An interpretation of quantum mechanics that rejects hidden variables has to say something about the way measurement can be understood as a transformation on states of individual systems, and that leads to the core of the interpretive problems posed by Luders' projection rule: What, if any, is its physical content? In this paper I explore one suggestion which is implicit in usual interpretations of the rule and show that this view does not stand on solid ground. In the (...) process, important aspects of the role played by the projection postulate in the conceptual structure of quantum mechanics will be clarified. It will be shown in particular that serious objections can be raised against the (often implicit) view that identifies the physical relation of compatibility preserved by Luders' rule with the relation of simultaneous measurability. (shrink)

This paper develops an appearance view of perception (focusing on vision). When we see an object, we see it by having it appear some way to us. We see the object, not the appearance; but we see the object via the appearance. The appearance is subjectively conditioned: aspects of it depend on attributes of the subject. We mentally have the appearance and can reflect on it as an appearance. But in the primary instance, of veridical perception, it is the object (...) that we focus on and experience. I contrast this view with naive realism (sometimes called disjunctivism) (Brewer, Campbell, Noe) and with intentionalist or representationalist views, which I call the physical content view (Dretske, Tye, Crane, Hill, Burge). I agree with these views in rejecting sense-data intermediaries and in affirming direct perception, but I argue that direct perception occurs via appearances, making mine a critical direct realism. The other views attempt to explain the spatial content of perception (shape, size, distance) entirely through the physical properties of objects and their physical relation to the perceiver (viewing position). I argue instead that there are ineliminably subjective aspects of normal spatial perception, which are systematically manifested as a lack of full phenomenal constancy. This systematic underconstancy can’t be accounted for at all by a consistent naive realism; for the physical content view, it requires that most of our ordinary perception is classified as illusory, violating the spirit of that view. Accepting phenomenal underconstancy as pervasive, I suggest that our ability to perceive the mind-independent properties of objects depends on developed conceptual abilities. In the final section, I compare my appearance view with the adverbialism of Chisholm and the critical direct realism of Roy Wood Sellars. (shrink)

What are the grounds for the distinction between the mental and the physical? What is it the relation between ascribing mental states to an organism and understanding its behavior? Are animals and complex systems vehicles of inner evolutionary environments? Is there a difference between personal and sub-personal level processes in the brain? Answers to these and other questions were developed in Daniel Dennett’s first book, Content and Consciousness (1969), where he sketched a unified theoretical framework for views (...) that are now considered foundational in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. -/- Content and Consciousness Revisited is devoted to reconsider the ideas and ideals introduced in Dennett’s seminal book, by covering its fundamental concepts, hypotheses and approaches, and taking into account the findings and progress which have taken place during more than four decades. This book includes original and critical contributions about the relations between science and philosophy, the personal/sub-personal level distinction, intelligence, learning, intentionality, rationality, propositional attitudes, among other issues of scientific and philosophical interest. Each chapter embraces an updated approach to several disciplines, like cognitive science, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive psychiatry. (shrink)

In the January number of the quarterly journal published by The British Institute of Philosophy, called Philosophy, Sir James Jeans with extraordinary ability has represented the view of the universe which may be held now in the twentieth century by a mathematician, and concludes that this representation contributes to and upholds an idealistic philosophy. Now with the contention that an idealistic philosophy is superior to any other, that is to say nearer the truth, we may be allowed to sympathize. Several (...) physicists, even in the nineteenth century, were inclined to sustain the essence of Berkeley's view, or to consider that metaphysical truth must lie somewhere in that direction. G. F. FitzGerald, for instance, was notably of that opinion. But he was not prepared on that account to abandon the physical view of existence, and to take refuge in mere mathematical abstractions. (shrink)

Qualia epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative properties of events, such as the raw feel of tastes or painfulness, lack causal efficacy. One common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the epistemic argument, which states that this loss of causal efficacy undermines our capacity to know about these epiphenomenal qualitative properties. A number of rejoinders have been offered up to insulate qualia epiphenomenalism from the epistemic argument. In this paper I consider and ultimately reject two such replies, namely, the common underlying (...) cause reply and the appeal to physical-effect epiphenomenalism. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle email.@free.kindle.com@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Physical-Effect Epiphenomenalism and Common Underlying CausesVolume 51, Issue 3DWAYNE MOORE DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0012217312000674Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Jeff McMahan's impressive recent defence of the embodied mind theory of personal identity in his highly acclaimed work The Ethics of Killing has undoubtedly reawakened belief that physical continuity is a necessary component of the relation that matters in our self-interested concern for the future. My aim in this paper is to resist this belief in a somewhat roundabout way. I want to address this belief in a somewhat roundabout way by revisiting a classic defence of the belief that (...) enormous changes in the contents of a person's psychology does not preclude justified fear of future pain. I have in mind Bernard Williams' The Self and the Future (1970) in which he argues, against the psychological view, that physical continuity is necessary for survival. I examine Williams' second thought experiment which ostensibly supports that intuition and afterwards defend two related claims. First, I argue that a close examination of the second thought experiment reveals that one's prior commitments to a particular criterion of personal identity can influence one's response to that thought experiment. Second, I argue that Williams' second thought experiment is set out in questionbegging terms. I do not claim, however, that the intuition under consideration lacks justification; I only claim that Williams' second thought experiment does not provide the needed support. (shrink)

Dr. Gamow has written a view of physics which does not teach basic facts exclusively or dwell completely on biographical data, but rather, Dr. Gamow does both, for each chapter presents one or two great physicts and then discusses the nature and content of their work.

A content theory of art would identify an artwork with the meaningful or representational content of some concrete artistic vehicle, such as the intentional, expressive, stylistic, and subject matter-related content embodied in, or resulting from, acts of intentional artistic expression by artists. Perhaps surprisingly, the resultant view that an artwork is nothing but content seems to have been without theoretical defenders until very recently, leaving a significant theoretical gap in the literature. I present some basic arguments (...) in defence of such a view, including the following. Content views of linguistic communication are ubiquitous, so why should they not be applicable in artistic cases as well? Also, propositional accounts of language involve two kinds of content (the proposition expressed by a sentence, plus the worldly state of affairs it represents), both of which kinds can be used in explaining artworks. In addition, the differing modal properties of artworks and concrete artefacts can be used to show that artworks could not be, or include, such physical artefacts. (shrink)

In this paper I take up the question of whether Wilfrid Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual perceptual content. The question is controversial, being one of the fault lines along which so-called left and right Sellarsians diverge. In the paper I try to make clear what it is in Sellars' thought that leads interpreters to such disparate conclusions. My account depends on highlighting the importance of Sellars' little discussed thesis that perception involves a systematic form of mis-categorization, one where (...) perceivers mistake their sensory states to be properties of physical objects. I argue that the counterpart color and shape attributes of these states, which become ‘point of viewish’ when organized by the productive imagination, provides perceptual experience with its non-conceptual representational content. I then argue that this content is not a form of the mythical Given because one can only have a non-conceptual point of view on an object when an object is introduced into one's perceptual experience through the conceptual mis-taking of one's sensory states. So, while Sellars has a notion of non-conceptual representational content, it can only be salient in the context of a perceptual act that is conceptual overall. (shrink)

