Ordinary cases of object seeing involve the visual perception of space and spatial location. But does seeing an object require such spatial perception? An empirical challenge to the idea that it does comes from reflection upon Bálint's syndrome, for some suppose that in Bálint's syndrome subjects can see objects without seeing space or spatial location. In this article, I question whether the empirical evidence available to us adequately supports this understanding of Bálint's syndrome, and (...) explain how the aforementioned empirical challenge can be resisted. (shrink)

Kant, Wittgenstein, and Husserl all held that visual awareness of objects requires visual awareness of the space in which the objects are located. There is a lively debate in the literature on spatial perception whether this view is undermined by the results of experiments on a Balint’s syndrome patient, known as RM. I argue that neither of two recent interpretations of these results is able to explain RM’s apparent ability to experience motion. I outline some ways in which each (...) interpretation may respond to this challenge, and suggest which way of meeting the challenge is preferable. I conclude that RM retains some awareness of the larger space surrounding the objects he sees. (shrink)

Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow ‘absolute’. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give (...) us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible. (shrink)

The question of toleration matters more than ever. The politics of the twenty-first century is replete with both the successes and, all too often, the failures of toleration. Yet a growing number of thinkers and practitioners have argued against toleration. Some believe that liberal democracies are better served by different principles, such as respect of, or recognition for, people's ways of life. Others argue that because the liberal state should be entirely neutral or indifferent towards people's ways of life, it (...) can no longer be tolerant - it has no grounds on which it can object, and so there is nothing left to tolerate.Respecting Toleration provides a new, original, and provocative take on the question of toleration and its application to the politics of contemporary diversity. The volume demonstrates how toleration - despite its critics - is essential to any liberal political order. Peter Balint argues that from a conceptual viewpoint, toleration is entirely compatible with liberal politics; and from a normative viewpoint, it is utterly essential. The volume argues that if one cares about people living divergent lives, then it is liberal toleration that should be respected by legislators and policy makers, and not people's differences. It is a book that will shape the debate and demand a response from all who are interested in which political structures most fairly accommodate the competing ways of life that characterise contemporary diversity.Key Features:Develops a new framework of political tolerationProvides a clear demonstration and analysis of complex concepts and argumentsProvides extensive practical and theoretical examples. (shrink)

The thirty years war is being fought between promoters of liberty, individual rights, moral guidance on one side; and believers in human reason as the supreme power, with government as its central authority, on the other.

In a recent article, Bernáth and Tőzsér (2021) defend what they call the Bias Argument, a new skeptical argument from expert peer disagreement. They argue that the best contrastive causal explanation for disagreement among leading experts in philosophy is that they adopt their positions in a biased way. But if the leading experts are biased, non-experts either are also biased or only avoid bias through epistemic inferiority. Recognizing this is expected to prompt one to decrease one‘s confidence in one‘s philosophical (...) beliefs. This paper argues that some beliefs are immune to a key premise of the Bias Argument. To show this, the paper develops the concepts of self-favoring theories, decisive support, and standing-incommensurable disagreements. A plausible example of a self-favoring theory, dubbed Mere Reformed Protestantism, is sketched. Many disagreements over self-favoring theories and over beliefs decisively supported by self-favoring theories are shown to be standing-incommensurable. It is then argued that when non-experts are in standing-incommensurable disagreements with experts, the standards of assessing expertise are themselves controverted. This result undercuts the move in the Bias Argument from expert bias to non-expert bias. Finally, a couple reservations about the role of self-favoring theories in philosophy are addressed. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What is a ‘Tolerant Society’? Respect and Appreciation of Difference Alternatives for Education Notes References.

Philosophers have recently argued that since there are people who are blind, but don't know it, and people who echolocate, but don't know it, conscious introspection is highly unreliable. I contend that a second look at Anton's syndrome, human echolocation, and ‘facial vision’ suggests otherwise. These examples do not support skepticism about the reliability of introspection.

