It would be a good thing to have at our disposal a general theory of location that is neutral with respect to the view that some objects have more than one exact location, the view that some objects are located without having an exact location, and the view that some objects are “spanners”—where a spanner is an object exactly located at a region that has proper parts but which has no proper part exactly located at a (...) proper part of the region. As far as I know, no theory of location that can be found in the literature has this feature. I put forward a new theory that does—or so I argue. The theory takes as its sole locational primitive the notion of being entirely located at. (shrink)

The paper reviews the empirical evidence for highly significant variation across perceivers in hue perception and argues that color physicalism cannot accommodate this variability. Two views that can accommodate the individual differences in hue perception are considered: the self-locating property theory, according to which colors are self-locating properties, and color relationalism, according to which colors are relations to perceivers and viewing conditions. It is subsequently argued that on a plausible rendition of the two views, the self-locating theory has (...) a slight advantage over color relationalism in being truer to the phenomenology of our color experiences. (shrink)

The paper reviews the empirical evidence for highly significant variation across perceivers in hue perception and argues that color physicalism cannot accommodate this variability. Two views that can accommodate the individual differences in hue perception are considered: the self-locating property theory, according to which colors are self-locating properties, and color relationalism, according to which colors are relations to perceivers and viewing conditions. It is subsequently argued that on a plausible rendition of the two views, the self-locating theory has (...) a slight advantage over color relationalism in being truer to the phenomenology of our color experiences. (shrink)

In Being in Time I articulate and defend a theory of diachronic identity based on a new account of the relation between objects and time. Traditionally, the relation between objects and time has been considered to be a direct one, analogous to the one they have with space, and accordingly called location. In my dissertation, I argue that this locative approach is metaphysically problematic insofar as it commits us to questionable consequences about the nature of objects or about (...) the metaphysics of location. In particular, the locative approach, depending on how it is specified, requires that objects do not persist, have multiple exact locations, divide into temporal parts, or are extended simples. In place of this locative approach, and drawing from an analysis of our temporal semantics, I put forward an account of the relation between objects and time – transcendentism, to give it a name – according to which this relation is indirect, and has to be analysed in terms of the events in which objects participate. Accordingly, for a object to exist at a time is for it to participate in an event which is located at that time. As such, transcendentism is not yet a theory of persistence – insofar as objects may be in time without persisting, i.e. by existing at an instant alone –. Transcendentism is an open option for every kind of persistence theorist – be one an endurantist, a perdurantist, or an exdurantist –. However, the combination of transcendentism and endurantism may reveal itself to be a semantically grounded and metaphysically fruitful choice. Semantically grounded, insofar as the analysis of our temporal semantics speaks against the locative approach and in favour of endurantism. Metaphysically fruitful, insofar as it allows us to frame a theory of persistence that avoids all questionable consequences mentioned before – a theory according to which objects persist without having temporal parts and without being extended simples or multilocated entities. The dissertation consists of four self-standing chapters in which (i) I systematize and highlight the problematicity of the locative approach, (ii) I put forward and articulate the transcendentist alternative, (iii) I develop a suitable metaphysics of events, and (iv) I reply to five objections that have been moved against the view both in official communications and in print. (shrink)

This essay explores how the social location of white traitorous identities might be understood. I begin by examining some of the problematic implications of Sandra Harding's standpoint framework description of race traitors as 'becoming marginal.' I argue that the location of white traitors might be better understood in terms of their 'decentering the center.' I distinguish between 'privilege-cognizant' and 'privilege-evasive' white scripts. Drawing on the work of Marilyn Frye and Anne Braden, I offer an account of the contrasting (...) perceptions and behaviors of white who animate one type of script and those who struggle to forge the other type. I use Maria Lugones account of identity and notions of 'world travel' and 'loving perception' and Aristotle's virtue theory to explicate the ways whites, and white feminists in particular, might cultivate a traitorous character conducive to an antiracist politics. (shrink)

One of the many problems that would have t o be solved by a satisfactory theory of empirical knowledge, perhaps the most central is a general structural problem which I shall call the epistemic regress problem: the problem of how to avoid an in- finite and presumably vicious regress of justification in ones account of the justifica- tion of empirical beliefs. Foundationalist theories of empirical knowledge, as we shall see further below, attempt t o avoid the regress by locating (...) a class of empirical beliefs whose justification does not depend on that of other empirical beliefs. Extemalist theories, the topic of the present paper, represent one species of foundationalism. (shrink)

