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(Mock-)Thinking about the Same

Author(s): Alberto Voltolini / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2017

In this paper, I want to address once more the venerable problem of intentional identity, the problem of how different thoughts can be about the same thing even if this thing does not exist. First, I will try to show that antirealist approaches to this problem are doomed to fail. For they ultimately share a problematic assumption, namely that thinking about something involves identifying it. Second, I will claim that once one rejects this assumption and holds instead that thoughts are constituted either by what they are about, their intentional objects, or by what determines their proposition-like intentional contents, one can address the problem of intentional identity in a different way. One can indeed provide a new solution to it that basically relies on two factors: a) what sort of metaphysical nature intentional objects effectively possess, once they are conceived as schematic objects à la Crane (2001, 2013); b) whether such objects really belong to the overall ontological inventory of what there is. According to this solution, two thoughts are about the same nonexistent intentional object iff i) that object satisfies the identity criterion for objects of that metaphysical kind and ii) objects of that kind belong to the overall ontological inventory of what there is, independently of whether they exist (in a suitable first-order sense of existence). As such, this solution is neither realist nor antirealist: only if condition ii) is satisfied, different thoughts can be about the same nonexistent intentionale; otherwise, they are simply constituted by the same intentional content (provided that this content is not equated with that intentionale). Third, armed with this solution, I will hold that one can find a suitable treatment of the specific and related problem of whether different people may mock-think about the same thing, even if there really is no such thing. Finally, I will try to show that this treatment can be also applied to the case in which different thoughts are, according to phenomenology, about the same intentionale and yet this intentionale is of a kind such that there really are no things of that kind. For in this case, such thoughts are about the same intentionale only fictionally.

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30 lat Dizajnu na co dzień. Komentarz i recenzja przekładu książki Dona Normana

Author(s): Witold Wachowski / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 3/2019

Book review of the Polish translation

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A COMMENTARY UPON GADAMER’S INTERPRETATION OF HEGEL

Author(s): Anton Crişan / Language(s): English / Issue: Sp.Iss./2015

A Commentary upon Gadamer’s Interpretation of Hegel. In light of a renewed scholarly undertaking of the Hegel‒Gadamer connection, the purpose of the present paper is to carry further this much needed re-approach of the issue by stressing yet another one of its aspects. I am referring to the scholarly insights that Gadamer himself provides us with in his interpretation of Hegel. Since many of Gadamer’s essays on Hegel are actually studies originally meant as contributions to major journals dealing with Hegel’s work, my claim is that we can retrieve from them answers to many ongoing debates in the Hegel scholarship. I will insist on only one of these issues, namely Gadamer’s account of Hegel’s relation to metaphysics.

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A Different Take on Humanities

Author(s): Włodzimierz Bolecki / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2015

The foreword to this issue focuses on the core functional differences between the humanities and hard sciences (i.e. different approaches to such phenomena as language, translation, teamwork, writing, discipline.s history, publishing, tradition, innovation). Yet, this dichotomy is questioned in the conlusion. The author argues that whenever human artifacts are at stake, both the humanites and experimental sciences are equally hard, because they inquire the same matter, ie. how the products of human cognitive activities were created and what are their social functions. Therefore, the author calls for a new model for interdisciplinary studies.

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A Fair Version of the Chinese Room

Author(s): Hasan Çağatay / Language(s): English / Issue: 96/2019

By the Chinese room thought experiment, John Searle (1980) advocates the thesis that it is impossible for computers to think in the same way that human beings do. This article intends firstly to show that the Chinese room does not justify or even test this thesis and secondly to describe exactly how the person in the Chinese room can learn Chinese. Regarding this learning process, Searle ignores the relevance of an individual’s pattern recognition capacity for understanding. To counter Searle’s claim, this paper, via examining a series of thought experiments inspired by the Chinese room, aims to underline the importance of pattern recognition for understanding to emerge.

