The present study applies a new method for investigating dynamic unconscious processes. The method consists of selection of words from patient interview and test protocols that in the clinicians' judgments capture the patients' conscious symptom experience and the hypothetical unconscious conflict related to the symptom, subliminal and supraliminal presentation of these words, signal analysis of event-related potentials obtained to the word presentations. Eight phobics and three patients suffering from pathological grief reactions served as subjects. A time-frequency ERP analysis revealed that (...) subjects' ERPs classified the unconscious conflict words better subliminally than supraliminally, while the reverse was true for the conscious symptom words = 2.82, p = .011). The relationship between frequency and latency revealed a similar mirror image pattern for the unconscious conflict and conscious symptom words . This method demonstrated that objective, brain-based evidence for unconscious conflict can be obtained. (shrink)

We lay groundwork for applying ethnographic methods in philosophy of science. We frame our analysis in terms of two tasks: to identify the benefits of an ethnographic approach in philosophy of science and to structure an ethnographic approach for philosophical investigation best adapted to provide information relevant to philosophical interests and epistemic values. To this end, we advocate for a purpose-guided form of cognitive ethnography that mediates between the explanatory and normative interests of philosophy of science, while maintaining openness and (...) independence when framing such an investigation to achieve robust unbiased results. (shrink)

During the decades following the publication of Darwin's Origin of species in 1859, religious belief in England and in particular the Church of England experienced some of the most intense criticism in its history. The early 1860s saw the appearance of Lyell's Evidence of the antiquity of man , Tylor's research on the early history of mankind , Renan's Vie de Jésus , Pius IX's encyclical, Quanta cura, and the accompanying Syllabus errarum, John Henry Newman's Apologia , and Swinburne's notorious (...) Atalanta in Calydon ; it was in this period also that Arthur Stanley was appointed Dean of Westminster, and that Bills were introduced in Parliament to amend or repeal the ‘Test Acts’ as they affected universities. They were the years that witnessed Lyell present the case for geology at the British Association at Bath , the first meeting of the X-Club , and the award of the Royal Society's Copley Medal to Charles Darwin. These were the years in which, as Owen Chadwick has put it, ‘the controversy between “science” and “religion” took fire’. (shrink)

W. J. Mander presents the first ever synoptic history of British Idealism, the school of thought which dominated English-language philosophy from the 1860s to the early 20th century. He restores to its proper place this neglected period of philosophy, introducing the exponents of Idealism and explaining its distinctive concepts and doctrines.

What are the limits of Left Wittgensteinianism's point- and need-based account of conceptual change? Based upon Wittgenstein's account of certainty and the riverbed analogy for conceptual change in On Certainty, the question is raised whether Queloz and Cueni's redevelopment of Left Wittgensteinianism can account for the multiplicitous forms of change these concepts are subject to. I argue that Left Wittgensteinianism can only partially do so, because it overemphasises the role of criticism-driven conceptual change, due to its focus on the reason-based (...) contingency of the practices of a local ‘we’. In response, it is argued that Left Wittgensteinianism should be fortified with (i) gradual changes to concepts' sociocultural constraints that concept-users are unaware of and (ii) evolutionary and environmental changes to the biological determinants of natural constraints of conceptual cores. In the end, there are conceptual practices like holding for certain that are generally, and fully contingent, but simultaneously inevitable not only for ‘us’ but also for many other delimitations of ‘we’. Subsequently, the compatibility of this Wittgensteinian account of conceptual change with pragmatic genealogy is discussed. It is concluded that thinking about conceptual changes to practices cannot be about the possibility of criticism alone nor succeed without the inclusion thereof. (shrink)

