Does commercial speech deserve the same freedom from governmental interference as do noncommercial forms of expression? Examination of this question forces a reappraisal of the grounds upon which freedom of expression rests. I urge an analysis of those grounds which founds freedom of speech upon the requirements of individual autonomy over against society. I then apply the autonomy analysis to commercial expression by examining the empirical features which distinguish commercial forms of expression. Some such features - e.g., triviality — have (...) been cited by others as justification for limiting the freedom accorded commercial speech, but I reject the power of those features to limit freedom of expression. Instead, I identify three features of commercial expression which are relevant to the task: resiliency (coupled with potential for abuse), action-orientation, and intimate connection with conventional commercial structures. I discuss the implications of these features for legitimizing governmental restriction of freedom in commercial expression, with the general conclusion that such restriction must be more severely limited than is commonly thought. (shrink)

Examination of several accounts regarding the nature of moral responsibility allows the extraction of a conceptual core common to all of them. Relying on that core conception of moral responsibility, the paper explores what human life without moral responsibility would be like. That exploration establishes that many robust forms of human relationship and nonmoral normativity could continue, absent moral responsibility, even if moral responsibility were abandoned on incompatibilist grounds. Much more importantly, it also establishes, contra Waller and Pereboom, that only (...) some forms of morality—so-called “behavioral” forms—remain possible without moral responsibility. The paper argues that normative moral approaches that take into account agent intentions in order to assess the moral status of action cannot be applied without moral responsibility of agents. Thus, morality without responsibility needs to be behavioral, not consequentialist, as has often been thought. (shrink)

We argue that the epistemic theory of vagueness cannot adequately justify its key tenet-that vague predicates have precisely bounded extensions, of which we are necessarily ignorant. Nor can the theory adequately account for our ignorance of the truth values of borderline cases. Furthermore, we argue that Williamson’s promising attempt to explicate our understanding of vague language on the model of a certain sort of “inexact knowledge” is at best incomplete, since certain forms of vagueness do not fit Williamson’s model, and (...) in fact fit an alternative model. Finally, we point out that a certain kind of irremediable inexactitude postulated by physics need not be-and is not commonly-interpreted as epistemic. Thus, there are aspects of contemporary science that do not accord well with the epistemicist outlook. (shrink)

In their paper “Vagueness, Ignorance, and Margins for Error” Kenton Machina and Harry Deutsch criticize the epistemic theory of vagueness. This paper answers their objections. The main issues discussed are: the relation between meaning and use; the principle of bivalence; the ontology of vaguely specified classes; the proper form of margin for error principles; iterations of epistemic operators and semantic compositionality; the relation or lack of it between quantum mechanics and theories of vagueness.

Causal models of agents have been used to analyse the safety aspects of machine learning systems. But identifying agents is non-trivial -- often the causal model is just assumed by the modeler without much justification -- and modelling failures can lead to mistakes in the safety analysis. This paper proposes the first formal causal definition of agents -- roughly that agents are systems that would adapt their policy if their actions influenced the world in a different way. From this we (...) derive the first causal discovery algorithm for discovering agents from empirical data, and give algorithms for translating between causal models and game-theoretic influence diagrams. We demonstrate our approach by resolving some previous confusions caused by incorrect causal modelling of agents. (shrink)

What is a moment? While Heidegger considers the moment hermeneutically in the first division of Being and Time, he abandons the thoroughly hermeneutic account in an ecstatic analysis of time in the second. In this paper, I explore the moment in the direction of hermeneutic temporality and finite comprehensibility. I begin by describing how Heidegger’s ecstatic analysis by its very nature forecloses the possibility of the average, everyday constitution of the moment. I then attempt a broader recovery of hermeneutic temporality, (...) specifically instantiated in Gadamer’s temporality of the festival. In so doing, I hope to re-establish the Augenblick as the moment of finite comprehensibility. (shrink)

