This title invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others.

Keine ausführliche Beschreibung für "Der (un)teilbare Geist" verfügbar.

Psychologists, economists, historians, computer scientists, sociologists, philosophers, and legal scholars discuss when is deliberate ignorance a virtue, and what type of environment does it require.

From early on, comparative philosophy has had on offer a high variety of goals, approaches and methodologies. Such high variety is still today a trademark of the discipline, and it is not uncommon of representatives of one camp in comparative philosophy to think of those in other camps as not really being about ‘comparative philosophy’. Much of the disagreement arguably has to do with methodological problems related to the concept of comparison and with the widely prevailing but unwarranted assumption that (...) comparative philosophy should be about comparing ‘culturally different philosophies’. This paper seeks to problematize this assumption by clarifying conceptually the notions of ‘comparative philosophy’ and of ‘comparison’, by showing the prevalence of the assumption in recent second-order discussions of methodology in comparative philosophy and its restraining implications in a randomly selected contribution of ‘Chinese philosophy’. At the end, a rallying call for a (self-)critical comparative philosophy is issued. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that the intentional is normative. (This claim is the analogue, within the philosophy of mind, of the claim that is often made within the philosophy of language, that meaning is normative.) But what exactly does this claim mean? And what reason is there for believing it? In this paper, I shall first try to clarify the content of the claim that the intentional is normative. Then I shall examine a number of the arguments that philosophers have (...) advanced for this claim (and for the parallel claim that meaning is normative). As we shall see, many of these arguments are unsuccessful. However, I shall close by giving a sketch of what may be a successful argument for this claim. (shrink)

In this book, renowned philosopher Ralph McInerny sets out to review what Thomas meant by the phrase and to defend a robust understanding of Thomas's teaching on the subject.

The concepts of the innateness, universality, species-specificity, and autonomy of the human language capacity have had an extreme impact on the psycholinguistic debate for over thirty years. These concepts are evaluated from several neurobiological perspectives, with an emphasis on the emergence of language and its decay due to brain lesion and progressive brain disease.Evidence of perceptuomotor homologies and preadaptations for human language in nonhuman primates suggests a gradual emergence of language during hominid evolution. Regarding ontogeny, the innate component of language (...) capacity is likely to be polygenic and shared with other developmental domains. Dissociations between verbal and nonverbal development are probably rooted in the perceptuomotor specializations of neural substrates rather than the autonomy of a grammar module. Aphasiologicaldata often assumed to suggest modular linguistic subsystems can be accounted for in terms of a neurofunctional model incorporating perceptuomotor-based regional specializationsand distributivity of representations. Thus, dissociations between grammatical functors and content words are due to different conditions of acquisition and resulting differences in neural representation. Human brains are characterized by multifactorial interindividual variability, and strict universality of functional organization is biologically unrealistic.A theoretical alternative is proposed according to which (1) linguistic specialization of brain areas is due to epigenetic and probabilistic maturational events, not to genetic ”hard-wiring,” and (2) linguistic knowledge is neurally represented in distributed cell assemblies whose topography reflects the perceptuomotor modalities involved in the acquisition and use of a given item of knowledge. (shrink)

Mit beeindruckender Geschwindigkeit hat der Transhumanismus in akademischen Kreisen und den Medien immer mehr Aufmerksamkeit gewonnen. Er wird von angesehenen Denkern unterstützt. Die ihm zugrunde liegende Triebkraft, Technologie zum größtmöglichen Nutzen der Menschen zu nutzen, hat offenbar ihren Reiz. Dennoch begegnet ein beachtlicher Teil der Menschen dem Transhumanismus mit Skepsis, Abneigung, sogar Verachtung. Ein verwirrendes Phänomen.