This chapter highlights the complexity of the relationship between enhancement of mood and cognition on the one hand and the improvement of people's well‐being on the other. To do so, two psychiatric conditions, Asperger's syndrome and bipolar disorder, are presented in the chapter. Even though there are both negative and positive aspects to Asperger's syndrome or to bipolar disorders, taking away even these negative aspects would not necessarily promote well‐being. It might also be impossible to isolate the positive (...) aspects of these disorders. An increase in specific forms of cognition might be intrinsically connected to a decrease in specific aspects of mood. A decrease in specific aspects of mood might be intrinsically connected to an increase in creativity. Neither is necessarily linked to any changes in some general form of “well‐being.”. (shrink)

In contrast to multicultural theory, which in discussions of respect for difference has primarily focussed on the state as the agent of respect, multicultural policy has instead tended to focus on citizens themselves as the potential agents of this sort of respect. This article examines the plausibility of this type of respect (which is advocated by some theorists too), and argues that is not a reasonable or necessary demand. While there are several different ways of understanding respect — most of (...) which focus on respecting persons — none seem capable of doing the work required for it to enable either the adequate or reasonable accommodation of diversity in a liberal society. More specifically, I use Darwall's influential distinction between appraisal and recognition respect — the latter in a broad non-moralised sense — to make my case. While appraisal respect for difference may be theoretically easy to dismiss, it is not uncommon in multicultural policy. On the other hand, recognition respect — which is more behavioural than attitudinal — may appear a more plausible candidate. Yet it too remains overly demanding for individual citizens, especially, and most importantly, in difficult cases. I conclude that tolerance of difference (coming out of respect for citizenship) is a more appropriate demand on the individual. (shrink)

Given that cities are now bearing the brunt of migration and integration, it might seem that we should shift our normative focus away from the state towards the city. This is the suggestion of Avner de Shalit’s (2018) Cities and Integration: Political and Moral Dilemmas in the New Era of Migration. In this article, we suggest that this move is not so straightforward. Other levels, including the global, the state, and the neighbourhood, on top of the city, are also impacted (...) by migration and so also have claims for normative priority, which need to be addressed. And even if the city is responsible for integration, we argue that de Shalit’s promotion of Amsterdam’s ‘Milkshake Model’ – a form of respect and appreciation of difference – is, despite its clear initial appeal, not an ideal for accommodating diversity. (shrink)

Just war theory has traditionally focused onjus ad bellum(the justiceofwar) andjus in bello(justiceinwar). What has been neglected is the question ofjus ante bellum, or justicebeforewar. In particular: Under what circumstances is it justifiable for a polity topreparefor war by militarizing? When (if ever) and why (if at all) is it morally permissible or even obligatory to create and maintain the potential to wage war? What are the alternatives to the military? And if we do have militaries, how should they be (...) arranged, trained, and equipped? These considerations are not about whether warmakingis justified, but about whether warbuildingis justified.InEthics, Security, and the War-Machine, Ned Dobos argues that we have not sufficiently calculated the true (noneconomic) costs of the military, and that if we did, having a standing defense force would not seem like as good an idea. Dobos pushes us to reflect on something we have taken for granted: that one of the biggest institutions in our society, which is supposed to keep us safe and allow us to lead our own lives, may in fact pose great dangers and risks to us physically, morally, and culturally. The essays in this symposium take Dobos's work as a starting point and show the importance, complexity, and richness of this new strand of ethical inquiry. (shrink)

In his last papers about deontic logic, von Wright sustained that there is no genuine logic of norms. We argue in this paper that this striking statement by the father of deontic logic should not be understood as a death sentence to the subject. Rather, it indicates a profound change in von Wright's understanding about the epistemic and ontological role of logic in the field of norms. Instead of a logical constructivism of deontic systems revealing a necessary structure of prescriptive (...) discourse, which marked his earlier efforts, he adopted the view that such systems should be seem as mere objects of comparison, i.e. as providing practical standards of rationality for normgiving activity. Within such view he proposed an interpretation of standard deontic logic in such a way to free deontic logicians from the philosophical difficulties related to the so-called Jørgensen's dilemma and deontic paradoxes. This effort, as we claim in the present paper, is an application of Wittgenstein's therapeutic method to dissolve philosophical difficulties caused by the use of logical tools to model relations between norms. (shrink)

From the nature and origin of expression in music to authenticity in performance, almost every topic implied by the title makes an appearance in this book. The author’s apparent familiarity with a vast number of publications on the subject is overwhelming, his acquaintance with the repertoire is impressive. If the reader is prepared to work through the maze of discussions, the final paragraph of the book reveals Sharpe’s thesis: “The marginalization of tonality... is... a tragedy for the art.”.

Written by an impressive group of international scholars, this collection’s ten essays explore key issues and forms of design, from ancient life ideals to the new media, displaying how creative design always revolves around the soma, the living, sentient body.

