A study of nurses and nursing students was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision-making in nursing and their relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study revealed that most nurses and nursing students tend to be subjectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value judgments are purely personal, private expressions of one's own opinion or inner-feelings and not believe that value judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or (...) false and therefore not expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most nurses and nursing students are inconsistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision-making, i.e., in decision-making regarding values they tend to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values. (shrink)

This article identifies five genres of anti-queer hate speech found in The Australian’s Facebook comments sections, exposing and analyzing the ways in which such comments are used to derogate cisgender and heterosexual women. One may be tempted to think of cis-het women as third-party victims of queerphobia; however, this article argues that these genres of anti-queer speech are, in fact, misogynistic. Specifically, it argues that these are instances of cis-hetero-misogynistic hate speech. Cis-hetero-misogyny functions as the “law enforcement branch” of a (...) cis-hetero-patriarchal gender order. Given the existence of such an order, it is clear that cis-het women’s liberation is inextricable from queer liberation. This article argues that to facilitate allyship and challenge this gender order—the order that elicits such hate speech acts—we need an epistemological revolution in the way we recognize and re-cognize human difference. (shrink)

Having a “normal” professional job and doing research impose different social and personal connotations. These differences materialize at least in two clear ways. First, it is common that researchers in the making find it very difficult to communicate to their closest social network (e.g., family and old close friends) the content and the importance of their work, as they lose known sources of social comparison. Meanwhile, professional job titles (e.g., brand manager, auditor, lawyer) are self-explanatory, and they provide for (...) the owner an immediate social contextualization and recognition. Second, students normally receive delayed and ambiguous feedback and reinforcement while doing a PhD, contrasting with the continuous flow of assessment that companies give to their employees. In this article, I analyze how young researchers may develop a feeling of social isolation as the communication bridges with family, old friends, and undergraduate colleagues become narrower than before, making it difficult to receive external reinforcement on their social position and comparative achievement. This feeling, combined with the ambiguous feedback during the early stages of a research career, challenges the self-esteem of PhD students, forcing them to develop a self-contained personal security in order to cope with those two social contexts. Some young researchers might even withdraw from PhD programs should they fail to develop such psychological strength. I approach the issue through my own experience, first as a junior consultant in a multinational firm and then as a PhD candidate in economics. Second, I explore the behavioral phenomena that occur beneath those feelings in order to understand how to build such psychological strength. My goal is, through the exploration of my personal experience of becoming a researcher, to offer young researchers a useful narrative to help face the potentially negative feelings that may emerge when learning to balance these conflicting social roles. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to introduce a formal system STW of self-referential truth, which extends the classical first-order theory of pure combinators with a truth predicate and certain approximation axioms. STW naturally embodies the mechanisms of general predicate application/abstraction on a par with function application/abstraction; in addition, it allows non-trivial constructions, inspired by generalized recursion theory. As a consequence, STW provides a smooth inner model for Myhill's systems with levels of implication.

This paper is a tentative step towards a historical cognitive science, in the domain of memory and personal identity. I treat theoretical models of memory in history as specimens of the way cultural norms and artifacts can permeate ('proto')scientific views of inner processes. I apply this analysis to the topic of psychological control over one's own body, brain, and mind. Some metaphors and models for memory and mental representation signal the projection inside of external aids. Overtly at least, medieval (...) and Renaissance theorists agreed that such models had to allow for, or even guarantee, some conception of cognitive order and discipline. Individual memory traces had to be independent, not mixed up or interfering with others. The long tradition of improving or bypassing 'natural memory' by deliberately internalizing artefactual models was part of an arduous process of self-fashioning. Moral panic about confusion and mixture features centrally in the imposition of cognitive discipline in local memory traditions. (shrink)

Socialism grew up in opposition to capitalism, just as liberalism developed in reaction to feudalism. Both liberalism and socialism combined potent critiques of the existing socio‐economic order with blueprints for a desirable future society. However, liberalism provides a rather more coherent body of thought than does socialism, and its theories are linked with the emergence of a dominant system combining capitalism and liberal democracy. By contrast, no widespread socio‐economic order has as yet emerged which can be confidently or closely associated (...) with the ideas of socialism. In both cases the relationship between theories and actual systems is a contestable one, but it has been particularly problematic in the history of socialism. (shrink)

This study investigates the three major educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs in the United States. It summarizes the characteristics of the Cultural Transmission Approach, the Affective Developmental Approach, and the Cognitive Developmental Approach. A questionnaire was sent to 415 teachers of medical humanities asking for their perceptions of the amount of time and effort devoted by their programs to these three philosophical approaches. The 234 responses constituted a 54.6% return. The approximately 80:20 gender ratio of males to females (...) and other demographic data on age and educational background were consistent with other studies of the field of medical humanities.Reflections on the results in Table II indicate that some changes need to take place in the teaching of the medical humanities if the perceived ideal is to be achieved. In order for the current teachers of the medical humanities to think that the appropriate philosophies behind the teaching of the medical humanities are being implemented as they should be, much less time and effort need to be devoted to the Cultural Transmission Approach. With no other published reports on the educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs, this study created a new knowledge base about this relatively young and rapidly emerging field. (shrink)

A study of physicians and medical students was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision-making in medicine and their epistemological presuppositions in relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study revealed that most physicians and medical students tend to be objectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value judgements are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and are expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value (...) structure or moral order in the world, but that most physicians and medical students are inconsistent in the philosophical foundations of their medical ethical decision-making, i.e., in decision-making regarding values they tend to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values. The study also revealed that most physicians and medical students think more emphasis should be placed upon medical ethics in medical education. (shrink)

A study of clinical medical ethicists was conducted to determine the various philosophical positions they hold with respect to ethical decision making in medicine and their various positions' relationship to the subjective-objective controversy in value theory. The study consisted of analyzing and interpreting data gathered from questionnaires from 52 clinical medical ethicists at 28 major health care centers in the United States. The study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists tend to be objectivists in value theory, i.e., believe that value (...) judgments are knowledge claims capable of being true or false and therefore expressions of moral requirements and normative imperatives emanating from an external value structure or moral order in the world. In addition, the study revealed that most clinical medical ethicists are consistent in the philosophical foundations of their ethical decision making, i.e., in decision making regarding values they tend not to hold beliefs which are incompatible with other beliefs they hold about values. (shrink)

