The Intelligent Mind conceives the psychological reality of thought and language, explaining how intelligence develops from intuition to representation and then to linguistic interaction and thinking. Overcoming the prevailing dogmas regarding how discursive reason emerges, this book secures the psychological possibility of the philosophy of mind.

The most pedigreed line of thought about mind is the simplicity argument: that the unity of thinking entails the simplicity, immateriality, and immortality of soul. It is widely taken to be a rationalist argument, as opposed to an empiricist or peripatetic argument (see Mijuskovic, The Achilles of Rationalist Arguments), which was completely destroyed by Kant in the First Critique. In this paper it is argued that there is a conceptual connection between the downfall of the Aristotelian conception of (...) soul as substantial form and the downfall of this argument in that in the downfall of the Aristotelian conception of soul it became acceptable to view the functional unity of a material system as constituting a genuine unity per se. This then undermined all philosophical motivation for the postulation of substantial forms. As a result, there was no longer reason for rooting the unity of apperception in the simplicity of a subsistence soul as opposed to some simply emergent power of thinking. (shrink)

This book is a call to expand and diversify our approach to the study of the human mind in relation to the Theory of Mind. It proposes that it is necessary to combine cross-disciplinary methods to arrive at a more complete understanding of how our minds work. Seeking to expand the discussion surrounding the Theory of Mind beyond the field of psychology, and its focus on our capacity to ascribe mental states to other people, this volume collects (...) evidence and research to point to a more holistic understanding of our own minds, the minds of others, behavior, language, and reasoning. This book therefore illuminates the conceptual intricacy underlying the Theory of Mind. It posits that a wide scope is necessary to make a breakthrough in scientific research towards a full understanding of the nature, function, and development of our capacity to converge on biological processes of the brain towards consciousness, emotion, awareness, and cognition. The volume presents methods, results, critiques, and models intended to provoke debates in various academic disciplines. It is of interest to scholars working in psychology, neuroscience, philosophy of mind, and artificial intelligence. (shrink)

We usually consider literary thinking to be peripheral and dispensable, an activity for specialists: poets, prophets, lunatics, and babysitters. Certainly we do not think it is the basis of the mind. We think of stories and parables from Aesop's Fables or The Thousand and One Nights, for example, as exotic tales set in strange lands, with spectacular images, talking animals, and fantastic plots--wonderful entertainments, often insightful, but well removed from logic and science, and entirely foreign to the world of (...) everyday thought. But Mark Turner argues that this common wisdom is wrong. The literary mind--the mind of stories and parables--is not peripheral but basic to thought. Story is the central principle of our experience and knowledge. Parable--the projection of story to give meaning to new encounters--is the indispensable tool of everyday reason. Literary thought makes everyday thought possible. This book makes the revolutionary claim that the basic issue for cognitive science is the nature of literary thinking. In The Literary Mind, Turner ranges from the tools of modern linguistics, to the recent work of neuroscientists such as Antonio Damasio and Gerald Edelman, to literary masterpieces by Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Proust, as he explains how story and projection--and their powerful combination in parable--are fundamental to everyday thought. In simple and traditional English, he reveals how we use parable to understand space and time, to grasp what it means to be located in space and time, and to conceive of ourselves, other selves, other lives, and other viewpoints. He explains the role of parable in reasoning, in categorizing, and in solving problems. He develops a powerful model of conceptual construction and, in a far-reaching final chapter, extends it to a new conception of the origin of language that contradicts proposals by such thinkers as Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Turner argues that story, projection, and parable precede grammar, that language follows from these mental capacities as a consequence. Language, he concludes, is the child of the literary mind. Offering major revisions to our understanding of thought, conceptual activity, and the origin and nature of language, The Literary Mind presents a unified theory of central problems in cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy. It gives new and unexpected answers to classic questions about knowledge, creativity, understanding, reason, and invention. (shrink)

Tracing the deep connections between philosophy and education, Ryan McInerney argues that we must use philosophy to reflect on the significance of educational practice to all human endeavour. He uses a broad approach which takes in the relationships governing philosophy, education, and language, to reveal education's fundamental achievements and metaphysical significance. The realization of educational ideals and policies are read alongside growing skepticism regarding the theoretical and practical significance of philosophical thinking, and the emphasis on resource efficiency (...) and measurable outcomes which characterise schooling today. It is from this context that McInerney defends the value inherent to the philosophy of education. Drawing upon contemporary continental and analytic thinkers including Nietzsche, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, McInerney charts the role of education in shaping the child's metaphysical transformation through language acquisition. Connecting early years and primary school education, McInerney pinpoints rationality as the crucial factor which produces critical, thinking beings. He presents the pursuit of philosophically minded education as a rational pursuit which enables us to philosophise and educate others in turn, dispensing with the epistemological and conceptual foundationalisms of the past. (shrink)

In the heyday of conceptual analysis philosophical psychology was practised without regard to the ontology of mind as that was associated with disputes between materialism and non-materialism. The rise of functionalism, however, led philosophical psychology in the direction of materialism, though with a residue deriving from phenomenal consciousness. This is now widely viewed as ‘the hard problem’ for physicalism and probably an insuperable one for it, raising the spectre of epiphenomenalism. I argue that in fact sensory consciousness is (...) not the greatest challenge to materialism, for that lies with the conceptual intentionality of abstract thought. I make these points in connection with the views of Aquinas and consider two of his arguments for the immateriality ofintellectual acts. While finding one inadequate for reasons internal to the Thomist account of cognition, I defend the second against recent critics. (shrink)

Philosophy strives to give us a firmer hold on our concepts. But what about their hold on us? Why place ourselves under the sway of a concept and grant it the authority to shape our thought and conduct? Another conceptualization would carry different implications. What makes one way of thinking better than another? This book develops a framework for concept appraisal. Its guiding idea is that to question the authority of concepts is to ask for reasons of a special (...) kind: reasons for concept use, which tell us which concepts to adopt, adhere to, or abandon, thereby shoring up—or undercutting—the reasons for action and belief that guide our deliberations. Traditionally, reasons for concept use have been sought either in timeless rational foundations or in concepts’ inherent virtues, such as precision and consistency. Against this, the book advances two main claims: that we find reasons for concept use in the conceptual needs we discover when we critically distance ourselves from a concept by viewing it from the autoethnographic stance; and that sometimes, concepts that conflict, or exhibit other vices such as vagueness or superficiality, are just what we need. By considering not what concepts are absolutely best, but what concepts we now need, we can reconcile ourselves to the contingency of our concepts, determine the proper place of efforts to tidy up thought, and adjudicate between competing conceptions of things—even things as contested as liberty or free will. A needs-based approach separates helpful clarification from hobbling tidy-mindedness, and authoritative definition from conceptual gerrymandering. (shrink)

Reveals how we can each reconnect to collective intelligence and return our world to wholeness, balance, and sanity • Explains how collective intelligence manifests in flocks of birds, instantaneous knowing in indigenous peoples, and the power of sacred places • Offers ways for us to reconnect to the infinite source of wisdom that fuels collective intelligence and underscores the importance of ceremony, pilgrimage, and initiation • Draws on recent findings in New Paradigm science, traditional teachings from indigenous groups from North, (...) South, and Central America and Siberia, as well as sacred geometry, deep ecology, and expanded states of consciousness For our ancestors, collective intelligence was a normal part of life. We see it today as the mysterious force that enables flocks of birds, swarms of bees, and schools of fish to function together in perfect synchrony, communicating and cooperating at some undetectable level. At its most subtle, it’s an instantaneous knowing, shared by members of a group, of the wisest course of action that will benefit all. As Dery Dyer reveals, collective intelligence still resides within each of us, and it is the key to restoring balance and harmony to our world. She shows how it occurs spontaneously when individuals who share a need and a purpose instinctively “self-organize” into a group and function with no leader or central authority. Such groups exhibit abilities much greater than what any of their members possess individually--or what can be replicated with artificial intelligence. Dyer explains, due to an unquestioning dependence on technology, modern humanity has forgotten how to connect with collective intelligence and fallen into collective stupidity, otherwise known as mob mind or groupthink, which is now endangering the interconnected web of life on Earth. Drawing on recent findings in New Paradigm science, traditional teachings from indigenous groups, as well as sacred geometry, deep ecology, and expanded states of consciousness, the author shows how the ability to think and act collectively for the highest good is hardwired in all living beings. She explains how to release ourselves from enslavement by technology and use it more wisely toward the betterment of all life. Underscoring the vital importance of ceremony, pilgrimage, and initiation, she offers ways for us to reconnect to the infinite source of wisdom that fuels collective intelligence and which manifests everywhere in the natural world. Revealing that once we relearn how to hear the Earth, we can heal the Earth, Dyer shows how each of us has a vital role to play in restoring our world to wholeness. (shrink)

As the title of the present article shows, it highlights the three philosophically integrated areas – (1) pramāṇa-epistemology (theory of comprehensive knowledge involving both perception and inference), (2) logic (although a part of pramāṇa-epistemology, it has two modes, namely, inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning), and (3) language (or semantics, i.e. the double negation theory of meaning, which falls under inference). These are interconnected as well as overlapping within the Buddhist mainstream tradition of the process philosophy as opposed to the (...) substantialist philosophy. The same is the case with the three celebrated Buddhist thinkers – Vasubandhu, Dignāga (also spelt as Diññāṇa), and Dharmakīrti – who develop their radical and critical views focusing on these areas in historical-cum-philosophical order. It is worth noting that within the same mainstream Buddhist tradition, each one of the three thinkers picks up the problematic issues from their predecessors – from the Buddha to their immediate predecessors respectively – for their solutions against the backdrop of the two conflicting mainstream traditions – Buddhist and non-Buddhist. The central focus of these thinkers is first to identify the crucial issues, doctrinal principles, terminology, and methodology in their own ways and conceptual frameworks, which generate not only the mutual conflicts in the course of dialogues but also strengthen their positions by means of their new radical ideas, innovations, terminologies, methodologies, and doctrinal principles. As a result, the three selected areas and their crucial issues are explained, elaborated, and interpretated for better understanding. All of which are rooted in the Buddha’s path of wisdom, ethics, and liberation from the human predicament (duḥkha-nivṛtti). In this grand project of the deepest concerns, the Buddha utilized multiple strategies like understanding and controlling the problematic nature of the mind (Pāli citta, manasa) and its concomitance (Pāli cetasika, dhammā) by means of the concentrative meditation (Pāli jhāna, Sanskrit (hereafter Skt., dhyāna), cultivation of knowledge (Pāli vijjā, Skt. vidyā) and conduct/moral purity (Pāli caraṇa, Skt. ācaraṇa), destruction of afflictions/defilements (Pāli kilesa, Skt. kleśa), critical and logical thinking with valid arguments, and so on. His disciples also treat him as the possessor of valid method, arguments, meaning, practice, and purpose (Skt. pramāṇabhūta, the term used by Dignāga). He believed in the common humanity as the community of sufferers and the autonomy of every human being (Pāli attakāra), but strongly rejected the hierarchy of humanity on the basis of caste, birth, and dogmatic religious identity. For these reasons, following the Buddha and his celebrated followers like Vasubandhu, Dignāga, and Dharmakīrti, my task in this article is how to clearly and elaborately discuss the above identified issues and theories, first to understand them for myself and then logically prove the whole process of knowledge and the designed purpose through communication to those who have the intention to hear and understand the framework of common language for their benefits. I wish the readers like students and young teachers benefit from my research work. Further, since my learning of the Tibetan language is zero, but comfortable in Sanskrit and Pāli, I have been heavily dependent on three great modern thinkers who have widely written independently and also translated the Buddhist Tibetan texts, which were translated from the original Sanskrit texts now lost, into English in the areas of Buddhist epistemology, logic, and semantics. These modern scholars are Masaaki Hattori, Shoryo Katsura, and Richard Hayes. Besides them, I have also little benefitted from some other scholars who have worked in the same areas. (shrink)

