Uses the thought of Wang Yang-ming, John Dewey, and Alfred North Whitehead to explain a more coherent theory of knowledge.

A translation of two untranslated epistolary exchanges of Wang Yangming, which provide a record of how he understood the doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action after 1521.

In responding to Harvey Lederman’s essay on the “unity of knowledge and action,” this essay takes up W ang Yangming’s 王陽明 writings on war to consider what Lederman calls Wang’s theoretical and therapeutic approaches to philosophy. Wang’s writings on his experiences in war provide a unique lens to think through the “unity of knowledge and action” as they point to several tensions within that idea. Battle is thus described both as an illustration of how (...) knowledge and action can be unified, but also, somewhat counterintuitively, as a sordid state of affairs that might be avoided altogether if knowledge and action were actually unified. I also show how Wang’s ethical reflections on war point to what I call Wang’s compartmentalized understanding of genuine knowledge, namely, when one has genuine knowledge of one relationship (e.g., loyalty to ruler) without genuine knowledge of another (e.g., filiality toward parents). (shrink)

With this book, Wang Yang-ming has been the subject of three full-scale volumes in English since 1976, the others being Julia Ching's To Acquire Wisdom and Wei-ming Tu's Neo-Confucian Thought in Action. Although there are a few older books and many articles on Wang, the recent surge of interest is long overdue for a philosopher whose influence in East Asia has been comparable roughly to that of Descartes in the West. Wang Yang-ming was a government official, a missionary of (...) Chinese high culture to barbarian tribesmen when exiled by the government, an exceptional general and military strategist, and above all a philosopher concerned to follow and teach the path to sageliness. Raised in a traditional Confucian home, Wang seriously pursued both taoism and Buddhism before returning to Confucianism as a path to sageliness that requires addressing dense social obligation. Because of his first-hand encounter with those other "taos," Wang made a fresh approach to Neo-Confucianism, which supplements the Confucian social orientation with taoist interests in nature and in something like metaphysics and also with a Buddhist interest in personal self-cultivation. (shrink)

Lederman makes a distinction between the _ben ti_ 本體 (“original natural condition”) of knowledge and action and the _gong fu_ 工夫 (“training”) of knowledge and action, associating “unity” with _ben ti_ and “joint advancement” with _gong fu_. This essay argues that both “unity” and “joint advancement” are used to describe the _ben ti_ of knowledge and action, and W ang Yangming 王陽明 emphasizes the unity of the _ben ti_ and _gong fu_ (...) of knowledge and action. Yangming’s doctrine of the _ben ti_ of knowledge and action is ultimately for practical potency and should not be reduced to a theoretical philosophy of the truth about knowledge and action. Yangming’s philosophy is for genuine knowledge of genuine knowledge and action. If Yangming’s philosophy is genuine, it must be characterized by the unity of knowledge and action. In other words, the appropriate methodology to read Yangming must be the unity of knowledge and action. (shrink)

In this work, Cua renders relatively inaccessible Chinese concepts into the categories and structures of Western ethical analysis, and in so doing, presents Wang Yang-ming as an ethical thinker worthy of contemporary consideration. There are four sections. The first outlines the problem: to pursue an understanding of the actuating force of moral learning as it is captured in Wang Yang-ming’s doctrine of “the unity of knowledge and action.” Reformulated in contemporary idiom, it becomes the unity of (...) prospective and retrospective moral knowledge. The author applies his familiarity with recent work in ethical theory to establish his questions and to bring structure to his analysis. In the second section, Cua tackles several of the core philosophical concepts, centering his discussion on li, frequently translated “principle,” but here rendered as “reason.” By exploring several of the binomial expressions of which li is a member, i.e., t’ien-li, tao-li, i-li, t’iao-li, Cua is able to register dimensions of li not previously noted, and, at the same time, to track some coherence among Wang’s more fundamental categories. There is an attempt, through representative selection, to let the original text speak for itself. (shrink)

