Most of us create and use a panoply of non-sentential representations throughout our ordinary lives: we regularly use maps to navigate, charts to keep track of complex patterns of data, and diagrams to visualize logical and causal relations among states of affairs. But philosophers typically pay little attention to such representations, focusing almost exclusively on language instead. In particular, when theorizing about the mind, many philosophers assume that there is a very tight mapping between language and thought. Some analyze utterances (...) as the outer vocalizations of inner thoughts (e.g. Grice 1957, Devitt 2005), while others treat thought as a form of inner speech (e.g. Sellars 1956/1997, Carruthers 2002). But even philosophers who take no stand on the relative priority of language and thought still tend to individuate mental states in terms of the sentences we use to ascribe them. Indeed, Dummett (1993) claims that it is constitutive of analytic philosophy that it approaches the mind by way of language. In many ways, this linguistic model is salutary. Our thoughts are often intimately intertwined with their linguistic expression, and public language does provide a comparatively tractable proxy for, and a window into, the messier realm of thought. However, an exclusive focus on thought as it is expressed in language threatens to leave other sorts of thought unexplained, or even to blind us to their possibility. In particular, many cognitive ethologists and psychologists find it useful to talk about humans, chimpanzees, birds, rats, and even bees as employing cognitive maps. We need to make sense of this way of talking about minds as well as more familiar sentential descriptions. In what follows, I investigate the theoretical and practical possibility of non-sentential thought. Ultimately, I am most interested in the contours of distinctively human thought: what forms does human thought take, and how do those different forms interact? How does human thought compare with that of other animals? In this essay, however, I focus on a narrower and more basic theoretical question: could thought occur in maps? Many philosophers are convinced that in some important sense, thought per se must be language-like.. (shrink)

I argue that we can reconcile two seemingly incompatible traditions for thinking about concepts. On the one hand, many cognitive scientists assume that the systematic redeployment of representational abilities suffices for having concepts. On the other hand, a long philosophical tradition maintains that language is necessary for genuinely conceptual thought. I argue that on a theoretically useful and empirically plausible concept of 'concept', it is necessary and sufficient for conceptual thought that a thinker be able to entertain many of the (...) potential thoughts produced by recombining her representational abilities apart from a direct confrontation with the states of affairs being represented. Such representational abilities support a cognitive engagement with the world that is flexible, abstract, and active. (shrink)

Does thought precede language, or the other way around? How does having a language affect our thoughts? Who has a language, and who can think? These questions have traditionally been addressed by philosophers, especially by rationalists concerned to identify the essential difference between humans and other animals. More recently, theorists in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and developmental psychology have been asking these questions in more empirically grounded ways. At its best, this confluence of philosophy and science promises to blend (...) the respective strengths of each discipline, bringing abstract theory to bear on reality in a principled and focused way. At its worst, it risks degenerating into a war of words, with each side employing key expressions in its own idiosyncratic way – or worse, contaminating empirical research with a priori dogmas inherited from outmoded philosophical worldviews. In Baboon Metaphysics (2007), Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth offer an analysis of baboon cognition that promises to exemplify the very best interaction of philosophical theory and empirical research. They argue that baboons have a language of thought: a language-like representational medium, which supports the sophisticated cognitive abilities required to negotiate their complex social environment. This claim is intended to be surprising in its own right, and also to shed light on the evolution of spoken language. Because our own ancestors likely lived in a similarly complex social environment, Cheney and Seyfarth propose that the earliest humans also developed language first as a cognitive medium, and that spoken language evolved as a means to express those thoughts. There are two potential difficulties here. First, ‘Language of Thought’ (LOT) is a term of art, with much associated theoretical baggage and often comparatively little careful exposition. Thus, evaluating the claim requires getting clearer about just what LOT implies in this context.. (shrink)

