Online research in philosophy

In this paper we attempt to show how the goal of resolving moral problems in a patient's care can best be achieved by working at the bedside.We present and discuss three cases to illustrate the art and science of clinical ethics consultation. The sine qua non of the clinical ethics consultant is that he or she goes to the patient's bedside to obtain specific clinical and ethical information. Unlike ethics committees, which often depend on secondhand information from a physician or (...) nurse, clinical ethics consultants personally speak with and examine patients and review their laboratory data and medical records. The skills of the clinical ethics consultant include the ability to delineate and resolve ethical problems in a particular patient's case and to teach other health professionals to build their own frameworks for clinical ethical decision making. When the clinical situation requires it, clinical ethics consultants can and should assist primary physicians with case management. (shrink)

Se dice que el utilitarismo es incompatible con la defensa de los derechos humanos, pues la búsqueda del mayor bien para el mayor número que prescribe el utilitarismo, puede exigir, en ocasiones, pasar por encima de los derechos. Sin embargo, quizá sea posible ofrecer una solución al conflicto presentando una doctrina utilitarista, reconocible como tal, que sea lo suficientemente amplia como para dar cabida a los derechos. La presente obra tiene como objeto exponer la doctrina de John Stuart Mill (...) como buen ejemplo de cómo es posible llevar a cabo esta tarea. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Cet article propose une analyse critique de la conception du raisonnement pratique développée par John Broome. Suite à une présentation de certaines de ses thèses, j'expose quelques difficultés soulevées par la «double expression» et par certains aspects du cognitivisme qu'il endosse explicitement. Je présente deux conséquences qu'entraînent ces critiques, l'une portant sur le lien qu'il établit entre croyance et intention, et l'autre portant sur l'idée que nos raisonnements pratiques seraient nécessairement enchevêtrés à nos raisonnements théoriques. Finalement, j'essaie de (...) montrer que la souree du problème auquel Broome semble être confronté réside dans la difficulté qu'il y a à distinguer clairement entre le raisonnement (relation entre des états mentaux) et la deseription du contenu du raisonnement (relation entre des propositions).ABSTRACT: This article offers a critical analysis of John Broome's conception of practical reasoning. I first introduce his main claims and then point out some of the difficulties raised by the notion of "double expression" and by some aspects of the cognitivism which he explicitly endorses. I then emphasize two consequences of these criticisms: one concerning the link he sees between belief and intention, and the other concerning the idea that our practical reasonings are inextricably linked to our theoretical reasonings. Finally, I argue that the problem Broome seems to be facing has its source in the difficulty of distinguishing clearly between reasoning (a relation between mental states) and the description of its content (a relation between propositions). (shrink)

Rawls no habría podido proveer una teoría de la justicia capaz de regular las relaciones internacionales, algo que otros pensadores rawlsianos (Beitz, Pogge) creyeron necesario. Este artículo intenta explicar las razones que impedían ese cometido. De una parte, el estrecho nexo entre la justicia, como una virtud, y la unidad política, solo en el contexto de la cual esa virtud tiene sentido. Al menos así lo ha entendido la tradición filosófica. De otra parte, las decisiones meta-filosóficas que Rawls toma y (...) su afán de hacer de la suya una teoría de la justicia "post-metafísica" y "estrictamente política". This article tries to explain why it was impossible for Rawls to develop a normative theory ofjustice for international relations; something that has been demanded by some rawlsian thinkers (Beitz, Pogge, etc.). There were two obstacles for such an enterprise. On one hand, the link established by the philosophical tradition between justice, as a political virtue, and the political unity (polis, national-state, etc.). On the other hand, Rawls' meta-philosophical decisions, which make his a 'post-metaphysical' and 'strictly political' theory of justice. (shrink)

Asumiendo junto con Heidegger que la filosofía es ontología por su objeto y fenomenología por su método, la intención es presentar algunas directrices para la hermenéutica de la poesía mística; específicamente para el Cántico Espiritual. Para ello se realiza una descripción esencial de la poesía, destinada a esclarecer por qué ésta es lo hablado puro, seguida por la caracterización de la poesía mística. Posteriormente se muestra que la inefabilidad de la poesía mística es un rasgo que le pertenece por ser (...) ésta palabra originaria que funda un modo de ser en el mundo, cuyo sentido es la unión entre el hombre y Dios. Por último, atendiendo a las advertencias que San Juan de la Cruz (SJC) hace sobre la interpretación de los textos místicos, se piensa sobre el temple de la conversión como disposición emocional instalado en la cual el hombre comienza la búsqueda del Amado. (shrink)

The debate about what constitutes the discipline of ethics and who qualifies as an ethics consultant is linked unavoidably to a debate that is potentiated by the reality of a rapidly changing and high-stakes health care consultation marketplace. Who we are and what we can offer to the moral gesture that is medicine is shaped by our fundamental understanding of the place of expert knowledge in the transformation of social reality. The struggle for self-definition is particularly freighted since clinical ethics (...) consultation aspires to be more than academic contemplation. Two recent books (Ethics Consultation by John La Puma and David Schiedermayer and The Health Care Ethics Consultant: A Practical Guide, edited by Francoise Baylis) exemplify the two most popular but most widely divergent positions on these issues. We argue that while useful, neither book addresses fully the particular and distinct role of the professional ethicist. (shrink)

