This sequel to the widely read Zen and the Brain continues James Austin's explorations into the key interrelationships between Zen Buddhism and brain research. In Zen-Brain Reflections, Austin, a clinical neurologist, researcher, and Zen practitioner, examines the evolving psychological processes and brain changes associated with the path of long-range meditative training. Austin draws not only on the latest neuroscience research and new neuroimaging studies but also on Zen literature and his personal experience with alternate states of consciousness.Zen-Brain Reflections takes (...) up where the earlier book left off. It addresses such questions as: how do placebos and acupuncture change the brain? Can neuroimaging studies localize the sites where our notions of self arise? How can the latest brain imaging methods monitor meditators more effectively? How do long years of meditative training plus brief enlightened states produce pivotal transformations in the physiology of the brain? In many chapters testable hypotheses suggest ways to correlate normal brain functions and meditative training with the phenomena of extraordinary states of consciousness.After briefly introducing the topic of Zen and describing recent research into meditation, Austin reviews the latest studies on the amygdala, frontotemporal interactions, and paralimbic extensions of the limbic system. He then explores different states of consciousness, both the early superficial absorptions and the later, major "peak experiences." This discussion begins with the states called kensho and satori and includes a fresh analysis of their several different expressions of "oneness." He points beyond the still more advanced states toward that rare ongoing stage of enlightenment that is manifest as "sage wisdom."Finally, with reference to a delayed "moonlight" phase of kensho, Austin envisions novel links between migraines and metaphors, moonlight and mysticism. The Zen perspective on the self and consciousness is an ancient one. Readers will discover how relevant Zen is to the neurosciences, and how each field can illuminate the other. (shrink)

The metaethics and metametaethics of Scanlon's "Reasons Fundamentalism".

Aesthetic testimony is testimony about aesthetic properties. For example, in aone straightforward case, one person might tell another that something is beautiful. Philosophical discussion about aesthetic testimony centers on the question of whether there are any important differences between aesthetic testimony and testimony about non-aesthetic descriptive matters. In particular, the focus is often on the respective epistemic credentials of aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony relative to firsthand judgments in the respective domains. Most are inclined to think that in some way and (...) to some degree we typically treat aesthetic testimony as being epistemically inferior to testimony about non-aesthetic matters. Assuming an asymmetry in the way we typically treat aesthetic and non-aesthetic testimony, the philosophical debate then asks a number of questions. Is aesthetic testimony actually epistemically inferior? If so, in what ways, and what explains its inferiority? If not, why do our ordinary ways of thinking, talking, and engaging with aesthetic testimony treat it as being inferior? In this chapter, I consider various ways in which experimental philosophy can contribute to these debates. Drawing on extant work and some new empirical studies, this chapter provides an overview of what experimental philosophy has told us so far, and summarizes the implications for philosophical debate. (shrink)

What is the relationship between, on the one hand, the sorts of causal claims found in the special sciences (and in common sense) and, on the other hand, the world as described by physics? A standard picture goes like this: the fundamental laws of physics are causal laws in the sense that they can be interpreted as telling us that realizations of one set of physical factors or properties “causes” realizations of other properties. Causal claims in the special sciences are (...) then true (to the extent that they are) in virtue of “instantiating” these underlying causal laws; as it is often put, the latter serve as “truth-makers” for the former. The picture is thus one according to which the notion of cause, as it occurs in the special sciences, is reflected or “grounded” in a fairly straightforward and transparent way in a similar notion that occurs in fundamental physics. This paper explores some alternatives to this picture. (shrink)

This Element presents a philosophical exploration of the notion of scientific representation. It does so by focussing on an important class of scientific representations, namely scientific models. Models are important in the scientific process because scientists can study a model to discover features of reality. But what does it mean for something to represent something else? This is the question discussed in this Element. The authors begin by disentangling different aspects of the problem of representation and then discuss the dominant (...) accounts in the philosophical literature: the resemblance view and inferentialism. They find them both wanting and submit that their own preferred option, the so-called DEKI account, not only eschews the problems that beset these conceptions, but further provides a comprehensive answer to the question of how scientific representation works. (shrink)

An overview of the main areas of epistemological debate to which experimental philosophers have been contributing and the larger, philosophical challenges these contributions have raised.

