Showing papers in "Philosophy and Phenomenological Research in 1994"

Particulars in Particular Clothing: Three Trope Theories of Substance*

Abstract: [W]hen we talk or think of any particular sort of corporeal Substances, as Horse, Stone, etc. though the Idea, we have of either of them, be but the Complication, or Collection of those several simple Ideas of sensible Qualities, which Ae find united in the thing called Horse or Stone, yet because we cannot conceive, how they should subsist alone, nor one in another, we suppose them existing in, and supported by some common subject; which Support we denote by the name Substance, though it be certain, we have no clear, or distinct Idea of that thing we suppose a Support. (John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XXIII, ?4.)

Nietzsche on Truth and Philosophy

Abstract: Notes on texts and citations 1. Interpreting Neitzsche's on truth 2. Nietzsche and theories of truth 3. Language and truth: Nietzsche's early denial of truth 4. The development of Neitzsche's later position on truth 5. Perspectivism 6. The ascetic ideal 7. The will to power 8. Eternal recurrence.

The Structure of the Skeptical Argument

Abstract: Much has been written about epistemological skepticism in the last ten or so years, but there remain some unanswered questions concerning the structure of what has become the canonical Cartesian skeptical argument. In this paper, I would like to take a closer look at this structure in order to determine just which epistemic principles are required by the argument. A standard way of presenting the argument is as follows. Let P be some arbitrary proposition about the external world, such as the proposition that I am now sitting. Let SK be some logically possible proposition which is incompatible with P-a skeptical counterpossibility to P-such as the proposition that I am a brain in a vat with sense experience qualitatively indistinguishable from my actual experience. Let us call the following argument A:

Thought experiments in science and philosophy

Abstract: Preface: This volume originated in a conference on "The Place of Thought Experiments in Science and Philosophy" which was organized by us and held at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, April 18-20, 1986. The idea behind this conference was to encourage philosophers and scientists to talk to each other about the role of thought experiments in their various disciplines. These papers were either written for the conference, or were written after it by commentators and other participants.... We hope that this volume will be of use to other philosophers and scientists who are interested in thought experiments, as well as inspire more work in this area....

Self-Knowledge and "Inner Sense": Lecture I: The Object Perception Model

Abstract: The general topic of these lectures is the nature of our \"introspective\" knowledge of our own mental states, and, in particular, the question of whether this knowledge should be thought of as involving a kind of perception , an \"inner sense\"-whether it is appropriately conceived on a perceptual or observational model. The knowledge I have in mind is not, as you perhaps hoped, the difficult-to-get knowledge that arises from successfully following the Socratic injunction \"Know thyself\"; it is the humdrum kind of knowledge that is expressed in such remarks as \"It itches,\" \"I'm hungry ,\" \"I don't want to,\" and \"I'm bored.\" In calling this knowledge \"introspective\" I of course do not mean to be prejudging the question of whether it is perceptual or quasi-perceptual in nature; as will become apparent , my own view is at odds with the answer to that question which the etymology of that term rather naturally suggests. Faced with the question of how someone knows something, the most satisfying answer we can be given is \"She saw it.\" Seeing is believing, the expression goes, and seeing is the paradigmatic explanation of knowing. No wonder, then, that many have been attracted by the idea that something like

Preserving the principle of one object to a place: A novel account of the relations among objects, sorts, sortals, and persistence conditions

Abstract: It is common for the whole of one object and the whole of another to occupy just the same place at just the same time. So say many identity theorists, partly on the basis of reasoning such as this: Before us lies a copper statue. In just the same place, presumably, there is some copper and a piece of copper. Now what are the relations among the statue, the copper, and the piece of copper? They can't all be the same one thing, since they differ in their persistence conditions. Suppose that tomorrow we are going to hammer the statue flat and then break what remains into bits. Both the copper and the piece of copper, but not the statue, will survive the flattening. And the copper, but not the piece of copper, will survive the subsequent shattering. So before us there are three objects occupying just the same place. Or if the copper is not an object, there are two such objects: the statue and the piece of copper. Of course, it is only because the statue and the piece of copper consist of the same particles of matter that they are able to occupy the same place. Supporters of such reasoning propose that the commonsense principle of one material object to a place be restricted so as to apply only to objects of the same sort. They would allow place-sharing by a statue and a piece of copper, although not by two statues or by two pieces of copper. Let's reserve the term 'coincidence' and its cognates for cases in which the whole of one object wholly occupies the place wholly and simultaneously occupied by the whole of another. Note that as here defined, 'coincidence' denotes an irreflexive relationship. We will use 'coextension' and its cognates for the corresponding reflexive relationship.