Une invitation, reçue au début de l’automne 2011, à intervenir dans la séance du 7 mars 2012 d’un séminaire tenu à l’EHESS sur l’islamophobie, a été l’occasion de traiter de « l’affaire Gouguenheim » plus de trois ans après son irruption dans la sphère médiatique. Cette nouvelle lecture d’Aristote au Mont Saint-Michel a permis de mettre en évidence l’importance que Sylvain Gouguenheim attribue à un texte du haut Moyen Age pour suivre la diffusion de l’hellénisme dans l’Europe latine. Il s’agit (...) d’une lettre adressée par le pape Paul 1er à Pépin le Bref. Ce document, le plus souvent négligé par les latinistes en raison de ses obscurités, a excité la sagacité des hellénistes, qui ont très majoritairement montré la difficulté d’en tirer des informations positives. La situation est singulière, si l’on se souvient que, pour l’essentiel, ce sont des latinistes et des arabisants qui ont mené la charge contre les impostures gouguenheimiennes. À la faveur de ce cas d’espèce, « l’affaire Gouguenheim » jette une lumière crue sur la place dérisoire que, pour des raisons historiques, l’enseignement supérieur accorde en France à la philosophie médiévale. Le scandale repose, certes, sur les manipulations d’un agrégé d’histoire ; mais il dévoile aussi l’une des lacunes de l’institution universitaire hexagonale dans l’enseignement de la philosophie médiévale. (shrink)

John Searle : Le courant analytique, dans lequel je me situe, est pour une large part un ensemble de réactions à l’oeuvre de Gottlob Frege. Nous ne faisons que commencer à prendre la mesure de l’importance considérable de Frege, non seulement pour ce qui est de ses propres théories, mais aussi des directions de recherches qu’il a fourni à Russell, à Wittgenstein, et à Austin, qui fut mon professeur à Oxford.1 Donc, en un sens, j’appartiens à la révolution fregéenne. (...) A première vue, cette révolution consiste en la réinvention de la logique : Frege a créé.. (shrink)

This is an extensive anthology of the writings of John Dewey, edited by John J. McDermott.

John Searle défend l’idée d’un «Arrière-plan» de l’intentionnalité, c’est-à-dire le point de vue selon lequel il existe un ensemble de capacités mentales non représentationnelles (ou non intentionnelles) qui rendent possible toute forme d’intentionnalité (donc sans lesquelles il n’y aurait pas de croyances, de désirs, d’intentions, etc.). J’examine d’une part dans cet article ses raisons de croire qu’il existe des capacités non représentationnelles et, de l’autre, ses arguments à l’appui de la thèse — la plus importante à ses yeux — (...) selon laquelle un état intentionnel ne peut être l’état qu’il est qu’à la condition qu’un tel Arrière-plan existe.John Searle upholds the idea of a “background” of intentionality. In his view there is an ensemble of non-representational (or non-intentional) mental capacities that make every form of intentionality possible (that is to say, without these mental capacities there would not be any beliefs, desires, intentions, etc.). I examine both his reasons to believe that there are non-representational mental capacities and the arguments he gives in support of the most important claim (according to him) that an intentional state cannot be this particular state unless the said “background” exists. (shrink)

À Harvard durant l’année académique 1940-41, les philosophes-mathématiciens Quine, Tarski et Carnap débattaient de la possibilité d’établir une distinction entre les énoncés analytiques et synthétiques qui soit suffisamment mordante pour dégager un statut spécial à l’épistémologie. Quine et Tarski s’objectaient à la distinction et l’objection de Quine verra notamment le jour sous le titre fameux « Les deux dogmes de l’empirisme ». Carnap, dans son autobiographie intellectuelle, se souvient avoir alors craint : « are we now back to John (...) Stuart Mill? ». Carnap avait compris qu’une épistémologie antipsychologiste comme celle du Cercle de Vienne ne peut subsister sans la présence d’une distinction de principe entre des énoncés analytiques et synthétiques. Il avait compris qu’un rejet de la distinction signifiait, à court ou moyen terme, un retour à l’épistémologie comme « psychologie de la science » telle que la pratiquait Auguste Comte, John Stuart Mill et Ernst Mach. (shrink)

Cet article analyse la manière dont l'engagement moral individuel est traité dans la théorie de la justice de John Rawls. En partant de la distinctionclé entre rationnel et raisonnable, la notion de « conformité » est décomposée en plusieurs strates. A une forme minimale de la conformité s'ajoutent des notions d'adhésion faible et d'adhésion forte. Diverses maximes de comportement individuel sont discutées, qui correspondent à différents degrés d'exigence morale. L'article s'achève sur une réflexion plus large sur le lien entre (...) engagement individuel et tolérance dans la société rawlsienne. This article analyzes the way in which individual moral commitment is treated in John Rawls's theory of justice. It starts with the central distinction between rational and reasonable and divides the notion of « compliance » into several components. Next to a minimal form of compliance, there is a weak form of adhesion and a strong one. Various maxims for individual behavior are discussed, corresponding to various degrees of moral demandingness. The article closes with a broader reflection on the link between moral commitment and tolerance in the Rawlsian society. (shrink)

