Open peer commentary on the target article “Arguments Opposing the Radicalism of Radical Constructivism” by Gernot Saalmann. First paragraph: I appreciate Saalmann’s recognition that “there are considerable differences amongst the authors” and that these “have changed their opinions in the course of time” (§3); but given this, what are the consequences for an outline of the theses of radical constructivism (RC)? Which approach is best for outlining a theory of knowing under these hindering conditions? My suggestion would be to use (...) a method specifically developed for this kind of situation and to present it explicitly, or, if it does not yet exist, to develop one. (shrink)

In this paper I argue for the importance of treating mental experience on its own terms. In defense of “experiential realism” I offer a critique of modern psychology’s all-too-frequent attempts to effect an objectification and quantification of personal subjectivity. The question is “What can we learn about experiential reality from indices that, in the service of scientific objectification, transform the qualitative properties of experience into quantitative indices?” I conclude that such treatment is neither necessary for realizing, nor (...) sufficient for capturing, subjectively given states (such as perception, pain, imagery, fear, thought, memory) – that is, for understanding many of the principle objects of psychological inquiry. A “science of mind” that approaches its subject matter from a third-person perspective should, I contend, be treated with a healthy amount of informed skepticism. (shrink)

While the pedagogical benefits of experiential learning are well known, classroom technology is a more contentious topic. In my experience, philosophy instructors are hesitant to embrace technology in their pedagogy. A great deal of this trepidation is justified: when technology serves only to replicate existing methods without contributing to course objectives, it unnecessarily adds extra work for the instructor and can even be a distraction from learning. However, I believe, if applied appropriately, technology can be used to positively enhance (...) the philosophy classroom experience in ways that are not possible in traditional classroom settings – including new ways of experiential learning. To demonstrate this, I offer a case study of implementing virtual reality as a tool for experiential learning of philosophy. I show how having students “walk a plank” off a skyscraper in VR allowed me to exceed my course objectives for my Existentialism course in particularly effective ways that I could not have done without this technology. (shrink)

Thesis on metaphysics featuring Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky. I discuss Strawsons' Materialism, panpsychism and the topic of reference. I compare Strawson's view with Chomsky's in relation to panpsychism, the nature of reference and the limits of human understanding by reviewing important historical events in the history of philosophy. I also cover some aspects of neuroscience to see if empirical evidence in any way contradicts the claims made by Strawson and Chomsky. I conclude by recasting the questions of metaphysics under (...) an epistemological framework. (shrink)

Epistemic Logic is our basic universal science, the method of our cognitive confrontation in reality to prove the truth of our basic cognitions and theories. Hence, by proving their true representation of reality we can self-control ourselves in it, and thus refuting the Berkeleyian solipsism and Kantian a priorism. The conception of epistemic logic is that only by proving our true representation of reality we achieve our knowledge of it, and thus we can prove our cognitions to (...) be either true or rather false, and otherwise they are doubtful. Therefore, truth cannot be separated from being proved and we cannot hold anymore the principle of excluded middle, as it is with formal semantics of metaphysical realism. In distinction, the intuitionistic logic is based on subjective intellectual feeling of correctness in constructing proofs, and thus it is epistemologically encapsulated in the metaphysical subject. However, epistemic logic is our basic science which enable us to prove the truth of our cognitions, including the epistemic logic itself. (shrink)

Using a multiple-trial stock market decision paradigm, the possibility that counterfactual thinking can be dysfunctional for learning and performance by distorting the processing of outcome information was examined. Correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) evidence suggested that counterfactuals are associated with a decrease in experiential learning. When counterfactuals were made salient, participants displayed significantly poorer performance compared to their counterparts for whom counterfactuals were relatively less salient. A counterfactual salience ? need for cognition (NFC) interaction qualified these findings. (...) High NFC participants outperformed their counterparts when counterfactuals were not salient. Evidence for a memory-based mechanism was also supported. (shrink)

Value, Reality, and Desire is an extended argument for a robust realism about value. The robust realist affirms the following distinctive theses. There are genuine claims about value which are true or false--there are facts about value. These value-facts are mind-independent - they are not reducible to desires or other mental states, or indeed to any non-mental facts of a non-evaluative kind. And these genuine, mind-independent, irreducible value-facts are causally efficacious. Values, quite literally, affect us. These are not particularly (...) fashionable theses, and taken as a whole they go somewhat against the grain of quite a lot of recent work in the metaphysics of value. Further, against the received view, Oddie argues that we can have knowledge of values by experiential acquaintance, that there are experiences of value which can be both veridical and appropriately responsive to the values themselves. Finally, these value-experiences are not the products of some exotic and implausible faculty of "intuition." Rather, they are perfectly mundane and familiar mental states - namely, desires. This view explains how values can be "intrinsically motivating," without falling foul of the widely accepted "queerness" objection. There are, of course, other objections to each of the realist's claims. In showing how and why these objections fail, Oddie introduces a wealth of interesting and original insights about issues of wider interest--including the nature of properties, reduction, supervenience, and causation. The result is a novel and interesting account which illuminates what would otherwise be deeply puzzling features of value and desire and the connections between them. (shrink)

Hermeneutic Research: An Experiential Method presents a method to investigate lived experiences. In doing so, this book integrates a broad range of philosophical topics, such as hermeneutics, the philosophy of consciousness, and the philosophy of being. We are conscious beings. Through every act of consciousness, something is presented to the experiencing person. Something--a theme--stands in the focus of attention. Within the dimensional human consciousness, this theme is related to other thoughts, a process that includes certain aspects of the theme (...) and excludes others from conscious experience. The foundational conviction of the experiential method detailed in this book is that thought is not static in its ultimate nature but organically dynamic. Thought uncovers its internal endlessness through time as its medium, just as the small seed uncovers the unity of a tree through soil as its medium. Thought, as a dynamic self-revealing phenomenon, uncovers itself as a series of understandings that cannot be interpreted except through reciprocal reference. Meaningfulness, therefore, is not contained in self-identity but in the larger whole in which it is a specific part. Wholeness contains possibilities of knowledge as present realities revealing themselves, through human choices and experiences, in temporal progression to reach a unity that is already contained in them. This infinite movement of knowledge thus reveals the possibility intrinsic to finite thought. Intuition, as wholistic apprehension, is movement that could acknowledge and reach an immanent infinite, of which the finite concepts of comprehension and cognition are only momentums. (shrink)

