Este artículo presenta a Weber y Habermas como los umbrales o polos de una modernidad que tiene al progreso como horizonte teórico-práctico. El diagnóstico weberiano sobre la modernidad y su proceso de desencantamiento del mundo y la injustificada reducción de la actividad racional a una actividad utilitario-estratégica desprovista de su carácter veritativo y de su orientación valórica, Habermas la utiliza para justificar su propuesta teórico-crítica respecto a la modernidad y la "paradoja de la racionalización", distinguiendo "sistema" y "mundo vital". Aquí (...) "desencantamiento del mundo" y "consenso del proyecto de lamodernidad", se encuentranThis article presents Weber and Habermas like the thresholds or poles of a modernity that has to the progress as theoretical- practical horizon. The diagnosis weberiano on the modernity and his process of disenchantment of the world and the unjustified reduction of the rational activity to a utilitarian-strategic activity devoid of his character of truth, Habermas uses to justify his theoretical-critical offerwith regard to themodernity and the "paradox of the rationalization", distinguishing "system" and "vital world". Here "disenchantment of the world" and "consensus of the project of the modernity", they are. (shrink)

John Searle once said: "The Chinese room shows what we knew all along: syntax by itself is not sufficient for semantics. (Does anyone actually deny this point, I mean straight out? Is anyone actually willing to say, straight out, that they think that syntax, in the sense of formal symbols, is really the same as semantic content, in the sense of meanings, thought contents, understanding, etc.?)." I say: "Yes". Stuart C. Shapiro has said: "Does that make any sense? Yes: (...) Everything makes sense. The question is: What sense does it make?" This essay explores what sense it makes to say that syntax by itself is sufficient for semantics. (shrink)

Elgin has presented an extensive defence of reflective equilibrium embedded in an epistemology which focuses on objectual understanding rather than ordinary propositional knowledge. This paper has two goals: to suggest an account of reflective equilibrium which is sympathetic to Elgin’s but includes a range of further developments, and to analyse its role in an account of understanding. We first address the structure of reflective equilibrium as a target state and argue that reflective equilibrium requires more than an equilibrium (...) in the sense of a coherent position. On the one hand, the position also needs to be stable between a ‘conservative’ pull of input commitments and a ‘progressive’ pull of epistemic goals; on the other hand, reflective equilibrium requires that enough of the resulting commitments have some credibility independent of the coherence of the position. We then turn to the dynamics of reflective equilibrium, the process of mutual adjustment of commitments and theories. Here, the most pressing internal challenges for defenders of reflective equilibrium arise: to characterize this process more exactly and to explain its status in relation to reflective equilibrium as a target state. Finally, we investigate the role of reflective equilibrium in Elgin’s account of understanding and argue that objectual understanding cannot be explained in terms of reflective equilibrium alone. An epistemic agent who understands a subject matter by means of a theory also needs to be able to use this theory and the theory needs to meet some external rightness condition. (shrink)

The work reported in this paper investigated the putative functional dependence of pragmatic language skills on general mind‐reading capacity by testing theory‐of‐mind abilities and understanding of non‐literal speech in patients with schizophrenia and in healthy controls. Patients showed difficulties with inferring mental states on a false‐belief picture‐sequencing task and with understanding metaphors and irony on a story‐comprehension task. These difficulties were independent of low verbal IQ and a more generalised problem inhibiting prepotent information. Understanding of metaphors and (...) understanding of irony made significant and independent contributions to discriminating patients from controls, suggesting that metaphor and irony make distinct pragmatic demands. (shrink)

"In 1982, the author of this book issued a "promissory note" of just the sort that analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have led us to expect will come to nothing. This particular "note" occurred as a passing remark in the concluding chapter of his Introducing Semiotic (Indiana University Press) to the effect that it would be possible to establish the classical distinction between sense and intellect by means of the analysis of the role of relations in the action of (...) signs." "Provoked by the remark of a colleague that, could this promissory note be fulfilled, it would provide "the first essay worth reading on the subject since the days of Locke and Hume," Deely decided to break with the analytic tradition of leaving promissory notes unfulfilled and to develop the alleged possible proof in full." "A colloquium convened by Professor Norma Tasca, in the Fall of 1995 in Porto, Portugal, provided Deely with the occasion. His lengthy essay for the occasion, ponderously titled "The Intersemiosis of Perception and Understanding," became the initial draft of this book." "Especially in the circles of English-speaking philosophers, where a mere difference of degree between animal intelligence and human understanding has come to be largely taken for granted and philosophy has been reduced to a play of linguistic signs without regard for the dependency of those signs upon other signs whose play is far from linguistic, the work is bound to stimulate considerable debate."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

