The linguistic path has been explored through several works. The present paper investigates a path underlain by the fictive motion phenomenon: The plateau goes east along the river. This itinerary, here called the ‘localization path’ discloses the FM of an item along a trajectory to highlight its immobility in space. This linguistic path is here inspected through a corpus-based analysis displaying the verbs come and go. If experiencing language is first vocal, this process also implies kinetic, non-verbal modalities. (...) The languaging experience will hence be explored through the interaction between language, space and the speaker’s body through an enactive approach. A prototypical syntactic configuration mirroring the interpretative grid of FM reality will be defined. Recurrent syntactic patterns revealing the way the speaker projects his own world through simplex models will highlight the way the complexity of visual scenari is converted into linguistic sequences. (shrink)

The canonical history of mathematics suggests that the late 19th-century “arithmetization” of calculus marked a shift away from spatial-dynamic intuitions, grounding concepts in static, rigorous definitions. Instead, we argue that mathematicians, both historically and currently, rely on dynamic conceptualizations of mathematical concepts like continuity, limits, and functions. In this article, we present two studies of the role of dynamic conceptual systems in expert proof. The first is an analysis of co-speech gesture produced by mathematics graduate students while proving a theorem, (...) which reveals a reliance on dynamic conceptual resources. The second is a cognitive-historical case study of an incident in 19th-century mathematics that suggests a functional role for such dynamism in the reasoning of the renowned mathematician Augustin Cauchy. Taken together, these two studies indicate that essential concepts in calculus that have been defined entirely in abstract, static terms are nevertheless conceptualized dynamically, in both contemporary and historical practice. (shrink)

Experientialist semantics has contributed to a broader notion of linguistic meaning by emphasizing notions such as construal, perspective, metaphor, and embodiment, but has suffered from an individualist concept of meaning and has conflated experiential motivations with conventional semantics. We argue that these problems can be redressed by methods and concepts from phenomenology, on the basis of a case study of sentences of non-actual motion such as “The mountain range goes all the way from Mexico to Canada.” Through a phenomenological (...) reanalysis of proposals of Talmy, Langacker, and Matlock, we show that non-actual motion is both experientially and linguistically non-unitary. At least three different features of human consciousness—enactive perception, visual scanning, and imagination—constitute experiential motivations for non-actual motion sentences, and each of these could be related to phenomenological analyses of human intentionality. The second problem is addressed by proposing that the experiential motivations of non-actual motion sentences can be viewed as sedimented through “passive” processes of acquisition and social transmission and that this implies an interactive loop between experience and language, yielding losses in terms of original experience, but gains in terms of communal signification. Something that is underestimated by phenomenology is that what is sedimented are not only intentional objects such as states of affairs, but aspects of how they are given, i.e., the original, temporal, bodily experiences themselves. Since cognitive semantics has emphasized such aspects of meaning, we suggest that phenomenology can itself benefit from experientialist semantics, especially when it turns its focus from prepredicative to predicative, linguistic intentionality. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Cognitive Linguistics Jahrgang: 26 Heft: 4 Seiten: 657-696.

The study of how languages differ in their portrayal of motion events has received much attention since Talmy provided the first detailed account of the phenomenon. Interest has extended from real, or factive motion, to imagined or fictive motion, and from there to metaphorical motion, in which experience in one sensory domain is understood in terms of motion. Studies of metaphorical motion have, however, concentrated so far on a limited number of sensory domains, (...) principally vision, and drawn data from a limited number of textual genres. The aim of this study is to identify the extent to which motion expressions are employed to express organoleptic sensory experiences, that is experiences of taste and smell. Drawing on analytical categories put forward by Talmy in his treatment of Satellite- and Verb-framed languages and on treatments based on Cognitive Metaphor Theory, and particularly the concept of ‘embodiment’, we investigate the variety and complexity of organoleptic Paths evidenced in two self-built corpora of craft beer reviews, one in Spanish, the other in English. We also compare the level of complexity evident in these sensory Path types with those of another, closely related, sensory domain: vision. The study finds, in line with related studies, that English has greater variety and complexity of sensory Paths than Spanish. A more unexpected result is the finding that organoleptic Paths are more varied and complex than visual Paths. This finding, then, may encourage us to reconsider Path complexity differences in sensory domains as a multifactorial issue and not simply as a cognitive-linguistic phenomenon. It is proposed here that external factors such as genre, or specifically, its communicative functions and linguistic constraints, coupled with the unique ‘perceptual landscapes’ created by each sensory modality, may transcend perceived physical boundaries of a Figure’s trajectory. (shrink)

