Descartes holds that the tell-tale sign of a solid proof is that its entailments appear clearly and distinctly. Yet, since there is a limit to what a subject can consciously fathom at any given moment, a mnemonic shortcoming threatens to render complex geometrical reasoning impossible. Thus, what enables us to recall earlier proofs, according to Descartes, is God’s benevolence: He is too good to pull a deceptive switch on us. Accordingly, Descartes concludes that geometry and belief in God must go (...) hand in hand. However, I argue that, while theism adds a layer of psychological reassurance, the mind-independent reality of God would ensure the preservation of past demonstrations for atheists as well. (shrink)

Jordan Peterson gave a series of lectures on the Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories. His first lecture lasted two hours. In that time, Peterson managed to cover only a single line from the Bible. This lopsided gloss-to-text ratio, I argue, entails that the rational explanations actually do all the work while the Bible is dispensable.

This paper argues that there is a conflict between two theses held by John McDowell, namely i) the claim that we are under a standing obligation to revise our beliefs if reflection demands it; and ii) the view that veridical experience is a mode of direct access to the world. Since puts no bounds on what would constitute reasonable doubt, it invites skeptical concerns which overthrow. Conversely, since says that there are some experiences which we are entitled to trust, it (...) undermines the prescriptive scope of. Drawing on C. S. Peirce's distinction between genuine and contrived doubt, I maintain that critical revisions of beliefs should be triggered only by unwanted disruptions of habits, thereby restoring unity between McDowell's two theses. (shrink)

I have always considered that the two questions respecting God and the Soul were the chief of those that ought to be demonstrated by philosophical rather than ...

This chapter contains section titled: The Cosmic Community Social and Individual Autonomy The World Out of Balance Multiple Communities, Multiple Identities Renewing the Cosmic Community.

In Descartes's Meditations, one of the key texts of Western philosophy, the thinker rejects all his former beliefs in the quest for new certainties. Discovering his own existence as a thinking entity in the very exercise of doubt, he goes on to prove the existence of God, who guarantees his clear and distinct ideas as a means of access to the truth. He develops new conceptions of body and mind, capable of serving as foundations for the new science of nature. (...) Subsequent philosophy has grappled with Descartes's legacy, questioning many of its conclusions and even his basic approach, but his arguments set the agenda for many of the greatest philosophical thinkers, and their fascination endures.This new translation includes the Third and Fourth Objections and Replies in full, and a selection from the rest of Descartes's exchanges with contemporaries that helped to shape and expound his philosophy. (shrink)

In 1988, Nadine Dormoy conducted a series of interviews with Rene Girard after a number of books and conferences had situated his work in a new context of research on self-organizing systems. In these interviews, Girard discusses the intellectual activity that followed the 1982 Stanford University conference, Disorder and Order. Girard also discusses Theater of Envy, his book on Shakespeare, as well as corrects several misunderstandings of his mimetic hypothesis.

Dernier ouvrage publie par Descartes, le Traite des Passions de l'ame (1649) est le fruit de toute sa philosophie. Ce traite, qui s'appuie sur un resume de la biologie cartesienne, s'oriente vers une medecine concrete des affections psycho-physiologiques et s'epanouit en une apologie de la generosite. Aux observations scientifiques, Descartes ne dedaigne pas d'adjoindre des notations psychologiques dont la finesse evoque parfois ces maximes qui fleurissaient dans les salons au XVIIe siecle. Ainsi l'ampleur des conclusions scientifiques, morales et metaphysiques, sources (...) d'etudes toujours renaissantes pour les specialistes, se colore par surcroit d'une richesse vecue qui fait de ce Traite, ecrit pour une princesse et offert a une reine, le modele des ouvrages accessibles au plus grand public. (shrink)

Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

Law-enforcement agencies are increasingly able to leverage crime statistics to make risk predictions for particular individuals, employing a form of inference that some condemn as violating the right to be “treated as an individual.” I suggest that the right encodes agents’ entitlement to a fair distribution of the burdens and benefits of the rule of law. Rather than precluding statistical prediction, it requires that citizens be able to anticipate which variables will be used as predictors and act intentionally to avoid (...) them. Furthermore, it condemns reliance on various indexes of distributive injustice, or unchosen properties, as evidence of law-breaking. (shrink)