Asperger's syndrome is a pervasive developmental condition characterized by features of autism. As observed in clinical practice, individuals with Asperger's syndrome present an impairment related to inflexibility in their everyday routine, an immediate manner of experiencing and relating, and difficulties in estimating periods of time. Following a phenomenological perspective, this study is an attempt to examine these aforementioned aspects in terms of temporality. Thirteen participants with Asperger's syndrome, from 13 to 20 years old, were interviewed about their (...) experience of periods of time, personal history, their past, present and future; and their concept of time and finitude. After the interviews, it was possible to identify three general themes which emerged in the invariant aspects of their experience of time: factual experience of present and future dimensions, chronological time and the past experience. Moreover, participants' descriptions evidenced aspects of experience based on the specificity of lived facts and a sense of time specifically related to what was lived in the past. (shrink)

In this paper I introduce the transcendental argument for Christian theism in the context of Reformed theologian and philosopher Cornelius Van Til’s thought. I then present the critique proffered by Barry Stroud against ambitious transcendental arguments, and survey various formulations of transcendental arguments in the literature, seeking how the objection bears upon them. I argue that Adrian Bardon’s (2005) interpretation is the most helpful in understanding the Stroudian objection. From this interpretation, two types of possible rebuttals are deduced. Proceeding to (...) survey the responses offered by Van Tillians to this objection in the recent literature, I discern two general strategies pursued in these responses, which map onto the previously deduced types of rebuttals: the Biblical justification strategy and the objection-undermining strategy. I argue that all the specific attempts to answer Stroud which I examine here (those of Butler, Bosserman, and Fluhrer) are inadequate and that these two strategies, in general, face serious problems. I conclude with considering the options before the proponent of the transcendental argument for Christian theism and with offering a new objection to the argument, which focuses on its inconsistency with the implications of Christian theism itself. (shrink)

Although personal relevance is key to sustaining an audience’s interest in any given narrative, it has received little systematic attention in scholarship to date. Across centuries and media, adaptations have been used extensively to bring temporally or geographically distant narratives “closer” to the recipient under the assumption that their impact will increase. In this review article, we review experimental and other empirical evidence on narrative processing in order to unravel which types of personal relevance are more likely to be impactful (...) than others, which types of impact (e.g. aesthetic, therapeutic, persuasive) they have been found to generate, and where their power may become excessive or outright detrimental to reader experience. (shrink)

Neither the pathogenesis nor the aetiology of Down's syndrome (DS) are clearly understood. Numerous studies have examined whether clinical features of DS are a consequence of specific chromosome 21 segments being triplicated. There is no evidence, however, that individual loci are responsible, or that the oxidative damage in DS could be solely explained by a gene dosage effect. Using astrocytes and neuronal cultures from DS fetuses, a recent paper shows that altered metabolism of the amyloid precursor protein and oxidative (...) stress result from mitochondrial dysfunction.1 These findings are consistent with considerable data implicating the role of the mitochondrial genome in DS pathogenesis and aetiology. BioEssays 24:681–684, 2002. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

This paper investigates confabulations in Korsakoff’s syndrome (KS) from the perspective of error-based teleosemantics, a framework that emphasizes the role of error detection in mental representation. I introduce a distributed and communicative model of memory, framing it as a network of information transfer encompassing both internal cognitive processes and external social interactions. This model, grounded in teleosemantics, allows for an understanding of how confabulations arise not solely from internal memory deficits, but also from disruptions in the feedback loops between (...) individuals and their social environments. By analyzing cases of provoked and spontaneous confabulations in KS patients, I demonstrate how this framework illuminates the crucial role of external consumers (e.g., caregivers) in either reinforcing or correcting erroneous memory reports. This approach, emphasizing error detection mechanisms, offers a new lens for examining the interplay between individual cognitive processes and social scaffolding in shaping memory and its pathologies. (shrink)

. The present study applies results and methods of psychobiology to intellectual history. Pascal's syndrome is a depressive neurosis associated with morbid effects of scientific certainty. The syndrome is characterized by self‐mortification and conversion experience that represses distressing certainties. The dynamics of the syndrome are assessed from Blake Pascal's psychosis. The ideation of the syndrome is evaluated by reference to the neurology of altered states of consciousness and the biogenic amine hypothesis of depression and mania. The (...) evaluation yields a description of the relation between psychogenic and biogenic factors in the syndrome's etiology. (shrink)

This article focusses upon defining those factors which may contribute to the pathogenesis of cancer. The molecular basis of tumour etiology is discussed with reference to cancer predisposing syndromes, and in particular to the human inherited disease, Bloom's sysdrome. In Bloom's syndrome, patients are predisposed to a wide variety of malignant disease. We propose a model in which overexpression of the ubiquitous c‐myc proto‐oncogene contributes to this process.