COVID-19 has substantially affected our lives during 2020. Since its beginning, several epidemiological models have been developed to investigate the specific dynamics of the disease. Early COVID-19 epidemiological models were purely statistical, based on a curve-fitting approach, and did not include causal knowledge about the disease. Yet, these models had predictive capacity; thus they were used to ground important political decisions, in virtue of the understanding of the dynamics of the pandemic that they offered. This raises a philosophical question (...) about how purely statistical models can yield understanding, and if so, what the relationship between prediction and understanding in these models is. Drawing on the model that was developed by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, we argue that early epidemiological models yielded a modality of understanding that we call descriptive understanding, which contrasts with the so-called explanatory understanding which is assumed to be the main form of scientific understanding. We spell out the exact details of how descriptive understanding works, and efficiently yields understanding of the phenomena. Finally, we vindicate the necessity of studying other modalities of understanding that go beyond the conventionally assumed explanatory understanding. (shrink)

The concept of volition has a long history in Western thought, but is looked upon unfavorably in contemporary philosophy and psychology. This paper proposes and elaborates a unifying conception of volition, which views volition as a mediating executive mental process that bridges the gaps between an agent's deliberation, decision and voluntary bodily action. Then the paper critically examines three major skeptical arguments against volition: volition is a mystery, volition is an illusion, and volition is a fundamentally flawed conception that leads (...) to infinite regress. It is shown that all these charges are untenable and the arguments are far from decisive to dismiss the concept of volition. In addition, it is suggested that a naturalistic approach, which takes philosophical inquiry as continuous with the scientific study of volition, is a promising way to demystify volition. (shrink)

Paulina Sliwa (2015) argues that knowing why p is necessary and sufficient for understanding why p. She tries to rebut recent attacks against the necessity and sufficiency claims, and explains the gradability of understanding why in terms of knowledge. I argue that her attempts do not succeed, but I indicate more promising ways to defend reductionism about understanding why throughout the discussion.

Watson’s monograph, The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them, clearly, succinctly and deftly introduces the notion of the right to know or epistemic rights to the epistemology literature. She does this partly by connecting the conclusions and theoretical motives of the moral and legal rights literature to the epistemology literature. In part, motivated by this book’s great value, I present two objections to some of the book’s central claims. The first objection is that there is tension (...) between (i) the book’s claim that information distribution is a basic epistemic duty that epistemic rights generate and (ii) the book’s claim that epistemic rights are complied with if subjects receive epistemic goods such as understanding and knowledge that respect their final value. The second objection is that the dyadic nature of Watson’s account of epistemic rights violation does not comport with plausible cases in which non-dominant groups’ epistemic rights have been violated and as a consequence the book’s claim that epistemic rights provide those who wield them an especially forceful rhetorical tool requires further motivation. (shrink)

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically problematic. (...) Poor linguistic understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests. (shrink)

Is ChatGPT a good teacher? Or could it be? As understanding is widely acknowledged as one of the fundamental aims of education, the answer to these questions depends on whether ChatGPT fosters or could foster the acquisition of understanding in its users. In this paper, I tackle this issue in two steps. In the first part of the paper, I explore and analyze the set of skills and social-epistemic virtues that a teacher must exemplify to perform her job (...) well – in those contexts in which epistemic aims are at play and in which understanding plays a pivotal role. In the second part of the paper, I put my conception of good teacher to test and deal with the question whether, and to which extent, the software ChatGPT is (or could serve as, if suitably modified or fine-tuned) a good teacher for its users. I close with some final reflections that point to further directions of research. -/- . (shrink)