The Philosophy of Michael Dummett

Abstract: Preface. Abbreviations. Part 1: Philosophy of Language. The Social Aspect of Language D. Davidson. Singular Terms B. Hale. Philosophical Theorizing and Particularism: Michael Dummett on Wittgenstein's Later Philosophy of Language D. Pears. Convention and Assertion E. Picardi. Meaning Theory and Anti-Realism D. Prawitz. Part 2: Philosophy of Mathematics. Anti-Realism and the Philosophy of Mathematics G. Oliveri. Dummett and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mathematics C. Penco. Vestiges of Realism G. Sundholm. About 'the Philosophical Significance of Godel's Theorem': Some Issues C. Wright. Part 3: Philosophy of Mind, Time and Religion. Dummett, Realism and Other Minds A. Bilgrami. Truth, Time and Deity B.F. McGuinness. Leaving the Past Where it Belongs J. Schulte. Part 4: Dummett's Replies. Reply to Davidson. Reply to Hale. Reply to Pears. Reply to Picardi. Reply to Prawitz. Reply to Oliveri. Reply to Penco. Reply to Sundholm. Reply to Wright. Reply to Bilgrami. Reply to McGuinness. Reply to Schulte. Bibliography. Index.

Self-Knowledge and "Inner Sense" Lecture III: The Phenomenal Character of Experience

Abstract: These lectures have been organized around the question of whether there is any good sense in which our introspective access to our own mental states is a kind of perception, something that can appropriately be called "inner sense." In my first lecture I distinguished two versions of the perception model of introspection, based on two different stereotypes of sense-perception. One of these, based primarily on the case of vision, is what I called the object-perceptual model-it takes perception to be in the first instance a relation to objects and only secondarily a relation to facts. I argued in my first lecture that introspection does not have non-factual objects of the sort required to make this model applicable. The other, which does not require perception to have non-factual objects, I called the broad perceptual model; its key tenet is that the existence of the objects of perception, whether they be factual or non-factual, is independent both of their being perceived and of there being the possibility of their being perceived. The view that introspection conforms to this was my target in my second lecture, where I argued that it is of the essence of various kinds of mental states that they are introspectively accessible. But one important issue was left dangling. If we had only such intentional states as beliefs and desires to deal with, the view that introspective awareness is awareness of facts unmediated by awareness of objects would seem phenomenologically apt. My awareness of a belief just comes down to my awareness that I believe such and such. This goes with the fact that the properties of beliefs that enter into the content of such awareness seem to be primarily intentional or representational properties, and include few if any of the "intrinsic" properties which, on the object-perception model, objects of perception ought to be perceived as having. But in the case of sensations, feelings, and perceptual experiences things seem to be different. While a few philosophers have recently maintained that the only introspectively accessible properties of these are intentional ones, I think that the majority view is

The first-person perspective and other essays: Self-knowledge and “inner sense.” Lecture II: The broad perceptual model

Abstract: Let me begin by presenting two opposed conceptions of the relationship between the realm of the mental and our knowledge of this realm, neither of which is the conception I shall be supporting. One I will call, with no pretension to scholarly accuracy, the Cartesian conception. According to this, the mind is transparent to itself. It is of the essence of mental entities, of whatever kind, to be conscious, where a mental entity's being conscious involves its revealing its existence and nature to its possessor in an immediate way. This conception involves a strong form of the doctrine that mental entities are “self-intimating,” and usually goes with a strong form of the view that judgments about one's own mental states are incorrigible or infallible, expressing a super-certain kind of knowledge which is suited for being the epistemological foundation for the rest of what we know. The other is the view that the existence of mental entities and mental facts is, logically speaking, as independent of our knowing about them introspectively, and of there being whatever means or mechanisms enable us to know about them introspectively, as the existence of physical entities and physical facts is of our knowing about them perceptually, or of there being the means or mechanisms that enable us to have perceptual knowledge of them. This is the view that implies that our introspective self-knowledge should be construed in terms of what in my first lecture I called the broad perceptual model.

