In the research ethics literature, there is strong disagreement about the ethical acceptability of placebo-controlled trials, particularly when a tested therapy aims to alleviate a condition for which standard treatment exists. Recently, this disagreement has given rise to debate over the moral appropriateness of the principle of clinical equipoise for medical research. Underlying these debates are two fundamentally different visions of the moral obligations that investigators owe their subjects.Some commentators and ethics documents claim that physicians, whether acting as care givers (...) or researchers, have the same duty of beneficence towards their patients and subjects: namely, that they must provide optimal medical care. In discussing placebo surgery in research on refractory Parkinson's disease, Peter Clark succinctly states this view: “The researcher has an ethical responsibility to act in the best interest of subjects.”. (shrink)

In the research ethics literature, there is strong disagreement about the ethical acceptability of placebo-controlled trials, particularly when a tested therapy aims to alleviate a condition for which standard treatment exists. Recently, this disagreement has given rise to debate over the moral appropriateness of the principle of clinical equipoise for medical research. Underlying these debates are two fundamentally different visions of the moral obligations that investigators owe their subjects.Some commentators and ethics documents claim that physicians, whether acting as care givers (...) or researchers, have the same duty of beneficence towards their patients and subjects: namely, that they must provide optimal medical care. In discussing placebo surgery in research on refractory Parkinson's disease, Peter Clark succinctly states this view: “The researcher has an ethical responsibility to act in the best interest of subjects.”. (shrink)

Responsibility theorists frequently discuss psychopathy because it challenges various accounts of the capacities required for appropriate ascriptions of moral and legal responsibility. As often described, the psychopath has the capacity to reason practically but lacks the capacity to grasp and control himself in light of moral considerations. As portrayed, then, the psychopath resides in the area of disagreement between two philosophical camps: (i) theorists who put forth the general capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance as sufficient for an agent (...) to be appropriately held morally responsible for his conduct; and (ii) theorists who view that general capacity as necessary but not sufficient for moral responsibility, additionally requiring the capacity to grasp and respond to distinctly moral reasons. On the former view, we may appropriately hold psychopaths responsible for their wrongful actions, but not on the latter. This article does not aim to describe the opposing views and argue for one over the other. Rather, I propose to deflate the debate as far as possible, attempting to reduce the area of disagreement. Meaningful disagreement exists only if there are, or could be, agents who have an undiminished capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance, yet truly are incapable of moral reasoning. However, I suggest that the capacity for rational self-governance entails the capacity to comprehend and act on moral considerations; thus, to the extent that an individual truly is incapable of grasping moral reasons, we should expect to find deeper, more general deficiencies in that individual's rational capacities. I appeal to the work of leading researchers who study individuals with psychopathy to determine whether psychopaths do represent rational self-governors without the capacity to grasp moral considerations. I argue that this work strongly suggests that the psychopath's incapacity for moral reasoning is, indeed, evidence of more general deficits in the rational capacities required for fully accountable agency. The Article closes with relevant considerations for thinking about any implications for criminal law. (shrink)

Over the past several years, the most widely publicized issue in capital litigation has been the constitutional status of states’ lethal injection protocols. Death row inmates have not challenged the constitutionality of lethal injection itself, but rather execution protocols and their potential for maladministration. The inmates’ concern is due to the three-drug protocol used in the vast majority of capital jurisdictions: if the anesthetic, which is administered first, is ineffectively delivered, then the second and third drugs — the paralytic and (...) heartbeat-ceasing agents — will cause torturous pain and suffering in violation of the Eight Amendment. Inmates have argued that the participation of anesthesiologists or other highly trained medical professionals is constitutionally required to minimize the risk of unnecessary suffering. This litigation, in conjunction with evidence that some executed inmates suffered torturous pain, has reinvigorated the ethical debate about physician participation in executions. Even though the United States Supreme Court has signaled that physician participation is not constitutionally required, lawmakers in death penalty states must consider the ethics of physician involvement. (shrink)

The nanotechnology hype, engendering both fanatical optimism and apocalyptic fears, has produced calls from different commentators for "a radical change in the way we address ethical issues" and a "novel [ethical] approach to the future" that must be divorced from existing moral theories. However, a unique ethical framework devised specifically for nanotechnology is both impossible and unnecessary. The ethical issues predicted to accompany nanomedicine and nanotechnology are raised by medicine, biotechnology, genetics, and other technologies, and will call for balancing familiar (...) values: autonomy, beneficence, fairness, etc. At present, ethical attention should concentrate on safety and environmental studies and preparing for unforeseeable consequences, while the scientific community should prepare for a public dialogue. (shrink)