What is a moment? While Heidegger considers the moment (Augenblick) hermeneutically in the first division of Being and Time, he abandons the thoroughly hermeneutic account in an ecstatic analysis of time in the second. In this paper, I explore the moment in the direction of hermeneutic temporality and finite comprehensibility. I begin by describing how Heidegger’s ecstatic analysis by its very nature forecloses the possibility of the average, everyday constitution of the moment. I then attempt a broader recovery of hermeneutic (...) temporality, specifically instantiated in Gadamer’s temporality of the festival. In so doing, I hope to re-establish the Augenblick as the moment of finite comprehensibility. (shrink)

Management plays an important role in reinforcing ethics in organizations. To support this aim, managers must use incentive and goal programs in ethical ways. This study examines experimentally the potential ethical costs associated with incentive-driven and goal-induced employee behavior from a managerial perspective. In a quasi-experimental setting, 243 MBA students with significant professional work experience evaluated a hypothetical employee’s ethical behavior under incentive pay systems modeled on a business case. In the role of the employee’s manager, participants evaluated the ethicality (...) of the employee’s incentive-driven and goal-induced ethical/unethical behavior and the outcomes of behavior, with consequences that were either favorable or unfavorable to the organization. The results indicated that participants discounted the ethical considerations of incentive-driven and goal-induced behavior when consequences were favorable to the organization. Participants’ morals and outcome orientations were also significantly related to their ethical judgments and intentions to intervene. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

The Barrett and Arntzenius (1999) decision paradox involves unbounded wealth, the relationship between period-wise and sequence-wise dominance, and an infinite-period split-minute setting. A version of their paradox involving bounded (in fact, constant) wealth decisions is presented, along with a version involving no decisions at all. The common source of paradox in Barrett–Arntzenius and these other examples is the indeterminacy of their infinite-period split-minute setting.

Most histories of psychology weave a story around the rise of objective methods of investigation and the decline of subjective introspection. This paper sidesteps such disciplinary stories by describing self-scrutiny as a practice that moved through a variety of cultural, social and technological contexts in early twentieth-century America. Edmund Jacobson's technique of 'progressive relaxation' is offered as a case in point. Jacobson, a Chicago clinician, developed this cure for nervousness out of his earlier research under E. B. Titchener, an experimental (...) psychologist at Cornell University. Like Titchener's method of 'experimental introspection ', progressive relaxation was a laboratory-based activity designed to transform the practitioner's sensibilities through the fastidious repetition of simple tasks. But while experimental psychologists ultimately rejected introspection as the core of their disciplinary project, the American public embraced progressive relaxation as a practical technique for mastering the new conditions of modernity. (shrink)

Classification of sciences; Moslem scholars; Africa, North.

This is a book review of The Michel Henry Reader, pubished in 2019, and edited by Scott Davidson and Frederic Seyler. It summarizes the basic outlook of Henry's radical phenomenology of life and notes some of its implications.

Nuclear intermolecular duplexes appear to be a general feature of nucleated cells. Most of these duplexes are formed between large RNA as well as between large and small RNA molecules. A significant portion of the large molecules belong to a special class of RNA that is restricted to the nucleus and, therefore, not designated for export. These molecules are assembled with proteins and form a structure of a higher order. The possibility that these molecules and a set of small nuclear (...) RNAs are components of a complex machine, “the transportosome”, which functions in nucleocytoplasmic traffic, is discussed. (shrink)

In Practicing Safe Sects F. LeRon Shults provides scientific and philosophical resources for having “the talk” about religious reproduction: where do gods come from – and what are the costs of bearing them in our culturally pluralistic, ecologically fragile environment?

Ethics for Enemies comprises three original philosophical essays on torture, terrorism, and war. F. M. Kamm deploys ethical theory in her challenging new treatments of these most controversial practical issues. First she considers the nature of torture and the various occasions on which it could occur, in order to determine why it might be wrong to torture a wrongdoer held captive, even if this were necessary to save his victims. In the second essay she considers what makes terrorism wrong--whether it (...) is the intention to harm civilians, rather than harm to them being 'collateral damage,' or something else--and whether terrorism is always wrong. The third essay discusses whether having a right reason, in the sense of a right intention, is necessary in order for a war to be just. Kamm then examines ways in which the harms of war can be proportional to the achievement of the just cause and other goods that war can bring about, so as to make the declaration of war permissible. (shrink)

A new English translation of Schelling’s unfinished magnum opus, complete with a contextualizing introduction by the translator.

