A popular approach to defining fictive utterance says that, necessarily, it is intended to produce imagining. I shall argue that this is not falsified by the fact that some fictive utterances are intended to be believed, or are non-accidentally true. That this is so becomes apparent given a proper understanding of the relation of what one imagines to one's belief set. In light of this understanding, I shall then argue that being intended to produce imagining is sufficient for fictive utterance (...) as well. (shrink)

A countably infinite relational structure M is called absolutely ubiquitous if the following holds: whenever N is a countably infinite structure, and M and N have the same isomorphism types of finite induced substructures, there is an isomorphism from M to N. Here a characterisation is given of absolutely ubiquitous structures over languages with finitely many relation symbols. A corresponding result is proved for uncountable structures.

This exploratory study assessed the use of functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) to examine hemodynamic response patterns during sentence processing. Four groups of participants: monolingual English children, bilingual Chinese-English children, bilingual Chinese-English adults and monolingual English adults were given an agent selection syntactic processing task. Bilingual child participants were classified as simultaneous or sequential bilinguals to examine the impact of first language, age of second-language acquisition (AoL2A), and the length of second language experience on behavioral performance and cortical activation. Participants (...) were asked to select the agent of four types of sentences: subject-verb-object (SVO), passive (PAS), subject-extracted relative clause (SR), and object-extracted relative clause (OR) adopted from the “Whatdunit” task by Montgomery et al. (2016). Semantic cues were removed by using inanimate nouns for agents and patients, which constrained participants to make decisions based on syntactic knowledge. Behavioral results showed greater accuracy for canonical SVO and SR sentence types than for noncanonical OR and PAS sentence types, which aligns with prior studies. Neuroimaging results revealed greater hemodynamic responses to relative clauses (i.e., SR and OR sentences) than to simple sentences (SVO and PAS), especially for Chinese-English bilinguals suggesting first-language transfer influencing sentence processing in English. The effects AoL2A and the length of second language experience showed no significant differences between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals or between bilingual adults and children for identifying the correct agent in each sentence. However, neuroimaging results demonstrated greater hemodynamic responses in right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) in simultaneous bilinguals compared to sequential bilinguals and greater hemodynamic responses in left and right DLPFC and left IPL among bilingual adults. Different behavioral and neural hemodynamic response patterns afford new insights into the effects of syntactic knowledge on sentence processing. (shrink)

As philosophers of mind we seem to hold in common no very clear view about the relevance that work in psychology or the neurosciences may or may not have to our own favourite questions—even if we call the subject ‘philosophical psychology’. For example, in the literature we find articles on pain some of which do, some of which don't, rely more or less heavily on, for example, the work of Melzack and Wall; the puzzle cases used so extensively in discussions (...) of personal identity are drawn sometimes from the pleasant exercise of scientific fantasy, at times from surprising reports of scientific fact; and there are those who deny, as well as those who affirm, the importance of the discovery of rapid-eye-movement sleep to the philosophical treatment of dreaming. A general account of the relation between scientific, and philosophical, psychology is long overdue and of the first importance. Here I shall limit myself to just one area where the two seem to connect, discussing one type of neuropsychological research and its relevance to questions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of psychology. (shrink)

Artificially Intelligent robotic technologies increasingly reflect a language of interaction and relationship and this vocabulary is part and parcel of the meanings now attached to machines. No longer are they inert, but interconnected, responsive and engaging. As machines become more sophisticated, they are predicted to be a “direct object” of an interaction for a human, but what kinds of human would that give rise to? Before robots, animals played the role of the relational other, what can stories of feral children (...) tell us about what it means to be human? What of ‘relationship’ do AI and robotic scientists draw on to generate ideas about their relational others? I will address these questions by reference to the work of Martin Buber in I and Thou. (shrink)

If beliefs and desires affect perception—at least in certain specified ways—then cognitive penetration occurs. Whether it occurs is a matter of controversy. Recently, some proponents of the predictive coding account of perception have claimed that the account entails that cognitive penetrations occurs. I argue that the relationship between the predictive coding account and cognitive penetration is dependent on both the specific form of the predictive coding account and the specific form of cognitive penetration. In so doing, I spell out different (...) forms of each and the relationship that holds between them. Thus, mere acceptance of the predictive coding approach to perception does not determine whether one should think that cognitive penetration exists. Moreover, given that there are such different conceptions of both predictive coding and cognitive penetration, researchers should cease talking of either without making clear which form they refer to, if they aspire to make true generalisations. (shrink)

I am extremely grateful to all commentators for such patient, generous, and stimulating contributions. What follows are some thoughts to enrich the conversation, but these are by no means intended to be definitive answers to the worries they have raised.

