Neuroplasticity, the capacity of the brain to induce changes in response to environmental stimuli, entails a continuous rearrangement of the neural network through a complex interaction between genetics and environment. Within this process, the plastic brain uses its internal representations to predict future conditions and proactively proceed to actions. It can be said that plasticity demands a rethinking of the concept of determinism as the process of coming-to-be is directly related to modifications produced by experience. Pure determinism and complete randomness (...) are the two ends of a spectrum of positions relevant to the debate of the existence of free will. However, none conceptually supports free decision-making. How brain activity and the conscious experience of volition are related to one another has been a matter of significant research, with a plethora of findings indicating that early brain signals precede the self-reported time of the decision to act. The meaning of these findings, however, has been debated at both a theoretical and empirical level and the controversy is still ongoing. Consciousness is intertwined with free will along the dimension of time as it would otherwise be purposeless, taking place right at the next moment. Electrical activity of the brain is a measure of neurophysiological function and contributes to the understanding of processes that underlie high-order cognitive functions. A multidisciplinary approach in the study of free will could be designed in a way that philosophical concepts are connected to neural correlates by psychologically functionalizing them in terms of cognitive abilities. Such abilities are at the margins of conscious and nonconscious sensory information and are closely linked to brain processes of executive functions like attentional control and working memory. (shrink)

Infolge der Moderne schwinden absolute Erklärungsprinzipien: Man sucht Orientierung, um seine Lebenswelt und den erfahrungswissenschaftlich aufgeschlossenen Kosmos zu überschauen. Seine sich in diesem Kontext ausbildende, nie ganz bewusst gestaltete Weltanschauung artikuliert der Mensch auch in der Literatur. Antonia Bräutigam analysiert anhand von Jenseitsreisen in Werken von Autoren wie Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett und C.S. Lewis die durch die Moderne geprägte Weltanschauung und reflektiert diese philosophisch-theologisch. Literatur erweist sich dabei als locus theologicus, als Erkenntnisort für die Theologie, das Motiv der (...) Jenseitsreise als Daseinsmetapher von hoher theologischer Relevanz. (shrink)

Just as bodily actions are things you do with your body, mental actions are things you do with your mind. Both are different from things that merely happen to you. Where does the idea of mental action come from? What are mental actions? And why do they matter in philosophy? These are the three main questions answered in this paper. Section 1 introduces mental action through a brief history of the topic in philosophy. Section 2 explains what it is to (...) be a mental action in terms of intentional action. Section 3 argues that the fact that we can perform mental actions has some striking consequences concerning mental content. Section 4 shows how mental action helps to explain some important facts about self-knowledge and the normativity of thought. The conclusion mentions two further fruitful avenues for philosophical research on mental action. (shrink)

Antonia Lolordo presents an original interpretation of John Locke's metaphysics of moral agency, in which to be a moral agent is simply to be free, rational, and a person.

This essay will consider the dispute between Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey on the nature and validity of the theory/practice distinction. Their dispute concerns whether a strong affirmation of this distinction enables scientific inquiry or disables it. Inherent in this issue are two related questions, namely whether tmth can be pursued for its own sake, and, as a subset of this question, whether there is an evidence proper to the consideration of pure possibilities. I will argue that there is (...) a common ground between the logic of inquiry which Dewey is determined will have practical effect, and the logic of inquiry which Peirce is concemed will discover the truth promised by correct investigation. This compromise is found in the philosophy of Bemard Lonergan, whose critical realism includes an account of concrete judgement strikingly similar to that of John Dewey, but whose account of the normative stmcture of cognition, emanating from the individual's radical desire to know, also incorporates Peirce's emphasis on the pursuit of truth and on the validity of the scientist's consideration of pure logical possibilities. I will present these similarities, and will consider the stmcture of Einstein's 1905 paper, "On The Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies," as a case study which supports Lonergan's (and Peirce's) account of cognitional stmcture, but which poses problems for Dewe/s instrumentalism. The essay concludes that Lonergan offers a critical realism which successfully renounces the 'spectator' theory of knowledge without underestimating the importance of the normative element of understanding in the human desire to know. (shrink)

