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161. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Daniel Farell Rationality and the Emotions
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There are some seemingly clear cases of the use of the concepts of rationality and irrationality in talk about the emotions. Even in such contexts, it is argued here, while not entirely wrong-headed, the use is much less clearly appropriate, upon reflection, than many of us seem to believe. The paper starts with a conception of the emotions which emphasizes the way we construe the world (or some aspect of the world) while we experience them and because of what it is to experience them. According to this approach, an emotion’s appropriateness is simply a function of the features of the relevant part of the world actually being in the way specified by a proper analysis of that emotion. It is then argued that this analysis is not favorable to using the concept of rationality in the sorts of cases that interest us.
162. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Isidora Stojanović The Contingent A Priori: Much Ado about Nothing
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Since Saul Kripke’s Naming and Necessity, the view that there are contingent apriori truths has been surprisingly widespread. In this paper, I argue against that view. My first point is that in general, occurrences of predicates “a priori” and “contingent” are implicitly relativized to some circumstance, involving an agent, a time, a location. My second point is that apriority and necessity coineide when relativized to the same circumstance. That is to say, what is known apriori (by an agent in a circumstance) cannot fail to be the case (in the same circumstance), hence it is necessary.
163. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Snježana Prijić-Samaržija Ways of Seeing: The Scope and Limits of Visual Cognition
164. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Nenad Miščević Response-Intentionalism About Color: A Sketch
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Building on Crane’s intentionalism, the paper proposes a variant of response-dependentist view of colors. To be of a color C is to have a disposition to cause in normal observers a response, namely, intentional phenomenal C-experience. The view is dubbed “response-intentionalism”. It follows from the following considerations, with the red of a tomato surface taken as an example of color C. Full phenomenal red is being visaged (intentionally experienced) as being on the surface of the tomato. Science tells us that full phenomenal red is not on the surface of the tomato. Equally, full phenomenal red is not a property of subjective state but its intentional object. Response-intentionalism follows by considerations of charity, i.e. minimizing and rationalizing the error of the cognizer, and of inference to the best explanation: being red in scientific sense is being such as to cause the response (intentionally) visaging phenomenal red in normal observers under normal circumstances.
165. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Ksenija Puškarić Crane on Intentionality and Consciousness: A Few Questions
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The paper concentrates on issues of intentionality subdivided into four particular sub-issues. First, is there an intentional object of depression and of states like depression? Second, according to the strong intentionalist view defended by T. Crane, what it is like to be in a mental state is fixed by the mental state’s mode and its content; but mode is not sufficiently well-defined in his analysis. Third, how can the intentionalist explain phenomenological richness of conscious mental states? Crane appeals to non-conceptual content. But in order to have such and such a content, e.g. such and such a pain, one has to recognize it on some later occasion, i.e. to be able to discriminate pains. But, discrimination brings us to concepts. It turns out that non-conceptual content is in fact just a non-linguistic or not yet lexicalized concept. Namely, in order to be re-identifiable, a pain must have a determinate and recognizable sharpness, continuity, and intensity. These are traditionally properties of a pain quale. A quale is also recognizable, it explains richness of experience, and it does not require language capability. The question is what is it that quale and non-conceptual content do not share? What sets one apart from the other? Fourth, what is the relation between the intentional object and content?
166. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Olga Markić Crane on the Mind-Body Problem and Emergence
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In his book Elements of Mind, Tim Crane gives us a very clear and interesting introduction to the main problems in the philosophy of mind. The central theme of his book is intentionality, but he also gives an account of the mind-body problem, consciousness, and perception, and then he suggests his own solutions to these problems. In this paper I will concentrate on a part in which he discusses the mind-body problem. My main aim will be to look at different physicalistic positions in relation to the mental causation problem, particularly at emergentism as Crane’s favourite position.
167. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Jordan Howard Sobel On Wakker’s Critique of Allais-Preferences
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Peter Wakker impugns the rationality of Allais-preferences. He argues implicitly that otherwise perfectly reasonable subjects who have Allais preferences will in some situations choose to bet on propositions before, rather than after, learning of their truth-values. After spelling out Wakker’s argument, and identifying and repairing a weak point, I turn it around to say that aversions to information, and preferring to bet on propositions without knowing their truth-values, can be reasonable on precisely the grounds that can make Allais-preferences reasonable. Lastly, to accommodate reasonable Allais-preferences, the normative principle of Utility Theory is restricted to pairwise preferences for lotteries the basic outcomes of which are ‘loaded up’, and, of course, to preferences for lotteries that are ‘comparable as alternatives’.
168. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Snježana Prijić-Samaržija Some Epistemological Consequences of The Dual-Aspect Theory of Visual Perception
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Seeking whether our perception produces knowledge which is not only relative or subjective perspective on things, is to be engaged in the realist/anti-realist debate regarding perception. In this article I pursue the naturalistic approach according to which the question whether perception delivers objective knowledge about the external world is inseparable from empirical investigation into mechanisms of perception. More precisely, I have focused on the dual aspect theory of perception, one of the most influential recent theories of perception which unifies two traditionally opposite approaches to perception: ecological and constructivist. I have tried to show that the dualistic model of human vision does not support the majority of realist theses aimed at non-relativism, but supports only pragmatic realism about observational reports (dorsal system) and the moderate realism about observational reports (ventral system).
169. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Nenad Miščević Conceivability and Possibility
170. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Dunja Jutronić The Knowledge Argument: Some Comments
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The paper discusses Crane’s analysis of Knowledge argument, and sets forth author’s disagreement with Crane. Surely Mary learns something new when she sees a color for the first time. The time for a physicalist to quarrel comes only when a qualia person says that this experience represents special phenomenal facts, and that such understanding should be identified with propositional knowledge. We should not confuse ‘having information’ with having the same information in the form of knowledge or belief. Mary knows everything there is to know about color vision. The only thing she has not done is practically experience what it is like to see a color. Thus her knowledge gap is practical and not propositional.
171. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 2
Ana Gavran Tim Crane on the Internalism-Externalism Debate
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The subject of this paper is the debate between externalism and internalism about mental content presented by Tim Crane in Chapter 4 of his book Elements of Mind. Crane’s sympathies in this debate are with internalism. The paper attempts to show that Crane’s argumentation is not refuting the Twin Earth argument and externalism, and that in its basis it does not differ much from externalism itself Crane’s version of the argument for externalism features two key premises: (1) The content of a thought determines what the thought is about/what it refers to (the Content Determines Reference Principle); and (2) Twins are referring to different things when they use the word “water”. From these, in a few simple steps, Crane’s externalist infers: Therefore, their thoughts are not “in their heads”. Crane suggests denying the Content Determines Reference Principle in the light of indexical thoughts. In the first stage, Crane reduces “content” to “some aspect of content”, although he needs all aspects of content to secure identity of thoughts. However, his view then comes close to something acceptable to externalists. In the second stage, Crane makes content relative to context, but then reference still determines content.
172. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Jonathan Kvanvig Nozickian Epistemology and the Question of Closure
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Nozick’s contribution to the epistemology of the last half of the twentieth century includes addressing the question of whether knowledge is closed under known implication. I argue that the question of closure provides a serious obstacle to Nozickian approaches to epistemology.
173. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Elijah Millgram The Ontological Meta-Argument: (and the Ontological Argument for the Actuality of the World)
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Would the Ontological Argument Greater Than Which None Can Be Conceived proue the existence of God? Might an ontological argument prove the actuality of the world (as Robert Nozick once suggested)? Should you believe that you’re actual, even if you’re not? And what happens if we attempt to answer these questions, having adopted Nozick’s mature view of the function of argument?
174. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Adam Leite Skepticism, Sensitivity, and Closure: or Why the Closure Principle is Irrelevant to External World Skepticism
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Is there a plausible argument for external world skepticism? Robert Nozick’s well-known discussion focuses upon arguments which utilize the Sensitivity Requirement and the Closure Principle. Nozick claims, correctly, that no such argument succeeds. But he gets almost all the details wrong. The Sensitivity Requirement and the Closure Principle are compatible; the Sensitivity Requirement is incorrect; and even if true, the Closure Principle is structurally incapable of generating a plausible and valid global skeptical argument. It is therefore a mistake to take the Closure Principle as central in discussions of skepticism. The paper concludes by examining the prospects for a plausible skeptical argument.
175. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Magdalena Črnac Liberalizam sa skeptičkim licem: (Liberalism with a Skeptical Face)
176. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Catherine Z. Elgin Optional Stops, Foregone Conclusions, and the Value of Argument
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If the point of argument is to produce conviction, an argument tor a foregone conclusion is pointless. I maintain, however, that an argument makes a variety of cognitive contributions, even when its conclusion is already believed. It exhibits warrant. It affords reasons that we can impart to others. It identifies bases tor agreement among parties who otherwise disagree. It underwrites confidence, by showing how vulnerable warrant is under changes in background assumptions. Multiple arguments for the same conclusion show how our beliefs hang together.
177. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Marc Slors The Closest Continuer View Revisited
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Many theories of personal identity allow for the metaphysical possibility of fission. In 1981 Nozick proposed a theory of personal identity called ‘the closest continuer view’ (CCV) that denies fission in the case of persons but allows fisson in the case of human beings. CCV may thus appear to reduce ‘person’ to a nonmetaphysical, practical notion. Against this I argue that CCV is an externalist metaphysical theory that purports to solve a problem that is insurmountable within the confines of an internalist metaphysics of personal identity.
178. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Ronald de Sousa Rational Animals
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I begin with a rather unpromising dispute that Nozick once had with Ian Hacking in the pages of the London Review of Books, in which both vied with one another in their enthusiasm to repudiate the thesis that some human people or peoples are closer than others to animality. I shall attempt to show that one can build, on the basis of Nozick’s discussion of rationality, a defense of the view that the capacity tor language places human rationality out of reach of a comparison with animals. The difference rests, paradoxically, on the human capacity tor irratianality. Irrationality depends on the capacity tor language, which allows the detachment of explicit thoughts from their underlying dynamic implementation; these, in turn, condition the essential disputability of principles of rationality. That is what places every human potentially -- if not actually -- on the other side of an unbridgeable gulf that separates us from other animals.
179. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Carla Bagnoli Introduction
180. Croatian Journal of Philosophy: Volume > 4 > Issue: 3
Filip Grgić Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonean Scepticism