In a detailed examination of Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, I argue that Quine fails to make the case that there are no analytical truths in ordinary language. Drawing on admissions he makes with regard to definitions and languages' relationship to pragmatic considerations, and an examination of his arguments concerning the interdefinability of the terms `synonymous', and `analytic', I argue that analytic truths exist as deducible consequences of the various uses to which language or sub-languages are put.

This article outlines several important agreements between Lynne Rudder Baker’s philosophical program and Shaun Gallagher’s target article, while also highlighting important differences. Like Gallagher, Baker does not believe that nature can be adequately understood from a reductive point of view. Unlike Gallagher, however, she argues against rethinking nature (or science) as a non-reductionist project, which instead focuses on ‘holistic relations (brain-body-environment)’ and not just on brains, for example. Regardless of whether the classic conception of nature is mainly (...) a philosophical or a scientific construction, Baker argues we should leave the definition of science to the scientists. We can then begin with the classic conception of nature and show what in nature cannot be explained by science so conceived. The robust first-person perspective, she claims, is precisely one such feature of nature: a dispositional property that no naturalist can accept as ontologically significant. So, while Baker agrees with Gallagher that the classic conception of nature (and science) is reductionistic, she does not accept that the sciences—whether reductionistic or not—can explain everything in nature. If that is right, then scientific naturalism, which does accept this claim, is straightforwardly false. (shrink)

The American Medical Association enacted its Code of Ethics in 1847, the first such national codification. In this volume, a distinguished group of experts from the fields of medicine, bioethics, and history of medicine reflect on the development of medical ethics in the United States, using historical analyses as a springboard for discussions of the problems of the present, including what the editors call "a sense of moral crisis precipitated by the shift from a system of fee-for-service medicine to a (...) system of fee-for-system medicine, better known as 'managed care.'" The authors begin with a look at how the medical profession began to consider ethical issues in the 1800s and subsequent developments in the 1900s. They then address the sociological, historical, ethical, and legal aspects of the practice of medicine. Later chapters discuss current and future challenges to medical ethics and professional values. Appendixes display various versions of the AMA's Code of Ethics as it has evolved over time. Contributors: George J. Annas, J.D., M.P.H., Arthur Isak Applbaum, Ph.D., Robert B. Baker, Ph.D., Chester R. Burns, M.D., Ph.D., Arthur L. Caplan, Ph.D., Alexander Morgan Capron, J.D., Christine K. Cassel, M.D., Linda L. Emanuel, M.D., Ph.D., Eliot L. Freidson, Ph.D., Albert R. Jonsen, Ph.D., Stephen R. Latham, J.D., Ph.D., Susan E. Lederer, Ph.D., Florencia Luna, Ph.D., Edmund D. Pellegrino, M.D., Charles E. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Mark Siegler, M.D., Rosemary A. Stevens, Ph.D., Robert M. Tenery, Jr., M.D., Robert M. Veatch, Ph.D., John Harley Warner, Ph.D., Paul Root Wolpe, Ph.D. (shrink)

In this chapter, we begin with a discussion of motivation itself, and use that discussion to sketch four possible theories of distinctively moral motivation: caricature versions of familiar instrumentalist, cognitivist, sentimentalist, and personalist theories about morally worthy motivation. To test these theories, we turn to a wealth of scientific, particularly neuroscientific, evidence. Our conclusions are that (1) although the scientific evidence does not at present mandate a unique philosophical conclusion, it does present formidable obstacles to a number of popular philosophical (...) approaches, and (2) theories of morally worthy motivation that best fit the current scientific picture are ones that owe much more to Hume or Aristotle than to Kant. (shrink)

In The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys and other significant (...) late twentieth-century artists. Baker's book draws parallels between the animal's place in postmodern art and poststructuralist theory, drawing on works as diverse as Jacques Derrida's recent analysis of the role of animals in philosophical thought and Julian Barnes's best-selling Flaubert's Parrot. (shrink)

