Download or read book Perception Causation and Objectivity written by Johannes Roessler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading philosophers and psychologists offer a rigorous assessment of the commonsense view that perceptual experience is an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects. They examine the nature of perception, its role in the acquisition of knowledge, the role of causation in perception, and how perceptual understanding develops in humans.
Download or read book Perception Causation and Objectivity written by Johannes Roessler and published by Consciousness & Self-Conscious. This book was released on 2011-07-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading philosophers and psychologists offer a rigorous assessment of the commonsense view that perceptual experience is an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects. They examine the nature of perception, its role in the acquisition of knowledge, the role of causation in perception, and how perceptual understanding develops in humans.
Download or read book Origins of Objectivity written by Tyler Burge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 645 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tyler Burge's study investigates the most primitive ways in which individuals represent the physical world. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, Burge outlines the constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, thus locating the origins of representational mind.
Download or read book Values Objectivity and Explanation in Historiography written by Tor Egil Førland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing sophisticated philosophy to bear on real-life historiography, Values, Objectivity, and Explanation in Historiography rekindles and invigorates the debate on two perennials in the theory and methodology of history. One is the tension between historians' values and the ideal—or illusion—of objective historiography. The other is historical explanation. The point of departure for the treatment of values and objectivity is an exceptionally heated debate on Cold War historiography in Denmark, involving not only historians but also the political parties, the national newspapers, and the courts. The in-depth analysis that follows concludes that historians can produce accounts that deserve the label "objective," even though their descriptions are tinged by ineluctable epistemic instability. A separate chapter dissects the postmodern notion of situated truths. The second part of the book proffers a new take on historical explanation. It is based on the notion of the ideal explanatory text, which allows for not only causal—including intentional—but also nomological, structural, and functional explanations. The approach, which can accommodate narrative explanations driven by causal plots, is ecumenical but not all-encompassing. Emergent social properties and supernatural entities are excluded from the ideal explanatory text, making scientific historiography methodologically individualistic—albeit with room for explanations at higher levels when pragmatically justified—and atheist.
Download or read book Sympathy in Perception written by Mark Eli Kalderon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging study of the nature of perception, discussing touch, hearing and vision, and bringing together analytic and continental approaches.
Download or read book Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Causation written by Pascale Willemsen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the connection between causation and responsibility? Is there a best way to theorize philosophically about causation? Which factors determine and influence what we judge to be the cause of something? Bringing together interdisciplinary research from experimental philosophy, traditional philosophy and psychology, this collection showcases the most recent developments and approaches to questions about causation. Chapters discuss the diverse theoretical ramifications of empirical findings in experimental philosophy of causation, providing a comprehensive survey of key issues such as the perception and learning of causal relations, omission, normative considerations, mechanism, voluntariness and legal theories of causation. With novel contributions from both experts and rising stars, Advances in Experimental Philosophy of Causation demonstrates the value of empirical work and opens new domains of inquiry at the cutting edge of the field.
Download or read book Perception First Form of Mind written by Tyler Burge and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-13 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In Perception: First Form of Mind, Tyler Burge develops an understanding of the most primitive type of representational mind: perception. Focusing on its form, function, and underlying capacities, as indicated in the sciences of perception, Burge provides an account of the representational content and formal representational structure of perceptual states, and develops a formal semantics for them. The account is elaborated by an explanation of how the representational form is embedded in an iconic format. These structures are then situated in current theoretical accounts of the processing of perceptual representations, with an emphasis on the formation of perceptual categorizations. An exploration of the relationship between perception and other primitive capacities-conation, attention, memory, anticipation, affect, learning, and imagining-clarifies the distinction between perceiving, with its associated capacities, and thinking, with its associated capacities. Drawing on a broad range of historical and contemporary research, rather than relying on introspection or ordinary talk about perception, Perception: First Form of Mind is a scientifically rigorous and agenda-setting work in the philosophy of perception and the philosophy of science"--
Download or read book Understanding Counterfactuals Understanding Causation written by Christoph Hoerl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-11-03 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve essays explore what bearing empirical findings might have on philosophical concerns about counterfactuals and causation, and how, in turn, work in philosophy might help clarify issues in empirical work on the relationships between causal and counterfactual thought.
Download or read book Causal Models written by Steven Sloman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-07-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human beings are active agents who can think. To understand how thought serves action requires understanding how people conceive of the relation between cause and effect, between action and outcome. In cognitive terms, how do people construct and reason with the causal models we use to represent our world? A revolution is occurring in how statisticians, philosophers, and computer scientists answer this question. Those fields have ushered in new insights about causal models by thinking about how to represent causal structure mathematically, in a framework that uses graphs and probability theory to develop what are called causal Bayesian networks. The framework starts with the idea that the purpose of causal structure is to understand and predict the effects of intervention. How does intervening on one thing affect other things? This is not a question merely about probability (or logic), but about action. The framework offers a new understanding of mind: Thought is about the effects of intervention and cognition is thus intimately tied to actions that take place either in the actual physical world or in imagination, in counterfactual worlds. The book offers a conceptual introduction to the key mathematical ideas, presenting them in a non-technical way, focusing on the intuitions rather than the theorems. It tries to show why the ideas are important to understanding how people explain things and why thinking not only about the world as it is but the world as it could be is so central to human action. The book reviews the role of causality, causal models, and intervention in the basic human cognitive functions: decision making, reasoning, judgment, categorization, inductive inference, language, and learning. In short, the book offers a discussion about how people think, talk, learn, and explain things in causal terms, in terms of action and manipulation.
