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1.
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. 相似文献
2.
Robert Nozick’s experience machine thought experiment is often considered a decisive refutation of hedonism. I argue that
the conclusions we draw from Nozick’s thought experiment ought to be informed by considerations concerning the operation of
our intuitions about value. First, I argue that, in order to show that practical hedonistic reasons are not causing our negative
reaction to the experience machine, we must not merely stipulate their irrelevance (since our intuitions are not always responsive
to stipulation) but fill in the concrete details that would make them irrelevant. If we do this, we may see our feelings about
the experience machine becoming less negative. Second, I argue that, even if our feelings about the experience machine do
not perfectly track hedonistic reasons, there are various reasons to doubt the reliability of our anti-hedonistic intuitions.
And finally, I argue that, since in the actual world seeing certain things besides pleasure as ends in themselves may best
serve hedonistic ends, hedonism may justify our taking these other things to be intrinsically valuable, thus again making
the existence of our seemingly anti-hedonistic intuitions far from straightforward evidence for the falsity of hedonism. 相似文献
3.
The present paper briefly reviews recent advances in spatial cognition. A central tenet in spatial cognition is that spatial
information is simultaneously encoded in multiple formats. It also appears that at the level of neural processing there is
no clear distinction between the representation of space and the control of action. I will argue that these findings offer
novel insight into the nature of dance and choreography and that the concepts used by cognitive neuroscientists to frame their
findings can be fruitfully applied in a choreographic setting. Finally, I will speculate that both dancing oneself and watching
dance may enhance one’s experience of space. 相似文献
4.
This paper engages Freud’s relation to Kant, with specific reference to each theorist’s articulation of the interconnections
between ethics and religion. I argue that there is in fact a constructive approach to ethics and religion in Freud’s thought,
and that this approach can be better understood by examining it in relation to Kant’s formulations on these topics. Freud’s
thinking about religion and ethics participates in the Enlightenment heritage, with its emphasis on autonomy and rationality,
of which Kant’s model of practical reason is in many ways exemplary. At the same time, Freud advances Kantian thinking in
certain important respects; his work offers a more somatically, socially, and historically grounded approach to the formation
of rational and ethical capacities, and hence makes it more compatible with contemporary concerns and orientations that eschew
the pitfalls of ahistorical idealist orientations. 相似文献
5.
In this paper, I take up the problem of the self through bringing together the insights, while correcting some of the shortcomings,
of Indo–Tibetan Buddhist and enactivist accounts of the self. I begin with an examination of the Buddhist theory of non-self
( anātman) and the rigorously reductionist interpretation of this doctrine developed by the Abhidharma school of Buddhism. After discussing
some of the fundamental problems for Buddhist reductionism, I turn to the enactive approach to philosophy of mind and cognitive
science. I argue that human beings, as dynamic systems, are characterized by a high degree of self-organizing autonomy. Therefore,
human beings are not reducible to the more basic mental and physical events that constitute them. I critically examine Francisco
Varela’s enactivist account of the self as virtual and his use of Buddhist ideas in support of this view. I argue, in contrast,
that while the self is emergent and constructed, it is not merely virtual. Finally I sketch a Buddhist-enactivist account
of the self. I argue for a non-reductionist view of the self as an active, embodied, embedded, self-organizing process—what
the Buddhists call ‘I’-making ( ahaṃkāra). This emergent process of self-making is grounded in the fundamentally recursive processes that characterize lived experience:
autopoiesis at the biological level, temporalization and self-reference at the level of conscious experience, and conceptual and narrative construction at the level of intersubjectivity. In Buddhist terms, I will develop an account of the self as dependently originated and
empty, but nevertheless real. 相似文献
6.
Scientific change has two important dimensions: conceptual change and structural change. In this paper, I argue that the existence
of conceptual change brings serious difficulties for scientific realism, and the existence of structural change makes structural
realism look quite implausible. I then sketch an alternative account of scientific change, in terms of partial structures,
that accommodates both conceptual and structural changes. The proposal, however, is not realist, and supports a structuralist
version of van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism (structural empiricism). 相似文献
7.