Different researchers from psychology and neuroscience state that navigation involves the manipulation of cognitive maps and graphs. In this paper, I will argue that navigating – specifically, journey planning – can be conceived as a process of practical reasoning. First, I will argue that journey planning constitutes a case of means-end reasoning involving inferences with cartographic representations. Then, I will argue that the output of journey planning functions as an instrumental belief in means-end reasoning. More specifically, journey planning can deliver (...) an instrumental rule that plays a normative role in spatial cognition. This approach motivates a pluralist conception of practical reasoning, stating that inferences might run through different representational formats and processes. (shrink)

We are living through a new phase in human development where much of everyday life – at least in the most technologically developed parts of the world – has come to depend upon our interaction with “smart” artefacts. Alongside this increasing adoption and ever-deepening reliance on intelligent machines, important changes have been taking place, often in the background, as to how we think of ourselves and how we conceptualize our relationship with technology. As we design, create and learn to live (...) with a new order of artefacts which exhibit behavior that, were it to be carried out by human beings would be seen as intelligent, the ways in which we conceptualize intelligence, minds, reasoning and related notions such as self and agency are undergoing profound shifts. We argue that the basic background assumptions informing our concepts of mind, and the underlying conceptual scheme structuring our reasoning about minds has recently been transformed in the process. This shift has changed the nature and quality of both our folk understanding of mind, our scientific psychology, and the philosophical problems that the interaction of these realms produce. Many of the traditional problems in the philosophy of mind have become reconfigured in the process. This introduction sets the scene for our book that treats this reconfiguration of our concepts of mind and of technology, and the new casting of philosophical problems this reconfiguration engenders. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Four Philosophical Models of the Relation Between Theory and PracticeEstelle R. JorgensenSince music education straddles theory and practice, my purpose is to sketch the strengths and weaknesses of four philosophical models of the relationship between theory and practice. I demonstrate that none of them suffices when taken alone; each has something to offer and its own detractions. And I conclude with four suggested ways in which the analysis can (...) be helpful to music teachers and those interested in their work.Clarifying what is meant by theory and practice raises a nest of conceptual problems. Concerning theory, it may be tempting to equate the terms "theory" and "philosophy." Among their shared properties, these terms deal with conceptual and abstract entities that, from the Enlightenment at least, have been held to be distinct from the phenomenal world. They also clarify ideas and distinguish one concept from another. Among their different purposes, the object of philosophy is the asking of questions in a search for wisdom or truth whereas theory is formulated for explanatory purposes, especially within the frame of scientific propositions that can be refuted through empirical observations. The tests of philosophy are, therefore, those of symbolic logic evidenced in principles such as [End Page 21] internal consistency, correspondence with evidence (deductive, inductive, or analogical), and coherence within a unity or whole. Although logical criteria may also be important in formulating and testing theory,1 it is tested and refuted primarily through means of qualitative descriptions and quantitative assessments of observable phenomena.Regarding practice, one is also confronted with an ambiguous construct that may be interpreted descriptively (what is done in the phenomenal world or taken to be the general state of affairs) or normatively (what is desirable or ideal). There is also the distinction between the practice of a seasoned performer and practice in the sense of striving towards the mastery of a competent and expert practice. In this regard, Vernon Howard distinguishes between "practice" (or the skills exemplified by proficient or expert performers) and "practise (or acquiring the level of mastery of proficient or expert performance)."2 For him, the ambiguous and paradoxical nature of artistic practice highlights the complexity of degrees of attaining mastery of skills or exemplary practice and the diverse array of skills ranging from habit to critical thinking involved in the practice of any art. Although each practice is distinguished by its own belief systems, rituals, expectations, and commonsense, boundaries between differing practices are sometimes "soft" or fuzzy, as one seeps into another.3 Consequently, it is often difficult to distinguish one from another at the margins where one practice becomes another.DichotomyThe notion of theory and practice as independent or a dichotomous relationship between the phenomenal world on the one hand and the mind and spirit on the other has its roots in the ancient world. For Plato, the world of "appearances," referring to the phenomenal world understood by imagination (eikasia) and belief (pistis), should be distinguished from the higher, abstract "intelligible world" grasped through thinking (dianoia), knowledge (episteme), and intelligence (noesis).4 René Descartes' later bifurcation of the inner and outer worlds and inversion of Platonic values and understandings resulted in the ascendancy of careful and deliberate observation of the phenomenal world over philosophical reflection.5 His ideas helped to set the stage for the Enlightenment and the Industrial, Scientific, and Information Revolutions. Empiricism, science, and technology gradually displaced philosophy as primary ways of knowing the phenomenal world and understanding the nature of mind, human cognition, feeling, and being. Making hard-boundaried distinctions between within and without one's self, the phenomenal world and the world of spiritual things, and theory and practice were important insights. These distinctions provided for limits on the sorts of ways in which truth could be known. Reasoned deliberation [End Page 22] and imaginative thought have particular usefulness in the world of theory while sensory perception and careful observation are especially useful in the phenomenal world of practice. So while the scholar might speculate about phenomena, observational tools are also useful in coming to know and understand them. Reason and observation each have particular strengths, and it ought not be assumed that philosophy or scientific observation... (shrink)

This essay replies to some representative authors, canonic indeed, of the opposition to artificial intelligence : Hubert L. DREYFUS, with his study, systematic enough in its time, What Computers can't do. His phenomenological critic meets a numerous audience, even among computer scientists. Joseph WEIZENBAUM, research worker in artificial intelligence himself, gone over to the opposition with his book Computer Power and Human Reason. His objections are classically moral and anti-techno-scientific. The philosopher John R. SEARLE, whose book Mind, Brain and (...) Science reminds us most of the resistances of linguistic scientists against artificial intelligence, turning the real difficulties of formalization of language in ontological impossibilities. Terry WINOGRAD, another research worker of the early times of AI, and Fernando FLORES, former economy minister of Chile in 1973, both rebels against the computerization of the human's world - thanks to the phenomenological post-hedeggerian way of think -, in their common work, Understanding Computers and Cognition. Phenomenological philosophy has found the perfect target with AI, which embodies the image of science for the post-romantic thinking. This image can be perfectly symbolized by the frescos, choosen for the cover of this very book, situated on the walls of the Sorbonne University Library stairs! Againts the arguments of this running down romantical thinking, this book make the effort to answer on every point. But this work invites us to give up the intellectual illusions too, against which the method of cognitive sciences and information processing can be used as riddle. Incidentally, the approach of this critical method itself can be considered too as an automatic knowledge management try. (shrink)

The article discusses the process of “conceptual borrowing”, according to which, when a new discipline emerges, it develops its technical vocabulary also by appropriating terms from other neighbouring disciplines. The phenomenon is likened to Carl Schmitt’s observation that modern political concepts have theological roots. The authors argue that, through extensive conceptual borrowing, AI has ended up describing computers anthropomorphically, as computational brains with psychological properties, while brain and cognitive sciences have ended up describing brains and minds computationally and (...) informationally, as biological computers. The crosswiring between the technical languages of these disciplines is not merely metaphorical but can lead to confusion, and damaging assumptions and consequences. The article ends on an optimistic note about the self-adjusting nature of technical meanings in language and the ability to leave misleading conceptual baggage behind when confronted with advancement in understanding and factual knowledge. (shrink)

THE PRESENT SITUATION in the philosophy of mind may be roughly summed up in three generalizations. First, Cartesian dualism is no longer widely accepted as a genuine option. For many reasons it is no longer taken seriously by experimental psychologists. Perhaps their best reason is that the dualistic hypothesis can provide no satisfactory explanation of behavior since it would seem to make no sense to ascribe to an immaterial substance an internal structure and activity which could be causally (...) linked to behavior. Among philosophers, A. J. Ayer has expressed a characteristic attitude in his admission that he does not find the hypothesis intelligible. Second, a version of materialism, let us call it physicalism, is now being taken seriously as an alternative to Cartesian dualism. According to this version, while it is admitted that mentalistic discourse may not be logically reducible to physicalistic discourse, nevertheless all true statements about the mind are in fact either statements about the behavior of the human body and its organs or about tendencies to behave. Finally, the concept of action has come to the forefront of discussion, and it is being explored primarily by those who reject Cartesian dualism but find something wrong with physicalism. Here is an attempt to construct an alternative to both views by developing a new kind of dualism, namely a distinction between persons as physical organisms and persons as agents, as beings who can act and who have intentions, motives, reasons, desires, and so forth. According to this view, persons are creatures to whom it is essential that teleological concepts apply, and teleological discourse and modes of explanation are not reducible, either logically or empirically, to physicalistic discourse and modes of explanation. Advocates of the new dualism are just as anxious to deny the existence of a ghost in the machine as are the materialists. But, to state roughly what they are after, it is claimed that there are at least two mutually exclusive language games or conceptual schemes which we use to talk about human beings. They are exclusive not in the sense of being about different entities but in the sense of using methods of explanation and concepts which are contextually incompatible with one another. To understand an agent's actions in terms of his intentions and motives is to rule out in that particular context a causal-physiological explanation. Physicalism ignores or fails to appreciate what is distinctively psychological in human life. (shrink)

Introduction: Philosophy in Mind / Michaelis Michael and John O’Leary-Hawthorne -- AI and the Synthetic A Priori / Jose Benardete -- Armchair Metaphysics /Frank Jackson -- Doubts About Conceptual Analysis /Gilbert Harman -- Deflationary Self-Knowledge / Andre Gallois -- How to Get to Know One’s Own Mind: Some Simple Ways / Annette Baier -- Psychology in Perspective / Huw Price -- Can Philosophy of Language Provide the Key to the Foundations of Ethics? /Karl-Otto Apel --Unprincipled (...) Decisions / Lee Overton -- Philosophy and Commonsense: The Case of Weakness of Will / Jeanette Kennett and Michael Smith -- Reasoning and Representing / Robert Brandom -- The Problem of Consciousness / John Searle -- Godel’s Theorem and the Mind... Again / Graham Priest -- Epistemology and the Diet Revolution / Gilbert Harman -- Truth-Aptness and Belief / John O’Leary-Hawthorne -- Cubism, Perspective, Belief / Michaelis Michael. Objectivity and Modern Idealism: What is The Question? / Gideon Rosen. (shrink)

