In creative cognition research, the Romantic view about creative cognition is traditionally rejected in favor of the modern view. The modern view about creative cognition maintains that creativity is neither mysterious nor unintelligible and that it is indeed susceptible to analysis. The paradigmatic objects of analysis in creative cognition research have been creative output and the creative process. The degree of creativity of an output is assessed in accordance with certain criterial definitions. The degree of creativity of a cognitive process (...) is assessed in accordance with certain models of creative cognition, psychometric test measures, and neuroimaging studies that are grounded in certain criteria for assessment. The reliance on criterial definitions and criteria for assessment in analyzing either the creative output or the creative process suggests that creative cognition researchers remain under the sway of the classical, bundles-of-criteria theory of meaning. In this paper, I will critically evaluate the criterial problems that confront both criterial definitions and criteria for assessment before proposing an alternative theory of meaning. (shrink)

Lo scopo del presente contributo è quello di riflettere da un punto di vista storiografico sull’interesse che la recente filosofia analitica ha mostrato nei confronti del pensiero tomista. Dopo aver contestualizzato la nascita di una vera e propria corrente denominata Tomismo analitico e averla adeguatamente definita, indicherò come essa si sia potuta sviluppare attraverso l’uso del criterio di ricorsività e di cinque massime storiografiche. Nella seconda parte prenderò in considerazione un caso particolare, analizzando la Serie metafisica tomista e metafisica analitica (...) attualmente in corso di pubblicazione presso la case editrice Carocci. Concluderò sottolineando come lo studio di domande ricorrenti, la commensurabilità dei paradigmi e una notevole consapevolezza storica siano i presupposti che rendono possibile il confronto tra due ontologia appartenenti a due epoche storiche così distanti. The aim of this paper is to ponder over the interest that more recent analytic philosophy has displayed for Thomism from a historiographical point of view. In the first section, the current called Analytical Thomism will be defined, and its origin will be adequately contextualized in order to underline how its existence and relevance are possible thanks to the use of the criterion of recursivity and of five historiographic precepts. In the following sections, a distinctive case will be taken into consideration; in fact the Collection of Thomistic Metaphysics and Analytic Metaphysics now published by Carocci will be analysed. In the conclusion, I will critically expound the posited criteria that make it possible to compare these two ontologies belonging to so different historical backgrounds: to pay attention to recurring requests, to consider different paradigms as commensurable as well as a great historic awareness. (shrink)

Anti-criterialists argue that there are no criteria that ensure personal persistence. However, this perspective is criticized for resulting in an unacceptable consequence that undermines our intuitions, daily beliefs, and direct introspective awareness of personal persistence. I defend anti-criterialism by responding to this objection and arguing that none of these aspects are undermined by anti-criterialism. The flawed objection against anti-criterialism reveals the excessive ambition of criterialism in seeking criteria for personal persistence with metaphysical necessity, which goes beyond (...) our abilities and needs. As beings living in the actual world, we are not able to consider what happens to personal persistence in remote possible worlds. Moreover, to judge whether a person persists or not in daily life, we do not need a criterion that ensures personal persistence in all situations. Anti-criterialism acknowledges the complexity and variability of personal persistence and offers a more realistic and practical approach to understanding personal identity. (shrink)

According to philosophical orthodoxy, there are informative criteria of identity over time. Anti-criterialism rejects this orthodoxy and claims that there are no such criteria. This paper examines anti-criterialism in the light of recent attacks on the thesis by Matt Duncan, Sydney Shoemaker and Dean Zimmerman. It is argued that those attacks are not successful. Along the way, a novel strategy to defend anti-criterialism against the critics’ most challenging objection is developed. Under-appreciated difficulties for criterialism are also (...) raised which, I claim, there is no obvious way to solve. It is concluded that anti-criterialism may be a much stronger rival to criterialism than is often supposed. (shrink)

I was one of the group that produced “An Official ATS/AACN/ACCP/ESICM/SCCM Policy Statement: Responding to Requests for Futile and Potentially Inappropriate Treatments in Intensive Care Units”. I do not write on that group’s behalf, but rather from two distinct perspectives which converge onto one view. First, I am a philosopher who thinks about our most pressing questions, such as how to make treatment decisions when a life is coming to an end. From that perspective, three of us from the group (...) tried to set out the philosophical position that seemed to underpin the Multiorganization Policy Statement. That deliberativist position holds that... (shrink)

Harald Wohlrapp’s The Concept of Argument has made a significant contribution to the argumentation theory by proposing a new approach to our way of thinking about arguments and argumentation that in which he proposes a criterion of criterial validity: An thesis is valid, if there are no open objections against the justification offered for it. In this paper, I will focus on some issues and difficulties with that principle.

