Favouring for No Reason

‘Favouring for No Reason’ addresses two matters. First, it argues that some favourings (i.e. pro- or contra-attitudes) may not be reason-governed. Various examples, including some from Joseph Raz, suggest that neither the guise of the good nor the guise of reason thesis is true: some of our favourings are favourings for no reasons. Being motivated is often a matter of having a set of beliefs and desires whose content appears normative to the agent, but sometimes being motivated does not involve motivating reasons but is rather a matter merely of having the right sorts of belief and desire. A second issue concerns whether fitting-attitude analysis (FA) should require that the valuable object’s properties appear in the content of the fitting pro- or contra-attitude. The so-called dual-role approach to FA analysis affirms that the properties that make an object x valuable have a dual role: on the one hand, they provide reasons for favouring x, and on the other hand, they appear in the intentional content of the favouring. It is argued that the dual-role approach is preferable to the classical form of FA analysis. However, that does not mean that the classical FA analysis is incorrect. Dual-role FA analysis should be regarded as a specification of its classical forebear. The remaining sections of this chapter consider different cases that challenge the dual-role approach.

Developing the flipped learning instrument in an ESL context: The experts’ perspective

The flipped learning approach has been accepted by numerous studies as an approach in implementing technological based classroom environments. This article aims to identify the required constructs in developing an instrument for flipped learning in an ESL environment. This study uses the Fuzzy Delphi method to collect and analyze the viewpoints of 18 experts from relevant fields. An online questionnaire was developed to gather the experts’ agreement towards seven constructs namely flexible environments, shift in learning culture, intentional content, progressive networking activities, professional educators, engaging & effective learning experiences, and diversified seamless learning platforms and 68 items gathered from the literature. The FDM (Fuzzy Delphi Method) analysis rejected seven of the items; finalizing the instrument with seven constructs and 61 items. The instrument is beneficial to teachers and learners of ESL and developers of technology-based learning methods. The implication of the study is the provision of the constructs to help guide and implement the flipped learning approach in educational contexts. Furthermore, these constructs can be used to the basis for further investigations that leads to the development of frameworks or models for the flipped learning approach. Future works on the topic may look at a bigger sample for stronger results. Furthermore, the instrument developed can be used on the student population and in other contexts as well.

A radical relationist solution to the problem of intentional inexistence

The problem of intentional inexistence arises because the following (alleged) intuitions are mutually conflicting: it seems that sometimes we think about things that do not exist; it seems that intentionality is a relation between a thinker and what such a thinker thinks about; it seems that relations entail the existence of what they relate. In this paper, I argue for what I call a radical relationist solution. First, I contend that the extant arguments for the view that relations entail the existence of their relata are wanting. In this regard, I defend a kind of pluralism about relations according to which more than one kind of relation involves non-existents. Second, I contend that there are reasons to maintain that all thoughts are relations between thinkers and the things they are about. More accurately, I contend that the radical relationist solution is to be preferred to both the intentional content solution (as developed by Crane) and the adverbial property solution (as developed by Kriegel). Finally, I argue that once the distinction between thinking “X” and thinking about X has been drawn, the radical relationist solution can handle issues like ontological commitment, substitutivity failure, scrutability, and non-specificity.

Flipped learning design fidelity, self-regulated learning, satisfaction, and continuance intention in a university flipped learning course

For effective flipped learning, beyond simply switching the sequence of lectures and homework, it is important to understand and implement the fundamental design principles of flipped learning. A new notion is proposed called flipped learning design fidelity, defined as the degree to which a class is faithfully designed to be close to an ideal flipped learning class operationalised with four proxy indicators of the F-L-I-P™ model (flexible environment, learning culture, intentional content, and professional educator). This study empirically examines the effect of both learner-related factor (self-regulated learning) and design-related factor (design fidelity) on learning outcomes (satisfaction, continuance intention) in a university flipped course. We hypothesised that flipped learning design fidelity and self-regulated learning affect student satisfaction and intention to continue participating in a flipped learning course. The participants were 134 Korean students of a university course taught in a flipped learning mode. The results revealed that the level of flipped learning design fidelity had a significant effect on satisfaction, but did not affect continuance intention. In addition, the level of self-regulated learning had a significant effect on satisfaction and continuance intention. Drawn from the key findings, we suggest implications for the design of flipped learning courses in a university context.

