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This article examines the use of mathematical concepts in philosophy, focusing on topology, which may be viewed as a modern supplement to geometry. We show that Plato and Parmenides were already employing geometric ideas in their research, and discuss three examples of the application of topology to philosophical problems: the first concerns the analysis of the Cartesian distinction between res extensa and res cogitans, the second the ontology of possible worlds of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, and the third Leibniz's monadology. We also consider the role of topology in mathematical explanations of the sort found in science, arguing that it can perform a role in philosophy that is of comparable importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Rorty notoriously maintained that philosophy is not an academic discipline. He thought that the only viable candidate for philosophy to be an academic discipline—where philosophy consists in a collection of permanent, pure topics—depends on a Cartesian conceptual framework. Once we overcome this framework, he maintained, there will be nothing left to be the distinct subject matter of philosophy. This article argues that there is a conception of philosophy that can be an academic discipline, even if we take Rorty's challenge seriously. It remains even if we overcome the Cartesian conceptual framework. In the end the article goes beyond Rorty's challenge and considers two further criteria for philosophy to be an academic discipline: that it have a distinct method, and that it be able to be done for the public good. The article argues that philosophy can fulfill these two criteria, and therefore that it can be an academic discipline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Evidence in Philosophy sketches an epistemology of philosophy itself, a method for philosophical inquiry. Part 1 defends a version of Moore's method of "common sense," in which humble, boring everyday facts like "I have hands" and "I had breakfast earlier today" trump the a priori philosophical premises of arguments for various eliminative idealisms and skepticisms. Part 2 exhibits the deeper poverty of philosophical method, arguing that philosophy cannot prove or even refute any interesting thesis. But Part 3 defends intuitions as giving us good prima facie reason to accept the judgments they support, and then develops the method of wide reflective equilibrium in the context of a broader explanatory‐coherentist epistemology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bart Streumer thinks that we cannot believe the global normative error theory. Streumer's argument presupposes a Cartesian theory of belief fixation. The Cartesian theory entails that we can understand a proposition without believing it. But the Cartesian theory of belief fixation is false, and the Spinozan theory is true. The Spinozan theory of belief fixation entails that we cannot understand a proposition without believing it. The present paper argues that Streumer's claim is false, and we can believe the global normative error theory because the Spinozan theory is correct. The paper then applies the Spinozan theory of belief fixation to the "Now what?" problem for global normative error theory and responds to objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are libraries of books and articles related to the study of Islamic terrorism. Most of them see Islam as a reason for action. The authors of these publications fail to explain why similar terrorist acts are committed by people who often—as is the case in the United States—have no ideology and seem to choose their victims at random. This article argues that the roots of terrorism can be found not in ideology but in sociocultural aspects of society, including Western societies. This article argues that the mind of a jihadist, like any other terrorists or revolutionaries, can be roughly divided into two compartments. The first I define as "Tertullian," based on emotions. Indeed, individuals from different cultures and societies have their own peculiar "road to Damascus." The other, defined as "Cartesian," is practical and helps Islamists achieve their goals. The writings of Islamists from the Russian Northern Caucasus during the heyday of their activities (2007–15) reveal how "Tertullian" and "Cartesian" minds work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Cottingham has done as much as anyone, and more than many, to champion what he has called "humane philosophy": a method of philosophising that resists the cool, detached style of much contemporary analytic philosophy, and which instead draws on the rich resources of the humanities and arts, including poetry, fiction, and music. Theism, then, can explain the existence of objective value, and can make sense of the lifeworld of consciousness through which we access that value. But rather than treat it as an illusion (as Daniel Dennett among others has done), or as a mysterious intrinsic property of matter (as we find in panpsychism), Cottingham suggests that theism can make sense of consciousness by positing "a source...of all being that is somehow I mind-like i " (p. 83, original emphasis). The sections on Descartes are especially instructive; here Cottingham's expertise comes into its own, revealing Descartes to be much more nuanced than the "Cartesian dualism" caricature suggests. [Extracted from the article]

When we differ on theoretical perspectives in psychotherapy, we regularly do so via appeals to the authority of the traditions we feel affiliated to or trained in, rather than a careful evaluation of the underlying philosophical presuppositions of those traditions. Lacan was at pains to distinguish his reformulation of psychoanalysis from biologically grounded perspectives such as attachment theory and more socially adaptive and normative readings of Freud, associated with the American Ego Psychology of the mid-twentieth century, against which he railed. Whilst it's true that Tombras' foregrounding of Heidegger's deconstruction of the legacy of Cartesian subject-object dualism, picked up and very differently elaborated by Lacan, speaks to this very philosophical divergence, I suspect that only the already-initiated will be alive to this. [Extracted from the article]

