I examine some recent controversies involving the possibility of mechanical simulation of mathematical intuition. The first part is concerned with a presentation of the Lucas-Penrose position and recapitulates some basic logical conceptual machinery (Gödel's proof, Hilbert's Tenth Problem and Turing's Halting Problem). The second part is devoted to a presentation of the main outlines of Complexity Theory as well as to the introduction of Bremermann's notion of transcomputability and fundamental limit. The third part attempts to draw a connection/relationship between Complexity Theory and undecidability focusing on a new revised version of the Lucas-Penrose position in light of physical a priori limitations of computing machines. Finally, the last part derives some epistemological/philosophical implications of the relationship between Gödel's incompleteness theorem and Complexity Theory for the mind/brain problem in Artificial Intelligence and discusses the compatibility of functionalism with a materialist theory of the mind.

Turing's analysis of the concept of computation is indisputably the foundation of computationalism, which is, in turn, the foundation of cognitive science. What is disputed is whether computationalism is explanatorily bankrupt. For Turing, all computers are digital computers and something becomes a (digital) computer just in case its 'behavior' is interpreted as implementing, executing, or satisfying some (mathematical) function 'f'. As 'computer' names a nonnatural kind, almost everyone agrees that a computational interpretation of this sort is necessary for something to be a computer. But because everything in the universe satisfies at least one (mathematical) function, it is the sufficiency of such interpretations that is the problem. If, as anticomputationalists are fond of pointing out, computationalists are wedded to the view that a computational interpretation is sufficient for something to be a computer, then everything becomes a digital computer. This not only renders computer-talk vacuous, it strips computationalism of any empirical or explanatory import. My aim is to defend computationalism against charges that it is explanatorily bankrupt. I reexamine several fundamental questions about computers. One effect of this computation-related soul-searching will be a framework within which 'Is the brain a computer?' will be meaningful. Another effect will be a fracture in the supposed link between computationalism and symbolic-digital processing.

The domain of cognitive semantics-insofar as it deals with semantic neighborhood and semantic fields-is discussed from a historical perspective. I choose four distinct stages in the evolution in philosophy of language: Raymundus Lullus and his Ars Magna (14th century); Giodano Bruno and his artificial memory system (16th century); Charles Sanders Peirce and his diagrammatic logic (19th century); and, Kurt Lewin and his topological psychology (20th century). Their proposals furnish steps toward a kind of space-oriented model of semantic neighborhood and semantic fields. Linguistic developments since 1920 (field linguistics) and more recently in cognitive semantics are compared to the evolution in the frame of philosophy as put forth above. The result is that we criticize cognitive semantics insofar as the field does not reflect the philosophical work done since Raymundus Lullus, which is highly relevant for contemporary cognitive science.

In the first chapter of Pragmatism, William James outlines two philosophical temperaments. He argues that though one's temperament modifies one's way of philosophizing, its presence is seldom recognized. This statement by James led me to Plato's Sophistes, especially the relationship between temperament and being. Although Plato describes certain temperaments, I hold that the main topic is being. The ancients restricted All to real being, e.g., the tangible or the immovable. This reading of the Sophistes puts a different face on the first chapter of Pragmatism. However, if we allow James to speak to present-day philosophers as well as his turn of the century audience, then this reading of the Sophistes will clarify the current philosophical temperament. Neither James nor the contemporary philosopher is satisfied with any restriction on All; for this reason, both lack interest in being. Being, once the richest word, no longer satisfies the philosopher's greedy temperament.

This paper shows how my introductory courses in philosophy were "reformed" by adopting the Peircean notion, as interpreted by Royce, of "community of interpretation." The paper has three main parts. The first sets forth the Peircean/Roycean notion of personhood as active membership in a community of interpretation. T he second spells out the implications of this idea for a theory of pedagogy, one that gives precedence to activities that promote "induction into" the community of interpretation over "introduction to" the subject matter. The third enumerates the specific technique that I adopted to implement the new pedagogical understanding. As a guiding principle for a philosophy of education, the community of interpretation offers specific criteria by which to judge the adequacy of the way a course is structured and presented in the syllabus, how classes are conducted, and how students are tested. The paper tells how the guiding concept is shared with the students in the syllabus to create a common understanding of what a philosophy class should be, and what is expected of them. The community of interpretation implies that lectures be minimized and that dialogue be maximized, requiring a constant discipline of exploring the intersection of concerns between students and major philosophers in the tradition. Finally, testing must become occasions for interpretation rather than mere recall of information about philosophers and their ideas. The pedagogical discipline entailed by the notion of a community of interpretation is judged to be the best way for students to discover and nurture their own autonomous philosophical voices.