Can the phenomenal character of perceptual experience be altered by the states of one's cognitive system, for example, one's thoughts or beliefs? If one thinks that this can happen then one thinks that there can be cognitive penetration of perceptual experience; otherwise, one thinks that perceptual experience is cognitively impenetrable. I claim that there is one alleged case of cognitive penetration that cannot be explained away by the standard strategies one can typically use to explain away alleged cases. The case (...) is one in which it seems subjects' beliefs about the typical colour of objects affects their colour experience. I propose a two-step mechanism of indirect cognitive penetration that explains how cognitive penetration may occur. I show that there is independent evidence that each step in this process can occur. I suspect that people who are opposed to the idea that perceptual experience is cognitively penetrable will be less opposed to the idea when they come to consider this indirect mechanism and that those who are generally sympathetic to the idea of cognitive penetrability will welcome the elucidation of this plausible mechanism. (shrink)

Representationalism is the position that the phenomenal character of an experience is either identical with, or supervenes on, the content of that experience. Many representationalists hold that the relevant content of experience is nonconceptual. I propose a counterexample to this form of representationalism that arises from the phenomenon of Gestalt switching, which occurs when viewing ambiguous figures. First, I argue that one does not need to appeal to the conceptual content of experience or to judgements to account for Gestalt switching. (...) I then argue that experiences of certain ambiguous figures are problematic because they have different phenomenal characters but that no difference in the nonconceptual content of these experiences can be identified. I consider three solutions to this problem that have been proposed by both philosophers and psychologists and conclude that none can account for all the ambiguous figures that pose the problem. I conclude that the onus is on representationalists to specify the relevant difference in content or to abandon their position. (shrink)

Is there a space of the sensory modalities? Such a space would be one in which we can represent all the actual, and at least some of the possible, sensory modalities. The relative position of the senses in this space would indicate how similar and how different the senses were from each other. The construction of such a space might reveal unconsidered features of the actual and possible senses, help us to define what a sense is, and provide grounds that (...) we might use to decide what is one token sense rather than multiple token senses. -/- In this paper, I explore, refine, and defend the idea that we can construct such a space—an idea that I briefly proposed in earlier work (Macpherson 2011a and 2011b). In doing so, I defend the idea from an objection that Richard Gray (2012) has voiced. Gray claims that the dimensions of the space of sensory modalities must generate a non-­‐arbitrary ordering of the senses. He argues that we cannot find dimensions that do so. I disagree. I identify different ways in which a space could be arbitrary but I argue that we can define a space of the sensory modalities in a non-arbitrary manner. I give examples of what the dimensions might be. (shrink)

Background: Managing HIV treatment is a complex multi-dimensional task because of a combination of factors such as stigma and discrimination of some populations who frequently get infected with HIV. In addition, patient-provider encounters have become increasingly multicultural, making effective communication and provision of ethically sound care a challenge. Purpose: This article explores ethical issues that health service providers in the United States and Botswana encountered in their interaction with patients in HIV care. Research design: A descriptive qualitative design was used (...) to collect data from health service providers and patients using focused group discussions. This article is based on responses from health service providers only. Participants and context: This article is based on 11 focused group discussions with a total sample of 71 service providers in seven US sites and one Botswana site. Ethical considerations: Ethical review boards at all the study sites reviewed the study protocol and approved it. Ethical review boards of the study’s coordinating centers, Rutgers University and the University of California at San Francisco, also approved it. The study participants provided a written informed consent to participate. Findings: HIV service providers encountered ethical challenges in all the four Beauchamp and Childress’ biomedical ethics of respect for patients’ autonomy, beneficence, justice, and nonmaleficence. Discussion: The finding that HIV service providers encounter ethical challenges in their interaction with patients is supported by prior studies. The ethical challenges are particularly prominent in multicultural care and resource-constrained care environments. Conclusion: Provision of HIV care is fraught with ethical challenges that tend to pose different issues depending on a given care environment. It is important that strong partnerships are developed among key stakeholders in HIV care. In addition, health service providers need to be provided with resources so they can provide quality and ethically sound care. (shrink)

