Dogmatic Slumber Research Articles

Chris Hill’s consciousness

One of the things I learned from Hill’s wonderful book is that I was too optimistic when I published my own account of conscious experience in Naturalizing the Mind (1995). Hill taught me that there are more problems lurking here than I realized. Until I read his book, I was in the midst of (if not a dogmatic slumber) at least a prolonged nap. Hill woke me up. I thank him for it. Hill and I are both dedicated representationalists about the mind. For Hill (as for me) all awareness is representational (69, 257). Being aware of an item is being in a state that represents that item (25). Although Hill finds the primary justification for this view in the fact that it is presupposed by the explanatory success of cognitive science (70, 88), I think its philosophical merits are also quite impressive. What makes the mind so profoundly mysterious, so spooky, so unlike anything one typically thinks of as physical, is the representational aspect of that organ—the brain—causally responsible for our intelligent and purposeful behavior. When nothing you experience, nothing you think, nothing you fear, nothing you want, need exist in the physical world for your thinking, experiencing, fearing, and wanting it to explain—causally explain—why you act the way you do, thinking, experiencing, fearing, and wanting begin to look completely alien. Not part of a scientific picture of the world. A representational theory—assuming it can be successfully grounded—constitutes an elegant rescue from this dilemma. It, and it alone, bridges this explanatory gap. It, and it alone, holds out some promise of solving the hard problems of consciousness. Let me add a word to justify that last claim. It is important to do so because much of Hill’s book is inspired by a conviction that among philosophical theories of the

Sobre “despertares” e revoluções

The article points to the relevance of a reading of the Revolution in the way of thinking, major theme of the Second Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason, in the light of the awakening of dogmatic slumber, confessed by Kant in his Prolegomena about David Hume and similarly indicated in a handwritten note about his encounter with the works of J.-J. Rousseau. It is argued therefore that the questions posed by Hume’s works not only could not be fully elucidated by Kant before Rousseau’s works were considered, but also and above all, that this exegetical effort resulted precisely in the proposition of the critical attitude as a solver of the problems continually repeated by dogmatism in metaphysics.

Some Speculation About Mirror Neurons and Copyright

internet, a world-wide copy machine, caused some rethinking of copyright law. Cognitive science increasingly suggests that humans are smaller scale, more adaptable, copy machines. Copyright law may again change. V.S. Ramachandran’s The Tell-Tale Brain discusses how mirror neurons may enable imitation, detection of others’ intention, and empathy. Ramachandran suggests that mirror neuron circuits could provide the neural substrate for cultural transmission, language, and even consciousness.This essay speculates on the implications for copyright law. It’s not news that people copy. But if cognition and culture depend on the bottom-up imitation by mirror neurons, perhaps some of the central tenets of copyright bear reexamining. Copyright’s central doctrine, the idea/expression dichotomy, could prove illusory if abstraction is dependent on embodied cognition - meaning that abstract ideas cannot be so easily separated from their expression as copyright law assumes. If cultural transmission is so directly tied to literal copying, fair use would have to give more respect to what it now terms merely reproductive uses. There would be reason to reexamine the Supreme Court’s statement in Eldred v. Ashcroft that mere copiers had little expressive interest. There could be more weight for such recent proposals to take into account the value of user innovation or to give protection to personal uses. On the flip side, in extending protection, copyright might give greater respect to the creative aspect of mere copiers.It remains to be seen whether mirror neurons underlie imitation, and whether that builds into language and cultural transmission. But copyright law may awaken from its dogmatic slumbers and take more seriously the question of how our minds work.

And She's Not Only Merely Dead, She's Really Most Sincerely Dead.

