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41. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Laureen Park Freud’s “Epistemology”: The Break of Dawn in the Unconscious
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For Freud, what appears to reason is already predetermined by an unconscious that distorts and censors the “true” meaning behind the explicit one that is allowed to appear to us. The evidences of dreams make this clear. Explicit thoughts or symbols that ultimately connect to our waking life and reality are mere vehicles for the expression of unconscious “thoughts”. Furthermore, dreams evidence a censoring mechanism (that is relaxed in the state of sleep) that keeps these unconscious “thoughts” from rising to the surface in our waking state. So how does Freud have an “epistemology”? Dreams also exhibit rational and cultural mediation. Censorship involves “knowledge” of what to prohibit and what to allow according to normative dictates. Ego-consciousness (or reason) is theultimate arbiter between unconscious and rational demands. Unconscious thoughts are, therefore, ultimately subject to rational deliberation.
42. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Bosuk Yoon What is the Subjectivity of Perceptual Experience?
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For the purpose of this paper, I take it for granted that subjectivity is an essential character of perceptual experience. What I take issue with is the further claim that subjectivity of experience tends to support the view that phenomenal characters are intrinsic properties of experience. A criticism of the claim can be presented from the perspective of representationalism according to which phenomenal character is a kind of representational character. But representationalism fails to do justice to the fact that from the subjective point of view, we seem to be directly aware of mind-independent objects in the world. A stronger criticism canbe based on the disjunctivist’s view of experience that best accommodates direct awareness of the external world. But disjunctivism rejects the common kind that also seems from the subject’s point of view to be shared by veridical perception and hallucination. The crucial problem is whether disjunctivists can make sense of the phenomenology of hallucination. Focusing the discussion on Martin’s epistemic version of disjunctivism, I hope to show the relevance of solving this problem for a better understanding of the subjectivity of experience.
43. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Manuel Liz Substantive, a Posteriori, Type Disjunctivism
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Disjunctivism in philosophy of perception maintains that whereas veridical perceptions are relational states involving objects of the external world, illusions and hallucinations are non-relational states of the subjects. Veridical and non veridical perceptions could be subjectively indistinguishable, but this fact would not be able to support fundamental psychological explanations. Disjunctivism has to face some important problems. The aim of this paper is to explore a peculiar elaboration of disjunctivism able to face them. Our proposal intends to be substantive, offering a counterfactual explanation of the differences between veridicaland non veridical perceptions. We will arrive to an a posteriori disjunctivism for some relevant types of perceptual experiences. The a posteriori character of our position will be consequent with the external nature of the intentional objects of veridical perceptions. But our disjunctivism will be concerned only with types of perceptual experiences. That way, it could make room for many sorts of internalist psychological explanations in the context of a general disjunctivist approach.
44. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Gang Chen Perception Dualism and Free Will
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This paper is to spell out a version of perception dualism, whose ontological description of the mind-body relation is stronger than property dualism but weaker than substance dualism, that is, to define mental events as perceptions from an internal point of view and physical events as perceptions from an external point of view, then, the author set out to tackle some long-persisting ontological issues in philosophy of mind, such as the psycho-physical interaction, the criterion of mind, the clash between free will and natural necessity, Benjamin Libet’s Experiment. It also recovers some of the observations and conclusions achieved byCartesian internalism and Leibniz’s parallelism. Since perception is the most essential feature of mind, while defining mental and physical events in terms of perception, the author also develops a philosophical theory of perception.
45. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Stephen Voss Agent’s Knowledge and First-person Authority
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I propose the hypothesis that our knowledge of our own mental states derives from our knowledge of our intentions, and that our knowledge of our intentions is part of having those intentions. I enumerate various aspects of the question to be answered and various aspects of my answer. The hypothesis begins to explain various aspects of self-knowledge, such as its fallibility and its variability from one kind of mental state to another. Self-knowledge is also grounded in our common antecedent knowledge of the functionalist nature of mental states and the integrity of our mental life and above all mind’s link with action in the world. The hypothesis helps pluck philosophy from the fairy-land of Lockean and Kantian inner sense.
46. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Xinyan Zhang The Interaction between Mental Energy and Memory
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In his paper, From Everything Outside Mind To Those Inside, submitted also to WCP 2008, the author put forward an idea that the existence of a human mind might generally be understood as either the interaction between circulating mental energies and living memories or results of the interaction. A further discussion on the details of this interaction is presented in this paper. The interaction may be divided into instinctive activities and intellective activities that may be further divided into basic activities such as memory’s forming and forgetting, and advanced activities such as simulating. Three different kinds of simulating activities are described and their general principles are discussed, which is called by the author as “Inforeactor”.
47. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Serguei Fokine The Singing Consciousness: The Mind with Sound
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Consciousness has been and will continue to be one of the central problems of philosophy. In written works the fact that the consciousness can sing is presented as one of the most interesting and enigmatic properties of consciousness. That consciousness can sing, and in fact does so, and to prove that this is the case is relatively easy. It is enough to say that “one is singing within oneself”, not loudly and only one or various simple sounds in a way so that the Phonologic system does not take part at all. The arguments over whether or not the consciousness can sing are based on comparisons of paragraphs 15 to 27 from the first and second editions of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” which were modified in the second edition, where no categorical statement about the similaritybetween reproduced representations and phenomenon is found. The problem between the similarity between the reproduced representations in the consciousness/brain and the consciousness/brain phenomenon were investigated by Kant in his first and second edition, where Kant reached his conclusion about the reproduced representations in the phenomenon. We are in agreement with Kant that there can exist in “the interior” of consciousness/brains of all human beings the state of similarity or difference between the represented and the perceived, but the unity of the consciousness can be found in only one state: the similarity between the represented and the perceived in the “interior”, of the consciousness/brain. In view of the similarity of the reproduced representations and the phenomenon of the consciousness/brain, the consciousness can sing and be united, or, if not, referring to the dissimilarity, the consciousness cannot sing and can be divided.
48. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Markus Kneer Imagining Being Napoleon
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If I want to imagine myself to be someone else, say, Napoleon, a problem arises concerning the protagonist of the imagined scenario: One has to attribute two conflicting personal identities to this protagonist, my own (the imaginer’s) and Napoleon’s (the target subject) – hence, a metaphysical impossibility arises. The metaphysically impossible is generally deemed inconceivable and hence unimaginable – however, we generally take ourselves capable of imagining being someone else. Williams (1966), who first raised the issue, proposes a way to overcome the philosophical obstacle posed by such so‐called transferenceimagination, namely one in which only Napoleon (the target subject) figures in the content of the imaginer. Over the years, a number of arguments have been proposed in support of this approach. My contribution disputes Williams’ approach by (1) refuting the arguments in its favour, (2) advancing some independent considerations against its plausibility, and (3) proposing a new and more intuitively appealing way of thinking about transference imagination.
49. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Shaffarullah Abdul Rahman Rethinking Nagel: Three Challenges to Physicalism (Rethinking Nagel’s “What is it Like to be a Bat?”: Nagel’s Three Challenges to Physicalism)
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It may be tempting to think that given Nagel’s much-discussed bat argument in “What Is It Like to be a Bat?” (henceforth the Bat article), Nagel qua Nagel has conceived an argument against the very idea of physicalism. For example, Tye (1986 p. 7) argues that Nagel’s argument from the Bat-Phenomenology Analogy shows that the physicalist account of the mental phenomenon is incomplete. Churchland (1995 p. 196) conceives Nagel in a similar manner: “[from the Bat Argument] Nagel concludes that conscious phenomena cannot be given a purely physical explanation”. McCullough (1988 pp. 2-3), without regret, is more direct on the issue: Nagel is against physicalism because the state of what-it-is-likeness “escapes the scientific net”. The same goes with Pereboom who argues that Thomas Nagel advances an argument that shows physicalist account of the phenomenal states are “inadequate” (1994 p. 314). The most recent article dealing with the Bat argument also makes it clear that physicalism does not feature in friendly terms in Nagel’s thinking (Nagasawa 2004). While Nagasawa claims to offer a new approach to Nagel’s Bat argument in that Aquinas’ seemingly disconnected argument about the divine omnipotence can answer Nagel’s resistance to physicalism, it is quite clear that Nagel is still being treated as an anti-physicalist. Now, of course, it’s fallacious to say that all these philosophers are alike in their takes on Nagel’s alleged anti-physicalist outlook but I hope it is uncontroversial to say here that they seem to share a common view of Nagel: On Nagel’s account of conscious mental states, physicalism is false because it fails to explain exactly what it is like to be in those states. In this essay, I wish to argue that Nagel’s treatment of physicalism as demonstrated in the Bat article is much more philosophically subtle than his detractors thought him to be. From the outset, let me begin by stating that Nagel is not characteristically a foe of physicalism as most of philosophers make him to be but Nagel in the Bat article could seem beproposing three challenges to physicalism as follows: (P1) physicalism is false, (P2) physicalism is unintelligible and (P3) physicalism remains to be made intelligible.
50. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
María del Rosario Hernández Borges, Tamara Ojeda Arceo Emotion, self-deception and conceptual/nonconceptual content
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First the rationalist tradition and then the cognitive revolution put limits on the philosophy and social sciences with regard to the analysis of emotion, of irrationality in mental events and actions, to the reduction of our representations to conceptual elements, and so on. This fact caused an increasing interest in these topics. In this paper, we intend to claim the significant relations among these three issues: emotion, selfdeception and non-conceptual content, with two aims: i) to analyse the relation between non-conceptual content of emotion and the phenomenon of self-deception; and ii) to explain how self-deception canbe overcome by the conceptualization of some non-conceptual elements of emotion.
51. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Zihu Liu 人类精神的结构体系和层面性发展解析
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Whenever we analyze the issue of spiritual activities, we can never lay aside of the macro-background of “spirit service to life”. Spirit is” software” of life. It is essentially to carry out determination of self life and a nervous system which make the information processing and feedback between self life and outside world. It has reasonable structure system and systematical work mechanism. The basic structure system of the spirit of human beings is like this: self is the core and leading of spirit running, which has properties in three aspects which are will, needs and motility. These properties formed a unity. Will mainly shows theessential property of self, which is in the domination and core position. Needs mainly shows the main part of life requesting and demanding for objective outside, which is in the conditional and secondary position. If we put the Needs in the key position, it will blaspheme the meaning of life and lose the value of life. Motility is a centralized reflection of life activity, which could be a means for the implementation of self Will and acquisition of self needs. In the tangible world, it is displayed as colorful life activity. In the intangible spiritual world, it is displayed as the information processing ability and information feedback ability of self life. Motility has four different levels: emotion, subconsciousness, consciousness, cognition. Correspondingly, the development of spirit could also be divided as four levels. In each level, self, activity, requested development degree, property characteristics and main content have certain of differences. In structure system of spirit, there is a correlation among each part and each element, which will interact with own characteristics to form an organic whole. In fact, it is an essential sublimation of tangible body and an intangible life existed with information form. The following figure shows the relationship of each element:[*Electronic Editor's Note: Figure in PDF of article*]This structure system of spirit, which isn’t a simple frame but an abstract mechanism of spirit running, is life active system of informatization. This system and mechanism make the changeable spiritual activity clear and orderly, and make the abundant and various life activities systematic and vivid. This system’s self isdeveloping, whose development still comply with the law of life development, symbolizing the development and extension of vitality. This development could be considered as continuance of life progress. In the low-grade life, it is mainly displayed as biological stress stage of promoting the favorable and avoiding the unfavorable as well as blind and instinctive affective response stage; in the highgrade animals, it is gradually displayed certain of psychological activity ability and study cognition ability. In human beings, it is gradually displayed awake of consciousness and mature of reason, making human beings to control themselves and change all things to become the soul of the world. Through this structure system and running mechanism, we could get a systematical explanation for theessence of emotion, mystery of psychological activity, process of consciousness awake, occurrence mechanism of dream. Meantime, we put forth that human beings must experience the second awakerational awake to become the true society human when human beings become the humans with souls after consciousness awake.
52. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Mircea Dumitru Conceivability and Possibility: Remarks on the Mind-Body Dualism in Contemporary Philosophy of Mind
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Explaining phenomenal consciousness may be the scientific and philosophical problem of our time, the last frontier of knowledge. This is not at all an easy task. For any serious attempt at finding a place for consciousness within the natural world was not successful so far. There is a conceptual tension here which makes this business of coming up with a unified (monist) explanation of mind and physical world one of the most intriguing mystery. The most predominant image of the natural world is one of a physicalist type, whereas the mind, and especially the conscious subjective experience seem not to fit well within that physicalistexplanation. That explanatory failure may require a dualist metaphysical scheme (probably of a neo-Cartesian type). It may seem very well that we are caught in a dilemma, for we either embrace a physicalist explanation, but then it seems that we leave out consciousness from the big picture we are looking for, or else we face the huge task of conceiving a dramatic change of our scientific outlook about the natural world, and we don’t quite see how that would be possible or desirable. But then, should any attempt at understanding consciusness be a dead-end, something doomed to fail from a theoretical and explanatory point of view? In my paper I explore some philosophical underpinnings of contemporary dualism, focussing on the modal facets of the conceivability (neo-Cartesian) arguments. I will asses both the prospects and the moot points of this type of arguments. Of particular interest is the role that two-dimensional semantics plays in nowadays discussions of this topic.
53. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 42
Andrés L. Jaume Teleosemantics and Useless Content: A Critical Remark on Millikan’s Account
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Teleosemantic theories of content constitute a mixed family of different proposals and accounts about what consists mental content. In the present paper, I would like examine the scope and limits of a particular and well defined teleosemantic theory such as Millikan’s account. My aim entails presenting arguments in order to show how her theory of mental content is unnable of giving a complete account of the whole mental life almost for adult human agents without commiting certain adaptationist assumptions. I am going to present my arguments in the following order. In section 1 I present an outline of the Millikan’s theory of mental content. In section 2, after defining useless content I pay attention to her treatment of it. In section 3 I set out my queries concerning to the fixation of useless content defended by Millikan. Finally, I conclude that the theory about useless content doesn’t identify content in terms of sufficient and necessary conditions.
54. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Finn Collin The Strong Programme: Between sociology and philosophy
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The strong programme in the sociology of science is officially "inductively" based, generalizing a number of highly acclaimed case studies into a general approach to the social study of science. However, at a critical juncture, the programme allies itself with certain radical ideas in philosophical semantics, notablyWittgenstein's "rule following considerations". The result is an implausible, radical conventionalist view of natural science which undermines the empirical programme.
55. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
V.P. Sevrjuk The Stratified Spaces of Intern Degrees of Freedom
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In modern physics nonlinear systems with a lot of heterogeneity and anisotropy which are in strong fields and processes of crossings of electromechanical, spinor-mechanical, termo-magnetic and other ones are actual. Correct building with the help of mathematics of the given theories is possible only with the attraction geometry of the stratified spaces. The geometry of the stratified spaces chow its power by examining these systems and processes. Noncontradictional, covarianty theory of the single whole field of matter can be built only with the attraction the geometry of the stratified spaces. Introduction the stratified spaces into physics of geometry is a continuation of works of Hamiltone, Langrange, Aler and other scientists. The problem is multivariate spaces of internal degrees offreedom. The ideas, positions of geometry of stratified spaces and their supplements demand a new philosophical sense of understanding.
56. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Xiaoping Chen Bayesian Test and Kuhn’s Paradigm
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Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm reveals a pattern of scientific progress, in which normal science alternates with scientific revolution, but he underrated too much the function of scientific test in his pattern. Wesley C. Salmon pointed out that, on criticizing the so-called testing pattern of science, Kuhn focused all his attention on a single testing model, namely hypothetico–deductive (H–D) schema. However, as a matter of fact, many philosophers of science had already abandoned that schema and taken Bayesian schema as a proper testing model. The main difference between Bayesian schema and the H–D schema lies in that the former is a testing model for more than one theory while the latter just for a single theory. Since Kuhn, multi-theoretical testing model has become aconsensus among experts, that is, a theory and its rivals should be faced with testing together, rather than a theory being tested in isolation. Kuhn was correct in finding the H–D schema not appropriate to scientific test, but didn’t catch the propriety of Bayesian schema in this field. This led to his disapproval of the logic or method of scientific test. I agrees largely with Salmon’s appraisal of Kuhn’s view on scientific test, and gives a further argument for it. I’ll employs Bayesian schema to re-examine Kuhn’s theory of paradigm, uncover its logical, or rational, components, and thereby illustrate the tension structure of logic and belief, rationality and irrationality, and comparability and incommensurability in the process of scientific revolution.
57. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Shunkichi Matsumoto The Nature of Adaptationism
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In this paper, I will take advantage of the controversy on the legitimacy of adaptationism in evolutionary biology to further investigate the nature of adaptationistic thinking, or biological explanations in general. To this end, first I will look at the famous and provocative criticism made by Gould and Lewontin (1979) against then-prevalent adaptationism --- a research strategy for accounting for the origin of traits of organisms seemingly adapted to the environment by appealing primarily to natural selection. Then I will consider its counterarguments put forward by Dennett (1995), one of the proponents of adaptationism, in order toscrutinize the intrinsically hypothetical character of adaptationistic thinking. By amplifying Dennett’s points, I will finally reach the conclusion that there are two senses --- objective and subjective --- in which adaptationistic thinking is said to be hypothetical, which nonetheless do not prevent it from qualifying as scientific practice. In the process, I will also gain an insight into the sense in which the theory of natural selection is said to be mechanistic, as a spin-off.
58. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Robert G. Hudson Carnap's Empiricism, Lost and Found
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Recent scholarship (by mainly Michael Friedman, but also by Thomas Uebel) on the philosophy of Rudolf Carnap covering the period from the publication of Carnap’s’ 1928 book Der Logische Aufbau der Welt through to the mid to late 1930’s has tended to view Carnap as espousing a form of conventionalism (epitomized by his adoption of the principle of tolerance) and not a form of empirical foundationalism. On this view, it follows that Carnap’s 1934 The Logical Syntax of Language is the pinnacle of his work during this era, this book having developed in its most complete form the conventionalist approach to dissolving the pseudoproblems that often attend philosophical investigation. My task in this paper, in opposition to this trend, is to resuscitate the empiricist interpretation of Carnap’s work during this time period. The crux of my argument is that Carnap’s 1934 book, by eschewing for the most part the empiricism he espouses in the Aufbau and in his 1932 The Unity of Science, is led to a form of conventionalism that faces the serious hazard of collapsing into epistemological relativism. My speculation is that Carnap came to recognize this deficiency in his 1934 book, and in subsequent work (“Testability and Meaning”, published in 1936/37) felt the need to re-instate his empiricist agenda. This subsequent work provides a much improved empiricist epistemology from Carnap’s previous efforts and, ashistory informs us, sets the standard for future research in the theory of confirmation.
59. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Zhānghàn Zhōng 真气科学
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科学追求真理,古希腊哲学家柏拉图认为精确的理念和数学就是 真理。本文对现代科学和数学进行了深入的反思,论证了理念和数学不 是真理。与真气同在的理念和数学是真理,与骄气同在的理念和数学是 谬误,人所得到的理念和数学只不过是在真气和骄气之间的模糊值。本 文试图在耶稣的真气中,建立三位一体的真气科学,让自然科学和社会 科学在真气的本形耶稣里得以贯通。本文的目的是通过这三位一体的真 气科学,让人在真气本形耶稣里自由地追求各自的真理。尽管各自的真理是模糊值,但模糊真理胜过精确谬误。真气和道,阴阳一体,是中华 文明的根基。《圣经》讲:“上帝是灵。”《圣经》所讲的“灵”的希 伯来字是ruagh。ruagh 的原意有气、风、生命力、等等含义。所以根据 希伯来字原意,这“灵”可以直译为中国古老的《黄帝内经》所述的 “真气”,上帝就是真气。耶稣就是道,是真气的本形,与真气同在。真气看不见,属阳;真气的形看得见,属阴。真气和真气的形,阴阳互 根,合为一体,在不同的时空彰显,就是道。真气、耶稣、道,三位一 体,是宇宙的独一真神。中国道家所述的阴阳关系,是宇宙万物的根本 关系,是超对称关系。万物都与耶稣的真气,构成阴阳关系。耶稣是真 气的本形,耶稣就是真气,万物始于他,归于他,依靠他。一切神学、哲学、科学、经济学、医学、等等,也始于他,归于他,依靠他。
60. Proceedings of the XXII World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 43
Alberto Cordero Diachronic Local Realism about Successful Theories
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A major realist response to Laudan-type historical arguments against scientific realism by seeking to identify parts of a successful scientific theory one can claim to have been "essentially" implicated in the theory’s distinctive success, which they regard as primary candidates for realist truth ascription. But, how is one to determine which parts of any theory are "central" or "peripheral", "essential" or "idle" in the required sense? Attempts at spelling out relevant synchronic links between successful predictions and correct partial theorizing increasingly look like a misguided effort. This paper proposes a weaker, but arguably still powerful version of the relation between success and growth of cumulative truth. Focusing on a pivotal case study in recent debates between realists and anti-realists (theories of light in the 19th century), a promising link between success and partial theoretical representation is located in the expansion and stabilization of approximately correct partial modeling of intended domains. The realist link is then formulated accordingly. In the resulting approach (a) predictive success is preserved as a marker of cumulative theoretical gain, but (b) specific gain identification is a diachronic rather than synchronic matter (i.e. specification of particular loci of theoretical gain associated with a given line of predictive success is not assumed to be generally possible at the time of the success in question). The truth ascriptions that get licensed are partial-of a piece-meal and retrospective sort, focused on methodologically specifiable theoretical subplots from past science.