In our wakeful conscious lives, the experience of time and dynamic temporal phenomena—such as continuous motion and change—appears to be ubiquitous. How is it that temporality is woven into our conscious experience? Is it through perceptual experience presenting a series of instantaneous states of the world, which combine together—in a sense which would need to be specified—to give us experience of dynamic temporal phenomena? In this paper, I argue that this is not the case. -/- Several authors have recently proposed (...) dynamic snapshot models of temporal experience— such as Prosser and Arstila, building upon Le Poidevin— according to which perceptual experience has no temporal content of a non‐zero extent. I argue that there is an absence of motivation for such a view; I develop and defend the claim that perceptual experience minimally presents something of some non‐zero temporal extent as such. (shrink)

Philosophers no longer argue whether Hume ever read Berkeley, yet some remain puzzled as to why so little of Berkeley appears in Hume's works. Professor Popkin has remarked that even “where Hume and Berkeley come closest to discussing the same subject or holding the same view, Hume neither uses Berkeley's terms nor refers to him.” An apparent exception to this generalization is Berkeley's doctrine ofminima sensibilia, for both philosophers use this term to denote indivisible sensible points, and both invoke (...) such points in order to show that sensible extension is not infinitely divisible. Yet it has been suggested that, although Berkeley and Hume employ the same terms, they nevertheless maintain different doctrines: Hume'sminimaare unextended, whereas Berkeley's are extended. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. Associationist psychologists of the late 19th-century premised their research on a fundamentally Humean picture of the mind. So the very idea of mental science was called into question when T. H. Green, a founder of British idealism, wrote an influential attack on Hume’s Treatise. I first analyze Green’s interpretation and criticism of Hume, situating his reading with respect to more recent Hume scholarship. I focus on Green’s argument that Hume cannot consistently admit real ideas of spatial relations. I then (...) argue that William James’s early work on spatial perception attempted to vindicate the new science of mind by showing how to avoid the problems Green had exposed in Hume’s empiricism. James’s solution involved rejecting a basic Humean assumption—that perceptual experience is fundamentally composed of so-called minima sensibilia, or psychological atoms. The claim that there are no psychological atoms is interesting because James supported it with experimental data rather than (as commentators typically suppose) with introspective description or a priori argument. James claimed to be the real descendant of British empiricism on grounds that his anti-atomistic model of perception fortified what Green had perhaps most wanted to demolish—the prospect of using empirical, scientific methods in the study of mind. (shrink)

The doctrine of the inchoatio formae is an important feature of Albert the Great’s metaphysics and natural philosophy, as modern scholars, starting at least with Bruno Nardi’s pioneering study, have recognised. Nevertheless, the notion of the inchoatio formae as employed by Albert is usually understood to refer exclusively to the relationship between matter and substantial forms. On the contrary, in his commentary on Aristotle’s De sensu et sensato, and specifically in the context of a discussion of the so-called issue of (...) minima sensibilia, i.e., the limits to the persistence of the accidental forms of sensible qualities according to the potential infinite divisibility of the matter with which they are united (cf. De sensu 6, 445b3-446a20), Albert talks explicitly of the inchoatio formarum sensibilium (possibly a hapax legomenon in the entire corpus of his writings), therefore applying the notion of the inchoatio formae to the accidental forms of sensible qualities themselves. This article reconstructs the precise meaning and the key features of the inchoatio formarum sensibilium in the context of Albert’s De sensu commentary and of his discussion of minima sensibilia and compares it with the notion of the inchoatio formae as applied to substantial forms, showing both the important similarities and the crucial differences between them. In this way, it becomes possible not only to better understand the intrinsic richness and complexity of the concept of the inchoatio formae in Albert’s writings, but also to do justice to the variety of functions it serves throughout Albert’s metaphysics and natural philosophy. (shrink)