The objective in the present paper is to analyze the aspect of subjectivity having to do with construing motion and change where no motion and change exists outside the representation, that is, in cases where the conceptualizer does not intend to convey the idea that these properties exist in the state of affairs described. In the process of doing so, I will elaborate on a critique of the notion of fictivity as it is currently being used in cognitive (...) linguistics. (shrink)

ArgumentAccording to Hermann von Helmholtz, free mobility of bodies seemed to be an essential condition of geometry. This free mobility can be interpreted either as matter of fact, as a convention, or as a precondition making measurements in geometry possible. Since Henri Poincaré defined conventions as principles guided by experience, the question arises in which sense experiential data can serve as the basis for the constitution of geometry. Helmholtz considered muscular activity to be the basis on which the form of (...) space could be construed. Yet, due to the problem of illusion inherent in the subject’s self-assessment of muscular activity, this solution yielded new difficulties, in that if the manifold is abstracted from rigid bodies which serve as empirical justification of the geometrical notion of space, then illusionary bodies will produce fictive manifolds. The present article is meant to disentangle these difficulties. (shrink)

James A. Diefenbeck, Wayward Reflections on the History ofPhilosophyThomas R. Flynn Sartre, Foucault and Historical Reason. Volume 1:Toward an Existential Theory of HistoryMark Golden and Peter Toohey Inventing Ancient Culture:Historicism, Periodization and the Ancient WorldZenonas Norkus Istorika: Istorinis IvadasEverett Zimmerman The Boundaries of Fiction: History and theEighteenth‐Century British Novel.

Berber languages use the directionals =d and =nn to specify the deictic path of motion verbs. These clitics occur with a range of verbs from other semantic classes (e.g. change of state verbs, verbs of vision and perception), with which they can be attributed different meanings. The first goal of this paper is to provide a cross-dialectal description of these meanings. The second goal is to show the role of verbal semantics in their constructions and the overall distribution of (...) the clitics. Adopting Talmy’s framework (2000) of lexicalisation of semantic concepts, linked to the domain of space and motion, I propose that the particular meaning components lexicalised by the modified verb govern the occurrence of the clitics and their particular meaning. (shrink)

How do we understand time and other entities we can neither touch nor see? One possibility is that we tap into our concrete, experiential knowledge, including our understanding of physical space and motion, to make sense of abstract domains such as time. To examine how pervasive an aspect of cognition this is, we investigated whether thought about a nonliteral type of motion called fictive motion (FM; as in The road runs along the coast) can influence thought (...) about time. Our results suggest that FM uses the same structures evoked in understanding literal motion, and that these literal aspects of FM influence temporal reasoning. (shrink)

This paper presents a detailed contrastive frame semantic analysis of arriving events in English and Spanish, attested through a corpus study. The framework and methodology of our research follows the FrameNet II Research Project housed at ICSI. First, we present a formal description of the Arriving frame as a subframe of the Motion frame: arriving encodes a basic subpart of our conceptualization of motion, namely the transition from moving to arriving at a goal. Second, we carry out a (...) cross-linguistic analysis of this frame, based on a corpus study of English and Spanish arriving predicates. A first assumption would suggest that these two languages share a basic abstract frame description for arriving events. While acknowledging this, we yet show that at a lexical level the particular lexicalization patterns of each language influence the way speakers bring onto stage the different participants of the scene. We discuss this issue through a study of implicit frame elements, conflation and incorporation patterns, profiling, and deixis. Third, we briefly introduce the question of polysemy for those predicates that participate in the arriving frame. Arguably, the spatial meaning of arriving is the core sense from which a set of sense extensions derives, pointing to a wide range of independent frames (e.g. Cognition frame, Achievement frame, etc.) This fact can be attested in both languages in a parallel way. The different senses can be described synchronically in terms of frame semantics, while motivation for them is to be found in the cognitive processes of Metaphor (across frames), and Fictive Motion (within frame). (shrink)

Journal Name: Cognitive Linguistics Issue: Ahead of print.

