The chapter ‘Alexander of Aphrodisias on Concepts’ by Frans A. J. de Haas takes up another aspect of concept theory, that is, the endeavour to define what a concept is. Furthermore, he explores the interactions between the Peripatetics and the Stoics, as they are evidenced by Alexander, on ontological as well as psychological and epistemological issues. De Haas also offers a systematic study of part of Alexander’s rich vocabulary denoting concepts, thoughts, and universals, and of a correspondingly rich collection of verbs referring to the human activities of abstracting or constructing concepts. Importantly, this analysis sheds light on Alexander’s understanding of ennoia and noêma, and on Alexander’s views concerning the epistemic reliability of concepts and the unity of concepts in the human soul.

Some readers of the Tractatus claim that, for Wittgenstein, the correct philosophical method is “a method of logical analysis in terms of a symbolic logical notation, whereby the logical, syntactical or formal properties of logically unclear expressions are clarified by translating them into a logically perspicuous notation” (Kuusela 2019, p. 85). This chapter aims at refuting this view, maintaining that Wittgenstein distinguishes between logical analysis and philosophical clarification. More precisely, I would like to establish that, drawing on certain features of Russellian logical practice (as illustrated for instance in On Denoting), Wittgenstein makes a distinction between logically ordered language and completely analyzed language. For him, philosophical clarification does not consist in an analysis of ordinary language but in the visible manifestation (at the level of signs) of the logical ordering of its symbols.

This chapter begins with more historical discussion, in which we sketch the prehistory of the study of the pragmatics and trace a route in the development of expressive meaning from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Following an expression coined by Nerlich and Clark, we use the term ‘proto-pragmatics’ to refer to those thinkers who were the first to take the role of context and emotion in language use seriously. The point of so doing is to show that our attempt to introduce affect into the centre of theories of utterance interpretation is actually an act of reintroduction, rather than an original move. The sidelining of affect by theories of communication has not happened in the absence of opposition. We also suggest parallels between the work of Charles Bally of the Geneva school and the work of those involved in the so-called ‘Ordinary Language Approach to Philosophy’ going on in the 1940s at Oxford, whose adherents committed themselves to the study of natural language use rather than the logical formulae of formal languages

The introduction sets out the context, aims and approach of this book. It explains that over the past thirty years, the number of cases before the ECtHR concerning freedom of thought, conscience and religion has increased significantly and interest in this right in the literature has grown exponentially. It notes that ECtHR jurisprudence relating to ECHR Article 9 has been heavily criticised by commentators but there has been very little interrogation of the core premises that underpin doctrinal analyses of Article 9 in recent years. In particular, the fundamental question—what is the law in relation to freedom of religion or belief?—has not been fully explored. The introduction explains that this book aims to address this important question in relation to ECHR Article 9 and, in doing so, it challenges the classic approach to freedom of thought, conscience and religion in the literature and offers an alternative interpretation of ECHR Article 9 and the related ECtHR jurisprudence. The detailed overview of the structure of this book in the introduction details the approach which will be taken, and sets out the the materials which form the basis for the analysis.

The Introduction offers a rationale for the first general analysis for a number of years of Samuel Johnson’s literary criticism. It sets forth the distinctive emphasis of the new volume and justifies its focus on Johnson’s “criteria of the heart.” This formulation points to the emotional foundation for many of Johnson’s literary judgments. How Johnson’s emotional demands count as criteria is then explained and the connection between the chapters is spelled out. Each explores Johnson’s critical artistry or aspects of his thought – the application of philosophical rigor to statements of critical opinion. The Introduction stresses the poetical character of Johnson’s critical prose and looks forward to the prose of the Lives of the Poets; a passage from this work has served as the basis for David Ferry’s poetical recreation of Johnson. The introductory excursus suggests that categories commonly employed to explain Johnson’s criticism in historical terms will always strike the wrong note. They make unwarranted assumptions about the nature and progress of criticism and disfigure our sense of Johnson’s place within critical history.

Johnson found Shakespeare full of truths; but how far Shakespeare thinks philosophically has been debated. This chapter considers how Shakespeare has been considered a thinker in dramatic form. He enacts morals via character and dramatic situation. Johnson generates no philosophical aesthetics. Indeed, his criticism is a counterweight to contemporary analysis of such concepts as the “sublime,” or “genius.” However, he does appreciate the ways in which Shakespeare thinks and the senses in which the plays help us to think rationally about life. Johnson’s praise of Shakespeare as “the poet of nature” forms a contrast with major eighteenth-century philosophers. They did not always think highly of Shakespeare. Yet Kant’s ambition not to “allow my judgement to be determined by a priori proofs” suggests a philosophical analogue for both Pope and Johnson. They were aware that Shakespeare can deliver in the moment an experience that no thought or theory could seem to precede, explain or predict, but that once experienced, appears natural and universal.

This chapter concerns the early modern redefinition of psychology as the science of mind. It examines the way the “invention of mind” was incorporated into Descartes’s metaphysical project. This Cartesian innovation marked a rupture from the traditional science of the soul as a division of natural science or physics. Rejecting the Aristotelian partition of the soul into distinct powers and the Scholastic view of the principle of thought (the intellect) as only the highest psychic power, the new Cartesian psychology required the unity of the soul as the thinking substance. What constituted early modern psychology as a metaphysical science of mind, this chapter argues, was fundamentally Descartes’s “realist” thesis that mind is a thing (res). Together with this Cartesian substantialist view, its critical reception structured the modern science of mind. The early modern alternatives to Descartes’s ontological thesis about mind, the chapter highlights, were based either on the argument that mind is not a thing or on the argument that mind is a non-substantial thing, a mere mode. The chapter illustrates the first argument with Hobbes, the second with Regius and Spinoza.