Nos daremos a la tarea de presentar una discusión que se encuentra en la obra del filósofo colombiano Julio Enrique Blanco, y en particular en dos de sus primeros escritos: “De la causalidad biológica I” (1917) y “Caminos de perfección” (1918). Para hacerlo debimos primero recurrir a uno de los textos centrales del inglés John Stuart Mill: Un sistema de lógica (1843). Lo que ha resultado de estas tres lecturas es la reconstrucción de una propuesta metodológica realizada por el (...) colombiano, propuesta que presentamos con complementos que son el resultado de las lecturas de éstas y otras obras suyas. Finalmente, intentaremos demostrar que ante la evaluación de los fundamentos cognoscitivos de nociones heredadas, una de las posibilidades que se presenta es inmovilizar aquellas que sean de carácter hipotético antes que hipertético. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 El interrogante del que este artículo pretende dar cuenta es si el individualismo de John Locke responde a la radicalidad con la que la corriente de interpretación más difundida intenta caracterizarlo. La conclusión que se alcanza luego de una amplia presentación de pruebas textuales, es que la necesaria matización del individualismo se deriva de la insistencia del autor en justificar el origen divino de los derechos y deberes. De este modo, en la (...) medida en que se niegue que los hombres disponen de un derecho irrefrenable a seguir su deseo de autopreservación, es posible concluir que el Estado no existe para resguardar esos presuntos derechos individuales, sino para restaurar la ley de naturaleza que ya no sirve, como debería, para determinar los derechos y deberes de los hombres. (shrink)

Fue en Inglaterra donde apareció por vez primera un individualismo virtuoso comprometido con la defensa pública de la libertad frente a la amenaza del absolutismo. Allí surgió un discurso político liberal-republicano que defendió que el bien público y el interés privado fueran de la mano. Así, el liberalismo nació como un discurso público y privado de la virtud individual que tenía la vocación de frenar cualquier arrogancia despótica. Pero en la segunda mitad del siglo XX una tendencia neoliberal y libertaria (...) convirtió el mercado en una abstracción dogmática que justificaba un egoísmo descontrolado y sin límites. En Liberales, José María Lassalle expone la necesidad de que el liberalismo del siglo XXI vuelva a los principios virtuosos de sus padres fundadores, John Locke, Adam Smith y Edmund Burke. Los liberales tienen por delante la responsabilidad de enfrentarse a sus propios fantasmas y liderar nuevamente la defensa de una política del deber, y no del beneficio. Una política al servicio de la libertad: preocupada por el c ontrol del poder; que asegure el establecimiento de mecanismos institucionales que impidan la corrupción y las conspiraciones contra el mercado que se urden a las sombras de los gobiernos; que combata el dogmatismo y que defiende la tolerancia como una seña de identidad de nuestra cultura. Ante la mayor crisis de las últimas décadas, urge recuperar la virtud y los valores, una tarea para la que los liberales están mejor capacitados que nadie. (shrink)

El presente artículo analiza los primeros cinco capítulos de Institución de la Religión Cristiana, discutiendo algunas de las principales interpretaciones que se ha ofrecido de la doctrina del sensus divinitatis ahí presentada por Calvino, y preguntando por su general pertenencia a una tradición de fe en búsqueda de comprensión. The present article presents an analysis of the first five chapters of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, and discusses some of the main interpretations that have been advanced concerning (...) the doctrine of the sensus divinitatis that Calvin espouses in this work. (shrink)

En este artículo explico el problema de la circularidad, tradicionalmente achacado a la metafísica cartesiana, destacando la importancia que, según Descartes, reviste esta cuestión. Argumento que las versiones del cartesianismo que ofrecen algunos de los comentarios más populares, utilizados en lengua castellana (los de Margaret Wilson y John Cottingham), resultan incompatibles con las posiciones que Descartes mantiene en una serie de textos. Teorías de ese corte sólo podrían justificarse por su valor filosófico intrínseco, pero también sostengo que ambas reconstrucciones (...) presentan debilidades conceptuales que las llevan al fracaso, sea como pretendida solución, en el caso de Wilson; o bien como intento por desplazar o disolver el problema central, en el caso de Cottingham. The problem of logical circularity, which traditionally has been blamed on Cartesian metaphysics, was clearly seen by Descartes himself, who moreover advertised its avoidance (or its solution) as a crucial merit of his own philosophy. On this subject two of the most popular commentaries on Descartes -those of Margaret Wilson and John Cottingham, which are widely used in teaching at least in Spanish- are criticized. Some of the objections I set here against both readings are textual in nature, while other ones hinge, as I argue, on their respective conceptual weaknesses. Wilson's proposed solution is shown to the botched, while Cottingham is shown to fail in his attempt to dissolve the problem. (shrink)

In this paper, I compare John Locke’s “memory theory” of personal identity and Memento (directed by Christopher Nolan). I argue that the plot of Memento is ambiguous, in that the main character (Leonard Shelby, played by Guy Pearce) seems to have two histories. As such, Memento is but a series of puzzle cases that intend to illustrate that, although our memories may not be chronologically related to one another, and may even be fused with the memories of other persons, (...) those memories still constitute personal identity. Just as Derek Parfit argues, perhaps there is no personal identity as such, since only survival (in some degree) matters to us. In Memento, Leonard Shelby is not identity to his former self, but survives to some extent. (shrink)

John Campbell argues that visual attention to objects is the means by which we can refer to objects, and that this is so because conscious visual attention enables us to retrieve information about a location. It is argued here that while Campbell is right to think that we visually attend to objects, he does not give us sufficient ground for thinking that consciousness is involved, and is wrong to assign an intermediary role to location. Campbell’s view on sortals is (...) also queried, as is his espousal of the so-called Referential View of Experience. (shrink)

