Continuity Thesis Research Articles

THE ACTUAL LOSS ILLUSION

Abstract On the orthodox account of the private law compensatory principle, the claimant is compensated for the loss that they actually suffered because of the defendant’s wrong. Although the principle has various exceptions, it is widely accepted in both case law and academic commentary. We argue that it is nevertheless flawed, both doctrinally and theoretically. Claimants are never really compensated for their actual loss, and, contrary to popular belief, leading theoretical accounts of private law compensation (corrective justice and the continuity thesis) suggest that a principle of compensation for actual loss is not desirable in any event.

Pragmatic realism: towards a reconciliation of enactivism and realism

AbstractThis paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactivism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,13(3), 461–475, 2014), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this attempt, and argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit the same world. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s manipulation-based enactivist realism to a richer, inquiry-based enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism.

On motivating irruptions: the need for a multilevel approach at the interface between life and mind

In a recent remarkable article, Froese (2023) presents his Irruption Theory to explain how motivations can make a behavioral difference in motivated activity. In this opinion article, we review the main tenets of Froese’s theory, and highlight its difficulty in overcoming the randomness challenge it supposedly solves, that is, the issue of how adaptive behavior can arise in the face of material underdetermination. To advance our understanding of motivated behavior in line with Froese’s approach, we recommend that future work should endorse a multilevel pluralistic approach to causation and explanation in which motivations could genuinely play an irreducible role. Additionally, in line with the life-mind continuity thesis, we suggest that the best place to look for the interplay between motivations and nonmotivational physical, biological, and dynamical factors, may be at the level of the continuous feeling of being an embodied, living organism.

QUINE’IN FELSEFESİNDE SÜREKLİLİK TEZİNİN GERÇEK ANLAMI NEDİR?

The continuity thesis (CT) does not suggest that the similarities between science, common sense, and philosophy are much more than its opponents might claim. Under its Quinean motivation, CT is used to suggest a normative idea concerning how to do philosophy; it is not a descriptive thesis about the actual relationships between philosophy, common sense, and science, except the historical and developmental origins of them. CT is not primarily a descriptive thesis on the similarities between science and non-science. It is, however, based upon another descriptive, closely related thesis: starting from the middle. All thought, human and animal, scientific or not, begins from an inherited mass of knowledge, assumptions, and a surrounding general framework. There is no cosmic exile, Archimedean point, and “view from nowhere.” This is an observation for Quine and underlies his attack against the analytic and the synthetic distinction; his defense of holism and of empiricism which in combination yields Quinean naturalism. Thus, CT should be considered as the ultimate expression of Quinean naturalism and cannot be invalidated by showing the vast differences, even occasionally outright opposition, between science, common sense, and philosophy. Neither does it imply that philosophy must be assimilated into science without a substantial shift in the present notion of science.

Synaesthesia and Encapsulation

The concept of informational encapsulation has been important in promoting a view of the mind that has dominated cognitive science. Multisensory phenomena, such as synaesthesia, have been used as evidence for challenging this view. The main objective of this paper is to provide a more detailed understanding of the nature of such a challenge by examining the two types of grapheme–colour synaesthesia, projectors and associators. It is argued that the phenomena under consideration exemplify partial encapsulation failure and that it is expressed in three forms: intramodal, intermodal, and top-down. Additional support for these claims is provided by considering some evidence on synaesthetic-like experiences in relation to the continuity thesis.

Heraclitus in Nietzsche’s Philosophy: Origins of the Discussion (1890s – 1930s)

The paper examines the early discussion on the role of Heraclitus in Nietzsche’s philosophy, including some relatively little-known contributions by R. Oehler, E. Bertram and A. Baeumler, as well as more wide­ly mentioned interpretations of K. Jaspers, M. Heidegger and K. Löwith. I show that in the 1890s–1930s the significant influence of Heraclitus on Nietzsche’s thought was considered indisputable. However, inter­pretations of the period can be divided into the ‘authentic’ ones (e.g., Oehler, Löwith), each of which view Nietzsche’s use of Heraclitus thought as significant for Nietzsche’s own philosophy, and ‘idiosyncratic’ ones (e.g. Heidegger, Jaspers), which, by interpreting Nietzsche from their own idiosyncratic perspectives, nat­urally put less philosophical weight on reading Nietzsche from the standpoint of Heraclitus. This review leads to the conclusion that a study of Nietzsche’s Heraclitus can contribute to two contemporary debates in Nietzsche studies: the discussion on Nietzsche’s ontological position and to the discussion around the so-called continuity thesis.

