Online research in philosophy

In this volume, fourteen scholars, many of them contemporaries of Professor Frank, engage with his legacy with important and seminal works which take some of ...

Robert Stern investigates how scepticism can be countered by using transcendental arguments concerning the necessary conditions for the possibility of experience, language, or thought. He shows that the most damaging sceptical questions concern neither the certainty of our beliefs nor the reliability of our belief-forming methods, but rather how we can justify our beliefs.

This paper addresses two issues: (1) what it is for a metaphor to be either alive or dead and (2) what a metaphor must be in order to be either alive or dead. Both issues, in turn, bear on the contemporary debate whether metaphor is a pragmatic or semantic phenomenon and on the dispute between Contextualists and Literalists. In the first part of the paper, I survey examples of what I take to be live metaphors and dead metaphors in order (...) to establish that there is a phenomenon here to be explained. I then propose an explanation of metaphorical vitality (and by implication of metaphorical death) in terms of the dependence of the interpretation of a metaphor on a family or network of expressions specific to its context of utterance. I then argue that only a Literalist account of metaphor — one that posits metaphorical expressions (a la Stern (2000))— and not Contextualist and Gricean approaches can accommodate this explanation. Finally, I discuss some objections to my Literalist account and sketch an explanation of types to counter Platonistic objections to my metaphorical expression types. (shrink)

In At the Will of the Body , Arthur Frank told the story of his own illnesses, heart attack and cancer. That book ended by describing the existence of a "remission society," whose members all live with some form of illness or disability. The Wounded Storyteller is their collective portrait. Ill people are more than victims of disease or patients of medicine they are wounded storytellers. People tell stories to make sense of their suffering when they turn their diseases (...) into stories, they find healing. Drawing on the work of authors such as Oliver Sacks, Anatole Broyard, Norman Cousins, and Audre Lorde, as well as from people he met during the years he spent among different illness groups, Frank recounts a stirring collection of illness stories, ranging from the well-known--Gilda Radner's battle with ovarian cancer--to the private testimonials of people with cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and disabilties. Their stories are more than accounts of personal suffering: they abound with moral choices and point to a social ethic. Frank identifies three basic narratives of illness in restitution, chaos, and quest. Restitution narratives anticipate getting well again and give prominence to the technology of cure. In chaos narratives, illness seems to stretch on forever, with no respite or redeeming insights. Quest narratives are about finding that insight as illness is transformed into a means for the ill person to become someone new. (shrink)

The Phenomenology of Spirit is Hegel's most important and famous work. It is essential to understanding Hegel's philosophical system and why he remains a major figure in western philosophy. Stern offers a clear and accessible introduction to what is undoubtedly one of the most complex books in the history of philosophy.

This paper argues first that, contrary to what one would expect, metaphorical interpretations of utterances pass two of Cappelan and Lepore’s Minimalist tests for semantic context-sensitivity. I then propose how, in light of that result, one might analyze metaphors on the model of indexicals and demonstratives, expressions that (even) Minimalists agree are semantically context-dependent. This analysis builds on David Kaplan’s semantics for demonstratives and refines an earlier proposal in (Stern, Metaphor in context, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000 ). In the (...) course of this argument, I also discuss some new examples of linguistic phenomena that motivate a semantic structure underlying metaphorical interpretation, phenomena I argue that neither Minimalists nor Contextualists can explain. (shrink)

This paper examines the place of metaphorical interpretation in the current Contextualist-Literalist controversy over the role of context in the determination of truth-conditions in general. Although there has been considerable discussion of 'non-literal' language by both sides of this dispute, the language analyzed involves either so-called implicit indexicality, loose or loosened use, enriched interpretations, or semantic transfer, not metaphor itself. In the first half of the paper, I critically evaluate Recanati's (2004) recent Contextualist account and show that it cannot account (...) for the metaphorical-literal dependence characteristic of metaphor. I then turn to Carston's (2002), and Bezuidenhout's (2001) Contextualist accounts and show that they place no constraints on metaphorical interpretations. In the second half of the paper I sketch a Literalist theory of metaphor elaborated in Stern (2000) and respond to two kinds of Contextualist criticisms of that account by Camp (2005) and Stanley (2005). (shrink)