Ethical Disagreement, Ethical Objectivism and Moral Indeterminacy

Abstract: What should we say when two reasonable, well-informed individuals disagree on some moral matter? There seem to be two basic analyses, each tied to a broad view of the nature of ethics. Objectivists of various stripes say that intractable moral disagreement does not undermine the claim that there is a fact of the matter awaiting discovery.' Rather, such disagreement suggests a fault of at least one of the interlocutors: a lack of information, a deliberative error, or some irrational emotional response that stands as a barrier to moral convergence. Disagreement, considered by itself, is no evidence for the claim that there is no moral fact of the matter. On the other hand, noncognitivists argue that such disagreement is best explained by citing the clashing attitudes that underlie persistent lack of moral consensus.2 They claim that the amount and apparent intractability of moral disagreement gives us reason to believe that morality is fundamentally a matter of projecting one's sentiments upon a value-free world. If moral facts were reports of "objective" states of affairs, then we should expect in morality the breadth of convergence that emerges in some of the

Predication Without Universals?: A Fling with Ostrich Nominalism

Abstract: In this paper I wish to consider the merits of Realist theories of predication vis-a-vis three varieties of Nominalism, which Armstrong has dubbed Predicate Nominalism, Resemblance Nominalism, and Ostrich Nominalism.' In Part I, I shall argue that Ostrich Nominalism is the most satisfactory position of these four, and that the Realist view favored by Armstrong and many others is prone to the same fundamental difficulty as the other two varieties of Nominalism. In Part II, I shall consider difficulties for the argument of Part I.

Review Essays: Snails Rolled Up Contrary to All Sense@@@The Philosophy of Right and Left: Incongruent Counterparts and the Nature of Space.

Abstract: To The Argument Of 1768.- To The Arguments Of 1770 And 1783.- On The First Ground Of The Distinction Of Regions In Space (1768).- Selection From Section 15 Of Dissertation On The Form And Principles Of The Sensible And Intelligible World (1770).- Selection From The Prolegomena To Any Future Metaphysics (1783).- On Higher Space.- The Paradox Of Incongruous Counterparts.- Tractatus 6.36111.- Incongruent Counterparts And Absolute Space.- The Fourth Dimension.- The Ozma Problem And The Fall Of Parity.- The Difference Between Right And Left.- Kant Incongruous Counterparts, And The Nature Of Space And Space-Time.- Hands, Knees, And Absolute Space.- Incongruous Counterparts, Intrinsic Features, And The Substantiviality Of Space.- Incongruent Counterparts.- Showing And Telling: Can The Difference Between Right And Left Be Explained In Words?.- Right, Left, And The Fourth Dimension.- On the Other Hand...: A Reconsideration of Kant, Incongruent Counterparts, and Absolute Space.- Replies To Sklar And Earman.- Kant On Incongruent Counterparts.- The Role of Incongruent Counterparts in Kant's Transcendental Idealism.- Incongruent Counterparts And Things In Themselves.- Contemporary Contributors.

Wittgenstein, phenomenology and what it makes sense to say

Abstract: In January of 1929, after returning to Cambridge, and to full time philosophical research, Wittgenstein wrote extensively about color. Among the questions he discusses are, Why can't one see blue and green in the same place? How many primary colors are there? Can one measure the amount of red present in a reddish-yellow in virtue of which it is redder than another reddishyellow? In what sense can one speak of the distance between colors, as when one says that one shade of orange is closer to yellow than another? Wittgenstein's interest in these and related issues is puzzling to say the least. Why should any philosopher be interested in this kind of problem about color, let alone Wittgenstein, who, in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, had boldly announced a conception of philosophy purified not only of psychological, but of all empirical admixture? Philosophy, claimed Wittgenstein in TLP, is not a science or body of knowledge made up of true theses. There are no philosophical propositions. Philosophy is an activity of clarification; it consists of elucidations.2 The problems of philosophy are not questions about some region of nature or other, at whatever level of generality we care to choose. They arise, rather, from our failure to understand the logical structure of our own language.3 Philosophical problems, the young Wittgenstein would have it, are confusions about how to use the symbols of our familiar language correctly, and do not point to any sort of ignorance of matters of fact. From this conception of philosophy it follows that the methods of inquiry appropriate to the sciences are inappropriate to philosophy. Wittgenstein's conception here is at odds with the view of his erstwhile teacher Bertrand Russell, who had argued for the application of the scientific method to philosophy.4 Wittgenstein's