Abstract. El objetivo de este documento es elucidar el papel de las idealizaciones en el conocimiento matemático inspirado por algunas ideas del filósofo neo-kantiano Ernst Cassirer. Usualmente, en la filosofía de la ciencia contemporánea se da por hecho que el tema de la idealización se refiere únicamente a las idealizaciones en las ciencias empíricas, en particular en la física. Por el contrario, Cassirer afirmó que la idealización de las matemáticas, así como en las ciencias tiene la misma base conceptual y (...) epistemológica. Precisamente, su "tesis de la identidad" es analizada al investigar una variedad de ejemplos de idealizaciones tomadas del álgebra, la topología, la teoría de red y la geometría física. Las idealizaciones en matemática, así como en el conocimiento físico se puede caracterizar por la introducción de elementos ideales que conducen a completaciones. En ambas áreas estos elementos ideales desempeñan esencialmente el mismo papel, es decir, sustituyen una variedad incompleta de objetos mediante una variedad conceptual completa “idealizada. (shrink)

Vol. 13 of John Dewey, The Later Works, brings this edition of Dewey's Collected Works to the fateful years 1938-1939. It contains three main texts Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, and Theory of Valuation, plus essays and miscellany. The editors, Jo Ann Boydston and Barabara Levine, provide twenty-five pages of Appendices, and Steven M. Cahn has written and excellent Introduction. The hardback version includes a scholarly apparatus featured in each of the volumes of the series.

n 1909, the 50th anniversary of both the publication of Origin of the Species and his own birth, John Dewey published "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy." This optimistic essay saw Darwin's advance not only as one of empirical or theoretical biology, but a logical and conceptual revolution that would shake every corner of philosophy. Dewey tells us less about the influence that Darwin exerted over philosophy over the past 50 years and instead prophesied the influence it would (or (...) should) take in the future. I will discuss this landmark paper and the key lessons Dewey draws from Darwinism for philosophy, and give a preliminary assessment of how well we've done so far. (Dewey would be largely disappointed.). (shrink)

In recent years, pragmatism in general and John Dewey in particular have been of increasing interest to philosophers of science. Dewey's work provides an interesting alternative package of views to those which derive from the logical empiricists and their critics, on problems of both traditional and more recent vintage. Dewey's work ought to be of special interest to recent philosophers of science committed to the program of analyzing ``science in practice.'' The core of Dewey's philosophy of science is his (...) theory of inquiry---what he called ``logic.'' There is a major lacuna in the literature on this point, however: no contemporary philosophers of science have engaged with Dewey's logical theory, and scholars of Dewey's logic have rarely made connections with philosophy of science. This paper aims to fill this gap, to correct some significant errors in the interpretation of key ideas in Dewey's logical theory, and to show how Dewey's logic provides resources for a philosophy of science. (shrink)

Some argue that humans should enhance their moral capacities by adopting institutions that facilitate morally good motives and behaviour. I have defended a parallel claim: that we could permissibly use biomedical technologies to enhance our moral capacities, for example by attenuating certain counter-moral emotions. John Harris has recently responded to my argument by raising three concerns about the direct modulation of emotions as a means to moral enhancement. He argues (1) that such means will be relatively ineffective in bringing (...) about moral improvements, (2) that direct modulation of emotions would invariably come at an unacceptable cost to our freedom, and (3) that we might end up modulating emotions in ways that actually lead to moral decline. In this article I outline some counter-intuitive potential implications of Harris' claims. I then respond individually to his three concerns, arguing that they license only the very weak conclusion that moral enhancement via direct emotion modulation is sometimes impermissible. However I acknowledge that his third concern might, with further argument, be developed into a more troubling objection to such enhancements. (shrink)

This is my review of Raymond Boisert's interpretation of the work of John Dewey in his book, John Dewey, Rethinking Our Time.

John Bickle's new book on philosophy and neuroscience is aptly subtitled 'a ruthlessly reductive account'. His 'new wave metascience' is a massive attack on the relative autonomy that psychology enjoyed until recently, and goes even beyond his previous (Bickle, J. (1998). Psychoneural reduction: The new wave. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) new wave reductionsism. Reduction of functional psychology to (cognitive) neuroscience is no longer ruthless enough; we should now look rather to cellular or molecular neuroscience at the lowest possible level (...) for explanations of memory, consciousness and attention. Bickle presents a fascinating set of experimental cases of such molecule-to-mind explanations. This book qualifies as a showcase of naturalism in the philosophy of mind. Naturally, many of the traditional conceptual approaches in the philosophy of mind are given short shrift, but - in Bickle's metascientific scheme - the role of philosophy of science also seems reduced to explicating laboratory findings. The present reviewers think that this reductionism suffers from overstretching; in particular, the idea of 'explanation in a single bound' from molecule to mind is a bit too ruthless. Still, Bickle's arguments are worth serious attention. (shrink)

This is a review of Peter Anstey's John Locke and Natural Philosophy, which is a masterful and well-argued study of Locke's philosophy of science that shall become both the standard and starting place, for scholars and students alike, for decades to come. Anstey's meticulous and thorough research, combined with his comprehensive knowledge of the history of natural philosophy, make this work a must-read for all who are interested in Locke, early modern philosophy, the history of the philosophy of science, (...) or early modern philosophy of science. His characteristically rigorous analysis and argumentation coupled with his easy and clear prose make this a highly readable and accessible work of scholarship. (shrink)