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A Few Comments on the Linda Problem

Author(s): Adam Olszewski / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2017

This paper discusses an experiment in cognitive psychology called the Linda problem. Firstly, some natural conditions for the correctness of the interpretation of psychological experiments (such as the Linda problem) are formulated. The article is essentially a critique of the interpretation of the results of the Linda problem experiment provided by Kahneman and Tversky as well as – indirectly – their concept of heuristics. It is shown that the interpretation provided by Kahneman and Tversky does not meet the aforementioned conditions for correctness. The main argument is justified utilizing such rules of rationality as conditional probability and Grice’s conversational maxims. It is also pointed out that this argument can be reformulated in terms of the intuitive system of reasoning.

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A Psychoanalytic Reading of Selected Persian Children’s Plays

Author(s): Zeinab Karimi,Bahee Hadaegh / Language(s): English / Issue: 02/2020

Once theatre aims at children, who are the citizens and decision makers of the future, it can influence the course of society through the values and worldviews that it promotes. The exceptional capacity of this medium in engaging the audience, along with children’s receptiveness, necessitates a meticulous study of the ideologies embedded in plays. This study unravels how these ideological factors can hamper the theatre’s main purpose which is to encourage the audience to form individual fantasies. Accordingly, Žižek’s theories are drawn upon for their hints on ideology, fantasy, reality, and subjectivity. Taking his psychoanalytic views into account, four Persian plays are examined to determine what ideologies underlie these plays’ motifs and instructions, as well as what may justify their presence in plays. On close inspection, it becomes evident that these plays are loaded with conscious manipulative ideologies which are intended to train homogeneous social members rather than present objective glimpses of real life.

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A Radical Reinterpretation of Quinean Naturalism and Its View of Consciousness

Author(s): Pamela Ann J. Boongaling / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2019

McGinn maintains that Quinean naturalism cannot provide a viable position in the debate on the existence of consciousness and the external world for it does not have a place for phenomenal experience in its naturalized epistemology. In effect, it cannot or will refuse to address any version of a sceptic’s argument regarding the lack of sufficient grounds to prove the existence of consciousness and the external world. I argue otherwise by pointing out that Quinean naturalism must provide an account of phenomenal experience to ensure the consistency of its epistemic and ontic assumptions with its naturalistic worldview. In the process, I demonstrate that Quinean naturalism allows us to infer that the best explanation for the existence of both consciousness and the external world can be derived from how the roles of subjectivity and objectivity in our creation and assessment of our conceptual schemes are primarily derived from our phenomenal experience of the external world.

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A Reason to Avoid the Causal Construal of Dispositional Explanations

Author(s): Lilia Gurova / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2017

Those who argue that dispositional explanations are genuine explanations usually construe them as causal explanations. There are several well-known arguments against the causal efficacy of dispositions, but there are as well demonstrations that on some minimal conditions, dispositions could be viewed as causally relevant to the effects which they are taken to explain. Although the latter position is generally tenable, it may be shown that in some important cases it is not a good idea to commit to a causal construal of dispositional explanations. The argument goes as follows: (1) Dispositional explanations are valued for certain specific extra-inferences which they allow us to draw; (2) The causal construal of dispositional explanations can account for some of these extra-inferences only on the assumption that the disposition is a common cause of its manifestations; (3) However, under certain circumstances, the common cause assumption is refuted on theoretical or empirical grounds; Therefore, (4) under certain circumstances, the causal construal of dispositional explanations cannot account for what these explanations are valued for. The latter conclusion is a reason to argue that in some cases at least, the causal construal of dispositional explanations should be avoided.

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A Trial of Interpretation of Meister Eckhart’s Thought on God and Man through the Analysis of Its Paradoxes

Author(s): Zbigniew Kaźmierczak / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2017

This article interprets Eckhart’s contradictions by presenting them as a result of an existential search for salvific power. It is shown that power is ambivalent in nature: it is the power of what is and the power of (self)overcoming (of what is). Just because power is in itself ambivalent and the process of searching for it existentialist (so not completely conscious), Eckhart’s mystical texts are full of contradictions and the German mystic is apparently not aware of it. The sample of them is shown in this article with regard to his ideas on God and man. Three other interpretations of Eckhart’s (“apophatic,” “educational,” “methodological”) are presented and argued against.