Reply to Commentators

Abstract: Sources of the Self attempts to trace the development of what I call the "modern identity," by which I mean a set of understandings of what it is to be a human agent which are current in modem western civilization. After an initial section in which I try to trace some of the connections between identity, society and the good, I develop a portrait of the modern identity in three main headings: tracing the development of the different forms of modern inwardness, the rise of the ethic which affirms ordinary life and puts great emphasis on equality and benevolence, and the articulating of the expressivist understanding of agency with its attendant emphasis on the creative imagination. The book finishes with a short discussion of the contemporary predicament, which mainly attempts to put the questions which arise for future work. Reading the papers of MacIntyre and Olafson was a humbling experience, and this for two reasons. First, I am made aware of how badly I communicated some of my basic points. I have to admit this came as a surprise. Secondly, a weakness I was aware of came very much to the fore. The book, particularly towards the end, contains affirmations or hints of affirmations which go beyond what I made any systematic attempt to argue for. I thought and still think this is a good procedure, because it sometimes helps the reader to understand what you've said, if you're a little more forthcoming on where you'd like to end up. But of course, readers, particularly philosophical readers, find it difficult to treat these hints differently from the central thesis I've been arguing. I'd like to start with Alasdair MacIntyre's very interesting paper, which I also found very challenging. I found his summary of the book very fair. But there are some cross-purposes in the differences between us as he lays it out. MacIntyre takes me to be committed to the view that, in making choices between goods, "we express no more than our personal preferences" (pp. 18889). I think he sees me as so committed, because of something I do say, which he quotes earlier (p. 187), viz., that goods may be in conflict without refuting each other. Now what I was trying to deny here is not that goods which are now in conflict can be integrated into a single life, perhaps by being put in the con-

The ethical advantages of hard determinism

Abstract: I sometimes act morally, doing what I think I morally ought to do. If hard determinism is the correct position with respect to the free will problem, I am not morally responsible for such acts, I am not praiseworthy for acting morally nor would I be blameworthy were I not to have so acted.' For according to hard determinism libertarian free will2 is required in order for moral responsibility to be possible, but people do not have libertarian free will. Without libertarian free will people are ultimately 'given', being whoever they happened to be, with the desires and beliefs they happened to have (including the desires to change or not to change themselves). Since people's actions follow from their desires and beliefs, which in turn result from factors ultimately beyond their control, people cannot be held morally responsible for their actions. To hold people morally responsible for their actions is, according to hard determinism, to hold them responsible for the results of the morally arbitrary, for what is ultimately beyond their control. In this paper we shall assume-that there is a strong case for hard determinism.3

Taylor on Self-Celebration and Gratitude

Abstract: In The Sources of the Self, as in his earlier Philosophy and the Human Sciences, Charles Taylor takes on two principal sets of opponents: reductionist naturalists, heirs of the Enlightenment, on the one hand and self-involved expressivists, heirs of Romanticism, on the other . Taylor sees the naturalists as caught in self-referential inconsistency, unable to account for their own passionate belief that we ought to uncover the irreducible reality behind the reducible appearances. "Theories of Enlightenment materialist utilitarianism," he says, "are hard to bring into focus. They have two sides-a reductive ontology and a moral impetus-which are hard to combine." (p. 337) Taylor thinks that any movement with the size, strength and endurance of reductive naturalism must have been motivated by some sense of what he calls a "hypergood," a "constitutive good." There must be something which functions as "moral source"-that is, as "something the undistorted recognition of which empowers us to do the good." (p. 342 ) On Taylor's view, it is "a recognizable feature of the whole class of modern positions which descends from the radical Enlightenment" the class of which Marxism is paradigmatic-that "their principal words of power are denunciatory. Much of what they live by has to be inferred from the rage with which their enemies are attacked and refuted." Such a position "draws its moral ideals, if not directly from its enemies, at least from a moral culture which they have better articulated." (p. 339) So it is parasitic on a hypergood which it refuses to acknowledge. Taylor admits that "the mere fact that a position may be at its inception parasitic on moral sources it cannot itself acknowledge doesn't prove that it is unfit to build a new world. It may have resources which are yet to flower." (p. 340) But he makes little attempt to explore the possibility of a non-reductive naturalism, one which would reject "the disengaged subject" and takes account of what he calls the "situatedness" of the self-and of all the antiCartesian and anti-Kantian lessons we have learned from Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, the later Wittgenstein, and Polanyi. (p. 514, esp. n. 27) This was the

