Search Results

This chapter develops a knowledge-based account, according to which a content is a mode of presentation of a fact (which fact, of course, need not exist). The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 presents a theory of mental acts. Section 2 suggests that some mental acts are apprehendings, which is to say that they non-mediately cause one to acquire knowledge. Section 3 defines the content of a mental act by the contribution it makes to apprehending, i.e., to the getting of knowledge. Section 4 defines concepts as powers of the mind to be the subject of mental acts with a certain range of contents. Section 5 defines reference, and deduces Russell's ‘Principle of Acquaintance’. Section 6 gives further argument for the Principle of Acquaintance, in the context of the epistemology of definitions. Section 7 notes connections between content, truth, and language.

Discusses a number of developments and consequences of my position. Firstly, there is the very important issue of the relation between the basic, essentially experiential, perceptual demonstrative contents that I have been considering up to this point, and the more detached, linguistically articulated and categorized judgements that a person more standardly makes on the basis of perception, and that constitute the normal expression of his perceptual knowledge about the world around him. Secondly, I argue that my account entails a version of Russell's Principle of Acquaintance (1917: 159), which I elucidate, on which singular reference is possible only to objects about which the subject is in a position to acquire, or to express, non‐inferential knowledge Thirdly, I exploit this version of the Principle of Acquaintance to provide what seems to me to be a fully satisfying response to an important objection to the possibility of combining a so‐called externalist theory of empirical content, of the kind that I myself favour and draw on in my account of perceptual knowledge, with a plausible account of a person's knowledge of the contents of his own beliefs.

Hopkins goes to New York for rehearsals in Battle with Angels, a play by first-time playwright Tennessee Williams. The play, however, is a failure, and the experience erodes Hopkins’s self-confidence, professionally and personally. She is offered several films before finally accepting the lead in A Gentleman after Dark. Hopkins accepts a role opposite Bette Davis in Old Acquaintance, a part that will bring Davis no end of problems.

Links between friendship and mental health are reviewed in this chapter. An original analysis is provided of how selected friendship and mental health indices covaried within a college sample. Adult best friendship maintenance difficulty was found to be higher among respondents with a history of panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder, suicide attempts, drug addiction, borderline personality disorder, alcohol addiction, or schizophrenia. Current psychiatric symptoms and/or prior treatments were similarly associated with best friendship strains. Smaller childhood friendship circles and weaker social support networks were linked to past suicide attempts. Future research will be necessary to identify the specific relationship qualities that may enhance stress resiliency among individuals who are at risk for the development of psychiatric illness.

Hazlitt expressed his commitment to political and social change by identifying himself as a “Revolutionist,” a term that signaled his commitment to the spiritual traditions of English sectarian Dissent. Yet Dissenting heritage also brought out some of his most internally contested literary impulses, not least an acknowledgment of his own lapsed faith. The figure of his father, and the radical Unitarian faith he represented, was the occasion for sentimental recollection, for (sometimes ironic) expressions of visionary and millennial expectation, and for impassioned attacks on literary “apostates” to the cause of liberty. Essays such as “My First Acquaintance with Poets,” “The Spirit of Controversy,” and “On Court-Influence” reveal the richness and complexity of his treatment of the radical traditions of sectarian Dissent.