And She's Not Only Merely Dead, She's Really Most Sincerely Dead. Alan Rubenstein, John P. Lizza, and Paul T. Menzel To the Editor: D. Alan Shewmon's work over the last decade has clearly awakened the bioethics community from its dogmatic slumbers. Easy acceptance of the "somatic integration" rationale for equating the condition known as total brain failure with death of the human being is, after Shewmon, a thing of the past. In "Brain Death: Can It Be Resuscitated?" (Mar-Apr 2009), he has made yet another valuable contribution to the debate, providing a close and critical reading of the President's Council's white paper, "Controversies in the Determination of Death." Shewmon asserts that the council's effort is "brave but flawed." Having been involved in the production of the white paper as lead staff researcher and writer, I believe that he is mistaken on a number of points. (All opinions expressed here are mine alone.) Shewmon's account of the historical foundations of this controversy is far too one-sided. He rightly points out that the initial equation of "irreversible coma" with human death was made without a developed philosophical defense and with an eye to practical consequences that would follow from a new standard. But a more balanced historical account would also note that the condition in question—also revealingly called "coma dépassé," or "beyond coma"—was recognized by neurologists and others as a case apart from all other brain injuries discovered in ventilator-dependent patients. Eelco Wijdick's 2003 historical study of the Harvard Committee's work gives a more nuanced picture, pointing out that "neurologists in the committee knew too well that brain death represented a unique comatose state that could be clearly delineated from other neurologic states." Regardless of the practical context, the task of interpreting this unique state in a way that does justice to the permanent and profound degree of its sufferers' incapacitation had to be taken up. The "position two" argument in the white paper can be understood as an attempt to provide such an interpretation. It should be noted that this is a more modest way of reflecting on this issue than the "definition-criteria-test" approach that other commentators have followed. The council did not propose a "definition" of death from which a criterion for judging whether someone has died should follow as a logical consequence. Rather, the council keeps its efforts closer to the ground—closer to the reality of the patient and the experience of those who confront the puzzling state of "brain death" in someone they love. Paying close attention to the phenomenon itself—and not to various philosophical devices that have piled up over the years—the white paper encourages us to ask: "What is so unique about this state?" and "Do the phenomena that differentiate this condition have any resonance with the way of being that distinguishes the living from the dead?" The patient who has suffered total brain failure is closed off from the world, and this closure will never be overcome; not even the very limited recovery that a patient in a persistent vegetative state achieves can be hoped for. The marks of this closure are complete coma—unresponsiveness to pain, to light, and so on—and complete termination of the drive to breathe. Does closure of this sort have any significance to an organism? Here is where the council's discussion of an organism's fundamental, defining work is useful. Openness to the world and the power and drive to interact at the whole organism level is what makes a living thing what it is. "Integration" was certainly never the point. After all, a complex machine is integrated: when assembled and functional, it is more than the sum of its parts. But it is not alive. Shewmon reasonably asks why breathing and minimal awareness should be singled out as signs of an organism's life and interaction with its environment. He suggests that the council's argument would have difficulty accounting for the embryo, which is alive but does not breathe. According to the council's argument, however, it is not breathing as such that is the fundamental...

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe (and a blender)

Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe (and a blender)

FROM LUTHER'S THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS TO NIETZSCHE'S PROBING FOR THE ÜBERMENSCH: GROWTH IN THE MODERN RHETORIC OF SELF-DOUBTING INTIMIDATION

FROM LUTHER'S THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS TO NIETZSCHE'S PROBING FOR THE ÜBERMENSCH: GROWTH IN THE MODERN RHETORIC OF SELF-DOUBTING INTIMIDATION

K–16: Our Dogmatic Slumbers

Michel Foucault would have found rich material in dissecting America's structures of primary and secondary education, increasingly constituted as they are by a regime of accountability and assessment. In Massachu setts, a state often cited as leading the nation in the development of this regime, history teachers must prepare students for state tests by cover ing just enough information about several hundred historical events or issues to enable their students to get the right answer. The curriculum guide to the Massachusetts English Language Arts assessment lists well over a hundred recommended books that teachers might wish to use in their classrooms. But lest some students be unfairly advantaged by hav ing read books that might appear on the tests, the textual excerpts in those tests don't use examples from any of the recommended books. If we put aside for a moment the issue of the fundamental educational value of these tests, the approach to date has produced at best mixed results: National Assessment of Educational Progress scores are essentially flat, while evidence from international comparisons (PISA and TIMSS) shows that American children's academic skills are too often a mile wide and an inch deep (Beatty). As a result, students are consistently unable to answer questions that do not match a familiar format. Nor is there better news with regard to our use of pure ability testing such as the SAT. As Rich ard Rothstein has persuasively argued, future life prospects, measured in

