"This is the third edition of a near standard survey of the intellectual life of the age of faith. Artz on the arts, as on philosophy, politics and other aspects of culture, makes lively and informative reading."—_The Washington Post_.

This essay argues that Spinoza’s metaphysics offers a theoretical framework for dissolving the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. The conceptual origins of the gap have their roots in Cartesian substance dualism. If phenomenal experience is conceived as substantially distinct from correlated physical processes in the brain, an explanatory gap opens in our understanding of the mind/body relation. Spinoza’s metaphysics offers an ontology that preserves the qualitative difference between phenomenal experience and physiological processes while conceiving the ultimate numerical unity of (...) mind and its correlated physical processes. The notion of qualitative difference within substantial unity is deduced from Spinoza’s redefinition of the basic features of the Cartesian universe: substance, attribute, and mode. Redefinition results in a property dualism that is internally consistent and dissolves the conceptual gap in contemporary consciousness studies. This paper identifies and explains the central argument for qualitative distinction within substantial unity and recommends a framework for consciousness studies that views phenomenology and neuroscience as complementary disciplines. (shrink)

This essay argues that Sartre offers a version of the intrinsic theory of inner awareness that is based on a feature of the internal negation that determines the relation between the for-itself and the in-itself : non-positional awareness. Non-positional awareness is the implicit consciousness of being conscious of an object that is a component of every conscious mental state. For example, the perceptual experience of this table is directed towards the table, but at the same time it is an awareness (...) of itself, though not as an object. Sartre’s ontology, and his account of the structure of intentionality, provide the theoretical foundation for a coherent account of how non-positional awareness lights up consciousness of an object without itself being either a subject or object of experience. (shrink)

This paper contrasts David Chalmers’s formulation of the easy and hard problems of consciousness with a Cartesian formulation. For Chalmers, the easy problem is making progress in explaining cognitive functions and discovering how they arise from physical processes in the brain. The hard problem is accounting for why these functions are accompanied by conscious experience. For Descartes, the easy problem is knowing the essential features of conscious experience. The hard problem is verifying our knowledge of the mathematical—physical world. While Chalmers (...) admits that consciousness as subjective experience has something irreducible about it, he also presupposes that conscious experience arises from physical processes. These physical processes are posited as objectively real entities given prior to human experience. The knowledge of such entities is assumed without theoretical justification. This assumption arguably invites a reductive materialist theory of mind. I suggest that employing the Cartesian method to articulate the representational theory of knowledge provides an antidote to reductive materialism and illuminates the conceptual gap between physical processes and conscious experience. To illustrate this I contrast Dennett’s heterophenomenology with the Cartesian method of crossing the conceptual gap. I suggest that the hard problem is attaining a knowledge of the extra-mental physical objects, not of conscious experience. (shrink)

This paper examines the contents and institutional context of August Weismann's long essay on Amphimixis (1891). Therein he presented detailed discussions of his on-going studies of reduction division and parthenogenesis, but more to the point, he included an elaborate examination of Émile Maupas's two major publications in protozoology. To understand the relevance of this part to the other two, the author briefly reviews highpoints in earlier nineteenth century protozoology and concludes that only in the mid-1870s and 1880s did protozoa add (...) an important dimension to heredity theory. Otto Bütschli and then Maupas provided Weismann with a deeper understanding of how conjugation and fertilization were related but not identical processes. This allowed him to integrate the two into a fuller understanding of evolution by natural selection. (shrink)

We began our survey at a time when Ehrenberg's functional principles concerning the design of all organisms prevailed in interpreting the taxonomic place and internal structure of Infusoria. Other options existed, such as Dujardin's sarcode theory and Siebold's cellular analogy, but these were not persuasive for reasons both relevant to and in addition to the microscopic observations. By mid-century other considerations, including the continuing search for complex life cycles and manifestations of sex, dictated the microscopist's rendering of infusorians. Müller and (...) his students saw spermatozoa and gonads; Stein envisioned alternating generations and generative nuclei; Balbiani found sexual behavior in the events of conjugation; and all interpreted the nuclei and nucleoli as gonads or gonadal products. Evolutionary theory provided a fourth dimension. Obsessed with phylogenies, particularly when joined with the germ-layer theory of development, Haeckel emphasized a structural interpretation and found a considerably altered cell theory ready to fill the breach.By the mid-1870s advances in cytology secured Siebold's original analogy. Infusorians now became single-celled organisms, the first in a long phylogenetic sequence that led to the “highest” metazoans. The analogy allowed Bütschli to invoke another biological principle, the physiological division of labor, to reinterpret the origin of the bisexual state. The ghost of Ehrenberg's polygastric theory had completely vanished. (shrink)

In recent decades, particularly since the publication of Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy and Gerardus Van der Leeuw's Religion in Essence and Manifestion , what is known as the ‘phenomenological’ approach to the study of religion has become extremely popular. I myself, in teaching courses in religious studies, have for a number of years used Van der Leeuw's classic study; it is a work of amazing insight and scholarship, and perhaps the single greatest example ofjust how successful the (...) method of phenomenology can be when applied to a distinct field of study. But it is not only in the domain of religious studies that phenomenologists have made important contributions; in the spheres of social and political theory, for example, as well as in the philosophy of art, the philosophy of psychology, and other areas, there have been notable accomplishments. (shrink)

In this introduction to philosophy, philosophers in their areas of specialization have produced essays written specifically for the novice. The collection includes traditional topics such as logic, metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, philosophy of religion , personal identity, and contemporary topics such as philosophy of mind and cognitive science.

An argument opposing the unrestricted use of quantification in modal logic has been put forward by Quine. Central to this argument are the two phrases, The Morning Star, The Evening Star.One form of the argument is obtained by considering the following two statements: It is necessary that the Morning Star is identical with the Morning Star. It is not necessary that the Evening Star is identical with the Morning Star.

These sixteen essays were written in honor of Frederick B. Fitch. Each part of the volume treats an area of the logical enterprise which had special interest for Fitch. The four parts are entitled, respectively, "Metaphysics and Language," "Basic and Combinatorial Logic," "Implication and Consistency," and "Deontic, Epistemic, and Erotetic Logic.".