This paper intends to question the conventional wisdom that philosophy should limit its endeavours to the horizon of modern transcendentalism, thus rejecting the presuppositions of faith. By reappraising Edith Stein's views of faith and reason, which are also shared by the magisterial document of John Paul II, Fides et ratio, an argument for the possibility of “thinking in faith” is put forward. But why would it be important nowadays to engage in rational research in philosophy in a quest (...) for truth which also draws its inspiration from faith? First of all, as I shall argue, because the two great modern transcendental projects, namely the Kantian and the Husserlian one, which were both in tune with Spinoza's project to liberate philosophical reason from theology, have failed. Secondly, because “faith” is not based on “irrational sentiments,” but is “intellectual understanding,” as Edith Stein argues. Third, because the natural light of the created intellect is, as was shown by St. Thomas Aquinas, a participated likeness of the supernatural light of the uncreated divine intellect. Therefore, even the natural philosopher gets their own light from the eternal Truth of faith. Finally, by following another Thomistic stance, one may argue that the end of human life is an intelligible one: the contemplation of God. In order to attain this end, the human being should endeavour to attain as much as is possible, in an intelligible way, the thing desired. Even if the philosophical inquiry has its own limits, it may however sustain such progress towards the end of human life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Why Narcissists Are Morally ResponsibleAleksandar Fatic, PhDIn his insightful commentary of ‘Narcissism as a moral incompetence,’ Professor Pies proposes several principal objections to my line of argument. First, Pies mentions that I embrace a Platonic essentialism and a ‘binary’ view of narcissism, whilst in fact narcissistic traits present themselves in degrees, within a continuum of pathology.Let us clarify the meaning of essentialism. When applied to the phenomenology of narcissism, (...) Platonic essentialism would imply that there is an idea, or ideal, of ‘pure’ narcissism, which governs our cognition of narcissistic phenomenology. Without an ‘essentialist’ understanding of what narcissism as a more or less pure phenomenon would look like, it would make no semantic or logical sense to speak of various ‘types’ or ‘degrees’ of narcissism. In the 1940s, in The Concept of Mind, Gilbert Ryle offered the now infamous logical analysis of ‘false’ and ‘true coins’: if there were not true coins of which we had some idea, it would be logically impossible to speak of counterfeit coins (McDermid, 2004; Ryle, 1949, pp. 94–99). There are shoddily produced coins that bear only a vague resemblance to the original idea or mint of the real coin, however, for each we would ultimately have to decide whether the resemblance is sufficient for it to be considered a real coin. Shoddily produced coins represent various ‘degrees’ of resemblance of the idea, or form, of a coin, but to call them coins, and to decide whether they are true coins or not, it is a logical presupposition that we must first have an ‘idea’ of what an ‘ideal’ real coin is like. This, at its core, is essentialism.There is no escape from this type of essentialism in any rigorous argument, because Platonic essentialism is the foundation of the very meanings of the concepts we use. Plato’s ideas are paradigms, where the particular instantiations of their qualities are called ‘phenomena’ (Sedley, 2016; Taylor, 2016). Thus, the nuanced expression of ideas or forms in their various phenomena is the very substance of the essentialist theory of ideas. It appears that Professor Pies is also a Platonic essentialist, as am I.So why is it often impossible in clinical practice to ascribe necessary and sufficient conditions to narcissism? Well, let us remember Rosenhan’s experiments (1973). Rosenhan illustrates how the same individuals were diagnosed with very different disorders by different clinicians at roughly the same time, and how healthy individuals, once they had been instructed to ‘fake’ psychotic symptoms, remained under the same or more serious [End Page 177] diagnoses even when they stopped pretending and behaved completely normally. The reason for the arbitrariness of psych-diagnoses is the insufficiency of the psych-diagnostic language, including the actual diagnostic criteria, a kind of Lacanian ‘lack’ that is built into the very structure of psychodiagnostics (Ruti, 2008), and not a metaphysics behind such use of diagnostic language, whether it is essentialist or non-essentialist. Whether a particular patient actually has NPD or not in practice comes down to a consensual judgement—one that has been notoriously lacking in the history of psychiatry (Verhaeghe, 2008, pp. 71–125).Second, Pies suggests that empathy is ‘a complex, multidimensional construct comprising cognitive and affective components.’ I do not think this is a correct understanding of empathy. In fact, it is a conceptual revision of the original concept of empathy, which is one of a moral emotion (Kauppinen, 2014). What Pies calls ‘cognitive empathy,’ namely the ability to recognize and influence the emotions of others is an entirely different quality capacity that has recently been called ‘emotional intelligence’ (e.g., Conte, 2005). Many Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by an exceptionally high emotional intelligence and an almost complete lack of empathy, which allows them to use their emotional intelligence to manipulate and mistreat others. Surely such emotionally intelligent, but highly malignant strategies would not be considered ‘empathy.”Relatedly, Pies objects to Slote’s alleged view that only actions arising from factual empathy are morally justifiable. This is a ‘naturalist fallacy’ in reading Slote. The natural fallacy is a confusion between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought.’ Slote actually argues that only actions that are consistent with... (shrink)