Most recent philosophical theories of consciousness account for it in terms of representation, the bulk of the debate revolving around whether (suitably) representing something is sufficient for consciousness (as per first-order representationalism) or some further (meta-)representation is needed (as per higher-order representationalism and self-representationalism). In this paper, I explore an alternative theory of consciousness, one that aims to explain consciousness not in terms of representation but in terms of the epistemically and metaphysically direct relation of acquaintance. I call this (...) the Inner Acquaintance Theory of consciousness (IAT). Roughly, on IAT, what makes a mental state conscious is its subject being acquainted with it. Though not wholly unprecedented, IAT is still at the fringe of consciousness debates and remains largely underexplored. The main goal of this paper is to take some steps toward developing the details of IAT, illustrate its potential explanatory power, and put it forward as a plausible alternative to representational theories, with the hope that this will contribute to shifting IAT closer to the center of the debate. Here is how I proceed. In §2 I introduce a notion—inner awareness—that is crucial both to contextualize and to understand IAT. In §3 I provide some preliminary motivation for exploring IAT. In §4 I explain the notion of acquaintance and illustrate some of the features that are typically attributed to it in the literature. The details of IAT are then shaped through four main decision points. I address them in §§5-8, where I suggest a particular choice at each decision point, thereby progressively building up a view that I consider particularly promising. (shrink)

I offer a reconstruction of Brentano's view of inner consciousness and show how Brentano prevented a regress of higher-order mental acts.

Recent advances in neuroscience lead to a wider realm for philosophy to include the science of the Darwinian-evolved computational brain, our inner world producing organ, a non-recursive super- Turing machine combining 100B synapsing-neuron DNA-computers based on the genetic code. The whole system is a logos machine offering a world map for global context, essential for our intentional grasp of opportunities. We start from the observable contrast between the chaotic universe vs. our orderly inner world, the noumenal cosmos. (...) So far, philosophy has been rehearsing our thoughts, our human-internal world, a grand painting of the outer world, how we comprehend subjectively our experience, worked up by the logos machine, but now we seek a wider horizon, how humans understand the world thanks to Darwinian evolution to adapt in response to the metaphysical gap, the chasm between the human animal and its environment, shaping the organism so it can deal with its variable world. This new horizon embraces global context coded in neural structures that support the noumenal cosmos, our inner mental world, for us as denizens of the outer environment. Kant’s inner and outer senses are fundamental ingredients of scientific philosophy. Several sections devoted to Heidegger, his lizard debunked, but his version of the metaphysical gap & his doctrine of the logos praised. Rorty and others of the behaviorist school discussed also. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that verbal auditory imagery, the reader's sense of hearing the words on a page, matters in the silent reading of poetry. Verbal auditory imagery (VAI) in the silent reading of narrative prose, on the other hand, is mostly neglected by literary and other theorists. This is a first attempt to provide a systematic theoretical account of the felt qualities and underlying cognitive mechanics of narrative VAI, drawing on convergent evidence from the experimental cognitive sciences, psycholinguistic theory, (...) and introspection. The central argument is that distinctions within the domain of embodied VAI also apply to higher-order meaning-making. That is, based on the imaginer's level of self-implication in their production, discrete types of VAI are associated with discrete tendencies in spontaneous literary interpretation. More generally, the aim of this paper is to isolate a new set of embodied experiences which, along with previously researched phenomena such as sensorimotor enactment or emotion, contribute to our understanding of literary narrative. (shrink)

What has the self to be like such that introspective awareness of it is possible? The paper asks if Descartes’s idea of an inner self can be upheld and discusses this issue by invoking two principles: the phenomenal transparency of experience and the semantic compositionality of conceptual content. It is assumed that self-awareness is a second-order state either in the domain of experience or in the domain of thought. In the former case self-awareness turns out (...) empty if experience is transparent. In the latter, it can best be conceived of as a form of mental quotation. Various proposed analyses of direct and indirect quotation are discussed and tested regarding their applicability to thought. It is concluded that, on the assumption of compositionality, the inner self is only insofar accessible to awareness as it has an accessible phonological structure, as apparently only inner speech does. (shrink)

Introduction The discussion of “self-knowledge” as a philosophical issue begins with an intuition. This intuition is based on the fact that our knowledge of our mental states or our knowledge in relation to statements like: “I know that I am happy,” is a particular knowledge that is distinct from the rest of our knowledge. It seems that in order to gain knowledge of ourselves, we do not need to go through those processes that we go through in order to (...) gain knowledge about the external world or knowledge of other minds. We feel that we directly know our own mental states. The role of self-knowledge philosophers is to explain this type of particular knowledge. Theories such as the Inner Sense Theory, the Acquaintance Theory, inferentialism, or theories with a rationalist approach are presented in response to this issue. Considering theories such as the Inner Sense Theory and the Acquaintance Theory, we will find that a common aspect of these theories is that self- knowledge has been defined as a product of an internal observation of our mental states. Such an approach is a kind of Empiricism in self-knowledge. The Rationalist approach has been raised against this approach. This approach, by linking self-knowledge with rationality, has opened a new chapter in the discussion of self-knowledge. The foundation of this approach is based on the principle that our situation as a rational agent plays a fundamental role in self-knowledge. Rationalists believed that this ignorance of the fundamental role of rationality in self-knowledge has caused Empiricists to ignore the most important kind of self-knowledge that is associated with rationality. Tyler Burge, Richard Moran, and Matthew Boyle are some of the important philosophers who theorize about this kind of self-knowledge. Goal In this paper, we will first introduce the main components of Rationalist approaches because we want to review the theoretical literature of this approach. Then, we will bring up a summary of the Tyler Burge view, a famous and important philosopher of the rationalist approach. This is an introduction to introduce Moran’s Theory of Transparency which is the focal point of our discussion. We will then refer to one of the most important challenges facing the Transparency Theory and bring up a significant solution that is presented by Matthew Boyle. We will also show that despite the advantages of this solution, there are ambiguities and other challenges. Finally, we will try to set up two proposals as a way to advance Boyle’s solution. Conclusion The perspective of rationalist philosophers about the existence of a kind of self-knowledge in rational creatures seems to be a powerful idea that is difficult to oppose. Tyler Burge presented interesting arguments about this issue. But it is not easy replying to the question of how this kind of self-knowledge occurs. The theory of Transparency and Reflectivism were proposed to respond to this question. Although they have been considered as efficient theories; however, the mentioned problem still remains ambiguous and complex. Transparency denied the introspective self-knowledge, but couldn’t explain how transparent self-knowledge occurs and therefore, it does not provide a complete explanation for self-knowledge. Some vagueness and some important challenges still continue to exist in this theory. Finally, we propose two proposals as a complement to Boyle’s theory. Maybe they could advance this theory. We suggest that we can use the concept of non-conceptual belief and dispositional belief. These debates have the potential for solving some of the challenges of Transparency and Reflectivism. These are profound topics and need great reflection. We know that our proposals are very elementary and crude ideas. But perhaps they can be a way toward developing the Transparency and Reflectivism theories. (shrink)

