Search

The designation of Diego Maradona's 'handball' goal, that it was an intervention by God himself, brings the phenomena of sport and religion into an interrelationship. The basic thesis of this paper is that, despite many of their phenomenal similarities, explicit religion is not, and cannot be, substantially related to sport, as the two manifest themselves in different ways of being. This thesis is supported by arguments from three philosophical areas: 1. The ontological dimension of the manifestation of the sacred in the profane through the process of hierophany in sport does not refer to a specific deity or God, and is therefore not a presentation but an indirect representation of the sacred; 2. The epistemological perspective of the intentional relation of consciousness to religious ritual justifies the necessity of situating them in an overall horizon of references and meanings to the horizon of the lifeworld; 3. The existential and experiential aspects of transformative sport experiences transform the horizon of meanings of empirical reality, but lack the sacramental perspective. Implicit religion as a possibility of transition on a continuum of complementary existential states is a suitable explicative framework for analyzing the phenomenal similarities and essential differences of religion and sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the metaphysics of science, it is often held that higher-level properties are grounded in micro-physical properties. According to many philosophers, however, phenomenal consciousness resists this view. Many famous arguments in Philosophy of Mind have been given to reject this notion. In this paper, we argue that there is something odd about the idea that phenomenal consciousness is a special case in science and give a constructive proposal on how consciousness can fit in the natural world. To do so, we will first introduce a general notion of what grounding is. Then, we will briefly explain how the arguments for the specialness of phenomenal consciousness work by considering two famous examples, namely the zombie and the knowledge argument. In a further step, we will briefly discuss two cases from other areas in science, i.e., in particle physics and chemistry. We will demonstrate that the standard view about the reductive relation does not hold, even in these paradigm cases of the natural sciences. If what we argue is true, we think that most arguments from phenomenal consciousness cannot defeat physicalism per se. Finally, we will introduce an alternative way to naturalize phenomenal consciousness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to dogmatism, our perceptual experience provides immediate justification for our beliefs about the external world. In particular, according to some versions of dogmatism, an experience with phenomenological strength (aka ‘phenomenal force’) is sufficient for immediate perceptual justification (call this ‘the phenomenal sufficiency thesis’). However, the sufficiency thesis has been challenged based on cases in which certain imaginative experiences with phenomenal force fail to justify. So, the dogmatist may claim that while phenomenal force is not sufficient, it’s still necessary for immediate perceptual justification (call this ‘the phenomenal necessity thesis’). In this paper, I would like to challenge the phenomenal necessity thesis on the basis of a psychopathological condition called ‘derealization disorder’. In particular, I’ll argue that cases of derealization show that phenomenal force isn’t necessary for immediate perceptual justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite recent criticism, the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) is still at the core of a contemporary neuroscience of consciousness. One common aim is to distinguish merely statistical correlates from "NCCs proper", i.e., NCCs that are uniquely associated with a conscious experience and lend themselves to a metaphysical interpretation. We should then distinguish between NCCs as data and NCCs as hypotheses, where the first is just recorded data while the second goes beyond any set of recorded data. Still, such NCC-hypotheses ought to be testable. Here, I present a framework for so-called "sufficiency tests." We can distinguish four different classes of such tests, depending on whether they predict creature consciousness (which systems are conscious), state consciousness (when a system is conscious), phenomenal content (what a system is conscious of), or phenomenal character (how a system experiences). For each kind of test, I provide examples from the empirical literature. I also argue that tests for phenomenal character (How-Tests) are preferable because they bracket problematic aspects of the other kinds of tests. However, How-Tests imply a metaphysical tie between the neural and phenomenal domain that is stronger than supervenience, delivers explanations but does not close the explanatory gap, uses first-person methods to test hypotheses, and thereby relies on a form of direct neurophenomenal structuralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gregory Boyd explains the long history of evolution and all suffering that results from it—as well as suffering that results from other natural phenomena—by appealing to an