AbstractThis essay argues for a new interpretation of the notion of “unity” in Yangming’s 王陽明 famous doctrine of the “unity of knowledge and action” (zhi xing he yi 知行合一). I distinguish two parts of Wang’s doctrine: one concerning training (gong fu 工夫), and one concerning the “original natural condition” of knowledge and action (ben ti 本體). I focus on the latter aspect of the doctrine, and argue that Wang holds, roughly, that a person exhibits (...) knowledge in its original natural condition if and only if the person exhibits action in its original natural condition. Moreover, I argue that Wang denies that knowledge in its original natural condition is identical to action in its original natural condition. (shrink)

No one denies the importance of applying knowledge to actions. But claiming identity (unity) of knowledge and action is quite another thing. There seem to be two problems with the claim: (1) the identity claim implies that the sole cause for one to fail to act on what one judges to be right is ignorance, but it is obviously false that the sole cause of failure in moral actions is ignorance. (2) The identity statement implies non-separation (...) of knowledge and action. But knowledge does not necessarily lead to action. However, the identity of knowledge and action is what a famous Ming Confucian scholar, W ang Yang-ming, proposed and the concept became the central doctrine of his teaching. Though there are several major interpretations of Wang’s doctrine in contemporary literature, it is not clear to me how they deal with the above mentioned difficulties. In this article, I will discuss these interpretations of the doctrine and propose a new interpretation. My purpose is to give an interpretation of Wang’s doctrine that has the capacity of dealing with these challenges to the doctrine and also captures the essence of his teaching. (shrink)

This article is an extension of my previous article, which describes pure knowing as the ability and criteria for making moral judgment.1 Due to apparent contradictions among Wang Yangming's statements, there are controversies over the evaluation and interpretation of Wang's idea of the relation between moral knowledge 2 and moral action. Generally, on the one hand, Wang admits that there are people who commit wrong actions even though they recognize that these actions are wrong. He claims not only (...) that sages possess pure knowing, but also that robbers feel ashamed to be called "robbers" through the working of pure knowing.3 On the other hand, he explicitly states that "There have never... (shrink)

Harvey Lederman has argued that the relationship signaled by W ang Yangming’s 王陽明 slogan “_zhi xing he yi_ 知行合一” is best captured by the principle “Unity: A person genuinely knows filiality if and only if they are acting filially.” In this essay I explain that Lederman views “extending knowing” and attaining “genuine knowing” as primarily episodic, in just the way that our actions are episodic (sometimes we are acting, sometimes we are not), but I argue that “extending knowing” and (...) attaining “genuine knowing” are centrally about a deeper and sustained transformation. (shrink)

“Knowledge” in Islam, Muslim culture and philosophy is considered as the key to understanding Muslim civilization, the formation of which took place in interaction with the cultures of peoples of the eastern and western parts of the former Roman Empire. The Byzantine theology and philosophy were of great importance for the points of contact and mutual enrichment of Muslim and Christian cultures in the Middle Ages, influencing the formation of Christian orthodox doctrine and the worldview of the ethnically diverse (...) peoples of the Byzantine oikumene. The phenomenon of “knowledge” in Muslim culture is presented in the article in connection with some contexts of Byzantine culture. “Knowledge”, as well as the categorical space of Muslim culture as a whole, on the one hand, allows us to understand the spirit of Islam as a phenomenon of religion, culture and civilization, and on the other hand, to determine the role and significance of this space in the formation and development of the main directions of Arab-Muslim philosophy formed in the “golden era” of Islam. The article considers the spiritual attitude to the “search for knowledge” in Islam: in the Koran and the Sunnah. Particular attention is paid to the concept of “knowledge” in the Arab-Muslim culture, while it is noted that written culture, book knowledge and education in general were the property of not only a narrow circle of rulers and religious figures in the Arab Caliphate. Within the framework of the categorical space of the Arab Muslim culture and philosophy, it should be borne in mind that the categories of “knowledge” (‘ilm) and “action” ('amal) constitute an inseparable unity within the framework of the Arab Muslim spiritual tradition in the context of the relationship between “theoretical” and “practical” mind. The role of “knowledge” and “action” within the framework of the Arab Muslim philosophical tradition is considered on the example of the teachings of al-Ghazali, who had a huge impact on the development of philosophy both in the Arab East and the European West. Being a key figure in the spiritual history of Islam and Muslim civilization, al-Ghazali considered knowledge not just as a value, but also as a virtue. An ardent champion of the role of reason, he connected theoretical reason with the understanding of spiritual realities that give us various systems of knowledge called sciences. The area of competence of practical reason, which should be based on the theoretical, al-Ghazali associated with human behavior. Practical reason directs human actions based on the will, based on and guided by a moral ideal. Al-Ghazali’s teachings are considered in notions and terms formed and developed in the Middle Ages within the Arab-Muslim culture and reflecting some meanings of such historical type of philosophical culture as the Greek-Byzantine classical Patristics. Al-Ghazali and the Byzantine Church Fathers shared a philosophical and theological understanding of man in his relation to the Creator and the phenomenon of “knowledge”. (shrink)