This article discusses the notion of inner experience and self-knowledge in Peter John Olivi. According to Olivi, each act of cognition is accompanied by some sort of self-awareness or self-experience. Therefore, the problem of an infinite regress of acts of self-awareness arises. Olivi tries to solve this problem by drawing on a theory of reflection which bears a striking resemblance to modern self-representational or dispositional accounts of (self-)consciousness. Thus, in order to be said (...) to be »known« or »certain« it is not necessary for each single act of intellect to be followed by a higher-order act ; Olivi argues that in many cases a simple first-order cognitive act suffices. (shrink)

Several conditions for being an intrinsically intentional agent are put forward. On a first level of intentionality the agent has representations. Two kinds are described: cued and detached. An agent with both kinds is able to represent both what is prompted by the context and what is absent from it. An intermediate level of intentionality is achieved by having an inner world, that is, a coherent system of detached representations that model the world. The inner world is used, (...) e.g., for conditional and counterfactual thinking. Contextual or indexical representations are necessary in order that the inner world relates to the actual external world and thus can be used as a basis for action. To have full-blown intentionality, the agent should also have a detached self-awareness, that is, be able to entertain self-representations that are independent of the context. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life by Guido SeddoneWill DesmondSEDDONE, Guido. Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life. Leiden: Brill, 2023. 155 pp. Cloth, $138.00Guido Seddone’s monograph explores an ensemble of issues centering on what he terms Hegelian “naturalism.” He argues that “Hegel’s philosophy represents a novel version of naturalism since it stresses the mutual dependence between nature and spirit, rather than just conceiving of spirit as a substance (...) emerging and separating from bodily natural requisites.” Seddone avoids scholarly exegeses to address instead “theoretical and systematic aspects of the Hegelian philosophy.” He focusses on “life” and “self-consciousness” as the conceptual keys to those parts of Hegel that remain compelling for relevant contemporary debates. “This book is, therefore, based on the dialogue between Hegel [End Page 361] and contemporary thinkers and strives to enhance our understanding of theoretical and practical issues and to widen the grammar of the philosophical thought.” The book’s chapters proceed from the more abstract to the more concrete—essentially from issues of logic, epistemology, and psychology to morality, society, and history.Chapter 1 (“Science of Logic: The Logical Premises of Hegel’s Naturalism”) argues that the categories of “Teleology” and “Life” in Hegel’s Science of Logic mark the critical transition in his naturalism from the sciences of physics (“Mechanism”) and chemistry (“Chemism”) to biology, as well as from external nature to inner self-consciousness and cognition. Seddone helpfully points to Hegel’s revisions of Kant’s subordination of teleological language (merely heuristic) to mechanical explanation. Most promising is the comparison of the “self-referring negativity” of Hegelian “life” to discussions by Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela of the cell—whose permeable membrane enables it to be more than its merely chemical environment.Chapter 2 (“Self-Consciousness”) takes a rather bird’s-eye approach to the Phenomenology of Spirit, offering a basic reading of Hegelian self-consciousness and Geist in relation to the Cartesian cogito and Kantian unity of apperception. Scattered remarks about animal desire and the master–slave relation could be clarified to better explore a naturalistic basis of the Hegelian conception of mind. One is struck by the dearth of specific texts from the section “Self-Consciousness”: Seddone seems content with some well-known quotations (for example, Geist as an “I that is We and We that is I”) punctuating large generalizations.Chapter 3 does not quite live up to its title (“The Hegelian Theory about the (Human) Biological Organism”) in that it focuses primarily on Hegel’s “treatise about habits” in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Here habit is construed as a second nature, and hence a further step toward self-conscious, relational mind: Habits are “universal ways of the soul, i.e. ways in which individual soul [sic] incorporates feelings by evolving general rules and practices.”The last section of chapter 4 (“Extended and Embodied Mind”) reverts to habits as moments of the feeling soul but dissociates Hegel’s notion of Verleiblichung from contemporary discussions of embodied mind. By contrast, Seddone argues for retranslating Hegelian Geist as “common mind” and juxtaposes this with the related concept of mind (in, for example, Philip Pettit) as “extended” through social entities, with the result that Hegel’s approach is praised as “the state-of-the-art of this topic.”Chapter 5 (“Natural and Self-conscious Agency”) is perhaps the clearest chapter as it presents the dialectic of the abstractly universal will in the initial sections of Philosophy of Right, links this and the Hegelian conception of free agency to his logical category of “actuality,” and proceeds to an illuminating contrast of the Hobbesian and Hegelian visions of society and state. [End Page 362]In tackling attempts to reconcile “Normativity and Freedom,” chapter 6 spends over six pages rehearsing the basics of Kantian autonomy before turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, specifically the master–slave dialectic (again) as the critical moment in the evolution of social norms. “My thesis is that self-conscious life needs recognition in order to achieve the higher form of independence created by social acknowledgement and justification, what [sic] fosters the condition for an authoritative reason that can be socially... (shrink)