In The Varieties of Reference, Evans makes two parallel claims about thought and perception. He argues that both our capacity to self‐ascribe thought and our capacity to self‐ascribe perception are fallible. The essay focuses on his claim about perception and examines its relation to Evans's project of rejecting a Cartesian conception of the mind. In his theory of perception, I argue, Evans embraces a conception of first‐person authority that he seeks to reject in his account of thought. He is thus not able to extend to perception the critique of Cartesianism that he develops in the context of his analysis of thought. My intent is not exclusively critical. By working through the difficulties that Evans's argument raises, I seek to shed light on whether and, if so, how criticisms of a Cartesian conception of thought may be extended to the philosophy of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is easy enough to see that this thesis entails Stoljar's no-entailment thesis, at least if we understand phenomenal truths in such a way that if there is no conscious experience (or no conscious being) there are no phenomenal truths. If we have a good argument for dualism about smell experience, dualism about dogs' experience, and dualism about future humans' experience, then we have established mind-body dualism. The view I am most inclined to accept is neither a purely phenomenal spatial functionalism (with only phenomenal roles) or nonphenomenal spatial functionalism, but a combined phenomenal/nonphenomenal spatial functionalism (combined spatial functionalism for short) where reference to space is fixed by both phenomenal and nonphenomenal roles. This response is closely related to Stoljar's objection 5, which says Stoljar's dilemma can be avoided by appealing to a nonphenomenal spatial functionalism. [Extracted from the article]

Although Descartes has in some ways become a symbol of academic isolation, we can dispel this misunderstanding by taking into consideration the holistic nature of Cartesian philosophy. Descartes understood the various branches of philosophy as constituting an organic totality of knowledge that, because of its dependence on imagination and sensation, remains irreducible to intellectual comprehension. Ethics holds a particularly significant place in Cartesian philosophy, and this essay both demonstrates the spiritual nature of Cartesian ethics and explains why Descartes saw ethics as "the ultimate degree of wisdom" so as to illustrate how we can interpret Cartesian philosophy as a spiritual practice. This takes place through a discussion of the distinctions and interconnections of Descartes's three primary notions (soul, body, and the union of soul and body) and concludes by reflecting on the specific temporality of nobility as well as addressing several objections to Cartesian ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reimagines the traditional problem of other minds. On a Cartesian view, the problem involves humans' inability to perceive other persons' minds. Similarly, Gilbert Ryle claims that we cannot directly access another's mind. The paper's rethinking of the problem of other minds moves beyond these questions of perceptibility and accessibility. It asks whether there are certain groups of people whose minds are systematically misinterpreted, or even denied mentality. It argues that there are. This claim builds off recent work in philosophy and social psychology on epistemic injustice and the role of social categories in mental state attribution. The paper proposes the Problem of the Other's Mind: the phenomenon of a (relatively) socially privileged person's inability or lack of desire to understand the mind of a (relatively) socially underprivileged person. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore various views on which mind–body dualism is true, but the soul is located in the body. I argue that this sort of dualism (which I call 'somatic dualism') once was a not‐uncommon view in the philosophy of mind. I also argue that it has the resources to reply to some of the problems thought to affect Cartesian dualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Andreas Malm's provocative monograph I Fossil Capital i (2016) won the Deutscher Prize for 2016. Chapter 6 is "On the Use of Opposites", specifically "in praise of the polarisation" advanced by the materialist "property dualism" of nature and society, and the value of such binaries. In terms of current Marxist debate, Malm emphasises "the primacy of property relations over productive forces" in line with "political Marxism" (Note 13, p. 162, elaborated in Malm, [1], p. 279-292). [Extracted from the article]

