. The first concerns his mathematical sources, that is, the mathematical axioms on which his extremal axioms were based. The second concerns Carnapcompleteness of the modelss different attempts to explicate the extremal properties of a theory and puts his results in context with related metamathematical research at the time.

This volume is the first collection focusing on the claim that we cannot but account for emotions if we are to understand the processes and evaluations related to empirical knowledge.

What makes our brain a brain? This is the central question posited in Unlocking the Brain. By providing a fascinating venture into different territories of neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy, the author takes a novel exploration of the brain's resting state in the context of the neural code, and its ability to yield consciousness.

Hegel's early philosophical essay demonstrates the need for a pure empiricism and complete formalism in scientific endeavor.

Wegner, Giuliano, and Hertel (1985) defined the notion of a transactive memory system (TMS) as a group level memory system that “involves the operation of the memory systems of the individuals and the processes of communication that occur within the group (p. 191). Those processes are the collaborative procedures (“transactions”) by which groups encode, store, and retrieve information that is distributed among their members. Over the past 25+ years, the conception of a TMS has progressively garnered an increased interest among (...) social and organizational psychologists, communication scholars, and management theorists (Ren & Argote 2011). But there remains considerable disagreement about how exactly Wegner’s appeal to group memory should be understood. My goal in this paper is contribute to this debate, by articulating more clearly the value of conceptualizing groups as TMSs. This value, I argue, consists in providing us with a blueprint for how to explain group memory in terms of collective information-processing mechanisms. Collective information-processing mechanisms are dependent on, and interact with, the brain-bound information-processing of individuals, but cannot be reduced to the latter. In my analysis, I lean on extant accounts of mechanistic explanation in the philosophy of science (Bechtel & Richardson 1993; Machamer, Darden, & Craver 2000; Wimsatt 2007) that have been used to analyze the explanatory practices of psychology and cognitive neuroscience (Bechtel 2008, 2009). Based on my reconstruction of Wegner’s conceptualization of a TMS, I argue that the reality of emergent group cognition is compatible with its mechanistic explanation. More generally, my analysis shows that group cognition cannot be reduced to individual cognition, while avoiding the false dilemma between “wholism” and “nothing but-ism” which has hampered traditional construals of the “group mind” thesis (Allport 1968). (shrink)

Hegel wrote this classic as an introduction to a series of lectures on the "philosophy of history"--a novel concept in the early 19th century. With this work, he created the history of philosophy as a scientific study. He reveals philosophical theory as neither an accident nor an artificial construct, but as an exemplar of its age, fashioned by its antecedents and contemporary circumstances, and serving as a model for the future. The author himself appears to have regarded this book a (...) popular introduction to his philosophy as a whole, and it remains the most readable and accessible of all his philosophical writings. Translation by J. Sibree. (shrink)

Logik ist nach dem traditionellen Verständnis eine ars iudicandi, eine Kunst, die Gültigkeit von Schlüssen zu prüfen. Da mit die normalen Mittel der modernen Logik zu diesem Zweck eingesetzt werden können, müssen erst Formeln an die Stelle von Sätzen treten: umgangssprachliche Schlüsse müssen adäquat formalisiert werden. Die richtige Formel entwickelt ein theoretisches Konzept des Formalisierens und praktisch anwendbare Adäquatheitskriterien für Formalisierungen. Dabei werden zentrale Fragen der Philosophie der Logik unter dem Gesichtspunkt des Zusammenspiels von Umgangssprache und Formalismus untersucht. Die ausführliche (...) und systematische Diskussion von Formalisierungstests bietet eine wichtige Ergänzung zu den traditionellen Logiklehrbüchern. (shrink)

Traditional logical reconstruction of arguments aims at assessing the validity of ordinary language arguments. It involves several tasks: extracting argumentations from texts, breaking up complex argumentations into individual arguments, framing arguments in standard form, as well as formalizing arguments and showing their validity with the help of a logical formalism. These tasks are guided by a multitude of partly antagonistic goals, they interact in various feedback loops, and they are intertwined with the development of theories of valid inference and adequate (...) formalization. This paper explores how the method of reflective equilibrium can be used for modelling the complexity of such reconstructions and for justifying the various steps involved. The proposed approach is illustrated and tested in a detailed reconstruction of the beginning of Anselm’s De casu diaboli. (shrink)