Post-Event Internet Discourse and Its Peculiarities in the Context of Covid-19 Pandemic

The article is devoted to post-event discourse which plays a major part in comprehending experience and forming the image of reality in one’s mind. The aim of the research is to define the peculiarities of post-event internet discourse in the context of the COVID -19 pandemic, that has affected all the aspects of human and social activity in an unprecedented way. The approach applied was approbated earlier and comprises the description of the main referential objects of discourse and their qualitative changes in the process of discussion, as well as the characteristic of intentional content and discourse structure.Diversity of message sources and internet platforms has determined the variability of intentional characteristics of post-event discourse during the pandemic. In translating opinion and seeking support of the audience, prime significance is attached to dialogical intentions, e.g., asking for information, clarifying, finding out an opinion. Negative intentions, linked with the expression of emotional states and criticism of the discussed objects, are also relevant. At the same time, positive directionality of communicants is revealed, with the focus on the intention to support the interlocutor and express gratitude to those who distinguished themselves throughout the pandemic. Considerable modification of referential objects in the course of the discussion, their generalization and replacement and increase in number as compared to the initial message have also been uncovered.

Relational Imperativism about Affective Valence

Affective experiences motivate and rationalize behaviour in virtue of feeling good or bad, or their valence. It has become popular to explain such phenomenal character with intentional content. Rejecting evaluativism and extending earlier imperativist accounts of pain, I argue that when experiences feel bad, they both represent things as being in a certain way and tell us to see to it that they will no longer be that way. Such commands have subjective authority by virtue of linking up with a relevant background concern. The imperative content explains but doesn’t constitute world-directed motivation. It also rationalizes action indirectly, by giving rise to an affective seeming that represents the situation as calling for the authoritatively commanded behaviour. One experience feels worse than another if its content tells us to bear a higher opportunity cost to comply with the command. Finally, experience-directed motivation is contingent on our being attitudinally (dis)pleased with the character of our experience.

Difficult Points of Chess Metaphor in the Theoretical Questions of Language and Mind

This review article reveals the structural components of the chess metaphor, which represent in an unusual perspective the properties of a linguistic sign and its connection with mental processes. Strict rule-following and the conventionality of the material plane of expression turn chess into a convenient illustration of a universal linguistic structure. Particular attention is paid to the computer profile of the chess metaphor, since it reflects a whole complex of philosophical problems of computer science about mind, thinking and intelligence. In the proposed paper, the presentation of most of the material is based on the works of F. de Saussure, L. Hjelmslev, L. Wittgenstein and their interpreters, in whose texts an obvious important place is occupied by chess analogies and theoretical conclusions initiated by them. First we investigate chess metaphor in the context of language and speech structures. Next, we analyze the "chess track" in the problem of individual language and the rule-following problem. The final part is devoted to the technical elements of computer chess and the influence of this area of computer science on some of the points of cognitive theories of language and mind. The author of the article emphasizes a nontrivial transformation of the conceptual content of the chess metaphor, which indicates the evolution of computational tendencies in modern theories about language and mind. The article substantiates the thesis that the traditional chess metaphor used in the XX century in the philosophical investigation of language and mind, today it takes on a realization in the framework of computer models of the chess game. Machine deep learning can significantly expand the horizon of computability. Game interaction makes it possible to ascribe the elements of intentional content to machine functions. Nevertheless, all the argumentation in the work is aimed at proving that the rules governing language and mind are rules different from the rules of computer intelligence.