Originally published in 1987 and re-issued in 2020 with a new Preface, this book presents and elaborates interrelated solutions to a number of problems in moral philosophy, from the location of intrinsic value and the nature of a worthwhile life, via the limits of obligation and the nature of justice, to the status of moral utterances. After developing a biocentric account of moral standing, the author locates worthwhile life in the development of the generic capacities of a creature, whether (...) human or nonhuman, and presents an account of relative intrinsic value which later generates a theory of interspecific justice. This value-theory also informs a consequentialist understanding of obligation, of moral rightness and of supererogation. The understanding thus supplied is shown to cope with the problems of integrity, of justice and of the 'Repugnant Conclusion' in population ethics. A cognitivist account of ethical conclusions such as those so far reached is then defended against non-cognitivist and relativist objections and a far-reaching naturalist theory is defended, integrating earlier conclusions with an account of the logic of the fundamental ethical concepts. This wide-ranging volume which maps the whole area of morality is thoroughly argued with reference both to contemporary philosophical developments and to classical theories. (shrink)

All of the current leading theories of location are parsimonious: they have at most one locative primitive, and the definitions of all of the other locative relations appeal to nothing beyond that primitive, mereological properties and relations, and basic logic. I argue that if we believe there can be extended, mereologically simple regions, we can construct cases that are incompatible with every possible parsimonious theory of location. In these cases, an object is contained within a simple region (...) that is larger than the object; that is, there is some region, r, and some object, x, are such that every subregion of r fails to be completely free of x, yet x fails to fill r. I argue that we ought to respond to this incompatibility by rejecting the analytic possibility of extended, simple regions. (shrink)

I argue that Plato thinks that the soul has location, surface, depth, and extension, and that the Timaeus’ composition of the soul out of eight circles is intended literally. A novel contribution is the development of an account of corporeality that denies the entailment that the soul is corporeal. I conclude by examining Aristotle’s objection to the Timaeus’ psychology and then the intellectual history of this reading of Plato.

Ned Markosian has recently defended a new theory of composition, which he calls regionalism : some material objects xx compose something if and only if there is a material object located at the fusion of the locations of xx. Markosian argues that regionalism follows from what he calls the subregion theory of parthood. Korman and Carmichael agree. We provide countermodels to show that regionalism does not follow from, even together with fourteen potentially implicit background principles. We then show (...) that regionalism does follow from five of those background principles together with and two additional principles connecting parthood and location, which we call and. While the additional principles are not uncontroversial, our conjecture is that many will find them attractive. We conclude by mentioning that fills a previously unnoticed gap in the formal theory of location presented in Parsons. (shrink)

An integrated representation of large‐scale space, or cognitive map, colled PLAN, is presented that attempts to address a broader spectrum of issues than has been previously attempted in a single model. Rather than examining way‐finding as a process separate from the rest of cognition, one or the fundamental goals of this work is to examine how the wayfinding process is integrated into general cognition. One result of this approach is that the model is “heads‐up,” or scene‐based, because it takes advantage (...) of the properties of the human visual system and, particularly, the visual system's split into two pathways. The emphasis on the human location or “where” system is new to cognitive mapping and is port of an attempt to synthesize prototype theory, associative networks and location together in a connectionist system. Not all of PLAN is new, however. Many of its parts have analogues in one or another preexisting theory. What makes PLAN unique is integrating the various components into a coherent whole, and the capacity of this resulting system to speak to a wide range of constraints. Our approach emphasizes adaptiveness; thus, our focus on such issues as ease of use and efficiency of learning. The result is a model that has a stronger relationship both to the environment, and to the ways that humans interact with it, compared with previous models. The resulting model is examined in some detail and compared to other systems. (shrink)

The primary difference between direct and inferential theories of perception concerns the location of perceptual content, the meaning of our perceptions. In inferential theories of perception, these meanings arise inside animals, based upon their interactions with the physical environment. Light, for example, bumps into receptors causing a sensation. The animal (or its brain) performs inferences on the sensation, yielding a meaningful perception. In direct theories of perception, on the other hand, meaning is in the environment, and perception does not (...) depend upon meaning- conferring inferences. Instead the animal simply gathers information from a meaning- laden environment. But if the environment contains meanings, then it cannot be merely physical. This places a heavy theoretical burden on direct theories of perception, a burden so severe that it may outweigh all the advantages to conceiving perception as. (shrink)

This essay stages a critical conversation between Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau, comparing their different appropriations of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of hegemony. In the 1980s, Hall and Laclau engaged with Gramsci and with one another in order to conceptualize what they regarded as a triangular relation between the rise of Thatcherism, the crisis of the Left, and the emergence of new social movements. While many of their readers emphasize the undeniable similarities and mutual influences that exist between Hall and (...) Laclau, this essay focuses on the differences between their theories of hegemony and locates the starkest contrast between them at the level of theoretical practice. While the main lesson that Hall drew from Gramsci was the privileging of conjunctural analysis, Laclau proceeded to locate the concept of hegemony at a higher level of abstraction, developing a political ontology increasingly indifferent to any specific conjuncture. The essay argues that this difference between conjunctural analysis and political ontology has a significant impact on Hall’s and Laclau’s respective understandings of two key political formations: populism and identity politics. Thus by focusing on these two formations, the essay argues that Hall’s work should not be read as a derivative or even undertheorized version of Laclau’s, for this tendency obscures substantial differences between their interventions as well as the fact that Hall’s theory of hegemony, as a theory of the conjuncture, ultimately possesses stronger explanatory power than Laclau’s political ontology. (shrink)