angelic fall through which demonic meddling warps the original, divinely-intended lawlike regularity of the cosmos. With this position, Boyd aims to exonerate God in the face of all evil, which for Boyd includes all forms of suffering. While Boyd's cosmic warfare theodicy is more thoroughly developed than any other to date and embraces certain scientific evidence about the world in a way that other fall-based theodicies do not, I argue that it nonetheless falls short of a viable theological worldview since it relies upon special pleading and ad hoc premises and ultimately presents an inconsistent system of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociocultural diversity is notoriously challenging to study. Sociocultural viability theory has proven influential in research and practice positing that 1) consists of four primary ways of perceiving, organizing and justifying social relations; and, 2) complex problems are likely to be solved by harnessing all ways of life, whereas attempts based on fewer are doomed to fail. However, the theory lacks elaboration of its philosophical underpinnings, leading to misunderstandings and confusion. This paper offers a pragmatic account of the theory. Based on a philosophical ontology, the argument exposes the theory's pragmatic wagers (mind-world monism and phenomenalism). Moreover, it also shows how the theory's overall project can be undergirded by pragmatism's focus on practical consequences, provisionality of knowledge, plurality, and public participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One crucial premise in the argument from illusion is the Phenomenal Principle. It states that if there sensibly appears to be something that possesses a sensible quality, then there is something of which the subject is aware that has that sensible quality. The principle thus enables the inference from a mere appearance to an existence (usually a mental one). In the argument from appearance, a similar move is taken by some philosophers—they infer a content from a mere appearance. There are two kinds of defences for the Phenomenal Principle in the literature, namely, the epistemological one (e.g. H.H. Price) and the semantic one (e.g. Frank Jackson). I argue that neither consolidates the Phenomenal Principle. I particularly demonstrate that the appearance verb in premise 1 of the argument from illusion is not used in the phenomenal sense as it is used in the Phenomenal Principle, which renders the argument essentially invalid. To avoid invalidity, the proponents either give up the phenomenal use, which makes the argument unable to serve its original purpose, i.e. inferring an unusual existence, or they insist on the phenomenal use in all premises of the argument, which will trivialise the argument. I also demonstrate that a similar objection applies to the argument from appearance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenal socialism says that what we actually, directly, literally perceive is only or primarily instances of high-level phenomenal properties; this paper argues for phenomenal socialism in the weaker, primarily version. Phenomenal socialism is the philosophy of perception that goes with recognitionalism, which is the metaethics that goes with epiphanies. The first part states the recognitionalist manifesto. The second part situates this manifesto relative to some more global concerns, about naturalism, perception, the metaphysics of value, and theory vs. anti-theory in ethics. The third part rehearses two familiar views about the possible contents of perceptual experience, Phenomenal Conservativism and Phenomenal Liberalism. It notes that the usual catalogue omits two other theoretical possibilities, Phenomenal Socialism and Phenomenal Nihilism, and it defends a watered-down form of Phenomenal Socialism from four main objections. The fourth part makes some connections with the epistemology of modality and with the role of the imagination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gibsonian psychology has become what Karl Popper called a haunted universe metaphysical doctrine, no longer subject to empirical refutation or correction. Once novel terms became circularly defined in such fashion that they support a position based upon the philosophical doctrine of phenomenalism: an epistemology that cannot separate the knower (or actor) as agent from that which is to be known (or acted upon). Fearing an alleged monster, "dualism," it promotes an untenable approach (direct realism, which reduces to naive realism) that cannot address how science makes use of fundamentally abstract conceptual explanatory entities (which are not "given" in "directly" perceived in phenomenal experience). Embracing the phenomenalistic umwelt conception of organism-environment "mutuality" (to avoid "dualism"), Gibsonians abandon actual realism and the framework of evolution while claiming to defend both. Eschewing discussion of the nervous system playing the fundamental active role in creating the "phenomenal experience" an organism has, proponents dismiss neuropsychology, learning history, memory, and cognitive factors for the affordance structure of the ambient array as the causal source of behavior and subject matter of psychology. Such accordion words arbitrarily cut the