This is not your psychoanalyst's unconscious.

At any given time, a subject has a multiplicity of conscious experiences. A subject might simultaneously have visual experiences of a red book and a green tree, auditory experiences of birds singing, bodily sensations of a faint hunger and a sharp pain in the shoulder, the emotional experience of a certain melancholy, while having a stream of conscious thoughts about the nature of reality. These experiences are distinct from each other: a subject could experience the red book without the singing (...) birds, and could experience the singing birds without the red book. But at the same time, the experiences seem to be tied together in a deep way. They seem to be unified, by being aspects of a single encompassing state of consciousness. (shrink)

To desire something is a condition familiar to everyone. It is uncontroversial that desiring has something to do with motivation, something to do with pleasure, and something to do with reward. Call these "the three faces of desire." The standard philosophical theory at present holds that the motivational face of desire presents its unique essence--to desire a state of affairs is to be disposed to act so as to bring it about. A familiar but less standard account holds the hedonic (...) face of desire to reveal to true nature of desire. In this view, to desire something is to tend to pleasure if it seems that the desired state of affairs has been achieved, or displeasure if it seems otherwise, thus tying desire to feelings instead of actions. In Three Faces of Desire, Schroeder goes beyond actions and feelings to advance a novel and controversial theory of desire that puts the focus on desire's neglected face, reward. Informed by contemporary science as much as by the philosophical tradition, Three Faces of Desire discusses recent scientific discoveries that tell us much about the way that actions and feelings are produced in the brain. In particular, recent experiments reveal that a distinctive system is responsible for promoting action, on the one hand, and causing feelings of pleasure and displeasure, on the other. This system, the brain's reward system, is the causal origin of both action and feeling, and is the key to understanding the nature of desire. (shrink)

Disorders of volition are often accompanied by, and may even be caused by, disruptions in the phenomenology of agency. Yet the phenomenology of agency is at present little explored. In this paper we attempt to describe the experience of normal agency, in order to uncover its representational content.

In this paper we defend the doxastic conception of delusions against the metacognitive account developed by Greg Currie and collaborators. According to the metacognitive model, delusions are imaginings that are misidentified by their subjects as beliefs: the Capgras patient, for instance, does not believe that his wife has been replaced by a robot, instead, he merely imagines that she has, and mistakes this imagining for a belief. We argue that the metacognitive account is untenable, and that the traditional conception of (...) delusions as beliefs should be retained. (shrink)

We characterize abstraction in computer science by first comparing the fundamental nature of computer science with that of its cousin mathematics. We consider their primary products, use of formalism, and abstraction objectives, and find that the two disciplines are sharply distinguished. Mathematics, being primarily concerned with developing inference structures, has information neglect as its abstraction objective. Computer science, being primarily concerned with developing interaction patterns, has information hiding as its abstraction objective. We show that abstraction through information hiding is a (...) primary factor in computer science progress and success through an examination of the ubiquitous role of information hiding in programming languages, operating systems, network architecture, and design patterns. (shrink)

It is not my claim that the ‘L¨ owenheim-Skolem paradox’ is an antinomy in formal logic; but I shall argue that it is an antinomy, or something close to it, in philosophy of language. Moreover, I shall argue that the resolution of the antinomy—the only resolution that I myself can see as making sense—has profound implications for the great metaphysical dispute about realism which has always been the central dispute in the philosophy of language.

One version of Moore’s Paradox is the challenge to account for the absurdity of beliefs purportedly expressed by someone who asserts sentences of the form ‘p & I do not believe that p’. The absurdity of these beliefs is philosophically puzzling, given that Moorean sentences are contingent and often true; and express contents that are unproblematic when presented in the third-person. In this paper I critically examine the most popular proposed solution to these two puzzles, according to which Moorean beliefs (...) are absurd because Moorean sentences are instances of pragmatic paradox; that is to say, the propositions they express are necessarily false-when-believed. My conclusion is that while a Moorean belief is a pragmatic paradox, it is not just another pragmatic paradox, because this diagnosis does not explain all the puzzling features of Moorean beliefs. In particularly, while this analysis is plausible in relation to the puzzle posed by characteristic of Moorean sentences, I argue that it fails to account for. I do so in the course of an attempt to formulate the definition of a pragmatic paradox in more precise formal terms, in order to see whether the definition is satisfied by Moorean sentences, but not by their third-person transpositions. For only an account which can do so could address adequately. After rejecting a number of attempted formalizations, I arrive at a definition which delivers the right results. The problem with this definition, however, is that it has to be couched in first-person terms, making an essential use of ‘I’. Thus the problem of accounting for first-/third-person asymmetry recurs at a higher order, which shows that the Pragmatic Paradox Resolution fails to identify the source of such asymmetry highlighted by Moore’s Paradox. (shrink)