“Synaesthesia” is most often characterised as a union or mixing of the senses.i Richard Cytowic describes it thus: “It denotes the rare capacity to hear colours, taste shapes or experience other equally startling sensory blendings whose quality seems difficult for most of us to imagine” ([1995] 1997, 7). One famous example is of a man who “tasted shapes”. When he experienced flavours he also experienced shapes rubbing against his face or hands.ii Such popular characterisations are rough and ready. What is (...) certainly true about synaesthesia is that it involves the interaction between sensory phenomena: in response to certain stimuli some sensory phenomena are elicited in synaesthetes that are not elicited in non-synaesthetes. However, the exact nature of the additional sensory phenomena forms a large part of the debate on the nature of synaesthesia. Synaesthesia is a condition that has been known about for some time. In the late nineteenth century, and early twentieth, century very many articles appeared on the topic in the psychological literature.iii Much of this work on synaesthesia relied on introspective reports of subjects. In consequence, when later in the twentieth century psychologists eschewed introspective reports and radical behaviourist methodology became the order of the day, synaesthesia was rarely a topic of research. In more recent times, however, psychology has once again changed tack. With the advent of cognitive psychology and of objective techniques that try to probe the nature of conscious states of the mind that are reported in introspection, psychological interest in synaesthesia has resumed. Many new findings about the subject have recently been brought to light. In philosophy, interest in synaesthesia is only just beginning to arise. The phenomenon is potentially philosophically interesting for several reasons.. (shrink)

Unlike those with type 1 blindsight, people who have type 2 blindsight have some sort of consciousness of the stimuli in their blind field. What is the nature of that consciousness? Is it visual experience? I address these questions by considering whether we can establish the existence of any structural—necessary—features of visual experience. I argue that it is very difficult to establish the existence of any such features. In particular, I investigate whether it is possible to visually, or more generally (...) perceptually, experience form or movement at a distance from our body, without experiencing colour. The traditional answer, advocated by Aristotle, and some other philosophers, up to and including the present day, is that it is not and hence colour is a structural feature of visual experience. I argue that there is no good reason to think that this is impossible, and provide evidence from four cases—sensory substitution, achomatopsia, phantom contours and amodal completion—in favour of the idea that it is possible. If it is possible then one important reason for rejecting the idea that people with type 2 blindsight do not have visual experiences is undermined. I suggest further experiments that could be done to help settle the matter. (shrink)

In this paper I examine whether representationalism can account for various thought experiments about colour inversions. Representationalism is, at minimum, the view that, necessarily, if two experiences have the same representational content then they have the same phenomenal character. I argue that representationalism ought to be rejected if one holds externalist views about experiential content and one holds traditional exter- nalist views about the nature of the content of propositional attitudes. Thus, colour inver- sion scenarios are more damaging to externalist (...) representationalist views than have been previously thought. More specifically, I argue that representationalists who endorse externalism about experiential content either have to become internalists about the content of propositional attitudes or they have to adopt a novel variety of externalism about the content of propositional attitudes. This novel type of propositional attitude externalism is investigated. It can be seen that adopting it forces one to reject Putnam. (shrink)

In this paper, I survey in some depth three issues arising from the connection between imagination and fiction: (i) whether fiction can be defined as such in terms of its prescribing imagining; (ii) whether imagining in response to fiction is de se, or de re, or both; (iii) the phenomenon of ‘imaginative resistance’ and various explanations for it. Along the way I survey, more briefly, several other prominent issues in this area too.

I argue that we should reject the sparse view that there are or could be only a small number of rather distinct senses. When one appreciates this then one can see that there is no need to choose between the standard criteria that have been proposed as ways of individuating the senses—representation, phenomenal character, proximal stimulus and sense organ—or any other criteria that one may deem important. Rather, one can use these criteria in conjunction to form a fine-grained taxonomy of (...) the senses. We can think of these criteria as defining a multidimensional space within which we can locate each of the senses that we are familiar with and which also defines the space of possible senses there could be. (shrink)

The prevention of disability has been the driving force behind much research. In epidemiology three levels of prevention are defined: primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary prevention is the prevention of the initiation or occurrence of a disease; secondary prevention is the prevention or amelioration of the consequences of a disease, and tertiary prevention refers to rehabilitation or the limitation of disability associated with the disease. We have examples of all three levels of prevention in the area of childhood disability. (...) Primary prevention is the protection of infants against congenital rubella syndrome by ensuring that women of childbearing age have adequate immunity before they become pregnant. The prevention of choreoathetosis, mental retardation, and deafness, by treating hyperbilirubinemia and preventing kernicterus in newborns, is a great success story in prevention. Similarly, at the level of secondary prevention, is the reduction in mental retardation caused by phenylketonuria, or PKU, by eliminating phenylalanine in the diets of newborns who lack the enzyme to metabolize this amino acid. Tertiary prevention is the area of rehabilitation medicine, and is regarded as the least desirable level of prevention. Indeed, tertiary prevention can be seen as “doing the best we can” in terms of rehabilitation, often while seeking a means of really preventing the disease. (shrink)