Drawing on ten years of research on the unpublished Wittgenstein papers, Stern investigates what motivated Wittgenstein's philosophical writing and casts new light on the Tractatus and Philosophical Investigations. The book is an exposition of Wittgenstein's early conception of the nature of representation and how his later revision and criticism of that work led to a radically different way of looking at mind and language. It also explains how the unpublished manuscripts and typescripts were put together and why they often (...) provide better evidence of the development of his ideas than can be found in his published writing. In doing so, the book traces the development of a number of central themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, including his conception of philosophical method, the picture theory of meaning, the limits of language, the application of language to experience, his treatment of private language, and what he called the "flow of life." Arguing that Wittgenstein's views are often much more simple (and more radical) than we have been led to believe, Wittgenstein on Mind and Language provides an overview of the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy and brings to light aspects of his philosophy that have been almost universally neglected. (shrink)

Contemporary health care often lacks generosity of spirit, even when treatment is most efficient. Too many patients are left unhappy with how they are treated, and too many medical professionals feel estranged from the calling that drew them to medicine. Arthur W. Frank tells the stories of ill people, doctors, and nurses who are restoring generosity to medicine--generosity toward others and to themselves. The Renewal of Generosity evokes medicine as the face-to-face encounter that comes before and after diagnostics, pharmaceuticals, (...) and surgeries. Frank calls upon the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, and literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin to reflect on stories of ill people, doctors, and nurses who transform demoralized medicine into caring relationships. He presents their stories as a source of consolation for both ill and professional alike and as an impetus to changing medical systems. Frank shows how generosity is being renewed through dialogue that is more than the exchange of information. Dialogue is an ethic and an ideal for people on both sides of the medical encounter who want to offer more to those they meet and who want their own lives enriched in the process. The Renewal of Generosity views illness and medical work with grace and compassion, making an invaluable contribution to expanding our vision of suffering and healing. (shrink)

In many histories of modern ethics, Kant is supposed to have ushered in an anti-realist or constructivist turn by holding that unless we ourselves 'author' or lay down moral norms and values for ourselves, our autonomy as agents will be threatened. In this book, Robert Stern challenges the cogency of this 'argument from autonomy', and claims that Kant never subscribed to it. Rather, it is not value realism but the apparent obligatoriness of morality that really poses a challenge to (...) our autonomy: how can this be accounted for without taking away our freedom? The debate the book focuses on therefore concerns whether this obligatoriness should be located in ourselves (Kant), in others (Hegel) or in God (Kierkegaard). Stern traces the historical dialectic that drove the development of these respective theories, and clearly and sympathetically considers their merits and disadvantages; he concludes by arguing that the choice between them remains open. (shrink)

This essay begins where Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue begins: facing a moral world in ruin. MacIntyre argues that this predicament leaves us with a choice: we can follow the path of Friedrich Nietzsche, accepting this moral destruction and attempting to create lives in a rootless, uncertain world, or the path of Aristotle, working to reclaim a world in which close-knit communities sustain human practices that make it possible for us to flourish. Jeff Frank rejects MacIntyre's framework and in this (...) essay attempts to create an alternative path, one of moral repair. Through a close reading of several poems from Robert Frost's North of Boston, Frank develops the notion of moral repair and describes its ethical and educational implications. (shrink)