Visual and cognitive skills are key to successful functioning in highly demanding settings such as elite sports. However, their mutual influence and interdependencies are not sufficiently understood yet. This cross-sectional study examined the relationship between visual skills and executive functions in elite soccer players. Fifty-nine male elite soccer players performed tests assessing visual clarity, contrast sensitivity, near-far quickness, and hand-eye coordination. Executive function measures included working memory capacity, cognitive flexibility, inhibition and selective attention. Overall, visual abilities were largely correlated with (...) executive functions. Near-far quickness performance showed a large correlation with an executive function total score as well as with cognitive flexibility, working memory, and especially selective attention. Visual clarity and contrast sensitivity were moderately correlated with the cognition total score. Most consistent correlations with the visual functions were present for working memory. These findings present an overall vision-cognition relationship but also very specific linkages among subcategories of these functions, especially meaningful relations between near-far quickness, selective attention and cognitive flexibility. Further studies are needed to investigate the neuropsychological mechanisms accounting for the correlations and possible improvements of the executive functions by training specific visual skills. (shrink)

Les origines grecques de la conception d'harmonie (H. Dufourt) - Du monde au matériau : le devenir-musical du timbre (A. Soulez) - La musique est-elle un langage? (R. Casati et J. Dokic) - Le devenir du matériau musical au XXe siècle (M. Solomos) - Hauteur, timbre, harmonie, synthèse (J.C. Risset) et d'autres articles...

Aesthetic value empiricism claims that the aesthetic value of an object is grounded in the value of a certain kind of experience of it. The most popular version of value empiricism, and a dominant view in contemporary philosophical aesthetics more generally, is aesthetic hedonism. Hedonism restricts the grounds of aesthetic value to the pleasure enjoyed in the right kind of experience. But hedonism does not enjoy any clear advantage over a more permissive alternative version of value empiricism. This alternative is (...) aesthetic liberalism. On this view, an object’s aesthetic value is fully grounded in any value—not just the hedonic value—of a correct and complete experience of its sensory features. To demonstrate the advantages of liberalism over hedonism, I apply both views to analyze the aesthetic value of the Spring Temple Buddha and Anselm Kiefer’s Seraphim. I detail four advantages of liberalism over hedonism, and I conclude by defending liberalism from two kinds of objection. (shrink)

This book offers a comprehensive treatment of the philosophical system of the seventeenth-century philosopher Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi's importance is widely recognized and is essential for understanding early modern philosophers and scientists such as Locke, Leibniz and Newton. Offering a systematic overview of his contributions, LoLordo situates Gassendi's views within the context of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century natural philosophy as represented by a variety of intellectual traditions, including scholastic Aristotelianism, Renaissance Neo-Platonism, and the emerging mechanical philosophy. LoLordo's work will be essential (...) reading for historians of early modern philosophy and science. (shrink)

Background Pediatric critical care physician attitudes about withdrawal of ventricular assist devices (VAD) and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) in cases of medical futility are poorly defined. Our aim was to define current attitudes regarding the withdrawal of these devices. Methods IRB-approved, cross-sectional observational survey conducted among pediatric critical care attending physicians and fellow physicians in the United States between 2016 and 2017. Data was collected anonymously and statistically analyzed. Results A total of 158 physicians responded with 67% being attending physicians. (...) Compared to a VAD, a higher percentage had taken care of a patient on ECMO where the device was turned off because care was believed to be futile (99% vs. 84%), including currently (95% vs. 57%). Nearly all reported that it can be ethically permissible to withdraw support from a patient with a VAD and on ECMO (97% vs. 99%), but varied opinions existed as to who should ultimately make this decision if the patient/their family disagrees. More respondents agreed that a patient/their family should agree to withdrawal of VAD or ECMO support prior to initiation if futility is later determined (60% vs. 58%) and that protocols should be created for VAD and ECMO withdrawal (77% vs. 76%). Conclusion Most pediatric critical care physicians felt that it can be ethically permissible to withdraw VAD and ECMO support. Our study indicates that pediatric VAD and ECMO withdrawal protocols are desired, but further investigation is needed to determine how to best design protocols that would incorporate multiple stakeholders. (shrink)