We hear nowadays in literary criticism of a type of novel that is an ‘anti-novel’ and of a type of hero who is an ‘anti-hero’. I recently read an article which argued, rather well in my opinion, that the later philosophy of Wittgenstein is an anti-philosophy. One could say the same of the philosophie positive of Auguste Comte, who is often called the father of sociology. The principle with which Comte starts off his philosophy, ‘the fundamental law of mental development’, (...) would put an end to philosophy as traditionally conceived, and would replace it by science. According to Comte, human inquiry goes through three stages. In the first stage, the theological or fictive, men try to give explanations in terms of supernatural beings. At the second stage, the metaphysical or abstract, theological explanation has given way to explanation in terms of abstract entities such as Absolute Motion or Absolute Justice. In the third stage, the scientific or positive, metaphysical explanations have given way to scientific explanations, that is to explanations which do not refer to any unobservable entities but instead simply correlate observable phenomena with each other. This is a picture of intellectual history in which philosophy takes the place of theology and then science takes the place of philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secrecy and Autonomy in Lewis CarrollSusan ShererVictorian novels quiver with morbid secrets and threatening discoveries. Unseen rooms, concealed doors, hidden boxes, masked faces, buried letters, all appear (and disappear) with striking regularity in the fiction of Victorian England. So many of these secret spaces contain children, and especially little girls, little girls in hidden spaces. The young Jane Eyre sits behind a curtain in the hidden window seat, escaping (...) the vindictive wrath of John Reed. Repulsed by her angry brother, Maggie Tulliver flees to the house attic, fantasizing that her family will fear that she has died. Little Dorrit withdraws from the common space of the Marshalsea into her private room above the prison, and Little Nell hides behind trees and walls, silently observing clandestine meetings. Finally the seven-year-old Alice falls down a rabbit-hole into a Wonderland, the dreamspace of her own psyche.Of these images, none can be more embedded in our cultural imagination than the child Alice dropping into the subterranean well of Wonderland. Indeed, of the many celebrated scenes in the Alice narratives, the most memorable, most potent, most quoted is Alice’s initial descent to the bottom of the rabbit-hole. The lastingness of this scene seems even greater when we realize that, although neither Carroll in Alice’s Adventures Underground nor Tenniel in the first edition of Wonderland illustrated the moment with a picture, it still became (along with the Mad Hatter’s tea party) one of the signature images of the Alice stories. Why, we must ask, did the Victorians retain, with a powerful tenacity, this vision of a little girl moving through a tight space toward the hidden world of Wonderland?The answer to this question is not—at least not wholly—that the scene simply represents a child’s metaphorical progress through the [End Page 1] birth canal 1 and that this, in turn, symbolizes some kind of rite of passage, a movement towards some deeper knowledge. For then how do we explain Alice’s conspicuous lack of internal development in both stories? Indeed, for a narrative that thematizes motion, Alice’s psychical growth remains disturbingly static. Throughout both narratives, Alice displays little emotional variation, for when she is not frustrated or anxious, she is, for the most part, vapid or expressionless. In fact, one is immediately struck by her coolness and indifference as she drops through the rabbit-hole. 2 Thus, because scene changes in Wonderland and Looking-Glass rarely betoken any emotional or intellectual modulations, Alice’s falling into Wonderland signals no internal transition.But the image does relocate her body and within this fictive world, location is everything. The scene gestures Alice’s departure, her separation, her movement towards an autonomy of which every child dreams when, in play, retreating to a hidden space. A child’s impulse to hide, to create a secret space, is one of the most compelling of all human wishes, the wish for autonomy and autarchy—“to be cut off from the word and yet owner of the world.” 3 Throughout Victorian literature, the fantasy of autonomy sets children dreaming of far-away worlds and hidden gardens. The young Cathy and Heathcliff flee to the isolated moors, filling the open, empty space with dreams of unrestricted freedom. Little Dorrit envisages the locked garden behind the Marshalsea as an alternative world to the foul prison atmosphere. And what are the Brontës’s Angria and Gondol but disconnected, self-governing realms imagined from the standpoint of childhood powerlessness? The image, then, of Alice’s fall begins to fulfill this powerful wish for autonomy, which culminates, finally, in Alice’s self-coronation at the end of Looking-Glass. Yet it is only within the child’s willing imagination that a secret space can encroach so closely upon autonomy, for as we shall see, secrecy and autonomy are irreconcilable not only in the demanding world of realism, but even in the more elastic world of Carrollian fantasy.IAlice’s descent into Wonderland and her entrance into the Looking-Glass kingdom would seem like ripe metaphors for Carroll to explore the thoughts and fantasies of Alice’s psyche. What could be more... (shrink)