In his new book, eminent psychologist - Daniel Stern, author of the classic 'The interpersonal world of the infant', explores the hitherto neglected topic of 'vitality' - that is, the force or power manifested by all living things. -/- Vitality takes on many dynamic forms and permeates daily life, psychology, psychotherapy and the arts, yet what is vitality? We know that it is a manifestation of life, of being alive. We are very alert to its feel in ourselves and (...) its expression in others. Life shows itself in so many different forms of vitality. But just how can we study this phenomenon? Till now, this has been a topic considered impervious to any kind of scientific study, but according to the Stern, it is possible to trace vitality to real physical and mental operations - including movement, time, perception of force - as well as spatial aspects of the movement and its underlying intention. Within this fascinating book he shows how an understanding of vitality can help the psychotherapeutic process (including a look at the developmental origins of forms of vitality) and looks at how these theories of vitality might fit with our current knowledge of the workings of the brain. Truly a tour de force from a brilliant clinician and scientist, Forms of Vitality is a profound and groundbreaking book - one that will be essential reading for psychologists, psychotherapists, and those in the creative arts. (shrink)

The effect of prism adaptation on movement is typically reduced when the movement at test (prisms off) differs on some dimension from the movement at training (prisms on). Some adaptation is latent, however, and only revealed through further testing in which the movement at training is fully reinstated. Applying a nonlinear attractor dynamic model (Frank, Blau, & Turvey, 2009) to available data (Blau, Stephen, Carello, & Turvey, 2009), we provide evidence for a causal link between the latent (or secondary) (...) aftereffect and an additive force term that is known to account for symmetry breaking. The evidence is discussed in respect to the hypothesis that recalibration aftereffects reflect memory principles (encoding specificity, transfer-appropriate processing) oriented to time-translation invariance—when later testing conserves the conditions of earlier training. Forgetting or reduced adaptation effects follow from the loss of this invariance and are reversed by its reinstatement. (shrink)

Introduction, by G. Holton.--Three eighteenth-century social philosophers: scientific influences on their thought, by H. Guerlac.--Science and the human comedy: Voltaire, by H. Brown.--The seventeenth-century legacy: our mirror of being, by G. de Santillana.--Contemporary science and the contemporary world view, by P. Frank.--The growth of science and the structure of culture, by R. Oppenheimer.--The Freudian conception of man and the continuity of nature, by J. S. Bruner.--Quo vadis, by P. W. Bridgman.--Prospects for a new synthesis: science and the humanities as (...) complementary activities, by C. Morris.--A humanist looks at science, by H. M. Jones. (shrink)

The following letters were written by the distinguished British chemist Professor Brian G. Gowenlock in response to Tibor Frank’s article on “Networking, Cohorting, Bonding: Michael Polanyi in Exile,” Tradition and Discovery 23:2 (2001-2002): 5-19. The two letters contribute to the history of the Manchester years of Michael Polanyi with interesting details concerning several of his colleagues and contemporaries. These informative comments by a former student of Michael Polanyi will improve our knowledge of the last years of Polanyi as a (...) physical chemist. (shrink)

Aquest llibre recull els textos de les reflexions que van tenir lloc en l'encont re internacional SCAN (festival de fotografia), a Internet del 29 de febrer al 1 7 d'abril de 2008, i al Teatre Metropol, el dia 17 d'abril de 2008. Tres teòrics de la imatge de reconegut prestigi internacional -Christian Caujolle, Joan Font cuberta i Radu Stern- van debatre virtualment a internet i posteriorment de form a presencial a Tarragona sobre el paper de la imatge al nostre (...) temps. (shrink)

The Theaetetus is one of the most widely studied of any of the Platonic dialogues because its dominant theme concerns the significant philosophical question, what is knowledge? In this new interpretation of the Theaetetus, Paul Stern provides the first full-length treatment of its political character in relationship to this dominant theme. Stern argues that this approach sheds significant light on the distinctiveness of the Socratic way of life, with respect to both its initial justification and its ultimate character.