In his 1987 novel Foe, J. M. Coetzee re-introduces the figure of Friday, a speechless cannibal, who is Robinson Crusoe’s slave and who allegedly had his tongue severed by slave-traders. Evidently, Friday’s bestialization and his peculiar position within the narrative are inextricably linked to his status as a nonspeaking character. In contrast to Susan, Coetzee’s “failed narrator”, Friday narrates nothing in the novel. Hence, his silence can be seen as a site of resistance to the oppressive power that tries to (...) define him, marking the limit of a language and a literature that seek to place him within western logocentrism. Thus, the enigma of Friday and the enigma that is Friday, are the major axis around which the novel and all relationships within it unfold. Susan’s -and by extension, Coetzee’s own- inability to interpret Friday’s silence does not incapacitate the narrative but quite the contrary: it is only through her productive failure to determine, to identify and to define the figure of Friday that Coetzee is able to restore agency and meaningfulness to Friday’s silence, opening up its void to the possibility of a restitution to come. (shrink)

Many great authors claim that reading literature can expand your phenomenal imagination and allow you to imagine experiences you have never had. How is this possible? Your phenomenal imagination is constrained by your phenomenal concepts, which are in turn constrained by the phenomenology of your own actual past experiences. Literature could expand your phenomenal imagination, then, by giving you new phenomenal concepts. This paper explains how this can happen. Literature can direct your attention to previously unnoticed phenomenal properties of your (...) own past experiences, as brought to mind by involuntary memory. This process gives you the opportunity to notice those phenomenal properties for the first time, and so also to form phenomenal concepts of those properties. Forming a new phenomenal concept strictly expands the range of your phenomenal imagination. It gives you the capacity to imagine more than you could have before, including certain specific kinds of experience that you yourself have never enjoyed firsthand. Literature’s capacity to expand your phenomenal imagination in this way is central to its social, moral, and epistemic value. (shrink)

In his fascinating new book Games: Agency as Art, Nguyen endorses an experiential requirement on aesthetic judgment: apt aesthetic judgment requires phenomenal experience. His own aesthetics of agency captures three phenomenally manifest and aesthetically significant harmonies (and corresponding disharmonies). But his view can be significantly extended to capture much more of the rich texture of human agency. In this discussion, I argue that emotions of agency, patterns of attention, and affordances all can be phenomenally experienced as aspects of agency, and (...) that each has genuine aesthetic significance. (shrink)

There has recently been a resurgence of interest in the early nineteenth century Scottish philosopher Mary Shepherd. This Element is intended to provide an overview of Shepherd's system, including her views on the following wide range of topics: causation, induction, knowledge of the external world, matter, life, animal cognition, the relationship between mind and body, the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, miracles, and the nature of divine creation. The author also provides an overview of relevant secondary literature (...) and argues for their own interpretation of Shepherd's metaphysics. (shrink)

In the first edition of the Essay, Locke argued that we pursue whatever course of action we judge to be the best option available to us at the time. In other words, we always act under the guise of...

Any contextualist approach to knowledge has to provide a plausible definition of the concept of context and spell out the mechanisms of context changes. Since it is the dynamics of context change that carry the main weight of the contextualist position, not every mechanism will be capable of filling that role. In particular, I argue that one class of mechanisms that is most popularly held to account for context changes, namely those that arise out of shifts of conversational parameters in (...) discourses involving knowledge claims, are not suited to the job because they cannot account for the genuinely epistemic nature of the context shift. A form of epistemic contextualism that defines the context through the structure of our epistemic projects is suggested. Context changes in this account are linked to changes in the background assumptions operative in our epistemic projects and the methods used to carry out our inquiries. (shrink)

Why talk about communism today?* A first point everybody will be agreed upon: the spectre of communism is not haunting Europe, nor for that matter any other region of the world. The only place where ‘communism’ is a positive name for anything is China, where it designates the ruling party of one of the most powerful capitalist nations of the world. In the immediate conjuncture, there are no real forces or conflicts that directly call for a reappraisal of communism. However, (...) certain questions linked to its reappraisal do appear to be at stake in conflicts that are taking place. (shrink)

Teaching and learning in a virtual learning environment poses some difficulties, but also challenges and opportunities to rethink the whole learning process, particularly in abstract subjects like logic or high level mathematics. On the other hand, resources and ways to work, now available in VLEs, might soon extend to all kinds of environments. In this paper, we will present experiences at the Open University of Catalonia , a particular VLE, concerning the whole process of teaching logic and mathematics. In addition, (...) we will discuss some challenges and we will present some innovation projects allowed by the present and near future technologies. (shrink)

This is about the tension between Epicurean and Galilean accounts of motion in Gassendi. For my more recent thoughts on this, see http://philpapers.org/rec/LOLCEG.