I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and
philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the
self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald
Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s
later work, in which he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within
what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom
organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue
that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary
and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world. 相似文献
8.
This essay engages with Heidegger’s attempt to re-think the human being. It shows that Heidegger re-thinks the human being
by challenging the way the human being has been thought, and the mode of thinking traditionally used to think about the human
being. I spend significant time discussing Heidegger’s attempt before, in the final section, asking some critical questions
of Heidegger’s endeavour and pointing out how his analysis can re-invigorate contemporary attempts to understand the human
being. 相似文献
9.
A distinctive feature of Merleau‐Ponty's thought is the central role he assigns style in generally characterizing embodied agents' perceptual and cognitive functioning. Despite this, he says little to explain how he conceives style itself. This article therefore aims to clarify Merleau‐Ponty's notion of style and its significance within and beyond his work. It begins by surveying his broad application of the term and using his discussions of painting to reconstruct his conception of style, identifying two major roles Merleau‐Ponty attributes it in unifying intentional structures and founding conceptual meaning. His view is related to several competing philosophical conceptions of style to highlight its distinctiveness and some conceptual difficulties in adequately defining style. I then argue that Merleau‐Ponty succeeds in coherently distinguishing style from rules by recognizing that style conceives pattern formation, especially the relation of general and particular, in a way contrasting with the identity‐based thinking inherent in the functioning of rules. With this distinction, I conclude that, although Merleau‐Ponty overgeneralizes its role, his conception of style has broader philosophical significance in accurately capturing the nonmechanical cohesion of certain embodied intelligent activities (such as painting) and enabling better understanding of the variety of forms such activities can take. 相似文献
10.
Philosophers have tended to dismiss John Stuart Mill’s claim that ‘all silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility’.
I argue that Mill’s ‘infallibility claim’ is indeed open to many objections, but that, contrary to the consensus, those objections
fail to defeat the anti-authoritarian thesis which lies at its core. I then argue that Mill’s consequentialist case for the
liberty of thought and discussion is likewise capable of withstanding some familiar objections. My purpose is to suggest that
Mill’s anti-authoritarianism and his faith in thought and discussion, when taken seriously, supply the basis for a ‘public
interest’ account of ‘freedom of expression as the liberty of thought and discussion’ which is faithful to Mill in spirit,
if not to the precise letter. I outline such an account, which – as I say in conclusion – can serve as a valuable safeguard
against ad hoc, reactive legislation, and the demands of a spurious communitarianism. 相似文献
11.
This paper examines taxonomy comparison from a cognitive perspective. Arguments are developed by drawing on the results of
cognitive psychology, which reveal the cognitive mechanisms behind the practice of taxonomy comparison. The taxonomic change
in 19th-century ornithology is also used to uncover the historical practice that ornithologists employed in the revision of
the classification of birds. On the basis of cognitive and historical analyses, I argue that incommensurable taxonomies can
be compared rationally. Using a frame model to represent taxonomy, I show how rational comparisons were achieved in the historical
case through compatible contrast sets and attribute lists. Through analyzing the cognitive processes of classification and
concept representation, I further explain how rival taxonomies in the historical case could be rationally compared on ‘platforms’
rooted in such cognitive mechanisms as relational assumptions and preferences for body parts in conceptual processing.
This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date. 相似文献
12.
The traditional account (TA) of first-person thought draws conclusions about this type of thinking from claims made about
the first-person pronoun. In this paper I raise a worry for the traditional account. Certain uses of ‘I’ conflict with its
conception of the linguistic data. I argue that once the data is analysed correctly, the traditional approach to first-person
thought cannot be maintained. 相似文献
13.