*The opinions expressed are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy of the National Institutes of Health, the Public Health Service, or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Federal efforts beginning in the 1990's have successfully increased pediatric research to improve medical care for all children. Since 1997, the FDA has requested 800 pediatric studies involving 45,000 children. Much of this research is "non-beneficial"; that is, it exposes pediatric subjects to risk even though these children will not benefit from participating in the research. Non-beneficial pediatric research (NBPR) seems, by definition, contrary to the best interests of pediatric subjects, which is why one state supreme court has essentially prohibited (...) it. It also appears that the only plausible rationale for this research is utilitarian, as it risks some children for the good of all. But that rationale is troubling. This Article answers two related questions: (1) What is the appropriate legal relationship between NBPR and the "best interests of the child" standard? (2) What is the ethical justification for this research? I argue that courts should hold that the "best interests" standard governs pediatric research. But, contrary to existing case law, courts must consider the benefits to each child, including pediatric subjects, from a policy that permits NBPR, and not simply consider that a non-beneficial protocol presents more risk than potential benefit to a child. Moreover, I argue that the justification for the practice need not be utilitarian. There is no need to appeal to the greater good to justify the research because each child has reason to endorse a policy permitting NBPR where there is a very low ceiling on acceptable risk, and each child has reason to participate in a practice from which she benefits. More controversially, I argue that each child, like other persons, has reason to help others when she can do so at little to no cost to herself. The Article then highlights practical implications of the offered justifications. (shrink)

Psychopathy presents a difficult challenge to moral and criminal responsibility theorists. Persons with the disorder have an impaired capacity for empathy and other moral emotions, and fail to feel the force of moral considerations. They have some rational impairments, but they reason adequately to manipulate, con, and exploit their victims, and otherwise to engage successfully in antisocial behavior. Is it appropriate to hold them morally responsible for their wrongdoing? Should the law hold psychopaths criminally responsible? This essay discusses philosophical debates (...) involved in addressing these questions. (shrink)

Moral judgments about a situation are profoundly shaped by the perception of individuals in that situation as either moral agents or moral patients (Gray & Wegner, 2009; Gray, Young, & Waytz, 2012), Specifically, the more we see someone as a moral agent, the less we see them as a moral patient, and vice versa. As a result, casting the perpetrator of a transgression as a victim tends to have the effect of making them seem less blameworthy (Gray & Wegner, 2011). (...) Based on this theoretical framework, we predicted that criminal offenders with a mental disorder that predisposes them to antisocial behavior would be judged more negatively when the disorder is described as having a genetic origin than when it is described as environmentally caused, as in the case of childhood abuse or accident. Further, we predicted that some environmental explanations would mitigate attributions of blame more than others, namely, that offenders whose disorder was caused by childhood abuse (intentional harm) would be seen as less blameworthy than offenders whose disorder is caused by an unfortunate accident (unintentional harm). Results from two vignette-based studies designed to test these predictions, conducted with participants recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk (N = 244 and N = 387, respectively), confirmed the first prediction but not the second. Implications of this research for three areas — the psychology of moral judgment, philosophical debates about moral responsibility and determinism, and the practice of the law — are discussed in the sequel. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 12, Issue 1, Page 44-46, January 2012.

Are judgments of praise for moral behavior modulated by knowledge of an agent's past suffering at the hands of others, and if so, in what direction? Drawing on multiple lines of research in experimental social psychology, we identify three hypotheses about the psychology of praise — typecasting, handicapping, and non-historicism — each of which supports a different answer to the question above. Typecasting predicts that information about past suffering will augment perceived patiency and thereby diminish perceived agency, making altruistic actions (...) seem less praiseworthy; handicapping predicts that this information will make altruistic actions seem more effortful, and hence more praiseworthy; and non-historicism predicts that judgments of praise will be insensitive to information about an agent's experiential history. We report the results of two studies suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to attract more praise when the experiential history of the agent involves coping with adversity in childhood rather than enjoying prosperity (Study 1, N = 348, p = .03, d = 0.45; Study 2, N = 400, p = .02, d = 0.39), as well as the results of a third study suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to be evaluated more favorably when the experiential history of the agent includes coping with adversity than in the absence of information about the agent's past experience (N = 226, p = .002). This pattern of results, we argue, is more consistent with handicapping than typecasting or non-historicism. (shrink)