Embodiment and Phenomenal Consciousness

Can the imaginary brains described in Chapter 1 have only representations of perceived patterns, objects, and events? Can hierarchical structures of neurons also represent feelings, beliefs, emotions, and other higher mental states? Creating feelings requires giving emotional perceptions, memories, plans, beliefs, and intentions. How can this be achieved? How are perceived objects and events using their significance for the fate of the conscious system? Do they meet the various needs of the system? In this chapter we show that to achieve this goal, to feel qualia and to create phenomenal awareness, it is necessary to embody the mind. Mental states, such as thoughts and desires, contain intentional content that can be described by referring to something that we expect or believe. Another category are sensory feelings that do not contain intentional content but instead have different qualitative properties like perceptions, impressions, and sensations. The authors indicate four main domains of cooperation between the body and the brain, so that the mind generated in the system has phenomenal consciousness. These domains are 1) The homeostatic system. The body or housing may contain sensors informing the brain about the internal conditions of the body. The signals from these sensors can complement the information coming from the external senses. 2) The motor system. The housing and body, together with the motor system, allow an individual to manipulate objects in the environment and its own body in the environment. The effects of these manipulations can broaden the experience and allow for their evaluation. 3) Participatory analysis. The body or housing can be used to predict, analyze, and plan activities by making calculations through a physical process. 4) The global states of the organism. Internal power supply parameters, information-processing speed, dynamics of operation, and sensitivity thresholds for internal and external sensors can affect performance, the results of evaluation of sensations, and the shape of neural representations. This assumption makes it possible to explain how the imaginary mind can feel subjective impressions, the qualia that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness. The bodily reactions to the sensory stimuli reaching the brain can give value to individual feelings, and emotions. Feeling hardness or smoothness, assessing the attractiveness of smells, judging the importance of sounds, and evaluating the favor of the environment based on images all go beyond the direct response of the senses. The entire brain is involved in the creation of a conscious mind, along with sensory processing, control of movements, memories, predictions, and all other brain structures. This is an emergent phenomenon that is not reflected in any part of the brain's apparatus. In this chapter, the authors explain to what extent we can be aware of our feelings, how far we can understand the world around us and our place in it, how we can consciously direct our thoughts, and how we can focus attention on something.

THE THREE DIMENSIONS OF INTENTIONALITY

The issue of intentionality was posed anew in philosophy by Franz Brentano. However, it was Brentano himself who indicated that the source of intentionality-related problems dates back to Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The search for the original traces of this issue in the history of philosophy has led me to conclude that intentionality as an inalienable characteristic of consciousness is characterized by three-dimensionality, which is expressed in theoria, praxis and poiesis. Contemporary research focuses primarily on cognitive intentionality, examining in particular either the very subject-object relation or the immanent (intentional) object, in-existing in psychical experience (in the acts of consciousness). And yet, intentionality is a basic feature of the whole consciousness-anchored (mental) life of a human being. It determines the whole consciousness-based activity of the subject in abstract theorizing, practice and production. Therefore, it manifests itself as a mode of being of a conscious (mental) entity, i.e. an entity partially constituted by intentional content, relationality, reference, directionality, openness and conscious awareness , as well as determining the meaning and the creation of purely intentional beings. Intentionality is revealed as a primary factor in the awakening of consciousness, through the building (constituting) of conscious experiences that are poietic, practical and theoretical. Each of these three ways of categorizing the nature of experience, however, indicates only the predominant aspect of a given experience, for strictly speaking experiences are determined by all three aspects. Intentionality and – consequently – all conscious experience, are thus characterized by three-dimensions: cognitive, activistic and productive. Any act of consciousness is always a form of activity that is informed by its cognitive aspect and produces something transcendent with regard to itself. The recognition of the three-dimensional nature of intentionality allows us to understand the human being and the dilemmas concerning his actions, knowledge and creativity.