This article presents a new interpretation of the great Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s celebrated doctrine of the “unity of knowledge and action”. Wang held that action was not unified with all knowledge, but only with an elevated form of knowledge, which he sometimes called “genuine knowledge”. I argue for a new interpretation of this notion, according to which genuine knowledge requires freedom from a form of doxastic conflict. I propose that, in (...) Wang’s view, a person is free from this form of doxastic conflict if and only if they are acting virtuously. (shrink)

This paper studies one aspect of the great Ming dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming’s (王陽明 1472-1529) celebrated doctrine of the unity of knowledge and action (zhi xing he yi 知行合一). Wang states that his doctrine does not apply to all knowledge, but only to an elevated form of knowledge, which he sometimes calls “genuine knowledge” (zhen zhi 真知). But what is “genuine knowledge”? I develop and compare four different interpretations of this notion: the perceptual, (...) practical, normative and introspective models. The main aim of the paper is to develop these models in more detail than has been done before. But at the end of the paper I argue that the introspective model is to be preferred over the alternatives. (shrink)

This article offers a novel interpretation of enacted knowledge through the lens of Wang Yangming’s theory of the unity of knowledge and action. By framing Wang’s concept of knowledge within an enactive model, it advances a holistic perspective that integrates mind, body, and world, as well as knowledge and action, into a unified whole. To bridge historical analysis with contemporary philosophical discourse, this article engages in dialogue with Harvey Lederman’s introspective model, offering a (...) complementary framework that, together, provides a more precise and comprehensive understanding of Wang’s philosophy. Moving beyond Lederman’s dichotomy of correspondence and identity, I introduce a third interpretation of “unity”: the Continuum Thesis. This interpretation places a more fundamental focus on the original condition of moral knowledge, presenting it as a singular entity that inherently integrates the distinct aspects of knowledge and action. By asserting that “action just is knowledge,” Wang indeed affirmed their original unity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Piety, Justice, and the Unity of VirtueMark L. McPherranNo doubt the Socrates of the Euthyphro would be delighted to encounter many of its readers, offering as they do an audience of piety-seeking interlocutors, eager to mend the dialogical breach created by Euthyphro’s sudden departure. Socrates’ enthusiasm for this pursuit is at least as intense and comprehensible as theirs. We are told, after all, that he will never abandon (...) his quest for knowledge of “what the pious is” (15c–16a), since not only is this enterprise both pious and “inconceivably happy” (cf. Ap. 41c3–4) in itself,1 but coming to understand piety would allow one to “live better the rest of one’s life,” (15e7–16a4), especially should its continuation be threatened by a charge of impiety (3b–d, 5a–c, 12e, 15e–16a).2 My own search here is no less happy and ambitious, since I wish to uncover Socrates’ own, implicit