Introduction.--Biographical notes.--General analysis of knowledge and the act.--Perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act.--Cosmology.--Value and the act.--Supplementary essays.

I set up two axiomatic theories of inductive support within the framework of Kolmogorovian probability theory. I call these theories ‘Popperian theories of inductive support’ because I think that their specific axioms express the core meaning of the word ‘inductive support’ as used by Popper (and, presumably, by many others, including some inductivists). As is to be expected from Popperian theories of inductive support, the main theorem of each of them is an anti-induction theorem, the stronger one of them saying, (...) in fact, that the relation of inductive support is identical with the empty relation. It seems to me that an axiomatic treatment of the idea(s) of inductive support within orthodox probability theory could be worthwhile for at least three reasons. Firstly, an axiomatic treatment demands from the builder of a theory of inductive support to state clearly in the form of specific axioms what he means by ‘inductive support’. Perhaps the discussion of the new anti-induction proofs of Karl Popper and David Miller would have been more fruitful if they had given an explicit definition of what inductive support is or should be. Secondly, an axiomatic treatment of the idea(s) of inductive support within Kolmogorovian probability theory might be accommodating to those philosophers who do not completely trust Popperian probability theory for having theorems which orthodox Kolmogorovian probability theory lacks; a transparent derivation of anti-induction theorems within a Kolmogorovian frame might bring additional persuasive power to the original anti-induction proofs of Popper and Miller, developed within the framework of Popperian probability theory. Thirdly, one of the main advantages of the axiomatic method is that it facilitates criticism of its products: the axiomatic theories. On the one hand, it is much easier than usual to check whether those statements which have been distinguished as theorems really are theorems of the theory under examination. On the other hand, after we have convinced ourselves that these statements are indeed theorems, we can take a critical look at the axioms—especially if we have a negative attitude towards one of the theorems. Since anti-induction theorems are not popular at all, the adequacy of some of the axioms they are derived from will certainly be doubted. If doubt should lead to a search for alternative axioms, sheer negative attitudes might develop into constructive criticism and even lead to new discoveries. -/- I proceed as follows. In section 1, I start with a small but sufficiently strong axiomatic theory of deductive dependence, closely following Popper and Miller (1987). In section 2, I extend that starting theory to an elementary Kolmogorovian theory of unconditional probability, which I extend, in section 3, to an elementary Kolmogorovian theory of conditional probability, which in its turn gets extended, in section 4, to a standard theory of probabilistic dependence, which also gets extended, in section 5, to a standard theory of probabilistic support, the main theorem of which will be a theorem about the incompatibility of probabilistic support and deductive independence. In section 6, I extend the theory of probabilistic support to a weak Popperian theory of inductive support, which I extend, in section 7, to a strong Popperian theory of inductive support. In section 8, I reconsider Popper's anti-inductivist theses in the light of the anti-induction theorems. I conclude the paper with a short discussion of possible objections to our anti-induction theorems, paying special attention to the topic of deductive relevance, which has so far been neglected in the discussion of the anti-induction proofs of Popper and Miller. (shrink)