Newly re-printed, Sydney Hook’s classic (1939) work on Dewey appears with an Introduction by Richard Rorty. Hook may help us see how Dewey fit into his own time. That story is important. The new printing may also help us see how Dewey fits into our time. Rorty lauds more recent treatments of Dewey’s work, especially Robert Westbrook’s intellectual biography John Dewey and American Democracy (1991), and Steven Rockefeller’s John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (1991) gets honorable mention. (...) Specific comments focus on Alan Ryan’s John Dewey and the High Tide of American Liberalism (1995). “It may be that Dewey and Hook witnessed, as Alan Ryan suggests, ... ‘the high tide of American liberalism,’ but if this is so, then America has lost its soul.”1 Even future-focused pragmatists need to look back to Dewey and Hook. They were “Americans” who, in the final words of the Hook volume, “still had hope for what America may yet be.”. (shrink)

"When John Dewey died in 1952, he was memorialized as America's most famous philosopher, revered by liberal educators and deplored by conservatives, but universally acknowledged as his country's intellectual voice. Many things conspired to give Dewey an extraordinary intellectual eminence: He was immensely long-lived and immensely prolific; he died in his ninety-third year, and his intellectual productivity hardly slackened until his eighties." "Professor Alan Ryan offers new insights into Dewey's many achievements, his character, and the era in which his (...) scholarship had a remarkable impact. He investigates the question of what an American audience wanted from a public philosopher - from an intellectual figure whose credentials came from his academic standing as a philosopher, but whose audience was much wider than an academic one." "Ryan argues that Dewey's "religious" outlook illuminates his politics much more vividly than it does the politics of religion as ordinarily conceived. He examines how Dewey fit into the American radical tradition, how he was and was not like his transatlantic contemporaries, why he could for so long practice a form of philosophical inquiry that became unfashionable in England after 1914 at the latest."--BOOK JACKET. (shrink)

The political and philosophical problems John Rawls set out to solve arise out of the identity and conflicts of interests between citizens. There is identity of interests because social cooperation makes possible for everyone a life that is much better than one outside of society. There is a conflict of interests because people all prefer a larger to a smaller share of the benefits of social cooperation, and people have ideological differences. The problem a theory of justice has to (...) solve is how, in the face of these conflicts, effective social cooperation can come about on terms that are justifiable to all. (shrink)

The project method became a famous teaching method when William Heard Kilpatrick published his article ‘Project Method’ in 1918. The key idea in Kilpatrick's project method is to try to explain how pupils learn things when they work in projects toward different common objects. The same idea of pupils learning by work or action in an environment with objects also belongs to John Dewey's problem-solving method. Are Kilpatrick's project method and Dewey's problem-solving method the same thing? The aim of (...) this article is to analyze and prove that Kilpatrick's project method differs radically from Dewey's problem-solving method. (shrink)

John R. Searle is one of the world's leading philosophers. During his long and outstanding career, he has made groundbreaking and lasting contributions to the philosophy of language, to the philosophy of mind, as well as to the nature, structure, and functioning of social reality. This volume documents the 13th Münster Lectures on Philosophy with John R. Searle. It includes not only 11 critical papers on Searle's philosophy and Searle's replies to the papers, but also an original article (...) by John R. Searle on his overall philosophical enterprise entitled "The Basic Reality and the Human Reality". -/- "I think Münster is probably unique among contemporary universities in its ability to produce such a high level of philosophical production from their philosophy students." - John R. Searle. (shrink)

This is a classic volume in the "library of Living Philosophers" and includes a collection of essays on Dewey's work by his contemporaries at the time of the volume's publication. It also includes a biographical essay on Dewey and his replies to the assembled essays.

James Campbell's Understanding John Dewey represents the latest of his series of recent books, focused on the classical pragmatist tradition. In The Community Reconstructs. Campbell capably explored the meaning and relevance of pragmatic social thought, urging that the social pragmatists combined 'the inquiring and critical spirit of Peirce' with 'issues of general and direct human concern that interested James. Dewey is 'the most important figure of this movement' and the "primary figure' for the earlier book. Campbell now engages Dewey (...) more fully. (shrink)

John Searle zählt zweifellos zu den weltweit wichtigsten und einflussreichsten Denkern der Gegenwart. Seine grundlegenden und nachhaltigen Beiträge zur Sprachphilosophie, zur Philosophie des Geistes, zur Handlungstheorie und zur Sozialphilosophie werden weit über die Grenzen des Fachs Philosophie hinaus wahrgenommen und gehören vielfach zum Standardrepertoire wissenschaftlicher Forschung und Lehre. -/- Michael Kober und Jan G. Michel bieten in diesem Buch eine übersichtliche sowie gut verständliche, aber auch kritische Einführung in das Gesamtwerk John Searles: Neben einer sehr persönlichen biographischen Notiz (...) und einem kurzen Überblick über seine Leitfragen und Positionen wird jeder der genannten Arbeitsbereiche John Searles in seinen wesentlichen Grundzügen historisch wie systematisch eingeordnet, dargestellt und diskutiert. Indem Kober und Michel dabei nicht chronologisch, sondern inhaltlich systematisch vorgehen, treten außerdem die Zusammenhänge innerhalb des Gesamtwerks John Searles deutlich hervor, so dass dieses schließlich im Lichte der heutigen Philosophie bewertet werden kann. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the requirement for the qualitative is theory-dependent, determined by the fundamental assumptions built into the ontology. John Heil’s qualitative, in its role as individuator of objects and powers, is required only by a theory that posits a world of distinct objects or powers. Does Heil’s ‘deep’ view of the world, such that there is only one powerful object (e.g. a field containing modes or properties which we perceive as manifest everyday objects) require the (...) qualitative as individuator of objects and powers? The answer depends on whether it is possible to account for the manifest objects and the ostensible spatial primacy of our perceived world without recourse to the qualitative. In this paper I outline just such an account with the intention of extending Heil’s efforts to incorporate fundamental power in the world while providing a coherent explanation for our strong intuition of spatial, as against relational, priority. (shrink)