In debates about the nature of scientific explanation, one theme repeatedly arises: that explanation is about providing understanding. However, the concept of understanding has only recently been explored in any depth, and this paper attempts to introduce a useful concept of understanding to that literature and explore it. Understanding is a higher level cognition, the recognition of connections between various pieces of knowledge. This conception can be brought to bear on the conceptual issues that have thus far been unclear in (...) the literature. Though this notion of understanding is broad, explaining various concepts of explanation, it is robust enough to underwrite an objective and useful notion of explanation. (shrink)

Philosophers have traditionally inclined toward one of two opposite extremes when it comes to metaphor. On the one hand, partisans of metaphor have tended to believe that metaphors do something different in kind from literal utterances; it is a ‘heresy’, they think, either to deny that what metaphors do is genuinely cognitive, or to assume that it can be translated into literal terms. On the other hand, analytic philosophers have typically denied just this: they tend to assume that if metaphors (...) express any genuine content at all, then that content can in principle be paraphrased into literal terms. They often conclude on this basis that metaphor is theoretically dispensable, and so that it poses no special challenges and affords no distinctive insights for the philosophy of language and mind. (shrink)

Recently, philosophers have discovered that they have a lot to learn from, or at least to ponder about, fiction. Many metaphysicians are attracted to fiction as a model for our talk about purported objects and properties, such as numbers, morality, and possible worlds, without embracing a robust Platonist ontology. In addition, a growing group of philosophers of mind are interested in the implications of our engagement with fiction for our understanding of the mind and emotions: If I don’t believe that (...) Anna Karenina exists, can I really pity her, or hope or desire that she extricate herself from her tragic situation? And why is there no “morality fiction,” analogous to science fiction? I suspect that philosophers have been especially comfortable thinking about fiction because it seems, at least prima facie, to employ the imagination in a way that conforms to a standard model of the mind. Specifically, contemporary philosophers tend to think of imagination as a form of mental pretense. Mental pretense can take two main forms: a cognitive attitude of supposing a set of propositions to be true (make-believe) or else an experiential state of imaging a scenario as if it were before one (imaging). Much of our pretense intertwines the cognitive and experiential modalities, of course. But both share a crucial common feature: all of one’s imaginative effort is invested in pretending that certain contents obtain. In this sense, we can understand imagination as the “offline” simulation of actual beliefs and perceptions (and perhaps other attitudes as well), where we analyze these in the normal way, as states individuated by their attitude and representational content. While I share the burgeoning interest in fiction, I want to suggest that we also have a lot to learn from poetry, and in particular from poetic metaphor. I will argue.. (shrink)

Everyone has mistaken one thing for another, such as a stranger for an acquaintance. A person who has mistaken two things, Joseph Camp argues, even on a massive scale, is still capable of logical thought. In order to make that idea precise, one needs a logic of confused thought that is blind to the distinction between the objects that have been confused. Confused thought and language cannot be characterized as true or false even though reasoning conducted in such language can (...) be classified as valid or invalid. To the extent that philosophers have addressed this issue at all, they take it for granted that confusion is a kind of ambiguity. Camp rejects this notion; his fundamental claim is that confusion is not a mental state. To attribute confusion to someone is to take up a paternalistic stance in evaluating his reasoning. Camp proposes a novel characterization of confusion, and then demonstrates its fruitfulness with several applications in the history of philosophy and the history of science. (shrink)

This is the journal of the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World, which is committed to the application of philosophy in the understanding and solution of contemporary ethical and conceptual problems. The journal provides a peer-reviewed venue for continuing dialogues in applied philosophy, philosophy and public policy, philosophy of the professions, race and gender studies, environmental philosophy, educational philosophy, and a range of multi-cultural issues. Philosophy in the Contemporary World invites original, (...) creative, and unconventional thinking, welcomes both analytical and continental approaches, and encourages submissions that cross disciplinary boundaries. An annual subscription to the journal includes membership in the Society for Philosophy in the Contemporary World. (shrink)

Philosophical consideration of dance has gained in vigor, diversity, and sophistication in recent decades -- even though philosophers disagree sharply on what philosophy is! Divergent methodological approaches range from the phenomenological explorations of Maxine Sheets- Johnstone, the existentialist approach of Sandra Horton Fraleigh, and the postmodernist continental work of Susan Foster to more traditional "British-American" analysis by such well-known philosophers as Nelson Goodman, Joseph Margolis, and Francis Sparshott.