The ‘multicultural clinical interaction’ presents itself as a dilemma for the mental health practitioner. Literature describes two problematic areas where this issues emerges - how to make an adequate distinction between religious rituals and the rituals that may be symptomatic of ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’ (OCD), and how to differentiate ‘normative’ religious or spiritual beliefs, behaviours, and experiences from ‘psychotic’ illnesses. When it comes to understanding service user’s ‘idioms of distress’, beliefs about how culture influences behaviour can create considerable confusion and (...) ‘normative uncertainty’ for mental health practitioners. In the absence of clear diagnostic and assessment criteria on distinguishing between ‘culture’ and ‘psychopathology’, practitioners have had to rely on their own intuition and seek out possible ‘strategies’ or ‘procedures’ from a contradictory and cross-disciplinary evidence base. Decontextualisation of service users’ experiences may result in the pathologisation of culturally ‘normative’ phenomenon, ‘category fallacy’ errors, and poor health care experiences and outcomes for service users. This paper situates this dilemma within a wider debate that has concerned both the biomedical and social sciences, namely, the unresolved question of ‘normality’ or ‘abnormality’. Indeed, issues that arise from dilemmas surrounding the question of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ are intimately tied to wider cultural ideas about what is considered ‘normal’. The disciplines of psychiatry, psychology, and medical anthropology have struggled to establish workable criteria against which to judge behaviour as ‘normal’, ‘abnormal’, or ‘pathological’. Three models for understanding mental ‘abnormality’ are evident in ‘transcultural psychiatry’ (what is now commonly known as ‘cultural psychiatry’), and these models have corresponded closely to the interpretive models used by anthropologists attempting to make sense of the apparent diversity of human societies. The three models of ‘absolutism’, ‘universalism’ and ‘cultural relativism’ have not only important consequences for the nature and conduct of research enquiry, but also have implications for how the dilemma of ‘culture’ or ‘psychopathology’ is attended to in clinical practice. (shrink)

Many materialist ontologies characterize the existence of everyday, middle-sized objects as reducible to collections or mereological sums of smaller, more fundamental particle constituents. Baker would have it otherwise and has set out a defence of her Constitution View of ontology that takes everyday objects to be irreducibly real and of a vast array of kinds.Motivating an interest in the metaphysics of everyday objects is not obviously straightforward when contemporary metaphysics is filled with attempts to answer seemingly more challenging questions (...) about the existence of disputed classes of objects, such as abstracta, or very specific, unusual phenomena such as holes, rather than the mundane case of these middle-sized concreta. Yet this is Baker's point: that many kinds of ordinary objects have been overlooked by philosophers to the point where we lack an adequate account of their significance in our practices and attitudes. Moreover, in a climate of metaphysics often governed by those of a strong eliminitivist inclination with a preference for Quinean desert landscapes, the advocating of an almost indulgent ontological pluralism is enough to make this book worth reading.Those familiar with Baker's work will not be surprised that this approach to ontology is grounded from her perspective of ‘Practical Realism’. This view – partly a legacy of Aristotle, partly of G. E. …. (shrink)

Baker and Detiénne argue that the results reported in Stone and Wang and Alea et al. should be contextualized within a broader historical and societal perspective that takes into account the co‐evolution of social interaction practices and technology‐mediated collaborative activities.

