In this chapter, we analyze the relationships between the Internet and its users in terms of situated cognition theory. We first argue that the Internet is a new kind of cognitive ecology, providing almost constant access to a vast amount of digital information that is increasingly more integrated into our cognitive routines. We then briefly introduce situated cognition theory and its species of embedded, embodied, extended, distributed and collective cognition. Having thus set the stage, we begin by taking an embedded (...) cognition view and analyze how the Internet aids certain cognitive tasks. After that, we conceptualize how the Internet enables new kinds of embodied interaction, extends certain aspects of our embodiment, and examine how wearable technologies that monitor physiological, behavioral and contextual states transform the embodied self. On the basis of the degree of cognitive integration between a user and Internet resource, we then look at how and when the Internet extends our cognitive processes. We end this chapter with a discussion of distributed and collective cognition as facilitated by the Internet. (shrink)

Certain plausible evidential requirements and coherence requirements on rationality seem to yield dilemmas of rationality (in a specific, objectionable sense) when put together with the possibility of misleading higher-order evidence. Epistemologists have often taken such dilemmas to be evidence that we’re working with some false principle. In what follows I show how one can jointly endorse an evidential requirement, a coherence requirement, and the possibility of misleading higher-order evidence without running afoul of dilemmas of rationality. The trick lies in observing (...) the difference between attitudes it is rational to hold (= propositional justification) and rationally holding those attitudes (= doxastic justification). (shrink)

According to many, to have epistemic justification to believe P is just for it to be epistemically permissible to believe P. Others think it is for believing P to be epistemically good. Yet others think it has to do with being epistemically blameless in believing P. All such views of justification encounter problems. Here, a new view of justification is proposed according to which justification is a kind of composite normative status. The result is a view of justification that offers (...) hope of solving some longstanding epistemological problems. (shrink)

An argument for the eponymous conclusion is given through a series of hypothetical syllogisms, the most basic of which is as follows: morality is necessary for self-respect; self-respect is necessary for happiness; therefore, morality is necessary for happiness. Some of the most obvious objections are entertained and rejected.

This is a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of contemporary work on moral relativism. The selections are divided topically under the following headings: General Issues Concerning Moral Relativism; Relativism and Moral Diversity; the Coherence of Moral Relativism; Defense and Criticism of Moral Relativism; and Relativism, Realism and Rationality. The volume includes a comprehensive topical bibliography and a large introduction with explanatory summaries of all the entries.

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot be understood (...) in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

Arguments for the extended mind suggest the possibility of extended knowers, individuals whose epistemic standing is tied to the operation of cognitive circuits that extend beyond the bounds of skin and skull. When applied to the Internet, this idea yields the possibility of Internet-extended knowledge, a form of extended knowledge that derives from our interactions and engagements with the online environment. This, however, yields a tension: proponents of the extended mind have suggested that cognitive extension requires the automatic endorsement of (...) bio-external content, but such a commitment appears to conflict with the need to carefully evaluate the veracity of online information. Lukas Schwengerer proposes a solution to this problem. He suggests that proponents of the extended mind ought to accept an alternative conception of the extended mind, one that allows for the evaluation of online content via the exercise of intellectual virtue. We highlight a number of problems with this proposal and suggest that further research is required before a virtue-theoretic approach to Internet-extended knowledge can be adopted. On a more positive note, we suggest that the exercise of intellectual virtue may play an important role in the developmental emergence of Internet-extended knowers. (shrink)

Sometimes it’s reasonable to reduce confidence in a proposition in response to gaining etiological information. Suppose, for example, a theist learns that her theism is ‘due to’ her religious upbringing. There is a clear range of cases where it would be reasonable for her to respond by slightly decreasing her confidence in God’s existence. So long as reasonability and justification are distinct, this reasonability claim would appear consistent with the thesis that this kind of etiological information cannot, all by itself, (...) affect one’s justification. In what follows, I argue that this is mistaken. For, even if reasonability and justification are distinct, the reasonability of decreasing confidence in response to etiological information must be explained in terms of a decrease in justification. The argument to follow threatens not only the stronger thesis that etiological information never defeats justification but the substantially weaker thesis, advocated by various authors, that justification is defeated by etiological information in only a limited range of circumstances. I go on to show how the arguments en route to this conclusion have much wider epistemological ramifications. (shrink)