Cognitive sciences have been interminably in search for a consistent philosophical framework for the description of perceptual phenomena. Most of the frameworks in usage today fall in-between the extremes of constructivism and objective realism. However, whereas constructivist cognitive theories face difficulties when attempting to explain the experiential commonality of different cognitive entities, objectivistic theories fail in explaining the active role of the subject in the formation of experiences. This paper undertakes to compare and eventually combine these two major approaches (...) to describing cognitive phenomena. It is argued that constructivist explanations inevitably refer to a `hidden' ontological source of experience, and that a compromise between the constructivist and realistic standpoints presents a natural basis for understanding cognitive phenomena. A view of all experiences as co-created through an interplay between a constructivist creativity and a realistic source of perceptual stimuli is proposed. A middle ground between the hardly compatible constructivist and objectivistic approaches to experiential realities is proposed from the standpoint of experiential co-creation. Traditionally divided, idealistic and realistic philosophical stances may thus become merged into a single consistent epistemological framework. Many favorable cognitive and psychosomatic consequences may arise from acknowledging the balance between `inner' and `outer' creativity proposed by the co-creational thesis. (shrink)

Our expectations for human experience of God can obscure the reality and the presence of such experience for us. They can lead us to look in the wrong places for God’s presence, and they can lead us not to look at all. This article counters the threat of misleading expectations regarding God, while acknowledging a role for diving hiding from humans on occasion. It contends that, given God’s perfect moral character, we should expect typical human experience of God to (...) have moral dissonance, that is, experiential conflict in morally relevant ways. We shall see the evidential or cognitive importance of how humans respond to such dissonance. Our failing to respond cooperatively with God can result either in our obscuring evidence of divine reality or in God’s hiding divine self-manifestation for redemptive purposes aimed at our benefit. (shrink)

This dissertation presents evidence that a number of the great traditional Western metaphysicians based their metaphysical systems upon their experiences of altered states of consciousness . It poses the question: what state of consciousness would be necessary for the metaphysician to actually experience "reality" in the way that he describes it? It specifically discusses evidence in the philosophical writings of Plato, Berkeley, Schopenhauer and Hegel which strongly suggests that they experienced various non-ordinary planes of "reality" during certain ASCs. (...) ;Four different metaphysical planes or levels of "reality" are presented: the everyday material world , the eternal soul , the archetypal Platonic Ideas or essences and the Divine Mind of God , which is identified with the mystical godhead. ;It is argued that Plato directly experienced the non-ordinary realm of the eternal Ideas . Berkeley's metaphysical claims about the unreality of matter and the dependence of the entities in the everyday world upon the mind or soul for their existence are grounded in his direct experience of the soul during a worldless ASC. Schopenhauer's description of the aesthetic experience of the Platonic Ideas is discussed as a perceptual form of concentrative meditation. Hegel's fundamental metaphysical concept of the Universal Mind of God or Absolute Spirit is rooted in his mystical experiences of Level Four. His non-Aristotelian form of logic is described as a "state-specific logic," i.e., a form of logic which is rooted in the experience of a specific ASC. ;It is argued that "analytic" philosophers have misunderstood the experiential nature of traditional metaphysical language. Some of the implications of this experiential approach to philosophy are explored in terms of the notion of "state-specific metaphysical systems.". (shrink)

Books have their origins in conversations and seek to extend and expand those conversations over time and with different audiences. The conversations that have culminated in this book were initially stimulated through a research project at The Hastings Center on the role of religious voices in the professional fields of bioethical inquiry. Those professional conversations have continued throughout my academic career as a member of various institutional ethics committees, organizational ethics task forces, and in local, state, and national public policy (...) settings. The professional context of bioethics conversations can sometimes miss the richness of conversations that occur in the classroom and with various communities, including family members, friends, and religious and civic communities. These conversations provide an experiential depth, a groundedness in the lives and stories of persons, which augments and corrects the professionalized perspectives. I have been particularly fortunate and appreciative of opportunities to bridge the academic and professional with the personalized and communal through conversations about the ethical commitments and moral culture cultivated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or Mormon). I was invited to develop an overview essay on "Bioethics in Mormonism" for the professional reference work, Encyclopedia of Bioethics (3rd ed., 2004), and some years later received my first invitation to make a presentation on "LDS Ethics" in an academic setting at the University of Virginia. This book is the outgrowth of these many conversations and seeks to advance my communal bridging. My aim in this book is to begin bridging these various intersections between the LDS religious community and its moral culture, the professional fields of bioethics, and practical decision-making. This work seeks to be a catalyst for expanding discourse within the interdisciplinary field of Mormon studies to include ethics and bioethics. Ethics has not been a well-developed area in Mormon studies, in contrast to studies in LDS history, theology, or literature. To remedy this oversight, I present a substantive interpretation of the sources, theological background, and moral principles of LDS ethics. The historical narratives and conceptual intertwining I offer of both bioethics and of LDS moral culture is intended to complement and expand the realm of Mormon studies. A further objective is to create opportunities for reciprocal dialogues between the bioethics community and LDS scholarship. This conversation has yet to occur within academic disciplines, professional communities, or in public policy deliberations. My exposition, analysis, and critiques will intertwine and contextualize LDS moral values and health care practices within the ethical inquiry undertaken in the broader professional scholarship of bioethics. My arguments will disclose some points of common ground as well as areas of divergence towards the end of establishing the LDS faith tradition as a community of moral discourse for the bioethics field and the healing professions (medicine, nursing, pharmacy, etc.) it informs. My claim is that given its emerging cultural prominence, LDS ethical scholarship should engage in bioethical literacy and bioethics should be LDS-literate. I am also engaged in an effort to initiate more reflective dialogues regarding LDS ethics and moral culture among LDS scholars, LDS health care professionals, and the interested general LDS reader. The focus of the book on the interrelationship of religion, ethics, medicine, and health care should present for these various audiences new opportunities for mindful reflection and creative scholarship on the ethical implications of faith commitments, the responsibilities of the healing professions, and religious dimensions of public policy and public bioethics. A religious community that is formed through narratives and practices of covenantal commitments of love of neighbor needs to have a robust discourse about its ethical character. I have understood my scholarship in biomedical ethics and in religious ethics through a linking metaphor of my moral culture, of medicine, and the law, of bearing witness. The witness offers moral realities, moral truths about the way things are, vocalizes and embodies moral experience, and prophetically critiques the hypocrisies of the powerful and their oppression of the vulnerable by offering a new story, a re-storying, of tradition and conventional practice. (shrink)