In this paper, I argue against the claim recently defended by Josh Weisberg that a certain version of the self-representational approach to phenomenal consciousness cannot avoid a set of problems that have plagued higher-order approaches. These problems arise specifically for theories that allow for higher-order misrepresentation or—in the domain of self-representational theories—self-misrepresentation. In response to Weisberg, I articulate a self-representational theory of phenomenal consciousness according to which it is contingently impossible for self-representations tokened in the (...) context of a conscious mental state to misrepresent their objects. This contingent infallibility allows the theory to both acknowledge the (logical) possibility of self-misrepresentation and avoid the problems of self-misrepresentation. Expanding further on Weisberg’s work, I consider and reveal the shortcomings of three other self-representational models—put forward by Kreigel, Van Gulick, and Gennaro—in order to show that each indicates the need for this sort of infallibility. I then argue that contingent infallibility is in principle acceptable on naturalistic grounds only if we attribute (1) a neo-Fregean kind of directly referring, indexical content to self-representational mental states and (2) a certain ontological structure to the complex conscious mental states of which these indexical self-representations are a part. In these sections I draw on ideas from the work of Perry and Kaplan to articulate the context-dependent semantic structure of inner-representational states. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Art as a Political Act:Expression of Cultural Identity, Self-Identity, and Gender by Suk Nam Yun and Yong Soon MinHwa Young Choi Caruso (bio)IntroductionA number of artists of color, including Asian American women, are creating art from the basis of their lived experiences. Within minority groups searching for their cultural identity, establishing self-identity is an important process. For various psychological and sociological reasons, artists seem inspired to seek (...) deeper meaning and a broader participation in cultural work.1 Asian American women artists, in particular, are currently making art as a means of exploring self-identity, cultural identity, and gender issues. Korean/Korean American minority women artists are creating art as a reaction to their cultural upbringing, which questions issues of identity, gender, ethnicity, politics, cultural, and socioeconomic status. These contemporary artists are breaking away from traditional cultural expectations and overcoming social barriers as artists, women, and Koreans/Korean Americans. With the growing public awareness of women's consciousness and sense of self as women in Korea and as an ethnic minority in America, these artists are redefining their identity. Despite the traditional patriarchal Confucian hierarchy; lack of social, institutional, and political support; and stereotypic gender, cultural, and socioeconomic status expectations for women, a few have stepped out of their traditional roles as women and have become successful artists in Korea and America.The artworks of these artists are worthy of investigation because they appear to be a culturally, socially, and politically motivated artistic expression of the complex multifaceted Korean/Korean American life experiences as women and as Korean immigrant members of a cultural (ethnic) minority in American society. Therefore, two main research questions can be posed: [End Page 71]• Given that art can be constructed out of layers of different experiences and influences, to what extent do the dimensions of cultural identity, self-identity, and gender interweave and contribute to the function of art as a political act for Korean/Korean American women artists?• How do Korean/Korean American cultural, social, and female experiences influence the artistic expression of Korean/Korean American women artists?In order to answer these questions, I selected case study methodology2 and adapted elements of interpretive biography,3 and narrative approaches as developed by Wallace and Gruber.4 According to Denzin,5 interpretive biography involves the collection and analysis of personal experiences, life documents, stories, accounts, and narratives that describe turning-point moments in individuals' lives. Denzin argues that personal experiences and personal stories are derived from a larger cultural, ideological, and historical context. The intent of the biographical project is to problematize the social, economic, cultural, structural, and historical forces that shape, distort, and otherwise alter lived experiences.By using narrative case study methods, I explore elements of self-identity formation, cultural identity, gender issues, personal thoughts, artistic expression, meaning of artworks, professional achievement, and life circumstances. I examine each participant's life in the Korean and American historical, cultural, social, and political environments. I interpret participants' outer lives (what they do) and inner lives (feelings, thoughts, inner self) to capture their deep, profound life experiences. I examine salient themes of their art expression and how the role of art and artistic activity is a part of political, cultural, social, and feminist activism. I further investigate their professional activities in order to identify the multiple roles that contribute to personal and professional identity formation.For the purpose of this study, I selected the contemporary Korean woman artist Suk Nam Yun and the contemporary Korean American woman artist Yong Soon Min as primary participants. These two women artists, despite many social and cultural barriers, chose to become artists; feminists; and social, cultural, and political activists; in addition to fulfilling traditional Korean family and domestic roles. Yun and Min are regarded as the leading contemporary Korean/Korean American women artists whose artworks deal with issues of cultural, social, feminist, political, and hybrid identity and art as political activism.Lippard acknowledges that visual images play an increasingly important role in society.6 Art that connects everyday experience with social critique and creative expression becomes a vital means of reflecting upon the nature of society and social existence.7 Artworks can function as... (shrink)

The ideal which Plato consistently endorses and develops in the Laws is one of a city which, like the ideal soul, is perfectly at peace with its inner conflicts. The law is presented as a remedy for the destabilizing influence of the sensations and emotions which make every human being an individual, before he is a citizen. The authoritarian aspect of this remedy may worry contemporary readers, but Plato supports it with his presupposition regarding the extreme weakness of human (...) nature. In particular, the law imposes that rational regulation which each man potentially possesses within himself in so far as he is a divine creature, but which only a ‘small stock of men’ (918 c) is able to exercise. In short, the price that Plato asks us to pay for political order is the suppression of our ‘worse’, yet more human, selves. (shrink)

This paper contributes to a debate that has arisen in the recent self-knowledge literature between agentialists and empiricists. According to agentialists, in order for one to know what one believes, desires, and intends, rational agency needs to be exercised in centrally significant cases. Empiricists disagree: while they acknowledge the importance of rationality in general, they maintain that when it comes to self- knowledge, empirical justification, or warrant, is always sufficient. In what follows, I defend agentialism. I argue that (...) if we could only come to know our judgement-sensitive attitudes in the way described by empiricism, then we would be self-estranged from them when we acquire knowledge of them. We would relate to our own attitudes as if we were watching the movies of our inner lives unfold. Given that this is not the position we typically inhabit, with respect to our judgement-sensitive attitudes, I conclude that empiricism fails. This is the self-estrangement argument against empiricism. I then consider a response that Brie Gertler, an empiricist, offers to the objection that empiricism fatally portrays us ‘mere observers of a passing cognitive show’ (2016, p. 1). I argue that her response is unsuccessful. Hence, we should endorse agentialism. (shrink)

Whereas Western moral philosophy has mainly accounted for recurrent failed or irrational actions through the concept of weakness of will, many early Chinese texts on self-cultivation, notably the Zhuangzi, stand for a philosophical position that explains our frustrations and failures as an "excess of the will." Leaving aside external factors such as accidents or mistakes, this essay explores the sources of thwarted plans and frustrated expectations that are due to factors internal to the individual—more precisely, to the nature of (...) intentional conscience. Such a view was generally inadmissible in Western moral philosophy, which revolves around the paradigm of a causal agent endowed with a 'muscular ethics' for which all that is desired, and indeed all that is achieved, may only be a direct effect of the will. In striking contrast to this orientation, the Zhuangzi presents a variety of situations in which things do not happen as planned because we were too aware of the plan that guided us. Here, I will use Jon Elster's concept of by-product states in order to explore this contrast between two contending models of action that, far from being culturally rooted, express an inner criticism in both traditions, European and Chinese. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is two-fold. It is, first, to reconstruct Kant's argument against self-murder, and, second, to analyze the function of the principle of self-preservation of reason with regard to the prohibition of self-murder. I argue that self-murder is contrary to the principle of self-preservation of reason and violates the trustee-relationship between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon. The analysis shows that moral self-preservation in Kant is a rational principle which serves (...) to secure the possibility of moral faith and self-perfection. ;In the first part of the dissertation, I provide a comprehensive analysis of Kant's argument against self-murder by examining all of the relevant statements in his works, the Nachlass, as well as the lectures recorded by Herder, Powalski, Collins, and Vigilantius. Since self-murder violates a perfect duty to oneself, key-topics of the analysis are: the dual status of the duty of self-preservation as both inner duty of right and duty of virtue, the right and end of humanity, as well as Kant's model of self-possession in terms of proprietas. The analysis makes clear that self-murder destroys the moral self and must be distinguished from sacrificing one's life in order to preserve one's moral integrity. ;In the second part of the dissertation, I interpret the duty of self-preservation and the prohibition of self-murder in the context of Kant's doctrine of the faith of reason and the principle of self-preservation of reason. I first provide an overview of the debate on self-preservation and its implications for an understanding of modern rationality and summarize the different meanings of -preservation in Kant. I then argue that the "principle of self-preservation of reason" consists in what Kant calls "the maxim of healthy reason" and that it grounds the faith and the unity of reason. Against the background of this analysis, I interpret the trustee-relationship between the homo phaenomenon and the homo noumenon as a model of moral self-obligation. Entrusting the homo phaenomenon to the homo noumenon, I contend, means to entrust life to practical reason and to subject oneself to the moral law. (shrink)

