David Hume endorses three claims that are difficult to reconcile: (1) sympathy with those in distress is sufficient to produce compassion towards their plight, (2) adopting the general point of view often requires us to sympathize with the pain and suffering of distant strangers, but (3) our care and concern is limited to those in our close circle. Hume manages to resolve this tension, however, by distinguishing two types of sympathy. We feel compassion towards those around us because associative (...) sympathy causes us to mirror their pain and suffering, but our ability to enter into the afflictions of those remote from us involves cognitive sympathy and merely requires us to reflect upon how we would feel in their shoes. This hybrid theory of sympathy receives support from recent work on affective mirroring and cognitive pretense. Hume’s account should appeal to contemporary researchers, therefore, who are interested in the nature of moral imagination. (shrink)

The theatrical device of the bed-trick occurs fifty-two times in forty-four plays during the English Renaissance.1 Just as in the first two plays employing it, Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany and Grim the Collier of Croyden, male characters arrange 60 percent of the bed-tricks used in gaining control over women. Shakespeare's heroines in All's Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure, then, appear to mark a decisive break from the bed-trick's evolutionary pattern. Helen and Mariana, respectively, persevere in (...) their endeavors in spite of a male-dominant hierarchy. Yet, upon closer inspection, men are the ones who create the circumstances that prompt the necessity of using the device. They impose such... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Satyr Play in Plato's SymposiumM. D. UsherIn the Symposium, Socrates jokingly declares that "the satyric—nay silenic—drama" of Alcibiades' drunken panegyric was perfectly clear to the guests that evening at Agathon's house (222d3-4).1 Though this statement implies an extended treatment of a theme, discussions of silenic elements in the dialogue have rarely ventured far beyond the overt comparison of Socrates to a Silenus or Marsyas figure in Alcibiades' speech (215a4-222b7).2 (...) Yet, as Paul Zanker has observed (1995, 38), "There is surely more than one aspect to the comparison of Socrates to Silenus." In fact, the final scenes of the Symposium are riddled with satyric motifs, many of which Plato inverts or otherwise adapts, in the pointed critique of wealth, beauty, and sexual attraction that he achieves in the character of Socrates.Let me begin defending this thesis with a Platonic analogy and suggest that if we look at the big letters first, we will be able to read the smaller ones more readily: Though it has only recently, and only in passing, been adduced as a source (Clay 2000, 74), much of the scene involving Alcibiades and Socrates is modeled on the myth of King Midas' capture of the satyr Silenus.3 While the extant sources for the Midas legend are disparate and fragmentary, an investigation into its literary provenance and the uses to which it was put in antiquity (section 1 of this essay) suggests that the encounter between Midas and Silenus was something of a literary set piece that had been used as a vehicle for popular wisdom and philosophic critique long before Plato's time. Indeed, in [End Page 205] reusing the story in just this fashion in his lost dialogue, the Eudemus,4 Aristotle highlights both its popularity and antiquity, describing it as "having been carried about on the lips of men for many years now."5The finer print (section 2) involves another source never previously adduced in discussions of the Symposium, Euripides' Cyclops, where we will consider both what is particular to that play (our only complete satyr drama) and what is typical of the genre.6 Cyclops was produced in the last five years of Euripides' life,7 when an impressionable Plato, that "nursling of Attic drama,"8 was in his early twenties.An awareness of the extent of Plato's use and adaptation of satyr lore in the Symposium is essential for a full appreciation of his philosophy of love, his technique as an author, and the purpose of the dialogue. Einstein once said that the secret to creativity is hiding one's sources. In constructing the final scenes of the Symposium, Plato is deeply unoriginal in precisely this sense. It would be well to emphasize at the start, however, that the satyric motifs adduced here—as legendary and mythic material—would have had a wide currency in many media, and one need not advance or defend arguments for strictly literary dependence. Indeed, it will be seen that the way Plato incorporates silenic elements into the Symposium is suggestive and indirect, though no less compelling, important, or even intentional for that reason. That Plato's purpose in including them is as apologetic as it is literary and philosophical is discussed in a concluding section where I attempt to bring some recent readings of Plato under one head. [End Page 206]I. The Capture of SilenusSome minor variants notwithstanding,9 the basic outline of this story is as follows: Silenus is captured while sleeping by Midas' henchmen, who have tricked him by spiking a river with wine; whereupon, in exchange for his release, Silenus agrees to reveal to Midas hidden wisdom about man and the nature of the world.10 Both the apprehension of the satyr while sleeping and the conversation that follows in the myth are adapted by Plato in the part of the Symposium where Alcibiades describes his unsuccessful romantic overtures toward Socrates. Having prevailed upon Socrates to come to dinner and spend the night, Alcibiades approaches the satyr-sage in bed and asks if he is sleeping (218c3). By Plato's inversion, however, it turns out that Socrates, unlike the... (shrink)

