Volume 3, Issue 2

ABSTRACT This paper comes in support of an idea advocated, among others, by Putnam and Searle according to which “computation is in the eyes of the beholder”, i.e. the question whether a physical system implements a computation is a subjective issue. The attacks mounted by David Chalmers and Jack Copeland against this ideology constitute, essentially, the subject of my critique: I have ventured to show that, to the extent to which notions like ‘causality’ and ‘physical system’ Are accepted and/or tolerated by the contemporary science of Physics, both attacks are rendered ineffective.

ABSTRACT Compatibilist, real-self accounts of freedom distinguish between various types of motivational element. They claim that only acts performed in accordance with and suitably related to elements of this kind that somehow constitute the agent's real self are free. While such accounts are more intuitively compelling than classical compatibilist ones, they are flawed in various ways. First, non-trivially identified real-self motivations are susceptible to estrangement. Second, realself accounts are unable to accommodate cases where the agent neither identifies, nor disidentifies, with his action and yet seems to exercise free will. Third, compared with classical compatibilism, real-self accounts give us an improved account of impediments to the will, but they do not provide an account of freedom itself. Finally, real-self theories are vulnerable to counterexamples in which the provenance of the agent's real self undermines freedom.

In his recently published treatise Heidegger's Concept of Truth Daniel O. Dahlstrom provides an insightful, detailed account of most aspects of Heidegger's thinking during the Marburg years, in particular Heidegger's reflections on the phenomenon of truth. Central in this undertaking is Dahlstrom's attempt to defend Heidegger against Ernst Tugendhat's almost classic critique of the Heideggerian account of truth. As I shall argue in the present article, Dahlstrom's defense of Heidegger does not bear critical scrutiny, because it simply fails to address the real issue. In his attempt to demonstrate that Heidegger's notion of disclosedness as “original truth” meets the demands, Tugendhat claims any meaningful concept of truth must meet, Dahlstrom confuses two essentially different phenomenological levels. What is really an issue pertaining to the level of the studied phenomenon is by Dahlstrom tacitly construed as an issue pertaining to the level of phenomenological description itself. This will be demonstrated in three steps. First, I present Heidegger's conception of truth as it appears in the magnum opus Being and Time ; then I introduce what I take to be the core of Tugendhat's critique; and finally, Dahlstrom's defense will be presented and criticized.

This paper is an attempt to understand and assess Thomas Nagel's influential case against physicalism in the philosophy of mind. I show that Nagel has claimed that experience is “subjective”, or “essentially connected with a single point of view” in at least three different senses: first, in the sense that it is essential to every experience that there be something it is like to have it; second, in the sense that what an experience is like for its possessor cannot be understood by a radically different type of organism; and third, in the sense that an experience cannot be “apprehended” or “observed” from a third-person perspective. I also show that these three claims have entered into two different arguments for his view that experience cannot be accounted for in physicalist terms. By way of assessment, I suggest that physicalists have decent resources for responding to the second and third of Nagel's claims about the subjectivity of experience, but that they currently have less convincing things to say about the first claim.

I denne artikkelen diskuterer jeg den såkalte institusjonsteoriens forsøk på å fange i en beskrivelse hva som gjør kunsten til kunst, det jeg har kalt det kunstneriske ved kunsten eller kunstens kunstværen. Ifølge institusjonsteorien er det institusjonelle trekket ved kunsten ikke bare en viktig side ved kunstverket, det utgjør selve begrepskjennetegnet for kunst. Selv om jeg finner det fruktbart å betrakte kunstverket som et fenomen som ikke kan forstås isolert fra sin institusjonelle kontekst, argumenterer jeg mot at kunst kan defineres på denne måten. Kunstfilosofiens oppgave kan heller ikke være å angi nødvendige og tilstrekkelige betingelser for det å være kunst.