In this paper, we introduce a novel difficulty for teleosemantics, viz., its inability to account for what we call unexploited content—content a representation has, but which the system that harbors it is currently unable to exploit. In section two, we give a characterization of teleosemantics. Since our critique does not depend on any special details that distinguish the variations in the literature, the characterization is broad, brief and abstract. In section three, we explain what we mean by unexploited content, and (...) argue that any theory of content adequate to ground representationalist theories in cognitive science must allow for it.1 In section four, we show that teleosemantic theories of the sort we identify in section two cannot accommodate unexploited content, and are therefore unacceptable if intended as attempts to ground representationalist cognitive science. Finally, in section five, we speculate that the existence and importance of unexploited content has likely been obscured by a failure to distinguish representation from indication, and by a tendency to think of representation as reference. (shrink)

A timely and accessible synthesis of the strengths, weaknesses and reality of science through the eyes of a practicing scientist.

Moti Mizrahi (2015) examines whether there are “good arguments” to support Kuhn’s taxonomic incommensurability (TI) thesis. He concludes that there is neither “valid deductive” nor “strong inductive” support for the thesis and that consequently TI should not be believed or accepted. In response, Lydia Patton (2015) claims that the most “influential” arguments within the history of science are abductive or inference to the best explanation (IBE) rather than deductive or inductive arguments. After reviewing and analyzing this exchange, I propose that (...) although argumentation is important for supporting Kuhn’s TI thesis, it is not the only type of support—or possibly even the most persuasive. I contend that the historian’s personal or psychological experience of accessing a revolutionary change in science—as illustrated in Kuhn’s own experience of laboring to understand the Aristotelian idea of motion while assuming a Newtonian idea of motion—represents a compelling type of support for TI. To that end, I reconstruct briefly a case history from the biomedical sciences and discuss how it supports TI vis-à-vis the Mizrahi-Patton exchange. (shrink)

A thought experiment involving an omniscient being and quantum mechanics is used to justify non-deductive methods in mathematics. The twin prime conjecture is used to illustrate what can be achieved.

A significant methodological difference between analytic and continental philosophers comes out in their differing attitudes to transcendental reasoning. It has been an object of concern to analytic philosophy since the dawn of the movement around the start of the twentieth century, and although there was briefly a mini-industry on the validity of transcendental arguments following Peter Strawson’s prominent use of them, discussion of their acceptability – usually with a negative verdict – is far more common than their positive use within (...) a philosophical system or to justify a specific claim. By contrast, in the continental traditions starting with Kant but enduring throughout the twentieth century and beyond, some form of transcendental reasoning is close to ubiquitous, notwithstanding that what one means by the transcendental is significantly reconfigured by phenomenology, and then the genealogical turn, as well as by a more constructivist understanding of philosophy. Concerns about the status of transcendental reasoning certainly exist for continental philosophers, but continued creative use persists, and there is no general agreement that transcendental argumentation is especially problematic. In fact, it is more commonly claimed, and it is certainly frequently implied, that a transcendental dimension is of the essence of philosophy. Any philosophical activity that does not reflect on its own conditions of possibility is naïve, or pre-critical, and the sometimes pilloried continental enquiries into the ‘problem of modernity’ are but one way of attempting to reflect on the conditions of contemporary philosophical discourse, subjectivity, and cultural life more generally. Much of this chapter will hence be concerned to offer both an explicit and implicit rationale for the divergent attitudes of analytic and continental philosophers vis-à-vis transcendental reasoning. We give an incomplete account of what transcendental arguments are, review the major analytic criticisms of them, gesture towards some of the recent continental appropriations of such arguments (focusing on the themes of embodiment and time), consider the extent to which analytic criticisms apply to such usages, and attempt to bring to the fore the differing explanatory norms that justify these divergent practices. (shrink)