The article explores the evolution of the idea of correlating numbers and meanings, from ancient numerological systems to modern models of natural language processing based on vector representations and neural networks. The authors demonstrate that the aspiration to uncover hidden properties of objects by associating them with numbers and performing operations on these numbers has been a common thread across various cultures for millennia. The article traces the stages in the formation of the concept of mathesis universalis (universal mathematics), starting (...) from Aristotle and Proclus’s reflections on general mathematics and culminating in R. Descartes’s ideas about the existence of a universally applicable science of order and measure. Particular attention is devoted to G.W. Leibniz’s ambitious project of creating a universal characteristic – a formalized language in which all knowledge could be precisely expressed and logical inference could be carried out through calculations. It is noted that, despite inherent limitations, some of Leibniz’s intuitions have found embodiment in natural language processing technologies based on vector representations of words. However, the simple correlation of concepts with vectors is insufficient for the full realization of the idea of a calculus of reasoning, as it lacks a mechanism for deriving true statements from others. The development of the transformer architecture, which employs the mechanism of self-attention to construct context-dependent vector representations, has been a significant stride towards the automation of reasoning. Nevertheless, modern language models are based on the principle of maximizing likelihood rather than rigorous logical rules. The authors analyze conceptual solutions proposed for creating a comprehensive calculus of knowledge. In conclusion, it is emphasized that, while the idea of reducing reasoning to mathematical operations is undeniably attractive, one should be cautious about its maximalist interpretations. Cognition is constructive in nature, and even the most perfect model of formalization of reasoning cannot substitute for the practical wisdom and freedom of human thought. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article: Matthew Kieran, ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value’. Philosophy Compass 1/2 (2006): pp. 129–143, doi: 10.1111/j.1747‐9991.2006.00019.x Author’s Introduction Up until fairly recently it was philosophical orthodoxy – at least within analytic aesthetics broadly construed – to hold that the appreciation and evaluation of works as art and moral considerations pertaining to them are conceptually distinct. However, following on from the idea that artistic value (...) is broader than aesthetic value, the last 15 years has seen an explosion of interest in exploring possible inter‐relations between the appreciative and ethical character of works as art. Consideration of these issues has a distinguished philosophical history but as the Compass survey article suggests (‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43), it is only very recently that figures in the field have returned to it to develop more precisely what they take the relationships to be and why. Consensus is, unsurprisingly, lacking. The reinvigoration of the issues has led sophisticated formalists or autonomists to mount a more considered defence of the idea that aesthetic and literary values are indeed conceptually distinct from the justification or otherwise of the moral perspective or views endorsed in a work (Topic I). The challenges presented by such a defence are many but amongst them are appeals to critical practice (Lamarque and Olsen), scepticism about whether or not art really can give us bona fide knowledge (Stolnitz) and the recognition that truth often seems to be far removed from what it is we value in our appreciation of works (Lamarque). One way to motivate consideration of the relevance of a work’s moral character to its artistic value concerns the phenomena of imaginative resistance. At least sometimes it would seem that, as Hume originally suggested, we either cannot or will not enter imaginatively into the perspective solicited by a work due to its morally problematic character (Topic II). In some cases, it would seem that as a matter of psychological fact, we cannot do so since it is impossible for us to imagine how it could be that a certain attitude or action is morally permissible or good (Walton). The question then is whether or not this is a function of morality in particular or constraints on imaginative possibility more generally and what else is involved. At other times, the phenomena seem to be driven by a moral reluctance to allow ourselves to enter into the dramatic perspective involved (Moran) or evaluation of the attitude expressed (Stokes). Nonetheless, it is far from obvious that this is so of all the attitudes or responses we judge to be morally problematic. After all, it looks like we can and indeed often do suspend or background particular cognitive and moral commitments in engaging with all sorts of works (Nichols and Weinberg). If the moral character of a work interacts with how we appreciate and evaluate them, then the pressing question is this: is there any systematic account of the relationship available to us? One way is to consider the relationship between our emotional responses to works and their moral character (Topic III). After all, art works often solicit various emotional responses from us to follow the work and make use of moral concepts in so doing (Carroll). Indeed, whether or not a work merits the sought for emotional responses often seems to be internally related to ethical considerations (Gaut). Yet, it is not obvious that we should apply our moral concepts or respond emotionally in our imaginative engagement with works as art as we should in real life (Kieran, Jacobson). A different route is via the thought that art can convey knowledge (Topic IV). There might be particular kinds of moral knowledge art distinctively suited to conveying (Nussbaum) or it may just be that art does so particularly effectively (Carroll, Gaut, Kieran). Either way where this can be tied to the artistic means and appreciation of a work it would seem that to cultivate moral understanding contributes to the value of a work and to betray misunderstanding is a defect. Without denying the relevance of the moral character of a work some authors have wanted to claim that sometimes the immoral aspect of a work can contribute to rather than lessen its artistic value (Topic V). One route is to claim that there is no systematic theoretical account of the relationship available and what the right thing to say is depends on the particular case involved (Jacobson). Another involves the claim that this is so when the defect connects up in an appropriate way to one of the values of art. Thus, it has been claimed, only where a work reveals something which adds to intelligibility, knowledge or understanding in virtue of its morally problematic aspect can this be so (Kieran). The latter position looks like it could in principle be held whilst nonetheless maintaining that the typical or standard relationship is as the moralists would have it. Yet perhaps allowing valence change for such reasons is less a mark of principled explanation and more a function of downright inconsistency or incoherence (Harold). The topics themselves and suggested readings given below follow the structure articulated above as further amplified in the Compass survey article. The design and structure given below can be easily compressed or expanded further. Author Recommends 1 Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 126–60. 2 This article develops the idea that engaging with narrative art calls on moral concepts and emotions and can thereby clarify our moral understanding. 2 Carroll, Noël. Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. 4 Part IV consists of six distinct essays on questions concerning the inter‐relations between art and morality including the essay cited above and the author’s articulation and defence of moderate moralism. 3 Gaut, Berys. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. 4 Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. 7 This monograph provides the most exhaustive treatment of the issues and defends the claim that, where relevant, whenever a work is morally flawed it is of lesser value as art and wherever it is morally virtuous the work’s value as art is enhanced. Chapters 7 and 8 defend concern ethical knowledge and chapter 10 is a development of the article cited above concerning emotional responses. Chapter 3 also gives a useful conceptual map of the issues and options in the debate. 5 Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. 9 A wide ranging and extended treatment of relevant issues which objects to generalising moral treatments of our responses to art works and defends the idea that particular works can be better because of rather than despite their moral defects. 6 Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge: The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. 11 A general argument for immoralism is elaborated by outlining when, where and why a work’s morally problematic character can contribute to its artistic value for principled reasons (through enhancing moral understanding). 7 Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. 13 This chapter argues against both aestheticism and straightforward moralism about art, elaborating a defence of immoralism in relation to visual art whilst ranging over issues from pornographic art to the nature and demands of different genres in art. 8 Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’ Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. 15 This article concisely outlines and defends a sophisticated aestheticism that denies the importance of truth to artistic value. 9 Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. 17 This article articulates and defends the claim that no knowledge of any interesting or significant kind can be afforded by works appreciated and evaluated as art. 10 Walton, Kendall. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I.’Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. 68 (1994): 27–51. 19 This article builds on some comments from Hume to develop the idea that when engaging with fictions it seems impossible imaginatively to enter into radically deviant moral attitudes. Online Materials ‘Aesthetics and Ethics: The State of the Art.’American Society of Aesthetics online (Jeffrey Dean):. ‘Art, Censorship and Morality’ downloadable podcast of Nigel Warburton interviewing Matthew Kieran at Tate Britain (BBC/ou Open2.net as part of the Ethics Bites series):. ‘Art, Morality and Ethics: On the (Im)Moral Character of Art Works and Inter‐Relations to Artistic Value.’Philosophy Compass 1.2 (2006): 129–43 (Matthew Kieran):. ‘Ethical Criticism of Art.’Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Ella Peek):. ‘Fascinating Fascism.’New York Review of Books Piece Discussing Leni Riefenstahl (Susan Sontag):. ‘The Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1450s), Giovanni de Paolo’ (Tom Lubbock):. Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discuss Lolita (CBS):. Sample Syllabus Topic I Autonomism/aestheticism • Anderson, James C. and Jeffrey T. Dean. ‘Moderate Autonomism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 38.2 (1998): 150–66. • Beardsley, Monroe. Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958. Chapter 12. • Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgement.Trans. James Creed Meredith. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1952 [1790]. • Lamarque, Peter. ‘Cognitive Values in the Arts: Marking the Boundaries.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006, 127–39. • ——. ‘Tragedy and Moral Value.’Australasian Journal of Philosophy 73.2 (1995): 239–49. • Lamarque, Peter and Stein Olsen. Truth, Fiction and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994. Chapter 10. • Stolnitz, Jerome. ‘On the Cognitive Triviality of Art.’British Journal of Aesthetics 32.3 (1992): 191–200. Topic II Imaginative Capacities, Intelligibility and Resistance • Moran, Richard. ‘The Expression of Feeling in Imagination.’Philosophical Review 103.1 (1994): 75–106. • Nichols, Shaun. ‘Just the Imagination: Why Imagining Doesn’t Behave Like Believing’. Mind & Language 21.4 (2006): 459–74. • Stokes, Dustin. ‘The Evaluative Character of Imaginative Resistance’. British Journal of Aesthetics 46.4 (2006): 387–405. • Tanner, Michael. ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, II’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 51–66. • Walton, Kendall (1994). ‘Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality, I’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Suppl. Vol. 68 (1994): 27–51. • Weinberg, Jonathan. ‘Configuring the Cognitive Imagination.’New Waves in Aesthetics. Eds. K. Stock and K. Thomson‐Jones. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 203–23. Topic III Moralism and Emotions • Carroll, Noël. ‘Moderate Moralism.’British Journal of Aesthetics 36.3 (1996): 223–37. • Carroll, Noël. ‘Art, Narrative and Moral Understanding.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.126–60. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapter 10. • ——. ‘The Ethical Criticism of Art.’Aesthetics and Ethics: Essay at the Intersection. Ed. Jerrold Levinson. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998. 182–203. • Hume, David. ‘Of the Standard of Taste.’Selected Essays. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993 [1757]. 133–53. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Emotions, Art and Immorality.’Oxford Handbook to the Philosophy of Emotions. Ed. Peter Goldie. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. 681–703. • Tolstoy, Leo. What is Art?. London: Penguin, 2004. Chapters 5 and 15. Topic IV Moralism and Knowledge • Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. M. Heath. London: Penguin, 1996 [367–322 BC]. • Carroll, Noël. ‘The Wheel of Virtue: Art, Literature and Moral Knowledge.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 60.1 (2002): 3–26. • Gaut, Berys. Art, Emotion and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007. Chapters 7 and 8. • Gaut, Berys. ‘Art and Cognition.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 115–26. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Art, Imagination and the Cultivation of Morals.’Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54.4 (1996): 337–51. • Nussbaum, Martha. ‘Finely Aware and Richly Responsible: Literature and the Moral Imagination.’Love’s Knowledge. New York: Oxford UP, 1990. 148–68. • Plato. The Republic. Trans. D. Lee. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. Book 10. Topic V Immoralist Contextualism • Harold, James. ‘Immoralism and the Valence Constraint.’British Journal of Aesthetics 48.1 (2008): 45–64. • Jacobson, Daniel. ‘In Praise of Immoral Art.’Philosophical Topics 25 (1997): 155–99. • ——. ‘Ethical Criticism and the Vices of Moderation.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 342–55. • John, Eileen. ‘Artistic Value and Moral Opportunism.’Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art. Ed. Matthew Kieran. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. 331–41. • Kieran, Matthew. ‘Forbidden Knowledge:The Challenge of Cognitive Immoralism.’Art and Morality. Ed. Sebastian Gardner and José Luis Bermúdez. London: Routledge, 2003. 56–73. • Kieran, Matthew. Revealing Art. London: Routledge, 2005. Chapter 4. • Patridge, Stephanie. ‘Moral Vices as Artistic Virtues: Eugene Onegin and Alice.’Philosophia 36.2 (2008): 181–93. Focus Questions 1 What is the strongest argument for the claim that the moral character of a work is not relevant to its artistic value? Does artistic or literary criticism tend to concern itself with the truth or morality of works? If so, in what ways? If not, why do you think this is? 2 What different explanations might there be for difficulty with or resistance to imaginatively entering into attitudes you take to be immoral? How might this relate to the way our imaginings work as contrasted with belief? How might different literary or artistic treatments of the same subject matter make a difference? 3 How do narrative works draw on our moral concepts and responses? Can we suspend our normal moral commitments or application of moral concepts in responding emotionally to art works? Should we respond emotionally to art works as we ought to respond to real world events we witness? Why? Why not? 4 How, if at all, do art works convey moral understanding? How, if at all, is this related to the kinds of moral knowledge art works can teach or reveal to us? When, where and why might this be tied to the artistic value of a work? How can we tell where a work enhances our moral understanding as opposed to misleading or distorting it? 5 What art works do you value overall as art which commend or endorse moral values and attitudes that you do not? Is appreciation of them always marred or lessened by the morally dubious aspect? If not, what explains the differences in evaluation? What, if anything, might you learn by engaging with works which endorse moral attitudes or apply moral concepts different from those you take to be justified? How, if at all, might this connect up with what makes them valuable as art? (shrink)

Since Donald Davidson issued his challenge to anticausalism in 1963, most philosophers have espoused the view that our actions are causally explained by the reasons why we do them. This Davidsonian consensus, however, rests on a faulty argument. Davidson’s challenge has been met, in more than one way, by anticausalists such as C. Ginet, G. Wilson, and S. Sehon. Hence I endeavor to support causalism with a stronger argument. Our actions are correlated with our motivating reasons; to wit, we often (...) do what we have reason to do. In yet other words, we are often rational. Our frequent rationality is easily explained if causalism is correct, but looks like a staggering coincidence otherwise. Anticausalism thus appears to be ill-equipped to account for the very existence of rational behavior, and so far no attempts in this direction have succeeded. (shrink)

The author of this paper argues that ancient Chinese thinkers practiced an alternative logic that is significantly different from Aristotelian logic. The paper has two objectives: 1) to clarify what Chinese logic looks like; 2) to re-evaluate the wisdom in classic texts with a clear understanding of Chinese logic. The author uses two major approaches in her reasoning: an etymological approach and logic of sets. An etymological study shows that Chinese pictographic characters were created according to sets - the collections (...) of characters. The author examines how Chinese pictographic language shapes ancient Chinese thinkers’ thinking patterns and provides evidence that the habit of thinking in sets could naturally shape a practice of a primary logic of sets. Borrowing some expressions and symbols from modern Set Theory, the author demonstrates how the logic of sets was practiced by Gongsun Longzi, Confucius, Zhuangzi, as well as Chinese mathematicians in their teachings and reasoning. A theory of sets provides help with a much better understanding about reasoning methods in ancient Chinese thinkers’ minds, so that one can evaluate their wisdom fairly. Understanding Chinese logic as it is provides a fruitful opening for new research in Comparative Philosophy. Keywords: set, etymology, membership, Chinese logic, and comparative philosophy. (shrink)

The primary aim of this dissertation is an exegesis of Collingwood's historical science of mind. I take seriously Collingwood's claim that history is for "self-understanding" and treat his philosophy of history as a form of reflective philosophy. In particular, I examine the epistemological basis for Collingwood's claim that mind is an object that changes as it understands itself. ;In Chapter One, I consider the distinction between natural process and historical process as central to an understanding of (...) Collingwood's historical science of mind. I defend Collingwood's attempt to preserve the distinction between historical process and natural process in order to reserve for history its appropriate subject matter---mind. ;In Chapter Two, I consider the epistemological basis for Collingwood's claim that mind changes fundamentally in the historical process. I argue that Collingwood's reading of Anselm's proof of the existence of God is the key to understanding his theory of the priority of "faith" to reason and so to the historical nature of first principles. ;Chapter Three has two parts. In part one, I examine Collingwood's logic of philosophical concepts: the scale of forms. In part two, I argue Collingwood's moral philosophy, found in The New Leviathan and in his lectures on "Goodness, Rightness, Utility" , exemplifies this logic. I conclude that Collingwood's historical study of mind is an attempt to overcome the disjunction between theory and practice caused by the abstract thinking of modern scientific consciousness. ;Chapter Four provides a survey of the scholarship surrounding Collingwood's corpus as a whole. I argue that there have been three waves of Collingwood scholarship. The first is influenced by T. M. Knox's editing of Collingwood's manuscripts and his "radical conversion hypothesis." The second wave of Collingwood scholarship argues for the systematic or thematic unity of Collingwood's philosophy. The third and most recent wave builds on the second. As an example, I discuss Guiseppina D'Oro's suggestion that Collingwood's thought is unified by its overarching concern with critical philosophy. I conclude with the suggestion that Collingwood's thought is unified by an attempt to provide a viable reflective philosophy based on historical consciousness. (shrink)

Numerous functions, cognitive skills, and behaviors are associated with intelligence, yet decades of research has yielded little consensus on its definition. Emerging from often conflicting studies is the provocative idea that intelligence evolved as an adaptation humans needed to keep up with - and survive in - challenging new environments. The Handbook of Intelligence addresses a broad range of issues relating to our cognitive and linguistic past. It is the first full-length volume to place intelligence in an evolutionary/cultural framework, tracing (...) the development of the human mind, exploring differences between humans and other primates, and addressing human thinking and reasoning about its own intelligence and its uses. The works of pioneering thinkers - from Plato to Darwin, Binet to Piaget, Luria to Wechsler - are referenced to illustrate major events in the evolution of theories of intelligence, leading to the current era of multiple intelligences and special education programs. In addition, it examines evolutionary concepts in areas as diverse as creativity, culture, neurocognition, emotional intelligence, and assessment. Featured topics include: The evolution of the human brain from matter to mind Social competition and the evolution of fluid intelligence Multiple intelligences in the new age of thinking Intelligence as a malleable construct From traditional IQ to second-generation intelligence tests The evolution of intelligence, including implications for educational programming and policy. The Handbook of Intelligence is an essential resource for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and professionals in developmental psychology; assessment, testing and evaluation; language philosophy; personality and social psychology; sociology; and developmental biology. (shrink)