Zwischen 1987 und 1994 sandte ich 20 Briefe an Karl Popper. Die meisten betrafen Fragen bezüglich seiner Antiinduktionsbeweise und seiner Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie, einige die organisatorische und inhaltliche Vorbereitung eines Fachgesprächs mit ihm in Kenly am 22. März 1989 (worauf hier nicht eingegangen werden soll), einige schließlich ganz oder in Teilen nicht-fachliche Angelegenheiten (die im vorliegenden Bericht ebenfalls unberücksichtigt bleiben). Von Karl Popper erhielt ich in diesem Zeitraum 10 Briefe. Der bedeutendste ist sein siebter, bestehend aus drei Teilen, geschrieben am 21., 22. (...) und 23. Oktober 1992, in dem er eine Vorform jener Definition der probabilistischen Unabhängigkeit entwickelte, die er 1994 im neuen Anhang *XX der 10. Auflage seiner Logik der Forschung (LdF) der wissenschaftstheoretischen Forschergemeinde vorstellte. Der berührendste ist sein letzter, geschrieben am 26. Juli 1994, in dem er trotz Erschöpfung mit Humor schildert, wie mühselig der Druck des Anhangs *XX verlaufen ist. Mein Bericht ist zugleich chronologisch und systematisch gegliedert: die ersten, vergleichsweise wenigen Briefe, großteils 1987 geschrieben, handeln von der Induktion; der große Rest, zeitlicher Schwerpunkt 1992, beschäftigt sich mit der Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie. Das Kapitel 1 über Induktion ist in vier Abschnitte unterteilt: 1.1 Das Popper/Miller-Argument: eine Nachkonstruktion, 1.2 Karl Poppers Brief vom 25.8.1987: Deduktive Stützung, 1.3 Karl Poppers Brief vom 29.9.1987: Nochmals zur deduktiven Stützung, 1.4 Echt induktive Stützung und Schwächung: zwei eigene Beweise. Das Kapitel 2 über Wahrscheinlichkeit ist ebenfalls in vier Abschnitte unterteilt: 2.1 Ein Mangel an Überschußgesetzen in der Logic of Scientific Discovery, 2.2 Probabilistische Unabhängigkeit, 2.3 Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie und Wahrscheinlichkeitssemantik, 2.4 Die neue Unabhängigkeitsdefinition im Anhang *XX der LdF. (shrink)

The basic idea by means of which Popper and Miller proved the non-existence of inductive probabilistic support in 1983/1985/1987, is used to prove that inductive probabilistic countersupport does exist. So it seems that after falsification has won over verification on the deductive side of science, countersupport wins over support on the inductive side.

This essay examines several recent philosophical attempts to define ‘disease’. Two prominent ones are considered in detail, an objective approach by Christopher Boorse and a normative approach by Caroline Whitbeck. Both are found to be inadequate for a variety of reasons, though Whitbeck's is superior because of her careful preliminary distinctions and because of its normative approach which is more nearly in accord with medical and lay usage. The paper concludes with a discussion of the nature of such efforts at (...) definition and suggests that their limitations are due both to the nature of our language and concepts in general, and to the nature of medicine in particular. It is the practical and changing character of medicine and its language that frustrates the efforts of philosophers to formulate such definitions. Keywords: disease, definition CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Trois parutions récentes sur la rhétorique aristolélicienne et médiévale ont fourni le contenu de cette recension. Il s'agit des livres suivants:Keith V. ERICKSON, Editor.Aristotle: The Classical Heritage of Rhetoric. Metuchen, New-Jersey, The Scarecrow Press, 1974; VIII-315pp. Joseph M. Miller, Michael H. PROSSER & Thomas W. Benson. Editors.Readings in Medieval Rhetoric. Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1973; XX-299pp.James J. MURPHY.Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. AHistory of Rhetorical Theory from saint Augustine to the Renaissance. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1974; XIV-395 pp.

Critical thinking and arguments -- What makes a good argument? -- Premises and conclusions -- Language -- Propositional arguments -- Categorical arguments -- Analogical arguments -- Statistical arguments -- Causal arguments -- Moral arguments -- Answers to selected exercises -- Reference guide.

Without question, Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, Hartshorne, is Daniel Dombrowski's most important and well-argued treatise to date within his growing, prolific literary corpus. Bringing his expertise on John Rawls's political thought to bear on the process thinking of A. N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, he explores commonalities of approach and ventures the interpretive hypothesis that Rawls is, at least broadly speaking, a process philosopher. He also argues that each of these philosophers appropriately shares the appellation “political liberal” (...) when that term is carefully defined. I find this strongly plausible. (shrink)

Richard Miller presents a bold new program for international justice. He argues for new standards of responsible conduct by governments, firms, and individuals in developed countries, to govern trade, investment, environmental policy, and the use of force. He offers an urgently needed strategy for moving humanity toward genuine global co-operation.