We wish to defend Jonathan Westphal's view that colour is complex against a recent ‘phenomenological’ criticism of Eric Rubenstein. There is often thought to be a conflict between two kinds of determinants of colour, physical and phenomenal. On the one hand there are the complex physical facts about colour, such as the determination of a surface colour by an absorption spectrum. There is also, however, the fact that the apparently simple phenomenological quality of what is seen is a (...) function of the physiological and psychological state of the viewing subject. Should the physical trump the phenomenal, or is it the other way round? Much of the phenomenal variation of colour, however, is explained by physical facts. There is a physics and a psychophysics of colour. Colours appear, to the colour scientists at least, to be in some sense objective, a sense not explained by the view that they are purely phenomenal. Taking physics and psychophysics into account will mean rejecting the claim that the content of what our concepts of colours are concepts of is exhausted by the purely phenomenal, or that we can determine these concepts simply by gazing at a colour. Taking account of physics will lead, as Westphal argued, instead to a view about white and the other colour terms like Putnam's account of gold. Necessary truths about colours cannot be explained without reference to the logic of the compossibility of what is given in reflection and absorption spectra, the analogue of H2O. (shrink)

This article treats of the distinction between objects and contents of pulses of consciousness - those minimal temporal sections of James's stream that give veridical or nonveridical consciousness of, or as though of, something, which can be anything perceivable, feelable, imaginable, thinkable, or internally apprehensible. The objects of pulses of consciousness are whatever the pulses mentally apprehend , whatever it is that they, by their occurrence, give awareness of respectively. Their contents are the particular ways in which they mentally apprehend (...) their objects, or would mentally apprehend them in those cases in which their objects do not exist. I argue, inter alia, that not all pulses of consciousness have objects, though James holds that they all possess cognitive content; that centaurs can be neither objects nor contents of consciousness, since they do not, have not, and will not exist; and that some hallucinations whose objects are not physically present have objects anyway, such as a long lost relative or a historical figure. I consider four psychologists' views with which I disagree, views proposing a consciousness without content , a consciousness without objects , a consciousness of phenomenal items in a phenomenal environment , or a consciousness that systematically mistakes its constructed "objects" for their external counterparts. (shrink)

Philosophers of mind have recently sought to establish a theoret- ical use for nonconceptual content. Although there is disagreement about what nonconceptual content is supposed to be, this much is clear. A state with nonconceptual content is mental. Hence, while one may deny that refrigerators and messy rooms have conceptual capacities, their states, as physical and not mental, do not have nonconceptual content. A state with nonconceptual content is also intentional, which is to say (...) that it represents a feature of the world for a subject. It may be tempting to think of qualitative states as having nonconceptual content since they can be experienced by indi- viduals independently of their possession of the requisite concepts, e.g. someone could experience pains, itches or tingles without possessing the concept pain, itch or tingle. But on such a view, one would have to assume that qualitative states are representational since mental states cannot be candidates for nonconceptuality unless they have intentional properties.2. (shrink)

The thesis that follows proffers a solution to the mind-matter problem, the problem as to how mind and matter relate. The proposed solution herein is a variant of panpsychism – the theory that all (pan) has minds (psyche) – that we name pansentient monism. By defining the suffix 'psyche' of panpsychism, i.e. by analysing what 'mind' is (Chapter 1), we thereby initiate the effacement of the distinction between mind and matter, and thus advance a monism. We thereafter critically examine the (...) prevalent view, antithetical to a pansentient monism, that mind is not identical to matter but emergent therefrom (Chapter 2). This anti-emergentist critique acts also as a fortification of the Genetic Argument for panpsychism: if mind is not emergent (nor distinct) from matter, mind must always have existed with matter. But what is 'matter'? Chapter 3 investigates what we understand by 'matter', or 'the physical', and exposes it as a highly deficient concept and percept that in concreto points to its identity with that denoted by 'mind'. This also acts as a fortification of the Abstraction Argument for panpsychism, employing a new taxonomy of physicalism and a new taxonomy of the varieties of abstraction. Thus do we reach a monism that is a parsimonious psycho-physical identity theory. But here we face what can be called The Identity Problem for Panpsychism: if our panpsychism is a psycho-physical identity theory, how can it respond to the powerful objections that beset the identity theory of the twentieth century? In Chapter 4 it will be argued that, like emergentism, this psycho-neural identity theory presupposed a deficient concept of 'matter', down to which mind was reduced away, let alone identified. But to identify down phenomena to what is actually an abstraction is to commit failure of explanation. When the theory is amended accordingly, we move from a psycho-neural identity theory to a genuine psycho-physical identity theory that as such can overcome the aforementioned identity problem. Furthermore, as Chapter 5 clarifies, our pansentient monism has, in addition to parsimony, the explanatory power to resolve the problem of mental causation that afflicts both the reductive physicalism of psycho-neural identity theory and the non-reductive physicalism of emergentism, by genuinely identifying physical and mental causation. Jaegwon Kim considers the place of consciousness in a physical world and the nature of mental causation to be the two key components of the mind-matter problem. Through the critical analysis of our prosaic understanding of mind and matter in this thesis, which incorporates the thought of both classical and contemporary thinkers through a novel fusion, it is hoped that both components are addressed and redressed. That is to say that I present this pansentient monism as a plausible, parsimonious, explanatory, and thus, I think, powerful position towards this ever-perplexing mind-matter mystery. -/- [This thesis was passed in January 2019 with viva examination from Galen Strawson and Joel Krueger. (shrink)

If physicalism is true, everything is physical. In other words, everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. Accordingly, if there are logical/mathematical facts, they must be necessitated by the physical facts of the world. In this paper, I will sketch the first steps of a physicalist philosophy of mathematics; that is, how physicalism can account for logical and mathematical facts. We will proceed as follows. First we will clarify what logical/mathematical facts actually are. Then, we (...) will discuss how these facts can be accommodated in the physicalist ontology. This might sound like immanent realism (as in Mill, Armstrong, Kitcher, or Maddy), according to which the mathematical concepts and propositions reflect some fundamental features of the physical world. Although, in my final conclusion I will claim that mathematical and logical truths do have contingent content in a sophisticated sense, and they are about some peculiar part of the physical world, I reject the idea, as this thesis is usually understood, that mathematics is about the physical world in general. In fact, I reject the idea that mathematics is about anything. In contrast, the view I am proposing here will be based on the strongest formalist approach to mathematics. (shrink)

Epicurean physics elaborates on a system of universal kinetics as regards the creation of the world. One of the main principles is that there is no genesis without motion. The human being, as all other beings, is the product of the motion of atoms within the cosmic void. Due to a sudden swerve in the motion of some atoms, it can be upheld, according to the Epicureans and Lucretius, that there is no determinism in the universe and the human being (...) is capable of free will. The atomic motions and the swerves also take place in the space of the human soul. Lucretius, in the De Rerum Natura, follows with precision the content of the Epicurean dogmas, and divides the soul into an irrational part, which he calls anima, and a rational one, animus, according to the distinction between ψυχή and διάνοια. (shrink)

