The Primacy of Metaphysics

Author(s):  
Christopher Peacocke

Is the metaphysics of a domain prior in the order of philosophical explanation to a theory of intentional contents and meanings about that domain? Or is the opposite true? This book argues from the nature of meaning and intentional content to the conclusion that content and meaning are never prior to the metaphysics. For every domain, either a metaphysics-first view or a no-priority view is correct. Metaphysics-first views are developed for several specific domains. For extensive magnitudes, a new realistic metaphysics is developed, and this metaphysics is used to explain features of the perception of magnitudes, and to elucidate analogue computation and analogue representation. A metaphysics-first treatment of time is developed and used to develop new accounts of temporal representation, and to address some puzzles about time and present-tense content. A metaphysics-first treatment of subject and the first person develops a new account of the ownership of mental events by subjects, and argues for a greater role of agency in the first person than in earlier accounts. A noncausal metaphysics-first view is developed for the natural numbers and the real numbers. The account gives an explanatory priority to the application of numbers to properties and to ratios of magnitudes. The final chapter of the book argues the materials earlier in the book permit a new account of the limits of intelligibility. Spurious concepts, such as absolute space, are ones for which there is no account of the relation that would have to hold for a thinker to latch onto it.

Author(s):  
Bruno and

Multisensory interactions in perception are pervasive and fundamental, as we have documented throughout this book. In this final chapter, we propose that contemporary work on multisensory processing is a paradigm shift in perception science, calling for a radical reconsideration of empirical and theoretical questions within an entirely new perspective. In making our case, we emphasize that multisensory perception is the norm, not the exception, and we remark that multisensory interactions can occur early in sensory processing. We reiterate the key notions that multisensory interactions come in different kinds and that principles of multisensory processing must be considered when tackling multisensory daily-life problems. We discuss the role of unisensory processing in a multisensory world, and we conclude by suggesting future directions for the multisensory field.


Author(s):  
Zoran Oklopcic

As the final chapter of the book, Chapter 10 confronts the limits of an imagination that is constitutional and constituent, as well as (e)utopian—oriented towards concrete visions of a better life. In doing so, the chapter confronts the role of Square, Triangle, and Circle—which subtly affect the way we think about legal hierarchy, popular sovereignty, and collective self-government. Building on that discussion, the chapter confronts the relationship between circularity, transparency, and iconography of ‘paradoxical’ origins of democratic constitutions. These representations are part of a broader morphology of imaginative obstacles that stand in the way of a more expansive constituent imagination. The second part of the chapter focuses on the most important five—Anathema, Nebula, Utopia, Aporia, and Tabula—and closes with the discussion of Ernst Bloch’s ‘wishful images’ and the ways in which manifold ‘diagrams of hope and purpose’ beyond the people may help make them attractive again.


Author(s):  
Amy Strecker

The final chapter of this book advances four main conclusions on the role of international law in landscape protection. These relate to state obligations regarding landscape protection, the influence of the World Heritage Convention and the European Landscape Convention, the substantive and procedural nature of landscape rights, and the role of EU law. It is argued that, although state practice is lagging behind the normative developments made in the field of international landscape protection, landscape has contributed positively to the corpus of international cultural heritage law and indeed has emerged as a nascent field of international law in its own right.


Philosophies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
S. J. Blodgett-Ford

The phenomenon and ethics of “voting” will be explored in the context of human enhancements. “Voting” will be examined for enhanced humans with moderate and extreme enhancements. Existing patterns of discrimination in voting around the globe could continue substantially “as is” for those with moderate enhancements. For extreme enhancements, voting rights could be challenged if the very humanity of the enhanced was in doubt. Humans who were not enhanced could also be disenfranchised if certain enhancements become prevalent. Voting will be examined using a theory of engagement articulated by Professor Sophie Loidolt that emphasizes the importance of legitimization and justification by “facing the appeal of the other” to determine what is “right” from a phenomenological first-person perspective. Seeking inspiration from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948, voting rights and responsibilities will be re-framed from a foundational working hypothesis that all enhanced and non-enhanced humans should have a right to vote directly. Representative voting will be considered as an admittedly imperfect alternative or additional option. The framework in which voting occurs, as well as the processes, temporal cadence, and role of voting, requires the participation from as diverse a group of humans as possible. Voting rights delivered by fiat to enhanced or non-enhanced humans who were excluded from participation in the design and ratification of the governance structure is not legitimate. Applying and extending Loidolt’s framework, we must recognize the urgency that demands the impossible, with openness to that universality in progress (or universality to come) that keeps being constituted from the outside.