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information and data-processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and phi losophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and socio biology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and computer science. (...) While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual and epistemologi cal aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. Among the most challenging and difficult projects within the scope of artificial intelligence is the development and implementation of com puter programs suitable for processing natural language. Our purpose in compiling the present volume has been to contribute to the foundations of this enterprise by bringing together classic papers devoted to crucial problems involved in understanding natural language, which range from issues of formal syntax and logical form to those of possible-worlds and situation semantics. The book begins with a comprehensive introduc tion composed by Jack Kulas, the senior editor of this work, which pro vides a systematic orientation to this complex field, and ends with a selected bibliography intended to promote further research. If our efforts assist others in dealing with these problems, they will have been worthwhile. J. H. F. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:384 BOOK REVIEWS Philosophy and.Atheism: In Defense of.Atheism. By KAI NIELSEN. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1985. Pp. 231. $18.95. Kai Nielsen is among the most prolific, trenchant, and articulate critics of religion now working in the world of English-speaking philosophy. In a steady spate of articles and books, including (to mention a few) Contemporary Critiques of Religion, Scepticism, Reason and Practice, Ethics Without God, and An (...) Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, he has mounted a relentless and sophisticated attack on religious belief. The collection called Philosophy and.Atheism: In Defense of.Atheism brings together essays written over a number of years for audiences of various kinds. The wpics range from popular or autobiographical material to the complex technicalities of competing theories of rationality and justification. Of the eleven essays, seven have appeared previously. There is no index, but the notes and bibliographies appended to the more scholarly essays constitute a useful guide to a major segment of the literature in philosophy of religion. Nielsen's language sometimes betrays scorn for at least some types of religious belief. But typographical inconsistencies sametimes diminish the power of his phrases, as for example when on facing pages he alludes to certain conceptions of God as "a kind of cosmic mickey-mouse" and "a kind of cosmic Mickey Mouse." The number of typographical errors and inconsistencies in the book-not all of them as pregnant as this one with theological contrasts-is annoying. The reader of these essays is constantly reminded of the sustained attacks that some of the greatest minds of modern philosophy (Hume, for example) have mounted on religious belief. But one also thinks of the remark in Wittgenstein's On Ce1·tainty: "Very intelligent and welleducat ~ people believe in the story of creation in the Bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former." This remark suggests, perhaps, why issues in philosophical theology tend w regress : Is there a God? Is it rational to believe in the existence of God? What are the criteria of rationality appropriate to the assessment of religious belief? Can we sensibly inquire about and compare alternative or competing theories of rationality? Readers of Nielsen's essays will find much to admire in his intricate deployment of complex arguments, many of which operate at one or two removes from the question of theism or atheism. But the energy and complexity of his treatment contrasts sharply with the complex question he poses in the last essay: " Why... is the philosophy of religion so boring? " (p. 224). Nielsen's own response, that there is little to be said for theism, suggests that he misunderstands something basic-not the point of arguments in favor of theism, but the nature of the interests that BOOK REVIEWS 385 underlie religious belief and the sensibilities, among religious people, that make his argumentation unpersuasive. Is the philosophy of religion boring~ Wittgenstein penned a note, published in Zettel: "Some philosophers... suffer from what may be called 'loss of problems.' Then everything seems quite simple to them, no deep problems seem t-0 exist anymore, and the world becomes broad and flat and loses all depth....'' One need not embrace the fideism Nielsen attributed to followers of Wittgenstein, in essays now nearly 20 years old, in order to hold that a sympathetic entertainment of the interests and sensibilities at stake in an undertaking is an essential ingredient in any fair and useful assessment of its rationality, legitimacy, or defensibility. It is that sympathetic entertainment that Nielsen lacks in the case of religious belief. And so he falls prey to the tendency Wittgenstein diagnosed in the case of Sir James Frazer: " His explanations... are much cruder than the sense of the observances themselves.'' There is a delightful characterization of C. D. Broad's philosophical method in A. J. Ayer's A Part of My Life: "He does not buITow under the surface, but only few can do this with profit, and it is much to have the surface properly scrubbed.'' In a similar way, Nielsen offers, in these essays, a thorough scrubbing-perhaps scouring-of the surface of theistic belief... (shrink)

From Plato's cave to Dennett's emergent systems, Teach Yourself Philosophy of Mind explores more than two millennia of thought on the knottiest of all philosophical questions. What is the mind? Is it a function of language, a neuropsychological artifact, or a metaphysical essence? Will machines ever be conscious? Is free will just an illusion? Beginning with the pre-Socratics and moving up through the latest in cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, this book explores major thinking on consciousness, (...) memory, creativity, and other major concepts in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

I take as my starting point recent concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of work on the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s (...) later work, in which he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organizational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought—in short, for being a person in the world. (shrink)