Making Sense of Inner Sense 'Terra cognita' is terra incognita. It is difficult to find someone not taken abackand fascinated by the incomprehensible but indisputable fact: there are material systems which are aware of themselves. Consciousness is self-cognizing code. During homo sapiens's relentness and often frustrated search for self-understanding various theories of consciousness have been and continue to be proposed. However, it remains unclear whether and at what level the problems of consciousness and intelligent thought can be resolved. Science's greatest (...) challenge is to answer the fundamental question: what precisely does a cognitive state amount to in physical terms? Albert Einstein insisted that the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple and can be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. When one thinks about the complexities which present themselves in modern physics and even more so in the physics of life, one may wonder whether Einstein really meant what he said. Are we to consider the fundamental problem of the mind, whose understanding seems to lie outside the limits of the mind, to be essentially simple too? Knowledge is neither automatic nor universally deductive. Great new ideas are typically counterintuitive and outrageous, and connecting them by simple logical steps to existing knowledge is often a hard undertaking. The notion of a tensor was needed to provide the general theory of relativity; the notion of entropy had to be developed before we could get full insight into the laws of thermodynamics; the notice of information bit is crucial for communication theory, just as the concept of a Turing machine is instrumental in the deep understanding of a computer. To understand something, consciousness must reach an adequate intellectual level, even more so in order to understand itself. Reality is full of unending mysteries, the true explanation of which requires very technical knowledge, often involving notions not given directly to intuition. Even though the entire content and the results of this study are contained in the eight pages of the mathematical abstract, it would be unrealistic and impractical to suggest that anyone can gain full insight into the theory that presented here after just reading abstract. In our quest for knowledge we are exploring the remotest areas of the macrocosm and probing the invisible particles of the microcosm, from tiny neutrinos and strange quarks to black holes and the Big Bang. But the greatest mystery is very close to home: the greatest mystery is human consciousness. The question before us is whether the logical brain has evolved to a conceptual level where it is able to understand itself. (shrink)

It is a common view in cognitive psychology that there is a fundamental difference between what may be called descriptive information, on the one hand, and depictive information, on the other. While the first kind of information is — ideally spoken — non-pictorial and usually equated with the content of a proposition, the second kind of information is pictorial by defmition and accordingly equated with the content of a mental image. Granting the correctness of this distinction, cognitive scientists (...) differ on the role played by mental images in epistemic processes. One faction, represented by the writings of Zenon Pylyshyn, asserts that mental images are merely an epiphenomenon of a more general and abstract processing system, and that they are in principle dispensable since they do not have any truth value.1 Another faction, represented by the writings of Stephen Kosslyn, favors the opposite view, maintaining that mental images are indispensable since they play, in spite of their lack of truth value, a fundamental role in human thinking.2 As Arthur I. Miller has proposed in his book Imagery in Scientific Thought, these two factions may be labeled as the “antiimagist” and the “pro-imagist” view, respectively. (shrink)

The view that the brain is a sort of computer has functioned as a theoretical guideline both in cognitive science and, more recently, in neuroscience. But since we can view every physical system as a computer, it has been less than clear what this view amounts to. By considering in some detail a seminal study in computational neuroscience, I first suggest that neuroscientists invoke the computational outlook to explain regularities that are formulated in terms of the information content (...) of electrical signals. I then indicate why computational theories have explanatory force with respect to these regularities:in a nutshell, they underscore correspondence relations between formal/mathematical properties of the electrical signals and formal/mathematical properties of the represented objects. I finally link my proposal to the philosophical thesis that content plays an essential role in computational taxonomy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Relativistic Content The Argument from Primitive Colors The Argument from the Inverted Spectrum The Argument from Dual Looks The Argument from Duplication Conclusion References.

Let’s consider the following paradox (Fodor [1989], Jackson and Petit [1988] [1992], Drestke [1988], Block [1991], Lepore and Loewer [1987], Lewis [1986], Segal and Sober [1991]): i) The intentional content of a thought (or any other intentional state) is causally relevant to its behavioural (and other) effects. ii) Intentional content is nothing but the meaning of internal representations. But, iii) Internal processors are only sensitive to the syntactic structures of internal representations, not their meanings. Therefore it seems that (...) if we want to defend the idea -absolutely plausible from an intuitive point of view- that mental / intentional states are causally responsible for behavioural outputs and we want to do it on the physicalist basis of any scientific methodology, we will have to give up the conviction that such intentional states qua intentional, i. e. as having a particular meaning, are the ones causally responsible for our behaviour. The path that takes us to mental epiphenomenalism is clear: 1) the causal powers of any event are completely determined by its physical properties; 2) although intentional properties supervene on physical properties, they can’t be identified with them; 3) intentional properties, as intentional, are not causally responsible for behaviour, because they don’t take part in the causal powers of the states to which they belong, i. e., intentional properties are epiphenomenal. Let’s consider now a different yet parallel position to the one just described. There is an important debate in cognitive science about whether the class of mechanisms to which we belong and which the computational modelling project of cognitive processes refers to is best represented by classical or connectionist approaches (McClelland, Rumelhart et. al [1986], Smolensky [1987] [1988], Fodor and Pylyshyn [1988], Pinker and Prince [1988], Clark [1989], Ramsey, Stich and Rumelhart [1991], Clark and Karmiloff-Smith [forthcoming]).In classical, serial processing models, information is encoded in terms of rules that have a linguistic character. In connectionist or parallel distributed processing (PDP) models, the causal relationships among the units that constitute the system determine how the information is processes by the network, although these units don’t have a direct semantic interpretation. But, for both, classical and connectionist models, all the computations can be explained without any reference to the content of the processed information, i.e., in both cases the properties that seem to be responsible for the system’s behaviour are ultimately physical properties nor intentional ones. This situation mirrors thus, within cognitive science, the philosophical discussion concerning the causal efficacy of semantic properties. Now, if in this debate we opt for the classical paradigm, there is a way of finding a solution to the computational version of the epiphenomenalism paradox. This solution is based mainly on the notion of supervenience or, more precisely, on the notion of mereological supervenience (Kim [1984] [1988])1 . The idea of intentional properties supervening on physical properties makes sense within the classical context because there exists an easily isolable supervenience base comprising the syntactic items in the socalled language of thought. But, what happens if we opt for the connectionist paradigm?. The situation here doesn’t seem to favour the use of the same supervenience strategy. For it has been argued (Ramsey, Stich and Garon [1991]) that beliefs, desires, and other mental states are nor, in the connectionist paradigm, individuable as weight or activation states of the system. This is because information is encoded by the network in distributed and superpositional representations, i.e., there are no straightforwardly isolable vehicles at the physical level that can be identified as the articulated supervenience base on which the semantic properties supervene2 . If this is true, then the connectionist not only loses the battle against epiphenomenalism but more drastically, seems to offer a standing invitation to eliminativism, since talk of beliefs and desires, etc. now seems to be floating free of any acceptable scientific underpinning, i.e., she has lost the necessary theoretical apparatus for supporting the intuitive idea that propositional attitudes -beliefs, desires and any mental states with semantic content- are physically realized. This second line of argumentation doesn’t take us to a paradox but to a dilemma: either we accept eliminativism, if connectionist hypothesis are correct or we defend the causal efficacy of mental states with semantic content by showing that, after all, connectionist networks are not plausible cognitive models (Davies [1991]). From my point of view, however, both lines of argumentation need to be revised. The aim of this paper is to find an account of the causal efficacy of content that avoids the aforementioned epiphenomenalist objections and that doesn’t require the discovery of inner symbols in the computational modelling of such contentful mental states. In short, the aim is to find a meeting point where a philosophical story about content and cause and the connectionist computational model can be brought together (Cfr. Clark [1989]). (shrink)