The article presents the conceptual groundwork for an understanding of the essentially improvisational dimension of human rationality. It aims to clarify how we should think about important concepts pertinent to central aspects of human practices, namely, the concepts of improvisation, normativity, habit, and freedom. In order to understand the sense in which human practices are essentially improvisational, it is first necessary to criticize misconceptions about improvisation as lack of preparation and creatio ex nihilo. Second, it is necessary to solve the (...) theoretical problems that derive from misunderstandings concerning the notions of normativity, habit, and freedom – misunderstandings that revolve around the idea that rationality is a form that is developed out of itself and thus works in a way similar to algorithms. One can only make sense of normativity, habit, and freedom if one understands that they all involve conflictual relationships with the world and with others, which in turn enables one to adequately take into account their constitutive connection to improvisation, properly understood. In outlining these conceptual connections, we want to prepare the foundations for an explanation of rational practices as improvisational practices. The article concludes by stating that human rational life is improvisatory because the conditions of human practice arise out of practice itself. (shrink)

In this paper, we develop an understanding of recognition in terms of individuals’ capacity for conflict. Our goal is to overcome various shortcomings that can be found in both the positive and negative conceptions of recognition. We start by analyzing paradigmatic instances of such conceptions—namely, those put forward by Axel Honneth and Judith Butler. We do so in order to show how both positions are inadequate in their elaborations of recognition in an analogous way: Both fail to make intelligible the (...) fundamental nexus between relations of recognition and individuals’ capacity for conflict. We then move on to reconsider aspects of Hegel's view of recognition—ones that, from our viewpoint, have been unjustly neglected in the debate about recognition: his focus on the constitution of relations of recognition in conflict and on the status of being an author of acts of recognition. On this basis, we then spell out in a more systematic way what we take to be a more convincing conception of recognition. This puts us in the position to gesture at some consequences of this conception in practical contexts, above all with regard to the justification, role and structure of political institutions. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.3 (2001) 57-66 [Access article in PDF] Literary Study Among the Ruins J. Hillis Miller It must be remembered and squarely faced, though it is difficult to do so for a lover of literature like me, that in spite of the lip service paid these days to literature's authority by politicians, the media, and educationists, fewer and fewer people, in Europe and America at least, actually spend (...) much time reading "literature" in the old-fashioned sense of canonical works—Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and the rest, in English literature. Literature has been granted enormous authority in our culture, but though that authority may still be tacitly or even explicitly acknowledged, for example by the media, no candid observer can doubt that it is no longer so pragmatically operative. If the books just stay there on the shelves, their authority is only potential. They must be read to be performatively effective. The joke about how George W. Bush's presidential library has been destroyed, both books in it, has an uncannily plausible ring. He has better things to do than read literature.If you are watching a movie or television or playing a computer game or surfing the Internet, you cannot at the same time be reading Shakespeare. People spend, all the statistical evidence suggests, more and more time doing the former. Poetry, it might be argued, does little legislating these days, unacknowledged or otherwise. Fewer and fewer people are decisively influenced by such reading as they do. Radio, television, cinema, popular music, and now the Internet—these are more decisive in shaping citizens' ethos and values, as well as in filling their minds and feelings with imaginary worlds. It is these virtual realities rather than strictly literary ones that have most performative efficacy these days to generate people's feelings, behavior, and value judgments. To speak of literature's authority is already to speak, to some degree, of an historical epoch that began in the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century in Europe with the rise of modern democracies and their concomitant print cultures. That epoch is now perhaps rapidly vanishing, whatever teachers of literature say, write, or do. Nevertheless, if someone happens for some reason to pick up Hamlet, or Middlemarch, or Yeats's poems, these works may still exert their magic power. Literature still has great authority over me and over no doubt many others. Just what effects are the globalization of the university and the new regime of telecommunications having on literary study and on the social role of literature itself?Jacques Derrida, in a striking passage written by one or another of the protagonists of La carte postale (The Post Card), says the following:... an entire epoch of so-called literature, if not all of it, cannot survive a certain technological regime of telecommunications (in this respect the political regime is secondary). Neither can philosophy, or psychoanalysis. Or love letters.... Refound here the American student with whom we had coffee last Saturday, the one who was looking for a thesis [End Page 57] subject (comparative literature), I suggested to her something on the telephone in the literature of the 20th century (and beyond), starting with, for example, the telephone lady in Proust or the figure of the American operator, and then asking the question of the effects of the most advanced telematics [la télématique la plus avancée] on whatever would still remain of literature. I spoke to her about microprocessors and computer terminals, she seemed somewhat disgusted [avait l'air un peu dégoutée]. She told me that she still loved literature (me too, I answered her, mais si, mais si). Curious to know what she understood by this. [Derrida, La carte postale 212, 219; Derrida Post Card 197, 204]What Derrida or rather his protagonist in La carte postale says in the citation I have made is truly frightening, at least to a lover of literature like me or like the protagonist's hapless interlocutor, the American graduate student in comparative literature who was looking for a dissertation topic... (shrink)