Baker rejects naturalistic views that exclude first-person facts. Persons are emergent, constituted entities having first-person perspectives that are ineliminable, first-personal, dispositional, multi-stage properties. Persons appear gradually with FPPs in the rudimentary stage, but are distinguished by the later, robust stage. We possess first-person perspectives essentially and thereby have first-personal persistence conditions. Transtemporal identity is unanalyzable, requiring a variant of the Simple View. All that can be said is that a person exists whenever her FPP is exemplified. The view is (...) “not-so-simple” because it eschews substance dualism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 25 (2005) 49-65 [Access article in PDF] The Three Minds and Faith, Hope, and Love in Pure Land Buddhism Sharon Baker Southern Methodist University,Messiah College Generally, the Buddhist path to nirvana calls a person to leave the mundane life and live as a monk, a sage, or a saint who continually works toward the pure state, toward nirvana. The way to Buddhahood can take the practitioner (...) through the process of death and rebirth for many centuries until he attains enlightenment and nirvana. Hence, Pure Land Buddhism is good news to those forced by karma to live mundane lives keeping house, working a trade, raising children. In other words, Pure Land Buddhism is good news for the common person. Pure Land Buddhism, especially in the thought of Shinran and Tanabe, seeks to provide a straight and easy way for the "small, foolish beings," for the greatest of sinners and those who are most evil. Even the most evil person possessed by blind passions is grasped by the great compassion of Amida Buddha. This great compassion, as revealed in Amida's Vow, knows no limits. Even a person's karmic evil, deep and heavy as it is, is not oppressive for the one who is embraced by the love of Amida Buddha—love that never tires, blessing that constantly protects, compassion that never abandons. The love and compassion of Amida Buddha are realized through his Vow of Great Compassion. Shinran states that "the joy of knowing the wonder and benevolence of the Vow of great compassion that Amida established for us, beings of karmic evil, is boundless and can never be fully expressed, for it surpasses all thought and all words."1 The Vow of Great Compassion The Vow of Great Compassion does not take into consideration whether or not one is good or evil, young or old; only faith matters. Indeed, through faith, the Vow saves all sentient beings, especially those burdened with powerful sins and those torn by great evils. Believing in the Vow, therefore, does not depend upon any other good—no matter how hard he tries, no human being can ever be good enough for salvation without belief in the Vow of Great Compassion.2In an attempt to discover a salvation by faith not generated by an act of human will, Shinran is drawn to the three spiritual attitudes described in the Eighteenth Vow, which states: "If, when I attain Buddhahood, the sentient beings of the ten [End Page 49] quarters with sincere mind entrusting themselves, aspiring to be born in my land, and saying my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain the supreme enlightenment. Excluded are those who commit the five grave offenses and those who slander the right dharma."3 This is the Vow upon which true shinjin4 is based—the Vow of sincere mind and trust. Those who practice the Vow include all the good, the evil, and the foolish, who, after realizing shinjin, are certain of attaining salvation—that is, enlightenment in the Pure Land. Shinran states that "this shinjin is the very cause for the attainment of the supreme enlightenment."5 Birth in the Pure Land, along with supreme enlightenment, is assured for those who have been given true shinjin. Amida and the countless Buddhas in the ten quarters watch over believers and protect them so that they cannot be led astray into strange teachings or tormented by demonic forces. In fact, "Shinran might have said in the modern situation that just as assuredly as the sun rises in the morning, our enlightenment is guaranteed by the Vow."6It is important to note that faith in the Vow of Great Compassion is brought about only by the power and compassion of Amida Buddha. By using various compassionate means, Amida Buddha (and even Sakyamuni) awakens the supreme shinjin in people. Amida and Sakyamuni grasp the person in whom they have awakened shinjin and they never abandon him. There is no calculation on the part of the person whatsoever; there is only... (shrink)

Via a reading of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian and a critical appraisal of Foucault’s break with historical materialism, W. Oliver Baker finds, at the limits of the new materialisms, space for a new post-humanist critical materialism that sees utopia not in post-human assemblages, but in the abolition of colonial and capitalist structures that condition those assemblages in the first place.

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

The everyday capacity to understand the mind, or 'mindreading', plays an enormous role in our ordinary lives. Shaun Nichols and Stephen Stich provide a detailed and integrated account of the intricate web of mental components underlying this fascinating and multifarious skill. The imagination, they argue, is essential to understanding others, and there are special cognitive mechanisms for understanding oneself. The account that emerges has broad implications for longstanding philosophical debates over the status of folk psychology. Mindreading is another trailblazing (...) volume in the prestigious interdisciplinary Oxford Cognitive Science series. (shrink)

Baker reviews the book Free will and action explanation: A non-causal combatibilist account, by Scott Sehon.

This new introduction by Shaun Gallagher gives students and philosophers not only an excellent concise overview of the state of the field and contemporary debates, but a novel way of addressing the subject by looking at the ways in which phenomenology is useful to the disciplines it applies to. Gallagher retrieves the central insights made by the classic phenomenological philosophers (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, and others), updates some of these insights in innovative ways, and shows how they directly relate (...) to ongoing debates in philosophy and psychology. Accounts of phenomenological methods, and the concepts of intentionality, temporality, embodiment, action, self, and our ability to understand other people are integrated into a coherent contemporary statement that shows why phenomenology is still an active and vital philosophical approach. Each chapter begins with a discussion of the classic analyses and then goes on to show their relevance to contemporary debates in philosophy about embodied, enactive and extended approaches to our understanding of human experience. Along the way Gallagher introduces some novel interpretations that suggest how phenomenology can both inform and be informed by the terms of these debates. (shrink)