understanding of piety and its relation to his claim elsewhere that “the virtues are one.”3 The account of this I shall provide will also touch on Platonic piety, although this notion obviously rests on a tendentious distinction. Nevertheless, there do seem to be some interesting differences between the way piety is treated in elenctic dialogues such as the Euthyphro and Protagoras, and the more explicitly theory-laden, constructive works such as the Republic and Laws. I shall later characterize [End Page 299] these differences, primarily in terms of the more carefully articulated, internalist moral psychology of the Republic.42. SOCRATIC PIETYThe distinct phenomena the term “religion” popularly designates for us were for the Greeks seamlessly integrated into everyday life. Thus, it is natural that the term “piety”—εὐσέβεια—carried a wider sense than our English equivalent commonly does: it concerned not only one’s immediate relation to the gods—emphasizing proper religious conduct and carrying a sense of respect and fear towards divinity (concomitant with a grasp of one’s own mortal limits)—but also often designated appropriate behavior towards parents, native land, and the dead.5 It is to this rough, inclusive conception of piety that Euthyphro appeals when confronted by Socrates on the Porch of the King (2a–6a). Moreover, and despite his own shockingly irreverent attempt at father-bashing and the subsequent elenctic drubbing he then receives from Socrates, toward the close of the dialogue Euthyphro still manages to envision piety in the quasi-traditionalist fashion with which he began—as “a knowledge of how to ensure the preservation of families and states by gratifying the gods through proper prayer and sacrifice” (14b; cf. 14c–15c).6 It is, however, precisely [End Page 300] at this dramatic juncture (14a–c) that we find—arguably—the final elements of a Socratically-acceptable conception of piety; one that builds upon Euthyphro’s initial concession to Socrates that piety and “human justice” are to be distinguished from one another (11e–12e). This, in turn, is a move that in principle forces Euthyphro to disengage from those aspects of the traditional conception of piety which would—from Socrates’ perspective—conflate the two.7 Recent challenges to this reading, however, have seen in Euthyphro’s initial holism not the heterogeneous presumptions of popular thought, but a semi-sophisticated grasp of the Socratic unity of the virtues.8 And since it does appear that the character Euthyphro is designed to serve not only as a hubristically-inflated, Homeric “fundamentalist,” but as an odd and Sophistically-influenced doppelgänger of Socrates as well—a lesson, that is, in what Socrates both is and is not—it now seems worthwhile to reexamine the view that Socratic piety is but a part and not the whole of justice.9Turning to our text, then, we discover that following the failure of Euthyphro’s initial definitional attempts to specify the nature of pious action and the resulting aporetic interlude, Socrates is willing to offer Euthyphro renewed assistance (11e1–4). This he does by asking whether all the just is pious, or whether justice is broader than piety such that piety is then merely a “part” (μóϱιον) of justice (11e4–12e5). Subsequent to his explanation of these alternatives, Socrates... (shrink)

