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Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Philosophy of mind
Simon Evnine examines various epistemic aspects of what it is to be
a person. Persons are defined as finite beings that have beliefs,
including second-order beliefs about their own and others' beliefs,
and are agents, capable of making long-term plans. It is argued
that for any being meeting these conditions, a number of epistemic
consequences obtain. First, all such beings must have certain
logical concepts and be able to use them in certain ways. Secondly,
there are at least two principles governing belief that it is
rational for persons to satisfy and are such that nothing can be a
person at all unless it satisfies them to a large extent. These
principles are that one believe the conjunction of one's beliefs
and that one treat one's future beliefs as, by and large, better
than one's current beliefs. Thirdly, persons both occupy epistemic
points of view on the world and show up within those views. This
makes it impossible for them to be completely objective about their
own beliefs. Ideals of rationality that require such objectivity,
while not necessarily wrong, are intrinsically problematic for
persons. This "aspectual dualism" is characteristic of treatments
of persons in the Kantian tradition. In sum, these epistemic
consequences support a traditional view of the nature of persons,
one in opposition to much recent theorizing.
This study examines the history of a fundamental problem in
Aristotelian cognitive psychology, i.e. the nature and function of
the mechanisms that provide the human mind with data concerning
physical reality.
Chapter I traces the Classical and Arabic prehistory of the
Medieval doctrine of intelligible species. Scholastic discussions
on formal mediation in intellective cognition were constrained in
essential ways by Thomas. Chapter II analyzes his views on mental
representation in the context of the reception of Peripatetic
psychology in the West. The following chapters (III-V) examine the
controversies about the necessity of intelligible species, from
Aquinas' death to the 15th century. Another volume is planned,
devoted to Renaissance discussions, developments of later
Scholasticism, and the elimination of the intelligible species in
modern non-Aristotelian philosophy.
Talbot Brewer presents an invigorating new approach to ethical
theory, in the context of human selfhood and agency. The first main
theme of the book is that contemporary ethical theorists have
focused too narrowly on actions and the discrete episodes of
deliberation through which we choose them, and that the subject
matter of the field looks quite different if one looks instead at
unfolding activities and the continuous forms of evaluative
awareness that carry them forward and that constitute an essential
element of those activities. The second is that ethical reflection
is itself a centrally important life activity, and that
philosophical ethics is an extension of this practical activity
rather than a merely theoretical reflection upon it.
Brewer's approach is founded on a far-reaching reconsideration of
the notions of the nature and sources of human agency, and
particularly of the way in which practical thinking gives shape to
activities, relationships and lives. He contests the usual
understanding of the relationship between philosophical psychology
and ethics. The Retrieval of Ethics shows the need for a new
contemplative vision of the point or value of human action --
without which we will remain unable to make optimal sense of our
efforts to unify our lives around a tenable conception of how best
to live them, or of the yearnings that draw us to our ideals and to
each other.
From Homer to Aristotle, understanding anger and harnessing its
power was at the core of Hellenic civilization. Homer created the
framework for philosophical inquiries into anger, one that
persisted until it was overturned by Stoicism and Christianity.
Plato saw anger as the guardian of justice and Aristotle conceived
of it as bound to friendship. Yet both showed that anger can become
a guardian of injustice and a defender of our psychological
abnormalities. Plato claimed that reason is a tertiary factor in
controlling anger and Aristotle argued that non-cognitive powers
can issue commands for anger's arousal - findings that shed light
as to why cognitive therapeutic approaches often prove to be
ineffective. Both proposed nurturing the "thumos," the receptacle
of anger and the seat of self-esteem. Aristotle's view of public
anger as an early warning sign of social dissolution continues to
be relevant to this day. In this carefully argued study, Kostas
Kalimtzis examines the theories of anger in the context of the
ancient world with an eye to their implications for the modern
predicament.