I argue that we cannot adequately characterize idealization and abstraction and the distinction between the two on the grounds that they have distinct semantic properties. By doing so, on the one hand, we focus on the conceptual products of the two processes in making the distinction and we overlook the importance of the nature of the thought processes that underlie model-simplifying assumptions. On the other hand, we implicitly rely on a sense of abstraction as subtraction, which is unsuitable for explicating scientific model construction. Instead, I argue that a sense of abstraction as extraction is more suitable. Finally, I suggest a different way to distinguish the two processes that avoids these problems. Namely, that both idealization and abstraction could be understood as particular modes of application of the same cognitive process: selective attention.
相似文献
15.
In this essay, I answer Nick Trakakis’ second critique of my argument against the adequacy of traditional free will theodicy.
I argue, first, that Trakakis errs in his implicit assertion that my argument relies upon our being strongly malevolent by
nature. I argue, second, that Trakakis errs in thinking that our being weakly benevolent, morally bivalent, or weakly malevolent
by nature is sufficient to refute my critique of the traditional freewill theodicy. I still maintain that the argument from
freedom of the will offers an explanation of moral evil that is, in the final analysis, manifestly inadequate.
I thank Nick Trakakis for his continuing interest in my essay, “On the Alleged Connection Between Moral Evil and Human Freedom.”
The exchange of ideas in an atmosphere of mutual respect is the very heart of philosophy and I am grateful for the opportunity
to participate in such an exchange. I believe, as a consequence, that my thinking concerning the inadequacy of the traditional
free will theodicy has become more fully articulated. 相似文献
16.
In this essay, I first evaluate the conceptual analysis of human rights by Wilfried Hinsch and Markus Stepanians. Next I criticize
Allen Buchanan’s claim that Rawls did not address basic human interests/capabilities theories of human nature. I argue Buchanan
is doubly mistaken when he claims that John Rawls sought to avoid such theories because they are comprehensive doctrines.
Then I evaluate David Reidy’s defense of Rawls, while questioning his efforts to show how Rawls’s list of human rights could
be expanded. Finally, I accept James Nickel’s argument that Rawls has tied human rights too closely to intervention on their
behalf. However, I reject his, and by implication Rawls’s, refusal to accept a two-tiered approach to human rights. 相似文献
17.
I develop a “two-systems” interpretation of Husserl’s theory of belief. On this interpretation, Husserl accounts for our sense
of the world in terms of (1) a system of embodied horizon meanings and passive synthesis, which is involved in any experience
of an object, and (2) a system of active synthesis and sedimentation, which comes on line when we attend to an object’s properties.
I use this account to defend Husserl against several forms of Heideggerean critique. One line of critique, recently elaborated
by Taylor Carman, says that Husserl wrongly loads everyday perception with explicit beliefs about things. A second, earlier
line of critique, due to Hubert Dreyfus, charges Husserl with thinking of belief on a problematic Artificial Intelligence
(AI) model which involves explicit rules applied to discrete symbol structures. I argue that these criticisms are based on
a conflation of Husserl’s two systems of belief. The conception of Husserlian phenomenology which emerges is compatible with
Heideggerean phenomenology and associated approaches to cognitive science (in particular, dynamical systems theory).
相似文献
18.
The paper examines three themes from the recent philosophical literature on place: the status of places as “concrete universals”;
the narratively mediated agency of places; and the various ways in which human identity proves to be relative to place. I
argue that these themes throw into new relief a set of correlative issues in philosophical theology concerning, respectively,
God’s supra-individuality, God’s status as a final cause, and the divine grounding of human identity. On this basis, the paper
proposes that knowledge of place is analogous to, and partly constitutive of, knowledge of God. 相似文献
19.
I discuss Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. I focus on the problem of perceived similarity. I argue that recent work in developmental psychology and neuroscience, concerning
intermodal representation and the mirror neuron system, fails to constitute a naturalistic solution to the problem. This can
be seen via a comparison between the Husserlian project on the one hand and Molyneux’s Question on the other. 相似文献
20.
Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work
primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny
that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic
beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess
cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human responses, and that cognizers
are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation.
However, in this article I use Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded
upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue
that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that’s often involved, influences and enables the
mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what’s involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it’s within a socio-linguistic community, and that community’s practices, that such aesthetic
sense can be made intelligible. 相似文献
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