In my 2003 SCR paper “Inner speech and conscious experience” (LINK) I put forward the notion that we most often need to talk to ourselves in order to understand who we are. That is, inner speech is frequently required to access self-information and to gradually build a self- concept. To illustrate, let’s imagine that you want to reflect on an abdominal pain you are currently experiencing. It is very likely that you will engage in an internal (...) monologue, thinking “Why is it that my belly hurts? I feel cramps... Ha! I get it—I skipped breakfast...” You could go on and also notice: “I’ve been missing breakfast often lately... I tend to sleep in, I don’t eat breakfast, and by noon I’m starving... And I didn’t go to the gym as often as I should have... This is bad—I’m getting _lazy_...” Here the adjective “lazy” constitutes the conclusion that you have drawn from your inner monologue; it may then become a more or less permanent part of your self-concept. (shrink)

The perception of being located within one’s body is an essential feature of everyday self-experience. However, by manipulating exteroceptive input, healthy participants can easily be induced to perceive themselves as being spatially dislocated from their physical bodies. It has previously been suggested that interoception, i.e., the processing of inner physiological signals, contributes to the stability of body representations; however, this relationship has not previously been tested for different dimensions of interoception and bodily self-location. In the present study, (...) using an advanced automatized setup, we systematically manipulated participants’ perspective of their own body as well as the synchrony of visuotactile stimulation. The malleability of bodily self-location was assessed using a questionnaire targeting in-body and out-of-body experiences. Participants also performed a heartbeat discrimination task to assess their interoceptive accuracy, interoceptive sensibility, and interoceptive awareness. Bodily self-location was significantly influenced by perspective, with third-person perspective being associated with stronger out-of-body experiences compared to first-person perspective. Furthermore, there was a significant perspective × stimulation interaction, with subsequent analyses showing that participants reported out-of-body experiences particularly under third-person perspective combined with synchronous visuotactile stimulation. Correlation and regression analyses revealed that meta-cognitive interoceptive awareness was specifically and negatively related to the exteroceptively mediated malleability of body experiences. These results indicate that the perception of the self being located within one’s body relies on the interaction of exteroceptive input and higher-order interoceptive abilities. This has implications for theoretical considerations about the bodily self in health as well as for the understanding of disturbed bodily self-processing in clinical contexts. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that knowledge of certain of one’s own mental states is authoritative in being epistemically more secure than knowledge of the mental states of others, and theories of self-knowledge have largely appealed to one or the other of two sources to explain this special epistemic status. The first, ‘detectivist’, position, appeals to an inner perception-like basis, whereas the second, ‘constitutivist’, one, appeals to the view that the special security awarded to certain self-knowledge is a (...) conceptual matter. I argue that there is a fundamental class of cases of authoritative self-knowledge, ones in which subjects are consciously thinking about their current, conscious intentional states, that is best accounted for in terms of a theory that is, broadly speaking, introspectionist and detectivist. The position developed has an intuitive plausibility that has inspired many who work in the Cartesian tradition, and the potential to yield a single treatment of the basis of authoritative self-knowledge for both intentional states and sensation states. (shrink)

Dupré argues that at the center of the cultural crisis of our time is an objectivist attitude, an attitude which results in thinking of human existence using models appropriate to objects with the result that transcendence is lost and man is thought of as a thing to be manipulated. However, a mere retreat into subjectivity is not the answer to this crisis. What is needed is reflection on the subject itself in order to give it a content of its own, (...) and Dupré suggests that a key to this kind of reflection is given in the work of Husserl and Heidegger. It is within the temporality and historicity of the being of man that man discovers his transcending of objectivist states and an openness to the divine, understood as other than an ultimate object separated from the self and opposed to it. Dupré’s brief and provocative book is primarily a series of reflections on the inner life of human existence, guided by critical reflection on the Judaeo-Christian tradition, in which he believes the inner transcendence of the self to have been articulated. It is the passive open character of man to which Dupré invites our particular attention, not the objectifying manipulating character, which is reflected prominently in our technological age. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Olivi’s theory of representation and aims at showing that his theory does not endorse epistemological representationalism . Moreover, there is no representation without self-representation for Olivi. Therefore, his account of self-representation or inner experience resembles modern higher-order theories of consciousness. But unlike most modern authors, Olivi seems to combine a higher-order thought theory with a higher-order perception one.

The Bible helps us discern our vocation. Biblical spirituality, in turn, helps us discern God's inner promptings.

Arguments about the discursive shaping of our inner lives explain the shaping powers of normalising forces on individual and collective social action, but, I argue here, do not adequately account for the actions of those who choose to follow alternative ways of being. Meta- Reality brings into this picture those aspects of being that are ‘beyond language’, and theorises human consciousness as stratified. I argue that it provides a fuller theoretical explanation for the motivations of five contemporary British visual (...) artists. Drawing on a discourse analysis, I explore why these artists go against the current stream of consumerist and work norms in order to find the time to make art. I summarise and compare Rose’s theory of a multiple interior self formed through our active participation in specific social processes with Bhaskar’s theory of individual uniqueness at a level of consciousness that also connects us to all others. (shrink)

