Remarks on Penrose’s “New Argument”

It is commonly agreed that the well-known Lucas–Penrose arguments and even Penrose’s ‘new argument’ in [Penrose, R. (1994): Shadows of the Mind, Oxford University Press] are inconclusive. It is, perhaps, less clear exactly why at least the latter is inconclusive. This note continues the discussion in [Lindström, P. (2001): Penrose’s new argument, J. Philos. Logic 30, 241–250; Shapiro, S.(2003): Mechanism, truth, and Penrose’s new argument, J. Philos. Logic 32, 19–42] and elsewhere of this question.     

Remarks on Grandi’s Comments

This note is a reply to some of Giovanni Grandi’s comments on my paper “Berkeley’s Contingent Necessities.”

Remarks on Smalligan Marusic’s Comments

The author defends attributing to Berkeley the thesis that we can't conceive of extension in a mind-independent body against criticism from Smalligan Marusic. The author also specifies the resemblance requirements that Berkeley places on conceivability, concedes that the principle that ideas can only be like other ideas is not, strictly speaking, a premise in the Master Argument, and clarifies his views on the relation between possibility and conceivability.

Some Remarks on “Hearing-as” and its Role in the Aesthetics of Music

Starting from the context in which Wittgenstein thinks of the concepts of “seeing-as” and “hearing-as”, the basic relation is clarified between the question of representation, musical understanding, and the theory of musical expressiveness. The points of views of Wollheim, Scruton, Levinson, and Ridley are discussed, in a re-consideration of the notions of hearing and understanding within Wittgenstein’s “last philosophy”.     

Remarks on Wittgenstein's über Gewissheit and a Norwegian discussion

In the late forties and in the fifties, what was then known as the Oslo School of Philosophy, that is, Arne Naess and his students, received some fame, or notoriety, for its empirical investigations of lay uses of various epistemological terms, such as ‘true’, ‘certain’, ‘probable’. It is less known that Arne Naess, in 1953, opened up a series of investigations into conceptual frameworks, the comparability of conceptual frameworks, and the senses, if any, in which a conceptual framework can be said to represent knowledge. In the course of these investigations Arne Naess, together with some of his students, developed views that are strikingly close to those of Ludwig Wittgenstein in Über Gewissheit. This paper examines some of those similarities and a few dissimilarities.     

Remarks on “equivalent linear logistic test models” by Bechger,Verstralen, and Verhelst (2002)

This paper discusses a new form of specifying and normalizing a Linear Logistic Test Model (LLTM) as suggested by Bechger, Verstralen, and Verhelst (Psychometrika, 2002). It is shown that there are infinitely many ways to specify the same normalization. Moreover, the relationship between some of their results and equivalent previous results in the literature is clarified, and it is shown that the goals of estimating and testing a single element of the weight matrix, for which they propose new methods, can be reached by means of simple, well-known tools already implemented in published LLTM software.     

Why just turquoise? Remarks on the evolution of color terms

Summary The location of the foci of green and blue in the perceptual color solid indicates that there is space for a derived color term between these two hues. Diachronic and synchronic linguistic studies on color term lexica explain that a term for turquoise is likely to develop into a derived basic color term (in the Kay and McDaniel definition), at present in languages of industrialized countries. In addition to the hypothesis of Zimmer (1982) that türkis (in German) is the result of universal production system for color terms, cultural, social, and psychological factors influence the evolution of new basic color terms.     

Berkeley,Meaning and Minds: Remarks on Glezakos’ Comments

This is a response to Stavroula Glezakos’ commentary on my paper, in which I address three main points: (1) whether Berkeley is entitled to argue via inference to the best explanation, (2) whether Berkeley’s likeness principle might be too strict, and (3) whether the texts support my reading.

Completeness and Decidability Results for Some Propositional Modal Logics Containing “Actually” Operators

The addition of actually operators to modal languages allows us to capture important inferential behaviours which cannot be adequately captured in logics formulated in simpler languages. Previous work on modal logics containing actually operators has concentrated entirely upon extensions of KT5 and has employed a particular model-theoretic treatment of them. This paper proves completeness and decidability results for a range of normal and nonnormal but quasi-normal propositional modal logics containing actually operators, the weakest of which are conservative extensions of K, using a novel generalisation of the standard semantics.     

What Carroll’s Tortoise Actually Proves

Rationality requires us to have certain propositional attitudes (beliefs, intentions, etc.) given certain other attitudes that we have. Carroll’s Tortoise repeatedly shows up in this discussion. Following up on Brunero (Ethical Theory Moral Pract 8:557–569, 2005), I ask what Carroll-style considerations actually prove. This paper rejects two existing suggestions, and defends a third.     

Stern on “Self”

ABSTRACT

Self is a notion of common-sense psychology that several schools of psychoanalysis have built into their theories. Stern explores and expands its meaning, tracing its development back to birth and even earlier, and outlining how the psychological development of the preverbal infant contributes to its evolution. In the process, Stern discusses two perspectives on preverbal infant psychology—that of the observational empiricist developmental psychologist, and that of the reconstructing psychoanalytic clinician working from the subjective experience of adult patients, and what each might contribute to the other. His thinking suggests the importance of nonverbal models of infant (and, eventually, adult) subjective experience.