First published in 1818, The World as Will and Representation contains Schopenhauer's entire philosophy, ranging through epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and action, aesthetics and philosophy of art, to ethics, the meaning of life and the philosophy of religion, in an attempt to account for the world in all its significant aspects. It gives a unique and influential account of what is and is not of value in existence, the striving and pain of the human condition and the possibility of (...) deliverance from it. This new translation of the first volume of what later became a two-volume work reflects the eloquence and power of Schopenhauer's prose and renders philosophical terms accurately and consistently. It offers an introduction, glossary of names and bibliography, and succinct editorial notes, including notes on the revisions of the text which Schopenhauer made in 1844 and 1859. (shrink)

Nearly all of the ways philosophers currently attempt to define the terms ‘representation’ and ‘function’ undermine the scientific application of those terms by rendering the scientific explanations in which they occur vacuous. Since this is unacceptable, we must develop analyses of these terms that avoid this vacuity. Robert Cummins argues in this fashion in Representations, Targets, and Attitudes. He accuses ‘use theories’ of representational content of generating vacuous explanations, claims that nearly all current theories of representational content are use theories, (...) and offers a non-use theory of representational content which avoids explanatory vacuity. One task I undertake in this article is to develop an alternative non-use theory which avoids an objection fatal to that theory. (shrink)

Part novella, part philosophy, Clara was Schelling's most popular work during his lifetime, and appears here in English for the first time.

Portraits of Wittgenstein is a major collection of memoirs and reflections on one of the most influential and yet elusive personalities in the history of modern philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Featuring a wealth of illuminating and profound insights into Wittgenstein's extraordinary life, this unique collection reveals Wittgenstein's character and power of personality more vividly and comprehensively than ever before. With portraits from more than seventy-five figures, Portraits of Wittgenstein brings together the personal recollections of philosophers, students, friends and acquaintances, including Bertrand (...) Russell, G. E. Moore, F. R. Leavis, A. J. Ayer, Karl Popper, Friedrich von Hayek, G. H. von Wright, Rush Rhees, Freeman Dyson, G. E. M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, Mary Midgley and Mary Warnock. These authors testify to the life-long influence Wittgenstein had on the lives of those he met. Their fascinating memoirs, reflections and commentaries, often at odds with each other, reveal Wittgenstein's kindness, and how much genuine friendship meant to him, as well as his suffering and despair. They show too how the philosopher's ruthless honesty and uncompromising integrity often resulted in stern advice and harsh rebukes to friends and foes alike. Now available in a single, revised and updated volume, Portraits of Wittgenstein includes new selections, revised contributions, photographs, maps and introductory overviews that provide historical context to Wittgenstein's relationships with his intellectual and social circle. This collection of valuable and hard-to-find material is an indispensable resource for scholars and students of the life and work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Globalization; Islamic countries; Arab countries.

Альтернативные определения, излагаемые в книге, реализуют возможности продуктивного мышления, являются источником смысла творческих исканий. Для студентов, преподавателей вузов и всех тех, кто интересуется человекознанием.

Preface -- Prolegomenon : Hayek's three unsettling theses -- Beyond human nature -- Beyond moral justification -- Beyond human governance -- Three enquiries on the open society -- The rise of a normative species -- A natural history of moral order -- The "starting point" -- The egalitarian revolution -- Self-interest, reciprocity and altruism -- Internalized, enforced, social rules -- The other side of morality -- Cultural evolution -- Part I : the rise and fall of inequality -- A complex (...) moral species -- The diversity and self-organized complexity -- Liberalism and the open society -- Understanding diversity -- Autocatalytic diversity -- Diversity and complexity -- Too much complexity? -- The morality of self-organization -- The social contract -- A self-organization model -- Moral diversity In the open society -- Part II: the complexities of self-governance -- Self-governance -- Macro control -- Macro structure -- Strategic dilemmas and polycentricity -- Meso-level goal pursuit -- Sectoral policy -- Self-governance from the bottom-up : simplifying the problems of governance -- Our moral nature and governance in the open society -- Liberal democracy -- Epilogue -- Appendix A -- Appendix B. (shrink)