This book assesses the German liberal theological tradition in the early years of the twentieth century, concentrating in particular on the work of Ernst Troeltsch. It locates theology in its social and political context, and seeks to understand the period on its own terms and not through the distorting lens of the First World War.

This article presents an Activity Cycle Theory of mental imagery.

Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test phrases involving geographic, responses were predominantly natural features such as mountain, river, lake, (...) ocean, hill. Artificial geographic features such as town and city were listed hardly at all for geographic categories, an outcome that contrasts sharply with the disciplinary self-understanding of academic geography. However, geographic artifacts and fiat objects, such as roads, cities, boundaries, countries, and states, were frequently listed by the subjects responding to the phrase something that could be portrayed on a map. In this paper, we present the results of these experiments in visual form, and provide interpretations and implications for further research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000) 267-278 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity. Edited by David Loy. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996. 120 pp. The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.--Karl Marx, Eleventh Thesis on Feuerbach Healing Deconstruction, edited by David Loy, is a (...) collection of essays which are situated by and elaborate the intersection of radical Christian, Buddhist, and deconstructionist discourses. With the exception of "Mindfulness of the Selves" by Morny Joy, all of these essays were first presented at the Fourth International Buddhist-Christian [End Page 267] Dialogue conference in Boston in 1992. While each author addresses different aspects of problems associated with suffering, the self, language, and healing, they share certain poststructuralist sensibilities in common and, with the exception of Robert Magliola, share a commitment to developing "a more holistic praxis" (p. 2). The title of this volume is, says Loy, "intentionally ambiguous. On the one side, it emphasizes the healing possibilities of deconstruction in a field where the deconstructive turn has too often been understood reductively" and on the other, it "refers to the potential healing power of this dialogue for deconstruction itself, whose critique of logocentrism had led to a rupture within contemporary thought" (ibid.). 1 The authors both affirm "the liberating and healing potential of de-essentialized concepts and images, language, bodies and symbols" and maintain "that actually realizing this healing potential requires a move from theorizing to practice, for only that can truly deconstruct the self" (p. 10).Chief among the problems they identify as presenting barriers to developing a new way of relating to the world and a new self are dualistic thinking and the notion of the autonomous self. Each of the authors contributes to comprehending the philosophical factors that foster the creation of these barriers and what may be done philosophically to dismantle them. Moreover, Philippa Berry, Joy, and Magliola not only deploy Christian, Buddhist, deconstructionist, and feminist tactics to dismantle these barriers, they also articulate alternative modes of relating to the world.Creating new ways of relating to the world and new senses of self are clearly in order. Profit-driven global development, enforced by U.S. directed, taxpayer financed military power, is not only fostering the growth of illiteracy, homelessness, poverty, slave labor, and starvation for hundreds of millions of persons worldwide it is also threatening the biological basis of life. To make matters worse, revolutions in communication, transportation, and weapons systems have accelerated the rate at which these processes are developing around the world. The left used to say: either socialism or barbarism. Today we might say, either a way of life or death. In light of the fact that, as Joy indicates, "[r]acism, sexism, and classism still pervade our social structures in ways that damage the lives of billions of people"; it is clear that we need "a new way of relating to the world: a different sense of self" (pp. 71, 97). It is no exaggeration to claim that we must build an alternative mode of being and becoming to that which presently exists in order to ensure that all human beings are able to enjoy the rich abundance of life. The authors in Healing Deconstruction make diverse contributions to this end and provocatively stimulate our thinking about how we might best create an alternative mode of human existence.Their contributions suffer, however, from problems which are, among other things, symptomatic of the state of critical theory and politics as we begin the twenty-first century. With the triumph of global capitalism and the retrenchment of the political right, critical theory and politics, particularly in their academic manifestations, have in large measure retreated from the radical agendas that characterized political movements in the 1960s. Whereas anticolonial, civil rights, antiracist, feminist, indigenous, environmental, and working class organizations and movements sought to transform existing institutions in order to insure universal access to social, [End Page 268] political, and economic resources, most liberals and many... (shrink)

