Subject collection: Philosophy (254 titles, 1969–2015)

The shaping of complex meanings depends on punctual and relational coding and inferencing. Coding is viewed as a vector which can run either from expression to content or from concepts to (linguistic) forms to mark independent conceptual relations. While coding relies on systematic resources internal to language, inferencing essentially depends on a layered system of autonomous shared conceptual structures, which include both cognitive models and consistency criteria grounded in a natural ontology. Inference guided by coding is not a residual pragmatic device but it is a direct way to long-term conceptual structures that guide the connection of meanings.

The interaction of linguistic forms and concepts is particularly clear in conceptual conflict where conflictual complex meanings provide insights into the roots of significance and the linguistic structure of metaphors.

Complementing a formal analysis of linguistic structures with a substantive analysis of conceptual structures, a philosophical grammar provides insights from both formal and functional approaches toward a more profound understanding of how language works in constructing and communicating complex meanings.

This monograph is ideally addressed to linguists, philosophers and psychologists interested in language as symbolic form and as an instrument of human action rooted in a complex conceptual and cognitive landscape.

The book focuses on the question of how and to what extent cognitive semantic approaches can contribute to the new field of the cognitive science of science. The argumentation is based on a series of instructive case studies which are intended to test the prospects and limits of the metascientific application of both holistic and modular cognitive semantics. The case studies show that, while cognitive semantic research is able to solve problems which have traditionally been the domain of the philosophy of science, it also encounters serious limits. The prospects and the limits thus revealed suggest new research topics which in future can be tackled by cognitive semantic approaches to the cognitive science of science.

Higher-Order (HO) theories of consciousness have in common the idea that what makes a mental state conscious is that it is the object of some kind of higher-order representation. This volume presents fourteen previously unpublished essays both defending and criticizing this approach to the problem of consciousness. It is the first anthology devoted entirely to HO theories of consciousness. There are several kinds of HO theory, such as the HOT (higher-order thought) and HOP (higher-order perception) models, and each is discussed and debated. Part One contains essays by authors who defend some form of HO theory. Part Two includes papers by those who are critics of the HO approach. Some of the topics covered include animal consciousness, misrepresentation, the nature of pain, subvocal speech, subliminal perception, blindsight, the nature of emotion, the difference between perception and thought, first-order versus higher-order theories of consciousness, and the relationship between nonconscious and conscious mentality. (Series A)

Which causal patterns are involved in mental processes?

On what mechanisms does the self-organisation of cognitive structure rest?

Can a naturalistic view account for the basic resources of intentionality, while avoiding the objections to reductive materialism?

By considering the developmental, phenomenological and biological aspects linking mind and causality, this volume offers a state-of-the art theoretical proposal emphasising the fine-tuning of cognition with the complexity of bodily dynamics. In contrast to the de-coupling of mind from the physical environment in classical information-processing models, growth of brain’s architecture and stabilisation of perception­–action cycles are considered decisive, with no need for an eliminative approach to representations pursued by neural network models. The tools provided by physics and biology for the description of massive causal interactions, on top of which ‘qualitative’ changes occur, are exploited to suggest a model of the mind as a many-layered, co-evolving system. (Series A)

Our species has been hunting for meaning ever since we departed from our cousins in the evolutionary tree. We developed sophisticated forms of communication. Yet, as much as they can convey meaning and foster understanding, they can also hide meaning and prevent comprehension. Indeed, we can never be sure that a "yes" conveys assent or that a smile reveals pleasure. In order to ascertain what communicative behavior "means", we have to go through an elaborate cognitive process of interpretation.

This book deals with how we achieve the daily miracle of understanding each other. Based on the author ’s contributions to pragmatics, the book articulates his perspective using the insights of linguistics, the philosophy of language and rhetoric, and confronting alternatives to it. Theory formation is shaped by application to fields of human activity – such as legal practice, artificial intelligence, psychoanalysis, the media, literature, aesthetics, ethics and politics – where interpretation and understanding are paramount.

Using an accessible language, this is a book addressed to specialists as well as to anyone interested in interpreting understanding and understanding the potentialities and limits of interpretation.

A multiple analogy is a structured comparison in which several sources are likened to a target. In Multiple analogies in science and philosophy, Shelley provides a thorough account of the cognitive representations and processes that participate in multiple analogy formation. Through analysis of real examples taken from the fields of evolutionary biology, archaeology, and Plato's Republic, Shelley argues that multiple analogies are not simply concatenated single analogies but are instead the general form of analogical inference, of which single analogies are a special case. The result is a truly general cognitive model of analogical inference.Shelley also shows how a cognitive account of multiple analogies addresses important philosophical issues such as the confidence that one may have in an analogical explanation, and the role of analogy in science and philosophy.

This book lucidly demonstrates that important questions regarding analogical inference cannot be answered adequately by consideration of single analogies alone.

