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The idea that we can understand key aspects of the metaphysics of consciousness by understanding conscious states as having a presentational character plays an essential role in the phenomenological tradition beginning with Brentano and Husserl. In this paper, the author explores some potential consequences of this connection for contemporary discussions of the ontology of consciousness in the world. Drawing on Hintikka's analysis of epistemic modality, the author argues that the essential presentational character of consciousness can be seen as accounting for the familiar failure of substitutivity of identicals in intensional contexts of conscious presentation and further provides for an ontology of conscious presentation that avoids metaphysically problematic commitments to "special" intentional objects. The author next considers how the irreducibility of intensional contexts, if grounded in the presentational character of consciousness, also may provide for a kind of irreducibility of the "first-person" perspective to third-person or objective description across possible worlds. Finally, drawing on Chalmers' "two-dimensionalist" semantic framework, the author argues that attention to the presentational aspect of consciousness as thus understood, while it provides significant motivation for the existence of the "hard problem" of the irreducibility of consciousness to physical and structural description, is nevertheless consistent with a globally monist, rather than dualist, ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's comments on the article related to contemporary philosophers, Graham Priest and Alain Badiou, on the nature and status of the Hegelian infinite. It offers information on the Cantorian set theory and the structure of the infinite and transfinite. It focuses on the concept of methodology or proof procedure called diagonalization.

Some contemporary discussion about the explanation of consciousness substantially recapitulates a decisive debate about reference, knowledge, and justification from an earlier stage of the analytic tradition. In particular I argue that proponents of a recently popular strategyfor accounting for an explanatory gap between physical and phenomenal facts — the so-called 'phenomenal concept strategy' — face a problem that was originally fiercely debated by Schlick, Carnap, and Neurath. The question that is common to both the older and the contemporary discussion is that of how the presence or presentation ofphenomenal experiences can play a role injustifying beliefs or judgments about them. This problem is, moreover the same as what was classically discussed as the problem of acquaintance. Interestingly, both physicalist and non-physicalist proponents of the phenomenal concept strategy today face this problem. I consider briefly some recent attempts to solve it and conclude that, although it isprimafacie very plausible that acquaintance exists, we have, as yet, no good account of it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore Wittgenstein's inheritance of one specific strand of Kant's criticism, in the Critique of Pure Reason, of reason's inherent pretensions to totality. This exploration reveals new critical possibilities in Wittgenstein's own philosophical method, challenging existing interpretations of Wittgenstein's political thought as 'conservative' and exhibiting the closeness of its connection to another inheritor of Kant's critique of totality, the Frankfurt School's criticism of 'identity thinking' and the reification of reason to which it leads. Additionally, it shows how Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy offers to challenge and undermine, in a historically novel way, the metaphysical assumptions underlying some of our most characteristic and ubiquitous social practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses on the work of philosophers in the analytic tradition and the consideration of its history as an object of philosophical investigation. It mentions two main results to consider in retelling the course of analytic tradition using the work of Scott Soames on the 20th century philosophical analysis. He talks about the three methodological presupposition.

Analyzes the use-doctrine and the meaning-theory in Ludwig Wittgenstein's book "Tractatus." Examination of the meaningfulness of signs in the Tractatus theory; Relationship between the Tractarian program analysis and the use-doctrine meaningfulness of signs; Precedents of Wittgenstein's program of analysis; Contributions of Wittgenstein to analytical philosophy; Investigations made by Wittgenstein on rule-following and private language.

Heidegger's treatment of 'machination' in the Beiträge zur Philosophie begins the critique of technological thinking that would centrally characterize his later work. Unlike later discussions of technology, the critique of machination in Beiträge connects its arising to the predominance of 'lived-experience' ( Erlebnis ) as the concealed basis for the possibility of a pre-delineated, rule-based metaphysical understanding of the world. In this essay I explore this connection. The unity of machination and lived-experience becomes intelligible when both are traced to their common root in the primordial Greek attitude of techne , originally a basic attitude of wondering knowledge of nature. But with this common root revealed, the basic connection between machination and lived-experience also emerges as an important development of one of the deepest guiding thoughts of the Western philosophical tradition: the Parmenidean assertion of the sameness of being and thinking. In the Beiträge 's analysis of machination and lived-experience, Heidegger hopes to discover a way of thinking that avoids the Western tradition's constant basic assumption of self-identity, an assumption which culminates in the modern picture of the autonomous, self-identical subject aggressively set over against a pre-delineated world of objects in a relationship of mutual confrontation. In the final section, I investigate an important and illuminating parallel to Heidegger's result: the consideration of the relationship between experience and technological ways of thinking that forms the basis of the late Wittgenstein's famous rule-following considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on a study which utilized the Russellian and Wittgensteinian approach in analyzing logical atomism. Utilization of the logical analysis of language in proving the existence of atoms; Development of analytic philosophy; Information on the A priori argumentation on the ontological and epistemological approach in atomism; Details on the work of philosophers Bertrand Russel and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Background: We examined relationships between schistosome infection, HIV transmission or acquisition, and all-cause death. Methods: We retrospectively tested baseline sera from a heterosexual HIV-discordant couple cohort in Lusaka, Zambia with follow-up from 1994–2012 in a nested case-control design. Schistosome-specific antibody levels were measured by ELISA. Associations between baseline antibody response to schistosome antigens and incident HIV transmission, acquisition, and all-cause death stratified by gender and HIV status were assessed. In a subset of HIV- women and HIV+ men, we performed immunoblots to evaluate associations between Schistosoma haematobium or Schistosoma mansoni infection history and HIV incidence. Results: Of 2,145 individuals, 59% had positive baseline schistosome-specific antibody responses. In HIV+ women and men, baseline schistosome-specific antibodies were associated with HIV transmission to partners (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR] = 1.8, p<0.005 and aHR = 1.4, p<0.05, respectively) and death in HIV+ women (aHR = 2.2, p<0.001). In 250 HIV- women, presence of S. haematobium-specific antibodies was associated with increased risk of HIV acquisition (aHR = 1.4, p<0.05). Conclusion: Schistosome infections were associated with increased transmission of HIV from both sexes, acquisition of HIV in women, and increased progression to death in HIV+ women. Establishing effective prevention and treatment strategies for schistosomiasis, including in urban adults, may reduce HIV incidence and death in HIV+ persons living in endemic areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]