scholarly journals A Role for Conscious Accessibility in Skilled Action

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Brozzo
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Skilled Action ◽  
The Way

AbstractSkilled sportsmen or musicians—more generally, skilled agents—often fill us with awe with the way they perform their actions. One question we may ask ourselves is whether they intended to perform some awe-inspiring aspects of their actions. This question becomes all the more pressing as it often turns out that these agents were not conscious of some of those aspects at the time of performance. As I shall argue, there are reasons for suspecting lack of conscious access to an aspect of one’s action to be incompatible with intending to perform that aspect of one’s action. Subsequently, though, I will also argue that, in some cases, the incompatibility is only prima facie, and can be dispelled by drawing the following distinction: that between aspects of one’s action that are merely temporarily not consciously accessed, versus aspects of one’s action that are permanently inaccessible to consciousness. I will thus remove an obstacle towards saying that skilled agents intended to perform certain aspects of their actions, despite lack of conscious access to those aspects at the time of performance.

READING THE RINSINGS OF THE CUP

2004 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
J. L. MACHOR
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Audience Response ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Literary Marketplace ◽  
The Public ◽  
Critical Perception ◽  
The Way

Although a widely shared critical perception is that Herman Melville's first two books, Typee (1846) and Omoo (1847), received comparable responses from reviewers in the late 1840s, the antebellum reception of the second novel was anything but a mirror of the response to the first. Not only did Omoo sell fewer copies and receive fifty fewer reviews than Typee, but reviewers also read Omoo through an altered set of interpretive assumptions that turned it, in their view, into a problematic and ultimately disappointing sequel. Part of this shift involved a marked increase in objections to Melville's critique in Omoo of Christian missionaries. A major factor in this response was that reviewers, after having struggled with the question of Typee's authenticity, were inclined to take Omoo as a prima facie work of fiction. Such an assumption meant that, in the logic of antebellum reading formations, Omoo's credibility as social critique was suspect by virtue of its fictional status. This impugning of the novel's authority, in turn, helped pave the way for reviewer responses that questioned the author's own morality. Adding to the problem was the fact that several key reviewers found Omoo to be disappointing because it failed to mark an advance on Typee. Such turns in audience response were significant in repositioning Melville in the antebellum literary marketplace, not only in terms of the public perception of his writings but also in the way in which he conceived his relation to his audience with his next novel, Mardi (1849).

Powerful Perdurance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

It is commonly held that the right sort of ‘glue’ for uniting the temporal parts of persisting objects should be causal. To date, very little has been said about the nature of this causal glue (except to give it unhelpful names like ‘immanent causation’ or ‘gen-identity’). To my mind, causal powers look well suited to the task: two consecutive object stages are part of the same persisting object just in case the latter is part of the manifestation of an appropriate power of the former. However, before any such project could hope to get off the ground, a number of prima facie objections must be dealt with. For instance: temporal parts look too short-lived to instantiate or exercise powers; the exercise of powers tends to be a mutual affair not suited to the causal line of single objects; and powers are typically thought of as incapable of having themselves as their manifestations. The aim of this paper is to answer these objections, thereby providing a greater understanding of the nature of powers and thus clearing the way for a powers-based account of perdurance.

The nature of meaning

2005 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Peregrin
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Semantic Theory ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
The World ◽  
Interactive View ◽  
The Way

Part of the philosophy of language of the 20th century is marked by a shift from the view of language as a tool of representing the world to its view as a means of interacting with the world. This shift is common to the later Wittgenstein, to pragmatists and neopragmatists including Brandom, and also to Chomsky and his school. The claim of the paper is that though the Chomskyans have offered an admirably elaborated theory of syntax adequate to the interactive view of language, they failed to develop a comparably adequate notion of semantics; and that it is Brandom‘s approach which, though prima facie much more speculative and much less scientific, paves the way to a semantic theory which an ‘interactivist’ should endorse.