Action is a means of acquiring perceptual information about the environment. Turning around, for example, alters your spatial relations to surrounding objects and, hence, which of their properties you visually perceive. Moving your hand over an object’s surface enables you to feel its shape, temperature, and texture. Sniffing and walking around a room enables you to track down the source of an unpleasant smell. Active or passive movements of the body can also generate useful sources of perceptual information (Gibson 1966, (...) 1979). The pattern of optic flow in the retinal image produced by forward locomotion, for example, contains information about the direction in which you are heading, while motion parallax is a “cue” used by the visual system to estimate the relative distances of objects in your field of view. In these uncontroversial ways and others, perception is instrumentally dependent on action. According to an explanatory framework that Susan Hurley (1998) dubs the “Input-Output Picture”, the dependence of perception on action is purely instrumental: "Movement can alter sensory inputs and so result in different perceptions… changes in output are merely a means to changes in input, on which perception depends directly" (1998: 342). -/- The action-based theories of perception, reviewed in this entry, challenge the Input-Output Picture. They maintain that perception can also depend in a noninstrumental or constitutive way on action (or, more generally, on capacities for object-directed motor control). This position has taken many different forms in the history of philosophy and psychology. Most action-based theories of perception in the last 300 years, however, have looked to action in order to explain how vision, in particular, acquires either all or some of its spatial representational content. Accordingly, these are the theories on which we shall focus here. -/- We begin in Section 1 by discussing George Berkeley’s Towards a New Theory of Vision (1709), the historical locus classicus of action-based theories of perception, and one of the most influential texts on vision ever written. Berkeley argues that the basic or “proper” deliverance of vision is not an arrangement of voluminous objects in three-dimensional space, but rather a two-dimensional manifold of light and color. We then turn to a discussion of Lotze, Helmholtz, and the local sign doctrine. The “local signs” were felt cues for the mind to know what sort of spatial content to imbue visual experience with. For Lotze, these cues were “inflowing” kinaesthetic feelings that result from actually moving the eyes, while, for Helmholtz, they were “outflowing” motor commands sent to move the eyes. -/- In Section 2, we discuss sensorimotor contingency theories, which became prominent in the 20thcentury. These views maintain that an ability to predict the sensory consequences of self-initiated actions is necessary for perception. Among the motivations for this family of theories is the problem of visual direction constancy—why do objects appear to be stationary even though the locations on the retina to which they reflect light change with every eye movement?—as well as experiments on adaptation to optical rearrangement devices (ORDs) and sensory substitution. -/- Section 3 examines two other important 20th century theories. According to what we shall call the motor component theory, efference copies generated in the oculomotor system and/or proprioceptive feedback from eye-movements are used together with incoming sensory inputs to determine the spatial attributes of perceived objects. Efferent readiness theories, by contrast, look to the particular ways in which perceptual states prepare the observer to move and act in relation to the environment. The modest readiness theory, as we shall call it, claims that the way an object’s spatial attributes are represented in visual experience can be modulated by one or another form of covert action planning. The bold readiness theory argues for the stronger claim that perception just is covert readiness for action. -/- In Section 4, we move to the disposition theory, most influentially articulated by Gareth Evans (1982, 1985), but more recently defended by Rick Grush (2000, 2007). Evans’ theory is, at its core, very similar to the bold efferent readiness theory. There are some notable differences, though. Evans’ account is more finely articulated in some philosophical respects. It also does not posit a reduction of perception to behavioral dispositions, but rather posits that certain complicated relations between perceptual input and behavioral provide spatial content. Grush proposes a very specific theory that is like Evans’ in that it does not posit a reduction, but unlike Evans’ view, does not put behavioral dispositions and sensory input on an undifferentiated footing. (shrink)

Most of us would want to say that it is true that Socrates taught Plato. According to realists about past facts,1 this is made true by the fact that there is, located in the past, i.e., earlier than now, at least one real event that is the teaching of Plato by Socrates. Presentists, however, in denying that past events and facts exist2 cannot appeal to such facts to make their past-tensed statements true. So what is a presentist to do?

