Until recently, it was assumed that co-representation of others’ actions, an essential part in joint action, is biologically tuned. However, research demonstrated that we also simulate actions of non-biological interaction partners under certain conditions. In the present study, we investigated whether perceived intentionality or perspective taking is the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon. Participants saw a short video fragment of a non-biological agent as main character. The movements of this agent were either described as intentional or as unintentional. Furthermore, participants (...) were instructed to either take the perspective of this non-biological agent or not. Results show that perspective taking and perceived intentionality both lead to action co-representation of non-biological actions. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed. (shrink)

Fully embracing one's embodied suffering, rather than denying it or mentally explaining it away, can open an individual to a broader sense of interbeing, to the ability to endure, survive, and move through pain and toward a deeper sense of compassion, peace, joy, and liberation. The self benefits from exploring interbeing using an environmental metaphor to consider the human body: the body as terroir. Terroir is analogous to the specific microclimate and natural environment in which quality wine is produced. Appreciation (...) of oneself as a unique mobile terroir can reveal estranged aspects of the host/guest relationship of interbeing within the individual body/self. Perhaps this is what those who practice interbeing in the real world have come to understand. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 261-264, October 2022. According to Jean Moritz Müller's The world-directedness of emotional feeling, the reason why emotions do not apprehend or disclose value is that one cannot apprehend what one has already apprehended: the value in question, he claims, is apprehended prior to the emotional feeling. Emotions, then, should not be conceived as apprehending value since they already presuppose awareness of it. I can be acquainted with a fact without feeling aware of the (...) meaning it holds. Yet I argue that only an emotional reaction actually registers value or disvalue. My value-responsive concept of emotion is one that Müller rejects. Yet I contend that to recognize the loss of a beloved person, for instance, just is to feel the emotion of grief. (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 4, Page 279-287, October 2022. This article clarifies and defends my view of emotional feeling in response to the commentaries by Ronnie de Sousa, Rick Furtak, Agnes Moors, Kevin Mulligan, Rainer Reisenzein and Philipp Schmidt. The issues addressed concern my critique of the axiological receptivity view, my proposed alternative, i.e. the position-taking view, as well as my methodological commitments.

Enaction, as put forward by Varela and defended by other thinkers (notably Alva Noë, 2004; Susan Hurley, 2006; and Kevin O’Regan, 1992), departs from traditional accounts that treat mental processes (like perception, reasoning, and action) as discrete, independent processes that are causally related in a sequen- tial fashion. According to the main claim of the enactive approach, which Thompson seems to fully endorse, perceptual awareness is taken to be a skill-based activity. Our perceptual contact with the world, according to the (...) enactionists, is not mediated by representations but is enacted, and the notion of representation, belonging to the classic computational paradigm, has no place in this alternative approach. Though Thompson does not pronounce directly on the issue of representationalism, he is most definitely keeping the company of anti-representationalists, and in that context it is not unreasonable to take his silence for consent. In this paper, we will argue that the enactive approach to imagery is unworkable unless it makes appeal to representations, understood in a particular way. Not understood as pictures, to be sure. Or sentences for that matter. But those aren’t the only options. (shrink)

The paper gives a physicist's view on the framework of branching space-time, 385--434). Branching models are constructed from physical state assignments. The models are then employed to give a formal semantics for the modal operators ``possibly'' and ``necessarily'' and for the counterfactual conditional. The resulting formal language can be used to analyze quantum correlation experiments. As an application sketch, Stapp's premises LOC1 and LOC2 from his purported proof of non-locality, 300--304) are analyzed.

This book presents the first collection of essays on the philosophy of Ueda Shizuteru in a Western language. Ueda, the last living member of the Kyoto school, has fostered the East-West dialogue in all his works and has helped to open up the Western image of philosophy by engaging the Zen tradition. The book reflects this particular trait of Ueda’s philosophy, but it also covers all thematic fields of his writings. Contributions from both young and established scholars and experts from (...) Japan, Europe and the U.S. make this a unique introduction to and reception of Ueda’s philosophy. Readers will discover discussions of mysticism in the East and West, and consideration of modern philosophy topics including self-awareness, nature and poetic language. The book also presents a focussed look at language and nothingness, considering silence and nihilism. Chapters allow the reader to understand the timeliness of a thinking that mediates and transcends the dichotomy of East and West. This volume will appeal not only to scholars of Nishida, Japanese philosophy, mysticism and religious experience in Japan, but also to scholars of Western philosophy, especially those interested in Meister Eckhart, Martin Heidegger and Martin Buber. It makes an ideal introduction to Zen philosophy and presents important contributions to scholarship on language and experience. (shrink)

There are unusual challenges in ethics for RAS. Perhaps the issue can best be summarised as needing to consider “technically informed ethics”. The technology of RAS raises issues that have an ethical dimension, and perhaps uniquely so due to the possibility of moving human decision-making which is implicitly ethically informed to computer systems. Further, if seeking solutions to these problems – ethically aligned design, to use the IEEE’s terminology – then the solutions must be technically meaningful, capable of realisation, capable (...) of assurance, and suitable as a basis for regulation. Thus, ethics for RAS is a rich, complex multi-disciplinary concern, and perhaps more complex than many other ethical issues facing society today. It is also fast-moving. This paper has endeavoured to give an accessible introduction to some of the key issues, noting that many of them are quite subtle, and it is not possible to do them full justice in such a short document. However, we have sought to counterbalance this by giving an extensive list of initiatives, standards, etc. that focus on ethics of RAS and AI, see Annex A. (shrink)