Comments on Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor

Abstract: Sources of the Self has two parts which are quite different from one another. The first is fairly brief and, among other things, explains the notions of "source" and of "self' with which Taylor is working. The second is very long and presents an historical reconstruction of the "making of the modern identity"-the story, that is, of how we have come to be the people that we now are. In an "digression on historical explanation" Taylor tells us how he conceives his own contribution to the telling of this story. Although he draws on the work of a great many students of our past, he is not, he says, offering a "diachronic-causal explanation" as an historian would, but rather an interpretive account of why people were drawn to the various new versions that were offered to them of their identity as human beings. Such an interpretation of the "spiritual power" of such ideas would not seem to oblige Taylor to take a stand on their philosophical merits. It is not surprising, therefore, that it is indeed often hard to tell, in this part of the book, just what his attitude is to the developments he is describing. Where Taylor's own philosophical views do emerge clearly is in the framework of ideas that is put in place in the first part; and it is some features of that framework that I want to comment on here. In a general way, what I want to suggest is that there are unresolved tensions between the philosophical stands Taylor takes in first part of his book and the historical account he gives in the second. At the beginning of his first chapter Taylor says that the book is to be an essay in "moral ontology" and that he will be dealing with "our modern notion of what it is to be a human agent, a person, or a self' (p. 3). This makes it sound as though "self' must be interchangeable with these other concepts and presumably with that of "human being" as well. Although Taylor has made the concept of self the vehicle of his argument, we are not really told why he chose it over the others. Whether it was a happy choice is, I suggest, a matter that needs more consideration than it gets in this book. Perhaps it is simply a stand-in for all the other concepts with which it is apparently supposed to be equivalent. Even so, it seems to me that there is a danger that

Laws, Natures, and Contingent Necessities

Abstract: Science teaches us such things as that copper conducts electricity, turns green upon prolonged exposure to air, and is composed of atoms that have 29 protons in their nuclei. Many philosophers suppose that science thereby informs us not just of uniformities that have in fact so far held, but of states of affairs that have a kind of necessity to them. But the necessity may seem at the same time not to be absolute or unconditional, even at the most fundamental level of scientific report: it may seem possible that copper should not have conducted electricity, or should not have turned green, or even that it might not have had that atomic number. For this reason many philosophers distinguish physical necessity (or "nomological" or "natural" necessity) from "full strength" necessity (of which "conceptual" or "logical" necessity is one species, and "metaphysical" necessity is often reckoned to be another). I argue here that these distinctions are unwarranted. Some regularities reported by science are, to be sure, only derivative necessities-they are bound to hold where and when certain localized or transient conditions obtain, and can in other circumstances fail to hold altogether. But concerning the more basic necessities, from which the derivative ones receive their localized sway, one has no good reason to hold they are necessary in anything less than a completely "full strength" way. One should suppose, in other words, that they are regularities which must obtain if the substances and stuffs which are their subject matter are to exist at all, are even to be themselves. Necessities differ in that some are easier for us to learn of than others, some are already reflected in our ways of thinking about the world while others are not, etc. But we should suppose that ontologically, all necessary states of affairs-at least, all non-derivative necessities-are necessary in just the same way. Other fairly recent papers have argued directly for the positive thesis that lawlike uniformities have "full strength" necessity.1 But the arguments there