This book recounts the remarkable history of efforts by significant medieval thinkers to accommodate the ontology of the Trinity within the framework of Aristotelian logic and ontology. These efforts were remarkable because they pushed creatively beyond the boundaries of existing thought while trying to strike a balance between the Church's traditional teachings and theoretical rigor in a context of institutional politics. In some cases, good theology, good philosophy, and good politics turned out to be three different things. The principal thinkers (...) discussed are Augustine, Boethius, Abélard, Gilbert of Poitiers, Bonaventure, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham. The aspects of Trinitarian doctrine dealt with are primarily internal ontological questions about the Trinity. The approach draws on history of theology and philosophy, as well as on the modern formal disciplines of set-theoretic semantics and formal ontology. Augustine inaugurated the project of constructing models of the Trinity in language drawn from Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy, especially the conceptual framework of Aristotle's Categories. He used the Aristotelian notions of substance and relation to set up a model whose aim was not so much to demystify the Trinity as to demonstrate the logical consistency of maintaining that there is one and only one God at the same time as maintaining that there are three distinct persons, each of whom is God. Standing against this tradition are various heretical accounts of the Trinity. The book also analyzes these traditions, using the same techniques. All these accounts of the Trinity are evaluated relative to the three constraints under which they were formed, bearing in mind that the constraints on philosophical theorizing are not limited to internal consistency but also take note of explanatory power. Besides analyzing and evaluating individual accounts of the Trinity, the book provides a novel framework within which different theories can be compared. (shrink)

Includes a chapter on visual perception.

This book discusses some of the most challenging ideas emerging out of the research program on institutional diversity associated with the 2009 co-recipient of 2009 Nobel Prize in economics, Elinor Ostrom, while outlining a set of new research directions and an original interpretation of the significance and future of this program.

This paper argues that questions concerning the nature of concepts that are central in cognitive psychology are also important to epistemology and that there is more to conceptual change than mere belief revision. Understanding of epistemic change requires appreciation of the complex ways in which concepts are structured and organized and of how this organization can affect belief revision. Following a brief summary of the psychological functions of concepts and a discussion of some recent accounts of what concepts are, I (...) propose a view of concepts as complex computational structures. This account suggests that conceptual change can come in varying degrees, with the most extreme consisting of fundamental conceptual reorganizations. These degrees of conceptual change are illustrated by the development of the concept of an acid. (shrink)

An exploration of the consequences of various ideas in the thought of John Calvin, and the influence of his ideas on later theologians. The emphasis is on philosophical ideas within Calvin's theology, dealing in turn with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues. Helm provides a fresh perspective on Calvin's theological context and legacy.

Medicine increasingly envisions health promotion in terms of reducing risk as determined by quantitative risk factors, such as blood pressure, blood lipids, or genetic variants. This essay argues that this vision of health care as risk reduction is dangerous for Christian bioethics, since risk can be infinitely reduced leading to a self-defeating spiral of iatrogenic effects. Moreover, it endangers character because this vision of health is connected to a reductionist vision of the body and an understanding of individual risk that (...) undermines the more communal virtue of solidarity. The essay concludes by discussing how recent Thomistic analyses in favor of physical enhancements illustrate some of the problems that envisioning health care in terms of risk reduction holds for Christian bioethics. (shrink)

I discuss the problem of whether true contradictions of the form “x is P and not P” might be the expression of an implicit relativization to distinct respects of application of one and the same predicate P. Priest rightly claims that one should not mistake true contradictions for an expression of lexical ambiguity. However, he primarily targets cases of homophony for which lexical meanings do not overlap. There exist more subtle forms of equivocation, such as the relation of privative opposition (...) singled out by Zwicky and Sadock in their study of ambiguity. I argue that this relation, which is basically a relation of general to more specific, underlies the logical form of true contradictions. The generalization appears to be that all true contradictions really mean “x is P in some respects/to some extent, but not in all respects/not to all extent”. I relate this to the strict-tolerant account of vague predicates and outline a variant of the account to cover one-dimensional and multidimensional predicates. (shrink)

What Numbers Could Not Be’) that an adequate account of the numbers and our arithmetic practice must satisfy not only the conditions usually recognized to be necessary: (a) identify some w-sequence as the numbers, and (b) correctly characterize the cardinality relation that relates a set to a member of that sequence as its cardinal number—it must also satisfy a third condition: the ‘<’ of the sequence must be recursive. This paper argues that adding this further condition was a mistake—any w-sequence (...) would do, no matter how undecidable its ‘<’ relation. (shrink)

This peer reviewed reference article is an annotated online bibliography on mereology with 80+ entries. It's aim is to provide a selective and balanced guide to the subject. It contains thematic headings with commentaries. The reader should come away cognizant of what the most influential work in mereology are. Topics highlighted herein include, but are not limited to: the history of mereology, classical extensional mereology and its challenges, parthood, connections with location relations, mereological simples and gunk, composition as identity, as (...) well as mereological essentialism, nihilism, and universalism. (shrink)

