This book takes a novel approach by highlighting comparative and long-term historical perspectives on experimental practice. The juxtaposition of accounts of natural, social, and medical experimentation is very enlightening, especially because the authors put the emphasis on the different kinds of objects of experimentation (physical matter, chemical reagents, social groups, organizations, sick individuals, archeological remains) and demonstrate how much the kinds of objects matter for the practice of experimentation, its methods, tools, and methodologies. Taken together, the chapters raise several fascinating (...) questions for further study: What do these different approaches have in common? Why do we call them “experimentation”? What are the intersections among the fields and their developments? The volume engages philosophical approaches that are not well known to Anglophone readers (Bachelard, Bergson, Bernard, Canguilhem, among others) and brings to attention a wealth of Francophone secondary literature on past and present scientific experimentation. The collection fills a yawning gap in science, science studies, and philosophy of science teaching, making it particularly valuable philosophers and historians of science in all subfields. (shrink)

Nulla dies sine linea (Pline l’Ancien à propos d’Apelle) « Regarde de tous tes yeux, regarde » (Jules Verne et Georges Perec) « Travaille ton instrument » (Pierre Schaeffer) Essentielle à toute activité artistique, la pratique d’exercices est pourtant rarement interrogée en tant que telle. Qu’est-ce qu’un exercice artistique? Quelles perspectives la pensée de l’exercice permet-elle d’ouvrir sur la compréhension des pratiques artistiques, sur leurs liens avec les savoirs et les techniques, su...

Jules Dupuit, dont on commémore le bicentenaire en 2004, est la figure centrale de ces deux ouvrages : comme personnage étudié en tant que tel sous de multiples facettes, dans le second ; aux côtés de nombre de ses collègues de l’École des ponts et chaussées, dans le premier. Dans l’un et l’autre cas, les auteurs se penchent sur les interactions entre les activités concrètes de l’ingénieur et la construction de ses théories économiques, leurs formalisations au XIXe siècle. Les (...) liens entre méc.. (shrink)

Jules Coleman, one of the world's leading philosophers of law, here presents his most mature work so far on substantive issues in legal theory and the appropriate methodology for legal theorizing. In doing so, he takes on the views of highly respected contemporaries such as Brian Leiter, Stephen Perry, and Ronald Dworkin.

1. Bosanquet, who relished paradox, does not disappoint us about history. The late nineteenth century was a golden age of historical inquiry. Historians — Ernst Curtius, J.G. Droysen, Theodor Mommsen in Germany, William Stubbs, E.A. Freeman and F.W. Maitland in England, Jules Michelet and others in France — were establishing history as a credible and esteemed academic discipline. This increasing respectability of the practice of history was matched by a sophisticated theorisation of history, a theorisation which took two directions. (...) On the one hand were Marx’s brilliant and bewitching historical projections. On the other the logic and methodology of history as an autonomously valid form of knowledge and inquiry were being elaborated. This last was largely a process in which the hermeneutic inquiries of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Droysen and Wilhelm von Humboldt came to fruition in the work of such writers as Philip August Boeckh, Wilhelm Dilthey and — not to forget The Presuppositions of Critical History — our own F.H. Bradley. (shrink)

The object of this paper is to look at the extent and nature of the uses of analogy during the ªrst century following the so-called scientiªc revolution. Using the research tool provided by JSTOR we systematically analyze the uses of “analog” and its cognates (analogies, analogous, etc.) in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London for the period 1665–1780. In addition to giving the possibility of evaluating quantitatively the proportion of papers explicitly using analogies, this approach makes it (...) possible to go beyond the maybe idiosyncratic cases of Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and other much studied giants of the so-called Scientiªc Revolution. As a result a classiªcation of types of uses is proposed. Relations between types of analogies and research ªelds are also established. In this paper we are less interested in discussing the “real nature” or “essence” or even the cognitive limitations of analogical thinking than in describing its various uses and different meanings as they changed over the course of a century. (shrink)