How to Perform a Reduction

Abstract: A reductionist is an imperialist in the service of physics. His ideal is that of a unified science. At bottom everything ontologically is physical. Everything is also ultimately determined by what happens at the lowest physical or micro-physical level.' Finally everything is explicable in terms of physics. The reductionist has his enemies. He rejects and wishes to root out and extirpate doctrines of emergence, vitalism, holism, and dualism. New properties cannot spontaneously emerge in complex systems without being explicable in terms of the structure and components of the system. There is no life force besides the forces of physics. Life is ultimately a physico-chemical process. If any whole is greater in any sense than the sum of its parts then this is quite explicable in terms of the nature of its components and the way they are put together. Finally, there are no ghosts, spirits or souls. Contemporary philosophy and philosophy of mind in particular, is, by and large, deeply sympathetic to the reductionist's crusade. However, the orthodoxy is to reject reductionism and be content with the feeble, milk and water pabulum of supervenience. The reason for this, I wish to argue, is the very excellence of that locus classicus on reduction Chapter 11 of Ernest Nagel's The Structure of Science.2 Nagel slew the reductionist's dragons using the account of explanation which was orthodox amongst those working in the footsteps of the Vienna Circle. The paradigm of explanation was hypothetico-deductive. Deductive explanation was the norm in classical mechanics in the explanation of individual phenomena. In reduction, the explanation of one science by another, the laws of the secondary science were explained by the laws of the primary science through being deducible from them with the assistance of bridge laws. Nagel's mistake, I hold, was believing that everything should be explained by physics in the way things are explained within

Paradox and Privacy: On §§201-202 of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations

Abstract: Wittgenstein's treatment of rule-following in ??185-242 of Philosophical Investigations challenges our need for, and the possibility of, foundations of language. In these sections, Wittgenstein seeks to undermine a conception of rational language use as informed by an underlying logical structure which determines standards of correctness for our uses of words. Although this much would be widely accepted, its meaning is more controversial: Both Wittgenstein's intentions and the philosophical force of his efforts have remained unclear. In fact, even the local significance of ??201-202, those crucial sections in which Wittgenstein reviews and dissolves his much-discussed "paradox" about rule-following and then challenges the coherence of the notion of following a rule privately, has proved elusive. This elusiveness rests in large part on failure to grasp the kind of point Wittgenstein means to make here. In this paper, I seek a deeper understanding of the lessons of Wittgenstein's investigation of rule-following by advancing a close reading of ??201-202 and by assessing what, in context, these sections actually accomplish. Properly understood, Wittgenstein awakens us to the realization that we have no standpoint from which to raise a general demand for independent normative standards for our practices. More specifically, he elicits the recognition that the effort to express such demands comes to grief; in effect, we do not know what we mean to be asking for when we require or seek "foundations of language." This sort of philosophical criticism must be handled cautiously; the suggestion that we do not know what we are saying when we begin to philosophize is bound to provoke resistance. Close scrutiny of the specific ways in which the dissolution of the paradox of ?201 reflects back on the origins of our philosophical perplexity about rules will, I believe, lessen resistance here. When seen as a contribution to unearthing the genesis of philosophical concern with rules and their grounding, ??201-202 present a key part of a formidable criticism of a picture of meaning that

Critical Remarks on The Sources of the Self by Charles Taylor

Abstract: It is praise, not dispraise, to remark of Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self that its importance lies in part in its incompleteness, in its enabling us to identify how much else needs to be done, if Taylor's central claims are to be vindicated. Those claims are fourfold. A first set concern the ways in which our "identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame or horizon within which" we "can try to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done..." (p. 27). A second set comprises a defence of the objectivity of such judgments, both about types of good and about what is good or bad in particular situations. Naturalistic reductions and subjectivist and projectivist accounts of good and goods all fail (pp. 53-62). Taylor's third set of claims are embodied in three narratives about those ideas through which distinctive modern conceptions of the self and of its goods were developed, so that the self achieved a new kind of identity. The first such idea is that of the peculiar inwardness of modern postCartesian subjectivity and of corresponding conceptions of rationality. A second concerns what Taylor conceives as a peculiarly modern affirmation of everyday life, of the life of production and reproduction. And a third focusses upon the postEnlightenment tension between the naturalistic humanism of the Enlightenment and the Romantic invocation of nature as the source of the self's powers. Collectively these narratives introduce a fourth culminating set of theses, in which Taylor both stresses and praises the richness of a distinctively modern identity. This richness is defined by reference to "the need to recognize a plurality of goods, and hence often of conflicts, which other views tend to mask by delegitimizing one of the goods in contest" (p. 518). These conflicts are not a sign that one of the goods in question is not really a good: "The goods may be in conflict, but for all that they don't refute each other" (p. 502). What these goods are has been disclosed by the three central narratives and the range of goods consequently to be acknowledged is impressive. That allegiance to