2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-76
Author(s):  
Derek Woods

The Great Stink of London took place one year before the publication of George Eliot's The Lifted Veil (1859). As a peak sanitary crisis, the Great Stink helps us to understand the particular telepathy of Eliot's narrator, since The Lifted Veil combines the rhetoric of telepathy with that of a more threatening form of transmission among bodies: foul odor and contagious air. Throughout the figurative structure of Eliot's story, tropes that convey the narrator's ostensibly supernatural experience contain traces – sometimes cryptic, sometimes explicit – of the earthly matter of sanitary crisis. The first section of this essay explores the sanitary dimension of The Lifted Veil, linking the story to sanitary crisis and to Victorian materialist psychology – particularly the work of George Henry Lewes – which conceived mind in physical terms. With the role of sanitation established, the second section shows the importance of the sense of smell to Latimer's first-person narration of telepathy. This section outlines the transition, contemporaneous with sanitary reform, from the use of animal to the use of vegetable perfumes. Throughout the story, vegetable scents act as prophylaxes against the narrator's too-physical telepathy. From these readings, it becomes clear that Eliot writes “extrasensory” perception with recourse to sensory figures. Telepathy and sanitation overlap in this exceptional gothic science fiction in such a way as to demand a new concept of olfactory telepathy.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. dmm048199

ABSTRACTFirst Person is a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in Disease Models & Mechanisms, helping early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers. Kim Landry-Truchon is first author on ‘Deletion of Yy1 in mouse lung epithelium unveils molecular mechanisms governing pleuropulmonary blastoma pathogenesis’, published in DMM. Kim is a research assistant in the lab of Lucie Jeannotte at Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec-Université Laval, Québec, Canada, investigating organ development and the regulatory networks involved. Nicolas is a research assistant in the same lab, investigating the role of master transcription factors during mouse development.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENRICO FACCO ◽  
Fabio Fracas ◽  
Silvano Tagliagambe ◽  
Patrizio Tressoldi

The main aim of this paper is to support a metaphilosophical and metascientific approach to the study of Consciousness.After a brief historical resume of the debate between the mind-brain-body relationship, we discuss how the apparently irreducible contention between a physicalist and an anti-physicalist interpretation of Consciousness can be overcome by a metaphilosophic and metascientific approach in the attempt to overcome ethnocentric cultural filters and constraints yielded by the Weltanschauung and the Zeitgeist one belongs to. IN fact, a metaphilosophical perspective can help to recognize key concepts and meanings common to different philosophies beyond their formal differences and different modes of theorization, where the common field of reflection is aimed to find the problem’s unity in the multiplicity of forms. Likewise, the metascientific approach, such as the anthropic principle adopted in astrophysics, helps overcoming the problems of indecidability of single axiomatic disciplines.A metaphilosophical and metascientific approach seems appropriate in the study of consciousness and subjective phenomena, since the first-person perspective and the meaning of the experience are the condition sine qua non for their proper understanding.


Author(s):  
Michael B. Miller

This final chapter offers a conclusion to the overall findings of the journal. It summarises the core factors of mass migration: migration patterns and networks; the role of governments and immigration policy; the importance of steamship emigration agents; the business of migration; and the shifting role of ports and port infrastructures. It concludes by suggesting that maritime and migration historians can further their studies by expanding and exploring one another’s territories.


This book started with a brief review of different outlooks on the role of financial sector development in the process of economic growth. Then it highlighted the fact that recent studies, particularly those originating from modern growth theory, suggest that financial intermediation affects growth through various channels. To test this proposition, an empirical model was built, data were obtained, empirical tests were carried out, and results were discussed. The final chapter in this book, therefore, summarises key research findings and discusses the potential channels through which financial sector development affects the economic growth process. The chapter further highlights contributions of this research to growth studies, discusses policy implications arising from the findings of this research, and provides directions for future research and analysis.


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