This paper develops an endurantist theory of persistence. The theory is built around one basic tenet, which concerns existence at a time – the relation between an object and the times at which that object is present. According to this tenet, which I call transcendentism, for an object to exist at a time is for it to participate in events that are located at that time. I argue that transcendentism is a semantically grounded and metaphysically fruitful. It is (...) semantically grounded, insofar as a semantic analysis of our temporal talk favors it over rivals. It is metaphysically fruitful, insofar as the theory of persistence that can be built around it – the transcendentist theory of persistence, to give it a name – requires neither temporal parts nor the problematic commitments to which all extant forms of endurantism are committed, such as the possibility of extended simples or multilocation. (shrink)

Most of us would want to say that it is true that Socrates taught Plato. According to realists about past facts, this is made true by the fact that there is, located in the past, i.e., earlier than now, at least one real event that is the teaching of Plato by Socrates. Presentists, however, in denying that past events and facts exist cannot appeal to such facts to make their past-tensed Statements true. So what is a presentist to do?There are (...) at least three conditions that would ideally be met in a satisfactory solution to this problem:a) It must preserve our views about which Statements are true and which falseb) It must be transparent what the truthmakers are for those Statementsc) It must accommodate the truth-value links between various times. (shrink)

In spite of feminist recognition that hierarchical organizations are an important location of male dominance, most feminists writing about organizations assume that organizational structure is gender neutral. This article argues that organizational structure is not gender neutral; on the contrary, assumptions about gender underlie the documents and contracts used to construct organizations and to provide the commonsense ground for theorizing about them. Their gendered nature is partly masked through obscuring the embodied nature of work.jobs and hierarchies, common concepts in (...) organizational thinking, assume a disembodies and universal worker. This worker is actually a man; men's bodies, sexuality, and relationships to procreation and paid work are subsumed in the image of the worker. Images of men's bodies and masculinity pervade organizational processes, marginalizing women and contributing to the maintenance of gender segregation in organizations. The positing of gender-neutral and disembodied organizational structures and work relations is part of the larger strategy of control in industrial capitalist societies, which, at least partly, are built upon a deeply embedded substructure of gender difference. (shrink)

The field of enquiry into the phenomenon of language has long been dominated by the Computational-Representational (C-R) theories of language. This seems to be the most natural and plausible state of affairs, given the revolutionary impact that the advent of computers and the emergence of information technology have had in our lives lately. Noam Chomsky’s variant has been the most influential among such theories. However, there are certain conceptual issues pertaining to the very method, object and modality of the Chomskyan (...) project. In the present paper, I will try to locate these issues and contend that they arise from the peculiar conception of human embodiment involved in the propositions forming the Chomskyan scheme of language. They come to light only when engaged closely with from a phenomenological viewpoint. And this will be done in the first part. Once this is done, I will propose an alternative approach towards language, contained in the phenomenological insights on human embodiment and perception of the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau Ponty. I will also hint at how befitting this alternative scheme is to the connectionist-neural network models of language, which are fast replacing the C–R models lately. (shrink)

I consider the idea of a propositional logic of location based on the following semantic framework, derived from ideas of Prior. We have a collection L of locations and a collection S of statements such that a statement may be evaluated for truth at each location. Typically one and the same statement may be true at one location and false at another. Given this semantic framework we may proceed in two ways: introducing names for locations, predicates for (...) the relations among them and an “at” preposition to express the value of statements at locations; or introduce statement operators which do not name locations but whose truth-conditional effect depends on the truth or falsity of embedded statements at various locations. The latter is akin to Prior’s approach to tense logic. In any logic of location there will be some basic operators which we can define. By ringing the changes on the topology of locations, different logical systems may be generated, and the challenge for the logician is then in each case to find operators, axioms and rules yielding a proof theory adequate to the semantics. The generality of the approach is illustrated with familiar and not so familiar examples from modal, tense and place logic, mathematics, and even the logic of games. To the memory of Ted Dawson, who introduced me to philosophy and the writings of Arthur Prior. (shrink)

In this article, I raise a question and acknowledge a ‘feminist debt’. The ‘feminist debt’ is to the politics of location, and the question asks: what particular stipulations and enablements does a critical reflexive feminist politics of location put in place for knowledge production and for doing feminist theory? I suggest that there are at least three stipulations/enablements that a critical reflexive politics of location puts in place for knowledge production. Firstly, it demands/enables scholarly accounts to (...) reveal their location within the prevailing entanglements of power relations and to highlight the politics of struggle that underpin these. Secondly, it demands/enables conceptual work from different geographical spaces – and in particular, it facilitates the production of conceptual work in non-standard background contexts and conditions. And finally, a critical reflexive politics of location demands/enables a methodological response to capture the different conceptual and analytical and empirical knowledges produced in different locations. (shrink)

According to some critics of liberal individualism, it is fundamentally problematic that individualists focus on rights instead of community and on decision-making processes instead of substantial goods. Among other things, it is claimed that liberal individualism therefore fails to provide meaning to people’s lives. The view has recently gained momentum as it has been incorporated in novel conservative and nationalist arguments. This article presents an individualist theory of meaning in response to a recent nationalist reiteration of the critique. The (...) theory is that a continuous pursuit of self-endorsement by a perfected, liberal, version of oneself provides purpose and direction in life. This allows the individual to be the ultimate arbiter in meaning-building matters, as the theory locates meaning in the individual’s decision-making processes rather than in factors external to her. The theory acknowledges the interdependence of human beings but remains loyal to the view that the value of the individual generally trumps competing values, such as that of the collective. (shrink)

metaphysics of goodness is the work of an unrelentingly systematic mind, but this is no surprise at all. It is simply true to form for Bob Neville, who for decades has been working out the intricacies of his systematic thought. For Bob, being systematic has never meant being systematically selective of, but rather systematically attentive to the cosmic miscellany. This is no less true of his most recent work, in which he develops his strongly realist theory of goodness.The work (...) as a whole builds across three parts, each composed of four chapters, from the thesis of form as goodness to an account of personhood and human flourishing. These latter parts, where Neville transitions from cosmological considerations to... (shrink)