In Averroes’s epistemology, knowledge is universal, but it is always singular in terms of the known. Averroes believes that there is no need for an activity, even in the sense that used by those who have the idea of "kumūn" rational forms being formed by other rational forms of the same kind, or for a power such as in the example of polishing a mirror to reflect an image. Similarly, he argues that there are no discrete abstract forms of (...) existing things because otherwise, everyone would have to know everything. Although there are different degrees and levels, the existence of absolute metaphysical forms is subject to change and increases with the multiplication of their subjects. There are three means of knowledge: sensation, imagination, and intellect. Unlike the sensation and perception modes in animals, humans perceive the outer appearance of objects as well as their unique meanings and distinctions. Like animals, the function of sensation in humans is to mediate the self. While perception is abstract and spiritual in one sense, it is material and concrete in another. Averroes does not find it correct to link the knowledge of the contingents of the world to the eternal knowledge of God. Beacuse this implies that there is a difference in God's knowledge between the state of the world's existence and non-existence. In addition, human knowledge about contingents is deficient and changeable, whereas God's knowledge is the cause of the existence of contingents and is unchanging. Ultimately, it does not seem possible for humans to comprehend the nature of God's knowledge. It is agreed with Alexander of Aphrodisias that there should be a distinction between the active and imaginative intellects, but he differs from him in the point that the imaginative intellect disappears. According to Averroes, the active intellect in action is eternal, unlike Themistius’ view. According to Averroes, the intellect is neither a pure potentiality nor a distinct substance. That is to say, if the imaginative intellect were an actual thing, it could not perceive other things. If the intellect were absolute, everyone would know the same things. Similarly, if the intellect were absolute plurality, there would be no unity and connection between intellects. If the intellect were merely an accepting capacity, it could not perceive absence. According to Averroes, the active intellect is not a distinct intellect that gives form or governs the spheres, but rather the form and purpose of the imaginative intellect. There are two powers of this intellect: to abstract the concepts in their potential state from their matter and to make them actual and accepting them. In conclusion, it can be said that Averroes made a substance-centered philosophy regarding the possibility and reality of knowledge, and while he did not deviate from the Aristotelian line, he had to make new openings. Paradoxically, he tries to explain both the actual/abstract and potential/material aspects of the intellect that are postulated by introducing an original soul theory with the imaginative intellect. Therefore, he places importance on both a priori knowledge and sensation and imagination. (shrink)

Cases of reasonable, mistaken belief figure prominently in discussions of the knowledge norm of assertion and practical reason as putative counterexamples to these norms. These cases are supposed to show that the knowledge norm is too demanding and that some weaker norm ought to put in its place. These cases don't show what they're intended to. When you assert something false or treat some falsehood as if it's a reason for action, you might deserve an excuse. You (...) often don't deserve even that. (shrink)

This paper contrasts two enactive theories of visual experience: the sensorimotor theory (O’Regan and Noë, Behav Brain Sci 24(5):939–1031, 2001; Noë and O’Regan, Vision and mind, 2002; Noë, Action in perception, 2004) and Susan Hurley’s (Consciousness in action, 1998, Synthese 129:3–40, 2001) theory of active perception. We criticise the sensorimotor theory for its commitment to a distinction between mere sensorimotor behaviour and cognition. This is a distinction that is firmly rejected by Hurley. Hurley argues that personal level cognitive (...) abilities emerge out of a complex dynamic feedback system at the subpersonal level. Moreover reflection on the role of eye movements in visual perception establishes a further sense in which a distinction between sensorimotor behaviour and cognition cannot be sustained. The sensorimotor theory has recently come under critical fire (see e.g. Block, J Philos CII(5):259–272, 2005; Prinz, Psyche, 12(1):1–19, 2006; Aizawa, J Philos CIV(1), 2007) for mistaking a merely causal contribution of action to perception for a constitutive contribution. We further argue that the sensorimotor theory is particularly vulnerable to this objection in a way that Hurley’s active perception theory is not. This presents an additional reason for preferring Hurley’s theory as providing a conceptual framework for the enactive programme. (shrink)

Pragmatic encroachment offers a picture of knowledge whereby knowledge is unstable. This paper argues that pragmatic encroachment is committed to more instability than has been hitherto noted. One surprising result of the arguments in this paper is that pragmatic encroachment is not merely about changes in stakes. All sorts of practical factors can make for the presence or absence of knowledge on this picture stakes-sensitivity’ is misleading. Furthermore, insufficient attention has been paid to the variety of ways (...) in which on this view pragmatic factors affect knowledge: pragmatic factors are not merely knowledge-depriving but are also knowledge-inducing. (shrink)