causal theory of perception from its roots in physical science realism, trying to start psychology at the level of a restricted, purely functional analysis of already given meanings (affordances) somehow directly "picked up" from the umwelt. Unable to do so due to the problems of stimulus equivalence, the abstract (thus nonphenomenal) concept of "invariants" was introduced to make abstract entities somehow "directly" perceived. The quest for hard science "laws" in psychology has been defended, ignoring arguments from the last few hundred years about the differences between physical identical objects that can be ratio scaled, and the inevitably always very different functional subjects or agents that cannot be so scaled or measured, found in the realm of the life "sciences." Thus, Gibsonians fail to understand why realism must be representational and not direct, what constitutes perception-action relations, the ambiguity of action (and affordance), the nature and role of meaning in life and understanding, the nature of mensuration and its role in science, the nature of anticipatory systems, fundamental limitations of dispositional accounts, the epistemic necessity of separating the knower from the known, and much more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Loorits (2014) identifies the solution to the hard problem of consciousness in the possibility of fully analyzing seemingly non-structural aspects of consciousness in structural terms. However, research on consciousness conducted in recent decades has failed to bridge the explanatory gap between the brain and conscious mind. One reason why the explanatory gap cannot be filled, and consequently the problem remains hard, is that experience and neural structure are too different or "distant" to be directly compatible. Conversely, structural aspects of consciousness can be found in phenomenal experience. One possible alternative, therefore, is to seek the structure of seemingly non-structural aspects of consciousness not in the neural substrate, but within consciousness itself, through a phenomenal analysis of the qualitative aspects of experience, starting from its simplest forms. An essential premise is to reformulate the explanandum of consciousness, which is usually attributed to qualia and what it is like to be in a certain state. However, these properties do not allow us to identify the fundamental aspects of phenomenal experience. Sensations such as the redness of red or the painfulness of pain are inseparable from the context of the experience to which they belong, making qualia appear as phenomenal artifacts. Furthermore, the simplest qualitative aspects can be found in early vision. They are involved in perceptual organization and necessarily have relational significance. The unitary set of qualities found in early vision--such as those related to being an object, background or detail--constitutes the explanandum of the simplest forms of consciousness and seems to imply a justifying structure. Although early vision is characterized by interdependent qualitative components that form a unitary whole, we cannot find in it the structure of seemingly non-structural aspects of consciousness. Phenomenal appearance alone does not seem sufficient to identify a unitary structure of consciousness. However, the closeness of these characteristics to a unitary structure prompts us to delve into less explored territory, using the components of experience also as possible explanans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decades, pain has moved more and more into the foreground of philosophical discussion. Still, there exists substantial disagreement concerning the exact nature of pain. The paper provides an overview concerning central topics in recent pain philosophy, indicating remaining challenges and outlining promising directions for future research. Starting point is the assumption that broadly constructed pain episodes are composed of at least four paradigmatic components: (a) physiological disturbance, (b) phenomenal experience (sensory + affective), (c) action tendency, and (d) alteration in a broader mental network. On that basis, the paper first addresses the challenge to fathom which of these components provides the necessary and sufficient condition for an episode being a pain episode. This involves discussions on the folk concept of pain as well as the closer examination of dissociative cases in which some components are apparently absent. Second, the paper addresses the challenge to define how the relevant components relate to each other, for example, how closely the phenomenal experience of pain is bound to the presence of a particular physiological disturbance or action tendency. This debate takes place mainly in the context of strong intentionalist theories—indicative, evaluative, and imperative. Third, the paper argues for the future development of a research program that centrally resolves around the challenges that chronic pain poses. This focus may open stronger interdisciplinary connections to clinical research and practice and advance considerations on topics that have so far received insufficient attention in pain philosophy (e.g., pain‐related suffering). