In this dissertation, a logical analysis of points of view is presented. It is based on the concept of determinable presented by Johnson in his book Logic. A point of view is a set of Determinables. Determinables generate a many-dimensional conceptual space. Concepts are subsets of this space, and their relations form a lattice. A logical system to present points of view is introduced and proved to be complete. Some applications of this logic are demonstrated (relative (...) identity, scientific change, inductive logic etc.). (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Sociality offers new ideas and conceptual tools for philosophers and social scientists in their analysis of the social world.

According to the Self-Location Thesis, one’s own location can be among the things that visual experience represents, even when one’s body is entirely out of view. By contrast, the Minimal View denies this, and says that visual experience represents things only as "to the right", etc., and never as "to the right of me". But the Minimal View is phenomenologically inadequate: it cannot explain the difference between a visual experience of self-motion and one of an oppositely moving (...) world. To show this, I argue (i) that these experiences are different in an important respect, (ii) that this difference is genuinely experiential, (iii) that it is visual, (iv) that it is not purely phenomenal, and (v) that it cannot be identified with anything other than the apparent motion of the self. So the Self-Location Thesis is upheld: reports of one’s own motion can correspond to aspects of visual experiences every bit as basic to their contents as the apparent motion or rest of the things one has in view. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to apply the metaphysics of John Duns Scotus in constructing a new conception of matter which does not stand in opposition to the mental realm, but is rather composed of both physical and mental elements. The paper is divided into four parts. Section one addresses Scotus’ claim that matter is intelligible and actual in itself. Section two aims to show that matter can be seen as a deprived thinking being. Section three analyzes Scotus’ conception (...) of place. The final section brings together the conclusions of the three preceding parts to confront the Cartesian psycho-physical problem anew and to suggest a viable solution. (shrink)

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers - including Joshua Gert, Douglas Portmore, and Elizabeth Harman - have argued that there is a sense in which morality itself does not treat moral reasons as consistently overriding.2 My aim in the present essay is to develop and extend this idea from a somewhat different perspective. In doing so, I offer an alternative way of formalizing the idea that morality is modest about the weight of moral reasons in this way, thereby making more explicit (...) the connections between this thesis and similar issues in the epistemic sphere. In addition, I discuss how these ideas can transform our thinking about familiar questions in ethics such as the nature of self-effacement, the significance of reflective endorsement, the weight that moral reasons ought to be given in all things consideration, and the plausibility of “indirect” moral theories. Finally, I show that these ideas are compatible even with pictures of morality – such as Kant’s – on which morality might seem to anything but modest about its own importance. In doing so, I stress that it is possible to see morality as modest about the weight of specifically moral reasons, while also seeing all practical reasons as grounded in morality more indirectly – namely, by seeing morality as determining the weight that both moral and non-moral considerations deserve to have in all things considered deliberation. (shrink)

The present study aimed to integrate findings from technology acceptance research with research on applicant reactions to new technology for the emerging selection procedure of asynchronous video interviewing. One hundred six volunteers experienced asynchronous video interviewing and filled out several questionnaires including one on the applicants’ personalities. In line with previous technology acceptance research, the data revealed that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use predicted attitudes toward asynchronous video interviewing. Furthermore, openness revealed to moderate the relation between perceived usefulness (...) and attitudes toward this particular selection technology. No significant effects revealed for computer self-efficacy, job interview self-efficacy, extraversion, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

In this article I defend John Dewey's use of the concept of "culture" in light of his anthropological sources and suggest that this cultural turn has much to teach contemporary scholars. Contrary to critics, I argue that Dewey's reconstructive aims are indeed well served by "culture" as a term for the complex set of symbolic and material resources shaping habit. Common misreadings of Dewey could be avoided by a better understanding of this anthropological appropriation; moreover, Dewey's emphasis on culture should (...) caution neuropragmatists against reductively scientistic models of human experience. I conclude, finally, with a call for democratic theorists today to engage with Dewey's later, anthropologically-informed writings. (shrink)