This book by one of America's preeminent legal theorists is concerned with the conflict between the goals of justice and economic efficiency in the allocation of risk, especially risk pertaining to safety. The author approaches his subject from the premise that the market is central to liberal political, moral, and legal theory. In the first part of the book, he rejects traditional "rational choice" liberalism in favor of the view that the market operates as a rational way of fostering stable (...) relationships and institutions within communities of individuals with broadly divergent conceptions of the good. However, markets are needed most where they are most difficult to create and sustain, and one way to understand contract law in liberal legal theory, according to Professor Coleman, is as an institution designed to reduce uncertainty and thereby make markets possible. Another target of this book is the prevalent view that tort law helps rectify market failures when transaction costs are too high to permit contracting. The author argues instead that tort law should be understood as a way of rectifying wrongful losses not inefficient exchanges. (shrink)

Recent empirical research has substantiated the finding that very many of us harbour implicit biases: fast, automatic, and difficult to control processes that encode stereotypes and evaluative content, and influence how we think and behave. Since it is difficult to be aware of these processes - they have sometimes been referred to as operating 'unconsciously' - we may not know that we harbour them, nor be alert to their influence on our cognition and action. And since they are difficult to (...) control, considerable work is required to prevent their influence. We here focus on the implications of these findings for epistemology. We first look at ways in which implicit biases thwart our knowledge seeking practices (sections 1 & 2). Then we set out putative epistemic benefits of implicit bias, before considering ways in which epistemic practices might be improved (section 3). Finally, we consider the distinctive challenges that the findings about implicit bias pose to us as philosophers, in the context of feminist philosophy in particular (section 4). (shrink)

Jules Dupuit, dont on commémore le bicentenaire en 2004, est la figure centrale de ces deux ouvrages : comme personnage étudié en tant que tel sous de multiples facettes, dans le second ; aux côtés de nombre de ses collègues de l’École des ponts et chaussées, dans le premier. Dans l’un et l’autre cas, les auteurs se penchent sur les interactions entre les activités concrètes de l’ingénieur et la construction de ses théories économiques, leurs formalisations au XIXe siècle. Les (...) liens entre méc... (shrink)

This chapter presents the different purposes of observation and experiment in physics using examples that allow us to grasp the historical transformations linked to the development of instrumentation. We cover both the observational and experimental aspects of this discipline, which range from astronomy and astrophysics to nuclear and particle physics, including optics and solid-state physics.

In this paper, we provide a macro level analysis of the visibility of philosophy of science in the sciences over the last four decades. Our quantitative analysis of publications and citations of philosophy of science papers, published in 17 main journals representing the discipline, contributes to the longstanding debate on the influence of philosophy of science on the sciences. It reveals the global structure of relationships that philosophy of science maintains with science, technology, engineering and mathematics and social sciences and (...) humanities fields. Explored at the level of disciplines, journals and authors, this analysis of the relations between philosophy of science and a large and diversified array of disciplines allows us to answer several questions: what is the degree of openness of various disciplines to the specialized knowledge produced in philosophy of science? Which STEM and SSH fields and journals have privileged ties with philosophy of science? What are the characteristics, in terms of citation and publication patterns, of authors who get their philosophy of science papers cited outside their field? Complementing existing qualitative inquiries on the influence of specific authors, concepts or topics of philosophy of science, the bibliometric approach proposed in this paper offers a comprehensive portrait of the multiple relationships that links philosophy of science to the sciences. (shrink)

How, if at all, do the findings of social psychology impact upon philosophical analyses of discrimination? In this chapter, I outline key findings from three research programs from psychology – concerning in-group/out-group favoritism; implicit bias; and stereotype threat. I argue that each set of findings presents challenges to how philosophical analyses of group discrimination are formulated, and propose possible revisions to be explored in future work.

