Pars I, 1- De subiecto virtutum cardinalium.

Based on a formal analysis of the operations Merge and Move, I provide a computational answer to the question why Move might be an integral part of language. The answer is rooted in the framework of subregular complexity, which reveals that Merge is most succinctly analyzed in terms of the formal class TSL. Any cognitive device that can handle this level of complexity also possesses sufficient resources for Move. In fact, Merge and Move are remarkably similar instances of TSL. Consequently, (...) Move has little computational or conceptual cost attached to it and comes essentially for free in any grammar that expresses Merge as compactly as possible. (shrink)

In this study, we investigated endorsement of two types of prescriptive views of aging, namely active aging and altruistic disengagement. The study comprised a large international sample of middle-aged and older adults, covering the age range from 40 to 90 years. Participants rated their personal endorsement of prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement targeting older adults in general. Findings showed that endorsement was higher for prescriptions for active aging than for prescriptions for altruistic disengagement. Age groups in the (...) sample differed regarding their endorsement of both prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement with older adults showing higher endorsement than middle-aged adults did. Prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement related positively to each other and to the superordinate social belief that older adults should not become a burden, which attests to their functional similarity. In contrast, prescriptive views of active aging and altruistic disengagement were associated with psychological adjustment in opposite ways, with endorsement of active aging being related to better adjustment outcomes such as life satisfaction and subjective health. Our findings highlight the internalization of prescriptive views of aging in older people and their implications for their development and well-being. (shrink)

Georg Lukac's most recent work of literary criticism, on the Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn, hails the Russian author as a major force in redirecting socialist realism toward the level it once occupied in the 1920s when Soviet writers portrayed the turbulent transition to socialist society.In the first essay Lukacs compares the novella One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich to short pieces by "bourgeois" writers Conrad and Hemingway and explains the nature of Solzhenitsyn's criticism of the Stalinist period (...) implied in the situation, characters, and their interaction. He also briefly describes Matriona's House, An Incident at the Kretchetovka Station, and For the Good of the Cause -- stories that depict various aspects of life in Stalinist Russia.In the second, longer section, Lukacs greets Solzhenitsyn's novels The First Circle and Cancer Ward, which were published outside Russia, as representing "a new high point in contemporary world literature." These books mark Solzhenitsyn as heir to the best tendencies in postrevolutionary socialist realism and to the literary tradition of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Moreover, from the point of view of the development of the novel, Lukacs finds the Russian author to be a successful exponent of innovative methods originating in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain.The central problem of contemporary socialist realism is a predominant theme in the book: how to come to critical terms with the legacy of Stalin. The enthusiasm with which Lukacs acclaims Solzhenitsyn will not surprise those who have followed his persistent refusal to endorse the so-called socialist realist writers of the Stalinist era. He outlines the aspects of Solzhenitsyn's creative method that allows him to cross the ideological boudaries of the Stalinist tradition, yet he finds a basic pessimism in Solzhenitsyn's work that makes him a "plebeian" rather than a socialist writer.Of Ivan Denisovich and the future of socialist realist literature, Lukacs urges: "If socialist writers were to reflect upon their task, if they were again to feel an artistic responsibiliity towards the great problems of the present, powerful forces could be unleashed leading in the direction of relevant socialist literature. In this process of transformation and renewal, which signifies an abrupt departure from the socialist realism of the Stalin era, the role of landmark on the road to the future falls to Solzhenitsyn's story.". (shrink)

Within collective epistemology, there is a class of theories that understand the epistemic status of collective attitude ascriptions, such as ‘the college union knows that the industrial action is going to plan’, or ‘the jury justifiedly believes that the suspect is guilty’, as saying that a sufficient subset of group member attitudes have the relevant epistemic status. In this paper, I will demonstrate that these summativist approaches to collective epistemology are incompatible with epistemic permissivism, the doctrine that a single body (...) of evidence may rationalize multiple doxastic attitudes. In particular, I will make use of epistemic permissivism to provide a general recipe for generating so-called divergence cases, which demonstrate situations in which rationality requires group-level and member-level attitudes to diverge. I will call this class of cases permissive divergence cases. While other divergence cases have been discussed in the literature, permissive divergence cases prove themselves to be less susceptible to many of the worries raised against their competitors, while being directly built on an often-defended epistemological thesis. (shrink)

Issues of reliability are claiming center-stage in the epistemology of machine learning. This paper unifies different branches in the literature and points to promising research directions, whilst also providing an accessible introduction to key concepts in statistics and machine learning – as far as they are concerned with reliability.