Introduction -- A default position -- Experience -- The character of experience -- Understanding-experience -- A note about dispositional mental states -- Purely experiential content -- An account of four seconds of thought -- Questions -- The mental and the nonmental -- The mental and the publicly observable -- The mental and the behavioral -- Neobehaviorism and reductionism -- Naturalism in the philosophy of mind -- Conclusion: The three questions -- Agnostic materialism, part 1 -- Monism -- The linguistic (...) argument -- Materialism and monism -- A comment on reduction -- The impossibility of an objective phenomenology -- Asymmetry and reduction -- Equal-status monism -- Panpsychism -- The inescapability of metaphysics -- Agnostic materialism, part 2 -- Ignorance -- Sensory spaces -- Experience, explanation, and theoretical integration -- The hard part of the mind-body problem -- Neutral monism and agnostic monism -- A comment on eliminativism, instrumentalism, and so on -- Mentalism, idealism, and immaterialism -- Mentalism -- Strict or pure process idealism -- Active-principle idealism -- Stuff idealism -- Immaterialism -- The positions restated -- The dualist options -- Frege's thesis -- Objections to pure process idealism -- The problem of mental dispositions -- Mental -- Shared abilities -- The sorting ability -- The definition of mental being -- Mental phenomena -- The view that all mental phenomena are experiential phenomena -- Natural intentionality -- E/c intentionality -- The experienceless -- Intentionality and abstract and nonexistent objects -- Experience, purely experiential content, and n/c intentionality -- Concepts in nature -- Intentionality and experience -- Summary with problem -- Pain and pain -- The neo-behaviorist view -- A linguistic argument for the necessary connection between pain and behavior -- A challenge -- The Sirians -- N.N. Novel -- An objection to the Sirians -- The Betelgeuzians -- The point of the Sirians -- Functionalism, naturalism, and realism about pain -- Unpleasantness and qualitative character -- The weather watchers -- The rooting story -- What is it like to be a weather watcher? -- The aptitudes of mental states -- The argument from the conditions for possessing the concept of space -- The argument from the conditions for language ability -- The argument from the nature of desire -- Desire and affect -- The argument from the phenomenology of desire -- Behavior -- A hopeless definition -- Difficulties -- Other-observability -- Neo-behaviorism -- The concept of mind. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Experiential Avoidance and Superstition: Considering Concepts in ContextRoger Vilardaga (bio) and Steven C. Hayes (bio)Keywordsacceptance, contextualism, influence, therapyThe target article (García-Montes et al. 2008) explores the application of the concept of superstition, examined from a Sartrian perspective, to psychopathology such as obsessive–compulsive disorder and psychosis. They compare their analysis to two different technical terms taken from current research programs in psychology, which are the notions of Thought–Action Fusion (...) and Experiential Avoidance (EA). We have been asked to respond because our work in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT; Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson 1999) and Relational Frame Theory (RFT; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche 2001) are part of the foundational work in EA, and thus in this short commentary we comment on the article from the point of view of our research program.The article notes several areas of overlap between the ACT/RFT work on EA and their Sartrian perspective on superstition, such as the holistic and contextualistic nature of the analysis, but also several differences which the authors feel advantage their own view.It is difficult to compare the two lines of work without appreciating their context and purpose. Sartre was not a scientific psychologist; ACT/RFT are part of a specific effort at scientific system building, which we term here “contextual behavioral science” (AKA, post-Skinnerian behavior analysis).Contextual behavioral science is a social enterprise that has as its purpose the development of increasingly organized statements of relations among events that allow actions embedded in their historical and situational context to be predicted and influenced with precision, scope, and depth. “Precision” means that a limited set of analytic constructs apply to any one event; “scope” means that a limited set of constructs are needed to analyze a broad range of events; and “depth” means that constructs should cohere across different levels of analysis.Although a real world (or at least the one world) is assumed, the partitioning of the world is thought to be the result of our continuous interactions in and with it. These partitions are not ontological constructions from the perspective of contextual behavioral science because they, too, are actions that are purposive and embedded in their historical and situational contexts. The [End Page 269] deliberate attempt to analyze the world scientifically does not contradict the holistic standpoint of contextualism. When analytic goals are accomplished, constructs are “true,” but multiple truths are possible given multiple goals and historical and situational contexts. Conversely, all forms of contextualism become dogmatic and self-contradictory if their goals are not stated. It is common for contextualists of all varieties to state and defend the ultimate apprehension of reality as a whole, for example, without realizing that any statement about the world including such a defense is a form of breaking down this whole into parts. As we will try to show, the target article seems to fall into this usual contextualistic trap by arguing for what is better, without stating clearly “better for what, assessed how” and without viewing concepts with relevance to their purpose.Prediction and influence with precision, scope, and depth is a purpose, stated naked and in the wind. It is not defended, justified, or given ontological status. To generate powerful ways of speaking as measured against that purpose, contextual behavioral science has embraced a wide variety of methodologies, including laboratory research designed to refine behavioral principles with high levels of precision and scope, and applied research such as randomized controlled trials, analog research, and measure development that test the scope of the principles and theories that result (e.g., Hayes et al. 2006). Whether concepts like EA are helpful is a matter to be considered relevant to the goals of the analysis.As example of the kind of problems the authors create for themselves, consider the following quote from the target article:Although the post-Skinnerians who proposed the EA concept call themselves “contextualists,” they pay no more than lip service to the role of the “social/verbal community” and the cultural context. Their research focuses almost exclusively on laboratory experiments, and does not consider the important role of particular social practices and contexts, such as modernity.(García... (shrink)

. The approach of experiential realism could indicate where science and faith deal with the same reality, where science questions faith assumptions, and where faith goes beyond the mandate and method of science. Although prescientific, Martin Luther's theology is the classical prototype of an experiential theology. We experience God's creative power in all of reality. We discern its regularities through observation and reason. So faith opens up all the space needed by science. However, experienced reality (...) is highly ambiguous. It obscures God's intentions. God's intentions are revealed in the proclamation of the gospel: God is unconditionally for us and with us and not against us. This proclamation is a promise, appropriated in faith, and geared to a vision of what ought to become. It is based on the interpretation of a catastrophe—the cross of Christ—as God's pivotal redemptive act in human history. It goes beyond the mandate and method of science, yet it is capable of giving the latter a sense of purpose, criteria of acceptability, and authority to act in the interests of humanity and the earth. Theology challenges science to acknowledge the necessity of a transcendent frame of reference and moral accountability. Scientific insight challenges theology to reconceptualize its assumptions on God, creation, and eschatology to integrate best science. (shrink)

Cognitive sciences have been interminably in search for a consistent philosophical framework for the description of perceptual phenomena. Most of the frameworks in usage today fall in-between the extremes of constructivism and objective realism. However, whereas constructivist cognitive theories face difficulties when attempting to explain the experiential commonality of different cognitive entities, objectivistic theories fail in explaining the active role of the subject in the formation of experiences. This paper undertakes to compare and eventually combine these two major approaches (...) to describing cognitive phenomena. It is argued that constructivist explanations inevitably refer to a `hidden' ontological source of experience, and that a compromise between the constructivist and realistic standpoints presents a natural basis for understanding cognitive phenomena. A view of all experiences as co-created through an interplay between a constructivist creativity and a realistic source of perceptual stimuli is proposed. A middle ground between the hardly compatible constructivist and objectivistic approaches to experiential realities is proposed from the standpoint of experiential co-creation. Traditionally divided, idealistic and realistic philosophical stances may thus become merged into a single consistent epistemological framework. Many favorable cognitive and psychosomatic consequences may arise from acknowledging the balance between `inner' and `outer' creativity proposed by the co-creational thesis. (shrink)