In The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal, Victor Kestenbaum swims against the current of Dewey scholarship. He declares for and gives close articulation to the importance of transcendence in the philosophy of John Dewey. The guiding thread of the book is "the proposal that Dewey never outgrew his idealistic period. His philosophical achievement is not to be located in his naturalism but in the frontiers along which the natural and the transcendental touch" (137). Kestenbaum does not argue (...) that Dewey defends a supernatural sense of transcendence; instead, he documents the modes of transcendence that, for Dewey, reveal themselves within the flow of experience. This is a learned and carefully developed book, one that will provoke pragmatists to think carefully about how growth, self-revision, and... (shrink)

James K.A. Smith argues that the ontology of participation associated with Radical Orthodoxy is incompatible with a Christian affirmation of the intrinsic being and goodness of creatures. In response, he proposes a Leibnizian view in which things are endowed with the innate dynamism of ‘force’. Creatures have a certain depth of being, and are intrinsically good, just because they each have an inner virtuality that they bring into expression. Such force is said to be a metaphysical component of the agent. (...) In this paper it is asked whether John Milbank's ontology of participation can be defended by distinguishing between two senses of being a subject. Perhaps it is possible for a creature to bring into expression what is an infused ‘alien’ gift rather than a metaphysical component – to be expressive subject, but not ontic subject, for divine power. However, while this distinction promises to make sense of the reception of an indwelling ‘other’ in grace, knowledge and love, neither proper substance nor proper existence can be received in this way. A creature must be the ontic subject for its being, after all. Still, divine being might proceed from God as radical indwelling gift, as non-ontic ground for ontic being. (shrink)

Partant de l'idée énoncée par le philosophe Charles Taylor, selon laquelle les êtres humains sont « des animaux capables d'auto-interprétation », cet article vise à comprendre le rôle constitutif de l'auto-interprétation dans la connaissance de soi. Une conception satisfaisante de l'auto-interprétation devrait à la fois rendre compte de l'autorité de la connaissance de soi en première personne et satisfaire les exigences du réalisme ordinaire. Si la version constitutiviste de l'auto-interprétation semble incompatible avec de telles exigences, c'est parce qu'elle considère ce (...) pouvoir constituant comme le privilège du sujet de modeler ses états mentaux au gré de sa volonté. Pour autant, il est possible de conserver un rôle constitutif à l'auto-interprétation en évitant toute implication volontariste et en maintenant une certaine indépendance des contenus mentaux du sujet envers lui-même. C'est ce que proposent les philosophes américains Richard Moran et David Finkelstein, le premier, en redéfinissant l'activité d'auto-interprétation en termes de croyance impliquant l'adhésion du sujet à ses attitudes mentales. Considérant le sujet en tant qu'agent responsable de ses attitudes, Moran défend une conception cognitive et engagée de l'interprétation, un point de vue pratique du sujet sur lui-même. La délibération fournit ainsi les raisons d'adopter une croyance, un désir, une émotion,... raisons qui justifient en même temps l'auto-interprétation. Moins attaché à la valeur cognitive de l'auto-interprétation, Finkelstein développe également une conception pratique de la connaissance de soi, fondée sur la fonction expressive des auto-attributions et où l'auto-interprétation a valeur de contexte de cela même qu'elle interprète. (shrink)

Reviews a collection of John Deely's articles. Deely is interested in the relationship between semiotics on the one hand, and the realism of Thomas Aquinas and John Poinsot on the other.

La vie est-elle un phénomène émergent ? Traduit-elle l'apparition de propriétés nouvelles au niveau d'un tout, qui seraient irréductibles aux propriétés et à l'organisation des composants de ce tout, ou encore imprédictibles à partir de ces mêmes éléments ? Développées à la charnière des XIXe et XXe siècles comme alternative aux deux approches antinomiques du vivant que sont le vitalisme et le mécanisme, la notion philosophique d'émergence connait aujourd'hui de nouveaux développements : avec la prise de conscience de la complexité (...) du vivant, un nouveau discours émergentiste refait surface en biologie et dans le champ scientifique des origines de la vie. Que signifie la notion d'émergence lorsqu'elle s'applique à l'apparition de la vie sur Terre ? Quelles sont sa pertinence et sa portée ? Dans ce livre, Christophe Malaterre propose une clarification conceptuelle de la notion philosophique d'émergence ; il en défend une conception epistémique et contextuelle, adossée à la notion d'explication. En s'inspirant des travaux les plus contemporains sur les origines de la vie, il montre que, selon le contexte epistémique dans lequel le phénomène est évalué, la qualification de l'apparition de la vie comme émergente est, ou non, justifié. Il défend alors la thèse selon laquelle la caractérisation émergentiste de l'apparition de la vie n'est qu'une conséquence temporaire des limites de nos connaissances scientifiques. (shrink)

Samuel Langhorne Clemens o Mark Twain es el autor del Diario de Adán y Eva, Un yanki en la corte del rey Arturo, Las aventuras de Tom Sawyer, Las aventuras de Huckleberry Finn y otras. Este escritor norteamericano asumió la práctica literaria como un asunto que va más allá del entretenimiento: escribió para interpelar al lector. Y este detalle salta a la vista con un libro que rara veces es referenciado: Sobre la decadencia del arte de mentir, texto que aborda (...) una enfermedad axiológica en el mundo moderno: los peligros que acarrea seguir al pie de la letra los postulados universales de un Deber y una Verdad abstracta. A continuación se hace un análisis de este problema. (shrink)