Substantive theories of diachronic identity have been offered for different kinds of entities. The kind of entity whose diachronic identity has received the most attention in the literature is person, where such theories as the psychological theory, the body theory, the soul theory, and animalism have been defended. At the same time, Wittgenstein's remark that ?to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself (...) is to say nothing at all? suggests that the idea of further analysing identity is mistaken at root. I shall offer a simple, deflationary theory that reduces diachronic identity to quantification, synchronic identity and existence at a spacetime location (or at a time, for non-spatial entities). On logical grounds, the theory is guaranteed to have no counterexamples. Because the theory is guaranteed to have no counterexamples, all the imaginative examples offered as intuitive support for theories of personal identity are going to be either incorrect or compatible with the theory. I shall argue that the deflationary theory is preferable on simplicity grounds to typical substantive theories, and that various problems that are commonly thought to concern diachronic identity are better seen as about something else. (shrink)

In the aftermath of Kant, that is, with Schelling and Hegel, the natural beautiful is no longer a major concern of aesthetic theory. According to Adorno, an evil star hangs over the theory of natural beauty. The essay examines the reasons for this neglect of the beautiful of nature by confronting Kant's account of natural beauty with Hegel's theory about the fundamental deficiencies of beauty in nature and locates them in the essential indeterminacy of everything that belongs (...) to nature. Inquiring into what Adorno seeks to achieve by playing Kant and Hegel off against one another, it is shown that this indeterminacy of nature is both an index of nature's interconnectedness with mythical violence and the promise of a freedom from myth. (shrink)

Within recent feminist theorizing the significance of social location has been overestimated, while the power of argument has been underestimated. We do not need to retreat to notions of ‘story-telling’ as the strongest claim to knowledge possible by feminist analysis. Rather, we should draw on the power of argument. This article addresses some dilemmas in debates around the projects of recognition, redistribution and transformation, and the claims to knowledge made in each. Further, it argues for the integration of the (...) concerns of equality and difference. The theoretical argument is supported by examples drawn from practical politics, including the development of democratic procedures, postcolonialism, the UNDP indicators sometimes used in development policy and suffrage movements. (shrink)

The problem of how mathematics and physics are related at a foundational level is of interest. The approach taken here is to work towards a coherent theory of physics and mathematics together by examining the theory experiment connection. The role of an implied theory hierarchy and use of computers in comparing theory and experiment is described. The main idea of the paper is to tighten the theory experiment connection by bringing physical theories, as mathematical structures (...) over C, the complex numbers, closer to what is actually done in experimental measurements and computations. The method replaces C by C n which is the set of pairs, R n,I n, of n figure rational numbers in some basis. The properties of these numbers are based on those of numerical measurement outcomes for continuous variables. A model of space and time based on R n is discussed. The model is scale invariant with regions of constant step size interrupted by exponential jumps. A method of taking the limit n→∞ to obtain locally flat continuum-based space and time is outlined. Also R n based space is invariant under scale transformations. These correspond to expansion and contraction of space relative to a flat background. The location of the origin, which is a space and time singularity, does not change under these transformations. Some properties of quantum mechanics, based on C n and on R n space are briefly investigated. (shrink)

Most theories of concepts take concepts to be structured bodies of information used in categorization and inference. This paper argues for a version of atomism, on which concepts are unstructured symbols. However, traditional Fodorian atomism is falsified by polysemy and fails to provide an account of how concepts figure in cognition. This paper argues that concepts are generative pointers, that is, unstructured symbols that point to memory locations where cognitively useful bodies of information are stored and can be deployed to (...) resolve polysemy. The notion of generative pointers allows for unresolved ambiguity in thought and provides a basis for conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Abstract: There are two traditionally rival views about the nature of time: substantivalism that takes time to be a substance that exists independently of events located in it, and relationism that takes time to be constructed out of events. In this paper, first, I want to make some progress with respect to the debate between these two views, and I do this mainly by examining the strategies they use to face the possibilities of ‘empty time’ and ‘time without change’. As (...) we shall see, the two allegedly very different rival views are much less different than has been thought: their structure is extremely similar, their strategies are extremely similar, and they can both face the possibilities of ‘empty time’ and ‘time without change’ in the same way. Thus, I argue in favour of a certain kind of equivalence between the two views; I discuss a Strong and a Weak version of this claim; and I provide reasons for endorsing the former. I also discuss the parallel between this pair of views about the nature of time and another analogous pair of views: the bundle theory and the substratum theory about the nature of material objects, with respect to the problem with Identity of Indiscernibles. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made recently to apply Darwinian evolutionary theory to the study of culture change and social history. The essential elements in such a theory are that variations occur in population, and that a process of selective retention operates during their replication and transmission. Location of such variable units in the semantic structure of cognition provides the individual psychological basis for an evolutionary theory of history. Selection operates on both the level of cognition and (...) on its phenotypic expression in action in relation to individual preferred sources of psychological satisfaction. Social power comprises the principal selective forces within the unintended consequences of action and through the struggle of individuals and groups in pursuit of opposing interests. The implication for historiography are methodological in that evolutionary theory of history sharpens the focus of explanatory situational analysis, and interpretive in that it provides a paradigmatic metanarrative for the understanding of historical change. (shrink)