Spinoza’s philosophy of mind has been subject to widely divergent interpretations. What explains this lack of consensus? The principal reason is that Spinoza’s notion of an attribute and its relation to his substance monism is poorly understood. This chapter begins by setting out some interpretative difficulties regarding Spinoza’s notion of an attribute in general. It will then explain Spinoza’s conception of the attributes of thought and extension in particular. Next, it will explain how Spinoza argues for the structural similarity of the mental and physical realms from his claim that the mind and the body are one and the same thing conceived under different attributes. This will require developing a new interpretation of Spinoza’s notion of attribute. This interpretation will both explain why his philosophy of mind has been subject to such contradictory interpretations as well as solve a host of interpretative difficulties that have long vexed commentators. The chapter will conclude by explaining how Spinoza’s denial of mind-body causal explanation is compatible with his assertion of mind-body identity.

In this chapter, I begin to develop an account of why psychopaths are unable to see other people as sources of value, a claim that is necessary for the central argument of the book as developed in Chapter 3. Having described psychopathy as a condition characterised primarily by emotional deficiencies, I look to the emotions for evidence of why psychopaths are as they are. I consider the three main philosophical theories of the emotions – cognitivist, ‘feeling’ and perceptualist theories – before settling on a hybrid account, according to which emotions are complexes of thought and feeling. Based on this, I interrogate the relationship between emotions and value, suggesting that emotions play a role in our ability to ascribe value to things in the world. I then trace the implications of these conclusions for the ability of psychopaths, given their emotional deficiencies, to engage evaluatively with the world.

Chapter 4 is about choice (prohairesis), an Aristotelian innovation. This is the central chapter of the book, drawing together the threads of the previous chapters. Aristotle says that virtue of character is a disposition involving choice and he defines choice as desiderative thought or thoughtful desire. He is here emphasizing each side of choice, thought, and desire. I argue that choice can belong to good, bad, and akratic people, but my main aim is to show how thought and desire are interdependent in the case of the good person. To that end, I analyze the type of thought involved in the choice of the good person – deliberation – showing that it cannot be adequately explained without mentioning virtue and hence desire and feelings. Conversely, I show that the type of desire involved, which I argue takes up the motivation both of wish (which I argue is in the rational part of the soul) and the feelings, requires thought. I conclude with some examples of choice, showing how from one point of view virtue makes the goal right, and from another it makes what contributes to the goal right. That is because virtue of character and thoughtfulness are intertwined.

I provide an overview of which the main thesis is that Aristotle’s view of thought and feelings is sui generis, different from Kantian and Humean style views of motivation. Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean is introduced, along with a discussion of philosophical method and a synopsis of chapters.

The repertoire of human imaginative thought is incredibly large. Whether reminiscing on memorable past experiences, or entertaining our hypothetical futures; whether transporting ourselves into a good book, or listening to an engaging conversation; whether reasoning about the thoughts of others, or pondering the meaning of life – the human mind is constantly imagining that which lies beyond our current sensory input. In this chapter, we aim to introduce a neuroscience-informed framework by which the diverse array of imaginative thoughts can be functionally organized. We first review some key psychological ingredients of imaginative thought: their content, their level of abstraction, their mode of representation, and the ways in which they arise and unfold over time. Next, we propose a neural basis for these different elements based on research highlighting the role of the brain’s default network in aspects of imagination. Third, we propose an integrative model whereby imaginative thoughts can be divided into two broad classes that often interact in everyday experience and in the brain: one encompassing contextually rich, perceptually vivid mental simulations, and another encompassing conceptually abstract, often verbal modes of imagination. We hope this neurocognitive framework will help organize the many varieties of imagination and facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration and discovery.

In the chapter, I attempt to identify and briefly describe the main features of CMT, as I see them. Other researchers might emphasize different properties of the theory. At the same time, I tried to select those features on which there is some agreement among practitioners of CMT. At the end of the chapter and given the description of the properties, I list a number of outstanding issues in CMT – issues that we need to get clear about in order to make CMT an even more powerful theory of metaphor.

Chapter 1 has three goals. First, it provides motivation and history for the methodology by reviewing seminal insights and current debates about the relationship between language and thought, outlining how most research in this field concerns the structure of language rather than its use. Second, it outlines the scope for using CODA by identifying crucial and typical areas of application, with specific focus on mental representations and cognitive processes. Third, it highlights the scope and limits of language analysis of this kind, along with a discussion of reliability and generalisability of insights gained by using CODA. Altogether, the chapter provides in-depth insights into the foundational insights the method builds on, what it is intended for, why and where it is useful, and how it relates to other approaches to cognition.

Arendt argued that political thought and discourse have traditionally been misconceived by philosophers, who have typically measured them against philosophical standards, and so conceived them as crude or defective forms of philosophy. This chapter explains how she reconceived the main faculties of political thought (opinion, judgment, imagination), the central forms of political thought (narrative thought, exemplary thought, and what she called “representative thought”), and the central mode of political discourse (persuasion). She saw political thought and discourse as primarily non-theoretical, in contrast to the theoretical forms of thought and discourse central to philosophy. Her project was to rethink these non-theoretical forms of thought and discourse in light of their powers in the realm of politics, rather than in light of their weakness in the realm of philosophy. This distinction between theoretical and non-theoretical thought and discourse sets up the question of the next chapter: How did the political theories of classical philosophers distort or obscure the non-theoretical understanding of politics implicit in Greek literature and history?