OPENING THE GATE OF VERIFICATION: THE FORGOTTEN ARAB–ISLAMIC FLORESCENCE OF THE 17TH CENTURY

Little research has been done on the intellectual life of the Arab-Islamic world between the 15th and 19th centuries. This scholarly neglect almost certainly reflects the widespread assumption that intellectual life in the Arab-Islamic world entered a long period of stagnation or “sclerosis” after the 13th or 14th century. This state of affairs is often believed to have lasted until the 19th century, when European military and economic expansion awakened the Arab-Islamic world from its dogmatic slumber, and inaugurated a “reawakening” or “renaissance” (nahḍa). An influential statement of this view of intellectual life in the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire before the 19th century is to be found in Gibb and Bowen's Islamic Society and the West. Although they noted that “the barrenness of the period has been greatly exaggerated,” they still stated that Arabic scholarly culture had degenerated, on the whole, into a rote, unquestioning acquisition of a narrow and religiously dominated field of knowledge. No “quickening breath had blown” on Arab-Islamic scholarship for centuries. Isolated even from Persian and Turkish influences, it was reduced to “living on its own past.”

James Jurin Awakens Hume from His Dogmatic Slumber. With a Short Tract on Visual Acuity

After a discourse about the literature on visual acuity before Hume, I discuss how the "size" of visual objects is defined and determined. I shall then present circumstantial, but commanding, evidence for the influence of James Jurin's Essay upon Distinct and Indistinct Vision on Hume's thought. This work contains well-supported findings incompatible with claims made in T 1.2, "Of the ideas of space and time," and elsewhere. Specifically, the prominent principle of the Treatise , "[w]hat consists of parts is distinguishable into them, and what is distinguishable is separable" (T 1.2.1.3; SBN 27) is shown to be false. A powerful principle, it is a premise to the most important arguments of the Treatise , but is shunned in the Enquiry and later writings because, I believe, Hume had read Jurin.

Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects

(2005). Celebrated Athletes, Moral Exemplars, and Lusory Objects. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport: Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 20-35.

Davıd Hume Ve Immanuel Kant’ın Kesin Bilgi Anlayışı

In this article, it will be briefly comprehended one empiricist philosopher David Hume’s and one rationalist philosopher Immanuel Kant’s exact understanding of knowledge and aporiae will be examined and they will be compared as necessary. As it is known, Hume is the representative of classical English philosophy after John Locke and George Berkeley. He destroyed the systems of all philosophers who preceded him, tried to establish a “science of human nature” based on experiments and wrote “A Treatise of Human Nature” to this end. In fact, he dwelled on the knowledge of the human mind. Hume, who awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumbers with his works on the concept of causality, changed the direction of science and philosophy and attained a completely different place in the history of philosophy with his style of solving problems. Kant, an 18th Century Enlightenment Philosopher, who considered the human mind to be very important and who believed that the mind is equipped with contained knowledge from birth, also made the mind his subject of examination. As a result, he wrote the “Critique of Pure Reason”, the “Critique of Practical Reason” and the “Critique of Reason with Reflections” and opened new horizons for philosophy, and especially for metaphysics, ethics and art.

