Creative Labor, Mental Objects and the Modern Theory of Production

Recent decades have seen a proliferation of literature on creativity, with no consensus about what it consists of. Chinese and Russian contributions throw new light on these debates because of their concern with economic and human development. By integrating this with the widely-used concept of the “creative industries,” a rigorous concept of creativity rooted in the notion of creative labor is proposed. This can be defined as non-mechanical labor which, in conjunction with Information and Communication Technology (ICT), has produced a mass market in products embodying the use-value of distinctness. The creative industries then emerge as a branch of the division of labor making intensive use of creative labor in combination with mental objects, such as scientific and artistic products. Software, itself a mental object, is an “instrument of mental production” in these industries, helping explain their potential contribution to human development, and the obstacles to this potential imposed by the commodity form.

The Parity and Disparity between Inner and Outer Experience in Kant

This article advocates a new interpretation ofinner experience– the experience that one has of one’s empirical-psychological features ‘from within’ – in Kant. It argues that for Kant inner experience is the empirical cognition of mental states, but not that of a persistent mental substance. The schema of persistence is thereby substituted with the regulative idea of the soul. This view is shown to be superior to two opposed interpretations: the parity view that regards inner experience as empirical cognition of a mental object on a par with outer experience and the disparity view that denies altogether that inner experience is empirical cognition.

Abstract Objects

An abstract object is a non-physical, non-mental object that exists outside of space and time and is wholly unextended. For example, one might think that numbers are abstract objects; e.g., it is plausible to think that if the number 3 exists, then it is not a physical or mental object, and it does not exist in space and time. Likewise, one might think that properties and relations are abstract objects; e.g., it is plausible to think that if redness exists, over and above the various red balls and red houses and so on, then it is an abstract object—i.e., it is non-physical, non-mental, non-spatiotemporal, and so on. Other kinds of objects that are often taken by philosophers to be abstract objects are propositions, sentence types, possible worlds, logical objects, and fictional objects. The view the that there are abstract objects—known as platonism—is of course extremely controversial. Many philosophers think there are just no such things as abstract objects. Philosophers who endorse this antiplatonist view have to endorse some other view of objects of the above kinds—i.e., numbers, properties, propositions, etc.; in particular, in connection with each of these kinds of objects, they have to say either that these objects are physical or mental objects or that there are just no such things. There is a vast literature on the existence and nature of abstract objects. This article focuses mostly (but not entirely) on the existence question—that is, the question of whether there are any such things as abstract objects. In addition, it focuses to some extent (though, again, not entirely) on the specific version of this question that is concerned with the existence of abstract mathematical objects.

On the Relation Between Infants’ Spatial Object Processing and Their Motor Skills

From birth, infants encounter an environment full of objects and learn rapidly about their spatial characteristics. According to Newcombe, Uttal, and Sauter (2013), spatial development includes (1) the development of intraobject representations with the ability to transform them by mental rotation, and (2) the development of interobject representations with the ability to find and predict certain object locations. Infants’ remarkable improvements of these two strands of spatial object processing raise the major question of which factors may drive them. In this article, we discuss the extent to which infants’ development of intra- and interobject representations is related to their emerging motor skills. In particular, we provide a review on how far infants’ development of mental object rotation ability and their ability to localize objects are related to their manual object exploration and locomotion skills. We document a bulk of evidence suggesting such a link between infants’ motor development and their spatial object processing and also discuss and critically reconsider the implications of these studies.

The Disunity of Mind

The term ‘mind’ (mano) is used in a confused range of different and contradictory senses in the early Pāli canon. Buddhaghosa will impose order by distinguishing distinct cognitive modules, each with its proper domain of cognitive work. Early perception, the subliminal orienting, and initial reception of a stimulus into the perceptual process, is the function of ‘mind-element’ (mano-dhātu), a low-level cognitive system. Late perception and working memory is the function of a high-level cognitive system, ‘mind-discrimination-element’ (mano-viññāṇa-dhātu). In deference to ancient Buddhist tradition, Buddhaghosa refers to six sense-modalities, the sixth being called ‘mind’ (mano). Just as each of the five types of sensory datum enters perceptual processing though a proprietary sense-door, so the objects of mind enter through a ‘mind-door’. However, this is not a sixth channel, a window onto a proprietary sort of mental object, but is nothing other than the door gating projection into short-term working memory.