This paper, in opposition to the standard theories of social cognition found in psychology and cognitive science, defends the idea that direct perception plays an important role in social cognition. The two dominant theories, theory theory and simulation theory , both posit something more than a perceptual element as necessary for our ability to understand others, i.e., to “mindread” or “mentalize.” In contrast, certain phenomenological approaches depend heavily on the concept of perception and the idea that we have a direct (...) perceptual grasp of the other person’s intentions, feelings, etc. This paper explains precisely what the notion of direct perception means, offers evidence from developmental studies, and proposes a non-simulationist interpretation of the neuroscience of mirror systems. (shrink)

Condorcet's understanding of the application of the philosophy of natural sceince to social science.

Science and its philosophical companion, Naturalism, represent reality in wholly nonpersonal terms. How, if at all, can a nonpersonal scheme accommodate the first-person perspective that we all enjoy? In this volume, Lynne Rudder Baker explores that question by considering both reductive and eliminative approaches to the first-person perspective. After finding both approaches wanting, she mounts an original constructive argument to show that a non-Cartesian first-person perspective belongs in the basic inventory of what exists. That is, the world that contains (...) us persons is irreducibly personal.After arguing for the irreducibilty and ineliminability of the first-person perspective, Baker develops a theory of this perspective. The first-person perspective has two stages, rudimentary and robust. Human infants and nonhuman animals with consciousness and intentionality have rudimentary first-person perspectives. In learning a language, a person acquires a robust first-person perspective: the capacity to conceive of oneself as oneself, in the first person. By developing an account of personal identity, Baker argues that her theory is coherent, and she shows various ways in which first-person perspectives contribute to reality. (shrink)

Context: Challenges by embodied, enactive, extended and ecological approaches to cognition have provided good reasons to shift away from neurocentric theories. Problem: Classic cognitivist accounts tend towards internalism, representationalism and methodological individualism. Such accounts not only picture the brain as the central and almost exclusive mechanism of cognition, they also conceive of brain function in terms that ignore the dynamical relations among brain, body and environment. Method: I review four areas of research where enactivist accounts have shown alternative ways of (...) thinking about the brain. Results: Taken together, such analyses form a comprehensive alternative to the classic conceptions of cognitivist, computational neuroscience. Implications: Such considerations motivate the need to re-think our understanding of how the brain itself works. They suggest that the best explanation of brain function may be found in the mixed vocabularies of embodied and situated cognition, developmental psychology, ecological psychology, dynamic systems theory, applied linguistics, the theory of affordances and material engagement, rather than the narrow vocabulary of computational neuroscience. Constructivist content: This account is consistent with an enactivist-constructivist approach to cognition. (shrink)

Maximize Expected Choiceworthiness (MEC) is a theory of decision-making under moral uncertainty. It says that we ought to handle moral uncertainty in the way that Expected Value Theory (EVT) handles descriptive uncertainty. MEC inherits from EVT the problem of fanaticism. Roughly, a decision theory is fanatical when it requires our decision-making to be dominated by low-probability, high-payoff options. Proponents of MEC have offered two main lines of response. The first is that MEC should simply import whatever are the best solutions (...) to fanaticism on offer in decision theory. The second is to propose statistical normalization as a novel solution on behalf of MEC. This paper argues that the first response is open to serious doubt and that the second response fails. As a result, MEC appears significantly less plausible when compared to competing accounts of decision-making under moral uncertainty, which are not fanatical. (shrink)

Sentimental Rules is an ambitious and highly interdisciplinary work, which proposes and defends a new theory about the nature and evolution of moral judgment. In it, philosopher Shaun Nichols develops the theory that emotions play a critical role in both the psychological and the cultural underpinnings of basic moral judgment. Nichols argues that our norms prohibiting the harming of others are fundamentally associated with our emotional responses to those harms, and that such 'sentimental rules' enjoy an advantage in cultural (...) evolution, which partly explains the success of certain moral norms. This has sweeping and exciting implications for philosophical ethics. Nichols builds on an explosion of recent intriguing experimental work in psychology on our capacity for moral judgment and shows how this empirical work has broad import for enduring philosophical problems. The result is an account that illuminates fundamental questions about the character of moral emotions and the role of sentiment and reason in how we make our moral judgments. This work should appeal widely across philosophy and the other disciplines that comprise cognitive science. (shrink)