Berkeley's doctrines about mind, the language of nature, substance, minima sensibilia, notions, abstract ideas, inference, and freedom appropriate principles developed by the 16th-century logician Peter Ramus and his 17th-century followers (e.g., Alexander Richardson, William Ames, John Milton). Even though Berkeley expresses himself in Cartesian or Lockean terms, he relies on a Ramist way of thinking that is not a form of mere rhetoric or pedagogy but a logic and ontology grounded in Stoicism. This article summarizes the central features (...) of Ramism, indicates how Berkeley adapts Ramist concepts and strategies, and chronicles Ramism's pervasiveness in Berkeley's education, especially at Trinity College Dublin. (shrink)

This essay examines David Hume's principal criticism of the idea of the infinite divisibility of extension in the ink-spot experiment of _Treatise<D>, Book I, Part II, and his arguments for his positive theory of finitely divisible space as composed of finitely many sensible extensionless indivisibles or _minima sensibilia<D>. The essay considers Hume's strict finitist metaphysics of space in the context of his reactions to a trilemma about the impossibility of the divisibility of extension on any theory posed by Pierre (...) Bayle in the article on "Zeno of Elea" in his _Dictionary Historical and Critical<D>. I evaluate Hume's arguments in light of complaints raised by contemporary commentators, and I compare the inference of the _Treatise<D> with Hume's final words on the subject, in the cryptic Berkeleyan 'hint' of the first _Enquiry<D>, to the effect that the idea of infinite divisibility is subject to general objections to 'all _abstract<D> reasonings'. (shrink)

According to a standard interpretation of Hume’s argument against infinite divisibility, Hume is raising a purely formal problem for mathematical constructions of infinite divisibility, divorced from all thought of the stuffing or filling of actual physical continua. I resist this. Hume’s argument must be understood in the context of a popular early modern account of the metaphysical status of the parts of physical quantities. This interpretation disarms the standard mathematical objections to Hume’s reasoning; I also defend it on textual and (...) contextual grounds. (shrink)

This book is the one to put into the hands of those who have been over-impressed by Austin 's critics....[Warnock's] brilliant editing puts everybody who is concerned with philosophical problems in his debt.

A reflection on everyday existence in the 'sphere of consumption of late Capitalism', this work is Adorno's literary and philosophical masterpiece.

This article attempts to think of thinking as the essence of critical education. While contemporary education tends to stress the conveying of knowledge and skills needed to succeed in present-day information society, the present article turns to the work of Theodor W. Adorno to develop alternative thinking about education, thinking, and the political significance of education for thinking. Adorno touched upon educational questions throughout his writings, with growing interest in the last ten years of his life. Education, he argues following (...) Kant, must enable students to think for themselves and to break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults. Nevertheless, in his discussions of education Adorno says little about the nature of thinking, and the secondary literature on his educational theory addresses this question only cursorily. Important claims on the nature of thinking do appear elsewhere in Adorno's work. From his early writings up to Negative Dialectics, Adorno is preoccupied with thinking, sketching the outlines of critical-dialectical thought. Still, these reflections rarely touch upon educational questions, and the Adorno scholarship has yet to establish this link. Unlike studies which read Adorno's educational thought against the backdrop of the history of education and the German Bildung tradition, or in relation to art and aesthetics, the present article brings together Adorno's ideas on education and thinking in an attempt to contribute both to the Adorno scholarship and to the growing field of education for thinking. (shrink)

_Minima Memoria_ attests to the impact of the works of Jean-François Lyotard, one of the most influential French philosophers of the twentieth century, and the continuing effects of these works across a wide array of fields: philosophy, literature, political theory, gender theory, aesthetics, and psychoanalysis. Particular attention is paid to Lyotard's repeated warnings regarding the way in which the complexity of events can be occluded in the very attempt to represent them. Indeed, through the contributors' careful and critical analysis, Lyotard's (...) complex intellectual trajectory—all the way up to the posthumously published works _The Confession of Augustine_ and _The Misery of Philosophy_—is traced in different and often conflicting manners, which bring out the different currents that traverse his writings and the sites of tension that such terms as "different," "affect," and "infancy" mark. What emerges is not a grand narrative that would organize Lyotard's life and work around one unifying idea, but multifaceted approaches that extend in new and unforeseen directions. (shrink)