This essay is a response to the recent reemergence in the philosophical literature of direct acquaintance theories of epistemic justification and concept acquisition. A central difficulty that confronts proponents of direct acquaintance is that of providing an adequate account of the nature of the cognitive act involved in direct acquaintance. In this essay, I articulate two different approaches to this project. I distinguish those who claim that all acts of cognition involve conceptualization, subsumption of a particular under a kind, or (...) something therelike from those who think that there are non-conceptually mediated states with cognitive, phenomenal content. I locate a range of views of each kind on what I call "The Conceptual-Content Continuum" and "The Phenomenal-Content Continuum," respectively. ;I then examine both historical and contemporary direct acquaintance accounts of concept acquisition and epistemic justification. In particular I examine the work of Bertrand Russell, C. D. Broad, Howard Robinson, and Richard Fumerton. My aim is to see whether the contemporary accounts fare any better than their historical counterparts in the face of certain objections. I argue that they do not. (shrink)

The neuropsychological and functional characterisation of mental state attribution (‘‘theory of mind’’ (ToM)) has been the focus of several recent studies. The literature contains opposing views on the functional specificity of ToM and on the neuroanatomical structures most relevant to ToM. Studies with brain-lesioned patients have consistently found ToM deficits associated with unilateral right hemisphere damage (RHD). Also, functional imaging performed with non-braininjured adults implicates several specific neural regions, many of which are located in the right hemisphere. The present (...) study examined the separation of ToM impairment from other deficits associated with brain injury. We tested 11 patients with unilateral right hemisphere damage (RHD) and 20 normal controls (NC) on a.. (shrink)

Several attempts have been made recently to apply Darwinian evolutionary theory to the study of culture change and social history. The essential elements in such a theory are that variations occur in a population, and that a process of selective retention operates during their replication and transmission. Location of such variable “units” in the semantic structure of cognition provides the individual psychological basis for an evolutionary theory of history. Selection operates on both the level of cognition (...) and on its “phenotypic” expression in action in relation to individual preferred sources of psychological satisfaction. Social power comprises the principal selective forces within the sociocultural environment. Sociocultural evolution takes place both as a result of the unintended consequences of action and through the struggle of individuals and groups in pursuit of opposing interests. The implications for historiography are methodological in that evolutionary theory of history sharpens the focus of explanatory situational analysis, and interpretive in that it provides a paradigmatic metanarrative for the understanding of historical change. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense (...) of others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

Literary pneuma is a foundational idea in Chinese literary thought and the theory of literary pneuma one of the major aesthetic theories in Chinese literature and art. Since its first appearance, however, this aesthetic has remained an elusive concept despite its central importance. This article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine major statements of wenqi in Chinese thought in relation to similar ideas in modern philosophy, aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism. It attempts to understand its rationale, locate its conceptual (...) groundings, and reconceptualize it into an aesthetic theory for our time. (shrink)

It is unreasonable to assume that our pre-scientific emotion vocabulary embodies all and only those distinctions required for a scientific psychology of emotion. The psychoevolutionary approach to emotion yields an alternative classification of certain emotion phenomena. The new categories are based on a set of evolved adaptive responses, or affect-programs, which are found in all cultures. The triggering of these responses involves a modular system of stimulus appraisal, whose evoluations may conflict with those of higher-level cognitive processes. Whilst the structure (...) of the adaptive responses is innate, the contents of the system which triggers them are largely learnt. The circuits subserving the adaptive responses are probably located in the limbic system. This theory of emotion is directly applicable only to a small sub-domain of the traditional realm of emotion. It can be used, however, to explain the grouping of various other phenomena under the heading of emotion, and to explain various characteristic failings of the pre-scientific conception of emotion. (shrink)