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Abejoti dėl laiko. Belaikiškumas vėlyvojoje Paulio Celano kūryboje

Author(s): Inga Bartkuvienė / Language(s): Lithuanian / Issue: 4/2019

The poetry of Paul Celan has a reflected intention to ask about the temporal determination of human being and simultaneously questions the term and definition of time. In may of his works he reflects he the catastrophic transformation, the reflection also includes the revision of the conventional conception of time. He tries to show, that beside the usual forms of historical, causal und linear time, individuals also perceive timelessness. Paradoxically, the accomplishment of a historical event (Holocaust) evokes a consciousness of the historical caesura, and thus of the untold and the inhospitable. In his perception, for the poet, writing (after holocaust) means writing after apocalyptic break, where history does not exist, in other words surrounded by the timelessness. The task of preserving the memory of what happened in poetry goes hand in hand with the awareness of a disorder and often borders on the impossibility of verbalizing what has happened or even being able to express itself verbally. The experience of disconnection from the temporal sequence of events (through trauma) coincides with the moments of speechlessness, emptiness in consciousness, verbal utterance, and time experience overlap. This tendency is radicalized especially in his late work. In this article late works of Paul Celan, that deal with the questions of timelessness and manifestations of it are analysed (“Zeitlücke”, “Die Trombonestelle” “Largo” and others).

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Actualization of Axiology Development: Problems, Searches, Solutions

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Actualization of Axiology Development: Problems, Searches, Solutions

Author(s): Lyubov’ Shabatura,Anton Yazovskikh / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2020

The article examines the concept of “value” in the context of the general planetary process of anomie at the level of local cultures and subcultures, when the possibilities of value-normative regulation of social processes are reduced to a minimum. Under these conditions, the predictive function of axiology has become particularly relevant, and the authors raise the question of the basis for the values evolution reproduction. The search to this answer involves the application of system analysis and retrospection. The study of the main axiological concepts based on the connection between objective and subjective in this perspective allows to identify the main contours of value consciousness that coincide with the dominant concepts: biological (objective-naturalistic concept), social (dialectical-materialistic concept), individual (subjective-psychological concepts) and existential (objective-transcendental and ontological ideal realistic concepts). The material summarizes the main methodological and cognitive limitations of these concepts, which are in fact natural, since they belong to specific contours of value consciousness. At the same time, a number of provisions can be considered as general ones. As a result, the authors hypothesize the possibility to develop a synthetic concept of axiology allowing predicting the development of cultural value core as an imperative of socio-cultural processes.

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Adevărul în perspectiva neurofiziologiei

Author(s): Dan PSATTA / Language(s): Romanian / Issue: 1/2018

The purely introspective philosophy, based on reasoning and that from centuries has analysed the mental activity of man needs the scientific research of brain, the only real method of objective investigation of the mental processes. I called this association ‘neurophilosophy’. In this paper, the cerebral processes involved in the knowledge of truth are described: he phenomenal analysis, the epistemic one, processes as thinking, judgement and consciousness.

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Affektív elmék

Author(s): Levente Papp / Language(s): Hungarian / Issue: 4/2018

In this study I would like to reflect on those fundamental and common features of minded beings which define them and set them apart from everything else in the world. What are those individually necessary and jointly sufficient basic characteristics by which an actual or possible being can be considered minimally minded or cognitive? Obviously, my aim is not to resolve this big question, but I think we can get closer to a possible answer by considering among others the following few essential traits: embodiment, agency, autonomy, teleology, normativity etc. These characteristics play a fundamental role in understanding what it means for a system to be minded. In the first part of my study I would like to analyse some connections which exist among these concepts and after this brief introduction I would like to highlight and interpret the category of affect. Following these considerations, I will try to argue that affect, like the other key features mentioned, plays an essential role in the constitution of minded beings.

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Afterthoughts on Critiques to The Philosophy of Curiosity

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Afterthoughts on Critiques to The Philosophy of Curiosity

Author(s): Ilhan Inan / Language(s): English / Issue: 48/2016

In this paper I respond to and elaborate on some of the ideas put forth on my book The Philosophy of Curiosity (2012) as well as its follow-up “Curiosity and Ignorance” (2016) by Nenad Miščević, Erhan Demircioğlu, Mirela Fuš, Safiye Yiğit, Danilo Šuster, Irem Günhan Altıparmak, and Aran Arslan.