Big Ideas for Little Kids includes everything a teacher, a parent, or a college student needs to teach philosophy to elementary school children from picture books. Written in a clear and accessible style, the book explains why it is important to allow young children access to philosophy during primary-school education. Wartenberg also gives advice on how to construct a "learner-centered" classroom, in which children discuss philosophical issues with one another as they respond to open-ended questions by saying whether they agree (...) or disagree with what others have said. (shrink)

Cette étude essaye d’établir qu’il y a deux notions très différentes de « fondation » à l’œuvre dans les Recherches logiques de Husserl. Dans la IIIème Recherche, où le terme est formellement introduit, lorsqu’il se demande quels sont les contenus qui peuvent exister d’une manière autonome (indépendants) et lesquels peuvent exister uniquement en tant que moments d’autre chose (dépendants), Husserl suit ce que j’appelle un « modèle ontologique ». Selon ce modèle, le concret possède une priorité sur à l’abstrait qui (...) est fondé en lui. Dans la VIème Recherche, en revanche, Husserl s’oriente principalement sur un « modèle gnoséologique » qui voit le complexe comme fondé sur ce qui est relativement simple, étant donné que les expériences d’ordre supérieur (telles les perceptions de types d’objets plus complexes) sont « fondées sur » des expériences plus simples, bien qu’elles ne puissent pas y être réduites. L’exemple principal ici est celui des intuitions catégoriales : fondées sur les intuitions sensibles, elles n’y sont pas réductibles. Mais cette distinction entre deux sens différents du terme de « fondation » peut également nous aider à mieux comprendre de nombreuses thèses husserliennes plutôt controversées. Par exemple, elle peut nous permettre de mieux comprendre dans quelle mesure faire l’expérience d’un être humain comme un tout se fonde sur l’expérience d’un corps physique, et cela même si l’étant que nous rencontrons inclut à la fois des aspects corporels et des aspects spirituels – les deux étant vus, d’une manière essentielle, comme des moments de cette unique personne qui fait l’objet de notre expérience. (shrink)

Both in scholarship on the Weimar Republic and in historical research in general, many conceptions of ‘crisis’ tend to remain vague and difficult to operationalize. These operational defects of the concept of crisis arise inevitably, we argue, from the concept’s constitutive link to human perception on the one hand and from its subsumption of complex interconnections of historical processes within different subsystems on the other. Frequently today, in both ordinary and historiographical usage, this basic openness of the concept of crisis (...) is foreclosed when it is deployed with a solely negative connotation of ‘downfall’ and ‘decline’, or of something being thrown into question or jeopardy. Such uses obscure a way in which a crisis can evoke not only the pessimistic sense of a threat to the old order but also the optimistic scenario of a chance for renewal. A one-sidedly negative understanding of crisis as prelude to calamity, we argue here, is problematic for historical research for two reasons. Firstly, it obscures comprehension of the consciousness of actors in the relevant period who at any particular moment can have had no prior knowledge of the crisis’s outcome. Secondly, it tends to reify the relevant crisis and to occlude its basic character as something narratively constructed in the accounts of both contemporaries and subsequent historiography. (shrink)

Die Evolutionstheorie hat sich in den letzten 150 Jahren von einer speziellen naturwissenschaftlichen zur universellen wissenschaftlichen Theorie entwickelt.