In this revolutionary work, the author sets the stage for the science of the 21st Century, pursuing an unprecedented synthesis of fields previously considered unrelated. Beginning with simple classical concepts, he ends with a complex multidisciplinary theory requiring a high level of abstraction. The work progresses across the sciences in several multidisciplinary directions: Mathematical logic, fundamental physics, computer science and the theory of intelligence. Extraordinarily enough, the author breaks new ground in all these fields. In the field of fundamental physics (...) the author reaches the revolutionary conclusion that physics can be viewed and studied as logic in a fundamental sense, as compared with Einstein's view of physics as space-time geometry. This opens new, exciting prospects for the study of fundamental interactions. A formulation of logic in terms of matrix operators and logic vector spaces allows the author to tackle for the first time the intractable problem of cognition in a scientific manner. In the same way as the findings of Heisenberg and Dirac in the 1930s provided a conceptual and mathematical foundation for quantum physics, matrix operator logic supports an important breakthrough in the study of the physics of the mind, which is interpreted as a fractal of quantum mechanics. Introducing a concept of logic quantum numbers, the author concludes that the problem of logic and the intelligence code in general can be effectively formulated as eigenvalue problems similar to those of theoretical physics. With this important leap forward in the study of the mechanism of mind, the author concludes that the latter cannot be fully understood either within classical or quantum notions. A higher-order covariant theory is required to accommodate the fundamental effect of high-level intelligence. The landmark results obtained by the author will have implications and repercussions for the very foundations of science as a whole. Moreover, Stern's Matrix Logic is suitable for a broad spectrum of practical applications in contemporary technologies. (shrink)

In this new introduction to a classic philosophical text, David Stern examines Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. He gives particular attention to both the arguments of the Investigations and the way in which the work is written, and especially to the role of dialogue in the book. While he concentrates on helping the reader to arrive at his or her own interpretation of the primary text, he also provides guidance to the unusually wide range of existing interpretations, and to the reasons (...) why the Investigations have inspired such a diversity of readings. Following closely the text of the Investigations and meant to be read alongside it, this survey is accessible to readers with no previous background in philosophy. It is well-suited to university-level courses on Wittgenstein, but can also be read with profit by students in other disciplines. (shrink)

Contrary to stockholder theories that place the interests of profit-seeking owners above all else, stakeholder theorists argue that corporate executives have moral and ethical obligations to consider equally the interests of a wide range of stakeholders affected by the actions of a corporation. This paper argues that the stakeholder approach is particularly appropriate for the governance of news media companies and outlines an ethical framework to guide news company executives.

[INTRODUCTION] Like the terms 'dialectic', 'Aufhebung' (or 'sublation'), and 'Geist', the term 'concrete universal' has a distinctively Hegelian ring to it. But unlike these others, it is particularly associated with the British strand in Hegel's reception history, as having been brought to prominence by some of the central British Idealists. It is therefore perhaps inevitable that, as their star has waned, so too has any use of the term, while an appreciation of the problematic that lay behind it has seemingly (...) vanished: if the British Idealists get any sort of mention in a contemporary metaphysics book (which is rarely), it will be Bradley's view of relations or truth that is discussed, not their theory of universals, so that the term has a rather antique air, buried in the dusty volumes of Mind from the turn of the nineteenth century. This is not surprising: the episode known as British Idealism can appear to be a period that is lost to us, in its language, points of historical reference (Lotze, Sigwart, Jevons), and central preoccupations (the Absolute). Even while interest in Hegel continues to grow, interest in his Logic has grown more slowly than in the rest of his work, with Book III of the Logic remaining as the daunting peak of that challenging text - while it is here that the British Idealists focussed their attention and claimed to have uncovered that 'exotic' but 'vanished specimen', the concrete universal. Finally, as the trend of reading Hegel pushes ever further in a non-metaphysical direction, it might be thought that the future of the concrete universal is hardly likely to be brighter than its recent past - for it may seem hard to imagine how a conception championed by the British Idealists, who were apparently shameless in their metaphysical commitments, can find favour in these more austere and responsible times. In this paper, however, I want to make a case for holding that there is something enlightening to be found in how some of the British Idealists approached the 'concrete universal', both interpretatively and philosophically. At the interpretative level, I will argue that while not everything these Idealists are taken to mean by the term is properly to be found in Hegel, their work nonetheless relates to a crucial and genuine strand in Hegel's position, so that their discussion of this issue is an important moment in the reception history of his thought. At a philosophical level, I think that the question that concerned Hegel and these British Idealists retains much of its interest, as does their shared approach to it: namely, how far does our thought involve a mere abstraction from reality, and what are the metaphysical and epistemological implications if it turns out it does not? As such, I will suggest, taking seriously what these British Idealists have to say about the concrete universal can help us both in our understanding of Hegel, and in our appreciation of the contribution Hegel's position can make to our thinking on the issues that surround this topic. (shrink)