We present a theory of human artistic experience and the neural mechanisms that mediate it. Any theory of art has to ideally have three components. The logic of art: whether there are universal rules or principles; The evolutionary rationale: why did these rules evolve and why do they have the form that they do; What is the brain circuitry involved? Our paper begins with a quest for artistic universals and proposes a list of ‘Eight laws of artistic experience’ (...) -- a set of heuristics that artists either consciously or unconsciously deploy to optimally titillate the visual areas of the brain. One of these principles is a psychological phenomenon called the peak shift effect: If a rat is rewarded for discriminating a rectangle from a square, it will respond even more vigorously to a rectangle that is longer and skinnier that the prototype. We suggest that this principle explains not only caricatures, but many other aspects of art. Example: An evocative sketch of a female nude may be one which selectively accentuates those feminine form-attributes that allow one to discriminate it from a male figure; a Boucher, a Van Gogh, or a Monet may be a caricature in ‘colour space’ rather than form space. Even abstract art may employ ‘supernormal’ stimuli to excite form areas in the brain more strongly than natural stimuli. Second, we suggest that grouping is a very basic principle. The different extrastriate visual areas may have evolved specifically to extract correlations in different domains , and discovering and linking multiple features into unitary clusters -- objects -- is facilitated and reinforced by direct connections from these areas to limbic structures. In general, when object-like entities are partially discerned at any stage in the visual hierarchy, messages are sent back to earlier stages to alert them to certain locations or features in order to look for additional evidence for the object . Finally, given constraints on allocation of attentional resources, art is most appealing if it produces heightened activity in a single dimension rather than redundant activation of multiple modules. This idea may help explain the effectiveness of outline drawings and sketches, the savant syndrome in autists, and the sudden emergence of artistic talent in fronto-temporal dementia. In addition to these three basic principles we propose five others, constituting a total of ‘eight laws of aesthetic experience’. (shrink)

Attention has a role in much of perception, thought, and action. On the erotetic theory, the functional role of attention is a matter of the relationship between questions and what counts as answers to those questions. Questions encode the completion conditions of tasks for cognitive control purposes, and degrees of attention are degrees of sensitivity to the occurrence of answers. Questions and answers are representational contents given precise characterizations using tools from formal semantics, though attention does not depend on (...) language. The erotetic theory proposes an integrated account of attention in cognitive control and of attentional focus in perception. The functional role of attentional focus on objects, properties, and locations has to do with picking out something that corresponds to what a task is ‘about’. The erotetic theory of attention opens new avenues in theorizing about the relationship between attention, representational content, phenomenal character, and practical reason. A novel representationalist account of salience is proposed. The theory also provides an account of distraction that suggests when distraction is a defect in practical reasoning. (shrink)

Despite widespread recognition of an emergent politics of data in our midst, we strikingly lack a political theory of data. We readily acknowledge the presence of data across our political lives, but we often do not know how to conceptualize the politics of all those data points—the forms of power they constitute and the kinds of political subjects they implicate. Recent work in numerous academic disciplines is evidence of the first steps toward a political theory of data. This (...) article maps some limits of this emergent literature with an eye to enriching its theoretical range. The literature on data politics, both within political theory and elsewhere, has thus far focused almost exclusively on the algorithm. This article locates a further dimension of data politics in the work of formatting technology or, more simply, formats. Formats are simultaneously conceptual and technical in the ways they define what can even count as data, and by extension who can count as data and how they can count. A focus on formats is of theoretical value because it provides a bridge between work on the conceptual contours of categories and the technology-centric literature on algorithms that tends to ignore the more conceptual dimensions of data technology. The political insight enabled by format theory is shown in the context of an extended interrogation of the politics of racialized redlining. (shrink)