This brief book surveys the theories of four German psychologists/philosophers, Wolff, Tetens, Wundt, and Brentano, in order to describe the transition in rationalistic psychology from a static to a dynamic concept of thought. Rappard presents this notion as a valuable corrective to the positivistic approach which has tended to predominate: for "sensory immediacy," the direct evidence of the data of the senses, these thinkers substitute "nonsensory immediacy," the direct evidence of the primordial activity of knowledge, which is only later differentiated (...) into inner and outer, self and other. This immediacy is self-knowledge, since the primary object of knowledge must first be the activity of knowing itself, prior to the separation from it of "activity centre" and "activity object". This nonsensory immediacy is in fact identified with the cogito, though it is not clear why the subject-side of such an original unity should thus be stressed. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“Bodyheartminding” (xin 心): Reconceiving the Inner Self and the Outer World in the Language of Holographic Focus and FieldRoger T. Amesin body consciousness: a philosophy of mindfulness and somaesthetics, Richard Shusterman expands upon a professional oeuvre in which his exploration of the phenomenon of “body consciousness” has effected nothing less than a somatic turn in the contemporary Western philosophical narrative.1 But his contribution does not end there. (...) Over the past two decades, the reach and influence of his “somaesthetics” has been extended to the gates of China. Indeed, it has become a theme engaged by scholars of China’s indigenous philosophical traditions, thus providing an opportunity for a further edifying conversation between the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions.2 And it is this conversation, as it has been inspired by Shusterman’s work, that I propose to join in this short essay.In Body Consciousness, Shusterman tells the story of how John Dewey advances the pragmatic project of not only understanding the body better, but indeed of applying the Alexander Technique as his way of using his own body properly.3 Just as Dewey has been a prominent resource for Shusterman in his development of somaesthetics, for Dewey in turn, it was William James’s Principles of Psychology that was a self-confessed inspiration for the development of his own evolving interpretation of pragmatism.4 Indeed, one way of reading Dewey’s philosophical career and his thirty-seven-volume opus is that it is a sustained effort to take the radical “stream-of-consciousness” insights developed in James’s Principles to their logical, systematic conclusion. In pursuing this project, while appreciative, Dewey is at times impatient with James’s dualistic lapses in which he continues to separate individuals from community, mind from body, emotions from intellect, agents from actions, and theory from practice. Dewey takes these unfortunate reversions to old ways of thinking as serving only to confound James’s holistic doctrines of pure experience and radical empiricism. Given Dewey’s own postulate of [End Page 100] immediate and continuous empiricism, one way of tracking his journey from having been inspired by James’s biological naturalism to achieving his own philosophical coherence is to register his unrelenting aversion to dualism in any form.But Dewey himself was not always consistent in this respect. Shusterman gives an account of the early neo-Hegelian Dewey who, affirming the familiar transcendent conception of soul we associate with idealism, unsurprisingly embraces a clear soul and body dualism. And in spite of the philosophically mature Dewey’s best efforts to think “process,” he has no choice but to use both a language and a grammar freighted with substance ontology that resists his more holistic insights. On occasion, even while trying to remain consistent in his thinking, Dewey seems to fall victim to terminology that if not dualistic is at best ambiguous. Dewey’s struggle against this problem of equivocation is particularly apparent in some of the language he appeals to in attempting to put the Humpty Dumpty of mind and body together again. In his effort to register the irreducible continuity and inseparability of the nonanalytic abstractions we differentiate as body and mind—the ontological givenness or “hadness” of “bodyminding”—Dewey still at times invokes terms such as “combination,” “integration,” “unity,” and so on, that take as their suppressed premise “two things becoming one.” By way of contrast, in the correlative vocabulary of Chinese process cosmology, expressions such as yinyang 陰陽, the natural/cultural and the human (tianren 天人), and knowing and doing (zhixing 知行), primacy is given to vital relationality and the continuity it entails. It is not putting two things together that is referenced with these binomials, but the deepening of the horizon of constitutive, internal relationships that transforms the two aspects of the same phenomenon qualitatively into harmonics (he 和) for yinyang, sagacity (sheng 聖) for tianren, and acting wisely (zhi 智) for zhixing. In each instance, the two aspects themselves are simply conceptual abstractions from a complex relational process. The proper and effective measure (du 度) sought in this Confucian cosmology is not quantitatively more or less of two distinct things—taking mind and body as our example—but rather a qualitative and transformative change that... (shrink)

Georg Simmel’s essay on Rome gives paradigmatic expression to an imponderable method that the philosopher practices for years, symbolized by the idea of a plumb line cast from the unstable waters of a sea to its firm foundations. Here Simmel shows how a complex and transhistorical city receives meaning through its multiply tense urban relations, constituting nonetheless a strangely coherent whole. Only circular thinking can adequately grasp this form of coherence. It requires seeing beyond conflicting facts as well as the (...) reader’s own subject positions, in navigation of a space between inner and outer features of perceptual experience. The fragmented and variegated layout of Rome allegorizes that complex space of historical and cultural relations into which interpreting selves must venture to experience totalities that are neither self-evident in things nor in minds that seek their order. (shrink)