ABSTRACT With a particular focus on the experience of young people in higher education, this paper turns to the philosophical work of Cora Diamond to open up new ways of conceptualising mental health. We claim that Diamond offers a compelling insight into that experience of human difficulty so often subsumed by a medicalised vocabulary. We propose that she offers philosophically astute perceptions of the related human attempts at deflection. And we situate this reading of Diamond against a broader understanding (...) of the contemporary university as a place of institutional darkness. In developing this general discussion, we place ourselves within a very particular context. We draw on the narratives of a number of third-level students in Ireland, who shared their experiences as part of a hermeneutic phenomenological study into the lived experience of mental health difficulties. (shrink)

In the current debate on the relation between how-possibly explanations (HPEs) and understanding, two seemingly irreconcilable positions have emerged, which either deny or assert HPEs’ contribution to understanding. We argue, in contrast, that there is substantial room for reconciliation between these positions. First, we show that a shared assumption is unfounded: HPEs can be interpreted as being correct explanations. Second, we argue that what we call the standard account is actually compatible with the claim that HPEs may improve (...) understanding. Our analysis not only indicates that there is room for reconciliation, but also specifies the potential remaining disagreements. (shrink)

It is predicted that the rapid acquisition of new genetic knowledge and related applications during the next decade will have significant implications for virtually all members of society. Currently, most people get exposed to information about genes and genetics only through stories publicized in the media. We sought to understand how individuals in the general population used and understood the concepts of ???genetics??? and ???genes.??? During in-depth one-on-one telephone interviews with adults in the United States, we asked questions exploring their (...) basic understanding of these terms, as well as their belief as to the location of genes in the human body. A wide range of responses was received. Despite conversational familiarity with genetic terminology, many noted frustration or were hesitant when trying to answer these questions. In addition, some responses reflected a lack of understanding about basic genetic science that may have significant implications for broader public education measures in genetic literacy, genetic counseling, public health practices, and even routine health care. (shrink)

Following Burge, many anti-individualists suppose that a subject can possess a concept even if she incompletely understands it. While agreeing that this is possible, I argue that there is a limit on the extent to which a subject can incompletely understand the set of concepts she thinks with. This limit derives from our conception of our ability to reflectively evaluate our own thoughts or, as Burge puts it, our ability to engage in critical reasoning. The paper extends Burge’s own work (...) on critical reasoning. He argued that critical reasoning imposes a limit on the extent to which we can be mistaken about what thoughts we are having; in general, we can know non-empirically what we are thinking . He does not explicitly consider whether critical reasoning also imposes a limit on incomplete understanding of thoughts. (shrink)

This is an abridgement of the complete translation of the New Essays, first published in 1981, designed for use as a study text. The material extraneous to philosophy - more than a third of the original - and the glossary of notes have been cut and a philosophical introduction and bibliography of work on Leibniz have been provided by the translators. The marginal pagination has been retained for ease of cross-reference to the full edition. The work itself is an acknowledged (...) philosophical classic, in which Leibniz argues point by point with Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The result is the single most important confrontation between the philosophical traditions of rationalism and empiricism. It makes an extremely suitable focus for the study of Leibniz's thought and of those two traditions in relation to one another. (shrink)

It is plausible to think, as many developmental psychologists do, that joint attention is important in the development of getting a full grasp on psychological notions. This chapter argues that this role of joint attention is best understood in the context of the simulation theory about the nature of psychological understanding rather than in the context of the theory. Episodes of joint attention can then be seen not as good occasions for learning a theory of mind but rather as (...) good occasions for developing skills of expressing and sharing thoughts. This approach suggests seeing language acquisition as learning how to focus and fine-tune joint attention already present in the normal basic relation of carer and infant. Philosophers in thinking about other minds have concentrated too much on the contrast of first and third person, I vs he/she, and forgotten the centrality of the contrast of first and second person, I vs you, and the related centrality of we. (shrink)

This article provides an introduction to a special issue of the journal Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, On Understanding and Explaining Schizophrenia. The article identifies a common thread running through the different contributions to this special issue, inspired by Jaspers's (1963) suggestion that a profound impairment in the ability to engage in interpersonal and social relations is a key factor in psychiatric disorders. It is argued that this suggestion can help solve a central dilemma in psychopathology, which is to make (...) intelligible the emergence and nature of psychiatric phenomena involving disturbances of rationality, intentionality and self-consciousness, whilst at the same time accounting for a sense in which such phenomena resist understanding. (shrink)