How does metaphysical necessity relate to the modal force often associated with natural laws? Fine argues that natural necessity can neither be obtained from metaphysical necessity via forms of restriction nor of relativization — and therefore pleads for modal pluralism concerning natural and metaphysical necessity. Wolff, 898–906, 2013) aims at providing illustrative examples in support of applying Fine’s view to the laws of nature with specific recourse to the laws of physics: On the one hand, Wolff takes it that equations (...) of motion can count as examples of physical laws that are only naturally but not metaphysically necessary. On the other hand, Wolff argues that a certain conservation law obtainable via Noether’s second theorem is an instance of a metaphysically necessary physical law. I show how Wolff’s example for a putatively metaphysically necessary conservation law fails but argue that so-called topological currents can nevertheless count as metaphysically necessary conservation laws carrying physical content. I conclude with a remark on employing physics to answer questions in metaphysics. (shrink)

Physicists use different theories to describe the world on different scales. In particular, they use the standard model of particle physics at very high energies, but move to various effective field theories, such as quantum electrodynamics, when modelling lower energy scattering processes. One way to explain this methodological fact is pragmatic in spirit. According to this view, physicists move to an effective field theory at lower energies in order to extract predictions and qualitative understanding which would be difficult or impossible (...) to extract directly from a more fundamental theory. By contrast, another way of accounting for the methodological data is metaphysical in spirit. On this view, the reason that physicists use different theories at different scales is that the world actually exhibits different nomic structure on different scales. These two positions have recently been thrown into sharp relief in a debate between Woodward (2016) and Batterman (2021), with Woodward taking the pragmatist line and Batterman the metaphysical line. One difficulty with the metaphysical answer is that its content is unclear: in what sense exactly could an effective field theory provide a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability than our world’s fundamental theory? This talk attempts to provide an answer to this question by developing a simple metaphysical model. I start by assuming a set of possible worlds which are nomically possible according to some fundamental theory (I suggest that one is free to adopt either a Humean or Non-Humean view of these fundamental nomic necessities). I then introduce an equivalence relation between possible worlds: two worlds are scale-E equivalent if they assign the same values to physical quantities below energy scale E (up to some finite level of precision P). The key question now is whether this relation induces equivalence classes on the set of nomically possible worlds. I argue that in the case of current quantum field theories this does indeed occur, as evidenced by the possibility of “integrating out” high energy degrees of freedom in the renormalisation group framework. The formation of equivalence classes in the fundamental theory's possibility space indicates that some of its high energy features do not make a difference to its low energy dynamical behaviour. This suggests the following reading of the claim that an effective field theory provides a better representation of the nomic structure of the world in its domain of applicability: the solutions of the effective field theory stand in one-to-one correspondence with equivalence classes induced by the scale-E equivalence relation, whereas the fundamental theory overcounts the physical possibilities which are relevant at scale E. In this sense, the effective field theory provides a more natural representation of low energy physics than the fundamental theory. I conclude by explaining how this metaphysical model offers a reduction compatible understanding of multiple realisability, once again pointing to renormalisation group results in quantum field theory to support this. (shrink)

This article considers how the new finds have affected one's view of Empedocles, and suggests how interpretation of that material might help solve some longstanding problems about the structure and content of Empedocles' writings. A basic account of the teachings of Empedocles would distinguish between two main components. On the one hand, there is a “Presocratic” physics, including a theory of principles, a cosmology, and a biology. On the other hand, there is a mythical law, clearly inspired by Orphic (...) or Pythagorean legends, which imposes on guilty gods a punishment consisting in their transmigration through a series of mortal beings. The purpose of this article is to show that Empedocles has the habit of referring to divine entities of his physical system both in a physical and in a mythological way and that his uses of the word daimon form part of this twofold language. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Physics and Metaphysics in Descartes and GalileoBlake D. Duttonin his classic biography of Descartes, Charles Adam passes this judgment on the influence of Galileo’s condemnation on the development of Cartesian metaphysics:Sans la condemnation de Galilée, nous aurions eu tout de même la métaphysique de Descartes. Mais nous ne l’aurions problement pas eue sous la forme volumineuse qu’elle a prise avec toutes ces Objections et Reponses, qui font plus (...) que quintupler les Méditations primitives.1(AT XII, 306)While not charging Descartes with dissimulation, Adam argues that the metaphysics was developed to deflect attention from the heart of the Cartesian system—its mechanistic physics—which posed a direct challenge to the reigning Aristotelianism. In his words, it served primarily as a “tent... to cover the merchandise (le pavilion... couvrir la marchandise)”(AT XII, 306).2Adam is certainly not alone in pointing to the Galileo affair as grounds for raising suspicions about the role of the metaphysics in Descartes’ larger work. In a recent biography, itself destined to become a classic, Stephen Gaukroger takes a similar line, arguing that it was Galileo’s failure to convince his opponents through arguments drawn from natural philosophy that prompted Descartes to seek acceptance of his own natural philosophy though metaphysical legitimation. Had Galileo not been silenced there would have been no impetus for Descartes to have developed a metaphysical argument; natural-philosophical [End Page 49] arguments would have sufficed.3 Thus, in the words of Gaukroger, Descartes’ project of metaphysical legitimation was “a task which he never even contemplated before the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and... was a direct response to that condemnation.”4 If we are to believe Adam and Gaukroger, then, Descartes was first and foremost a natural philosopher whose extended venture into metaphysics was primarily a strategic response to the events of 1633.Despite the many merits of this line of interpretation, I believe it is trouble-some insofar as it isolates Descartes’ reaction to the condemnation from both his criticisms of Galileo’s science and his views on the relation between science and theology. In doing so, it overstates the degree to which Cartesian science can itself be isolated from Cartesian metaphysics. In what follows, then, I will contextualize Descartes’ reaction to the Galileo affair by examining his comments on Galileo’s scientific work and the relation of his own views on science and theology to those of Galileo. Two results will emerge. First, we will see that if we fail to take Descartes’ search for metaphysical foundations as having a genuinely scientific motivation, not only will we render his criticisms of Galileo’s science unintelligible, but we will fail to understand the distinctive nature of his science vis-à-vis Galileo’s. This will become clear as we examine the work of each on motion and the fall of bodies. Second, we will see that it is only by taking Descartes’ metaphysical commitments as integral to his science that we can make sense of the divergent ways in which he and Galileo resolved the question of the relation of science to theology. Both, it is clear, sought to guarantee the autonomy of science, yet each did so in a way which mirrored his unique conception of science and its relation to metaphysics. All of this, I conclude, deflates the utility of appealing to Descartes’ concern over the Galileo affair as a means of assigning a primarily strategic or extra-scientific role to his metaphysics. [End Page 50]1. descartes on galilean scienceAlthough they were contemporaries, there is no evidence that Descartes and Galileo ever met or corresponded. There is also no strong evidence that the work of either had any significant influence on the work of the other, despite the fact that Descartes reports having leafed through the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems and having obtained a copy of the Two New Sciences.5 However, we do find several references to Galileo in Descartes’ correspondence from which a general attitude toward the Italian scientist becomes reasonably clear. While occasionally being complimentary, Descartes appears to have been largely unimpressed and even claims to have arrived at several... (shrink)