To answer whether moral responsibility is compatible with determinism, two different methods for justifying compatibilist conditions of responsibility have emerged in recent literature. First-person approaches, such as Hilary Bok's, appeal to the first-person experience of human agency to justify our practices of holding agents responsible. In contrast, T. M. Scanlon and Jay Wallace, following P. F. Strawson, begin with an account of the interpersonal significance of holding each other responsible in order to discern the conditions under which it is appropriate (...) to assign that significance to an agent's actions. In this dissertation, I evaluate these different methodologies, and I examine the details of each view in order to find a proper understanding of the conditions of responsibility and of the significance of responsibility judgments within our interpersonal lives. ;I argue that the backward-looking significance we attach to responsibility judgments, including those of blame and praise, can be captured only by an interpersonal approach. Specifically, I argue that the significance of responsibility is not found in the negative consequences or emotions that we associate with holding agents responsible. Rather, ascribing to an agent the status of being responsible is a form a deep respect, which has practical implications. I argue that our intuitions concerning victims of severely deprived childhoods are best accounted for if we recognize that ascription as a form of respect and we separate the question of whether an agent is responsible from considerations of appropriate punishments. ;With regard to the conditions of responsibility, I argue that practical reasoners should be considered responsible not only for their choices, but also for negligent omissions, moral beliefs, and certain emotional reactions, even if such phenomena are not based on their choices. In addition, I argue that compatibilists do not need to add the capacity to grasp distinctly moral reasons to the requirements of responsible agency because that capacity is entailed by the basic capacity to reason practically. I examine the psychological literature on psychopaths---agents who supposedly are practical reasoners without moral understanding---to counter an objection to my view. (shrink)

The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 11, Issue 8, Page 19-20, August 2011.

Noam Chomsky and Frances Egan argue that David Marr’s computational theory of vision is not intentional, claiming that the formal scientific theory does not include description of visual content. They also argue that the theory is internalist in the sense of not describing things physically external to the perceiver. They argue that these claims hold for computational theories of vision in general. Beyond theories of vision, they argue that representational content does not figure as a topic within formal computational theories (...) in cognitive science. I demonstrate that Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims about Marr’s theory are false. Marr’s computational theory contains a mathematical theory of visual content, based on empirical psychophysical evidence. It also contains mathematical descriptions of distal physical surfaces and objects, and of their optic projection to the perceiver. Much computational research on vision contains these types of intentional and externalist components within the formal, mathematical, theories. Chomsky’s and Egan’s claims demonstrate inadequate study and understanding of Marr’s work and other research in this area. Computational theories of vision, by containing empirically based mathematical theories of visual content, to this extent present naturalizations of semantics. (shrink)

This edition includes a new introduction by Peter J. Gomes that reflects on the impact of this book in the years since it was written.

This paper summarizes paired courses, a technique that is being used to incorporate the benefits of liberal arts into the business curriculum. This technique pairs a required business course with a liberal arts course that students take concurrently during a semester. The courses have overlapping themes and activities to build specific competencies that are desired by organizations, such as communication, critical thinking and problem solving, emotional intelligence, and organizational professionalism. These competencies are identified by exploring national surveys and conducting a (...) local survey of business professionals. The paired courses utilize a variety of exercises with the ultimate goals of building desired workplace-related skills in students and improving their practical reasoning ability. The exercises do this by strengthening students’ analytical thinking, understanding of multiple framing, and reflective exploration of meaning through various techniques. Many of the activities are explained in detail with some additional resources provided. Teachers can utilize the same activities or adapt them to their classroom. (shrink)

Introduction Joseph Dunne, Attracta Ingram, Frank Litton This volume of essays has two main objectives: first, to pay tribute to Fergal O'Connor, ...