Philosophers perpetually find ourselves justifying our existence in a pragmatic go-go capitalistic world. Aren’t we the head-in-the-clouds people indulging in endless debates about how many angels fit on the head of a pin? The absent-minded professors who argue that the physical world might not exist- - even as we step aside to avoid that bus bearing down on us? The granola-heads who delight in pondering a world of brains-in-vats?

Philosophers have often adopted a dismissive attitude toward metaphor. Hobbes (1651, ch. 8) advocated excluding metaphors from rational discourse because they “openly profess deceit,” while Locke (1690, Bk. 3, ch. 10) claimed that figurative uses of language serve only “to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment; and so indeed are perfect cheats.” Later, logical positivists like Ayer and Carnap assumed that because metaphors like..

This paper turns to Hannah Arendt’s brief, poignant remarks about the advent of a biotechnological revolution as a starting point for a renewed reflection on her concept of natality. By expanding on Arendt's significant, but often overlooked, reference to the work of the German anthropologist Arnold Gehlen, it will be argued that that natality is a concept that subverts any rigid opposition between zoe and bios, biological birth and politico-linguistic birth. Consequently, it will be shown that Jürgen Habermas and Michael (...) Sandel are mistaken to appeal to the concept of natality in their arguments against genetic enhancement. (shrink)

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

I argue that stories are ‘equipment for living’ in two senses: retrospectively, they provide ‘configurational comprehension’ of a temporal sequence of events; prospectively, they offer templates for action. Narrative conceptions of the self appear well poised to leverage these functional roles for stories into an intuitively compelling view of self-construction as self-construal. However, the narrative conception defines selves in terms of the lives they live: a self is the protagonist in a lifelong story. And narrative structure is itself defined by (...) ‘retrospective necessity’: the meaning of events within a story is given by their contribution to that story's ending. Together, this entails that life stories hold selves metaphysically, epistemically, and practically hostage to their ends. Fortunately, narratives are just one species of interpretive frame. I suggest some alternative types of frames, including identity labels and metaphors, that support configurational comprehension, action guidance, and self construction without shackling selves to their lives’ ends. (shrink)

I consider why women philosophers, once identified and given recognition, too often seem to drop from the intellectual radar screen or, at least, to drop mainly to the land of footnotes and bibliographies. Are they disappearing any more than men of comparable stature from their generation? Is there anything we can do about this? Can we do more than excavate and recognize women in philosophy? What can we do to continue and enhance their presence in the historic dialogue of (...) philosophy? (shrink)

An important milestone was crossed recently in the discipline of philosophy, but hardly anyone seems to have noticed. In 2004, for the first time since statistics have been gathered on such things, women earned more than 30 percent of the doctorates in philosophy in this country, 33.3 percent, up from 27.1 percent the year before. The highest percentage women had achieved previously in philosophy was 29.4 percent, in..

Although much has been written about the so-called political, ethical and religious turns in the thinking of Jacques Derrida, few have noticed that his late writings were marked by what we could tentatively call a “zoological turn.” This is surprising given that in The Animal That Therefore I Am Derrida clearly stated that the question as to what distinguishes the human from the animal has for him always been the most important question of philosophy. This essay will attempt to (...) offer a preliminary exploration of this still largely uncharted aspect of Derrida’s thought. Starting from a brief overview of Derrida’s most important writings on the question of the animal, it will be argued that his decision to write an entire book on this issue was largely motivated by his eagerness to settle a discussion with one of his pupils, the French theorist of technology Bernard Stiegler. (shrink)

/p. 14 The humanities, as defined by Congress, include the history, theory, and criticism of the arts. While the National Endowment for the Arts funds the creation, performance, and display of art, the National Endowment for the Humanities funds the theoretical dimensions that place the arts within a broader cultural context. Admittedly, the line is sometimes difficult to draw precisely, but generally, the humanities center on verbal analysis of the phenomenon of art, using the methodology and content of various humanities (...) disciplines, such as history and philosophy. (shrink)