It is natural to think that our ordinary practices in giving explanations for our actions, for what we do, commit us to claiming that content properties are causally relevant to physical events such as the movements of our limbs and bodies, and events which these in turn cause. If you want to know why my body ambulates across the street, or why my arm went up before I set out, we suppose I have given you an answer when (...) I say that I wanted to greet a friend on the other side of the street, and thought that my arm's going up would be interpreted by him as a signal to stop for a moment. This widely held view might be disputed, but I shall not argue for it in this paper. I want to start with the view that our beliefs and desires and other propositional attitudes are causally relevant, in virtue of their modes and particular contents, to our movements, in order to investigate the consequences for analyses of thought content. For this purpose, I argue, in sec. II, for three necessary conditions on causal relevance: (a) a nomic sufficiency condition, (b) a logical independence condition, and (c) a screening-off condition. In sec. III, I apply these conditions to relational and functional theories of thought content, arguing that these theories cannot accommodate the causal relevance of content properties to our behaviour. I argue further that, on two plausible assumptions, one about the dependence of the mental on the physical, and the other about the availability in principle of causal explanations of our movements in terms of our non-relational physical properties, content properties can be causally relevant only if they are nomically type-correlated, relative to certain circumstances, with non-relational physical properties of our bodies. In sec. IV, I respond to a number of objections that might be advanced against this conclusion. (shrink)

Putnam and Burge have been viewed as launching a joint attack on individualism, the view that the content of one's psychological state is determined by what is in the head . Putnam argues that meanings are not in the head while Burge argues that beliefs are not in the head either, and both have come up with convincing arguments against individualism. It is generally conceived that Putnam's view is a version of physical externalism, which argues that factors in (...) the physical environment play a role in determining the meanings of natural kind terms. Burge, on the other hand, is regarded as following up Putnam's argument to bring in factors in the social environment for the determination of belief. Burge's view has been commonly referred to as 'social externalism.' The general consensus in the field is that physical externalism and social externalism are compatible views. Furthermore, both Putnam and Burge seem to endorse each other’s position for the most part. In this paper, however, I shall argue against this general view to show that the two theories are deep down incompatible. (shrink)

The content of emotion sometimes seems to be conflated with its object, but we can distinguish between content and object on the model of Fregean sense versus reference. Fear, for instance, refers to something the subject of fear is afraid of and represents that object of fear as dangerous, so that the emotion can be said to have evaluative content. Here I attempt to clarify and defend my view of emotional discomfort or other affect as what does (...) the evaluating. Some current accounts of the unpleasantness of physical pain take a similar view, but in application to emotion they call for an explanation of how emotional affect can simultaneously evaluate both the affective symptoms of emotion and the emotion's object. I suggest an explanation and indicate how it supports the link between emotional valence and motivational force. (shrink)

Virtually all philosophers of science have construed fundamental theories as descriptions of entities, properties, and/or structures. Call this the “descriptive-ontological” view. I argue that this view is incorrect, at least insofar as physical theories are concerned. I propose a novel construal of theories that I call the “prescriptive-dynamical” view. The central tenet of this view, roughly put, is that the _essential_ content of fundamental physical theories is a _prescription for interfacing with natural systems and translating local data (...) into compact theoretical language_. The descriptive-ontological aspects of theories, if any, are taken as _inessential_ content on this view: they do not contribute to the predictive success of the theory. Rather than describing _what is there_, the essence of a physical theory is to tell us _what to do_ when interfacing with a physical system. (shrink)

The paper offers some preliminary and rather unsystematic reflections about the question: Do Beliefs Have Their Contents Essentially? The question looks like it ought to be important, yet it is rarely discussed. Maybe that’s because content essentialism, i.e., the view that beliefs do have their contents essentially, is simply too obviously and trivially true to deserve much discussion. I sketch a common-sense argument that might be taken to show that content essentialism is indeed utterly obvious and/or trivial. Somewhat (...) against this, I then point out that a “sexy” conclusion that is sometimes drawn from Putnam-Burge-style externalist arguments, namely that our mental states are not in our heads, presupposes content essentialism — which suggests that the view is not entirely trivial. Moreover, it seems intuitively that physicalists should reject the view: If beliefs are physical states, how could they have their propositional contents essentially? I distinguish three readings of the title question. Content essentialism does seem fairly obvious on the first two, but not so on the third. I argue that the common-sense argument mentioned earlier presupposes one of the first two readings but fails to apply to the third, on which ‘belief’ refers to belief-state tokens. That’s because ordinary belief individuation is silent about belief-state tokens. Token physicalists, I suggest, should indeed reject content essentialism about belief-state tokens. What about token dualists? One might think they ought to embrace content essentialism about belief-state tokens. I end with puzzling why this should be so. (shrink)

This dissertation is an investigation into the degree to which the mathematics used in physical theories can be constructivized. The techniques of recursive function theory and classical logic are used to separate out the algorithmic content of mathematical theories rather than attempting to reformulate them in terms of "intuitionistic" logic. The guiding question is: are there experimentally testable predictions in physics which are not computable from the data? ;The nature of Church's thesis, that the class of effectively calculable (...) functions on the natural numbers is identical to the class of general recursive functions, is discussed. It is argued that this thesis is an example of an explication of the very notion of an effectively calculable function. This is contrary to a view of the thesis as a hypothesis about the limitations of the human mind. ;The extension to functions of a real variable of the notion of effective calculability is discussed, and it is argued that a function of a real variable must be continuous in order to be considered effectively calculable . The relation between continuity and computability is significant for the problem at hand. The results of a well-designed experiment do not depend critically upon the precise values of the relevant parameters. Accordingly, if the solution to a problem in mathematical physics depends discontinuously upon the data, it cannot be regarded as an experimentally testable prediction of the theory. The principle that the testable predictions of a physical theory cannot be singular is known as the principle of regularity. This principle is significant, because discontinuities generate non-computability, but they also disqualify a prediction from being experimentally testable. ;A mathematical framework is set up for discussing computability in physical theories. This framework is then applied to the case of quantum mechanics. It is found that, due to the use of unbounded operators in the theory, noncomputable objects appear, but predictions which satisfy the principle of regularity are nevertheless computable functions of the data. (shrink)

Further arguments are offered in defence of the position that the variant of quantum field theory (QFT) that should be subject to interpretation and foundational analysis is axiomatic quantum field theory. I argue that the successful application of renormalization group (RG) methods within alternative formulations of QFT illuminates the empirical content of QFT, but not the theoretical content. RG methods corroborate the point of view that QFT is a case of the underdetermination of theory by empirical evidence. I (...) also urge caution in extrapolating interpretive conclusions about QFT from the application of RG methods in other contexts (e.g., condensed matter physics). This paper replies to criticisms advanced by David Wallace, but aims to be self-contained. (shrink)

