Topics in Cognitive Science, Volume 14, Issue 3, Page 634-645, July 2022.

Engaging in environmental stewardship is critical for sustainability. Understanding individual differences and engagement is an important gap in present scholarship and addressing it is necessary to understand individual factors that relate to the types of activities engaged in, motivations and barriers to environmental stewardship. We surveyed 637 Canadian and American adults via Amazon Mechanical Turk, querying a range of demographic, psychological and environmental perceptions factors as well as motivations and barriers to stewardship activities. Respondents were ultimately grouped into Non-Stewards, Home-Oriented (...) Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards. Few differences were found among these groups. However, Home-Oriented Stewards and Community-Oriented Stewards exhibited very different initial and ongoing motivations to engage in environmental stewardship. Accordingly, we identify stewardship motivations as a potential leverage point and as one of several promising avenues for future research related to enhancing engagement in environmental stewardship for the sustainability of the planet. (shrink)

This collection brings together thirteen essays by some of the most respected contemporary scholars of Schopenhauer's aesthetics from a wide spectrum of philosophical perspectives. The dynamics of the empirical will and Will as a thing-in-itself in the interplay of Schopenhauer's metaphysics and philosophy of fine art has important implications for the freedom, salvation and tragic suffering of the artist, the representation of Platonic Ideas in art, and the role of artistic inspiration, emotion and aesthetic pleasure in the beautiful and sublime. (...) These essays examine the unique theory Schopenhauer developed to explain the life and work of the artist, and the influence his aesthetic philosophy has had on subsequent artistic traditions in such diverse areas as music, painting, poetry, literature and architecture. The authors present Schopenhauer's thought as a vital and enduring contribution to aesthetic theory, and to the idealist vision which continues to guide Romantic and neo-Romantic art. (shrink)

Some ecologists, philosophers, and policy analysts believe that ecosystem health can be defined in a rigorous way and employed as a management goal in environmental policy. The idea of ecosystem health may have something to recommend it as part of a rhetorical strategy, but I am dubious about its utility as a technical term in environmental policy. I develop several objections to this latest version of scientism in environmental policy, and conclude that our environmental problems fundamentally involve problems in our (...) institutions of governance, our systems of value, and our ways of knowing. These are the problems that most need to be addressed. (shrink)

An elementary algebra identifies conceptual and corresponding applicational limitations in John Kemeny and Paul Oppenheim’s (K-O) 1956 model of theoretical reduction in the sciences. The K-O model was once widely accepted, at least in spirit, but seems afterward to have been discredited, or in any event superceeded. Today, the K-O reduction model is seldom mentioned, except to clarify when a reduction in the Kemeny-Oppenheim sense is not intended. The present essay takes a fresh look at the basic mathematics of K-O (...) comparative vocabulary theoretical term reductions, from historical and philosophical standpoints, as a contribution to the history of the philosophy of science. The K-O theoretical reduction model qualifies a theory replacement as a successful reduction when preconditions of explanatory adequacy and comparable systematicization are met, and there occur fewer numbers of theoretical terms identified as replicable syntax types in the most economical statement of a theory’s putative propositional truths, as compared with the theoretical term count for the theory it replaces. The challenge to the historical model developed here, to help explain its scope and limitations, involves the potential for equivocal theoretical meanings of multiple theoretical term tokens of the same syntactical type. (shrink)

Based on an original synthesis of the work of Marx and Bergson, the key theorists of capitalism and creativity, the book presents an astonishing analysis of ...

In an article “Countering a Counter-intuitive Probability” [4], Lynn E. Rose discusses a question in conditional probability, claiming that the following problem posed by Copi [1] is usually incorrectly solved:Remove all cards except aces and kings from a deck, so that only eight cards remain, of which four are aces and four are kings. From this abbreviated deck, deal two cards to a friend. If he looks at his cards and announces that his hand contains an ace, what is the (...) probability that both his cards are aces? If he announces instead that one of his cards is the ace of spades, what is the probability then that both his cards are aces? (shrink)

Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment and the watering-down of extranuclear properties to surrogate nuclear counterparts was offered in response to Russell's problem of the existent round square. To avoid an infinite regress of successively watered-down factualities, Meinong stipulates that the modal moment itself cannot be watered-down. This limits free assumption, since it means that the idea of the existent-cum-modal-moment round square cannot be entertained in thought. It is possible to eliminate the modal moment and watering-down from Meinongian semantics in (...) favor of a strict enforcement of the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. This provides a simpler, more economical Meinongian object theory, and regains unrestricted free assumption. (shrink)