Do Universals have a Reference? On the Critical Theory of Herbert Marcuse

great truth wants to be criticized, not idolized. Nietzsche Do Universals have any reference? If so, is it that they refer to? These are philosophical questions. It be argued that they are the philosophical questions. A particular, and admittedly strong, reading of the philosophical tradition, suggest that there have been two major generative moments of its history. These were the Socratic-Platonic birth of philosophy, and secondly, German idealism, born from Kant's critical philosophy. But both these moments were intimately tied to the question of the possibility and nature of universals. Socrates' whole project turned around how, when one asks, what is x? (e.g.: courage, temperance, virtue, etc.), it is unsatisfactory as an answer to list particular examples of x-- ness. He set his method and meaning up in avowed opposition to the sophists, who defended different variants of we would now call moral and epistemic relativism. Likewise, Kant was awoken from his dogmatic slumbers by Humean skepticism concerning the possibility of universals. Through his critical project, Kant defends the wonder of the starry skies above, and the moral law within, and both of these on grounds of a philosophical reclaiming of a universal dimension to knowing and doing. Against Hume, Kant suggests that we not have the awareness of the natural world that we do, were we not always already in possession of categories whose scope is universal and a priori, and that condition the possibility equally of the natural world and our knowledge of it. In the practical philosophy, an irremovable part of we mean when we speak of morality, Kant argued, is that its dictums have a universal validity, vouched for by reason alone. This essay means to broach the question: are there universals?-or, given the difficulty of opening one's mouth without invoking universal predicates and names, to might these contentious terms refer? Are especially sortals (identifying names of types) and especially the more grandiose universals (such as mind, person, nation, or people) perhaps only the misleading semblances of names? Can their reference, such that it is, not be broken down, without remainder, into particular simples, so they be properly discarded by a rigorous philosophical language? Or is there something to them, some referent, perhaps? Can we not hear in them, properly, some surplus of meaning over the given particulars they name, that is irreducible? Two things about the birth of philosophy in Plato, and its modern apotheosis in German idealism, are relevant for this essay. I want and need to stress these, before turning to the exposition. The first is that, in both classical Greek philosophy, and German idealism, the question concerning the possibility and nature of referents for universals resounds in two registers. The first is a veridical, or ontological register. When one asks what is the referent of the universals? one wants to know about the way the world is, and/or how we can know about what there is. In Plato, the answer one gets is that a universal is an eidos, or form. Aristotle shares Plato's ontological realism, while being skeptical of its metaphysical, Pythagorean figuring in a story about birth and rebirth, and some wholly extrasensible realm. Universals have reference to traits and even identifying essences, but these inhere in the things themselves. But my point is that this is not the only way that one asks the question. The second register of the question could there perhaps be some universal referents? in both Kant and classical philosophy, was a moral one. Socrates was primarily concerned with the human things, and asked repeatedly about the nature of the virtues. In Plato, if the forms provide the ontological answer to the question of universals, the form of the Good was in some way for him the highest form (cf. The Republic, 509b). …

Dogmatic Slumbers: American Business and Health Policy

For more than a decade students of health policy have predicted a revolution waged by corporate purchasers of health care who would rise in demand of public policy cures for increasing and burdensome health care costs. This forecast has been largely disappointed, however, as the business sector has remained oddly diffident in its demands for health policy reform. There are three reasons for business's reticence--the economic stakes of the corporate sector in health reform are uncertain, organizational encumbrances hamper business activism in this arena, and ideological convictions make business wary of governmental solutions. Although business is sometimes said to manipulate the policy process for its own material ends, in the health sphere the most likely road to reform may reverse this image: a newly activist federal government may have to mobilize business support for reforms that advance both corporate interests and larger social goals.

Wittgenstein, Davidson, and the Myth of Incommensurability

Philosophers have been spending a considerable amount of time discussing whether or not they are doing anything of substance. This of course is the 'end of philosophy' debate. I am perverse enough to bring myself out of my dogmatic slumber to join the debate. I am also perverse enough, or at least out of my slumber enough, to join with the nay sayers such as Richard Rorty, Kai Nielsen, and others who declare the end of the tradition, at least with respect to what has been called Metaphysical Realism, or its alter-ego, Idealism. My contribution to the philosophy of philosophy is the observation that at least in some areas philosophy has, and rightly so, lost its subject matter.

