IX—On Being Bored Out of Your Mind

The contemporary philosophical debate over practical reasoning—over how one ought to figure out what to do—has been almost entirely focused on whether there is more to it than means-ends reasoning. But a prior and very difficult question has to do with why instrumental deliberation is so important an aspect of our cognitive life (regardless of whether there is anything else). I consider an answer broached by Harry Frankfurt, that having ends is the alternative to being literally bored out of one's mind, and adapt an argument from John Stuart Mill's political and psychological writings to show what more there is to not being bored than just having something to aim for.     

存在·心灵·价值——布伦塔诺哲学疏论

布伦塔诺哲学博大精深.其主题可由"存在"、"心灵"、"价值"贯通.布氏把"内知觉明证性"原则引入"实在"的分层,将亚里士多德哲学中"存在"的多义性推进到"实在"的多层性.布氏的"心灵学"是对亚氏"灵魂论"的扬弃,其创发之处是对"心灵现象"的厘清和类型划分.布氏以"内在价值"为核心的价值伦理思想是对前人相关思想的重大突破,他以"明智的经验主义"与"真实的个体主义"为尊严、平等和仁爱等重要的普世价值奠基.布氏哲学是对以"认识你自己"为鹄的的哲学的实质性推进.     

Being Right,and Being in the Right

This paper presents a critique of a prevailing conception of the relation between moral reasoning and judgment on the one hand, and moral goodness on the other. I argue that moral reasoning is inescapably vulnerable to moral, as opposed to merely theoretical, failure. This, I argue, means that there is something deeply misleading in the way that Kant's moral theory, and some of its main rivals, have invited us to conceive of their subject matter.     

Mind,State, and Metaphor

This article examines the post‐Ryle developments in philosophy of mind and psychology, in particular tracing the emergence of the concept of a mental state. The climate immediately following the large‐scale rejection of Descartes seems rather hostile to the idea of mental properties as internal states that cause behaviour. In this context, the emergence of the reificatory view of mental states is quite surprising, and it appears to stem from Putnam's adoption of the Turing machine (including the Turing state) as a model for human psychology. I conclude that the success of the “mental state” is down to the fact that it neatly conforms to the picture painted by the metaphorical expressions we use when talking about minds and mental things, and that its success is more accidental than inevitable.     

Reasoning,Meaning, and Mind

Book Information Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind. By Gilbert Harman. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1999. Pp. viii + 291. Hardback, $120.00.     

Body,Mind and Bonds

In this paper, after reviewing some of the controversial concepts of psychosomatics, and their historical development as well as some of their theoretical and clinical consequences, I propose a vincular point of view of this type of pathology, with some dreams of a psychosomatic patient where different aspects of the proposed model can be observed.     

Realism,Mind and Evolution

Perceptual experience is perspectival, and human minds occupy a variety of “viewpoints.” These considerations provide grounds for both realist and anti‐realist philosophies. Each is represented in adjacent areas of thought, and often connects with familiar debates between “conservatives” and “liberals,” which in turn are commonly related to disputes about religious and naturalistic accounts of the world and of the place of human beings within it. These have been joined from an orthogonal direction by Thomas Nagel in his recent book Mind and Cosmos. This is considered and contrasted with the ideas of Thomas Aquinas before returning to the possibility of reconciling perspectivalism with an account of what it could mean to speak of the world as it is in itself.     

Being grateful for being: Being, reverence and finitude

Atheists are rarely associated with holiness, yet they can have deeply spiritual experiences. Once such experience of the author exemplified ‘the holy’ as defined by Otto. However, the subjectivism of Otto’s Kantianism undermines Otto’s otherwise fruitful approach. While the work of Hegel overcomes this, it is too rationalistic to account for mortal life. Seeking to avoid these shortcomings, this paper places ‘holiness’ within a self-differentiating ontological unity, the Heideggerian ‘fourfold’. This unity can only be experienced by confronting groundless finite mortality, and the resulting existential disposition is characterized as ‘reverence’. Reverence is gratitude for mortal existence, and existence itself. Moreover, it is as much political as it is ontological, atheistic as it is theistic.     

Mind,Consciousness, and Free Will

This commentary discusses how philosophy and science can collaborate to understand the human mind, considering dialogues involving three philosophers and three cognitive scientists. Their topics include the relation of philosophy and science, the nature of mind, the problem of consciousness, and the existence of free will. I argue that philosophy is more general and normative than science, but they are interdependent. Philosophy can build on the cognitive sciences to develop a theory of mind I call “multilevel materialism,” which integrates molecular, neural, mental, and social mechanisms. Consciousness is increasingly being understood as resulting from neural mechanisms. Scientific advances make the traditional concept of free will implausible, but “freeish” will is consistent with new theories of decision making and action resulting from brain processes. Philosophers should work closely with scientists to address profound problems about knowledge, reality, and values.