Donald Davidson's theory of mind is widely regarded as a normative theory. This is a something of a confusion. Once a distinction has been made between the categorisation scheme of a norm and the norm's force-maker, it becomes clear that a Davidsonian theory of mind is not a normative theory after all. Making clear the distinction, applying it to Davidson's theory of mind, and showing its significance are the main purposes of this paper. In the concluding paragraphs, a sketch is (...) given of how a truly normative Davidsonian theory of mind might be formulated. (shrink)

This paper concerns Tarski’s use of the term “model” in his 1936 paper “On the Concept of Logical Consequence.” Against several of Tarski’s recent defenders, I argue that Tarski employed a non-standard conception of models in that paper. Against Tarski’s detractors, I argue that this non-standard conception is more philosophically plausible than it may appear. Finally, I make a few comments concerning the traditionally puzzling case of Tarski’s ω-rule example.

Alex Oliver and Timothy Smiley provide a new account of plural logic. They argue that there is such a thing as genuinely plural denotation in logic, and expound a framework of ideas that includes the distinction between distributive and collective predicates, the theory of plural descriptions, multivalued functions, and lists.

Teleosemantics has a problem: it holds that to have a mind one must have a history, often a long evolutionary history. The solution to the problem is for teleosemanticists to give up on natural selection as the source of natural norms (functions) for neural structures, and to find a different source of natural norms which is not essentially history-involving. Such a source in fact exists, in cybernetic governance. This paper argues for the existence of natural norms derived from cybernetic governance, (...) parallel to natural norms derived from natural selection but distinct from them, and shows how such norms could save teleosemantics from its over-emphasis on history. (shrink)

THERE IS WIDESPREAD AGREEMENT among historians that the writings of Robert Boyle (1697-1691) constitute a valuable archive for understanding the concerns of seventeenth-century British natural philosophers. His writings have often been seen as representing, in one fashion or another, all of the leading intellectual currents of his day. ~ There is somewhat less consensus, however, on the proper historiographic method for interpreting these writings, as well as on the specific details of the beliefs expressed in them. Studies seeking to explicate (...) Boyle's thought have been, roughly speaking, of two general sorts. On the one hand there are those studies of a broadly "intellectualist" orientation which situate his natural philosophy within the intellectual context provided by metaphysics, religion, and early modern science. In this connection his corpuscularianism has been shown to be motivated by specific epistemological, theological, as well as empirical concerns. One of the central aims of such studies has been to show that apparently discordant elements in his scientific thought are rendered coherent by referring them to such "non-scientific" commitments. Among studies of this sort might be mentioned the works of John Hedley Brooke, E. A. Burtt, Gary B. Deason, J. E. McGuire, R. Hooykaas, Robert H. Kargon, Eugene M. Klaaren, P. M. Rattansi, and Richard S. Westfall. (shrink)

In his writings Alfred Schutz identifies an artificiality in the concept of life-world produced by Edmund Husserl's method of reduction. As an alternative, he proposes to assume intersubjectivity as a given of everyday life. This eradicates Husserl's distinction between life-world and natural attitude. The subsequent phenomenological project appears to center upon sociological descriptions of the structures of the life-world rather than on a search for apodictic truth. Schutz, however, actually retains Husserl's emphasis on the subject. A tension then arises between (...) the assumption of intersubjectivity and individual experience. Rather than clarifying the concept of intersubjectivity, this further problematizes it. Drawing upon Max Weber's work, Schutz responds by developing a rigorous methodology for studying the social world. But having rejected Husserl's reduction and conflated life-world and natural attitude, Schutz's analysis moves at the level of daily life itself. Consequently, the explanatory categories he proposes appear as abstractions rather than as a way of describing lived experience. Schutz, it is concluded, initiates a scientistic sociology in which the commonsense structures of the natural attitude of everyday life are subverted and replaced by the more rigorous knowledge of the scientific attitude. Schutz's version of phenomenology is ultimately untrue to the spirit of Husserl's original project; and deploying his work as a clear-cut alternative to scientistic tendencies within sociology is not as straightforward as it might at first seem. (shrink)

The propositional attitudes are attitudes such as believing and desiring, taken toward propositions such as the proposition that snow flurries are expected, or that the Prime Minister likes poutine. Collectively, our views about the propositional attitudes make up much of folk psychology, our everyday theory of how the mind works.