The experiactional stream of a person can be seen to be organized. It takes place in situation as a "situated event." Events have a duration through time; they could be called: Time-Gestalten. Events first tend to appear in the stream of experience in imaginary anticipation usually as a result of a social invitation or as a self-initiated project. In anticipatory experience projected events are developed, worked-on, thought about on repeated occasions. The event takes shape in experience as an anticipation before (...) it takes place . This has consequences and is important because strategy-decisions are made which actually create the future event. During the recorded experience I actually decided what I was going to do for the lecture. The meaning of this anticipated event which has personal as well as social-professional horizons sets limits to what is allowed into the imaginary anticipation or the projecting. They could be said to act as "charges" upon my experiaction here and now. It seems that the event in anticipatory elaboration is richer and allows more play in experience. As we approach the actualization proper the range of possibilities narrows. Anticipation has to become embodied: it springs into action and enters the domain of public and shared social reality. We witness the event. Any component of the experiactional stream-particularly in the anticipating phases of event-structures-is built up in complex ways. This may be described as "interwovenness." Whatever we focus on can be seen to arise on a string of previous encounters reaching back into one's at bottom indeterminate biographical stock of experiaction. This stock hovers horizonally around the theme-what I pay attention to at the moment-and codetermines its meaning. This makes for idiosyncratic meanings. But our past experience is also in a good measure shared because it is based on experiences of communication to which I had access through language or images. To some extent, therefore, there is also a public and shared meaning to a perceived theme. Components of the experiactional stream are also gathered up and connected through a higher and unifying intention, the project. We take many steps to actualize a project, and we also seem to have more than one project going on at any one time. This tends to "mix-up" our stream of experiaction in surprising and complex ways. In this study I have taken a small step which turned out to be connected to the larger sequence of being involved in giving a lecture. This event as an over-arching project casts its shadow ahead of itself and colored my anticipatory experience in clearly definable ways. The general structural features uncovered here through reflection were present and at work during my experiaction although I was not explicitly aware of them at the time, while living them out. Nevertheless, my pre-reflective experiaction turned out to have been structured and organized. In what I thought was an unique-private experience there were revealed and operative general-universal structures. The personal-existential and the general-phenomenological components are inextricably intertwined and collaborative in the creation of human experience in a particular situation. They constitute a tension inherent in the flow of experiaction. In living we constantly move between these levels and as researchers in this field we always try to bridge this "gap" that arises in understanding which dichotomizes "lived immediacy" and "theoretical understanding." Either extreme-"just living" or "just thinking"-if emphasized unduly is an aberration. The human way is to experiact and to make sense of it so that mere living-out is humanized into living-with-awareness. This can never be fully accomplished but is always in process, ongoing. Everyone has to unfold his own awareness and understanding, recognizing that the depth or ground of living eludes objectification and final conceptual grasp. We can only tune-in. (shrink)

The publication of Cora Diamond's important 2002 “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” (in Philosophy and Animal Life) stimulated the writing of this essay. “The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy” attempted to show that there are experiences of reality (recounted especially in literature like John Coetzee's novels and Ted Hughes' poetry) in relation to which philosophical concepts and words encounter difficulty. The experiences resist conceptualization. By examining several of Diamond's earlier writings, (...) I try to show that the difficulty of philosophical conceptualization of reality is due to the fact that reality does not exist external to experience. Reality being internal to experience means that reality contains an unfixed set of possibilities. Being experiential, reality is historical. The historical dimension of reality – such as the reality of animal life suffering – makes the words through we describe this reality too weak, i.e. they are not powerful enough to capture reality, hence the difficulty. Consequently, as I argue, for Diamond, the weakness of words means that words are never complete concepts. The meaning of them seems always still to come since reality seems always to have a surplus of possibilities. I suggest that because of this always still “to come” aspect of the meaning of words, we might characterise Diamond's thought as a messianism. (shrink)

Since the publication of his book on Zhongyong, Tu Weiming has worked for more than 30 years on an anthropocosmic reconstruction of the Confucian universe, in which self-transformation is defined both as the starting point and as the necessary vehicle for one’s spiritual journey. This article is primarily intended to examine Tu’s attempts to reconstruct Confucian spirituality but further to take a step forward to argue that in the spiritual world as construed by Confucius and Mencius, the experiential functions (...) as transcendental by which the self initiates and empowers the transformative process. Through exploring the spiritual significance of Confucian experiences, this essay will conclude that although “transcendental experience” is only one of many dimensions in other religious or intellectual traditions, it is the most important path for Confucians by which the self is enabled to become fully integrated with ultimate reality. (shrink)

This article is a review of David Kolb's program of work on learning styles and experiential learning, which I find to be a problematic instance of psychologism. I argue that Kolb's approach ignores the process nature of experience and that attractive as it may be instrumentally, it ultimately breaks down under the weight of its structuralist reductions. Kolb attempts to account for experiential learning without a coherent theory of experience, such as might have been found in phenomenology, which (...) he virtually ignores. Thus, Kolb neglects the constitutive effects of the noetic-noemic corelationship and the intentional reality of the person. I contrast Kolb's formulations with John Dewey's much more resilient conception of "habit" and close with a critical analysis of various ways in which Kolb's learning-style instruments are used for aggressive intervention in people's lives. (shrink)

Metaverse is to build a virtual world that is both mapped and independent of the real world in cyberspace by using the improvement in the maturity of various digital technologies, such as virtual reality, augmented reality, big data, and 5G, which is important for the future development of a wide variety of professions, including education. The metaverse represents the latest stage of the development of visual immersion technology. Its essence is an online digital space parallel to the real (...) world, which is becoming a practical field for the innovation and development of human society. The most prominent advantage of the English-teaching metaverse is that it can provide an immersive and interactive teaching field for teachers and students, simultaneously meeting the teaching and learning needs of teachers and students in both the physical world and virtual world. This study constructs experiential situational English-teaching scenario and convolutional neural networks –recurrent neural networks fusion models are proposed to recognize students’ emotion electroencephalogram in experiential English teaching during the feature space of time domain, frequency domain, and spatial domain. Analyzing EEG data collected by OpenBCI EEG Electrode Cap Kit from students, experiential English-teaching scenario is designed into three types: sequential guidance, comprehensive exploration, and crowd-creation construction. Experimental data analysis of the three kinds of learning activities shows that metaverse-powered experiential situational English teaching can promote the improvement of students’ sense of interactivity, immersion, and cognition, and the accuracy and analysis time of CNN–RNN fusion model is much higher than that of baselines. This study can provide a nice reference for the emotion recognition of students under COVID-19. (shrink)

