Six Theses on Mechanisms and Mechanistic Science

In this paper we identify six theses that constitute core results of philosophical investigation into the nature of mechanisms, and of the role that the search for and identification of mechanisms play in the sciences. These theses represent the fruits of the body of research that is now often called New Mechanism. We concisely present the main arguments for these theses. In the literature, these arguments are scattered and often implicit. Our analysis can guide future research in many ways: it provides critics of New Mechanism with clear targets, it can reduce misunderstandings, it can clarify differences of opinion among New Mechanists and it helps to define a research agenda for New Mechanists.

The Metaphysical Implications of the Nigerian National Anthem and Pledge

This discourse, using the analytical method of philosophical investigation, sets to examine the economic and socio-political implications of the Nigerian national anthem and pledge. In doing this, selected lines from the Nigerian national anthem and pledge were analyzed within the socio-political and developmental process that confronts Nigeria society. The paper, therefore, presents a metaphysical understanding of the life-style of the political elites and civil servants as it is being affected by the wordings of the anthem and pledge. The treatise adopts the meaning of anthem as a song that has special importance for a country, an organization or a particular group of people and is sung on special occasions while the pledge is conceived as a formal promise to be loyal often make by people standing in front of the flag with their right hand on their heart. The paper concludes with a meta-logical argument that the wordings of the anthem and pledge though look ordinary possesses far-reaching implications that could be positive or negative, despite the contemporary realities that suggested that the powers and significance of the words that constitute the anthem and pledge seem to have been lost.

City Living

This book is about urban spaces, urban dwellers, and how these spaces and people make, shape, and change one another. It is the first systematic philosophical investigation of the nature of city life and city dwellers. It draws on empirical and ethnographic work in geography, anthropology, urban planning, and several other disciplines in order to explore the impact that cities have on their dwellers and that dwellers have on their cities. It begins with a philosophical exploration of spatially embodied agency and of the specific forms of agency and spatiality that are distinctive of city living. It explores how gentrification is enacted and experienced at the level of embodied agency, arguing that gentrifying spaces are contested territories that shape and are shaped by their dwellers. The book then moves to an exploration of repurposed cities, which are cities materially designed to support one sociopolitical order but in which that order collapsed, leaving new dwellers to use the space in new ways. Through a detailed original ethnography of the repurposed cities of Berlin and Johannesburg, the book makes the case that in repurposed cities, we can see vividly how material spaces shape and constrain the agency and experience of dwellers, while dwellers creatively shape the spaces they inhabit in accordance with their needs. The book ends with a reconsideration of the right to the city, asking what would be involved in creating a city that enabled the agency and flourishing of all its diverse inhabitants.

Philosophy and the visual arts: Illustration and performance

In this paper I distinguish between illustrative and performative uses of artworks in the teaching and communication of philosophy, drawing examples from the history of art and my own practice. The former are where works are used merely to illustrate and communicate a philosophical idea or argument, the latter are where the artist or teacher philosophizes through the creation of art. I hope to promote future collaboration between philosophers, art historians and artists, with artworks becoming catalysts for artistic-philosophical investigation, thus revitalizing the idea of universities embodying ongoing and open-ended conversations.

On the psychological origins of tool use

The ubiquity of tool use in human life has generated multiple lines of scientific and philosophical investigation to understand the development and expression of humans’ engagement with tools and its relation to other dimensions of human experience. However, existing literature on tool use faces several epistemological challenges in which the same set of questions generate many different answers. At least four critical questions can be identified, which are intimately intertwined—(1) What constitutes tool use? (2) What psychological processes are involved in tool use? (3) Which of these psychological processes are specific to tool use? (4) Which psychological processes involved in tool use are specific to Homo sapiens? To help advance a multidisciplinary scientific understanding of tool use, six author groups representing different academic disciplines (e.g., anthropology, psychology, neuroscience) and different theoretical perspectives respond to each of these questions, and then point to the direction of future work on tool use. We find that while there are marked differences among the responses of the respective author groups to each question, there is a—perhaps surprising—degree of agreement about many essential concepts and questions. We believe that this interdisciplinary and intertheoretical discussion will foster a more comprehensive understanding of tool use than any one of these perspectives (or any one of these author groups) would (or could) on their own.

La modernità cartesiana: un paradigma di interpretazione

Descartes is usually considered as the father of Western rationalism and the thinker who made the cogito and the subjective element the cornerstone of philosophical investigation. This article aims to analyze the history of this hermeneutic paradigm by verifying the main turning points which transformed this reading into the traditional approach to Cartesian thinking and modern philosophy. Starting from M. Heidegger’s analysis, the article proceeds backwards and identifies the main phases of this interpretation giving a sharper focus on F. Nietzsche, F. W. J. Schelling, G. W. F. Hegel and, lastly, I. Kant. At the end of the analysis, the article highlights the significant continuity of the different interpretations: even those philosophers, such as Heidegger and Nietzsche, who radically questioned the Cartesian modernity paradigm, assumed the same interpretation which supported that paradigm among their premises and allowed this interpretation to prosper and dominate the hermeneutic scene still nowadays.

You can't always get what you want

The predictive processing framework has gained significant popularity across disciplines investigating the mind and brain. In this article we critically examine two of the recently made claims about the kind of headway that the framework can make in the neuroscientific and philosophical investigation of consciousness. Firstly, we argue that predictive processing is unlikely to yield significant breakthroughs in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness as it is still too vague to individuate neural mechanisms at a fine enough scale. Despite its unifying ambitions, the framework harbors a diverse family of competing computational models which rely on different assumptions and are under-constrained by neurological data. Secondly, we argue that the framework is also ill suited to provide a unifying theory of consciousness. Here, we focus on the tension between the claim that predictive processing is compatible with all of the leading neuroscientific models of consciousness with the fact that most attempts explaining consciousness within the framework rely heavily on external assumptions.

Infini-Rien: Ist Pascals Wettargument formallogisch ungültig?

In the Infini-Rien fragment of his Pensées, Blaise Pascal develops an argument for the rationality of faith in God, which posthumously became known as Pascal’s Wager and at the same time represents a cornerstone of modern probability theory. While this betting argument has been the subject of much philosophical investigation, the contribution of this paper lies in the following: On the one hand, the bet is reconstructed in its basic features as well as its structure with the help of modern decision and probability theory tools. Thus, it is shown that Pascal’s betting argument, in distinction to Hacking 1972 for instance, has the form of an a fortiori argument. On the other hand, as far as objections to Pascal’s argument are concerned, it is true that the premises have often been called into doubt, more or less convincingly. On the other hand, this article is dedicated to the question, often emphatically – especially in Hacking 1972 – and perhaps carelessly affirmed in Pascal research, whether Pascal’s premises imply his conclusion at all.