Hans Jonas and the phenomenological continuity of life and mind

AbstractThis paper offers a novel interpretation of Hans Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, the centrepiece of Jonas’ philosophy of organism, in relation to recent controversies regarding the phenomenological dimension of life-mind continuity as understood within ‘autopoietic’ enactivism (AE). Jonas’ philosophy of organism chiefly inspired AE’s development of what we might call ‘the phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis’ (PLMCT), the claim that certain phenomenological features of human experience are central to a proper scientific understanding of both life and mind, and as such central features of all living organisms. After discussing the understanding of PLMCT within AE, and recent criticisms thereof, I develop a reading of Jonas’ analysis of metabolism, in light of previous commentators, which emphasizes its systematicity and transcendental flavour. The central thought is that, for Jonas, the attribution of certain phenomenological features is a necessary precondition for our understanding of the possibility of metabolism, rather than being derivable from metabolism itself. I argue that my interpretation strengthens Jonas’ contribution to AE’s justification for ascribing certain phenomenological features to life across the board. However, it also emphasises the need to complement Jonas’ analysis with an explanatory account of organic identity in order to vindicate these phenomenological ascriptions in a scientific context.

Constraint-evading surrogacy: the missing piece in Radical Embodied Cognition’s non-representationalist account of intentionality?

Radical Embodied Cognition (REC) is an anti-representationalist approach to the nature of basic cognition proposed by Daniel Hutto and Erik Myin. While endorsing REC’s arguments against a role for contentful representations in basic cognition we suggest that REC’s ‘teleosemiotic’ approach to intentional targeting results in a ‘grey area’ in which it is not clear what kind of causal-explanatory concept is involved. We propose the concept of constraint-evading surrogacy as a conceptual basis for REC’s account of intentional targeting. The argument is developed via a reconsideration of Peter Godfrey-Smith’s ‘environmental complexity thesis’. We show how constraint-evading surrogacy clarifies REC’s account of intentionality by specifying the role of external natural signs and certain internal states (REC’s ‘Local Indexical Guides’). We argue that the resulting view of intentionality can be extended to proto-biotic autocatalytic systems, offering support for the life-mind continuity thesis. We leave open the question of whether it is helpful to consider constraint-evading surrogacy to be a form of (non-contentful) representation, but we suggest that there is a prima facie case for such a view.

Contextualising colonial violence: Causality, continuity and the Holocaust

AbstractThis article considers the problems that arises in linking colonialism and colonial violence to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust. Links between colonialism and the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, have again become popular with the increased focus on colonial violence. In German colonial history, a dominant tendency has been the ‘colonial sonderweg’ where continuities are drawn from colonial Africa to the Holocaust. Recently, British colonial violence too has been contextualised with the Holocaust, thus expanding the continuity thesis. Furthermore, Germany's confrontation with the Holocaust after 1945, some argue, serves as a model for how Britain should confront its past as a colonial power. This article argues that the invocation of the Holocaust as a benchmark for violence and a way to gauge colonial violence is generally unproductive and problematic. While intended to promote the historical significance of colonial violence, it does the opposite: it reduces it to a precursor and flattens the historical complexities that explained colonialism and colonial violence. Colonial violence, it is argued, is in itself significant and should therefore be separated from the Holocaust if we are to maintain its colonial context and historical specificity.

Remedial consistency in private law

This article is concerned with the concept of ‘remedial consistency,’ the consistency of remedial rights with primary rights in the sense I explain. I argue that the requirement of remedial consistency has important implications across private law. It suggests that the ‘continuity thesis’ does not provide a justification for the right to compensation for a wrong, and I argue that rights to compensation are not generally based on wrongdoing. I also consider whether the absence of a right to specific performance is consistent with the existence of a duty of performance, and I discuss the need for alternative remedies to be mutually consistent. I also discuss the implications of remedial consistency for the concept of unjust enrichment, and I argue on the basis of remedial consistency for the general availability of proprietary claims for invalid transfers.