Some monothematic types of delusions may arise because subjects have unusual experiences. The role of this experiential component in the pathogenesis of delusion is still not understood. Focussing on delusions of alien control, we outline a model for reality testing competence on unusual experiences. We propose that nascent delusions arise when there are local failures of reality testing performance, and that monothematic delusions arise as normal responses to these. In the course of this we address questions concerning (...) the tenacity with which delusions are maintained, their often bizarre content, the patients' inability to dismiss them, and their often circumscribed character. (shrink)

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is typically read as a work that either rehabilitates the metaphysical tradition or argues for a new form of idealism centred on social normativity. In the following, I show that neither approach suffices. Not only does the metaphysical reading ignore how the Phenomenology demonstrates that human rationality can never adequately capture ultimate reality because ultimate reality itself has a moment of brute facticity that resists explanation, which prevents us from taking it as a logically (...) self-contained, self-justifying metaphysical zone traditionally known as ‘substance,’ but it also ignores how the Phenomenology equally demonstrates that human rationality creates a historically self-unfolding universe of meaning that is, because it displays a rational systematicity and consistency unlike anything else in the world, the closest thing we have to substance, but which, given its freedom, is more correctly called ‘subject.’ Consequently, while the non-metaphysical reading rightly recognizes that the Phenomenology develops a radically innovative account of intersubjectivity, it neglects how the social theory that it develops comes fully equipped with various metaphysical commitments concerning nature, spirit, and the relationship between them without which this theory would be unintelligible. (shrink)

Indian philosophy is a term that refers to schools of philosophical thought that originated in the Indian continent. Buddhism is one of the important school of Indian philosophical thought. Happiness is much pursued by individuals and society in all cultures. Eastern and western cultures have understood well-being and evolved ways and means to promote well-being over the years. Buddhism pursues happiness by using knowledge and practice to achieve mental equanimity. In Buddhism, equanimity, or peace of mind, is achieved by detaching (...) oneself from the cycle of craving that produces dukkha. So by achieving a mental state where you can detach from all the passions, needs and wants of life, you free yourself and achieve a state of transcendent bliss and well-being. The journey to attain a deeper form of happiness requires an unflinching look into the face of a reality where all life is seen as dukkha or mental dysfunction. Buddhism is a philosophy and practice that is extremely concerned with the mind and its various delusions, misunderstandings and cravings but, happily for us, sees a way out through higher consciousness and mindful practice. Perhaps it is because of this seemingly dim view of reality that happiness in Buddhism is so tremendously full; the ideas contained in Buddha's teachings point to a thorough engagement with lived reality. Ironically, it is through such an engagement with one's self, the world and reality that one is able to achieve a transcendent happiness. Equanimity, a deep sense of wellbeing and happiness, is attainable through proper knowledge and practice in everyday life. The objective of this paper is to the study the conception of happiness Buddhist philosophy. This paper is divided into four parts (i) meaning of Indian philosophy and its relation with Indian psychology, (ii) Buddhist philosophy, (iii) Buddhist conception of happiness and (iv) relevance of Buddhism in present day world. (shrink)

Section I details Husserl’s insight into style and how a person’s individual style is played out in affect and action and in the two‑fold articulation of perception and “the kinestheses,” both of which are integral to gestural communication. Section II details how the evolutionary perspectives of Darwin and linguistic scholars complement Husserl’s insights into the animate realities of gesture and bring to light further dimensions of human and nonhuman gestural practices and possibilities through extensive experiential accounts that document the (...) essential role of movement and thinking in movement in animate lives. Section III focuses on critical oversights by prominent phenomenologists who, rather than basing their studies in the rigors of phenomenological methodology, write of “what it is like” with respect to experience or give preferred opinions as in “consciousness of my gesture [...] can tell us nothing about movement.”. (shrink)

The question I address in this paper is whether there is a version of mental state welfarism that can be coherent with the thesis that we have a legitimate concern for non‐experiential goals. If there is not, then we should reject mental state welfarism. My thesis is that there is such a version. My argument relies on the distinction between “reality‐centered desires” and “experience‐centered desires”. Mental state welfarism can accommodate our reality‐centered desires and our desire that they (...) be objectively satisfied. My general strategy is, at the level of the value theory, somewhat analogous to the strategy that indirect consequentialism applies at the level of moral obligation theory. To test my argument, I appeal to Nozick's well‐known example of the Experience Machine. (shrink)

Some monothematic types of delusions may arise because subjects have unusual experiences. The role of this experiential component in the pathogenesis of delusion is still not understood. Focussing on delusions of alien control, we outline a model for reality testing competence on unusual experiences. We propose that nascent delusions arise when there are local failures of reality testing performance, and that monothematic delusions arise as normal responses to these. In the course of this we address questions concerning (...) the tenacity with which delusions are maintained, their often bizarre content, the patients’ inability to dismiss them, and their often circumscribed character. (shrink)

The ethics of describing and indexing works which have an element of deception is an important topic within the arena of knowledge organization (KO). However, what happens if the unreal element is for artistic purposes and is part of the experience of the document? The focus of this article is on the KO of art documentation. It considers art documents where unreality and mistruth are part of a document’s creative and artistic purpose. Three examples of exhibition documentation for contemporary art (...) are explored. These illuminate the KO implications of unreal elements in artworks, exhibitions and documents, and the interplay between them. Three models are then presented relating to the KO of unreality. Model one shows how the wishes of the creator are a significant part of ethical KO for art and the ethical KO decisions which result from the performative and experiential aspects of art documentation. Model two illustrates how the placement of the unreality in relation to metadata creation can have a critical impact on ethical decisions in KO. Model three posits unreal-ness as a novel type of information about metadata creation, introducing categories such as motive for the deception. It shows how this original way of contemplating applied ethics in KO is vital for all ethically challenging works. Ultimately, considering the KO ethics of art documentation extends our thinking about how to deal with deception and unreality and adds an important aesthetic-ethical dimension to the corpus of work on KO ethics. (shrink)

This article argues that reality and virtuality are still very much phenomenologically distinguishable, although this might not be the case forever. I argue for two main types of virtuality – one inherently involved in the dynamic horizons of perceptual experiences, while the other is all of our experiences of digital images – in order to show that a particular possible instantiation of the latter type, namely “pure” mixed reality (MR), might come to blur and collapse various experiential (...) categories in the future, not least real and irreal, like never before. To show this, there are three main sections. First, I outline my understanding of the two basic types of virtuality, as understood from a classical phenomenological analysis. Second, I give an account of the most important family of “virtual technologies” relevant to the question at hand, namely virtual, augmented and mixed reality (VR, AR and MR respectively) technologies. After homing in on MR, I explain what “pure” MR is and how, through tactile holograms, this might change even basic experiential distinctions going forward, and not necessarily for the better. (shrink)