The introspective method has come under attack throughout the history of psychology, yet it is widely used today in virtually all areas of the field, often to good effect. At the same time indirect methods that do not rely on introspection are widely used, also to good effect. This conundrum is best understood in terms of models of nonconscious processing and the role of consciousness. People have access to many of their feelings and emotions, and develop rich narratives about themselves (...) and their social worlds. These conscious states, accessible to introspective reports, are often good predictors of people’s behaviour. There is also a pervasive adaptive unconscious that is inaccessible via introspection. When using introspective reports researchers should be clear about which kinds of mental states they are trying to measure. (shrink)

In 1999, Jeffrey Ketland published a paper which posed a series of technical problems for deflationary theories of truth. Ketland argued that deflationism is incompatible with standard mathematical formalizations of truth, and he claimed that alternate deflationary formalizations are unable to explain some central uses of the truth predicate in mathematics. He also used Beth’s definability theorem to argue that, contrary to deflationists’ claims, the T-schema cannot provide an ‘implicit definition’ of truth. In this article, I want to challenge this (...) final argument. Whatever other faults deflationism may have, the T-schema does provide an implicit definition of the truth predicate. Or so, at any rate, I shall argue. (shrink)

The object of the present work is to rectify the neglect that pleasure and displeasure have been suffering from in the philosophy of mind, and to give an account of pleasure and displeasure which reveals a striking degree of unity and theoretical tractabiliy underlying the diverse phenomena: a representationalist account.

An option range is a set of alternative actions available to an agent at a given time. I ask how a moral theory’s account of option ranges relates to its recommendations about deliberative procedure (DP) and criterion of rightness (CR). I apply this question to Act Consequentialism (AC), which tells us, at any time, to perform the action with the best consequences in our option range then. If anyone can employ this command as a DP, or assess (direct or indirect) (...) compliance with it as a CR, someone must be able to tell which actions fit this description. Since the denseness of possibilia entails that any option range is indefinitely large, no one can do this. So no one can know that any option has ever emerged from any range as the best option in that range. However we come to know that a given option is right, we never come to know it in AC’s way. It is often observed that AC cannot give us a DP. AC cannot give us a CR either, unless we are omniscient. So Act Consequentialism is useless. (shrink)

Here is an account of logical consequence inspired by Bolzano and Tarski. Logical validity is a property of arguments. An argument is a pair of a set of interpreted sentences (the premises) and an interpreted sentence (the conclusion). Whether an argument is logically valid depends only on its logical form. The logical form of an argument is fixed by the syntax of its constituent sentences, the meanings of their logical constituents and the syntactic differences between their non-logical constituents, treated as (...) variables. A constituent of a sentence is logical just if it is formal in meaning, in the sense roughly that its application is invariant under permutations of individuals.1 Thus ‘=’ is a logical constant because no permutation maps two individuals to one or one to two; ‘∈’ is not a logical constant because some permutations interchange the null set and its singleton. Truth functions, the usual quantifiers and bound variables also count as logical constants. An argument is logically valid if and only if the conclusion is true under every assignment of semantic values to variables (including all non-logical expressions) under which all its premises are true. A sentence is logically true if and only if the argument with no premises of which it is the conclusion is logically valid, that is, if and only if the sentence is true under every assignment of semantic values to variables. An interpretation assigns values to all variables. (shrink)

Many contemporary bioethicists claim that the possession of certain psychological properties is sufficient for having full moral status. I will call this thepsychological approach to full moral status. In this paper, I argue that there is a significant tension between the psychological approach and a widely held model of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder). According to this model, the individual personalities or alters that belong to someone with DID possess those properties that proponents of the psychological approach (...) claim suffice for full moral status. If this account of DID is true, then the psychological approach to full moral status seems to entail that the two standard therapies for treating DID might, on occasion, be seriously immoral, for they may well involve the (involuntary) elimination of an entity with full moral status. This result should give proponents of the psychological approach pause, for most people find the claim that current treatments of DID are ethically suspect highly counter-intuitive. (shrink)

The target paper by Noë and Thompson is a very welcome addition to the literature on the neural correlates of consciousness. It raises a number of important issues, and the debate it will generate should go some way towards clarifying the conceptual terrain that we’re in. In this commentary I focus on three issues: the link between isomorphism and the matching-content doctrine; the argument against the matching-content doctrine; and the argument against experiential internalism.