From the mid-thirties onwards, Martin Heidegger occasionally speculated about the future possibility of artificially producing human beings. What is at stake in biotechnology, Heidegger claims, is the imminent possibility of the destruction of the human essence. It is unclear, however, how Heidegger can substantiate such a claim given that he consistently denounced attempts to define human Dasein as a living being to which a higher capacity such as reason or language is added. This paper will argue that, in this sense, (...) Heidegger took the radical challenge of biotechnology both too seriously and not seriously enough. Too seriously, because it is unclear why he would fear the annihilation of Dasein’s essence if he is convinced that this essence is not related to man’s biological equipment in the first place. Not seriously enough, because Heidegger at the same time remained convinced that even the most intrusive interventions in the human body will not be able to disrupt Dasein’s ontological essence. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt calls “natality,” the fact that human beings enter the world through birth, the centralcategory of political thought. But how can she assert that being born conditions one to act freely if shealso seems to maintain that is through labor, not action, that human beings deal with biologicallyconditioned processes? Expanding on Arendt’s largely neglected footnote to Arnold Gehlen in TheHuman Condition, this paper will argue that the concept of natality precisely undoes any strict divisionbetween freedom and necessity because it (...) names the radical co-implication of biological and politicolinguisticbirths, the conditioned and the spontaneous. (shrink)

Davidson advocates a radical and powerful form of anti-conventionalism, on which the scope of a semantic theory is restricted to the most local of contexts: a particular utterance by a particular speaker. I argue that this hyper-localism undercuts the explanatory grounds for his assumption that semantic meaning is systematic, which is central, among other things, to his holism. More importantly, it threatens to undercut the distinction between word meaning and speaker’s meaning, which he takes to be essential to semantics. I (...) argue that a moderate form of conventionalism can restore systematicity and the word/speaker distinction while accommodating Davidson’s insights about the complexities and contextual variability of language use. (shrink)

Midwest Studies In Philosophy, EarlyView.

Some recent commentators have acquiesced in the efforts of some religious groups to co-opt concepts of morality, thus leading many—inappropriately, I believe—to think we must keep all morality out of our civic life and especially out of the reasoning in our legal system. I review examples of the confusion in characterizing the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision as a conflict between constitutional rights and religious moral precepts. I argue that this approach capitulates to particular views of morality as religious morality. (...) I consider the appeals to morality in the dissent and the ensuing confusion among commentators about the significance ofthis opinion. I review alternate readings of the Lawrence majority opinion, including proposals that it be considered from the perspectives of the ethicalframeworks of Locke, Mill, or Kant. (shrink)

I identify issues of philosophical concern in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on copyright extension, and encourage the participation of philosophers in these public policy debates. Philosophers have contributions to make to the dialogue not captured exclusively by the technical and often narrow legal debate in the courts.

I identify issues of philosophical concern in Eldred v. Ashcroft, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on copyright extension, and encourage the participation of philosophers in these public policy debates. Philosophers have contributions to make to the dialogue not captured exclusively by the technical and often narrow legal debate in the courts.

Reno v. ACLU, the 1997 landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court providing sweeping protection to speech on the Internet, is usually discussed in terms of familiar First Amendment issues. Little noticed in the decision is the significance of the ontological assumptions of the justices in their first visit to cyberspace. I analyze the apparent awareness of the Supreme Court of ontological issues and problems with their approaches. I also argue that their current ontological assumptions have left open the (...) door to future suppression of free speech as the technology progresses. Ontology is significant because zoning in the physical world has long been recognized as a way to segregate "adult" entertainment from minors. So far, at least, the justices seem to agree that such zoning is not possible in cyberspace, and therefore that adult zones for certain forms of expression are not possible. But this conclusion is far from settled. The degree of free speech on the Internet in the future will depend on whether or not our ontological understanding of cyberspace supports such zoning or renders it incoherent or impossible. (shrink)