In this chapter a new problem about rule-following is outlined, one that is distinct both from Kripke’s and Wright’s versions of the problem. This new problem cannot be correctly responsed to, as Kripke’s can, by invoking Wright’s Intentional Account of rule-following. The upshot might be called, following Kant, an antinomy of pure reason: we both must — and cannot — make sense of someone’s following a rule. The chapter explores various ways out of this antinomy without here endorsing any of (...) them. (shrink)

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text (...) is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

Paul Thom's book presents Kilwardby's science of logic as a body of demonstrative knowledge about inferences and their validity, about the semantics of non-modal and modal propositions, and about the logic of genus and species. This science is thoroughly intensional. It grounds the logic of inference on "that in virtue of which" the inference holds. It bases the truth conditions of propositions on relations between conceptual entities. It explains the logic of genus and species through the notion of essence. (...) Thom interprets this science as a formal logic of intensions with its own proof theory and semantics. This comprehensive reconstruction of Kilwardby's logic shows the medieval master to be one of the most interesting logicians of the thirteenth century. (shrink)

De milieuproblematiek staat pas sinds kort op de agenda als een fenomeen dat de mensheid bedreigt. Toch blijkt het negentiende-eeuwse gedachtegoed van Karl Marx verrassende inzichten te bieden om deze actuele problemen te duiden. Marx laat zien dat het menselijk ingrijpen in de natuur leidt tot zelfvervreemding: de mens ondermijnt zijn bestaan als een wezen dat zelf deel uitmaakt van de natuur. Deze zelfvervreemding cumuleert in de kapitalistische samenleving. Marx lezend zien we dat de milieuproblematiek geen historische vergissing is, maar (...) fundamenteel samenhangt met de mens als redelijk wezen. Onze beheersingsrede heeft geleid tot de vervreemding van de natuur. Toch geeft dezelfde rede die de mens de vrijheid biedt zich boven het ecologische evenwicht te verheffen, hem de mogelijkheid zich te verzoenen met de natuur. Marx verwijst naar dit dubbele gezicht van de rede als hij stelt dat het 'rijk van de vrijheid' in de schoot van het kapitalisme wordt geboren. In dit boek onderzoekt Paul Cobben welke aanzetten de huidige samenleving biedt om vorm te geven aan de verzoening met de natuur. Paul Cobben is emeritus hoogleraar geschiedenis van de moderne filosofie aan Tilburg University. Momenteel is hij gastonderzoeker aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam en redacteur van de serie 'Critical Studies in German Idealism'. Van zijn hand verscheen o.a. 'Value in Capitalist Society. Rethinking Marx's Criticism of Capitalism' (2015)."-- Publisher information. (shrink)

The Renaissance was a period of great intellectual change and innovation as philosophers rediscovered the philosophy of classical antiquity and passed it on to the modern age. Renaissance philosophy is distinct both from the medieval scholasticism, based on revelation and authority, and from philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who transformed it into new philosophical systems. Despite the importance of the Renaissance to the development of philosophy over time, it has remained largely understudied by historians of philosophy and professional (...) philosophers. This anthology aims to correct this by providing scholars and students of philosophy with representative translations of the most important philosophers of the Renaissance. Its purpose is to help readers appreciate philosophy in the Renaissance and its importance in the history of philosophy. The anthology includes translations from philosophers from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and it ranges from works on moral and political philosophy, to metaphysics, epistemology, and natural philosophy, thereby providing historians and students of philosophy with a sense for the nature, breadth, and complexity of philosophy in the Renaissance. Each translation is accompanied by an introduction by a historian of Renaissance philosophy, as well as select secondary sources, in order to encourage further study. (shrink)

Paul Helm investigates what religious faith is and what makes it reasonable.

Logic brings elementary logic out of the academic darkness into the light of day. Paul Tomassi makes logic fully accessible for anyone trying to come to grips with the complexities of this challenging subject. This book is written in a patient and user-friendly way which makes both the nature and value of formal logic crystal clear. This textbook proceeds from a frank, informal introduction to fundamental logical notions to a system of formal logic rooted in the best of our (...) natural deductive reasoning in daily life. The book includes plenty of exercise to put the students' reading to test, summay boxes of key points, a glossary and many illustrations. This book will be useful to any student who needs a patient and comprehensible introduction to what otherwise can be a daunting subject. (shrink)