In _Notebooks 1914-1916, Wittgenstein considers two related arguments to prove the transcendence of ethics. The inferences involve the claim that the existence of ethics must be indifferent to whether or not the world is inhabited by living things, and that moral good and evil occur only because of the extraworldly metaphysical subject. I reconstruct and criticize these arguments in detail as a prelude to analyzing Wittgenstein's _Tractatus remarks about the transcendence of value, the identification of ethics and aesthetics as one, (...) and the elimination of theoretical ethics or metaethics as meaningless pseudopropositions. (shrink)

My intent is to paint in rather broad strokes Bill Poteat’s intellectual agenda, as I came to understand it, and how Michael Polanyi fit into that agenda for Poteat alongside other major intellectual mentors. Bill’s agenda was to expose critically and, so far as possible, to counter the fateful consequences of what he called the “prepossessions of the European Enlightenment” regarding human knowing, human doing, and human being. Although his work involved conceptual analysis, the nature of this conceptual-archaeology was far (...) more profound than what usually goes by the name “conceptual analysis” or “cultural conceptual analysis.” In effect it sought first to bring to light how the conceptual resources by which modern intellectuals reflectively consider anything, fatefully result in a state of self-abstractedness – indeed, a kind of culturally constituted insanity – that loses touch with the actual, concrete object of one’s concern, with one’s actual concrete self, and with the wellsprings of one’s intellectual passion and creativity. Second, Bill sought to cure this cultural insanity, person by person, by ushering his students and readers into re-placement of themselves into themselves, in possession of themselves, within the concrete context of their embodied personhood. Poteat called attention to the way that our powers of reflection quite systematically forget their contextual rootedness in this cultural matrix and, beneath that, in our lived bodies – ultimately in our personhood. Polanyi served to assist Poteat in this endeavor, I believe, as much as, or more than, did any other of Poteat’s several intellectual mentors. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that the moral value of an agent is determined solely by their dispositions to act intentionally and freely. We then put this conclusion to work. It resolves a putative moral paradox first posed by Saul Smilansky, and it undermines a prominent line of argument for a variety of Trinitarian theology. Finally, we derive our conclusion about the moral worth of agents not only from our initial series of thought experiments, but also from Abrahamic theism itself. (...) This means that Smilansky’s paradox can only possibly be rehabilitated by an atheist, and that the aforementioned line of argumentation for the Trinity is radically self-undermining, since it relies upon the denial of a corollary of Abrahamic theism. (shrink)

What contemporary social and political significance, if any, can we draw from Nietzsche’s philosophy? The present essay looks into this question by first examining the broader debate regarding anti-foundational tendencies in post-Nietzschean discourses and their alleged threat to liberal democracies. Thatthese tendencies can indeed be traced back to Nietzsche, specifically through Martin Heidegger’s problematic transmission, will then be discussed along withthe more general theme of how metaphysics stands in socio-political practices and why metaphysics should be overcome. The sorts of problems (...) stemming fromHeidegger’s transmission of Nietzsche are philosophical and historical in nature, both of which make the contemporary socio-political significance of Nietzsche’sphilosophy difficult to discern. The essay examines some of these problems through a discussion of an historical encounter between Heidegger and Eugen Fink. The essay concludes with the thought that despite the various ways in which the name of Nietzsche haunts contemporary discourses, a promise for liberal democracy is also contained therein. (shrink)

“Language in Zen Enlightenment” considers the role language might play in the experience of enlightenment. Building on the Zen claims that enlightenment is “not dependent on language and culture” and that enlightenment is a “pure experience” of “things as they are” prior to the shaping effect of language, this chapter takes the perspective of contemporary philosophy and linguistic psychology in order to assess the two primary Western interpretations of the relation between language and Zen enlightenment. To articulate an alternative understanding (...) of language and spiritual experience that goes beyond these earlier attempts, the chapter explores the kinds of language use found in the daily life of Zen communities, the role of the Zen master’s cryptic rhetoric of instruction, and the predominance of silent meditation in Zen training. It concludes with reflection on the possibility that Zen enlightenment might entail awakening to the power and subtlety of language rather than from it. (shrink)

John Buridan's Sophismata contains some of the most interesting puzzles and paradoxes of any of the many surviving medieval informal logic manuals. Buridan's purpose is not only to illustrate and challenge Aristotelian syllogistic with difficulties of interpretation, but also in part to lay logical philosophical foundations for a radically nominalistic ontology in the tradition of William of Ockham.