Physiologically accurate mouse models of cancer are critical in the pre‐clinical development of novel cancer therapies. However, current standardized animal‐housing temperatures elicit chronic cold‐associated stress in mice, which is further increased in the presence of tumor. This cold‐stress significantly impacts experimental outcomes. Data from our lab and others suggest standard housing fundamentally alters murine physiology, and this can produce altered immune baselines in tumor and other disease models. Researchers may thus underestimate the efficacy of therapies that are benefitted by immune (...) responses. A potential mediator, norepinephrine, also underlies stress pathways common in mice and humans. Therefore, research into mechanisms connecting cold‐stress and norepinephrine signaling with immune depression in mice could highlight new combination therapies for humans to simultaneously target stress while stimulating anti‐tumor immunity. (shrink)

As an international IRB collaboration project, we set out to develop an approach to enhance the understanding of issues related to the conduct of human research with an international partner. While the larger project included two specific aims, the activities supporting the first aim are addressed in this paper—specifically, human research protection program capacity strengthening in Cali, Colombia, through the development of an infrastructure that supports the conduct of human research with appropriate protection of subjects and access to new resources (...) at the international site. (shrink)

In volume 1 of this three-volume work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing. Now, in volume 2, he examines these relations in fiction and theories of literature. Ricoeur treats the question of just how far the Aristotelian concept of "plot" in narrative fiction can be expanded and whether there is a point at which narrative fiction as a literary form not only blurs at the edges but ceases to exist at all. Though some semiotic (...) theorists have proposed all fiction can be reduced to an atemporal structure, Ricoeur argues that fiction depends on the reader's understanding of narrative traditions, which do evolve but necessarily include a temporal dimension. He looks at how time is actually expressed in narrative fiction, particularly through use of tenses, point of view, and voice. He applies this approach to three books that are, in a sense, tales about time: Virgina Woolf's _Mrs. Dalloway;_ Thomas Mann's _Magic Mountain;_ and Marcel Proust's _Remembrance of Things Past_. "Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear."—Eugen Weber, _New York Times Book Review _ "A major work of literary theory and criticism under the aegis of philosophical hermenutics. I believe that... it will come to have an impact greater than that of Gadamer's Truth and Method—a work it both supplements and transcends in its contribution to our understanding of the meaning of texts and their relationship to the world."—Robert Detweiler, _Religion and Literature_ "One cannot fail to be impressed by Ricoeur's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject under consideration.... To students of rhetoric, the importance of Time and Narrative... is all too evident to require extensive elaboration."—Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, _Quarterly Journal of Speech_. (shrink)

The concept of the imaginary is pervasive within contemporary thought, yet can be a baffling and often controversial term. In Imagination and the Imaginary , Kathleen Lennon explores the links between imagination - regarded as the faculty of creating images or forms - and the imaginary, which links such imagery with affect or emotion and captures the significance which the world carries for us. Beginning with an examination of contrasting theories of imagination proposed by Hume and Kant, Lennon argues (...) that the imaginary is not something in opposition to the real, but the very faculty through which the world is made real to us. She then turns to the vexed relationship between perception and imagination and, drawing on Kant, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre, explores some fundamental questions, such as whether there is a distinction between the perceived and the imagined; the relationship between imagination and creativity; and the role of the body in perception and imagination. Invoking also Spinoza and Coleridge, Lennon argues that, far from being a realm of illusion, the imaginary world is our most direct mode of perception. She then explores the role the imaginary plays in the formation of the self and the social world. A unique feature of the volume is that it compares and contrasts a philosophical tradition of thinking about the imagination - running from Kant and Hume to Strawson and John McDowell - with the work of phenomenological, psychoanalytic, poststructuralist and feminist thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Lacan, Castoriadis, Irigaray, Gatens and Lloyd. This makes I magination and the Imaginary essential reading for students and scholars working in phenomenology, philosophy of perception, social theory, cultural studies and aesthetics. Cover Image: Bronze Bowl with Lace , Ursula Von Rydingsvard, 2014. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Lelong and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Photo Jonty Wilde. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper seeks to establish whether the cognitive penetration of experience is compatible with experience having nonconceptual content. Cognitive penetration occurs when one’s beliefs or desires affect one’s perceptual experience in a particular way. I examine two different models of cognitive penetration and four different accounts of the distinction between conceptual and nonconceptual content. I argue that one model of cognitive penetration—“classic” cognitive penetration—is compatible with only one of the accounts of nonconceptual content that I identify. I then consider (...) the other model of cognitive penetration—cognitive penetration “lite”. I provide reasons to think that this is compatible with three accounts of nonconceptual content. Moreover, I argue that the account of nonconceptual content that it is not compatible with is a spurious notion of nonconceptual content that ought to be abandoned. Thus, I claim that cognitive penetration lite is compatible with all reasonable specifications of nonconceptual content. (shrink)