For each $n > 0$ , two alternative axiomatizations of the theory of strings over n alphabetic characters are presented. One class of axiomatizations derives from Tarski's system of the Wahrheitsbegriff and uses the n characters and concatenation as primitives. The other class involves using n character-prefixing operators as primitives and derives from Hermes' Semiotik. All underlying logics are second order. It is shown that, for each n, the two theories are synonymous in the sense of deBouvere. It is further (...) shown that each member of one class is synonymous with each member of the other class; thus that all of the theories are synonymous with each other and with Peano arithmetic. Categoricity of Peano arithmetic then implies categoricity of each of the above theories. (shrink)

This paper focuses on one of C. S. Peirce's criticisms of G. W. F. Hegel: namely, that Hegel neglected to give sufficient weight to what Peirce calls "Secondness", in a way that put his philosophical system out of touch with reality. The nature of this criticism is explored, together with its relevant philosophical background. It is argued that while the issues Peirce raises go deep, in some respects Hegel's position is closer to his own than he may have realised, whilst (...) in others that criticism can be resisted by the Hegelian. (shrink)

The model of memory as a store, from which records can be retrieved, is taken for granted by many contemporary researchers. On this view, memories are stored by memory traces, which represent the original event and provide a causal link between that episode and one's ability to remember it. I argue that this seemingly plausible model leads to an unacceptable conception of the relationship between mind and brain, and that a non-representational, connectionist, model offers a promising alternative. I also offer (...) a new reading of Wittgenstein's paradoxical remarks about thought and brain processes: as a critique of the cognitivist thesis that information stored in the brain has a linguistic structure and a particular location. On this reading, Wittgenstein's criticism foreshadows some of the most promising contemporary work on connectionist models of neural functioning. (shrink)

This paper presents the findings of a study of purchasing and supply management professionals in India conducted to identify the key ethical issues they face in carrying out their work related responsibilities as well as to determine the extent to which various factors appear to be helpful or to present challenges to their efforts to act ethically in the course of their work. The Indian findings are then compared to those for studies conducted among purchasing and supply management professionals in (...) the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Key findings for the four studies are summarized and implications for business and the professions are presented. (shrink)

: This paper offers a distinctive interpretation of Hegel's Doppelsatz from the Preface to the Philosophy of Right: 'What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational'. This has usually been interpreted either conservatively (as claiming that everything that is, is right or good) or progressively (that if the world were actual, it would be right or good, but that there is a distinction that can be drawn between existence and actuality). My aim in this paper is to (...) argue against both interpretations, so that the position I offer is neutral between the two. My claim is that when Hegel identifies what is actual with what is rational in the Doppelsatz, his intention is not to offer a normative assessment of what is actual; rather, it is to suggest that genuine philosophy must be committed to reason in its methods of inquiry, if it is to properly undertake an investigation into the "spiritual universe" as well as the "natural" one. The Doppelsatz is thus a defence of philosophical rationalism, rather than a normative claim about "was ist wirklich". (shrink)

. This paper presents the findings of two surveys conducted in April 2003 of Chartered Life Underwriters (CLUs) and Chartered Financial Consultants (ChFCs) who are members of the Society of Financial Service Professionals. The first survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs – the life insurance industry’s most highly regarded professionals – was aimed at identifying the key ethical issues faced by professionals working in the life insurance industry today. A comparison of these findings with those of earlier studies conducted in (...) 1990 and 1995 suggests that while the key ethical issues facing those working in the life insurance business today are essentially the same as those encountered during industry’s highly troubled ethical environment of the early 1990s, these issues are perceived as presenting somewhat less serious problems than in the past. The second survey of 3000 CLUs and ChFCs was aimed at determining the extent to which these professionals perceive the industry created Insurance Marketplace Standards Association (IMSA) as having contributed to any change in the ethical environment that has taken place. The findings suggest that IMSA has played an important role in influencing senior managers to more strongly encourage and support ethical market conduct, a critical step in improving the industry’s ethical environment. (shrink)