Throughout his writings, Nietzsche problematizes self-knowledge, trying to displace rather than satisfy our drive for it. Describing self-knowledge as an ideal only for a certain kind of human being, he writes that it is the community that says, “‘you shall be knowable, express your inner nature by clear and constant signs—otherwise you are dangerous [...]. We despise the secret and unrecognizable.—Consequently, you must consider yourself knowable, you may not be concealed from yourself, you may not believe that (...) you change’”.1 And he argues that what we call self-knowledge develops in the first instance not in order that we might know ourselves, but only in response to our need to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist Meditation for the Recovery of the Womanist Self, or Sitting on the Mat Self-Love RealizedMelanie L. HarrisIn this essay, I will argue that Womanist-Buddhist dialogue is beneficial not only for advancing theory in our respective disciplines, but for the practice of social justice. In the dialogues for which we gathered, we followed a process of learning inspired by chavruse, the method of Torah and Talmudic study (...) found in yeshivas, in which one reads a text with friends, in order to see and understand in ways that would be impossible for individuals alone. The mutually constitutive project of Womanist-Buddhist engagement with Buddhist texts has helped to shift the boundaries within Womanist religious thought and Buddhist studies. We are grateful for the trust—essential to any healthy dialogue—embodied in our work together, and for the deep humility and honor that has been shown by all who are engaged in the process.The Buddhist "self": A Womanist PerspectiveIn a conversation with a friend recently, I was encouraged to hold on to the humanness that suffering teaches by being fully present with a broken heart. My grief was offered tea, and I was invited to join in the depths of suffering for a "spell," sharing stories of strength and longing, through a process of healing meditation. I hear this invitation echoed in essays by Alice Walker in We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For: Inner Light in a Time of Darkness, as well as in the work of Jan Willis. Both scholars are committed to telling the truths in women's stories and uncovering the "true self" through spiritual means. Here, I present some reflections on how engaging Buddhist texts as a Womanist scholar opens up a new perspective on the Womanist theme of self-love and how this can shift our understanding of the Buddhist self.The "Buddhist self," you say? Although Buddhism insists there is "no self"? Yes! The concept of no-self in Buddhism is often equated with "dissolving" the self; I would argue that Buddhist contemplative practices can be seen and experienced as form of healthy self-love and self-care, necessary to sustain activists' work for compassionate justice. According to Walker's definition, a Womanist "Loves herself. Regardless."1 To consider Buddhist meditation as a strategy of self-love and social justice [End Page 67] helps us to see why so many African American women are turning toward Buddhism as a religious orientation.Buddhist meditation invites one to overcome oppression and transform the self and the community, by raising consciousness through a true turning or shifting of mind, in a manner that produces clarity of thought and inner peace. As the Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön has observed, most people who are not raised Buddhist come to Buddhism because they are suffering and trying desperately to get out of dukkha. However, when confronted with the First Noble Truth that suffering is just part of life, many people turn away from meditation, pack up their sitting mats, and return home to habitual patterns.Sitting still on the mat for a long time, for any length of time really, seems to most beginners like an otherworldly commitment—unless of course, one has reason to stay, reason to change. As Willis has observed, most people of African descent do have reason.2 She says Buddhism offers at least three major gifts to African Americans—I would add Womanists here—and to all people of color who have experienced historical traumas such as slavery, exploitation, and cultural genocide. They are: (1) confidence in our humanity—a special gift to a people who have endured four hundred years of slavery and oppression, in which the very essence of our humanity was consistently ravaged; (2) a way of being in the world that emphasizes self-love and inner and communal wholeness; and (3) a method for dealing with the frustrations, disappointments, and anger left behind by multilayered oppressions. Rather than negating the self, and everyone else around, by succumbing to practices of patriarchy, or by falling into the traps of internalized oppression, or by pulling out our hair after upsetting meetings, or by indulging... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 95-99 [Access article in PDF] The Distinction between ego (e) and ego-Self (e/S): Notes on Religious Practice Based upon Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Yagi Seiichi Toin University The Goal of Religious Practice We cannot see the transcendent as an object. Nor is it the case that the transcendent and the human are two separated realities that are united afterwards. When the Self (Christ in me--Gal. (...) 2:19-20) reveals itself to and in the ego (Gal. 1:16), the ego becomes aware of the Self, which is divine--human or transcendent--immanent. This is called enlightenment.In enlightenment, the ego (hereafter: e) does not vanish.When the Self (hereafter: S) appears to and in the ego, the ego (now a relatively independent part of S) becomes the function of S. The ego, understanding itself as the knot of inner and outer reality, plays the role of the reason of the whole body, the center of which is S. In this case we represent such a person as e/S. e/S is the subjectivity of the religious life. D.T.Suzuki and one of his disciples, Ryomin Akizuki called e/S the "individual qua trans-individual." 1 In enlightenment, e/S as the authentic subject, which remains potential before enlightenment, is actualized or realized so that it understands itself as e/S, no more as the mere ego. In order for e/S to be realized and understand itself as e/S, egocentricity, egoism and the confusion of the verbalized reality with "reality as it is" must be overcome. This is the goal of religious practice. e/S From the point of view of interreligious dialogue,"Christ who lives in me" corresponds to "actualized Buddha-nature" or "the Formless Self" in Buddhist language, that is, the Self as we call it. 2 In the case of Paul,"Christ who lives in me" is the ultimate subject of him on the one hand, and "Christ the Son of God" is the object of his faith on the other (Gal. 2:19-20). That means: the ego of Paul that believes in the Son of God is borne by "Christ in me"; as Paul says, "Christ was revealed to and [End Page 95] in me" (Gal. 1:16). In this way, the subjectivity of Paul consists of e/S. Of S, namely, Paul is aware as e/S--neither as e, which is ignorant of S, nor as S. It is impossible for S to exist alone. Egocentricity and Egoism The distinction between e and e/S is of fundamental importance to our theme. e means in this essay the mere ego that is ignorant of S.When it becomes aware of S we represent it as the ego of e/S. e is egocentric and egoistic. It goes without saying that the ego-centered "I" driven by desires produces immorality and social anomies. The biblical word for this is sin, the transgression of the Law.But there is another problematic concerning e, namely egoism, which can be at work even in the effort to attain a high level of morality. We understand the egoistic ego as follows: the ego is to itself the only reality that concerns and moves it. It posits itself solely on itself apart from the relation to others and to S. By itself it projects itself and strives to realize itself. It can, among others, set up its own ideals and pursue their realization. It can, for example, conceive the moralistic ideal that seems to be the reverse of immorality and social anomie. Indeed, it can succeed in controlling egocentricity so that it seems to have attained perfect morality. In reality, it is interested only in its own moral perfection, not in the person encountered (moralistic egoism). Such e is illustrated in Luke 18:9-14 and described in Romans 7:7-24. Egoistic ego must die to itself and must be freed from egoism. (In Romans 6, for example, Paul does... (shrink)

The essay brings a summation of human efforts seeking to understand our existence. Plato and Kant & cognitive science complete reduction of philosophy to a neural mechanism, evolved along elementary Darwinian principles. Plato in his famous Cave Allegory explains that between reality and our experience of it there exists a great chasm, a metaphysical gap, fully confirmed through particle-wave duality of quantum physics. Kant found that we have two kinds of perception, two senses: By the spatial outer sense we perceive (...) phenomena, objects in space. Our temporal inner sense lets us perceive our inner state, noumena . Kant's two senses are fully confirmed through bilateral brain duality of cognitive science. The bilateral brain serves inner, temporal sense, logic & noumena in the left hemisphere. The right brain half is for the outer, spatial sense, geometry & phenomena. We form a whole system, a bilateral interior cosmos, a kind of world model, expressing what may lie beyond the metaphysical gap. In the right brain we build a phenomenal cosmos, to resemble the outer environment. In the brain's left hemisphere a noumenal cosmos, a model of our private world including Saint Teresa of Avila's castillo interior. The cosmos is regularly updated with novel sense data integrated into our memory banks. This was recognized early by Helmholtz (1860s). Our lives, health & well-being depend on us keeping our interior cosmos in good order. This used to be seen as saving one's precious soul from perdition. While we endeavour to keep our phenomenal cosmos neat & orderly by protecting the environment from harm, our noumenal cosmos to be livable requires us to engage in ethical conduct. This bilateral cosmos is responsible for our common sense judgment power, that we depend on for being able to lead a good & benign life. The 200 million neurons of BA10 in the prefrontal lobe have global access to the interior cosmos, & apply massive feedback to identify environmental conditions rapidly. The global access also gives conscious presence of the individual to itself, all that is present in the interior cosmos, for total freedom of action. In the left brain private ego, we are guarded by faith in divine mercy, & guided to choose the best course of action, able to survive under the most adverse conditions. For this, we receive directions from the Holy Ghost in Saint Teresa's castillo interior. (shrink)