You can come to know that you believe that p partly by reflecting on whether p and then judging that p. Call this procedure “the transparency method for belief.” How exactly does the transparency method generate known self-attributions of belief? To answer that question, we cannot interpret the transparency method as involving a transition between the contents p and I believe that p. It is hard to see how some such transition could be warranted. Instead, in this context, one mental (...) action is both a judgment that p and a self-attribution of a belief that p. The notion of embedded mental action is introduced here to explain how this can be so and to provide a full epistemic explanation of the transparency method. That explanation makes sense of first-person authority and immediacy in transparent self-knowledge. In generalized form, it gives sufficient conditions on an attitude’s being known transparently. (shrink)

: Malebranche famously objects to Descartes' argument that the nature of the mind is better known than the nature of body as follows: if we had an idea of the mind's nature we would know the possible range of modes of the mind, including the sensory modes, but we do not know those modes and thus can't have an idea of the mind's nature. I argue that Malebranche's objections are readily answerable from within the Cartesian system. This argument involves examining (...) the status of sensations in Descartes, innate ideas, and Malebranche's occasionalism. (shrink)

How could Hannah Arendt, a German Jew who fled Germany in 1931, have reconciled with Martin Heidegger, whom she knew had joined and actively participated in the Nazi Party? In this remarkable biography, Antonia Grunenberg tells how the relationship between Arendt and Heidegger embraced both love and thought and made their passions inseparable, both philosophically and romantically. Grunenberg recounts how the history between Arendt and Heidegger is entwined with the history of the twentieth century with its breaks, catastrophes, and (...) crises. Against the violent backdrop of the last century, she details their complicated and often fissured relationship as well as their intense commitments to thinking. (shrink)

Locke claims that we have sensitive knowledge of the external world, in virtue of the fact that simple ideas are real, true, and adequate. However, despite his dismissive remarks about Cartesian external-world skepticism, Locke gives us little to go on as to how knowledge of the external world survives the fact of perceptual error, or even how perceptual error is possible. I argue that Locke has an in-principle problem explaining perceptual error.

This is about Gassendi's 5th Objections to the Meditations and Descartes' Reply. The main issue is what clear and distinct perception consists in and whether we need a criterion in order to know if we perceive something clearly and distinctly.

This paper attempts to reconstruct Hume's argument in Treatise 1.4.1, 'Of Scepticism with Regard to Reason'.

In several early 19th century works, Mary Shepherd articulates a theory of causation that is intended to respond to Humean skepticism. I argue that Shepherd's theory should be read in light of the science of the day and her conception of her place in the British philosophical tradition. Reading Shepherd’s theory in light of her conception of the history of philosophy, including her claim to be the genuine heir of Locke, illuminates the broader significance of her attempt to reinstate reason (...) as the source of scientific knowledge. Reading Shepherd's theory in light of the science of the day helps make plausible her claim that there are robust natural kinds in nature, defined by their causal powers: this is precisely what then-recent advances in chemistry hold. (shrink)

El retorno del lenguaje conlleva la desaparición del hombre como figura cardinal del saber moderno. La muerte del hombre anunciada por Foucault está en estrecha relación con la muer-te de Dios anunciada por Nietzsche. El último hombre ha matado a Dios y debe responder ahora de su propia finitud. La obra de Foucault traza una historia crítica del pensamiento. Su escepticismo es una crítica del conocimiento. Foucault dudó de las verdades de cada época y de las verdades intemporales. En este (...) artículo trazo el recorrido del hombre en la obra fou-cauldiana y muestro que el escepticismo en Foucault deviene una herrramienta importante en su crítica del conocimiento. (shrink)

A systematic reconstruction of Adorno’s philosophy of language in the framework of contemporary linguistic philosophy.

