At the end of his writing, “La Différance,” Jacques Derrida deconstructs his text by taking on an authoritative rhetorical tone. Reflecting back on his discussion of metaphysics, Derrida announces that “(t)here will be no unique name, even if it were the name of Being”. And then he takes a surprising phenomeno-logical turn and advocates a privileged attitude or disposition towards his reflection:And we must think this without nostalgia, that is, outside the myth of a purely maternal or paternal language, a (...) lost native country of thought. On the contrary, we must affirm this, in the sense in which Nietzsche puts affirmation into play, in a certain laughter and a certain step of the dance. (shrink)

Mexican thinkers in recent generations have sought a philosophy emphasizing the ends of human activity as contrasted with one stressing means or techniques. According to Professor Weinstein's interpretation, an integrated perspective toward all aspects of the human condition characterizes Mexican philosophy and social thought, incorporating close attention to the aesthetic dimension of human experience and the tensions of human existence. The distinctive Mexican world-view provides a needed supplement to the analytical approach of North American philosophy and Marxist determinism.

The human mind has proven uniquely capable of unraveling untold mysteries, and yet, the mind is fundamentally challenged when it turns back on itself to ask what it itself is. How do we conceive of mind in this postmodern world; how can we use philosophical anthropology to understand mind and its functions? While philosophers and social scientists have made important contributions to our understanding of mind, existing theories are insufficient for penetrating the complexities of mind in the twenty-first century. Mind (...) Unmasked: A Political Phenomenology of Consciousness draws on twentieth-century philosophies of consciousness to explain the phenomenon of mind in the broadest sense of the word. Michael A. Weinstein and Timothy M. Yetman develop a thought provoking discourse that moves beyond the nature of the human experience of mind at both the individual and interpersonal levels and present a meditation on life in the contemporary world of global mass-mediated human culture. (shrink)

I American Philosophy as a Form of Modern Philosophy The essence of modern philosophy is the expression of an image of human existence and of its major ...

Michael Weinstein redefines the debates over modernism/postmodernism that dominate contemporary cultural studies, offering a daring and original alternative. He argues that the current era is neither a continuation of modernity nor a postmodern rupture, but a period of 'post-civilized modernity.'.

In Meaning and Appreciation, Michael Weinstein traces the history of the failure of historical meaning, showing how the disappearance of collective purpose has ...

Critical explorations of the key thinkers in the New World. Intersecting biography and history, individual monographs in New World Perspectives examine the central intellectual vision of leading contributors to politics, culture and society.

Given the widening gap between the number of individuals on transplant waiting lists and the availability of donated organs, as well as the recent plateau in donations based on neurological criteria, there has been a growing interest in expanding donation after circulatory determination of death. While the prevalence of this form of organ donation continues to increase, many thorny ethical issues remain, often creating moral distress in both clinicians and families. In this article, we address one of these issues, namely, (...) the challenges surrounding patient and surrogate informed consent for donation after circulatory determination of death. First we discuss several general concerns regarding consent related to this form of organ donation, and then we address additional issues that are unique to three different patient categories: adult patients with medical decision-making capacity or potential capacity, adult patients who lack capacity, and pediatric patients. (shrink)

A paradigm of scientific discovery is defined within a first-order logical framework. It is shown that within this paradigm there exists a formal scientist that is Turing computable and universal in the sense that it solves every problem that any scientist can solve. It is also shown that universal scientists exist for no regular logics that extend first-order logic and satisfy the Löwenheim-Skolem condition.