Williams (1970) argues that our intuitions about personal identity vary depending on how a given thought experiment is framed. Some frames lead us to think that persistence of self requires persistence of one's psychological characteristics; other frames lead us to think that the self persists even after the loss of one's distinctive psychological characteristics. The current paper takes an empirical approach to these issues. We find that framing does affect whether or not people judge that persistence of psychological characteristics is (...) required for persistence of self. Open-ended, abstract questions about what is required for survival tend to elicit responses that appeal to the importance of psychological characteristics. This emphasis on psychological characteristics is largely preserved even when participants are exposed to a concrete case that yields conflicting intuitions over whether memory must be preserved in order for a person to persist. Insofar as our philosophical theory of personal identity should be based on our intuitions, the results provide some support for the view that psychological characteristics really are critical for persistence of self. (shrink)

I clarify recently developed phenomenological approaches to social cognition. These are approaches that, drawing on developmental science, social neuroscience, and dynamic systems theory, emphasize the involvement of embodied and enactive processes together with communicative and narrative practices in contexts of intersubjective understanding. I review some of the evidence that supports these approaches. I consider a variety of criticisms leveled against them, and defend the role of phenomenology in the explanation of social cognition. Finally, I show how these phenomenological approaches can (...) solve the “starting problem” of social cognition. (shrink)

Social Externalism is the thesis that many of our thoughts are individuated in part by the linguistic and social practices of the thinker’s community. After defending Social Externalism and arguing for its broad application, I turn to the kind of defeasible first-person authority that we have over our own thoughts. Then, I present and refute an argument that uses first-person authority to disprove Social Externalism. Finally, I argue briefly that Social Externalism—far from being incompatible with first-person authority—provides a check on (...) first-personal pronouncements and thus saves first-person authority from being simply a matter of social convention and from collapsing into the subjectivity of “what seems right is right.”. (shrink)

Non-Archimedean population axiologies – also known as lexical views – claim (i) that a sufficient number of lives at a very high positive welfare level would be better than any number of lives at a very low positive welfare level and/or (ii) that a sufficient number of lives at a very low negative welfare level would be worse than any number of lives at a very high negative welfare level. Such axiologies are popular because they can avoid the (Negative) Repugnant (...) Conclusion and satisfy the adequacy conditions given in the central impossibility result in population axiology due to Gustaf Arrhenius. I provide a novel argument against them which appeals to the way that good and bad lives can intuitively outweigh one another. (shrink)

We review the distinction between sense of agency and sense of ownership, and then explore these concepts, and their reflective attributions, in schizophrenic symptoms and agoraphobia. We show how the underlying dynamics of these experiences are different across these disorders. We argue that these concepts are complex and cannot be reduced to neural mechanisms, but involve embodied and situated processes that include the physical and social environments. We conclude by arguing that the subjective and intersubjective dimensions of agency and ownership (...) cannot be considered in isolation from one another, but instead form an interdependent pairing. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, a number of central figures in moral philosophy have defended some version of moral rationalism, the idea that morality is based on reason or rationality. According to rationalism, morality is based on reason or rationality rather than the emotions or cultural idiosyncrasies, and this has seemed to many to be the best way of securing a kind of objectivism about moral claims. Consider the following representative statements.

According to recent accounts of the imagination, mental mechanisms that can take input from both imagining and from believing will process imagination‐based inputs (pretense representations) and isomorphic beliefs in much the same way. That is, such a mechanism should produce similar outputs whether its input is the belief that p or the pretense representation that p. Unfortunately, there seem to be clear counterexamples to this hypothesis, for in many cases, imagining that p and believing that p have quite different psychological (...) consequences. This paper sets out some central problem cases and argues that the cases might be accommodated by adverting to the role of desires concerning real and imaginary situations. (shrink)

Thought experiments about the self seem to lead to deeply conflicting intuitions about the self. Cases imagined from the 3rd person perspective seem to provoke different responses than cases imagined from the 1st person perspective. This paper argues that recent cognitive theories of the imagination, coupled with standard views about indexical concepts, help explain our reactions in the 1st person cases. The explanation helps identify intuitions that should not be trusted as a guide to the metaphysics of the self.