The foregoing considerations support the conjecture that prototypes are semi-compositional in the sense that there exist unboundedly many combinations of nouns with non-exceptional adjectives, which satisfy the rule default-to-prototype and hence are compositional. Presumably there also exist unboundedly many combinations of nouns with exceptional adjectives, which violate DP and hence are non-compositional. An analysis of the connection between productivity and compositionality has been suggested by Robbins. He argues that, for the explanation of productivity, one need not assume that conceptual meanings (...) always compose—it is enough that they compose in infinitely many cases. Since semi-compositionality entails the existence of unboundedly many non-compositional cases, non-compositionality cannot be dealt away with a finite list of idiomatic exceptions, but is a genuine feature of prototype semantics in natural language. (shrink)

When Bernard Williams died in June 2003, the obituary in The Times said that “he will be remembered as the most brilliant and most important British moral philosopher of his time”. It goes on to make clear that Williams was far from the dry, awkward, detached academic philosopher of caricature. -/- Born in Essex in 1929, Williams had an extraordinary and, in some respects, glamorous life. He not only enjoyed a stellar academic career – holding a series of distinguished posts (...) at Oxford, UCL, Cambridge and Berkeley – but was also a public figure in British political and cultural life. He played, for example, a leading role in several high profile government committees and reports, and served for almost two decades on the board of the English National Opera. He had, moreover, an easy confidence and charm, a lucidity of expression, and a sharp and, at times, acerbic wit (which could alarm both friends and foes alike). -/- Although these achievements and qualities are impressive, what he will be remembered for chiefly is his significant contribution to philosophy, which spanned a wide spectrum of topics. It is in the field of ethics, in particular, that his contributions are of the most lasting importance. And yet there is a real sense in which he remains a rather enigmatic figure – and the interpretation of his work continues to be a matter of considerable debate.... (shrink)

This book takes the debate about the rationality of the transition to ethical life in Kierkegaard’s thought in a significantly new direction. Connecting the field of Kierkegaard studies with the meta-ethical debate about practical reasons, and engaging with Alasdair MacIntyre’s and Bernard Williams’ thought, it explores the rationality of the choices for ethical life and Christian existence. Defending a so-called ‘internalist’ understanding of practical reasons, Compaijen argues that previous attempts to defend Kierkegaard against MacIntyre’s charge of irrationality have failed. He (...) provides a thorough analysis of such fundamental topics as becoming oneself, the ideal of objectivity in ethics and religion, the importance of the imagination, the power and limits of philosophical argument, and the relation between grace and nature. This book will be of great interest to Kierkegaard scholars in philosophy and theology, and, more generally, to anyone fascinated by the rationality of the transition to ethical life and the choice to accept Christianity. (shrink)

Two concepts of field of view are spelled out, the ordinary concept defined by the dictionary and the technical concept devised by Gibson and put to work in his ecological account of visual perceiving. The dictionaryís concept refers to an area of the environment taken from a particular viewpoint; from this viewpoint, there are some objects visible throughout the geographical area constituting the corresponding field of view. The technical concept refers to the total large solid angle of light (...) that projects to an animalís point of observation and is registrable by its ocular system. Consisting of photic energy, a Gibsonian field of view is neither a kind of experience nor a part of the ecological environment, although a field of view instantiates stimulus information specifying properties of the environment or animal and makes visual experience possible. Being a portion of the light by which we see the environment and ourselves, a field of view may not be itself a possible object of experience ó if Gibsonís account of visual perceiving is on the right track. Our visual system picks up features of the light that makes up our successive fields of view, but we thereby have visual perceptual awareness of what these photic features are nomically specific to, not of the features themselves. A concept of stream of view may be preferable to a concept of field of view, for a perceiver is typically moving, rather than occupying a point of observation. (shrink)

The fall of the Soviet Union is analysed in conceptual terms, drawing on Reinhart Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte. The author seeks to interpret the instrumental role of the concepts perestrojka, glasnost´, reform, revolution, socialist pluralism, and acceleration in the Soviet collapse. The semantics and pragmatics are related to a wider intellectual and political context, and the conceptual perspective is used to help explain the progress of events. The author argues that the common notion of the reform policy concepts as clichés is not (...) valid. (shrink)

The author proposes a method of verification for moral statements. (staff).