Adorno und Horkheimer zufolge prägt die Kulturindustrie alle Facetten des gesellschaftlichen Lebens und reicht bis in die tiefsten Fasern der subjektiven Erfahrung des Individuums hinein. Entsprechend hielt Adorno im Vorwort der Minima Moralia fest: „Was einmal den Philosophen Leben hieß, ist zur Sphäre des Privaten und dann bloß noch des Konsums geworden, die als Anhang des materiellen Produktionsprozesses, ohne Autonomie und ohne eigene Substanz, mitgeschleift wird.“ Seit Adorno und Horkheimer diese prägende Wirkung der Kulturindustrie auf die subjektive Erfahrung erstmals (...) beschrieben haben, hat sie nicht an Durchsetzungskraft verloren. (shrink)

Suppose that 〈xk〉k∈ℕ is a countable sequence of real numbers. Working in the usual subsystems for reverse mathematics, RCA0 suffices to prove the existence of a sequence of reals 〈uk〉k∈ℕ such that for each k, uk is the minimum of {x0, x1, …, xk}. However, if we wish to prove the existence of a sequence of integer indices of minima of initial segments of 〈xk〉k∈ℕ, the stronger subsystem WKL0 is required. Following the presentation of these reverse mathematics results, we (...) will derive computability theoretic corollaries and use them to illustrate a distinction between computable analysis and constructive analysis. (shrink)

One of the conundrums of Wittgenstein’s so-called ‘1914–1916 Notebooks’ concerns the role played by the visual instances of logical analysis. As a matter of fact, in discussing in that work the requirement that the logical analysis of meaningful sentences be complete, Wittgenstein often takes as examples statements about the colored parts of the subject's visual image (Gesichtsbild). In view of this, it might be thought that the requirement is not laid down in the Notebooks on logical grounds, but somehow on (...) psychological or psychophysical ones. In this paper I argue this is not so and that the requirement is exemplified rather than justified by the analysis of statements about the products of the subject’s visual imagination. I also argue that, on Wittgenstein’s syntactic notion of a complete logical analysis, our unanalyzed statements embody as they are the requirement that their sense be fully determinate; which is just what is meant by the idea that the analysis must be complete. (shrink)

As a rational discourse philosophy can not be reduced to any cultural concern. Culture we call that civilization which became aware of its own mortality and henceforth cultivates the aesthetic pleasure of representing its ruined ideals. It is the responsibility of philosophy to think through to the end the project of modern philosophical aesthetics, thus accomplishing it. The description of the aesthetic condition shows that aisthesis does not have to provide the fake peace of consentment with the sensible but on (...) the contrary should question and discredit the aistheton that confronts us with a double bind experience. This experience stirs to life the 'minimal soul' in its pure affectibility, and at the same time threatens it with slavery and death. Therefore art has to consist in the achievement of a work, not in disguising nihilism but in carrying it out. Should philosophy accomplish a work of art? The activity of reflexivity in writing which caracterizes philosophy persists in interrogating its own singularity, thereby incessantly dispossessing itself. (shrink)

Este artículo se propone como objetivo analizar detalladamente la definición mínima de democracia propuesta por Norberto Bobbio, sus elementos constitutivos, sus principales características así como sus límites conceptuales, sobre todo sus pretensiones de universalidad, univocidad y neutralidad, enfocándonos críticamente en estos tres últimos elementos en aras de tensionar la definición bobbiana de democracia. Se comenzará por analizar el rasgo procedimental de esta definición. A continuación se descompondrá detalladamente cada uno de los elementos que la caracterizan, haciendo énfasis en el supuesto (...) y prioridad de la libertad. Finalmente, se indicarán una serie de objeciones que obstaculizarían las pretensiones de universalidad, univocidad y neutralidad, tensionando con ello la intencionalidad teórica del filósofo italiano. Metodológicamente hablando, se tratará de un análisis descriptivo y sistemático, no prescriptivo ni tampoco axiológico. (shrink)