We sometimes strive to achieve difficult goals when our evidence suggests that success is unlikely – not just because it will require strength of will, but because we are targets of prejudice and discrimination or because success will require unusual ability. Optimism about one’s prospects can be useful for persevering in these cases. That said, excessive optimism can be dangerous; when our evidence is unfavourable, we should be at most agnostic about whether we will succeed. This paper explores the nature (...) and rational significance of agnostic practical commitments. Most importantly, the rationality of striving against the odds can depend on investing in a plan for failure: a plan B. I aim to make headway on an account of what backup plans are, how they are related to primary plans, and whether the standard norms of plan rationality apply to our agnostic commitments. (shrink)

The hatchet and the seed -- A tree with deep roots -- The critical tools -- A field crystallizes -- Destruction of nature -- Construction of nature -- Degradation and marginalization -- Conservation and control -- Environmental conflict -- Environmental identity and social movement -- Where to now?

We are witnessing increasing use of the Internet, particular social media, to criticize (perceived or actual) moral failings and misdemeanors. This phenomenon of so-called ‘online public shaming’ could provide a powerful tool for reinforcing valuable social norms. But it also threatens unwarranted and severe punishments meted out by online mobs. This paper analyses the dangers associated with the informal enforcement of norms, drawing on Locke, but also highlights its promise, drawing on recent discussions of social norms. We then consider two (...) crucial conditions that online public shaming must meet in order to be justifiable: proportionality and accountability. We argue that these requirements are in fact frequently violated, rendering most cases of online public shaming unjustified. While the use of online public shaming against others’ vices has some apparent virtues, it is currently rarely justified, given its own vices. (shrink)

The relationship between abstract formal procedures and the activities of actual physical systems has proved to be surprisingly subtle and controversial, and there are a number of competing accounts of when a physical system can be properly said to implement a mathematical formalism and hence perform a computation. I defend an account wherein computational descriptions of physical systems are high-level normative interpretations motivated by our pragmatic concerns. Furthermore, the criteria of utility and success vary according to our diverse purposes and (...) pragmatic goals. Hence there is no independent or uniform fact to the matter, and I advance the ‘anti-realist’ conclusion that computational descriptions of physical systems are not founded upon deep ontological distinctions, but rather upon interest-relative human conventions. Hence physical computation is a ‘conventional’ rather than a ‘natural’ kind. (shrink)

This paper introduces constitutivism about practical reason, which is the view that we can justify certain normative claims by showing that agents become committed to these claims simply in virtue of acting. According to this view, action has a certain structural feature – a constitutive aim, principle, or standard – that both constitutes events as actions and generates a standard of assessment for action. We can use this standard of assessment to derive normative claims. In short, the authority of certain (...) normative claims arises from the bare fact that we are agents. This essay explains the constitutivst strategy, surveys the extant attempts to generate constitutivist theories, and considers the problems and prospects for the theory. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology contains 19 previously unpublished chapters by today's leading figures in the field. These chapters function not only as a survey of key areas, but as original scholarship on a range of vital topics. Written accessibly for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and professional philosophers, the Handbook explains the main ideas and problems of contemporary epistemology while avoiding overly technical detail.

In this book, Russell examines Hume's notion of free will and moral responsibility. It is widely held that Hume presents us with a classic statement of a compatibilist position--that freedom and responsibility can be reconciled with causation and, indeed, actually require it. Russell argues that this is a distortion of Hume's view, because it overlooks the crucial role of moral sentiment in Hume's picture of human nature. Hume was concerned to describe the regular mechanisms which generate moral sentiments such as (...) responsibility, and Russell argues that his conception of free will must be interprted within this naturalistic framework. He goes on to discuss Hume's views about the nature and character of moral sentiment; the extent to which we have control over our moral character; and the justification of punishment. Throughout, Russell argues that the naturalistic avenue of interpretation of Hume's thought, far from draining it of its contemporary interest and significance, reveals it to be of great relevance to the ongoing contemporary debate - particuarly in relation to the views of P.F. Strawson and his influential paper "Freedom and Resentment". (shrink)

Reasons and reasoning were central to the work of Paul Grice, one of the most influential and admired philosophers of the late twentieth century. In the John Locke Lectures that Grice delivered in Oxford at the end of the 1970s, he set out his fundamental thoughts about these topics; Aspects of Reason is the long-awaited publication of those lectures. This immensely rich work, powerfully evocative of the mind of its author, will refresh and illuminate discussions in many areas of (...) contemporary philosophy. (shrink)