Delegation and the Continuity Thesis

Delegation and the Continuity Thesis

Examining the Structure of Remedial Law

Examining the Structure of Remedial Law

Zhuangzi, Peirce, and the butterfly dreamscape: concentric meaning in the Qiwulun 齊物論

AbstractWaking from a vivid dream, the sage finds himself lost between worlds of possibility and ultimately transformed. Zhuangzi’s famous butterfly story may seem familiar, but the text-linguistic structures of its broader interpretive context are little discussed and poorly understood. In this paper I argue that theQíwùlùn齊物論 chapter, like so many other ancient writings, is composed in a concentric, chiastic pattern, with sections in each half mirroring each other throughout, while the central sections provide a pivotal peak and interpretive key that radiate meaning back out to the margins. To quote Mary Douglas, “the meaning is in the middle.” The middle is also the place of Peircean Thirdness. In this paper I map the chapter’s text-level chiastic structures and trace its intimations of Peircean semiotic pragmatism. The core rings of the text endorse contrite fallibilism while also prefiguring triadic structure, the pragmatic maxim, and the continuity thesis. Referencing cultural and historical contexts plus recent scholarship on Zhuangzi and Peirce, I ultimately argue that this ancient text, like the pragmatist semiotic it foreshadows, can be better appreciated and applied by embracing the interplay of centers and margins, discarding debilitating ideologies, and waking up to new degrees of freedom.

A free energy reconstruction of arguments for panpsychism

The paper draws on scientific resources formed around the notion of Free Energy Principle to reconstruct two well-known defences of panpsychism. I reconstruct the argument from continuity by expanding the mind-life continuity thesis under the rubric of the Free Energy Principle (FEP), by showing that FEP does not provide an objective criterion for demarcating the living from the inanimate. Then I will reconstruct the argument from intrinsic nature. The FEP-based account of consciousness is centred on the notion of ‘temporal depth’ of generative models. I argue that even evolution can be modelled as a temporally deep system. Since we have no access to the intrinsic perspective of evolution to see whether or not it models itself as a temporally deep system, we must draw an analogy from our own case and conclude that evolution is consciousness involving. Thus the paper reconstructs two main arguments for panpsychism.

Metaphors in arts and science

Metaphors abound in both the arts and in science. Due to the traditional division between these enterprises as one concerned with aesthetic values and the other with epistemic values there has unfortunately been very little work on the relation between metaphors in the arts and sciences. In this paper, we aim to remedy this omission by defending a continuity thesis regarding the function of metaphor across both domains, that is, metaphors fulfill any of the same functions in science as they do in the arts. Importantly, this involves the claim that metaphors in arts as well as science have both epistemic and aesthetic functions.

Perceiving properties versus perceiving objects

AbstractThe fact that you see some particular object seems to be due to the causal relation between your visual experience and that object, rather than to your experiences’ phenomenal character. On the one hand, whenever some phenomenal element of your experience stands in the right sort of causal relation to some object, your experience presents that object (your experience's phenomenology does not need to match that object). On the other hand, you cannot have a perceptual experience that presents some object unless you stand in the right sort of causal relation to that object (no matter how closely your experience's phenomenology matches some object). According to the continuity thesis, property perception is similar to object perception in these two respects. A standard reason to reject the continuity thesis is the assumption that the environmental properties that a perceptual experience presents are determined by its phenomenal properties (which are not determined by the environmental properties that cause the experience). I maintain that the continuity thesis is false but for a different reason: perceptual experiences present both objects and properties via manners of presentation; but, whereas perceptual manners of presentation for objects are purely relational, perceptual manners of presentation for properties are satisfactional.

Examining the Continuity between Life and Mind: Is There a Continuity between Autopoietic Intentionality and Representationality?

A weak version of the life-mind continuity thesis entails that every living system also has a basic mind (with a non-representational form of intentionality). The strong version entails that the same concepts that are sufficient to explain basic minds (with non-representational states) are also central to understanding non-basic minds (with representational states). We argue that recent work on the free energy principle supports the following claims with respect to the life-mind continuity thesis: (i) there is a strong continuity between life and mind; (ii) all living systems can be described as if they had representational states; (iii) the ’as-if representationality’ entailed by the free energy principle is central to understanding both basic forms of intentionality and intentionality in non-basic minds. In addition to this, we argue that the free energy principle also renders realism about computation and representation compatible with a strong life-mind continuity thesis (although the free energy principle does not entail computational and representational realism). In particular, we show how representationality proper can be grounded in ’as-if representationality’.

Toward an Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing Account.