The defense of common sense in Berkeley's Three Dialogues is, first and foremost, a defense of the gardener's claim to know his cherry tree, a claim threatened by both Cartesian and Lockean philosophy. This defense depends on the esse is percipi thesis (EIP). EIP is not something the gardener believes; rather, it is a philosophical analysis of the rules he unreflectively follows in his use of the word 'exists'. Uncovering these connections between Berkeley's epistemology and philosophy of language will clarify Berkeley's strategy for bringing his reader back to common sense and practical engagement in the ordinary affairs of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the old story about early modern philosophy, Descartes is a 'rationalist' who devalues the senses, and Berkeley an 'empiricist' who rejects this. Berkeley plays into this story in his Notebooks, where he writes: 'in vindication of the senses effectually to confute wt Descartes saith in ye last par. of the last Med: viz. that the senses oftener inform him falsly than truely' (794). But when we turn to this 'last par.,' we find Descartes maintaining that 'my senses report the truth much more frequently than not' (CSM2: 61). In this paper, I draw on recent commentary to outline Descartes' positive account of sensation. I then look carefully at Berkeley's account of the same, in particular, by considering his distinction between human and divine perception and his account of the laws of nature. In so doing, I suggest that there are noteworthy parallels between Descartes' and Berkeley's accounts with respect to the function of sensation and the ways in which sensations can fulfill this function. I conclude by sketching some ways in which this understanding of Berkeley can illuminate some aspects of Berkeley scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article lays out a general thesis for the development of a comparative ethnographic approach to the anthropology of wonder. It suggests that wonder is both an index and a mode of challenge to existing ontological premises. Through analytical engagement with the theme of wonder in Western philosophy and the anthropology of ontology, it extends this thesis to include the corollary that different ontological premises give rise to different wonders. Ethnographically, the article supports these claims via analysis of wonder discourses among the Arosi of Solomon Islands. These discourses, it is argued, both respond to and promote ontological transformations in a context where the premises at stake are neither those of the Cartesian dualism commonly ascribed to modernity nor of the relational non-dualism commonly ascribe to anthropology's ethnographic 'others', but of a non-Cartesian pluralism termed poly-ontology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accounts of Hobbes's 'system' of sciences oscillate between two extremes. On one extreme, the system is portrayed as wholly axiomatic-deductive, with statecraft being deduced in an unbroken chain from the principles of logic and first philosophy. On the other, it is portrayed as rife with conceptual cracks and fissures, with Hobbes's statements about its deductive structure amounting to mere window-dressing. This paper argues that a middle way is found by conceiving of Hobbes's Elements of Philosophy on the model of a mixed-mathematical science, not the model provided by Euclid's Elements of Geometry. I suggest that Hobbes is a test case for understanding early-modern system construction more generally, as inspired by the structure of the applied mathematical sciences. This approach has the additional virtue of bolstering in a novel way the thesis that the transformation of philosophy in the long seventeenth century was indebted to mathematics, a thesis that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additive theories of rationality, as I use the term, are theories that hold that an account of our capacity to reflect on perceptually-given reasons for belief and desire-based reasons for action can begin with an account of what it is to perceive and desire, in terms that do not presuppose any connection to the capacity to reflect on reasons, and then can add an account of the capacity for rational reflection, conceived as an independent capacity to 'monitor' and 'regulate' our believing-on-the-basis-of-perception and our acting-on-the-basis-of-desire. I show that a number of recent discussions of human rationality are committed to an additive approach, and I raise two difficulties for this approach, each analogous to a classic problem for Cartesian dualism. The interaction problem concerns how capacities conceived as intrinsically independent of the power of reason can interact with this power in what is intuitively the right way. The unity problem concerns how an additive theorist can explain a rational subject's entitlement to conceive of the animal whose perceptual and desiderative life he or she oversees as 'I' rather than 'it'. I argue that these difficulties motivate a general skepticism about the additive approach, and I sketch an alternative, 'transformative' framework in which to think about the cognitive and practical capacities of a rational animal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The so-called epistemological turn of the Descartes- Locke- Kant tradition ( Rorty) is a hallmark of modern philosophy. The broad family of normativism constitutes one major response to the Cartesian heritage building upon some version of the idea that human knowledge, action and sociality build fundamentally upon some form of social agreement and standards. Representationalism and the Cartesian picture more generally have been challenged by normativists but this paper argues that, even where these challenges by normativism have been taken to heart, our intellectual culture remains fundamentally epistemic in certain problematic senses. Two problems are highlighted: first, normativism remains functionally Cartesian, for human action and sociality appear as processes driven by the shared understandings by competent contributors (regardless of how these are constructed naturalistically), and second, normativism is unable to account for forms of human action and sociality other than those occurring in the relatively small worlds of normatively regulated conceptual spaces of mutual access and listening. These points are illustrated by an applied discussion of the blind spots of normativist accounts of the emerging environmental and the on-going economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study related to normative behavior without concerning about Cartesian philosophy. Topics discussed include Anti-Cartesianism such as condition of negligence and non-transparency in some situations; need of contextual lucidity for normativity; deontic facts consideration for normative behavior; and arguments of philosopher Frank Jackson on ethical norms.