This paper addresses the question whether the past couple of decades of formal research in belief revision offers evidence of a new psychologism in logic. In the first part I examine five potential arguments in favour of this thesis and find them all wanting. In the second part of the paper I argue that belief revision research has climbed up a hierarchy of models for the change of doxastic states that appear to be clearly normative at the bottom, but are (...) more amenable to an empirical-descriptive interpretation on higher levels. I conclude that this observation might offer a foothold for the thesis that there is a new psychologism in logic. (shrink)

The volume focuses on a wide range of thinkers, including Iris Murdoch on truth and art, Stanley Cavell on tragedy, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault on "the death of the author," and Kendall Walton on fearing fictions. Also included is a consideration of the fifteenth-century Japanese playwright and drama teacher Zeami Motokiyo, the founding father of Noh theather.

Long after its alleged demise, phlogiston was still presented, discussed and defended by leading chemists. Even some of the leading proponents of the new chemistry admitted its ‘absolute existence’. We demonstrate that what was defended under the title ‘phlogiston’ was no longer a particular hypothesis about combustion and respiration. Rather, it was a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions and the empirical practices associated with them. Lavoisier's gravimetric reduction, in the eyes of the phlogistians, annihilated the autonomy of chemistry together (...) with its peculiar concepts of chemical substance and quality, chemical process and chemical affinity. The defence of phlogiston was the defence of a distinctly chemical conception of matter and its appearances, a conception which reflected the chemist's acquaintance with details and particularities of substances, properties and processes and his skills of adducing causal relations from the interplay between their complexity and uniformity. (shrink)

Scientific knowledge systems function as effective and specialized apparatus for formulating, analyzing and solving scientific problems. In science, problems become internal parts of the knowledge systems; thus they acquire new forms and properties in comparison with common-sense problems. Definite theoretical structures connected with problems and questions appear in the theory. Among them are erotetic expressions and languages, calculi and algebras of problems. On the basis of the structure-nominative reconstruction of a theory, the unified treatment of these structures is given. Methods (...) of the theory of named sets are used in the logical analysis of problems and their systems. As a consequence a new formalized model of the problem part of theory is constructed. (shrink)

Problems of practical reasoning often arise as the result of a clash between two different points of view. What do we mean when we say that while from the point of view of prudence there is no reason to rescue one's drowning enemy, from the point of view of morality there is reason to do so? In this essay we examine how the idiom of points of view arises in practical discourse, and offer a (...) clarification of it. We will be particularly concerned with a common argument for assigning a privileged status to the moral point of view, an argument which can be seen to be fallacious once certain features of Judgments made from a point of view are clearly discerned. (shrink)

– Foundation: Probabilistic Confirmation (c) from a Logical POV ∗ cph, eq as a “relevant” quantitative generalization of pe  hq ∗ cph, eq, so understood, is not Prpe  hq or Prph | eq, etc. ∗ cph, eq is something akin (ordinally) to the likelihood ratio..

This paper argues that ability to do otherwise (in the compatibilist sense) at the moment of initiation of action is a necessary condition of being able to act at all. If the argument is correct, it shows that Harry Frankfurt never provided a genuine counterexample to the 'principles of alternative possibilities' in his 1969 paper ‘Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility’. The paper was written without knowledge of Frankfurt's paper.

This chapter contains sections titled: Galilean Transformations and Galilean Invariants A Brief Preliminary: Why Worry? Lorentz Invariance: Collapse Theories Lorentz Invariance: Hyperplane Dependence Lorentz Invariance: Non‐Collapse Theories Choose Your Poison.

Recently we proposed the linguistic Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is called quantum language or measurement theory. This theory is valid for both quantum and classical systems. Thus, we think that quantum language is one of the most powerful scientific theories, like statistics, and thus, it is the scientific completion (i.e., the destination) of dualistic idealism. If so, we can introduce the concept “progress” in the dualistic idealism. For example, we can assert that [Plato → Descartes → Kant → (...) Wittgenstein → quantum language], where [“X” → “Y”] means that “Y” is more like quantum language than “X”. In this paper, we will study the problem of universals from the perspective of quantum language (i.e., from the scientific perspective of ignoring any religious perspective). And we can be confident of the progress of both of the two time series [Plato → Anselmus → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language] and [Descartes → Thomas Aquinas → quantum language] in dualistic idealism. The reader may find it surprising that Scholastic philosophy is more scientific than Cartesian-Kantian philosophy. However, this is because Descartes gave up the pursuit of “universals” and presented dualism as a visible “mind-matter dualism” so that it could be familiar to the general public. This made the Cartesian-Kantian philosophy socially successful, but unscientific. The problem of universals has not always been clear in the long history of philosophy. The reader should be convinced that the reason is that the problem of universals has been discussed in an incomplete non-scientific dualism to this day. (shrink)

A. W. Moore argues in this bold and unusual book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude. 'imaginative, original, and ambitious' Robert Brandom, Times Literary Supplement.