In this paper I address some of John Dewey’s more generally applicable criticisms of the philosophic "tradition," and show how his criticisms stem from his naturalistic approach to philosophy. This topic is important because Dewey gives great insight into discussions that are relevant today regarding the role of philosophy. In 1935 he anticipated many of the criticisms of the "later" Wittgenstein regarding the establishment of post facto standards as a cause, the separation of language from behavior and the privatization of mind—yet Dewey still finds use for metaphysics or "thinking at large." I believe the essence of Dewey’s criticisms are found in a few key distinctions. Therefore, I cover the history of philosophy with blanket criticisms of the blanket categories of "classical" and of "modern" thought. For Dewey, the fundamental error characteristic of both Greek and Modern thinking is the artificial bifurcation of our thoughts, feelings and actions from the natural world. As I see it, the heart of this metaphysical mistake is captured by the distinctions he draws between the "instrumental" and "consummatory," and between the "precarious" and "stable."

Criticisms of analytic philosophy have increased in intensity in the last decade, denouncing specifically its closing in on itself, which results in barrenness and ignorance of real human problems. The thought of C. S. Peirce is proposed as a fruitful way of renewing the analytic tradition and obviating these criticisms. While this paper is largely a reflection on Hilary Putnam’s study of the historical development of analytic philosophy, not only can some of its main roots be traced back to Peirce, but also the recent resurgence of pragmatism can be regarded as a pragmatist renovation of the analytic tradition. Further, Peirce’s thought offers suggestions for tackling some of the most stubborn problems in contemporary philosophy, thereby enabling us to shoulder once more the philosophical responsibility which has been abdicated by much of twentieth-century philosophy. The most accurate understanding of Peirce is to see him as a traditional and systematic philosopher, but one dealing with the modern problems of science truth, and knowledge from a valuable personal experience as a logician and an experimental researcher in the bosom of an interdisciplinary community of scientists and thinkers.

I argue that the modernist notion of a human self (or subject) cannot easily be post-modernistically rejected because the need to view an individual life as a unified ‘narrative’ with a beginning and an end (death) is a condition for asking humanly important questions about its meaningfulness (or meaninglessness). Such questions are central to philosophical anthropology. However, not only modern ways of making sense of life, such as linear narration in literature, but also premodern ones such as tragedy, ought to be taken seriously in reflecting on these questions. The tradition of pragmatism has tolerated this plurality of the frameworks in terms of which we can interpret or ‘structure’ the world and our lives as parts of it. It is argued that pragmatism is potentially able to accommodate both the plurality of such interpretive frameworks—premodern, modern, postmodern—and the need to evaluate those frameworks normatively. We cannot allow any premodern source of human meaningfulness whatsoever (say, astrology) to be taken seriously. Avoiding relativism is, then, a most important challenge for the pragmatist.

Schools are expected to transmit knowledge to younger generations. They are, however, also increasingly criticized for distributing socalled inert knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is accessed only in a restricted set of contexts even though it is applicable to a wide variety of domains. The causes of limited knowledge transfer are mostly attributed to the disembeddedness of learning situations in schools. Instructional procedures that result in learning in the sense of being able to recall relevant information provide no guarantee that people will spontaneously use it later. "Authentic learning," acquiring knowledge in the contexts that (will) give this knowledge its meaning, is now being presented as an alternative. Underpinning these reform proposals is not only a (growing) concern with efficiency, but is also a new epistemological theory, labelled as constructivism. This paper will, first, focus on the layout of and diverging perspectives within recent constructivist research in education. Next, the epistemological approach of John Dewey will be discussed, which takes as its starting point the relation of knowledge to action. Finally, we will indicate what a Deweyan approach might add to the constructivist research in education.

