790 research outputs found
Consciousness
Consciousness is sometimes viewed as a particular parametric factor in the analogy of blood pressure or electric charge. The paper argues that this is an erroneous conception becomes consciousness involves a varied assortment of different phenomena that have no single unified commonality. And so even as ‘abnormal psychology’ has to be a disjointed assembly of diverse specialties so will ‘consciousness studies’ have to be
Interpreting Philosophy. The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics
Metaphilosophy is philosophy’s poor and neglected cousin. Philosophers are on the whole too busy doing philosophy to take time to stand back and consider reflectively how the project itself actually works. And they lead tend to produce texts without too much consideration of how this looks from the standpoint of the consumer. All this, it seems to be, affords good reason for attending to philosophical hermeneutics, reflecting on the issue of how philosophical texts are to be understood and interpreted
Coping with Cognitive Limitations: Problems of Rationality in a Complex World
In cognitive and practical contexts alike, even the most rational of problem-solutions can misfire in situations of incomplete information. The prevailing state of our information will -- and should -- decisively affect the determination of what is the best thing to do or think. Accordingly, reason faces the predicament of acknowledging that it must call on us to do that which, for aught we know, may in the end prove totally inappropriate.SUNY BrockportPhilosophic Exchang
Luck and the Enigmas of Fate
Luck is a formidable and ubiquitous factor in human life as we know it. It is a rogue force that prevents human life from being fully domesticated to rational management. This paper explores the nature of luck and its role in human life.SUNY BrockportPhilosophic Exchang
Luck and the Enigmas of Fate
Luck is a formidable and ubiquitous factor in human life as we know it. It is a rogue force that prevents human life from being fully domesticated to rational management. This paper explores the nature of luck and its role in human life
QUANTUM META-THEORY (Twisting the Tail of Schrödinger’s Cat)
The problem of Schrödinger’s Cat has figured prominently in the debates about the bearing of quantum physics on our understanding of physical reality. On its basis, various theorists have maintained the quantum physical world exhibits a probabilistically indecisive physical reality. The analysis of the paper that this appeal to quantum reality is methodologically at odds with and disjoint from its underlying approach to quantum theory itself. If there is to be methodological uniformity at this juncture it will have to be along the lines that Einstein always focused—an incomplete hidden factor (perhaps better than “hidden variables”) approach
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