René Descartes's Regulae ad directionem ingenii ('Rules for the Direction of the Understanding') is his earliest surviving philosophical treatise, and in many respects his most puzzling text. It is a profoundly original work with few intellectual precursors, and offers the fullest account anywhere in Descartes's work of his theory of method. Yet Descartes left it unfinished, and unpublished, at his death in 1650. The versions currently known to modern readers are all posthumous: a manuscript copied for Leibniz in the late (...) seventeenth century, a Dutch translation of 1684, and the version printed in 1701 in Amsterdam. As a result, the details and date of its composition, its fragmentary, unfinished state, and its philosophical content have long puzzled scholars. The discovery by Richard Serjeantson in 2011 of a previously unknown, early manuscript draft of the Regulae in Cambridge University Library was a hugely significant event in Cartesian scholarship. This edition presents the Cambridge manuscript of the Regulae alongside the 1701 Amsterdam version of the text to allow comparison between the early manuscript draft and the version best-known to modern readers, together with a full English translations of both texts. It is also the first critical edition of the Regulae to take into account the full range of textual witnesses to the text, both manuscript and printed. The new Cambridge manuscript sheds important light on the composition, date, and philosophical content of the Regulae, and will provoke scholars to rethink key questions about Descartes's early philosophical development. (shrink)

These two volumes provide a translation of the philosophical works of Descartes, based on the best available Latin and French texts. They are intended to replace the only reasonably comprehensive selection of his works in English, by Haldane and Ross, first published in 1911. All the works included in that edition are translated here, together with a number of additional texts crucial for an understanding of Cartesian philosophy, including important material from Descartes' scientific writings. The result should meet the widespread (...) demand for an accurate and authoritative edition of Descartes' philosophical writings in clear and readable modern English. (shrink)

Sparrow argues that military robots capable of making their own decisions would be independent enough to allow us denial for their actions, yet too unlike us to be the targets of meaningful blame or praise—thereby fostering what Matthias has dubbed “the responsibility gap.” We agree with Sparrow that someone must be held responsible for all actions taken in a military conflict. That said, we think Sparrow overlooks the possibility of what we term “blank check” responsibility: A person of sufficiently high (...) standing could accept responsibility for the actions of autonomous robotic devices—even if that person could not be causally linked to those actions besides this prior agreement. The basic intuition behind our proposal is that humans can impute relations even when no other form of contact can be established. The missed alternative we want to highlight, then, would consist in an exchange: Social prestige in the occupation of a given office would come at the price of signing away part of one's freedoms to a contingent and unpredictable future guided by another agency. (shrink)

It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy. The term “semiotics” was introduced by John Locke in the modern period (...) – its etymology is ancient Greek, and its theoretical underpinnings are medieval. Charles Sanders Peirce made major advances in semiotics, so he can act as a pipeline for these forgotten ideas. Most philosophers know Peirce as the founder of American pragmatism, but few know that he also coined the term “qualia,” which is meant to capture the intrinsic feel of an experience. Since pragmatic verification and qualia are now seen as conflicting commitments, Champagne endeavors to understand how Peirce could (or thought he could) have it both ways. The key, he suggests, is to understand how humans can insert distinctions between features that are always bound. Recent attempts to take qualities seriously have resulted in versions of panpsychism, but Champagne outlines a more plausible way to achieve this. So, while semiotics has until now been the least known branch of philosophy ending in –ics, his book shows how a better understanding of that branch can move one of the liveliest debates in philosophy forward. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

Existenzphilosophie fragt nach dem Sinn menschlichen Lebens. Für den Konstruktivismus ist diese Frage schon beantwortet, ja, sinnlos: Für ihn ist die Wirklichkeit des Einzelnen ohnehin die ganze Wirklichkeit - es gibt keine »Objektivität«. So fremd sich beide Denkweisen also gegenüberstehen, so nahe sind sie sich in ihrer radikalen Subjektivität. René Weiland nimmt diese fremde Nähe in den Blick, indem er sich von der Kategorie der Innen-Außen-Differenz als eines Schaltbegriffs leiten lässt, der beide Denkweisen untergründig miteinander verbindet: als Nahtstelle alles (...) Systemischen wie als Nadelöhr unserer Individuationen. Ein Buch für Philosophen und Psychologen - und für Resilienz-Forscher. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences inform us about objective properties of things in our environment. But they also have perspectival character in the sense that they differ phenomenally when objects are viewed from different points of view. Contemporary representationalists hold, at a minimum, that phenomenal character supervenes on representational content. Thus, in order to account for perspectival character, they need to indentify a type of representational content that changes in appropriate ways with the perceiver’s point of view. Many representationlists, including Shoemaker and Lycan, (...) argue that such contents are best construed in terms of mind-dependent properties. Other representationalists, including Tye and Dretske, hold that these contents involve only mind-independent properties. Susanna Schellenberg has recently developed an account of perceptual experience that would serve these latter representationalists extremely well. She suggests that we can do justice to the perspectival character of perceptual experience by appeal to representations of a certain type of relational properties, so-called ‘situation-dependent properties.’ In this paper, I critically engage with Schellenberg’s proposal in order to show how mind-independent representationalists can explain perspectival character. I argue that appeal to situation-dependent properties is problematic. I then show that mind-independent representationalists can account for perspectical character by means of scenario contents in Christopher Peacocke’s sense. (shrink)