In our daily lives, we are surrounded by all sorts of things - such
as trees, cars, persons, or madeleines - and perception allows us
access to them. But what does 'to perceive' actually mean? What is
it that we perceive? How do we perceive? Do we perceive the same
way animals do? Does reason play a role in perception? Such
questions occur naturally today. But was it the same in the past,
centuries ago? The collected volume tackles this issue by turning
to the Latin philosophy of the 13th and 14th centuries. Did
medieval thinkers raise the same, or similar, questions as we do
with respect to perception? What answers did they provide? What
arguments did they make for raising the questions they did, and for
the answers they gave to them? The philosophers taken into
consideration are, among others, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon,
William of Auvergne, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, John Pecham,
Richard Rufus, Peter Olivi, Robert Kilwardby, John Buridan, and
Jean of Jandun. Contributors are Elena Baltuta, Daniel De Haan,
Martin Klein, Andrew LaZella, Lukas Licka, Mattia Mantovani, Andre
Martin, Dominik Perler, Paolo Rubini, Jose Filipe Silva, Juhana
Toivanen, and Rega Wood.
Vision dominates philosophical thinking about perception, and
theorizing about experience in cognitive science has traditionally
focused on a visual model. In a radical departure from established
practice, Casey O'Callaghan provides a systematic treatment of
sound and sound experience, and shows how thinking about audition
and appreciating the relationships between multiple sense
modalities can enrich our understanding of perception and the
mind.
Sounds proposes a novel theory of sounds and auditory perception.
Against the widely accepted philosophical view that sounds are
among the secondary or sensible qualities, O'Callaghan argues that,
on any perceptually plausible account, sounds are events. But this
does not imply that sounds are waves that propagate through a
medium, such as air or water. Rather, sounds are events that take
place in one's environment at or near the objects and happenings
that bring them about. This account captures the way in which
sounds essentially are creatures of time, and situates sounds in a
world populated by items and events that have significance for us.
Sounds are not ethereal, mysterious entities.
O'Callaghan's account of sounds and their perception discloses far
greater variety among the kinds of things we perceive than
traditional views acknowledge. But more importantly, investigating
sounds and audition demonstrates that considering other sense
modalities teaches what we could not otherwise learn from thinking
exclusively about the visual. Sounds articulates a powerful account
of echoes, reverberation, Doppler effects, and perceptual
constancies that surpasses the explanatory richness of alternative
theories, and also reveals a number ofsurprising cross-modal
perceptual illusions. O'Callaghan argues that such illusions
demonstrate that the perceptual modalities cannot be completely
understood in isolation, and that the visuocentric model for
theorizing about perception --according to which perceptual
modalities are discrete modes of experience and autonomous domains
of philosophical and scientific inquiry--ought to be abandoned.
Recent research across the disciplines of cognitive science has
exerted a profound influence on how many philosophers approach
problems about the nature of mind. These philosophers, while
attentive to traditional philosophical concerns, are increasingly
drawing both theory and evidence from empirical disciplines - both
the framing of the questions and how to resolve them. However, this
familiarity with the results of cognitive science has led to the
raising of an entirely new set of questions about the mind and how
we study it, questions which not so long ago philosophers did not
even pose, let alone address. This volume offers an overview of
this burgeoning field that balances breadth and depth, with
chapters covering every aspect of the psychology and cognitive
anthropology. Each chapter provides a critical and balanced
discussion of a core topic while also conveying distinctive
viewpoints and arguments. Several of the chapters are co-authored
collaborations between philosophers and scientists.
Over recent years, the psychology of concepts has been rejuvenated
by new work on prototypes, inventive ideas on causal cognition, the
development of neo-empiricist theories of concepts, and the inputs
of the budding neuropsychology of concepts. But our empirical
knowledge about concepts has yet to be organized in a coherent
framework.
In Doing without Concepts, Edouard Machery argues that the dominant
psychological theories of concepts fail to provide such a framework
and that drastic conceptual changes are required to make sense of
the research on concepts in psychology and neuropsychology. Machery
shows that the class of concepts divides into several distinct
kinds that have little in common with one another and that for this
very reason, it is a mistake to attempt to encompass all known
phenomena within a single theory of concepts. In brief, concepts
are not a natural kind. Machery concludes that the theoretical
notion of concept should be eliminated from the theoretical
apparatus of contemporary psychology and should be replaced with
theoretical notions that are more appropriate for fulfilling
psychologists' goals. The notion of concept has encouraged
psychologists to believe that a single theory of concepts could be
developed, leading to useless theoretical controversies between the
dominant paradigms of concepts. Keeping this notion would slow
down, and maybe prevent, the development of a more adequate
classification and would overshadow the theoretical and empirical
issues that are raised by this more adequate classification. Anyone
interested in cognitive science's emerging view of the mind will
find Machery's provocative ideas of interest.