Codes of ethics were drafted by participants in the European and North American Congresses of DIYbio, a single global organization of informal biotechnology practitioners, in 2011. In general, the existence of a code of ethics amongst a community is itself significant. Codes of professional ethics are common in scientific and engineering fields, as well as in DIY communities. It is also significant, and highly unusual, that DIYbio has maintained two separate codes of ethics years after their drafting. While agreement was (...) reached within the congress for each geographic region, with considerable commonality between the two codes drafted, they are far from identical. There are differences in the ordering of items, the wording of common items, and the presence/absence of items. I will argue that these differences are meaningful, and consider them with respect to cultural variation, ethics, and societal implications. Finally, I recommend that the entire DIYbio organization unite under a single code of ethics, and that one of the existing drafts is superior to the other for this purpose. (shrink)

What is fiction? It permeates contemporary life: via novels we read, stories we tell, box-sets we watch, and as philosophers, thought experiments we use. Many think it should be characterised in terms of a relation to the imagination. In this essay, I’ll consider prominent expressions of this view, as well as rejections of it. Before this, I’ll introduce two methodological approaches that it’s helpful to distinguish.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Little Eternities: Henry James’s Horatian Sense of Time KATHLEEN RILEY Summer’s lease hath all too short a date. —Shakespeare, Sonnet 18 On a visit to Bodiam Castle in Sussex in 1908, Henry James remarked to Edith Wharton: “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”1 The potency of those two words derives from their immediate evocation of an (...) arrested moment between the day’s halcyon perfection and its imminent dying fall. Small wonder that those same words were later used to mythologize an Edenic Edwardian England poised on the brink of war, to preserve in aspic the fancy of a gilded innocence and order, and the promise of “blue remembered hills,”2 careless of the teeming, tumultuous reality of an England already in the shadow of the Tree of Knowledge. James’s masterpiece of 1881, The Portrait of a Lady, begins with a luxuriously redolent depiction of a summer afternoon, of the hours before dusk that constitute a pleasurable little eternity, of the languorous rhythms and rituals of what Disraeli called “the sustained splendour of [a] stately life.”3 Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not—some people of course never do,—the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one’s enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o’clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.4 This passage, it strikes me, is essentially Horatian in its Epicurean delight in the passing moment. For the Augustan poet Horace, this delight, which is intrinsically elegiac, is expressed in the sympotic pleasures of wine and friendship, in the freedom aestivam sermone benigno tendere noctem (“to prolong the summer night with genial conversation,” Epistles i.5.11). For Henry James, it rests in “the ceremony known as afternoon tea,” in the lengthening shadows on an English lawn by “the reedy, silvery Thames” (PL 32). In both cases the evanescence of these simple pleasures is deeply felt and pleasure itself heightened by an undertone of melancholy, by a nostalgic apprehension of the present. LOCI AMOENI in his review of Augustus J. C. Hare’s Days near Rome (1875), Henry James commented: “The smallest pretext for quoting from Horace—the most quotable of the ancients— should always be cultivated.”5 His own facility for quoting from Horace was evident from his earliest published works, and belied an “extraordinarily haphazard and promiscuous” education shuttling, at his father’s restless instigation, between New England, Britain and Continental Europe.6 James’s biographer, Leon Edel, recorded the family legend that William James (Henry’s Irish grandfather), “who was eighteen in 1789, when he set foot in the New World, 22 little eternities brought with him a ‘very small sum of money,’ a Latin grammar and a desire to visit the fresh battlefields of the Revolutionary War.”7 Young Henry’s instruction in Latin grammar seems to have begun in the Old World, under a private tutor in London in 1855, a Scotsman named Robert Thomson who later ran a small school in Edinburgh attended by Robert Louis Stevenson. It... (shrink)