Despite its internal divisions and the uncertainty surrounding many of its foundations, there is a growing consensus that the on-going search for an alternative model of the mind finds a minimal theoretical identity in the pursuit of an anti-Cartesian conception of mental phenomena. Nevertheless, this anti-Cartesianism remains more or less explicitly committed to the neo-Brentanian idea that intentionality is an essential feature of the mental-an idea that has prevailed since the advent of modern cognitive science in the 1950s. An issue of compatibility is thereby raised, as neo-Brentanism arguably sides with cognitive Cartesianism. The main goal of the paper is to put into full light one specific aspect of this largely unperceived problem of compatibility by arguing that the neo-Brentanian property of intentionality is an essentially representational one that runs counter to the salient anti-representationalism of anti-Cartesianism. And, that this representational essence confronts the search for alternative models of the mind of an anti-Cartesian kind with the following theoretical issue: To what extent is it possible to devise a non-Brentanian property of intentionality, particularly one that is fully dissociated from the property of representation? This issue is shown to be much deeper and more difficult than it looks once the nature of representation is properly apprehended; it seems to be still waiting for an answer in the current search for an alternative model of the mind, if only because it has not yet be set in fully adequate terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of what minds are and what they do is a contentious issue. This is particularly so when considering non-human animals, for here the questions become: do they have minds at all? And if so, what kinds of minds are they? Alternatives to Cartesian or computational models of mind open up a whole new space of possibility for how we should conceive of animal minds, while also highlighting how Skinner's pragmatist-inspired radical behaviourism has much more to offer than most researchers in animal cognition would like to admit. Pragmatism, or 'American Naturalism' is also highlighted by Chemero as the alternative for human cognition. The challenge, then, is to build an understanding of mind along pragmatist lines in a way that does justice to both human and non-human animals. A clear understanding of embodiment, and commitment to a radical form of enactivism, can, perhaps, begin to generate a better kind of continuity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the evolution of criticism that focuses on the representation of animals in Shakespeare. While animals have always been a topic of interest to Shakespeare critics, recent decades have seen the emergence of a coherent body of theoretically informed work that investigates the cultural, material, and ideological work that animals perform. Shakespeare's plays and poems have become the ground from which challenges to the human-animal divide, Cartesian mind-body dualism, and other powerful manifestations of 'the anthropological machine' can be successfully mounted. The article considers debates within the field and takes account of new directions in the scholarship, arguing that continued and reciprocal engagement between Shakespeare criticism and animal studies enlivens both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Cartesian" model of the rational subject is central to the political philosophy of Hobbes and Locke and is "transcendentally" affirmed in Kant's account of ethics and legality. An influential body of Hegelian inspired critique has suggested, however, that the dialectical deficiencies of the dominant models of Liberalism in late modernity inhere in this "atomistic" or "self-supporting" characterisation of the individual. The "atomistic" perspective appears as an obstacle not only to the coherent articulation of the compatibility of liberty and equality, but also to the attempt to express the mutuality of recognition between agents that might offer a genuinely communal conception of constitution and subject. Employing as a frame of reference Alan Brudner's analysis of these issues in his comprehensive Constitutional Goods (Brudner 2004) it is argued that legal and political theory might usefully adopt an understanding of Hegel's notion of "recognition" (Anerkennung) in this regard without drastic phenomenological reconstruction of the Cartesian or Kantian subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines Kant's various criticisms of the broadly Cartesian ontological argument as they are developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. It is argued that each of these criticisms is effective against its intended target, and that these targets include-in addition to Descartes himself-Leibniz, Wolff, and Baumgarten. It is argued that Kant's most famous criticism-the charge that being is not a real predicate-is directed exclusively against Leibniz. Kant's argument for this thesis-the argument proceeding from his example of a hundred thalers-although it may seem to beg the question, in fact succeeds against Leibniz. It does so because the charge of begging the question can be rebutted if one makes certain Leibnizian assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ontological dimensions of encounters between Brazilian biomedical Cartesianism and Amerindian perspectivism come into sharp focus in an intensive course in functional anatomy offered to trainee indigenous health agents in Acre state, Brazil. After presenting the biomedics' rationalization of the course, which centered on the supervised dissection of a cadaver, I look at Cashinahua students' accounts of their participation in the training and consider the broader implications of this particular engagement between two profoundly different philosophical traditions from the angle of the ontogenesis of meaning. I contextualize the students' views of the cadaver through discussion of Cashinahua phenomenology of the body and cumulative personhood. Rather than revealing a confrontation between distinct "cultures," as suggested by the term interculturality, analysis supports a focus on the interplay between ontology and epistemology within historically specific ontogenetic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The familiar Cartesian sceptical arguments all involve an explanation of our experiences. An account of the persuasive power of the sceptical arguments should explain why this is so. This supports a diagnosis of the error in Cartesian sceptical arguments according to which they mislead us into regarding our perceptual beliefs as if they were justified as inferences to the best explanation. I argue that they have instead a perceptual justification that does not involve inference to the best explanation and that should not be put in doubt by the sceptical hypotheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the association of a worldview to science as more ambiguous and complex. It discusses the differing views of philosophers and scientists on the proper scope and explores two different types of science, such as Cartesian ad Baconian. It highlights how the differing intuitions on scientific inquiry are apparent in contemporary argument about reductionism and presents the work of physicists John Polkinghorne and Steven Weinberg.