Based on the findings of several research studies of professionals in both the property-liability insurance industry and the life insurance industry, the paper makes and supports several important points. First, ethical challenges in the insurance industry involve not only a series of ethical dilemmas frequently faced by those working in the business, but also a variety of factors that hinder those working in the industry as they seek to resolve the ethical dilemmas encountered in the course of their work. Both (...) of these two components of ethical challenges must be understood by those in the financial services industry who will deal with insurance operations in the future. Second, whereas the life insurance business and the property-liability insurance business have traditionally been viewed as being quite different from one another and still are in terms of operations and regulation, the research findings show that they are no longer very different in terms of the key ethical challenges faced by those working in the two segments of the industry. The paper shows how during the past decade the ethical challenges in the property-liability insurance industry have become quite similar to those in the more troubled life insurance industry. (shrink)

The issue of boundaries in clinician–patientencounters is considered through narrativeanalysis of four clinical stories in whichboundaries crossings are a self-conscioustopic. One story is by a physician as patient,two are by physicians, and one is by apalliative care nurse. The stories arediscussed using Walter Benjamin''s distinctionbetween the painter, who maintains distance andsees the whole, and the cameraman, who usestechnology to penetrate realities and thenreassembles fragments. The essay argues thatdistance and closeness are ethical issues thatconstitute the possibility of clinicalencounters but the encounter (...) also changes theclinician''s sense of boundaries. The relevantethics of boundary decisions in most clinicalencounters are not procedural ethics but anethics of self-creation: in orienting toboundaries as doctors do, they createthemselves in their relations to others. (shrink)

Training in ethics and professionalism is a fundamental component of residency education, yet there is little empirical information to guide curricula. The objective of this study is to describe empirically derived ethics objectives for ethics and professionalism training for multiple specialties. Study design is a thematic analysis of documents, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups conducted in a setting of an academic medical center, Veterans Administration, and community hospital training more than 1000 residents. Participants were 84 informants in 13 specialties including (...) residents, program directors, faculty, practicing physicians, and ethics committees. Thematic analysis identified commonalities across informants and specialties. Resident and nonresident informants identified consent, interprofessional relationships, family interactions, communication skills, and end-of-life care as essential components of training. Nonresidents also emphasized formal ethics instruction, resource allocation, and self-monitoring, whereas residents emphasized the learning environment and resident-attending interactions. Conclusions are that empirically derived learning needs for ethics and professionalism included many topics, such as informed consent and resource allocation, relevant for most specialties, providing opportunities for shared curricula and resources. (shrink)

In recent decades, the individual has become more and more central in both national and world cultural accounts of the operation of society. This continues a long historical process, intensified by the consolidation of a more global polity and the weakening of the primordial sovereignty of the national state. Increasingly, society is culturally rooted in the natural, historical, and spiritual worlds through the individual, rather than through corporate entities or groups. The shift has produced a proliferation and specification of individual (...) roles, accounting for what individuals do in society. It has also produced an expansion in recognized individual personhood, accounting for who individuals are in the extrasocial cosmos and fueling elaborated personal tastes and preferences. Where it has been contested, the shift to the individual has also produced a rise in specializing identities (e.g., in such domains as ethnicity or gender). These offer accounts of individuals' distinctive linkages to the cosmos, and they serve to bolster individual claims to standard roles and personhood. Over time, specializing identities tend to get absorbed into roles and personhood. And in turn, expanded roles and personhood provide further bases for specializing identity claims. Because many theorists mischaracterize the relationship of specializing identities to roles and personhood, the literature often overemphasizes the anomic character of the identity explosion and the closeness of the coupling between social roles and identity claims. On the contrary, specializing identities tend to be edited to remain within general rules of individual personhood and to be disconnected from the obligations involved in institutionalized roles. (shrink)