The Chomskian revolution in linguistics gave rise to a new
orthodoxy about mind and language. Michael Devitt throws down a
provocative challenge to that orthodoxy. What is linguistics about?
What role should linguistic intuitions play in constructing
grammars? What is innate about language? Is there a 'language
faculty'? These questions are crucial to our developing
understanding of ourselves; Michael Devitt offers refreshingly
original answers. He argues that linguistics is about linguistic
reality and is not part of psychology; that linguistic rules are
not represented in the mind; that speakers are largely ignorant of
their language; that speakers' intuitions do not reflect
information supplied by the language faculty and are not the main
evidence for grammars; that the rules of 'Universal Grammar' are
largely, if not entirely, innate structure rules of thought;
indeed, that there is little or nothing to the language faculty.
Devitt's controversial theses will prove highly stimulating to
anyone working on language and the mind.
An easy-to-digest introduction the science of the experience of
consciousness as the German Idealist philosopher GEORG WILHELM
FRIEDRICH HEGEL (17701831) understood it, this condensed version of
Hegels The Phenomenology of Spiritwhich the author created himself
for his Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciencesexplores Hegels
take on: [ what mind is [ the sensibility of the physical soul [
the immediacy of the feeling soul [ consciousness and the intellect
[ the theoretical mind [ memory, intuition, and imagination [ the
morality of conscience [ moral life, or social ethics [ revealed
religion in the absolute mind [ and much more. This 1894
translation of the 18271830 German original, by Scottish
philosopher and Oxford University professor WILLIAM WALLACE
(18431897), remains a favorite of Hegel students, and is celebrated
for its style and eloquence.
Can you be a self on your own or only together with others? Is
selfhood a built-in feature of experience or rather socially
constructed? How do we at all come to understand others? Does
empathy amount to and allow for a distinct experiential
acquaintance with others, and if so, what does that tell us about
the nature of selfhood and social cognition? Does a strong emphasis
on the first-personal character of consciousness prohibit a
satisfactory account of intersubjectivity or is the former rather a
necessary requirement for the latter? Engaging with debates and
findings in classical phenomenology, in philosophy of mind and in
various empirical disciplines, Dan Zahavi's new book Self and Other
offers answers to these questions. Discussing such diverse topics
as self-consciousness, phenomenal externalism, mindless coping,
mirror self-recognition, autism, theory of mind, embodied
simulation, joint attention, shame, time-consciousness, embodiment,
narrativity, self-disorders, expressivity and Buddhist no-self
accounts, Zahavi argues that any theory of consciousness that
wishes to take the subjective dimension of our experiential life
serious must endorse a minimalist notion of self. At the same time,
however, he also contends that an adequate account of the self has
to recognize its multifaceted character, and that various
complementary accounts must be integrated, if we are to do justice
to its complexity. Thus, while arguing that the most fundamental
level of selfhood is not socially constructed and not
constitutively dependent upon others, Zahavi also acknowledges that
there are dimensions of the self and types of self-experience that
are other-mediated. The final part of the book exemplifies this
claim through a close analysis of shame.
The nature and reality of self is a subject of increasing
prominence among Western philosophers of mind and cognitive
scientists. It has also been central to Indian and Tibetan
philosophical traditions for over two thousand years. It is time to
bring the rich resources of these traditions into the contemporary
debate about the nature of self. This volume is the first of its
kind. Leading philosophical scholars of the Indian and Tibetan
traditions join with leading Western philosophers of mind and
phenomenologists to explore issues about consciousness and selfhood
from these multiple perspectives. Self, No Self? is not a
collection of historical or comparative essays. It takes
problem-solving and conceptual and phenomenological analysis as
central to philosophy. The essays mobilize the argumentative
resources of diverse philosophical traditions to address issues
about the self in the context of contemporary philosophy and
cognitive science. Self, No Self? will be essential reading for
philosophers and cognitive scientists interested in the nature of
the self and consciousness, and will offer a valuable way into the
subject for students.