In the mid twentieth century the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein famously asserted that games are indefinable; there are no common threads that link them all. "Nonsense," says the sensible Bernard Suits: "playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles." The short book Suits wrote demonstrating precisely that is as playful as it is insightful, as stimulating as it is delightful. Suits not only argues that games can be meaningfully defined; he also suggests that playing games is a (...) central part of the ideal of human existence, so games belong at the heart of any vision of Utopia. Originally published in 1978, The Grasshopper is now re-issued with a new introduction by Thomas Hurka and with additional material (much of it previously unpublished) by the author, in which he expands on the ideas put forward in The Grasshopper and answers some questions that have been raised by critics. (shrink)

How I became a philosopher -- To love, to love me, to love us.

Do participants in shared activity have mutual obligations to do their bit? This article shows this question has no one-size-fits-all answer and offers a pluralist account of the normativity of shared agency. The first part argues obligations to do one's bit have three degrees of involvement in shared activity. Such obligations might, obviously, bolster co-participants’ resolve to act as planned (degree 1). Less obviously, there also are higher and lower degrees of involvement. Obligations to do one's bit might provide our (...) agency-pooling mechanism. When they do, we act together by virtue of satisfying them (degree 2). Conversely, some shared activities involve no obligation (degree 0). In the second part, I argue shared agency theory is best served by a non-moralistic conception of obligation, one on which co-participants’ obligations need be neither strict-performance obligations, nor directed ones. Overall, my arguments suggest that we can choose how to coordinate normatively our shared activities. (shrink)

This collection of essays by one of America's leading legal theorists is unique in its scope: it shows how traditional problems of philosophy can be understood more clearly when considered in terms of law, economics, and political science.

In this introduction to the new edition of Durkheim and Mauss's Primitive Classification, I flesh out Durkheim and Mauss’s account of the acquisition of the concept of class, and I argue that their account steers a middle course between traditional strands of rationalism and empiricism.

This chapter contains sections titled: Jurisprudence: Method and Subject Matter Legality and Authority Positivism: Austin vs. Hart The Authority of Law Judicial Discretion Incorporationism and Legality Raz' s Theory of Authority Incorporationism and Authority Conclusion Postscript References.

Next SectionIn emphasizing the importance of the separability thesis, legal philosophers have inadequately appreciated other philosophically important ways in which law and morality are or might be connected with one another. In this article, I argue that the separability thesis cannot shoulder the philosophical burdens that it has been asked to bear. I then turn to two issues of greater importance to jurisprudence. These are ‘the moral semantics of law’ and ‘the normativity of theory construction in jurisprudence’. The moral semantics (...) claim is that legal content is best understood as moral directives about what is to be done and who is to decide what is to be done. The problem is that legal positivists typically hold that only social facts contribute to the content of law, and it is hard to see how a positivist can hold both the social-facts claim and the moral-semantics claim. I argue that not only are the two claims consistent with one another, but that legal positivists must hold some version of the moral semantics claim if they are to make sense of the claim that legal reasons purport to be content-independent moral reasons for acting. In Section 3 of the article, I take up the question of whether theory construction in jurisprudence is normative or descriptive. This is hard to do in part because so little attention has been paid to correctly formulating the issue. I suggest a demanding test for descriptivism; namely, that an adequate analysis of law can be provided entirely in terms of its formal features. I then defend this claim against three arguments designed to show because governance by law is necessarily desirable or valuable that, we cannot characterize law without making reference to those values or to other material features of law. This constitutes a limited but powerful defence of descriptive jurisprudence. (shrink)

