This article is a defence of representationalism against the objection of phenomenal saliency, which Chalmers, Nickel and Speaks have developed. According to my approach, covert shifts of attention enhance the resolution of perceptual representations at fixation point. This local enhancement accounts for the saliency effect, typical of focal attention, and preserves the representationalist intuition.

Metaphysical theories heavily rely on the use of primitives to which they typically appeal. I will start by examining and evaluating some traditional well-known theories and I will discuss the role of primitives in metaphysical theories in general. I will then turn to a discussion of claims of ‘equivalence’ between theories that, I think, depend on equivalences of primitives, and I will explore the nature of primitives. I will then claim that almost all explanatory power of metaphysical theories comes from their primitives, and so I will turn to scrutinize the notion of ‘power’ and ‘explanatory’.

This article uses Fichte and Hegel to explore the argument that vulnerability is valuable because it is what we all share as embodied beings in the world, and thus contributes to our connection with others. Further, recognition of one’s own vulnerability promotes self-knowledge. Their philosophies are then contrasted to show that Fichte’s system leads him to the attempt to overcome and control vulnerability, whereas Hegel’s describes an interplay of freedom and determination that allows us to be reconciled to our vulnerable, embodied state.

In this paper, I develop an interest-relative theory of justification in order to answer the question, “How can I maintain that P when someone whom I consider to be my epistemic peer maintains that not-P?” The answer to this question cannot be determined by looking at evidence alone, I argue, since justification cannot be determined by looking at evidence alone. Rather, in order to determine whether a subject S is justified in believing that P at time t, we need to assess her evidence in favour of P in proportion to her interest in P.

Because the meaning of indexical expressions fluctuates, they have long been enigmatic for the theory of signification in phenomenology. In Husserl’s first analysis in The Logical Investigations, two problems remained unsettled: 1) how this signification, directly oriented towards an object and intuitively fulfilled, is different from the object of reference, and 2) how a “symbolic” understanding of indexical expressions, without the participation of perception, is possible. In this paper, I show how the notions of “intentional horizon” and of “proper concept” provide answers. Without the new phenomenological value of the theory of concept and intentionality, it is impossible to understand the linguistic operation of indexicality.

Loving another person requires that we set that person apart from others, but morality is often thought to require that we view everyone as equally important. I argue that two approaches to the nature of love, robust concern and special perception, both miss crucial aspects of loving relationships: sensitivity to the beloved’s response, and history of the relationship. Love depends on the beloved’s attitude as well as the lover’s. Shared history as a necessary condition of loving relationships addresses these problems, and points the way to more productive analysis of conflicts between loving relationships and impartiality.

The aim of this paper is to argue against the widely held view that our concept of person is purely mental. Utilizing an Anscombian scenario, in which reports on one’s own actions are made on the basis of observation, I argue that such “pilots in their ships,” as it were, cannot self-ascribe bodily properties. The mere fact that we feel in our bodies unlike pilots in their ships cannot generate the intuition that we are bodily: as long as we conceive ourselves as purely mental, the fact that we are bodily beings remains an inexplicable mystery.

The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the difficulties involved in interdisciplinary work on the question of the risks associated with the ethical and social acceptability of human enhancement through the development of nanotechnologies. These difficulties emerge in the context of the debate between transhumanism, whose principal defenders have backgrounds in the natural sciences, and humanism, whose principal defenders have backgrounds in the social sciences and the humanities. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate that essentially transhumanists and humanists differ on these questions: the identification of risks and impacts; the assessment that serves as the foundation for the acceptability or unacceptability of these risks and impacts; and faith in the capacity of science to overcome the identified risks to human beings. This paper’s presentation of the divergences that exist in the debate between transhumanism and humanism constitutes a necessary first step towards intervening in that debate in an interdisciplinary manner.