Ramon Llull (1232-1316), born on Majorca, was one of the most remarkable lay intellectuals of the thirteenth century. He devoted much of his life to promoting missions among unbelievers, the reform of Western Christian society, and personal spiritual perfection. He wrote over 200 philosophical and theological works in Catalan, Latin, and Arabic. Many of these expound on his "Great Universal Art of Finding Truth," an idiosyncratic dialectical system that he thought capable of proving Catholic beliefs to non-believers. This study offers (...) the first full-length analysis of his theories about rhetoric and preaching, which were central to his evangelizing activities. It explains how Llull attempted to synthesize commonplace advice about courtly speech and techniques of popular sermons into a single program for secular and sacred eloquence that would necessarily promote love of God and neighbor. Llull's work is remarkable testimony to the diffusion of clerical culture among educated lay-people of his era, and to their enthusiasm for applying that knowledge in the pursuit of learning and piety. This book should find a place on the shelf of every scholar of medieval history, religion, and rhetoric. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Mark David Webster ABSTRACT: Using qualitative methods, the author sought to better understand how philosophical assumptions about technology affect the thinking, and influence the decision making, of educational technology leaders in their professional practice. One of the research questions focused on examining whether assumptions of technological determinism were present in thinking and influenced the decisions that leaders make. The core category that emerged from data analysis, Keep up with technology (or be left behind), was interpreted to be a (...) manifestation of the technological imperative, an assumption associated with the philosophical perspective of technological determinism. The article presents a literature review and critique of philosophical issues surrounding technological determinism. Data analysis led to the conclusion that technology leaders working in K-12 education place weighted priority on the technological imperative, and there is philosophical tension between Keep up with technology (or be left behind), and a concurrently held perspective based on the logic of the instrumental view of technology. The findings suggest that different accounts of technological determinism, including Bimber’s three accounts of normative, nomological, and unintended consequences, are significant in the thinking of participants. School technology leaders placed priority on embracing technological change, sometimes adopting technology for its own sake. (shrink)

A biography of Socrates, a philosopher and teacher in ancient Greece who held that wisdom comes from questioning ideas and values rather than simply accepting what is passed on by parents and teachers.

A qualitative study using grounded theory methods was conducted to (a) examine what philosophy of technology assumptions are present in the thinking of K-12 technology leaders, (b) investigate how the assumptions may influence technology decision making, and (c) explore whether technological determinist assumptions are present. Subjects involved technology directors and instructional technology specialists from school districts, and data collection involved interviews and a written questionnaire. Three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants, including an instrumental view of (...) technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that sees technological change as inevitable. Technology leaders were guided by two main approaches to technology decision making in cognitive dissonance with each other, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). The researcher concluded that as leaders deal with their perceived experience of the inevitability of technological change, and their concern for preparing students for a technological future, the core category Keep up with technology (or be left behind) is given the greater weight in technology decision making. A risk is that this can on occasion mean a quickness to adopt technology for the sake of technology, without aligning the technology implementation with educational goals. (shrink)

In this lucid and impassioned critique of the work of Harvard University professor Cornel West, Mark David Wood examines West's philosophy of prophetic pragmatism.