The present work is focussed on the completeness of physics, or what is here called the Completeness Thesis: the claim that the domain of the physical is causally closed. Two major questions are tackled: How best is the Completeness Thesis to be formulated? What can be said in defence of the Completeness Thesis? My principal conclusions are that the Completeness Thesis can be coherently formulated, and that the evidence in favour if it significantly outweighs that against it. In opposition (...) to those who argue that formulation is impossible because no account of what is to count as physical can be provided, I argue that as long as the purpose of the argument in which the account is to be used are borne in mind there are no significant difficulties. The account of the physical which I develop holds as physical whatever is needed to fix the likelihood of pre-theoretically given physical effects, and hypothesises in addition that no chemical, biological or psychological factors will be needed in this way. The thus formulated Completeness Thesis is coherent, and has significant empirical content. In opposition to those who defend the doctrine of emergentism by means of philosophical arguments I contend that those arguments are flawed, setting up misleading dichotomies between needlessly attenuated alternatives and assuming the truth of what is to be proved. Against those who defend emergentism by appeal to the evidence, I argue that the history of science since the nineteenth century shows clearly that the empirical credentials of the view that the world is causally closed at the level of a small number of purely physical forces and types of energy is stronger than ever, and the credentials of emergentism correspondingly weaker. In opposition to those who argue that difficulties with reductionism point to the implausibility of the Completeness Thesis I argue that completeness in no way entails the kinds of reductionism which give rise to the difficulties in question. I argue further that the truth of the Completeness Thesis is in fact compatible with a great deal of taxonomic disorder and the impossibility of any general reduction of non-fundamental descriptions to fundamental ones. In opposition to those who argue that the epistemological credentials of fundamental physical laws are poor, and that those laws should in fact be seen as false, I contend that truth preserving accounts of fundamental laws can be developed. Developing such an account, I test it by considering cases of the composition of forces and causes, where what takes place is different to what is predicted by reference to any single law, and argue that viewing laws as tendencies allows their truth to be preserved, and sense to be made of both the experimental discovery of laws, and the fact that composition enables accurate prediction in at least some cases. (shrink)

Some content externalists claim that if C is a theoretical concept and “C” expresses C, then the content of C in a community at a time is determined by how some members of the community at the time—call them “experts”—understand C or use “C”. Thus, when non-expert Chauncey utters “C”, the content of the concept he expresses does not depend entirely on his intrinsic physical properties, contra the claims of content internalism. This paper proposes that (...) “concept” expresses a theoretical concept, such that the externalist’s insights should apply to how we understand claims expressing the view itself and to how we evaluate the arguments alleged to motivate it. With respect to the first, I argue that the content externalist should regard it as unclear at present which proposition her theory expresses, and should take it that content externalism teaches us about our linguistic community rather than about the metaphysical nature of concepts. With respect to the second, I argue that by externalism’s own lights, the famous externalist thought experiments shouldn’t establish content externalism. In conclusion, I suggest that making sense of content externalism requires presupposing internalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that the idea of a computer is unique. Calculators and analog computers are not different ideas about computers, and nature does not compute by itself. Computers, once clearly defined in all their terms and mechanisms, rather than enumerated by behavioral examples, can be more than instrumental tools in science, and more than source of analogies and taxonomies in philosophy. They can help us understand semantic content and its relation to form. This can be achieved because they (...) have the potential to do more than calculators, which are computers that are designed not to learn. Today’s computers are not designed to learn; rather, they are designed to support learning; therefore, any theory of content tested by computers that currently exist must be of an empirical, rather than a formal nature. If they are designed someday to learn, we will see a change in roles, requiring an empirical theory about the Turing architecture’s content, using the primitives of learning machines. This way of thinking, which I call the intensional view of computers, avoids the problems of analogies between minds and computers. It focuses on the constitutive properties of computers, such as showing clearly how they can help us avoid the infinite regress in interpretation, and how we can clarify the terms of the suggested mechanisms to facilitate a useful debate. Within the intensional view, syntax and content in the context of computers become two ends of physically realizing correspondence problems in various domains. (shrink)

This paper addresses the extent to which both Julian Barbour‘s Machian formulation of general relativity and his interpretation of canonical quantum gravity can be called timeless. We differentiate two types of timelessness in Barbour‘s (1994a, 1994b and 1999c). We argue that Barbour‘s metaphysical contention that ours is a timeless world is crucially lacking an account of the essential features of time—an account of what features our world would need to have if it were to count as being one in which (...) there is time. We attempt to provide such an account through considerations of both the representation of time in physical theory and in orthodox metaphysical analyses. We subsequently argue that Barbour‘s claim of timelessness is dubious with respect to his Machian formulation of general relativity but warranted with respect to his interpretation of canonical quantum gravity. We conclude by discussing the extent to which we should be concerned by the implications of Barbour‘s view. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to investigate the philosophical and theological validity and coherence of the classical concept of a miracle within the contemporary scientific world view. The main tool in this process will be the cognitive standard model of the formation of religious beliefs operative in the cognitive science of religion. The application of this model shows why an intentional agent is assigned as responsible for the occurrence of events with no visible cause such as a miracle: miracles (...) are events that violate the intuitively expected behaviors observable in the physical reality. It will become evident that much of the conceptual content of the classical understanding of miracles can be retained despite of the ontological and epistemological challenges of the contemporary science. In particular, this concerns the semantic view of miracles in which a miracle does not occur as an objective Divine intervention but qualifies as religious interpretation of the natural course of events always in reference to a cultural and personal context that is unique to those who directly experience these events either as direct recipients or as observers. (shrink)

Approaches to the interpretation of physical theories provide accounts of how physical meaning accrues to the mathematical structure of a theory. According to many standard approaches to interpretation, meaning relations are captured by maps from the mathematical structure of the theory to statements expressing its empirical content. In this article I argue that while such accounts adequately address meaning relations when exact models are available or perturbation theory converges, they do not fare as well for models that (...) give rise to divergent perturbative expansions. Since truncations of divergent perturbative expansions often play a critical role in establishing the empirical adequacy of a theory, this is a serious deficiency. I show how to augment state-space semantics, a view developed by Beth and van Fraassen, to capture perturbatively evaluated observables even in cases where perturbation theory is divergent. This new semantics establishes a sense in which the calculations that underwrite the empirical adequacy of a theory are both meaningful and true, but requires departure from the assumption that physical meaning is captured entirely by the exact models of a theory. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to determine the methodological features of the organization of design engineering activities when teaching physics at school. The article focuses on the formation of design and research skills of students, which is a mandatory requirement of the Federal State Educational Standard of the General Education. From our point of view, one of the stages of the implementation of project activities should be design, so the formation of design skills is also reflected in the FSES (...) BGE. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the definition of the concept of "project design activity", the definition of the methodology of the organization of project design activity in teaching physics at school. As a result, the requirements for the content and organization of design engineering activities in teaching physics at school are identified, a model of the methodology of its organization is proposed; the program of the circle is developed and an example of one of the implemented projects is given. (shrink)

The view of human in Confucian philosophy in Pre Qin Dynasty arose not only from the change in socio-economic conditions but also from the deterioration of social morality. Facing that situation, thipkers of this period began to study human to come up with solutions to help the rulers stabilize society. Despite the presence of past studies on the topicand views on people in Confucian philosophy during the Pre Qin period, there (xists gaps for further research. This study attempted to (...) understand through a document review and extensive in-depth research procedure the theoretical underpjnnings of the perspectives on the origin of man, on human nathře, on hụman rples and positions and on educating people in order to develop perfect people and maintain civil order in society. The methodology used was documehtation research and content analysis of the data collected. The document reséafch method was particularly helpful in investigating categorizing and analyzing physical sources, most commonly written documents in the social, public or dígital world. The study found out that the Confucianism represents a legitimate doctrine of the Pre Qin philosophy to build social stability social harmony and peace. The Confucianists of Pre Qin also advocated the need for a personal cultivation, cultivation of the body, family, country, and the whole world, and use it as the basis of the methodology for governing the country. Howeyer, for this purpose, the study recommends that people need to be educated to know the way to be human. (shrink)