Download or read book Perceptual Ephemera written by Thomas Crowther and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most research on perception has focused on the perceptual experience of three-dimensional, solid, bounded, and coherent material objects - items like tables and tomatoes. But as well as having perceptual experience of such objects, we also experience such aspects of the world as, for instance, rainbows and surfaces, shadows and absences: things that are ephemeral by contrast with material objects. This book presents fifteen new essays on the perceptual experience of such ephemera. The editors' introduction provides a detailed guide to the topic as a whole, setting out the thematic background to this emerging area of research in contemporary philosophy of perception. The volume winds a path through the ephemeral, considering such topics as sounds, smells, transparency, reflection, camouflage, solidity, and ambient vision. A general aim of the volume is to make a case that the broad range of ephemera it catalogues is far from marginal, or insubstantial with respect to their philosophical interest and value. Philosophical attention to perceptul ephemera may well suggest novel routes to arriving at a more developed understanding of perceptual experience at large and its characteristic features.
Download or read book Truth Knowledge and Causation written by C. J. Ducasse and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-05-22 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1969. This book examines the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and of theory of knowledge. Topics treated include the nature of substance and of causation; their relation to natural laws, dispositions, and attributes; the nature of consciousness and purposiveness; of symbols, signs, and signals, and their relation to interpretation and objective reference; and the nature and criteria of truth. The author holds that philosophy is by intent a science and that its becoming so requires precise and non-arbitrary semantical analysis of basic philosophical terms. He argues that philosophy then, like the other sciences, has practical importance: in its case this consists in its capacity to give to difficult practical decisions not only the efficacy insured by its application of the findings of the other sciences, but in addition some of the wisdom which is philosophy’s distinctive ultimate aim.
Download or read book Possibilities of Perception written by Jennifer Church and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jennifer Church presents a new account of perception, which shows how imagining alternative perspectives and possibilities plays a key role in creating and validating experiences of self-evident objectivity. She explores the nature of moral perception and aesthetic perception, and argues that perception can be both literal and substantive.
Download or read book Kant on Causality Freedom and Objectivity written by William Leonard Harper and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kant on Causality, Freedom, and Objectivity was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. Kant's account of causation is central to his views on objective truth and freedom. The Second Analogy of Experience, in the Critique of Pure Reason,where he provides his defense of the causal principle, has long been the focus of intense philosophical research. In the past twenty years, there have been two major periods of interest in Kantian themes, The first coincided with a general turn away from positivism by analytic philosophers, and resulted in a fruitful interchange between Kant scholars and those who applied Kantian ideas to contemporary philosophical problems. In recent years, a new surge of interest in Kant's work occurred along with the developing controversy over realism generated by the work of Dummett and Putnam. Scholars now appreciate the extent to which the Kantian causal principle is illuminated by the philosopher's argument that his transcendental idealism supports an empirical realism. And in turn, Kant's views on objectivity, causation, and freedom are especially relevant to the philosophical concerns raised by the new debate over realism. The eight papers in this book are drawn from two conferences that honored Lewis White Beck, an influential Kant scholar. Together with the introductory essay by the editors, they show the continuing relevance of Kant's analysis for the present-day philosophy of causation.
Download or read book Motivation and the Primacy of Perception written by Peter Antich and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological notion of motivation advances a compelling alternative to the empiricist and rationalist assumptions that underpin modern epistemology. Arguing that knowledge is ultimately founded in perceptual experience, Peter Antich interprets and defends Merleau-Ponty’s thinking on motivation as the key to establishing a new form of epistemic grounding. Upending the classical dichotomy between reason and natural causality, justification and explanation, Antich shows how this epistemic ground enables Merleau-Ponty to offer a radically new account of knowledge and its relation to perception. In so doing, Antich demonstrates how and why Merleau-Ponty remains a vital resource for today’s epistemologists.
Download or read book Disjunctivism written by Matthew Soteriou and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is commonly held that the experiences involved in cases of perception, illusion and hallucination all have the same nature. Disjunctivists deny this. They maintain that the kind of experience you have when you perceive the world isn’t one you could be having if you were hallucinating. A number of important debates in the philosophy of mind and epistemology turn on the question of whether this disjunctivist view is tenable. This is the first book-length introduction to this contested issue. Matthew Soteriou explains the accounts of perception that disjunctivists seek to defend, such as naïve realism, and the accounts to which they are opposed, such as sense-datum theories and representationalist theories. He goes on to introduce and assess key questions that arise in these debates: Is disjunctivism consistent with what has been established by the science of perception? Does introspective reflection support naïve realism? Can disjunctivism be motivated by appeal to the role that perception plays in enabling us to think demonstratively about mind-independent objects and qualities in our environment? Does disjunctivism offer the best account of perceptual knowledge? What can disjunctivists say about the nature of hallucination and illusion? Including chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary, this book is an ideal starting point for anyone studying disjunctivism for the first time, as well as for more advanced students and researchers.
Download or read book The Neural Basis of Free Will written by Peter Tse and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 473 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. This book examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say. Because the brain must already embody a solution to the mind--body problem, why not focus on how the brain actually realizes mental causation? Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and downward mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Recent neurophysiological breakthroughs reveal that neurons function as criterial assessors of their inputs, which then change the criteria that will make other neurons fire in the future. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
Download or read book A Na ve Realist Theory of Colour written by Keith Allen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'A Naïve Realist Theory of Colour' defends the view that colours are mind-independent properties of things in the environment. Keith Allen argues that a naïve realist theory of colour best explains how colours appear to perceiving subjects, and that this view is not undermined by our modern scientific understanding of the world.