This paper argues that a strong thesis of divine providence, whereby God is understood as in complete control of all things, entails pantheism, the thesis that the universe is not ontologically distinct from God. In normal discourse, we distinguish a plan from, on the one hand, the state of affairs which realizes that plan—its execution or expression—and, on the other hand, the person or group whose plan it is. However, with respect to an omnipotent God who displays complete providence, neither (...) of these two distinctions holds. We cannot separate person from plan, or plan from world, and in consequence, neither can we separate person from world, ergo pantheism. Accordingly, the argument of this paper comes in two parts maintaining, first, the impossibility of distinguishing between God’s plan and its execution and, second, the impossibility of distinguishing God himself from his plan. (shrink)

W. J. Mander presents a history of metaphysics in nineteenth-century Britain. He traces the story of the development and interplay of three great schools of thought, the agnostics, the empiricists, and the idealists, and their different responses to the idea of an ultimate but unknowable way that things really are in themselves.

In Search of a Political Philosophy is an analysis of the three democratic `isms'--conservatism, liberalism, and socialism--and of the distinct nature of the all-consuming ideology of Marxist communism. W. J. Stankiewicz is concerned with the conscious and unconscious assumptions of the proponents and followers of each ideology, and those of their theoreticians and critics. Stankiewicz examines the norms by which political ideologies are characterized, and discusses which of these are given precedence. He provides an analysis of how each ideology views (...) such issues as freedom and restraint, responsibility, equality, justice, power, authority, property, human nature and happiness. He also examines the areas of ideological contiguity and mutual influences, the sources of ideological incomprehension in our society, and the forces that split Western societies. In Search of a Political Philosophy takes issue with the positions of some of our leading political theorists and represents an original contribution to political philosophy in its own right. It makes a stimulating and challenging contribution to the areas of politics, political philosophy, ethics, political and social theory, the history of political thought, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

Op basis van de zgn. wijsbegeerte der wetsidee van Dooyeweerd (1894-1977) bouwt de auteur een christelijke, wijsgerige antropologie.

Knowledge about moral development and elderly persons is very limited. A hermeneutical interpretative study was conducted with healthy elderly persons (n = 20) in order to explore and describe their moral orientation based on the paradigms of justice (Kohlberg) and care (Gilligan). The types of moral reasoning, dominance, alignment and orientation were determined. All but one participant included both types of reasoning when discussing an ethical conflict. None of the men’s moral reasoning was dominated by caring, but justice dominated the (...) reasoning of four women. The implications for ethical decision-making and future research are discussed. (shrink)

What precisely, W. J. T. Mitchell asks, are pictures (and theories of pictures) doing now, in the late twentieth century, when the power of the visual is said to be greater than ever before, and the "pictorial turn" supplants the "linguistic turn" in the study of culture? This book by one of America's leading theorists of visual representation offers a rich account of the interplay between the visible and the readable across culture, from literature to visual art to the mass (...) media. (shrink)

The paper argues that Donnellan’s distinction between the referential and attributive uses of definite descriptions, whilst a genuine feature of language, does not count against Russell’s Theory of Descriptions where Russell’s theory is regarded as a theory of the semantics of descriptions and not the pragmatics of individual uses on a particular occasion. The argument I shall present is simple but decisive and ought to resolve once and for all the debate about the significance of Donnellan’s distinction for Russell’s theory, (...) provided of course that Russell’s theory really does concern the semantics of definite descriptions rather than their use on particular occasions. (shrink)

W. J. Mander examines the nature of idealist ethics, that is to say, the form and content of ethical belief most typically adopted by philosophical idealists. His inquiry has two aims. The first is historical: from the record of past philosophy, Mander demonstrates that there exists a discernible idealist approach to moral philosophy; a tradition of 'idealist ethics', and examines its characteristic marks and varieties. The second aim is apologetic. He argues that such idealist ethics offers an attractive way of (...) looking at moral questions and that it has much to contribute to contemporary discussion. In particular he argues that Idealist ethics have the power to cut through the sterile opposition between moral realism and moral anti-realism. To be an idealist is precisely to hold that the universe is so constituted that things are real if and only if they are ideal; to hold that uncovering in something the work of mind makes it more not less significant. (shrink)