Research programs in empirical psychology from the past two decades have revealed implicit biases. Although implicit processes are pervasive, unavoidable, and often useful aspects of our cognitions, they may also lead us into error. The most problematic forms of implicit cognition are those which target social groups, encoding stereotypes or reflecting prejudicial evaluative hierarchies. Despite intentions to the contrary, implicit biases can influence our behaviours and judgements, contributing to patterns of discriminatory behaviour. These patterns of discrimination are obviously wrong and (...) unjust. But in remedying such wrongs, one question to be addressed concerns responsibility for implicit bias. Unlike some paradigmatic forms of wrongdoing, such discrimination is often unintentional, unendorsed, and perpetrated without awareness; and the harms are particularly damaging because they are cumulative and collectively perpetrated. So, what are we to make of questions of responsibility? In this article, we outline some of the main lines of recent philosophical thought, which address questions of responsibility for implicit bias. We focus on (a) the kind of responsibility at issue; (b) revisionist versus nonrevisionist conceptions of responsibility as applied to implicit bias; and (c) individual, institutional, and collective responsibility for implicit bias. (shrink)

We explore the relationship between jurisprudential theories pertaining to the nature of law and semantic and metasemantic theories pertaining to the meaning of ‘law’ in the wake of Dworkin’s notorious Semantic Sting argument in Law’s Empire (HUP 1986). Along the way we delineate various aspects of the semantic and metasemantic underpinnings of ‘law’ as an artifact term and advance the general methodological point that jurisprudential inquiry is only negligibly constrained by the findings of semantic and metasemantic inquiry.

An updated and expanded successor to Culver and Gert's Philosophy in Medicine, this book integrates moral philosophy with clinical medicine to present a comprehensive summary of the theory, concepts, and lines of reasoning underlying the ...

This book offers the fullest and most sophisticated account of Gert's influential moral theory, a model first articulated in the classic work The Moral Rules: A New Rational Foundation for Morality, published in 1970. In this final revision, Gert makes clear that the moral rules are only one part of an informal system that does not provide unique answers to every moral question but does always provide a range of morally acceptable options. A new chapter on reasons includes an account (...) of what makes one reason better than another and a second new chapter is devoted to the question of justifying violations of the rules. Moral impartiality, the moral ideals, and virtue and vice, are all treated in greater detail. Throughout, Gert attempts to answer all of the challenges that his work has provoked. (shrink)

H.L.A. Hart'sThe Concept of Lawis the most important and influential book in the legal positivist tradition. Though its importance is undisputed, there is a good deal less consensus regarding its core commitments, both methodological and substantive. With the exception of an occasional essay, Hart neither further developed nor revised his position beyond the argument of the book. The burden of shaping the prevailing understanding of his views, therefore, has fallen to others: notably, Joseph Raz among positivists, and Ronald Dworkin among (...) positivism's critics. Dworkin, in particular, has framed, then reframed, the conventional understanding, not only of Hart's positivism, but of the terms of the debate between positivists and him. While standing on the sidelines, Hart witnessed the unfolding of not only a lively debate between positivists and Dworkin, but an equally intense one among positivists as to positivism's (and his) core claims. The most important debate has been between so-called inclusive and exclusive positivists: a debate as much about Hart's legacy as about the proper interpretation of legal positivism. (shrink)

Suppose the prevailing distribution of property rights is unjust as determined by the relevant conception of distributive justice. You have far more than you should have under that theory and I have far less. Then I defraud you and in doing so reallocate resources so that our holdings ex post more closely approximate what distributive justice requires. Do I have a duty to return the property to you? There are many good reasons for requiring me to return to you what (...) I have taken. One is that while you may have no right in justice to all that you own, it does not follow that I do, or that I have a right to take it. Thus, requiring me to return the property to you is a way of recognizing that I had no right to take it from you in the first place. (shrink)