The relationship between mental representation and consciousness is considered. What it means to 'represent', and several types of representation (e.g., analogue, digital, spatial, linguistic, mathematical), are described. Concepts relevant to mental representation in general (e.g., multiple levels of processing, structure/process differences, mapping) and in specific domains (e.g., mental imagery, linguistic/propositional theories, production systems, connectionism, dynamics) are discussed. Similarities (e.g., using distinctions between different forms of representation to predict different forms of consciousness, parallels between digital architectures of the brain and connectionist (...) models) and dissociations (e.g., insensitivity to gaps in subjective experience, explicit memory/implicit memory, automatic processing/controlled processing, blindsight, neglect, prediction/ explanation) of mental representation and consciousness are discussed. It is concluded that representational systems are separable from consciousness systems, and that mental representation appears necessary but not sufficient for consciousness. Considerations for future research on correspondences between representation and consciousness are suggested. (shrink)

We examine two-cardinal problems for the class of O-minimal theories. We prove that an O-minimal theory which admits some (κ, λ) must admit every (κ , λ ). We also prove that every “reasonable” variant of Chang’s Conjecture is true for O-minimal structures. Finally, we generalize these results from the two-cardinal case to the δ-cardinal case for arbitrary ordinals δ.

The present paper explores three interrelated topics in Popper's theory of science: (1) his view of conjecture, (2) the aim of science, and (3) his (never fully articulated) theory of meaning. Central to Popper's theory of science is the notion of conjecture. Popper writes as if scientists faced with a problem proceed to tackle it by conjecture, that is, by guesses uninformed by inferential considerations. This paper develops a contrast between guesses and educated guesses in an attempt to show that (...) there is more to scientific conjecture than conjecture. The suggestion is made that some inductive considerations enter into the process of educated guessing or scientific conjecture in such a way that the ‘context of discovery’ cannot be sharply separated from the ‘context of justification’. This discussion leads to a tension between Popper's negative method of conjecture and his realism. Given Popper's (implicit) theory of meaning it seems Popper's epistemology (the conjecture and refutation method) is incompatible with his metaphysical realism. (shrink)

The distinction between the modeling of information and the modeling of data in the creation of automated systems has historically been important because the development tools available to programmers have been wedded to machine oriented data types and processes. However, advances in software engineering, particularly the move toward data abstraction in software design, allow activities reasonably described as information modeling to be performed in the software creation process. An examination of the evolution of programming languages and development of general programming (...) paradigms, including object-oriented design and implementation, suggests that while data modeling will necessarily continue to be a programmer's concern, more and more of the programming process itself is coming to be characterized by information modeling activities. (shrink)

A kind of intellectual project characteristic of Ernest Sosa is to resolve an apparently flat-out dispute by showing that it is not after all a zero-sum game. His irenic goal is to do justice to both sides and give each of them most of what it wants. In his subtle paper ‘Abilities, Concepts, and Externalism’ he applies this strategy to the dispute between internalism and externalism in the philosophy of mind. It is a pleasure to engage in discussion with a (...) philosopher of Sosa’s fair-mindedness and analytical skills. (shrink)

Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of (...) Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters. (shrink)

To become fully aware of the original and radical character of his transcendental phenomenology Edmund Husserl must be located within the historical tradition of Western philosophy. Although he was not a historian of philosophy, Husserl's his torical reflections convinced him that phenomenology is the necessary culmination of a centuries-old endeavor and the solution to the contemporary crisis in European science and European humanity itself.l This teleological viewpoint re quires the commentator to consider the tradition of Western philosophy from Husserl's own (...) perspective. Husserl maintained that the Cartesian tum to the "Cogito" represents the crucial breakthrough in the historical advance of Western thought toward philosophy as rigorous science. Hence 2 he concentrated almost exclusively on the modem era. Much has been written of Husserl's relationship to Descartes, Kant, and the neo-Kantians. His connections with Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have not been examined as closely despite his fre quent allusions to these British empiricists. Among these thinkers David Hume gained from Husserl the more extensive considera tion. Commentators have pointed out correctly that Husserl always criticized unsparingly Hume's sheer empiricistic approach to the problem of cognition. Such an approach, in Husserl's view, can only result in the "naturalization of consciousness" from which stem that "psychologism" and "sensualism" which lead Hume inevitably into the contradictory impasse of solipsism 3 and skepticism. (shrink)