Christian Pfeiffer explores an important, but neglected topic in Aristotle's theoretical philosophy: the theory of bodies. A body is a three-dimensionally extended and continuous magnitude bounded by surfaces. This notion is distinct from the notion of a perceptible or physical substance. Substances have bodies, that is to say, they are extended, their parts are continuous with each other and they have boundaries, which demarcate them from their surroundings. Pfeiffer argues that body, thus understood, has a pivotal role in Aristotle's (...) natural philosophy. A theory of body is a presupposed in, e.g., Aristotle's account of the infinite, place, or action and passion, because their being bodies explains why things have a location or how they can act upon each other. The notion of body can be ranked among the central concepts for natural science which are discussed in Physics III-IV. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way of understanding the space of possibilities in the field of mental content. The resulting map assigns separate locations to theories of content that have generally been lumped together on the more traditional map. Conversely, it clusters together some theories of content that have typically been regarded as occupying opposite poles. I make my points concrete by developing a taxonomy of theories of mental content, but the main points of the paper concern not (...) merely how to classify, but how to understand, the theories. Also, though the paper takes theories of mental content as a case study, much of the discussion is applicable to theories of other phenomena. To a first approximation, the difference between the traditional and the proposed taxonomies turns on whether we classify theories of content by, on the one hand, their implications for a non-redundant supervenience base for content facts (i.e., for facts about what contents thoughts have) or, on the other, by their constitutive accounts of content. By a "constitutive account," I mean the kind of elucidation of the nature of a phenomenon that theorists have tried to give for, for example, knowledge, justice, personal identity, consciousness, convention, heat, and limit. The tendency to taxonomize by supervenience base is encouraged, I suggest, by a failure to keep clearly in view a distinction between constitutive and modal determination. Many philosophers would accept that a constitutive account cannot be captured in purely modal terms. Giving a constitutive account is not the same as specifying modally necessary and sufficient conditions. Nevertheless, philosophers often try to cash constitutive claims in modal terms. A case in point is that theories of content tend to be conceptualized in terms of the theories' implications for a supervenience base for content facts. My thesis goes beyond the by-now somewhat familiar proposition that not all modal determinants of a phenomenon are constitutive determinants. One who has taken that point on board might nevertheless conceive of a philosophical account as an attempt to specify constitutive determinants of the target phenomenon that make up a non-redundant supervenience base for the phenomenon. Shoehorning a philosophical account into this form leaves out elements that are modally redundant, but may be explanatorily or ontologically significant. For example, when a constitutive account has multiple levels, the different levels will typically be modally redundant. Formulating the account as a specification of a supervenience base of constitutive determinants will therefore flatten the account into a single level. Many of my arguments can be illustrated by considering the place of normativity in the theory of content. The new taxonomy gives a distinct niche to normative theories of content - theories that explain a thought's having a certain content at least in part in terms of the obtaining of normative facts. By contrast, on a traditional map, normative theories are invisible as such because normative facts supervene on non-normative ones. (shrink)

This article reassesses Samuel Pufendorf's understanding of sovereignty and of the Holy Roman Empire. I argue that the form of the polity theorized by him should be comprehended in light of his adoption of the faculty psychology of Francisco Suárez. Suárez's was a conception of the life of the mind which, Pufendorfmaintained, also operated at the level of the 'composite moral person' of the state. It is true that the sovereign's is the only will in the state that counts politically; (...) but the state has an intellect too, and this may be located in an institution separate from the sovereign. Sovereign will can only function according to the scheme of efficient causality of which faculty psychology forms a component, and thus political absolutism, in which a singular and uncontrollable will is all, is not a necessary feature of Pufendorf's political theory. Moreover, this facultative conception of sovereignty is designed to pertain just as much to composite polities such as the German Empire as to more simple polities. (shrink)

Human behavior is an underlying cause for many of the ecological crises faced in the 21st century, and there is no escaping from the fact that widespread behavior change is necessary for socio-ecological systems to take a sustainable turn. Whilst making people and communities behave sustainably is a fundamental objective for environmental policy, behavior change interventions and policies are often implemented from a very limited non-systemic perspective. Environmental policy-makers and psychologists alike often reduce cognition ‘to the brain,’ focusing only to (...) a minor extent on how everyday environments systemically afford pro-environmental behavior. Symptomatic of this are the widely prevalent attitude–action, value–action or knowledge–action gaps, understood in this paper as the gulfs lying between sustainable thinking and behavior due to lack of affordances. I suggest that by adopting a theory of affordances as a guiding heuristic, environmental policy-makers are better equipped to promote policies that translate sustainable thinking into sustainable behavior, often self-reinforcingly, and have better conceptual tools to nudge our socio–ecological system toward a sustainable turn. Affordance theory, which studies the relations between abilities to perceive and act and environmental features, is shown to provide a systemic framework for analyzing environmental policies and the ecology of human behavior. This facilitates the location and activation of leverage points for systemic policy interventions, which can help socio–ecological systems to learn to adapt to more sustainable habits. Affordance theory is presented to be applicable and pertinent to technically all nested levels of socio–ecological systems from the studies of sustainable objects and households to sustainable urban environments, making it an immensely versatile conceptual policy tool. Finally, affordance theory is also discussed from a participatory perspective. Increasing the fit between local thinking and external behavior possibilities entails a deep understanding of tacit and explicit attitudes, values, knowledge as well as physical and social environments, best gained via inclusive and polycentric policy approaches. (shrink)

I put forward an externalist theory of social understanding. On this view, psychological sense making takes place in environments that contain both agent and interpreter. The spatial structure of such environments is social, in the sense that its occupants locate its objects by an exercise in triangulation relative to each of their standpoints. This triangulation is achieved in intersubjective interaction and gives rise to a triadic model of the social mind. This model can then be used to make sense (...) of others’ observed actions. Its possession plays a vital role in the development of the capacity for false belief reasoning. The view offers an integrated account of the development of social cognition from primary intersubjectivity to level-2 perspective taking. It incorporates insights from interactionism and mindreading theories of social cognition and thus offers a way out of the stalemate between defenders of the two views. Because psychological sense making is perspectival, the frame problem does not arise for social reasoners: the perspective they bring to bear on the action that is to be interpreted constrains the information they can select to make sense of what others do. (shrink)