This study evaluated the integration of psychology ethics into an introductory psychology course. Students in two general psychology sections were exposed to an infusion of psychology ethics in teaching, research, and clinical practice, whereas students in two sections were exposed to traditional course content. Students completed a pre and post-test assessment including a psychology ethics questionnaire and open-ended responses to three ethics case studies. Students in the ethics group displayed a statistically significant increase in scores on both measures from pre (...) to post-test. However, students in the traditional group showed no improvement in scores. (shrink)

... Lorsque j'ai connu René Boylesve, il lui advint de me parler de son renom et de sa vente. Je reviendrai là-dessus. En tout cas, il pouvait rentrer dans la classe de ces auteurs qui, faute de savoir se montrer dangereux - car alors on vous respecte par crainte -, faute de savoir intriguer pour se faire rendre justice, et parce que les critiques notables les tiennent pour des artistes sans relief, restent dans l'ombre de leur vivant. Il est (...) entendu au demeurant que l'ombre, en France, appartient de droit au talent. Victor Hugo eut un mal infini à percer, et l'Académie l'élut à sa cinquième candidature... (shrink)

'Those most capable of being moved by passion are those capable of tasting the most sweetness in this life.'Descartes is most often thought of as introducing a total separation of mind and body. But he also acknowledged the intimate union between them, and in his later writings he concentrated on understanding this aspect of human nature. The Passions of the Soul is his greatest contribution to this debate. It contains a profound discussion of the workings of the emotions and of (...) their place in human life - a subject that increasingly engages the interest of philosophers and intellectual and cultural historians. It also sets out a view of ethics that has been seen as a radical reorientation of moral philosophy.This volume also includes both sides of the correspondence with Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, one of Descartes's keenest disciples and shrewdest critics, which played a crucial role in the genesis of The Passions, as well as the first part of The Principles of Philosophy, which sets out the key positions of Descartes's philosophical system.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. (shrink)

Il s’agit d’une édition de fragments (titres et extraits de traités entrepris ou simplement projetés) et de commencements d’œuvres de Descartes qui nous sont parvenus par des sources variées mais parfaitement fiables, et dont Descartes lui-même a fait mention à un moment ou à un autre dans sa Correspondance ou dans le Discours de la méthode, mais qui n’ont jamais été pris en considération pour eux-mêmes. Nous avons réuni ces textes, nous les avons traduits quand ils étaient en latin ou (...) en néerlandais – tout en plaçant les originaux en regard –, présentés, datés et annotés historiquement et philosophiquement. Nous insistons sur la Licence en droit (placard découvert en 1987), l’Étude du bon sens, dont nous restituons l’objet et l’ensemble des fragments non identifiés jusqu’ici, et La recherche de la vérité, pour la première fois traduite en français à partir de sa version néerlandaise et datée de façon sûre. Ces textes ainsi réunis et datés présentent pour la première fois un Descartes inédit, travaillant en philosophe, et non seulement en savant, dans les deux décennies qui précèdent le Discours de la méthode. (shrink)