After 1905, Einstein's miraculous year, physics would never be the same again. In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute (...) time had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc 2 . The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light , in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921. The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions , was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules. These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year. (shrink)

In several works, Ruth Millikan has developed a ‘teleosemantic’ theory of concepts. Millikan’s theory has three explicit desiderata for concepts: wide scope, non-descriptionist content, and naturalism. I contend that Millikan’s theory cannot fulfill all of these desiderata simultaneously. Theoretical concepts, such as those of chemistry and physics, fall under Millikan’s intended scope, but I will argue that her theory cannot account for these concepts in a way that is compatible with both non-descriptionism and naturalism. In these cases, Millikan’s view (...) is subject to the traditional ‘indeterminacy problem’ for teleosemantic theories. This leaves the content of theoretical concepts indeterminate between a descriptionist and non-descriptionist content. Furthermore, this problem cannot be overcome without giving up the naturalism desideratum. I suggest that the scope of Millikan’s theory should be limited. At best, the theory will be able to attribute naturalistic, non-descriptionist content to a smaller range of concepts. (shrink)

Current attempts to understand psychological content divide into two families of views. According to externalist accounts such as those advanced by Tyler Burge and Ruth Millikan, psychological content does not supervene on the physical features of the individual subject, but is fixed partially by the nature of the world external to her.¹ In the rival functional role theories developed by Ned Block and Brian Loar, content does supervene on the physical features of the individual, (...) and is, in addition, determined solely by the role it plays in the causal network of an individual's sensations, behavior, and mental states.² Over the past fifteen years, criticism of these two types of views has often focussed on their capacity to individuate content in an acceptable way, and both seem to be deficient in this respect. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Discussions AGOSTINO NIFO'S EARLY VIEWS ON IMMORTALITY Various historians of Renaissance philosophy have taken some notice of the prolific author and important philosopher of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Agostino Nifo (1470-1538), x but no one has yet studied his writings in a methodical and exhaustive fashion. 2 He not only published philosophical works in logic, physics, psychology and metaphysics, but he also (...) authored treatises on humanist topics? Recent scholars have tended to concentrate their attention on his psychological doctrines, no doubt because he was one of the major opponents of Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) during the immortality controversy.4 Nifo published his De Immortalitate Animae in 1518 as a reply to the De lmmortalitate Ardmae, On the year of Nifo)s birth, see Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull'aristotelismo padovano dal secolo xav al xvl ('Florence, 1958), p. 284, n. 8. There is contemporary evidence that he died on January 18, 1538. See Bartolommeo Capasso, "Le cronache de li antiqui ri del regno di Napoli di D. Gaspare Fuscolill0," Archivio storico per le province napoletane, I (1876), p. 538. The standard bio-bibliography still remains Pasquale Tuozzi, "Agostino Nifo 9 le sue opere," Atti e memorie della R. Accademia di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova, Nuova scrie, XX (Padua, 1904), pp. 63-86. But see also Giuseppr Tommasino, Tra umanisti e filosoft (Maddaloni, 1921), Porte I, pp. 123-147; and Edward P. Mahoney, "A Note on Agostino Nifo," Philological Quarterly (forthcoming). z See Franeeseo Fiorentino, Pietro Pomponazzi; Studi storici su la scuola bolognese e padovana del secolo xvI (Florence, 1868); Carlo Giacon, La seconda scolastica: 1 grandi commentatori di San Tommaso (Milan, 1944); Etienne Gilson, "L'affaire de l'immortalit6 de l'fime ~t Venise at* d6but du xvIe si~ele," in Umanesirno europeo e uraanesimo veneziano, ed. Vittore Branea (Florence, 1963), pp. 31-61; Miehele Giorgiantonio, "Un nostro filosofo dimentieato dcl '400 (Luea Prassicio e Agostino Nifo)," Sophia, XVI (1948), pp. 212-214 and 303-312; Bruno Nardi, Saggi sulraristotelismo padovano dal secolo x]v al xvI (Florence, 1958); idem, Sigieri di Brabante nel pensiero del Rinascimento Italiano (Rome, 1945); Giovanni di NapoH, L'immortalitd delranima nel Rinascimento ('Turin, 1963); John Herman Randall, Jr., The School of Padua and the Emergence of Modern Science (Padua, 1961); Wilhelm Risse, Die Logik der Neuzeit, I (Stuttgart, 1964); Eugenio Garin, La cultura [ilosofica del Rinascimento Italiano (Florence, 1961); idem, Storia della filosofia italiana, II (Turin, 1966). See Nifo's De Armorum Literarumque Comparatione Commentariolus (Naples, 1526); De Pulchro et Amore (Rome, 1531); De Re Aulica (Naples, 1534); and Prima Pars Opusculorum (Venice, 1535). The second of these works has been studied by Jules Houdoy, La beaut~ des femmes dans la litt#rature et darts rart du xII" au xvIe si~cle; Analyse du livre de A. Niphus du Beau et de l'amour (Paris, 1876). 4 For recent discussion of the immortality controversy, see Etienne Gilson, "Autour de Pomponazzi, ProbMmatique de l'immortalit~ de l'~me en Italic au d~but du xvIe si~.cle," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litt~raire du moyen dge, Ann6e 1961, pp. 163-179; Giovanni di Napoli, op. cit., especially pp. 227-338; Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Stanford, 1964), pp. 72-90; Bruno Nardi, Studi su Pietro Pomponazzi (Florence, 1965); Martin Pine, "Pomponazzi and the Problem of 'Double Truth'," Journal ot the History of Ideas, XXIX (1968), pp. 163-176; Harold Shulsky, "Paduan Epistemology and the Doctrine of the One Mind," lournal of the History of Philosophy, VI (1968), pp. 341-361. [451] 452 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (1516) of Pomponazzi, who had argued that personal immortality cannot be philosophically demonstrated, s But while these scholars correctly point out that Nifo abandoned an Averroist interpretation of Aristotle concerning the unity of the intellect and the immortality of the soul for the position which they assume to be Thomistic, they are not precise as to just when Nile made the shift.6 They have not observed that in his first two printed works, namely, the commentary on Averroes' Destructio Destructionum (1497) and the early commentary on the De Anima (1503), Nifo explicitly accepts Averroes as the... (shrink)

Foundations research in physics, according to Bunge, has lagged behind its sister discipline, the foundations of mathematics. His book is an attempt to partially remedy this situation by analyzing the form and content of some basic ideas in physics and presenting some of the fundamental theories of physics in an axiomatic fashion. The heart of the book consists of axiomatizations of Classical Mechanics, Classical Field Theories, and Quantum Mechanics. Bunge does not claim to be working without predecessors. While the (...) idea of a separate discipline in the foundations of physics is rather new, the existence of material that clearly belongs to foundations research is not. This is attested to by the substantial bibliography at the end of the book. But he is ideally suited to the task of bringing this difficult material together and welding it in his own fashion into a coherent whole. His grasp of physical theory is wide-ranging and he writes with clarity and wit. In the first chapter he states his views on a number of issues in the philosophy of science: explanation, prediction, operationalism, laws, and other topics. The arguments are usually summarized very briefly, or reference is made to other books. Thus those who disagree with his philosophical presuppositions will not be convinced; but friends or foes will miss a great deal of informative material if they do not push on to the axiomatizations which follow and which are the main concern of the book. This book will undoubtedly be a source-book for future foundations research in the physical sciences.--R. H. K. (shrink)