Film and phenomenology : toward a realist theory of cinematic representation

Abstract: In Film and Phenomenology, Allan Casebier develops a theory of representation first indicated in the writings of the father of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and then applies it to the case of cinematic representation. This work provides one of the clearest expositions of Husserl's highly influential but often obscure thought. It also demonstrates the power of phenomenology to illuminate the experience of the art form unique to the twentieth-century cinema. Film and Phenomenology is intended as an antidote to all hitherto existing theories about the nature of cinematic representation, whether issuing from classic sources such as the film theory of Andre Bazin or the post-structuralist synthesis of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Barthesian textual analysis and Metzean cine-semiotics. Casebier shows how a phenomenological account of representation will further the aims of any film theory. Developing a viable feminist film theory, legitimizing the documentary, answering the challenge of Derridean deconstruction, properly theorizing narrativity, Film and Phenomenology argues that theory of film must be Realist both with respect to epistemology and ontological issues. In this way, this work runs contrary to the whole course of contemporary film theory which has been deeply anti-Realist.

Second Thoughts: Revoking Decisions Over One’s Own Future

Abstract: In asking questions about a person's right or authority to decide for his or her future self, we are tempted to invoke a Parfitian metaphysic of separate selves. Successive selves here are not merely a useful figure of speech such as Elster and Schelling employ, but a moral guide.' 2 Such thinking invites a rather standard alignment: advance directives are morally binding while traditional notions of personal identity prevail, but when with Parfit we countenance a succession of selves inhabiting the same body, we are drawn to question whether the decision of one self could bind the subsequent action of another.3 Although I would not deny the force of the second of these tenets, I am loathe to accept the first. Exotic metaphysics aside, there are very strong reasons to doubt the moral force of decisions we may make and later reconsider about what we are to be, or to do, at some time in the future. A central expression of autonomy is found in our ability to make a plan for ourselves and adhere to it. Emphasizing this view, Joel Feinberg argues that when a voluntary commitment is made, freely, on the basis of principles, and with alertness to the possible consequences which might ensue, it should be honored.4 He quotes with approval from Arneson, "The root idea of autonomy is that in making a voluntary choice a person takes on respon-

What Is the Connection Principle

Abstract: The Connection Principle (hereafter, CP) says that there is some kind of internal relation between a state's having intentional content ("aspectual shape") and its being (at least potentially) conscious. Searle's argument for the principle is just that potential consciousness is the only thing he can think of that would distinguish original intentionality from ersatz (Searle, 1992, pp. 84, 155 and passim. All Searle references are to 1992). Cognitivists have generally found this argument underwhelming given the empirical successes recently enjoyed by linguistic and psychological theories with which, according to Searle, CP is not reconcilable. Our primary interest in this paper is not, however, to decide whether CP is true, but just to get as clear as we can about what exactly it asserts. Finding a reasonable formulation of the principle turns out to be harder than Searle appears to suppose; or so we claim.

Bats, brain scientists, and the limitations of introspection

Abstract: Thomas Nagel and Frank Jackson have advanced influential arguments designed to foil any materialist attempt to account for the mental.' These socalled knowledge arguments assume that if materialism is true, someone who possesses complete physical knowledge will know every fact about mental states there is to know. Thus, because there are facts about mental states that will not be known by someone who possesses complete physical knowledge but has never enjoyed certain experiences, it follows that materialist accounts of the mental are inadequate. In response, defenders of materialism have generated counterarguments of several kinds. In my view, no materialist strategy has so far been successful, but nonetheless, further development will vindicate one of them. Early resistance to the knowledge arguments aimed to show that what distinguishes a subject who has had certain sensory experiences from someone who is physically omniscient but has never had them is not factual knowledge, but merely an ability, such as an ability to imagine, recognize, or remember,2 or an ability to apply a concept,3 and that hence, there is no fact about mental states that eludes a materialist account. The decisive issue for this first strategy is whether having an ability of the sort in question nevertheless involves possessing factual knowledge about certain phenomenal features of mental states, factual knowledge lacked by the physically omni-