How is art both distinct and different from the rest of human life, while also mattering in and for it? This central yet overlooked question in contemporary philosophy of art is at the heart of Georg Bertram's new aesthetic. Drawing on the resources of diverse philosophical traditions – analytic philosophy, French philosophy, and German post-Kantian philosophy – his book offers a systematic account of art as a human practice. One that remains connected to the whole of life.

George W. S. Bailey. prove that mental phenomena in general are not self- intimating in sense (3). Armstrong's argument is based on two claims: (a) Introspective awareness and its objects are distinct existences. (b) If introspective awareness ...

The concept of second nature promises to provide an explanation of how nature and reason can be reconciled. But the concept is laden with ambiguity. On the one hand, second nature is understood as that which binds together all cognitive activities. On the other hand, second nature is conceived of as a kind of nature that can be changed by cognitive activities. The paper tries to investigate this ambiguity by distinguishing a Kantian conception of second nature from a Hegelian conception. (...) It argues that the idea of a transformation from a being of first nature into a being of second nature that stands at the heart of the Kantian conception is mistaken. The Hegelian conception demonstrates that the transformation in question takes place within second nature itself. Thus, the Hegelian conception allows us to understand the way in which second nature is not structurally isomorphic with first nature: It is a process of ongoing selftransformation that is not primarily determined by how the world is, but rather by commitments out of which human beings are bound to the open future. (shrink)

How should the task of containing the global greenhouse effect be divided internationally, especially as between developed and developing countries? It is hard to overestimate the importance of this question. When George W. Bush, in agreement with a 95-0 vote of the U.S. Senate, refused to sign on even to the utterly inadequate constraints of Kyoto, he did not affirm junk science; he rejected an arrangement that "exempts 80% of the world, including major population centers such as China and (...) India ..."1 It is also hard to be too cynical about the interests and powers that will largely shape any ultimate greenhouse regime. Above all, U.S. political leaders will (in effect, whatever they say to others and to themselves) resist arrangements that help humanity but advance the time when the rising star of Chinese power overtakes declining U.S. power. Still, the growing social movement concerned with the greenhouse effect can have some impact, by increasing the reputational costs of immoral choices. I will try to contribute to this supplement to power politics and disasters by defending a view of cogent reasoning over the fair division of tasks among the world's people in responding to the challenge of global climate change. (shrink)

Hegel is an immensely important yet difficult philosopher. His Philosophy of Mind is one of the main pillars of his thought. Michael Inwood, highly respected for his previous work on Hegel, presents this central work to the modern reader in an accurate new translation supported by a philosophically sophisticated editorial introduction and elucidating scholarly commentary.

El concepto de segunda naturaleza promete proporcionar una explicación de cómo la naturaleza y la razón se pueden reconciliar. Pero dicho concepto está cargado de ambigüedad: se entiende como aquello que une todas las actividades cognitivas y se concibe como un tipo de naturaleza que puede ser modificada por actividades cognitivas. Se intenta investigar esta ambigüedad distinguiendo una concepción kantiana de otra hegeliana. Se sostiene que la idea de una transformación de un ser de prim- era naturaleza en un ser (...) de segunda naturaleza, que se encuentra en el corazón de la concepción kantiana, es errónea. (shrink)