The content of this book is essentially one argument. The aim of this book is to consider the breakdown of a certain world view during the twentieth century. This is mirrored in the treatment of both science and philosophy. As these form the foundation for the human position in the world, a major reorganization of the body of knowledge had to take place. Bohr and Wittgenstein have been chosen as the main actors to represent this revision. Each one had (...) to replace apparent order and certainty by an understanding based on limited concepts in constant flux. The conclusion is that the modern synthesis is far from satisfactory. By leaving the story unfinished in its present state, the book hopes to provoke a renewal of the discussion and the eventual emergence of a reformed clarity and understanding. Reality is to be left as it is, but the human mind is also to be left as it is. The problem is to find a way to effect a harmonious combination of these. (shrink)

My dissertation has three interrelated aims: to defend introspectivism, the view that the deliverances of introspection should be basic data for philosophical theories of the mind, from pivotal objections which inspire the currently prevailing anti-introspectivist approach to mentality; to advance a substantive account of introspection; and to lay the groundwork for a more general theory about the mental. ;I begin by analyzing a host of philosophical problems about the mind; in each, I isolate the source of perplexity in an epistemic (...) factor. The body of the thesis is devoted to elucidating the ontological and epistemological status of mind by considering, in turn, phenomenality and intentionality. ;Physicalism lacks the resources to explain the individual subject's greater epistemic authority regarding the phenomenal as compared to the physical. My detailed account of phenomenal state introspection is therefore preferable to the physicalist explanations of phenomenal knowledge; its consequences include a counterexample to a widely-accepted constraint on concept possession and a minor modification to one familiar theory of de se reference. ;Similarly, functionalist reduction of intentional states cannot countenance our refusal to defer to empirical science regarding one's occurrent mental states to the same extent that we defer regarding physical states. My account of introspection, which does justice to the measure of authority we retain about our own intentional states, undermines both functionalism and content externalism about such states. ;Grave difficulties face each of the four currently popular views about the relation between phenomenality and intentionality. According to my alternative, occurrent phenomenal states and occurrent intentional states are importantly different yet share an epistemic feature which distinguishes them from physical states: our deference to empirical science regarding such occurrent states is limited in a way that our deference regarding physical states is not. The key to understanding the mind is thus intimately related to the primary source of philosophical problems about it, namely, the disparity between our knowledge of the mental and our knowledge of the physical. (shrink)

Introduction: representationalismMost theorists of cognition endorse some version of representationalism, which I will understand as the view that the human mind is an information-using system, and that human cognitive capacities are representational capacities. Of course, notions such as ‘representation’ and ‘information-using’ are terms of art that require explication. As a first pass, representations are “mediating states of an intelligent system that carry information” (Markman and Dietrich 2001, p. 471). They have two important features: (1) they are physically realized, and so (...) have causal powers; (2) they are intentional, in other words, they have meaning or representational content. This presumes a distinction between a representational vehicle—a physical state or structure that has causal powers and is responsible for producing behavior—and its content. Consider the following characterization of a device that computes the addition functionReaders will recognize the similarity t. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Lack of Autonomy: A View From the InsideSteve Weiner (bio)Keywordsagency, autonomy, deficit, determinismThe most vivid and truly overwhelming response I have to all arguments stressing agency/autonomy, that is, what lay people call free will, is this: that I’ve never had the sensation of acting autonomously since the onset of my mental illness on August 28, 1965. I have never been comfortable with saying that “I made a choice,” (...) or with other people either lecturing me or attempting to reassure me, often at the same time, by saying that I acted with autonomy/primary agency, as it were. That is my overwhelming subjective experience. I usually refrain from attempting to make a general case for determinism about myself or the universe in general, although, again, I feel far more determined than free. (I would note that Mary Midgley [2006] points out that the word determined and the concept, by extension, of determinism have two different meanings in say, social theory and geometry.)One strong criticism of this article I would put forward is that the Davidson and Shahan seemed to mention only depression among many diagnoses to make their case, although their French mentors/ co-thinkers apparently focused on schizophrenia, however unusually defined by them. In obsessive-compulsive disorder, we all have the very strong impression of the obsessive thoughts having been forced into our mind by something or someone else. My impression is that we all engage in our warding-off rituals, especially in the later, most frequent, most ritualistic repetitions, “against our will.”My most frequent diagnoses over the decades have been paranoid schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder, and I more or less agree most of the time with those labels. I find Louis Sass’ “discovery” that our delusions are better thought of as semi-delusions with our simultaneously believing and not believing them, and our usual failure to take action on them, pretty well describes my own long-term experience. I know he is insistent on ascribing some degree of agency/whole personality involvement to us as compared with the standard National Alliance on Mental Illness/biological model, but I feel that he is getting closer to most of the “truth” when he talks about a subtle interweaving of affliction/deficit and agency.The authors’ reliance on French thinkers almost inevitably sends me back to a once-prominent French intellectual, one of my favorite writers Albert Memmi, the Tunisian-Jewish born socialist and Zionist. In a book that mentions The Story of O, (Memmi 1984) a story of extreme sexual submission or masochism, he makes the striking remark that the mentally ill are “oppressed from within.” I have spoken of this often because it seems to touch perfectly on my experience and that of fellow mentally ill people I have met. From the perspective of the outsider, it seems that the whole [End Page 237] and integrated person is involved in every behavior. What looks like agency to others, especially when it comes to undesirable behaviors, when experienced from within, is actually a situation of affliction from a seemingly autonomous place. We experience this as coming, yes, from within us, but not ultimately of us.I cannot be sure, but a belief in some degree of metaphysical choice from the beginning of one’s life seems to me the only way the authors of this article can firmly, enthusiastically come down on the side of agency as opposed to deficit/malfunction in trying to explain human problems. In contrast, I suppose I could be called a physicalist. I have noticed that physical substances (alcohol, caffeine, psychiatric drugs) have such a vivid and consistent effect on my mind that it makes sense to me to conclude that yes, mind is probably ultimately reducible to brain/body/experience of the senses. That is my private opinion based on experience as mediated through knowledge/intellect.One final point: Despite the (almost certainly) radical left politics of the authors, as an officially disabled person almost completely dependent on the welfare state, I fear that in competitive individualist America, the authors’ hoped-for far greater emphasis on autonomy will feed into popular “blame the victim” ideology. I believe... (shrink)

When you have a perceptual experience of a given physical object that object seems to be immediately present to you in a way it never does when you consciously think about or imagine it. Many philosophers have claimed that naïve realism (the view that to perceive is to stand in a primitive relation of acquaintance to the world) can provide a satisfying account of this phenomenological directness of perceptual experience while the content view (the view that to perceive (...) is to represent the world to be a certain way) cannot. I argue that this claim is false. Specifically, I maintain that the only acceptable naïve realist account of the relevant phenomenology is circular and that the content view can provide a similar account. In addition, I maintain that a certain specific variety of the content view provides a non-circular and thus more satisfactory account of this phenomenology. If so, then contrary to what is commonly assumed there are powerful phenomenological grounds for preferring the content view to naïve realism. (shrink)