A qualitative study was conducted to examine the philosophy of technology of K-12 technology leaders, and explore the influence of their thinking on technology decision making. The research design aligned with CORBIN and STRAUSS grounded theory methods, and I proceeded from a research paradigm of critical realism. The subjects were school technology directors and instructional technology specialists, and data collection consisted of interviews and a written questionnaire. Data analysis involved the use of grounded theory methods including memo writing, open and (...) axial coding, constant comparison, the use of purposive and theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation of categories. Three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants: an instrumental view of technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that saw technological change as inevitable. Technology leaders were guided by two main approaches to technology decision making, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). The core category and central phenomenon that emerged was that technology leaders approached technology leadership by placing greater emphasis on keeping up with technology, being influenced by an ideological orientation to technological change, and being concerned about preparing students for a technological future. (shrink)

We propose as a UCGIS research priority the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information.” Under this umbrella we unify several interrelated research subfields, each of which deals with different perspectives on geospatial ontologies and their roles in geographic information science. While each of these subfields could be addressed separately, we believe it is important to address ontological research in a unitary, systematic fashion, embracing conceptual issues concerning what would be required to establish an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain, (...) issues relating to the choice of appropriate methods for formalizing ontologies, and considerations regarding the design of ontology-driven information systems. This integrated approach is necessary, because there is a strong dependency between the methods used to specify an ontology, and the conceptual richness, robustness and tractability of the ontology itself. Likewise, information system implementations are needed as testbeds of the usefulness of every aspect of an exhaustive ontology of the geospatial domain. None of the current UCGIS research priorities provides such an integrative perspective, and therefore the topic of “Ontological Foundations for Geographic Information Science” is unique. (shrink)

Two hundred and sixty-three subjects each gave examples for one of five geographic categories: geographic features, geographic objects, geographic concepts, something geographic, and something that could be portrayed on a map. The frequencies of various responses were significantly different, indicating that the basic ontological terms feature, object, etc., are not interchangeable but carry different meanings when combined with adjectives indicating geographic or mappable. For all of the test phrases involving geographic, responses were predominantly natural features such as mountain, river, lake, (...) ocean, hill. Artificial geographic features such as town and city were listed hardly at all for geographic categories, an outcome that contrasts sharply with the disciplinary self-understanding of academic geography. However, geographic artifacts and fiat objects, such as roads, cities, boundaries, countries, and states, were frequently listed by the subjects responding to the phrase something that could be portrayed on a map. In this paper, we present the results of these experiments in visual form, and provide interpretations and implications for further research. (shrink)

Information may be defined as the conceptual or communicable part of the content of mental acts. The content of mental acts includes sensory data as well as concepts, particular as well as general information. An information system is an external (non-mental) system designed to store such content. Information systems afford indirect transmission of content between people, some of whom may put information into the system and others who are among those who use the system. In order for communication to happen, (...) the conceptual systems of the originators and users of the information must be sufficiently similar. A formal conceptual framework that can provide the basis for exchange of information is termed an ontology. In its most fundamental form, ontology studies the most basic constituents of reality. Traditionally, ontology seeks to reflects structures that are independent of thought and cognition. The term ontology is used more broadly in artificial intelligence and software engineering, to refer to the conceptual basis for an information system. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive critical survey of all the logical doctrines of the well-known but little understood Catalan philosopher and theologian, Ramon Llull (1232-1316). The highly idiosyncratic character of Llull's writings has long frustrated the efforts of general medieval historians to define his contribution to later scholastic culture, and has resisted attempts by specialists to explain exactly how his methods and procedures worked. This new study--the first book-length treatment in English of Llull's philosophy to appear in over fifty years--seeks (...) to resolve both of these difficulties. The author argues that Llull's peculiar logical doctrines result from his reinterpretation of the use of commonplace scholastic teachings according to his own preferred ethical and spiritual ideals. (shrink)

A survey of the work of the Majorcan lay theologian and philosopher Ramon Llull (1232-1316), along with examples of its wide influence in late medieval, Renaissance, and early modern Europe and in colonial Spanish America.

Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

The shape of the Earth's surface, its topography, is a fundamental dimension of the environment, shaping or mediating many other environmental flows or functions. But there is a major divergence in the way that topography is conceptualized in different domains. Topographic cartographers, information scientists, geomorphologists and environmental modelers typically conceptualize topographic variability as a continuous field of elevations or as some discrete approximation to such a field. Pilots, explorers, anthropologists, ecologists, hikers, and archeologists, on the other hand, typically conceptualize this (...) same variability in terms of hills and valleys, mountains and plains, barrows and trenches, that is, as (special sorts of) objects, with locations, shapes, and often names of their own. In this chapter, we sketch an approach to bridging this fundamental gap in geographic information infrastructure. (shrink)

Scholars have emphasized that decisions about technology can be influenced by philosophy of technology assumptions, and have argued for research that critically questions technological determinist assumptions. Empirical studies of technology management in fields other than K-12 education provided evidence that philosophy of technology assumptions, including technological determinism, can influence the practice of technology leadership. A qualitative study was conducted to a) examine what philosophy of technology assumptions are present in the thinking of K-12 technology leaders, b) investigate how the assumptions (...) may influence technology decision making, and c) explore whether technological determinist assumptions are present. The research design aligned with Corbin and Strauss qualitative data analysis, and employed constant comparative analysis, theoretical sampling, and theoretical saturation of categories. Subjects involved 31 technology directors and instructional technology specialists from Virginia school districts, and data collection involved interviews following a semi-structured protocol, and a written questionnaire with open-ended questions. The study found that three broad philosophy of technology views were widely held by participants, including an instrumental view of technology, technological optimism, and a technological determinist perspective that sees technological change as inevitable. The core category and central phenomenon that emerged was that technology leaders approach technology leadership through a practice of Keep up with technology (or be left behind). The core category had two main properties that are in conflict with each other, pressure to keep up with technology, and the resistance to technological change they encounter in schools. The study found that technology leaders are guided by two main approaches to technology decision making, represented by the categories Educational goals and curriculum should drive technology, and Keep up with Technology (or be left behind). As leaders deal with their perceived experience of the inevitability of technological change, and their concern for preparing students for a technological future, the core category Keep up with technology (or be left behind) is given the greater weight in technology decision making. The researcher recommends that similar qualitative studies be conducted involving technology leaders outside Virginia, and with other types of educators. It is also recommended that data from this or other qualitative studies be used to help develop and validate a quantitative instrument to measure philosophy of technology assumptions, for use in quantitative studies. (shrink)

From the early days of European settlement in North America, Christianity has had a profound impact on American law and culture. This volume profiles nineteen of America's most influential Christian jurists from the early colonial era to the present day. Anyone interested in American legal history and jurisprudence, the role Christianity has played throughout the nation's history, and the relationship between faith and law will enjoy this worthy and unique study. The jurists covered in this collection were pious men and (...) women, but that does not mean they agreed on how faith should inform law. From Roger Williams and John Cotton to Antonin Scalia and Mary Ann Glendon, America's great Christian jurists have brought their faith to bear on the practice of law in different ways and to different effects. (shrink)

What does it feel like to encounter ourselves and one another as implicated subjects, both in our everyday lives and in the context of our work as clinicians, and how does this matter? With contributions from a diverse group of relational psychoanalytic thinkers, this book reads Michael Rothberg's concept of the implicated subject - the notion that we are continuously implicated in injustices even when not perpetrators - as calling us to elaborate what it feels like to inhabit such subjectivities (...) in relation to others both similarly and differently situated. Implication and anti-Black racism are central to many chapters, with attention given to the unique vulnerability of racial minority immigrants, to Native American genocide, and to the implication of ordinary Israelis in the oppression of Palestinians. The book makes the case that the therapist's ongoing openness to learning of our own implication in enactments is central to a Relational sensibility and to a progressive psychoanalysis. As a contribution to the necessary and long-overdue conversation within the psychoanalytic field about racism, social injustice, and ways to move toward a just society, this book will be essential for all relational psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. (shrink)

Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in (...) the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of object-boundaries at different scales. (shrink)

Do mountains exist? The answer to this question is surely: yes. In fact, ‘mountain’ is the example of a kind of geographic feature or thing most commonly cited by English speakers (Mark, et al., 1999; Smith and Mark 2001), and this result may hold across many languages and cultures. But whether they are considered as individuals (tokens) or as kinds (types), mountains do not exist in quite the same unequivocal sense as do such prototypical everyday objects as chairs (...) or people. (shrink)