Recent work in the philosophy of science has been debunking theory and acclaiming practice. Recent work in philosophical psychology has been neglecting practice and emphasizing theory, suggesting that common?sense psychology is in all essential respects like any scientific theory. The marriage of these two strands of thought would serve to make science and common sense virtually indistinguishable. My paper resists this conflation. The main target is the attempt to assimilate everyday psychology to a scientific theory; I argue that this is (...) badly mistaken, and does a disservice both to scientific and to common?sense psychology. A secondary aim is to argue that some of the new pragmatism in the philosophy of science is overstated. The suggested conflation would have interesting implications, as would its denial; in a concluding section, some of these implications are briefly explored. (shrink)

Strawson (2006) claims that he is a physicalist and panpsychist. These two views are not obvious bedfellows, indeed, as typically conceived, they are incompatible. Strawson avoids holding a contradictory position only by holding a non-standard view of physicalism. I first contrast Strawson’s usage of ‘physicalism’ with the mainstream use. I then explain why I think that Strawson’s position is not a physicalist position, but ratherr, one of property dualism and substance monism. In doing this, I outline his view and Locke’s (...) view on the nature of substance. I argue that they are similar in many respects and thus it is no surprise that Strawson actually holds a view on the mind much like one plausible interpretation of Locke’s position. Strawson’s use of terminology cloaks this fact and he does not himself explicitly recognize it in his paper. In the second section, I outline some of Strawson’s assumptions that he uses in arguing for his position. I argue that by looking at the assumptions that Strawson makes when arguing for his position and by looking at the problems of such a position we can see that his variety of dualism is no better off than other varieties, and seems indeed to have more explanatory work to do. I also claimed that Strawson is right to point out that mainstream physicalism is not, at least as we understand it at present, a good solution to the mind-body problem. There is an explanatory gap that has not been crossed. However, Strawson’s position brutely posits experiential properties that are unlike ours, but from which ours emerge. This position also has an explanatory gap that, while not as wide as that which the physicalists posit, exists nonetheless and has, at one side of the gulf, brute unfamiliar experiential properties. (shrink)

In their 2018 article in the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Little, Lipworth, and Kerridge unpack the concept of corruption and clarify the mechanisms that foster corruption and allow it to persist, noting that organizations are “corruptogenic.” To address the “so-what” question, I draw on research about trust and trustworthiness, emphasizing that a person’s well-being and sense of security require trust to be present at both the individual and organizational levels—which is not possible in an environment where corruption and misconduct (...) prevail. I highlight similarities in Little et al.’s framing of corruption to the persistent problem of scientific misconduct in research and publishing. I acknowledge the challenges in stemming corruption in science and medicine and conclude with a discussion about the need to reinvigorate a web of stakeholders to actively engage in professional regulation. (shrink)

I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore creating new forms of perception (...) in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. (shrink)

This thesis is an examination and critique of naturalistic representational theories of phenomenal character. Phenomenal character refers to the distinctive quality that perceptual and sensational experiences seem to have; it is identified with 'what it is like' to undergo experiences. The central claims of representationalism are that phenomenal character is identical with the content of experience and that all representational states, bearing appropriate relations to the cognitive system, are conscious experiences. These claims are taken to explain both how conscious experiential (...) states arise and their nature. After examining the desiderata for naturalistic explanations, I argue that theories which ascribe nonconceptual content to experiences are the most plausible versions of representationalism. Further, causal covariation and teleological theories yield distinctive and interesting representationalist positions, hence, they become the focus of this study. To assess representationalism, I investigate whether all differences in phenomenal character can be correlated with differences in content. I claim that a useful distinction can be drawn between implicit and explicit content, which allows one to best describe the phenomena of perfect and relative pitch. I then argue that ambiguous figures show that two experiences can have the same content but different phenomenal character. I explicate the Inverted Earth hypothesis and claim that to identify content and phenomenal character, representationalists either have to condone the possibility of philosophical zombies, or hold that people lack authoritative first-person knowledge of their current experiences. Both these positions are unpalatable. Finally, I argue that representationalists cannot ascribe contents to experiences of novel colours to account for their phenomenal character. I also question, in light of dissociation phenomena, whether there is one distinctive relationship that all experiences bear to the cognitive system. I conclude that phenomenal character cannot be identical with the type of content under investigation, and that naturalistic representationalist theories cannot fully explain conscious experience. (shrink)

