Overview -- Locke's internal sense and Kant's changing views -- Personal identity amd its problems -- Rationalist metaphysics of mind -- Consciousness, self-consciousness, and cognition -- Strands of Argument in the Duisburg Nachlass -- A transcendental deduction for a priori concepts -- Synthesis : why and how? -- Arguing for apperception -- The power of apperception -- "I-think" as the destroyer of rational psychology -- Is Kant's theory consistent? -- The normativity objection -- Is Kant's thinker (as such) a free (...) and responsible agent? -- Kant our contemporary. (shrink)

Designing for culture through intelligent tutoring systems is on the rise. The needs of military personnel to communicate and understand cultures other than their own in deployments, missions, and work-related assignments have strongly encouraged the creation of culturally aware tutoring systems (CATS) that teach about other cultures. This paper critically analyzes three systems (i.e., ELECT-BiLAT, Tactical Iraqi, and VECTOR) and the frameworks that guided the design and development process. The examination reveals that there is a need for comprehensive guidelines to (...) build CATS. Therefore, the Culture Based Model is offered as a framework to guide the design of culture-based information and communication technologies. (shrink)

I use a version of the case in "sophie's choice" as an example of the strongest sort of dilemma, With all options seriously wrong, And no permissible way of choosing one of them. This is worse, I argue, Than a choice between conflicting obligations, Where the agent has an overriding obligation "to choose", And does nothing wrong, Once the choice is made, By ignoring one of his prior obligations. Here, "contra" marcus, Guilt seems inappropriate.

There is a well-known scene from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that illustrates what might be considered benign manipulation: Tom has the job of whitewashing a fence but would rather spend the time with friends. By feigning enthusiasm for the job he manages to get his friends to hang around and do it for him. They even pay to do it - with various little items that he later trades for..

Abstract:During recent years, the principle and practice of employment-at-will have been under attack. While progress has been made in eroding the practice, the principle still governs the philosophical assumptions underlying employment practices in the United States, and, indeed, EAW has been promulgated as one of the ways to address economic ills in other countries. This paper will briefly review the major critiques of EAW. Given the failure of these arguments to erode the underpinnings of EAW, we shall suggest new avenues (...) for approaching employment issues to achieve the desirable goal of employee dignity and respect. (shrink)

Gottlob Frege famously rejects the methodology for consistency and independence proofs offered by David Hilbert in the latter's Foundations of Geometry. The present essay defends against recent criticism the view that this rejection turns on Frege's understanding of logical entailment, on which the entailment relation is sensitive to the contents of non-logical terminology. The goals are (a) to clarify further Frege's understanding of logic and of the role of conceptual analysis in logical investigation, and (b) to point out the extent (...) to which his understanding of logic differs importantly from that of the model-theoretic tradition that grows out of Hilbert's work. (shrink)

Peter Geach famously holds that there is no such thing as absolute identity. There are rather, as Geach sees it, a variety of relative identity relations, each essentially connected with a particular monadic predicate. Though we can strictly and meaningfully say that an individual a is the same man as the individual b, or that a is the same statue as b, we cannot, on this view, strictly and meaningfully say that the individual a simply is b. It is difficult (...) to find anything like a persuasive argument for this doctrine in Geach's work. But one claim made by Geach is that his account of identity is the account most naturally aligned with Frege's widely admired treatment of cardinality. And though this claim of an affinity between Frege's and Geach's doctrines has been challenged, the challenge has been resisted. William Alston and Jonathan Bennett, indeed, go further than Geach to argue that Frege's doctrine implies Geach's. If Alston and Bennett are right, then those who favor a broadly Fregean treatment of cardinality have no choice but to adopt Geach's doctrine of relative identity. And because contemporary set-theoretic accounts of cardinality are essentially Fregean in all respects relevant to this issue (see §11 below), it follows from Alston and Bennett's claim that virtually every standard modern treatment of cardinality requires a 'relativized' treatment of identity. The purpose of this paper is to argue against the implication claimed by Alston and Bennett. Despite some superficial similarities between Frege's treatment of cardinality and Geach's treatment of identity, the two doctrines are fundamentally opposed. Frege's account of cardinality, and its set-theoretic descendants, are all inconsistent with the claim that identity is 'relative' in Geach's sense. (shrink)