The religious and spiritual aspects of Wittgenstein, his understanding of ‘das mystiche’ and his philosophy understood against the background of German mysticism has been commented on by authors to...

This book seeks to arrive at a better understanding of the relationships between the objective and subjective aspects of time. It discusses the existence of fluent time, a controversial concept in many areas, from philosophy to physics. Fluent time is understood as directional time with a past, a present and a future. We experience fluent time in our lives and we adopt a temporal perspective in our ways of knowing and acting. Nevertheless, the existence of fluent time has been debated (...) for both philosophical and scientific reasons, thus creating a rift between the subjective and objective aspects of time. Starting from the basic notion of points of view, or perspectives, this book explores the relationships between objective or external time, as it has been conceptualized by science, and subjective or internal time, which is involved in our lived experiences. It establishes a general framework encompassing the nature, structure and mode of existence of points of view, in which the objective and subjective aspects of time can be integrated. The book mainly addresses researchers and postgraduates in philosophy and logic. Additionally, it offers inspiration for physicists and computer scientists involved in the modeling and simulation of complex behaviors for which the representation of internal time should be considered together with the notion of objective, external time. (shrink)

This paper examines the apparent tension in Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem between his commitment to convergence in ideal desires and his acceptance of agentrelative reasons, particularly those grounded in first-personal perspectives like the parent-child relationship. While Smith maintains that ideal desires are agent-invariant and converge on what is universally desirable, he also endorses agent-relative reasons that imply agent-centered normative commitments. I argue that resolving this tension requires rethinking convergence. Specifically, I propose extending the first-personal („de se“) nature of agent-relative (...) reasons to the objects of convergence, which I term „de se aims.“ By recognizing these aims as value bearers, we can reconcile agentrelativity with the universality of desirability, preserving Smith’s broader metaethical commitments. The proposal avoids the pitfalls of agent-relative value theories and illuminates the role of perspective-dependent aims in systematic justification. (shrink)

This article looks at the relevance of the concept of self-determination to psychiatric patients by studying the existence, importance and manifestations of self-determination. The data were collected by interviewing long-term patients (n = 72) in one mental health care organization, which included a psychiatric hospital and an outpatient department. Self-determination was defined in terms of the right to decision-making, the right to information, the right of consent, the right to refuse treatment, and the right to be heard and taken into (...) account. It was found that, with the exception of the right to refuse and consent, these rights are indeed present in the practice of psychiatric nursing and that they are relevant and important to psychiatric patients. The patients typically gave ethical, practical and legal reasons for a psychiatric patient's right to self-determination. The main reasons why psychiatric patients said they lacked the right to self-determination were illness and staff authority. Recommendations for educational, clinical and methodological implications for the future in nursing are discussed. (shrink)

In his rich and provocative paper, Peter Carruthers announces two related theses: (a) a positive thesis that “central cognition is sensory based, depending on the activation and deployment of sensory images of various sorts” (Carruthers 2013) and (b) a negative thesis that the “central mind does not contain any workspace within which goals, decisions, intentions, or non-sensory judgments can be active” (Carruthers 2013). These are striking claims suggesting that a natural view about cognition, namely that explicit theoretical reasoning involves (...) direct operations over beliefs, is wrong. Our beliefs, on this natural view, interact with each other to yield new beliefs. If Carruthers is right, beliefs have only an indirect or mediated influence in cognition with sensory states playing the direct role. I think it an important feature of Carruthers’ discussion that he draws support from work on the neural circuits and mechanisms that subserve these processes. In what follows, I want to regis. (shrink)

