VOLUME 6 • 2007
WINDOW ON ROMANIAN FOLK MUSIC (II)
ABSTRACT. Zlateva notes that many of the spiritual creations of the Romanian people are inspired by pastoral life (a number of ballads, songs and dances commemorate shepherds and shepherding). Kraft writes that the immediate appeal of village dancing must have had much to do with its being an intens..
SUBJECTIVITY AND MULTIPLICITY IN DELEUZE'S TRANSCENDENTAL EMPIRICISM
ABSTRACT. Semetsky remarks that, for Deleuze, the states of things are what he called qualitative multiplicities, or relational entities, the analysis of which as a task of philosophy ultimately leads to the invention or construction of concepts anew. Jobst states that Deleuze's philosophy was inten..
HEURISTICS AND BIASES IN PSYCHOLOGY
ABSTRACT. Gilovich and Griffin note that the heuristics and biases message fit well with the pragmatic agenda of much of the field of social psychology. According to Kahneman and Tversky, there are several reasons for studying judgmental or perceptual biases: they are of interest in their own right;..
MEANING AND CONVENTIONS OF LANGUAGE
ABSTRACT. Kripke notes that such semantical notions as "grounded", "paradoxical", etc. belong to the metalanguage. Quine remarks that it is obvious that truth in general depends on both language and extralinguistic fact. Russell asserts that in an elementary proposition we can distinguish one or mor..
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES IN THE CREATION OF ARTIFICIAL MINDS
ABSTRACT. Substrate is morally irrelevant. We differentiate morally between actual and potential beings: the latter do not exist now and will never exist unless we bring them into existence. It is generally unethical to create a person whose life is expected to be not worth living. A being's moral s..
REPRESENTATIONS IN QUANTUM MECHANICS
ABSTRACT. Barrett writes that quantum mechanics and special relativity are the two cornerstones of modern physics. Balaguer contends that propensities are just physical properties, like temperatures and lengths, and so we can get rid of them. Lewis argues that on a realist construal of quantum mecha..
MEANING AND THE USES OF SENSE
ABSTRACT. Putnam writes that the claim that all natural languages are inconsistent, because they are "semantically closed", is false in part because only theories (systems of assertions) are inconsistent, and natural languages, e.g. English, are not theories. Russell states that in any proposition w..
DENNETT'S PROJECT OF HETEROPHENOMENOLOGY
ABSTRACT. Dennett points out that nobody denies that when we engage in mental imagery we seem to be making pictures in our head, and that one can't have infallibility about one's own consciousness, but that one can get close. Dennett distinguishes between the "scientific approach" to mental images a..
DIFFERENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
ABSTRACT. Sartre contends that if the intention is not a thing in consciousness, then the being of the intention can be only consciousness. Deleuze and Guattari note that the two forms of content and expression are in reciprocal presupposition, and they can be abstracted from each other only in a ve..
THE META-NEWCOMB PROBLEM
ABSTRACT. I consider a twist of the Newcomb problem. There are two boxes in front of you and you are asked to choose between taking only box B or taking both box A and box B. Box A contains $ 1,000. Box B will contain either nothing or $ 1,000,000. What B will contain is (or will be) determined by P..
EXISTA INCA UN SENS IN CARE MATEMATICA POATE AVEA FUNDAMENTE? (III)
ABSTRACT. An analysis of traditional mathematical proof is undertaken, with an implicit contrast to formal derivations. The semantic interpretation of mathematical terms plays a role in the former that doesn't appear in the latter. This semantic interpretation, with an accompanying role for intuitio..
MANOMETRUL LUI WITTGENSTEIN SI ARGUMENTUL LIMBAJULUI PRIVAT
ABSTRACT. ABSTRACT. The manometer example in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations § 270 is notoriously difficult to interpret; ironically, in one sense, because it is supposed to clarify by concrete analogy Wittgenstein's abstract remarks about the impossibility of private language. There is ..