Shared governance in hospitals promotes the inclusion of nurses' expertise, knowledge and skills in organisational processes, and nurses increasingly fulfil positions in organisational hierarchies. However, incorporating nursing expertise in strategic governance structures might be complicated, as these structures are primarily linked to managerial and biomedical expertise. Drawing on a Foucauldian perspective on knowledge and power, intertwined and embedded in everyday (inter)actions, we study how newly appointed directors of nursing challenge these dominant ‘modes of knowing’. By focusing on a (...) (Dutch) healthcare organisation, a large academic medical centre, we gained insight into how the history of director of nursing roles relates to how nursing expertise is valued. We gathered qualitative data (from multiple sources) to get close to the daily practices of these directors. In this way, we were able to highlight three tactics that enable directors to relate to new ‘knowledge‐power knots’: (1) positioning, by creating more unity; (2) profiling, by showing significance and (3) powering, by being alert and intervening. With these tactics, the directors of nursing try to embed themselves and their expertise in hospital governance. This study contributes to an everyday understanding of power and the tactics that directors of nursing employ as an ongoing practice. This provides practical starting points for embedding nursing in governance and decision‐making. (shrink)

In this paper I set out to problematize what the distinguished evolutionary biologist, Edward O. Wilson, has presented to a popular audience as his consilience worldview. Wilson's consilience worldview is a metaphysical framework that presumes the existence of an underlying unity in the knowledge gleaned from otherwise diverse modes of intellectual inquiry, and details a particular normative approach for its discovery by scientists. After introducing Wilson's consilience worldview (WCW), I review philosophical and historical literature on the role that (...) values play in scientific inquiry and explain how to understand WCW as a problematic bundle of prescriptive claims concerning the appropriate doing of scientific inquiry. Specifically, I examine deleterious implications for the study of human social behavior that result from attempted application of WCW in order to challenge Wilson's claim that WCW is the most profitable or promising research program to adopt in the study of human social behavior (what I describe as the Fertility objection). Then, I present an argument for why readers of Consilience should regard its central thesis, WCW, skeptically, as potentially deleterious to the process and aims of science (what I describe as the Scientific Integrity objection). (shrink)

When introduced around 1925, interdisciplinarity, grounded in the notion of the unity of knowledge, was meant to reconnect the fragmented and specialized disciplines of academia. However, interdisciplinary research became more and more challenging as the plurality and heterogeneity of disciplinary perspectives and insights increased. Insisting on this divergence and diversity, Julie Thompson Klein has nonetheless contributed in important ways to convergence in interdisciplinarity with her work on the process of integration as interdisciplinarity's defining feature. Of course, she is (...) aware that the increasing inclusion of extra-academic stakeholders in transdisciplinary research constitutes a fundamental challenge to integrative interdisciplinarity. This challenge implies that next to academic contributions, experiential knowledge, interests, and norms must be recognized as valuable to the process, and stakeholder expectations of applicable results must be met. Exploring the future by extending this crucial development further, this article focuses on the actionability of knowledge as an additional criterion for effective interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, as it is in Action Research. With action options for stakeholders being an important goal for such research, it is argued that joint deliberation about these options must be part of the process, aiming for reflective equilibrium. At the same time, an important role for imagination is defended, enabling adequate consideration of action options with their ramifications and implications. The future of interdisciplinarity, it is concluded, will entail an important role for the actionability criterion and for the related role of imagination of potential outcomes, much greater roles than these now have. (shrink)