Most theists believe that they will survive death. Indeed, they believe that any given person will survive death and persist into an afterlife while remaining the very same person. In light of this belief, one might ask: how—or, in virtue of what—do people survive death? Perhaps the most natural way to answer this question is by appealing to some general account of personal identity through time. That way one can say that people persist through the time of their death in (...) the same way that people persist through time in general. Then the obvious question is: how—or, in virtue of what—do people persist through time in general? Many different answers to this question have been proposed. Some philosophers think that personal identity through time consists in something, such as psychological or biological continuity. They think that there are informative necessary and sufficient conditions—i.e., criteria—for personal identity through time. These philosophers are criterialists. Other philosophers are anti-criterialists. Anti-criterialists believe that people persist through time, but they deny that there are any informative criteria for personal identity through time. In this paper I develop a challenge to anti-criterialism. I begin by spelling out the commitments of anti-criterialism. Then I argue that there are good reasons for anyone to reject anti-criterialism. And then I argue that theists have special reasons to reject anti-criterialism (This is particularly important and noteworthy because a substantial portion of those who defend anti-criterialism are theists. Examples include [but may not be limited to] Trenton Merricks, Richard Swinburne, Joseph Butler, and Thomas Reid). I conclude that there is an informative criterion for personal identity through time and death, even if we haven’t heard of it yet. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to make some steps towards a formal characterization of identity criteria. First of all, we analyse some logical requirements identity criteria are supposed to satisfy and observe that some commonly used identity criteria fail to meet some of them. We focus in particular on the equivalence requirement. We consider then the proposals which have been given so far and aimed at providing logical adequacy to non-equivalent identity conditions. To this purpose, we analyse Williamson’s and De (...) Clerq and Horsten’s treatment of identity criteria. We expand their formal framework, characterizing identity conditions in terms of contexts and levels of granularity too. (shrink)

Aim of the paper is to make some steps towards a formal characterization of identity criteria. First of all, we analyse some logical requirements identity criteria are supposed to satisfy and observe that some commonly used identity criteria fail to meet some of them. We focus in particular on the equivalence requirement. We consider then the proposals which have been given so far and aimed at providing logical adequacy to non-equivalent identity conditions. To this purpose, we analyse Williamson’s and De (...) Clerq and Horsten’s treatment of identity criteria. We expand their formal framework, characterizing identity conditions in terms of contexts and levels of granularity too. (shrink)

Michael Pardo and Dennis Patterson have recently put forward several provocative and stimulating criticisms that strike at the heart of much work that has been done at the crossroads of neuroscience and the law. My goal in this essay is to argue that their criticisms of the nascent but growing field of neurolaw are ultimately based on questionable assumptions concerning the nature of the ever evolving relationship between scientific discovery and ordinary language. For while the marriage between ordinary language and (...) scientific discovery is admittedly not always a happy one, it is an awkward union that nevertheless seems to work itself out with the passage of time. In the following pages, I will try to show that Pardo and Patterson’s primary argumentative strategy ultimately depends on basic assumptions concerning the fixity of language that we should reject. (shrink)

The two main topics of the paper are an allegedly justified reliability requirement for knowledge and an alleged incoherence among three propositions asserted by Cartesian foundationalism. It is argued that neither the allegation of justified reliability nor the allegation of incoherence is correct.

In virtue of what do things persist through time? Are there criteria of their identities through time? Anti-criterialists say no. One prominent challenge to anti-criterialism comes in two steps. The first step is to show that anti-criterialists are committed specifically to the claim that there are no informative metaphysically sufficient conditions for identity through time. The second step is to show that this commitment yields absurd results. Each step of this challenge is open to objection. However, in what follows, (...) I will refortify this challenge to anti-criterialism by offering new reasons to take each step. (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The thesis focusses on the question of the coherence of the notion of a "criterion" which has enjoyed considerable currency in the contemporary Philosophy of Language and Mind. The text is divided into three parts, each of which deals with a particular aspect of the notion of a criterion, or of theories of criteria. Part One consists of Chapters 1, 2 and 3 and explores the question of the (...) origins of the notion and of theories concerning it. Wittgenstein's later work is widely recognized as the notion's point of origin and for that reason I examine Wittgenstein's use of the term "criterion" and the philosophy of language which is the proper context of the notion as employed by that author. I then present my own account of the significance of the notion to Wittgenstein, and the role of the notion in his later thought. Part Two consists of Chapters 4 and 5 which examine the place of the notion in the contemporary Philosophy of Language and offer a critical account of much recent work in that field. Finally, in Part Three, I concentrate on the question of the coherence of the notion. The sixth Chapter deals mainly with epistemological issues of relevance but also involves some formal work together with some discussion of the ramifications of the notion, correctly understood, in the Philosophy of Mind. Chapter Seven suggests a formal, logical framework in which criterial reasoning patterns can be usefully mapped and also attempts to demonstrate an inherent flexibility of format which might allow for contrastive comparisons with other modes of reasoning. (shrink)

'An “inner process” stands in need of outward criteria' is not a thesis from which philosophical propositions are proved. It is a synopsis of grammatical rules that determine what we call 'the inner'. Although it is not a theoretical term in Wittgenstein's philosophy, the word 'criterion' was the heir to an expression which could, with some justice, be called 'theoretical', one which was embedded in a philosophical account which might be viewed as a theory. Wittgenstein used various metaphors and similes (...) to illuminate the relationship between genuine propositions and hypotheses. One can conceive of genuine propositions as sectional cross‐cuts through the connected structure of a hypothesis. The survey of the similarities and differences between the symptoms/hypothesis relation and criterial relations and of the distinction between criteria and symptoms (in the new sense of the term) has established the rough outlines of Wittgenstein's use of the term 'criterion'. (shrink)