In a recent paper, Michael Levin argues that both statements reporting causal relations and causal explanatory statements are extensional. We show that his argument for the extensionality of causal explanatory statements fails to establish that conclusion. His claim that certain 'because' statements are elliptical for statements of what he terms the 'causal explanatory' form is unsubstantiated. The argument for the referential transparency of the allegedly explanatory form, regardless of whether it is a distinct explanatory form, fails because of scope problems. (...) Finally, we argue that the apparent referential opacity of explanations, the attribution of certain kinds of properties to explanations, and our satisfaction with explanations in what appear to be disparate forms are best accounted for, not by the assumption of ellipticality of statements in various forms for statements in some inherently explanatory form, but rather by an account of explanation as a speech act, the success or failure of which may be affected by which of several co-referring expressions is employed. (shrink)

This paper compares the findings of studies of seven groups of professionals in various key segments of the fields of accounting and insurance conducted during 1990 through 1994 in an effort to determine the extent to which they tend to rely on various factors in their business and professional environments for help in behaving ethically in the course of their work. Commonalities among the findings for these rather diverse groups are highlighted and their possible implications for business and the professions (...) are discussed. (shrink)

Newspaper stories that rely on reconstruction of events from police reports, court records, and recollections of witnesses often sacrifice attribution for the sake of immediacy. Such stories make compelling reading, but they mislead readers by erasing the line between information obtained via observation and information obtained from human or documentary sources. This article argues that the lack of attribution is more distracting than it presence--because readers wonder how the reporters know what they know--and calls on reporters to make clear when (...) they have left the realm of observation and entered that of reconstruction. (shrink)

We introduce a notion of complexity for interpretations, which is used to prove some new results about interpretations of sequential theories. In particular, we give a new, elementary proof of Pudlák's theorem that sequential theories are connected. We also demonstrate a counterexample to the infinitary distributive law $a \vee \bigwedge_{i \in I} b_i = \bigwedge_{i \in I} (a \vee b_i)$ in the lattice of chapters, in which the chapters a and b i are compact. (Counterexamples in which a is not (...) compact have been found previously.). (shrink)

Did Wittgenstein consider himself a Jew? Should we? Wittgenstein repeatedly wrote about Jews and Judaism in the 1930s, and biographical studies make it clear that this writing about Jewishness was a way in which he thought about the kind of person he was and the nature of his philosophical work. Those who have written about Wittgenstein on the Jews have drawn very different conclusions. But much of this debate is confused, because the notion of being a Jew, of Jewishness, is (...) itself ambiguous and problematic. The paper provides a close reading of leading passages in which Wittgenstein discusses Jews and Jewishness, and argues that previous interpreters have been too quick to condemn or defend him. If we consider what it could mean to say that Wittgenstein was, or was not, a Jew, we will see that Wittgenstein's problems with 'Jewishness' arise out of the philosophically problematic nature of the concept, a philosophical problem he was unable to resolve. (shrink)

The Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change is a highly influential welfare analysis of climate policy measures which has been published in 2006. This paper identifies and systematically assesses the long-term socioeconomic and climatic predictions the Stern Review relies on, and reflects them philosophically. Being a cost-benefit analysis, the Stern Review has to predict the benefits of climate mitigation policies, i.e.the damaging consequences of climate change which might be avoided, as well as the costs of (...) implementing such policies. While distinguishing deterministic, probabilistic, and possibilisitic forecasts, this paper finds that the Review's major predictions severly suffer from a lack of robustness. It argues, moreover, that the use of subjective probabilities as well as the fact/value entanglement pose additional problems. Given our ignorance, this assessment raises finally the question how detailed an analysis of climate policy decisions should reasonably be at all, and whether the argument for acting against climate change is maybe very simple. (shrink)