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Early modern debates about the nature of matter interacted with debates about whether matter could think. In particular, some philosophers (e.g. Cudworth and Leibniz) objected to materialism about the human mind on the grounds that matter is passive, thinking things are active, and one cannot make an active thing out of passive material. This paper begins by looking at two 17-century materialist views (Hobbes's, and one suggested but not endorsed by Locke) before considering that objection (which I call here the Activity Argument). In discussion, I note that several philosophers of the time believed that matter was active. That view opens up a possible response to the Activity Argument. The paper concludes by looking at the views of two materialists of the time who also believed that matter was active, Toland and Cavendish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers have held that it is not possible to experience a spatial object, property, or relation except against the background of an intact awareness of a space that is somehow 'absolute'. This paper challenges that claim, by analyzing in detail the case of a brain-damaged subject whose visual experiences seem to have violated this condition: spatial objects and properties were present in his visual experience, but space itself was not. I go on to suggest that phenomenological argumentation can give us a kind of evidence about the nature of the mind even if this evidence is not absolutely incorrigible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article surveys and evaluates the answers that philosophers and animal researchers have given to two questions. Do animals have thoughts? If so, are their thoughts conceptual? Along the way, special attention is paid to distinguish debates of substance from mere battles over terminology, and to isolate fruitful areas for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Frank B. Ebersole died recently. Here I remind philosophers of the thinking of this reclusive philosopher who brought out the value of Wittgenstein's dictum that philosophers should “bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.” I illustrate Ebersole's singular thinking by focusing on his philosophical investigation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barry Stroud suggests that when we want to explain a certain kind of knowledge philosophically we feel we must explain it on the basis of another, prior kind of knowledge that does not imply or presuppose any of the knowledge we are trying to explain. If we accept this epistemic priority requirement (EPR) we find that we cannot explain our knowledge of the world in a way that satisfies it. If we reject EPR then we will be failing to make all of our knowledge of the world intelligible all at once. I respond to this dilemma by questioning EPR and arguing that it is, in any case, a requirement that is satisfied by explanations of our knowledge in terms of non-epistemic seeing. Since non-epistemic seeing is not a form of knowing, such explanations show how knowledge of the world can come to be out of something that is not knowledge of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I contest a reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations—a reading of it as debunking philosophy. I concede that such a reading is not groundless, but I show why it is nonetheless mistaken. To do so, I distinguish two different ways of viewing Philosophical Investigations and its concern with philosophical problems, an External View and an Internal View. On the External View, readers of the book are taken to know ahead of time what philosophical problems are. On the Internal View, readers are not taken to know this ahead of time: the task of the book is to disclose what philosophical problems are, to show them coming into being. One thing disclosed is our participatory role in philosophical problems coming to be. Learning about the nature of philosophical problems is thus learning about our own nature; metaphilosophical knowledge is in part self-knowledge. If the Internal View is correct (as I believe it is), then Philosophical Investigations does not debunk philosophy but provides a different conception of philosophy and the philosopher's task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being there from the beginning, philosophical approaches have never had a settled place in cognitive research and few cognitive researchers not trained in philosophy have a clear sense of what its role has been or should be. We distinguish philosophy in cognitive research and philosophy of cognitive research. Concerning philosophy in cognitive research, after exploring some standard reactions to this work by nonphilosophers, we will pay particular attention to the methods that philosophers use. Being neither experimental nor computational, they can leave others bewildered. Thought experiments are the most striking example but not the only one. Concerning philosophy of cognitive research, we will pay particular attention to its power to generate and test normative claims, claims about what should and should not be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses dialogue in the philosophy of Martin Eger. It profiles Eger who was a professor of physics at the College of Staten Island at the City University of New York. His works include "Science, Understanding, and Justice," and "Hermeneutics and Natural Science." The article mentions that Eger supported the hermeneutic techniques of interpreting concepts and propositions. Eger also supported the idea that dialogue is needed in interpretation. The article also discusses the role of dialogue in hermeneutics.

The article discusses a form of reductionism based on the thinking pf Murray Gell-Mann and James Hartle. The new reductionism is based on discoveries in quantum physics and on a program by Gell-Mann and Santa Fe Institute on complexity and emergence. The new reductionism has been neglected by philosophers due to the technical nature of the papers as well as the focus on structures and dynamics. The article discusses several types of reductionism including epistemological, ontological, and methodological. An overview of the new reductionism is provided.

This paper presents an objection to the view that intentions provide reasons and shows how this objection is also inherited by the more commonly accepted Tie-Breaker view, according to which intentions provide reasons only in tie-break situations. The paper also considers and rejects T. M. Scanlon's argument for the Tie-Breaker view and argues that philosophers might be drawn to accept the problematic Tie-Breaker view by confusing it with a very similar, unproblematic view about the relation between intentions and reasons in tie-break situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a new compatibilist definition of free will, which is an elaboration of the classic compatibilist view of free will as absence of restriction, with the help of the causal theory of action and some special categories. This new definition enables us to neutralize a very wide range of counterexamples in a systematic and compelling way, including those left unanswered by hierarchical definitions.1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information related to the generality problem in philosophy. These problems are especially impressive because they target the coherence of reliabilism, leaving aside the issue of whether reliabilism even gets the right result assuming its coherence. Such problems stem from the issue of how one is to characterize a reliable process. In particular, a process can be described at varying levels of generality and depending on what level of description one is working at, one gets different results regarding the reliability of this process. For instance, a seemingly uncontroversial process for generating true beliefs involves a normal human being visually inspecting a mid-sized object in broad daylight and then forming beliefs on that basis.

The article presents a response to Quentin Skinner's comments about the relationship between history and philosophy. The author discusses and expounds upon the arguments in which he agrees with Skinner. Further, Passmore separates his ideas from those of Collingwood, with whom Skinner associates him. He then discusses the arguments where he and Skinner are in conflict. He reflects that his writing on the historiography of philosophy is in response to a particular situation in the 1950s. He also discusses his own book: "Hume's Intentions."

The article presents a disputed opinion of John Passmore's argument about the relationship between history and philosophy. The author reflects that Passmore's argument, presented in his major essay, "The Idea of a History of Philosophy," has come under heavy criticism due to its trend toward deconstruction. He argues that the arguments presented by Passmore can answer the criticisms being raised by different schools of thought. He also opposes Passmore's idea that the history of philosophy has the effect of reducing it to a mere aspect of cultural history.

In this article, the author argues that philosopher John Martin Fischer's theory regarding the Principal of Alternative Possibilities and counterexample strategy can only be made by reliance upon an intuitive view of control which the advocate of the Principle of Alternative Possibilities does not share. The author believes that Fischer's defense of philosopher Harry Frankfurt counter example strategy is not decisive.

The author focuses on the idols of imprecise thinking by philosopher Francis Bacon. The said phantoms of the mind are believed to have the capacity to block out the truth, according to Bacon. Although, the common belief is that science can produce absolute truth, Bacon's "New Organon" still stands as a guidepost to avoid errors in science or dogmatic and erroneous reasoning. Bacon has classified such idols as the idols of the tribe or error common to humankind, the idols of the cave or errors due to personal prejudice, bias and ignorance, the idols of the market place or errors that creep into one' thinking by the influence of a common language in the mind and the idols of theater, errors due to faulty philosophical systems, on faulty proofs and on blind acceptance of attitudes and ideas.