This article addresses questions about the sense of agency and its distinction from the sense of ownership in the context of understanding schizophrenic thought insertion. In contrast to “standard” approaches that identify problems with the sense of agency as central to thought insertion, two recent proposals argue that it is more correct to think that the problem concerns the subject’s sense of ownership. This view involves a “more demanding” concept of the sense of ownership that, I will argue, ultimately depends (...) on the sense of agency. In this regard, the sense of agency still appears to be the originating problem. (shrink)

There is a widespread notion, both within the sciences and among the general public, that mental deterioration can rob individuals of their identity. Yet there have been no systematic investigations of what types of cognitive damage lead people to appear to no longer be themselves. We measured perceived identity change in patients with three kinds of neurodegenerative disease: frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Structural equation models revealed that injury to the moral faculty plays the primary role in (...) identity discontinuity. Other cognitive deficits, including amnesia, have no measurable impact on identity persistence. Accordingly, frontotemporal dementia has the greatest effect on perceived identity, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has the least. We further demonstrated that perceived identity change fully mediates the impact of neurodegenerative disease on relationship deterioration between patient and caregiver. Our results mark a departure from theories that ground personal identity in memory, distinctiveness, dispositional emotion, or global mental function. (shrink)

This paper argues that, with certain provisos, predicting one's future actions is incompatible with rationally deliberating about whether to perform those actions. It follows that fully rational omniscient agents are impossible, since an omniscient being could never rationally deliberate about what to do. Consequently, theories that explain practical reasons in terms of the choices of a perfectly rational omniscient agent must fail. The paper considers several ways of defending the possibility of an omniscient agent, and concludes that while some of (...) these may work, they are inconsistent with the aim of explaining practical normativity by appeal to such an agent. (shrink)

One legacy of post-Enlightenment dualism in the universe of academic discourse is the presence of two approached to notions of duality championed by two differing camps. One camp might arbitrarily be called debunkers; the other might be labeled rationalists. The strategies of the camps are conditioned by traditional notions of inside and outside. Debunkers consider themselves outsiders, beyond a deceptive show filled with tricky mirrors. Rationalists, by contrast, spend a great deal of time among mirrors, listening to explanations from the (...) overseers, attempting to absorb sideshow language, hoping to provide acceptable analytical accounts. If debunkers are intent on discovering generative and, presumably, hidden ideological inscriptions of a given discourse—its situation on what Amiri Baraka calls the “real side” of economic exchange and world exploitative power—rationalists are concerned to study discursive products, to decode or explain them according to forms and formulas that claim to avoid general views or judgments of ideology. Differentiating the camps also is what might be called a thermal gradient: the heat of the debunker’s passion is palpable. It is unnecessary to command him, in the manner of the invisible man’s tormentor, to “Get hot, boy! Get hot!” Rationalists, by contrast, do not radiate. They appear to have nothing personal at stake and remain coolly instructive and intelligently unflappable in their analyses.This tale of an Enlightenment legacy, as I have told it, contrasts a debunking body and rationalist soul. As I have suggested in my opening sentence, however, what is at issue is not so much two actual and substantially distinctive camps as two metonyms for dual approaches to a common subject—namely, notions of duality. My claim is that the Enlightenment reflexivity of academic discourse, devoted to, say, “the Other” and conceived in dualistic terms of self-and-other, expresses itself as an opposition. Thos whom I have called debunkers gladly accept the Other’s sovereignty as a bodily and aboriginal donnée; rationalists work to discover the dynamics of “othering” engaged in by a self-indulgent Western soul. The difficulty of producing usefully analytical or political results for either camp is occasioned by their joint situation within a post-Enlightenment field. Houston A. Baker, Jr. is the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a poet whose recent volume Blues Journeys Home appeared in 1985. He is also the author of a number of studies of Afro-American literature and culture, including the forthcoming Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance. (shrink)