By the late Ming, the concept of ‘the mind/heart-cum-principle’ 心即理 had generated confusion in the relations between xing (human nature) and xin (mind/heart). Moreover, with the increasing interpenetration of the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism, some scholars became gravely concerned that the perversion of traditional Confucian thinking had resulted in the degeneration of the moral and social order. Li Cai (1529–1607) was one of these concerned scholars. Wielding the two concepts of ‘zhizhi’ (knowing the ultimate end) and ‘xiushen’ (...) (self-cultivation) in the Great Learning, Li wrestled with Wang Yangming’s teachings by reasserting the primacy of xing, insisting that moral reality must involve direct individual action in order to preserve the unity of substance and effort. Li’s keen awareness of the inner tension between the mind/heart and xing not only prompted his critical reflections on Wang ’s thought but also on Zhu Xi’s. In so doing, he sought to address the fundamental question of what Confucianism is by clarifying the boundaries between the three teachings, and reshaping the spiritual values of Confucianism. (shrink)

Wolfhart Pannenberg's innovative account of the Trinity, in which the mutual self-distinction of the divine persons is also constitutive for the divinity of each, is an important corrective to one-sided views of Trinitarian relations which reductively account only for relations of origin. However, his account ties relationality to death and self-emptying in such a way that it becomes impossible to escape a hierarchical account of Trinitarian relations in which the differences between the persons collapse into an ordered relation (...) that repeats the pattern of the relations of origin. As a result, the most significant potential contribution of Trinitarian theology, its responsiveness to a reality that is internally differentiated yet non-competitive, is lost. This problem is the result of tying the inner-Trinitarian relations too closely to the cross, such that there has to be something in the divine life that can make the cross possible, a move that has become increasingly popular in recent Trinitarian theology. The inner-Trinitarian relations are then reduced to a single taxis which is not sufficiently flexible to respond to the various ways in which God interacts with the world as narrated in the Bible. (shrink)

These remarks focus on Kraus’s claim that for Kant the category of substance cannot apply to the soul but that instead we can and should apply a merely regulative idea of the soul. While granting Kraus’s contention that we require an idea of the soul in order to investigate inner experience, I argue that the category of substance nonetheless applies to the soul, but that the notion of the soul as entirely non-corporeal is a regulative idea. To explore this (...) contention, I closely examine two crucial passages Kraus uses to argue against parity between inner and outer sense. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant and the Demands of Self-ConsciousnessFrederick RauscherPierre Keller. Kant and the Demands of Self-Consciousness. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp vii + 286. Cloth, $59.95.Pierre Keller finds an argument for transcendental idealism in Kant's conception of the self. Keller argues that, for self-consciousness to be possible, there must be not only an empirical distinction between representations in inner sense and objects outside (...) us in space but also a transcendental distinction between an ontological inner and outer: "We distinguish the inner from the outer within experience, and the outer as what is completely independent of the way we must experience the world, on the basis of the consciousness that we have of ourselves" (236).This ultimate conclusion is reached through an argument begun with a suggestive analysis of Kant's theory of self-consciousness. Keller agrees with many other recent commentators that Kant's theory of mind is functionalist. But to this analysis Keller adds an impersonal account of transcendental self-consciousness. This move can be understood as follows: Knowledge of the self as a particular identifiable empirical individual person depends upon objective evidence of the continuity of self accessible from a third person point of view. Objective knowledge is required because mere inner representation of the self as identical over time might err. This objective knowledge, however, is possible only if there is an empirical self-consciousness or awareness of self in inner sense in which different representations are connected together to form a point of view on that objective realm; thus empirical self-consciousness is the basis for [End Page 285] but not the same as personal identity. Empirical self-consciousness, the existence of a particular point of view, in turn depends upon the more abstract transcendental self-consciousness which is the transcendental condition for the existence of particular points of view as grounded in the totality of all possible points of view (72). The transcendental "I think" which Kant holds to be required for knowledge, then, is a single collection of all possible points of view, or, a possible grand function synthesizing all possible representations to generate an objective world. Keller holds each particular "I," then, to be a subset of this possible (not actual!) global self-consciousness.Here Keller's argument is unconvincing. Kant need not hold that particular points of view in inner sense require a conception of all possible points of view in a global whole of representations. Rather, in order to guarantee the objectivity required for a point of view in inner sense, Kant could hold that there must be objective relations among objects which account for the particular point of view even if those objective relations are not representable to any possible point of view. Keller's overlooking this option is puzzling given the emphasis on objectivity he develops in the remainder of the book.Keller's interpretation of self-consciousness ultimately leads to transcendental idealism through the requirement of objectivity. For since each individual self-consciousness can claim to be such only in reference to a possible global self-consciousness, that global self-consciousness provides the objective background for all subjectivity claims. I can become aware of my place in the world only by becoming aware of other possible relations to the objective world which I might have had. The Refutation of Idealism ultimately makes this claim regarding the necessity of the existence of real objects outside of me in space as the basis for my ability to have any subjective relations at all. Although some have taken Kant's argument here to also refute his own transcendental idealism, Keller holds that this empirical realism can be taken to support transcendental idealism. We must not only have knowledge of objects which we represent as outside of us, such knowledge also cannot ultimately arise from active, spontaneous self-affection, for then the represented object would not be truly able to provide an independent marker for our subjective relations. Thus, there must be objects to which we relate passively; moreover, this passive relation dictates that the objects are "radically independent of us" (216). Hence, the refutation of idealism proves not only that there must... (shrink)

Phillip Cary argues that Augustine invented or created the concept of self as an inner space--as space into which one can enter and in which one can find God. This concept of inwardness, says Cary, has worked its way deeply into the intellectual heritage of the West and many Western individuals have experienced themselves as inner selves. After surveying the idea of inwardness in Augustine's predecessors, Cary offers a re-examination of Augustine's own writings, making the controversial point (...) that in his early writings Augustine appears to hold that the human soul is quite literally divine. Cary goes on to contend that the crucial Book 7 of the Confessions is not a historical report of Augustine's "conversion" experience, but rather an explanation of his intellectual development over time. (shrink)

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the figure of the adolescent (Jugendlicher) was introduced into public discourse in the German-speaking world. The adolescent soon became an epistemic object for the still loosely defined field of psychology. Actors in the slowly differentiating scientific field of youth psychology were primarily interested in the normal development of adolescent subjects and sought out new materials and methods to research the inner life of young people. In order to access this (...) class='Hi'>inner life, they turned to the interpretation of diaries and other self-descriptions. This article takes up the questions of how diaries were used in the scientific context of psychology, and how diary writing was psychologically interpreted and theorized. The theoretical and methodological contexts of psychological knowledge production grouped around the subject of the diary will be examined in keeping with Hans-Jörg Rheinberger’s concept of historical epistemology. This analysis is carried out by using the example of three central actors who were in conversation with each other during the 1920s and 1930s: the developmental psychologist Charlotte Bühler (1893–1974), the psychologist and founder of personalistic psychology William Stern (1871–1938), and the youth activist Siegfried Bernfeld (1892–1953), who was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis. (shrink)