Der 'Discours de la Méthode', 1637 anonym publiziert, gilt als das erste und wirkmächtigste Manifest des neuzeitlichen Rationalismus und wissenschaftlichen Methodenbewusstseins. Beachtenswerter noch als die von Descartes angeführten vier Regeln selbst, die er als die Grundregeln für die methodische Erlangung wahrer Erkenntnis hervorhebt, erscheint aus heutiger Sicht die autobiographische Perspektive, aus der heraus der Autor das breite Publikum dafür gewinnen will, ihm auf seinem Wege zu folgen, der ihn zu der Entdeckung einer universalen wissenschaftlichen Methode und von lediglich auf die (...) autonome Vernunft gegründeten metaphysischen Prinzipien aller Wissenschaften geführt habe. Nach der 2011 erschienenen zweisprachigen Neuausgabe des 'Discours' (PhB 624), die sich – wie beinahe alle später verbreiteten Ausgaben – auf den Kerntext der Schrift beschränkt, also den 'Entwurf der Methode seine Vernunft richtig zu leiten und die Wahrheit in den Wissenschaften zu suchen', folgt jetzt die erste vollständige Ausgabe des Werks in deutscher Übersetzung, die auch die der Erstausgabe von 1637 angefügten drei Proben (Essais) der Anwendung dieser Methode auf Gegenstände der wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnis umfasst: die Versuche zur Dioptrik, zu den Meteoren und zur Geometrie. Das Ziel dieser Versuche ist nicht, den Lesern zu erklären, was Meteore sind oder wie Licht sich in durchsichtigen Medien verhält, sondern auf drei besonders »kuriosen« Gebieten, die stellvertretend angeführt werden, den Nachweis zu erbringen, dass diese Methode – als universale Methode – allen anderen überlegen ist: Die neue Methode ist universal, weil sie auf alle möglichen Gegenstände unseres Wissens angewendet werden kann. (shrink)

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed (...) as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile. (shrink)

Neue Musik ist eine Verkörperungsform von Aufklärungskultur und somit im akustischen Medium tätige Vernunft. René Thun erweist die Stichhaltigkeit dieser musikphilosophischen Perspektive, indem er statt von einer rein begrifflich deduzierten Ontologie vorrangig von einer medientheoretischen Pragmatik in ideengeschichtlicher Hinsicht ausgeht. Seine interdisziplinäre Verschränkung von Philosophie, Musik und Musikwissenschaft ermöglicht es, die kritischen Bezüge Neuer Musik zu Begriffen wie Aufklärung, Tradition, Natur sowie zur Politik, Anthropologie und Musikpädagogik zu explizieren. Der innovative Ansatz erlaubt es zudem, einen Ausblick auf eine mögliche (...) Musikkultur geben zu können. (shrink)

The coming of bioethics -- The coming of bioethicists -- "Choices on our conscience": the inauguration of the Kennedy Institute of Education -- "Hello, Dolly": bioethics in the media -- Celebrating bioethics and bioethicists -- Thinking socially and culturally in bioethics -- Reminiscences of observing participants -- Bioethics circles the globe -- Bioethics in France -- The development of bioethics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan -- The coming of the culture wars to American bioethics.

Presentation times of study words presented in the Deese/Roediger and McDermott (DRM) paradigm varied from 20 to 2000 ms per word in an attempt to replicate the false memory effect following extremely short presentations reported by . Both in a within-subjects design (Experiment 1) and in a between-subjects design (Experiment 2) subjects showed memory for studied words as well as a false memory effect for related critical lures in the 2000-ms condition. However, in the conditions with shorter presentation times (20 (...) ms in Experiment 1; 20 and 40 ms in Experiment 2) no memory for studied words, nor a false memory effect was found. We argue that there is at present no strong evidence supporting the claim for a nonconscious basis of the false memory effect. (shrink)

This study examines the hydrolysis of lignocellulose extracted from poultry manure for the purpose of investigating low-cost feedstocks for ethanol production while providing an alternative solid waste management strategy for agricultural livestock manures. Poultry manure underwent various pretreatments to enhance subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis including untreated, alkaline pretreatment with 0.5N KOH, drying, and grinding. The KOH-treated, dried, and grinded poultry manure yielded the highest glucose conversions. When poultry manure without pretreatment was hydrolyzed at 40°C with an enzyme loading 400 units/g feedstock, (...) 7.1 ± 0.3% was converted to glucose in 24 hours. This increased to 27.6 ± 1.2% when a KOH pretreatment followed by drying and grinding was applied. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy analyses were used to examine differences in the composition of the pretreated feedstock before and after enzymatic hydrolysis. These indicate that the cellulose content in pretreated poultry manure was removed during enzymatic hydrolysis. (shrink)

The book covers ways in which educators can develop social-emotional learning competencies of self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, relationship skills, and social awareness in themselves and then within their students.