In his writings during the 60s and 70s, Derrida situates his doctrine of différance in the context of a radical critique of the Western philosophical tradition. This critique rests on a scathing criticism of the tradition as logocentric/phallogocentric. Often speaking in a postured, Übermenschean manner, Derrida claimed that his 'new' aporetic philosophy of différance would help bring about the clôture of the Western legacy of logocentrism and phallogocentrism. Although in recent writings he appears to have settled into a more pietistic attitude towards the traditionally Judeo-Christian sense of the sacred and a stronger declamatory acknowledgment of his solidarity with the critical project of the Greek thinkers, many of his readers are still left with a sour taste in their mouths due to the denunciatory and self-ingratiating tone of his earlier writings. In this paper, I address these concerns, arguing that the earlier phallogocentric paradigm underlying Derrida's critique of classical Greek philosophical paideia can be troped as a postmodern, Franco-Euro form of 'Occidentalism'-a 'metanarrative' very similar in intent to the Orientalism critiqued by Said. In Derrida’s earlier writings, it is indeed very difficult to untangle this Occidental metanarrative from the aporetic metaphysics of différance.

A reading of Luce Irigaray suggests the possibility of tracing sexual difference in philosophical accounts of personal identity. In particular, I argue that Irigaray raises the possibility of moving beyond the aporia of the other which lies at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's account of self-identity. My contention is that the self conceived in Ricoeur's Oneself as Another is male insofar as it is dependent upon the patriarchal monotheism which has shaped Western culture both socially and economically. Nevertheless there remains the possibility of developing Ricoeur's reference to 'the trace of the Other' in order to give a non-essential meaning to sexual difference. Such meaning will emerge when (i) both men and women have identities as subjects, and (ii) the difference between them can be expressed. I aim to elucidate both conditions by appropriating Irigaray's 'Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love.'

In part one of this paper, I offer a description of the main versions of multiculturalism, with its liberal interpretation among them. In part two, I give an outline of the changes that have taken place in women's social status in the course of history and of the various stages of their emancipation process. In the third part I examine the relationship between multiculturalism and women's issues in general. Finally, I explore the same in Hungary, and attempt to draw some general consequences. Does a minority group (e.g., Gypsies in Hungary) in a multicultural society have the right to maintain their traditional patriarchal culture? I argue that the liberation of women is not a "women's issue"; it is part of the persistent enforcement of human rights.

Feminists and cultural relativists are highly critical of human rights even if their criticisms have taken two diametrically opposed sides. This has created a conflict between the two groups. In this paper, I summarize the views of feminists and cultural relativists and then show that there are many similarities between them despite their differences, for they share a common ground concerning human rights discourse. Based on the similarities, I believe that both must work together on this matter by making changes in an inclusive way with regard to human rights violations. This is true not only at the international level but also at national levels. To demonstrate this, I analyze the issue of the sex-determination test in India and show that if feminists and cultural relativists joined hands, then the problem of aborting female fetuses in India (due to cultural conditioning and leading to the larger problem of adverse sex ratios) could be resolved. I conclude by proposing that medical technology could be channeled in the direction of progress if feminists and cultural relativists work jointly for the promotion of women's rights by recognizing 'different voices' of women across race, class, age, culture, sexual orientation and wealth.

I consider the revision of pragmatism by three leading neopragmatists: Richard Rorty, Richard Bernstein, and Cornel West. I argue that their vision of pragmatism lacks a teleology, though a teleology is suggested by Bernstein's description of a pragmatic ethos. I appeal to Stanley Cavell's notion of 'moral perfectionism' to suggest a kind of teleology that is available to pragmatism. Finally, I find the weakness of pragmatism done without teleology well exemplified in the exchange between Rorty and Nancy Frazer at Rorty's 1990 Tanner Lecture. Rorty's paper, "Pragmatism and Feminism," was meant to offer feminists some pragmatic strategies for improving their position. Frazer's strong response finds Rorty's suggestions only marginally helpful. I interpret her criticism of Rorty's suggestions to be that they lack something like a teleology. To me, this suggests that pragmatism can learn from feminism.

Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 feminist masterpiece, The Second Sex, has traditionally been read as an application of Sartrean existentialism to the problem of women. Critics have claimed a Sartrean origin for Beauvoir's central theses: that under patriarchy woman is the Other, and that 'one is not born a woman, but becomes one.' An analysis of Beauvoir's recently discovered 1927 diary, written while she was a philosophy student at the Sorbonne, two years before her first meeting with Sartre, challenges this interpretation. In this diary, Beauvoir affirms her commitment to doing philosophy, defines the philosophical problem of 'the opposition of self and other,' and explores the links between love and domination. In 1927, she thus lays the foundations of both Sartre's phenomenology of interpersonal relationships and of her own thesis, in The Second Sex, that woman is the Other. Her descriptions of the experience of freedom and choice point to the influence of Bergson, specifically his concepts of 'becoming' and élan vital. Tracing Beauvoir's shift from her apolitical position of 1927 to the feminist engagement of The Second Sex points to the influence of the African-American writer, Richard Wright, whose description of the lived experience of oppression of blacks in America, and whose challenge to Marxist reductionism, provide Beauvoir with a model, an analogy, for analyzing woman's oppression.

Environmental philosophers, policy-makers and community activists who discuss environmental justice do so almost exclusively in terms of mainstream Western distributive models of social justice. Whether the issue is treatment of animals, human health or property, wilderness and species preservation, pollution or environmental degradation, the prevailing and largely unchallenged view is that the issues of environmental justice are for the most part distributive issues. I think this wholesale framing of considerations of environmental justice solely in terms of distribution is seriously flawed. Drawing on both ecofeminist insights into the inextricable interconnections between institutions of domination and Iris Young's work on the inadequacy of distributive models of social justice, I argue for the twofold claim that a distributive model of environmental justice is inadequate and that what is needed is an additional nondistributive model to supplement, complement and-in some cases-take precedence over a distributive model.

This presentation focuses on the main philosophical approaches toward analyzing the notions of "sex" and "gender" in Russia since the nineteenth century. I analyze the conceptions and ideas which were developed by Aleksey Khomyakov, Nicolai Chernyshevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Fedor Dostoevsky, Vladimir Solovyov and some other philosophers. Then, I discuss the concept of emancipation of women within the framework of Marxist-Leninist theory, which played a role in the state's "women's philosophy" in the Soviet period, and within the existing modern viewpoints. My methodology is based on concepts and guidelines developed in feminist philosophy. One of the goals, as put forward by feminist philosophy, is to discover the gender determinateness of the metatheoretical foundations of science and traditional Western humanitarianism and of philosophy. This problem can be quite successfully solved on the basis of Western philosophic studies. Russian philosophy, however, has not so far become a subject of feminist analysis either in Russia or in the West. Therefore, my research in this field could be considered rather novel.

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls defends two principles of justice, in part by an appeal to stability. Rawls claims that coupled with the publicity condition, the two principles are preferable because they are more likely to encourage stability than are average utilitarian theories. Rawls' radical and feminist opponents have found this appeal to stability problematic since they believe that achieving justice may sometimes necessitate the destabilization of society. Moreover, utilitarian critics argue that even if stability is granted as justification for a theory of justice, it seems at least plausible that institutions structured according to an average utilitarian conception of justice could yield a society that is just as stable. I will argue that with an accurate understanding of Rawls' appeal to stability, these sorts of criticisms lose their strength, and Rawls' argument for the stability of his two principles over average utilitarianism appears that much more convincing. Thus, by getting clear on what Rawls' appeal to stability entails, we gain a fuller understanding of his theory and its justification. Finally, I will consider a revised feminist critique that appeals to the appropriate understanding of stability and go on to suggest how Rawls might respond to such a critique.

The feminist philosopher Susan Bordo suggests that the dilemma of twentieth-century feminism is the tension between a gender identity that both mobilizes a liberatory politics on behalf of women and that results in gender prescriptions which excludes many women. This tension seems especially acute in feminist debates about essentialism/deconstructionism. Concentrating on the shared sex of women may run the risk of embracing an essentialism that ignores the differences among women, whereas emphasizing the constructed natures of sex and gender categories seems to threaten the very project of a feminist politics. I will analyze the possibility of dismantling gender prescriptions while retaining a gender identity that can be the beginning for an emancipatory politics. Perhaps feminists need not rely on a reified essentialism that elides the differences of race, class, etc., if we begin with our social practices of classification rather than with a priori generalizations about the nature of women.