The thesis that the mind cannot directly apprehend features of the
physical world - what Reid calls the Way of Ideas - is a staple of
Early Modern philosophical tradition. This commitment to the direct
awareness of, and only of, mental representations unifies the
otherwise divergent philosophical systems of Rationalists and
Empiricists. Thomas Reid battles against this thesis on many
fronts, in particular over the nature of perception. Ryan Nichols
lays the groundwork for Reid's theory of perception by developing
Reid's unheralded argument against a representational theory of
thought, which Nichols applies to his discussion of the
intentionality of perceptual states and Reid's appeal to 'signs'.
Reid's efforts to preserve common sense epistemic commitments also
lead him to adopt unique theories about our concepts of primary and
secondary qualities, and about original and acquired perceptions.
About the latter pair, Nichols argues that most perceptual beliefs
depend for their justification upon inferences. The Way of Ideas
holds that sensations are objects of awareness and that our senses
are not robustly unified. Nichols develops Reid's counter-proposals
by examining his discussion of the evolutionary purpose of
sensations, and the nature of our awareness of sensations, as well
as his intriguing affirmative answer to Molyneux's questions.
Nichols brings to the writing of this book a consummate knowledge
of Reid's texts, published and unpublished, and a keen appreciation
for Reid's responses to his predecessors. He frequently
reconstructs arguments in premise/conclusion form, thereby
clarifying disputes that have frustrated previous Reid scholarship.
This clarification, his lively examples, and his plainspoken style
make this book especially readable. Reid's theory of perception is
by far the most important feature of Reid's philosophical system,
and Nichols offers what will be, for a long time to come, the
definitive analysis of this theory.
Many kinds of Cartesian views are treated by these papers: the
views that Descartes held, views from our perspective on those
views, views on Descartes held by his early critics and followers,
and views that are Cartesian in outlook (not for nothing is
Descartes still regarded as the father of modern philosophy.) These
overlapping views provide the unity of this volume, and reflect the
unity of Richard A.Watson's philosophical work. Not least among
Watson's contributions has been his depiction of Cartesianism as a
response to a set of problems within Descartes's philosophy. The
later Cartesians were not slavish followers of Descartes. The
contributors to this volume might be viewed as standing to Watson
as the Cartesians did to Descartes. Contributors include:
Jean-Robert Armogathe, Leslie Armour, Alan Gabbey, Daniel Garber,
William H. Gass, Alan Hausman, David Hausman, Thomas M. Lennon,
Jose R. Maia Neto, Steven Nadler, Richard H. Popkin, Han van Ruler,
Theo Verbeek, Fred Wilson, and Alison Wylie.
Certain things, like justice, have impersonal value. Other things,
like your parents, carry personal values: they have value for you.
Besides whatever value they have, they are valuable to you. The
philosophical literature as well as non-philosophical literature is
inundated with suggestions about the kinds of thing that are good
for us or, if it is a negative personal value, what is bad for us.
This is a stimulating and vivid area of philosophical research, but
it has tended to monopolize the notion of 'good-for', linking it
necessarily to welfare or well-being. Since these more or less
well-grounded pieces of advice are seldom accompanied by an
analysis of the notion of 'good-for', there is a need for such an
analysis. Ronnow-Rasmussen remedies this need, by offering a novel
way of analyzing the notion of personal value. He defends the idea
that we have reason to expand our classical value taxonomy with
these personal values. By fine-tuning a pattern of value analysis
which has roots in the writings of the Austrian philosopher Franz
Bretano, this sort of analysis will come to cover personal values,
too. In addition, Ronnow-Rasmussen makes substantial contributions
to a number of issues, including hedonism vs. preferentialism,
subjectivism vs. objectivism, value bearer monism vs. value bearer
pluralism, and the wrong kind of reason problem -- all of which are
much debated among today's value theorists.
Could robots be genuinely intelligent? Could they be conscious?
Could there be zombies? Prompted by these questions Robert Kirk
introduces the main problems of consciousness and sets out a new
approach to solving them. He starts by discussing behaviourism,
Turing's test of intelligence and Searle's famous Chinese Room
argument, and goes on to examine dualism - the idea that
consciousness requires something beyond the physical - together
with its opposite, physicalism. Probing the idea of zombies, he
concludes they are logically impossible. Having presented the
central problems, he sketches his solution: a version of
functionalism, according to which consciousness consists in the
performance of functions. While there is wide agreement among
philosophers about what the main problems of consciousness are,
there is little agreement on how to go about solving them. With
this powerful case for his version of functionalism, Kirk offers an
engaging introduction to both the problems and a possible solution.