In this paper I want to suggest that causal and interpretive approaches to epistemology are in tension with one another. Drawing on the work of hermeneutic writers I suggest that epistemological justification is an interpretive process. The possibility of rational justification requires attention to our locatedness within the domain of reasons, into which we have been culturally initiated. The recognition that there is no transcendent processes of rational justification has to be addressed from within this framework and cannot be resolved (...) in a naturalizing way. The turn to hermeneutics in the context of epistemology allows us to reassign a central role to experience within epistemological justification. Here the very features of experience which render problematic its role in empiricist accounts form the basis of its position in hermeneutic ones. This presents us with an immanent conception of rationality, in place of the transcendent conception which so many writers have problematized. (shrink)

In a tribute to the intellectual legacy of Peter Fitzpatrick, this article explores the poiesis of modern law, as a constitutive ambivalence distilled in the affinity between law and literature. Reading with Fitzpatrick, the resolution of the contradictions of this law in myth depends, paradoxically, upon its fundamental irresolution. Reflecting upon the profound significance of his revelation of the mythology of modern law and its scholarly reverberations, I consider the constitutive tensions of this law as exemplified in the relation between (...) praxis and poiesis, the operative function of the former dependent upon the creative unfolding of the latter. The alchemy of autopoiesis, by which law boldly proclaims itself law, is made explicit in the eschatology of its archive and the formation of its sovereign subject in negation. Revealing the literary dimensions of this law, the conceit of autonomy is nonetheless subject to the subversive substitutions of the supplement. Pressing yet further, the autopoiesis of law is found to be enfolded within a generative sympoiesis, constituted by the movement between its apposite dimensions. Ultimately, extending Fitzpatrick’s rendering of the irresolution of modern law as decolonial, I explore the possibilities afforded by a reading of the fundamental mutuality of myths, and the decolonial conviviality of poiesis. (shrink)

I argue that the default interpretation of “aesthetics” should be global aesthetics, and that aestheticians should take as standard preparation for work in the field some basic knowledge of aesthetics in various cultural traditions. I consider some of the obstacles that interfere with a move in this direction and some of the steps that might encourage a more inclusive self-conception of the field.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:René Girard and the Rhetoric of ConsumptionKathleen M. Vandenberg (bio)The work of René Girard, so productively applied in so many different fields—in theology, in anthropology, in literature, to name a few—has yet to be recognized or applied in the field of rhetorical studies. Yet there exists, I argue, a need precisely for Girard's theories as the over 2000 year-old discipline enters the twenty-first century.Girard's theory of mimetic or triangular (...) desire can be used as a model for understanding persuasion, because it is, among other things, an "expression of a basic set of ideas on... the dynamics of the self and human relations" (1996, vii). Girard's concern is with human relationships and, in a sense, with how individuals in these relationships act rhetorically upon themselves and others. Girard's mimetic theory hinges on the dynamics of imitation and explains how individuals relate through both the conscious and the unconscious sharing of behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs in certain situations. These situations are clearly rhetorical, as can be seen by examining the definition of the "rhetorical situation" set forth by Lloyd Bitzer, in his seminal 1968 article, "The Rhetorical Situation." Bitzer proposes three conditions that must be met for a rhetorical situation to exist: an exigency or imperfection marked by urgency; a rhetorical audience or an audience that can act; and constraints, or elements that have the power to constrain the decision and action needed to modify the exigency (7). In mass-mediated modern rhetoric, I argue that the exigencies exist externally (in the culture) and internally, the audience is both others and self, and the constraints are the alienation, mystification, and desire generated by hierarchies. Twentieth-century rhetorical theorist Kenneth Burke advises that "we must often think of rhetoric not in terms of some one particular address, but as a general body of identifications that owe their convincingness much more to trivial repetition and dull daily reënforcement than to exceptional rhetorical skill" (1950, 26). Such is the case with this particular form of rhetoric, which is generated and propagated by mimetic contagion and thus is best more narrowly defined as sociological propaganda, a type of propaganda [End Page 259] theorized by Jacques Ellul in Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1975).Ellul, the first to distinguish between political propaganda and sociological propaganda, proposes that the latter encompasses social behaviors "much more vast and less certain" than those of political propaganda (1975, 62). These social behaviors permit the penetration of an ideology in a society, a penetration that is achieved through the active participation of the masses. Sociological propaganda, as Ellul describes it, works from within; it is dependent on the individual's willingness and ability to persuade him- or herself and others. Sociological propaganda, Ellul posits, is created when members of a group behave in such a way as to influence the attitudes, actions, and lifestyles of others; often this behavior is unconscious, unintentional, and spontaneous.In these ways, the rhetoric of sociological propaganda operates in a markedly different fashion than more "traditional" rhetoric, which is largely understood to operate as a unilateral transaction in which an individual orator actively, openly, and orally works to move a relatively passive but physically present audience to act in accordance with the orator's own beliefs through a formally delivered speech. In its reliance on the interaction and cooperation of the many rather than the centrality and dominance of one speaker, in its acceptance of unintentional, spontaneous, and unconscious persuasion, in its dependence on the modern mass media, and in the limitless and nebulous nature of its boundaries in time and space, sociological propaganda constitutes a type of rhetoric heretofore insufficiently addressed by rhetorical studies. Although existing perspectives in rhetorical criticism have certainly addressed some aspects of this rhetoric, sociological propaganda is not easily explained with the terminology of traditional rhetorical criticism or easily approached from traditional rhetorical perspectives.This article asserts that the best way to approach and understand such propaganda is through the perspective of René Girard. Approaching this propaganda from a Girardian perspective permits us to look beyond the symbols of sociological propaganda and analyze our own responsibility in rhetorical... (shrink)