scholarly journals The possibility of a free-will defence for the problem of natural evil

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. J. MAWSON
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Natural Means ◽  
The Way

In this paper, I consider various arguments to the effect that natural evils are necessary for there to be created agents with free will of the sort that the traditional free-will defence for the problem of moral evil suggests we enjoy – arguments based on the idea that evil-doing requires the doer to use natural means in their agency. I conclude that, despite prima facie plausibility, these arguments do not, in fact, work. I provide my own argument for there being no possible world in which creatures enjoying this sort of freedom exist yet suffer no natural evil, and conclude that the way is thus open for extending the free-will defence to the problem of natural evil.

scholarly journals Consciousness and Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 585-609
Author(s):  
Berit "Brit" Brogaard ◽  
Elijah Chudnoff
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Cognitive Penetration ◽  
Perceptual Consciousness ◽  
Core Theme ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Do So ◽  
The Way

This chapter focuses on the relationship between consciousness and knowledge, and in particular on the role perceptual consciousness might play in justifying beliefs about the external world. A version of phenomenal dogmatism is outlined according to which perceptual experiences immediately, prima facie justify certain select parts of their content, and do so in virtue of their having a distinctive phenomenology with respect to those contents. Along the way various issues are considered in connection with this core theme, including the possibility of immediate justification, the dispute between representational and relational views of perception, the epistemic significance of cognitive penetration, the question of whether perceptual experiences are composed of more basic sensations and seemings, and questions about the existence and epistemic significance of high-level content. A concluding section briefly considers how some of the topics pursued here might generalize beyond perception.

THE RELEVANCE OF BAD CHARACTER

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 684-714 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Redmayne
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Data ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Criminal Record ◽  
The Way

An important rule of criminal evidence is that evidence of a defendant’s previous misconduct (evidence of bad character) is prima facie inadmissible. The usual justification for this rule is that, in most cases, such evidence is either irrelevant or likely to have an unduly prejudicial effect on the fact-finder. This article questions this justification. After reviewing the psychological research on character, it examines statistical data on recidivism. The statistics suggest that those with previous convictions are much more likely to offend than are those without a criminal record, which implies that evidence of bad character will usually be sufficiently probative to justify its admission as proof of guilt. The remainder of the article examines various criticisms which can be levelled at this argument, in particular, that the recidivism data are misleading and that the way in which fact-finders reason renders evidence of bad character uninformative.

Sophocles, Trachiniae 94–102

1986 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-342
Author(s):  
T. C. W. Stinton†
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Native Land ◽  
The Media ◽  
Technical Sense ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Town ◽  
The Way

Some years ago, Sir Kenneth Dover suggested a new interpretation of καρ⋯ξαι. Prima facie, the chorus ask the sun to proclaim where Heracles is, and this sense is supported by such passages as Il. 3.277 Ή⋯λιóς θ', ὃς π⋯ντ' ⋯ɸορᾷς, Od. 9.109 Ήελ⋯ου, ὅς π⋯ντ' ⋯ɸορᾷ (cf A. PV 91, S. OC 869), Od. 8.270–1 ἄɸαρ δ⋯ οἱ ἄγγελος ἧλθεν | Ή⋯λιος, and especially (‘a passage…which comes very close to Sophocles in spirit’) h. Cer. 69ff., where ‘Demeter visits the Sun and implores him, “you who look down on all earth and sea…tell me truly of my dear child, if you have seen her anywhere, who has gone off with her…”.’ This is the way καρ⋯ξαι in Trach. 97 has always been taken. Dover points out, however, that κηρ⋯ττειν also has a special, technical sense: to make proclamation inquiring about a missing person's whereabouts, as the town-crier used to do a century ago England and elsewhere, and the media do now. The model is not that of h. Cer. 69ff., but rather S. Aj. 845ff.: ‘Sun, when you see my native land, draw near and tell (ἄγγειλον) my aged father…of my fate.’The examples he cites are enough to demonstrate the ‘interrogative’ use of κηρ⋯ττω, though his first example, Ar. Ach. 748 ⋯γὼν δ⋯ καρυξ⋯ Δικαιóπολιν ὅπᾳ, will not do: if sound, it means not ‘I will find out by κ⋯ρυξ where Dicaeopolis is’ (he is present in the next line), but ‘I will summon Dicaeopolis to where (the sale is)’. The normal ‘interrogative’ use is to enquire by herald (town-crier) the whereabouts of a Crminal (Andoc. 1.112, D. 25.56, Antiphon ii γ 2 with ib. δ 6) or a runaway slave (Lucian,Fug. 27).