Between Saying and Doing aims to reconcile pragmatism (in both its
classical American and its Wittgensteinian forms) with analytic
philosophy. It investigates the relations between the meaning of
linguistic expressions and their use. Giving due weight both to
what one has to do in order to count as saying various things and
to what one needs to say in order to specify those doings, makes it
possible to shed new light on the relations between semantics (the
theory of the meanings of utterances and the contents of thoughts)
and pragmatics (the theory of the functional relations among
meaningful or contentful items). Among the vocabularies whose
interrelated use and meaning are considered are: logical,
indexical, modal, normative, and intentional vocabulary. As the
argument proceeds, new ways of thinking about the classic analytic
core programs of empiricism, naturalism, and functionalism are
offered, as well as novel insights about the ideas of artificial
intelligence, the nature of logic, and intentional relations
between subjects and objects.
We know a lot about the world and our place in it. We have come to
this knowledge in a variety of ways. And one central way that we,
both as individuals and as a society, have come to know what we do
is through communication with others. Much of what we know, we know
on the basis of testimony. In Knowing on Trust, Paul Faulkner
presents an epistemological theory of testimony, or a theory that
explains how it is that we acquire knowledge and warranted belief
from testimony.
The key questions addressed in this book are: what makes it
reasonable to accept a piece of testimony? And what warrants belief
formed on this testimonial basis? Faulkner argues that existing
theories of testimony largely fail because they do not recognise
how issues of practical rationality motivate the first question,
and this is what makes testimony distinctive as a source of
knowledge. At the heart of the theory this book presents is the
idea that trust is central to answering these two questions. An
attitude of trust can make it reasonable to depend on another's
testimony, but what warrants testimonial belief is not trust but
the body of evidence the testimony originates from. Testimonial
knowledge and testimonially warranted belief are formed on trust.
Faulkner goes on to argue that our having a way of life wherein
testimony can provide such a source of knowledge and warrant is
dependent upon a society in which a certain kind of trust is
possible.
Focusing on conceptual origins, this book shows that there is a
bond between hominid thinking and hominid evolution, a bond
cemented by the living body. This thesis is illustrated in eight
paleoanthropological case studies ranging from
tool-using/tool-making to counting, sexuality, representation,
language, death, and cave art.
Barry Dainton presents a fascinating new account of the self, the
key to which is experiential or phenomenal continuity.
Provided our mental life continues we can easily imagine ourselves
surviving the most dramatic physical alterations, or even moving
from one body to another. It was this fact that led John Locke to
conclude that a credible account of our persistence conditions - an
account which reflects how we actually conceive of ourselves -
should be framed in terms of mental rather than material
continuity. But mental continuity comes in different forms. Most of
Locke's contemporary followers agree that our continued existence
is secured by psychological continuity, which they take to be made
up of memories, beliefs, intentions, personality traits, and the
like. Dainton argues that that a better and more believable account
can be framed in terms of the sort of continuity we find in our
streams of consciousness from moment to moment. Why? Simply because
provided this continuity is not lost - provided our streams of
consciousness flow on - we can easily imagine ourselves surviving
the most dramatic psychological alterations. Phenomenal continuity
seems to provide a more reliable guide to our persistence than any
form of continuity. The Phenomenal Self is a full-scale defence and
elaboration of this premise.
The first task is arriving at an adequate understanding of
phenomenal unity and continuity. This achieved, Dainton turns to
the most pressing problem facing any experience-based approach:
losses of consciousness. How can we survive them? He shows how the
problem can be solved in a satisfactory manner by construing
ourselves as systems of experiential capacities. He thenmoves on to
explore a range of further issues. How simple can a self be? How
are we related to our bodies? Is our persistence an all-or-nothing
affair? Do our minds consist of parts which could enjoy an
independent existence? Is it metaphysically intelligible to
construe ourselves as systems of capacities? The book concludes
with a novel treatment of fission and fusion.
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