Toward a Model of Situations and Their Context

Developing a widely accepted theory of behavior causation has been hampered by the lack of a rigorous approach to understanding the kinds of determinants at work. Interest in behavior change is also burgeoning, and requires a profound understanding of how personal and environmental determinants interact dynamically to predict changed behavioral outcomes. Behavior settings theory, a powerful naturalistic theory with a huge empirical underpinning, has long been available for describing the recurrent, everyday behavioral episodes in which many social and psychological scientists are interested. In this article, I review settings theory and update it in the light of a number of recent contributions from various quarters. I argue that this syncretic model should be seen as defining the proximate causal network surrounding these common behavioral episodes, which I call “situations.” I further propose that “contexts” should be thought of as the more distal, second-order causes circumscribing situations. I argue that these situational and contextual “spheres” of causation are a powerful way to understand behavior determination. I conclude by introducing a quasi-computational model of situations that is worthy of the further development necessary to make psychology a predictive science of behavioral causation and change.

Naturalizing the centennial: History, memory, and the limits of human lifespans

Recent studies of centennials focus on explaining the social and political contexts for such commemorations. This paper develops an alternative, naturalistic theory of these long-range anniversaries. The paper starts by describing the value of a naturalistic account of complex cultural formations, and by reviewing basic demographic and physiological facts underlying centennial observances. Next, the paper provides a novel taxonomy of three central social functions of centennials, highlighting their roles as standards of greatness, mirrors of progress, and spurs to renovation. Each of these functions reflects the existence of certain predictable limits to human lifespans. The paper concludes by considering some transformations in form and function that centennials might undergo in a potential future of extended longevity.

The role of narrativity in Ronald Dworkin’s legal theory: is there a narrative theory in “How law is like literature”?

This paper has the purpose of assessing the role of narrativity in Ronald Dworkin’s theory of law. The research question is to know whether Dworkin’s theory of law can be considered a narrative theory of law. By narrative theory, we mean a theory that is based on a heuristic characterization of plots, narrative genres, characters etc. Dworkin introduces six theses in order to link literature and law, in his classic “How law is like literature”: (1) law, as a practice of identifying valid legal propositions, can be better understood when compared to the practice of literature (synechist methodology thesis); (2) the compression of the practice of law always involves a descriptive and valuative dimension (normative theory thesis); (3) every judgment about art presupposes a theory about what art is (aesthetical hypothesis); (4) every judgment about valid legal propositions presupposes the determination of what law is (political hypothesis); (5) the political hypothesis of law depends on understanding the intentionality of the political community (chain novel); and (6) The chain novel depends on understanding the institutional history of the political community (institutional history thesis). This paper’s conclusion is that Dworkin’s theory must be seen as a narrative theory, and that without such narrative aspect, his theory would simply be a legal naturalistic theory, since the purpose or value of the law would thus become absolute.

Acquaintance Is Consciousness and Consciousness Is Acquaintance

In this chapter I survey the various roles that acquaintance might play in the philosophy of language, epistemology, and philosophy of mind, and I then go on to explore the prospects for a naturalistic account of acquaintance to fill these roles. I will continue by arguing that while some roles can be filled by a naturalistic theory, others cannot. Finally, I will briefly present a non-naturalistic theory, according to which consciousness just is the relation of acquaintance, and show both how it accomplishes what a naturalistic theory could not but also how it cannot accomplish everything a naturalistic theory can.

Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Imagination

Margaret Wilson argued that Spinoza’s theory of mind cannot “recognize and take account of” such specific phenomena of human mentality as ignorance of many internal bodily states, representation of the external world, consciousness, and the expression of mentality in behavior. By resolving a set of puzzles about the scope, representational content, consciousness, and bodily expression of imagination more generally, this chapter defends Spinoza’s panpsychistic theory of mind against these objections. The key lies in understanding his theory of the imagination itself; his doctrines concerning a number of closely related topics such as inherence, intellect, confusion, conatus, perfection, and “power of thinking”; and what may be called his “incremental naturalism” that is, his guiding conviction that intentionality, desire, belief, understanding, and consciousness are already present in their most rudimentary forms throughout nature. The chapter argues that Spinoza identifies consciousness (conscientia), in its various degrees, with power of thinking (cogitandi potentia).