Spirituality emerges in the function of culture to reinforce and yet redirect our genetic heritage. Our genes urge us to be concerned only for our own welfare, which can turn us to evil behaviors. Our religious traditions urge us to engage in behaviors of transkin altruism. These religious traditions have been selected for in the processes of natural selection. The challenge to spirituality is to discern the fundamental dynamics of the evolutionary processes, both genetic and cultural, that have created us (...) and to direct our behaviors in ways that can be beneficial to the entire natural system. Reason is not enough; we must also cultivate spiritual discernment in order to perceive the true nature of our situation and the best responses that are called for. The religious communities have the major responsibility for cultivating the spirituality that can achieve the most adequate discernment. (shrink)

This response reinforces the major themes of our target article. The impact of key methodological variables should not be taken for granted. Rather, we suggest grounding experimental practices in empirical evidence. If no evidence is available, decisions about design and implementation ought to be subjected to systematic experimentation. In other words, we argue against empirically blind conventions and against methodological choices based on beliefs, habits, or rituals. Our approach will neither inhibit methodological diversity nor constrain experimental creativity. More likely, it (...) will promote both goals. (shrink)

Philosophers have long distinguished between practical and theoretical rationality. The first section of this chapter begins by discussing the ways in which this distinction was drawn by Aristotle and Kant; then it sketches what seems to be the general consensus today about how, at least roughly, the distinction should be drawn. The rest of this chapter explores what practical and theoretical rationality have in common: in the second section, several parallels between practical and theoretical rationality are outlined, and it is (...) argued that these parallels make it plausible that a unifying account of rationality can be given. Finally, in the third section, a number of such unifying accounts of practical and theoretical rationality are surveyed. These include accounts that are inspired in various ways by Hume and by the results of formal decision theory, as well as views that appeal to reasons and to the distinctive value of correct or appropriate attitudes. (shrink)

In this reflection piece, Ralph Johnson provides an account of the development of informal logic and how it intersected with the Critical Thinking Movement. Section I is an account of the origins of what Johnson calls the “Informal Logic Initiative.” Section II discusses how the Informal Logic Initiative connected with the Critical Thinking Movement at the Sonoma State University Conferences starting in 1981. Section III discusses the relationship between logic and critical thinking. Section IV describes “The Network Problem,” which (...) emerged for Johnson in the mid-1980s – largely as a result of his experiences at critical thinking conferences, especially the Sonoma State conference. Section V expresses some concerns about the current status of critical thinking as an educational idea and about the Critical Thinking Movement. (shrink)

This essay gives a new interpretation of some of the central ethical doctrines of Bishop Butler's Sermons -- in particular, of his claim that a review of the empirical facts of human nature shows that we have "an obligation to the practice of virtue", and of the precise claims that he makes about the relations between morality and self-interest.

Many philosophers think that internalism supports a noncognitivist account of normative judgments, according to which these judgments do not count as genuine beliefs, but rather as non-cognitive states of some kind. Such noncognitivist accounts of normative judgments naturally accompany an expressivist account of the meaning of normative statements. This chapter considers the prospects of such an expressivist theory, taking as its paradigm the most recent theory of Allan Gibbard. It is argued that this theory is vulnerable to a strengthened form (...) of the objection that P. T. Geach derived from the work of Frege. This makes it plausible that expressivist accounts face insuperable problems, and so that both expressivism and non-cognitivism should be rejected. (shrink)

Ralph D. Ellis interviewed by Samuel Maruszewski / Ralph D. Ellis, one of the strongest advocates of the enactivist approach to consciousness and cognitive theory, began his academic career as a phenomenologist, earning a Ph.D. at Duquesne University under Andre Schuwer, John Sallis and Amedeo Giorgi, and has taught at Clark Atlanta University since 1985. He subsequently received a post-doctoral M.S. in Public Affairs at Georgia State University, and worked also as a social worker in both Pittsburgh and (...) Atlanta. Partly as a result of those experiences, as well as being a life-long practitioner of Gene Gendlin’s focusing method, he gravitated toward emotion research and the intersection of philosophy, psychology and the brain sciences from the enactivist perspective, arguing that action, as opposed to mere reaction, has to be emotionally motivated, and that the understanding of all modalities of consciousness should include that perspective. The author of many books and articles on these topics, he is interested in integrating the social sciences with phenomenology, ethics, and philosophy of mind. He is now trying to integrate enactive consciousness theory with moral and social philosophy, with relevance to our current world-wide crisis of internet disinformation. The Moral Psychology of Internal Conflict (Cambridge University Press 2018) is an attempted beginning in that direction. His latest book, Action, Embodied Mind, and Life-World (SUNY Press 2022) is a continuation of that project. His various books in these areas are listed at the Ralph D. Ellis page of Amazon. (shrink)