Consciousness

Consciousness is sometimes viewed as a particular parametric factor in the analogy of blood pressure or electric charge. The paper argues that this is an erroneous conception becomes consciousness involves a varied assortment of different phenomena that have no single unified commonality. And so even as ‘abnormal psychology’ has to be a disjointed assembly of diverse specialties so will ‘consciousness studies’ have to be

The Role of Rhetoric in Rational Argumentation

The structure of this discussion will be tripartite. First it will set out a way of distinguishing between rhetoric and strictly rational argumentation. Next it will consider some of the ramifications of this proposed way of looking at the matter—in particular what its implications are for rationality and for rhetoric, respectively. Finally it examines how this perspective bears on the project of philosophizing. The paper\u27s ultimate aim, accordingly, is to consider what light such an analysis can shed upon philosophy and philosophizing

Leibniz and the Plurality of Space-Time Frameworks

Paper by Nicholas Resche

Luck and the Enigmas of Fate

Luck is a formidable and ubiquitous factor in human life as we know it. It is a rogue force that prevents human life from being fully domesticated to rational management. This paper explores the nature of luck and its role in human life

Interpreting Philosophy. The Elements of Philosophical Hermeneutics

Metaphilosophy is philosophy’s poor and neglected cousin. Philosophers are on the whole too busy doing philosophy to take time to stand back and consider reflectively how the project itself actually works. And they lead tend to produce texts without too much consideration of how this looks from the standpoint of the consumer. All this, it seems to be, affords good reason for attending to philosophical hermeneutics, reflecting on the issue of how philosophical texts are to be understood and interpreted

QUANTUM META-THEORY (Twisting the Tail of Schrödinger’s Cat)

The problem of Schrödinger’s Cat has figured prominently in the debates about the bearing of quantum physics on our understanding of physical reality. On its basis, various theorists have maintained the quantum physical world exhibits a probabilistically indecisive physical reality. The analysis of the paper that this appeal to quantum reality is methodologically at odds with and disjoint from its underlying approach to quantum theory itself. If there is to be methodological uniformity at this juncture it will have to be along the lines that Einstein always focused—an incomplete hidden factor (perhaps better than “hidden variables”) approach

Conceivability

For various reasons grounded in their articulation and conceptualization, objects and contentions can be inconceivable. Proper conceptualizing requires an adequate apprehension of meaning. But while there indeed are objects and contentions that are inconceivable to given individuals and groups, we (obviously) cannot give any concrete examples of items inconceivable to ourselves