Janssen argues that special relativity is preferable to Lorentzian dynamics due to its kinematic structure. Brown, along with others, raises an objection, arguing that a dynamical understanding of special relativity is explanatorily prior and hence more fundamental than the principle theory-based kinematic structure of Minkowski spacetime. This paper challenges this objection, arguing that both Janssen and Brown miss the essential aspect of the principles of special relativity which underwrite its interpretational success. It is not its kinematic structure, but the constitutive (...) nature of the principles it employs, by providing a coherent conceptual framework, which does the foundational work. (shrink)

Metaphor has traditionally been construed as a linguistic phenomenon: as something produced and understood by speakers of natural language. So understood, metaphors are naturally viewed as linguistic expressions of a particular type, or as linguistic expressions used in a particular type of way. This linguistic conception of metaphor is adopted in this article. In doing so, the article does not intend to rule out the possibility of non-linguistic forms of metaphor. Many theorists think that non-linguistic objects or conceptual structures should (...) also be treated as metaphors. Indeed, the idea that metaphors are in the first instance conceptual phenomena, and linguistic devices only derivatively, is the dominant view in what is now the dominant area of metaphor research: cognitive science. In construing metaphor as linguistic, the article merely intends to impose appropriate constraints on a discussion whose focus is the understanding and analysis of metaphor within contemporary philosophy of language. (shrink)

Es, quiza, la coleccion mas abierta que existe en cuestiones de etica, aunque se ha ocupado tambien de antropologia, estetica, ontologia, teoria del conocimiento e historia de la filosofia. El primer titulo que se publico en la coleccion fue la gran Historia de la filosofia y de la ciencia en tres volumenes de Ludovico Geymonat. A este le han seguido obras de A. J. Ayer, A. MacIntyre, Ernst Tugendhat, Antoni Domenech, Anna Estany, Agnes Heller, F. Fernandez Buey, Carlos Paris, Emilio (...) Lledo, Manuel Sacristan, John Rawls o Ludwig Wittgenstein. Victoria Camps ha dirigido, ademas, una gran Historia de la etica, en tres volumenes, en la que han colaborado los mejores especialistas espanoles. Los trabajos que componen este volumen recorren los conceptos centrales de la Ilustracion: razon, critica, autonomia, naturaleza humana, humanidad, libertad, solidaridad, igualdad, justicia y emancipacion, cuyo fracaso etico obliga a replantear las formulaciones de la filosofia ilustrada, y a someter a critica sus presupuestos. (shrink)

One of America's most celebrated poets, Emily Dickinson was virtually unpublished in her lifetime. When a slim volume of her poems emerged on the American scene in 1890, her work created shockwaves that have not subsided yet. Famously precise and sparse, Emily Dickinson's poetry is often described as philosophical, both because her poetry grapples with philosophical topics like death, spirituality, and the darkening operations of the mind, and because she approaches those topics in a characteristically philosophical manner: analyzing and extrapolating (...) from close observation, exploring alternatives, and connecting thoughts into cumulative demonstrations. But unlike Lucretius or Pope, she cannot be accused of producing versified treatises. Many of her poems are unsettling in their lack of conclusion; their disparate insights often stand in conflict; and her logic turns crucially on imagery, juxtaposition, assonance, slant rhyme, and punctuation. The six chapters of this volume collectively argue that Dickinson is an epistemically ambitious poet, who explores fundamental questions by advancing arguments that are designed to convince. Dickinson exemplifies abstract ideas in tangible form and habituates readers into productive trains of thought--she doesn't just make philosophical claims, but demonstrates how poetry can make a distinct contribution to philosophy. All essays in this volume, drawn from both philosophers and literary theorists, serve as a counterpoint to recent critical work, which has emphasized Dickinson's anguished uncertainty, her nonconventional style, and the unsettled status of her manuscripts. On the view that emerges here, knowing is like cleaning, mending, and lacemakingL a form of hard, ongoing work, but one for which poetry is a powerful, perhaps indispensable, tool. (shrink)