BACKGROUND: Delusions in schizophrenia are commonly approached as empirical false beliefs about everyday reality. Phenomenological accounts, by contrast, have suggested that delusions are more adequately understood as pertaining to a different kind of reality experience. How this alteration of reality experience should be characterised, which dimensions of experiential life are involved, and whether delusional reality might differ from standard reality in various ways is unclear and little is known about how patients with delusions value (...) and relate to these experiential alterations. This study aimed to investigate the nature of delusional reality experience, and its subjective apprehension, in individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis. METHODS: In this qualitative phenomenological study, we recruited individuals with lived experience of delusions and a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis from two psychiatric-hospital services in Belgium using homogenous sampling. Criteria for participation were having undergone at least one psychotic episode with occurring delusional symptoms, present at least 1 year before participation, on the basis of clinical notes assessed by the attending psychiatrist; a schizophrenia-spectrum diagnosis, ascertained through clinical interview by the attending psychiatrist upon admission; being aged between 18 years and 65 years; and having the capacity to give informed consent. Exclusion criteria included worries concerning capacity to consent and risk of distress caused by participation. We did phenomenologically driven semi-structured interviews with the participants to explore the nature of delusional reality experience and their subjective valuation of these experiences. We used interpretative phenomenological analysis, a qualitative method tailored to the in-depth exploration of participants’ first-person perspective, to analyse their accounts. FINDINGS: Between March 2, 2020, and Sept 30, 2020, 18 adults participated in the interview study. The findings suggest that delusions are often embedded in wide-ranging alterations of basic reality experience, involving quasi-ineffable atmospheric and ontological qualities that undermine participants’ sense of the world as unambiguously real, fully present, and shared with others. We also found that delusional reality experience can differ from standard reality in various ways, across multiple dimensions, and that participants are often implicitly or explicitly aware of the distinction between delusional and standard reality. Delusional experience can have an enduring value and meaning that is not fully captured by a strictly medical perspective. INTERPRETATION: Increased awareness and recognition of the distinctive nature of delusional reality experience, in both clinical and research settings, can improve diagnostic accuracy, explanatory models, and therapeutic support for individuals with delusions whose lived realities are not always evident from an everyday perspective. FUNDING: FWO Flanders. TRANSLATION: For the Dutch translation of the abstract see Supplementary Materials section. (shrink)

Mental Reality is concerned with three questions: is reference to non-mental phenomena central and indispensable for an effective account of the nature of mental phenomena? ; is reference to publicly observable phenomena central and necessary for an effective account of every, or even some, mental phenomena? ; and is reference to behaviour essential to any adequate account of all, or almost all, mental states and occurrences?. Galen Strawson’s summary answer to these questions is, on the whole, negative, but there (...) are several qualifications. The view he defends is experiential realism. Experiential realism asserts that experience is contentful and experience is what it is like to be who and what one is. Experience is necessarily conscious experience, and one sense of the meaning of the problematic term “consciousness” is the ordinary, everyday, waking consciousness, as distinct from dream-state consciousness. As Strawson uses the word, “conscious” in the expression “conscious experience” is pleonastic. The other alternative is for the term “conscious” to be central and “experience” becomes pleonastic. This is a matter of strategy, and depends on the audience. Strawson’s audience is the contemporary theorist in the philosophy of mind rather than the phenomenologist, and then only those theorists who insist on reductive or eliminative materialism, or those varieties of functionalism in which consciousness is incidental and ontologically, epistemologically, or explanatorily irrelevant. (shrink)

RESUMEN El artículo estudia la epistemología o los fundamentos de la interpretación. Tradicionalmente se han enfrentado dos: las que interpretan analíticamente usando conceptos, ideas y palabras, y las que lo hacen desde la vida y señalan que la palabra limita la comprensión de ciertas realidades. Mauricio Beuchot defiende un punto intermedio a partir de la analogía. Sin embargo, se argumenta que esta interpretación se encuentra en del marco analítico y, más allá de ella, es posible realizar un abordaje experiencial de (...) la analogía. Esta aproximación inaugura un modelo de interpretación que integra las dos concepciones de la epistemología mencionadas. ABSTRACT The article discusses the epistemology or grounds of interpretation. Traditionally, there has been a debate between those who interpret analytically, using concepts, ideas, and words, and those who do so on the basis of life and hold that words limit the understanding of certain realities. Mauricio Beuchot defends an intermediate point of view based on analogy. The article argues that this interpretation remains within the analytical framework, and that it is possible to go beyond that and adopt an experiential approach to the analogy. This approach constitutes a new model of interpretation that combines the two above-mentioned epistemological conceptions. (shrink)

The vast majority of philosophers of personal identity since John Locke have been convinced that the persistence of persons is not grounded in bodily continuity. Why? As numerous ‘textbooks’ on personal identity attest, their conviction rests, to a large extent, on an objection to the bodily approach, which concerns episodic memory. The objection invites us to a thought experiment in which we meet a person who experientially remembers events from the past of a person with a different body. The nature (...) of such first-personal memory-links is viewed as strongly suggesting that the rememberer is identical with the remembered, and hence, given the possibility of such a case, as suggesting that a person can transgress its bodily limits. The memory objection is as influential as it gets in the metaphysics of personal identity. Textbooks often portray it as the starting point of the contemporary debate about personal identity. And it has been widely perceived as a success. As everyone who has taught an introductory course on personal identity knows, the recognition of episodic-memory links in body-switching cases has the power to turn any group of novice students against bodily criteria of personal identity. In this essay, I shall specify and undermine the memory objection. I shall attempt to establish two theses. The first thesis is that the memory objection is only viable if construed as resting on the view that episodic memory contains a sense of personal identity, which teaches us about the reality of personal identity. The second thesis is that there is no such sense of personal identity, that episodic memory teaches us nothing at all about personal identity. (shrink)

In 1940, Wolfgang Metzger began a profound reflection on the meaning of the phenomenological approach to Gestalt psychology, which had its starting point in the rejection of what he called the “Eleatic” or “Eleatic–Rationalistic Postulate,” that is, the notion that, in his opinion, had dominated Western scientific and philosophical thought of the past centuries, according to which any assertion about the state of things that could lead to self-contradictory conclusions had to be considered unfounded. On the basis of this rejection (...) and with exclusive reference to access to experiential data, Metzger proposed to distinguish five meanings of reality: (1) the physical or experiential world; (2) the intuitive or experienced world; (3) the experienced world (met, Angetroffen) in contrast to the represented world; (4) the something or fullness in contrast to emptiness or nothingness; (5) the real in contrast to the apparent. For Metzger (1950), this concept, although primarily related to perception, has far-reaching implications for our conception of others and of society. We question here the validity of Metzger’s concept, its explanatory significance, and its relation to other phenomenological concepts, such as that of Merleau-Ponty. (shrink)