La philosophie Ricœurienne de la religion suit l’anthropologie kantienne, la bonté originaire et le mal radical de la nature humaine. Ricœur, toutefois, considère le problème du mal plus profondément que Kant. Il cherche alors, dans le kérygme religieux, la motivation plus profonde que le motif autonome, alors que Kant, par l’interprétation allégorique, s’adonne à la démystication de la religion historique. Le Dieu nommé s’addresse, au-delà du Dieu conceptuel kantien, au sens super-abondant au millieu du non-sens de la vie et ouvre (...) l’horizon de théonomie. Celle-ci fait du commandement de l’amour un appel non-violent; l’amour qui réunit la forme universelle et la matière particulière de la norme morale. (shrink)

Cet ouvrage collectif est le fruit d'un colloque sur les philosophies du plaisir qui a réuni philologues et philosophes, spécialistes de l'Antiquité et de la Renaissance, en juin 2004, à l'Université de Lille 3.

During the 2007–2008 global food crisis, the prices of primary foods, in particular, peaked. Subsequently, governments concerned about food security and investors keen to capitalize on profit-maximizing opportunities undertook large-scale land acquisitions (LASLA) in, predominantly, least developed countries (LDCs). Economically speaking, this market reaction is highly welcome, as it should (1) improve food security and lower prices through more efficient food production while (2) host countries benefit from development opportunities. However, our assessment of the debate on the issues indicates critical (...) voices in both the media and academic discourse. This article aims to provide a philosophical law and economics analysis. We draw on John Rawls’s Theory of Justice, focusing on Rawls’s background institutions for distributive justice (§43) to evaluate LASLA form an ethical angle. Approaching LASLA into Sub Saharan LDCs as a socio-economic reform redistributing land from the local population of LDCs to investors, we acknowledge that they bear a highly desirable potential. Often, though, they cannot be regarded as ethically correct in practice as the insignificant improvements for local populations and sometimes even human rights violations contradict Rawls’s principles of justice. Then investigating whether and how international law can help overcome the shortcomings, we conclude that even though respective mechanisms exist in the current state of international law, it is hardly possible that it will produce more just outcomes in the near future. (shrink)

Los estudios especializados sobre la obra de Hans Blumenberg [1920-1996] han prestado poca atención a su historia de la ciencia, en particular a su historia de la astronomía. A partir de 1955 Blumenberg empezó a ocuparse de la astronomía copernicana, y publicó diversos artículos relacionados con esta temática a finales de la década de los 50 y comienzos de los 60, luego recopilados en su Die kopernikanische Wende [1965]. Blumenberg preparó también estudios preliminares al Sidereus Nuncius de Galileo Galilei y (...) al De coniecturis, de Cusa. Todo este trabajo fue culminado en su monumental Die genesis der kopernikanischen Welt [1975], así como en el libro póstumo Die Vollzähligkeit der Sterne [1997]. El propósito de este artículo es tomar en consideración este ámbito específico de la obra de Blumenberg. Nos centraremos en la presencia de algunos motivos heideggerianos en la historia blumenberguiana de la astronomía. Defenderemos que en ella cabe identificar una metafísica de la existencia en sentido heideggeriano, en tanto paradigmas existenciales astronómicos. (shrink)

"Les uns sont fascinâes par la hardiesse et la constance de sa pensâee, les autres la rejettent au motif que sa mâetaphysique est extravagante et son raisonnement obscur.

This review of John Russon's Human Experience: Philosophy, Neurosis, and the Elements of Everyday Life focuses on Russon's position that experience is open (having a developmental, situated and dynamic, rather than fixed, structure) and figured (having a structure inseparable from forms of bodily function), and that mind is something learned in the process of working out experience as figured and open. These themes are drawn together in relation to recent scientific discussions (e.g., of bodily dynamics, mirror neurons, robotic systems (...) and thermodynamics), to show how Russon's view challenges deep philosophical assumptions in prevailing accounts of mind, body and experience. (shrink)

Historical research on John Dalton has been dominated by an attempt to reconstruct the origins of his so-called "chemical atomic theory". I show that Dalton's theory is difficult to define in any concise manner, and that there has been no consensus as to its unique content among his contemporaries, later chemists, and modern historians. I propose an approach which, instead of attempting to work backward from Dalton's theory, works forward, by identifying the research questions that Dalton posed to himself (...) and attempting to understand how his hypotheses served as answers to these questions. I describe Dalton's scientific work as an evolving set of puzzles about natural phenomena. I show how an early interest in meteorology led Dalton to see the constitution of the atmosphere as a puzzle. In working on this great puzzle, he gradually turned his interest to specifically chemical questions. In the end, the web of puzzles that he worked on required him to create his own novel philosophy of chemistry for which he is known today. (shrink)

En la Genizah del Cairo se encontraron unos manuscritos con notación gregoriana y escritura hebrea. También aparecieron documentos que apuntan como autor de las partituras a Giovanni-Abdías, un monje cristiano del siglo XII, nacido en el sur de Italia, que se convirtió al judaísmo. Hasta ahora, el estudio de este personaje se ha realizado casi exclusivamente desde el punto de vista judío. Sin embargo, al igual que Abdías sintetiza las tradiciones cristiana y judía en su notación al copiar melodías hebreas (...) con notación cristiana, también lo hace en sus textos. Abdías transcribió una cita latina de Joel a caracteres hebreos. Este artículo estudia la posibilidad de que Abdías pretendiera contraponer su conversión al judaísmo a su ordenación como monje cristiano a través de la plasmación de la profecía de Joel, lo que implica un intenso diálogo entre ambas tradiciones. (shrink)

This article focuses on Proculus of Marseilles’ long episcopate (ca. 381-428 AD) in order to analyse this key moment for the construction of the Gallic Church. A further aim of this paper is to implement a methodological approach that allows a nuanced assessment of complex processes of institutional development.