The Dogmatic Slumber of Hume Scholarship

The Dogmatic Slumber of Hume Scholarship

Reply to Comstock

Gary Comstock deserves praise for his courage in reexamining his own beliefs about our duties toward animals. Awakening from one's dogmatic slumbers can be a painful process indeed. While the thrust of my criticisms concerns the incompleteness of his discussion, I urge him to continue his thinking on the subject. The issues of the nature and extent of our moral obligations to animals are far from settled. It seems to me that people with a farming background may have within them an understanding of the nature of the ethical relationship among humans and other species which might provide valuable insight if brought to light. Also, lest readers think my defense of including Regan's ideas in any discussion of these issues constitutes agreement with his method and conclusions, I refer them to my own naturalistic approach to our dealings with animals! In addition, I seem to have struck a chord with Comstock on the issue of theological approaches to these questions. A rereading of my comments should make it clear that I do not argue that theological approaches should be excluded from the conversation. Rather, I question the universality of such approaches. It seems to me that more than just Christian views ought to be included. Comstock justifies not including secular ethical theories on the grounds that these discussions are available elsewhere. The same might be said of theological approaches. My overall concern is with the balance and completeness of the discussion of ethical foundations in this volume. Here's why: the likely readership for the volume is not going to be comprised of philosophers and theologians. The great majority will be scientists and students from the agricultural disciplines. These individuals may tend to take the view that Comstock is an ethical expert and may accept his

Laudan’s Model of Axiological Change and the Bohr-Einstein Debate

Since the publication of Science and Values in which Laudan unveiled his “reticulated model of scientific change” (Laudan (1984)), he has published a series of articles emphasizing the naturalistic axiology inherent in this model. (Laudan (1986), (1987a), (1987b), (1989), and (forthcoming)). His epistemic naturalism makes the business of fixing rational beliefs about facts, theories, methodologies, and aims all together “cut from the same piece of empirical cloth.” Laudan’s position has numerous attractive qualities: It allows one to accept a great deal of the wisdom in historicism without caving in to relativism. It allows one to accept the seemingly inevitable annexation of the theory of knowledge by the sciences and yet still maintain a normative epistemology. Finally, it awakens philosophers of science’s dogmatic slumbers regarding the axiology of scientific inquiry, and stimulates historical research into the relation between practiced means and professed ends in the sciences.

The Heirs of Socrates

It seems as though in ancient philosophy there are no permanently lost causes. Until recently few scholars have taken seriously the defensibility of the sceptical Academy's claim to be philosophically in the tradition of Plato, or the tenability of the Stoic theory of knowledge. Now both are centres of philosophical debate: the issues are seen to be more complex, historically and philosophically, than has been assumed, and we have been woken from our dogmatic slumbers to find fierce debate over a sceptical Plato and a sophisticated Stoic epistemology.1 Anna Maria loppolo's book2 covers the epistemological debate between Stoics and Sceptics in the third and second centuries BC, and thus has much to contribute on both these issues. Although she concludes with a chapter on Carneades, Ioppolo's main focus is the attack on Zeno's early brand of Stoicism by Arcesilaus, the head

On Telos and Genetic Manipulation

In 1981, in my Animal Right~ an~ HI.lllBJl Morality, [1] I gained the perhaps dubious distinction of attempting to rouse the Aris­ totelian concept of teJ.:os from the dogmatic slumber in which it had long lain, attended to only by Scholastic philosophers. It ap­ pearedto me (and still does) that the notion of telos provides a sound basis from which to deduce the rights of animals of different species, even as human rights have been based in plausible hypotheses about hl.lllBJl nature. In so far as different kinds of animals are built in different sorts of ways for differ­ ent sorts of things and in so far as these differences are rooted in biological, gene­ tically based, empirically ascertainable, environmentally expressed blueprints, I saw nothing problematic about the concept of telos that would not also trouble both the ordinary and the scientific notions of spe­ cies, or perhaps, sub-species, depending upon what one takes as a basic unit of classifica­ tion. Both cOIllllOn sense and mcx:1ern biology, after all, note that fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly, as Professor Harlan Miller put it in reviewing my book. Furthenrore, as I argued later, once one had leaped positiv­ istic and behavioristic hurdles about animal consciousness, one could generate a notion of happiness and unhappiness for different sorts of animals in terms of whether or not they were in a position to fulfill their telos, or to engage in those activities whose infringe­ ment or thwarting matter most to them. [2]

Subversion as a constructive activity in medicine.