Initiatives to encourage more women in STEM-related industries have had mixed results. Adding more women to longstanding male-dominated STEM occupations has highlighted issues in workplace culture that are hostile to women. In this case, the CEO of an engineers' professional association, NSE, is accused of making a sexually suggestive remark to two female engineers at the annual convention. One of the women, Claire, lodged a complaint with the board. After reviewing the investigation report, the board voted to ask the CEO (...) to quietly apologize to both women. Claire, in the meantime, posted a negative review of the NSE's handling of her complaint which is getting considerable media attention. The purpose of this case is for students to examine the competing interests NSE faces in promoting the safety of female members, protecting its reputation for advancing the profession and women in engineering and supporting an otherwise “brilliant CEO”. (shrink)

In the first half of this book, I offer a theory of fictional content or, as it is sometimes known, ‘fictional truth’.The theory of fictional content I argue for is ‘extreme intentionalism’. The basic idea – very roughly, in ways which are made precise in the book - is that the fictional content of a particular text is equivalent to exactly what the author of the text intended the reader to imagine. The second half of the book is concerned with (...) showing how extreme intentionalism and the lessons learnt from it can illuminate cognate questions in the philosophy of fiction and imagination. For instance, I argue, my position helps us to explain how fiction can provide us with reliable testimony ; it helps explain the phenomenon of imaginative resistance ; and it fits with, and so supports, a persuasive theory of the nature of fiction itself. In my final chapter, I show how attending to intentionalist practices of interpreting fictional content can illuminate the nature of propositional imagining itself. (shrink)

Monique Roelofs’s The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic is groundbreaking in its nuanced account of the potential and limitations of the aesthetic for creating a more just, humane world. Particularly timely are Roelofs’s analyses of the ways in which racial and gender stereotypes are reinforced and the operations of what she calls “racialized aesthetic nationalism,” the tendencies of aesthetic values to shore up schisms along racial, ethnic, and national lines. I raise questions, however, about the appropriateness of aesthetic criticism that (...) stresses sins of omission, the desirability of insisting that the broad nexus of social relations always be kept in view, and the danger that foregrounding minority group membership and gender will reduce individuals in marked categories to mere exemplifications of such status. (shrink)

One of the reasons for the disappearance of beauty in the artistic ideology of the late twentieth century has been the seeming similarity of beauty to certain kinds of kitsch. Beauty has also been associated with flawlessness and with glamour. I will content that the flawless and the glamorous are actually categories of kitsch, and that the dominance of these images in marketing has contributed to our societal tendency to confuse them with beauty. The quests for flawlessness and glamour are (...) both self-sabotaging, a premise on which the marketing of beauty depends. These false paradigms of beauty have ob cured the fact that human beauty manifests an ideal of balance and health that is neither self-conscious nor a consequence of deliberate effort. I will defend the relevance of this ideal to beauty to our personal and cultural well-being. (shrink)

I trace a brief history of philosophical discussion of the concept WOMAN and identify two key points at which, I argue, things went badly wrong. The first was where when it was agreed that the concept WOMAN must identify a social not biological kind. The second was where it was decided that the concept WOMAN faced a legitimate challenge of being insufficiently “inclusive”, understood in a certain way. I’ll argue that both of these moves are only intelligible, if at all, (...) in the context of an anti-naturalist picture drawn from either post-structuralism or radical feminism. They become incoherent when adopted by methodological naturalists, who – especially when concerned to track oppression and discrimination – have no good reason to deny that WOMAN refers to a pre-given, biological kind. (shrink)