Analytical commentary -- Fruits upon one tree -- The continuation of the early draft into philosophy of mathematics -- Hidden isomorphism -- A common methodology -- The flatness of philosophical grammar -- Following a rule 185-242 -- Introduction to the exegesis -- Rules and grammar -- The tractatus and rules of logical syntax -- From logical syntax to philosophical grammar -- Rules and rule-formulations -- Philosophy and grammar -- The scope of grammar -- Some morals -- Exegesis 185-8 -- Accord (...) with a rule -- Initial compass bearings -- Accord and the harmony between language and reality -- Rules of inference and logical machinery -- Formulations and explanations of rules by examples -- Interpretations, fitting and grammar -- Further misunderstandings -- Exegesis 189-202 -- Following rules, mastery of techniques and practices -- Following a rule -- Practices and techniques -- Doing the right thing and doing the same thing -- Privacy and the community view -- On not digging below bedrock -- Private linguists and private linguists : Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Is a language necessarily shared with a community of speakers? -- Innate knowledge of a language -- Robinson Crusoe sails again -- Solitary cavemen and monolinguists -- Private languages and private languages -- Exegesis 203-37 -- Agreement in definitions, judgements, and form of life -- The scaffolding of facts -- The role of our nature -- Forms of life -- Agreement : consensus of human beings and their actions -- Exegesis 238-42 -- Grammar and necessity -- Setting the stage -- Leitmotifs -- External guidelines -- Necessary propositions and norms of representation -- Concerning the truth and falsehood of necessary propositions -- What necessary truths are about illusions of correspondence : ideal objects, kinds of reality, and ultra-physics -- The psychology of the A priori -- Knowledge -- Belief -- Certainty -- Surprise -- Discoveries and conjectures -- Compulsion -- Propositions of logic and laws of thought -- Alternative forms of representation -- The arbitrariness of grammar -- A kinship to the non-arbitrary -- Proof in mathematics -- Conventionalism. (shrink)

An empirical study of people's intuitions about freedom of the will. We show that people tend to have compatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more concrete, emotional way but that they tend to have incompatiblist intuitions when they think about the problem in a more abstract, cognitive way.

Shaun Nichols offers a naturalistic, psychological account of the origins of the problem of free will. He argues that our belief in indeterminist choice is grounded in faulty inference and therefore unjustified, goes on to suggest that there is no single answer to whether free will exists, and promotes a pragmatic approach to prescriptive issues.

This essay explains some basic concepts about BDSM, and it responds to two important objections to it. The first is the psychological objection—that BDSM practitioners suffer from mental disorders—and the second is the ethical objection—that BDSM practitioners have morally compromised desires because of the kinds of activities they desire to participate in, especially ones that involve roles that dip into tortured oppressive histories (e.g., "rape" scenes, "master-and-slave" scenes). The paper argues that both objections fail, and, more specifically focusing on the (...) ethical objection, argues that BDSM desires are psychologically, conceptually, and phenomenologically different from their seeming counterpart real-life desires that are truly ethically defective. Finally, the paper argues that BDSM practitioners, in having to always understand, explore, and justify their desires (especially to a majority that is hostile to them), have an interesting chance to lead rich, flourishing lives. (shrink)

Miller analyzes the relationship between consent and autonomy by offering three pictures. For autonomy, Miller distinguishes between procedural, substantive, and weak substantive autonomy. The corresponding views of consent are what Miller has termed as consensual minimalism, consensual idealism, and consensual realism. The requirements of sexual consent under consensual minimalism are a voluntary informed agreement. However, feminist critiques reveal the inadequacies of this simple position. Consensual idealism, which corresponds with substantive autonomy, offers a robust picture where consent and autonomy must be (...) based on non-oppression. However, this view is considered too ideal and it ignores context. Weak substantive autonomy takes into account the context in the sexual domain. Correspondingly, consensual realism takes into account the context and still fulfills the requirements of consent. (shrink)

In Political Theology the "Modern Way": The Case of Jacques Almain (d. 1515), Shaun Retallick provides the first monograph on this late medieval philosopher-theologian and conciliarist, and his thought. He demonstrates that Almain's political theology, of which ecclesiology is a sub-discipline, is strongly impacted by the Via moderna. At the heart of his political theology is the individual and his or her will. Yet, the individual is rarely viewed in isolation from others; there is a strong emphasis on community (...) and on the religious and secular bodies through which it is realized. But these bodies, including the Church, are understood in collectivist rather than corporatist terms, which tends to a quite radical form of conciliarism. (shrink)