La investigación en medicina tiene por objetivo generar nuevos conocimientos que ayuden al diagnóstico, el tratamiento y la prevención de enfermedades. Pero la medicina no es una ciencia exacta, sino una actividad humana heterogénea que se basa solo parcialmente en la ciencia, con varios factores no científicos que influyen en la forma de desarrollar esta actividad. El dolor, como síntoma o como enfermedad, es probablemente el trastorno que más afecta y preocupa a las personas y el que con mayor frecuencia (...) motiva una consulta médica. A pesar de la magnitud del problema, y del interés médico y social por el dolor, la atención y el tratamiento de las personas con dolor crónico es un tema infravalorado o tratado inadecuadamente. Con base en múltiples preguntas que se plantean a lo largo del desarrollo del presente documento, nuestro objetivo es, por un lado, el de señalar que los cambios que se han producido en el manejo del dolor crónico hacen de los llamados protocolos de consenso un ejercicio obsoleto en la medicina del siglo XXI. Por otro lado, en términos de bioética, responder a la pregunta ¿se ajustan los protocolos de consenso al principio de beneficencia del paciente individual? (shrink)

At the turn of the twenty-first century, historical studies of internationalism--above and beyond the call to the workers of the world to unite--have become the norm in a relatively short space of time. This shift has occurred in the context of a historical vogue for 'transnationalism,' that is, capturing experiences that traversed and transcended the borders of nation-states both within and beyond the European world. The work of the diplomatic historian Akira Iriye has been central to these developments, illuminating the (...) traces of a distinctively twentieth century history of 'cultural internationalism' that resonated through the realms of politics. Following in the footsteps of Iriye and others--including feminist and pacifist historians who had long engaged the internationalist past--a new cohort of international historians, often sensitive to cultural analyses and with expertise in imperial and transnational as well as national histories, are now accruing broad-ranging evidence of the geographies of internationalism and the political and economic reach of its various strands at critical moments in the twentieth century. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that Frege’s reduction of arithmetic to logic would, if successful, have shown that arithmetical knowledge is analytic in essentially Kant’s sense. It is argued, as against Paul Benacerraf, that Frege’s apparent acceptance of multiple reductions is compatible with this epistemological thesis. The importance of this defense is that (a) it clarifies the role of proof, definition, and analysis in Frege’s logicist works; and (b) it demonstrates that the Fregean style of reduction is a valuable tool (...) for those who would investigate the nature of arithmetical knowledge. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the logos, the primary object of knowledge in Heraclitus’ epistemology, is a unity both as an object of knowledge and as an instance of being rather than becoming. Section I begins with discussions of knowledge and Heraclitus’ conception of logos; section II is concerned with knowledge and unity. The two later sections of the paper explore the consequences of the account I attribute to Heraclitus: section III considers being, unity, and change; and section IV (...) discusses Heraclitus’ views of knowledge and sense perception. (shrink)

: The author seeks an explanation for Merleau-Ponty's expression "the body understands", to which a real value is applied: the objects of the world have a signification that the body grasps by way of perception. The analysis focuses on Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology of perception and on notes from two of his courses, Le monde sensible et le monde de l'expression and La nature. In these works, there is a constant allusion to the I can as an underlying and grounding mode with (...) regard to the I think. The French philosopher thus grants a central role to movement that demonstrates the interweaving of the body with the world. Resumo: O autor busca uma explicação para a expressão "o corpo conhece", de Merleau-Ponty, à qual atribui um valor real: os objetos do mundo têm uma significação que o corpo apreende por meio da percepção. A análise se concentra na Fenomenologia da percepção e nas notas de dois cursos: O mundo sensível e o mundo da expressão e A natureza. Há uma constante alusão ao eu posso como um modo subjacente e fundamental em relação ao eu penso. Daí, o filósofo francês conferir um papel central ao movimento que demonstra o entrelaçamento do corpo com o mundo. (shrink)

States of the brain represent states of the world. A puzzle arises when one learns that at least some of the mind/brain’s internal representations, such as a sensation of heat or a sensation of red, do not genuinely resemble the external realities they allegedly represent: the mean kinetic energy of the molecules of the substance felt (temperature) and the mean electromagnetic reflectance profile of the seen object (color). The historical response has been to declare a distinction between objectively real properties, (...) such as shape motion and mass, and merely subjective properties, such as heat, color and smell. This hypothesis leads to trouble. A challenge for cognitive neurobiology is to characterize, in suitably general terms, the nature of the relationship between brain models and the world modeled. We favor the hypothesis that brains develop high-dimensional maps whose internal relations correspond in varying degrees of fidelity to the enduring causal structure of the world. From this perspective, the basic epistemological relation is not “single-percept to single- external-feature” but rather “background-brain-maps to causal-domain-portrayed. (shrink)

Studie over leven en werk van de Franse schrijfster en filosofe (1909-1943) van joodse afkomst.