Conventional wisdom in the philosophy of mind holds that (1) minds are exclusively possessed by individuals, and that (2) no constitutive part of a mind can have a mind of its own. For example, the paradigmatic minds of human beings are in the purview of individual organisms, associated closely with their brains, and no parts of the brain that are constitutive of a human mind are considered as capable of having a mind. Let us refer to the conjunction of (1) (...) and (2) as standard individualism about minds (SIAM). Put succinctly, SIAM says that all minds are singular minds. This conflicts with the group mind thesis (GMT), understood as the claim that there are collective types of minds that comprise two or more singular minds among their constitutive parts. The related concept of group cognition refers to psychological states, processes, or capacities that are attributes of such collective minds. -/- In recent years, the once-discredited concept of group cognition has shown definite signs of a comeback in the social sciences, some regions of cognitive science, and among philosophers concerned with collective agency. However, there are important differences among their respective views of why some psychological property should count as a group level phenomenon. If we want to understand these differences, it is critical that we develop a shared ‘lingua franca’ that we can use to taxonomize different variants of group cognition. It is the goal of my paper to contribute to this larger enterprise. The paper is organized as follows. First, I elaborate on the distinction between singular and group minds, and draw a distinction between hive cognition, collective cognition, and socially distributed cognition. Then I briefly clarify the concept of mind that we can plausibly take to be at play in the present debate. In the rest of the paper, I sketch an analysis of the emergent character of socially distributed cognition that is free from the metaphysical shackles of vitalism. I close with a few remarks on the idea that there are multiple levels of cognition. (shrink)

The goal of this essay is to analyse the influence of Johann Bernhard Basedow and Rousseau on Kant’s cosmopolitanism and concept of cosmopolitan education. It argues that both Basedow and Kant defined cosmopolitan education as non-denominational moral formation or Bildung, encompassing—in different forms—a thin version of moral religion following the core tenets of Christianity. Kant’s encounter with Basedow and the Philanthropinum in Dessau helps to understand the development of Kant’s concept of cosmopolitanism and educational theory ‘in weltbürgerlicher Absicht’. Rousseau’s role (...) is more complex: he clearly influenced Kant; he is usually considered a precursor of modern nationalism and national education; and recent studies have stressed the cosmopolitan dimension of his educational programme. I claim that the dilemma of education according to Rousseau is that one has to choose between education of homme or education of citoyen, and that there is no way to avoid or go beyond this stark alternative. Kant’s reinterpretation of Rousseau is favourable and creative and has found many followers up to the present, but is misleading, as he ignores the dilemma and imposes his own conception of cosmopolitanism, of cosmopolitan education and of (possible) progress in history on Rousseau while claiming that this was actually Rousseau’s message. (shrink)

"The actuality of the revolution: this is the core fo Lenin's thought and his decisive link with Marx."This essay on Lenin, which appeared in 1924, was intended to head off the massive criticism leveled at Lukacs History and Class Consciousness by Communist Party leadership. It was a period in which Lukacs was decisively influenced by Lenin and by Rosa Luxemburg, and his intellectual development proceeded concretely toward a political interpretation of history and of literature.In a postscript Lukacs remains essentially unchanged (...) in his view of Lenin as a practitioner whose theoretical superiority lay in his ability to assess the sociohistorical uniqueness of any given situation that required action. Looking back, Lukacs regards the book as a document of the mid-twenties--of how a number of Marxists of the period saw Lenin's personality and mission and his place in world events. Ideas in the book were determined by the concepts of the period, its prejudices, illusions, and extravagances. Nevertheless, the book established certain spiritual verities in perceiving Lenin as the active-practical sage who had a skillfull tactical grasp of realpolitik which was neither empirical nor dogmatic but the culmination of a theoretical attitude. "His life was one of permanent action, of continuous struggle in a world in which he was profoundly convinced that there was no situation without a solution, for himself or his opponents. The leitmotiv of his life was accordingly: always be armed ready for action--for correct action." Lukacs further notes that an essential dimension of Lenin's activism was unceasingly self-education and constant openness to the lessons of experience.Lukacs also emphasizes a number of points in the book that remain methodologically valid, including criticisms of Lenin's behavior which were implicit and accurate critiques of Stalin's later development and the increasing bureaucratization and mechanization of the party. (shrink)

Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that “the good [that] men do separately is small compared with what they may do collectively” (Isaacson 2004). The ability to join with others in groups to accomplish goals collectively that would hopelessly overwhelm the time, energy, and resources of individuals is indeed one of the greatest assets of our species. In the history of humankind, groups have been among the greatest workers, builders, producers, protectors, entertainers, explorers, discoverers, planners, problem-solvers, and decision-makers. During the late 19th (...) and early 20th century, many social scientists employed the notorious “group mind” idiom to express the sensible idea that groups can function as the seats of cognition, intelligence, and agency in their own right (Allport 1968; Wilson 2004). In their quest to stress (rightly) that group phenomena are something “over and above” the sum of individual contributions, a fondness for vitalist metaphors led them to believe (wrongly) that genuine group cognition must be the result of tapping into individualistically inaccessible, “holistic” forces. Today, inspired in part by historically unparalleled forms of mass collaboration enabled by the internet, it has once again become popular to speak of collective intelligence, group agency, or even the emergence of a “global brain” (cf. the wiki-edited MIT Handbook of Collective Intelligence). -/- In this chapter, I review some contemporary developments of the idea of group cognition, defined broadly as the collaborative performance of cognitive tasks such as remembering, problem-solving, decision-making, or verbal creativity for the purpose of producing a group-level outcome. My discussion serves a two-fold purpose. First, by discussing how the idea of group cognition can be operationalized, I seek to show that we can retain some central theoretical insights of the “group mind” thesis without succumbing to its eccentric metaphysical overtones. Second, by providing a useful array of generalizable taxonomic resources, I hope to foster greater degrees of mutual awareness among insufficiently integrated areas of research on group performance. (shrink)

There is a long-standing debate whether propositions, sentences, statements or utterances provide an answer to the question of what objects logical formulas stand for. Based on the traditional understanding of logic as a science of valid arguments, this question is firstly framed more exactly, making explicit that it calls not only for identifying some class of objects, but also for explaining their relationship to ordinary language utterances. It is then argued that there are strong arguments against the proposals commonly put (...) forward in the debate. The core of the problem is that an informative account of the objects formulas stand for presupposes a theory of formalization; that is, a theory that explains what formulas may adequately substitute for an inference in proofs of validity. Although such theories are still subject to research, some consequences can be drawn from an analysis of the reasons why the common accounts featuring sentences, propositions or utterances fail. Theories of formalization cannot refer to utterances qua expressions of propositions; instead they may refer to sentences and rely on additional information about linguistic structure and pragmatic context. (shrink)

This paper discusses Carnap’s attempts in the late 1920s to provide a formal reconstruction of modern axiomatics.1 One interpretive theme addressed in recent scholarly literature concerns Carnap’s underlying logicism in his philosophy of mathematics from that time, more specifically, his attempt to “reconcile” the logicist approach of reducing mathematics to logic with the formal axiomatic method. For instance, Awodey & Carus characterize Carnap’s manuscript Untersuchungen zur allgemeinen Axiomatik from 1928 as a “large-scale project to reconcile axiomatic definitions with logicism, and (...) transform implicit into explicit definitions.” It is argued that Carnap’s central idea was to balance a Fregean foundational stance with the modern model-theoretic viewpoint introduced in Hilbert’s Grundlagen der Geometrie ). It was also shown in recent literature that Carnap’s attempt to provide a logicist reconstruction of axiomatics is limited in several ways.2 No closer attention, however, has so far been dedicated to some of the details of his proposed reconciliation. (shrink)