Research has demonstrated that language is important for the development of an everyday understanding of mind. The Theory of Mind framework is the dominant conception of what and how children develop in coming to understand mind. As such, much current thinking in developmental psychology about the way language makes a difference to the development of mentalistic understanding is tainted by certain deeply entrenched philosophical assumptions. Following an examination of views of language and mind that continue to frame, if (...) only tacitly, the ToM tradition, we offer an alternative con-ception of the nature of mental state concepts and how language-based engagements between children and care-givers introduce an understanding of such concepts. Based on that alternative conception of language and mind we propose that parent-child discussion about situations involving minds facilitate the child's development of an understanding of mind. We attempt to demonstrate that the development of the foundational skills necessary for understanding the meaning of psychological terms through such conversation make the construction and appreciation of narratives possible, deepening and extending the child's mentalistic understanding. We then review three studies of parent-child talk about situations involving mind that offer empirical support for the claim that such talk is an important context for developing an understanding of aspects of human activity that involve reasons for action, emotion and belief. We conclude by describing the situated and sequential nature of meaning that our view of language and mind entails. (shrink)

Many philosophers take understanding to be a distinctive kind of knowledge that involves grasping dependency relations; moreover, they hold it to be particularly valuable. This paper aims to investigate and address two well-known puzzles that arise from this conception: (1) the nature of understanding itself—in particular, the nature of “grasping”; (2) the source of understanding’s distinctive value. In what follows, I’ll argue that we can shed light on both puzzles by recognizing first, the importance of the distinction (...) between the act of coming to understand and the state of understanding; and second, that coming to understand is a creative act. (shrink)

E. O. Wilson (1974: 54) describes the problem that social organisms pose: “On what bases do we distinguish the extremely modified members of an invertebrate colony from the organs of a metazoan animal?” This framing of the issue has inspired many to look more closely at how groups of organisms form and behave as emergent individuals. The possible existence of “superorganisms” test our best intuitions about what can count and act as genuine biological individuals and how we should study them. (...) As we will discuss, colonies of certain organisms display many of the properties that we usually reserve only to individual organisms. Although there is good reason to believe that many social insects form genuine emergent biological individuals, the conclusion offered here is of a slightly different sort. I will argue that to understand some social insects' interactions and the emergent traits they give rise to, it may be helpful to shift our understanding from a community-level approach to an ecosystem-level approach. I will argue that viewing certain insect colonies (termites) as parts of ecosystems allows us to better understand some of the adaptations that have emerged from their evolution. (shrink)

This article presents an existential framework for understanding loss and grief. Since not all experiences of loss lead to grief, I begin by exploring what constitutes grievable losses. The dominant approach in grief research has been to understand grief in terms of bereavement. In light of emerging discourses on living and non-death losses, this approach no longer seems tenable, and the contemporary debate requires an account of grievability that extends beyond bereavement. In response to this challenge, I propose a (...) two-part existential framework. The first part introduces mourning as a ground attunement, suggesting that our finitude is the basis for generalized experiences of loss. The second part posits that specific grievable losses reflect a loss of identity. To explain this, I introduce the concept of existential identity and four associated axes susceptible to loss. Lastly, I demonstrate how this framework can be used to analyze loss as complex existential experiences. (shrink)

Newton and Einstein each in his way showed us the following: an epistemologically responsible physicist adopts the most measured understanding possible of spacetime structure. The proper way to infer a doctrine of spacetime is by a kind of measuring inference -- a deduction from phenomena. Thus it was (I argue) by an out-and-out deduction from the phenomena of inertiality (as colligated by the three laws of motion) that Newton delineated the conceptual presuppositions concerning spacetime structure that are needed before (...) we can actually think coherently about these phenomena. And Einstein (I argue) very much recapitulated this argument pattern, twice over in fact, recolligating the phenomena first so as to add something from the laws of electromagnetism, and then so as to add everything about gravitation, into what he understood by inertiality. Notably, to deduce one’s theoretical conclusions from phenomena is both more cautious and more cogent than to "infer to the best explanation". And in the context of the development of a doctrine of spacetime, deductions from phenomena lay before us formal rather than causal understanding. Deductions from phenomena tell us, in this context, not what things or what causes there are, but rather what our concepts should be like. The more measured the inference is, however, the more definitively it tells us this. For these reasons the most measured understanding of spacetime lies on a line between conventionalism and realism, between relationalism and absolutism, and indeed (as I demonstrate) between empiricism and rationalism. Spacetime is understood as neither merely immanent in material goings-on, nor truly transcendent of them either. In order to explain this understanding as adequately as I can and in order to remark its excellences most fully, I consider some respects in which the tertium quid between metaphysical realism and strict empiricism about spacetime is wise in the sense of practical wisdom. The wisest understanding of spacetime illustrates, I argue, an original and fundamental connection that epistemology has with ethics. (shrink)