The currently standard approach to fiction is to define it in terms of imagination. I have argued elsewhere that no conception of imagining is sufficient to distinguish a response appropriate to fiction as opposed to non-fiction. In her contribution Kathleen Stock seeks to refute this objection by providing a more sophisticated account of the kind of propositional imagining prescribed by so-called ‘fictive utterances’. I argue that although Stock's proposal improves on other theories, it too fails to provide an adequate (...) criterion of fictionality. I conclude by sketching an alternative account according to which fiction is a genre. (shrink)

Fiction has been of concern to both the aesthetician and the ontologist. The former is concerned with the criteria or standards by which we judge the aesthetic worth of a fictional work, the latter with whether our ontology must be enlarged to include possible or imaginary worlds in which are housed the characters and incidents referred to and depicted in such works. This is a paper on the ontology of fiction. It will attempt to answer these ontological questions concerning truth (...) and reference in fiction by clarifying the use of language. Our paradigm case of the fictive use of language will be one in which the story-teller orally relates the fictional story in the presence of his audience, rather than one in which he inscribes his story so that it may be read at a later date. The value of considering the use of language in a face-to-face situation is that it brings before us in their full explicitness all of the different facets of a speech act, many of which often lie dormant in non-face-to-face uses and therefore are hard to discover from a consideration of such uses. (shrink)

One may distinguish between three broad conceptions of linguistic meaning. One conception, which I will call “logical”, views meaning as given in reference (for words) and truth (for sentences). Another conception, the “monological” one, seeks meaning in the cognitive capacities of the single mind. A third, “dialogical”, conception attributes meaning to interaction between individuals and personal perspectives. In this chapter I directly contrast how well these three approaches deal with the evidence brought forth by fictive interaction. I examine instances (...) of fictive interaction and argue that intersubjectivity in these instances cannot be reduced to either referential-logical or individual-cognitive semantic notions. It follows that intersubjectivity must belong to the essence of linguistic meaning. (shrink)

This essay will discuss some of the ways that narrative works to promote philosophy, called fictive narrative philosophy. The strategy is to discuss the ways that direct and indirect discourse work and to show why indirect discourse fills an important void that direct discourse cannot fulfill. In the course of this examination several famous narrative-based philosophers are examined such as Plato, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Murdoch, Johnson, and Camus. These practitioners used the indirect method to make plausible to readers the (...) vision that they were presenting. This article also offers some constraints in this process. (shrink)

This article studies fictive dynamicity as a factor motivating aspectual case marking in Finnish. In Finnish transitive sentences aspect is marked with the morphological case of the object: the restrictive object is used in sentences with a resultative meaning, whereas the partitive object is used in sentences indicating either atelicity, irresultativity, or progressivity. Interestingly, however, the restrictive object is also used in so-called quasi-resultative sentences, the aspectual meaning of which is atelic. These typically express a static physical location, perception, (...) or cognition. In this article I argue that the use of the restrictive object in quasi-resultative sentences reflects the telic features of the conceptualization used to construct the representation of the atelic situation, where the atelic situation is represented as the result of a fictive change. This study thus extends the concept of fictive dynamicity to cover phenomena related to linguistic aspect. (shrink)

Tracing the fictions that lie at the core of political theory's attempts to ground itself in nature, truth or knowledge of the real opens the space for a new mode of political theorizing. This new mode of (self-consciously) fictive theorizing has, McManus argues, both epistemological and ethical advantages. Methodologically reflexive, part epistemological critique, and part political manifesto, this book unfolds a creative epistemology of the possible, a utopian and deconstructive mode of political theory which moves beyond a politics based (...) on legislative drives. This means moving from a political-theoretical mode concerned with models of governance, to a critically utopian mode, concerned with emancipatory knowledges and resistance. (shrink)