As the title indicates the author presents a contemporary theory of consequence. In so doing he establishes a terminology that enables a description, interpretation and evaluation of medieval theory independently of medieval vocabulary.

In the interest of better understanding the medieval writers the author puts himself in the position of the medieval scholar in Erfurt. The reader learns about the Erfurt schools and the controversal debate on the so-called modi significandi, using only texts that are known to have been available in Erfurt in the first half of the 14^th century.

The two tracts, a short epitome of Thomas Maulfelt and a comprehensive volume of Albert of Saxony represent the two most common tracts of this discipline, and are discussed on the basis of questions arising in the introduction. New conclusions can be reached about the scope and the goal of medieval consequence theory which is an original accomplishment of the high Middle Ages and its place in the history of logic.

Der Ankündigung im Titel gehorchend stellt der Autor eine zeitgenössische Theorie zu Schlußfolgerung dar. Somit wird eine Terminologie erstellt, in der — unabhängig von der Fachsprache des Mittelalters – die verschiedenen Ausführungen zur Schlußfolgerungslehre des Spätmittelalters beschreiben, interpretiert und bewertet werden können.

Um die mittelalterlichen Autoren Thomas Maulfelt und Albert von Sachsen zu verstehen, versetzt sich der Autor in die Perspektive eines Scholars im Erfurt der Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts. Der Leser wird über die Schulsituation in Erfurt unterrichtet, er erfährt von der hitzigen Debatte um die modi significandi und blickt zur weiteren Erläuterung lediglich in solche Schriften, deren Vorkommen für die Mitte des 14. Jahrhunderts in Erfurt belegbar sind.

Anhand von Fragestellungen, die sich aus dem Einleitungsteil ableiten, werden die zwei Traktate, die in Form, Inhalt und Umfang die zwei häufigsten Schrifttypen zur Schlußfolgerungslehre repräsentieren, untersucht. So ergeben sich zur Anwendungreichweite, zur Zielsetzung dieser Disziplin, die eine originäre Leistung des hohen Mittelalters ist, sowie zu ihrem Stellenwert in der Logikgeschichte neue Erkenntnisse.

Quantum Closures and Disclosures thinks together two seemingly irreconcilable discourses: An application of quantum field theory to brain functioning, called quantum brain dynamics, and the continental postphenomenological tradition, especially the work of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida. Underlying both developments is a new ontology of nonCartesian dual modes whose rich provenance is their "between." World is disclosed in the lumen naturale of dual modes belonging-together in their between; all presencing is a function of a "~conjugate" form of match in the between. This surprising rapprochement between a powerful tradition within continental philosophy and the 20th-century quantum revolution in science is fruitfully applied to crucial issues in philosophy, brain science, mathematics and psychiatry.



Related Titles: Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An introduction, edited by Mari Jibu and Kunio Yasue (1995), and My Double Unveiled: The dissipative quantum model of the brain, by Giuseppe Vitiello (2001)

The disciplines of philosophy make up its methodological and thematic branches of study; they reflect its self-understanding as a science according to both its basic tasks and its different approaches to them. The contributions to this anthology, arranged according to the main disciplines of philosophy, were originally presented in a special lecture series at the Department of Philosophy of the Ruhr-University Bochum, geared towards providing students with a much-needed provisional orientation in the field. The essays included in this volume combine this introductory systematic character with careful historical scholarship. Topics treated include aesthetics, epistemology, ethics, logic, metaphysics, philosophical anthropology, philosophical pedagogy, philosophy of language, philosophy of nature, philosophy of religion, political philosophy, and the theory of the human sciences. This volume should appeal to students and teachers of philosophy as well as to all those interested in a historically grounded systematic introduction to philosophical thinking.

Die Disziplinen der Philosophie bilden die Teilbereiche, in die sie sich sowohl methodisch als auch gegenstandsbezogen gliedern läßt; sie bezeugen das Selbstverständnis dieser Wissenschaft nach Aufgabe und Vorgehensweise. Die Beiträge zum vorliegenden Band gehen auf eine Ringvorlesung zurück, die am Institut für Philosophie der Ruhr-Universität Bochum gehalten wurde. Diese hat den Studierenden zur Einführung in die Philosophie gedient und damit einem elementaren Wunsch nach einer — wenn auch nur provisorisch — wegweisenden Orientierung im Fach entsprochen. Somit werden die Teilbereiche Ästhetik, Erkenntnistheorie, Ethik, Logik, Metaphysik, Naturphilosophie, Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie, Philosophiedidaktik, Philosophische Anthropologie, Religionsphilosophie, Sprachphilosophie und Theorie der Geisteswissenschaften im vorliegenden Band vorgestellt. Der Band ist für Studenten sowie Philosophielehrer vom Interesse, ferner für alle, die sich eine historische sowie systematische Einführung in philosophisches Denken wünschen.