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Against ‘Corporism’: The Two Uses of ‘I’

Author(s): Galen Strawson / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2009

In his book Individuals P. F. Strawson writes that ‘both the Cartesian and the no-ownership theorists are profoundly wrong in holding, as each must, that there are two uses of ‘I’, in one of which it denotes something which it does not denote in the other’ (p. 98). I think, by contrast, that there is a defensible ‘Cartesian materialist’ sense, which Strawson need not reject, in which I (=df. the word ‘I’ or the concept I) can and does denote two different things, and which is nothing like the flawed Wittgensteinian distinction between the use of I ‘as object’ and the use of I ‘as subject’. I don’t argue directly for the ‘two uses’ view, however. Instead I do some preparatory work. First I criticize one bad (Wittgensteinian or ‘Wittgensteinian’) argument for the ‘only one use of I’ view. Then I offer a phenomenological description of our everyday experience of ourselves that leads to an attack on ‘corporism’—the excessive focus on the body in present-day analytic philosophy of mind.

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Against Deflation of the Subject

Author(s): Janko Nešić / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2017

I will argue that accounts of mineness and pre-reflective self-awareness can be helpful to panpsychists in solving the combination problems. A common strategy in answering the subject combination problem in panpsychism is to deflate the subject, eliminating or reducing subjects to experience. Many modern panpsychist theories are deflationist or endorse deflationist accounts of subjects, such as Parfit’s reductionism of personal identity and G. Strawson’s identity view. To see if there can be deflation we need to understand what the subject/self is. One aspect of consciousness left unexplored and unappreciated by panpsychist theories is pre-reflective self-consciousness/self-awareness. Theories of the self, inspired by phenomenology, that are serious about subjectivity, could be of use in arguing against the deflationary reductionism of the experiencing subject. These theories show that there is more to the subject of experience than just its experiences (qualities). Even without arguing for any precise account of the nature of the self, it can be shown what phenomenology of subjective character of consciousness and pre-reflective self-awareness contributes to the combination problem debate.

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AGAINST EXTRINSIC DISPOSITIONS

Author(s): Seungbae Park / Language(s): English / Issue: 16/2017

McKitrick (2003) proposes that an object has a disposition if and only if there are a manifestation, the circumstances of the manifestation, a counterfactual true of the object, and an overtly dispositional locution referring to the disposition. A disposition is extrinsic if and only if an object has it, but a perfect duplicate of the object might not have it. I present an alternative definition that an object has a disposition if and only if a counterfactual is true of the object that, under a certain condition, it would interact with another object in a certain manner. There are three reasons for thinking that my definition is better than her definition. 1. Ockham’s razor favors my definition over McKitrick’s definition. 2. My definition is consistent, while her definition is not, with Lewis’s and her definitions of intrinsic and extrinsic properties. 3. My definition goes well, while her definition does not, with our intuition that an object has a disposition even in a possible world where there is nothing but that object.

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Aktuelnost Fihteovog poimanja transcendentalnog Ja i psihološkog Ja za savremenu filozofiju duha

Author(s): Andrija Jurić / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 2/2020