The present study assessed the degree to which probabilistic reasoning performance and thinking style influenced perception of risk and self-reported levels of terrorism-related behaviour change. A sample of 263 respondents, recruited via convenience sampling, completed a series of measures comprising probabilistic reasoning tasks (perception of randomness, base rate, probability, and conjunction fallacy), the Reality Testing subscale of the Inventory of Personality Organization (IPO-RT), the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking Scale, and a terrorism-related behaviour change scale. Structural equation modelling examined three progressive models. (...) Firstly, the Independence Model assumed that probabilistic reasoning, perception of risk and reality testing independently predicted terrorism-related behaviour change. Secondly, the Mediation Model supposed that probabilistic reasoning and reality testing correlated, and indirectly predicted terrorism-related behaviour change through perception of risk. Lastly, the Dual-Influence Model proposed that probabilistic reasoning indirectly predicted terrorism-related behaviour change via perception of risk, independent of reality testing. Results indicated that performance on probabilistic reasoning tasks most strongly predicted perception of risk, and preference for an intuitive thinking style (measured by the IPO-RT) best explained terrorism-related behaviour change. The combination of perception of risk with probabilistic reasoning ability in the Dual-Influence Model enhanced the predictive power of the analytical-rational route, with conjunction fallacy having a significant indirect effect on terrorism-related behaviour change via perception of risk. The Dual-Influence Model possessed superior fit and reported similar predictive relations between intuitive-experiential and analytical-rational routes and terrorism-related behaviour change. The discussion critically examines these findings in relation to dual-processing frameworks. This includes considering the limitations of current operationalisations and recommendations for future research that align outcomes and subsequent work more closely to specific dual-process models. (shrink)

The central thesis of the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta is the doctrine of the identity of brahman and ātman. Brahman is essentially sat, being as such in the sense of the dimension of existence in which all worldly goings-on take place. The ātman is conceived as the “seer,” i.e., as the pure subject qua the to-whom of any experiential givenness; and this subject, in turn, is understood not as some entity that performs the seeing but as nothing but the (...) very seeing itself, i.e., as consciousness in the sense of the abiding presence-realm in which permanently changing experiential contents come to givenness. The Advaitic thesis is that this presence-realm—the seeing that takes place “in us”—is ultimately nothing other than the universal being-dimension—brahman—itself, modified by the mental contents of an innerworldly individual. This paper attempts to vindicate this doctrine by a series of reflections on the nature of the I and of reality as such. It argues that Advaita Vedānta can be viewed as a version of cosmopsychism in its idealist version which does not view consciousness as one of the features of the cosmos as a whole, but as its exclusive intrinsic nature, i.e., as the very essence of being as such. (shrink)

In this paper, I show that a phenomenological concept of normality can be helpful to understand the experiential side of post-truth phenomena. How is one’s longing for, or sense of, normality related to what we deem as real, true, or objective? And to what extent is the sense for “what (really) is” related to our beliefs of what should be? To investigate this, I combine a phenomenological approach to lived normality with a genealogical account of represented normality that sheds (...) light on the social and historical contingency of definitions of normality and their intertwinement with structures of power. It is my contention that such an approach to normality is well-suited to investigate how is and ought are interrelated within subjective experience and practice. This might in turn help overcoming one-sided debates on post-truth, which rely on the strict opposition of objectivity versus subjectivity, universal truth versus subjective experience, facticity versus meaning, or reason versus stupidity. It also sheds light on the ambivalent or contested status of experience within debates of post-truth and feminist theory. I will conclude that post-truth is related to what Hannah Arendt has termed the lack of a common world (i.e., normality), arguing that a plurality of experiences is needed to let the “real world” stand its ground again. (shrink)

In recent decades, attempts to create and argue a new ontology of existence that could provide a robust alternative to the mainstream physicalist metaphysics have been made in science and philosophy. A new book by Bernardo Kastrup, a well-known specialist in the field of philosophy of mind and neuroscience of consciousness, offers the author's conceptually clear and rigorous formulation of the philosophical system. The author proves that appearance and reality in ontology are fundamentally experiential. A universal phenomenal consciousness (...) is the sole ontological primitive, which patterns of excitation constitute existence, and a human being is dissociated mental complexes of this universal consciousness, surrounded like islands by the ocean of its mentation. Kastrup’s idea of the World has an idealist ontological underpinning. The author contrasts his vision of the world with the existing ideas of the world perception, such as physicalism, microexperientialism and cosmopsychism. The quality of the argument, which is given in the book, suggests the revival of the philosophy of idealism as the next paradigm, according to which a form of universal mind will be viewed as nature's sole fundamental entity. (shrink)

Art shows something of reality as a whole, a reality that exists above or below the directly perceptible world. There is a first reality, or empirical reality, which can be mapped and captured through sense perception and is characterized by immediacy; and then there is a second or imagined reality that unfolds beyond direct empirical and experiential observation. While the animal intellect is attracted to the surface, to mere appearances, the human intellect is drawn (...) to what lies beyond the surface. The ability to imagine is a condition of human intellect, being characterized, in Schopenhauer’s terms, by a power of “seeing in things not what nature has actually formed but what she endeavored to form, yet did not bring about”. For Schopenhauer, this capacity can be fully engaged not by the “ordinary man, that manufactured article of nature”, but by the man of genius. In contrast, John Ruskin holds that the power of art consists precisely in allowing us to regain what can be called the innocence of the eye, in other words, a kind of childlike perception which remains blind to the meaning of perceived things. This paper seeks a possible answer to the question of how art ties us to reality. (shrink)

The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles – sometimes overt, sometimes masked – throughout the history of biology, and frequently in very normative ways, also shifting between the biological and the social. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and the ‘theorization’ of Life, (...) but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated ‘vitalism’. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the ‘body’ than to the ‘molecule’, is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, sometimes even as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious ‘vitalist’ ontology of extra-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. This paper does not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either in terms of scientific validity or historical coherence; nor does it return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to focus on the emergence and transformation of the concept of organism, but has not emphasized so much the way in which organism is a shifting, ‘go-between’ concept – invoked as ‘natural’ by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or an epistemic limit case, all of which partly overlap with the idea of ‘nomadic concepts’. Thereby the concept of organism continues to function in different contexts – as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge, a model of order, of regulation, etc. – despite having frequently been pronounced irrelevant and reduced to molecules or genes. Yet this perpetuation is far removed from any ‘metaphysics of organism’, or organismic biology. (shrink)

