What are we frightened of?

I am concerned to understand that relation to a situation which we call fearing it. Some say this cannot be done: it is a brute fact about us that we fear certain things and we understand another's fear when we see that he confronts a situation of this sort (a basic fear object) or one which he understandably associates with this sort. In Section I, I argue that being associated with a basic fear object will not usefully explain a current fear. In Section II, I argue that the obvious candidates for being basic fears will not do the required work. The notion should be rejected. I then argue that to fear an object is to take it as exhibiting one's lack of control and I proceed to describe the nature and content of this notion.     

What Are Degrees of Belief?

Probabilism is committed to two theses:

What is the point of helping?

Philosophical Studies - In some cases, a group of people can bring about a morally bad outcome despite each person’s individual act making no difference with respect to bringing that outcome...     

What kind of discipline is psychoanalysis?

Current controversies involving clinical, conceptual and empirical research shed light on how psychoanalysis confronts its nature and its future. Some relevant debates in which Wallerstein, Green, Hoffman, Eagle and Wolitzky, Safran, Stern, Blass and Carmeli, and Panksepp have participated are examined regarding the characteristics of their argumentation. Agreements and disagreements are explored to find ways that could have allowed the discussion to progress. Two foci are highlighted in these debates: (a) whether a clinical common ground exists in psychoanalysis and what kind of procedure could contribute to further clarification; (b) complementation of in‐clinical and extra‐clinical evidence. Both aspects are scrutinized: the possibility of complementing diverse methodologies, and the nature of the shared clinical evidence examined in clinical discussion groups such as those promoted by the IPA Clinical Observation Committee. The importance of triangulation and consilience is brought to bear regarding their contribution to the robustness of psychoanalysis. So as to strengthen a critical perspective that enhances the discipline's argumentative field, psychoanalysis should take into account arguments from different sources according to their specific merits. By doing this, psychoanalysis increases its relevance within the current interdisciplinary dialogue.     

What is the Problem of Non-Existence?

It is widely held that there is a problem of talking about or otherwise representing things that not exist. But what exactly is this problem? This paper presents a formulation of the problem in terms of the conflict between the fact that there are truths about non-existent things and the fact that truths must be answerable to reality, how things are. Given this, the problem of singular negative existential statements is no longer the central or most difficult aspect of the problem of non-existence, despite what some philosophers say.     

What is General Philosophy of Science?

The very idea of a general philosophy of science relies on the assumption that there is this thing called science??as opposed to the various individual sciences. In this programmatic piece I make a case for the claim that general philosophy of science is the philosophy of science in general or science as such. Part of my narrative makes use of history, for two reasons. First, general philosophy of science is itself characterised by an intellectual tradition which aimed to develop a coherent philosophical view of science, qua a part of culture with distinctive epistemic features and a distinctive relation to reality. But, second, this tradition went through some important conceptual shifts which re-oriented it and made it more sensitive to the actual development of science itself. The historical narrative focuses on three such moments: the defining moment, associated with Aristotle, and two major conceptual turns, related to Kant and Duhem. The pressures on the very idea of a general philosophy of science that followed the collapse of the macro-models of science that became popular in the 1960s, the pressures that lay all of the emphasis on fragmentation and not on integration, can be dealt with by a new synthesis within general philosophy of science of the constitutive and the historical, in light of the intellectual tradition that has defined it.     

What is Locke's Theory of Representation?

On a currently popular reading of Locke, an idea represents its cause, or what God intended to be its cause. Against Martha Bolton and my former self (among others), I argue that Locke cannot hold such a view, since it sins against his epistemology and theory of abstraction. I argue that Locke is committed to a resemblance theory of representation, with the result that ideas of secondary qualities are not representations.     

What Kind of Narcissist Are You?

We are all narcissists, and necessarily so, since healthy narcissism is one of the main routes available to us for nourishing and protecting ourselves. Like all personality traits, narcissism is dimensional. For our own good, and for that of those whose lives we touch, it is useful to know what kind of narcissist we are, and to what effect. When my own narcissism was tweaked by an event that left most people relatively nonplussed, I examined the implications of this psychic insult. I looked to the contents of my narcissistic mirror, asking who and what had contributed to that template. After this analysis, I was able to see more clearly and concretely how helpful the concept of narcissism can be when trying to understand both normal and pathological behavior.     

What Is a Context of Utterance?

Philosophical Studies -     

What is the Normativity of Meaning?

There has been much debate over whether to accept the claim that meaning is normative. One obstacle to making progress in that debate is that it is not always clear what the claim amounts to. In this paper, I try to resolve a dispute between those who advance the claim concerning how it should be understood. More specifically, I critically examine two competing conceptions of the normativity of meaning, rejecting one and defending the other. Though the paper aims to settle a dispute among proponents of the claim that meaning is normative, it should be of interest to those who challenge it. After all, before one takes aim, one’s target needs to be in clear view.     

What is the Meaning of Proofs?

Journal of Philosophical Logic - The origins of proof-theoretic semantics lie in the question of what constitutes the meaning of the logical connectives and its response: the rules of inference...     

What Kind of Normativity is the Normativity of Grammar?

The overall goal of this article is to show that aesthetics plays a major role in a debate at the very center of philosophy. Drawing on the work of David Bell, the article spells out how Kant and Wittgenstein use reflective judgment, epitomized by a judgment of beauty, as a key in their respective solutions to the rule‐following problem they share. The more specific goal is to offer a Kantian account of semantic normativity as understood by Wittgenstein. The article argues that Wittgenstein's reason for describing language as a collection of language games is to allow for a perspective that shows those games as internally purposive without any extralinguistic purpose. This perspective also allows for that union of the general rule and its particular application in practice that the original paradox of rule‐following is wanting.     

What are the phenomena of physics?

Depending on different positions in the debate on scientific realism, there are various accounts of the phenomena of physics. For scientific realists like Bogen and Woodward, phenomena are matters of fact in nature, i.e., the effects explained and predicted by physical theories. For empiricists like van Fraassen, the phenomena of physics are the appearances observed or perceived by sensory experience. Constructivists, however, regard the phenomena of physics as artificial structures generated by experimental and mathematical methods. My paper investigates the historical background of these different meanings of “phenomenon” in the traditions of physics and philosophy. In particular, I discuss Newton’s account of the phenomena and Bohr’s view of quantum phenomena, their relation to the philosophical discussion, and to data and evidence in current particle physics and quantum optics.     

What kind of kind is intelligence?

The model of human intelligence that is most widely adopted derives from psychometrics and behavioral genetics. This standard approach conceives intelligence as a general cognitive ability that is genetically highly heritable and describable using quantitative traits analysis. The paper analyzes intelligence within the debate on natural kinds and contends that the general intelligence conceptualization does not carve psychological nature at its joints. Moreover, I argue that this model assumes an essentialist perspective. As an alternative, I consider an HPC theory of intelligence and evaluate how it deals with essentialism and with intuitions coming from cognitive science. Finally, I highlight some concerns about the HPC model as well, and conclude by suggesting that it is unnecessary to treat intelligence as a kind in any sense.     

What is the Philosophy of Information?

Computational and information-theoretic research in philosophy has become increasingly fertile and pervasive, giving rise to a wealth of interesting results. In consequence, a new and vitally important field has emerged, the philosophy of information (PI). This essay is the first attempt to analyse the nature of PI systematically. PI is defined as the philosophical field concerned with the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. I argue that PI is a mature discipline for three reasons: it represents an autonomous field of research; it provides an innovative approach to both traditional and new philosophical topics; and it can stand beside other branches of philosophy, offering a systematic treatment of the conceptual foundations of the world of information and the information society.