SUBVERSION AS A CONSTRUCTIVE ACTIVITY IN MEDICINE WILLIAM A. SILVERMAN* A report of positive results of a carefully researched proposal to relieve pain or to cure illness often bears the author's assurance that the hard-earned evidence can be depended on as the basis for widespread medical action. The warrant does not put off pesky doubters, who proceed to lay down a withering barrage of criticism. They are confident that the evidence is incomplete because it is impossible to devise criteria of completeness of clinical experience. Such skeptics run the risk of being labeled "nihilists" intent on subverting medicine's high purposes. But, I will argue, such irreverent troublemakers are indispensable. Infallible treatments are virtually nonexistent—critical examination (in pedantic detail) of all claims in medicine is the only way we have of determining the limits of applicability of innovations. Idols ofAuthority Authoritarianism has long been the enemy of the critical attitude in medicine. Ipse dixit (He says so) dominated the long Galenic age of dogmatic slumber, and down to the present day we are uneasy with the idea that there is no final sanction and authority for knowledge. Sociologist Robert K. Merton examined some of the contemporary effects of authoritarianism in the sciences [I]. He found evidence that psychosocial processes tend to still voices of doubt by reinforcing the influence of those who have achieved positions of prominence. Allocation of resources to scientists for their contributions, as an instance, appeared to effect the flow of ideas and findings through communicaThe author acknowledges with gratitude the generosity of The Rockefeller Foundation for making it possible for him to write this essay while a scholar in residence in the idyllic surroundings of its study center in the Villa Serbelloni, Lake Como, Italy. *Address: 90 La Cuesta Drive, Greenbrae, California 94904.® 1986 by The University of Chicago. AU rights reserved. 003 1 -5982/86/2903-0488$0 1 .00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 29, 3, Part 1 ¦ Spring 1986 \ 385 m^^'fû NOT Uflí Nàti wmusw 4£-M&, ' ¦ f C^^r/oA m ??? cw*N , , *rr .' (VES)^-ArT/ 1 /WITHOU''" POl)ST trasoí Li^r,r^ßyrff/ '¦^ci^/rv^ ,t ¡s so/ T^ G î31r^v^ ß??t? Fig. 1.—ipse tfccií. (Drawing by Booth; © 1977 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.) tion networks in their fields of knowledge. Interviews with Nobel laureates disclosed a common theme: eminent scientists received inflated credit for their contributions while relatively unknown workers were more likely to be denied recognition for comparable contributions. Merton called this the Matthew Effect, after the Gospel According to Saint Matthew: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." When the Matthew Effect transforms fallible men and women into idols of authority, it serves to curb the advancement of knowledge by discouraging criticism. Alexander Solzhenitsyn observed, bitterly, that a highly honored Russian medical scientist went about the hospital wards with an entourage of followers, like some new Christ with his apostles [2]. The "god" lost the right to make mistakes or to be in doubt; he lost the right to be allowed to think things over. This penchant for deifying medical authority is not confined to totalitarian countries. The phenomenon is particularly obvious when highly publicized accounts of research results place heavy emphasis on the identities of investigators. In such personalization of evidence, who is speaking becomes more important than what is said. Preoccupation with Names and Results Formal communication of evidence is channeled through articles published in professionaljournals; the very important influence of skeptical review of such evidence by peers is missing in most other kinds of reportage . The judging process is weakened if referees are bedazzled by the contributions from well-known researchers in prestigious institutions. Psychologists Douglas P. Peters and Stephen J. Ceci examined the review procedure and found cause for uneasiness [3]. They took one published article from each of 10 leading researchjournals in their field, made a few cosmetic changes (author's name, title, and wording of the abstract were altered), and resubmitted the reports for consideration to the very journals that had previously...