The organism is neither a discovery like the circulation of the blood or the glycogenic function of the liver, nor a particular biological theory like epigenesis or preformationism. It is rather a concept which plays a series of roles, sometimes masked, often normative, throughout the history of biology. Indeed, it has often been presented as a key-concept in life science and its ‘theorization’, but conversely has also been the target of influential rejections: as just an instrument of transmission for the (...) selfish gene, but also, historiographically, as part of an outdated ‘vitalism’. Indeed, the organism, perhaps because it is experientially closer to the ‘body’ than to the ‘molecule’, is often the object of quasi-affective theoretical investments presenting it as essential, as the pivot of a science or a particular approach to nature, while other approaches reject or attack it with equal force, assimilating it to a mysterious ‘vitalist’ ontology of extra-causal forces, or other pseudo-scientific doctrines. I do not seek to adjudicate between these debates, either regarding scientific validity or historical coherence; nor do I return to the well-studied issue of the organism-mechanism tension in biology. Recent scholarship has begun to discuss the emergence and transformation of the organism concept, but has not emphasized the way the latter is a shifting, ‘go-between’ concept – invoked as ‘natural’ by some thinkers to justify their metaphysics, but then presented as value-laden by others, over and against the natural world. The organism as go-between concept is also a hybrid, a boundary concept or a limit case, which continues to function in different contexts – as a heuristic, an explanatory challenge, a model of order, of regulation, etc. – despite having frequently been pronounced irrelevant and reduced to molecules or genes. Yet this perpetuation is far removed from any ‘metaphysics of organism’, or organismic biology. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 312-314 [Access article in PDF] Shook, John R. Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality.The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 316. Cloth, $46.00; Paper, $22.95. The current renaissance of American pragmatism, and John Dewey's philosophy in particular, began two decades ago with Richard Rorty's refashioning of Dewey as a postmodernist who renounces (...) the "professional philosophy" of metaphysics and epistemology for the fluidity of conversation in the life and growth of a community. This depiction, though praised for rekindling Dewey's star, has been widely challenged by subsequent commentators. Ralph Sleeper's 1986 The Necessity of Pragmatism persuasively argues that Dewey reconfigures, rather than renounces, the logical and metaphysical grounds of knowledge. Despite an archaic Hegelian vocabulary that misleadingly suggests idealism and antirealism, Sleeper finds Dewey advancing a genuine metaphysics of existence, not merely a conversation about experience: a naturalistic realism of independent existences that enter into and are transformed by human interactions with them.This perspective is shared by most Dewey scholars, including Sandra Rosenthal, Raymond Boisvert, and J. E. Tiles. At least until now. In a profound and provocative exploration of his early philosophy, John R. Shook, presents a compelling case that Dewey's reconstruction of metaphysics and epistemology is deeper than even Sleeper imagined. Dewey did not merely abandon idealism under the influence of William James, as most assume; he transformed it in a original way that, while wholly naturalistic, [End Page 312] is a fusion of idealism and realism that overcomes both the former's "mind-stuff" and the latter's "in-itself reality."Dewey began his philosophical odyssey with the searing desire to eradicate the dualisms of mind versus world, phenomenal versus noumenal, perceptual versus conceptual. Post-Hegelian idealists agreed that this division is ultimately reconciled in the "absolute," though they disagreed about whether the absolute is psychological or cosmological, social or supernatural, knowable or unknowable. From the very beginning, Shook argues, Dewey accepted the psychological path as sketched by James Ward, and also Edward Caird's claim that the absolute must be knowable in some sense. Intriguingly, the missing link between perception and conceptual awareness is Wilhelm Wundt's notion of volition: percepts are neither mechanically attached to concepts nor are they overlaid by Kantian "faculties of mind." Instead, a disruption of perceptual or noncognitive experience generates a desire for reconciliation that calls forth ideas that diagnose the problem and suggest ways to resolve it. Achieved solutions, in turn, forge a background of habitual dispositions that shape interpretations within the noncognitive realm.While still an idealist, then, Shook finds the essential elements of the "method of inquiry" that later anchored Dewey's instrumentalism and pragmatism. Prior to 1890, however, he still construed this as individual "mental activity," and the problem of its relation to God's Absolute Mind remained. Upon relinquishing the supernatural for the social, however, this final obstacle was eliminated. The dispositional background extends beyond the individual to the customs, traditions, and values of a culture—indeed, even the barest notions of "self" and "reality" are inconceivable without reference to such a background. This is Dewey's broad conception of "experience"—a humanistic naturalism with no trace of mind-stuff or subjectivism. In this sense Dewey is a realist, though his affirmation of things-themselves (including things we have not or may never actually discover) avoids the things-in-themselves that is the bane of metaphysical realism. To claim that things exist without an experiential background of how we may find them to exist is at best empty verbiage, and at worst hypnosis by the dervishes of dualism.Scrupulous in research, penetrating in detail, Shook's presentation is so faithful to Dewey that it will undoubtedly draw many of the same criticisms once hurled at the master. Though careful readers will be able to identify "experience" in its broadly social and functional sense, others will be confused by applications as diverse as "mental activity," "soul," "reality," "the history of the... (shrink)

This article examines the concept of “perspective” as an embodied metaphor with ontological and epistemological implications for the modeling of historical understanding of contested pasts. The metaphors employed in modeling past reality shape how we make sense of the controversial past. In particular, I explore how perspectival metaphorical models conjure the notions of presence/proximity/engagement and absence/distance/detachment. To open this up, the paper juxtaposes two distinct models of seeing and knowing as sources of embodied metaphor: 1) static and distancing optical (...) metaphors of cognition, and 2) a “post-cognitive” process of interaction. I argue that the shift towards the affective, experiential and immersive forms of engagement in historical representation is indicative of the growing importance of dynamic, embodied and interactive features in mediated models of the past. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of virtual reality as an emergent medium that offers a new way of modeling the past. Despite its novelty, however, virtual reality raises age-old questions about the dynamics of engagement and detachment in historical understanding. (shrink)

The idea of reduction has appeared in different forms throughout the history of science and philosophy. Thales took water to be the fundamental principle of all things; Leucippus and Democritus argued that everything is composed of small, indivisible atoms; Galileo and Newton tried to explain all motion with a few basic laws; 17th century mechanism conceived of everything in terms of the motions and collisions of particles of matter; British Empiricism held that all knowledge is, at root, experiential knowledge; (...) current physicists are searching for the GUT, the “grand unified theory,” that will show that at very high energies the electromagnetic and the weak and strong nuclear forces are fused into a single unified field. Some of these projects are clearly ontological in nature (Leucippus and Democritus), others are more methodological (mechanism), and still others strive for theoretical simplification (the projects of Galileo and Newton or the search for a GUT). Nevertheless, as they all aim at revealing some kind of unity or simplicity behind the appearance of plurality or complexity, they may all be regarded as (attempted) reductions. (shrink)

Since an observer arises in the experiential domain of languaging, and because everything said is said by an observer, it would be misleading to refer to a single reality constructed in language. ….