Since it is only five years since the publication of our paper, "Geographical categories: An ontological investigation" (Smith and Mark 2001), it seems somewhat strange to be making retrospective comments on the piece. Nevertheless, the field is moving quickly, and much has happened since the article appeared. A large number of papers have already cited the work, which suggests that there is a seam here that people find worthy of being mined. In this short essay, we first review the (...) paper and attempt to assess its significance from the perspective of our current work. We then put the paper in the context of our individual and joint works, which led up to it, and summarize our research trajectories since the paper appeared, pointing out what some of this reveals about spatial ontology in general. We conclude with some remarks on the future of ontological research in geographical information science. (shrink)

Ontology, since Aristotle, has been conceived as a sort of highly general physics, a science of the types of entities in reality, of the objects, properties, categories and relations which make up the world. At the same time ontology has been for some two thousand years a speculative enterprise. It has rested methodologically on introspection and on the construction and analysis of elaborate world-models and of abstract formal-ontological theories. In the work of Quine and others this ontological theorizing in abstract (...) fashion about the world was supplemented by the study, based on the use of logical methods, of the ontological commitments or presuppositions embodied in scientific theories. In recent years both types of ontological study have found application in the world of information systems, for example in the construction of frameworks for knowledge representation and in database design and translation. As ontology is in this way drawn closer to the domain of real-world applications, the question arises as to whether it is possible to use empirical methods in studying ontological theories. More specifically: can we use empirical methods to test the ontological theories embodied in human cognition? We set forth the outlines of a framework for the formulation and testing of such theories as they relate to the specific domain of geographic objects and categories. (shrink)

Wisely, the authors begin this book by describing it as a polemic. They argue that most contemporary analytic metaphysics is a waste of time and resources since contemporary ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysical theorizing cannot hope to attain objective truth given its penchant for making a priori claims about the nature of the world which are backed up by appeal to intuition. In engaging in this activity, metaphysicians have, the authors claim, abandoned hope of locating any interesting connection between their metaphysical pronouncements and (...) how our best empirical theories describe the world. Moreover, the success attained by empirical science just cannot be matched by metaphysical theorizing and so, faced with this asymmetry, empirical science wins: a priori metaphysical theorizing must give way to a naturalistic form of metaphysics, a positive account of which the authors attempt to elucidate in the second and third, rather lengthy chapters of the book.The first chapter consists of a statement of the authors’ negative view, a vigorous, sustained and sometimes withering attack upon contemporary a priori metaphysics. Most ire is reserved for those who indulge in what the authors call ‘pseudo-scientific metaphysics’; that is, those who pay lip service to keeping their metaphysical speculation in tune with physics, only to constrain their ontology in such a way that the entities and processes within it do not even play a role in current physical theory, or are in straightforward contradiction with it. Much philosophy of science and scientific metaphysics is too superficial and simplistic to deserve the name and bears more relation to ‘the philosophy of “A” Level chemistry’. The guilty in this respect include David Lewis, Jaegwon Kim, Jonathan Lowe, Donald Davidson, Jerry Fodor, Crawford Elder, Trenton Merricks among …. (shrink)

John Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality and Hernando de Soto’s The Mystery of Capital shifted the focus of current thought on capital and economic development to the cultural and conceptual ideas that underpin market economies and that are taken for granted in developed nations. This collection of essays assembles 21 philosophers, economists, and political scientists to help readers understand these exciting new theories.