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Felsefelogos is the property of Felsefelogos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the idea of objective phenomenology, or a way of understanding the phenomenal character of conscious experiences that doesn't require one to have had the kinds of experiences under consideration. My central thesis is that structural facts about experience—facts that characterize purely how conscious experiences are structured—are objective phenomenal facts. I begin by precisifying the idea of objective phenomenology and diagnosing what makes any given phenomenal fact subjective. Then I defend the view that structural facts about experience are objective. I also argue that structural facts about experience, despite being objective, nevertheless still give rise to an explanatory gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

My commentary focuses on Khalidi's defense of episodic memory as a cognitive kind. His argument relies on merging two distinct accounts of episodic memory—the phenomenal and the etiological. I suggest that Khalidi's framework can be used to carve the contemporary memory literature differently. On this view, the phenomenal account supports constructive episodic simulation as a cognitive kind, the etiological account supports event memory as a cognitive kind, and episodic memory ceases to be. The question for Khalidi is, then, how to evaluate this alternative proposal—and more broadly how to adjudicate between competing and overlapping accounts of cognitive kinds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The connection between the unity of God and the multiplicity seen in the universe represents the central concern for the Sufi thinker, Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn 'Arabī (d. 638/1240). It deeply affected the thought of the Southeast Asian mystic, Ḥamza Fanṣūrī (d. 1590?), and his alleged disciple, Shams al-Dīn al-Sumatra'ī (d. 1630). Traces of this idea, through its popularisation in the poems of Fanṣūrī, exert a powerful influence on the Indonesian intellectual topography to this day. This article investigates the concept of unity and multiplicity, of the One expressed as the many in the phenomenal world, in Ibn 'Arabī's Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam (Ringstones of Wisdom). Through a close textual reading of the chapters of Ādam (Adam) and Ibrāhīm (Abraham) and their various commentaries by the most influential followers of Ibn 'Arabī, it concludes that the representation of 'oneness of being' (waḥdat al-wujūd), which was extensively taught by Fanṣūrī in Aceh, as an erasure of the God-Man divide, is untenable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Miranda Fricker's insightful work on epistemic injustice discusses two forms of epistemic injustice—testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when the victim lacks the interpretative resources to make sense of her experience, and this lacuna can be traced down to a structural injustice. In this paper, I provide one model of how to fill the conceptual gap in hermeneutical injustice. First, I argue that the victims possess conceptual resources to make sense of their experiences, namely phenomenal concepts. Second, I show how one might work the way up in a two-step process from a subjective, phenomenal concept to a novel, public concept. Finally, I discuss the conditions that have to be met for this process to be successful. The resulting model shows a way how the victims might alleviate hermeneutical injustice by developing novel concepts, given that the dominant group does not care about their predicament. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we make a case for the disjunctive view of phenomenal consciousness: consciousness is essentially disjunctive in being either physical or non-physical in the sense that it has both physical and non-physical possible instances. We motivate this view by showing that it undermines two well-known conceivability arguments in philosophy of mind: the zombie argument for anti-physicalism, and the anti-zombie argument for physicalism. By appealing to the disjunctive view, we argue that two hitherto unquestioned premises of these arguments are false. Furthermore, making use of the resources of this view, we formulate distinct forms of both physicalism and anti-physicalism. On these formulations, it is easy to see how physicalists and anti-physicalists can accommodate the modal intuitions of their opponents regarding zombies and anti-zombies. We conclude that these formulations of physicalism and anti-physicalism are superior to their more traditional counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many philosophers tacitly accept the View: consciousness is necessary for being a welfare subject. That is, in order to be an eligible bearer of welfare goods and bads, an entity must be capable of phenomenal consciousness. However, this paper argues that, in the absence of a compelling rationale, we are not licensed to accept the View, because doing so amounts to fallacious reasoning in theorizing about welfare: insisting on the View when consciousness is not in fact important for welfare value in a systematic and significant way is objectionably "consciousist." As a result, the View does not advance our understanding of the value of consciousness. The paper further