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

This paper summarizes the results from the first European Advanced Seminar in the Philosophy of the Life Sciences, which was held at the Brocher Foundation in Hermance (Switzerland) 6-10 September 2011. The Advanced Seminar brought together philosophers of the life sciences to discuss the topic of "Causation and Disease." The search for causes of disease in the biomedical sciences, we argue on the basis of the contributions to this conference, has not resulted in a simplification and unification of biomedical knowledge, (...) as once hoped for by philosophers of science, but rather in its "complexification.". (shrink)

The Special Composition Question asks under what conditions a plurality of objects form another, composite object. We propose a condition grounded in our scientific knowledge of physical reality, the essence of which is that objects form a composite object when and only when they are in a bound state – whence our Bound State Proposal. We provide a variety of reasons in favour of a mereological theory that accommodates our Proposal. We consider but reject another proposal, which is quantum-physical in (...) nature: the Entanglement Proposal. We close by responding to Teller’s ‘Suit Objection’. (shrink)

A partir de la reprise par Nietzsche des analyses de Paul Bourget dans les Essais de psychologie contemporaine, l'auteur analyse la notion de décadence telle qu'elle s'applique, selon Nietzsche, dans l'art conçu d'un point de vue psychologique et physiologique. De l'œuvre de Wagner, envisagée physiologiquement dans Le cas Wagner, l'analyse de Nietzsche glisse vers la personne du Maître. L'analyse de cette notion capitale reliée à certaines problématiques centrales de l'œuvre permet de préciser la pensée du dernier Nietzsche. Starting from Nietzsche's (...) rehandling Paul Bourget's analyses in the Essais de psychologie contemporaine, the author analyzes the concept of decadence as applied, according to Nietzsche, to art conceived from a psychological and physiological point of view. From Wagner's work, studied physiologically in The Wagner Case, Nietzsche's analysis slides towards the character and personality of the Master. The analysis of this major notion, linked as it is to some very essential problematics inherent to the work, enables one to study much more precisely the thought of the late Nietzsche. (shrink)

Una discussione della filosofia neoscolastica e della storiografia da essa ispirata, con particolare riferimento alla scuola milanese che si sviluppa nel contesto della Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. Agostino Gemelli, la Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica e la ricerca nel pensiero medievale del nucleo centrale di una philosophia perennis: rischio di una interpretazione pre-costituita del pensiero medievale, individuato come itinerario di ricostruzione di modelli di verità. Il progressivo dissolversi dell'immagine della scolastica come blocco omogeneo e compatto di dottrine culminanti nella filosofia (...) tomista, a favore di una visione sempre più articolata e complessa dei grandi temi e problemi teorici nati dal confronto diretto o indiretto con le massime tradizioni del pensiero classico, con i maestri arabi ed ebrei, con il mondo bizantino. In questa storia è fondamentale il ruolo di Sofia Vanni Rovighi , la sua fiducia nel continuo progresso della ragione e la sua interpretazione della philosophia perennis come idea regolatrice più che come filosofia storicamente determinata.A discussion concerning the so called filosofia neoscolastica and the historiography influenced by this theoretical tradition, with particular reference to the school that develops in Milano in the context of Catholic University del Sacro Cuore. Agostino Gemelli, the journal Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, looking in medieval thought for the primary core of a philosophia perennis and the consequent risk of a dogmatc interpretation of medieval thought, interpreted as itinerary for the reconstruction of models of truth. The progressive weakening of the image of the scholastic philosophy as an homogeneous and solid doctrinal piece, culminating in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, in favour of a more and more detailed and complex vision of the fundamental issues and theoretical problems born from a direct or indirect comparison with the great classical traditions, with the Arab and Jewish thinkers and with the Byzantine world. In this history is fundamental the thought of Sofia Vanni Rovighi, her confidence in the continuous growth of human reason and her interpretation of philosophia perennis as a regulative idea more than as an historically definite philosophy. (shrink)

This book was intended to familiarise the western world with the vastness and depth of Indian philosophy. Metrical translations of ancient hymns, Vedanta philosophy, reformist religious movements, an in-depth study of the doctrines of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa - strands of myriad thoughts blend seamlessly in this work of erudition. Dedicated to his `Indian Friends', the book is also rich in personal memories - of Dwarkanath Tagore and Raja Radhakanta Deva among others.

In the aftermath of the Aum case, various suggestions as to the causes of dangerous cult mentality, and possible measures for its prevention have been offered in the Japanese media, but it seems that a much more penetrating diagnosis is necessary than that thus far proffered. To merely lay blame to the person of Shoko Asahara, or the phenomenon of mind control, or an insensitivity, ineptitude, or lack of resources on the part of the Japanese police, is to grossly oversimplify (...) and objectify a problem which has complex roots within the structure of the very institutions and values which Japanese society regards as its greatest assets. (shrink)