Philosophers who have written about implicit bias have claimed or implied that individuals are not responsible, and therefore not blameworthy, for their implicit biases, and that this is a function of the nature of implicit bias as implicit: below the radar of conscious reflection, out of the control of the deliberating agent, and not rationally revisable in the way many of our reflective beliefs are. I argue that close attention to the findings of empirical psychology, and to the conditions for (...) blameworthiness, does not support these claims. I suggest that the arguments for the claim that individuals are not liable for blame are invalid, and that there is some reason to suppose that individuals are, at least sometimes, liable to blame for the extent to which they are influenced in behaviour and judgment by implicit biases. I also argue against the claim that it is counter-productive to see bias as something for which individuals are blameworthy; rather, understanding implicit bias as something for which we are liable to blame could be constructive. (shrink)

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the fundamental normative issues underpinning immigration policy. Economists, political scientists and philosophers address issues such as the proper role of the state in supporting a particular culture, the possible destabilization of the political and social life of a country through immigration, the size and distribution of economic losses and gains, and the legitimacy of discriminating against potential immigrants in favour of members of the resident population. The need for serious philosophical consideration of this (...) subject is beyond question. This volume should advance discussion in an area of great practical as well as philosophical importance. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article est une approche stylistique de l’oeuvre de Claude Lévi-Strauss. Partant de l’hypothèse que pour lui le discours des sciences humaines doit rechercher l’homologie structurale avec son objet et le traduire, nous nous proposons d’étudier, dans Tristes tropiques, les Mythologiques et Regarder écouter lire, le style de pensée de Lévi-Strauss dans l’étude des productions artistiques. Or si un discours doit traduire la structure et la forme de mythes comme d’objets non-discursifs tels que des oeuvres plastiques, quelle forme doit-il (...) adopter? Cette recherche est aussi bien formelle que théorique, puisque Lévi-Strauss entend trouver un mode d’écriture qui traduise et rende visible le fonctionnement de l’esprit dans la création. Cet article tente de répondre à cette question en décrivant comment Lévi-Strauss altère progressivement ses modèles stylistiques, plaçant d’abord son écriture sous l’égide de l’analyse structurale, puis de la musique et du mythe, et enfin du collage. (shrink)

In our racially unjust societies, what should white people do? In this paper, I survey answers to this question that recent work in ethics, social epistemology, and philosophy of race suggests.

A dissertation in the tradition of logical positivism includes a discussion of the functions and methods of philosophy and a critique of ethics and theology.

Reactive emotion accounts hold that blameworthiness should be analyzed in terms of the familiar reactive emotions. However, despite the attractions of such views, we are not persuaded that blameworthiness is ultimately a matter of correctly felt reactive emotion. In this paper, we draw attention to a range of little-discussed considerations involving the moral significance of the passage of time that drive a wedge between blameworthiness and the reactive emotions: the appropriateness of the reactive emotions is sensitive to the passage of (...) time in ways that attributions of blameworthiness are not. There are a number of ways in which reactive emotion accounts might attempt to accommodate the moral significance of time, however. We consider the most important of these, but ultimately find them wanting. Accordingly, we conclude that the prospects for the reactive emotion accounts are bleak. Our argument, if successful, has a range of implications for legal theory, most importantly in providing a novel moral basis for statutes of limitations and in shedding light on new avenues in the theory of criminal law generally. (shrink)

The first part of this book is a translation of a philosophical work by the Breton philosopher Jules Lequyer, which explores questions of divine justice and human equality. The second part is a biography of Lequyer by Donald Wayne Viney, based on Prosper Hemon's life of Lequyer, and other material.

Oedipus’s basic error was to have viewed evil as a problem, whereas he learns to his grief that it is actually a mystery, an irresolvable paradox, a natural contradiction between the mutually exclusive possibilities of self-determination and predetermination, between freedom of the will and divine omniscience. This is the quandary as it is perceived by philosophy and religion. In the domains of religion and theology Fate is indeed a mystery. Ill-equipped as I am to elucidate mysteries, I will move the (...) discussion to a firmer ground, where the concept of Fate is merely a problem, where scholars, those who “traffic in words,” as Goethe calls us, stand a fighting chance.1My major concerns will be: 1) to determine what .. (shrink)