This groundbreaking text is the most complete and detailed book devoted to middle-range theories and their applications in clinical nursing research. The book thoroughly explains the process of selecting an appropriate theory for a particular nursing research study and sets forth criteria for critiquing theories. Each chapter includes examples of research using middle-range theories, definitions of key terms, analysis exercises, reference lists, and relevant Websites. Instruments are presented in appendices. New features of this edition include analysis questions for all theories; (...) new chapters on learning theory and physiologic middle-range theories; "Part" introductions to frame the selection process for each middle-range theory chosen; and a glossary of terms. (shrink)

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This study examined how research conducted at several federally funded institutions designated as Clinical Research Centers or Specialized Programs of Research Excellence addressed the issues of consent, control over biological materials, confidentiality, and disclosure of results in protocols and consent forms for genetic research with stored biological materials. Although a majority of the documents reviewed addressed most of the issues raised in the research ethics literature, topics identified in the literature that were missing include the return of research results, the (...) right to withdraw from research involving biological materials, and the consent of children when they become legal adults. If typical, these findings suggest greater educational efforts may be needed to prompt investigators and IRBs to consider these and other issues that were either not addressed in the protocols or consent forms or were addressed inadequately. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Evgeny Zamiatin's "The Cave"Timothy LangenEvgeny Zamiatin's short story "The Cave," like Fyodor Dosto- evsky's novel Crime and Punishment, has at its dramatic center a single criminal act, and as its philosophical preoccupation the reasons for and the results of that act. The act in "The Cave" is not murder but theft, the theft of scarce firewood from a downstairs neighbor. The result, unlike Dostoevsky's, is rapid detection, confrontation, (...) and then suicide. The reasons, however, are somewhat more complex, and as with Dostoevsky they reach beyond merely topical sensation to touch a paradox that lies close to the heart of human civilization.The immediate reasons are topical and simple enough. Martin Martinych and Masha live together on the brink of hypothermic death during the predictable cruelty of a Petrograd winter and the exceptional horror of the Russian Civil War. Nearly everyone in the city is freezing and starving, and the precariousness of existence has led people to trade the luxuries of civilized life for the barest essentials of physical survival. Books and sheet music shift imperceptibly from repositories of memory and culture into combustible objects good for a few more minutes of life-saving warmth. Favorite rooms are abandoned as not worth the cost of heating, and Martin Martinych sacrifices his conscience for a few scraps of wood. Indeed, Zamiatin prepares the crime at least as sympathetically as does Dostoevsky: the victim, Obertyshev, is every bit as dislikable as Dostoevsky's pawnbroker; he hoards his considerable supply of wood in total indifference to the suffering of his neighbors. Moreover, Mart's crime, unlike Raskolnikov's [End Page 209] in Crime and Punishment, hardly injures the victim, who seems to suffer a purely mental affront when some of his stash has been stolen. We would like to think that in Raskolnikov's place we would not commit his crime; in Mart's place, however, we might well be excused for following his example and filching a few sticks of wood from a man who doesn't need them.However, it is not an easy decision for Mart, and Zamiatin describes it as a battle between two Marts, bifurcated by the extreme deprivation of his circumstances into a purely animal Mart, a "caveman" who says only "I must," and another Mart clinging tenaciously in memory, a Mart who used to love the music of Scriabin and who now, standing before Obertyshev's ample woodpile, says "I may not." The caveman prevails, Mart brings the wood upstairs, and he and Masha enjoy a day of warmth. At the end of the day, the chairman of the housing committee confronts Mart, assuring him that he too detests Obertyshev, but advising Mart to return the wood or else face legal consequences. Alas, there is none to return. In despair Mart reaches for a vial of poison that he has apparently reserved for that moment when the suffering of life outweighs the hope—but Masha, who is further gone than he, insists on taking the single portion herself. She instructs Mart to go outside for a little walk while she does the deed. He does so, and here the story ends.Zamiatin was trained as an engineer and early in his career he worked both as a technical writer and as a writer of fiction, and so it is tempting see behind this story a mechanical vision of human existence that is something like a physical structure. The structure of human civilization, according to this view, is built on an essential framework without which the entire thing would collapse, and to which every other part of the structure must be sacrificed if need be. Physical existence is part of this framework: it is the precondition of any human civilization, and the ornaments of that civilization must when necessary be devoured to ensure the continued survival of human beings. The burning thirst of physical necessity must be slaked before we can irrigate the lush fields of beauty, kindness, and imagination. Books are for reading, but in some circumstances they are more valuable as kindling.In the writing of some psychologists—most notably Abraham Maslow—there appears a "hierarchy of human needs" that... (shrink)