The author explores the place, role, and significance of the transcendental ‘I’ in Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre, from a theoretical standpoint. It will be analysed through the ideas of an absolute, unconditioned principle, aresidue of abstraction and a product of a real (existing) activity, as well as through ideas of the ideel ray in the structure of consciousness, as a transcendental aspect in psychological consciousness, while the absolute ‘I’ will be interpreted as an activity of the spontaneity of mind, with the ‘I’ in reflection concluded. It will be shown to be, , on the one hand, pure, transcendental, and logicaland, on the other, as concrete and individual. Thanks to this dual nature, it enables self-consciousness as sui generis mode of consciousness, different from the objectifying consciousness, but, at the same time,, acting freelyas an agent. In the analysis of consciousness as consciousness, Fichte shows that unitary psychological (real) consciousness has structural elements that are necessary and objective; a transcendental structure. Only through those transcendental moments ‘I’, as a condition of possibility, a concrete psychological subject, comes into being. By differentiating between psychological consciousness and transcendental moments, Fichte also distinguishes between First and Third-person point of view. Unified, the kernel of psychological consciousness, the ‘I’, is transcendental. This interpretation of Fichte’s ideas aims to make them independent of German Idealism, and more accessible for analysis in the light of contemporary philosophy of mind and notions of consciousness. Thus, the result of the first section, ‘I’ as an unconditioned principle, can be interpreted epistemologically; a residue of abstraction has phenomenological connotations, while the ‘I’ as a real activity, contrary to factual knowledge, is an explicit distinction between consciousness and knowledge. The imperative indicates that psychological consciousness possesses its necessary form, which psychology alone cannot explicate; while the ideel ray represents an attempt to solve the problem of self-consciousness through form and structure alone. Furthermore,, in this respect, the absolute ‘I’ is not interpreted metaphysically or with connotations to idealism, but as a pre-differentiated activity and spontaneity of mind. In addition,, anotherconsequence is that consciousness should not be conceptualised only as a ‘state’ or ‘property’, but as a structure with unique form. The Heidelberg School of Self-Consciousness’ insistence on the fallibility of the reflection model puts Fichte’s potential solutions to this problem at the forefront of contemporary concepts of self-consciousness, as they are conceptualised either on reflection or objectifying consciousness, thus putting consciousness in the place of an object. Further explications of the importance of these ideas for the problems of egological and non-egological consciousness will be elaborated elsewhere.

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Aktuelnost Fihteovog poimanja transcendentalnog Ja i psihološkog Ja za savremenu filozofiju duha (II deo)

Author(s): Andrija Jurić / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 1/2021

The author emphasises the importance of Fichte’s ideas from the Wissenschaftslehre for the contemporary philosophy of mind and the problem of consciousness and self-consciousness. Inspired by Henrich’s work on Fichte’s original insight and by subsequent Frank’s widening of the problem in connection with contemporary analytic theories, I point out some rudimentary intersection of ideas and problems. These problems include, but are not limited to: (1) the difference between I-subject (conceptualised as the always-subject of consciousness) and I-object (that same I-subject taken as an object for itself); (2) the problem of the relation of the I (self-consciousness) and consciousness – how exactly is the I ‘in’ consciousness? This issue is best expressed in the egological and nonegological theories of consciousness. This point will be expanded into (3) differentiation of self-consciousness as sui generis mode of consciousness and consciousness proper, or intentional consciousness that has a (proper) object. The former cannot be explained by the latter on the basis of its immediacy, directedness, and pre-reflectivity – consciousness can’t “have” itself as an object for itself and yet, always be able to recognize itself in its object. The egology of Wissenschaftslehre sees the I as, at the same time, pure, transcendental, and logical, and yet as concrete and individual. This enables self-consciousness to no longer be explained by reflection and object consciousness, but at the same time opens the problem of the nature of that self-relation of consciousness and the original duplicity contained in it. It shall be demonstrated that (self-)consciousness is the condition of possibility of (self-)reflection and not the other way around. I will also argue for the role of immediate and pre-reflective self-awareness in the agency of the subject and as his basis of action in the world – an activity which doesn’t have an immediate relation to the I, or the self (in such a way that the I is aware that ‘it’ did that), should be regarded as a nonconscious activity, not different from sleepwalking. Yet, the Kantian problem of the relation between the pure I and the psychological I (or self) will be left unanswered. The proposed solution will be that the I in itself is self-conscious, but is not conscious – meaning that it ‘is’, yet any explicit consciousness of it renders it as an object. In other words: we can be conscious of an object and at the same time self-conscious (not as a consciousness of self, but as ‘auto-consciousness’). The benefit of this solution is that it still leaves open the possibility to be conscious of oneself as an object and remain self-conscious at the same time. But, the proposed solution is faulty in its own way, because it doesn’t account for the original “duplicity” in self-consciousness, i.e. that the I is and at the same time is for itself. Nevertheless, insights Fichte has made are invaluable for the conceptualization of consciousness and self-consciousness in contemporary theories and should be analyzed, if for nothing else, then to better formulate and explicate those notions.

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