Freud claimed that the concept of drive is "at once the most important and the most obscure element of psychological research." It is hard to think of a better proof of Freud's claim than the work of Nietzsche, which provides ample support for the idea that the drive concept is both tremendously important and terribly obscure. Although Nietzsche's accounts of agency and value everywhere appeal to drives, the concept has not been adequately explicated. I remedy this situation by providing an (...) account of drives. I argue that Nietzschean drives are dispositions that generate evaluative orientations, in part by affecting perceptual saliences. In addition, I show that drive psychology has important implications for contemporary accounts of reflective agency. Contemporary philosophers often endorse a claim that has its origins in Locke and Kant: self-conscious agents are capable of reflecting on and thereby achieving a distance from their motives; therefore, these motives do not determine what the agent will do. Nietzsche's drive psychology shows that the inference in the preceding sentence is illegitimate. The drive psychology articulates a way in which motives can determine the agent's action by influencing the course of the agent's reflective deliberations. An agent who reflects on a motive and decides whether to act on it may, all the while, be surreptitiously guided by the very motive upon which he is reflecting. I show how this point complicates traditional models of the role of reflection in agency. (shrink)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 6 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] In order for a reason to justify an action or attitude it must be one that is possessed by an agent. Knowledge-centric views of possession ground our possession of reasons, at least partially, either in our knowledge of them or in our being in a position to know them. On virtually all accounts, knowing P is some kind of non-accidental true belief that P. This entails that knowing P (...) is a kind of non-accidental true representation that P. I outline a novel theory of the epistemic requirement on possession in terms of this more general state of non-accidental true representation. It is just as well placed to explain the motivations behind knowledge-centric views of possession, and it is also better placed to explain the extent of the reasons we possess in certain cases of deductive belief-updates and cases involving environmental luck. I conclude with three reflections. First, I indicate how my arguments generate a dilemma for Errol Lord’s view that possessing reasons is just a matter of being in a position to manifest one’s knowledge how to use them. Second, I explain how my view can simultaneously manage cases of environmental luck without falling prey to lottery cases. Finally, I sketch the direction for a further range of counterexamples to knowledge-centric theories of possession. (shrink)

"Evidence of a flight from reason is as old as human record-keeping: the fact of it certainly goes back an even longer way. Flight from science specifically, among the forms of rational inquiry, goes back as far as science itself... But rejection of reason is now a pattern to be found in most branches of scholarship and in all the learned professions."--from the introduction In the widely acclaimed Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science, Paul R. (...) Gross and Norman Levitt offered a spirited response to the "science bashers," raising serious questions about the growing criticism of scientific practice from humanists and social scientists on the academic left. Now, in The Flight from Science and Reason, Gross and Levitt are joined by Martin W. Lewis to bring together a diverse and distinguished group of scholars, scientists, and experts to engage these questions from a wide variety of perspectives. The authors take on critics of science whose views range from moderate to extreme, from social constructivists to deconstructionists, from creationists and feminists to Afro-centrists. They discuss the rise of "alternative medicine" and radical environmentalism (here skewered as "ecosentimentalism"). They explain why the "uncertainty principle" does not work as a metaphor for ambiguity, and why "chaos theory" cannot be invoked without an understanding of mathematics. Throughout, they grapple with the paradox inherent in arguing with opponents who contend that reason itself, and thus logic, is suspect. Distributed for the New York Academy of Sciences. (shrink)

Le philosophe, collègue et ami de Michel Foucault, fait le portrait de ce dernier et présente les grands thèmes de sa pensée philosophique et politique.

Vorrangig als der "strengste Methodenfanatiker und Logizist" der Marburger Schule des Neukantianismus bekannt, trat Natorp jedoch genau an diesem Punkt mit der selbständigen Form seines späten Philosophierens hervor: der Überschreitung der Methode in der Idee einer allgemeinen Logik. Unter allgemeiner Logik versteht er die streng einheitliche logische Grundlegung der Gegenstandssetzung, ja aller irgendwie logisch erfaßlichen Setzung. Damit war ein Zugang geschaffen zu der von Natorp angestrebten Erkenntnis des Geistigen in seiner Ureinheit, aus der erst die Besonderungen hervorgehen.

The present collection brings together in a convenient form the seminal articles in the philosophy of mathematics by these and other major thinkers.