The central idea of the paper is that human thinking consists in a movement through which a person socially interacts with herself. Consequently, thinking does not offer the experience of a private refuge in the intimacy of the individual thinker's self-knowing, but a field where multiple points of view interact by contesting, distancing, approaching, agreeing or disagreeing, one to another. Classical (Isocrates, 1929/1968) and contemporary (Billig, 1987) rhetorical approaches to thinking stress that both “inner” and “social” discourse are addressed to (...) someone else, are determined by the anticipation of this audience, and both are interested in persuading it. In doing so, the discursive, rhetoric, and dialogic aspects of thinking become tied to argumentation. The paper tries to show, following the dialogical notion of discourse of Bakhtin (1986) and Vološinov (1929/1986) that, since every act of thinking consists in the raising of a point of view addressing another one and oriented by a particular interest, every stream of thought involves a rhetorical activity. A distinction between rhetoric and argumentation is proposed. On this basis, the rhetorical nature of thinking is discussed beyond argumentative discourse. Overall, this discussion contributes to a rhetorical approach to dialogism. (shrink)

In this paper we describe a test for Nijhout's hypothesis that the eyespot patterns on butterfly wings are the result of a threshold reaction of the epidermal cells to a concentration gradient of a diffusing degradable morphogen produced by focal cells at the centre of the future eyespot. The wings of the nymphalid butterfly, Bicyclus anynana, have a series of eyespots, each composed of a white pupil, a black disc and a gold outer ring. In earlier extirpation and transplantation experiments (...) it has been established that these eyespots are indeed organised around groups of signalling cells active during the first hours of pupal development. If these cells were to supply the positional information for eyespot formation in accordance with Nijhout's diffusion-degradation gradient model, then, when two foci are close together, the signals should sum, and this effect should be apparent in the detailed shape of the resulting pigment pattern. We give an equation for the form of the contours that would be obtained in this manner. We use this to test the morphogen gradient hypothesis on measurements of the outlines of fused eyespots obtained either by grafting focal cells close together, or by using a mutation that produces adjacent fused eyespots. The contours of the fused patterns were found to satisfy our equation, thus corroborating Nijhout's hypothesis to the extent possible with this particular type of experiment. (shrink)

In the thirteenth-century Bibles moralisées there appears a new iconographical type in which God the Father, and figures depicted in moralising illustrations, are shown with a compass. This article argues that these images throw light on the medieval concept of reason and its role in the Divine Economy. In these French Capetian Bibles, the compass is the symbol of divine or human reason, depending on the context where it occurs. When depicted in the scene of Creation in the frontispieces, the (...) compass is the instrument of Christ-Logos as Divine Reason, used to impose God’s rational order on formless matter, but also to initiate the Divine Economy. The compass is depicted again, in the same sense, at the beginning of the New Testament, as a ‘dynamic sign’ which links the start of God’s plan for humankind salvation during Creation with the re-enactment of the Divine Economy through the Incarnation. When a compass occurs elsewhere, in a moralised image for a biblical story which takes place in the earthly realm, the instrument becomes the tool used by human reason to discern between good and evil. The analysis which leads to this interpretation is borne out by an examination of related themes in the Bibles moralisées: those of the sleep of mortal reason, and of the endurance of Divine Reason as a guide to true knowledge. (shrink)

Merleau-Ponty offers an insightful account of the relation between bodies and technology, specifically by understanding this connection as incorporation (i. e., extension of the body schema). This account is particularly convincing when considering interactions “at a distance.” (e. g., video conferences) However, two aspects of this relation are potentially problematic: (1) Current technologies, devices, and infrastructures enabling interactions “at a distance” are more complex than the examples discussed byMerleau-Ponty. (2) If the relation between bodies and technology is conceived as a (...) relation of incorporation, how can technologies, devices, and infrastructures themselves be perceived? These issues are analyzed from a Merleau-Pontian perspective, notably by drawing on his account of the body schema, of sensory perception, and some aspects of his reading of gestalt theory. (shrink)