Contrasting traditional and common forms of ethics consultation with bioethics mediation, I describe the case of a “second opinion” consultation in the care of a patient with advanced cancer for whom treatment was futile. While the initial ethics consultation, performed by a colleague, led to a recommendation that some may deem ethical, the process failed to involve key stakeholders and failed to explore the underlying values and reasons for the opinions voiced by various stakeholders. The process of mediation ultimately led (...) to creative solutions in which all stakeholders could reach consensus on a plan of care. (shrink)

We provide a new interpretation of Zeno’s Paradox of Measure that begins by giving a substantive account, drawn from Aristotle’s text, of the fact that points lack magnitude. The main elements of this account are (1) the Axiom of Archimedes which states that there are no infinitesimal magnitudes, and (2) the principle that all assignments of magnitude, or lack thereof, must be grounded in the magnitude of line segments, the primary objects to which the notion of linear magnitude applies. Armed (...) with this account, we are ineluctably driven to introduce a highly constructive notion of (outer) measure based exclusively on the total magnitude of potentially infinite collections of line segments. The Paradox of Measure then consists in the proof that every finite or potentially infinite collection of points lacks magnitude with respect to this notion of measure. We observe that the Paradox of Measure, thus understood, troubled analysts into the 1880’s, despite their knowledge that the linear continuum is uncountable. The Paradox was ultimately resolved by Borel in his thesis of 1893, as a corollary to his celebrated result that every countable open cover of a closed line segment has a finite sub-cover, a result he later called the “First Fundamental Theorem of Measure Theory.” This achievement of Borel has not been sufficiently appreciated. We conclude with a metamathematical analysis of the resolution of the paradox made possible by recent results in reverse mathematics. (shrink)

_Arguing with People_ brings developments from the field of Argumentation Theory to bear on critical thinking in a clear and accessible way. This book expands the critical thinking toolkit, and shows how those tools can be applied in the hurly-burly of everyday arguing. Gilbert emphasizes the importance of understanding real arguments, understanding just who you are arguing with, and knowing how to use that information for successful argumentation. Interesting examples and partner exercises are provided to demonstrate tangible ways in which (...) the book’s lessons can be applied. (shrink)

My essay, “Multi-modal argumentation” was published in the journal, _Philosophy of the Social Sciences,_ in 1994. This information appeared again in my book, _Coalescent argumentation_ in 1997. In the ensuing twenty years, there have been many changes in argumentation theory, and I would like to take this opportunity to examine my now middle-aged theory in light of the developments in our discipline. I will begin by relating how a once keen intended lawyer and then formal logician ended up in argumentation (...) theory. (If you do not care to read this bit of autobiography, skip to Section 2). (shrink)

Introduction -- What is proportionality? -- Proportionality : a multiplicity of meanings -- Proportionality in the just war tradition -- Proportionality in international humanitarian law -- Proportionality in human rights law and morality -- The uniqueness of jus in bello proportionality -- Countermeasures and counterinsurgency -- Human shields and risk -- Targeted killings and proportionality in law : two models -- The nature of war and the idea of "cyberwar" -- Thresholds of jus in bello proportionality.

In particular, it seeks to disclose two distinctive features of Western culture uniquely attributable to the ancient Greeks: A human-centered worldview that elevated humans to the threshold of divinity and a philosophical temperament which for the first time in history proffered unbridled operation of the human mind as a kind of cultural imperative"--Provided by publisher.

Abstract:While the rise of a ‘dictatorship of relativism’ was a longstanding concern for Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, some commentators have suggested that—for better or for worse—the challenge posed by relativism appears to be less of a priority for Pope Francis. Indeed, Francis's remark, ‘Who am I to judge?’ appears to have become as much the defining soundbite for his papacy as the ‘dictatorship of relativism’ was for Benedict's. Contrary to these perceptions, this article argues that a critique of relativism is (...) in fact a central aspect of Pope Francis's magisterium. Francis exhibits continuity with Benedict by amplifying his concerns about the danger of attempting to reconstruct reality according to human desire, but Francis also develops his predecessor's teaching by introducing the category of ‘practical relativism’. With this development, relativism cannot be dismissed as a theoretical problem that only plagues those who refuse to assent to the truth intellectually. The willingness to set aside the truth to which one assents when it proves inconvenient represents a more pernicious—precisely because more subtle—form of relativism that Francis argues must be rooted out, not by argument, but through self‐examination and the practice of solidarity. (shrink)