The essays in this book criticise the new positivism in education policy, whereby education is systematically reduced to those things that can be measured by so-called 'objective' tests. School curricula have been narrowed with an emphasis on measurable results in the 3 R’s and the ‘quality’ of university departments is now assessed by managerial exercises based on commercial audit practice. As a result, the traditional notion of liberal arts education has been replaced by utilitarian productivity indices.

This paper concerns the normative status of coherence of desires, in the context of moral rationalism. I argue that 'desiderative coherence' is not tied to rationality, but is rather of pragmatic, instrumental, and sometimes moral value. This means that desire-based views cannot rely on coherence to support non-agent-relative accounts of moral reasons. For example, on Michael Smith's neo-rationalist view, you have 'normative reason' to do whatever your maximally coherent and fully informed self would want you to do, whether you want (...) to do it or not. For these reasons to be non-agent-relative, coherence would have to be grounded in rationality, but I argue that it is not. I analyze, and reject, various strategies for establishing a coherence-rationality connection, considering in detail a purported analogy between desires and a priori beliefs, with particular attention to the case of mathematics. (shrink)

Hutcheson’s theory of morality shares far more common ground with Clarke’s morality than is generally acknowledged. In fact, Hutcheson’s own view of his innovations in moral theory suggest that he understood moral sense theory more as an elaboration and partial correction to Clarkean fitness theory than as an outright rejection of it. My aim in this paper will be to illuminate what I take to be Hutcheson’s grounds for adopting this attitude toward Clarkean fitness theory. In so doing, I hope (...) to bring to light an otherwise unexpected continuity between moral sense theory and the moral rationalism to which it is usually opposed, and, in so doing, draw attention to the anti-sceptical realism that lies at the heart of both accounts. (shrink)

Desde una hermenéutica ontológica política se hacen visibles y audibles prácticas singulares a partir del punto de vista de los estudios latinoamericanos, los cuales apelan por una perspectiva de afirmación como propone Arturo Escobar respecto a una mirada sobre la diversidad y singularidad de accio..

The language of evolutionary biology and psychology is built on concepts applicable in the first instance to individual strategic rationality but extended to the level of genetic explanation. Current discussions of mental disorders as evolutionary adaptations would apply that extended language back to the individual level, with potentially problematic moral/political implications as well as possibilities of confusion. This paper focuses on one particularly problematic area: the explanation of women's greater tendency to depression. The suggestion that there are "good evolutionary reasons" (...) for depression makes sense, and might be helpful to note in therapy, as implying that the tendency is not a defect. However, evolutionary adaptiveness should not be confused with individual or psychological adaptiveness. Besides making reference to an earlier environment, it presupposes a strategic standpoint that may not accord with the legitimate interests of the individual, as this example makes vivid. (shrink)

Irvin Rock's hypothesis that certain stages of perceptual processing resemble problem solving in cognition is contrasted to some recent work in computer vision (Marr, Ullman) which tries to reduce intelligence in perception to computational organization. The focal example is subjective contours which Marr thought could be handled by computational modules without descending control, and which Rock thinks are the outcome of intelligent processing.

Sex determination in most organisms involves a simple binary fate choice between male or female development; the outcome of this decision has profound effects on organismal biology, biochemistry and behaviour. In the nematode C. elegans, there is also a binary choice, either male or hermaphrodite. In C. elegans, distinct genetic pathways control somatic and germline sexual cell fate. Both pathways share a common set of globally acting regulatory genes; however, germline-specific regulatory genes also participate in the decision to make male (...) or female gametes. The determination of sexual fate in the germline of the facultative hermaphrodite poses a special problem, because first sperm then oocytes are produced. It has emerged that additional layers of post-transcriptional regulation have been imposed to modulate the activities of the global sex-determining genes, tra-2 and fem-3; the balance between these activities is crucial in controlling sexual cell fate in the hermaphrodite germline. BioEssays 23:596–604, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)