The article discusses the view that presentational content of ideas determines its referential content in contrast to Rene Descartes' claim that deliverances of senses are never truthful representations of reality. It defends Cartesian claim that sensations are intrinsically representational by discussing arguments and texts that motivate Cartesian sensations as nonrepresentational states of mind. It notes that presentational content of ideas is determined by a descriptivist and causal factor.

The article discusses Raffaella De Rosa's approach to Rene Descartes' strategy which is to have the intentionality of a sensation secured by an idea of extension while the phenomenal content of a sensation is explained by its being causally related to the object of sensation. The discussion is restricted to the second grade of sensation and cites De Rosa's contention that Cartesian sensations are almost always fusions of an extensive, spatial element and an element distinctive to the 5 senses.

The article focuses and responds to three main lines of criticisms against philosopher Rene Descartes' view that ideas of secondary qualities are materially false and the fusion of an intellectual and phenomenal component is crucial to the descriptivist-causal account. It explains why Cartesian sensations are still misrepresentational. It presents a defense to a nonliteral reading of the passage in Meditation Three. The problems with the descriptivist-causal account are addressed.

Why are disembodied extraordinary beings like gods and spirits prevalent in past and present theologies? Under the intuitive Cartesian dualism hypothesis, this is because it is natural to conceptualize of minds as separate from bodies; under the counterintuitiveness hypothesis, this is because beliefs in minds without bodies are unnatural—such beliefs violate core knowledge intuitions about person physicality and consequently have a social transmission advantage. We report on a critical test of these contrasting hypotheses. Prior research found that among adult Christian religious adherents, intuitions about person psychology coexist and interfere with theological conceptualizations of God (e.g., infallibility). Here, we use a sentence verification paradigm where participants are asked to evaluate as true or false statements on which core knowledge intuitions about person physicality and psychology and Christian theology about God are inconsistent (true on one and false on the other) versus consistent (both true or both false). We find, as predicted by the counterintuitiveness hypothesis but not the Cartesian dualism hypothesis, that Christian religious adherents show worse performance (lower accuracy and slower response time) on statements where Christian theological doctrines about God's physicality (e.g., incorporeality, omnipresence) conflict with intuitions about person physicality. We find these effects for other extraordinary beings in Christianity—the Holy Spirit and Jesus—but not for an ordinary being (priest). We conclude that it is unintuitive to conceptualize extraordinary beings as disembodied, and that this, rather than inherent Cartesian dualism, may explain the prevalence of beliefs in such beings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 17th century author François Poulain de la Barre was both an important contributor to the history of feminist thought and a thoroughgoing Cartesian. Poulain borrows from many of Descartes's doctrines, including his dualism, distrust of epistemic authority, accounts of imagination, and passion, and at least some aspects of his doxastic voluntarism; here, I examine how he uses a Cartesian notion of prejudice for an anti‐essentializing philosophy of women's education and the formation of the tastes, talents, and interests of individuals. "Prejudice" remains Descartes's notion of an entrenched, yet self‐imposed doxastic commitment, but also takes on the sense of social‐political group bias, founded on custom, transmitted through education, serving interests, and forming social expectations. Poulain also expands on the Cartesian notion and themes by emphasizing widespread yet unjustified social opinions in favor of the status quo in both epistemic practices and epistemic authorities, while considering how biased beliefs about sexual difference and gender identity can be internalized even by those who suffer most from them. At the same time, he shows how powerful Cartesian concepts can be for feminist methodology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]