Rawls in his later philosophy claims that it is sufficient to accept political conception as true or right, depending on what one's worldview allows, on the basis of whatever reasons one can muster, given one's worldview (doctrine). What political liberalism is interested in is a practical agreement on the political conception and not in our reasons for accepting it. There are deep issues (regarding deep values, purpose of life, metaphysics etc.) which cannot be resolved through invoking common reasons (this is (...) the fact of free reason itself), and trying to resolve them would involve us in interminable debates and would hamper the practical task of agreement on the political conception. Given the absolute necessity of a political society which is stable and enduring, it is thus wise to avoid these issues in founding a political society and choosing its basic principles - this is the pragmatic part of Rawls's position. In this paper I argue that this strategy leads Rawls into a paradox: (i) although the intention is to stay independent of comprehensive doctrines, the political conception is in fact totally (and precariously) dependent on comprehensive doctrines (not just on one doctrine but on each and every major doctrine in society). It is dependent on them: for its conceptualisation as an independent idea, for its justification, for the check of its reasonability in relation to the external world, for the formation of identities and value inculcation and hence for the formation of its model citizen; (ii) the very search for independence makes the political conception more dependent on comprehensive doctrines, and by extension makes it potentially more prone to intervention in and tampering with comprehensive doctrines (it is enough to show that it is a strong conceptual possibility to cast doubt on the whole strategy). Thus, for example, the political conception relies on the hope that “firmly held convictions gradually change” and that it would “in fact . . . have the capacity to shape those doctrines toward itself”. The purpose of the Rawlsian conjecture is to give these “hopes” a concrete, practical form by giving advice to proponents of the comprehensive doctrine on how they can do all this and “try to show them that, despite what they might think, they can still endorse a reasonable political conception”. I further argue that this paradox can be overcome by making the core of political liberalism more flexible. (shrink)

John Searle begins his (1990) ``Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion and Cognitive Science'' with

``Ten years ago in this journal I published an article (Searle, 1980a and 1980b) criticising what I call Strong
AI, the view that for a system to have mental states it is sufficient for the system to implement the right sort of
program with right inputs and outputs. Strong AI is rather easy to refute and the basic argument can be
summarized in one sentence: {it a (...) system, me for example, could implement a program for understanding
Chinese, for example, without understanding any Chinese at all.} This idea, when developed, became
known as the Chinese Room Argument.''

The Chinese Room Argument can be refuted in one sentence. (shrink)

(with John Haugeland), in R. L. Gregory, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Mind , Oxford University Press 1987; reprinted in Actes du 3ème Colloque International Cognition et Connaissance: Où va la science cognitive? Toulouse: CNRS/Université Paul Sabatier 1988; reprinted in K. Lehrer and E. Sosa, eds., The Opened Curtain: A U.S.-Soviet Philosophy Summit, Westview Press, 1991, Chapter 3.

It was in the Oxford of Austin, Ryle and Strawson that John Searle was shaped as a philosopher. It was in Oxford, not least through Austin’s influence and example, that the seeds of the book Speech Acts, Searle’s inaugural opus magnum , were planted. And it was in Oxford that Searle acquired many of the characteristic traits that have marked his thinking ever since. These are traits shared by many analytic philosophers of his generation: the idea of the centrality (...) of language to philosophy; the adoption of a philosophical method centred on (in Searle’s case a mainly informal type of) logical analysis; the respect for common sense and for the results of modern science as constraints on philosophical theorizing; and the reverence for Frege, and for the sort of stylistic clarity which marked Frege’s writings. (shrink)

Late Dewey on democracy and its social and political roles in American society. Republished in John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925-1953, Vol. 14.

This study provides a comprehensive reinterpretation of the meaning of Locke's political thought. John Dunn restores Locke's ideas to their exact context, and so stresses the historical question of what Locke in the Two Treatises of Government was intending to claim. By adopting this approach, he reveals the predominantly theological character of all Locke's thinking about politics and provides a convincing analysis of the development of Locke's thought. In a polemical concluding section, John Dunn argues that liberal and (...) Marxist interpretations of Locke's politics have failed to grasp his meaning. Locke emerges as not merely a contributor to the development of English constitutional thought, or as a reflector of socio-economic change in seventeenth-century England, but as essentially a Calvinist natural theologian. (shrink)

The essays in this volume offer an approach to the history of moral and political philosophy that takes its inspiration from John Rawls. All the contributors are philosophers who have studied with Rawls and they offer this collection in his honor. The distinctive feature of this approach is to address substantive normative questions in moral and political philosophy through an analysis of the texts and theories of major figures in the history of the subject: Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, (...) and Marx. By reconstructing the core of these theories in a way that is informed by contemporary theoretical concerns, the contributors show how the history of the subject is a resource for understanding present and perennial problems in moral and political philosophy. This outstanding collection will be of particular interest to historians of moral and political philosophy, historians of ideas, and political scientists. (shrink)