In “Of Personal Identity”, Hume attempts to understand why we ordinarily believe in persistent selves. He proposes that this ontological commitment depends on illusions and fictions: the imagination tricks us into supposing that an unchanging core self remains static through the flux and change of experience. Recent work in cognitive science provides a good deal of support for Hume’s hypothesis that common beliefs about the self are founded on psychological biases rather than rational insight or evidence. We naturally believe in (...) personal persistence, according to this emerging research, because we are prone to categorize the world in terms of hidden essences and structure our lives in terms of whole life stories. (shrink)

In Book III, Part 2 of the Treatise, Hume presents a natural history of justice. Self-interest clearly plays a central role in his account; our ancestors invented justice conventions, he maintains, for the sake of reciprocal advantage. But this is not what makes his approach so novel and attractive. Hume recognizes that prudential considerations are not sufficient to explain how human beings – with our propensities towards temporal discounting and free-riding – could have established conventions for social exchange and collective (...) action in commercial societies. This leads him to develop an innovative account of the role that emotional aversions play in establishing trust between strategically rational agents. (shrink)

Is PDP Connectionism compatible with Cognitive Linguistics? It is unfortunate that this question has not received the attention it deserves, since at stake is the very possibility of a unified "West Coast Cognitive Science" approach to language. Part I of this paper argues that a systematic approach to the question of compatibility must involve an enumeration and analysis of the general principles used by each research program in their linguistic explanations. This approach is carried out in Parts II and III, (...) and the conclusion is that the explanatory principles of PDP Connectionism are fundamentally data-driven, whereas those of Cognitive Linguistics rely essentially on structure that the mind contributes to language use. Part IV presents several computational models of metaphor and analogy as case studies of the practical difficulties involved in reconciling these two frameworks. Finally, Part V examines the philosophical foundations of their respective explanatory strategies in order to get a clearer view of the theoretical obstacles to a unified account. (shrink)

On many currently popular ontologies of material objects, we share our place with numerous shorter-lived things that came into existence after we did or will go out of existence before we will. Subpeople are intrinsically indistinguishable from possible people, and as several authors pointed out, this raises grave ethical concerns: it threatens to make any sacrifice for long-term goals impermissible, as well as to undermine our standard practices of punishment, reward, grief, and utility calculation. The aim in this paper is (...) to offer a unified set of solutions to these problems. The paper’s starting point is the "self-making view," according to which our de se beliefs help determine our own spatiotemporal boundaries. This paper argues that the self-making view also plays a key role in the best treatment of the moral problems of subpeople. (shrink)

This project continues our interdisciplinary research into computational and cognitive aspects of narrative comprehension. Our ultimate goal is the development of a computational theory of how humans understand narrative texts. The theory will be informed by joint research from the viewpoints of linguistics, cognitive psychology, the study of language acquisition, literary theory, geography, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. The linguists, literary theorists, and geographers in our group are developing theories of narrative language and spatial understanding that are being tested by the (...) cognitive psychologists and language researchers in our group, and a computational model of a reader of narrative text is being developed by the AI researchers, based in part on these theories and results and in part on research on knowledge representation and reasoning. This proposal describes the knowledge-representation and natural-language-processing issues involved in the computational implementation of the theory; discusses a contrast between communicative and narrative uses of language and of the relation of the narrative text to the story world it describes; investigates linguistic, literary, and hermeneutic dimensions of our research; presents a computational investigation of subjective sentences and reference in narrative; studies children’s acquisition of the ability to take third-person perspective in their own storytelling; describes the psychological validation of various linguistic devices; and examines how readers develop an understanding of the geographical space of a story. This report is a longer version of a project description submitted to NSF. This document, produced in May 2007, is a L ATEX version of Technical Report 89-07 (Buffalo: SUNY Buffalo Department of Computer Science, August 1989), with slightly.. (shrink)

The aesthetic skeptic maintains that it is futile to dispute about taste. One and the same work of art might appear beautiful to one person but repellent to another, and we have no reason to prefer one or another of these conflicting verdicts. Hume argues that the skeptic, however, moves too quickly. The crucial question is whether qualified critics will agree on their evaluations. And the skeptic fails to provide sufficient evidence that their verdicts will diverge. We have reason to (...) expect that a consensus will emerge over time, moreover, since aesthetic values are grounded on universal principles of human nature. Skeptics might doubt that there is a natural basis for a standard of taste, but this proposal is supported by recent work in experimental aesthetics and cognitive science. (shrink)