diagnoses why we may be attracted to the View, and what we should accept instead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to one prominent account of perceptual justification, "dogmatism," whenever you have perceptual experience as if p, and lack defeaters, you thereby have immediate, prima facie justification for believing that p. The most important challenge is to show how experience can, on its own, provide justification for the belief in its content. Dogmatists often try to meet this challenge by highlighting the phenomenal character of perceptual experience and the mode of presentation of its content and defending their justifying roles by appealing to intuitively plausible examples. What is lacking here, however, is a theoretical framework to sanction and justify those roles going beyond the mere appeal to examples. Finding such a framework is the main goal of this article. I begin by criticizing a prominent response to this challenge, which suggests a composition view of perceptual experience consisting of sensory experiences and seemings. I then highlight the need for a theoretical framework to provide the rationale for the justifying roles that dogmatists allocate to perceptual experience. It is claimed that the framework in question involves the mechanism by which we possess reasons. Adapting the framework to cases where perception functions as a reason, a principled defense of dogmatism is provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain‐general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been largely overlooked in favor of mental states' type, representational contents, domain‐specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Standard responses to the knowledge argument grant that Mary could know all of the physical facts even while trapped inside her black‐and‐white room. What they deny is that upon leaving her black‐and‐white room and experiencing red for the first time, Mary learns a genuinely new fact. This paper develops an alternate response in a grounding physicalist framework, on which Mary does not know all of the physical facts while trapped inside the room. The main thesis is that Mary does not know certain phenomenal facts while trapped inside the room, whereby these facts classify as physical due to being wholly and fully metaphysically grounded in the underlying fundamental facts which are themselves entirely physical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper explores anew the question of Husserl's metaphysics by contrasting H. Philipse and D. Zahavi's respective position on the matter. I argue that these positions fall victim to opposing exegetical pitfalls. On the one hand, while I concur with Philipse's general characterisation of Husserl as an ontological phenomenalist, I disagree that this implies Husserl was a subjective idealist similar to Berkeley. On the other hand, while Zahavi's correlationist interpretation of Husserl avoids this subjective idealist interpretation, I argue that it inadvertently succumbs to the realist alternative that construes the world as existing independently from subjectivity. The way out of this dilemma is to interpret Husserl as an experiential monist, where the phenomenal stream (Erlebnisstrom) is taken to be ontologically primary, by virtue of its antecedence over the subject-object or mind-world dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cognitive phenomenology debate centers on two questions. (1) What is an apt characterization of the phenomenology of conscious thought? And (2), what role does this phenomenology play? I argue that the answers to the former question bear significantly on the answers to the latter question. In particular, I show that conservatism about cognitive phenomenology is not compatible with the view that phenomenology explains the constitution of conscious thought. I proceed as follows: To begin with, I analyze the phenomenology of our sensory experiences and argue for a weak phenomenal holism (WPH) about sensory phenomenology. Next, I explore how WPH can be integrated into the competing accounts of cognitive phenomenology. I argue that, given WPH, conservatism turns out to reduce phenomenal character to a merely concomitant phenomenon that has no explanatory power when it comes to the constitution of conscious thoughts. In contrast, liberalism is explanatorily more powerful in this respect. Finally, I propose a new version of liberalism that explains how phenomenology constitutes conscious thoughts and fits best with WPH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the book "Phenomenalism: a metaphysics of chance and experience" by Michael Pelczar, the author argues that physical objects are tendencies or propensities for specific experiences. Pelczar resurrects the idea of phenomenalism, which suggests that physical things are "permanent possibilities of sensation." He presents two main arguments for this view: the Regularity Argument, which states that the regularity of experience is explained by the propensity for experiences to occur in certain ways, and the Correspondence Argument, which claims that there is a perfect correlation between physical things and possibilities for ideal things. Pelczar also highlights the advantages of phenomenalism over other metaphysical systems. While this perspective may be counterintuitive, the book makes a compelling case for considering phenomenalism as a serious viewpoint. [Extracted from the article]

