Other-Awareness

2019 ◽  
pp. 176-193
Author(s):  
Mark Rowlands

Other-awareness is the ability to recognize another as minded. This sort of ability is usually identified with mindreading: the ability to attribute mental states to another and use this attribution to predict and/or explain his or her behavior. It is unclear whether animals have mindreading abilities. However, even if they do not, there is another way of being aware of the mindedness of another. Just as there is a pre-intentional form of self-awareness, so too is there a pre-intentional form of other-awareness. In pre-intentional self-awareness, one is aware of oneself in virtue of being aware of something else in a certain way. In pre-intentional other-awareness, one is aware of the other in virtue of being aware of oneself in a certain way. Arguments are presented for the claim that many animals can be pre-intentionally other-aware.

Author(s):  
Aryeh Kosman

This chapter examines the treatment of self-knowledge in Plato’s Charmides. The chapter argues that Critias’ proposal that temperance is self-knowledge, and its subsequent examination by Socrates, initially offers the reader a picture of self-knowledge as a reflexive self-awareness of the content of mental states. However, the initial discussion between Socrates and Critias presents the reader with a tension between the dual demands placed on self-knowledge in that dialogue. On the one hand, since self-knowledge is directed inward, towards one’s conscious states in acting temperately, it appears to be presented as reflexive. On the other, since, as a kind of knowledge, self-knowledge must be about something, and so dependent on the object it is directed towards, it is presented as exhibiting the characteristic of ‘objective intentionality’. A clue to the tension’s resolution, it is argued, can be found by considering the more standard understanding of temperance as self-control, and in Charmides’ characterization of temperance as a kind of ‘quietude’.


Author(s):  
Lauren Ashwell

In standard presentations of functionalism in the philosophy of mind, it is generally assumed that our mental states determine our behavioral dispositions as a holistic unit. Thus, although our mental states may them-selves conflict, the behavioral dispositions we have in virtue of these mental states do not. On the other hand, the everyday experience of desiring is often that of competing wants pushing and pulling us in different directions. Our ordinary conception of desiring involves thinking of desires as forces that battle against each other, that cause us to feel torn, and that may overpower each other. Such desire conflicts, I will argue, give us reason to think that the behavioral dispositions we have in virtue of having these desires can themselves conflict—the conflict that we experience when we have conflicting desires is mirrored in the conflicting ways that we are disposed to behave. In this paper I develop a metaphysics for the mind that better respects this sort of conflict, and which requires treating dispositional properties as fundamental properties out of which a mind is constructed.


2002 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 543-559 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Mittag

If one is to believe that p justifiably, then one must believe p for, or because of, one's evidence or reasons in support of p. The basing relation is exactly this relation that obtains between one's belief and one's reasons for believing. Keith Allen Korcz, in a recent article published in this Journal, has argued that two conditions are each sufficient and are jointly necessary to establish basing relations between beliefs and reasons. One condition is formulated to account for basing relations that can obtain in virtue of causal relations between one's belief and reasons, and the other condition is supposed to account for basing relations which can be established independently of the instantiation of any such causal relation.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Thoriq Nurmadiansyah

This article discusses the development of local wisdom SMKN 1 Wonosari.  Local Wisdom are closely related to honesty was initiated in order to strengthen the nation's character. The study was conducted in the cafeteria honesty SMKN 1 Wonosari. "Canteen" honesty is honesty canteen canteen that still exists among the other folded. Existence to be an example for other schools, in addition to the creation of a culture of honesty also cleanliness can not be denied, and more importantly the quality of the food is guaranteed. Unequaled achievement is "Cafeteria Honesty" is able to create a culture of self-awareness and honesty without having watched someone else.


2004 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-268
Author(s):  
Wiesław Dyk

The discussion about the rights of animals is always up-to-date. The dichotomy division into philoanimalists and philohominists, although reasonable, is not satisfactory to everyone. It is too strongly associated with the division into people and things in Roman law. To avoid this association in the context of biocentric trends in ecological ethics, accomplishments of evolutionary psychology and the concept of animal welfare, it is suggested that a third moral dimension dealing with creatures with highly developed nervous system be introduced between moral objectivity of creatures with high perception and moral subjectivity of people - creatures characterized by self-awareness and reflexive awareness. Human beings on the one hand are responsible for recognizing their rights given by nature and on the other hand, they are obliged to create a law to protect themselves.


Author(s):  
Katja Garloff

This chapter jumps to the turn of the century, when the rise of racial antisemitism fostered a new Jewish self-awareness and rendered “interracial” love and marriage central to the public debates about German Jewish identity. It analyzes three German Jewish writers of different and paradigmatic political orientations, who used love stories to diagnose the reasons for the faltering of emancipation: the assimilationist Ludwig Jacobowski, the Zionist Max Nordau, and the mainstream liberal Georg Hermann. Their works, including Jacobowski's Werther the Jew (1892), Nordau's Doctor Kohn (1899), and Hermann's Jettchen Gebert (1906), show how love stories potentially escape the ideological constraints of increasingly racialized models of identity. On the one hand, the love plot affords an opportunity to expose the obstacles encountered by Jews seeking integration in times of rising antisemitism. On the other hand, the open endings of most love stories and the ambiguous use of racial language allow the authors to eschew a final verdict on the success or failure of integration. The chapter argues that the love plot generates a host of equivocations between the social and the biological, and the particular and the universal, creating a metaphorical surplus that opens up venues to rethink the project of Jewish emancipation and assimilation.