Minima moralia e un libro fondamentale per la ricostruzione del dibattito filosofico e culturale del Novecento. I suoi aforismi hanno alimentato appassionate discussioni nel mondo accademico, politico e sociale. Adorno li scrisse prevalentemente durante gli anni del suo esilio americano condensando in costellazioni concettuali i principali nuclei tematici del suo pensiero: la messa in discussione della razionalita moderna e occidentale, la critica del fascismo e della personalita autoritaria, lo smascheramento della cultura di massa e delle sue fascinazioni, la possibilita (...) di pensare filosoficamente e teologicamente l'utopia. Minima moralia parla con sorprendente freschezza alla teologia contemporanea e puo essere giustamente considerato un grande libro della tradizione cristiana. I "classici" infatti prospettano all'interno di una tradizione culturale o religiosa nuovi stili di riflessione e inediti orizzonti di ricerca, hanno inoltre il potere di avvicinare e convocare persone diverse per formazione, sensibilita e cultura. Nei singoli aforismi e all'opera un pensiero "in uscita" che non teme di riconoscere i propri limiti e non ha paura della propria incompletezza, un pensiero che rimanda costantemente ad "altro da se" scegliendo la via dell'abbassamento, mostrando la rilevanza degli scarti e dei frammenti. (shrink)

In this book, W. V. Quine’s Immanuel Kant Lectures entitled Science and Sensibilia are published for the first time in English. These lectures represent an important stage in the development of Quine’s later thought, where he is more explicit about the importance of physicalist constraints in his account of the steps from sensory stimulation to scientific theory, and in further using them to assess the extent to which mental vocabulary is defensible. Taken as a unit, these lectures fill an (...) important gap in our understanding of his philosophical development from his 1973 work The Roots of Reference to his later work. The volume further contains an introduction that outlines the content and philosophical significance of the lectures. In addition, several essays written by leading scholars of Quine’s philosophy provide further insight into the important issues raised in the lectures. (shrink)

This book was reconstructed by G. J. Warnock from notes Professor J. L. Austin prepared for a course of lectures he first gave in Oxford in Trinity Term, 1947, under the title ‘Problems of Philosophy’. The title was changed to ‘Sense and Sensibilia’ the following year. Mr Warnock deserves to be commended for a piece of work which must have been as difficult as its result is excellent. It is a considerable feat of sympathetic identification to have achieved the (...) kind of continuity and order of thought as well as the stylistic continuity found in the book from the sketchy lecture notes a practised lecturer like Austin would need. Mr Warnock assures the reader in his Foreword that ‘…in all points of substance his argument was the argument which this book contains’, and there can be no doubt whatever that Austin's thoughts have been recorded meticulously and with admirable clarity. (shrink)

This paper considers what olfactory experience can tell us about the controversy over qualia and, in particular, the debate that focuses on the alleged transparency of experience. The appeal to transparency is supposed to show that there are no qualia—intrinsic, non-intentional and directly accessible properties of experience that determine phenomenal character. It is most commonly used to motivate intentionalism—namely, the view that the phenomenal character of an experience is exhausted by its representational content. Although some philosophers claim that transparency holds (...) for all of the sense modalities, any detailed discussion of it focuses on vision. But transparency seems unintuitive for olfactory experience. This paper argues that olfactory experience is indeed transparent and that explanations of what transparency is have been obscured by a reliance on the visual model. In this way, the paper clarifies and advances the debate about transparency. (shrink)