This compact booklet addresses informal logical aspects of infinite regress arguments. We know what infinite regress arguments are from such examples as Plato’s Third Man problem. It is presented here for tradition sake in its original formulation, where for convenience ‘man’ does duty for ‘human being’. Plato’s theory of abstract Ideas or Forms, in order to explain how it is that Phaedo and Meno are both men, posits their belonging to, participating in or falling under a higher ideal abstract universal (...) Man. The theory thereby takes the first irreversible step toward an infinite regress of ideal abstract universal men of increasingly higher order, beginning with the third MAN, for which there seems to be no legitimating explanatory rationale. A further example, to have several on hand, is the infinite regress that occurs on the assumption that every occurrent event has a temporally prior cause, or, simply, that every event has a cause that is also an event. The logical structure, class .. (shrink)

Meinong's doctrine of the modal moment and the watering-down of extranuclear properties to surrogate nuclear counterparts was offered in response to Russell's problem of the existent round square. To avoid an infinite regress of successively watered-down factualities, Meinong stipulates that the modal moment itself cannot be watered-down. This limits free assumption, since it means that the idea of the existent-cum-modal-moment round square cannot be entertained in thought. It is possible to eliminate the modal moment and watering-down from Meinongian semantics in (...) favor of a strict enforcement of the distinction between nuclear and extranuclear properties. This provides a simpler, more economical Meinongian object theory, and regains unrestricted free assumption. (shrink)

The concept of a dialogue is considered in general terms from the standpoint of its referential presuppositions. The semantics of dialogue implies that dialogue participants must generally have a collective intentionality of agreed-upon references that is minimally sufficient for them to be able to disagree about other things, and ideally for outstanding disagreements to become clearer at successive stages of the dialogue. These points are detailed and illustrated in a fictional dialogue, in which precisely these kinds of referential confusions impede (...) progress in shared understanding. It is only through a continuous exchange of question and answer in this dialogue case study that the meanings of key terms and anaphorical references are disambiguated, and a relevantly complete collective intentionality of shared meaning between dialogue participants is achieved. The importance of a minimally shared referential semantics for the terms entering into reasoning and argument in dialogue contexts broadly construed cannot be over-estimated. Where to draw the line between referential agreement and disagreement within any chosen dialogue, as participants work toward better mutual understanding in clearing up referential incongruities, is sometimes among the dialogue’s main points of dispute. (shrink)

A philosophical argument in ordinary language is made the basis for a series of deductive logic exercises. Problems of translating the reasoning and alternative symbolizations are discussed to help guide students toward accurate charitable formalizations. Finally, the inference is critically evaluated in light of its deductive validity.

ABSTRACTThe ideological and methodological oppositions that divide philosophy generally into realisms and idealisms, objectivisms and subjectivisms, also pervade aesthetic theory. The question arises whether there was beauty in the world prior to the emergence of intelligent perceivers like ourselves, or whether beauty itself comes into existence only through the perceptual idiosyncrasies with which we happen to encounter the objects we happen to consider beautiful. The experience of beauty and its opposites under this description can easily seem to be an altogether (...) subjective phenomenon, available at most only to those psychological subjects conditioned or predisposed to recognize certain features as possessing specific aesthetic properties. The article examines topics related to the intentionality of expression in art. Intention is often rejected as a basis for aesthetic judgment. The present discussion, by focusing on the role of perception in art production and appreciation, considers ways of addressing those objections to restore an intuitive sense of the intentional expressiveness of art. The proposed solution also helps uphold an approach toward answering the question of whether aesthetic value generally is only subjective or also has a distinctively objective element. (shrink)

Berkeley’s immaterialism depends on a correct answer to the question whether, in experiencing what is described as hearing a coach in the street, a perceiving subject really only immediately perceives certain sounds, auditory sensible ideas that are partly constitutive of the carriage as a sensible thing, or in immediately experiencing the associated sounds immediately perceives the carriage itself. Much hangs on how the word ‘perceive’ is thought to be propery used, and how wide and deeply penetrating its intentionality is conceived (...) to be, whether we can perceive sensible things like carriages or only carriagey sensible ideas. There are problems with answers on both sides of the inevitable opposition, and hence a number of related dilemmas running through and sometimes across one another in this part of Berkeley’s philosophy. The coach and horse argument in Berkeley’s Three Dialogues affirms radical phenomenalism as the strictly philosophically correct thesis that all perceiving is immediately perceiving sensible ideas, to the exclusion of sensible things as total congeries of sensible ideas. Relevant passages in Berkeley’s text set in an interpretative framework and proper context of philosophical exchange between Berkeley’s dialogue partners reveals the carriage argument as more subtle in structure and more powerfully supportive of a radical idealist phenomenalism in Berkeley’s empiricist epistemology than is exemplified elsewhere in Three Dialogues. (shrink)