This study reinterprets the core concept of bao 報 (reciprocity or recompense) within the Confucian tradition through the lens of yili zhi bian 義利之辨 (debate of righteousness and profit). It examines the relevant discourses of Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, Zhou Dunyi, Zhu Xi, and Wang Yangming. By analyzing these discussions, the paper elucidates the transformations in the meaning of bao embedded in the moral principles and views on righteousness in Confucian thought. Furthermore, it systematizes the notion of “virtue” (dexing 德性) into (...) three categories: great virtue (dadexing 大德性), non-virtue (feidexing 非德性), and theological virtue (chaodexing 超德性), thereby uncovering the multidimensional implications of bao. Confucius and Mencius emphasized the primacy of moral principles, advocating for the pursuit of legitimate profit (li 利) grounded in righteousness (yi 義). They further concretized the ethical significance of bao by asserting that “requite kindness with kindness; requite resentment with justice.” Xunzi, on the other hand, stressed the regulation of human nature through ritual propriety and postnatal education, proposing that profit should be harmoniously controlled through righteousness. The Neo-Confucian scholars of the Song and Ming dynasties advanced the yili zhi bian to a metaphysical level. In particular, Wang Yangming sought to reconcile righteousness and profit by grounding them in inner conscience and virtue through his doctrine of the “unity of knowledge and action” (zhixing heyi 知行合一). Consequently, the concept of bao evolved beyond mere reciprocity or transactional exchange, emerging as a principle of moral cultivation and ethical practice. This reinterpretation offers a foundation for moral reasoning in the face of contemporary ethical uncertainties, providing a basis for strengthening the moral fabric of modern society while fostering individual moral self-cultivation. (shrink)

The conviction that ‘intention’ is not semantically ambiguous but has a single and distinctive meaning frames the argument of Anscombe’s masterwork Intention. What this meaning is, however, is barely recognizable in her book. One reason for this difficulty is that Intention starts from a threefold division of the appearance of the concept in our natural language and proceeds to develop its various accounts piecemeal. Another is the obscurity of the notion of ‘practical knowledge’ it introduces, precisely for shedding the (...) light that would make its topic perspicuous as a whole. The present article aims to amend this obscurity by providing both a schema of unity for the various parts of the division and an account of the fixed character of the concept. For the former task, the article recaptures Anscombe’s technical use of the term ‘a kind of statement’, uses it to clarify the nature of the division’s parts, and argues that they are co-constituted in a larger context of rational proceedings. Having done this, the article shows that the point of such proceedings is to display the validity of practical reasoning in a given case. It analyses Anscombe’s account of this kind of validity, providing thereby the representation of the fixed character of ‘intention’ as a distinct form of thinking. (shrink)

The topic of my dissertation is selfhood. I aim to explain what a self is such that it can sometimes succeed and other times fail at thinking and acting autonomously. I open by considering a failure of autonomy to which I return throughout the dissertation. The failure is that of self-deception. I show that in common cases of self-deception the self-deceived individual fails, due to a motive on his part, to be able to explain the cause of some belief or (...) action of his. There are several philosophical projects that arise when one reflects on this failure. They are presented by the following questions: what are our minds like, such that this failure is possible? For what should we criticize the self-deceived individual, given that he has a motivated lack of self-knowledge but does not know he is so motivated? Is the self-deceived individual epistemically criticizable for lacking explanatory self-knowledge in a way that he is not criticizable for lacking knowledge that would help him explain another's thoughts and actions? By answering these questions I provide an account of the rational unity that goes missing in self-deception and in the related phenomenon of epistemic akrasia. This unity can—and I argue, should—be present in bodily action as well. When a person acts without this unity, he acts in a weak-willed, akratic way. I provide an account of this disunity, which, when added to my account of the disunity of self-deception, reveals the rational unity of an autonomous agent, the rational unity of the self. (shrink)