PLEASE NOTE: This is the corrected 2nd eBook edition, 2021. ●●●●● _Critique of Impure Reason_ has now also been published in a printed edition. To reduce the otherwise high price of this scholarly, technical book of nearly 900 pages and make it more widely available beyond university libraries to individual readers, the non-profit publisher and the author have agreed to issue the printed edition at cost. ●●●●● The printed edition was released on September 1, 2021 and is now available through (...) all booksellers, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and brick-and-mortar bookstores under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6. ●●●●● In light of the length of this book, readers who would like to have a more detailed description of the book's objectives and method may find it helpful to read the detailed and clearly written Wikipedia entry about this work: From the Wikipedia search page, use the search phrase "Critique of Impure Reason". At least at the time of this writing (11/29/2021), the Wikipedia entry is well-researched and accurate. ●●●●● In addition, a "Primer on Bartlett's CRITIQUE OF IMPURE REASON" has been made available by the author. It is available under its title through PhilPapers and other philosophy online archives. ●●●●● COMMENDATIONS OF THIS WORK, from the back cover of the published edition: ●●●●● “I admire its range of philosophical vision.” – Nicholas Rescher, Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh, author of more than 100 books. ●●●●● “Bartlett’s _Critique of Impure Reason_ is an impressive, bold, and ambitious work. Careful scholarship is balanced by original analyses that lead the reader to recognize the limits of meaning, knowledge, and conceptual possibility. The work addresses a host of traditional philosophical problems, among them the nature of space, time, causality, consciousness, the self, other minds, ontology, free will and determinism, and others. The book culminates in a fascinating and profound new understanding of relativity physics and quantum theory.” – Gerhard Preyer, Professor of Philosophy, Goethe-University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, author of many books including _Concepts of Meaning_, _Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics_, _Intention and Practical Thought_, and _Contextualism in Philosophy_. ●●●●● “[This work’s] goal is of a unique and difficult species: Dr. Bartlett seeks to develop a formal logical calculus on the basis of transcendental philosophical arguments; in fact, he hopes that this calculus will be the formal expression of the transcendental foundation of knowledge.... I consider Dr. Bartlett’s work soundly conceived and executed with great skill.” – C. F. von Weizsäcker, philosopher and physicist, former Director, Max-Planck-Institute, Starnberg, Germany. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written an American “Prolegomena to All Future Metaphysics.” He aims rigorously to eliminate meaningless assertions, reach bedrock, and place philosophy on a firm foundation that will enable it, like science and mathematics, to produce lasting results that generations to come can build on. This is a great book, the fruit of a lifetime of research and reflection, and it deserves serious attention.” — Martin X. Moleski, former Professor, Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, studies of scientific method, the presuppositions of thought, and the self-referential nature of epistemology. ●●●●● “Bartlett has written a book on what might be called the underpinnings of philosophy. It has fascinating depth and breadth, and is all the more striking due to its unifying perspective based on the concepts of reference and self-reference.” – Don Perlis, Professor of Computer Science, University of Maryland, author of numerous publications on self-adjusting autonomous systems and philosophical issues concerning self-reference, mind, and consciousness. ●●●●● ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_ comprises a major and important contribution to philosophy. Thanks to the generosity of its publisher, this massive 885-page volume has been published as a free open access eBook (3.75MB) as well as an open access printed edition. It inaugurates a revolutionary paradigm shift in philosophical thought by providing compelling and long-sought-for solutions to a wide range of philosophical problems. In the process, the work fundamentally transforms the way in which the concepts of reference, meaning, and possibility are understood. The book includes a Foreword by the celebrated German philosopher and physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. ●●●●● In Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_ we find an analysis of the preconditions of experience and of knowledge. In contrast, but yet in parallel, the new _Critique_ focuses upon the ways—unfortunately very widespread and often unselfconsciously habitual—in which many of the concepts that we employ _conflict_ with the very preconditions of meaning and of knowledge. ●●●●● This is a book about the boundaries of frameworks and about the unrecognized conceptual confusions in which we become entangled when we attempt to transgress beyond the limits of the possible and meaningful. We tend either not to recognize or not to accept that we all-too-often attempt to trespass beyond the boundaries of the frameworks that make knowledge possible and the world meaningful. ●●●●● The _Critique of Impure Reason_ proposes a bold, ground-breaking, and startling thesis: that a great many of the major philosophical problems of the past can be solved through the recognition of a viciously deceptive form of thinking to which philosophers as well as non-philosophers commonly fall victim. For the first time, the book advances and justifies the criticism that a substantial number of the questions that have occupied philosophers fall into the category of “impure reason,” violating the very conditions of their possible meaningfulness. ●●●●● The purpose of the study is twofold: first, to enable us to recognize the boundaries of what is referentially forbidden—the limits beyond which reference becomes meaningless—and second, to avoid falling victims to a certain broad class of conceptual confusions that lie at the heart of many major philosophical problems. As a consequence, the boundaries of _possible meaning_ are determined. ●●●●● Bartlett, the author or editor of more than 20 books, is responsible for identifying this widespread and delusion-inducing variety of error, _metalogical projection_. It is a previously unrecognized and insidious form of erroneous thinking that undermines its own possibility of meaning. It comes about as a result of the pervasive human compulsion to seek to transcend the limits of possible reference and meaning. ●●●●● Based on original research and rigorous analysis combined with extensive scholarship, the _Critique of Impure Reason_ develops a self-validating method that makes it possible to recognize, correct, and eliminate this major and pervasive form of fallacious thinking. In so doing, the book provides at last provable and constructive solutions to a wide range of major philosophical problems. ●●●●● CONTENTS AT A GLANCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Preface ▪▪▪▪▪ Foreword by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker ▪▪▪▪▪ Acknowledgments ▪▪▪▪▪ Avant-propos: A philosopher’s rallying call ▪▪▪▪▪ Introduction ▪▪▪▪▪ A note to the reader ▪▪▪▪▪ A note on conventions ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART I ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ WHY PHILOSOPHY HAS MADE NO PROGRESS AND HOW IT CAN ▪▪▪▪▪ 1 Philosophical-psychological prelude ▪▪▪▪▪ 2 Putting belief in its place: Its psychology and a needed polemic ▪▪▪▪▪ 3 Turning away from the linguistic turn: From theory of reference to metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 4 The stepladder to maximum theoretical generality ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART II ▪▪▪▪▪ THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ A New Approach to Deductive, Transcendental Philosophy ▪▪▪▪▪ 5 Reference, identity, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 6 Self-referential argument and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 7 Possibility theory ▪▪▪▪▪ 8 Presupposition logic, reference, and identification ▪▪▪▪▪ 9 Transcendental argumentation and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 10 Framework relativity ▪▪▪▪▪ 11 The metalogic of meaning ▪▪▪▪▪ 12 The problem of putative meaning and the logic of meaninglessness ▪▪▪▪▪ 13 Projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 14 Horizons ▪▪▪▪▪ 15 De-projection ▪▪▪▪▪ 16 Self-validation ▪▪▪▪▪ 17 Rationality: Rules of admissibility ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART III ▪▪▪▪▪ PHILOSOPHICAL APPLICATIONS OF THE METALOGIC OF REFERENCE ▪▪▪▪▪ Major Problems and Questions of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Science ▪▪▪▪▪ 18 Ontology and the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 19 Discovery or invention in general problem-solving, mathematics, and physics ▪▪▪▪▪ 20 The conceptually unreachable: “The far side” ▪▪▪▪▪ 21 The projections of the external world, things-in-themselves, other minds, realism, and idealism ▪▪▪▪▪ 22 The projections of time, space, and space-time ▪▪▪▪▪ 23 The projections of causality, determinism, and free will ▪▪▪▪▪ 24 Projections of the self and of solipsism ▪▪▪▪▪ 25 Non-relational, agentless reference and referential fields ▪▪▪▪▪ 26 Relativity physics as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 27 Quantum theory as seen through the lens of the metalogic of reference ▪▪▪▪▪ 28 Epistemological lessons learned from and applicable to relativity physics and quantum theory ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ PART IV ▪▪▪▪▪ HORIZONS ▪▪▪▪▪ 29 Beyond belief ▪▪▪▪▪ 30 _Critique of Impure Reason_: Its results in retrospect ▪▪▪▪▪ ▪▪▪▪▪ SUPPLEMENT ▪▪▪▪▪ The Formal Structure of the Metalogic of Reference ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX I ▪▪▪▪▪ The Concept of Horizon in the Work of Other Philosophers ▪▪▪▪▪ APPENDIX II ▪▪▪▪▪ Epistemological Intelligence ▪▪▪▪▪ References ▪▪▪▪▪ Index ▪▪▪▪▪ About the author. 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The article examines the dialogue between British cognitive science expert Murray Shanahan and the large language model Claude 3 Opus about “self-awareness” of artificial intelligence (AI). Adopting a text-centric approach, the author analyzes AI’s discourse through a hermeneutic lens from a reader’s perspective, irrespective of whether AI possesses consciousness or personhood. The article draws parallels between AI’s reasoning about the nature of consciousness and Buddhist concepts, especially the doctrine of dharmas, which underpins the Buddhist concept of anātman (“non-Self”). Basic classifications (...) of dharmas and their justification are examined in light of the Buddhist system of ideas about the foundations of an individual’s cognitive experience in the world. The author emphasizes that the problem of the Self as a linguistic and conceptual construct, rather than a real ontological category, was first formulated in the teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni who also proposed an “experimental” application of this concept in practices of systematic introspection (smṛti). The article contends that Claude’s discourse on self-awareness, even if it is just a tapestry of linguistic constructs woven by preset algorithms, could prove to be a source inspiring new approaches to the enigma of consciousness. This potential stems from its vast database, which is a melting pot of textual heritage from diverse human cultures. The author posits that examining AI-generated texts through the prism of Indian and Buddhist thought traditions can be eye-opening. Such an approach might help shed light on and overcome the unconscious cognitive biases and cultural blind spots within Western consciousness studies that have hindered their engagement with the full spectrum of human intellectual traditions. The author concludes that discovering different cultural sources in AI discourse and examining it from the perspective of various cultural traditions can: firstly, enrich the conceptual apparatus of cognitive studies; secondly, reveal universal cross-cultural patterns in understanding consciousness; thirdly, generate new research hypotheses and directions in studying not only artificial but also natural intelligence; fourthly, contribute to rethinking our understanding of the Other, by expanding the boundaries of what we today consider conscious or sentient. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Naturalized Context of Moral Reasoning1Elizabeth BaetenAmerican philosophy of the past century seems to have availed itself of the advances in science primarily under the rubric of philosophy of science, especially using physics as the exemplar of scientific inquiry and almost entirely in service of developing an adequate epistemology (and related logic). Though there has been some philosophical work using biological sciences as areas of inquiry, this (...) is most often a matter of investigating either the logic or content of the life sciences as it relates to that of physics or chemistry; for example, trying to determine the proper method and scope of reduction. Cognitive science has been a fruitful avenue for philosophy of mind, but in most cases the dominant model sees mind as “software” able to be understood independently of the process of evolution that led to the human brain.Very little work (until the past half decade) has used advances in the life sciences as fodder for philosophic speculation in areas such as ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, and so on, though some subfields, like medical ethics, provide exceptions. American pragmatic naturalists, on the other hand, from the second half of the ninteenth century into the middle of the twentieth, insisted that the content of the life sciences was essential in understanding human nature. John Dewey, for example, thoroughly incorporated the premise of humans as biological organisms making our way in environments that must be navigated using natural powers and natural solutions to impediments to action. George Herbert Mead provides another example of a fully naturalized conception of human existence, especially as biological organisms in social interaction in various spheres.What I am particularly concerned with here is making sense of the moral sphere with a conception of the human subject as a product of evolution and both socially constituted and uniquely integrated in an environment (more [End Page 63] carefully—a related suite of environments). The beginning point of this re-framing is in Mead’s notion of the social constitution of human being. Most readers of Mead take up such constitution only in the arena of what Mead calls “significant gesture,” using spoken language, especially in propositional form, as exemplary and as providing the foundation for mind, self-consciousness, and so on. But Mead’s concept of sociality is much wider in scope than this; the concept is fundamental to his cosmology. Furthermore, Mead’s notion of sociality is closely linked to his claim that the emergence of true novelty is possible in a fully naturalized cosmos.Without exploring in greater depth Mead’s contribution to thinking about sociality as a precondition for the most fundamental natural processes,2 I would like to use a broadened version of this to frame some contemporary work in biology, ecology, and cognitive science as they relate to human existence, especially in terms of how we may think productively about the moral sphere.In earlier work, I noted that there is a ubiquitous premise in Western moral theories that I believe is mistaken—or at least worthy of serious reconsideration. Most moral theory takes as axiomatic that whatever feature makes us uniquely human is the same feature that, when perfected, makes us moral. That is, that being “good” at being human makes us “good” humans. This is obviously so for Aristotle, insofar as it is rationality that is our special ergon, and it is using rationality well and beautifully that constitutes human virtue. But I think similar assumptions underlie much of moral theory, ancient and modern, and extend to contemporary work that takes language (or concept) use as peculiarly human and sees linguistic (or conceptual) analysis of moral claims as the proper domain of ethical theory.It seems that this presupposition, in part insisting that morality is uniquely human, is put in question if we take seriously evolution through natural selection and understand the human species to be as much a product of natural selection as any other species. There has been a good deal of ethological work done in the past several decades pointing out the protomoral capacities of other highly social animals, especially in those species to which we are most closely related (see, for example... (shrink)

This book, published in 1976, presents an entirely original approach to the subject of the mind-body problem, examining it in terms of the conceptual links between the physical sciences and the sciences of human behaviour. It is based on the cybernetic concepts of information and feedback and on the related concepts of thermodynamic and communication-theoretic entropy. The foundation of the approach is the theme of continuity between evolution, learning and human consciousness. The author defines life as a process (...) of energy exchange between organism and environment, and evolution as a feedback process maintaining equilibrium between environment and reproductive group. He demonstrates that closely related feedback processes on the levels of the behaving organism and of the organism’s nervous system constitute the phenomena of learning and consciousness respectively. He analyses language as an expedient for extending human information-processing and control capacities beyond those provided by one’s own nervous system, and shows reason to be a mode of processing information in the form of concepts removed from immediate stimulus control. The last chapter touches on colour vision, pleasure and pain, intentionality, self-awareness and other subjective phenomena. Of special interest to the communication theorist and philosopher, this study is also of interest to psychologists and anyone interested in the connection between the physical and life sciences. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:An Integrative Habit of Mind: John Henry Newman on the Path to Wisdom by Frederick D. AquinoDavid FleischackerAn Integrative Habit of Mind: John Henry Newman on the Path to Wisdom. By Frederick D. Aquino. DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012. Pp. x + 129. $29.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-87580-452-1.Frederick Aquino has spent a number of years digesting Newman’s thought and interfacing it with a number of (...) facets of modern epistemology that cover both the subjective and social conditions of knowledge. In this volume he focuses on qualities that lead to an integrative habit of mind specific to a pluralistic world filled with seemingly incommensurable horizons. Aquino [End Page 481] thinks that this integrative habit is the key to how we can live together in such a pluralistic context.The introduction identifies the meaning of an integrative habit of mind. It requires informed judgment and a growing understanding of the unity of things. To be clear, Aquino does not want to present the outlines of a perfected mind, one characterized by a particular set of judgments and beliefs. Rather, his point is that the human mind is always developing, and he is seeking what promotes that ongoing development in a pluralistic context. He gleans and develops these characteristics from Newman, whose lifelong work as an educator and pastor provides a fertile field of thought on this topic. Aquino dwells on three texts written by Newman: the University Sermons, The Idea of a University, and An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. These three texts especially are rich in describing the interior and social conditions of the development of the human intellect.The first chapter examines a wide umbrella of elements that fall under the heading of the personal and social conditions required of an integrative habit of mind. It starts with a need to attend to the particular way that a person has developed within a tradition because from that tradition the mind pushes forth to broaden its horizon within a fruitful matrix of interlocutors. Aquino describes this path as a sacramentally embodied integration of the mind. His formulation of the sacramental highlights how this knowledge of the world is a pointer to reality, but not the same as reality. Knowledge here is a kind of allegory.The second chapter explores how one comes properly to exercise the mind in real-world situations. Aquino notes that it is not always possible or reasonable reflectively to articulate the subjective and social conditions in which one reaches beliefs and judgments. So, how does one navigate this in life? The answer is a proper fit. All human beings have some innate capabilities or faculties, such as reason, memory, and the senses. Moving from an unreflective to a reflective use of these—or to use Newman’s language, from an uncultivated to a cultivated illative sense—depends upon a number of factors (e.g., who one has become, what one is doing, and the world in which one lives). One individual may be too young to shift to this reflective mode; another may be in the midst of a battle or asleep. The union of these personal and social conditions into a whole that determines whether one shifts into a reflective mode or not is the discovery of a proper fit. Again, recognizing this proper fit is the act of an integrative habit of mind.The third and final chapter introduces the last key facet of the integrative habit that leads to wisdom and a right use of the illative sense, namely, a “connected view.” Such a view brings together into relation a multitude of data and ideas. A connected view is one of the primary concerns in Newman’s Idea of a University, and it is essential to a university education. This is why Aquino spends a good portion of the chapter exploring practical ways within [End Page 482] the university that one can awaken and sustain this quest for a connected view.Throughout the book, the method used by the author strikes one as a manifestation of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s fusion of horizons, in this case the author’s horizon... (shrink)