As medical science continues its rapid advances, questions are raised that have more to do with theology than with technology: Where is God when I am hurt or suffering? What role does God play in my healing? "Pain Seeking Understanding" examines how believers and nonbelievers alike wrestle with questions of faith when confronted with pain and suffering that medicine alone cannot treat. Margaret Mohrmann and Mark Hanson call upon fellow experts in the fields of medicine, ethics, theology, and pastoral (...) care to help them weave the complex story of faith and science working together to ease suffering -- and to help broaden our understanding of God's role in suffering and healing. (shrink)

Contemporary debate surrounding the nature of scientific progress has focused upon the precise role played by justification, with two realist accounts having dominated proceedings. Recently, however, a third realist account has been put forward, one which offers no role for justification at all. According to Finnur Dellsén’s (Stud Hist Philos Sci Part A 56:72–83, 2016) noetic account, science progresses when understanding increases, that is, when scientists grasp how to correctly explain or predict more aspects of the world that they (...) could before. In this paper, we argue that the noetic account is severely undermotivated. Dellsén provides three examples intended to show that understanding can increase absent the justification required for true belief to constitute knowledge. However, we demonstrate that a lack of clarity in each case allows for two contrasting interpretations, neither of which serves its intended purpose. On the first, the agent involved lacks both knowledge and understanding; and, on the second, the agent involved successfully gains both knowledge and understanding. While neither interpretation supports Dellsén’s claim that understanding can be prised apart from knowledge, we argue that, in general, agents in such cases ought to be attributed neither knowledge nor understanding. Given that the separability of knowledge and understanding is a necessary component of the noetic account, we conclude that there is little support for the idea that science progresses through increasing understanding rather than the accumulation of knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that, contra Strevens (2013), understanding in the sciences is sometimes partially constituted by the possession of abilities; hence, it is not (in such cases) exhausted by the understander’s bearing a particular psychological or epistemic relationship to some set of structured propositions. Specifically, the case will be made that one does not really understand why a modeled phenomenon occurred unless one has the ability to actually work through (meaning run and grasp at each step) a (...) model simulation of the underlying dynamic. (shrink)

This collection embodies a debate that explores what could be characterised as the tension between judging and understanding.

The notion of dao 道 in the Daodejing 道德經 typically receives either a metaphysical interpretation or a practical one. In this essay, I survey a series of recent interpretations and show that given the gap between the two dimensions, the extant interpretations typically have the problem of attributing ambiguity to the central notion of dao, whether explicitly or implicitly. In light of this, I venture a novel reading according to which the text is interpreted also in practical terms, more specifically (...) in methodological terms, but thoroughly. This requires me to offer a new account for the creative or generative role of dao, now construed as a method. I argue that this reading is at least equally plausible as the ones in circulation by spelling out its central constituents and pointing out its theoretical virtues. In conclusion, I point out certain implications for research, both exegetical and comparative, if we come to accept this novel reading. (shrink)