In a crucial passage of the second-edition Transcendental Deduction, Kant claims that the concept of motion is central to our understanding of change and temporal order. I show that this seemingly idle claim is really integral to the Deduction, understood as a replacement for Locke’s “physiological” epistemology (cf. A86-7/B119). Béatrice Longuenesse has shown that Kant’s notion of distinctively inner receptivity derives from Locke. To explain the a priori application of concepts such as succession to this mode of sensibility, Kant construes (...) the mind as receptive to its own activity. As Longuenesse understands Kant’s response to Locke, “motion” becomes little more than a metaphor for the action of understanding on inner sense. For Michael Friedman, in contrast, this passage evidences Kant’s deep concern with the foundations of Newtonian science. He reads it as a reference to inertial motion, the standard by which temporal intervals are measured. I show that Longuenesse’s and Friedman’s interpretations are in fact complementary. Both Locke and Kant are deeply concerned with the quantification of time. So Longuenesse is right that §24 is meant to supplant Locke’s account, and Friedman correctly takes it as the foundation of Kant’s account of the application of quantitative concepts to time. Kant aims, specifically, to explain cognition of time as continuous magnitude. However, Longuenesse leaves Kant without an answer to Locke’s challenge that continuous magnitude cannot be understood on the basis of discrete magnitude. And on Friedman’s view Kant’s account of the understanding’s activity presupposes, and thus cannot explain, the achievements of the mathematical sciences (such as the representation of temporal continuity). On my reading, Kant’s key contention is that we must regard the segregation of temporally ordered representation into units as the work of the understanding, rather than (as Locke views it) of sensibility. By giving the understanding this role, Kant succeeds where he takes Locke to fail. I show how the power to unify temporal representation can be ascribed to the understanding on the basis, not of assumed mathematical or scientific knowledge, but of its characterization as the power of judgment. (shrink)

A number of researchers have begun to demonstrate that the widely discussed ?Knobe effect? (wherein participants are more likely to think that actions with bad side-effects are brought about intentionally than actions with good or neutral side-effects) can be found in theory of mind judgments that do not involve the concept of intentional action. In this article we report experimental results that show that attributions of knowledge can be influenced by the kinds of (non-epistemic) concerns that drive the (...) Knobe effect. Our findings suggest there is good reason to think that the epistemic version of the Knobe effect is a theoretically significant and robust effect, and that the goodness or badness of side-effects can often have greater influence on participant knowledge attributions than explicit information about objective probabilities. Thus, our work sheds light on important ways in which participant assessments of actions can affect the epistemic assessments participants make of agents? beliefs. (shrink)

Scientists are rapidly mapping the chemical and physical pathways that constitute biological systems, making the complexity of processes such as inheritance, development, evolution, and even the origin of life increasingly tractable. Through genetics and neuroscience, biological understanding is now being extended deeply into the human sciences and has begun to transform our understanding of behavior, mind, culture, and values. The idea of a science-driven unity of knowledge has reemerged in several forms in both reductionist and nonreductionist frameworks. This (...) volume examines some of the extraordinary empirical discoveries that have caused a revival of this idea and presents theories from thinkers in a variety of disciplines, including E. O. Wilson, Eric Kandel, and Elaine Scarry. (shrink)

This is an analysis of Kant's account of human understanding--of our capacity to form concepts of, and to be conscious of, things in the world. Schwyzer argues that the conditions which Kant sets forth for understanding--conditions about the autonomy of thought, and about the relation of concepts to objects and of language to experience--cannot be satisfied within his overall picture of understanding as representing something to oneself. If Kant's conditions are to be satisfied, Schwyzer argues, understanding must be seen not (...) as a capacity for mental representation, but as a capacity for action. (shrink)

This essay attempts to contextualize the importance of Wang Yangming’s 王陽明 philosophy in terms of world philosophy in the manner of Goethe’s innovative plan for “world literature” (Weltliteratur). China has the long history of philosophizing rather than non-philosophy contrary to the glaring and inexcusable misunderstanding of Hegel the Eurocentric universalist or monist. In today’s globalizing world of multicultural pluralism, ethnocentric universalism has become outdated and outmoded. Transversality, which is at once intercultural, interspecific, interdisciplinary, and intersensorial, is a far more befitting (...) response than universality. In this context, what is focused and emphasized in Wang’s world philosophy is mainly fourfold. First, there is the unity or circularity of knowledge and action, that is, knowledge is the beginning of action, and action is the consummation of knowledge. Second, sincerity is the moral soul of Sinism as it is the enabling act of making perform all other virtues, including ren 仁. Third, in Sinism, including Wang’s philosophy, there is no Cartesian dualism in that the mind and the body are inseparable soulmates. Fourth, if ethics is prima philosophia, then geophilosophy is ultima philosophia to sustain and perpetuate all life-forms on earth (geo). (shrink)