The concept of conditional intent is pervasive in practical reasoning and action. Although conditional intent has not received the detailed attention it deserves, it is worth remarking that much if not most of the intentions we formulate and on the basis of which we act or try to act are conditional in logical form.

Although it is frequently said that logic is a purely formal discipline lacking any content for special philosophical subdisciplines, I argue in this essay that the concepts of predication, and of the properties of objects presupposed by standard first-order logic are sufficient to address many of the traditional problems of ontology. The concept of an object's having a property is extended to provide an intensional definition of the existence of an object as the object's possessing a maximally consistent property combination, (...) consisting, for any property or its complement. Nonexistent objects by the proposed definition are those that either lack both some property and its complement, or have both a property and its complement included in its corresponding property combination. The definition in turn makes it possible to offer solutions based on purely logical concepts of such longstanding metaphysical problems as why there is something rather than nothing, and why there exists exactly one logically contingent actual world, itself a maximally consistent combination of true predication instances or facts. Additionally, the ontology upholds an argument in support of modal actualism and against modal realism, treating all logically possible worlds other than the actual world as predicationally incomplete nonexistent objects or semantic fictions. (shrink)

Franz Brentano upheld the medieval Aristotelian doctrine of intentionality as a mark of the mental, distinguishing physical from psychological phenomena by the intentionality of the psychological and nonintentionality of the physical. But to implement, even to fully understand and appreciate Brentano’s thesis, it is necessary to know when intentionality does or does not obtain. The task of formulating satisfactory criteria of intentionality has proved elusive. The magnitude of difficulty is indicated by the number and variety of criteria proposed and defeated (...) by counter examples. Intentionality may be a primitive irreducible property incapable of reductive conceptual analysis. But nonreductive criteriological characterizations of intentionality demonstrate an equally stubborn resistance to philosophical methods. (shrink)

This essay asks whether there is a relation between action-serving and meaning-serving intentions. The idea that the intentions involved in meaning and action are nominally designated alike as intentionalities does not guarantee any special logical or conceptual connections between the intentionality of referential thoughts and thought-expressive speech acts with the intentionality of doing. The latter category is typified by overt physical actions in order to communicate by engaging in speech acts, but also includes at the origin of all artistic and (...) symbolic expression such cerebral and linguistic doings as thinking propositional thoughts. There are exactly four possibilities by which meaning and action intentionalities might be related to be systematically investigated. Meaning-serving and action-serving intentionalities, topologically speaking, might exclude one another, partially overlap with one another, or subsume one in the other or the other in the one. The theoretical separation of the two ostensible categories of intendings is criticized, as is their partial overlap, in light of the proposal that thinking and artistic and symbolic expression are activities that favor the inclusion of paradigm meaning-serving intentions as among a larger domain of action-serving intentions. The only remaining alternative is then developed, of including action-serving intentions reductively in meaning-serving intentions, and is defended as offering in an unexpected way the most cogent universal reductive ontology in which the intentionality of doing generally relates to the specific intentionality of referring in thought to the objects of predications, and of its artistic and symbolic expression. (shrink)

(1979). From endorsement to disintegration: Progressive education from the golden age to the green paper. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 191-209.

In classical Greek poetry there is a familiar distinction between verse which repeats line upon line, and that which forms patterns liable to closure at intervals, in stanzas or lyric sections. This is often equated with the distinction between spoken and sung verse, but the equation is only approximate. At an earlier stage all verse had some musical accompaniment—so much can be deduced from a number of passages in Homer, and is in any case implicit in the nature of quantitative (...) verse. By Hellenistic times it seems that, in new composition, the more complex lyric structures had died out, while of the simpler ones more and more were being taken over as spoken verse. In the fifth century—and this can probably be extended to at least the late sixth and most of the fourth—only two kinds of verse are known to have dispensed with music altogether in performance: the heroic hexameter and the iambic trimeter. (shrink)