In global business, business organizations and their representatives frequently encounter corruption and may be the perpetrators, victims, or simply participants in such acts. While international corruption has existed in multiple forms for several years, many individuals, companies, nations, and international organizations are currently attempting to reduce or eliminate corrupt acts because of their harmful effects on local economies and the quality of life of citizens. Several of these corruption curtailment efforts have been directed toward the supply-side of corruption, i.e., those (...) who make corrupt payments. In developing an understanding of corruption, however, and formulating strategies for its reduction, consideration must also be given to the demand-side of corruption, i.e., those who demand and accept corrupt payments. Accordingly, this study examined the demand-side of corruption and several related factors in the categories of government, economy and poverty, education, geography, and culture. Analysis of these factors employed the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), formulated annually by Transparency International (TI), and other sources. Several factors in each of the five categories were found to correlate significantly with perceived corruption, and strategies for addressing these issues were developed and discussed. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to Genevieve Lloyd, conatus is manifested in body as a fixed ratio of motion and rest and in mind as increasing adequate understanding. The commentary provides textual analysis to resolve the apparent paradox that bodily stability corresponds to intellectual growth. The activity of adequate ideas and passivity of inadequate ideas are identified as analogues of motion and rest in Spinoza’s philosophy of mind and these are put to work in exploring what is required for increasing one’s adequate (...) understanding: that one can acquire adequate ideas only by extending one’s receptivity to being affected and by forming inadequate ideas. Thus a mind’s ratio between adequate and inadequate ideas is maintained even as it gains and exercises greater power. This appreciation of Spinoza’s epistemology supports Lloyd’s characterisation of his philosophy as “thinking from within the totality of being”. (shrink)

The effects of environmental degradation and climate change are propelling a discourse shift towards regenerative agriculture, yet understanding motivations for implementing regenerative practices on private agricultural lands is still a challenge. We study that challenge within the realm of regenerative ranching, a subcategory of regenerative agriculture. By examining the frequency of values articulated by respondents, a valuation typology stemming from 24 semi-structured interviews with ranchers in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota is revealed. Instrumental valuations dominated in the studied (...) region in connection to regenerative ranching practices, although some respondents articulated relational and intrinsic valuations tied to their practices. While this study focuses on regenerative ranching, we posit that a better understanding of the interplay between diverse valuations as they relate to private land management practices is vital to promoting more resilient and thoughtful ecosystem governance. (shrink)

Scientific normativity, one of the contentious issues in the philosophy of science, warrants thorough exploration to situate the epistemic role of the norms governing methodological choices in science. This paper endeavors to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of it by using Lewis' account of convention. The attempt is to develop a social conventional framework for scientific normativity. It is an epistemological framework that recognizes scientific norms governing methodological choices as social conventions. These social conventions are arrived at by appealing (...) to the values, goals, desires, and assumptions that characterize the sociality of the situation in which they emerge. We argue for a pluralistic notion of scientific normativity without being dismissive of the universalists’ central concerns. (shrink)

Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that language is the medium of all understanding and thus that it is the medium through which we can reach understanding with one another. Yet many today are sceptical of this claim and worry that Gadamerian hermeneutics ignores at its own peril the limits of the particular discourses that people utilize to reach understanding with one another. I argue here that this criticism rests on the assumption that, for Gadamer, it is the semantic features (...) of a language alone that allow it to function as the medium for shared understanding. I argue that focusing solely on semantic agreement as the source of understanding ignores the role that mutual recognition plays in allowing language to serve as a medium for shared understanding. I turn to discussions in several of Gadamer’s later essays to examine how he conceives of the mutual recognition that is essential for communicative understanding. (shrink)

Sarah Sawyer has challenged my claim that social externalism depends on the assumption that individuals have an incomplete grasp of their own concepts. Sawyer denies that Burge's later sofa thought-experiment relies on this assumption: the unifying principle behind the thought-experiments supporting social externalism, she argues, is just that referents play a role in the individuation of concepts. I argue that Sawyer fails to show that social externalism need not rely on the assumption of incomplete understanding. To establish the content (...) externalist conclusions, further considerations are required, and these do commit the externalist to the assumption of incomplete understanding. (shrink)

The booming development of educational livestreaming platforms has caused the prevalence of user experience to a certain extent, which profoundly affects users' purchase intention and behavior, and has become a hot topic of current research in the online education field. However, there is a lack of in-depth analysis on the mechanism of the role of user experience in influencing purchase intention. Based on the analysis of user experience and psychological ownership, this study constructs a moderated mediation model to investigate the (...) mediating psychological mechanism and boundary conditions of user experience affecting purchase intention. In this study, a valid sample of 372 users was used for structural equation modeling analysis. The results of the study found that user experience not only had a significant positive effect on purchase intention but was also mediated by psychological ownership. We also found that the effect of psychological ownership on purchase intention was moderated by privacy concerns. This study examines the role of user experience in purchase intention and reveals the mechanism of the role of user experience in an educational livestreaming platform. (shrink)