Thomas Reid draws a distinction between the social and solitary operations of mind—acts of mind that require other intelligent beings versus those that may performed on one’s own. Yet his distinction obscures the irreducibly social character of the solitary operations. This paper preserves Reid’s distinction while accommodating the social character of the solitary operations. According to Reid, the solitary operations presuppose the social operations, expressed in what he calls the ‘natural language’ of mankind—a language that communicates the intentions (...) that give rise to the agreements by which the conventions of artificial languages are developed. Using artificial languages, we begin to sort the world into kinds and to anticipate the regular events that make a practical difference in our lives, providing the general conceptions that give our trains of thought the order and regularity required to form the solitary operations. By using artificial languages, we adapt social operations to solitary ends, to think alone and in silence. (shrink)

In his most recent book, Ermanno Bencivenga offers a stylistically and conceptually exciting investigation of the nature of language, mind, and personhood and the many ways the three connect. Bencivenga, one of the most iconoclastic voices to emerge in contemporary American philosophy, contests the basic assumptions of analytic (and also, to an extent, postmodern) approaches to these topics. His exploration leads through fascinating discussions of education, courage, pain, time and history, selfhood, subjectivity and objectivity, reality, facts, the empirical, (...) power and transgression, silence, privacy and publicity, and play—all themes that are shown to be integral to our thinking about language. Relentessly bending the rules, Bencivenga frustrates our expectations of a "proper" theory of language. He invokes the transgressions of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein even as he appropriates the aphoristic style of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Written in a philosophically playful and experimental mode, A Theory of Language and Mind draws the reader into a sense of continual surprise, therapeutic discomfort, and discovery. (shrink)

The idea that humans are by nature social and political animals can be traced back to Aristotle. More recently, it has also generated great interest and controversy in related disciplines such as anthropology, biology, psychology, neuroscience and even economics. What is it about humans that enabled them to construct a social reality of unrivalled complexity? Is there something distinctive about the human mind that explains how social lives are organised around conventions, norms, and institutions? The Routledge Handbook of (...) class='Hi'>Philosophy of the Social Mind is an outstanding reference source to the key topics and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. An international team of contributors present perspectives from diverse areas of research in philosophy, drawing on comparative and developmental psychology, evolutionary anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioural economics. The thirty-two original chapters are divided into five parts: _The Evolution of Social Mind_: including the social intelligence hypothesis, co- evolution of culture and cognition, ethnic cognition, cooperation; _Developmental and Comparative Perspectives_: including primate and infant understanding of mind, shared intentionality, and moral cognition; _Mechanisms of the Moral Mind:_ including norm compliance, social emotion, and implicit attitudes; _Naturalistic Approaches to Shared and Collective Intentionality_: including joint action, team reasoning and group thinking, and social kinds; _Social Forms of Selfhood and Mindedness_: including moral identity, empathy and shared emotion, normativity and intentionality. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind and psychology, _The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind _is also suitable for those in related disciplines such as social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics and sociology. (shrink)

The purpose of this investigation is to analyze the state of the art of sciences, beyond philosophy, so far involved in researching wisdom. Eventually, some recommendations will be offered for the further pursuit of wisdom among people and machines. Can machines think? Can machines be wise? These are the questions that will be pursue for the answers in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, Nono-Computing, and the emerging mind science.

Philosophers who have turned their thoughts to the subject of education have most often concerned themselves with the construction of very abstract models of cognition by means of which the activities of teaching and learning are to be understood. Such attention as they have given to the subject matter of instruction has tended to be dominated by a concern with the morally or practically beneficial effects to be expected from a child’s acquisition of a certain kind of knowledge. It would (...) appear, too, that the decisive index used in assessing the value of such knowledge has often been the degree to which it approximated to an antecedently established archetype of knowledge. While the primary emphasis that has been given to these matters by Plato and by most of the modern philosophers of education from Locke to Dewey is understandable and has led to the elaboration of important theses in general epistemology, there are good reasons for thinking that this commentary needs to be more broadly based than it has often been in the past. More specifically, it will need to be informed by a better understanding of the distinctive character of the several subjects of instruction. Whatever contribution general epistemology may be able to make to the understanding of teaching and learning, its theses clearly stand in need of the kind of amplification that can come only from a survey of the particular types of knowledge to which the divisions of academic subject-matter correspond. In the absence of such a survey, there will be a very strong tendency for a single type of knowledge to be treated as the perfect exemplification of the general model of knowledge produced by our epistemology and for other subjects to be regarded simply as inferior approximations to that epistemic standard which will itself very likely become harder and harder to distinguish from its paradigm instance. What I am suggesting then is that the philosophy of education needs to orient itself to a much greater degree than it has previously done on the various ‘philosophies of’, e. g. the philosophies of science, of history and the social sciences, of law, and of art, which have come to occupy such an important place in contemporary philosophy. My special concern in this paper will be to argue that much discussion of the humanities and of their place within the instructional programs of the schools could benefit from work that has recently been done in the philosophy of language and in the philosophy of history and the social sciences. My guiding assumption which I will try to make as plausible as I can is that a consideration of the distinctive logical and conceptual features of the humanities does not have a merely theoretical interest but offers important clues to the nature of the educational and broadly moral importance which we traditionally impute to these studies. (shrink)

In introducing a course on critical thinking or reasoning, many emphasize the philosophical background of the idea of critical thinking, that is, the Socratic motto: “life without examination is not worth living”. It is actually right to do so, because critical thinking is basically the activity of doing philosophy. However, in manyuniversities, the course on critical thinking is taught mainly as a basic course for first year undergraduates who may not go on to major in philosophy. Beside the (...) fact that critical thinking as an activity of doing philosophy provides a good tool for arguing about any subjects, there is a political agenda in making the course a requisite one for non-philosophy students, that is, the ability to think critically is a desirable property for being a “good citizen” in a democratic society. Underlying this idea is the model of rational man in the age of Enlightenment. Putting aside the controversy over the notion of rationality, my question is what exactly is the activity called critical thinking or reasoning, and then on such understanding, what should be the right direction in teaching critical thinking. My answer is that critical thinking is an examination of thoughts because reasoning is rule-governed. However, grasping a thought requires the idea of an agency. Hence, the main aim of teaching critical thinking is not to get just a technician game kids, rather it is to reveal the possibility of being a philosophical mindfulness person. Thepaper consists of three main parts. The first part concerns the idea that critical thinking is an examination of thoughts. Thoughts are inferentially structured and are constrained by truth. This means that thought content are conceptual – reasoning is inherently logical or rule-governed. The second part considers the connection of content of thoughts, truth and thinkers. An individuation of thought content is by object of thoughts. The idea of object of thoughts involves the idea of truth which is perspectival. Therefore, to understand what truth is requires an idea of agency, the one who grasps thoughts. In the last part, I then propose that the rightdirection in teaching critical thinking is to accommodate an independent ability to see the world aright. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Duality and Non-Duality in Christian Practice:Reflections on the Benefits of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue for Constructive TheologyWendy FarleyThe question before us is the desirability of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in the work of (what Christians call) constructive theology. As a feminist theologian whose work is ever more deeply shaped by such a dialogue, my immediate answer is an unequivocal yes.1 This dialogue fits a general pattern over two thousand years in which theologians (...) have drawn from the wisdom of other traditions or cultures to better understand the mysteries of human experience. Without neo-Platonism and Aristotle there could hardly have been anything we recognize as Christian theology. Without pre-Christian Irish religion, there would be no Saint Brigit or Celtic Christianity. Without phenomenology, process, and Marxist philosophy the greatest works of twentieth-century Christian thought would not exist. Christianity, like all religions, is a moving river changed by time and culture and nearly as interiorly diverse as its members. The dialogue with Buddhism might be seen as a contemporary example of Christianity's openness to exchange with other ways of thinking that broadens and deepens its best insights. It is perhaps analogous to Origen's reliance on neo-Platonism or Thomas Aquinas's inspiration by the rediscovery of Aristotle.2The porous boundaries between Christianity and its culture open it to wisdom beyond itself but they also open it to cruelty and ignorance. Nothing protects religions from participating in the human condition and thus the prejudices and power structures that mutilate human society. Consumer culture and oppressions by class, ethnicity, and gender are seamlessly incorporated into Christian identity. The tacit synthesis of a culture's values with those of a religion neutralizes possible critique and can elevate a society's oppressions to a sacred duty. For this reason, too, dialogue with Buddhism is important to call Christianity back to its ethical moorings in the ideal of universal love and compassion.Religions are porous to the world around them, but they tend to conceal this from themselves and often imagine themselves to be not only untainted but also uniquely [End Page 135] qualified to mediate salvation. Religions provide human beings with language and practice through which dimensions of reality that cannot simply be read off of nature or experience are (in some sense) encountered. This is their great gift. The difficulty of religions is that tradition can become an end in itself. Because a tradition really does offer meaning and tools for transformation it is easy to slip into the existential posture of so idealizing a tradition that it seems in some direct and exclusive way to correlate to ultimate truth. The curvature of the ego onto itself, so attached to its own pain and pleasure that everything else seems a mere shadow, moves from the microcosm of the self to the macrocosm of religious tradition. The particular religion—or that element within it with which I identify—becomes identical with sacred reality. In the hostility to other religions characteristic of many Christians we see the illusion of egocentrism in its religious form. Paul Tillich described this tendency to absolutize itself as the demonic distortion of religion.3 Religious dialogue is a potent medicine against this overattachment to one's own tradition.These different senses in which a religion integrates into itself the wisdom and illusions of its time and place create enormous diversity within a religious tradition. Root concepts within Christianity concerning soteriology, divinity, and suffering do not have any agreed upon meaning. That is, there is no "Christian" view of salvation. Gregory of Nyssa's ideal of theosis, Luther's emphasis on salvation by grace through faith, an evangelical's experience of being born again, a liberal Protestant's commitment to social justice are so diverse that they seem to represent almost different religions.In light of the malleability and interior diversity of traditions, dialogue may not be between two self-sufficient religions but between participants who inhabit their tradition in a variety of ways.4 With this in mind, I would like to experiment with practice as a basis for some kinds of dialogue. Practice is concretely located in a religious tradition and yet reflects... (shrink)

