Pub Date : 1987-01-01DOI: 10.5840/pra1987/19881321
E. Bartlett
Elizabeth Anscombe and Anthony Kenny disagree on whether or not it is possible to doubt the existence of one's own body. Anscombe believes that such doubt makes sense while Kenny argues that it could make sense only if one supposed that he had become a bodyless Cartesian ego. To resolve the issue I explore the knowledge one acquires of himself, and thus the manner in which such knowledge might be weakened into doubt. Siding with Anscombe, I argue that under the conditions of sensory deprivation some very basic questions asked of oneself such as, "Which body?" cannot be answered. Without such answers, one can be uncertain about his own body. Such uncertainty, however, is to be explained by the autonomy of the relevant 'J-thoughts' and not because one had become a Cartesian ego. I intend to show that under the conditions of sensory deprivation it makes sense for one to doubt that, at that moment, he has a body. I will argue further that the acceptability of such a doubt does not depend on assuming that one has become a bodyless Cartesian ego. The particulars of the argument will derive from defending this belief, as initially conceived by Elizabeth Anscombe, against an attack made by Anthony Kenny.' Before I get to them, however, I would like to state what I take to be the main concepts and issues involved. The issue turns on one's understanding of the nature of first person expressions of self-consciousness--the so called, 'I-thoughts'. What is most important about them is that they are, in themselves, logically autonomous and complete. To speak of a thought as autonomous in this special sense is to deny two things that are commonly part of the logic of thoughts. Typically the occurrence of a thought points to a person who is thinking it--i.e., the thought's subject. These thoughts of self-consciousness are, however, understandable and intelligible without any reference, implicit or otherwise, to anything as their subject. Since I have elaborated on the "subjectlessness" of these concepts in another paper, I will not dwell on it here.' This paper is about the second part of the autonomy thesis, namely, what I choose to call the "objectlessness" of these thoughts. The object of a thought--i.e., what that thought is about, is commonly something other than the thought itself. As it may be a thought of the sky or a thought of a car, and as the sky and a car are distinct from the thoughts about them, such thoughts may be said t.o have ulterior objects. Thought.s of self-consciousness 490 EDWARD T. BARTLETT are, in this sense, objectless, because they are, by hypothesis, reflexive, and are of themselves. "Objectless" is, perhaps, not the happiest of terms since the ideas are clearly about something, namely, the ideas themselves and their content. The point is that there is nothing outside of this content such as an experience for these ideas to be about. I will explain the mechanism by which such reflexive ideas have content in the absence of an "ulteri
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Pub Date : 1986-10-01DOI: 10.5840/PRA1986/198712SUPPLEMENT28
J. Culbertson
{"title":"A Neural Theory of Percepts and Mental Images","authors":"J. Culbertson","doi":"10.5840/PRA1986/198712SUPPLEMENT28","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PRA1986/198712SUPPLEMENT28","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82315,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy research archives (Bowling Green, Ohio : 1982)","volume":"12 1","pages":"1-139"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/PRA1986/198712SUPPLEMENT28","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71230131","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1986-04-01DOI: 10.5840/PRA1986/19871216
Johnny D. Jones
{"title":"Poverty as a Living Death: Toward a Phenomenology of Skid Row","authors":"Johnny D. Jones","doi":"10.5840/PRA1986/19871216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PRA1986/19871216","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82315,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy research archives (Bowling Green, Ohio : 1982)","volume":"12 1","pages":"557-575"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/PRA1986/19871216","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71229399","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1986-04-01DOI: 10.5840/PRA1986/19871220
C. L. Sheng
{"title":"On the Flexible Nature of Morality","authors":"C. L. Sheng","doi":"10.5840/PRA1986/19871220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PRA1986/19871220","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82315,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy research archives (Bowling Green, Ohio : 1982)","volume":"12 1","pages":"125-142"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/PRA1986/19871220","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71229667","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1986-04-01DOI: 10.5840/PRA1986/19871212
G. Ferrari
{"title":"The Resolution of Hume’s Problem, and New Russellian Antinomies of Induction, Determinism, Relativism, and Skepticism","authors":"G. Ferrari","doi":"10.5840/PRA1986/19871212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PRA1986/19871212","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82315,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy research archives (Bowling Green, Ohio : 1982)","volume":"12 1","pages":"471-517"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/PRA1986/19871212","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71229223","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 1986-04-01DOI: 10.5840/PRA1986/19871215
Wayne A. Davis
{"title":"Warner on Enjoyment: A Rejoinder","authors":"Wayne A. Davis","doi":"10.5840/PRA1986/19871215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5840/PRA1986/19871215","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":82315,"journal":{"name":"Philosophy research archives (Bowling Green, Ohio : 1982)","volume":"63 1","pages":"553-555"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1986-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.5840/PRA1986/19871215","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71229353","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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