The article explores the basic conceptual relationship between social cognition, intersubjectivity and self-consciousness. A much-debated recent approach to social cognition, the so-called interaction theory, is the view that the ability to perceive, understand and interpret the behavior of others relies on interaction in the sense of mutual coordination of the embodied agents involved. It will be shown that this notion of reciprocity is too weak in order to fully account for social understanding. It will be argued that the idea (...) of reciprocity should at least in some cases be conceived of as a stance persons adopt towards each other, which in turn presupposes that they acknowledge each other as self-conscious agents. This view is inspired by an argument originally introduced by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. (shrink)

This paper represents a response to the criticisms made by Eric Barnes in “Explanatory Unification and the Problem of Asymmetry” and “Explanatory Unification and Scientific Understanding” against the thesis of Explanatory Unification. This paper responds to Barnes‟ two main criticisms, that of derivational skepticism and causal asymmetry, and successfully refutes his objections. This paper also defends the plausibility of the unificationist account of scientific explanation because of its ability to render coherent the notion of scientific understanding, focusing in (...) particular on the work by Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher. (shrink)

This book offers an innovative, unified theoretical model for better understanding of the processes underpinning naming and framing and the power of words in shaping our perceived reality.

We have grown used to leading the hermeneutics to its philosophical honorary status up various steps. It begins relatively innocently with the skill of interpretation and explanation: it goes on with philosophical hermeneutics which prepares the general epistemological and theoretical framework for methodical understanding, and it ends with the hermeneutic philosophy, in which both philosophizing and pre-philosophical life are decisively defined as understanding and mutual understanding. This hermeneutic philosophy need not restrict itself to the hermeneutics of texts, (...) but can extend to encompass the hermeneutics of senses, images and that of human comportment. The touchstone for determining the direction in which hermeneutics is going will be otherness. The crucial question is: can otherness be overcome on the grounds of hermeneutics or can hermeneutics itself become questionable by otherness? In dealing with this question we are mostly referring to the third of the above-mentioned phases, i.e. the philosophical core of hermeneutic philosophy, which finds its most effective expression in Gadamer’s Truth and Method. That this effect is not without its doubts is not evident only from the German debates, in which the older, »traditional« hermeneutics presents various arguments defending its rights against Gadamer’s attempt at overcoming it, but also from a variety of types of hermeneutics from Italy. If we side with Jean Greisch in defining the contemporaneousness as »the age of hermeneutic reason«, it may well be that this definition of our age also reveals its limits. (shrink)

Successful language use requires accurate intention recognition. However, sometimes this can be undermined because communication occurs within an interpersonal context. In this research, I used a relatively large set of speech acts (n = 32) and explored how variability in their inherent face‐threat influences the extent to which they are successfully recognized by a recipient, as well as the confidence of senders and receivers in their communicative success. Participants in two experiments either created text messages (senders) designed to perform a (...) specific speech act (e.g., agree) or interpreted those text messages (receivers) in terms of the specific speech act being performed. The speech acts were scaled in terms of their degree of face threat. In both experiments, speech acts that were more threatening were less likely to be correctly recognized than those that were less threatening. Additionally, the messages of the more threatening speech acts were longer and lower in clout than the less threatening speech acts. Senders displayed greater confidence in communicative success than receivers, but judgments of communicative success (for both senders and receivers) were unrelated to actual communicative success. The implications of these results for our understanding of actual communicative episodes are discussed. (shrink)

This essay is an exegetical work, the primary intention of which is to present and interpret Hegel’s notion of the “understanding” in the first chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit. The presentation and interpretation at hand takes as its starting point the work of Slavoj Žižek, who the author feels has begun a new and exciting era of scholarship on Hegel. The overall aim of the essay is modest: to develop the Žižekian reading of Hegel at the micro level. (...) My thesis is that Hegel’s initial development of the “understanding” demonstrates how, from the very first, subjectivity grabs a hold on the incompleteness of reality—a notion that is essential to Žižek’s work. Specifically, I show that the understanding realizes itself, against its will, as an accident of the world, upon which it previously depended for its illusory neutrality. The first chapter of the Phenomenology culminates in the problem of consciousness confronting itself as an accident. Ultimately, I show how Hegel’s accidentality of consciousness, since it is determined by the world, coincides with Žižek’s teaching about the identity of the subject precariously established on the incompleteness of reality. (shrink)