Introduction. The article raises the problem of methodological foundations of sociohumanitarian knowledge. The opinion that has been established since the constitution of the social and humanitarian sciences that there are fundamental differences in the methodology of natural science and socio-humanitarian knowledge has become perceived as an axiom. This situation did not contribute to the creation of an adequate theory capable of sufficiently implementing the explanatory and predictive functions of science in this area.Methodology and sources. Obstacles to the creation of an adequate methodology for the study of human existence are misunderstood thesis about the specifics of socio-humanitarian knowledge and inadequate understanding of the nature of the object of socio-humanitarian knowledge. The unity of criteria and standards of scientific research in the natural sciences and socio-humanitarian sciences is achieved on the basis of the post-non-classical model of science. The concept of scientific paradigms developed by V.S. Stepin can serve as a source of a new approach to the formation of the methodology of socio-humanitarian knowledge.Results and discussion. The classical model of scientific research posited the opposite of the method of natural and socio-humanitarian sciences on the basis of the opposite of the methods of mastering the objects of research: sensory means and intelligible. In this way, indeed, it is impossible to combine the criteria and standards of science in relation to natural science and socio-humanitarian research.Conclusion. The post-non-classical model of science is based on the understanding of the research object from the point of view of its structure, which allows us to consider the phenomena of human existence as having a single nature with the object of natural science, since in both cases, objects have a complex, systemic nature and belong to self-developing objects.

Why do we tend to think that phenomenal consciousness poses a hard problem? The answer seems to lie in part in the fact that we have the impression that phenomenal experiences are presented to us in a particularly immediate and revelatory way: we have a sense of acquaintance with our experiences. Recent views have offered resources to explain such persisting impression, by hypothesizing that the very design of our cognitive systems inevitably leads us to hold beliefs about our own experiences with certainty. I argue against this kind of "designed certainty" views. First, I claim that it is doubtful that we really hold beliefs about our own experiences with certainty—in any sense of certainty that would make our phenomenal beliefs special. Second, I claim that, even if it were the case that we hold beliefs about experiences with certainty, this would fall short of explaining our sense of acquaintance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, perceptual experiences can give us immediate justification for beliefs about the external world in virtue of having a distinctive kind of phenomenal character—namely phenomenal force. I present three cases to show that phenomenal force is neither pervasive among nor exclusive to perceptual experiences. The plausibility of such cases calls out for explanation. I argue that contrary to a long‐held assumption, phenomenal force is a separate, non‐perceptual state generated by some metacognitive mechanisms that monitor one's first‐order mental processes and states. This new account advances our understanding of the nature of phenomenal force. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perceptual experience usually comes with "phenomenal force", a strong sense that it reflects reality as it is. Some philosophers have argued that it is in virtue of possessing phenomenal force that perceptual experiences are able to non‐inferentially justify beliefs. In this article, I introduce an alternative, inferentialist take on the epistemic role of phenomenal force. Drawing on Bayesian modeling in cognitive science, I argue that the sense of reality that accompanies conscious vision can be viewed as epistemically appraisable in light of its rational etiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I present a two-pronged argument devoted to defending the type-identity theory of mind against the argument presented by Kripke in Naming and Necessity. In the first part, the interpersonal case, I show that since it is not possible to establish the metaphysical conditions for phenomenal identity, it is not possible to argue that there can be physical differences between two subjects despite their phenomenal identity. In the second part, the intrapersonal case, I consider the possibility of imagining one and the same individual having the same phenomenal state while counterfactually being in very different physical states. I argue that this case should respect Kripke's implicit theory of personal identity—but this proves to be a very difficult task to accomplish, thus preventing the argument from getting off the ground. Therefore, I maintain, that the type-identity theory is still the better option to solve the mind–body problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article documents a previously unattested variety of obligatory control (OC) in the Nakh-Daghestanian language Chirag Dargwa, which lies at the intersection between two phenomena known from previous research: overt controlled subjects and partial control. Despite being less widespread crosslinguistically, these two phenomena do occur in various unrelated languages and are known to not quite fit in with existing theories of OC. Combined in a single construction, they yield a new empirical option in the typology of OC and provide evidence in favor of a pro analysis of controlled subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interview with composer and multimedia artist Miodrag Lazarov Pashu, conducted by his son, musicologist and pianist Viktor Lazarov. They start by discussing Lazarov Pashu's immigration to Canada in the 1990s, followed by the beginning of his career and doctoral studies in Montreal. The composer talks about the culture shock he experienced upon his arrival in Canada and his difficult adaptation to a new artistic environment. He describes his performance in a New York gallery in 1993 and explains the change that occurred in his artistic direction in the 1990s. The composition of his first quartet, a pivotal work, is situated in this context, followed by a comparison of the artistic approaches and cultural institutions in Belgrade and Montreal. The composer speaks about the influence of Rachmaninov's music on his piano works and his compositional process, particularly in relation to Valse (2008). Finally, Viktor Lazarov describes his creation and interpretation of this piece, leading father and son to trace a link between musical interpretation and the art that the composer defines as phenomenalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consciousness and intelligence are properties that can be misunderstood as necessarily dependent. The term artificial intelligence and the kind of problems it managed to solve in recent years has been shown as an argument to establish that machines experience some sort of consciousness. Following Russell's analogy, if a machine can do what a conscious human being does, the likelihood that the machine is conscious increases. However, the social implications of this analogy are catastrophic. Concretely, if rights are given to entities that can solve the kind of problems that a neurotypical person can, does the machine have potentially more rights than a person that has a disability? For example, the autistic syndrome disorder spectrum can make a person unable to solve the kind of problems that a machine solves. We believe the obvious answer is no, as problem-solving does not imply consciousness. Consequently, we will argue in this paper how phenomenal consciousness, at least, cannot be modeled by computational intelligence and why machines do not possess phenomenal consciousness, although they can potentially develop a higher computational intelligence than human beings. In order to do so, we try to formulate an objective measure of computational intelligence and study how it presents in human beings, animals, and machines. Analogously, we study phenomenal consciousness as a dichotomous variable and how it is distributed in humans, animals, and machines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traditionally, phenomenal consciousness has been restricted to the realm of perceptual and otherwise sensory experiences. If there is a kind of phenomenology altogether unlike sensory phenomenology, then this was a mistake, and requires an accounting. I argue such cognitive phenomenology exists by appealing to a phenomenal contrast case that relies on meaningful and relatively meaningless dialogue. I explain why previous phenomenal contrast arguments are less likely to be effective on even neutral parties to the debate: these arguments rely on a 'hard-to-understand' sentence, which may elicit sensory crutches that one focuses on, thereby obscuring cognitive phenomenology. I argue for a positive characterization of the phenomenal contrast in terms of seeming to be aware of abstract relations that obtain between different contributions in a dialogue. This paves the way for arguing that what it's like to entertain a cognitive content that p differs from that of q in their cognitive phenomenology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo is the property of Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios de Desarrollo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this contribution, the author presents a refoundation of transcendental phenomenology in terms of “generative phenomenology”. Four perspectives for entering this “generative phenomenology” are outlined – respectively through a consideration of being in phenomenology, creativity, ontogenesis and a reinterpretation of the very concept of the “transcendental” through a descent beneath the phenomenal sphere. This last perspective is developed in more detail and implements a methodological way, a way through the transcendental logic and a way through the structures of transcendentality (which are made explicit in the “generative matrix of the meaningformation” [Sinnbildung]). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the transparency thesis, some conscious states are transparent or "diaphanous". This thesis is often believed to be incompatible with an inner‐awareness account of phenomenal consciousness. In this article, I reject this incompatibility. Instead, I defend a compatibilist approach to transparency. To date, most attempts to do so require a rejection of strong transparency in favor of weak transparency. In this view, transparent states can be attended to by attending (in the right way) to the presented world: that is, they are merely translucent. Here, I first argue that this understanding of transparency is too weak to qualify as a compatibilist view. Drawing on insights from Franz Brentano, I then describe a middle road between strong and weak transparency. The crucial idea is that, although transparent states cannot be attended to, they can be noticed (under suitable conditions). This view, I submit, allows supporters of inner awareness to commit themselves to a more interesting understanding of transparency—moderate transparency—that preserves the initial intuition underlying the transparency metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I develop a new version of the acquaintance view of the nature of introspection of phenomenal states. On the acquaintance view, when one introspects a current phenomenal state of one's, one bears to it the relation of introspective acquaintance. Extant versions of the acquaintance view neglect what I call the phenomenal modification problem. The problem, articulated by Franz Brentano in his Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, is that drawing introspective attention to one's current conscious experience may modify its phenomenology. Failing to take phenomenal modification into account affects the adequacy of extant versions of the acquaintance view. The purpose of this paper is to develop a better version, the integration account, that meets the phenomenal modification challenge while preserving the merits of other versions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Logos: A Journal, of Religion, Philosophy Comparative Cultural Studies & Art (08687692) is the property of Logos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Immanuel Kant's oft-repeated statement that physical objects are mere representations has given rise to various phenomenalist interpretations. Here I understand phenomenalism to be the view that physical objects are actual or possible perceptions. I argue for a novel phenomenalist interpretation: for Kant a physical object is nothing but the sum of actual and possible perceptions that agree with its empirical concept. I argue that this interpretation is supported by the textual evidence and that this interpretation is not vulnerable to objections commonly made against phenomenalist interpretations. I also argue that the textual evidence provides more support for this interpretation than it does for certain other phenomenalist interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her 2011 paper "Phenomenal Concepts, Color Experience, and Mary's Puzzle", Diana I. Pérez argues that some phenomenal concepts, namely those linked to color experiences, are complex recognitional concepts. In addition, she holds that only the postulation of this kind of concepts allows us to account successfully for the new knowledge intuition which underpins the knowledge argument. However, in this paper I show that Pérez fails to distinguish between phenomenal, psychological and recognitional concepts and, therefore, her argument is unsound. In particular, I contend that there are in fact no phenomenal concepts as Pérez conceives them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the defense of phenomenal accessibilism in epistemology and the challenges it faces from different perspectives. The author engages with critics who either reject accessibilism or phenomenalism, resulting in a symposium where various positions are represented. The disagreement primarily revolves around the explanation of epistemic akrasia and the role of entailment in the evidential support relation.

This paper argues for the claim that the mental ontology required for what has been called the "Phenomenal Intentionality Theory" (PIT) should be understood in terms of mental events or episodes, not mental states that instantiate phenomenal properties because the former but not the latter has a kind of temporal shape. I begin by laying out the basic commitments of PIT. I then introduce the notion of "temporal shape" and defend the following simple but powerful argument: (1) If conscious experiences are phenomenal mental states that instantiate phenomenal properties, then the phenomenal character of these experiences will lack a temporal shape. (2) The phenomenal character of conscious experience typically has a temporal shape. (3) Therefore, conscious experiences are not mental states that instantiate phenomenal properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ideas y Valores is the property of Universidad Nacional de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue Klesis is the property of Revue Klesis and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revue Klesis is the property of Revue Klesis and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)