Postscript Consciousness Revisited

Chapter 14 (“Representation and Consciousness in Spinoza’s Naturalistic Theory of the Mind and Imagination”) argues that Spinoza identifies consciousness (conscientia) with power of thinking (cogitandi potentia). In his important article “Spinoza and Consciousness” (2008), Steven Nadler rejects this interpretation, proposing instead that consciousness for Spinoza is “a certain complexity in thinking that is the correlate of the complexity of a body.” In another important article, “Theories about Consciousness in Spinoza’s Ethics” (2010), Michael LeBuffe proposes that the interpretation of consciousness as power of thinking is “promising” but should be restricted to the consciousness of ideas within a mind and not applied to a mind’s overall consciousness. This postscript raises objections to Nadler’s complexity-based interpretation, rebuts Nadler’s objections to Chapter 14’s “Power of Thinking” interpretation, and argues against LeBuffe’s proposal to restrict the scope of that interpretation.

Naturalized philosophy of science

Naturalized philosophy of science is part of a general programme of naturalism in philosophy. Naturalists reject all forms of supernaturalism, holding that reality, including human life and culture, is exhausted by what exists in the causal order of nature. Naturalists also reject any claims to a priori knowledge, including that of principles of inference, holding instead that all knowledge derives from human interactions with the natural world. Philosophically, naturalists identify most closely with empiricism or pragmatism. David Hume was a naturalist. So was John Dewey. The logical empiricists were naturalists regarding fundamental ontological categories such as space, time and causality, but non-naturalists about scientific inference, which they came to regard as a branch of logic. Most naturalists now dismiss searches for ’philosophical foundations’ of the special sciences, treating the basic principles of any science as part of scientific theory itself. The main objection to naturalism has been at the level of general methodological principles, particularly those regarding scientific inference. Here non-naturalists object that, being limited to ’describing’ how science is in fact practised, naturalists cannot provide norms for legitimate scientific inferences. And providing such norms is held to be one of the main goals of the philosophy of science. Naturalists reply that the only norms required for science are those connecting specific means with the assumed goals of research. These connections can be established only through further scientific research. And the choice of goals is, for naturalists, not a scientific question but a matter of practical choice guided by an empirical understanding of what can in fact be achieved. Among naturalists, the main differences concern the relative importance of various aspects of the practice of science. These aspects exist at different levels: neurological, biological, psychological, personal, computational, methodological, social and cultural. Each of these levels has its champions among contemporary naturalists, some insisting that everything ultimately be reduced to their favourite level. Perhaps the wisest approach is to allow that influences at all levels are operative in any scientific context, while admitting that some influences may be more important than others in particular cases, depending on what one seeks to understand. There may be no simple, one-level, naturalistic theory of science.

The Conception of Habit as a Stage of Hegel’s Naturalistic Theory of Mind

This contribution aims to address the nature of the normative in Hegel’s theory of habits and to highlight that social practices are the outcome of natural and biological characteristics related to the homeostasis of the organism and to the common biological features of the individuals of the same species. This should point out that habits and human practices have a concrete biological background and are the outcome of humans’ eagerness to inhabit the world through socially codified activities. The contribution deals also with the relation habits have with the self-conscious life and human world history.

Human Rights Naturalized

This chapter helps to confirm the explanatory power of the naturalistic theory of moral progress outlined in previous chapters by making two main points. First, it shows that the theory helps to explain how and why the modern human rights movement arose when it did. Second, it shows that the advances in inclusiveness achieved by the modern human rights movement depended upon the fortunate coincidence of a constellation of contingent cultural and economic conditions—and that it is therefore a dangerous mistake to assume that continued progress must occur, or even that the status quo will not substantially deteriorate. This chapter also helps to explain a disturbing period of regression (in terms of the recognition of equal basic status) that occurred between the success of British abolitionism and the founding of the modern human rights movement at the end of World War II.