The structure of the traditional paradigm -- Narrative fiction as philosophically interpreted in the ancient western world -- Narrative fiction as philosophically interpreted in the modern and contemporary western world -- The structure of the new paradigm -- What makes an artifact philosophy? -- Literature as philosophy -- The special logic of fictive narrative philosophy -- Constructional devices -- How do we judge fictive narrative philosophy? -- When should we use direct discourse philosophy and when fictive narrative (...) philosophy? -- How might fictive narrative philosophy change the academy? -- First order metaethical principles: my own philosophical work on ethics and personhood theory as a first step for ethics & fictive narrative philosophy -- My own work in fictive narrative philosophy. (shrink)

Motion—and, in particular, local motion or change in location—plays a central role in Kenelm Digby’s natural philosophy and in his arguments for the immateriality of the soul. Despite this, Digby’s account of what motion consists in has yet to receive much scholarly attention. In this paper, I advance a novel interpretation of Digby on motion. According to it, Digby holds that for a body to move is for it to divide from and unify with other bodies. (...) This is a view of motion—as change in relations of parthood—that Alison Peterman attributes to Digby’s contemporary and acquaintance, Margaret Cavendish. Having shown that Digby’s presentation of the view predates Cavendish’s by more than a decade, I make a case that Digby’s work influenced Cavendish’s on this topic. In developing and defending my reading, I consider to what extent the Digbean account of motion and the arguments for it accord with the ideals of the mechanical philosophy emerging in the early modern period. (shrink)

A popular approach to defining fictive utterance says that, necessarily, it is intended to produce imagining. I shall argue that this is not falsified by the fact that some fictive utterances are intended to be believed, or are non-accidentally true. That this is so becomes apparent given a proper understanding of the relation of what one imagines to one's belief set. In light of this understanding, I shall then argue that being intended to produce imagining is sufficient for (...) fictive utterance as well. (shrink)

Margaret Cavendish is widely known as a materialist. However, since Cavendishian matter is always in motion, “matter” and “motion” are equally important foundational concepts for her natural philosophy. In Philosophical Letters (1664), she takes to task her materialist rival Thomas Hobbes by assaulting his account of accidents in general and his concept of “rest” in particular. In this article, I argue that Cavendish defends her continuous-motion view in two ways: first, she claims that her account avoids seeing (...) accidents as capable of generation and annihilation, which she argues is inconceivable; and second, she contends that according to Hobbes’s own view “rest” is an absurd conception since it cannot be drawn from experience. Beyond its function as a defense, I claim that Cavendish’s focused criticism of “rest” shows that she is a perceptive reader of Hobbes’s natural philosophy, insofar as her criticisms undercut the two a priori principles of Hobbesian physics. Finally, I show how her views developed in more detail in Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1663) and Observations upon Experimental Philosophy ([1666] 2001) avoid the worries she raises for Hobbesian materialism. (shrink)

I argue that Plato believes that the soul must be both the principle of motion and the subject of cognition because it moves things specifically by means of its thoughts. I begin by arguing that the soul moves things by means of such acts as examination and deliberation, and that this view is developed in response to Anaxagoras. I then argue that every kind of soul enjoys a kind of cognition, with even plant souls having a form of Aristotelian (...) discrimination (krisis), and that there is therefore no completely unintelligent, evil soul in the cosmos that can explain disorderly motions; as a result, the soul is not the principle of all motion but only motion in the cosmos after it has been ordered by the Demiurge. (shrink)

The law of the collegium of ivory and citrus-wood merchants is best known for its suspected prohibition against outsiders or non-practitioners. The present study argues that the regulation in question actually prohibits curatores from enrolling outsiders—the text curiously labels such an offense ‘fraud’. Rather than banning outsiders altogether, the law provides that only quinquennales shall have the authority to admit non-practitioners. It is still a rather unusual law, and since it conveys the impression that this collegium is wildly popular even (...) among non-practitioners, and headed by quinquennales who excel in the virtue of orderliness, its audience and function are both scrutinized here. (shrink)

In apparent motion experiments, participants are presented with what is in fact a succession of two brief stationary stimuli at two different locations, but they report an impression of movement. Philosophers have recently debated whether apparent motion provides evidence in favour of a particular account of the nature of temporal experience. I argue that the existing discussion in this area is premised on a mistaken view of the phenomenology of apparent motion and, as a result, the space (...) of possible philosophical positions has not yet been fully explored. In particular, I argue that the existence of apparent motion is compatible with an account of the nature of temporal experience that involves a version of direct realism. In doing so, I also argue against two other claims often made about apparent motion, viz. that apparent motion is the psychological phenomenon that underlies motion experience in the cinema, and that apparent motion is subjectively indistinguishable from real motion. (shrink)