Sorensen raises the issue of whether it is logically possible to fake Munchausen's syndrome by way of a fictional exchange between a physician and an insurance company. In this paper, it is shown that it is possible to fake Munchausen's syndrome and to fake faking Munchausen's syndrome. The implications of this on deeper philosophical issues such as Lewis' puzzle of iterated pretence and “internalist” versus “externalist” accounts of faking are discussed. An externalist account of faking is defended (...) and offered as a solution to Lewis' puzzle as it arises in this context. (shrink)

Reflection on skeptical scenarios in the philosophy of perception, made vivid in the arguments from illusion and hallucination, have led to the formulation of theories of the metaphysical and epistemological nature of perceptual experience. In recent times, the locus of the debate concerning the nature of perceptual experience has been the dispute between disjunctivists and common-kind theorists. Disjunctivists have held that there are substantial dissimilarities (either metaphysical or epistemological or both) between veridical perceptual experiences occurring when one perceives and perceptual (...) experiences involved in hallucination. Common-kind theorists have denied this. In this paper, I examine the nature of introspection – a faculty that has often been compared and contrasted to perception. I reflect on cases where introspection goes wrong in ways analogous to that in which our perceptual faculties can go wrong and formulate, what I take to be, an attractive theory of introspection. The cases that I focus on in which things go wrong are the case of zombies and the case of subjects with Anton’s syndrome. (Anton’s syndrome is a condition in which people who are blind claim that they can see.) I suggest that, just as it is possible to be a disjunctivist about perception, it is possible to be a disjunctivist about introspection. I argue that this is a good view of one type of introspection, namely, introspection of states that have phenomenal character, such as perceptual experiences. It has a good account to give of the cases in which such introspection seems to go wrong and it yields a plausible metaphysical and epistemological view of the nature of introspection. However, while I favour a disjunctive view of introspection, I do not favour a disjunctive view of perception. And, I suspect, that many disjunctivists about perception would not wish to condone my disjunctivist theory of introspection. I therefore go on to examine to what extent.. (shrink)

Background: Although maternal serum screening for Down’s syndrome has become routinely available in most obstetric clinics in many countries, few studies have addressed the reasons why women agree to undergo the MSS test.Objectives: The aims of this study were to describe the circumstances in which MSS was offered to pregnant women and their reasons for undertaking it.Methods: Participant observation and in depth interviews were used in this study; specifically, the experiences of women who had a positive result for MSS (...) and who then followed this up with amniocentesis were examined. The interviewees were twenty six mothers aged between 22 and 35 years. The interviews were audio taped and transcribed for analysis. The results were analysed by the constant comparative method.Results: This study identified the reasons on which pregnant women appeared to base their decisions when undergoing MSS. The reasons were first, the recognition that the procedure was a prenatal routine procedure; second, the need to avoid the risk of giving birth to a baby with Down’s syndrome, and third, a trust in modern technology and in the professional authorities.Conclusions: This study offers insights into the informed choice made by women with a positive MSS result. The reasons for undergoing MSS might help health professionals and policy makers to reflect on their practice and this may, in turn, improve the quality of prenatal care during MSS. (shrink)

Cotard's syndrome is a psychotic condition that includes delusion of a supernatural nature. Based on insights from recovered patients who were convinced of being immortal, we can (1) distinguish biographical experiences from cultural and evolutionary backgrounds; (2) show that cultural significance dominates biographical experiences; and (3) support Bering's view of a cognitive system dedicated to forming illusory representations of immortality.

There is a broad consensus about the fundamental role of thehippocampal system (hippocampus and its adjacent areas) in theencoding and retrieval of episodic memories. This paper presents afunctional model of this system. Although memory is not asingle-unit cognitive function, we took the view that the wholesystem of the smooth, interrelated memory processes may have acommon basis. That is why we follow the Ockham's razor principleand minimize the size or complexity of our model assumption set.The fundamental assumption is the requirement of (...) solving the socalled ``homunculus fallacy'', which addresses the issue ofinterpreting the input. Generative autoassociators seem to offer aresolution of the paradox. Learning to represent and to recallinformation, in these generative networks, imply maximization ofinformation transfer, sparse representation and noveltyrecognition. A connectionist architecture, which integrates theseaspects as model constraints, is derived. Numerical studiesdemonstrate the novelty recognition and noise filtering propertiesof the architecture. Finally, we conclude that the derivedconnectionist architecture can be related to the neurobiologicalsubstrate. (shrink)