In the paper we offer a logical explication of the frequently used, but rather vague, notion of point of view. We show that the concept of point of view prevents certain paradoxes from arising. A point of view is a means of partial characterisation of something. Thus nothing is a P and at the same time a non-P, because it is a P only relative to some point of view and a non-P (...) from another point of view. But there is a major, complicating factor involved in applying a logical method that is supposed to provide a formal and rigorous counterpart of the intuitively understood notion: ‘point of view’ is a homony-mous expression, and so there is not just one meaning that would explain points of view. Yet we propose a common scheme of the logical type of the entities denoted by the term ‘point of view’. It is an empirical function: when applied to the viewed object in question, it results in a evaluating proposition about the object. If there is an agent applying the criterion, the result is the agent’s attitude to the respective object. The paper is organised into two parts. In Part I we first adduce and analyse various examples of typical cases of applying a point of view to prevent paradox. These cases are examined according to the type of the viewed object: a) the viewed object is an individual and b) the viewed object is a property or an office. In Part II we then show that the method described in Part I can be applied also to the analyses of agents’ attitudes. We thus explain how an agent can believe of something that it is a P and at the same time a non-P: the agent applies different viewpoint criteria to the viewed object. The inversion of perspective consisting in the perspective shifting from the believer on to the reporter in the case of attitudes de re, and from the reporter to the believer in the case of attitudes de dicto, is also analyzed. We show that there is no smooth logical traffic back and forth between such attitudes and prove that they are not equivalent. By way of conclusion, we explicate the notion of conceptual point of view and analyze cases of viewpoints given by conceptual distinction. We show, finally, that the proposed scheme of the type of point of view can be preserved, this time, however, in its extensional version. (shrink)

This contribution is a report of a two months' participant observation in a Dutch hospice. The goal of the observation was to gain an overview of moral decisions in a hospice in which euthanasia, a tolerated practice in the Netherlands, is not accepted as an option. In an introduction, the development of palliative care in the Netherlands will be briefly presented. Subsequently, various moral decisions that were taken during the participant observation are presented and analysed by means of case reports. (...) Attention is especially drawn to decisions that directly or indirectly relate to euthanasia. These moral decisions will be clarified in the light of the philosophy behind the concept of palliative care as it has evolved since the foundation of St Christopher's Hospice, London in 1967. (shrink)

What does the idea of taking 'the point of view of the universe' tell us about ethics? Lazari-Radek and Singer defend objectivism in ethics, and hedonistic utilitarianism, following Henry Sidgwick's lead. They explore how to justify an ethical theory; conflicts of self-interest and universal benevolence; and whether we should discount the future.

In this article, we would like to discuss some aspects of a theoretical framework for Artificial Life, focusing on the problem of an explicit definition of living systems useful for an effective artificial construction of them. The limits of a descriptive approach will be critically discussed, and a constructive (synthetic) approach will be proposed on the basis of the autopoietic theory of Maturana and Varela. -/- .

The Philosophy of Information is a new area of research at the intersection of philosophy and computer science [4]. It concerns (a) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics (especially computation), utilization (especially computer ethics) and sciences; and (b) the elaboration and application of computational and information-theoretic methodologies to philosophical problems. Past work by members of our group has concentrated on (a), and in this paper we explore (b). In a nutshell, we (...) ask what computer science can do for philosophy, rather than what the latter can do for the former. -/- . (shrink)

Points of view are a central phenomenon in human cognition. Although the concept of point of view is ambiguous, there exist common elements in different notions. A point of view is a certain way to look at things around us. In conceptual points of view, things are looked at or interpreted through conceptual lenses. Conceptual points of view are important for epistemology, cognitive science, and philosophy of science. In this article, a new method (...) to formalize conceptual points of view is introduced. It is based on the conceptual space approach, where concepts are regions of multi-dimensional quality spaces. Points of view, as defined in this article, consist of a selection of relevant dimensions, referred to here as determinables, and of a certain supposition, referred to here as a theory, about the subject content. After considering some early efforts to formalize points of view, the notion of conceptual space is defined and explored. One concept of point of view is defined and developed in the framework of conceptual space, and a new logic for points of view is also outlined. The problem of mind–body correlation is discussed as an example of the application of the notion of points of view. To conclude, the meaning and applications of the new concepts and tools developed in the article are discussed. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Language and Cognition - An Interdisciplinary Journal of Language and Cognitive Science Jahrgang: 5 Heft: 4 Seiten: 313-343.