Sometimes it is wrong to imagine or take pleasure in imagining certain things, and likewise it is sometimes wrong to prompt these things. Some argue that certain fictive imaginings—imaginings of fictional states of affairs—are intrinsically wrong or that taking pleasure in certain fictive imaginings is wrong and so prompting either would also be wrong. These claims sometimes also serve as premises in arguments linking the ethical properties of a fiction to its artistic value. However, even if we grant (...) that it might sometimes be wrong to imagine x or to take pleasure in imagining x, nothing follows about the ethical status of fictively imagining x, with or without pleasure. Prompting some fictive imagining is intrinsically wrong only when the fiction is a means to encourage for export from the fiction to the actual world some belief or attitude that it would be blameworthy to hold. The failure of arguments for the wrongness of certain fictive imaginings and their prompting lies in part in a failure to recognize that imagining x and fictively imagining x are distinct mental acts. This distinction blocks many arguments attempting to forge a link between a work's ethical properties and its artistic properties. (shrink)

The concept of Substantial motion (حركت جوهرى) is fundamentally flawed and severely muddled. Aristotle and Mulla Sadra’s conception of motion, substance (جوهر) and substantial form صورت نوعيه)) were all based on a severe misunderstanding of nature as later was established by the scientists and philosophers that came after them. Here, by recalling the established facts of modern science, particularly the universally accepted scientific fact that, properties of objects are reducible to the motion of their electrons and there’s (...) no such thing as ‘substantial form’ much less substance, the author puts an end to a 400-year-old glorious error called ‘substantial motion’. Naturally any attempt to reconcile the paradigms of modern physics with Aristotle/Sadra paradigms of form/matter and substance/accidents, and to try to draw parallel between the two and revive their philosophy would be an exercise in futility. (shrink)

This chapter has three aims. Firstly, it elaborates the so-called pragmatic approach to fictionalism. By evoking some classical pragmatic theories of fictive utterances, it gives an account of pragmatic properties responsible for the difference between serious and fictive utterances. The authors argue for the thesis that the pragmatic approach can be applied plausibly to all kinds of fictionalism, that is from instrumentalism to figuralism. Secondly, the authors investigate some consequences of the suggested account for fictionalist theories in general. (...) They show that some more or less known difficulties of fictionalist theories become more serious if one accepts the pragmatic approach. The chapter discusses two of them, namely the problem of entirely fictional discourses and the apparent contradiction between hermeneutic fictionalism and first person authority. Thirdly, the authors investigate the consequences of the pragmatic approach for mental fictionalism in particular. At the end of the paper, they argue that once the pragmatic approach is applied to mental fictionalism, the well-known problem of cognitive suicide becomes especially nagging. They suggest it is highly questionable that mental fictionalism is worth to endorse in the light of these serious difficulties. (shrink)

The concept of self-motion is not only fundamental in Aristotle's argument for the Prime Mover and in ancient and medieval theories of nature, but it is also central to many theories of human agency and moral responsibility. In this collection of mostly new essays, scholars of classical, Hellenistic, medieval, and early modern philosophy and science explore the question of whether or not there are such things as self-movers, and if so, what their self-motion consists in. They trace the (...) development of the concept of self-motion from its formulation in Aristotle's metaphysics, cosmology, and philosophy of nature through two millennia of philosophical, religious, and scientific thought. This volume contains "Self-Movers" (David Furley), "Aristotle on Self-Motion" (Mary Louise Gill), "Aristotle on Perception, Appetition, and Self-Motion" (Cynthia Freeland), "Self-Movement and External Causation" (Susan Sauvé Meyer), "Aristotle on the Mind's Self-Motion" (Michael Wedin), "Mind and Motion in Aristotle" (Christopher Shields), "Aristotle's Prime Mover" (Aryeh Kosman), "The Transcendence of the Prime Mover" (Lindsay Judson), "Self-Motion in Stoic Philosophy" (David Hahm), "Duns Scotus on the Reality of Self-Change" (Peter King), "Ockham, Self-Motion, and the Will" (Calvin Normore), and "Natural Motion and Its Causes: Newton on the 'Vis Insita' of Bodies" (J. E. McGuire). Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)