Author(s):  
Gabriele Kohlbauer-Fritz

This chapter illustrates the backwardness of Yiddish in the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire. In Galicia, Yiddish language and culture developed quite differently and at a much slower pace than in the other parts of Poland and Russia. At a time when the works of Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Mokher Seforim, and Sholem Aleichem were flourishing elsewhere, Yiddish culture in Galicia was still underdeveloped, emerging only fleetingly at the beginning of the twentieth century, inspired by the political and social movements that encouraged Jewish national self-awareness. No doubt one reason for this long period of dormancy was the particular historical situation that resulted from the policies of the Habsburg regime. Thus, a history of the Yiddish-language movement in Galicia and the Austrian capital, Vienna, must also be an account of its failure. The chapter shows that it was precisely in Galicia that a thriving cultural symbiosis emerged among the coexisting national groups, and this symbiosis had a substantial impact on the Yiddish cultural movement. Yet competition from the Polish and German languages ultimately ousted Yiddish almost completely.


2019 ◽  
pp. 272-301
Author(s):  
Lydia L. Moland

Hegel’s analysis of poetry’s genres begins with epic poetry, which is the action-based articulation of a nation’s dawning self-awareness. Lyric poetry, by contrast, allows poets to express their deepest subjectivity and interpret the world through their own experience. Drama brings action back into art, allowing actors themselves to emerge as artists and correcting for the vanishing subjectivity in painting and music. Drama also incorporates the two other poetic genres, as well as the other arts. Because it achieves these syntheses, it is, according to Hegel, the highest art. Hegel gives special consideration to tragedy and comedy, assessing both in their ancient and modern forms. His conclusion is that although both subgenres are more difficult to achieve in the modern world, successful examples are possible, ensuring that poetry will continue. With these poetic subgenres, the individual arts reach their conceptual end.


Autism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 136236132095101
Author(s):  
Alexandra Zinck ◽  
Uta Frith ◽  
Peter Schönknecht ◽  
Sarah White

Recent studies on mentalizing have shown that autistic individuals who pass explicit mentalizing tasks may still have difficulties with implicit mentalizing tasks. This study explores implicit mentalizing by examining spontaneous speech that is likely to contain mentalistic expressions. The spontaneous production of meta-statements provides a clear measure for implicit mentalizing that is unlikely to be learned through experience. We examined the self- and other-descriptions of highly verbally able autistic and non-autistic adults in terms of their spontaneous use of mentalistic language and meta-representational utterances through quantitative and qualitative analysis. We devised a hierarchical coding system that allowed us to study the types of statements produced in comparable conditions for the self and for a familiar other. The descriptions of autistic participants revealed less mentalistic content relating to psychological traits and meta-statements. References to physical traits were similar between groups. Within each group, participants produced a similar pattern of types of mental utterance across ‘self’ and ‘other’ conditions. This suggests that autistic individuals show a unique pattern of mental-state-representation for both self and other. Meta-statements add a degree of complexity to self- and other-descriptions and to the understanding of mental states; their reduction in autism provides evidence for implicit mentalizing difficulties. Lay abstract Autistic people can have difficulties in understanding non-autistic people’s mental states such as beliefs, emotions and intentions. Although autistic adults may learn to overcome difficulties in understanding of explicit (overt) mental states, they may nevertheless struggle with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. This study explores how spontaneous language is used in order to specifically point to this implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states. In particular, our study compares the spontaneous statements that were used in descriptions of oneself and a familiar other person. Here, we found that autistic and non-autistic adults were comparable in the number of statements about physical traits they made. In contrast, non-autistic adults made more statements about mentalistic traits (about the mental including psychological traits, relationship traits and statements reflecting about these) both for the self and the other. Non-autistic and autistic adults showed no difference in the number of statements about relationships but in the number of statements about psychological traits and especially in the statements reflecting on these. Each group showed a similar pattern of kinds of statements for the self and for the other person. This suggests that autistic individuals show the same unique pattern of description in mentalistic terms for the self and another person. This study also indicates that investigating spontaneous use of language, especially for statements reflecting about mental states, enables us to look into difficulties with implicit (indirect) understanding of mental states.


1910 ◽  
Vol 56 (233) ◽  
pp. 227-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
George A. Watson

The following observations are founded upon the records of 301 autopsies performed by myself at Rainhill Asylum. They are concerned principally with certain abnormal and morbid manifestations which occur within the crania of the insane. Of these the chief are, on the one hand, indications of subevolution, as shown by macroscopic structural defects of the cerebral hemispheres, such as deficiency of weight or of convolutional complexity, and on the other, evidence of dissolution as exhibited by wasting of the cerebral hemispheres. The relationship existing between these abnormal and morbid manifestations and certain other intracranial appearances is also discussed. No attempt, however, has been made—for reasons which will afterwards be given—at any close correlation between these abnormal and morbid manifestations and the mental states recorded during life. The observations, therefore, are of a pathological rather than a clinical nature.


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