In this paper, I argue for an embodied, embedded approach to predictive processing and thus align the framework with situated cognition. The recent popularity of theories conceiving of the brain as a predictive organ has given rise to two broad camps in the literature that I call free energy enactivism and cognitivist predictive processing. The two approaches vary in scope and methodology. The scope of cognitivist predictive processing is narrow and restricts cognition to brain processes and structures; it does not consider the body-beyond-brain and the environment as constituents of cognitive processes. Free energy enactivism, on the other hand, includes all self-organizing systems that minimize free energy (including non-living systems) and thus does not offer any unique explanations for more complex cognitive phenomena that are unique to human cognition. Furthermore, because of its strong commitment to the mind-life continuity thesis, it does not provide an explanation of what distinguishes more sophisticated cognitive systems from simple systems. The account that I develop in this paper rejects both of these radical extremes. Instead, I propose a compromise that highlights the necessary components of predictive processing by making use of a mechanistic methodology of explanation. The starting point of the argument in this paper is that despite the interchangeable use of the terms, prediction error minimization and the free energy principle are not identical. But this distinction does not need to disrupt the status quo of the literature if we consider an alternative approach: Embodied, Embedded Predictive Processing (EEPP). EEPP accommodates the free energy principle, as argued for by free energy enactivism, but it also allows for mental representations in its explanation of cognition. Furthermore, EEPP explains how prediction error minimization is realized but, unlike cognitivist PP, it allocates a constitutive role to the body in cognition. Despite highlighting concerns regarding cognitivist PP, I do not wish to discredit the role of the neural domain or representations as free energy enactivism does. Neural structures and processes undeniably contribute to the minimization of prediction error but the role of the body is equally important. On my account, prediction error minimization and free energy minimization are deeply dependent on the body of an agent, such that the body-beyond-brain plays a constitutive role in cognitive processing. I suggest that the body plays three constitutive roles in prediction error minimization: The body regulates cognitive activity, ensuring that cognition and action are intricately linked. The body acts as distributor in the sense that it carries some of the cognitive load by fulfilling the function of minimizing prediction error. Finally, the body serves to constrain the information that is processed by an agent. In fulfilling these three roles, the agent and environment enter into a bidirectional relation through influencing and modeling the structure of the other. This connects EEPP to the free energy principle because the whole embodied agent minimizes free energy in virtue of being a model of its econiche. This grants the body a constitutive role as part of the collection of mechanisms that minimize prediction error and free energy. The body can only fulfill its role when embedded in an environment, of which it is a model. In this sense, EEPP offers the most promising alternative to cognitivist predictive processing and free energy enactivism.

The entangled state: How state-business relations shaped the German corporate tax regime

Contemporary tax research is split into two camps: comparative approaches emphasize continuity and cross-country differences, while the globalization literature stresses similar changes across countries. Counter the continuity thesis, this paper finds that neoliberal dynamics were at play in a case considered largely resilient to such dynamics: German governments implemented a series of corporate tax reforms which radically curbed business taxes and added a short-term and cost-cutting component to investments and corporate finance. While these changes point towards neoliberal change, they were distinct from the trends we see in other economies: crucially, the German reforms did not follow the common trend of reducing taxes for individuals and entailed a particular emphasis on enhancing multinational’s access to international capital – but did not liberate financial incomes from tax in general. Based on archival documents from the Bundestagsarchiv, this paper traces the process of German tax reforms and finds that neoliberal dynamics were at play but received a local (export-oriented) colour through processes specific to the German polity. Because consensual institutions granted power to a specific business coalition, radical change was long blocked. Reforms could only be implemented once the state forged a new coalition. Making sense of the mediation of neoliberal dynamics through state institutions can contribute to a better understanding of the variegated nature of neoliberalism.

Simplicity out of complexity? On physical eschatology and abiogenesis

Standard reductionist narrative about the necessity of complex systems arising from simple subsystems can be undermined from multiple directions. Here, I shall suggest an unexpected way of such undermining which occurs upon joining our best understanding of the future evolution of the universe (as outlined by physical eschatology) with the continuity thesis which plays the key role in studies of the origin of life (abiogenesis). Many aspects of evolution - including physical, chemical, and astrobiological evolution - would look quite different from what we empirically find around us at the present epoch if the history of the universe within our cosmological horizon were to be observed from a timeless ?Archimedean? point. Avoiding the pitfalls of this chronocentric bias leads to several unexpected conclusions, one of them being that the directed panspermia, coupled with advanced biotechnology, represents the most probable origin of almost all phylogenetic lineages in the universe. Therefore, complex lifeforms are required for emergence of (almost) all simple lifeforms. This has several counterintuitive and unexpected philosophical consequences.