Supporters of G.W.F. Hegel's philosophy have largely shied away from relating his logic to modern symbolic or mathematical approaches. While it has predominantly been the non-Greek discipline of algebra that has informed modern mathematical logic, philosopher Paul Redding argues that the approaches of Plato and Aristotle to logic were deeply shaped by the arithmetic and geometry of classical Greek culture. And by ignoring the fact that Hegel's logic also has this deep mathematical dimension, conventional Hegelians have missed some of (...) Hegel's greatest insights. In Conceptual Harmonies, Redding develops an account of Hegel's logic against a classical and modern historical background that is rarely considered. He stresses Hegel's attention to the Platonic background of Aristotle's original syllogistic and beyond. He then links these Platonic elements to Leibniz's modern revitalization of the logical tradition and then to new forms of algebraic geometry emerging in Hegel's lifetime. Redding thereby reestablishes aspects of Hegel's philosophy that are essential if Hegel is to be taken as a thinker relevant not only to contemporary philosophy, but also to current philosophical conceptions of logic. (shrink)

Exploring the 'roads less travelled', MacDonald continues his monumental essay in the history of ideas. The history of heterodox ideas about the concept of mind takes the reader from the earliest records about human nature in Ancient Egypt, the Ancient Near East, and the Zoroastrian religion, through the secret teachings in the Hermetic and Gnostic scriptures, and into the transformation of ideas about the mind, soul and spirit in the late antique and early medieval epochs. These transitions include discussion of (...) the influence of Central Asian shamanism, Manichean ideas about the soul in light and darkness, and Neoplatonic theurgy, 'working-on-god-within'. Sections on the medieval period are concerned with the rediscovery of magical practices and occult doctrines from Roger Bacon to Francis Bacon, the adaptation of Neoplatonic and esoteric ideas in the medieval Christian mystics, and the survival of these ideas mixed with natural science in the works of von Helmont, Leibniz and Goethe. The book concludes with an investigation of the many forms of dualism in accounts of the human mind and soul, and the concept of dual-life which underpins our aspiration to understand how humans could have an immortal nature like the gods. (shrink)

Returning from the Great War to Cambridge in 1919, F. R. Leavis switched from studying history to studying English. It’s not hard to see why. The academic study of history must have seemed monstrously unreal to him after what he had been through, and the fledgling English School offered, as he later said, “a creative response to change—change in society and civilization that had been made unignorable by the war,”1 in contrast to the Oxford course, which reflected “the habit instilled (...) by a classical training”, with its compulsory Old English and its refusal to include contemporary literature on the syllabus. Leavis’s reticence about his wartime experiences—exemplified in his well-known suppression of... (shrink)

In this landmark book, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen combines and culminates the two strands of his substantial scholarly work: ecology and Medieval and Early Modern studies. Stone is ambitiously synthetic and syncretic, framed not as critical exegesis but “a thought experiment, attempting to discern in the most mundane of substances a liveliness”. Rather than developing an ecological theory and applying it to particular texts, or practicing an ecocriticism that reads nature “in” texts, Cohen attempts to stage something like a symbiotic textual (...) petric performance: “To tell a story with stone is intensely to inhabit that preposition with, to move from solitary individuations to ecosystems, environments, shared agencies... (shrink)

Behemoth is a history of the English Civil Wars and Interregnum written by England's most famous philosopher, Thomas Hobbes. It covers the events which were the background to his major philosophical writings, especially Leviathan, and is the only place where he discusses them directly.

No detailed description available for "Platone".

In Part I of this paper, we identified and compared various schemes for trivalent truth conditions for indicative conditionals, most notably the proposals by de Finetti and Reichenbach on the one hand, and by Cooper and Cantwell on the other. Here we provide the proof theory for the resulting logics DF/TT and CC/TT, using tableau calculi and sequent calculi, and proving soundness and completeness results. Then we turn to the algebraic semantics, where both logics have substantive limitations: DF/TT allows for (...) algebraic completeness, but not for the construction of a canonical model, while CC/TT fails the construction of a Lindenbaum-Tarski algebra. With these results in mind, we draw up the balance and sketch future research projects. (shrink)

Paul Tillich ; Volltext // Exemplar mit der Signatur: München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek -- Var. 382 t-1/2.

A central idea in moral and political philosophy, 'autonomy' is generally understood as some form of self-governance or self-direction. Certain Stoics, modern philosophers such as Spinoza, and most importantly, Immanuel Kant, are among the great philosophers who have offered important insights on the concept. Some theorists analyze autonomy in terms of the self being moved by its higher-order desires. Others argue that autonomy must be understood in terms of acting from reason or from a sense of moral duty independent of (...) the passions. Autonomy seems closely related to the notion of freedom, but in what sense: freedom from coercion, freedom from psychological constraints, or freedom from material necessity? Various approaches to these and similar questions yield different implications for public policy. Is capitalism, social democracy or socialism more favorable to autonomy? The essays in this volume address these important questions. (shrink)

Einführung in Paul Tillichs philosophische Schriften Gunther Wenz Daß der Gott Abrahams, Isaaks und Jakobs und der Gott der Philosophen der gleiche Gott sei ...