In the Natural history of religion, Hume attempts to understand the origin of our folk belief in gods and spirits. These investigations are not, however, purely descriptive. Hume demonstrates that ontological commitment to supernatural agents depends on motivated reasoning and illusions of control. These beliefs cannot, then, be reflectively endorsed. This proposal must be taken seriously because it receives support from recent work on our psychological responses to uncertainty. It also compares quite favorably with its main competitors in the cognitive (...) science of religion. (shrink)

Since the 1960s, many artists have incorporated ecological concerns into their work, an endeavor that has required new strategies in art-making. To explore recent American manifestations of these interests, the David and Alfred Smart Museum commissioned new projects from artists Mark Dion, Peter Fend, and Dan Peterman, each focusing on interrelationships between particular organisms—human beings-and a specific group of sites—a museum building, a river landscape, and a university campus. The results, exhibited at the Smart Museum during the summer (...) of 2000, evoke the varied scales, from the microscopic to the global, at which human actions affect the environment. This catalog documents each of the artists' projects through an array of images and words: Smart Museum Associate Curator Stephanie Smith provides an introduction and brief overviews of the three projects, each of the artists contribute statements, and photographers Susan Anderson and Tom van Eynde document—in over 100 images—the processes and projects that comprise the exhibition. (shrink)

In Book III, Part 2 of the Treatise, Hume presents a natural history of justice. Self-interest clearly plays a central role in his account; our ancestors invented justice conventions, he maintains, for the sake of reciprocal advantage. But this is not what makes his approach so novel and attractive. Hume recognizes that prudential considerations are not sufficient to explain how human beings – with our propensities towards temporal discounting and free-riding – could have established conventions for social exchange and collective (...) action in commercial societies. This leads him to develop an innovative account of the role that emotional aversions play in establishing trust between strategically rational agents. (shrink)

We must rethink our assessment of Hume’s theory of probabilistic inference. Hume scholars have traditionally dismissed his naturalistic explanation of how we make inferences under conditions of uncertainty; however, psychological experiments and computer models from cognitive science provide substantial support for Hume’s account. Hume’s theory of probabilistic inference is far from obsolete or outdated; on the contrary, it stands at the leading edge of our contemporary science of the mind.

A number of ways of taxonomizing human learning have been proposed. We examine the evidence for one such proposal, namely, that there exist independent explicit and implicit learning systems. This combines two further distinctions, (1) between learning that takes place with versus without concurrent awareness, and (2) between learning that involves the encoding of instances (or fragments) versus the induction of abstract rules or hypotheses. Implicit learning is assumed to involve unconscious rule learning. We examine the evidence for implicit learning (...) derived from subliminal learning, conditioning, artificial grammar learning, instrumental learning, and reaction times in sequence learning. We conclude that unconscious learning has not been satisfactorily established in any of these areas. The assumption that learning in some of these tasks (e.g., artificial grammar learning) is predominantly based on rule abstraction is questionable. When subjects cannot report the rules that govern stimulus selection, this is often because their knowledge consists of instances or fragments of the training stimuli rather than rules. In contrast to the distinction between conscious and unconscious learning, the distinction between instance and rule learning is a sound and meaningful way of taxonomizing human learning. We discuss various computational models of these two forms of learning. (shrink)

How is grounding related to metaphysical explanation? The standard view is that the former somehow “backs”, “undergirds” or “underlies” the latter. This view fits into a general picture of explanation, according to which explanations in general hold in virtue of a certain elite group of “explanatory relations” or “determinative relations” that back them. This paper turns the standard view on its head: grounding doesn't “back” metaphysical explanation but is in an important sense downstream from it. I call this view “grounding (...) idealism”, since it structurally resembles an analogous view about causation that is known as “causal idealism” and has been endorsed by philosophers like Michael Scriven and Philip Kitcher. I formulate a specific version of grounding idealism, Metaphysical Explanation‐First Idealism (MEFI), according to which the semantic value of ‘grounding’ is an abundant, gerrymandered relation settled by the metaphysical explanation facts. Then I offer some theoretical considerations that support MEFI over rival accounts of the relation between grounding and metaphysical explanation. Finally, I address the question of what role is left for grounding to play, if not that of “backing” metaphysical explanations. (shrink)