Xenophanes in Plato’s Sophist and the first philosophical genealogy

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 324-337
Author(s):  
Sylvana Chrysakopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
The Many ◽  
The One ◽  
The Way

Abstract In this article I intend to show that Plato in the Sophist provides us with the earliest doxographic material on pre-Platonic thinkers. In his account on his predecessors, Xenophanes emerges as the founder of the Eleatic tribe as opposed to the pluralists, while Heraclitus and Empedocles are presented as the Ioanian and the Italian Muses respectively. This prima facie genealogical approach, where Plato’s predecessors become the representatives of schools of different origines paves the way for Plato’s project in the Sophist. In other words the monistic account Xenophanes introduces, prepares for the synthesis between the one and the many set forth by Heraclitus and Empedocles, which is thus presented as a further step towards the ‘interweaving of forms’ (συμπλοκήν εἰδῶν) Plato proposes in the Sophist.

scholarly journals Intention at the Interface

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ellen Fridland
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Control Structure ◽  
Action Control ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Level Control ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Personal Level ◽  
Skilled Action ◽  
The Way

AbstractI identify and characterize the kind of personal-level control-structure that is most relevant for skilled action control, namely, what I call, “practical intention”. I differentiate between practical intentions and general intentions not in terms of their function or timing but in terms of their content. I also highlight a distinction between practical intentions and other control mechanisms that are required to explain skilled action. I’ll maintain that all intentions, general and practical, have the function specifying (and thus guiding according to those specifications), sustaining, and structuring action but that several functions that have been attributed to proximal intentions are actually implemented by other control mechanisms that are not themselves best identified as intentions. Specifically, I will claim that practical intentions do not initiate, monitor, specify or guide the fine-grained, online, kinematic aspects of action. Finally, I suggest that the way in which practical and general intentions should be differentiated is in terms of their content, where general intentions specify the overall goal, outcome, or end of an action as it is conceived of by the agent at a time, and practical intentions determine the means to that end. I conclude by providing empirical evidence to support this way of characterizing the intentions that “interface” with the mechanisms of motor control. Though this discussion has repercussions for action in general, I will limit my discussion to cases of skill.

scholarly journals Evidence-based or person-centered? An ontological debate

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rani Anjum
Keyword(s):  
Evidence Based Medicine ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Biomedical Model ◽  
Practice Of Medicine ◽  
Solid Foundation ◽  
Medical Paradigm ◽  
Based Medicine ◽  
The Way

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) continues to be vigorously debated and person-centered healthcare (PCH) has been proposed as an improvement. But is PCH offered as a supplement to or as a replacement of EBM? Prima facie PCH only concerns the practice of medicine, while the contended features of EBM also include specific methods and the biomedical model. In this paper I argue that there are good philosophical reasons to see PCH as a radical alternative to the existing medical paradigm of EBM, since the two seem committed to conflicting ontologies. I will aim to make explicit some of the most fundamental assumptions that motivate EBM and PCH in order to show that the choice between them ultimately comes down to ontological preference. While EBM has a solid foundation in positivism, or what I here call Humeanism, PCH is more consistent with causal dispositionalism. I conclude that if there is a paradigmatic revolution on the way in medicine, it is first of all one of ontology.

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