In kritischer Distanz zu etablierten religiosen Institutionen suchen sie auf ihre spezifische Weise Lebenssinn zu generieren. Insoweit sind sie selbst zentrale Akteure der modernen Religionsgeschichte.

v. 1. Editorial introduction -- v. 2. The English and Latin texts (i) -- v. 3. The English and Latin texts (ii).

Looking back on it, it seems almost incredible that so many equally educated, equally sincere compatriots and contemporaries, all drawing from the same limited stock of evidence, should have reached so many totally different conclusions---and always with complete certainty.

Thomas Reid, the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of ideas (...) propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

This article discusses the text of seven passages in the etymological books 5–7 of Varro's De lingua Latina, and proposes new conjectures for all of them. The discussions are of direct relevance to the interpretation of fragments and testimonies of lost Latin authors quoted by Varro: the scenic poets Naevius, Pacuvius, Caecilius Statius, Juventius and Atilius, and the grammarian Aurelius Opillus. The starting point for the discussions is the new Oxford edition of Varro's De lingua Latina by Wolfgang de Melo.

This book addresses the endangerment of children’s bodies in affluent societies. Bodily integrity is an important part of a child’s physical and mental well-being, but it can also be violated through various threats during childhood; not only affecting physical health but also causing mental damage and leading to distortions in the development of the self. The authors give an account of three areas, which present different serious dangers: (1) body and eating, (2) body and sexuality, and (3) body and violence. (...) Through an in-depth examination of the available theoretical and empirical knowledge, as well as a thorough ethical analysis, the central injustices in the mentioned areas are identified and the agents with responsibilities towards children displayed. The authors conclude by providing invaluable insight into the necessity of an ethical basis for policies to safeguard children and their bodies. (shrink)

Insight problems are difficult because the initially activated knowledge hinders successful solving. The crucial information needed for a solution is often so far removed that gaining access to it through restructuring leads to the subjective experience of “Aha!”. Although this assumption is shared by most insight theories, there is little empirical evidence for the connection between the necessity of restructuring an incorrect problem representation and the Aha! experience. Here, we demonstrate a rare case where previous knowledge facilitates the solving of (...) insight problems but reduces the accompanying Aha! experience. Chess players were more successful than non‐chess players at solving the mutilated checkerboard insight problem, which requires retrieval of chess‐related information about the color of the squares. Their success came at a price, since they reported a diminished Aha! experience compared to controls. Chess players’ problem‐solving ability was confined to that particular problem, since they struggled to a similar degree to non‐chess players to solve another insight problem (the eight‐coin problem), which does not require chess‐related information for a solution. Here, chess players and non‐chess players experienced the same degree of insight. (shrink)

In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other.

Thomas Reid , the Scottish natural and moral philosopher, was one of the founding members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society and a significant figure in the Scottish Enlightenment. Reid believed that common sense should form the foundation of all philosophical inquiry. He criticised the sceptical philosophy propagated by his fellow Scot David Hume and the Anglo-Irish bishop George Berkeley, who asserted that the external world did not exist outside the human mind. Reid was also critical of the theory of (...) ideas propagated by Locke and Descartes, arguing that it was incompatible with physical and experiential facts. For Reid, our senses demonstrate that the external world must exist, and this work is organised in chapters examining each of the senses in turn. The book, based on his lectures, was first published in 1764 when Reid was a regent professor at King's College, Aberdeen, and was reissued in 1818. (shrink)

_Focused on existentialism, this issue explores current writers, thinkers, and texts affiliated with the movement_ In 1948, _Yale French Studies_ devoted its inaugural issue to existentialism. This anniversary issue responds seventy years later. In recent years, new critical and theoretical approaches have reconfigured existentialism and refreshed perspectives on the philosophical, literary, and stylistic movement. This special issue restores the writers, thinkers, and texts of the movement to their subversive strength. In so doing, it illustrates existentialism’s present relevance, revealing how the (...) concerns of the past urgently bristle into our own times. (shrink)

This paper is an exposition and evaluation of the Agustín Rayo's views about the epistemology and metaphysics of mathematics, as they are presented in his book The Construction of Logical Space.