"If we are to understand not only the direct impact of Marx on the development of German thought but also his sometimes extremely indirect influence, an exact knowledge of Hegel, of both his greatness and his limitation, is absolutely indispensable."- from the preface. It is well known that Hegel exerted a major influence on the development of Marx's thought. This circumstance led Lukács, one of the chief Marxist theoreticians of this century, to embark on his exploration of Hegelian antecedents in (...) the German intellectual tradition, their concrete expression in the work of Hegel himself, and later syntheses of seemingly contradictory modes of though. Four phases of Hegel's intellectual development are examined: "Hegel's early republican phase," "the crisis in Hegel's views on society and the earliest beginnings of his dialectical method," "rationale and defense of objective idealism," and "the breach with Schelling and The Phenomenology of Mind." Lukács completed this study in 1938, but because of the imminent outbreak of war, it was not published until the late 1940s. A revised German edition appeared in 1954, and it is this text that is the basis of this first English translation of the work. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophical developments of the notion of distributed and/or scaffolded cognition have given rise to the “extended mind” thesis. Against the popular belief that the mind resides solely in the brain, advocates of the extended mind thesis defend the claim that a significant portion of human cognition literally extends beyond the brain into the body and a heterogeneous array of physical props, tools, and cultural techniques that are reliably present in the environment in which people grow, think, and (...) act (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 1997, 2003, 2008; Wilson 2004; Rowlands 1999, 2012; Menary 2007; Theiner 2011). However, as commentators who are friendly to the idea of distributed cognition have pointed out, the philosophical debate over extended cognition has predominantly focused on the impact of tools on our thinking while somewhat neglecting the distinctively social and cultural dimensions of cognitive scaffolding (Sterelny 2004, 2010; Caporael 1997a, 1997b; Smith and Semin 2004; Wilson 2005; Barnier et al. 2008; Sutton et al. 2010; Theiner, Allen, and Goldstone 2010). -/- To reorient the reigning paradigm, Hutchins (2010, 445) has recently proposed the “hypothesis of enculturated cognition” (HEnC) as an alternative to Clark’s (2003, 2008) largely individualistic vision of the extended mind. According to the HEnC, the “ecological assemblies of human cognition make pervasive use of cultural products” and are typically “assembled … in ongoing cultural practices” (ibid.). Cultural practices, for Hutchins, are essentially “the things people do in interaction with one another” (ibid., 440). My goal in this chapter is to follow up on Hutchins’s call to “spur the program forward” (ibid., 445), by generalizing Kirsh and Maglio’s (1994) distinction between pragmatic and epistemic actions from the level of individuals to the level of groups. The concept of a collective epistemic action refers to the ways in which groups of people actively change the structure of their social organization, with the epistemic goal of reshaping and augmenting their cognitive performance as integrated collectivities. By placing a renewed emphasis on the interactions between people, rather than between people and their tools, I hope to reconnect the cognitive-scientifically-driven “extended mind” thesis with complementary areas of social-scientific research in which groups are analyzed as the seats of action and cognition in their own right. In particular, the literature to which I aim to build a bridge in this paper is, on the one hand, certain segments of social and organizational psychology (Larson and Christensen 1993; Hinsz et al. 1997; Mohammed and Dumville 2001), and, on the other hand, theories of collective and institutional action (Ostrom 1990; List and Pettit 2011). (shrink)

Though the brain and its neuronal states have been investigated extensively, the neural correlates of mental states remain to be determined. Since mental states are experienced in first-person perspective and neuronal states are observed in third-person perspective, a special method must be developed for linking both states and their respective perspectives. We suggest that such method is provided by First-Person Neuroscience. What is First-Person Neuroscience? We define First-Person Neuroscience as investigation of neuronal states under guidance of and on orientation to (...) mental states. An empirical example of such methodological approach is demonstrated by an fMRI study on emotions. It is shown that third- and first-person analysis of data yield different results. First-person analysis reveals neural activity in cortical midline structures during subjective emotional experience. Based on these and other results neural processing in cortical midline structures is hypothesized to be crucially involved in generating mental states. Such direct linkage between first- and third-person approaches to analysis of neural data allows insight into the "point of view from within the brain", that is what we call the First-Brain Perspective. In conclusion, First-Person Neuroscience and First-Brain Perspective provide valuable methodological tools for revealing the neuronal correlate of mental states. (shrink)