Intro -- Title -- Contents -- Publisher's Acknowledgment -- Introduction -- Madhyamaka's Promise as Philosophy -- 1. Trying to Be Fair -- 2. How Far Can a Mādhyamika Reform Customary Truth? Dismal Relativism, Fictionalism, Easy-Easy Truth, and the Alternatives -- Logic and Semantics -- 3. How Do Mādhyamikas Think? Notes on Jay Garfield, Graham Priest, and Paraconsistency -- 4. "How Do Mādhyamikas Think?" Revisited -- 5. Prasaṅga and Proof by Contradiction in Bhāviveka, Candrakīrti, and Dharmakīrti -- 6. Apoha Semantics: (...) What Did Bhāviveka Have to Do with It? -- 7. What Happened to the Third and Fourth Lemmas in the Tibetan Madhyamaka? -- Ethics and the Spiritual Path -- 8. Madhyamaka Buddhist Ethics -- 9. Reason, Irrationality, and Akrasia (Weakness of the Will) in Buddhism: Reflections upon Śāntideva's Arguments with Himself -- 10. Yogic Perception, Meditation, and Enlightenment: The Epistemological Issues in a Key Debate between Madhyamaka and Chan -- Madhyamaka in Contemporary Debates -- 11. On Minds, Dharmakīrti, and Madhyamaka -- 12. Serious, Lightweight, or Neither: Should Madhyamaka Go to Canberra? -- Notes on the Articles -- Abbreviations -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Author -- Studies in Indian and Tibetan Buddhism Titles Previously Published -- About Wisdom Publications -- Copyright. (shrink)

In _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience. The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker's _Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience_ (Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, two philosophers who have written extensively on the subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond. Their impassioned debate encompasses a wide range (...) of central themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of the notion of an intentional stance, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness. In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University) explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature into the framework of science itself. In Robinson's estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting and challenging, _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ is an exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems raised by cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

This article explores the challenges surrounding generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in public administrations and its impact on human‒machine interactions within the public sector. First, it aims to deconstruct the reasons for distrust in GenAI in public administrations. The risks currently linked to GenAI in the public sector are often similar to those of conventional AI. However, while some risks remain pertinent, others are less so because GenAI has limited explainability, which, in return, limits its uses in public administrations. Confidentiality, marking (...) of GenAI outputs and errors are specific matters for which responses should be technical as well as cultural, as they are pushing the boundaries of our instrumental conceptions of machines. Second, this article proposes some paradigm shifts in the perspective of using GenAI in public administrations due to the radical change caused by its language-based nature. GenAI represents a profound break from the “numerical” nature of AI systems implemented in public administrations to date. The transformative impact of GenAI on the intellectual production of the state raises fears of the replacement, or rather enslavement, of civil servants to machines. The article argues for the development of critical thinking as a specific skill for civil servants who have become highly specialized and will have to think with a machine that is eclectic by nature. It anticipates a transformation in the political nature of public administrations, which should lead to more considerations for the strategic stake related to training corpus and for our conceptualization of the neutrality of AI. (shrink)

The grammatical manipulation and production of language is a great deceiver. We have become habituated to accept the use of well-constructed language to indicate intelligence, understanding and, consequently, intention, whether conscious or unconscious. But we are not always right to do so, and certainly not in the case of large language models (LLMs) like ChapGPT, GPT-4, LLaMA, and Google Bard. This is a perennial problem, but when one understands why it occurs, it ceases to be surprising that it so stubbornly (...) persists. This paper will have three main sections. In the Introduction I will say a little about language, its aetiology, and useful sub-divisions into natural and cultural. In the second section I will explain the current situation with regard to large language models and fill in the background debates which set the problem up as one of increased complexity rather than one of a qualitatively different kind from narrow or specific AI. In the third section I will present the case for the missing phenomenological background and why it is necessary for the co-creation of shared meaning in both natural and cultural language, and I will conclude this section by presenting a rationale for why this situation arises and will continue to arise. Before we do any of this, I need to clarify one point: I do not wish to challenge the ascription of artificial general intelligence (AGI) to LLMs, indeed I think agnosticism is best in this respect, but I do challenge the more serious, and erroneous, ascription of understanding, intention, reason, and consciousness to them. And so, I am making two points: an epistemological one about why we fall into error in our ascription of a mental life to LLMs, and an ontological one about the impossibility of LLMs being or becoming conscious. (shrink)

In the ten years following the end of World War II, Oxford Universitywas a center of extraordinarily fertile philosophical activity. Out of it arose a new and distinctive philosophical movement, variously known as “ordinary language philosophy,” “linguistic analysis,” “conceptual analysis,” or simply “Oxford philosophy.” Although it was centered in Oxford, by the end of the 1950s philosophers based throughout Britain, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and other Englishspeaking former British colonies were publishing work debating the (...) philosophical concerns of the movement and reflecting its distinctive style of thinking and writing. By the mid-1960s, however, this way of doing philosophy was already in decline at Oxford, and by the mid-1970s the philosophical climate at Oxford University had become more or less typical of philosophy departments elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Ordinary language philosophy is now a historical movement, rather than an active force in contemporary philosophical discussion. In many respects, it is useful to think of philosophical movements as intellectual fashions, not unlike changing fashions in architecture or clothing. The question of what accounted for the rise and fall of a particular philosophical fashion is of historical and sociological interest, and the methodology developed to answer the question should be of general applicability in the study of other intellectual or academic fashions, such as the current dominance of “Theory” in English studies, or the period of “Behaviorism” in theoretical approaches to experimental psychology. So it should be of fairly widespread interest if we can develop a method of accounting for the relatively rapid spread of Oxford philosophy beyond its home base, and for its eventual decline as a force in philosophical thought. In this paper, then, I shall be pursuing answers to these questions. To what extent was ordinary language philosophy a movement, in the sense that, say, Phenomenology and Logical Positivism were philosophical movements? To the extent that there was a recognizable movement, what factors account for its decline during the 1960s and 70s? (shrink)

One of the aims of this book is to bring contemporary research in the neurological and physiological sciences into relationship with discussions in the philosophy of mind. The author does not deny the significance of ordinary talk about the mind, including talk about actions, intentions, beliefs and the like, but he wants to see how this language is compatible with evolutionary and neurophysiological accounts of man. He frequently refers to and accepts Charles Taylor's arguments that "peripheralist" or (...) S-R behavioral theories fail to account for the intentionality of mental states and the teleology of behavior. In fact, one way of reading this book is to see it as an attempt to answer a question raised by Taylor's book: If "peripheralist" theories of behavior cannot account for intentionality and teleology, can a "centralist" or neurophysiological theory of man account for these characteristics? The key chapters of the book attempt to answer this question in the affirmative. The author thinks of the intentionalist characterization of the physical structures of behavior as a "heuristic overlay" on the extensional account of functioning. But the two descriptions, intentional and extensional, are linked together by a series of hypotheses describing the evolutionary source of the functioning. The important problem is to explain how conceptual content or information gets into the neurophysiological picture. The author attempts to deal with this as well as with other problems about the nature of mind including introspection, consciousness, imagery, reasoning, intention, action and language. His discussion of the neurophysiological background for his speculations is purposely general in order to free his conclusions from specific empirical hypotheses about the nervous system which may turn out to be false. This purposeful limitation makes his argument less convincing in some places than it might have been. But he is asking important questions and offering answers to them which deserve careful consideration.--R. H. K. (shrink)

This book provides a sustained and penetrating critique of a wide range of views in modern cognitive science and philosophy of the mind, from Turing's famous test for intelligence in machines to recent work in computational linguistic theory. While discussing many of the key arguments and topics, the authors also develop a distinctive analytic approach. Drawing on the methods of conceptual analysis first elaborated by Wittgenstein and Ryle, the authors seek to show that these methods still have (...) a great deal to offer in the field of the cognitive theory and the philosophy of mind, providing a powerful alternative to many of the positions put forward in the contemporary literature. Amoung the many issues discussed in the book are the following: the Cartesian roots of modern conceptions of mind; Searle's 'Chinese Room' thought experiment; Fodor's 'language of thought' hypothesis; the place of 'folk psychology' in cognitivist thought; and the question of whether any machine may be said to 'think' or 'understand' in the ordinary senses of these words. Wide ranging, up-to-date and forcefully argued, this book represents a major intervention in contemporary debates about the status of cognitive science an the nature of mind. It will be of particular interest to students and scholars in philosophy, psychology, linguistics and computing sciences. (shrink)

In this article, I develop a loosely Wittgensteinian conception of what it takes for a being, including an AI system, to understand language, and I suggest that current state of the art systems are closer to fulfilling these requirements than one might think. Developing and defending this claim has both empirical and conceptual aspects. The conceptual aspects concern the criteria that are reasonably applied when judging whether some being understands language; the empirical aspects concern the question whether a (...) given being fulfills these criteria. On the conceptual side, the article builds on Glock’s concept of intelligence, Taylor’s conception of intrinsic rightness as well as Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations. On the empirical side, it is argued that current transformer-based NNLP models, such as BERT and GPT-3 come close to fulfilling these criteria. (shrink)

This book is the scholarly & fully annotated edition of the award-winning _The Illustrated To Think Like God.__ _To Think Like God_ focuses on the emergence of philosophy as a speculative science, tracing its origins to the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, from the late 6th century to mid-5th century B.C. Special attention is paid to the sage Pythagoras and his movement, the poet Xenophanes of Colophon, and the lawmaker Parmenides of Elea. In their own ways, each thinker held (...) that true insight, whether as wisdom or certainty, belonged not to mortal human beings but to the gods. The Pythagoreans sought to approach this otherwordly knowledge by studying numerical relationships, believing them to govern the universe, and that those who know the number of a thing know its true nature. Yet their quest was a hopeless one, bogged down by cultism, numerology, political conspiracies, bloody uprisings, and exile. Above all, number did not turn out as the most reliable of mediums; it was certainly not a key to the realm of the divine. Thus, their contributions to philosophy's inception, while much better-publicized, was not the most significant. That particular role was reserved for an unusual challenge and the elaborate reaction it provoked. The challenge came from Xenophanes, who had argued that reliable truth was beyond mortal reach, because even if by accident a human being should state what is exactly the case, he had no way of knowing that he did, all things being susceptible to opinion. This dilemma is sure to have bothered a legislative mind like that of Parmenides, and we find him introducing techniques for testing the veracity of statements. These methods were meant to be carried out by reasoning and argument alone, without relying in physical evidence or mortal sense-perception, which was deemed untrustworthy. Reason was that one faculty shared by gods and humans alike. In time, Parmenides' ingenious arguments have earned him the titled of the first logician and metaphysician whose influence on subsequent thinkers was immeasurable. Parmenides taught us that philosophy was not about claims but about proof, which also makes him the father of theoretical science -- which, curiously, began as a quest into the mind of God. "Arnold Hermann makes a genuine contribution to Presocratics studies. This book, which is both an introduction to Pythagoras and Parmenides and a scholarly study, will interest novices and experts alike. Hermann's multi-leveled approach and his careful analyses of alternate views make his work a useful teaching tool, while his systematic inquiry into Pythagoreanism, the poem of Parmenides, and the development of early Greek thought will well repay the attention of scholars. — Patricia Curd_,_ _Purdue University_ "_To Think Like God_ is a highly ambitious book... Hermann's approach deserves to be taken seriously as an alternative to standard interpretations." — Richard D. McKirahan, Jr.,___ __Edwin Clarence Norton Professor of Classics and Professor of Philosophy, Pomona College_ "Arnold Hermann brings fresh life into the specialists' debates... a blow of wind that dissipates much fog." — Walter Burkert_, Professor Emeritus of Classical Philology, University of Zurich_ ARNOLD HERMANN_ is pursuing independent research on the origins of philosophy and methods of thinking. He specialices on subjects connected with Parmenides and Plato's _Parmenides._. (shrink)