In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on folk moral realism. G1 and G2 require (...) studies’ answer choices to be as metaethically comprehensive as methodologically feasible. G3 and G4 prevent fallacious inferences from intuitions about related debates. G5 and G6 limit first-order moral and epistemic influences. G7 address studies’ instructions. And G8 and G9 suggest tests of important psychological presuppositions. (shrink)

The development and use of large and dynamic health data repositories designed to support research pose challenges to traditional informed consent models. We used semi-structured interviewing to elicit diverse research stakeholders' views of a model of consent appropriate to participation in initiatives that entail collection, long-term storage, and undetermined future research use of multiple types of health data. We demonstrate that, when considering health data repositories, research stakeholders replace a concept of consent as informed with one in which consent is (...) engaged. In engaged consent, a participant's ongoing relationship with a repository serves as a substitute or adjunct to information exchange at enrollment. We detail research stakeholders' views of the risks of engaged consent and suggest questions for further study about engagement and consent procedures in initiatives that aim to store data for future unspecified research purposes. (shrink)

This volume is a study of the influence of Timaeus on the development of Western cosmology in three axial periods of European culture: Late Antiquity, Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In recent years, a plethora of high-profile scientific publications has been reporting about machine learning algorithms outperforming clinicians in medical diagnosis or treatment recommendations. This has spiked interest in deploying relevant algorithms with the aim of enhancing decision-making in healthcare. In this paper, we argue that instead of straightforwardly enhancing the decision-making capabilities of clinicians and healthcare institutions, deploying machines learning algorithms entails trade-offs at the epistemic and the normative level. Whereas involving machine learning might improve the accuracy of medical (...) diagnosis, it comes at the expense of opacity when trying to assess the reliability of given diagnosis. Drawing on literature in social epistemology and moral responsibility, we argue that the uncertainty in question potentially undermines the epistemic authority of clinicians. Furthermore, we elucidate potential pitfalls of involving machine learning in healthcare with respect to paternalism, moral responsibility and fairness. At last, we discuss how the deployment of machine learning algorithms might shift the evidentiary norms of medical diagnosis. In this regard, we hope to lay the grounds for further ethical reflection of the opportunities and pitfalls of machine learning for enhancing decision-making in healthcare. (shrink)

Thomas Reid is now recognized as one of the towering figures of the Enlightenment. Best known for his published writings on epistemology and moral theory, he was also an accomplished mathematician and natural philosopher, as an earlier volume of his manuscripts edited by Paul Wood for the Edinburgh Reid Edition, Thomas Reid on the Animate Creation, has shown. The Correspondence of Thomas Reid collects all of the known letters to and from Reid in a fully annotated form. (...) Letters already published by Sir William Hamilton and others have been reedited, and roughly half of the letters included appear in print for the first time. Writing in 1802, Reid's disciple and biographer Dugald Stewart doubted that Reid's correspondence &"would be generally interesting.&" This collection proves otherwise, for the letters illuminate virtually every aspect of Reid's life and career and, in some instances, provide us with invaluable evidence about activities otherwise undocumented in his manuscripts or published works. Through his correspondence we can trace Reid's relations with contemporaries such as David Hume and his colleagues at both King's College, Aberdeen, and the University of Glasgow, as well as his engagement with the most controversial philosophical, scientific, and political issues of his day. If anything, the letters assembled here serve as the starting point for understanding Reid and his place in the Enlightenment. (shrink)

Virginia Held, best known for her landmark book Rights and Goods, has made an indelible mark on the fields of ethics, feminist philosophy, and social and political thought. Her impact on a generation of feminist thinkers is unrivaled and she has been at the forfront of discussions about the way in which an ethic of care can affect social and political matters. These new essays by leading contemporary philosophers range over all of these areas. While each stands alone, the essays (...) together demonstrate the lasting value of Held's work to the field. Includes an afterword by Held. (shrink)

Insight problems are likely to trigger an initial, inappropriate mental representation, which needs to be restructured in order to find the solution. Despite the widespread theoretical assumption t...